Cooking Like a TV Chef

Fiddlehead Ferns Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012, all rights reserved. When one orders pesto in a restaurant, one expects the flavor of fresh basil. After all the classic basil pesto recipe is simply fresh basil, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, a little garlic, pine nuts, salt and pepper. Pesto, however, doesn't have to be made with basil. Parsley, cilantro, and a variety of fresh, flavorful greens can be used instead to provide twists on the classic pesto. Pesto, of course, is a thick sauce often used in place of tomato sauce on pasta, but also appropriate for many other dishes. It's great with chicken, with gnocchi, in place of mayo in a sandwich, with pork chops, in place of horseradish with beef, with fish or in almost any dish that can be enhanced by the addition of fresh garden flavors. Since it is springtime in New England, it is the only time of year that we can get fresh fiddlehead ferns. These are often available in the produce department of good grocery...

This is as close to canned mushroom soup as it gets in my kitchen. Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012. Someone pointed me to a recipe for Egg Foo Yung sauce that consisted of mixing one can of mushroom soup with 3 tablespoons of soy sauce and then heating the mixture. I was appalled. In my kitchen, that doesn't qualify as a recipe, as cooking, or as egg foo yung sauce. I took it as a personal challenge, and came up with the following egg foo yung sauce recipe. First, let's get the spelling out of the way. I've seen this dish referred to as egg foo yung, egg fu yong, egg foo young and all possible permutations of fu, foo, yong, yung, and young. You can use whichever you prefer since it is simply someone's best judgment as to which sounds more like the original Chinese words from which the name is derived. For consistency, I'll use egg foo yung, throughout this blog. Egg foo yung is traditionally an egg dish containing vegetables and meats and fried in...

Wontons folded several different ways and arranged in a bamboo steamer basket Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2012. Do not copy. There are probably as many different wonton recipes as there are cooks in China. Like curries, every cook adds their own flair. Wontons make a great party appetizer or a component of a larger meal. They can also be used to make soup. Although they can be fried, I find that steamed wontons retain more of the flavor of the ingredients. My son was home from college for the holidays and requested that we make some of his favorite meals while he was home as a refresher from college food hall fare. Dad's wontons were on his list, so I took the opportunity to jot down my recipe and take a few photos of the process for this blog. A standard package of wonton wrappers from the grocery store contains about 52 wrappers, this recipe will give you enough filling for an entire package with a little safety margin which can be made into Asian meatballs. Won...