"wood fire" news and stories

• Grilling over a wood fire presents many nuanced delights, provided you have the right tools and a high threshold for sweat and smoke.
  
• Sriracha Chili Sauce is a flagship product of Huy Fong Foods, and one that chefs like Jean-Georges Vongerichten love for its sweet, garlicky heat.
• Le Fooding, the group that set France on fire with picnics of finger foods and plastic-cupped drinks, is coming stateside to introduce New Yorkers to a new generation of French chefs.
  
• Across the country, drink menus are showing some love for homemade ginger ale.
• Food safety is becoming a mess. Almost every element of processed foods is a potential pathogen carrier, and the industry is shifting the worry to the consumer.
• Scotland Yard isn't just the famous face of London law enforcement. It's also a tasty Scotch and Drambuie twist on the Rusty Nail.

Last night, I baked a batch of brownies. As I read through the recipe in order to prep all my ingredients, I noticed the words at the top of the recipe "Preheat oven to 325 degrees." However, in my hurry to keep going, I neglected to turn the oven on until just before I poured the batter in the pan. I quickly cranked it up, but I could tell it hadn't reached temperature by the time I put the brownies in the oven. Half an hour later when I took them out, they were perfect, with a delicate, crisp crust on top and dense and fudge-y inside.

I recently came across a couple of online articles about the importance (or lack thereof) of preheating your oven. It seems that it is mostly a tradition that comes from the past, when people baked in wood or coal-powered ovens and so getting the fuel up to temperature was the important part. These days, with our fairly accurate gas or electric ovens, the need to get the fire going has been eliminated. However, we've never given up the ceremony of preheating our ovens. Now that we're in days in which fuel and energy costs are rising with each bill, maybe it's time to truly rethink our preheating habit.

Thinking about it, I do believe that my brownies would have come out just as well if I hadn't preheated at all.