Mystika tis Kouzinas (Kitchen Secrets)

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~ Wine tasting Glossary. ~ Raw: wine which is very young with big content of acids. ~ Velvet: wine which is soft and pleasant in the palate. ~ Bouchonne: wine with obvious fault in the smell and flavour that is due to the cork. ~ Generous: wine with high temperature rankings, rich in flavour and in perfume. ~ Balanced: wine with harmony in individual flavours. ~ Soft: wine that does not have annoying acidic and grape flavour. ~ Wiry: wine with evident of acidity. ~ Hard: wine with the intense grape flavour. ~ Round: wine with body and with velvet flavour. No flavour fall short and at the same time no one surpass. ~ Wine with body: wine rich in components that it leaves our mouth full from tasting impressions. ~ Marinating before baking. ~ Pork or Beef meat - 3-24 hours ~ Breast of chicken without the skin and bones - 3 hours ~ Other parts of chicken - 3-24 hours ~ Big fishes - 30 minutes ~ Small fishes - 15 minutes ~ Vegetables - the 15-60 minutes ~ Vinegar uses. ~ Few drops of vinegar on the sponge for the dishes will relieve you from by any chance of smells in the dishes and in the glasses. ~ Also water and vinegar mixed can be used as detergent for salts in taps and stainless steel. ~ The dosage is 3 parts water and 1 part of vinegar. ~ The rice should not be stirred during cooking. ~ The frequent stirring breaks the grains, something that has as resulting for the rice to soften and be sticky and muddy. ~ You want to extend the herb and vegetable aroma longer? ~ The secret in order to keep the aroma more days that accompanies foods like celery, dill, parsley, spearmint is to put them in a glass with water into the refrigerator. ~ Their duration of life will be at least double. ~ Do you squander the radishes? ~ As you should know the radish (white) burns (usually) and this makes it splendid. ~ What you do not know (perhaps) is that the “burn” of the radish is found precisely under the skin in very small distance by this and as we go towards the centre of the radish the burn weakens. ~ Hence an advice for our friends, you do not clean a lot the radish, just peel it simply (as the carrots). ~ Steaming Vegetables? ~ In order to cook the vegetables in steam, we put them in a special steaming basket of the saucepan. ~ We put as much water that the surface (when it boils) it is hardly 3 cm (roughly) below the bottom of the basket. ~ The saucepan should be covered with the lid. ~ Steaming of the vegetables maintain more of their “liveliness”. ~ The onions blacken during sautéing? ~ When onions are being sautéing for some foods, you throw in the frying pan some salt in the oil, when is heating up (you do not forget to put less salt in the food) and then throw in the onions. ~ They will not blacken with anything, except and if you forget the frying pan on the heat for an hour, where in that case not only the onions but also the entire house will be burned! ~ The tomato salad is watery? ~ When we salt the tomatoes the salt little by little pulls their water out, which results in having a watery tomato salad. ~ For this purpose it is best that we salt the salad right before we serve it on the table and not before. ~ You want the cake to be fluffy? ~ As soon as we remove it from the oven and after it cools down lightly, we cover it with transparent membrane (plastic wrap). ~ The tomato sauce came out sour? ~ If your tomato sauce came out a little sour there is a solution. ~ Some sugar (on the nose of a spoon) and good stirring at the time of boiling. ~ Lighter and tastier pesto sauce? ~ In order to become lighter and tastier the pesto sauce we replace half of the basil with parsley and also half of the pine nuts with almond. ~ The pesto sauce at the same time has a different flavour from usual and a lot less calories. ~ We burn the food a little? ~ If the food is seized a little during cooking, throw cold water externally on the saucepan to lower the temperature of the bottom. ~ Afterwards we change saucepan, transferring only the unburned food and continue the cooking adding the needed liquids. ~ With this way the food does not smell burned. ~ The saucepan that was burned we clean it easily if we leave it for a few hours with some hot water where we have thrown in some dish-washing soap. ~ The frying pan splatters? ~ First of all what ever we are planning to fry have to be as dry from water as possible. ~ It is worth it to wait little. ~ Naturally we can cover the frying pan with special dense sieve. ~ What happens however if we don't have one off-hand? ~ Some salt (one teaspoonful roughly) in the middle of the frying pan at the time of heating up the oil it will do wanders. ~ For Crisp oven Potatoes. ~ If we want the oven potatoes to become crisp, with the rest of the ingredients we sprinkle some breadcrumbs over on top of them. ~ Your hands smell onions? ~ If you cut onions and your hands smell, you rub your hands well with some Greek coffee. ~ You can also put some (not much) Greek coffee n the hot eye of stove in order to get rid of the unpleasant kitchen smells. ~ Are you still crying when you chop onions? Learn how to stop that. ~ The onions, as well as the garlic, absorb large quantities of sulphur from the soil. ~ When we finely chop the onions, are released certain ferments, which afterwards react with sulphur and create anti- sulphur Krebs. ~ All these in turn, they create unstable oxide, which is a combination of sulphur acid, the sulphur dioxide, and hydrogen sulphide. ~ When this substance, in gaseous state, comes in contact with the humidity in your eye, it activates a sense of burn, via the radial nerve. ~ The cooked onions do not make you cry because the process of cooking disable the ferments that are required in order to make oxide that causes you to cry. ~ This way you can chew with safety the cooked onions without you being crying. ~ The best ways in order for you not to cry when you cut onions is: ~You put the onions in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before cutting them. ~ Alternative is to dip the onions in frozen water a few minutes before cutting them. ~ Others say that you should chew gum while chopping onions. ~ The refrigeration slows down the fermentation and it does not produce the oxide that makes you cry. ~ One other way is to have a fan (if available) to blow the onions when you cut them. ~ Another way is to cut the onions while you wash them because the oxide that makes you cry is water diluted. ~ Your hands smell garlic? ~ You cleaned garlic and your hands smell? ~ Cut a tomato and rub your hands with this. ~ Immediately afterwards you wash your hands. ~ Your house smells in general? ~ The best solution is the right utilisation of the stove-hood. ~ Very seldom we read the manufactures directions of use. ~ These directions therefore, as a rule say that the time that we use the oven-hood there should be a kitchen door open, but no towards the exterior of the house or window, because then the exterior air blows the smells to the interior of the house. ~ If the oven-hood is maintained rightly we have better results. ~ Wandering if the eggs are fresh? ~ In order to find out if the eggs you just bought are as fresh as they say they are, put one egg in a bowl floating in water. ~ If the egg is horizontal, it is fresh. ~ If the egg is in a slanting position, it is 3-4 days old. ~ If it is vertical, is about 10 days old and if it floats, it is stale. ~ The eggs break during boiling? ~ The eggs break during boiling when we have just removed them from the refrigerator. ~ Just for this reason they should be removed from the refrigerator roughly 20 minutes before in order to be at room temperature. ~ Also during boiling we throw some salt in the water. ~ The eggs cut when poured into the soup or sauce? ~ In order for the eggs not to cut, we make sure that there is not a big difference in temperature from the mixture in which we add it in. ~ Are the potatoes growing roots? ~ When we keep potatoes in the cool room or elsewhere and we don’t want them to grow roots faster, we put in between them an apple. ~ It will delay the root budding for a long period of time. ~ Extra salt in the pulses? ~ If by mistake a lot of salt falls while cooking pulses, we throw in the saucepan a peeled potato. ~ It will pull enough of saltiness from the food. ~ Pure and clean ice cubes? ~ Boil the water before pouring it into the ice cube tray and freezing it. ~ Maximum juice out of lemons? ~ To get the maximum juice out of the lemons, soak them into hot water for about an hour first and then juice them. ~ Cabbage smells while cooking? ~ To avoid the house smelling cabbage, place a slice of bread in the pot over the cabbage while cooking it. ~ Smelly hands after handling fish? ~ To get rid of the smell off your hands after handling fish, wash your hands with apple vinegar and then with soap and water. ~ Wandering if the fish is fresh? ~ In order to find out if the fish you just bought for dinner is fresh, all you have to do is place it in a bowl full of water and if the fish floats, it is fresh.