And in case you don’t want your instant gratification turning into a self-humiliation, you might want yourself to be mentally well prepared before entering the kitchen. Something should be borne in mind not to do, and that’s what we call the Cooking Taboos for Newbies. Learning from my mistakes is certainly a more pleasant journey than making your own.
1) Do your own math with the ingredients
Unless you are a professional and you know what you are doing. There was a time when I was making a classic pound cake at home, and after I arrayed all the tools and ingredients on the table, two eggs were missing. So I started to do my own adjustment by reducing some amount of sugar and flour, saying things can hardly go wrong for such a simple recipe.
Then I realized that the baking powder in my hand is already expired. So I replaced it with yeast, asking myself “What’s so different anyway?” At the end of the day, instead of making a cake, I get myself a brick.
A gram is a gram: wild guesses won’t get you far around here. Without strictly following a recipe, professionals won’t make wild guesses (coz they just know), but you will. And in case you are wondering, ancient Sumerians had invented the first scale long back in 7,000 BC. So for the sake of civilization, buy yourself a kitchen scale. Do not trust the measuring cup, especially since flour can easily be compacted, the difference in readings could be significant.
2) Hold a turner and a cookbook at the same time
No wonder the government enforces the law to prohibit drivers from using cell phones without hand-free devices. Read and cook at the same time is definitely a bloody car crash. Apart from careless drivers, careless first-time cooks should also be brought to justice: guilty for unintentional food poisoning.
As if it is not busy enough for a first-timer to deal with all the cooking steps, you even have to share your eyes between the fire and the papers.
Try to memorize the recipe, and rehearse the steps in your mind for several times before you actually switch on your range. It might sound ridiculous, but once you tried, you would realize when you cook, a cookbook will not do you much good but stressing you out.
3) Trust your oven
Your oven is lying to your face, so never trust it until you get to know it well. When you ask for 200°C, very likely you will end up getting 180°C or 220°C. Uneven heating inside the oven or simply a small leak around the door could cause this kind of so-called “heat swing”.
The same problem would also happen with pre-heating times. Especially when you are using an old oven, in some worst cases you might have to pre-heat the oven up to 20 extra minutes to get the real temperature you want.
While shaking your head and blaming its unfaithfulness would not get you anywhere, practice would be a way to help you get along well with your oven. The secret potion for a long-lasting relationship is an oven thermometer and one single trial.
Say when you set the oven for 180°C and the thermometer’s reading is 200°C, you will know in the future to set the temperature a bit lower. Buying a new oven may not be very wise, as there is no guarantee that the new one will not just be another jerk.
Someone also suggest to add weight to the oven by putting a quarry tile or a pizza stone in it, saying that it can extend the preheat time and provide more constant heating. This might worth a try, but why the trouble? Oven thermometer is not expensive.
4) Switch and substitute, thinking nobody would realize
Just because two things look and sound similar does not make them identical. And given such an obvious principle, it is interesting to see how people can make up their own rules when it comes to ingredients.
The taste difference between red and green peppers are minimal, and in fact they are fundamentally the same thing. But still, it would be weird enough for them to substitute each other.
Instruction is probably the least interesting part of culinary. While first-timers will be very eager to try out different possibilities, it is also their obligation to know what would be considered weird and what is simply wrong.
For instance, there is no way baking powder and yeast can be interchanged. (Is it only me or there are other people who have the same misunderstanding?) Truly, they both serve similar purpose, which is to act as a leavening agent. However, instead of being a chemical like baking powder, yeast is a microorganism that needs time for the slow reaction. On the other hand, baking powder (or soda) release carbon dioxide upon mixing, therefore the recipe has to be baked immediately or else it will fall flat.
Baking powder and baking soda are also easily getting mixed up all the time. It’s not that mixing them up your cake will explode or something, but they do make huge difference in taste and texture for the final product.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, and when it mixes under heat with moist and acidic ingredients such as buttermilk, carbon dioxide will be released which gives rise to the batter.
Baking powder, on the other hand, contains baking soda, acidifying agent and a drying agent. In other words, baking soda can only be used when there is already an acidic ingredient in the recipe.
Another reason why baking powder is more preferred is its double-acting attribute. It reacts with moist and heat in two stages, which helps delay the baking for about 15 minutes without losing its leavening power.
Still, if an acidic ingredient such as chocolate were already in the recipe, baking soda would be a better option since too much of baking powder would result in a bitter taste. Just make sure the batter have to be baked immediately once the baking soda is added.
5) Not reading our magazine
.JPG)
Yes, thank you very much.
By WALTER YU
No comments:
Post a Comment