It's all about good food

REVISED 10/11/08

As some of you may know, I like to cook. This is something that I learned from my mother who learned it from her father. A great tasting, ( and good looking), Meal doesn't have to be complicated. In fact many of those fancy dishes you see in resterants arn't hard to make at all. It comes down to quality ingreedients and a little knowlage on what to do with them, and you don't have to have attended Johnson and Whales or the Culinary Institute of America to have or get that knowlage.

So lets start with 4 ingreedents everyone should have in their kitchen. Most of these are things you use in your everyday cooking.

SALT

most people use regular old table salt and for many years so did I. Then I noticed all the chefs on TV used kosher salt. I didn't understand why, I thought salt was salt, boy was I wrong. Then one day I found sea salt in a grinder in the grocery store and decided to try it. What a difference it made. Tha taste was far suppirior and regular table salt was out. It was at this point that I decided to find out what all the hub hub was about kosher salt. A few googles and a trip to the store later and it was kosher for cooking for me. See what I didn't know was that table salt has lots of addittives that change the flavor of it. Kosher and sea salt don't. Kosher is also bigger and generaly flat which helps it to cling to what ever you are cooking. It's still recomened to use reg. table salt for baking though. It's small uniform shape as it easily disolves

PEPPER

This is simple, just use fresh ground when ever you can. Pre-ground may have sat for months in a warehouse before shipping to your local grocery store, where it may sit for several more months. only to sit in your cabnet for 6 - 9 months before you use it up, and thats about how long you should hang onto any spice, 6 - 9 months, before you replace it. After that most spices tend to lose some of their flavor.

OIL

Look in most homes kitchen cabnets and you will find one kind of oil. Usualy corn, canola or vegitable. If  your lucky you may find the occational bottle of Olive oil. I have 4 or 5 different oils at any given time. Corn, Olive, Peanut, sesame seed and lately grape seed. Corn oil and olive are what i use for everyday cooking. sesame seed I use to flavor asain dishes. Peanut I use for deep frying and Grape seed I have started to use for stir fry. Now there are dozens and dozens of oils out there and chances are - unless you are a prof. chef - most of us will never have occation to try them. So keep a corn and a bottle of olive oil in the house, but pick one or two others and try them in different recipes.

     Fats
Bacon grease • Butter • Clarified butter • Cocoa butter • Dripping • Duck fat • Ghee • Lard • Margarine • Niter kibbeh • Salo • Schmaltz • Shea butter • Smen • Suet • Tallow • Vegetable shortening
    Oils
Almond oil • Argan oil • Avocado oil • Canola oil • Castor oil • Coconut oil • Colza oil • Corn oil • Cottonseed oil • Grape seed oil • Hazelnut oil • Hemp oil • Linseed oil (flaxseed oil) • Macadamia oil • Marula oil • Mustard oil • Olive oil • Palm oil • Palm kernel oil • Peanut oil • Pecan oil • Perilla oil • Pistachio oil • Poppyseed oil • Pumpkin seed oil • Rapeseed oil • Rice bran oil • Safflower oil • Sesame oil • Soybean oil • Sunflower oil • Tea seed oil • Walnut oil

here is a list of oils and there smoking points

www.goodeatsfanpage.com/CollectedInfo/OilSmokePoints.htm

WINE

This one is simple. Just keep a good wine or two around for recipes that call for it. The rule here is to only use a wine that you would drink. Stay away from anything that says "cooking wine".  These are made from really bad wine that has a lot of salt added to it. They do this to keep alcoholics and children from drinking it. Also try not to use anything to heavy like port, marsala or madiera unless the recipe calls for it. These are all fortified wines, meaning they have brandy added to them and tend to be thick and sweet. These are usually used for very rich sauces.

   RED WINE

Red wine is also typically used in sauces, but more to give flavor and color vs adding texture. It is REALLY important with red wine that you use a relatively good (or at least not awful / vinegarred) red wine for cooking, otherwise the dish tastes like pickles. If the recipe calls for a particular type of red wine (merlot, pinot noir, etc), use what it asks for. If it asks for ANY red wine, use your favorite. After all, the point of this dish is that you enjoy eating it. If the recipe asks for a TYPE of red wine, go with:
light bodied: pinot noir, merlot
full bodied: cabernet, chianti

   WHITE WINE

White wine tends to give the least flavor to a dish and therefore is the least picky about what you choose. Usually white wine goes into a dish such as "chicken in white wine sauce" where really the sauce is made with creams and the white wine adds just a hint of flavor. Again, use a white wine you enjoy. That wine's flavor will be featured in your meal.
light bodied: pinot grigio
full bodied: Californian Chardonnay

OH yeah.......................................

thong of the day