‘Tips Cooks Love’
Those crazy kids at Sur la Table are at it again, this time with a cute little handbook called “Tips Cooks Love.”
I’ve been flipping through this book and while some of these ideas may not seem very novel (smash garlic under your knife blade; use room-temperature eggs in baking – meh), others really do have me saying “Aha! What a great idea!”
A sprinkling of those gems:
* After you are finished processing herbs in the food processor and have removed most of the bits, toss a slice of bread in there and pulse a few times. Voila! Herbed bread crumbs.
* Chopping sticky things like crystallized ginger? Coat the knife with a light layer of flavorless oil.
* For parties where you will be scooping lots of ice cream, line a baking sheet with wax paper ahead of time, place ice cream scoops on wax paper and put the whole tray in the freezer. When it comes time, all you’ll have to do it pluck the scoop off the wax paper and put it on the cake.
* Out of cooking twine? Use unflavored dental floss. Just don’t tie the meat too tightly or you might cut it with the floss and lose juices during cooking.
* If you are out of tea bags but have loose tea, line your mug with a coffee filter, then put in the desired amount of loose tea, fill with hot water, let steep and carefully remove the filter, which will collect the loose tea.
* Finally, if you are worried about pesticides on store vegetables, here is a list of the “dirty dozen,” or the 12 veggie types that had the highest amounts of pesticides on them when tested. It might be good to buy these particular vegetables in the organic section. On the other hand, the second list is of vegetables that do not tend to be sprayed much, so you can feel good about saving money buy skipping those in organic.
The “Dirty Dozen:”
Peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, imported grapes, pears, spinach and potatoes.
Safer to buy conventional:
Onions, avocados, frozen sweet corn, pineapples, mangoes, frozen sweet peas, asparagus, kiwifruit, bananas, cabbage, broccoli and eggplants.
October 23, 2009 - 12:54 PM
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LOVE the Dirty Dozen list. I just finished reading an article on whether or not going totally organic is “worth” it. This list includes many of the fruits and veggies we eat in my house. It’s like a cheat sheet. Thanks!
I wanted to share my favorite food blog with y’all…prepare to drool. http://inncuisine.com
The best advice I heard about organic produce is that if you peel the fruit or vegetable before eating, or if it is one that is grown completely underground, its safe to go conventional. The thought is that pesticides and the like are either peeled away or not consumed.
Thank you for the blog link, Shellie. That is a gorgeous food blog. The chocolate cheesecake muffins were the first sight that greeted me… yum.
Tresk, that sounds like logical advice. I always scrub the dickens out of the outside of any fruit and vegetable, too. Even things like cantaloupes get washed thoroughly on the outside. That’s good treatment in case of pesticides OR bugs like salmonella.