Life Kit - Clever kitchen hacks from 'Bake Off' judge Prue Leith

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Chef and TV host Prue Leith may be an exacting judge with the bakers on The Great British Bake Off. But when it comes to the rest of us, she thinks we could all cut ourselves a bit of slack in the kitchen. That's the idea behind her new cookbook, Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom. It includes flavorful and simple recipes — but also dozens of practical cooking hacks from her 65-year culinary career. From peeling garlic to rescuing over-whipped cream, she offers strategies that can help you reduce waste and prepare tricky foods with ease.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Marielle. Any fans of the Great British Bake Off here? If so, you know there is nothing simple about those bakes. So mine is a Black Forest Gâteau, which in the layers it is chocolate genoise soaked in kirsch with a moreno cherry reduction on that and then a buttercream on the outside there is some a bit of the cherry syrup in that and a bit of almond extract just to give it a bit of flavor bake off is known for its technical challenges and the elaborate showstopper cakes painstakingly constructed by contestants but in her new

cookbook bake off judge prue leith wants folks to focus on the basics of cooking and baking. It's called Life's Too Short to Stuff a Mushroom. And it's filled with recipes, of course, but also cooking hacks, tips from Prue on how to do basic things in the kitchen quickly and easily. Like how to cut an onion, peel garlic, prevent your muffin liners from getting oily. Because if you've never learned this stuff, it's easy to feel discouraged and to give up on cooking. A lot of my friends who are foodies and cooks and things said, why are you putting all these absolutely basic things in this book? You know, everybody knows how to do that.

Actually, they don't. And if you can't do something, it makes you anxious and quite cross. And you think, why should I bother? Well, if you know how to do it, it's actually quite a pleasure. Prue stopped by our studio during a visit to New York. And I got to tell you, we had a great time. I gave her some spooky baking stickers. Thank you.

You're welcome. They're really good. This is a Halloween-y one with ghosts. She shared all kinds of wisdom. We talked about cooking and baking and herbs or herbs. If you do put in basil, you should only put a tiny bit. Basil, as you call it. I like it your way. Tomato, tomato. Do you say tomato? I say tomato. Okay. Had to fact check that one. But you can say anything you like. On this episode of Life Kit, Prue Leith shares some of her best cooking hacks with us.

Okay, so I've never stuffed a mushroom before. I'm assuming that it's long-winded and entails a lot of hard work. Well, to be honest, if I'm really honest, you can make a perfectly delicious stuffed mushroom and probably quite quickly. But it's a phrase that a friend of mine called Shirley Conran used years ago when she wrote a book called Superwoman. And her whole thesis was that

you should not waste your life doing things that are taking up lots of time and not giving you any pleasure. And because my book is really about, you know, cheating when cheating doesn't compromise the quality. I don't think you have to make your own puff pastry. There's a perfectly good product called frozen puff pastry. I don't think you have to make your own mayonnaise. Of course, if you like making mayonnaise, which I do, and I have a very good machine that makes it quickly, then yes. But you can take shortcuts. You can do simple recipes that will give you just as much

satisfaction and, you know, look lovely and please your friends and family without breaking your bank and without making you miserable. So, yeah, that is actually one of my favorite parts of the book was that you had all of these handy hacks throughout that can save you time. And a lot of the time it's the things that maybe no one ever taught you how to do, but you do all the time if you're cooking, like peeling garlic or cutting an onion. Tell me about peeling garlic. You take a pig of garlic, you know, a little clove of garlic, cut the two ends off, the root end and the tip end, and then take anything, a jam jar will do, or the flat blade of a knife, and just squash it. And as soon as you hear that sort of crack, the skin breaks, then you'll find the

skin will peel off perfectly easily. It's so much easier. Someone taught me that not too long ago, and it's been game-changing. Otherwise, you're scratching around with your nails, trying to get hold of the skin, and it doesn't come off easily. And you end up with your hands really smelling horribly of garlic, and not so easy. I love that. It's so simple. You had something in there too about feta, how to prevent the feta from going bad. Yes, you know, feta goes rancid very quickly, doesn't it? It's because it's so fresh.

Feta needs to be kept under salted water if it's to be kept for a long time. Either that or eat it straight away. So what I suggest you do is just put the feta in a plastic container. It doesn't have to have a lid on it even, but just in water with a tablespoon of salt added to the water. And it'll keep for weeks. It's a terrible feeling when you just bought something like feta, which can be pretty expensive,

and then you use it for one recipe and it's gone bad. And then you have to chuck the whole thing. Yeah. I know. And also, if you see it there, every time you open the fridge door and the feta is lying there in its bath water, you think, oh, I'll use that. Because you see it. Yeah. Okay, so Thanksgiving is coming up and a lot of holidays.

And I know a lot of folks will bring a side dish to a family gathering. One of the ones that caught my eye in here was the sweet potato and parsnip bake. Delicious, isn't it? Yeah. That's very autumnal too. And it looks very good. What I did was I just cut up carrots and parsnips, equal quantities, into roughly the same sort of rounds. I had carrots and parsnips, which were sort of the same size. And I just cut them all into slices. And then I put alternate slices standing up on the edge in a centric circle in a little baking dish. The baking dish was buttered. And then I put melted butter with lots of different kinds of herbs, all chopped up into the melted butter and buttered the top.

Yes, it's a little bit of a fiddle arranging them. It would taste just the same if you just chuck the slices in any old how, but somehow if it's something like a Halloween party or something and you're bringing it to a friend, it's worth taking the trouble to just stand the slices up and arrange them in concentric circles. And they look lovely. Yeah. So you also have a recipe in there for a grilled spiced monkfish with a pineapple salsa. And I love looking at pineapples, but I have never caught

one because I'm too overwhelmed by this idea. How do you actually cut it without injuring yourself? Take the bottom and top of it off, push them to the side, then stand the pineapple up, hold it from the top, and just slice down the sides to get the four cheeks off. You know, straight down. You need a big knife. And then cut them the opposite way, and you'll end up with little dice. But I love a pineapple salsa. Yeah, it sounds great.

I will try. The exterior of a pineapple just looks so unwelcoming. It does not want to be cut. That's at least how it looks to me with all the spikes on it, you know? You should try it, honestly. I know. Have a go at your pineapple. You should try it, honestly. I know. Have a go at your pineapple and you'll find it's easy. Okay.

It's very easy. If you've got a big, sharp knife, it'll cut incredibly easily. I have an embarrassing question that you didn't answer in the book, but now that you bring it up, how am I supposed to sharpen my knives? To be honest, I think the answer is buy a decent sharpener. I've just bought a new one, actually, which is absolutely brilliant, but I don't know what the name is. It's an electric one. It's quite expensive. It costs about 30 pounds or something. But when you think how much a knife, a good knife costs, if you're saving your knives and you're,

I mean, I've still got knives that I had at cookery school 50 years ago, and they still work beautifully. But then be careful because your knives will be very, very sharp. If a knife is really sharp, you don't need any pressure to carve anything or to cut anything because it just goes through like butter. Mine right now are what I imagine prehistoric humans were working with. Like, they're so blunt at this point. Prehistoric humans sharpened their knives on a thing very... Oh, my God, you're so right.

You're so right. My grandmother used to sharpen her knives on the back step. Oh, wow. The stone step, very, very well worn and smooth. And she just would, you know, pull the knife one way, slightly at an angle, about 45-degree angle that way and 45-degree angle that way. I don't know why I thought of it now,

like why I waited until I had, like, a very well-known chef in front of me to ask someone this question, and I didn't just Google it before now. But, you know, sometimes't just Google it before now. But, you know, sometimes we just don't know everything. No, of course you don't. There's no reason why you should. Yeah. Thank you for that. Okay. So we have to talk about dessert, obviously. There was a recipe I liked in there, the passion fruit yogurt cupcakes. First of all, love passion fruit, especially love it with dark chocolate. Those are, I feel like, a really beautiful pair. But yeah, you had a tip in there for preventing muffin liners from getting oily.

It's simple. Yes. You just put a bit of rice in between the muffin liner and the metal tin that it's sitting in. So you put a few grains of rice in the bottom. And then you put the cupcake liner. And then you pour the cupcake liner, and then you pour the mixture in. And that rice absorbs any kind of grease or fat, and it's extraordinary, but it makes it come away smoothly, and it's lovely. Love that. You also have a tip for how to rescue

over-whipped cream. You can only do that if it's just overwhipped. You know, if you overwhip cream, it just suddenly gets a bit too stiff and you almost don't dare take the whisk out because it's obviously about to be too overwhipped. But if you add a bit more cream to it or milk and stir it in, you can sometimes bring it back. But it only works if it's just over whipped. If you've gone too far and you've already got lumps of what is in fact butter and it looks wet, the wet part is the whey and the lumpy bits are the butter you've just made.

So don't go that far. Can you use it as butter? Yeah. Don't throw it away. Just keep use it as butter? Yeah. At least you got something out of it. Don't throw it away. Just keep stirring and it'll become more like butter. And then you can chuck the whey in. Keep the butter. And you've made butter. You add a bit of chopped herbs to it.

You've made sort of methotel butter. You can use it on top of your steak and say, I made the butter. I love that. Silver linings. Okay. You also had one on how to rescue hardened brown sugar. Oh, yeah. That was, you know, I put that once as a hack on social media, and I had more response and delight and people so pleased with it. And it's such an obvious thing. You know, the reason

that brown sugar goes solid as a brick sometimes is it's because it's become dehydrated. If you've got it in a jar, let's say, if you add a lemon and close the lid, within a few days, the sugar will absorb some of the moisture from the lemon. And it goes soft and perfect like it was when you bought it. You know, I wonder if your work on Bake Off at all informed this book. And I say that because I feel like the contestants on the show, they are very focused on getting things technically right and making showstoppers. But then if they fall short, you see a lot of people just supporting each other and having a laugh about it and not putting too much pressure on themselves?

Well, that's one of the reasons that I love Bake Off, because I think it's such a lovely, friendly, relaxed program. And I think that's what the audience like about it. They know they're not going to be stressed out by lots of blood and violence and drama and misery. They know this is going to be perfectly happy. And the worst that can happen is somebody's chocolate's going to melt or they're going to drop their cupcakes or something.

It's quite pleasant stress. You just quite enjoy watching the drama. But I think you're right in a sense that so many people think chefs are a breed apart, that they do all these amazing things all the time. Actually, if you ate with them at home, they'd be eating hamburgers and hot dogs like the rest of us, and they'd be making very simple food. And they love good, simple stuff. I don't think cooking should be intimidating. And I think it doesn't have to be grand. It just has to be delicious. Yeah. You just has to be delicious.

Yeah. You say it should be a pleasure, not an endurance test. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm very conscious that people at the moment are very stressed and they are very short of time. And they haven't got the skills. So I wanted to just say, look, it's not that difficult. You can do it. Yeah. And it'll be delicious. And it's really satisfying to do, you know, it's not that difficult. You can do it. And it'll be delicious.

And it's really satisfying to do. You know, to cook for other people is just the most satisfying thing because they are obviously appreciative. And there's something great about seeing people tucking into the food you've cooked. Just does your soul good. Okay, y'all, one more tip for the road. If you're a smoothie lover like me, you might throw in a banana. Well, guess what? You can eat the skin too. Prue has a recipe in the book that she borrowed from a chef friend.

Which is when a banana goes manky and black, what you should do is you cut two ends off because they're a bit hard. And then you liquidize the whole thing, including the skin. Then add milk and cinnamon, lots of cinnamon, and it makes the most delicious smoothie. And if you really want to treat, you put a blob of vanilla ice cream into it as you whiz it up. By the way, lots of fiber, polyunsaturated fats, and amino acids in the skin of that banana. Also, make sure to wash it first. You may also want to buy bananas that haven't been sprayed with pesticides. Okay, time for a recap. Here are some of our favorite tips

from Prue's book. An easy way to peel garlic is to press down on the clove with a flat edge of a knife. Then the skin will come right off. If you want to keep feta fresh, store it in a container covered in water with a tablespoon of salt mixed in. Proust says pineapples are not as hard to cut as they might look. First you'll lop off the top and bottom and then stand the pineapple up, hold it on top, slice straight down the four sides to get the cheeks off, and then dice it up. Keep muffin liners from getting oily by putting a little bit of uncooked rice in the bottom of the muffin tin. If you've over whipped cream, you can try to rescue it by stirring in a little extra milk or cream. If you think it's gone too far, keep whipping and you'll get butter.

If you notice that your brown sugar is hard as a rock, you can rescue it by putting it in a container with a lemon, closing the lid, and waiting a couple days. Lastly, remember, cooking doesn't have to be grand for the food to be delicious. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to get a good night's sleep and another on how to cultivate your chosen family. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love life kit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash life kit newsletter. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at life kit at npr.org. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Gareeb. Megan Cain is our supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.

Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Claire Marie Schneider, and Margaret Serino. Engineering support comes from David Greenberg. I'm Mariel Seguera. Thanks for listening.