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Urb'n'Spice Tips and Techniques Series

HOW TO MAKE PAN ROASTED GARLIC PUREE

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The Confident Kitchen Series

There are numerous techniques on the Internet and in cookbooks that describe how to roast garlic – almost all of them demonstrate or discuss the traditional oven roasting method. I have prepared roasted garlic this way for many years.  However, I always felt that it was a bit wasteful because I could not totally remove all of the sticky, roasted goodness from the heads of garlic. Therefore, knowing How to Make Pan Roasted Garlic Puree is an important skill to learn because it is a simpler process with little or no waste.  I will provide you with a step-by-step process which will show you how to peel cloves of garlic in an easy and efficient way, then pan roast the garlic cloves, puree them and then store them.  As well, I have provided recipes and ideas regarding how to use the pureed roasted garlic. There are several advantages to this method:  one, there is no waste, and two; you end up with a delicious bonus – garlic oil.  Let’s get started. 

Freezing Roasted Garlic Puree in silicone | urbnspice.com
Puree of Roasted Garlic in silicone trays ready for the freezer
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How to Prepare Spatchcock Chicken

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Urb’n’Spice Tips and Techniques Series

Chicken is one of the most versatile of all meats or poultry.  It is prepared in a variety of ways in the Urb’n’Spice kitchen, such as Herb and Butter Sunday Roast Chicken, Pan Roasted Chicken with Creamy Asiago Sauce, or Grilled Chicken Breast with Roasted Strawberry Salsa.  The opportunity to flavour chicken is limitless.  In this post, I will teach you How to Prepare a Spatchcock Chicken, and also show you how to make a Quick Poultry Rub that will give any poultry dish a delicious flavour.

A Spatchcock Chicken is essentially a chicken that has had the backbone removed.  This allows you to butterfly or flatten the chicken more easily for grilling or roasting. Removing the backbone can be done with a sharp pair of kitchen utility shears or a chef’s (French) knife – not a serrated knife.  Alternatively, your butcher can easily remove the backbone for you. Once you have mastered the spatchcock technique, you will be able to create a delicious meal in the oven or on the grill in a much shorter time than roasting a whole chicken.

Spatchcock Chicken with Quick Poultry Rub | urbnspice.com 

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How To Make a Classic Braised Beef Stew

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UrbnSpice Tips and Techniques Series

I sooooo enjoy a Classic Beef Stew, and my absolute favourite recipe is adapted from the first Canadian Living Cookbook (circa 1977).  It is called Old Fashioned Beef Stew with Vegetables. I like to use root vegetables, which are a perfect accompaniment, and a number of herbs. In this post, I will discuss the braising method of cooking a more inexpensive tougher cut of meat and share a recipe for Classic Braised Beef Stew.

Skip to My Recipe

Ask any chef what their favourite cooking method is and a large majority, myself included, will say braising because it produces a rich and flavourful product that is hard to beat. It is a cooking method that I use often in the Urb’n’Spice kitchen. Braising is commonly utilized in preparing meat, but there are numerous other food items that can be braised as well. You can learn all about braising in this post.

“Braising is one of the most amazingly delicious and yet simple methods of cooking
an otherwise tough cut of meat.”
The UrbnSpice Chef

What is braising?  It uses a combination of cooking techniques; for example, cubes of beef are first seared to brown and then slowly cooked in a liquid at a low temperature.  Beef stew, Osso Buco,  pot roasts, chicken thighs, pork belly, beef ribs, lamb shanks and pulled pork are a few examples of braised meats, whereas Vichy Carrots and Honey Glazed Rutabaga are some examples of braised vegetable dishes.

Try cooking a tough piece of meat (such as cubed stewing beef) using the braising method and I can guarantee that you will become a fan as well.  I will guide you through a step-by-step process on how to braise cubes of beef, how to deglaze a pan properly and then create and reduce a braising liquid to perfection.

Plated Classic Braised Beef Stew | urbnspice.com

The prepared vegetables are arranged on top of the Beef Stew for presentation

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How to Chiffonade

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UrbnSpice Tips and Techniques Series

Chiffonade is a knife skill that is easy to learn.  This post will show you How to Chiffonade using leafy tender greens, such as mint, basil, lettuce leaves, kale and similar greens.

Chiffonade is a simple technique of stacking leaves; rolling the leaves into a tight (often referred to as cigar shaped) cylinder, and then cutting very fine ‘slices’ of the rolled up leaves.  With a sharp knife, you can quickly create fine shreds of leafy greens such as kale to add to soups, or basil or mint to add as a garnish to salads or drinks, or piles of shredded iceberg lettuce packed into a loaded sandwich.

A selection of chiffonade items | urbnspice.com

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LEARNING TIPS

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“Success is no accident.

It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all,

love of what you are doing or learning to do”.

Pele


LEARNING TIPS is a little bonus that I like to incorporate on Urbnspice and into my cookbooks.  I use LEARNING TIPS to elaborate on a technique or share tips with you that helped me throughout my career as a chef and pastry chef as well as my home kitchen.

I use the term LEARNING TIPS in a broader sense to allow for a greater scope to explain some of the finer points of baking and cooking. This can often make the difference between a good result and an exceptional one.

Learning Tips: assortment of pastry equipment | urbnspice.com

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Vichy Carrots

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One of the very first classes that I was taught in Professional Cooking Culinary Training was Vegetables & Starches Class. I gained a whole new appreciation for vegetables from my culinary instructors during this three-week segment. It was jam-packed with useful information pertaining to all types of vegetables. I was surprised how little tips and techniques made such a difference in the taste of a vegetable; for instance – peeling and cooking a rutabaga properly.  I talk about exactly that in this post. But, the vegetable dish that sticks in my mind the most is Vichy Carrots.

The name of this dish originated from a village in France called – you guessed it – Vichy. Known for its slightly carbonated volcanic water, it is said to be one of the most mineral-rich waters in France. Although is not likely the average person will be able to obtain this magical Vichy water, there is nothing stopping us from making Vichy Carrots by substituting either water, carbonated water or chicken stock.

Pot Latch Salmon Papillote | urbnspice.com

Potlatch Salmon Papillote served with Vichy Carrots and Israeli Couscous

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How to Make a Meringue Nest

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I learned how to make a meringue nest early in my pastry chef career.  It is an excellent idea in the pastry kitchen to have a repertoire of recipes that use an abundance of egg whites.  The reason for that is because there are so many egg yolks utilized in the kitchen for crème brûlée, custards, sauces, Hollandaise and Béarnaise sauce, to name a few.  We often had buckets of egg whites within a day or two of kitchen activities. Since there are only so many egg white omelettes you can make for the spa menu, using egg whites in cookies or desserts was popular – and fun!  I had quite a repertoire of recipes available to use these extra egg whites and I will share some ideas with you to use in your own kitchen.

How to Make a Meringue Nest: Blackberry Lime Curd in Crispy Meringue Nests | urbnspice.com

Blackberry Lime Curd in Crispy Meringue Nests 

In this article, I will give you some ideas how you can use extra egg whites as well giving you as a recipe for meringue nests.  On this blog, you will find recipes for Italian Almond Macaroons, Rice Flour Tuile Cookies, Earl Grey Chiffon Mini Cakes, Colourful Meringue Cookies, Chocolate Financier Cookies and many more.  Making meringues are another way to use egg whites to create all kinds of excellent dessert options.

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Baking Dilemmas and the Fix

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The Confident Kitchen Series

“I love baking, but baking hates me!!” This is a frequent comment that I hear, which clearly illustrates people’s frustration with baking. Typically, after just a few questions, it quickly becomes quite clear why they are feeling this way. There are several key issues which arise again and again. In this “Confident Kitchen” post, I am going to address some of the necessary fundamentals of baking. For the purposes of this post, I will discuss Baking Dilemmas and apply “The Fix” to a recipe for muffins.

One of the very best things about being a chef is that I am able to adopt a “pay it forward” approach to cooking and baking. There are many barriers that prevent people from attempting baking or cooking which can be resolved easily.

Example of a perfectly baked muffin | urbnspice.com

Example of a perfectly baked muffin | urbnspice.com

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How to Caramelize Onions

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The Confident Kitchen Series

Well, it was a sad day in the UrbnSpice kitchen when I realized I had developed a sensitivity to onions – not eating them, thank goodness – only for cutting and chopping them! There was a time when I wore contact lenses for years and years and didn’t have to give cutting onions a second thought. I would smugly chuckle at my teary-eyed colleagues as they prepared their daily mise-en-place. After having laser eye surgery, I now stand before you, adorned in goggles – teary eyed from all the cutting and slicing and dicing. However, this has not stopped me from one of the most important flavour booster processes in the world of cooking – caramelizing onions.  So, in this post, I will share with you How to Caramelize Onions.

Caramelizing Onions

Caramelized Onions

The result of caramelizing onions is so worth the time it takes to make them – the tears are an added bonus – or so I am told. It takes very little effort to make them – it is a great technique for the novice or seasoned cooks. For those cooks who ‘love to hover’ over their speciality dishes, making caramelized onions is intensely gratifying.

Bacon and Onions | urbnspice.com

The process of caramelization of bacon and onions will have people coming into your kitchen to see what’s cooking!

The versatility of caramelized onions or shallots alone makes it one of the best flavour enhancers to any dish. It is definitely worth your time to make enough to have on hand for other recipes and uses. Take a lamb burger to epic heights with the addition of caramelized onions. French Onion Soup would not be French Onion Soup without this important ingredient in the process. A bowl of plain onion soup just doesn’t have the same appeal.

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TWEAKING; A STUDY IN FLAVOUR AMENDMENT

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The Confident Kitchen Series

Are you familiar with the word tweaking?  The term “tweaking” is sometimes used in technological communication, but chefs have used the expression as part of their kitchen terminology for years to describe the path they take to perfect flavours.  This is called a Tweaking:  A Study in Flavour Amendment.

Roasted Strawberry Salsa on Grilled Chicken Breast | urbnspice.com

Roasted Strawberry Salsa on Grilled Chicken Breast

During a recent cooking class, one of the students asked the question, “What do I do to flavour my food if it needs a little ‘something-something’? I don’t know where to start to fix it and what would I use to fix it?” The other students joined the conversation by asking, “what do I do if my dish is too salty, too sweet, or ends up being too bland?”

The focus of this article is to address these questions in a number of practical ways; for example, the proper use of seasonings such as salt and pepper and more sophisticated ones such as smoked paprika or reductions. I will discuss how to “tweak” a dish until it is pleasing to your taste.

The three most important steps in developing flavours are:

  1. “taste,
  2. taste and then,
  3. taste again”.

This process is often ignored until the dish is finished and on the table. In professional kitchens, the tasting ritual is encouraged by having containers of fresh spoons available for the cooks and executive chef for continual tastings while food is being prepared. It is an important element in cooking and one that is stressed in good kitchens.

My husband is the tweaker in our family. He has the refined palate of a ‘saucier’ – one of the most important and coveted roles in a professional kitchen. When tasting, they can readily identify what the dish needs in order to balance the flavours. They understand what sour, sweet, or acidic addition would correct, enhance or brighten the flavour of a dish. If the balances of sour, sweet and acid in the dish are not in harmony, it is difficult to bring the flavours of the dish together….

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