You can add whole sprig of rosemary to a dish -- tossed in with roasted vegetables, submerged in soups, stews, tied to or tossed alonside roasted meats - when you want the flavor but not the texture of the leaves. Just discard the sprigs before serving the dish.More often though, it makes sense to finely chop rosemary. First, you have to remove the leaves from the woody stems. Hold a sprig upright with one hand, then pull the leaves downard against the direction of growth. Pull away the remaining top leaves separately.Put the leaves in a pile, rock your knife across them, and occasionally bring them back into a pile. Chop until they're as fine as you like. Coarsely chop them for longer cooking dishes. For quick cooking dishes, or to add at the end of longer-cooking dishes, finely chop them.
How to clean clams, mussels and other mollusks
How to clean clams, mussels and other mollusks
Cleaning your Shellfish:
Before mussels and clams are cooked, the shells must be scrubbed in cold water with a stiff brush to remove any barnacles and sand. Reduce the amount of interior sand by soaking them in cold water mixed with a few handfuls of cornmeal for 30 to 60 minutes.
Debearding the Mussel
Wild mussels (mussels are also farmed) require an additional cleaning step -- debearding. Protruding between mussels' shells is a small bristle or beard, by which the mussel attaches itself to rocks or pilings. Shortly before cooking, remove the beard by tightly grasping the hairs near their base and giving a sharp tug. The beard should snap off along with a tiny bit of mussel flesh.
Here's a fast, organized way to slice a bell pepper. First, cut off the top end. You can use the flesh around the stem, so save it to prep at the end.Next cut off the bottom. Save it to slice or dice at the end, too.Split the pepper from top to bottom with a single cut.Pull out and dscard the core and seeds.Now you're left with relatively flat sections. You can slice them to any thickness, in any direction. For stir-frys, slice the pieces into long thin strips.To make larger irregular slices for longer-coooking dishes like braises and stews, rotate the sections back and forth as you slice.
Saffron, the world’s most expensive spice by weight, comes from the stigmas of the purple saffron crocus (a member of the iris family). Each flower contains three stigmas, which are harvested by hand and then dried. One pound of dried saffron requires a minimum of 50,000 flowers to be picked, which helps explain the elevated cost. Native to Asia minor, Iran and Spain now lead the world in saffron production.
Saffron can be purchased ground into a powder or whole as threads. Buying the threads ensures the spice’s purity, since powdered saffron may be watered down with additional spices like turmeric or safflower. The threads tend to have a stronger taste than the ground, and must be steeped in milk or water, or roasted, before being added to a dish to release their flavor.
Saffron has a bitter taste, an earthy, hay-like smell, and a golden-red hue, which gives food a deep yellow color. When cooking with saffron, it must be used sparingly; too much can produce a harsh, medicinal flavor.
what you should know
Richly flavored and intensely aromatic, these golden-orange threads are the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus.
Harvesting saffron takes some doing: each thread is picked by hand. An acre of flowers yields only about 10 pounds of saffron, making it worth more than its weight in gold (and, ounce for ounce, the most expensive spice in the world).
not mellow yellow A little saffron goes a long way. Just a few strands -- which can smell hay-like or brightly medicinal -- add a distinct color and flavor to a dish.
to dye for Saffron has a history as a dye, both for clothing and for food. If you want to give a dish that telltale color, soak the threads in warm water for 10-20 minutes and then cook with the infused liquid.
toasty warm If you're going to use saffron threads without soaking them first, lightly toast them to enhance the flavor.
blooming Saffron crocuses are blooming right about now. If you are very industrious, you can grow your own -- Andrea from Andrea's Recipes is just about ready to harvest hers.
what you need
Saffron threads are absolutely crucial if you're making paella. You can make do with a wide saucepan or Dutch oven, but it's much simpler to go from stovetop to table in a pretty paella pan.
Joyce Goldstein explores the wide-ranging traditions of Jewish cooking in the Mediterranean in her book Saffron Shores.
If you decide to grow your own saffron, White Flower Farms offers a variety of bulbs. And if your thumb is not as green as you'd like, a copy of Gayla Trail's You Grow Girl (and regular visits to her wonderful blog) will set you on the path for prosperous gardening.
what you do
Persian chicken and rice glistens with golden beets and saffron.
Saffron is the star of a Provençal-inspired seafood stew.
Broil them, grill them, serve them on ice cream -- no matter how you serve them, saffron-infused pineapples are bright and delicious.
An elegant presentation of tapenade and saffron aioli makes pan-smoked tomato bisque a beautiful main course.
Cook and Eat created an elegant soup for any season, pairing saffron with citrus and a cranberry-balsamic meringue.
Try a Sardinian take on paella from Efisio Farris' Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey.
Featured: A fall-perfect featured recipe for this week's Root Source Challenge -- gorgeous saffron-pumpkin macarons. Congratulations to Helen of Tartelette!
Find more saffron recipes at Cookthink.com. And if you haven't yet signed up for a free account at Cookthink, do it now!
Chopping is probably the most common way to prep an onion. Chopped onions show up in anything that needs the basic, earthy pungent flavor that onions give. Chop them larger for longer-cooking dishes like stews and rustic soups, and smaller (call it a dice if you like) for anything from salsas to sauces to ragouts.
To start, cut the onion in half through the root. The root itself will help keep the onion together for chopping
Rotate the onion 90 degrees and cut off the papery end (not the root end). This will make the skin easy to peel away and discard.
Peel back the onion's papery skin. It's often easiest to peel away the first layer of the onion along with the skin.
Make a series of diagonal cuts (roughly 45 degrees) into the side of the onion. Keep more space between the slices for a large chop. Make the cuts closer together for a small chop or a dice.
Now make a series of horizontal cuts to finish shaping the chop or dice.
Finally, rotate the onion again and slice crosswise against the checkerboard pattern you made in the onion. The chopped pieces will fall away from the onion.
What is the difference between a shrimp and a prawn?
What is the difference between a shrimp and a prawn?
In some culinary circles, the word "prawn" is used to describe a large shrimp. In other circles, "shrimp" is used exclusively to describe both shrimp and prawns. And to further complicate matters, in other circles, "prawn" is used exclusively to describe both shrimp and prawns.
So is there a difference between the two?
Yes, there is a difference. Technically, shrimp and prawns are separate species, with mildly different gill structures and tastes.
The saltwater crustacean known as a shrimp is found in warm water (like the Gulf of Mexico) or cold water (like the Atlantic). Much of the shrimp we eat is pond-raised. In general, the colder the water, the smaller the shrimp.
Marketed according to size, shrimp are named based on the rough number of them that make up a pound. "Miniature" shrimp are so small that it take roughly 100 to make a pound, while just 10 "colossal" shrimp make a pound.
A prawn is a different kind of crustacean that resembles a miniature lobster and has sweet, succulent meat. The French langoustine, Spanish langostino and Caribbean lobsterette are all prawns, as is the Italian scampi (which shouldn't be confused with the dish known in the United States as "shrimp scampi"). Freshwater prawns like the Hawaiian blue prawn look like a shrimp-and-lobster love child, with thinner bodies and longer legs than shrimp.
Since in most recipes one can be substituted for the other, at Cookthink, we prefer to say "shrimp" when referring to shrimp and prawns. Using our synoynm feature, you can search for shrimp or prawns and we'll know what you're talking about.
Recipe: For recipes using shrimp and praws, take a look at the "related recipes" box on the left
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)
The Roma tomato, also called the Italian plum, has an elongated oval, egg or pear shape and comes in red or yellow varieties. Smaller Romas may be called "baby Romas." The Roma is a disease-resistant tomato that makes it widely available and popular with home gardeners. At Cookhink, we lump Roma tomatoes in with all "plum tomatoes." (Find some recipes here.)
With few seeds and firm, dense, meaty flesh, Romas have less water content and more pulp than other varieties. This means they break down nicely into tomato sauce and are good candidates for canning, sun- or oven-drying and making tomato paste. Sliced Roma tomato rounds work well as a pizza topping, because they hold their shape and their minimal seeds won't make the pie soggy.
Recipe: Quick Roasted Tomatoes With Basil And Goat Cheese (Kalyn's Kitchen)
Recipe: Gazpacho With Roasted Tomatoes And Peppers (FatFree Vegan Kitchen)
