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Are You Missing The 5 Benefits of Simple Cooking?

Simple cooking is the best cooking.  There, I said it for the 1000th time!  No matter where I travel, no matter to whom I speak, those people and cultures that know good food say the same thing.  In Paris, the spice store shared his incredibly simple secret to eating healthy, “Simple things are good things”.

In a fish market on Hawaii, the local fish monger advised me to cook my tuna very rare and very simply.  “Only scare the fish with a fry pan, it will be Ono”, he said.  Ono is “delicious” in Hawaiian.

From the pierogi at the Polish Festival in Riverhead, Long Island  to the grass-fed beef rancher in Nebraska, they have all told me that the best ingredients, cooked simply yield the best results.

Yet, food TV shows will have you believe that elaborate meals are the only way to truly be considered a good cook.  Few people have need of complicated dinners, most are just trying to provide interesting, flavorful meals for their families every night.  Why would cookbooks and food TV want to make you feel as if your cooking were inadequate?  So you’ll buy more cookbooks and watch more food TV!

When you discover just a few basic cooking methods, then you can break this cycle.  Imagine the benefits you would enjoy if you stopped searching for recipes and avoided the influence of celebrity chefs who make you feel unworthy of a kitchen.

What if you were empowered with this concept of simple cooking?  What if you could just choose items already in your pantry and improvise a delicious, nutritious, quick and easy meal every night of the week?

You would then begin to improve your lifestyle through food.  You needn’t be on TV, nor need to write a cookbook to know what type of food YOU like.  No celebrity chef or recipe author can tell you what you should be eating or how you should be cooking it.  Only you can decide that.

Cook simply and you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

1)  Freedom – You’ll gain freedom from written recipes and vague instructions that make it impossible to cook consistently.  You’ll have the freedom to eat what you want, how you want it.

2)  Confidence – Once you gain your freedom from others telling you how to cook, you’ll have the confidence to create your own recipes, using the ingredients you desire.  Or, you can change any existing recipe to come out just like you want it to.

3)  Health – With confidence comes a desire to cook new ingredients, more wholesome, fresh, farmer’s market ingredients.  Once you discover simple cooking, you’ll want to try it out on items you were afraid to purchase before because you couldn’t find a recipe for the item.
4)  Family -  You’ll reunite your family over the dinner table.  When they actually look forward to your cooking, when you enjoy preparing healthy meals with confidence, you’ll spend more time together.  Also, cooking is a social skill.  You’ll find yourself entertaining more, making friends and meeting new people.

5)  Money -  When cooking in your home moves from the living room as entertainment and back into the kitchen as art, you’ll save money.  You’ll order less take-out food.  You’ll purchase less convenience items and make better decisions at the grocery store.  You’ll stop buying cookbooks.  Simple cooking will save you money.

Something else I’ve said 1000 times is that cooking is an art.  There is no other art form that comes with a strict set of instructions to follow.  Your cooking should come from your heart, using basic cooking methods with the ingredients you and your family desire.  Otherwise, you’re giving the responsibility of something as important as your health and nutrition to a guy on TV.
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How To Cut Onions Without Buying A Chopper Device

If you want to know how to cut onions and aren’t easily fooled by late night TV commercials, I’m about to save you a tremendous amount of time and money.

I have a neighbor that owns every kitchen gadget and appliance available.  She must have the QVC shopping network on speed-dial.  These devices are advertised to save your time and lower your kitchen stress, but they do just the opposite.

I imagine a race between my neighbor and I.  We’ll both dice an onion, she with her chopper/dicer device, me with my chef’s knife that I bought 17 years ago for twenty dollars.  Ready?  Go!

She has to take out a knife anyway to cut the onion in half and peel the skin off.  A chopper/dicer doesn’t peel the onion for her, and it’s too big to fit into the appliance.  Then, she has to go to the kitchen cabinet to retrieve the gadget.  Then plug it in and try to attach the chopper bowl.  Well, we all know they never fit quite right, so with a bit of monkey-ing, it finally clicks into place.

Then comes the blade, and there’s only one way that it fits correctly onto the motor, so more monkey-ing until it snaps on.  Place the onion in the chopper, screw the lid on tight and press the button a few times to zap the onion.

She empties the inconsistently cut pieces of onion into a bowl or cutting board, and now must disassemble the device, rinse all the pieces, place it in the dishwasher, later to return to the kitchen cabinet.  There!  Just about 10 simple steps.

That’s not how to cut onions.  In my onion race fantasy, I’ve long since finished dicing my item into nice, consistent pieces.  My chef’s knife has no moving parts, it wipes clean in seconds, never breaks, takes little maintenance, and is easier to control and an electric appliance.

Since the root end of the onion holds the layers together, I consider the root end my friend.  I’ll try to leave that in tact.  First, I cut the onion from blossom end to root end to give myself a flat surface to work from.  This avoids rolling onions and bleeding fingers.

Leaving my root end friend in tact, I remove the blossom end and peel the onion.  Now, with 4 horizontal strokes and 4 vertical strokes, I’ve created a checkerboard fashion in the onion.  Cutting down and across the top of the onion half has the item simply fall apart in consistent pieces.

Since consistency of cut is consistency of cook, I will have a better final dish than my neighbor who basically pureed her onions.

The 5 Steps on How To Cut Onions:

1)  Cut from north pole to south pole (root end to blossom end)

2)  Peel away the skin

3)  Make horizontal cuts across the layers

4)  Make vertical cuts to make a checkerboard design

5)  Cut down across the previous two cuts to create diced onion.

You don’t need additional kitchen appliances to cut kitchen ingredients, they waste your time and money.  The device is meant for only one purpose.  Once you discover the correct method for using a chefs knife, you’ll be preparing beautiful meals from fresh, wholesome ingredients without having to give your credit card to the TV shopping network.

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Mahi Mahi Recipes You Can Do in 15 Minutes

Mahi mahi recipes are no different than any other recipe.  I’m sure you know by now how I feel about recipes.  They have inherent flaws that make them very difficult to duplicate consistently.  If you’re going to get varied results from the same recipe, why even follow it in the first place?

Cooking is a chore when you have to follow someone else’s written instructions.  However, cooking becomes inspirational and therapeutic in many ways when you follow your own creativity and desires.

I hear it all the time, people tell me about a great cook they know that can “just throw things together”.  This metaphorical throwing of food means these people understand the methods behind all recipes and cook with their own rules, using the ingredients they want to.

So, here I am in a rental condo kitchen in Kauai, Hawaii and I’ve just returned from the Dolphin Fish Market in Hanalei with a piece of fish that was swimming just hours ago.  Without any mahi mahi recipes in sight, I’ll improvise an outstanding dinner with the very few ingredients I could pick up at the local grocer.

The key to cooking the fish correctly is choosing the best cooking method.  Last time I was here, I was also cooking fish with rum, but it was Monchung, a much tougher and meatier fish.  Since Mahi Mahi is a delicate fish, I want to cook it quickly under high heat.  Saute’ method is the perfect choice since I have much more control over the heat than baking or poaching the fish.

Along with some packaged Udon Noodles, sliced Portobello Mushrooms, and a bit of rum for deglazing, all I need is the flavor of the fresh mahi mahi.  Since I don’t make a habit of bringing cookbooks on vacation with me, I’m not bound to over-complicate this dish with a multitude of recipe commanded ingredients.  I’ll keep it quick and simple.

Once I remove the skin and cut the fish into smaller pieces so it will cook more quickly, it’s a matter of placing the mahi mahi in heated butter and watch the item turn from fleshy to cooked-white.  This is called coagulation of proteins and a great indicator of when to turn the item over, and when it’s finished.

What’s left in the pan is called “fond”, the rendered fats and material from the fish.  It’s an excellent place to start building levels of flavor, and the Portobello mushrooms will add even more texture to the dish.  Once they’re sauteed, the Udon Noodles and the mushroom flavor packet they came with are quickly stir-fried and we’re done!

You can spend your vacation searching for mahi mahi recipes, or you can just go buy a fresh piece of fish and improvise your way to an outstanding Hawaiian meal.  Keep in mind that HOW you cook something is so much more important than WHAT you cook, or what the recipe tells you to do.

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Hawaiian Drinks – Fruit Smoothie With Local Rum

Hawaiian drinks don’t begin and end with a Mai Tai.  There are an endless number of fresh ingredients, fruits and liquors to use on Hawaii that don’t have to end up in a Tiki Bar.

When I travel to Hawaii, I’m always excited to take advantage of the best local ingredients I can find.  Having access to the freshest fish, beef, fruits and vegetables for me is like a painter having access to a brand new set of paints.  All I can imagine are the possibilities of fantastic meals because of the tools I now have at my disposal.

The sun is hot on Kauai, but the soft trade winds minimize the effect.  Perhaps I don’t feel like I’m roasting on the sand, but my building thirst says its time to rehydrate.

One of my favorite Hawaiian drinks is a fresh fruit smoothie.  With my “No-Recipe” attitude, I’m going to create a new beverage using the items I already have on hand and my favorite Koloa Spiced and Koloa Dark Rums from the Koloa Rum Company, right here on Kauai.

Having just returned from a tour of the Koloa Rum Company processing plant and a personal tour from President Bob Gunter, I already know that the best drink in Hawaii starts with the best rum.  When I add fresh pineapples, papayas, and limes, I’ve got an individual creation that uses locally sourced ingredients.

This doesn’t just give me a nice relaxing attitude, it also puts money back into the local economy.  I don’t come to Hawaii to buy rum from the Caribbean or pineapples from Costa Rica.  I come to Hawaii to experience their fantastic foods and I’m glad to spend my money for quality items that help the creators, vendors, their families and the entire island.

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Mojito Ingredients Necessary For The Hawaiian Way

Mojito ingredients are a few of the things I made SURE I have on hand when visiting Hawaii.  I may not have much in my rental kitchen pantry, but I only need a few items to make a refreshing drink to take back to the beach with me.

I’ve shown you before how it doesn’t take much to create a great meal from very few ingredients, especially when you’re on vacation.  Because, when I take a holiday, I still love to cook.  I have access to the best, freshest, local ingredients.

“Why would you cook on vacation?” is what most people ask me.  They’re implying that as a professional chef, I’d want to avoid my occupation for two weeks.  Isn’t that what vacation is all about?

Actually, cooking in Hawaii for me is like a violinist having the opportunity to play on a Stradivarius violin, just as I said when I visited a fish market in Hawaii.

However, mojito ingredients are absolute necessities when spending the day baking under the Hawaiian sun.  I’ve already shown you how cooking with rum can be dangerous and delicious, but there’s nothing difficult or dangerous about making my Hawaiian Blended Mojito.

You needn’t be a chef to complete this mojito recipe, you just need to be thirsty.  After filling the blender with ice cubes, I’ll add fresh mint, sugar, and my favorite Koloa Spiced Rum from Kauai.  I’ll top with some club soda, add a straw and I’m ready for my lounge chair!

You don’t have to use the mojito ingredients I’ve chosen.  Just like cooking, you are free to substitute and create your own Mango, Pineapple, or other tropical fruit mojito.  I find that, just like cooking, the best ingredients are the freshest ones grown closest to where you live.  That’s a bit easier to do in Hawaii, where everything is fresh.

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Gelato Recipe Uses Rum in Ice Cream

A Gelato recipe was not what I expected to find when searching Hawaii for the freshest, most wholesome ingredients that support the local community, economy and agriculture.  However, Marck Shipley at Papalani Gelato  on the island of Kauai is accomplishing all those things.

I’ve already taken an Organic Beef Tour in Maui, and had the president of Koloa Rum Company show me how they are making rum from pure cane sugar.  Each of these companies are using local ingredients and creating an artisan product that, in turn, aids the farmers, their workers, and their planet while having great respect for all four elements.

However, when Bob Gunter at Koloa Rum Company suggested that I visit a Gelato shop to see this process in action, I was surprised.  I expected to be pointed to some farm or plantation to see the best use of natural ingredients.  I should not make such assumptions.

The gelato recipe that Marck Shipley started his first gelato shop with in Seattle has now become an all-encompassing philosophy of how a simple Italian ice cream can help his entire community and ecology of the world.

He eventually chose a slightly better climate in moving to the island of Kauai in Hawaii.  But, it’s not just the weather he’s come for.  Being located within a few miles of all the best fruits, nuts, and dairy in the world, Marck could produce his gelato in a fashion that pleases his customers, vendors, family and neighbors.

“Italian food is good ingredients, prepared simply, and displayed beautifully.  That’s what we do here.” Marck explains.  The same is true for Italian ice cream.  “Our whole ideas is to find the best ingredients we can, which we believe are right here on this island, present them simply and beautifully and let the natural flavor shine through.”

Marck uses Koloa Rum in ice cream as well as many local fruits, nuts and coffee.  “This gives us an opportunity to support the local economy and the local growers”, he adds.  “Kauai is not like the mid-west or California, we don’t have farms that are 500 acres growing only one type of product.”  “Here, we have 5 or 10 acre plots of land that families have been farming for generations.”  “So, every time we buy a pineapple or a lemon, we are buying it from a family.  We know that every time we support a local grower, that money makes it back into our local community.”

Ultimately, you get what you pay for.  If you want a great food experience, you have to be willing to pay what it costs for someone to produce that food, especially if you want something fresh and local.

Marck never did share his gelato recipe with me, I think he distracted me in amazement for how something as seemingly as ice cream could make such a large impact on his family, other families, and the global wellness.

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Pad Thai Recipe With Rum In Under 15 Minutes

I can create a pad thai recipe in my head.  I don’t need a cookbook.  I only need a bit of ingredient inspiration and a few basic cooking skills.  Luckily, I’ve just returned from the Koloa Rum Company, and I’m excited to find a way to get the flavors of their dark rum into my cooking.

I’ve also taken an organic beef tour in Hawaii, having toured the Maui Cattle Company earlier this week, so I’m also inspired to use local pasture raised beef.

I’ll have to make one confession.  While I say that I can create a recipe without a cookbook, the truth of the matter is that I HAVE to create my own recipe because I don’t even have a cookbook.  I don’t have a pantry of ingredients.  I don’t have spices, I barely have acceptable pots and pans in my vacation rental kitchen, so it’s up to me and my basic cooking methods for dinner tonight.

My improvised pad thai recipe will start with marinating local beef in the Koloa Spiced Rum, in an attempt to steal some of that great spice flavor from the rum.  From there, it’s a simple saute procedure, as I’ll brown the drained beef, deglaze with some beef broth, add Koloa Dark Rum for that extra level of flavor, and reduce the sauce.

What will give this made up meal it’s flavor profile is peanut butter and coconut milk.  They’re added to the reducing liquid to give even more complex flavors, but not complicating the cooking process.

Lastly, I’ll add the Thai noodles to the pan and crack a raw egg on top.  The egg will scramble from the heat and attach itself to the noodles and strips of beef.  It’s a delicious combination of flavors and textures that no cookbook could tell me how to do.

I can whip up an easy pad thai recipe, and so can you with just this basic procedure.  Once you watch the video I hope you’re inspired to change the ingredients I’ve used and create your own dish, to your tastes, in the way you like it, and forget about written recipes.

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Making Rum From Pure Cane Sugar

Making Rum from pure cane sugar that is farmed within 15 miles of the distillery is what makes Koloa Rum Company different.  They use the best ingredients they can find while supporting the local economy and ecology with their portfolio of rum products.

I’ve already toured their production facility and was introduced to the “Crown Jewel”, their copper pot still.  Their hands-on single batch processing makes their rum unique.  Today, I’m back visiting with Bob Gunter, the President of Koloa Rum Company,  to further examine what goes into their award winning rum.

In the tasting room, Bob shows me a tray piled high with an ivory powder.  I know there’s no snow on Kauai and I’m not in a scene from Scarface, so this must be sugar before me.  It’s the purest form of cane sugar, almost white with an earthy aroma that bring a sensation of the dirt it was grown in.

Making rum is just like cooking, the best ingredients treated with skill always yield the best results, and Bob explains why the purest form of sugar creates a better product.  Brown sugar has molasses in it.  Molasses is actually a by-product of sugar production, so the more molasses you add to the fermentation, the less pure the end result will be.

From this pure ingredient comes all their rum flavors and I’m fortunate enough to be tasting them with the President of the company.  Their newest product is the Kauai Spiced Rum.  It’s like no other spiced rum I’ve ever tasted.  It didn’t assault my palate with heavy spices.  I was rewarded with the sweetness of the pure cane sugar BEFORE being given a hint of the spice on the back of my tongue.

The Kauai Spiced Rum is their newest introduction and won third price at the International Rum Competition in Miami, Florida last year.  My mind starts to race, considering how I can get the great flavor of this rum into my cooking.

The Koloa Dark Rum has been my favorite since it was initially released.  Bob offers me a taste, and all that I’ve learned today is summarized in one small glass.  I can certainly taste the pure, local, natural sugar that he uses, but much more.  I can now taste the earth, the community, the ecology and passion that goes into making every bottle of this fantastic product.

Making rum is a passion for Bob Gunter, just as cooking with natural ingredients is a passion for me.  The next step will be putting our passions together.  I’ve just got to create a “No Recipe” dish using Koloa Rum.  I wonder what I’ll come up with……

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The Best Drink In Hawaii Starts With The Best Rum

The best drink in Hawaii starts with Rum that is made from local ingredients.  Today, I tour the Koloa Rum Company with President Bob Gunter to see how it’s made.

The Koloa Rum Company is yet another example of how you can take the freshest local ingredients and create a product that supports the local community and environment while thrilling your customers with an outstanding product.

I found their production facility on the island of Kauai, and my expectations of a huge warehouse with large machinery was immediately proven wrong as I drove up a gravel driveway and was greeted by chickens scurrying around the front yard.

This former candy making factory now houses all operations of the Koloa Rum Company, explains Bob Gunter, President of the company.  He’s been kind enough to offer me a personal tour of the facility.

The best rum in Hawaii starts with only Hawaiian sugar cane that comes from a plantation only 15 miles away!  Now, that’s locally sourced ingredients!  Bob explains to me that he uses only the purest crystal sugar and not molasses to make his rum.  These are the two biggest differences between Koloa rum and all others.

However, the single element that sets them apart is their “crown jewel”, Bob says.  The crown jewel is their huge copper still.  Koloa rum is made one batch at a time so they can carefully scrutinize and adjust for the best end product.

After the crystal sugar is distilled and the evaporated alcohol is captured, it is transferred to large mixing tanks, and eventually pumped to the bottling line for filling, labeling and capping.

The end result is the rum that will always give you the best drink in Hawaii because it is made from pure, natural ingredients while supporting the environment and community and producing an artisan product that shows the focus and concern they put into it.

I love to explore natural, local foods and the farmers who are doing it correctly.  But, production of local ingredients doesn’t always have to mean food.  In this case, I’ve witnessed the best rum in Hawaii being made the same way any other locally sourced food product is.

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An Organic Beef Tour in Maui

Organic beef tastes nothing like the Styrofoam tray grocery store beef.  Humanely cared for, naturally fed animals give you beef that is healthier than Salmon!  Today, I’ll tour the Maui Cattle Company where they do it right.

An old pineapple processing plant now houses the operations of the Maui Cattle Company where they have a respect and passion for every element that goes into supplying the best grass fed beef to the state of Hawaii.

My tour guide is Tweety, the production manager.  As we enter the first large aging room, there are bulky sides of beef hanging from ceiling hooks.  It’s one entire cow, in 4 pieces, Tweety explains to me.  However, they don’t look like other primal cuts I’ve seen before.

The animals that come to Maui Cattle Company average about 500 pounds.  That’s quite small compared to the mainland feed-lots.  Cattle that are fed heavy carbohydrates and corn can grow to 800 pounds faster than a grass-fed animal can reach 500 pounds.

However, organic beef and grass fed beef cannot be compared to feed lot beef strictly on size.  It’s a matter of quality versus quantity.   I’d rather have six ounces of the most flavorful, healthy beef than a pound of bland mooing corn.

The carcasses I’m inspecting with Tweety have been aged 12 days to this point, kept at a constant temperature to tenderize the meat.  As a matter of fact, this company grades every carcass individually and performs a tension test on the meat to assure it’s the most tender.  If it doesn’t meet their standards, it doesn’t sell.

The processing room at Maui Cattle Company looks like many kitchens I’ve seen in the past, but not a meat cutting plant.  Here, there are no huge pieces of equipment.  There are just four skilled craftsmen and their knives, hand cutting each and every steak to be vacuum packed and shipped for sale.

Tweety explains how proud he is of the cleanliness of this operation.  They are fanatical about assuring the quality of the product they so lovingly provide.  The vacuum packaging helps with this cause as well.  Because, if there ever were any bacterial contaminants, the gasses they give off will slightly inflate the packaging.  This is an immediate sign that something is wrong.  Luckily, it rarely happens here.

Just before shaking hands and bidding good bye to Tweety, he feels he must explain to me how well they treat their animals.  The local cattle are lovingly raised and live a stress free life full of nutritious grasses and natural feed.  Being raised naturally, they are not subjected to the loads of steroids and antibiotics fed to animals that are not eating a native diet.  Corn-fed animals can lead a sickly, stressful life.  As Tweety says about his animals, “There’s only one bad day, they live very well otherwise.”

Organic beef at the Maui Cattle Company is raised naturally, treated humanely, and results in a beef product that has a better Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio than salmon.  I’m so glad to have spent the afternoon here, witnessing the pinnacle of wholesome and natural beef production.

If you’d like to know even more about organic beef, I speak with a nationally renowned expert, John Wood of US Wellness meats.  I’ll ask him why grass fed beef makes the best steaks for grilling. 

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