Month: August 2012

Granola

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Making granola is as simple as mixing together a bunch of ingredients and then baking them for 45 minutes. I often keep all of the ingredients needed for granola in my pantry, so the most difficult part is hunting for the nuts or seeds that end up in the back of a cupboard. Granola is very flexible (and it is especially good for cleaning out your pantry of random nuts and dried fruits). You can substitute any nuts, raw seeds, or dried fruits you like as long as you keep the volume about the same; taste the raw granola and adjust the spices, seasoning, oil, and sugar if needed. You can halve this recipe if you want to make a smaller amount. Most types of dried fruit should be mixed in after the granola is cooked because the long baking time will dry them out. However, by accident I’ve found that golden raisins will turn golden, slightly caramelized, and sweeter from the heat, so I like to mix them in before baking. (The picture above shows my …

Chicken Stock

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My mother often made stock at home, so I tried out making stock soon after I started cooking. Michael Ruhlman’s is by far the simplest and easiest stock recipe that I’ve found, and it has given me the best results so far. I used a combination of Michael Ruhlman’s chicken stock recipe on his blog, and the chicken stock recipe in “Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto” and some other tips from recipes that I’ve read over the years. The difference between the two recipes is that in the book, he suggests chicken has cooked in water for several hours and then adding the vegetables and aromatics and then cooking for 1 hour more. On the blog, he cooks everything together. When you break down a chicken, you can save the spare parts (e.g. backbone), in a bag in the freezer until you have enough to make stock. You can also save the carcass from a roasted chicken to make a dark roast chicken stock, . Cooking the stock in the oven was a revelation …