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.
Tongs are the most useful tool in the kitchen.
Having a good pair of tongs is like having a heatproof robotic arm in the kitchen. Consider a partial list of things you can do with a pair of tongs: stir something in a sizzling pan; flip something in a sizzling pan; move something around in a sizzling pan; spear something in a sizzling pan; push something in a sizzling pan to check for doneness; hold something above a sizzling pan to taste it; take something out of a sizzling pan. And that's just around a sizzling pan. Standing around a grill or reaching inside an oven, tongs are critical.
You can spend a small fortune on specialty tongs, but you don't have to. OXO's Good Grips stainless steel tongs are inexpensive and probably as special as you’ll ever need.
So here's our public service announcement - buy tongs now.
The word sauté actually comes from the French sauter, “to jump”. The jumping describes the constant motion of the food in the pan, which is caused by constant stirring and/or shaking the pan.
Sautéing usually requires only a small amount of oil (or butter) in a very hot pan, an environment in which keeping things moving is a top priority. (James Beard called sautéing a "fast, deft procedure.")
Though it's possible to sauté in just about any type of pan, the true sauté pan is wide and usually a couple of inches deep, with straight sides. Sauté pans are made pretty large to prevent the food from overcrowding, which can lead to too much moisture staying in the pan. If there is too much food in the pan, the moisture released will start to create steam, which interacts with the oil and leads to sticking.
What does it mean to devein a shrimp?
What does it mean to devein a shrimp?
"Deveining" has nothing to do with veins. To devein a shrimp is to remove the black threadlike intestinal tract that runs along its back.
Deveining is a good idea when working with larger shrimp, because the digestive tract can contain grit. But whether or not to devein smaller shrimp is a matter of preference. Some people think the flavor of a dish is enhanced by leaving it in (or that it's just too much trouble to remove the harmless tract). The perfectionists among us remove it for aesthetic purposes.
We're not perfectionists here, so we rarely devein shrimp. If you're set on doing it, there are a few shrimp deveining devices on the market -- such as OXO's shrimp cleaner -- but you can just as easily make do with a knife. Peel the shrimp first, then run the tip of a sharp knife along the shrimp's back to lift out the delicate black vein, removing any pieces that break off with your fingers.
Recipe: Broiled Thai Shrimp (Cookthink)
Recipe: Spicy Linguini With Shrimp And Mint (Cookthink)
Feta cheese is the most famous Greek invention since democracy. Traditionally made from sheep's (or goat's) milk, commercial producers now also use cow's milk to make the bright white, rindless cheese. Feta is cured and stored in a salty whey brine and has a distinct tangy taste and crumbly texture.
Feta is made by draining curdled milk in molds or cloth bags. It is then cut into slices, salted, and these days, packed in whey brine-filled barrels or plastic tubs, although the best feta is salted and aged rather than drowned in brine. The flavor and level of moisture in the cheese depends on the cheesemaker.
Feta-like cheese is now made in many parts of the world. In Europe the cheese is produced from Bulgaria to Denmark and France. But authentic Greek feta is now protected in Europe with an AOC designation of origin label, like Champagne or Bordeaux. Real feta must contain at least 70 percent sheep's milk and be made using traditional methods and in just seven regions of Greece. Feta cheese sold in the U.S. does not have to comply with these rules.
