Braised and Infused

Consider the Oyster

I am concerned about the nation’s economy, of course, but there is an approaching catastrophe linked to the economic crisis that frightens me more. It is the inevitable arrival of hordes of cookbooks, websites, and food articles devoted to making meals on the cheap. I fear titles like “Ten Dinners in Ten Minutes for Under a Buck,” and “How to Save Money by Omitting Flavor.” I have offered to appear before Congress and testify to the necessity of a rescue. I took a number and I am waiting my turn. 

But there is hope. Hope because the foundations of great cooking do not rest on slabs of foie gras or shavings of truffle. Great cooking is about transformation and it rests in part on the backs of chickens. Literally. That humble, essentially free, cut from the chicken carcass renders stock and treats us to oysters. 

If you’re not familiar with the chicken oyster, it’s what I was eating as I carved the chicken before I brought it to the table. You were none the wiser. The oyster is also the piece of meat you surrender to your spouse for suffering your cooking habit because it took a bit longer than you expected to make dinner and all the while she was creating a demilitarized zone between your two daughters. 

Chicken oysters are the ultimate nugget of rich dark meat. They come from the back of the chicken near the hip joint. After I’ve roasted a chicken, I pry them out with my fingers. This is probably the best way to eat them given the effort-to-enjoyment ratio of the task. To remove them raw, I use a small knife with a sharp point. Once I’ve freed the oysters from the back of the chicken, I will use the back to make either white or brown stock for soups and sauces. The oysters can be coated or uncoated and roasted, sautéed, or deep-fried.

For an elegant preparation, hack up several chickens and save the legs, thighs and breasts for future meals. Make a brown or white stock from the backs and use the oysters in a first course preparation, three to a plate with some root vegetables. Use some of the stock to make a sauce or jus to accompany the oysters.

Let one humble part of the chicken show you the way through the recession. You’ll be a better cook and your family will enjoy the food you’ve put on the table.

Efficient and Tasty Sourdough Bread

Although good sourdough bread is a revelation, the recipes I enjoy require multiple steps over many days and I eventually lose interest in making them. I’ve been making my own version of no-knead bread with commercial yeast from a recipe by Jim Lahey. I decided to try it with my sourdough starter.

Fortunately, I’m not especially sentimental about hand-kneading dough. I like the feel of dough, but only for a few minutes and under my own terms. I once hand-kneaded a batch of dough for eighteen minutes because it was too large for my mixer. Only the last six of those minutes were excruciating. The first twelve minutes are still a wonderful memory.

I make a 900 gram (2 pound) loaf because it fits well into my clay baking dish and a smaller loaf gets eaten too fast. The benefit of measuring by weight and using the baker’s percentage is that you can easily scale the loaf to fit whatever size of pan you need. I calculate the ingredients to give an 80% hydration, which includes my starter (see below). I’ve been refreshing it using a 4:3 ratio by weight of water to flour.

No-Knead Sourdough

404 g flour (I've been using King Arthur white bread flour.)
271 g water (somewhere around 68-72 degrees)
225 g starter
18 g salt

I mix the ingredients together thoroughly in a bowl with a big spoon and cover with plastic wrap. I let the bowl sit at room temperature (mine is 68-72) for about  9-10 hours and then refrigerate it overnight. The next day I take the dough out of the bowl and rest it on a silicone mat for 15 minutes. It’s sticky. I shape it loosely, put it into a baking pan lined with parchment paper, and put the baking pan inside a large Ziploc plastic bag. I let it rise for 2-3 hours (until it doesn't spring back much when pushed).

I pre-heat the oven to 450, but I don't pre-heat a baking pan as called for in the original no-knead recipe. I just put the cover on the baking pan and put it into the oven for about 30 minutes. I take the cover off and bake another 20-25 minutes. Then I turn the oven off, take the bread out of the pan and put the bread back in the oven for 5-10 minutes to let the crust dry out and brown. I let it get really, really golden brown. I use my convection fan to brown it, but if you don't have convection, opening the oven door a few inches has a similar effect.

Sourdough Starter

Simple is better. I originally used a recipe by Peter Reinhart in Crust and Crumb, but I found that I could dispense with the raisin water and malt he added. I like adding a squirt of honey for luck.

1 cup of flour (I use King Arthur Organic White Whole Wheat)
1 cup of water (mine is filtered) at about 68-72 degrees
1 squirt of honey. 

I mix the ingredients together, cover and let sit for 24 hours. On the second and third day I add water and white bread flour (I use King Arthur, but not organic) in a 4:3 ratio making sure to double the size of the mixture from the previous day. On the fourth and fifth days, I throw some of it out before refreshing to keep the starter manageable. I start using it once it is strong and bubbly about 4-5 days. After that I refresh it every other day (doubling the mixture) when I'm baking and use it the day after I refresh it. My latest batch made great bread on the seventh day.

Sweet Corn Flan

I hadn’t planned to husk corn in May, but I wanted to try the Sweet Corn Flan recipe that Dara Moskowitz-Grumdahl included in her post about the Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook. It’s not corn season, but I’m planning a few dinners for friends and when the dinners are multi-course, I like to practice dishes before serving them.

What stirred my curiosity about this flan recipe from Restaurant Alma’s Chef Alex Roberts was the tiny amount of cream, only half a cup, with seven eggs. I typically have made savory flans with about 4 eggs/cup of cream. I wondered how much liquid I could get out of the corn and how small the flans would be. The recipe said it served six. I was dubious. I made two versions: the recipe as printed and another version with eight eggs and two cups of cream.

Lessons Learned
I have a makeshift chinois. Despite my love of kitchen tools (cut to scene of wife rolling eyes) I’ve managed with a fine mesh strainer and the back of a large spoon. With this combination I was able to get only about ten ounces of strained batter from Chef Roberts’s flan. A better tool for straining the corn would have been a tamis (drum sieve) and now I have a valid excuse to finally buy one.

I expect fresh local corn to puree better, but if you’re going to make six flan, they will be small. Strive for at least 12 ounces of strained batter for six servings. Two ounce servings are quite rich.

For Chef Roberts’s version I pureed everything together in a blender. It was very thick and my blender was very unhappy. For my version, I pureed the corn and cream and added the eggs to the blender after I had a good puree.

The original recipe leaves the seasoning up to the cook. For both versions of the flan, I used a ½ tsp of cumin (toasted and ground) and ½ tsp of salt. The cumin was very subtle. Truffle oil is extremely potent and too much would have been overwhelming. I found 2-3 drops sufficient.

Unmolding the flan can be unnerving. I tested some ramekins with parchment rounds on the bottom. I unmolded some the same day and some the next day after refrigeration. All of the ones with rounds came out of fine. Some without a parchment round that I unmolded the same day stuck. The next day they all came out fine after a brief stint in hot water. If you’re making the two ounce version, use smaller ramekins. The flan won’t fall as far when you unmold it.

I covered the pan to bring the water up to temperature faster and in the case of the corn flan it prevented the top from drying out and turning a darker yellow than the bottom.

Thoughts
I enjoyed the minimal approach to cream in Chef Roberts’s recipe (photo right). The focus should be on the corn. My version (bottom photo) had a creamier texture. I was surprised that the extra one and a half cups of cream didn’t diminish the corn flavor as much as I had anticipated.

Once fresh corn is available, I’ll be curious to see how much volume I can strain out of it. If you don’t have fresh corn, I don’t think adding another ½ cup of cream to Chef Roberts’s recipe will damage it. Or you could add more corn. That’s the beauty of this recipe. You have a wide range of egg/cream to suit your taste. Both versions are extremely rich. Depending on the number of courses, the two ounce version is great as a starter or first course. I wouldn’t make one bigger than four ounces or you might have to garnish it with Lipitor.

Possibilities
There it sits. Corn flan. All by itself. Tasty, but if I want to serve this for dinner with friends I’m going to have to compose a dish. I could opt for vegetarian or add shrimp or duck. Maybe some cheese or tomatoes or red bell peppers, or … something else? I’m happy to have some time before the local corn arrives. Does anyone have any thoughts about how to dress it up?

Crab Cakes

I love making crab cakes. On a weeknight, they are the centerpiece of a light dinner. Or I can dress them up with a sauce, place them on greens, and present them as the first course of an elegant dinner with friends. It’s a wonderful way to serve crab. I like being able to make and refrigerate the cakes ahead of time before finishing them under the broiler. And, a homemade crab cake is as good, if not better, than a restaurant one.

Crab cakes had been on my mind for a couple months after reading about a version using potatoes as a binder on the blog Ideas in Food. The chef’s post on crab cakes is less recipe than compelling narrative. I had to make them. When I walked into Coastal Seafoods and found some Dungeness crab meat, it was all over but the shouting.

The basic ingredients in the chef’s description are crab meat, potato, hot sauce, egg, butter, sour cream, and bread crumbs. I altered his ingredients by using a pound of Dungeness crab, half of a very large russet (5-6 inches long) potato and three splashes of hot sauce (a little more would have been all right).

I made a salad with blue cheese dressing using St. Pete’s Select from the Faribault Dairy Company. I sliced a baguette from Rustica Bakery and opened a bottle of Kistler Chardonnay 2003 McCrea Vineyard. I served the crab cakes with a squeeze of lemon juice.

My wife had seconds and the children ate them without complaint. I finished some strawberries drizzled with aged balsamic vinegar and all was well for a weeknight dinner.

Barista Excellence

For fifteen minutes in front of an audience, under spotlights and with his every move projected on two large video screens, Andrew Milstead (a barista from Kopplin’s Coffee), ground, tamped, steamed, pulled, and mixed his way through three coffee drinks: espresso, cappuccino, and a specialty drink of his own creation. Four savory judges evaluated his drinks and table service. Two technical judges scored his technique, cleanliness, and movements.

Milstead’s intense devotion and expertise is why drinking an espresso at Kopplin’s is an experience in excellence.

He was competing today at the United States Barista Championship (USBC) held in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The competition is part of the annual convention of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. The winner of the championship will represent the United States in the world championships in Copenhagen, Denmark. Push button baristas need not apply.

I’ve been a fervent fan of espresso for a decade. Five years ago, I purchased a Rancilio Silvia espresso maker because I could not find a decent shot in the Twin Cities. I had to work at mastering the Silvia, but the sad truth is that I can pull a better shot than the vast majority of coffee houses. But not Kopplin’s. The staff has introduced me to a variety of single origin coffees with diverse flavor profiles and they’ve given me pointers on time and temperature for when I take beans home to make my own.

If you're new to espresso, know that great espresso is not bitter. If a shot is pulled correctly bitterness is only one component that is properly balanced with the other components. If you want to understand what it is to enjoy a complex, intense espresso go to Kopplin’s. The flavors linger on the tongue for minutes after you’ve finished the espresso. Then you’ll have a standard to measure all others.

Farmer's Market

I made a quick and symbolic trip to the opening of the St. Paul Farmer’s Market last weekend. Quick because it was really cold and windy and symbolic because it was really cold and windy. The brave vendors included one selling what I assumed were hydroponic tomatoes and cucumbers. I also walked by an untended card table of parsley plants. A harbinger of warmer weather? I hope so.

I was leaving town to visit some relatives and I wanted some cheese for my uncle who introduced me to cheese-that-is-not-shrink-wrapped. Mary from LoveTree http://www.lovetreefarmstead.com/home.htm was handing out samples of her buttery jersey cow cheese. It contrasted well with the frosty morning and I knew my uncle would appreciate it.

I also bought a couple of thick pork chops from Prairie Pride Farm http://www.prairiepridefarm.com/. I’m a big fan of their pork chops, ribs, sausage, bacon, brats and well, most of the cuts they sell. Last January, I had trouble finding pork caul fat for a dinner and the owner, Dawn, helped me get some on short notice from her butcher.

What I knew I wouldn’t find, but what I’m ready for is some local asparagus. I’ll have to be content in the next few weeks to think about cooking asparagus. When it’s extremely fresh, I like it simply cooked with a little oil or butter and salt on it. The best asparagus I’ve ever had - the standard to which I compare all other asparagus - was cut from my wife’s grandfather’s farm a few hours before we ate it. It had a vegetal quality similar to what I’ve encountered with the freshest non-hybrid sweet corn. It is an elusive flavor that disappears soon after cutting.

Once it’s in the market, I’ll make some sauces, including aioli, for it. I’ll put it in a stir fry, an omelet, and I’ll toss it with homemade pasta. When morel mushrooms are in season, I’ll combine the two for a wonderful seasonal treat.

What is your favorite cooking method for asparagus – steaming, boiling, grilling, sautéing or another method? What ingredients do you find go particularly well with it?

Fish

Last April, I started a promising year of fish cookery by planning a multi-course meal for friends  featuring raw oysters, shrimp, grouper, and monkfish. All of the seafood I purchased was high quality and the dinner went well. I was happy and excited about cooking more seafood, but like a dieter who loses ten pounds in two weeks only to see fifteen come back, my fish resolution fizzled. I had planned to grill whole fish, make curries and try new species throughout the year. Instead at year’s end, I had made only one interesting new dish - halibut cheeks with homemade mayo.

I could rationalize my ambivalence by leaning on the latest problems of overfishing and toxic seafood reported frequently in the media, but as Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl wrote in April’s Minnesota Monthly http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/media/Minnesota-Monthly/April-2008/No-Guilt-Fish, there are ways to avoid those problems and still eat a few tasty species. I could reach back to my childhood fear of taking a slimy fish off a hook, but really, I’m over that now. Or I could lament that living between the oceans where the nearest salt water is in my pasta pot doesn’t help, either. Choice is limited, quality is lower and price is higher when the fish have to fly.

Of course these are all excuses and as my old football coach once said, “Suck it up or quit.”

I don’t want to quit. I love fish. I live blocks away from a Coastal Seafoods, which gives me easy access to very good seafood. I like the impromptu aspect of finding something unexpected in the fish case. That doesn’t happen with beef or chicken. It’s great fun to come up with a combination of flavors for a particular fish and just as much fun to enjoy a very fresh filet with a little lemon, butter, and herbs.

On the first day of Spring, I had a sketch of a plan. I had picked up some black trumpet mushrooms at Whole Foods and I wanted to use some Israeli couscous sitting in my cupboard. I went to Coastal Seafoods to find something from Dara’s list of no-guilt fish. The fish case was full, but the large, beautiful wild striped bass won out immediately.

I returned home with the fish and made mushroom stock from button mushrooms and cooked the couscous in it. I sautéed the black trumpets and finished them in butter. I pulled off a few remaining scales on the bass and cut it into even-sized thick pieces. I sautéed it and crisped the skin. I made a tarragon lemon zest oil to round out the dish.

The black trumpets pulled the dish together. My wife and I drank a 2005 William Fevre Chablis and we enjoyed the meal as my thoughts drifted toward what’s next…

Spring Cleaning

In March I start my annual passive-aggressive relationship with the remaining winter vegetables in my basement. They deserve better, I know, but I walk past the vegetable bin almost daily and ignore them. Eventually I will look, hoping they have rotted at which point I will get angry because they haven’t inspired me to cook them.

But this year is different, at least for the sweet potatoes. I’ve finally decided to recreate a traditional Argentine dessert that I enjoyed three years ago on a business trip to Buenos Aires. (quick aside: If you love steak make a pilgrimage to Buenos Aires and you will never want to eat in a US steak house again.)

After eating a late afternoon and apparently typical lunch of an assortment of meats and sweetbreads (my first pancreas!) accompanied by an arugula salad, it was time for dessert. I asked my Argentine colleagues to suggest something local and traditional. They recommended and I enjoyed dulce de batata y queso fresco - sweet potato jam with fresh cheese.

When I returned to the Twin Cities, I couldn’t buy dulce de batata anywhere. I searched the Web and found a few recipes, but it remained on my Things To Cook list. This month, I decided to check the Web again and I found a reference to dulce de batata in a 659 page book: “Sweet Potato: An Untapped Resource” by Jennifer A. Woolfe. According to Woolfe, dulce de batata is made from an equal weight of sweet potato and sugar cooked together with a little vanilla added. It can be thickened with agar or the natural pectin in the sweet potato. I thought if someone could devote the time to write 659 pages about the sweet potato, the least I could do is make the dessert.

How thick did I want my dulce de batata? That seemed to be the only important question. I decided to skip the agar that would have allowed me to slice it, but I didn’t trust the natural pectin in the potato to thicken it enough for my liking. I added a small amount of pectin to make it jam-like. The result was a jam that could stand up on its own. The final test was the taste. I spread some of the jam on my queso fresco. The flavor was all Buenos Aires and the memories of my brief, but unforgettable trip.

The cheese I enjoyed in Buenos Aires was a young cow’s milk cheese. I couldn’t find Queso Fresco from Argentina at local cheese shops, but I was extremely happy with Mexican Queso Fresco. I’ve found it at most Mexican grocery stores and at Whole Foods.

Dulce de Batata y Queso Fresco (sweet potato jam with fresh cheese)

4 oz sweet potatoes (about 1), 4 oz sugar, 1/4 t vanilla

Peel and cut the sweet potato into 1” pieces. In a small pan, cover the pieces with water and bring to a boil. Simmer until very tender. Drain and mash or rice the potato. Combine the potato with the sugar and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Boil 1 teaspoon Sure-Jell with 2 T water for one minute, Stir into the potato/sugar mixture and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.

Put into a small container or ramekin and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours. Refrigerate. Spread on top of bite size slices of queso fresco.

Horton hears a Lactococcus

I’m relieved that microbes don’t have a union. The writer’s strike demonstrated the importance of a relatively obscure group of people. Writers may be only one component of a production team, but without them there were no television shows, no stars performing. The same is true for microbes in the food world. Cheese, bread, wine, beer, and countless other stars of food would not exist without their oft-forgotten, much-maligned microbial colleagues. Crème fraîche, sensuous and seductive, would have no role without contributions from members of the Lactococcus and Leuconostoc families of lactic acid bacteria.

Crème fraîche is also a tasty home science experiment. Worried about the quality of your child’s science curriculum? Mix buttermilk with cream, cover, and let it sit at room temperature for a day. It will magically thicken and you can explain to your wide-eyed youngster how some bacteria makes food last longer and taste better. Teach them not to fear bacteria. Explain that there are good bacteria and bad bacteria. That green mold on the bread from the package they left open? Bad. A cup of yogurt in the morning? Good. If your child asks what kind of bacteria makes crème fraîche, make this a teaching moment and help your child research it on the computer (because you can’t remember). This may not work with a teenager.

I’ve enjoyed crème fraîche in sauces, soups, and desserts. I’ve ground spices into it and stirred it into butternut squash soup. My favorite use was to add chopped Oregon black truffles to crème fraîche and serve it as a dip with homemade potato chips (an idea from the French Laundry cookbook). The truffle aroma wrapped itself around the tart and creamy, crunchy and salty taste. For a quick dessert, simply whisking it with or without sugar and adding berries is a satisfying end to a meal during the week.

Crème fraîche is not hard to make, but after reading many, many instructions on how to make it, I had a couple questions. Some recipes told me to warm the cream, others to shake the cream with the buttermilk for a minute, and a few said I should not use ultra pasteurized cream because it wouldn’t thicken. I was dubious.

I tested four creams: Kemps Old Fashioned, Kemps Ultra Pasteurized, Organic Valley (ultra pasteurized) and Cedar Summit. Using canning jars, I stirred one tablespoon of low fat cultured buttermilk (Kemps) into one cup of cream taken straight from the refrigerator. My room temperature was about 68-70 degrees. At 15 hours, all were still runny. At 24 hours all were thick.

I compared the four jars of crème fraîche for texture and taste. Both Kemps products had a similar smooth texture. The Organic Valley was the thickest and resembled over-whipped cream (a good thing here). The Cedar Summit was a mixture of smooth and thick.

As for taste, Both Kemps products tasted too much like sour cream, crème fraîche’s leaner cousin, without any of the buttery flavors that lactic acid bacteria convey. Cedar Summit makes a distinctive cream with flavors that often change with the seasons. Sometimes I like it, sometimes it is overpowering. In this case, the barnyard flavors interfered, although it did have a buttery taste. My favorite (and my wife’s favorite) was the Organic Valley. It had the wonderful buttery flavors and tartness of real crème fraîche. I prefer Organic Valley for preparations with desserts and other subtle uses.

When you decide to make crème fraîche, keep it simple. You don’t need to warm it. You can use ultra pasteurized cream and there’s no need to shake the container.

Crème Fraîche

In a glass container (I use a canning jar) that can hold at least 8 oz + 1 T of liquid, stir 1 T cultured buttermilk into 1 cup heavy cream. Cover the jar with the lid and let it sit in the kitchen for about 24 hours (my room temperature was about 68-70). Check it for consistency by tasting a spoonful and refrigerate. I’ve kept it for up to ten days.

Temperature Control Freak

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but my hands are too soft. I’ve never been able to relate the tactile difference of areas on my hand to the “doneness” of meat on a grill. All points on my palm seem to be “rare” and I like my steak medium rare.

If my problem was limited to steak, I might be all right. Experience has taught me to pull the steaks off at the right time. But knowing the internal temperature of pork and chicken allows me to pull a leg, breast, chop, or roast off the grill or out of the oven at just the right moment. With pork, I like it pink at a temperature just north of where any potential inhabitants have been eliminated. For a whole chicken, I’m able to make sure the breast is not overcooked and dry.

The solution I purchased a few years ago was a true instant-read thermometer. My first instant read thermometers worked like the postal service. You got a reliable temperature, but you weren’t sure when it would show up. I did not enjoy pulling a roast out of the oven, sticking a dull probe into it, and waiting 20 seconds while everything cooled. My current model, a Thermapen, is more like instant messaging. Put the thin sharp probe into the meat and a couple seconds later you know the temperature.

http://www.thermoworks.com/products/thermapen/tpen_home.html

It’s not cheap at first glance. The latest version of the Thermapen is over $90, but I consider it an investment in taste. It’s durable and I don’t have to worry about upgrades to the Fahrenheit scale.

In addition to temping meat, I measure custards and candies, melted chocolate before adding butter, water before adding it to coffee in a press pot, baked bread and a few other things I can’t remember because I take it for granted.