GARLIC AND GINGER

Local style cooking, the two main ingredients in a lot of dishes is drum roll please... rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..... "Garlic," the fans go nuts! And... "Ginger," the fans go crazy. If you have garlic and ginger in your spice box, you got two ingredients when used wisely, can enhance the most simple dishes. Heat up a skillet or wok with a little vegetable oil, put in a tsp. of minced garlic and ginger, and see for yourself how the aroma just livens up your kitchen. While some will say that the aroma of garlic is stinky, they'll usually admit, when it is in harmony with ginger, the marriage is made in heaven. This is the basis for a lot of Chinese style stir fries. Toss in meat, chicken, fish, tofu or veggies, and sauce it up with oyster sauce, soy sauce, hot sauce, and then you'll be a kitchen wizard to your friends.

Garlic is part of the onion family, when purchasing garlic I like young tender ones, try to stay away from dried up garlic, it is not potent. Ginger on the other hand is a spice and comes in a grounded powdered form used in baking. Experiment with these two, you'll be surprised at the simplicity of it and how it really makes a dish awesome.

Chef Mark Ellman used garlic cloves on my show when he did his roasted chicken, but he left the skin on, he roasted it with the chicken, and the moisture from the roast made the skin soft and easy to peel off, all the while adding aroma and flavor to the roast. So if you are a lazy cook, don't peel the garlic ha ha.

Also when I worked at a natural food store, we used young fresh ginger in juices, ginger has a lot of healing properties, including healing the flu bug, migraines, high blood pressure, and in some cases it is reported that it helped cancer patients fight off cancer.

Good luck with your cooking you foodie.

Ron S.
808-385-7667
ronsambrano@live.com