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Archive for June, 2009

How to Cook Cajun Food

Cooking great Cajun food is truly an art. There really is very little science to this particular form of cooking that includes a lot more than mere lagniappe from the pantry or the spice cabinet. Cajun cooking is something that has often been imitated around the country and around the world but can very rarely be accurately duplicated.

One of the fascinating things about Cajun cooking is the fact that there are very few exact recipes. Most, if not all authentic Cajun cooking is done to taste rather than measurements. Even more amazing is that from day to day one person can make the same dish over and over and it is quite likely to taste a little bit different each and every time it is made. The major reason for this is that in addition to being an art form in and of itself, Cajun food is often made even more delicious or mysterious simply by the mood of the one doing the cooking.

A culinary career is becoming an increasingly common choice among young college graduates. Due to this influx in popularity, there is now a wide array of choices when it comes to cooking schools. If you are interested in the field of culinary arts, then the first thing you need to do is decide which area you wish to explore.

At most cooking schools, the courses will be broken down into more specific areas, depending on your interests. You could focus on baking desserts or even on mastering full-course meals. The beauty of these schools is that you can expand your goals at anytime in order to add more expertise to your plate.

Another reason that culinary arts programs are becoming so popular is that they typically allow you to achieve your credit in less time. Some programs can have you settled into your new career in as little as 36-weeks. Compared to other programs that take years to complete, this edge will get you into the work force faster.

Ingredients

250gm. Potatoes

2 sliced brown/white bread

1tsp cumin seeds

1tsp ginger juice

2 green chillis

1 lime

2 springs fresh coriander leaves

Salt

Oil

Dip the bread in water and soak for 15 minutes.

Extract water from bread and mash. Chop the ginger, chillies and coriander leaves into fine bits. Pressure cooks the potatoes. Remove the skin and mash. Mix the mash potatoes with soaked bread, lime juice, chopped coriander, chillies, ginger, cumin seeds and salt. Mix well and make round patties. Shallow fry in hot pan until both sides brown in colour.

Ragda

Ingredients

2 cup white dry matar (Peas)

2 chillies

Small piece of ginger

1onion

Tamarind juice

1 potato

1 tsp chillies powder

? tsp garam masala

Salt

1 tbsp ghee

Soak the peas for 4 to 6 hrs. Pressures cook the matar and potatoes. Grind the chillies, ginger and onion together. Heat the ghee add the grind paste fry for 3 minutes add the matar, mashed potatoes, tamarind juice, chillies powder, salt and cook for 5 to 7 seven minutes on slow fire. Serve hot with patties.

Written by Jyoti Ranjan our expert of the day.

How to Cook a real Crispy Duck

If you’re like me you love the skin on the outside of duck, if it’s crispy. The texture of the meal can totally be changed with a crispy skin.

The secret is to make sure the duck is scored across the front and salted heavily.

This helps dry up the skin and makes for a super crispy skin. You will not be the only one that enjoys this Crispy Duck Recipe, but everyone else at your dinner table.

Take the duck that you’re going to use for your main dish make slits in the breast with a knife and poke with a fork. Salt the breast heavily use your discretion and taste. You can use this method for any recipe you can think of.

Just use the cooking instructions from the recipe you are using. Place the bird breast down on the baking pan and cook like that for about ¾ of the total time that the recipe says to cook it for, making sure to drain the fat from the bird, usually by sticking it with a fork under the wings and legs.

Here are 3 different, easy to make, recipes for meatloaf.

Meatloaf Recipe 1

Ingredients:

2 Eggs

1/2 cup water

Two tablespoons of soy sauce

1 small onion diced

2 Lbs. ground beef

8oz package of pre-made stuffing, (such as Stove Top)

salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 350°F

Beat eggs, water, and approximately two tablespoons of soy sauce together in a separate bowl and set aside.

Get a large bowl and mix the ground beef and stuffing together. Make sure to use your hands and combine the mixture well, as this is the most important step.

Slowly work the egg mixture into the meat and stuffing, once again making sure to combine all ingredients well.

Pick up big ball of meat and pack in hands until you have formed a loaf.

Place in ungreased loaf pan and place on center rack in oven for 45-55 minutes uncovered until center of meatloaf is browned. Drain excess grease off side of pan and let stand 5-10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Meatloaf Recipe 2

This chicken enchilada recipe will teach you how to make chicken enchilada. It is a quick and easy recipe to make. Chicken enchilada is a best recipe. It is a big hearty recipe to make up. I like to have a special Sunday and I love making it for us. Why don’t you and your husband have a fantastic chicken enchilada to with this recipe.

A rich white sour cream sauce for chicken enchilada recipes. Let’s make this easy!

If we use 12 oz carton of sour cream then use 12 ooze of chicken broth and etc.

1 heaping tablespoon of butter, pinch of cumin

1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder or 1 diced garlic clove.

Salt to taste, 1/2 teaspoon should do it.

Bring to a boil. Slowly add 4 or 5 tablespoons of flour dissolved in cold water, using whip or cooking spoon, till desired consistency. When using flour or corn starch, I will always mix more than I use, easier to throw away some, than to have to stop and mix more.

Definitely yummy! I’ve made the chicken enchilada recipe several times and my family always enjoys it.

Written by Dede Purneim our expert of the day.

If visitors to Oaxacan cooking school La Casa de los Sabores came away with nothing more than great recipes and a gastronomic meal rich in unique herb- and spice-accented flavor combinations that are the hallmark of Oaxacan cuisine, they would leave fully satisfied. But a visit with owner and chef extraordinaire Pilar Cabrera also inspires and sates travelers with a sensual day-long immersion into sights, sounds, smells and, yes, tastes and time-tested recipes of southern Mexico.   
As always, a recent culinary odyssey with Pili, as she is known, began at La Casa de los Sabores first thing in the morning – at 9:30 a.m. Over the next few hours, she introduced  me and the others in the class to the wisdom and experience of her great matriarchal culinary tradition.  Pili learned the basics and the subtleties, including the mysteries of the famed seven moles, from her grandmother, who learned from her grandmother before her. She is a Oaxaca-born master of southern Mexico cookery as well as international epicurean trends, capable of sharing the secrets of preparing the most multifarious meal with novice and expert alike – in English and in Spanish.
Our day began with Pili’s informal talk about the menu and the foods she was going to introduce us to in one of Oaxaca’s colorful markets. The extra attention to the key ingredients of Oaxacan cuisine kept us spellbound. “What we will achieve today with the chilis,” she told us, “is hot and tropical … with the Chile de agua, you will see we use it not only for flavor but color as well, and I will teach you how we keep this beautiful, brilliant green.”
Once prepared with this knowledge, we all embarked on a shopping trip to the well-known marketplace, Mercado de La Merced, armed with multihued bolsas – market bags – to carry the compras – purchases.  Pili had readied a partial shopping list, but, she advised us, she always adds “surprises,” such as fresh foodstuffs which peasant women from the mountains sometimes bring down.
 
“When you have a chance to find something real special or unusual, you buy and incorporate into the comida,” she explained.  “Today, for instance, we look for mushrooms, because they grow so beautifully in the rainy season. Also, we will see what kind of fresh fruit we can use for the dessert.”
 
Her insights into the unique stores and small factories enriched the short walk to the market. A rich bouquet drew us into a mill that was making chocolate from scratch. As Pilar told us about the ingredients – cacao, cinnamon, almonds and sugar – the owner welcomed us with, “do you want to taste?” 
 
The lesson began in earnest when Pilar began methodically searching through the indoor and outdoor portions of the marketplace and exchanging pesos for its plethora of fresh produce.
 
“Look at that lady sitting there, what she has in those bowls,” she said. “She just brought those raspberries and blackberries from the Sierra Juarez.  We can use them for the dessert. Notice how fresh and beautiful.  The mushrooms beside them, see the size, how big and the bright orange color … this is the time of year, but not for our recipe today … Over here, we don’t buy the big green tomatillos.  I prefer the little ones grown locally because they are not acidy like the others, and they have much more flavor, perfect for the salsa we are preparing today.” 
 
She encouraged us to smell the herbs as she explained their use in particular Oaxacan dishes. “Today we use this hierba santa for the mole,” she said as she was examining samples of the fragrant leaf until she’d found the best and freshest for storage in one of our bolsas. “But we also use it to wrap fish and make tamales.”
 
Lynet who had been in Puerto Escondido on the Oaxacan coast for six months, expressed the wish of many as she lamented, “I wish I’d been in this class at the beginning of our trip.”
 
Our enthusiasm and our appetites grew once we returned to Doña Pili’s well-equipped, spacious kitchen. Its wide counters, food preparation island and eight-burner gas stove opening onto the lush courtyard dining area made this cocina into an ideal classroom.
 
While we were reviewing printed recipe sheets for the dishes we were about to prepare, she displayed our purchases in baskets filled with the components of each recipe to help us learn why we bought what. Then we spent the next two hours preparing a sumptuous four-course meal.
 
Mary, her sous-chef, did preparatory work such as halving limes, slicing chilies and preparing chicken stock and poultry for the mole, freeing Pili to teach us the rituals and secrets of Oaxacan culinary seduction. Sparks from Pilar’s hearth of experience ignited even the most learned in the class as she pointed, touched, and passed around each item we purchased, telling us how it would be incorporated into the meal.
 
Once the actual cooking began, she put her bilingualism to good use, giving instructions and asking questions in one language, then repeating it in the other, as required by some of her visitors.  “Necesito otro ayudante para quesillo, I need another helper for the cheese.” Pilar might as well be a Maestra de Español, a Spanish teacher to boot. 
 
Everyone learned each task and participated in the preparation of virtually all menu items. And as the group peeled, diced and sautéd, Pili’s gems of information flowed on.
We learned much more than how to achieve flavor. Pilar taught us techniques on how to attain desired tones and textures: “A lot of people ask me about cleaning mushrooms,” she said at one point, demonstrating the correct technique. “Now watch to see how we clean and seed this kind of chili,” she pointed out while preparing chile guajillo for the mole. “Once we start cooking these chile de agua, we need to remember to always check them and turn them constantly.”
“Look for the hot part of the comal … now this is when you know when to turn it over,” she said while demonstrating the art and science of making tortillas.
 
Every once in a while a new recipe rolled off the tip of her tongue as we worked … other dishes we could prepare with this particular mole; different fillings for the quesadillas such as potato, chorizo or huitlacoche, the exotic corn mold … the texture we would want for the corn masa if we were making tamales rather than tortillas. 
 
Soon, aprons removed, we were ready to feast. But first – “now before we sit down, remember in the market I told you there were two types of gusano worm?  Here they are, so who wants to try?” she asked. “Now know about mezcal.  Taste this one Alvin brought, and tell us how it seems to you.  Here’s another kind.  What do you think is different about this one?”
 
We sat down at a table exquisitely set with local hand-made linens, dishes and stemware. Bottles of Mexican and Chilean red wine were already breathing. The fine music of Oaxacan songstress Lila Downs serenaded us in the background.   
 
Pilar reminded us that her grandmother and other relatives usually prepare their comidas with meat and all vegetables mixed together in the mole, a plate of rice on the side, and a bowl of broth. But our meal, like all the recipes she prepares with visitors at La Casa de los Sabores, would be her modern take on all the elements and flavor combinations of the best that contemporary Oaxacan cookery has to offer.
 
It was a celebration of every ingredient. We began with wild mushroom, onion, tomato, chili and cheese stuffing in the quesadillas de champiñones (mushroom quesadillas), complemented perfectly by smoky salsa verde asada (green sauce from the grill) served in its molcajete. Then it was time to calm our palates with bright yellow crema de flor de calabaza (cream of squash blossom soup), garnished with a drizzle of real cream, toasted calabaza seeds and indeed fresh squash blossoms. The main course or plato fuerte was mole amarillo – tender slices of chicken breast atop a sea of aromatic deep saffron-colored mole, accompanied by a medley of crunchy-fresh steamed vegetables. To conclude, arroz con leche (rice pudding), speared with a length of wild vanilla bean and crowned with berries that had been picked only the day before.
 
I left convinced that the grandest chefs at the most trendy Manhattan beaneries would be hard-pressed to compete with this petite Oaxaqueña’s ability to marry the region’s complex cooking with post-modern attention to color, texture and flare. For Pilar Cabrera, it comes naturally. For the rest of us, it comes with a visit to her home.  
 
La Casa de los Sabores Cooking School is located at Libres 205, in downtown Oaxaca.  Maximum class size is 8, with private lessons available upon request.  You can register for Pilar’s classes by calling (951) 516-5704 or e-mailing her at: bbsabores@prodigy.net.mx

Written by Alvin Starkman our expert of the day.