When I was small and wanting to learn to cook, my mom had certain things that she was adamant about, one being that I must poke the baking potato with a sharp knife prior to baking. She would ask me if I poked them because she did not want the potatoes exploding in her oven. To this day, I still poke them. Do you poke your potatoes, is is really necessary? I recently read an article that says it is not and is really an old way of thinking.
The other nonsense....I buy San Marzano whole canned tomatoes. They are always in my pantry and I use them frequently. I drop them into the pan, they quickly cut with my cooking scissors. Last year, I watched a cooking show where the whole tomatoes were dumped into the pot to make Spanish Rice. Each person was served a pretty portion with one or two whole tomatoes. It looked nice but I kept thinking the cook was being lazy. Recently, I have seen two recipes in magazines calling for whole tomatoes, with no mention of breaking them down. Yesterday, I caught an episode of Ina Garten making a company stew which was so pretty, it had me thinking about it all day. Again, she simply dumped the whole tomatoes into the pot. I could not tell, if at the end, the tomatoes broke down. I know this is a matter of preference depending on what you are cooking, but have you ever used the tomatoes whole in something you've made?
