“Fast frugal scratch cooking” is my credo at Copywriters’ Kitchen. For taste, health and cost-savings, nothing beats delicious home-cooked meals, snacks and baked goods.
Most of the time.
But the truth? There are limits to what you can—and should—cook at home.
If kids and work are part of your daily mix, you’d best “just say no” to perfect puff pastry and panforte—at least on weeknights.
Take it from me. I learned the hard way.
Confessions of a former scratch-cooking fanatic
Years ago when I was adjusting to new motherhood, exiled in the suburbs and managing a home for the first time, I became fixated on food.
Planning, shopping, preparation and serving-food-forth-in-style took up hours of my day.
I puréed homemade baby food and baked whole wheat teething biscuits. I cooked labor-intensive dinners every night. I started a sideline business supplying my husband’s late-night co-workers with individual gourmet meals.
Looking back on my extreme foodieism, I blame my mother, a California New Age seeker and community activist. Mom was always happier marching in picket lines than perfecting fondue.
While other kids longed for looser, liberal parents, I wanted Susie Homemaker.
So I became her.
My Waterloo came a few years later with a Rose Beranbaum butter cake.
Death by buttercream
For my son’s second birthday I decided to make Beranbaum’s Queen Bee Cake. With its honeybee theme, the cake sounded like the perfect centerpiece for Noel’s Winnie-the-Pooh party.
I sweated over Beranbaum’s directions to make a three-layered Biscuit de Savoie cake soaked in Nectar Syrup. The layers were iced with Royal Honey buttercream and the sides pressed with pulverized, homemade honey-almond brittle. The cake’s crowning glory was a solid 10″ diameter disc of Swiss chocolate. In the disc I cut perfect circles and filled them with honey. Over the honey-pools hovered life-size honeybees modeled from marzipan, their tiny stripes painted in chocolate ganache.
If I was thinking, I would have realized a crowd of two-year olds couldn’t appreciate the subtle tastes, texture and esthetic beauty of my baked masterpiece. They probably would have preferred a Carvel ice cream cake.
But I wasn’t. Thinking.
So years of food fanaticism give me the culinary creds to advise…
Warning! Don’t prepare these foods at home.
Yes, you can embark on the following culinary challenges. But think hard—do you want to? Maybe a return to therapy, meditation or pottery class would prove a better palliative.
P.S. I’ve made every one of the following.
P.P.S. Don’t. I beg you.
- Any cake by Rose Beranbaum—see above.
- Buttercream. Triple-whipped egg yolks, candy thermometers, scalding sugar syrup, second degree kitchen burns. I’m just saying. It’s true that buttercream’s sublime taste cannot be replicated—the confectioner’s sugar-butter mix is no substitute. So if you must make real buttercream, do it on a weekend. Send your spouse or partner to the park with the kids. Better yet, wait until the bairns morph into teens. After taking these precautions, you can check out my recipe and photo instructions for buttercream.
- Icing a wedding cake. I won’t bore you with the detail of the August Day I Made Ten Batches of Buttercream and Iced Fred and Mandy’s Wedding Cake in a Galley Kitchen Without Air-Conditioning. The thing is, it wasn’t the icing but icing the cake that slayed me. The huge cake layers are heavy and unwieldy. It’s almost impossible to spread the icing on them smoothly. In the end, I was saved by Kaye Hansen, pastry chef and kindly owner of Riviera Bake House—the fabulous French bakery in Ardsley, New York. On hearing my woes, Kaye kindly lent me her professional bakers’ Lazy Susan thingy. That made the job easier. Not easy. Easier. Hard. The truth is, icing that cake was still really hard. (Nota bene: Don’t make or ice your own wedding cake. Buy from Riviera. Seriously.)
- Panforte, hard candy—or any confection that requires a candy thermometer—see scalding sugar syrup, second degree kitchen burns in Buttercream, above.
- Italian bread, baguettes and New York style pizza: Professional artisanal breads and thin-crust pizza can’t be duplicated at home. Here’s the not-so-secret: brick ovens. Unless you’re a Wall Street robber baron, you don’t have one of those babies in your kitchen. But don’t stress: With a regular oven you can home-bake delicious puffy-crusted pizza and bread of every variety—just no hard crusted variations. Don’t kill yourself trying.
- Puff pastry. It takes 2 pounds of butter, a chilled marble work surface and a lot of practice sealing, folding and rolling butter and dough into paper-thin butter-filled layers. Why not just buy a pound of frozen phyllo dough, melt a stick of Plugra and get on with your life?
- Cassoulet. With the superlatives heaped on this dish, you’d think it was well worth the 48 hours of hard labor it takes to prepare. I don’t agree. Cassoulet started as the pork and beans of 17th century Southern French peasantry. Now it’s a foodie litmus test that includes a minimum of 18 arcane ingredients including homemade sausage, any roasted game you have leftover—when’s the last time your fridge stored leftover hare?—and duck fat. ‘Nuff said.
What foods do you refuse to cook from scratch? Let me know.
Photo courtesy of chego101.
Hi Lorraine,
I am still laughing from reading this one. I have PLENTY of your Rose Beranbaum’s cake stories. I am not a baker and I have no cold marble surface, let alone a brick oven, so I totally empathize. And yes, I go to Riviera for my cake and fruit tarts (my favorite) fixes. But there are other food groups that I completely botched up.
One thing I tried to make, thinking it was a snap, crackle, pop was Osso Bucco. I thought it was just, “cook it in low temp for ions” until the meat falls off the bone. Not so easy. The recipe I used required several steps, including browning, braising, and then, making the sauce in the pan after the meat was done, putting the whole kitandcabodle back in the oven, etc.etc.etc…..Not worth my time. But, I have to admit, it was delicious when I finally sat down after laboring for over 5 hours but I don’t think I’ll make it again…..unless you have a simpler recipe.
On the other hand, if I didn’t make attempts in making certain foods because they looked too complicated, I wouldn’t have discovered some of my favorite foods and desserts….like cream puffs I make with my daughter. Even, Andrew, who hates sweets including chocolate, loves our cream puffs. It’s actually a recipe that we combined from two different sources after trying different versions. I’m just glad we didn’t give up after our first failure. The pastry came out all soggy. But the next time, they came out perfect!
Sorry this comment is so long.
Hi Karen:
I love long comments–please feel free to hold forth.
Regarding an easy recipe for Osso Buco: Unfortunately, I do not have one–and wonder if such a thing exists.
(Other visitors, please jump in with suggestions!)
Hi Lorraine,
Great post! Don’t agree about buttercream — in fact, I find that Swiss meringue buttercream (see salted caramel buttercream post) is one of the easiest and most forgiving things to work with (beat the heck out of it and it comes back to life. Magic!) However, I am totally with you on cassoulet, and your description of it as 17th century pork and beans is priceless. Definitely not worth the time and effort when you can make so many things (Cuban black beans, Tuscan beans, etc.) in a fraction of the time with simpler ingredients.
Hi Sheryl:
Thanks dropping in and commenting. I’ll definitely give your recipe a try: I’d love to eat my words on buttercream–but more than that, I’d love to eat more buttercream!
I am too lazy to make my own pie crust and I don’t think the homemade version tastes that much better.
We use the Osso Bucco recipe from Cooks Illustrated (I think — it’s been a while since my husband printed it) and it’s not that hard.
Hi class factotum:
Thanks for commenting. I think many people would add pie crust to their list of Don’t-Cook-From-Scratch foods.
Appreciate the Osso Bucco recipe–check it out, Karen!
Definitely! Thanks for the recipe source. I’ll try to find it.
We substitute orange for the lemon in the gremolata:
Osso Buco
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 veal shanks (8 to 10 ounces and 1 1/2 inches thick each), tied around equator with butcher’s twine
Table salt and ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups dry white wine
2 medium onions , chopped medium
2 medium carrots , peeled and chopped medium
2 medium celery ribs , chopped medium
6 medium garlic cloves , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 2 tablespoons)
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 bay leaves
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes , drained
Gremolata
3 medium garlic cloves , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
2 teaspoons minced lemon zest (see note)
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley leaves
Instructions
1.
1. FOR THE OSSO BUCO: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees.
2.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in large ovenproof Dutch oven over medium-high heat until smoking. Meanwhile, dry shanks thoroughly with paper towels, then season generously with salt and pepper. Place 3 shanks in single layer in Dutch oven and cook until golden brown on one side, about 5 minutes. Flip shanks and cook on second side until golden brown, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer shanks to bowl and set aside. Off heat, add 1/2 cup of wine to Dutch oven, scraping bottom with wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits. Pour liquid into bowl with flavorful browned shanks. Return pot to medium-high heat, add 3 more tablespoons oil, and heat until shimmering. Brown remaining shanks, about 5 minutes for each side. Transfer shanks to bowl with other shanks. Off heat, add 1 more cup wine to pot, scraping bottom to loosen browned bits. Pour liquid into bowl with shanks.
3.
3. Set pot over medium heat. Add remaining 2 tablespoons oil and heat until shimmering. Add onions, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly browned, about 9 minutes. Add garlic and cook until lightly browned, about 1 minute longer. Increase heat to high and stir in broth, remaining cup wine, juices from veal shanks, and bay leaves. Add tomatoes and veal shanks to pot (liquid should just cover shanks). Cover pot, bring to simmer with lid slightly ajar, and place pot in oven. Cook shanks until meat is easily pierced with fork, but not falling off bone, about 2 hours.
4.
4. FOR THE GREMOLATA: Combine garlic, lemon zest, and parsley in small bowl. Stir half of gremolata into pot, reserving rest for garnish. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let osso buco stand, uncovered, for 5 minutes.
5.
5. Remove shanks from Dutch oven, cut off and discard butcher’s twine, and place 1 veal shank in each serving bowl. Discard bay leaves. Ladle some braising liquid over each shank and sprinkle with portion of remaining gremolata. Serve immediately.
6.
TO MAKE AHEAD: Osso Buco may be prepared through step 3 up to 3 days ahead of time and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. The meat should be stored and reheated in the braising liquid to prevent it from drying out. Scrape the chilled fat off the top and bring the osso buco to a simmer over medium-low heat in a covered Dutch oven, adding broth or water to adjust the consistency, if necessary. The gremolata should be prepared just before serving.
class factotum,
Thanks a lot for this recipe. It is simpler than the one I tried before. I’ll try it and let you know how it turns out. I can’t wait to try it.
Thanks again!
The Queen Bee cake tale is the pinnacle, but I have another story. In search of the perfect gingersnap crust, Lorraine once baked her own gingersnaps with fresh grated ginger, then crushed them to make the crust. But that was before she went into recovery from don’t-try-this-at-home cooking…
Louise. You promised. I really believed you when you swore you’d never tell about the ginger snaps…
(Louise has known me for 25 years, tasted most of my culinary extravaganzas and can bear witness to the veracity of this post.)