Quote: (02-06-2011 12:20 PM)FretDancer Wrote:
Hey Alib do you have any tips on starting out? I want to get real into it but I feel I don't know where to even start :/
Equipment (buy the best you can afford. It's worth it because it'll last years as opposed to one year of regular use):
-Large cast iron pan by Lodge. Find it at a camping store. Pancakes, pan roast chicken, steaks, lamb chops
-Nonstick pan. Omlettes, eggs, fish
-Large aluminum pan. Finish pasta, sauteeing vegetables
-Large pot. Making soup, stock, or boiling pasta water
-Small pot. Making risotto, polenta, or a sauce accompaniment
-large chef's knife. Spend as much as you can here. Visit http://www.korin.com and go with Japanese, and pick up a 1000/3000 ceramic wetstone and the instructional knife sharpening DVD
-small pairing knife. Go cheap here and just buy a new one every year. Cheap victorinox go for like 5 bucks.
-Serrated bread knife.
-metal bowls of various sizes. Mixing batters, dressing salads (or tossing them, as the case may be)
-pair of tongs
-wooden spoon
-rubber spatula
-fish spatula
Ingredients:
olive oil-all purpose low temperature cooking
canola/coconut/peanut oil-high temperature cooking like searing meat
butter. Can't stress this one enough. Margarine sucks. If you need to cut out calories or saturated fat, do it elsewhere. Don't skimp on butter.
kosher salt
finishing sea salt like Maldon
Pepper mill (always use fresh cracked)
Dried pasta
Dried beans
Long grain rice
arborio/vialone nano/carnaroli rice for risotto
canned tomatoes
tomato paste
fresh greens like arugula, endive, chicory
garlic
vermouth (i use this instead of cooking white wine, much better)
This is just a very brief list of where to start. Obviously you're not going to go out and buy this all at once. This represents a fraction of what I keep stocked in my kitchen. Obviously I have things on hand that aren't commonplace nor do they need to be, like anchovies, pimenton d'espelette, Framboise, fine mesh strainers, heat diffusers, etc...but they are necessary for more involved cooking.
Cookbooks that I consider the bible:
Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli
Pork and Sons by Stephane Reynaud
French Feasts by Stephane Reynaud
On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee
Any of the River Cottage cookbooks by Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall
Additionally, you can actually buy most of the curriculum cookbooks that they use in the Cordon Bleu or Culinary Institute of America programs. The book will literally show you how to hold a knife, how to use a knife, how to make stock, how to scramble eggs, etc.
Start small. Build a repertoire of 3 dishes that you can make perfectly. Surprisingly, after all these years, it's still the simple things that are the most challenging. Perfect hash browns are a goddamn art form.
I'd say find one chicken dish, one pasta dish, and one breakfast dish that you really like and master them. Practice them weekly if you can. Move on from there.