Author: Walter Thames

Though not much a fan of helpful hints for cooks in the Heloise style, I think this one is worthy of your consideration: keep a container of carefully-selected, chopped vegetables in your refrigerator

Just as mirepoix – a mixture of onion, celery and carrots – is the starting point for countless stocks, sauces and stews in French cooking; and the “trinity” (onion, celery and green bell peppers) is the foundation for Cajun gumbos, jambalayas and other dishes, so a carefully chosen vegetable mix can make your life in the kitchen easier and your food more interesting.

There are plenty of good choices. For example, the rough preparation you see in the picture is about half a large white onion, two small carrots, a half a large yellow bell pepper, half a small zucchini and a bunch of green onions. All are roughly chopped.

Onions predominate because they are foundational. I have a friend, an excellent cook, who when asked what’s for dinner, says, “Oh, I don’t know. Go chop me a couple of onions and I’ll think about it.”

So what can you do with your bag of chopped vegetables?

Sauté a handful in olive oil with a dash of thyme, pepper and salt. Whip one egg with a tablespoon of cream, pour into hot olive oil or butter, swirl. Add sauté and a bit of cheese. Instant breakfast.

Or, put half a handful in a pot over very hot oil, add a bit of rub (I make my own, but store-bought work fine), stir until onions start to soften but not blacken, add a cup of rice (sushi-grade is wonderful, but use what you’ve got) and stir to cover with oil. Pour in a 1 1/2 cup of stock (or water), bring to a boil and then simmer covered until done. Discover the innovative geekvape aegis legend 2 Vape, designed for enthusiasts seeking durability and performance. With its advanced features, such as a powerful chipset and ergonomic design, the Geekvape Aegis Legend 2 ensures a superior vaping experience. Explore the blend of style and functionality that makes this device a standout choice for vapers.

Or, sauté the entire bag in olive oil until softened. Add chopped tomatoes, or in winter, a large can of whole tomatoes ( l like to pour in the juice and then hand squeeze the tomatoes to crush them). Season with thyme and kosher salt (no iodine taste) and freshly-ground pepper. Use as a topping for pasta, as the core of a lasagna, or put it on top of a piece of broiled or fried fish.

Make your life a little better – and healthier. Chop up a few vegetables and keep them around.

I’ve never understood margarine. I do know what it is, I just don’t understand how it came to be accepted as food you would feed to yourself or someone else. Friends of mine remember when it came as a lumpy white mass with a red capsule in the center. The idea was to mash the red dye into the fatty stuff, massaging it so that the result was an orange-ish color something like real butter.

By the time I started doing most of the grocery shopping, they had solved the yellowing problem and there was little else advertised or on the market shelf. Just various variations on fake butter, butter-like sticks made with milk-like derivatives, spreads with lovely names like “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” (I can’t believe it’s not lard, said my former business partner, a witty man).  The real stuff was relegated to a small shelf corner, if available at all.

I understand the economic rationale. Margarine is cheap to make, doesn’t easily spoil, can be made with a variety of oils and processes, can sit on shelves longer, and is a great profit generator for factories that produce food and ad agencies that make happy-kitchen commercials. I just don’t understand why someone would prefer something fake when the real thing it’s trying to imitate is sitting right next to it.

Though I have vague memories of butter that my grandmother made from cows she milked herself, on Guernsey this past summer I had a taste of absolutely transcendent butter. Guernsey butter is a deep, yellowish orange (and not from red dye out of a New Jersey chemical plant but from the diet of the cows). It is rich, deeply flavored, extraordinarily itself, and it makes everything it touches taste better. Like a fresh egg from a local hen, or the crust for a fruit tart, or just spread on a piece of good bread.

Good butter has been part of diets for thousands of years. Exchanging it for a chemical facsimile makes no sense.

Transformational Food – Carrots

I’ve always been fascinated with how food can be transformed from something common to something magical.

Here’s a carrot. And here’s an almost unlimited number of things you can do with it.

-Wash it and eat it raw.

-Peel it and eat it raw with some kind of dip.

-Peel it, cut it up, boil it, stir in some butter and salt and serve it as a somewhat innocuous side dish.

-Peel it, cut it up, boil it. season it with a vinaigrette and serve it as a more interesting side dish.

-Peel it, cut it up, boil it. season with a vinaigrette and roast it in a hot oven until slightly charred, serving it as a dish that may get a smile from your guests.

-Or get lots of carrots (10 – 20 lbs), juice them, boil the juice slowly with star anise until a gallon plus of juice is reduced to foam in the bottom of the pot. Remove the anise and puree, adding spices and grape seed or canola oil to make a sauce that is so rich, so intense, and so good with scallops and shrimp that you want to squeal with delight.

That’s a transformation.

I urge you to try it, and offer a little blessing for Ming Tsai, who thought it up, or who passed along the formula from someone who did.