The Perfect Whipped Cream

For the serious home cook, whipped cream does not come out of a pressurized can. Both for our environment and for our budget, cream whipped by yourself using heavy cream is far better. Besides, pressurized whip cream is only good if spreads on top just shortly before serving—it flattens and starts to liquefy in less than half hour. Many home cooks are convinced that they don’t have the temerity to whip their own heavy cream. Yet creating whipped cream is hardly more challenging than boiling hard-cooked eggs.

And freshly whipped cream, unlike the canned product, stays solid and firm for hours. But sometimes you also need the whipped cream stable for even longer. I learned a few simple tricks during my catering career, one was how to stabilize whipped cream lasting firm for even two days. This simple trick is to add dry milk powder during the whipping process.

The amount is 1½ teaspoons dry milk for ⅓ cup cream; or 4½ teaspoons for each cup of cream you are whipping.

It works!

Remember, to have the best volume of firm whipped cream foam, chill the bowl and the wire whip before whipping. With an electric mixer the process is quick: two to four minutes. Occasionally the cream seems to refuse to whip into foam. But keep at it at high speed and it will firm up.

POPCORN--YOUR VEGETABLE OF THE DAY

Yes, some consider popcorn their vegetable of the day though the nutrient you gain from it is pretty slim. It has a little fiber and lot of carbohydrates and it provides have plenty of snacky eating pleasure as you well know when you can’t stop eating them. It’s the fat, either oil, butter or margarine, and salt that make popcorn so irresistible.

Whether you prefer microwave popcorn, pre-popped popcorn or popcorn popper popcorn, the end result is the same.

I don’t own a microwave or a popcorn popper but my skillet-popped popcorn is wonderful and just as hard to quit eating them.

I start with three tablespoons popping corn per serving. This is a rather modest serving for those who don’t like to overeat.

Popcorn salt is finer than our common granulated salt so I grind my common table salt with mortar and pestle until the grains are reduced to fine—about twenty seconds.

Now I heat a heavy skillet having a tight-fitting lid, when hot, add just a little film of oil and the popping corn plus the salt. Cover the skillet and continue heating over moderate heat until I hear the first kernels pop. From now on I keep shaking the pan frequently while holding on to the lid so the kernels are distributed evenly in the heat and none burns on the bottom. Popping will continue for three or four minutes and when you hear no more popping, all the kernels were popped (except for the few old unpopped grannies). I add about half a tablespoon of butter to the pan per serving, sometimes a sprinkling of hot ground chillies, I stir well and serve.

Only reasonably fresh popping corn pop well, corn which you haven't stored for years. Some suggest that sprinkling old kernels with water and let them sit in a closed jar for a few days will refresh them. Perhaps. But these refreshed kernels don't seem to pop as large as fresh ones and old grannies gather rather plentifully in the bottom of the pan.

Yes, they are hard to stop snacking on them but I make modest quantities to overcome that urge.

COOKBOOKS -- How I Rate Them as Reviewer

As a cookbook reviewer, I occasionally come across some awesome cookbooks.

Reviewers follow Amazon’s system giving each book a star ranging from one to five. Cookbooks (or food-related books) given five stars are truly exceptional and not common. Really bad books surface in the mail (that I regularly receive from the book review magazines) but they are not common either. Our criterion of giving one star to a book is: “Probably only going to be read and enjoyed by the author's mother.”

I am often asked by friends and acquaintances how I arrive at the rating of a cookbook.

First, the recipe writing: it must be absolutely clear, unambiguous, ingredient amounts also clear and in easily measurable amounts in a home cook’s kitchen; step-by-step instructions in logical order; ingredients listed according to cooking steps used. I check making sure no ingredients are missing either from the list or from the directions. Are most ingredients readily available and known to a home cook? Are there professional jargon used a cook needs to look up in a dictionary?

Then comes the layout of the recipes. Good cookbook authors insist that the recipes are laid out to the convenience of the cook not to the book designers. If you need to flip pages back and forth to follow a recipe, the layout is poor. Illustrations related to a recipe should be close to the recipe itself.

Recipe headnotes should be interesting to read and informative to the cook. This also applies to the sidebars, tables, and charts. Good food writing rates high in my reviews but endless personal stories and history can be boring that readers will only read once (if at all). Also illustrations: some authors include many, many personal photos from babyhood on which I consider fillers. The quality of food photography may be amateurish or professional, as well as sketches and step-by-step thumbnail photos.

Index is extremely important. Having poor index is very frustrating to a cook when attempting to find a previously prepared recipe. Index needs to be thoroughly cross-referenced to be useful. (Roasted Tuscan Eggplant should be listed under eggplant and Tuscan but not under Roasted.)

A good cookbook also have extras: perhaps something about unusual ingredients, about the cooking techniques used, history and origin of the recipe and so on.

Using a very good professional cookbook editor (not just any book editor) and a professional indexer don’t guarantee a good cookbook but it’s likely to lead the way to five stars.

Scrambled Eggs the Chinese Way

Some year ago I visited a good childhood friend in Toronto, staying overnight for a couple of days. My friend delivered bread from a bakery so his work started well before dawn—in fact even before some folks hit the bed for the night. His wife was a late riser and I would’ve gladly fixed my own breakfast (even though I dislike trying to find things in someone else’s kitchen). But their ten-year old daughter, Jenny insisted that she will scramble two eggs for me.

She put a sauté pan on high heat while she lightly beat the eggs, adding salt and pepper and some chopped scallions. Wooden spoon in one hand and serving plate ready, she swirled a teaspoon of vegetable oil in the smoking hot pan then she quickly dumped the eggs into the hot oil and within fifteen or twenty seconds the eggs were done.

As a food expert I was dismayed, knowing that only slow heat can produce good, creamy-soft scrambled eggs but, not trying to hurt her feelings, I accepted my fate with resignation. I sat down to have the best scrambled eggs anyone ever served me. What happened?

Jenny actually stir-fried the eggs so quickly that they didn’t lose their natural moisture. Ordinarily the tight spring-like protein molecules of the eggs unfold on cooking, and the heat drives off their moisture, turning the scrambled eggs dry. Yet Jenny’s cooking process was so fast that the proteins retained their moisture. The eggs coagulated in the pan and remained soft and flavorful thanks to the high heat.

Try this simple method next time you have scrambled eggs in a meal plan. Just make sure everything is ready. You cannot leave the eggs in the hot pan even ten seconds too long.

Omelet for Dinner

When in a hurry to fix a decent dinner or simply ran out of ideas or ingredients, what is your Plan B solution? Mine is a nice omelet: full of nutrition, full of flavor and very, very quick to make. If nothing else, a simple salad is a perfect accompaniment with good bread, toast or English muffins to complete the meal. If I have time, I brown some potatoes instead of bread.

Omelets may be elaborate with plenty of fills and toppings but mine is simple, basic that is satisfying as a meal yet you won’t feel so stuffed that dessert has no room left in your tummy.

I am fortunate to have access to fresh free-range hen eggs. Yet even if you don’t, egg-production, processing and shipping are so efficient that supermarket eggs are very good and very fresh too. The yolks of free-range hens are deeper, the whites are firmer and flavor is more intense but I am not going to disparage the eggs from the market.

Eggs are laid by commercial egg-producing hens like any other assembly line workers. They are then rolled on rubber-matted conveyor belts to a washing and egg-shell sterilizing room, gently sprayed with wax to retain freshness longer and within hours or days shipped on refrigerated trucks to distribute them to retailers. These are truly fresh eggs.

Nevertheless, the difference of yolk color between the two types is a revelation (see photo).

Back to my omelet.

Depending on your appetite, count on one, one-and-half or two eggs per serving, and for some, I am sure, three or four. I scramble the eggs with a generous dash of salt and fresh-ground pepper per egg. I finely chop onion and red pepper. I sauté first the onion in a little butter over medium heat for a few minutes then add the pepper, continue cooking for a few more minutes, sprinkle with generous amount of paprika (about quarter teaspoon per egg) and quickly remove from the sauté pan before the paprika burns.

Now I return the sauté pan to low to medium heat with more butter and once the butter is bubbling, I pour in the scrambled eggs. As soon as the eggs are beginning to set in the center, I spread the onion-pepper mixture over the omelet surface. If I use grated cheese, this is a time to sprinkle it on as well.

Before the omelet dried out, I fold one half over the other and the omelet is ready to slip out of the pan on a plate. The whole process takes eight or ten minutes.