| 22 February 2010
What cooks meals in a fraction of the time, tenderizes tough cuts of meat and requires next to no fat? A pressure cooker, of course. It may be the perfect answer to the modern dilemmas of lack of time, expensive cuts of meat and health concerns.
Pressure cookers (as you no doubt already know) cook food at much higher temperatures than normal. That's why that delicious lamb stew you've been thinking about all day will be ready in record time. While the slow cooker will take six or more hours to cook food at barely a simmer, the pressure cooker basically sears food at a temperature of 121°C, (To put it in perspective, boiling occurs at 100°C, at the height of summer, the Sahara desert can reach 50°C. Quite balmy, don't you think?) That heat produces an incredible amount of pressure that's regulated by the heat emanating from the burner and by a valve controlling the release of steam. Sounds complicated, but it's actually very easy to operate. The only drawback to pressure cookers is that not all foods are suited to that kind of cooking. Applesauce, cranberries, oatmeal, pasta, barley and split peas, for example tend to foam up as and block the vent as they cook. If that happens, the safety valve could fire out, leaving a bullet-like hole in your ceiling. For best results, stick to food that can be braised or steamed, and make sure you read the manufacturer's instructions.| 18 October 2009
What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
So, Shakespeare probably didn’t have the “stinking rose” in mind when he wrote those lines for Juliet. But garlic is certainly one of the most useful, if not beautiful, of kitchen essentials. Garlic (a bulb or a head) is made up of small cloves, like the petals of a flower. It’s considered a root vegetable because the bulb grows underground. Originating thousands of years ago in China, that’s still where most of the world’s supply is still grown. There are over 300 varieties of garlic grown worldwide.
Varieties
Common garlic is white and has a strong flavour. Italian garlic is recognizable by its pinkish skin and its milder flavour. Elephant garlic is, as its name suggests, huge, but actually very mild in flavour. It’s not really true garlic, being instead a distant cousin of the leek. Garlic has become so essential to cooking that you can find it in almost any form in the grocery store – loose whole fresh heads, preserved whole peeled cloves, jars of minced garlic, dried garlic powder, garlic extract and even garlic salt. If you’re in the habit of visiting a farmers’ market for your produce, you’re bound to come across long, thin, green-onion-like spears nestled beside the garlic heads. Those are the tender and very edible scapes that shoot up from the bulb. They’re milder than garlic cloves and can be sliced and eaten just like a green onion.
| 09 August 2009
Have you ever had a friend drop by unannounced on those one or two days before grocery shopping day? You find yourself rummaging through a sparsely stocked fridge and pantry, hoping that, somehow, a forgotten can of olives or a round of cheese will appear before you. All you need to do to impress any guest anytime is to make sure you have just a few staples on hand all of the time. Apart from the usual preserved antipasto mix easily found in most grocery stores, try mixing it up with a stash of diverse bites from Hawaii.
Hawaii is an archipelago made up of hundreds of islands. Its amazing array of foods showcases the mix of Asian, South Pacific and Portuguese cultures that have settled there over the centuries. Keep on hand items like taro chips, macadamia nuts, toasted coconut chips and Japanese rice crackers, and you’ll always be ready.
The pupu (appetizer) party is a popular, often impromptu, get-together on the islands. Hawaiians usually prepare six or more types of appetizers enjoyed over the course of a sultry afternoon or evening. If cooking up that many appetizers seems a little daunting, do as the Islanders do: visit your favourite grocery store or farmers’ markets to buy ready-made appetizers. Granted, it may be somewhat challenging to find Hawaiian specialties here, but adapting what you do find and quickly grilling up the rest yourself actually makes this kind of party quite doable anywhere you happen to live.