Take your best knife out and look at it closely. How sharp is it? Probably not as sharp as you think it is. Here’s one of my favorite knives, a 7 1⁄2 inch Chinese cleaver: Looks pretty sharp, eh? Let’s look at it a bit closer, at about 3X power: Still look pretty sharp? Let’s try it at 150X power:…
Delicious Liasons — the Science and Art of Thickening
Liason. The very word conjures up images of entanglements, and well it should, since it comes from the French verb lier, to bind. In cooking, a liason is something added to a liquid, like a sauce or a soup, to bind or thicken it. There are two basic kinds of liasons–starches, like flour, and proteins, like egg. Both…