Mom Cooking Tip 139

Looking for a flavor boost?  Add a teaspoon of soy sauce to a soup, sauce or stew.

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Disguising a Food Purchase Mistake

When I was at my local supermarket recently, I discovered a two-pound bag of individually frozen salmon fillets on sale and immediately bought a package.  The price was right--$5.99 for 6 fillets instead of $12.99.

I pan-fried two of them for dinner that night and got a resounding boo from my husband.  After a few bites, he pushed the salmon around his plate for a while and then took an extra helping of rice.  Seldom has he been so negative about what I cook.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw out the other fillets.  I figured I would eat them when he was away on a trip. 

A few weeks later I had an idea.

Question for Mom

What can you do if chocolate seizes up when you’re melting it?  --Helen H.

Not a lot.  Chocolate gets gritty when a tiny bit of water gets into it during the melting process.  Some people suggest adding some corn oil or canola oil to the mixture, but I’ve never had any success doing that.  To calm myself down, I add some cream or milk, as well as sugar if I’m using unsweetened chocolate, and turn the mess into a cup of hot chocolate.  Adding a lot of liquid to gritty chocolate makes the gritty texture go away. 

Once you’ve enjoyed the hot chocolate, start melting a new batch of chocolate.  Here are some effective ways to do that. 

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Whenever Possible Make Baked Stuffed Potatoes

Like eating Chicken Soup when you’re feeling under the weather, Baked Stuffed Potatoes are a cure-all.  A little butter, some cheese, a large dollop of sour cream, garlic and spices—what more can a potato ask for to become the center of attention?

I recently realized that making these potatoes needn’t be a huge drain on my energy just before dinner.  Why not prepare them early in the day and keep refrigerated until the final baking? 

Here’s the plan:

Mom Cooking Tip 138

Bacon slices are easier to separate when you’re frying them and the fat begins to melt.  Use a fork or tongs to nudge the slices apart.

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Rice Vinegar: What Is It and How Do I Use It?

Until I began cooking Asian dishes, I was unfamiliar with rice vinegar. At first I substituted cider vinegar, which seemed to work--although I wasn't really sure what the dish was supposed to taste like. Then I bought a bottle of rice vinegar, which is made from fermented rice.

Tasting it on its own was a shock. The label describes it as "the mild vinegar," but the back of my throat did not enjoy the experience. But when I mixed it with other ingredients, including oil and spices, the sharp flavor mellowed out.

Somehow I used up two bottles of rice vinegar within a few months. It was a good addition to Super-Easy Fried Tofu  and Asian Chicken Slaw I've also added it to my homemade oil and vinegar dressing recipe. Rice vinegar is not a kitchen essential, but using it makes me feel like a more sophisticated cook.

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Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Homemade Truffles

In case truffles are new to you, they are little balls of chocolate mixed with cream, butter and vanilla, then covered with cocoa or powdered sugar. 

They are a lot more exotic than a bar of chocolate, even though they’re usually made from a bar of chocolate.  The process is straightforward, but there are two steps that require your full attention.

1) Melting the chocolate—a simple task as long as you focus on it.  Look away for a minute while checking your phone, and the chocolate may turn gritty and inedible.  Melting directions are below.

2) Shaping the truffles once the chocolate mixture is cold.

Store-bought truffles can be expensive, but 15 homemade truffles can cost less than $5 total. 

Rutabagas: What Are They and How Do I Cook Them?

A rutabaga is a root vegetable.  It’s not the most popular choice at the supermarket, nor is it sleek like asparagus or irresistible like heirloom tomatoes.  It’s a work-horse vegetable that’s been around for at least 400 years.  If you find it on a menu it’s likely to be part of a stew or a pile of roasted vegggies.

Some people think rutabagas are just used to feed livestock, but that’s not true.

Mom Money-Saving Tip 90

Why buy breadcrumbs when you can easily make your own?  If you’re dealing with traditional store-bought bread, 1 3-ounce slice makes about 1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs. If you dry it in the oven, the slice makes 1/4 cup dried bread crumbs.

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Can You Ever Have Too Much Chocolate?

I find this hard to admit, but I was once in a room with too much chocolate.  This room, about the size of two football fields, was inside the Los Angeles Convention Center. 

A Chocolate Festival was in progress.  My job (courtesy of the International Herald Tribune) was to visit as many booths as possible, take notes and taste whatever was on offer.  That way I could tell readers about the latest American chocolate trends. 

I couldn’t believe my luck, especially when I saw 25-pound bars of semi-sweet chocolate being hacked into fist-sized samples.  But I soon discovered there’s truth in that old saying, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

Question for Mom

Does size of egg matter when you’re cooking? --Natalie R.

No, unless you’re baking, and even then it may not matter much.  As you can see from the picture above, not all large eggs are exactly the same size

1 extra-large egg = about 4 tablespoons

1 large egg = about 3 1/4 tablespoons

1 medium egg = about 3 tablespoons

Most recipes call for large eggs, so as long as you’re using only 1 or 2 eggs, you can easily substitute extra-large or medium eggs.  However, if the recipe calls for 6 large eggs, you would be wise to substitute 5 extra-large eggs or 7 medium eggs.

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Getting Out of a Cooking Rut

When I was growing up, every Friday night we had dinner at my grandmother’s house.  Usually it was boiled chicken, preceded by chicken soup.  Grandma was probably in a cooking rut.

Now our house is the venue for that weekly dinner.  Although boiled chicken is never on the menu, I’m the one in the cooking rut.  There are only certain dishes I can serve that we all will eat—vegetarian lasagna, stuffed tortillas, blintzes--and I’m tired of them.

At times like this one of my great joys in life is dinner at somebody else’s house.