The difference between a chef and a home cook is not as large as you might think, and you can do most of what they can do at home. With this recipe, we're going to highlight some of those differences so you can try them too.

First, chefs use really good meat. If you want to make the best stew you've ever eaten, buy some grass-fed beef. Whole Foods is a reliable source for this ingredient, which you can often buy already cubed for stew.

Second, chefs saute vegetables to form a flavor base for the stew; this is called a "mirepoix" (pronounced mir-pwa'). A lot more vegetables than you would think necessary (usually onion or leeks, celery, carrot and garlic) are diced and cooked in a bit of fat until they are softened.

Third, chefs sear the meat. When meat is seared, a "Maillard reaction" occurs, creating even more flavor. When searing, they space the meat in the pan so that it does not touch. It takes 2-3 batches to do this, but if you add too much meat at once, the meat throws off water so that instead of searing, it actually steams instead, and you lose out on those flavors.

Fourth, once all the sauteing and searing is done, chefs remove everything and "deglaze" the pan with a liquid, usually wine or broth. This not only captures all the flavors created above, but - bonus - it cleans up the bottom of the pan very nicely!

Fifth, chefs add fresh herbs. Thyme is great, but sage and rosemary play well too as does some fresh flat-leafed parsley at the end. More complex flavor!

Finally, chefs braise. They put all the ingredients back in the pan, add enough beef broth or wine to cover much of the beef and bring it a boil. Then they cover the pot tightly with foil or parchment, put the lid on and slide it into a 325 oven until the beef is meltingly tender and irresistible. If adding potatoes, they wait until about 1 hour before the end and add the potatoes in 1-1/2" cubes, cooking the stew until the potatoes are just done.

It's not every night that you want to cook like a chef, but for those nights that you do, beef stew is a great recipe to try.

Chris

​​​If you would like to see my recipes, tips and adventures in cooking every week go to www.ucancook.net and enter your email on the right side. Alternatively, email me at chrisd.williams@yahoo.com and I will set you up! For even more tips and techniques, follow You Can Cook on Facebook.

At my mother's memorial service, I told a story that really painted a picture of my mom. She enjoyed cooking (although sometimes - as the cook in chief - she grew tired of her obligations), and particularly liked one dish meals. One such recipe, from a cookbook titled "That Amazing Ingredient, Mayonnaise", was tuna quiche.

Now before you close this window, I must tell you that my mother's tuna quiche was really quite good, even if it was made with the amazing ingredient quoted in the title of her cookbook. A friend raised by a Parisian baker once agreed to taste it, and although she would not allow that it was worthy of the name "quiche", she did concede that it was quite delicious.

But here's the thing about my mother: since the recipe said tuna and scallions, tuna and scallions it was. Every. Single. Time. No ham, no mushrooms, no broccoli. No cheddar cheese, only swiss. No crustless quiche. Because the recipe said so.

In this regard, my mother and I have little in common; I love to mix it up. If I really like a dish, I might make it 5 or 6 times a year, but even then, I usually change up the recipe depending on how I feel and what I have on hand. Looking through my cupboards last night, I was not pleased with the amount of half-consumed snack food I found, so I decided to throw it all into chocolate chip cookie batter. Here is what I added to a 1/2 recipe of New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies:

3/4 cup of "Wholesome Medly" trailmix of uncertain vintage
1 peanut butter and dark chocolate Kind bar, crumbled
12 stale marshmallows, cut in fourths
5 oz. chopped belgian white chocolate

Might I add that I finished each of these unloved ingredients? With my son away at school, finishing snack food is a win.

Other fun cookie adds might include leftover cocktail peanuts, broken potato chips or pretzels, any small amounts of leftover chocolate/pb/white/mint etc. chips in your freezer or pantry, crushed graham crackers, rainbow sprinkles, crushed candy canes or a handful of kalmata olives.

Just kidding about the olives. Please don't add the olives.

As you can see, the cookies turned out pretty well. The marshmallows browned and puffed up in some cases, but the they tasted delicious!

In our culture, we describe a meal based on the type of meat, and so I might say, "I had chicken for dinner" or "I had pork for dinner" or "I had fish for dinner". But in Seattle, there is an entire category of meat that most of the country doesn't separately recognize: the category of salmon.

There's a good reason for this - huge amounts of salmon are caught in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Visit the fish ladders at the Chittendon Locks in Ballard between July and September, and you can see entire schools of 2'+ salmon making their way upstream. One summer, the salmon harvest was so large the grocery stores were giving them away for free (limit 2, please).

Nearly all of my family now live in the Pacific Northwest, and I have had salmon many, many ways: poached with dill sauce, baked on a cedar plank, stuffed in puff pasty, made into sushi, or grilled and Rubbed with Love. But my favorite is the humble salmon burger.

I have frequently purchased salmon burgers from my local fishmonger. The problem with those burgers however is that they have so much fat that I find myself popping Tums within a few minutes of the completion of my meal...and personally, as a dessert, Tums leave much to be desired. Plus it seems somewhat ironic to consume my entire day's limit of grease eating an allegedly healthy food like fish.

So while my search for the perfect salmon burger doesn't quite rise to the level of a quest (for example my caramel sauce adventure), it has been an interest for quite a while. And I'm proud to say, I think I've found a winner.

This simple and flexible recipe for salmon burgers can be prepared at least two ways: as full-sized burgers, or as mini-burgers for an unusual but memorable appetizer. For a full sized burger, you can use your hands to shape the mixture, or get an inexpensive single-use kitchen tool: a burger press. For the uninitiated, you fill the press with ground meat and then rotate the handle to release a perfectly-shaped burger into your hand. Although this may seem a bit fancy for some (and anathema to people like me who decry single-use kitchen tools) it actually makes some sense: burgers - whether salmon or any other meat - are prepared quickly and without having to pack down the meat, and it's a lot easier to make them all the same size, ensuring even cooking.

To make mini-burgers, use the smallest cookie scoop (about 2 Tbs), and release a flat-sided scoop directly into a non-stick skillet. Saute on both sides, flattening with your spatula to form a mini-burger. By the time it's browned on one side, the fish will be perfectly cooked. I served mine on Triscuits with a bit of chive on each one for color. In the photo below, I used them to make a salmon salad.

Many people have asked me about my Mother's Day. In truth, I was brutally attacked...by a wrap.

My daughter and I were enjoying a lovely lunch in Newburyport. The sun was shining and we were investigating all the cute little stores. We stopped for lunch and I ordered a gyros wrap with onion rings (oh, how I love onion rings!).

Both were fabulously delicious, when suddenly the attack began. After taking a bite, I realized that my onion rings were sitting in a pool of wrap-dressing. I quickly moved them to higher ground, and then without warning, the flood ensued. A gap in the foil wrapper caused the dressing to go everywhere. My plate, the table, the chair, the floor, even the window next to our table...covered in oily dressing.

Then I looked down and saw that I was sitting in a puddle of it. It was also dripping down the front of my coat, shirt and hair. If I had to guess, I'd say more than one CUP of dressing had attached itself to my person and immediate surroundings.

My onion rings forgotten, I quickly sprang from my chair, trying to remove the offending grease from my shirt and jeans, but it was useless. I then took an entire roll of paper towels to the restroom, and proceeded to remove dressing from myself and my clothing, right down to the socks and underwear. This required a good deal of water, and I was fortunate that there was one of those extremely powerful hand dryers...and that it was a single-stall restroom. Because although I don't often feel embarrassed, I'm not sure I could have dried everything required under a hand dryer in a multi-stall facility.

The story has a happy ending. Thanks for the brilliant engineers at Excel (the hand dryer people) and an entire trash basket of paper towels, I emerged mostly clean and mostly dry, ready to finish my day with an extremely embarrassed teenage daughter.

But there are lessons to be learned from my nasty experience.

First, gyros (like Cheetos and baby back ribs) are a food best eaten in private. I'm normally pretty good about this, but it was Mother's Day so I guess that I thought the normal rules did not apply.

Second, when you are a host planning food, think not just about what your guests might like (pigs in a blanket = joy for anyone under 16), but how they will eat it. Small finger foods are the best at gatherings of more than 8 people; guests can grab a piece (and maybe a napkin on the side) and go. Save things eaten with a knife & fork for other occasions.

Years ago, I attended a benefit with drinks & appetizers. Due to poor planning on my part, I arrived quite hungry and deicded I would grab an appetizer or two. I knew they were there...I could SMELL them...but somehow never found one until I was offered a piece of beef wellington. While talking to a very elegant woman I accepted a piece of beef, however once I bit into it, realized my error: my lipstick was immediately and completely covered in flakes of puff pastry. I spent the entire conversation basically trying to chew the stuff off my own lips...as discretely as possible. I don't think I ever saw that woman again, but that may have been because she's been crossing the street to avoid me ever since.

Here are some tasty - and easy to eat - suggestions for your next gathering:
Sweet & Salty Nuts
Ham-wrapped asparagus spears (bonus - a no-carb recipe!)
Thin Italian breadsticks, such as Alessi
A couple of cheeses on a board or plate (one soft cheese and one hard) with a bowl of grapes on the side
Bacon cream cheese roll ups (extremely unhealthy, but simple to make and very, very good; picture at left)
Chocolate fondue with mini-marshmallows speared with tiny pretzels for dipping
Buffalo Chicken Dip​

​Any of these would leave your guests happy...and not wearing the food you are trying to serve them.

​If you would like to see my recipes, tips and adventures in cooking every week go to www.ucancook.net and enter your email on the right side. Alternatively, email me at chrisd.williams@yahoo.com and I will set you up! For even more tips and techniques, follow You Can Cook on Facebook as well.

I've often started my posts with stories of cooking disaster; an overcooked turkey, a failed salad made of shredded brussels sprouts, and the time I stuffed a roast chicken with a weed I believed to be sage. But with roast vegetables, I have no failures to share because it is almost impossible to do it incorrectly.

The basic recipe is simple: line a cookie sheet with foil, place evenly cut, clean dry fresh vegetables on the sheet and toss lightly with olive oil and salt. Making sure they are no more than one layer deep, bake at 450 degrees for 12 - 20 minutes, until the vegetables are crisp-tender (i.e. you can pierce them with a fork).

My son (21) attends the Riverview School in Sandwich, MA and in his dorm, they cook dinner together most nights. He recently send me a picture of the roast vegetables he prepared for his dorm. If a bunch of young 20-something men can cook roast vegetables - and enjoy eating them - you can be pretty sure you can cook and enjoy them too.

A word about salt. Salt has a bad name, and part of that is well-deserved. If you look at the back of a can of soup, frozen dinner or many other prepared foods, the amount of salt per serving is shocking; sometimes as much as your entire recommended daily intake. However, when you cook food that is REAL (i.e. not manufactured), adding a bit of salt is often a crucial step for great flavor. So when you make this recipe, add more than a pinch; unless you're on a salt-restricted diet, it's not going to hurt you.

Here is a partial list of vegetables that taste great roasted:

• Asparagus (snap off woody base of stem, usually about 1", and roast whole)
• Beets (boil until the peel slips off and cut to 3/4" cubes)
• Broccoli (break into equal sized florets, about 1")
• Brussels sprouts (trim and halve, also see my recipe for brussels sprouts roasted with bacon)
• Butternut squash (peel and cut into 3/4" cubes)
• Carrots (cut into 1" pieces, peel if desired) 
• Cauliflower (break into equal sized florets, about 1")
• Garlic (peel and trim end but leave bulbs whole)
• Onion (peel and cut into 3/4" pieces)
• Parsnip (peel and cut into 3/4" pieces)
• Potatoes (especially the waxier types such as red, blue or yukon gold; cut into 3/4" cubes)
• Sweet Potatoes (peel and cut into 3/4" - 1" cubes; they cook more quickly than regular potatoes, so cut the sweet potatoes larger if roasting together)

The next step is the rub, a combinations of sugar, salt and spice. You can buy it or make your own. For purchased rub, I like the salmon version of "Rub With Love" for both salmon and pork. Making your own rub is simple and inexpensive, and it keeps for up to a year. The evening before you are going to cook your pork, generously coat the pork on all sides with the rub and refrigerate the pork (uncovered if possible) overnight. 

First thing in the morning, get the pork out of the refrigerator and bring it to room temperature on your counter (this is perfectly safe unless you have a counter-surfing dog in your home). After an hour, preheat your oven to 275 degrees and put the pork in, fattier side up. Depending on the size, it will take several hours to cook - allow a solid 6 hours. This is a very forgiving meat; it needs to reach 200 degrees but if you cook it a bit longer, it will still taste great. Use a meat thermometer to confirm that the meat has reached 200 degrees.

A note about slow cookers (crockpots). There are many good crockpot recipes for pulled pork, and if your oven is otherwise occupied, a crockpot will do the job. The problem with a crockpot is that it's a moist cooking method, and your pork won't develop a crispy exterior if prepared this way. So crockpots are a good backup plan, but an oven is the preferred choice. A grill is a great choice (bonus - it frees up your oven and doesn't heat up the house), but only if you can truly control the heat.

Once the pork reaches 200 degrees, take it out of the oven and let it cool for 30 minutes or so. This is not necessary for the recipe, but will make it much less likely that you will burn yourself when you pull it. When the pork is done, it should smell fabulous and be crispy on the outside; the outside pieces are called the "bark".

I'm away this week, but wanted to share my new favorite smoothie...chocolate peanut butter cup.

Here are a few ways to make a smoothie breakfast almost as simple as grabbing a protein bar:
- Keep your ingredients together, like they are in my photo below.
- Make the ingredients easy to add: put a scoop in the flax seed, get honey that dispenses easily and buy some Trader Joe's organic peanut butter - stir it once and you can pour it from the jar.
- Find a blender with a frozen drink button; you can press it once and walk away.

If you've been having trouble getting your kids to eat breakfast, try giving them this peanut butter chocolate milkshake oops I mean smoothie. It makes one adult or two kid-sized servings. I probably don't know your children, but I would be quite surprised if they won't drink it.

One of the great things about the internet is that you can learn all sorts of interesting new things without ever leaving your desk. For example, you can survey best-chocolate-chip-cookie contests and look for a consistent winner. In this case, the frequent favorite is the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe.

I made a batch yesterday to share with friends, and in that process both determined that they are superior in every way to my prior favorite recipe, and that this fabulous recipe can be adapted to make it a bit simpler to prepare.

The adaptations are just two: first, the recipe calls for cake flour (7-8% protein) and bread flour (14-16% protein) used in equal amounts. The average protein content is thus about 10 - 12%...exactly the same as the all-purpose flour that you probably have in your cupboards and canisters...so use that instead. I have not yet done the side-by-side comparison, but I can assure you that just using regular flour tastes great.

The second adaptation concerns shaping the cookies. Let me be clear: making golf-ball sized scoops out of rock-hard dough was not fun. So for subsequent batches, I scooped the freshly made dough, chilled it and then quickly popped my flat-golf-ball-sized cookie dough balls onto the sheet for baking. Bonus: you can store them in your freezer and quickly whip up a batch for a last-minute treat.

One note about the chocolate. I would love to make these cookies with 1-1/4# (20 oz. or about 3-1/3 cups) of artisinal chocolate disks, but frankly I'm just too lazy to order them on-line or make a pilgrimage to a store that carries them. You can now buy high quality dark chocolate chips by Guittard and other manufacturers at your local Marketbasket or other grocery store; even Nestle's Special Dark chips work well. Of course if you would like to buy several bars of high-end chocolate and chop them for this recipe, you should!

The recipe's measures are shown by both weight and volume, and for this recipe and many others, consider is purchasing a scale. The Escali scale that I use costs just $23.50, and weighs everything from a gram of beads to 5 pounds of bread dough (it may weigh more than 5#, but I've never tried it). One reason to use a scale is that it makes baking really speedy - you pour ingredients into the bowl right from their containers (press and hold the on button to reset the weight or "tare" the scale when adding a new ingredient). It's also much more accurate than volume measurement, and - bonus! - results in fewer dishes. I've had my scale for at least 5 years, and it's still accurate to the gram.

One more thing about this chocolate chip cookie recipe: the dough really does need to chill at least overnight. The chilling period causes the flour to break down slightly into it's component parts (one of which is actually sugar) and the water in the dough to evaporate - both of which lead to a cookie that is crisp on the outside and chewy within; in short, the cookie of your dreams.

Here is my (adapted) NY Times cookie recipe.

I also want to include a link to the Butter Flavored Crisco chocolate chip cookie recipe. Butter Flavored Crisco has no dairy (surprise!), and so if you substitute almond or soy milk for the 2Tbs of milk and use non dairy chocolate chips, you can have dairy free chocolate chip cookie that is also extremely good. Trader Joe's regular chocolate chips are also non-dairy, but it should be noted are packaged on machines that also package dairy and so are not safe for those with serious dairy allergies.

Even a simple batch of chocolate chip cookies deserve to taste great. If you buy pre-made dough, it will taste a LOT better than Chips Ahoy, and if you make cookies using the Butter Flavored Crisco recipe, they will be a LOT better than the pre-made dough. But to reach the pinnacle of chocolate chip cookie goodness, try the adapted NYTimes Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe - you may never go back.

For those interested, the plate in the top photo is indeed depression glass, a gift to my grandmother from my grandfather for their very first Christmas in 1932. Here is the note she sent when she gave me the dish:

Next step: fresh popcorn. There is a bit of science to fresh popcorn: the reason it pops is that there is a tiny bit of moisture in every kernel. When that moisture is heated to boiling, the kernel explodes, creating a piece of popcorn. I spend about 50 cents extra to buy Orville Redenbacher popcorn in a plastic jar with a screw-on top. In case you're wondering, that's about $4 for a jar of popcorn that makes at least 20 servings of my favorite snack. No matter what you buy, it's important to store it tightly sealed, so the moisture inside each kernel doesn't evaporate.

Finally oil. Many of us have plastic containers of vegetable oil (Wesson or Canola) in our pantries. Grab that oil, open the top and sniff it. It should not smell of anything, but if it's older than a year, it probably does. Believe it or not, oil does go bad. If your oil has an "off" smell, throw it out and buy new; your food will taste a lot better. If you don't use much of the stuff, buy it in small containers.

If you have only olive oil on hand, go ahead and use it, but it's not ideal. Olive oil breaks down at high heat (it has a low "smoke point") and may scorch your pan and your popcorn. Since I cook on an electric stove, even the hottest burner doesn't usually get hot enough to do this, but if you have natural gas, watch out.

Now that you've assembled your ingredients, put the oil in the pan and turn it on high. After about a minute, pour in your popcorn, cover the pan and shake. Once it starts to pop, shake frequently until the popping stops (or until you hear less than one pop every 5 seconds). If you wait just until the popping has almost stopped, you should have only a handful of unpopped kernels and an unblemished pan: success! Salt and serve.

The first video below explains the recipe, and the second shows you how to tell when the corn is done popping.

Photos of each step in making hot chocolate: sugar and cocoa; added milk; after microwaving and when whisked.

Both of these snacks take under 5 minutes to prepare, taste great (especially compared to their packaged cousins), have no chemicals and are tasty and REAL. Because after all, if you are going to eat "fun food", it should be as delicious as possible!

​​If you would like to see my recipes, tips and adventures in cooking every week go to www.ucancook.net and enter your email on the right side. Alternatively, email me at chrisd.williams@yahoo.com and I will set you up!
​

I'm not sure about your house, but in my home brussels sprouts are a deeply unpopular vegetable, the stuff of righteous and absolute refusal in any form. It is rumored that they were to be part of the food fight in Animal House, but were rejected on the grounds that no college student would have allowed them on their plate.

However, we now know that brussels sprouts are one of a handful of the superfoods sometimes known as "The Mighty Cruciferous" (which actually sounds like a losing sports team to me), and that they are worth eating, if only we can get them past our tastebuds.

Being somewhat distinctive in shape and texture, they are hard to disguise. I've cut them into tiny ribbons for salad, but as soon as my suspicious family took the first bite, the jig was up. Even I must admit, that salad was not my favorite.

I've tried battering them and sending them for a swim in the deep fryer, served up with a side of ketchup. This iteration was also soundly rejected, although I enjoyed the resulting 6 servings of leftovers more than I enjoyed eating the leftover salad.

Enter a food that even a picky toddler can love: bacon. Two years ago, scientists released a study showing that although the price of bacon had nearly doubled, consumption had remained constant. This is what is known by economists as inelastic demand. In other words, bacon has the economic properties of crack.

In my delicious preparation, you take an old cookie sheet lined with foil (because it's not "winning" if you have to clean up bacon grease), and lay down four strips of bacon. Turn the oven to 450 and put the bacon in (put the bacon in a cold oven - no preheating - win!).

Meanwhile, rinse the brussels sprouts, cut off the stem end, pull off any yellow outer leaves and cut each sprout in half.

Within 15-20 minutes, the bacon should be crispy, and the cookie sheet should be covered in fat. Remove the bacon (place it on a paper towel to dry) and put the brussels spouts and any separated leaves on the cookie sheet. Stir until they are coated in bacon grease, then put them back in the oven. In about another 15-20 minutes, you will have brussels spouts so delicious that you will struggle not to eat them all yourself. Salt lightly if needed, and serve.

The leftover bacon is a moral question that only you can answer. In a perfect world, it would be crumbled on top of the brussels spouts, adding extra crispy goodness to this most delicious of cruciferous vegetables. In the real world however, note that the spouts in my photos have no bacon at all.  Oops.

To recap my recipe for brussels spouts:
Family eating superfood: WIN!
Two ingredient recipe: WIN!
Easy cleanup: WIN!
Four leftover pieces of crispy bacon: WIN!

Go team cruciferous!

 ​​If you would like to see my recipes, tips and adventures in cooking every week go to www.ucancook.net and enter your email on the right side. Alternatively, email me at chrisd.williams@yahoo.com and I will set you up!
​