Jesters Armed (with laddles)

start wanting rice. (or, if you are traditional, simply recognize your constant desire for rice.)

measure out two cups of rice. then one more. then two more. then another. this seems fine. you love rice. there is no way that this will backfire on you.

remember that your great-great-uncle’s recipe says it should be soaked overnight.

become consumed with despair.

decide to soak it for half an hour instead, acknowledging that the final product will be inferior and anger your ancestors but will still satisfy your now almost-overwhelming need for rice to be inside your body much faster.

remember that you should have set the water to boil when you soaked the rice. goddammit. 

once the water boils, put the rice in until it is half-cooked. the eyeballing or intuitive method is less effective than a timer but that’s how your aunt does it so you feel compelled to meet her standards.

now that the rice has fluffed up, realize how much rice six dry cups really is. holy shit. you’ve fucked up immeasurably. 

take a minute to dwell upon your failings.

grease a baking dish with butter. this will never be as elegant as you want it to and your fingers will get greasy, but the slightly shameful, self-indulgent joy of licking your fingers afterwards will make up for it.

pour the rice into the dish. wonder immediately if you actually buttered the dish beforehand and if you’ve just fucked up. 

melt approximately one thousand pounds of butter in the microwave and pour it over the rice, pondering your imminent death from rapid-onset arterial clogging. put a small pat of butter on the top to properly gild the lily.

put your pan into the oven, which you have absolutely preheated after your previous lack of foresight. shake the rice once or twice while it bakes to make sure the butter is well distributed. resist the impulse to climb into the oven with the rice. for the last ten minutes, sit next to the oven and count the seconds until it’s done.

remove the dish from the oven. shed a tear or two at the perfection laid before you. if you are dining with others, this is the time to serve the rice while making passive-aggressive statements about how oh no, you don’t need any help, you just made dinner all by yourself, you can serve everyone as well. (this is still fun if done alone, but optional.)

CONSUME THE RICE.

realize that you have eaten half of the dish in one sitting. no matter how much rice you made, this will always happen. 

put the leftovers away, if there are any, and enjoy a cup of chai while marveling at the amount of food you have just eaten. if possible, fall asleep in an armchair, sitting up, head tilted slightly back, like a grandpa.

1lb / approx. 2 ⅓ cups basmati rice (any long-grain rice will do)

3 tbsp salt

8 tbsp / 1 stick butter (you can reduce this if you don’t want to have a heart attack)

Put the rice in a pot and cover it in cold water and salt. Let it soak overnight. (If you don’t have the time to soak it, rinse the rice with cold water until it runs clear.)

Edit: The reason you want to soak basmati and other aromatic rice before cooking is to preserve more acetylpyrroline, the compound that gives aromatic rice its characteristic scent and flavor. Soaking rice allows the grains to absorb water, which reduces the cooking time, which means less time for the acetylpyrroline to cook off. It’ll still taste pretty good if you can’t do this, but you don’t want “pretty good”, you want mind-blowing, so for that perfect flavor you’ll want to soak your rice overnight. The soaking process also washes away the layer of starch on the outside of the rice, which allows the grains to separate rather than sticking together; this is why you want to rinse your rice thoroughly if you don’t have time to soak it.

Preheat your oven to 325°.

Boil three quarts of water in a separate pot. Once it’s at a fast boil, drain the rice and add it to the water. Boil for 5-7min or until one grain tastes half-cooked, but not soft. Pour the rice into a colander and rinse with cold water.

Edit: This step also helps get rid of any remaining starch on your grains, for perfectly separated rice. If your colander or strainer has large holes, you can put a paper towel/cheesecloth/clean dishcloth on the inside in order to drain your rice. Pour carefully if you’re using a paper towel, though, and put a bowl underneath your colander; I once lost a heartbreaking amount of rice when my paper towel got oversaturated and tore open.

Liberally grease the bottom of your baking pan with some of your butter. Pour the rice on top. Melt the rest of the butter in the microwave and pour on top of the rice.

Bake for 45min. (If you like, cover the rice for part or all of the baking time, but I find it gets less crispy on top if you do this.) Shake the pan a couple times during baking to ensure that the butter distributes throughout the entire dish.

Eat.

Serves four. Can easily be scaled up if needed (or down, but why would you do that?). Best enjoyed with a nice cup of chai.

But there is one recipe, one cake, that has recontextualised all those comments for me and now actually I think those bloggers might be wrong about what a family favourite is. It sure as hell isn't Interchangeable Chocolate Cake No. 7.

I'm telling you this because I need you to know the seriousness of the power I am going to bestow on you. And hey, maybe your friends and family have different preferences than mine do. Maybe you need to find another recipe to fill this role. But you must know that there's a recipe out there, and not even a particularly alluring one or a particularly difficult one, which people will bring up in unrelated conversations to you four years later.

If I so much as say the word cake, my family all turn to face me like a pack of hungry wolves. Even the ones that don't like food!! Health nuts and people who simply don't enjoy eating and people with no appetite and people I have no goddamn memory of ever having cooked for, all of them come up and say to me "Hey remember that cake-" I asked my brother and his girlfriend what foods they're looking forward to, when they return home after three years in Japan, and they say "You know that cake?"

It doesn't sound particularly appetizing. I only made it the first time because it was gluten free and I had a bunch of lemons. Please don't let the name inform your opinion here. This is a fairly fast and simple cake that requires no special equipment and people will literally never stop asking you for it.

It's not even my favourite cake! I'd rather have basque burnt cheesecake, which is harder and more expensive to make and consists almost entirely of fat and sugar but still manages to be a little savoury... But people want the weird corn one.

has this ever been you: you have a nicely steamed vegetable, or maybe you want to make the best butter noodles, but you know that if you put butter on those it’ll just melt and you end with kind of greasy noodles or vegetables? don’t you wish it was instead a luscious buttery glaze?

introducing: beurre monté

you will take a small sauce pan, and begin heating it with 1-2 tablespoons of water (use very little water) and bring it to a hard simmer or boil

turn the heat down slightly, and add Butter. how much? however much you dare. (start with 3-4 tablespoons and go from there)

you are going to either whisk Aggressively or you can pick up the saucepan, still holding it over the heat, and swirl aggressively so the butter is skating around the sides of the pan

done correctly, you will have liquid butter that is still emulsified. you have made Butter Sauce. season it with a little salt, and toss whatever you want in it.

if you’re butter splits, i’m sorry. you didn’t agitate it enough to maintain the emulsion, and now you have melted butter.

you can use this knowledge to make other sauces by swapping out the water for another liquid. white wine becomes beurre blanc. red wine is beurre rogue.

you want to CUM? sweat minced shallot in a tiny bit of butter, add white wine and cook it out until it’s reduced by about half. then whisk butter in hard. a few flecks of minced thyme or fennel frond stirred thru, and you eat that with a nice seared fish? or scallop? or even shrimp? wow. you will Nut

your boxed mac and cheese game can also be elevated by cooking your pasta and making a beurre monté first, tossing your pasta in that and adding the cheese packet. wow. hey; you’ll cum

Lemons! Limes! Oranges! You can do this with pretty much all citrus! Candied Lemon Peel 2 cups water 2 cups white sugar The peels of 3 lemons

The secret is in the water; literally, it’s IN the water.

See, when you boil potatoes, a lot of special starches and sugars and stuff leeches out into the water. When you drain the water before mashing them, you throw away a lot of good stuff, which is a big part of what makes mashed potatoes “dry” and bland, even when you add large amounts of cream and butter and things.

So don’t throw out any water.

Here’s how you do that:

First, cut your potatoes into smaller cubes than you probably do. (I’ve left the skins on for flavor and also, that’s where a lot of a potato’s nutrients are, like protien and iron and vitamins B and C, just to name a few)

The reason for cutting them smaller (besides avoiding giant peices of skin) is so that there is less space in the pot between each peice for water to fill, so you use less water to cook them. That’s important because you won’t be draining any water, so you can’t afford to have too much water! For the same reason, just barely cover them with water when they go on the stove.

But! Before you do that, put the pot on the stove with some butter, garlic, and seasonings; let the butter start to sizxle just a little then put most of a single layer of potatoes in the pan and let the brown and sear. Turn them, brown them on all sides, get ‘em fairly dark (I forgot to get a pic here because I was worried I’d burn the butter).

Ready? now throw the rest of the potatoes in right on top, and add your water, give them a stir. This way, you’re boiling in some of that lovely fried potato/french fry flavor.

Okay, so, as they cook, you may need to add a little water, not too much! ideally the very highest piece of potato will be poking just above the surface. Now, when your potatoes are really really soft, mash them directly into the water. Just pull them off the stove, leave all the water in, and start mashing. Trust me. At first you’ll think there’s too much water. If you get them mashed and they ARE a little too liquidy, just put ‘em back on the stove. You’ll have to stir often or constantly, but they will steam off additional water without losing any good stuff.

Now add some salt, and taste. Right?! And you haven’t even put in any cream or cheese or anything yet.

Speaking of which, you can use like, a third of the amount of butter or cream or anything, and they will still taste better than usual. So they taste better AND they are higher in nutrients AND lower in fats and salts! That’s a lot of win — enjoy your potatoes!

@dduane​ and I thought the link we’ve been posting was open access - it certainly is on both laptops - however several comments report problems on mobile devices.

So here’s something I should have done ages ago…

NO KNEAD BREAD

INGREDIENTS

3 ⅓ cups / 430 grams all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for dusting

Generous ¼ teaspoon  / 1 gram instant yeast

2 teaspoons / 8 grams kosher / / Maldon / coarse sea salt

Flour, cornmeal or wheat bran, as needed (we prefer flour)

PREPARATION

In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt.

Add 1½ cups / 345 grams water and stir until just combined; dough will be shaggy and sticky.(Don’t overwork this mixture, and obviously don’t knead it.)

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough sponge rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. The yeast will get busy doing its thing.

(A cooler room temperature will still work, it’ll just take longer. A COLD room is too much; the yeast will hibernate, but will wake up again when moved into the warm. If you make such a move but forget that this will happen, things can get… Exciting.)

The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. It usually won’t have risen much but will have VERY well-developed gluten and you’ll need a scraper:

Lightly flour a work surface and floomp the dough onto it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Re-cover loosely with the plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape it into a ball. (Which will then collapse a bit. It does this. Don’t worry.)

Generously coat a cotton towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal (we use floured kitchen parchment for easier clean-up); put the dough seam side down on the towel / parchment and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal.

Cover with another cotton towel (or more parchment then a towel on top, tucked in to give a little resistance and help keep the shape) and let it rise for about 2 hours.

When ready, the dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

A half-hour before the dough is ready, put a 6- to 8-quart / 6-8 litre cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic lidded pot in the oven and pre-heat to 450° F / 230° C.

(This is usually the hottest setting of most home ovens, so put simply, turn your oven right up and wait until it gets there. Our fan oven usually needs no more than about 15 minutes to reach full thermostat-clicked-off heat. YMMV.)

When ready, carefully remove the heated pot from oven and take off its lid. Slide your hand under the towel / parchment and upturn the dough into the pot. Now it should be seam side up; it will floomp again and may look like a mess, but that’s OK.

Shake the pot once or twice if the dough is unevenly distributed (you ARE wearing oven-mitts during all this, aren’t you?); it’ll straighten out as it bakes.

Put the lid on and bake 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes until the loaf is as brown as you like it.

Cool on a rack, then slice and eat.

(The crust will be very hard, brittle and splintery when fresh, so be careful of skipping knives. About 12 hours in a bread-bag calms it down; not as crunchy, now a chewy toasty contrast to the soft crumb.)