Daily Loaf

You like to cook at home but you’re missing a little something to put you over the edge. You watch the Food Network, read cookbooks in bed, and wish that you had that little extra knowledge to make your cuisine a personal work of art. You admire chefs, and study your plate every time you sit in a restaurant. You wonder how they make it taste and look that way.

With my experience in the restaurant/fine catering business, and now teaching at the Art Institute of Tampa, I think I have acquired a sense of what amateur chefs really need to greatly improve their skills, almost instantly. Now, don’t get me wrong; it takes many years of experience to achieve a sense of artistic wholeness that some chefs have. However, there are a few tips that most people would enjoy knowing.

I’ve been teaching privately for a long time, and home chefs are always looking for the same advice. It’s my pleasure to give you the following 10 tips that will improve your cooking pretty much instantly. Guaranteed.

• FOCUS ON INGREDIENT QUALITY
  The biggest difference between an OK chef and a good chef is the quality of the ingredients. Food pretty much speaks for itself. Chefs are the translators between food and those who enjoy it. A good product, say a farm-raised pork belly paired with freshly-picked, organic vegetables is best just roasted and the veggies just flash sauteed. Salt & pepper. What else does it really need? My cooking is simple, or rather, it tries to be. Paradoxically, simple is hard to achieve. Look at Picasso or Cezanne or Matisse. So much simplicity in their work; yet so much mastery, control and experience. They pretty much spent a lifetime trying to achieve simplicity. Simplicity is the key. Focus on the best ingredients you can find. Focus on 3-4 main ingredients per dish. Focus on local, organic, artisan food made with love, care, and respect. Don’t overdo it. Let the wholesome goodness of natural ingredients speak for themselves.

• THINK TECHNIQUES
  Recipes won’t get you anywhere. Think techniques. What’s a technique? Roasting is one. So is  steaming or sauteing or braising. Do me a favor. Grab a technique book such as The Professional Chef or Jacques Pepin’s Complete Techniques. Learn 10 techniques. Then go grocery shopping for whatever you find (see first tip). Come back home. Think deeply about your ingredients. And apply some of the 10 techniques you’ve learn. No books; no recipes. Your inner creativity will reveal itself, and you’ll be much happier in the kitchen preparing what YOU like, not what a cookbook tells you to make.

• INVEST IN A GREAT SET OF KNIVES
  No way around it — you gotta have the tools. Get proper German or Japanese knives, whatever fits your fancy, but for god’s sake, don’t be afraid to spend the money. If you’re cash-limited, only buy 3 knives: a chef knife, a paring knife and a filet knife. For my Top 10 Chef Knives, take a look at my HotList (see column on the right-hand side).

• INVEST IN A SERIOUS CUTTING BOARD
  I don’t mean to make you spend your hard-earned money, but that’s also a prerequisite. A thick, butcher block cutting board is the way to go. And please, please, if you have one of those horrible glass cutting board, make a Tiffany lamp out of it and don’t ever bring it back in the kitchen.
  A proper cutting board will help you cut sharper, improve your precision and organization, and give you a sense of comfort that is much needed in the kitchen.

• GET A SKILLET
  See, it’s not all about spending money. A cast iron skillet is dirt cheap. Season it right or steal it from Grandma. I could cook a lifetime of dishes only using a well-seasoned skillet. It can sear beautifully, saute, roast, make casseroles, braise and more. The heat is spread beautifully all over the surface thanks to the conductibility of cast iron. It goes in the oven. A skillet is really all you need as far as pots and pans.

• LET MEAT REST
  This is an ultra-important tip for beginners/amateur home cooks. When you roast meat, say a pork tenderloin, make sure you let it rest 1/2 the time as it has cooked, before serving it. Did you roast it 16 minutes? Let it rest 8 minutes. Why? Because searing, roasting or grilling is extremely violent on the meat. It pushes all the juices inside the center and dries out all the fibers around the meat. If you serve it right away, the juices don’t have time to travel back from the inside out and irrigate all the fibers back. The result? A more tender piece of meat. Works with all meat and all cooking techniques, providing you don’t overcook it.

• Which brings me to my next tip: STOP OVERCOOKING!
  Look, I know you do it. I’ve seen you. Americans are so freaked out with diseases, sickness, tragedy and armageddon, that they think they will automatically get sick or die if they don’t kill their meat the second time around. Relax. If your ingredients are first-class, rare salmon is OK. Medium-rare pork is OK. Flash steamed asparagus are OK. Everything will look and taste much better and much livelier.

• OSMOSIS AND DIFFUSION
  That’s a big one too. This is where you learn if you should use cold or hot water to start your soup, or a cold or hot pan to sear your steak. Osmosis and diffusion are principles of physics. I didn’t make them up.

  Let’s translate osmosis and diffusion to the Culinary Arts. You need to know about the following  experiment. Let’s say that you take two identically-sized sauce pans, pour one gallon of water into both — make sure that one gallon is boiling, while the other one is cold. Now let’s say that you take two equally-sized onions, plunge one in the cold water, and the other in the boiling water. Finally,  cook them both for 30 minutes (the cold water pan will have to be brought to a boil, of course) and then taste both waters.

  Well, one water (the one we started cold) will have a strong taste of onion, while the other one (the one we started boiling) will have a taste of, well, plain water. That’s the principle of osmosis and diffusion in a nutshell.
  But think about that for a second. Actually, no! Think about that every time you cook something. If you want to make a rich minestrone soup with a flavorful vegetable broth, of course you’re going to start your soup with COLD water. But if you want to keep your asparagus bright, green, and flavorful, you’re going to start cooking them in HOT water.

  Wow. Cool tip, no? It also works with searing and grilling. Because we want our steak full of flavor, moist and crusty, we’ll start putting our steak on a HOT grill, as opposed to a cold one.

• PICTURE YOURSELF AT THE TABLE OF A VERY PRICEY RESTAURANT
  My students are great. But sometimes they ask me very stupid things. Like “Chef, is the salmon cooked?” or “Chef, should I serve the asparagus, it doesn’t look right?”

  I always tell them to picture themselves at the table of a very expensive, fine dining restaurant where you pay the big bucks for an outstanding culinary experience. The server brings you a plate of cold,  undercooked salmon and brown, sloppy, grossly overcooked asparagus. Are you happy? Are you liking your “outstanding culinary experience”? Or do you want to go Gordon Ramsay on the server? Exactly. You’re not happy. Then put yourself back into chef form, cook your salmon a little more and get another batch of asparagus in the steamer. And this time, don’t overcook them!

• COOK WITH WINE MORE OFTEN
  I don’t mean in the food, I mean wine in your system. Look, cooking is supposed to be fun, lively, personal but convivial and altruistic, too. Cooking is a cultural experience. People have cooked for thousands of years. It’s necessary, but it can also be really, really fun. So pour yourself a glass of good wine, put some music on, relax, and take your time to have fun in the kitchen. Don’t stress yourself. Don’t overextend yourself. Don’t plan more things than you can actually do. Make it simple and fun. Not stressful and worrisome.

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