Cooking Lesson Number One: Seasonings Are Your Friend

So, I have a friend.  Bless her heart, she's a wizard with animals, a rock star at packing and tells a hilarious story.  But the poor thing has never properly learned to cook.  Fortunately, she has a husband who can pick up the slack, but they work opposing shifts, and I can't very well let her starve while she's alone.  Besides, she's desperate to save some money around the house, and food is the best place to do it -- but only if you know what you're doing. 

I half-jokingly told her I'd take her under my wing and teach her to cook.  I figured I could include my culinarily-clueless boyfriend in the lessons and kill two birds with one stone.  But as I started thinking about it, I started to realize that maybe other people could use some help.  Plenty of my friends can't cook, after all, and the friends who can often express interest in doing it more inexpensively.  So I decided, maybe I should blog a few of my lessons, to make them easier to share. 

Lesson the First: Seasoning is Your Friend

When it comes to 'seasoning,' the very first thing you need to think of is salt.  You need to put salt on everything.  You also probably need to use more than you would imagine.  Contrary to what you might think, salt (when used properly) doesn't make food taste salty.  It just makes the food taste more....delicious.  It amps up the dial for every flavor that crosses your tastebuds.  It's a complex chemical reaction that takes place in your mouth and exists, evolutionarily, to ensure you eat enough sodium (which is necessary for multiple bodily functions). 

That said, you've probably heard about how sodium isn't so good for you.  It's true that, in high quantities, it can cause hypertension and plenty of other problems.  Here's a secret: The sodium that's hurting you isn't what you're putting on the food you're cooking.  It's the hidden sodium in processed foods.  If you cut those out and focus on cooking food from whole ingredients, you don't need to worry about salt. 

One other thing: Most of the frenchy-froggy chefs advise you to use kosher salt.  This is because it has a bigger surface area and dissolves better.  It's also easier to measure, and tends to have a cleaner taste.  But it is a little pricier, and I won't hold it against you if you use regular table salt.  I've been known to do that plenty of times myself. 

Herbs and Spices by Cuisine

Once you've mastered the salt thing, it's time to tackle herbs & spices.  You can get a long way with an empty pantry but a full spice rack.  Below are some of the more common cuisines along with the herbs and spices they use, as well as some of the other common ingredients that go into these recipes.  If you're starting with a bare spice rack, you can pick the cuisine you cook the most of and focus on buying just those spices.  You can also skim through to see which spices show up again and again, and buy those first. 

A few notes: 

• Herbs are the green leaves and stems of plants, and many of them can be grown at home.  Spices are usually seeds, berries or bark, and they're mostly grown in exotic or far-away places.  
• Herbs can be used fresh or dried.  If you're using dried herbs, add them to the dish early on so they can infuse the dish with flavor while it's cooking.  If you're using fresh herbs, add them toward the end so they don't get slimy and wilted.  
• Herbs and spices both lose potency over time.  Try not to store them too close to the oven -- the heat will cause them to lose flavor quickly.  Replace them frequently.  
• Save money on herbs by buying them in bulk.  You can usually buy plastic bags of herbs and spices on the Mexican aisle of a supermarket for a fraction of the price of the name-brand containers.  
• Start small with any new seasonings you try.  You can always add more later, but you can't really take it back if you put in too much.  Start with a quarter-teaspoon of any new spice or herb and work up from there as necessary.  
• In addition to their yummy flavor, herbs and spices have various health benefits associated with them as well! They've been a key part of, er, herbal medicine since the dawn of time.  

Mexican Cuisine:
Examples: Chili, fajitas, enchiladas
Herbs & Spices:  Garlic, cilantro, oregano, cumin, chili powder, paprika, black pepper (these last four I refer to as "chili spices" in recipes I write for myself). 
Other Common Ingredients: Peppers, tomatoes, beans, rice

Asian Cuisine: 
Examples: Stir-fries, fried rice
Herbs & Spices: Garlic, ginger, black pepper, soy sauce, five-spice powder, Siracha
Other Common Ingredients: Vegetables, tofu, rice, noodles

Italian Cuisine: 
Examples: Pasta dishes
Herbs & Spices: Garlic, oregano, parsley, thyme
Other Common Ingredients: Pasta, tomatoes, polenta

French (and gourmet American) Cuisine: 
Examples:  Roast chicken, meatloaf
Herbs & Spices: Rosemary, thyme, marjoram, sage
Other Common Ingredients: Onion, carrot and celery (aka mire poix, or the start of any good soup), wine

Mediterannean Cuisine: 
Examples: Roast lamb, gyro meat
Herbs & Spices: Basil, parsley, marjoram, oregano
Other Common Ingredients: Olives, chickpeas, feta cheese

There are lots of other combinations to learn -- like those in Indian, Middle Eastern or North African cuisine -- but they are perhaps not as useful to the beginning cook.  Pay attention to seasonings in recipes you find and you'll start to realize which ingredients are responsible for what flavors. 

The valuable thing about this brief list is that it helps you determine what a dish will taste like (if reading from a recipe) or what type of flavor profile to give something (if experimenting in the kitchen).  For example, if you start with tomato sauce and add oregano, parsley and thyme, the results will probably be a pasta sauce.  If you took that same tomato sauce and added cumin and paprika, you'd be well on your way to making chili.  By knowing -- even vaguely -- what you're starting with, you know more or less where you'll end up. 

Week Three: A Whole Bunch of New Foods

As I think I've mentioned, we're doing the 14 weeks of 100 Days of Real Food mini-pledges (although I'm not quite doing them in order).  At the end of each week, we the goal is to add on the next challenge while continuing the first (or at least slightly modifying the first to make it long-term accessible).  Week one ("eat two fruits or vegetables with every meal") was pretty easy, and I've continued doing it since without too much trouble.  I've mostly displaced a lot of grains with vegetables (opting for veggies as a side or base instead of pasta or rice, for example, or wrapping things in lettuce instead of eating it on bread).  

Week two was a bit more of a challenge:  Don't drink any sweetened beverages.  I mostly succeeded at this.  I drank a latte instead of a mocha at the coffee shop, and I had a 100% juice when I somehow ended up at Jamba Juice while out shopping.  Mostly I've just been drinking a lot of water, and I like it that way.  I did stumble twice.  The first time, I ended up at a fast food-style Greek restaurant.  After paying for my drink, I discovered that they didn't have any unsweetened iced tea (my go-to drink for fast food places) so I got stuck with the house-made lemonade.  Oh well.  The second time, David bought us an agua fresca (de fresas) at the market, and the person selling it didn't speak enough English to confirm whether it had sugar in it.  So the jury's still out on that one (but from the taste, I'm assuming "yes." And let me just say - it was delicious). 

Today was the day to buy groceries for weeks three and four.  One of those challenges is super easy -- "Buy nothing low-fat or fat-free."  The rationale being that when food manufacturers artificially remove fat, they often replace it with sugar and chemicals.  For the most part the only thing I had to avoid buying "light" was dairy.  I still don't have a good source for raw milk (or even local milk) but I did get some organic whole milk, so that's a start.  

The other challenge is more fun:  Eat two new whole foods per week.  I actually went slightly over and got six new foods instead, because I'm an over-achiever.  Here are the foods I got -- along with a bit of fun information about them.  

Watercress 

A semi-aquatic plant in the Brassica family (along with broccoli and cabbage), watercress was one of the first leafy vegetables to be eaten by people.  It goes back at least as far as ancient Greece, and it's mentioned in the Talmud.  Apparently it also makes up a primary part of a swan's diet.  Nutritionally, it's a power-house:  iron, calcium, iodine, folic acid, and vitamins A and C as well as antioxidants.  It's also been reported to have some medicinal qualities, including as a diuretic, expectorant and digestive aid, and it's rumored to have some anti-carcinogenic properties.  

Because it's so delicate, you have to eat watercress pretty much as soon as you get it home.  You can eat it raw or cook it.  It tastes sort of spicy and a little bitter, almost like mustard greens, but the flavor is much more mild.  When you cook it, the flavor mellows and picks up a flowery hint.  

Milkfish

The local Asian market has an amazing selection of fresh fish.  David's always very excited about picking them out because he'd always thought he didn't like fish -- until he had some real fresh fish.  After surveying our options, we ended up bringing home a milkfish, which are native to the Indian and Pacific oceans and spend some time in swamps and estuaries before heading back to the sea.  Ours -- like pretty much all other milkfish you'll find sold -- was farm-raised.  They live on a diet of algae and invertebrates and make up an important part of the diet for people in the Philippines.  

If you're looking for recipes, it may help to search for their other common names, "bangus" or "chanos chanos." When preparing these guys, be careful of the bones as these are very bony fish.  There are about a billion different ways to cook and eat it, but pan-frying seems to be one of the most popular.  Here's some more information about cooking them.  

Lotus Root

The root -- or, actually, the sunken stem -- of the aquatic lotus blossom.  Lotus plants have a long, somewhat sacred history in Asia, especially in Buddhist countries, where it's a symbol of purity.  The root is commonly used in varying types of cuisines.  

They're a great source of fiber, and they also provide thiamin, vitamin B6, potassium, phosphorous, copper and manganese.  They also have about 27% of your necessary vitamin C.  Here's a few tips for preparing them.  

I had this once in a pho and fell in love with it, though I had absolutely no idea what it was and didn't find it again until discovering it at the Asian market.  It has a flavor and texture somewhat similar to jicama, and it plays well with others in soup.  The easiest way to prepare it is to peel and slice it, then boil it in vinegared water to remove some of the tannins that lend bitterness to it.  After boiling for a minute or two, you can pull it out to use as a crunchy ingredient, or you can keep boiling it and put it in soup.  

Flax Seed

Cultivated as far back as ancient Egypt, flax used to be an extremely common clothing fiber.  Some evidence suggests flax was spun and worn in pre-historic times, dating back to 30,000 B.C. The seeds are eaten as-is or made into oil.  

These things are chock-full of fiber and omega-3s as well as a whole slew of nutrients: thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, folate, vitamin C, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and zinc.  There's some research that suggests it might play a role in reversing diabetes, high cholesterol and cancer, but the jury's out on just how accurate all that is.  

So what do you do with this stuff?  First, you can mix it into things, like yogurt or muffin batter.  Lots of people like putting them in smoothies.  You can also pound it down into a flour-like substance and use it in various baked goods.  The easiest way to do that is to grind it in a coffee grinder.  

Mung Beans

These little guys are native to India, but they're grown throughout Asia and the southern U.S.  They can be cooked and eaten or sprouted.  Cooked, they can be substituted for lentils in most dishes. 

They're packed with fiber and vitamin C, and they're also a good source of protein, thiamin, niacin, iron, magnesium, and a bunch of other things.  

Before we went to the Asian market today, we stopped off at Pho Saigon.  While we were eating our lunch, we got to musing about just how yummy bean sprouts are, and it made me think I needed to buy some mung beans and sprout them myself.  I'm curious to try them cooked.  

Kale

During the Middle Ages, this was one of the  most popular and common green vegetables eaten.  My vegetarian friends have been riding me to try this stuff since forever, so I'm finally giving in.  

This humble vegetable is another of the brassicas, closely related to cabbage.  It's high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C and calcium.  It's also rumored to have some cancer-fighting properties.  

You can eat it cooked or raw.  I hear you can dehydrate it into a delicious chip, so I'll be trying that.  It can also be mixed into things or even snuck into smoothies.  

Homemade Chips and Guacamole Dip

What you're looking at is lunch from today:  turkey, havarti and avocado sandwich with homemade guacamole and homemade oven-fried chips. The bread is Earth Grains 12-grain, which is probably the best commercial sandwich bread I've found so far. 

I've always been quite proud of my guacamole, so I decided to be adventurous and try making some tortilla chips to go with it.  The tortillas are made by hand in the bakery of the HEB.  They still have a few more ingredients than I'd like, so I'll keep searching for good local tortillas (considering the neighborhood I live in, that shouldn't be too hard), but they're still better than the commercial ones. 


 Chips are so stupidly easy to make that I don't understand why anyone would ever feel it necessary to buy them.  These are crispy and fresh and you only have to eat a handful of them to feel satisfied -- it's not like regular chips where you pound through a bag in one sitting.

All you have to do is dip/brush/spray the chips with oil, sprinkle with salt and bake them at 375 for about five minutes.  If they still seem a bit soggy or under-done, pop them back in the oven.  It's as simple as that. You can use the same technique to make taco shells, rolled tacos, etc.  You could also deep-fry them if you wanted, but this is much less messy.

Your method of oil preparation will determine how much fat the chips have in them.  You can also spray them with cooking spray, or just put the oil in a regular spray nozzle bottle.  This allows you complete freedom over what type of oil you use, how much salt goes onto the chips, etc.  You definitely don't have that same flexibility when dealing with commercial chips!

And here's my famous Guacamole. I could eat this plain with a spoon, it's that good.  People get intimidated by guacamole -- I've even seen grocery store guacamole mix, which seems ridiculous -- but it's actually insanely simple.

Here's what you need:

• 1 large avocado 
• 1 tomato
• A bit of diced onion - I use about two tablespoons of finely diced onion
• A clove of garlic
• A tablespoon or so of freshly-chopped cilantro
• Fresh lime
• Salt & pepper to taste

Just combine all of the ingredients together in a bowl.  Mash up the avocados as you fold in the other ingredients to be sure your flavor gets distributed evenly.  Everything goes in by taste, so adjust it to the way you like it.  This makes just enough to serve two people comfortably.  You can scale up or down accordingly.

Other than eating with chips, guacamole is a great replacement for mayonnaise on sandwiches.  If you happen to have leftovers (blasphemous, I know) just cover it up with plastic wrap. Be sure the plastic wrap is touching the surface of the guacamole or else it oxidizes and turns brown.  It doesn't hurt it, but it does look pretty gross.  I've also heard you can freeze guacamole, but I haven't tried it myself so I can't make any guarantees there.

Anyway -- I hope this inspired you to experiment a little.