Question for Mom

Sometimes a recipe calls for egg yolks, rather than whole eggs.  What can I do with the leftover egg whites? --Jordan G.

Why not make yourself an egg-white omelet?  It’s a great diet meal and an excellent source of protein.  One large egg white has just 17 calories, while one whole egg has 78 calories.  

Egg white omelets are much easier to make than whole egg omelets.  You can beat the egg white(s) if you like or just pour them into a hot frying pan containing 1 teaspoon olive oil or canola oil.  Cook the egg white(s) for about 1 minute, or until firm on the bottom.  Then flip the pancake-like whites over and cook for 20 or 30 seconds, or until the whites are firm.  Gently fold in half with a metal spatula and serve with salsa or hot sauce.

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Why Not Use Lamb in a Stir-Fry?

I tend to get trapped making the same dishes over and over.  It’s the easy way out since I hate hearing complaints from family members when they’re presented with a dish they’ve never seen before.

Sometimes when I’m trying something new, I make it resemble a dish I know they already like.  That approach can backfire if they decide they don’t like that dish after all and ask me never to make it again.  This time though, when I made my friend Abby’s lamb stir-fry recipe, the plan worked.

Mom Money-Saving Tip 103

shrimp / 16-20 per pound

Cooked, peeled shrimp almost always cost more than uncooked, unpeeled shrimp.  So you can save money by doing the cooking and peeling yourself.  Also, you are less likely to overcook the shrimp since you will be cooking it only once.  A shrimp stir-fry dish, for instance, will taste fresher when you start with raw shrimp.  If the shrimp are already cooked, add them to the dish at the last moment so they don’t get overcooked.

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How to Use Up Leftover Potatoes

Baked Stuffed Potatoes

It’s so easy to cook more potatoes than you need—whether you meant to do it in order to have leftovers or you made a mistake.  How you cooked them in the first place will determine what you can do with them next.  Here’s a guide to using up leftover potatoes in recipes on this blog;

Mom Cooking Tip 158

Everyone can teach me something about cooking.  Today as I was checking out at Trader Joe’s with my two 17.6-oz. chocolate bars made of 70% cocoa, the young man loading my grocery bag nodded at the chocolate.  Then he said, “Have you ever tried grating some of this onto the surface of a cup of cocoa?  The contrast between the sweet and bittersweet is amazing.”  As soon as I got home, I tried it, and he was right.  Just a few slivers of the chocolate made quite a difference!

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Cave Woman Cooking!

Celeriac Soup is perhaps the most delicate soup I’ve ever eaten, and yet to make it I felt like a cave woman.  Peeling the main ingredient, a 1-pound celery root, required the sharpest knife I owned.  And cutting it into 1-inch pieces took brute strength.  But it was worth it.

I took on this challenge for one simple reason. I had a delicious bowl of Celeriac Soup a few weeks ago at the National Gallery Café in London, and I wanted to try making it at home.

A New Way to Cook Arborio Rice

Standing at the stove and stirring Arborio rice while everyone else is chatting is one reason a lot of people avoid making Risotto.  Most types of rice can cook by themselves, but I’ve always been told that because Arborio rice has so much starch in it, you’ve got to keep stirring until it has finished cooking.

I’m happy to report

Is It Possible to Eat Just a Little Bit of Chocolate?

Anything is possible. But when chocolate desserts are sitting on the table, I’m not one to walk away—or turn down seconds.  There is no real way to deal with my chocolate passion.

I’ve tried the Jodie Foster method of not keeping chocolate in the house.  She claimed it worked for her.  I’ve tried this approach, but the rest of the family rebelled and brought in their own chocolates.  And I knew where they kept them.

The Rolling Pin: a Kitchen Accessory Useful for Making Chicken Parmesan

Chicken Parmesan

I take my rolling pin for granted.  It used to belong to my grandmother, and I have carried it with me to New York, London and now Los Angeles.  I use it for making pie crusts on occasion, but there’s nothing more satisfying than using it to bash chicken breasts. 

Several of my recipes require flattened boneless chicken breasts.  You can’t buy them flattened, so you have to flatten them yourself.  Although I’m not a baseball player, I’ve noticed that the bat striking the ball sounds rather like the rolling pin striking the chicken.

Mom Cooking Tip 157

Normally I serve fresh strawberries whole,with stems attached.  If I cover them with chocolate, I take the stems off first.  Never have I thought to serve them cut until I saw a caterer turn a bowl of strawberries into a work of art by simply slicing them in half.  They're faster to prepare because you can leave the stems in place.

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