Wizard Recipes

Here are some assorted hints to help you with your meat cooking.

Beef. This list from the National Cattlemen’s Association gives you beef steaks with decreasing degree of tenderness.

¨ Tenderloin

¨ Chuck top blade

¨ Top loin

¨ Porterhouse/T-bone

¨ Rib

¨ Rib-eye

¨ Chuck-eye

¨ Round tip

¨ Top sirloin

¨ Chopped steak

Veal. Veal comes from young cattle. It is a very tender, light-colored meat with little or no fat and connective tissue. They market virtually all veal and calf fresh (not frozen). The meat has a high moisture content and doesn’t improve with aging as beef does, so you want to use it soon after purchase.

Baby veal is the most tender and lightest in color of all veal but with very little flavor. It comes from baby animals of mere 2 or 3 days old that weigh between 22 and 55 pounds (10 and 25 kg) (not much more than a large tom turkey).

Meat labeled veal comes from slightly older 1 to 3-month old animals that were entirely milk-fed. The meat is white (there is no iron in milk that would darken the color). If the veal is not white, the animal had supplemental feed, that turns the color pink. Meat labeled calf is still from a young animal in the 3 to 8-month range, just a little older than veal. Calf meat is tender but no longer a light pink color.

Baby beef is another category you occasionally see at the meat counter. This comes from immature, 7 to 10-month old cattle. Ranchers usually sell these when economic reasons or adverse weather conditions force them to reduce herd size. Although low-priced, this meat isn’t a good buy because these young animals have already lost the desirable characteristics of veal, but haven’t yet developed the true beef flavor and marbling.

By itself, veal is dry with little flavor. Its low fat and high moisture content does poorly in dry heat cooking. It is best if you sauté veal (because frying oil adds lubrication), or serve it in rich sauces or with high-fat fillings. Retail cuts of veal are similar to beef, but the size is smaller-veal round steak, for example, is smaller than a beef round steak.

Pork. Because pork used to be much fatter, you may have to alter recipes from older cookbooks. Add a little more liquid and baste more frequently to compensation for today’s leaner pork.

Like other red meats, pork is best when you roast it slowly at a low oven temperature. If you rush it, you’ll lose more liquid and a hard outside crust forms that heat cannot penetrate evenly. Part of the roast may be done while the rest is still pink. The hard crust also makes carving thin slices difficult.

Cured pork cuts. Salt pork and some brine-cured hams (Virginia and Smithfield, for example) are too salty for many people’s tastes. The answer is to soak some of the salt out. If it is a whole ham, soak it for 24 hours, changing the water many times. A small piece of salt pork takes much less time. Cover it with cold water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes.

Salt content, age of the meat and texture all make a difference. No exact timeline exists to guide you how long to soak a particular piece of salted meat. Let the piece of meat soak a while and then give it a lick test. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the flavor.

Bacon. Have you ever wondered how much edible meat you actually get when you buy bacon? I selected three different brands: a high-quality bacon from a butcher shop, a better quality bacon from a supermarket deli counter and a standard lower-priced, but not bottom-of the-line brand, from the supermarket display case. I carefully weighed each batch on a laboratory scale and fried them to identical crispness, then weighed the final edible portions again.

The butcher shop bacon and the better-quality supermarket bacon yielded close to the same amount of meat-about 35 percent of the original weight. The standard brand only yielded 27.5 percent.What I lost, nearly three-quarters of the total, was fat and water. The higher-priced bacon had better flavor and the cost per pound (or per kilo) of the edible portion worked out about the same as of the lower-priced bacon.

When you buy bacon, it is more economical to buy a better-quality package and you get a better flavor. Considering such a high loss, bacon costs more than most of the highest-quality meats.

In fact, the price of the edible portion is only just below the price of the highest-priced item in the butcher’s display, fully trimmed beef tenderloin steak or filet mignon.

Lamb. Lamb has a delicate flavor, but to retain it without a gamy overtone, know how to cook it properly. Lamb fat is a hard fat with a lower smoking point than other animal fats, and it burns easily if the temperature is too high. Once it burns, it develops an unpleasant odor and flavor. Never roast lamb in an oven higher than 325°F (165°C).

Leg of lamb has a thin membrane completely surrounding the meat, separating it from the fat layer. This is called the fell. The butcher doesn’t remove it because it holds the bundle of muscle together and helps to retain moisture during cooking. It should be removed, however, in steaks and chops. If it is still there, simply pull it off with your fingers.

If you don’t do this before grilling or broiling, the heat shrinks the fell and makes the meat buckle-as a result it browns unevenly and looks unappealing. Scoring the fell in several places also helps to avoid curling. The term spring lamb refers to the very tender meat from lambs born in the spring, but in North America today it has no meaning because of improved shipping. Lamb ranchers and processors provide young, tender, spring-lamb quality meat year round.

In California, Arkansas and parts of the South, young lambs are born in the fall and flourish in the mild winter. They provide tender meat before the true spring lambs are born in cooler parts of the country.

Soybeans enjoy having their own privileged class. They are unique with an amazing protein content of 34 percent, one of the highest of all foods (compare that to meats that range from 15 to 22 percent). Yet, we hardly ever eat them. Even though they are an impressive source of protein, they have flunked the palatability test in every country anyone every tried to introduce soybeans as a staple. But all those soybeans are not wasted.

We use its oil either directly or indirectly in all kinds of consumables goods. The soybean protein is a prime animal feed, but it also provides a significant protein source in its many permutations for vegetarians.

Interestingly enough, soybeans are a very recent introduction to U.S. agriculture, yet in a few decades they have become her single largest cash crop. Although we don’t eat them either fresh or in dry form as we do other legumes, we consume plenty of them in other ways. Most of us have never had a bag of soybeans in our kitchen cupboards, yet we recognize the coagulated or fermented products derived from them.

Foods from the soybean

There are five soybean-derived foods (excluding oil) that you come across on many supermarket shelves. They were virtually unknown in North America in the 1940s and 1950s.

Two of these became fairly common: soy sauce (and its cousin tamari sauce) now in nearly every kitchen and tofu. The other three are not so well known: soy milk, tempeh and miso. Tofu and soy milk are unfermented, soy sauce, tempeh and miso are fermented products. The Chinese have been using fermented soybean products for at least 2200 years.

Tofu is soybean curd, very similar to unripened cheese curd both in flavor (they both have none) and the way they make them. First they soak the dry soybeans overnight. Then they crush and cook these lightly hydrated but still hard beans until they turn into a mush. After filtering off the liquid, which is the soy milk, they add calcium or magnesium salt to coagulate the curd. They put this semisoft solid into wooden forms and press it for several hours to squeeze more of the liquid whey out.

Starting with 4 pounds (4 kg) of dry soybeans they end up with about 6 pounds (6 kg) of tofu (the increased weight is water) plus the whey that they discard. Tofu is an ideal medium for bacterial growth and spoils very quickly at room temperature. That is no problem in the Orient where they eat tofu the same day they make it. The American food distribution system requires far longer shelflife than one day, so processors pasteurize tofu and seal it in a package for weeks of shelflife like they do cheeses.

Tofu comes in different textures from very soft, smooth, fragile, silken cakes to hard, solid, almost cheese-like bricks. The difference is in the amount of whey left in it. Soft tofu is about 85 percent, while the hard stuff is only 50 or 60 percent water. Hard tofu, often flavored with sugar, tea and spices, is the preferred form in many parts of China. Elsewhere, soft tofu or an in-between consistency is more popular.

By itself, tofu is bland and flavorless, virtually unpalatable. But it adds great texture to foods. It acts like a sponge for flavor compounds, so it takes on flavors from all other ingredients. It is good in soups, salads and stir-fries. It is suitable to marinate, to bake, to braise or to sauté just like meat. My recommendation to you is to try it at least once, no matter how reluctant you feel about tofu. For instance, why not marinate tiny tofu squares in an intense

Oriental sauce for a few hours, then add them to your salads. Wow!

Tofu is now available commercially in different flavors and forms that replicate meat (called value-added products)-tofu burgers, baked teriyaki and barbecued tofu, cutlets of tofu in marinade, tofu blocks marinated in Italian, Thai or Oriental flavors, or whatever the trend of the moment happens to be. Although plain tofu is inexpensive, these value-added products are not cheap. You will probably pay almost as much for them by weight as for medium to high-priced meats.

The protein content of tofu is not very high, only about 7 percent, because of the large amount of diluting water it contains. The harder the tofu is, the less water and more protein concentration in a same-weight piece. A 4-ounce (113-g) tofu, in dietitians’ language, contains 8 to 10 grams of protein.

Soy milk the other unfermented soy product, is the liquid that results from the first step of the tofu-making process. However, more cooking and processing are necessary before the liquid becomes suitable and acceptable to drink as soy milk. The processor adds salt, sweetener, oil and flavoring to give it a little taste. Without them, it tastes like plain tofu, very blah!

Soy sauce is to Orientals what ketchup is to Americans. Each country, and even districts within country, has its own ways of making it and each one may be very different from the other. Soy sauce has become very popular in our kitchens, too.

To make Japanese soy sauce, the processor cooks the soybeans and adds roasted, and coarsely crushed wheat berries. The ratio of the two differs in every region. Then the processor inoculates the mash with a specific mold (Aspergillus) and lets this mixture mature for about 3 days under controlled temperature and humidity conditions to develop enzymes. After that he adds a brine solution to destroy the mold. The result, moromi mash, is what ferments and ages in fermentation tanks at natural temperature for about 2 years.

Fermentation for our domestically produced soy sauce is only about 6 months but under controlled temperature.

During the fermentation, two processes take place. In the first one the proteins of the soybeans are broken down into their component amino acids, and in the second the

carbohydrates of the wheat kernels change to sugar. The brine is also part of the process.

It introduces saltiness and triggers a new set of chemical reactions between the amino acids and sugar. A yeast fermentation runs simultaneously with these changes that alters part of the sugar into alcohol, introducing a tart flavor component. The result is a further deepening of flavor with even more complexity and the development of a rich, clear color.

Aging follows fermentation and the two processes take 6 months to a year, after which they filter off the reddish-brown syrupy mash under pressure to squeeze out every single drop. Then they pasteurize the liquid before bottling to get rid of any remaining live culture.

Chinese soy sauce is somewhat different. They make it without wheat and is both thicker and heavier than the Japanese variety. The Chinese add molasses to give sweetness and a dark color.

Tamari is similar to the Japanese-style soy sauce but has little or no wheat, is darker, heavier and stronger-flavored than soy sauce. Salt makes up a very high 15 to 20 percent of any soy sauce, so don’t use it too generously. It generally replaces table salt in recipes.

Tempeh is a close relative to tofu. Tofu is unaged and unfermented. Tempeh is also unaged, but it is fermented for a day under warm, humid conditions with inoculated mold culture so it develops a mild flavor. Otherwise, it is a white cake-like food similar to tofu. Tempeh originated in Indonesia and because it is more tasty than tofu, it is popular with vegetarians as a meat substitute.

You can buy tempeh in health food stores flavored with seaweed, soy sauce, five-spice or just plain sea veggies. Sometimes they fortify it with extra cooked soybeans. It has the same protein content as tofu (about 7 percent) unless has the benefit of added soybeans. That boosts the protein content up to a respectable 21 percent (24 grams in a 4-ounce or 113-g serving)

Miso is a Japanese fermented product that begins with soaked soybean mush into which they mix either pre-fermented soybeans, rice or barley. The processor inoculates this conglomeration with mold, and ferments it for a few days. Then he blends, mashes and pasteurizes the mush, and it is ready for sale in sealed jars or in bulk in health food stores.

In bulk it is like thick porridge. It has a complex, distinctive taste which makes it good for flavoring and as a soup base. The cost is about the same as a medium-priced meat. The protein content is around 13 percent (15 grams in a 4-ounce or 113-g serving) depending on what other ingredients they have added.

Cooking pasta is very easy. So why is it that so many cooks ruin it? The fault is usually the cook’s inattention or his or her poor knowledge of a few basic facts. Pasta needs plenty of boiling salted water, about three times the volume of the dry pasta. A large amount of water keeps boiling while you add the pasta, a crucial factor for ending up with a firm outcome.

If the cook starts with a small pot of water, according to basic laws of physics, the water temperature drops drastically when you drop in the pasta compared to a large pot of water. To help keep water remain in furious boil, add pasta little at a time, not all at once.

Start your timer when the last batch is in the water. Use 1 tablespoon salt for every gallon of cooking water. Cooking without salt gives you a flat-tasting pasta that no sauce can cover up. Too much salt gives a sharp over-salted taste to whatever you mix it with.

Many cookbooks advise you to add oil to the boiling water to keep the pasta from sticking together. This is an unfounded myth. The oil remains on the surface of the water, only making it harder to wash the pot when cleaning up. Pasta won’t stick together if you keep stirring for a few seconds while adding it to the boiling water. After the water returns to a full boil, hang around and give your pot a stir once or twice. Good pasta will remain in distinct pieces.

Never, never cover the pot while cooking pasta. Some of the starch dissolves in the water during cooking, floats on the surface and the water boils over, making a terrible mess of your stove.

Instructions on the package give you a general guide about cooking time, but experience with the same brand is your best bet. When uncertain about cooking time, taste test the pasta near the end to avoid overcooking. Pasta should be cooked to a stage of, as the Italians say, al dente, or firm to the teeth. Fully cooked yet just slightly chewy, like barley grains in a soup.

If you overcook pasta and it becomes mushy, throw it out and start with a brand new batch. Feed the overcooked pasta to your dog. The cat is apt to have more gourmet sense and won’t touch it. As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it in a colander. Good pasta does not need rinsing.

Cheaper pasta with its higher starch may benefit as you remove any remaining surface starch that helps to keep the individual pieces from sticking together. If you serve the pasta right away, shake the colander to remove as much water as possible. Add a little oil, preferably olive oil, to the still-warm cooking pot, just enough to barely cover the bottom.

Return the drained pasta to the pot, thoroughly stir the oil into it and warm it over low heat stirring constantly until most of the moisture has evaporated. Now the oil coats the surface of the pasta and keeps the gelatinized starch of neighboring noodles from sticking together. Within a minute your pasta should be hot enough to serve.

When you are baking a pasta dish like lasagna, which has plenty of liquid in the sauce, you don’t need to pre-cook the pasta. Disregard all such recipe instruction. Just layer the dry pasta with the rest of the ingredients and bake it for the usual time. By the time it is baked, the pasta will be soft and fully cooked. Try this method first with the family, before you serve it to dinner guests, to prove to yourself that it works. It saves an hour of anxiety should you try it on guests.

How do you decide how much pasta to cook? There are a number of kitchen gizmos available to help you measure the appropriate amount. Best and easiest is to weigh it. The average person eats about 3 ounces (85 g) of pasta by dry weight when it is the main entrée. Reduce that to 2 to 2½ ounces (55 to 70 g) when it is a side dish with generous amount of other foods. Take into account the individual appetites of the people you are serving, too.

For best flavor, appearance and least nutrient loss cook vegetables as quickly as possible. The quickest-cooking methods present us with most tasty vegetables-blanching, stir-frying, deep-frying, grilling and broiling. But the slow-cooking oven roasting also brings out full flavors.

When you want to cook several kinds of vegetables together irrespective of what method you use, you have two choices to arrive at vegetables with the same degree of tenderness. Either add them to the pot or pan at different times, starting with the slowest-cooking, densest vegetables then gradually adding the faster-cooking ones, or cut them into different sizes-the slow-cooking vegetables into smaller pieces than the fast-cooking ones.

You may also combine two cooking methods. For example, pre-blanching vegetables significantly speeds up grilling, broiling or sautéing. Blanching is also an efficient way of preparing vegetables to fast last-minute serving, the way restaurant chefs serve freshly-cooked crisp vegetables in the shortest time.

The chef has the supply of pre-blanched, cooled vegetables ready to sauté on high heat in butter or oil and seasonings in less than a minute. Efficient home cooks do the same.

When cooking strong-flavored vegetables, such as those in the cabbage and onion families, the flavor becomes milder if you cook it in water to cover. The strong flavor components leach into the liquid.

They also become milder if you leave your pot uncovered so some of the strong volatiles spread their aromas throughout your house, leaving their vegetable source behind. Due to chemical reactions, prolonged cooking increases the strong flavor of cabbage-family vegetables, but decreases the onion-family vegetables.

A useful way of concentrating flavor in some high-moisture vegetables is a technique the French call dégorger. The idea is to get rid of part of the water without heat. You grate or finely dice the vegetables (cucumber, zucchini, cabbage) to increase the surface area and sprinkle it generously with salt.

After several hours the salt draws out some of the water that you drain in a colander or you wrap the vegetables in a kitchen towel and squeeze out the water by twisting the towel. After thoroughly rinsing out the excess salt, the vegetables are ready to sauté, stir-fry, bake or whatever method is suitable.

Useful Tips to remember :

¨ Use yellow onion in cooking, sweet onion for salads

¨ The flatter the onion the less the pungency

¨ For most intense garlic flavor add garlic late to the sauté pan or dishes

¨ Cooking ginger in water or oil mutes pungency; cooking in acidic liquid increases it

¨ Keep extra minced garlic and ginger in small containers in your freezer

¨ To ripen tomatoes, keep them out of the sun in a warm place in a closed paper bag

¨ Canned tomatoes are better for cooking than tomatoes out-of-season

¨ Chili powder is a spice mix; ground or powdered chili is pure red chili ground into fine

powder

¨ Keep ground chili and paprika in the freezer for best flavor

¨ To tame chili-induced fire in your mouth, get rid of chili oil with alcohol or milk products, or

soak it up with bread or tortilla; avoid water

¨ The ribs in the chili carry most pungency; the amount you include defines how hot your dish

will be

¨ Mushrooms add flavor and texture to dishes; some are bland but soak up flavorful liquids

¨ Heating creates the flavor in mushroom; raw mushrooms are pretty but flavorless

¨ Store mushrooms in paper bags in refrigerator, never in plastic

¨ Cook vegetables with three goals in mind: best flavor, most nutrients, most eye appeal

¨ Cook all vegetables for shortest time possible, particularly green vegetables to preserve color. Never add any acid or baking soda to the cooking water

¨ One of the best vegetable cooking methods is blanching in plenty of boiling, salted water. Microwave cooking is the least suitable

Vegetables are extremely versatile in the kitchen. We may use any of the following cooking methods to prepare them:

1. Boiling, blanching or parboiling. All these terms refer to the same cooking method- cooking in briskly boiling large amount of salted water, akin to pasta cooking. The reason for large amount of water is to keep it at boil as much as possible when you add the vegetables.

A large body of liquid keeps its heat better than a small amount. When you add the vegetables, it returns to boil relatively quickly. Large amount also helps to dilute accumulating leached-out acids that would change the color.

Blanching and parboiling are the same things. The terms imply cooking in boiling water until nearly cooked but still quite crisp. Once you remove the vegetables from the boiling water, you quickly immerse them in cold water to stop the cooking process (iced water, that some cookbooks suggest, is not necessary-cold water instantly stops the process and you avoid an unnecessary step of ice water preparation).

Then the vegetables are ready for a next cooking step, for cold storage or as salad ingredient. Boiling is a term that implies cooking to a softer stage than blanching. Today many cooks prefer to serve freshly-blanched crisp vegetables instead of boiled.

You always add salt to the water to cook vegetables. The amount is about ½ teaspoon for every quart (liter) of water. Without salt the boiling water leaches out the vegetables’ natural salt and the flavor becomes flat.

Blanching produces the brightest colored vegetables of all cooking methods. They become brighter than their natural colors. Why? Vegetables are made up of tiny cells that contain the coloring pigments.

There is a thin layer of air that surrounds each cell and that layer slightly mutes the color in living plants. It is similar to looking through a fogged-up windshield. The heat in blanching removes that thin air layer from the surface cells, and the muting effect disappears-the colors become brighter, like if you had put on the defroster for your windshield.

2. Steaming is a slower process than boiling or blanching requiring nearly twice the cooking time. Many cooks swear by steaming as the method for best-tasting vegetables. But thers (myself included) disagree. When you steam and blanch the same vegetable to the same degree of doneness, you notice a slight but distinct difference.

Steaming does not bring the flavors out as fully as cooking in boiling water does. You may want to try it yourself and decide. You don’t need to salt the water when steaming in spite of some cookbook directions. Salt does not evaporate with the steam and the vegetables remain unaffected.

3. Stir-frying, sautéing and frying are closely related methods. All use high heat and oil or fat to prevent sticking to the pan and to develop the flavor by the browning reaction In stir-frying you add just a film of oil, in sautéing somewhat more and you fry in deep, hot oil. When frying in a lot of oil, the cook needs to coat the vegetable with a batter, or the fast-escaping steam from the vegetables makes a terrible spatter in the oil. The coating moderates the direct contact of the hot steam and the oil, resulting in plenty of hissing and sizzling but less spattering.

4. Baking or roasting is suitable for many of the sturdier vegetables. Those with particularly high moisture content, such as cucumbers, are not suitable-by the time they are finished roasting, not much more than a brown pellet left. You always stir in a small amount of oil or fat with baked or roasted vegetables to help them brown and inhibit sticking to the pan.

You may also add seasonings with the oil. Add robust herbs and spices early in the process but subtle-flavored herbs lose too much essential oil during the baking process, so it is best to add them late. For baking or roasting, use whole vegetables or large chunks. If you cut them into too small pieces, they dry out too much.

5. Broiling and grilling vegetables are just like broiling or grilling meat, except it is necessary to add some oil or fat to avoid sticking and promote browning. For this method the vegetables are often in thick slices.

6. Microwave cooking is very popular because of its speed. Many cooks believe in this method yet it is so fast that overcooking is a real danger. You leave the vegetables in the microwave oven just 30 seconds too long, and you end up with a product ready to be puréed for baby food. Microwave cooking doesn’t brings out flavors, either. Test it for yourself and compare. Cook, say green beans, in the microwave to the same doneness as green beans you cook in boiling water or in a steamer.

My memorable microwave cooking lesson was at a good friend’s summer dinner party at the height of the corn season. He was a first-class gardener and his wife was a third-class cook. Unfortunately, she was the designated cook in the house. Minutes before dinner he picked fresh young corn in his backyard garden, handed them to his wife while us guests looked on in an expectation for fabulous culinary delights.

Fresh-picked corn is a rarity in most of our lives and the flavor is often ahead of caviar and truffles. The corn cobs were ready in record time-she microwaved them. Instead of culinary delight it was a struggle to chew and swallow the tough, flavorless kernels. The microwaves totally annihilated them. It was a pure waste growing them since in this case frozen corn would have easily surpassed the fresh.

The five types of dry heat cooking are:

¨ broiling or pan-broiling

¨ sautéing

¨ deep-frying

¨ stir-frying

¨ roasting (baking)

Dry heat cooking methods use high heat and little moisture. Cooking is not entirely dry, as the name implies, because all meat have plenty of moisture that contributes to the cooking process.

Since extra moisture is not welcome because it reduces the high cooking temperature, it is always a good idea to wipe the seafood thoroughly with a paper towel just before cooking or, if fried with breading, before applying the coating.

The hottest heat in dry cooking method is grilling (barbecuing) and broiling. To avoid sticking, brush the surface of the grill or broiler pan with a film of oil, and for added insurance, do the same with the meat.

The intense heat (with some help from the brushed-on oil) rapidly browns the surface of your meat. By the time you cook the inside, the surface color is a deep caramel brown or, if you’re not careful, charcoal black.

Never turn the meat more than once either on the grill or under the broiler. This keeps handling to a minimum and produces attractive grill marks. Determine the time to cook one side, set your timer and don’t even peek until the time is up. Quickly flip the piece over and set the timer again. Now you can get ready to check the internal temperature.

When you are grilling smaller pieces, skewer them. Keep heavy work gloves near the grill to turn skewered meat.

A quick and easy way of cooking meat is pan-broiling, which is similar to grilling or broiling. To pan-broil meat, place it in a heavy preheated skillet over medium heat. Cook the meat directly on the hot surface without water or oil, turning only once.  This is an excellent way for preparing steaks and ground meat patties. Some cooks sprinkle salt in the pan before adding the meat to prevent sticking.

Initially the meat may stick a little, but if you detach it from the pan right away, the fat and juices from the meat keep it from sticking again.

Sautéing, deep-frying and stir-frying all use oil. Sauté meat in small amount of fat on strong heat. Sautéing is easy, not messy, very quick and the meat absorbs a minimum of fat.

Keep the pan in constant motion for even browning and to avoid sticking. If you are planning to serve the meat with a sauce, you can use what’s left in the pan as a base-the highly-flavored oil   with some deeply-browned food particles and possibly some juice.

Deglaze it by adding a little wine or stock, even water. The liquid dissolves the particles and within a minute you have it cooked down into a sauce.

Deep-frying and stir-frying are both high-heat methods. The difference is in the amount of oil you use-plenty for deep-frying, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan or wok for stir-frying.

Food absorbs more fat in deep-frying than in any other cooking method, but if you do it properly, you can reduce fat absorption. Deep-fried food of any kind is wonderful but home deep-frying is messy.

The foundation of any good soup is either broth, stock, bouillon or consommé. So what’s the difference between these four? Not a great deal. They are all liquid end-products that absorb most of the flavor from the original food-meats, vegetables (or even stones if you’re making stone soup).

The differences in the four are strength, concentration and clarity. Here is your guide to this mysterious jargon.

¨ Broth is what you end up with when your main ingredient is meat, fish or poultry, with

vegetables and spices acting only as flavorings. Broth has a full, rich flavor.

¨ Bouillon is the French term for meat broth. Beef bouillon and beef broth are the same thing.

¨ Stock is somewhat lighter, more predominantly vegetable-flavored and is made from whatever is available. Some meat or bones may be part of the solids.

Stock is also very flavorful. You can serve a stock as is, adding little more than few fresh vegetables or noodles and garnish. It is also popular as a base for more complex soups, stews and sauces.

¨ Consommé is a broth that has been clarified to the transparency of tea. The idea is to develop an even more intense flavor than in broth.

The demand for crystal clarity makes it hard to prepare it successfully. Here are some tricks chefs use to prevent cloudiness, and to clarify a broth once it has clouded. They are not difficult to do by home cooks though they take a little time.

1. Whisk a small amount of the hot stock into beaten egg whites. Add this mixture to the completely fat-free stock and bring slowly to a simmer, stirring occasionally to disperse the egg whites throughout. Over a few minutes’ time, the egg whites collect the sediments in the stock and rise to the surface. Now you can filter the egg whites through a cheesecloth. Be careful. If the stock comes to a boil, it may cloud up again.

2. You can also add lean ground beef or broken-up egg shells to the stock, bring it to a simmer, then filter as above. The beef adds extra flavor, but the egg shells only help to clear sediments.

Serving a cupful of clear, cloudless, incredibly tasty hot liquid with nothing added provides a first course that few others can satisfy. It is a fabulous start for a formal meal, and that is exactly what consommé’s place is in the meal.

¨ A double consommé has an even more intense, luxuriously rich flavor. To prepare this, cook fresh meat and vegetables in a previously prepared broth, then clarify it. This is now in the professional chef’s arena.

We inherited this complex terminology from the classic French culinary art in which the distinction between a broth and a stock was important. Being a stickler to precise terminology in nouvelle cuisine is no longer as important.

The huge array of classic French sauces is hardly ever used outside the milieu of French cookery, and whether you produce a stock or a broth matters little, as long as it results in a superb soup. The term broth, however, is used less today in preference to stock, whatever the base of the resulting liquid.

While we are with terminology, let’s identify some other common soup terms:

¨ Purées. You pass both liquid and solid through a blender, food processor or food mill, ending up with the same flavor but an altogether different consistency and mouthfeel. If you have served the same soup twice already and still have leftovers, purée and add a fresh garnish. You created a new soup with little effort. A blender produces a very fine purée, like baby food. A food processor doesn’t purée quite that fine and food mills vary depending what

¨ Cream soups. These are purées to which you add milk, cream or a combination of both.

¨ Bisque is a cream soup in which the main ingredient is traditionally shellfish, though you can use vegetables for a bisque, too.

¨ Chowder is a thick fish or meat soup with vegetables in milk, cream or a combination of the two.

With these basic definitions you’ll know what any cookbook or restaurant menu is talking about. But how you prepare your own soup base matters not at all.

Dried tomatoes, also called sun-dried tomatoes, were possibly the most trendy vegetable on the American markets in the 1980s and they still somehow survived into the 1990s though they lost their tarnish. I also think that they are the most overrated vegetable. Their appeal is their appearance.

Dried tomatoes dress up a plate or a dish with their pleasing shape, texture and color. It is the flavor that is somewhat overrated and often does not come up to expectations.

The idea of drying tomatoes to preserve the m is not a new one. This alternative to canning is easy, but it requires warm sunny weather during and after the tomato harvesting season. Any rain or periods of cloudy, cool weather, and the sun-dried tomatoes turn mold-covered and semi-dried. This means that climate limits making truly sun-dried tomatoes to very few tomato-growing areas in the world: the Mediterranean regions of Italy and France and California.

Italians have produced sun-dried tomatoes for at least a century. In the early 1980s importers introduced them to North American markets and they were accepted instantly, even though the imported products were quite costly. Sun-dried tomatoes made a hit with the nouvelle cuisine chefs of the West Coast who constantly search out innovative new products.

They were particularly popular in the winter when red-colored produce was rare. (Red peppers were still not common and outrageously expensive back then, because they were airfreighted from Holland.)

High price or not, dried tomatoes have a long shelflife and are available when needed. They solve the problem of providing a desirable eye-catching red color on the plate during the colorless winter months. That is why the red pepper has been such a smash hit, too.

Home cooks picked up the idea and sun-dried tomatoes were on their way, helped by a generous dose of intense marketing. It didn’t take long before several California dried fruit producers noticed this very profitable opportunity to compete with the pricey Italian imports.

Since they had both the know-how and equipment to dry fruits, it was but a short step to add tomatoes to their line of dried produce. Dried tomatoes, they discovered, bring in much more revenue than prunes and apricots.

To dry tomatoes in the traditional Italian way by sun is slow and labor intensive. It takes 8 to 10 days under the weakening late summer sun. Leaving the tomatoes exposed that long to insects is somewhat questionable, too.

Italians use their sun-dried tomatoes in pasta sauce, so they are always cooked before eating. Americans, on the other hand, eat their sun-dried tomatoes raw or blanched quickly to reconstitute the moisture content.

Drying does not destroy the bacterial contamination so for export, they add sulfur and salt to eliminate bacteria. The California processors also tried heat treatment to solve the problem.

There are three major ways for American processors to dry tomatoes:

1. Like the Italians do, under the sun for 8 to 10 days, then pasteurize to produce a safe and acceptable product. This process retains the original color and some of the flavor.

2. Dried like other fruits, in hot dehydrating ovens at about 190°F (88°C) with fans to draw the moisture off, a process that takes only a few hours. The process is quick and eliminates the need for sulfur or pasteurization because of the heat that kills microorganisms. But the tomato turns rather dark, losing its attractive color, because the heat partially caramelizes sugar. The heat also alters the flavor a great deal, more than pasteurization does.

3. Dehydrated without heat by blowing fans. In warm weather this process takes about 36

hours and results in a product similar to sun-dried tomatoes with good red color and moderate change in flavor. To kill all larvae, processors freeze the dried tomatoes for two days.

It takes 17 pounds (17 kg) of fresh tomatoes to make 1 pound (1 kg) of dehydrated product after about 95 percent of the moisture evaporates. Processors’ favorite is Roma tomatoes, which have less moisture to begin with, but some small specialty producers use other, more flavorful varieties and sell them for premium prices.

While firm and low in moisture, commercial Romas are not very flavorful tomatoes even when fully ripe. None of the dehydrated tomatoes have anywhere

near the flavor of vine-ripened tomatoes. But they do have their own distinctive flavor and special place in our kitchens.

Most good cookbooks tell you not to refrigerate your tomatoes. It is true that in cold temperatures tomatoes, like all foods, lose much of their flavor. Wholesale produce distributors and supermarkets never refrigerate tomatoes either.

They keep them in a cool room at about 55°F (13°C) once they reach the red but firm stage. And you never see them in the chilled vegetable bins at the produce department.

However, lately food scientists disputed the no-refrigeration rule. As aconsequence, I tested two identical-looking, fresh, candy-red vine-ripened tomatoes. One shivered a full day in the refrigerator and the second one rested patiantly on the cool kitchen counter.

At the end of the experiment I allowed the chilled tomato to come back to room temperature and cut both tomatoes for a taste test. I couldn’t detect any difference in flavor or texture. The no-refrigeration rule for tomatoes appears to be an old myth. I urge you to try your own tomato experiment.

TASTINGS Tomato equivalents

¨ 1 medium tomato is ½ cup and equals 1 tablespoon tomato paste

¨ To get tomato sauce from paste, dilute 1 part paste with 2 parts water

¨ Tomato purée is halfway between sauce and paste in concentration

¨ 2 medium tomatoes is ½ pound (225 g) or 1 cup chopped

¨ 1 pound (450 g) tomato yields 1½ cups drained pulp

¨ A large tomato is 7-8 ounces (200-225 g), a medium tomato 4-5 ounces (110-

140 g), a small tomato 3 ounces (85 g)

If you buy tomatoes that are still pink rather than red, ripen them in a warm place for a few days but not in direct sunlight (as some cookbooks suggest). Direct sun cooks or spoils them before they ripen.

To speed ripening, put the tomatoes in a paper bag that traps and concentrates the natural ethylene gas from the tomato. The paper bag lets the accumulated moisture escape that hastens spoiling. Banana is a generous ethylene gas generator. If you have one, put in the bag with the tomato.

When cooking tomato-rich dishes, avoid aluminum and cast-iron pots if the cooking process is longer than 20 or 30 minutes. Not only the acid in the tomatoes leach out too much of the metal, giving the dish an off-flavor, but tomatoes discolor by these metal pots, eventually turning dingy brown.

Anyone with a bare minimum skill in the kitchen can master quick breads. If you don’t make a mistake in following the recipe, if your ingredients are not ancient (especially the baking powder), if your oven temperature is within 25º of what the dial indicates and if you take the bread out of the oven on time, you’ve mastered quick breads.

The variety of quick breads is enormous depending on what flavoring agent you use. From fresh or dried fruit to vegetables, nuts, or often a combination of these are examples. The type of flour and fats or oil, the liquid and the sweetening agent also vary.

Eggs not only hold the bread together but enrich it in flavor and nutrition. Plain quick breads without at least some added flavorings are too bland, yet they are fine to accompany a meal with butter and perhaps jam, marmalade or honey.

All quick breads use the same type of viscous batter. Preparation is user-friendly, ideal for beginners in the kitchen, even young children. Combine all the dry ingredients in a sifter, including dry flavorings like cinnamon and nutmeg, and sift into a bowl.

Combine all liquid ingredients, including eggs and any liquid flavorings like vanilla in another bowl, then lightly mix the wet into the dry. You may add chopped fruits, nuts, grated vegetables or whatever the recipe calls for at any time in this process. An important part is to mix lightly, just until the ingredients are combined.

To much mixing toughens the final product, and that is about the only thing you have to be careful about. Too much mixing is beginners’ downfall and the bread turns out dense and dry. Never use a food processor to mix a quick bread dough.

Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake. After it is done, a quick bread is ready to eat it at once, though it is easier to slices if you let the bread cool a little.

If you overbake your quick bread, it gets too dry. If you underbake it, the center is still soft and doughy. Set your timer 5 to 10 minutes earlier than the recipe calls for, and start testing the bread with a toothpick or bamboo skewer at that point.

As soon as the tester comes out clean, the bread is ready. A thermometer registering 190°F (90°C) in the center is also a good testing device.

Quick breads don’t have a delicate structure like cakes do, they won’t collapse or fall when disturbed. You can go ahead and dance in the kitchen while your quick bread is baking, even if your floor is quite bouncy. The bread won’t mind it (though your neighbors might).

Why do some recipes call for baking powder and baking soda? When a sour ingredient is part of the dough-buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream or sour milk-the dough needs both leaveners.

Baking powder was designed for a neutral batter, so if it contains additional acid ingredients, you need something to neutralize it or the chemical reactions are unbalanced. That is what the baking soda does.

The sour liquids in the recipe promote a lighter bread and are the basis for another chemical reaction that produce bubbles. Recipes with sour ingredient always call for baking soda.

Should you change a recipe and substitute sweet milk for any of the sour products, be sure to omit the baking soda. You can also substitute sour liquids for sweet, for example, sour milk or yogurt for milk, sour cream for sweet cream.

But make sure you add baking soda in the ratio of ½ teaspoon for every cup of the sour liquid. Because the baking soda combines with the sour liquid and generates carbon dioxide gas bubbles, you don’t need as much baking powder in the recipe- reduce it slighlty.

The amount of chemical leavening in quick breads is critical. If you don’t add enough, you won’t get the gas bubbles light breads require. If you add too much, all the chemicals don’t completely neutralize during the mixing and baking, and your bread ends up with a chemical or   bitter soapy taste.

Too little mixing, so you don’t distribute the chemicals evenly throughout the dough produces the same effect. You remember the church potluck when that wonderful-looking zucchini bread had such a bitter favor? That is what caused it.

Hopefully it wasn’t your zucchini bread!