Apples of Love
July 23, 2008
If the Spanish conquistadors had known what they were onto when they brought tomatoes to the old world in the sixteenth century, they wouldn’t have spent the rest of their careers searching for gold, because they had already found it. If any of them had any prescience at all, they would have simply opened a canning facility somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius, and begun mining the gold that became known as pomodòri ‘golden apples’.
By the time southern Italians began manufacturing pasta asciuta ’semolina pasta’ in the late eighteenth century, inovative chefs had already invented dozens of preparations for tomatoes (also referred to pómi d’amore ‘apples of love’). So when tomato sauce was introduced to pasta, it was indeed love at first sight. Pasta alla marinara was love at first sight for me, anyway.
But due to restrictions imposed by Mother Nature, we here in America can enjoy fresh, vine-ripened plum tomatoes for only about three months of the year. The rest of the time, we depend on the canned variety.
Green Tea Stir-Fry Chicken Over Udon
July 22, 2008
Green Tea Stir-Fry Chicken Over Udon
by: John Newman
Ingredients (4 servings)
½ lb chicken breast
1 stalk scallion
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 lb Fresh, refrigerated or frozen udon noodles
1/4 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon chili paste
1/2 tablespoon dry sherry or sake
6 to 8 fresh shiitake mushroom caps, crisscrossed on top with knife
1/4 sencha loose leaves
Preparing it (5 minutes)
1. Cut chicken into thin slices.
2. Dice scallion.
3. Cut Shiitake mushrooms into thin strands
Directions (10 minutes)
1. Boil udon noodle until well done.
2. Drain udon noodle.
3. Heat 1 tbsp sesame oil or skillet over high heat until hot (Approx. 350°F).
4. Add chicken and shiitake mushrooms and stir fry until done.
5. Add udon, sencha loose leaves, soy sauce, sherry or sake, rice wine vinegar, then stir fry until hot.
6. Top off with diced scallion and sesame seeds.
Picture Perfect Bread
July 21, 2008
The secret-at least most of it-is in the rise. The most common mistake that we see in bread making is not letting the dough rise enough.
So how do we know when the bread has risen enough? The dough will double in size. It will be soft and look a bit airy. When you touch it with your finger, it will feel soft and an indention in the dough will remain. If it feels a bit springy and the dough bounces back from the indentation, it hasn’t risen enough.
To help you tell when your bread has risen enough, most recipes tell you how long to let the bread rise at normal kitchen temperatures. (The stated time is a guideline but it’s usually pretty accurate if you are using water at the recommended temperature. Set the timer and forget about the bread until you hear the timer.)
Can you let bread rise too much? Yes-but most of us are too impatient to let that happen often. If it does rise too much, it will be blistered, so soft it won’t hold its form, and may even collapse. No problem. Just gently knead some of the air from the dough, reshape the loaves, and let it rise again. It will rise more quickly the second time.
Top Tips For Good Nutrition This Thanksgiving
July 20, 2008
Top Tips For Good Nutrition This Thanksgiving
by: Dave Saunders
To many, good nutrition and thanksgiving dinner seem to cancel each other out. However it should be possible and even easy to make a nutritious meal that is a pleasure to share with friends and family. Here are a few tips to help you make your holiday meals healthy ones too.
Prepare a wide variety of foods. Traditional thanksgiving stories tell us of meals that contained wide varieties of dishes reflecting the backgrounds of the many people who came together for these meals and to give thanks. The nutritional benefit of eating from a wide variety of foods is you gain a wider variety of nutrients. Also, you are less likely to overload on a single type of food. If you don’t have time to prepare a large number of dishes, many grocery stores sell prepared dishes that you can add to the variety of dishes you’re cooking yourself. Gourmet grocery stores often prepare these dishes on site.
Summer Salads
July 19, 2008
Green vegetables are the food most missing in modern diets. Nutritionally, greens are very high in calcium (120 -190 mg per cup!) They’re also high in magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc, and they are a power house for Vitamin A, C, E and K. Believe it or not, they are also crammed high with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll and many other micro-nutrients and phyto-chemicals ? you just can’t get any better than this. Take a look at the following two recipes to help move you into a sensational summer!
Sensational Summer Salad
For a summer snack that will cleanse the kidneys and help the body to unload toxic wastes from the blood, use the following high powered recipe.
1/2 cup of watercress
1/2 cup of dandelion greens
1/2 cup of arugula
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp grated ginger
pinch of Sea Salt
Mix washed greens together. Stir lemon juice and ginger. Pour over greens. Season with salt.
Tomato Basil & Feta Salad
This is a simple salad that requires no salad dressing.
2 cups tomatoes, diced
1/4 cup red onions, finely chopped
2.25 ounces sliced black olives
Brown Bread Ice Cream
July 18, 2008
Brown Bread Ice Cream
by: Susan Love
1 1/4 cups of bread crumbs
1 tbsp of very good vanilla
1/2 cup of whipping cream
4 egg yolks
¼ cup of brandy
2 tbsp of sugar
1 1/2 cups of whole milk
Beat together the egg yolks and sugar and cook gently in a double boiler, stirring all the time until it thickens slightly.
Then add the brandy. Let it cool.
Whip the cream and fold it into the cooled mixture. Chill.
Crisping the bread crumbs, sprinkled with sugar, in the oven for 15 minutes. Mix together with the custard and put into an ice cream maker or freeze in the freezer,taking out every 1/2 hour to stir to break up the cristals until totally frozen.
Put the mixture into a pretty dish and serve.
Servings: 4
This is an Edwardian recipe that my grandmother used to make. She was originally from Cape Town, South Africa where her father was the owner of a bookstore. She was the oldest of six children who went to England every summer and played cards all the way up and back on the ship When she was 15 her father died even though as she said, she “ran as fast as she could to get the doctor.”
Champagne
July 18, 2008
Champagne is without question the finest sparkling wine made in the world. Champagne is the name of the wine region located about 90 miles northeast of Paris.
Champagne can contain up to three different grapes: Chardonnay, and the red grapes Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Vintage Champagnes are only produced in the very best years; they are always more expensive than non-vintage Champagnes, but they are not always better tasting. Most Champagnes are the supreme expression of the Champagne blender’s art, assembled from numerous vintages, multiple grape types and various selected vineyards within the Champagne district, then carefully hand made and fermented in the bottle. By making these blends, the Champagne winemakers are able to create a consistent ‘’house'’ style and, indeed, each Champagne producer has its own distinct style.
Finally, there are several important terms you will encounter on a Champagne label that tell you much about the contents. From dry to sweet, Champagnes are labeled Brut Absolut, Brut, Extra-Dry, Sec, Demi-Sec and Doux. Blanc de Blanc Champagne bottlings are made entirely from Chardonnay grapes and tend to be lighter and more delicate in style. Blanc de Noirs Champagnes are made from red grapes and tend to be fuller bodied and richer tasting; Rose Champagnes are dark pink in color and frequently intensely flavored.
The Quick and Easy Guide to Water Filters
July 17, 2008
The Quick and Easy Guide to Water Filters
by: Ryan Tenney
I bet you are frustrated over constantly having to buy new water filters for your home. After all, you don’t want to drink the tap water straight- who knows where it has been. And, you certainly don’t want to pay keep paying for water filters that only last so long. Well, the good news is that there are a couple of tips to keep in mind when shopping for your new water filters at Walmart or Cosco. We’ll go over a few of them here.
1)Quality over quantity. Just because a water filter looks like a good deal, does not mean it actually is. Compare the quality of the different filters and most importantly how many uses you are likely to get out of each water filter and you should be able to make a fairly good judgement on just what you are getting in a water filter.
Thailand’s Vegetarian Festival
July 16, 2008
Thailand’s Vegetarian Festival
by: John Turner
First time visitors arriving in Thailand at the start of any October might be puzzled by the myriad of eye-catching bright yellow pennants displayed by street vendors or nowadays even strung out in front of restaurants. What it simply means is that the annual Vegetarian Festival is upon us once again.
This unique Thai festival had its origins on the southern island of Phuket some 180 years ago and has gradually spread to virtually all parts of the kingdom. Rather surprisingly, it is actually of Chinese origin and not really Thai at all. It began among the Chinese immigrants who had flocked to Phuket in the early 19th Century to work in the tin mines that once provided the island’s economy. According to local historians, about the year 1825, a mysterious epidemic struck the Chinese miners and their leaders met to discover the cause. They noted that the traditional Chinese rituals were being neglected, and the mining community was accordingly ordered to undergo a period of fasting as a penance. After nine days, the disease vanished as mystifyingly as it had arrived.
Secrets of Great Breads
July 15, 2008
Often we field questions about making great bread. Great bread is a matter of using the right ingredients and the right techniques-there’s no single secret that will make perfect bread. But really great bread is readily attainable. We’ve compiled our list of what goes into great bread.
1. The right flour.
2. An understanding of yeast.
3. A good dough conditioner.
4. A baker’s thermometer.
Now this isn’t everything that goes into great bread but the baker that is armed with these four tools are likely to be baking great bread.
Recently we stated that if there is a secret ingredient that bakers use it’s the flour. So we put the right flour on the top of our list.
To understand how important flour is, you need to understand just a little about gluten. Gluten strands are formed from the proteins naturally occurring in wheat flour. It’s what gives bread its chewy texture. If you use a flour with a higher percentage of protein, you will have more gluten. Most commercial bread bakers are going to use flours with 10 to 14% protein–bread flour.
