food

Meet Your Veggies!

64 Arts

Farmers Market BountyAll ten of them!

According to the list-maker, their definition of vegetable is the broader one: as in, if it’s not animal or mineral, it must be vegetable!

Now, the key to cooking well is not so much in being able to follow a recipe–that’s a great place to start, of course–it’s in the cook’s comfort with their ingredients. The more you cook, the more you learn how ingredients work in various situations. After a while you will find that you’ve gained enough proficiency to save a failing recipe or improve a sub-par one.

So let’s see about these 10 types of vegetables!

Roots

Carrots, Parsnips, Beets, Radishes and Turnips

Split ’em, Peel ’em and Roast ’em up crispy. Any of these veggies (yes, even the radishes) are wonderful after some time in the oven. Turnips, sliced like steak fries and drizzled with olive oil and spices, make a great French fry alternative. Wrap each beet in foil before roasting, the skins just rub off–no knife required! And if you’ve never had a parsnip (they look like a white carrot), they’re slightly sweet with a hint of pepper and can be whipped and mashed in addition to roasted.

Leaves

Ah, those leafy greens. Everything from Arugula to Watercress can make for wonderful salad bases. The heartier greens (like turnip, mustard and kale) make amazing side dishes that cook up quickly in a hot pan with a little bit of garlic and some olive oil. Don’t be deceived by their volume, though: there’s a lot of water in those leaves and they cook down to next to nothing in seconds. Start with way more than you think you’ll need and you’ll have a nice side dish in no time.

Seeds (and Nuts)

When I took Latin in high school a common phrase we learned translated to “from soup to nuts” meaning the whole kit and caboodle since formal Roman meals began with soup and ended with nuts. While a nut course isn’t part of today’s usual line-up, they make a great snack because of their B vitamins and relatively healthy fats (though the latter is why it’s a good idea not to eat too many).

Cooking with nuts is fairly straightforward: they’re great as fillings and toppings and can be ground, in the case of almonds, as a sauce thickener. Mostly you have to be careful that the nuts haven’t gone bad–those fats they are so rich in? Can easily turn rancid, which is why it’s not a bad idea to store leftover nuts and seeds in the freezer–they’re one of the few foods that isn’t harmed by the freezing process.

Seeds also encompass beans and peas and even lentils. Those are best soaked and cooked long and slow in order to tenderize them but they are serious power-houses when it comes to protein and fiber. Always good things. That, and they are so malleable and will take so many different flavor profiles they can be used over and over without feeling like you’re eating the same thing.

Buds

This category is full of the unexpecteds. Buds aren’t something we think about eating but the most common one are the little tiny buds that make broccoli florets look like little trees. Blanch them in boiling water to bring up their color and then use them however you want. We like to just steam them and toss them with a little olive oil, lemon juice and garlic.

Other buds in hiding are cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Cabbage is another one of those foods that deflates as it cooks and looses all that water in the leaves. Steam it in a big pot with a ham hock for your New Year’s Day meal or shred it for an awesome cole slaw. Brussels sprouts are usually boiled or steamed, but split them and roast them with a little curry powder and you will be in for a wonderful surprise!

Fruits

Easy mark, right? Fruits are sweet, juicy, lots of natural sugars and perfect for desserts. All true. But don’t annex them to that final course so soon.

Mangoes and pineapples have enzymes that make them wonderful natural meat tenderizers. They also pair wonderfully as a topping (like a chutney) for grilled meats. Apples and pears are each great matches to pork. And tart cherries or cranberries with chicken? Perfection.

Fruits are pretty delicate, though, so you want to be careful not to cook them too long or they’ll be mush and mush isn’t always great.

Tubers

Potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams and water chestnuts. The first three? Boil them, roast them, bake them or mash them and they’ll be great. Now, for white potatoes you might need to pile on the flavor agents–salt, herbs, garlic out the wazoo. One of the best things about white potatoes is that they are so malleable but if they’re under seasoned? It’s blech.

Sweet potatoes and yams, though, they have a wonderful natural sweetness but you don’t have to stick with the cinnamon and brown sugar. Experiment with a little bit of chili powder or cumin along with the “sweet” spices and edge out of those tuber-ruts!

Now water chestnuts are great in an entirely different way. I have two main uses for them: stir fries (where they soak up that wonderful sauce) and spinach dip. Something about the crunch among the creamy is just heavenly.

Stalks

Celery, anyone? Not just for dieters, some diced celery livens up a chicken salad, helps round out your basic stock-making veggies (along with onions and carrots) and really is good when filled with peanut butter or pimento cheese. So what if it’s a carrier some days, every veggie has its purpose!

Another favorite stem or stalk is the asparagus. Always look for tightly closed tips (those are actually flower buds!) and snap off the bottoms before cooking (if you hold each end and bend they’ll snap where they need to–discard the bottoms, they’ll be too tough to eat). Steam them and add a little lemon juice and pepper. You can go the hollandaise-route, but only if you’re feeling really ambitious.

Peels

Two quick(?) thoughts here: citrus peels are fabulous for flavoring all sorts of dishes without adding extra liquid because the zest is chock full of wonderful oils. All you want is the colored part, the white spongy bits are the pith and they are very bitter.

The other peel worth noting is cinnamon. It’s actually the inner bark of certain trees (cinnamon and cassia)–which is why the whole sticks look so woody. Try adding some to your meatballs the next time you make them–it’s great with red meat.

Flowers

Edible flowers are so much fun! They have the most impact when added as a salad accent but they can also be folded into tarts and cakes, dried and used as teas or–in the case of larger ones like squash blossoms–filled, battered and deep fried!

Always be sure of the source of your edible flowers, you want to make sure there were no harmful pesticides (which is why you don’t just swoop into someone’s garden and dig in!). Edible varieties include nasturtium, carnation, honeysuckle, chickory, cornflower, sunflowers and roses.

Bamboos

Bamboo is generally an acquired taste, but if you eat enough Chinese take-out you might just acquire it. Hundreds of pandas can’t be wrong, right? But don’t go making like a panda and just gnaw on a stalk–they must be fully cooked before eating to prevent unpleasant side effects.

So, are you inspired to try a different vegetable this week?

The Art of Cooking

64 Arts

Oh, wow, how to break this down into a few blog posts? Well, let’s start with the source material, shall we, and go from there!

23 The Art of Cooking

Cooking is the art of transforming various vegetables into soups and dishes. Food is of four kinds: bitten, eaten, licked, or drunk*. The food is cooked with condiments to give it a pleasant flavor. Vegetables that are unpleasant to the taste without condiments often become acceptable thanks to the latter. Vegetables are of ten kinds: roots, leaves, seeds, buds, fruits, tubers, stalks, peels, flowers, bamboos….

Products that are pleasant to lick are made of powdered aphrodisiacs mixed with honey, which may be sweet, salty, sour, or bitter according to choice, which are chosen at the right moment to reinvigorate the body or stimulate amorous ardour. Food and drinks are thus prepared, either uncooked, or else cooked to improve their flavor. Although different, these processes all indicate ways of satisfying taste.

Medieval Borscht

Soup for all Seasons

Soups?! Oh, perfect! As I write this it’s grey and drizzly outside and pretty perfect soup weather. Which reminds me of the Fool-Proof Soup post I wrote for my food blog, Nibbles ‘n Bites, back in July. We love soup year-round and soup is one of those dinners that is tough to screw up no matter how little experience you have in the kitchen. And a slow-cooker makes it so much simpler on busy weekdays.

What are my rules for fool-proof soups?

  • Start with your primary ingredient: beans, lentils or dried peas, chicken pieces or stew meat are good places to start.
  • Add flavorings: an onion, a couple of garlic cloves (minced), salt, pepper and a bay leaf are my go-to flavor choices for almost all my soups.
  • Finish with enough stock to cover all the ingredients. When setting up your soup the night before and using anything that sucks up liquid (e.g. dried beans, pasta or grains), wait to add your broth or stock until just before starting  the soup.
See? Simple!

But that’s just the basics. You can add any number of additional ingredients that you have on hand. Toss in some diced tomatoes, carrots and green beans. Try hard squashes or potatoes added to your basic soup with a bit of nutmeg or garam masala. Maybe some kale or spinach towards the end of the cooking time, or barley or quinoa. Sliced-up sausage adds amazing flavor, as do some smoked chicken wings or ham hocks–perfect when you want the flavor without meat being the main course.

*The preparation of drinks is the 24th art so we’ll deal with those parts later!

~~~oOo~~~

What do you want to know about cooking?
And, while we’re out it, what’s your favorite type of soup?

Oh! And before we sign off for another week, the winner of the Satin Hands giveaway is Miranda from A Duck in Her Pond! I already have your address, Duckie, so I’ll be sending out your prize this week 🙂

Episode 7: Grab a Spoon

Podcast

Extra pretend points if you think of Friends at today’s title 🙂 Not so much if you think Matrix.

I was really impressed with the number of songs I found for this episode–once again I had so many that it was tough to pare this episode down to just over an hour! Of course, when one of your keywords is ‘eat’ you learn just how many times those 3 letters show up in sequence in the course of music listings (hint: “featuring”, “death” and a host of other things had to be weeded through to find a few honest-to-goodness food songs). It’s not all bad, though–I found some great things hiding here and there for the next 2 podcasts!

In all, I probably listen to about 300 songs for each podcast and then pick out the dozen or so songs that best amuse me, rock it out or just amuse me. Here’s this month’s tasty morsels:

Food–Dierdre Flint
Thanks–Youngblood Brass Band
So, Thanks–Tom Smith
Pockets Full of Gold–Danika Holmes
A Girl Should Never Eat Alone–Clayton
Healthy Eating–Dan Elson
Salad of Doom–SJ Tucker
Eat You Now–The FuMP/Robert Lund & Spaff.com
My Baby Likes to Eat–Alec Berlin
French Fries Overdose–The Great Potatoes
Salt–Diedre Rodman/The Lascivious Biddies
Let’s Eat Home–Linda Baker
Everybody’s Family is Messed Up–Kristen Kitko
Twisted Family Ties–Delina
Sorbet Girl–Subplot A
Gluten Free Blues–Kyle Dine
Sugar Bomb Baby–Industrial Salt
Coffee to Go–Alice Leon/The Alice Project
Cold Turkey Sandwiches–Sealed Weasels

Wondering how you make turkey gumbo from leftovers and bones? I got you covered over at Nibbles ‘n Bites.

Foodie Photography

Nibbles

About 10 years ago or more I read an article about all the different “tricks” food stylists would use to make food look good on camera. Everything from cellophane “ice” and “milk” glue to browning agents and tweezer-applied sesame seeds–the works!

Oh, sure, we know folks put their best food front-loaded and forward when it’s time for an advertising campaign or cookbook shoot, but can the average foodie can make their not-so-average food stand out in a still shot?

Lighting

Regardless of subject, lighting is one of the major factors between blah and beautiful. Natural light is, by far, the most prized but, well, Mr Sun and my dinner don’t always cooperate. Not only is a lot of my cooking done in the evening when the light’s not so hot but it’s not always feasible to cart each item out onto the deck for a few snaps before supper. A well-lit window is the next best thing to the great outdoors, I’ve read, but it brings with it some of the same issues.

Stuffed Mirliton--no retouching!

What I found, completely by accident, was a way of working around the wonky indoor light. It happened while trying to take a picture of our Christmas tree this past December without each and every light looking like flares. Turning the setting dial on my Canon PowerShot S2 I came to “SCN” and it turns out it had tons of useful pre-sets that saved me having to crack open a dusty manual and figure out how to manually set the white balance and so forth. The “Fireworks” setting turned out to be great for the lit Christmas tree and the “Indoor” has done a wonder for my food pics!

Angle

Okay, so we’ve figured out the lighting situation, what else is there?

Do you find yourself automatically aiming the camera straight down onto the plate or platter? Do you do this because maybe there’s other stuff around the dish that you don’t want to be in the shot? Not that I’d know anything about that…

I blame part of this habit on my early experiences with food photography. A lot of decorated cakes look the same from a side view, the fun stuff is on the top! So you shoot the top. Then, in culinary school and after, at the Plantation, the point of taking photos was usually to see the plate clearly so someone else could recreate it. (Very useful in buffet settings or when you want to avoid having to work the dinner shift yourself but must ensure consistent presentation–again, not that I would know anything about that).

Anyway: overhead shots are second nature.

Salsatini

Bar towels make an instant backdrop!

I’ve been trying to remind myself, though, that it’s not the only way to go and practice close-up shots at a 3/4-view–hey, it’s flattering for faces, why not food? And when the counter isn’t providing the right backdrop do you know what can come in handy? A hand or tea towel “hung” in the door of the cabinet above. Keep a few of different colors or materials on hand and you’re golden!

The Extras

Which leads me to another thing… Props. I’m not a huge fan of too many props in a food picture. If you’ve ever seen those recipe cards from the 60s and 70s with their odd table-dressings, you know exactly what I mean! But a well-chosen plate or place mat certainly would not go amiss.

The plate, glass or other vessel should be your main prop and, in a perfect world, would contrast the color of the food nicely. Does this mean you need a butler’s pantry worth of serving-ware in order to take good food shots? Absolutely not! First of all, most foods fall into the white, red, green, brown or orange color-categories. Having a few white, yellow and purple plates for picture-purposes will cover most contrast requirements along with whatever other fun pieces you might find at thrift stores and garage sales. Choose a few cloth napkins or placemats in fun colors or patterns from a housewares open-stock section and you’ve got your primary needs covered! Keep in mind that salad plates rule for this sort of thing and are generally less expensive than the full-size options.

Catching mouth-watering images of your favorite foods doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Keep your shots simple, your props uncomplicated and the focus on the food. My camera now hangs out in the kitchen while I cook, where’s yours?

Happy snapping!

Lessons From a Party

Nibbles

Learning never stops–it’s one of the few constants in life. I find that whether it’s something as simple as a new flavor combination or a more efficient way to complete a task, the kitchen offers plenty of opportunities the learn something new. Even if it’s what NOT to do!

Last weekend I hosted a small Wedding Shower. Here’s what I learned:

“Just Enough” Can Still Look Abundant

How sad is it to walk into a party and see a few small amounts of snacks laid out on large plates on a large table? That sort of thing makes me hesitant to take anything, not wanting to make the spread even more meagre for folks coming behind me. Guests who see an abundance of food and drink, though, will freely help themselves.

Of course, we’ve talked about figuring out how much food to prepare and, in the case of small parties, the choice seems to be between making just enough and making enough to fill out your serving pieces. I was facing this particular dilemma since the Shower had a limited guest list (and an even more limited response!).

  1. Instead of bringing out the larger folding table I usually use for parties, the small kitchen table was just large enough to hold the various serving dishes I’d purchased to go with the theme. If the gathering is very small, tray tables arranged around the party room, the tops of low bookcases (or even cleared shelves of tall ones) or a card table may make the most of a smaller spread.
  2. Keep the serving pieces smaller and pile the food upon them. Rather than spreading out the food, pile it up and on! The smaller the item, the smaller the plate. There’s a fine line between abundance and overwhelming, so just make sure guests can easily serve themselves from the bowl or plate without knocking anything off or spilling.
  3. Create varying heights on your table. Whether you have multi-level stands available (stacked cake pedestals make a nice display) or place boxes or crates under the plates and bowls, adding height takes up some of the extra space on a table. If your risers are pretty (glass blocks from the hardware store, for example) leave them in plain sight but it’s easy enough to camouflage cardboard boxes or other items by adding an extra tablecloth or tea towel to the arrangement.

I was able to make only what was needed for the party without letting the table seem bare at all! It’s the first time, ever, that I’ve not over-prepared by fridge-filling proportions!

The Cupcake Conundrum

Who doesn’t love cupcakes? They make great buffet items: self contained, easy to serve and just enough for a bite in miniature. The only problem is that iced cupcakes cannot be stacked and therefore can take up ridiculous acreage on the party table or require frequent replenishing, taking up the hostesses time.

My solution? Take out the icing issue! Instead of icing several dozen Red Velvet mini-cupcakes, I left them plain, piled them in the two lower bowls of a 3-bowl stand (height!) and filled the top bowl with the cream cheese icing and a decorative spreader. Guests loved adding as much icing as they wanted and I was free to enjoy the party without having to constantly police the refreshment table.

I may serve all my cupcakes with do-it-yourself icing from here on out, it worked so well. If the spreader idea doesn’t sound like enough fun, what about filling several disposable piping bags with various flavors of icing and setting out an array of toppings (sprinkles, candies, and berries)? I bet most guests would love the opportunity to play decorator!

All in all the party was a wonderful success: the two sides of the family got to mingle a bit before the wedding (it was a couple’s shower), everyone enjoyed the games and I was left with a happy heart and tired feet–the mark a truly good party in my opinion!