Whole Chicken
Aspiring Cook/Culinary Arts
I've been working in restaurants for the last year and a half, and cooking a variety of low-cost/high nutrition dishes at home. Including a lot of sour-dough bread, fresh pasta, and a variety of legume-based semi-fermented dishes.
It's a great day-job while I I finish the Compare Basic white-paper and Caneka system..
I have a slide-show up on what will eventually become a my cooking education site Redneck Ramen.
Favorites
My two favorite dishes are listed here:
The Basics
To start, I'd like to share what I've learned from cooking almost every meal over the last six months for myself, and my family, on a budget!
What is Cooking?
Here is the definition I like to use: "Transmuting raw ingredients into a more enjoyable and nutritious form".
- Heat: surfaces nutrition, helps break down food.
- Chopping: changes the shape of food to accept heat or be easier to chew.
- Spices: brings out flavor, and provides enjoyment and aids digestion.
- Time: most flavors and changes from heat require time to take effect.
- Combination: some things just dont get along :( and others bring out complimentary charactarisics.
- Cleaning: simple solutions to make sure the tools are available when you need them.
Managing Heat
Heat management is well understood from a general idea. "Don't burn stuff" is a phrase that most people think about. The science of the matter is that cooking with enough water or oil is the way to manage burning. Water distributes the heat around the food, and the single most effective thing you can do is make sure there is enough to move flavor around, without focusing too much heat on any single ingredient.
Spreading flavor: Oil can bring out different spice flavors than water, starting with onions in spices and adding other ingredients with water later can form a base quickly and bring out a richness in your dishes.
Time
Let's face it. No one has enough of this. The main time management strategy is to get things that take time cooking, while the rest is being prepared. I always start with my spice pallete in oil with an onion, and then proceed to chop and prep the rest of the dish. The item that takes the longest is the one I start cooking. While the chicken is in the oven the rice is being cooked, while the rice is boiling the salad is being prepared, when the salad is done, I'm cleaning the cutting board and prep dishes. Proper time-management in cooking is like a set of russian dolls, the steps all fit inside of eachother.
Flavours
My favorite flavors come in a few categories, flavor vegetables like onions and garlic, flavor spices like ginger and chilli powder, and flavor strateges like steam-frying or pan-roasting.
See more flavour techniques on the spices page.