A couple of weeks ago I observed, briefly, the first anniversary of becoming the lone adult in my household. It’s still a painful memory, but that event was the impetus for my cooking journey, and in marking it I realized that over the past year I’ve made some real progress in my new role in the kitchen. They’ve all been baby steps, but even baby steps get you somewhere eventually, right?

At first I worked in the kitchen as my husband had left it and did things the way he’d done them. But as I was pressed into regular service I started making discoveries about how I do things, and how I wanted my kitchen to work. Then I found, when I mentioned some of my techniques and timesavers to others, that no, not everyone had thought of that, and a number of people said they’d be adopting some of my ideas as their own.

So, although it seems a little absurd to me, the until-recently non-cook, here are some of the kitchen ideas and observations that have helped me get through the past year, offered with the hope that they might be helpful to some of you.

Prep for success: Chop, pour and measure every ingredient in your recipe before you touch a pan or turn on a burner. Some of this prep can be done hours in advance, and will pay off in a far less frantic cooking process.

Take inventory: Knowing what you already have to work with can save you time and money. If you no longer remember what all is in your freezer or pantry, take a few minutes to sort through, then make a list of what you find. I keep my list on the freezer door, and update it as I use or add items. You might be surprised by the number of complete meals you can put together with groceries you’d forgotten about.

Prioritize: Decide which ingredients or dishes are worth making from scratch, and which ones modern culinary technology can provide for you. If you enjoy focusing on entrées but have no interest in salads, pick up some coleslaw at the deli or a bag of Caesar salad in the produce department. Refrigerated dough products like pie crust allow you to get straight to the fun stuff, and are even sanctioned by celeb chefs like Guy Fieri and Paula Deen.

Freeze for speed: Precook recipe components, package them as single or family-sized servings and freeze them for use later. Cooked chicken is a staple in my freezer, as is cooked rice. When packaging meat for freezing — whether cooked or uncooked — individually wrap chicken breasts, pork chops and the like before throwing them all into a large freezer bag. This keeps the pieces from freezing into a clump of more meat than you need.

Stock up: As long you’re precooking that chicken for the freezer, buy it on the bone and make chicken stock at the same time.

You can’t have too many go-to tools: If you’re constantly reaching for your tongs, have three or four pairs on hand so you don’t have to stop what you’re doing to wash your only pair. Discount stores often sell serviceable kitchen tools that are cheap enough to stock up on.

Cook on your countertop: Small countertop ovens — souped-up versions of toaster ovens — preheat quickly, can accommodate an 8-inch-by-8-inch pan and offer a variety of cooking functions including, in some cases, convection bake. These can be a real timesaver and are great for singles or small families.

Have fun: I’ve enjoyed my time in the kitchen a lot more since I stopped thinking of every meal as a life-or-death event. Stuff happens, but rarely is an entire meal ruined by one or two slip-ups. Start with a slapdash outlook, and more often than not you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Tags: Amy Campbell, Guy Fieri, Paula Deen, Slapdash Gourmet

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under Slapdash Gourmet, Star.
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The group assembled in the Canadian Club Lounge at Caesars Windsor in late May was a mix of male and female, dressed up and dressed down, young and old, but they were all buzzing, enthusiastically accepting canapés as they kept one eye on the door.

They might have been waiting for a political activist, guru or rock star, but the actual object of their anticipation was a combination of all three: Guy Fieri, the rock star chef who advocates feeding children “real food” and is a culinary guru to millions. Windsor was the third stop on Fieri’s 14-city roadshow, a mix of comedy and cooking with a rock ‘n’ roll attitude.

At the pre-show reception in the Club Lounge, the Fieri faithful weren’t shy about their devotion. Tami Whittington came to Caesars from the Toronto area and was elated at the prospect of meeting the chef. Whittington runs the restaurant for the UPS logistics campus in Burlington, Ont., and said Fieri is a staff favorite.

Guy Fieri

“This is a dream,” Whittington said. “My friend at work will never believe this. We talk about him all day long.”

Fieri didn’t disappoint when he arrived a few minutes later in the California casual T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops that have become a trademark. He charmed the crowd, moving from table to table making easy small talk. To a woman wearing sequins he stopped and said, “Did you get dressed up for my show? Look how cute you are!” Before leaving the party, Fieri autographed copies of his latest cookbook, “Guy Fieri Food,” and posed for photos with fans.

Fieri’s culinary career started in 1978 when the enterprising sixth-grader started selling soft pretzels out of a cart he and his father built; 20 years of restaurant experience and a trip to France later, he was a successful restaurateur in Santa Rosa, Calif.

But the road to the Guy Fieri Road Show began in earnest when he won Food Network’s “Next Food Network Star” in 2005, launching his first Food Network show, “Guy’s Big Bite,” followed soon after by “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.” In 2010, he made the crossover to network television as the host of NBC’s “Minute to Win It.”

The Guy Fieri Road Show takes the personality TV viewers have come to love, backs it up with DJ Cobra providing music and sound effects from a booth onstage, and gives some cooking tips in the process.

After an opening video promising, “This ain’t your mama’s cooking show,” Fieri came onstage with a squeeze bottle in each hand, squirting water high into the air before pointing out to one of his “krew” which sections should be fired on with a T-shirt cannon. Then he told his Canadian audience they were the first.

“After the first tour, we knew if we were going to do another one we wanted it to be international. And Windsor, we’ve done it here tonight!” he said, ramping up the considerable energy in the room.

The rest of the show was a runaway train of cooking and comedy, with the Caesars audience 100 percent onboard. Wearing a yellow and black chef’s coat featuring a skull and crossbones topped with a chef’s hat, Fieri delivered accounts of his childhood and his early restaurant experiences with the nuance and timing of a seasoned comedian. Recounting his first attempt at deep-frying a turkey, Fieri soon had the audience repeatedly inserting the phrase “ice cold beverage” with gusto, right on cue.

Between his onstage stories and video clips of the “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” appearances of his sous chefs, Panini Pete, Gorilla and Stretch, Fieri gave short, sometimes interactive cooking demonstrations. Pouring olive oil into a skillet, he asked audience members what they noticed about the oil as he swirled it in the pan.

“It’s slow!” one called back.

“That’s right — that means it’s not hot enough,” he said, noting that the viscosity of the oil should be more like that of water. “It should be fast in the pan,” he said, putting the skillet back on the stove. “There will be a test on this later.”

Loosely related to food was Fieri’s nod to his “Minute to Win It” fans, for which he pulled volunteers from the audience to participate in the show’s “Face the Cookie” challenge. Fieri narrated the action and the rest of the audience roared as eight fans used only their facial muscles to move two Oreos from their foreheads to their mouths.

In addition to cooking tips, Fieri gave eating tips: Eat with your children and cook with your children to teach them healthy eating habits. In 2009, Fieri helped draft California legislation establishing the second Saturday in May as “Cook With Your Kids Day,” and earlier this year established the Cooking With Kids Foundation (www.cwkfoundation.org) to encourage healthy eating habits and strengthen family relationships by working together in the kitchen.

“We’ve got to cook with our kids,” he told the Windsor audience. “We’ve got to show them where their food comes from.”

Fieri’s 2011 Road Show coincides with the release of “Guy Fieri Food,” a 400-plus-page, hardcover cookbook peppered with stories — some of them stories he tells in the show — of Fieri’s culinary adventures and antics, from pretzel cart to roadshow. But sous chef Stretch, aka Jeff Rumaner, is happy to tell one story the book humbly doesn’t: the impact Fieri and his “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” has had on the restaurant business.

“He’s done a lot for the mom-and-pop places,” Rumaner said. “He’s opened a lot of doors for a lot of people.”

Tags: Amy Campbell, Caesars Windsor, Cooking With Kids Foundation, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, Guy Fieri, Guy's Big Bite, Minute to Win It, Next Food Network Star

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Arts and Life, Food.
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