Professional Recipes Blog

This is a nice recipe from Gordon Ramsey recipe with some personal touches added by our friends at Real Food Direct: Roast Leg of Lamb with Apples and Cider.

Enjoy!

To all you chefs out there who enjoy blogging: I found this interesting post on a contest for Pomegranate Recipes with a $5,000 top prize:

Pomegranate Recipe Contest

I figured that it was worth sharing with all of you. The prize is $5,000 and become the Featured Blogger for Pom Wonderful. If you like to blog and are looking for exposure, this is your thing!

And while you’re here, check out some of our recipes from our Gourmet Recipes Collection!

With the advent of Starbucks® and the popularity of coffee shops that offer wi-fi, we sometimes take our coffee for granted. Walk into a coffee shop and order up a Mocha Latte and you’re out of there in a few minutes. Places like these can often make some really good drinks, from specialty coffees and all kinds of cappuccino drinks. Only a few make a really good espresso.

It’s a challenge to recreate many of those drinks for most of us. Some of us may have a decent espresso machine and can whip something up relatively quickly, no doubt, but nothing like what we can get from a decent coffee shop. Often we lack the knowledge of what flavors blend well with different kinds of coffee beans. What happens if you were hosting a cocktail party at your restaurant or a dinner party for clients and friends at your home? If one of your guests asks for an espresso during dessert, what would you serve?

Your food was a hit and your best friend devoured the hors d’oeuvres, but what now? Have no fear, you’ve studied the art of the Barista. What is a Barista you ask? A trained professional in making espresso and related drinks. They take their art very seriously as pairing the right flavors of a particular coffee bean (Columbian vs. Brazilian for example), is not an easy task with the complexity of flavors found in food.

The variety of coffee beans from around the globe produces an entire world of different flavors and textures that most of us don’t get to experience. Have you ever had coffee from Uganda or Ethiopia? They’re both coffee producing countries each with distinct qualities which vary from region to region. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is a bean sought after by the U.S. consumers that has a fruity aroma, light and elegant body, and an almost menthol taste.

It would seem that with all the different flavors of coffee, only one as skilled as a Barista could truly pair a coffee with the main course, much as a gourmet chef would pair a fine wine. Read more about the Art of the Barista here:

Art of the Barista: A Brief Guide for the Gourmet Chef

Enjoy!

Hi everyone,

With the Easter holiday coming so early this year, we had to get out some Easter Recipes, especially Easter Ham Glaze and a few others coming in the next few days. Stay tuned to our latest recipes by going to the Latest Recipes menu in the Recipes section of our site. There you can view the 10 newest additions to the site (RSS Feed coming soon – updated).

I’d also like to discuss glazing hams before the holiday officially arrives, which is a popular tradition in many households who celebrate Easter. Usually the ham is cooked to whatever family tradition passed down to the chef du jour, and is one that has been used for a long time.

While I don’t propose breaking family tradition of course, it’d be very easy to change up your style instead and throw some pizazz into that family tradition. How do you ask? Simple, we’ll show you some tried and true methods for your old favorites and some new ideas for those of you bold enough to change it up!

Searching for the Perfect Easter Ham Glaze

List of Easter Recipes: (more to come)

Orange and Honey Ham Glaze
Orange Marmalade with Bourbon Glazed Ham
Coca Cola® Ham Glaze
Pineapple Ham Glaze

There are many people who enjoy cooking and working with food. From resourceful parents who can whip up a meal in 30 minutes with whatever happens to be in the fridge, to the person who simply likes to dabble with different combination’s of food and create new dishes. Many of these people are looking for new ideas to try or simply wish to improve their cooking skills to impress guests, friends and family, or impress their date with a fabulous meal.

The difference between the home cook and the gourmet chef really comes down to knowledge and experience and oftentimes practice makes perfect (especially when it comes to food). How many times have you or someone you know attempted to make a dish only to have it taste different than what you expected or not look the way you expected or simply be over or undercooked? It happens to even the best of gourmet chefs from time to time. Even the pros (you just don’t see their mistakes or they know how to fix a mistake quickly).

So how does the average person learn to cook like a gourmet?

1. Be open to learning new things: Try something new and creative that you haven’t tried before. Spend some time learning about the techniques involved and just go and do it! The more you try different techniques, the more you learn.
2. Go ahead and watch the cooking shows: there are some truly resourceful chefs out there now using many different styles and with the variety of shows on the Food Network and other channels, there’s plenty to learn by observing.
3. Experimentation: experimentation is the only way we come up with recipes, so go ahead and spice up that bland sauce or try something new for your old favorite, just remember to start small and tweak as you go along and reserve some extra time in case you overdo it.

I’ve created a new “lens” on Squidoo entitled How to Cook Gourmet Style that will show different things to learn, offer tips and how to’s on cooking like a gourmet and more. You can find this lens and other lens that we create by going here:

How to Cook Gourmet Style: 10 Things Every Aspiring Gourmet Chefs Should Learn

I’ll be creating different lens on gourmet cooking as time goes on and I’ll be posting the different lens here, but all will be indexed on the Professional Recipes Squidoo Page so you can check out all of our lens. I’ll also be adding the lens to the Gourmet Cooking section on Professional Recipes also so that you can simply subscribe to our blog for updates, or bookmark the Gourmet Cooking section on Professional Recipes and check out our articles as well.

Enjoy!