Summer meals can always use pro’s advice

Fire up the grill and prep the fresh produce. Summer meals with a bounty of salads, fruitbased desserts, seafood and lean meats serve up the delicious and nutritious win-win of taste and health.

Many recipes are as easy as tomatoes topped with basil, olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. But food fans gathered to acquire savvy secrets from celebrity chefs at the 2013 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, Colo., learned that what can look like a no-brainer actually takes some thought.

Rub, season or marinade?

A recipe or menu description may include the word “rub” to describe the coating of herbs and spices added to meats, but Texas chef Tim Love warned the crowd at his cooking class, “Don’t rub it in!”

Love, executive chef of the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in Fort Worth, explained that rubbing a mixture of spices, salt and often sugar into meat can create an undesirable crust: “They tell us rub it so we rub it, but we want to leave the pores open. Rubbing will close the pores of the meat. Then the meat won’t taste like the seasonings because they stay on the outside.”

So, a rub isn’t really a rub, it’s a seasoning to spread on lightly.

For leaner cuts of beef, such as a flank steak, Love recommended a soy sauce-based marinade to help tenderize, “It breaks down the connective tissue.” But, he advised against it on tender cuts of beef, “The soy sauce will actually take away the velvetiness of highdollar steaks.”

Veggie master

There’s something mesmerizing about watching a skilled athlete or musician perform with ease. The same thing can be said of witnessing cookbook author and TV food personality Jacques Pepin slice an onion or segment a grapefruit.

“We’re in awe,” I overheard a fan exclaim while attending Pepin’s cooking class with daughter Claudine called Techniques to Create a Great Meal. “He makes it look so easy, “said daughter Claudine, who added, “He is the food whisperer.”

In less than 45 minutes, the elder Pepin sliced, diced, chopped, stirred, whipped and whirred his way through a dozen different techniques and ended up with a roasted chicken, quick cured herbed salmon, a mayonnaise, a grapefruit salad and a tomato rose. All while drinking Champagne. (Well, actually Gruet sparkling wine from New Mexico.)

“It’s a question of practice,” said Pepin, who’s been a headliner for the Food & Wine Classic for many of its 31 years in Aspen. “A sharp knife is important, of course, but did you know that when you slice an onion with a sharp knife, there are less fumes?”

Another veggie tip: lay asparagus flat on a cutting board and use a vegetable peeler to trim off the tough exterior flesh at the end of the spears. And don’t toss vegetable trimmings. Pepin keeps an empty milk carton in the freezer and adds bits and pieces, “Keep adding more, pressing it down, and when it’s full, you can make a wonderful vegetable stock.” Jacques Pepin’s cookbook “Essential Pepin” comes with a DVD demonstration of culinary techniques.

Carolyn O’Neil