July 2003 “Cooking Tips” Winner —
Katherine Chicosky

Garlic cooking tips:

1) Microwave the cloves for a few seconds on HIGH. The skins will slip right off.
2) OR, if you have a Kitchen Aid mixer with the paddle attachment and have lots of cloves of garlic to peel, put all the individual cloves in the Kitchen Aid bowl and turn it on medium speed. The peels will all come off like magic, and the garlic will not be damaged.

Katherine Chicosky

Prize:

• Cooking tips:
  Chocolate Chardonnay Raspberry Dessert Topping
  Cuisine Perel

July 2003 “Cooking Disasters” Winner —
Sona Sandalian

For my Mother’s 60th birthday I decided to have a surprise birthday dinner party for her. The main course of the dinner was to be Veal Tonata, a lovely Italian dish which requires a rich veal broth. Since I wanted to do it with a classic veal broth, I acquired all the necessary ingredients (veal bones, spices, vegetables, etc.) but the most important part to this broth to be perfect was cooking it for 8 hours. After spending the whole day overlooking this long process, the broth was finally ready when the door bell rang.It was my Mother coming over for a little visit. I was a little flustered, but quickly recovered by saying that I was making some broth to keep in my freezer for future use. Mother asked if she could help me, so I told her to hold the colander over the sink so that I could pour the broth and discard the bones, which she did. Here I was holding my huge pot of broth pouring it as she steadily held the colander, and I was being very careful not to spill any of the precious broth, until I poured the very last drop! Suddenly we looked at each other, and the same realization hit us at that same moment - we forgot to put a bowl under the colander - our mouths fell open and no sound came out, until the laughter overwhelmed us both. We had poured every single drop of the broth down the drain! To this day, every time anyone mentions veal broth we still laugh to tears!

Sona Sandalian

Prize:

• Cooking Disasters:
  Chinese Chicken Salad Dressing
  Private Harvest

Previous Winners

Click here to see our previous "Cooking Tips" and "Cooking Disasters" contest winners!