Tips from a Professional Chef

Recipes abound, like for Italian Dressing, but how do you make "homemade" practical? Everyone has a favorite recipe, but how do we find the time to make up a fresh batch of this or that when our schedule gets tight?

At The New Deli, we get plenty busy all right... And I'm not married to my work, so I don't want the business to take over my life. So, how do I maintain our reputation of offering freshly prepared foods, without spending all my time on it? I look for time savers; I create my own time saver for every recipe I can!

We have a few tips for producing quality food efficiently... One tip: We make up concentrated batches of the dressings. For our Italian Dressing Recipe, we process the fresh garlic, herbs, and salt, portioning up the paste and freezing. We can then mix in the oil and vinegar in batches, as we need it. The flavors stay fresh, without us having to go through the whole process of making a new batch from scratch. Fresh and homemade doesn't have to be complicated. Give it a try in your kitchen!