TV Chefs Should Show How They Clean Up After Meals

With all of the celebrity chefs and cooking shows on television these days, I can’t help but think that it must be a challenge these people to come up any kind of recipe or cooking idea that hasn’t been already done a thousand times. I do have one suggestion for any cooking show producer searching for a truly novel idea; show how the cook cleans up all the mess he made after he’s finished cooking.

Most celebrity chefs are focused on meals that are practical for the home cook, most notably Jamie Oliver, who has rose to prominence with his shows and books based on 15 minute meals. Anyone interested in preparing meals very quickly should watch his show as he really does prepare some nice looking meals in only 15 minutes. The audience does not though see how long it takes to clean up the mess that gets left behind. If like most home cooks you do not have your own personal cleaning staff ready to swoop in and clean up after you as soon as you are done, you need to take into account what kind of mess your meal will leave.

Jamie Oliver often uses a food processor on his show as it can often greatly speed up the cooking process, particularly for those amateur cooks who are not all that proficient with a chef’s knife, but while the food processor can save time on the front end, they can be a pain in the neck to clean. You can’t just pop it in the dishwasher; you need to take it apart, and you have to clean up the hollow part inside the blade attachment that can be particularly cumbersome depending on what you are cooking. That is not to say that you should never use a food processor; just make sure you realize what you are getting yourself into.

Food processors are one of the biggest mess creators in the kitchen; there are all kinds of nooks and crannies where food can get stuck. Though using a chef knife can be slower than a food processor in the preparation, you can clean and dry it in about 10 seconds. It’s for that reason that I rarely use a food processor. I can shred a block of cheese in seconds with the processor, but I still use a hand grater when I’m making a grilled cheese sandwich or macaroni and cheese because I can just throw it into the dishwasher when I’m done. There is nothing worse than trying to clean a food processor after running a block of cheese through it. God help you if you attempt a recipe that requires you to use a food processor for multiple different ingredients.

I doubt we will ever see it, but I would love to see a TV chef like Jamie Oliver actually include the actual cleanup in the show. Some might think that it would be boring television, but it would have enormous potential for unintended entertainment, as the bright and cheery cook starts cursing as he tries to clean a food filthy food processor.

Why Would Anyone Ever Make Their Own Pasta?

I make a lot of things from scratch. There are certain things that just taste better when you make it yourself from scratch. There is nothing like the taste of bread fresh out of the oven. Even if you aren’t that good at making bread it will taste great if you eat it right out of the oven. There are other things though that are a complete waste of time as you end doing all kinds of work and creating a giant mess only to end up with something that is no better, and often worse tasting, than what you could have bought in the grocery store. There is no better example of this than pasta.

I have eaten pasta that was made by hand at several wonderful, high end restaurants. It tasted fine, but for the life of me I would never be able to tell the difference between that and the fresh pasta that I have bought at the grocery store.  Foods like beef add flavour, which is why it is perfectly acceptable to throw a steak on a grill and eat it as is when it is cooked. Pasta, on the other hand, is one of the foods that carry flavour, which is why it is generally served with tomato and meat based sauces. If you are eating lasagna, it will not make one bit of difference whether you made your pasta yourself or bought it in a grocery store as the flavour from the meat, cheese, and tomato will completely overwhelm the pasta. The pasta will impart only slightly more flavour to the dish than casserole dish it was cooked in.

That being said, if pasta was easy to make, I would still probably cook it from scratch; but it isn’t. Cooking pasta is an ordeal. Once you make your dough, you then have to roll it through a pasta press about a dozen times and after all that you then have to go about shaping it into whatever type of pasta you want. I guess I could see making simple rectangular pieces for lasagna but why in God’s name would anyone bother making macaroni, or, perish the thought, bowtie pasta?

Compare this with making bread. With the no-knead method, you can spend two minutes mixing together a few ingredients, leave it overnight, knock it down and dump it in a bread pan, leave it for a couple of hours, then pop it in the oven for a half an hour and you have a wonderful loaf of bread. The return per minute of actual work is tremendous. Making homemade pasta is, after making homemade butter, the least efficient use of your time in the kitchen. If you want to eat pasta and enjoy the feeling of cooking from scratch, just throw a can of tomatoes in a pot with a diced onion, some garlic, and some oregano and you’ve got a homemade tomato sauce to pour over the pasta. Serve some homemade bread with it and nobody will question where your pasta came from.

Why Do Celebrity Chefs Insist on Desecrating Their Dishes with Cilantro?

Like 95% of the human population, I detest cilantro. For those of you who are lucky enough to have never tasted it and are curious it is akin to eating paper thin slices of a cheap bar of soup; not the creamy, aromatic ones like Dove or Ivory, nor the cheaper private label brands of the major grocery stores, but the cheapest soap in the lowest end stores in the worst part of town. Yet for some reason some of my favourite celebrity chefs insist on using it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve been watching a cooking show on TV or a video recipe on the Internet and witnessed the chef prepare one of the most mouth-watering dishes imaginable only to at the very end hear those dreaded words, “and then I like to garnish it with some fresh cilantro”. Even Chef John from Foodwishes.com, the greatest of all celebrity chefs, insists on tossing Satan’s herb over some his best creations.

This isn’t a case of someone who dislikes strong tasting herbs. I’ve got sage and rosemary plants growing next to my house and use them all the time. I’m not a fan of mint but I realize that many people love it, particularly when it is thrown in with some white rum, but I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a regular person who truly enjoys the taste of cilantro. It is awful. The only reason it is sold in grocery stores at all is because of all the home cooks trying out the recipes from their favourite celebrity chefs.

If all celebrity chefs banned together and agreed to stop including cilantro in their recipes the herb would be virtually eradicated from the planet within three years. It would be like Polio; only existing in some of the most remote mountain regions of Pakistan. By contrast, if every chef in the world took up an active campaign against oregano it would not have even a slight impact on production. The reason of course is that oregano tastes fantastic. The smell of oregano in the kitchen just makes you hungry and eager to cook and eat. Seeing cilantro on the counter of the friend who invited you over to dinner gives much the same feeling as seeing a moose darting in front your car on the ride over.

A truly good herb isn’t used as a garnish; it is used as an ingredient in the cooking process. You don’t throw a handful of oregano over your pizza, you add it to the sauce so it can spread around its flavour. Have you ever heard of anyone garnishing their dish with a pinch of fresh rosemary? Of course not. The only dish that cilantro is commonly used during the cooking process is salsa where you have enough jalapeño to blunt the herb’s sharp edges.

Cilantro is a fraud. It seems so popular but truth be told everyone hates it and its prominence is owed entirely to the chefs who promote it on the Internet and TV. If cilantro was a person its last name would be Kardashian-Hilton. If there was no food media, there would be no cilantro.

Does Anyone Eat Liver Anymore?

One of the most vivid memories of my early childhood was getting my first and last horrifying taste of liver. I remember how slimy and revolting it looked coming out of the package, and the stench it gave off as it was being cooked. I knew I wouldn’t like it, but my father told me I couldn’t know I didn’t like something without having tried it. The only positive I took from the experience is that I now know that I have the ability to know I won’t like something even though I have never tried it.

When I was a kid it seemed like there was always someone around me eating liver. That was back when people only ate about 12 different things in their entire lives, and now that the nose to tail fad is in full swing and people are seemingly willing to try anything, nobody wants anything to do with liver. You can grab a dozen cookbooks from your local bookstore and not find a single reference to liver. Anthony Bourdain eats insects and intestines, but I don’t think there is any evidence of him trying liver.

I have travelled to many countries, and though I am not that adventurous and eater, I have tried my share of different foods, and though I’ve tasted many things I didn’t like (octopus tastes like eating a thick rubber band), nothing has ever come close to the revolting taste of liver. I’m not just limiting this to foods; I am counting everything I have ever tasted in my life, including dirt, salt water, my own blood, and soap. I can’t imagine anything that could taste as horrible as liver, except perhaps some actual poisons.

I have no idea why previous generations choose to eat liver. In Newfoundland, where I am from, all kinds of nice tasting seafood was always more widely available than cow liver. There has never been a person in Newfoundland who ever had to choose between eating liver and starving to death. I suspect that is the same in most parts of the world. Yet people still chose to fry themselves up a pile of slimy liver.

It is a sign of societal progress that hardly any of eat an organ whose function is to filter toxic garbage out of cows’ blood. I suspect though that when liver is on the verge of disappearing altogether from grocery stores that some group of pretentious foodies will try to turn it into the latest culinary fad. Though I am glad that liver is disappearing from shelves and dinner tables, I must confess that I would get some satisfaction at seeing a pretentious hipster foodie forcing his or herself to eat liver and pretending to like it.

Who Doesn’t Put Ketchup on Hot Dogs?

I love Clint Eastwood. I loved the all of the Dirty Harry Movies. Of all the lines that I remember from all the Dirty Harry movies, the one that I remember the most was in the 1983 movie Sudden Impact, where he tells his partner that “nobody puts ketchup on a hot dog”. It’s the strangest line I have ever heard in a movie, because not only do I put ketchup on a hot dog, but every single person I have ever seen eat a hot dog in my entire life has put ketchup on a hot dog.

It isn’t like this movie was made long before I was born and hot dog tastes changed after the movie was made. I was seven years old in 1983, which is pretty much your prime in the sport of hot dog eating, and even then I never witnessed a single person eat a hot dog without ketchup. I have attended sporting events in multiple parts of Canada and the United States over the years, and I have never seen a hot dog eaten without ketchup on it. Every single hot dog vendor in North America has a large supply of ketchup on their trolley. You know why? Because everyone puts ketchup on their hot dogs.

I did a little Googling on the subject and I learned that there are some purists who think that putting ketchup on a hot dog is unsophisticated and who that you should only put things like mustard and relish on them. That is nonsense. If you were really sophisticated you wouldn’t be eating hot dogs in the first place so put whatever you feel like on them. In any case, I don’t believe there is a person on earth who doesn’t put ketchup on their hot dogs when nobody is watching. Except maybe those people who just really hate ketchup.

Don’t Ever Try to Make Cauliflower Pizza

I love pizza, but I am also trying to cut back on the carbs in order to lose a few pounds. I was looking around for some halfway appetizing low carb recipes and I came across something that appeared to be too good to be true; a recipe for pizza crust made out of cauliflower. The recipes I came across all looked fantastic, with thin, crispy crusts. I knew that it couldn’t possibly taste as good as regular pizza dough, but even if it was just halfway edible I figured I could mask the taste by piling on the toppings and sauce. Alas my dream of low carb pizza was short lived as I threw the whole thing in the garbage.

I don’t usually throw leftovers in the garbage; I generally throw them out for the crows that live in the woods behind my house. They generally love stale pizza leftovers but I didn’t bother giving them any of this because I seriously didn’t think they would eat it. It was the worst thing I have ever cooked. An absolute abomination. Cauliflower pizza is to regular pizza what gremlins are to mogwais. It is impossible to make cauliflower crust crispy. The outside of my crust was almost burnt and it was still soft.

This was the most disappointing thing I have ever made, not just because of the taste, but because it almost fooled me into believing that it might actually be not terrible. When I took the pizza out of the oven it looked fantastic, but then my dream was shattered as soon as I tried picking up the gooey mess. It’s like the first time I ever tried decaf coffee, only a hundred times worse. If you are trying to cut down on carbs, either don’t eat pizza or make a very thin crust. Do not try replacing flour with ground up cauliflower. If it was any good you would have seen one in a restaurant by now.

A Guide to Buying Cigars in Cuba

With Cuba and the United States in discussions to reestablish diplomatic relations, American cigar lovers may soon have the opportunity to travel to Cuba and legally bring back Cuban cigars. Many of these cigar lovers will run the risk of being taken advantage of and being sold cigars of poor quality of things that are not even cigars at all. With that in mind, I thought I would put together a short Cuban cigar buying guide for my American cousins.

The first and most important rule is that if someone is selling Montecristos or Cohibas on the street, or anywhere other than an official, government owned store, they are fake. Fake can mean that they are not really authentic Montecristos or Cohibas, but some low quality, cheap cigars with a fake label. Fake can even mean that what you are buying is not cigars at all but are actually dried up leaves of some other plant like banana leaves. The reason why Montecristos and Cohibas are most likely to be fake is that they are the most recognizable to the casual cigar smoker. It would make no sense to counterfeit a cigar that most tourists have never heard of.

During your visit to Cuba, some hotel staff member or store worker will tell you that they have a relative who works at a cigar factory and can hook you up with some cheap authentic cigars. All of these people are lying. Everyone who sells fake cigars uses some variation of the same story, so do not be swayed no matter how earnest or trustworthy the person appears to be.

Even if you are able to buy authentic cigars off the street, the lack of proper storage may have lead them to be infected with cigar beetles. These are extremely common and you may find that your new collection of Cuban cigars suddenly are filled with holes. Then the other cigars in your humidor are filled with holes. And then you have to throw away your entire cigar collection. If you can afford to go on a vacation to Cuba, you should be able to afford a second, small humidor so that you can quarantine cigars you buy on vacation for several months to ensure they are clean before putting them with the rest of your collection.

My suggestion would be to buy a bunch of different cigars in the official stores while you are there and then buy a box of the one you like best. If you are buying them for someone else who wants one of the iconic Cuban cigars, you could buy Montecristos or H. Uppmanns. Don’t buy Cohibas for anyone other than yourself; they taste fantastic but they are too expensive. Nobody with any sense will ever complain about being given some genuine Uppmanns or Montecristos. One the other end of the spectrum, do not buy Guantanameras unless you are only buying them for some in-law you don’t really like or someone who usually smokes cigars that have wine flavoured plastic tips. If you really want to impress a friend while keeping on a budget then you should pick up a box of Fonsecas. Fonseca is a mild cigar that comes in an impressive looking wrapper but are relatively inexpensive. They are also mild cigars, which are the best choice for an occasional cigar smokers. Most casual smokers would likely enjoy them much more than the stronger tasting Cohibas.

Does Anyone Buy Bone China Anymore?

When I was a child, it seemed everyone my mother’s age and older had a set of bone china plates and cups to be used on special occasions. Now that I am that same age that my mother was when I was a kid I can’t help but notice that I haven’t seen a single person my age with a set of china. I feel that is a sign of social progress.

If there is one thing I know about plates and cups is that they get chipped and break all the time. It must be a horrible feeling to invest in a set of expensive tea cups and watch a clumsy dinner party guest knock one off the table and smash on the floor. People who owned such expensive sets must have found dinner parties unspeakably stressful. People my age drink a lot, but they don’t drink anywhere near as much as my parents’ generation.

The problem with bone china sets is that they are often used for tea, coffee, and deserts, which are typically served when dinner party guests are at their drunkest. If you are going to invest in bone china, you should only buy salad plates and soup bowls. When you factor in that people from the baby boomer and older generations were much more prone to waving their hands when speaking, there must have been a shocking number of beautiful cups and plates destroyed over the years.

It makes absolutely no sense to invest in something so delicate that is so frequently handed over to drunk house guests. If you want to invest your money in something nice for your dining room, why not spend your money on high end knives? They are far more practical and if a drunk dinner party guest who happens to hit one while talking with his hands he will do far more damage to himself than he will to the knife.

Most people these days are accustomed to drinking their tea and coffee out of a Tim Horton’s cup, so anything that has a handle and doesn’t rot or melt now looks sophisticated. Who among us has a social group that could be trusted with something that would smash into a hundred pieces if dropped on the floor? If you want to invest in something nice for your kitchen, invest in steel knives or cast iron cookware.

Why Do All Fast Food Restaurants Assume You Want the Combo?

I am a home cooking enthusiast who prepares most all of our meals from scratch, but I still very much enjoy a good fast food hamburger, particularly during working hours when I’m busy running errands. It’s just so tempting to turn into a drive through lane. They each have their own unique style of burger, but there is one thing that seems to unite every single fast food restaurant; a complete inability to contemplate that someone would ever consider ordering a burger without fries and a soft drink.

Almost without fail, whenever I order a hamburger the person will either ask me what I would like for the drink or if I would like to large size the meal. Then I have to clarify that it is just the burger that I want and they have to go and change the order, no doubt cursing me under their breath for being so difficult. It isn’t that I don’t like fries or soft drinks, it’s just that I enjoy the burger more and I don’t feel it is worth doubling the calories of my lunch to add the French fries.

What I find surprising is that it must be exceedingly rare for anyone to ever not get the combo. If people were regularly just getting a single hamburger I’m sure they wouldn’t automatically assume combos, but I get the impression that people must go weeks without every coming across a customer who declines to go for the combo. I understand that combos can be a good deal, but surely I’m not the only person who just wants to grab a burger to hold me over until supper?

I Think I Know the Secret Ingredient in Mary Brown’s Fried Chicken

Most people reading this probably have not heard of Mary Brown’s fried chicken restaurants, but it is more popular than Kentucky Fried Chicken in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and has numerous locations throughout Atlantic Canada as well as in Ontario and Alberta. Its expansion over the years has pretty much tracked the migration of Newfoundland workers, first to Toronto, and then to Alberta, where Newfoundlanders make up a disproportionately large portion of workers in the oil industry.

Much like KFC, Mary Brown’s aficionados have frequently tried to replicate the recipe, with varying levels of success. I’ve never tried to replicate any famous fast food recipes myself, but in trying to create my own chicken finger recipe I think I may have stumbled upon the secret ingredient that has prevented anyone from successfully replicating it in the past; Aleppo pepper.

I ordered some Aleppo pepper online after seeing it used in a Million Dollar Chicken recipe video on YouTube, and I decided to add some to my chicken finger recipe to give it a little extra zip. That was in addition to my standard ingredients of salt, pepper, thyme and oregano. The first thing I thought of was how much it reminded me of the Mary Brown’s taste.

This was not long after a story appeared on the local news that Mary Brown’s was expanding into Turkey. As the chain had always chosen to stick to areas with a sizeable concentration of Newfoundlanders, expanding into Turkey seemed strangely random and made no sense. But Aleppo pepper comes from that region and is a very commonly used spice in Turkey, and so if that is indeed one of the main ingredients then the decision suddenly seems a little less random, albeit still a curious one. This is obviously just idle speculation on my part, but before you dismiss the idea, try adding a little Aleppo pepper to your homemade fried chicken recipe and see if it tastes strangely familiar.