Simmer

One of the benefits of finding a great container of yogurt is that you can save some of it to make more of your own batch. You can bump the action of natural yogurt cultures and increase the thickness of the finished product by adding powdered milk in the ratio of 1/3 cup (26.6 grams) powdered milk per quart (1,040 grams) of milk. Some cultured yogurt recipes call for the addition of gelatin, pectin, or carrageenan to thicken the finished yogurt. You can substitute powdered milk there as well, starting with 1 tablespoon (5 grams) per quart (1,040 grams) of milk and gradually increasing the ratio to reach a thickness you like. The yogurt will keep for up to two weeks in the refrigerator.

Brown butter refers to butter that is heated quickly in a sauté pan until the milk solids just turn golden brown; it is then used immediately for cooking. It is a delicate operation because if heated a few seconds too long, the butter solids turn black and an unpleasant bitter taste is all you have to work with. Brown butter has developed a cultlike following and is now made specifically to be used as a flavoring agent in nontraditional recipes from sweet to savory. While we were working on ideas for increasing our output of brown butter, Michael Laiskonis, pastry chef at Le Bernardin, blogged about his experiments with brown butter. He shared a technique of reducing heavy cream until it separated into clarified butter and milk solids. This led to a discussion in the blog comments about the best way to extract the most milk solids from dairy and how to get the best yield of brown butter solids to play with. The discussion culminated with a tip from Cory Barrett, the pastry chef at Cleveland’s Lola Bistro. He suggested using nonfat dry milk to increase the yield of caramelized milk solids, and recommended letting them brown slowly in butter, then steeping them overnight to increase the butter flavor. This is why we love the Internet. It brings like-minded people together. Thanks to Michael and Cory, we now have access to a new approach, which yields a bounty of brown butter solids to be integrated into innumerable dishes. For our brown butter solids, we melted 2 sticks (224 grams) of unsalted butter and added 1 cup (80 grams) of nonfat milk powder. One of our favorite uses for brown butter is this ice cream. Just wait until you taste it.

We love crème fraîche. Its slightly viscous, silky texture and sweet-and-sour flavor make it a staple in our kitchen. It probably goes without saying, but the better your cream, the better your crème fraîche.

Yet another favorite of ours, this appears on our table in various guises every few weeks. The evaporated milk may seem like an odd choice but it serves a purpose, helping to stabilize the sauce. Evaporated milk is manufactured by exposing fresh milk to high heat in order to evaporate up to 60 percent of its water content. The resulting milk is concentrated in both flavor and nutrients. It usually has added stabilizers in the form of disodium phosphate and carrageenan. Although it is marketed as a substitute for fresh milk, it has a noticeably caramelized flavor that works nicely in sauces and soups. It produces an incredibly creamy sauce without the use of heavy cream or eggs. We’d like to say that we pair this mac and cheese with a salad or a vegetable, but truthfully, we tend to just savor the pasta with a glass of rich red wine or deep red berry juice depending on our age at the table.

Homemade ricotta is nothing like the supermarket version. It is luxurious, with a sweet, rich flavor that will make you appreciate why this cheese is such an integral part of Italian cuisine. The addition of heavy cream gives it an amazing texture. This ricotta can easily hold center stage on a plate. We like to serve it alongside baked pastas, as a condiment of sorts, instead of inside them. Its sweet creamy flavor is a wonderful contrast to the intense flavors of lasagna or baked ziti. Sweetened with a touch of honey and spread on good toast, it is a wonderful pick-me-up for the mid afternoon slump. In cheesecakes, it is revelatory. Even better, it’s easy to make. A little bit of effort will net you something truly indulgent.

There’s nothing better than melted cheese on a chilly winter evening. A wide range of dishes center around hot cheese, like Welsh rarebit, queso fundido, raclette, and the classic fondue. Fondue hinges upon a few ingredients handled well. Cooking temperature is very important—do not give in to the urge to increase the heat. Have a glass of sparkling water or wine while you’re cooking and enjoy the process. A whisk helps bring everything together smoothly. Your fondue will start out thin and slowly thicken. At times the fat may threaten to break free, but have faith and keep whisking and everything will come together in the end. If you’re the kind of person who likes added insurance, you can toss your grated cheese with a tablespoon (6 grams) of tapioca flour before adding it to the wine. It’s not strictly necessary but will help compensate for a slightly distracted cook. We like to serve fondue with good bread, sliced apples, charcuterie, and occasionally a salad on the side.

One of the benefits of making your own mozzarella is the ability to eat it fresh and warm. This is not an experience you can get from the store-bought product unless you happen to be there as they are making the cheese. If you’re going to eat it right away, you can forgo the ice bath at the end of the recipe and serve it instead. It’s an unforgettable experience and one that any cheese lovers worth their salt should try at least once.

This is the classic pudding of our childhood. Chocolate pudding is the ultimate comfort food, and this version is decadent without being overpowering. Use your favorite good-quality chocolate here because it will make your pudding that much better. A dollop of unsweetened whipped cream or lightly sweetened heavy cream poured over the top takes this to yet another level, although Aki has been known to eat it straight out of the container with a spoon. Jell-O pudding has nothing on us.

Pudding is one of Aki’s favorite desserts. Classic American puddings are made with either flour or cornstarch. We substitute tapioca flour in our stirred custards because it gels at a lower temperature and still provides the right texture in the finished dessert. This pudding was inspired by classic butterscotch pudding, which gets its flavor from brown sugar and a hint of vanilla. Burnt sugar is a slight misnomer because although the dark caramel we make here does have a slightly bitter edge, it is not the unpleasantly acrid taste of fully burnt sugar. We recommend that, if possible, you let the pudding rest for several hours or overnight before eating it. This gives the intense caramel flavor time to soften and mellow.

While most custard is made with eggs and dairy, classic Japanese chawan mushi is made using stock. There’s no real equivalent to chawan mushi. It is a light and deeply savory custard. The egg-to-liquid ratio is 3:1, designed so there is slightly more liquid than the eggs can hold. This way, as you dip the spoon into the custard, it releases some of its juices and creates its own sauce. Here we’ve used fresh clams to make the broth. Its buttery flavor speaks of our American heritage. We’ve garnished the custards with the clams, celery, and jalapeño instead of cooking them inside the custard, as would be traditional; this preserves the texture of the littlenecks. As with all steamed custards, it’s important to keep a close eye on things because the time difference between a smooth, silky custard and a grainy, scrambled mess is less than you might think.

A beautiful soft-boiled egg, warm and served from its shell, perhaps with crisp fingers of buttered toast, is enough to make the heavens sing. We have been lucky enough to experience different versions of this egg at Per Se, Elements in Princeton, and Momofuku Ko. Each preparation and presentation inspired us and raised the question of how to consistently prepare and serve this elusive culinary delight. Alex began by weighing our eggs to see if all large eggs were the same size. They were close, with about a two-gram differential in our sample. We bought a pot of water to a boil and added the eggs. We cooked the eggs for five minutes and fifteen seconds in gently boiling water and then placed them in an ice bath. The eggs were cooked the way we wanted them and were relatively easy to peel. It may seem finicky to specify a cooking time in minutes and seconds but the devil is in the details. Deciding which details are important and paying attention to them is essential to consistent cookery.

This is comfort food at its finest. It blends Italian risotto with the idea of American macaroni and cheese to create a dish that is more than the sum of its parts. And because we love the crisp juicy flavor of apples with our Cheddar cheese, we decided to take things a little further and use cider to deepen the flavors of our risotto. That hint of tartness balances out the richness of the dish. If you happen to have them around, fresh chives are a wonderful finishing garnish.

This is an excellent technique for a dinner party or any occasion when you want to spend time with your guests instead of standing over the stove. The risotto will be firm and toothsome, but you can treat this as traditional risotto and finish it with a dollop of extra virgin olive oil or butter and some freshly grated cheese for added creaminess. It’s a nice change of pace served with sautéed chicken with a quick pan sauce of white wine and fresh herbs, crispy skate in brown butter with capers, or a garlicky stir-fry of seasonal vegetables.

One summer we worked as private chefs on a ranch in Montana. One of our jobs was to oversee the chefs in the employee kitchen. We watched as they lamented the crew’s love of ranch dressing, culminating one evening when a guy poured it on his lasagna. We were fascinated by how much people loved the flavor of ranch and slowly began to weave it into our repertoire just for fun. These gnocchi were one of our first experiments and are still one of the best.

Cacio pepe literally translates as “cheese and pepper.” It is a classic Italian pasta dish that centers on the flavors of grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper. The simplest versions we have seen are made with abundant cheese and pepper, melted and moistened only with the cooking water. More indulgent recipes add olive oil or butter as we do below. Most recipes call for Pecorino Romano, a hard sheep’s-milk cheese, although Parmigiano Romano also crops up here and there. In our version the roasted pasta adds a deeper, more savory flavor to the finished dish. It is simple to make but it’s important to get the balance right so that your pasta is silky and flavorful. It’s the perfect meal for when the pantry is almost bare but the body needs something delicious to satisfy it.

We love the flavor of barbecue sauce. Here we’ve added the sauce to the pasta instead of the other way around. The pasta is simply tossed with butter, ready to be paired with sautéed jumbo shrimp, breaded pork chops, or sausage and peppers. These rigatoni could also be stuffed with raw shrimp sausage and then gently simmered in a blend of barbecue sauce, butter, and white wine to cook the pasta and the shrimp.

This Italian-style pasta dough makes golden noodles that have a great silky texture. It is wonderful cut into noodles or used to make ravioli. A simple pan sauté is all you need to finish the pasta. Who needs bottled pasta sauce? Depending on the season, we like cherry tomatoes with artichoke hearts and basil, wild mushrooms with thyme, zucchini with fresh garlic, or sweet corn with green onions and cayenne. Once the vegetables are cooked, the hot pasta is added to the pan and tossed with a few spoonfuls of the pasta cooking water to make a delicious and flavorful sauce. A little freshly grated cheese and perhaps a touch of freshly ground pepper, and you’re ready to eat.

We love potato chips. We use them in a variety of preparations, from stuffings to ice cream, so making the leap to pasta dough wasn’t as crazy as it may sound. After all, potato chips go with almost anything. Think of all those dips. Although we originally tried to make this with actual potato chips, the dough was too greasy. Using toasted, ground potato flakes gives it that nutty flavor without the added fat. The potato flakes, sometimes labeled “instant mashed potatoes,” are easily found in the supermarket. It doesn’t take much effort to toast the flakes and grind them into flour, and the results will make you feel like a kid again. The dough can be cut into noodles or used to make ravioli. The potato chip pasta is delicious tossed with brown butter, parsley, and lemon, perhaps served alongside soft-shell crabs or sweet Maine lobster.

Miso has become a common ingredient in the supermarket. It is a fermented soybean paste that is traditionally seasoned with salt and koji, which are grains, usually rice, fermented with Aspergillus oryzae molds. Miso is classified by color (white or blond, red or brown), flavor (sweet or salty), and ingredients (barley, soybean). In this pasta dough we like the delicate taste of blond miso, which is fermented with a high percentage of rice koji. It is the sweetest and mildest of the miso varieties and adds a savory depth of flavor with a lighter touch than a darker miso. Traditionally, flavored noodles are often served simply buttered, as they are in this recipe. Chopped sautéed watercress, freshly cooked clams, sautéed ground pork, braised baby radishes, or pan-seared calamari would all complement this pasta and create a satisfying meal.

Spaetzle is a German word meaning “little sparrow,” an evocative description of these small dumplings that have a long, irregular shape. Traditionally, they are boiled, tossed with butter, and served alongside rich, saucy dishes. We like to fry spaetzle in butter because it gives them a delicate crispy edge to contrast their tender texture. They are a nice change of pace from traditional starches like potatoes and pasta. The sourdough spaetzle’s light texture and tangy flavor are equally at home with meat or fish; they can be tossed with fresh peas or fava beans and finished with tarragon, sautéed with wild mushrooms, or combined with bite-size ratatouille for an interesting twist on a classic. Use them in place of rice or small pastas in your favorite preparations and you’ll see what a difference they can make.