Garam masala is a magical spice blend because it can be used in sweet and savory recipes. The name literally translates to “warming spices” because it contains a blend of spices that, when combined, ...
Cooking professionally allows you to constantly taste new flavors, experience new combinations and techniques and develop your palette, but this doesn’t end with food. That is why many chefs find ...
Get the Party Started with an Interactive Cheese Board
If you are in any way connecting with the civilized world during the holidays, you are bound to be spending more money than usual. Holiday gifts for the kids, the folks, the partners, the friends, ...
Get ready to embark on a journey of culinary exploration that will reveal the unsung hero of our taste experience, the trigeminal nerve. This often-overlooked fifth sense plays a profound role in our ...
If your garden is looking anything like ours is at this point in the season, the herbs are beginning to wane and you’re quickly realizing the time has come to clip your herbs for the last time, ...
How do you preserve a memory? Are yours sparked by pictures? Can you inhale a certain aroma and be taken back in time? Maybe there is a particular sound that uploads a hard drive in your mind? It is ...
I have frequently talked about “taste memories” in previous blog posts: How the taste or aroma of something brings back memories from long ago. They often take me to a place or event with loved ones ...
One of my very favorite classes to teach at The Chopping Block is our Flavor Dynamics class. In this class, we explore taste versus flavor. It is an in-depth look of all the five basic tastes: salty, ...
Aromatics from around the World: Mire Poix, Soffritto, Refogado, Holy Trinity
Growing up homesteading in Iowa in the 60’s and 70’s gave me tremendous exposure to fresh food. We didn’t really eat frozen or packaged food, in part because we couldn’t afford it but also because it ...
The first Crossroads Diner: At the Intersection of Hospitality & Community of 2020 takes a turn down memory lane, back to my high school days. A relatively unsupervised 3-month summer stay in ...
