Cutting dried chillies

Dried chillies are often leathery and can be difficult to cut with a knife. A pair of scissors does the job with ease. To begin, snip off and discard the stem. Beginning at the stem end, cut chile lengthwise in half. Use your fingers to brush out seeds from inside chile halves. Cut seeded halves into thin stripes that can be toasted, stir-fried, or added to sauces and salsas.

In fact, I find my kitchen scissors really handy and use them to cut many things from herbs, to pizza. Try them out.

5 tips every serious home cook must know…Gordon Ramsay

We can’t all afford foie gras, caviar and truffles, but that shouldn’t stop us thinking like a three Michelin star chef. To introduce his new book, Gordon Ramsay discloses the recipes that made his reputation – and reveals the five tips that every serious home cook should know.

1 Timing
So many people misunderstand timing. They think it’s about everything coming together at the same moment. They’ll think, the chicken will be ready at 1pm, so I’ll put the potatoes on at 20 to, the carrots at 10 to and the peas at 5 to. Then, disaster – they’re trying to carve the chicken, mash the potatoes and drain the veg all at the same time. I wouldn’t even try that with a brigade of 15 chefs. No, what a professional chef means by timing is getting everything prepared as far ahead as possible, so that two thirds of the work has already been done and you’re just bringing together the elements for the grand finale. That means having the meat ready up to half an hour before and parboiling your vegetables and refreshing them in cold water, ready to be warmed through in a pan with a splash of olive oil. It means frying your mushrooms in olive oil and reheating them in butter. And it means turning the final stages of cooking into an assembly line, which is much easier to control than starting everything from scratch and cooking it right through. Less stress, better results.

2 Seasoning
Salt and pepper are the building blocks of any kitchen. It’s the first thing I teach my new chefs – to season with confidence and, where necessary, subtlety. Too many people wait until the end to season their dishes. That way your taste buds just get clobbered with uncooked salt or pepper. Better to add it at the beginning of cooking so the raw taste can be cooked out and it has time to enhance the flavour of your ingredients. And keep tasting, all the way through cooking, to see how the flavours evolve. Finally, don’t limit yourself: salt and pepper are only the beginning of the story. We always season fish or seafood with a squeeze of lemon or lime at the end and, increasingly, we’ll use whole bunches of herbs to infuse a soup or cream sauce, or add cloves, vanilla or cinnamon to a fish stock. Be bold. Be adventurous.

3 Cooking fish
Given how popular sushi has become, I’m amazed at how squeamish people are about eating their fish anything other than nuked. Believe me, if the inside is a bright white, the outside will be dried out and woolly. No, you want the inside of your fish slightly translucent, like the inside of an oyster shell. Start with a medium-hot pan, add two parts olive oil and put in your seasoned fillet of fish, skin-side down. Don’t worry about it sticking – once it has caramelised, the fillet will release itself. Prodding and poking will just make it fall apart. Once it is 80 per cent cooked, gently turn it over, add one part butter and keep basting it. Add the butter too early and you’ll end up with a blackened pan – and burnt-tasting fish. Finally, allow the fish to relax, during which time it will continue to cook. Like vegetables, it can be held for five minutes, and then flashed in a 200C/Gas 6 oven with a little stock to warm it through.

4 Cooking meat
The secret of cooking meat is in the resting. I find it so dispiriting when I cut into a steak and watch all the juices leak out on to the plate because it hasn’t had time to relax and reabsorb all that goodness. Start with your meat at room temperature – if you take it straight from the fridge, the outside will be burnt before the centre has had time to heat up. And remember, 85 per cent of the cooking is done in the pan, the remaining 15 per cent as it rests. For a rare fillet steak, for example, give it two and a half minutes on each side and let it rest in its own juices for three. Then, just before serving, roll it in its juices again before flashing it through a hot oven. A final word about duck: of all meats, it goes cold the quickest because it is so lean, so don’t slice a breast into more than three or four slices or it will discolour and turn an unappetising brown colour.

5 Perfect custard
It’s worth perfecting your egg-custard recipe as it is the base for so many things, from ice-cream to crème patisserie. Follow these three golden rules and you won’t go wrong. First, always use fresh vanilla pods – the difference between those tiny seeds and vanilla extract is like night and day. Second, when you bring your milk and cream to the boil, take it off the heat the moment it starts to boil; even another 30 seconds will completely change the consistency. And finally, don’t add the sugar to the egg yolks until the last second and you are ready to whisk it, otherwise the sugar will dissolve into the egg and lose the strength to make the custard thicken as you need it to.

Tips for making the Perfect Cake

Preheat: You must preheat your oven, and make sure it is completely heated when you put the cake in - otherwise it won’t cook properly.
Baking Paper: It is a good idea to line the tin with baking paper. Then spray some cooking spray around the tin. This will prevent your cake from sticking.

Choosing your Pan: It is really important to use the right sized pans for the cake. If you do not have the right pan you will need to adjust the cooking time. If you need a springform pan do not use a normal one because you will need a springform to get the cake out - this is often the case with cakes like cheesecakes.

Don't Overfill: Do not overfill the tin with cake mix - it will bubble over and not cook properly. If you have too much cake mix make some mini cupcakes.

Testing: To check if your cake is cooked, insert a skewer into the middle of the cake. It should come out clean. If your cake looks like it needs more cooking, but it’s getting too dark on the top, cover it with foil so the rest of it cooks without the top burning.

Overspill: Before you put the cake in the oven, put it on a tray covered in baking paper. That way if the cake mix bubbles over it won’t ruin your oven.

Cooking Pasta

Cooking pasta sounds easy but it’s not easy to get it just right unless you know how. Follow these simple steps to perfect pasta.


Add the spaghetti to boiling salted water.
Do not add oil to the water - it is a myth that this stops it from sticking, and by adding oil you will make the pasta all slippery so the wonderful flavours of the sauce are not absorbed into the spaghetti or pasta.

The best way to avoid your pasta sticking is to cook it in a really big pot and stir it for at least the first minute, and then give it the occasional stir as it cooks.

Check on the pasta a couple of minutes before the required cooking time is up, and taste it to see if it is al dente.
Al dente means ‘to the tooth’ and so it should be a little firm to bite.

Fresh pasta (fettuccine, tagliatelle, lasagna) cooks quickly, 3-5 minutes.
Thin dry pasta (spaghettini, shells, rotini) cooks in 6-9 minutes.
Thick walled pasta (penne, ziti, spaghetti, tortiglioni, etc.) cooks in 12-15 minutes.

I like to use fresh pasta because it just tastes that much better, but dry pasta is still delicious.

Belissimo!

Cutting Dried Chillies

Dried chillies are often leathery and can be difficult to cut with a knife. A pair of scissors does the job with ease. To begin, snip off and discard the stem. Beginning at the stem end, cut chile lengthwise in half. Use your fingers to brush out seeds from inside chile halves. Cut seeded halves into thin stripes that can be toasted, stir-fried, or added to sauces and salsas.

In fact, I find my kitchen scissors really handy and use them to cut many things from herbs, to pizza. Try them out.

No more sticky rice

Wash the rice a few times until the water runs clear. Remove all the water until no water remains. Let it sit for 20 minutes. This will remove all the starch and help the rice to remain separate.

Also adding a few drops of lemon juice to the rice while cooking, you will find that the grains of rice will tend to remain separate and the rice stays white.

Juicing Lemons and Limes

Buy large lemons and limes, they tend to be much sweeter. Make sure that the skin is thin, those are much juicer. To obtain more of the juice from lemons, limes or oranges, microwave on high for 30 seconds and then let stand for a couple of minutes before cutting and squeezing. Rolling them between your hand and the counter will also help release more juice.

Quick Curries

Curries requires a lot of pre-preparation. Make wet and or dry pastes ahead of time, making extra portions. Divide the pastes into the desired portions according to the recipe. Place the portions in Ziploc Freezer bags and freeze till the next time. A great time saver and I’ve found the flavour appreciates in the freezer and is even better the next time.

Marinating Meat

Sugar, honey, or preserves can cause a sauce to burn on the meat’s exterior before the meat is fully cooked.

To avoid burning the meat, wait until the last 5 or 10 minutes of grilling to brush on sweet sauces.

If you wish to serve a sauce at the table, divide it before you brush part of it onto raw meat. Or, if you’ve brushed on a sauce, boil the remainder in a pan before passing.

I like to marinate my meat in a bag - you can buy these from any supermarket - it works so well. You can fill the bag with all of the marinade, add the meat, and then massage the marinade into the meat before putting it in the fridge.

Massaging the marinade into the meat makes it absorb the flavours better.

Purchasing Kitchen Equipment

Purchasing kitchen equipment is really expensive. Winsome and I discovered a great way to stock up the kitchen. Go to the local op-shop! You can purchase everything here - pots, pans, graters, casserole dishes, muffin tins, baking racks. You name is, someone has thrown it out and the samaritans collected it. Winsome purchased an equivalent baking equipment selection that would put Betty Crocker to shame for $23.

The local fete is also a great place for stocking up.