Like Oil and Water... and Noodles

Dear Tricia, My mom always cooked spaghetti with a little bit of oil in the water because she said it helped to keep the noodles from sticking together. Is she right? I have money riding on this.

Well friend, I don't know who just lost money, but whomever agreed with your mom needs to pay up. Putting oil in pasta water is something that I've seen a lot of people do, but they're all just wasting good olive oil. In fact, one of the first things I learned from Chef Pardus at the Culinary Institute of America was that tip right there. He also taught me that my knife skills are terrible. I was called "Lefty" because I was always cutting my fingers. (Unintentionally. Despite my burn marks and scars, I'm not into self-mutilation.)
In theory, it seems like a good idea: oil keeps things from sticking. But like me and Rachael Ray, oil and water are mortal enemies. Oil won't disperse itself throughout the water to evenly coat all the pasta, it will only stay in one spot because oil and water just don't mix. I mean, come on... how many euphemisms are there about oil and water not going together? When you pour the cooked pasta out into a colander, the only noodles that will get oil on them are the ones closest to the little blob of oil that never mixed in with the water. That's like hosting a frat party with one beer and expecting everyone to drink it and get wasted. There's just not enough to go around.
If you want to keep your pasta from sticking, leave the oil out of the water. (And salt the water, dammit. If there's one thing you should learn from this blog, it's that.) When you pour out the cooked pasta to drain, put the oil directly on the pasta and toss them around to coat them. Simple as that.
Back to my pocket Tetris game...

Hearts of Palm: Are they that girl group that sang "Barracuda?"

Dear Tricia, I've seen hearts of palm in salads, but what exactly is a heart of palm? Something about it seems really wrong.


Well, when you find out that words like "self-suckering" and "burglar's thigh" are associated with it, I'm not surprised that you thought something was wrong.
That's such a good question because I wasn't too sure when I got this email. So this one's a learning process for both of us. From my research, I learned that hearts of palm come from the very inner core of the stems of certain palm trees, usually ones called "peach palm trees" when they're grown in the US. South America has different kinds of palm trees that they harvest hearts of palm from, and I couldn't pronounce a single one of them. Its classified as a vegetable (How creative. Who's the genius that decided to put them in salads?), has only about 30 calories for a 4 ounce serving, 2 grams of fiber, and 3 grams of protein.
Peach Palm Trees are "self-suckering." I didn't know what that meant, so I googled it. Take my advice: do NOT google that word. My eyes were not prepared for those search results. I eventually found the meaning of it in reference to botany, and its when secondary shoots will grow out of the base of the tree when you cut shoots off. Palm farming didn't used to be like that and hearts of palm grew to be very expensive because humans are naturally greedy money-whores who decided to cut down tons of palm trees to harvest them. But now they've been domesticated as a farm-raised tree and it has become more sustainable. On a side note: the French are the number one consumers of hearts of palm in the world. Go figure.
To harvest them, fancy heart of palm people cut down the tree and remove the bark. The fibers are removed leaving the center core or heart of palm. While the entire core edible, the outside part of it is more fibrous (I would imagine it being like chewing on carpet,) and the very inner part of it is what is packed in water, canned, and shipped to your grocery store. In Florida, you can buy fresh hearts of palm.
Other weird facts about them: apparently they're also called "burglar's thing" and "swamp cabbage." I'm not sure who designated these nicknames for hearts of palm but I think they might be a little crazy. Or just bored. But the next time you order a hearts of palm salad, I triple dog dare you to call it "A Burglar's Thigh Salad with a little bit of extra swamp cabbage." Let me know how that works out for you.

Dwarf Eggs and Crack

Dear Tricia, Sometimes on shows I see chefs carefully pouring eggs into a pan like they're trying to get the yolk and just a little bit of white. The visual result is a little "mini" egg where the yolk is half or more the diameter of the entire cooked result. Is this just some silly fanciness or is there a point and trick to it? I've heard it's better to crack an egg on a flat surface as opposed to a lip, what do you think?


Honestly? Its silly fanciness. The people who made up that trick are the ones who will serve you "roasted leg of songbird with aspirin sauce," as David Sedaris puts it. If you're referring to something you've seen on "Hells Kitchen," then I don't know what you're talking about. For some reason, when people find out I work in a restaurant kitchen, they always ask if I watch that show. I have NEVER watched that show. I live it every single day of my life. I'd rather spend my rare hours with the TV watching "Labyrinth" and examining David Bowie's spandex. But if you're referring to something you saw on "Top Chef," then its just an episode I've missed. Did I ever mention that I used to drink beers with Marcel, one of the early seasons' villian-esque competitors? His hair isn't really that weird looking. He's also not quite as villiany as he appears on the tube. But once again, I digress.
If you'd like to recreate the silly fancy small-white egg trick (and I don't know why you'd want to), just take your egg and separate the white and the yolk. The easiest way to do this is to crack the egg in half (more about that in a few. Be patient.) and keep it in the shell. Keep it over a bowl to drop the white into and just shift the yolk back and forth between the two egg halves until the white drops off into the bowl. The yolk will naturally have some of the white still attached to it and you can cook it as such.
As I was asking my fellow crazies (ahem, I mean... fellow colleagues) at work about this "mini egg" dilemma, none of them had ever heard of it. Their immediate response was, "Is he referring to a quail egg?" which are tiny eggs that fry just like regular chicken eggs, but obviously come from quail. Sounds like you're asking about something different, but I just wanted to put that out there. If you want tiny eggs, you may be able to special order quail eggs from a specialty grocer (like the ones who ruthlessly fired me... Whole Foods.... you know who you are...).
Now, about cracking eggs. As I've stated before, it's all about what works for YOU. There really is no "proper" way to crack eggs, you just have to be mindful if you get some shell in there. I have found that in my years of cooking breakfast for a living (I'm guessing 20,000 eggs?), cracking eggs is much more successful on a flat surface, as opposed to the corner of the kitchen counter. But if you've found that the opposite works for you, then stick with that. I'm not going to tell you what's right or wrong. Try them both. Pick which one's better. Problem solved. Also, you may want to crack your eggs into a bowl before you put them into a pan, just in case you break a yolk and wanted it to be whole.
Another tip: the easiest way to get pieces of broken shell out of your eggs is to use... an eggshell. It cuts right through the white and picks up said broken shell much faster than using your fingers. I've tried to be smarter than the eggshell so many times but I just ended up chasing the tiny bit of shell around with my fingers for like 10 minutes. Allow me to make that mistake for you and just go with the eggshell on eggshell method.