Three Basic Recipes for Everyone

You've heard me rave about Mark Bittman before. I make no bones about the fact that I love him, his food philosophy, and his very simple "anyone can do it and everyone should" approach to cooking.

Well here's another example of why. He recently wrote an article about how few people in the U.S. actually cook, or even know how, and how that is a national problem that needs fixing. If we want healthier Americans, lower healthcare costs, healthier food systems, and a healthier planet overall, we're going to need to teach each other to cook.

He acknowledges the truth that most of us, these days, are not being taught how to cook or even about food by our parents. That idea of passing down recipes and cooking lessons from generation to generation has mostly gone the way of the Dodo bird. Maybe some of us are lucky to get one or two recipes from our parents, but that's about it. It's not like we grow up knowing how to instinctively put together a menu or shop for the right ingredients or throw an impromptu dinner together at the last minute.

So Mark is making an attempt to right that wrong, but giving us three very basic recipes that we all ought to know how to make -- WITHOUT a cookbook. And I agree with him: that once you have a few recipes (be they these or others) that you can confidently cook consistently on your own, you're well on your way to being a home cook. You can extrapolate and make your own recipes and dishes by riffing off what you already know. You will no longer need to order takeout or make a run for the nearest fast-food "restaurant."

As he puts it:

Make these three things and you’re a cook. And with luck and perseverance, these foods will crowd out things like (to single out one egregious example from hundreds of its competitors) KFC’s Chicken Pot Pie, which costs about $5 (so much for the myth of cheap fast food; a terrific meal for four can be put together for $10); contains nearly 700 calories, more than half of which come from fat; and has well over 50 ingredients — most of which cannot be purchased by normal consumers anywhere — including things like “chicken pot pie flavor” and MSG.

By becoming a cook, you can leave processed foods behind, creating more healthful, less expensive and better-tasting food that requires less energy, water and land per calorie and reduces our carbon footprint. Not a bad result for us — or the planet.

So without further ado, here are Bittman's Three:

1. Simple Stir-Fry (and really, the variations on this are truly ENDLESS)

2. Lentils and Rice (or very easily beans and rice; my Black Beans & Rice is ridiculously simple)

3. Chopped Salad (check out Robin's School Garden Salad for the most divine dressing ever)

Turkey Day? There's an App For That

No but really: of course there is. I'm sure there are hundreds! But there's only one Thanksgiving helper app by the amazing foodie folks at Chow.

It just so happens I have one of those two-degrees of separation connections to the great founder of Chow, and she's really excited about this new app. So I'm helping her push it out a bit.

BUT, the truth is, I love Chow! Whenever I need restaurant advice or cooking advice, that site and its forums are where I turn to first.

So even though I don't have a smartphone, I'm downloading this app into my iTunes. Because you never know what kind of help you'll need come The Big Day!

My Favorite Things

If you're a new reader or have been a loyal and steadfast Recipe Exchanger since the days of yore, you may have noticed a new little list I've got on the right-hand side (below "Where I Shop"): My Favorite Things.

It's a collection of things I use and love in the kitchen -- and wholeheartedly recommend. As well as some non-kitchen, but food-related, items.

If you've got any can't-live-without Favorite Things of your own, I hope you'll share; I'm always looking for the best kitchen tools to round out my collection.

Dena's Favorite Things

• Microplane Grater/Zester (The Classic: I love this microplane for zesting citrus and grating spices like nutmeg.)
• Microplane Grater (Medium Ribbon: If you're not grating hard cheeses and chocolate with a microplane, you haven't lived!)
• Lodge Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron Skillet (The King of all pans. Deserted island + cast-iron skillet = just fine with me.)
• All-Clad Stainless Fry Pan (The King of the stainless pan. Seriously. All-Clad is worth the $$$.)
• Wusthof Chef's Knife (The ultimate chef's knife. Indispensable.)
• Chicago Metallic Jelly Roll Pan (The only baking sheet I ever want to use.)
• San Marzano Organic Canned Tomatoes (San Marzano tomatoes make the best sauce. They're far from local, but at least they're organic!)
• The New Best Recipe (This is my food bible. If you want the best recipe with exact instructions that has been taste-tested to perfection, the Cook's Illustrated folks are who you turn to.)
  
• How To Cook Everything (My secondary food bible. I love how Mark Bittman makes everything easy and simple, and shows you how to take 1 recipe and give it endless variations.)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma (The seminal work from Rebbe Pollan on how our current food systems do not work, and how we need to change.)
  
• Food Rules (The follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma that answers the questions you're left with after reading that book, "What should I eat? And how?")
  
• Like Water for Chocolate (The book: My very favorite novel about food and eating. It is as lush and delicious as your favorite meal.)
• Like Water for Chocolate (The movie: Amazingly, the movie version of the book is, in my opinion, actually better! I adore this movie. I laughed, I cried, I got really, really hungry.)

What am I missing/forgetting?

The Splendid Table

My favorite way to cook is listening to NPR on my kitchen radio -- from All Things Considered to Fresh Air to Car Talk. My very, very favorite program to listen to while cooking is The Splendid Table. On Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), The Splendid Table is played Sunday evenings, a perfect time for cooking a warm and homemade meal.

It's a fantastic show about food, cooking, and eating. They just added a new feature called "Stump the Cook," (should sound familiar to anyone who listens to Car Talk!) in which someone calls in, gives the host, Lynn, a list of five random ingredients from their fridge or pantry, and Lynn then has to make up a recipe using those five ingredients. Her recipe is then judged on its worthiness by the one and only Christopher Kimball of America's Test Kitchen fame. Fun! And can be pretty hilarious. I so want to call in one of these days.

One thing I learned this past Sunday that I had always wondered about and never known (did you know this?):

Baking Powder and Baking Soda: Baking soda is direct leavening - it reacts instantly but needs an acid ingredient to start the reaction. Baking powder contains in its mix the exact amount of acid needed for the soda (1 teaspoon baking powder includes 1/4 teaspoon baking soda) and reacts in different stages so you have more control. Baking powder will be labeled "double acting" or "triple acting." In a recipe, the correct amount of baking powder is 1 teaspoon per cup of flour (at the maximum 1-1/4 teaspoons); for baking soda it's 1/4 teaspoon per cup of flour. Get the leavening right and you'll have lighter, finer textured cakes.


I highly recommend checking The Splendid Table out, and I actually highly recommend this past Sunday's show -- listen to the podcast the next time you're cooking!

Seasoning

Not the kind of seasoning you think, silly.

I'm talking seasoning a cast iron skillet. This is the first thing you do when you get it home, and something you can do every so often to keep it in good shape.

Unsalted butter is the recommended seasoner. (If you're vegan, you could use a vegetable oil with a high smoke threshold, like sunflower.) But let's be real: butter always makes everything better, doesn't it?

First, rinse your new skillet with hot water and dry it off. (And that's it -- NO SOAP.)
Then take your butter or oil and give your skillet a light coating all around the inside.

Then put it in your oven and set it to 400F. Leave it in there for about 15 - 20 minutes or so -- enough time for the oven to get hot and the pan to really get all seasoned, with the butter baking in.

Take the pan out and let it cool down on your stovetop. Careful -- your pan will be very hot!

Once it's cool to the touch, wipe it down with a paper towel to get rid of the excess butter.

And now you can store it and cook in it, full steam ahead.

I do this with my cast iron skillets every so often, to keep 'em in tip top shape. This cute little 8" skillet you see here is a new one I brought home this weekend (joy! and thanks, honey!) and needed some seasoning TLC.

I've fried up an egg and other such things in him since, and he's non-stick and perfect, as expected.

Still Tasty

Still Tasty.

No, that's not the working title of my memoirs.

It's an awesome site that I heard about from a friend blogger that gives you the answer to the eternal question we've all asked ourselves after leaving pizza out overnight by mistake:

"Can I still eat this???"


In fact, they answer that very question! (Not to my satisfaction, however: I am all about eating pizza leftovers, whether they made it into the fridge or not.)

And they answer the question my dear friend Winston and I have often asked ourselves: Why/how on earth does bottled water have an expiration date?

We need wonder no longer. And, it turns out, we need replace our earthquake water no longer to continue to replace our earthquake water, simply because of the plastic in which it comes -- what a waste. If anyone knows of a way to store water safely in large non-plastic containers, I wanna know!

And now that we're heading into the fruity months of spring and summer, I love this guide on how to store fruit and get the most out of it. Because nothing's worse than rotting fruit -- that just has always struck me as really bad juju/feng shui/karma.

Meal Planning for Beginners

How do you make a menu for the week?

I realized, after posting my menu plan on Monday and receiving the following comment from my friend Nzinga, that I've been just assuming meal planning comes easy and is something everyone knows how to do automatically.

"Seeing this post in my inbox today reminded me that I've been meaning to create weekly meal plans for...oh, I dunno, a few years now. It seems way more necessary now that we've got the kidlet and want to spend less on impromptu "missing ingredient trips". Getting started seems a little overwhelming, though."

Clearly I was wrong -- and I should be the first to know this, because when I first started meal planning six years ago, I had no idea where to begin! It was agonizing. I turned to my friends and got ideas from them, and eventually was able to do it all on my own.

So, a step-by-step meal planning tutorial for today!

Meal Planning for Beginners
(so as to avoid the overwhelm)

To begin meal planning without getting totally overwhelmed, we'll stick with the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. We'll start small with planning for three meals to cook and you can work your way up from there.

1.) Set aside 10 minutes on Sunday or Monday to sit down with a piece of paper and pen.

2.) Think about your week to come -- how many nights do you need to cook? Do you have plans any nights this week that mean you'll be eating out or getting take-out?

3.) Since we're starting small and simply, we'll only meal plan for three nights. Your first meal will be the one that is easiest for you to cook, the one that comes to mind first.

For some people, this is pasta of some sort, either with a simple tomato sauce or dressed with garlic and olive oil. What is it for you? What is the first easy dish that comes to mind? Whatever that is, it is your First Meal. Write that down.

4.) For your Second and Third Meals, do you have any other dishes that spring to mind? If not, you could try:

--- Picking up a bag of frozen potstickers like I mentioned on Monday and adding in one or two veggies for a very simple and inexpensive but filling stirfry.

--- My easy and tasty Sesame-Soy Chicken with a green vegetable on the side (I often serve with chard or kale sauteed with garlic).

--- Healthy and hearty Black Beans & Rice -- this is a one-pot meal that satisfies. And it's really very simple and fast to make. This Cabbage Salad makes a great side if you feel like you need one.

--- Too hot for beans and rice where you are? This Curried Chicken Salad will not disappoint. Steam some artichoke or roast some asparagus (or both, like I often do), and you've got a complete, delicious meal.

5.) Now that you've got three meals written down, you've got your menu!

6.) All you need to do now is figure what ingredients you do not have on hand. I usually look at each meal's recipe individually and figure out what I'll need for each, writing it on my grocery list.

And you're done! Off to the store with you. You are now set for three nights of delicious home-cooked meals. With only ONE trip to the grocery store. How about that!

If you have other ideas or ways about planning out your week's menu, I'd love to hear about them! Please do share!

The Best Food Article I've Read All Year

Okay so it's been all of 7 days in this year. But The New York Times' own Mark Bittman's* "Fresh Start for a New Year? Let's Start in the Kitchen" article would be a great one anytime of year.

Basically, Bitty breaks it down for us and tells us to start 2009 with a clean slate of a kitchen. He simply and directly tells us what we need around the kitchen, what we can get rid of, and lots of short and simple little recipes to enliven our cooking.

It is so good I almost want to print it out and pin it up.

Reading through, there's a lot he recommends that I already do, and I felt like patting myself on the back (Parmesan in our house = never the green can, always the real freshly grated kind). Yay! I win.

But then...there's also a lot I don't do, and want to explore (Beans in our house = always canned, haven't tackled dried). Shoot. I am a total slacker.

So I'm going to take his advice. I'm totally going to try using dried beans this year at some point, and try to work my way through his list and see how else I can make my kitchen a little more real and flavorful.

What about you? What recommendations do you already do? And what are you guilty of?


* For any other Bittman fans out there, this profile, "The Making of the Minimalist," in the Observer from a few weeks ago is great!

10 Ways To Improve Cooking

Yes, this is old. But it is still so relevant!

My favorite is #1 -- hubby grows me rosemary and thyme on our front porch in a little planter. I love that!

And I know my husband's favorite will be #4. Definitely.

How To Use EVOO

Ah, extra-virgin olive oil. It can be complex, luscious, and decadent or simple and functional. It's ubiquitous and it ranges in price from super cheap to WTF!

And how to know when to use which kind or for what?

Grist has a great article explaining it all. And there's a great recipe at the bottom for skordalia -- a spread made of potatoes, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.

If you don't have time to read the whole thing, the long and short of it is:

• Use very high quality EVOO with strong and complex flavors mostly on its own -- you don't want to use it in anything where it will be overpowered. That would just be a waste.
• Use a still high-quality but not as high-quality EVOO for things like pesto or that get a lot of flavor from other ingredients so that the olive oil is still adding to and matching the flavors.
• Use a "cheaper yet still good-quality olive oil or an expeller-pressed canola oil" for cooking or when you are applying heat. Heat of any sort breaks down olive oil's flavor and thus renders the amazing flavors of a really special, high-quality EVOO pointless.

My favorite part of the article? "Essentially, [when you buy a very high-quality EVOO], you're buying a sauce. Use it that way."

YUM. I am now going to go home and bathe in extra-virgin olive oil.

* With a tip to my girl Rachael Ray. For you haters, sorry, but I love her. Her 30 Minute Meals changed my life -- made me realize I could cook dinner every night and that I didn't have to be a gourmet chef to do so. I could just be me, warts and all. And I know, I used to hate how she says "EVOO" and then explains what it means, but now I find it endearing.

Pressing Tofu

 

This is what does the trick in my kitchen when I need to get tofu ready for sauteeing or stir-frying. Leave it like this for 10-15 minutes, and your tofu will fry better and the dish will be less watery overall.

Understanding Heat

The New York Times has a GREAT and very fascinating article on what they call "the invisible ingredient" in all of our recipes and all of our cooking: heat.

Understanding how heat works makes us better -- and more energy-efficient, I might add -- cooks. It makes our food taste better. It can make a good steak into a magnificent one. It can make what could be a delectable roast into a dry, stringy one.

And who ever knew that gas burners transmit only 35-40% of their heat to the pan? And electric 70%, and induction 90%? Makes you re-think what an excellent kitchen would/should look like!

Brining Makes It Better

It's been a while since I posted a recipe, and while this brining recipe would have been very handy to have posted before Thanksgiving, Chanukkah, and Christmas, better late than never, no? And at least it's in time for New Year's!

My husband's wonderful boss' interest and curiosity has been piqued enough (by my husband's extolling the many virtues of brining) to give brining a whirl this year. Hubby's boss is thinking of brining a duck, which I think will be lovely. Brining really does make everything (well, almost everything) better!

And who better to give us the full ins and outs on brining than the masters at Cooks Illustrated? Download a pdf for the full info on brining, or follow the simple brine formula below to make your own mouth-wateringly flavorful and juicy bird.



I know my delicious heirloom breed Thanksgiving turkey would not have been anywhere near as tender without having brined it the night before cooking.

A Basic Brine for Richard

- 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp Morton's Kosher Salt OR 1/4 table salt (if you must use the Cargill-produced Diamond Crystal kosher salt, then you'd want 1/2 cup of it)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- Any aromatics or herbs you'd like to add to marinade (ie, garlic, rosemary, etc.)
- 1 quart of water

(You want to use 1 quart of brine per pound of meat.)

Combine in a container large enough to hold the brine AND your bird, or use a brining bag/ziploc bag. Stir to dissolve salt and sugar. Make sure your bird is fully submerged and covered by brine if it's not in a brining bag. Leave it to soak up the brine and do its thing for an hour per pound -- though not less than 30 minutes!

(When I did my Thanksgiving turkey, I didn't have a container large enough so I left the turkey in breast-side down for most of the night and then flipped him when there was a quarter of the time remaining.)

Want to know why and how the heck brining works?
America's Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated explains it this way:

We find that soaking turkeys (as well as chicken and even pork chops) in a saltwater solution before cooking best protects delicate white meat. Whether we are roasting a turkey or grilling chicken parts, we have consistently found that brining keeps the meat juicier. Brining also gives delicate (and sometimes mushy) poultry a meatier, firmer consistency and seasons the meat down to the bone. (We also find that brining adds moisture to pork and shrimp and improves their texture and flavor when grilled.)

How does brining work? Brining promotes a change in the structure of the proteins in the muscle. The salt causes protein strands to become denatured, or unwound. This is the same process that occurs when proteins are exposed to heat, acid, or alcohol. When protein strands unwind, they get tangled up with one another, forming a matrix that traps water. Salt is commonly used to give processed meats a better texture. For example, hot dogs made without salt would be limp.

In most cases, we add sugar to the brine. Sugar has little if any effect on the texture of the meat, but it does add flavor and promotes better browning of the skin.

Chop Garlic First: Your Heart & Health Will Thank You

The New York Times ran a great article on unlocking garlic's health benefits through cooking. I love this -- we all know garlic is good for you, but instead of reaching for a pill, just incorporate it into what you eat!

And for any of you who've been reading this blog for any length of time, you KNOW we love our garlic around Casa Dena.

What thrilled me was to learn that "The concentration of garlic extract used in the latest study was equivalent to an adult eating about two medium-sized cloves per day." What cracked me up was that the NYTimes posited this as a "downside." As if two cloves per day per person is the most ridiculously unachievable goal ever.

Are you kidding me? When I cook, I'm at least getting two cloves per person in there. At least. And when we eat out, if there's a menu item that mentions garlic, I'm all over it. So I'm lucky, I guess.

But really -- I feel like it's an urban myth that garlic is hated because of its strong scent and flavor. But I feel like everyone I know loves it as much as I do. What's going on?

What about you: do you love it or hate it? And if you hate it, do you eat it anyway, because you know it's good for you?

One more important thing to note about cooking with garlic: "Many home chefs mistakenly cook garlic immediately after crushing or chopping it, added Dr. Kraus. To maximize the health benefits, you should crush the garlic at room temperature and allow it to sit for about 15 minutes. That triggers an enzyme reaction that boosts the healthy compounds in garlic."

So now, I am chopping my garlic first, trying to give it as much time as possible to do its magical little thing. But no pre-chopped garlic for me; it loses its special oils if it sits around for days. Plus I like cooking from scratch with garlic. And then I can adjust the size of my chop. Sometimes you really do want it sliced thinly, or chopped into larger bits.

The Elements of Cooking

Michael Ruhlman's new sideblog based on his new book, The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen, is a wonderful way to learn more about the basics of cooking, the foundational building blocks upon which any cook -- whether professional chef or someone like me, who just cooks at home for family and friends -- creates her own flavor and style of cooking.

I found that when I grasped the basics of how certain foods worked -- for example, the different ways garlic will cook: sauteed, toasted, roasted, etc., depending on the heat of your pan and the way you prep it -- I was a better cook and was better able to use and interpret recipes and create dishes on my own.

For me, I realized somewhere along the way that nearly every dish I cook has the same, simple beginnings: a few glugs of olive oil in a medium-hot pan, chopped garlic, and chopped onion. From there, the dish could turn into anything. Add bell pepper and cumin and it is the base for my black beans. Add thyme and rosemary and it's a more sophisticated chicken or steak dish. Now I knew how to improvise and add my own flair to my food.

Anyway, I highly recommend reading Ruhlman's blog...one of his recent posts is on water, which seems so simple, but that bit at the end is something all of us have needed to or could stand to learn at some point:

Keeping the effects of water in mind will help you sauté better. The browning of food adds flavor to the food. But food won’t brown at low temperatures/when water is present. So if you want a piece of meat to brown, make sure its surface is dry. If you want mushrooms to brown, they have to go into a pan that will brown them before they begin releasing their water. Water is fundamental to life and fundamental to cooking.

Tantalizing Turkey Trussing

Dude this video is worth watching for the turkey-trussing trick alone.

Look at that woman go with her twine! She could be very popular at Folsom Street Fair with those skills. That turkey looks like it's having a grand old time in her able hands. I wonder if the turkey knows the safeword?

I have bookmarked this video so I can do it myself and follow along tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Recipe Round-up

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the idea of a holiday in which we actually carve out and take time to be thankful. And in which we take the time to get together with family, whether it's our family of origin or the family we've created from scratch, and just cook and eat and be together. As my friend Liz says, "I love a holiday that is all about food."

So many of my favorite food blogs and websites are offering up their favorite recipes and tips so I figured rather than re-invent the wheel, I'd do a little round-up of all my favorites in case anyone is looking for a new, or a traditional, Thanksgiving recipe.

I will be posting pics of my Thanksgiving feast (I'm hosting and cooking for the first time!) as well as one of my favorite recipes, which can be made year-round, after the big day.

1. Serious Eats' Serious Thanksgiving - this is like the mother of all recipe roundups. They've got some DELICIOUS sounding recipes from one of my food heroes, Ruth Reichl, and Gourmet, and many, many others.
2. CityMama's Thanksgiving Recipes - one of my favorite food bloggers is posting some unique recipes that she always has on her table.
3. Cook's Illustrated's Thanksgiving Guide - the best of the best. Whenever I want to know how something is supposed to be done, or when I need a recipe that will tell me exactly how I am supposed to do something, I go to them. If they recommend it, it's got to be good.
4. Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Thanksgiving Recipes - I subscribe to this magazine, which is the quick & easy version of Martha's recipes. They've got some good ones that will definitely be on our Thanksgiving table!
   

Salting Your Steak

Mmmm...steak. There's nothing like a grass-fed juicy steak with that seared-in crust. And now we have the secret to that delicious steaky-ness: salting 60 minutes ahead of time. It sounds kinda crazy, but if Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen says to do it, I believe it.

How To Chop an Onion

One of my fave food bloggers has posted a FANTASTIC step by step photo tutorial on how to chop an onion, with special tips on how to do it with fewer tears!

She mentions my method, which is to refrigerate them; for some reason, a cold onion produces fewer tears. I've also heard that chewing gum while chopping onions helps. Go figure.