Jeff, the A.D.D. Chef

“Sauces are elegant, clean, smart and flavorful. A sauce can elevate sliced white meat that’s cooked within an inch of its life to something, well, groovy. Gravy is just gravy.”

“There’s nothing easier or quicker to make than a good little sauce. All you need is a pan to deglaze (the one you roasted your bird in), and some liquid — wine or stock; even water will do in a pinch. The pan will still have all the tasty brown bits of meat and caramelized stuff clinging to it. Extra flavorings are nice — shallots, wine, stock, herbs — but you don’t even really need them.”

For the full article see: Deglazing: It works like magic - Los Angeles Times

Marinate: Marinate means to coat or immerse foods in an acidic-based liquid or dry rub, to tenderize and flavor before cooking. Food is marinated in a marinade.

Marinade: The liquid foods marinate in. Marinades always contain some acidic liquid like lemon juice or vinegar to tenderize the foods, and may contain spices or herbs to add flavor.

Ziploc® Bags: A popular brand of plastic bag characterized by its distinctive method for closing the bag, essentially zipping it like a zipper.

Zip It: Spoken by Doctor Evil.

Now that we’ve differentiated marinate from marinade, Ziploc® bags from Zip It, we can speak intelligently about this oh-so-simple method for marinating your foods. Simply stated, use a Ziploc® bag.

How to Zip It (your food, that is):

1. Mix marinade in a container.
2. Place food to be marinaded in the Ziploc® bag.
3. Pour marinade into Ziploc® bag.
4. Gently squeeze out some of the air in the bag and then seal the bag.
5. Toss and turn the bag a few times to swish around the food and the marinade.
6. Place bag in refrigerator.

Some of the Reasons to Use this Method are:

• The marinade is more evenly distributed around the food.
• It’s easy to store in the refrigerator.
• You don’t have to search your cabinets for a container and matching lid.

Chicken marinating in balsamic vinegar

Here are Other Ziploc® Bag Ideas:

1. Before you go on your camping trip, premix ingredients you need for your morning pancakes and put it in a Ziploc®. See Zip-lock Bag Ideas for Outdoor Cooking. (And go here for health and nutrition information on chocolate chip pancakes.)
2. Here is a list of twenty five other uses for Ziploc® bags, like kneading dough, storing your pantyhose¹ and using one to create an instant funnel.²
3. And be sure to visit Ziploc® Central at http://www.ziploc.com/.

1. This tip does not apply to most men. [↩]
2. Hint: cut a small corner of the bag. [↩]

“A what?” That was my reaction the first time I read a list of ingredients that included a seeded cucumber. A seeded cucumber is a cucumber that had its seeds removed. Why would you do that? First, for aesthetic reasons. Raw seeded cucumbers just “look interesting” sitting next to the other raw vegetables on your appetizer tray.¹ The second and more important reason for seeding a cucumber is for creating Tzatziki sauce which is usually served with souvlaki and gyros. It also makes a great dip for raw vegetables.

THE METHOD

1. Start with a peeled cucumber.
   
2. Slice the cucumber in half.
   
3. Take a melon baller (a tablespoon would work too) and gently scrape out the seeds. If you use a melon baller, use the smallest amount of pressure as you scrape out the seeds so that you don’t accidentally split the cucumber.
   
4. Your seeded cucumber should look something like this:
   
5. It’s really that simple. When we get to the Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki sauce, then you’ll know why you need to remove the cucumber seeds.

Tzatziki and Cucumber Trivia

1. Wikipedia on Tzatziki
2. Making Tzatziki
3. Wikipedia on Cucumbers
4. A (very small) tribute to my last homegrown cucumber for 2007

1. It also shows you may have too much time on your hands if you are removing seeds from your cucumbers. [↩]

This post is for the onion-challenged. Yes, you know who you are. You try to slice up an onion and when it completely falls apart only then do you realize that you’ve sliced it the wrong way. One way to slice it so it doesn’t fall apart is to slice it in half along its “equator,” then in half again along its north/south axis, then flip it and again cut it along its “equator.” This sounds worse than it really is and the photos below should help you to understand the gyrations of the onion.

Let’s start with a peeled onion¹ with the black line representing the north/south axis and the gray line representing the “equator.”

The first cut (see image below) is along the equator.

The second cut is along the north/south axis. In the photo below, I cut in half the bottom half of the onion. Notice the light brown “nib” indicating the north/south axis (the black line in the very first photo).

Take one of the halves and flop it onto its side (see photo below) and start cutting.

The slices are made on what is left of the “equator.”

If needed, you can cut these semi-circles into smaller pieces.

A note about the color of the photos: Photographing an onion, which is almost translucent, against the background of a white cutting board turned out to be a formidable task.² Therefore, the images have been manipulated to enhance their contrast. Despite noticeable visible differences from one image to the next, I certify that it is the same onion used in all of the photos. The differences are a result of digital manipulation. Additionally, I certify that no onions were hurt during the making of these photos.

1. Peeling is really no more than removing the outer brown layer. If you don’t like the way that layer looks, remove another layer. As Shrek once said, what’s under an onion layer but yet another layer. [↩]
2. Formidable when you using an ordinary digital camera with no special lighting. [↩]

I guarantee that watching a video or two at What’s Cooking Grandma? will make you feel all warm inside. You’ll get to see grandma make jalapeño cornbread, scones and apple crumb. She’ll even reveal some of her cooking secrets but you better be ready to jot them down or there will be no jalapeño cornbread for you.