Christopher Kimball's Substack

We just posted this video for a Burnt Honey Tomato Salad on the Milk Street Instagram account, and it has over a million views. You’ll have to go to Milk Street for the full salad recipe, but the essence of this dish is the dressing, which involves “burning” honey in a skillet. Here’s how to make it: Add 3 tablespoons of mild honey to a skillet over medium-high and cook until the honey is a dark amber.

I like icebox cheesecake; I really like it. It is lighter than a typical cheesecake, perhaps with the exception of Japanese cheesecake, and I also like the cool temperature and tang, which ameliorates the fat content. I have not had a slice of icebox cheesecake in over 20 years and, like restoring an old Corvette hidden in a barn, I set out to make this one with great enthusiasm. I started with a graham cracker crust and punched it up with ground ginger.

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Photo by Tim Toomey on Unsplash I have a a few digital Thermapens in my kitchen, and they are top-of-the-line, but I find that temping steaks is tricky. I pull a steak off at 130 degrees, and it is blood rare, or the steak goes from 120 degrees to 145 degrees in just seconds. You can use a Bluetooth meat thermometer such as the Meater Pro (this is my favorite brand—it is compact and I like the Bluetooth app) or, and this is old school, you can teach yourself to test a steak with your fingers.

Once in a great while, I come across a recipe from the past that sounds intriguing, in this case, the Melting Tea Cake from Paula Peck’s “The Art of Good Cooking” from the 1960’s. What caught my attention was the notion that this is a half sponge and half pound cake. That is a worthy goal, since pound cakes are dense and rich and sponge cakes can be a bit airy. But this is one recipe that almost did me in. Let’s start with the eggs.

Marie Briggs was the cook and baker at the Yellow Farmhouse in our small Vermont town, the population shrinking to just 150 souls in the 1940s. The farmhouse still stands today just within the town line, with the farmhouse on the left and two sagging horse barns on the right.

I hate brunch. I really do. I get up early on the weekends, as in 5:30 a.m., bake biscuits or pancakes, and get out of the house. Please don’t sit around in your PJs, crunching toast, drinking coffee, and reading excerpts from the paper out loud (that last part shows my age). Get moving! However, there are recipes that you can serve for breakfast that are substantial enough to be considered brunch-worthy, or even suitable for a quick midweek supper. One of the best is the puffy omelet.

In Mexico, the blender is king. During a recent trip to Oaxaca, it was clear that the blender is the most-used kitchen appliance in Mexico. It’s great for salsas, especially when you have to purée tough chili skins, but it’s also used to make cake batters. Maria Isabelle Vasquez made both a mango cake and a dulce de leche pan de elote (a corn cake with a caramel sauce topping) using the blender. I also discovered that the blender is used all the time to make guacamole.

Time for the burger to be released from the bun and stand on its own! Grinding boneless short ribs or brisket in a FP with a few other ingredients and then a simple salt and pepper crust allows this burger to stand naked and proud. Or, if you like, you can skip the crust and the sauce entirely and leave the burger truly naked! One of the best burgers I ever had was on 12th street in New York City at a small diner.

I am not a dessert snob. I am perfectly happy to bake up pecan bars, hermits, strawberry pretzel salad, and even a pudding or two just because those recipes taste good. These pecan bars are much easier than a pecan pie and have a better mix of crust to filling to pecans. I slightly underbake them to keep the filling creamy instead of chewy. Pecan pie is a problem. You overbake it and it turns chewy and nasty. The crust often does not cook through properly.