My goodness, we are already in the thick of August. I have been a busy bee since my last newsletter. If you haven’t noticed, I have a new company name! I am no longer operating under the name of Taste of Home Personal Chef Service. From now on, my company will be known simply as Chef Mei…. Personal Cheffing At Its Best. I am excited about the name change as I feel it better represents my business, as I am the business! Everything else about my service remains the same; great food, quality service, and above all my personal touch and dedication to you as my client. My website is currently undergoing a few changes also, a little at a time that is. The domain name will change from www.chefmeipcs.com to www.chefmeipcs.com. Currently if you type ww.chefmeipcs.com you will still be directed to my website. Once the new domain name takes effect and you type the old domain name, you will still be directed to the website whichever way.  I hope to add more exciting and new updates on food and events on the website soon. I am currently working on adding a blog site also. Please feel free to check back every now and then to see the changes.

I just got back from attending the annual United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) conference.  This is my second year attending the conference and each time I go I come back learning something new.  Each year the conference is held in different states and the chapter of the hosting state will do everything they can to make the conference a truly remarkable event with cutting edge information in the food and cheffing industry. We get to meet chefs from different backgrounds, states and even countries such as Canada and Panama. Classes and demonstrations are held throughout the day for us to brush up on our skills and knowledge. I look forward to these conferences as they are a bunch of fun. We get to catch up with old and new friends, network and of course eat! We are very well fed as you can imagine. Restaurants around town are out to impress us when they find out that we are chefs. As the conference was held in the heart of Philadelphia, there were numerous restaurants to choose from. My family had accompanied me on this trip and they too had fun exploring the city and trying out Philadelphia’s gastronomical fare. I went to the Reading Terminal and it was like a gastronomical paradise for me. I also tried Delilah’s Macaroni and Cheese who was featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network Channel at the Reading Terminal. However, according to my family, I gave Delilah a run for her money. I wish I had more time to explore this city as there were a lot to do but I had to get back right after the conference to get cooking again. I feel all charged up and ready to go with full of new ideas to better perform. Let the cooking begin! 

Local Happenings. There is a new local magazine called Women’s View here in Fayetteville. Yours truly has an article in this magazine, with recipes of course, if you are interested. Karla Allen, the editor, and her staff did a wonderful job in publishing the magazine. It is a magazine by women, for women, about women. This is truly a wonderful magazine that is full of information for women who are interested in starting their own business, learning to manage their finances, how to market their business, about health, your pets and many more.  Its first issue just came out this August. The free magazine is distributed around Fayetteville. For areas of distribution, you can e-mail womensview@nc.rr.com or call 910-489-3469.

Congratulations to Karla and her staff on the wonderful magazine. Get your free copy today and you will be glad you did.

Freezing Foods. August marks the last month of summer vacation for most kids in our area. Pretty soon, most of us will be busy ferrying our children to school, sports practice, and other extracurricular activities along with trying to balance a regular workday and managing our homes. All good intentions of eating well, staying fit and healthy gets push to the wayside again as fast foods are convenient and accessible. For those of you who feel you fall in this category, there is another solution. As there is some time before school starts, why not plan ahead and spent one weekend, preparing some meals that can be cooked ahead of time and freeze them for those crazy days. There are many dishes that you can prepare ahead and freeze. Casseroles are perfect for freezing. So are lasagnas. Nevertheless there are a few fast rules to remember regarding freezing. Make sure the containers that you use are freezer safe. Heavy-duty plastic containers, glass jars, or plastic freezer bags are great to use for freezing. As moisture is the worst enemy of frozen foods, make sure the food is wrapped well; double or triple-wrapping with plastic wrap (I love using Glad Press n’ Seal) works great for wrapping cakes and pies. I also usually wrap another layer of aluminum foil over the plastic wrap, to further seal out any moisture or freezer burn that may occur, and label the item. Food should be completely cooled before freezing. Always try to cover all cooked meats to be frozen with some kind of gravy or liquid as any exposed area will dry out fast or end up getting freezer burn if not wrapped properly. It is also best to cook the items to be frozen slightly underdone to prevent overcooking in the reheating process. Make sure all items to be frozen are labeled with a date. Frozen foods can normally store for a month or a little longer depending on the item. When you are ready to reheat the dish, take the item out a day in advance to thaw in the refrigerator and reheat accordingly.

Now that you have the know-how on freezing prepared foods, here are a couple of recipes to get you started.

Chicken and Broccoli Parmesan

1 cup white or brown uncooked long grain rice

½ cup green onions, sliced and divided into half

6 4-ounce boneless and skinless chicken breast halves

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2¼ cup milk

3 ounces cream cheese, cut into cubes

2 cups cooked fresh broccoli

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

1/3 cup deli ham, diced

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

2 tablespoon sliced almonds (opt)

Method

1. Cook the rice. To the cooked rice add 1/2 of the green onions. Cool and set aside.
2. Lightly pound the chicken breasts in a plastic bag to tenderize and even out. Then rinse the chicken breasts and pat dry with paper towels.
3. Place the oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken breasts, garlic, and Italian seasoning and cook until the chicken is no longer pink (turning once). Remove the chicken from the skillet and set aside, reserving the drippings.
4. Add the remaining green onions to the skillet with the drippings, and cook until tender, adding a little more oil if necessary.
5. Dissolve the cornstarch in the milk and add to the skillet all at once. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until slightly thickened and bubbly (about 5-10 minutes). Reduce the heat and stir in the cream cheese until nearly smooth. Remove from the heat and stir in the broccoli, Parmesan, and ham. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Spread the rice mixture evenly in a single 12"x 8"x 2" baking dish or freezer proof container. Arrange a chicken breast on top of the rice then spoon the sauce over each one of the breasts. Garnish with nuts (if desired) and parsley. Cover the container with foil (if reheating in the oven). Cover with lid, label, and store in the freezer.

Heating instructions: Thaw the dish in the refrigerator the day before consumption. If baking, remove plastic lid (but not foil), and place in a 350-degree (F) oven for 30 minutes, or until hot throughout. If microwaving, heat at medium-high (70%) power with the plastic lid slightly ajar, for 3-5 minutes.

Pasta E Fagioli Casserole

1 28-ounce canned Italian tomatoes

1 8-ounce canned kidney beans

½ pound Italian sausage, crumbled

½ pound lean ground beef, crumbled

1 small onion, chopped

2 large garlic clove, minced

¾ teaspoon dried oregano

¾ teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoon tomato paste

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

salt and pepper to taste

½ pound mostaccioli pasta, cooked or penne pasta

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

1/8 cup fresh parsley, minced

6 ounce grated Fontina cheese

Method

1. Drain and chop tomatoes, reserving the juice. Drain the kidney beans.
2. Sauté the sausage, ground beef, onion, garlic, oregano, and thyme in a heavy large saucepan over medium high heat until sausage and meat are browned, crumbling with fork. Add tomatoes, juice, tomato paste and cayenne pepper; then simmer for 5 minutes. Add kidney beans.
3. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add cooked mostaccioli or penne, Parmesan, and parsley, and toss to combine. Let cool.
4. Place mixture in containers. Sprinkle with Fontina cheese. Cover with heavy-duty aluminum foil and store in the freezer.

Heating instructions: Thaw in refrigerator the night before day of consumption. Heat covered in 375 degree oven for approximately 45 minutes or until hot throughout.

If you want to learn more about freezing foods or recipes for freezing foods, here is a book that may be of interest: Don’t Panic-Dinners in the Freezer: Great-Tasting Meals You Can Make Ahead (Paperback) by Susie Martinez, Vanda Howell and Bonnie Garcia. This book has a variety of recipes to suit everyone, from preschoolers to senior citizens. You can purchase this book online at Amazon.com. You most probably can order it at Barnes and Nobles if they do not already carry it.

Cooking Method— You are all set to prepare a recipe. You bought all the ingredients, set them up and ready to get started. The first part of the recipe states, “Cut broccoli into florets and blanch.” You are now asking yourself, how do I blanch broccoli? Blanching is a process of plunging food (especially vegetables and fruits) in boiling water briefly and then in cold water to stop the cooking process. Blanching is used to firm the flesh, to loosen skins (as with peaches and tomatoes) and to heighten and set color and flavor (as with vegetables before freezing). I use this technique quite often when I want to freeze a dish that uses vegetables. Blanching allows the nutrients of vegetables to be preserved without overcooking it and the plunge in the cold water retains the color of the vegetables to make it still look beautiful even if the vegetables are frozen later. Blanching comes in handy when I want to peel skins off tomatoes and fruits such as peaches and nectarines. To remove the skins of these vegetable and fruits, first bring a pot of water to a boil and then slowly drop the produce into the water for a minute or until you see the skin starts to lightly peel. Do not leave the vegetable or fruit in the boiling too long as it will cook the vegetable or fruit instead. Remove the produce and rinse under cold water. The skin will come off much easier.

Ingredient Of The Month—Cooking Oils.  There are so many variety of cooking oils out in the market. Do you get confused by the variety that claims to be refined, unrefined, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, light, extra virgin and so on? I am going to try to de-mystify these confusing terms but only in a gist as I can go on and on about this subject.

Cooking oil includes the well-known olive, sunflower, and canola oils and the not so well-known coconut, soy, and palm oils. Oil is removed from olives by pressing. The oil obtained from the first pressing is called virgin oil and is considered to be the highest quality salad and cooking oil. A second pressing of the olives produces oil of lesser quality that must be refined. Sunflower oil, because of its high protein content, is considered as semidrying oil and can be used in making paints or other industrial uses. But it is much more popular as a food and is considered by some as desirable as olive oil. It is also used in cooking, frying, and in the manufacture of margarine and shortening. Canola oil, which is was previously called rapeseed oil, differs from other vegetable oils because it contains significant quantities of eicosenoic and erucic fatty acids. It is used as both edible oil and as a lubricant for metal surfaces because of high viscosity of rapeseed oil.

Coconut oil comes from a part of the coconut called the copra, which is mostly made up of highly saturated oil. The oil is extracted from the copra by crushing and is used in baking and a variety of prepared foods. Of all the edible oils, coconut has the most nonedible uses. It is used in cosmetics, toiletries, and soap production. Palm oil is similar to coconut. Because of it's highly saturated, it is used to make shortening and frying oil. Soy oil, obtained by solvent extraction, is the dominant vegetable oil worldwide. Most of the production is consumed as salad oil, cooking oil, and margarine. It is also used in a variety of prepared foods such as frozen desserts and coffee whiteners. Just like sunflower oil, it is considered a semidrying oil and has a variety of industrial uses.

Okay now let’s discuss the saturations of oils. Fats and oils are either saturated or unsaturated. Here is the difference between the terms saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated; picture a fat molecule as a train of passenger cars (carbon atoms). If every seat on the train is filled by a "passenger" (hydrogen atom), then this is a saturated fat molecule. If there's one seat open in each car where a hydrogen-atom "passenger" can sit, the molecule is monounsaturated; if there are several seats available, it's polyunsaturated. In general, saturated fats come from animal sources and are solid enough to hold their shape at room temperature (about 70°F). Exceptions to this rule are tropical oils such as coconut oil and palm oil, which, though of plant origin, are semisolid at room temperature and highly saturated. Monounsaturated fats are known to help reduce the levels of LDL (the bad) cholesterol. The three most widely used oils that are high in monounsaturates are olive oil, canola oil and peanut oil. Polyunsaturated fats are also considered relatively healthy and include the following, ranked in order, most to least, of polyunsaturates: safflower oil, soybean oil, corn oil and sesame oil.  If the explanations above are not enough to satisfy your curiosity, feel free to e-mail for more information.

Kitchen Tips. Does cutting an onion make you cry? Try this the next time you find yourself turning on the waterworks. Light a candle nearby before getting started. The flame from the candle neutralizes the sulfuric fumes from the onions, keeping the waterworks away!

When a recipe calls for breading meat or fish, try brushing it with mayonnaise instead of egg. The mayonnaise won’t drip like egg does, and it imparts great flavor while helping keep the meat moist. Plus it helps holds the breading to the meat or fish better.

Well my dear readers, I hope this month’s issue has been as informative as I hope. Each month I try to touch on subjects that I feel, you the reader, may encounter in your everyday life or your adventures in the kitchen and try to address these issues. I hope the tips have been helpful and the facts have been interesting. As some of you may know, I am supposed to teach Thai cooking at FTCC this fall. Unfortunately I will not be able to do so this fall as time does not permit. Nevertheless, I may be able to teach other classes next Spring (if FTCC still wants me to). Until the next issue, eat well, stay healthy, and enjoy life to the fullest.