Pasta

Pasta falls into two categories: fresh or dry. Dry pasta is what you pick up in the store. If you’ve never made fresh pasta before, it’s much easier to make than you probably think it is. A basic pasta is

-Flour
-Liquid (egg/water)
-Flavorings

As for what type of flour to use, in the U.S., that tends to be one of those things everyone has their own opinion on. Ain’t that the way it always is? You might hear that in Italy fresh pasta is made with 00 flour. In Italy, this mostly refers to how finely ground the flour is. 00 is powdery soft. You can find it in specialty stores. I also know a couple Italians who swear by using only semolina for fresh pasta as well as dry though. Semolina comes from both hard wheat and soft wheat. Americans will know soft wheat semolina as cream of wheat. The hard wheat semolina is usually what people are referring to when they talk about making pasta. It’s usually yellow, and it almost looks like cornmeal. You’ll usually see it labeled in the stores as just “semolina.” Those are usually the two flours everyone recommends, but the truth is, there are many others you can use as well. The differences in the flour will account for different textures more than anything else. If you’re looking for something finer like “00 flour” in the U.S., you can look for cake flour, pastry flour or AP flour. The gluten content for those differs. For cake flour the gluten content is around 7%. Around 9% for pastry and 11% for AP. AP is also probably the cheapest option here. More powdery textured flour is going to result in a softer, velvety pasta. If you’re using something like hard wheat semolina, it’s going to produce a firmer texture and a chewier pasta. Neither are bad things. It just depends on what you’re looking for in pasta. The gluten content comes into play because gluten is responsible for giving foods structure, strength and flexibility. It’s also okay to mix any of these flours together. You don’t have to, but the option is there for you to play around with. You can also add in whole wheat pasta, buckwheat and so on.

I put eggs or water in parentheses by liquid because those are the common ones. Eggs will produce a richer mouthfeel and taste, but water can definitely be used. For ratios, I usually start with about an egg per 4 oz (about ½ to 1 cup) of flour. The ounces here refer to weight, not volume. A cup measures the volume of something so it’s not okay to just substitute half a cup for four ounces (weight) of flour. Different flours will have different weights. It’s okay to have a little more flour than you need anyway so it doesn’t have to be exact.

Flavorings are commonly olive oil and salt, but this is also an area to explore color and taste within pasta. Blanching spinach and pureeing it in a blender will add that flavor here, but it will also give it an appealing color. Red bell pepper, tomato paste will give a red color. Carrots will give orange, and so on. Any kind of herbs and spices would work, too.

So the basic recipe I use for egg pasta is this:

8 oz (by weight) hard wheat semolina
2 whole eggs
AN olive oil (usually a drizzle)
AN kosher salt (usually a pinch)

As for actually making the pasta, it’s pretty easy. Clear a space on your counter top. It’s easier to work directly on the counter. Before you dump the flour on it though, make sure you wipe down the counter with a little hot water and soap to cut down grease that may be there or sanitizer. Even when you regularly clean the countertop, you’ll be surprised what can collect there throughout the day and you probably don’t want Essence of Dust in your pasta. Maybe, but probably not. After you wipe down the counter, run a clean dry towel over it just to make sure it’s dry. You don’t want extra water getting in your dough.

Okay, first, just dump your flour directly onto the counter. Mound it up, and then in the center create a well. It’ll look like this:

Next, combine your liquid and flavoring ingredients, and mix them together. If you’re doing a puree like spinach or bell pepper, it’ll probably be easier just to puree it in the blender or food processor with the egg/water, salt, olive oil, spices, etc. Puree it until it’s smooth so you don’t have a lumpy, uneven dough. Then dump your water/egg into that hole in the middle of your flour like this:

Take a fork and run it along the inside edge, knocking some of the flour into the middle.

Mix this flour into the egg mixture, and knock some more in. Keep doing this until you get a ragged dough:

At this point, the dough will still be pretty sticky. Pick up the dough, and push aside all the extra flour. Don’t throw it away, you’ll be needing it. Before putting the dough back down, dust a fine layer of flour underneath the dough. Set it down, and peel off any dough that came off your hands. Now coat your hands with flour. This will help keep the dough from sticking to your hands. Knead the dough. Easiest way to do this is fold the top half on top of the bottom half and press down with the heel of your hand. Rotate the dough 90 degrees and do the same thing. Keep rotating the dough and doing this. As the flour gets worked in, sprinkle more on top, more underneath and more on your hands as needed. The dough will eventually become significantly less sticky. You’ll tell when it’s ready because it’ll tighten and get harder to work with. Poke a hole in the dough with your finger, does the hole stay or does it start to pop back out? If the hole stays, keep working it. If the dough hole starts to pop back out, it’s pretty much there. This is because as you’re kneading the dough, you’re developing gluten. As I said before gluten causes elasticity in the dough.

Once your dough is ready, knock off any extra flour that may be sitting on the dough but not absorbed in it. On a clean space on the counter, set your dough and cover it with saran wrap. Leave it there for 20-30 minutes or so. This is called “resting” the dough, and it’s a very important step. You’re letting the gluten relax back down. If you don’t you’ll find it almost impossible, or at least, extremely hard to work with when we go to roll it. If you want to see the difference you can always try to roll out dough that hasn’t rested and compare it to rolling out dough that you have let rest.

After the dough has rested, the next step is to roll out the dough. You don’t have to have a pasta roller, you can do this with a rolling pin. Keep in mind that you have to roll the dough extremely thin, and when rolling by hand, when you probably think you’ve rolled it thin enough, you could stand to go thinner. However, you don’t immediately start rolling it that thin. You have to work the dough a bit. I find it easier to roll out the dough by cutting it in half and then rolling out each half one at a time. With a machine, go to the thickest setting first. Roll one half of the dough through the thickest setting. Take your dough, fold it in thirds and roll it through the machine again. You do this 3 or 4 or however many times you need to do this until you notice these changes in the dough: first off is the color. With my dough, it ends up being a paler color. Texturally, it won’t feel gritty. Here’s the difference between the two:

Obviously the bottom dough has been worked in this way a few times. If you’re doing this with a rolling pin, fold it in thirds and then roll it to the width it was before you started rolling it.

Once you get to this stage, stop folding it in thirds. You’re just going to continue to work it down thinner a bit at a time. Run it through the machine on the next setting, just one step thinner than before. Then move to the next setting, and so on until you get the thinness you’re looking for. Same with a rolling pin. The final rolled out dough should be thin and maybe even almost sheer.

See how you can see the color of my fingers through the pasta? That thin. After all, remember that this is going to expand in size when we boil this in water.

After this, you cut the pasta. If you have a machine, you can choose the setting you want and just roll this dough through like you did before. If you’re doing this on your own, roll the pasta up like a rug, or gently fold it in fourths or something. If you’re worried about it sticking, scatter some flour across the top. Take your knife, and cut the dough into strips to the size you want. Fettuccine is fairly thin. Pappardelle is thick, about an inch across. Once you make the width crosses, remember to cut the length to a manageable size. You can keep them separated on a sheet pan by tossing them with left over flour and laying them out flat. I would recommend something coarser like a hard wheat semolina for this just because it won’t absorb as easily.

Farfalle (Bowtie) is another easy shape to cut. Cut the pasta into one inch strips, and then cut each strip into about one and a half to two inch pieces. So you should have 2 inch by 1 inch rectangles. Then you pinch the edges with your fingers. Best way I can describe this is to pinch the middle lengthwise so it’s almost like you’re pinching it in half. Then fold the top and bottom edges back up toward the middle. Fan the sides back out, and pinch all of the middle together to make it stick better.

For raviolis, don’t cut the pasta. Leave it rolled out, and use a round cutter to cut out circles. Drop a bit of filling in the middle, and place one of the circles on top. Crimp the sides. You can make this seal easier by running some water or egg along the edge of the bottom piece, near the filling. Then when you press the top on, it’ll stick together better. If you don’t have a round cutter, you can always cut out squares with your knife. A basic ravioli filling is ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, egg, yolk, parsley and oregano. The egg yolk is there to bind the filling. Sometimes you’ll see some breadcrumbs, also for that purpose. Everything else comes down to preference- the ratios of the cheese, the herbs and spices. I like to throw a little nutmeg in there. If you want to make a meat filling, make sure the meat is cooked through.

To make your pasta decorative, you can always use a pastry cutter/wheel to make those crimped edges. They look like pizza cutters with a pattern imprinted on them. You could do this yourself with a paring knife, too, but it’s probably easier to just roll a cutter along the edge. You can make tricolored pasta. Place a basic egg pasta rolled out in center. On one side, overlap that edge with a spinach dough. On the other side overlap with a different colored dough. With a rolling pin, go through one more time to make sure it’s the same evenness where the colors meet. Then cut away. With raviolis, it’s easy to do one side as a double color, and the bottom as your third color.

 

So that’s pretty much how to make the dough. To cook, the dough is really straight forward, but I have a few tips.

• Fill the pot with as much water as you can. Don’t be silly and have water sloshing over the edges. Remember you’re going to bring this to a boil, so don’t let it boil over. Make sure you’re using a big enough pot, but this is one of the important keys to keeping the pasta from sticking. Which leads me to…
• Don’t put olive oil in your water. I’ve seen people say that this keeps the pasta from sticking. It doesn’t. Oil and water don’t mix so oil will just sit on top of the water. Your pasta is underneath. I’ve also read that you do this so when you strain your pasta, the oil will coat the pasta as it’s pulling out. That’s a bad idea because you want the pasta to absorb the sauce. This is one of the reasons you see sauce mixed in with the pasta at a restaurant instead of sitting on top of the noodles.
• DO salt your water. A lot. This will bring in flavor into your pasta.
• So if we don’t do the oil thing, how do we keep it from sticking? Well, for one thing, like I said before, making sure you have more than enough water. Next, before you drop in your pasta, make sure the water has come to a rolling boil. When water is boiling, the water is moving in a circular motion, up-down motion. The more water you have, the bigger this circular motion will be. This will act to stir your pasta around and keep it from sticking. You can also stir it by hand.
• To test for doneness, the really only way to tell is to just eat a noodle. The most commonly preferred doneness is described as “al dente.” It means “to the tooth” or “to the bite.” You don’t want your pasta crunchy, but you do want firmness there. You shouldn’t be able to squish the pasta in your mouth without chewing. That is way over done. You should be able to bite and chew through your pasta with ease, but it should still be firm. Does that make sense?

 

I’m going to end this entry here, but I’ll be continuing with pasta for at least one more entry. I’m going to cover common sauces and dishes, how to pair up the sauce with the shape of the pasta, things like that. This post is fairly long though, and it seemed like a good stopping point. Look for the next entry sometime next week, by Thursday or so.

Thanks!

 

Update!

Obviously this isn’t the pasta entry. I’ve got a pasta machine coming in the mail, and the reason I’ve been holding off on starting the series is that I would love to put up pictures. Pasta dough is very simple to make, but it’s even easier when you can see an example in front of you. Don’t worry- I’ll describe and put up pictures detailing out how to use the pasta machine, but I will also let you know how to cut pasta by hand. The pasta machine really just comes into play during the cutting.

Not only is pasta pretty simple, but it’s also a lot faster to make and cook than you would think. In fact, when I make beef bourguignon, I don’t even start on the pasta dough until after I get the braise into the oven. This is one of those dishes that would be perfect to make after you get home from work at 6 or 7. You can still be creative; you can still make things from scratch. And it allows you to be flexible in a tight schedule.

In the meantime, I’d like to point out that I picked up 834 Kitchen Quick Tips from the editors of Cook’s Illustrated over the summer. It’s got a lot of great ideas on quick shortcuts from faster ways of trimming vegetables to better ways to organize your kitchen to great ideas for cooking. I loved the tip on using spoons or forks for decorating the cake. There was also a neat idea for dusting cocoa powder and powdered sugar over cookie cutters for different designs. Even if you know some of them, I guarantee there’s simple tips in there you probably wouldn’t have even thought about.

 

Balance: Not as Hard as Wii Fit Posture Tests

First of all, I know I promised an entry on an introduction to fish and as it pertains to grilling. Truth is, as I began to type out this post, I realized covering fish in one post is a bit different than covering the basics of poultry or red meats in one post. “Fish” encompasses many different subcategories, and many of them are handled differently. Cleaning, handling, and cooking a clam is a bit different than cleaning, handling and cooking a mahi mahi fillet. So, I’m going to do a whole series on fish. However, before that, as I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to cover a series on something a bit more vegetarian friendly, and as I have just come back from Rome, it seemed fitting to do it over pasta.

Before that though, I promised an update today. This may seem short. It may seem simple, but in actuality, this is one of the fundamental principles of cooking. When it all comes down, it comes down to this. Many times when cooking a dish, you’ll find a combination of these elements: salty, sweet, acidic, and/or heat (”spicy”).

Salty- that one’s obvious. You all should know what salt tastes like on its own. Sweet is another taste you should all know. Acidic is the kind of sharp tang you get from vinegar, and heat is “spicy” from peppers and the like. When creating a dish that will appeal to many different people, balance is what you’re looking for. A dish doesn’t even have to taste good to you, the cook, (because you don’t enjoy chicken or shrimp or whatever)… If you can get past that, to identify these elements, you’ll be in pretty good shape.

With the title being what it is, and with what I just said you’re looking for, I’m sure you can guess what you need to do with these elements. And while it seems simple, some people have difficulty deciding whether these are in balance or not. Most of the time a dish will be a balance of salty, sweet and acidic. Sometimes a dish will be salty, heat, sweet or salty, heat, acidic. First, know which elements are going to be there going into the dish. Then taste along as you can. Obviously don’t taste with raw meat in or anything like that. But especially when you’re just about to plate a dish and serve it, it’s a good idea to taste it for any last minute adjustments. When you are tasting, ask yourself the following question and answer with whatever comes to your mind first:

• Do I taste sweet, salt or acid?

If any of those leap to mind first, you need to work to balance the levels again. If you’re truly hard-pressed to answer, you’re in pretty good shape.

Then, now that you know balance is so important and you know how to look for it, the next step is learning how to balance. Learn to be able to look at a recipe and know which items will affect the sweetness and which will affect the acidity. A salty flavor usually comes from, well, salt, but it doesn’t have to be. Certain cheeses are pretty salty on their own, and often times it’s a good idea to hold off on adding salt until after the cheese has been added. Sweetness, it seems like sugar is the most obvious answer, but fruit or juice can add to sweetness. Vinegar, wine and tomatoes (yes, tomatoes) are all big ones that are acidic. Obviously, peppers are usually the source of heat.

So if something is too salty, add a bit more of your sweet item to counteract it. Add salty and sweet to counteract acidity, or salty and heat to counteract sweetness and so on.

The bottom line is this: don’t be married to the ingredient amount listings in a recipe. When coming up with your own recipes, it’s a good idea to note how much you use for ease of future reference whether by you or someone else. However, always look at recipe amounts as more like guidelines. Even if you’re following your same recipe and getting ingredients from the same source, there can always be differences or circumstances you don’t know about. Even if you’ve made the dish a million and one times, taste it anyway and make sure it’s balanced.

Maybe today’s tip isn’t quite what you hoped for, and it might not be as fun as getting to try out new recipes. If you can get this down though and use it frequently, it’ll be one of the most important things that I believe you can learn about cooking.

As a side note, I found this article in Bon Appetit on “Women Chefs: the Next Generation” to be an interesting read.

Thanks for reading everyone, and look for an update sometime next week!

 

Grilling: Poultry

Wow, it’s been a long time. In that time, I’ve moved, had a wedding, had a honeymoon, started classes again, and now I’m going to start back up the ole blog again. During the week of the wedding, my husband and his best man put together a pretty nice computer for me. The downside is that he made this supposedly really souped up awesome gaming computer, and well… now he always wants to play on it. Anyway, on this computer I’ve got the latest version of Microsoft Office with Word 2007, and it turns out you can both type up and your blog entry and publish it on your actual blog from Word without ever pulling up a browser. I probably shouldn’t find that as cool as I do, but oh well. Seriously, though you know it’s cool. Don’t deny.

I have a couple more entries to get through on grilling and wrap up the summer: today’s poultry and later an introduction into fish. Hopefully, all this will get put up into for Labor Day so it can be put to good use. Now, after the fish entry, I’ve got a couple ways I can go with this. I can do another series on meats like roasting red meats, white meats, poultry; braising red meats, white meats, poultry; sautéing; and so on. And a series on fish: flatfish, roundfish, shellfish, bivalve mollusks, misc shellfish. That way I can finish up all the meats in one go. One realllllly long go, I might add. Or, I can move onto other things and come back to meats throughout. Like, I can do a pasta series. Then come back to roasting. Then do dumplings, and come back. My reasoning on the second way is just so my blog isn’t completely useless to vegetarians. This has come up recently, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for awhile since I know for a fact at least one vegetarian reads the blog. Because of that, I’m leaning more toward the second way, but let me know in the comments which way to go.

Annnnyway, poultry. With red and white meats, I noted a difference between locomotive and static muscles and whether they’re best for dry cooking methods or moist cooking methods. If you notice some terms you don’t quite understand in the last sentence, you can get a quick recap by reading the quote at the top of this page. One of the things I mentioned is that connective tissue makes meat naturally tougher. With red meats and white meats, the meat that has more connective tissue (locomotive muscle) is muscle used or exercised more. With poultry, it’s more important about the age of the bird. Younger poultry is pretty much tender throughout so they do well with the dry and moist cooking methods. Older poultry tend to be tougher and are better with slow, moist cooking.

So, for example, has anyone heard of rock Cornish game hen? Probably that it’s pretty good overall, right? That’s because their age tends to be 5 weeks or less. They are a special breed, pretty tender and delicate.

From there, you have broiler or fryer at 6- 12 weeks. They’re young chicken, either sex. They have tender flesh, smooth skin and flexible cartilage.

Roaster chickens are 3-5 months so they have tender flesh, smooth skin, but their cartilage is less flexible.

Capon chickens are under 8 months. They’re castrated male chickens with very tender flesh that’s well flavored, a large breast and are expensive.

Hen or fowl chickens are female chickens over 10 months. They have tough flesh, coarse skin, and their breastbone cartilage is hardened.

Cock or roosters are male over 10 months. They have coarse skin and tough, dark meat.

It’s important to know the class (subdivision of the kind based on sex and age) because all of these can taste good when done with the right cooking methods. Other domestic poultry includes:

Turkey: It’s probably a lot more common to see turkey roasted whole, but turkey parts are used sometimes– And not just the giant legs at Renaissance festivals! From there you see:

• Fryer-roaster turkeys, which are under 16 weeks, either sex. They have tender flesh, smooth skin, and flexible cartilage.
• Young turkeys are 5-7 months. They’re flesh is still tender, but the cartilage is not as flexible.
• Yearling turkeys are under 15 months. They are fully matured but are still somewhat tender.
• Mature turkeys are over 15 months. They have tough flesh and coarse skin.

Duck: Ducks have a thick layer of fat under the skin, which causes it to have a lower yield than chicken or turkey. However, this fat can be useful in many ways- one is to baste the breast and help keep it from drying out. This especially comes in handy for roasting whole birds, which is something that can be tricky, but I will get around to covering it at a later date. White pekin is a common breed, but magret is considered a gourmet item and comes from the moulard breed.

• Broiler or fryer duckling is a tender duck with a soft bill and windpipe, typically under 8 weeks.
• Roaster duckling is a slightly older (under 16 weeks), but still a tender duck whose bill and windpipe are a little harder.
• Mature duck has tough flesh and a hard windpipe and bill. They tend to be over 6 months.

Goose: Geese are very similar to duck in that they also have a thick layer of fat and a lower yield, meaning when you break a whole goose (or duck) down into raw lean meat, you will have less available than you would with either a turkey or chicken. Geese are just split up into young and mature at around the 6 month mark.

Guinea: Guineas are related to the pheasant. They are pretty much treated just like chickens when cooked. Also divided into young and mature. Young is considered 3-6 months. Mature is up to 12 months.

Pigeon: Young pigeons at 3-4 weeks are called squab. Their meat is light as well as tender. Over 4 weeks, an older pigeon is just referred to as “pigeon.” They’re meat is dark as well as tough.

Dark and Light Meat and Its Influence on Cooking
Chickens and turkeys are split up into white and dark meat. Duck, goose, and pigeon all have dark meat. Dark meat gets its color from myoglobin, which stores oxygen for muscles to use during exercise. Since turkeys and chickens don’t fly, their breast and wings don’t really need myoglobin. This is what splits chicken and turkey up into white (breast and wing) and dark (legs) meat.

Now, chicken, turkey and duck, goose, and pigeon, the breasts and wings have less fat, less connective tissue and cook faster. The legs have more fat, more connective tissue and take longer to cook.

Doneness
Everyone probably knows the biggest danger with undercooked poultry, especially chicken, is salmonella. For safety, something must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 F (74 C) for 15 seconds to kill off salmonella. Most domestic poultry is served well done (although duck breast is sometimes served rare), but keep in mind that there’s a difference between well done and overcooked. Overcooked poultry tastes very dry. Also, keep in mind that there’s a difference between “safety” and doneness. Once something is “safe” to eat, it still may not be done in terms of connective tissue being tender enough, but that’s more a discussion for later.

Grilling and Poultry
There are a couple things to keep in mind when grilling poultry. One, since poultry is cooked to a well done, as mentioned earlier, you want the outside to crisp up in the time it takes the meat to cook through to the correct doneness. This means while cooking poultry, you’re going to be grilling at a medium to low heat. Or, as mentioned with pork, you can sear poultry quickly at a high heat on the grill and to build flavor while finishing it at a lower temperature in the oven. You may find the second a safer way if you’re finding the outside is cooking too quickly or may burn. And you may find it a good idea to pound parts a little thinner. Not to make it tender or anything, but to help speed the cooking and to even the breast out for even cooking.

Another thing to be conscious of is the presentation side. If the skin is on, the skin side is the presentation side. This means that is the side you’re going to lay against the grill first. The reason being that the grill is clean when you lay that side down. Once you flip over the poultry, the grill isn’t quite as clean. So, you grill the pretty side first, and that way nothing will stick to it or mess it up.

All the same rules of grilling as expressed in the first post of the grilling series are the same in terms of oiling the meat, quadrillage for show, etc. Based on this post so far, you should be able to pick up a chicken breast and have a pretty good idea on how to grill, but I’d like to give you an example:

Grilled Chicken Breast
1 boneless chicken breast, skin on (or airlined chicken breast, skin on)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
AN oil
AN kosher salt
AN black pepper

Pound the breast to even out (with the skin side laid down so it doesn’t mar).

Marinade: garlic, lemon juice, rosemary, salt and pepper. (This is a pretty basic marinade).

Use half of this marinade for one chicken breast, and the other can go to veges or whatever you’d like. You don’t have to marinade for super long. 20-30 minutes is good. Just before grilling, oil the chicken and season with salt and pepper. Grill skin side down, flipping half way through cooking. The outside should be golden, and the meat on the inside should be white all the way through.

Chicken Yakitori with Leek and Shiitake Mushroom
6 oz chicken breast, boneless and skinless, sliced into thin and long strips at an angle
1 leek, whites only, sliced into rings as thin as possible
3 oz shiitake mushroom, cleaned and stemmed, sliced thinly
4 oz soy sauce
1 oz mirin
2 oz honey
AN kosher salt
AN black pepper

Marinade: soy sauce, mirin, honey, salt and pepper. The thing to keep in mind with this is balance. You may not be using the entire amount listed for each of these. A good idea (for anything really) is to try the marinade before adding the chicken to it. Then you can play with the amounts. Sweet can be balanced with salt or acid (vinegar, etc.) for instance.

In a bowl, salt and marinade the veges (enough to cover). Add the rest of the marinade to the chicken. These may marinade 15-20 minutes.

Skewer the chicken with wooden skewers. Brush with a little oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill once on each side. The thing to keep in mind with this is that if you’ve sliced the chicken in the thin strips- we’re talking like 1 ½- 2 inches wide, 6-7 inches long and around a ¼ inch thin- then overcooking is a major concern because it’ll cook quickly. So, remember, white all the way through, but not dry.

Serve this by laying the veges in a small mound on a plate and resting the chicken on top.

Look for the introduction to fish (and grilling) by Friday morning…hopefully tomorrow afternoon if I rush it out! Thanks!

 

Grilling: White Meats

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:

American 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.

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

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.

 

Grilling: Red meats

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 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.

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.”

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.

 

Sauces: Misc.

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.

 

Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses.

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.

 

Sauce Week: Hollandaise

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.

 

Sauce Week: Tomato Sauce

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.