Archive for September, 2007

What do I always say? Buy new spices, different herbs, try things out!! You don’t have to do it all at once. A little at a time and build up your cooking aresenal. Now, all that is true. I’m not backing off of any of it; not in the slightest.

However — yes, the “big but” — you know sometimes you go through pages of a cookbook or you watch a cooking show and you just want to scream out: “Hey, buddy! We don’t all have every ingredient in the world like you do!!” That’s right, not every pantry or spice cabinet can have everything.

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A few minor mistakes and one or two interesting things I came up with for this dish. Let’s get right to it.

First I put the entire pound of lasagna noodles in, only to find out I only needed maybe 1/4 to 1/5 of the box. Now I guess I’ll do something weird or slice them down or something, as I have 3/4 a box of cooked noodles now sitting in the refrigerator. Had I known, I would have chosen to use just what I needed. Live and learn.

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Some things I put off trying (for a while) having convinced myself that the item, the recipe, the dish is too intimidating. Oddly pizza was one of them. I know, silly — such a simple thing too! I think I know what it is. Failing something complicated seems fine, but failing something simple seems wrong. Thing is often the simplest things are the most difficult. No shame there. Plus, some of my best successes began as failures the first time out. Long story short, at long last I’ve gotten to make homemade pizza. And you know what? Don’t you put it off like I did. You’re missing out on some fun and some good stuff here!

I’ve tried a few homemade chinese dishes, all worked out. Already have my steak quesadilla recipe up as well. And now pizza. Am I going to stop doing take-out now? Heck no. Am I going to stop buying DiGiorno’s? Nope, there’s still that occasional late-night pizza urge that hits me after the store has closed and when I just don’t want to do much work. Besides, I don’t know about you, but I like to be treated or pampered once in a while, and having someone else do the cooking for me is just grreat. And the second best is sticking pre-made in the oven. Especially the delcious self-rising frozen pizzas of today!

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Taken straight from Wikipedia: “Mirepoix is the French name for a combination of onions, carrots and celery […] is the flavor base for a wide number of dishes, such as stocks, soups, stews and sauces. […] Traditionally, the ratio for mirepoix is 2:1:1 of onions, celery, and carrots.”

So today’s magic number, ladies and gentlemen, is 2-1-1. Though I find that can be confusing (believe it or not, at times). So maybe a better way is thinking 1 and half and half … one part onions, and the combination of half carrots and half celery. So 2-1-1 or 1-.5-.5, whichever works for you. How to remember which item gets the “2″? Think of “OCC”, of onions, carrots, celery, in that order.

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Just the other day I was talking to a neighbor who I had given this recipe to a couple months back, and she told me hers didn’t taste at all as good as mine, and then detailed the problems she had. So, while (for once) I didn’t make any mistakes, I’ll share hers with you so you don’t get the chance to make them yourself.

First, she took everything out of the can, including that gunky “reminants” that’s left in the bottom of cans of beans. Also she didn’t know to wash them well first. So that took something away from the taste. It was apparently much worse the next day when she decided to take some to work for lunch: she had put the dressing, feta and salad altogether.

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This is somewhat like a ratatouille, sorta like a cacciatore, in a sense like a stew, and apparently is a ragout (though it seems a million things could be a ragout). It appears from spending a great deal of time researching on the Web trying to find what was the most appropriate way to label this recipe, that in the end, it’s very much my own concoction. That should make me happy. And yes, it does — but, it’s one of those rare times when thinking of the name of dish was a ton more difficult then actually coming up with or even cooking the dish!

Ok, let’s explore what it’s similar to and yet not: Cacciatore which is usually definied as a hunter-style preparation with tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, herbs, and bell peppers. Now while all of those elements are indeed main ingredients, the real deal almost always contains red wine and capers, whereas mine doesn’t. Moreover, yes, cacciatore is most often found with chicken seems like it’s a shoe-in, but no, for it is not made with bonesless chicken breast but legs and theighs and the bones intact, the idea being to made a flavorful “stew” of darker meats “hunter” (as in just caught) style. This is close though.

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Here we go. The meat of meats, the summertime special, the reason — so many thousands of years from cavemen, we still like to do it their way — old school, neolithic old school — we’re talking about BBQ spare ribs, baby.

Maybe you’re totally into BBQ and smokin’, or perhaps you’re totally new. Either way, I’ve decided the best way to get the main elements across isn’t to repeat them in every barbecue recipe, but to refer to a single primer on the subject BBQ: Bringing Smoke to the Fire.

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Before we even begin, it seems that old Churchill adage comes up again: “two countries divided by a common language”. Seems the term barbecuing means different things in different places.

So you know what this particular article is about, we’re talking the US version, namely, according to Wikipedia: “In US English usage, however, grilling refers to a fast process over high heat whilst barbecuing refers to a slow process using indirect heat and/or hot smoke. For example, in a typical US home ‘grill’, food is cooked on a grate directly over hot charcoal; while in a US ‘barbecue’, the coals are dispersed to the sides or at significant distance from the grate.”

Since you’re no doubt curious, now what it means in the UK: “In British English usage, barbecuing refers to a fast cooking process directly over high heat, whilst grilling refers to cooking under a source of direct, high heat - known in the US and Canada as broiling.” Below is a chart I made up to simplify matters. Btw, I had thought the UK did not have any “real BBQ” until a friend told me some folks do there, and that they call it “California” barbecue.

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If I say I’m making some homemade Chinese food tonight and I’m using yellow onion and button mushrooms, is your first thought “that’s not authentic Chinese food”?

Good chance you might think that. Sometimes I stop and think that myself. Which gets me to even more thinking. Namely: what is Chinese food as compared to what is Chinese-American food?

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There’s a lot of unusual or “foreign” terms or items we keep hearing all the time, in cookbooks, on cooking shows, on restaurant menus …

Now before everyone and their half-brother writes me. Depending upon a lot of things — your ethnic family upbringing, how often you eat out, where you’ve traveled, your cooking experience and a hundred other items — you may have heard of many of these or none of these, you might be very familiar with these or not at all. In short, your particular mileage may vary.

So, if you get to the end of this article and you’ve learned something, excellent! That was the idea all along. If you actually knew the exact meaning of all of these listed, bravisimo! You’re either a world-class foodie, spent some serious time in either the CIA (no, not that one) or the FCI, and/or your name ends in “Puck” or “Batali”.

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Question one: What are three most indispensible inventions of the twentieth century? On my personal list are the microwave, the air conditioner and the television. The third of which I pretend I could live without; the first two which I know I could not live without.

Another question: What major kitchen applicance is the least seen on a cooking show? Yep, the lowly microwave. Sure, the oven gets all the attentiion. Every thing comes out of the refrigerator. They have tons of “fancy” gadgets like friers, ice cream machines and even rice cookers which get more spotlight. But the all-purpose microwave? Hardly a glance.

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… Well, just because you did, that does not mean you should.

Hey, we all love our television cooks. We really do. I’m addicted for sure watching the various cooking shows out there. There’s never been so much info out there. So many different personalities, cooking styles, cooking shows. It’s definitely a golden age. (Who ever thought there would be a summer cooking movie? And yet there are two out!)

But there is a problem or two. First, we tend to forget they’re human and can make mistakes too — though they rarely ever show it. So we think everything they’re doing is perfect. Especially since they can edit and cut and mix and toss away mistakes and reshoot. Children of television as we are, we are all well aware of the production process, however just as we make the mistake of thinking the cooks are perfect (and not regular people), we also figure since the show got all the way onto the air that it’s perfect and caught everything too.

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