Cooking Recipes Download

[Anthony]

With the holidays coming up quickly here are some delicious featured recipes for your family that are perfect this time of year, honey baked ham recipe, how to cook a whole turkey and the perfect ratatouille recipe.

There is not one single method of cooking beans. At its most basic, you want to simmer the pot until the beans are soft. Soaking can speed up the process and vegetables or stock will make them more flavorful. It's really that simple. There's all kinds of fine tuning and variables, but basically, this is it.

Normally on a bean cooking day (which frankly is everyday at Rancho Gordo), I put the beans to soak in the morning, after rinsing in lots of cool water and checking for small debris. I cover the beans by about an inch or so of water. If you haven't soaked, don't fret. Go ahead and cook them, knowing it will take a bit longer.

Heirloom and heritage varieties don't need a lot of fussing if they are used fresh, which I'd define as within two years. You can use a ham bone, chicken stock or as I prefer, simply a few savory vegetables. A classic mirepoix is a mix of onion, celery and carrot diced fine and sauted in some kind of fat, often olive oil. A crushed clove of garlic doesn't hurt. If I'm cooking Mexican or Southwestern, I will saut just onion and garlic in mild bacon drippings or even freshly rendered lard.

Add the beans and their soaking water to a large pot. You have been told before to change the water and rinse the beans. The thinking now is that vitamins and flavor can leach out of the beans into the soaking water you are throwing down the sink. There is conflicting scientific evidence that changing the water cuts down on the gas. If you want to, do it. If it seems unnecessary, don't.

If you've soaked them, the beans will have expanded, so make sure they are covered by at least two inches of water, maybe even a bit more. Add the sauted vegetables and give a good stir. Raise your heat to medium-high and bring to a hard boil. Keep the beans at a boil for about ten to fifteen minutes. After so many years, I think this is the moment that really matters. You have to give them a good hard boil to let them know you're the boss and then reduce them to a gentle simmer, before covering. I like to see how low I can go and still get the occasional simmering bubble. Open and close the lid, or keep it ajar to help control the heat and allow evaporation. The bean broth will be superior if it's had a chance to breathe and evaporate a little.

When the beans are almost ready, the aroma will be heady. They won't smell so much like the vegetables you've cooked but the beans themselves. At this point, I'd go ahead and salt them. Go easy as it takes awhile for the beans to absorb the salt. If you want to add tomatoes or acids like lime or vinegar, wait until the beans are cooked through.

If the bean-cooking water starts to get low, always add hot water from a tea kettle. Many believe that cold water added to cooking beans will harden them. At the very least, it will make the cooking take that much longer to bring them back to a simmer. We don't recommend using hot tap water, straight from a water heater. Better to heat the tap water in a tea kettle or pan first.

So you're done! Once you've mastered this method, go ahead and try some different techniques. Your bean friends will swear by this or that method and you should take their advice, keeping in mind there are few absolutes when it comes to cooking beans, only that it's very hard work to mess up a pot of beans.

For a pot of simple baked beans, we recommend the Parsons Method. Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times, and author of How to Pick a Peach, came up with this technique: Put 1 pound of beans in a Dutch oven with 6 cups of water. Add aromatics if you like, such as garlic, onion, bay leaf, etc. Bring to a simmer on top of the stove, and simmer for 10 minutes. Cover the pot and transfer it to a 350F oven to bake until the beans are done. This can take anywhere from an hour to 2 hours, depending on the type and age of the bean. Add 1 teaspoon of salt once the beans begin to soften. Check the water level often and add more hot water as needed.

Saut half of a chopped onion in about one tablespoon of fat (oil, lard, bacon fat, etc.). Place in a crockpot along with any other aromatics you'd like (such as Mexican oregano, garlic, bay leaf), followed by beans that have been picked over and rinsed. Cover with plenty of water (about one part beans to three or four parts water). Turn the heat to "high" and give the contents a stir. Do this in the morning, and your beans should be done by the afternoon. Cooking time will be 4 to 6 hours, depending on your crockpot and the variety of beans.

First, consult the manufacturer's instructions for the exact method for your model. Place cleaned beans in the pressure cooker and cover with three or four parts water. Generally, you want to cook under pressure for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the bean, release pressure naturally, and then cook open on the stovetop for another 20 minutes to develop the broth.

Get some straight talk about beans and pressure cookers in this free, downloadable e-book written by Kathy Hester for Rancho Gordo.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Not the food, you understand, just the book itself. It resided in my mother's rack of cookbooks, an eccentric aunt to the spiral-bound Junior League collections that surrounded it, its cover spangled with an old-world pattern of rose-colored fleurs-de-lys, its pages dotted with French words and occasional line drawings depicting culinary acts beyond comprehension.

Okay, here's a confession: I had never eaten an egg before I embarked on The Julie/Julia Project. Well, only ones that were baked in a cake, or at the very least scrambled with cheese and peppers and tortilla chips and anything else I could think of that would keep them from tasting like, smelling like, or in any way resembling eggs.

I'd never been much of a quiche person. I grew up in Texas, after all, where the saying "real men don't eat quiche" is not gender-specific. But MtAoFC contains nine recipes for quiche, so quiches I made: Quiche Lorraine and Quiche aux Oignons, quiches with tomatoes and olives and anchovies and leeks. By the end of the quiches I could whip the stuff up in seconds, and my crusts turned out buttery and golden and flaky and perfect.

But Oeufs en Gele was the worst. I made the jelly by boiling cow's hooves and pigskin, which made my house smell like a tannery. I poured the jelly over some poached eggs in little molds and let them set. When I unmolded them, they were brownish, quivering cylinders, the little x of tarragon leaves I'd used to decorate them somehow macabre, like a mark on the door of a plague-ridden house.

I think a strong argument can be made that any meat-eating person ought to take the responsibility once in life for slaughtering an animal for food. But I speak from experience when I say that it's probably not necessary to chop the animal into small pieces while it's still alive.

In the recipe for Homard l'Amricaine, Julia instructed me to "split the lobsters in two lengthwise." Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Many people insist that plunging a knife through a lobster's head is absolutely the quickest and most humane way to kill it. I have to say, though, that the lobster I murdered in this way did not seem to think so. It did not think being sawed in half vertically was much fun, either. Even after I'd chopped the thing into six pieces, the claws managed to make a few final complaints about the discomforts of being sauted in hot olive oil.

It is a mysterious fact that I had never once in my entire life watched a Julia Child cooking show before the inception of the project. To me, Julia Child was always the book, plus Dan Aykroyd blithely gushing blood on Saturday Night Live.

So watching my first episode a few months ago was illuminating. I had just had a kitchen meltdown, complete with hurled cutlery and the beating of skulls on door frames. (These incidents occur, it must be said, not infrequently.)

What really made an impression on me at the time was the fact that they brought the stew out to the table uncooked, and then fired up a burner and cooked it at the table. This way we could sit and talk and watch it cook. I could get a good look at the ingredients: kimchi, onion, green onion, thinly sliced pork on top, and seasonings. There was some white granules (salt, sugar, and probably MSG) and also they used water at the broth base.

My kimchi-jjigae recipe served me well for years and years and I even made a video of it in 2007. But since then I developed this version, which is even more delicious. The secret is in the savory anchovy stock.

Also, soup is always served in individual bowls, with rice. Traditionally in Korean cuisine stews were served in a big pot on the table, and the family would eat communally from the pot. These days, some people (including me) get a little freaked out by double-dipping, so for stews I put individual bowls on the table, and a large spoon so that diners can take what they like from the pot and put it in their bowls.

My monthly letter to my readers includes my recipe roundup, funny and touching stories, upcoming events, reader comments and photos of what you guys are cooking! It's delivered the first day of every month.

Hi Maangchi! I love this recipe. It is the first one I made after buying your big book of Korean food. However I have a question. I have made this using pork belly cut into medium size chunks and after cooking it around 25 min I feel the pork belly is still quite firm. Is it OK to cook it for longer (like > 2 h)? Or maybe cutting the pork belly into thinner slices would do the trick in less time? What do you think? Thank you!!

I made this tonight for supper and it was wonderful! I may have had to use some chicken broth and chicken in replace of the pork and anchovy stock and it was so yummy. I had some rice and black beans(both your recipe) with it, I would absolutely make this again. My dad and I loved it, thank you for the recipes!

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