Fondue Feasts

Fondue goes in and out of style, but at heart it’s an ancient form of one-pot-cooking. And right now it's hot, hot, hot.

Fondue can be a pot of melted cheese, liquefied chocolate, or boiling-hot oil for cooking meats. The fun part is skewering nibbles on long forks and dipping into the communal pot. What better way to gather your best pals and truly share a meal.

Fondue for All Reasons

Girls Night In: chocolate fondue, baby! Get your best-friends-forever in front of the widescreen, tune in a chick flick and pull out all the forbidden goodies: brownie bites, Oreos, marshmallows, angel food cake, and strawberries. Now get dippin’ and dishin'.
Little Dippers: cheese fondue. Let the kids pick and prepare the dippers (sliced sausage, mini hot dogs, pretzels, veggie bites) because sometimes everything is better with melted cheese. Make it nacho cheese fondue by adding bottled salsa. Make it a total dip experience by serving it at your kid's next pool party.

Double Dip: cheese fondue for dinner; chocolate fondue for dessert. Turn this into a romantic dinner for two with candlelight, music, wine, and lots of succulent nibbles to feed each other.

All Dips, All the Time: entertain buffet style by setting up several fondue stations. Let guests wander and cook their own meats, vegetables, and desserts.

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Planning the Menu

Start the meal with a salad. It's not fondue, but it's a nice way to whet the appetite for the main course.

Strawberry Spinach Salad I Blue Cheese Pear Salad

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Pick at least two savory fondue options to give guests variety.

Cheese Fondue Parmesan Fondue Beef Fondue with Sauces Wine Fondue

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Pull out all the stops for dessert by taking a basic recipe and embellishing it with added liqueurs and inventive dippers.

Totally Groovy Chocolate Fondue Five-Minute Chocolate Fondue Butterscotch Fondue

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Fondue Tricks and Tips

Best food size: Aim for 1-inch cubes, just enough for one or two bites.

Best fondue pot: Ceramics work best for showcasing dessert fondue; metal pots work best for cooking meats and vegetables in oil, wine, or broth.

Best temperature: A tea light candle or low flame (a warm 120 degrees) keeps cheese or dessert fondues at perfect melting temperatures. If you’re cooking meats in a pot of hot oil, the oil needs to be kept at 375 degrees to cook food quickly and evenly.

Best oil: peanut oil. A low smoke point makes it best for high frying temperatures.

Best wine: Something acidic (like Sauvignon Blanc) helps keep cheese fondue smooth.

Best fast fix: Cheese mixture clumping? Add a few drops of lemon juice. Chocolate or butterscotch mixture separating? Whisk in a little more cream.

Best fondue fork stand-in: Long wooden skewers. Find them at the supermarket along with other supplies for outdoor grilling.

Ribs Tips: Rethinking Braised Short Ribs

Published January 1, 2009.

Rich, fork-tender short ribs usually need an overnight rest to get rid of the grease. We wanted the fat gone by dinnertime—no bones about it.

The Problem

Since so much fat is rendered during the ribs’ stint in the oven, most recipes call for resting them in the braising liquid overnight, so that the fat solidifies into an easy-to-remove layer. However, most people don’t plan their dinners days in advance and with so much fat, skimming it off with a spoon doesn’t work well enough. The meat and sauce come out greasy, no matter how diligent one’s spoon-wielding.

The Goal

A silky, grease-free sauce and fork-tender short rib meat, all in a few hours.

The Solution

The first task was to choose the right rib. Instead of traditional bone-in short ribs, we used boneless short ribs, which rendered significantly less fat than bone-in. While we didn’t miss much flavor from the bones, we did want the body that the bones’ connective tissue added. To solve this, we sprinkled a bit of gelatin into the sauce to restore suppleness. We also wanted to ramp up the richness of the sauce. Taking a cue from our French-Style Pot Roast recipe, we jump-started flavor by reducing wine with browned aromatics (onions, shallots, celery, and carrots) before using it to cook the meat. This added the right intensity, but we need another cup of liquid to keep the meat half-submerged—the right level for braises. More wine yielded too much wine flavor; we used beef broth instead. As for the excess fat, the level was low enough that straining and defatting the liquid in a fat separator, and then reducing it concentrated the flavors, made for a rich, luxurious sauce for our soft, succulent boneless short ribs.

Braised Beef Short Ribs

Serves 6.   Published January 1, 2009.   From Cook's Illustrated.

Make sure that the ribs are at least 4 inches long and 1 inch thick. If boneless ribs are unavailable, substitute 7 pounds of bone-in beef short ribs at least 4 inches long with 1 inch of meat above the bone. To remove the meat from the bone, see the illustrations below. We recommend a bold red wine such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Côtes du Rhône. The test kitchen’s preferred brand of beef broth is Pacific. Serve with egg noodles, mashed potatoes, or roasted potatoes.

Ingredients

3 1/2	pounds boneless short ribs , trimmed of excess fat (see note and technique below)
	Kosher salt and ground black pepper
2	tablespoons vegetable oil
2	large onions , peeled and sliced thin from pole to pole (about 4 cups)
1	tablespoon tomato paste
6	medium garlic cloves , peeled
2	cups red wine (see note)
1	cup beef broth
4	large carrots , peeled and cut crosswise into 2-inch pieces
4	sprigs fresh thyme
1	bay leaf
1/4	cup cold water
1/2	teaspoon unflavored powdered gelatin

Instructions

1. 1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Pat beef dry with paper towels and season with 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium-high heat until smoking. Add half of beef and cook, without moving, until well browned, 4 to 6 minutes. Turn beef and continue to cook on second side until well browned, 4 to 6 minutes longer, reducing heat if fat begins to smoke. Transfer beef to medium bowl. Repeat with remaining tablespoon oil and meat.
2. 2. Reduce heat to medium, add onions, and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown, 12 to 15 minutes. (If onions begin to darken too quickly, add 1 to 2 tablespoons water to pan.) Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until it browns on sides and bottom of pan, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Increase heat to medium-high, add wine and simmer, scraping bottom of pan with wooden spoon to loosen browned bits, until reduced by half, 8 to 10 minutes. Add broth, carrots, thyme, and bay leaf. Add beef and any accumulated juices to pot; cover and bring to simmer. Transfer pot to oven and cook, using tongs to turn meat twice during cooking, until fork slips easily in and out of meat, 2 to 2½ hours.
3. 3. Place water in small bowl and sprinkle gelatin on top; let stand at least 5 minutes. Using tongs, transfer meat and carrots to serving platter and tent with foil. Strain cooking liquid through fine-mesh strainer into fat separator or bowl, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible; discard solids. Allow liquid to settle about 5 minutes and strain off fat. Return cooking liquid to Dutch oven and cook over medium heat until reduced to 1 cup, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin mixture; season with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over meat and serve.

Masa de Panqueques

Colocar en un bol los huevos y la sal, batir bien y agregar de a poco la harina alternando con la leche, hasta obtener una preparación omogenia, chirle sin grumos, dejar reposar 10 minutos, preparar los panquenques.En una sartén tipo panquequera de 18 cm. de diámetros, calentarla sobre la llama, pincelarla con manteca derretida, poner un cucharoncito de la mezcla y hacer correr rápidamente para que cubra bien toda la panquequera cocinar a fuego moderado, cuando los bordes comiencen a dorarse, el panqueque estará cocido de ese lado, darlo vuelta con una espátula y dejar cocinar unos minutos del otro lado.
Nota: Se tiene que echar cada vez una pequeña cantidad de pasta para obtener panqueques finos, se debe pincelar la panquequera con la manteca cada vez que se prepara un panqueque.

Ingredientes

• 3 huevos
• 1 pizca de sal fina

• 250 gr. de harina común
• 1/2 litro de leche

Swedish Meatballs

Serves 4 to 6.   Published January 1, 2009.   From Cook's Illustrated.

The traditional accompaniments for Swedish meatballs are lingonberry preserves and Swedish Pickled Cucumbers (see related recipe). If you can’t find lingonberry preserves, cranberry preserves may be used. For a slightly less sweet dish, omit the brown sugar in the meatballs and reduce the brown sugar in the sauce to 2 teaspoons. A 12-inch slope-sided skillet can be used in place of the sauté pan—use 1 1/2 cups of oil to fry instead of 1 1/4 cups. The meatballs can be fried and then frozen for up to 2 weeks. To continue with the recipe, thaw the meatballs in the refrigerator overnight and proceed from step 3, using a clean pan. Serve the meatballs with mashed potatoes, boiled red potatoes, or egg noodles.

Ingredients

Meatballs
1	large egg
1/4	cup heavy cream
1	large slice high-quality white sandwich bread , crusts removed and bread torn into 1-inch pieces
8	ounces ground pork
1	small onion , grated on large holes of box grater (about 1/4 cup)
1/8	teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8	teaspoon ground allspice
1/8	teaspoon ground black pepper
1	teaspoon packed brown sugar (see note)
1 1/2	teaspoons table salt
1	teaspoon baking powder
8	ounces 85 percent lean ground beef
1 1/4	cups vegetable oil
Sauce
1	tablespoon unsalted butter
1	tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2	cups low-sodium chicken broth
1	tablespoon packed brown sugar (see note)
1/2	cup heavy cream
2	teaspoons juice from 1 lemon

Instructions

1. 1. For the Meatballs: Whisk egg and cream together in medium bowl. Stir in bread and set aside. Meanwhile, in stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat pork, onion, nutmeg, allspice, pepper, brown sugar, salt, and baking powder on high speed until smooth and pale, about 2 minutes, scraping bowl as necessary. Using fork, mash bread mixture until no large dry bread chunks remain; add mixture to mixer bowl and beat on high speed until smooth and homogeneous, about 1 minute, scraping bowl as necessary. Add beef and mix on medium-low speed until just incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping bowl as necessary. Using moistened hands, form generous tablespoon of meat mixture into 1-inch round meatball; repeat with remaining mixture to form 25 to 30 meatballs.
2. 2. Heat oil in 10-inch straight-sided sauté pan over medium-high heat until edge of meatball dipped in oil sizzles (oil should register 350 degrees on instant-read thermometer), 3 to 5 minutes. Add meatballs in single layer and fry, flipping once halfway through cooking, until lightly browned all over and cooked through, 7 to 10 minutes. (Adjust heat as needed to keep oil sizzling but not smoking.) Using slotted spoon, transfer browned meatballs to paper towel-lined plate.
3. 3. For the Sauce: Pour off and discard oil in pan, leaving any fond (browned bits) behind. Return pan to medium-high heat and add butter. When foaming subsides, add flour and cook, whisking constantly, until flour is light brown, about 30 seconds. Slowly whisk in broth, scraping pan bottom to loosen browned bits. Add brown sugar and bring to simmer. Reduce heat to medium and cook until sauce is reduced to about 1 cup, about 5 minutes. Stir in cream and return to simmer.
4. 4. Add meatballs to sauce and simmer, turning occasionally, until heated through, about 5 minutes. Stir in lemon juice, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

REAL SWEDISH MEATBALLS

Cook´s Illustrated: Published January 1, 2009.

Meatballs have to be Sweden’s national dish for a reason. What’s the secret to making them light, springy, and flavorful?

The Problem

Too often, most recipes for this dish produce flavorless balls of ground beef or pork covered with thick, grainy sauces.

The Goal

Substantial yet delicate meatballs with a sausagelike springiness and satisfying snap, accompanied by a light cream sauce instead of heavy, brown gravy.

The Solution

We began with a combination of beef and pork and a panade—a paste of bread and liquid that is mixed into the meat. Although these yielded moist meatballs, they were too tender and practically fell apart. A panade works in two ways: Its liquid adds moisture, and the bread starch gets in the way of the meat’s proteins, preventing them from interconnecting and becoming tough. But it can result in meatballs that barely hold together. Thinking of other ingredients that lightened food, we turned to baking powder. Combining baking powder and a slice of bread mixed with cream provided moistness, substance, and lightness. To get sausagelike springiness, we took a cue from sausage-making techniques and used our stand mixer to whip the pork with salt, baking powder, and seasonings before adding the panade and gently folding in the ground beef. The results? The panade and baking powder kept the meatballs delicate and juicy, the whipped pork distributed the fat and provided spring, and the barely mixed beef offered heartiness. For the cooking method, shallow frying worked best—it browned the meatballs evenly and cooked them through. The final step was the sauce. Using mostly stock, a bit of cream lightened things, and some sugar helped balance flavors. A splash of lemon juice added just before serving lent brightness to these light, juicy Swedish meatballs.

Crab Cakes

These crab cakes are a step-up riff off a recipe found years ago in Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me with Apples. The difficult thing with crab cakes is that they don't hold together that well when forming them, and they can easily fall apart when frying them. The trick is to handle them delicately to begin with, and then chill them on a breadcrumb-lined pan for at least an hour before cooking them. Just that time in the fridge will go a long way in helping them stay together as they cook. There isn't a lot of binder in this recipe, so it needs the chilling time.

Crab Cakes Recipe

We started with two 2 lb Dungeness crabs, which were then cleaned and cracked, resulting in about 1 1/4 pounds of lump crab meat.

Ingredients

• 1 lb (around 0,5 kgrs... 0,454 kgs to be exact) lump crabmeat, picked through and any bits of shell removed (try not to break up the lumps of crabmeat as you pick through it)
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter (divided, 1 Tbsp and 3 Tbsp)
• 1/2 cup chopped shallots
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Tbsp prepared tartar sauce
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco
• 2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
• About 4 slices white bread, crusts removed, torn into small pieces, yielding 2 cups
• 2/3 cup fresh bread crumbs

Method

1 Heat one tablespoon of butter in a small skillet over medium high heat. Add the shallots and a half teaspoon of salt. Cook until the shallots are translucent, a couple minutes. Do not brown. Let the shallots cool.
2 Whisk together the eggs, Worcestershire sauce, remaining half teaspoon of salt, paprika, freshly ground black pepper, tartar sauce, lemon zest, Tabasco, parsley, and the cooked shallots. Gently fold in the crabmeat and torn bread, taking care again to not break up the lumps of crab meat. The mixture will be very wet. Using your (clean) hands, take a scoop of the crab mixture and gently form it into a patty form about 2 1/4 inches across and 3/4 inches thick. Continue until you've made 12 crab cake patties. Line a rimmed tray with a piece of wax paper just large enough to hold the cakes and sprinkle the bottom of the tray with half of the bread crumbs. Set the crab cakes in one layer on the top of the layer of bread crumbs and sprinkle them with the remaining bread crumbs. Cover the crab cakes loosely with another sheet of wax paper and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour.


3 Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter in a large non-stick skillet on medium high heat. The butter will melt and foam up. When the foam subsides, working in batches, place the crab cakes in the pan (do not crowd the pan), and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side.

Makes 12 crab cakes.

Pork Chops with Dijon Sauce Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 4 center-cut rib or loin pork chops, boneless or bone-in (whatever you prefer), about 1 1/4 inch thick
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped shallots or green onions
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 3/4 cup chicken stock*
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp chopped parsley (optional)

*If cooking gluten-free, use homemade chicken stock or gluten-free packaged stock.

Method

1 Pat the pork chops dry with paper towels. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over them. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Stir in the butter. As soon as the butter has melted, add the pork chops to the pan and sear them, about 2-3 minutes on each side. Reduce the heat slightly if the chops brown too quickly.

2 Remove the pork chops from the pan and pour off most of the fat. Add the green onions or shallots and cook them on med high heat until softened, about 1 minute. Add 1/2 cup of the wine and bring to a boil, deglazing the pan by scraping the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Stir in the stock and return chops to the pan. Bring sauce to a simmer, reduce heat, cover and cook until chops are cooked through (145°F internal temp), about 10 to 15 minutes.

3 Remove the pork chops to a warm platter; cover with foil to keep warm. Add the remaining half cup of wine. Increase the heat to high to boil the pan juices. Reduce the juices by half, about 3 minutes. Add the heavy cream and boil 3 minutes more, until sauce reduces and thickens, and scraping the pan with a wooden spoon leaves a trail. Remove from the heat and whisk in the mustard and parsley. If you want, add more mustard to taste. Place chops on a bed of sauce and serve.

Serves 4.

How to Cook Pasta

• Use 4 quarts of water for every pound of pasta. You'll need a very large pot, but this large amount of water will ensure that the pasta cooks evenly and won't clump.
• Forget about adding oil to the pot, but use plenty of salt. Adding oil to the boiling water does not prevent sticking. Frequent stirring does. Skip the oil but make sure to add salt--roughly 1 tablespoon for 4 quarts of water--or the pasta will taste bland.
• Taste the pasta early and often for doneness. Reading the instructions on the box is a good place to start, but for al dente pasta you may need to shave a few minutes off the recommended time.
• Wait! Before you drain that pasta...Take a liquid measuring cup and retrieve about 1/2 cup of the cooking water from the pasta pot. Then go ahead and drain the pasta for just a few moments before you toss it with the sauce. (Don't let your pasta sit in the colander too long; it will get very dry very quickly.) When you toss your sauce with the pasta, add some (or all) of this reserved pasta water to help spread the sauce.

Don't forget to save some water!

Balsamic Vinegar

As said, "COOK´s Illustrated" loves testing different ingredients and tastes and them after consulting with their scientists and nutricionists, give their advise and results....
Ahead find BALSAMIC VINEGAR testings

Enjoy!

May

Published March 1, 2007.

Few foods demonstrate such a wide range in price—you can spend $2 or $200 for one bottle—or quality. Our tasters decode the mysteries of balsamico.

products tested (listed alphabetically)

• Alessi Balsamic Vinegar
• Cavalli Gold Seal Extra Vecchio Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale de Reggio Emilia
• Colavita Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
• Lucini Gran Riserva Balsamico
• Modenaceti Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
• Monari Federzoni Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
• Ortalli Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
• Pompeian Balsamic Vinegar
• Progresso Balsamic Vinegar
• Rienzi Balsamic Vinegar of Modena
• Star Balsamic Vinegar of Modena

See Product Comparison Chart

Traditional aged balsamic vinegar, produced in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, can cost $200 per bottle, making even fine French perfume look like a bargain. You can also walk into any supermarket in America and fork over $2 or $3 for a big bottle of balsamic vinegar. What are you really buying in each case? And should you buy either product?

Thirty years ago, almost no one in America had ever heard of (never mind tasted) balsamic vinegar. It was an obscure product made in northern Italy and so highly valued that many families passed along barrels of aged vinegar as part of a wedding dowry. Fast-forward a generation, and balsamic is now the best-selling vinegar in America, accounting for 45 percent of all supermarket vinegar sales. Intoxicated by its big, sweet, caramel flavor, Americans mix it in salad dressing; drizzle it on meat, fish, and vegetables; and add it to sauces, soups, and desserts. Of course, none of this popularity would have been possible if balsamic vinegar had remained a $100-an-ounce extravagance.

A Tale of Two Vinegars

It turns out there are two kinds of balsamic vinegar, and they're made by entirely different processes. The traditional technique takes a minimum of 12 years; the modern industrial method as little as a few hours. The centuries-old traditional way begins with late-harvest grapes (usually white Trebbiano) grown in Emilia-Romagna. The sweet, raisiny juice, skin, and seeds, called grape must, is boiled in open vats until reduced to about half its original volume. This concentrated must is added to the largest of a battery of wooden barrels, which are kept in uninsulated attics in this region where the summers are hot and the winters frosty. The battery comprises barrels of different woods—including oak, cherry, juniper, and mulberry—and sizes. The barrels aren't sealed; they have cloth-covered openings on top to allow evaporation. Each year, before the vinegar maker adds the new must to the largest barrel, he transfers some of its ever-more concentrated contents to the next largest, and so on down the line, before finally removing a liter or two of the oldest vinegar from the smallest barrel. This is traditional balsamic vinegar.

What's more, all this can only happen in two provinces of Emilia-Romagna: Modena and Reggio Emilia, an area designated as a government-protected denomination of origin, or DOP. Each province has its own consortium of experts who approve the balsamic before sealing it in its official 3-ounce bottle (an inverted tulip shape for Reggio Emilia; a ball with a neck for Modena). If you want a guarantee that you're getting true balsamic vinegar, look for the word tradizionale and these distinctive bottles—and be prepared to pay dearly.

All those rules are thrown out the window when it comes to commercial balsamic vinegar. With no law defining balsamic vinegar in the United States, manufacturers supply the huge demand any way they can, coloring and sweetening wine vinegar and calling it "balsamic vinegar of Modena." It may not be the real thing, but could I find one worth using until I hit the lottery?

We began by choosing ten top-selling, nationally available supermarket balsamic vinegars. All were made in Italy, and their prices ranged from $2.39 to $14 a bottle. We tasted them plain, reduced to a glaze for roasted asparagus, and whipped into a vinaigrette. We then tasted several traditional balsamic vinegars for comparison.

Now here's the bad news: Tasted straight from the bottle, there was no contest between supermarket and traditional balsamics. Even the best of the commercial bunch-while similarly sweet, brown, and viscous—couldn't compete with the complex, rich flavor of true balsamic vinegar. With notes of honey, fig, raisin, caramel, and wood; a smooth, lingering taste; and an aroma like fine port, traditional balsamic is good enough to sip like liqueur.

But the news is not all bad. The test kitchen made vinaigrette with both a 25-year-old traditional balsamic from Reggio Emilia and the top supermarket brand from our taste tests—and frankly, in dressing, the traditional stuff did not justify its price tag. In a pan sauce, most of that fine aroma and depth of flavor was cooked away. The lesson was clear: Don't waste your money on pricey traditional balsamic vinegar if you're going to toss it on salad or cook with it. The good stuff works best uncooked, as a drizzle to finish a dish. In vinaigrette or cooked sauce, the sharpness of a supermarket balsamic adds a pleasingly bright contrast to the vinegar's natural sweetness.

The Best Supermarket Option

Among the 10 supermarket vinegars we tasted, some were quite good, others quite awful. Why? An independent lab test supplied part of the answer. Our top choice contained the most sugar; vinegars with the lowest sugar content occupied four of the bottom five spots on the list. This makes sense—the sweeter supermarket vinegars tasted more like the traditional balsamic. It turns out that our tasters also wanted their supermarket balsamic vinegar to be viscous, like traditional balsamics. Lab tests confirmed that higher viscosity tracked with higher rankings.

But sweetness and thickness alone were not enough to guarantee a spot high on our list. The second-sweetest vinegar was also the second most viscous, and it broke the pattern by appearing near the bottom. We were puzzled, until we tested pH levels. This vinegar was the least acidic one tested, and tasters thought it was excessively sweet. So a good supermarket balsamic vinegar must be sweet and thick (like the real deal), but it should also offer a little jolt of acidity.

In the end, we found one supermarket vinegar that appealed across the board, working well both plain and in the dishes we prepared. The manufacturer told us they use must that is aged in the artisanal way for 10 years, mixed with the company's own wine vinegar. It may have come across as "honey-sweet," but this vinegar offered "a nice compromise between sweet and tangy," with a "nuanced flavor" that came closest to traditional balsamic.