LoveTheJourney

So then, why is the almond the only type of prunus pit we eat? It’s not because cherry, apricot and peach pits are hard to crack and chew (though they are). It’s because the pits of most prunus drupes contain a chemical known as amygdalin, a member of a family of compounds known as cyanogenetic [...]

This question comes in from reader Nick:
You said cherry pits taste like almonds. Why is that?

Oh, I was hoping somebody would ask that, though I’m pretty sure I would have found a way to talk about this subject anyway. The reason cherry pits taste like almonds is that they’re part of the same family of [...]

Talk about something that brings me back to childhood. Taking a bite of these put me right back in Lillie’s kitchen, where my twin sister and I would watch her whip up meringue by hand on a flat egg board (she didn’t own a mixing machine of any kind). Lillie was an ample woman, and [...]

I was very lucky as a boy to live two doors down from the neighborhood baking queen. Her name was Lillie Lundstrom, a second-generation Swede whose cakes and cardamom rolls are still the stuff of legend on Lincoln Street. One of her lesser-known creations was this recipe for apricot bars, which takes the American concept [...]

My style of baklava is nut-heavy, as you can see. I like it that way, though it does produce a baklava that isn’t easy to eat according to formal Turkish baklava etiquette. If you’re a stickler for formality, cut down the nuts. The result will be pieces of baklava that are easier to spear with [...]

So if you’re not making your own filo, how do you improve on the usual mass-produced stuff? One answer is the nuts. Most of the baklava you find in stores contains one or two different kinds of nuts, usually walnuts with perhaps a few almonds mixed in. That’s because for a larger manufacturers more exotic [...]

…is how I like my baklava. Commercially-made filo dough doesn’t taste like much, so why not go where the flavor is? Like any simple recipe, the better your base ingredients, the better the end product will be, so get good butter, grind your spices fresh, you know the drill. This recipe fits a 9″ x [...]

Earlier in the week I wrote that I was taking a “sponge cake” approach to my marjolaine. That term isn’t wholly accurate, since I think of a classic sponge cake as something quite fluffy, that employs egg yolks, etc. etc.
This “cake” isn’t that sort of affair. Compositionally it’s similar to a meringue, only with [...]

This is one of those small steps that has a big impact on flavor. Yes, it’s an extra step, but I think it’s worth it since nuts play such a big part in the overall flavor profile. Preheat your oven to 400 and toast 1 1/2 cups (4.5 ounces) of sliced almonds for 7-8 minutes [...]

Meet my new favorite potato dish. Oh, those mustard-roasted potatoes were wonderful, weren’t they? And who doesn’t love baked pommes frites? And latkes, they were a force to be reckoned with. But they’re dead to me, or they would be, if in some cruel parallel universe I was to choose only one way to eat [...]