In this video he shows Epicurious how simple it is to make fresh butter, in less than 15 minutes.   This recipe uses only one ingredient:  heavy cream.  Daniel recommends using the best you can find, “which usually means organic cream from a small producer”.  In this recipe he uses whipping cream from California’s Straus Family Creamery, which comes from grass fed cows and is about 36% butterfat.

Here’s his simple technique:

Fresh Butter
1 half gallon of whipping cream (this makes a quite a bit, for home use you could half this and use 2 pints, aka 1 quart, for 2 cups of butter. A basic rule of thumb is that 1 pint of cream will yield 1 cup of butter.)

Add the cream to a mixing bowl, and enclose the area between the top of the  bowl and the top of the mixer with plastic wrap to avoid a mess.  Using an electric mixer, beat on #6 until mixture thickens a bit, and then increase to #7 setting, for a total of 6 minutes.  Place the mixture into a colander or strainer, let the fresh buttermilk drain out.  Squeeze with your hands to expel as much liquid as possible.  Mix in salt if desired.  Add herbs or flavorings if a compound butter is desired, and roll the butter into a log with plastic wrap. Use within 2 weeks.

Regarding flavorings, the possibilities are endless!  Chop the ingredients as finely as possible, and keep at room temperature for 2 hours (before rolling) so that the flavors may blend.  Some delicious variations for compound butter:

• Chipotle pepper with cilantro and lime butter (for sweet corn) from Chef Brett Bannon
• Fresh berries, cinnamon,or honey and toasted pecans for a pancake or breakfast toast topping
• A garlic and lemon, or chardonnay and shallot butter for sauteeing or baking with fish or shellfish
• Fresh basil and sundried tomatoes to top pasta or warm baguette slices
• Roasted garlic, shallots, or fresh chive butter for potatoes, bread, or vegetables.

If you have a favorite compound butter recipe, please do share with us in the comments below.

Ingredient wise, it all boils down to the country of origin. Fish sauce is a principal cooking ingredient for curries, sauces, pastes and condiments in Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, and several other Southeast Asian countries.  It always includes some type of fermented fish, but the type of fish varies, as well as the ingredients and spices added to it. In general, most fish sauces are made of three simple ingredients:  fish, water, and salt.   Anchovies are the most common fish used in fish sauce.

Now we’re going to get Alton Brown style geeky with you.  Fish sauce, as well as aged cheeses and meats contain glutamates, the salts of the amino acid glutamic acid.  Glutamates are flavor enhancers, and are the essential component of the hard to describe savory flavor known as Umami.  So there is a scientific reason why fish sauce tastes good!

So, what brand of fish sauce is best? Of course that all depends on your personal tastes. Chef Ming Tsai recommends the Three Crabs brand, and Chowhounders here discuss several favorites, including:  Golden Boy and Tra Chang from Thailand, and Colatura di Alici from the Amalfi Coast of Italy.

Does it go bad? Listen, everything goes bad eventually, everything!  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Watch this video from Chow featuring Chef and Asian food expert Corinne Trang as she explains when it’s time to toss the sauce.

©Modern Luxury Magazine

Chef William Bradley is the executive chef of Addison, the signature restaurant of the The Grand Del Mar resort in San Diego.  Here’s some recent praise for the chef from Troy Johnson of Modern Luxury Magazine:

“Paging Bravo! William Bradley’s time in the lights is now. He recently became the only Southern California chef to be anointed with both the AAA Five-Diamond Award and the Mobil Five-Star Award for his contributions to the mouth. The brainy charmer’s kitchen at the San Diego-based Grand Del Mar’s Addison restaurant is a sanctuary—not a single knife or shallot out of place. This obsessive attention to detail shows in his food, as well: think clean, perfectly separated tastes of wild leek vichyssoise with bacon crémeux, brioche and fennel pollen.”

In today’s featured restaurant recipe, the chef shares a simple to prepare yet elegant appetizer featuring stuffed cremini mushrooms. And did you know? Cremini mushrooms are nutrient packed, trumping all other mushrooms and many vegetables in levels of copper, potassium, Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), and the antioxidant selenium. You can view the comparisons in a chart from the Mushroom Council here.

Marinated Cremini Mushrooms Stuffed With A Caper and Crab Salad
Chef William Bradley
4 servings

Ingredients

16 cremini mushrooms
To taste Fleur de Sel sea salt
3 cups extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves
4 whole shallots, sliced
2 cups picked Dungeness crabmeat
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup chopped chives
½ cup chopped capers
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions
Method for Marinated Creminis:
Place cremini mushrooms on a roasting tray, sprinkle with sea salt. Place in a preheated 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for 15 minutes. Remove mushrooms and rest for an additional 15 minutes. In a mixing bowl, add olive oil, garlic, shallots and mushrooms. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 48 hours.

Method for Caper Crab Salad:
In a mixing bowl, add crab, mayonnaise, chives, capers and lemon juice. Make sure all ingredients are mixed thoroughly.

Assembly:
Remove mushrooms from marinade. Divide mushrooms among 4 plates and place a generous amount of crab mixture on top of the mushrooms.

In this video from MSNBC, Chef Andres shares 3 recipes using canned ingredients, a  White Asparagus Gazpacho, Chickpea and Tuna Salad, and Artichokes with Clams and Jamon Serrano, a dry-cured Spanish ham.

PS:  We asked the chef what the best or his favorite brand of canned tuna was, and he said that he always uses Bonito Del Norte tuna packed in Spanish olive oil. For garbanzo beans, aka chickpeas, he prefers the Goya Brand.

Read on for the recipes

Chickpea and Tuna Salad
Serves 2

• 1 medium ripe plum tomato
• 1 14-ounce can of cooked chickpeas, drained
• .5 ounce shallot, peeled and minced
• 2 medium ripe plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
• 1 quarter green bell pepper, seeded and cut into small cubes
• Half cucumber, peeled and cut into small cubes
• Sea salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons Spanish extra-virgin olive oil plus extra for garnish
• 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
• 1 9.15-ounce can of atun claro (tuna packed in olive oil)
DIRECTIONS
Grate one tomato to create a tomato puree. Set aside. In a bowl, combine the chickpeas, shallots, tomato, pepper, cucumber, olive oil and vinegar. Toss. Season with the sea salt. Spread grated tomato on the base of each plate. Top with the chickpea mixture. Remove chunks of the tuna from the can and place over top of the salad. Drizzle with olive oil. Serve.

Artichokes with Clams and Jamon Serrano
Serves 2

• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons of minced shallot
• 1 14-ounce can of artichokes
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1 tablespoon of minced parsley
• 12 clams
• 2 ounces jamon Serrano, diced
• Juice of quarter lemon
• Salt to taste
• More minced parsley to garnish
• Olive oil to drizzle over top
DIRECTIONS
Drain the artichokes and reserve the liquid. Add enough water to create one cup of liquid. Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and shallots and cook for a minute. Add the artichokes and saute until the artichokes get a little color. Add the reserved artichoke water, the white wine and parsley. Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil. Add the clams and cook for 2-3 minutes until the clams begin to open. Add the lemon juice. Salt to taste. Remove from the heat and place on platter. Sprinkle with diced ham and minced parsley. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Serve.

White Asparagus Gazpacho
Serves 4

• 2 8.8-ounce cans of premium white asparagus
• 1/2 cup Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
• Tips of the canned white asparagus
• Fresh white asparagus
• Spanish extra-virgin olive oil
• Maldon sea salt
• Fresh Spanish tarragon

DIRECTIONS
Drain the asparagus from the cans and reserve the liquid. Reserve the empty cans. Cut the tips off the asparagus and reserve.
Combine the asparagus, the liquid from the can, the olive oil, the vinegar and the salt in the blender. Puree until smooth. Taste for salt and add more if needed. Strain the mixture and place in the refrigerator to chill at least an hour.
Peel the fresh white asparagus and snap off the woody stems. Slice thinly using a mandolin.
Divide the asparagus tips amongst the four soup bowls and stand them up on the base of bowl. Divide the asparagus slices among the four bowls and place along the tips. Drizzle with olive oil. Garnish with Maldon salt and Spanish tarragon. Place the soup in a glass pitcher and pour table side.

In today’s chef recipe, she shares with us an a dessert recipe for Mexican Chocolate and Banana Empanadas, featuring Nestle’s delicious Abuelita Mexican chocolate.  Abuelita, if you haven’t tried it, is a yummy Mexican chocolate infused with cinnamon.  We found it in the Hispanic food section of our regular grocery store.

Mexican Chocolate and Banana Empanadas
Chef Lorena Garcia

12 (one 11.6-ounce package) frozen store-bought empanada dough discs, defrosted (These you should be able to find in most grocery stores, if not a Mexican grocer should have them. We used Goya brand.)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablets (90 grams each) NESTLÉ ABUELITA Chocolate, broken into pieces
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, at room temperature
3 small ripe bananas, chopped
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease a large baking sheet.
Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl; reserve.
Heat the Abuelita chocolate and cream in small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until chocolate is completely melted and smooth; remove from heat.  Beat cream cheese and melted Abuelita chocolate until mixed well.  Fold in chopped bananas.
Place 2 heaping tablespoons Abuelita mixture in center of each pastry disc. Wet edges with water; fold in half and crimp edges with fork. Place empanadas on prepared baking sheets; brush lightly with oil and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar mixture.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Recipe per the video:

Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette
Chef Keith Snow

Wash, cut off tops, and half 1 cup of strawberries (Or raspberries, blackberries, blueberries.  If nice looking fresh berries are not available, try organic frozen berries)
Slice a small clove of shallot
Red wine vinegar (1 tbsp or to taste)
Balsamic vinegar (1 tbsp or to taste, Chef Keith likes aged Italian balsamics from Modena Italy or from the Emilia Romagna region)
Pepper
Salt
1/4 cup of light olive oil

Blend in an immersion blender.

©foodwishes.com

OMG.

Chef John from Food Wishes, thank you thank you thank you! The best Christmas present ever, a video recipe for Maple Candied Bacon, using only 5 ingredients.  Can you imagine the holiday love you will receive when you serve these savory sweets as an appetizer?

Diet, schmiet,  they officially don’t start until January anyway!

Watch and drool.

Read on for the recipe

Pizza With Smoked Salmon and Caviar
Chef Wolfgang Puck
Serves 4 (Makes 1 12 inch large pizza)

* 12 ounces Pizza Dough (recipe to follow) Pressed for time? Use frozen premade dough.
* 6 tsp of Chili and Garlic Oil (recipe to follow), or…you may simply use olive oil
* 1/2 cup of thinly sliced red onion
* 4 tablespoons of Dill Cream (recipe to follow)
* 5 ounces sliced smoked salmon
* 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh chives
* 6 teaspoons of Sevruga caviar, optional

1. Place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 500°F.
2. On a lightly floured surface, stretch or roll out the dough into an 8- inch circle, with the outer edge a little thicker than the inner circle. Brush the dough with the oil and arrange the onions over the pizza. Slide a pizza paddle or rimless baking sheet under the pizza and then slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. Bake until the crust is golden brown, 6 to 8 minutes.
3. With the pizza paddle or a large spatula, carefully remove the pizza from the oven and set it on a cutting board. Use a knife, an icing spatula, or the back of a spoon to spread the Dill Cream over the inner circle. Arrange the slices of salmon so that they cover the entire pizza, slightly overlapping the raised rim. Sprinkle the chopped chives over the salmon. Using a pizza cutter or a large sharp knife, cut the pizza into 4 or 6 slices. If you like, spoon a little caviar in the center of each slice. Serve immediately.

Dill Cream

* 1 1/2 cups Sour cream
* 3 tablespoons Minced shallots
* 2 tablespoons Fresh dill leaves, chopped
* 1 1/2 tablespoons Fresh lemon juice
* 1/4 teaspoon Freshly ground white pepper

1. In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix well.
2. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use. Extras will last in the refrigerator for up to one week, and are delicious on potatoes as well.

Note that the pizza dough recipe will make enough dough for 2 12 inch pizzas, so if you are only making one pizza, freeze the remaining dough, it will last for up to 2 months in the freezer. Alternatively you can refrigerate it for up to 2 days.

Pizza Dough:

* 1 packet of active dry or fresh yeast
* 1 teaspoon of honey
* 1 cups of warm water (105º F to 115º F)
* 3 cups of all-purpose flour
* 1 teaspoon of kosher salt
* 1 tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and honey in 1/4 cup of the warm water.

In a mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the flour and the salt. Add the oil, yeast mixture, and the remaining 3/4 cup of water and mix on low speed until the dough comes cleanly away from the sides of the bowl and clusters around the dough hook, about 5 minutes. (The pizza dough can also be made in a food processor. Dissolve the yeast as above. Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Pulse once or twice, add the remaining ingredients, and process until the dough begins to form a ball.)

Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and knead by hand 2 or 3 minutes longer. The dough should be smooth and firm. Cover the dough with a clean, damp towel and let it rise in a warm spot for about 30 minutes. (When ready, the dough will stretch as it is lightly pulled.)

Place a pizza stone on the middle rack of the oven and preheat the oven to 500º F.

Divide the dough into 4 balls, about 6 ounces each. Work each ball by pulling down the sides and tucking under the bottom of the ball. Repeat 4 or 5 times. Then on a smooth, unfloured surface, roll the ball under the palm of your hand until the top of the dough is smooth and firm, about 1 minute. Cover the dough with a damp towel and let it rest for 15 to 20 minutes. At this point, the balls can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to 2 days.

To prepare each pizza, dip the ball of dough into flour, shake off the excess flour, place the dough on a clean, lightly floured surface, and start to stretch the dough. Press down on the center, spreading the dough into an 8-inch circle, with outer border a little thicker than the inner circle. If you find this difficult to do, use a small rolling pin to roll out the dough. Lightly brush the inner circle of the dough with oil and arrange the toppings of your choice over the inner circle.

Using a lightly floured baker’s peel or a rimless flat baking tray, slide the pizza onto the baking stone.

Chili and Garlic Oil

* 1 Whole head garlic (about 2 ½ ounces, cloves separated and peeled)
* 2 cups of Extra virgin olive oil
* 1 tablespoon of Red pepper flakes

1. In a small saucepan, combine the garlic cloves and olive oil. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to maintain a bare simmer and cook until the garlic turns golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Keep a close watch: If the garlic gets too dark, the oil will have a bitter taste.
2. Let the oil cool, then stir in the red pepper flakes. Leave at room temperature for at least 2 hours to let the flavors blend. Strain the oil into a clean glass container, cover, and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks. You may also use this recipe to saute ingredients for pasta dishes.

Wish to help?   Celebrate Mario and purchase a wonderful foodie gift,  a limited edition Mario Batali watch from Ernst Benz, or simply donate on the site here.

Featured in the video are: Emeril Lagasse, Anthony Bourdain, and the delicious Mario himself.  We loved this quote from Bourdain: “Look at him in all of his magnificence, he is an incredible creature, I’m basking in his golden glow.”  Ha! Go Mario!