The Tools!

You must realize by now a kitchen must have some essential tools to be functional. Of course there are many extras out there that make life in the kitchen easier. I don’t think I know a single well-used kitchen that doesn’t have a draw filled with those implements that get used once in a while for a special job.

Buying gadgets is part of the fun (or frustration when they don’t work) of being in the kitchen. But, the best advice I can give you is put your money in better quality basic tools and develop your kitchen skills. The gadgets are designed to make your life easer, but many times the setup and clean up of these gadgets take longer than the job they were designed to do! You won’t find very many of them in a commercial kitchen.

The final decision is always yours, buy what your comfortable with!

So, here goes!

Knives
The major implement of the kitchen, nothing much happens without them. Buy the best you can afford and keep them sharp.

Chef's knife, 8 or 10-inches (I use this for everything)

Paring knife, 3 or 4 inches (for trimming vegetables and other small jobs)

Serrated knife (must-have for soft foods such as bread and tomatoes)

You can get by with just these knives, but remember quality is the key!

Ok, on to the extras or “going for broke”

Utility knife, 6-inches (like a small chef's knife)

Slicing knife, 12-inches (for carving roasts)

Flexible boning knife (if you cook a lot and plan to bone your own meat, if you fish you probably know all about this knife.)

Cleaver, used for heavy-duty cutting up poultry or chopping.

A sharpener or stone and a steel to keep the knives sharp.

I use a stone to hone my knives, but there are many good manual or power sharpeners on the market (look for a 5 star rating.) A “steel” is used to touch up the edge of the knife between sharpenings and remove the burr after a sharpening. A few swipes are all that is necessary, remember a steel will not sharpen a dull blade!

Next, Pots and Pans!
If you’re going to cook you need them.

Look for comfortable heat resistant handles that don’t rotate easily in your hand.

Try to go for stainless steel with clad bottoms.

2 saucepans of different sizes, such as a 1-quart and a 2-quart, if you live alone or your family is small, or a 2-quart and a 4-quart, if you have a larger family or like to do a lot of cooking. Make sure both have tight-fitting lids.

2 skillets of different sizes, such as 8 and 12-inch. While I still prefer stainless here, I also use heavy, nonstick ones too. Keep in mind with nonstick, NO METAL IMPLIMENTS PLEASE, it scratches the surface and you get an unexpected ingredient in your food and will ruin your skillet.

Roasting pan with rack.

A stockpot (not aluminum)

Ridged grill pan, nice to have when you don’t want to bother with the BBQ.

Dutch oven with tight-fitting lid.

Appliances:

Food processor (the basic power tool of the kitchen, available with many useful attachments.)

Electric mixer (you can get by with a hand held, but if you want to bake a lot, spend the money and get a Kitchenaid heavy-duty one, which will last the rest of your life)

Blender used for liquids and the occasional cocktail.

Spice/coffee grinder or mini-food processor Not essential, but highly useful


The Small Stuff:

Colander (plastic ones can be used to simultaneously cook and drain grease from ground beef in the microwave)

Cutting boards (keep one only for meat and chicken) Go for the plastic ones, they may not be as pretty as wood, but are a lot easier to keep clean.

Pepper mill, fresh ground pepper always has a better flavor then the pre-ground variety.

Four-sided hand grater

Meat thermometer (digital instant-read ones are easiest to see inside an oven)

Tongs

Kitchen timer

2 liquid measuring cups in different sizes, such as a 1-cup measure and a 2-cup measure

Set of dry measuring cups

Measuring spoons

Potato/Vegetable peeler

Bottle opener/cork screw

Can opener

Whisks

Large and small sieves

Rubber and metal spatulas

Wooden spoons

Large metal spoons (plain and slotted)

Rolling pin

Steaming rack

Kitchen shears

Optional, but some people can't live without:

Mandoline Slicer (these run all over in price the less expensive ones work fine, invest in an expensive one if you find yourself using it all the time.) Watch your fingers!

Salad spinner

Garlic press

Pastry brushes

Pastry Scraper great for gathering chopped items and lifting them to put in pan or pot

Sifter

Funnel

Pizza wheel

Bakeware, yes we’ll get to baking

Pie pan of glass, pottery or dark metal (9 1/2 inches is a good all-purpose size)

2 baking sheets (nonstick is good)

1 muffin pan

Loaf pan (get the larger size, 9 by 5 inches)

9-by-13-inch baking pan

Wire cooling racks

Nice extras for making dessert and fancier things:

Bundt pan

Two 8 or 9-inch round cake pans

Two 8 or 9-inch square cake pans

Springform pan

Tart pan with removable bottom

Souffle dish

Well, that’s it! This list is not a complete list, but it will let you make almost anything. And, you won’t find much in the way of gadgets, although at one time many were considered gadgets.

J

Ok, time to put some of these tools to use!

Judy’s Homemade Tomato Sauce with Pasta

Ok, before I bore you to death with all these details. How about a recipe? I know we haven’t covered everything you need in a kitchen, but you can review the recipe and get what you need or save it for later.


Let me just say; “There is no substitute for homemade Italian tomato sauce.”

This is one of my favorites and as recipes go this one is a moving target. There are just so many thing you can add and proportions that can be changed and its always good!

Believe me on this one: any professional chef worth his salt, will never use canned tomato sauce when there’s time and ingredients to make a fresh homemade one. Now, that’s not to say you can’t use canned tomatoes for the base. In fact that is the smart thing to do, especially considering the fact tomatoes canned at their peak of flavorful are far superior to fresh ones that have been picked green to ripen in shipping and arrive with the usual bruising!

It's the tomatoes combined with the other ingredients that make homemade tomato sauce so awesome. You can add capers and sliced ripe olives. You can add intensely flavored herbs like rosemary, Italian parsley and basil. Yum!

You can even add brandy (I do it all the time) or vodka and all Italians know red wine is pretty good in this tomato sauce. Give it a final boost with a teaspoon or 2 of fresh lemon juice and 3-4 tablespoons brandy. Sh…! I could go on forever! Ok, here's the recipe:

Judy’s Homemade Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (Yes you’ll need a chef’s knife and try not to cry.)
3-5 cloves garlic, crushed with flat of knife and sliced thinly
1/2 to 1 cup diced, fresh basil. (It's your call. I usually use 1/2 cup and add more to taste)
1/2 cup red wine. (Good enough to drink, there’ll be some left over and you’ll want to have that with the meal)
1 T turbinado (raw) sugar (or Splenda) (You can also substitute a grated carrot or a ¼ cup of chopped raisins.)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (there’s that taste again)
1 28 oz. can crushed or diced tomatoes.
1 t lemon juice (optional)
3 T brandy (optional)
1 lb.-1 pkg. spaghetti or pasta of your choice

Preparation:
Fill a large pot 2/3 with water and place on high heat. Add salt to the water, it should have a slightly salty taste.

In a large sauté pan sauté onions in olive oil over low heat, covered, for 10-12 minutes.

Add garlic and basil, re-cover, for another 5 minutes or so.

Uncover and add wine. Reduce by about half.

Add tomatoes, salt and pepper, and simmer for 15 minutes. You can reduce the sauce further and intensify the flavor.

Add pasta to boiling water and stir gently. Set timer to shortest time in package directions.

I like to add the brandy and lemon juice about 3-4 minutes before finishing.

If you want to turn this sauce into Neapolitan Sauce, add 10-12 sliced ripe olives, and 1 1/2 T capers just before finishing.

Fresh Italian Parsley can be added at the end if you like it.

Drain the pasta in a strainer (yes, buy a large one first, you can get smaller ones later.) DO NOT add oil or rinse the pasta. The starch on the surface of the pasta helps the sauce to cling to it, giving it a full flavor.

Place a portion of pasta on dish and add sauce to taste! That’s it!

Freeze any sauce you have left over in a plastic container. You can thaw it out in the microwave or in warm water in no time. Leftover pasta? Place it in a zip lock plastic bag and freeze it. To use it just thaw it in warm water and your ready to go! Restaurant chefs do it all the time. Why not you?

Here a great tip! Double the recipe and freeze it in batches. That way if you have to eat on the go, just heat and eat! It will beat fast food every time!

J

How to boil water?

I know it sounds simple enough, but it’s the first stumbling block in cooking.

Ok, it is simple; fill a pot part way with water, leaving some room so the water doesn’t boil over the sides. Put it on the stove turn on the burner as high as it will go.

How do you know when it's boiling? You’ll see big bubbles rising from the bottom of the pot. Not those little pinhead sized bubbles, that’s just an indication that boiling is near. A “rolling boil” is when the water is bubbling a lot at the sides of the pot.

Let me add some advice to make thing run a little smoother.

ALWAYS turn the handles on pots to the side! No one needs to be scalded with hot water!

Put the water on when you first start to prepare the food. That way it will be boiling when you’re ready to use it. (Watch it if you must, it won’t boil any faster or slower, it will just seem longer!)

Always add some salt to the water when cooking a starch (pasta, potatoes etc.) It helps to subtly season the food and speed up the boiling. Actually, I use salt in my water all the time, except when I'm heating something.

If you’re on a low sodium (salt) diet leave the salt out. It's not the same, but you can always ad a salt substitute when you sit down to eat.

Then there's the on going question: “Which is better gas or electric?” the answer is they both work fine and if you timed them there is very little difference in how long it takes to boil water. However, in a commercial kitchen gas is king, the reason is everything is prepared at much higher temperatures. More important in a home kitchen is matching the size of the burner to the size of the pot. Put a small pot on the small burner and a big pot on a big burner. The idea is to localize the intensity heat under the pot.

Volume matters, the more water you put on to boil the longer it takes. So, try and match the amount of water to the task.

Please! Add ingredients to boiling water slowly and carefully! You don’t want the boiling water to splash and burn you!

Ok, read the directions on the packages and set a timer to the shortest amount of time. Remember you can always cook something longer if it’s undercooked, but once it’s overcooked you can only start over. See tasting below for help on this.

Keep in mind after you put anything into boiling water, the bubbles will stop, temporarily. Most recipes call for a "return to the boil." This means leave it on high heat until the big bubbles reappear. At this point, you can usually turn the heat to low (you know those marking on the dial on the front of the stove) to maintain a slow boil or simmer, which is small, bubbles around the edge of the pan. A lazy boil is when one larger bubble plops to the surface just occasionally. (Be aware that tomato sauce really can make a mess! A cooking screen can help control this.)

TASTING! Cooking is all about taste! TASTE means just that. Use a spoon (always clean, please) and taste the food, if its hot blow on it to cool it off a little (I can’t tell you, as a kid, how many times I saw mom do this and of course I always got to sample too. It was a great way to learn how thing should taste.) Add a little bit of whatever seasoning you feel is needed. Just a little, you can always add more, but you can’t take it out! Salt should not make your food taste salty; it should intensify the natural flavors of the food. What you're looking for here is flavor that's rounded, not flat. You have to taste the food to figure this one out for yourself (that "mom experience" is real helpful here.)

Just remember it all gets easer with experience.

J

Welcome to Cooking With Judy a post-by-post learn to cook blog.

So, why a cooking blog? Well, I just love to cook! I’ve enjoyed cooking since my mother first sat me down at the kitchen table and explained the basics to me. Later it was home economics classes in school (Hmmm! I don’t seem to hear much of those classes anymore.) Still later it was the CIA, no not what you think, no mystery involved, this CIA is the Culinary Institute of America and yes I’m a chef.

Now, why should you learn to cook?

After living on fast food and takeout and eating in restaurants, you may have come to realized there’s a better way. Or maybe you'd like to feed the kids better. How about entertaining or just learn this skill. Remember once you learn to cook all the compliments are yours!

So hang in there and you’ll be sautéing and broiling in no time. Well, maybe not, I’ll give you the information and you decide what parts you want to use.

J