It’s taco time

As much as I like cooking and baking I love it even more when I’m spending time in the kitchen with family and friends. I’ve recruited another sous chef. He’s a foodie in the making. Meet my nephew Daniel:

I gave Daniel the option of choosing what we would make together. He chose tacos. Who am I to argue? We kept it pretty basic. We made seasoned ground beef and seasoned chicken using this recipe for the seasoning. Toppings included sour cream, cheese, salsa and lettuce. We had cornbread and red beans & rice for our sides. Daniel did a great job. His next request is to make homemade meatballs. I can’t wait!

Here’s a couple pics from our day in the kitchen:

Daniel is busy adding water and seasoning to the meat while it is browning. It was his first time cooking on a stovetop.

Carefully measuring the water for the rice.

 

Is it sauce or gravy?

Some theories I have heard:

• It’s gravy if there is meat in it; otherwise, it’s sauce.
• It’s regional.
• The difference between sauce and gravy is attitude.
• If meat is cooked plain or floured, the resulting pan juices will make sauce.
• If flour is added after meat is cooked in order to thicken the pan juices that’s gravy.

What does Wikipedia say:

Sauce: Some Italian Americans on the East Coast refer to tomato sauce as “gravy“, “tomato gravy”, or “Sunday gravy”, especially sauces with a large quantity of meat simmered in them, similar to the Italian Neapolitan ragù. “Gravy” is an erroneous English translation from the Italian sugo which means juice, but can also mean sauce (as in sugo per pastasciutta). The expression for “gravy” in Italian is sugo dell’arrosto, which is literally “juice of a roast” and is specifically not tomato sauce.

Gravy: A sauce made often from the juices that run naturally from meat or vegetables during cooking. The gravy may be further coloured and flavoured with gravy salt (a simple mix of salt and caramel food colouring) or gravy browning (gravy salt dissolved in water) or ready-made cubes and powders can be used as a substitute for natural meat or vegetable extracts. Canned gravies are also available. Gravy is commonly served with roasts, meatloaf, rice, and mashed potatoes.

What do you say?

Meet my new sous chef

I recently spent the weekend visiting a friend and her 4 year old son Nicholas. Due to the cold weather we spent a lot of time indoors. Most of that time was spent playing in the kitchen. Nicholas wanted to smell everything, taste everything and help wherever he could. He’s a true foodie. Our big project was to make a couple pizzas from scratch. I consulted Baking Bites and The Oyster Evangelist for their recipes. Our pizzas became a hybrid of the two recipes. We topped the pizzas with tomato sauce, onions, chicken and mozzarella cheese.

Here’s Nick rolling out the dough. Look at that concentration.

Before going into the oven.

 

 

 

 

 

Nick showing off our first pizza. Sneak a peek at the second pizza in the oven.

A close up of our final product.

We had a great time making them. Of course, we were both covered in flour after we were done but isn’t that part of the fun of making things from scratch? Most importantly, the pizzas tasted fantastic.