2007 June

• Basics Of Cooking Home
• About Us

Archive for June, 2007

— Next Page »

Breakfast and Lunch Recipes For Cancer Treatment

Friday, June 29th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Cooking For Summer

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Bet ready for Summer Cooking!

How To Buy Fresh Fruits And Vegetables

Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

There is nothing tastier than fresh produce.  Learning to cook with fresh ingredients will help ensure healthy and tasty meals.  Whether you are buying produce from a grocery store or from a local farmers market, here are some tips on what to look for when buying fresh fruits and vegetables.

Purchase fruit and vegetables that look and smell fresh.  Look for produce that is not bruised or damaged.  Over-handling the produce can cause damage and spoilage.

Refrigeration keeps most fruits and vegetables from ripening.  If you purchase unripe fruits or vegetables, place the fruit in a paper bag and close tightly.  As for vegetables such as avocados, it is best to just lay them on the counter until they are ripe.

Fresh Vegetables
The Farmers Almanac found at www.farmersalmanactv.com suggests some of the following tips.

Peas: Quality is indicated by the color and condition of the pod, which should be bright green.  Select pods that are well-sized, but not bulging.  Dried, spotted and yellow pods indicate over matured peas.

Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts and Cauliflower:  Flower clusters on the cauliflower and broccoli should be tightly together.  Brussel sprouts should be firm and compact.

Asparagus: stalks should be firm and tender; tips should be close and compact.

Beans: Beans with small seeds inside the pods work best. Avoid dry looking pods.

Lettuce, Spinach and Cabbage: Lettuce and spinach should be well developed and stocky.  They should have fresh, crisp and cleans leaves. Avoid lettuce with discoloration or stem rot and cabbage with worm holes.  Heads should be firm or heavy for their size.

Cucumbers: Skin may be dark or light to medium green.  Yellow ones are not ripe.

Potatoes: Potatoes should be firm, clean, reasonably shaped and relatively smooth.  They should not be wilted or show sprouts.

Fresh Fruits
Bananas: Peel should be free of black or brown spots as well as bruising.

Berries: Look for plumb, solid berries with vibrant coloring. Avoid wet or leaky containers as this may be an indication of mold or spoiling fruit.  A strong berry smell may also indicate they are ripe and ready to eat.

Citrus: Choose citrus that has a smoother, thinner skin.  Skin markings do not affect the quality.  Avoid those that show withered sunken or soft areas.

Melons: In cantaloupes, thick close netting on the rind indicates the best quality.  Cantaloupes are ripe when the stem scar is smooth and the space between the netting is yellow or yellow-green.  The fresh fruity smell may also indicate ripeness.

Ripe watermelons have some yellow color on one side.  If the melon has a white or pale green color on one side, they are probably not ripe.

Learning to cook with fresh fruits and vegetables is not only ensuring a healthy diet, it can also satisfy the pickiest taste buds.

Delicious Stew For Cancer Treatment

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Learn how to prepare a healthy and delicious stew especially for people who are going through tough cancer treatment.

Should Italians Add Garlic?

Monday, June 25th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Interesting! The Italians are wondering if they should add garlic into their dishes!

Helpful Cooking Tips

Friday, June 22nd, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Have you ever wished you knew how to save a ruined dish, increase the flavor or make cooking easier? Well, you’re not alone.  There are many tips that have been passed down over the years that I know you will find helpful.

Meats

• After the meat is done cooking, let the meat rest for 5 minutes before cutting.  This will keep the meat tender and juicy. Also, when possible, cut meat across the grain. It is easier to slice or cut meat when it is partially frozen.
• When microwaving chicken, cover the dish with vented clear plastic to keep the chicken from drying out.
• Rubbing lemon juice on fish before cooking will enhance the flavor.
• No time to marinate meat? Pound meat lightly with a mallet, sprinkle with meat tenderizer and add marinade.  Refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
• Use plastic baggies to marinate your meat.  It will be fast and easy clean up.
• Tomatoes added to roasts will help tenderize the meat.
• If making hamburgers, add cold water to the beef before grilling. This will make the hamburger juicier.

Breads

• Put a small dish of water in the oven when baking bread to help keep the crust from getting too hard or brown.
• Use shortening to grease pans. Margarine or butter will be absorbed into the dough or batter.
• To prevent hard or dry crusts, rub bread tops with shortening after you take them out of the oven.
• Water that is too hot will kill yeast.  One way to tell if the water is the correct temperature is to pour the water over your forearm. If you can not feel either hot or cold, the temperature is just right.
• Always sift flour before measuring if you are not sure.
• Reduce oven temperature by 25 degrees when baking in a glass pan.

Vegetables

• Lemon juice will remove onion scent from your hands.
• To avoid watery eyes when chopping onion, put onion in the freezer for 10 minutes before chopping.
• To cut down on odors when cooking broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower, add a little vinegar to the water.
• Revive soggy lettuce by soaking in cold lemon water.
• Spray plastic bowls with cooking spray before adding vegetables or food that can stain.
• Never soak vegetables after slicing; they will lose some of their nutritional value.
• Instant potatoes are a good soup or stew thickener.
• If cooking vegetables that grow above the ground, boil them without a cover.
• To bake potatoes quickly microwave for 5 minutes and then place in a preheated oven. Or soak potatoes in salted water for 20 minutes before baking. This will help them cook more rapidly.
• Add potato cubes to cover salted soups or stews.  The potatoes will absorb the salt.  Remove potatoes when ready to serve.
• Add a paper towel to opened bags of lettuce to absorb the moisture. This will absorb the moisture and keep the lettuce fresher.
• To keep cauliflower white while cooking, add a little milk to the water.
• To absorb the smell of cooked cabbage, put a small cup of vinegar near the stove.

Fruits

• Over-ripe bananas can be peeled and frozen. Use them in a fruit smoothie, bread or cakes.
• Strawberries keep best unwashed in the refrigerator.
• Use a Melon Baller to core a pear.
• To ripen peaches, nectarines or pears, keep them in a paper sack tightly covered.

Drinks

• For refreshing water, add slice of fresh lemon or lime to the water glass or pitcher.
• Flavor tea lemon juice, honey, lemon drops or mint candies.
• Add sparkle to your fruit drink by adding club soda.

Now that you know some of the best tips for being successful in the kitchen, the next time you run into a snag you will be well prepared.

Health Benefits Of Fish

Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Fish is no doubt one of the popular meat we cook. Regardless of how you cook fish, it is one of the healthiest forms of protein you can eat.

A clue to the enormous health benefits comes from the fact that fish features largely in the diet of two of the world’s longest living people: the Italians, particularly those loving in the south of Italy and the Japanese, particularly those from the Okinawan region. It’s interesting that the Okinawan, who are one of the longest living peoples on the planet consume, on average, half a pound (200 grams) of fish daily.

This is eaten as part of a balanced diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, but studies in the Igdlorssuit region of Greenland are even more dramatic.

Fish and Heart Attack
Over a period of ten years there was not one recorded incident of a heart attack among the 2,000 inhabitants of all ages. This statistic would be unheard of elsewhere, particularly among the more “advanced” countries of USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

Yet the diet of this 2,000 Greenlanders was noticeably absent of the fruit and vegetables we usually associate with a healthy diet and was made up almost entirely of fish.

Not that surprising, really, because — in addition to the heart protecting Omega-3 oils — fish is crammed with other vital vitamins and minerals.

The Omega-3 works to prevent heart attacks in various ways. On of the main ways is lowering the triglycerides in the blood stream. Doing this prevents the build up of fatty deposits on the walls of the arteries. It is the build up of this plaque that narrows the passageway for blood through the arteries.

The job of the heart is, of course, to pump blood around our body, non stop, for the entire time we are alive. Stop that constant flow of fresh, oxygen rich blood and the brain (the most oxygen hungry organ of the body) soon suffers irrepairable  damage.

But the heart also needs its own supply of oxygen rich blood to keep on working to the max. So, when the arteries feeding the heart muscle itself with oxygen rich blood get so constricted that the blood flow is cut off, a heart attack occurs.

Most heart attacks occur in the early hours of the morning. This is because the blood tends to thicken during sleep. So, when it is thicker than normal and trying to squeeze through arteries, already partially blocked with arterial plaque, that’s when blood clot is most likely to form and a heart attack most likely to happen.  If that clot blocks a vital artery feeding blood to the brain, a stroke — instead of a heart attack — is the most likely outcome. This will cause death or (at best) destruction of part of the brain. This is why certain movements or skills have to be re-learnt after a stroke.

That’s why physicians often prescribe blood thinning compounds — including fish oil capsules — to be taken immediately upon wakening.

Another “popular” time for heart attacks is Monday morning, when the population are steeling themselves for another stressful week at work!

So, as well as preventing the build up of arterial plaque the omega 3 oil also keeps the blood thin enough to reduce the risk of blood clots. There are also indications that fish oil also reduces the serotonin, which is a chemical which causes the blood vessels to contract causing migraines.

Depending on the type, fish and shellfish are also packed with vitamins and minerals, such as zinc, selenium, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and iodine, as well as pretty much every vitamin, except vitamin c.

Fish is truly top of the list of super foods!

En Papillote Fish Recipe

Saturday, June 16th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

En Papillote Fish sounds very nice and rather glamorous. In French, “En paillote” means “In a parcel” hence En Papillote Fish means fish cooked in a parcel. And that’s how we will cook our fish for maximum simplicity and maximum flavor.

If you like, you can view the video of this En Papillote Fish Recipe here.

Traditionally, this method used a parcel of waxed paper, but these days aluminum foil is more commonly used. Unless you have access to industrial size sheets of foil, its best to cut larger fish into individual portions and cook each piece in its own parcel. This method is also ideal for cooking on the barbeque. Simply prepare in the normal way and then put the parcels on the barbeque grill rather than in the oven or stove.

Servings: For 1 person

Ingredients:

• One piece of Fish Fillet or fish steak
• One piece of aluminum foil 12″ (30cm) square
• A knob of butter
• Your choice of seasoning or herbs, such as salt, pepper, dill, chervil, oregano, parsley or lemon juice

Steps:
Grease the foil in the central area with the butter.
Rinse the fish in cold running water and place it, skin side down, in the center of the foil, which you have greased with butter.

Bring two of the opposite sides of the foil together and fold the edges over twice. Repeat this for the other two sides, to complete the parcel.

Because the fish will effectively be steamed in its own juice, it’s very important that you make these folds airtight, so that no steam escapes. You should also take care to allow sufficient air space within the parcel for the steam to circulate.

Place the parcel on a backing pan and put it into the stove or oven.

For the average thickness of fish of about one and a half inches (3.67 cm) allow twenty minutes in a stove or oven at 190 degrees centigrade or 375 degrees Fahrenheit. If cooking on a barbeque (because the heat can be quite fierce) undo the parcel slightly and check if the fish is cooked after fifteen minutes.

The Canadian Department of Fisheries has a good rule of thumb for cooking fish of various thickness, popularly known as the Canadian Theory. This states that, whatever method of cooking is used: grilled, baked, poached or steamed (as here), you simply need to measure the thickest part of your fish and allow ten minutes for every inch (2.45cm) of thickness. If cooking in foil (as we are) add a further five minutes.

So our fish, being 1.5 inches and cooked in foil is (10 X 1.5) = 15+5=20 minutes.

The white coating that appears on salmon and other oily fish when cooked en papillote is simply the healthy omega 3 oil, which would normally be lost if the fish was cooked on a open grill. Cooking en papillote preserves all these health giving oils.

Fish cooked this way can be eaten right away and is also excellent as a cold dish later, perhaps as a summer picnic.

Getting To Know Cooking Jargon (Part 2)

Saturday, June 16th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Here is the second part of the cooking jargon list.

Baste
To brush or spoon liquid fat or juices over meat during roasting to add flavor and to prevent it from drying out.

Batter
A mixture of flour, fat, and liquid that is thin enough in consistency to require a pan to encase it. Used in such preparations as cakes and some cookies. A batter is different from dough, which maintains its shape.

Beat
To smoothen a mixture by briskly whipping or stirring it with a spoon, fork, wire whisk, rotary beater, or electric mixer.

Emulsion
A mixture of liquids, one being a fat or oil and the other being water based so that tiny globules of one are suspended in the other. This may involve the use of stabilizers, such as egg or mustard. Emulsions may be temporary or permanent.

Fillet
To remove the bones from meat or fish for cooking.

Fold
To cut and mix lightly with a spoon to keep as much air in the mixture as possible.

Fry
To cook food in hot cooking oil, usually until a crisp brown crust forms.

Glaze
A liquid that gives an item a shiny surface. Examples are fruit jams that have been heated or chocolate thinned with melted vegetable shortening. Also, to cover a food with such a liquid.

Julienne
To cut into long, thin strips.

Knead
To work dough with the heels of your hands in a pressing and folding motion until it becomes smooth and elastic.

Leavener
An ingredient or process that produces air bubbles and causes the rising of baked goods such as cookies and cakes.

Marble
To gently swirl one food into another.

Mince
To chop food into tiny, irregular pieces.

Mix
To beat or stir two or more foods together until they are thoroughly combined.

Steam
To cook over boiling water in a covered pan, this method keeps foods’ shape, texture, and nutritional value intact better than methods such as boiling.

Panbroil
To cook a food in a skillet without added fat, removing any fat as it accumulates.

Pare
To peel or trim a food, usually vegetables.

Pinch
Same as “dash.”

Poach
To simmer in liquid.

Pressure cooking
A cooking method that uses steam trapped under a locked lid to produce high temperatures and achieve fast cooking time.

Proof
To let yeast dough rise.

Purée
To mash or sieve food into a thick liquid.

Roast
To cook uncovered in the oven.

Sauté
To cook food quickly in a small amount of oil in a skillet or sauté pan over direct heat.

Sift
To remove large lumps from a dry ingredient such as flour or confectioners’ sugar by passing it through a fine mesh. This process also incorporates air into the ingredients, making them lighter.

Simmer
Cooking food in a liquid at a low enough temperature that small bubble begin to break the surface.

Whisk
To mix or fluff by beating; also refers to the utensil used for this action.

Whip
To incorporate air into ingredients such as cream or egg whites by beating until light and fluffy; also refers to the utensil used for this action.

Whisk
To mix or fluff by beating; also refers to the utensil used for this action.

So that is more or less about it. Do you find this list useful for you? Let me know by leaving your comments below. Cheers!

Getting To Know Cooking Jargon (Part 1)

Friday, June 15th, 2007 by The Cooking Guy

Here is a question posed by one of my subscribers (in case you didn’t know, you can sign up for my newsletter at my cooking main page):

“I wanted to cook a good meal for my family, which NEVER happens. I was trying to follow the directions from a cookbook but I didn’t understand most of what they were telling me to do. Please tell me what they mean?”

Well, I thought that is a valid question so here is the first part of basic cooking definitions (in alphabetical order). I hope this helps you as it has really helped me when I was starting out.

Aerate
A synonym for sift; to pass ingredients through a fine-mesh device to break up large pieces and to incorporate air into the ingredients to make them lighter.

Bake
To cook in the oven. Food is cooked slowly with gentle heat, causing the natural moisture to evaporate slowly, concentrating the flavor.
Bind
To thicken a sauce or hot liquid by stirring in ingredients such as eggs, flour, butter, or cream

Blanch
To boil briefly to loosen the skin of a fruit or a vegetable. After 30 seconds in boiling water, the fruit or vegetable should be plunged into ice water to stop the cooking action, and then the skin easily slices off.

Blend
To mix or fold two or more ingredients together to obtain equal distribution throughout the mixture.

Boil
To cook food in heated water or other liquid that is bubbling vigorously.

Braise
A cooking technique that requires browning meat in oil or other fat and then cooking slowly in liquid. The effect of braising is to tenderize the meat.

Broil
To cook food directly under the heat source.

Broth or stock
A flavorful liquid made by gently cooking meat, seafood, or vegetables (and/or their by-products, such as bones and trimming) often with herbs, in liquid, usually water.

Brown
A quick sautéing, pan/oven broiling, or grilling method done either at the beginning or end of meal preparation, often to enhance flavor, texture, or eye appeal.

Butterfly
To cut open a food such as pork chops down the center without cutting all the way through, and then spread apart.

Caramelization
Browning sugar over a flame, with or without the addition of some water to aid the process. The temperature range in which sugar caramelizes is approximately 320º F to 360º F (160º C to 182º C).

Chiffon
Pie filling made light and fluffy with stabilized gelatin and beaten egg whites.

Chop
To cut into irregular pieces.

Clarify
Remove impurities from butter or stock by heating the liquid, then straining or skimming it.

Coat
To evenly cover food with flour, crumbs, or a batter.

Confit
To slowly cook pieces of meat in their own gently rendered fat.

Cream
To beat vegetable shortening, butter, or margarine, with or without sugar, until light and fluffy. This process traps in air bubbles, later used to create height in cookies and cakes.

Crystallize
To form sugar- or honey-based syrups into crystals. The term also describes the coating.

Cure
To preserve or add flavor with an ingredient, usually salt and/or sugar.

Dash
A measure approximately equal to 1/16 teaspoon.

Devil
To add hot or spicy ingredients such as cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce to a food.

Dice
To cut into cubes.

Direct heat
A cooking method that allows heat to meet food directly, such as grilling, broiling, or toasting.

Dredge
To sprinkle lightly and evenly with sugar or flour. A dredger has holes pierced on the lid to sprinkle evenly.

Drizzle
To pour a liquid such as a sweet glaze or melted butter in a slow, light trickle over food.

— Next Page »

Site Tags:

Awesome Barbeque Chicken Pizza Breakfast and Lunch Recipes For Cancer Treatment cancer treatment Chefs When You Need Them chicken cooking tips Cooking Basics Cooking Jargon Cooking Measurements cooking with kids cookware Copper Cookware Essential Cooking Utensils and Equipment French Cuisine Fruit Dessert Handy Kitchen Gadgets Health Benefits of Fruit Dessert italian cooking Kitchen Gadgets Learning to cook No Bake Cookies Recipe Preparing To Cook With Your Kids Preparing Your Kitchen pressure cooker using slow cooker Whole Wheat Muffin Recipe

Credits: Dewald ama-Canuck | Matteo Turchetto | Andreas Viklund
Copyright © 2008 Basics Of Cooking