Sunday, August 26, 2007

Cooking With a Dutch Oven

I have baked delicious one dish meals such as stew and soups in a Dutch Oven that have turned out perfect especially when out in the outdoors. Other meals and snacks that can be made are pizza, rolls, and cakes. Meat is another savory meal that can be cooked to perfection in a Dutch Oven.

There are a few things concerning the cooking source that are important to fruitful Dutch oven cooking. They can cause the difference between undercooked or burnt food. When I am near cooking a meat dish such as ribs, chicken or roast, I like to brown the meat in the Dutch oven on a camp stove. The delcious flavor from the browned meat is in the Dutch oven and makes the finished product tasty. Another thing it does is this gets the Dutch oven hot so when it is placed on the coals, they sustain the heat and energy so it isn't lost trying to heat the Dutch oven up http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/The-Skinny-on-Skinless-Chicken-Breasts-Italian-Recipe.htm.

The heat for the Dutch oven has to be just right. To take a line from the three bears, it must be, "just right." This might seem hard to determine, but if you are using charcoal briquettes it is no harder than counting the number of briquettes to put under and on top of the Dutch oven.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Hot Gourmet Coffee

To fully appreciate a cup of hot gourmet coffee, you should take a minute to familiarize yourself with the basics of gourmet coffee. The coffee bean is not really a bean; they are actually the seeds of a cherry that are found on a coffee tree. There are a couple of different ways to extract the seed; wet process and dry process, http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/Broiled-Portobello-Mushrooms.htm.

Each process will bring about the shared result of removing all of the fruit from the seed.There are two grades of coffee: Robusta and Arabica. The Robusta makes up the coffee that contains the most caffeine, at the lowest price. Arabica (a.k.a. gourmet) coffee is the superior grade. It has half the caffeine of Robusta and has a more desirable taste.

Those that enjoy this type of coffee will also tell you that gourmet coffee has a much better smell and more desirable flavors than Robusta.Gourmet coffee is available in many of your favorite flavors, including: almond, amaretto, Irish cr�me, French vanilla, Swiss mocha, vanilla, chocolate, mint, peppermint, pumpkin spice and just about anything else you can imagine! Basically, if there is any flavor that you are partial to, you will be able to find.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Cooking Prime Rib On The Grill

You need a lot of charcoal for cooking prime rib on the grill. The cooking time is about two hours so you need about 8 pounds of good quality charcoal. Fire up the charcoal and wait until the flames die down and the charcoal is giving off a good heat.

When cooking prime rib on the grill, you don't want the meat to be directly over the hot coals. Move them over to one side of the grill so that you can place the roast on the other side. Before putting the meat on the barbecue, rub the exterior with a mixture of coarse salt, pepper and herbs. http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links4.htm

You can use either bone on or bone off when cooking roast prime rib on the grill. You can ask the butcher to remove the bones and then tie them back onto the meat. This gives you the best of both worlds -- easy carving and great tasting ribs.

Place the meat on the grill and cover it tightly. If the cover has vents, you want to close them as well. Check the grill from time to time to make sure it has enough heat to for cooking roast prime rib on the grill. If it cools off, you can open the events to let the flames build up again.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Serious Pasta Lover

First of all, allow me a short digression. To a serious pasta lover the name "noodles" is plain simply dreadful. Noodles is a very good name for Chinese pasta, or Japanese, or Thai, or any other nationality pasta, but not for Italian pasta. Calling Italian pasta "noodles" would be like calling American baseball or English cricket something like "Stickball".

That is just sad. Yes, pasta is easy to cook, *if* you have the right ingredients, *if* you know the right way of preparing it, and, above all, if you have the right attitude. "What is this?" - I hear some of you gasp - "I now have to be like a zen archer or a samurai warrior just to prepare a bowl of noodles?" Let's proceed in order, one secret to the next (by the way, didn't we agree never to call pasta noodles again?). http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links2.htm

If you feel your guest swooning in delight over your steaming pasta is a good thing, you have to take cooking seriously. Cooking, and especially cooking pasta, is an act of love and self-sacrifice. It requires your personal energy, your prana, your inner and outer purity, and your uninterrupted concentration. Without these elements, cooking is not cooking anymore, but just cold, mechanical, heartless food preparation. Would you feed such food to your dog?

Serious Pasta Lover

First of all, allow me a short digression. To a serious pasta lover the name "noodles" is plain simply dreadful. Noodles is a very good name for Chinese pasta, or Japanese, or Thai, or any other nationality pasta, but not for Italian pasta. Calling Italian pasta "noodles" would be like calling American baseball or English cricket something like "Stickball".

That is just sad. Yes, pasta is easy to cook, *if* you have the right ingredients, *if* you know the right way of preparing it, and, above all, if you have the right attitude. "What is this?" - I hear some of you gasp - "I now have to be like a zen archer or a samurai warrior just to prepare a bowl of noodles?" Let's proceed in order, one secret to the next (by the way, didn't we agree never to call pasta noodles again?). http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links2.htm

If you feel your guest swooning in delight over your steaming pasta is a good thing, you have to take cooking seriously. Cooking, and especially cooking pasta, is an act of love and self-sacrifice. It requires your personal energy, your prana, your inner and outer purity, and your uninterrupted concentration. Without these elements, cooking is not cooking anymore, but just cold, mechanical, heartless food preparation. Would you feed such food to your dog?

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Attend Cooking Classes

You have a variety of places to choose from to attend cooking classes. You might start at a popular spot, a nearby community center that offers classes or workshops. Your local restaurants, also may have classes. or can suggest a good cooking school. You also can try learning from a family member or friend. There may be a lot of fantastic cooks in your immediate circle of friends and relatives. Your final choice in classes will depend on what you wish to accomplish with your cooking.

How do you choose a type of class? One place to start is with what you love to eat. Your favorite restaurant may offer classes by the chef. Or, if Aunt Mary always has made the most delicious salads, ask her if she might spend an afternoon with you, to show you how she makes them. Often, you will find people that love to cook and produce great dishes, will be glad to share their cooking methods.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Basic Methods For Cooking Prime Rib Roasts

There are two basic methods for cooking prime rib roasts -- high temperature and low temperature. Each method has its advantages and there are people who swear by a one cooking process or the other. Prime rib cooking times are mostly determined by whether you are cooking the meat at high temperatures or low temperatures, Italian food cuisine noble bean.

Some people love the slow cooking methods that is used in smoker barbecues. It can't be denied that smoking brings out wonderful flavors in the prime rib and produces some of the juiciest roasts imaginable. The low temperature of smoker barbecues means that prime rib cooking times can be extended to five or six hours.

On the other hand, there are those who swear by cooking the prime rib in a hot oven. This method reduces prime rib cooking times to the minimum while searing the exterior of the meat so that it contains the juices. When placed in a 500° oven, a 12 pound roast will cook in less than an hour.

This fast cooking method, however, depends on the roast staying in the warm oven for at least one more hour after the heat is turned off. During this time, the meat is still cooking, so you could say that this method requires prime rib cooking times of three hours.
No matter which way you cook the meat, you have to check the interior temperature to make sure that it is cooked all the way through. A good-quality meat thermometer will tell you the temperature of the roast and you might have to extend the prime rib cooking times by an hour or two.

http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/sitemap.htm

Barbeque Cook Book

There are some people that take this VERY seriously, and use all sorts of recipes and techniques, but I am going to give you the BASICS and you can build from there. Whether its barbeque cooking fish, steaks, sausages or chicken - there are some basic principals to follow to ensure your barbeque turns out a treat! http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/italian-food-articles.htm

So put away that barbeque cook book for now and read on...
1. Buy Choice Cuts of Meat - If it's cheap and as tough as shoe leather, barbequing it isn't going to help matters! If you can't afford good cuts of meat, marinating it is a good choice.

2. Heat Your Hotplate Well! - Before whacking anything on the plate, you want it heated nicely so that the meat fries as soon at it hits the plate and doesn't just stew away. Once your plate is heated nicely, turn the burners down to medium heat.

3. Leave Your Meat Be! - Once it's on the plate, leave it to cook one side at a time. If you continually turn it, meat has a tendency to dry out. You can have a look under it to make sure it's not burning, but flip it only once. When do you flip it? Watch the "gray" colour rise up the side of the meat. Once it is about a third to half way up the side, turn her over. The exception to this is sausages, they benefit from plenty of turning..

Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Foundation For Innovation in Medicine

The term nutraceutical was coined by the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine in 1991 as “any substance that may be considered a food or part of a food and provides medical or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease.” http://www.italianfood-recipes.com

Glyconutrients fall within this definition. Glyconutrients are a class of new technological breakthroughs in the nutritional industry. Briefly, it is believed that the sugar strands attached to proteins and lipids in our body require 8 out of 200 known carbohydrates in nature, to enable the cells of our body to have the right structure to communicate with each other. Improper structure equals improper function. http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/sitemap.htm

It’s as simple as that.

Some of my colleagues in the medical profession would argue we get all the glyconutrients we need in our diet. WHO ARE YOU KIDDING? From green harvested fruits and vegetables? Grown in nutrient deficient soil? Using fertilizers and pesticides and being fed dirty water and breathing polluted air? Yes the liver is able to manufacture glyconutrients however it requires up to 32 or so enzymatic reactions and that is dependent on what? An ample diet of fresh fruits and vegetables! Glyconutrients are a food supplement and as such are not meant to cure, treat, or mitigate any disease or condition. Yet science has established in the literature that there is a direct link to poor nutrition and many disease conditions.

http://www.italianfood-recipes.com/links.htm

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

The Arrangement of Your Kitchen

The arrangement of your kitchen, as well as the tools you use, make all the difference. Don't give up on trying to expand your skills and abilities. Try these suggestions to make gourmet cooking well within your time constraints. You might have heard the old adage, "a place for everything and everything in its place." This is a great time saving practice. Put the same things in the same place in your kitchen and work area.

You will not waste time trying to find things and get frustrated. Tools and items that are frequently used should be placed accessible and easy to get. The bowl or platter you only use at Thanksgiving can be placed in the basement or in the back of the cupboard. It is also worth noting that you won't know if something works until you try it and you might make changes as time goes by. Don't be afraid to reorganize or adjust, Italian Partners, Italian more partners.

The smell of bread baking alone is enough to make the senses ripple with pleasure. Don't deny your home of the enticing aromas of fresh baked goods that relax and invigorate the soul because you think they take too long. If you are among the population that think making homemade bread is a horribly long process that you do not have time for, invest in a mixer, it does all the work! While the ingredients combine you can spend your time checking a recipe, loading the dishwasher, or making a call. When choosing a mixer consider the quart size capacity of the bowl and wattage of the Food mixer.

This is important because a smaller, less powerful machine will not be able to handle some quantity of ingredients. More time will be spent mixing by hand and cleaning up than if you would have done it without the machine to start with. Another important thing to note about a free standing mixer is their ability to do so many different tasks. Whipping, whisking, blending, and kneading, can all be done without you participating at all. Not only does this save time, but it also saves effort, freeing up up energy for other aspects of preparation.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

BBQ Chicken and Corn

BBQ Chicken and Corn on the CobOf course there’s nothing better than grilled corn on the cob but what meat does it go best with? When grilling outdoors at your favorite picnic site, pairing finger foods like barbecue chicken and grilled corn on the cob is enough to make your mouth water. Add a quick side of lite coleslaw and you have the perfect healthy menu, Italian food recipes chicken fried rice.

Perfectly grilled corn on the cob is easy. Simply place 4 ears of corn, shucked, onto a large piece of foil. Place two ice cubes and two tablespoons of butter on the corn and wrap tightly. Grill for 15-20 minutes; remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes. Carefully unwrap and enjoy, Italian food recipes vegetarian ratatouille.

NY Strip Steak, Summer Squash, and Sweet PeppersLooking for a more hearty and quick menu? Try kebobs. They can be prepared in advance and make picnic grilling easy. Mix your favorite red, green, and yellow peppers with a seasonal squash like zucchini. Add mushrooms, onion wedges, and 2-inch chunks of tenderloin or NY Strip steak. Arrange veggies and meat on kebobs and marinate in your favorite Italian dressing for 2-3 hours. Remove from marinade and grill until meat has reached desired temperature, Italian food chicken breasts with Hazel Nuts.