Posted on April 28th, 2008 by admin
Olive oil has been used in cooking for many thousands of years, so much so that it has become the keystone of Mediterranean cooking. There are, of course, many grades of olive oil, the best of them being extra virgin, which is characterized by its perfect flavour and scent. This is the oil that in some regions is judged by a panel of experts. It is used at the table with salads or for dipping bread, and added too soups and stews. Other grades are fine virgin, virgin, semi-fine, refined and pure. Strong flavoured olive oil can be used for frying fish and other strong flavoured foods, whereas you would use a mellow flavoured olive oil for baking a cake. Olive oil can be used with great success when mixed with butter for frying meats – try using it the next time you fry a rump steak in a griddle.
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Posted on April 28th, 2008 by admin
There are five great foundations to fine cookery
- olive oil,
- butter,
- cream,
- wine and
- eggs.
Of these five ingredients the cheapest by far are eggs, and there are literally thousands of recipes for this extremely nourishing food. Compare the price of eggs to that of the others, or indeed to the price of fish or meat, and you will see that eggs stand out by far. Pure extra virgin olive oil is expensive, but there is absolutely no substitute. Butter, too, is expensive, but again there is no substitute – don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that you can use other vegetable oils or butter substitutes in fine cooking – you can not. In many cases where a recipe calls for cream, you can use whipping cream rather than double cream. It is cheaper and less fattening, but if the recipe calls for a cream that has to be reduced in a sauce, it can be better to use double cream. Reducing single cream to the correct consistency you may have to use so much single cream and reduce for such a time that it would have been cheaper to use double cream in the first place.
I will say only one thing about using wine for cooking – never cook with a wine that you would not be prepared to drink – if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t use it.
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