Chef Foundation

Archive for June, 2011

Are you someone that enjoys cooking and does it as much as possible? Yet, do you actually like cooking in your kitchen? Typically, cooking areas are not organized for frequent cooking. For example, the cutting board is not near the stove, but far from it on a separate counter top. Then again, you might have a small kitchen that you have a hard time maneuvering in. In order to cook well, you must have more then the skills to do the mechanics of food preparation. You also require a kitchen that is convenient and efficiently organized.

What Is Great In Your Kitchen?

Can you easily cook in your kitchen? The odds are that you enjoy cooking if your kitchen is roomy and large. But small kitchens are usually short on room and uncomfortable. In either case, if it is not set up properly, chances are you feel frustrated. To get a properly set up kitchen started, first consider what you like and dislike about your kitchen. By writing down your list of pros and cons, you will have a reference to plan around, while you are looking for alternatives.

Find Storage Space

One thing that is essential in order to make a kitchen nice to work in is having enough storage. You will want to think about a spot to put all of your food plus the kitchen utensils. Those folks that have small kitchens can find this a real obstacle. Yet, extra storage space can appear where you least expect it to. Why not start on the wall with a shelf, hang a rack underneath the counter tops, or maybe put some hooks on the back of doors? You can always get help by taking a quick trip to a kitchen store or by hiring a kitchen design expert to help you choose the best type of items.

Copy Pictures In Magazines

There are a ton of cooking and home decorating magazines that often highlight the kitchens with pictures of the most effective kitchens. You can easily figure out what suits you the best by closely examining several of these pictures. What can you take and apply to your own cooking space? Since decorators are the people that designed these kitchens, their examples should provide you with a lot of great ideas.

Add Some Of Your Favorite Color

By just adding a bit of color will often help you to find inspiration in your cooking space. It is well worth it to spend time decorating and produce a kitchen that reflects your own personal style. It will be a pleasant surprise, when you cook, how this flair will infuse itself into your cooking and the atmosphere of the kitchen. You and others may end up spending more time cooking or just sitting and enjoying your decor.

To get more tips on setting up an easy kitchen and on cooking simply visit the Internet to pick up your copy of a complete ebook covering everything you ever wanted to know about cooking, but never dared to ask.

This tasty beef, pork, or veal German sausage is usually spiced with flavors like ginger, nutmeg, or pepper. It is delicious with sauerkraut and mustard in a bread roll. You can get raw or cooked bratwurst but buying them raw and cooking them results in a superior tasting dish.

One of the best ways to cool brats is to boil them in beer and then grill them. You can use water instead of the beer if you prefer. You will need a couple of bottles of beer and a chopped onion.

Bring the onions and beer to a boil in a big pot, then add the sausage and keep cooking it until it is cooked through. Add more beer to the pot if necessary. Drain the beer and grill the sausages and grill them for five minutes on each side until they are golden brown all over. Serve them with onions and mustard in buns.

You can pan fry the brats in a skillet if you do not have a grill or if the weather is not good. If you do this, you will need to keep turning them over in the skillet so they form a nice crust.

If you grill them, they will have grill marks as well as the tasty crust but pan frying them is almost as good. You might want to drain them on paper towels afterward because the grease does not run out of the skillet the way it runs off the grill.

Brats are ideal if you are having a barbecue. They smell gorgeous while they are on the grill and people can assemble their own snacks if you have buns, mustard, ketchup, onions, and salad to hand. Do not forget the napkins either, to catch any drips.

How to Cook Brats in Water

Poke some holes in your sausages with a fork. This will let the steam escape. Cover half an inch of the sausages with water in a big skillet, then cover it with a lid and cook them over a medium heat.

When the water has evaporated, take the lid off and keep cooking the bratwursts, turning them a few times, until they are golden brown. You can add some chopped onions if you like.

Germany Meets Mexico – Bratwurst Tacos

If you are looking for a nice, meaty recipe to serve up to five people, this one is really good. Grill your bratwurst until it is done. Warm five flour tortillas, and then put a sausage on each one, as well as some finely chopped tomato, onion, and lettuce.

Add a little grated cheddar cheese if you like and some spicy tomato salsa. You can use pretty much any kind of meat to make tacos but the unique spiciness of bratwurst makes it ideal for making this mouthwatering Mexican recipe.

Potato soup is the perfect soup for just about any day when you’ve got the urge for a warm, tasty meal that is easy and nutrition. It’s great on a day when you’re tired and hungry and the kids are hungry but not tired. They are clamoring for food and even the dog gets in the act, jumping and howling! The pantry is almost empty. You haven’t had a chance to get to the grocery store this week. You look around and see not even a single slice of bread left. It was devoured along with the half dozen eggs you fried for everyone’s breakfast.

Two packs of saltine crackers are all that’s left after the peanut-butter session from yesterday and the jelly jar is all but empy. Surely there’s something you can fix that will make everybody happy. You look in the vegetable bin. Four white potatoes remain from last week and two medium sized onions. That’s a start. You look in the cabinet and find a half box of fettuccini and a can of chicken broth. Next you look in the refrigerator. There’s plenty of milk because you got an extra gallon last week. There’s enough of everything to make potato soup. Everybody likes that! You pull out your recipe to help you remember all the ingredients.

Peel 4 large white potatoes and dice them

Skin 2 large onions and dice them as well

1 handful of fettuccini broken into bite-sized pieces

1 14 oz. can Swanson’s 100% natural chicken broth

1 cup water

1 1/2 cup teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 cup whole milk

1 can Cream of Chicken soup

1 1/2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese

Add first eight ingredients to a large soup pot. Cook over medium heat. Stir often because the mixture will burn easily. Cook until the vegetables and fettuccini are tender. Add milk and chicken soup to your pot. Bring to a low boil. Turn down heat and simmer until soup is very hot. CAREFUL not to burn! Add grated cheese and stir until the cheese is melted and distributed throughout the soup. Soup will be thick and creamy. If too thick, add a little milk.

Pour hot soup into bowls. Add a generous size dollop of sour cream on top of each serving. Bring out your two packs of saltine crackers. Pour big mugs of cold milk for everyone, sit down and enjoy your bowl of wonderful potato soup made from scratch!

Homemade soup recipes fall into two general categories: thickened soups, and clear soups. This distinction refers only to the liquid portion of the soup, as both types will most often contain solid ingredients as well. A broth of a clear soup is normally formed from a pre-made stock, made from simmering ingredients to extract the flavor and nutrients.

These stocks can be made from meat or vegetable ingredients, most often both. If bones or cartilage are included then the stock can contain gelatin, which is formed from the collagen in these ingredients. This gives the soup a thicker texture, especially after chilling, but it also helps mix the flavors of the soup. This is because gelatin, like fats, oils and alcohol, can dissolve organic compounds, while water cannot do so as easily.

Thickened homemade soup recipes can be further divided into two main groups. The first is soups that are thickened by puréeing starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, squash, or peas. Even less starchy vegetables like asparagus or broccoli can be used, but the texture usually benefits from other thickening ingredients.

The other category of thickened soup comes from those that use either dairy or grain starch, or a combination of the two, in order to thicken the broth alone. Often the “main” soup ingredient is left intact, or is partially puréed, as in a cream of mushroom soup.

A classic method of thickening a soup is to use a béchamel, which is a preparation of butter, flour and milk or cream, which is then mixed into the soup. The flour, being partially coated by the butter, only absorbs a portion of the liquid that it would otherwise do, so it does not thicken to the point of becoming a dough (like a dumpling). A similar method is to use a veloute, which is a butter, egg and cream mixture. This is slightly more difficult than a béchamel, as care must be taken in order to avoid scrambling the eggs. Given the extra preparation time called for by these two methods, most homemade soup recipes simply call for cream or butter, or both. This is especially true for seafood soups.

However, if certain starchy ingredients are added to the soup, and they are given ample time to cook, they can also help thicken a soup. Barley, rice, beans and potatoes are perfect examples of these. These ingredients do two important things. First, they absorb liquid from the soup, thereby reducing the total amount of free liquid. Second, they release starch molecules into the remaining liquid, where they begin to expand and form loose bonds between each other. This loose connection between swollen starch molecules is what makes the soup thicker. The longer the ingredients are allowed to cook the thicker the soup will be, until it becomes more of a stew.

So why bother going to the trouble to thicken a soup? First, because it feels “heavier” and more substantial. this can give you a more “satisfied” feel after eating it. Also, thicker liquids cling to the tongue, which helps improve the taste sensation. Thicker soups generally have more flavor — or at least they seem to. By contrast, a clear soup is lighter and more refreshing, and is more appropriate as an appetizer than a complete meal.

If you found this article helpful or informative, please visit my site at http://www.homemade-soup-recipes.com

Almost every restaurant in Cape Town has Malva Pudding on its dessert menu. It is one of those ubiquitous dishes that one has to side-step diplomatically, as a tour manager organising menus for a week of dinners for clients on walking holidays. If you’re not careful you could end up with a gastronomic tour of Cape Town’s Malva Puddings! That’s not to say that it is not a good dessert choice. It is rich, delicious and indulgent and has to be tasted at least once on a gourmet tour of Cape Town. Along with many other traditional South African dishes it gives a nod to the Netherlands for its origins. Essentially a rather homely baked cakey pudding, its restaurant version soaks itself in a rich, creamy sauce to take on a mantle of decadence, while elegant versions serve themselves up with a few poached apricots alongside too.

No-one seems to know where the name Malva pudding came from – suggestions range from a traditional accompaniment of Malvasia wine, a heavy dessert wine, to a woman named Malva creating it back in the mists of time.

I tried out my sister-in-law’s recipe to make a dessert to follow our Sunday lunch of roast chicken and roast potatoes. Hers is a home version rather than restaurant one and gives details for the cake without drenching it in the creamy sauce. It produces a comforting cross-between steamed pudding and cake, with a tantalising hint of the apricot jam that flavours it and a pleasing, almost caramelly overtone. It is served warm with custard and cream alongside. Leaving out the stage of drenching it with the sauce makes it a lot less rich and calorific, but does mean that you can eat a lot more of it!

Malva Pudding Recipe

Serves 6-8

1 heaped tablespoon butter

3 heaped tablespoons apricot jam

1 egg

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Perhaps the hardest part for anybody beginning a diet is that everyone wants to see results very quickly. It is all too easy to become impatient and want the ‘quick fix’. But like anything in life, nothing worthwhile is generally easy. This also applies to weight loss. After all, if losing weight were easy, NOBODY would be overweight!

However, there ARE certain diets that can jump start your weight loss goals. And this is where the Sacred Heart soup diet comes in. The Sacred Heart Soup Diet is a diet that has actually been going around for many years. The diet was supposedly thought to come straight from the cardiology department at the Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital in America. It was allegedly used for very obese heart patients. However, like most of these diets – this is nothing but an urban myth. The Sacred Heart Soup Diet has been called a number of different names. For example: the Spokane Heart Diet, the Cleveland Clinic Diet, Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital Diet and the Miami Heart Institute Diet.

Low Calories

The diet doesn’t offer many calories but because it fills you up, you are less tempted to eat anything else and indulge yourself in ‘naughty’ foods! The soup acts as filler, making sure that the dieter does not get hunger pangs or the feeling of starvation. Due to the low number of calories that you are eating, a dieter following the Sacred Heart Soup Diet may experience a few side effects. These can range from feeling a little weak or lightheadedness, but generally most people won’t feel too bad and its very easy to stick with because you know it will only last for a short time. The diet should only be followed for a week – it’s not meant to be taken as a continuous diet and there should certainly be breaks between using it. But as a fast weight loss program it’s unrivalled. Losing weight, like anything else worthwhile in life, takes discipline and perseverance.

I am not going to lie to you like so many others and promise you that it is easy. It’s not. But neither is it a monumental mountain to climb – if you apply the right diet program and adopt a positive attitude to your goal. Here is a recipe for the diet. Sacred Heart Soup Diet Recipe Ingredients: 1 or 2 cans of stewed tomatoes 3 plus large green onions 1 large can of beef broth (no fat) 1 pkg. Lipton Soup mix (chicken noodle) 1 bunch of celery 2 cans green beans 2 lbs. Carrots 2 Green Peppers Making the soup Season with parsley, salt, pepper curry, if desired, or bouillon, or even a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Cut the vegetables into small to medium size pieces. Then cover with water. Boil on high heat for 10 minutes. Then redduce heat to a simmer and then continue to cook until vegetables are soft and tender. This soup can be eaten anytime you are feeling hungry.

This will help you to feel full and not be tempted to eat fatening foods. Eat as much as you want, whenever you want. This soup will certainly not add on any pounds! The more you eat, the more you will lose. You could even fill a thermos in the morning and take it to work with you. You can then eat a few bowls during the day and not be tempted by those naughty foods! The Sacred Heart Soup Diet will only work if you follow it exactly.

Instructions:

Make sure you consume at least 4 glasses of water or diet soda per day. You can eat the soup at any time of the day or night.

Sacred Heart Soup Recipe

6 large green

2 green peppers

1 or 2 cans of tomatoes

1 bunch celery

1/2 head cabbage

1 package Lipton Soup Mix 1 or 2 cubes bouillon (not compulsory)

1 48 oz. can V8 Juice (not compulsory)

Season with salt and pepper etc.

Day 1 – Any fruit you would like to eat except bananas.

Day 2 – Any vegetables you want.

Day 3 – Consume as much soup as you wish. Consume plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Day 4 – Up to six bananas, all the skim milk you want.

Day 5 – Ten to twenty ounces of beef, a can of tomatoes, 5 to 8 glasses of water.

Day 6 – All the beef and vegetables you want.

Day 7 – Consume as much unsweetened fruit juices, brown rice and fresh vegetables as you wish. Again, eat at least 1 bowl of soup during today. Don’t eat any bread or drink any alcohol, or carbonated drinks.

Incorporating the Sacred Heart Soup diet into your slimming program will help you lose the weight you desire. Be disciplined in your planning and execution, plan out your foods for the week and you will get there. Don’t give in to temptation!

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