The Age of The Slider - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

There is a magic to small food. Do not ask me how it works because I don't know. But there is something that happens when you take a regular sized piece of food and make it small.

You've experienced this magic. Ever found yourself inexplicably drawn to the word sliders on a menu. The half pound hamburger, ho hum. But oh how those sliders call to you. They beckon with their tiny little buns and, if you're lucky, that single slice of pickle. It's as though you are being offered nothing but the unencumbered center of the burger. Each bite is going to be perfect; no edges to get cold, no middle to navigate and get your cheeks dirty. White Castle built a small empire on the back of this phenomenon.

Growing up in New York I have fond memories of rolling into White Castle at 3 a.m. excited to order a sack of burgers. But the HGC slider exists in a whole other plane. Our sliders backpacked through Europe before enrolling at Johnson and Wales. I think they're the king of our tiny food.

We like to joke that Hugh is rather fond of the word tiny. In the super secret HGC recipe vault you can count 19 recipes that begin with the word tiny: tiny cupcakes, tiny chocolate cakes, tiny tacos, tiny meringues (those are so good), tiny tarts, tiny pot de cremes, tiny creme brulees. But right above all those tiny's in our alphabetical menu comes "The Ultimate Sliders." I think part of the delight is you can eat a "whole one" without feeling like you did. Or maybe it's because they're just so darn cute.

Whatever the reason now is the time of the ascension of the slider. Of all the tiny food we make here nothing causes such gasps of joy. Nothing causes so many guests to stake out the door to the kitchen keeping a sharp eye for their appearance. And no matter how fancy the party nothing so tiny has ever been met with such delight at two in the morning. Hugh always steals the last tray of sliders and passes them out; soaking up all the love. We all hate him a little bit for that.

The Zen of Caramel - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

Caramel, just the word can make your mouth water. But making caramel can be a bit more daunting. Caramel adheres to Malcolm Gladwell's meme of a tipping point. You want to heat the sugar until it just caramelizes, but not so much that it tips and burns. That's it - in essence. In practice everyone has their system.

Here at HGC we make a caramel pot de creme that is, in a word, fantabulous. But how to make it, ah, that is the question. The first few times I tackled / was forced at gunpoint to make the caramel there was no end to the advice given.

"Don't stir it with a spoon. Swirl it by moving the pan."
"Don't swirl it, you'll get too much up on the sides of the pan."
"Whatever you do, don't scrape down the sides of the pan."
"Scrape down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush."
"Use low heat and bring it up slowly."
"Crank the heat and blast it."

The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted to use a candy thermometer. At 250 degrees it would be ready.
The one thing everyone agreed on saying to me was "What are you doing with that thermometer?"

Not only does caramel have a very fine tipping point but I was supposed to know where it was by feel, by sight, by smell, by sheer primal cooking instinct. That's how it goes sometimes in a professional kitchen, you make your bones by being so immersed in the context of your food you just know.

Needless to say my first attempt ended in a dark brown melted disaster. That was two years ago. I am still trying to clean the pan.

The next time our pastry chef extraordinaire David came over. He watched me watching the light gold bubbles rising and popping. Then, at the critical moment, he shoved me into the wall and took over. With a towel in his hand he grabbed the handle of the pan and shook it and swirled it and tilted it to get a look at what was going on at the bottom. The man had no fear. He spun it around. He smelled it. He gave it a good long squint.

He was moving with the flow of the sugar. In technical terms it moved from soft ball to hard ball to hard crack. But we were experiencing it from light brown into deep golden brown, from a light sweetness to a rich sweetness. With one last look David pulled the pot from the stove.

There, at the bottom, was a beautiful golden caramel. David had me pour in the cream. It foamed and roared then settled down. Now we had ourselves a caramel sauce. I added some milk and then we tempered in the eggs and we just like that we had moved our way to our pot de cremes.

You can't really learn to make caramel. You have to live it.