Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How many cook books must a man read

before you can call him a man?
And how many people must a man serve,
before you can call him a chef?

The answer, my friend
is tasted in the sauce.
The answer is tasted in the sauce.


Those words were the original lyrics to that Dylan song. Not a lot of people know that. There are a lot of food parallels in music. The original lyrics to that one Beatles song were 'Scrambled Eggs', at least according to His Majesty Sir Paul McCartney.

How many cookbooks do we own? I don't know, a lot, thirty maybe. That's nothing compare to Jesse Sheidlower, however, who owns 573 cookbooks. Apparently he just hangs out all day and throws dinner parties, kind of like a modern day Mrs. Dalloway. This guy seems pretty cool, really, his day job is editing the Oxford English dictionary. "Look here now, tool is not just a noun, its a damn verb, why, I went tooling down the road just yesterday." That's a fine life. What am I going to do today? Try to spruce up the definition of a word, or find an excuse to throw a dinner party.

Speaking of dinner parties the Times has an article about dinner parties today, called The Anti-Restaurants. The article is, unfortunately, a meandering beast, and they've buried the lead to the point where you'd think it was just an article about slaughtering a boar. Apparently an Anti-Restaurant begins as a group of people who think its more fun, and cheaper, to cook at home for friends than to drop a Benjamin per, at a restaurant. Then they start cooking so often that they split the grocery bill with the friends. Then their friends start bringing friends, and those friends start bringing friends, and suddenly, its basically a restaurant which isn't inspected by the health department, and its cheap and good, and the wine glasses are plastic, and oh yeah, you might have to chop some veggies.

I think that I went to a restaurant like that several years ago on central park west called the A-train. It certainly wasn't inspected by the health department. Although it wasn't in an apartment, it was in a hole in the wall with about 6 tables on street level. The food was good and the menu was a little off the wall, the 2 chefs were also the waitresses, it was byob, and it was cheap, and there was no sales tax.

I would never want to run an anti-restaurant, I think I'd lean more towards the Jesse Sheidlower model. He has a few favorite books, by the way, I think I'll get them. Its not often that you get a cookbook recommendation by someone who has read 573 cookbooks.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spaghetti Cat

No, not cat spaghetti, Spaghetti Cat:


Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Hominy

Hominy is corn that has first been dried, then soaked in lye in order to remove the bran and the germ. germ? bran? lye? The germ is the part that grows into the baby, the bran is essentially the hull of the kernel. I've never noticed the corn germ, personally, I'm too busy stealing its food. Lye is sodium hydroxide, sometimes known as Drain-O, other times known as Liquid Plummer. Now, don't ask me why lye doesn't kill us, I would assume that one uses a very dilute solution of NaOH in food preparation. (kids, don't try this at home, even if you use a diluted liquid plummer to soak your corn in, you'll probably end up dead, by and large). I know what you're thinking, this is some new fad food, or it was created by a biofuels manufacturer that is foisting some gasoline byproduct on an unsuspecting public. Nope. The Guatemalans have been making Hominy in this manner for over 3,300 years. You want fad-food? Try foam.

At least, this is what a little web research has taught me, because until yesterday I had no idea what Hominy was until I prepared it from scratch by opening some canned Hominy and stuffing it into my piehole. Believe me you, Hominy is good stuff, and so I will capitalize it all day long.

Hominy is famous, too, kind of. Remember Menudo? Ever wonder where they got their name? Menudo is a Mexican soup of tripe and hominy. Tripe, as you probably know, is the lining of a cow's stomach. It seems like a bad name for a band, truthfully, I guess they thought that we would like the sound of it. Menudo. Maybe we should take a lesson in marketing. What's the grossest thing we eat? Let's all move to Spain and start a band called The Hot Dogs.

Last night we had Corn & Hominy chowder. It tasted great, and the combination of Hominy with its progenitor, corn, is so wrong that its brilliant. Be sure to use fresh corn. There is no (good) substitute for corn you have removed from the cob yourself.  It was a very easy chowder to make, just chop everything and boil it gently for 15 minutes. We also made corn bread from a box. This is a meal that should be served at the Corn Palace.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Crank. It. Out.

The phone rang. I was asleep. The phone rang again. I woke up. It was Elyse, "Hey, I'm walking home from Yoga class, what should I pick up for dinner?" It was 6:15pm. I had no idea how long I'd been asleep. Was I cooking tonight? I couldn't remember. Was it Tuesday? Thursday? Yesterday? I asked Elyse to pick up a chicken, an onion, and a lime. And some greens for a side salad.

In a fresh sleep-coma I stumbled out into the living room where I picked up the latest copy of Food & Wine. The recipe that I had half-remembered was for steak, not chicken. Well, a chicken and an onion will make a nice meal. The lime can waste away in the fridge until we finally throw it out. Supports the lime growers. Kids in Africa can't survive on limes anyway.

One thing that I have never mentioned in the food blog is that if I nap 20-25 minutes I feel great. Cat Nap City. Refreshed. Mentally engorged. Any longer, and I am out for the night, nothing can wake me up. Not even an entire pot of coffee. By this time I had figured out that I must have been out for about 60-70 minutes. I got home from work at ~5, and laid down for a 20 minute nap. 99 times out of 100 I wake up in 20 minutes. But not today. I was out for the count. Slovenlyville. Dull. Mentally retarded.

Elyse arrived. I took one look at the chicken and realized that I wasn't very hungry, and the sautéed chicken with white wine and piquillo peppers that I had wanted to make wasn't going to be worth the effort. It wasn't just lack of hunger, I didn't have my faculties about me enough to prepare a meal like that. I was still determined, however, to cook. I have no idea why. Was it have been the a coma? When there?

I informed Elyse that the chicken will be for tomorrow and that we were having leftovers night. She whined a little. Spontaneously. Quietly. I like the whining because if the expectations are low, and you run out a grounder, you're Pete freakin' Rose. Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points. There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium. Thank you, Crash Davis.

I knew that we didn't have any dying quail, but I looked into the freezer. BINGO. Frozen leek & potato soup that I had previously used to make Vichysoisse, and a whole Tupperware container full of chicken livers that I had harvested over the last few weeks. Trust me, save those livers.

I started cooking. Clumsily. I unwrapped the chicken that Elyse bought because I needed its fat. I removed the fat without hurting myself but then chaos ensued. I was almost completely unable to work Saran wrap. Everytime I yanked the Saran wrap, the whole roll came out! damnit. Then, when I finally ripped a piece off it became totally enamored with itself and would not let go. It took me almost 5 minutes to wrap that bird back up. I was not in the zone. Not in the bird wrapping zone.
I hard boiled 2 eggs. Easy enough. I put the frozen leek & potato soup in a saucepan and started melting it. No problemo.

I chopped the onion. I must have that wired because it took like 15 seconds. I tossed the fat in the skillet preheated to medium, along with a little chicken skin for good measure. When the fat melted I added the livers, there were about 4 big ones, and the chopped onion. I sautéed them on high for a minute, then turned the heat down to medium and covered the pan for 10 minutes, just like Jacques had taught me.

Elyse came into the kitchen and picked up Food & Wine. "There's a recipe in here for sautéed chicken with piquillo peppers you know."
"I know, that's for tomorrow night now."

"You're obsessed with those peppers so I thought you'd make it."

"Tomorrow night, no problemo!" I could do anything tomorrow.
"This recipe is by Mario Batalli! It says here that he's from Seattle, no wonder he can't dress himself. Look at these ugly red crocs!"
I cringed, "The recipe isn't by Mario Batalli, its something that a Spanish lady taught him on his new PBS show with Gwenneth Paltrow."

"She can't cook, she just walks around Spain, looking hot and trying to make people not notice him."
There are sometimes conversations like this when I am cooking. I was holding my own tonight. No screw ups for like 10 minutes here. Dinner is going to happen. Toss the arugula with a little olive oil and red wine vinegar. Drain the livers & onion in a collander. After they cooled, cut the livers into pieces.
Elyse was still reading the article. "Mark Bittman is in the show, too."

That was pretty surprising, how many chefs does a show need? "What? I hope he does 101 ways to use Piquillo peppers in under 15 minutes."

"Michael Stipe is in it, too"

"What the hell? Now I have to see that show."
Meanwhile, I turned off the heat on the soup and melted 1 Tb butter into it. Recall, I had added cream to this same base for the Vichysoisse, and served it cold. You can do worse than having frozen leek & potato soup on hand. I put the chopped livers & onions back into the fat that had drained out of the collander. I put the eggs through the egg slicer, twice, so I had little pieces of egg, and I mixed them into the livers & onions. Violá!

I was pretty proud of this one. A salad of liver, onion, & egg along with a bowl of leek & potato soup isn't bad at all. The key is to keep your eyes open for foods that can be saved in the refrigerator for a night like this. Soups are good, just don't add any fat before you freeze them. Freshly melted butter, or fresh cream added at the last minute is a nice touch. Oh yes, the other lesson is, never agree to cook if you just woke up.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Seafood Bread


Here's a fun one for an informal dinner party (known around here as Catan night). We made this a while ago. The recipe is from Jacques & Julia Cooking at Home. We used a 12" round loaf, hollowed it out, made some flavored butter, and filled the loaf up with seafood, a few mushrooms, and the butter. Then covered the top with a layer of bread crumbs and baked it in the oven. We used 1/2 lb each of salmon, scallops, shrimp, and mushrooms, all cut into 1-inch pieces.

The butter
Put 1 C parsley, 3 peeled shallots, and 5 cloves garlic into a food processor, and cup until minced. Add 1.5 sticks of room temperature butter, 1/2 tsp each of salt & pepper, and 3T dry white wine, and process until blended.



The bread bowl
Hollow it out, and use the insides to make bread crumbs in the food processor. Line it with a layer of butter, the add a layer of seafood, another butter layer, a layer of crumbs, the rest of the seafood, the rest of the butter, and then the rest of the crumbs. Bake at 400F for 1-1.5 hours. You can cover the bottom of the bread with foil if you don't want it to get too brown.

Friday, August 8, 2008

A hot August night, a vichyssoise, corn tempura, pork chops with thyme, and a Viognier.

You are at work. There is blistering heat outside. You are planning to make dinner tonight, and there is no a/c at home. To make matters worse, there are no cookbooks around. What to do?

The names and places may change, but the story is the same for all of us. There are nights where we want to make dinner but none of your no-brainer meals - like roast chicken - seem right. You want something warm and safe. Or, on a Hot August Night, something cold and safe.

I turn to either Food & Wine, or the New York Times. Yes, the
Times is more than just election coverage and reviews of candy stores in Wisconsin. It is an enormous repository of recipes from 4 columnists. Some dead. Some alive. Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey, Jacques Pépin, and Mark Bittman - the current columnist. Go to the 'advanced search' page, and enter the name of your preferred chef, and then a keyword. Yesterday I entered Pépin and summer, which is how I found these recipes, ideal for a hot night.

Vichyssoise
A vichyssoise is a cold soup, a purée of leeks, onion, and potatoes in chicken stock, with cream. The recipe is here, but it calls for 6 cups stock, and 3 cups is plenty, really. I like puréed soups to be fairly thick.

Pork Chops
The pork chops with thyme are here, but all you have to do is pat the chops with salt, pepper, and dried thyme, and sauté them ~4 minutes on each side, and rest in a 180F oven 10+ minutes.

Corn Tempura
The fun one was the corn tempura, to which I added onion slices. Make a batter with 1 C flour, 1 C water and 1 egg. (If you haven't done that before put the flour and the egg into a bowl, and add 1/4 c water, mix well, the add another 1/4 c water, mix well, then the rest of the water. This way you don't get lumpy batter). Refrigerate the batter while you prepare the corn and the onion. Slice 1 small onion into half, and then into thin slices.

Have you ever cooked with fresh corn?  You'll never buy frozen corn again, after you've used fresh. For this recipe you need 2 corn cobs. After shucking a cob, 
slice the kernels off with a sharp knife: hold the cob in your hand, pointing away from you and make a long slice going away from your body along the length of the cob, slicing off kernels as you go - don't worry if you leave parts of the kernels behind, this is the quick & easy method. Rotate the cob and make another long slice. Finish slicing all the kernels off this way.

Mix the kernels and onion into the batter. Preheat 2T oil to medium-high heat in a large nonstick pan, and make 4 tempuras at a time. Each tempura needs a scant 1/4-cup of the batter mixture. Sauté 3 minutes, then flip and sauté 2 more. Take them out, add another 2T oil, and make 4 more tempuras.  You'll have 12-16 of them. They are good, and a different way to get your vegetables.

Viognier
Finally, we had a great wine, a Viognier, from the Coteaux de Languedoc. If you are looking for a change of pace with a white, the Viognier is nice. This one had an intense flavor and smelled of flowers and a little citrus. By the way, here's a little tip I thought up on my own, if you have trouble finishing a whole bottle over dinner, just start drinking when you start cooking!

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Beef consumption

Some interesting beef facts from this article in the WSJ.

Americans are projected to consume 28.9 kg of beef per capita this year. That's 64 lb for each of us! Only Argentinians and Uruguay-ers will consume more. EU-ers will consume only 12.1 kg (26.6 lbs) each.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Making yer own hamburger

You've probably heard me talking about the €35 hamburger craze in Paris.  OK, aside from Jessica, Chris, Christy and Scott, who were over that one time I mentioned it, you haven't heard me talkin' 'bout it.  But I wanted to make a burger that might be worth €35 to a sucker in a restaurant.

I did a little hamburger making research, its pretty simple, as you probably guessed.  You need some meat to grind, and a little fat to add. You don't need a meat grinder, though, just chop the meat with your chef's knife.  (it can also be done in a food processor, but that sounds like a hassle)  I used sirloin, pork loin, and ground chuck as the meats, and pancetta, and beef marrow for the fats.  I also added an egg and covered it with a little flour before I cooked it.  The topping is piquillo peppers and Manchego cheese.

I'm not going to give an explicit recipe, just some general principles.
1) Choose 2-3 meats that you like.  I consider sirloin to be a fancy-hamburger staple.  Add another beef cut, or pork, or even duck or goose if you can find it.  You'll want to make a 1/2 lb burger per person.
2) Cut the meat into 2-3" chunks, and put them in the freezer for 20-30 minutes in order to firm them up and make the chopping easier.  Chop the meat into little pieces.  
3) Choose a fat, or a fatty meat: about 10% of the burger should be fat.  The Pancetta was great, and the beef marrow was a bit of a hassle.  Consider using chorizo.   Use any rendered poultry fat you've been keeping in the fridge.  Also, you can use butter.  Use about 1 tb butter per lb of meat.
4)  Put the chopped meat, and the fat into a bowl, add 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper per lb of meat.  (There is a lot of room for variation in this step: a chopped clove of garlic, some thyme, cayenne...)  mix it up.
5)  Optional step, add an egg and mix that up, too.  I used 1 egg for 1 lb of meat, and that was plenty of egg, I think that 1 egg would be enough for up to 3 lbs of meat.
7)  form your patties and put them into the fridge - or a few minutes in the freezer - until you cook them, to firm them up.
8)  optional step: dredge them in flour just before cooking.
9)  Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan and cook them about 5-7 minutes on each side, then place them in a 180 degree oven to rest for at least 10 minutes.

Now for the buns, I just bought a baguette and sliced a couple of pieces off, and sliced those in half.  Use whatever you like, I find than buns intended for hamburgers are too heavy.

You'll want some kind of topping.  Let's talk about piquillo peppers.  These things are great - if a little expensive.  They are 2-3" long, and are fire roasted and peeled, and then stuffed into glass jars.  They have a soft texture, and an intense flavor that's sweet, not at all spicy.  I like to keep a jar around, they were great for these burgers, and I have used them on homemade pizza.  They are also good as an appetizer with a piece of Manchego stuffed into them, and sautéed for about a minute.  Keep your eyes peeled for a jar of piquillo peppers!

I also served a side dish of sautéed peas and shallots so we had a vegetable.

enjoy!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Recipes from the New Yorker?

The New Yorker pokes fun at Mark Bittman's minimalist column with Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers.

Meandering Wine Entry!

The best birthday present ever I received from Elyse last year. It is a wine-of-the-month subscription from KLwines. Every month we receive a red and a white for $20 + shipping. The gift is especially good for a wine-beginner who wants to expand their (my apologies for pluralizing the gift recipient - unless you are gifting the Siamese - but I cringe even more when I read "his or her") repertoire. Although they send a few Bordeaux's and Chardonnays - which you would probably buy on your own anyway - in just the last 6 months we have also received a Côtes du Roussillon, Coteaux du Languedoc, Semillon, Garnacha Blanca, and one of my favorite whites, an Entre-Deux-Mers. Also, they send you a description of the wine which can help you develop your wine palate. Are those citrus flavors? Mocha? Is it a tannic wine? How many rhetorical questions can I ask?

Although the bottles we get aren't (usually) complex, they are reliably good. Last night we opened a 2005 "Line Shack" Cabernet Sauvignon from Monterey which had nice smooth tannins, cherry flavors, and ended with a tiny bit of spiciness that I really, really liked. Not bad for $10! (yes, I know that $10! = $3,628,800 but I don't know how to express an abrupt utterance of delight in print involving money without using the factorial symbol) KLWines prides itself on sending very good bottles for the price. That sounds a little silly, who doesn't pride themselves on stocking very good products? Wait, I know who, American grocery stores stock foods that sell, not foods that taste good (or are healthy). Stores in our country are often all about maximizing profits, so they don't take pride in selling quality things. (not to totally knock that business model, but it is often pushed too far with food)


If you happen to walk into a store you will find my personal wine-buying rules to be useful:
1) Don't buy from a store which does not have a knowledgeable wine-person.
2) Don't buy major-label wine. Major label wines are like chain restaurants, reliably mediocre. You will never love a wine from one of these places. So buy from a little guy.
3) If the label has words like "rat bastard wine", "big blue trucker wine", "friendly bitches wine" just stay away. If you don't believe me, just imagine someone who is excited by these labels. Yuck!
4) Don't spend more than $15 (unless you know what you're doing.) There are a lot of great wines under this price, especially if you stick with the small guys.
5) Don't spend under $7 unless you want to get a headache.
6) Don't buy Merlot, especially if you are following the $15 rule. The name Merlot sells the wine, it doesn't have to be good, I don't know why this is. (Some Merlots are quite good, but you'll have to drink a lot of bad ones to find the good ones, again, especially under $15)

Finally, I generally like to buy wines that are named by the place they come from as opposed to the name of the grape. The locations are more specific. Each region has its own climate, soil structure, and farming methods. These are the types of things that take a chardonnay, for example, and rises it up to the level of a Chablis. I usually look the name of the wine in my handy-dandy little wine encyclopedia. You could also use the wiki, or the wine dictionary at epicurious.

Readers, do you have a favorite wine? What do you remember about the best bottle you've ever had?