Are you entertaining? Or perhaps you would like to surprise your family on the weekend with something different to taste while enjoying some time together? We often have clients come to our store asking us for ideas to prepare different platters with cold cuts. Nothing gives us more pleasure than to be able to give you suggestions on cold cuts and even on how to arrange them on a platter. These occurrences have inspired us to write this blog post for you. Hopefully it will help you come up with amazing creations.
Remember to choose quality over quantity. A good combination of meats is dry cured salami (made of beef or pork), presunto (Portuguese prosciutto), sopressata, mortadella and ham.
Be creative. Nothing stops you from creating a board consisting of some (or all) of the above meats with some cheese. However, remember to pair them well. For example, presunto is salty. So, you may want to pair it with a less salty cheese, so the two flavors complement each other. Fill in the platter with fruit, such as melon or figs, as well as olives or pickles. If you are serving the platter as a meal as opposed to a course, serve with a baguette or flatbread crackers.
For a charcuterie plate to stand out and have a well-rounded selection, some serious thought and preparation is required. Don’t forget we are always here to assist you.
You feel like having a steak (t-bone, bone-in…) for dinner, but there is a problem: it’s Winter. How do you enjoy a steak dinner during the freezing cold days? There is always an alternative. Learning how to oven cook steak isn’t difficult, but it definitely needs attention that it doesn’t need when you’re grilling it outside.
The first step is let them come to room temperature after thawing or being refrigerated. This usually takes about an hour or so. After the hour, coat your steaks on both sides in about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle seasoning salt and pepper on both sides. Pre-heat a cast iron skillet or heavy pan on your stove top to get it very hot. Add your steaks to the pan after it has heated and sear them on both sides, for 1 minute each. Set your oven to broil.
After they have seared, put your steaks onto a jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet. Wrapping the pan in aluminum foil is a great idea so nothing ruins your pans. You can then pour whatever juice was in the stove top pan onto the meat. You want to cook your meat until it reaches approximately 140 degrees. Be sure to flip the steaks every 2-3 minutes of cooking. How long your steaks need to cook will depend on how thick they are.
After taking them out of the oven, make sure to let them rest for a few minutes before cutting and serving. And there you go. Enjoy a flavourful steak during the cold Winter days.
When you want to cook up deliciousness in your kitchen for a special weekend dinner, Oven Roasted Pork Chops will definitely be a crowd pleaser. Here are some tips to prepare this delicious dish for you and your family and friends to enjoy.
Cooking pork is really pretty easy. The simple pork chops are seared on the stovetop and then roasted to perfection in the oven. The pork chops take just 15 minutes to prepare and cook. A cast iron skillet is an excellent choice for the recipe. Bone-in chops offer the most flavor but feel free to use boneless in the recipe. If the pork chops are quite thick, adjust the cooking time accordingly. If you crave a bit more flavor, add about 1/2 cup of sliced onion to the skillet with the chops.
Feel free to change up the seasonings. Besides garlic powder and thyme, herbs and spices that go well with pork include fennel, ginger, rosemary, and parsley. If you like a sauce or gravy with pork chops, consider making a pan gravy or sour cream sauce.
And now… let’s share some recipes. Head to our recipe section to get inspired. Also share with us some of yours. We will be glad to publish them. Bon appétit!
If you go to Thailand, to the southern part of India, Korea, Greece and the southern part of the United States, you may find there is a dish common to all of these cultures, even though the recipes are different: fried chicken. It might not be a healthy choice, but who doesn’t like to indulge, once in a while, in something so delicious?
There are so many factors to choose from when it comes to preparing, cooking, and serving fried chicken. Stick to the classic chicken wing, or get creative and fry up breasts, drumsticks and thighs. If you are looking for ways to prepare fried chicken for your family, do some research on the types of recipes available from around the world.
Let’s start with American South fried chicken. This classic dish is prepared by soaking wing, breast, thigh, and leg cuts in buttermilk, then coating them in flour mixed with cayenne, black pepper, and other spices. Finally, the chicken is fried with vegetable oil, traditionally in a cast iron skillet. Home cooks and Southern chefs alike attribute the crispy, crackly breading to the buttermilk bath.
Next, there’s the famous Dakgangjeong. This is the name given to Korean fried chicken. The world has fallen in love with this type of fried chicken. These marinated wings are coated in cornflour, twice-fried until crisp and golden, and then coated in a sticky, sweet, spicy, tangy and completely addictive sauce that will have you licking the plate, not just your fingers. And, these delicious glazed morsels are also topped with chopped peanuts.
Last suggestion for this blog, even though there are many more to look at, the deep-fried chicken, or gai tod, is something of an obsession in Thailand. Sold from street carts, the chicken pieces – often wings or small drumsticks – are marinated in a mixture of spices and aromatics, and then dredged in rice flour, which lends an extra crispness, before being fried. After being fried, the gai tod is wok-tossed in a sauce of nahm prik pao, or Thai chilli paste.
Head to our recipe section to get one of these recipes.
Once in a while, we feel like having a nice, cozy, romantic date night at home. A home-cooked meal in an intimate setting is the way to begin and it is a great way to start the evening, especially if your partner is the one usually making dinner.There are many delicious meal ideas, many of them very simple to make, that will turn your evening into a memorable one.
Let’s begin by the main event of the evening: dinner. You want to ensure you are making something delicious for your date. It is more than fine to have difficulty deciding on a recipe. It happens to the best of chefs. So, head to our recipe section to get some inspiration. Once you decide on the recipe you are going to make, the next step is to get the best ingredients to make your meal an absolute delight.
Get into the chef mindset. A steak dinner can never go wrong if you are both meat lovers. Talk to your butcher about the recipe you are planning to make to get some advice on the best cut of meat for what you have in mind.
Voilà! Staying in is the new going out! Open up a bottle of wine, put on some tunes, serve your dinner and enjoy a romantic evening!
Although they are more common during the Fall and Winter seasons, meat stews are delicious all the time and can be very healthy.Filled with tender cubes of meat and hearty vegetables, stews (beef, chicken, pork, a mix of all the meats…) are a staple dish you should have as part of your meal prep plan.
A stew has been described as an assortment of foods cooked in liquid within a container with a lid. The word “stew” is said to come from the old French word estuier, meaning to enclose. Most cultural groups have created a recipe for a special stew, and there are as many versions of them as there are cooks to make them.
While stew is pretty basic, and not many changes need to be made to make it healthy, especially with chicken, here is a tip to make it a bit better: use a lean cut of meat and trim the fat, add lots of vegetables and add broth that has no salt.
Stews are commonly regarded as “comfort” foods, everyday dishes served to family or close friends in an intimate setting. So, head to our recipe section and look for a stew recipe. We would also like you to share your own creations with us. We will publish them on our recipe section.
