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When it comes to preparing meat, a cook's major goal is tenderness, juiciness and flavor. To consistently turn out the best meat, it helps to have a basic insight of what happens to meat when you heat it. Cooking experience over your stove also helps. From earlier discussion you know a little about muscle tissues, connective tissues and fat. These three determine potential tenderness as well as flavor. The amount and kind of connective tissue surrounding the meat is the most difficult to deal with in the kitchen, and it affects tenderness the most. Some meat, like flank steak, has...

We inherited salad from the French. It all began with tender greens topped with a light dressing of oil and vinegar. This basic theme got more and more elaborate, first with the addition of other raw and cooked vegetables, then fish, poultry, meats and cheeses. Today anything can, and does, go into a salad bowl. The dressings on the salad also became intricate with spices and herbs, condiments, exotic oils and vinegars. Now you hardly, if ever, see a simple salad recipe in a new cookbook or in a fashionable restaurant, yet simple salads and dressings have much to recommend...

I wrote this cookbook because people wanted recipes that would helpthem understand how to apply the principles in How Not to Die in theirdaily diet and to give them handy, delicious ways to get the Daily Dozenand other wonderful Green Light foods into their meals.That's great if you're already committed to the most healthful way ofeating. But I also wrote this book for those of you who may be at theexperimental stage, where you are telling yourself, 'Okay, I'm willing totry eating more healthfully, but I'm only going to do it if I like what's onmy plate!'To eat well, it...

Here's a handful of hints and explanations to help you in the kitchen:BAKING: This dry-heat cooking method takes place in an oven, usuallywith a temperature below 400°F/200°C, primarily involving foods thatlack structure before becoming solid, such as muffins or cakes.BAKING AND ROASTING WITH SILICONE MATS OR BAKING PARCHMENT:Lining your baking sheets and pans with silicone mats or bakingparchment before placing ingredients on them allows you to bake androast without oil and without the food sticking. It also makes cleanup thatmuch easier.BRAISING: This cooking method uses both moist and dry heats.Typically, the food is first seared at a high temperature before...

All but our organ meats have three distinct pa rts—muscle, fat and connective tissue. All three are edible and digestible, but only the first two contain nutrition and flavor. Fat is the reason for our dietary problems, but connective tissues are the ones to give us headache in the kitchen. Once we learn how these problem connective tissues react to various cooking techniques, we have the key to tender meat dishes. To offer the most tender, juicy morsels of meat, let’s first learn a little about the three parts—muscle, fat and connective tissue. Muscles  Muscle fibers are individual meat cells—long,...