Tag: cooking

Pearls Before Wine

Given the choice of any bottle on the shelf, red wine is probably the last variety I would reach for when I want a drink. Why, then, do I keep buying it regularly, and sometimes even more often than my preferred whites and roses? Few ingredients can unlock such a wide range of flavors, transforming an average dish into something spectacular. Red wine is my secret ingredient for many savory recipes.

The science behind cooking with wine really is fascinating. The alcohol content is almost completely nullified, leaving behind great taste without the buzz. Much like salt, the alcohol itself doesn’t exactly add to the final flavor but instead helps other elements taste more like themselves. It adds acidity for brightness, and umami for greater depth and savory richness.

Although you shouldn’t cook with something you wouldn’t drink, the very best bottles are not great cooking wine, especially when it comes to reds. Your best bets are a merlot, cabernet sauvignon, or red blend, and should cost somewhere between $3 to $15 a bottle. Choose a young (not aged) wine with low tannins, since these can impart a bitter aftertaste.

The best red wine to cook with, of course, is whatever you have leftover! That’s where this simple, comforting, yet dazzlingly luxurious side dish comes in. Acini di pepe take center stage, which are really just a fancy way of referring to pearl couscous in Italian. The Translation means “seeds of pepper,” which makes a final flourish of cracked black pepper only fitting.

Balancing out these intense, robust flavors, candy cap mushrooms introduce an unmistakably sweet flavor, shockingly much like maple syrup with an added earthy undertone. The combination is complex, nuanced, and truly greater than the sum of its parts. Even if you’re not much for red wines either, you’ll want to keep some on hand to whip this dish up in 15 minutes flat.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)4 Comments

20 Soup-erb Vegan Soup Recipes

Every season is soup season if you ask me, but January is legitimately designated as National Soup Month. Considering the colder temperatures, it really is the best time to cozy up with a hearty bowlful, be it creamy, brothy, chunky, or otherwise. Just like salads, almost everything can be categorized as “soup” if you try hard enough, so where does the intrepid, undecided cook start?

When you want to get something on the stove without stressing over the best recipe, I’ve got you covered. These are my 20 most popular plant-based soup recipes that are all tried and true. I’ve made each of them scores of times myself, and if you don’t believe me, the glowing comments don’t lie.

Pull out your biggest stock pot and get ready to stew up a double batch. These foolproof formulas will bring you comfort and joy all year long.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)3 Comments

Perfect Pairings

Anyone who appreciates good food knows that a careful balance of harmonious and contrasting flavors is essential. That starts with choosing not only the best raw ingredients, but ones that work well together. Similar to how you might pair wine with food, olive oil has so many unique characteristics that can make or break a meal, it deserves particularly careful consideration.

While there are no hard and fast rules on the subject, consider the following guidelines before heating up your frying pan.

Intensity is probably the most important element to bear in mind. A mild, buttery olive oil would be lost in a strong, garlicky stew, while a peppery and assertive option could easily overpower a delicate green salad.

In general, extra virgin olive oils fall into three categories of intensity: mild, medium, or robust.

  • Mild olive oils have a delicate, buttery, or floral taste, with a light peppery finish. This is typically what I choose for baking, since it’s a healthier option than many other neutral vegetable oils, without imparting a strong taste itself. It’s also great for popping popcorn or making mayonnaise.
  • Medium olive oils can be bitter and pungent, but fade to the background quickly, with a light peppery finish. This is my pick for sauteing or roasting vegetables, making pesto, and tossing pasta.
  • Robust olive oils are on the upper end of intensity, often with a strong, lingering peppery bite. I prefer these options for dipping bread, caramelizing onions, and slow simmering braises.

Provenance is a large contributing factor to the flavor of the olive oil. Beyond what it says on the bottle, you can expect certain countries to produce a predictable range of tastes due to the climate and soil conditions.

  • Spanish olive oil is typically a golden yellow color with a fruity, subtly nutty flavor.
  • French olive oil is often more mild, pale green, and overall light.
  • Italian olive oil tends to be a darker green with herbaceous, grassy notes

Don’t forget that the time of harvest also affects the taste, with earlier pressings being more bitter and pungent, while later batches become more buttery and smooth.

It’s a lot to juggle when you just want to make a simple dish. Thankfully, you can’t go too far wrong; even if it’s not the most complimentary pairing, simply starting with quality European olive oil ensures delicious results every time.

The Flavor Your Life campaign aims to educate North American consumers about authentic extra virgin olive oil from Europe. Flavor Your Life is empowering consumers by educating them about the rich history and delicious properties that these oils display—and sharing the delicious extra virgin olive oil culinary culture that’s been harvested in Europe for generations.

This post was made possible as a collaboration with Moms Meet and Flavor Your Life. My opinions can not be bought and all content is original. This page may contain affiliate links; thank you for supporting my blog!

Hannah (BitterSweet)6 Comments

Discomfort Food

Don’t get too comfortable. Don’t make yourself at home. This won’t be a nice, soothing, easy read. No; this is the opposite of soup for the soul. Sorry to spoil it for you, but isn’t a classic happy ending either.

There is no foolproof recipe for success. Don’t be fooled by the ratings or praise; sometimes, even the most sound advice, the easiest path, the most obvious choice, is doomed to fail. It’s not you. It’s not even the recipe. I don’t know what it is- Bad luck? Destiny, or fate? Some things can’t be explained away by science or reasoning. Life is unpredictable like that, both infuriatingly incomprehensible and exhilaratingly changeable.

Even presumed constants are forever in flux. That’s to say nothing of the random accidents, the drops, drips, splashes, and spills. The bumps and bruises, the cuts and burns. Everything that can go wrong, at some point or another, will, and sometimes all at once.

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Dishes blow up in the oven like a volcano in a pressure cooker. Stews overflow their stockpots to leave impermeable stains on the countertop.

Shit happens, and shit happens to all of us. At least, when it comes to food, you can clean up to try again another day… Or just order takeout.

Take solace in this heaping serving of discomfort food; you’re not alone.

Hannah (BitterSweet)6 Comments

Ode to Avocados

Prized as a delicacy and an aphrodisiac, avocados have been cherished since the early Aztecs first harvested the wild fruit over 10,000 years ago. While that’s an impressive history, proving its long term staying power, I’m disquieted to imagine any point in time that this most precious, indispensable stable didn’t exist. Rarely does a day pass without some form of avocado appearing on my personal menu, and often more than once. I hate to play favorites when there are so many incredible fresh finds out there… But I know avocado is the one I couldn’t live without.

Once the underdog of the produce world, avocados have enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity only during the later half of the 20st century. Now ubiquitous, Americans alone account for over $2.6 billion in avocado sales annually. No wonder millennials can’t afford to buy houses anymore. The buttery flesh may be green, but its really worth it’s weight in gold.

As National Avocado Day looms ever nearer on July 31st, the whole event seems curiously redundant. Don’t we already pay our respects at the shrine of the ahuacatl more religiously than most conventional deities? I don’t really need to suggest a celebratory round of guacamole, as if it wasn’t the most obvious serving suggestion in the book? Besides, you have a whole separate holiday to rock out with your guac out, on September 16th.

There’s no wrong way to eat an avocado. In fact, my favorite method is to scoop it right out of of shell with a spoon, gilded with tiny pinch of flaky salt over the top. If you’d like to pull out all the stops for this party and try something special, however, I do have a few more ideas that are sure to make any avocado lover swoon.

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Hannah (BitterSweet)8 Comments

Hungry for Higher Education

Life has undergone some drastic changes for most of us in the past year. Facing pressure on all sides from rising expenses and a plummeting employment rate, the job market feels especially volatile, especially if you’re the sort of person who wants to do what they’re genuinely passionate about. The good news is that jobs in the food industry are more important than ever, and with so many people changing careers now, this is a great time to invest in further education.

Is that even possible to get a degree as an avowed vegan, you may ask? Plant-based diets are far from a passing trend, and mainstream institutions are finally waking up to the signs, revamping decades-old programs to accommodate. Brand new schools are cropping up at the same time to offer a fresh perspective on the field, too. Whereas in the past, you might have been forced to sacrificed ethics until graduation day, there are now 100% vegan culinary institutions and programs that uphold those high standards.

Compiled and provided by Culinaryschools.org, the list of options continues to grow:

Living Light Culinary Institute

Living Light is an internationally known raw organic vegan chef cooking school. Located in Fort Bragg, California, it was founded in 1997 by master chef Cherie Soria who is considered the mother of gourmet raw food cuisine. Living Light offers workshops and comprehensive chef and instructor training designed for both the serious chef and the ordinary individual interested in healthier meal choices. Their certifications include Gourmet Chef, Associate Chef. and Raw Culinary Arts Professional. Workshops in knife skills, recipes and nutrition facilitate the training. Internet classes are available using videos and online instruction.

Vegan Culinary Academy

Located in beautiful Napa Valley, California, Vegan Culinary Academy was founded in 2007 by Certified Executive Chef Sharon Christensen. Though they do not offer a certification program, all chef instructors are credentialed and certified in the state of California. Their classes are customized and personalized to include plant-based diet instruction, food sculpting, and food business management. They guide students through intensives and traineeship programs.

The School of Natural Cookery

The School of Natural Cookery has a unique curriculum where students learn to cook without using recipes. Their non-traditional professional culinary program caters to the intuitiveness of the individual chef/artist. Joanne Saltzman, who founded “The Language of Cooking” bases the school’s cuisine on original foods to include grains, beans and vegetables. The School of Natural Cookery first opened its professional curriculum in 1991 and it has flourished since. Located in Boulder, Colorado, this school offers both a diploma and certificate program as well as teacher training.

Vegetarian Society Cookery School

Part of the Vegetarian Society of the United Kingdom, Vegetarian Society Cookery School is a prestigious venue for vegetarian and whole food cooking education. Founded in 1982 by Sarah Brown & formerly known as the Cordon Vert School, its diploma is well-received around the world. The highly regarded and intensive diploma program is only open to professional chefs but their courses are available to anyone who wants to excel in whole food cuisine. The school is headquartered in Cheshire, England in an old Victorian mansion. Chefs can find a helpful eLearning section online to learn the basics of vegetarian cooking and catering and to assess their own knowledge of the art.

Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts

Located in Manhattan, New York, the Natural Gourmet Institute enjoys first class facilities. Founded by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. in 1977, the school emphasizes the relationship of food to its effects on health. Their hands-on approach to the natural diet and cooking techniques provides the student with an overall knowledge of both theoretical and practical information. The Chef’s Training Program includes an intensive internship often leading to employment offers.

The Natural Epicurean

The Natural Epicurean bases its philosophy on macrobiotics, which they describe as a holistic approach to a healthy lifestyle choice. The academy was founded in 1994 by Elizabeth Ann Foster and is located in Austin, Texas. They offer an intense 800 hour training course and include cooking for healing, cutting techniques and home remedies. Natural whole foods cooking is combined with eclectic course offerings. Internships are available.

Natural Kitchen Cooking School

The Natural Kitchen believes in making the world a happier and healthier place one kitchen at a time. Based in New Jersey, the school was founded in 2005 by Christine Waltermyer who continues to have a large television presence as a natural and raw foods chef. The Natural Chef Training Program offers hands-on innovative cooking techniques. They often have guest chefs and include food history, food politics and personal healing in the curriculum.

Are you thinking about going back to school? Whether you’re vegan for ethical, environmental, or health reasons, you have a wealth of options to make your dreams of a culinary career come true!

 

This post was made possible as a collaboration with Culinaryschools.org. My opinions can not be bought and all content is original. This page may contain affiliate links; thank you for supporting my blog!

Hannah (BitterSweet)4 Comments