If you’ve watched even a moment of Queer Eye, then you know Fab Five food and wine expert Antoni Porowski has more than a few culinary tricks up his sleeve. So, when we recently had the esteemed pleasure of making flatbread pizza with him (his looked so much better than ours) thanks to Boursin Cheese, it’s safe to say we learned a thing or two.
So what tips and tricks does the 35-year-old cookbook author suggest when getting down and dirty cheesy with some flatbread?
The most flavorful part of cilantro is—you guessed it—the stem. So be sure to use the whole herb when cooking. If you think cilantro tastes like soap, then that’s a whole separate issue.
Pro tip from Porowski: You can buy the notoriously expensive nuts in bulk at Costco for around $20 and store them in your freezer until you need them. Pine nuts add a satisfying crunch to an otherwise doughy flatbread.
Like pine nuts, tomatoes can add an unexpected crunch when used correctly. In this instance, Porowski suggests only using the outer shell of the tomato and storing the inside pulp to use for a sauce of some sort later.
Porowski warns that “parsley loses its flavor really quickly,” so wait to chop it until your flatbread is done and ready to nosh on.
Few things can make a meal look prettier than rainbow carrot ribbons. To up the ante, Porowski says throwing them into an ice bath will make them especially curly and visually appealing.
A big fan of “savory and sweet,” Porowski suggests drizzling honey over a flatbread when it’s fresh out of the oven to meld the ingredients together. He notes budding chefs shouldn’t add it on before the oven, as heating honey at high temperatures makes it unpasteurized and reduces its health benefits.
