Gumbo and Garlic Bread

Normally I would think twice before recommending a mix.  However, after my whole family loved the soup that was based on a box of Zatarain's Gumbo Mix, I feel comfortable mentioning it.  We even fought over the leftovers, and that is unheard of in our house.

Kosher Salt: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

Table Salt (left) and Kosher Salt (right)

Kosher salt is like the extra-large t-shirt displayed next to mediums.  The flakes are bigger and coarser than regular table salt, but surprisingly these flakes are less salty.  They can be used in almost any recipe calling for salt. 

But be careful.  A teaspoon of table salt is a lot more salty than a teaspoon of kosher salt.  “The Cook’s Bible” says 1 tablespoon kosher salt = 2 teaspoons table salt. 

Not a lot of recipes demand kosher salt, but it is used often enough in cooking that two big companies—Morton’s and Diamond Crystal—package and sell it.  Kosher salt costs more than table salt, but even then the price is low--$1.99 for a 1-pound container at my local supermarket.

Here’s a bit of history:

Mom Cooking Tip 122

Vegetable Quiche

If your quiche mixture seems too runny, add 1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs before baking to absorb some of the extra liquid.

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Question for Mom

Seafood Pasta

I’ve heard people at restaurants request their pasta cooked ‘al dente.’  What does that mean? 

--Joy H.

“Al dente" is an Italian expression referring to the doneness of cooked noodles.  “Al dente” is the opposite of limp or over-cooked noodles.  "Al dente" noodles are ever so slightly chewy.  Be aware there’s a fine line between "al dente" and not quite cooked.

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Secrets of the Radish

Radishes never seemed mysterious.  When I was growing up, they sometimes appeared as a side dish along with some slices of cucumber.  It was like an instant salad, both spicy and colorful.  Once in a while my mother put sliced raw radishes and small chunks of cucumber into a bowl of sour cream.  That would be our lunch when she’d run out of everything else.

When I began cooking, I ignored radishes unless a recipe called for them, which was almost never. 

Reinventing a Classic Vegetable

Gugarati Green Beans

Sometimes cooking a traditional vegetable a different way makes me think I’m Christopher Columbus discovering a new world.  It happened a while ago with green beans.

My first memory of green beans involved a tuna casserole.  I’m pretty sure those beans came out of a can.  They must have been overcooked because they were soft and squishy.  But at the time I didn’t know they could taste any different.  I just ate what was put in front of me.

Years later I picked some green beans growing in a friend’s garden and discovered:

Mom Money-Saving Tip 88

Be creative with leftovers.  Six uneaten French fries from last night’s dinner became the basis of today’s lunch.  First I warmed up the fries in the microwave.  Then I heated up a flour tortilla in a frying pan, flipped it over, placed the fries in a rough line down the middle and added some cheddar cheese.  I covered the pan with a lid and continued cooking for about 30 seconds, or until the cheese melted.  Voila!  Cheapest lunch ever.

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Mortar and Pestle: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

Glass Mortar and Pestle

A mortar and a pestle are actually two stand-alone items that are sold together and work together.  Basically they mash things up, things not really mashable with a fork.  In my case that usually means whole spices.

I bought a mortar and pestle some years ago because I thought it looked cool, but I only started using it when I began liking the taste of Szechuan peppercorns.  They were too expensive to put in a pepper mill, so I ground them up in my mortar and pestle.

Spinach: Fresh vs. Frozen

I couldn’t resist the 40-ounce bag of fresh spinach at Costco yesterday for $3.99.  I’ve been a fan of fresh spinach since my earliest cooking days.  I like putting it in salads, dropping a few handfuls into soup, a stir-fry, a stew or hot pasta.  I’ve recently taken to mixing some fresh spinach into ground turkey recipes, just to provide some novelty.  I also make an excellent Spinach Quiche.   

Frozen spinach just doesn’t provide the same taste experience, especially the chopped version.  Draining a pot of once-frozen, then-cooked chopped spinach is highly unappealing.  I would never serve it as a vegetable.  Whole-leaf frozen spinach is slightly better in principle, but I can’t remember the last time I offered it as a side dish.  As for canned spinach…I don’t want to think about it.

Mom Cooking Tip 121

Don’t rinse cooked pasta.  Fresh water washes away the starch coating that will help the sauce stick to the pasta.

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Oops! I Ran Out of xxx in the Middle of Cooking

How many times have you discovered you were missing an ingredient in the middle of getting dinner ready?  Somehow I can look at a recipe, carefully check the ingredients and still manage to overlook the need for an egg or a cup of milk. 

If the ingredient is something odd—like anchovies or honeydew melon—I make a special point of confirming its existence in the house. But if it’s something so basic, so certain to be in the fridge or the cupboard, then I often don’t bother to check that I actually have it. 

I never buy lemons, for instance, because there’s a lemon tree 20 feet from my front door.  So lemons are always in supply—except when they’re not, as I discovered the other day when I went out to pick one.  The tree was full of mini-green lemons, which should be ripe next month.

Manzana Bananas: What Are They and How Do I Use Them?

I never heard of Manzana Bananas until I saw them in the produce department at a local grocery store.  They’re cute little bananas, 8-10 to a bunch, and they provide about three mouthfuls of fruit.

They seemed like the perfect answer to my lifelong problem of buying regular bananas and watching them over-ripen before having the chance to eat all of them.

A Fool for Chocolate

I sensed my life  going downhill yesterday when I found myself in the kitchen eating a spoonful of creamy peanut butter covered with chocolate chips.  It was my own fault.  I’d made a chocolate cake earlier in the week and foolishly given most of it away.  I didn’t want it to tempt me, but here I was making a fool of myself over chocolate.

I could have whipped up a batch of chocolate peanut butter cups, but that would have been work.  Or I could have made a batch of Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies – same problem.