How to slice mushrooms with an egg slicer
How to slice mushrooms with an egg slicer
There's more than one way to slice a mushroom. But if you're working with mushrooms about the size of an egg (like creminis or buttons) consider using an egg slicer; it'll help you make a pile of consistently-sized slices in no time. Here's how:
After you rinse and dry or brush your mushrooms to remove any dirt, trim away the very bottom part of their stems. Open the blades of the slicer and orient the mushroom the way you'd like your slices to go.
Then just slice down as you would with an egg.
You should end up with nice even slices.
If you're in the market for an egg slicer, look for one with two blades -- one for slicing and one for quartering.
what you should know
Our anti-fruit sauce zealotry got some people worked up last week. As a gesture of fruit-love, we decided to make peace with this week's root source on lemon zest.
why zest? James Beard chose the perfect word when he wrote that the lemon is "irreplaceable" in cooking. Lemon dignifies whatever it touches. Zest, the outer, yellow surface, is the intense, perfumed essence of the lemon. As a bright flavoring or finish, it acts like a spice or an herb. When you zest a lemon, you're basically taking the color from it and using that color to enliven something else.
5 zest notes 1. Buy firm, thick-skinned lemons that are heavy for their size. 2. Non-organic lemons have been sprayed with pesticides and other treatments. They've also been handled, dropped on the floor, and who knows what else. Before zesting a lemon, scrub it with a brush and a little soap and water. Then, rinse it well and dry it. 3. Zest only the outer yellow surface of the lemon. Avoid the bitter, white pith just below the surface. (And unless you're a "fruit detective," also avoid the pith helmet.) 4. Don't zest the lemon until you're ready to use it. 5. Then again, get in the habit of zesting every lemon you buy. If you're not using the zest right away, it will keep for a few months in the freezer.
what you need
How you zest a lemon depends on what kind of zest you want. For a fine, airy zest, use a Microplane or some other fine grater. For a julienne cut, use a zester. For longer, thicker strips of zest, use a vegetable peeler.
Cookbook author Lori Longbotham specializes in desserts, but in her comprehensive Lemon Zest, she features some delicious savory dishes as well.
what you do
As a nod to the last days of winter, brighten a dish of collard greens and white beans with lemon zest and hot sauce.
As a nod to the first days of spring (one more week), get outside and grill a New York strip with a spicy gremolata vinaigrette.
As a nod to arborio rice (why not?), try this cremini mushroom risotto that highlights the natural affinity between thyme and lemon.
Sealed inside parchment paper, lemon zest perfumes a salmon, fennel and potato papillote.
Lemon zest adds a bright spark to a dish. There are lots of tools for zesting a lemon -- zester, a knife -- but it's hard to go wrong with a fine grater (such as the popular Microplane version), which makes a beautiful light zest that melds into a dish and gives great flavor.
To zest with the Microplane, just rub the lemon in one direction against the little blades. Turn the lemon as you go so you remove only the yellow part -- the zest. You don't want the white pith just beneath -- it's bitter.
If you use a traditional zester, which makes long, thin strands of zest, or a knife, be sure to finely chop the strands with a knife. The finer shrivels of zest will permeate the dish better than the strands.
To get the most flavor out of lemon zest, add it toward the end of cooking.
Recipe: Agnolotti With Eggplant, Tomatoes And Garlic (Cookthink)
Recipe: Broccoli With Fettuccine, Lemon Zest And Parmesan (Cookthink)
Recipe: Cremini Mushroom Risotto With Lemon Zest (Cookthink)
Reference: What is a Meyer lemon? (Cookthink)
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.
To wash or not to wash? Though the conventional wisdom says not to wash mushrooms, we side with Jacques Pepin, Harold McGee and Alton Brown, all of whom say that washing leads to neither mushy mushrooms nor lost flavor. Most of the time though, you'll be okay just brushing over dark spots with a damp paper towel. However you decide to clean your mushrooms, wait and clean them just before you need them.
Which rices can I use for risotto?
Which rices can I use for risotto?
For this classic northern Italian dish, you want an absorbant, high-starch rice with short, fat grains that will yield a moist, creamy risotto but hold their own for an al dente bite.
Arborio has long been the favorite, but recently, the more expensive and less widely available Carnaroli has become the rice of choice for risotto connoisseurs. Vialone Nano, from the Veneto, can absorb twice its weight in liquid, meaning it is hard to overcook (although some cooks claim it produces a less delicate result). Carnaroli is a hybrid of Vialone Nano and a Japanese rice that was developed in Italy in the 1940s.
Risotto is made by sautéing rice grains in a bit of butter and/or olive oil and diced onion until translucent, then ladling in stock gradually and letting it to absorb before adding more. This process is repeated until the rice is cooked (18-20 minutes).
Most risotto recipes call for almost constant stirring to help release some of the rice's starch and result in a creamy finished dish. We're not so militant about the constant stirring -- in our experience, it's one of those passed-down recipe-isms that doesn't make as much of a difference on the finished dish as conventional wisdom says it does.
Reference: What does al dente mean?
Recipe: Risotto With Treviso Radicchio And Taleggio (Lucullian Delights)
Recipe: Cauliflower Risotto With Spicy Pangrattato (Traveler's Lunchbox)
Recipe: Roasted Beet Risotto (Coconut & Lime)
