Knife Skills II: Chiffonade

What is a chiffonade? It's both a technique and the result of doing that technique...
When a recipe calls for a chiffonade of an herb what they're asking for are thinly shredded leaves of that herb. Usually done with Basil, it can be used on a variety of foods.

First you take whatever herb you want to chiffonade (in this case Kaffir Lime Leaves)...

Read On...

...and you stack leaves with the largest ones on the bottom...

...roll them up like a cigar...

...then start cutting thin strips...

...and voila! Chiffonade!

You would usually do this when you don't want to bruise your herbs. Works great for basil on a caprese salad or if you want to slice up some green leafy vegetables like chard for sauteeing.

Lunchtime: Pad See Iew

Read On...

I'm a regular at Thai Star on Boren and Madison because their Pad See Iew is amazing.  They know me there since I come in at least once a week and as soon as they see me, they confirm with me that I want the Pad See Iew, chicken, 4 stars, brown rice. 5-10 mins later I'm chowing down. So good! 

Cilantro Shrimp

One of my best friends had their birthday BBQ this weekend and she's one of those friends that really get me when it comes to cooking.  We met in college and where she knew baking pans (her pie is amazing!), I knew frying pans.  Needless to say, I wanted to make something really tasty that takes advantage of the grill.

So today I'll be telling you guys how I made her Cilantro Shrimp

Read On...

 Ingredients:

2lbs Shrimp (u16-20) with Shells
1 half bunch of cilantro, chopped
1/4c Kaffir Lime Leaves, chiffonade
1 shallot, chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, minced
2 scallions, chopped
2 stalks of lemon grass, tender parts chopped
1/3c brown sugar packed
1/3c fish sauce
1/3c sesame oil
1 tsp cayenne
Salt and Pepper


Method:

For the marinade:

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor except for the shrimp and pulse a few times to get a rough consistency.  

Split all the shrimp, keeping the shells on, and remove the vein.  Combine the marinade and shrimp together, and marinade for an hour.  Skewer as you see fit.


In the end you should get something like this:

Put those on the grill, 5-7 mins on each side and you're set! You'll want to eat them immediately.

I find that keeping the shells on keeps more of the marinade in contact with the meat and adds a lot of flavor to the dish.  Let me know what you think!

Updates

Bear with me for a bit as the blog is going through some technical changes. In addition to my love of food, I'm a huge nerd and I'm trying to pimp out my blog, hence the new layout. I've also added a new widget to my pics that presents them in a better way.

A bunch more posts are on the way. Stay hungry.

Quick Dinner: Carnitas and Warm Corn Salsa

Just a quick post for what I made for dinner tonight:

Chicken Carnitas with wilted Red Chard served with a warm Corn and Red Chard Rib salsa.

Over the weekend I went to the Top Banana fruit stand and they had some good looking corn and red chard.  Chard is becoming one of my favorite new vegetables. The leaves are buttery with a little bitterness.  The ribs can be a little tough and fibrous, but if you chop them finely they cook up just fine and have a great, sweet, herbaceous crunch.  They were a good complement to the fresh corn.  I wanted to add some green to the mix so I decided some peas would look good and they definitely added to the dish both visually and in taste.

I had some leftover carnitas meat from a chicken I bought over the weekend so I decided to make some little tacos.  Fresh. Light. Delicious.

Warm Corn and Red Chard Rib Salsa:
3 ears of fresh corn off the cob
~1-1.5 cups Red Chard Ribs finely chopped
1 Medium Onion chopped
1/3 cup Frozen Peas
2 cloves of garlic minced
Salt, pepper
Olive Oil

Sweat the onions with a pinch of salt in a cold pan over medium low heat.  Once translucent add the garlic and chard ribs and turn to medium high.  Cook for a few minutes to soften the ribs.  Then add the corn and then turn to medium high.  Stir and saute until the corn is cooked through, about 3 mins.  Add peas and warm them through.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Serve warm.

Try the dish out and let me know what you think!

Knife Skills I: Fluting Mushrooms

I'm always impressed with the details in cooking, but what always gets me is how chefs consistently make their food uniform during prep. How do they make it so even? How long have they been working on their knife skills? Does it even matter?

When you think about it, it really does. When the food is the same shape and size, it cooks uniformly and you avoid having things being done at different times. Plus, it just plain looks more appetizing. But moreover, good knife skills goes deeper than that. Uniformity means that the cook put time into the food and it's a way to tell the diner that they're worth the trouble. It shows that the cook takes detail seriously.

In my quest to better my knife skills, I've decided to start a series of posts dedicated to different techniques. So with my first post in the series, I wanted to do something challenging: fluting mushrooms.


So what does a fluted mushroom even look like?

Fluted Mushroom caps (not mine)

It really doesn't do anything for cooking, but it makes them look cool and its a pretty hard cut to learn and cook. You need a really sharp paring knife and patience.

First you take a mushroom:


Then you take your sharpest paring knife and cut out trenches by moving the blade along the skin of the cap:

This...

To this

Then you repeat the pattern around the cap:

And eventually you end up with this:

It looks pretty cool and it took me forever to get the pattern down. I'm pretty excited about it though.

Coming back...

Wow, it has been a looooong time since I've posted on the blog. I'm still as passionate about food, but blogging sometimes takes a back seat to life. So why am I coming back? A few things...

NEW TOOLS

I bought a really good set of knives. I was looking for value, durability, and a bag and my search brought me to cookingforengineers.com. I like them because they used empirical data to rate gear and mentioned Saber Knives as the only set they'd recommend as a whole. They recommended this set not only for the performance of the knives (which performed as well as some Wusthofs) but for the quality of the bag. On top of that, Saber was having a free paring knife promotion. I emailed the company mentioning the promo and the CEO personally responded back to me. 3 days later the sharpest paring knife I've ever used came in the mail.

I was a little hesitant to buy a whole set though. Usually, chefs buy their knives one at a time from various makers because a whole set could have one or two good knives and the rest are crap. That can get really expensive though. However, when I googled Saber knives, most knife reviews said they were really good. The paring knife wasn't the only good knife, ALL OF THEM WERE GOOD. So I pulled the trigger and 3 business days later a 10 pound box of amazingness came (thanks Dallas for letting me use your Amazon Prime account!).

What a difference a sharp knife makes. It actually makes things safer in the kitchen because less effort is needed to cut and chop through food. I've actually become quite the prep cook and it's enjoyable every time I use them. Expect to see more posts as I use these knives more.

Which leads me to the next reason why I'm back...

WHY COOKING MATTERS

Cooking matters because in today's passive world preparing a meal is incredibly proactive. You choose the ingredients, you choose how to prepare it, you choose how to cook it, and you choose how to eat it. By cooking we take a role in everything affected by food, and some BIG things are affected by food like your health, work performance, and relationships.

I don't know of many other things in life that have such an impact on who you are than food. We eat every day, but it's too easy to take food for granted and lose the connections meals create. It makes me sad when I see people who are so closed minded to new foods and instead expect to eat processed, prepackaged garbage. Of course, I'm guilty of eating garbage too but I don't want that to be the norm. I know that a steady diet of prepackaged food isn't good for you in the long run.

In the end I guess this is my attempt to keep people connected through food. I'm afraid that people will lose out on the joys food can bring in today's convenience driven society. There's community and friendships to be found around food and I don't anyone to miss out on that.