Tip: Mise en Place

When the Food Network first started I was addicted to it. Way back then it was a serious cooking channel with real chefs demonstrating real techniques. I even learned a few things — one of them being the importance of mise en place.

Mise en place (pronounced "meez on ploss" often simply called "meez" in American restaurants) is a French term meaning, "putting in place," and it refers to having all your ingredients lined up and waiting to be used.

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Breakfast Casserole

All the Major Breakfast Groups



This breakfast casserole features the major breakfast food groups - eggs, sausage, and potatoes. With some coffee and juice to wash it down, you're ready to take on King Kong. Nevertheless my standard breakfast is a few cups of coffee, some yogurt or a banana, and a couple of cigarettes (although if I have to go somewhere in the morning I like getting a sausage biscuit at Burger King) so I make this for supper more often than breakfast. But whenever you make it, it's a great, easy, and inexpensive meal.

Recipe here...

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Tip: Safe Cooking Temperatures

Let me get the disclaimer out of the way up front. I'm a cook and food writer — not a microbiologist. The information presented here is a result of my research into the subject. And I am not making any recommendations. But I've found this information helpful in determining what's safe when it comes to cooking meat.

We're taught that food should never be held at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. That's because most bacteria will quite happily reproduce in that range, but reproduce very slowly, if at all, below 40 and above 140. But note, the temperatures at which bacteria is killed varies according to the microbe.

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SouthwesternHam & Rice Casserole

This Southwestern Ham Casserole is perfect for using up that last bit of baked ham — you know, when you've got too little to feed two people and too much to throw away. If you happen to have some leftover rice all the better, but if not rice is easy enough to make. You can use a commercial chile powder if you wish, but my recipe for chile powder has a nice smoky flavor from the chipotles.

Recipe here...

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Ingredient: Roux

Roux is a French word and refers to a combination of a lipid (fat or oil) and flour and is a key ingredient in, probably, thousands of dishes involving some sort of sauce. Roux is the thickening agent in Mornay sauce (the basis for mac-n-cheese), brown sauce (beef or turkey gravy), and, though it isn't obvious, beef stew.

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Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | sauces

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Ingredient: Anchovies

The odds are you hate anchovies. I don't have a formal survey, but anecdotally I suspect about 80 percent of Americans do. I did. When we think anchovy we think salty, salty, salty and fishy, fishy, fishy. And usually you're right. Salt is used to cure them and they tend to have a fishy — in the worst sense of the word — flavor and, when eaten alone, they're pretty bad. Or, at least those packaged for the American market suffer from these sins. But that needn't be the case.

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Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | ingredient

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Ingredient: Eggs

In this country we tend to think of eggs as the ultimate, or at least penultimate, breakfast food. We eat them scrambled, fried, poached, and soft-boiled. Less frequently we have soufflés for breakfast or we'll eat them coddled or shirred. And they deserve their place in our hierarchy of breakfast foods because they're an excellent source of protein and cook in mere minutes with a minimum of preparation. We include them as an ingredient in our pancakes and grab them on muffins, biscuits, or croissants at fast food joints on our way to the office.

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Technorati: Food | ingredient | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | eggs

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Mexican Sauteed Corn

Calabacitas



This traditional Mexican Corn Saute (calabacitas) is a favorite with my clients — especially in the summer when all the ingredients are fresh. But I also make it using frozen corn and canned tomatoes. Think of it as form of succotash but with chiles and without lima beans (although there's nothing to keep you from adding limas is you wish) One reason I like it is because it freezes well — so I can make up a big batch then freeze it in pint-sized bags. When I need a side dish I pull it out of the freezer, dump it straight into a bowl, and microwave it for 2 - 3 minutes.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | corn | side dish

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Pepper Steak

A Stir-fry Staple



When I was a kid my mother made pepper steak on a regular basis. She'd use a round steak and cook it too hot and too fast so it was always tough as could be - but it tasted mighty good. I hadn't thought of it in years until a few days ago. The sirloin steak is much more tender, and because the recipe only calls for 1/2 pound it's pretty cheap. Don't be tempted to add more meat, the steak is only one ingredient.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | beef | main dish | asian

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Ingredient: Juniper Berries

Gin's Namesake



I don't recall when I first discovered juniper berries, but it was pretty much love at first taste. They are the key flavoring in gin, which was originally known as jenever ("juniper") and was developed in the Netherlands. They have a wonderfully piney taste — most like rosemary if you're looking for a comparison — but more resinous and with citrus overtones (so if you're subbing rosemary for juniper, add a bit of lemon juice too).

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Technorati: Food | ingredient | kevin d weeks | seriously good | juniper berries

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Irish Bread Pudding

Dessert with a Dram of Whiskey



Bread pudding is one of those old dishes. It has certainly been around in some form or another since bread was invented. Take some stale bread, an egg or two, a bit of milk, sugar, and a fire and cook the mixture. It's just bread baked in a sweetened custard. What could be simpler?

Bread pudding with raisins and whiskey is a traditional Christmas treat in parts of Ireland. The apples are my addition as is the whiskey/cream topping.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | dessert

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Chicken and Rice

An Old Favorite



Chicken and rice is an old standard, but this version is somewhat different in it's use of sour cream. It began as one of those late evening "throw together" meals but turned out so well I've been making it ever since.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | chicken | main dish

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Greek Caprese Salad

Variation on a Classic



The Italian Insalata Caprese is a tomato salad that originated on the island of Capri. It consists of sliced tomatoes, fresh buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, and olive oil. It's absolutely delicious and well-deserving of its fame. But I like a Greek version of the salad that I make better - in fact it's my standard lunch during tomato season.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | salad | tomatoes

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Cooking for Two: Yogurt Chicken

Yogurt chicken (chicken marinated in yogurt) is a popular dish throughout the middle-east. I first had it grilled and served on a skewer in Beirut, Lebanon and loved it. Then I had yogurt-marinated lamb on a skewer and loved that too. The marinated beef wasn't as good as the chicken or lamb, but was still pretty good. This recipe calls for sumac, which I can find in the ethnic section of my local supermarket (and Knoxville is not the most cosmopolitan city in the world) so check before giving up on it.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | chicken | main dish

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Blackberry Ice Cream

Beautifully Luscious



The rich color of this blackberry ice cream recipe is matched by its rich, creamy and slightly tart flavor. Here in Tennessee we won't see fresh local blackberries until at least the middle of July, but there are a couple of local supermarkets that carry blackberries "imported" from elsewhere, and even frozen blackberries will work. If you wished, you could substitute raspberries for the blackberries — although I don't like them as well.

Recipe at Cooking for Two...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | dessert | ice cream

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Iceberg Wedge Salad

Retro Classic



When I was a kid (mumble) years ago my mother would sometimes take us to the S&W Cafeteria in downtown Knoxville. For a cafeteria, it was an elegant place dating to the Art Deco era and featuring a huge, sweeping, spiral staircase from the ground level to a mezzanine. The one thing I always got was the wedge of iceberg lettuce with their signature blue cheese dressing (my sister liked the 1000 Island dressing). The other day I made up a batch of my blue cheese dressing and remembered those days of yore. So I bought a head of iceberg and returned to my childhood.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | salad

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Ingredient: Dry Vermouth

When cooking with wine, chefs usually recommend that you use whatever wine you're planning to drink. Good advice and I generally adhere to it. But the advice presumes you're going to be drinking wine and that might not be the case on a weeknight or you may be planning on red wine with a steak but you need white wine in the appetizer. You can always re-cork the wine, but once exposed to oxygen it's shelf life is limited - particularly in the case of white wine.

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Technorati: Food | ingredient | kevin d weeks | cooking for two

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Tip: Better Burgers

If the last burger you ate was in a fast food joint, then you short-changed yourself. A well-made homemade burger is not only far superior to what you can buy, but it's a great choice when cooking for two. They're easy to make and, because burgers freeze well, you can make up half a dozen and freeze four for a later meal. Here are a few tips for creating better burgers.

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Technorati: Food | tips | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | burgers

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Caribbean Jerk Burger

A Taste of the Islands




No, a Caribbean Jerk Burger isn't a burger for Caribbean jerks, it's a burger containing jerk seasoning. Jerk seasoning is a collection of spices popular on grilled meats (pork, beef, and chicken) in the Caribbean. In this recipe instead of sprinkling the seasoning on the surface of the burgers, it's mixed into the meat along with a bit of lime juice. I like serving them on onion rolls with a slice of aged provolone and a spoonful of mayo. These are also good made with half beef and half pork - and they freeze beautifully.

Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | hamburger | main dish | grilling | sandwich

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Review: Cooking for Two

Cook's Illustrated has been my favorite cooking magazine since issue 1 way back in 1993 — in fact I'm a charter subscriber. I own a few of their cookbooks but not many because I don't use cookbooks very often any more. Nevertheless, when I was sent a free review copy of the recently published Cooking for Two 2009: This Year's Best Recipes Cut Down to Size by the editors of Cook's Illustrated I jumped on it.

You can read the compete review at
CookingforTwo.About.com...

Technorati: Food | review | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | book

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Broiled Trout with Fines Herbes

Broiled Trout with Fines Herbes. Recipe here...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | Cooking for Two | broiled trout

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Mediterranean Pork Roast

Sandwich Planning



As you may have gathered from my Kitchen Window article, I've been on a bit of a sandwich binge lately. But in fact, I haven't eaten that many sandwiches because two of the recipes were for sandwiches I'd previously perfected and photographed. Yesterday I felt myself suffering from a sandwich deficit. On reflection, I decided I wanted a pork sandwich, that meant I needed roast pork and so last night I roasted a pork sirloin roast. Tonight, I make the sandwich. More to come...

You can find my recipe for the roast on About's Cooking for Two.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | pork | main dish

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Individual Beef Wellingtons

You may have noticed that I'm now a Guide (Cooking for Two) at About.com. This brings the number of regular jobs I hold to somewhere between six and eight depending on how I count them (and how overwhelmed I'm feeling on a given day). At any rate, one of the nice things about About.com (aside from my getting to say I work for the New York Times) is that they provide a format for doing tutorials as well as paying enough to justify doing them.

A photo tutorial is a major PITA. It should be something that's inherently visual because if you can adequately explain it in words it's not worth the effort of shooting the photos. It requires shooting in my tiny kitchen, which means setting up lights so they're useful but out of the way. It requires loads — and I mean loads — of photos, and even then some shots just go wrong. And then there's the whole business of not covering your camera with flour.

At any rate, my first photo tutorial was actually for Chefsline. I'd been trying to explain to a client how to make a beef wellington (using a whole tenderloin) and simply couldn't find the words to adequately describe wrapping it. So I did a little series of photos making Sock Wellington where I wrapped a sock in paper. But clearly doing a tutorial using real meat and pastry was in my future and I finally did one for Cooking for Two at About.com.

And if you're interested, the first tutorial I did for About was on cooking in parchment.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | cooking for two | beef wellington | cooking in parchment | cooking tutorial

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