Cookbook Publishing - The Basic Ingredients and the Secrets to Success
June 30, 2007
You are about to embark on the most exciting enterprise of your life — publishing a cook book! You will soon learn that writing a cook book is truly a fun, exciting and challenging project ? more than you can imagine. Like me, you can publish your own wildly successful cook book. And if you ask me if I think publishing a cook book is worth the time and effort? You bet I do!
My cook book, Fit to Cook ? Why ‘Waist’ Time in the Kitchen? sold over 250,000 copies (with, I might add, less than 10% of those sales coming from book stores). However, I wasted a great deal of time, back-tracking and scrambling in order to sell all those books because in the beginning I did not have a complete grasp of the publishing industry and the process of marketing a cook book.
Before you rack your brain figuring out how to write a cook book, and more importantly, how to publish a cook book, take some time to thoroughly research the why and what you are writing about, who you are writing for and when is the best time to launch your book.
Cooking Healthy For Radiant Health
June 29, 2007
Cooking Healthy For Radiant Health
by: Adoz Lizzat
Who can resist the mouth-watering pictures in a cookbook? Who doesn’t have childhood memories of the fragrances that wafted from the kitchen on holidays, and even on regular, ordinary days? Spices, bread baking, cookies fresh out of the oven - all these trigger a deep longing in most of us. As eating holds a guaranteed spot in everybody’s daily schedule, so do those who prepare it. They have beome the uncrowned gods and goddesses of our lives.
Real cooking consists of more than opening a can with a dull picture of green beans on the front, or popping a TV dinner from a wax-covered box into the oven or microwave. The true goal of cooking is to nourish these marvelous bodies that we live in, to allow them to grow and express vitality and strength, to keep them healthy and able to overcome environmental germs and bacteria. Summarized in one word, the main purpose of cooking is heath!
Hot Sauce - Heating Things Up
June 29, 2007
Hot Sauce - Heating Things Up
by: Chris McCarthy
There is nothing like a dash of hot sauce to liven up even the blandest of all dishes. In fact, true to the genre of sauces all over the world, the hot sauce is not only an accompaniment but also does honors as the prime ingredient in many dishes.
The term hot sauce could not have been more apt for it refers to any hot and spicy sauce made from chilly peppers or chilly extracts and vinegar. Thus, you can have sauces made from any kind of chilly pepper (i.e., the fruits of plants hailing from the Capsicum family) like red peppers, habaneras or tabasco. The Tabasco sauce is the most popular amongst all the hot sauces available.
How hot your hot sauce is going to be is determined by the type of pepper being used. Thus, you have the bell pepper with a barely-there taste at one end of the spectrum and the robust habaneros, which will work up quite a steam, at the other end. Interestingly, it is a substance called capsaicin, which imparts the characteristic heat to the pepper.
Kitchen Canister Sets - How to Beautify Your Kitchen
June 28, 2007
Kitchen canister sets are a great way to accent your kitchen and give you more storage space. Canister sets of today come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors. Finding the right kitchen canister set depends on your individual tastes and what theme, if any, the kitchen is. Many manufactures including All-Clad, Calphalon and Fleur Rouge have a wide assortment to choose from.
When deciding which canisters to add to your kitchen also keep in mind the different kinds. A canister can be found made from stainless steel, glass, acrylic and stoneware. Families with children may want to consider acrylic or stainless steel for durability and long life.
Another consideration is how they fit the theme or go with everything else. Many sets follow a kitchen theme such as chickens, grapes or a country theme. These can fit right in and highlight the overall kitchen design. Guzzini, Fleur Rouge, Polder and some others have canisters or sets in such designs.
The advantages of different canisters should also be looked at. For those with a modern kitchen the stainless steel makes a great impression on the counter. Acrylic or glass gives you a view of what’s inside, and how much is left. Stoneware gives the option of beautiful colors and long storage for food.
Handy Home-Prepared Mixes
June 27, 2007
Pre-packaged store-bought box mixes are expensive. Have you considered homemade alternatives? Made-from-scratch mixes are healthy, cost beneficial, store well, and taste great. Often times, you’re paying for the packaging of commercial "convenience" foods and you don’t have any control over the additives and preservatives they contain. When making your own mixes, you tailor the ingredients, so have control over the quality and quantity.
Making your own bulk mixes is a great way to stock your pantry. Creative containers make homemade mixes a terrific frugal gift idea too. There’s something deeply satisfying when cooking from scratch. It takes some minimal preparation, but many of the ingredients are already a staple in your pantry. It’s not as time consuming as you may think.
Supplies
Plastic baggies Glass containers with tight fitted lids Prep area Labels Appropriate ingredients Storage area Basic kitchen tools Plastic containers Decorative items for gifts. (ribbons, printable recipe cards, labels)
Master Baking Mix
9 cups sifted all-purpose flour 1/3 cup baking powder 1 Tablespoon salt 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 4 Tablespoons granulated sugar 2 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk solids 2 cups shortening (which does not require refrigeration)
Tips for Selecting the Right Beef Cuts for Your Meal and Budget
June 26, 2007
Tips for Selecting the Right Beef Cuts for Your Meal and Budget
by: Mike Sullivan
When we stand at the butchers counter, most of us may wonder what is the difference between a top sirloin and a porterhouse. If you ever come across a good beef cookbook, you will be able to appreciate a good diagram of beef cuts.
Beef is the widely consumed animal protein through out the world when compared to any other meat. Hence it is important for a good steward to select a good piece of beef for his wonderful recipe.
Grading of beef cuts
The beef is usually graded into three categories based on its quality by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Grades are specified after taking into consideration the color, appearance, meat’s consistency and last but not least the amount of marbling in the beef. The Graded beef is classified as follows:
Prime meat
Choice meat
Select meat
Prime Meat
The meat, which is having more marbling, is termed as Prime meat. This is usually found in fine restaurants.
Select Meat
Just How Is Chocolate Made?
June 25, 2007
Just How Is Chocolate Made?
by: James McDonald
How is chocolate made you are wondering? Chocolate is derived from a cocoa bean removed from the pod of the cocoa tree. Cocoa trees are found growing in equatorial zones in the South America region. Once the Cocoa beans have been harvested they are then placed into large shallow pans to be heated. This is also known as the fermentation process. In some regions where the climate is warm the beans may be fermented by the sun. Throughout this fermentation workers stir them often to ensure that all the cocoa beans have been equally fermented.
One of the first things that industrial chocolate manufacturers do is dry roast the beans. The process of dry roasting helps develop the flavor into what we enjoy when eating it. The cocoa nibs, otherwise known as beans are comprised of two very important ingredients: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The cocoa butter is basically a fat while the cocoa solids are predominantly coarse cocoa powder. The seperation of the two ingredients is very crucial in producing a smooth, high quality chocolate candy.
Coffee Roaster Machines - Java on Demand!
June 24, 2007
Coffee Roaster Machines - Java on Demand!
by: Jocelyn Meadows
Most coffee lovers have a strong liking to freshly brewed coffee. They are not very fond of instant coffee and sometimes may even consider it demeaning to have coffee right out of the can. They will either grind their coffee and stir a cuppa or have one of the new fancy coffee roaster machines which promise a quick fix from the bean to the cup in a few minutes without loosing the authentic flavour of the coffee.
These coffee roaster machines have become quite popular in the recent past. They provide café style coffee and are quite economical to maintain. Some of the key things you should look out while buying a coffee roaster machine for your personal use is the whether it suits your requirements or not. The first concern will be the size of the machine. If you have a small kitchen, you will need to pick up a compact piece and if you have a good sized kitchen then you can pick up a larger machine which has a higher capacity.
Guide To Tasting Wine
June 24, 2007
The basics of tasting wine are relatively simple to learn. Once the fundamentals are mastered, the nuances and details can be enhanced over a lifetime. Like any other skill, tasting wine requires practice, and consistency is probably the most important factor.
One helpful strategy an aspiring wine taster can pursue is tasting with a friend that has superior knowledge. Questions can be addressed, and you will quickly become comfortable with this unnecessarily intimidating subject.
Another important strategy for a beginning wine taster is to taste several wines side-by-side that share at least one common variable. This could be the varietal, style, AVA of origin, or any combination of the three.
Tasting blind will minimize any prior opinions or stereotypes. You may be surprised to discover that less-expensive wines are more pleasing to you.
The Essentials of Tasting Wine
It is imperative that you taste in spotlessly clean glasses. The most common contaminants in unclean glasses are invisible molecules left behind by cleaning products. Even high-end restaurants can be guilty of this faux pas. It is best to thoroughly hand wash glasses with unabrasive soaps and hot water.
Rockfish Bessie
June 23, 2007
Ingredients 5-6 lbs. Whole Rockfish 1 Onion 1 Lemon 1 Lime Cilantro Corn Husks Olive Oil Salt and Pepper Preheat over to 375F. Make sure the fish is clean of all entrails. Slice the onion, salt and pepper it and place it in the cavity. Chop the cilantro and slice the lemon and lime and place it on top of the fish. Drizzle a bit of olive oil on top of the fish then salt and pepper the top. Cover the fish entirely in corn husks and then wrap the fish in tin foil. Place fish in a baking pan and place in the over. Bake for 30 minutes and then flip it over carefully and bake for another half hour. If the meat flakes, its ready. Serve with salsa, rice pilaf, black beans and fried plantains.
Paul Rinehart is the founder of Online Cooking
