Stay Cheese!

Whether it’s an elegant event or a casual party, cheese is a perfect way to please people. With the right serving accessories and pairings, cheese can be elevated from a simple food to something sensational. Nutrition specialists say, “Climate plays a huge role in the consumption of cheese. Unlike countries like Switzerland, Italy and France, which have a relatively cooler temperature throughout the year, hotter and humid countries consume less cheese which has more calories and protein. Low fat cottage and regular cheese is the safest bet. Cheese made from cow’s milk and skimmed milk is easier to digest and is lighter. Including vegetables with a mainstream cheese dish is ideal for the hot and humid climate.”

Buying cheese
Keep in mind the following points the next time you are buying cheese at a gourmet shop.

• Keep an open mind when you approach the cheese counter. Check for what’s ripe, what’s in season — yes cheeses do have seasons and even vintages!
• Taste before you purchase. This will help you select the right one. 
• Be wary of cheeses that are cracked. If the cheese has a cut side, make sure it looks fresh, the edges should not look dried out. 
• Smell the cheese. If you catch a whiff of soured milk, or a barnyard smell in particular, it could be well past its peak. Also, look out for smell of ammonia, which is often an indication that the cheese has aged too long or hasn’t aged properly. 
• Avoid cheese pieces which are wrapped in plastic. Buy freshly cut cheese. 
• Check for the label and the expiration date if you are buying a packaged one. 

Storing cheese

• Do not store cheese in a plastic wrap. Wrapping cheese directly in plastic is equivalent to flavour suffocation. 
• The best way to store cheese is in a cheese paper inside a container. Or the easiest would be to wrap cheese first in parchment or waxed paper, to prevent drying out. Let it breathe! 
• Consume the cheese as soon as possible, since many tend to dry out if kept in the refrigerator for a very long time. 
• Do not store cheese with foods that have strong odours, as they absorb the smell. 

Pairing with drinks 
According to experts, “Though cheese is paired best with wine, it is completely a personal preference. Soft ripened cheese can be paired with a sparkling wine, martinis, stout beer or coffee as well.” 

Tips

• When preparing dishes using cheese, add the cheese at the end, especially in sauces, risottos and soups. 
• Grating cheese is easier when it’s cold. 
• An expert chef says, “ The style, texture and flavour of the cheese depends on the origin of the milk. To enhance the taste of the cheese, herbs, spices or smoke may be used as flavouring agents.”

Fish and Seafood for gourmets

Fish, chips and mushy peas

ingredients

sunflower oil for deep-frying
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 8oz nice white fish fillets, pinboned
• 2 cups flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1¹⁄₄ cups good cold beer
• 3 heaping teaspoons baking powder
• 2lb potatoes, peeled and
• sliced into chips (French or home fries)

FOR THE MUSHY PEAS
• a knob of butter
• 4 handfuls of shelled peas
• a small handful of fresh mint, leaves picked and chopped
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

method

Good fish and chips are becoming harder to find these days, but there are still some good boysout there making the real deal. However, if you want to make your own at home, here’s the recipe I use. Unless you’ve got a really big fryer I’d say it’s not really worth trying to make fish and chips at home for more than 4 people – otherwise it becomes a struggle. Other things to have on the table are some crunchy sweet pickled gherkins, some pickled onions (if your other half isn’t around!) – and pickled chillies are good too. Then you want to douse it all with some cheap malt vinegar and nothing other than Heinz tomato ketchup.

To make your mushy peas, put the butter in a pan with the peas and the chopped mint. Put a lid on top and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. You can either mush the peas up in a food processor, or you can mash them by hand until they are thick and perfect for dipping your fish into. Keep them warm while you cook your fish and chips.

Pour the sunflower oil into your deep fat fryer or a large frying pan and heat it to 375ºF. Mix the salt and pepper together and season the fish fillets on both sides. This will help to remove any excess water, making the fish really meaty. Whisk the flour, beer and baking powder together until nice and shiny. The texture should be like semi-whipped heavy cream (i.e. it should stick to whatever
you’re coating). Dust each fish fillet in a little of the extra flour, then dip into the batter and allow any excess to drip off. Holding one end, lower the fish into the oil one by one, carefully so you don’t get splashed – it will depend on the size of your fryer how many fish you can do at once. Cook for 4 minutes or so, until the batter is golden and crisp. Meanwhile, parboil your sliced potatoes in salted boiling water for about 4 or 5 minutes until softened but still retaining their shape, then drain them in a colander and leave to steam completely dry. When all the moisture has disappeared, fry them in the oil that the fish were cooked in at 350ºF until golden and crisp. While the potatoes are frying, you can place the fish on a baking
sheet and put them in the oven for a few minutes at 350ºF to finish cooking. This way they will stay crisp while you finish off the fries. When they are done, drain them on paper towels, season with salt, and serve with the fish and mushy peas.

Fish kebabs

ingredients

• 1lb 2oz monkfish tail (or cod or haddock), trimmed of all skin and bone and cut in to 1-inch cubes
• 6—8 skewers or sticks of fresh rosemary,lower leaves removed
• 9 oz boiled new potatoes,halved
• for the marinade - 2 thumb sized pieces of fresh ginger,thinly sliced
• juice and zest of 1 lemon
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 dried chillies,crumbled
• 1 handful of freshmint
• 4 table spoons plain yogurt

method

Put all the marinade ingredients except the yogurt into a food processor and blitz until smooth. Stir in the yogurt. Using the skewers or rosemary sticks, skewer the fish alternately with the new potatoes. Drizzle with the marinade and grill for 2 minutes on each side.

Two Delightful Seafood Dishes

Home cooks and chefs have spent hours time testing recipes from famous restaurant. Now you can make these recipes from the comfort of your home.

We all have our favorite restaurant seafood dishes. Has it every occurred to you that you can make the same meals at home  Home cooks and chefs have spent hour’s time testing recipes from restaurant secret recipes. These recipes that have the distinctive taste and flavors of your favorite restaurant dishes. Cook your favorite restaurant secret recipes from the comfort of your home. Save time and money. Try  at home and see if you can tell the difference.

Red Lobster Shrimp Scampi

Ingredients

1 cup White Wine
1/2 cup unsalted Butter
3 tablespoon minced Garlic
1 pound Shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt & pepper, to taste

Method

Combine the butter, wine, garlic and shrimp in a pan.
Bake in a 350 degree F oven for about 7 minutes or
until the shrimp turn pink.
Be careful not to overcook the Shrimp.
Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Serve.
Serves 2-4

Red Lobster Dungeness Crab Bisque

Ingredients

1 tablespoon minced onion
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups half-and-half
1 pound Alaska Dungeness crab meat
Salt, to taste
Chopped parsley

Instructions
1. Sautee onion in butter until soft. Add flour; cook while stirring
for 1 minute.
2. Slowly stir in chicken broth and half-and-half; cook 5 minutes
while stirring.
3. Break crab into chunks; add to broth.
4. Heat thoroughly and add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with
parsley.
Serves 4

Please Remember

Cooking Seafood

1. Purchase seafood fresh or frozen. Clams and muscles should be alive in shell when purchased. With lobster and crab live is best but frozen is a second option.

2. Cook fresh seafood within 24 hours of purchase if not sooner.

3. With frozen seafood thaw immediately before cooking. Thaw fish in refrigerator.

4. When boiling lobster no special preparation is needed. Put the lobster in boiling water head first.

5. When cooking steam crabs done when shells turn bright red.

6. Steam muscles should be cooked for only 2-3 minutes in covered pan.

7. After cooked lobster’s and crab’s shells should be cracked and dip flesh in melted butter. If desired add lemon juice separately.

8. Sautee shrimp, scallops and clams. Can be sauteed in wine sauce, garlic butter, butter, margarine or oil. Watch and remove when cooked to desired taste.

9. For mixed-seafood main dishes steamed shrimp, scallops and clams can be used.

10. Marinated seafood in refrigerator.

11. Baking fish 10 minutes per inch of thickeness at 400-450 degrees F. Halfway through cooking time turn fish. When fish becomes opaque and thickest part of fish flakes.

Broiling
If fish one inch thick or less place 2 to 4 inches from heat. Pieces greater than one inch should be placed 5-6 inches from heat.

Frying
Saute: fish in approximately 1/8 inch of cooking oil or oil covers one side of fish. Cook for 3-6 minutes per side.
Deep Fry: Cooking oil should cover entire fish. Cooking time approximately 2-3 minutes or until fish golden brown.

Boiling:
Shrimp broiled in 4 cups of water per pound of shrimp. Bring water to broil place shrimp and simmer for 3-5 minutes.
Scallops broil for 3-5 minutes

There can be health riskes when consuming raw seafood.

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The Most Expensive Spice of the Universe!

Saffron  is a spice derived from the flower of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus).Crocus is a genus in the family Iridaceae. A C. sativus flower bears three stigmas, each the distal end of a carpel. Together with the styles — stalks that connect the stigmas to their host plant — the dried stigmas are used in cooking as a seasoning and colouring agent. Saffron, long the world's most expensive spice by weight, is native to Southwest Asia.

Saffron's bitter taste and iodoform- or hay-like fragrance result from the chemicals picrocrocin and safranal. Saffron also contains a carotenoid dye, crocin, which imparts a rich golden-yellow hue to dishes and textiles.

Saffron contains more than 150 volatile and aroma-yielding compounds. It also has many nonvolatile active components

 The bitter glucoside picrocrocin is responsible for saffron's flavour. 

 Saffron has many medicinal uses  A 2010 double-blind, placebo-controlled study found saffron helped mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. Crocetin, an important carotenoid constituent of saffron, has shown significant potential as an anti-tumor agent in animal models and cell culture systems. Saffron inhibits DMBA-induced skin carcinoma in mice when treated early. Both saffron stigma and petals are said to be helpful for depression.

 The history of saffron cultivation reaches back more than 3,000 years. The wild precursor of domesticated saffron crocus was Crocus cartwrightianus. Human cultivators bred wild specimens by selecting for unusually long stigmas. Thus, a sterile mutant form of C. cartwrightianus, C. sativus, emerged in late Bronze Age Crete.

 Saffron's aroma is often described by connoisseurs as reminiscent of metallic honey with grassy or hay-like notes, while its taste has also been noted as hay-like and sweet. Saffron also contributes a luminous yellow-orange colouring to foods. Saffron is widely used in Iranian(Persian), Arab, Central Asian, European, Pakistani, Indian, and Turkish cuisines. Confectionaries and liquors also often include saffron. Common saffron substitutes include safflower (Carthamus tinctorius, which is often sold as "Portuguese saffron" or "açafrão"), annatto, and turmeric(Curcuma longa). Medicinally, saffron has a long history as part of traditional healing; modern medicine has also discovered saffron as having anticarcinogenic (cancer-suppressing), anti-mutagenic (mutation-preventing), immunomodulating, and antioxidant-like properties. Early studies show that saffron may protect the eyes from the direct effects of bright light and retinal stress apart from slowing down macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.Saffron has also been used as a fabric dye, particularly in China and India, and in perfumery.

 Most saffron is grown in a belt of land ranging from the Mediterranean in the west to Kashmir in the east. Annually, around 300 tonnes of saffron are produced worldwide. Iran, Spain, India, Greece, Azerbaijan, Morocco, and Italy, in decreasing order of production, are the major producers of saffron. Iran with its cultivation of different varieties, is the largest producer of saffron with 93.7% of the world's total production.

A pound (454 grams) of dry saffron requires 50,000–75,000 flowers, the equivalent of a football field's area of cultivation (110,000-170,000 flowers or two football fields for a kilogram). Forty hours of labour are needed to pick 150,000 flowers. Stigmas are dried quickly upon extraction and (preferably) sealed in airtight containers. Saffron prices at wholesale and retail rates range from US$500 to US$5,000 per pound (US$1,100–11,000/kg)—equivalent to £2,500/€3,500 per pound or £5,500/€7,500 per kilogram. The price in Canada recently rose to CAN$18,000 per kilogram. In Western countries, the average retail price is $1,000/£500/€700 per pound (US$2,200/£1,100/€1,550 per kilogram). A pound comprises between 70,000 and 200,000 threads. Vivid crimson colouring, slight moistness, elasticity, and lack of broken-off thread debris are all traits of fresh saffron.

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Sweet Soft and Juicy !

The mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh.

In Hinduism, the perfectly ripe mango is often held by Lord Ganesha as a symbol of attainment, regarding the devotees potential perfection. Mango blossoms are also used in the worship of the goddess Saraswati.

Mango is a fruit which is indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, belonging to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous species of tropical fruiting trees in the flowering plant family Anacardiaceae. While other Mangifera species (e.g. horse mango, M. foetida) are also grown on a more localized basis, Mangifera indica – the common mango or Indian mango – is the only mango tree commonly cultivated in many tropical and subtropical regions, and its fruit is distributed essentially world-wide.

Mangoes have been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years and reached East Asia between the 5th and 4th centuries BC. By the 10th century AD, cultivation had begun in East Africa. The 14th century Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, reported it at Mogadishu. Cultivation came later to Brazil, the West Indies and Mexico, where an appropriate climate allows its growth.

Mango is now cultivated in most frost-free tropical and warmer subtropical climates; nearly half of the world's mangoes are cultivated in India alone.

Top producers of mangoes, mangosteens, guavas, 2007

Country	Production in tons
India	13,501,000
People's Republic of China	3,752,000
Mexico	2,050,000
Thailand	1,800,000
Pakistan	1,719,180
Indonesia	1,620,000
Brazil	1,546,000
World total	33,445,279

Mangoes account for approximately half of all tropical fruits produced worldwide. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates worldwide production at more than 33,000,000 tonnes (36,000,000 short tons) in 2007 (table above). The aggregate production of the top 10 countries is responsible for roughly 80% of production.

Alphanso Mango

Alphonso, Benishaan or Benisha (Banganapalli in Telugu and other south Indian languages) and Kesar mango varieties are considered among the best mangoes in India's southern states, while Dussehri and Langda varieties are most popular in the northern states.

Generally, ripe mangoes have an orange-yellow or reddish peel and are juicy for eating, while exported fruit are often picked while underripe with green peels. Although producing ethylene while ripening, unripened exported mangoes do not have the same juiciness or flavor as fresh fruit.

Mango is rich in a variety of phytochemicals and nutrients. The fruit pulp is high in prebiotic dietary fiber, vitamin C, diverse polyphenols and provitamin A carotenoids.
Mango is generally sweet, although the taste and texture of the flesh varies across cultivars, some having a soft, pulpy texture similar to an overripe plum, while the flesh of others is firmer, like a cantaloupe or avocado, or may have a fibrous texture.

Mango, raw

Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)
Energy	272 kJ (65 kcal)
Carbohydrates	17.00 g
Sugars	14.8 g
Dietary fiber	1.8 g
Fat	0.27 g
Protein	0.51 g
Vitamin A equiv.	38 μg (4%)
- beta-carotene	445 μg (4%)
Thiamine (Vit. B1)	0.058 mg (4%)
Riboflavin (Vit. B2)	0.057 mg (4%)
Niacin (Vit. B3)	0.584 mg (4%)
Pantothenic acid (B5)	0.160 mg (3%)
Vitamin B6	0.134 mg (10%)
Folate (Vit. B9)	14 μg (4%)
Vitamin C	27.7 mg (46%)
Calcium	10 mg (1%)
Iron	0.13 mg (1%)
Magnesium	9 mg (2%)
Phosphorus	11 mg (2%)
Potassium	156 mg (3%)
Zinc	0.04 mg (0%)
Percentages are relative to US recommendations for adults.

Mangoes are widely used in cuisine. (for Mango recipes click here) Sour, unripe mangoes are used in chutneys, athanu, pickles, or side dishes, or may be eaten raw with salt, chili, or soy sauce. A cooling summer drink calledpanna or panha comes from mangoes.

Mango peel contains urushiol, the chemical in poison ivy and poison sumac that can cause urushiol-induced contact dermatitis in susceptible people. Cross-reactions between mango contact allergens and urushiol have been observed. Those with a history of poison ivy or poison oak contact dermatitis may be most at risk for such an allergic reaction. Urushiol is also present in mango leaves and stems. During mango's primary ripening season, it is the most common source of plant dermatitis in Hawaii.

Find Mango recipes here

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