Why Not Try an Antipasto Lunch Plate?

Whenever my brother decides it’s time to lose weight, he does two things.  He eats less, and he makes himself an Antipasto Lunch Plate.  When he first told me about his routine, I asked for the Lunch Plate recipe.  I wasn’t looking to lose weight, but I liked the idea of having something new to eat in the middle of the day.

Here is what’s on the plate in the above picture: lettuce, a sliced hard-boiled egg, slices of salami, several large olives, anchovies, cut-up cheese, a cucumber, cherry tomatoes, broccoli and Italian dressing.

For those not dieting, some French bread would be a handy addition.

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A New Way to Serve Shrimp

When I first learned that I didn’t have to dine out in order to eat a shrimp cocktail, my instinct was to make a shrimp cocktail at home.  When that worked, I became more adventurous, sampling and liking such exotic (to me) dishes as shrimp stir-fry, spicy grilled shrimp and shrimp tacos. 

Mom Cooking Tip 175

If you hang around good cooks, you can learn something new every day.  This tip I learned recently.  When making scrambled eggs, dilute the egg mixture with a few tablespoons of water.  The water will make the eggs fluffier.  Do NOT substitute milk for the water.  Milk toughens the eggs.

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Best Use of Your Time in the Kitchen

Mississippi Mud Pie

Some days I feel like spending hours cooking. It allows me to not think about other things.  Other days I can barely force myself to get a meal on the table.  So I have developed some tricks to keep us from going hungry.

1) Examine what’s in the freezer. Is there a main dish in there, hiding behind the ice cubes?  Sometimes there actually is.  It could be a leftover or an actual main dish, deliberately prepared and frozen when I was in the mood to cook.

Mom Cooking Tip 165

Here’s a way to transport a lot of deviled eggs with or without special egg trays.  Buy a package of paper cupcake cups, usually sold in the baking section, and pop each prepared egg half into its own paper cup.  Put the filled cups in a flat-bottomed container so they won’t slide around in transit.

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I Can Make That Too: Mom’s Eggs Benedict vs. Fischer’s Viennese Café’s Version

Fischer's Viennese Cafe Version of Eggs Benedict

I credit James Bond with my introduction to Eggs Benedict, a wonderful, slightly decadent egg dish that, if made right, you’ll never forget.

Eggs Benedict is usually served for breakfast or brunch, but 007 had his with Jack Daniel’s as a late-night snack in “You Only Live Twice.”  I prefer mine for brunch because it gives me the rest of the day to digest all the butter the dish calls for.

Eggs Benedict are more complicated than an omelet and can go wrong in several ways.  But if you get them even partly right, the effort is worth it.

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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Eggs, Bread, Cheese and Pasta

If I were alone on a desert Island for a week, I’d want eggs, bread, cheese and pasta, plus some olive oil, garlic, salt and black pepper, if possible.  Whenever I’m cooking just for myself, these are the foods I turn to.  I may supplement them with salad and chocolate, but I could survive just on these four basics.

Quiche Lorraine Sounds So Sophisticated

Back when I was a new cook, I didn’t know much of anything.  Every recipe I looked at impressed me.  When one of my sophisticated friends invited me to dinner and made Spaghetti with Garlic Sauce, I was enthralled.  Only when I dared make it myself did I realize how easy it was.

My first taste of Quiche Lorraine came at a cocktail party.  By then I was slightly more ambitious in the kitchen.  I liked the bacon-y flavor of the quiche but had no idea what was in it.  There was no Internet then, so I went to a bookstore and searched through cookbooks.  That may be when I bought my first copy of “Joy of Cooking,” which included a Quiche Lorraine recipe. 

A New Kind of Omelet

When I was just learning to cook, I shared an apartment in New York with a friend who worked in the Standard Brands test kitchen.  One day she came home with a new product her department was testing.  It was called Egg Beaters.  It looked like beaten eggs, but in fact it was made of egg whites and yellow coloring.  It tasted pretty much like regular eggs, but I couldn’t figure out why I would want to use it instead of real eggs.

Now that I’m older and think more about healthy food choices, I understand

A Cheap Emergency Meal

Thank goodness for eggs.  Most people who have refrigerators also have a box of eggs in them.  Eggs are cheap, versatile and full of protein.  They’re one of the basics of my life, whether I’m making a dessert, an omelet or a heavy-duty soup that can serve as a main course.

When I’ve assessed the contents of my freezer and can find nothing I want to eat for dinner, I turn to Oniony Egg Soup.  I don’t know where the recipe came from, but I’ve been making it for years. 

It doesn’t require many ingredients:

Question for Mom?

Why do my hard-boiled eggs have a green ring around the yolk? –Melanie R.

You overcooked them.  They will still taste fine, though.  Here are two ways to cook hardboiled eggs.

1) Gently place the eggs in a pot of boiling water, lower the heat to medium, cover and cook for 10 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 2 minutes.  Drain and add cold water to the pot to cool the eggs.  Peel, wrap in plastic or place in a covered container and refrigerate until needed.  This approach works well if you are also cooking a pot of noodles.  You can cook the eggs and the noodles at the same time.

2) Put the eggs in a small pot, cover with cold water and then a lid.  Bring the water to a boil (about 5 minutes) and cook the egg for 3 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let the eggs sit in the hot water, covered, for 12 minutes.  Then drain and add cold water to the pot to cool the eggs.  Peel, wrap in plastic or place in a covered container and refrigerate until needed.

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Goat Cheese – How to Use It

 Occasionally my bargain-hunting outruns my common sense, and I buy way too much of an ingredient because it’s on sale.  About a week ago an irresistible double package of goat cheese landed in my shopping cart.

Once I got it home I began to wonder what I was going to do with 20 ounces of this soft white cheese.  I took one package to a dinner party.  The other sat forlornly in the cheese drawer for a week until I remembered a quiche recipe an English friend sent me.  Conveniently it called for goat cheese.

The directions said

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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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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How Far Can You Stray From a Classic Recipe?

I’ve been aware of Gado Gado, an Indonesian salad, for years.  I’ve admired pictures of it and even considered making it at one point.  But I never did because 1) it looked like too much work, and 2) it didn’t appear filling enough to be a main course.

Sunset Magazine’s July issue carried a recipe for this salad, and I finally decided to try it.  ‘Too much work’ and ‘not filling enough’ still seemed valid concerns, so I decided to add a few of my own touches and subtract one of theirs--the bean sprouts, because there were enough cold vegetables already on the platter.

Mom Cooking Tip 103

Always wash your hands thoroughly after handling raw eggs.

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Ingredients Hiding in Plain Sight

Right now my refrigerator is stuffed with food that doesn’t quite add up to dinner: a slice of mushroom pizza, at least one cup of cottage cheese, a huge pan of rice left over from a business meeting, some mushrooms, 2 bell peppers + the usual block of cheddar cheese and several dozen eggs.

I really should pop out to the store or find something in my freezer, but I want to clear out the fridge shelves first.  What can I make from these ingredients?  Click on the links below for the three recipes.

Mom Cooking Tip 99

Kiwi Slices

Use an egg slicer to slice hard-boiled eggs and other foods into slender slices.  The foods, which need to be semi-soft, could include bananas, kiwis, strawberries, avocados, pieces of ripe peach, apple or pear (skin side away from the blades), as well as nearly-cooked carrots, potatoes, beets and other root vegetables.

Hard-Boiled Egg Slices 

Banana Slices

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Mom Money-Saving Tip 78

Maximize your use of boiling water. If you need to cook raw shrimp for a few minutes, use the opportunity to remove the skins from a few tomatoes and/or make hard-boiled eggs.  Just drop everything into the same pot of boiling water?  The tomatoes will take no more than a minute.  Then scoop them out and pull off the skins.  The shrimp will take 3-5 minutes, depending on size, to turn pink and slightly curl.  Then scoop them out and peel them.  The eggs will take 10 minutes in boiling water and then another 2 minutes sitting in hot water.  Then run under cold water and peel.  

It’s culinary multi-tasking!

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