I love to cook, but I am the first to tell you I’m no expert. Fortunately, I know where to go for expert advice, tips, and tricks.
You’ll find some of the best cookbooks and cooking magazines available here. If you want a peek into the life of a professional chef, check out my Chef Interviews.
Not only will you learn a bit about what it’s like to work in a restaurant, but most of the chefs I’ve interviewed have generously offered some pro tips that home cooks will find helpful.
If you’re going to be a good cook, it helps to know the language. To that end, you’ll find a good glossary of culinary terms and techniques, information on measurement conversions, ingredient substitutions, photography tips for the budding blogger (I’m still learning), and helpful cooking videos.
Conversions
- Cooking Ingredients Substitutions
- Mushroom Conversions Equivalents and Substitutions
- Ingredient Conversions and Equivalents
- 31 Extremely Important Grain Conversions for Home Cooking
- Ratio Chart for Converting Fresh Herbs to Dried Herbs
- Pasta and Rice Conversions
- 20 Incredible Important Tomato Conversions for Home Cooking
- Cooking Fat and Oil Smoke Points
- Bean Conversions
- Conversion Calculators for Home Cooks
Tips & Food Facts
- How to Doctor Store Bought Tomato Sauce
- About Oven Temperatures
- The Reason Not to Store Onions and Potatoes Together
- 15 Salad Tips You Need To Know For Better Salad Making
- Couch Potato Explained
- How To Stop Bananas From Over Ripening Too Soon
- What Is The Difference Between French Bread and Italian Bread
- Everyday Food Phrases Explained
- Do Not Press Down On The Burgers
- 8 Straightforward Grill Tips to Make Grilling Simple
- Top 10 Steak Buying Tips
- How to Make Thickened Soups
Chef Interviews
Ask a Chef
Many of you send me questions about your cooking at home, and although I try to answer what I can, I often have to refer to one of my chef friends for a better answer. This page will highlight some of the questions I get from you and the answers I receive from the chefs. Here are some of the questions and answers I've received.
Cooking Mistakes & How to Avoid
Here's where you will find a collection of cooking tips and fun food facts I've been posting over the years. You will find them both informative and useful, and of course, I always like to hear from you with your tips.
Cooking Terms
This is a roundup of all the terms a novice home cook should know but might not. From ingredient components like bouquet garnis and gremolata to cooking techniques such as resting and mise en place, learn the terms--and their meanings--so you can hold your own both in the kitchen and at your next foodie gathering.
Cooking Videos
If a picture is worth 1000 words, a video is worth 100,000. When I need to learn how to perform a cooking technique, I spend a lot of time reading about it, but if I find a video, I find that any questions I might have during my reading are answered just by watching. Here is a collection of videos I found particularly useful in learning cooking techniques. I’ll be adding to them as I find more. I hope you find them useful.
Photography
The more I write about cooking, and the more cookbooks, cooking magazines, and food blogs I read, the more I realize that good photographs can make or break a recipe or recipe post. We eat with our eyes first, so it pays to take the best pictures I can. As I learn more about photography, I’ll post it here so that all the information is in one place.
Restaurants
I only write about a few restaurants; when I do, I only write about restaurants I enjoy. I'm hoping that now that the kids are getting older, Meg & I can get out more often to try new restaurants here in Philadelphia and the suburbs. So, over time, I expect this section of the site to grow substantially.
