Grilling: White Meats

July 21, 2008 · Filed under Flavorings, Grilling, White Meats · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hola! I’m back from beautiful Costa Rica, and I thought I should finally get off my butt and do something worthwhile. Like packing up all my junk for Moving Day. But then I decided I’d much rather update my blog! I mentioned in the last post (eons ago) that I’d get a page up explaining which cooking methods (moist or dry) for which fabricated cuts of meat. If you look at the right (or very top) at the pages on my blog: home, about, etc., you can see that I now have a tab for that.

Today I’m going to continue with grilling, but I’m going to give a basic introduction into the white meats: pork and veal. Yes, veal, get off my back. The white meats are similar into the red meats in that they, too, have static and locomotive muscle. Static muscles are best receptive of dry cooking because they are the muscles not used a lot by the animal walking around and therefore have less tough connective tissue. Locomotive muscles are used a ton and have a lot of tough connective tissue that requires cooking using moist methods and for longer periods of time to break it down. Pork is similar to beef in that the static muscles are up and away from the feet. That is generally true of most animals.

If you don’t understand the difference between moist and dry cooking, that’s okay, because I’ve given a basic rundown on this page that I mentioned earlier.

The American veal primal cuts are exactly like the lamb:

Veal Primal Cuts

American Pork Primal Cuts:

Pork Primal Cuts

As far as grilling goes, there’s nothing mindblowing to add in this post that wasn’t covered in the last post on grilling. The basics are still the same. It’s a dry cooking method. You still want a clean grill. You still prepare meat the same way- oil and season with salt and pepper.

That’s because grilling is just a simple Lego in your cooking set. It’s one of those “building blocks” that I keep mentioning. The basics of grilling are always very similar no matter what you’re cooking. The difference comes in because of the differences in the characteristics of what you’re cooking.

For example, on beef and lamb, I said that people prefer those more medium-rare to rare. I also said that as you cook a piece of meat, the outside crisps up because of the Maillard Reaction, similar to the carmelization of an onion, and that it builds flavor. Ideally, you want the piece of meat to cook through in the amount of time it takes the outside to crisp up. With beef and lamb, it does not take very long to reach a rare to medium-rare. This is why you want a high temperature that will sear the outside quickly.

With pork and veal, you’re going to be looking more at a medium to medium-well. Trichinosis has been virtually eliminated in American commercial pork (but not wild boar). Still, a lot people have qualms about eating pork even at a medium. At any rate, to reach the doneness of pork most people enjoy, it would take longer to cook at the same temperature than it does to cook beef or lamb.

There are two solutions to keep pork or veal from being overcooked or burnt on the outside while underdone on the inside:

The first solution is simple; cook it at a lower temperature than you would red meats- medium to a medium-low temperature, remembering to turn it every so often to get even cooking.

The other solution is the best way to ensure that the outside will be the doneness you desire as well as the inside being the proper doneness- start off at a medium to medium-high heat and allow the outside to reach the desired doneness and crispness. This will build the flavor profile. If you’d like, you can do this at a medium to medium-low heat to spend a longer time building up that smokey flavor if you’re using a charcoal gill. Then transfer to a pan and finish in the oven. Something like this is what I would do for a pork tenderloin or the thicker pork chops.

An oven allows for heat to come at the piece of meat from all sides as opposed to one direction on the grill so it’ll allow the inside to heat up more evenly. And while grill marks are nice, you won’t get a charred/burnt flavor from where the grill slats are. You can let them get as deep enough marks as you want, and make sure it doesn’t go further than that.

To give you an idea, I’ll post a couple of recipes below, but with this information you have all the basics you need.

Grilled Veal Chop Forestière

1 veal chop
1 oz shallot, minced
2 oz assorted seasonal wild mushroom, cleaned and rough chopped
1 oz whole butter
1 oz white wine
4 oz demiglace
AN kosher salt
AN black pepper

Looking at that list, you might be confused at first, but if you’ve been reading the blog since the beginning, you should already know how to do this just based off of the ingredients list. No?

So what if I told you, the chop was grilled just as we covered? You know what to do then, right? Well, what about those other ingredients? What if I told you the rest was for a sauce? It is very similar to an integral sauce, except we’re building it from a scratch in a separate pan. That’s pretty much exactly what we’re doing here. If you were confusing by the scary French words, don’t be. It turns out Forestière is just French for “in the style of a crapton of mushrooms.”

Don’t worry, I’ll still tell you what to do, but the point I’m making is that you should now be getting a vague idea of the similarities between even seemingly different dishes.

At this point, there’s only one new concept to add to the veal, most chops you get are probably going to come Frenched. It’s just a presentation technique of cutting off the meat around the bone so that can expose it.

Frenched Veal Chop

If for some reason you get a regular chop, veal or otherwise, from the store, this is easy to reproduce.

Chop

You can tell where the bone is running, right? You can see where the mostly eatable meat is- the circular slab of meat. You have to let the bone stick down into the meat by a couple of inches so it will hold together. So locate where the bone ends into the meat, move your knife up the bone a couple of inches, then at the first dotted line without the arrow, you cut all four sides, down to the bone. These cuts go across the width of the bone, not the length. Next, lay your knife perpendicular to that cut, and cut up the bone lengthwise, all the way up. Make sure you cut down to the bone. Then using your hands, pull the meat from the bone. This requires some strength!

Again, I almost always see chops already Frenched in the grocery store, and this is just a presentation issue so don’t stress if you don’t get it right the first time.

As far as preparing the veal on the grill goes, the rest you know. you slather oil, canola or olive works fine, on both sides of the veal chop. Liberally salt (and pepper if you wish). Grill on a medium heat until a medium doneness.  Let rest.

The sauce should also be easy- in a sauté pan, sweat shallots and mushrooms until shallots are soft and mushrooms are cooked. Pour out extra oil. Deglaze the pan with wine. Reduce. Add demiglace. Reduce until sauce like consistency and mount with butter. Taste, season, and adjust with salt and pepper.

If you don’t regularly keep demiglace in the house, you can just as easily use beef stock. The only difference is that you might need to use a whitewash (couple of spoonfuls of cornstarch and enough water to make it look like a white liquid). If you do, add only a couple of spoonfuls at a time, keeping the sauce at a simmer and giving it enough time to thicken before adding more. Do this where you would add the demiglace, in other words, before the butter.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin

8 oz pork tenderloin, trimmed
AN Canola oil
AN salt
AN black pepper

Rub:
1 part sage
1 part cayenne
2 parts garlic powder
4 parts chili powder
4 parts cumin

A rub is a great, easy (and healthy) way, to build flavor right onto the meat without needing to serve a sauce on the side. If sauces give you trouble, but you still want to build something from scratch, this is the way to go. There are two different kinds of rubs- dry and wet. Dry rubs are probably the most familiar to everyone. The one I listed above is dry, and a mix I’ve found I rather enjoy. A dry rub is just a mix of spices and/or herbs. A wet rub adds jam, oil, citrus juice, butter, mustard, horseradish…something along those lines to the mix. Even with a wet rub, you usually don’t want it any thinner than a paste because you have to be able to coat a piece of meat with it.

So the way this works, is you mix the rub together. Everyone understands “parts,” right? If we were using teaspoons as a measurement, you’d have 1 tsp sage, 1 tsp cayenne, 2 tsp garlic, 4 tsp chili, 4 tsp cumin, right? Everyone understands? Once this is mixed together, you…stay with me here…rub this mixture all over the meat. You want it to coat the meat in a very thin layer.

Afterwards, I would let the pork sit a half hour or so. Then, everything else is the same. You rub oil on the tenderloin. Season with salt and pepper. Then grill.  And rest.

This is definitely one of those that I would consider moving to the oven after awhile. And while learning the correct doneness of a chop is harder, on something like this, you can take the temperature of the meat. You need a meat thermometer, obviously, which is correctly calibrated, and you want to take the temperature of the middle. A lot of thermometers will have a little notch in it about an inch or two from the bottom. You want that notch, in the middle. One something like this, I personally would pull it from the oven or grill at 130-135 F and allow the carryover cooking to finish it while it rested. Like I said earlier, trichinosis isn’t really a concern anymore. It’s something like 12 reported cases a year on average, most of which are from game meat anyway. But, to be on the safe side, trichinosis is killed at 140 F. So to be on the safe side and disclaimers sake and whatnot, you should wait until 137-140 F to pull it and not blame anything on me.

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Grilling: Red meats

July 2, 2008 · Filed under Grilling, Red Meats · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Now, that we’re starting red meats, allow me to introduce you to my little friend, the handy dandy primal cuts guide:

American Beef Primal Cuts

American beef primal cuts

American Lamb Primal Cuts

American lamb primal cuts

While memorizing cuts of meat may seem tedious, there are two main differences in the muscles that it makes it worth your while. For the most part, muscles are divided up into static and locomotive. Locomotive are the muscles that get moved a lot and have a lot of connective tissue. A general picture is shown below. The reason it’s important to know the difference between these two is that certain muscles are better receptive of certain cooking methods.

static vs. locomotive

Cooking methods tend to be broken up into dry heat and moist heat. Moist heat is pretty self explanatory- heat is conducted to the food by water or water-based liquids like stock or by steam, etc. Dry heat is conducted without moisture. So hot air, hot metal, radiation, and even hot fat. This might surprise you, but deep frying and sautéing are both considered dry heating.

Now, again, as a general rule, static muscles do best with dry heat methods, and locomotive muscles tend to do best with moist heat. Locomotive muscles have a lot of what’s called “connective tissue.” Connective tissue consists of collagen and elastin. Elastin does not break down during cooking and needs to be cut out for tenderization. But collagen does break down when cooked long and slow in the presence of moisture, making tougher pieces of meat more tender.

Moist heating methods include poaching, simmering, boiling, steaming (and smoking), and braising.

Dry heating methods include roasting, baking, broiling, griddling, pan-broil, sautéing, pan-frying, deep-frying, and…grilling!

Cooking methods are only one of the tenderizing techniques. Others are…

- Marinades (the more acid, the more effective at tenderizing; oil controls the acid so the more oil the less effective as a tenderizer)
- Physical tenderizing (slicing thinly against the grain, ground, pounding)
- Enzymatic (certain fruits have natural tenderizing enzymes, for example, like papaya, mango, fig, kiwi, pineapple, all of which are heat activated)

So that’s why it’s possible that fajitas, while coming from the flank cut are able to be grilled. Primal cuts are further broken down into what’s called “fabricated” cuts, which use the names you know them by: prime rib, flank steak, porterhouse steaks… I will build a little chart to recommend cooking methods for different fabricated cuts, but it’ll probably get put up by the weekend sometime.

As far as doneness goes for red meats, typically you’re not going to be taking the temperature of a steak on the grill the way you would a roast. For a guideline, rare is a browned surface with a thin layer of grey meat and a red interior. Medium is a thicker layer of gray and a pink interior. Well done is grey throughout.

The basics for grilling are really simple. Grilling is a high heat coming from one direction. If an item you’re serving from the grill is going to be served with a sauce, you must build this from scratch. No integral sauces since the juices fall through the slats.

Before grilling, you need to make sure that your grill is clean and scrubbed free of any residue from the last time you grilled. This can leave for an unpleasant taste. For those without the ability to check temperatures on your grills, the best way to tell is to hold your hand around five inches above the grill. If you need to move your hand after a couple of seconds because it’s so hot, it’s high. If you need to move after a few seconds, it’s medium. If you don’t need to move your hand until ten seconds or more, it’s low.

The outside of a piece of meat crisps up and turns a darker brown color because of what’s known as the Maillard Reaction. This is very similar to caramelization of onions. Ideally, you would like the meat to cook in the amount of time it takes the outside to crisp up. Typically, red meat is served no more than a medium. I prefer mine around medium-rare to medium. Because of this, you’re looking for a high heat when grilling steaks and such. You want a quick sear without overcooking the inside. It doesn’t take long to cook a steak to a medium-rare.  However, if you are cooking ground beef, like for a hamburger, then I would caution you against leaving that at a medium rare or rare due to the potential E Coli risk factor.

Have you ever noticed those cool grill marks on photographs of food? That’s really easy to replicate. It’s called a “quadrillage.”

quadrillage
Crappy artist’s interpretation of a quadrillage.

If you thought about it, you could probably guess how the grill marks are made, right? Either, you put a piece of meat on the grill, rotate it 90 degrees, flip it and then rotate it 90 degrees. Or you can put it on the grill, flip it, flip it AND turn 90 degrees, flip and turn 90 degrees. I personally think it’s just best to flip it three times because it makes for more even cooking that way. The only tricky part is when you’re flipping it over the second time, you’ll have to note which way the grill slats are running, and which way the marks are running on your steak. You don’t have to have them at 90 degrees. You can tilt the steak more or less to get more severe or fatter diamonds. One thing to keep in mind though is that one you set the meat down, leave it. If you didn’t get it lined up exactly, just leave it anyway. You don’t want to risk getting multiple stripes and have it look sloppy.

When it comes to cooking the meat, you just need a pair of tongs. But right before you set out to grill, you need to oil and season the meat. Oil keeps the meat from sticking to the grill. Canola works fine. Just lather up both sides. Then liberally salt both sides. You want salt covering both sides. The thing to keep in mind is that the amount of salt on the surface of a piece of meat is for the insides of that steak as well. So it might look like a lot at first. Then add pepper on both sides to taste. Oiling before seasoning is a good idea, since adding the oil afterward tends to “wash” the seasoning off.

After grilling, it’s important to let your meat “rest” on a rack. You’re not looking for it to cool any. Rather, when food cooks, it changes the water within that item at a molecular level. By allowing that item to rest, you allow the moisture within the item become even within it again. At least that’s the theory. However, I can say that from experience, a piece of meat that has been well rested will not bleed on a plate. When you see that on the plate, it tends to be because the meat was not rested. It had nothing to do with searing a meat to “seal in the juices.” That is a myth, and searing does nothing of the sort. A meat that is seared will still bleed if it is not rested properly. It is strictly to build flavor. And a piece of meat doesn’t even need to rest long. Maybe half the time it took for the meat to cook. You don’t want the meat to get cold.

So say we were to make a Grilled New York Strip, the directions would look like this:

1 each 10 oz New York Strip steak
AN canola oil
AN kosher salt
AN black peppercorn, ground

Lather both sides of steak with oil. Salt liberally, and season with pepper to taste. Place on a high heat grill. A fourth of the way through, flip with a pair of tongs. Allow to cook to the half way point. Flip again with a pair of tongs and match up grill marks on the steak so that they are perpendicular to the grill slats. Flip one last time and again match up the marks. I’d hate to put a time limit on this since cooking times depend on a number of factors, especially how thick an item is. I’d say this takes about 6-10 minutes on a medium heat for a medium to medium-rare. Rest the steak.

If you’re looking to impress everyone by building a sauce from scratch, I’d recommend serving this with the Béarnaise sauce.

Shish Kebabs

There are not too many more things to add under here. Just a couple of quick points.

One, you may have heard to soak your skewers in water to keep them from burning. I personally find that you still might see some burning anyway. If that’s a concern of yours, I would wrap the exposed wood in foil. That tends to keep the skewers from burning nicely. However, soaking the skewers in water for awhile before assembling your shish kebabs is still a good idea, since it can help, but not stop splintering.

Two, the nightmare of shish kebabs to the cook is that you basically take a bunch of stuff that all have different cooking times but place them on the same stick and expect it to be done in time. If you have things like bell pepper next to chicken, this might be a problem on getting one to cook through without burning the other. I like to cut all the pieces so that they’re all roughly the same cube shape and size. Then when assembling the shish kebabs, I like to make sure that there is no space between the food. If it’s all shoved up against one another, it takes longer for the thinner items like the bell pepper to burn.

Three, shish kebabs are another area to get creative in. Grilling are one of the building block techniques I mentioned in the introduction post. Shish Kebabs are an easy way to break into creativity if you’re not used to that yet. Get creative in the pairings, get creative in the marinades. Get creative in herbs. You can use a thicker stems from herbs like rosemary as skewers. (Although I wouldn’t soak those in water beforehand). This really is a simple way to mix and match.

Lamb Shish Kebab

8 oz lamb sirloin, cubed 1” (and trimmed and clean)
½ lemon
2 each garlic cloves
1 each zucchini squash, thinly sliced
1 each red bell pepper, cut into thin 1” squares
1 tsp oregano, chopped
½ tsp cumin, ground
3 oz olive oil
AN kosher salt
AN black peppercorn, ground

The marinade consists of lemon, olive oil, garlic, oregano and cumin. Place the meat, zucchini and bell pepper in a bag. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in marinade. Set in fridge for an hour.

Assemble shish kebabs in whichever order you wish. Wrap the ends in foil. Grill on high heat. Make sure to heat all four sides of the shish kebab.

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Sauces: Misc.

June 29, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Butter

I like to think of butter as the sixth mother sauce. A lot of simple sauces have butter as a base, and it can be easy to work with. In the U.S., whole butter is made up of around 80% milk fat, 15% water, and 5% milk solids.

Brown Butter

This is whole butter that is melted and then heated until it turns a golden brown. It gives off a nutty aroma. It tends to be served with fish, white meats, eggs and vegetables. It takes a very short time to make, which makes it great in a time crunch. One thing to keep in mind though is that when you shut off the burner, the pan will continue to slightly brown the butter. So make sure you move it to a cold burner, and don’t let it get too brown before you remove it. The liquid part (the milk fat part) should look golden brown, and the “specks” inside the butter should be a darker brown

Meunière

Cooking fish “à la Meunière” is a classic French preparation that’s actually very easy. The sauce for it is just brown butter, lemon and parsley. Most squeeze lemon directly onto the fish and sprinkle it with parsley before adding the brown butter to counteract the potential splattering problem.

Black Butter

Black butter is the same as brown butter, but it’s been heated a little darker. It’s flavored with a few drops of vinegar, and parsley and/or capers are sometimes added. Careful when adding vinegar to the hot butter, it could splatter. Scalding butter on skin isn’t fun last time I checked.

Compound Butters

We’ve already looked at how to make a shrimp compound butter when we covered Nantua under the Béchamel sauces. But basically, compound butter is softened butter that has a flavoring ingredient. The mixture is usually rolled into a cylinder type shape in parchment paper and hardened back up to use as necessary.

The possibilities on this one are endless, and this is another easy way to break into using techniques you are familiar with (what a compound butter is) with creative outlets to add to it. Garlic, mustard, dried herbs, any of the flavored vinegars, juice/zest… It’s all up to you.

A famous compound butter is Maître d’hôtel butter. It consists of butter, lemon juice, parsley and white pepper. It’s typically seen on top of steaks. You just cut it into slices and lay them on top of the steaks, allowing it to melt and sauce the steak with no extra work for you! Except maybe bringing it back up to room temperature right before plating.

But the great thing about this one is that it can have both savory and sweet applications. Butter and garlic can be great for haricot verts, but an orange butter compound might go well over a pie.

Beurre Blanc

I left this one for last because it’s one of the trickier butter sauces. The key to this one is the same as hollandaise sauce, the same as most sauces, really- temperature control.

1 oz shallots, chopped finely but not minced
2 oz white wine
4 oz cold butter
AN kosher salt
AN white pepper

In a small sauté pan, add the shallots and wine. Slowly, on a low heat until reduced down to one-fourth the original amount of wine. You should notice the remaining wine has turned a pinkish color from the shallots. The reason you want to go a lower heat is that you want the shallots to soften and completely cook in the time it takes the wine to reduce. Now, divide the butter up into pieces, and yes, you want it to be just-pulled-from-the-refrigerator cold. It’s at this point on a gas stove, I’d turn the heat off so it’s just got the pilot light. On an electric stove, I’d lower the heat to the lowest possible setting.

Now take the pan off the heat and add a chunk of butter, swirl the butter in the pan until it melts. Keep doing this until all the butter you have is in the sauce. Yes, the whole thing. When do you know to put the pan back on the stove? I’d say it like this, you should be able to comfortably lay your palm flat against the bottom of the pan without burning off your fingerprints. Don’t get it any hotter than that. If it’s too hot to touch, pray it hasn’t broken. Now when you feel that it’s closer to room temperature warm than “mmm, this is fresh laundry warm,” place it back on the burner and swirl it around for a few seconds to get it back up there. After the butter is mixed in, season with salt and pepper. You can serve with the shallots in or strain them out. I personally like them better left in, myself.

Beurre Rouge

Okay, so maybe that one wasn’t the last butter sauce I’m covering. But this one is exactly like that one only you use red wine. You can also throw in some thyme or black peppercorns to the wine reduction at the beginning for flavor, just make sure you strain it out.

Integral Sauces

When you cook a piece of meat, you’ll notice bits of charred, golden brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan. Not burned, mind you. Just a golden or a darker brown. Those small little brown bits? Yeah, they have a ton of flavor, and the best way to take advantage of that flavor is to build a sauce off of it. Now there are a lot of ways to do this. Usually this is what you see:

- Remove the meat and set aside.

- Add onions, celery and carrots. (or other aromatic vegetables) Saute them on a medium to low heat. Add garlic, sauté it. Careful not to burn it. Pour off the extra oil/fat, but leave the vegetables.

- Deglaze with alcohol. Usually you see red or white wine, depending on the meat, but really it can be anything. Classically, it just has to be acidic so you could use a vinegar if you want. With something like wine, you might be adding 3-4 oz, but with a liqueur, you typically only add an ounce or two since they have much stronger flavors. Stir up the brown bits. You’ll notice as soon as you add the alcohol, it comes up rather easily.

- Add a few ounces of stock. Typically, if it’s chicken, it gets chicken stock. If it’s beef, it’ll get a veal stock.

- Aromatics are added here such as thyme, bay, anything else you’d like.

- Reduce the sauce until the right consistency. The thickness you’re shooting for is that if you stick a spoon in it and pull the spoon back out, the sauce will coat the spoon.

- Strain the sauce, mount with a little butter. (Meaning, just melt a little butter in).

- Season with salt and pepper as necessary.

**Note 1: first of all, if you’re using a store bought stock like a beef stock, you might notice it takes a long time to reduce to the right consistency. Even with a well-made home-made chicken stock, it not as gelatinous as veal stock and has a harder time reducing to the right consistency. You can make a whitewash. It’s really simple. In a cup, add a few tablespoons of cornstarch. Then pour in enough water to where it looks like a white liquid. Add a couple of spoonfuls to the sauce as needed until it thickens to the right consistency. Remember you need the sauce to be at a simmer when you do this and give it time before adding more right away. If you get it too thick though, you can always thin it back down with more stock. Do this before adding butter. Add the butter after it is the right consistency.

**Note 2: This is basically a simple pan gravy. If you’re using a veal stock to accompany a roast, it might taste fancier than that. But try it with chicken stock after searing chicken in a pan, and you’ll see. That’s basically all this is.

**Note 3: Integral sauces don’t always follow this pattern. For instance, some may be a cream sauce. You simply pour off the extra fat at the bottom of the pan. Deglaze with a wine, reduce. And add cream and reduce.

Salsas

Salsa is just the Spanish word for “sauce.” In the U.S. though, salsa usually refers to a mixture of raw (or cooked) vegetables, peppers, herbs. You even see fruit in salsas, such as Mango or pineapple salsa. Salsa can have liquid added to it, or it can rely on the moisture within the vegetables themselves. Adding salt to a bowl full of vegetables, and letting it sit for a half hour, you’ll notice that the salt naturally draws out liquid.

The exact definition of a salsa is pretty fluid. Basically you get the spicy taste (from the peppers and from some of the vegetables if there’s onion). You get the acidic taste (from tomatoes if there are tomatoes, from lime juice, from vinegar added). And you have salt.

When creating a salsa, your goal should be to balance those three things. And if you do have fruit thrown in there, the sweetness should not overbalance any of those things. A very basic salsa might look like:

Tomatoes, diced
Jalapenos, minced
Onion, minced
Fresh cilantro, rough chop
Lime juice
Salt

Mix to taste. Again, if you add enough salt, in a half hour or so, you should see liquid in the bowl. It should also be pretty flavorful since it’s a combination of everything in there. However, if the consistency doesn’t have enough liquid for you, you can always add a little water or a little tomato sauce.

Even how big or how small you cut the vegetables plays into what the final product will look like. This is another sauce that is a great way to start looking to get creative in your own cooking.

Chutneys

Chutney is another one of those things where there are many varieties, and it’d be very hard to pin down one definition. If I had to though, I’d say that a chutney is typically fruit (although sometimes vegetables) cooked in the presence of sugar so it doesn’t break down. Spices are added, usually heat like from a chili. And then enough salt and acid are added to balance it. A chutney typically tastes like a balance of sweet, spicy and acidic. So an example of a chutney might look like:

1 oz shallot minced
1 tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 tomato, peeled, seeded and diced
1 ripe mango, diced
AN coriander, toasted and ground (to toast, just place the whole seeds in a pan dry over low heat until they turn a darker color and start to pop)
AN mustard seed, toasted and ground
AN cayenne
2 oz granulated sugar
2 oz cider vinegar
1 tsp cilantro, chopped

In a sauté pan, in oil, sweat the shallot, garlic and ginger. Add the tomato, mango, and some of the sugar. The sugar helps the mango and tomato to hold their shape. Add coriander, mustard and cayenne to taste. Let simmer until it’s the right consistency, then taste, season and adjust with cider vinegar, salt and chopped cilantro. Remember you want a balanced taste.

This post should sum up a pretty decent introduction to sauces. I know there are posts I’d like to make eventually (like mayonnaise and more on making dressings), but I’m probably going to do that at a much later time. I really want to get going on the grilling because it’s near the beginning of summer still, and I would say it’s that time of the year that’s perfect for grilling.

But the truth is that grilling is awesome any time of the year. I’ll try to get that up by Tuesday.

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Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses.

June 26, 2008 · Filed under Misc.

I just felt the need to explain why I’ve fallen off the blogosphere right after starting this blog. The truth is that I’ve got a lot going on right now. I have a day left of the big culinary class I’m taking now so tomorrow I’ve got a five hour practical exam. The class itself was a lot of work so I’ve been pretty busy with that, and on top of it, I’m working on planning for my wedding in August. Things are starting to wind down now. I’ll be updating a lot more after tomorrow. I probably should have posted that before now, but there you go.

After this one class, I’ve got a six week leave of absence so I’ll have nothing but time on my hands to post. And even when I get back to culinary school, I start off with a really easy schedule: a cost control class and a wine class. So boozing it up every day will not only be allowed, it’ll be expected. Good thing I’m going to be moving within walking distance of school!

I have one more miscellaneous sauces post I want to put up, and then I’m going to get going on what I feel is the best way to start off the beginning of the summer: grilling!

Thanks for being patient, I really appreciate it.

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Sauce Week: Hollandaise

June 7, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Like tomato sauce, Hollandaise is the other mother sauce that is suitable enough to be served on its own although there are small sauces that build off of it. One of which you are also probably familiar with: béarnaise sauce. If you’re not sure as to what a mother sauce/small sauce even are, you should check out the opening on my béchamel post for a basic introductory to sauces.

Of all the previous mother sauces, this is probably the most difficult, but don’t let that discourage you. As I’ve said before, the biggest issue with these sauces is heat control, and that is definitely the biggest factor in making a hollandaise. Hollandaise can break if it gets too cold or if it gets too hot.

Hollandaise is an emulsion of fat and water. An emulsion is a mixture of two unmixable liquids. I know, I know, that sounds like crazy talk, but all of you should already be familiar with one emulsion after reading this blog—vinaigrette! Vinaigrette is a temporary emulsion (it’ll separate as soon as you stop shaking the bottle), but hollandaise is permanent thanks to the egg yolks.

To do this, you need a whisk, a pot, and a metal bowl with a rim the same size as the rim of the pot. You want to be able to rest the bowl on top of the pot without it falling in.

Hollandaise Sauce
2 egg yolks
2 cups unsalted butter, melted (classically, you use clarified butter, but you can use whole. It doesn’t matter)
AN water
AN lemon juice
AN kosher salt
AN cayenne pepper

Pour the yolks into your metal bowl. Add a little squeeze of lemon. Your pot should be filled with water and simmering on your stove. You should see no more than a few bubbles coming off of it. If you set the bowl on top of the pot, and the water touches the bottom of the bowl, that’s too much water. You want less than that, but you don’t want so little it boils away.

Note on temperature: so to keep the right temperature, you need to work the bowl on and off the heat. You want the bottom and sides of the bowl to feel hot to the touch but not so hot that you can’t comfortably hold it. So you lower the bowl onto the pot long enough to heat it up and keep it hot, then take the bowl back out. Make sure you use a rag, or you can burn your fingers. Some feel it’s easier to keep it at the right temperature if they bring the pot to a simmer with gentle bubbling on the top, and then cover the pot with a washcloth. Then place the bowl on top of that. The rag should act more like a buffer to bear the brunt of some of the heat.

Okay, now that’s out of the way: start off by whisking your eggs/lemon, keeping it at the right temperature we talked about. It’s especially important now because getting the eggs too hot will scramble them. As time goes on, the yolks will turn a lot paler, and you should see them start to thicken up. They’ll almost seem to double in volume, and you want to keep doing this until you get to the “ribbons” stage. That is, while you’re whisking, you should see little trails left in the yolks by the whisk.

Add this stage, you start adding the butter drop by drop while whisking until the butter is emulsified. You’ll be able to tell because it’ll start to thicken up even more. Whenever it gets too thick, add a little water. Do this until you get the butter flavor and thickness you would like. Remember- water thins it down, butter thickens it up.

Once you get the consistency you want, taste, season, and adjust (TSA) with the lemon juice, salt and cayenne pepper. Also remember that a little bit of cayenne goes a long way. You want that flavor, but you also don’t want it to dominate the sauce.

Now, say while you were doing this, you broke the sauce. You’ll know because it’ll look like little globs of fat floating in it the way oil floats on water. You can try to save it by adding another egg yolk, and either turning up or turning down the heat, depending on what caused it to break. Then slowly adding the butter again.

And now to build off of that…

Béarnaise Sauce
8 oz hollandaise
4 oz white wine vinegar (or tarragon vinegar)
1 oz shallot, chopped small dice
Tarragon, whole sprigs and chopped
AN kosher salt
AN black peppercorns, ground

In a small pot, pour in vinegar, shallots, a couple sprigs of tarragon and whole peppercorns. Turn it on very low heat and reduce until you have about an ounce to a half ounce of liquid left. You want to do this on the lowest heat possible to give time for an infusion of the tarragon and shallots. Strain this vinegar, and pour the liquid into your hollandaise.

Now keep in mind that the hollandaise is the same as above with one difference—no lemon and no cayenne go in this. Instead of lemon at the beginning, add a tiny amount of tarragon or white wine vinegar. Then at the end, instead of adding the squeeze of lemon, add the vinegar. Finish by adding chopped tarragon, salt and pepper to taste.

Maltaise Sauce
8 oz hollandaise
2 oz naval orange juice (or blood orange if possible)
AN naval orange zest
AN kosher salt

In a pan, reduce the juice (with the zest) until it’s a syrupy consistency. Add to hollandaise sauce to taste. TSA with salt. Add zest.

A couple of notes: 1) When you add the lemon at the beginning, you just want a touch. Enough to stabilize the yolks, but not enough to give it taste. 2) When you get the zest from an orange, lime, lemon, etc., you want to just scrape off the colored part. Don’t grate any of the white “pith.” It’ll be bitter. A microplaner works well for zesting. You can use a regular grater or zester, but you might want to run your knife through it a couple of times to get the pieces even smaller.

So if you can remember back to my first post on oils and vinegars, you can see how those can come in handy here. Raspberry vinegar would work just as well. You wouldn’t have any “zest,” but you could always chop add in chopped mint to cut out the acidity of the vinegar. We used a tarragon vinegar in the béarnaise. This is a great example of how you can use your knowledge of the basics (in this case how hollandaise small sauces are typically made and flavors of vinegar) to create your own dishes.

All five mother sauces have been covered now, but later on, I’m going to add an entry of miscellaneous kinds of sauces that don’t really fall under one of the “mother sauce” groups.

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Sauce Week: Tomato Sauce

June 6, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , ,

If you’ve been having difficulty with any of the previous sauces, today’s mother sauce is really easy- tomato sauce! Or “sauce tomate” if you want to sound really snooty. It is one of the two that Escoffier added, and like I said, it’s one of the two that can stand alone and be tasty on its own without breaking it down to a small sauce.

Tomato Sauce

4 oz salt pork (or pork product- try 2 slices bacon)
1 cup tomato, small- medium dice (maybe around 4 tomatoes)
2 tsp-1 T. tomato paste
1 bouquet garni (typically a pocket is created using a celery stalk against a leek half and tied with twine. Inside are black peppercorns, a whole clove, thyme, parsley stems, thyme, bay leaf. You may wrap this in a little pouch made of cheesecloth if it’s easier.)
2 oz carrots, chopped
2 oz celery, chopped
4 oz yellow onion, chopped
AN black peppercorn, ground
AN kosher salt

Classically, a tomato sauce uses a pork product. Here we’re just going to render the fat. Heat the salt pork in a pot on low heat. We don’t want any color on the meat. We’re just looking for the fat to be melting and collecting in the pot. After meat is cooked, remove. If you’re using bacon, you should have more than enough grease, but if you just got stuck with a piece of salt pork that doesn’t yield a lot of fat, you may thin it down with canola.

Sweat the carrots, celery and onion in the fat. Remember we want no color on them. We’re looking for a translucent color on the onions. Sprinkle in just a touch of flour, and mix it up. Add the tomato paste as needed, and mix it up. You want all of the vegetables to be covered in a reddish tint. Add tomatoes. Add around 3 cups of water. If it is too much, you may always let it reduce (which basically is just evaporating water out of a dish anyway). Add bouquet garni. Leave the sauce on a low heat until the tomatoes are completely broken down, and all the vegetables are soft and can be easily squished. Remove bouquet garni. Puree sauce in a blender until smooth. Pour sauce through a strainer into another pan. Taste, season and adjust with salt and pepper.

Pretty simple, right? It’s easy to add to this one- how about basil sliced thinly and added at the very end? Not too much of a leap of logic to go from something like this to a Bolognese sauce either. I’ll wait to give the recipe on that one until I cover pastas, but I’ll leave you with this one excellent small sauce for the day:

Creole Sauce

1 oz olive oil
1 oz yellow onion, small dice
1 oz celery, small dice
1 oz green bell pepper, small dice
1 oz garlic, minced
8 oz tomato sauce
1 bay leaf
AN lemon zest
AN Tabasco sauce
AN Italian parsley

In a pan, sweat the vegetables in oil. Remember no color. Once translucent, add the vegetables to the sauce. Add bay leaf. Simmer until the vegetables are cooked through. Take out the leaf. DO NOT puree this one. The chunks of vegetables are supposed to be in this one. TSA with zest, Tabasco, salt and pepper.

Just for some background information- the French like to use a lot of what’s called “mirepoix.” That’s a mixture of 50% onions, 25% carrots, and 25% celery. Cajun cooking replaced the carrots with green bell peppers. That’s what’s reflected in this recipe.

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Sauce Week: Espagnole and Demi-glace

June 5, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Traditionally an espagnole sauce is a brown stock thickened with a brown roux. (If you don’t remember or know what roux is, you might want to read through my introductory post to sauces. Now, most use demi-glace in place of an espagnole. Personally, I like the taste of a demi-glace better. A demi is just a brown stock that has been reduced by around half or 60%. Reducing evaporates the water and concentrates the flavor. With a homemade stock, it will also thicken a lot because of its gelatinous quality. Store purchased stocks (different than broth) will need to be reduced more to get the same thickened state.

You’re shooting for what’s called a “napper” consistency– you don’t want it soupy, you want it more on the level of gravy thickness. If you can dip a spoon into it, pour off the stock, and have it coat the back of the spoon? That’s the ballpark. It’ll be solid at room temperature. They actually sell veal demi-glace in places like Whole Foods and Central Market. William-Sonoma says their veal demi will last up to six months in the fridge.

While it may seem expensive at first, keep in mind that in a pan, you might want to thin down a few spoonfuls of the demi with a couple spoonfuls of water. After all, to go from a stock to demi, you simply evaporate the water. This way you can reduce it back to the level you would like. So when you see something call for “5 oz veal demi,” I’d use 5 oz of water, and add a few spoonfuls of demi until I got the right thickness and flavor. I’ll go ahead and type out a recipe for espagnole, but the small sauces I’m going to type up all work with a demi.

Espagnole
1 cup browl veal stock
2 oz ap flour
2 oz whole butter
2 oz yellow onion, chopped about medium dice
1 oz carrot, chopped
1 oz celery chopped
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
2 oz tomato paste
3 oz red wine
AN black peppercorn
AN whole clove

Saute the onion, carrot and celery in the full 2 oz butter. It’s okay to have leftover fat. Add tomato paste and stir it around. Add the flour. Sprinkling in flour like this is called “singer.” Basically you’re making a roux in the pan. Allow the flour to cook out a little, but be careful not to burn. You want a “carpet” on the bottom of the pan. It should look kind of gummy, but not be burned. Deglaze with the wine. Add stock, bay leaf, thyme and peppercorn. Let simmer around 20 minutes, thinning with water if need be. Strain the sauce into another pot so you have just the liquid, not anything else. Taste, season and adjust (TSA).

Next, on the small sauces, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind. Once you add butter to a sauce, it no longer becomes stable. These sauces all involve reducing the demi and finishing the sauce by mounting it with butter. Before you add the butter, you can reduce to where you’d like it, and shut off the heat and let it sit. But once you heat it up to add the butter, you need to be about ready to serve your dish.

Another thing to keep in mind is that adding the butter is what can break the sauce. You can tell when you break the sauce because you’ll see little globs of butter floating in the sauce instead of a smooth consistency. I’ve learned that the biggest way to avoid this is heat control. If your demi is at a simmer, and you’re ready to mount it with butter, take the pan off the heat. The sauce should still be warm enough to melt the butter. Butter here serves as two purposes. It carries the flavor, and it gives the sauce a smooth texture.

Marchand du Vin
5 oz veal demiglace
4 oz red wine
1 oz shallot, minced
3 oz whole butter
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
AN black peppercorn, crushed or ground
AN kosher salt

In a pan, add shallots, peppercorn, thyme, bay leaf, and red wine. Let reduce on a low heat until you have about an ounce of wine left. Add demiglace and reduce until the right consistency. Strain into another pan. Bring back to simmer. Thin with water if needed. Once ready, shut off heat and mount with butter. TSA.

Sauce Robert
3 oz white wine
2 oz yellow onion, chopped finely
5 oz veal demiglace
2 oz whole butter
1 oz Dijon mustard
AN sugar
AN salt
½ lemon

Place onion and wine in pan. On a low heat, reduce au sec (“almost dry”- you want a tablespoon of liquid there). The reason you want a low heat is to give the onions time to cook through. You want them soft and without a crunch. Add pinch of mustard to taste. Start with maybe a half teaspoon. Sprinkle with a pinch sugar. Squeeze in a little of lemon. Add demiglace. When at right consistency, mount with butter. TSA.

Sauce Chasseur
1 oz whole butter
2 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 oz shallots, minced
5 oz veal demiglace
3 oz white wine
1 oz tomato, peeled and seeded
AN Italian parsley, chopped
AN kosher salt

Sweat shallots and mushrooms in butter. Add wine, and reduce au sec. Add demi. TSA. Just before serving, add tomato and parsley. These are both delicate enough that you will want to do this off the heat.

Sauce Diable
3 oz white wine
1 oz shallot, minced
5 oz veal demi
1 oz whole butter
AN cayenne pepper
AN kosher salt.

Reduce shallots and white wine on low heat until about 2/3 gone. Add demi. Simmer. Mount with butter. TSA.

Mushroom Sauce
3 oz Madeira wine
3 oz domestic mushrooms, sliced thinly
1 oz shallots, minced
5 oz veal demiglace
AN kosher salt
AN black peppercorn

Reduce shallots and mushrooms in wine on low heat until 2/3 gone. Add demi. Simmer. Mount with butter. TSA.

Over the next two days, I’m going to cover the last two official mother sauces. They’re both a lot more recognizable, and the one for tomorrow is a lot easier and a lot less expensive than today’s. Saturday, I’ll cover some miscellaneous sauces. Next week, I’m going to get into meat cookery, which will be a lot easier to work with than sauces. Meat is nowhere near as finicky. Please don’t get frustrated with you’re having trouble with this. Sauces can be pretty difficult. They just take practice.

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Sauce Week: Velouté

June 5, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Sorry about not getting this posted yesterday. It’s turned out to be a pretty busy week so far. This entry’s sauce is easy. It’s very similar to the béchamel so if you haven’t read that entry yet, you should do so now here. Velouté is just a white stock thickened with a white or blond roux. Chicken is probably the most common stock for this, but a white veal or fish stock may be used, too. You know the gravy inside a chicken pot pie? This basically tastes like that. In fact, this may even be used as a starting point for making that dish.

Here’s the basic idea:

24 oz chicken stock
4 oz whole butter
4 oz ap flour

Make the roux on a low to med heat. Bring the stock to a low boil and gradually add the roux while whisking hard. Reduce to simmer, and allow to cook at least 15-20 minutes. Again you want these to be cooked at least this long to get the flour taste out. At the end you’d season this with salt and pepper.

Here are just some of the small sauces off a velouté. Feel free to branch off from here to try your own ideas:

Suprême Sauce
8 oz chicken velouté
1 oz heavy cream
4 oz domestic mushroom, thinly sliced
1 oz whole butter
AN lemon juice
AN kosher salt
AN white pepper (black if you prefer it like I do)

Reduce the velouté by a fourth. In another pan, sweat the mushrooms in a little butter. Add mushrooms to the velouté. After letting simmer for a little, temper in the cream. Tempering something is a way to gradually increase its temperature. The way to temper- have the cream in a bowl, and add a ladle of velouté while whisking. Add another. Do this two or three times, and then dump the bowl into the pan while stirring the pan. In the end, mount it with butter. This is where most sauces break! Sauces can be stable up until adding the butter, and then you don’t want to let them sit or wait around on this. Turn your veloute to a low heat. Swirl in a chunk of butter, and gently swirl the pan to let it melt. Season with lemon, salt and pepper. Strain the sauce if you don’t wish to serve it with the mushrooms in it.

Hungarian Sauce
1 oz yellow onion, chopped small dice
.5 oz Hungarian paprika
1 oz whole butter
2 oz white wine
8 oz suprême sauce

Sweat the onions in whole butter. When soft and translucent, add the white wine and paprika. Reduce the wine by half. Add the suprême sauce. Mount with butter.

Sauce Allemande
Fun fact! This is what Carême had as one of the original sauces, and Escoffier 86ed it because it’s made with a velouté base so it doesn’t make sense to give it Mother Sauce status.

8 oz veal (or chicken) stock
1 egg yolk
1 oz heavy cream
AN lemon juice
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Simmer velouté until slightly reduced. Lower the heat. Beat the egg yolk and cream together to create a liaison. Temper the liaison similar to how you tempered the cream in the previous recipe. After this, do not boil! Reheat to just below simmering. Taste, season and adjust. (TSA.)

Sauce Aurora
8 oz allemande sauce
2 oz tomato paste
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Add paste to allemande and bring to a low simmer. TSA.

White Wine Sauce
4 oz fish velouté (or chicken or veal)
2 oz white wine
1 oz shallots, chopped finely
2 oz heavy cream
AN lemon zest
AN whole butter
AN Italian parsley, chopped
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Reduce wine by half. Add velouté. Reduce. Slowly stir in tempered cream. Remove from heat, and mount with butter. TSA. In the beginning you may add chopped parsley, chives and tarragon to the wine for an herb sauce.

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Sauce Week: Béchamel

June 3, 2008 · Filed under Sauces · Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Next week I’m going to get more into different techniques of cooking and working with meats, which is why this week I want to cover sauces. That way when I get to meats, you’ll know how to pair it up with things other than A1 if you wish. Just for this week, I’ll post every day, starting today and ending Saturday. Normally, I’m going to shoot for Thursday updates though. This is a special “sauce” week, and I’ll try to refrain from making any puns along the lines of “getting sauced.” Bear with me.

So back in the day, there was this dude. Let’s call him Carême. He came up with four sauces that he felt were pretty universal. Later on down the line this other dude came along. Let’s call him Escoffier. Escoffier realized that one of these sauces was a little redundant, and in its place, he came up with two more sauces that he felt were pretty universal. These five sauces are what we know today as the five “mother sauces.”

Now normally I would say not to bother with mother sauces if you’re first starting out. However, knowing these sauces fits along my theme of teaching “basic” techniques and is another way to open up a lot more creativity. The idea behind mother sauces is that most sauces come from one of these. For that reason, they’re actually pretty bland. You add other flavorings and ingredients to them to give them flavor. Only two are passable to eat as is- sauce tomate (“tomato sauce” in case you couldn’t pick up on that) and hollandaise.

Depending on the sauces, they can be kind of tricky at times so don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out right away. My first week of my first cooking class at culinary school covered sauces, and I had a hard time with them at first. I would say from personal experience, the biggest challenge of cooking sauces is “heat control.” Certain sauces like hollandaise not only can break if they get too hot, but they can also break if they get too cold. It just takes practice to know what temperature is good for which sauce.

The first thing you should know if you want to get into sauces is what’s called a “roux.” A roux is used as a thickener, and it’s basically equal parts of flour and any sort of fat (butter, animal fats, oil), measured by weight. You heat it up in a pan, and the longer it’s in a pan, the darker it gets. This is why you might see roux further classified as white, blond, or brown roux. White roux isn’t pure white. It’s more an off-white/light yellow. Blond roux is a much darker yellow, more golden looking, and brown roux is obviously pretty self-explanatory.

Today’s mother sauce is pretty easy to start off with: béchamel. Béchamel is basically milk thickened with a white roux. Here’s how it’s made:

1 qt whole milk
4 oz whole butter (measured by weight)
4 oz ap flour (measured by weight)
½ yellow onion (peeled)
2 whole cloves
1 bay leaf
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Note: I use ounces a lot as measurement. 8 oz are in a cup, which means 4 oz are half a cup, etc. Two tablespoons are in an ounce. Three teaspoons in a tablespoon.

In one pan, make the roux- remember it’s a white roux. In another pan, heat the milk at about a medium high. You can pin the bay leaf to the flat side of the onion with by using the cloves as “pins.” You want bring the milk to a simmer. A simmer should have gentle bubbles at the top. Once the milk is at a simmer, add the roux a little bit at a time, whisking until you get the right thickness. The roux needs to simmer for a bit to thicken completely so don’t add it all at once, or you might make it too thick. If you’re worried that it has become too thick, you may thin it down some with milk. Toss in the onion. Let it heat around 20 minutes or so. You don’t want a floury taste. When it’s cooked, remove the onion and strain if there are too many lumps. Season with salt, pepper and a touch of nutmeg.

And there you go. I should note that I put down white pepper because classically, the French have this thing where white foods get white pepper, and you only use black pepper when you’re not going to see it in the food. They both have completely different flavor profiles so honestly I think this is dumb, and the world’s not going to be destroyed if you use black pepper in your béchamel.

So the theory is that you can now take this sauce and add things to it to get the flavor you’re going for. Here are just some of the small sauces that come off béchamel:

Sauce Crème

8 oz béchamel
4 oz heavy cream
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Reduce the cream no more than by half at a medium temperature. Reducing just means you put it in a pan, turn on the heat, and let it evaporate until the amount you want. In this case, no more than half of what you started with. Add this to béchamel, and whisk it in. Season with salt and pepper.

Congratulations. You know what you just made? A basic white gravy like the kind you get with chicken fried steak, or at Denny’s.

Sauce Soubise

8 oz béchamel
4 oz yellow onion, chopped in the small dice range
AN white peppercorn, ground
AN kosher salt

Sweat the onion in a small amount of butter. Sweat is basically the same thing as sauté, but sauté implies that you want color on the items. You just want the onion to be cooked through (soft, not crunchy) and look sort of translucent. Add the béchamel to this. Season as needed.

Mornay Sauce

8 oz béchamel
3 oz gruyere cheese, grated or microplaned
2 oz parmesan cheese, grated or microplaned
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn, ground

Take your béchamel. Have it heated on a low flame. Stir in the cheese as needed to taste, and whisk it constantly as it’s melting. Season as needed.

Note: these two types of cheese both can have a salty taste to them so I would skip the salt and pepper stage of the béchamel until after you get as much of the cheese flavor as you’d like.

Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Same as the mornay, but substitute cheddar for gruyere and parmesan. Again, this is too taste. So you can start off with 5 oz, but you might not need all of it, and you might need more. Season as needed. A dash of dry mustard and Worcestershire sauce can complement this well.

Nantua Sauce

8 oz béchamel
3 oz shrimp or other shellfish (traditional crayfish is used)
3 oz whole butter
2 oz heavy cream
AN kosher salt
AN white peppercorn

Shell the shrimp and devein them. You can see how to do that: here. Save the shells, and in a pan, toast them in butter and a little tomato paste for color. Add enough water to cover the shells. Take the shrimp and chop fine. Add that to the mixture, and let reduce. The shrimp should be cooked through. Strain the sauce into a small bowl. You want only the liquid. Everything else can be tossed in the trash at this point. Add chunks of butter to this sauce. The consistency you want is softened butter, and the color should be a soft coral. Take out a small piece of parchment paper, and roll the butter into it. Place in the fridge and allow it to harden back up. Once hardened, cut this compound butter into chunks and swirl a chunk at a time into heated béchamel until you get the flavor you like. Season as needed.

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Oils and Vinegars

May 29, 2008 · Filed under Flavorings · Tagged , , , ,

Despite what Rachael Ray might have led you to believe, extra virgin olive oil is not the only oil in the world. Actually, oils and vinegars are probably the easiest way to “spice” up an old recipe or to try and come up with new ideas on our own. If you haven’t looked for anything past “canola” or “olive oil” before, you might be surprised at what all is out there. Let me give you a quick run down on just some of what’s out there:

Avocado oil

Smoke point of 520 F/ 271 C. (The smoke point of an oil is the temperature at which it starts to break down, and it can give off a bad taste.)

Because of the high smoke point, this oil can be great for searing. The flavor isn’t too overpowering so it works well with a lot of different foods. It’s also high in monounsaturated fat and vitamin E.

Coconut oil

Smoke point of 350 F/ 177 C while unrefined. Refined coconut oil has a smoke point of 450 F/ 232 C. Refined coconut oil tastes like nothing. And I absolutely mean “nothing.” It’s hard to even describe because when you try it, you can feel the oil in your mouth, but you can’t taste it. You might be able to pick up on the slightest coconut aftertaste if you’re looking for it. It’s also solid at room temperature so because of this, and because of the neutral flavor, it tends to be used a lot in baking. (Makes for good shortening). The unrefined still has a coconut flavor to it and is used in a lot of South Asian dishes. In general, the more refined an oil is, the less taste it has.

However, keep in mind that coconut oil is mostly saturated fat (about 90%). So it is something to be used in moderation.

Grapeseed oil

Smoke point of 420 F/ 216 C. Has a slight nutty taste, but it is neutral enough that it wouldn’t compete with any herbs or spices it is paired with. It’s mostly polyunsaturated fat, some monounsaturated and only a little saturated fat.

Hazelnut oil

Smoke point of 430 F/ 221 C. Tastes like…surprise! Hazelnuts! Its flavor is definitely strong, and it mostly consists of monounsaturated fat.

Macadamia oil

Smoke point of 390 F/ 199 C. The taste is lighter than walnut or hazelnut oil, but it is stronger than peanut oil. This one also consists of mostly monounsaturated fat, but some have a “perfect balance” of Omega 3 and Omega 6.

Pumpkinseed oil

I’m not going to list the smoke point of this one because while I’d hate to say “never,” this is not an oil you should be cooking with. I’ll get into that more later on down. This one is probably my favorite of the bunch though, despite its nasty green color. It tastes exactly like roasted pumpkin seeds.

Toasted Sesame Seed oil

Smoke point of 350 F/ 177 C (unrefined). Typical in Asian cuisine, especially Korean. It does have a stronger taste than the milder peanut oil that is also typically used in Asian cuisine.

Truffle oil

I’m not going to list a smoke point because truffle oil is not intended for cooking. Again, I’d hate to say “never,” but… Anyway, truffle oil comes in black or white truffle oil. Usually, the oil tends to be olive oil that is infused with truffles. However, the more affordably priced truffle oils may contain a synthetic flavor. Truffle oil is the strongest of everything I’ve listed here. A little goes a long way. Some also find that it has a slight “garlic” taste.

Walnut oil

Smoke point of 320 F/ 160 C. Strong flavor. This is another one of my favorites.

And while no descriptions are necessary, here are a few of my favorite vinegars:

Fig vinegar
Date vinegar
Champagne vinegar
Tarragon Vinegar
Blood orange vinegar
Pear vinegar
Raspberry vinegar
Spicy pecan vinegar
Passion fruit vinegar

Typically, you’re going to cook with olive oil (NOT extra virgin), peanut oil or canola because the heat tends to destroy/lessen the flavor. So it’s not like I’m against extra virgin olive oil. I actually do love the stuff, but you fork over more money for extra virgin because of the taste, most of which will then be destroyed in the cooking.

It’s still easy to incorporate the taste into the final product even if you’re not cooking with it though. Extra virgin olive oil would go great in a pesto or for dipping bread. When grilling a steak or chicken breast, go ahead and oil lightly with canola and season it. But after the steak is grilled, brush on a very tiny layer of walnut oil. A tiny amount of oil may also be stirred into a side item like mashed potatoes.

That way you’re using less of the product so you can get more “bang for your buck.”

A great idea for a strongly flavored oil, that involves no cooking at all is to make your own vinaigrette. A vinaigrette classically has a ratio of 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. Although, with stronger flavored oil, you might want to play with the ratios to see what tastes good to you. After that, you add any seasonings or flavors you want. Walnut oil and a pear or raspberry vinegar can create an unusual spin on a typical salad dressing. Just add a little salt and pepper, or even nutmeg. Want a more Asian inspired dressing? Pair up toasted sesame seed oil with a plum vinegar or a rice wine vinegar. Add a little garlic and ginger, maybe even a dash of soy sauce.

The flavored vinegars can easily be substituted for any vinegar in a marinade. (Really, any kind of vinegar will give you the acid you need to tenderize the meat). And you can even create your own marinades, building the rest of the flavor around the type of vinegar you wish to use.

Another use for vinegars can be in sauces. Béarnaise sauce is made by adding a tarragon vinegar that has been reduced and infused with peppercorns, shallots and tarragon to a traditional hollandaise sauce. I will get into sauces later on, but even if you know nothing about sauces, why not add a small touch of a flavored vinegar to melted butter before you add it to vegetables?

A lot of the oils (walnut, hazelnut) can be added to a heavy cream to be whipped and served as served as a topping on a pie.

In my first post, I said that I hoped one of the things you could “take away” from this blog was the ability to get more creative in your own cooking. If you have always wanted to get more creative in your cooking, and haven’t really known where to start, this is the easiest jumping point as vinegars and oils are really easy to incorporate in a lot of dishes. At this point it just becomes mixing and matching flavors together.

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