eeeeks! Are you cringing right now? Has your mouth just gone dry looking at this image? If so then good… I’ve done my job. The reason I’m writing this post is to address the misuse of salt. We’re a salt crazy nation that has done a terrific job at masking good, pure, delicious food with salt, fat and sugar. It’s out of control! Don’t get me wrong, salt is a wonderful seasoning and helps accentuate many dishes but it can be your worst enemy as well! I can’t begin to tell you how many sauces I’ve destroyed because I didn’t listen to my acute (ha) senses and simply leave a sauce, soup or ragout alone. A perfect example is tomato sauce. For some reason the acidity and sweetness in tomatoes covers salt while it’s still hot. When it cools down the sodium levels really come through and there is NOTHING you can do but weep if over salted.

Restaurants are the biggest offenders and are notorious for heavy salty hands. If you ask most professional cooks to name the one ingredient that is used the most in kitchens it’s SALT! It goes like this “Hey Kev, could you taste the sauce that I made for the chicken and see if it needs anything?” “sure Bob… (finger in pot and inserted in mouth) hmmm, tastes good but needs some acid and… salt!” and then when you order the chicken dish later that night you might feel that Bob should have left the finger lickin chicken sauce alone!

To get the bottom of the salt lick and uncover the why; we need to get a little scientific. Your mouth and tongue has all kinds of receptor cells that basically get stimulated when it comes into contact with certain foods and seasoning. Taste is the function that your mouth performs when recognizing these chemical properties. Taste is composed of sweet, salty, sour and bitter and most recently umami that defines certain taste components that are barely perceptible (I’m not getting into this right now.. too long)…. But basically the more you have of one taste component, like salt, it makes a dish off balanced.. and then the tongue and mouth send signals to the brain that something is off.

Not to get side tracked here… the absolute main point that I want to address is how to approach a dish that you are making. You really want to taste the sweetness in corn and tomatoes or the vegetative properties in asparagus or even the flesh in a cut of meat. It’s all a balancing act and really important to realize that salt only plays a supporting role. If fava beans with shaved pecorino and olive oil are the lead actors then salt is cop #3. Just there to add to the story… that’s it! Below is a recipe for un-salted tomato sauce. The thing to realize here is that it uses canned tomatoes that already has added salt and sugar; as so many packaged products do. Think about it, it already contains trace amounts of sodium and sugar and has sweet (tomato), bitter (eggplant) and fennel (flavor booster) with heaps of other aromatic properties. It’s loaded like a gun with flavor, so why add more salt? You try the recipe and let me know… in the mean time use salt with a delicate hand and enjoy more genuine flavors from your food.

This is Chef Stephen from the HOG laboratory

Un-salted Tomato Sauce with Fennel and Fried Eggplant
Serves 6 people

Ingredients
3 tablespoons pure olive oil
1 medium size yellow onion, diced
1 bulb of fennel, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup dry red wine
6 cloves garlic
4 cups canned San Marzano plum tomatoes or canned Italian tomatoes
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 small Italian eggplants
1/2 bunch of fresh basil
pepper

Instructions
In a medium to large sauce pot add the pure olive oil and bring up to medium low. Add the onions, carrots and fennel and cook until soft (approx 15 minutes). Add tomato paste and stir into veggies. Cook mixture for 5 minutes, constantly stirring so that you don’t burn the paste. Add wine and reduce until liquid has disappeared. Take off the heat and set aside.

Poach the garlic cloves in the olive oil over low heat until the garlic begins to lightly brown. Add the tomatoes, the onion fennel mixture and 1/2 of the basil. Simmer for about one hour, adding a few tablespoons of water at a time to prevent the sauce from drying out. Continue to stir as the sauce simmers.

Throw a large cast iron skillet on medium high heat and add 1/4 cup pure olive oil. When it starts to lightly smoke add the eggplant. Cook on each side until it gets dark brown and crispy (approx 1 minute per each side). Remove and drain eggplant on paper towel; then chop. Fold into sauce.

Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Chop the remaining basil and add to the sauce. DO-NOT season with salt! Only some fresh ground pepper.

Eat with pasta or spoon over toasted baguette.

Over the years, I must have poured out a small fortune worth of wine. It has felt like the GNP of some small country jumping out of my pocket and doing the breast stroke right down the damn drain! Trust me, I don’t want to do it and I really truly feel awful when I have to say goodbye to any worthy varietal. All that time it took to grow the grape and make it into wine…and then gone..poof!

Here’s one scenario that could lead up to said tragedy: You get home from a long day of work and think to yourself, “boy I’d love a big robust glass of wine to help me wind down” … but just one glass. It’s a school night remember, and any more might have you picking cobwebs out of your head the next day… so you do what a lot of people do and cork the bottle with anticipation of finishing it off the next day. Well, next day comes and you forgot that you had to go to your niece’s school play after work and then go out to dinner with your sister. You have two Sapporos with sushi and call it a night. You get home, eye the bottle from across the room and promise that you’ll finish it off the next day. Well, that next day never comes and then the liquid eventually turns into paint thinner.

Folks, here’s what you can do to save both wine and money. Buy one of these: it’s called vacuvin and is a magnificent device that extracts the excess air out of the bottle. It helps preserve the wine a couple of days longer and lets you not feel pressured to consume the wine in two to three days. It’s cheap and something you simply can’t live without. Buy one today and start feeling better about not wasting wine.

Caroline, our illustrious marketing guru, thought that it would be nice to offer some cooking tips for Thanksgiving. Well.. I’m up to my giblets in tips! Every year, it’s all the same stuff with just a few minor variations. T-Day is T-Day… it’s the beloved groundhog day holiday over and over again! I’m sure the general public knows by now how to brine a turkey and how dangerously fun it is to fry one. So, I thought I’d give out the best tip of all: how to turn some of your leftover veggies into an exciting, bold, sassy and invigorating drink.

It’s the day after, you are in a food coma and want to ease into the day. You open your fridge and see it stuffed with meats, random pies, sauces, dips and dried mashed potatoes. You know that you’ll make a sandwich at some point in the day and maybe even make a stock with the bones; but what do you do with some of the veggies? You might have some green beans, carrots and cauliflower sitting there screaming out, “We don’t want to go into the soup this year. Pulleeaseee sir!”Ok you say… what do I do? and I kind of want some breakfast too. Nooo problem. I say we all make “Bloody Marys” with some select leftover veggies. … chop em up and toss them in your drink AND finish the drink with a piece of crisp smoked bacon. What?!! That’s insane. Insanely good that is. Now you have a morning tonic with a strip of breakfast. Who needs soup?! Now I can’t take all the credit. Props need to go out to that fellow who owns SF Gelato. We met at Stern Grove for a concert and he was making these beauties. My contribution is an outlet for the stray veggies from T-Day…So here is a wonderful idea, if I do say so myself, to indulge in.ps…serve it with a spoon!

Bloody Mary
2 ounces vodka
squirt of fresh lime
pinch of celery salt
salt and pepper
7 drops Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon horseradish
smidge of minced garlic
1 (6-ounce) container clamato or tomato juice
green beans
cauliflower or broccoli
strips of par cooked carrots

Combine all of the ingredients in a mason jar containing ice, stir well, and serve with a celery stick and piece of smoked bacon!
Serve with a straw and spoon.

Last night as Molly and I were walking through a new neighborhood market my eyes bulged out as we passed thousands of containers of roasted peppers, tomato sauce, tapanades, pestos and various stock. wow and double wow! HOG’s going in the condiment business next week!! The dollar amount spent on luxury food goodies is on the grow and consumers are shelling out the bucks without even doing the cha-cha.

Now a lot of the folks that we work with at Hands On Gourmet might not want to crank up the food processor, bar blender or wait hours slowly simmering a sauce but a roasted pepper? its a thing of understated beauty that is soooo simple to do and so quick to make. Before summer is over and all the peppers are gone I’d like to share with you some tips on how to roast the perfect pepper. Great results and a good way to save a few bucks!

Now there are 2 basic ways to skin a pepper. One is roasting the peppers over an open flame and the other is roasting them in a hot oven.

Open flame method: turn on a burner to medium high heat and place the pepper on the grate above the flame. Make sure that the pepper isn’t directly on the flame as it won’t allow even roasting. As the skin of the pepper starts to bubble and blacken rotate it until all the skin is the same color, black and charred… and don’t worry, you won’t ruin the flesh. When it’s done roasting place it in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. This is when steam gets in between the flesh and skin allowing them to separate. (this takes between 10 to 15 minutes).
The next step is to take it out and pull the stems out. Place the pepper on a flat work surface and pull the skin off with your fingers. Split the pepper open with a pairing knife and use the back side to scrape out the pith and seeds. A big big big no no is to rinse the pepper under water. It might help wash away some of the skin, seeds and pith but it also rinses away the flavor! Ok your all done!

Oven method: turn on your oven to 500 degrees. Line a baking pan with parchment paper (the reason you do this is to save a lot of clean up later), place the peppers on the pan and put in the hot oven. Some folks brush with oil but it really doesn’t matter. Watch the pepper and pull when it becomes black and bubbly. Repeat the steps above.

One of my favorites is a grilled chicken sandwich with roast red peppers, basil, mayo, a squeeze of fresh lemon and thinly sliced red onions.

Happy roasting! From Chef Stephen

There’s nothing worse than flavoring food with a substance that’s been tainted. In this case our butter had been attacked by every odor in the fridge. I was super pumped to experience some popping corn from this nifty company out of Napa called Rancho Gordo. They specialize in dried beans, chilies, herbs and corn products. Needless to say that my first handful was the last. Yucko! Who wants something as neutral as popcorn tasting like blue veined cheese, onions and bacon? Fat absorbs smells, period! The moral of this story is to make sure you keep all your fats well wrapped and happy. A little factoid… in the old days they would make perfume by extracting delicate aromas with… you guessed it, fat.

Don’t ever assume that your store bought veggies have been washed or are clean. A lot of folks think that certain herbs, veggies and even packaged greens are as clean as a whistle. Not long ago I had a dinner party and served asparagus for the first course. The only problem was that every bite was ruined by invasive sand that “wasn’t” washed off. Boy it was worse than egg shells! gnarly! Even old kitchen dogs get bitten by forgetting common everyday sense. Not to mention all of that prep that went down the drain…

Roasted Asparagus with Cherries and Pecorino

Serves 6 people… turn on oven to 550°

1 bunch asparagus, washed and ends removed
1 heaping tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon lemon juice
Salt and pepper

1 shallot, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
½ cup red wine, cabernet or shiraz
½ lb pitted and rough chopped cherries
½ cup chicken stock *water works fine
pecorino or parmesan, shaved with veggie peeler

In a small sauce pot, sweat the shallots and thyme in a dab of veggie oil. Add the wine and cherries and reduce by ¾. Add the stock and simmer until the cherries start to break down and thicken the sauce. Take off the heat and season. If it’s too acidic, then mix in some extra virgin olive oil to round out the taste. Toss the asparagus with the extra virgin olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment. Roast until done, anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. Place a few spears on plate, spoon over sauce and lay down a sliver of cheese. Fantastico!