#brown-butter-sage

#brown-butter-sage

Trader Joe's Garlic Spread Dip is sold as a savory refrigerated spread/dip, but the simple ingredient list hints to all kinds of culinary shenanigans.

I use a lot of vermouth actually. Obviously it's a fortified wine and so therefore it has a lot of flavor. When I'm doing pastas, for example, I'm using white vermouth sometimes. If I'm doing a seafood pasta with clams, it's amazing. People are like, 'What's that flavor in there?'

"The solution to everything was just add butter. It was the moment when I realized so much of the magic that occurs in pastry, but also in sauces, emulsification, creating that silky texture of a classic French sauce, it's all because of butter."

Few low-prep dishes satisfy and delight on busy weeknights like one-pot pastas, and one of the best ingredients to take your pasta dishes to the next level is vegetable broth. Boiling dry pasta directly in vegetable broth instead of water imparts bolder flavor as the pasta soaks it up. Plus, you'll end up with a pot full of starchy cooking liquid from the boiled pasta, which can provide a solid base for building a pan sauce.

Buttered noodles are one of the best comfort food dishes out there. There is something very homey about eating the slippery-slidey and carby pasta noodles topped with a copious amount of rich, salty butter. While much of the beauty of this dish is in its simplicity, there are numerous ways to doctor up your buttered pasta to give it a more sophisticated and adult flavor, and you can make yours extra savory by adding anchovies.

Cooking during late March can be particularly challenging due to the cold weather and lack of fresh produce. The desire for spring recipes clashes with the reality of winter ingredients still dominating the market.

Of the five mother sauces, velouté is extremely under-appreciated and not talked about enough. It's what we as Americans call gravy, which we know has so many various uses. Velouté, which means velvety in French, is made with a light roux (or a mixture of flour and fat, like butter), stock or broth, and some seasoning like salt and pepper, and a bay leaf.