Answer NO!

Fascinating, This is the search term that was used to find my blog. In a the professional kitchens that I have worked in I have never seen an electric sharpener used. 2 way and 3 way whetstones and of course the steel are about all that I have seen in terms of self sharpening. A few chefs have those cheap draw through sharpeners but anyone with an expensive set of blades would avoid using that type as it takes off metal in an uneven way. Several of the kitchens do use a knife service that comes by once a week and swaps out their knives with a freshly sharpened batch. Most chefs own and use their own knives but some use the knives provided by the service.

The knives provided by the knife services are typically lower quality steel knives that have molded handles and thick blades as in 2 and a half inches at the heel. The reason for this is that they are run through an electric grinder every week and need to be replaced about once a year. When they arrive in the shop they are razor sharp but they quickly loose that edge due to the softness of the steel and the abuse they take. These knives feel to me like I am using a serrated knife, like I am holding a cross-cut saw in my hand instead of a knife. So instead of a soft-butter experience, its like spending a day at the sawmill.

One of the challenges of owning a good knife is keeping a good edge on the knife. I have mentioned here that a knife for home use really needs to be sharpened once every 6 months or a year, but should be put on a steel every day. Electric knife sharpener’s are probably a good thing if you are unsure of how to use a whetstone, but I would be very reluctant to take an expensive blade and grind it down a couple of millimeters while trying to get an edge on it. If you want to an electric knife sharpener look for the type that have a guide that will keep the knife at the proper angle as you draw it through. I just spoke to a lady who uses the type that are attached to an electric can opener… ack please avoid this type of sharpener if you want to have a blade in a couple of years from now. The problem is that an electric knife sharpener will quickly take off much more of the edge than you want and do so in an uneven way. You can quickly loose the center curvature of the blade on a chef’s knife and actually have a hollow spot where the blade doesn’t even touch the cutting board.

Learning to use a basic sharpening stone is probably the best way to go. It is not that difficult. Rather than repeat what has already been said about the subject simply go to this site: http://users.ameritech.net/knives/ward.htm and spend some time you will learn a lot. Also Michael Chu at cookingforengineers.comhas an excellent article with boatloads of comments which is quite educational.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Electric Knife Sharpener

Today we are going to go back to the basics and talk about food garnishes. Typically when I am headed out to do a party one of the last things I will do is to go into the walk-in and grab a bunch of vegetables and whole fruits and a few sprigs of fresh herbs. Of all the vegetables that can be used for plate and platter garnishing, the carrot is the most versatile. It can be peeled into ribbons, cut into matchsticks, and made into brunoise for fine chunks of color. Carrots can become butterflies, eagles, small daisies or large tulips. With specialized tools they can be krinkle cut or cross krinkle cut, shredded for birds nests and spiral cut for long strand borders.

In a previous post I mentioned using the spiral cutter to get strands of carrot or beet. These strands can be used by themselves or as a base to put other colors on. One of my favorites is the tulip. It is easy to do using a small paring knife or a Birds beak paring knife. Peel the carrot first then holding the carrot by the top in your left hand with the top up, take the birds beak and grasp it with your fingers leaving your right thumb to push against the bottom of the carrot. Now you are going to make a series of 5 cuts around the carrot, twisting or turning the carrot about 40 degrees for each incision. With your thumb on the bottom of the carrot start the cut about an inch above it and cut in toward an imaginary line in the center of the carrot at about a 45 degree angle. After you make the first cut turn it an make you second one so that it overlaps the first just a little then repeat until you have gone completely around the carrot. At this point you have cut through the center line all the way around the carrot and the flower will fall off into your hand. There will be 5 points and some tiny vee shaped pieces on the flower, remove the little pieces and you will have your tulip. If the vee shaped pieces are still stuck to the flower you may have to carefully cut into that groove one more time to get them out.

Once you get the feel of it you can do several of these from the same carrot. This method can be used on other vegetables as well like summer squash and zucchini. Soaking these in ice water will cause the tips to curl a little as well.

Another method of getting flowers is shown below in a video. Taking a large block of carrot at it’s thickest point (the top third or so) You can make a variety of cuts into the side of the carrot and shape your flower into a daisy or mumm. By carefully cutting vee’s into the side of your carrot you can get many shapes. A butterfly is easy to do with 3 small vee’s to outline the feelers and two shallow vees for the wings and two more vees on the bottom to outline the body. You can then sharpen the outline with a wooden skewer or the tip of your birds beak to increase the roundness of the contour. When you are finished you have a long block that you can now cut several identical butterflies or flowers to decorate you plate or platter. Look at the two videos below for even more ideas. I will do a short video my self in a few days and show you a few more techniques. Stay tuned. Thanks

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: carrot flowers, food garnishes

Healthy chocolates

It that an oxymoron or could it be true? Can chocolate really be healthy?

The answer is, yes and no.

Dark healthy chocolate benefits include:

* Lowers blood pressure and cholesterol.
* Stimulates endorphin production leading to a greater sense of pleasure.
* Contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant.
* Contains theobromine, which is like caffeine but without all the bad side affects.

Unfortunately, there are bad aspects of ordinary dark chocolate. Actually they are not within the chocolate at all, they are just often added for whatever reason might be. Items like waxes and fillers, which I guess are meant to compliment the product.

I still remember my experience with a 70% cacao bar being handed to me last summer. What seemed like a kind delicious event to start with ended with a horrible taste going into my taste buds and beyond? Yes indeed. The giver didn’t intend that I feel like I was eating a candle, it’s just the way it was. Yuck!

Experiences like that would lead me away from eating dark chocolate if it were not for what I have discovered.

* May Help You Lose Weight*
* Increases Your Sense of Well-Being*
* Supports Healthy Response to Inflammation*
* Helps Provide Natural Energy*
* Helps Promote Cardiovascular Health*
* Improves Sleep*
* Unique Cold Processed Formulation*

NOTE 1: *The above statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat or prevent any disease.

NOTE 2: While all the above is exciting, its even better to know this chocolate actually tastes delicious. So, if you’re like me, and you’re ready for an exquisitely delicious alternative to mostly healthy chocolate then it’s time you discover the benefits of truly healthy chocolates.

Dark healthy chocolate can indeed be beneficial to your life, but only if you eat it.

Try a sample of healthy chocolate cookies from Body By Chocolates healthy chocolate world.

Guy Siverson
What do you get when you put healthy and chocolate together with…

* A highly interactive website
* Tons of targeted marketing with integrated video technology
* And a unique business opportunity
===> Body By Chocolates

http://BodyByChocolates.com

Eat Healthy – Eat Xocai
509.993.7215
253.948.2509

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: dark healthy chocolate, healthy chocolates

Nothing says "Welcome" any more than the smell of fresh baked bread. It is one of those smells that we somehow shove into our memory bank at an early age that stays forever. At this time of year as we go to holiday gatherings we are constantly reminded of those childhood smells. Fresh breads, stollens, cookies, pumpkin pie… uuhm I am making myself hungry just by mentioning them.

 

I remember the huge mixing bowl and the flour bin and my mother stirring the yeast into the water, slowly adding the flour until it was too hard to stir and then turning it out onto the bread board to begin kneading. Add flour to the board, roll it over, punch it down, roll it over punch it down again twenty or thirty times. If it got too sticky add more flour until the dough got just right and set it aside to rise. Once it had risen she would form the loaves and put them in the oven. 10 minutes later the house was filled with the most heavenly smell in the world…Fresh Baked Bread!

 

Years later when I started my own household I renewed my interest in making fresh breads. Some of my early experiments were fantastic and some were disastrous. The non-yeasted buckwheat bread was so bad that even the squirrels would not eat it when it went out to the feeder. As time has gone by, I don't bake as often as I should but there is no substitute for home made bread. Today the pace of life seems to leave less time for bread baking so I have looked for a few short cuts to the process. When the bread machine was first introduced I looked at one and decided that it was not for me. I could not imagine how adding all the ingredients to the same pot that you cooked it in would work. I know that there are some who would swear by them but somehow there is something missing in the process.

 

The place to save the most time is in the kneading process, I will spare you of the chemistry lesson but you get the best bread results when you have plenty of air mixed into the dough and that is generally the hardest part of making bread. Using a mixer to take care of this part, saves a lot of time and energy. Until a few years ago using a mixer to make bread was solely for the large bakeries which had a monster machine that could turn out several pounds of dough at one time. This convenience has now become available for the modern homemaker. I know , I know it has been around for a while, but humor me… I can remember when it wasn't.

 

For the purpose of kneading the Stand mixer cannot be beat (pun intended), and Kitchenaid has come out with the best stand mixer as far as I am concerned. The recipe that I use yields 4 large loaves, I got the recipe from The Tassajara Bread Book an amazing little book which teaches you all you will ever need to know about bread making. When all the flour is put together in the bowl it can be tough to stir it when the gluten gets going. Using this Kitchenaid Mixer I can easily add the flour and get it thoroughly mixed. This saves about a half an hour of time and produces excellent results. Just let the dough rise once, punch it down, form the loaves and bake. Soon your kitchen and house have that awesome welcoming smell as well. This little cousin to the big Hobart (a mere $8267) is ideal for home use and it packs a lot of power for such a small machine. The Kitchenaid Mixer has a powerful 575 watt motor with a variable speed on/off switch. You can set the speed exactly at the right speed for mixing the dough. The bowl is raised with a lever which is great if you want to mix butter or cream cheese by slowly raising the bowl as you start the mixer. It comes with a wire whip, paddle wand and a dough hook just like the monsters found in a commercial kitchen. You can even get other grinding attachments and use it to make pates and ground meats. The Kitchenaid Stand Mixer normally retails for $499, it is now on sale for a substantial discount running through the end of this year at $299. Sales of this sort tend to run on and off through out the year so be sure to only buy when you find it on sale. It is possible to find them refurbished for even less. It is a great addition to any kitchen and I must say this little work horse is not your grand-mothers stand mixer.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Technorati Tags: Home Made Bread, Kitchenaid Professional Stand Mixer

Everyday kitchen gadgets make your job much easier. My favorites are the toys that enable me to get different visual appearances in the food that I prepare. From salads to fancy cheese boards the kind of cut you can make for a different product does a lot for the overall effect. From a simple Crinkle cutter,

to a high end Mandoline slicer, I use several toys on a daily basis. The extra ten minutes you spend in making a different cut makes for a tremendous difference in your finished product.

There are probably boatloads of places on the internet where you can find pages upon pages of everyday kitchen gadgets. The ones that I am listing here are some of the ones that I use almost everyday. Tossed salads come in a number of different flavors. In the catering business the object is always to make food look pretty.So when we send out a salad it has got to look good. Using the fancy “spring mix” salad I add carrots, cucumber, cherry or grape tomatoes, jicama and black olives. Putting it all together to make the best possible presentation.

The carrots are cut on a mandoline slicer using the crinkle cutter to produce a waffle or gaufrette style carrot. The mandoline is the only kitchen gadget that can do this kind of cut, and the process only takes about 10 minutes to complete. Peel the carrots, cut the tip off at a 45 degree angle and run them through the mandoline turning the carrot about a third of the way going left and then right with each slice and you get these cool looking oval waffle slices to add to your salad.

While I still have the mandoline out, I peel a whole jicama and run it through the mandoline to get fine juliennes of white sticks to put on the top of the salad. The skin of the jicama is too tough to use a peeler so I use my favorite fruit knife and cut off the ends and then slice the skin off by following the contour. Next I grate a big pile of sticks on the mandoline and I am finished with that step in less than 10 minutes.

Cucumber these days comes from the supplier with a coating of some kind of wax. That is why they are shiny when you see them in the store. I don’t like that, and I am not sure it is good for you so I get rid of most of it by using my zester. This can be done by carefully holding the cucumber firmly and running the zester down the full length. It will peel through the skin and come off in strings, then roll the cuc slightly and repeat the process until you have scored all of the cucumber. Now you can either slice it with

a knife or use the japanese mandoline to quickly cut it into even slices. A word of caution here! The blade on the “Benriner” is super sharp and it will cut anything that gets near it including your finger or palm. On the plus side it can cut vegetables literally paper thin. If you purchase one, you might want to consider getting a cutting glove to protect you in case you slip.

Today I made a salad that required fresh pears as a garnish. Fruits of this sort tend to oxidize quickly, so to prevent that I used

fresh lemon juice in a small amount of water to coat the pears and keep them white for a much longer time. If you need juice in a hurry the citrus squeezer is the “cat’s meow”, it gets all the juice without the seeds. This little toy is well worth the investment, it gets the juice without the mess.

Shop Kitchen Collection’s Gadgets and More selection and save!

Pictures of finished salads are coming so stay tuned.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Bron Mandoline Slicer, Everyday Kitchen Gadgets, Garnish Crinkle Cutter

The jolly season busy times continue, as Christmas party season swings into high gear. Today was full of lamb chops, spring rolls, cheese platters, brie en croute and even a larger granite slab of sushi. Sushi, that wonderful Japanese way of eating pickled rice and raw fish has taken the US by storm. A few years ago you had to look real hard to find sushi but now there are usually a few shops in just about every neighborhood around. The varieties of sushi are endless and the preparation is fairly involved so I will save that for a later post.

Today I want to look at how to serve sushi, especially for a party where the presentation is important. When you buy sushi it will come in a roll, generally covered in “Nori” or seaweed. Sometimes the nori is rolled inside the roll like the one pictured below. This spicy crab roll has the nori showing through in the inside. After you get it home you have to cut it to serve it and here is where you get presented with a real challenge. How do you cut it with out tearing it apart?

With the rice exposed you need to slice through this very carefully to insure that it stays together with out tearing the roll apart or crushing it by pushing down on the knife too hard. For this job you need two things; a very sharp knife and leave the cellophane on until after you have sliced it. The plastic will hold the rice in place as you carefully slice and if you are gently holding the roll next to the blade as you slice, it will clean the blade as you go.

A very sharp knife will easily go through the cellophane and the roll using light pressure so you don’t crush it. The knife that I used today is a Shun 10″ right handed slicing knife. It is a single bevel sharpened knife and as my friend who owns it says “The sharpest knife I have ever owned”

Today I used a slab of black granite for my serving ware. Typically sushi is served with Soy Sauce, Pickled Ginger and Wasabi (powdered horseradish). First I made a flower of the sliced ginger and placed it in the middle of the slab and then I set the assorted pieces around the flower. Finally I added little stars of wasabi around the outside of the slab. I apologize for the quality of the photos; they are taken with my cell phone.

The Ginger flower is easily made. Use sushi ginger which you can find at your local oriental store, or even where you get the sushi. It comes in thin slices. Lay out an overlapping row about 6 to 10 inches long and carefully roll it up in a spiral. When you set it on your platter it will spread out and form a flower looking presentation. You can then add individual pieces to increase the petals of your flower. Since they are moist they will stick to the original spiral.

I laid these pieces out flat, if you have too many pieces to fit on your platter you can stack them closer together by standing them up at a 45 degree angle.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Food garnishing, Sushi

Ah December, the time of year when every caterer goes insane. Over the course of the next two weeks we will serve several thousand people in one way or another from a fancy sit-down dinner, to a casual buffet its the time of year when the party business goes bonkers. We have the ability to produce several hundred different hors d’ oeuvres and the business owner has been known to invent them on the fly as he sits with a potential client. Out of the many that are part of our regular menu, the Lump Crab Cakes are among the most popular on our menu.

Lump Crab comes from the Chesapeake Bay. It is famous for the Blue Crab

Today I went in to start my day to be greeted with “Ok, welcome to crab cake hell”. Normally when I make up a batch recipe I use 12 cans of Phillips Maryland Lump crab. So we looked at the upcoming menus for the next week and decided that between entree’s and HDO’s we needed 5 times that many. Ouch! That is a lot of chopping. (20 Bell peppers, 20 jalapeno’s, 50 scallions, 5 bunches Cilantro and a half pound of fresh basil plus 5 cases of cans) Long story made short we made over 700 3 ounce lump crab cakes and about 2000 half ounce sized cakes.

Here is the recipe that we use, I think it is really good:
My recipe would yield about 700 very small cakes so you probably wouldn’t want to try that unless you are a caterer and can sell that many in a reasonable amount of time. This is a cut down version.

1 Can lump or claw crab meat.
2 ounces minced Red bell pepper
2 ounces minced Yellow bell pepper
2 Scallions thinly sliced
1 ounce minced Jalapeno pepper
1/2 ounce minced fresh Basil
1/2 bunch fine chopped Cilantro
1 Tb Old Bay Seasoning
1 ounce Sambal Chili
1/2 Lemon (Juice only)
4 ounces Mayonaise
1 Egg
1 Cup fine Bread crumbs

Add your vegetables together with the herbs and toss lightly then add the crumbs. Next add the wet ingredients to moisten and bind the cakes together. The mixture should be relatively dry and a little sticky. You may have to play with the bread crumb/mayonnaise ratio to get the proper stickiness so the cake will hold together when you form a ball. Next take a very small ice cream scoop and make balls out of the mix. Line them up on a cookie sheet or small sheet pan. When you have finished the balls go back and press down lightly to form a small cake about an inch and a half in diameter. From here you can cook these on a griddle or freeze them so they will be hard when you bread them.

If you decide to bread them use flour, egg and seasoned bread crumbs in that order and put a nice coating of breading on each cake. Now you can deep fry the cake for about 3 minutes in 350 degree oil and set the aside for later. A few minutes in the oven to get them warm for serving or put them in a warm chaffing dish for 20 minutes before serving.

These go well with a Cajun style tartar sauce or a spicy remulade.

Questions? Tell me what you think if you try this recipe or need any help. Leave a comment below. Thanks

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Lump Crab Cakes

I have had a few requests and several searches on this blog for more information on the best knife for slicing fruit. My favorite is a Wustoff 8″ Utility Knife. I own two of them as one, went for a wander in a kitchen a few years back and after replacing it, the first one found it’s way back to my tool box. I like this knife for several reasons but only for fruit. The steel is high quality carbon stainless and it keeps a good edge for a long time between sharpenings. There is no sign of rust on the blade or the rivets after 20 years. The blade is 8″ long which is sufficient for cutting and peeling watermelon if I need it. By the same token the blade is narrow enough that I can use it on a Kiwi fruit as well.

The knife has a full bolster and the blade at the heel of the knife is only an inch an a quarter wide. This is good for knife strength, it gives a solid feel when you use it. You can cut the ends off of a cantalope or honeydew and then follow the contour of the fruit down the sides and have it peeled quickly. The blade is very narrow so when you peel smaller items like an apple or the skin off of a jicama you can use the tip to go out around and down and the blade will bend a little to follow out, around and down very easily. The knife is also excellent with a mushroom slicing project when you need to bang out 5 pounds of sliced shrooms in a hurry.

Now there are some drawbacks to this thin blade. Since the blade is only an inch or so at the heel you can not use it for any kind of job that requires a rocking action where the blade has to go to the board and rock back. You wind up hitting your knuckles on the board before the blade gets through the product. Chopping and dicing are not possible with this knife as you need at least 2″ at the heel of the blade to do that. When you slice the peeled cantaloupe this is not an issue since you are moving back and forth horizontal to the board and when you finish the tip of the knife is touching as you draw through for the final time. The knife is light weight easily manipulated, the 8″ blade is long enough for big jobs and slender enough to use the tip for fine work. The longer blade gives you the ability to keep your hand well back and slice with the middle of the blade where a 6″ would have your hand too close to your work and have your knuckles running into the fruit as you sliced it.

One other word of caution; if you get a knife like this be careful when you set it down. The spine of the blade and the handle are so perfectly balanced that the knife will sit perfectly upside down. As you can see in the picture it is resting with the blade exposed. On more than on occasion I have set mine aside to do something else and then realized that the blade was sitting there as an accident waiting to happen, just a heads up.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Technorati Tags: Eight Inch Utility Slicing Knife, Fruit Slicing Knife