The Cookstr Weekly: Slow-Cooker Specials & Fondue for February
|
Welcome to The Cookstr
This newsletter is filled with a variety of editorial features and links to Cookstr’s expert recipes by chefs and cookbook authors. You can access an archive of Cookstr newsletters here, and check out more featured recipes on our homepage.
As always, Cookstr recipes are tested, trusted, and handpicked by Cookstr’s editors from published cookbooks to help you on your culinary journey. To get you started, here are a selection of recipes on Cookstr by the chefs and cookbooks authors that made them famous.
Cook in good company. |
 Like a good no-knead bread recipe or basic fermentation technique, slow cookers are a chef’s secret tool, allowing time and nature to do the hard work. Beginning with quality ingredients, you’ll produce a meal with flavor and texture that implies you’ve slaved away – when in truth, the hands-on time for these recipes is minimal. A slow cooker can be a ideal partner in crime when it comes to tackling dishes that seem too time- and work-intensive for everyday, such as French onion soup or risotto. And slow cookers are season-neutral: while they’re a great alternative to keeping your oven on in the summer, slow-cooked meats, vegetables, soups and stews are excellent comfort food to carry you through the end of winter. Try Judith Finlayson’s New Potato Curry for a flavorful side dish or vegetarian main course. |
|
|
——–
|
|
Peaking in fashion in the 1950s and now making a comeback, “fondue” (the French for ‘to melt’) has become a generalized term for nearly any act of dipping some edible thing (endive, bread, strawberry) in a communal pot of a hot, liquid, also edible thing (cheese, broth, oil, chocolate). Let’s get specific: traditional fondue, for which we have the Swiss to thank, consists of cheese, cheese and more cheese. Most versions also contain wine, beer, or another alcohol, and some include ingredients ranging from garlic to mushrooms to crab. Day-old bread cubes work best for dipping, as do lightly steamed vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, baby potatoes, cured meats and raw pear and apple slices. Feel free to experiment! To begin your fondue explorations, try Nigella Lawson’s recipe for a classic Cheese Fondue, of which she writes, “I don’t suppose this is ever going to win plaudits from the World Health Organization, but a cheese fondue is surely the stuff of dreams. On the plus side, healthwise, I love it best with radishes, endive, spears of radicchio and carrots dipped in, but I don’t know why I am trying to engage with that particular argument. The point is, it makes a fabulous supper: filling, gorgeous to eat, and conducive to good atmosphere and even better spirits. Make a vat of this, and supply nothing other than fruit afterward or, at most, a little palate-tickling sorbet.”
|
|
