Author, Delish Cooking School(2012)
Former Editor-in-Chief, Epicurious.com
Former Head of food and lifestyle programs at Time, Inc Content Solutions
Consultant to Kraft Food, Nestle, Unilever, etc
Married, 2 Sons
GUEST BIO
Elizabeth Shepard: Delish Cooking School
By
The 700 Club
CBN.com -EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO COOK
Elizabeth loves her job as the Executive Director of Delish.com – one of the top food destinations on the Internet that has over 5 million views monthly. It gives her the opportunity to do everything she loves to do. The recipes offered on the site are easy and delicious. This is how Elizabeth cooks in her own life. She wants people to eat well and doesn’t want them to stress out about food or worry about the cost. When she cooks, she wants to make things that people love. Though some of the recipes are more sophisticated on Delish.com, there are a variety of cooking tips and recipes to suit every skill level and taste.
Delish has put some of these recipes and cooking knowledge in a book called Delish Cooking School. It contains a good variety of techniques and recipes (and all the recipes featured are from the Delish.com kitchens). Elizabeth says there is a balance of familiar dishes but also some unusual ones: classic dishes, like Steak Diane, which only takes a few minutes to prepare; dishes that don’t require cooking; Asian; and some desserts and baking. The pictures really make the book. This book has really been easy and a joy for everyone from the Delish team to put together. Elizabeth likes empowering people to cook with the website and now the book. Each recipe includes nutritional information needed to plan healthy meals for your family. Recipes show how much of an ingredient you need to use as well as how much you’ll need to buy. All of the ingredients can be found in most major supermarkets, but they also offer ideas for simple substitutions. Recipes include Herb Omelette, Roast Chicken with Herb Stuffing, Tuna Tartare, Smoked Salmon with Capers, Chunky Beef and Vegetable Pie, Date and Walnut Rolls, Mango and Raspberry Parfait, etc. Many of the recipes feature triple-tested, fail-safe, how-to advice that assures great results every time, whether you want to make a tender meatloaf, prevent pies from sagging in the middle, or bake really fudgy brownies.
INGREDIENTS TO ALWAYS HAVE ON HAND
Elizabeth says you should always have the following ingredients available: good olive oil, a type of acid (i.e. vinegar and/or lemon, tomato), good quality salt and pepper, a type of protein (chicken is always easy), starch, fresh herb, fresh vegetables (greens -you can steam and non-green - like tomatoes – can be combined with eggs). These ingredients are available at any local store and don’t cost a lot. It’s important to choose the right, key ingredients that are versatile as opposed to many ingredients. For example, soy sauce can be good in other dishes besides just Asian recipes. Elizabeth also says when you are considering ingredients to buy and recipes to cook; think of the basic flavors you like. There doesn’t have to be a lot of ingredients, and they don’t have to be very expensive. According to Elizabeth, you can never go wrong with eggs, pasta, and cheese.
DELICIOUS, EASY, FAMILY-FRIENDLY MEALS – ON A BUDGET
The dishes Elizabeth will be sharing are: Chicken Cacciatore (demo), White Bean Dip, Salad Compose, Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry, Spaghetti with Pesto, Glazed Carrots with Hazelnuts, and Carrot Cake. These dishes are with readily accessible ingredients. With the Pork and Vegetable Stir Fry: pork is a healthy white meat, colorful, easy, inexpensive, you can put it over left over rice and you can use a lot of substitutions. For the Glazed Carrots with Hazelnuts: this is a festive, spring dish, not expensive, kids love carrots – hazelnuts you can buy in bulk and can last for several months so in the long run they don’t cost much.
For Chicken Cacciatore, Elizabeth says it is a very easy, fast, inexpensive, family friendly dish. It has ingredients kids love – tomato sauce (like in pizza) and chicken. It is a one-pot, no fuss dinner that makes a good number of servings. It can be made more “up-scale.” Anchovies are a secret ingredient that can add a lot of flavor. It is not a common ingredient and people shouldn’t be afraid of it. A tip Elizabeth gives is when browning chicken for this dish is the skin is the key. It is less fuss if you brown skin side down. Also, the best thing to do when browning is not to touch the food – just let it brown.
At Elizabeth’s house Chicken Cacciatore is a household favorite. She adds rosemary, bread crumbs, and puts it in the oven. She has two kids. One of them is a voracious eater and the other one is picky – both love this dish.
MORE ABOUT ELIZABETH
Elizabeth has always loved food. Her mother would cook simple dishes and Elizabeth would watch. Even as a little girl, she would make up her own recipes. They wouldn’t always taste good but she loved trying to put new dishes together. This became creatively fulfilling for her. To this day, creating recipes is not a stressful thing for Elizabeth – she finds peace in it. Elizabeth says she is not a fancy cook and she never cooks from recipes. She just finds what is in her cupboards and sees what works. She does what she can: gives food, makes food, gives recipes and cooking tips to people . It makes her feel good to feed people.
Since its debut in 2008, Elizabeth has been the Executive Director of Delish.com. Before working with Delish, she was Editor-in-Chief of Epicurious.com where she oversaw the development of all of the original content franchises for more than three years, and collaborated on the weekly programming for Epicurious TV where she was also a guest host. Some of her other noteworthy contributions were Taste Test, a weekly product comparison newsletter; Monthly Cooking Technique packages, and national restaurant reviews. In the interim, Elizabeth was the head of the food and lifestyle programs at Time Inc. Content solutions, spearheading magazines and websites for Unilever and Nestle, among others, and later she consulted on the Kraft Food and Family project for Meredith. Elizabeth spends her free time developing recipes from what’s on hand in her kitchen.
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