Fusion Craftiness is a journey. It’s a love forged through travel and good, no, great food. I need this in my life permanently kind of epiphany. While traveling for the first time, I noticed the food culture was in-your-face different. The bread, cheese, pastries, entrees, street food….different and amazing! How could this be? I live in America, I thought we could get everything at the grocery store, how is the food this incredibly different? The answer lies with ‘Better Living Through Chemistry, and the advent of convenience food starting in post WWII America.
Sadly, through these modern social and scientific inventions, Americans forgot how to cook. Pour a ‘Cream of Something Soup’ over dried, packaged spaghetti and factory chicken doesn’t count as cooking. We just forgot, that’s all. Not only did we forget but our food industry forgot too. It’s hard to source ‘artisanal’ ingredients here, something that is a staple in most countries around the world, they didn’t forget. It’s expensive, not the cheap food we have gotten used to in the past 70 years. But what to do? Especially if you don’t know how to really cook. You have choices.
–Visit farmers’ markets and talk to the farmers. Some farmers markets allow for re-sellers so find out if you are actually talking to a farmer or their representative.
–Educate yourself on the current food climate by reading up on the 40 organizations that are shaking up the food system here.
–Read about and adopt the Slow Food Movement principles.
–And finally, learn to cook, really cook, not soup can cooking or frozen pizza cooking. Learn here at Fusion Craftiness, at a community college, go to cooking demonstrations, anywhere, just learn.
Seeking out international cuisine is a great start, especially if it’s in those off-main-street kind of cafes, noodle houses, grandma’s in the back cooking for you and she doesn’t speak English. You know, those places. At noon, if a bunch of construction workers are walking into an unknown establishment, that’s the place! They know where to go, good, cheap and many times authentic cuisine.
Here you will find fundamentals of cooking using science based cooking, many of the same techniques that are used in culinary schools.
Learn To Cook
Resources to help you on your cooking journey.
Food Prep Fundamentals
A collection of articles to help you with food prep techniques such as chopping, mincing and how to hole a knife.
Cooking Fundamentals
Learn the basics of cooking with this helpful collection of articles.
Cooking From Your Pantry
A collection of recipes for common pantry items.
Chicken Broth & Chicken Stock Substitutes
Stock up your pantry with these staples. Use these in lieu of chicken broth or chicken stock.
Food Safety
Food safety has been broken down into four fundamentals.
Clean your hands and work surfaces frequently while cooking and preparing food, especially after handling raw meat and poultry.
Separate raw meat, poultry and raw eggs from other foods in your grocery cart, in the fridge and on your prep surfaces to prevent cross contamination.
Cook your food to a safe, internal temperature as indicated in the chart below. Once cooked, keep your food at a temperature of 140F or above or below 40F. Stay out of the danger zone which is between 40F-140F.
Chill your food within two hours of cooking. Never thaw or marinate food on the counter.
Bon appetit!
