Cooking and Gadgets

redsnapperFish seldom make a midweek dinner, but that shouldn't be a reason not to make this quick and easy recipe tonight. Most people think fish is too fussy to prepare and cook, so it's usually made on rare occasion. However, fish should be eaten at least twice per week for their many nutritional values including omega-3 fatty acids.

What better way to add fish to your diet than by using the easiest of methods, baking. With one fish per person, this recipe works well for a quiet evening alone or a rowdy dinner party among friends. Enjoy a healthy meal in well under a half an hour any day of the week.

Red snapper is one of the most popular fish. It's flavorful, flaky, and tender. It has a slightly sweet and nutty flavor that is complemented by many spices and fresh herbs. This recipe features the flavors of lemon and tarragon, with lemon adding a hint of citrus and tarragon lending an anise flavor. On the outside the fish is sprinkled with saffron for a unique flavor and earthy aroma.

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cakeknife.jpgI had the world's strangest roommate. We were best friends in college and she seemed like  the perfect person to live with. She was a great listener, she was obsessed with Clive Owen and her purse was always stocked with remedies to just about anything – creams, lotions, pills, even powders. Everything was going great, until one day, it just wasn't. Her once mild room-dancing had started to rival the sound of a herd of elephants, her attempts to match our outfits had turned from sort of cute to sort of single-white-female (except that she's five feet tall and Asian) and she had invited her new best friend to come live with us for a month, without consulting me. She finally decided to move out, taking her friend with her. And they went amicably enough.

I came home with my friend Amanda that night to cook dinner, so excited to have the place to ourselves. We skipped around the apartment, lay down on the floor of the now empty second room and made our way into the kitchen to create a culinary masterpiece to celebrate our freedom. That's when we found out that she'd decided to take all of our utensils with her. Every last one, except . . . my dainty, little, silver cake knife.

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salt-and-pepper-shaker.gif Today I want to discuss Pepper.    

Yes, Pepper.  

I feel the eye roll.  You think you know what there is to know. It's sat on the table, every day, for a lifetime in an arranged marriage to Salt.  A couple.  Separate but not equal.  I mean, really, isn't Mr. Pepper, in our culture, sort of the lesser of the two?  The sides of the shaker by the stove are not as greasy.   Pepper is....

A kick.  A punch.  A jab. 

Salt knows her boundaries.  She comes to you in the right size. Pepper, the guy, has to be ground down, beat up, knocked into shape.  

But what is he really....?   

What is the nature of the love affair – not just between them – but between us? 

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underpressure.jpgI don't know about you but I've got five extremely angry über chefs glaring at me from their cookbook bookflaps on my kitchen shelf and it's making me nervous:  England's Heston Blumenthal's "The Big Fat Duck Cookbook", Thomas Keller's "Under Pressure", Grant Achatz's "Alinea", and a couple of chefs from Spain – Ferran Adrià's  "El Bulli Volumes 2003-2004", and Joan Roca's "Sous Vide".  It sounded like a good idea at the time – assembling courtesy of Amazon.com the modern greats for a holiday feast using the latest sci-fi techniques of sous vide (cooking food in a vacuum packed pouch) – and then having at it. 

smokinggunkit-sm.jpgWhat these chefs failed to take into account – and the cause of their ire – was that I now see I don't possess any of the tools required to cook any of their recipes. They want to know why they are in my kitchen.  I don't have a Polyscience Minipack-torre Model MVS31 Vacuum Sealer ($2025.00), a 8306C Model Thermal Circulating Bath ($1799.00), or even a functional spatula.  I do have, however, from a previously deranged buying spree – The Smoking Gun™ ($79.00), which runs on 4 AA batteries and helps infuse dishes with a smoky flavor.  An excellent Christmas present for your foodie friends.  But I'm crushed to learn from their website that the gun is now being touted as "Excellent for finishing products that are cooked Sous Vide".  Back to the beginning.  I won't be dining in.

eggcoddler.jpgEvery once in a while I gain possession of some kitchen gadget or device that has fallen out of favor. Often despite my best intentions it just ends up on yet another shelf, unused, unloved. But aware of the risk, when my mother offered me her set of egg coddlers, I couldn't resist. They are so charming to look at that even if you swore off eggs you might want to put large blossoms in them for decorating a table or you could use them for serving jam or marmalade. They can also be used for heating up baby food.

Egg coddlers allow you to cook an egg to the consistency you like, and serve it up in a convenient and attractive manner. Personally I love the tecture of poached eggs, but there is no way to really get them dry enough once they emerge from their bath. I know Martha Stewart places them on the heels of bread and trims them just so, but they still seem drippy to me. I also like soft boiled eggs, but eating them out of the shell is a mess. I know they look cute in egg cups, but they really aren't that easy to crack the lids off and eat.

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