Christian Chefs Newsletter
November 15, 1999

OUTLINE:
           Introduction
           Christianity in the Kitchen - Spiritual Food Poisoning
           Learning Subject of the Month - Fats & Oils (part 2 of 2)
           Recipe Contest
           Featured Recipes
           Recent Job Listings - 1 New
           Featured Website - ilovecheese.com

As promised last month, our website redesign has been completed! The website is now better looking than before, and is better organized to help you more easily find your way around. We've also added an search engine to the navigation bar, allowing you to search our entire website to quickly find what you're looking for. For everybody who doesn't have a frames-compatible browser and for those of you who just plain don't like frames on a website we have permanently removed them, and have a navigation bar instead. If that isn't enough, the website now includes our brand new logo! No guarantees, but if there's enough interest, we will soon be offering the logo on clothing articles. If you'd be interested in getting one or more of these, please e-mail us so we can know how much interest there is in our offering this. Although the redesign is complete, we welcome your e-mails with your comments and suggestions about our website. This includes ideas on ways to improve the existing parts, and/or new things to add to the website.

As well as the redesign, we've also opened a couple of new areas on the website this month. The first is the Contests area, providing you with information and links to numerous recipe contests that allow professional cooks to enter. The second area is an extensive Charts section of our website. We have charts ranging from the basic metric-US scale conversions and high altitude charts to a seasoning recommendations chart and a seasonal ingredients chart. If there are any charts not listed there that you believe would be helpful to you, you can feel free to e-mail us with your recommendation, and the chances are that we will be able to add it soon thereafter. To check out either of these areas of our website, please follow the below links to that area.

A couple of other things we're currently working on are adding a new Links area and a Games area. The Links area will be very extensive and well organized, listing both Christian and culinary websites. The Games area will start with a few different games, the main one being a Christian and culinary trivia hangman game we're currently programming. That's about it for this month. Be looking forward to many more new and exciting changes God is bringing to CCF!

Homepage:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org

NEW Recipe Contest Listings:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/contests.html

NEW Charts area:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/charts/

"RESIST NOT EVIL: BUT WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE ON THY RIGHT CHEEK, TURN TO HIM THE OTHER ALSO." Matthew 5:39

This truth came home to me this weekend at our Women's Retreat. I had a roommate so full of anger and hurtful words. I should tell you, this lady is in both the support groups I work with for chronic illness/pain. The Lord placed her in MY small group at the retreat, and now here she was in my room. No accident!

She directed her verbal abuse at me. At first I was crushed, for it was totally uncalled for. The Lord showed me to bite my tongue and just listen to and love her. To make a long story short, she ended up in my arms crying and emptying out all the garbage of hate and anger about things going on in her life. Deep healing occurred in her because the Lord had me turn the other cheek and love her with His compassionate heart. Going through this valley was a very humbling experience. But look how the Lord ended up using this time!

I know from my thirty-five years working in the food service industry that there are many difficult people we have to deal with; often they are other chefs. How we react to them can have eternal consequences. So, the next time someone "throws up" all over you, stop and ask the Lord for wisdom and insight about this person whom He loved enough to die for. You may be the instrument to reach out with our Lord's compassion and love and bring another hurting soul into the Kingdom.

Consider with me these verses:

"AND THIS IS MY PRAYER: THAT YOUR LOVE MAY ABOUND MORE AND MORE IN KNOWLEDGE AND DEPTH OF INSIGHT, SO THAT YOU MAY BE ABLE TO DISCERN WHAT IS BEST AND MAY BE PURE AND BLAMELESS UNTIL THE DAY OF CHRIST." Philippians 1:9,10 NIV

"IF ANYONE CONSIDERS HIMSELF RELIGIOUS AND YET DOES NOT KEEP A TIGHT REIN ON HIS TONGUE, HE DECEIVES HIMSELF AND HIS RELIGION IS WORTHLESS." James 1:26

His Servant, Chef Diane Boone

If God is speaking to your heart about these things, and you need somebody to talk with, please don't hesitate to e-mail us about your need and somebody from the Fellowship will contact you as soon as possible.  If you have a prayer request or would like to start a theological discussion on this or any other topic please feel free to post it in our Message Boards:

http://www.ChristianChefs.org/forums.html

This month finishes up our "Fats & Oils" series of articles. Last month, I wrote in-depth on how to choose what fats and oils you will be wanting to use (link below). The month before that, Diane Boone explained all about olive oils (link below). And finally, this month I'll be talking about what you can do with these fats and oils now that you know all about them. We'll be discussing how to make your own flavored oils, a few of the numerous uses for butter, and more.

Starting off with most peoples' favorite, because it's so versatile, we will talk about butter. Butter can obviously be very useful on its own, but after playing with it a little, you will discover a multitude of uses for it:

-To increase the smoking point of butter (which will allow you to cook foods in it at a higher temperature), you can make clarified butter. To make this, first melt, then SLOWLY cook the butter in a saucepan until the butter becomes extremely clear as the milk solids drop to the bottom of the pan. As the butter clarifies, skim the foam off the top. After it's clarified, ladel out the clarified butter, discarding the milk solids.
-Beurre noisette, being translated from French to "brown butter", is butter that's cooked to a light hazelnut color and smell. This can be used to flavor different dishes, such as sauteing a little orzo pasta in it for some added flavoring to a plate's starch. This also makes a great roux, a dark roux being a very important ingredient in many cajun and creole dishes.
-Cooking the butter a little past the "noisette" stage, you'll come to the point of beurre noir, being French for "black butter", which refers to a dark brown color, not black. There aren't a great multitude of uses for this, but one excellent way to prepare it is to flavor it with lemon juice, capers, and parsley, and serve it with eggs, fish, and some vegetables.
-Without even cooking the butter, you can make a product called compound butter, which is made by creaming butter with your choice of flavoring ingredients. A few ideas for flavoring ingredients are fresh herbs, garlic, caramelized shallots, and/or a little wine. After mixing the butter (as well as tasting it to see if it's properly seasoned), you'll want to shape it into a cylinder and freeze or refrigerate it. Compound butter is excellent served on poached or baked fish or poultry, and by the time the plate reaches the table, the slice of butter should have halfway melted from the heat of the food.
-These are just a few, but many other sauces can also be made with butter. A few of the butter sauces can be made more nutritionally acceptable, but most of these sauces just plain can't be tinkered with. For example, it would be impossible to make a hollandaise sauce (recipe below) without egg yolks and butter, and a pale imitation of a bearnaise sauce would not be well received.

Moving on, we will now discuss how to make flavored oils. If you're looking for something new to use with marinades or to brighten your sauces, then this is for you. As we've been doing recently in the restaurant I work at, you might also replace the plain butter with flavored oil to have with the bread on the center of your tables. Just make sure the waitstaff doesn't drop a jar of garlic oil on the carpet (we've learned the hard way that the smell is extremely difficult to remove). Although these oils are extremely easy and affordable to make with your personal touch, you can also purchase pre-flavored oils at a variety of stores and through many purveyors. The great thing about these oils is that there's no set way for you to make them. If you like, you can steep a spice, herb, or citrus fruit in barely warm oil for awhile, then put the oil away, allowing it to continue to steep during refrigeration. With this method, you can just strain the oil whenever you need it and leave the rest for later. Another method is to make a sort of puree-oil by slowly cooking a vegetable in the oil to release the flavor, such as celery, later pureeing the vegetable with the oil. A third way is to cook ingredients like lobster shells, shrimp shells, garlic skins, etc. in the oil, later straining them out before using that oil. Because it's probably the most popular, we've included a recipe for roasted garlic oil below. Other ideas for ingredients for you to play with would be to use cloves, cumin, chili, ginger, tomato, saffron, mint, oregano, or even horseradish.

As mentioned in last month's article, we also have provided a couple of charts on our website regarding fats and oils (link below). The first chart has the descriptions of various different fats and oils and whether they're best for salad dressings, pan frying, wok cooking, or something else. The second chart shows the smoking points of various fats and oils, giving you an idea of how hot a cooking method each one can handle.

If you have any questions about things mentioned in this article, anything else regarding fats and oils, or any other questions regarding a culinary or Christian subject, we welcome you to post it in our fairly new and easy to use message boards (link below). Please feel free to submit replies to others' questions as well as to assist in everybody's learning experience here. God bless and happy cooking!!!

by Ira Krizo, CCF Director

Message Boards:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/forums.html

Fats & Oils charts:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/charts/oils.html

Last month's article, Part 1 of 2 on "Fats & Oils":
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/newsletters/1999/10LSOTM.html

The prior month's article on Olive Oils:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/newsletters/1999/09LSOTM.html

SOUTHERN LIVING COOKING SCHOOL 1999 RECIPE CONTEST
WEBSITE: http://www.southernliving.com/events/cookingschool/contest.html
PRIZES: Grand Prize: Trip for two to the Disney Institute at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL
DEADLINE: Dec. 1
INFO: Recipes will be judged on originality, taste, ease of preparation and visual appeal. Prizes will be awarded in the following categories: Easy Entertaining Entrees, One-Dish Family Favorites, Meatless Main Dishes, Desserts/Cakes and Pies, and Desserts/Cookies and Candy.

To find out about future contests, you can follow the below link to the NEW "Contests" area of our website:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/contests.html

All contests listed above are provided by the company listed, NOT by CCF. For additional information on each contest, please visit the designated website for that specific listing. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (118ml) unsalted butter
2 tbsp (30ml) distilled white vinegar
1 pinch white pepper
2 tsp (10ml) fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup (59ml) water
2 ea large egg yolks
1/8 tsp (1ml) salt

Procedure:
Note: Make sure you have all your ingredients and equipment ready and together before starting.
1. Melt butter in a saucepan; keep warm. (The butter may be kept warm by leaving the pan near a warm stove.)
2. Combine vinegar, pepper, and lemon juice in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to half its original volume.
3. Add water and yolks; whisk to combine.
4. Cook over low heat, whisking constantly, until smooth ribbons form. Remove from heat and continue stirring to cool mixture. (If heat is too high the yolks will overcook and curdle.)
5. Hold pot steady using clean, dry tea towel or pot holder. Gradually, in thin steady stream, whisk warm melted butter into yolk mixture. (Once you start adding butter, do not stop until it is all incorporated. It should take 3-4 minutes to fully incorporate the butter. It is critical that the butter and yolks stay warm during this process.)
6. If sauce becomes too thick while adding butter, whisk in a few drops of hot water. The sauce should not appear "shiny".
7. Keep sauce warm.
8. Adjust seasoning of sauce if needed with salt, white pepper, lemon juice, and/or a tiny bit of Tabasco. Finished sauce should be light and not too thick, and evenly coat the back of a spoon.

Nutrition Facts (Per Serving)
Calories: 235
Cholesterol: 168mg
Carbohydrate: 1g
Protein: 2g
Sodium: 80mg
Total Fat: 26g

Ingredients:
1 head Unpeeled Garlic
1.5 cups (355ml) Olive Oil
Coarse or Kosher Salt to taste

Procedure:
1. Roast garlic by breaking apart and tossing it in a tiny bit of oil and baking at 350'F (177'C) until tender (about 30 minutes).
2. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and mix. Warm through.
3. Allow oil to steep in a warm place for 30 minutes. Store without straining and strain oil as needed.

Recommended uses: Spoon over baked chicken, baked potatoes, beef dishes, pastas.

Find jobs and post job openings here:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/employment.html

**
Name = Forest Edge Christian Ministries
Location = Neerim East, Victoria, Australia
Timeline = Full Time
Position = Cook/Catering Manager
Responsibilities = Manage Kitchen; Prepare Meals; Supervise Assistant Cook
Pay = $500 Australian per month + accommodation for a family
Second Position = Assistant Cook
Responsibilities = To aid in cooking
Pay = Similar to above
Contact:
          Kevin Houghton
          theedge@dcsi.net.au
          Forest Edge Christian Ministries
          405 McKenzies Rd
          Neerim East Victoria 3831
          Australia
          Work phone = 5628 4224
          Home phone = 5964 3409

ilovecheese.com is a cheese-lover's paradise. The site is a highly entertaining plethora of cheese facts and information! (Ever read a website that was written in the first person by CHEESE?!) Need lots of recipes? They're here! In addition to checking out their very interesting internet cheese newsletter, take a look at the "Featured Chef" section of the website, in which a different famous chef is highlighted every few weeks. Included is information about where the chef works as well as recipes he/she has conceived. Their "cheesy" logo, "cheesy" graphics and twisted humor all combine to make this one of the most entertaining food sites ever!

http://www.ilovecheese.com

Reviewed by GR Higginbotham

Permission is granted to circulate this publication via e-mail or in printed form to others providing that no fee is charged and that proper credit has been given to CCF for the part sent.

Donations are sincerely and deeply appreciated and may be sent to the below address. The following link leads to our "Finances" webpage, where you can find how all CCF's finances are handled:
http://www.ChristianChefs.org/finances.html

If this newsletter was forwarded to you and you would like to be added to this mailing list, please go to the following website to sign up:
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God Bless,
Ira Krizo, Director

Christian Chefs Fellowship
webmaster@ChristianChefs.org
http://www.ChristianChefs.org
P.O. Box 608
Crestline, CA 92325-0608
Phone: (909) 338-0876
Fax: (508) 462-1068
AOL Buddy list name = "ChristChef"
ICQ number = 15520005

Note: To view our archived newsletters, go HERE

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