The Food Dude has been sheltering in place in his well-appointed Fortress of Solitude (it's east of Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard), but he decided to poke his head out for a much-needed haircut.
While he was out _ he saw his shadow, BTW _ he fielded a few questions from readers.
Hey, Food Dude: I am a former St. Louisan now living outside Chicago, where Charlie Gitto's salad dressing is not available. Would it be possible to get a recipe for a comparable salad dressing that I could make myself? _ Far From Home
Dear Getting Dressed: Don't think of yourself as living in a suburb of Chicago. Think of yourself as living in a distant, distant suburb of St. Louis. Isn't that better?
I searched our files to see if we have ever printed a recipe for the popular Gitto's dressing, and we have not. But we did run a semi-helpful, generalized reconstruction of the it: "Blend one or more cloves of roasted garlic with red wine vinegar, grated Asiago cheese, good olive oil and freshly ground black pepper."
Best of all, of course, would be to come back to town and bring a case of your favorite dressing back with you. But if you'd like other Charlie's Gitto's recipes, go to stltoday.com/food for four of them we did find.
Hey, Food Dude: I have several questions for you:
How do I create a warm enough environment for dough to rise?
Do I have to peel carrots? They don't seem to have a peel and I could scrub their surface with vegetable brush.
What is so impressive about kosher or sea salt that it is called for in recipes?
In a recent article on kitchen substitutions, the liquid from canned chickpeas was suggested as a substitute for whipped dessert topping. How? How much of the liquid should you have to make it worthwhile and should I freeze what I have to accumulate enough? _ Dough and Carrots and Salt, Oh My!
Dear Dorothy, You have questions, I have answers. Mostly.
1. To get bread dough to rise, you could always turn off the air conditioner (in the winter, find the warmest room in the house; in my house, it is a small powder room that has a heat vent). If you have room above your refrigerator, a lot of people put it there _ heat rises, and also a fridge generates a small amount of heat.
You can also turn on the light in your oven for a half hour or hour, put the dough in, and then turn the light off after another half hour or so. Or you could bring a couple of cups of water to a full boil in a microwave, wait a couple of minutes, and then take out the water and put in the dough; close the door quickly and keep it closed until the dough has risen.
You'll get the best results when the ambient temperature is between 75 and 78 degrees.
2. You don't absolutely have to peel carrots, but they will taste somewhat more bitter and the texture will be gritty. So, yeah. Peel them.
3. Kosher salt is easy to pick up with your fingers. That is literally the only reason chefs recommend it so often (unless they are calling for coarse salt for finishing, such as for the top of a pretzel, but that usually is a coarser salt than kosher).
And here is the thing about sea salt: All salt is sea salt. If it comes out of the ground in large amounts, it was originally from an ocean that dried up, maybe millions of years ago.
4. I have no idea how much canned chickpea liquid to use as whipped dessert topping. Yuck. That sounds gross.
