At a wine festival in Maryland many years ago, the vineyard representative said something that’s stayed with me for decades. This wasn’t just a representative of the winery, it was the family owner and winemaker himself! It remains my favorite winery, not just because of the fantastic wines and champagnes they create, but also for this one gem of advice.

“If it’s good to YOU, it’s good.” said the winemaker with a shrug. “Don’t let anyone else tell you what YOU think is good.”

I believe in healthy eating through purchasing the freshest, local ingredients and cooking in a simple method. To me, the best food is food that makes me feel good afterward. “Good” to me is energized, not lazy. Satiated but not full. My mouth is full of flavor, not fat. I’ve created a flavorful meal using fresh ingredients and basic cooking methods.

However….there are times when “good” is the heart-felt warmth that foods from your cultural heritage or childhood bring you. There’s certainly a recipe that your grandmother “never follows” to arrive at a meal only decades of practice could create. That’s your culinary heritage.

I found part of my culinary heritage at the Polish Festival in Riverhead, N.Y. It’s the 36th year for the street, arts, food, and polka festival that supports many community charities.

Pierogies (or Pierogi) are the Slavic answer to ravioli. Every culture the world-over has an item where unleavened dough is stuffed with fillings. Beside raviolis, Indians have samosas, Spanish have empanadas, Chinese have wontons, Japanese have dumplings.

The Pierogi is like a big ravioli, most often filled with mashed potatoes, sauteed onions, and grated cheese. However, they’re also stuffed with cabbage or ground meats, and can be an inspiration for anything you create in your kitchen.

Explore your culinary cultural heritage. What items did grandma make “from the old country” that you can incorporate into your diet and pass the heritage to your children? Perhaps you can update some of those family recipes to include healthier ingredients and simple cooking methods so all generations are happy!

I’m interested in your family’s cultural meals. Please comment below and share with everyone.

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The Fairway Market in New York City calls itself “a market like no other”. That’s quite a bold claim for what I thought was simply an organic supermarket. Boy, was I wrong! Once I went inside, a new world of food was revealed, all in the busiest city in the world, New York.

The most nutritious food are those grown locally, within 50 miles of where you live, and cooked in a simple manner that retains those nutrients. However, finding the freshest ingredients, or your local farmers market can mean a greater effort on your part. You may have to drive past a few mega-grocery stores to arrive at the freshest ingredients. The effect on your health and nutrition will be worth the trip!

Even in New York City, a “concrete jungle”, you can find fresh, local ingredients. The Fairway Market in New York has a beautiful outdoor display of fruits and vegetables, all clearly marked as to country of origin, along with description of the items. This can be very helpful in choosing your own ingredients for the healthiest cooking.

Once we venture inside the market, it becomes obvious why they call themselves “a market like no other”. Along with the amazing variety of every type of fruit and vegetable, dry cured fish and meats, a full bakery, sushi, and authentic Cheese Mongers, there is a sense of pride in the food they present and sell. Everything is displayed with such respect for the food, just like I experienced in Paris. It was very easy to eat healthy food in Paris, it was everywhere!

When you have access to the freshest local ingredients and you cook them with a simple method, you create easy healthy recipes that fit your desires. Since I think learning to cook is the easy part, then actually finding the locally grown ingredients is the difficult part. I demonstrated how easy it is to cook easy healthy recipes in a previous blog post.

The combination of basic cooking methods and the most flavorful ingredients, like those found at the Fairway Market in New York, will always yield the best meals that you create yourself.

Have the ultimate power over food by learning to cook with the freshest ingredients.
Chef Todd Mohr’s “Complete Fresh Approach to Cooking”.

A grilling marinade is a very simple way to add flavor and moisture to grilled items. If you follow these basic rules, you’ll be able to create a long list of unique combinations of ingredients and invent your own grilling marinade.

Any grilling marinade will be made of three basic ingredients; Oils, Acids, and Seasonings. These three categories are the beginning of a grilling recipe that you create. Oils will not penetrate meat, they’ll simply coat the surface. This is why I usually don’t include oil in my grilling marinades unless I choose a highly flavored oil like walnut or sesame oil. However, many of the most flavorful oils have lower temperature “smoke points”, not the best choice for the grill, so I omit oil altogether.

Acids and seasonings will dictate the flavor of your grilling marinade. Acids are used because of their ability to tenderize items. This is largely overstated, though. Acids have a SLIGHT tenderizing effect, but not enough to make a big difference in your grilling marinade. The acids most effective at tenderizing tough cuts of meat are from tropical fruits like mango and papaya, but most often tomato products, vinegar, wine, or soy sauce are used.

Choosing the right cut of meat to marinate is the most important step. A cup of ketchup in a marinade will not make a tough cut of meat magically tender. Don’t expect your grilling marinade to turn tough beef into filet mignon, it won’t happen. Acids will break down connective tissues, but it’s the intense direct heat of the barbeque grill that will toughen and dry meats quickly. That’s why it’s important to choose a tender cut of meat to grill, because the cooking method of grilling won’t tenderize your item, regardless of which grilling marinade you choose.

The general rules of marinating are easy:
1) Longer = Stronger. The longer you marinate something, the stronger the flavor
2) Thicker = Longer. The thicker the product, the longer you’ll need to marinate it.
3) Tender = Shorter. A tender product will not need to be marinated as long.
4) Cooler = Cooler. ALWAYS marinate under refrigeration to keep bacteria growth down.
5) Acid resistant container = No Brainer. ALWAYS marinate in plastic or glass, never in copper or reactive metals.

A grilling marinade is perfectly matched for a dry cooking process like grilling. The marinade will add flavor and moisture for the quick, intense heat of the barbeque grill. You can create your own complex flavors of oils, acids and seasonings and invent the latest grilling marinade. A Grilling Rub is also considered a marinade, but made of dry instead of wet ingredients.

How do you feel about adding oil to a marinade? For it or against it? Leave your comment below.

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Creating your own grilling rub is a great way to add unique flavor to meals, regardless of the cooking method you choose, or your cooking skill level.

Healthy cooking recipes call for less fats and salts. Many commercially available seasoning mixes for the grill contain a large proportion of salt. Salt is inexpensive and heavy. It’s easy for a manufacturer to weigh-down and thin-out a pre-made grill seasoning mix with salt.

Why pay someone else to mix your spices for you? A few simple combinations of dry seasonings can have you creating your own grilling rub without the addition of salt and fillers.

Start by reviewing your spice rack and arranging spices into “ethnicities”. Simply smell each spice and think what it reminds you of. For example, oregano and basil will certainly remind you of Italian food or tomato sauce. You can create an Italian grilling rub with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, and basil.

You can now create an endless number of unique dry seasoning combinations. Curry powder, turmeric, celery seed and onion powder will remind you of Indian food, and can add this particular flavor profile to your seasoned ingredient. Cumin, coriander, thyme, and chipotle pepper will combine for a Mexican or Latin-American flavor.

Always apply your grilling rub to a DRY product. Your steak or chicken breast should be totally dry before applying the seasoning. Let the item rest at least an hour to allow the seasoning to penetrate the meat.

The real advantage of this type of seasoning is that the cooking method doesn’t really matter. Once you’ve created your favorite dry seasoning mix, you can apply it to something sautéed, grilled, roasted, or even braised!

You can add great flavors to any healthy cooking recipe with a grilling rub. It will give you pronounced flavor without having to add fats and salts to your diet.

Do you have a combination of dry seasonings that always produces amazing results? If it’s not a generational family secret, please share it with a comment below:

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Michael Pollan is the author of four best selling books that examine our culture of food in the United States. He’s my hero. He’s been able to identify the growing problems with our industrial food system, but more importantly, masterfully communicate these ideas to everyone that’s not a food scientist. And he says “learn to cook and YOU hold the power over food”.

Michael Pollan was on Oprah in January of this year. I’m generally not able to watch Oprah during the day, but when I saw the author of “In Defense of Food“, “Omnivores Dilema“, and “Food Rules” on the flat-screen at the gym, I stopped my workout and watched.

During the first segment that wasn’t included in the edited video, Mr. Pollan shares a list of the food rules from his latest book. They seem less like rules and more like wise adages of shockingly common sense. But, he ends the first segment with serious advice, “learning to cook is one of the most important skills to have because then YOU have the power over what food you choose and who cooks it. Corporations are terrible at making food“, says Pollan. Corporate packaged foods can contain compounds to increase shelf life, retain color, and improve profits.

There are simple rules or guidelines that you can use to change our entire food system. “Vote with your fork”, Michael says, “you get three votes a day. Where else do you get three votes each day?” He’s referring to the financial motivation of all food companies. If you don’t buy it, they’ll stop making it.

Some examples of his simple rules:
1. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad.
4. Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food,” Pollan says.
5. Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.

Michael’s new book is called “Food Rules”, and outlines 64 adages to keep good eating in your consciousness.
#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
#36 Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
#39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
#47 Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
#58 Do all your eating at a table.

Seeing Michael Pollan on Oprah boosted my resolve in bringing basic cooking methods to the world. You’ll improve your health and nutrition, reunite your family over dinner, entertain and be more social, eat a wider variety of foods, and enjoy a life-long skill when you learn to cook, as Michael Pollan advises.

Don’t ever refrigerate corn on the cob. Under cold temperatures, sugar in the corn will turn to starches, robbing you of the sweet flavor of fresh corn on the cob. You may think that your corn is still fresh because it’s only been in the refrigerator for 24 hours, but this is enough time to make a cob from the field taste two weeks old.

Steaming is always better than boiling. If you submerge corn on the cob into a big pot of boiling water, you’ll have water that tastes like corn and corn that tastes like water. Rather than direct contact with the hot liquid where your fresh corn on the cob can lose flavor, add only a small amount of liquid to your stock pot. With a steamer basket or round wire rack, be sure the corn is suspended ABOVE the simmering liquid. To assure the steam cooks evenly, I often stand the ears of corn on end.

Your steamed corn on the cob is finished when it squirts. After a few minutes in the steam bath, I check for doneness by trying to burst one of the kernels on the corn. If the outer skin on the kernel is soft enough, and the inside cooked properly, it will burst with slight pressure from a finger.

This is my favorite way to approach corn on the cob and know how to cook it right. While this is not the only way, I feel it’s easier than cooking the corn while still in the husks, or wasting a whole bunch of tin foil wrapping each ear. If you want to cook corn on the cob and retain all the flavor and nutrients, a steaming method is the way to cook it right.

Do you cook your corn with the husks still on? Do you prefer to clean and steam the corn like me? Let’s see which way is more popular by leaving a comment below:

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The low idle of your engine with the faint smell of an Aussie barbeque from the tailpipe would answer any question whether gulf seafood is safe to eat.

Before April 20th, I could have never fathomed a fathoms-deep gusher. It made me immediately wonder if I’d ever eat another crawfish. I’d have nightmares of having to explain to children what a blue crab was and why they were so good.

Nightmares seem so real, they remain with you. But the inflated images are impeached in the light of day. They’re just not real. It didn’t really happen, but you feel like it did, like you saw it on TV.

I watched the brown cloud cover my beloved shrimp, crabs, fish and seafood for 100 days this summer. The visions remain in my head that seafood must be tainted forever because of this disaster.

But, nothing has shown this to be true. Louisiana continues to open more areas to finfish, and will allow shrimp harvesting when the season begins in mid August. The State of Louisiana has been testing fish tissue samples since May and has found no public health threat.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said the government is “confident all appropriate steps have been taken to ensure that seafood harvested from the waters being opened is safe and that Gulf seafood lovers everywhere can be confident eating and enjoying the fish and shrimp that will be coming out of this area.”

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is calling on BP to fund a seafood testing and certification program over the next 20 years. “This will be the most monitored, safest seafood you will get anywhere in the world,” Jindal said.

The best seafood test for government inspectors, as well as for you, is smell. Fish, mollusks, crustaceans should have a clean salty smell, like the ocean. Seafood exposed to oil will smell like petroleum. Petroleum smell is not subtle.

A chef friend recently told me of a customer who returned his fish entrée because it “smelled like oil”. His fresh-water catfish was farm-raised in North Carolina. Here-in lies the problem, hysteria and mistaken beliefs.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, is the believed cancer causing agent in oil. It’s also found in many foods, such as corn oil, kale and smoked meats.

In studying the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Federal Scientists found that the method in which Alaskan villagers were smoking fish created PAH levels hundreds of times higher than shellfish directly tainted by oil. They also point to the fact that unlike Mercury, the most common cancer-causing compounds in oil are quickly metabolized and eliminated in the bodies of finfish and some crustaceans.

It’s easy to be irrational. Mark Twain said, “I’ve had many problems in my life, most of which never happened”. While more people die in car crashes, fear of flying is most prevalent. Eating a fish from Louisiana won’t be what kills you. There are dozens of inherent carcinogenic elements to our urban lives that we ignore. Oily fish on TV is easy to get upset about, even if it never happens.

The challenge approaching us quickly is not the safety of gulf seafood, but the supply. Louisiana fishermen remain uncertain about the safety of their own seafood as long as more lucrative BP clean-up jobs are available. The oil giant is currently employing 13,000 fishermen in the effort. How many are left to actually catch fish?

If you’re taken to hysterics or love irrational thought, then avoid seafood altogether. But remember there are thousands of people whose income and source of pride is providing, distributing, processing, and preparing seafood items. Chefs like me, managers of restaurants, fish markets and suppliers have no advantage in selling bad seafood. To date, there’s been no tainted seafood detected by anyone.

For me, I’m eating New Orleans, Mississippi, and Gulf seafood. I trust they ARE safe. I trust everyone in the chain from fisherman to fish monger. I’m glad my car will never run on unleaded shrimp, and I can show children an actual crawfish, while enjoying the summer time flavors and health benefits of fresh seafood.

When you’re cooking brown rice, does it come out mushy or lumpy? When you follow the brown rice instructions, do you get inconsistent results? Despite what everyone on the internet says, there is more than one way to achieve firm but fluffy results when cooking brown rice.

All the brown rice instructions on the internet will say their method is the best. Ultimately, it’s up to your own tastes and desires how you like your grains cooked. A perfect method for one person may be unacceptable to another. Understanding HOW the rice cooks will lead you to the results that fit your tastes. This is one of the 7 Skills Chefs Use to Cook Food Consistently.

Brown rice differs from white rice in that it’s less refined. The outer skin or “bran” is left on. It’s like a scuba suit for the rice, making it harder for water to enter. Thus, you must find a way to crack that outer layer, or unzip the scuba suit.

Cooking brown rice will generally take you in one of two directions. Either bring the liquid AND the rice together to a boil, OR boil the water first and THEN add the rice. What’s the difference?

The science of cooking behind rice is “gelatinization of starches”. At 150F (65c), starches will begin to absorb liquids and swell. This is how sauces are thickened, and why the water disappears and the rice gets bigger under cooking.

Different rices have different starch contents. Sushi rice is very sticky. Jasmine rice is very fluffy. Once the bran is cracked on brown rice, the starches gelatinize and make them stick together in lumps.

You can avoid lumpy rice by adding acids or fats in the cooking. Whether you choose to boil your liquid separately from the rice, or together, you can inhibit gelatinization and stick-factor.

If you coat the grains in fat, as in making Risotto, they won’t be as sticky. Try a simple sauté method with butter before adding hot liquid. Acids like rice wine vinegar are often added to sushi rice to reduce sticking and add flavor.

When you’re cooking brown rice, you have the options and the power. Experiment with different methods and decide which is best for your tastes. Brown rice instructions can’t always tell what is unique about your kitchen and cooking style. Your tastes should be reflected when cooking brown rice.

Which method works best for you? Or have you invented a new way of cooking brown rice? Share your new ideas with everyone by commenting below:

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When I go clam digging and I am as successful as I was on this particular trip, my favorite clam recipe to cook is baked stuffed clams. Today, I’m going to share how I create this fantastic dish!

Knife Skills
First and foremost, all of the clams need to be cut into small, yet uniformly sized pieces. While you are chopping the clams, it’s good to keep a watchful eye out for pieces of shell. You may also feel these unwanted pieces with your hands.

Into the Pan
Calling on your knowledge of basic sauté method is what you’ll need to do next starting with melting butter into your pan. For the best baked stuffed clams, make sure that you control the heat so your melted butter isn’t allowed to brown in the pan. Once melted, add your chopped clams.

After a few moments, the clams you brought home from your clam digging expedition will release much of the moisture that they have and begin to poach in their own liquid. Watch your temperature to ensure that the clams don’t boil or simmer, but continue to poach.

The Thickener
Add enough Panko bread crumbs to soak up some of the liquid as well as a heaping mound of Parmesan cheese. Stir all of the ingredients together and taste it to ensure that you have the correct seasoning in place. Now, your clam recipe is starting to take form!

Seasoning
I like to add basil and oregano, but it doesn’t mean that you have to. Make sure that you season your clams to your sense of taste. After the seasoning is just right, I like to add a large quantity of fresh chopped parsley to give it a fresh aromatic flavor.

The Half Shell
Set up some half shells on a sheet pan for your baked stuffed clams and use a portion scoop to get the same quantity of clam mixture out of your bowl and into the clam shells. Using a portion scoop will ensure that your clam recipe cooks consistently for each clam shell.

Percentages
From my clam digging adventure, I ended up using 120 raw clams for my clam recipe which yielded a total of 40 baked stuffed clams. That’s 3 whole clams for each baked clam.

The next time you go clam digging, remember that the most flavorful dishes that you cook are made from the freshest ingredients and the simplest cooking methods. I hope that your clam recipe for baked stuffed clams turns out just as flavorful as mine.

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One of my favorite clam recipes is baked stuffed clams. But, to get the freshest clams, you have to go clam digging first, and then you need to open the 300 clams that you dug up.

Heading out in a small boat to find a secluded low-tide spot that no one else knows about and spend the afternoon clam digging is a fond childhood memory of mine. I grew up on Long Island, NY and as a kid, I could walk along the shore, dig my toes into the sand and find clams to bring home.

I decided to revisit this childhood memory. It’s a beautiful day. I’ve even brought my dogs, who want to get into the act, even if they think clam digging is a game to find very hard tennis balls.

Once we’ve collected all our clams, my head begins to swim with clam recipes. In the end, I know that one of the recipes I will have to cook is baked stuffed clams as it’s my absolute favorite. However, to even start making baked stuffed clams, the fresh clams need to be opened.

There is a specific technique to opening fresh clams and a certain tool to be able to do it correctly and safely. First, it’s wise to wear gloves, because the clam shells can be sharp, but also because the knife can slip under the pressure you exert to open them and you can easily cut yourself.

The key to opening fresh clams is not to cut through the belly of the clam as this makes the clam unappetizing for clam recipes. The proper technique is to cut the two muscles on either side of the shell to expose the clam meat in tact.

Clam digging is done, 300 clams are opened, baked stuffed clams are a must…but there are so many more clam recipes to choose from!

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