Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Perhaps you noticed Squid Ink was covering Martha Stewart's Cooking School on PBS -- watching her program each weekend and employing her expertise in our own kitchens, learning to make salad dressings and emulsions, stocks, and getting terrorized by the occasional chicken.

And perhaps you noticed that coverage abruptly stopped. And perhaps you were sad. Maybe you even called us all the way from Marietta, Ohio, to express your dismay at the impromptu hiatus. (That really happened! Hi Bruce!)

A. Trachta

Shallot and balsamic vinaigrette

Unlike, say, the stocks episode, we're not sure this dressings and emulsions episode of Martha Stewart's Cooking School is going to save you any money. What you'd spend on really good grapeseed oil or high quality Dijon mustard for use in homemade dressings is likely going to come out to more than what you'd spend for a bottle of Wishbone. But the product you'll end up with will be infinitely better, of course. And despite Martha's constant and sometimes false claims that all her recipes are easy, these truly are. (Even the mayonnaise.) Which gives us no reason not to at least give them a shot. Yes, even during this busy Thanksgiving week when the kitchen's already crowded with stress.

Martha explains, for anyone who may not know, that an emulsion is simply a mixture in which acid is suspended in oil, with the ratio tending towards three parts oil and one part acid. That formula was applied to the vinaigrette, creamy dressing, mayonnaise and aioli that made up Martha's lesson.

A. Trachta

Rice pilaf, Martha Stewart style

Rice can be an unsung hero at times -- taken for granted, treated as merely a bed on which to lay more interesting food, or as filler, say, in a burrito. It's an everyday item, thus we often forget to appreciate the many roles it can play in our kitchens.

But Martha Stewart, in her infinite wisdom, reminded us of rice's greatness in this weekend's episode of Martha Stewart's Cooking School, showing not just how many varieties there are to choose from, but explaining how to best use each one.

A. Trachta

Whole chicken from Lindy & Grundy

It's time for a confession: I have never butchered a chicken. Why? Well, mostly because raw chicken gives me the willies. I like chicken, I eat it all the time, and I don't get that same skin-crawly feeling around raw beef or pork, but raw chicken is something I've just never really been fond of handling. (Side note: I often find when I admit this to people that I'm not alone. Raise your hand if you share my irrational fears!) So anyway, in the past, when I've needed my chicken in pieces (as opposed to a whole roaster) typically I buy it that way. Shameful, I know.

Therefore, this butchering-themed episode of Martha Stewart's Cooking School was the one I was dreading the most, on one hand, but on the other, I knew it was the kick in the pants I needed to finally buck up and, well, cut up.

And I was so full of confidence until ... the feet. But more on that later. First, a lesson from Martha.

A. Trachta

Vegetable stock, simmering

See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 1, Eggs
See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 2, Sauces
See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 3, Vegetables

You've heard this claim time and again, from Mark Bittman, Michael Ruhlman, nearly every Food Network personality and certainly from Martha Stewart: Homemade stock is better than anything you could pour out of a carton or can. And you've never doubted it. But that doesn't necessarily mean you've taken the time to make it.

The hours it takes isn't really the problem -- slow cooking is the easy part. What's hard is being an organized enough person not to discard the scraps that you could later turn into stock when cooking other meals. That's an art, and probably the biggest lesson we learned from this episode of Martha Stewart's Cooking School: to be ever-stingy with ends of squashes and carrots, beef bones, chicken backs and the like. Keeping and freezing those bits until you're ready to use them is what makes the stock-making process truly economical.

First, turn the page to see recipes for chicken, beef and vegetable stocks, courtesy of the Martha Stewart team.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Roasted Spiced Acorn Squash

See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 1, Eggs
See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 2, Sauces

It seems a difficult undertaking to show viewers how to cook vegetables within a half hour. It's such a broad category. The volume of vegetable types -- the sheer variety -- is a little overwhelming. But as Martha Stewart successfully demonstrates in this week's Martha Stewart's Cooking School episode, vegetables, if they're fresh, usually need very little done to them in order to make them great-tasting. A quick boil and a toss in butter or spices is often all they require, though if you're feeling ambitious, there are always ways to fancy them up (such as when she turns plain boiled corn into Mexican elotes).

After the jump, see Martha's lessons on the best ways to prepare peas, carrots, corn, broccoli rabe, squash and kale, then check out how our attempt at one of her recipes fared.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Eggs Benedict with hollandaise

See also: Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Episode 1, Eggs

Martha Stewart believes in studying the classics, she says, as images of Einstein, Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln (what?) cross the screen, and this logic, of course, applies to cooking. That's the whole basis of what she's doing with Martha Stewart's Cooking School, and it's the theme behind the sauces she chose to teach the masses (or at least we PBS-loving geeks) over the weekend. These are her classics: hollandaise, beurre blanc, béchamel and marinara, all of which work as either a dressing for entrees and vegetables, as well as for the bases of less textbook sauces.

First up, Hollandaise.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

It seems fitting for Martha Stewart to kick off her latest series, Martha Stewart's Cooking School, with eggs, since it's the way many of us begin our days. We all make eggs, and often, in a variety of ways, but are we cooking them properly, and are they the best they can be? Anyone who's ever choked down a rubbery egg knows they're easy to screw up, so in this episode, Martha gives us tips on how to, well, not do that. We followed closely, then gave one of her recipes a shot, which yielded mixed results. But first, Martha's lesson.