Curious Cook

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Cooking pasta in minimal water

In today's Curious Cook column, I write about a different way to cook pasta: starting in cups of cold water instead of quarts at a rolling boil. The pasta comes out fine, and the small amount of leftover cooking water is thick, delicious, and useful.

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Clarifying liquids with gelatin

In my column in the September 5 New York Times, I describe a recently discovered method for making intensely flavored liquid essences, or "consommés," from all kinds of foods, from meat stocks and fruit juices, baked potatoes and chocolate. 

The Times prints a recipe for brown butter consommé from H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa, authors of the remarkable blog Ideas in Food. David Kinch, chef-owner of the acclaimed restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos, California, generously sent me a recipe for a pumpkin consommé, but the the Times didn't have space to print it. With chef Kinch's kind permission, here it is.