Breading without eggs

Today, we tackle the question of how to get a breading onto a thing without using eggs. Hopefully this helps some of you out.

Snacks

Very short one today, because about 1/2 way into the recording, my head started pounding in screaming pain. Apologies. Going to go lie down. I didn't want to deny you the dubious joy of listening to me ramble.

Soy-free mushroom stir-fry

I'm out of soy sauce. I'm also out of noodles. I have pasta, but not those quick-cooking noodles like you find at the Chinese market. I have ginger, but it's seen better days. I have it soaking in a bowl of water in my fridge. I was in the mood for a stir-fry, but didn't feel like going to the market. I have to be downtown anyway on Thursday, and I'd sooner do it all at once then.

I know that there are those of you who can't (or won't?) eat soy. This is one of those times when I won't be asking you to buy a weird ingredient to substitute the taste of soy sauce, because the mushrooms have a ton of taste on their own. This recipe is important to follow pretty closely. If you increase the amounts, it doesn't work so well.

5 - 7 large white button mushrooms, cut into large chunks (this is important)
3 cloves of garlic, minced (not the kind in the vinegar; if you don't have fresh, use a few shakes of garlic powder)
2 tsp grated ginger (if you don't have fresh, skip it)
2 tsp sesame seeds
1 TB peanut oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 of a small onion, sliced into slivers
1/2 a small carrot, sliced into rounds
1/3 cup water, reserved
2 cups rice
Salt, to taste (IMPORTANT to add salt)

Heat a wide shallow skillet (or wok, preferably) over highest heat. When it gets hot, add the oil, and the mushrooms in rapid succession. Furiously toss the mushrooms around, so that they get evenly coated in oil. Let the mushrooms sizzle and squeak like mad. They will begin to get a very dark brown crust on them. If they don't, your heat is too low, or your pan is too crowded. This only works when the mushrooms have plenty of room to jump around the pan. This initial step will give the flavour for the rest of the dish, so don't skimp on this step.

Add the garlic, ginger, sesame seeds, onion, carrot, and sesame oil (in that order), and toss to cook through. When the pan gets too dry, splash in about 1 - 3 TB of water, to loosen things up a bit. This will not only prevent your food from sticking like mad, but also distribute the mushroomy flavour throughout. Add the rice, and toss through.

Salt to taste, and toss through. Adjust seasoning as needed.

If you have them (I don't) garnish with chopped scallions.

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What I love about this version is that you don't have to work hard to get that good taste through the food. I know it's extremely simple in the flavour department, but it tasted pretty awesome. The version I made didn't even have the ginger or the carrots OR the sesame oil. It was just the onion and mushroom with rice (and a bit of cayenne). So tasty.

Sprouts

I don't have cheesecloth. I don't have a large jar. I do have plenty of tupperware though. Not the cheapo kind that's "disposable" (and there's a misnomer if ever I heard one; you go to any thrift store or yard sale, and I guarantee that you'll find actual tupperware cheaper than that stuff they sell as disposable), but the actual kind with those lids that are flexible. This is important, so stay with me.

What I did was that I started with 1/2 cup of mung beans, and soaked them in 3 cups of water overnight (8 - 10 hours). The next morning, I drained off the liquid, and rinsed them well under running water. Then, I threw it into a square tupperware container, and only locked down two corners of the lid. I kept the other two open. This will work with pretty much any container you have. Just leave the lid propped open somewhat. I used a tupperware, but you can use a pot with a slightly ajar lid. For the next three days, you'll need to rinse your sprouts at least once a day. You'll want to keep your container in a warm place that won't see much light. I used the cupboard under my sink. I vaguely recall that when you do expose them to light, you'd get some pretty foul smells going.

Anyway. Once all that's done, you'll have beautiful long sprouts from your beans. The point is that regardless of whether or not you've got the things lying around that most people say you need to make sprouts. When I read those instructions online, I tend to mentally shut down, and say "Well, that's me then. No cheesecloth, so I don't have to bother."

But you should bother. In the winter, when the days are all short and horrible, and it gets dark by 5:00, you need things in your diet that are rich in nutrients. Take the mung bean sprouts. A cup of the stuff has like 30 calories, and has all kinds of vitamins and minerals in it. It's got fibre, it's got protein, and vitamin C. Seriously, you can't go wrong. That said, if you really can't be bothered to sprout your own beans, even though I've just told you how easy it is, just go buy them. Eat your sprouts either way.

Bean Sprout Salad

1 cup of bean sprouts, rinsed
1 lemon, juiced (or 3 TB lemon juice)
1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp sesame seeds
Big pinch cayenne pepper
Salt, to taste

In a skillet, heat the oil over high heat. Add the mustard seeds, and allow them to pop. Add the cumin seeds and sesame seeds, and turn off the heat. They will pop in the residual heat. Add the bean sprouts, lemon juice, and cayenne. Toss to combine with the seasoning and juice.

This dish is done lightning fast, and tastes very good. Because the sprouts are so tender, they don't really need to be cooked. A gentle warming through does the job.

Make your food taste restaurant quality delicious.

The food you get in a restaurant tastes the way it is for various reasons. One is the seasoning. Another is the collaboration. Another is the presentation. I'll get into each, so that you all can dish out a very festive meal when the time comes for it.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of seasoning your food. I'm not even talking about herbs, spices, or anything fancy or esoteric. Just plain salt will ensure that your food tastes right. When it comes to seasoning starchy foods (rice, pasta, potatoes, etc), season as they cook, so that they have a chance to get the salt into there. If it's vegetables and the like, feel free to season once it's done cooking, so that you don't end up with over-salted vegetables. In cases of soups and stews (and especially daal), I tend to wait until the last minute to salt my food, because I don't want to have to account for evaporation and the like throwing off the amount of salt that I've added. Unless you have a recipe that specifies an amount, wait until the end, add a bit of salt, see if that improves things, and keep adding in small amounts until you get to where you're comfortable.

Some people argue that it's better to leave the food unsalted, so that the folk who like more can add more, and those who don't like as much can leave it out. This is good in theory. Unfortunately, in practise, it makes it so that you have the person who's eating leaving things alone to be polite, and quietly choking it down, even though it's bland as hell. I don't know where the stigma behind salting at the table comes from, but it runs pretty strong. Even at home, when my husband and I are having something quick, under-salting is a problem. Rather than adding enough salt to his liking in a dish that's unsalted (which happens by mistake from time to time), he'll flat out avoid it all together until I add some salt to the dish. Then, once he's seen that it does taste good, he's able to adjust up if he wants more than that.

In other words, you need some salt to get the party started, so that people don't avoid the dish all together.

In a good kitchen, there is no space for ego. Yes, there is one person in charge of the whole meal. So what? Everyone can teach you something. No matter how new someone is to cooking, that person still has her/his own opinions on what tastes good. That's why, when we're in a restaurant kitchen, we don't work in a vacuum. Everyone, from the dish person, to the waitstaff, to the line cooks, and the management tastes a new dish. We all give feedback (more salt, too spicy, not enough pepper, not creamy enough, needs more fat, is a bit greasy, odd texture, needs crunch) based on what we like. The person making the dish will incorporate that into the recipe to improve it. It's why a restaurant is able to turn out delicious recipe after delicious recipe.

We're obsessed with food. We talk about it all the time. When we find a new method, or an interesting recipe, the first thing we do is share it with each other. Bossman likes to read magazines and newspapers. He's especially a fan of the food columns in the New York Times, because they provide such a varied set of people with different inspirations. Even if the recipe isn't vegan, we can easily make it vegan. I like YouTube. I like it a lot. My mother and I will watch those cooking channels made by individuals. They've frequently got recipes just as good (if not better) than cookery books. Because they're working in kitchens that are similar to mine (actually, their kitchens are much larger than mine; my home kitchen is tiny), with similar tools, and similar concerns, they'll often come up with neat ideas to do the same thing that I've done a million times. I also enjoy online cooking forums. They'll frequently have other food nerds around, who enjoy eating and cooking. It's a wonderful thing to bounce recipe ideas off a group of people you trust, who will then come back with suggestions to tweak or improve what you've started with.

The point is that even if you don't work in a restaurant kitchen, with multiple brains around you, you can still reach out to others to get that same feedback we get. If you have anyone at all who's interested in food who's helping you to cook, let them taste everything. This is especially good if you have children underfoot. They love to help out (if they're like the children I've met), and are usually thrilled to be asked their opinion on something that you're cooking for a large group. A simple "Hey, can you please check my food for salt", will often be greeted with enthusiasm.

More so than the recipe development or tasting collaboration, a restaurant kitchen has work collaboration. Rarely will I have to make a recipe all by myself, from start to finish, without someone helping me out. Whether it's our amazing dish person, who swoops in and clears off dirty dishes to be cleaned immediately, or my fabulous coworkers, who offer to knock out vegetable chopping tasks, it's a lot more enjoyable to cook when you have help.

Nobody who is helping you is doing an unimportant job. My job would be impossible without someone to help me clean up. I worry about the dish person if he's a little late, because it will bring our production to a screeching halt if we don't have someone who's around to enthusiastically keep the place sparkling clean. Similarly, at home, I really like it when there's someone who's there to keep the dishes from piling up (and pile up they do!), so that at the end of the night, it's a question of just washing the serving plates and the eating plates, rather than the myriad preparation bowls and cookware. If your guests offer to help you clear up, take them up on the offer! If someone offers to help you out in the kitchen, have them do something that will let you concentrate on other tasks that only you can do.

There are times when my boss and I will head into the kitchen together to make something. It's not that the other cooks don't know how to do the tasks I'm doing. It's not even necessarily that they're so busy that they can't lend a hand. Sometimes, the two of us just need some time by ourselves, to talk and get work done at the same time. This happens at home too. When I cook with someone, we tend to talk about things that won't come up in regular conversation. There's a bond that we form over that food preparation that isn't quite the same as any other bond. Something about working together to reach a specific goal just makes that task fun, and meaningful at the same time.

Either way, the point is that if you can get (or recruit) help when you're cooking, by all means, take it.

Finally, there is the point that in a restaurant kitchen, common tasks will be done en masse. If we need to have peeled onions (which we do), we'll peel a 50 pound bag at once, so that the next person going in to reach for onions has some already peeled. If we need chopped ginger and garlic, we'll make 5 pounds at once, so that we'll have chopped ginger or garlic ready and waiting (although here that 5 pounds will only last a day or two tops, you can keep about a couple of heads of chopped garlic, and a palm-sized knob of chopped ginger around for about five days in the fridge). We keep bunches of parsley already chopped, and waiting to go into things as a garnish. In other words, we do the boring bits during the slow times, so that when the crazy times hit, we aren't wasting needless steps on preparing the starting ingredients. It takes me just a few seconds to roughly chop an onion. Once that's done, and I already have chopped garlic and ginger, along with my salt, oil, and a pot, I can get pretty close to any recipe started with the sauteeing or sweating of the onions within a minute or so of prep time (especially since the onions are already peeled). Once those onions go into the pot, it's just a few more seconds of gathering additional ingredients to make my food.

In other words, if you're about to embark on a major holiday spread, have those recipe starters (onions, garlic, chopped celery and carrots, chopped ginger) ready and waiting for you. If you are doing the prep work just a day or two before, feel free to chop the onions, and put them into a zip top bag. Then chop your root vegetables, and soak them in cold water. That way, when the day of arrives, you just have assembly work to do.

Finally, at a restaurant, we pay attention to how your food looks. This isn't just about plating things beautifully. It's about the entire dish itself. For example, if you make a stew or soup, and everything is brown and dark coloured, we'll frequently put something in there to break up that colour monotony. If you have millet, sweet corn, and squash, you're going to end up with something that looks monochromatic. In cases like the millet example, I'll throw some kind of green vegetable into the mix (maybe some broccoli, or chopped kale). If I'm making something of any green, brown, or yellow, I'll generally throw some red in there. There's a reason that so many restaurants will have red peppers in the food: it really pops with red without bleeding onto anything else. When you have beets, or tomatoes, it tends to leak onto other foods. When you have bell peppers, however, you have a sharp blast of colour that's self-contained.

There are many things you can do at home to make your food look and taste as good as the food you get outside. For sure, some restaurants that you go to will bump up the fat content of any meal that they serve you. This is especially true of fast food or chain restaurants. There are diners where they bring in pre-made, mass-produced frozen meals, which they just heat up to serve you. However, people still cheerfully eat them. This is not the sort of "nicer tasting at restaurants" food I'm talking about. I'm talking about those places that make healthy, delicious food, consistently. That's why I didn't just tell you to throw fat at your cooking until it yields.

If you don't have local friends or family who are interested in food, find people online. They exist! If your children are uninterested in helping you cook, at the very least get them into the kitchen with you to taste the food as you cook, so that they get an idea of how a recipe can be tweaked to make it work for you. Especially in the case of massive parties and festivals, have multiple people give you feedback on your dish, until it's exactly where you'd like it to be.

And finally, know that even when you make mistakes, you learn something new. That in itself is a valuable enough reason to get into the kitchen and get to cooking. 

Oven Uppuma Rava

Anyone who's made uppuma (and you should; it's very tasty) can tell you that one of the things that discourages one from making it is the roasting of the rava (semolina). Rava is this coarse ground semolina flour that's used in various Indian mains and sweets. In the South, we tend to use it in a savoury dish called uppuma, which is a mixture of a tarka of mustard seed, cumin seed (depending on whether the house is fond of cumin seed, like mine is), urad daal, dried or fresh chilies, curry leaves (if you have them), along with onion, and in some cases, turmeric (depending on whether or not the house is fond of that vibrant, yellow colour, as mine is), and water, along with the roasted semolina flour, to make a thick polenta-like main dish.

It's absolutely delicious, and very easy to make, once the initial roasting step is finished. Unfortunately, for most people (including myself), roasting is a huge pain. You have to dry roast it over medium low heat (low heat if you're not lightning quick on your feet) in a wok. It takes quite a while, and you must stir it constantly. As you're standing there and stirring that thing endlessly, there's other steps to preparing to make the uppuma that you're delaying, such as chopping the onions, or getting the rest of your counter space cleaned off, so that when everything is done, you don't end up frantically searching for a space to put the freshly roasted semolina flour, which then burns. Why didn't you think of this before? That would have only made sense, seeing as how you've just spent the better part of a half hour roasting this thing.

And now you're doubly irritated, because that was the last of your semolina, and you do have rice, but that involves even more time (an hour, to be precise, if you're talking brown rice), and you're hungry right now, so you angrily throw the pot, semolina and all, into the sink, scream and cry for a good solid 20 minutes, and then run down to the bodega downstairs, and anger-buy a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa, which you proceed to eat between sobs.

Totally not speaking from experience.

All this can be prevented, if you will use your oven to roast the semolina. I discovered this trick on accident when I was at my brother's house in VA. His wife was making up a batch of uppuma as a lunch thing, and had asked me to roast the semolina for her. I asked her why she didn't just use her oven for it. She mentioned that the oven was being used as storage at that moment, and would I give her a sec to clean it out.

With rare exceptions, Indians who were raised in the South Indian tradition tend not to trust ovens terribly well. When coming to the USA, and making the odd bake sale dish, or birthday thing for the kid's school thing, they'll tend to use the oven to store pots and pans, and promptly ignore its other function: perfect roasting thing.

You see, when you roast anything on the stove, you're dealing with the vagaries of your cooking vessel. For one thing, not all the food is going to be in contact with the heat, which is coming from below, heating your cooking vessel, then heating your food. In an oven, the cooking vessel does get hot and help your food to heat, but the ambient temperature is hot as well, making the food heat evenly. Furthermore, because air is not as good a conductor of heat as water is, you're going to get a more steady and gradual roasting.

There's a reason why you should do your roasting in the oven: the margins aren't quite so razor-sharp as they are on the stove. If you miscalculate by a few mere seconds while roasting on the stove, you risk burning the whole thing, and making a mess. If you misjudge the oven, you still have some wiggle room to fix your mistakes.

Mind you, there are a couple of caveats before we venture into the oven's door:

1) Always double and triple check the temperature of the oven before putting anything in. If your recipe calls for 350°F, and your oven is set at 375°F, you're going to be in a world of pain when the food gets finished so much faster.

2) When roasting something like semolina, which is a flour, don't ever fill your baking sheet completely full. For one thing, the thicker your stack of food, the longer it will take to get everything roasted. For another, you have a much more likely chance of spilling a fair bit onto your floor on your way to and from your oven, and then your sister-in-law grumbles and mutters as she has to clean up yet another mess. Again, totally not speaking from experience.

3) USE. A. TIMER. I cannot stress this enough. With the oven, you don't have those visual cues to keep you going. It's a self-contained environment, where you'll likely miss something if you're not timing yourself. Initially, set the timer for a lower setting, and check frequently. Don't set it for longer until you're confident that it will all work out.

For me, the whole roasting process took a total of 45 minutes. Mind you, this is because I had set the initial times for 7 minutes, and then finally for like 12 minutes. For the first 21 minutes (in 7 minute increments), I baked the semolina in baking sheets, at 350°F (180°C). I then baked it for 2 increments of 12 minutes (24 minutes). Between increments, I gently stirred the rava with a slotted spoon.

A couple of obvious changes happened. Firstly, the rava smelled wonderful and roasted as time went on. For another, in the initial stages, the rava tended to clump a bit. This is normal. There's a bit of residual moisture in the rava from the surrounding air. When the whole thing is roasted to perfection, the moisture is driven out, and the rava becomes free flowing again. Initially, just stir through the lumps. It'll all work out. Finally, the rava became a light golden brown. Don't take it much further than that. That's about where you want it to be.

The best part of this method is that at the end of the first 21 minutes, I was able to prep my ingredients for the actual uppuma, and get them on the stove. This meant that I was using my time efficiently.

All said and done, yesterday's project took about an hour from start to finish. However, I now have a jar of pre roasted rava, with which to cook future meals very quickly. Once the rava is roasted, the actual uppuma itself takes about 10 minutes.

Why not cook the uppuma without roasting the semolina? Because then the uppuma will be a big gross clump of disgusting, and not be fluffy and delicious.

Once more, totally not speaking from experience.

Set up big pressure cooker for small cooking.

In the body of the pressure cooker is lentils with enough water to cover them. The first bowl in the stack has barley, and its cooking liquid. Atop that, I set the little trivet that came with the pressure cooker. Atop /that/ are some red potatoes, with a scant 2 cm of water in. There'll be plenty of steam in the cooker, so I need not even bother with it, but I don't want the potatoes sticking to my bowl. I then put the lid and weight on the whole mess, set it over high heat, and set my timer for 40 minutes. (Next time, I'll go with shorter time, because the potatoes got overcooked). Then I walked away, and heard the pressure cooker get to full pressure at like 6 minutes or so. Then, I dropped down the heat to low, and let the timer run out. I did a quick release. Honestly, if I just did like 20 minutes, I could have still done a quick release with no problems. I was just stupidly nervous. Boo.

My friend Christy Morgan, of Blissful Chef fame, is maintaining an ongoing pressure cooker party on her blog. Please check out this link for more info on cooking other stuff in pressure cookers! She's got lots of creative ideas for cooking in my style: whole ingredients, lots of produce, and minimising premade stuff. Check it out!

Creamy Hummus Every Time

Someone from the vegan forums that I'm on wrote in to ask about her hummus. Let's see what she had to say. Vegan K wrote:

Hi Dino!

Let me first say that I love your Podcast! I have been listening to them since you first started and I have really enjoyed them all. Many of your techniques and ideas mirror my own and so at last I don't feel so alone in my in my approach to the kitchen :) -- But believe me, you have touch me much as well.

My question is about canned beans, or tinned beans as you would say, versus dry beans.
I make a mean hummus, but whenever I use dry beans the hummus seems less flavorful and the texture is not as smooth. Mind you my processor is not that great so the texture difference is very noticeable.
I have added more liquid to the dry beans concoctions and have thrown in additional salt but it still doesn't seem to have the same texture and flavor that I get with canned beans.
Any suggestions?
I was thinking maybe it is something that I have to get used to, like when you change from "Skippy" peanut butter to the "Natural". When I eat the Skippy kind at a relative's house I want to gag nowadays.

But still, the questions is Why?!

Thank you for your wonderful shows... sometimes I listen to them if I am just in a crabby mood... your voice and demeanor is very comforting.

Kathleen (katieo - VeganFreak forums)

The thing about tinned beans is that they're consistent. The manufacturers have enormous cooking pots that clean, sort, and cook the beans to perfection. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to have happen at home. So. there's a couple of things you can do to ensure that your dry beans (especially chickpeas, as they take an extraordinary amount of time to cook) will cook all the way through. They're all fairly important, but there's a couple that are more important than others. When you've read through the procedure, you can either tweak your own method, or decide that it's all too much effort, and just stick to tinned beans! I'm kidding. In reality, this whole process is actually extremely simple. I'm just being detailed, so that you have a framework from which to work. Most of the "work" is leaving the beans alone.

Before working with any dried beans, always turn them out onto a cookie sheet, and check for any stones or other foreign material. Then, when you're ready to start the soaking, wash them under cold running water, until the water runs clear. Even if you're buying organic beans, you're still unable to know what's been going on in the processing plant, the storage warehouse, etc. etc. Best not to take any chances, and just get them rinsed clean. It only takes one or two washes anyway. Sorting and washing the beans takes about two minutes, and is well worth it.

1. Soak your beans well, for a minimum of 8 hours, in cold water. The "quick soak" method is fine if you're just using the beans for a chickpea dish, but for hummus, we're doing everything just so, and it's worth spending the extra step of properly soaking them in cold water. When soaked, the beans have a chance to slowly re-hydrate, and expand their volume. It also give a chance for any impurities and the like to leak out into the soaking liquid. It's best to set them in cold water before you wind up the kitchen for the night. Some people start just before they go to bed, but for me, giving it those couple extra hours before I even think of bed helps me to remember to soak them, and it gives the soaking a couple of extra hours.

Another thing to remember is that you're soaking your beans in a lot of water. If you start out with about two cups of beans, you're going to want 6 - 8 cups (or 1 1/2 - 2 litres) of water. There are many reasons for this, principle among them being that you want the beans to have enough water to "drink up". Aside from that, I just feel like my beans turn out better when I give them plenty of water to soak in. In other words, for every cup of beans you start with dry, soak them in 3 - 4 cups of water.

2. The next day, when they've been thoroughly soaked, drain off the soaking liquid completely. Place a pot of water on the stove, and crank the heat onto high. For every cup of beans (dry) that you started with, put in 3 cups of water into the pot to boil. As you wait for the water to come to a boil, rinse the beans off a couple of times. This is especially important if you're not using organic beans. Any of the chemicals or pesticides should be rinsed down the sink, and not go into your food. Anything in the water will inhibit the cooking process. This includes salt, the chemicals on the surface of the beans, or anything else. Keep things clean, and you'll be fine.

3. When the water comes up to a full, rushing, rolling boil, drop the soaked and rinsed chickpeas into the boiling water. Wait for the water to come back up to a full rushing boil. At this point, start timing about 10 minutes. Let them continue to boil at that high heat rushing boil for about 10 minutes. If you go over a minute or two, it's no biggie, but try not to go under 10 minutes. After boiling fiercely for 10 minutes, drop down the heat to as low as it'll go, and cook gently until they're tender (about 2.5 hours or so). Do not let the water come back to the boil after that initial 10 minute boiling. Cooking at too high a temperature will result in cooked but firm beans. You want your chickpeas to be so tender that you can easily mash them with a potato masher.
If you have a pressure cooker, let the beans cook according to the manufacturer's instructions. Exact times will be on the manual that came with the pot.

On mine, chickpeas take about 10 - 12 minutes, but your pot will have its own instructions specific to yours. Follow the instructions exactly, and cook towards the higher minute range listed. If it says 10 - 12 minutes, let it go for 12 minutes. Let the pressure come down by itself (don't do "quick release").

When the chickpeas are boiled completely, let them sit in the hot cooking water until you're ready for them. Because you've cooked them so long, chances are that you won't need to use too terribly much water in the hummus itself.

For the hummus, start with your very well cooked chickpeas. Beat them around a bit with a wooden spoon. If they don't easily mash up this way, the beans aren't cooked enough. They'll need longer on the stove. If they do, however, beat up fairly easily, you're just about where you wanna be. Combine the chickpeas with the olive oil, garlic, salt, tahini, and lemon juice. Toss the chickpeas and the other ingredients until well combined. Then, fill your food processor only half way full with this yummy chickpea mixture (which frankly, I'd be quite happy to eat as-is, because it's quite delicious all on its own). Pulse a few times until the chickpeas are broken down. THEN crank it up to full speed, and let the hummus grind down. Open the top, and scrape down the sides frequently.

The reason for doing this is two-fold. For one thing, you're thoroughly combining the ingredients and flavours together long before it goes into the food process, making it so that the food processor isn't working so hard. For another, when the food processor is only half full, it can really grind your hummus down without very much fat or water. Once the hummus is down to a paste, you add a bit of water, a couple tablespoons or so at a time, until it's the desired smoothness and creaminess.

This would not work if the food processor were full, however. It only works when you do the method I described.

Hope this gives you some ideas as to where to tweak your current procedure! Thanks for writing in.

Dino

Mid week feast.

I don't know if this will become a regular feature, but I guess I'll give you guys a peek at this week's mid-week feast. It's a special cooking I do during the middle of the week, to lift up my spirits (because I love to cook), and Steve (because it gives him something of a change, and makes the house smell nice). This week's mid-week feat was simple, but tasty.

I had a few yuccas lying about, along with a few heads of cabbage, some onions, a lot of garlic, some tomato, and sweet potato. I peeled and chopped up the sweet potato (1 large one) into large (about 3 cm cubed) pieces, and set it in a pot of cold water. I set it onto the stove to boil. While that water came up to heat, I peeled the yucca, and set that in a pot of cold water. Set that on the stove to boil as well. Then, I chopped up 1 1/2 heads of cabbage, and the onions I had left. Then I minced up a head of garlic. I then got to cooking. By the time the onions, garlic, and cabbage were prepped, the sweet potatoes were just tender.

That's when the magic started to happen. On went some oil into a screaming hot skillet. In went some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. In went a bit of coconut oil, to fortify the smell and taste of the Canola. The house started to fill up with the heady aroma of the coconut oil, and the lovely spices. In went the sweet potatoes, a hefty hit of salt, and a bit of turmeric, black pepper, and cinnamon. I rounded it out with a good scraping of nutmeg.

I then continued to cook the sweet potatoes until they developed a rich, decadent crust on them. They browned every so nicely. I had to drop down the heat to medium low, and let them sit for a few minutes to move them around, but so what? The crust was developing. Then, I finished it off with some garlic, onion, and flaked coconut. That only boosted the smell even more.

By that point, the yucca was done. So I drained that, and chopped it up. In that same wok, I threw in some more oil, mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. When they popped, I dumped in the cabbage, along with some salt, and black pepper, and some red chili flakes. I sauteed that around for about ten minutes. That went off the heat into its serving bowl.

Finally, I had the chopped yucca, some tinned beans, the rest of my onions and garlic, and a hankering for a hearty stew. In went the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and coriander seeds (crushed) with the screaming hot fat. In went the onions and garlic. When they browned, I threw in one tin of drained and rinsed black eyed peas, and a tin of pink beans (with the liquid it came in). I sauteed the beans around in the hot oil and spices, and slated it generously. Then in went the yucca, the yucca's cooking liquid, and some red chili flakes. The smells got even more heady, as the yucca cooked up, and the spices got more aromatic.

While this whole thing was going down, I had a pot of rice going in my rice cooker. All said and done, it took about 40 minutes from start to finish. Hope this inspires some of you to try your own mid week feasts.

Add garlic and ginger at the end, please

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: add your garlic towards the end of cooking. I've seen the cost of garlic skyrocketing like everything else in the stores. And, just like everything else, we can find ways to maximise the way we use said ingredient. If it's oils that are costing a fortune (olive, sesame, etc.), we can use them only as finishing oils, and in sparing amounts. With garlic, the magic is in adding it at just the right time to get the punch you want.

If you don't like strong garlic flavour--

Wait a minute. If you don't like garlic, what're you reading this for? Don't use it!

No, I'll be serious now. If you're not a huge fan of the sharp, strong garlic taste, add it in the mid-point of your cooking. Say for example that you're making a tomato sauce or something similar. Instead of sauteing the garlic with the onions, and missing out on having the garlic give any impact at all, just use less than the recipe calls for, and add it after you add the tomato. It's when you cook it in oil that the flavour disperses and weakens.

So now, suppose that you're a huge fan of garlic. Mince it up as finely as you can, and go ahead and add it as close to the end as possible. You'll taste the garlic, and smell it as soon as it gets to the table. In fact, if you want to use the mortar and pestle to grind it down to a paste, and go from there. It'll be all the more strong, and taste all the sharper.

This goes double for ginger. I myself have advocated cooking ginger along with the aromatics, but I've found that it cooks extremely quickly. It cooks even more quickly than garlic! Add ginger at the very last minute possible, once you've grated it finely, and you'll taste it clearly in the end result.

Chickpeas are awesome in general.

I was in the vegan chat room today, and got to chatting with someone from Australia, who was just starting out her exploration of the humble, yes awesome, chickpea. She's been roasting them in the oven, and spending upwards of half an hour on the process, as the oven takes its own sweet time in making the roasty magic happen. I gave her a detailed explanation on how to roast chickpeas on the stove. She seemed shocked that it only takes a few minutes!

You can hear the results of the conversation here, on the new podcast episode. It was basically me catching up with my listeners, by reading their emails, and then plunging in head-first into chickpea heaven.

You start with a screaming hot skillet, some oil, some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. I get into more detail about the conditions of the whole thing in the podcast episode, and in the cook book, so either way, read up or listen up to the whole popping spices deal before attempting this. If you don't have the book, listen to the pocast which is free. Either way, you'll get the idea.

After the seeds are popped, throw in the well-drained chickpeas WITH NO AROMATICS. Aromatics kill caramelisation of your ingredients. They exude water, and increase the cooking time. This is supposed to be a quick five minute thing. Besides, adding aromatics adds to your prep time. Bother with that stuff when you don't care about time!

Then, you roast the chickpeas on high heat for about five minutes. If you want them more brown, keep going. Do not fear oil! Stove top roasting is a bit more oil intensive than oven roasting. If you see the skillet drying out, add a bit of extra oil, until the chickpeas are slightly shiny from the oil, and keep roasting. You won't get that beautiful brown unless you use a bit of oil. If you are watching your calories, read on, and I'll explain how to do them in the oven.

After the five minutes (or however long you decided to roast them) is up, turn off the heat, and let the chickpeas rest for a minute, while you contemplate how to eat them. They're excellent in a pita pocket, with some alfalfa sprouts, cilantro, and tomato. They're good over hot steamy rice. They're quite nice all by themselves, as a snack. You can use them as croutons over a salad. You can add a cup or two of water, and make it a soup (to thicken up the soup, either mash with a potato masher or grind in a blender about 1/2 of the chickpeas). I discuss other possibilities in the podcast.

If you are watching your calories, and want to reduce the amount of fat, use the following ratio for 1 pound of cooked chickpeas:

1 teaspoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
Salt, to taste

Mix the oil, sesame seeds, and turmeric powder into a spice paste. Toss the spice paste with the well-drained chickpeas. Arrange them onto a baking sheet, so that they have a fair bit of space between them. For me, a pound of chickpeas takes two baking sheets. Your sheets may be bigger or smaller. The idea is that you don't want to crowd your baking sheet, or else the chickpeas will not roast on all sides.

Sprinkle generously with salt, to taste. Let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes (at 180ºC or 350ºF), and check and see if they're brown enough for your liking. Feel free to shake the pans a bit to turn the chickpeas over. Also, feel free to rotate your pans. Some ovens have "hot spots", and you might do well to move the baking sheets around your oven, so that they can all get cooked evenly.

If they are brown enough to your liking at 20 minutes, remove them. If not, keep roasting them until they're at the brownness and crispness of your liking. The longer you let them go, the more they dry out, and the more brown they get.

If you find that they are taking too long to roast, chances are that you're crowding the pan, and having them steam first, then roast. Make sure there's plenty of breathing space for the chickpeas in the pans.

Now go out and roast some chickpeas!

By the by, this whole entry and discussion with my friend on the chat room was spawned because of the mid week feast I made for Puppy. I've got the picture below and above this entry.

CREAMY DRESSING OF DOOM OMG

So I have a couple of heads of romaine lettuce, and a few other random veg lying about the fridge. I had today off from work, so I decided to cook up a bit of a feast for lunch. First, I set the lentils that I'd soaked overnight on the boil. Then, I cooked up some aubergine for Puppy. I used fennel seed, cardamom (1 pod), sesame seed, and cumin seed. The recipe is in the book. Then I cooked up some cabbage, and used mustard seed, coriander seed, cumin seed, and sesame seed, with a bit of turmeric for colour. Finally, I composed the salad. I used two heads of romaine, two small Jordan cucumbers, grated carrot, fresh summer squash, chickpeas, Kalamata olives, onions, and of course, the creamy dressing of doom. It changes shape every time I make it, but it's got a similar base of hummus. This time, I amped up the flavour profile to be a little more adventurous.

I started with 1/2 cup of chickpeas (the other 1/2 cup went into the salad itself), and a small handful of raw cashews. I first whizzed up the cashews in the food processor until they were ground as finely as they would go (almost a powdery thing). Then, I dumped in the chickpeas, as if I were going to make a hummus. I let the food processor run until the cashews and chickpeas became a solid mass of paste of delicious. Then I added a sprinkle of salt, a scant teaspoon of oil, and let the food processor rip again. Every time I open the top of the food processor, I had to scrape down the sides, because I wanted everything to come together neatly. It was still at a thick paste stage.

Now comes the fun part.

I dumped in a heaped teaspoon of my own home made grain mustard. It has a kick like horseradish, which I hate, but a wonderful peppery back note that I love. Also, since I had so much chickpea and cashew to offset, I knew I'd be fine. Then in went the juice of one lime. Always remember to be conservative when you're building a good dressing, because you can add, but you can't take away. I let the food processor rip again. By this point, it was starting to resemble a very thick hummus.

I tasted it for seasoning, after grinding till the mustard was combined through, and almost fell over in bliss. It was such a strong, bold dressing. It was creamy, but sassy. It had boldness but with a soft touch. It was beautifully balanced, and I didn't even need to add any vinegar! Just had to use my cashews, chickpeas, salt, mustard, and lime juice. (Side note: next time, I'll add the zest of the lime as well to amp up the flavour even more.)

Unfortunately, beautiful as it was, it was also way too thick to use as a dressing. I ran the food processor at full blast while I very slowly drizzled in some water, allowing the last bit to emulsify in before adding more. I'd say if you went with a teaspoon at a time, you'll be safe. I think (but don't hold me to it or do the same thing) I ended up with about 1/4 cup of water in total, but I could be mistaken, because I tend to eyeball these things, and before I have a chance to measure what I've done, the dressing ended up perfect. I did stop a few times to check the texture.

All this took about five minutes flat. It just seems like it took longer, because I wanted you to have the experience with me, and share along in the discovery. I'm eating the salad now, and I must say that it's a beautiful matching. The best part is that because the dressing has such a strong taste, I'm not tempted to use too much, and drown my salad in dressing. Instead, the leaves are gently coated with a fine layer of silky dressing.

Give this one a shot if you like creamy dressing. For the first time you do it, leave out the mustard, or use a mild dijon mustard, and go with a scant teaspoon. The dressing does not need the mustard; I just added it because I wanted to make something different from how I've been doing it all this time.

By the by, this dressing would have also been wonderful with the addition of a clove or two of garlic, and a scant 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder. If you don't like cashews, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts would work fine. Macadamia nuts would work, but it'd be a bit extravagant to use macadamia nuts in a dressing! Brazil nuts would work, but you would leave out the fat, as Brazil nuts are very high in their own fat. Pistachios would work, only if you don't mind the colour being a very mild pale green. Peanuts might work, but I'd suggest that you use peanut butter, and not whole peanuts.

Try it out, and tell me how it goes for you!

I mention the chickpea dressing here.

Pictures of the salad and the dressing:

Watermelon.

I just finished eating a giant piece of watermelon. Next to me was my little salt grinder. Now, anyone who's been over to my house to eat at one of my Saturday afternoon food for alls knows that I have a bit of a salt thing. You've probably eaten freshly cut fruit from atop my slab of Himalayan pink rock salt (it's shaped like a brick). You know that I use Kosher salt (and only Kosher salt) in my cooking, and I use coarse sea salt in a salt grinder for salting at the table.

So when I was staring at that little salt grinder, and wondering what would happen, my brain went back to that Watermelon Gazpacho (which is what it's called, but I couldn't remember the name) at Sacred Chow. If they can use salt on watermelon, why can't I?

On went a few ethereal grains of finely ground salt atop my glistening slice of watermelon. It was almost as if the watermelon slice grew more delicious than it already was! How was it possible that I've waited this long for the magic to happen? I'm quite pleased with my little salt grinder.

Roti from the bread machine

There are few kitchen gadgets that I really care for, as I tend not to use too terribly many of them very often, because most times, I can just do it faster by hand. One of them is my citrus squeezer. It's a red number which resembles a large garlic press, only instead of being square, it's round and large enough to fit half a tangerine.

Another is my food processor. Few things can really get the job done like a good strong food processor, especially when I have large amounts of repetitive tasks to get done. It's not that I don't know how to chop garlic, ginger, or onions, but rather that if I'm about to chop around three heads of garlic, a pound of ginger, or three pounds of onions, I'd sooner run them through the food processor, whiz it a few times, and get on with my life.

Still another is the rice cooker, but this one is because it's so much more convenient to have a machine to make picture perfect rice every time. Frankly, we eat so much rice in my house that to cook it on the stove every time would needlessly tie up a burner that I could be using to cook up something else.

Largest and most ostentatious of the bunch, however, is the bread maker. I'd never buy one, but there are so many to be found for free either through Craigslist, or for really cheap, such as in garage sales and the like. The one I own now is from my mother, who got hers for free, because her friends went on a certain low carbohydrate diet, and decided that a bread machine is far too much temptation for anyone's own good.

Not only that, but she managed to snag yet another machine for free from yet another friend who was going off of carbohydrates. Apparently, this is a common occurrence. Fine by me, I say. More bread making for me and my husband!

At any rate, all this time, I've been using my own two hands, or the food processor to bring my flatbread dough together (roti, puri, etc.), and ending up with a hard dough. This is rather useless, because roti dough is meant to be very soft. Not soft because of lots of water and fat, but because it's been kneaded for a rather long time, until it becomes supple and pliable. Doing that with all purpose flour is bad enough, but I have durum atta, which is whole meal flour that's been finely milled. Even though it is finely milled, it's hard as rock when you attack it with your own two hands, and you'll frequently end up with tired arms.

As I side note, I feel that must mention that I do not make dainty little roti or puri like they do in restaurants. They are neither small not perfectly shaped into a perfect circle. They're vaguely circular in shape, but you wouldn't really call it a circle. And, they're on the minimum, ten inches in diameter. Why? Because I don't have all day to stand around rolling out dainty, perfect roti, and then griddling them one by one. There's way too much other stuff to be done, so I'd sooner make large ones, and bang them out quickly, than make aesthetically pleasing ones and stand over a hot cast iron skillet for hours on end.

By the time I'm done griddling off a set of roti, I'm usually fairly tired, since the kneading took so long. I don't know why it took this long for my dense skull to figure it out, but I finally realised that I could just chuck the lot into the bread machine, and let that wonderful invention do all the kneading work, as long as I used the dough setting. My dough setting does almost nonstop kneading for a good 30 minutes or so, and then goes for a 20 minute rest period, and then finishes off with another 30 minutes of kneading. Pretty cool, I think.

In it all went, flour, water, spices, and salt. On went the machine. I decided to just let it run for the first 30 minute cycle. It was a revelation! Perfectly smooth, round ball, and beautifully soft. It rolled out into a perfectly thin disc in no time flat, and I was slapping them on the cast iron skillet in just a few minutes. And the best part is that everything got perfectly mixed in. The roti taste fantastic.

For the record, there is an excellent puri and roti recipe in the book.

Storing Grains

My mother had a problem with bugs, which she told me about. All her grain products, and many of her bean products had developed those little needle nosed bugs that some people call weevils, but are really Tribolium confusum, or the so called "confused flour beetle." Yes, it's a species of beetle. They're fascinating little creatures, and have a standard life cycle of egg, larva, pupa, and adult. They can survive on the tiniest amount of grain, and can even survive the freezer.

However, the people who typically give advice on bug management tell you to do horrible things, like put the grain into the freezer for extended time, so that they can be frozen to death. I don't know about you, but I'm not too keen on the cold, and freezing to death doesn't sound like my idea of fun. I think that the best way to avoid eating bugs (although it's funny how squeamish people get about eating bugs, when they have no problem eating other animals, but that's for another day) is to prevent their access to your food supplies in the first place.

This is dead simple to do, as long as you are fastidious about it.

1. If you already have an infestation, don't buy any new grain until all the old grain is completely consumed (by either you or the bugs). I'd suggest just letting the bugs have at, because the eggs are small enough to pass through a sieve, and are too small to be seen easily by the human eye. Better to start fresh, so that you're not taking any chances at all.

2. Clean out any vestiges of grain products left in open surfaces, such as on the counter, in cupboards, pantries, or other storage areas, and any other place you think some grain may have fallen. Thoroughly vacuum your kitchen, to pick up any stray pieces. Go over everything with hot water and bleach. It'll take a while, but it's well worth it if you're looking to start over fresh.

3. When you buy grain, beans, or anything else that these critters like to attack, store them in air-tight containers with as small an opening as possible.

I'll repeat that, in case you missed it: store them in airtight containers with small openings.

What do I mean?

Juice bottles! You know those bottles of cranberry juice or apple juice that you buy from the store? (Or, in some cases, bottles of liquor with a screw on cap.) Those are perfect for keeping out bugs, because you can close them tightly, they don't cost you anything, and they store a LOT of grain.

I can easily fit a 20 lb bag of rice into a couple of one gallon juice jugs. I prefer the clear containers, so that I can see what it is that's inside the container, but you can use any bottle you have.

If you've ever visited my apartment, you'll see bottles of rice, split peas, and other random grains on top of my fridge, bottles of spices in my cupboards, and bottles of other grains in my pantry. The easiest way to get your stuff into those jars is to visit a hardware store, and buy one of those cheap plastic funnels that have a very large opening on the bottom, so that your grain flows through evenly. Once they're in there, it's very easy to dispense.

Those funnels are usually used to get oil into a car, but they work just fine for grain. If you find that the opening that rests in the bottle is too small, grab a serrated knife, and saw off the bottom tip until it's wide enough to admit the grains, but narrow enough to fit the mouth of the bottles. Sand it down a bit with your sharpening steel, some steel wool pads, sandpaper, a nail file, an emery board, or whatever else you have lying around. The point is that you want to avoid the little bits of plastic getting into your food.

If you'd rather not spend the $1 - $3 on the plastic funnel, grab a newspaper, and roll it into a cone with an open end. Secure it with a staple or two, or some tape, and go to town. Or, use one of those party hats, and snip off an end. I used the same party hat for about six months while I was trying to find a better way, and it worked just fine for me.

In fact, I find it awkward to use my grains without pouring them out! The smaller containers are much easier to handle than those messy bags that they come packaged in.

This goes triple for sushi or basmati rice. Both are extremely expensive, and I'd sooner miss out on the attractive packaging that they come in than lose out on the rice itself.

If you have friends that also discard their used juice and water bottles, ask them to save the bottles for you, so that you can reuse them.

WARNING: Ensure that you wash and thoroughly dry the containers before putting any grain into them. Any leftover moisture will encourage the growth of fungus, and will spoil your stuff. Make sure that it's completely dry before using the containers. It's important to was the juice containers, because the leftover sugar will attract ants and other critters. Best to avoid it in the first place!

Why recycle when you can reuse?

Sauce interview, Pt 5

OK, last two questions (for now!) …

Any favorite or little-known-but-fantastic-and-easy tips for using spices and ready-made sauces you want to share?

Any words of encouragement for people who, for one reason or another – lack of experience, bad luck in the past, intimidated by TV chefs, whatever – still may lack the confidence to try out things in the kitchen?

Finally, not a question, but thanks so much for imparting all this information and enthusiasm for healthy, natural, delicious, peaceful foods. Much appreciated, and I hope we can do it again sometime.

Any favorite or little-known-but-fantastic-and-easy tips for using spices and ready-made sauces you want to share?
The microwave, of course!

Whenever I'm in a severe rush, I'm never embarrassed to use the microwave. Heck, sometimes I use it even when I'm not in a hurry. There's nothing wrong with setting a pot of rice to cook in the rice cooker, chopping up a bunch of root vegetables (yams, potatoes, what have you), tossing them with some oil, and your spice blend (Mrs. Dash, curry powder, garam masala, whatever), and letting it rip in the microwave for a while. As for sauces, I tend to save those for occasions when a large pot of soup or stew is coming up flat for some reason. Suppose you've just made a fairly large vegetable stew. At the end, you taste for seasoning, and you notice that it's all well cooked and such, but it's severely lacking in flavours. This is when you start experimenting (quickly) with your ready made sauces. Grab a few small bowls, and ladle a bit of stew into them. Line up your sauces, and try each bowl with a different one. Once you've found the combination you like, start pitching it into the pot! It will taste fine soon enough!

The reason I use sauces in this manner, is because they've already been processed in such a way that the flavours are already well developed. Spice blends, on the other hand, are in a sort of suspended animation, and are waiting to release their stuff. This is why I suggest the dry cooking in the microwave: the fast cooking speed is hot enough to pull out the flavour of the spices quickly. Don't be afraid of substituting a different sauce for a different purpose. For example, if all this time, you've only had sweet potatoes with cinnamon, sugar, and a dash of nutmeg, why not give them a shot of barbecue sauce, and see where the adventure takes you? If you've only used soy sauce (or tamari) in stir fry dishes, why not try soy sauce over steamed vegetables? Start thinking outside of the box. These ready made sauces are meant specifically to work with a wide range of foods. Chances are, you'll hit on something new that you like.

Any words of encouragement for people who, for one reason or another – lack of experience, bad luck in the past, intimidated by TV chefs, whatever – still may lack the confidence to try out things in the kitchen?
Don't look at the intimidating ones, but think of the most popular ones. Julia Child. Martin Yan (Yan Can Cook!). Graham Kerr. Rachel Ray. What did all these people have in common? For one thing, their shows are filmed live. You could see when they made mistakes, and have accidents. For another thing, they stressed that you try to have a knowledge of what you're doing, rather than have a strict adherence to specific amounts and rules.

I don't think I've ever seen Julia Child measure food in her show. She just knew what it looked like in the dish, because she knew that it's not going to make a huge difference if she got a little more or a little less in the pan. She can always adjust later, as needed. Look at Rachel Ray. She doesn't pull out measuring spoons; she tells you to "eyeball" it. The reason that these TV cooks are popular is because they're showing you how to prepare food in the way that most people do in their own homes. Even though they're all following recipes, they still don't bother being all that retentive about it, because that's how you learn. I remember being in the kitchen with my mother. The two of us would be keeping up a steady stream of chatter while working on the food. Sometimes, we'd make a fairly big mistake ("oops! I forgot to chop the onions, mom." "Well, leave it out then."), and in the end, it wasn't that huge a deal.

One such time was this Friday night that we were rushing to get dinner ready. We had more people than we thought we would, and were rushing, because they were set to arrive soon. Usually, in a proper daal, you have to chop up some onions, some garlic, some tomato, cilantro, curry leaves, and set up a series of five or six spices. Everything needs to be there to give an authentic feeling. That evening, we hadn't the time to bother with all that. Instead, in her panic, my mother toasted some cumin seeds in hot oil, and added the lot of the cooked beans when she heard them pop. She didn't even bother adding salt. Similarly on my side, I didn't have time to make my cabbage, which involves onions, carrots, cabbage, and two or three spices, along with curry leaves. Instead, I just did the grated cabbage, grated carrot, some chopped onions, lemon juice, and some curry leaves raw, and tossed it all together.

This is all because the two of us didn't do anything in advance. Before leaving the kitchen, we set the rice cooker to get going, and ran to greet the guests. It was as if the food was high gourmet. Everyone had third helpings, and was raving about the food! There were other times when the mistakes would give us either over salted (meaning, you have to double the quantity of food, and add a bit of lemon), over cooked (add water, call it a soup), undercooked (sprinkle on just enough water to dampen, microwave until cooked through), or bland (liberally add in any sort of Chile sauce you can handle; Cholula is the best, because it has heat and lots of spices), or burned (gently pour out just exactly what's not burned, and don't scrape the bottom; soak the pot in water and soap; reseason the salvaged part to your liking, using some sort of BBQ sauce or such, which goes well with a smoky taste, then call it cajun).

These things happen to everyone, because that's the nature of the beast. The important thing is to avoid panicking, and work with it. I can't remember how many times I'd mix up the sugar for the salt, and sprinkle some in, and get very odd looks from my mother at the dinner table. We'd salvage it by adding some sour (tamarind, lemon, lime, what have you), and a bit of extra heat (cayenne, black pepper, ground chilly), and the actual salt itself. There's a reason that in my own home now, I refuse to use anything else but Turbinado sugar, and Kosher salt! Can't confuse those two, right? Here's a couple of ways to avoid disaster:

1. Until you're highly adept in the kitchen, don't let the dial go on anything higher than medium to start. That is, when you heat up oil, or pop spices, or do anything else that involves a naked pan + whatever you're adding, start at medium heat. This way, you'll understand how the pot reacts to the amount of oil you have in there. I generally start at medium when I'm in an unfamiliar kitchen for the same reason: I don't know how their cookware and stoves do things until I've gotten the hang of it. Sometimes, if the pots are very thin, and the stove is very hot, I'll mentally re-calibrate the dial. Medium is the new high, and so on.

2. Once your stove is above low heat, don't leave the room. I'm seriously not joking on this one. The reason is that the boiling point of water is 100ºC. Since water resists change in temperature very well, you can more or less count on the food in the pot staying at this temperature for the most part. However, once water has left, there is no compelling reason for the pot to remain at 100º. Instead, you'll see the temperature climb extremely rapidly, to the burning point. Soon, your smoke detector is screaming, and your family is coughing.

Just stay put. If the phone rings, or doorbell rings, and your stove is on high, turn the heat off, and handle those other things. It's better to come back to it, and pick up where you left off, rather than leave things a smoking mess. If you are an experienced cook, and are simmering a large pot of food over the lowest heat setting (such as when cooking beans, or making a Chile), feel free to cover the lid of the pot, and set a timer for about 30 minutes or so.

I use the timer in my microwave (press timer, set the amount of time you need it to time, then press timer again). I can then sit down with a book, or surf the internet for a while. I won't watch TV, because the sound of the TV will drown out the sound of the timer. When my timer goes off, I'll check on the food, and keep cooking, or set the timer for a bit longer, and relax. The point is that you don't have to babysit the kitchen the entire time you're cooking, if it's a long, slow-cooking food, but when you're in a hurry, be there to pay attention to what's going on.

3. Use the built in timer for your oven. With the oven, we often forget that it's there, because it's enclosed, and doesn't really make itself known too much. Instead of risking that, just read the manual of your stove, and figure out how to set the timer. If you have lost your manual, type into Google "how to set oven timer for ________" with the brand name of your oven. Something is bound to show up!

4. Clearly label, in BIG letters, your spices. A simple piece of white paper, taped onto the jar, will do the trick. Why? Because sometimes, you can't find your glasses. Sometimes, you're in a rush, and don't look too closely at the white powdered spice (which is baking soda, not powder, or sugar, not salt), and you sprinkle some in, thinking that you'll be fine. The food comes out, and everyone looks confused.

5. Try to keep your spices and sauces in roughly the same place every time. Don't let people take it out of that spot, if you can help it. If you use ketchup in everything, it'll be a good idea to have it in the same spot in your fridge every time you need it, so that you don't have to go searching for it. Similarly, with your other spices, if you keep them in easy reach, you'll remember to use them, and you'll know where to find them. I don't let people take my salt or pepper out of the kitchen. Instead, I measure out enough for that meal, and keep it in a separate container on the table. This way, I won't have to go searching for my salt box the next time I need it. It'll be right there, where it's always sitting.

6. Before flipping on the stove, try to have most of everything waiting for you. That is, if the recipe calls for crushed garlic, a bag of green peas, some Mrs. Dash, and some oil, try to have those things all in one spot, relatively close by. In fact, open the bag of peas, crush the garlic, and have the jar of Mrs. Dash open before flipping on the stove. You'll thank yourself later when you're not fumbling around. These guidelines should give you an insurance policy against mess-ups in the future. It won't prevent them completely, but it'll certainly help avoid major disasters. Trust me when I say that even the most experienced chefs have disasters. We just make it work for us.

Finally, not a question, but thanks so much for imparting all this information and enthusiasm for healthy, natural, delicious, peaceful foods. Much appreciated, and I hope we can do it again sometime.
For sure! This was pretty much what I'm very much suited to, right? Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Sauce interview, Pt 4

Awesome, thanks!

I hear you on Mexican food. It's like asking how to make music sound Mexican. Are we talking mariachi, tejano, ranchera, or norteno? I'm also with you on corn tortillas. But not asparagus. :) Thanks also for introducing the versatility of coconut milk into the discussion.

Next set of questions has to do with spices that most U.S. households are likely to have accumulated over the years, for one reason or another, even if no one does much cooking. I want to ask you if you have any simple ideas for using these spices. Again, just to limit the scope, I'd like to focus on vegetables primarily and fruits and grains secondarily, but if there is a "you must know about this" tip you'd like to share that doesn't fit into those categories, don't hold back!

Cayenne pepper or similar
Chile powder
Cinnamon
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Oregano
Parsley

Not quite as ubiquitous, but still very common:
Basil
Bay leaf
Cumin
Dill

We should probably include sauces that are found in most refrigerators, as well, eh?
BBQ sauce
Soy sauce
Szechuan sauce or similar
Tabasco sauce or similar

Let's do it.

Cayenne pepper or similar
Ever seen that lovely film called Chocolat? If not, go rent it now. The next time you make a cup of hot chocolate or coffee, throw in just a pinch of cayenne. You'll never be able to go back to the sickeningly sweet stuff that passes for good hot chocolate nowadays.

Barring that, there is no Chile recipe that would do without at least a pinch of cayenne. You need it for the fiery Southeast Asian cuisines of Thailand. In fact, to be honest, I find that cayenne is just a lovely addition to any sweet-and-sour combo, to offset the sweet. Say for instance, you're starting off with a mess of stir-fry vegetables, right? Suppose you start with some screaming hot peanut oil in a skillet, and add carrots, onions, peppers, bamboo shoots (from the tin; who has time to bother with fresh!?), scallions, sprouts, cabbage, and whatever other vegetable stirs (haha) your imagination. Suppose you add a healthy splash of tamari, or soy sauce. Suppose then, to offset the salty taste, you add in a healthy splash of orange juice. Then, to offset the sweetness, you add a very generous splash of lemon juice. When all is said and done, you're talking basic, yummy, and vibrantly coloured food. However, there are those of us who like a bit of adventure when we're eating stuff that we've probably had before.

Enter the cayenne.

Just a light sprinkle of cayenne, along with some crushed peanuts, will transport your stodgy stir-fry from back-alley fast food into an orgy of flavour. If you can possibly imagine a fiery edge to the next batch of stir-fry you pick up from your local Chinese fast food place (which typically runs on the sweeter and saltier side), you're sure to do like my mother does, and carry a batch of hot chilly powder with you anywhere you go.

Chile powder
There is the spice blend that contains (amongst other spices): cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, coriander, some tiny trace of ground chilly, and other spices. This is usually what I think of when I hear "Chile Powder". It's the stuff you use when making ... well ... a Chile! Starting with about a kilo of onions, a kilo of carrots, and 1/2 kilo of bell peppers, and a head of garlic is the perfect beginning to a good, strong Chile. In the largest pot you have, heat up a few tablespoons of oil. You might need up to 1/4 of a cup of oil. Use a neutral flavoured oil, like Canola, peanut, or safflower oil.

When the oil is hot, add the onions, carrots, peppers, and garlic. Drop down the flame to as medium, and allow the vegetable combination to cook for as long as it takes to get medium brown. You want the onions, garlic, and peppers chopped into a rough chop, and the garlic to be whole (for a milder garlic flavour), or minced (for a stronger garlic flavour). When the whole lot is the colour you desire, pitch in about 1 1/2 kilos of tinned, diced tomatoes, and a good handful of Chile powder. Turn up the heat to as high as it will go, and allow most of the water from the tomato tin to evaporate. Once you're down to about 1/4 of the original liquid from the tin, add a healthy slurp of tequila or dark rum. This step is optional. Add in about 3 kilos of cooked beans (as in, they weigh three kilos when you're done cooking them; start with about 1 1/2 kilos of dry beans to get to this level, or use tinned; both are equally fine). You can use all of one bean, like pinto, black, kidney, or pink beans, or combine them in any way you deem fit. You can omit the liquid from the tin, or add it in. It depends on your preference for how thick you like your Chile.

Let the whole mess come to a full, rolling boil, and let it cook for about 10 more minutes. Add one ounce or so of unsweetened chocolate, or an ounce of cocoa powder (unsweetened). Let the whole lot cook for about 10 more minutes, and eat!

Barring that, Chile powder is wonderful when sprinkled onto yams, yucca, sweet potatoes, squash, eggplant, chickpeas, potatoes, or any other hearty vegetable that you fancy. To prepare, simply mix 1 tablespoon of Chile powder with 1 tablespoon of oil. Toss about 1 pound of your vegetable (or chickpeas, if you're feeling adventurous!) in the spice and oil mixture. Throw it in the microwave for about 10 - 15 minutes, or in the oven at 350º F for about 30 - 45 minutes. If it's a tough veggie, let it cook longer. You now have a quick and delicious entree to dump onto bread, rice, or pasta, or eat by itself.

Cinnamon
The reason that apples and cinnamon are a cliche is because the two of them work so well together. Barring that, the next time you make the Chile recipe I mentioned, feel free to pitch in a teaspoon or so of cinnamon with the Chile powder. Also, any time you do sweet potatoes with maple syrup, you have to add a healthy dose of cinnamon for the taste to come out clearly. My morning oatmeal would be incomplete without cinnamon, as would my coffee, and hot chocolate.

Garlic powder
I tend to reserve garlic powder for when I want to punch up a jarred pasta sauce. I'll throw some olive oil into a skillet, throw in the jarred pasta sauce, throw in a few shakes of garlic powder, and let the mess come together in about five minutes. When it's done, I'll dump in the fresh pasta, and the taste is just as if I've been slaving over a hot stove. Additionally, whenever I am sauteeing onions for a recipe, and the recipe doesn't call for garlic, I'll throw some garlic powder into the sautee, to punch up the overall taste. Ditto this on whenever I make a cocoanut cream sauce. I'll start with the traditional roux (1 TB of oil, 1 TB of flour, heat over low heat until light blond, then pitch in 1 cup of cocoanut milk, then add a pinch of nutmeg and garlic powder), and do my magic when the sauce forms.

Onion powder
Ew. Wait, people actually BUY this stuff? Ew. Just. Ew. The flavour is far inferior to garlic powder, and onions are cheap and readily available enough that this travesty of the spice world should really go crawl into some corner and die.

Oregano
Remember the pasta sauce example? Same here. Throw in some oregano to punch it up. Same with the Chile powder example, where I mention adding 1 TB Chile powder to 1 TB oil? Try throwing in oregano with those veggies. Also, any Chile recipe will be complemented extremely well by oregano. Simply add it with the onions and garlic and peppers. Any recipe that calls for tomatoes will do well with oregano. Any recipe with root vegetables, but not a lot else will do well with oregano. The next time you make corn chowder, try some oregano in it; your tongue will thank you. Any bean recipe will love oregano. Crumble the dry leaves in your palm before you add it to your pot, so that you release the maximum flavour.

Parsley
Any time I have a sautee going, with onions, garlic, and/or other aromatics (carrots, peppers, etc), I add lots and lots of dried parsley if I have it. Just like oregano, crumble it in your palm before adding it in. Come to think of it, pretty darn near any savoury dish does well with a healthy (and I do mean healthy!) dose of dry parsley. I find that I need about a handful or so for the impact to come through in a pot of food meant for 4 - 6 people.


Not quite as ubiquitous, but still very common:

Basil
Always use wherever there are tomatoes present. Use generously in Thai food, or any other recipe which calls for hot ingredients, or creamy ingredients (like cocoanut or cocoanut milk).

Bay leaf
Never let a soup happen without some bay leaf in it. Ever. Bear in mind, however, that bay leaves are not digestible, and need to be removed before you serve the food. Also remember that bay leaves take some serious time to impart their flavours, so use it mainly in long-cooking curries, or soups, rather than quickie foods. Will do extremely well in my Chile recipe, if you add it with the sauteeing aromatics.

Cumin
Always use cumin in Chile, to punch up the "mexican" flavour. Use with refried beans to /give/ it flavour; often the stuff in the tin or from the restaurant is fairly boring. Use generously with any root vegetable. Use with any Indian dish.

If you have cumin seeds, you are especially lucky. The next time you make a savoury dish, start like the Indians do. In a large pot, heat up a tablespoon or so of oil. Sprinkle in 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds. Wait about 30 seconds or so, and your house will fill with the mouth-watering smell of cumin. The seeds will begin to jump and pop. Add about 2 cups of uncooked, long grain rice (or any other vegetable you feel like cooking). Drop down the heat to medium heat, and gently cook the grains of rice (or vegetable) until you smell a nutty aroma (or until the veggie is browned). Add in about 4 cups of water. Increase the heat to high heat, and allow the water to come to a full, rolling boil. Let the water boil for about two or three minutes. Slam on a tight-fitting lid (or aluminum foil, if you don't have the lid), and decrease the heat to as low as it will go. Set a timer for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, turn off the heat, and remove the pot from the heat. Allow the rice (or vegetable) to rest for about 10 minutes. Uncover the pot, and dig in! It's fabulous. This same technique can be used to make split pea soup. Just add about 3 cups per cup of water, and skip the browning step.

Cumin has anti-gas properties, which is why Indians use the spice so generously whenever they make cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli), or beans.

Dill
To be honest, dill is one of those few herbs that I rarely use when it's dried, because the fresh and dried version are so different, that I tend to avoid the dried. When you have the fresh, it's perfect in salad, and other raw applications. Throw some onto sliced cucumbers, with a dash of lemon, for the best summer treat ever. Combine it with hummos for an unusual flavour combo. Have it with tomatoes, parsley, and lemon, and you'll never want cooked tomato again!

Dry dill, on the other hand, is a lot more sober, and subdued. I'd use it in any application where dry parsley is appropriate.

BBQ sauce
Use for dipping French cut fries, or slices of baked potato or baked sweet potato. Slather onto mature plantain, and bake in the oven for a smoky, sweet treat. Rub onto slices of eggplant, and grill. Use as a marinade for portabello mushrooms, and grill.

Soy sauce/Tamari
Use in place of salt in recipes calling for salt. Switch to Tamari, if you're gluten free. Switch to low sodium, and see if you can really tell that much of a difference (why eat the extra salt if you don't have to!). Combine with various fruit juices, citrus, and/or spices to create your own marinades for various vegetables. When making tomato sauce, use a capful of soy sauce to counteract the tinny flavour of tinned tomato. When making a vegetable stock, add a few shakes to give the stock a much deeper, richer colour. Use for dipping of steamed vegetables.

Szechuan sauce or similar
It reminds me too much of snot to take it seriously. ::shudder::

Tabasco sauce or similar
Sriracha, Tabasco, and other fiery sauces should be on hand for those who like a bit of a kick with their food. Any time you do sweet-and-sour applications, have a touch of heat to offset the cloying sweetness that is so typical of the sweet and sour craze. Always have hot sauce on hand to combine with ketchup (and, in my house, freshly minced raw garlic) for a fabulous dipping sauce for French cut fries, and tater tots. (Yes, tater tots and other fried foods aren't healthy, but if you're having them, you might as well enjoy them, right!?) Add a fiery kick to your Chile by adding a bit of hot sauce at the table, before you dig in to eat. If you're like my husband, you'll like to have it on pretty close to everything.

Coriander powder:
For those who dislike, or are allergic to cumin, coriander powder is an ideal substitute. It's got the same smoky aroma, but a much more subtle flavour.

Sesame Seeds:
I would never let my kitchen exist without sesame seeds. I add them to hot oil before adding my aromatics (when I sautee aromatics). I add them to hot oil along with cumin seeds to release the flavour of both spices into the oil, before cooking vegetables. If I'm making (cooked) garbanzo beans, I /always/ add a good dose of sesame seeds, paprika, and olive oil, before pitching the lot into the oven for 15 minutes (at 350 F). I could never dream of a soup, stew, or bean dish without some bit of sesame seeds. Because they're high in Iron, I don't even feel guilty about the negligible extra fat they add.

As a note, there are three different varieties of sesame seeds. For the purposes I mention here, any of the three will work just fine.

Sauce interview, Pt 3

Thanks so much, Dino. Lots of information there! Definitely some stuff I didn't know. Oil is really its own subculture of cooking, is it not? Understand how to use oil and it seems like you're halfway there. [Dino's note: Whether it be oil, water, steam, or dry heat, it's paramount to know the different mediums of cooking. It's why I am so careful to specify which method to use in the recipes on here and in the book: it really does make a difference in the final food. Oil is but one of the cooking media.]

Thanks also for the "start small and gradually increase" recommendation on unfamiliar spices. Now let me get into some more specifics; these may be slightly random. For these next questions, I'm thinking about spices and sauces that easy to find.

First, I'm interested in spices or spice blends and/or off-the-shelf sauces that can be used to produce the flavors below. For simplicity's sake - and to fit in with our recent theme of vegetable - let's concentrate on vegetable dishes, maybe together with rice or other grains, or on a sandwich.

Suppose I want a Mexican feel?
What about Thai?
Down-home or soul food?
Barbecue / smoky?

Second...I'm interested in any favorite spices and sauces you have for the following vegetables. Let's say I'm quickly cooking up some frozen vegetables (nuking, steaming, pan-frying, etc.) as a side dish. It's a busy weeknight and I don't have any time to make anything elaborate, but I want to add a little something from the spice rack or cabinet.

Asparagus
Broccoli
Peas
Green Beans (One suggestion from me: A bit of Hoisin sauce. It works great.)

When there are times that you want to have a certain ethnic cuisine, but you can't be arsed to delve into the seedy underbelly of weird ingredients or expensive/time consuming stuff, you will need to guesstimate the experience of such cuisines.

Suppose I want a Mexican feel?
Mexican food is so difficult to classify, because there are so many regional variations, based on distance from the sea, the USA, and mixture of cultures in that particular place. However, there are some baseline foods that really feel Mexican, when you incorporate them into your regular food. For example, if you ever buy a wheat tortilla again (to have a Mexican feel), I will personally come to your door, and smack you with said tortillas. ALWAYS buy 100% corn tortillas. Wheat didn't show up in Mexico until long after the Conquistator oppressors showed up. Until that point, the native Mexcians made tortillas from corn.

Get. Corn. Tortillas.

Instead of lemon juice, use lime juice. Use lots of garlic, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro. Use cumin. For example, say you want to have a quickie bean burrito. Open up a tin of black beans. Drain them, and rinse them off lightly. Pitch them into the bowl of a food processor. Add some olive oil, lime juice, and cumin powder. Pulse until everything is ground down to a paste. Chop up an onion, mince a clove of garlic, mince up a chilly (be it poblano, jalapeno, or whatever heat you can take in terms of chilly). Dump the onion, garlic, and chilly into a bowl. Add a generous squeeze of lime juice. Dice up a roma tomato, and pitch that into the bowl as well. Mince up a bunch of cilantro (use parsley if you hate cilantro), and throw that into the bowl as well. Top off the concoction with some ground black pepper, a touch of salt, and about 8 oz of tinned corn (drained, of course). Quickly toast up a corn tortilla. Spread the ground black beans onto the tortilla. Top it with your salad of tomatoes and corn. Fold it in half, and enjoy!

What about Thai?
To someone from Thailand, there is no such thing as too hot or too garlicky. Get used to using lots and lots of heat and garlic.

Say you want a quick curry. In a skillet, heat up some oil. Add a diced onion. Sautee the onion until it's soft. Pitch in as much minced garlic as you can handle. Add some chopped up green beans, some minced ginger, and a healthy dose chopped tomato. When the vegetables are cooked, throw in a few tablespoons of cocoanut milk. Add a generous squeeze of lemon juice, some chopped chilly peppers, and a whole tonne of chopped cilantro. Serve the curry over rice.

Down-home or soul food?
Soul food is concerned with taking cheap ingredients, and making them taste really great. To make some quick collard greens, all you need is a bit of oil, lots of garlic, and some Old Bay seasoning. Chop your collard greens roughly. In the bottom of an enormous pot, heat some oil. Add the greens. Stir the greens around in the hot fat, so that every green is coated in a bit of the fat. When everything is coated, add a generous dose of Old Bay seasoning. Stir the greens around some more to combine them with the seasoning. Add in just enough water so that the first inch or so of the pot is filled. Add the garlic. Cover the lid of the pot, and drop down the heat to as low as it'll go. Let the greens steam for about five to ten minutes. Remove the lid, and stir everything around again. Serve with corn on the cob, a green salad, and some rice. Soul food need not be artery clogging!

Barbecue/smoky
Since I've never eaten it before, I'm out of my depth. What worked for me, is to rub on some cocoanut oil on some portabello caps, sprinkle on some Chili powder, and grill them. Friends have raved about it.

Asparagus
I hate asparagus.

Broccoli
Garlic powder, a touch of nutmeg, and cocoanut milk. Combine the spices and cocanut milk. Toss broccoli florets in spice and cocoanut milk blend. Nuke on high for like 10 minutes.

Peas
A tonne of parsley, basil, oregano, and dill (all fresh, please). Add some lemon juice, some olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

Green Beans
Sautee in olive oil. Add slivered almonds. Pitch in some white wine. Cook until liquid evaporates.

Sauce interview, Pt 2

Now that the news about your open marriage to Mrs. Dash is out...let me ask these questions next:

- What kind of oil should I use?
- What is sriracha, and can I find it in Nebraska?
- How do I know if I've added enough spice? How do I prevent adding too much?
- If I add more than one spice, do I cut back on the amounts of each one?
- Adding OJ and lemonade is a nice touch! Do any other kinds of juice work? Pineapple? Apricot? Fruit punch?

- What kind of oil should I use?
The midnight oil, damnit! After using some of these techniques, you'll find yourself cooking less, and eating more. This is a good thing. Seriously though. It depends on what you're doing.

Say for example, you're adding garlic, onions, peppers, celery, carrots, or any combination (or any one of those) to cold oil, heating said oil and aromatics in a pan, and then adding other ingredients, you can use any cooking fat. What am I talking about? Frankly, fats have this wonderful way of only doing one thing rather well. For example, olive oil is really good at tasting buttery, and lending such a depth of flavour to whatever you eat. However, it's really bad at getting super duper hot. Try to set your stove on high with olive oil in the skillet, and you'll soon have a face full of smoke, and really nasty smelling living grounds. Instead, with olive oil, you add aromatics (garlic, onions, carrots, celery, etc.) to the cold oil, and set the pot on the heat. The aromatics have water, which prevents the oil from rising too much above the 212F, which is the boiling point of water. Mind you, this isn't a license to set the stuff on the stove and forget about it, but rather a nice insurance policy.

However, there are times when you want to really scorch the bottoms of your vegetables, and get some serious colour going. In these cases, you use an oil that can handle very high heats. Examples are canola, peanut, vegetable, and safflower oil. With these oils, you can set a pot on the stove, crank the heat up to high, add the oil, and add the aromatics, or whatever else to the pot at your (relative) leisure. You still need to act quickly, as you've got about a minute before your kitchen turns into a smoky mess, but the oil will resist the temptation to stay at the neat and pat 212F. Instead, it will aggressively inch towards 500F! The point is that you want to suit the oil to your cooking situation, right? HOWEVER! Don't feel afraid of starting canola, peanut, safflower, etc. oil off cold, with aromatics thrown in.

Starting with cold oil, and cold aromatics, and allowing the two to come to temperature together, is a time-honoured method of withdrawing the maximum of flavour from the aromatics. Also, when you're baking or have everything ready, and you do the spice blend method, you really don't need to worry about which oil you use. Let me handle the first scenario first. Suppose you are feeling infinitely lazy, and need to have a shower before dinner is served. You're smelling quite ribald, and feeling the need for the cleansing waters to relax. Get into your kitchen, and hack up some root vegetables to about the same sized chunks. In a small bowl, combine a couple of tablespoons of oil with your favourite spice blend, and a bit of salt and pepper. Make a loose paste of this. In a large roasting pan, combine the spice-oil mixture with the chopped vegetables. Toss the veggies with the spices and oil to combine everything evenly. Set the oven to 350, the timer to 35 minutes, and get on with your shower. By the time you get back, you'll have the kitchen smelling heavenly, and a large mess of vegetables, waiting to be served over salad greens, or in between two slices of bread. In this case, the oil doesn't matter, because you're mainly using it to be a vector for the spices, and the fact that the oven is slowly roasting your vegetables will keep the oil from burning. Frankly, the controlled temperatures are ideal for any oil.

The second scenario is if you have a quick hand, and everything waiting. Set your large stock pot onto the stove. Crank the heat up to high. Drizzle in whatever oil you choose. Wait about 20 seconds for the oil to heat. Immediately pitch in your aromatics. Because you've got everything waiting, you don't have to worry about the oil getting too hot too quickly. Otherwise, if you aren't that quick in the kitchen, follow the advice I originally gave.

- What is sriracha, and can I find it in Nebraska?
It's one of those delicious fire sauces from Southeast Asia. If you can't find it in Nebraska, never be ashamed of substituting Tabasco, or whatever other hot sauce you fancy. If you don't fancy hot sauce, cheat, and add a touch of black pepper (as much as you can take!) to some ketchup, and call it a night. Nobody has to know.

- How do I know if I've added enough spice? How do I prevent adding too much?
Eyeballing it works for me. If I'm looking at a piece of vegetable in the pot, and each piece has enough spice that about half of it is visible through the veil of spices, I'm good to go. If you've added too much, cheat, and pitch in some cooked pasta, potatoes, rice, or whatever other frozen vegetables you have lying around. To prevent adding too much in the first place, measure out just enough of whatever spice you're adding into the palm of your hand first. If it takes up more than a dime-sized round, you're probably going to end up with too much ... stuff in your food. Err on the side of not enough. Worst comes to it, you can always sautee some more onions and garlic in oil, add additional spices to that pot, and mix it in with the rest of the food. Nobody has to know, and you've avoided the problems of having raw-tasting dried herbs.

- If I add more than one spice, do I cut back on the amounts of each one?
Here's a rule that works for me. When I'm working with an unfamiliar spice, I'll first start with 1/2 teaspoon, and add the rest of the "normal" seasonings. For example, whenever I make a pasta sauce, I add 1 tablespoon of italian seasoning, 2 tablespoons of Mrs. Dash, and 5 cloves of garlic. However, I saw a recipe that used fennel seeds. I'm not sure how it'll work out in the end. Because I'm a bit nervous about a spice like fennel seeds, I'll even cut it back to 1/4 teaspoon, rather than 1/2 teaspoon. Chances are that it'll be so subtle that I won't even notice it (as I tend to make about a 6 lb tin's worth of diced tomatoes of sauce every time I bother to make sauce). If that slight hint is pleasant, I'll try to up the ante the next time. Eventually, I'll find an amount that's close enough to the new recipe to suit my tastes. Sometimes, I end up adding more. Most of the time, I add less than what others like. The point is that because I introduced it gently, I never jarred myself into dislike.

- Adding OJ and lemonade is a nice touch! Do any other kinds of juice work? Pineapple? Apricot? Fruit punch?
YES! Yes! Not so much. Pineapple juice is very easy to incorporate into different foods, because it's got a distinctly tropical feel. Apricot juice tastes of Tradition, and Pomp. It's quite a sophisticated taste. Fruit Punch, however, tastes of ... red. I'm serious. What other flavour can you attribute to Fruit Punch? It's lovely with a hefty shot of vodka, and a splash of lime juice, but otherwise, it's best left to Church picnics, with women who wear tragic parodies of fashions they saw in Better Homes and Gardens. Frankly, I love Better Homes and Gardens, Fruit Punch, Vodka, and Apple Pie, too. However, I do feel that all of those things should be enjoyed in places where they will make the most impact.