Wizard Recipes

The more water a dairy product contains, the more perishable it is. The more aged and processed the cheese is, the better it keeps. Bacteria need high moisture to thrive and they spoil milk, cream and high-moisture cheeses with pleasure and expediency.

As we already know, milk curdles when we add acidic foods, but it also curdles naturally without your help if you give it time. Lactic acid-forming bacteria build up the acidity slowly if the milk is cold, but they multiply fast, complete the job and curdle the milk within hours at warm room temperatures.

Milk freezes well. If you have too much milk on hand, pour it in plastic containers, self sealing bags or store it in its original carton in the freezer. It keeps well for 2 to 3 months and tastes fresh and remains lump free when defrosted.

Butter is moderately perishable, but it is notorious for picking up odors from other things around it. Never store it in the refrigerator uncovered even for short-term storage.

What actually makes butter spoil is oxidation, caused by exposure to both light and air which turns it rancid.Wrapping it tightly in foil instead of the waxed paper it comes in almost doubles its shelflife. You may have noticed that better-quality butters are often foil-wrapped.

Refrigerated unsalted butter has a shelflife of a few weeks. Butter freezes well and it stays good for several months in the freezer. Salted butter lasts at least three times longer in both the refrigerator and freezer without deterioration. When defrosted, you cannot tell the difference in flavor or texture.

Freezing, on the other hand, separates cream. It breaks down the emulsion, so the fat separates from the water. But if you freeze it very fast, the emulsion stays intact. If you have extra cream that you want to freeze, take a clean baking sheet, chill it thoroughly in the freezer and pour a thin layer of cream on it. Freeze it, then scrape the frozen cream into a plastic container or plastic bag. After defrosting you can even try to use this cream for your coffee.

Whipped cream freezes very well. Put dollops of whipped cream on a sheet of waxed paper laid on a baking sheet and freeze them for an hour. Then collect these individually quickfrozen dollops in a plastic bag to store in the freezer. You can use them as freshly whipped cream after defrosting. Freezing preserves its structure virtually intact.

High-moisture cheeses keep for several weeks, lower-moisture hard cheeses at least twice as long, even several months when you store them properly. The less you touch the cheese, the fewer bacteria you transfer to its surface, and the longer the shelflife.

Handle freshly-opened cheese only with clean hands. Wrapping cheese well to eliminate both microorganisms and oxidation extends its shelflife, too.

When surface molds attack stored cheese, don’t throw the whole piece out. They are not harmful, just disgusting looking and tasting. Scrape or cut off a thin layer, and the cheese beneath it is still perfectly good to eat. But once a piece of cheese is heavily coated with mold, scraping is not enough. The moldy flavor may have permeated the entire chunk.

Dry, low-moisture, well-aged cheeses, such as romano and parmesan are stable even without refrigeration. But if you are planning to store them for several months, you should keep even these cheeses chilled to reduce the rate of oxidation, thus rancidity.

Ripe, well-aged cheeses continue aging even in storage, though slowly at refrigerator temperatures. Storing them too long allows them to overripen, their flavor gets unbalanced and too intense. Often these cheeses, like brie, come in a wrapping something like waxed paper, but if you look closely, there are tiny holes all over the wrapping (called microperforated packaging).

These tiny holes let the cheese breath while ripening. Aging produces excess moisture that you want to release to prevent spoilage. Don’t rewrap these aged cheeses in plastic wrap. Use the original wrapper or kitchen waxed paper.

Don’t freeze cheese if you don’t have to. Freezing doesn’t affect flavor, but you destroy its texture, and it turns mushy after thawing. It is perfectly fine in any cooked dish, since it still blends well with other ingredients.

If you need to freeze excess cheese or just want to have some for cooking in the freezer, grate it first then store in labeled freezer bags. That way you can use small amounts at a time when you need it.

All of the 60-odd proteins in milk fall into two categories. In one group they precipitate either in acid or on heat, and in the other they remain in solution. This is an important distinction in the kitchen that asks for some clarification.

Milk and acid

In its natural state, milk is very slightly acid (pH 6.5). One protein, casein, which makes up 80 percent of all milk proteins, precipitates in mild acid conditions but natural acidity is not acid enough.

When milk starts getting old, bacteria produce lactic acid, the milk becomes mildly acidic (turns sour), and casein precipitates as curds. If you let the milk sit longer, with more lactic acid it becomes more acidic, and another group, whey proteins, also precipitate, and even more curds develop.

If you add anything quite sour like citrus juice, vinegar or tart fruits, the milk curdles instantly as the casein precipitates. Sometimes we do this deliberately, making custards with fruit juices or fruits, for example, but the soft curds will disperse when slowly heated in the oven, and add firmness to the custard. Most of the time, you don’t want milk to curdle.

To prevent this, mix starch (in the form of flour, cornstarch, tapioca) with the acid ingredient. Starch keeps the casein in suspension, and prevents curds from forming.

Milk and heat

A common problem when heating milk is how easily it scorches on the bottom of the pan. The thinner the pan and the higher the heat, the more scorch you have to scrub off. What happens is that the heat precipitates heavy proteins in the milk that sink to the bottom, and burn on the hot surface of the pan.

What can you do? Heating the milk in a double boiler works, because there’s no direct contact with the hot metal surface of the outer pan, but it takes forever. Constant stirring keeps the proteins from settling on the bottom, but this also takes time and attention. Try heating milk at a bare medium heat while occasionally stirring. This at least minimizes the pot scrubbing afterwards.

The other common problem with heating milk happens on top. A skin forms on the surface of the milk as it heats, and if you are not watching it carefully, the milk boils over. The two events, bottom scorching and top skin, are connected. Heat precipitates proteins and calcium.

The heavy casein sinks to the bottom while the light proteins and calcium precipitates rise to the top and form the skin. The skin in turn creates a tight seal over the upper surface of the milk all the way to the sides of the cooking pot. The air bubbles that form below the skin in the liquid cannot escape, so they accumulate as steam, which lifts the skin up like a hot-air balloon.

The next thing you smell is the erupting milk pouring down the outside of the pot and onto the burner. When you see the skin forming over the surface, stir it back in the milk to prevent it from boiling over. Don’t skim it off, or you lose valuable nutrients.

You can buy a ceramic disk (size of a tuna can and thickness of a finger) that sits on the bottom to prevent boil-overs. It has a clever design, that allows air bubbles to collect below the disk and are released in big pockets instead of many tiny bubbles. These large bubbles stir the milk enough to keep the skin from forming. This stirring action also helps with the bottom scorching problem.

Scalding milk

Why do some recipes call for scalded milk before using it in baking? You see these particularly in older cookbooks. This was an essential step before pasteurization to deactivate enzymes in the milk that interfered with the action of other ingredients, like yeast.

Scalding is no longer necessary because pasteurization deactivates the offending enzymes. In some recipes it is helpful to warm the milk to speed a process, such as activating yeast, or starting with warm liquid in custards and puddings. But if you need to scald milk, heat it to near boiling.

Tiny bubbles on the surface are your trigger. If you actually boil the milk, the flavor becomes insipid. (Note, however, that heating milk to make yogurt has a different purpose. Heating here is to destroy all competing microorganisms before adding the bugs that culture the milk.)

Cooking an egg properly is not as easy as boiling water. You can ruin eggs, or dishes containing eggs, in seconds, and there’s no bringing them back to edible. The major problem in cooking eggs is that they are as sensitive to heat as rubber-and heat them too fast or just a little too long, and they’ll will be like eating rubber. But first let’s explore their uses.

Besides being a good source of nutrition, eggs also perform three culinary tasks with profound significance in western cookery:

1. Binding-for example, in custards the yolks and whites act together to thicken and bind other ingredients in the liquid. You activate this by low heat until both coagulate, solidify and incorporate the rest of the ingredients into their structure.

2. Emulsifying-for example, in mayonnaise, salad dressings and hollandaise sauce. It is the egg yolk that permanently suspends oil in water. Yolk is an emulsion, which makes it an efficient emulsifier with other ingredients. Emulsions are complex systems that form according to physical and chemical laws.

3. Foaming-as in sponge cakes and soufflés. The albumen in the egg white is able to hold enormous quantities of air in its structure when you beat it, and it forms a semistable foam. Here beaten egg whites act alone in two similar capacities-as leavener to give a light, airy texture and as a semisolid network of support to give structure to the baked product.

Eggs are useful in two other ways: they lend their delicate yellow coloring to whatever you bake with a yellow pigment (xanthophyll) in the yolk and, secondly, they also act as a glue for breaded foods. When the egg coagulates in the heat (oven or deep-fry oil), a tight adhesion forms between the food and the breading material.

Cooking whole egg in the shell

If you can boil water, you should be able to boil an egg, right? But cooking them and ending up with easily peelable shells and perfect, bright yellow, still-moist yolks in the dead center of the whites is somewhat trickier.

First, let’s straighten out our terminology. The American Egg Board declares that there is no such thing as a hard-boiled egg. Eggs simply should not be boiled, the egg people maintain. It is a hard-cooked egg that we are after, and we accomplish this by cooking them in barely simmering water or letting the eggs stand in water that is just been brought to boil.

Although the American Egg Board may be correct, the terms hard-boiled and soft-boiled are too firmly entrenched in our kitchen terminology to change. An overcooked egg has a dry and discolored yolk. Too much heat eventually breaks down proteins, and discoloration occurs as these react with sulfur and iron compounds in the yolk.

To avoid this fate, set your timer and cook an egg no more than 10 minutes. A centered yolk is critical only when you are planning to cut the cooked eggs in half. The Egg Board says storing eggs pointed end down gives a better chance of a centered yolk. Egg packers always pack

To peel the shell off both easily and fast, leaving a fully intact egg behind is visually important for some recipes, especially hors d’oeuvres. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to remove a shell that won’t let go of the egg white. You end up with an egg that looks like an outer-space-pitted meteorite.

Let’s look at the physics of what makes one egg peel readily and another cling to the shell as if its life depended on it. I discussed above the two membranes that is between the shell and the white.

First, the fresher the egg, the stronger the bond of the outside of those two membranes. With aging, the membranes shrink and the bond weakens. Because of that strong bond, hard-boiled fresh-laid eggs are the toughest to peel. Once they are about a week old, the membrane’s bond begins to weaken considerably. That is one thing you don’t need to worry about when you buy eggs at the supermarket. No eggs are likely to be less than a week old by the time they hit the supermarket shelf.

Not only their freshness, but the way you cook eggs can also affect the shrinking of the membrane. First, bring eggs to room temperature before cooking them. Starting with cold eggs ups the chances of cracking while in the cooking water because there is too much temperature change.

Eggs should warm up in an hour or two on your counter (depending how warm your kitchen is), or in a pot of very warm water in a few minutes.

Place the eggs in a cooking pot. Fill the pot with water to about an inch above the top of the eggs. (Adding salt to the water, as some cookbooks recommend, does nothing to aid in peeling, and it doesn’t help the flavor, either. The salt does not penetrate the shell.) Turn the burner on high and keep an eye on the pot. As soon as the water starts to boil, put the lid on and reduce the heat. Simmer in barely bubbling water for 10 minutes.

Remove the eggs from the hot water with a slotted spoon (don’t pour the hot water off yet), set them in a bowl and run cold water over them for half a minute to give them the shock of their lives (this helps prevent yolk discoloration, too), then put them back in the hot water for another half a minute for another shock.

Drain the hot water and place the pot under running cold water until the eggs feel cool, 3 to 4 minutes. The shocks should shrink the fine membranes enough to separate them from the shells and the eggshell should come off easily, but don’t be in a hurry. If you have the time, the shell comes off even easier if you let the eggs chill for a few hours.

The first step in peeling is to place all the eggs in an empty pot, cover with a lid and shake them gently up and down and side to side, so they bang against the pot and each other. This shatters the shells into a network of cracks, another help to peel. Be gentle so the eggs themselves don’t break. The shells are now as easy to remove as freshly blanched tomato skins.

Soaking the eggs in water for half hour after cracking them is also helpful if you have the time. The water seeps in under the shells, and they almost fall off by themselves. Peeling under running water or in a large bowl of water is another good idea. Start peeling at the flat end as that is the end that contains the air pocket.

Peel the shells off so the membranes remain with the shell, not on the egg white. Food industry egg peelers who peel eggs by the thousands, day in and day out, use this technique, piling the perfect oval, shiny, nude eggs in small mountains. No machine

has yet been invented for this job that can match the human touch.

Soft-boiled eggs

Soft-boiled eggs are simple because you don’t need to worry about easy peeling. Bring them to room temperature before cooking to avoid them shocking in boiling water and the shell cracking. If you are in a hurry, place refrigerated eggs in a bowl of very warm water.

In 10 minutes they will be near room temperature. When the water is boiling, slip the eggs in the pot one at a time with a spoon and start the timer. Cover the pot and keep the water on a gentle simmer. For large eggs, 4 minutes of cooking gives you firm whites with runny yolks in the middle.

Adjust this time half minute either way for softer or firmer eggs. Similarly, adjust the time if you use smaller or larger eggs than the standard large size.

APPLES, of which there are at least a thousand varieties, are probably the best known of the non-tropical fruits. Some apples mature early in the summer, while others do not ripen until late in the fall.

The late apples can be kept during the entire winter if they are properly stored, but the summer varieties must generally be used immediately, as they do not have good keeping qualities. In each locality in which apples are grown, a few varieties seem to be especially popular and are used to the exclusion of others.

Some apples are good for one purpose and some for another. For instance, many that are excellent if eaten raw are not good for cooking purposes, and others that cook well are not suitable for eating.

It is therefore a good idea for the housewife to become familiar with the varieties of apples raised in her community and to learn the use to which each kind can be put to advantage.

Apples of all kinds may be prepared in a large variety of ways. They are much used for sauce, pie, and numerous desserts, as well as for jelly and, with various fruit mixtures, for jams and preserves. The juice of apples, which upon being extracted is known as cider, is used in a number of ways, but its most important use is in the manufacture of vinegar.

APPLE SAUCE.

When apple sauce is to be made, apples that are somewhat sour and that will cook soft easily should be selected.

This is a dessert that can be made all during the winter when it is often difficult to obtain other fruits fresh. It is usually served when roast pork is the main dish of a meal, but is just as appetizing when served with other foods.

Here a simple recipe, sufficient to serve six:

You should have:

10 medium-sized apples

1/2 c. water

1 c. sugar

Wash the apples, cut them in quarters, remove the cores, and, if desired, peel them. Put them into a saucepan, add the water, and allow them to cook until they are very soft. If the apples are inclined to be

dry, a little more water may be necessary.

When done, force them through a colander or a sieve, add the sugar to the pulp, and return to the stove. Cook until the sugar is completely dissolved and, if necessary, until the apple sauce is slightly thickened, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. Remove from the heat, and season with lemon peel cut fine, cinnamon, or nutmeg.

If there are apples in supply that do not cook well for apple sauce, they may be peeled, quartered, and cored, and cooked with the sugar and water. Then, instead of being forced through a sieve, they should be allowed to remain in pieces in the sirup.

A pleasing change in the way of an apple dessert may be had by making porcupine apples.

PORCUPINE APPLES

(Sufficient to Serve Six)

6 large apples

1 c. sugar

1 c. water

2 doz. almonds

Currant jelly

Wash, core, and pare the apples. Make a sirup by bringing the sugar and water to the boiling point. Put the apples into the sirup, cook on one side for several minutes, and then turn and cook on the other side. Do not allow the apples to cook completely in the sirup, but when they are

still hard remove them and continue to boil the sirup down.

Set the apples in a shallow pan, stick the almonds, which should be blanched, into them so that they will project like porcupine quills, sprinkle them with sugar, and bake in the oven until they are soft and the almonds slightly brown.

Remove from the oven, fill the center of each with currant jelly, pour the juice over them, and serve.

The soy controversy is alive and well in the West nowadays. The debate revolves around the phytoestrogens in soybeans.

When you eat a normal amount of these foods, it should have no affect on your health.

Soy has come under heat about their phytoestrogens since 2006, when an American Heart Association review of a 10-year study found that soy protein may not reduce post-menopause hot flashes, may not be good for the heart, and may not prevent breast cancer, uteran cancer, or prostate cancer.

It is interesting to note that soy foods and beans don’t have the highest levels of phytoestrogens. In fact, the order goes like this… nuts and oil seeds, soy products, cereals and breads, legumes, meat products, and processed foods (from highest to lowest).

Basically, the soy controversy comes down to a general lack of solid data on the risks of soybeans. Some say that it is not good for the body, and others say that the data cannot be substantiated with solid evidence.

Also, many of the studies are using extremely high dosages in their treatments and are using concentrated phytoestrogens that are taken from soybeans. The studies are not done with actual soybeans, where the concentration is much lower.

Concentrated amounts of virtually any substance are likely to be bad for your health.

Estrogen is no different.

Again, to go back to the study down in 2006 by the American Heart Association, soy supplements and pills are not good for you. We know this about supplements already.

You cannot expect to extract all the good stuff from real food, eat that, and still be healthy.

You must instead eat the good stuff to be healthy.

So, the soy controversy lives on.

Legumes are all edible when young in the pod, although we only eat beans, peas and fava beans at that stage of growth. We are more familiar with legumes after they fully mature and dry.

In fact, a major contributing factor to their historical popularity, besides their nutritional value, is that they store so well in dried form-almost indefinitely without deteriorating. A third way we eat legumes is freshly sprouted.

Dry legumes, like most seeds, quickly sprout in moist, warm conditions, providing flavorful and crisp sprouts, but only modest nutrition. It is in the dried form that most legumes find their ways to our dining tables.

Once legumes reach their mature stage, the pods become dry and brittle, they crumble and release the seeds. Before the farmers can be harvest legumes, the pods must dry thoroughly on the vine. Though they originally contain a lot of water (about 80 percent), by the time they are fully dried, their moisture content is less than 20 percent.

If we look at a seed under the microscope, we find three parts. The central mass of substance is the main storage area for the new plant, called the cotyledon. Inside this mass is the embryo of the new plant complete with two tiny leaves, roots and stems. A tube attaches this embryo to the mass of cotyledon, and once the plant emerges, the embryo receives its food supply through this tube, like human embryo through an umbilical cord.

The third part is the seed coat, which acts like our skin. It keeps the whole thing together and protects it from external threats. To serve this purpose, it needs to be tough-a significant fact for cooks, because it is the last thing to soften on cooking. If we cook legumes too long, the skin bursts, spilling out the soft, mushy insides.

The seed coat is tough but it doesn’t protect the seed from hungry insects and animals with sharp teeth and strong jaws. The bean needs other defenses to combat them. Its first defense is two proteins (protease inhibitor and lectin) that interfere with digestion of an animal that is foolish enough to eat the seeds raw. Scientists have shown in experiments that animals fed only raw soybeans actually lose weight because it takes more energy to digest them than they provide.

Rather than learn how to cook them, as we did, animals learned to avoid the raw legumes-those that didn’t died of starvation. One of these two proteins (lectin) provides another protective mechanism-agglutination. It actually causes cells in the eater’s body to clump together. When scientists feed rats only raw beans, they die within a few days because of this.

There’s still another line of defense, this is more straightforward. Many legumes contain the toxin cyanide, that kills any hungry creature that attempts a meal from them. Don’t worry much about this one, though. Only lima beans contain enough to cause a problem in the human body. Older varieties of lima beans had to be cooked thoroughly to eliminate cyanide.

Newer varieties people grow in most parts of the world have had most of the cyanide bred out of them. However, even if it contains cyanide, properly cooked lima beans is not poisonous. Cooked in an uncovered pot the cyanide evaporates. A covered pot traps it, and it falls back into whatever is cooking in the pot. While heat can deactivate the cyanogenic compound in lima beans, cooking old varieties in a covered pot could deactivate you.

Don’t take beans out of your diet because of what you’ve just read. Heat gets rid of the two proteins that interfere with digestion and the cyanide as well.

Legume varieties

Of the 20 major species of legumes we find 7 that are reasonably well known in North

America:

1. Common beans with about a dozen varieties

2. Lentils-the most common variety is brown lentil

3. Peas-yellow, green and black-eyed

4. Chickpeas-we also know it as garbanzo beans by its Italian name

5. Fava beans

6. Soybeans-we use very little directly for food, but for its oil and in innumerable

soybean products

7. Peanuts-always popular in many forms; we use them as nuts

We cook beans, lentils, peas and chickpeas in many different dishes, fava beans much less frequently, and usually as fresh young vegetables. We use soybeans in a variety of forms but rarely by themselves-we combine them with other ingredients.

The seventh popular legume, the peanut, we actually use as a nut, so I included it in the chapter on nuts. Here is a list of the 13 best known common beans among the hundreds of varieties:

Adzuki (or Chinese)

Black (or turtle)

Cranberry

Great Northern

Lima (both baby and large)

Mung (both green and black)

Navy

Pinto

Red kidney (both light and dark)

Pink

Small red

Small white (or California small white)

White kidney (or cannellini)

While most of the common beans look different, they have very similar flavor. You probably could not tell one from another unless you were taste-testing them side by side.

Tradition, however, demands a specific bean for a specific dish. For a chili con carne, for instance, we prefer pinto beans, for Boston baked beans, navy beans and for the Southern hopping john, black-eyed peas. But don’t be afraid to substitute with whichever you happen to have on hand. It is what you add to them that gives the flavor definition.

Chinese food can be considered a magical key to health. They point to the lower incidence of heart disease and certain cancers among the Chinese. Others state that the average Chinese meal is a disaster because of high levels of sodium, fat and calories. Not surprisingly, both these extreme views overlook a number of important facts and qualifiers.

It’s true that certain Chinese dishes are invariably high in calories, often containing a high percentage of saturated fat. Six fried dumplings, for example, equals about 700 calories, a third of which are in the form of saturated fat. And fried dumplings may be only a portion of the total meal. Add sweet and sour pork or other similar items and the total may well reach over 1,250 calories.

Numbers like that may be fine for those who don’t need to limit their total daily intake. A large, healthy person may consume as many as 3,000 calories per day and still remain at their normal weight and body fat percentage. But for most, especially those on a restricted calorie diet of less than 1,700 per day, that one meal constitutes over 73% of the total.

Nevertheless, there is an enormous variety of Chinese cuisine dishes that are low or moderate calorie, while providing a range of healthy nutritional elements.

Many Chinese dishes are prepared with fresh vegetables. True, they may be stir-fried, adding calories and fat. Or, they can be steamed providing a healthy side dish or component of the recipe. The method is as important as the ingredient in determining whether a particular dish is a healthy option or not.

Wonton, egg-drop, or hot and sour soups provide a modest number of calories. If prepared without large quantities of salt, they also provide a low sodium and satisfying meal, or portion. Chicken that is boiled or steamed, a common method in many Chinese-style preparations, provides needed protein with little fat. Steamed rice, in moderation, is low calorie (200 per cup) and highly nutritious.

Soy is a common ingredient of both dishes and sauces. It is a rich source of plant protein and fiber. It is rich in Vitamin B6 and isoflavones, widely believed by experts to provide nutritional benefits. Vitamin B6 is an important building block for essential amino acids and is used in certain vital neurotransmitters. Isoflavones are reputed by several studies to be an important part of the low heart disease rate in Asian countries. They’re thought to help lower LDL cholesterol levels.

So, as is the case with the cuisine of any other culture, there is no inherent good or bad to all Chinese dishes. The same principles apply here as they do anywhere else. Watch calories, fat percentage and the levels of sodium and other components. That’s the best way, in any instance, to arrive at reasonable dietary decisions

A few failures can intimidate anyone, yet cooking rice to perfection, once you learn it, is one of the easiest and most fool-proof kitchen tasks, next to boiling water. Remember one thing-rice cooking leaves very little latitude for errors or carelessness.

Learn a good rice cooking technique, practice it and stick with it (pun unintended). You’ll invariably end up with fluffy, perfectly-cooked rice grains that are neither dry nor soggy or sticky. And if it is sticky rice you are after, you will get the stickiest, gummiest rice that stays on your chopsticks in good-size lumps instead of two or three grains at a time.

Have a rice-cooking marathon to get thoroughly familiar with the technique. Get a pound or two ( a kilo) of rice and play hooky from work for a couple of hours. Start with the recipe here, then vary your technique to suit your taste until you judge the finished product perfect for your taste and your purposes.

Rice cooking varies slightly depending on your water, variety of rice, humidity (i.e. how much moisture rice grains retain) and how hot your lowest burner setting is. And some people like rice slightly al dente, others soft. Keep cooking batches of rice until you have exactly the way you like it, noting for each batch the amount of water you used and cooking time. It is a very cheap lesson, since rice is so inexpensive, and it only takes a few hours.

Feed your dog or cat any poor results and tell them that all Asian pets live mainly on rice. They don’t know the difference between good and bad rice and it is good for them (many canned cat and dog food filler is rice).

Each cookbook’s rice cooking technique is different. One variable, the amount of water to use so the rice absorbs the last drop at the end of the cooking period, changes with the age of the rice. Younger rice has a higher moisture content, so use slightly less water. But virtually all rice we buy has passed the young-rice stage.

The large variety of cooking techniques probably originated in Asia. There are many Asian rice-eating nations, and each culture prefers a different end result. Many people in parts of Asia prefer a long-grain, fluffy, dry rice. But even these people don’t agree on their cooking techniques.

In Pakistan, India, Burma and Sri Lanka they cook rice with salt.In Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam they cook it without salt. Going further east, Cambodia, Korea, China and Japan prefer a medium or short-grain variety that cooks up fluffy but moist with the grains sticking together. They add no salt to the water. In Laos, they eat glutinous rice as the everyday staple, not just in sweet preparations.

In Western cookbooks, the recommended cooking time for white rice varies from 15 to 30 minutes. Your guess is as good as anyone’s why this broad range.

Another area of complete disagreement is whether to rinse the rice before cooking.Asians often do this simply because their rice is not pre-cleaned. With better processing techniques clean rice is now available more readily in Asia. Rice we buy in the U.S. is always clean and you save a step by not rinsing it before cooking.

Another argument for pre-rinsers is to remove any surface starch that would make the cooked rice sticky. Rinsing advocates swear that rinsing until the water runs clear (starch in the rinsing water turns it milky) gives the fluffiest, driest, least sticky grains possible. Non-rinsers argue that rinsing washes away most of the nutrients, particularly the three B vitamins. Nutritional researchers agree. Laboratory experiments confirmed that much of the valuable vitamins end up in the rinse water with extensive rinsing.

So do you want vitamin-rich rice or non-sticky rice?

To settle the controversy, I cooked identical rice in identical pots, one after a thorough rinse and one straight from the bin. I found no perceivable difference in stickiness or in any other culinary properties between the two pots of cooked rice. My recommendation-don’t rinse the vitamins away and save an unnecessary step.

There are three different ways to cook rice in your kitchen (not including the rice cooker). One way is to cook it like pasta, in plenty of boiling salted water. When it is cooked, pour water and rice into a colander, drain well and serve. This is not the easiest, and much of the nutrients in the rice end up in the cooking water. But the method is foolproof.

Then you can . Combine rice, measured water and salt, and bake, tightly covered, in a 350°F (180°C) oven for 25 to 30 minutes (if you are using brown rice, give it an hour). Uncover and let bake for a few more minutes to evaporate any residual moisture. Simple.

The best and easiest method is the absorption (some cooks call it steaming) method. Put unrinsed rice into measured boiling salted water, cover, turn the heat low and cook for 15 minutes. Then let the pot sit covered, off the heat for 5 minutes. The proportions are 1 cup rice, 1½ cups water and ½ teaspoon salt. Fluff gently with two forks and the rice is ready to eat. This amount serves four people.

If you are cooking more than one cup of raw long-grain rice, for each additional cup of rice you only add 1¼ cups of water, not 1½. The amount of salt remains ½ teaspoon for every cup of rice. For short-grain rice the cooking technique and amount of water is the same, but for each additional cup of rice add only 1 cup of water.

Brown rice takes longer to cook because of the fibrous bran layer that cover the grains needs longer time to soften. The amount of water and salt are the same as for long-grain rice. Most brown rice cooks in 40 minutes.

Glutinous rice is not cooked in water but steamed. I don’t know the reason, possible it is tradition. The less common Asian variety, black glutinous rice, on the other hand, they always cook in water.

Both the absorption method and oven cooking rice, by the way, retain all nutrients.

Cakes are favorites in all western cuisines, while tortes are just as popular in pastry kitchens with French culinary influence. The difference is small but significant-tortes are cakes with little or no flour. They acquire their bodies from ground nuts and plenty more eggs.

Some tortes may have a small amount of flour to thicken the batter, some have dry bread crumbs. Tortes use 2 to 4 times the number of eggs that most cake recipes call for. Both cakes and tortes receive high esteem on dining tables, and when it comes to a celebration or a festive occasion, one or the other is unquestionably the choice as the last course in our dining rooms.

The selection may be as simple as a home-baked cake from a mix, or a basic inscribed supermarket cake in technicolor or elaborate, exquisite torte from a high-end pastry shop.

The name torte has been misused by fashionable menu writers to enhance the image of a simple cake. Torte connotes something rich, European and elegant. Now airline meal menu may denote “torte” as one item on your crammed tray of food for the small piece of simple, unpretentious white cake topped with a strawberry-flavored sugar syrup.

The high reputation of tortes is well-deserved. Not because cakes cannot be equally sumptuous and elaborate and just as difficult to produce. Yet, a humble home baker can bake a simple, easy, almost foolproof cake, but any true torte takes meticulous care, some knowledge and baking experience before you can serve it with pride. And they are anything but foolproof.

Tortes don’t have a flour matrix to give them strength, and are particularly sensitive to collapse if you dare to disturb them before fully set in the oven. They rely entirely on solidified egg white foam structure for support, which is considerably weaker than a combination of flour and egg white. There is no starch that gelatinizes on heat to give the body extra strength.

Perfect cakes and tortes are light and tender, with moist body, just the opposite of good yeast bread where the goal is a chewy and firm texture with strength provided by the gluten structure. The trick to a light cake is not allowing the gluten to develop, the arch enemy of all sweet baked products. Since tortes have no flour, gluten problems don’t exist. Cakes do have flour but you can do two things to reduce the chances for gluten development:

1. Use cake flour which has minimal protein (that produces gluten),

2. Stir the batter as little as possible to discourage gluten formation. The high fat in cakes is helpful-fat coats flour particles and insulates them from moisture. Without moisture, gluten cannot develop.

Planning ahead

Before you start the baking project, decide if you want a layer cake and if so, how many layers. You can have a two, three or many layers. The authentic, glorious Hungarian dobos torta has seven bread-slice thin layers. There are two ways to make layers.

Either divide the cake batter into as many portions as layers in the cake and bake each in separate pans, or bake the cake in a single pan and cut the cooled cake with a serrated knife into layers. There is a difference. If you bake in a single pan, the cake bakes longer and you have more chance of a collapsing catastrophe. But with a serrated knife you can cut even, flat-topped layers.

In single pans you are safer when baking, but you may need to trim off the domed tops for even layers, and the cake tends to dry out more in the shallow pans. For 2 or 3-layered cake, the choice is yours. For a 7-layered cake you need seven cake pans-it is very difficult to cut a single cake into seven thin, equal layers.

Have sets of good-quality, heavy pans and torte pans (with removable bottoms), preferably in more than one size. Light, inexpensive aluminum pans will not help for even baking. You can grease the pan either with solid fat (butter, vegetable shortening) or, for convenience, with oil spray, both produce identical results.

Dust the greased surface with flour and shake off excess to assure that the cake will release easily. For additional insurance, cut a round of waxed or parchment paper to fit the bottom. Fit the paper into the pan after greasing and flouring both the pans and the paper’s surface in contact with the cake. You will have virtually no chance for the dreaded stuck-to-the-pan cake.

And here is another professional trick that is an extra step for you but helps baking professional-looking and high quality cakes and tortes. The sides of cakes and tortes brown faster than the rest because they are in direct contact with the hot metal.

Home bakers generally leave the over-browned layer on the cake and cover it with frosting. If too brown, they may trim it off. Many professional bakers, on the other hand, want to avoid too much browning.

They wet a kitchen towel, fold it until it is a long, thin narrow strip and tie it around the cake pan. The moisture in the towel slowly evaporates in the oven, cooling the metal just enough to reduce over-browning. An extra step but it is worth it.

According to experts, the older the beans, the drier they are, and the longer it takes to fully rehydrate and soften them. The experts also claim that they lose their flavor after a year in storage.

My kitchen tests found these to be unfounded myths. I cooked two batches of black turtle beans side by side. One batch was 3 years, the other was 3 months old (counting from harvest time). Both batches cooked to softness at the same time, and there was no noticeable difference in their flavor. I also cooked beans that were in storage for at least 10 years. They had excellent flavor.

Cooking time increases with higher altitude and harder cooking water. The recommended cooking time on packages is far too long, no matter what the circumstances. I tested the cooking time for kidney beans with package directions given as 1 to 1½ hours after overnight soaking for a tender stage. The beans (cooked at sea level in soft water) were fully tender in 25 minutes.

Start testing a cooking pot of beans 30 minutes before the recommended time is up, then drain them as soon as their texture is to your liking. Those destined for mashing as refried beans need to be cooked a little softer. Beans for soup, salad, chili and baked dishes can be more chewy.

If you live in an area with very hard water, the beans may never cook to a soft and tender stage. Calcium and magnesium, the salts which cause water to be hard, chemically react with some components in the beans and retard the rehydration process. If you have this problem, use bottled or softened water for cooking beans. Adding molasses to the beans keeps them from softening, too, because it contains calcium.

Another important thing to pay attention to is acidity of the cooking liquid. Legumes soften in a neutral cooking environment, and the process speeds up under alkaline conditions.

Baking soda (an alkali) accelerates cooking. So, should you add baking soda to speed up cooking? Some people swear it also lessens the negative effects of beans in your digestive tract. I tested the softening effect of the recommended 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda per cup of beans. It shortened the cooking time by about 5 minutes. But for 5 minutes gain it is not worth it. Baking soda actually destroys some of the nutrients (particularly vitamin B) and adversely affects flavor.

While alkalis speed up cooking a little, acids virtually halts it. In acid conditions beans simply refuse to get soft. Here is what happens. The skin of the bean is a carbohydrate that is held together with insoluble organic substances called pectins.

Cooking changes this glue to soluble pectins which slowly dissolve and that is the way beans turn tender. Acid changes the picture. The pectic substances remain insoluble even through long cooking. A mere 1 teaspoon vinegar in the cooking water of 1 pound (half kilo) of beans virtually stops the softening process.

My first attempts at making chili taught me that lesson. I cooked the beans and removed them from the heat while they were still a bit chewy. I figured the further hour of cooking called for in the recipe with the remaining ingredients would allow them to finish softening. I added chopped-up tomatoes, spices, meat, and onion, and continued to cook the chili.

When I sampled it an hour later, the beans were still very chewy. The tomatoes made the sauce acidic and the beans stopped softening. Many cooks learned the same lesson the hard way. Any seasoned Southwestern chili cook can tell you that.

This can work to your advantage, too. If you don’t want beans to get any softer, for example when you are making minestrone soup, add a little tomato or vinegar when the beans reached your favorite degree of tenderness and continue cooking the soup. The rest of the ingredients will go on cooking but the beans will “hold.”

How much water and salt

How much water should you use when cooking beans? Legumes expand roughly to 2½ times their dry volume when fully rehydrated by cooking. If you add more water than necessary, you end up pouring off some of the nutrients. The more the water, the more nutrients leach out.

Too much water fades the color out, too. If you cook black beans, for instance, in the least amount of water so there is very little left over when they are done, they retain their purple-black color very well. If you cook them in plenty of water, they fade to a grayish-purple. As a rule of thumb, add 2 cups of water to each cup of dry beans you begin with. As you check for tenderness, you can add a little more if the liquid is too low.

Should you use salt in the cooking water? Some cooks claim that cooking beans in salted water takes more time and they recommend adding salt late in the cooking process. Some even recommend cooking beans without salt. I tested both ideas, and found to be another myth.

In the no-salt water, the same beans cooked to just about the same degree of tenderness in the same time as in the salted water. The real difference was in how they tasted. The unsalted batch was flavorless, bordering on unpleasant. Cooked in unsalted water, the natural salts of the beans migrate into the water and are lost. Add ¼ teaspoon of salt for every cup of water you use, and your beans will always taste round, nutty, full-flavored.

Tips from the chef

It is a good idea to use two or three different-colored beans in varying sizes to provide texture and color variation in the salad or even main dishes. It takes extra effort but not much extra time. Wash, then cook each kind of bean in a separate pot. They all vary in their cooking time, so don’t attempt to cook them in one pot. Cooking them together also mutes the colors.

If, for instance, you cook small white navy beans and black turtle beans together, the white beans become a light purplish-gray and the black beans a deadened dark purple-gray. Cooked separately, you preserve their full rainbow of colors and your salad or bean dish will look vibrant, elegant and appetizing.

It is also a good idea to always cook some extra beans. They freeze superbly, and you will have them ready in your freezer to add to soups, salads, eggs, other vegetables, or even to serve as a side dish, should your refrigerator be on the bare side. When defrosted, they are like fresh-cooked.