The term "Thai basil" can refer to three different types of basil common in Thai cooking -- Queen of Siam basil, Holy Basil or Horapa basil. Horapa is the most commonly used Thai basil in the United States. It has purple stems, small greenish purple leaves, and a licoricey taste that is different from Italian sweet basil.
Thai basil adds a subtle anise flavor and perfume when added to hot soups, stir-fries or curries just before serving. Or it can be eaten fresh in salads, wrapped in a lettuce leaf with mint, or fried in spring rolls.
Recipe: Beef Pho (Cookthink)
Recipe: Thai Carrot-Cucumber Salad (Cookthink)
Reference: What is pho? (Cookthink)
Reference: What is sriracha? (Cookthink)
How to make homemade beef stock
How to make homemade beef stock
Got some leftover beef bones? Make beef stock. It's a long but easy process. Here's what you do.First, take several beef bones along with large pieces of onion, carrot and celery and place them in a shallow roasting pan. Roast them at 400F for about 45 minutes or until they brown.Put the vegetables and meats in a large pot with star anise, cinnamon, thyme and enough water to cover. Simmer for 4 hours or so.When it's done, strain the liquid into a bowl. Set it in the refrigerator for several hours, and the fats will congeal to the top. Once they are solid, you can just lift that layer away with a spoon or tongs.Recipe: Beef Pho (Cookthink)
Reference: What is pho? (Cookthink)
Most of the heat in a chile pepper -- whether jalapeño, serrano, habanero, or another -- comes from the white ribs and seeds. Removing both reduces the chile's heat and allows more of the pepper's flavor to come through.
First, cut the pepper in half lengthwise. If you want the halves to stay intact for larger slices or a large dice, just trim out the seeds and ribs, cut out the stem, and slice the pepper as thick or thin as you like.
Otherwise, it's easier to get the seeds and ribs out if you cut each half in half again.
To get the seeds and ribs out, hold each quarter by the end. With the knife parallel to the cutting board, slice across the ribs and seeds. When you get to the top of the pepper, turn the knife downward toward the cutting board and chop off the stem with the same motion. (Here, we used a Granton Santoku knife; you may prefer a smaller paring knife.)
Reference: Help! I ate a hot pepper! (Cookthink)
Reference: How to seed a chile pepper (Cookthink)
Reference:: Why are some jalapenos hotter than others? (Cookthink)
Green onions are a somewhat renewable resource in your kitchen. When you finish slicing off what you need for soups, bread, or whatever else you use them for, hang on to the white bub plus a scant inch of the green part. Placed in a small cup of water on a sunny windowsill, the onions will shoot up again and keep you well stocked through several re-growings. Change the water every few days, and clip off pieces as you need them.
Recipe: Scallion and Radish Soup (Barbara Kafka)
Recipe: Green Onion Beer Bread (Coconut & Lime)
Recipe: Boiled Eggs With Green Onions, Bell Pepper And Ginger (cookthink)
What's the difference between a green onion and a scallion?
What's the difference between a green onion and a scallion?
The words green onion and scallion are generally interchangeable; they both most often refer to immature members of the sweet onion family.
In general, green onions or scallions are vegetables with a white base and long straight green leaves that can be eaten raw or cooked (both parts). In Europe, the term spring onion refers to green onions that have a fatter but mild white bulb and long green leaves.
recipe: Boiled Eggs With Green Onions, Bell Pepper And Ginger (cookthink)
recipe: Green Onion Beer Bread (Coconut & Lime)
You can leave basil leaves whole and add them to salads and hot dishes toward the end of cooking, tear them into pieces for more capricious basil flavor, or thinly slice them. To avoid bruising the basil, slide a sharp knife down and across the basil with a deliberate, smooth stroke. A clean cut will darken the leaves less than a pounding cut.
To slice basil, first stack the leaves together.
You can either roll them up like a cigar and slice through them to make a chiffonade, or just slice away at them as they are.
Once a prize kept under lock and key in wealthy households, sugar is now ubiquitous and comes in many forms. Most commercial sugar is made from cane or beet root. Here's a look at the most common types of sugar used in the kitchen.
Granulated white sugar: White sugar is highly refined and made from sugarcane or beets. This all-purpose refined white sugar has small but fairly coarse crystals and is used to sprinkle on food, sweeten beverages, or add to dishes during cooking. Golden granulated sugar is a brown sugar made from sugar cane molasses that is similar but has a light brown color.
Castor (caster) or superfine sugar: This refined white sugar has fine crystals that dissolve more quickly than regular granulated sugar, making it a good choice for baking meringues. Golden castor sugar is made from unrefined cane sugar.
Brown sugar: Brown sugar is nothing more than white sugar that has been mixed with molasses to color it and give it a moist texture. Light brown sugar has less molasses than dark brown sugar. Brown sugar should not be confused with raw sugar, which has a similar color and taste but is actually the residue from processed sugarcane.
Turbinado sugar: A sugar cane extract that is made by steaming unrefined raw sugar. It has large crystals and a slight molasses flavor. It's a shade paler than brown sugar and can be substituted for brown sugar in recipes. We like to use turbinado sugar for sprinkling on top of muffins, cookies and scones. It holds its texture well and, when cooked, has a nice sweet crunch.
Demerara Sugar: True Demerara sugar is raw or partly refined sugar with large crystals, but some impostors are nothing more than white sugar stained with molasses.
Muscovado Sugar: This raw cane sugar comes in light and dark varieties and is used to make cakes and desserts.
Powdered, icing or confectioner's sugar: This sugar is made by reducing granulated sugar to a powder and mixing it with starch to prevent it from lumping up. It's used to decorate cakes and can also be used in making sweet dishes and baked goods.
The flavor of a shallot falls somewhere between red onion and garlic, often without the pungency of either. The shallot's subtle flavor works in soups, stews, sauces, and pretty much anywhere else you'd use an onion or garlic.
To dice a shallot, first cut it in half through the root.
Next, cut the papery end (not the root end) off and discard it. This will make the skin easier to peel away.
Make a series of vertical cuts through the shallot, without cutting all the way through to the end.
Then just rotate the shallot 90 degrees, and slice across the vertical cuts to make a dice.
The flavor of a shallot falls somewhere between red onion and garlic, often without the pungency of either. The shallot's subtle flavor works in soups, stews, sauces and pretty much anywhere else you'd use an onion or garlic.
Thinly sliced shallots are nice to use in place of sliced onions, say in a stir-fry where you want onion flavor but you want it in a subtle, less aggressive way.To slice a shallot, first cut it in half through the root.Next, cut the papery end (not the root end) off and discard it. This will make the skin easier to peel away.Now just slice across the shallot crosswise. Cut the slices thin for quick-cooking dishes and thick for longer cook times, like a stew.
Most of the United States knows only one sriracha: the one produced by Los Angeles-based Huy Fong Foods that comes in a tall plastic bottle with a green cap and a rooster logo. Huy Fong has been the sriracha producer in the United States since the 1980s (though imitators of the green-capped original are on the rise).
Despite the monopoly in this country, sriracha is a general name for a hot sauce that was first made in Si Racha, Thailand. Sriracha is a sweet, tangy paste made with sun-ripened chile peppers, garlic, vinegar, sugar and salt. Sriracha is thicker and not quite as hot as Louisiana-style hot sauces like Tabasco and Frank's RedHot.
Most grocery stores carry Huy Fong Sriracha on the international foods aisle. You can find authentic Thai sriracha at Asian food markets.
Cilantro is the parsley of the East, where it's known as "coriander leaves" or "dhani". (In Mexico, where it's also very popular, it's sometimes called "Mexican parsley".)
If you like cilantro (and some people don't at all), the herb is an easy way to add a beautifully fresh, sweet, fruity flavor to any dish.
To prep it, first rinse and shake dry the leaves. Hold the bouquet at an angle with the leaves against the cutting board. Run your knife down the side of the bouquet to slice away the leaves. It's fine to remove some of the tender stems along with the leaves. (In fact, for salsas, spice pastes, curries and some longer-cooking dishes, the stems add essential, concentrated cilantro flavor.)
Now just run your knife back and forth across the pile of leaves, chopping them as coarsely or as finely as you need to. The closer to the end of the cooking you plan to add the cilantro, the finer you'll want to chop it. But since cilantro is so tender it's usually okay to keep the the chop coarse.
Now that you know how to prep it, try some cilantro recipes at Cookthink.com.
A Chinese fruit shaped like its name and containing a small seed in each of its points, star anise is cultivated before ripening from small Southwestern Chinese evergreen trees. It is unrelated to anise seed, although both get their flavor from a compound called anethol.
Star anise has a more bitter taste than anise seed, and is used as a spice and infusion in Asian cuisines. It can also serve as cheaper alternative to anise in baked goods and liqueurs.
One of the five ingredients in Chinese five-spice powder and a major component of garam masala, star anise flavors Vietnamese pho broth and Southern Indian biryani. It is also an ingredient in the bird flu remedy Tamiflu.
What should you do if you eat a pepper that sets your tongue on fire?
Do not drink beer. Water won’t help either. (In a Caribbean folktale, children drown in a river trying to cool their tongues after eating habanero stew. See Dave Dewitt and Nancy Gerlach's The Pepper Pantry for the full story.) Capsaicin, the chemical that makes a hot pepper hot, doesn’t dissolve in water, so even ice water won’t help remove the heat.
Your best bet? Get milk. Because capsaicin is fat-soluble, a compound in milk can actually pull the capsaicin off your tongue and relieve some of the burn. Another option: eat bread or rice to absorb the heat. Cucumber can also have a cooling effect.
If you are feeling brave (or masochistic), you could try eating another pepper. According Robert Berkley, the author of Peppers: A Cookbook, you can build up a resistance to capsaicin by eating more chile peppers. With Berkley’s approach, you get the added high of a capsaicin-triggered endorphin release. Before you know it, you might be addicted to the hot little things.
Reference: How to seed a chile pepper (Cookthink)
Reference:: Why are some jalapenos hotter than others? (Cookthink)
Biting into a raw jalapeño will probably create quite a sting, but on the pepper scale of heat (the Scoville Scale), jalapeños are not really that hot. If you seed and core the pepper, you may not get any heat at all out of a jalapeño.
Some jalapeños are hotter than others. Mature peppers that are dark green and a little wrinkled will be hotter than younger ones. The hottest jalapeños are grown in the hot, dry climates of New Mexico or Arizona.
If you don't know where a jalapeño was grown, you may have to taste it yourself to measure the heat. Don't rely on someone else to tell you whether or not a pepper is too hot. Some people are more sensitive to capsaicin (the chemical that makes hot peppers hot) than others. In junior high, I watched a guy drink a bottle of Tabasco on a dare. He didn't even dab his forehead. If you want to try that at home, you can build up your tolerance to capsaicin by eating more chile peppers and hot sauce.
My father-in-law, Billy, eats raw jalapeños whole from tip to stem. He tells me they are good for his health, and the American Dietetic Association agrees. Peppers are rich in phytochemicals that appear to provide anti-inflammatory benefits. Medical studies show that capsaicin may act as a blood thinner. Spicing dishes with cayenne or pepper flakes also reduces the need for extra salt. Hot sauce, which is actually more salt than pepper, is another story. - Elizabeth Hughey
The Scoville scale measures the hotness of a pepper.
A "Scoville Unit" is actually a measure of capsaicin, the chemical that makes a hot pepper hot. Most capsaicin is found in the ribs and seeds of a pepper, which is why seeding a pepper makes it's heat less potent.
You might have noticed a Scoville rating on your bottle of hot sauce. Original Tabasco has a rating of 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. The hottest readily available peppers, Scotch Bonnet and habaneros, share a rating of 100,000–350,000. India's Bhut Jolokia pepper is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest known pepper. It measures 1,000,000 heat units. (Pepper spray weapons hit 5,300,000 units.)
The rating of a bell pepper? Zero -- no heat from this pepper.
Reference: Habanero vs. serrano vs. jalapeño
Reference: How to dice a jalapeño
Reference: Help! I ate a hot pepper!
(image courtey of wikipedia)
