Infinite Food Combinations

     For those of you that do not know me, I cook and eat more than just sushi. As I explained before, learning and practicing the art of sushi has spilled over into how I prepare and present my other food dishes, even salads! I will be showing many many different types of foods and desserts on the this blog in the future, so stay tuned! I have recently gotten written permission from Bon Appétit Magazine (to which I am an avid subscriber) to repost recipes from their magazine , get ready for some really tasty foods!
    I am not a chef, and I have not had formal training.I am just a foodie who was fortunate enough to grow up in a cooking household, where everyone, male and female, cooked! I have worked in about
6 restaurants, including: seafood, pizza, and country clubs too. I have picked up many hints and secrets along the way, and I just want to share them with all of you. This is my humble purpose.

 One tip I picked up that you can use in everyday cooking, is to not make your food homogeneous, especially sandwiches. I was quite guilty of this, because I tried to be thorough when I prepared food. If you spread mayo, or mustard to every corner of your bread, then you too are guilty of this. Here is what I mean. The next time you use mayo and mustard to make a nice deli sandwich, regardless of the meat or toppings, try to just smear the mayo on one slice of bread haphazardly, so that there is more mayo on one half than the other.  On the other slice, use a spicy brown on one half of the slice and a Dijon on the other half. Don't push it to every corner and make it flat and uniform. This would defeat the purpose; just slop it on! When you eat the sandwich, the taste will change with each bite. First you will get (depending on where you bite first) a Dijon and ample mayo taste, then you will get a Dijon/spicy brown taste as you progress to the middle, and as you finish, the mayo will be minimal and the spicy brown will dominate. In doing this, you will get three distinct tastes in the same sandwich! Your other choice is to use the mayo and mustard evenly on both slices and get just one taste, from first to last. Your choice!

Recipe: Janet McCracken Deputy Food Editor Bon Appétit Magazine May 2011

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2011/05/scrambled-eggs-avocado-and-smoked-salmon-on-toast

The above salmon sandwich is delicious any time you want to make it. My favorite time is afternoon brunch on a lazy weekend. It can be very filling especially if you eat it with a sliced banana, apple or other fruit. It goes well with coffee or orange juice. My friend Derrick came over after he helped me with a photo shoot one morning, and I whipped two of these up for us to munch on, and all I had to drink was chocolate soy milk. He said it was perfect! The sweet after the salty was a nice combo for the tongue. The author of this recipe encourages you to experiment. I did with the dendê oil, which you can find in your local Brazilian grocery store. If there is not one near you, you can order it on the net. Here is one you can use:

http://www.amigofoods.com/chazdede200m.html

This is just one other way,as I used the dendê oil to cook the salmon. You only need a few tablespoons, if that. It has a buttery smooth flavor like hot sauce would have if you took all the hot out of it. The flavor is hard to describe, but very much worth buying and using! It goes amazingly well with garlic and shrimp, but I digress. In making variations of this sandwich, I used a huge glob of sour cream, and then the next time I made it, I used goat cheese. This is a great time to use my non-homogeneous condiment tactic, and use goat cheese on one half and sour cream on the other half of the bread slice. Delicious!

You will get addicted to this sandwich, as there are so many ways to make it, so it never gets boring! Enjoy, and thanks for reading!

Food Perception

        It is funny to think that when I was I was young, I only wanted to eat hamburgers and hot dogs. I guess kids are prone to these types of simple foods. Pizza not excluded. My mother (bless her heart) probably got really frustrated seeing all the ethnic, original, delectable, succulent foods in Montreal shops, bistros and food stores. She passed so many restaurants going to work and driving through the city, knowing how much was out there for us, and all her two boys wanted was Mc Donald's, chocolate chip cookies, and corn flakes.
Enough, I guess, was enough!
Early one Saturday morning, she came home from grocery shopping and got my brother and I out of bed. She called us to the kitchen and told us that we were going to try different foods. We looked at each other with a little boyish doubt in our eyes. So she tells us to close out eyes and open our mouths. Now a little fear started creeping up from my stomach. We were reluctantly defiant and just squinted. Ha! Like that was gonna fool my mom! She ramps up a bit and emphatically states that she is our mother, she loves us very much and would never give us anything that would hurt us. So we closed our eyes, and opened our mouths, and that was the moment that my perception of food changed forever.

       After my eyes were closed, I felt a fork with some strange textured food on my tongue. I wiped the contents of the fork off with my closed lips and just held it in my mouth, maybe hoping that it would somehow go away. "Now chew," my mother barked! My brother and I began chewing and slowly turning our heads towards each other and opening our eyes, trying to see if the other was gonna spit it out. As we chewed she told us that if we didn't like it, we did not have to eat it again, but we had to try it once! My brother, by this time, had his eyes open and a look on his face that was not disgust. I, being his junior of two years, would usually go with what he said or liked. Did I like it myself? Did the pleasant look on  his face influence me somehow?  We both liked it!! Whatever it was that my mom put in our mouths, we wanted more. We asked what it was, but she would not tell us. She just said, "No, have some more first!"
So we did. Like eager little birds in the nest, we closed our eyes and opened our mouths, chewed and smiled.
It was octopus!
"Octopus?!", we both cried in unison. "Cool!" We both ate the whole can!
From that day forward, my mother would wake us up on Saturday morning and tell us ritualistically to open our mouths and close our eyes. We were eager, and did it even before she asked.
So many types of food were introduced to us this way: octopus, yogurt, kiwi, oysters, tripe, rabbit, and many more. Eventually we just started trying new foods without the ritual, but it was fun doing it and anticipating what our loving mother was going to feed us.
She never put anything in our mouths that we didn't like!

   Thirty years later and I am not a chef, nor have I had any formal classes. Just a foodie who has worked in restaurants here and there and picked up a few skills and tips from my parents, chefs, and various cooks. I want to encourage people to at least try different foods, and experiment with the foods you are familiar with. Don't just buy the same foods every single time you go to the store! Buy shallots instead of onions, buy bok choy instead of cabbage, buy leeks, artichokes, cauliflower, shitake mushrooms, experiment my friends!

Photo:Diana Itzel

This is me in the kitchen making sushi for about 20 guests. Sushi is very labor intensive, but if you can eliminate the labor costs, you can serve many people cheaply.

Photo:Diana Itzel

Photo:Diana Itzel

I made about three of these trays of sushi. It takes a long time, so do the prep work  ahead of time, if you are having guests. There are thousands of sushi books out there, so my advice is to just buy one (or more) that has simple pictures and simple instructions. Sushi comes from a very exigent culture, so take everything seriously, no shortcuts and have as high a standard as you can muster. Sushi must look good as well as taste good. If you are bold enough to try raw fish, make sure you ask for sushi-grade fish. DO NOT just buy fish from a local supermarket to eat raw! Some people think that sushi is always raw fish, but it is not, sushi can be vegetarian with no problems. Make sure you clean your knife with a water/vinegar solution 10 parts water and 1 part vinegar should suffice. Clean your hands with this as well. It will keep the rice from sticking to your fingers  and sanitize your mitts too! :-)

Use a rice cooker if you cannot make the rice in a pot. I use a pot with a tight-fitting lid exclusively, but I was not very good at the beginning. Don't lose faith if you fail the first time! (Do not lift off the lid to the pot while the rice is cooking!) Sushi rice can be found in any Asian food store or maybe even your local farmer's market.

There is so much information of the web and in books, that I don't need to go into any detail here. My suggestion is to get a book (or books) and read, read, read it! Have it in the kitchen as a reference, and when you get better, you can throw sushi parties and have it handy for your guests to read.

I have come along way from just wanting to eat just hamburgers and french fries. Open you mind, open your palate, have fun! Thanks for reading!

Origins

    As I grew up in Canada helping my mother in the kitchen and smelling fresh food made from scratch, she always seemed to know exactly what to do and how to get me to help. At a young age, you always think your mother can do anything! Whether the smell of fresh bread or the taste of warm chocolate chip cookies melting on your tongue, food made from scratch is always best! She wanted me to be self-reliant, so that I would not be dependent on anyone to cook for me. So as soon as I was tall enough to see into the pot or skillet I was using, I began my cooking lessons. I was 8 years old.
     When we (my two siblings and I) moved to the States into my dad's house, I found that both my parents were amazing in the kitchen. Dad would make dinners that were excellent in taste and texture, and he eventually would go on to perfect a barbeque sauce whose equal I have not yet tasted, even thirty years later!
Well-made food has been an essential part of my family, from my mother's fresh-baked rolls and bread, to my dad's ribs and savory sauces, to my step-mother's spaghetti sauce.

Photo:Erich Coleman

(The above picture is of a few of my friends that came over for sushi and drinks a few years after I started sushi-making.)

I grew up cooking and even inventing a few things of my own aling the way. I have never been afraid to experiment in the kitchen, but through the years of cooking and winging it, I have arrived at a point in my life where I only want to eat gourmet food! So now I have to take it up a notch!

 Anyone can make sushi. Originially, I just bought a sushi book, read it and went into the kitchen! I encourage people to try this, even if it does not come out looking or even tasting like they make it in  restaurants. My first sushi endeavor was horrible, as was my second. A friend came to visit and saw me making it, and she asked if I would come over to her place and show her. I did. Little did I know that she invited three of her friends over to partake with us! I immediately ramped up my sushi skills and it finally came out presentable. A charm, as they say, is the third time. I have been trying to perfect it ever since, and that was 12 years ago. I have had dozens of sushi parties through the years, and I still have lots to learn about it.
   The culture of sushi has affected how I cook all other food. In Japan this philosphy states that food must not only appeal to the pallate, but also to the eyes. The sight of the food must engage the appetite, so now, to me, food is art. This is what I strive to do, no matter what I cook. I hope you enjoy.