Recipe: A Deliciously Easy Pizza Sauce

Fresco Salsa di Pizza Crudo

This recipe for fresh, uncooked pizza sauce is so simple it barely qualifies as a recipe. Yet this is a common sauce used at pizzerias everywhere. Once you make it at home, you'll never buy the stuff in a jar again.

You'll need:

1 (28 oz) can whole, peeled San Marzano tomatoes (Pomodori pelati)
about 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
a pinch of dried basil
a pinch of sugar
salt and pepper, to taste

And here's what you do:

Get a big bowl and puree all the ingredients together. Really. It's that simple. For best results, run the tomatoes through a food mill. This will significantly reduce the amount of seeds in the sauce. But a food processor or an immersion blender will work, too. Then blend in the other ingredients, taste and adjust for seasoning, and you're done.

Use immediately or store, covered, in the refrigerator for up to three days. Can be frozen for up to a month.

Told you it was easy!

Buon appetito!

Bye, Bye, Boston Butt: "Simpler" Names for Cuts of Meat?

Meet Your New Meat

Like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers, and here's something I read recently: apparently some people are confused by meat.

According to Progressive Grocer, the National Pork Board and the Beef Checkoff Program have gotten unanimous approval from the Industry-Wide Cooperative Meat Identification Standards Committee – try saying that one three times fast – to introduce updated terminology for Uniform Retail Meat Identification Standards (URMIS) that retailers use on fresh beef and pork package labels.

“Why?,” you may ask. I certainly did. And it turns out that it's because some people have problems figuring out that pork butt does not come from.......where they apparently think it does. People in the know, of course, know that it does not originate anywhere near the piggy's tail. It is a shoulder cut. In some places it's actually called “pork shoulder.” Unless you're in Boston, where it goes by the name “Boston butt.” Or if you're driving through rural South Carolina, you might see it advertised as “butt meat.” Yes. I'm serious. “Butt meat.”

Some sources trace the term to the wooden casks, or “butts,” in which the relatively cheap cuts of pork used to be stored and shipped. Some take an anatomical approach: a pig's foreleg has a “shank” end where it attaches to the foot and a “butt” end where it joins the shoulder. This meets the dictionary definition of “the larger or thicker end of an object.” 

However it evolved, the term confuses the bejeebers out of some folks, so the meat industry decided to change it. Henceforth and forever – or at least until they change their minds again – the cut of meat formerly referred to as “Boston butt,” that which comes from the upper foreleg of a pig, shall now be called “Boston roast.” How that's going to play in rural South Carolina remains to be seen. “Roast meat?” Nahh.

And no more “pork chops,” either. Nope. Now you'll have the infinitely less confusing "porterhouse chops," "ribeye chops," and "New York chops" from which to choose. These cuts used to be “loin chops,” “center rib chops,” and “top loin chops,” respectively. And for you folks who enjoy a good rump roast, look instead for “leg sirloin.” Don't you feel clearer already?

Cows also get their due. No more “boneless shoulder top blade steaks.” They have become “flatiron steaks.” Gone, too, are “under blade boneless steaks.” They are “Denver steaks” now. “boneless beef loin top sirloin steak” now will simply be called a “sirloin steak.”

In an attempt to make things even more less confusing, the new changes will cross species. A bone-in loin cut will be called a “T-bone” whether it’s pork or beef.

All in all, expect to see as many as 350 different names for different cuts of beef and pork. And if that seems a little overwhelming, don't worry; the “old” names will still be on the labels, too.

After two years of research on the subject, marketing people became convinced that consumers are stupid. Sales of beef and pork have declined and it must be because people can't figure out what they're buying, right? So let's come up with new marketing terms! That always works! Think of what it did for prunes when we started calling them “dried plums!”

According to one industry PR flack, only butchers and meat cutters actually care about the part of an animal from which a particular cut comes. The rest of us average stupid consumers only want to know what it is and what to do with it.

Frankly, this stupid consumer actually knows what an “under blade boneless steak” is. I've never heard of a “Denver steak.” And I guarantee the people who wrote the hundred or so cookbooks in my library didn't write recipes with “Boston roast” or “leg sirloin” in mind. You wanna talk about confusing?

“If it ain't broke, don't fix it” does not register with ad people whose mantra, instead, is “if it ain't broke, break it and then charge double to fix it.” If the problem truly is uneducated consumers, how 'bout we educate them rather than making wholesale changes to a well-established system? Hmmmm?

As always, I am merely a voice crying in the wilderness. The meat industry movers and shakers are already on board with this. At least the beef and pork people are. The chicken people have declined to participate. A National Chicken Council representative says, “a chicken breast will remain a chicken breast.” Sorry if that confuses you.

This is a voluntary thing within the industry. Retailers don't have to go along with the changes. Feds at the USDA are just kind of shrugging and saying, “whatever.” But even they admit that the whole thing could become a pain in the Boston butt. Says one Bucky Gwartney, a federal agriculture marketing specialist, “The intent certainly was not to confuse consumers, but there are some situations where that certainly could happen.”

Ya think?

Teaching Yourself to Cook

Becoming the Cook You Never Dreamed You Could Be

I've seen a lot of statistics lately from studies that claim to find an increasing number of people who say they can't cook. A recent survey conducted by appliance-maker Bosch put the figure at twenty-eight percent. As alarming as this seems, I'm not sure I buy it. It's long been my experience and my oft-published philosophy that anybody can cook. There are a great number of inexperienced people who cook badly and there are those misguided individuals who proudly proclaim the fact that they don't cook. But I don't believe in the existence of a class of people who can't cook.

When you are born, you can't walk, right? But are you still crawling on all fours twenty years later? I should hope not. Just as nobody is born knowing how to walk, nobody is born knowing how to cook. It's an acquired skill that requires motivation to learn and a desire to improve.

I made my first foray into the kitchen when I was about seven years old. My culinary education began at the hands of my grandmother and my mother who taught me how to not cut off my fingers or burn down the kitchen. My grandfather and a couple of my uncles were the literal chefs in the family, but my mother and grandmother both had the skills to hold their own in the professional kitchens of family-owned restaurants back in the 1940s and '50s. Unfortunately, by the time my cooking education began in the early '60s, both of these fine, experienced cooks had succumbed to the “convenience food” craze that swept the nation. It wasn't that they couldn't cook “real” food, but they had been successfully brainwashed by the ad men of the day into thinking that they didn't have to. The Madison Avenue hucksters convinced them – and a whole generation of homemakers – that the packaged, processed, chemically dyed and artificially preserved crap they were pushing was not only easier than “real” cooking, but was equally as good for their busy, modern families. As a result, a lot of my early accomplishments came out of boxes, cans, and frozen packages. But at least it was a foundation upon which I could build. As my education broadened and my skills increased, I abandoned the boxes and cans and learned how to cook real, fresh, delicious food from scratch. And so can you.

Now, I don't cook with duck tongues or sheep brains or yak testicles. More power to the people who do. Let them amaze and impress on TV as they sit and count their Michelin stars. I'll content myself with turning out exceptional food from the ordinary ingredients I buy at my local butcher shop, produce market, and grocery store. And you can, too. You don't need an expensive formal culinary education to be a world-class cook in your own kitchen preparing amazing meals for your family and friends. Here's how to become the cook you never dreamed you could be.

1. Ya Gotta Wanna

If you don't have a desire to learn how to cook, you're not going to be successful doing it. That's pretty much a common statement for anything. You'll be a mediocre golfer, guitarist, or gongoozler if you don't really want to do it. Focus on the benefits of being able to cook for yourself and for others. Nutrition, weight management, economy, bragging rights – whatever it takes to get you motivated.

2. Hide and Watch

You know somebody who cooks. Even if you're among the alleged twenty-eight percent, that still leaves seventy-two percent of the population for you to observe. Grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, girlfriend, boyfriend, neighbor, roommate – somebody you know knows how to cook. Watch them. Ask questions. Watch them some more. Take notes.

3. Hit the Books

Once you've figured out that you want to cook and have spent a little time watching somebody else do it, it's time to hit the books. Not just cookbooks, although that's certainly going to be the mainstay of your culinary curriculum. Look for books about cooking, too. There are lots of basic guidebooks for terms and techniques out there. Like many hobbies and occupations, cooking has its own vocabulary and its own set of basic rules. If you don't know what “sauté” means or how to do it, you'll be completely lost when you see something like “sauté the vegetables” written in a cookbook.

Like college textbooks, cookbooks are expensive. It's not uncommon to pay thirty, forty, fifty dollars or more for a cookbook. But if you don't want to bust the budget, you have some alternatives. One alternative is the public library. Check out a couple of general interest cookbooks for starters. You can move on to specific cuisines once you get familiar with the basics. Other cheap cookbook sources include yard sales, flea markets, antique stores, or the bargain bins at your local bookstore. I have about a hundred cookbooks in my kitchen library. Most of them came from these places.

Cooking magazines are often a good way to get your feet wet. Many combine techniques and recipes to give you a comprehensive package for just a few bucks. Word of caution, though; some of these publications fly a little higher than others. As a novice cook, you may not be ready for Bon Appétit. You might want to start out with Taste of Home. Cook's Illustrated is one of my “go to” magazines.

The Internet is a huge resource. There are hundreds of cooking and recipe sites available online. But here, too, you might want to get a little more experience regarding what to look for before you start looking for it. I just Googled “fried egg” and got more than thirty thousand results. The web can be a little overwhelming for newbies.

Go through your new acquisitions and try to find recipes for things with which you are already familiar. Starting out with an ambitious dish comprised of twenty ingredients and a long list of specialized techniques and equipment when you can barely boil water is a sure route to failure and disappointment. Go easy on yourself. Boil an egg. Make macaroni and cheese. Once you get good at the easy stuff, the harder stuff will get easier.

The ability to read, interpret, and follow a recipe is the key to learning how to cook. You'll often hear things like, “recipes are just guidelines,” and “chefs don't need recipes.” And that's true. I can make a boatload of dishes in my sleep while dreaming of a white Christmas. And once you've been at it for fifty years, you'll be able to do so as well. But in the beginning, follow the recipe. The ability to tweak and improvise comes with experience.

4. Practice, Practice, Practice.

You know the old joke; “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!” In the previous paragraph I alluded to cooking in my sleep. Well, not quite, obviously. But close. After you've done any task long enough, muscle memory kicks in and you kind of go on auto pilot. The first thing I learned to cook was bacon. I can now cook bacon in a round pan, a square pan, on a griddle, in an oven, in the microwave, on an electric stove, on a gas stove, over an open campfire......heck, I could probably cook it with a stick and a blowtorch. Why? Practice, practice, practice. You like your bacon crispy? I can do that. You want it limp? I can do that, too. You want it crispy in the middle and limp on the ends. No problem. Practice, practice, practice. It builds confidence and encourages experimentation. And that results in growth. You say you can't cook because you tried it once and failed? Try it again. And again. And again. Until you get it right. I can't play the piano. I know what one looks like and how it works. I even know what keys match up with which notes. But I can't play because I didn't practice, practice, practice.

5. Movin' On Up

Okay. You've decided you really want to cook. You've watched some people do it, you've gotten some cookbooks and you've practiced a few recipes. Now what? Where do you go next? Time to move up. Once you've gotten to the point where you can make a few dishes confidently and well, you've established that you can cook. Now it's time to be a cook.

Go back to step 2; Hide and Watch. Back then you were a little tentative. A little unsure. Now you're more confident, so it's time to watch and learn. You can go back to those same sources and get more involved. Look for things you didn't know how to look for before. Pick up some tips and tricks and instead of just watching the big holiday meal being prepared, jump in there with a dish of your own. Maybe you're not up to roasting the turkey yet, but you can make some mean mashed potatoes. It's a start.

Want more? You should. A formal culinary education is outrageously, ridiculously, almost obscenely expensive. And unless you're planning to apply for a chef de cuisine position at a five-star restaurant, you don't need it. But you can still be a five-star cook by taking advantage of the knowledge of others. You can do this in a number of ways. One of the easiest is by turning on your TV. Don't laugh.

When I was a kid in the kitchen, there were “educational channel” shows featuring Julia Child and later, Graham Kerr. Now cooking shows dominate the regular network schedules with entire cable networks devoted to cooking. There are basically two kinds of cooking shows: competitions like Food Network's Chopped, ABC's The Taste, or Master Chef on Fox, and the good old “dump and stir” – or “stand and stir,” if you prefer – programs that are all over Food Network, Cooking Channel, and PBS. These, students, are your new instructors. Even with many, many years of cooking experience under my apron strings, Mario Batali, Giada De Laurentiis, Michael Chiarello, Lidia Bastianich, Mary Ann Esposito and a host of others continue to teach me nearly every day. Oftentimes, it's just reinforcement of “old” knowledge; things I've been doing for years. And that's good. It means I've been doing things right for years. But these culinary experts – people who do have expensive educations and/or vast amounts of real world experience – also teach me a lot of new things. You know, a great many high-dollar chefs learned much of what they know from working in kitchens with these people. You can garner a lot of that same knowledge by simply turning on your TV. Even the competition shows have some educational value. You won't learn much about the basics there, but if you can already cook a little, you'll find some great inspirations and ideas.

Another way to improve your burgeoning skills is to take some classes. As I said, full-on formal training is not an option for most people who just want to learn to cook. But locally offered cooking classes are. If there's a university, college, or community college in your town, chances are they offer some form of cooking instruction for the general public. Oftentimes, libraries and community centers have cooking classes. Culinary stores like Williams-Sonoma and Sur la Table frequently hold seminars and classes. You can even find restaurants that conduct specialized courses.

Go back to the Net. Now that you know what to look for, you can find lots of online cooking resources that will help you hone and improve your new skills. Be wary of “online cooking schools” that charge you an arm and a leg for some kind of “degree” or “diploma.” They're not all scams, but many are. For your purposes, you'll do just as well with any of a number of free online “schools” or “classes.” Chef Jacob Burton does a marvelous job at Stella Culinary (https://www.stellaculinary.com) and Escoffier Online has some great free instruction available at http://learntocook.com. Are you going to come away from any of these ready to step into the kitchen at Le Cirque? No. But you'll be more than able to hold your own in your home kitchen. And that's really what you're after, isn't it?

If you feel you truly “can't” cook, it's time for a little self-examination. I can't play the piano – but I posses the intelligence and the ability to learn. I have the physical, mechanical ability it takes and I am able to read and follow instructions, so I could play the piano if I chose to do so. If I got some books and sought some instruction and dedicated some time to practice and improvement, I could play the piano. I may never achieve concert hall virtuosity, but I bet I could pound out a few tunes for my own entertainment. If I wanted to. Do you really want to cook?

You have to be open to learning new skills and, if you've got a few decades behind you, you have to be willing to break some bad habits. As with many disciplines, in cooking some things are tried and true and some things change with the times. Maybe you can't cook because you won't change. My mother and grandmother taught me a lot of wonderful things. But I had to unlearn a lot of things they taught me, too. Like putting oil in pasta water. That was standard practice in American kitchens for many, many years. Subsequent education has taught me better and now I'm a better cook because of it. Do you really want to learn?

Finally, you've got to take the time to make the time to practice and improve. “I can't cook because I just don't have the time.” Specious and spurious. You make all kinds of time for all kinds of other activities. How important is it that you learn to cook wholesome, healthy, delicious food for yourself and for those you love?

You can cook. You can learn. You can improve. And with motivation and dedication you can become the cook you never dreamed you could be.

The Absolute Best Bacon

Sinfully Delicious Porky Ambrosia

I just finished reading an article that I couldn't resist. It purports to identify the best bacons known to man. (http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/10-best-bacons-known-man-162800607.html)

When listing the “best” of anything, it is a completely subjective exercise based largely upon personal opinion. And you know how I feel about opinions; everybody is entitled to mine. And in my opinion, the authors here missed the bacon boat by one slab. But all is not lost. Way down in the comments section following the main body of text, somebody got it. Somebody mentioned the absolute best bacon known to man. That would be the thick, rich, unctuous, salty, smoky, sinfully delicious porky ambrosia produced in a little brick smokehouse just outside Madisonville, Tennessee by Allan Benton at Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams.

Now, other than this egregious exclusion, I'm going to give the authors credit for most of their choices. I say “most.” Nueske's definitely belongs up there in the bacon stratosphere, as do any of the choices that contain reference to “applewood” and/or “smoked.” I'll even grant them kudos for selecting Oscar Meyer Center Cut as the best “store bought” bacon money can buy. But in order to be taken seriously here, they've got to lose the duck.

Here's the dictionary definition of bacon: “the back and sides of the hog, salted and dried or smoked, usually sliced thin and fried for food.” Do you see “duck,” “turkey,” “cow,” “chinchilla,” or any other animal presented in that very simple definition? No. Bacon = pig. Period. End of discussion.

So let's go back to the original article, eliminate the duck aberration, and add Benton's bacon to the top of the list. Now we're cookin'!

There's a reason Allan Benton has been called “the Pork Whisperer” and elevated to the station of “Bacon Baron.” There's a reason David Chang at New York's legendary Momofuku, Sean Brock at Charleston's famed McCrady's, John Fleer at Walland, Tennessee's renowned Blackberry Farm and a host of other Michelin-starred chefs from all over seek out Benton's bacon. There's a reason it shows up on the menu in restaurants from Los Angeles to Atlanta. There's a reason John T. Edge featured it in Gourmet, and its been mentioned in Southern Living , Saveur and a host of other national publications. It's the same reason I'll get off I-75 and make a sixty mile round trip detour anytime I'm in East Tennessee. Allan Benton does bacon the way bacon is supposed to be done. The old-fashioned way. The real bacon way. Some might call it “artisan” bacon, and by any definition, Allan Benton is an artisan. But he'll tell you it's just country.

With the exception of refrigeration, there ain't nothin' mechanical or 'lectrical at Benton's. Everything is done by hand; everything from the cutting of the hickory wood for the smokehouse through the processing of the meat itself. And that meat is exceptional, too. Nothing but pasture-raised, heritage-breed pigs, like Berkshire and Duroc, who feed on natural forage like the leaves and acorns and grasses of oak forests. According to Benton, the meat from these pigs contains more intramuscular fat and has a heartier flavor.

“We Cure 'Em” says the hand-painted sign out front. And that's just what they do at Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams. Relying on age-old techniques, handed down through generations, the meats at Benton's are slow-cured. He uses a rub made of salt and brown sugar and then smokes the bacon in thick clouds of hickory or applewood smoke. “We smoke the heck out of them for three days,” says Benton.

Back in 2009, Esquire Magazine called Benton's “the world's best bacon.” Now, how are you going to argue with a culinary authority like that?

And here's the best part: you can get four pounds of Benton's Hickory Smoked Country Bacon for $24. Hello? That's six bucks a pound! Compared that to the prices of some of the other bacons on that “top ten” list. It's only a dollar a pound more than the premium store-bought brand. Now, if you order online through http://bentonscountryhams2.com/ it'll be about a month before you get your bacon. They're a little busy, you see. But if you happen to be anywhere within, oh, say a hundred miles of Madisonville, Tennessee – it's just a little ways south of Knoxville – you might just drop in at 2603 Highway 411 and get some direct from the smokehouse. That's the way I do it. Or sometimes I get friends passing through to supply me. Who wants to wait a month for slices of the bacon they probably serve in heaven?

See why I believe the authors of the “ten best” list goofed? Go ahead and try their favorites. And then treat yourself to mine – and Emeril's and Hugh Acheson's and Sean Brock's and........

Try the rest, then buy the best: Benton's Hickory Smoked Country Bacon from Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams. It's so good that if you put it on top of your head, your tongue will slap your brains out trying to get to it.

UPDATE: Gretel Ann Fischer Calls It Quits

Excuse Me While I Dry My Tears

Well, well. From the “Karma is a bitch” department comes word that the most execrable example of poor sportsmanship since Tonya Harding is closing the doors to her business.

Vermont's alleged baker and erstwhile reality TV personality, Gretel Ann Fischer, told her coterie of supporters – both of them – that she was bailing on her bakery. Let the finger pointing begin!

Speaking of the television network behind “The Next Great Baker,” Fischer says, “I can never repair what they did to my reputation.” TLC, you should be ashamed of yourself for the manner in which you “edited” this fine woman's appearances. Why, it's patently obvious that you forced her to plaster
a smug grin on her face as she delivered lines like “"I just knocked out a good percentage of her profits right there," and "Apparently everyone else doesn't realize this is a competition." And you must have been behind her smarmy likeness on Twitter. You know, the one where she's grinning like a pig in slop and holding up a sign that reads, “It's not cheating......it's culinary 101 – what you learn when you go to culinary school.” Somebody pass me a barf bag.

And shame on you, too, Winooski-ites. "I lost contracts. I lost wedding cakes. I lost a lot of business," wailed the pillar of integrity. Walk-in traffic dropped off and orders were canceled. What's wrong with you people? Who are you to sit in judgment and equate moral standards to business practices? And so what if she did just stick her finger in the community's eye on national television? Is that any reason to stop supporting her?

In her own little world, there's absolutely no reason to believe that Gretel Ann had anything whatsoever to do with her own downfall. It's the economy, stupid. It's competition from other restaurants. It's taxes! Ah-ha! It's Bush's fault! Or Obama's! Or maybe the Pillsbury Doughboy's, I don't know. But it couldn't possibly be hers.

Good ol' Gretel Ann. Always gracious in the face of defeat.

I read a few of the comments that accompanied various online stories about the closing. “Who would have thought that a person's business would be negatively impacted by showing the world that they are dishonest and untrustworthy?” And, “That's the same attitude as a criminal who winds up in jail and then labels himself a 'victim'. I wouldn't want to do business with this lady either.” Or, “Blame the TV show for showing her true character? You reap what you sow and people get to choose where they spend their money. They obviously choose not to spend it with someone who sabotages others.” Several other comments reflected that her products were overpriced and of poor quality. I suppose TLC is to be blamed for that, too.

Anyway, on the brighter side, Fischer vows that, although she plans to remain in the industry, she is not planning to open another bakery. And with luck, she won't be making anymore TV appearances either. To paraphrase a quote from a famous 1962 press conference, “But as I leave you I want you to know.... just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Fischer to kick around any more.” Her fifteen minutes of fame behind her, let's just hope she fades off into quiet obscurity. And stays there.

My Favorite (Mostly Free) Cooking Apps for the iPhone

I'm not exactly a Luddite, but I'm also not one for jumping at every new technological gimmick that hits the market. That's why it took me awhile to acquire a smart phone. I was perfectly content with my old stupid phone. It made phone calls. What more did I need? My wife finally dragged me into the 21^st century when she got an iPhone a couple of years ago. I started playing with it and within hours I was at the phone store buying one of my own. Among the big selling points for me was all the cooking apps with which I could junk it up. And there are hundreds of them.

Cheap bast.....errrr.....thrifty person that I am, I tend to gravitate toward the freebies, but there a few worth purchasing. Here are a few of the apps I've tried.

Naturally, I have some Italian-specific apps. The best of these is Mario Batali Cooks! At $9.99, it's also the most expensive. Mario had a big hand in the creation of the app, which contains lots of his favorite recipes from all over Italy along with some great instructions on technique. Lots of video and still photography, food and wine pairings, a glossary of terms, and much more. It's a keeper.

My other favorite Italian food personality, Giada de Laurentiis, also has an app. It's a freebie, but you kind of get what you pay for. Don't get me wrong, Giada is a nice app. There's just not much to it. A handful of recipes, a few short video tips, and Giada's Twitter feed. Oh, and a cute pronunciation guide in which my dearest Italian goddess mispronounces “asiago.” For some odd reason, she says “ah-SAH-gee-oh.” Tried the app and, sad to say, dumped it.

Fabio Viviani has a nice app. Called Let's Cook, it's a big sucker. It's free, but make sure you're on a wi-fi or you'll devastate your data minutes downloading it. Like Mario's app, it's got lots of step-by-step video instructions and a ton of static recipes that are very intuitive and easy to follow. Fabio imparts some helpful cooking and entertaining tips, and there are menu suggestions and wine pairings and other neat features, too. I use it a good bit.

I'm a subscriber to La Cucina Italiana magazine, and their basic La Cucina Italiana US app is free. It's not the most comprehensive app I've ever seen, but I refer to it from time to time. You can search recipes by course, by prep time, by cooking method, or by season. You can store your favorites and set up your menu. There's also a shopping list and a timer. It's worth the phone space.

Two other Italian apps that I have on my phone are iCuoco and one that displays as Flavour, but is actually Il Cucchiaio d'Argento or “The Silver Spoon.” iCuoco is free Il Cucchiaio d'Argento is $1.99. Both are excellent apps with lots of recipes and helpful features. But both are written in Italian, so don't go there unless you can read Italian or are in possession of a good translator program. I'm always amazed when I read through the reviews to find so many clueless individuals who are angry or upset because they downloaded the app and discovered that something called Il Cucchiaio d'Argento was all in Italian! Gee. Ya think?

On the general cooking front, I'm also a dedicated reader of Cook's Illustrated. They've got an app. The freebie is pretty limited. It's got a fair number of good open recipes in various categories, but you have to be a subscriber to access the “members only” recipes. Same thing with the “taste test” section. One or two open testings in each category with a “members only” section at the bottom. This one's also got a place to archive your favorites and a shopping list feature. It's still on my phone, but not one of my “go to” apps.

I've got four “go to” apps: Big Oven, Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner, Epicurious, and The Betty Crocker Cookbook. If you can't find it with one of these, it's not going to be found.

The Betty Crocker Cookbook is a freebie with more than 13,000 recipes that come fully loaded in the app. If you know what you want to make, you can search by recipe. If you just want to see what you can come up with using ingredients you have on hand, you can do that, too. There's a recipe box to store your favorites and a shopping list feature. You can sync your recipes and grocery lists across different devices. You can e-mail them to friends, and you can even access coupons.

Epicurious is another great app. It, too, has loads of recipes available and it allows you to save your favorites and create a shopping list. One of my favorite aspects of Epicurious is its timeliness. As I'm writing right now, it's Spring and Easter is a couple of weeks away. When I open Epicurious, the home page displays Easter, Passover, and Spring recipes right up front. And there are recipes for kids, low- fat recipes, low-carb recipes, low-cal recipes and recipes designed for people who can “cook like a pro” as well as for those who “can barely cook.” The app itself is free and there's an in-app option that allows you to sync your recipe box for $1.99.

The Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner is a winner. The free version does a lot, the $2.99 version does a little more. With the freebie, you can search among more than 40,000 recipes. You can search by ingredient and you can search by nutrition. You can bookmark your favorites, create shopping lists, e-mail recipes to friends, and share them on Facebook and Twitter. There's a built-in grocery scanner that lets you scan barcodes and searches for recipes that use the scanned items. The “spinner” feature is a lot of fun. There are three tiers; dish type, ingredients, and ready in. Select, for instance, “main dish” from the first tier, “beef” from the second, and “slow cooker” from the third, and the app brings up a huge selection of slow cooker beef recipes.

An app that comes highly recommended by almost everybody is Big Oven. It's a free app with access to over 250,000 recipes. You can search recipes by keyword, course, or ingredient, and you can browse popular recipe collections. If you need to be inspired, the app lets you enter up to ten ingredients from your fridge or pantry to get meal ideas. You can scale recipes, convert English to metric, and share your recipes by e-mail, Twitter, or Pinterest. There's also a menu planner for special occasions and everyday meals. I guess that's why it's had more than seven million downloads.

One of my most indispensable cooking apps is free and doesn't contain a single recipe. Published by Portable Knowledge, LLC, it's called Cooking, and it is a treasure trove of culinary knowledge. I can't begin to describe how useful this app truly is. Want to know how many slices of bacon you'll need to crumble to get a half-cup? Look in the “Yields and Tips” section. Don't have any chicken broth on hand? Find out how many bouillon cubes or how many teaspoons of granules or dried poultry seasoning you'll need in the “Substitutions” section. What's a “chinoise?” Look it up in “Terms.” Ever wonder what the volume of a Number 10 can is? Twelve cups. It's in the “Commercial Can Sizes” subcategory under “Measurements.” And if you need to know what to do when cooking at high altitudes, Cooking has you covered. It's a great little app.

Equally indispensable is a free app from the Escoffier Online International Culinary Academy folks, published by Futura Group. The Escoffier Cook's Companion will knock your socks off. Touted as “The ultimate Cook's Companion for the kitchen,” it really lives up to the hype with a range of tools that include a measurement converter, a compendium of ingredients, a glossary of culinary terms, a comprehensive list of kitchen equipment, and a versatile kitchen timer. The converter is easy to use, the glossary is fun and informative, and the compendia (yes, that's the proper plural of “compendium”) are awesome. I love the timer feature, though, because you can have more than one going at a time. If you're preparing three different dishes, you can set up three separate timers. Very handy.

I also have something on my phone called Kitchen Dial. It's a quick and easy converter that let's you select a metric or English amount and convert it to its other equivalent. Select “ounces,” dial it to 1 ½ , then select milliliters on the other dial, and you get 44.4. Saves me a lot of calculation time. It's a little more comprehensive than the Escoffier converter.

 

I've got some recipe scalers and food cost converters on my phone, too. In fact, I had to separate all my cooking apps into two folders on my home screen because they wouldn't all fit into one.

As I said, there are a mind-numbing number of cooking apps available. I just entered “cooking” into the App Store search box and got 3,541 results. “Italian cooking” racks up 815. “Recipes” will net 4,100 and “kitchen” will get you 1,272. I think you'll like the dozen that I've covered here, especially my four “go to” apps and my two “utility” apps. Look 'em over and see what you think.

It's "al Dente", Not "al Dante"

I once heard Mario Batali joke about people who asked for things to be prepared “al dante.” He laughed that Dante has been dead for nearly seven hundred years and so food prepared “al Dante” would probably not be very tasty. He suggests people should ask for “al dente” instead and leave poor dead Dante alone. Another chef I know believes that “Al Dante” might be the old Italian guy who lives down the street. Either way, I always thought these guys were kidding. I mean, nobody really says “al dante,” do they. Turns out, they do.

I was channel surfing and came across a cooking show where the “chef,” one P. Allen Smith, was preparing something that looked pretty good. I watched until I actually heard him say, “you want this to have a little tooth; to be al dante.” I rewound and listened again. Yep. He said “al dante.” Click! There went his credibility. Come to find out he's a designer and gardener from Tennessee, so he didn't have much cooking cred to begin with. Although he has published a cookbook, which just goes to show you anybody can do it.

Isolated incident, right? Nobody else uses “al dante," right? Wrong. Check out this recipe instruction for “Rigatoni alla Fontina” from the website www.cookingindex.com : “Cook the rigatoni in 5 to 6 quarts salted boiling water until extra al dante....” Or, same site, different recipe (Rigatoni with Three Cheeses); “Cook until super al dante as they are going into the oven....”

And over at the “busy cooks” section of About.com I found a really nice, helpful lady named Linda Larsen telling people that “al dente” is pronounced “all DAN tay” and that “Al Dante” is just an alternate spelling.

Okay, so maybe there are doofi (the proper plural of “doofus”) who say “al dante” instead of “al dente.” But what does it all mean?

“Dente” is Italian for “tooth.” Adding “al” makes it “to the tooth.” It is sometimes also translated as “to the bite,” meaning you have to use your “bite” to chew the food. It shouldn't be overcooked or mushy. The term refers to a proper degree of doneness, especially as it relates to pasta, although it is often applied to certain vegetables, as well. The texture of a food that is considered to be “al dente” should be tender but still slightly firm. There should be a resistance at the center of ”al dente” pasta. When you bite through it, you should see a firm, white core. Vegetables cooked “al dente” should be at the “tender crisp” stage.

Dante was not noted to be a great cook. But since he is often called “The Father of the Italian Language,” he would really want you to know this. And I'm sure if you read between the lines of his great work, he probably has a place in hell designated for those who use “dante” instead of “dente.” Maybe in the Sixth Circle with the rest of the heretics, I don't know. But I wouldn't take any chances if I were you.