Wizard Recipes

BACON Besides being delicious on its own, bacon lends incomparable flavor to many dishes, such as chowders and other soups, baked beans and collard greens, and savory custards and tarts. There are many types; look for bacon that is free of nitrates and other artificial ingredients.

Thick-sliced bacon, along with its melted fat, provides not only flavor but also a hot dressing for wilting spinach or other greens. The subtler flavor of Canadian bacon (which is also lower in fat and calories than American-style bacon), is an essential component of eggs Benedict.

Pancetta, a traditional Italian bacon, is cured but not smoked; it is highly flavorful and slightly salty, and a small amount is all it takes to flavor pasta sauces and other dishes. All bacon can be tightly wrapped and kept for up to three weeks in the refrigerator or three months in the freezer.

BUTTER Unsalted butter has the purest flavor. It is ideal for all types of cooking, especially baking. European- style butters are also good for baking, especially pastries and shortbread, as well as for spreading at the table. They have a higher percentage of butterfat (typically 83 percent compared to 80 percent) and a richer, more distinctive taste.

CHEESE

Of all the many types of cheese available, the following are among the more versatile. Of course, it’s also nice to keep a supply of favorites, such as Cheddar and Muenster, for making grilled cheese or for quickly putting together an appetizer to share with unexpected guests.

Fontina cheese is a cow’s milk cheese with a mildly sweet, nutty, buttery flavor. Smooth and shot through with tiny holes, fontina is a very good melting cheese and is excellent on pizza and in hot sandwiches.

Goat cheese Made from goat’s milk, this soft and creamy cheese is usually sold in logs or disks; French goat cheeses are often called chevre. Goat cheese is particularly good in egg dishes, salads, sandwiches, and savory tarts, as well as paired with fresh fruit as a light snack or dessert.

Aged goat cheeses are more pungent and often have a rind; they are harder in texture and not generally a good substitute for fresh in recipes (but they are delicious as a snacking cheese). Keep fresh goat cheese, loosely wrapped, in the least cold part of the refrigerator. It should not be frozen, but you may want to pop it in the freezer for five or ten minutes to make it easier to slice.

Gruyere is another wonderful melting cheese, and is traditionally used in making croque-monsieurs.

Parmesan This popular cheese is a hard, dry cheese made from skimmed or partially skimmed cow’s milk. The finest of the many kinds of Parmesan is Parmigiano-Reggiano (the name should be printed on the perimeter of the rind), produced in the Emilia- Romagna region of Italy.

Known for its sumptuous flavor, this cheese can appear at any point of the meal, from hors d’oeuvres to dessert. A good alternative is Pecorino Romano. For the best flavor, buy wedges of cheese (instead of already grated) and grate just before using or serving. To keep Parmesan, wrap it in parchment paper and then plastic, and store it on the bottom shelf (or in the cheese bin) of the refrigerator.

EGGS Eggs come in many sizes; large is the most common and the size most often used in our recipes. Shell color has nothing to do with flavor or nutritional value, but is determined by the breed of the hen.

When buying eggs, check to make sure the eggs are clean and free of cracks, and look on the carton for an expiration date. To store, refrigerate eggs in their original carton; it will help protect the delicate, porous shells from cracking and absorbing odors. Eggs are freshest within a week of purchase, but will keep longer (up to a month).

Butter is made from the fat that comes from milk from cows, sheep, goats, horses, and other mammals. Most commercially produced butter in the United States is made from cow’s milk.

Butter making occurs in several stages. Cream that separates from milk is pasteurized (heated at a high temperature) to kill any organisms that might be harmful to human health. Then the cream is placed in a ripening tank for 12 to 15 hours.

There, it goes through another series of heat treatments that give butter a crystalline structure when it cools, helping it to solidify.

The next step is to churn the butter. This process breaks down the fat globules in the cream. The result is that the fat is coagulated into butter grains. The mixture is then separated, the remaining butter paste is worked until it is smooth, and, depending on the producer, it may be salted.

Further variations in processing influence its characteristics, including aroma, taste, color, appearance, and quality. There are numerous butter variations.

Those you find in gourmet markets include a French butter known as beurre (butter) de Charentes. Beurre de Charentes has an ivory color and tastes very rich.

Another European-style butter growing in popularity in the United States is ripened butter, traditionally made in Denmark and the Netherlands, which is softer than regular butter. It also has a slightly tangy taste because lactic acid is added to the cream from which it is made.

More common variations include the following:

Whipped butter - Whipped butter’s name is self-explanatory. It has air beaten into it. The result is that it is slightly lower in fat and calories than regular butter. It is very soft and spreadable.

Light butter - Light butter usually has about half the calories of regular butter. It also generally has less fat and less salt because water is usually added to it.

Unsalted butter - This is butter to which no salt has been added.

Clarified butter - An ingredient in some recipes, clarified butter is butter that has the milk solids removed from it. The advantage is that it has a higher smoke point than regular butter, which increases its cooking versatility.

It also keeps longer than butter and is thought to have a more pure flavor. Clarified butter is similar to a type of butter called ghee that is used in India. Butter should be refrigerated and stored in opaque packaging that prevents light from entering.

In addition, the packaging should seal in moisture to prevent the butter from becoming dehydrated, a process that intensifies its color and detracts from its flavor.

Preparation Tips

Should you use salted butter or unsalted? Although salted butter is the most common type in supermarkets, many serious cooks prefer to use unsalted butter in cooking and baking. Unsalted butter is thought to have a sweeter flavor. In addition, many cooks prefer to control the salt they add to a dish or baked food.

Both light butter and whipped butter work well for toppings, but neither can be substituted for regular butter in recipes for baked goods because of the air or water they contain.

Serving Suggestions

Butter is one of the most versatile cooking ingredients and the foundation of numerous gourmet foods, sauces in particular. Its taste can be enhanced by mixing it with herbs and spices and then refrigerating it again.

One popular flavored butter is garlic butter, which can be made by creaming the desired amount of butter and mashed garlic cloves to taste. Oregano, marjoram, basil, or parsley also can be added. Numerous recipes for flavored butter are available in cookbooks.

Butter’s health drawbacks are well known, however, and thus it should be used selectively. If that special dish simply cannot be made without butter, don’t try to substitute something else. Instead, save the dish for special occasions.

BUTTER is the fatty constituent of milk. It is obtained by skimming or separating the cream from milk and churning it in order to make the particles of fat adhere to one another. Butter is used largely in the household as an article of food, for it is one of the most appetizing and digestible forms of fat.

To supply the demand for butter, it is produced domestically in the home and on farms and commercially in dairies and large establishments. The principle of all churns used for butter making is practically the same. They simply agitate the cream so that the butter-fat globules in it are brought together in masses of such size as to enable the butter maker to separate them from the buttermilk.

Butter is seasoned, or salted, to give it a desirable flavor and to improve its keeping qualities; it is washed, or worked, in order to distribute the salt evenly, to separate from it as much of the curd and other non-fatty constituents of the cream as can be conveniently removed, to bring it into a compact, waxy mass, and to give it texture.

The United States authorities have set a standard for the composition of butter, which allows this product to contain not more than 16 per cent. of water and requires it to have at least 82.5 per cent. of butter fat

While some housewives make it a practice to use butter in cooking of all kinds, there are uses in which other fats are preferable; or, in case butter is desired, there are certain points to be observed in its use.

For instance, butter is rendered less digestible by cooking it at a high temperature, as in frying or sauteing; also, it cannot be used to any extent for the frying of foods, as it burns very readily. If it is used for sauteing, the dish is made much more expensive than is necessary, so that in most cases a cheaper fat should be employed for this purpose.

In addition, a point to remember is that this fat should not be used to grease the pans in which cakes and hot breads are baked unless it is first melted, because the milk contained in the butter burns easily; after it is melted, only the top fat should be used. When butter is desired for very rich cakes and for pastry, it is usually washed in cold water to remove the milk.

To neutralize the sour milk contained in butter that is used for baking purposes, a little

soda is sometimes employed. Further economy can be exercised in the use of butter if a little

thought is given to the matter. For instance, when butter is melted and poured over meat or fish that has been broiled or over vegetables that have been cooked in a plain way, much of it usually remains in the dish and is wasted. Such butter can be utilized again.

Since butter undergoes a change when it is cooked, it should be mixed with cooked foods to flavor them, rather than be subjected to the temperature necessary for cooking.

When butter is used for spreading sandwiches, it usually will be found advisable to soften the butter by creaming it with a spoon, but it should never be melted for this purpose.

SERVING BUTTER

When butter is used for the table, some consideration must be given to the serving of it. Probably the most usual way of serving butter is to place a slice of it on a plate and then pass the plate with a knife to each person at the table.

The advantage of this method is that each person can take the amount desired and thus prevent waste. However, a still more desirable way of serving butter that is to be passed is to cut it into small cubes or squares or to shape it into small balls and then serve it with a fork or a butter knife.

To prevent the pieces or balls of butter from melting in warm weather, cracked ice may be placed on the butter dish with them. Butter cut into cubes or squares may also be served on an individual butter dish or an individual bread-and-butter plate placed at each person’s place before the meal is served.

Whichever plan is adopted, any fragments of butter that remain on the plates after a meal should be gathered up and used for cooking purposes.

Butter that comes in pound prints lends itself readily to the cutting of small cubes or squares for serving. Such butter may be cut by drawing a string through the print or by using a knife whose cutting edge is covered with paper, a small piece of the oiled paper such as that in which the butter is wrapped answering very well for this purpose.

If butter balls are desired for serving, they may be rolled with butter paddles. To make butter balls, put wads of the butter to be used into ice water so as to make them hard. Then place each wad between the paddles, and give the paddles a circular motion.

After a little practice, it will be a simple matter to make butter balls that will add to the attractiveness of any meal. Paddles made especially for this purpose can be purchased in all stores that sell kitchen utensils.

Sometimes, for practical purposes, it is desired to know the quantity of butter that is served to each person. In the case of print butter, this is a simple matter to determine. First mark the pound print in the center in order to divide it in half; after cutting it into two pieces, cut each half into two, and finally each fourth into two.

With the pound print cut into eight pieces, divide and cut each eighth into four pieces. As there will be thirty-two small pieces, each one will represent one thirty-second of a pound, or 1/2 ounce.

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.

Butter is a common ingredient in most of our cooking. It is absolutely crucial in French baking, in fact, in any French cooking. But the majority of western cuisines also choose butter as the principal cooking fat. Oriental cuisines generally do not. Only Indian cooks use it extensively in its clarified form, ghee.

While perishable, butter doesn’t spoil nearly as quickly as milk. When Indian cooks remove its milk solids (by clarifying), they don’t even need to refrigerate butter. In clarified form its shelflife is as long as that of any vegetable oil.

The major problem posed by butter in our culture today is its high saturated fat and cholesterol content. (The fat in butter is called butterfat, a chemically distinct type among fats). Many U.S. households have banned butter from their kitchens with regrets, substituting margarine or oil.

How do we obtain our butter? First the milk processor pasteurizes, then ages the cream for at least 8 hours and finally churns it into butter by physical agitation. Aging the cream allows the milk fat to crystallize and weakens the fat globules.

The forceful agitation of churning breaks each tiny globule’s delicate membrane and allows the globules to clump together into a solid, that we call butter. The churning action expels a byproduct liquid, that the industry calls buttermilk. This is not the kind of buttermilk we drink, it only has the same name.

After the cream becomes butter, it goes through washing and then a mechanical manipulation (something like kneading bread dough) to reduce the size of the fat crystals. This makes it softer and more spreadable.

Butter oxidizes (turns rancid) at room temperature relatively fast. Chilling slows down the oxidizing process. Antioxidants would help reduce rancidity, but U.S. law restricts adding anything but salt and a coloring agent to butter. Salt extends its shelflife, coloring enhances its appearance.

Salting butter is a habit left over from the days before refrigerators. By the time refrigeration was common, people were used to the flavor of salted butter, and processors encouraged its use because it extended the shelflife. The amount of salt they use in butter is 1.5 to 1.8 percent (about 1¾ teaspoons in a pound or 450 g).

The most common coloring agent is annatto, a natural reddish-yellow dye. Without coloring, most butter is too white to look like the real thing. The natural color depends on what the cows, who produce the cream, eat so in some seasons they must use coloring to boost the yellowness-or consumers start complaining.

That 15 to 16 percent water you see in the table is the reason butter sizzles when you heat it in the sauté pan. The water boils in the hot pan, turns into steam and tries to escape from its covering blanket of fat. The bubbles of steam pop and they make a symphony of sound that we hear as sizzle. Oil, lard and vegetable shortening never sizzle in a hot pan because they are free of moisture.

Don’t confuse unsalted butter with sweet cream butter. The sweet cream label refers to the fact that they started the churning process with sweet instead of soured cream. North American processors don’t use soured cream to make butter, but the French and several other Europeans do as consumers prefer it. They let the cream sour slightly before churning it.

The difference in flavor between the two types of butter is slight-the European style has a slight tanginess. No one knows why we still retain the outdated term sweet cream butter, but it has nothing to do with its salt content.

Butter blends and dairy spreads are a combination of butter and vegetable oils. Mixing oil in butter reduces the price since oil is far cheaper than butter, but it also reduces the cholesterol while maintaining some butter flavor. Don’t be fooled-total fat and calories remain about the same. In low-fat spreads, water replaces some of butter’s fat, reducing not only fat but calories, cholesterol and flavor

Margarine

Margarine is not a dairy product but since so many people substitute margarine for butter, this is a good place for its discussion.

A food scientist in France, H. Mège-Mouriès, developed margarine in 1869 as a substitute for butter in case of unexpected dairy shortage. He produced it by churning together high-quality beef fat, called suet, and milk, but production was limited because of shortages of suet.

In 1902 W. Normann, a German scientist improved on the technique, and was able to bypass suet and harden oil with the addition of hydrogen (this is the process called

hydrogenation), which changed liquid oil into a solid fat that we know as today’s margarine.

Margarine is mainly oil and water. The processor uses huge hydrogenation converter drums with a nickel catalyst at 200°C (392°F) and violent agitation in contact with a flow of hydrogen gas. Then they cool and filter the resulting margarine to remove traces of the nickel catalyst.

Continuing our discussion regarding milk and dairies, here are some advantages and disadvantages when consuming these products

Disadvantages

-lactose intolerance represents the impossibility to digest carbohydrates from milk due to the lack of an enzyme called lactose.

- during the proccess of milk transformation into yogurt lactose is degraded so persons with lactose intolerance may consume any dairy, except for milk

- proteins from milk may give allergies and, in this case, dairies have to be eliminated from your diet

- if you have high cholesterol and trigliceride levels, you shouldn’t consume dairies due to their high lipid content

- fruit or muesli yogurt has a very high sugar content, so if you’ re on a diet, be careful when consuming these products…

Recommended associations:

- try dairies and yogurt with bread, pasta or rice

-dairies don’t contain vitamin C or fibers, so add cereals, muesli of fruits to your fresh milk, yogurt or cream

Culinary secrets

-use milk enriched with D vitamin to increase Calcium absorption and fixation

- vitamin B2 from milk is sun sensitive so keep it away from sunlight

- the yellow color in butter is given by the amount of carotene in the caw’s food

Here are some tips and tricks for successful cooking!

• when making a BBq, grease the grill a little bit so that it doesn’t stick to it. In order to remain juicy,

don`t poach the meat, and add salt when you serve it (or prepare the marinate  and leave it to soak

up for 24 hours for best results).

• Leave the steaks to rest for 4,5 minutes before cutting!
• Cut the steaks before you put them on the plate!

• The water for cooking spaghetti must be boiling before you add them. Also, you can add a little bit of butter or oil to prevent sticking to the pot.

• Rice gets cooked faster if kept in cold water before.

• Potatoes for mashed potatoes remain white during cooking with you add a little bit of vinegar in the water.

• Use warm milk for preparing the mashed potatoes, to give it a plus of flavor.

• Cook the soup at a small flame, to keep it clear.

• Mushrooms don`t go dark when cooked, if soaked for 5 minutes with water and vinegar.

• Grated apples remain white if sprinkled with a little bit of lemon juice.

There are good and “bad’ fats, some toxic, some neutral, and some essential to good health. All animal and plant fats can be broken down into fatty acids, glycerin, and water. Fats and lipids are better energy sources than protein or carbohydrates.

We need to add fats to our diets because they carry the fatsoluble vitamins A, D, E, and

K. Vitamin K is easily destroyed by the use of mineral oil, Heparin and Dicumarol

(blood thinners), drugs, or aspirin. Most people overlook, the need for vitamin K, but it has recently been linked to intestinal disorders. It is important in the treatment of arthritis.

One rich source of vitamin K is alfalfa. The right kind of fat is essential for good health. most people consume too much of the wrong kind. Excess fat is stored in the liver, in arteries around the heart, and in all tissues.

Cancer of the breast, prostate, and colon, not to mention obesity and an increased risk of heart attack, are linked to a high-fat consumpation. The typical American diet consists of 40-50 % fat, a primary reason for the rise in the disorders mentioned above.

Saturated fats are behind many health problems, and should be omitted form your diet. They are behind heart disorders and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). High intake of saturated

fats have been shown to elevate serum cholesterol, and contribute to heart disease and cancer. Do not consume saturated fats! They slow the liver’s ability to remove arter-clogging LDL (low-density lipopreteins) from the blood. However, the nomounsaturated fats aid in removing LDl (bad fats) from the blood stream.

Saturated fats

Saturated fat is found in all animal products and many vegetable oils:

Butter/lard

Poultry

Beef

Chocolate

Plam oil

Coconut

Milk/cream

Cheeses

Bacon/pork

Palm

Coconut oil