Fearless Fresh — Page 3 — Learn to Cook Like A Boss

January 16, 2016 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

Culinary PTSD: Don’t Wallow in Your Flops

A few years ago, a friend decided to make me rainbow cupcakes for my birthday. At the time I was battling some health issues and had removed gluten from my diet to see if that made a difference in my overall sad-sack-sick-girl status (because honestly, that’s how I felt at the time). She threw together some gluten-free cupcakes, popped them in the oven, arrived at my house, and presented me with… some of the sorriest cupcakes I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen some baking flops, but I’d never seen anything quite like this. The cupcakes had collapsed into bright, colorful little craters, not unlike those you see on the moon, and when bitten, they had the texture of fresh asphalt. I had never seen her to stressed out, and I’m way familiar with cooking stress.

January 4, 2016 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

The Fearless Fresh Ninja Community: Your Key to the Kitchen

We all need help sometimes, no matter how good a cook we are. Things go wonky: Cake pans overflow, vegetables melt into a gray gelatinous puddle, chicken suddenly decides to go rubbery in the frying pan. Even those of us who wrangle food for eight hours a day run into our fair share of problems. That’s why I’m building Fearless Fresh, and why I started the new Ninja community on Facebook. It’s a place for cooking beginners and adventurers alike, where you can find friendly-fierce guidance and inspiration for sharpening your skills… so you can feel like a total badass in the kitchen. (Because, you can be. I promise.)

December 27, 2015 20 Cooking Tools You Must Have

Other Types of Kitchen Knives

In part two we covered the three basic knives every home chef should have – a chef’s knife, paring knife, and bread knife – but there are countless other types of knives out there on the market. You’ve no doubt seen them glistening down from the display case at your local cooking store, many with a hefty price tag. Most of these knives are supplementary and not 100% necessary in the average kitchen, but they’re sure fun to use. Here are a few of my favorites.

December 16, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Almost Flourless Chocolate Torte with Hazelnuts

This almost flourless chocolate torte cake is so easy to put together, I made it when I was 8 years old. The result is a deep, dense chocolate cake with the aroma of hazelnuts, which always reminds me of a hazelnut mocha.

December 12, 2015 Cook with Ingredients You Already Have

How to Freeze Vegetables: Help, My Freezer Ate My Veggies!

Your freezer is a huge asset when it comes to de-stressing dinner and eating healthy on a budget. A lot of you out there have questions about how to freeze vegetables and fruits. In fact, here’s an email I received recently: “A lot of my veggies are stored in the freezer and get freezer burn, even though I put them in Ziplock containers that are advertised for use in the freezer. What’s the best way to freeze vegetables and fruit? I ask because I recently took out some frozen strawberries that were in my freezer for probably a year. They were freezer burned and they fell apart into a pale pink icy sludge. I have some year old Brussels sprouts in the freezer too.” This is a great topic so I’m going to give you a ton of tips for getting the most out of your frozen vegetables.

December 7, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Meyer Lemon Cheesecake with Mascarpone

This Meyer lemon cheesecake is so easy to make you’ll think it dropped out of the sky. Made with smooth, rich mascarpone cheese and topped with a tart lemon pudding made from fresh Meyer lemons, this cheesecake is best suited cut into dainty little slices for after dinner. A little goes a long ways here, making this a great cheesecake for a party. A hint of cayenne in the cheesy filling lends a little something-something, and your guests will never be able to figure out why they love the mystery zip.

December 5, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Easy Pie Crust from Scratch + Game Changing Tips

This super easy pie crust from scratch is one of the simplest, most successful pie crust recipes I’ve developed. It makes two crusts, so you can either make a single pie with a top and bottom crust, or two pies with just a bottom crust. I’ve also included my very best pastry chef pie crust tips. Making pie crust is easy, for sure, but as with most things in baking, there are a few caveats. Because there are so few ingredients, it’s hard to hide bad technique behind fancy flavors or other distractions. If you want to make a perfect pie crust from scratch, it’s all about patience and waiting. Here are a few important tips for making a perfect easy pie crust from scratch, every single time.

December 2, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Very Best Tiramisu Cake Recipe

This is the best tiramisu cake recipe on Earth. Handed down from a master chef and then made easy for the home kitchen, it’s a sure-fire hit. One thing that makes this tiramisu recipe special is the use of amaretto instead of rum, which I have always found overpowers the tiramisu with the flavor of alcohol. You cook the amaretto with the espresso until it thickens to a syrup, and then you brush it over the ladyfingers so they can absorb that almond-y coffee flavor.

December 1, 2015 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

The Professional Fail Files: Dianne Jacob on Learning How to Cook

To prove that every single person struggles in the kitchen, even the pros, I’m interviewing professional food folks about their own cooking intimidations and failures. These are people who make their living cooking, who every single day put themselves out there, and still experience cooking flops and failures. In my first interview, food writer Dianne Jacob talks about her wins and fails as a professional recipe tester and cookbook author.

November 28, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

6 Tips to Save Your Cooking Sanity

I’ve got a little secret to share: I used to be a super stress case in the kitchen. I’m type-A to begin with, and when confronted with cooking for guests where I felt like my reputation was on the line, my inner control freak joined forces with my inner perfectionist, then the two of them walked right up to my inner zen yogi and punched her in the face. The result was me, doing a cross-impersonation of Regan, the little girl from the Exorcist, and the Tasmanian Devil from Loony Tunes.

November 27, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Double-Chocolate, Pecan, and Butterscotch Cookies

You can’t go wrong with a combination of chocolate, pecans, and butterscotch, can you? This is what inspired me to turn what was once a recipe for brownies into cookies—and I must say they’ve probably eclipsed the original idea in popularity. It’s a great make-ahead treat that can easily be turned into a delicious gift. This fudgy cookie recipe is adored by both kids and adults. If you’re looking for a special treat to tempt the Santa at your house, these cookies just might guarantee you’ll find the keys to a new car in your stocking. (One can dream, right?)

November 22, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Easy Chocolate Cream Pie Recipe with Sour Cream Custard and Pecans

I love this chocolate sour cream pie because it’s so simple, but with the addition of sour cream and pecans, it takes on a festive air with a touch of tart attitude. Despite the fact that it comes together in 15 minutes or so – a little longer if you opt to make your own homemade pie crust – it meets with rave reviews every time. I’ve had a few folks ask me for this recipe, so here it is.

November 16, 2015 Breakfast and Brunch

Autumn Mission Fig Jam Recipe with Pears and Cinnamon

This autumn mission fig jam recipe with pears and cinnamon is the ultimate in seasonal comfort. Warming cinnamon and tender pears play off the earthy sweetness of the figs, making for the ultimate fall breakfast.

November 13, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Easy Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe with Gingersnap Crust

Seriously, autumn would not be complete without this easy pumpkin cheesecake recipe, which is so simple to throw together. It only takes 30 minutes of work and tastes like you suddenly added a pastry education to your past. (Remember how in The Matrix you could just pop a disk into a computer that’s plugged into your head and learn Jiu Jitsu? Culinary school would have been SO much easier if that technology actually existed. Sigh.)

November 4, 2015 Breakfast and Brunch

Spiced Vanilla Pear Refined Sugar-Free Jam Recipe

I start to twitch when I think about pouring over a pound of refined sugar into my regular fruit preserves. I strive every day to cut back on sugar, so making jam always feels like a compromise to me. I’ve finally found a recipe with no added sugar, and it’s a real treat. This Spiced Vanilla Pear Jam is refined sugar-free, and it gets a boost of flavor from cardamom, cinnamon, and vanilla beans. It’s a great example of a sugar-free jam recipe that works. It’s nearly sugar free, except for the fruit, of course!

November 1, 2015 20 Cooking Tools You Must Have

What Are the Best Kitchen Knives Made of?

Many people ask me, “What are the best kitchen knives made of?” So that seems like a good place to start this series. It’s actually a lot more interesting that it sounds. Today we’re going to start at the very beginning: metals. Kitchen knives can be made of a range of materials, and if you’ve ever shopped for cutlery, you’ve probably read a billion different metal-related buzzwords. Stainless, carbon, high carbon… what’s the difference? Here are some of the most common metals you might hear of when researching kitchen cutlery. So, what are the best kitchen knives made of, anyways?

October 26, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Halloween Snack Recipe: Orange and Black Marmalade

This Halloween snack recipe, a colorful orange and black marmalade, is made with seasonal citrus and given a spooky touch with black sesame seeds. But don’t worry – the sesame seeds; flavor play off the citrus in a playful, trick-or-treat way.

October 24, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

5 Tactics to Cut Dinnertime Stress

You’ve been there: 9-hour workday. Boss on your tail. Hour-long commute home… in traffic. Then comes the mad dash for dinner while you’re starving, stressed, and want nothing more than to flop onto the couch with the remote and a glass of wine. That pizza in the freezer is looking pretty good right about now, isn’t it? Dinnertime should be the main thing that relaxes you from the zoom-zoom-zooooooom of the rest of the day. It might seem like a tall order, but I’m here to tell you it’s entirely possible.

October 21, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Strawberry Cheesecake Recipe with Tender Almond Crust

This strawberry cheesecake recipe has a gorgeously tender almond crust. It’s perfect as a post-summer fling, given it whips up so easily with frozen strawberries. Sure, we’re all fans of in-season fruit, but when you’ve got a few bags of strawberries in the freezer and you’re feeling a little wistful at the chilly temperatures, why not enjoy a few bites of summertime when folks least expect it?

October 3, 2015 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

How to Make Fresh Pasta Using A Pasta Maker

– How to make fresh pasta dough, all fresh and homemade-like. – Learning how to make fresh pasta dough for dinner tonight is incredibly easy, especially when you’ve got a sexy little beast like a pasta machine taking up residence in your cupboard. I somehow ended up with two of these things, so I thought I should start putting…

October 1, 2015 Cheese

Cheese 101: Lille’ Coulommiers

Mushroomy and buttery, with a touch of vegetal funk towards the end, Lille’ Coulommiers’ texture is pure velvet on your tongue. There’s a luxurious layer of cow’s milk fat here, but it’s not overpowering like some of the other creamy cheeses I’ve written about here. Lille’ is thicker than a brie and won’t run down your knife; instead it stays right where you put it, like an obedient kid, and waits patiently for your next move.

September 21, 2015 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

Kill Dinner Boredom In 3 Easy Steps

In a perfect world, cooking would be a fun and exciting every time you step into the kitchen, but that’s not always a possibility in our busy modern lives. That said, even the everyday quick-and-easy meals should bring with them some sense of satisfaction, regardless of how simple the recipe is. How do you do that? With a little intention and a sense of adventure.

September 14, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

3 Ways To Kick Stress for Dinnertime

Let’s be honest here – cooking can be stressful. Whether you’re tired, starving, running short on time, or didn’t have the chance to go to the grocery store, dinner dealbreakers are everywhere. It’s so easy to resort to digging through the freezer for a frozen dinner or rummaging through local takeout menus. And if we’re being totally honest with ourselves we know the convenience route is not the best route, especially when it comes to health and happiness. Seriously… How many times have you scarfed down a box of frozen enchiladas and felt guilty about it afterwards? Or even worse, experienced a crappy-food hangover (complete with lethargy, headache, and/or heartburn)? Trust me, I know all about being too tired or busy to cook – but in the end these convenience solutions do not serve us as much as a real meal will.

September 6, 2015 Cheese

10-minute Pasta with Tomatoes and Fresh Ricotta

I threw together this simple 10-minute pasta with tomatoes and fresh ricotta from memory, and what I had in the end was not only quick and easy, but incredibly delicious. So much so that I made a bunch and saved the rest for lunch. This wonderful recipe comes together lightning-quick for those nights when you’d rather become a piece of furniture than get off your butt to cook dinner.

September 1, 2015 5 Kitchen Organization Ideas for Fast & Effective Cooking

Shopping Online: Can You Have A Personal Shopper For $3.99?

Do you think grocery shopping online is a luxury reserved for rich people with personal assistants? I used to too, but now, I swear by it. And it’s a lot cheaper than you think. Grocery delivery has come a long way since I first looked up PeaPod back in the 90s. Back then, it cost a good chunk of change to have food delivered from the supermarket, and I remember thinking, “Wow, it must be nice to have someone just drop off your groceries without having to lift a finger. Someday, when I’m rich and famous, I’m going to have to give that a try.” Flash forward to right now: I’m neither rich or famous, but I get my groceries delivered at least once a week… and it only costs me about $4.

August 19, 2015 Breakfast and Brunch

Korean Kimchi Pancake Recipe

One day I told Eun-ji I wanted to learn how to make kimchi pancakes, so we sat down with all the ingredients and she showed me how to go about it. She also told me a story about how her mom, Kwon-Hee, used to make kimchi pancakes for her, and how they always made them on rainy days because the pancake frying in the oil sounds like heavy rainfall on the ground. How I’m sharing her recipe with you. It’s so incredibly simple and only takes about 10 minutes to prepare.

August 14, 2015 Cook with Ingredients You Already Have

The Key to Life: Eat More Leafy Greens

Healthy eating on a budget isn’t so hard, and as with anything else, there’s a right and wrong way to do it. There’s also a right and wrong way to make a green smoothie. Start simple and follow tried and true mixtures, like the one below. You will learn what you like (spinach and apples) and what you don’t like (brussel sprouts and strawberries). Once you’ve got the hang of it, not only will you become more adventurous with your smoothies, but you’ll also feel more energetic and alert. As you get used to the idea of blended veggies, up the amount of roughage you add to your smoothies to get as many leafy greens into your body as you can.

August 7, 2015 Cook with Ingredients You Already Have

Pop Quiz: Is Artisanal Cheese Worth It?

Why is it that the quality and origin of one’s cold cuts warrants so much critical thought, yet not nearly as much attention is paid to the cheese that’s slapped on top of food before calling it dinner? If you notice a difference when you eat fresh, locally sourced meat and vegetables, I guarantee that you’ll find a huge difference between high and low quality cheeses. So listen up! School’s in session. Today I’m going to give you a quick primer on basic cheese vocabulary. These terms will help you to become a better cheese buyer, and consequently, a healthier, more satisfied cheese eater.

August 5, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Epic Summer Peach Cake: Peach Blueberry Upside Down Cake Recipe

This upside-down peach cake recipe has been my summer go-to dessert when the peaches are ripe and the blueberries are plentiful. Every summer I go nuts at the market with all the fresh fruit, so before I end up with a ton of bruised and overripe fruit I throw together this simple, versatile upside-down cake. We love it for dessert on a weeknight, but it’s also an impressive summer cake for picnics and barbecues.

July 26, 2015 Easy

Making Kimchi: How Long to Ferment Kimchi

A short story about how I came to love kimchi, and finally learned how to ferment it myself so that when I move out of my apartment, I won’t have to call my Korean roommate once a week to ask her how to make it. It got to the point that I was really, really digging this kimchi stuff. I was eating it plain, mixed into eggs, and in my very favorite Korean recipe ever, the kimchi pancake. This week marked a milestone: for the first time, I bought my own jar of kimchi. I brought it home and sat there staring at the jar, with the lid bulging from the pressure inside. Honestly, I was a little concerned about opening it. I poked at the jar until Eun-ji came home, because I had no idea what to do with it.

July 15, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Bellini Peach Jam Recipe with Champagne

Over the weekend I wanted a nice, summery drink that tasted like sunshine, and with so many peaches in my kitchen, they were the perfect candidate for drink-making. And my dream cocktail must contain bubbles. So I thought, how about a Bellini? After sipping my drink for a few minutes while staring out into the cityscape, it occurred to me that I could easily turn this little concoction into the perfect peach jam recipe. And that’s just what I did.

July 8, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Ethel’s Easy, Fresh Strawberry Pie Recipe

This week’s super easy, super fresh recipe comes from our own Julie Dreyfoos, production manager for Fearless Fresh and The Culinary Life. “This fresh strawberry pie recipe is made with the sweet strawberries of summer inside a buttery pie crust. The recipe was passed down to me by a very special woman with a heart of gold, who adopted my family as her own when I was a toddler growing up in Ohio. Ethel taught me the basics of cooking and I spent many days with her in the kitchen rolling out sugar cookies, baking pies, canning pickles and everything else from the garden.”

July 7, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

Tips for Eating Well as a Student

While sometimes literally running from one commitment to the next, food choices often become a complex equation of proper nutrients multiplied by budget constraints and divided by the square root of availability, where X is the constantly shifting variable of cancelled meetings, mis-scheduled appointments, paper deadlines, and amount of sleep needed. Much of the time it’s easier to grab some quick, processed, pre-packaged nightmare from a vending machine or fast food outlet and wash it down with an energy drink, rather than to seek out healthier, more nutritionally dense options that will better keep the body going and the mind sharp.

July 1, 2015 Free Cooking Resources

Free Ebook: Sad to Fab – 5 Foods to Get You Feeling Great

I wrote this e-book to highlight five deliciously simple foods that, when eaten regularly, work wonders on the human body — five everyday ingredients so potent, they’ve been used for centuries to improve the health and wellbeing of our ancestors. It just so happens they’re equally effective for us, right now. The recipes in Sad to Fab are also incredibly easy to make, with each timing in at under 5-10 minutes worth of actual work. Not too shabby when it comes to your super busy life, right? Right. And that’s super awesome when you’re stuck on ideas for what to cook for dinner tonight.

June 14, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

Dinner in 5 Minutes? Seriously?

Is dinner a full-contact sport at your house? Are there pans flying and arms flailing as you dig through the pantry or fridge, foraging for anything even remotely edible? How often do you end up settling for something in a box, from a can, or dredged up from the remote corners of your freezer? If you had to count, how many frozen, boxed, or canned meals have you eaten in the past two months? You don’t have to share it here, but that’s a good number to have in your head whenever deciding what you’re going to eat next. It sucks to be hungry and tired at the same time, and what sucks even more is that for many, this is the American weekday dinnertime experience. No fun. The exact opposite of fun, really.

June 7, 2015 Does Cooking Stress You Out? De-Stress Dinner.

Avoiding Airport and Airline Food

As someone who’s very sensitive to refined junk foods, I have a tough time eating when I fly. I’m sure I’m not the only one who nearly passes out from hunger because I’m not willing to eat at the countless crappy fast food joints that have filled our country’s airports, or worse, eat the food on the plane itself. Honestly, if my choices are nasty airport food or starvation, I’d probably starve. The ensuing digestive Chernobyl just isn’t worth it. A baggie of carrots sticks just won’t cut it for more than an hour or two. And remember the olden days when you could just pack a smoothie for your flight? Sadly, that’s not the case anymore.

June 1, 2015 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

Tips for Cooking Whole Grains

Eating healthy is important, but everyone has days where you’re just too busy or too tired to plan out a balanced meal. What’s a person with a life to do? Instead of running out to McDonald’s or ordering in pizza for the third night in a row, here’s a tip that can save not only your health, but a few pennies from the coffers of the restaurant gods. Everyone has days where they’re just too busy or too tired to plan out a balanced meal, let along think about cooking with whole grains. It doesn’t matter if you’re a student, a mom, or a harried executive. It’s rough for all of us. What’s a busy person with a life to do?

May 27, 2015 Baking and Sweets

The Dark Knight Cake (Triple Chocolate Layer Cake)

I love cake, but I have a serious aversion to bad cake. What do I mean by bad cake? Too-sweet cake. Too-dry cake. Boring cake. Uninspired cake. Cake that tastes like it’s made from a cake mix, or cake that has a texture resembling a used sponge from a college cafeteria dish pit. Some people believe…

May 21, 2015 Learn How to Cook - Sharpen Your Skills

10 Ways to Not Get Bored with Your Food

Looking for ways to keep from getting bored with your food? Here are some tips to keep your culinary life alive.

April 28, 2015 Easy

Easy, Healthy Spanish Rice Recipe

– A Spanish rice recipe you can serve with almost anything. – Had a bad day? Dig out your favorite Spanish rice recipe and you’ll feel better. (My easy brown rice chicken enchilada casserole does a pretty good job also.) Come on, you know how this goes: It’s been a long one, and you somehow got stuck…

April 21, 2015 Easy

Refreshing Pistachio Parsley Pesto

– This parsley pesto would have saved me. Sigh. – I’ve got a confession to make: I ate my first McDonald’s burger in YEARS last week. I was stuck in an airport late at night, starving, and I’d exhausted all of the healthy snacks in my bag. No other “restaurants” were open and I was…

April 8, 2015 Cheese

Cheese 101: How to Store Cheese

– Helpful tips on how to store cheese. – Did it happen again? Did you spend $50 at your local cheese counter, and now you’ve got more cheese than a normal human being can possibly consume in a week? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. *sheepish smile* But now you’re faced with an important question: How are you going to store…

March 18, 2015 Cheese

Cheese 101: Andante’s Metronome Cheese – Mixed-Milk Splendor

– Meet Metronome cheese, for serious lovers of mixed-milk flavor. – Named after the ticking device used by musicians to keep their rhythm while practicing, Metronome is a gorgeous pyramid of precocious mixed-milk personality. The cheesemaker, Soyoung Scanlan of Andante Dairy, hand-crafts Metronome cheese in a shape traditionally reserved only for goat cheeses, giving Metronome an air of…

March 11, 2015 Easy

15-Minute Honey Thyme Orange Chicken Recipe

– A super-fast orange chicken recipe for those “I don’t want to cook” nights. – I have a ridiculous number of cookbooks – over 700 at last count, and that was over a year ago – so at this point I’ve become very discerning over which cookbooks I’m willing to spend my money on. I…

March 4, 2015 Cheese

Cheese 101: Bonne Bouche

I have a favor to ask. Please, right this very second, go to your local cheese shop and ask for Vermont Creamery’s Bonne Bouche. This little puck of goaty love has become one of my most favorite things in the world, and I want nothing more than for you to fall in love with it also. Bonne Bouche…

February 25, 2015 Flavorful Intermediate Cooking Recipes

One-Pot Butterflied Brown Sugar Mustard Chicken Recipe

– A mustard chicken recipe that might keep you from jumping off a bridge. Because chicken is magical. – Snow. Lots of it. Ice on the roads and sidewalks. Gray skies popping in and out of visibility between equally monochromatic buildings and lampposts. If you’re anywhere near the northern and/or eastern part of the country, this is…

February 18, 2015 Baking and Sweets

Cinnamon Apple Cake Recipe with Sour Cream

– For this little birthday, as apple cake recipe that takes 15 minutes to prepare. – Guess what? My 8th year blog birthday just passed! That’s right — back on February 4, 2006, I wrote my very first post, about vegan cupcakes. The photo is ridiculous and I didn’t even include a recipe. Wow, things…

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