How to navigate the food w ld like ao

293 Pages·2016·26.99 MB·English

Cheat
Sheet
X
How to navigate
the food world
like a pro
Foreword
The Cheat Sheet column was introduced
to The Straits Times Lifestyle food pages in
May, 2012.
Noticing a growing foodie culture in Singapore,
the lifestyle team decided a guide to the booming
range of foodstuff as well as the finer points of
prepping and storing ingredients would be
useful for readers.
Since then, food consultant and author
Chris Tan has written some 140 Cheat Sheets
for The Straits Times, covering everything
from preserved vegetables to kitchen whisks.
With the tagline, “How to navigate the food
world like a pro”, each Cheat Sheet offers
bite-sized pieces of information that the
reader can use.
This e-book compiles 60 of the
best columns.
Happy cooking and eating!
Contents
Pantry Staples
Dried beans
Eggs
Eggs: How to boil them
Fats for baking and cooking
Gelling agents
Legumes
Natural food colourings
Natural salts
Equipment
Noodles: Dried rice
Noodles: Dried wheat Chopsticks
Noodles: Glass Cookie cutters
Rice: Cooking method Food strainers
Soya sauce Kitchen brushes
Sugars: Asian unrefined Kitchen thermometers
Sugars: Unrefined Stemware
Tofu Whisks
1 | 3
Vegetables
Bittergourd
Fruit
Brinjals
Apples
Cauliflower, broccoli
& relatives
Asian mangoes
Cucumbers
Bananas
Preserved greens
Citrus: Kumquats
Spring onions, leeks
Citrus: Limes
& chives
Citrus: Mandarins
Sprouts
Citrus: Unusual hybrids
Stem vegetables
Tomatoes
Sticky vegetables
Vegetable gourds
& melons
Yams & other
root vegetables
2 | 3
Herbs & spices
Basil
Commonly confused
herbs & spices
Chilli: Powders
Fish
Chilli: Green
Anchovies
Chilli: Red
Fish and seafood roe
Garlic
Salmon
Ginger
Sardines
Mustard
Tamarind
Beverages
Ulam
Coffee
Milk Substitutes
Sake
Sparkling wines
3 | 3
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Pantry Staples
Dried beans
X
Spanning diverse shapes, colours and characters,
dried beans are a boon to every cook.
X
Black-eyed beans
Also called cowpeas. Thin-
skinned, they cook slightly
faster than other beans.
Lentil-like in flavour, they are
a good all-purpose bean for
curries, soups, stews and
salads.
X
Borlotti beans
Dried versions of the fresh
cranberry beans sold in their
pods in season. Also called
rose coco beans (though
they are unrelated
to coconut or chocolate).
Their plain, neutral flavour
makes them a good all-
purpose bean for soups,
stews and salads.
1 | 5
X
Broad beans
Large, flat, camouflage-green and
assertively beany-tasting. Most often
seen as deep-fried snacks or cooked with
spices and mashed to make kacang phool,
a traditional Arabic-Malay dish.
X
Anasazi beans
An attractive American
heirloom bean sometimes
seen at gourmet
supermarkets. Needing
shorter soaking and
cooking times than most
other beans, they are
pink when cooked. Mild
and sweet, almost like
boiled peanuts.
X
Pinto beans
Widely used in Southwestern
American cooking, in dishes such as
refried beans. Similar to kidney beans
in taste and texture, but a tad milder.
| 2 | 5
Pantry Staples Dried beans
X
Cannellini beans
Also known as alubia or white kidney
beans. Creamy-textured and mildly
nutty-tasting. A good all-purpose
bean for curries, salads and stews.
X
Butter beans (left)
Large, flattened and ivory-hued. Also
called lima beans, they cook up very
smooth and creamy. Excellent for
purees, soups, and bean pastes for
Japanese wagashi sweets and other
confections.
X
Haricot beans
Most recognisable as baked beans
in tomato sauce. Small, white and
quite bland, but a good backdrop for other
flavours in stews, cassoulet and other
casseroles, and salads. Also called
navy beans.
3 | 5
|
Pantry Staples Dried beans
X
Soya beans
The world’s most ubiquitous bean,
eaten in myriad forms such as sprouts,
bean milk, tofu, tempeh, fermented
sauces and pastes, soya protein and
soya bean oil. Cultivars vary widely in
colour, size and shape: shown here
are Japanese soya beans.
X
Azuki beans
Small red beans widely used across Asia, mostly
in sweet items such as red bean soup, anpan
buns and such. Also called adzuki or aduki.
Complex and earthy in flavour, they typically
need multiple changes of water during
soaking and cooking to remove their
tannic edge.
X
Mung beans
Familiar to Singaporeans in many
local foods such as green bean soup,
dal dishes, tau suan, tau sar piah
and as beansprouts. They
have thick skins, a yellow
flesh that collapses readily
once cooked and a distinctive
but not assertive taste.
4 | 5
|
Pantry Staples Dried beans