Consigli per la Cottura: Egg Yolks

The always-helpful Rose Levy Beranbaum offers three tips when using egg yolks, discussing the following:

  1. More and more often, the proportion of yolk to white is less than it has been over the past decades.
  2. If egg yolks are combined with sugar and allowed to sit they will crust over, dry out on the surface, and result in lumps in the cooked or baked product.
  3. If you have extra yolks, you can freeze them but only if you stir in some sugar which will maintain their texture.

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Read the whole thing here.

Rose has an excellent blog for bakers, a great source for information that nicely compliments her highly acclaimed baking books; I highly recommend it!

“Rose Levy Beranbaum is the award-winning author of nine cookbooks, including The Cake Bible, the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook of the Year for 1988.  It was also listed by the James Beard Foundation as one of the top 13 baking books on “the Essential Book List.”  Rose also won a James Beard Foundation Award in 1998 for Rose’s Christmas Cookies, and her book, The Bread Bible, was an IACP and James Beard Foundation nominee and was listed as one of the Top Ten Books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly and Food & Wine.  Her most recent book, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, won the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook of the Year for 2010.

She is a contributing editor to Food Arts magazine and writes regularly for the Washington Post, Fine Cooking, Reader’s Digest, and Bride’s.  Her popular blog, realbakingwithrose.com, has created an international community of bakers where you can visit Rose Levy Beranbaum and join in the discussion on all things baking.  While you are there, you can bring the author right into your kitchen as she demonstrates key techniques and shares trade secrets so that you can create perfectly divine cakes.”

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Ricette Classiche: Lasagne Verdi al Forno

Baked Spinach Lasagne with Meat Sauce in the style of Bologna

Italy’s most famous baked pasta is lasagne!  Historians have traced the dish back to at least Roman times, believing its name derives from the Latin lasania [cooking pot], and possibly to ancient Greece.

Lasagne has been widely adopted throughout Italy, with each region placing its own imprimatur on the dish.  In Bologna, lasagne is made with fresh spinach pasta and layered with classic ragù alla Bolognese.  In Liguria, lasagne is made with pesto (although sometimes the boiled pasta sheets are simply tossed with pesto [Genoa’s mandilli de sæa al pesto]).  Neapolitans layer tomato sauce and mozzarella between the pasta sheets, and Calabrians prefer ricotta salata. In Piedmont, I’ve had lasagne with mushrooms and ham; and lasagne with artichokes is, well, sublime.

This dish takes quite a bit of time to prepare, but in our view it’s worth the effort.  You can make the ragù alla Bolognese ahead of time.  Also, once fully assembled, you can hold lasagne verdi al forno in the refrigerator for two full days if tightly sealed with plastic wrap.  Just allow it to return to room temperature before baking.

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