Priya's Cookbook

• Rubbing the inside of the cooking vessel with vegetable oil will also prevent noodles, spaghetti, and similar starches from boiling over.
• Give mashed potatoes a beautiful whipped cream look by adding hot milk to them before you start mashing.
• To test if the consistency of your dahi-wada batter is correct, drop a little batter into a cup of water. If it floats it is ready to be fried.
• Run your ice cream scoop under hot water and it will cut through the ice cream more easily and make neat smooth scoops.
  
   
• To ripen tomatoes-put them in a brown paper bag in a dark pantry and they will ripen over night.
• To keep cauliflower white while cooking, add a little milk to the water to cook it.
• Tender corn: when boiling a corn, do not add salt to the water, add a little sugar, salt toughens the corn.
•  When a recipe calls for adding oil, garlic, and onions to a pan, always add garlic last. This keeps it from burning and tasting bitter.
• Turn thoroughly heated bowl over hard butter and in no time you will get soft butter.
• Add a lump of butter or a few teaspoons of cooking oil to the water. Good for Rice, noodles or Spaghetti. To cook rice without sticking, add a spoon full of vinegar in it.
• If noodles/pasta has to be used after some time, then refresh the boiled noodles in cold water and drain. This way they will not stick to each other.
• Want a quick salad dressing - Blend a cup of curd with little limejuice and seasoning and toss the salad into it.
• Hard bread - just keep leftover hardened bread on the lid of a pan containing hot water, the slices will become soft in no time.
• Stale bread - sprinkle a little milk over it and place it in a moderately hot oven for 15 minutes, It will regain its taste & crispness.
• Curd in winter - set in a ceramic container and place it on the voltage stabilizer of your refrigerator.
• If curry has become very salty then add few cubes of potatoes and cook it, potatoes will absorb all the salt and will make your curry taste good.
• To thicken any gravy just add some boiled mashed potatoes.
• Bulk cheese will keep longer when it's wrapped in a paper towel dampened with vinegar and placed in a sealed plastic bag. The vinegar will inhibit mold growth. Re-moisten the paper towel every few days, as needed.
• Cheese won't harden if you'll butter the exposed edges before storing.
• Hard Cheese - when storing hard cheese store in the coldest spot of your refrigerator. It lasts much longer than freezing. Freezing the cheese makes it "spongy" after a certain period of time.
• Soft paneer - add curd or lemon or vinegar to the boiling milk & you will get soft paneer which is specially good for those with weak stomachs.
• Softening the cream cheese - Remove it from its wrapper and microwave it on medium for 30-40 Seconds.
• To retain greenness of vegetable while cooking , add a pinch of turmeric powder in the oil before putting them and you can still have the fresh green color

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