mizchef

Archive for the ‘Around the Kitchen’ Category

Hi, folks–whew. Had my knife skills test last week and did pretty well! Woo-hoo! Though I’ve been cooking for many years, culinary school requires that you learn certain techniques in style and uniformity of cuts, and it’s been kind of difficult for me to wrap my brain and fingers around that.

So today, I’ll talk a little bit about knives.

Read on!

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Hi, all. I’ve just gone crazy with the kumquats! The Chinese market still had them, so I just had to buy more. This time, I made kumquat salsa (different from the Cranberry-Kumquat Salsa) and kumquat marmalade.

And salsa! So read on to see how that all went…

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The other day, I went into my local Chinese market. I love going in there because I can always find some new/unusual/hard-to-get product that I can try. Anyway, in the produce section there were these big containers of kumquats. I’d passed them up last week because I was in there for only a few specific items and my funds were limited. But when I saw them again, they just looked so beautiful and enticing, I couldn’t resist.

Want to know what I did with them?
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I call this “my world” of food because I believe that food is a very personal thing: How we eat it, how we interact with it, and what we like/don’t like. We all look at food differently. The taste, feel, and smell of every bit of food we consume is experienced differently by each and every person.

For example, the same orange can produce two completely different responses in two people. It might repulse one person, maybe because they got violently ill one day after eating an orange and now s/he can’t stand looking at one. For the other person, maybe it triggers memories of fragrant orange groves in Seville during a honeymoon or a stint as a bright-eyed exchange student. When I think of oranges, I think back to when I was 9 years old and on a trip with my mother and aunt to visit famiily in Venezuela. I have a vivid memory of looking out at the mountains at night and seeing all these orange lights glowing, and, to my 9-year-old eyes, it looked like a giant orange grove.

But one thing remains true: No matter how different our languages, clothing, customs, culture, religions, etc., the one thing every person on the planet has in common is that we must eat. That is why dining is a communal affair, to be shared with friends and loved ones. Even our pets get a little something special from our plates, don’t they?

So, with this blog, I hope to share my views on food and our relationship with it. I’ll be sharing recipes, tips, links, and all kinds of goodies. Hope you like it.