Regional Cuisine Of The United States: California-Style Cooking

The great state of California carries some of the most rich aspects of American culture, from the pioneers to the gold rush to quality cuisine. Bordered by the Pacific Ocean, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, and Baja, classic California food can take on many forms. The unique cuisine of California is earmarked by a tradition of freshness and home grown quality, calling forth to mind fresh leafy green salads, fruit, and organic just-about-anything.

California is one of the major agricultural centers of the United States. The state of California, as one of the nation’s leading producers of fresh produce, has an extreme abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. When it comes to food in California, a lot of the focus is shifted to quality and nutritiousness rather than cost, taste, or anything else. While this does not necessarily mean that California cuisine tastes badly, it is not for everyone. Those who prefer a heavier, fried or battered food would have better luck sampling some other type of cuisine.

Fruits and nuts account for at least a quarter of California’s farm income, and vegetables in themselves account for another 25 percent. This includes the famous grapes, oranges, nectarines, peaches, nectarines. and avocados that California is famous for producing, as well as almonds, pistachios, and walnuts. Organic food, which is grown without the aid of pesticides, insecticides, and other potentially harmful additives, is also an extremely popular aspect of California cuisine. Don’t get it confused, though; contrary to popular belief, California food is not all about grapes, nuts, yogurt, and organic orange juice.

The taste of California is, of course, highly accented by its major influence from the south–of course, Mexico. Tex-Mex or Baja-style cooking plays an integral role in good old-fashioned California Cuisine. Mexican-style food is part of the way of life in California; with the dense Mexican-American population in California (about 34.3 percent of the total number of California residents), a great California chef can put a south of the border twist on just about anything! El Pollo Loco is a fast-food restaurant very commonly seen in California. El Pollo Loco, which translates into The Crazy Chicken, specializes in marinated, grilled chicken in tacos, burritos, or alone. El Pollo Loco is an excellent representation of southern California’s obsession with Baja-style “Mexican” food.

There are some restaurants in California, even, that boast to serve the “classic Californian cuisine.” The California Pizza Kitchen is a chief example of this type of restaurants. The California Pizza Kitchen has more than 180 locations all over the United States and the world. On July 5 the company even opened a CPK in Shanghai, China. They specialize in making food authentically “California-style.” The Pizza Kitchen specializes in healthier foods; they mainly serve many different kinds of salad and pizza. All of their pizzas are specially prepared in an open flame pizza oven, conforming to the California trend of healthier meal preparation and eating.

Regional Cuisine – Down Home Southern Cooking

I grew up in New England, the home of ‘plain cooking’, where corn on the cob is served as is with a slab of butter and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. We boil salted meats with vegetables and call it – well, a boiled dinner. Our clam chowder is white, our baked beans have bacon and molasses in them, and no one in the world has ever invented a food that was improved by the addition of curry. By the time I was eighteen, I could boil a lobster, steam clams and grill a pork chop to perfection. Then I moved to Virginia, picked up a roommate from North Carolina – and discovered a whole new world of down home country cooking goodness.

To an All-American Italian girl from Boston, the menus in restaurants were in a foreign language. Chicken-fried steak, grits, corn pone pudding, strawberry rhubarb pie – sweet potato pie?? In my mind, chicken and steak were two different meats, grits is what’s on sandpaper, corn is a vegetable – and what in the world is sweet potato doing in a crust? But I became a fervent convert to Southern cooking the first time my roommate made up a pan of the sweetest, tastiest, most perfectly melt-in-your-mouth delicious Southern baking powder biscuits and topped them with sausage gravy. From that day on, I was Sue’s disciple, standing at her elbow as she diced scallions to make up a mess of pinto beans, stirred the milk into a pan of drippings for milk gravy and rolled thin steak strips in chicken batter to make chicken-fried steak.

Down home southern cooking is no different than New England plain cooking – at least at its most basic level. Like any other regional style of cooking, it makes use of the ingredients that are plentiful and cheap. In New England we gussy up our dried beans with brown sugar and molasses, and serve them with thick, sweet heavy brown bread dotted with raisins – perfect fare for cold winter nights. In North Carolina, they simmer for hours with salt pork and onions and served with scallions for scooping and a side of flaky biscuits cut out of dough with a juice glass. Salty, spicy and flaky-good all at once, it’s a down home meal that makes my mouth water just to remember.

Some dishes just don’t translate, though. There is no New England substitute for a Southern barbecue sandwich – shredded pork simmered with spices for hours and ladled over buns in a ‘sandwich’ that really requires a fork. The ubiquitous ‘sloppy joe’ just doesn’t cut it. It lacks the spicy-sweet tang and buttery texture of real slow-simmered pork barbecue. Nor is there anything that compares with chicken fried steak – a dish that can’t be described in words without selling it short. If you’ve had it, you KNOW how good it is. If you haven’t, the idea of dredging and dipping strips of beef and frying it like chicken just doesn’t do it justice.

My New England Italian roots show wherever I go. Lasagna will always be a favorite meal, and New England boiled dinners still make my mouth water. But I know, deep in my soul, that when I go to Heaven, the diners will serve flaky Southern biscuits with sausage gravy and chicken fried steak. Some temptations even the angels can’t resist.

Rediscovering Grilled Pizza

America’s favorite food has long been the pizza cooked in a traditional oven but is that about to change? While most Americans have probably never indulged in a grilled pizza, the origins of pizza are making a big comeback. There is no denying that we love our traditional backyard barbeque but rarely, if ever has the barbeque included grilling a pizza. Despite the seemingly odd combination of grill and pizza, the grill is the ideal tool for cooking pizza and in fact is deep in the origin of pizza making. The high, dry heat is ideal for a nice crisp crust and the flavor provided from your grill will on a whole new world of backyard grilling.

Before the word pizza was ever used, Greeks and Romans used wood-fired brick ovens to prepare the original version of pizza – flatbread. In ancient times each diner was given a piece of flat bread along with a piece of meat on the bread. This food was eaten with the fingers with an occasional knife to cut the meat. Little did they know that this would eventually spark the creation one of the America’s favorite foods.

Grilled Pizza Techniques:

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon dried yeast
1 tablespoon soy oil
1 teaspoon sugar
½ cup warm water (110°F)
1 ½ cup bread flour
1 tablespoon soy flour
1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:
Combine yeast, sugar and ½ cup very warm water in bowl, let sit for five minutes. Combine flour and salt in bowl. Mix yeast mixture with bowl containing dry ingredients. Add a little extra flour if dough is sticky. Knead for a good 10 minutes. Put into a greased bowl and let rise for 60 minutes until it doubles in size. Turn out onto a floured surface then knead lightly until smooth. Roll out into a ¼” thick, 12″ diameter circle. The thinner the dough is rolled, the better.

Before placing your crust on the grill, be sure that your grill is both clean and well oiled. This will help prevent the dough from sticking to the grill. You will need something large enough to transport your dough to the grill. A pizza spatula is highly recommended for this task. Brush an even coat of extra virgin olive oil on the side that will be facing down first. The oil will introduce flavor and help to keep the dough from sticking to the grill as well as giving the crust a nice crisp finish. Before placing your pizza on the grill, you may want to remove the top rack of your grill to make it easier to flip your pizza. Cook the first side from 1-3 minutes before flipping depending on the heat of your grill. During this time you will need to brush olive oil on the side that is facing up. While cooking the first side, peak under the edge of the crust to monitor its finish. Cook until you are satisfied with the finish and then flip your crust over. After flipping, immediately apply any topping that you would like. It’s highly recommended that you keep the topping very light, as they will not have a chance to cook on the grill without burning the crust. You may consider precooking certain ingredients such as meats and thick vegetables. Be sure to lower the lid as soon as possible to trap the heat in and finish cooking the toppings. Cook the pizza for an additional 2-3 minutes or until you are satisfied with the crust’s finish.

You are now ready to experience one great pizza with deep tradition. Cut your pizza into triangle shaped slices or try cutting them into 1” wide strips. This shape is great for a party snacks!

Recipes Cooks Can Trust And Love

Many cookbooks these days are long on dazzle and flash, and short on good recipes that we can instantly trust and love.

New York Times best-selling author Phyllis Pellman Good gives us recipes that include ingredients we already have on hand or can easily buy-recipes that are easy, foolproof and will make our families smile.

Good’s series of slow-cooker cookbooks, “Fix-It and Forget-It,” sold more than 6 million copies! Now, her new “Fix-It and Enjoy-It! Cookbook” (Good Books, $15.95) offers readers even more tried-and-true, welcome-home recipes for stovetop and oven cooking.

A collection of more than 675 recipes submitted by at-home cooks from around the country, the “Fix-It and Enjoy-It! Cookbook” features mouthwatering favorites such as “10-Minute Meatloaf” and “Frozen Mocha Cheesecake.” Each recipe includes its prep and cooking times.

Here’s an appetizer recipe taken from the new book:

Cheese and Shrimp Strudel

Makes 16-18 slices

1 half of a 17.25-ounce package (1 sheet) frozen puff pastry, thawed

11/2 cups (6 ounces) shredded Swiss cheese

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup thinly sliced green onion

1 cup (4 ounces) cooked shrimp, chopped, or 4.5 ounces canned shrimp, rinsed, drained and chopped

1 egg, beaten

On a lightly floured surface, roll the thawed puff pastry to a 10″ x 18″ rectangle.

Place rectangle of pastry on a lightly greased, large baking sheet.

In a medium-sized bowl, stir together cheese, sour cream, onion, shrimp and half the beaten egg (about 2 tablespoons).

Spread the mixture length-wise down half of the rectangle. Brush edges of pastry (using pastry brush) with some of the remaining beaten egg.

Carefully fold dough over the filling and seal edges with the tines of a fork. Brush top and sides of strudel with remaining egg.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool 20 minutes before slicing. With a very sharp knife, slice slightly on the diagonal.

A cookbook with detailed directions, including prep and cooking times, can help even novice cooks navigate the kitchen with confidence.

Recipe For A Successful Barbecue

Take the barbecue itself – if it’s seen better days then maybe it’s due for an upgrade? Do you want the precision, efficiency and convenience of a gas barbecue or would you prefer the hands-on theater of a traditional charcoal-burner? Gas can be a real time-saver, assuming you remember to check the level of the gas bottle and don’t have to make a dash to the local garden center to re-stock in the middle of the party. But charcoal fans will tell you that nothing imparts the smoky barbecue flavor like the real thing – even if you do set your hair and the neighbor’s fence on fire in the process. It’s all down to personal taste, but with dozens of models available in all price ranges the choice has never been wider.

If you’re creative in your kitchen, then there’s no need to be boring when it comes to barbecue food either. Good quality burgers and sausages always go down well, but be a bit more imaginative and try something new. Swordfish, monkfish or tuna are very easy to cook on a barbecue, and can be really tasty when combined with a tangy marinade or dressing. If you’re short on time, you can always speed up the marinating process by massaging the meat in a plastic bag of marinade for a few minutes before placing in the fridge for just 30 minutes. Vegetables are delicious cooked over a fire and flambéed bananas & pineapple make the perfect finishing touch. Take an approach of experimentation.

If you’re feeling lazy, many of the supermarkets now sell pre-prepared food with the BBQ in mind, for example, Waitrose stocks Chinese-Style Pork Loin Ribs marinated in honey, orange and spices and Green Thai Chicken Kebabs marinated in aromatic coconut and fresh coriander and spices.

If you’re feeling lazy, many of the supermarkets now sell pre-prepared food with the BBQ in mind, for example, Waitrose stocks Chinese-Style Pork Loin Ribs marinated in honey, orange and spices and Green Thai Chicken Kebabs marinated in aromatic coconut and fresh coriander and spices.

It’s best to prepare salads and dressings before you start cooking so that everything is ready to serve as soon as the cooked food comes off the heat. If you are cooking for a large number of guests, then many foods may be cooked off first and kept hot in the kitchen oven until required. Remember that you – the cook – are there to enjoy yourself too so give yourself time to relax by being properly organized.

There are some basic rules to remember when using a barbecue that do make sense to bear in mind. Keep safe, be aware of children and pets and keep them away from the hot stuff. If using charcoal, then allow enough time for the coals to really heat up before trying to cook anything. Look for signs of white ash on the charcoal to indicate that the temperature is hot enough for effective cooking.

Barbecue food is infamous for making an unwelcome return appearance! If you want to avoid this unpleasantness, be aware of basic food hygiene and wash your hands before handling food. Be especially careful when handling raw meats and do not contaminate cooked meats with raw meat juices. Ensure that all items are properly cooked through before serving. If you are cooking items on the bone, such as chicken legs, it’s a good idea to pre-cook them in the oven first and then finish them off on the barbecue.

Recipe – Lavender Heart Cookies

Lavender, its bushy hedges wafting a delicate scent in the winter sunshine, is one of my favourite herbs. It is hardy, smells wonderful, cleanses the air of viruses and repels insects. All these virtues and you can bake with it too! I was going through my recipe books yesterday, looking for something new to try in the biscuit baking line and saw a recipe for Lavender Heart Cookies. Every time I’d glanced through the book it had always intrigued me, but I’d never tried it before, as the idea of using lavender in baking seemed a little bizarre…interesting but probably getting results of ‘yuk Mum, what are these bits?’

Anyway, in the spirit of culinary adventure, I thought I’d have a go. The ingredients were minimal – butter, sugar, flour and flowers! Lavender florets. So off I went to pick the lavender. Not much was required, just two tablespoons of fresh florets (the little purple flower bits off the main stalk), so I had a nice therapeutic moment selecting the best stalks from my lavender hedge, which is still producing new flowers despite it being the middle of winter here. Then came the mixing all the ingredients together into a crumbly dough, which is more crumb than dough, but eventually did all work together. After its rest in the fridge, I tentatively rolled out the dough, still crumbling madly, but it was eventually persuaded to stay together by an insistent rolling pin. I churlishly refused my youngest daughter’s offers of help in cutting out the hearts…mean of me, I know, but this was my journey of exploration not hers, this time!

They came out of the oven, fragrant and golden. The moment of reckoning drew near. Children, scenting new baking, gathered around. The girls uncritically tucked in, my son, the conservative connoisseur, turned away, but changed his mind at the appreciative noises around him. A cautious nibble and he was convinced – I was not trying to poison them…!

Here’s the recipe in case you’d like a culinary adventure too!

Lavender Heart Cookies
115g/4oz butter
90ml/6 tablespoons caster sugar
175g/6oz plain flour
2 tablespoons fresh lavender florets

Cream together the butter and 60ml/4 tablespoons of the sugar till light and fluffy. Stir in the flour and lavender and work it in, kneading with your hands till it comes together into a soft ball of dough. Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. Roll out on a lightly floured surface. Stamp out the cookies with a heart shaped cutter (alternatively a fluted-edged round cutter). Makes about 18 with a 5cm/2inch cutter. Put carefully onto a lightly greased baking tray and sprinkle the remaining sugar onto the top of each shape. Bake at 200C/400F for about 10 minutes till golden. Leave the cookies on the tray for 5 minutes, before putting on to a cooling rack.

So my experiment was deemed a success. The adults, later that evening, also liked them. ”Elizabethan” suggested my sister-in-law, and “packaged in a pretty box they’d make a great gift”. I have to admit here that, given the choice of a chocolate biscuit or a lavender one, the children would unanimously vote for chocolate, but the fact that they considered them edible at all, when they knew they had flowers in, is pretty high praise for this recipe. I was the one who surreptitiously finished them off the next morning with my tea. That fragrant flavour on the palate, clean yet sweet, was irresistible!

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock

Quick And Easy Everyday Desserts.

For many people, dessert is the best part of any meal. But even in these health-conscious times, it’s still possible to satisfy a sweet tooth with quick and easy confections. All it takes is some yogurt and fresh-cut fruit.

Yogurt is a terrific way to get vitamins, calcium and other nutrients in a smooth, creamy treat. It’s also an excellent accompaniment to fruit, complementing the natural sugars of pineapple or orange with a touch of tartness.

One yogurt product that’s perfect with fruit is Litehouse Yogurt Fruit Dip. It comes in three popular flavors: Vanilla (with all-natural flavor), Chocolate (made with real Hershey’s chocolate) and Strawberry (made with real strawberries). These delicious refrigerated dips are low in fat and contain no preservatives. They can be enjoyed throughout the day or in these simple dessert ideas that combine a variety of fresh seasonal fruit.

• Cookie Pizzas: Set out packaged or homemade sugar cookies, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry Litehouse Yogurt Fruit Dips and bowls of your favorite fresh fruit, such as bananas, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, kiwi, pineapple and grapes. Ask family or friends to top a cookie with the yogurt dip, then any combination of fruits for a one of a kind dessert pizza.

• Berry Wonderful Cake: Drizzle slices of pound or angel food cake with strawberry Litehouse Yogurt Fruit Dip and top with fresh strawberries, blueberries and/or blackberries.

• Fruit on a Stick: Thread chunks of fresh fruit on wooden skewers, alternating colors, textures and flavors of the fruit. Serve with any flavor Litehouse Yogurt Fruit Dip. For a change of pace, try grilling fruit such as pineapple slices, peaches or mango before serving.

Prepare And Cook Macaroni

Macaroni is a product of wheat prepared from a hard, clean, glutenous grain. The grain is ground into a meal called semolina, from which the bran is excluded. This is made into a tasty dough by mixing with hot water in the proportion of two thirds semolina to one third water. The dough after being thoroughly mixed is put into a shallow vat and kneaded and rolled by machinery. When well rolled, it is made to assume varying shapes by being forced by a powerful plunger through the perforated head of strong steel or iron cylinders arranged above a fire, so that the dough is partially baked as it issues from the holes. It is afterwards hung over rods or laid upon frames covered with cloth, and dried. It is called by different names according to its shape. If in the shape of large, hollow cylinders, it is macaroni; if smaller in diameter, it is spaghetti; if fine, vermicelli; if the paste is cut into fancy patterns, it is termed pasta d’Italia. Macaroni was formerly made only in Italy, but at present is manufactured to a considerable extent in the United States.

Good macaroni will keep in good condition for a long time. It is rough, elastic, and hard; while the inferior article is smooth, soft, breaks easily, becomes moldy with keeping. Inferior macaroni contains a large percentage of starch, and but a small amount of gluten. When put into hot water, it assumes a white, pasty appearance, and splits in cooking. Good macaroni when put into hot water absorbs a portion of the water, swells to nearly double its size, but perfectly retains its shape. It contains a much smaller amount of gluten.

Do not wash macaroni. Break into pieces of convenient size if it is long. Always put to cook in boiling liquid, taking care to have plenty of water in the saucepan (as it absorbs a large quantity), and cook until tender. The length of time required may vary from twenty minutes, if fresh, to one hour if stale. When tender, turn into a colander and drain, and pour cold water through it to prevent the tubes from sticking together. The fluid used for cooking may be water, milk, or a mixture of both; also soup stock, tomato juice, or any preferred liquid.

Macaroni serves as an important adjunct to the making of various soups, and also forms the basis of other palatable dishes.

Perfect Scrambled Eggs

The truth is that scrambled eggs are easy to make. Unfortunately, they are also the easy to make WRONG. At a root level, scrambled eggs are simply beaten eggs which are fried and – for lack of a better word – scrambled. But like most things that are simple (take love and martinis as examples), people have found ways to make them needlessly complex.
No cheese. No overt flavorings. Just eggs and what it takes to make them taste and look like great eggs.

What NOT To Add

Cottage Cheese — Several recipes I encountered recommended whisking a Tablespoon of small curd cottage cheese in with each egg. Visually, the result was creamy and mildly fluffy scrambled eggs. In terms of taste, the cottage cheese did not contribute or detract from the eggs — but it did make the dish seem somehow impure. You knew there was something in there besides the egg. The aspect of cottage cheese that secured its fate as a stay-out-of-our-scramble ingredient was that no matter how vigorously you whisked the dish had texture irregularities. Every other bite had the unwelcome surprise of a noticeable cottage cheese curd.

Real Cream – I tried two recipes that used real cream (“the fat skimmed off the top of raw milk” as defined by the Wikipedia Dairy Products Guide). One said to add 1 Tablespoon of real cream per egg. The other instructed the use of 1 and ½ Tablespoons of cream per egg. Both recipes created beautiful eggs with a creamy yellow color. Sadly, the resulting flavor was not so beautiful. In both cases the first bite tasted terrific, but the more I ate the more I had to admit that these eggs were just too creamy. The recipe with 1 and ½ Tablespoons of cream left a slight, unpleasant milky after-taste.

Sour Cream – Scrambled eggs with sour cream can not be considered scrambled eggs in a purist sense. The sour cream adds a distinct flavor. Therefore, scrambled eggs with sour cream will be saved for mention in a future article on specialty or flavored scrambled eggs.

Baking Powder — Scrambled eggs with a pinch of baking powder per egg had a great appearance. They were fluffy, yet firm. I was surprised to find there was no trace of baking powder taste. Unfortunately, the texture of the scramble in the mouth was uneven with specks of firmer pieces in a single bite.

Sea Salt – When salt is heated it breaks down to the same components regardless whether its table salt or sea salt. As Robert Wolke says in his book What Einstein Told His Cook, “…when a recipe specifies simply ‘sea salt’ it is a meaningless specification. It might as well be specifying ‘meat’.” If you see a recipe that says to add sea salt to eggs before whisking…. you can be sure it was written by someone who needs to learn more about the ionic bonds that hold sodium and chlorine together.

Sugar – Eggs, flour and sugar are the primary ingredients of a great many deserts. Remove the flour and you end up with neither desert nor scrambled eggs – at least not from a purist scramble perspective. What you do end up with is a kind of specialty egg dish that deserves further exploration in the field of breakfast. It’s not fair to call them scrambled eggs, but their sweetness makes them an interesting complement to pancakes and waffles

What NOT To Do

DON’T beat egg whites until stiff peaks form

With or without added ingredients like sugar and cream of tartar, the result of scrambling looks like a big dollop of melting Crisco crossed with cottage cheese.

DON’T stir eggs slowly for an extended period

I came across one recipe that actually instructed to stir the eggs in the fry pan (heated at your stove’s lowest setting) with a wooden spoon for 30 minutes.

First of all, the eggs didn’t set after 30 minutes at the lowest heat setting. I tried once more at a slightly higher setting. After 10 minutes, the eggs began to show subtle signs of setting. I continued to stir the eggs in the pan for 10 minutes. The result looked more like butternut squash than any eggs I’ve ever seen. The texture was close to chewy and the extended cooking time seemed to have cooked away all the flavor of egg.

Do It Or Don’t – It doesn’t Make a Difference

Keep eggs at room temperature before scrambling – Kitchen tests showed no significant difference between room-temperature and refrigerated eggs from the same carton. Refrigeration actually deters the growth of salmonella enteritis. Even though salmonella is very rare (1 out of every 20,000 eggs may contain the bacteria), it is advised that your eggs always remain stored in the refrigerator.

The Art of Scrambling – Proper Technique

The Best Way To Beat Your Eggs

One of the most important ingredients in scrambled eggs is hardly ever mentioned… air. It would be nice if we could just dollop a Tablespoon of air into the mixing bowl, but for the time-being, incorporating air into beaten eggs requires good old-fashioned elbow grease (or the electric equivalent).

The more you whisk — the more air bubbles become trapped in the shaken and unraveling protein of the eggs. As the eggs cook, protein molecules firm-up around the air bubbles resulting in a spongy texture and hopefully full and fluffy scrambled eggs.

The American Egg Board describes well-beaten eggs as “frothy and evenly colored”. When your eggs match that description (generally after about 2 minutes) you should stop beating.

Over-beating will completely unravel the protein molecules and destabilize their ability to form a microscopic casing around the air. In terms of whisking motion, a tilted wheel motion works far better than a vertical stirring motion. A fork works as well as a whisk but requires a slight bit more time and energy.

The Best Way To Scramble In The Pan

The actions you take once the eggs hit the fry pan will dictate the size of the scrambled egg pieces (curds). Some recipes suggest stirring the eggs with a wooden spoon immediately as the eggs hit the heated surface. Others direct you to let the eggs start to set before stirring/scrambling. Of the two, the second method results in larger fluffier pieces.

Getting Hungry?

Before we scramble our brains contemplating the best plate to eat scrambled eggs off of, the texture differentials of eating with a spoon and the ideal temperature of the chair you sit in as you eat… let’s get back to the reason we’re here. For your breakfast pleasure, The Fish Creek House Presents…

This recipe serves 2 hungry people.

6 large eggs
6 teaspoons (1 teaspoon for each egg) low-fat milk
3 dashes of salt (1 dash for every two eggs)
1 Tablespoon butter for frying

Heat a large non-stick frying pan to a setting just above medium. A 12-inch pan works well for 6 eggs. Do not add butter yet. We just want get the pan ready.

In large metal or glass mixing bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk and salt. Beat vigorously for 2 minutes.

Alternatively, you can place the eggs, milk and salt in a blender and blend for 20 to 25 seconds. Allow the mixture to set for a couple minutes to let the foam settle.

Melt the butter in the frying pan. As the very last of the butter is liquefying, add the egg mixture.

Do not stir immediately. Wait until the first hint of setting begins. Using a spatula or a flat wooden spoon, push eggs toward center while tilting skillet to distribute runny parts.”)

Continue this motion as the eggs continue to set. Break apart large pieces as they form with your spoon or spatula. You will come to a point where the push-to-center technique is no longer cooking runny parts of the egg. Flip over all the eggs. Allow the eggs to cook 15 to 25 seconds longer. Transfer eggs to serving plates. Add salt and pepper to taste. Eat up!

Outdoor Kitchen Barbeque

It is no secret that most of the people who are interested in an outdoor kitchen are in fact thinking mostly about an outdoor kitchen barbeque, it makes perfect sense that the main use for an outdoor kitchen would be to host as many barbeque parties as possible.

An outdoor kitchen is perfect for a barbeque, once you have seen an barbeque party held in a place that had an outdoor kitchen you would probably never want to go back to that messy, unorganized and completely uncool option of the old, more classic barbeque. The new era is here, and it is definitely growing in popularity which is absolutely natural.

Why bother with the old style barbeque, when you can have your own outdoor kitchen, making everything accessible and easy, very simple to maintain and clean and most of all, incredible help with food preparation and sanitation.

The outdoor kitchen barbeque market has got many different products in it, and it is important that you make a few decisions before you start your search for the ultimate outdoor kitchen barbeque. The one, most important decision is if you choose to go with the gas barbeque or the charcoal heated barbeque, this will have a great significance on your cooking, and the layout of your outdoor kitchen. Once you have made this decision it will be much easier for you to shop and research.

I would recommend having some idea about these two different cooking styles before you make this designs, you don’t want to spend your money on an outdoor kitchen barbeque only to discover you prefer another cooking method at some friends barbeque party, you should also try and ask other family members what is their preference, since you would probably want them to enjoy this outdoor kitchen too.

One mistake I would recommend avoiding is not to ask around too much, people feel very strongly about the kind of barbeque they use and not everyone is open to hear new things, so the best way is just to try and taste the difference, either in a restaurant or at friends that have different kinds of barbeques.

The charcoal option has been a classic favorite for many years, but in the last few year more and more people are deciding to go with a gas grill. The variety of gas grills allows you to find one at almost any budget, a gas grill can cost anywhere between two hundred and four thousand dollars. As with all the accessories and features you add to your outdoor kitchen, the outdoor kitchen barbeque is really a question of how much you will be willing to spend, so think carefully of how much you plan to use this feature, and form my experience I can say that most people surprisingly under estimate their barbeque usage, simply because they fail to understand how easy it is to use on a regular, day to day basis.

Going foe the expensive barbeques is not necessarily a wise choice, but be sure that the best quality grills out there do cost a lot, you need to research this market because it has many products and players and things can change, always look for the heaviest grill and try and find out how much extras you get with it.

« Previous Page — Next Page »