.

And we continue with our ghetto breakaway cooking video series with a quick run-through of my favorite fats: a few grades of olive oil, walnut oil, sesame oil, duck fat, butter, and ghee. I also demonstrate my simple method of making ghee. Enjoy!

Are there any fats not included that you can’t live without?

We started out this video making three pickles: pickled ginger, pickled fennel, and pickled daikon. But some technical difficulties meant a reshoot, leaving only enough time for the pickled fennel!

It would be insanely great to have a ready-to-shoot kitchen. Push record, do it, push stop, push publish! That is sort of the Gary Vaynerchuk model, and it obviously works for him. Harder to pull off with cooking though….

Do try this pickle if you can — I still haven’t met anyone who doesn’t go gaga over it! Unique, refreshing, healthy, gorgeous — it’s got it all. Got a pickle you can’ t live without? I’d love to hear about it!

I’ve spent a good part of the last few weeks in the garden — major weeding sessions, fertilizing, planting, cleaning up. The oregano and thyme FINALLY made it into the ground, after two years in pots on the deck, and the difference is dramatic: they’re already spreading like mad, ecstatic to have some room to run. The lesson: if you can possibly get your herbs in the ground, do it! They’ll probably be a lot happier.

I’m often amused by the quantities of fresh herbs called for in recipes: quarter teaspoon here, half teaspoon there, and maybe even — gasp! — a full tablespoon sometimes! Around here we go by the cup, not spoon; I’ll add a half cup of tarragon to something, two cups of thai basil to something else, a cup of parsley to something else. I guess there is, theoretically, such a thing as too much herbage, but I don’t think I’ve encountered it. Large quantities of herbs make EVERYTHING taste good. They’re such an instant way to improve your cooking: just add fresh herbs!

In the next video I highlight my favorite herbs and make what is probably my all-time favorite breakfast: fluffy herby eggs. If anyone has any dishes that use large quantities of herbs, I’d love to hear about it — I’m always looking to increase my use of them even more. And now that my herbs are situated in a sunny spot with room to spread out, I expect truckloads of them will soon make their lovely presence felt.

How does one use TRUCKLOADS of herbs?

Addendum: Lots of people have written me, asking about the make of the diamond sharpener in the video. It’s made by DuoSharp. Amazon has the cheapest price I’ve seen, here.

.

As always, feedback please!

.

And: I’m open to ideas you’d like to see covered here, so let me know. It’s been great fun doing these things; I’m really looking forward to doing actual dishes, start to finish, for the new book. If it wasn’t so bloody time-consuming and expensive, I’d do hundreds of them! But it’s also next to impossible in my tiny kitchen; it’s quite the ballet to move around at all with all the lighting equipment and the two cameras. Man I’d love to have a studio kitchen … if anyone has ideas on how to get one, please tell me!

.

The whole series will, at least I hope, outline the basics of breakaway cooking. And since citrus plays such a big role in my own cooking, we might as well start with that one.

More to come! Feedback/criticism is HUGELY appreciated.
.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=thRH9FxqGrM

Here’s a clip from the new Vook. I’ll have a lot more video to upload in the coming months, so I’m hoping everyone likes this direction. Feedback is hugely appreciated! Btw, there’s nothing inherently Japanese about this dish, other than the cut of meat — sukiyaki cut, which is quite hard to find in mainstream markets — and possibly the addition of minced ginger. Whatever its origin, it’s really, really tasty.

Here’s a clip from my appearance on KTLA in Los Angeles — Michaela is such a great host!

.

.