The different cooking modes

Cut twice as fast

When you need to cut something long into small pieces, for example chopped chives or the stem of a spring onion, there's a simple gesture that doubles your cutting speed. Let's see how.
May 21^th 2026968

The other use for bowl scraper

Your kitchen or bakery utensils may include a horn (left) or a pastry cutter (right). These practical utensils are normally used to scoop the contents of a bowl or salad bowl - the horn - or to cut dough - the pastry cutter. But they also have another, very practical use - let's see what it is.
May 9^th 20261,274

The strange foam of potatoes in milk

As you may have already noticed, when you cook potatoes in milk, especially in small pieces (slices or cubes) for a gratin for example, a surprisingly abundant white foam forms on the surface. Where does it come from?
April 26^th 20261,508

A little leftover butter

Very often when you're making a cake, your recipe will tell you to melt some butter and mix it into the batter - a classic for cookies, cakes, moelleux and the like. And every time you do this, you'll have to butter the baking tin to prevent the dough from sticking during baking. Naturally,...
April 16^th 20261,3845

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20262,1005

The bitterness of endives

As I write these lines, we are entering the endive season, and if you like it, it's time to enjoy it, if possible with your local producers. Endive is good, but the reproach that is often made of it, and children in particular, is: "It's bitter! And it is (somewhat) true of course, endives...
February 9^th 201916 K4.9

The secret of cooking until "done"

This is a real chef's skill: being able to look at a fish fillet cooking and say, "Stop – that's enough, it's cooked". I always admire this ability to see at a glance if something is done. It is what sets the professionals apart from us mere amateurs. And it's true that how fish is cooked is...
November 26^th 201222 K4.4

The golden-brown finish on puff pastry

Let's take a look at the tricky matter of producing puff pastry with an attractive, golden-brown finish. French pastry chefs call this "dorure" (literally, "gilding"). Behind this quirky term there lurks a real problem (and the solution): when using puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) for a pie, or...
February 8^th 201849 K 24.6

Tranché, dissociated, failed, in short... missed!

When preparing a sauce or a cream, there's always a (small) risk that the creamy preparation you're working on will suddenly separate into two parts of different textures: a liquid part, for example, and a more or less solid part, or even become lumpy. It's terribly frustrating, but we'll see...
June 19^th 202315 K5

Should I believe my oven?

Can you really trust your oven? This is an important question as we are always tempted to take the temperature indicated as gospel truth and, unfortunately, this is rarely very precise. .
July 4^th 201134 K4.6