Ma.gazin.es

Cooking Indian Food | By Jaynne Nichols

Many people love to experiment with different foods from different cultures and ethnicities. Some people love to go out for dinner and experiment with foods they’ve never had before. Other people like to reproduce their favorite dishes at home. Experimenting with cooking from other regions and cultures can be an exciting and fun process. Many cuisines have subtle differences from region to region. Or sometimes the ethnic cuisines are based strictly on different geographic areas. [More]

Chicken Parmigiana Recipe | By Emma Lina Johnson

Recipe Story

Chicken Parmigiana (short from parma) is actually an Australian pub favorite. It is typically a piece of chicken breast or a slice of eggplant which is crumbed, unfathomable cooked and topped with an optional cut of ham, tomato sauce and cheese. It is then grilled until the cheese is foamy and brown. The dish is often served with chips and a crisp salad. It is same to a Wiener schnitzel, but comes with a topping. Notwithstanding, in the United States, chicken parmigiana is commonly served both the centerpiece of a meal usually accompanied with a spaghetti like pasta and on sandwiches, especially subs. It mostly consists of a fried, breaded cutlet, a marinara or spaghetti sauce, and mozzarella cheese. “Parmigiana” is oftentimes used to relate to other sandwiches with marinara sauce and cheese, such as meat, eggplant and meatball. Inferior frequent ingredients include shrimp and sausage and peppers. Though parmigiana means lite rally “from Parma” (a town in Italy), the name derives from parmigiana a Italian recipe prefab with cooked aubergine, tomato sauce and mozzarella. Even though my Quick Bite recipe calls for any grated Parmesan cheese, there’s no actual Parmesan cheese in the traditional Sicilian Parmigiana recipe.

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Ingredients

1-1.5 pound. of thinly sliced boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 beaten egg
2 cups of Italian breadcrumbs
1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
4 slices of fresh part skim mozzarella cheese
1 cup of tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste

How to make Baked Chicken Parmigiana

1) Preheat oven to 425. Combine breadcrumbs with cup of Parmesan cheese.
2) Period breasts with salt and pepper.
3) Dip chicken into egg mixture and then coat with breadcrumb mixture.
4) Place chicken on baking shape and heat for 8 minutes on each side.
5) Take from oven and top with your favorite tomato sauce and a cut of fresh mozzarella cheese before popping back in the oven for two minutes or until cheese is liquefied.
6) Attend along with few complete grain spaghetti

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The Many Ways of Cooking Mexican Food | By KC Kudra

Mexican foods, like many other foods, can be boiled, grilled, or fried. These are modern Mexican cooking styles but Mexican traditional cooking techniques were rather different.

In ancient times, Mexicans did not have ovens. Instead, they would cook Mexican food over an open fire, which was the most common out of all the Mexican traditional cooking techniques.

The food would be placed in iron pots before cooking. This Mexican cooking method is similar to how we cook food on the grill these days. The Aztecs steamed and boiled their food in two handled clay pots before the Spanish introduced iron cooking pots. These two handled clay pots were called xoctli. The pot would be filled with food and then heated over an open fire. A lot of foods were fried and Mexican cooking features frying to this day.

Today in the present, it is a lot easier to cook Mexican dishes. It takes less time to prepare the foods. If someone wants to make homemade tortillas, there are iron pans that make it easy. Flans are made simply using spring form type pans. Long ago, it was a long process to make masa, which is a dish that includes a certain type of corn that has to be grinded. Nowadays you can purchase a metal grinder that helps grind the masa.

When you are making Mexican cooking recipes, the oven is perfect for many of them. You can bake meat, fish, and vegetables easily. You can also cook foods in a pot of water with added spices. A lot of Mexican recipes can even be made in a crock pot or slow cooker. Large steaming pots simplify the tamale cooking process. They take a long time to cook so a large pot means you can cook more at once, instead of in smaller batches.

Grilling Mexican food is another way to enjoy it. Foods used to be cooked this way many years ago and it was called “barbacoa.” With this Mexican cookery method, meat was wrapped in banana leaves and cactus leaves and steamed over boiling water in a large pit. If you want to learn how to cook Mexican food, this is not the easiest technique for a novice! Food cooked in this way would have tasted similar to our grilled food of today. Fajitas are a good example of a perfect Mexican food to grill.

Mexicans many years ago used “metate y mano,” which was a large tool with a concave surface, made from stone or lava rock. This utensil was used to mash the ingredients together. A “molcajete” is another ancient Mexican cooking tool, which translates as a mortar and pestle. You would learn about these ancient cooking tools in a Mexican cooking class, although we use different utensils today.

Cooking almost always requires stirring somewhere in the preparation. Wooden spoons have been around for many hundreds of years and are still widely used. There are different types of spoons today, depending on whether you are moving meat around in hot oil or stirring a thick sauce.

There is a rich history behind Mexican food and Mexican traditional cooking techniques. The methods might have changed through the ages but the food is still traditional. Food tastes different when cooked in different ways and there are plenty of Mexican recipes to try out and enjoy.

Mexican recipes are easier than you might think, find out just how simple it is to make your favorite Mexican food recipes at home in your own kitchen.

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Chocolate History | By Verland Pierson

Chocolate is made from the seed of the cacao tree, a tree native to lowland areas of South America. Cacao was used as far back in history as 1100 BC. Although the Maya used the cacao bean earlier, most of the credit is given to the Aztecs.

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Cacao played an important role in the Aztec society, serving both as a drink and as currency. The drink “xocolatl” or “bitter water” was consumed by the Aztec elite society. According to legend the Aztec ruler Montezuma consumed up to fifty cups of chocolate a day. Perhaps the myth of chocolate was born when Europeans first observed Montezuma drinking xocolatl prior to visiting his concubine.

Although Columbus actually was the first to bring cacao back to Spain, it wasn’t until Cortez returned to Spain with cacao beans that Europeans first started consuming it. Unlike the people of South America, Europeans found the drink bitter and sweetened it with sugar. Within 100 years the secrets of cacao had spread throughout Europe and chocolate was a favorite in the royal courts of Europe.

In 1828 the Dutch chemist Van Houten invented a press to extract the cocoa butter from the roasted ground beans leading to the invention of the chocolate bar. When Daniel Peters developed a technique to incorporate condensed milk into the candy, and Milton Hershey used fresh whole milk, milk chocolate was born.

History is sprinkled with anecdotes relating to chocolate and it’s various uses. In addition to Montezuma’s use of cacao as an aphrodisiac, the great lover Cassanova allegedly used chocolate for the same reason. Reportedly he actually preferred chocolate to champagne. Chocolate was actually marketed as a medicine here in the United States and in Europe.

Today we continue the aphrodisiac tradition with Valentines Day gifts and the tradition of bringing flowers and chocolate for dates.

To read this or other articles related to chocolate go to http://www.internetvaluereviewer.com/chocolate.html

Author of this article is Verland Pierson, webmaster and contributing writer for http://www.internetvaluereviewer.com
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Tips to Cooking Healthy Meals | By Khieng Chho

Cooking a good nutritious meal does not have to result in torture for your taste buds. In fact, aside from it being pretty easy to prepare, adhering to experts’ cooking tips and tricks can turn you into cook extraordinaire. All you have to do is know which types of food you should choose and find out how many meal varities you can make out of them.

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Even your favorite cooking recipes can be modified to their healthier alternatives without compromising on taste and texture. Just figure out where to cut on calories and fat so it won’t turn out a gourmet disaster.

Of course, cooking healthy food does not really ental having to start from scratch. Why, you can even use convenience store fare and transform them into semi-homemade masterpieces by just adding healthy pinches of ingredients here and there.

Healthy cooking also does not mean that everything has to be raw and involve only vegetables. Healthy means the meals carry a balance of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, no matter how they are prepared. So whenever you think healthy cooking simply means chopping up a few things and tossing them together, you are wrong.

Keep Fat Low

To spare yourself from the so-called hidden fats, or fats that aren’t easily visible, it’s best to use reduced-fat dairy goods and lean meats for ingredients. The good dietary fats usually come from unrefined products, such as fish, olives, nuts, soy, avocado and seeds. Such kinds of fat also come with other necessary nutrients so it’s okay to crazy with them.

When cooking, use a non-stick pan to minimise your oil usage. If you really need to use oil, use monosaturated oils applied with pastry brushes or cooking sprays so you don’t go overboard. Also, if your recipe book requires you to brown some veggies, try dunking them into the pan first before spraying oil. This will help lessen the amount of fat absorbed by your ingredients.

Some heathy cooking experts recommend that you use subsitute liquids for oil, like water, stock, fruit juices, so you won’t strip your ingredients of their vitamins and you won’t run the risk of having excess fat. And if you’re really serious about a healthy diet, use vinegars and salsas, instead of creams and butter, when you serve fish or meat dishes.

Should the Veggies Stay Raw?

This is a trikcy question. While there are schools of thought that say vitamins and minerals are best preserved when vegetables are served raw, there are some that also contend that certain nutrients only surface when they are cooked. For instance, the anti-cancer and anti-heart illness antioxidant called lycopene is present mostly in cooked tomatoes and ketchup.

When cooking vegetables, just make sure they don’t stay boiling or frying too long to keep the minerals locked inside. Vegetables contain vitamins that are also soluble in water, it is not advised that you use too much of this liquid.

As with anything else in this world, things work when done in moderation. The secret the healthy cooking is knowing what you want to take out and what you want to preserve. It doesn’t really take rocket science to learn all these, but it does require some amount of research and patience. After all, your body is your temple. You must love it by giving it a delicious and healthy reward.

Khieng ‘Ken‘ Chho is author and owner of Online Cooking Resources. For related articles and other resources, visit Ken’s website: http://cooking.onew3b.net
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Cooking For Working Moms | By Tracy Falbe

Super mom is supposed to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but that old song is a tired joke for working moms who need to put dinner on the table. Too often working moms resort to fast food or microwave dinners to feed their families, but these options if used too much lead to poor nutrition and even obesity.

Fatigue and stress usually cause working moms to forsake the kitchen, but with a change in attitude toward cooking, you could enjoy more time at home, better nutrition, and even save money.

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Overcoming the time barrier

Busy moms (and dads) think that their schedules do not allow time for cooking. Dealing with time issues usually becomes easier once you step back and examine how you are actually using your time. If you are picking up a take out dinner five nights a week, then you are likely spending 20 to 30 minutes after work performing this chore by driving to a take out food place, waiting in line, ordering, and then going home. With even the conservative 20 minute estimate, you have used 100 minutes (close to 2 hours) in one work week that could have been spent cooking nutritious food and saving money. Wouldn’t it be nicer to drive home, put your feet up for a few minutes, then make some dinner?

Time barriers to cooking are also overcome by planning and accepting that many foods do not require very much time to prepare. To cook efficiently you need to find meals that you like and that do not require much time to cook. Next, you will decide what meals you want for the week and then make one trip to the grocery store to buy the necessary food supplies.

My kids don’t like my cooking

If you have a family that is accustomed to fast food, then your family may need time to adjust to a healthier lifestyle. Kids often prefer fast food to home cooking, but that is all the more reason to make fast food a treat. It can be something they earn instead of simply expect. Also, as your cooking skills improve, your kids will come to like real food better because most fast food is rather distasteful to people who are used to good food.

Asking for help

For working moms with older kids, you should ask them to help you cook. The kids could even have specific days in which they prepare dinner. Although kids will likely complain about having to do anything, teaching them the important skill of cooking is important to their future independence and health. Some kids will even enjoy cooking and take pride in contributing to the family’s needs. And allowing them to be involved in food preparation will get them excited about their food instead of whining for fast food.

Tips to make cooking easy

• Keep it simply on most days. You do not need to try anything extravagant.
• Cook meats ahead of time. This is often a simple task that can be accomplished with minimal effort in the couple hours before you go to bed. Browning and seasoning some ground beef the night before and putting it in the refrigerator will allow you to have a speedy taco dinner or nachos the next night. And having some cooked chicken in the refrigerator makes it easy to put together a casserole after work.
• Get a slow cooker and find some recipes you like for it. After some prep time in the morning, you can go to work, and then have a hot dinner ready to dish up when you walk in the door.

Saving money

Buying take out food all the time eats into your wallet every day. That money would be much more efficiently used with a big trip to the grocery store. A roast on sale for $7 can feed a family of four and give some leftovers for a sandwich or two. That same $7 might be only one or two fast food meals. And staples for side dishes like potatoes and rice are easily under $1 a pound. Frozen vegetables are also very affordable and they don’t wither in the refrigerator. They might not be as nutritious as fresh, but they are much better than no vegetables and they taste good.

Cooking skills come with practice, but the effort is rewarding. Spending some time in your kitchen with the kids helping or doing their homework at the table is far better than sitting in a car at a drive-through restaurant.

To begin your journey to reclaim your food and spend your time on meaningful activities, steer your canoe over to Recipe River, a resource for home cooking with a growing list of recipes. recipes.falbepublishing.com
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