Milk Street Q&A

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Joshua - The best part of the Danish Dream Cake is the broiled topping - it's got a gooey layer hidden beneath a crunchy, caramelized topping - but the only way to achieve that perfect topping is using a broiler. The only pan option for this cake is an aluminum (not nonstick) 9 x 13 baking pan. I see these a lot in discount stores for under $10 or you can purchase one online for about $15 (they even come with a lid to keep the cake fresh). Trust me, it's well worth it for this cake! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Tom - We appreciate your support of Milk Street and our radio show! We understand that it's helpful to know the nutritional information for recipes. However, we are not a health food magazine and, therefore, do not have a nutritionist on staff to accurately calculate the nutritional details for all of our recipes. I would suggest using a smartphone apps or website (there are TONS out there) into which you can enter ingredients and get some nutritional information. These aren't 100% accurate, but they should give you a general picture of the nutritional details of a dish. Thanks for your question! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi David - In general, we recommend using all of our specialty soy, tamari, and shoyu in their raw form so we don't compromise their delicate flavor. Some suggestions - dipping sauce for fish, chicken, or tofu, drizzled over mild-flavored vegetables or rice, salad dressing, marinades (but only the bolder flavored Smoked , Black Garlic, and Matsutake Shoyu) etc. So you had the right idea by using the Takuko White Soy Sauce in a salad dressing! I think what may have masked the flavor was your choice of greens. Kale is a hearty green with a lot of bold flavor that likely overpowered the soy sauce. I would instead recommend using bibb, green or red leaf lettuce, or spring mix, which are all mild enough to keep the delicate flavor of the white soy sauce intact. Both the Takuko White Soy Sauce and the Nitto Jozo White Tamari would also be excellent with sushi or sashimi. The Haku Smoked Shoyu would be fantastic drizzled over grilled meats, especially salmon, pork, or lamb. The Black Garlic Shoyu (or, really, any of the soy, shoyu, tamari in our store) would be great in the Tamari Dipping Sauce for our Japanese Fried Chicken. The Matsutake Shoyu is great in vegetarian dishes since the double umami hits of the soy and the mushrooms adds tons of meaty flavor. I also think it would be fantastic as a marinade for skirt, flank or hangar steak. Have fun experimenting with all of these distinct sauces! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Nichola - Thanks for writing to us all the way from Australia! Our recipe for Swedish Spiced Wine recommends keeping the syrup separate from the wine so you can tailor the sweetness to each person's preference. The syrup can be kept in an airtight container for up to a month. The brandied raisins can be kept for up to a week as is or, if you continue adding brandy, weeks longer. There are definitely sources out there that say you can leave the Glogg - rebottled in clean wine or liquor bottles - to age for months or even years (!). We haven't tested this and I would be concerned that the flavor of the wine, once opened, exposed to the air, and rebottled, would be compromised. I probably wouldn't recommend freezing the syrup. Although the brandy won't freeze, the lemon juice and water and any remaining particles of zest, fig, ginger, and raisin that snuck through the strainer will. This creates a slushy texture to the syrup. Once this thaws, the ice crystals will melt and dilute the syrup's flavor and texture. Hope that helps! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Dominic - Generally speaking, no. There's only about 1/4 teaspoon of salt per stick of butter (for most commercial brands). At Milk Street we use salted butter in all of our baking recipes. We think the overall flavor is better than in unsalted butter. If you are using a recipe that calls for unsalted butter, however, remember to eliminate the salt in the recipe or the final product will taste too salty. There's a great article from the Washington Post about how unsalted butter became the preferred choice for baking and how professional cooks are turning back towards salted butter, which was used for generations before the switch to unsalted. One caveat I would make - I generally don't use salted butter for buttercream frosting. Since it's such a tight ingredient list make up of mostly butter, I do think it makes the buttercream too salty. Hope that helps! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Mitchell - you can substitute chicken breasts for most (if not all) of our sheet pan chicken recipes, including our recipe for Miso-Glazed Chicken with Mushrooms. In fact our Sheet Pan-Roasted Chicken (which includes 3 flavor variations - za'atar, jerk, and coriander) calls for a mix of whatever parts you like. I would recommend using bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. The skin and bone will protect the chicken a bit from drying out. Most importantly, temp your chicken. Insert the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast and pull it out of the oven when it hits 160 degrees. This will ensure that the chicken will still be moist and juicy. Hope that helps! Best, Lynn C. \_

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Quintin - you might be interested in Mark Bitterman's book, "*Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes." *Mark is considered an expert on all things salt (he both coined the phrase and is considered a selmelier, a food service professional whose expertise is in salt). His website, The Meadow, has a little bit on the history of salt (albeit a bit skewed towards finishing salts which he sells in his salt boutique): https://themeadow.com/pages/introduction-to-gourmet-salt. I also found some great information on the history of salting food for flavor from Saltworks, a sea salt company: https://www.seasalt.com/history-of-salt and a short article and video from the History Channel: https://www.history.com/news/off-the-spice-rack-the-story-of-salt. I hope you enjoy reading these! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Howard - the classic French recipe, Poulet en Cocotte, is a whole chicken roasted in a small, covered Dutch oven (a cocotte) that essentially cooks in it's own juices which, in turn, become a very flavorful sauce. You can also find a similar version of this recipe in the South Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan). In both regions it's always been made with a whole chicken. The idea was to provide an easy, economical dinner for the family. Whole chickens were and are widely available (most countries still don't sell chicken parts) and, even here in the U.S., are much less expensive per pound than cut-up parts. I make this recipe a lot at the end of a busy day and I'm grateful to be able to just throw the whole chicken in the pot to start cooking while I help with homework or shuttle my daughter to a dance class, leaving my husband to keep an eye on the pot. Another benefit -you can use the cooked leftover carcass and the giblets to make a super flavorful stock. My favorite thing about this recipe is that it offers endless opportunities for variation in both the spices on the chicken and the sauce ingredients. Thanks for writing to us! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Maureen - I haven’t made cottage cheese pancakes and we don’t have a recipe here at Milk Street, but I can offer some basic guidelines on cooking and baking with cottage cheese that will, hopefully, help make yours more successful. I don’t like using low-fat or fat free cottage cheese in cooking and baking. These tend to break and become very watery, which will both dilute flavor and negatively impact the texture of your pancakes. In general, I prefer full-fat cottage cheese with a thicker texture. Full-fat cottage cheese is still only 4% fat, which is quite low compared to other cheeses. It also tastes worlds better than low- or fat-free cottage cheese! Thick-textured ones tends to perform better in baking applications because they won’t throw off the dry-to-wet ratio. However, it’s hard to know the texture of a particular brand of cottage cheese without opening the container and taking a look. A good guideline is to look at the ingredient list. Full fat cottage cheese without any stabilizers (xanthan gum, locust bean gum, guar gum) would be my top pick. As long as it’s full-fat and contains only milk, cream, and salt (added probiotics are OK), I don’t think curd size matters as much. Hope this helps! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi David - Thanks for your question! At Milk Street we use leftover cheese rind from hard cheeses like parmesan and pecorino to add a savory boost to soups and stews. Parmesan contains high levels of glutamate, an amino acid that (along with ribonucleotides) imparts umami. The dish won’t taste cheese-y, per se, but the rind will add a depth of flavor that will really take your dish to the next level. As Elizabeth S. mentioned, we use parmesan rind to flavor the broth in our weeknight Kale and White Bean Soup and in the vegetable broth for our Risotto with Fresh Herbs. I would also recommend adding a rind to a Bolognese, meat ragu, or tomato sauce, a minestrone, or, really, any soup or stew. Happy cooking! Best, Lynn C.