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.

Ask any woman, and she’ll tell you that guys who cook are catnip. They have a sexy self confidence and aren’t afraid to experiment. It also shows a nurturing side that is very appealing.

Cooking can be one of the most rewarding and enjoyable, and at the same time one of the most stressful, things you can do. Rewarding and enjoyable because you’re taking raw ingredients and, through skill, ingenuity, and love, you’re turning them into the whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Stressful, because even with the simplest recipes, there is a lot to keep track of. That’s why we recommend that the first step in any recipe should be “Measure and Mise”: whether it’s written in the recipe or not. We’ve often been guilty of violating this rule, but acknowledging our mistakes has led us to codify this ‘first principle’ in Colbrook Kitchen.

There are several reasons why Measure and Mise is a good idea. But first let’s discuss what it is. Your recipe, if it’s a good one, will tell you how much of each ingredient you will need. It may be by weight: pounds, ounces, grams, etc., or by volume: cup, teaspoon, tablespoon, etc. If you measure each ingredient in advance and put it into a separate bowl, then you don’t have to stop between cooking steps to do it later. The same with mise. “Mise” is short for “mise en place”: in French, literally, “to put in place” or ‘to set up’. This refers not only to measuring your ingredients beforehand, but doing the step that usually (but not always) comes after the comma in the ingredient listing: e.g. chopped, diced, minced, grated, juiced, toasted, etc. It’s getting your ingredients prepared in advance so that, when you are cooking, you can focus on the process and not be interrupted by further prep.

So here are just some of the reasons why your first instruction in any recipe should always be Measure and Mise:

1. You are compelled to read all the way through the entire recipe before you start to cook. As Julia says in Mastering the Art of French Cooking: “We therefore urge you, however much you have cooked, always to read the recipe first, even if the dish is familiar to you. Visualize each step so you will know exactly what techniques, ingredients, time, and equipment are required and you will encounter no surprises.”

2. You save time in the long run. This is why restaurant kitchens do it. Doing all your cutting, chopping, measuring, toasting, etc. at one time, in advance, gets all your ingredients into a ready state, and allows you to “clear the decks” so you are ready to cook your dish without distractions or interruptions.

3. You can focus all your senses, so you can react to whatever is going on in your bowl, pot, or skillet, without your attention being diverted to do a preparation step, in the middle of cooking your dish.

4. You achieve better results because you’re not risking something boiling over or over cooking because your attention was elsewhere.

5. When you’re entertaining, you can Measure and Mise before your guests arrive, leaving your cooking to look effortless.

6. In long recipes, the ingredients may be on a different page than the instructions. If you Measure and Mise first, then you can avoid having to flip back and forth between pages.

7. You have less stress because you’re not rushing to prepare an ingredient just before you have to add it to your dish. Your cooking becomes a ballet, rather than a hip hop routine.

Many of the Cool Tools on our site were selected to make this Measure and Mise step easier. Take advantage of this principle and make your cooking process more rewarding, less stressful, and more enjoyable.

Don’t you just hate it when you cut up an apple, pear, avocado, banana, etc. and it turns brown in just minutes? It makes it tough to prepare your ingredients ahead of time (make your mise-en-place). So, why does this happen and how can you stop it?

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!

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

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 ....

Your microwave is not just for reheating coffee or melting butter. Nathan Myhrvold has called its capabilities “underappreciated” and Mark Bittman wanted to rename it “the whiz-bang steaming oven”. We love it for cooking bacon, and Kennedy’s Favorite Chicken is a microwave reengineered recipe that reduces over an hour of stovetop cooking time to 15 minutes in the microwave (and the results are better, too). And everyday we’re discovering more ways it can produce wonderful food quickly. So how is this all possible?

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

It’s that time of year when entertaining heats up, and house visits and dinner parties abound. While a lot of what follows is common sense, sometimes we get so busy that we forget. So here are a few simple suggestions that we’ve found help us, and we hope will help you, to be great guests.

Have you ever wondered why some steel knives need to be sharpened all the time, while others seem to hold their edge for much longer?

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

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

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 1

This is the coolest way we've seen to separate eggs...

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.

A good mise en place makes cooking easier...

What's in your basket? Guide to a great picnic infrastructure.

How do you make order out of the chaos of your kitchen tools?