Hands-Off Cooking

One of the most important things you'll need for stress-free Hands-Off cooking is a good oven thermometer. Most ovens vary a bit from the temperature on the dial or read-out, especially older ovens. To make sure that yours is accurate, purchase an oven thermometer and check it before you use the oven to see how it matches up with the temperature you need. Keep in mind that convection ovens circulate the hot air more efficiently, and can be 25 to 50 degrees higher than the temperature that you set.

If your oven is consistently 25 degrees higher than what you set it at, just keep that in mind and set the dial 25 degrees lower to compensate. Then you can really walk away from the oven while your food cooks and not worry that it will burn before your timer goes off.

Start with one that's not too expensive and move up as you use your oven more or need the temperature to be extremely accurate, as for pastry work.

[photo courtesy Sacramento Bee]

As I continue to cook and demonstrate recipes from the book, I inevitably make some variations. Sometimes it's a matter of not having the exact ingredient on hand. Other times, as when I teach at LifeStyle Rx in Livermore, CA, I'm trying to reduce the fat content of a recipe. Recently, for example, I substituted evaporated 2% skim milk for the cream in the Ricotta-Pesto Souffles with great success. The texture was still light and the souffles were still flavorful, but without the extra fat.

I've been making a lot of the Chilled Avocado-Tomatillo Soup lately, since it's peak avocado season here in California. My husband suggested we use some leftover soup as an enchilada sauce and it worked well. We rolled corn tortillas with cooked, shredded chicken, sliced onions, and fresh chard. Then we poured on plenty of soup as the sauce and topped it with some shredded Cheddar. Thirty minutes at 350 degrees and it was hot through and bubbling. Tasty and quick--and still Hands Off!

This past Tuesday in San Francisco, I did the first of the Tuesday market chef demos, which will be held every other week through the summer. Using lots of produce available now in the market, I demonstrated Enchiladas Suizas with chicken and spinach and a creamy tomato sauce and Indian-flavored Dal (lentil stew) with market tomatoes and chard. The dal recipe calls for "crushed ginger from a jar" in my book, but that day I used fresh ginger since one of the farmers had it for sale.

Coincidentally, a reader from Omaha, NE, sent me an email asking what "ginger from a jar" was. It's a great product that comes in small jars like those that hold minced or crushed garlic. I often find both the ginger and garlic products in my produce section at Safeway or other large markets. Even Trader Joe's now has crushed garlic in a jar, although I prefer the minced product. But ginger in a jar is a great thing to have on hand. It retains its flavor well and the peeling and getting rid of the fibrous strands are already done.

However, if you have fresh ginger root, you can peel it (use the tip of a spoon to just take off the papery skin) and cut it into 1-inch chunks. Freeze them in a resealable bag and then grate them directly from the freezer using a Microplane or rasp grater. That way, the root won't get dried out or moldy, as it sometimes does in the fridge when you keep it for too long.