A New Food Trend, Who Knew?
Category: cuisine, entertaining, featured, yourchichomeBy: The Twice Baked Twins, Judy Vig and Joy Paoletti
It is a year filled with new promises, dreams and the next phase in food trends! We are seeing different foods from other cultures popping up all over. One of the top food critics predicted that this years favorite cuisine would be Austrian. Another reported that Indian food was it!! The new dessert trend is the old fashioned comfort dishes like brown bettys, buckles, cobblers and crisps. These are the recipes our Nana passed down to us and we have been making for years. Who new it would be the “it” dessert for this wonderful new year! Let me tell you a little about each one. A brown betty is usually made with apples and bread or graham cracker crumbs with layers of each. A buckle is just a cake batter with the berries sprinkled in and when baked the top actually buckles over the fruit. The cobbler has a fruit filling with a very thick crust, and the crisp is just that, a fruit mixture on the bottom with a very crispy crumbly topping.
Top Ten Ways to Throw a Party on a Dime
Category: Interior design, cost saving ideas, cuisine, entertaining, top ten, yourchichome
By: Tavon Ferguson
10. The dollar store is your friend. Exhibit A: a wreath from a high end store is about $40 but a wreath with supplies bought from the dollar store is about $4. Your local dollar store has more than just canned veggies and birthday cards. They are stocked full of pre-made decorations and crafty kits.
9. You are invited to a dessert hour. You don’t always have to go for the large dinner with 10 homemade items that leaves you tired and your wallet stretched. How about a dessert party or a “Holiday Open House?” This way, you can serve desserts that can be made ahead of time.
From a Chef’s Kitchen to Yours
Category: cuisine, yourchichome
You may not think that your home kitchen has much in common with a professional kitchen, but think again. Oh sure, you’re not cooking for hundreds of diners each evening. But you also don’t have a staff of 5 to 8 people helping you. You, and you alone, are left with the task of cooking dinner for your family each night. So, just like a professional kitchen, yours should be organized and efficient.
So let’s bring some of the practices of professional kitchens I’ve worked in to your home kitchen. The focus of this article will be on the organization of your pantry and refrigerator since that’s where you spend most of your time when cooking – and experience the most frustration.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
From the milk in your refrigerator to the bread in your pantry, most everything in your kitchen needs a dedicated “home”. And its home should make sense for you and the way you cook.
REFRIGERATOR
In a professional kitchen, the walk-in refrigerator is equipped with industrial-strength, ventilated, metal shelving. It’s up to the chef to adjust the shelves to maximize space and to place items in there designated homes. Dairy is grouped together. Fruits and vegetables are housed in their ideal place. Meats and poultry must be assigned a home to be kept at the ideal temperature, as well as for food safety. Everything should be labeled and dated.
For the home cook, today’s refrigerators have many spaces designed to house specific items, such as milk, butter, and deli meats. But you can also create dedicated spaces for sodas, leftovers, condiments, eggs and so on. Assign a bin or shelf for a go-to snack area and the kids will know where to go when hungry. When buying plastic containers for your leftovers, consider buying all the same size and shape or at least similar ones. This will make it easier to get them all on one shelf.
Adjust the shelves to maximize your space. You can place the shelf where you keep your eggs so that there is little space between it and the shelf above it. (Side note – always store eggs in their original container, never the plastic bin that came with your fridge or the cute cups built into your fridge door. Storing them uncovered, the eggs can pick up flavors of other items in your fridge. They also lose moisture and gas more quickly. This decreases their ability to coagulate or foam. If the little cups are in the door, they can be jarred, breaking the chalazae membrane which holds the yolk in the center of the egg.) Then put similarly sized items on the same shelf. That will leave more space below for taller items. Same thing goes for sodas, juice pouches and small water bottles. They’re about the same height. Use that to your advantage and put them on the same shelf and then adjust the shelf above to get more room for other items.
PANTRY
The pantry in a restaurant deals with items on a much larger scale than at home. For example, flour and sugar arrive in 40-pound bags. Think ketchup in 180 ounce cans, not 15 ounce bottles. Again, everything must have a dedicated home so that all the cooks can find what they need every time and quickly. Proper storage must also be maintained to ensure pests and rodents don’t use the pantry as their own personal buffet.
While the size of the dry goods in your kitchen may be smaller than a restaurant’s, so is your kitchen. You want to maximize every inch of your pantry and know where things are so you don’t waste that last English muffin or onion.
Group similar items together. Place canned goods in one spot, rice and boxed items in another, and condiments in their own home. If you bake frequently, put all your ingredients and supplies in a bin so you can easily move them to the counter when you’re ready to bake your next cake. Put infrequently used foods on the top shelf, while items used every week are more accessible.
You can also buy shelf extenders or risers to maximize your space. The typical pantry space has fixed shelves spaced 20 inches apart. Think of all the wasted real estate above the cans of soup! By creating a shelf on the existing shelf you are doubling your space.
TAKE INVENTORY
We’ve all had this happen: You dig through the veggie drawer to discover that bunch of parsley that has decomposed almost beyond the point of recognition. Or it could be something costly, like the leftover tuna steak that was pushed to the back of the fridge and now has no hope of being enjoyed a second time as tuna salad. Your freezer can also have hidden treasures.
The same is true for a professional kitchen. Chefs must be aware of everything in their pantry and walk-in. How long has it been in there? Is it still on the menu? Can it be used in another dish? Periodic inventory will ensure that the flank steak hidden behind the chicken will make it to the grill and not die a slow death by freezer-burn.
Every week or so, look in your refrigerator and take stock. Check expiration dates. If something is getting close to going bad, include it in one of that week’s dinners. If the cilantro is close to dying, make enchiladas on Tuesday. If the zucchini is past it’s prime, toss it out. It’s taking up valuable real estate in the veggie drawer. You may also find a forgotten treasure that will inspire you. The jar of Tahini paste turns into Hummus dip for a casual get-together. Or the basil becomes pesto sauce for fettuccini.
So remember, a little organization and investigation go a long way. I hope these restaurant practices help you get the most out of your cooking at home. As always, enjoy your family, enjoy your meals and most of all, enjoy yourself.
Discussion questions:
Do you have any tips for organizing your kitchen that have made your life easier? What’s the oldest food you’ve ever found in your frig?
