Sometimes, when I sit down at a bar, the cocktail list stumps me. I write about food and drinks for a living so I consider myself reasonably well educated when it comes to booze, but half the time, I feel like I’m playing cocktail roulette when I order, never quite knowing what I’m going to get before I taste it.
Do you know how this feels? Let’s demystify some of the, shall we say, very intense bar menus out there.
While restaurant cooking is very different from cooking at home, there are plenty of smarts that a home cook can pick up from chefs and their shops. As part of a week devoted to learning from restaurants, I asked Andrea Lynn to share some of the little tips and good ideas she picked up in her interviews with chefs, restaurant owners, and food truck proprietors in the neighborhood of Queens.
We had a recent conversation about some of the smart tips and tricks she learned in her research that have changed her cooking, and we thought it would be fun to share with all of you. It certainly made me take a second look at instant coffee, and I am also going to stock up on the frozen lemongrass.
Your spatulas have been warned: Achiote is the turmeric or, if you like, the saffron of Cuban and Latin American cuisine and will dye most anything it comes across a vibrant red-orange. It’s worth it though, as I discovered and cooked with this spice.
This week we toured the New York kitchen of Ed Cotton, Executive Chef at New York’s Sotto 13 and a Top Chef alum. We saw how he uses his oven and noted a particularly cool feature on his range. We discovered his favorite knife and a few easy ways to work clean (the chef’s mantra!).
Now there’s only one question left before we close off the week: Ed, what’s cooking this weekend?
I’ve been reading all the comments on this post about building a vegetarian and vegan pantry that helps you create healthy, easy meals every day.
So many good additions and suggestions!
Here’s one comment that sums up a lot of the best suggestions.
When I was 15 I got my very first job, working in a bakery. I spent my time after school and weekend mornings selling fresh bread, beautiful pastries and cakes, and warm doughnuts.
Sure, I learned the difference between Italian and semolina bread, how doughnuts are made, and the beauty of fresh pastries. But the best things I took away from that job, though I was too young to realize it at the time, were lessons I’ve carried with me every day since.
Breakfast doesn’t get much better than this. I’m talking about tangles of tender collards cooked with bacon (and yes, oh yes, bacon fat), sharing a plate with soft polenta and a perfectly fried egg. If you can wait a whole 10 seconds before breaking that yolk and making a total mess of the plate, you have far more willpower than me.
Going to culinary school was hands-down one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Besides learning the butter-loaded art of classic French cooking, I got to experience living abroad in Paris, made an international roster of friends that I still keep in touch with, and even met my boyfriend (now husband) there. It was a whirlwind dream come true.
I still use many of the cooking techniques and recipes I learned in school when I develop recipes, cook for photo shoots, or cook at home. But almost 10 years after graduation, I’ve realized there were a bunch of lessons about cooking that culinary school didn’t teach me!
There are some kitchen tools that are just universally indispensable, but there are also favorites that vary from person to person. While one cook might have never used a mandoline, another may reach for theirs several times per week.
With that in mind, we scoured our archives to find some of the best kitchen tool recommendations from some of our favorite chefs. We have the standards, like vegetable peelers and food processors, and some suggestions that are a bit more obscure — speed grill, anyone? Take a look and then tell us what’s on your must-have list.
