T I P S & T R I C K S
A cooking towel: Necessary. Have you ever tried to salt something when your fingers are wet because you cut a tomato and then they’re covered in salt and, ugh. Throw it over your showerl, leave it there.
Garbage bowl: Grab a bowl or tupperware and keep it next to your cutting board, then put your scraps in it as you prep! Small tip, big impact!
Mise en place: A fancy french word for “put in place”. It’s all about cutting and preparing all your ingredients before you start to cook. That way you can focus entirely on cooking when you get to it and not be going back and forth to your cutting board, which let’s be honest, inevitably ends in something burning. We’ve all got nothing but time these days, so why not.
No-slip cutting boards: If you’re finding that when you’re chopping your cutting board is moving around a fair bit (some plastic cutting boards tend to do this a lot), save your digits from getting sliced by dampening a dish cloth, wring it out, then put it underneath your cutting board. It shouldn’t slip or move around now.
BRIE’S LOWDOWN //
All Things: C O O K I N G
Hi! I’m Brie. Some people call me Cheese and I teach spin at Annex (which I miss desperately.)
When the Annex leaders were talking about what we’d like to share in these lowdowns with our community, I knew what mine was going to be right away: cooking.
If you follow me on instagram (shameless plug @brie_elise), you’ll know I’m pretty passionate about the culinary arts. It all started when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was this show on CBC that had a host who was a sweet, old, white haired man who had a comforting voice with a british accent. He cooked in this quintessential 90s kitchen and had a little bit of a limp. It was so calming to watch him talk with joy and wonderment about simple ingredients and simple techniques. His message and his dishes communicated something so simple: cooking was easy, it was a way to show love and get love in return. I was hooked. The show was called The Urban Peasant. I only recently found out that he lived out his later years living on Vancouver Island - if that’s not serendipity, I don’t know what is.
Anyway. That’s where it started. Then I watched almost every show on The Food Network. Worked in a kitchen at a golf course when I was 16. Managed a cafe/restaurant at 18. Then with the advent of streaming I’ve watched nearly every cooking show on most platforms. So, all of this has led to knowing some little tips and tricks that I use every day in the kitchen that I’m going to share with you all below! Hopefully it helps a bit for anyone who’s found themselves spending way more time in the kitchen than usual and not too sure what’s going on.
How to hold a knife: Properly holding a knife will also help ensure you don’t accidentally slice yourself (are you sensing a theme here?). Bring your hold close to the hilt of the knife (where the handle and the blade meet) pressing your thumb flat on one side and curling your knuckle against the other side. The key here is to not have your index finger on top of the blade. All this will do is tire your finger! Holding the knife right at the hilt will also make sure the weight of the knife is evenly distributed. Look, now you’re a professional chef!
Chopping like a chef: Now that you’re a professional chef (you’ve got the holding the knife part down), we’re going to talk about your other hand - the one that’s going to be close to the blade. Look at your hand, then make a claw. Somewhere between what you would do to pretend you’re a bear or one of Lady Gaga’s little monsters. Making a claw means your fingers curl in and when chopping the blade will come against your knuckle and not slice your fingers! Hooray!
Securing your mixing bowl: If you’re making a sauce, dressing, batter, really anything in a bowl that requires you to whisk pretty vigorously this hack will save you from your bowl moving all over the place. Take a dry dish towel and roll it into a long snake, then wrap that around the base of your bowl. It’ll lift the bowl a little bit from the counter but create this safe little nest for your bowl to rest in and keep it from shimmying across your counter!