Paper Palate

Welcome back class!  We are now in our sixth lesson on cooking, straight from The Professional Chef, the textbook of the Culinary Institute of America.  Last time we studied the various cuisines that make up American cuisine.  Today, we’re crossing the ocean to take a look at the culinary masterpiece that is Asia. 
Asia is a huge […]

All right class, places, places!  Welcome to the next installment of Paper Palate cooking school.  Please open our textbook, the venerable The Professional Chef, the reference used to train students at the Culinary Institute of America, to Chapter 5.  Last week, we looked at food safety issues, including the different types of nasties you can […]

You heard the bell… it’s time for another culinary lesson.  As always, this lesson comes from The Professional Chef, which continues to be the Culinary Institute of America’s textbook and one of the finest books on the art and science of professional cooking you can buy.
Today’s lesson is going to put you in the kitchen, […]

Take your seats!  It’s the third installment of Paper Palate’s cooking school.  Please open your textbook (and the Culinary Institute of America’s), The Professional Chef, to chapter 3.  Last time, we looked at menus and recipes and their effect on pricing.  Today, we are going to look at food nutrition and food science.
According to the […]

Welcome back class to the second installment of Paper Palate’s cooking school.  As always, our class text is The Professional Chef, the textbook of the Culinary Institute of America.  Last time, we looked at the different stations in the kitchen.  This week, we will keep looking at the nuts and bolts of how to run […]

All right students, this is your first day of culinary education, so please open your textbooks to Chapter 1 of The Professional Chef.  Over the next several months, Paper Palate will feature a number of posts which summarize the various chapters of The Professional Chef.  The Professional Chef is the textbook for the Culinary Institute […]

The first time I made reservations at Kansas City’s best tapas bar, La Bodega, it was Valentine’s Day maybe five years ago.  I proudly called my wife and told her I was taking her to a tapas bar.  Of course, this was over a cell phone and I had a lot of explaining to do […]

If Anthony Bourdain, one of the most despised, yet respected culinary personalities in the world, releases a book called The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, I expect it to be nasty.  I expect descriptions that would make the hair on the head of Gordon Ramsay (of Kitchen Nightmares fame) to […]

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up The Man Who Ate Everything by Vogue food editor Jeffrey Steingarten.  Until I cracked open his book, which could be called a culinary memoir, but just as easily could be labeled one man’s obsessive lab book, my primary experience with Steingarten had been limited to […]

If I had to spend the rest of my life with only one cookbook on my shelf, that cookbook would be I’m Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 by Food Network star (and true culinary personality) Alton Brown.
There are so many reasons why I’m Just Here for the Food deserves this high praise (the […]