Farmers Market Rainbow Marinara

This marinara was completely thought up on an inspired whim. The inspiration was from a friend of mine, a Southerner trying to find parts of NYC to love, who loves getting heirloom tomatoes and just eating them with olive oil and salt. After trying some of them and acknowledging their varied tastes, acidities, and textures, I was inspired to see how these fresh ‘matoes would do in a marinara. So I went to the Union Sq Farmers market and picked up a group of tomatoes and bell peppers that were as varied as I could find. I went with a lot of variety so that I could taste each tomato and bell pepper before adding it to get a feeling for how the various heirloom tomatoes and crazy colored bell peppers taste. I went with the philosophy of having the sweet bell peppers compliment the (at least I feel) higher acidity of heirloom tomatoes. I also included red onion in the mixture as once had a chicken parmigiana soup that was made great by the addition of red onion, which adds a small kick to the flavor. Note, that the way that I made this marinara required a food processor. See the Comments section for making the sauce without one.


Farmers Market Rainbow Marinara
Servings: ~ 6 cups of sauce
Prep Time: 15min
Cooking Time: 35min or more (see Comments section)

Ingredients: (see the farmers market products picture for an idea of how certain quantities)
• A bunch of heirloom tomatoes of your choice
• A few sweet bell peppers
• Some red onion
• 5 cloves of garlic coarsely chopped
• ¼ cup of olive oil
• 15oz can of tomato sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp dried basil
• 3 basil leaves

Directions:
Clean all ingredients that need cleaning (the tomatoes, peppers, onion). Coarsely cut up the tomatoes, bell peppers, and red onion making sure to throw out the stem areas of the tomatoes and bell peppers, the seed of the bell peppers, and the skin of the onion. Put the tomatoes, bell peppers, onion, and garlic into the food processor and… process them until they are of a chunky paste/sauce consistency similar to crushed tomatoes. Add the paste/sauce to a large sauce pan and add the olive oil, canned tomato sauce, basil, and bay leaves. Stir the sauce, taste it, and then add salt and pepper to your liking. Bring the sauce to a boil, then lower the flame and simmer the sauce for half an hour while stirring occasionally. After half an hour turn the stove off and remove the bay leaves.


Comments
At the end of the recipe provided you can enjoy the sauce then OR ideally let it sit for another 30-60 minutes OR refrigerate for future enjoyment. If you do not have a food processor, you can cut the tomatoes, bell peppers, onion, and garlic to more of a diced size and then add them to the sauce pan; you may also need to add some crushed tomatoes (no more than 15oz) to fill out the sauce. Also, note that getting a different sampling of tomatoes should change the taste of the sauce. I liked this sauce best on top of a fresh tasting ravioli and for dipping grilled cheese sandwiches into (which I HIGHLY recommend).


Enjoy!


Picture 1: Farmers market goods.


Picture 2: Sauce in the pan.


Picture 3: Final product.

Will you mari(nara) me?

From dipping mozzarella sticks, to making a simple pasta and sauce, to a fresh and tasty shrimp parmigiana, a good marinara sauce is always delightful, adds some juiciness to your food, and it makes you want to grab some bread and mop your plate clean. Marinaras are really simple things to make. Basic ones include tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and usually some basil. Your tomatoes provide the substance of marinaras and you can begin with fresh tomatoes, canned peeled tomatoes (usually plum tomatoes), canned diced tomatoes, or canned crushed tomatoes. For marinaras I would suggest keeping your ingredients pretty fresh as that freshness can really come through with so few ingredients and make a real difference (definitely having fresh basil in there is preferred). If you like more of the fresh acidic taste to your marinara then don’t add sugar, but if you want it to have a less intense acidic tomato flavor and be sweeter then add a little sugar. Different people and different recipes also include different amounts of olive oil depending on whether or not you just want it to sauté your garlic or if you want to have more of the olive oil taste in your marinara. Some possible things to add to the marinara include garlic powder, parsley, onions, and red pepper flakes.

Chiles Rellenos

As mentioned previously, having a food processor opens up new culinary doors like enhanced salsa making. The thought to do the following recipe was inspired by a One Small House trip that I did last winter, where a group of individuals including a decent number of medical students went to rural Tijuana to build homes for a few families in need of them. While we were out there, we were fed by the couple that cooked for the local orphanage that we stayed in… and they were great cooks! I thought that I was taste-bud happy (TBH) when I had the best carne asada taco of my life at a local taco stand or when the orphanage cooks made homemade tostadas. But no, true TBH came when they unveiled their chiles rellenos. Not only were they delicious with a nice kick but it was a dish that I could agree with the vegetarians on the trip that meat would not improve the flavor. Now fast forward to the present where my tiny food processor at the time allowed me to make a TBH version of my own.


Chiles Rellenos
Servings: ~ 4
Prep Time: ~35min
Cooking Time: 50min

Ingredients:
For the Peppers
• 4 poblano peppers
• 6-8 ounces of cheese (shredded or cubed) (I used Monterey Jack because I wanted them to be spicy, but you can use regular Jack or maybe even Coby cheese if you want less heat)
• 4 eggs, separated
• ½ cup of flour
• 1-1½ cup of vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
For the Salsa
• Either 4 large ripe tomatoes (peeled and chopped) OR 8 ripe plum tomatoes (peeled and chopped)
• ½ medium white onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• ¼ tsp dried thyme leaves
• 2 bay leaves
• ¾ cup canned reduced-sodium chicken broth
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
In a food processor combine the tomatoes, onion, and garlic. Puree until smooth. In a saucepan heat 2 tbsp of the oil, add in the puree, and cook for 3min while stirring. Add the cinnamon, oregano, thyme, bay leaves, broth, salt, and pepper. Reduce the heat to low and simmer while occasionally stirring until the salsa is thickened and the onion is cooked (15min). While the salsa is cooking, preheat your broiler. Remove the bay leaves once the salsa is cooked. You can either let the salsa cool and put it in the fridge or you can just set it aside.

Place the peppers on a baking sheet and broil them close to the flame for about 5min each side (you want the outer skin to blacken and start to separate from the pepper flesh). Then place the peppers in a container or bag (I used a paper bag) and let them steam for about 15min. Peel off the blackened skin and rinse the peppers in cold water. With a small sharp knife, slit each pepper the long way on one side while keeping the stem on the pepper (I would actually not cut along the whole length but would leave about an inch of uncut space at the top and bottom of the cut). Carefully cut out the seed pod, remove it, and rinse the inside of the pepper with cold water to get any remaining seeds out. Pat the peppers dry inside (carefully) and out.

Stuff the peppers with 1.5-2 ounces of cheese each. Reshape the peppers so that they close while retaining the general shape of an intact pepper. Secure the open cut in the pepper with your toothpicks.

In a mixing bowl beat your egg whites with ¼ tsp of salt until it is frothy. Beat in egg yolks 1 at a time. Then beat in 1 tbsp of flour. Use the remaining flour to dust the peppers with. Preheat your oven to 200oF. In a medium skillet heat the 1 cup of vegetable oil until it is very hot. Gently place a pepper in the oil and cook on each side until golden brown (~2min each side). Remove the pepper with a slotted utensil and place on top of a paper towel to drain. Place the pepper in the oven to keep it warm while you are frying the others (use the remaining ½ cup of oil if needed). Once you have fried all of the peppers, (optional to heat up the salsa), take out the toothpicks (not so optional), place the peppers on your dishes, place the salsa on the peppers, place a piece of Chiles Rellenos in your mouth, and then place a smile on your face.


Commentary:
This recipe is adapted from 365 Easy Mexican Recipes by Marge Poore. I will tend to post more original, family, or less specialized cookbook recipes on the blog but this one was very very good, I tweaked it a bit, and I’m plugging the book. I look forward to trying more recipes in this book when I can.
The salsa in this is really nice as it tastes very fresh and complements the spicy heat from the pepper (and Monterey Jack if you used that). I prefer having the salsa cold or room temperature to even further contrast the spicy and temperature-hot pepper, but you can alternatively heat it up before placing it on the peppers.

Enjoy!


Picture 1: Salsa making with the little food processor that could


Picture 2: Cubed Monterey Jack


Picture 3: Charred peppers


Picture 4: Homemade steaming apparatus


Picture 5: Frying the peppers


Picture 6: ¡El producto final!

TechnoKitchen: Food Processors

One big recommendation that I will make for anyone trying to take their beginner-intermediate (that’s rookie-pro for the madden players out there) cooking game to the next level is to get a food processor. I feel confident saying that my life has changed because of my processor. Not only can it save time on big chopping tasks, but it opens up new doors into homemade sauces, salsas, cooking pastes, and more. It doesn’t even have to be a big processor, you can get a small one speed for like $15-25. Now personally, I got a small one, fell in love, and then ditched it for a bigger, newer, shiny model and fell in love again (the original is still appreciated and used). If you are a little worried about space in your cabinet (like me) I would recommend getting a combined blender/food processor, preferably one with separate blender and food processor attachments. However, I would remind you that if you want pieces bigger than “finely chopped” that you will probably have to do that still on your own, but being proficient with knives is a good thing to be. In the following post, Chiles Rellenos, I get to show off my little processor that could.

Picture 1: My combo blender/food processor

Buttered Roasted Chicken

So in addition to seasoning your own butter, it’s kind of cool to be able to work with a meat from a more basic form than your skinless, boneless, seasoned chicken patty with the grill marks already on it. So this is a roasted chicken recipe with some nice picks of how to season a bird with your seasoned butter.

Buttered Roasted Chicken
Servings: ~ 4
Prep Time: ~30min
Cooking Time: ~1 hour and 20 - 40min

Ingredients:

For the Butter
• ½ stick of butter
• Lemon flavoring of some sort (zest from ½ a lemon, 1 ½ tsp lemon juice (fresh preferred but not necessary), or 2 tsp lemon pepper spice)
• ¼ cup of dried herbs of your choice (i.e. rosemary, basil, sage, marjoram; but you can really empty whatever is green and you think would go nicely with this recipe)
• 2 cloves garlic finely crushed (or pressed and finely chopped)
• Fresh black pepper to taste (omit if using lemon pepper)

For the Chicken
• 4-5lb whole chicken
• 2 tsp coriander
• Salt and pepper to taste


Directions :
Soften the butter (i.e. leave it at room temp until soft). Mix the butter with the lemon flavoring, dried herbs, garlic, and black pepper (for the butter) in a large bowl. Beat and mix the butter with the seasoning until it is fully mixed and there is an even distribution of the seasoning in the butter. Optional: you can make more of the seasoned butter, roll it into a log in saran wrap and put it in the fridge for later.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Take your chicken out of its covering, remove the inner gizzard like stuff, wash in cold water, and pat dry. Carefully and without tearing the skin separate the skin from the meat starting at the head and tail ends of the torso (see the picture below). Be invasive, invade the chickens personal space and try to separate the skin from the meat over as much of the bird as possible while still leaving the skin attached in certain areas like right down the middle of the torso (basically you want separation but to keep it covering the meat and to not remove it). Next use a bit more than ½ of the seasoned butter to season the chicken by rubbing and massaging it into the space between skin and meat (see the picture below). You can try putting some of the butter in the space and then from the external side of the skin, massaging the butter into the rest of the space you made under the skin. Rub the rest of the butter on the outside of the bird. Additionally season the outside of the bird with the salt, pepper, and coriander.

Put the seasoned bird in a roasting pan and roast for an hour and 20 min at 400 degrees F. The butter makes it so that you don’t need to baste (how great, you can now go and watch TV, check email, play with the kids, or go study). After an hour and 20 minutes, check to see if the chicken is done (i.e. does the juice run clear when you poke the thigh or the leg joint is loose when tugged). Let the chicken cool (while you bask in the joy of roasting a whole chicken and using your seasoned butter) for about 10 minutes, cutting before then would let the juices and flavor goodness evaporate out of the bird.


Comments
Now I don’t have a roasting pan. But, w/ a vision and some “whatever, this works” attitude, I made one out of a pyrex baking sheet and the grill plate from my toaster oven (see the picture below). If you also do this, you should flip the bird top to bottom in order to better cook the under side of the bird. You should also add 10-20 min to the cooking time of the bird. Also, I didn’t truss the bird because the heat can get around the legs and wings and make them. But I you have company and want to be fancier you can truss the bird, tuck the wings in and truss (trussing instructions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpSPfuJQVOA ).


Enjoy!


Picture 1: Seasoned Butter

Picture 2: Creating space under the skin


Picture 3: Rubbing seasoned butter underneath skin

Picture 4a and 4b: Makeshift roasting pan


Picture 5: Cooked chicken

Flavor That Ish: Seasoned Butters

So what do we want from our meals besides our daily dose of carbs, protein, and fat (yes you need some fat, not much but some). That would be flavor. There are many ways to put flavor in your food and to cook with it and I will try to highlight some of those ways through this blog over time.

One way that I personally think is cool, pretty easy, and sounds kind of impressive is seasoned butters. Yeah, that’s right, I said seasoned butters! Adding to butter is nice not only because its butter and seasonings, but also because it’s a cool way to use your herbs. Now you can use fresh herbs or dried herbs. But I like using butters as a way to extract the flavor from my dried herbs in a juicy way (and having more uses for dried herbs is really nice as they are cheaper and last far longer than fresh herbs). There isn’t anything wrong with fresh herbs, they are great and there will be recipes using them later on the blog, but they spoil quickly and cost more (though most don't cost a lot, just more than dried).

What do I season my butter with? A lot of things. The main additive (I have found) is usually herbs (ranging from the more ordinary dried basil to a more powerful dried rosemary or to fresh cilantro). Just think about what herbs/seasonings you would like on your dish and then mix it in softened butter. For steak I like to use garlic and thyme, for fish some garlic with fresh cilantro, for roasted poultry I like to go heavy on the dried herbs without shying away from tougher dried herbs (like rosemary) that I never use outside of a moistening medium (sauces, butters, broths, etc.) but that have a nice strong flavor to them. Additionally you can add things like fresh lemon juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and more to your seasoned butters to give them a nice kick (insert Emeril Lagasse “bam!” here). So here is a nice recipe with a flavored butter that I like http://www.thatsmyhome.com/fishermans/cilantro-snapper.htm.

After talking to a few more followers of the blog I will try to throw in more recipes and tips with fish (for all of you pescatarians out there) and vegetables (for the vegetarians)… sorry vegans but I may not be too helpful… as for the carnivores... I got you, especially when I decide to write about BBQ.

Hiatus Explanation

Sorry for the hiatus that has happened recently with posts. They have so far been due to the fact that my comp had a dysfunctional power button (kind of an important one) and my new apt doesn't have internet yet. And now, I will be away on vaca for 2-3 weeks.

BUT! I am planning on doing a post on homemade spaghetti sauces and would welcome (meaning gimme gimme) any of your recipes or even just techniques for your homemade spaghetti sauces so that the post can show some variety. So send'em in if you're willing.

Also, when I get back to posting I have a few dishes and pics to post that I made during the hiatus. So you can look forward to that, esp. those of you "checking the site everyday" so you can "find a distraction from the desk job".

See yah soon!

No Tomato Sauce, No Cream Sauce, No Meat and Still a Tasty Pasta Dish

So as you go through life you encounter more and more vegetarians and even the most ravenous carnivore will admit that most are not crazy people but people who just choose to live a different lifestyle; one without meat and potentially a longer lived one because of it. So it was a great thing when you find an inventive new recipe that you can share with your vegetarian friends that is not a salad, has some nice flavor, and doesn’t involve anything near a tofurkey. So this post features a dish that my mom actually surprised the heck out of me with one day since she doesn’t often venture into new culinary territory. If you want a crazy name for the dish let’s say “A-Friendly Kickin Pasta” (A-friendly as in animal-friendly).


A-Friendly Kickin’ Pasta
Servings: 4 healthy ones
Prep Time: ~6min
Cooking Time: ~25min

Ingredients:
• 1 box of penne pasta
• 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 4 healthy cloves of garlic (pressed then finely chopped or just crushed)
• ~4oz sun-dried tomatoes (no juice)
• ~12oz banana peppers (no juice)
• 1 healthy teaspoon of dried basil
• ~6oz fresh mozzarella (chopped to a size depending on personal preference, explained below)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Place EVOO and garlic in a large saucepan or stewing pot (you’re eventually going to put all of the pasta in here) and heat on a medium-low flame to slowly sauté the garlic. At the first sign of the garlic browning (very roughly 5-10 minutes) turn off the heat and add the basil. Next add the banana peppers and sun-dried tomatoes (without the juice; you can drain them or just pick them up with a fork-like utensil). Cover and let sit for a bit.
Boil the pasta (the instructions should be on the box if needed).
Uncover the A-Friendly Kickin’ sauce and taste it (don’t be shy). Add salt and pepper to taste. Then add the pasta and toss.
When you are ready to serve, cut the fresh mozzarella into pieces that size is up to you (I went with pieces a little bit thicker and shorter than a stick of gum, but base your decision on how much you like chunks of fresh mozzarella cheese flavor or having that taste spread out over the dish).

Comments
So pressing garlic is great for something like this as it really opens up the garlic and exposes its flavor. However, when you don’t have a garlic crusher (because some friend who shall remain nameless promised to buy you one a year ago…) you can press the garlic under the blade of large kitchen knife and then finely chop it. Also, I like having the fresh mozzarella in the fridge as late as possible and adding it to the dish as its cold milky flavor with provide some contrast to the hot pasta and sauce (I also like the fresh taste of cold fresh mozzarella). However, if you put the mozzarella on the pasta and warm it a bit it will melt on it nicely which is also tasty. Most importantly, I went with the easier and cheaper version of this recipe in that I used canned sun-dried tomatoes and canned+chopped hot banana peppers. My mom makes this with fresh sun-dried tomatoes and fresh sweet banana peppers. I prefer her way but its slightly more expensive, requires chopping the banana peppers, and harder to find depending on your local super market offerings.

Enjoy!


Picture 1: Ingredients


Picture 2: All together in the pot now


Picture 3: Final Product

Garlic Shrimp aka Gambas Al Ajillo

For the first mentioned recipe on this site I decided to go with one that I consider to be a guilty pleasure. A great place to get this dish (and the place that I first had it at) is Dali Restaurant and Tapas Bar in Cambridge, MA (http://www.dalirestaurant.com/). To make the dish you can use the recipe off of (http://www.df.lth.se/~thanisa/cgi-bin/wrapper.cgi?rec.food.recipes/misc3/du3); it may not be the full traditional recipe but it’s simple and does the job.

Lessons:
Substituting chili powder for fresh dried chiles
One substitution I made in this recipe was that I didn’t have a red chile pepper on hand and so I used some ground chile pepper that I had. This may have caused the heat to be drier and/or rougher but unless you are cooking a lot of ethnic foods that require chile pepper, you probably won’t have any fresh chile peppers around. Also, be wary of cheap chili powders as opposed to nicer chili powders, the former I find are often refered to as chili powders and the latter as ground chile. Chile powders can have very different tastes such as a hot cayenne powder and a sweet and smoky chipotle powder. You can find out more about chili powders at http://www.theepicentre.com/Spices/chile.html.

Brining
Instead of sprinkling salt on the shrimp, I brined them (I’m still learning how to use this technique correctly). Brining is an interesting technique of submerging food in a sugar and salt solution that flavors meats and keeps them juicy. It works by osmosis due to the higher salt concentration of the fluid than the meat, leading to absorption of salt by the meat, which drags water into the cell with it (sound familiar to those of you in med school). The influx of salt also denatures the meat proteins making them absorb and retain more water. Like many things in cooking, you can Wikipedia brining to get more details on it (I also like this website as it gives examples of flavored brines (http://www.cookshack.com/brining-101#_Toc528293321). The brining technique that I used came from http://whatscookingamerica.net/ShrimpTips.htm. To note, you need to brine with raw shrimp, if you only have cooked shrimp for the garlic shrimp recipe than salt them as the recipe says to. You can brine chicken, pork, and turkey as far as I know; so it might come in handy for that next Thanksgiving bird. I had previously been brining my shrimp for 20 minutes and it felt like the brine worked but not to its full potential. For this shrimp recipe I brined for 40 minutes, which was too long (made it too salty), so I’m going to recommend a 30 minute brine. I also threw in some coarsely chopped garlic in the brine mixture to add some flavor (note: that this addition would work better for things that brine for longer like a turkey).

Pictures:
During brining


During cooking

Learning to Cook: Tapping into Internet Sources

(There’s a lot of cited examples in this entry due to its topic, enjoy this somewhat rare treat)

Overall the internet tends to be pegged as being a potentially amazing source for all kinds of information but with a lot of warnings of false information. Recipes are the same except that instead of a warning of false information, there is a requirement for the acknowledgment of the gynormously varied skill levels, expectations, and above all varied tastes of the people posting these recipes (think of that guy or girl that you know that you seem to always disagree with and then realize that they can post recipes on the web). This applies mostly to sites like www.cooks.com that contain posts from everyday individuals. More official sites like www.foodnetwork.com will have some exotic recipes but their overall aim is to post recipes from professionals that many would like, some will love, and very few will hate. So these sites are safer sources in terms of finding lower risk recipes. However, more official sites (just like fancier cookbooks) will probably have a healthy amount of complex recipes with ingredients or techniques that you may be unfamiliar with (i.e. making ravioli is harder than you’d think).

Additionally, you will eventually find a random website with a recipe that you love (like http://www.thatsmyhome.com/fishermans/cilantro-snapper.htm).
Additionally internet recipe searches are like general internet searches in the respect that if you’re looking for something very weird… you will probably find it on the internet. To tackle the issue of safely dabbling in random internet searches you need to use your instincts. If something seems way too weird or way too difficult, then don’t do it. Adding some weird and difficulty to your recipes does help you expand your skills and recipe repertoire and improves your winging-it skills; just stay away from the very weird until you make a dish that makes the previously very weird or difficult into a not so weird or difficult recipe (Rome was not fed in a day). Do note that the simple but delicious recipes are often going to be the ones that you use and treasure most (i.e. http://www.home-ec101.com/back-to-basics-sauteed-cabbage/).

One last important source is food company websites. Yes, it’s ok to drink the company juice sometimes because these sites can have really good recipes on them (i.e. http://www.san-j.com/recipes.asp). More than that, these broad-audience recipe sharing endeavors by companies are often expressed in good teachable formats that can often give some interesting/helpful commentary (i.e. http://www.barillaus.com/Pages/Art-Of-Lasagne.aspxv).

So overall, you should treat internet recipe sources like you treat early romances; explore a little, then explore a lot, demand high-quality, be open-minded to new experiences, stick with good ones and they’ll treat you right, you’ll never forget your first good ones (http://www.df.lth.se/~thanisa/cgi-bin/wrapper.cgi?rec.food.recipes/misc3/du3) or your epic fails (http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1915,151162-232203,00.html), and most of all balance adventure with smarts. Good luck out there!

Learning to Cook: Learning from Family Members

Learning how to cook from relatives is a great way to begin your introduction to cooking; not only do you get personal tutoring and honest commentary, but you will also get a lot of information about which recipes your family makes and likes and who makes it well: “yah know your grandmother's side of the family loves making stewed pork chops, I believe they use a tomato base and lots of peppers”. However, you most likely encounter a comical level of imprecision when it comes to timing, measuring, temperatures, and perhaps even ingredients: “hey ma, how much salt goes in this?” “I don’t know” “what do you mean you don’t know?” “yah know… some salt” “how much is some?” “(snicker) some is some” “fine then, how much thyme did you just put in the pot” “Oh.. a bit” “Geese ma!” “Hey I cook with love not units of measurement”. Now don’t fault your relatives for this habit, it comes from cooking for years and becoming so familiar with recipes and possibly so good at the winging-it factor that it would slow them down and make the food less fun to make.
Even though they may be annoyed by a certain level of questioning while they are cooking, you need to get your information out of them, because if you don’t they will make the meal on autopilot and not really teach you anything.

Your main objectives from learning from cooking relatives for specific recipes are:
• what are the main ingredients of the recipe?
• what ingredients have they often substituted when they were missing an ingredient?
• is there a shorter or longer (time of cooking) version to this recipe?
• why they are cooking the meal the way that they are? (time, cooking method, pot/pan size and type)
• is this a family/culture specific-recipe?

Some good questions to ask cooking relatives in general are:
• do they add any ingredients in particular very carefully to dishes due to price or strength of flavor?
• what is their favorite ingredients? why?
• what is their favorite cooking method? (baking, broiling, frying, wok-ing, grilling, etc.) why?
• what is their dish to make? why?
• what are the family’s favorite dishes to eat?
• what would they cook for themselves if they had all day and any ingredients that they needed?
• what would they make if they had half an hour and no unusual ingredients?
• what would they cook if guests came over?

Lastly, your relatives are family members and can help you begin to associate your cooking with your family’s culture. It’s good to have a knowledge of your culture’s cuisine; not only will it tell you more about your culture and family and make you feel good for knowing it, but you will also have something to share with others when you inevitably exchange cooking tips sometime in your life.

Why I love food and cooking.

We need food. You can go for somewhere around a month or so without food (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-a-person-sur), but most of us get antsy if we miss two meals in a day.
We want food. We want it to be tasty, delicious, and satisfying.
We have associations with food. Prospectively we plan celebration dinners and retrospectively we recall fond memories of childhood birthday cakes.
Food dictates feelings. A nice pint of beer or dulce de leche makes us feel better after a bad break up.
Food is a social mechanism. We use food to catch up with old friends, to test out new love interests, to facilitate business, and to lure students to research talks.
Food has cultural meaning. Each culture has ingredients, techniques, and/or tastes associated with it. Eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day helps a contemporary girl feel like she is celebrating and experiencing her Irish culture appropriately. Making Bulgogi for your girlfriend’s Korean parents helps show them that you appreciate their culture (and that you may want to become part of the family… wink wink).
Food is work and accomplishment. Cooking for others is how hundreds of millions of people earn their living. Friends finishing a 12lb. burrito challenge they saw on Man v. Food makes them feel accomplished (as well as gross).

Long story short food is an integral part of being human. Cooking is the hands-on manipulation of ingredients to make food. My philosophy, empower yourself with some skills to harness the power and joy of food.