Cooking Like a TV Chef

Summer in the United States is barbecue season. Millions of home cooks fire up the grill, invite friends over, and cook outdoors. Whether it's a charcoal grill or a gas grill, the main point is to make a great show of putting some kind of meat over some kind of fire and proving one's outdoor skills to a gathering of family and friends. This recipe for barbecued shrimp is sure to delight your guests while offering something just a little more out of the ordinary than hamburgers and hot dogs. By placing the shrimp on skewers, you can bring the presentation level up a notch, but even without the skewers, they are sure to be a big hit. The sauce described below is my personal favorite basic sweet teriyaki. It is also great for beef or chicken. Yield: Four pounds of colossal shrimp makes 15-18 skewers with four shrimp per skewer. Your mileage may vary depending upon the size of the shrimp you use and the number of shrimp that you place on each skewer. Preparation: about 30 ...

In many of the television cooking competition reality shows, prospective chefs are tested on basic skills or made to perform repetitive tasks demonstrating that they are proficient at certain tasks. This could be something as simple as dicing an onion or something like shucking an oyster. Shucking oysters, in particular, has even been used as a team punishment for a team that lost the service on Hell's Kitchen. If you're not familiar with oysters, this can be a difficult task. Oysters have evolved for millions of years to prevent predators from getting their shells open. That protection is often quite effective against a novice chef. Fortunately, even novices are smarter than oysters and can learn to quickly shuck an oyster (remove it from the shell). First, oysters should be securely shut without broken shells. That's because they are still alive when you get them and should be holding the shell tightly closed with their abductor muscle. If the shell is open, the oys...

Great wines start with great grapes, but a serviceable wine can be made with grocery store ingredients and without special equipment. Photo by Brad Sylvester, all rights reserved. While many great dishes take a great deal of preparation and skill, some of the best home-cooking is relatively simple and made from simple ingredients. Home-made wine can be just as easy and can be made from common every day ingredients without any special equipment. We're not talking connoisseur level wine, but the end result is very drinkable and quite potent. Homemade wine is something many people want to try, but may seem too intimidating  to try on your own. This recipe is easy, cheap and nearly fool-proof. The best part is that like the little pop-up buttons on store bought turkeys, there's a nearly fool-proof indicator to let you know when that it's brewing properly and when the wine is complete and ready to taste. This recipe yields one gallon of a sweet white wine Equi...