45 Things to Own, Know and Do to Be a Commando in the Kitchen

Slice, dice and spice your way to glory! 45 things to own, know and do to be a commando in the kitchen

01 Cover up like a man

A man’s apron is like his battle armour – the fresher it looks, the more of a novice the bloke wearing it is. If yours isn’t coated in sauce splashes, wine spillages and all manner of unidentifiable stains, you’re not spending enough time in the war room. Get in there and cook yourself something messy. ₹325, Flipkart

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02 Lose the thermometer

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways, especially when it comes to establishing whether your meat is cooked. Find a sharp, thin, pointy thing, like a skewer or thin knife, stick it into the thickest part of your beast, and leave it in for five seconds. Pull it out and gingerly put it to your top lip. Generally speaking, if it feels cold, keep cooking. Warm – but not painful – and your meat is ready. If it burns you, it’s overcooked, and you deserve it for ruining a good piece of meat. There’s no need to rely on gadgets.

03 Avoid chilli willy

If you’ve ever chopped a chilli then rubbed your eyes or, even worse, rearranged the contents of your Y-fronts, you’ll have felt the full fiery fury of the chilli burn. Rub olive oil into your hands before you start chopping. The oil creates a barrier so the chilli doesn’t get into your skin. Afterwards, rub some fresh lemon juice into your hands – the acid neutralises the chilli better than soap.

04 Discover a new taste

There are four basic tastes, right? Salt, sweet, sour and bitter… Wrong. In the ’80s, scientists recognised a fifth taste: umami, a meaty, savoury flavour. The taste of umami, which is Japanese for ‘flavour’, is found in tons of food, including anchovies, mushrooms and shellfish. You can now buy it in paste and powdered forms, which you can add to a Bolognaise sauce or cheese on toast, with explosive results.

05-08 Upgrade your pizza

…with these top-secret toppings

• Portobello mushroom: This is amazing on a Bianca pizza with truffle, and no tomato sauce. It’s like a really posh mushrooms on toast.
• Nutella: It’s the Neapolitan pizzeria’s dirty little secret, but Nutella pizza is incredible. The combination of salty pizza dough and seriously sweet Nutella is totally irresistible.
• Nduja: A spicy, spreadable sausage from southern Italy. Pork belly and cheek is blitzed up with chilli before being smoked and cured.
• Fior di latte: This is the best mozzarella for a classic Neapolitan pizza. Though if you’re feeling adventurous, try provola – a smoked mozzarella that tastes incredible with the best of all salty staples: anchovies.”

09 Fry a fillet on your motor

Super-successful restaurateur Antonio Carluccio is a man who knows how to extract the maximum pleasure from any road trip. “Go for a drive and let the engine heat up, then cover your steak in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and put it on the engine,” says Carluccio. “It needs to be a car where the engine is exposed and not covered in pipes and cables.” Ideal for when you feel peckish on your evening commute.

10 No more tears, soldier

Crying when your buddy gets gunned down by the enemy a few yards from the chopper: perfectly understandable. But when the chopper is you, and what you’re chopping is an onion? Not cool. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: chill your onions in the freezer for 10-15 minutes first, which reduces the tear-jerking acid enzyme released by the bulb.

11 Cook the Hairy Bikers’ classic chicken tikka masala

It may have been voted Britain’s favourite dish almost every year for over a decade, but despite devouring tons of the stuff every week, most of us have no idea how to actually rustle up a creamy tikka masala. That’s why we enlisted the chefy expertise of Si King and Dave Myers, aka the Hairy Bikers, to provide us with their favourite recipe for taking curry night from the high street to your kitchen.

The essentials: 4 x decent boneless chicken breasts; 1 x glass of milk or lassi; 1 x bottle of lager; 1 x fresh, warm naan bread; Metal skewers for evenly cooked, succulent chicken

12 Nail the perfect steak

If you’re going to be spending upwards of a fiver on a hunk of delicious, juicy red meat, the last thing you want to do is burn it to the consistency of a rubbery chew toy not even suitable for your least-loved pet. We tell you how to become beefy green berets, in five simple steps

• Source it: Great beef should be a deep red colour and have a good marbling of fat running through it, which melts while the steak cooks, keeping it moist and succulent. Dry aging or hanging – 21 days minimum, 35 days better – results in the melt-in-the-month texture you’d expect.”
• Temper it: At least one hour before you’re due to cook it, remove the meat from the fridge, season well using good quality sea salt and black pepper, and leave it at room temperature. The seasoning will penetrate deeper in the meat.
• Heat it: Drizzle a little olive oil over the tempered steaks, then lay them across the griddle. Don’t put too many on at once, as this will cool the griddle and the steaks will boil. Two at a time is an optimal amount. And don’t be tempted to turn them too soon – wait until they’ve formed a light crust, then turn them over and repeat.
• Finger it: To know if your steak is cooked, a rule-of-thumb trick called a ‘finger test’ can be used. For medium rare meat, gently press the tip of your middle finger to your thumb. This is what medium-rare steak feels like. For medium, press the tips of your ring finger and thumb together.
• Rest it: The whole process can be ruined in an instant if you’re too hasty tucking into the steak before allowing it adequate time to rest. Leave the steak in a warm place or under some tin foil for at least five minutes.

13 Be a precision chopper

Flick through chefy recipes and you’ll find some pretty precise measurements. Top cooks may not need a chopping board with mathematical lines explaining the difference between a ‘brunoise’ and a ‘fine julienne’, but the rest of us do.

14-17 Always have hot sauce (and be creative with it)

Here’s how to you can get the most out of your bottle of hot pepper sauce.

• Bloody Mary: This is as manly as cocktails get. Top up your double vodka with tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, and as much hot sauce as you can handle.
• Devilled eggs: Hardboil your eggs and scoop out the yolk. Mix sour cream and mayo with diced red onion and celery, add your sauce, and spoon the mixture into the egg white hollow.
• Red hot nuts: Stir two parts Worcestershire Sauce with one part hot sauce, then add 1 tbsp of oil and a pinch of curry powder. Pour this over mixed nuts and bake in the oven at 150˚C.
• Kentucky dip: For a sauce to dip your nuggets in, mix 120ml ketchup, 80ml cider vinegar and 160ml Worcestershire sauce with 3 tbsp of brown sugar, 1 tsp of hot sauce and pepper.

₹200 for 295ml, www.ebay.in

18 Buy a gas oven tandoor

Tandoori delicacies are a win win situation, they are tasty and easy on calories. Specially developed for Indian Tandoori cooking, this appliance will save you from hefty restaurant bills. Sanjeev Kapoor Gas Oven Tandoor, www.wonderchef.in, ₹4790

19-21 Fire off pics like a pro

Want your Instagram shots to look as good as the foodie photos on these pages? Follow these expert advice and take your snaps to the next level

• Play the angles: Some food can look really bold and graphic on a plate, so think about shooting something like that directly from above. Alternatively, you can shoot at more of a three-quarter angle – diagonal to the dish – bringing the best-looking part to the front of the picture.
• Keep your distance: If you pull out and give the image more space, you may be able to tell more of a story. Think about including any ingredients used for cooking to give the impression of a more realistic setting.
• Light it up: If at all possible, use natural sunlight. If you’re indoors or struggling with light and want to get all fancy, you can use a blank sheet of paper to reflect light back into the areas that are too dark. Avoid using the flash on your phone because it’s a little uncontrollable.”

22 Turn your dishwasher into a cooker

Sometimes in the field of war, you’ve got to improvise and use tools for purposes other than those they were designed for. If you find yourself in the kitchen with a full or broken oven, you can still muster up a first-class meal. Grease a sheet of tin foil with olive oil, pop in a salmon fillet with some salt, pepper and a big squeeze of lemon, and wrap it tight – use several sheets of foil if necessary. Pop the parcel on the top shelf of the dishwasher, set it to run on a full standard cycle, and voila, your Salmon a la Bosch is perfectly steamed and ready to eat. Probably avoid putting detergent in though – chemical warfare won’t go down well with the UN, or your delicate stomach.

23-28 Know your spices

Because without them, food isn’t really eatable. Here is a low-down on FHM’s favourite spices

• Smoked paprika: This is a weapon worth having in any kitchen cupboard. Fabulously bright red, smoked peppers add an instant BBQ hit to anything. Expert tip: Pimp up a chicken and chorizo stew with this for more of a smoky flavour.
• Chilli flakes: Hot and smoky, these ground-up dried red chillies pack a real punch. Expert tip: Chuck them into a stir-fry to add an extra kick and a lovely fruity flavour.
• Cinnamon: Cinnamon is a tree bark that is used from Morocco to Mexico, in both sweet and savoury dishes. Expert tip: Spice up your morning porridge with a drizzle of honey and a fat pinch of ground cinnamon.
• Cardamom: Don’t be put off by these odd-shaped little pods. They add masses of flavour to Arabic coffee and delicate almond orange cakes. Expert tip: Bash a few open with a spoon and add them to boiling rice for a fragrant note.
• Cumin seeds: Whether you want to tart up some hummus or make a classic Indian curry, this spice adds bucket-loads of flavour. Expert tip: Pack extra flavour into your curry by chucking cumin seeds into hot oil with finely chopped onions.
• Turmeric: Sunshine yellow and amazingly good for you – what’s not to like? This ground root is used in abundance in Middle Eastern cookery. Expert tip: Try adding some turmeric to a classic chicken soup for an earthy flavour and deep-set colour.

29 Cook The Diner’s pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries

Let’s face it, from burgers to hot dogs, and waffles to pecan pies, those Yankee foodies know a thing or two about deliciously indulgent treats. And nothing, in our humble opinion, beats the succulent goodness of a perfectly crafted pulled pork sandwich. We recruited the front line intel of Lizzy Stables, executive chef at authentic US food palace The Diner, to give us the low-down on how to perfect the Juicy Lucy pulled pork sarnie.

The essentials: 1 x pork shoulder from the butcher’s; 150g fiery Mexican chipotle; 2 x jalapeño peppers; 1 x kilo of sweet potatoes for frying; 1 x bottle of beer (Green Bullet pale ale). Serve your pulled pork with sweet potato fries.

30-33 Talk like a chef

You might not be able to cook like one (yet) but you can sure as hell learn the lingo

• Sandbagging: Not some sort of sexual act involving your scrotal sack, but when you cook food ahead of time, then warm it up before serving.
• Soigne: Pronounced ‘swan-yay’, this is French for a seriously sexy dish, or when you’ve plated up your food and it looks really frigging ace.
• Robocop: A food processor. Chefs have all sorts of weird nicknames for their appliances, including a salamander (a high-temperature broiler) and a low-boy (a waist-high fridge).
• 86 it!: When a restaurant has run out of a particular item and has to take it off the menu. Its origins remain a much-disputed mystery.

34 Cook the Hairy Bikers’ next level manly cheese on toast

Food doesn’t need to be fussy to tickle your tastebuds. Sometimes, when you get in late from work, or you rock in after a night at the pub, you just don’t have the time, inclination or, um, balance to faff about with elaborate recipes. There’s no shame in that – shoving a block of mature cheddar on a slice of buttery toast under a hot grill is truly the stuff that dreams are made of.

The essentials: 4 x thick slices of bread; 1 x bottle of Worcestershire sauce; 1 x jar of proper English mustard; 1 x tin of lager; 2 x feet up on the sofa

35-37 Lock and load some appetising apps

• BigOven (Free on iOS, Android and Windows Phone): Browse through more than 250,000 recipes, search by the ingredients you’ve got in your fridge, and create shopping lists that the app automatically sorts by supermarket aisle. Deliciously convenient.
• How To Cook Everything (₹180 on iOS): With 400+ how-to illustrations, plus top tips and tricks on equipment, technique and ingredient information, this is truly the most useful cookery-related app out there. It even includes timers, and an imperial-metric conversion tool.
• The Perfect Egg Timer (₹55 on iOS): Boiling an egg may not be rocket science, but it is eminently fuck-upable. This app’s got your back, calculating cooking time based on egg size, temperature and even altitude – handy if you’re making some egg and soldiers up a mountain.

38 Command and conquer red alert

A basic tomato sauce doesn’t just make for a deliciously simple pasta topping: it’s also the start of a recipe book-full of awesome dishes. Finely chop a large onion and four cloves of garlic, chuck them in a pan with a glug of olive oil and cook down until the onions are soft. Then just throw in a tin of good quality chopped tomatoes and a pinch of salt and pepper and, bongo, you’ve got four people’s worth of red brilliance. Take it to the next level by throwing some meat and veg in the mix.

One sauce, infinite possibilities:

• Bolognaise: beef mince; bonus: carrot; serve with spaghetti; drink up: Camden Hell’s Lager
• Chilli Con Carne: beef mince; bonus: kidney beans; serve with tortilla chips; drink up: shot of Mezcal
• Jalfrezi: diced chicken; bonus: spice mix; serve with basmati rice; drink up: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
• Ratatouille: no meat; bonus: courgette, peppers, aubergine; serve with French baguette; drink up: large glass of Shiraz
• Moroccan Tagine: cubed lamb; bonus: root vegetables; serve with cous cous; drink up: large glass of Sauvignon Blanc

39 Make pancakes in a bottle

If you’re only eating pancakes, you need a no-frills way of whipping them up. Get a clean bottle or wide jar, put in one mug of plain flour, one mug of milk, one large egg, one teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of salt. Shake it until you have no lumps, then heat a frying pan over a medium heat, add a small knob of butter and when it’s melted pour over just enough batter to cover the pan. Fry for a minute before gently flipping over.

40 Sharpen your blade

A sharp knife is the single most important tool in your armoury. Or kitchen drawer. All top chefs use an eight-inch blade, which is hefty enough to slice through an onion, long enough to carve your Sunday roast, and intricate enough to skin a chicken. A top quality chef’s knife can cost in excess of ₹100, but it’s worth the investment for what is both a handcrafted work of art and the most-used item in your kitchen. Do the honourable thing, and slice your carrots like a samurai warrior.

41-45 Rustle up some tunes

Whether you’re frying bacon in your pants or preparing a romantic meal for two (in your pants), listening to some tasty ditties while you do so makes it all the more enjoyable. We asked Jaguar Skills, cut-n-paste DJ wizard and milkshake-maker extraordinaire, for his ultimate food-prep playlist...

• Sesame Street, C is for Cookie (Larry Levan’s Funky Version Special Disco Mix)
• Pendulum, Blood Sugar “I probably play this tune at every one of my gigs. It’s a 100% guaranteed winner. Drink with a pint of Coffee Saki Cola (one shot of coffee, one shot of saki, topped up with Coke) to add a little distortion to the tune.”
• Gil Scott-Heron, The Bottle “One of the best tunes ever written. To appreciate it even more, fill a bottle with leftover cooking juices and leave it in the fridge for a few days – you’ll find a new flavour and ninja surprise every time you taste.”
• Bill Conti, Gonna Fly Now “It’s the theme from Rocky. I play this song before I go on stage – it turns you into a super-ninja.”
• Black Moon, Powaful Impak! (Jaguar Skills Props Remix) “It’s just the perfect soundtrack for making ice cubes to. Method: get your ninja mask, put it on, take the trays over to the sink and fill them with cold water. Place the trays back in the freezer and shut the door.”

From the April 2014 issue of FHM India.