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We cannot go to a cafe or restaurant yet. But we can try to prepare a dish from the chef at home. Moreover, there is still time for this.
When the quarantine will be lifted, no one can say yet – in May, or even in July. Responsible citizens are sitting at home, trying to find at least some kind of entertainment besides endless watching of TV series. Why not upgrade your culinary skills? After all, delicious food can brighten up boring everyday life. And if the food is also beautiful, then the pleasure from it is much more. So, what is worth learning in quarantine is our top list.
1. Make caramel
Caramel syrup is able to bring any dessert to a new level: even a biscuit, even a pie, even an ice cream. And to make it is very simple: it will take about 10 minutes, water, sugar and lemon. And a little patience. The process is as follows: pour two cups of sugar into a thick-walled saucepan or frying pan, add half a glass of water, stir until a wet mixture is obtained. Heat it over medium heat and bring to a boil. You don’t even need to mix! Then add a little lemon juice to prevent crystallization. The walls of the pan during heating must be lubricated with water for the same purpose. Remove the saucepan from heat as soon as the syrup is amber. And if you want a thicker caramel, hold it on the stove longer, up to 15 minutes.
2. Knead the dough
Yeast is the first step. It is very simple to do it: you need to put a dough, then knead the dough, pour out all the flour relying on the recipe, knead and let rise again. And with puff it will be more difficult: it is much more capricious. He needs a certain temperature: if the kitchen is too hot, the layers will not work. It only needs to be rolled in one direction so as not to spoil the structure. But in fact, there is nothing supernatural here either – the recipe for how to do this can be found HERE. And for a snack, you can master shortbread dough – it is generally better to knead it with a mixer, without touching it with your hands. The main thing is to let him rest for hours in the refrigerator, and you will be provided with delicious buns and cookies.
3. Cook eggs in any way
Hard-boiled, soft-boiled and in a bag – these are far from all the ways in which you can cook an egg. Between the omelet and scrambled eggs there are also poached eggs, stuffed eggs, steamed omelet, eggs inside out, deep-fried and breaded eggs, with bacon … It can be listed for a long time, but you can definitely master a dozen ways. And choose your favorite, as Julia Roberts’ heroine once did in Runaway Bride.
4. Making cake cream
Sour cream, custard, creamy, buttery – whatever. Our latest favorite is buttercream. It is made on the basis of cream cheese such as ricotta or “Cremetto”: the cheese is mixed with sour cream, melted white chocolate bar, and then carefully combined with whipped cream. It turns out simply delicious: the cream is thick, not cloying, it keeps its shape perfectly and is suitable for both cakes and cookies. You can also freeze it and then eat it like ice cream.
5. Make dumplings and dumplings
The main thing here is to find your perfect dough recipe. And then you can frolic as you like: make green dumplings with cottage cheese and herbs, with cabbage and potatoes, black dumplings with fish, add a variety of surprises to them (just don’t put coins). Well, the next logical step of mastery will be homemade pasties. The dough for them is made in a similar way, and the shape is almost the same.
6. Prepare the chocolate icing
It’s also very simple: you just need a little milk, butter, cocoa and sugar. It will take only 5-10 minutes, but what the result will be! Chocolate icing always complements perfectly any baked goods – from classic sponge cake to carrot cake, from cake to banana muffins. How to make chocolate icing, read the link.
7. Make homemade pasta
Well, it’s not as fast as making the frosting, but it’s fun too. The dough has only two components – flour and an egg. The most important thing here is to guess with the amount of flour and knead an elastic homogeneous dough. This can take a lot of time, 30-40 minutes. Then you need to roll out the dough into the thinnest sheet, roll it into a roll and cut fettuccine. Then all that remains is to sift them to remove excess flour, and you can cook.
8. Make mirror glaze
Have you seen these space cakes that look like precious bars, not desserts? This is all thanks to the glaze, which is made from condensed milk, sugar, chocolate, gelatin and dyes. You will have to tinker and practice too: after all, making the icing is half the battle, you still have to manage to evenly cover the cake with it!
9. Remove the zest
The zest from the peel of citrus fruits gives many dishes an exquisite aroma – sunny, bright. But removing it correctly is not so simple: first you need to thoroughly wash the fruit, then remove the thinnest layer of the peel so as not to catch the white layer: it will taste bitter. And you can also remove curly stripes of zest, advanced cooks then caramelize them and use them to decorate dishes.
10.prepare fondue
Cheese or chocolate, it doesn’t matter. Fondue is not so much a dish as a process. It is important to manage to keep the sauce melted just as long as needed. And you can dip anything into it, as far as your culinary fantasy allows. And it is not necessary to buy a special fondue dish, you can get by with a saucepan and ordinary forks.