Cooking World

Apple - the most widespread and accessible fruit. At the height of an apple season, you may take advantage of some variants of apple-based diets. Choose to the taste.

Apples are an ideal basis for a diet. They contain vitamins, microelements and digestion improving matters. However, apple diets are useful not for everyone.

First of all, restrictions concern those who have problems with a stomach and bowels. For example, women, suffering from stomach ulcer, gastritis with acidity biliary dyskinesia, are not to it sour varieties of apples. But they can afford sweet or baked apples. People with insufficient gastric juice secretion, on the contrary, should eat more sour apples.

Highly allergic people should be very cautious, and it is unimportant, how exactly declare itself an illness - by skin reactions or an asthma. In any case these people should give preference to green apples - orange fruits can cause an aggravation.

Eating an apple 15 minutes before dinner, the person consumes less calories, than without an apple, has shown new research of the American scientists.

Experts from University of Pennsylvania (USA) have conducted a research how apples consumption influences assimilation of calories.

Participants who have eaten just an apple, consumed 187 calories less, than those who has eaten other apple products, such as apple sauce, juice or nothing at all.

“These facts indicate that consumption of fruit before meal can be an excellent way out for lowering of assimilation of calories”, - said the research assistant from University of Pennsylvania Julia Flud.

Professor of dietology from University of Pennsylvania Barbara Rolls says that these openings confirm, that such low-calorie dishes as soup, salad or fruits eaten in the beginning of meal, lead to that you eat less.

Mums have always known that vegetables, fruits and fish are useful for children. But Greek scientists have decided to find some additional factors to prove once again the uniqueness of their native Mediterranean diet. So, last researches say that children, who like to regale on fish, fruits and vegetables, are protected from asthma and allergy.

These results are based on the research and observation of physicians over 460 Spanish children.

Scientists observed kids’ state of health and came to a conclusion, that those who ate more than 40 g of fruit and vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, green beans and vegetable marrows) and 60 g of fish every day did not suffer from allergic diseases.

Besides, doctors have noted that the question is about certain dietary effects. Other food (meat, poultry, and dairy products) did not provide the same protective effect. Biological mechanisms, which are responsible for action of these products, are not completely clear for a while.

Authors of the research believe that fruit, vegetables and fish reduce an inflammation connected to asthma and allergy.

All parts of pumpkin are edible, including stalks, leaves and soft roots. In Italy roots are added in an omelet or soup. Flowers are used for stuffing, salads and risotto; pumpkin “pulp” may be used for almost everything, seeds for a delicacy. Even the peel is edible! In the south of Italy, namely in Kalberia, all a peel is dried at first, during winter time it is soaked, rolled in a flour and baked in deep fat.
Secrets of cooking

If you want to soften a pumpkin, steam boiling is more preferable to cooking in water.

Pumpkin can be baked in an oven, without adding any liquid. It may be baked whole.

It is fried, if one wants to make pumpkin chips. To get rid of superfluous moisture, it is recommended to cook it as vegetable marrows - to salt pieces of pumpkin and set aside for a couple of hours.

The pumpkin is good also for a grill. For this purpose it is cut sliced or cubed, greased with olive oil and fried on a grill up to softness.

Pumpkin is a widespread vegetable. It came to the European cuisine in the middle of XVI century from Central and South America. To all botanical signs, a pumpkin is a berry (juicy pulp, and many seeds inside). It may reach 25 kg, but the best pumpkins are round ones and of the average sizes, such pumpkins are sweeter.

The pumpkin protects an organism from many illnesses and delay ageing. Chinese believe that the pumpkin helps at depressions, in the Western people consider that pumpkin seeds help to treat inflammations and clear uric system.

The pulp of a pumpkin is rich with sugars, zinc salts and phosphoric acid. From microelements there are potassium, calcium, magnesium. It contains more iron then any other vegetable. And how many vitamins - B1, В2, В6, With, Е, РР, Т and also vitamin Е. Seeds contain valuable oil and albumen. In folk medicine dishes from a pumpkin are in cases of hypertension, adiposity and metabolic disease. Pumpkin juice or pumpkin broths with honey are recommended in case of insomnia.

In autumn many restaurants organize gastronomic festivals devoted to oysters. What should you know to make the best choice at restaurant and to receive the maximal pleasure from oysters?

It is meaningful to find out up to a campaign to the restaurant, what kinds of oysters are offered there. There are about 50 kinds of oysters, which in their turn belong only to two families: European and Pacific. At a restaurant to you will be given the information on the origin of their oysters: France, Ireland, Kurils, Northern America, Canada, and Australia. The choice is great - only having tried all of them, you will find your favorite oysters.

A small secret: oysters, grown in colder waters are as tasty as their “southern” copies. Certainly, oysters from different countries and different kinds differ from each other. Nice pastime - to taste oysters with friends and share impressions. Besides, many restaurants offer the allsorts of seafood including various combinations of sea gifts.

At a restaurant a cook or a waiter will open an oyster for you - in some cases it can be a difficult task. At Moscow restaurants oysters are served up already opened, but in France, more often, you can observe, how dexterously wield with knifes cooks or waiters.

The majority of used products are grown specially for this restaurant on farms in Santa Cruz Mountains. These are vegetables, fruits and cereals grown exclusively with the help of biodynamic and organic methods. At that cooks try to use on kitchen only fresh products, gathered in the morning of the same day.

The owner of the restaurant was the head-cook in restaurant Silks in five-stars hotel Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco. He was in charge of restaurants Schweizer Stuben in Germany, Akelarre in Spain and L’Esperance in France. Then he has again returned to the States and became the chief of the legendary restaurant Ernie’s in San Francisco.

In 1995 he has founded his own restaurant Sent Sovi in Saratoga. It was an excellent opportunity to try himself as a victualer and to earn some money. In July, 2002 he opened Manresa.

To make the most of all riches of taste, there is constantly varying seasonal menu, some testing menus and so-called gastronomic courses. All dishes are selected for one menu not casually. Supplementing each other, they become the true gastronomic show.

Each dish is supplemented with an unusual serving and accompanied by waiter’s detailed story about the used products and technologies.

However each should know when to stop: everything in the restaurant cannot be extravagant. Therefore unusual dishes and serving are accompanied with simple, unostentatious service.

However Manresa is a restaurant of the modern Catalan cuisines. Its name goes from the name of medieval Catalan city known due to surprisingly beautiful Gothic monastery. The choice is not casual, as Catalonia is that region of the world where recently has taken place culinary revolution.

The majority of kitchen’s components are unique, because the question is about unusual equipment. Such technical equipment is equally difficult to find in any country. It was made on an individual demand. Besides for creation of such kitchen there won’t be enough designer from an ordinary company-supplier.

This kitchen was created by Mark Novak, the person, who worked with the best world cooks - Thomas Keller and Alain Ducasse.

The kitchen looks as chemical laboratory. It is a real “Ferrari”. Due to the modern equipment the cook almost is not limited in the search and can do thing of what other cooks cannot evn dream.

For example, to prepare fish almost instantly at a very high temperature. It will not burn down, its initial structure will change completely, but taste remain the same.

Or, on the contrary, to prepare meat at the lowest temperature that will make it so soft, that the customer will not need a knife.

Cooks of the restaurant were trained in Europe at the best restaurants. Including The Fat Duck and El Bulli, which head today the list of the best world restaurants.

The molecular cuisine enjoys the increasing popularity. Ice-cream from a herring, purees from mussels or from pumpkin have long ago turned from shocking viands on a table to quite ordinary phenomenon. One of the founders of a molecular cuisine is David Kinch, the owner of the Californian restaurant Manresa which is included in the list of 50 best restaurants of the world.

Manresa is well-known far beyond the bounds of California and even the USA.

The minimal cost of the tasting menu not taking into account alcohol exceeds hundred dollars.
Now Manresa has two Michelin stars and 27 Zagat Survey points. It draws to restaurant even greater attention. Popularity is amazing also because the restaurant is not in Las Vegas, Hollywood or New York, but in the small provincial small town of Los-Gatos forgotten in hills of Santa Cruz. Here there are very few solvent gourmets and celebrities. Besides Manresa is very small. It has only 68 seats, and many people, wishing to arrive there should wait for some months.

According to Gilles Marshal, an uncompromising head-confectioner of the Parisian Le Bristol and the author of the strawberry recipes book, there is only one quality of a berry: it should be fresh. That is picked not later than 48 hours ago and not placed in a refrigerator. (Well, it is the known fact: after a refrigerator strawberry has neither taste, nor aroma.) Strawberry fresh and transported Gilles Marshal regards as different berries and recommends to take for all dishes of the book, certainly, the first one. Even if it is a lovely kickshaw like sugar candies “rududu” which are made from hot caramel with strawberry juice, cooled down in sea cockleshells. Gourmets should agree with Gilles Marshal: everything that can be told about strawberry concerns fresh berries, instead of arrived from Turkey, Spain and Morocco.

In the book of the fashionable Frenchman recipes are ranged on variety. But in our reality the strawberry is divided according to conditions. Unripe goes for a jam. Ripe will be nice in compote, pies, pastry and mousses. Ripe, but not very attractive for jelly. Not very attractive just picked – for a quick-freezing. Became overripe - in fruit candy, syrup or sauces. In an ideal condition, form and color - in personal using, to white wines and liquors, to mint and almonds, to vodka, to an elder, to light, holiday and love! By the way, scientists claim that the benefit of a strawberry is proportional to its color: the brighter - the better is a berry.