Today I want to spend a few minutes discussing simple salad dressing. A good salad can be a whole meal, or just a component thereof, and good salad dressing is, for me, a big part of what makes a good salad. Salad-in-a-bag + crumbled feta cheese + a yummy dressing is a pretty good meal when I’m busy (argh, like now). Maybe a slice of bread or some crackers on the side.

Most people know that the main component of vinaigrette salad dressing is some sort of oil + some sort of acid (vinegar, lemon juice, etc…). And for some people, that’s enough. When my husband goes out to eat, he often orders just the bottle of oil + bottle of vinegar for his salad dressing. I need a bit more, though.

I’m going to walk you through my House Dressing and explain what makes it work and how you can alter a dressing to your own tastes.

To start out, the easiest way to prepare a dressing is by using an old jar of the smallish variety. An old mustard jar, olive jar, any kind of jar, as long as it has been washed and has a tight-fitting lid.

Into your jar,  you will put 3 tablespoons (45mL) of olive oil and 1 tablespoon (15mL) of red wine vinegar. Olive oil because it has a pleasant fruity flavor and red wine vinegar because it’s got a good balance of acid-to-sweet. Something like cider or white vinegar can be too acid, and balsamic vinegar is too sweet (and also expensive).

Now into your jar, put 1 teaspoon (5mL) of dijon mustard (or any kind of mustard other than the bright yellow kind). This adds a bit of a horseradish bite.

Next into the jar is 1 teaspoon (5mL) of maple syrup or honey. I add some sweet to my dressing because I tend to eat bitter greens a lot in my salads (spinach, cabbage, the lettuce that comes out of my garden that, by the end of the growing season, is so bitter that it will put hair on your chest and then take it clean off again). The sweetness balances out the bitter of the greens.

Finally, add 1 teaspoon (5mL) of soy sauce. Yes, that sounds weird. This is mainly here for both the salt and that certain je ne sais quois that fermented soy products have.

Now, put the lid on your jar and shake it until it’s all reasonably well blended. It won’t look like the perfect emulsions you get out of a bottle from the store because you’re using human-power and not a giant blender, but it’s fine. You can store this dressing in the fridge for a good long time. Just be aware that it will separate out into its component parts and you’ll have to shake it up again before using. You’ll also have to let it come to room temperature, as oils when refrigerated, get hard. This doesn’t mean it has gone bad, it’s just like the difference between melted butter and butter that’s been in your fridge.

You can play around with your own angle on a basic vinaigrette. If you fancy lemon juice, my advice is to not just simply replace all the vinegar with lemon juice, but to go half-and-half. Vinaigrette made with lemon juice only is just too lemony for me, and too acidic. If you want to get rid of the maple syrup, go for it. As I say, I mainly use it because I eat a lot of bitter greens, but if you go to the store and look at the bottled dressings there, I think you’ll find that most of those also incorporate some sort of sweetener. Raw vegetables just in general are more bitter than most people are used to eating, and a sweet-ish dressing can balance that on your palate. Instead of soy sauce, you can just add a pinch of salt (not a teaspoon of salt, I hasten to add–just a pinch). Or, keep the soy sauce, lose the mustard and instead add a teaspoon of minced ginger for a more Asian-style take on the same idea.

Dress your salad as close to when you’re going to eat it as possible. The acids in your dressing will wilt your veggies if left to sit on them too long. If you’re packing yourself a lunch, leave your salad undressed and take the dressing along separately.

Have a salad, too. Eat your vegetables.

Straight from my mom to you. Well, via me.

Now, you will never catch me maligning the mac and cheese that comes in the blue box or whatever. I love that shit in a very, very guilty sort of way. But homemade macaroni and cheese is another category of food entirely. Sometimes I want Kraft, but sometimes I want the stuff that mom used to make.

So, follow along to make your own macaroni and cheese casserole, suitable for pot-lucks and impressing loved-ones.

Your Shopping List:

1 package of dried pasta of some sort. Ah, pasta shapes. For this dish, select a shape that has a lot of surface area but isn’t a long noodle. The surface area is important, because the more surface area, the more delicious cheese sauce each piece carries. I’m using farfalle (butterflies). Other good candidates are penne and fusilli.

Cheese! This dish is only as good as your cheese, to be honest. Get the generic dollar store pasta by all means, but the better the cheese, the better this will turn out. Traditionally for Americans, the cheese used is cheddar, but any hard, sharp cheese is fine. I actually use Kerrygold Dubliner cheese, which is like cheddar and aged gouda had a baby, if that makes any sense (I just like cheese okay). If you’re not a cheese aficianado, just go for a sharp cheddar that strikes your fancy (the store brand stuff that just says “sharp cheddar” will be fine). Can you get the pre-shredded kind? Certainly. It costs more, but if you don’t have a cheese shredder, go for it. You don’t need a whole lot, just a couple square inches worth (it’s a cup shredded) so no need to get the giant brick of cheese as big as your head.

Butter. Yes, you can also use margarine.

Milk. Any sort–skim, whole, whatever. You’ll only need a cup.

Flour. We’re talking white all-purpose flour here. Make sure it’s not “self-raising” or “biscuit” flour. The only ingredient should be wheat flour, that’s it. Again, you’ll only need a little, so if you can find a smaller package than the standard 5 lb. sack, go for it. (Or borrow from a neighbor.)

Tomatoes (optional): 1-2 fresh ripe tomatoes if you’re going whole hog and making the baked casserole version of this recipe.

Bread crumbs (very optional): If you’ve got some around, use them, otherwise, you don’t need them.

For your equipment, you’ll need: Large pot, cutting board, serrated knife, measuring cups and spoons, wooden spoon, whisk and a casserole dish.

What you'll need.

Ready to cook? The following recipe serves 4, technically. It’s so delicious though, it’s really more like 3 (or 2 if you’re really bad).

• 8 oz (225 g or half a package) of pasta
• 1 cup of cheese, shredded (1 cup refers to the amount of shredded cheese, not unshredded–it’s about 3 oz or 85g)
• 1 tablespoon (15 mL or 15 g) of butter or margarine
• 2 tablespoons (30 mL) all-purpose white flour
• 1 cup (235 mL) milk
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt
• Pepper (a pinch)
• 1-2 fresh ripe tomatoes (optional)
• Breadcrumbs to sprinkle (optional)

Fill your pot with water (not all the way to the top–you’ll need room for the pasta) and set it on a burner turned to high. Wait for it to really start to boil before adding your pasta.

After adding the pasta to the boiling water, give it a couple stirs (this prevents the pasta from sticking to the bottom of the pot), turn the burner down to medium-high (you want the water to continue to boil, but not boil over). If “high” is at 1 o’clock on the dial, “medium-high” is probably around 3 o’clock. Set your timer for whatever it says on your package of pasta. Different shapes and sizes of pasta require different cooking times, so just go by the package.

Meanwhile, shred your cheese until you’ve got about a cup (235 mL).

When your timer goes off on the pasta, test it. Take a piece out, blow on it (no burned fingers) and cut it open to look inside. Does it look like there’s a bit of a lighter-colored core? Then it might not be done yet. Try a piece. Crunchy? Not done yet. Firm but chewy? Done. If it isn’t done, give it another minute and try again.

When it is done, drain it in a colander in your sink, and just let it be. Return the pot to the stove and turn the burner down to low.

Put your 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of butter into the pot and let it melt. If it’s really sizzling like crazy, make sure you’ve turned your burner down to low.

After the butter is melted, add the 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of flour. With your wooden spoon, mix the butter and flour so that you create a bit of a paste. What you’ve just created is known in French and Cajun cooking as a roux. It’s the foundation of many very famous dishes such as bechamel sauce, gumbo, and also your grandma’s turkey gravy. The flour and the butter (or other fat) act as thickening agents so that liquid that is added turns creamy, smooth and thick.

Once the butter and flour are fully mixed up together, it’s time to switch to the whisk.

A little at a time, add the milk. You want to make sure the milk has time to get hot before you start whisking. Cold milk will just turn lumpy when introduced to the roux. So, pour the milk in and give it a moment. Once it starts to bubble a little bit, start whisking. Using a whisk in this context is much like using a spoon, so just basically stir it quickly using your whisk and you’re “whisking.”

Once that bit of milk has been incorporated into the roux, so that it’s a bit more dough-like and less paste-like, add a bit more milk and repeat the process. Wait for it to get hot, then whisk. As you can see from the video, I add milk three times to total the 1 cup called for in the recipe.

Lumpy sauce will not be an issue if you wait for your milk to get hot after you add it. You get lumps when you get ahead of yourself and add too much, too fast and try to whisk it in too soon.

Once you’ve added all the milk and have a smooth, creamy sauce, you can now add your cheese. Add it all at once and use your wooden spoon again to stir it around until it begins to melt. You can add the salt and pepper at this time as well.

Turn the burner off and add the pasta into the sauce. Give it all a thorough stirring.

You can eat this right now as is, if you’d like. Or you can continue on and make the casserole.

Preheat your oven to 400F (205C). While it’s pre-heating, get your casserole dish out and dump your pasta into it.

Slice up a couple tomatoes into thin rounds. Lay the tomatoes on top of th e pasta, and then (if you’ve got them around) sprinkle some breadcrumbs on top. Just a dusting, for a bit of crunch. Alternatively, you can top it with a bit more shredded cheese.

When the oven is pre-heated, put your casserole dish in, uncovered, for about 20 minutes.

That’s it!

It really is delicious.

Panko-Crusted Cod with Glazed Beans (and incidental pierogies)

Now doesn’t that sound fancy! I bet you’re thinking this is going to take ages to prepare and be all complicated and discouraging.

The fact is that this is a great, week-night 30-minute meal that requires a real minimum of fuss. I’ll be discussing the fish and vegetable portions of the meal but not a starch. If you’d like to have a go at making rice, now might be a good time to try. Last night when I made this, we had frozen pierogies as our starch (just boiled with a dollop of plain yogurt on top). So pair it up with whatever starch you like (a piece of bread? some take-out left-over rice? pasta?), or none at all if the breadcrumbs on the fish are enough carbs for you.

Credit where credit is due: The fish recipe is adapted from here.

First things first, let’s talk about your shopping list to prepare 3 servings (divide by threes to get amounts for 1-2 servings):

12 oz. (350 g) of some sort of de-boned, fileted white fish: I’m using Icelandic cod that I got frozen at Trader Joe’s. You needn’t use cod, however. Any white-fleshed fish with filets about an inch thick will do. So, no giant, thick tuna steaks or anything like that. But cod, pollock, sole, flounder is all fine. Before you cook, your fish needs to be thawed if you bought it frozen. If what you’ve purchased comes in large whole filets (the cod I bought were huge), just cut them down into even portions about the size of your palm. Don’t forget to wash the knife and cutting board in hot, soapy water afterwards. Things that touch raw fish or meat should not be touching anything else unless washed first.

Thawing frozen fish has some attendant food safety tips: Never ever re-freeze something you’ve already thawed. What this means in practical terms is that if you buy a large package of something and you know you only need, say, half of it for your recipe, open up the package it came in and separate it out into what you know you’re going to need to thaw and what you want to remain frozen. Use plastic wrap and freezer bags to re-portion your fish, and return the portion you are not going to use to the freezer. The portion that you need to thaw, put in your fridge over night for use the next day (or in the morning for use that evening). Don’t thaw stuff if you think you might not actually use it within 24-48 hours. Save the meals that require the thawing of frozen fish/meat for nights that you know you’ll be in and wanting to eat it.

1 package of panko or regular breadcrumbs: Panko is also known as Japanese bread crumbs. If you’ve ever had Japanese tempura or tonkatsu, you’ll recognize panko. It might be easier than you think to get a hold of if your grocery store has an East Asian food aisle. Alternatively, any packaged breadcrumb product is fine. Traditional western breadcrumbs tend to come in either unseasoned or seasoned varieties and that’s up to you. By ‘seasoning’ they usually mean Italian-style herbs, and if that sounds like it might be your thing, give it a whirl. If not, unseasoned.

1 jar of dijon or coarse-ground mustard: We’re looking for any sort of mustard other than the bright yellow kind. Dijon mustard has a real horseradishy zip to it, and coarse-ground mustard still has bits of the original mustard seeds. If you’re a condiment aficionado and already have a type of spicy mustard that you like, you can use that.

Optional dried herb purchases: I use dried parsley flakes and dried chives in this recipe. Neither are required, but are a nice addition if you’re looking for an excuse to build up your spice rack.

3/4 lb (.30 kilograms) green beans: You can use fresh OR frozen and it makes no difference to this recipe.

1 bottle of cooking oil: I am using extra virgin olive oil, as I do for everything I make that does not involve very high heat. (See this post about cooking oils and heat.) You may use whatever you have on hand, though I always feel that flavor is improved with olive oil.

Butter: The recipe only calls for a small pat. Can you use margarine? If you must. /food snob

White wine, cider (hard or not), or lemon juice: We’ll again just be using a small amount, so if you’re not a wine-drinker, don’t go out and buy a whole bottle just for this recipe. What you want is any sort of sweet/tart beverage that is not overly, sickeningly sweet. We want a little sugar and a little acid, but not something overpowering. I used (non-alcoholic, because we Americans are perverse like that) apple cider. If you use lemon juice, cut it with half water, half lemon juice (I’ll mention this again in the recipe).

Salt and pepper if you don’t already have some.

Equipment: A baking sheet, tinfoil, a medium-sized or large frying pan, cutting board, and a knife if you need to cut up your fish to portion it or buy green beans that need to be trimmed.

A tangential word about ovens and stovetops: In many parts of the world, you’ve got two choices for your stove/cooker: electric or gas. Electric stoves use electricity to power heating elements that in turn heat your food. Gas stoves use ignited gas to make flames, and that’s what you cook your food on. The difference isn’t trivial because the type of stove you have effects all sorts of things about how you cook your food, especially on the stove top. With an electric stove, when you turn the heat on your burner up or down, it takes time for the heating element to heat up or cool down to the new desired temperature. How much time depends on your individual stove. With a gas stove, however, because what’s cooking your food is an actual flame, you can turn that flame up or down and experience the difference in temperature nearly instantly. I personally prefer a gas cooktop because I really appreciate the greater control it gives me over how quickly I heat or cool what I’m cooking. Unfortunately, my current house has an electric stove, so that is what I’m stuck with. The difference between the two types of cookers makes it difficult to give precise instructions for novices as I attempt to do in this blog, because how long I tell you to wait for your pan to heat up or cool down is going to differ depending on your individual stove.  There’s really no way around that, but know that if you have a gas stove and you see instructions from me about waiting for something to heat up or cool down, you will likely be waiting less time than I specify.

Recipes! (We’ll start with the fish, as you’ll do the beans while the fish is in the oven.)

Panko-Crusted Cod

• 3 4oz. pieces of cod or other white fish
• 1 cup of panko or regular bread crumbs
• 2 tablespoons (30mL) or thereabouts dijon or coarse-ground mustard
• Optional: 1 tsp (5mL) each dried parsley flakes, dried chives, and salt
• 2 tbl (ish) extra virgin olive oil or other cooking oil

Preheat your oven to 375F or 190C. You’ll notice there’s probably some sort of light or indicator on your oven controls that indicates if the oven is done preheating or not. Pay attention to that. Ovens can take a long time to come up to temperature and you don’t want to put your food into an oven that isn’t hot enough.

Get a baking sheet and cover it with tinfoil (shiny side up).

Dump the panko (or breadcrumbs) into a shallow bowl. Add the dried herbs and salt, if using, and mix it up with your fingers.

Put the mustard into a separate small bowl. (This will keep you from contaminating a perfectly good jar of mustard with a knife that has touched raw fish.)

Identify the skin-side of your fish. One side may look silvery or shiny. That’s the side you want facing down. If both sides of your fish look the same as far as just being white and fishy, don’t worry about it.

Coat the top of each piece of fish with an even, thin slathering of mustard. You still want to be able to see the fish underneath, so don’t go crazy. Just enough to provide a nice adhesive for the breadcrumbs.

Now take a piece of fish and put it mustard-side-down into the breadcrumbs. Press down firmly and then spoon some breadcrumbs onto the top as well. You want the whole piece to be coated in a thin layer of breadcrumbs. Before putting that piece back onto the baking sheet (mustard-side-up again), brush some oil onto the foil where it’s going to land. Now put the coated fish on the baking sheet and repeat with the next piece until all your fish is coated in breadcrumbs and on your baking sheet, ready to go. Drizzle a small amount of oil on the tops of each piece. If your oven is fully pre-heated, put the fish in and set the timer for 15 minutes. You’re done with the fish for now.

Glazed Green Beans

• 3/4 lb (1/3 kilo) green beans either fresh or frozen
• 1 tablespoon (15 mL) cooking oil
• 1 quarter-inch (half-centimeter) pat of butter (or margarine… I guess)
• 2 tablespoons (30 mL) white wine, apple juice or cider, OR 1 tablespoon (15 mL) water + 1 tablespoon (15 mL) lemon juice

Portion and trim your green beans if they require that. If using frozen, go check your email for about 7 minutes and then come back.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat on your stove top. Put in 1 tablespoon (15mL) of cooking oil and wait for it to come up to heat (if you put your hand a couple inches above the surface of the frying pan, it should definitely feel like you wouldn’t actually want to touch it). Dump in your green beans and sautee them over this same medium heat, stirring them frequently to prevent any sticking and giving them a chance to cook on all sides. This will probably take about 4 minutes. If it seems like its getting too hot, if you see smoke rising off the pan or you detect that your beans might be started to scorch, turn the heat down as low as it will go (especially if you have an electric stove).

After 4 minutes, try a bean. Is it cooked enough for you? If it is, turn the heat to low if you have not done so already and toss in the pat of butter. Let it melt and coat all your beans. Now dump your wine or cider or half-lemon-juice-half-water into the pan. The heat will cause the water in this liquid to evaporate, which, combined with the butter, will create its own sauce or glaze in about 30 seconds. Add some salt and pepper if you think it needs it. (Taste a bean!)

Turn the heat off entirely, your beans are done.

Panko Crusted Cod, Part 2

Has your timer gone off on the fish yet? If it has, now we get to do some advanced oven cookery. We’re going to use the broiler. Most ovens I’ve had have had a broiler setting among the other oven controls. What the broiler does is turn a heating element on the roof of the oven on, to direct high, targeted heat to the top of whatever you are cooking. Because all the heat is going to be beating down on the top of your fish, make sure the rack that you’ve got your fish on is at least 8 inches below the top of your oven.

So, turn your oven’s broiler on to high. Some ovens require you to turn the “bake” setting off before you can turn the “broil” setting on.

Leave your fish where it is in the oven and keep a very very close eye on it. You can even crack the door to your oven a bit and peek, since broiling relies more on direct heat than the ambient heat of a regular bake setting (opening the door lets the heat out when you’re baking, which is bad, but doesn’t matter so much when you’re broiling). It will probably not be very long, a minute at most, before you see that the breadcrumbs on the top of your fish are turning darker. Once that happens, you’re done. Turn the broiler off, take the fish out of the oven, and plate up your delicious meal.

ANYWAY.

Today’s post is about cooking oils: when to use which ones and what to keep in your pantry for maximum usefulness.

A cooking oil is, of course, some sort of fat that you use to impart flavor, lubricate your cooking vessel to avoid sticking, and conduct heat to your food. Many oils are plant-based (olive, peanut, canola, etc…) and some are animal-based (butter, lard, etc…). What many people don’t realize about cooking oils (especially the plant-based ones) is that they are not all made equal when it comes to applying heat to them.

Cooking at too high a heat with an oil not meant for that temperature will lead to that oil breaking down, scorching, smoking, and making your food taste bad. And probably setting off your smoke alarm.

To avoid this, know your oils and select the right one based on how high you will need to heat it in order to prepare your recipe.

Sometimes you will hear an oil’s “smoke point” referred to. This is the temperature after which the oil begins to break down into its component lipids–meaning this is the temperature you do not want to go past with it. This handy wikipedia page gives the smoke points of many common cooking oils, sortable by temperature.

As you can see, on the lower end of things we have butter and many unrefined oils. If you look further down the chart, you’ll see the refined versions of many of those same oils with much higher smoke points. Both butter and unrefined oils have other materials in them that are more susceptible to heat than the oil in its pure state. The refinement process removes these extra ingredients. So, when you shop for oils, make sure that you’re purchasing the right type of that particular oil (refined or unrefined–with butter the term is “clarified” and this is actually something you can make at home, comment if anyone wants to know how) for the job.

In my house, I use extra virgin olive oil for all low and medium-heat cooking. Olive oil is good for you and has a lovely, fruity flavor. It can do double and triple duty not only as a cooking oil but as a flavoring agent, even in an uncooked form (such as salad dressing or drizzled over a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella cheese). However, its smoke point is too low for higher heat cooking needs such as stir-fries or deep-frying. For that I keep refined peanut or high oleic canola* oil in the house. It doesn’t get used as often as the olive oil but is much easier to work with at high heats.

Butter is great but has a very low smoke-point unless you clarify it first, and when you burn butter, you know it. The flavor is unmistakable and unpleasant. I avoid using butter in anything that I think may even approach its smoke point. If you want the buttery flavor without the risk of burning, use a higher-heat oil to cook your recipe, and then finish the dish with a pat of butter dropped in after you’ve turned the heat down or off.

If you do decide that extra virgin olive oil is versatile enough to justify its extra expense, I suggest purchasing some sort of squeeze bottle for it. A lot of recipes call for a “drizzle” of olive oil, and it’s hard to drizzle out of a regular wide-mouth glass bottle. I use one of these, purchased at a local store that sells oils in bulk:

You can also get similar sorts of plastic squeeze bottles at beauty supply stores or dollar/unit-of-currency stores.

*Canola oil may be known as rapeseed oil in other countries. “Canola” is a portmanteau of the words “Canada” and “oil” and began to be used as the name for the oil produced by pressing the seeds of the rape or rapa plant (a type of brassica). Because, well… rape. In English it’s got some unfortunate implications.

Hopefully, this post will demystify it a bit and you’ll be cooking delicious rice in no time.

So, with rice there are two major characteristics to learn about: color and grain-size.

Uncooked brown rice.

With regards to color, you’ve got your brown rice and you’ve got your white rice. Brown rice is rice that has not had the outer hull removed. It’s the rice equivalent of whole wheat. Because this outer hull is still present, it is higher in fiber (making it a more complex carbohydrate) and also takes longer to cook. It’s got a bit more of a nutty, earthy taste and a firmer texture even when fully-cooked.  Average cooking time for brown rice is about 40 minutes, so don’t embark on that unless you’ve got some time.

White rice is rice that has had its outer hull removed, leaving it lower in fiber, while also allowing it to cook faster (about 20 minutes). White rice has a softer texture and less assertive flavor. It is also delicious.

The lovechild of white and brown rice is something called Converted Rice (if you’re in the US and perhaps other locales, the most famous brand of converted rice is Uncle Ben’s).  Converted rice goes through a special process that takes brown rice and then does a bunch of stuff to it to produce a rice that looks kind of beige and behaves a bit like white rice, but has some of the nutrients of brown rice left over. It has a distinctive taste and texture and one that I, frankly, am not real fond of.

Instant rice (Minute Rice, etc…) is white rice that has been cooked and then dehydrated. When you cook it, really all you’re doing is rehydrating it.

So, to recap: Brown rice is  a whole grain and takes a long time to cook, white rice is a simple carb and takes a short time to cook, converted rice is a special white/brown hybrid, and instant rice is like astronaut ice cream. But rice.

Now, on to grain size.

You may have seen packages of rice that say things like “long grain” or “short grain” and wondered what that means, aside from the obvious (the length of each grain of rice).

The general rule to remember is that the shorter the grain, the more starch. I am sure there are exceptions, but all of the types of rice that you’ll commonly find at the grocery store adhere to this principle.

Why does starch content matter? Because starch is what makes rice sticky. If you’ve ever eaten sushi and wondered how all the rice sticks together, it’s because sushi rice is a very short-grained variety and all that starch makes each individual grain extremely sticky. Longer grained rice is fluffier when cooked, with each grain standing apart from its neighbors.

From left to right, that's short, long, and medium-grained rice (uncooked).

If you like your rice to be sticky and glutinous, go for a short-grained variety (these are usually Chinese and Japanese varieties or the Italian risotto rice Arborio). If you like light, fluffy rice where all the grains are separate, get a long-grained variety such as Basmati or Jasmine. Or, for the best of both worlds, try a  medium-grained variety like Calrose. Even generic “BAG O’ RICE” rice will be labeled with grain-size, so you can just go by that.

When it comes to cooking rice, it’s all about the rice-to-water ratio. I’ve always had good luck sticking to a 1 part rice : 2 parts water ratio, though I know other people have other formulas.  A Korean housemate of mine used a method whereby he’d put the rice in to the pot, then place his hand palm-down on the surface of the rice and fill the pot with water until the water just barely covered his knuckles. (I’ve also used this method and it does indeed work, if you’re feeling adventurous.)

This video shows me preparing a short-grained Japanese variety of rice. You’ll note that even when it’s done cooking, it’s still shiny and wet-appearing. That’s the starch (and as far as I’m concerned starch=delicious and more starch= more delicious). An optional step when cooking a starchy, short-grained rice is to rinse it under cold water to wash off some of the excess starch. This will make the finished product less sticky and glutinous.

My cooking method is to measure out my desired number of servings of rice (when I’m not making an instructional video, I usually use an espresso cup to equal 1 serving of dry rice), then twice that amount of water, bring it to a simmer, stir, then turn the heat down low low LOW—as low as it will go and still technically be “on”—and cover the pot with tinfoil and then a tight-fitting lid.

Rice likes to steam, not boil. It wants a warm, moist environment. For this reason, peek-a-boo cooking is not allowed with rice. Once you put that lid on, it stays on. No looking. Every time you open the lid, you release some of the steam that the rice needs to cook.

I keep the rice on the low burner for 15 or so minutes, then turn the burner off and let it sit, unmolested, for another 10-15 minutes. This allows the steaming process to finish completely.

Troubleshooting rice mistakes:

Too much peeking: this lets steam out, as I say, and inhibits the cooking of the rice. You may wind up with slightly crunchy, toothy rice. After the fact, there’s not that much that can be done about that. Live and learn.

Too little water: this creates a situation where all the water has been absorbed by the rice, but the rice isn’t done yet. Add more water, but be prepared for mushy rice at the end of it all.

Stuck to the bottom of the pot: As long as its not burned, but rather just a bit stuck, take it off the heat, add a small amount of water and put the lid back on for 5 additional minutes, allowing the water to penetrate to the bottom of the pot and steam the stuck rice off a bit.

Too much water: this will lead to mushy rice. However, too much water also leads to the Chinese rice porridge known as congee if you do it on purpose.

Pot boils over: If you’ve already turned the heat down and the water is taking an extra minute or two to stop boiling so hard, it might boil over when you put the lid on. Just leave it be. It will stop boiling soon enough and if you go taking the lid off, you may wind up with Rice Problem #1 due to releasing too much steam. Just clean your stove top up later. If this is a persistent problem that doesn’t go away, turn your burner down, it is on too high still.

Confession time: I eat a mostly vegetarian diet. I do promise, however, to enlist the help of my dear old mom to present non-vegetarian recipes in the future (and I’ve been known to cook seafood every now and again, so keep an eye out for a broiled fish supper coming up soon). But for now, we’ve got that old vegetarian stand-by: lentil soup. (Which you can un-vegetarian easily by making a simple tweak, noted below.)

This recipe is one of the first dishes that I learned to cook when I went away to college, and it sort of became my signature dish for a while. I know, it’s not exactly haute cuisine, but it’s filling, healthy, easy to prepare and people really do seem to love it.

So for each new recipe, I’ll first talk about the individual ingredients, and then we’ll get to the actual cookery bit. I’ve also included 2 videos, one of the prep work (cutting everything up) and one of the actual cooking. It’s all happening, beyond the jump:

Your shopping list for this dish is as follows:

1 bag of brown lentils: Brown lentils are a type of bean or legume, high in fiber and protein and really just fantastic for you. They are usually purchased dried and then prepared by boiling them (30 minutes or so). However, the older your lentils are, the longer they will take to cook. Like all dried beans, you should never add anything salty or acidic to lentils before they are fully cooked. Salts and acids toughen the skin of dried legumes and it makes them take longer to cook. If you are in the US and can’t find them in your grocery store, check the Hispanic foods section.

2 medium-sized, thin-skinned potatoes: In the video you’ll see I’m using red-skin potatoes. I like to use a potato with a thin skin, which is basically every type except the stereotypical baking potato (a variety known as Russet). Look for potatoes that are smaller than your fist and have either red or yellowish skins. Using a thin-skinned variety of potato means I can leave the skin on and retain all the vitamins that are in it. Don’t forget to give them a vigorous wash in the sink under cold water before cooking with them!

1 onion: Any onion will do. There are yellow ones and white ones and red ones and they’re all fine to use in this recipe. I’m using a yellow onion.

1 Carrot: Again, it’s just a carrot, nothing special about it.

1 bag of frozen chopped spinach: I get the kind that comes in a bag, as the kind that comes in the square box is like a solid brick of spinach, which makes it impossible to just use some of it at a time without attacking it with an ice-pick.

Most of the ingredients, assembled in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

1 box of bouillon cubes: Bouillon cubes are purportedly the concentrated flavor of whatever they say they are (typically chicken, beef or vegetable), though mileage varies on how much of that is due to MSG. (I don’t knock MSG though, it’s an interesting substance that lends a pretty unique flavor.) I’m using Knorr vegetable bouillon cubes here, but you can use beef or chicken bouillon if you’d like. Beef would probably mesh the best with the assertive flavor of the lentils, but I’m sure chicken would be fine as well. Alternatively, you can use prepackaged liquid broth instead (I’ll tell you how to make that replacement later).

1 sprig of fresh rosemary or 1 bottle of dried rosemary: Rosemary is a Mediterranean herb with a very distinctive piney, astringent sort of flavor. I’m using fresh rosemary because I grow it in my herb garden. You can purchase fresh rosemary in many grocery stores these days, in the produce section (look for little clamshell plastic packages of many different sorts of fresh herbs), or you can use dried from a bottle. Your choice.

1 bottle of red wine vinegar: This is actually the secret ingredient, and it completes the flavor profile of the soup. I often add acidic things to dishes that are otherwise quite salty and earthy to give them a spark and pep them up. Red wine vinegar is, as you might have guessed, vinegar made by adding a vinegar “mother” (you actually don’t want to know what this is all about, believe me) to red wine and letting it ferment. There are lots of different sorts of vinegar, some sweeter, some more purely acid. Red wine vinegar is on the sweeter end.

Kitchen gear-wise, for this you’ll need your cutting board, vegetable peeler, mid-sized knife, and measuring cups/spoons. Use your mid-sized pot if you’re making the quantity given in this recipe (or less).

Here we go with the recipe. Metric amounts are in parenthesis (and if anyone spots a conversion error, please let me know).

Lentil Soup
Serves 4 (cut amounts in half to serve 2, or in quarters for a single serving), takes about an hour to make, but half of that is it cooking without your assistance.

• 2 medium-sized potatoes, washed and cut into cubes about the size of a sugar cube (it’s fine if they’re a bit bigger—we’re going for “fits on a spoon and can be eaten in one bit” size).
• ½ of an onion, diced (no need to labor over the dicing, just chop it up real good)
• 1 carrot, peeled and then diced (again, just chop it up so that the pieces are fits-on-a-spoon-with-some-other-stuff sized)
• 1 cup (240 mL) of dried brown lentils
• 2 cups (480 mL) chopped frozen spinach
• 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of fresh rosemary (that’s just the leaves, not the woody stem) OR 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of dried rosemary OR no rosemary at all if that’s how you want to roll
• 1 bouillon cube of your choice OR 3 cups of pre-made chicken, beef or vegetable broth
• 6 cups (1.5 liters) of water (or 3 cups water + 3 cups of the broth from above)
• 1-2 tablespoons (15-30 mL) red wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper (optional)

I picked this for the first recipe because the amounts are flexible. Don’t want four servings? No problem, just use ½ cup ( 120 mL) of lentils, 1 potato and 3 cups (700 mL) of water instead. Furthermore, none of the measurements need to be exact here.

First, chop all of the fresh veggies (the onion, carrot, and potatoes).

Put your pot on the stove, turn the burner on to high and fill it with the water (or broth + water), then the vegetables, then the lentils, then the rosemary. Let that come to a nice boil.

You may notice that as your lentils begin to boil, they develop a bit of a scuzzy brown foam. That’s actually totally normal. You can skim that off or just stir it right back in.

Once your soup has achieved a vigorous boil, give it a stir and then turn your heat down to medium-low (if you think of your burner’s dial as a clock face, with High at 1:00 and Low at 11:00, medium-low is somewhere around 9:00). Place a lid on the pot, but give it a bit of a jaunty tilt. This is to let some steam escape without letting so much out that all the water boils off.

You’re now going to leave that bad boy to do its thing for about 20 minutes.

Now go back and check on it.

Does it seem too thick, like too much water has boiled off? Feel free to add an extra cup or two of water. No big deal.

Get a spoon, dip it in and get a few lentils to taste. A fully-cooked lentil should not be crunchy or toothy in any way. (Undercooked legumes give you wicked gas.) You can even examine a lentil (after blowing on it! I don’t want to hear any tales of burned fingers!) and see if you can see any bit in the center that is a lighter color than the rest, indicating that it is not quite done yet.

If your lentils aren’t done yet, give it another 5 minutes, and repeat the above process.

If they are done, then now is the time to add the bouillon cube (if that’s what you’re using) and the frozen spinach. Give it a couple minutes to come back up to a temperature that will dissolve the bouillon cube fully and cook the spinach. Give it some stirs, mix it on up, and then taste it again.

What do you think? Does it need a bit more salt? If you think it might, add a teaspoon (5 mL) of salt now. If it’s plenty salty enough for you as-is, skip the salt. Do you have some pepper? Add a pinch of that if you’d like.

Now taste it again. Good level of salty? If so, move on. If not, add another teaspoon of salt.

Turn your burner off at this point. Acidic things like vinegar and lemon juice, I find, don’t do well with high temperatures.

Add 1 tablespoon of your vinegar. Stir the pot, then give the soup a taste.

Acidic enough for you? If it is, then stop here. If it isn’t, add that other tablespoon of vinegar.

Everyone’s taste buds are different, which is why it’s so important to continually taste what you are cooking. Just because I’m a bit of a salt fiend and a supertaster on top of it (get away from me, cilantro) doesn’t mean that you are going to delight in the sorts of ultra-savory, cilantro-less meals I make. So taste as you cook and add ingredients a little at a time so you can stop when you get to a flavor that really speaks to you.

And now you have just made lentil soup!  It’s a great Sunday dinner sort of meal if you’ve got some bread and cheese (some pita with some feta cheese is divine) on hand to have along with it. It keeps in the refrigerator well for several days, so if you’d like, save some to take to work for a mid-week lunch. The flavor actually improves as all the ingredients get super comfortable with one another.

I made you some lentil soup, but then I eated it.

Once again, I really need to step up my follow-through when it comes to celebrity endorsements.

Here to talk to you all about what is possibly the most important measurement in cooking, all the way from Gallifrey, give him a big hand folks, it’s the Doctor!

Okay, if the Doctor were here, he’d be telling you about Time. Time and temperature are the most important measurements in your kitchen. Forget for now about cups and tablespoons and liters—we’ll get to those later.

When you cook, you are the master of time and temperature. You measure them carefully and orchestrate all the food around them so that in the end everything is perfectly cooked. The tricky bit is that every food item has different desires for how it wants to dance with time and temperature. A stir-fry wants to mosh with temperature but leave time standing woefully at the bar crying into its lager. A roast chicken does a sultry tango with time but is shy around temperature, flirting bashfully. You get the idea of this very labored metaphor, I hope.

Combining ingredients when you cook (and I am a big, big fan of one-pot/pan meals, so expect a lot of that from me) means taking the individual time and temperature needs of all the ingredients into account. (Even when cooking separate dishes, timing them so they are all finished at the same time and one thing isn’t left sitting cold while another is still cooking takes practice and attention to time.) Let’s consider an example…

Lentils together with rice are thought to present a complete protein for vegetarians. When you go to the store, you might see two kinds of lentils (brown and red) and two kinds of rice (white and brown). Temperature wise, they are all fairly compatible. Rice likes low temperatures (and a well-sealed lid) so that it can steam. Lentils are fine with somewhat higher temperatures and more vigorous cooking, but are happy hanging out with rice and cooking the way rice prefers.

Time-wise, however, there are problems.

Who am I to stand in the way of pure legume/grain love of this sort?

White rice takes about 20 minutes to cook, while brown rice takes upwards of 40. Meanwhile, red lentils are done in 15-20 minutes while brown lentils need 30-45 minutes at least. The solution here is clear: if you want to throw some lentils in with your rice in order to punch up the protein, combine red lentils with white rice and brown lentils with brown rice.  Putting the brown lentils with the white rice will lead either to crunchy lentils after 20 minutes or mushy, overcooked rice after 40 minutes.

Likewise when you assemble a stir-fry, consider the needs of all of the ingredients separately. If you put everything into the hot pan at once, you may wind up with the things that take longer to cook still being mostly raw, or, conversely, the things that cook very quickly will be overdone. Frying a stir-fry is like being that guy in the airplane who directs all the parachuters when to jump out. “Now you! Okay, now you! You’re up next! Go, go, go!”

It totally looks exactly like this when I cook.

What I’m saying is not that you need to have a dozen egg-timers sitting around your kitchen (just use the timer or clock on your stove or phone) but that you should be aware of what the temperature and time needs are of all your ingredients, and of what the current temperature and cooking time of your dish is. When I give recipes, I’ll tell you all about the individual ingredients and their relationship to both time and temperature.

Now, on to the much more fiddly, irritating units of measurement: weight and volume.

So, how important are precise measurements anyway?

In cooking that does not involve baking pastries and bread, not very.   By this I don’t mean that you can just willy-nilly toss ingredients around, but I do mean that you need not get out your scanning electron microscope to make sure that your cup of broth has exactly the right number of molecules. As you get more comfortable in the kitchen, you’ll probably find yourself eschewing measurement for most ingredients entirely and just eyeballing it.

I’m US American, so I use American weights and measures, but we’ll also discuss metric (and I’ll give metric measures for all recipes). In the US, weight is measured in ounces (oz.) and pounds (lb).

Volume is measured in quarts (qt.), pints (pt.) cups (c.), teaspoons (t.), tablespoons (tbl.) and—just to make things interesting—ounces. Yes, ounces again. When measuring volume, technically an ounce is called a “fluid ounce” (fl. oz.) but when people actually write recipes they very rarely specify that. For things that can’t easily be stuck inside a measuring cup, if someone refers to ounces, they’re probably talking about weight. If I see a recipe that calls for 1 oz of sliced cheese, I get my kitchen scale out because no one is sticking sliced cheese in a measuring cup.

The most important things to be able to measure for the American cook are mainly cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. I’m always frustrated when I come across recipes that call for a quart or pint of something that does not actually come from the store in quart or pint quantities. I have to then go google “How many cups are in a quart?” Which reminds me that, when it comes to measurement conversions, Google always has the answers. If something calls for ounces of something and you want to know how many cups that is equivalent to, google it. There’s no shame in that. I do it all the time.

You don't even need to press "enter" to get the answer!

There’s also this thing called “a pinch” which is maddeningly imprecise. A pinch is what you can hold between the finger pads of your thumb and index finger. Rest assured, anything measured in “pinches” is really not that important to the overall success of the recipe. If it were, they would have given a more precise measurement.

The metric system is infinitely more logical than the US standard of weights and measures. It’s based on units of ten and if you live in a metric system country (i.e., most of the rest of the world), then you already basically know how it works. Volume is measured in liters (in the kitchen you’ll be working with milliliters mostly) and weight in grams. One milliliter (mL) is one thousandth of a liter (L), one milligram (mg) is one thousandth of a gram (g). Because it makes so much more sense, there’s a lot less to say about it! Some countries are still in a bit of  a hybrid state, using both cups and tablespoons and milliliters and grams.

Some very fussy cooks are all about weight measurements instead of volume. Weight is a more precise measure because volume can differ slightly (for dry ingredients primarily) depending on how packed in to the measuring cup the, say, flour is. Bakers especially tend to measure everything in weight because even tiny fluctuations in liquid/fat/dry ratios can adversely effect the finished product. (Why I don’t bake, ladies and gentlemen.) Converting weight to volume will differ depending on the ingredient. I shop at a store with a bulk section and I always see people getting the vapors over the fact that a pound of dried parsley (which is the price written on the outside of the jar) costs like $40. Meanwhile, a pound of flour is $1.20. Is parsley made of gold? No, it’s just really light. A pound of parsley is nearly a garbage bag full. The amount that people normally buy to refill their empty spice jar costs about $0.50.  Meanwhile, a pound of flour is about 4-5 cups, enough to bake a couple small loaves of bread. So, if you’re going to ask Google to help you convert a weight measurement into volume, you have to also tell it what specifically you are talking about.

To be honest, though, when I encounter a recipe where someone is insisting I use weight measures, I find another recipe instead. I do have a kitchen scale, but come on.

I just revealed my vintage, didn't I?

If you’d like to read more about who I am and what this is all about, visit the “About” page.

Today’s post is about what you need, so here’s Michael Hutchence to tell you all about it!

Okay, maybe not.

It might take you a little time to accumulate all this stuff, or you may already have most of it. If you can get to a thrift store or charity shop, this can be your golden ticket to stocking up on good cookware for cheap.

I’m a notorious cheapskate. I will never tell you that you need an item unless you really, absolutely have to have it to prepare basic foodstuffs. However, the fact of the matter is that you can’t boil water for pasta in a paper cup, so let’s discuss the things that you need in your kitchen in order to prepare the meals we’ll be discussing in later posts.

First off, let’s talk pots. And also pans.

Despite the fact that I cook most nights of the week and have even been known to get gourmet on occasion, I really only use three cooking vessels when it comes to stove-top preparation. Everything else is extraneous and just translates in my head to, “More shit to wash later.” My husband, when he cooks, somehow manages to use every single pot, pan and dish in the entire kitchen, but I assure you that this is not generally necessary.

Behold! My filthy stove! And my three favorite pots.

For the meals I’ll be discussing on this blog, you will need to have the following items:

1. A large pot (and by large I mean big enough to put your head in with plenty of room on all sides to spare).
2. A smaller pot (smaller than the large one, but not miniscule)
3. A large frying pan (for multi-purpose use, the higher the sides on it, the better; and I cannot recommend cast iron highly enough).

Cast-iron may seem like a really fussy, foodie thing to recommend, but it is actually the ideal low-maintenance cookware. I mean, you’re not even allowed to use soap on it! That’s practically an engraved invitation not to wash it. If you have a grandparent handy, hit them up for an old cast-iron pan. Here’s some info about the care and upkeep of cast-iron.

Of course you may continue to use whatever frying pan you already have or can easily lay your hands on.

When shopping for pots and pans, weight matters. A lightweight pot or pan means it’s cheaply made, won’t conduct heat evenly and will probably burn the shit out of your food through no fault of your own. When you pick up your prospective new cookware, it should feel like a bit of a challenge to lift. It should not feel like someone just folded over a few layers of tinfoil and stuck a handle on it. If you are buying used, it should not be noticeably dented or bent out of shape (this is a sign that it is too light to be useful).

LET ME SHOW YOU MY KNIVES OKAY

That’s not creepy and threatening at all, is it?

Going with our rule of threes again, there are three basic types of knife that, if you have them, you’re pretty much covered.

Oddly enough, none of these were purchased at the same time or at the same place. Cutlery just isn't really an area with a lot of design innovation.

Left-to-right we’ve got:

1. Big, heavy and non-serrated. This is the sort of knife you think of when you think “there is possibly a serial killer waiting for me in the kitchen.”
2. Smaller and non-serrated. Paring knives are very small, probably a bit too small to be useful for multiple tasks, but there’s a nice happy medium between giant cleavers and tiny paring knives. Get one of those.
3. Medium-sized and serrated. A serrated knife is the kind that has a bumpy-looking edge. This is useful for slicing things that are squishy, like bread or tomatoes. With a serrated knife, you saw at the food rather than chopping.

Like pots and pans, weight also matters with knives. Serious gourmets will pay three-figures and up for a knife that is perfectly balanced, and professional chefs will tell you that all is lost if you don’t have the correct set of perfect knives.  This is, of course, untrue. If you want to prepare restaurant-quality food (and not get carpal tunnel while doing it for 12 hours a day) then yes, by all means get the fancy knives. For the rest of us, though, going to the thrift store and picking up the knife that someone’s grandma who just died used to make her special Bolognese sauce for the past 50 years will do just fine. But, as I say, lightweight = cheap, heavy = quality. Generally speaking.

Implements of Destruction Measurement and Other Miscellaneous Items

A selection of my fine cookware, and an example of what a poor photographer I am.

You will also need:

1. A set of measuring cups in whatever your country measures in.
2. A set of measuring spoons for same.
3. A good-sized cutting board. You can get by just fine with one if it’s a big one. (I’m resisting making a “that’s what she said” joke here. Whoops, looks like I just did!)
4. A wooden spoon
5. A spatula
6. A colander (that bowl thing with holes in it that you drain pasta in).
7. A big mixing bowl or two.
8. A vegetable peeler.
9. A whisk (yes, really).

Dollar/Pound/Unit-of-Currency Store is fine for all of these things. A wooden spoon is a wooden spoon is a wooden spoon. All of my Cooking Things have come from various bargain bins and such over the years. Many’s the year when I didn’t even have a ladle and just spooned soup out of the pot with a mug. It’s not like the soup cares.

So, there’s your shopping list. We’ve got some time before we get to the first actual recipe, so no need to rush.

The next post will be all about measurement: when it’s important, when it’s not, and what all these units are. My homework is going out to locate a set of metric measuring cups and spoons so that I don’t alienate most of the world’s population with my recipes.