THE PORTABLE CHEF^TM
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Chef Chip Desormeaux - 678.480.4973

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AMUSE BOUCHE                 by Chef Chip Desormeaux

/ah-mooz boosh/ def: A small complimentary appetizer offered at fine restaurants. From French, literally, "it entertains the mouth."

Food & Entertaining Tips from The Portable Chef

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I love it when y'all forward my newsletter to friends and family. Do you know I even have subscribers in Saudi Arabia? I think that's cool! Maybe one day we'll have subscribers on every continent! Who do you know around the world?

Had breakfast with a friend last week and she asked me about the best way to store her left over cilantro in the fridge. Probably everyone could use a little knowledge in that area. So I decided to write about it this week.

Oh, I almost forgot! Happy Mother's Day to everyone of you Moms. Especially mine! For dinner we had Scaloppini Pork Chops with Mushrooms & Marsala Wine Sauce, Sweet Potato Gnocchi, and Broccolini. For dessert we had Beignets—they were the best ever. Recipes follow...

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Storing Produce

Imagine for a moment the juiciest, plump, most vibrantly red apple. Take a bite out of your imaginary apple. Hear that crunch as the insides give way to your bite, releasing its deliciously sweet juice over your taste buds...

Now reach into the crisper drawer of your imaginary fridge and pull out a stick of celery that's been languishing at the bottom of your crisper drawer under the Kraft cheese singles. Have a bite of that, if you dare! Yuck, huh? (OK. Spit the celery out and have another bite of that apple, then.)

The difference between a plump, crisp vegetable and a flaccid, leathery one is the water pressure within its cells. Veggies rely on water pressure within their cell walls to give them shape and firmness.

By the simple process of refrigeration, the air within your refrigerator is very dry. This causes any exposed vegetables to "leak" their water into the refrigerator air. Almost all veggies need to be sealed in a Ziploc bag if you need to refrigerate them.

Many of our popular fruits and veggies actually do not need to be refrigerated at all. Some absolutely should not.

One determining factor for storage is how long before you finally use it. Refrigeration will slow the ripening process, buying you more time to use it. The down side is that many fruits and veggies also suffer in texture, taste and nutritional value when refrigerated.

The easiest way to determine what to do with your veggies when you get them home is pay attention to where in the produce department you found them in the first place.

Tomatoes are never ever refrigerated. Onions, potatoes of all kinds, melons, bananas, citrus fruits, eggplants, squashes, and peppers really don't need to be refrigerated.

Peppers and chiles are sometimes refrigerated just to keep them from changing from green to yellow (then to orange, to red and then purple.)

Berries, even though they are sold in containers with holes in them, need to be sealed and refrigerated.

Wrap your herbs in a damp paper towel before you pop them in the bag and refrigerate them.

Pre-washed lettuce and spinach are very carefully packaged to prevent deterioration and microbial growth. It's best to store them in the bags you bought them. Packers fill the bags with specific ratios of gases so the plant cells function normally. Even the bags are made of materials with special gas permeability.

Here are a few more useful tidbits:

• Wait to clean berries until you are just about to eat them. They're very delicate and cleaning them will actually cause them to deteriorate more quickly.
• Mushrooms, berries, apricots, figs, avocados deteriorate fastest and should be consumed within a day or two of purchase.
• Apples, pears, kiwi, carrots, can be kept much longer.
• Onions, which are designed by Nature to hibernate, also keep for long periods.
• Don't refrigerate your potatoes or they will become sweet.

Bon Appetit!

Chef Chip Desormeaux

But, Wait! There's More!
(Recipes, Nifty Gadgets, & Stuff Like That)

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