These tricks are really changes in your mindset...things you should do all the time in your
cooking in order to insure your reputation, but also to make everything taste better. 
These steps are really are the way to change ordinary recipes into something
special.  They shouldn't be saved just for company cooking, but should be
a new way of looking at everything you cook.

QUICK CONNECT LINKS
Trick #1: Turning Water To Wine
Trick #2: Grow Your Own Spices
Trick#3: What's a Peppercorn Anyway?
Trick #4: Peppers Again?
Trick #5: The Glories Of Garlic
Trick #6: Butter & Margarine - What Does It Matter?
Trick #7: Oil - More Than  Mazola
Trick #8: Arrowroot - Huh?
Trick #9: It Isn't Your Mother's Kraft: Parmigiano Reggiano
Trick #10: You look mahvelous! - Garnishing Your Dishes

When a recipe calls for liquid to be added (especially WATER) DON'T DO IT!!!!!
ADD INSTEAD:

Wine

	Cheap ones are fine but don't use anything labeled "cooking wine"
	Use RED WINE (Burgundy, Beaujolais, Chianti) for anything Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, etc)
	Use WHITE WINE (Chablis, Grenache) in vegetable dishes or in delicate things
	Use MIRIN (Japanese Rice Wine) in oriental stir fry, some vegetables, steaming
	Never make a gravy with milk or water when you can use wine instead

Beer

	Use any beer you would drink with the dish.  Examples:  Mexican food & chili, stew, pot roast, steamed hotdogs, deglazing pans for mushrooms & onion sauce for steak.
	Use Stout (i.e. Guiness Stout) when you want a dark, pungent flavor as a common backdrop against combinations that have their own distinct flavors, like in keilbasa stew.

ANY FRESH HERB IS BETTER THAN ANY DRIED SPICE, PERIOD!

Some herbs are indispensable in your kitchen.   Basil is one of these, grown best in summer,
but available year-round in any decent supermarket.  If you do grow it, just use the "Sweet Basil"
variety & don't be fooled by opal basil or lemon basil or globe basil or any other variety: the taste
just is not the same. 

The addition of fresh basil will do SO MUCH to convert the mundane (i.e. frozen pizza,
tomato soup, spaghetti sauce from a jar) into something edible and even tasty.  It can be
picked just before the first freeze and dried (in a dark cool place) and then stored in canisters
(just rip the leaves off the stems).  You can also freeze it in ice cubes, but the texture is
kind of icky. 

Rosemary is phenomenal when fresh just chopped and put into bread, wrapped as sprigs
around any poultry being smoked or baked, sprinkled on pizza, in meatloaf and more. 
I find the dry variety inedible.  Grow as bushes for landscaping (they smell so good
when you brush against them), or in a windowsill garden but DO keep this great
smelling herb handy at all times.

All of this advice goes double for parsley, rosemary and fresh sage (both of which will
usually winter over in this area in the garden so is right there when you need it at
Thanksgiving and Christmas).  If you grow nothing else, grow these 4 herbs in your garden
(they even look good mixed in regular landscaping):

Parsley, Basil, Sage, Rosemary

FRESH GROUND PEPPER IS A MUST!!   BUY A GRINDER TODAY!!!

Peppercorns (black, green, pink, white, or mixed) that are freshly ground have no relationship
to the cans of black pepper found in your spice rack.  They are SO much more flavorful, and do
wonders for unexpected things.   Try it on:

French Fries, Home Fries, Baked Potatoes, Green Salad, Grilled Steak, Pasta

Fresh ground pepper makes such a big difference in taste and aroma that when
in doubt, grind pepper on it!!  ALWAYS serve meals with a grinder on the table!

Everything you ever wanted to know about Bell Peppers but didn't know
you should care about!

Bell peppers are available in several colors (green, yellow , orange, and red)
and guess what? Every color tastes differently.  But, no matter what color your recipe calls
for, if it requires bell peppers in a cooked (not raw) form, substitute your own
Roasted peppers...they just taste BETTER!

Of all the colors, roasted RED bell peppers taste the best, and are generally milder
than green peppers.  Remember, we are talking about red BELL peppers...NOT hot ones!

ROASTING PEPPERS

Put as many as you can fit on a cookie sheet and slide it under the broiler in your oven (or on the
grill without the sheet), leaving them until the skin is charred black all over (turning if necessary). 
When blackened, place them in a big ziplock bag (traditional recipes say to put them in a
brown paper bag, but I find you loose a lot of their flavorful juice that way, as well as tear a
lot of bottoms out of brown bags).  Leave them alone until they are cool.  After you can
handle them, just remove the black skin (you might prefer doing this under running
water unless you need the juice), and then core and seed them.

To Store Them:
Short Term:   Put strips into a tupperware or jar, cover with olive oil, and store in the
refrigerator up to 2 weeks
Long Term:   Put big strips into tupperware or giant ziplock on wax paper, separating
layers, and keep for a whole year.  To use, just thaw the pieces you need.

Use your roasted red peppers on/in:

pizza, scrambled eggs, meatloaf, sausage sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches, anything

If you are feeling lazy, the best commercial sweet roasted red peppers can be orderd from
Balducci's in NYC. Just click below to go to their web site.  They are expensive, but taste sweeter
than any I can make (even home grown) in Florida. 

http://www.balducci.com/nappet.html

As Printed From Balducci's Online Catalog:

Roasted Red Peppers
These silky strands are the most versatile food on any antipasto tray  I am not exaggerating!
Andy and I cannot truly relax into our dinner hour unless we start off with roasted red peppers.
They are silky, sweet, meaty and immensely satisfying. And they are very light and low in calories!
The first thing I do when I rush home from work is arrange these peppers on a plate.
Andy pours two glasses of cold white wine and slices Pane di Casa bread. We both sip and
munch as I get dinner ready. Enjoy them as Andy and I do: dressed with olive oil, sliced garlic
and a little chopped parsley, and served with warm and crusty bread.
Approximately 2 lbs. (ship wt. 3 lbs.)

Order #4833................$25

For those among you who may still be thinking of garlic as that smelly, bitter, worse than
cooking cabbage smelling, bad breath making stuff, welcome to the future.  Garlic has become
absolutely edible, absolutely yummy, absolutely the coolest thing going.  
Impossible?  Outrageous?  Wrong.    How? Just by roasting it...sensing a theme here?
Yes, it turns out that roasting things whether they are peppers, or garlic, or potatoes, or
carrots or WHATEVER makes it taste so much better.  In the case of garlic, it makes
it sweet, nutty, and nullifies the bad breath thing.

We will talk about two ways to roast garlic...as whole heads and as individual cloves. 

WHOLE HEADS:
The way you buy it in the store...the big ball that is made up of individual sections

INDIVIDUAL CLOVES:

The little sections that make up a head are each called one clove.

Tools You Need For Roasting Garlic

Roasting Garlic: 

Whole Heads
Simply slice off the stem end of the head until most of the tops of the cloves are exposed, then
drizzle generousely with the best olive oil you can find.  Put into a baker or a baking dish covered
with foil and bake (following manufacturer's directions on your baker) at about 350 degrees for
45 minutes to an hour. You do not want to burn it...the idea is to cook until the oil is apsorbed
and the meat is tender and smooshy.   You mostly would use this to squeeze out like a
paste/spread (it is GREAT served with a crusty bread as an appetizer, giving everyone
their own head and letting them squeeze each clove out onto the bread slices to spread).

HEAD

CLOVES

Individual Cloves
Now this is just the same as above, only you peel the cloves first and in addition to the olive oil, I add just a bit of red wine and salt & pepper, just to help keep the cloves tender. Don't cook it quite as long..you do not want it to get tough, but rather want it just tender and smooshy.  I use this method when I want the individual clove as a bite sensation all together and not as a general taste all thru a recipe, like on top of pizza or in mashed potatoes.

For the Mooney's Favorite Roast Garlic Recipies Click here

If a recipe calls for margarine, use BUTTER.

If a recipe calls for lard, use BUTTER.

If a recipe calls for frying with butter, use 1/2 butter and 1/2 olive oil to get higher temperatures without burning.

NEVER EVER EVER serve margarine on your dinner table. Serve BUTTER.

With warm breads serve sweet (unsalted) BUTTER.

If you need a spread that is lower fat than butter, use roasted garlic, cream cheese, or a little bit of warm olive oil with fresh herbs added to it.

Get it?

If you deep fry:  Use PEANUT OIL
If you saute':  Use OLIVE OIL
If you pan fry:  Use OLIVE OIL
If you are using cold oil in anything: Use OLIVE OIL

	Buy the very best 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil you can find or afford!: Cold-Pressed = A good thing    Green Tinged = A good thing  Most Expensive = A good thing)
	When it says saute' in butter (except for desert items), do it in 1/2 butter and 1/2 olive oil because then you can raise the heat higher without burning.
	You can make fantastic infused olive oil (or vinegar) just like I do for sauteeing vegetables for pasta, frying home style potatoes, frying sausage, making scrambled eggs, and just about anything you can fry.   Just put some warmed olive oil in a decorative bottle (emptied Grolsch Beer Bottles work great because the tight cap and tinted bottle keep it fresher longer), into which you have added 3-4 sprigs of fresh herbs like rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, or marjoram; or calamari olives; or roasted sweet peppers; or roasted garlic.  In a few days the oil is pungent with the smell and taste of the added item(s) and ready for use.  They keep about a month out, or much longer if refrigerated.  I never use anything else anymore.  Also, a set makes a great Christmas or Housewarming or Hostess gift.

Click to read poetry about the kudzu vine from University of Hiroshima

Find this in the spice section of your supermarket.  This white powder is your friend!  Use it to thicken everything that calls for flour or cornstarch.  It doesn't lump, doesn't take very much, and give a nice shine to whatever you add it to (giving the appearance and texture of having been made with butter or fats but without the calories or fat grams).  It is great for lowfat sauces, stirfries, gravies, glazes or custards

AND GUESS WHAT!?! IT COMES FROM THE VINE THAT ATE THE SOUTH!
Click to read more about the potential uses of kudzu
Click to read the poem "Kudzu" by James Dickey

The rootstalks of the kudzu, or arrowroot vine, are dried and ground into a veryfine powder. Arrowroot is used as a thickening agent for puddings, sauces and other cooked foods, and is more easily digested than wheat flour. Its thickening power is about twice that of wheat flour. Arrowroot is absolutely tasteless and becomes clear when cooked. Unlike cornstarch, it doesn't impart a chalky taste when undercooked. It should be mixed with a cold liquid before being heated or added to hot mixtures..

EAT MORE ARROWROOT AND SAVE THE SOUTH!!!

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