If we had to pick one sandwich to take with us if we were stranded on a deserted island, then it would be New Orleans’ incomparable Muffuletta. It’s a 10-inch round loaf of bread, cut horizontally and layered with a variety of Italian meats, cheeses, and a garlicky olive salad.

Here's a tip to take the hassle out of fresh ginger

It’s almost truffle season, when the wonderful earthy smell of fresh truffles can take almost any dish to the next level. But you don’t have to wait for truffle season or shell out a whole lot of money to have a little touch of that magic at home.

We're starting the Fast Metabolism Diet and thought it would be fun to share with you what we're eating, what Cool Tools we're using and how it's going. Here's Week 1

How to make candied citrus zest.

Many of our favorite vegetables have a high water content: zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant (OK: my fave, but not Piper’s!), and more. And if you try to cook them just as they come in from the garden, that extra water will effectively poach the vegetable, turning it into a soggy, tasteless (or, worse, bad tasting) mess, and it will dilute any sauce or dressing you try to serve with it. So you need to remove a significant percentage of that water, and you do that with salt.

We love avocados...not just for the health benefits, which are legion, but for the way it just feels so creamy and luxurious in our mouths. But now there seems to be a new recognition of the dangers lurking in and around that beautiful fruit, or at least in its preparation. See this article from the May 10, 2017, issue of The Times of London….

Holy guacamole, that’s got to hurt!
Gurpreet Narwan
May 10 2017, 12:01 am, The Times

Jamie Oliver has posted a one-minute video to prevent more cases of “avocado hand”. Right, Meryl Streep also got caught out

No self-respecting bruncher would consider a late breakfast without a little smashed avocado on toast — but for many it comes at a high price.

Surgeons say growing numbers of amateur chefs are reporting to accident and emergency departments with what they are calling “avocado hand”: serious stab and slash injuries that are the result of failed attempts to penetrate the fruit’s hard outer casing with a sharp knife before encountering a resistant inner stone.

The British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons is calling for safety labels on the fruit to staunch the flow of injured patients to hospitals. Many cases involve serious nerve and tendon injuries, requiring intricate surgery — and even then some patients never recover the full use of the hand.

Simon Eccles, secretary of the association and former president of the plastic surgery section of the Royal Society of Medicine, said: “People do not anticipate that the avocados they buy can be very ripe and there is minimal understanding of how to handle them. We don’t want to put people off the fruit but I think warning labels are an effective way of dealing with this. It needs to be recognisable. Perhaps we could have a cartoon picture of an avocado with a knife, and a big red cross going through it?”

Hard figures for “avocado hand” have not been collated but it is a global phenomenon: Meryl Streep was photographed with a bandaged hand in 2012 after the fruit fought back. In New Zealand more than 300 people have sued for compensation from avocado injuries in the past five years. The New York Times ran an article this month headlined: “How to cut an avocado without cutting yourself” after the wife of a staff member had to be treated in hospital for a deep wound.

At Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, Mr Eccles says he treats about four patients a week with avocado hand. Staff at St Thomas’ Hospital, in London, say they are well accustomed to the “post-brunch surge” on Saturdays….

Now think about how many times you’ve picked up a sharp knife to slice through an avocado and then banged the sharp edge of the knife into the avocado pit to dislodge it: all while holding the avocado in your hand. We’ve done it countless times, but now we think about the potential dangers to one of our favorite appendages.

But wait: there is no need to give up avocados, or to watch a how-to video every time you want avocado toast or to prepare guacamole, or to forgo drinking while preparing brunch. We’ve found a truly Cool Tool to deal very safely with avocados, and we can’t wait to tell you about it. Just glance here, and see what we’re talking about ....

So we love chilis ...and we know that many of you do too! We have a dozen varieties growing in our garden, ranging from sweet to very hot …. We smoke many of these - creating a wide range of chipotles - but all of them are so much better fresh. And as the season goes longer, the fresh chilis get hotter ….

We're starting the Fast Metabolism Diet and thought it would be fun to share with you what we're eating, what Cool Tools we're using and how it's going.

Actually there are two questions when it comes to wine breathing: the first is "whether" and the second is "how".

A frequently-asked question for the Home Cook is: what do I really need to keep my knives sharp?

Here's the key to great roast chicken!

We first discovered Perfect Spice, a Canadian product, many years ago when our friends from Canada brought about a case with them and produced a bottle, like magic, at every meal… what a revelation! It made everything we sprinkled it on taste better.

Here's why you shouldn't put tomatoes in the refrigerator...ever!

One of the most luxurious and impressive meats you can prepare, share and enjoy is fresh magret, the breast of a fattened duck.  The texture is like velvet, the flavor is like heaven, and the preparation is like child's play!

So … the summer season is starting to wind down - the grape harvest is in full-swing here in Napa Valley - and we all are searching for more ways to enjoy the abundance of zucchinis, cucumbers, and eggplants … from our own garden, your friends’ gardens, or the farmers’ markets … before winter descends. And as we approach this bounty, with a variety of recipes in mind, the fundamental question is ...to salt or not to salt?

Note to self: Idiot, plug in the mixer before you add the ingredients!

A guide to art and wine in the WIne country...

Choosing, preparing, and cooking asparagus...

I have salad envy; specifically French salad envy.  You can go into any little bistro in Paris and get a salad that is simple, beautiful, light and delicate.  And try as I might, I couldn't reproduce that at home.  Now of course the greens are an issue, but you should be able to get good greens from a good green grocer, a farmer's market or your own garden.  The elusive element has always been the dressing.  Even with the best olive oil and vinegar, mine never tasted the same.

An inevitable by-product of Holiday excesses is a … choose your own label: hangover, sour stomach, upset tummy … you know. And there are many patent medicine vendors who will swear their products will relieve your problem.

But one of the oldest, simplest, most effective, and most refreshing remedies is Bitters in Soda (carbonated water).

Piper to Universe: Why didn’t anybody tell me about pasta water? It used to be the detritus that I eagerly threw away after making pasta...now I realize: it’s pasta magic!

Almonds--the healthy snack...

I don’t know about you, but every doctor and nutritionist we’ve talked to lately has preached, “Eat more oats!” Sometimes, we just feel like saying: Neigh! But we've found a better alternative...

Ravioli can be a little packet of wonderfulness.  You can fill it with wild mushrooms, like the recipe on the right, a savory pumpkin mix, or just about anything you can think of.  The possibilities are endless.  But making the pasta yourself, while absolutely feasible, is not something many of us (me included) want to tackle.  Well, you can tickle your tastebuds and impress your friends, all with very little work.

Here's how to eat your onions, and have them too...

This is a great way to add a hit of flavor straight out of your freezer!

Here's an easy way to peel a tomato...

With Downton Abbey just over for the season and Mr. Selfridge just getting underway for its second season, I’ve been doing a little reading, some testing, and a lot of thinking about tea. I’ve come up with three conclusions:

Hiccups are one of those things that aren’t really serious, but they are really annoying, to yourself, and to those around you...and sometimes embarrassing!

Now that we’ve passed the first anniversary of Colbrook Kitchen, we thought we’d share how we got started on this adventure.

How do you make the marriage of pasta and sauce work? We found a very Cool Tip to do this!

The easiest way we've found to steam asparagus...

Oh how we love a beautiful cheese course at the end of a meal! We picked up this habit traveling in Europe and often substitute it for dessert. This ritual, whether as a prelude to dessert or in its place, has become much more familiar and appreciated here in the US.

Archimedes, one of the leading mathematicians in ancient Greece, discovered the way to measure the volume of irregular objects through the principle of displacement: if you put an object into liquid, the amount of liquid displaced, is equal to the volume of the object.  (And you thought you would learn only about cooking in these Newsletters...)  It is said that he discovered this when he was in the bath and noticed how the water overflowed the tub when he got in.  He was so excited that he jumped out of the tub shouting ”Eureka” and running through the streets of Syracuse stark naked.

If you have or have access to raw olives, here's one way to process them into something wonderfully edible.

Here's the easiest way yet to make homemade mayonnaise...

There are so many reasons and occasions to give gifts: birthdays, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, special events, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentines Day, hostess, thank you...and the list goes on. Wouldn’t it be great to get or give something that was truly wanted? Think of a Gift Registry as a wishlist with benefits--the benefits being that you can share it with others.

As the Holidays come to a close and you begin the inevitable cleanup from the flurry of the season, don’t forget your Gift Closet. It can be a closet, or a drawer, or simply the corner of a shelf somewhere. It has a critical role throughout the year, but this seems to be the time of year when it needs your particular attention.

Probably the scariest thing about making a soufflé is folding in the egg whites.  You just finish beating the egg whites to get all this air into them, and then you have to take this fragile fluffy cloud and fold it into some really dense heavy stuff (your soufflé base), and you're cautioned that if you do it wrong, your soufflé won't rise and you'll have an ugly mess on you hands (or, more importantly, in your dish!)

English Muffins, which are neither English nor muffins (at least not in the American blueberry muffin genre) are one of the most popular breakfast breads in the US. Whether you top them with marmalade, peanut butter, lemon curd or a poached egg and hollandaise, they are a much-loved breakfast treat. But what do you know about their origins, and, more importantly, what makes them so special?

Did you know, for example, that they are not baked, but rather cooked on a griddle? And while the idea of a round, yeast-risen bread cooked in a ring mold on a griddle dates back to tenth or eleventh century Wales, the modern English Muffin was created by Samuel B. Thomas in the late nineteenth century in New York. (10 Things You Didn’t Know About English Muffins)

But the things that make English Muffins so very special are the “Nooks and Crannies”, a term that Bimbo Bakeries USA, Thomas’ English Muffins’ parent company, trademarked to describe the open grain and texture that is unique to English Muffins. The “Nooks and Crannies” allow the muffin to create a texture, when toasted, that almost crackles with goodness and crunch because of the little peaks and valleys on the surface of the split muffin.

And that brings us to the discussion of how you split a muffin. The creators of the English Muffin (both original and of later versions--the Model Bakery in St. Helena, CA makes one of our favorite versions) have gone to a great deal of trouble to create a texture with peaks and valleys that give English Muffins their unique appeal. Cutting an English Muffin with a knife is tantamount to “peakacide”: it destroys the peaks and robs the muffins of their delightful character. 

Here is the guidance for splitting a muffin from the Thomas’ English Muffin site: “First, use your hands. Find a crease on the side and pull the muffin apart. If you prefer, you can use your fork. Just poke a hole in three sides of the muffin with a fork and pull apart. Do not use a knife. This cuts away the delicious "Nooks & Crannies" texture. Place each side of the English muffin in separate toaster slots to toast all sides evenly.” 

While this guidance works, we think we’ve found a better way. Check out the Sirius Chef Muffin Splitter on Colbrook Kitchen, and take your breakfast to a whole new level!

Enjoy!

It's the beginning of truffle season, and if you're fortunate to have access to fresh truffles, here are some tips for storage:

And you thought avocados were just for guacamole...

Why are there so many different cutting boards? Do you really need more than one?

We talk about Stainless Steel ratings ...usually 18/8 or 18/10 in cookware or flatware. But what do these numbers mean? And which rating is “better”? Discuss!

Cool Tip: The Case for Fresh Pineapple

I was about 10 or 11 years old, when my family took our first vacation to California from Chicago; and that was the first time I had fresh pineapple.  Wow, it blew away the canned stuff I was used to (sorry Dole!). It was sweet and tart and juicy and just plain delicious … and it still is.  It’s sunshine in a bowl! So what a treat to learn that it’s healthy as well.

In a Healthline article, the author lists the following key health benefits of pineapple:

• Pineapples contain large amounts of Vitamin C and Manganese. “Vitamin C is essential for growth and development, a healthy immune system and aiding the absorption of iron from the diet. Meanwhile, manganese is a naturally occurring mineral that aids growth, maintains a healthy metabolism and has antioxidant properties.”

• Pineapples are loaded with antioxidants. “Pineapples are a good source of antioxidants, which may reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers. Many of the antioxidants in pineapple are bound, so they may have longer lasting effects.”

• Pineapples contain digestive enzymes (which, by the way, is the reason not to use fresh pineapple in Jello). “Pineapples contain bromelain, a group of digestive enzymes that breaks down proteins. This may aid digestion, especially in those with pancreatic insufficiency.”

• Pineapples may reduce the risk of cancer. “Pineapple contains compounds that reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, both of which are linked to cancer. One of these compounds is the enzyme bromelain, which may stimulate cell death in certain cancer cells and aid white blood cell function.”

• “Pineapples have anti-inflammatory properties that may boost the immune system.”

Now that you know the pineapple is good for you, we’ve provided you with advice on how to choose a pineapple, and we’ve found a Cool Tool to make preparing a pineapple so much easier, ... what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

Here are some Whys and Hows of marinating to make it easier.

Confused about all the choices from Charles Viancin? ... You're not alone

Here's our attempt to make the choices a little easier

How can you make your scrambled eggs fluffy and creamy? Check it out...

We started this experiment 2 weeks ago, and we thought you'd like to see the updated photos... Frankly, we were amazed that it worked so well. We've added more green onions as we went along, but the longest are the ones that were the in photo below. We reprinted the Cool Tip, in case you missed it the first time.

What do you do with Rotisserie Chicken?

(Sung to the tune of “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor”)

Our recent practice during the pandemic (and it will probably continue after as well) is to go to Costco about once every 2 weeks. Each time, I buy 2 rotisserie chickens (just about the best $10 you can spend). Here’s what I do with it:

NIght 1: Sliced roast chicken with a veg and maybe a starch--in this case, microwave steamed peeled asparagus (1.5 minutes) with leftover hollandaise and homemade pasta with truffle butter and freshly grated parmesan cheese. Total time: about 15 minutes, including peeling the asparagus--it does make it taste better.

After dinner: I break down the rest of the chickens into chicken meat (to be used in salad, pasta, tacos, chicken salad or soup)

and the bones to be turned into bone broth …

The bone broth cooks overnight in the pressure cooker setting on the Instant Pot.

Which leaves me with a good quantity of chicken bone broth to make some of our favorite soups:

Matzoh Ball Soup

Thai Shrimp, Pork and Chicken Soup with Jalapenos

Slow Cooker Lentil Soup with Sausage and Spinach

What do you do with a Rotisserie Chicken?

Every cooking surface needs a little lubricant to avoid sticking food, and your Grill is no exception! After you’ve scraped to achieve a nominally clean surface, you need to oil that surface.

We're starting the Fast Metabolism Diet and thought it would be fun to share with you what we're eating, what Cool Tools we're using and how it's going. Here's Week 2

How to make a Better Lemon Wedge.