SALON

Eyewitness Cook

Saturday, Feb 19, 2011 2:01 AM UTC

Pasta with garlicky peas and roasted mushrooms

It's one of my absolute standbys, it's a dinner that's half vegetables, and it's delicious

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After my piece yesterday extolling the pleasures and creative possibilities of cooking and eating vegetables, I got a message from a brilliant chef — one whose food haunts my dreams — asking, “An Achatz dish as an illustration for home cooks?”

Fair enough! I’d trotted out the dish in question, by Grant Achatz of the restaurant Alinea, to highlight the level of excitement a vegetable dish can attain. But it’s a 20-element composition involving tomatoes, making balloons of mozzarella cheese, spirals of molasses and saffron, and, well, 17 other things, and it’s hardly the kind of thing most people would/could/should attempt. (Not that the intrepid blogger Carol Blymire hasn’t tried.) And the thing with pointing toward creative geniuses is that it’s dangerous — one person’s inspiration is another’s totally oppressive, intimidating, why-should-I-bother wall.

So the dish below (one of my absolute standbys) is not going to win any awards for creativity or highbrow excellence, but that’s kind of the point. It uses very unfashionable supermarket white mushrooms and even more unfashionable frozen peas. I mean, it’s just pasta with peas and mushrooms. But it uses a searing technique to bring out flavor in the mushrooms and pairs that with a gentle warming-through in garlicky butter to keep the peas light and sweet, a complementary range of flavors and depths. It’s also a dinner that is almost fully half vegetable by weight, and will be happily eaten by anyone short of those who literally run at the sight of green in their food. That feels pretty creative to me.

A note about the frozen pea: I love fresh peas, but to be honest, peas lose their sugar and tenderness so quickly that unless you’re getting them the same day out of the garden, they can be all mealy and boo-hoo. (And we’re still a while from pea season, at any rate.) A decent brand of frozen pea, though, can serve you well; frozen within hours of being picked, they keep many of their fresh charms.

Pasta with peas and roasted mushrooms

Serves 3-4 as a main course

Ingredients

  • 8 ounces white mushrooms
  • Salt and white pepper, to taste
  • Olive oil, as needed (a couple tablespoons)
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • 3 tablespoons butter (you can use olive oil instead, but butter makes it … special)
  • Pinch saffron (very optional, but very nice)
  • 8 ounces pasta, some manner of short shape (bowties, pennette, you get the picture. Or saffron malloreddus, if you really want to be a baller.)
  • 10 oz box frozen peas (or fresh, of course, if they’re in season)
  • ½ cup white wine
  • 1½ ounces parmesan cheese, grated fine
  • Chopped parsley, thyme, basil, rosemary or mint, to taste (optional, but nice)

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 425. Meanwhile, set three quarts of water on to boil, and salt it so it tastes nearly like sea water.
  2. Rub the mushrooms clean of dirt with a towel or paper towel. Cut off the stems if they’re long (but use them). Quarter the mushrooms if they’re quarter-sized, and cut them in sixths if they’re half-dollar sized. Toss them in a bowl with salt, pepper and enough olive oil to coat lightly.
  3. Heat a heavy pan, large enough to fit all the mushrooms comfortably in one layer, over high heat. Add about a tablespoon of oil to the pan, and when it’s hot enough to shimmer but not quite smoke, add the mushrooms. Let sear briefly, then transfer to oven.
  4. Cut off half a clove of garlic and mince it very fine. Reserve it. Chop the rest, to somewhere between the size of a pea and a BB. In a pan large enough to hold all the peas, mushrooms and pasta, melt the butter over low heat and add the chopped garlic. Let it get friendly; you’re not trying to brown the garlic, but slowly infuse the butter with its flavor. Add saffron, if using. If the garlic starts to brown, take the pan off the heat.
  5. Check on the mushrooms. Give the pan a toss. You’re looking for nice browning and, eventually, for them to have cooked and shrunken enough to be almost chewy, about 20-25 minutes total. Put back in oven and continue to roast.
  6. Cook pasta in the boiling, salted water.
  7. When the pasta is nearly done, put the garlic-butter pan back over high heat. Add the peas and heat through with a few tablespoons of pasta water. Season with salt and plenty of pepper. Take the mushrooms from the oven and deglaze the pan with the wine, stirring to dissolve all the brown bits, and bring to a boil to cook off the alcohol. Add to the peas. Stir in the raw minced garlic and herbs, if using.
  8. Drain the pasta once finished and add to the peas. Toss all together, stir in the cheese, taste and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper and possibly a splash of olive oil, butter or more pasta water if it seems a little dry. Serve right away.

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Saturday, Feb 12, 2011 2:01 AM UTC

How to make kale and spinach chips

Dark leafy greens are sometimes a tough sell. This is the crispy approach

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It’s been decades since the time in my life when I wore T-shirts with slogans and names of bands, but I do have two still kicking around my dresser. One is pure rock ‘n’ roll, and the other says, “Eat more kale.”

I get that kale can be a tough sell. It’s been maligned for decades, in a nation not known for its love of vegetables, as a deeply unreconstructed vegetable. Scary-dark green, way tougher than lettuce and vaguely bitter, it was long relegated to being a frilly little decoration on fruit plates and supermarket fish counters. My best friend, in fact, grew up working a part-time job at a supermarket fish counter. He was 24 when he found out you can actually eat the stuff he used to tuck into the ice around the salmon steaks.

But kale lovers … oh, we know. We know all about its superfood properties: 36 calories-worth of it contains five grams of fiber, 15 percent of the daily requirement of calcium and vitamin B6, 40 percent of magnesium, 180 percent of vitamin A, 200 percent of vitamin C and 1,020 percent of vitamin K. And that’s before we get to the copper, potassium, iron, manganese and phosphorus.

OK, call my bluff. I don’t know what any of those things do for you. Let me tell you what I do know. The leaf is full of flavor, wallops of chlorophyll green goodness. Cooked quickly, its springy chewiness is intensely satisfying; braised tender, it still has enough body to hold up in soup or stew. The Portuguese stir thinly shredded fistfuls of it into basically what is potato and sausage broth to made their national dish, caldo verde. Brazilians sauté it in ripping hot oil with garlic to serve with their national dish, feijoada. I like to sauté it in garlicky oil and toss it with toasted nuts, some cheese, a splash of vinegar or lemon and pasta (OK, fine, and a little bit of butter) for a quick, lovely dinner.

And then there’s this: the kale chip. Kale chips were the hotness on the food blog circuit a couple of years ago, but honestly I never got around to making them because I never grew tired of kale as-is. But I did get around to it, and I can’t say that I am happy that I waited so long.

The idea behind these chips is simple — baked at low heat, rubbed down in oil, leafy greens become crisp and impossibly light. You’re not really roasting them — you’re really just dehydrating them. What comes out is three shades darker, mottled beautifully with almost black, glassy spots. They’re pure crispness, a brief crackle that disintegrates and disappears, leaving just a mouth-filling vegetal flavor — minerally, deep green and roasty, almost mushroomy.

Not that you’ll forget about potato chips, but these wouldn’t be out of place in a bowl next to them. Or crumble them into an intriguing topping or seasoning for anything that could use a punch of complex, “what was that?” flavor.

Finally, for some, these may be a great introduction to the glories of kale, or for others who are scared of the flavor of leafy greens, they might be a little intense. For those in the latter camp, you can also make these with spinach or baby spinach, which comes out much sweeter and lighter.

Kale or spinach chips

Ingredients

  • Kale, curly or flat (aka Tuscan, lacinato or dinosaur), or spinach
  • Olive or other kind of oil (lightly garlic-infused oil if you’re fancy)
  • Salt
  • Smoked paprika or other spices, if you’re really fancy, optional

Directions

  1. Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.
  2. If using kale, hold the thick stem between two fingers and strip the leaf from the stem; if the stem is thick through the middle of the leaf, it’s better to strip it so the leaf comes apart in two pieces. If using spinach, do the same if the stem is thick. Baby spinach leaves are fine as they are.
  3. Toss the leaves with a splash of oil, enough to lightly coat, not drown them. If you’re using kale, give the leaves a nice rub with your fingers to get the oil all over them. Season lightly with salt (as the leaves dehydrate, they’ll shrink, so the chips will taste much saltier than when they go in).
  4. Lay leaves flat on a baking sheet; don’t overlap them, but they can be close to one another. Bake until they’re dried, crisp and crackly with no chewiness left, about 26 minutes for curly kale, 24 for flat kale, 18 for spinach or 15 for baby spinach leaves. In any event, be sure not to bake them for too long, lest they brown and get too intense.
  5. Once they’re done, you can lightly sprinkle them with spices. Store in an airtight container.
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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Saturday, Feb 5, 2011 2:01 AM UTC

How to make potsticker dumplings, Mama Yang style

Yes, it's a project. Yes, they're cheap to buy. But what's better than a party where the guests all get to cook?

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I’ll be straight with you: I’m not going to try to convince you to spend hours and hours to make these potstickers. After all, they are a food that, if you live in a city with a Chinatown of any size, you can probably get for 20 cents apiece. When it comes to making dumplings at home, it’s a choice you have to come to on your own.

Because they are no joke when it comes to effort. You have to chop and squeeze and mix the filling, cooking off bits to taste for the correct seasoning until you get it right. You have to knead the dough and roll out dozens if not hundreds of skins. You have to stuff them, form them, pleat them and then, eventually, you get to cook and maybe even eat them. (This is why they are a distinguished weapon in the ever-full quivers of mothers who tend to smother with kindness.)

And I’m not even going to say that there is “nothing like eating a homemade dumpling,” because eating one made by someone else can be a lot like eating a homemade one. (Granted, if you take your time and care, these are more delicate and tastier than most.)

But for those of you who like projects, or inviting a bunch of people over to chat, get tipsy, and make food, here are my friend Winnie’s mom’s famous dumplings (technically, they’re potstickers if you pan-fry them). Made right, they’re light, crisp, tender, meaty, crunchy with vegetables, sparky with ginger and aromatic with chives. That does sound like a pretty good evening, doesn’t it?

Mama Yang’s dumplings

Makes about 120 dumplings. A normal person can readily eat 12 as a main course. And feel free to mess with the quantity/combination of seasonings. All of them can be adjusted to taste. As for the wrappers, you can cheat and buy them pre-made — try to get the kind made of just flour and water, no egg or yellow dye — but if you’re not making your own skins for her mom’s dumplings, my friend Winnie will get all Tiger Mother on you.

Ingredients

Filling

  • 1 big head of napa cabbage
  • 2 pounds ground pork
  • ¼ cup finely grated ginger (these are very gingery, so you can cut this down even by half, but don’t cut it all the way — it helps tenderize the meat and freshens the aroma)
  • 2 teaspoons minced garlic
  • 1 teaspoon white pepper
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon sugar (to “accelerate” the sweetness of the vegetables)
  • 1 tablespoon salt, plus more to taste
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil (Mama Yang says, “I use olive oil because I don’t like that Chinese restaurant smell.” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but sure!)
  • 4 ounces shrimp, roughly chopped
  • 2 bunches scallions, chopped
  • 1 pound Chinese chives, chopped (available at Asian markets, or substitute regular chives, if you don’t mind spending more on them than everything else combined)
  • Vegetable oil for cooking, as needed

Wrappers

  • 2 pounds all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
  • 14 ounces plus 2 teaspoons water

Dipping sauce

  • Soy sauce, to taste
  • Vinegar, to taste (traditionally, this is Chinese black vinegar)
  • Sesame or chili oil, to taste

Special equipment: 1 assistant, roughly 5’9″, 200 pounds, and of athletic build

Directions

Filling

  1. First, you have to deal with the napa cabbage. Chop it up fine, salt it vigorously, and let it sit for a while, preferably a few hours, so that it gives up its water. (If chopping is not your favorite task, you can do what Winnie’s dad does –throw big chunks of the cabbage in the blender with a little water to loosen it up. Afterwards drain off the water and then salt it.) After it’s exuded its juices, call upon your muscular assistant: squeeze the cabbage in your hands (or wrapped in cheesecloth or a clean towel) until it doesn’t want to give up any more water. I told you this was real work!
  2. Now put the meat in a massive bowl (sometimes a big pot is your best bet for size — you’ll need to fit all the filling ingredients and have room to stir). Add the ginger, garlic, peppers, sugar, salt, olive oil and shrimp. Hold your hand like a claw, as if you were holding a baseball, and stir the meat and seasonings together in one direction (clockwise or counterclockwise, whichever you prefer). As you’re stirring, open and squeeze your hand into a fist, to help combine the ingredients. After a little while, you’ll notice the meat coming together a bit, sticking together almost as a dough would. What’s happening is actually quite similar to what happens with dough — you’re mashing together proteins and making them bond into a network that will toughen up the flabby filling. When it’s there, add the scallions and chives, and mix them in the same way. Then mix in the squeezed-out cabbage. Once that’s mixed in and the filling has come back together, fire up a little pan and cook a little bit of the filling. Taste it. Does it need more salt? Pepper? Sugar? Adjust the seasoning, cooking and tasting, until it’s just right.

Wrappers

  1. Combine the flour and water and knead together until mostly smooth. It’ll be a tough dough, kind of dry, so don’t freak out and add more water right away. Just keep working it; usually all the flour incorporates with a little nudging. If you’re all worked out and it’s still chunky and dry and the flour isn’t mixing in, wet your hands and give it some more muscle. (You can also do this in a standing mixer, of course. Wuss.) Once it’s smooth, cover it with plastic wrap. Ideally, let it rest for 30 minutes to an hour.
  2. Pull off a wad of the dough and roll into a snake about ¾” thick. Rip off or, better, slice ¾” chunks from this dough snake to form dough nuggets. (That sounds like a euphemism for something, but I don’t want to know what.) Sprinkle chunks lightly with flour, flatten, and roll them out with a rolling pin into circles (or as circle-like as you can get them) about 3″ across. (They’ll be quite thin. That’s what you want.) Keep rolled skins loosely covered with plastic wrap while you work.

Stuffing

  1. This is where teamwork really helps: You can have someone stuffing the dumplings while others roll out skins. Lay the wrapper in your fingers (not the palm) of your hand and spoon in enough to fill the center, but still leaving you about a half-inch of room all around. Fold the bottom of the skin up and pinch one of the corners tightly together. Then pleat it in one direction, pulling the skin from one side and pinching it into the other … you know what? Trying to describe this is dumb. Watch my homegirl Andrea Nguyen show you how instead:

  2. Note: If you’re using store-bought skins, you may need to use a little touch of water as a glue to hold the edges together. And whether store-bought or homemade, you can cheat and not bother with the pleating. Just squeeze the edges together. But they won’t sit up as nicely.
  3. Place the folded dumplings onto a lightly floured plate or tray, loosely covered in plastic wrap as you work. Don’t cram them together, lest they start to stick. Dust them with a little more flour as they sit.

Cooking and serving

  1. When you’re ready to cook them, heat a large — preferably nonstick — frying pan over medium heat, and lightly coat the bottom of the pan with oil. When the oil is hot enough to look as thin as water, add the dumplings flat-side down. Don’t cram them all in there, but pack the dumplings so that they’re fairly snug.
  2. After a few minutes, when the bottoms are nice and toasty brown, pour in a half-cup or so of water — enough to come up a quarter to a third of the way up the dumplings. It should boil immediately. Turn down heat to medium low, cover and let them steam. When the water has all evaporated, the dumplings should be cooked through. Careful, they’re hot, but poke at a few gently with your finger. If the insides feel flabby, they need more cooking — pour in a little more water and cover again. If they feel solid, they should be done. (Cut into one if you’re unsure.)
  3. Dumplings may also be boiled; once they float, let them cook for another minute or two and they’ll be done. Uncooked dumplings may be frozen, covered in plastic wrap.
  4. Serve with a dip of soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame or chili oil, mixed to taste.
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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Saturday, Jan 29, 2011 1:30 AM UTC

Making stock, part two: Fish and seafood

I love this stuff. Great flavor, more versatile than you think, and done in under an hour

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Welcome back, class. When we last met, we spoke of the proper and informal techniques of fundamental meat and vegetable stocks. Forgive me for the professorial tone today, but I find it difficult to communicate about stock any other way, because making stock is SO OLD SCHOOL. Boom!

Anyway, when I admitted that I actually don’t often make stock the proper way at home anymore — I mean, when am I going to start simmering bones eight hours before dinner? — I did withhold a little. I will make seafood and fish stocks fresh, because they can be in and out in under an hour — under half an hour if you really want. And I’m never too worried about what I’m using them for. Obviously they would be great for seafood sauces or soups, but if I want to make, say, beef stew and have only shrimp stock? I’m going to make beef stew with shrimp stock, and it’s going to taste great. Don’t be afraid to mix and match. Most times, if the stock is good, it’ll taste good in the end.

And while I’ll give you the “proper” quantities of bones or shells below, you can get away with far fewer than prescribed, because these recipes call for a bit of cooking before you add the water, which gooses up the flavor like mad.


But first, where am I going to get fish bones?

OK, sorry. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. If you go to a fish market, or the fish counter of a good grocery store, just ask for some fresh bones from lean fish — sole, flounder, halibut and the like. Even snapper or bass are fine, but stay away from really rich fish like salmon or tuna, since their flavors are a bit too strong to blend well (unless you’re trying to knock someone over the head with salmon flavor, that is). They’ll likely have some that they’re happy to give away. And heads are fine, if they smell good and fresh. (Just make sure the gills are cut out, which would cloud up your stock.)

Speaking of freshness, definitely take a good whiff of the bones. They should be clean smelling, kind of sweet; they can smell like they lived in the sea at one point, but if they’re “fishy” or have a hint of ammonia, ditch them.

As for shellfish, all parts of the shell, legs, tails and heads are fantastic. If you’re using big crab shells, you can split them with a cleaver first, but it’s not necessary.


OK, now get cooking.

While it’s possible to make fish and seafood stocks the same way as other “white” stocks (that is, simply simmering raw bones in water), most chefs prefer the more pronounced flavors of shells that have been sautéed and fish bones that they’ve sweat with aromatic vegetables before cooking. (Technically, this step and some white wine will make the fish stock a “fumet.”)

Fish fumet

(Adapted from the Culinary Institute of America)

Makes ½ gallon. You’re probably not going to need that much, so feel free to half this recipe

Ingredients

  • 5½ pounds of bones and heads from lean fish
  • 2 ounces onion, cut in ½” dice
  • 2 ounces leeks, cut in ½” dice
  • 2 ounces parsnips, cut in ½” dice
  • 2 ounces celery, cut in ½” dice (this combination of vegetables is called “white mirepoix.” Feel free to substitute more onion for the leeks and carrots for the parsnips for standard mirepoix)
  • 5 ounces mushrooms
  • ½ gallon water
  • 2 cups white wine
  • 2-3 sprigs parsley
  • 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
  • 1 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or so, enough to coat the pot

Equipment: a pot big enough to fit everything, and that is ideally taller than it is wide (so the liquid doesn’t evaporate too quickly). A strainer and a fine-mesh strainer. Maybe some cheesecloth, if you have some.

Directions

  1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot over a moderate flame. While it heats, add the mirepoix and then the bones on top, and cover with a lid. Cook for about five minutes, until the bones turn opaque and are “sweating” juices. I don’t know why this makes it taste better. I just know it does. Much mo’ betta.
  2. When the bones look good and cooked, but before the vegetables begin to brown, add the wine, stir the whole lot, and bring to a simmer to cook off the alcohol. Then add the water and the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a simmer again, and cook, uncovered, for 35-40 minutes. Skim off any grody foam and fat that floats to the top.
  3. After the simmering time, give the fumet a taste. It should be rich, with nice brightness from the wine, but not overpowering. Bland, in a comforting way, but with a distinguishable, sweet flavor of fish. Strain, and then, if you’re fussy, strain again through a fine-mesh or triple-cheesecloth lined strainer. Let cool and refrigerate, or pour into ice cube trays, freeze and keep on hand in the freezer.

But what if I don’t have that many bones? Do you know how goofy I feel asking for five pounds of fish bones?

No problem. Your fumet won’t be as rich or flavorful, but even half as many bones will still give you enough flavor to use as a nice background for sauces to be served with seafood, stews, soups and the like.

And … the promised shellfish stock!

I love this stuff. Reduce or skip the wine in the recipe, use standard mirepoix as described in the ingredients list, and replace the fish bones with the same amount of shrimp, crab, lobster, or whatever kind of shells you like. (Honestly, it’s tough to come by this many shells, so I actually usually adjust the recipe by using as many shells as I have and using just enough water to cover and calling it a day.)

Get the oil ripping hot in the pot, almost smoking, and add the shells. Let them sit for a minute, browning, and then stir. Keep stirring until the shells are all pink, and if you want stronger flavor, keep stirring and cooking until they get a nice golden brown. This is going to smell terrific. (Alternatively, you can roast the shells in a hot oven.) Add mirepoix, cooking until that’s taken on a little color, and then a little tomato paste (2 tablespoons if you’re making the full recipe), and cook until that’s aromatic and starting to change color. Add water and herbs, etc. Bring to a simmer, and simmer for 35-40 minutes (although superstar seafood chef Eric Ripert says you get all the good flavor out of the shells in 20). Strain and store as above.

 

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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Saturday, Jan 22, 2011 2:02 AM UTC

How to make stock the right way, the wrong way, and when it matters

It's the foundation of your cooking, so it'd better be great. But don't let the perfect be the enemy of the tasty

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Sign up for any culinary school, open up any How To Be a Chef in 800 Easy Pages kind of cookbook, talk to any classically trained chef, and the first thing they will tell you is to learn how to make stock.

Stock is the foundation of cooking, they will say. It is the base for all your soups and all your sauces; it’s what you use to stew and braise, what you use to thin out liquids and purees that are too thick, or, reduced, it’s what you add to them for more flavor. Used to poach delicate fish and meat, it makes those foods magnitudes more flavorful.

“Oui, Chef!” I said, standing up straight.

And so what that means, too, is that your stock must be perfect. It must embody all the flavor of the bones and the vegetables and the herbs, but be able to blend into the background. To do that, you must simmer it for hours – many, many hours.

“Oui, Chef!” I said, hurrying to clean the bones.

It must be skimmed meticulously so that it does not make for greasy sauces. It must be crystal clear, so that it doesn’t cloud what you are cooking.

“Oui, Chef!” I said, skimming and straining and preparing to do this for the rest of my life.

So I have a little explaining to do, I guess, about why it took me over a year into this column before getting to the subject of making stock. And the reason is this: I kinda stopped caring. For everyday cooking, I’m just as likely to use wine, beer, tomato juice, a quick vegetable stock I can whip together, soaking liquid from rehydrating dried mushrooms or the like, cooking liquid from beans or other simmered things, even plain old water if my other ingredients are flavorful enough. It wasn’t like I’d broken my chains of love for stock, but that I’d found plenty of other things to use in a pinch, and then a pinch became normal life.

But I still like keeping a zip-lock bag full of stock cubes in the freezer (frozen in ice cube trays), for whenever I just want that clean, satisfying, flavorful-but-not-overbearing backbone stock gives to a dish. It’s still the ideal canvas on top of which to layer flavors, to make fragrant with herbs or spices, to splash with wine or spike with citrus, to fatten up with butter. Maybe, though, since I’ve grown so used to bootlegging stock-like things, I’ve also grown to believe most of the technically correct details in stock-making have become a little unnecessary. The liquid gets a little cloudy? Oh well. There aren’t really quite as many bones in it? Big deal. Don’t quite have four hours to kill? Snooze. It’ll be plenty tasty all the same.

So here, I’ll show you the classicist’s way of making stock, but then I’ll let you in on all the ways you can cheat.

Classic meat stock

Makes one gallon; double, halve, or quarter as necessary

Ingredients

  • 8 pounds of bones – chicken, veal, beef, or pork, or lamb or whatever
  • 8 ounces onions, cut in 1″ dice
  • 4 ounces carrots, cut in 1″ dice
  • 4 ounces celery, cut in 1″ pieces
  • 1 sprig thyme
  • 4 parsley stems
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon whole peppercorns (You’re supposed to wrap the herbs and peppercorns in cheesecloth to make a “sachet d’epice,” which you can take out if the flavor gets too strong. Do I do that? No. Can I tell the difference? Never. In fact, can you leave them in the whole time or out entirely? Sure.)
  • Cold water to cover, probably 5-6 quarts

Equipment: a pot big enough to fit everything, and that is ideally taller than it is wide (so the liquid doesn’t evaporate too quickly). A strainer and a fine-mesh strainer. Maybe some cheesecloth, if you have some.

Directions

  1. If you’re using chicken or other thin bones, rinse them well in water to wash them. For thicker bones such as beef or veal, drop them in a pot with cool water, bring to a boil, and drain off the now-blanched bones. Both of these techniques are meant to get rid of some of the blood, loose bits, and impurities that will turn into unseemly scum that you’ll have to skim off later.
  2. Cover the cleaned bones in cold water and put over high heat. When the liquid is just about to come to a full boil, turn the heat down to a very gentle simmer, like only one or two bubbles at a time. Don’t hover over it, but every once in a while, swing on through the kitchen and skim off any fat or scum that floats to the top. Simmer 3 hours for chicken, 5 hours for pork, 7 hours for beef or veal. Top off with water to keep the bones covered, if necessary.
  3. Add the vegetables, herbs and peppercorns. Simmer one hour more.
  4. Give it a taste. Can you taste a meatiness, some sweetness from the vegetables, and, after you’ve swallowed, a nice, lingering depth? Don’t get me wrong; it won’t be delicious. It will be kind of bland, not something you’d want to eat on its own, but that’s the point. It’s supposed to be a nice backdrop. OK, once you’ve communed with your stock, strain out the bones and vegetables, then strain it again through the fine-mesh strainer (or you can line your strainer with a few layers of cheesecloth). If you’re picky, blot away any little slicks of oil with paper towel corners. Let cool to room temp, then chill or freeze.

OK, now to the ifs, ands & buts.

For brown stock (made from roasted bones)

Brown stock is much bolder in flavor, darker, richer and more complex. It’s what you use when you want to make a killer beef stew, for instance, or magnificent chili. To make it, skip the washing / blanching step for the bones, and instead give them a light rub with oil and roast them in a hot oven, 425 or so, until they are brown, toasty, and smell terrific. Then proceed as with step 2 above. While they are simmering, caramelize the vegetables slowly in a wide pan along with 6 ounces of tomato paste (assuming you’re using the full pound of vegetables) before adding them to the stock. For more on how to make these caramelized vegetables, called pinçage, go here.

For vegetable stock

Some people have great recipes for vegetable stock — complex, balanced combinations of many vegetables, but I find that a simple stock made of mirepoix (the classic combination of 2 parts onion, 1 part carrot, 1 part celery) with maybe some thyme, parsley and a couple cloves of garlic usually suits me just fine (plain old white mushrooms are great, too). Cut them into ¾” dice, sauté them lightly in a touch of oil — “sweat” them, not brown them — add just enough water to cover, and simmer 30-40 minutes and you’re done. Again, not mind-blowing stuff, but it will give you a liquid that will add a nice structure of flavor for whatever you make with it. If you want brown vegetable stock, just substitute the mirepoix with Pinçage.

ARGH! I let it come to a boil / don’t have a fine mesh strainer!

OK. Alain Ducasse would probably deem your stock unfit to water his weeds with, but honestly, it’s fine. What happens is that a boil will emulsify some of the fat into the stock, making it less than crystal clear, and some will say it dulls the flavor. A less-than-utterly perfect strain will leave some errant bits of protein or whatever to sink to the bottom. I think if you can taste the difference, no one is good enough a cook for you anyway. So don’t stress. Also, some classic Asian versions actually call for the liquid to be boiled, specifically to get that fat and protein emulsified, resulting in thick, rich, milky-looking stock. And they are fantastic.

I only have an hour, not four, and definitely not eight!

Cutting down the simmering time by 85 percent isn’t the greatest idea in the world, but you know, that hour is still something. You will still get some flavor extraction from the bones. You can also add the vegetables right away from the start, and you’ll get all of the flavor out of them in an hour as well. Or, you can go with the Asian method of bringing it to a full boil and letting it rip from there; one of the rich, milky chicken stocks I learned from a Chinese chef only boils for an hour. (She also adds a handful of ginger peels or a few slices of fresh ginger and scallions to the stock.)

How am I going to get eight pounds of bones?

Well, you can buy them. Or you can save your bones, cooked or not, from bird or beast and save them in your freezer until you have enough to make some stock. Or you can just use less water and make a small batch. Or you can just make stock with whatever you have, and if you don’t love it in the end, you can always freeze and refortify it later — use it in place of water to make your next stock. 

Is there anything I can do with all these used bones?

Yes! One of my favorite things in the world is remouillage, which, in French, means to re-wet. Basically, once you’ve got your beautiful stock all drained and strained and ready to go, you can go ahead and just recover the spent bones in water and cook it again. What comes out is a weak stock, cloudy and not great on its own at all, but totally great to use in place of water for your next stock. Or you can cook it down, way down, reducing it to a thick, kind of stiff concentrate of incredibly meaty depth, which you can spoon into sauces or stews that could use a bit of oomph. This concentrate is called glace. Have you heard of the lusciously rich brown sauce called demiglace? That means “half glace.” So you know this stuff is weapons-grade flavor.

 

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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Saturday, Jan 15, 2011 1:01 AM UTC

Turnip sauerkraut — turning the humble into the spectacular

Make turnip sauerkraut. You heard me. Hey, where are you going? Come back, this stuff is great! Really!

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My special ladyfriend is fond of repeating something she heard once: that the two signs of senility in men are comparison shopping and pickling. And despite the fact that I now live in Brooklyn, the Look-At-Me-I’m-Pickling capital of the developed world, who can honestly be excited about senility and sauerkraut?

So it’s a mystery even to me that I curled up in bed one night with Sandor Katz’s wildly influential pickling how-to Wild Fermentation, aka The Guide to Living Comfortably with Memory Loss. And I woke up the next morning so excited to shred and salt turnips for an unusual sauerkraut that I was there, in my kitchen, doing it in my shorts. Pants would come later. That is probably not a good sign. But the results, I can say after a healthy munch this morning, are definitely worth it.

Katz –in a fascinating story on him by Burkhard Bilger in the New Yorker — describes the friendship we have with bacteria, and nowhere is that more clear in our diets than in intentionally fermented foods. Before you make the gross-face at the f-word, keep in mind that these foods include beer, wine, cheeses, yogurt (lovely, lovely yogurt), dry sausages, bread and of course pickles.

Not only do friendly bacteria protect these foods from spoilage, but they do magical things to flavor and texture. As we saw last week, they create the full, rich, custard-like body of yogurt out of liquid milk. They give off lactic acid, which gives us the familiar yogurty tang. And in many foods, they break down proteins into amino acids, amino acids that we then perceive as the deep, complex, meaty, satisfying taste of umami.

And that is why I am writing to you today about turnip sauerkraut, which develops that umami in spades. I first tasted this years ago, at a fantastic New York restaurant called the Modern, which, true to its name (and its location inside the Museum of Modern Art), is a sleek restaurant, hard lines and modernist design. But the food at the bar, while gorgeous and refined, is often inspired by the rustic joys of chef Gabriel Kreuther’s native Alsace, the part of France that one might mistake for Germany. He serves turnip sauerkraut (or choucroute, as the French call it) simply, lightly braised to soften the flavors, and places it alongside sausage. It’s one of the most magical things I’ve ever had.

The turnipkraut (technically “sauerrüben”) doesn’t quite develop the same acidic tang as cabbage does in sauerkraut, but after a couple weeks, there is definitely some brightness there. It keeps a little bit of its pungent, funky mustardy bite, but then the flavor rounds out and bounces around, tasting one second like nice cheese, another like beer, a third a little bit like broccoli, a touch of pleasant bitterness and all underlined by that wonderful, lingering umami.

And it’s tremendously easy to make, because really, it’s the bacteria that does all the work. You just shred it, sprinkle some salt, press it down and hang out for a couple of weeks. Give it a try, and see if you don’t start wondering what you’ll pickle next. And don’t forget to put on some pants.

Turnip sauerkraut

Adapted from Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation

One of the fun things about making pickles of this sort is that their flavors and depth will evolve as you let them ferment. Try tasting it starting from a few days or a week into the process, and watch how it develops. Once it’s at the point where you know you won’t want it to go much further, you should pop it in the fridge. Or cook it, and eat it soon.

Also, a note on usage: this stuff is still nice and crunchy and salty out of the pickling pot, but if you like, you can give it a quick rinse in fresh water and squeeze it out to cut down on the salt. Or you can simmer it in water, wine, stock or beer until it’s tender to serve as a lovely side to sausages, smoked meat or wherever your mind takes you.

Ingredients

Turnips — weigh them

1½ tablespoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt per pound of turnips, or slightly less if using Morton’s (if you’re using sea or pickling salt, cut it to 2 teaspoons per pound of turnips; avoid iodized salt, which may inhibit the friendly bacteria)

Equipment: a straight-sided crock, a plate that fits in the crock, a weight that will fit on the plate, like a clean jar filled with water, and a towel that can cover all of this (don’t use metal for any of this stuff, which might react with the acid that the pickle produces)

Directions

  1. Clean your gear and hands. Katz’s book is inspiring and empowering; where appropriate he punctures the myth that all forms of fermentation need to be done with maniacally sterilized tools in lab settings. He gets you to trust in the friendly bacteria floating all around you, but urges common sense: Make sure you wash you hands well and your equipment is clean.
  2. Peel and shred the turnips, using the large holes on a standard box grater. As you’re shredding, add some in layers to the crock (honestly, I just use one of those big 2-quart Pyrex measuring cup things), sprinkling the salt on in between layers; try to season it evenly, but don’t worry too much about it. Give it a brief stir to even it out.
  3. Now place the plate on top of the salty turnip, and press down on it to make sure it’s making contact and squeezing the turnip a little bit. Place the weight on top of the plate, and give it another good press or two. Cover the whole thing with the towel to protect it from dust, and set it in a cool, darkish corner.
  4. For the first few days, give the weight/plate a good press or two every few hours, to help expel more brine. The point is to keep the vegetable submerged under the brine that the salt will draw out; as long as it’s under brine, mold won’t get to it, and our bacterial friends can get to work. It’ll bubble a little bit as it ferments. If there is some scummy-looking mold that forms on the surface, just scoop it off. No problem.
  5. And that’s it! Now it’s just time — you can taste and enjoy the turnip at any point, but I find that it starts to develop some interesting flavor at about a week, and starts to get really complex at about two weeks, but that all varies with temperature, etc. (The warmer it is, the faster it ferments.)

For advanced turnipkrauters, Katz also suggests grating other vegetables –carrots, cabbage, etc. — into the mix for flavor, or using herbs or spices of your choice. I like it plain, but give it a whirl!

 

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Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Page 2 of 13 in Eyewitness Cook

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