We bruise herbs to release their aromatic oils. To bruise herbs, gently roll and rub a bunch of sprigs in your hand or tap loose leaves with a mallet or the back of a knife.
A recipe may call for bruising herbs in lieu of chopping them when the herbs are not intended to be eaten. We add sprigs of bruised thyme to simmering vegetable soup and then remove the sprigs before serving. Make flavored oil by stuffing bruised rosemary or basil into a bottle of olive oil and letting it stand for at least a day.
A purée is a thick, soft dish that's made by pressing cooked foods through a sieve, or mixing them in a blender or food processor.
Vegetable purées are either used as a base for soup -- thinned with water or stock -- or eaten as a side dish. Tomato purée, used for sauces and soups, is made by removing seeds from lightly cooked tomatoes and straining the pulp. Fruit purées are used to make sauces, mousses, soufflés and other preparations. Purées can also be made from anchovies, chicken livers, shrimp or salmon, and used as a filling for canapés.
Recipe: Butternut Squash And Banana Puree With Whiskey And Pecans (Cookthink)
Recipe: Parsnip And Orange Puree (Cookthink)
Reference: Tomato paste vs. tomato puree vs. tomato sauce (Cookthink)
What is extra-virgin olive oil?
What is extra-virgin olive oil?
Extra-virgin olive oil is the precious unrefined first result of cold-pressing olives to make a fruity liquid that contains less than one percent acid.
Extra-virgin olive oil is the most expensive olive oil variety, and it is best appreciated in salads or as a garnish to give preparations a final flourish. If you are using olive oil to cook, it's fine to use regular olive oil.
Greece is the #1 consumer of olive oil in the world and also the leading producer of extra virgin olive oils, which account for 82 percent of their olive oil production. The U.S. is not a member of the International Olive Oil Council (IOOC), which regulates olive oil standards worldwide, and the IOOC does not recognize the U.S. standards for extra-virgin oil.
There is much controversy in the olive oil world, with accusations of corruption and adulteration smearing consumer confidence and shedding doubt on the purity of so-called virgin olive oil.
What is the difference between stock and broth?
What is the difference between stock and broth?
The two terms are often used interchangeably but retain an aura of cloudiness like the unskimmed foam on a simmering pot of stock or broth.
Stock is the strained liquid that you get once you've cooked various meat, poultry, fish or seafood, vegetables, herbs and seasonings in water. Brown stock is made by browning bones and vegetables first in oil before adding water and/or wine to the pot.
Stock is the basis for many a soup, stew and features in many sauces, often reduced. White sauce is made from white stock made with chicken, veal or other poultry; brown sauces incorporate brown stock made from veal, beef or poultry meat and bones. A court-bouillon is also a stock. Vegetable stock is made with vegetables which may or may not have been first sautéed in oil or butter.
Broth is also the strained liquid that's left after you've cooked meat, poultry, fish or seafood, vegetables, herbs or seasonings in water. Broth is also called bouillon. Nevertheless, cubes of instant stock that is reconstituted with water as a cooking shortcut are called bouillon cubes. The liquid in a pot-au-feu is also called bouillon.
When we're sautéing potatoes alone or with other vegetables, making soup with them, or stirring them into stews, we usually cut them into cubes. It's not always necessary to peel the potato (especially smaller, waxier varieties), but sometimes you'll want to.To start the dice, cut the potato into planks lengthwise, You can vary the width of the slices depending on the size cubes you want.After you've cut the potato into planks, roll it a quarter turn and cut the planks into rectangular strips lengthwise.Holding the strips together, turn them and cut across the them crosswise to make cubes. This is a good time to use a knife with recesses along the blade, like a Santoku. The small indentions keep the potato from sticking to the knife during slicing.
Kosher salt is a bright-tasting white, coarse-grained salt made without additives (such as iodine).
It is called kosher salt in North America (elsewhere it's referred to as coarse-grain salt) because it is used to aid in the preparing of kosher meat that is salted after butchering in order to draw out the animal's blood. Kosher salt works particularly well because its large grains don't immediately dissolve on the surface of meat, drawing in liquid instead.
But you don't have to keep kosher to appreciate kosher salt, a favorite of cooks everywhere for its large flaky texture and clean taste that works in a variety of dishes.
If you're new to kosher salt, be aware that it doesn't always dissolve completely in baked goods and that its grains vary in size according to the manufacturer, so be sure to check the box for measurement conversions. The large flakes of kosher salt make it a nice finishing salt to sprinkle on dishes before serving.
Sage is one of the stronger herbs. Its flavor ranges from mild, warm and spicy to musky, heady and astringent. We commonly cook with it in the cooler months since it pairs well with rich dishes.
Sage’s best match might be with brown butter as a pasta sauce. But it also contrasts the fattiness of pork and sausage, makes roasted chicken more succulent, and complements heartier vegetables like sweet potatoes, squash and zucchini.
Large pieces of uncooked sage leaf and stem aren’t the most pleasant things to chew. You can finely chop them for quick-cooking or last minute appearances. Long cooking and higher heat (like with sage butter) softens the leaves.
To make clean even slices, roughly stack the leaves, roll them up like a cigar and hold them in place on the cutting board.
Then just slice the cigar crosswise into thin strips.
To coarsely chop the leaves for longer cooking dishes, run the knife back and forth across them a couple of times.
For quick-cooking dishes, keep going with the knife until the leaves are finely chopped.
Leeks are underappreciated and underused. Their flavor is mellow, complex and more subtle than other members of the onion family, and they go tender and silky when cooked.
They’re known for their role in potato and cream-based soups (like vichyssoise) and in winter stews. They’re delicious raw and sliced thin in salads, stir-fried with beef (or anything, for that matter), simmered in water and served hot or cold with a vinaigrette, braised whole in wine or stock, or brought in anywhere you’d use an onion.
No matter what form you want your leek to take, you’ll need to isolate and clean the usable white and light green parts.
Start by cutting off and discarding the root from the leek’s bottom end. If you’re planning to cook the leeks whole or as halves, try to leave enough of the fibrous white part above the roots to hold the halves together. If you’re planning to slice the leeks, you don’t need to be so exact here.
Next, chop off the tough top part of the leek between the light green and dark green parts (let's call it medium green). Either discard the dark green part, or rinse it well and use it to flavor a stock, broth, or poaching liquid.
Next, cut the leek in half lengthwise. If you’d like insurance that the leek will stay together for washing, leave the root end intact.
Now it’s time to get rid of the sand and soil that wedges between the leek’s layers. Be thorough here — a gritty bite is a deal-breaker. Rinse the leek under cold running water, making sure to spread the layers apart with your fingers to remove any hidden sand or soil.
Alernatley, If this is too much, you can take the short cut and slice them sand and all, and afterwards rinse them well in a colander submerged in a bowl of cold water and pat them dry.
Now all you have to do is finish cutting the leek in half lengthwise (if you haven’t already), and choose your slice - crosswise for little half moons, or lenghtwise for matchstick sized pieces. Remember the longer the cooking time, the thicker the slice should be to hold up well.
Measuring freshly ground black pepper
Measuring freshly ground black pepper
When a recipe calls for "freshly ground black pepper," it usually does so without suggesting an amount. In the instructions of the recipe, you’ll be told to "sprinkle [something] with freshly ground black pepper" or "generously season both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper" or "add freshly ground black pepper to taste."
In general, this makes sense. Cooking with black pepper is one of those things you just get a feel for as you spend more time in the kitchen. And descriptive measurements like "sprinkle" and "generously season" are hard to screw up: a light sprinkle is not going to be drastically different from a heavy sprinkle.
Still, we've been keeping track of pepper amounts for a while now, because we want our descriptive measurements to be more or less the same from recipe to recipe. How much pepper do we mean when we write "generously season?" What is the ideal amount of a Cookthink "sprinkle?"
And of course, there are times when it helps to have an exact amount for freshly ground black pepper. For certain casseroles and papillotes -- dishes that can’t be tasted for seasoning as they cook -- it's nice to have an exact baseline amount of pepper so that you don’t have to tweak it too much at the end for taste.
The problem is that it’s near impossible to grind accurately into any measuring spoon smaller than a tablespoon, and few recipes call for that much pepper. So how do you measure freshly ground black pepper?
One easy way is to go by turns of the grinder. I’ve carved an “X” onto the side of mine, a short and simple model with three settings: coarse, medium, fine.
I set the grind to medium and made 8 full rotations into a small bowl. Using a 1/8 teaspoon, I shoveled the ground pepper into another 1/8 teaspoon. Too much. I started over and stopped at 4 full rotations. It was a little light, so I made another full turn and got an almost level 1/8 teaspoon with 5 total rotations of the grinder.
I did the same for 1/4 teaspoon, 1/2 teaspoon and 1 teaspoon. I got the results you’d expect:
1/8 teaspoon = 5 full rotations
1/4 teaspoon = 10 full rotations
1/2 teaspoon = 20 full rotations
1 teaspoon = 40 full rotations
I repeated this in both the fine and coarse settings, and found them close enough to the medium not to worry too much about it.
So are these measurements helpful? In writing and testing recipes, yes. In practice, probably not, though I have often wondered, while standing over a stew grinding away, just how much pepper I’m adding. Now I know. - Chip
what you should know
The carrot is the Emmylou Harris of vegetables, best known for backing harmonies but really deserving of more attention for the solo work.
To wit, look up carrot in the index of most cookbooks and you'll find plenty of dishes that have carrot in them. What you won't find a lot of are carrot recipes -- recipes with "carrot" in the title.
Which is a shame: this orange root's sweet, earthy flavor and year-round availability should elevate it well beyond its role as a staple base vegetable. (For what it's worth, the carrot is Britain's third favorite vegetable.)
stick with sticks Unless you're into watery, processed nubs, avoid so-called baby carrots. Get fresh and slender carrots when you can, as they tend to be the tastiest. If you buy larger, older carrots, peel them and cut out their musty, woody core. Got a bunch of carrots that have gone soft? Revive them in an ice bath before using them.
what's up, doc? Carrots are rich in beta carotene, an orange pigment that gives the carrot its color. The body converts carotene to Vitamin A, a nutrient important for vision and bone growth. On the advice of the family doctor, Chip's father-in-law used to eat one carrot a day. After work. Reading the paper. With a martini.
roots Seventy years ago, Dorothea Lange spent time in and around Holtville, California, the "Carrot Capital of the World". Her photos from the area are worth looking at every now and then when you're feeling insufficiently thankful.
what you need
Do you Y peel or swivel?
Do you dump chopped vegetables right from the cutting board into the pan (and, like Chip, end up spilling them all over the stove)? Why not use a pastry scraper to transport them? Or you could use these cool melamine bowls to store the prepped veggies in until you're ready use them.
We're in prime carrot-planting season. If you've got a small patch of earth somewhere -- even a bare spot of the flower garden will do -- pick out some seeds and grow your own. If you're new to gardening, consult either Louise Rotte's Carrots Love Tomatoes or Sally Jean Cunningham's Great Gardening Companions.
Greatest carrot moment in the history of movies? In Gone with the Wind, when Scarlett rips a carrot from the earth and says, "...As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!"
what you do
Glazed carrots shine in contrast alongside a good steak. They shine as bright on their own. Even as dessert.
Let's say you've got only 20 minutes to prepare something filling for a vegetarian dropping by for an impromptu dinner: consider this citrus-thyme couscous with peas and carrots.
Same situation but it's a carnivore? Try this linguine with andouille, carrot and tarragon.
Carrots add sweetness and texture to black bean burritos with cilantro.
With so many variations, carrot salad never gets old: a basic carrot-mint salad, a grated carrot and celeriac salad, a Thai carrot-cucumber salad.
Could you use a muffin?
The French term chiffonade means "made of rags." In cooking, chiffonade is a technique for slicing herbs and leafy vegetables into long, thin strips. This method is useful for cooking tougher greens like kale and chard, which can be hard to chew when left in bigger pieces. It's also a nice way to slice up herbs like mint or basil to scatter over a dish or add to a salad.
To chiffonade something, stack and roll a small pile of leaves and then slice (or snip) them into thin ribbons.
Russet or Idaho potatoes have a high starch and low moisture content, meaning they bake well, are fluffy when mashed and make excellent French fries. Because they tend to fall apart when cooked, use a waxy variety when making a potato salad or a gratin.
Potato starch or potato flour, made by grinding cooked, dried potatoes, is a gluten-free thickening agent. Be careful not to boil a preparation once it has been thickened with potato starch. Potato starch is also an approved ingredient for Jewish Passover preparations, because it is not grain-based like cornstarch.
Store potatoes in a cool, dark place. Refrigeration will turn their starch to unwanted sugar, making them grow unpleasantly dark when cooked.
What does it mean to caramelize?
What does it mean to caramelize?
Well, two things, actually.
When it comes to dessert, caramelizing means to heat sugar until it liquifies and turns gold to dark brown depending on its temperature (around 320 to 350F on a candy thermometer). Custards such as crème brûlée are caramelized by sprinkling them with sugar and placing them either under a broiler or salamander or by torching the sugar until it forms a brittle burnt crust. Caramelizing can also technically mean to coat a mold with caramel so that it acts as a glaze when a custard or other dessert is turned out (as in crème caramel or flan).
We also use the word caramelize to describe what happens when we brown meat over high heat to draw out its natural sugars and create a flavorful crust. Vegetables with a high natural sugar content, such as onions, carrots or turnips, can also be caramelized by sautéing them in butter and a bit of water to prevent burning. Fruit such as apples or figs can also be caramelized by sautéing them in butter before sprinkling them with sugar, which gives them a lightly caramelized glaze.
