Bacon and Cheese Biscuits
As part of “The Cooking Basics” series, I thought I’d share with you one of the books I consider to be an invaluable resource for creating your own recipes. Michael Ruhlman’s “Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking” is slowly turning out to be pretty handy in the kitchen.
Essentially, the author refers to a culinary ratio as a fixed proportion of one ingredient relative to another. He says that these proportions for the backbone of the craft of cooking. The book contains ratios for doughs, stocks, sausages, sauces and custards and once you know the basics, you are really only limited by your imagination. For example, the ratio for bread is 5 parts flour : 3 parts water. So combining 500 grams of flour plus 300 grams of water plus a small amount of yeast will give you the basic bread dough. Now, once you know how to mix this properly, comes the fun part! Looking for a savoury bread? Add bacon, caramelized onions, or cheese. In a nutty mood? Add walnuts, olives, and raisins.
I must caution, if you are looking for a “cooking bible” or “the best bread recipe, best custard recipe etc” this is probably not what you are looking for. Think of this more as a guide to help you understand how certain ingredients work together to give you different results (for example, pizza dough and bread are made up of the same ingredients but why are they so different?)
This book enables you to rely less on cookbooks and more on your creativity and as the author says “When you know a ratio, it’s not like knowing a single recipe, it’s instantly knowing a thousand.”
Trissalicious 