My Five Simple Rules For You to Master Cooking!

Here you go:

1. Sharpen your taste buds. (More sequels of my posting about taste to come!)

2. Recipes are maps. You are the driver at wheel.

• Don't be obsessed about the measurements. Season to your taste, your liking.
• Taste and adjust is part of the fun in the journey. Embrace and own it.
• Don't be afraid to get lost. Explore and experiment is fun.
• Change ingredients for what you have on hand! My notes provide you basic rules and options.
• One of the keys to sustainability is that you have to like it, not to be told to.

3. Shop like your grandma.

• Well, I've done part of it for you by posting weekly sales.
• Inspect the produce. 
• Don't be afraid to ask the workers for more if the shelf is empty.
• Ask for rain checks if they are all out for sale items.
• Go to farmer's market. Know your local growers if you can.
  (List of State by State farmers' markets)

4. Stick with real, fresh, local and seasonal.

5. Pick on the quality of food, not quantity.


For people who have decision fatigue, feel free to use my grocery shopping rules:

• Choose those closest to the earth, soil, habitat - vegetables, fruits, chicken, fish, wholesome real food.
• Choose those that don't require the packages - the produce.
• Choose those that don't require ingredients list.
• Choose those with short ingredients list, generally the less the better.
• Choose those with ingredients that you know and can pronounce.
• Choose those that don't have to shout for their health benefits and claims.
• Wednesday is the best grocery shopping day, less people shop on Wednesday.

Suck at Cooking? Myth Busted.

I know, it's fun, it's tongue in cheek entertainment and I enjoy watching it. However, I don't think there is a certain way that can be called "right" when it comes to cooking.

Cooking is an art and a very intimate, very personal sensory experience. I believer there is no "right" or "wrong" ways, there is only "this" or "that" way that people choose according to what their taste buds are telling them.

A lot of people are intimidated because they don't want to embarrass themselves by "being wrong", so they completely outsource the food preparation to, uh, the food industry or the restaurant industry. That's really tragic because they fail to realize that's a high price they can't afford to pay.

Certainly for professional chefs and cooks, there will be general expectations and guidelines of the food they are serving, but it is not so when you prepare food for yourself and your family.

Recipes are not mechanical manuals for you to follow to a Tee. They are to be adjusted, changed, modified to fit you, to please you! It is you who could say, this is not right for me, I don't like it, and not the other way around. Your palate is the judge and you are the ruler of it.

The more you allow yourself to know about food, the more comfortable you are to handle and prepare them, the more choices and control you'll have for your own and your planet's future.

Simple rules, accessible, approachable, sustainable ... that's my mission.

Grilling Into the Independence Day!

For this week's sale, you've got everything you could ask for on the grill.


For chickens, check out Grilled Chicken Drumsticks or Quarter Legs.

Or use my barbecue sauce for the pork chops.

You've got broccoli, carrots, corn, bell peppers and mushrooms to hit the grill and be served with the side of salad and fruit medley.

For dessert, you can grill the peaches, mango, or melons to go with your meat.

If you not much of an outdoors person, use the ground pork with my New Ethnic Ragu on Rice Recipe. Try half pork and half chicken/turkey if you like. Or try my Mapo Tofu recipe.

Enjoy!

Five Ways With Fried Shallots!

Here are 5 ways to use Fried Shallots. (If you can't find it in Asian market, try my Homemade Fried Shallots Recipe.)

1. Top them with fried rice.
2. Top them with pastas.
3. Top them with grilled steaks or pork chops.
4. Use them as flavoring agents when you cook clear savory soup.
5. Use them in scramble eggs, omelette, or frittata.

They also go well with garlic, cilantro and chives in these five ways. Enjoy!

How to Deglaze!

How to capitalize the delicious fond that is bursting with flavors?

First, remove the food you’ve just cooked from the pan and pour off any liquid or fat. Dump out anything that seems burned because that won’t taste good if you’re making a sauce.

Return the pan to the heat and add liquid to cover the pan by about half an inch. As the liquid heats, use a spatula or spoon to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan until the pan is clean and all the fond bits are dissolved or floating into the liquid.

You can simply add water to deglaze but if you want to jazz up the flavor with the fond, use stock, wine, juice, beer or vinegar to deglaze. If you are using alcohol to deglaze, make sure to remove the pan from the heat when adding the alcohol to prevent flames.

To transform that liquid into a sauce or gravy for a meal, boil the liquid until it’s reduced and thickened. Add any aromatics such as shallots, garlic, fresh herbs, or whole spices and cooked briefly. Remove from heat, strain off the solids if necessary, whisk in butter or cream to make it velvety, and serve.

Where are those brown bits from?

Love Your Ugly Fond!

Fond (pronounced fahn), the French culinary term for "base" or "foundation", refers to the remaining residue or brown bits that sticks to the pan after browning meat or vegetables, either on the stove top or at the bottom of a roasting pan in the oven. 

These brown bits contains hundreds and thousands of complex and irresistible

flavor compounds unlocked by Maillard Reactions and Caramelization when proteins and sugar are present in cooking.

Fond is used by professional cooks to form the base of many flavorful sauces, while it is mistakened by many home cooks as dirty, nasty burnt bits and simply discard down the drain.

The tasty bits stuck to the pan are largely water soluble - so water, wine, stock, etc., is used to "dissolve" them and this is a technique known as degla

zing.

A fond, which means the same as a base stock, is categorized into 3 main categories: white, brown or vegetable stocks (in French referred to as fond blanc, fond brun and fond de vegetal).  They are at the core of classical cooking and of the five mother sauces, at least three are based on fond by deglazing.

Deglazing is a cooking technique for removing and dissolving browned food residue from a pan to flavor sauces, soups, and gravies by introducing liquid to the pan to loosen and disperse all of those concentrated flavors, aka fond, back into your dish. Flavor the fond with the addition of an aromatic or two -- such as shallots or garlic -- thicken it with flour, tomato, or vegetables, and you have the blueprint for hundreds of sauces and gravies.

To deglaze...

Notes:

Fond is literally translated to mean "the bottom" or "base."

In classical French cooking, the word is also used to mean "stock," another common base for various recipes.

Why Take Time to Brown?

Why do we love grilled meat?

You put a piece of meat with an open fire, with a very, very hot iron to grill. The moment the meat is in contact with the heat, you can almost hear the meat begin to talk to you.

Even if you know nothing about cooking, if you hear the meat spit, splatter and yell at the top of the lungs, "A-A-A-Ouch!", most likely you would immediately smell something wonderful and your mouth starts to water. If you hear nothing but a whimper, "so what", you know something isn't right ...

When you cook your food on high heat and see it turn darker, two miracles happen - caramelization and Maillard reaction (both are forms of non-enzymatic food browning).

To the eyes, both processes appear as the food gets brown and darker. In many contexts, "caramelized" have become a catchall culinary term meaning the food should be cook to darken until it's caramel-brown. However these two processes are not the same.

Caramelization

Caramelization is a process of cooking sugar (carbohydrates) until it melts and darkens. The sugar undergoes chemical changes through different stages as the temperature keeps rising. The sugars break apart and reform hundreds of new compounds. These complex compounds are highly desirable with their rich, buttery, nutty, acidic, slightly bitter and rounder softer sweet notes.

Maillard Reactions 

Baked goods and meat that develop a nutty, slightly sweet richness when browned undergo a process called "Maillard reactions" and it's named after the French chemist who identified the process in the early 1900s.

Maillard reactions is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring the addition of heat and this process accelerates in an alkaline environment because the amino groups do not neutralize.

Maillard reactions also create caramel-like flavor developing in foods that contain carb (sugar) and protein as they brown on high heat. The reactions are similar to classic sugar caramelizing except they involve a series of complex reactions between proteins and sugars, as opposed to caramelization happens to just sugar. Another thing is that Maillard reactions occur at much lower heat than true sugar caramelization.

This reaction is the basis of the flavouring industry, since the type of amino acid determines the resulting flavour. In the process, hundreds of different flavour compounds are created. These compounds in turn break down to form yet more new flavour compounds, and so on. Each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavour compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction. It is these same compounds that flavour scientists have used over the years to create artificial flavours.

Wait, don't throw away those brown bits!

How to brown tips!

Notes:

• Browning of foods can be either non-enzymatic (caramelization or maillard reaction) or enzymatic.
• Enzymatic browning in fruits and vegetables is usually not desirable but it is essential in developing flavors in tea.
• Different sugar types have different temperatures for caramelization to happen. In general, it starts above 160°C (320°F).
• Maillard Reaction can happen as low as 100°C (212°F) but it happens very slowly. It progresses at a faster pace at higher temperature, such as at 150°C (300°F) it can cause noticeable browning within minutes. However, above 180°C (355°F), a different set of reactions occur to char foods and too much of that would cause foods to burn and taste bitter.
• Pat meat and fish dry before browning to speed up the Maillard reaction process since the presence of water will keep the temperature at the boiling point until it's all vaporized. (More...)

Fried Shallots.

Crispy fried shallots are aromatic, sweet, salty, crunchy and are an essential condiment/ingredients in Southeast Asia, such as Taiwan, Burma, Vietnam and so on. 

They turn up in sauces, soups and on salads, sprinkled onto dumplings as a garnish, and minced and added to meatballs. 

You can sprinkle them on burgers, casseroles, chickens, chops, fish, meat, baked potatoes, hot dogs, scrambled eggs, frittata or even a tuna tartare for extra aroma, flavor and crunchy texture.

How to Make at Home

You may want to make double batches, as people have a hard time resisting the urge to snack on them. Strain the oil you used to fry the shallots and use it in other recipes or to fry more shallots. The strained oil, called shallot oil, will keep, refrigerated, for several weeks. The freshly fried shallots will keep, refrigerated in an airtight container, for 1 day, but they're best the day they are made.

Homemade Fried Shallots Recipe.

How to Buy

It is indispensable in some Southeast Asia dishes and can easily be found in Asian supermarkets. Beware of the labels on many packages are called "Fried Onions", which is a misnomer and they usually cannot substitute each other because the flavors are different. If you are just adding a touch of crunchiness to a dish, such as a casserole, either would work well.

How to Use

Five Ways with Fried Shallots!

Papery Dried Shrimp Skin.

Other than the regular dried shrimp we talked about (Dried Shrimp), there is another dried shrimp product that is made of the shrimp shells or really tiny shrimp.

These tiny dried shrimp, known as ‘shrimp skin’ (虾皮) in Chinese, is like the dried shrimp in terms of flavor but is a few notches lighter. They are much smaller, papery and they cost less.

The regular dried shrimp is on the right in the picture for comparison, while the tiny dried shrimp skin is those on the left.

The good thing about dried shrimp skin is they don't require soaking process prior to cooking. They can go directly from freezer to stove.

I also keep a bagful of these for use when I need to punch up the umami, and when I make my special Pork Stew Meat Sauce.

Dried Shrimp Skin and Dried Shrimp

Dried Shrimps!

Dried shrimp are made from tiny, unshelled shrimp that are boiled and then sun-dried or baked dry over a gentle heat. After the drying process, they are shrunk to about a thumbnail size.

Dried shrimp is a natural flavor enhancer just like the dried shiitake mushrooms and anchovies, that make everything they touch taste better.

They are used in many Asian cuisines, imparting a unique salty, umami taste that can lift the flavor of all kinds of savory dishes. Some people find their taste a bit strong because they are intensely briny and mildly fishy. Just like the fish sauce, the aroma is stronger than the flavor. They are dense, meaty, and potent so you don't need a lot to flavor a dish. Because of that, dried shrimp is used to season the dish, rather than to substitute for the fresh shellfish.

Unlike some flavoring agents that end up flaccid and insipid after a long cooking process, dried shrimp stay briny and chewy no matter how long they cook. In fact, texture is one of their biggest selling points. It makes them seem more like pork than shellfish.

I always keep a bagful of these dried shrimp in my refrigerator. A few dried shrimp can be used to jazz up a bowlful of wontons in soup, pad Thai, tamales, fried rice or an omelette, and a handful transforms a cabbage into a fragrant, irresistible stir-fry. 

How to Use

A handful is enough for the whole dish serving 4 people. Rinse and soak a handful in cold water for 10-15 min until they are softened. You can chop them up if the cooking time is short, or use them as whole pieces if you can allow them to simmer for long period. The water is to be kept and used too.

Some Chinese cooks soak dried shrimp in Shaoxing wine to mellow the flavor, but water works just fine at making them easier to mince or chop. 

You can grind the dried shrimp in a spice mill without soaking but I don't find it necessary as they soften in water rather quickly.

How to Store

Once opened, vacuum-sealed packages of dried shrimp should be stored in the refrigerator, where they will keep for a few month. Dried shrimp that are sold loose, as they are in Chinatown, should be refrigerated as soon as you get them home.

Keeping them refrigerated in mason jars with air-tight lid helps to preserve the aroma and extend the shelf life.

Where to Buy

Most cooks prefer bigger dried shrimp, even in recipes in which they are chopped. They hold more moisture when dried and are not quite as salty. They can actually be chewy straight from the bag, while small ones are almost always brittle. In fact, some of the larger ones — three-quarters of an inch to an inch long — are chewy and mild enough to eat as a snack. The price increases with size: tiny shrimp run about 50 cents an ounce (about three tablespoons), while larger ones can cost twice as much. The difference in sizes does not effect the flavor at all.

No matter what size you buy, avoid those that are gray or brown or look washed-out. Dried shrimp are not as stable on the shelf as most other dried foods. Within a few months, they will become very hard and lose much of their flavor. Fresh packages will have bright pink, coral-colored shrimp that are whole rather than broken.

Shiitake Mushrooms!

Shiitake mushrooms is a very common ingredient in Asian cuisine and it's now widely used in all types of cuisines.

All fresh mushrooms are to be either brushed to clean or gently rinsed with water but should never be soaked or the fragrance and flavor will be drained and lost. Once when it's rinsed, it should be used in cooking right away.

Dried Shiitake Mushrooms

Dried Shiitake

Dried shiitake mushrooms have all the umami flavor of the fresh counterparts and the umami is more intense because of lack of the water content. It is a very important flavoring ingredient in Asian fine food cooking and the water used to soak and rehydrate the mushrooms are to be kept and used too.

To use dried shiitake mushrooms, rinse them shortly to remove the dirts and soak them in cold water to rehydrate. Since the water would have serious flavor and should be used later, I usually barely cover the dried shiitake with just enough water. This way, I won't end up with too much water to dilute the flavor and water down the dish.

How to Use

Soaked Shiitake

For small and thin dried shiitakes, they could be softened and rehydrated in 1-2 hours. If you have those gorgeous, thick-cap, deep-crack-fissure, hana (means flower in Japanese) shiitakes, they could take up to 8 hours or overnight to be fully rehydrated. You have to check in on them in the beginning since they float on top of the water. You could either use something to push them down or keep flipping them so all sides have a chance to get wet and be soaked. You should keep them in the refrigerator if you are to soak them overnight or longer.

If you are pressed for time, you can soak them in hot water but this will leach much of the great flavor into the soaking water. I've always managed my time to soak them early enough in cold water.

Another trick to speed up the soaking process is to snap and separate the stem and the cap before getting them wet. The stem is tougher and more woody so it takes longer to soak it. Don't throw the stems away. You could cut the stems into thinner, smaller pieces after soaking, or keep it to cook stock later.

After they are fully soaked and softened, remove them from water with hand and gently squeeze the excess water out. Then slice them or dice them, depending on what your recipe requires.

How to Store

Though dried shiitake doesn't have to be refrigerated and they last a very long time when kept in dry condition, they do get moldy if you live in very damp and humid areas. You should keep them in the refrigerator or freezer in this case.

Where to Buy

If you decide to add dried shiitake to your pantry, don't buy the pre-sliced, small package from just any market as those are of less quality and more expensive by weight. It would worth your while to take a trip to the Asian supermarket for better deals and buy them in the uncut whole mushroom form. Since this is a common ingredients, the Asian market usually have one of the brands on sale. Even if you can't afford the top-tier best-grade ones, you could still be very pleasantly surprised by what the the small, thin dried shiitake could offer to boost your dish.

In the Asian market, they are usually displayed with herbs, spices or dried beans. The deals are placed at the end caps of aisles.

I have never tried online purchase but if you cannot find it in your neighborhood, that would be something worth trying.

Substitute Fresh Shiitake for Dried Ones?

The tastes of the dishes won't be the same if you replace one for the other and especially in dishes that call for dense meaty flavor, you will need the dried ones. However, in most cases of the clear soups, using the fresh shiitake is okay and could be delightful and refreshing.

Ground Beef for Mapo Tofu!

Today is the last day for you to get that ground beef on sale.

Here is my Mapo Tofu recipe for you.

Enjoy!

If You Can't Trust Your Eyes...

I hope you understand your brain and how it perceives better after the games on your eyes.

What about your auditory perception? Can you always tell me what pitch it is, if I play a single note on the piano? Or can you always tell me which one is higher or lower if I play two notes on the piano?

For the majority of us, it is way easier for us to perceive a group of things and tell a relative difference or distinction.

This could actually be good news for us. If we know how our brains work, we can help the brains to help us in reaching our intended goals!

How about this:

If you want to control your diet, you should start with the plate size.

Cheers.

Can You Tell?

You must have played this, right?

Which of the circles in the center is bigger?

Which line is longer?

Which red line is longer?

Are the shades of these 2 patches the same or different?

Enjoy!

Four Cooking Techniques!

In all of cookery, there are only four cooking techniques: dry-heat cooking with fat, dry-heat cooking without fat, moist-heat cooking, and combination cooking.

1. Dry-heat cooking with fat embraces saute-ing, deep-frying, pan-frying and stir-frying.
2. Dry-heat cooking without fat includes grilling, broiling, roasting, and baking.
3. Moist-heat cooking involves poaching, steaming, simmering, and boiling.
4. Combination cooking is using a combination of more than one techniques above, such as braising and stewing.

If you understanding the basic four cooking techniques, every time you practice a new recipe, you can categorize it and understanding it in the context of these four methods. That way, you don't have to start from scratch and be confused with the long breaking down steps to follow.

You can also understand it in terms of its cooking temperature range:

1. Dry-heat cooking with fat - temperature is usually between 300-450F, depending on the smoke point of the oil.
2. Dry-heat cooking without fat - temperature can go lower or higher depending on the food.
3. Moist-heat cooking - temperature is limited by the water's boiling point - 212F.
4. Combination - usually employs high temperature cooking with or without fat/oil, usually for the purpose of browning, and then add water to cook low and slow.

I'd often like to share three simple steps that's easy to remember with friends when they are confused about what goes in first, second, or last.

All cooking process are alike in the following steps:

Step 1: Build the flavor base or foundation.

Step 2: Add sauce and seasonings.

Step 3: Combine all ingredients and make sure they are ALL cooked to the desired doneness for the rest of cooking process. (Key is "ALL")

Of course the god is in the details but equipped with these basic know-hows, you will find common places for every recipe you will encounter.

How to Make Clarified Butter.

Clarified butter is a butter that has been melted and separated into butter fat, butter milk, and milk solids. The buttermilk and milk solids burn more easily and are removed to produce the remaining clear butter fat that can tolerate higher heat.

It could take a few hours to make clarified butter, just letting it simmer very gently on the stove. A few hours later, it will be separated into clear fat with the white foam on the top and the butter milk at the bottom.

Directions:

1. Cut the butter into cubes and place them in the saucepan.
2. Melt the butter over a very low flame. It will foam, bubble, and it will start to separate into its components, with the milk solids floating on the top and the butter milk on the bottom.
3. Once the butter starts to separate, you can skim the milk solids off of the top and continue to cook it over a very slow, gentle low heat. As it continues to cook, it will separate even more.
4. Ultimately the butter will be almost clear and it is pure fat.
5. You can use the clarified butter for stir-fry or as a topping.

Note:

• Do not replace regular butter with clarified butter in your recipes unless it calls for it specifically. Since regular butter contains 16-17% water that has been removed from clarified butter, it's going to throw the proportions of your baking recipes off. 
• Ghee is not the same as clarified butter. It's often used in Indian dishes and is heated just a wee bit more on medium heat, until the milk solids are browned, giving the resulting fat a nutty flavor, richer aroma and a very high smoke point.

Homemade Chicken Breast Sandwich Slices, with Bonus Soup.

The chicken breasts are a great source of lean protein that I often buy the whole pieces with bone-in and make for the whole week. I add them into my salad, sandwiches, wraps, or top off my ramen noodles.

The key is to time the process so as not to overcook the breasts.

Try my simple way of cooking the chicken breasts.

I also made a soup out of the bones.

Simple Tomato Soup with Leftover Bones.

Enjoy!

Tools, What's the Chosen One?

You really don't need a lot of tools. You just need the right one.

Most of my recipes can be prepared even if you just have one knife (and cutting board), and one pot.

You may wonder if that works. Let me tell you, I use my go-to knife (mine is an utility knife) 99% of the time and the 1% time when I have to use another knife is when I am cutting raw meat.

It goes without saying that having multiple sizes of each tool and multiple tools for each purpose is more convenient, especially when you are preparing food for a family or a group of people. I have listed my suggestions as well.

Let me say this first, for different people, the right ones can vary. Tools of your own has to fit you, just like your food.

The most essential and important tool in the kitchen is the knife so let's start from there.

One Knife: Chef's Knife or Utility Knife

My utility knives

You want a knife that feels good and wieldy in your hand. Make sure you are comfortable with its weight and your knuckles won't hit or touch the cutting board when you cut ingredients.

There are many types of knives (My Knife Page). If I could only choose one with me, I'd opt for my utility knife (also called tomato knife or sandwich knife).

Ok, I do have two but they are about the same. The one on the left comes with a sheath which makes the storing and traveling easier. The one on the right, with a white blade is a ceramic knife that I use to cut tomatoes or for other delicate work. I put a graph paper with the inch lines to show you that the blades are about 5 inches long. Their length and weight are perfect for me.

As you can see, the space between the lowest point of the blade and the bottom of handle is not that much. For me, that is not a problem since I have skinny fingers. For people who need more finger space, a chef's knife (also called French knife) would work better. It's a general purpose knife with a blade that usually comes in 6 to 8 inches and would probably be most people's first choice.

My paring knives

I do have a chef's knife but I rarely use it. Also my chef's knife is closer to Japanese style (Western vs Japanese Styles).

Two Knives: Adding Paring Knife

When you consider to have another knife, I would suggest a paring knife.

I have two paring knives and their blades are around 3 1/2 inches as you can see in the picture. The one on the right is a Japanese Santoku paring knife.

More cutlery? 
I suggest to add more knives in the following order.

• Vegetable peeler.
• Chef's knife or utility knife if you don't have one yet.
• Serrated knife
• Boning knife

One Pot: a Four-Qt Stainless Pot
It is a great choice because you can use it to boil, braise, stew, fry or cook pasta for one to three people. You can also use it to pan fry or stir fry.

The second one to add would be a 10-inch non-stick frying pan, preferably with a tight fitting lid. (Sauteuse versus Sautoir)

More pots and pans?
I suggest to add the followings:

• A three-quart pot
• A non-stick 8 inch sauteuse just for cooking eggs
• Stock pot 

Note:

Santoku knife versus Western chef's knife illustrated:

No Time for Breakfast? Try This!

I don't have to tell you the importance of breakfast, but a lot of times we skip it because we are so pressed for time in the morning. Okay, maybe the usual cereal and milk or whatever is boring and we are just not in the mood to do anything in the morning, other than turning on the coffee machine.

Here is something as simple and you can prepare the night before. Heat up and you have a breakfast to go.

Try my Creamy Hot Sesame Cereal.


Note:

• Sesame seeds are an excellent source of copper, a very good source of manganese, and a good source of magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, molybdenum, vitamin B, vitamin E, and selenium. It is also rich in vitamin B, vitamin E, and contains sesamin and sesamolin.
• Therefore, regular consumption of black sesame seeds is believed to have the following benefits:
• Anti-aging
• Lowering your cholesterol
• Protect heart health
• Improve blood pressure
• Balance hormones
• Fight Cancer
• Help burn fat
• Support healthy bones and skin
• Protect liver in detoxification process
• Relieve constipation
• Improve digestion

So, enjoy!

Flavor Is Not Taste!

Try an experiment. Make some Jell-O desserts with different flavors, or take something that comes in different flavors with the same texture, shape, and even color so you can't tell by any other way except tasting them, for example, jelly beans that come in surprise flavors. You can even mash up some fruits with the same texture.

Now, pinch or plug your nose first, cover your eyes and ask your friend to feed you blindfolded.

When you eat that mysterious Jell-O, jelly bean or puree, can you decide the flavor of it? Is it apple, pear, carrot, potato, yam, watermelon or butterscotch? You notice the sweetness and the texture, maybe a little acidity, but without the sense of smell, you shouldn't be able to tell what flavor it is.

Now, let your nose go and taste again. You'll notice that the flavors become apparent, and likewise the distinction between taste and flavor becomes apparent. Taste and aroma in tandem become the flavor you perceive. In other words, we decide the flavor of food through our taste perception of the tongue and our smell perception of the nose.

Recognizing the distinction between the taste and flavor will help you season your food in the kitchen. Most of the challenges in cooking have to do with the interaction of tastes with one another (Basic Five Tastes), and is not about esoteric herbs and spices.

Further more, if you find yourself eat without tasting or savoring it, it may be time to slow your pace down a bit.

Cheers.

Have You Tasted Lately?

The taste buds on our tongue and palate can perceive the five basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. These five basic tastes are meaningful from our evolution history and they are the markers for things that helped us survived.

As we talked about in the posting Dessert Disaster and Food Brain, sugar is a marker for ripeness in fruits and vegetables, which did not come very often in prehistorical age. When our smart prehistorical ancestors encountered a bush of ripe berries, they topped out their carb tanks to provide the energy for the existence, and thus had the chance to pass on the genes with the predisposition to sugar.

Saltiness is a marker for sodium, minerals, and micronutrients that we need to regulate our fluid balance and body functions.

Sourness is a marker for under-ripeness or even spoilage. It is to alert us to think twice before eating that further. Without that, we might eat too much of unripe fruits and get sick or a stomachache.

Bitterness is a marker for alkaloids in a plant-based diet, which are often poisonous. It is a warning that it is risky to put that in our mouth again, as it might kill us.

Savoriness, or called Umami in Japanese (a trendy term used by chefs), is the flavor of protein that has begun to break down through enzyme activity or through long cooking process. Savory flavors can be found in soy sauce (brewed and fermented with enzyme), cured meats (fermented), aged cheese, miso (Japanese fermented bean paste), and broth or stock (cooking fish or livestock bones for a long period of time).

Enter flavor.

Isn't it the same thing? Not quite. Be right back ...

Complete Food Experience!

A real full-blown food experience involves all five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

Though you'll think there is no need to explain how senses of taste and smell get involved, on the contrary, they really deserve a lot more discussions as they are the front and center of the art of cooking.

Evidence of how food involves sense of sight, or vice versa, is everywhere these days, from Pinterest to popular food blogs. The art of food plating is no more reserved to just a few who are fortunate enough to visit the star-decorated restaurants. The visual presentation of food has become an art in their own right to provoke the strongest desires and emotions for food just by looking at the pictures.

Close your eyes for a moment and recall the sound of a sizzling steak when it hits the hot grill, or the fast, crisp splattering cheers of oil when the cook put your order of fries into the hot oil. Think about how you feel when you hear the clattering of silverwares and clinking of wine glasses in a wedding banquet or a busy restaurant. Does that simulate your appetite, make your mouth water and ready to eat just by listening to that?

If most of the meals you have are prepared by someone else, then you don't know what you are missing. It's a chance to work with your hands, and there is something very satisfying when you can see something through from start to finish, create just by you. Bread-baking can be very therapeutic to work through stress and aggression by mixing, kneading and punching down the dough. And yes, the wonderful aroma of fresh-baked bread is healing to the souls of anyone who is lucky enough to be home when the bread leaves the oven.

Kneading a bread dough definitely deserves a spot on your bucket list.

More on taste and smell later ...

How to Make a Double Boiler?

When you are melting chocolate, or making Hollandaise sauce, you often see the recipe calls for a double boiler (also called water bath or bain marie in French), in order to heat the materials gently and gradually at fixed low temperatures, or to keep it warm over a period of time.

However, you don't have to buy one. A double boiler is the same as using a bowl over, but not touching, a slightly smaller pot with simmering water. This way you could control the heating process to the minimum fluctuation and you could lift the bowl with the material when it's overheated.

There are tricks if you can't find exact the sizes of pots to stack one over another.

1. Use a metal ring like shown in the picture, or use a shallow saucer, anything that can be heated on the stove top, can lift the upper bowl above the water and prevent water from getting into the material.
   
   
   


2. Use chop sticks. This is not as stable thus harder to maneuver and I would avoid it if I can. If you really have no other way to go around, it's worth a try.
   
   
   
   



3. If you have nothing else, a little touching won't be a killer. You just have to be more careful in controlling the heating and cooling - more ups and downs exercise for the arm.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Try microwaving it. The good thing about microwaving is, once you figure out the right timing, it's pretty consistent. However for the first trial, you need to do it in very short intervals (10 sec) and figure out the total amount of time required. Then in regular practices, work in rounds of 15 to 20 sec intervals to prevent overheating.

Happy heating.

Dishes With ONE Ingredient! Is It Possible?

Hey, stranger, thanks for coming back! That's encouraging.

My last post kept me thinking, what if I only have one pot and one knife? A bowl, a spoon and a fork or a pair of chopsticks to eat with? Ok, fine, you need a chopping board and, maybe borrow that can opener from Jimmy, then you're good to go.

Ready?

Here is my Simple Egg Drop Soup for you.

You can add some vegetables (onion, spinach, carrots, celery, cabbage, cauliflower, even potato would go with it. Dump that Nissin noodles in and it's a nice, warm, filling light breakfast. I will show you how to add some meat later.)

I am cheating?

How about two ingredients?

Here is my Two Ingredients Soup. How about that?

I know what you're thinking. These are just soups! I got to be kidding!

Okay, my point is, even you have just very simple tools or ingredients, if you know how to make them work, make the ingredients sing, you are maximizing the pleasure from food when it's a masterpiece.

You see, the simpler the dish is, the more difficult it is to make it great and the more you can tell if it's done amateurishly or professionally.

Take egg drop soup for example, the key is not to pour in the egg before the water is boiling, not to touch it too soon, and you have to watch for that water to boil just right, not poaching, simmering or rolling vigorously.

If it's simmering (a few bubbles breaking at the water surface,) the temperature of the water is too low and the egg can't coagulate quick enough to keep it from breaking and melting into the water. The soup will end up being a pot of yellowish liquid, which may not be visually appealing but still edible (smiley, been there, done that). Same thing could happen if your stir up too soon before the egg has been cooked into ribbons. If the water is boiling vigorous in heaves and waves, the egg you pour in will be cooked and puffed up too quickly in bigger, thicker and fewer pieces. The texture of egg could be porous, not silken and smooth. A trick many chefs use is to thicken the soup up with a touch of slurry ( mix equal part of cornstarch and water, add into water to thicken, my geeky page here) before adding the egg mixture and that will make the egg ribbons silken, and velvety.

There, even if you only have one pot, one egg, one can or one Nissin soup, one spoon and one bowl, you can still get flavor and texture. You owe it to yourself to make it count.

Next time when you don't know what to do to impress someone, you can make something as simple as egg drop soup, make it with just a few things, make it well and tell the story. I bet you'll totally rock and turn the tables.

Yes, I promise, I will post more for you, and not just soups, I know. 

Stay well.

Note - 

The major protein of egg white, ovalbumin, makes up 54% of the white and doesn't coagulate until the temperature reaches 80 °C. The yolk begins to thicken around 65 °C and sets around 70 °C. Since the different parts of egg coagulate at different temperatures, it is definitely not a simple matter to cook it right.

Simmer : one brings it to a boil and then reduces the heat to a point where the formation of bubbles has almost ceased, typically a water temperature of about 94 °C(200 °F) at sea level.

Poaching is a type of moist-heat cooking technique that involves cooking by submerging food in a liquid, such as water, milk, stock or wine. Poaching is differentiated from the other "moist heat" cooking methods, such as simmering and boiling, in that it uses a relatively low temperature (about 160–180 °F (71–82 °C)).

You Only Need the Basics!

It would be remiss of me not to explain after I posted the "Asian Ingredients" especially because I might have scared you off, those exactly who I hope this blog could help.

There are so many great recipes out there with step by step pictures and perfect photography that makes the dishes so tempting like you could almost smell it.

I do wonder, what if I were a student, living with roommates, with very tight budget? What if the closest Asian market is 20 miles away and it's smaller than my apartment? What if I can't buy all those ingredients and just use them once or twice a month and I can't buy all the tools in the right sizes, because I only get one drawer's space, one shelf in the refrigerator, and most importantly, I'll have to get rid of most of them when I move.

I do wonder because I know people just like that. Since they are my friends, I can't bear to see them suffer for food, like how I did years ago -- far away from home, stressed out at school or at work, craving for something simple yet familiar to comfort the body and soul, but I was new to cooking (ok, truth be told, I knew absolutely nothing about cooking,) and either fixing familiar Asian food, or exploring Western food were equally epically challenging to me.

Fear not! You do not need a lot for delicious food, neither tools or ingredients.

You only need some basics and knowledge about what makes food delicious, even if you only have a knife, a pot, and manage to find two ingredients from the neighborhood supermarket. (I suppose you do have a bowl and spoon to eat with. I will post something to show you there are many free wares around when you have to travel light.)

Well, I'll just have to show you some examples, right? Got that.

Stay tuned and come back soon.

Elephant in the Room: Stress!

Why are we so stressed out?

To detox, we need to understand stress.

Two Types of Stress:

To understand the causes of stress, we need to first know there are two kinds of stress: acute stress and chronic stress.

See, stress in our daily life is just like hurt or pain - they are there to protect us from further harm.

When people or animals experience an immediate threat to their well-being, they know something is wrong and danger might be there if we don't do something, thus acute stress occurs to alert us. Think about when we could not find our wallet or cellphones, the stress response kicks in to help us respond to the event. Once the event is over, our body returns to normal and the stress is gone.

These days, when people talk about stress, they usually mean chronic stress that's always there, in the background ready to rise up.

Animals don't seem to experience chronic stress, except those that live around human beings (yeah, and we thought they were the trouble makers.) - those we abuse or keep in cages. When left along, animals don't appear to have chronic stress like we do.

Three Causes of Chronic Stress:

There are three reasons why we are far more chronically stressed than animals or our prehistorical ancestors.

1. We changed our environment drastically

Wild animals live in pretty much the same environments like they have been living for millions of years in their evolution. We don't. We have changed our environment so much that most things that create chronic stress are the recent developments of civilization and culture, including traffic jams, computer crashes, constant interruptions and noise, air travel, financial market mess and stock market volatility.

2. We changed from being in immediate-return environment to being in delayed-return environment, thus uncertainty about the future rise.

No, I am not talking about the interest rate and long term treasury bond.

Wild animals live in immediate-return environment, while we found ourselves in a delayed-return environment ever since we started to rely on farming about 10,000 years ago (at the start of the agricultural revolution when we began to settle into permanent communities, build houses and grow our own food.)

In the immediate-return environment, animals get immediate feedback to know how things are going, or if their effort, responses to events work. (Well, if you get eaten, you get eaten, but at least you know the outcome right then.) Our ancestors also lived like that until very recently. They wandered around, searching for foods, dealing with threats or predators, interacting with other human beings and raising kids. Day to day, moment to moment they had constant feedback about how they were doing in meeting goals. Prehistorically, people couldn't do much for the future so they were focusing on meeting their day to day needs and there were very little uncertainty about how well they were doing.

These days we spend most of our time and effort for future goals. Can this relationship work out? Can we find a job after four years of college? When we put all our time and effort into something, there is no assurance that our hard work will pay off and the uncertainty about the future causes us constant stress.

3. To make things worst, there is often nothing we can do about it.

Just like the return is delayed, the threat is also delayed in the future, and it is in our mind rather than immediately present, even though it's every bit real. Our human nature wants to take action to remove the stressors but we find ourselves not able to do anything about it at the moment. Therefore, we feel frustrated and stressed out when we worry about things in the future that we have no control over.


Well, happiness and stresses are both connected to our well-being and eating well is part of the whole so we have to take a holistic approach. When we are off balance, we tend to stress eat without really enjoying, savoring and tasting whatever food has to offer and that's sad.

Asian Ingredients for Recipes.

Before I drop all the unfamiliar names for recipes, I would like to make sure we are on the same page. (Pun intended!)

In California, these are easy to come by in major supermarkets and you can always find them in Asian grocery stores.

Buddha Melon	Burdock Root	Chinese Yam	Enoki

Produce:

• Buddha Melon or Buddha's Palm or Chayote Melon 佛手瓜, 合掌瓜
• Burdock Root or Gobo in Japanese 牛蒡
• Chinese or Wild Yam (Nagaimo in Japanese) - 山药 Shan Yao (Also in dried form, called 淮山 Huai Shan) 
• Ginkgo Nuts 銀杏 or 白果
• Enoki Mushrooms 金针菇
• Shiitake Mushrooms 
• Tofu Skin

Ginkgo	Shiitake	Tofu Skin

Canned Food:

• Straw Mushroom or Paddy Straw Mushroom - mostly in canned food section.
• Water chestnut - mostly in canned food section.

Straw Mushrooms	Longan

Dried Fruits:

• Chestnut
• Dried Fig 
• Longan Pulp, pitted or in shells 龍眼

Dried Yam	Dried Lily	Dried Orange Peel

Dried Herbs:

• Dried Chinese Yam - 淮山 (Huai Shan)
• Dried Lily Bulb 百合
• Dried Orange Peel or Tangerine Peel 陳皮
• Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
• Fox Nut 芡實
• Hair-like Seaweed 髮菜
• Honey Prune 蜜枣
• Lady Bell Root 沙參
• Lotus Seed 蓮子
• Red Dates or Jujube 红枣/紅棗
• White Fungus 白木耳 or 雪耳

Fox Nuts	Hair Seaweed	Honey Prune

Lady Bell Root	Lotus Seeds	Jujube	White Fungus

Also, check out my Chinese Herbs Page.