I hope you enjoy the recipes that I will be posting here. All of them have been tried and tested by me, so I won’t be posting something that I am not sure about.
However, before I begin, I thought it might be helpful to post a few tips to make things easy.
1. Before you begin, read through the entire recipe. This way you won’t encounter any surprises along the way.
2. Try to lay out and have all of your ingredients and tools ready to go (i.e., your “mise en place”). This means prepping all of your ingredients (wash, cut, etc.), preheating your oven, laying out all of your utensils and equipment. This will allow you to cook without having to stop every so often to put things together. Setting up a mise en place is especially desirable in baking, where sometimes the recipes are under time-constraints.
3. Buy a good knife and make sure you sharpen it often. This is the most important item on this list. A dull knife makes cutting and chopping very difficult and tears into the food, rather than slicing into it. A dull knife also increases the amount of pressure you have to apply in order to cut Click here to learn how to select a good chef’s knife.
4. Buy an oven thermometer. This will help you more accurately determine if something is cooked through, rather than relying on eyesight. I prefer the digital ones, as I think they’re more accurate. You don’t have to splurge on anything fancy. I have a digital one that I picked up at the Christmas Tree Shop about ten years ago and it has served me well.
5. Try to clean up a little as you go along….it’ll make the final task of cleaning easier. It doesn’t matter whether you spend 10 minutes in front of the oven, or an hour — trust me, you’ll be happier in the end.
There you go….with these simple tips, following the recipes should go smoothly!
Happy Cooking!
Dishing with Diana 