mise en place

Healthy Flavor Options?

2009-01-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Erica Borrowman:

"I tried a great recipe (a soup) from a magazine last night and while it was tasty, by the time I was finished, I had cooked bacon, boiled a chicken, and browned breadcrumbs in butter - all in the same pan (she didn't suggest draining off any of it). The natural flavor of the veggies (not to mention the healthy factor) was all lost in the midst of fat...visible fat, I might add (my stomach was roiling a little afterward). So, how do I change a great recipe that is laden with flavorful calories to reflect a more nutritional and healthy way of eating without losing flavor?"

Hmm. That’s a difficult question. I don’t quite know how to dress this up, so I’ll just say it… fat is tasty. Like, really tasty. Recipes call for butter and bacon grease because ingredients with high fat content add a lot of flavor. Not only that, but they add a lot of flavor while keeping it easy. If a soup is boring pour in some cream and bingo-bango-bongo, tasty soup. But there’s no need to sacrifice flavor for a healthy heart. It’s just learning to appreciate flavors other than fat.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noticed a pattern: I love grilling. Honestly, I do. I don’t know of any food that isn’t best cooked by being grilled (except maybe ice cream, and that’s only because I haven’t found a way to keep it from falling through the grate…yet). Look at what grilling does. First, it chars food. Now when I say “chars” I don’t mean burns. The difference between perfection and pathetic is often only a minute or two, so keep an eye on your food. But what charring does is caramelize the sugars in the food, giving it another layer of flavor. So caramelization (which isn’t really a word, but you know what I mean) is definitely a good road to travel when developing flavors. Is charring the only way to caramelize? Of course not. Anytime sugars (not all sugars, but many) are exposed to heat, whether it be in the oven or frying pan, they caramelize. But we’re going for healthy. The second reason that grilling is so great is because it lifts your food out of the grease. Whenever you cook a food, any fats in it will run off. If your food is sitting in a pan, that fat will fall in the pan, and the food will sit in it. I’ll be honest, there are many times where something like that is desirable, but not with our healthy cooking. With grilling, when the fat starts to run, it drips off the meat into the fire. This is a pretty awesome thing because the fat will catch on fire and your grill will flame up. A bit of flaming is a good thing but make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. Also, remember that every bit of moisture is important. With all the fats and liquids dripping off your food, it can dry out fast. But there are a few tricks when grilling.

Marinate anything that MUST be cooked through, like chicken. With steak, a little pink is a good thing, whereas chicken with pink in the middle is extremely dangerous. Nobody wants salmonella, which is why so much chicken cooked today ends up overcooked. It’s better to err on the side of overcooked when bloody stool is on the line. Marinating chicken before cooking introduces extra liquid, allowing the chicken to cook for longer before drying out.

Use olive oil. I suggest just a pure olive oil, not extra virgin (don’t get me wrong, I love extra virgin olive oil, but I don’t think it’s the best choice as a cooking oil, most of the time). Coating your food with a thin layer of olive oil will do two things: first, it’ll keep the food from sticking to the grill and second, it’ll help your seasonings stick to the food.

Regulate your temperature. Foods like chicken have to be cooked all the way through, while your beef and tuna steaks are best (in my opinion) with some pink in the middle. The trick to grilling something is to get the charring on the outside to hold off long enough to let the food reach its desired internal temperature. So for chicken, you’ll cook it on a lower flame than you will a rib eye, and the chicken will take a few minutes longer to cook than a steak. You may ask, “How do I know when the meat is done without cutting into it?” Well, you can learn the hard way and just practice, practice, practice. But with your practice there’s always the danger of getting it wrong (remember, bloody stool). So I suggest getting an instant read, digital thermometer with a small tip you can poke into the meat. Chicken should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Keep in mind that food continues to cook after being removed from heat. I usually remove my chicken when it hits about 160 degrees and let it coast the rest of the way. Also, let your food rest for about 10 minutes after cooking. Especially chicken. This allows the juices to settle in so you won’t lose all that moisture when you cut into your food.

So you may be wondering how this applies to your example of soup. Well, try this out: get 2 cobs of corn, 2 zucchini, 2 portabella mushrooms, 1 medium Vidalia (sweet) onion, and two chicken breasts. Marinate the chicken in ½ a cup of lemon juice, ½ a cup of olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, one teaspoon fresh cracked white pepper, and ¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro (marinate for about 2-3 hours in the fridge in a Ziploc bag). Shuck the corn, leaving the kernels on the cob. Slice the zucchini on a bias (at an angle) in pieces about ½ an inch thick. Remove the stems from the mushrooms (but don’t throw them out, you’ll still use them). Slice the onion into slabs ½ an inch thick. Coat all the vegetables with a small amount of olive oil, sprinkle on a little salt and pepper, then grill them. Now, we’re not trying to cook the vegetables all the way through, we just want that grilled flavor. So you can cook the vegetables at a higher temperature than you normally would. Once you have some good charring (not burning) on your vegetables, cut them up into bite-sized pieces (remove the kernels of corn from the cub with a knife. BE CAREFUL!). In a pot, bring 3 cups vegetable stock to a slow simmer. Add your grilled vegetables and 2 stalks of chopped celery to the vegetable stock (also, toss in a bay leaf). While the vegetables are simmering, grill your chicken. Grill it until it’s ALMOST cooked through, but don’t worry about it being pink inside (it’ll finish cooking in the soup). Remove the chicken from the grill, cut into cubes about ½ an inch to an inch thick. Add that to your soup and let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Season it to taste with salt, white pepper and a little cayenne pepper. To thicken the soup, make a slurry (cornstarch and cold water) and whisk it into the soup while it’s simmering. For this amount of soup I’d suggest about 2 tablespoons of cornstarch and ¾ a cup of cold water (cornstarch must be mixed with a cold liquid before being introduced to a hot liquid, or else it’ll clump up and be gross). The total simmering time of this soup will be about 30 minutes.

Romantic Meal for 2.

2009-01-18T21:40:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Patty Poulsen:
Coming from a big family I can cook really well for 7. I can fill a casserole dish. Make enough spaghetti to feed an army. But, when given the rare opportunity to cook for just me and Ken, I always make too much. Cutting recipes down never works well for me. It doesn't taste the same. Now, I have fallen into the habit of making something with gravy. Not incredibly romantic. What is a good "romantic" recipe/meal for two? Something impressive.

Cooking for two can be tough, but a good rule of thumb is to let the store do your portioning for you. If you want to cook a romantic (and impressive) meal, I suggest shopping specifically for that meal. Instead of using a bag of frozen chicken go to the butcher’s counter for fresh, trimmed meats. That way you can buy exactly how much you want, and you won’t have to worry about freezer burn. The taste will just be better, which is the first and easiest way to be impressive.

Also, be picky. If you want to fix your husband a steak, don’t buy the cheap one. It’s tempting to buy a skirt steak for $2 thinking, “I’ll just marinate it.” Wrong. A skirt steak has purpose, but I wouldn’t suggest trying to pass it off as a porterhouse. No, what you’re going for is impressive. The most impressive food is cooked simply, allowing the true flavor and texture to shine. If you start with ingredients that are tough in texture or bland in flavor, by the time you finish doctoring them up all you taste is seasoning. Why not just eat a teaspoon of curry powder and save yourself the time?

Of course, good curry is impressive and quite enjoyable to eat. But we’re also going for romantic. You know what’s not romantic? Indigestion. Foul-smelling breath. Explosive diarrhea. Fajitas are impressive, but if my stomach is going wild after eating too many jalapenos, I’m not gonna feel romantic. That’s one of the main reasons for using high-quality ingredients. You won’t need to cover them with paprika and cumin for them to taste good.

Some people may think that simple food sounds boring. But there are still simple things you can do to take your food to the next level. It starts with the way you cook your food. In my opinion, grilling is number one for meat. The flavor is unbeatable and a lot of the fat drips off. If you don’t have a grill, using the broiler in your oven is a good substitution. For your vegetables, buy them fresh (not from a can) and don’t boil them. Boiling vegetables removes nutrients and flavor. Either steam your vegetables or sauté them.

Here are a few suggestions:
Steak- Buy a good cut of meat. A rib eye or New York strip would be awesome. Remove from the packaging and set it on a plate. Coat with a thin layer of olive oil (not extra-virgin) and sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides (coarsely ground). Let it sit until the meat reaches room temperature (maybe an hour-don’t let it sit much longer than that). If you're gonna grill it, lay the steak diagonal across the grate of the grill. Cook for a few minutes, then rotate the steak (don’t flip it yet) 90 degrees and let cook a couple more minutes. Rotating the steak 90 degrees once on each side gives the impressive cross-hatch marks which won’t only look good, but they’ll help the meat cook evenly.

If you want to cook chicken, do the same thing as with steak, except sprinkle with some finely chopped rosemary along with salt and pepper. Also, you’ll cook chicken on lower heat for longer. Medium rare chicken isn’t nearly as good as medium rare steak. You can also cook shrimp the same way. I suggest putting it on a skewer first, but a little oil, salt and pepper and a squirt of lemon when you remove it from the grill, it doesn’t get much better. Just make sure you only cook the shrimp for about 60 seconds on each side. They cook fast.

If you want a sauce for your meat, try topping it with a compound butter (a compound butter is basically butter with other stuff in it). For steak, add 1 teaspoon minced garlic and ¼ teaspoon horseradish with 3 tablespoons room temperature butter. Let it sit for about 20 minutes for the flavors to mix, then top your steak with about 1 tablespoon of your butter. It’ll melt across the steak and make a BOMB sauce. For chicken, use the same amount of minced garlic, the same amount of butter, but instead of horseradish add half a teaspoon of finely chopped, fresh oregano. For shrimp, just the butter and garlic. Also, it's probably a good idea to throw away any of the compound butter you don't use. Garlic likes to grow botulism after awhile of being in certain circumstances.

Typically you’ll have two side dishes. A vegetable like asparagus sautéed in olive oil with pecans and shitake mushrooms will go with just about anything (whenever sautéing mushrooms with vegetables, don’t add the mushrooms until about halfway through cooking. Otherwise they might come out a bit rubbery or chewy). As for the other side dish, my typical rule is steak and potatoes, chicken/seafood and rice. Add an extra layer to your rice by cooking it with chicken stock and caramelized onion instead of water.

These are just overviews of pretty broad topics, but if you have any questions about how to cook a specific vegetable or meat, let me know.

Tapioca

2009-01-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Heather Marcum:
"I purchased some tapioca pearls (not the quick-cooking/instant type...whatever that means...I'm not a tapioca follower). Anyway, I’ve heard you can add them to thicken up stews, etc. I tried it once and they never fully dissolved so there were white floating balls in the stew...not very appealing. How is tapioca best used? Advice on the proper method for using them in soups or stews?"

Tapioca is actually taken from the root of the cassava plant. Does that mean anything as far as cooking is concerned? Probably not. But I wanted to show how smart I am. What DOES matter, is that it’s a small, odorless, colorless and flavorless starch. Not only that, but it’s gluten free (for anyone watching their gluten intake-shout out to my brother, Cam).

Before using tapioca (there are different forms of tapioca. We’ll go over the pearl form) you need to do a little prep work. I guess you could compare them to kidney beans. Before cooking with kidney beans (if you buy them in the bag, not soaked in a can) they need to be soaked in water over night. It’s the same with tapioca. The bigger a starch is, the longer it takes for it to absorb water. Cornstarch is a good last minute thickener because it’s so fine, it absorbs the water and gelatinizes (fun fact- all starches gelatinize when introduced to heat). The gelatinization is what causes thickening. Because tapioca pearls are larger, the water takes longer to enter the starch. Soaking tapioca pearls overnight (or from morning until night if using them for dinner-either way at least 8-9 hours) allows the water to push into the starches and loosen them up. Now, they won’t necessarily gelatinize fully yet, because heat hasn’t been introduced. Once you add the tapioca to your hot stews, the heat will cause the starches to absorb more water and the soup will thicken.

In saying this, I don’t want to give you false hopes. The tapioca pearls will probably never fully dissolve. You’ll always be left with little gelatinous balls in your food. But by soaking overnight, you can minimize their size and loosen up their texture. Personally, I’d rather use another starch for my stews and keep the tapioca in my pudding. But there are a lot of other options for thickening stews. If you want to try something else, let me know and we’ll get ya hooked up.

Omelets and Eggs in general

2009-01-06T13:46:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Erica Borrowman:
"When I make an omelet, it fluffs up so much, it loses flavor, is hard to turn, and is a little bit annoying to eat. My recipe calls for milk - should I use water? What am I doing wrong?"

Eggs are extremely versatile. They’re used in many different recipes. Some feature the egg, some let the egg sing backup, and some hide the egg completely. See, the reason an egg is so versatile, is because it doesn’t have a strong flavor of it’s own. Don’t get me wrong, eggs definitely have flavor. But when you use eggs in a meatball recipe, you don’t taste any egg. It’s easy for an egg to be outdone in the world of flavor, so if you want eggs to taste like eggs, you have to be very careful about what you add. On the same note, eggs are so great because they can add substance to a meal, while allowing another ingredient to dominate.

Eggs contain a lot of water, especially the egg whites (eggs whites are about 90% water). When water heats up, it turns to steam. The steam can either release or can be somewhat trapped in your eggs. Either way, the steam will cause the egg to fluff. For a lot of people, a bit of fluffing is desirable. But I recognize that there are many people who don’t necessarily want that. Especially in an omelet. Adding milk or water will create more steam, therefore more fluff. If you don’t want fluff, I’d say don’t add either one.

Have you ever made meringue? It’s basically egg whites that you beat and beat and beat until they’re so full of air that the mixture becomes stiff. To control how much your eggs fluff, just monitor how much whisking you do with the eggs. The more you whisk an egg, the more air is introduced. With little air bubbles in the egg, once the egg begins to cook, the steam created will enter these air bubbles and make them grow. This makes the eggs more fluffy. For less fluffy eggs, only whisk the eggs as much as is needed. Personally, I like my omelets to be less fluffy, so I beat them just enough to where there aren’t any big pieces of yolk, but you can still distinguish between the white and yolk.

As far as the turning, there’s a simple way to fix that: don’t turn the eggs. There’s really no need with the right equipment. Two things that every cook should have: 1-a non-stick pan dedicated to cooking eggs, and 2-a lid that fits that pan. (Quick lesson on non-stick pans. They’re not my favorite. But for eggs, they’re a must. BUT YOU MUST TAKE CARE OF THE PAN! If you scratch the non-stick coating, the countdown begins. It’s only a matter of time until your pan is completely useless. Not only that but you’ll end up with little flakes of Teflon hiding amongst your flakes of pepper. Not necessarily a good thing. Never use a metal spatula on non-stick cookware. Buy a nice, plastic spatula that won’t melt. You can get them at Ross or TJ Maxx for cheap.) With a lid for your pan, you can cook both sides of the egg without ever having to flip them or make a mess.

Put your pan on the stove over medium/medium-low (I’ll explain the reason for the low temperature in a minute). Once it comes to heat, give a quick spray of your favorite non-stick cooking spray, and add your eggs. Sprinkle a pinch of salt, a couple grinds of cracked pepper, then put the lid on your pan. Don’t touch the lid. If you can find a lid that is glass, that would be best (so you can watch the eggs cook). As your eggs cook, they’ll create steam (as before mentioned). The steam, which would typically be released into the air, is now caught above the egg, raising the temperature. As the temperature continues to rise, the eggs cook on both sides. The reason we cook on a lower temperature is to allow time for steam to build up and cook the top without burning the bottom of the eggs.

You should be left with a flat, circle of eggs. While those are cooking you can put your favorite veggies or breakfast meats in another pan and give them a quick sauté. Slide your eggs onto a plate directly from the pan. Put your veggies/meat on half the eggs and fold the other half over top. Booyah, omelet.

As far as why it’s annoying to eat, I don’t know what to do about that. Having less fluffy eggs may cut down on annoyingness, but if not, try cooking your inside ingredients IN the eggs, instead of folding the egg around them after the fact. If you do something like that, I would cook your meats and veggies before adding them to the eggs. And don’t add them until after they’ve cooled a touch, or they’ll start cooking your eggs prematurely and it just won’t turn out the way you want.

Alcohol in food

2009-01-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Erica Borrowman:
"I watch a lot of Food Network and have heard it said that alcohol does cook off; and I've heard it said that it doesn't ever cook off all the way. What's the real answer? And what's the scientific explanation for why?"

As far as the exact science, I don’t know. But I do know that alcohol never fully cooks out. There will always be trace amounts left in anything cooked with alcohol. There was a study done by the USDA on this and they found that as much as 75% of alcohol added to a dish can remain, even after cooking. The amount of alcohol remaining is effected by several factors, including cooking time, temperature, method and even the size of the cooking dish.

We’ve all seen the TV shows where a chef will add wine to a dish then light it on fire. He is of course burning alcohol. But not all of the alcohol makes it to the surface of the sauce. If it doesn’t make it to the surface, it doesn’t evaporate. If it doesn’t evaporate, it’s still in your sauce. In theory, ingesting enough of this sauce could get you as tipsy as a bottle of wine.

If wine is added to a braise, the alcohol content will be much lower by the end of the cooking process (braising is a cooking method where your food cooks in a small amount of liquid for a long, long time allowing the liquid to enter the food and break down it’s connective tissues). Because braising takes so long, the alcohol has more time to cook off and less will be retained. But even after almost 3 hours, 5% of the alcohol will remain.

I know for a lot of people there are reasons to stay away from alcohol. These may be health reasons or religious. Some people feel that enough alcohol burns out for it to not matter. For others, it’s enough to know that there will always be alcohol that remains.

Scallions

2009-01-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Stephanie Marcum (Jared's Stephanie):
"Scallions. How do you use them? I have a bag that was given to me from a friends garden and I am not sure how or what to cook with them."

Scallions are proof that God loves us. Most people know them as green onions, but whatever you call them, they’re amazing. If you’re not familiar with scallions, here’s what I would suggest: don’t be scared. They’re basically immature onions. Being immature, the flavors have not fully developed and neither has the harshness that many onions have. Instead, what you’re left with is a fresh, light onion taste that would take any dish to the next level.

If you want to add them into a cooked dish, add them early. Cooking is basically like building a house. Just as a cement foundation supports a home, your flavor foundations will support your other ingredients. Scallions are an easy way to build a strong foundation. There are different types of ingredients, and scallions fall into a group we call “aromatics.” Aromatics are ingredients you add to your pan first so that their flavors will carry through the dish (garlic is also an aromatic ingredient). If you’re cooking in a pan with olive oil, when you add your aromatics to the pan first the flavors are drawn into the oil. This flavor will then transfer from the oil into your meat, soup or sauce.

Scallions are a really inexpensive way to make regular food into awesome food. Next time you sauté some chicken, cut up a palm full of scallions and toss them in the pan first. I think you’ll be pleased at the difference it makes.

Because their less harsh in flavor than regular onions, scallions are a great addition to fresh dishes as well. If you make a garden salad, sprinkle some chopped scallions on top to keep things interesting. However you decide to use them, it’s hard to go wrong with such a versatile ingredient.

Thawing foods

2009-01-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Patty Poulsen:
"Our microwave has a defrost button. But when I defrost something using it- it's never as good. Or the outer area of food is HOT and the middle is still an ice cube. So, what's the best way to defrost? I never remember to put things in the fridge the night before. Is there a "healthy" or "safe" way to defrost food? Why can't I just cook something that's not defrosted?"

Putting frozen food in the fridge and letting it thaw slowly is the safest way and, whenever possible, this should be your method of thawing. BUT, it takes a long time and sometimes we forget. So if you want to thaw something quickly without getting the semi-cooked/semi-frozen product that a microwave creates, we can learn a bit from the convection cooking method.

The basic idea of convection is to not only expose something to heat, but to MOVE the heat around your product so that the heat passes into it quicker. A convection oven will cook food faster than a conventional oven. We can do this same thing when thawing food.

Put your frozen food into a bowl deep enough to fully submerge the food in water. Put the bowl under a tap (depending on how much sink room you have you can do this in a bathroom sink or even in your bathtub. Just make sure you keep things clean to prevent contamination) with cool water slowly trickling into the bowl. I say COOL water because if it’s warm, the cooking process could start prematurely. If it’s down-right cold the process will take that much longer. So you want to find a happy middle ground. Either way, the cool water, even though it’s not as warm as you think it should be, is warmer than frozen chicken, so the chicken will thaw. The trickling effect will keep the water in the bowl moving, which creates convection. Bada-bing bada-bang, thawed chicken. This past Thanksgiving I thawed an entire 10 lb turkey in less than 7 hours by using this method.

Now as for the reasons for not cooking frozen meat, there are many. If you put a frozen steak on a grill, you’d end up with a charred piece of flesh with a nice, frozen center. With a steak, a cold center might not be a big deal. I probably wouldn’t kill anyone. Chicken or pork, on the other hand. Nobody wants salmonella, and you can be sure that nobody wants worms.
There are some instances where it really won’t matter too much. If you put a frozen roast in the crock pot for 8 hours, I doubt you’ll really notice much difference and your food will for sure be cooked. But for smaller pieces, meat shouldn’t be cooked until it has nearly reached room temperature. This allows the strands of protein to loosen up and when the meat is cooked it will be more tender.

Prawns-part 2

2009-01-05T12:02:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Janene Marcum:
"How do restaurants get their prawns to lay flat?"

Meats contain protein. Whenever a protein is introduced to heat, it coagulates. Coagulation removes liquid and causes the proteins to shrink. Shrimp are basically one giant muscle, so when they’re cooked they’ll shrink. But the more protein-laced parts will shrink more. If you’ve ever seen the way a shrimp or prawn swims, it curls its tail under by flexing the muscles on its belly. The belly muscles are stronger, so they’ll shrink more in cooking.

If you want to get your shrimp to lay flat, buy the shrimp with the veins still in them. Deveined shrimp is awesome, but the manufacturer cuts so far into the shrimp’s back that all the muscles in the stomach are left in tact and the shrimp curls. All your cuts should be on the belly of the shrimp. Leave the back alone until it comes time to remove the vein.

Peel your shrimp and make a few small scores in the meat cross-wise, then butterfly the shrimp by cutting length-wise (remember, you're cutting into the belly!). When you take the vein out, be careful that your cut into the back doesn’t meet with your cut into its belly, which would cut the shrimp in half. Lay the shrimp flat and cook it however you like (deep-fry, grill, broil, etc.). Scoring and cutting from the belly cuts the strands of protein and prevents such drastic shrinkage, allowing your shrimp to maintain its flat shape.

Prawns-part 1

2009-01-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Janene Marcum:
"I bought some large prawns yesterday, and I deep fried them, but it made us feel "like you do when you eat deep fried foods." So what's a good way to cook them that is healthier and tastier? I dipped them in egg and rolled them in bread crumbs. They weren't that great."

First off, let's go over the difference between shrimp and prawns. As far as flavor is concerned, not really anything. The term "prawn" is usually used to describe any LARGE shrimp, but technically the difference is in their shells and the way the layers of shell overlap. But for our purposes, we'll jump aboard the bandwagon and use the term "prawn" for big shrimp.

The number one thing to remember when deep frying is that you always have to start with your oil at the cooking temperature. If you put shrimp into cold oil and bring up the temp, you’ll end up with oily, greasy shrimp. The universal frying temperature is 375 degrees, although some recipes will call for higher or lower temperatures. A good rule of thumb is to go with 375 unless instructed otherwise.

Even when you start cooking at 375, your food can still seem a bit greasy. That’s because it was cooked by being fully submerged in oil. It’ll never taste healthy. Sometimes that’s okay, though. I don’t always want to eat a fresh salad with apple slices. Sometimes I need some grease. Not only that, but I need it to be layered with salt, sprinkled with malt vinegar and dipped in mayo. There’s a reason they call it comfort food. But there are healthier options, especially with shrimp or prawns.

I suggest grilling. You can even marinate your shrimp before you grill to add some extra flavor. BUT, if you do that, don’t put acid in your marinade. Seafood cooks very quickly; and with an acidic marinade, the acid will start cooking the shrimp before it hits the grill. If that happens, what you’ll end up with is a piece of shrimp that tastes like acid and has the consistency of a wad of rubber bands. My favorite way to prep shrimp for the grill is to put them in a ziploc bag with olive oil (just enough to coat the shrimp, not so much that it's swimming), cayenne pepper and salt. Let them sit for a few minutes. The oil will not only help the seasonings stick to the shrimp, but it'll keep the shrimp from sticking to the grill. Plus, olive oil makes it taste really good.

If you still want to coat and fry your shrimp, try a different technique. Instead of deep-frying, try pan-frying. Coat your shrimp in egg, then a mixture of cornstarch and seasonings (the more powder-like the better). Put pure olive oil (not extra virgin) in your pan so that it covers the bottom and fry your shrimp over medium heat. Cook on one side for maybe one minute (longer for bigger pieces), flip over and cook for just under a minute. Your shrimp will not only be less greasy, but the cornstarch will give them a nice crunch. Breadcrumbs do what they’re designed to: soak up liquid. Putting breadcrumbs on your frying foods will cause the food to absorb more oil and taste more greasy. There are also variations you can do with coconut or even almonds. If you’d like to know those, send me an email and we’ll get them your way.

Seasoning or Quality. I say both.

2009-01-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Bryan Borrowman.
"Should I buy better food and not season it as much for taste, Or can I buy any kind food and use lots of seasoning? For example, can I buy any cut of meat and put seasoning on it? Or should I buy a better cut of meat and get a better taste with less seasoning?"

Higher quality, fresh ingredients will always produce better tasting, more satisfying meals. Personally, my favorite foods focus less on seasoning and more on the product. That being said, there’s definitely value in having a variety of spices.

Every spice has its use. There’s a time for Cajun food, and there’s a time for Thai food. Sometimes marinating a skirt steak in ginger and teriyaki sauce is a good way to enjoy a cheap cut of meat, while other times you might be feeling a grilled rib eye with nothing but butter, salt and pepper. The beauty of having a variety of spices is having a variety of options. There’s no need to eat the same thing every day.

A lot of ingredient selection will be give and take, but there is one ingredient I would definitely suggest you don’t compromise on: garlic. Use fresh garlic whenever you can. Garlic powder is good for dry rubs, but I’d say that 95% of recipes that call for garlic would be best represented by the use of fresh garlic. Also, I’d suggest staying away from the jars of pre-chopped, soaked-in-water garlic. Some people say it’s the same, but it’s not.

Of course, not everyone can afford a rib eye everyday. There are tricks to making tougher, cheaper cuts of meat into delicious meals. If there are any questions about the best way to cook these typically dry, tough meats, let me know and we’ll give ya some options.

Mise en place

2009-01-04T19:37:00.000-08:00

If someone were to ask me the most important thing to know before they enter their kitchen, I would say, “Mise en place.” Partly because it’s French and would make me look really smart. But even more than that, because of what it means. This term translates “Putting in place,” or “Everything in its place.” In the culinary world, preparation is everything. Entering the kitchen without a plan is like walking in the airport without a destination.

So consider me your “Culinary Travel Agent.” I love everything about food, and I want you to as well. Any questions you have about food, cooking techniques or tricks, send them my way. Whatever I don’t know, I’ll find out. We can make sure that, before you enter your kitchen, you not only have a plan, but an understanding of why that plan will work and what you can expect to come from it. We can make sure that you have everything in its place.