17 Cooking Tips Our Food Staff Swears By - The New York Times

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17 Cooking Tips Our Food Staff Swears By - The New York Times

17 Cooking Tips Our Food Staff Swears By - The New York Times

Posted: 28 Jan 2021 12:33 PM PST

If a baking recipe specifies room-temperature ingredients, there is a reason: Chemistry! The temperature of your ingredients plays a very big role in the final outcome. I, for one, rarely have the forethought to take my ingredients out of the fridge ahead of time. An easy way to bring your eggs up to temperature is to fill a bowl with lukewarm water and submerge the eggs for about 1 or 2 minutes. VAUGHN VREELAND

When I'm cooking, I keep one large bowl for food scraps nearby. It keeps the prep cleaner and eliminates a back and forth to the trash or compost. KIM GOUGENHEIM

Chopsticks are among the most versatile tools in the kitchen. They're great for turning greens to coat evenly with salad dressing, tossing noodles or pasta with sauce, plucking deep-fried treats out of oil or boiled dumplings out of water, beating eggs for scrambles or omelets, and flipping roasted vegetables on a sheet pan. With baking, they fill the tool gap between whisk and wooden spoon, incorporating wet ingredients into dry without over- or undermixing. GENEVIEVE KO

I wish I could remember who taught me to start garlic in cold oil. Whenever my first step is to fry garlic, I put the garlic and oil into a cold pan and then turn on the heat, so the fry is gentle, slow and even. The garlic and oil heat up together, so the garlic doesn't immediately singe on the edges because the oil got too hot, or start to color too quickly. TEJAL RAO

Always keep a few dish towels on hand, neatly folded, to wipe down the stove as you cook, to help clean off cutting boards, to dry knives you've washed after cutting the chicken, before slicing the ginger. SAM SIFTON

Always place a dish towel under your cutting board. It'll keep the board from slipping as you chop or cut. KRYSTEN CHAMBROT

Store a pizza stone on the bottom rack of your oven. The hot stone works as a buffer between the oven's heat source and the food, which helps regulate the temperature of a fussy or uneven oven. It also helps the oven return to temperature faster when you open and close the door. SCOTT LOITSCH

What We're Cooking This Weekend: Black Pepper Tofu - The Beet

Posted: 28 Jan 2021 08:06 AM PST

This Black Pepper Tofu can be whipped up in 30 minutes making it the perfect last-minute meal that's packed with protein. Because this recipe is so simple to make, it's easy to cook in large batches, making it a great recipe to meal prep for the week. Serve it with rice and a side of your favorite veggies to complete this nutrient-dense dish.

If you are looking to take this recipe up a level, try freezing and thawing out your tofu beforehand. This method gives your tofu a little bit more chew, making it "meatier" and a lot more satisfying to eat. If you do choose to freeze and thaw your tofu, be sure to squeeze out the excess water before cooking it. However, if you are just looking for a last-minute recipe, regular extra-firm tofu will still work great.

Prep Time: 5 Min

Cook Time: 15 Min

Total Time: 20 Min

Black Pepper Tofu

Serves 4

Ingredients

  • 400g Extra Firm Tofu
  • ⅓ Cup Veggie Broth
  • 2 Tbsp Tamari
  • 1 Tbsp Maple Syrup
  • 3 Cloves Garlic, minced
  • 1 Tbsp Rice Vinegar
  • 2 Tsp Black Pepper
  • 1 Tsp Paprika
  • 1 Tsp Sriracha
  • ½ Tsp Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Cornstarch

Instructions

  1. Cut your tofu into pieces. It doesn't really matter what shape it is, but cut it to be about ½" thick. In a bowl, whisk in the rest of the ingredients until well combined. Set aside.
  2. Heat up about 1 Tbsp of oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add your tofu to the pan and cook your tofu for about 5 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Turn the heat down to medium-low and stir in your sauce mixture, it will thicken up quite quickly. Stir until each tofu piece is coated.
  3. Cook your tofu an additional 1-2 minutes on each side until the sauce caramelizes onto the tofu. Remove from the heat, and serve with rice and your favorite veggies. Garnish with sesame seeds and enjoy!

In Praise of Aunties: The Ultimate Home Cooks - Food & Wine

Posted: 28 Jan 2021 12:43 PM PST

The auntie is a universal concept shared by many cultures around the globe. She can be someone you're related to—even, though not necessarily, your actual aunt—or she might be a family friend, or a member of your community. Whoever she is, she is the keeper of tradition—and the good gossip. And she is the consummate home cook. Your auntie doesn't need fancy techniques or ingredients. The food she makes feeds both your appetite and your soul. Here, we gather the recipes of some of our favorite aunties across the country: a Thai rice porridge that will soothe you, an Armenian dessert that has survived war and genocide, a Korean fried chicken that will remind you to celebrate life, an Indian dish of chickpeas and fried bread that is always a crowd-pleaser, and a Southern seafood mac and cheese that will lift your spirits. We gathered their stories, too, so you can get to know the incredible aunties who make our lives better—and more delicious. They'll do that for you, too.

As a child, I would boldly declare that I would not eat something if it did not taste "like my mom's." I was spoiled for choice growing up and lucky to have a mother who is ferociously talented in the kitchen. There was only one other house, besides my own, where I would happily eat without comment: Hina Auntie's. It didn't matter what she put in front of me. I would drain bowls of steaming dal brightened with a pinch of sugar; pillage stacks of crispy, salty Indian snacks she spent hours frying; and try not to burn my tongue while scarfing down a tray of piping hot enchiladas she would make to appease our endless demands for Mexican food. It was as simple as this: If Hina Auntie made it, I would eat it.

Hina Auntie, full name Hina Mody, is my mom's best friend. She is the person whom I first trusted to thread my eyebrows, and her two kids feel more like cousins than family friends. Perhaps Hina Auntie has always had a special place in my life because she shares a first name with my mom—and several matching outfits. The two Hinas, as I like to refer to them, are especially adept in the kitchen when it comes to the cuisine of Gujarat, the state in western India they both hail from.

It was at the young age of seven that Hina Auntie learned to cook. She didn't really have a choice: Her mother was ill, and as the eldest of three children, she had to figure out how to feed the family. "There weren't many restaurants or other options at the time," Hina Auntie tells me while sitting at her dining table in suburban Michigan. "I had to cook." She would whip up pots of lentils, beans, vegetables, and rice before going to school each day, picking up her skills not from a cookbook but by observation. She turned out to be a natural and has been cooking for people ever since. —Khushbu Shah

As a young woman, Roberta Kochakian knew that if she wanted to preserve Armenian recipes that had been passed down orally for generations, she needed to do what many often neglect to: ask a lot of questions and write down detailed directions. That foresight cemented her role as a rare chronicler of familial culinary heritage, a documentarian of a cuisine with a timeline cut short, derailed, and fused together again due to transformative events like genocide, forced migration, and war.

Roberta wanted to know things like exactly which side of the leaf the filling should be wrapped in for proper yalanchi, or stuffed grape leaves; how many ounces the demitasse used to pour olive oil in the pot actually held; the exact proportions for the spice mix known as chemen, a carefully guarded recipe used in the making of basturma, an air-dried cured beef her family had perfected over generations before arriving in the United States.

"Nobody knows how to do this," she recalls thinking. "Even if I never make it in my life, at least I'll have it written down." But as it turns out, the opposite happened. A lifelong cook, she hasn't been able to stop making the dishes she wrote down. —Liana Aghajanian

I realized at a very young age that my Auntie Monica was the coolest person ever. She's the baby out of five siblings, coming in right after my momma. She is a Gemini, just like my momma. I have always been in love with and in awe of the women in my family. They're headstrong, hilarious, and fierce, and Auntie Monica is no exception.

Auntie Monica marches to the beat of her own drum. She was one of the reasons I could embrace being different, too. I have never known her to shrink herself or compromise her beliefs. That may have gotten her into some tough spots, but it has made her the unapologetic woman she is today. She was stationed in South Carolina working as a drill instructor training recruits for the United States Marine Corps when I was growing up, and I had a hard time imagining my barely 5-foot auntie marching and shouting at these folks who often towered over her.

I don't have any older sisters, but growing up, Auntie Monica filled that role. She spoiled me, took me shopping, and bought me things my mom would never let me get. She is also one of my biggest cheerleaders. Regardless of my goals and aspirations, she is never lacking in support. Honestly, in her eyes I can do no wrong. With every tattoo, every move to a new city, and a brief stint with the United States Air Force, she was there with unwavering love and encouragement. I'm always starstruck by her, even now.

Like me, she picked up her cooking skills later in life. It was after high school that Auntie Monica moved to Parris Island for the Marine Corps. It wasn't until she had her first duty station that she started calling home to my grandma for recipes like her famous pork chops. —Kia Damon

In 1974, Georgia Yi, a nursing major at Korea University, brought dakgangjeong, or fried chicken, that she bought at a restaurant to her boyfriend every other Sunday on her day off from the hospital. My dad's cousin Kyeongsuk Song, who was serving his compulsory military service in South Korea, loved fried chicken and looked forward to Georgia's visits to his army camp. He could eat a whole bird in one sitting and loved alternating between bites of crispy chicken and sweet-and-sour pickled radishes. The combination, to this day, makes his mouth water. It's also one of the many reasons he proposed to Georgia six years later.

A few months after Georgia and Kyeongsuk got married, they immigrated to Atlanta, where they had two daughters, Sehee and Semi. For both daughters' first birthdays, or doljanchi—a traditional milestone often celebrated with a huge party to commemorate the health of the child—Georgia made her signature dakgangjeong.

Many people probably think of the spicy gochujang-based sauce when they hear "Korean fried chicken," but there are other variations of the dish equally popular in Korea. The version my Aunt Georgia makes—and the one that's beloved in our family and in many social circles around Atlanta—has a garlicky, soy sauce–based glaze and is served in large aluminum foil trays to be eaten buffet-style at various family functions, including parties, church events, and funerals. —Eric Kim

Growning up I was lucky that my best friend's mom also happened to be my mom's best friend. I met Pichy when I was 5 at Wat Thai of Los Angeles, a temple and Thai school where kids came to learn the Thai alphabet, traditional dancing, and how to meditate. Both my mom and Pichy's mom, Oranij Promsatit—whom I lovingly refer to as Kru Nid, which translates to "teacher Nid," her nickname—were volunteer instructors who wrangled unruly Thai-American youths each weekend.

You have to have grit, perseverance, and a love of teaching when it comes to imbuing young Thai Americans with the importance of their language and culture. Kru Nid, who emigrated from Thailand when Pichy was only 5, has all of these qualities and more. Though strict in the classroom—she gave me plenty of tough love when I neglected my Thai homework or disrupted class with my antics—Kru Nid also has an infectious laugh, a zest for adventure, and a hidden gentleness that makes her a wonderful teacher both in and out of the classroom.

Having my best friend's mom also be my mom's best friend made asking for playdates and sleepovers a lot easier. As a quartet, the four of us would spend days in Santa Monica, where Pichy and I swam in the Pacific Ocean and rode the boardwalk roller coaster. We took turns having slumber parties: At my house, we'd splash in the pool and go on bike rides around the neighborhood; at Pichy's place in the Valley, we'd hunch over her laptop playing games or give her oversize beagle, Lucky, a bath (and generally annoy him). And when we weren't engaging in shenanigans, we were stuffing our faces with Thai food. —Kat Thompson

Ella Risbridger, the ‘new Nigella Lawson’, on cooking as a lifeline - Financial Times

Posted: 28 Jan 2021 09:00 PM PST

Ella Risbridger does not like to cook for herself. "It's a very weird time to be a cookery writer," says the 27-year-old author over Zoom from her flat in London. "I normally cook for other people. There are usually people popping in and out all the time."

But 2020 was not, on the whole, a year for feeding friends and trying out new recipes on a grateful crowd. Risbridger has largely been cooking for her flatmate or eating toast alone. 

What she really wants, she says, is "to go to a lot of expensive restaurants and have people bring me a lot of little expensive plates of things. Or just to go to someone else's house or dinner." 

Still, audience or no audience, cooking has long been a salve for Risbridger, a way through the darkness of anxiety and depression in her early twenties. Throughout that period, she was taught to cook by "the Tall Man", as she refers to her then partner, the writer John Underwood, who died of cancer in 2018, aged 28. She learnt to embrace it as a way of "being useful".

After Underwood's diagnosis, cooking and writing about food became a lifeline. She cooked for them both, and wrote at his bedside in hospital and in a church across the road. 

When Underwood died, Risbridger was just 25. In 2019, her first book — the fruits of that terrible time — Midnight Chicken (& other recipes worth living for) was published. A genre-bending foodie memoir, it is both a beautiful book to cook from, with a wide range of soul-soothing recipes, and one to curl up with in bed. 

It was an instant hit. Risbridger has a magpie mind, collecting snippets of information and inspiration to create dishes as disparate as "Weekend Oatcakes" and an Ottolenghi-esque "Fig, Fennel, Freekeh and Cauliflower". Most of the focus is on savoury dishes and she begins a short dessert section with: "Let me start this chapter with a confession: I don't really make a lot of sweet stuff." Still, there is a decent selection of snacky puddings, from "Whisky & Rye Blondies" to "Paris Cookies". The recipe for the latter went viral last year and is now nicknamed "Lockdown Cookies". 

Recipes are prefaced with engaging entries on how and why a particular dish has saved her and when you should cook and eat it. The book begins dramatically with the eponymous midnight chicken, a recipe that helped Risbridger during an acute depressive episode.

"It was dark outside, and I was lying on the hall floor, looking at the chicken through the door . . . And wondering if I was ever going to get up . . . Eventually the Tall Man came home, and he helped me up. 'Come on,' he said, and we went into the kitchen together, and I made this, late at night."

Yet there is also light to counter the darkness, a host of colourful characters and plenty of twentysomething chatter. "I met a girl at a party, and she gave me a pirate pop-gun, and a recipe for bagels, and then she was deported. All of this is true. This is her bagel recipe: she lives in Paris now." Recipes are often presented as a balm, a way to brighten one's day — "Uplifting Chilli and Lemon Spaghetti", "Glumday Porridge" — or for specific occasions: "First Night Fish Finger Sandwiches", for that tricky starter evening in a new home, "Saturday Afternoon Charred Leek Lasagne".

But such playfulness conceals a rigorous approach to recipe development and testing. She tells me that on average she tested the book's recipes four or five times before they made the cut.

Food wasn't a passion for Risbridger as a child, growing up in a village in the English Midlands — she was more of a bookworm, going on to study comparative literature at King's College London. "My mum was an 'I have four children to feed and a job and I will get dinner on the table' sort of cook", while her father liked to be left alone to immerse himself in complicated recipes.

She had a peripatetic teenagehood, moving to Dubai at 15 for her father's work, and later taking a job in Paris as a nanny. At 19, she landed in London. "I will never be an authentic cook for any region," she says. "I didn't learn a cuisine at anybody's knee." In Dubai, she went to an international school and ate everything from burgers to Lebanese cheese bread. In Paris, she subsisted mainly on baguettes and Nutella, but she also tried Vietnamese food and sushi, which she considered the height of sophistication.

Risbridger's easy expressiveness about cooking for her various states of mind reminds me of another debut cookery book — Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. Indeed, she has been called "The New Nigella", an enviable moniker for any young food writer, and has been praised by Lawson herself. "It's a cookbook, but it is also a manual for living and a declaration of hope," is a Lawson quote on the front of her paperback. 

Ella Risbridger earlier this month in Ladywell Fields, south London. 'I very rarely cook from somebody else's recipe,' she says. 'It's a following-rules thing'
'I very rarely cook from somebody else's recipe — it's a following-rules thing' © Adama Jalloh

There are similarities between the two women beyond their approach to food writing. Both lost partners called John at a young age from "weird cancers", as Risbridger puts it, and both wrote and cooked their way — often late at night — through their partners' illnesses, producing bestselling debut books, almost exactly 20 years apart. 

She is astonished by how Lawson has taken her under her wing. On speaking at a joint event last year she says: "I was very nervous when I met her, as 'New Nigella' suggests she is going somewhere. Which is wrong, as she is the absolute queen." 

Aside from Lawson's Guinness cake recipe, which she says "she follows to the letter", Risbridger describes herself as an experimental cook who starts with an ingredient and then googles what to do with it. "I very rarely cook from somebody else's recipe — it's a following-rules thing," she says, laughing. 

Today, Risbridger lives in the south London borough of Lewisham: "Within 20 minutes of my house there are supermarkets catering to a dozen different cultures . . . I can pick up one thing and something from somewhere else and wonder if they go together."

Life as an established food writer in a vibrant, cosmopolitan city means she can afford to experiment with ingredients. But she also feels a sense of responsibility towards readers who might not be so well off or may live miles away from a Turkish grocer: "You kind of have to cross-examine yourself — are people actually going to buy this ingredient? Are these ingredients accessible to my grandparents in Staffordshire?"

She is also mindful, she says, of other people's finances: "Every recipe in the world is on the internet. So, you have to think, what makes my book important and worth people's money? Some people's cookbooks — people who have never cooked domestically — have recipes that require five egg yolks. What are you supposed to do with the whites?" 

I ask what recipe she is working on right now. "Something with condensed milk and coffee," she says without hesitation. "I'm going to try muffins. I'm thinking a banana could add something . . ." Could a new cookbook be in the works? Not exactly, she tells me. Since the success of Midnight Chicken, she has released an anthology of poetry and is working on some children's literature. 

What would Risbridger prescribe for the mood in Britain this winter? Quick as a flash, she replies: "I think the best January recipe I know is Chao xa ga, a Vietnamese rice porridge. It is like a Thai risotto with lime and coriander so it feels bright and springy and like we are going somewhere. It has that very rare combination of comfort and going forward. We are going forward and we are going to be fine."

(Not quite) Chao xa ga 

Serves 2 

  1. Combine your coconut milk, chicken stock and fish sauce in a saucepan and stir to dissolve any lumps. Add the ginger, garlic, sugar and pepper. Stir again. If using fresh lemongrass, chop it into the pan with scissors; if using dried, add the stalks whole. Bring the broth to a gentle simmer over the lowest-possible heat while you zest and juice your limes. Reserve a pinch of lime zest, then add the rest to the broth, along with the juice. Inhale deeply. Feel better. 

  2. Tip the kale and coriander into a colander and rinse them vigorously (both are horribly good at hiding grit). Use scissors to chop them as finely as you can manage, then set to one side. Rinse and slice the spring onions, then add most to the broth, reserving a few green shreds for garnish. Rinse, slice and deseed the chillis and do the same.

  3. This should take about 10 minutes, and by this time the house will smell beautiful and bright and green. Rinse the rice, then tip it into the broth. Cover the pan and cook for 18 minutes, stirring a couple of times to break up any clumps. 

  4. Taste: the rice should be soft and sticky, with broth bubbling all around and over it. Stir through the kale and coriander and cook for two minutes more. Finally, add the prawns and cook for another two minutes.

  5. Decant into bowls: a mound of rice, studded with pink prawns and flecks of vivid green, surrounded by a moat of richly scented broth. Scatter with the reserved lime zest, loops of red chilli and hoops of green onion. Serve.

From 'Midnight Chicken (& other recipes worth living for)', published by Bloomsbury and available now in paperback, £9.99

Rebecca Rose is editor of FT Globetrotter

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