Traditional Food

Posts Tagged ‘Cooking’

Learn how to cook the Karo syrup and caramelize sugar for candy apples, a healthy dessert and fun Halloween party treat, with expert cooking tips in this free dessert video clip. Expert: Kenyatta Gilliam Bio: Kenyatta Gilliam started cooking at 10. As he got older, he began helping his parents with the family catering business. He was also a chef for the FAA & catered for Café Savilla as an assistant chef. Filmmaker: Nili Nathan

What is traditional Christmas cooking? Well, that depends on you and your family. Tradition is something you make up as you go along. A traditional Christmas is what is traditional in your home. It may be a recipe handed down from your great grandmother or it may be something you thought of in a desperate hurry last Christmas Eve. Anything can become a tradition. What makes something traditional depends on how we feel about it.

That said, once something becomes traditional then you change it at your peril. If your children expect to come home to stir the Christmas pudding and put in the family favors then you had better not change it. They may be away at college or carving out a big career for themselves in the city but they will still expect Christmas to be the Christmas they remember. Christmas cooking is a big part, maybe the biggest part, of the way we remember Christmas.

Every part of Christmas is accompanied by food of one sort or another. The tastes and smells of that food fixes the memory of Christmas in our minds. That smell of cinnamon or hot sugar. If we catch a hint of it anywhere at anytime we are transported instantly back in time to a Christmas kitchen of our childhood. That is the power of traditional Christmas cooking.

I remember how when my mother-in-law was alive and would come to us for Christmas dinner, I had to cook a big traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Turkey seemed a very dry meat to me so I looked through one of my cookery books and found a recipe that involved glazing the turkey with apricot jam for the last 15 minutes of cooking. As a “proper” cook I was appalled, but it seemed to work, so every year I poured a pot of apricot jam over my turkey and, I have to confess, it was delicious.

When my mother-in-law died I saw the opportunity to change our family’s traditional Christmas cooking routine. At last my culinary skills would find true expression in a Christmas dinner that would be original and exciting. No more apricot jam for me. I would amaze family and friends with my creations. But no matter what I tried in subsequent years nothing was quite as good as the old turkey recipe with its apricot jam. It had become part of our family’s traditional Christmas cooking. So I gave in and everyone was much happier, even me.

However good a cook you are and whatever new recipes you may attempt in the rest of the year Christmas is a time to come back to traditional Christmas cooking whatever that might be for you and your family. There is a profound wisdom in that which cooks too easily forget. When we cook we are engaging in one of the great acts of social ritual. We are not just cooking for ourselves we are cooking for other people. Our Christmas dinner table expresses not just our skill but our human relationships. Traditional Christmas cooking encapsulates all those relationships, gathered over the years, with people still living and people long since dead that go into making us what we are. At Christmas ghosts sit down at out tables. Traditional Christmas cooking makes sure they are happy ones.

www.WebCookingClasses.com From his kitchen in Cary, North Carolina, Chef Todd Mohr reviews some of the necessary tools to have in your kitchen. Cooking meals and getting easy dinner ideas doesnt have to include a home cooking recipe or a gourmet recipe, it can be a cooking recipe that youve created yourself with basic cooking methods. Cooking Coarse focuses on basic cooking methods to empower the home cook to create simple cooking recipes to make everyday cooking more creative and enjoyable….

Perhaps you have eaten Mexican food in a top quality Mexican restaurant or even in a Mexican home. If you have, maybe some authentic Mexican cookware or utensils were used to make the dishes. Mexicans use a range of different cooking methods, including baking, slow roasting and deep-frying and they have unique pots and pans for these methods. Mexicans like to use plenty of fresh produce in their cuisine, including spices and herbs, so you will find sharp knives and a mortar and pestle in any Mexican kitchen.

Some Common Mexican Cooking Pots

Ollas, also known as Barros, are deep clay cooking pots. They are perfect for simmering beans, stew or soup and clay is a great medium for cookware because it distributes the heat evenly to avoid burnt spots. Barro means clay or mud and olla means pot. These cooking pots are fine to put over a direct flame all day long.

Clay can be sensitive to temperature changes so you need to warm it gently before using it to prevent it from cracking. One excellent reason for cooking in clay pots is that it gives the food a slightly earthy flavor.

Comals are used in Mexican cookery and these are big, round griddles made from cast iron, clay, or aluminum. Modern ones normally have a non-stick finish and they are used to roast chilies and warm tortillas.

A cazuela is used for simmering mole and other sauces. This is a large, round clay dish, which is between five and seven inches deep. The outside might be painted in bright colors and the inside is glazed. A cazuela has handles so you can put it over an open fire.

A tortillero is a Mexican tortilla press with two wooden discs or round plates. You put a ball of masa between the plates and press down to make a tortilla. These machines used to be wooden but are normally cast iron now. You can get cheap aluminum ones too but these break easily.

Popular Mexican Cooking Utensils

You will find a metate y mano in most Mexican kitchens. This concave dish is the size of a platter and made of stone or rock. It will have three short legs and sit on the table or three long legs so you can sit up to it on a chair. There is a big, round stone, which you roll on the surface to mix together or grind the ingredients.

A molcajete y tejolote is a mortar and pestle, which consists of a small stone, clay, or wooden bowl with an elongated cylinder or the same material, rounded on both ends. The end of the cylinder is used in a circular motion to grind the item in the bowl, to pulverize it.

The Mexicans love hot chocolate and they use a wooden whisk called a molinillo to make the top frothy. The molinillo is spun between the hands and some are plain but others are highly decorated. The molinillo is a small yet fascinating part of Mexican food culture. You can make Mexican food without having the equipment but using it can be fun and it looks good displayed in the kitchen.

While there are those who prefer to stick to traditional methods of cooking and traditional food, there are also classes of people who are always willing to experiment with new culinary delights! The French cuisine consists of traditional and regional dishes, as well as continental food flavored with the French ethnic touch. It is because of this that French food has become so popular in the rest of Europe, USA, for more help visit to: www.cheese-cake-recipes.com.and many other countries. This popularity has therefore led to the initiation of the French Cooking School USA.

The French Cooking School USA, an association of different schools, was inaugurated with the idea of imparting knowledge about French recipes and French delicacies to people wishing to qualify as professionals in the art of French cooking. Development of teaching skills is also a part of the program. In addition, the advancement of science and technology and schools under this association being placed at varied locations has ensured that distance poses no problem to learning.

Having earned the distinction of being the most exploratory international institution where the culinary arts and cooking are concerned, the French Cooking School USA uses varied cooking techniques unique to France and innovative recipes to provide an extraordinary learning experience for its students. The School is run by people thoroughly acquainted with French gourmet cooking as well as the essence of France’s culture. Is it any wonder then that superb masterpieces like Soufflés and Bisques have come from the French Cooking School USA?

Two of the more popular schools associated with the French Cooking School USA are the Cole Dijon Cooking School and the Cook Street School of Fine Cooking.

The Cole Dijon Cooking School conducts classes at Chef Drew Holladay Home. There are small groups of students who are scheduled to attend eight sessions of teaching. This school basically caters to cooking in the home. So people who wish to confine their culinary skills to their own homes or bring a change in their regular menus take admission here. Trained cooks demonstrate newer ways of cooking routine food to bring about variety.

The students at Cook Street School of Fine Cooking in Colorado learn specialized French cooking and how to prepare wine. Certificates are awarded at the end of the course. Though the fees demanded are quite affordable, the students get thorough training in the science of good eating. They can therefore opt for careers in culinary art. The course program imparts knowledge about the heritage of French cuisine, how a menu has to be prepared, knowledge about wines, and how an appetite for good food is to be developed.

Another school of mention associated with the French Cooking School USA, is the New School of Cooking. For more detail go to:www.cooking-groundbeef.com.An amateur takes admission and departs as a professional cook! There is the flexibility of taking up part-time, or full-time baking courses of one-year duration. Training is given by professional chefs. There is also the option of learning Italian and Asian cooking in addition to French cooking.

Thus, the French Cooking School USA provides an ideal atmosphere and learning experience for anyone desiring to master French cooking!