Kung Foodie » Cooking Tips

Hot Lava Hawaiian Food

Kat — Mon, 08 May 2006 18:55:34 +0000

From steam vents to bubbling hot springs, ingenious chefs (and even a few wayward travellers) acround the world have used volcanic power for cooking…but the folks at Dolphin Bay Hotel in Hilo show off some serious Hawaiian cooking fu with their Hot Lava Game Hen recipe.

Surprisingly, cooking with 2000° F still takes the same amount of time as oven roasting, its just a tad more interesting and requires a few special items of equipment like kevlar gloves and a shovel. The Dolphin Bay folks are kind enough to point out that it should be a shovel you don’t mind throwing away.

While this isn’t something you can do at home, you can get a little taste of lava love by using oven heated volcanic rocks…the latest fad in tableside cooking.

Of course there’s always traditional Hawaiian cooking which uses lava stones placed in a imu pit. While cooking with hot lava right from Pele’s mouth requires you to leave a vent for steam to escape, the trick to awesome kalua pork involves keeping the steam trapped inside the covered pit.

Anyone up for a luau?

Japanese Cooking Tricks

Kat — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:25:46 +0000

Forget those boring Food Network cooking shows! It’s time to get your Asian geek-on with these hilarious educational cooking vids I found on You Tube. Here’s six tricks every wannabe Iron Chef should know.

1. Removing Potatoes Skins with a Twist
You can use this trick for lots of foods like tomatoes or peaches. Just be sure to score an entire line around the fruit or veggie before boiling, then drop into an ice bath afterwards.

2. The Two Second Method for Peeling Shrimp
It’s so much fun, everyone’s doing it! Just be sure to bring your scissors.

3. A Perfect Cuppa Hot Cocoa
Whenever you want to dissolve powder in a liquid the trick is to stir back and forth in a line, not a circle!

4. No Fuss Fish Cleaning
Apparently rubber spatulas have the perfect edge for removing fish scales. Of course you can always ask the butcher at the meat counter to do it for you.

5. Keeping Your Potstickers From Sticking
Oil the pan after it’s gotten hot, then add your gyoza. If you steam them with water or stock you’ll want to pour that off and cook just a bit longer.

6. Pulling Whole Crab from the Shell
All of you ReadyMade fans are going to love this one…besides the little sound effects the crab meat makes when it comes out of the shell are, hmmmm…mouth-watering?

Lab Coats in the Kitchen?

Kat — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 08:33:01 +0000

The latest hot food trend to hit the Internet blends high tech science with cooking. It started with pro chefs using centrifuges and microscopes, then hardware hackers jumped in. The guiding principle is to create dishes based on the molecular compatibilities of foods.

Even traditional food bloggers are giving geek recipes a wirl. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks recently shared her experience with creating Liquid Nitrogen ice cream, and if you’d really like to dig in be sure to check out Marc Powell’s molecular gastronomy blog, FoodHacking.com.
If you thought making souffle for Sunday brunch with friends was challenging try Nitro Pumpkin Seed Pie Horchata Foam for 100.

You can often catch Powell cooking in the Bay Area, such as the Dorkbot demo linked above. Check out the Dorkbot slideshow for more photos of some serious food science.

The Art of Meringue

Kat — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:10:50 +0000

Pastry chef Shuna Fish Lydon, whose writings are as tasty as dessert has published a great piece on Bay Are Bites, full of tips on how to make meringue. I can’t say I’ve ever been excited by the standard chocolate meringue pie but this collection of meringue cookie and pie recipes I pulled off of Epicurious.com sounds simply divine.

I think my destiny is calling. Lemon meringue custards anyone?

Bone In Cooking

Kat — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:31:47 +0000

SFgate.com recently published an interesting article on cooking meat with the bone. With the way meat is often packaged at stores these days it’s easy to forget there’s so many more options than just the standard boneless chicken breast or rib eye steak (rainy days always make me crave my Mom’s Ham Hock stew).

Interesting note….

Bones themselves don’t contribute much flavor, says Harold McGee of Palo Alto, author of “On Food and Cooking” (Scribner), a food-science bible for many chefs. But they do prevent juices from escaping from what would otherwise be a cut surface. Bones also act as an insulator, slowing the transfer of heat, which is why meat near the bone is always more rare and moist than meat near the surface.

While I’m lucky enough to actually have a few family members who are meat aficionados, we unfortunately don’t live that close (but that certainly doesn’t stop the Fedex deliveries from arriving now and then).

Here are a few Bay Area butcher shops and markets for bone-in cuts and special orders.

Bryan’s Meats – San Francisco
Lucky Pork – San Francisco
Golden Gate Meats – San Francisco
Cafe Rouge Meat Market – Berkeley
Magnani Poultry – Berkeley
Monterey Fish Market – Berkeley (all types of meat)
Tokyo Fish Market – Berkeley (fish only)
Berkeley Bowl – Berkeley
99 Ranch Market – various locations
Niman Ranch – online
Draeger’s – Menlo Park, Los Altos and San Mateo
Whole Foods – various locations
Andronico’s – various locations
Mollie Stone’s – various locations

The Kung Foodie clan recommends: Tokyo Fish Market and Monterey Fish Market for Berkeley shoppers…they often have the best prices and are near a number of other small specialty markets that can’t be beat. We do all of our grocery shopping in small shops on or near San Pablo Avenue.