Cook Like a Rock Star - Anne Burrell [8]
BTB, RTS
Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer. To reduce to a simmer you must first bring your pot to a boil—you can never turn the heat down if it hasn’t gone up!
CINCHY
Easy.
CRUD
The delicious brown bits on the bottom of the pan that help develop deep, rich, meaty flavors.
DIPPER
A dipping sauce.
EQUATORIALLY
Through the middle widthwise, like the equator!
FORK-TENDER
When something can easily be pierced with a fork and meets no resistance; how you know it’s fully cooked.
HOMOGENEOUS
When things are uniformly combined.
LARDONS
Sliced bacon cut crosswise into ¼-inch lengths.
MISE EN PLACE
French for “put in place.” Means getting all your prep work done BEFORE you start cooking.
PICCOLINI
My teeny, tiny small plates; super-yummy, bite-size nibbles. Kind of like Italian tapas.
POC
Piece of cake, totally easy.
QC
Quality control, tasting to make sure everything is delicious.
Q&E
Quick & easy, the way we like to roll!
SAUTÉ
A quick cooking method in a “sauté pan” over high heat with a small amount of oil.
SHOOTIN’ MATCH
The whole thing, whatever it is.
SOFFRITTO
A combination of veggies (usually onions, carrot, celery, and garlic) puréed to a coarse paste in a food processor. The base for braised things.
SPRINKEY-DINK
A little sprinkle.
SUPER-SECRET FLAVOR WEAPON
An ingredient that adds amazing flavor to a dish.
SWEATING
To sauté without adding any color (e.g., cook onions until they’re translucent but not brown—guess what? You’re sweating!).
TECHNIQUE
An approach or a method, not a specific recipe (e.g., sauté).
Thinking ahead, taking your mise en place seriously, streamlining the process, being organized, and multitasking: These are some of the most important things you need to know—and keep in mind—to be a good home cook. It’s a process. Of course you’re going to screw up sometimes; all cooks do (and if they tell you they don’t, they’re lying). But you learn a lot from your mistakes. You learn what not to do and how to prevent it next time. You may even figure out how to fix it! Once you start to think about all this as you cook, you’ll be thinking like a chef—then you’ll start feeling like a chef. The next thing you know, you’ll cook like a chef. Remember, YOU are the chef of your own kitchen! Way to go, rock star!!!
See my playlist for rockin’ out in the kitchen.
I love to graze, to nibble on what I call “picky” food: itty-bitty morsels made up of different flavors and textures, delicious bite-size snacks in cute servings. That’s why I created what I call “piccolini.” In Italian, piccolini means teeny, tiny—which perfectly describes my style of lovely little bites. My piccolini are small plates to be eaten with a big glass of wine (or two!) as an intro to dinner. Think of them as Italian tapas.
I started making piccolini seriously when I was the chef at Centro Vinoteca in New York City because I wanted to share a special tradition with my customers. These days, many of our families are made up of people we’re not related to at all—friends who support us, care about us, and are there whenever we need them. My surrogate family is a group of friends I couldn’t live without—most important, Jim and Deacon. We help each other through work crises and personal dramas, we get together to celebrate the good times—and of course we spend a lot of time just laughing. For years, every Friday night our little group would meet up, sometimes pretty late, for what we called our “family dinners.”
Just like a family get-together, we’d meet at a restaurant to eat, drink, catch up on the week, and find out what was going on in everyone’s lives. We’d always have a lot of wine and then suddenly be totally starving, at which point we’d say to the waiter, “Three orders of croquettes—STAT!” Within minutes, three plates would arrive: gorgeous little fried bites, tasty snacks that were far yummier than diving into the breadbasket and that got us excited for dinner, more wine, and, of course, more gossip and laughter.
These family dinners