What’s your favorite Mardi Gras food?

What’s your favorite sauce? All of the sauces we have today when we go to restaurants are based on some old school techniques. I made up a little infographic that talks about the 5 mother sauces, what they contain and what these sauces eventually turn into. Which is your favorite!?

Where do you land on RANCH?

I’ve been playing around with a chili crisp Alfredo — starting with leftover Alfredo sauce I had made using my copycat Olive Garden-style recipe. That base matters. It’s familiar, rich, and intentionally a little flat in the way classic Alfredo often is. Adding chili crisp wasn’t about making it spicy or trendy — it was about seeing how a strong, textured condiment behaves when introduced into a sauce built for comfort. What stood out wasn’t whether it worked — it did — but how quickly it could overpower the sauce if treated like a main component instead of a seasoning. A few things that made the difference: - Using the chili crisp sparingly, like a finishing spice - Blooming it gently so the aromatics integrated instead of sitting on top - Letting the bitterness and heat cut the fat, rather than compete with it It was a good reminder that even very familiar flavors change once you shift their context. If there’s interest, I can share the copycat Olive Garden Alfredo recipe I used as the base. Let me know in the comments.

I posted a short video showing how I brown flour. This isn’t about doing things the “fancy” way or adding unnecessary steps. Browning flour changes flavor in a very specific way — nuttier, deeper, more rounded — and when you understand why it works, you can decide when it’s worth using and when it isn’t. This comes up more often than people realize in: - Roux-based sauces and gravies - Comfort-food menus - Dishes where you want depth without adding more ingredients