Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Claire Saffitz
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American editor Claire Saffitz.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I've always just operated with the attitude that if I work just as hard as I can, everything will be fine.
For rave-worthy soups, skip the store-bought stock. You can extract a cleaner, stronger broth from a combination of water and several pantry ingredients. It's all about layering powerful flavor-enhancers that you probably already have on hand - bacon, tomato paste, herbs, peppercorns, a Parm rind, and, of course, kosher salt.
Pate a choux is a mixture of simple ingredients - flour, water, milk, eggs - but the proper technique is essential. Unlike other doughs, the pastry is pre-cooked on the stovetop before being enriched with eggs, piped, and baked.
The holy grail of recipe developing is the recipe that turns out so much more impressive than you would expect from the effort it took to produce.
Lemon curd is a basic custard, meaning it's thickened by eggs. Although many curd recipes call for just yolks, I prefer to use a combination of whole eggs and yolks to add a bit of lightness.
I always keep some variety of dumpling in my freezer for convenience, but frozen homemade pierogi are a special treat.
For a while I thought I would work in museums, so my first job after college was an internship at the 9/11 Museum. I quickly found out that I did not want to do that. So I signed up for culinary school, and directly following culinary school, I went to graduate school at McGill.
Caramelized white chocolate is a mind-blowingly simple and delicious technique that will silence all the alleged white-chocolate haters out there.
I don't like a too-perfect cake. You want people to know it came from your kitchen and not the cake case in the bakery aisle.
In the height of summer, a ripe cantaloupe is one of the most intoxicating pieces of produce under the sun.
Cooking has always been work.
Criticism of a dish is not a criticism of the cook.
Home cooks are finding inspiration in the past, digging up centuries-old recipes more familiar to the likes of Thomas Jefferson than Thomas Keller.
I know very little about my great grandparents, who came through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century, settled in Baltimore, and spoke only Yiddish.
Even as a little kid I knew that spinning a dreidel on the floor for literal pennies was a sad consolation for the joys of trimming a Christmas tree.
Of all the quirky, inexplicable, reindeer-embellished holiday traditions out there, making your own Yule log might take the cake.
I ate cottage cheese all the time growing up, but it wasn't until I was in college that I became aware of the stigma surrounding it.
The mild creaminess of cottage cheese makes it a perfect blank canvas for almost any flavor combination, savory or sweet. Since it's so soft, I usually try to give it some textural contrast in the form of something crunchy. Brightening it up with acid is also a must.
When making tartare, keep everything chilled as you go, including the mixing bowl and plates. Presentation matters, too: The meat should be fridge-cold when served and cut as precisely and neatly as possible.
Always bake in the center of the oven. A pan placed too close to the bottom of the oven will receive more heat radiating from the oven floor, baking it faster from the bottom. The reverse is true of something baked on the top rack. Always bake in the center for the most even baking and browning all around.
My beauty routine has changed a lot since I turned 30. But also, being on camera more has made me dial in on my skincare and makeup routine. I have acne-prone skin, and washing my face with cleanser in the morning, using witch hazel to tone, and washing twice at night to take off all of my makeup has really made a difference.
Ever crack an egg into simmering water only to watch the white spread out and form wispy tentacles? It happened to me until I came across this game-changing fix: Break the egg into a sieve set over a bowl. The watery outer edge of the white will drain through, leaving the thicker white and yolk intact.
Pierogies are textbook comfort food.
The first time I ever deep-fried something, I was terrified. I was making yeasted jelly donuts, and I was so nervous that I fried them, unblinking, with a pounding heart and sweaty palms.
As a kid, I was overly studious, overly serious, very academically driven. It was important to me on a cellular level to do well. And then I went to college at Harvard, and I relaxed a little bit.
No stuffing is complete without chopped onion and celery - they're the building blocks. If you want to deepen the flavor, consider adding leeks, sage, and/or hardy greens.
I have makeup that I can do in 15 minutes, 10 minutes, or five minutes, depending on what I'm doing that day. On a day when I'm shooting, it's 15 minutes. Five minutes is when I'm running around that day, and it's no big deal.
You don't need a specialty lame (French for 'blade') to make professional-level bread at home, but it certainly helps in creating those telltale slash marks. You need a truly razor-sharp edge to make a clean cut; even a sharp paring knife will drag as it moves through the wet dough.
If you think about it, composed salads are like nachos (I'll explain). When you're eating a plate of nachos, it's always a bummer when you get to those naked, topping-less chips on the bottom of the pile. It's the same with salads. No one wants to find a naked leaf on the end of their fork.
A well-crafted cocktail isn't complete without the right garnish. This final flourish - often citrus or fresh herbs - enhances the drink's taste, smell, and look.
I brought babkallah to a party and people freaked. They hovered over like it was a newborn baby, oo-ing and ah-ing. Its beauty didn't prevent them, however, from devouring the entire thing within minutes. It makes a lovely hostess gift, as it's both novel and delicious.
Never met an egg I didn't like.
When I was a kid, my idea of heaven on a hot summer day was fresh cut-up watermelon, Breakstone's cottage cheese, and a sprinkle of salt.
One thing I hear a lot is that people feel less stressed out after they watch 'Gourmet Makes.' There's a transference of their stress onto me.
Running - it keeps me balanced, energetic, and primed for pasta intake.
It's the ingredients you choose (Chorizo? Sure! Rye bread? Why not?) that will make your stuffing stand out.
I'm so bad at self-care.
There's a lot you can learn about something by taking it apart.
For reasons that aren't quite clear I derive a weird and almost inappropriate pleasure from making a cake that looks like a decomposing log. Essentially, that's what a Buche de Noel is supposed to look like, complete with meringue 'mushrooms' poking out of the chocolate buttercream 'bark.'
Having those people that you trust implicitly is so important.
Serve as a sweet brunch treat or with tea in the afternoon. No one would turn it down as dessert after a big holiday meal, either. You'll find there's no bad time for babkallah.
Turmeric or cinnamon? Nuts or raisins? The players may change, but the fundamentals of fluffy, fragrant pilaf are always the same.
Can you braid three strands? Then you can make babkallah. The very idea of babkallah came about because the recipe avoids the complicating twisting technique that gives babka its signature swirl.
I don't discriminate when it comes to dumplings. Give me a generous plate of pretty much anything wrapped in a starchy, doughy casing and I will dive in with pleasure. But one star in the dumpling universe shines brighter than the others: the humble pierogi.
If anything betrays my Ashkenazi Jewish heritage - besides the Casper-the-friendly-ghost-like skin tone - it's my love of fishy fish.
Only advanced bakers should endeavor to adapt non-vegan recipes to be vegan, or gluten-full recipes to be gluten-free. There are all sorts of tips and tricks when it comes to subbing vegan ingredients for eggs and dairy, but it's tricky to say the least.
I love the Grub Street Diet. I am particularly fascinated by what people eat; I think it says a lot about people.
As an adult, I use whole-milk cottage cheese anywhere you might use plain Greek yogurt or ricotta cheese.
Lemon curd is one of the first things I remember cooking when I was old enough to use the stove without supervision. I looked up a recipe in my one of my mom's Martha Stewart cookbooks and went to work, stirring anxiously and monitoring closely for signs that the mixture was thickening so as not to curdle the eggs.
The problem with traditional pie weights is you never have enough and they're expensive. Common substitutes like dried beans just aren't heavy enough to do the job. Our genius solution? Small steel balls that fit inside ball bearings and that can be purchased at any hardware store.
Simmering vegetables in a covered pot over low heat so that they steam in their own liquid - a French technique called a l'etouffee - is the ticket to achieving a soup with pronounced depth.
Don't get attached to any one idea. Nothing is too precious.
Cooking is not effortless. To get a recipe that feels effortless is really hard.
Generally I don't find that basting does a lot of anything! I think what makes the most difference is treating the turkey ahead of time with a dry brine. It really does provide a very moist result.
When making any pureed soup, don't blend all the liquids and solids together at once. Hold back some liquid at first and use it to thin the soup as needed. You can always add more liquid, but there's not much you can do to fix a too-thin soup.
True marshmallow - and I'm not talking about those ones from a bag - is nothing more than an Italian meringue set with gelatin.
Every year since culinary school I have made a Buche de Noel, or Yule Log.
My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).
The last time I ordered soup in a restaurant was - well, let me see - possibly never. That's because in my mind, soup is something to be made and eaten at home, ideally with a cuddly animal at your feet in front of a blazing fireplace while the wind whips outside.
I made my first Yule Log as a culinary student in Paris, complete with the traditional chestnut filling, silky chocolate buttercream, and almost-too-adorable mushrooms. Since then, I've tweaked and updated both the recipe and the process - and I've definitely learned tips and tricks to make it easier.
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