Tilapia Taco with Black Beans & Corn

Rather than being a daily chore, cooking can be a daily stress-reliever: you can use your time in the kitchen to express your creativity, to unwind after a long day, to gain immediate satisfaction from serving healthy food to yourself and others…or all three! Here are some tips to help you enjoy your culinary adventures.

- Make self-assembly dinners (like the fish taco shown above). Not only does it save you the step of adding ingredients, it allows your guests to custom-flavor their meals. All you have to do is chop/grate/dice the separate ingredients and serve them in individual containers. Salads work particularly well for this kind of meal; so do hearty stews with toppings (think chili) and fold-’em-up type dishes such as tacos, burritos, sandwiches, wraps, and pitas.

- Instead of going to a restaurant, invite your friends into your kitchen and cook together (or ask each person to bring a dish). That way, no one is stuck doing all the work…and if your friends are familiar with a certain type of ethnic cooking, you can hold an impromptu cooking class. You’ll probably come up with your own fusion cuisine!

- Keep your kitchen clean and organized. A tidy kitchen is inviting to use; a messy one is not. Besides, cleaning as you go is much quicker than having to chisel off dried-on gunk the next day.

- Try sampling ethnic cuisine. If you have a favorite ethnic restaurant, make a mental note of your favorite dishes and then look up some recipes. Or pay a visit to your local library and head for the 640s–that’s where all the cookbooks hang out. They’ll be grouped by ethnicity, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. (If I don’t have a particular cuisine in mind, I just let my hand trail along the shelf and then stop randomly on a book. Wherever it lands is whatever I cook.)

- Look for cheap and fun kitchen items at garage sales. Ceramic, glass, and metal items can be easily cleaned and can be great bargains. You’d be amazed at how many folks get a full set of china on their wedding day and then never use it. (Or they get three sets and only use one of them.) And some items can be beginner art projects to boot–I got this champagne glass for 10 cents and then painted it. For 10 cents, who cares if it doesn’t turn out perfectly?

- Crank up the music! Cooking should not be a high-pressure situation. Put on some good tunes, sing along, and dance if you want to. (Just try not to drop anything.) I’ve found cooking to be a great way to practice bellydance moves–if you can shimmy while you’re whipping up a meringue, then you’ve got some great hip isolation.

- Give yourself plenty of time. Of course, not all meals are going to be an objet d’ art, but even a slapdash one can be more enjoyable to prepare if you’re not rushing madly from one utensil to another. And if you know you have some hectic evenings heading your way, make extras on the days you do have time and then have leftovers.

- Keep a stack of recipes on hand. That way, you can plan a week at a time and save yourself a lot of time at the grocery store. Rip recipes from magazines, flip through cookbooks once in a while and write down a few titles and page numbers, or hit a website like allrecipes.com to get dinner ideas. (Allrecipes has a great “Ingredients” feature where you can enter ingredients you do want the dish to have and ones that you want to avoid. Perfect for cooks with limited ingredients on hand or those with allergies!)

- Whenever you’re shopping for groceries, leave a spot in your cart for one new item. Maybe you spot a tropical fruit you’ve never had before, or a vegetable your grandma used to make. Try it! There may be a sign next to the item with serving suggestions; if you’re in a produce-oriented market, chances are the grocers can help you figure out how to prepare it. The Joy of Cooking is another good source of food-prep information. And as for spices and herbs, serving suggestions are often given right on their labels.

Happy cooking!

Anatomy of a Leftover

“Fusion cuisine” is the latest trend–it’s innovative, intriguing, and embraces all the foods that the world has to offer. It’s also astonishingly simple to create using leftovers. Don’t think you have anything in the fridge for dinner? Craving flair instead of humdrum? Try mixing and matching what you already have. How’s this idea: chicken satay + leftover BBQ pizza = killer Malaysian-style flavors. (Many Asian dishes are based on peanut sauces and spices.) You never know where fantastic taste combinations are lurking!

The dish above is a conglomerate of fresh (zucchini & onion), my own leftovers (a chicken tandoori dinner I had made) and a restaurant doggie bag (the already-seasoned rice that had accompanied Lebanese chicken shawarma & lamb kebabs). All I did was sauteé the fresh veggies over high heat until they were browned, then de-glazed the pan with some water and the tandoori sauce (which included the red peppers). The final step was to add the rice and cook for about 5 minutes, until the sauce had been absorbed into the rice and the ingredients were heated through.

I have to say, the result was pretty spectacular: not only did the Indian spices (turmeric, ginger, coriander) compliment the Lebanese emphasis on garlic and lemon, but dinner was done in ten minutes flat…and with a considerable amount of flair.

Be brave and try your own concoctions–you never know which odd couples will make good bedfellows!

You’ll enjoy cooking and baking much more if you take a little bit of time to organize your pans, utensils, and ingredients. Do whatever seems logical to you–just make sure that you can remember where you put that colander when you really need it. I find that it’s easier to group things according to how they’re used. (That way, if you can remember where you put one of those items, you’ll find the rest!) Here’s how I’ve arranged my wares:

- a drawer for baking utensils (measuring spoons, cake decorating tools, pastry cutter, candy thermometer, pastry brush, etc.)
- a drawer for general non-baking utensils (garlic press, mushroom brush, slotted spoon, egg slicer, meat hammer, salad spoons, etc.)
- a drawer for oven mitts and potholders
- a stovetop container of cooking implements (long-handled spoons, spatulas, whisks, ladles, pasta forks)
- a cupboard of spices and teas
- a cupboard of baking dishes (glass and metal pans, springform pans, ceramic quiche dishes, tube pans, etc.)
- a cupboard of oils and vinegars
- a cupboard of baking ingredients (flours, sugars, honeys, nuts, oats, molasses, etc.)
- a cupboard of dry goods (canned vegetables, pastas, rice, dried fruit, grains, etc.)

Getting organized may seem like a pain at first, but trust me–an hour of organization now is worth a baker’s dozen later on. No more spills, curses, or inadvertently-blackened-pancakes…or, at least, you’ll have fewer of them!

-The small yellow and white onions (often labeled as “cooking onions”) are the most potent. Unless you absolutely love the taste of onion, I wouldn’t advise using these raw. Luckily, their small size makes them perfect for cooking–one onion is usually the right amount to add to a batch of marinara sauce or a pot of chili.

-Red onions are tricky–they can be mildly sweet or as sharp as the cooking onions, which means that if you do use them raw in a salad, you probably want to slice them very, very fine. Their color, too, is a double-edged sword: it’s a beautiful purple on the plate, but it can also turn your white sink, clothes, or counter into a not-so-welcome hue. A cooked red onion turns rather purplish-brown, which may or may not complement your dish. (Pickling them, however, keeps them crunchy and pink.) The good thing about the vivid color of a red onion is that you can toss the skins into a pot of boiling water to naturally dye your hard-boiled eggs as they cook.

-Spanish and Bermuda onions are larger and more mild than their smaller cousins. They’re great to grill and roast, and I think their smoother flavor makes a richer French Onion Soup. The only difficult thing is slicing them–you’ll need a big knife!

-Pearl onions are the tiny ones you’ll find sold in bags at your grocery store. They’re so small that you can add them whole to soups, stews, and baked entreés. Peeling them may seem like a chore, but it really isn’t so bad as long as you pour boiling water over them and let them cool before attempting it. Cooked or pickled pearl onions also make great garnishes.

-Then there are the sweet onions: Vidalia, Walla Walla, and Maui. These can easily be eaten raw on salads and in sandwiches. Sauteéing them will result in a very sweet, carmelized flavor.

-Shallots have a light-brown, papery skin and a taste that’s somewhere between garlic and onion. French cuisine in particular tends to favor their unique flavor. If you have a recipe that calls for shallots and you don’t have them, you can substitute green onions in a pinch–just be sure to only use the white part, which has a more pronounced flavor than the more-tender green stalks.

-Green onions are extremely versatile: use the raw green shoots for a delicate, almost chive-like accent, or cook them for a slightly-chewy texture. The white part can be sauteéd alone (and is also a substitute for leeks) or with the shoots…or you can slice the white part into thin, decorative rounds and leave it raw. Draw a knife a few times through the shoots–starting at the white part and going to the end of the green–to make an eye-catching, ribbon-like garnish.

Of course, the problem many of us have with onions is the tear factor. You can make chopping an onion a little more bearable if you have a very sharp knife–the more dull the blade, the more it smashes the flesh of the onion, and the more sulfur it will release–but the best way to deal with an onion is to quickly slice it, put it on the other side of the kitchen and away from your workspace, and clean your knife and cutting board. If you’re going the cook the onion, you might want to cut it right before cooking since the heat will take away the tears. If you’re going to use it raw, you might want to put the sliced onion into a bowl of cold water and then drain before using. (This will also tame the taste a bit.) Those of us who wear contacts are lucky–my eyes don’t sting when I’m wearing mine and dealing with onions. Finally, a good side effect of having bad vision!

As soon as you take the eggs off the heat, run cold water into the pan to cool them, pouring out the hot water as you add more cold. (You can add ice cubes to the water to speed up the process.)  Let eggs thoroughly cool in cold water before you peel them.

1. Put the tomatoes in a deep bowl, leaving a bit of space at the top.
2. Boil enough water to cover the tomatoes completely.
3. Pour the boiling water over the tomatoes and let them sit for 3 minutes.
4. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, take out the first tomato.  You’ll want to be working over a cutting board since this part gets a bit messy.
5. Use a sharp knife to lift a little piece of the skin.  The rest will tear off easily, in large strips.  Be careful when peeling–the inner flesh of the tomato will be hot!
6. Slice the peeled tomato down the center, hold it over the sink, and scoop out the seeds with your fingers.  You may want to peel all of the tomatoes first and then seed them all.
7. Depending on what you’re making, you may wish to chop or mince the tomatoes.  If you have one of the hand blenders I mentioned in an earlier post (see “Handy Hand Blenders” for more information), you can leave the tomatoes in large chunks.

That’s it!  All you need is a bowl, boiling water, and a bit of patience!

A Hand Blender in Action

(If you want to see what a hand blender looks like, go to a website like bedbathandbeyond.com and look under “kitchen/kitchen electrics/blenders.”  You’ll probably find hand blenders at the tail end of the blenders/small appliances section; they can be as little as $30 or as much as $100.)

• De-lump gravies and sauces
• Make a smooth roux
• Fold delicate ingredients together
• Combine dry ingredients–this functions like sifting

Whisks are made out of metal, plastic (safe for non-stick cookware), even bamboo.  Some varieties are straight tines with a ball at each tip.  Whatever your need, you’re sure to find a whisk to suit you.

• Never, ever wear your best clothes while cooking; it’s better to stain a shirt you’re not overly attached to.  Or you could use an apron–even Jacques Pepin wears one when he’s cooking!
• Read all the directions before you start.  I remember my fourth-grade teacher handing out a set of instructions and asking us to follow them.  We all eagerly jumped in–except for the one student who read the entire page and found out that the final instruction was to disregard all the previous ones and do nothing.  (Nope, sadly that student wasn’t me…)  The exercise was a good way of illustrating how few people read directions all the way through.  When you cook, you have to know what’s coming next.
• Make sure you have all the ingredients and pans/pots that you’ll need.  Are you baking brownies?  Be sure you have a 8×8 glass pan if that’s what the recipe requires.  Don’t have capers for those stuffed tomatoes?  That might be okay, depending on how much you like capers and whether or not they’re a main ingredient in the dish.
• When it comes to food receptacles, you are much better off super-sizing them than trying to scoot by with the bare minimum–if in doubt, choose the bigger pot, pan, or bowl.
• Clean as you go! I can’t emphasize this point enough.  There are often pauses in cooking–the sauce has to simmer, the bread has to rise–and you might as well take advantage of that time to clean up whatever mess you’ve made.  Not only are utensils much easier to clean before the food adheres to them like super-glue, but then when your dish is ready, you will be, too!  It’s also a lot easier to cook if you have plenty of clean counter-top space to work with.
• Have a care with your glass-ware.  If you pour boiling liquid into a glass measuring cup that isn’t meant to handle high temperatures, it will crack and you’ll have boiling liquid everywhere.  Likewise, if you’ve heated an empty glass container in the oven and you pour cold water into it, it will shatter.  These rules also apply to the glass coffeepot at work!
• Always use a timer, and if you go into another part of the house where you won’t hear it go off, take the timer with you.  I knew a guy who put a frozen pizza into the oven for dinner and forgot about it until the next day.  By then, it was ash and partly-molten slag.
• If you’re using potholders with loops on them, be mindful of where you’re reaching–you don’t want to get them caught on anything.  (Those who use gas stoves with the hooking burners need to be particularly careful about this one.)
• Wash all of your produce–you don’t know where that produce has been!  It’s also a good idea to rinse your rice.
• Be very careful about handling raw poultry:  use only plastic cutting boards that you can put in the dishwasher and be sure to wipe down the counters with a throwaway paper towel when you’re done.  Wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw poultry!
• Keep your cutting boards separate:  use wooden ones for produce and cheese and your plastic ones for meat.
• Keep your knives sharp!  You are much less likely to cut yourself with a dull blade than with a sharp one–you won’t have to press as hard, and you’ll have greater control over exactly where it’s going to cut.  Some people swear by electrical sharpeners, but I prefer the hand-held variety, such as the DMT Diafold Knife Sharpener.  I’ve seen it at several hardware stores.

And here’s a final bonus tip:  if you do stain your clothes, immediately blob cold water onto the stain and use your fingers to rub it with liquid dish soap.  Rinse the spot and throw it in the to-be-done-soon laundry pile.  This has worked for me about 90% of the time.

• Whole-wheat flour is my favorite.  It’s high in iron and fiber and has a nutty-but-not-overwhelming flavor.  I freely substitute this for white flour when I make yeast breads, brownies, and muffins.  Depending on the kind of cake I’m making, I substitute wheat for half the amount of white called for.
• Modern-day white flour has unfortunately been stripped of all of its nutrients.  The only reason you see any nutritional value on the label is if the nutrients have been added back in during the final stages of processing.  (????)  While this seems to defy conventional wisdom, the food industry refers to this as adding “value” to the product.  Personally, I would rather eat food that hasn’t been taken apart and reassembled along the way, so I don’t use white flour very often.
• Nut flours, such as almond and hazelnut, are wonderful in many baked goods.  They are also packed with iron, calcium, and protein, particularly almond flour.  (Nut flours are simply very finely-ground nuts.)  I don’t like whole chunks of nuts, but I do like the faint nut flavor and slightly-pebbly texture that nut flours impart to the final product.  You can substitute nut flour for up to half the amount of standard flour called for in the recipe without throwing the final consistency out of whack.
• Cornmeal gives baked goods a bit of crunchiness–who doesn’t love cornbread?  Or corn muffins, or corn dodgers…  I prefer the yellow cornmeal over the white, mostly for the sake of color.  There is also stone-ground organic cornmeal.
• Rye flour has a very distinctive taste.  The Swedes use it to wonderful effect in their rye-and-caraway breads, and rye also stars in German Schwarzbrot (think pumperknickel).  A little bit of rye goes a long way, though, and rye flour is also very dense, so you might want use it in recipes that specifically call for it until you’re more accustomed to working with it.
• Bean-based flours like garbanzo have a whopping amount of fiber and can safely be consumed by celiacs, but since they entirely lack gluten, they can’t be used willy-nilly.  If you’re going to attempt non-gluten baked goods, you’ll need to find recipes (and ingredients) created for gluten-free diets.  Bean flours could, however, be easily used as thickeners in sauces and soups.
• Wheatberries, wheat germ, and cracked wheat represent various stages in the processing of wheat–further reducing them results in the final flour product.  Wheatberries and cracked wheat make nice texture additions to bread–they’ll be distinct and crunchy–while wheat germ is flaky enough to not be overly noticeable.  (Wheat germ is one of the most nutrient-laden foods on the planet; it’s used as a supplement by many bodybuilders and athletes.)  If you’re looking for more oomph in the morning, try putting wheatberries, germ, or cracked wheat into your muffins!
• Oat flour is finely-ground oatmeal; you can easily make your own in a blender.  (Nut flour is a little bit more difficult to grind finely because nuts are oily by nature.)  Use oat flour in heavy breads (multi-grain/health-food), waffles, or pancakes for a hearty breakfast.

These are only a few of the flours available on today’s grocery shelves.  Check out the “Know Your Ingredients” section in the Joy of Cooking to read about more.

• Applesauce is a good substitute for butter, oil, yogurt, and eggs.  (This can be especially useful for those who have food allergies/sensitivities.)  It’s also slightly sweet, so using it may allow you to reduce the amount of sugar in your recipe.  Be careful when choosing your applesauce, though–make sure you purchase one that is ALL apples.  Sounds obvious, but most fruit-based foods (jam and jelly included) are made with corn syrup.  Read labels of everything before you buy it!
• Nut “flours” are finely-ground nuts; almond and hazelnut flours are the most common.  You can substitute up to half the amount of normal flour for nut flour.  I prefer the nutty taste in many baked goods and muffins, and nut flour has significantly more fiber, protein and calcium than white flour.
• Whole-wheat flour has 3 grams of fiber in a 1/4 cup.  Refined white cake flour has 0.  The choice is clear…unless you are making a very delicate cake where the flavor of the wheat could interfere, such as angel food cake.  I often mix and match varying amounts of wheat and nut flour.
• Honey and agave nectar are both very sweet and have more nutrients than white sugar, which has been refined to the point of being empty calories.  Beware, however:  honey and agave will make the finished product much more dense!
• Sucanat has a rich, deep taste, and it has much more iron than white sugar.  I much prefer the flavor of sucanat.  Molasses are a close relative of sucanat–they’re the nutrients that are “left over” when refined white sugar is stripped and processed.
• Mashed bananas, canned pumpkin, and other fruits and vegetables can be good non-dairy substitutes for butter, but they’ll obviously add a strong taste of their own.  Then again, who doesn’t love zucchini bread or Caribbean rum banana-chocolate cake?
• Greek yogurt is the only yogurt I have in my fridge.  Unlike the vast majority of corn-syrup- and sugar-laden yogurts on the market, Greek yogurt is made of milk, cream, and cultures.  I love it as a substitute for sour cream–whether in a baked recipe or with guacamole and chips–and as a partial substitute for butter and oil.  Another caution, however:  yogurt is a dense ingredient and results in a dense final product.  If the recipe calls for sour cream, feel free to substitute yogurt for the full amount, but if the recipe calls for oil/butter, you probably don’t want to use only Greek yogurt as a substitution.