Something You Should Know about Cooking and the Kitchen

October 20, 2011

Interview with Kathleen Flinn, author of the book The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

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Mike Carruthers:
Whether you cook a lot or a little everyone can use some help in the kitchen to save time and money. And one thing every cook needs is a sharp knife.

Kathleen Flinn:
A sharp knife is the number 1 tool you can have in terms of prompting you to cook more because it goes so much faster – it just doesn’t take as long to cut stuff up.
 

April 14, 2010

Interview with George Erdosh, author of the book What Recipes Don't Tell You

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Mike Carruthers:
When it comes to improving the flavor of food one important key to any recipe is browning.

George Erdosh:
Recipes start, almost always, brown the meat first. And that browning precipitates powerful flavor enhancing reaction which gives flavor to food.
 

November 6, 2009
Interview with Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

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Mike Carruthers:
It's estimated that we make about 200 food decisions a day. And we can influence how we make those decisions.

Brian Wansink:
We did something where we put candies on their (secretaries) desk or we put them six feet from their desk. And every single day we found out that the average secretary ended up eating a hundred and twenty five more calories if the candy was right on their desk than if it was just six feet away.

February 10, 2009

Interview with Dr. John La Puma, author of Chef MD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine: A Food Lover's Road Map to Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Getting Really Healthy

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Mike Carruthers:
You can make some of the foods you eat healthier just by changing the way you cook them.

John La Puma:
If you bake a pizza at 550 (degrees) instead of 400 or for 14 minutes instead of 7 minutes,  you more than double the bio-availability of the anti-oxidants in the whole-wheat crust. You do need a whole-wheat crust because that's where the anti-oxidants are - in the germ and the bran not the starch.

John LaPuma, M.D.