This is the first in a series of posts on knife technique. Practicing proper knife technique will make prep work safer, more efficient and more enjoyable. It’ll also give you something to show off to your friends! If you’re the sort who hates prep work because it takes ages, you always seem to cut yourself, and the veg always seems to end up uneven or crushed, then this is what you need to work on. Read on, and practice, practice, practice

The Pinch Grip

A popular way of holding the knife is called the “pinch grip”. It involves holding the blade forward of the handle between your thumb and the first and second joints of your forefinger. The heel of you hand then rests on the handle. A good knife should be balanced just forward of where the blade joins the handle, so this grip gives you excellent control over the knife. Cooks who use this hold eventually develop calluses on their forefinger where it rests on the spine on the blade. As a home cook, you’re not likely to develop calluses, but many professional cooks are quite proud of their calluses!

The Cutting Motion

Hold the knife in the pinch grip, and place the tip on your chopping board. Slide the knife forward and bring the blade fully down to the board. Slide the knife back, and raise the blade. Always try to keep the tip of the knife in contact with the chopping board. So that’s your cutting motion. Forward and down, back and up. This movement should be steady and continuous. Your other hand will guide the knife and position the food under the blade. It’ll take some practice to get this smooth and steady.

Holding the Food

The hand which holds the food is also very important. As well as holding the food steady, it also acts as a guide for the knife. Tuck your fingertips in, so that the part of your fingers between the first and second joints guide the knife blade. The speed at which your hand moves back across the food determines the thickness of the cuts. This will take quite a bit of practice, but you’ll get the hang of it.
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We love the Hairy Bikers - fab recipes, a bit of a travel show, and cooks who don’t take themselves seriously at all. We even have one of their books The Hairy Bikers Ride Again! So, last night when the Hairy Bakers was on, we settled down with our cuppas, and a slight look of confusion on our faces. Si and Dave have promised to do for baking what they did for motorbikes. Last night was bread-based; an easy white loaf, Naan Bread, baps, and a farmhouse loaf. They even did a Cheese & Beer Bread!

I have to say, I loved it, and I’m not even the bread baker in the house! But Si and Dave are so enthusiastic about their subject, while at the same time being totally irreverent, that you couldn’t but enjoy it.

BBC2, 8.30pm, Monday nights. Worth watching if you’re thinking of getting into baking at all.

By the way, who are your favourite Celebrity Chefs? Why? And are there any books you’d recommend to us? (Not that we don’t have enough, but you can never have too many books.)

I originally nicked this recipe from here, but it’s so good I’ve been claiming it as my own ever since. Now, it’s in American, and I don’t have the brains to translate it into metric, so you’re either going to have to mark it up on a measuring jug (1cup=240ml) or get hold of measuring cups. I bought my metal ones in Homebase, and Made Marian’s Mom gave us a set of Nigella Lawson measuring cups as a housewarming present.

Ingredients
2 sticks butter (OK, I’ll give in on this one, that’s half a pound or 225grams)
2 1/4 cups strong white flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar (Seriously, this adds something fantastic to the cookie. Made it once with all white sugar and still haven’t forgiven myself.)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (For the love of all that’s holy, please use chocolate chips. For some unknown reason, a chopped up bar of chocolate, no matter how high-quality just does not work… It goes horrible. Tastes good, but looks terrible. I usually just use two 100g bags of chocolate chips from Tesco or Dunnes. If you have a wholesale card, Musgrave sometimes have a jar of Saxa chocolate chips which are also pretty good.)

1. Line one or two baking sheets with parchment.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over LOW heat. Otherwise you’ll burn the butter and have to start again. Which is a pain.
3. While the butter is melting, put the salt and sugars into a large bowl.
4. Mix in the melted butter. The original recipe said to use a mixer; I’ve only ever used a wooden spoon and it still only takes about 20 seconds.
5. Beat the egg, yolk, milk and vanilla in a small bowl or pint glass and then mix it with the buttery sugary goodness.
6. Sift in the flour, and mix it up. It’ll still be fairly sloppy at this stage.
7. Whack in the chocolate chips and mix again.
8. Now for the tricksy bit. If you want to bake the cookies straight away, measure them into equally-weighted balls (I usually go for 50g because that’s what my old boss did), stick them on cling-film lined plate and whack them in the fridge for a half-hour or so. Now is also the time when you turn on the oven to pre-heat to 190C. I bet you were wondering why I didn’t do that at the start, weren’t you?
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes. You don’t want them completely soggy as otherwise you’ll just wind up with hockey-pucks. You need them to be a bit wibbly in the middle so you have a nice, soft, chewy cookie. I can generally only fit 8 on a baking tray to allow for spreading. You may also want to smoosh the doughballs a little in order to wind up with a flattish circle, maybe 1-1.5cm deep.
10. If you want to freeze the dough (which I do all the time), weigh out the dough in multiples of 50g, eg 200g, 400g so as to have an exact number of cookies. Wrap it up in cling-film like a tube and stick it in the freezer. Take it out about 24 hours before you want it and stick it in the fridge to defrost.

These are ridiculously good and easy cookies. The quantity that you wind up with is ridiculous; hence the freezing. Of course, if you’re going to a party, feel free to bake the lot and bring them with you.

There are a lot of people asking for tips on buying kitchen knives, and there are a ton of websites out there with articles on the subject, some of which conflict with each other. The authors of many of these articles wax lyrical about why their particular favourite is the “best”, and are quick to shun all others as inferior. Some go into great detail about knife construction, citing the optimum Rockwell Scale hardness for blade metals.

Well, just to add to the confusion, I’m gonna throw in my 2 cents . But I’m not going to bore you with too many details. I haven’t won any Michelin Stars, and am unlikely to in the near future. Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you aren’t either. If you want more info on knife sharpening, check out Chad Ward’s excellent tutorial on knife sharpening.

So what do you need in a knife? You need one that you like, that’s comfortable in your hand, that can take and hold a good edge, and is fairly easy to clean and maintain.

Most knives are either stamped or forged from some variation of stainless steel. Some stainless steel is quite soft, and will not hold an edge very well. A pure carbon steel blade holds an excellent edge, but is not stainless and will require far too much maintenance for the average home cook. Therefore, what you want is a blade which contains a good dose of carbon, and might be called something like “No Stain Carbon Steel” or “High Carbon Stainless Steel” or some such. It’s essentially Stainless Steel, but with a suitable carbon content to make a good blade.

The prevailing advice has always been that forged blades (also called “drop-forged”) are better than stamped blades. This is true in many cases, but there are enough exceptions that you can take this rule with a grain of salt.

A big question is whether to choose Japanese or German? Japanese knives tend to be lighter, with harder steel, which takes a very keen edge. The edge on a Japanese knife is reputed to be more difficult to maintain. German knives tend to be heavier, with slightly softer steel which takes an edge that is easier to maintain. This is all relative. A good German knife still has pretty hard steel in it - just slightly softer than a Japanese knife. I use German Henckels knives, simply because they’re the first good knives I’ve ever owned. I like that extra weight in my hand too. I’m sure I would like a good Japanese knife just as well. I just haven’t gotten around to buying one . At the high end, these knives are all excellent.

Here are a few tips that might be useful to you.

1. Don’t buy a set of knives. Buy each knife individually for what you want it to do, the feel of it in your hand, and your budget.
2. You only need 3 knives. A 8″ Chef’s knife, a small paring knife, and a bread knife. Don’t get caught up in “sets”. You can get a 10″ Chef’s knife if you wish, but for a home kitchen, you’ll probably find the 8″ more controllable.
   
3. High end knives are all excellent. Wustof, Henckels, Global etc. Don’t get caught in a “which is better” debate. They all cost a lot, and they are all excellent. Get what suits you personally.
4. Cheap knives are usually crap. And a crap knife is a dangerous knife. A knife with a poor edge will require much more force to cut. This increases the chances of the blade slipping. If the blade slips while you’re leaning on it, all that force goes straight into your finger (where the blade will probably end up). Ouch!
5. If your budget doesn’t stretch to a high end knife, check out the Victorinox Fibrox range of knives. These are inexpensive, high quality, and used in professional kitchens everywhere (where expensive, high end knives may be damaged or stolen). These blades are stamped, not forged, and are still better than most of the lower priced forged blades out there. These are also the only exception I know of to the rule that cheap knives are crap.
6. Don’t buy a Chef’s knife with a serrated edge, or anything that claims to be “revolutionary” or “never needs to be sharpened”. All good knives need occasional sharpening. That’s all part of the game.

Basic knife care and maintenance:

1. Once you get a good knife, keep it sharp! A blunt knife is a dangerous knife. See point 4 above. A few swipes on a steel before use will keep a good edge on your knife for a long time. Professional cooks who use their knives all day every day will need occasional sharpening on a grinding stone, but for the home cook, just steeling should keep a good edge for a very, very long time.
2. Don’t put your good knives in the dishwasher. They can rattle around and the edges can get nicked.
3. Don’t throw your good knives in the sink. This can damage the edge or tip, and can be dangerous to anyone washing dishes.
4. Don’t leave your knives lying around dirty on the counter. Clean them after use and put them away.
5. Store your knives in a block or on a magnetic strip. Don’t throw them in a drawer, where they can get damaged. If storing in a block, put the knife in edge-up, so the weight of the knife isn’t constantly resting on the blade edge (this might seem a bit over-protective, but it couldn’t hurt, right?).
6. Don’t use a glass or ceramic chopping board. This will damage the edge on your knife. Plastic or wood boards only!
7. Your knife is designed to cut food. Do not use it for anything else! It’s not a screwdriver, and it’s not a crowbar. To quote Chad Ward “there is a special place in Hell for those who abuse their knives in this way”.

Ok, so we know the high end knives are great. We know about the Victorinox Fibrox knives. What about some of the knives you see all the time in kitchen shops? Well, I haven’t tested them myself, but I believe some of the knives by Stellar and Richardson Sheffield are reasonably ok. They both have a “Sabatier” range, which is probably fairly good. Feel the blade strength, the edge, and see how they feel in your hand.

One last point. The most important part of a knife is the hand that holds it. Get a knife that feels good in your hand, get a good edge on it, take good care of it, and practice your knife technique! I’m planning on putting up a few basic knife techniques soon. In the meantime, mind your fingers….

This is one of those dinners that looks impressive, but because all the effort is earlier, you still look cool and relaxed when it actually gets to dinnertime.

You need:

1 x Pork Steak

1 x Pkg of Parma Ham (we get ours in Aldi)

1/2 loaf of white bread or packet of breadcrumbs.

Mixed herbs

about 110g butter

2 med white onions

2-3 cloves garlic

salt & pepper

Method:

Get out your blender and make breadcrumbs of the bread. Put them in a fairly large bowl and leave aside for a few minutes.

Start melting the butter in a smallish pan. Peel one of the onions, cut it in quarters and stick it in the blender to dice it up. Throw the onions in on top of the melted butter and let them simmer away for a few minutes. If you don’t have a blender, sorry, you’re going to have to hand-chop the onions.

Into your breadcrumbs, throw about 2 tablespoons of the mixed herbs or whatever herbs take your fancy. On this occasion, we used 1tablespoon of mixed herbs, some fresh sage and a little rosemary.

Take the buttery onions off the heat and throw them into the breadcrumbs. Mix around until fairly evenly coated. Now, this bit is important. If you’re going to be putting the whole thing into the oven straightaway, then you may stuff the porksteak with the warm stuffing. If you’re going to be delaying, even only 15 minutes, then let the stuffing cool down before you put it on the pork, otherwise you’re heading for listeria. It wouldn’t be pleasant, let me assure you.

OK, when you’re ready to stuff the

steak, put it on a fairly large chopping board, and slice it straigh down the middle, but NOT the whole way through; the aim here is to flatten it out, not to wind up with a stir-fry. Then, on either side of the cut you just made, make two smaller cuts, one each side. This should flatten it out nicely.

Now, put a couple of spoons of the stuffing on top, a nice amount but don’t go too mad - remember the parma ham will be wrapped around it in a few minutes. Any stuffing that’s left over can be put in a seperate dish and whacked into the oven when there’s about 30 minutes left on the meat.

Now for the only slightly difficult part: wrapping the steak in the parma ham. The only reason this is difficult is because the parma ham is delicate and prone to tearing. Carefully extract the first slice of parma ham from the packet and lie it over the furthest away end from you, with the fatty bit nearest to you. This is so the fat will wind up being on the inside and soak into the stuffing. Nom. Then take the second slice, and lay it over the first one, with about 50% overlap, and the fat nearest to you. Continue like this until the steak is covered and the ham is gone. (Rashers work as well, but if you’re making an impressive dinner like this, you may as well go all out.)

Now, tuck in all the bits of ham under the porksteak. This is what stops the stuffing falling out. Now take a few cocktail sticks and stick them through the ham into the pork. This should stop it all falling apart when putting it into the roasting dish.

Now, take said roasting dish and drizzle in some olive oil. Take the other onion, peel it and cut it into about 8 chunks. Fire it into the roasting tin. Peel the garlic and fire the whole cloves into the tin. Swish them around a bit in the olive oil, just to coat them. This is instead of using a roasting rack - use the veggies and you’ll get fabulous juice for gravy. Put your beautiful porksteak on top of the veggies.

Stick the porksteak into the pre-heated oven at 180C for about 90 minutes. It’s done when the internal temperature is 77 degrees - use a meat thermometer to check this.

Serve with roast potatoes, veggies, and gravy or port sauce (coming soon).

About a year ago, I got the notion that I would learn how to make sauces. I’ve always liked a decent sauce with my food, so it was beginning to bug me that I couldn’t make my own. To fill this knowledge gap, I went and bought Sauces: Sweet and Savoury, Classic and New by Michel Roux (hereafter affectionately referred to as “Johnny Sauce”).

Now, Johnny Sauce, while an excellent book on sauce making, is really more geared towards the professional restaurant kitchen. That is to say, most of the recipes in the book call for ingredients that the average home cook (such as yours truly) will find difficult to get their hands on. However, by studying lots of sauce recipes from various sources (notably Saint Delia, Anthony Bourdain, and to a lesser extent Gordon Ramsay, in his TV shows), I’ve noticed certain patterns emerging. Things that seem to be common themes among different sauces.

I intend to start posting some sauce recipes (I’m still learning, so I’ll post more as I figure them out), so I just want to share some of these general common principles I’ve discovered so far.

• Sauces are sorta time critical. Many take a good while to cook, and you must serve them as soon as they’re done. You can’t leave them lying around. So pay attention to your timing. You want to be finishing the sauce around the same time as you’re plating the dinner.
• Season your sauce with salt and pepper at the end of the cooking time. You want to taste it when it’s cooked to get the balance right with the seasoning.
• Lots of sauces require stock. Get the best you can lay your hands on. For convenience, I use the Kallo organic “just bouillon” stock cubes. You can also get pouches of pre-made stock. You can use those if you prefer, but they’re a good bit more expensive.
• Lots of sauces involve simmering a liquid with lots of bits of stuff in it, until it’s reduced to coating consistency, then straining it through a conical sieve to give a nice clear sauce with no “bits” in it.
• Get yourself a conical sieve. It really does make it easier to strain sauces without half of it going all over your counter.
• Many sauces involving stock will also include some alcohol (port, brandy etc). The alcohol is usually added before the stock and reduced for a couple of minutes, so that the alcohol boils out of the liquid, leaving you with the flavour, but not the harshness of the alcohol.
• Most sauces involving stock will require a small knob of butter swirled in just before serving. This gives the sauce a nice glossy sheen.
• Do yourself a favour and use a decent sized pot for your sauces. Those tiny milk pans are too small (although I usually strain a finished sauce into one, just before adding the butter).
• Some sauces (like Béchamel, or white sauce) are thickened using a roux. This is a mixture of flour and butter. You need to constantly stir these sauces while bringing them to boiling point. They will form lumps if you walk off and leave them. Always use Plain Flour when making a roux.

I’m kinda leaving out emulsion sauces on purpose at the moment. I’m still learning how to do those with enough confidence to write about them. Hopefully I’ll come back to them again in the not too distant future

If any of you budding sauciers out there can think of anything else, leave a comment!

This is the easiest brownie recipe ever, though maybe not the recipe with the least amount of washing up. The recipe originally started off as a Delia Smith recipe, but I added a few bits just to up the flavour. I’m good  like that.

This recipe is very straightforward as it doesn’t require any whisked egg whites or the like, literally just mix the stuff in the order below and throw it in the oven.

Ingredients:

55g good quality chocolate

110g butter

55g plain flour

110g chopped nuts (I usually just use ground almonds)

225g sugar (I usually use brown sugar - gives a lovely flavour.)

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 tblsp cocoa powder (not drinking chocolate)

2 eggs, beaten

2 tblsp Frangelico

1 tblsp vanilla

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a heatproof bowl over simmering water (but not touching the water), melt the chocolate and the butter together. (Do not use cooking chocolate. Use real chocolate.)

While the chocolate and butter are melting, line a brownie pan or square cake tin with greaseproof or parchment paper.

Beat together the egg, vanilla and frangelico in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large bowl, sieve together the flour, salt, baking powder, and cocoa. Add in the sugar.

When the chocolate is melted, add it to the dry ingredients. This is so that the hot chocolate/butter mixture cools down before you add the eggs, otherwise you’ll have chocolatey scrambled eggs.

Once the flour and chocolate mixes are thoroughly combined, add the eggs and mix thoroughly.

Pour into your pre-lined tin, and whack in the oven for 30-35 minutes. They’re done when a skewer comes out mostly clean. You don’t want to over-do them as they’ll continue to cook a little bit after you take them out anyway.

Cool them on a wire rack for a few minutes, and then devour. Enjoy!

Again with the inauthentic recipes. And again it tastes good, so we don’t care. This recipe came from a book given to me by my old boss at the Wild Onion Café in Limerick. The Book is called Gourmet Cooking for Two, by Beatrice Ojakangas, and was originally published in 1970.

Our favourite recipe from this book is Beef Teriyaki, which is dead easy to make and perfect for evenings when you’re going to be busy as you must prepare it in advance in order for the marinade to work.

Ingredients:
1 Round Steak (or sirloin if you’re feeling particularly wealthy)
3 Tblsp Soy Sauce
1 Tblsp Salad Oil (Sunflower or Vegatable works just fine)
2 Tsp Honey
2 Tsp Sherry
1 small clove of garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced or 1/4 tsp dried ginger.
Assorted Veggies

Rice to serve.

Remember I said it was easy - this is how easy it is.

1. Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl. (We usually double it so it’ll soak into the rice.)
2. Cut up the beef and dump into the marinade. Give it a stir around and cover with clingfilm and shove in the fridge till you need it.
3. Just before you’re ready to serve, heat up a wok or a large frying pan. Throw in the beef. No need for extra oil (in my experience anyway).
4. While the beef is cooking, chop up your veggies (I usually use peppers and broccoli but anything is fine).
5. Put on the rice.
6. Throw in the veggies with the beef - you want them to retain a bit of crunch.
7. Serve over the rice.

See, wasn’t that easy?

OK, so now you’ve had a few weeks to read some of our recipes, so maybe it’s time to explain the ideas behind Cookzors cooking? Some of this is basic common sense, some of this is from reading around different places on the internet, newspapers and cookbooks.

- It’s cheaper to cook at home. This informs a lot of our cooking; we can’t really afford to spend €18.50 to have a Domino’s pizza delivered to the door, so we make it ourselves. We think that €2.99 for a jar of pasta sauce is a crime, when a can of tomatoes costs 29c in Aldi and we can make the same or better ourselves for a grand total of 50c.

- All those random ingredients towards the end of the list on the back of the packet? Don’t know what they are? Then why are you eating them? As JD’s mom says, “if nothing bad goes in, nothing bad can come out”. Having said that, we’re not above using a jar of pesto or the odd packet of Schwartz Chilli Con Carne seasoning. I suppose what we’re trying to say is be aware of what you’re eating. Don’t eliminate, necessarily, but reduce where possible. (We’re not going to make our own mayonnaise any time soon either…)

- In an ideal world we’d buy most things at the market in order to support local growers. We’d love to but it’s really not practical for us, so we buy a lot of fruit & vegetables at Aldi as they seem to have less food miles than the equivalent products in other supermarkets. We do buy our meat at the butcher’s as he’s much cheaper than any of the supermarkets, and the meat is just fabulous. For example, at our butcher’s, four chicken breasts costs €4.99 where six chicken breasts cost €9.99 in Dunnes. A free-range chicken costs €8.99 in the butcher’s, but costs about €15 in Dunnes or Tesco. I think we use the same butcher as Lorraine from Italian Foodies, namely Jim Flavin on the Dublin Rd in Castletroy, Limerick. It’s definitely worth getting to know your butcher. Our butcher rears his own beef, gives great advice, and carries a huge range of veggies as well. He also makes his own sausages (which are divine…), and has great specials. (Having said that, Margaret’s mother rears her own beef and we’re not above nicking the contents of her freezer either…)

- It’s an excuse to buy food porn, I mean cookbooks. I read cookbooks like other people read novels - start at the beginning and go the whole way to the end. I usually do this with a pencil and a packet of post-its in hand to highlight recipes. We recently moved our collection of cookbooks to a shelf under the stairs as we were just wasting too much time going up and down the stairs looking for them!

- It’s nice to give people gifts of home-made foods, especially things they wouldn’t make for themselves. One of our regular gifts is Brownies, and at Christmas we make up hampers of home-made treats for our friends. Last year’s hamper had a bottle of wine, cheese from the market, JD’s home-made soda-bread, cookies, Pepperonata, and I think fudge. The whole lot looked very impressive and probably cost about €45 each, but looked much more expensive.

So, why do you cook? What do you cook? Tell us in the comments!

The perfect accompaniment to Indian food, such as Chicken Biryani, naan bread is dead easy to make. You don’t need an authentic Indian brick oven (although if you happen to have one lying around, go for it). Simply shallow fry the dough in a frying pan, and it turns out really well with nice golden colouring on both sides. If you haven’t made bread before, check out my Introduction to Breadmaking to get the basics down. This recipe will make 3 good-sized naan breads.

What you need:

• 500g strong white flour
• 1 sachet instant yeast
• 1 tsp Honey (be generous - I’m using this instead of sugar to feed the yeast)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 300ml lukewarm water
• 1Tblsp peanut oil or sunflower oil
• a small dash of toasted sesame oil (this stuff is strongly flavoured - only a dash)

What to do:

1. Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix thoroughly.
2. Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. If you’re quick at kneading, you’ll probably need less time.
3. Place the dough back in the bowl and cover with clingfilm. Let it rise for 1 hour.
4. Divide the dough into 3 pieces and roll each piece into a disc about 1 inch thick. This doesn’t have to be exact, but you want the disc to be slightly smaller than your frying pan (so it doesn’t all fold when you drop it in).
5. Let the discs rest for 10-15 minutes while you oil the frying pan and heat it up. The pan should be very hot before you place in the naan dough.
6. Place each naan disc in turn into the hot pan and fry for 5 minutes on each side.
7. Place the fried naans on some kitchen paper to cool. The kitchen paper will soak any excess oil.