The coming new year

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. I hope that your time was well spent and that you and your family and friends were able to share the love and joy that such times offer.

With New Years approaching, those of you who are having friends and family over to bring in 2011 might consider getting your orders in to us so that we can ship them to you in time. We at LasagnaAndMoreByMail.com will be shipping Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week all over America in order to assure you that the Lasagna and/or Manicottis you want to share will get to you promptly.

Here's a little tip about cooking that not only applies to cooking Lasagna, but goes for most meats, roasts, poultry, fish; anything you will be baking. Before placing your food in the oven, let it sit on the kitchen counter for a hour or two to bring it to room temperature. This will allow for even cooking through out. Generally speaking, poultry should be brought to 165 deg. F....while the internal temperature of meats should get to 145 deg. F. in order to kill any bacteria that might cause food poisoning. One more thing; Once you remove your dish from the oven its temperature will continue to rise as much as 5-7 deg, so removal a bit early according to your meat thermometer is a good idea depending on how well done you like your dish.

So have fun in the kitchen and don't forget the most important ingredient....Love!

Happy New Year from Chef Scotty and your friends at LasagaAndMoreByMail.com

Note: Picture is of our Meat Manicotti. Here's what Craig of Mill Valley had to say about it.

"The Manicotti is Delicious. I have eaten in many San Francisco, North Beach establishments and yours rivals the best of them. The red wine reduction sauce is superb, but the manicotti itself is great as well. The pasta, the meat, the cheese all have balance of flavor; You've really done it with this menu item."

Craig

Thanks

With Christmas fast approaching, and today the last day for LasagnaAndMoreByMail.com to ship, in order to get it there by Christmas...I can finally exhale and spend a bit of time exercising my 'other' passion; writing...and my 'other other' passion, spending time with my family. Oh and I have to get my last minute shopping for Christmas done, and decorate, and wrap presents, and, and, and....well so much for relaxing...

So Merry Christmas to you and yours....Happy Holidays and our best to you in 2011! If you are enjoying one of the many great food products we sent out over the last month since our site launch, Thank you. Since we've fed you, how about a little feed back via our contact page.

If you haven't ordered yet from LasagnaAndMoreByMail.com...better hurry if you'd like us to get your lasagna or manicotti to you in time for that New Years celebration.

Once again Happy Holidays and thank you from Chef Scotty , Bruce Guercio and all of us at LasagnaAndMoreByMail.com.

Welcome to your portal to great food and food chat

Hello and welcome to My Blog. I'm Chef Scotty, one of the founders of LasagnaAndMoreByMail.com

and I will be blogging away in hopes of sharing with you, the reader, some fun facts and knowledge about food cooking and perhaps more. I hope you enjoy this source of information and glean a bit of understanding that will help you cook up some tasty delights in your kitchen.

First, a bit about me. I have many passions in this fine life, two of which are cooking and writing.

The cooking part I've been doing since I started working in the restaurant business back when my I was 14 and my mom had to drive me to down town Phoenix where I bussed tables at 'Newtons Prime Rib'. It was there that I was thrust into the kitchen and became an instant 'Fry Cook' when the guy who had that job was...as we say in the business...a no-call no-show. Since then I have worked in numerous eating establishments, owned five of my own, and been Exec chef in a couple more. I am presently Corporate Executive Chef for the Vero Amore Restaurants, in Tucson, Arizona. Vero Amore is one of the few Certified Neopolitan Pizzaria's in the world and the U.S. A visit to Vero Amore, to enjoy our authentic wood fired pizza or any of the Italian 'fusion' dishes I've created, will bring a smile to your face should you live around, or be visiting, Tucson or Southern Arizona. Try veroamorepizza.com to check it out. Writing, on the other hand, has become a more recent passion for me discovered over the past seven years. With one novel finished and a couple more projects in the works, I trust I will be writing for the rest of my days...as well as cooking, as good food and conversation are, I think, a great match.

Enough about me for now. Let's talk cooking!

Salt! One of the basic ingredients in cooking but perhaps one of the most overused and most misunderstood. If you check your cook books you will find that almost all of them instruct us to 'salt the water' when cooking pasta or potatoes...But why? For many it is to increase the temperature of the water for faster cooking. It is said that Salt releases heat when it dissolves.

Truth is that one tablespoon of salt...(20grams)...added to 5 quarts of boiling water will only raise the boiling point temperature by several hundredths of a degree. If you hope your pasta will finish about a half second faster, then salt is the way to do this.

For others, when to add the salt is very important. Until recently, I was under the impression that the water should be 'vigorously boiling' before adding the salt, then add the pasta.

Truth here is; It doesn't matter when the salt is added, as salt dissolves easily in luke warm to boiling water and has no 'molecular memory' of when dissolution happens.

The reason for use of salt when cooking pasta, or potatoes, is because salt enhances the flavor of both. So salt away whenever you want and enjoy the fruits of your labors.

Thanks to Robert L. Wolke and his book 'What Einstein Told His Cook'.