My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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My kitchen is the heart of my home. My friends all like to hang out in there instead of in my more spacious living room.
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I love to cook. There's nothing I'd rather do, so I always get upset when I've spent all that time in front of the stove, whisking, stirring and carefully preparing, only for the results to end up in the bin. Sometimes things go wrong because I wasn't paying attention. Sometimes the end result is less than satisfying because I used shortcuts instead of sticking to the recipe. Taking shortcuts while cooking is never a recipe for success Lessons learnedAfter years of long practice I've learned that cooking needs time and patience. It simply doesn't do to rush and above all, there need to be some ground rules. There are recipes I've done so often I know them off by heart, but I still can't cut corners if I want a good result. I've put together ten cooking tips that I've learned over time. We're not talking rocket science here, but they can make all the difference between a good meal and a complete failure. I hope you find them as useful as I have! 1) taste it How many times have we found that a recipe is overcooked or under-cooked, too salty or just plain insipid. Chefs taste as they go along, so we should, too. We need to taste what we're cooking, several times if necessary. 2) read the recipe It's a common mistake to start a recipe and then find half-way through that we can't find one ingredient, or we mixed up the order of the various steps and now we need to start over. When trying out a recipe for the first time, we need to read through the recipe carefully, check that we have all the ingredients to hand and take note of the procedure. 3) give food some space! It's always a temptation to cram the frying pan with food. Ingredients need space to cook properly and release the aromas. If you're in a hurry, you can use two frying pans at once. 4) give it time! Everybody knows the saying: “A watched pot never boils”. Everything needs its own time to cook. It's pointless trying to hurry things along by turning it, moving it about in the pan or pricking it every minute or so. It won't make it cook any quicker, on the contrary, our continuous fidgeting about could make the food crumble or disintegrate. 5) sticky fettuccine Who doesn't love fettuccine? But alas, sometimes you end up with a tangle of sticky ribbons. The mistake you made is to cook the fettuccine in too little water. Try using a bigger saucepan and more water. And remember to drain the pasta while it's still al dente because it will continue to cook while you're dressing it with the sauce 6) from fridge to hob This is a mistake most of us make. We take raw meat out of the fridge and cook it straight away. Better to let it rest at room temperature for a while, and so avoid having meat that's cooked on the outside and still raw in the middle. 7) perfect scrambled eggs Scrambled eggs seems like the world's simplest recipe, but it can also be the trickiest. Instead of soft, fluffy eggs we can end up with something dry and chewy. The trick is to melt the butter at low-medium heat, add the eggs and stir them gently with a wooden spoon. As soon as they're creamy and shiny turn off the heat, and let them continue to cook in the residual heat from the frying pan. 8) great potatoes! Roast potatoes should be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. It's always a disappointment when we end up with pale and squishy or dry, burned spuds. For the best results, we need to cut the potatoes lengthwise into slices not more than half a centimetre or a quarter inch thick. Soak them for 30 minutes so that the water absorbs most of the starch, then dry them with a paper towel. Roast at 200c for half an hour, and turn them after 15 minutes. 9) soggy lettuce
We're always being told we need to eat more vegetables, and fresh salad for most of us makes a nice side dish. Alas, it's all too easy for lettuce to go all wrinkled and soggy. This is usually because it has too much moisture. The best way to preserve lettuce in the fridge is to wrap it in a paper towel and put it in a saleable plastic bag. 10) cake with berries Everybody loves soft fruit cake recipes, especially if we've spent time picking them from our gardens or hedgerows. To stop berries sinking to the bottom of the cake while it's cooking, dust them with flour. This will help them stick to the other ingredients in the cake mix Comments are closed.
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AuthorI love cooking, and when it comes to quality I'm quite fussy. Archives
February 2018
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