Cooking Simple Foods & Drinks
I’m excited to introduce a new category today: Tips & Techniques. I hope this will turn into a section that can provide you all with helpful tips to make home cooking a little easier. Feedback is much appreciated, so if you have any great tips or techniques to share, please add them via the comment form. The first tip I’m sharing is quite simple but very helpful nevertheless.
Homemade herbed butter is one of the easiest and most satisfying condiments to make. You can use most herbs (try rosemary, basil, parsley) and store it in the freezer or fridge until it’s ready to be used. The ice cube shapes make it readily available in your cooking and there are endless possibilities to use your herb butter (read below).
If you like to bake, this vanilla sugar recipe should be a pantry staple. But I’m not even sure if I should call it a recipe, it’s so easy! The only two ingredients are vanilla beans and sugar. I used raw cane sugar, which is not chemically refined and similar in taste to brown sugar. Use this in place of regular sugar in baked foods like cakes, cookies, muffins, or granola. I don’t bake too often, so I like to use it in my hot cocoa or teas.
Garlic Mayonnaise – or aioli in France – is one of my favorite condiments. It’s traditionally used with seafood but I love it on French fries, baked veggies (watch out for my oven baked sweet potato recipe), bread, tartines and sandwiches. You can pretty much use it on anything, and the taste of homemade mayo is nothing like the over-processed supermarket stuff.