Gourmet Food at Homeby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 19 Mar 2009 08:37 AM
Gourmet cooking at home is all in the details. You can adapt one or several of these ideas to boost your regular home cooking into the exotic. Here is how. Practice presentation When preparing a meal, give some thought to the presentation. This can make all of the difference in the world between gobbling a meal and appreciating it. For example, you can grate some cheese over your soup and serve it with a chunk of crusty bread in the bowl or top your pizza with three whole basil leaves arranged in a circle. Instead of serving a bowl of sauce on the side of your meal, drizzle it into a pleasing pattern on to the side of the plate. Have some consideration for color when you plan your meal. Make sure that the colors and textures go together beautifully. And as for that meat loaf, why not cut the loaf on a diagonal and serve triangular slices with a pattern of ketchup dots? Add a little richness Sometimes just a touch of a more expensive ingredient can make all of the difference in a meal. A touch of cream or a few shreds of coconut can elevate your meal to a new level. You can reserve the rest of the cream or coconut for future meals. Purchase just a few exotic mushrooms and mix them in to your meal. Try some new combinations of foods. You can take your cue from gourmet cookbooks at the library. Lower cost options can also boost flavor and richness without the price. Substitute canned evaporated milk for regular milk in mashed potatoes, for example, or use olive oil instead of standard vegetable oil in brownies for gourmet taste. Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right. Favorite Deal Websites: Related Articles: Best Frugal Food Ingredients 2 Frugal Homemade Seasoning Recipes Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments StBridgit (322) 19 Mar 2009 09:15 AMSometimes the only thing you need to make something gourmet is to use a different spice for a regular recipe. For example, using cardamom instead of cinnamon in apple recipes adds a different twist that seems more exotic than the normal recipe. Or using a bit of saffron in rice will give it a different flavor. Also substituting different grains like quinoa for rice, or using couscous instead of rice, can make a meal seem gourmet. You can buy different grains in bulk, too, so they don't have to be more expensive than their regular counterpart. Tashi (1013) 21 Mar 2009 11:37 AMI like adding sriracha sauce (the bottle with the rooster on it) to as many things as I can think of. I can thank a blogger in my state for cluing me in to its existence (I never paid attention to it before, even if some restaurants have it on tables). It's an Asian condiment sometimes referred to as hot sauce (and it's hot!). It makes my food less boring, and a bit more exotic, for sure. I have even mixed it with Heinz ketchup and dipped Tricuits in it. Yummm.... :-) But use sriracha sauce sparingly, with caution -- it's not for the feint (?) of heart, weak tastebuds, you know? A huge 28-ounce bottle is, at the most that I've seen, about $3.50, and lasts foreverrrr.  Mary Ann Romans (26886) 22 Mar 2009 04:07 AMOoh, I will have to look for this. Have you ever read the Good Earth by Buck. In it the family is tired of rice all of the time, so the mother makes everyone take a bit of a really hot pepper, and no one complains again. Community Tags frugal living, Food, gourmet, recipes Discuss this article
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