So, butter + flour + cream = Béchamel
Clarified butter + flour + stock = Veloute
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Back to school (3) __David Wong
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Category Archives: Cooking
Back to School (2)__David Wong
Our school motto is simple.
Kill with food beats kill with knife.
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Back to School (1)__David Wong
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Little facts about Herb__d
1. Thyme 
Thyme is supposed to have antiseptic properties. It is an antioxidant and would help reduce your waist-line. Its aid in digestion rumours extend to include curing stomach ulcers. With a slightly pungent, spicy, clove-like flavour, thyme is as easy to use as it is to grow. Thyme is a dry herb meaning it prefers to be dry between watering. It requires good drainage.
Theme can be used on all meats, vegetables, casseroles and soups. Keep in mind the herb has a strong flavour, so a little goes a long way. Continue reading
Easy Pesto Sauce__d
Risotto, Risotto, wherefore art thou Risotto?__d
There is really nothing new under the sun. A lot of culinary ideas are borrowed, copied or transferred from one country to the other.
long grain
short grain
Chinese people regard rice as their most important food. There are all different varieties of them. There
are the long grain rice and the short grain rice too.
The short grain rice is sometimes called gluttonous rice or sweet rice. It has this unique sticky feature when cooked and they are a lot softer than the long grain rice. It is almost similar to the Japanese sushi rice. Continue reading
Treasure Hunt – the Discovery
The Chinese Grocery store is a place well worth an adventure. The stores have so much variety and the qualities are generally satisfactory. Asian cooking does not have much taboo as Western cooking, especially North America. The living standard in Asian is high and people pay more respect to food. We eat almost anything. Things that run, fly, swim we devour. One type of food attracts the general admiration is the seafood and shellfish. Chinese grocery stores have particular sections built around the supply of seafood. Continue reading
The Pasta Cometh__d
The Pasta Cometh
Over the Christmas holidays I received a pasta machine as a gift. It is a simple device. It is manually operated and nothing more than 2 wheels with grooves. It was beautiful, shiny and elegantly sitting on the counter waiting to be explored. The little grooves on the dial of the machine look like little mouths that keep saying “Try me!” They are most certainly waiting for the wonderful dough which will be made into pasta.
Pasta had been around for a long time. Almost every nation has its own version of pasta. When we mention pasta, we only think of Italian, but when we say noodles, and then everybody understands it is the long strand, stringy, dough which can be cooked up with soup, sauce, baked and anything you can imagine. Continue reading
Home Cooking Made Simple – More Equipment
When you have the knives, you need the cutting board.
There are lots of designs for cutting boards on the market. The most common ones are the ones made of wood. There are treated bamboo ones, and there are ones made from resin or sanitized plastic. There are also disposable ones. Choose whatever material you desire but choose a fair size one. A workable size would be 24 x 18, and it should be 1 to 1.5” thick.
You do not need to be so elaborate to use the checker design but the little cells can serve as measurement when you are baking and measuring the dough or puff pastry. The measurement also comes in handy if you are carving a roast. You would know how many slices you can get out of the roast. A plain old fashion cutting board should be good enough. We choose the depth because we need the thickness to cushion chopping. Continue reading
Home Cooking Made Simple – Your Knives
Your mother never taught you this. Her mother never taught her either. The skill has always been passed down through practice and experience. Most people would spend a quarter of their life time preparing, watching and doing it. There had never been any written rules or records of how it is done. There had been no formal cook book or written manual either. Of course we are talking about cooking skills.
Sure you can explore and find recipes on websites, journal, books, videos, tapes and many other forms of media that gives you knowledge about what ingredients to use. The fact still remains this cooking skill problem is more complicated than it appears. Continue reading