Breaking down a recipe into components and treating them as separate processes is a versatile strategy applicable to home cooking. The previous post (cooking with alcohol) described how and why this might be applied to the French classic coq au vin (rooster with wine), which normally involves a long simmering to enrich the sauce and tenderise
As the fridge magnet may say, “I love cooking with wine; sometimes I even put it in the food” – a quote variously attributed to WC Fields or Julia Child (but perhaps neither). There is evidence for the intentional consumption of fermented alcoholic beverages going back to the late stone age (neolithic) period, about 7-12
Bleach is an effective sanitiser, as is acidifying with distilled vinegar. Add some soap to wash your hands and that is all you need – expensive cleaning products claiming to ‘kill 99.9% of household germs’ are best avoided. A 200 ppm solution of bleach can kill microbes in about 2 minutes and is dilute enough
The kitchen is a domestic microbe’s playground (well ahead of the bathroom for example). The kitchen sink, dishwashing sponges, linen towels and cutting surfaces can be teeming with microbes. In the US, about 200,000 cases of food-borne illnesses occur every day. Most of these illnesses have a domestic origin rather than a commercial (restaurant/canteen/fast food)