During the holidays my daughter wanted to use the extra heavy whipping cream we had on hand. She thought she would check on the web for a recipe. Epicurious.com is the place to go, I told her. I have been using it for more than six years at the library to help people quickly find quality, reviewed and rated, recipes. (I remember a man who came in looking for Sunset magazine and a recipe for pork roast. It would have taken a while to find it but in minutes, Epicurious.com had a recipe that he thought would work. He came back in the next week and thanked me for helping him find a recipe that worked so well.)Epicurious.com, aka Epi, will teach you to cook with cooking videos, define cooking terms and let you search for a recipe with an ingredient. Just put "heavy whipping cream" in the main search window on Epi and rated recipes appear. We both fell for Milk Chocolate Mousse with Port Ganache and Whipped Cream Fraiche. Yes, I thought it was way too complicated for me to make but when you are someone else, you just jump right in, especially if someone else is buying the ingredients. By the way, what is a ganache? Epi comes through with this definition. It's a rich chocolate icing made with semisweet chocolate and whipping cream that are heated and stirred together until the chocolate is melted. The mixture is cooled until lukewarm and poured over a cake or torte. Creating it took longer than the cook thought but it was amazingly delicious when it was together. The Port reduction tasted delicious and made it look professionally done.
Try out Epi, home of recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazine. There are Healthy Options, Quick & Easy Ideas, Recipes of the Day, Holidays & Parties, Seasonal Ingredients and user forums.
posted by mb
