It’s all the same
I just finished cooking Indian food for the second time in my life, using the Indian spices I picked up at the Spice House yesterday. I made tandoori lamb meatballs, chick pea marsala, carmelized cumin-roasted carrots, and a radish raita with naan and white rice.
Rachel’s boss’ wife, who is Indian, invited us to her house a few months ago to teach us how to cook an Indian meal. I was surprised that, although she cooks an entirely different cuisine than I am used to, the techniques are the same.
I was struck by that tonight too. I’ve roasted carrots a hundred times, but this was the first time I put cumin on them. If I had omitted tandori seasoning in the meatballs, subbed oregano for garam masala into the tomato sauce, and used spaghetti instead of chickpeas, I would have Italian spaghetti and meatballs.
Rene’s demonstrating this at Next right now too. Get a badass group of chefs together, focus on flawless technique and ruthless execution, and you can be a world class French restaurant one month and a world class Thai restaurant the next. It’s all the same.
Learn solid technique. Learn to cook a couple meals really, really well. Learn to do it right. Then you can cook anything.
Three Key Indian Spices
I want to start cooking Indian food more often. Lots of flavor packed into fairly inexpensive ingredients.
Someone, I think it was Rene, told me that originally spice in Indian food was used to mask spoilage.
Anyway, I was at the Spice House today and asked owner Tom Erd for the key Indian spices I need. He said:
- Cardamon
- Cumin
- Coriander
Battering with Frosted Flakes and Tortilla Chips
Mewia on Reddit asked “What can I make with lots of tortilla chips?”
You could chop your tortilla chips up real fine and use them to batter stuff too. We just read the alligator recipe where you batter with corn meal… corn meal, corn chips.
You can batter with frosted flakes. Frosted flakes are corn chips. I worked at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in Vegas, we battered fish with corn flakes and it was fucking delicious. Then we stole that at the MGM.
You could of course do nachos too, but whatever you’re going to do, do it fast. They’re not going to last long.
Tips on making fresh pasta?
Congruence asked for some tips on making homemade pasta:
The only time I’ve ever dried the pasta at a restaurant they just hung it out on wooden skewers. They wouldn’t dry fresh pasta for days, but at least air dry it an hour or two, maybe longer. I don’t know… I’m sure there are some pasta experts out there that would let you know how to deal with it.
As far as making the pasta, I would go to the French Laundry cookbook and look at their pasta recipe and just make that. It’s super eggy… basically super fatty. It’s more luxurious because there’s fat in it.
But all pasta is good. Even if you have pasta made without egg yolks… I mean, it’s not like every family in Italy was just dumping six cases of eggs every time they made pasta for dinner. That’s a lot of chickens in your back yard.
How do I cook alligator meat?
VerbaJungleGym asked on Reddit “I’ve got a pound of alligator tail. Any suggestions?”
I have never seen it cooked, but I know they’re just going to fry that shit. You would think the flavor would be really strong, but they soak it in buttermilk over night which sucks out blood and nastiness and stank. Once you get rid of that it has a less gamey and fishy taste.
Then it’s just fried meat. Batter with cornmeal and deep fry. That just fried food… that’s good. Is it good for you? Maybe not, but it’s good.
How do I make this chili better?
mistersleepy on Reddit asked: “I am on a quest for the perfect bowl of chili, this is my first recipe. It went well, but how can I improve?”
The first three ingredients in your recipe say say “canned”. If you make all that shit and it’s not in a can, it’s going to be better.
There is absolutely zero that beats walking into a garden, taking a vegetable from the vine and walking that into the kitchen and using it right there.
If corn is in season and I can walk across the street and pick the most outstanding corn, do that. Peas as well, but peas don’t have a long season. The second you pick peas they start to go starchy. Even the next day they’re not as sweet as when you first picked them. So with peas, they’re freezing them right away, so they’re still very fresh.
So frozen corn is okay, but get rid of the cans. If you make your own beans its going to be a lot better.
What do I do with a can of condensed milk?
Proslepsis on Reddit asked “what do I do with half a can of condensed milk?”
Normally with condensed milk you would take the whole can and just drop it in water and cook it for hours. It gets sweet because it caramelizes in the can. And because you’re doing it in the water it goes really slow and caramelizes evenly.
Condensed milk is basically for custards. Once it’s caramelized you can take a custard and make carmel condensed milk creme anglaise by adding eggs and making it a sauce. Or you can make a custard out of it and turn it into ice cream.
12 Thoughts on Protecting Your Chef’s Knife
- Never put your knife in the dishwasher
- Never leave your knife in the sink.
- Thoroughly dry your knife to prevent rust.
- If storing your knife in a drawer, wrap it in a towel or use a knife guard.
- Cut through bone with care.
- Don’t let the edge of the blade come into contact with anything metal other than a honing steel.
- Don’t cut on anything other than a plastic or wooden cutting board. Stay far away from glass cutting boards.
- Unless you really know what you are doing, don’t try to sharpen your knife yourself. Take it to the pros.
- Never do that dumbass thing where you jam the tip straight down into cutting board so that the knife stands straight up on its own.
- Your friends don’t know how to protect your knife. If you let them use it, tell them the proper dos and don’ts.
- If cooking in a group setting, always know where your knife is.
- It is your responsibility alone to protect your knife. If someone else damages your knife, it’s not their fault – it’s yours.
Alton Brown – I’m Just Here For The Food
If you have any interest in cooking and basic cable you probably know of Alton Brown.
His show on the Food Network, Good Eats (also available on YouTube) is the best TV resource for learning how to cook. Everyone I know with an interest in cooking, from total novices to world-class chefs like Rene love this show. AB’s gift is in explaining the why behind the how – breaking things down to their scientific reasons in an interesting and playful way. I call him the Mr. Wizard of cooking.
I mean, watch this video. This dude does not hold back. He does not dumb down his content. I am totally humbled.
I’m Just Here For the Food is AB’s first cookbook. I’ve heard it described as as “the instruction manual for your kitchen”. This is not a recipe book. The book is about teaching you how to cook and understanding why.
The first page of I’m Just Here For the Food describes Alton Brown’s mission, in a sense, the mission of this site:
If I could choose to have any job title, it would be a culinary cartographer.
Let’s say I invite you to lunch. You’ve never been to my house so you ask for directions. I fax you a very precise list of instructions designed to get you where you’re going. Distances are calculated to the tenth of a mile and landmarks are described in Proustian detail. You arrive without a hitch.
But do you know where you are? If a tree had fallen in the road or a road suddenly closed, would you know what to do? Unless you have a global positioning system in your pocket, I’m eating lunch alone.
If only I’d sent a map instead.
This is what’s wrong with recipes. Sure, they can get us where we’re going, but that doesn’t mean we know where we are when we get there. And it would be a real shame to make it all the way to a souffle without realizing that scrambled eggs are just over the next hill and meringue’s just around the corner.
You Need Three Go To Meals
You don’t need to be a gourmet chef to impress women in the kitchen.
A good goal when you’re getting started cooking is to have three meals that you can pull out of your tool belt anytime and execute to perfection. These are your three go-to meals.
By the time you’ve cooked three killer meals on three separate occasions you are past first impressions. She already thinks you are hot stuff in the kitchen. She’ll be forgiving when you say “I wanted to try something new out for you…” or “Will you help me experiment on this new dish?”
Also, once you can reliably crank out three meals, your techniques will be strong enough to handle the challenge of new meals that you haven’t practiced much.
The first step at becoming proficient at three meals is getting good at one meal. Pick something that is interesting, but relatively complex. The first dish Rene taught me was pasta with cream sauce. This involved:
- Chopping onions, peppers and mushrooms
- Sauteeing onions, peppers, mushrooms
- Searing Chicken breasts
- Making a reduction sauce with cream and chicken stock
- Mincing herbs and garlic
- Grating parmesan
- Boiling pasta
- Making garlic bread
I probably cooked this meal 15 times before I got it right. But once I did, I could take those same techniques and apply them to other dishes. Put the veggies and chicken in a tortila, add cheese, lettuce and sour cream and you have a fajita.
