New Address

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Ahh...the Holidays

"You'll shoot your eye out kid!" - A Christmas Story

Personally, my favorite time of the year and what a better way to start off the post then from the most famous 1 liner from a holiday classic. Off from work for 2 weeks, no classes for 3 weeks, spending time with family, relaxing, and eating some really good food. With all this free time on my hands I have been able to concoct some different recipes on paper such as a cold cheesy crab spread, garam masala, and a few others...now to just put them to the test.

With all this time I was also able to do some "research" on the possibility of taking a group of students to Spain for a culinary/sightseeing inspired trip.

But most of all the chance to take time to spend with family either doing nothing, eating at Tampa area restaurants we haven't tried, or shopping for Christmas presents it has been nice. Hope everyone has had a nice and relaxing holiday season!

What Can Middle School Students Cook?

Well after seeing how the chef's of Top Chef created a dish using ingredients from a vending machine I decided to put my students to the test. Keep in mind this is a group of 6th-8th graders meeting after school one day a week for 1 hour...

Click here to see the rest of the pictures.

The "New" Caesar Salad

Since its invention in 1924 in Tijuana, the Caesar salad has suffered countless transgressions, not least the ubiquitous chicken-breast add-on. As it turns out, though, the original recipe, improvised by Italian-immigrant restaurateur Caesar Cardini, is less of a strict formula than a highly interpretable guideline. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Cardini coddled his eggs and eschewed anchovies (a flavor he credited to the Worcestershire sauce in his dressing), rendering the revered tableside ritual of raw eggs and mashed fish a bit of theatrical fabrication. But that’s nothing compared to some of New York’s newest Caesar riffs. Romaine has been swapped for more exotic greenery like escarole (at The John Dory Oyster Bar) and kale (at The Bedford, where the anchovy dressing is seasoned with Sriracha and sumac; at Five Leaves, where chef Kenny Addington enhances his with Thai chiles and aged Gouda; and at the East Village’s Counter, where the vegan version wears tempeh croutons). At Millesime, chef de cuisine Alan Ashkinaze fills grilled hearts of romaine with Parmesan, browns them under the broiler, and plates them with slices of Petrossian smoked sable. Speaking of unorthodox fish, pickled herring displaces anchovy entirely in two stellar new salads: Vandaag’s Phillip Kirschen-Clark softens its tangy bite by blending Russ & Daughters’ creamed pickled herring with more cream, vinegar, and olive oil to dress romaine hearts, then garnishes them with morcilla sausage and pistachios. And at Long Island City’s M. Wells, Hugue Dufour soaks smoked herring in red-wine vinegar and blends it with Worcestershire, Parmesan, and poached garlic before emulsifying it with olive oil and Dijon mustard. At Ciano, Shea Gallante goes so far as to dress baby romaine with a tonnato sauce and adorn it with not only anchovy and Parmesan, but Bartlett pears—a brave, some might say blasphemous approach to a not-so-classic classic.

5 things you probably don't know about food

Nothing is more entertaining at a social gathering than paying close attention while someone divulges previously unknown facts about a certain subject. We’ve all gathered around in a circle to hear what our suit jacket has in common with the space station, and how the shoes you’re wearing can help provide energy for a small town in Africa. And although I don’t plan on sharing those particular tidbits with you, here are five things about food that you can enlighten your friends with at your next gathering.

Why is beef tenderloin so tender?
Any butcher will tell you that the most used muscles turn into the toughest cuts of beef. By that same token, the least used in an animal will yield the softest cut. Both cows and bulls have tenderloin muscles, used by bulls to mount the cow during mating. Since cows are female they obviously don’t mount anything, so that muscle remains virtually unused, making it the softest muscle and providing you with delicious, tender steaks.

What does ‘No MSG’ really mean?
Many people try to avoid monosodium glutamate's potential problems by purchasing food products labeled “NO MSG”. Problem is, MSG goes by many different names. MSG can be made many different ways and, chemically speaking, is constructed from hydrolyzed vegetable protein. So the next time you buy a ‘No MSG’ product, read the ingredients carefully, because you will likely find that it does contain some the flavor-boosting chemical, just renamed: hydrolyzed corn protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, spice, or hydrolyzed (ANYTHING) protein. That’s how those sneaky food manufacturers have been getting away with it up until now.

Why do people in hot climates eat such spicy foods?
It seems that the closer to the equator you go, the spicier the food gets. Take countries like India, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Thailand. Not only does the weather get extremely hot, but so does the food! As a tourist, you may wonder why people would do that to themselves. You can see them sniffling and sweating while they eat, and it’s 100 degrees out. But the truth is that hot peppers containing substances like capsicum cause the body to sweat, which actually cools you as you eat. And many hot spices will also thin out your blood, lowering your body’s core temperature.

What did people do before refrigerators?
There are many other ways of preserving food. Some cultures used strong mixtures of spices — and salt, of course — to preserve meats and grains. The spice mixture we know today as curry was used in the past by people to preserve meats, and even to cover up the unsavoury flavor and smell of slightly rancid food. Spices such as garlic, cinnamon, mustard, cloves and oregano have such high concentrations of anti-microbial (germ killers) that they have been clinically proven to kill the salmonella bacteria.

The “all natural” claim is not so fresh!
Marketing companies are constantly throwing you catchy words in order to convince you that something is good for you when it’s vaguely true at most. Did you know that the marketing term “all natural” really doesn’t have an official meaning? It certainly doesn’t mean that what you’re eating is good for you. Here are some things that are “all natural”: Arsenic, Opium, Snake Venom, Mercury, Death Cap Mushrooms, Atropine, Tetanus, and Strychnine.

Now that you have learned some juicy morsels of moderately important information, go out there and show your friends how smart you really are!

Food Fight

Who says you can't play with your food?

Recipes. The law of the kitchen or guidelines?

90% of the time recipes are a great thing to have handy. Chefs don’t always want to have to think off the top of their heads to come up with a recipe for a meal. When it comes to situations like that I love recipes, I have the chance to look at something that has already be made by many so you know it won’t go wrong. This is when I take the opportunity to enhance that recipe and make it my own. A personal pet peeve of mine is when people take a recipe for let’s just say a stuffing and stand there and measure out every single ingredient and tell me that since the recipe has it that’s what I have to do…for me recipes are strictly guidelines, it is perfectly acceptable to change them or adapt them to suit your needs and wants. That is how new recipes are created, if you “follow them to a tee” then it gets boring. The only time I ever follow a recipe exactly and measure each ingredient out it when I am working on baking and pastry dishes otherwise have fun with it and experiment sometimes. Food is both and art and science, it is okay to experiment.