Food for Thought: Masa and Masienda

Posted on January 7, 2026 by Burnt My Fingers
Masa by Jorge Grivalda.

Masa: Techniques, Recipes and Reflections on a Timeless Staple. (Note we got rid of the Oxford comma.)

I received quite a nice Christmas gift: a four-pack of artisanal masas from Masienda, accompanied by Masa*, a beautiful book by Masienda’s founder Jorge Gaviria. It being the holiday season, I immediately dove into the topic of tamales. My 1972 copy of Diana Kennedy’s The Cuisines of Mexico shows how far we’ve come with masa making in non-Hispanic regions; she uses Quaker Quick Grits.  Two years later Maseca instant masa entered the US market, and soon became ubiquitous for its predictably satisfying results.

Masas from Masienda

My four-pack of artisanal masas from Masienda.

In Masa, the author praises Maseca and calls it the Bisquick of Mexican cooking, meaning it’s a way for a home cook to feel accomplished without fear of failure. But he was looking for something more in the same way Chad Robertson of Tartine was looking for a more elemental way of making bread. (The beautiful photos in Masa reminded me of the Tartine cookbooks before realizing the resemblance is intentional.) This led him to landrace research in Oaxaca and ultimately to the founding of Masienda in 2014. Their white masa is available nationwide at Whole Foods; that plus blue corn masa were on the shelves of my local high end store. If you want red (which, of course, is the first I would like to experiment with) you’ll need to order it directly from Masienda.

Notice the subjunctive in the above; the actual tamale making at BMF has yet to take place. All the local Hispanic markets were sold out of corn husks around New Years and by the time I finally acquired some (mail order from Walmart) my tamale making party had dissipated. So this is an experience we can explore together. Start by ordering your own copy of Masa and some masa from Masienda.

P.S. One thing I missed in Masa was detailed recipes. Fortunately, many  can be found for free on the Masienda website.

Tortilla Press Liners

Tortilla press liners from Masienda.

PPS. If ordering from Masienda, grab a pack of reusable tortilla press liners which have a useful “tortilla ruler” to help you make consistent size discs.

*Affiliate link! The book is also available from Masienda, but it’s cheaper on Amazon. So consider ordering it there and using your savings to shop for masa.

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Olivye Salad for New Years

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers


Kate at the Sunday Stack shared this very traditional Russian recipe for Olivye Salad which she says is always served at New Years Eve. We were charmed by the family quirks (why would you pat gherkins dry after chopping them?) and reminded of a similarly named but very different salad our Yelp friend Leo shared a few years back which also insists the ingredients must be cut to exactly the same size (though his are quite a bit larger). Anyhow, Happy New Year and let’s hope 2026 is a good year for all.

olivye salad:

serves about 8-10

15 oz canned sweet green peas
3/4 cup cornichons/gherkins, diced then patted dry
4 hard boiled eggs
1 lb baby bologna/mortadella
3 medium yellow potatoes (or 2 large)
4 small whole carrots
about 3/4 cup mayo, or to your liking
salt + pepper to taste
fresh dill to garnish

for the eggs: add them to a saucepan filled with water. bring to a boil then cook for 12 minutes. remove from heat, pour off the water, flush with cold water and let them cool completely in the fridge.

for the potatoes and carrots: wash and add them to a pot (unpeeled). cover them with cold water, close the lid, and cook for 20-30 minutes, or until they are easily pierced with a fork. be sure not to overcook them to mush. let cool to room temperature.
my parents say not peeling them prior is esssenntialllllllllll but I have yet to test the method of peeling first out of fear of being disowned. do what you will with this info.
to peel the vegetables, use the back of a small knife to scrape the skins off after they come to room temp.

in the meantime, drain your peas then lay them out on a paper towel lined plate. allow them to sit and dry while you cut your vegetables.my mom likes to change the towel once more to ensure very dry peas. add them AFTER your mayo.
d
ice every single ingredient to 1/4” cubes. it takes some time but the small dice is essential!!when ready to dress, add 3/4 cup mayo first, and using a spatula or very large spoon, gently fold the mayo in. check the consistency – this is highly dependent on your taste. we like adding mayo until the salad just holds together on a spoon and no individual ingredients are falling off alone. if you like it heavier, add 1 tbsp at a time.

finally, fold in the peas. taste for salt. usually the mayo is salty enough and you might just need a pinch of salt. add crushed black pepper if you like! refrigerate olivye for 1-2 hours until very chilled. garnish with dill and even some hard boiled eggs if you like!
let me know if you try it!!!

instagram: @babytamago

tiktok: @babytamago

xoxo Katie

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Indoor Grilling with BlueStar

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Indoor Grilling

Indoor grilling on the BlueStar range.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac correctly predicted a bitter cold winter for the Northeast, so I can see myself doing a lot of indoor grilling on the BlueStar over the next couple of months.  It helps that Tom Thibeault of Adirondack Appliance* did a great job on refurbishing my Abbaka vent hood. I blasted away last night at the pictured kebabs and nary a wisp of smoke escaped into the room.

I don’t have a recipe for shish kabob but I do have a formula. 1 inch squares of a leg of lamb are marinated in olive oil, red wine, garlic and oregano and the veggies are marinated separately in a red wine vinaigrette. I use tomatillos, which hold up better on the grill, along with onion and green bell pepper.

The BlueStar grill is a “cartridge” which can be covered with a stainless plate when not in use (it provides a handy prep area) or swapped out for a griddle or two additional burners.  The griddle only makes sense when cooking for a crowd, otherwise I would use a couple skillets. The one complaint I have about my BlueStar is the uneven heat in the large oven which is due to an always-on fan that makes the rear of the oven hotter than the front. Michelle Hines Abrams Thiebault, Tom’s spouse, uses their BlueStar for her catering business and tells me the solution is to always turn on the convection feature and use a temp 25 degrees below what you would set without convection. But I mistrust convection for some reason and whenever possible use the second, conventional oven which is wide enough to accept a half sheet pan in place of a rack.

By the way, we still get traffic on our post about Old Thermy, the predecessor to the BlueStar which we had to abandon because Thermador parts were are longer available from Bosch, the current owner of the brand. A number of readers have asked for a schematic of this particular model, the GCR484GG. You can find them and a lively conversati0n among Thermador owners if you look down in the (many) comments.

*Tom is now with Marcella’s, which also sells the full BlueStar line.

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Reverse sear prime rib? Not a fan.

Posted on December 26, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Reverse Sear Prime Rib

Reverse sear prime rib baseball and first cut, plated. Some will say it’s too rare but that’s how we like it.

Yesterday as planned I used the reverse sear method to cook my 5 pound prime rib roast from Hannaford. The meat had been refrigerator aging under a Kosher salt rub since Monday. At 12:30 pm I took it out to bring to room temperature and rubbed in some fresh cracked black pepper and (at the urging of AI and various online nabobs) a little herbes de provence. At 1;30 I put it in a preheated 250 degree oven.

At 3 pm I checked and internal temperature was just below 90 degrees. So far so good. At 3:45 I checked again and temp had risen to 109 degrees. Panic time because dinner was planned for 5 pm and we were still missing some guests. Left the roast in a few more minutes (I had planned to cook to 115 degrees so it would end up on the rare side of medium rare) and let it sit under aluminum foil while I prepped other dishes. At 4:45 I put it back in the oven, now at 500 degrees, for a 10 minute sear. Sliced and served at 5 per plan.

The verdict? To paraphrase Jeffrey Hamelman’s quote about baking bread, “men drool, meat rules.” Meaning proofing or roasting will happen on its own schedule and you will either adjust or end up with a less than perfect result. My crust was fine (except the h de p was a completely unnecessary and distracting addition; I’ll never do that again). The flesh was rare to medium rare as desired. But the damn meat was COLD, or at least not as hot as desired. And I still ended up with a layer of grey just inside the crust which Kenji says this method will avoid; I didn’t and it didn’t matter because the meat tasted fine.

By comparison, in cooking hundreds of prime rib roasts at Victoria Station results were consistent and predictable. We were in charge, not the meat. We’d let the roast come to room temperature, blast it in a 500 or 550 degree convection oven for 50 minutes, check the temp expecting perfect results and if needed give it another 10 minutes. That’s what I did with a 9 pound 4 bone roast (which would cost a fortune today) in 2023 and that’s what I will do again next time. No more reverse sear prime rib in this kitchen.

Reverse Sear Prime Rib

As it came out of the oven.

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Prime rib prices 2025

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Prime Rib Rpices 2025

One of these roasts is $8.99/lb Select, the other $13.99/lb Certified Angus. Can you tell the difference?

Prime rib prices are coming down for Christmas dinner in 2025, but that doesn’t mean they are cheap. Of the two major supermarkets in my town, Market 32 has Select grade bone in rib roasts for $8.99/lb (they call it “Butcher’s Promise” which to me seems to put a lot of unfair baggage on the meat cutter) and Certified Angus for $13.99/lb. Hannaford has Choice bone in roasts for $8.99/lb and “Angus” for $10.99/lb. By comparison, our last year’s roast appears to have been $6.99/lb. Ouch.

When I was doing paid marketing work in the beef industry I was cautious about sharing my personal opinions. Truth is, grading is subjective. The inspector makes a single cut between the 12th and 13th rib on a side of beef and determines its grade. Younger animal (determined by condition of bones and firmness of flesh) and more marbling = higher grade. But there will be cuts at the high end of Select that have a decent amount of visible marbling and those might serve you well, especially if you do a couple of days of refrigerator aging. (If you want to dig deeper, here is a good article about grading. And here is the official grading guide from USDA.)

I had the idea of doing a comparison at Hannaford in which I would purchase an Angus roast but also buy a bone in rib steak at $8.99/lb and strap it on with butcher’s twine so it becomes the end cut. But the $8.99 rib steaks had a very different profile since they were likely delivered pre-trimmed with bones cut in half.

Luckily, I found a nice three bone Choice roast this morning for $8.99/lb and that will be our Christmas entrée. I usually cook the roast at high heat for a short time as we used to do at Victoria Station, but this time I am going to do a reverse sear in which I cook the roast at low heat to rare/medium rare then blast it at the end for a crisp crust.

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Hacking Bi Rite Market in San Francisco

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Bi Mart Sweet Potato and Kale

Bi Mart San Francisco Sweet Potato and Kale.

Bi Rite Market is a high end mini-supermarket chain in San Francisco with impeccable goods and prices to match. They recently opened a branch on Polk St, near where I stay when in town, so I went exploring in the take out aisle.

Key Lime Pie in a Jar

Key Lime Pie in a Jar.

Two items immediately caught my eye: a sweet potato and kale salad that looked like a full meal in a take out tub, and a jarred key lime pie. I purchased both at $8.99 each, with an eye to creating my own knock off versions.

The sweet potato salad wasn’t so great. The coconut miso dressing didn’t contribute much and the kale was cooked to the point the leafy bits turned to mush. I did much better with a knock off version which featured:

  • Sweet potato chunks from a tuber that was peeled then cut into 1 inch squares and cooked in salted water till it was tender but not falling apart.
  • An equivalent amount of kale shreds that were not cooked but massaged according to this technique so they were raw, but tender.
  • A sesame dressing from Trader Joe with a splash of soy to achieve an umami balance; if doing this at home you could do worse than our Japanese Restaurant Salad Dressing.
Sweet Potato Remnants

What’s left of our knock off version.

Our knock off version was better in every way. It became the combo salad/starch course at a family meal and was nearly gone before I could get a picture. Definitely do try this at home.

The key lime pie in a jar is a nice idea for a gift at holiday time or whenever. Take a 16 oz wide mouth mason jar and start with a layer of pie filling, add something equivalent to a graham cracker crust, then finish with a flavored topping. The topping at Bi Rite combined whipped cream with some yogurt and stabilizing agents so it held its own being transported sideways in a backpack. If you don’t have carageenan in your cupboard you might try gelatin combined with yogurt.

I am going to pursue the pie-in-a jar concept and have ordered these nifty Mason jars with color coded lids from Amazon so I can create for folks. The tops have a recess so another jar can be stacked on top, making them useful for storage of small amounts of whatnot. Check ’em out (affiliate links!) and report back on your own experiments.

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Eating cioppino in San Francisco

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Sotto Mare Cioppino

Eating cioppino at Sotto Mare in San Francisco.

Cioppino, the seafood stew with various briny creatures in a tomato stock, was invented by fishermen in San Francisco and I have wanted to try it over my repeated visits. The barrier has been cost. The preparation is simple but quality ingredients are pricey and you will pay well over $50 for a bowl of the stuff so you need to choose wisely. On my current visit I finally decided to pull the trigger.

The three places universally recommended for cioppino are Scoma’s on Fisherman’s Wharf, Sotto Mare in North Beach and Anchor Oyster Bar in the Castro. (There is also a restaurant called Cioppino’s but I have eaten there and it is not a good option.) After much deliberation I decided to eat at Sotto Mare, which seems to have the best rankings, and repaired there a bit before noon last Wednesday. It’s a simple lunch counter place with lots of bar seating and two-tops off to the side. Probably half the tables are ordering cioppino which is currently $55 for a bowl claiming to serve two.

Sotto Mare Interior

View from the bar at Sotto Mare.

I sat at the bar right next to the pass, so I could see what else was going on, and my bowl was placed in front of me within a few minutes. The bowl looked to have capacity of a gallon and was filled pretty close to the brim. It was accompanied by a sliced half loaf of crusty bread. My first impression taking a sip from my spoon is hey, this reminds me of Campbell’s condensed Manhattan Clam Chowder (which I later found out has been discontinued, alas). More delving found lots of mussels in their shells, clams, bay scallops and shrimp. Everything was fresh and flavorful and it was easy to imagine oneself an Italian fisherman in the early 1900s enjoying the day’s catch with some of mamma’s tomato gravy.

Also, there was crab, a lot of crab, legs and breast meat, probably a whole crab less the claws. (Dungeness is out of season most of the year in the bay area so my crab meat was likely frozen, in comparison to the other very fresh ingredients.) A bib for the messy diner was provided along with a shell cracker and a tiny fork for digging through the leg cylinders. The legs had been pre-cracked but even so the stock was cooling off before I finished them, a problem that might not have happened if there were two of us. I set on a strategy to finish the crab pieces and take the rest home. My server packed everything up and included extra bread plus a second Sotto Mare bib as a souvenir.

As I slurped my appreciation for the tomato base grew. It did have that tomato/clam juice balance like Manhattan clam chowder, but there was also a base of sautéed vegetables (celery, onion, possibly garlic, possibly fennel) mixed with bread crumbs. Also, some plain penne pasta was loaded into the bowl (I saw the cook do this) before the stock was poured over. There wasn’t a lot, just enough to add some useful bulk.

Anchor Oyster Bar Cioppino

Anchor Oyster Bar Cioppino. Photo courtesy Yelp.

The Sotto Mare bread was generous but generic, a strike against it vs the two competitors. Scoma provides buttered toasted crostini and Anchor Oyster Bar a full-on garlic toast. (Anchor’s owner has shared what she says is the family recipe with the New York Times; it is elaborate and includes a detailed process for making the garlic bread if you care to try it.)

Scoma Cioppino

“Lazy Man’s Cioppino” at Scoma. Photo courtesy Yelp.

Speaking of the competition, I spent a lot of time studying Yelp photos (there are well over 100 of them for each establishment’s cioppino). You can discern the portions by the size of the mussel shells, a common element. Scoma’s serves a “lazy man’s” version with crab meat instead of crab legs and it’s definitely tempting, but it costs the same as the Sotto Mare and the portion is smaller. Anchor’s cioppino is huge but $25 more assuming we’re looking at the “large” portion and also geographically inconvenient.

We are talking home style cooking vs fine dining here so I am not likely to pay to try the other two places any time soon. (Though I’m fascinated by the star anise in the Anchor recipe.) And yes, you can bet I’ll be working on a lower priced copycat version you can make at home. Stay tuned.

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Taste test: cafeteria baked fish

Posted on December 6, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Cafeteria Baked Fish Mayo

Cafeteria Baked Fish: copycat Luby’s prep. Next time we’ll add some paprika or bread crumbs for a more appealing surface appearance.

Our success with Mediterranean Baked Fish made us nostalgic for the cafeteria baked fish served at the late lamented Highland Park Cafeteria. I recall it as being moist and juicy with a mild butter based sauce and a sprinkle of paprika on top. HPC apparently took its recipes to the grave (a tease by the owner at closing time that he would eventually share some recipes has not come to fruition) but Google’s AI suggests we might like the fish served at competitor Luby’s: “This recipe is a popular copycat that mimics the tender, flaky fish and light golden-brown topping typical of classic Texas cafeterias.” Their source recipe is here; it uses an improbable 3-4 c of mayonnaise for 3 lb of fish so this version is probably more reasonable. Time for a taste test!

Cafeteria Baked Fish Butter

The contender: cafeteria baked fish with butter and lemon juice.

We acquired some generic white fish (HPC used halibut, but that is prohibitively expensive nowadays) and prepared one portion as we imagined it might have been done in our remembered dish: lightly salted and peppered, generous pats of butter on top, a good amount of lemon juice and a dusting of paprika before serving. The other prep generally followed the Luby’s copycat: filets were salted and peppered, dredged in flour, then lightly coated with mayo (we used maybe ¼ c total for 1 ¼ lb fish). We added a little water as suggested by one of the copycat recipes; made sense because we didn’t want to risk the flour sticking to the pan. We didn’t have any lemon pepper seasoning so we shook on some Old Bay.

The results? Walla! The butter and lemon juice fish was dry and uninteresting but the copycat Luby’s version had the tenderness and juiciness we were looking for. Neither the mayo nor the flour were detectible in the finished dish. Next time we’d add some lemon juice and butter and more water for nice pan juices, and maybe experiment (as some other copycat Luby’s recipes do) with a topping of toasted buttered bread crumbs (which was definitely not part of the HPC version) or running the finished dish under the broiler for a bit of a crust. To be continued!

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Do you need purified water for sourdough baking?

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Purified Water Sourdough Test

Should you use purified water for sourdough baking? We tested (from left) spring water vs retail purified vs tap.

I read somewhere that you should use purified water for sourdough baking because the chlorine in tap water retards the yeast. Have dutifully done this for years without questioning. Then I noticed my purified water actually has chemicals added (baking soda and calcium chloride) “for taste”. WTF? Time for a deeper investigation!

I refreshed a dormant starter using three different water options: tap water (I live in a small city where we don’t likely have scientists on staff, so assume our water is treated according to generally accepted guidelines); Great Value from Walmart, the aforementioned “tasty” water; and Poland Water which is as pure as whatever spring it comes from. The ratio was 40g starter, 50g all purpose flour and 30g water.

The result is what you see here. The Poland Water starter rose slightly more than the others and had a lighter, airier texture. But the difference wasn’t significant. I would now say you are fine using tap water for your baking. If you’re not happy with the results it’s not the water, it’s you. (Just kidding. Most sourdough woes can be cured with an extra round of refreshing so you bake with a lively, bubbly starter.)

P.S. R/sourdough as well as some other sources say the purified water theory is bunk and distilled water (which is different than purified) actually has a negative effect because it lacks useful minerals. If you’re concerned about chemicals you can simply leave a pitcher of tap water in the open air overnight so the chlorine can dissipate.

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Frankenturkey!

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Burnt My Fingers
Frankenturkey

Frankenturkey!

Our 2025 bargain frozen turkey turned out a Frankenturkey. It had the following message on the label, which of course was not noted by me when purchasing: “pre-brined with approximately 9.5% solution of turkey broth, salt, sugar and natural flavoring” with a separate message on the side: “pre-brined/simply thaw and cook”.

I discovered this info just as I was about to start the dry brining process which was promptly cancelled. Instead, the defrosted turkey spent a final night out of its wrapping in a cooler, before being dried with paper towels and stuffed prior to going in the oven Thanksgiving morning at 11:00 am. The finished product was ok with crisp skin and moist breast meat, but skin on the bottom of the bird was still pale white and when transferred to a serving tray it exuded a half cup of pinkish clear liquid. Also the stuffing inserted in the bird’s cavities was way moister than it usually is.

I managed to correct these problems without causing anybody any health problems, but caveat emptor. Next year I will try to find a bird on sale which is not pre-brined and if that fails it will spend a good amount of time on a rack drying out prior to cooking. How was your turkey experience this year? Anybody else struggling with a Fankenturkey?

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