→ December 13, 2010
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Cookbook recommendations (plus Top Chef thoughts).

Before I get to the books (and magazine), a thought or two on last week’s Top Chef: All-Stars.

First, I found it interesting that no chef stood up for Jamie and even indicated that they understood, let alone approved of, her decision to leave for stitches on her thumb. If that’s the ethic of the kitchen, I feel like I should defer to that. And Tony Bourdain had no sympathy either. (Hat tip to Dave Cameron for pointing me to Bourdain’s blog.) Plus the stakes are even higher in this competition than they are in a restaurant kitchen.

But more importantly, how did no one ding her on bad cutting technique? Where the hell was her thumb that she ran her knife directly into it? I hate the parallel-to-the-board cut anyway because it’s dangerous, but when I must do it, my main priority is ensuring that if the knife moves forward faster than I expect, it will do nothing but slice the food I’m cutting. Fingers up. Thumbs up. Wrist angled up and sharply away from the food. If you don’t want to send Jamie home for malingering, send her home for poor knife skills.

Also, I tweeted a link earlier to the Chicago Tribune‘s interview with week 1’s unconditionally-released chef, Elia, in which she completely loses her mind and goes after Tom Colicchio. Tom’s response, while clearly dripping with disrespect, stays on point in an impressive manner – he answers the charges while keeping the deprecation subtle. It’s a model of angry writing. And as he and Bourdain and others have said, raw fish is raw fish. If it’s not meant to be raw, and it’s raw, you can’t pin that on the judges.

–

I was asked on Twitter today to suggest some cookbooks or magazines, and I haven’t updated my old list of recommendations in a while so I figured I’d throw a new post together. I tend toward more specialized cookbooks now because I’m more interested in ideas than in techniques, but I’ll start with the staples to which I keep returning even though I’ve owned some of them for years.

Joy of Cooking. The gray lady of the kitchen – still reliable if somewhat staid, with a level of completeness that few rivals can approach. If you need a recipe for a basic or common dish, it’s probably here, with clear instructions and lots of information on ingredients. I learned to cook from two sources above all others: Alton Brown and Joy. I’m partial to the 1997 edition myself, as I understand the last revision (for the book’s 75th anniversary) introduced some best-forgotten sections on semi-homemade meals while removing some of the professionally-written material that makes the ’97 version so indispensable. The new revision does include cocktail recipes, but I have The Official Harvard Student Agencies Bartending Course for that.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. You cook, and you don’t own Ratio? I don’t think I’ve added any cookbook to my collection that changed my thinking on food as much as Michael Ruhlman did in his concise, almost engineering-like book that reduces recipes to their master formulas. From biscuits to pâte à choux to stocks to custards, Ruhlman gives you the framework and lets you build up from there. If you’re like me and cook better when you understand what’s happening in the bowl or pot, you must own Ratio. And it’s just $10 on amazon.

Baking Illustrated. The one book that I can say has truly supplanted Joy, at least in its niche; if you can get past the cloying prose and descriptions of the strange substitutions they tried (“then we replaced the sour cream with motor oil … but that killed four of the testers”), the recipes are extremely reliable, and the lengthy prose does give you the insight you’ll need to know where you can tweak. Their pumpkin pie recipe remains the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever tried, and it worked perfectly the first time I made it.

Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Whole Grain Breads, and Artisan Breads Every Day. I love bread, real bread, just baked, best eaten in a day or two after which you bake some more. Reinhart helped me crack the code of good bread, and his books are tremendous references that cover many of the directions in which you might go as a baker. Artisan Breads Everyday is the beginner’s book of the collection, if you’re just getting started with the joys of autolysis and the overnight soak, while the other two books are still accessible but presume a little more skill – and they include the best pizza dough recipe I’ve ever used.

How To Cook Everything. I do not own this book, but the reviews from those of you who do have been uniformly positive, and it seems like a good companion to or – perish the thought – substitute for Joy. The author, Mark Bittman, is a longtime food writer for the New York Times who is often credited with bringing no-knead bread to the attention of the masses. (I still knead my bread, though. Even a minute of kneading makes a huge difference.)

Good Eats: The Early Years. The first of three books – I do not own the second one yet – has Alton going back through every episode of his seminal TV series and reworking recipes to address problems or user concerns, all while providing a lot of background information on each episode or the food it covers.

Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom. I do own a copy of the first part of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking … but it feels dated to me, and I’m never likely to do much classical French cooking at home. That’s just not how we eat on a day to day basis. Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom distills the core techniques and ideas from her experience in the kitchen into a slim, bright volume that I have always found far more relevant to what I might cook on a Wednesday evening. The book contains many recipes, but as with Brown, Reinhart, and Ruhlman, Child is pushing comprehension, not repetition. This was the book that pushed me to make more vinaigrettes.

For magazines, I’m partial to Fine Cooking, which takes that scientific approach of Good Eats and packs every issue full of recipes, with reference information on ingredients and tools, a card with nutrition data for every dish in that issue, and an emphasis on extensibility (such as the “nine cookies from three doughs” article from several years ago that was a staple of my Christmas cookie regimen). Of course, my subscription keeps lapsing because I’m disorganized, but this is the only cooking magazine to which I’ve subscribed since my daughter was born; I gave up on Bon Appetit because they repeated recipes and ideas, and I can’t deal with the writing in Cook’s Illustrated, which is even sillier than the writing in Baking Illustrated.

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→ November 9, 2010
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Gifts for cooks, part one.

With the holidays approaching, I’m starting to get more of this question from readers and friends: “What should I buy for my [friend/relative/s.o.] who loves to cook?” With that in mind, here’s part one of what I hope will be a series on kitchen gadgets I can recommend based on personal experience. Nothing on here is over $30 – I can do a more expensive list if anyone wants it – and I use all of these items regularly in my kitchen. Where possible, I’m recommending the exact make and model I own. If not, I’ll make that clear right away.

8-Inch Chef’s Knife

This knife is Cooks Illustrated‘s recommendation, and those of you who have bought it on my past recommendations, but you should know that I do not own this particular knife – I own a Henckels chef’s knife that I received as a gift but that runs about $100, and while I love it, there’s no reason for me to recommend it over a $28 knife that does the job just as well. You must own a good chef’s knife if you intend to cook; I tried to cook with a cheap one that we received in a knife set at our wedding and cut myself at least a half-dozen times inside of two years, while I don’t think I’ve cut myself five times in ten years since I received this knife as a gift.

I do own a BladeSafe for my chef’s knife, a simple, safe plastic holder that not only keeps the knife safe in a drawer but makes shipping or transporting it much easier. We’ve often gone to friends’ houses for holidays or other big dinners where I’ll offer to cook something, and there’s no good way to wrap or protect a knife en route other than a BladeSafe or the competing KnifeSafe option.

Your friend/relative already has a chef’s knife? If he or she is a meatatarian, consider this Henckels boning knife, which I do own and use often. It’s the best tool for breaking down a whole chicken, and is good for deboning tough cuts of meat, such as separating a short rib from its bone, two things I’ve done with this knife in the last five days.

Hand-held Mandoline Slicer

I have that model, made by Kyocera and sold in several colors with red, for some reason, about a buck cheaper than the other options. I’d actually lost track of it in our house in Massachusetts as it ended up buried in the back of a cabinet, but rediscovered it when we moved – that has easily been the best part of this process, realizing that I owned things I should have been using for the last, oh, five to nine years – and have found myself reaching for it more and more often. It’s lightweight and the ceramic blade will never require sharpening. Best application so far has been for shallots: Mincing a shallot for a vinaigrette or a beurre blanc is a pain in the neck, and it cracks me up when I see TV chefs (America’s Test Kitchen is the biggest violator) try to mince a shallot like it’s just a miniature onion. I use this slicer to create very thin sheets of the shallot, then stack them roughly on the cutting board and go over them twice with a chef’s knife. No, Tom Colicchio might not approve of the uneven pieces, but this ain’t craftsteak and I’m not cooking anything for 24 hours. For my purposes it creates a perfect mince, saves time, and is safer than trying to execute the classic three-cut technique for an onion on a shallot.

And while you’re at it, you could add a pair of cut-resistant Kevlar gloves, since, as Alton Brown pointed out in the last episode of Good Eats, the hand guards that come with these home slicers are about as useful as a utility infielder who can’t play shortstop.

Box Grater

The model I own is no longer available, and it didn’t come with that handy little tub at the bottom to catch whatever you’re grating, although I’ve found either a flexible cutting board or a large piece of waxed paper does the trick. I use mine at least five times a week, usually for grating hard or semi-soft cheeses. I’ve found nothing faster except maybe the food processor, and that can’t get Parmiggiano-Reggiano as fine as a box grater can. If you don’t want this exact model, make sure you get one with a strong, sturdy handle, and at least three different sizes of holes on the various sides of the grater. (I also own a three-sided grater as a backup in case the first one is in the dishwasher.)

Instant-Read Thermometer

I own lots of thermometers – a fridge thermometer (check your nearest hardware store; Fry’s sells them too), an oven thermometer ($3!), a candy/frying thermometer, a digital probe thermometer for roasting – but this $9 gadget is so simple and handy that I use it every day. It’s ideal for measuring the temperature of the milk I steam for espresso drinks, and small and unobtrusive enough to use when measuring an egg foam in the top of a double boiler for buttercream, genoise, or zabaglione. I bought a second one just to have a spare on hand for when my first one dies, but even though I see a few amazon reviews say the device stopped working right away and even though I’ve dropped it in water and in milk (and probably worse), it still works.

Silpat Baking Sheet

I own two of these and keep them in the half-sheet pans I bought from a now-defunct restaurant supply store in Belmont, Massachusetts. Silpat sheets are made of silicone and make any sheet pan a nonstick pan, meaning you can bake on the sheets without greasing the pan or using parchment paper. (I do love parchment paper, but why use more than you have to when you can buy a Silpat, never have to cut the paper to fit, and maybe save a tree?) It’s great for cookies, biscuits, and meringues, and Alton – I’d like to think we’re on a first name basis, even though he never returns my calls – uses his for candy-making. They sell other sizes but I only have this one.

Potato Ricer

Bit of a unitasker, but you can’t make great mashed potatoes without it. I’ve tried. A wire potato masher is great for making guacamole, where uneven texture is desirable, but leaves potatoes too chunky. Grid mashers are even less effective. Anything electric, like a stick blender, will make the potatoes gummy. My only complaint about using a ricer is that you have to work fast with the hot material, but I haven’t found a better way.

(I do own a stick blender and use it often, but I don’t love my model, and it’s no longer available. I’m not sure which one to recommend.)

Microplane Grater/Zester

If amazon is to be believed, I’ve had mine for at least seven years, and it’s still as sharp as it was the day I got it. It’s ideal for zesting a lemon (those tiny “zester” tools are horrid), grating fresh nutmeg (because you would never buy it ground, right?), or grating small amounts of hard cheeses like Parmiggiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. Of all the items on this list, this is the one I’ve given most often as a gift.

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→ September 21, 2010
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Top Chef, season 7.

Sorry for the long delay between posts, but the move, which went reasonably smoothly*, has still been a colossal ass-kicking. Not only are we unpacking, but we have all our stuff in one place for the first time in … well, maybe ever, since we had a fairly full basement back in Massachusetts and a storage space with some boxes that had been there for five years. Since we started the unpacking process, we’ve donated at least six bankers’ boxes full of books, a lot of clothes and fabric, and an old laser printer to Savers, and we’re not done yet – so clearly, we had way too much stuff.

*I define “smoothly” as “the pizza stone, espresso machine, and rum collection all made it intact.” My wife may view it differently. Anyway having DirecTV come the day of the move to get us set up turned out great, since by that night we had the HD-DVR already recording shows.

I did catch the Top Chef finale last week as well as the first episode of Top Chef: Desserts. I’ve seen a fair amount of hand-wringing over Kevin’s upset win in Top Chef, and on some level I can sympathize – in effect, the team with the third-best record (of the three finalists) won the World Series. But as I argued loudly in 2006, the best team doesn’t always win the World Series, and winning the World Series does not make that team the best. Kevin may or may not have been the best chef of the final three, but he clearly finished ahead of Ed and had a good case to finish ahead of Angelo, and under the rules of the competition, that makes him Top Chef.

Ed’s final offerings were extremely disappointing. I’m unclear whether he completely farmed out dessert or had some input into what his sous (Ilan) was making, but that was as complete a whiff as you should ever see in a final challenge – he served sticky toffee pudding, an outstanding dessert that (for me) transcends ordinary cake, but there’s a recipe for the thing in the back of Baking Illustrated, and most Whole Foods sell a very solid microwavable version from the Sticky Toffee Pudding Company. I know he used fleur de sel, but salt and caramel isn’t exactly an inventive combination. I didn’t really see a chilled corn soup as the sort of cutting-edge cooking I’d want to see in a Top Chef finale, and I just have to take the judges’ word for it that his fish dish was too complicated and that he overcooked his duck. I will say that duck can move from perfectly cooked to inedible in a short period of time.

Angelo getting sick provided the drama the producers seemed desperate to inject into this season (coughpeapureecough), but also raised a question for me of whether he completed enough of the work to win the title. It was a lose/lose situation – if he’d won, there would be legitimate complaints that he skipped a day of work the other chefs put in, and if he lost, there’s the question of whether he lost because he got sick. The tart cherry “palate cleanser” was incredibly bizarre – palate cleansers usually aren’t sweet, and certainly not sweet and acidic – but the way he flubbed the first dish shocked me, since a pork belly char siu bao should be right in his wheelhouse. The meringue was also just weird; it was as if Angelo couldn’t taste how sweet some of these items were, so he wasn’t bothered by the high sugar content.

From episode one, Angelo came off poorly on camera between the steady arrogance (doesn’t bother me if the man can really cook) and the increasingly emotional, even erratic, behavior, but he was the closest thing this season had to a high-quality chef who pushed the envelope with many of his dishes. He’s no Voltaggio brother, but in a thinner pool, he stood out to me all season.

Whatever the reason for Angelo’s mediocre performance in the finale, it does seem like Kevin out-cooked him, and his quartet of dishes had its weakest link up front (the vegetable terrine … seriously? A terrine? What’s next, Kevin – a fondue pot? You can take that terrine and shove it up your aspic) and finished very strongly, with a dessert that the judges treated as revolutionary but looked to me like it was slightly clever but just well-executed. He didn’t botch anything major and left the judges with strong impressions of the dishes they had most recently from him, which doesn’t match our general impressions of what should make a Top Chef … but it’s not like we tasted the food, either, so I’m really hesitant to call them out the way I’m going to call the voters out when Felix Hernandez finishes 4th in the AL Cy Young voting.

Overall, a disappointing season, one where I felt like I didn’t learn as much about food as I did the previous year. Great cooking shows should either teach you fundamentals or get you to think about ingredients differently, and both Voltaggio brothers did that, while no one this season did. Kenny was our best hope, as he went for crazy flavor combinations, but when the judges told him repeatedly to edit his dishes and he didn’t do it, he was destined for an early exit.* I thought the judges had really fallen for Tiffany’s cooking, and she seemed to execute at a very high level until her last episode, but did she ever push the envelope with anything she produced? In hindsight, I think the answer is “no.”

*Also worth noting: The stronger teams on paper in this year’s Top Chef Restaurant Wars episode and the two-team episode of the current season of Project Runway both got smoked by the underdogs.

As for Top Chef: Desserts, as someone who likes cooking desserts even more than I like cooking savory foods, I’m glad to see the sequestering of desserts into their own show, and we already have seen some Voltaggio-like offerings from Seth, who works with a complex, full flavor palate and is pretty clearly unafraid to use it.

Gail Simmons gets her chance to look more beautiful without Padma Laskhmi next to her, and so far they haven’t sabotaged her with ridiculous clothing. Her delivery as a host didn’t work for me in the first episode, though; when she walked in to announce the twist to the quickfire, her “did you really think it would be that easy” came off as obnoxious, even taunting, when they were throwing a pretty nasty wrench into the works for the chefs. Picture Tom Colicchio delivering the same line as a throwaway – “Come on, did you think it would that easy?” – making it seem like a joke that the chefs are in on, a sort of, “Yeah, you know, it’s Top Chef, we like screwing with you” way. I don’t think Gail was trying to taunt anyone, but her delivery was that of a host who’s focused on seeming host-like instead of being charismatic.

I commented on Twitter that the preview of the rest of the season made it look like the show would be a cross between Top Chef and Project Runway, which wasn’t meant as a comment on how, er, fabulous the cast is but on how much more inter-chef drama they showed in the previews. Not to steal a line from Alton, but I’m just here for the food, and I hope they don’t edit in too much of the personality stuff at a cost of showing and talking about the dishes and the techniques at work.

Obligatory ESPN note: I’ll resume regular writing this week, with one piece scheduled for Tuesday and blog items probably five of the next six days, after which I’ll start some instructional league coverage. I will be doing playoff preview pieces for the eight teams that qualify, but they’ll be a little shorter this year so I don’t have to miss instructs while I’m living in the area. I’m also scheduled for a chat on Thursday.

As for the dish, I finished John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener last week – short review to come in a day or two, I hope – and just started Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.

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→ April 8, 2010
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Pressure-cooker carnitas with blue corn pancakes.

Pressure cookers cook foods faster by utilizing the fact that water boils at a higher temperature when it’s under higher pressure; the typical pressure cooker works at 15 psi, a pressure level at which water boils at 250 degrees. For stews or other long braises, this can reduce cooking times by 75% or more, yet you don’t lose the braise’s power to break down connective tissue or extract gelatin (or its precursors) from bones, and of all my pressure-cooking escapades only beans come out substantially different when cooked under pressure. (It causes beans to pop out of their skins, which is fine if your intent is to mash or puree them.)

Cooking with pressure requires no special skills or other equipment beyond the cooker itself, and unlike your mother’s (or grandmother’s) pressure cooker, today’s models aren’t likely to explode and leave your dinner on the ceiling. The model I use is no longer in production; this Presto 6-quart model seems to be the best starter cooker available, although I can’t tell from the item description if it has two pressure settings or just one.

Somehow, I got the idea the other day to try to make carnitas, which I had often in Phoenix and now miss, via the pressure cooker. Pork carnitas refers to a pork butt (really the shoulder), the same cut you would smoke to make barbecued pulled pork, but braised low and slow in a slightly salty liquid with aromatics and spices, especially cumin. A quick Google search for recipes that might tell me how long to cook the meat turned up this recipe, which didn’t require much modification. After thirty minutes under pressure, the chunks of pork held their shape but could pull apart easily with a fork, and the oven finish brought out the flavors you’d ordinarily get by browning the meat before braising or roasting it. You could take the meat, wrap it in a tortilla with some rice, beans, and salsa, and make a burrito; you could serve it with guacamole and rice as a main course; or you could do what I did: Toss a bunch of it on some blue corn pancakes as a sort of Mexican/New Mexican take on chicken and waffles. A recipe for those pancakes follows.

Pressure-cooker carnitas

One 3-4 lb pork butt (shoulder), trimmed of exterior fat and cut into large (two-inch-ish) chunks
1.5 Tbsp salt
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp ancho chili powder
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 bay leaf
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeds and stem removed, chopped
3 cloves garlic, bruised

1. In a large bowl, toss the pork with the salt and seasonings.
2. Add the pork, bay leaf, and aromatics to a pressure cooker with enough water to cover – it took just over a liter for me to cover 3.3 pounds of meat.
3. Close the cooker, turn the valve to its maximum setting, and put over high heat until the cooker begins hissing loudly. Reduce the heat to bring the cooker to a faint hiss and cook for 30 minutes. With about ten minutes to go, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
4. Release the pressure according to the cooker’s manual – usually that means turning the dial down a level at a time – and remove the pork. Transfer it to an oven-safe skillet or rimmed sheet pan and lightly press each piece with a fork to expose more surface area to the oven’s heat. Re-season with more salt, cumin, etc.
5. Roast the pork with a very thin layer of either the braising liquid or hot water for about 15 minutes, until much of the exposed surface has turned brown. Do not let the pork burn or dry out – check it at the ten-minute mark. Serve.

Blue corn pancakes

I find these sweet without sugar because of the corn, but if you want to make these more breakfasty, you could add 1 Tbsp of sugar, agave nectar, or maple syrup to the mix.

2 cups blue corn flour, preferably whole grain (I like Arrowhead Mills, available at Whole Foods)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup AP flour
3/4 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder (more if you want thicker pancakes, but for the pork, I like them thinner)
4 cups milk, 2% to whole
2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter, melted and cooled slightly
4 eggs

1. Mix the flours, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
2. Whisk the milk, butter, and eggs until well combined. Pour over the dry ingredients and beat just until moistened with no visible lumps. Cook on electric griddle or skillet as you would regular pancakes, on one side until brown at the edges, then flip and cook roughly half as long on the second side. If the pancakes aren’t cooking through, you can thin the batter slightly with a little more milk, or reduce the heat on the griddle.

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→ February 24, 2010
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Why I cook.

Returning to the subject of Michael Ruhlman, the passionate and blunt food writer behind Ratio, he posted a mini-essay on his blog last week titled “Why I Cook,” giving his reasons and urging his readers to do the same. (This comment from one of his readers is alone worth the click, although it’s quite sad.) Here, therefore, is my answer to the question of why I cook.

I cook, first and foremost, to eat. When I was in graduate school, my wife was working 40 hours a week as a preschool teacher, which, some of you probably know, is exhausting work. I, meanwhile, was done every day by 3 pm, sometimes sooner, and generally didn’t have much homework to do, so I thought it was the least I could do to take over the cooking duties. And, in hindsight, I was pretty bad at it. But we ate, and we ate cheaply. That still holds today, even though I can splurge on more expensive ingredients – although I now understand the value of those ingredients, and when and where it’s worth the splurge and which corners one can safely cut for home cooking.

My life has changed dramatically in the eleven years since I’ve graduated, as I now have a demanding job but a commensurate income and at least have the excuse to slack on cooking. I continue to do so because…

* I want the control over what goes into our bodies, especially since the first-person plural now includes my three-year-old daughter. I know what we’re eating, and I know that we’re limiting her intake of pesticides, high fructose corn syrup, preservatives, or needless quantities of salt. I know the bread we eat is 100% whole wheat, because I made it. I know the beef we eat was grass- or grain-fed, and that the sea bass I purchase (rarely) came from a sustainable fishery, because I bought it and cooked it myself.

* All three of us have to monitor our diets to limit our intake of one or more ingredients or nutrients. For me, it’s lactose, and a handful of other foods that my stomach doesn’t like. For my wife, it’s sugar and a few minor food allergies. For my daughter, it’s protein, so we’re raising her as a vegetarian, and are glad that she hasn’t quite made the bacon/pig connection yet. (I did suggest we name the stuffed-animal pig we bought her “Smokey,” but my wife called that “twisted.”)

* It lets me spend my calories where I want to. I’m not on a diet, nor am I a rabid calorie-counter, but I will put on weight if I completely ignore what I’m eating, something that happens to many people in my line of work because we’re on the road so much. When I cook, I can stick with lean meals and use those extra calories on dessert, or on a big mess of waffles and sausage on a Sunday morning.

* I can vote with my mouth. Organic food isn’t for everyone because it’s expensive, and while I wish organic farms could feed everyone today, we’re not there yet. I also know that the more that people like me who are not rabid environmentalists but care enough about food safety, the environment, and the rights of farmers and laborers in the food supply chain choose to buy organic or sustainable or fair-trade products, the more that that section of the industry can grow.

* You can’t beat the flavors of fresh food. I can buy and cook the same day, and if I time it right, I might get a locally-grown vegetable or fruit from ground to table in a day or two. We pick strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries every summer and I put them up in jams so that I can still get that unbeatable taste of summer in the middle of January. I grow herbs in my backyard because pesto Genovese is sweeter and more potent when you picked the basil 20 minutes before putting it in the food processor.

* And, most of all, I cook because I love it. There is something magical about taking ingredients, applying heat and a little know-how, and producing a dinner to feed your family. There’s a tremendous reward in bringing a dessert or a basket of bread to a party and seeing people enjoy the food you crafted with your hands – regardless of whether you ever receive a “thanks” or a “wow.” And, to me, food just tastes better when I earned it in the kitchen.

Any one or two of these reasons would be sufficient for me to continue cooking, but all of them together have made it a part of my routine that borders on obsession, to the point where I miss it after too many days on the road – the sight of bright-green basil or deep red roasted peppers, smell of onions caramelizing in the pan, the feel of bread dough that just needs a few seconds of kneading, the sound of meat hitting the surface of a hot pan, and the taste of all of the above.

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→ February 23, 2010
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Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio + whole wheat pancakes.

Ratios liberate you – when you know the ratio and some basic techniques, then you can really start to cook.

That’s the final line of Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, a cookbook that’s also part anti-cookbook in the way it attempts to separate you from your 1/8-tsp-this-and-1/2-cup-that recipes by addressing the underlying relationships between ingredients that make the recipes work. It’s worth buying even if you never get out of the Doughs and Batters section that opens the book, including master formulas for bread, pasta, pie crust, biscuits (his are rolled, but unrolled they are as tender as can be), cookies, pâte à choux, pancakes, muffins, fritters, crepes, and more. I’ve adapted his master pancake recipe to use 100% whole wheat flour* below, but if you do decide to buy the book, I suppose you might want to delve into later sections on stocks, roux, brines, vinaigrettes, hollandaise, and custards. I’m just saying the first section is the part I’m wearing out.

*I love white-flour pancakes, but let’s face it – you feel like crap after eating a whole stack of them. Pancakes have a high glycemic load, and good ones contain a fair amount of fat, so to me, they function more like dessert than breakfast. If I’m making pancakes for the family for breakfast, it needs to be a kind that won’t put us all in a food coma for the rest of the day. It reminds me of a line in the very silly too-good-to-be-true travel memoir Pasquale’s Nose, where a crazy old man has just one sentence to say: “Nobody ever feels good after eating pancakes.”

Whole wheat pancakes

Ruhlman’s recipe is identical to this one save an extra half-ounce of flour, since he’s using white all-purpose flour instead of whole wheat. These freeze and reheat well – cool completely on a rack, freeze in a flat layer (if you stack them in a bag before they freeze, you’ll need a jackhammer to separate them), then reheat in the microwave for about 40 seconds, or reheat for 30 seconds, top with cold syrup, and give it another 10 seconds to heat it through.

Wet ingredients:
8 ounces milk (anything but skim)
2 large eggs
2 ounces (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry ingredients

7.5 ounces (by weight) whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

1. Preheat your griddle. It has to be completely hot or the first batch of pancakes won’t brown.
2. Whisk the wet ingredients together in a bowl, making sure the egg is thoroughly broken up.
3. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a second bowl.
4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir briefly to fully hydrate the flour and eliminate any huge lumps. Small lumps are okay.
5. Lightly grease the griddle and immediately begin pouring the batter on to the griddle once any sizzling (of butter or bacon fat) has stopped.
6. When the bubbling on the top becomes firm and the bottom is nicely browned, flip and cook for roughly half the time it took for the first side to cook.

These pancakes are strong enough to handle anything you’d fold into ordinary pancake batter, but I haven’t found a better partner for the nutty, grainy, slightly cardboardy taste of whole wheat than sweet blueberries.

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→ January 17, 2010
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Yeast-raised Belgian Waffles.

I’ve mentioned before that the problem with “Belgian waffles” as currently served by most American restaurants that offer them is that they are only “Belgian” in shape – it’s a regular waffle batter poured into an iron with deeper ridges, creating a dense, greasy, cakey waffle that bears no resemblance to the lighter, crispier waffles that earn the Belgian moniker. I’ve even seen recipes in reputable cookbooks that make no allowance for the different shape of Belgian waffle irons and assume that your straight-up chemically-leavened waffle batter will do the trick. Of course, it won’t.

It’s not clear to me whether there is a single waffle style that qualifies as an authentic Belgian waffle, but everything I’ve read points to the inclusion of one of two methods of introducing lightness into the final batter: yeast or an egg white foam. This recipe, adapted from The 1997 Joy of Cooking, uses both to create a waffle with a light texture and crispy exterior and that brings the virtue of on-the-fly extensibility.

A quick note on equipment: The model I have, from Hamilton Beach, has been discontinued – I got it four or five years ago for $10 on clearance. It has a 7-inch diameter and nonstick grids; they’re not removable, which does make cleanup tricky, but for ten bucks I wasn’t going to be picky. The heat setting runs from 1 to 5, and I found somewhere between 3 and 4 was perfect for this recipe. If you decide to buy a Belgian waffle iron, look for nonstick grids and a variable temperature setting; I vote for a circular grid since it’s easier to spread batter on a circle than on adjacent squares. Always preheat your iron before the first waffle, and after removing each waffle close the lid and allow it to come back up to temperature.

3 cups milk, warmed to 105-110 degrees
3 eggs, separated
11 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm
1 Tbsp vegetable oil*
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour*
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast*
a pinch of cream of tartar

1. Whisk the egg yolks, butter, oil, and 1/2 cup of the milk together in a bowl.
2. Whisk in the sugar, salt, and extract.
3. In another bowl, stir the yeast into the two flours.
4. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the remaining milk (3 installments of flour, interspersed with two installments of milk), whisking thoroughly to combine each addition.
5. In yet a third bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until you achieve soft peaks. Fold the foam into the master batter. Seal with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature for about an hour, until roughly doubled, although any healthy rise will suffice.
6. Preheat your waffle iron about 45 minutes after you finished making the batter.
7. Stir the batter to deflate it, then pour enough batter to make one waffle on to the hot iron’s grid. For my 7″ iron, it took about 3/4 cup of batter; Joy says about 1/2 cup, which probably assumes a 6″ grid. Use an offset spatula or heat-proof silicone spatula to spread the batter quickly to the edges, then close the iron and cook until the steaming starts to subside and the waffle is golden brown; this took about two and a half minutes on my iron. Serve immediately; hold in a 200 degree oven; or cool on wire racks before freezing.

* Notes:

  • The vegetable oil will help keep the waffles from drying out. It’s a tiny sacrifice of flavor for greater shelf life.
  • I’m sure this recipe will work fine if you use 4 cups of AP flour, but I like whole wheat flour for both its flavor and nutritional benefit. Not that these waffles would qualify as health food. Pastry flour is lower in protein than regular whole wheat flour and is usually ground more finely.
  • Instant yeast is infinitely superior to the crap they sell in packets as “active dry” or “rapid-rise” yeast. Instant yeast lasts longer – I’ve taken instant yeast that was in the fridge for over two years and baked successfully with it. It doesn’t require you to bloom it separately in liquid. And it uses less packaging than other kinds. Whole Foods sells a brick of the stuff for $5, so if you use yeast even a dozen times a year it’ll save you money. Just dump the contents of the bag into an airtight container and stick it in your refrigerator.
  • If you decide at any point you want to add something to the batter – nuts, berries, dried coconut, chocolate chips (I’d grease the hell out of the iron before that one, though), even crumbled bacon – you can just drop it into the master bowl or even into one waffle’s worth of batter, stir quickly, and pour. Unlike a chemically-leavened batter, this one bounces back quite well from agitation and the resulting waffle won’t be heavier or denser for the intrusion.
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→ December 7, 2009
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Bryan V’s short ribs, take one.

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I took a shot at Bryan Voltaggio’s short rib dish from the Top Chef semifinal, where he braised them with figs and then used the figs in the finishing “glaze” (which may have been more of a sauce). Several of you asked for the recipe for it, but I wouldn’t say what I did was quite ready for the dish – I need to alter it and preferably make it twice successfully before posting it. However, since you asked, here’s a rundown of what I intend to do the next time.

The actual cooking of the ribs themselves went pretty well. I started with just over two pounds but probably could have gone up to three without too much alteration. I deboned them (but froze the bones to make a little stock later on) and trimmed the excess fat; seasoned them with salt, pepper, and crumbled dried rosemary (my own – fresh rosemary in a dry kitchen for a week is dry enough to use here); then browned them on all sides in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.

After that, I drained all but about 2 tablespoons of the fat and sweated one diced yellow onion, two diced carrots, three diced celery stalks, a smashed and chopped clove of garlic, salt, pepper, and another pinch of rosemary, scraping the pan bottom as they cooked. So far, I haven’t deviated from my basic short rib technique.

Next, I returned to the ribs to the pan and added ten dried figs that I’d halved, a cup of red wine, about ¾ of a cup of chicken stock, and two bay leaves. I brought it to a boil, covered it, and stuck it in a 350 degree oven for two hours.

At about 90 minutes, I had to add more braising liquid to the pot as the pan was starting to get dry. Alcohol, of course, boils at a much lower temperature than water, and I managed to cook too much of it off too soon. Next time around, I’m going to drop the temperature to at least 300 degrees and start with three cups of a half-and-half mixture of red wine and stock. (For the wine, I went with a very cheap Italian merlot and it worked just fine, although it met my desire for a wine without too much character so well that drinking it was a somber experience.)

Even with the loss of the liquid, the ribs reached the desired fall-apart texture and they acquired a faint tangy-sweet taste from the figs and wine. I took the pot from the oven, cranked it up to 450 degrees, threw the ribs into a roasting pan, and browned them for ten minutes.

The lost braising liquid also meant that I didn’t have much of a sauce at the end of the braising process, and pureeing what was in the pot produced a paste that had exactly the flavor I was looking for – strong, hint of sweet, more than a hint of acidity, a little earthy, very savory – but the wrong texture, even after I thinned it out with some added boiled stock. Next time, I’ll strain what’s in the pot, pressing the solids, and then thicken what comes out with some of the pureed solids until I reach the thick but pourable consistency I want.

This method sits on an extensible foundation that looks like this:

  • Trim, season with salt/pepper/herb, and brown
  • Add aromatics with more of the same herb
  • Braise in stock, wine, beer, or some combination of liquids
  • Re-brown at a higher temperature

You can use just about any dried herb; I’ve done it many times with thyme and always had success. Too much alcohol in the braise will result in too little liquid before the process is through, so if you want to use wine (or spirits) cut them with stock or broth or even water if you must. (I admit to wondering whether ginger beer has too much sugar for this task, as Dark-and-Stormy Short Ribs sound, in theory, quite appealing. The resulting glaze would probably be to die for.)

Removing the bones before braising is the key to making successful short ribs in my experience. They cook more quickly without the bones, and removing the bones means there’s a lot less fat in the pan at the end of the braise – you don’t that fat in your sauce, and you don’t want the ribs to braise in that fat unless you’re trying to make a short rib confit. If you debone them, brown them, and don’t overheat them during the braise, your finished product should be very good even if you flub the details as I did.

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→ December 3, 2009
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Pops Restaurant & the Top Chef semifinal.

Klawchat today at 1 pm. I’m on Rumor Central today talking Donavan Tate’s broken jaw and Polanco to the Phils. Top Chef spoilers at the bottom of this piece.

I had dinner with a friend last night at Pops Restaurant in Boston’s South End, a small place that serves fine-dining-caliber food with prices one level down from what fine-dining places in the South End or Back Bay would charge. I’d recommend it, as the meal was well above-average despite some small issues.

Once I saw the crispy confit duck on the menu, there was no shot I’d order anything else, as duck confit is probably my favorite meat dish and it’s not something I’ve made at home. The duck was close to perfect, with crispy skin with a little bit of spice (I think five-spice, but there was too little for me to say for sure) and outstanding texture; duck skin needs very little seasoning since it has so much flavor of its own. The meat inside was perfect, tender and moist, falling apart like a braised pork shank. The duck comes with a mixture of asparagus, wild rice gnocchi, and a ‘red wine chocolate sauce’ that was astringent and overly salty and that didn’t do much to complement the duck; duck and rice do go well together, but something like a risotto with asparagus would have worked better. The side also contained lardons that were excruciatingly salty – and really, when have you ever known me to say a bad word about any form of bacon? – and weren’t listed on the menu, which, given how many people don’t eat pork for religious reasons, is a little customer-unfriendly. We also ordered a side of French fries at my friend’s suggestion – they’re lightly seasoned with herbs (thyme and rosemary?) and perfectly fried with virtually no grease, reminiscent of the fries at the defunct Back Bay restaurant Excelsior, which made probably the best fries I’ve ever had and served them with a rosemary aioli.

We started with the truffled butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter and fried egg; the egg was more of a garnish but the ravioli were excellent, just a little too soft, with the squash allowed to come through as the star of the dish. The arugula around the dish seemed like an afterthought but, softened slightly in the brown butter (which was mixed with a little pasta water), it was worth fishing out.

Service was good, not great; the waitress brought me the wrong beer, and it took over an hour from seating to the arrival of the entrees, although I imagine that would have been shorter without the appetizer. On the plus side, I had started at the bar and ordered sparkling water, and forgot about it when my friend arrived, but the bartender brought it back to the table for me after realizing I’d disappeared. The restaurant has two sections; we sat in the back, which is quieter but dimmer and lacks the visual appeal of the tables in the front near the bar and kitchen. The limes from the bar were dried-out, which isn’t a big deal for me but raises a small question about quality control in the back of the house.

—

Quick thoughts on last night’s Top Chef semifinal:

* Is Padma trying to be condescending, or is it just that her natural way of speaking comes off that way? My wife said last night, “I can’t picture her as a mother.” Growing up with a mother who is hot, famous, and sounds incredibly disappointed at the most minor of things is a recipe for a lifetime of therapy, no?

* We need to get Gail Simmons on “What Not to Wear.” It was like someone decided to add melons to the crush party menu. I feel bad for her – it’s not like she’s unattractive, but that dress – and it’s not the first – was not working in her favor.

* Have to try Bryan’s idea of cooking figs with short ribs and then pureeing them with the braising liquid to make a sauce. I’m thinking a dry red wine with good body but not too much fruitiness, but since I know jack about wine, I’m open to suggestions from the oenophiles in the audience.

* Jennifer undercut herself by, in effect, apologizing for making duck confit instead of grilling it. Play it up, talk about how you improvised, you love how it came out, spin it positively. Telling the judges you wish you’d done it another way isn’t going to make them like your food more. Of course, there’s a limit, since Kevin’s line about the undercooked didn’t go over well.

* This elimination was predictable, although I wonder (again) if the decisions are based on the dishes in that specific challenge or on the broader body of work. The weakest remaining chef was sent home; the three best from when I picked up the show about six episodes ago are going to the finals. I’m still sticking with my pick – Bryan.

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→ November 23, 2009
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Macaroni & Cheese with Gruyère and Thyme.

Before I get to the recipe, I wanted to point out that Amazon.com is selling a one-year subscription to ESPN the Magazine for $5 this week. I believe that this will also get you a year of Insider.

—

This is my reboot of this recipe; since I can’t abide cheddar cheese, I decided to make it with Gruyère, a milder cheese that’s also one of the best melting cheeses I’ve ever used.

Gruyère also happens to be the classic cheese at the heart of a sauce mornay, and mac and cheese is little more than cooked pasta covered in a sauce mornay with extra cheese and baked till semi-firm and golden brown on down. A sauce mornay is built on a sauce Béchamel*, one of the “mother sauces” and a somewhat secret ingredient in dishes like lasagna. A Béchamel starts with a flour-butter roux to which one adds milk (the traditional method is to steep an onion studded with a bay leaf and a few cloves in the milk first) and then simmers very gently until thickened. Add Gruyère and Parmiggiano-Reggiano to a Béchamel and you have a mornay.

*So one of the Food and Wine pavilions at Epcot this year had some dish served in a Béchamel sauce, and while I was walking by, I overheard a female tourist from somewhere in the northeast yell to her family that the dish was in a “buh-KAM-el” sauce. Granted, not everyone knows what a Béchamel is or how to say it, but if you saw that word and didn’t know it, how far down the list of potential pronunciations would “buh-KAM-el” be? Twentieth? Eightieth? A hundred and twelfth?

Since Gruyère is a French and Swiss-French cheese I went for one of the Frenchiest herbs I could think of, thyme, which pairs very well with Gruyère, and added parsley for some background music. Tarragon is probably the other herb I most associate with French cooking, but it’s too assertive for this dish in my opinion, and it’s more of a spring herb than a fall/winter comfort food flavor. Chives might work. I guess what I’m saying is that you can and should play with the herbs in this dish, just bearing in mind that the cheese flavor is on the soft side and you don’t want the finished product to taste like grass or licorice.

I’ve tried the dish with and without bread crumbs in the topping and I prefer it without, but it’s just a matter of taste. I also cut the mustard (!) in half to keep it in the background; it’s also a very French flavor but not everyone likes a mustardy smack in the mouth.

Whole Foods has organic whole wheat elbows under the 365 label for $1.99. I found a Swiss Gruyère at Trader Joes for $9.99 a pound; a roughly 10-11 ounce brick should give you enough for two batches.

1 1/2 cups elbow-shaped pasta (whole wheat works fine; you can try other shapes but it may alter the cooking time in the oven)
3 T unsalted butter
3 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp dry mustard
2 cups milk, anything but skim
1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 cups (about 5 ounces) grated Gruyère cheese (nothing too fancy like “cave aged for 20 years” or anything)
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp Parmiggiano-Reggiano
salt/pepper to tastes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a saucier (if you have one) or deep skillet or sauté pan, melt the butter and allow to foam but not brown. Add the flour and whisk constantly until a small paste forms. Add the mustard.
3. Gradually add the milk (you may choose to heat it first for faster cooking), still whisking constantly to create a smooth liquid.
4. Allow the mixture to simmer gently for 5-7 minutes until it’s visibly thickened and coats the back of a spoon. Add the herbs, then begin adding the Gruyère in small handfuls, whisking each addition into the sauce until it’s fully integrated. (If you add it all at once and whisk, you will end up with a big congealed clump in the center of your whisk – a hot mess if ever there was one.) Add 1/2 cup of the Parmiggiano-Reggiano and kill the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper (white pepper works well here for aesthetic reasons).
5. Cook the pasta in several quarts of salted water and drain. You don’t want the pasta sitting and waiting for the sauce, so I usually put a small pot of water on high heat when I start the roux.
6. Grease a casserole dish and add the pasta. Pour the sauce over the pasta and toss to coat. Spread the remaining Parmiggiano-Reggiano over the top and bake until the top is golden, brown, and delicious and the center is slightly firm, 20-25 minutes, 30 if you want to be able to cut firm, stable wedges of the dish.

UPDATE: Reader Steve asked about adding leeks and/or bacon. I haven’t tried this variation, but here’s how I’d approach it:
* Chop the bacon finely and crisp in a skillet, rendering out as much fat as possible. Remove the bacon to a paper towel, then add to the casserole right before it goes in the oven.
* Pour out all but maybe 1 Tbsp of the fat from the skillet and use that to sweat the leeks. Slightly browning them is optional but would add more flavor – just don’t burn them. Add with the bacon to the mix right before baking.

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