How to bread better

Last week I finally risked making chicken Milanese.  It turned out great, but the breading process left a king-hell mess. What can I do to tidy up this process?

Let me start by saying that clean up is part of this game.  No one knows it, or hates it, more than me. It's simply my love of cooking and eating that overcomes my distaste for dealing with the aftermath.

You can, however, take some steps to seriously limit the mess-making throughout the process, and yeild a better product as well. 

Here are some tips.

Use big bowls- you'll have more space to work in.  This contains the mess and let's one bread multiple pieces at a time.
Shake off the flour well- If there's a clump of flour, it's liable to break up after all is said and done.  You'll loose your breading and be left with a chuck of exposed flour.
Beat well and strain the eggs- Lightly tossing the eggs with a fork does not serve here.  I use a blender to thoroughly combine the eggs (and sometimes a little water).  Then I pour it through a fine sieve, this removes the gloppy albumen and lessens the clumps - making the wet step a little easier.
Keep a "dry hand"- I focus on keeping my right hand dry, touching only the flour and breadcrumbs with it.  With my left, I use a slotted spoon to fish stuff out of the egg wash and drain off the excess egg.
Don't bother seasoning the bread or flour - I find that for the amount of seasoning required, not enough of the flavor comes through.  In other words, it's wasteful.   The items that you're cooking should have enough seasoning in and of themselves. 

Baking with Nut Flours

by Lauren Rauh

I'm not jumping on the gluten free or wheat free bandwagon, but the increasing popularity of these lifestyles has brought about the greater availability of alternative flours for baking. Seeing quinoa, barley, coconut, and chestnut flours at the super market sends my mind soaring with pastry inspiration, but the prices keep me from ever bringing these flours home. An easy way to save some money and still be able to experiment is to make your own flours. For this you need a good quality blender or a coffee grinder. I decided because of the abundance of raw almonds in my cabinets, that I would make muffins using almond flour.

Nut flours are full of protein and good fats and add an extra nutritional boost to baked goods. They also impart a wonderful wholesome flavor. If you are making your own nut flours it is important to use only raw nuts and to not over grind the nuts, or you will suddenly have nut butter (also delicious, but not a good flour substitute). For these muffins I ground about three cups raw almonds in small batches using my coffee grinder. It gave me enough flour with a little bit to spare.

The following recipe is extremely simple and rife with opportunity to experiment. Add spices or herbs, try different ground nuts or a combination of different flours. As long as the proportions stay the same you should have hearty, moist muffins in no time.

The Goods:
1 ¾ cup finely ground almond flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
2 eggs
¼ cup walnut oil (or oil of choice)
¼ cup honey

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease or line your muffin tin. Mix the dry goods in a small bowl. Beat together the eggs, oil, and honey.

Stir the dry mix into the wet ingredients. The batter will be very wet. Evenly divide the muffin batter between six muffin cups.

Bake in the center of the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick stuck in the center of a muffin comes out clean. The tops should be a deep, golden brown.

You may want to double or triple this recipe since six muffins will not last long!

Cut Your Chopping Time

When ever a recipe charges you with "slicing thinly" a long thin ingredient such as a scallion or a ramp. Keep this in mind - always double up when you can.  The same goes for if you're julienning thin slabs of something. You should stack them when you can.  It will cut your chopping time in half.  Now, this could be perceived as an arbitrary measure to take, but if you have to crank out four quarts worth of thinly sliced ramps then cutting your time in half is a very big deal. 
It seems very self-explanatory, I know, but it is more about the mentality than it is the practice.  Learning to recognize when you can make things move faster in the kitchen will make cooking a more approachable thing.


Here's an example: if you're slicing three ramps - rather than slice your way through the length of all three . . .

Half them cross-wise  . . .

and lay them next to each other.

Get More Juice From Your Citrus Squeeze

With citrus prices sky-rocketing, there's a little more incentive to effectively season your gin & tonic.  One extra slice can make squeezing easier and help you extract more juice from whatever it is that you're squeezing.
If you look closely at any citrus fruit, you'll see hundreds of little cone-shaped vesicles.  This is where all of the juice is hiding out.  When you cut a strait wedge out of a lime, all of these vesicles are intact and so when you go to squeeze, the force is distributed among the vesicles and that results in more effort on your part and less juice as a reward for all of that effort.  A simple incision along the corner of the wedge will open the tips of all the vesicles, letting all of the juice flow out when prompted by your pinch. 
Who knew such a simple slice could lead to a better cocktail.

Getting Every Last Drop Out of That Olive Oil Bottle.

I am  a big lover of great olive oil.  It's one thing I'll  drop some serious coin on from time to time: and when I spend 25 dollars on a bottle, I want to get every last drop out of it.

Fortunately, this is pretty easy.  If I finish a bottle while cooking, I place the bottle in the center of my stove for about 20 minutes.  The heat leftover from cooking (especially if you were baking) is enough warm the oil.   This, in turn, loosens it up enough to collect at the bottom. Simlpy pour out the remaining oil. 

A bottle that looks empty can give off as much as a few tablespoons of tasty oil.  Enough to dress your next salad.

Canned Caramel

This little recipe always slips my mind when I'm looking for an easy dessert.  All you have to do is submerge a can of sweetened condensed milk in water and cook at what I would call a vigorous simmer for three hours.  (this recipe has failed me once and I don't know why, it came out a tepid blond color.) Alternatively, you could cover this pot of water throw it in 350˚ F oven for three hours. Once it's done, allow it to cool for around 30 minutes before opening.**

The result is a silky, perfectly sweetened, dulce de leche.  Spread this on a wafer cookie with a tiny pinch of sea salt and you have an amazing dessert.



**NOTE: Do not just drop a room temp. can of condensed milk into an already-boiling pot of water - the temperature contrast could cause the can to burst.  and DO NOT boil a can and return it to your cabinet for few months - once cooked I would not consider this a shelf stable product. 

A Substitute for a Pack of Jell-O

Q:Is your thinking cap on? There's a cake recipe on a bag of flour that gives me some ideas. However, one of its ingredients is "1 package lemon jello." Lemon jello is sugar, gelatine, yellow dye # something, artificial lemon flavoring.
How the heck do I replace that, and in what quantity? Got any ideas?

A: Ok, here goes. 

Lemon Jell-O is going to bring a few unique characteristics to a cake.

1. Gelatin - This is going to give your cake a unique texture.  You can replace this with 1/2 ounce (2 1/4 tbsps) of powdered gelatin.  

2. Lemony flavor - this is probably best substituted with lemon oil (or a bunch of zest) and ascorbic acid (you can literally crush up a vitamin C).  Straight lemon juice will involve water that throws off the moisture content of a recipe. 

3. Sugar - this is going to be a matter of personal preference, but a regular jell-o pack has about 7 tablespoons of sugar. 

4.  A yellow hue - If you really want that yellow color you could add a touch yellow food coloring.

D.I.Y "Ricotta"

Before you read this article, Read This!
I was mistaken in some of my information in this entry.  See the comment below.

We've all done it before - you're on your way home, you stop and pick an extra gallon of milk thinking you're doing everybody a favor and you get home to find somebody else just did the same. 
Before you start mixing up White Russians and reenacting The Big Lebowsky, consider this, a simple fresh cheese.  In addition to getting a little longer shelf life out of your milk, it will open up a world of options - granted, none of them are cocktails.**

D.I.Y. Fresh Lemon "Ricotta"

2 qts. (that's a half gallon) whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tsp salt
Juice and zest of one lemon

The separated curd

1. In a heavy bottomed pot, bring the milk, cream and salt to just a simmer.
2. Once it hits a simmer, (don't let it simmer for long) stir in the lemon juice and turn off the heat and let this stand for 10-12 minutes.  Do not continue to stir - you sill see the curd and whey separate.
3.  Line a strainer with a cheese cloth and strain the curds out of the whey.  (If you had pigs the whey from this would be one of their favorite snacks. At one time in Parma italy, for your prosciutto to be considered "di Parma" your pigs would have to have feasted on the whey leftover from making Parmigano Reggiano)
4.  Stir the lemon zest into the curds and throw the whole thing in the fridge for 2-4 hours.  (the curd in the cheese cloth, in the strainer, in a bowl)

Your cheese is ready to go.  Transfer it to an airtight container.  This can be used where ever you would use ricotta, but mine was shoveled away with crackers before I could apply it to anything.

Variation Notes:  In this recipe, I use the word "ricotta" but many cultures have a version of this cheese with slight variations on the recipe and process.  It's very similar to the process of making paneer, farmer's cheese, pot cheese, and if you pressed the curd and let it sit, you'd have queso blanco.
Also, if you used skim milk and rinsed the curds, then soaked them in half & half you'd have cottage cheese. 

** If somebody has a cocktail that involves ricotta cheese I'd love to hear about it.

I love codfish, but I have a lot of trouble keeping it in one peice. Any pointers?

The Codfish family (hake, scrod, cod, haddock, et al) has always been one of those trickier fish to dabble in. It's very tasty, but mild, and so goes well with many flavor profiles... but there's a catch, it has a tendency to crumble into a pile of fish flakes if you breath on it.

For this reason I've always operated under the rule - "once it sees heat, don't f----ing touch it". So usually, I would prepare it in a vessel in which it could be served, such as a crock.

There is, however, an alternative- a simple step to give these fillets a little more strustural integrity and build flavor while your at it.  All it takes is salt, but a lot of it.   You simply take them out of the fridge about 20 minutes before cooking time and salt them very liberally, almost burying them.  (if you have a flatter tail section, fold it onto itself and salt only the outside) Let them stand in the salt for about 10 to 15 minutes and then rinse them well and dry them off.

The flesh of the fish itself should become slightly more translucent and noticeably firmer to the touch.   This slight change will make it much easier to handle throughout the cooking process, but you still have to be gentle.   And remember, this process seasons the fish as well, so you won't need any more salt.

For the record, you always lay the fish away from yourself.  So as to not splatter oil on yourself.

See what I made with this here fish. . . .