Grand (Mother) Sauces

Sauces in French cuisine date back to Medieval times. In ‘classical’ French cooking (prior to “nouvelle cuisine”), sauces were a major defining characteristic of French cuisine.
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Dicing

A dice is a cube, usually of a vegetable, (one can also “cube” meat) that ranges form 1/4 inch to 3/4 inch square.

First things first…

• Have a firm, clean cutting board. (Lay it on a kitchen towel to avoid slips)
• A sharp knife at least twice as long as the vegetable

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Mise En Place

Maybe it is my life experiences, or maybe it is my German heritage, but I do try to live by the mantra of “Organization will set you free.”

Nowhere is this more true than the kitchen. To have all the ingredients, cleaned, preped and ready to cook before you begin is one of the TRUE KEYS to enjoying cooking.

I know what you are thinking,” I thought this was a notebook of some rouge style, (I don’t give a sh*t), chef and now you are throwing some fancy French phraseology at us.” Cooking or doing a lot of high end stuff, in the kitchen and on site with clients is a my real pleasure, and it is a pleasure, BECAUSE, I tend to the basics first. You will find this is a key to almost anything in life.

All mise en place, pronounced MEEZ ahn plahs, means is to have all your ingredients prepared and ready to go before you start cooking. Translated, “ to put in place.”
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What is BBQ?

Barbecue or barbeque (abbreviated BBQ, Bar-B-Q or Bar-B-Que is a method and apparatus for cooking food, usually meat, with the heat and hot gases of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of charcoal and usually includes application of a marinade, spice rub, or basting sauce to the meat. Barbecue can also refer to foods cooked by this method, to the cooker itself, or to a party that includes such food. Barbecue is also used as a verb for the act of cooking food in this manner. Barbecue is usually cooked in an outdoor environment heated by the smoke of wood or charcoal, or with propane and similar gases.

Barbecue has numerous regional variations in many parts of the world. Notably, in the United States, practitioners consider barbecue to include only relatively indirect methods of cooking, with the more direct high-heat methods to be called grilling.