Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

I'm going to have twist your arm and insist you make this...it's so unbelievably full of flavor, it left me speechless.  That's pretty hard to do.  This also does not have to be spicy.  For the record, mine was not.  I only used 1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes.  The suggested amount is one teaspoon for spicy, but I knew that would leave the kids out, so I went easy. 

The trick to this dish is a 24 hour marinade.  It infuses the chicken, making it unbelievably flavorful, tender and juicy.  It's nothing less than incredible.  Honestly, when I tasted it, I wanted to use it as salad dressing. 

This is a great weeknight dish but it is by far company worthy.  It's sweet and spicy (if you choose it to be) and looks so beautiful.  Makes sure to serve it over rice or couscous so you can drizzle the sauce from the pan and catch all the wonderful flavors.

I’m not really a baker.  I make perfect oatmeal cookies (once every three years), perfect chocolate chip cookies (if really bored – Laraine Newman thinks the Joy of cooking recipe is the best, I just use the one on the back of the Nestle’s chocolate bits bag) The secret to chocolate chip cookies is fresh nuts, if you ask me, the quality of the pecans or the walnuts, changes the equation.  Sometimes, if I’m feeling really wild, I’ll make butterscotch chip cookies, same recipe, but butterscotch bits instead of chocolate and totally delicious.

I went through a phase where I made bread (when I was at boarding school in Vermont and there was a Country Store down the road that sold 100 varieties of flour from the grist mill down the road) so it was sort of hard to resist.  And we didn’t have a television, but we had a kitchen in our dorm with a sweet old Wedgwood stove and somehow, the smell of bread, and an occasional roast chicken, made it feel somewhat more like home.  But I can’t really find good flour any more and fresh baguettes abound.

I have a new friend I'd like you to meet. I've never had a friend like her before – she's fast and easy. So I was skeptical when my parents, of all people, insisted I would like her.

I don't like her, I love her. Readers meet Miss Cuisinart.

She is now my new best friend. Pie crusts are a snap thanks to her. She's also really neat; I no longer have to suffer sticky fingers and counter tops; she keeps everything to herself.

In full disclosure, our relationship was a bit bumpy at first. I wasn't sure when her dough needed more water or was ready to come out, and she wasn't forthright with me. So last time my mom visited, she conducted an intervention between Miss C. and me. Mom gave me suggestions such as how much water to add and how much to pulse. She did not give Miss C. any suggestions though; I guess I was the source of all our problems.

I don't know about you but I've got five extremely angry über chefs glaring at me from their cookbook bookflaps on my kitchen shelf and it's making me nervous:  England's Heston Blumenthal's "The Big Fat Duck Cookbook", Thomas Keller's "Under Pressure", Grant Achatz's "Alinea", and a couple of chefs from Spain – Ferran Adrià's  "El Bulli Volumes 2003-2004", and Joan Roca's "Sous Vide".  It sounded like a good idea at the time – assembling courtesy of Amazon.com the modern greats for a holiday feast using the latest sci-fi techniques of sous vide (cooking food in a vacuum packed pouch) – and then having at it. 

What these chefs failed to take into account – and the cause of their ire – was that I now see I don't possess any of the tools required to cook any of their recipes. They want to know why they are in my kitchen.  I don't have a Polyscience Minipack-torre Model MVS31 Vacuum Sealer ($2025.00), a 8306C Model Thermal Circulating Bath ($1799.00), or even a functional spatula.  I do have, however, from a previously deranged buying spree – The Smoking Gun™ ($79.00), which runs on 4 AA batteries and helps infuse dishes with a smoky flavor.  An excellent Christmas present for your foodie friends.  But I'm crushed to learn from their website that the gun is now being touted as "Excellent for finishing products that are cooked Sous Vide".  Back to the beginning.  I won't be dining in.