Vinaigrette, aka Salad Dressing

Don't ever buy salad dressing.

1 part vinegar : 3 parts oil                     Shake.          Thats it.


Now you can get interesting. You can use any vinegar with any oil plus any flavouring you can think of, that's a lot of options.

Often add 1/2 part sweetener.

To make a nice thick dressing, add everything but the oil and then using a hand blender slowly drizzle in oil. You could even add an egg at the beginning, and have a mayonaisse based dressing, like caesar.

Add salt. Most people don't season their leaf enough if at all.

Squeeze two lemons into a mason jar. Add a spoon of honey and a spoon of mustard. Slowly add grapeseed oil while blending with hand blender. Keep adding oil slowly until dressing thickens. Add a chunk of chevre goats cheese and fresh picked thyme. Taste all the time, at the beginning with no oil it's very sour, when finished the flavour should be balanced and delicious.

Or think of something yourself..

Try adding herbs, spices, raw, dried or cooked fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds......

Confit

Confit. If you see this on a menu, order it. Don't question it and don't be silly. Order. Confit means love.
Actually it means cooked in fat, preferably it's own, but that's not always possible. Food is usually cured with salt and or sugar and aromats before being submerged in fat and cooked very slowly until tender. What more do you want?
Because confit foods are covered with fat, they are not in contact with oxygen and are therefore preserved. This style of cooking was a necessity before refrigeration. Originally referring to fruits cooked and preserved in sugar, the French perfected the art with meats like duck and goose.
Making Duck confit is easy and amazingly delicious. You would be really cool if you actually tried this.

Liberally cover the skin of your duck legs (thighs attached) with cure. 2 part rock sea salt : 1 part sugar + aromats, (traditionally bay leaves, garlic, thyme, black pepper, juniper berries, I like a whack of herbs too and pulsing in the food processor before adding the salt and sugar) leave in fridge loosely covered 24- 48 hours. Wipe off cure and submerge duck in fat. ( If you can't find duck fat you can use oil, but you should really go find duck fat). Put in oven below 300F. Duck is done when thigh bone can be pulled out with ease, 3-5 hours ish. Cool. Back in the day they'd sort of just keep this downstairs for months but I suggest the fridge. When you want to eat it, which is pretty much always, when you're actually ready to eat, make a pan hot. Gently (always gently (hands of a lesbian, tender yet firm)) remove duck from fat, and place duck skin down in hot pan. Don't move it. (Hot means when the duck hit the pan it goes spttzzzzzzz instantly but not so hot your pan is about to melt and everything goes black). Put pan in 350F oven for 10 min or so. You want the skin all super crispy. That's when it's done.. Put a little salad on a plate, put the duck down, drizzle with a gastrique. Wow.

Oil

All oils have a set temperatures at which they will begin to smoke, flash and burst into flame. When oil smokes the healthy molecules break down becomes carcinogenic.  FYI

You need extra virgin olive oil. It's health benefits have been promoted for centuries and it is used for most western based cooking and dressings EXCEPT when you DON'T WANT TO TASTE OLIVES, or you need HIGH HEAT. Olive oil has a very low smoke point, so don't use it for searing.It is good for sauteing but is the healthiest unheated.

Grapeseed oil. This stuff is great. It has pretty much no flavour and a high smoke point, so it's great for searing. Use anytime you don't want to taste olives. Anything Asian and olives is almost always weird and not so pleasant. (So don't use olive oil to make Asian food).. Grapeseed oil makes wicked salad dressing because you only taste the other ingredients.

Sesame oil. There are two types, made from roasted or raw seeds. By far the most common is the roasted, usually used for flavour rather than cooking. Be careful, a little goes a long way.

Some nuts make great salad and baking oils like walnut and hazelnut, but what you need is nice extra virgin and grapeseed for pretty much all your cooking.

Polenta

Polenta is quick, easy, cheap and ya, Delicious and Nutritious..
Polenta is cooked cornmeal. It's made delicious with butter and cheese. I love cheese.

Shop  cornmeal, (optional( right)) cheese, (whatever you like, parmesan, piave, mascarpone, gorgonzola), butter and the preserved lemon in your fridge...

1 part cornmeal 4 parts water. Boil 1 litre of water with a teaspoon of salt. 'Make it rain polenta,' (250mls) gently shake it into the water while whisking, like so..

Once you have whisked in all the cornmeal switch to a wooden spoon and turn heat to low. Cook stirring often for about 20minutes. You can tell it is done by putting it in your mouth, the bits of cornmeal should not be hard and when stirred vigorously it pulls away from the sides of the pot (somewhat).. Add a whack of butter ( I like a lot of butter on my corn, 1/4 Cup is coool..) hand-fulls of cheese, finely chopped preserved lemon, juice from one lemon. Taste it, add more salt and lemon probably... Now you are at one of the natural cross-roads of life. You can either eat your polenta as it is or you can pour it into a BUTTERED dish of a size that your polenta will be an inch and a half or so thick, let it cool, cut it and fry until crispy in a medium hot pan with oil.
That's it.

Preserved Lemon

Preserved Lemons are a staple of North African food. All you have to do is heavily salt lemons and leave it on your counter for a month. I like to use 1 part sugar to 2 parts salt. Classic aromatic flavourings are cinnamon, star anise, black pepper, bay leaf, chili. Leave spices whole.
Usually lemons are quartered lengthwise with the cuts not going through so the lemon is held together at the bottom. Cover each lemon with your cure (salt, sugar, spices) and pack into a jar. Agitate daily and the lemons will release juice that mixes with the cure to form the brine that not only keeps lemons edible for months in hot African sun, but makes them absolutely lemony delicious. You can use them anytime but they are really ready after a month or so, when they should be refrigerated. What you're really after on these little suckers is the yellow part of the skin. The white pith is really bitter. To use remove a lemon from the brine and give it a quick rinse. 'Filet' a quarter with a sharp knife so you have just yellow skin. This can be tricky. So here's a better way...

Wash lemons. Peel them with a vegetable peeler into a jar. Try to get just yellow, no white. Cut in half and juice lemons that now have no skins through a sieve into the jar. Add a Tablespoon of unrefined sugar and 2 Tablespoons of sea salt PER LEMON! (about). Add any aromats you like. Shake it. Leave it. For at least a week. Chop it up really small and mix into grain salads, put on vegetables, use with meats or to finish stews*...

*Citrus peel becomes very bitter when cooked too long, it's a finisher..

Happy Birthdaiye!!

Here's the menu from a birthday I did for a friend. We started with started with four little bites and then had some snacks..

 Asparagus, Proscuitto, Thyme Goat Cheese

Smoked Duck Breast, Cider Gel

Smoked Salmon, Pickled Beets, Lemon Dill Fraiche

Mushroom Crustini

Chicken Sticks, Peanut Sauce

Root Beer Beef, Polenta

Lamb Chop, Black Fennel

Garlic Prawns, Sweet Chili

Veggie Cakes, Rouille, Red Onion Jam

Scalloped Potatoes

Green Bean, Broccoli, Sesame, Onion

Farro 

It was Nutritious and oh so Delicious.. I'll post some recipes, if you want more just ask!

Caesar?

Mayonnaise is really easy to make. It is basically oil and an acid, (vinegar, lemon juice), which would normally separate when combined, held together by egg yolk. The trick is to add everything but the oil, blend on high with a hand blender on a stick and then slowly drizzle in the oil while blending.

AIOLI = MAYONNAISE WITH GARLIC IN IT. THAT'S IT.

SHOP LIST eggs, oil, vinegar or lemon juice, any flavourings you like, garlic, chili, herbs, pickles, spices, fruit, whatever...

Put three yolks in a mason jar. (Or something that's sorta tall and skinny that you can fit your hand blender into(that's not hand in blender please)). Add 75ml, 5Tablespoons, or a couple shots of vinegar, flavours (like garlic, anchovy, caper for Caesar dressing), blend. While blending drizzle in about 1Cup, 250mls oil. *be careful using too much olive oil, it can taste quite strong. I like half and half grapeseed and olive oil. Taste it. Add salt. Taste it. Add salt. Taste it. Finish with blending in herbs or mixing in chopped pickle or whatever. Use for anything you can think of ...

Vinegar

Wow. This stuff is amazing. Wild sour fermentations. Delicious. And Nutritious. I eat a lot of vinegar. It's great straight and amazing when slowly reduced with some aromatics and sometimes sweetener. French food has gastrique sauces, Chinese have sweet and sour, Indians chutney. We have... ketchup. Do not misunderstand. I love ketchup. But kinda weak...

VINEGARS YOU SHOULD HAVE AT ALL TIMES...

Apple cider vinegar
White wine vinegar
Red wine vinegar
Rice vinegar
** 'white' vinegar is for cleaning, keep away from your mouth

...go for it

Try this. 2Cups apple cider vinegar, 1/2Cup honey, dried chili, fennel seed, mustard seeds, little cinnamon stick, 2 cloves. Bring to boil and reduce slowly 40ish minutes, strain and continue reducing slowly until thickened slightly. Add finely chopped peeled apple. Adjust sweetness. Spoon over pork, duck, chicken....

Pancakes, Crepes

One of the things that got me into cooking.. I love crepes. They are quick and easy, sweet or savory and definitely Delicious and Nutritious.
Simple.
Crack 5 eggs into a large jug. Using a hand blender (blender on a stick, get one of these) blitz the eggs. Add 2 Cups of milk, blitz. Add 1 1/2 Cups flour, a pinch of salt, spices, (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, cardamom, coriander) blitz. You might need a touch more flour. For thicker pancakes you need a thicker batter, for crepes a thinner batter works better. Crepes are better. Now comes the best part. Beurre Noisette. Browned Butter, awesome stuff. Put a whack of butter in a small pan, something between  a couple Tablespoon and a 1/4 Cup. Medium heat. Cook until butter turns light brown, just a few minutes. Don't burn it. If it goes black don't use it, it's disgusting and unhealthy. Let the butter cool slightly and pour into batter while mixing with blender. Let the batter rest 10 minutes or more. This lets the flavours meld and helps the batter hold together a bit more when cooking..
Large pan hot. Small amount of frying oil, make it hot. Add a 1/2 Cup of batter to the pan. Either swirl the pan so the batter covers the bottom or use a pastry cutter to spread the batter. Cook for a minute or so, flip once.
Butter it and do your thing, maple, chocolate, jam, yogurt, whipped cream, ice cream, fruit, whatever...
Yes they are very good but you really should share...

Lamb Stew

Stew is the best. It is a braised product. Read the Braising Guide. Braising is one of the best ways to cook; using tough cheaper cuts of meat, made deliciously sweet from thorough caramelization and then tenderized and infused with the cooks imagination with slow cooking.. Bloody delicious..


Make large cubes out of a lamb shoulder. One piece of meat per person size.. Make a cure by warming in a pan until fragrance is released a combination of fennel seeds, mustard seeds, chili, cumin seeds, anise seeds, peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, allspice. Take it easy on the last three. Otherwise up to you. Pulse in coffee grinder with 2 Tablespoons of rock sea salt and 2 Tablespoons of unrefined cane sugar. Rub the meat with the cure, be generous but not ridiculous.
Let the meat hang out in the fridge if you can and when ready to cook make a large pan nicely medium hot. Add oil to lightly cover the bottom and make it hot. Add the meat. Read the Braising Guide.

Add onions, garlic, ginger, caramelize. Add celery, carrots, tomatoes and stock. Boil, place in 350F oven. Cook 1 hour and add potato. Cook 1 more hour or until everything is tender. Serve over rice.