Gearing Up For Holiday Cooking

 Three major holidays happen this month and that means prepping the kitchen for holiday cooking. Ramadan, Easter and Passover happen within weeks of each other. it means planning and shopping along with scanning over recipes to see what works.

Ramadan starts tonight and ends on May 1st.There is fasting from dawn to sunset but that doesn't mean there can't be tasty dishes. The fast has to b broken each night with iftar the traditional meal. Of course the fast is usually broken by eating Medjool dates but there are other dishes that can be enjoyed by the family or by a crowd.Samosas are perfect, They're fun , finger foods and can be filled with either meat or potatoes. Think chicken or potatoes highly spiced with a variety of different spices like cumin and turmeric.Another tasty and quick to make dish are kabobs. A good choice is lamb or again chicken interspersed with onions, tomatoes and bell peppers.You could have stuffed veggies too or stews like one with lentils and beef. Sweets could be lokaymat, sweet dough balls fried and soaked in honey. Passover also begins this month and with it comes traditional recipes along with new spins on the classics.Of course there will be matzoh ball soup, highlighted by fluffy matzoh balls lightened a splash of seltzer. Brisket is always served. This savory cut can be seasoned with brown sugar, rosemary and a dash of paprika. What to serve with it? A vegetable kugel would work .it's a host of different veggies baked into a savory cake held together with potato starch and egg. A different dessert would be flourless chocolate cookies instead of the traditional cake.

Easter , itself, brings tradition and new spins.Most families serve ham with some kind of glaze. Southerners love one made with a good splash of Coke or Dr. Pepper. This cuts the meat's saltiness. Martha Stewart offers one with a cognac and brown sugar glaze. For a light  Spring-y meal Cornish hens will work. They have a more delicate taste than chicken and are perfect with an orange based glaze. Asparagus are a must , whether at a Seder or Easter meal. As for desserts, a cake would be nice. Think a bunny one, with  coconut frosting and jelly bean eyes. For all the holidays, make sure you have all the ingredients and the gadgets to prep them. Do you have enough pans for roasts along with plastic bowls and containers for left overs? What about linens? Is it time to get a new Spring tablecloth along with linen napkins. If it's warmer weather then what about having an outdoor holiday feast. Do you have enough outdoor chairs and plastic tablecloths? Now is the time to start buying for it all, along with planning. 

This is a month for holidays. Make sure you're ready with your recipes and ingredients.Planning and prepping will ensure a smoothly run holiday meal.

Ramadan Up North

Ramadan has special meaning to the world's Muslim community. It's exemplified in Anchorage, Alaska, with its' diversity  and growing Islamic culture. The many groups celebrate and with an Alaskan twist at times. 

Regular contributor and food reporter, Victoria Peterson wrote about this in yesterday's New York Times Food section. A native Alaskan, herself, Ms. Peterson explored the wide diversity in the state's largest city. It is also home to Alaska's only mosque.Surprisingly the city is also an immigrant city with one hundred languages being spoken within the city's school districts. The Islamic Community Center of Anchorage has members from between forty and fifty countries. Some are Muslim s from the US , like Maleika and Gregory Shuaib Jones from North Carolina but there are others from Bhutan and Somalia. They are all bonded together  unlike in other cities where mosques reflect the majority of the people attending them. The only problem they have is the short winter and long summer days. Fasting can be hard, especially during the warmer months when sunset begins at 11:30 PM. Many adopt to Mecca's time for prayer and breaking the fast.

Feasting happens afterwards with traditional halal foods. When graduate student Sajid Raza first arrived there in 2016, there was only a pizzeria and and Indian restaurant. Now, six years later there are three halal specialty shops along with restaurants with several halal dishes on the menu. Local Walmart, Safeway and Costco stores also stock halal certified options. There are also a few international markets springing up across the city too. Mr. Jones feels that it's a remarkable because halal is becoming more and more mainstream in America. Their neighbor even killed and prepared a caribou in the Islamic law and ritual. Families have no trouble in finding rice, lentil, flour and vegetables, staples in every Muslim home. They are even getting Medjool dates, those big gooey ones that are becoming easier to find during Ramadan. There are also pot luck dinners at the mosque which turn into s buffet thanks to the wide variety from s;; over the Muslim world.. Ms. Jones and her daughter Shumalaiah are making kebabs, roti and fruit with yogurt. There will also be samosas filled with potato and meat.

Ramadam anywhere in the world is special. In Anchorage it is very, with bonded community celebrating togehter. They will fast. They will eat They will be there for each other in the country's most northern city.

Your Community College The New Culinary School

 Let's face it - culinary schools are expensive. That's horrible for so many who want to be chefs and restaurant owners. However there's always community college. This staple of suburban life is stepping in and stepping up helping those to achieve those dreams.

Regular contributor, cookbook author and chef herself, Priya Krishna wrote about this new facet of American education in today's New York Times Food section. Thanks to their high tuition,  and pandemic many culinary schools are closing. The only ones still opened are the famous one like the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde park and ICE The Institute of Culinary Education in the heart of the world's restaurant capitol, new York ity.Even the famed Johnson & Wales , a college with a culinary bent has closed their Denver and Miami campuses. Community colleges will always be open, offering a variety of majors from communications to nursing and now aspects of the food industry.They are also much cheaper. A student ca receive a certificate for only $6500 and $14,000 for a two year Associates Degree. One semester at the CIA is $20,000.There is already too much student debt and starting out line cooks can''t afford that on their beginning salaries. 

Many companies and local governments are realizing that the culinary departments are worth investing in . The state-of-the-art kitchens at North Essex Community College in Haverhill Massachusetts were built and equipped from funding from the state and Lupoli Companies. The last is a Massachusetts real estate developer that owns the culinary arts building.Graduates are then hired at Bosa, owned by Lupoli. There are also perks too such as breaking down meats at Haverhill Beef Company, a local butcher. Other have gardens planted on site such as Butler Community College in El Dorado Kansas. This allows students to cook in the farm to table method. At Mott Community School in Flint, Michigan run the student coffee shop that in turns  fund scholarships. Yet there is criticism despite all the good they do. Jeffrey Gardner , a consulting chef in Atlanta feel the community college grads have an outdated French  cuisine background along with teachers not having adequate restaurant backgrounds. There's also no ethnic diversity in the training either. None have backgrounds or classes in African and Asian cooking. Yet these courses and programs do fill a need. Local businesses need the grads and they are hard working according to Sussex Community College's superviser Martin Kestner. His grads help out the local restaurants in Newton, New Jertsey

Community colleges have a lot going for them. Their culinary programs are worth looking into. Young chefs can get a good education at a reasonable price.

Those I Don't Want To Cook Days

 Even the most diligent and food loving home chefs have them. Those I don't want to cook days.It' looking in your kitchen and thinking what can I throw together to make a meal? Surprisingly there are some good combos that make for memorable meals.

An easy way out is take out , yet why bother?It takes time and nowadays  money to have a full meal delivered. A quick dinner can easily be prepared in the time it takes to run out and grab a Happy Meal or have a pizza or Chinese delivered. Pasta and sauce are one of the easiest put togethers.I just discovered Rao's sauce, from the famed Manhattan eatery. This was a quick three minutes in the microwave while I boiled DeCecco's penne.Any prepared sauce will do and you can easily doctor it to fit your family's tastes. Add a glug or two of olive oil or a sprinkle of oregano for more flavor. For a more homemade taste, add a cup or two of pasta water to thicken the sauce and give the flavor some oomph. Keep in mind that pasta also is very good with a simple melted butter sauce or one made with just oil and garlic - aglia e olio. Serve it with a ready made salad and you have a filling and satisfying meal. Pasta salad is the perfect warm weather I don;t want to cook meal. Add some julienned mortadella and ham to it along with a chopped assortment of veggies.

An air fryer can greatly assist in those days when you jut are too tired to make an elaborate or labor intensive meal. Use it regularly. You can easily cook up real and plant protein based chicken nuggets and tenders in it. These make for a tasty meal that the kids will love. You can also fry up steaks in it as well. The end result is a strip with a crispy exterior and a tender , melt in your mouth inside. You can brush the meat with garlic or melted butter and then sprinkled with herbs or just sea salt and freshly ground pepper. If you;re really having a bad or lazy day think air fried Tater Tots. This is a quick cook that only takes about fifteen minutes or less to crisp up. serve it with bacon bits and melted cheese. One of the easiest full meals is breakfast for dinner. You can easily scramble up a few eggs or make an omelet. Vegans and vegetarians can rely on Just Egg,a mung bean based egg substitute. Add some sliced peppers, tomatoes and spinach to make it more filling or some mushrooms for protein.Microwave either pork, turkey or soy bacon for a tasty side.This is also the time to toast some Eggo waffles and serve them with butter and maple syrup.

Every home chef has those "I don't want to cook days". Don;t worry. There are plenty of easy recipes that can give you a no fuss, no trouble meal.

Different Takes On Tollhouse Cookies

 who doesn't love a good old fashioned chocolate chip cookie? Well there are some who do and some who want a little more variety. Not surprisingly the recipe has some interesting turns over the years.

Chocolate chip or Tollhouse cookie us a Twentieth Century invention created by Ruth Wakefield in 1939. She added broken chocolate pieces to a brown sugar cookie recipe, thinking the chocolate would melt. They didn't, much to the delight of her diners at her famed Tollhouse restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts. However that's a myth , She deliberately created something new on her dessert menu to give her other cookie recipe, a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. It appeared in her Tollhouse cookbook too, spreading the recipe through the Boston area. It was World War Two however that make her "chocolate crunch"cookie super popular. They were packed into the care packages that families sent their sons overseas and in turn the boys shared it with fellow troopmates. Soon these GIs were writing home, begging their moms and sweethearts to bake and send this new kind of cookie. The recipe is a basic one (that can be made without the chips for a buttery brown sugar snap) that combines brown and white sugars with shortening , flour , hot water and baking soda.Vanilla and salt are added for flavor and to bring out the other ingredients flavors.

Eighty years later the recipe is still going strong but with many variations. One of the earliest - )and my and child hood favorite) is where M&M's are subbed in for the chips. These came out almost as soon as the original chocolate chip cookie did. M&M's were created in 1942 for our troops. They were modeled on the British Smartie, with a soft, melty milk chocolate center and hard candy shell. These are a fun variation, especially when biting into those crisp shells. The holiday M&M's make them perfect for Christmas, Valentines' Day, Easter and Halloween cookie trays, You can also sub in M&M Peanut variety or even Reeses Pieces too. Toss in some walnuts or almonds too if you want more flavor. The basic recipe stays the same. The basic recipe can also change, The original one calls for using Crisco, but using dairy or plant based butters give the cookie a richer flavor.What about whole wheat flour? Many home chefs wonder if this will change the cookie's original taste.It won't.It may give it a denser texture however thanks to the entire wheat kernel being used. You can also use almond and rice flour too.As for the brown sugar you can use both light and dark, omitting the white. This results in a cookie with very crispy edge. 

Chocolate chip cookies are one of the best cookies out there. However there are variations to try. The result? An even better version of this American favorite.

The Meat Crunch

 It's no secret that our groceries have gone up in price. The worst is the price of meat. A simple pack of coldcuts is close to ten dollars. Lamb chops are almost twenty dollars for a pack of four in New York City.Is it the time to embrace plant based meats? 

The answer is yes. They're somewhat cheaper than the real thing and way more healthier for you and the planet. These days there are many choices and recipes so you and your family don''t have to miss any animal protein, I recently discovered Rebellyous Foods that specifically deals with plant based chicken.

I air fried these tonight and to be honest they taste almost like chicken. The nuggets were even juicy  with a moist inside and a crunchy exterior. I'm looking forward to trying their tenders and patties.They;re mostly soy as the Morningstar Farms ones. If you want more variety with faux poultry then go to Gardein. They have great tasting chicken strips and wings, complete with sauces. They also have turkey cutlets which come with gravy and taste exactly like the actual bird. Both Rebellyous and Morningstar Farms can be bought for under five dollars at Walmart.

It is a hard time for beef eaters and even plant beef ones too. Right now Beyond Beef is on the same price par as beef however there are less expensive alternatives.Try Quorn which is one of the rare non meat products no derived from soy, It;s made from a fungus, Fusarium venenatum. A pack of four patties is only $5.79 for four (about a $1.45 a burger - much cheaper than any fast food offering). there is also the long standing favorite Morningstar Farms which has a pack of four for $4.59. Their bacon is a dollar more but two or three dollars cheaper than pork bacon. Another plus about Morningstar Farms bacon is that it crisps up perfectly, providing the right amount of salt and crunch. It's perfect in BLTs and accompanying a tomato and mayo sandwich. As for fish, Gardein is your best bet. Again go to Walmart for their fish filets that cost less than four dollars for a package of four.

It is tough times for everyone. Meat lovers have it the worst. Yet they can switch over to non meat products and save a few dollars. That's a good thing these dsys,

Your Oscar Party Lush Or Simple

 The Oscars are this Sunday, March 27th and it's time to celebrate. Will you have a lavish Hollywood type of do or one that without all the drama? Will  it be a party for many or for one and two? either way , you can have a fun night ,full of delicious foods.

Even though prices have gone up, you can still have create a lush spread. Just cut down on the variety. You can have shrimp or lobster but not both. Pick the one you know your guests will enjoy more. Another fun bite are steak sliders.This is just cutting up grilled steak and  placing the cutlets on toasted brioches.What about sides. Stuffed artichokes would be a nice idea or asparagus drizzled with lemon butter.A fun idea for a cold dinner is the classic charcuterie platter.Have boule, those crusty rounds of bread instead of the usual baguettes.Also have a variety of crackers or savory shortbread.This is an easy bake with omitting the sugar in the recipe.Cheese and herbs are added in instead.As for the meat, think prosciutto, thinly sliced ham and dried salame.,You can also include black and green olives along with cornichons. Cheeses can be a richy runny Brie or a tasty Gruyere. Cheddar slices also work here as well.Have wine and champagne for drinks along with mock tails for those who don't drink.

What about when it's just you and another film buff? Think small but tasty.Homemade French bread pizzas are always a fun treat.It is also an easy make.Just split a baguette, hollow out the loaf and add olive oil, sauce and mozzarella cheese.Top with whatever you want. Try veggies like broccoli and peppers or meats like pepperoni, ham or even bacon. You can even do this with bagels or English muffins too.Homemade chili over cornbread is another fun dinner and best of all you can have the leftovers through the week.Another idea is air fryer chicken wings or nuggets. Serve these with ramekins of different sauces like honey mustard and barbecue.Keep in mind that you can also do this with batter dipped cauliflower too.Use your air fryer or toaster oven for making kale chips too.Of course popcorn would also be good too. Think about one popped in olive oil and sprinkled with dried rosemary.Cheddar corn is a tasty treat too. Finely grate a good ,solid cheddar over the cooked popcorn. Add bacon for a kind of a loaded snack. What to drink?Go with what you want. Beer, cider or even an ice cream soda woeks.

Celebrate lavishly or comfortablIty.It s the Oscars . Enjoy them with a good bite.

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