Eyewitness Cook

You see, the tartness in yogurt is the acid produced by those swarming friendly bacteria. Since they multiply best at around 110 degrees Fahrenheit and slow to a crawl below 40, you can basically decide when there’s enough sourness in the yogurt and stick it in the fridge to put the process on hold.

Not only can you customize the flavor in homemade yogurt this way, but the texture is miles beyond what you can usually buy. When fresh — just-cultured and set — it quivers ever so slightly, like a perfect custard. I confess to having trouble restraining myself from eating half of it like this. But if you can wait and chill it, it firms up a bit; it can sit unperturbed in your spoon, or loosen up into a smooth, thick, just-pourable liquid when stirred. (For fascinating details behind how and why the texture of milk and yogurt changes, read Harold the Good Man McGee.)

How to make yogurt

Take some milk — your choice, but I really, really suggest whole milk; the fat helps the texture and it balances the tartness, giving you a delicious, rich flavor that lingers. Heat it up. I stir it constantly while this is happening, ostensibly so that the bottom doesn’t scorch, but really it’s because I find the smell of warm milk to be so lovely, one of those fundamental pleasures you can find yourself missing for years. When it’s 180 degrees F, or when you start seeing some bubbles and the top is steaming noticeably, take it off the heat, pour it into the jar, crock or bowl you want to keep your yogurt in, and let it cool to 110-120 F, or until you can hold your finger in it for 10 seconds without it getting too uncomfortable. It should be hot, but not painful, unless you have particularly delicate or asbestos-y hands. (And in either case, make sure they’re clean first.)

While the milk is cooling, set up your keep-it-warm situation. Some people like to use a cooler, like an Igloo, filling it with towels and maybe bottles of warm water. McGee suggests pouring the hot milk into an insulated canister or jar; he likes to just wrap his jar in towels. I like to do that and keep it in my oven, heated only by the pilot light. I sometimes leave it on my radiator, sitting on top of a nice thick book. You’ll find a warm spot in your home, but don’t really sweat it. The worst that will happen if you end up putting it in a spot that’s not quite warm enough is that you might have to leave it out for a few more hours.

Take one tablespoon of active-culture yogurt per pint of milk. (Most yogurts you can buy will work, but just make sure the label says there are live cultures.) Mix the yogurt with a little bit of the milk in a separate bowl. When it’s smooth, stir that into your warm milk, give it a good stir, cover it with plastic wrap and place it in your snug little warm spot.

After four hours, depending on the culture and how warm you kept it, the milk should be set into something yogurty, but the taste may still be quite mild. Here is where you can exercise your aesthetic choice. The first taste of warm, just-cultured yogurt can be magic. Tender like the softest custard, it’s sweet, creamy, eternally round milk, leaving you with the aftertaste of a soothing, buttery sip. I wouldn’t blame you if you put it in the fridge now, to keep it from getting any sourness and to firm up the structure. But since I like a bit of tartness, I leave it hanging out in my pilot-light-warm oven for another 3 hours or more, occasionally turning it on for like 30 seconds just to warm it up slightly. When the yogurt is pretty much as tart as you like it, refrigerate it. (Don’t worry about the little bit of whey that will seep out eventually; either stir it back in, drink it, or use it in cooking.)

(Note that these times are really pretty loose, and can vary greatly depending on how warm you keep the milk, how active your starter yogurt culture is, etc. If it doesn’t thicken up after 8 hours or so, try adding some more starter yogurt and gently warming up the jar by dunking it in a warm-water bath, and leave it out for another few hours.)

Enjoy the yogurt, but remember to keep a few spoonfuls of it for your next batch, when this one is running low and you have more milk lying around. I don’t know exactly how the tradition of eating yogurt for breakfast started, but it’s a lovely symbol. Mornings are about renewing, and yogurt is a perfect symbol of rejuvenation — of making old milk new again, living and breathing and good. 

A couple of delicious things to eat with yogurt

I love to make sorbet with yogurt; I also use yogurt as a dressing or condiment for spicy stews that want a little bit of tangy creaminess, and in baking, but I most love it with some tasty fruit and honey, so that I feel like I’m living out some minor Mediterranean fantasy on a Sunday morning. Here are a couple of my favorite mixtures.

Mint, orange, honey

Pear, rosemary, honey

I realize that sounds kind of laughable. But then again, how is it that a man whose signature dish is, essentially, a salad can be regarded as one of the greatest chefs in the world?

I think it’s because of his compelling sense of wonder, of his endless fascination with his ingredients — what they taste like, what they feel like, what they smell and look like. What he might be able to do with even the simplest food to make it seem new again, to reveal more of its character. I recently had the opportunity to watch him peel a carrot. (Yes, that sentence is for real, and the experience was spectacular.) He did this utterly pedestrian thing with such focus and care that when he’d cleared off all the peel and continued shaving into the carrot, beautiful, noodley ribbons curling onto his board, I could imagine the first time he did this, the first time he noticed this gorgeous shape, the first time he realized he could present carrots in a form so delicate and elegant.

So much of the soul of cooking is learning to open your eyes to the possibilities of anything in the kitchen. In my copy of his book “Essential Cuisine,” he wrote an inscription: “Nature speaks; experience translates.”

I’m thinking about this today because I hope that in my own, tiny, nongenius way, I’ve been able to help inspire your own cooking in this column. I’ve tried to share simple concepts and techniques to demystify new-to-you ingredients, or to make old ones taste new again. (For some reason, I also found it necessary to describe these “simple concepts” in 1,500-word columns. Sorry, I’m a yapper.) Whether it was to rediscover the aromatic pleasures of ginger and scallion by splashing them with sizzling oil, or to concentrate summer vegetables into a dense brick of pure flavor, to brulee and caramelize your Easter Peeps or to share the recipe for the greatest roast beef sandwich I have ever met, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading, talking and cooking with me.

If all this sounds a little bit like a soft-focus flashback montage sequence, it’s because, well, it is. Cue the waterworks: This is my last column for Salon.

What we’ve planned here is food coverage for curious people, for people who care about people, for people who are passionate about finding new ways to look at the world, whether they are “foodies” or people who think foodies’ main contribution to our society is allowing us to call wine dorks “winies.”

That’s what I said when I started, and I’m proud of the stories, essays and conversations we’ve shared here. For the last year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of discussing the issues of food with you, big and small, from wondering about the ethnic politics of shark’s fin soup bans to the taste of things too horrible to enjoy in polite company. (Wait, this is going to turn into another montage sequence. Somebody stop me!)

It’s been a wild, educational, gratifying, infuriating, thrilling, humbling, exciting time. And so it’s with gratitude and sadness that I’m leaving Salon, but I won’t be going too terribly far. I hope to still contribute some meandering thoughts, and I’m excited by what’s coming up. I’ll be easy to find, on Twitter at <strong>@francis_lam, and on the web at about.me/francis_lam. I hope you’ll say hello!

But one more thing before I go — a recipe from Michel Bras. It’s for a long potato crisp, crackly and browned like the best chips, but with a softer, more mellow heart. In his truest spirit, they’re simple, delightful and just odd enough to get you wondering what else you might do with them … other than mow them all down before dinner’s served.

Michel Bras’ crispy potatoes

Adapted from “Essential Cuisine” by Michel Bras

Martha Foose’s Lemon Icebox Pie is that recipe for me.

Some time in 2008, when I was at the height of my Mississippi powers, living part-time on the Gulf coast and chatting up cooks and shrimpers and such, a group organizing a conference panel on culinary tourism asked me to come speak. Flattered and hubristic, I said yes. And only then did I proceed to ask myself, “What the hell do I know about promoting culinary tourism?”

The answer, of course, was, “Not a whole hell of a lot.” So I talked about it with my friend Google, jotted down some notes about magazine advertising rates or something, and showed up confident I could avoid sounding like I was just there for the free drinks at the reception.

I took my place at the panel, flashed a flirty smile at the (very beautiful, it turns out) woman who invited me, and heard the introductions of the other speakers. One was a culinary tourism promoter who’d been in the game for roughly three quarters of my life. The next was a woman who’d basically invented the term culinary tourism, who could tell you the name of every person to visit the great states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and Montana from the years 1984-2007. And then there was me. With my notes. From a 20-minute round of Googling.

The rest is a little too painful to go over, but suffice it to say that I learned a few very important lessons that day:

1. If you actually, literally ask the audience to laugh at your next joke, they will. But they will not actually be amused.
2. Self-deprecating jokes from the stage are funny. Unless you’re bombing. Then they’re just depressing.
3. No beautiful woman will be impressed with a flirty smile if you are obviously, appallingly incompetent.

Anyway, my time finally ground to an end, and I booked it out of that conference like my house was on fire.

On my way out, though, one of the organizers caught sight of me and, bless her heart, made sure I took home one of the thank-you gift bags. I wanted to protest. I wanted to give it back. I didn’t deserve it. I got home and opened it up, full of all manner of shameful reminders of my humiliation. I wanted to put them all out of my sight — the tumblers, the cooler bags, the aprons. But then I pulled out “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea,” Martha Foose’s cookbook.

A proud daughter of Mississippi, Martha left for a spell to train with some of the most renowned pastry chefs in France, and then returned home to cook, bake and teach up in the Mississippi Delta. I knew her from a random, wild-eyed moment years earlier, when I ran up to her after having a taste of her signature Sweet Tea Lemon Chess Pie, a pastry that will forever change the way you think about Mississippi, France, iced tea, pies, unicorns and ligers. I don’t even remember our conversation, but that there was some wary smiling and the word fraisage floated in the air (which is French for “smearing the crust dough in little circles and then stacking them all back on one another so it’s ridiculously flaky”), and I walked away hoping that I didn’t scare her too badly.

So then, in the comfort and social-awkwardness safety of my home, I opened the book to smashing success. The first page I opened to was banana pudding, which is as good a sign as there is in cookbooking. Four pages later, and I was in the promised land — “Lemon Icebox Pie: The Wonder of Sweetened Condensed Milk.”

I am a great lover of lemons, any food that includes the word “icebox,” and most of all, of the gooey ambrosia that is sweetened condensed milk. My feelings of shame and embarrassment gave way. I fired up the oven. I ground up graham crackers to make crumbs. And soon, spoon deep in its tart, creamy goodness, I started to thank fate for sending this recipe my way.

Martha Foose’s Lemon Icebox Pie

From “Screen Doors and Sweet Tea.” Used with permission, except for the stupid commentary, which is my own.

Makes one 9-inch pie

Aren’t you sad you didn’t get an invitation to the World’s Most Sanctimonious Dinner Party? I am. I want to know what gets served for dessert at a soiree like this.

But my Fancy Brooklyner self-hatred aside, the lady had it right, for sure — mussels are the jam. They taste great, are cheap, are ridiculously easy to cook, still pack some heat on the impress-the-guests scale, are seriously versatile and are, yes, sustainable. Calling seafood “sustainable” is usually tricky business because there are so many variables, but with mussels, you’ll almost always get responsibly farmed shellfish that actually clean the water they’re grown in. (They’re a “best choice” on the well-respected Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list.)

For too long relegated to “mixed-seafood pasta” jumbles or clichéd steams with white wine and herbs, it’s time for mussels to get shown a little love. They can seem intimidating for home cooks, but really, I can’t think of anything easier to prepare. And I love how sitting there with a big pot of them, slurping them out of the shell, soaking up the broth with bread, turns dinner into an event of conversation and juice-slicked hands.

How to clean mussels

Most mussels come pretty clean, actually, and there’s pretty much never a problem with grit or sand, as you might have with clams. If there’s a beard coming out of one — you’ll know it when you see it — just give it a yank to pull it off. Some chefs want you to scrub them afterwards with a stiff brush or pad, but I never do. Your call.

How to store mussels

You don’t want to hang on to them for too terribly long, more than a couple days, but they’re fine in the fridge. Especially if you keep them in a bowl lined and topped with a moistened towel or paper towel. Whatever you do, don’t keep them in water; fresh water will kill them.

How to cook mussels

Get them hot. They will open. They are cooked.

How to cook delicious mussels

OK, this is the fun part. Mussels have a flavor that’s unmistakably oceanic — salty, briny, minerally. They’re not as saline or meaty as clams, not as clear and ringing as oysters, but they’re a little earthier, a little down-and-dirtier. And they pair beautifully with anything you can think of that would do well with that salty, earthy bass note.

Earlier, I knocked on the combination of mussels with garlic and shallots, white wine, herbs and butter, but there’s a lot to be learned in the basics. You have garlic and shallots (and usually butter or olive oil) as the aromatic base; an acidic liquid to help the steaming and to lighten the flavor; a bunch of fresh herbs towards the end of cooking to add a nice top note, and a finishing stir-in of butter to enrich the broth.

Using this framework, you can start improvising your way to limitless combinations. Basically, if you can imagine a bunch of flavors tasting good together, they will probably be good with mussels. Like a version with leeks or onions (aromatics), bacon (just because) and dark beer (liquid), and finished with a stir-in of crushed or ground nuts for more richness. (And maybe a final splash of malt vinegar or something if it wants a little brightness.)

The handsome chef Barton Seaver (who once chipped the hell out of my cleaver when I was in culinary school with him, and no, that’s not a euphemism) has a new, excellently named book, “For Cod and Country,” and it’s got a bunch of fantastic mussel pairings: mustard in the classic white wine version, with scallions instead of herbs. Shallots, roasted until soft and caramelized, with red wine, finished with butter and rosemary. Roasted garlic and IPA or another strong beer, also finished with butter. A fistful of spices, finished with chorizo. (That one’s called Mussels Saint-Ex, and it’s probably worth buying the book for.)

Steamed mussels

This isn’t a recipe so much as a basic method for steaming mussels; please do improvise with different flavor combinations, liquids, finishers, etc. Serve with big hunks of bread, crisp toasts, French fries, rice, pasta or whatever floats your boat. Allow about 1 pound of mussels per person for a main course, or half that for an appetizer.

Anyway, the point is this: There’s a lot in butter that’s not butterfat. The vast majority of that is water, and then there are milk solids, which are mainly sugars and proteins. Normally, all those elements are emulsified together, but you see them break apart when you heat it — ever notice how butter sizzles in a hot pan? That’s the water boiling furiously out of it. That foaming? That’s a mix of proteins trying to hold onto water that’s desperately trying to escape. And then, of course, there’s the browning.

Remember that the milk solids in butter are mainly sugars and proteins?

That’s the key. See, where there’s sugar, there can be caramelization. Where there’s protein, there can be meaty browning. Where there’re both of them, there can be THE BOMB.

Brown butter is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Evocatively called beurre noisette (hazelnut butter) in French, it gives God’s own grease a sweet, nutty flavor, turning in its smooth richness for one more liquid, dark and complex. It’s a classic “sauce” nearly on its own when splashed with a little lemon juice or vinegar to brighten it, maybe with some shallots and capers to bring it up even higher, or some chopped nuts to accentuate its fatty goodness. Herbs like parsley, thyme or rosemary get all happy in there, too, chopped and tossed in at the last second. Spoon some on sautéed chicken, fish or pork, and you’re in business.

But brown butter is one of those things that can turn on you in a second. It just gets more and more flavorful as it browns, until it hits some evilly magic point that turns it black, bitter and nasty. (There actually are uses for “buerre noir,” but I tend to leave that napalm alone.) So for beginners, it’s best to brown your butter slowly.

The safest way I’ve found to do it is this: Put a heavy, light-colored pan over medium heat. (Black-bottomed or nonstick pans make it hard to see the color.) Cut the butter into one-inch pieces, so that they melt and color evenly — you don’t want a big lump of butter still sliding around solid while stuff is already burning around it.

If you’re using just a small amount of butter, there’s really no mystery. Just let it get hot, foam and settle, and keep a close eye on the color of the milk solids at the bottom. Like caramel, the darker they are, the more complex the flavor, but the jump from dark to burnt is a shockingly quick one, so err on the side of safety. If you’re using this is as a sauce, add your lemon juice or capers or whatever else immediately, as it will help to cool it down and set the color.

But if you’re using a larger amount of Paula Deen’s best friend — as in the recipe below — you can work it a little more precisely. I like to use a lower heat, more medium to medium-low, to get a nice even color. As the water in the butter eventually comes to bubble up and boil, be careful — it has a tendency to splatter. Gently swirl the pan so that those bubbles dissipate a bit, and use a heatproof rubber spatula or spoon to clean up any early-browning bits along the side of the pan. (Don’t throw them out — just start adding them to whatever you’re going to put the butter on or in.) Stir often while cooking. Eventually, you’ll cook off the water, the milk solids will settle at the bottom, and the foamy proteins will look like a scum at the surface. You can skim it, if you’d like.

At this point, what you’re doing is clarifying the butter, and if you keep the heat pretty low, all the water will eventually evaporate without the milk solids browning. What you’ll be left with is crystal-clear pure butterfat. (It’s great for sautéing and high-heat cooking that you can’t normally do with butter.)

But let it keep going on the flame, and the solids will brown after a few minutes. Watch the pan. Once they turn a medium brown color, take them off; they’ll keep coloring from the residual heat.

The brownies below are from a recent issue of Bon Appetit magazine, and are fantastic. Instead of using chocolate, the recipe calls for cocoa, letting you use brown butter as the fat, which flavors them with that subtle, round nuttiness. I’ve modified the recipe to crank up that brown butter flavor, using the milk solids from twice the amount of butter — and you get to keep the extra!

Brown butter brownies

Modified from Alice Medrich, published in Bon Appetit, Feb. 2011

Makes 16 brownies

Well, imagine for a minute a better place, a happy place, where cream-ofs are lively and vibrant, where they have real flavor and a texture that’s smooth and satisfying, not leaden and semisolid. That happy place is in your pot, and it’s easier than you might realize. You don’t really even need a recipe.

The key is knowing the procedure: You sweat some aromatics and the main ingredient (the part that comes after “of”) in a little butter or oil, sprinkle on just enough flour to pull it together, add some stock, simmer, puree it and finish with a shot of cream. The sweating brings out flavor, the flour mixes with the fat to form a quick, thickening roux, the simmering marries all the ingredients, pureeing smoothes and thickens, and the cream, well, the cream is the power move, of course.

Fundamental cream-of-anything soup

Adapted from “The Professional Chef,” 7th edition, Culinary Institute of America

Serves 4-6 as an appetizer (about 1 quart of soup)