In a recent article I talked about bravery in the kitchen. After speaking with my Aunt, well, my favorite Aunt as she wants to be known 🙂 she agreed. In the end, it is only food. Food has been experimented on since the beginning of time and I would guess a good percentage of food has ended up in the trash.

Many of us grew up with the mantra not to waste food, and this is a good rule to live by. However, the creative cook cannot survive if they worry about ruining food while they try to create new dishes.

One comment I get a lot when I present a dish that people enjoy is “I have never had this quite this way before!”

To me, that is a compliment. Many people do not always want to try brand new things, but are comforted by familiar recipes. This is when taking an old recipe and making small changes can make it shine.

How does one go about this? Well, it has been my experience that the first time I try and create something, I follow the recipe to the letter and see how it tastes. Ninety nine percent of the time I usually find I want to add this, to alter that. The next time I make it, I play around with my ideas. Every time I make the dish, I change – (More…)

Being a bachelor a good portion of my life, my kitchen was based around myself. I only needed what was good for me. Then I got married, and the woman I married only knew recipes that started with “Set your microwave on high”.

When we moved into our new place, I knew it was time to put a real kitchen together and after some trial and error, here is what I found to be the ten things I need to be able to cook consistently and deliciously.  Now obviously you need a stove, refrigerator, sink, and garbage can, but this list is about those other things that usually do not come with the house when you buy it.

1. Cutting boards – You cannot have too many. When your making a dinner for a family of four, there will be many times you will need to use more than one board. Two cutting boards is the minimum. You should have one for meats, and one for everything else. Everything that meat touches, can spoil and contaminate other food.

2. A frying pan – How are you going to make that big breakfast on Sunday without a frying pan? It is a family must. The bigger the better and if you can find one with a metal handle that will fit in your oven, even better!

3. Sauce pans – And I mean pans! One is not – (More…)

This little recipe I whipped up the other night came about by just thinking what I was going to do with some remaining ingredients from a few past recipes. After using some puff pastry for a bread stick recipe, I found I had an entire box of it left over. I love the fact that most of your major supermarket chains now carry these ready made puff pastry sheets. Who wants to make that by hand anymore?

Anyway, I also had some Gorgonzola cheese left over from the steak sandwiches I made for the Super-bowl party. I also have had this London broil steak in my freezer for about a month and after a bit of thought, I whipped this together and we had it (along with some other stuff) for dinner.

This cheesy steak puffs will probably go better as an appetizer, but I had made so many I actually incorporated them into dinner.

1 box (two sheets) of puff pastry, thawed.
1 average size London broil steak, FROZEN.
About 1/4 cup Gorgonzola cheese.
1 small onion, loosely chopped.
Garlic powder.
Onion powder.
Dried basil.
Fresh ground pepper.

You can use any marinade that you like to use for your London broil. Here is what I used:

1/4 cup of each: Worchestshire sauce, Soy sauce, and Balsamic vinegar.
1 1/2 tablespoons Dijon mustard.

Set your frozen steak on the cutting board for about 15 minutes, covered with some plastic wrap. The idea here is for – (More…)

My poor wife.  She is one of the few (but I’ve noticed, growing) women who have little to no experience in cooking.  She does try though and through that, she gets better as time goes by.  Watching her make a few recipes, I began to notice something.  When she cooks, her mess travels across most of the kitchen.  Not only that, many times she is hurrying along.

I could not figure out why, I mean, I make the same dishes with half the mess and no real stress while doing it.

After watching her knock a few things off the counter while preparing a meal it dawned on me.  She was working around bowls, cutting boards, empty food containers from the parts that she already prepared.  She never cleaned while she was cooking.  Much of the reason she was rushing is because she had not prepared ahead of time before starting the recipe.

Having worked in a kitchen for a while in my youth, I learned pretty much from the beginning that preparation and cleanup are very important when it comes to cooking.  A professional kitchen comes to a screeching halt when there is no room to prepare food, and there is hardware all over the place.

Assuming my wife is not alone, perhaps it is a good idea to lay out a good strategy to use with any recipe.

First, go over your ingredients list.  Many times not only will it list an ingredient, – (More…)

Truly, winter is the domain of Chicken Soup. Although good any time of year, there really is nothing better on a cold miserable day than a bowl of hot, healthy chicken soup. Anyone who has cooked for pleasure for even a small amount of time has eventually made their way to this concoction.

My recipe is many years in the making and surely it will be different in a few more years. This recipe grows and changes as you do.

Here is my current recipe that I use to make about six quarts of soup:

5-6 chicken thighs.
1 large onion (any kind), chopped.
3 cloves of garlic, minced.
4-5 stalks of celery, cleaned, leaves removed, and chopped.
2 cups of baby carrots, chopped.
1 15 ounce can of sweet kernel corn, drained.
Assorted pasta (bow tie, noodles, egg noodles, macaroni, etc.) about three large handfuls.
3 stalks (sprigs) of thyme.
3 stalks (sprigs) of sage.
2 large bay leaves.
water.
kosher salt& fresh pepper.

Place the chopped onion on the bottom of your Crockpot. Add the carrots, celery, and then the garlic next. Place two of chicken thighs on top of the vegetables. We are not going to cook all the chicken in the Crockpot. This would create a very fatty soup. Although chicken soup needs some fat, you do not need quite that much and chicken thighs are very fatty.

Cover everything with the corn (make sure you drained it). Sprinkle with fresh ground pepper – (More…)

Many times when I prepare a meal for others, talk usually comes around to general culinary theory. One of the questions I get a lot is “How did you come up with this recipe?”

The answer is simple, I put away my fears of ruining a bit of food, and take a risk by trying to create something different and unique. This doesn’t mean necessarily that I am making something brand new. In fact, many times I am just reworking a recipe that someone else presented (which was probably reworked by them from someone else). Does this mean it always comes out perfect or better than the original? Of course not. After you experiment for a while, the error part of trial and error becomes less because of your experience.

For example, a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were planning a dinner we were having the next night. A friend of ours was coming over so we wanted to make something different. We decided on barbecue ribs since we had some in the fridge anyway.

We started thinking about a marinade and basically all we did was lay the ribs in a large glass baking pan, and started adding ingredients that we could agree might work.  First, we added some Jack Daniels, then some lemon, then balanced with some balsamic vinegar, etc., etc., until after about 10 different things were in there.

The next – (More…)

There once was a time when the kitchen was a woman’s domain. Sure, all of your top chefs have usually been dominated by males, but the trend of men cooking just for the fun of it is seriously on the rise.

Yesterday I opined on why it is I love cooking and wouldn’t you know it, the next day the Herald News comes out with an article about how more and more men are being drawn to cooking, or as they call it: ‘inspired cooking’.

I found it interesting how they mentioned that many mens magazines that in the past had little to no mentions of cooking in them are now offering recipes for meals, drinks, and the like. I was surprised to see in the article that they have found that many men are getting into baking bread. This has recently become a hobby of my own. It came about more out of pallet necessity rather than any inspiration. The local shop here has horrible bread and to drive 10 miles for a decent loaf to me seemed a bit ridiculous. I started making my own so I could have a decent sandwich once in a while.

The article did hit on a major factor in why men are turning to cooking more and more. It is no real surprise because this is why men do many things: Women love it. I – (More…)

As I posted in a recent article, I am a big Giada fan.  I also talked in that article about one of her recipes I used as a base for a dish I made at a super bowl party I attend every year.  Well, for my tastes, it needed a bit of tweaking, so for you steak sandwich lovers, here it is.

The first thing you need to consider for this recipe is the type of steak you are going to use.  Ideally, you want a steak with a lot of fat.  A lean cut of beef will not do well in my opinion.  This is because you need extra tender beef for a good steak sandwich.  There is nothing worse then eating one, and pulling out huge chunks of beef and destroying the sandwich.

For the best flavor, I would use the cut Giada recommends (rib-eye), but really any fatty cut will work.  Shell steak for example will work.   For this recipe, I will use rib-eye.

First, the marinade.  The one thing I changed was I took out the mustard seed.  I do not think it really needed it.  I  replaced it instead with Dijon mustard.

Marinade:

1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup of worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons spicy Dijon mustard (i.e. grey poupon)

Mix all of these ingredients together in a large sealable plastic baggy add:

three 12 -14 oz. rib-eye steaks.

Marinate the meat for at least an hour, but it – (More…)

I was recently asked by a friend of mine why it is I like to cook so much.  He eluded to the fact that most men don’t cook, or at least enjoy it as much as I do.  I had never really given it that much thought before.  I thought about it for a few days, mostly while I was cooking to be honest and I think I have come to a few conclusions.

At an early age, I found that I was deprived of a couple things that most everyone else I knew had.  I was tested and it was proved that I was red green color blind.  No wonder why all my finger painting looked worse than all the other kids.  I remember my mother laughing out loud when I answered her question “So what does your teacher look like” and I told her that she had green hair.  This “handicap” if you will, really stopped any artistic pursuits during my youth.  I never learned how to draw, and to this day any attempt I make at drawing makes the average three year-olds paintings look like Michelangelo.

I did try to learn guitar during my life and had some success but in the end realized that although I can mechanically operate the device, I had no flare in creating anything with it.

As for singing, well, other than a few tipsy tries at the karaoke machine, it was a non starter.

I – (More…)

The week comes to an end at the house.  For the last 5 days, the kids have gotten up at 7:30 a.m. and off to school by 8:15.  Returning home around 4 p.m., there is yet another two hours of homework to do (assigned by the school, and then by me).  Next it is off to their room to get it cleaned up.  Beds made, clothes put away, etc..  Dinner comes next followed immediately by a shower then an hour of T.V. or other such entertainment.  Finally it is bed time only to start it over again in a few hours.

Even for the young this can be a busy week when all is said and done.  Fortunately we give some relief by giving kids the weekends off.  This time of year, that means unless it is seriously below zero, we wrap them in coats and sweaters and push them out the door.  “Go play” has another meaning around here, it means, please get out of the house and do something.

You can’t help but feel for the little guys when you see them out there with their cheeks getting red after a couple hours.  This is the time when one of the simplest past times can really heal the drudgery of the week.  Hot chocolate.

I remember when I was a kid there was nothing like coming in from the bitter cold after playing all day and having a hot mug of – (More…)