Category Archives: Recipes

Events & Ideas, Menus, Recipes, Theme Dinners

Movie Menus–“Like Water for Chocolate”

cream_fritters_in_caramel_sauce
Cream Fritters in a Caramel Cage
Quail_in_Rose_Petal_Sauce1
Roasted Chicken in Rose Petal Sauce
Chile_en_Nogada1
Chile en Nogada–Stuffed Peppers in Walnut Sauce

 

One of my favorite dinner events is to build a menu around the food of a movie. There are a number of films that use food as a vehicle for driving a plot forward. One such movie is “Like Water for Chocolate.”

Although conceptually simple, the challenge with many literary or film-based menus arises when recipes are incomplete or non-existent. Cream Fritters, for example, are described in a sensory manner in the movie, but nowhere is it mentioned how one successfully deep fries merengue and cream! There is a secret–and an opportunity to be very creative.

 

Knife Skills, Recipes

Learn to Handle Your Knife Like a Professional Chef

Rick's Knifes Skills 1Most home cooks learned how to use a knife from their mothers and grandmothers like I did.

I remember watching my mother slice strawberries, bananas, carrots, or celery at about the same pace as she would snap beans–one at a time, holding a single piece in one hand and a paring knife in the other, pulling the small blade through the food toward her thumb.  She would spend the afternoon preparing enough food for dinner for the five of us.

Rick's Knife Skills 5

In today’s faster paced environment, most home cooks I know don’t have the time or patience to spend an afternoon in the kitchen preparing dinner. So it becomes easier and more convenient, and more expensive, to buy foods that have already had the prep work done.

Learning to slice, chop, dice, mince, chiffonade, peal, and pare foods like a professional chef will allow you to spend less time in the kitchen, serve fresher food, that cooks more evenly, and looks better.

A single two hour class can set you on the path to perfect platters.