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Yogurt Rice, or the importance of curry leaves
I can’t decide whether Paul Bertolli’s book, Cooking By Hand, is obnoxious, critical culinary instruction, or a bit of both. Bertolli, longtime Chez Panisse chef, is known for his exacting dissection of ingredients. Minutiae are his thing: percentages of hard to soft wheat in flours for fresh pasta; the advantages of milling your own wheat for the same; the crucial distinctions between balsamic vinegars, heritage pork breeds, and so on.
Is he on target? Is it really pointless to make fresh flat noodles out of Baker’s Choice versus the little known but ideal Promotory brand, constructed from a “harder” wheat? If he came to dinner and I served him Baker’s Choice pasta would he toss it out the window onto the Broadway pavement below?
I suppose a massive series of taste tests would put the matter to rest, but that’s one kitchen project I doubt we’ll undertake. It’s messy enough to make one batch of fresh pasta. Pushing out a second batch using special mail-order flour and mineral water would surely coat the apartment with a thick, floury mat. Also, logistics aren’t in my favor: It’s tough to hang sausages in a New York City apartment and even trickier to find the space for a flour mill.
I will concede, however, that there is such a thing as an indispensable ingredient without which a dish is a mere shadow of the genuine article. For certain dishes, “optional”, a term which peppers so many recipes, is at best wishy-washy and at worst criminal. Curry leaves are just such an ingredient.
Living in New York, we’re spoiled by the profusion of specialty items. For most, a lush garden of unusual stuff is a few subway stops, or brief traffic dodging bike ride away. And so I cycle uptown, wearing my empty backpack, past Union Square, into Gramercy, to Kalustyan’s from which I emerge, backpack stuffed with sacks of dals, pink salt, bags of spices, nuts, and, invariably, the aforementioned fresh curry leaves. The ride back is slightly more perilous.
Earthy and almost toasty, fresh curry leaves are a critical component of Indian cooking. Imagine fried chicken without salt, a burger without ketchup, or chicken salad without celery, and you get the idea. Curry leaves round out the dish, adding fragrance, flavor, and color to an otherwise lifeless product.
Yogurt rice is a perfect example. Yogurt rice is a delicious, cold side dish of Basmati rice mixed with yogurt, fried dal, mustard seeds, chiles, and curry leaves. It is Indian food at its purest: quick with an exquisite balance of spices. Minus a handful of curry leaves, yogurt rice is forgettable and frankly not worth the trouble.
Paul Bertolli may know everything about pasta, balsamic vinegar, and sausages, but he can’t convince me I won’t be able to follow his tortelli of tagliatelle with braised poussin recipe and come out with a pretty decent dish of pasta. However, I know for sure that if you come across an Indian recipe which calls for “optional” curry leaves, and you don’t have any, make something else. It simply won’t be the same.
(NOTE: you can use all urad dal or mung dal. Asafoetida is highly useful in Indian cooking, and in the spirit of this post I haven’t labeled it “optional”, but if you can’t find the stuff I won’t be too upset.)
Yogurt Rice
Serves 4
1 cup basmati rice
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
12 curry leaves
3 dried chiles
2 tablespoons urad dal
2 tablespoons chana dal
¼ teaspoon turmeric
pinch asafoetida
2 cups yogurt
juice ½ lemon
- Wash rice. Combine with 2 cups water in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, stir, cover, simmer slowly until done, then leave 15 minutes before fluffing.
- Heat oil in a small pan with the mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, add the curry leaves, chiles, and dal. Fry, stirring, about 2 minutes, till the dal has colored. Stir in turmeric and asafetida.
- Combine the yogurt and dal mixture in a large bowl, mix in rice, season with salt and lemon juice. Refrigerate. Serve cold.
Lamb Chops w/ Cinnamon
The idea for this one is speed. A speedy weeknight dinner, that is. As such, I’ll keep it short in case you don’t have time to read.
Weeknight, or any kind of deadline cooking, should use no more than a pan or two and/or the oven. The goal is achieving as much flavor with the least possible effort. The use of spices is the most efficient and effective method.
Think cocktails. Throw together vodka, grapefruit juice and sugar. Nice. Crush up a few mint leaves and stir. Nicer. The entire palate is satisfied: sugar, sour, booze, and herbal fragrance. Which is why an understanding of spice is the mark of a good cook. As Anthony Bourdain said between mouthfuls of Red Hook ballfield ceviche: “a monkey can cook a sirloin”.
Spice is on the brain chez 2 peas (see our post on upma) these days. You’d think that odd, perhaps, since spices are often associated with heavy wintry foods such as pumpkin pie, Indian food, and gingerbread. But we also rub it on ribs headed for the grill, so get over it.
Spices and herbs are fantastic tiny parcels which rapidly transfer enormous flavor. And since rapidity is what we’re after, they’re the key. All we need to do is choose the vehicle. Because it’s already so flavorful, we went with lamb. Lamb pairs with so many spices, reducing the risk and complication. We chose cinnamon.
There you go: two ingredients, lamb and cinnamon. Weeknight and speed. And not too many words.
(NOTE: loin chops are much cheaper than those from the rack and just as good. As with all lamb chops, they’re two-biters, so you may want to cook more in case. Heat up an extra pan.)
Lamb Chops w/ Cinnamon
8 loin lamb chops
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
salt and pepper
- Season the chops on both sides with salt and pepper.
- Heat the oil in a large pan over high heat until nearly smoking. Add the chops and cinnamon sticks. Cook 3 minutes or so, or until browned.
- Flip the chops and add the butter. Cook another 3-4 minutes, using a spoon to baste with the butter. In the last minute sprinkle the ground cinnamon over the chops and continue to baste with the cinnamon butter. Remove to a plate and rest 5 minutes. Serve.
Crab Cakes Done Right
I don’t believe in that firm stance of refusing to order an item in a restaurant which you could make at home. Restaurants are about luxury; people bring stuff to you. They refill your water glass; cook your food; play music over the speaker; say hi and goodbye. Whether or not you could make it at home isn’t really the issue. Usually.
But they still need you to return, hence easy-listening menu options such as burgers and fries, steak, salmon (a friendly fish), pasta, and so on. All of which can be very tasty. Crab cakes, though, are a curiously ubiquitous offering.
The genesis of the crab cake is a mystery. At its best-purely crab, very lightly breaded-it’s still a hockey puck served with dressing on the side. Because it’s so popular, you’d think McDonald’s would have coopted the crab cake. However, crab is prohibitively costly, which is why, in addition to being fried, it’s a restaurant favorite.
Expensive and plain, crab cakes, to my view, are, yes, best made at home. Not because in your kitchen they’re any less plain, but for another key reason: the bowl. The best part of crab cakes is stealing a spoonful of newly-mixed fresh crab. The lump crab, tossed with a light dressing of mayo, capers, cayenne, and herbs, is delicious, especially in summer. Why not just make a salad of it, you may ask. You can, though here it’s like eating cake batter, where half the fun is the anticipation.
And, to be fair, a good crab cake is worth the anticipation: crisp and sweet assisted by a rich, astringent dressing. It’s just not something, despite a restaurant’s inherent luxury, I’d order.
(NOTE: I was feeling in a diet mood so I bypassed pan-frying and opted for the oven, which worked well. Also, these guys serve it as a sandwich on brioche with their Cajun Remoulade, which is probably pretty tasty, but I made my own yogurt dressing-see below.)
Crab Cakes (adapted from Clinton St. Baking Cookbook)
Serves 4
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¾ cup fresh white breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped capers
1 tablespoon minced onion
¼ cup Hellman’s mayo
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
pinch cayenne
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon white or black pepper
1 pound lump crabmeat
2 teaspoons Canola
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Mix egg, lemon juice, ½ cup of the breadcrumbs, parsley, capers and onion with the mayo, mustard, and seasonings. Fold in crabmeat and shape 4-5 ounce cakes with your hands. Dredge in remaining breadrumbs.
- Refrigerate cakes for an hour then place on a oiled tray and into oven until lightly browned. Turn off the oven, switch to the broiler, place on a rack close to the broiler and sear until fairly dark and crunchy, flipping once. Serve with the sauce.
Yogurt Dressing
1 cup strained 2% Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons chopped capers
2 tablespoon chopped tarragon
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons chopped chives
salt and pepper
1. Fold all ingredients together, season well with salt and pepper. Refrigerate till ready to serve.
Upma-The Art of Spice
There’s okra and there’s okra. I haven’t done a formal survey, but it’s a fair bet a lot of people don’t like the stuff. It’s cool-looking-a green, faceted pod-but tough to cook. You can’t eat it raw, and, heated, it releases a strange sticky white gel. Sound gross? Not at all. The entire thing-nutty, crunchy seeds and toothsome skin-is edible and even hearty, a rare quality in a green vegetable.
That is, if you cook it right, i.e. nicely browned and al dente. If you screw it up you get that plateful of nasty vegetal ooze, which scares, off cook and diner alike.
To my mind, Indian cooks have truly mastered okra. They slice it in small chunks and give it a quick toss in a hot pan with plenty of spices. Not only does the vegetable retain its integrity, but the spice heightens the flavor. It’s what I love about Indian cooking: respect for the ingredient paired with respect for the spice.
Tamarind, a few blocks from us, is a fantastic Indian place. A giant, airy two-level loft, it attracts a sharp-dressed crowd. A far cry from the neighborhood Indian place of my childhood, with its oppressive red velvet walls, neon-red tandoori chicken, and soul-deadening sitar music, Tamarind is an Indian restaurant for the modern era.
The spice pantry at Tamarind must be cavernous, and most of it seems to go into the okra, a mixture of okra, ginger, and a wild handful of ground and whole spice. Whole spice is among the best elements of this cooking: the seeds add crunch and a strong but not overwhelming flavor, which is muted by hot oil.
Upma, introduced to me years ago, is the quintessential whole-spice Indian dish. Like the best quick curries-okra, eggplant, or other-it’s a mix of a simple ingredient and complex spice. Although fortified with potatoes and tomatoes, the main ingredient couldn’t be more basic-cream of wheat-making upma essentially a dish as suited to breakfast as it is lunch or dinner.
Lending a great crunch to the otherwise soupy cream of wheat, the whole seeds make upma a great starting point for anyone interested in cooking Indian food. It’s like sinking into a bubble bath: the warm water is great, but nothing without the bubbles.
Upma
Serves 4
¼ cup olive oil (or canola)
3 tablespoons toor dal (or any small-sized dal, i.e. not chana)
2 tablespoons cumin seed
2 tablespoons mustard seeds (black, preferably)
2 yukon gold or red bliss potatoes, peeled in 1-inch chunks
3 plum tomatoes in chunks
1 inch ginger, peeled and minced
1 cup cream of wheat
salt
3-4 small red chiles, chopped thinly, with seeds (if you can deal with the heat)
- Add the oil and spices to a medium pot over medium heat. When the mustard seeds pop and the dal starts to color (about 30-40 seconds), add the ginger, potatoes, and tomatoes.
- Cook a few minutes, stirring, and season with salt. Not too heavily-this is just the first seasoning-you don’t want the final product to be too salty. Adjust at the end.
- (This is where we go off recipe a bit.) Add enough water as you want-it’ll determine how much upma you want. For this amount of spice and other ingredients, I add quite a bit-enough to cover the veg by probably 2 inches.
- Raise the heat a bit and bring to boil. Stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, add the cream of wheat in a thin, slow stream. You don’t want lumps.
- Reduce to low heat and cook, stirring, until the upma thickens. You don’t want cement, rather, a smooth, thin porridge. Season again with plenty of salt. If you’re being fancy, plate it and garnish with chiles. Otherwise, just stir em in. Serve hot. (But it’s great cold the next day.)
Crispy Skate w/ Chile Oil
This post was in the works but moved along by http://theoffalcook.com who writes great stuff for SE. (http://www.seriouseats.com/user/profile/Chichi%20Wang)
Skate is an interesting fish. It doesn’t look like Nemo or anything you might catch off a boat or the banks of a stream. Rather, skate, which uses its wings to propel itself through the sea, is more like an underwater bird.
To my mind, seafood is far more interesting than landfood (made up word). The sea is a vast, mysterious world, where history, geography, and atmosphere collude to breed an infinite array of life.
But back to eating. On the face of it, skate really isn’t any weirder than, say, soft shell crab, lobster, or octopus. It’s just another fish. In eating terms, though, it is unique. Peel the skin, and you can see its structure. Like the slats of a wicker chair, the flesh is striated and bumpy. Stranger still, as opposed to flounder or other flatfish, the top and bottom are divided by a layer of pure cartilage, again, bumpy and striped.
I can see why it’s a tough sell. People tend to eat seafood that more or less resembles “landfood”, i.e. firm like swordfish, halibut, or, less so, salmon, snapper, and bass. While well-cooked salmon shouldn’t resemble a block of cat food, the flakes, have a somewhat familiar, substantial texture.
Skate is, frankly, stringy and quite soft. On the plus side, it is pleasantly sweet and very tasty. More so, to my mind, than swordfish. To offset the texture, it is most often pan fried, resulting in a soft, sweet, crunchy fish. Bathed in brown butter, capers, and lemon juice, it becomes a fantastic meal.
I like fish and chips as much as the next guy, but-not comforting to mommy skate-some fish were born to be fried. They become a fantastic package: you bite through a crispy crust and into a sweet, unctuous, interesting, full-flavored interior. Think fried oysters, soft shell crabs (pan-fried, not deep-fried), fried clam bellies, and, yes, pan-fried skate.
(NOTE: we like to cook skate on the bone: it’s both more impressive on the plate, and moist, though skate is forgiving and resists overcooking. Some recipes call for weighing the skate with another pan to prevent curling, but we haven’t had a problem.)
Pan-Fried Skate w/ Chile Oil
Serves 4
12 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup olive oil
4 pasilla chiles, stemmed and seeded
¼-½ cup canola
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 ½ pound skate on the bone
1 cup flour
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Wrap garlic in foil with ¼ cup of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast about 20 minutes till soft and golden. Remove and reserve with oil.
- Meanwhile, boil a few cups of water. Toast the chiles in a small pan over low heat until fragrant, 3-4 minutes. Remove, add to a bowl and pour over the boiling water. Let soften 10 minutes.
- Carefully remove chiles from water. Split lengthwise with a sharp knife. Lay the halves on cutting board and scrape the soft insides. Discard the shells.
- Add the chile pulp to a blender along with ¼ cup canola and the reserved garlic oil, a bit of salt and black pepper. Puree until emulsified. You may need a bit more oil. Pass through a fine mesh strainer into a small bowl. Reserve.
- Using a heavy knife, cut the skate through the bone into even quarters i.e. four steaks, filet on top and bottom divided by bone. Season with salt and pepper. Lightly dredge fish in flour, shaking off excess.
- Heat remaining olive oil in a large pan over high heat. When shimmering, gently lay in the fish and cook till well-browned, about 2 minutes. Flip and add the butter, cooking until browned. Baste the fish frequently with the butter.
- Transfer the oven and cook 3-4 minutes, opening the door once to baste the fish with butter.
- Serve fish, spoon over chile oil and several cloves of roasted garlic. Serve.
Artichoke Confit
If you want to encourage a non-cook to use his kitchen, the artichoke is not a great place to start. The majority of this globe is inedible, woody fiber. Getting to the “food” is like hacking through the Amazon with a machete: tough, army-green plant matter flying all around, settling, finally, on your kitchen floor.
Other poor starter foods may include: unpitted olives, beets, leeks, fennel, and mangoes. These are fruits and vegetables that inspire a special kind of listlessness. No one wants to go home and have a death match with the Thomas train you bought for your kid, and which requires a surgeon’s touch to install the batteries. So why take home produce that seems equally labor-intensive and annoying? Which is one reason why markets sell more cucumbers and lettuce than fennel.
Unfortunately, nature doesn’t accommodate the produce shopper, who misses out by passing on items such as fennel and artichokes. In his photographs, Charles Jones, the late 19th century gardener and photographer, captured the complexities of these vegetables. Their odd structure-curves and crevasses, folds, points, humps, and waves-requires a little finesse with the knife.
There is a labor factor hierarchy here. An olive pit is an annoying little nub. Beets (unless shaved very thin) require long cooking. Leeks come embedded with grit, and fennel has a difficult structure to make sense of.
Artichokes, however, conjure the most terror in home kitchens. Rather than a vegetable, they seem an object to conquer, a beast of prey genetically designed to withhold its treasure.
There is a quick way and a relatively slow way to extract the heart of the choke. The quick is really a restaurant method mastered by practicing on crates of chokes under the whip of a sadistic chef. There are more peaceful systems, and this is my preferred method:
- Squeeze a bunch of lemons into a bowl of cold water. Drop in the squeezed halves.
- With your hand, rotate the artichoke and snap off most of the bottom third of the leaves. Make sure not to pull down, as that will tear off edible choke. When you hit the light green layer, use a super sharp or serrated knife and slice just above it (about a third of the way from the bottom of the choke). Discard everything but what you’re holding (choke and stem)
- Using a paring knife and/or peeler, trim off the remaining green parts. Peel the stem as well.
- Using a spoon, scrape out the fibrous choke. Drop into the acidulated water.
Step-by-step photos would be easier perhaps, but this isn’t a glossy food mag. If I haven’t explained it well, email or consult the web. I prefer this method.
As for cooking, you can do pretty much anything: sauté, roast, add to a braise, steam, parcook and add to pasta, etc.
While these are all fine, to bring out the essence, the pure artichoke flavor, I prefer to confit in a few cups of olive oil. Unlike cooking in a liquid medium, none of the flavor is leached out, and unlike sautéing or roasting, there is no caramelization, which alters the taste.
Gently poaching in olive oil gives you a creamy, unadulterated artichoke. And after all that work, you may as well enjoy the real thing.
(Note: For this recipe, pureeing the already creamy flesh with the cooking oil makes for a luscious product. Topping it with the tender confited leaves adds flavor and texture. Be sure to use only the bright yellow leaves! Even slightly green leaves turn into chewing tobacco. Save the remaining oil for a vinaigrette.)
Artichoke Puree w/ Tender Artichoke Leaves
Serves 2
1 globe (large) artichoke, quartered, yellow inner leaves reserved
2 lemons, halved
2-3 cups olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ cup parmesan, grated
salt and pepper
- Prepare the artichoke as described above and reserve in the lemon water.
- Drain and dry. Add the quartered heart (you can cut in large chunks) and the leaves to a small pot and pour in the oil just to cover. Place under low heat and cook until very tender. You may need more oil than called for. Also, be sure not to let it bubble too much. You want a very low simmer. Remove from heat.
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the choke (not the leaves) to a blender along with the garlic and parmesan. Turn on blender and puree, adding enough of the flavored oil to achieve a very smooth texture. Season with salt and pepper.
- Plate the puree, sprinkling with the confited leaves.
Sticky Thai Stir-Fried Beef with Sugar and Shallots
Thai and Vietnamese food is known for its exquisite balance of sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. I’m not sure how they acquired this knack for blending ingredients, but I suspect they feed their babies a steady diet of cilantro smoothies. Cilantro, which should be the national currency, is the perfect symbol for this cuisine: fragrant, uniquely indescribable, a thing unto itself.
If this sounds intimidating, that’s because it is. Our friend, Steven Duong, has a new place on 9th Ave. called Co Ba, an incarnation of his prior TriBeCa restaurant Nam, an old haunt of ours. The food, mostly small plates as well as banh mi, is equally succulent and frustratingly mysterious. Usually I can sort of suss out method and ingredients, but with this stuff not so much.
Lemongrass-crusted tofu, fried and served with a green papaya relish and ponzu dipping sauce; steamed shrimp and coconut rice cakes with ground pork and a few drizzles of scallion oil; calamari, fried, seasoned with chiles and a cool tamarind-lime sauce on the side.
The plates don’t seem complicated, but they require a serious gift for blending spices, herbs, and oils. The eggplant is tender and hot, as if roasted or steamed, but slightly charred from a grill. I guess. I don’t know. I just eat.
A fundamental tenet of Western cooking is “a little of this, a little of that”. Grab jars and cans and meats and fish and tailor the thing, more or less, to your liking. Which is why thanksgiving dinner is essentially a giant carb fest-everyone brings five types of stuffings: oyster, chestnut, sausage, sourdough, classic with herbs, etc. Allowing for regional variation, a Thai thanksgiving (I suspect), would look more uniform, rooted in a more or less common pantry.
And it’s quite a pantry. Our local Thai grocer is over on Mosco Street. To get there you cut through 1 Police Plaza and the adjacent city jail, which is nice, because you can both check your shopping list and dodge cops tugging around felons. From there it’s a quick stroll through the Chinese playground, where old men play board games, past the cheap dumpling place, and onto Mosco Street, a narrow, crooked way where sits a tiny, gem of a store, packed with every possible Thai ingredient.
Like cilantro, the flavors are refined and complex. Instead of salt, there’s fish sauce. Instead of cream, there’s coconut milk. Instead of ginger, there’s galangal. Instead of brown sugar, there’s palm sugar. Instead of basil, there’s holy basil. Other items, like lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf, pretty much have no Western match.
Unless you live near a cool Thai grocery, cooking from a Thai or Vietnamese recipe is often frustrating. Basil can be used, but it’s not really a substitute for holy basil, which is more fragrant. Galangal is like ginger but spicier. For this recipe, you could use brown sugar, but again, palm sugar is ideal: it’s smooth, moist, and dense, almost like peanut butter. And it melts beautifully in a hot pan to form a quick, golden caramel.
The recipe below is a perfect example of Thai/Vietnamese balance. As the fish-sauce marinated beef dries, it attains a delicate saltiness, which is offset during cooking by the melted, amber palm sugar, which is in turn re-balanced by a splash of more fish sauce. Fried chiles, shallots and garlic add heat and crunch while, finally, a handful of cilantro brightens the whole dish.
(Note: you could deep-fry the beef strips to save time, if you like. It won’t be the same, but still delicious. To fry shallots and garlic: thinly slice, heat oil in a wok or pot, add to the oil, stir until lightly colored, a minute or two. Have paper towels on a tray nearby to drain upon removal as they burn quickly. The first batch might not come out well-it takes a little practice adjusting the heat on the oil. Using the garlic frying oil is a good idea, as it enhances the flavor. We cover and store it for a few days for re-use. As for the dried beef, Thompson calls for turning the meat once during the drying process, but we were away at a wedding, so in lieu of missing the first dance to rush home and flip drying meat strips, we rolled the dice It came out fine. Also, it took about 2 days on a shelf to dry fully. Finding a sunny spot is probably less critical than locating one high enough to discourage the curious fingers of a three-year-old boy.)
Salted Beef Stir-Fried with Sugar and Shallots (adapted from Thai Food, by David Thompson)
Serves 2-4 as part of a meal with other dishes
1 pound salted beef (see below)
1 pasilla or other Mexican chile, stemmed, seeded, and julienned
6 tablespoons palm sugar
4 tablespoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons fried shallots (see note)
3 tablespoons fried garlic (see note)
3 tablespoons coriander leaves
1 or 2 fresh red Serrano chiles, julienned with seeds (optional)
oil for frying
- Rehydrate the beef in a bowl of cold water for at least 10 minutes, drain and dry on paper towels. Slice into very thin julienne.
- Heat a few tablespoons of the garlic oil in a wok over medium-high heat and drop in the chile. Fry about 30 seconds, remove to paper towel.
- Add palm sugar. When melted, add fish sauce and meat and turn heat to low to prevent burning. Simmer, stirring to coat the meat with the syrup. When sticky, remove from heat and toss with the shallots, garlic, herbs, and fresh chiles.
Salted Beef
1 pound beef, sliced thinly, about 1/8 inch thick and 1 ½ or 2 inches long
8 tablespoons fish sauce
large pinch salt
pinch white pepper
pinch sugar
- Whisk the sugar, salt, pepper and fish sauce together in a bowl. Add the beef and mix well. Marinate overnight.
- The next day, lay out the beef strips on a rack in an airy place for at least 24 hours. (see note) The spot should not be too hot or the meat will cook rather than dry. Make sure the strips are spaced evenly so the air will circulate. Make sure they have completely dried, or they will become moldy when stored. The beef will keep several weeks in the refrigerator.
Makin’ Bacon
I smoked my first bacon this weekend. It was at my parents’ place outside the city.
Two Wednesdays ago I bought a giant slab of pork belly, smothered it in salt, sugar, and pink salt, and let it sit in a few ziplock bags. We drove up there, me in the passenger seat clutching my pork like an old lady grips her purse on the subway.
Already it was early afternoon, and I needed to get this thing on the fire. First to Wal-Mart for the chips then shoot down the curving country roads to the house.
A partially used weekend house isn’t like other homes you pass by on suburban roads. No one’s standing in the kitchen stirring tomato sauce dodging a pack of little kids. There’s no “mud room”: I learned what that was about a month ago. The garage isn’t full of toys and bikes. Life inside the weekend place doesn’t evolve. Neither the contents nor their placement have changed in decades. Books, magazines, photographs, light switches, television: everything is decades old, but tidy as the day it came.
Having hacked away at the rust-coated grill grates and shoveled out half a foot of ash, I started the pork and eased into the pool with our little kid. He loves to swim but started screaming inconsolably when we uncovered a frog caught in the skimmer.
Like the rest of us, he’s pure city, through and through.
Meanwhile, the bacon came out great: salty and smoky, dark and a tad sugary from the molasses.
(Note #1: If you don’t have a butcher, get the supermarket guy to remove the bones from a slab of spare ribs. However, supermarket spare ribs are skinned, so your bacon will lack that critical smoked pork skin. The first step, namely, drying it over a very gentle heat, is absolutely not my invention. I copied it from bbq expert on the web, who claims pork and other meats have to be fully dried before they can “accept” smoke. I assume he’s right, but I don’t even own a grill. I did rub the pork with a touch of nitrites, probably not necessary, as I’ve seen a bunch of recipes which don’t use them. I’m going to slice it up and freeze in batches.)
(Note #2: As amateurs, we wanted to confirm meat safety, hence the final low-oven roasting-it’s easier than dealing with more coals. I recommend this stage, but who knows. All I know is we made a mean bacon.)
Makin’ Bacon
2 ½ pounds pork belly, skin-on
½ cup kosher salt
¼ cup sugar
½ cup molasses
pinch nitrites (pink salt-optional)
- Mix the spices in a bowl. Spread half on the bottom of a baking sheet and lay the belly on top. Spread the rest over the belly. Massage the cure all over the belly. It should really be worked into the meat. Cover and refrigerate. We sliced it in half so it fit in ziplock bags, which work well.
- Cure the belly for about a week, flipping it every day. Ziplock bags make this easier.
- When ready to smoke, soak several handfuls of wood chips (I used hickory) in a pan of water for 1 hour then drain. Meanwhile, remove the belly and rinse under running cold water. Dry well.
- Heat about 12 coals and use a grill rake or some other utensil to divide the coals to opposite sides, leaving the center bare.
- Lay the belly over the center of the grate skin up. Close the grill and roast for ½ hour. Make sure the temperature doesn’t exceed 150. If so, remove a few coals.
- After the ½ hour, add the same number of coals to the fire and divide a small handful of chips over each mound of coals, close and keep the temp at 150 or so. Do this every ½ hour. We did it for 2 ½ hours.
(See note #2 for this step.) Preheat oven to 150, lay the pork on a rack over a sheet pan and roast 2 hours. Remove, rest, slice, freeze, or whatever you like. We immediately roasted delicious, crispy lardons
Spaghetti Bolognese-the real way
A while back, I wrote a post on the longest-cooking dish. While I imagine smoking a brisket takes a while, we live in soho and can’t smoke meat without getting evicted. Though worth the effort, baked beans take forever. The cooking is not hands on-mostly oven time with a little stirring-but a lot has to go on in that pot before the dish is ready. Once the beans have broken down, the sugars in the braising liquid need several hours to concentrate and coat the beans.
Baked beans is essentially a braise-short ribs, brisket, stews-and braises are self-sufficient. A lot happens in that pot with little outside assistance: collagen and fat melt, liquid evaporates. Other long-cooking dishes require a little more nudging: though similar chemical reactions are in effect, you’re the one in charge and deeply involved in the process.
(2 hours in-roughly-the "rusty" color and crud on the bottom)
Such is the case with a true Bolognese. To do so is like weaving a quilt on a loom. I saw this in action a few years back at a historical recreation village on Long Island and it seemed numbingly painful. Nearly as much as having to change into bonnet and colonial dress each day for work. I’d much rather cook a Bolognese.
(final consistency-four hours later)
A Bolognese is all about layering, and, as in quilt-making, there can be no shortcuts. Upon the completion of one layer, you weave in the next flavor element and so on until you arrive at a deeply flavored and textured sauce. As an example of this layering, the recipe calls for tomato paste rather than tomatoes, which by their nature melt down and bind a quick sauce. Here, tomato paste is the essential, and demanding ingredient. You have to stir and scrape, stir and scrape the paste, working it into the meat, not only creating a “rusty” base, but also building up the all-important crud stuck to the bottom of the pot.
The process takes about 4 hours, much of which is spent stirring, but the sauce freezes well, and if you time it right, you can stir your way through an entire NBA finals game.
Spaghetti Bolognese
Serves 4 with extra sauce
¼ cup olive oil
1 onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 ribs celery, minced
3 carrots, peeled, minced
1 pound ground beef
1 ½ pound ground pork
1 cup tomato paste
milk
white wine
1 pound spaghetti
freshly grated quality parmesan
salt and pepper
1. In a heavy bottom pot over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the vegetables and stir constantly until they have released their liquid. You don’t want them to brown, rather, you’re looking for a mass much reduced in size that comes together. About 40 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Add the meat and break up with a wooden spoon. Let meat brown and fold the bottom to the top, allowing for even browning. Do this until the meat is dark, then fry, stirring constantly, until it is crispy. You may want to add a bit more olive oil. The bottom of the pot should be coated with bits of meat. About 40 minutes.
3. Add tomato paste and work in vigorously until the meat is dark and rusty in color. About 30-40 minutes.
4. Add (finally) the liquid. First milk just to cover, scraping the crud from the bottom and sides. Simmer gently (turn down the heat if necessary) until the milk is absorbed: 20 minutes or so.
5. Add the wine, again barely to cover, and simmer until the alcohol is burned off, then cover and simmer very slowly. About 30-40 minutes for this whole step. The sauce is done, though you may need to adjust consistency with some water if too thick. Reseason with salt and pepper.
6. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to boil and cook pasta. When done, turn pasta into a large serving bowl. Toss with a ladleful or so of sauce, some parmesan and serve.
Chicken Crackling thoughts
Robert Caro told a great story about his work on the Lyndon Johnson books. Johnson (hope I get this right-I saw this a few years ago on C-Span at 3 am during an insomniac rage) was walking up the capitol steps (or was it the Lincoln Memorial?) at dawn, when he experienced a moment of exultation brought on by the early sunlight angling off the building.
Early sunlight is something I haven’t seen in years, let alone bouncing around the capitol, but let’s move on. Curious, Caro traveled to D.C., arose at dawn and retraced Johnson’s steps, whereupon he experienced a similar elation. Or at least settled his confusion.
Truly there’s no substitute for experience, as Caro would be the first to tell you. It’s a lesson best absorbed at Peking Duck House. Every duck-head intact, glistening and crispy-emerges from the kitchen followed by a hundred sets of greedy eyes as well as The Duck Master, clad in long white coat, tall chef’s toque, clutching a saber-like knife.
Talk about experience. This guy is the Michael Jordan of the duck carving community. In minutes, he turns the bird into a clean carcass, filling out a neat platter of duck meat, duck skin, and gleaming duck legs. It’s a feat of duckdom made possible by a lifetime bond with the animal.
Short of devoting your existence to the art of duck butchering, you can do something similar at home with chicken. In other words, render a perfect, crisp chip of chicken skin with which to fill a duck pancake wrapper or in this case, a tortilla.
For our purposes chicken thighs work best: the skin is flat and resists curling; the meat is rich and shreds well, making for a good filling. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. Actually, you could take this recipe in numerous directions once you have the meat and skin crisped up. It may be no substitute for life in the bowels of the Duck House, but it’s better than waking up early to follow the ghost of Lyndon Johnson.
(Note: there are several ways of working with chicken skin: this is just one effective method. You could spread on a tray and roast in the oven as well. The crackling is like bacon. If it doesn’t seem crisp, it’ll get that way off the heat as it drains and dries out.)
Chicken Tortillas w/ Chicken Crackling
Serves 4
2 dried pasilla or ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded
2 pounds chicken thighs
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tomatoes, chopped roughly
1 green pepper, chopped roughly
2 teaspoons chile in adobo sauce, chopped
¼ cup cilantro, chopped
sour cream
tortillas
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 400.
- In a small pan over medium heat toast the chiles until fragrant. 4 or 5 minutes. Remove to a bowl and pour boiling water over. Reserve for 20 minutes.
- Season thighs on both sides with salt and pepper. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large sauté pan over medium high heat until smoking. Place thighs skin down and let cook till browned, about 3 minutes. Place in oven until cooked, about 15 minutes. Then remove to a plate. Reduce heat to 200, wrap tortillas in foil and warm.
- Meanwhile, remove softened chiles from water and chop finely, to a paste. In a large pan heat the remaining oil over medium high heat.
- Add garlic and minced chiles, stir till fragrant, about 1 minute. Don’t let garlic burn. Stir in tomatoes and peppers and chile in adobo. Let the sauce break down until thickened, the tomatoes have melted and the peppers are soft, about 20 minutes.
- When chicken is cool, remove the chicken skin to a plate and shred the meat into the pan with tomatoes and chiles. Stir in cilantro, season and keep warm.
- Place chicken skin in a small pan crisped side up, over medium heat. Render fat, pressing a bit occasionally on the skins, until sizzling like bacon, about 8-10 minutes. Remove to drain on a paper towel. It will crisp up outside the pan and become like a chip.
- Fill tortillas with tomatoes, then chicken, sour cream and a piece of crackling. Eat.
