Is it a play or is it a chore? The art and science of cooking and baking may be either. If your kitchen work is a play, you'll get years of fun reading this book and decades of references that you'll keep checking and rechecking (and may be revising). If you are into other things, and cooking for you is a genuine, certified chore, this book will help ease the pain, make the chore efficient and quick, and the results more likely to be beyond just edible. The ancient art of cooking is still filled with many kitchen myths without foundation-myths that have been propagated from generation to generation.
Contents:
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. 5
INTRODUCTION 6
INTRODUCTION TO REPAST-SALADS AND SOUPS 9
SALADS . 10
SOUPS 21
MEET MEAT 34
CHICKEN AND ITS COUSINS 74
SEAFOOD 87
FOUNDATION VEGETABLES 123
THE ONION TRIBE. 125
TOMATO AND ITS BAMBINO, SUN-DRIED TOMATO . 134
PEPPERS AND CHILIES 141
MUSHROOMS. 152
OUR VEGETABLE SCENE 163
THE CARBOHYDRATE CHAMPS 169
PASTA 171
RICE 179
WILD RICE 186
SPUDS AND TATERS. 191
LEGUMES 200
HIGH FLAVOR, HIGH NUTRITION, LOW COST. 200
UNSCRAMBLING DAIRY AND EGGS 213
UNSCRAMBLING DAIRY . 214
UNSCRAMBLING EGGS . 230
BREAD-OUR MOST INDISPENSABLE FOOD. 245
NUTS TO YOU 278
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF A SWEET TOOTH. 293
(MAINLY HOT) BEVERAGES 343
COFFEE 344
TEA . 351
COCOA. 357
FLAVORING FOOD 361
REFERENCES 378
INDEX 380
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. <-----> Harriet Van Horne
Play or Chore?
Is it a play or is it a chore? The art and science of cooking and baking may be either. If your kitchen work is a play, you'll get years of fun reading this book and decades of references that you'll keep checking and rechecking (and may be revising). If you are into other things, and cooking for you is a genuine, certified chore, this book will help ease the pain, make the chore efficient and quick, and the results more likely to be beyond just edible. In fact, you may even become addicted and become one of the players. is book is the result of many years of research into the immense culinary disciplines, written for both the professional and the home cook. It is also the result of numerous kitchen tests and experiments.
The ancient art of cooking is still filled with many kitchen myths without foundation-myths that have been propagated from generation to generation. Some have scientific bases and are perfectly valid. Others are also valid but food scientists still don't know why. There are kitchen myths without rhyme or
reason, and only testing and re-testing in the kitchen proves or invalidates them.
There are other myths that are new propagated by current fashionable chefs, cooks and food writers, either through ignorance or snobbery. For example, many culinary professionals state that imported pure durum wheat Italian pastas are far better than even the best domestic pastas. Kitchen tests showed otherwise.
Besides, Italian pasta makers import most of their durum wheat from the wheat-growing regions of Canada and the United States, and their pasta-making techniques are not superior to our own. So why would their pasta be better?
Focus on simple, common-sense cooking. Most new cookbooks today focus on new styles of cooking
- trendy and unusual ingredients are “in”, with exotic-sounding recipe titles and catchy phrases such as "nap the plate with the sauce", "transporting the flavor", "mildly sweet to assertively spicy" and "intensify and magnify the flavors".
In this book I prefer the basic approach to everyday cooking. The focus is how to produce simple yet best-tasting foods with least effort, most efficiency, shortest time and with available fresh ingredients. Exotic, hard-to-find food items rarely make a food better. In fact, they are often of inferior quality because their slower turnover in the market. For instance, pine nuts are authentic ingredient in an Italian pesto, but fresh pine nuts are not often available and they are pricey.
