3 posts tagged “cooking”
In a quest to finish up the two large heads of lettuce I received in my organic farm share box this past week, I am about to have my third Caesar salad in as many days. Even though technically they aren't Caesar salads (I am using green and red lettuce, not romaine), they just as tasty, especially with homemade fixins: dressing, croutons and chicken grilled on my little Weber. Almost as good as the Caesar salad at the awesome Italian deli near where I used to work in Soho.
And everything was so quick and easy to prepare! I used my blender to pulverize the tiny anchovies, garlic, oil, etc. into the dressing. Croutons were equally simple: I cut a couple of french demi-baguettes in crouton-sized cubes, tossed with a little olive oil and kosher salt, then baked in the oven for ten minutes til crispy.
Sadly, Josh and I finished up the chicken in our salads last night, but that was grilled with a brushing of olive oil, more kosher salt and pepper, then sliced crosswise into strips. Toss everything together with a sprinkle of parmesean cheese and (as Gordon Ramsay would say): DONE.
Since I forgot to take pictures of the salads, here's one from my other current food obsession: rainbow chard. Thankfully, I also got a big bunch of the stuff in my weekly farm share box. Chopped rainbow chard stems are both pretty and tasty, especially when sauteed with finely diced bacon.
There was an interview with the CEO of Kraft Foods in yesterday's Wall Street Journal that I found both hilarious and depressing. Here's a choice excerpt:
WSJ: Do people still want to cook?Ms. Rosenfeld: A lot of people consider microwaving their nacho chips with Cheez Whiz on it as cooking. I think consumers very much like to cook. I think the definition of cooking has changed dramatically. Whereas our mothers were more inclined to using their oven and their stove when they cooked, today's consumers think about using their microwave. They think about assembly as opposed to necessarily cooking.
I'm excited about this new product we just launched in January called Deli Creations. These are hot sandwiches that are made with our high-quality ingredients like Oscar Mayer meats, Kraft cheese and A1 and Grey Poupon sauces. But what's so cool about them is you stick them in your microwave, it takes 60 seconds and it tastes freshly baked.
WSJ: Do people feel like that's cooking?
Ms. Rosenfeld: In all honesty, no.
Who taught you how to cook?
Submitted by Donna.
I don't remember ever being explicitly taught to cook, though I certainly absorbed all of the basics from my mother. She cooked dinner from scratch for our family almost every night. And around the holidays there was always something baking up in the oven.
It wasn't until I got older and found myself in the kitchen with friends who really didn't know how to cook that I realized that I already knew things like the importance of heating up oil before tossing something in the frying pan, why you should always set the timer for sooner than the recipe says, and how a written recipe is always a jumping-off point for your own creativity.
Tonight I made beef short ribs with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and I definitely wouldn't have had the nerve to try a two-day, multi-step, multi-hour-cook-time recipe (the ribs) without the culinary foundation that mom provided. And the results were more than edible:
