braised short ribs, French bistro food
Michael Pollan, Michael Ruhlman, Bill Buford
Stephen King, Steve Reich, Jackson Pollack
| The Lost Legacy |
| Blindsided |
A family recipe is sometimes passed done with as much thought and care as an English estate. “Not just anyone can be the custodian of my recipe” has been proclaimed by countless grandmothers over the years. Other recipes beg to be passed on, but find no willing takers. Some, miss their chance to continue in the family lore and are lost. My father’s potato pancake recipe is one of those.
No one made potato pancakes like my father, at least no one that I have met. They were not the latke type made out of shredded potatoes. His were made from a batter and had a lightness about them that only led to you eating more of them. Everyone loved them. They became a symbol of family and celebration. Nothing would make me happier to whip up a batch when far flung branches of the clan stopped by. Only one problem, my father didn’t teach me how to make them.
I would pop into the kitchen when he was making batch, only to be shooed away. Then he got sick and thoughts were directed elsewhere.
Gray and rainy days find me in the kitchen, trying to reverse engineer those pillowy cakes of memories. Trying to get the taste, texture and timelessness just right. But I know, that they will never be my father’s pancakes. I can already hear the family proclaiming “These are great, but their just not Uncle Ray’s”. You just can’t whip up a batch of legacy.
Last night, a funny thing crossed my mind while I was making a risotto, nothing. I was so enrapt by the process, that I must have went a good 10-15 minutes without the usual mental chatter. It was just add stock, stir, add stock, stir. I was completely living in the moment like a Zen master, until E entered the kitchen and interupted my reverie.
This got me thinking about the meditive properties of cooking. So many of the usual tasks of cooking are repetitive and require your full attention. When you really look at it how different is prepping vegtables from the Zen meditation practice of zazen. Instead of foucing you mind by sitting still and counting breaths, you focusing your mind on slicing and dicing. When you are dicing an onion, you world collapses to job at hand, the only sound you hear is the snick of the knife slicing through the onion and hitting the board. It’s nearly magical that this simple task can hold the chaos of the world beyond the kitchen is at bay, at least for a while.
While “What is the sound of one hand whisking” will probably not be made an official Zen koan anytime soon, the forced mindfulness of cooking may bring us closer to inner peace. It certainly helps me. And, you get to eat your path to elightenment.
The wine snob raises the glass of wine, swirls it deftly, as his nose probes for all its secret aromas. He takes a sip, swishes it around his mouth and spits it out into the waiting bucket. He proceeds to describe the wine in prose even more purple than the permanent wine stains on his teeth. Then, as a finale, he declares the exact grape, area, producer and vintage of the wine. The crowd is stunned with awe in witnessing such an amazing feat.
The above is the cliched version of blind tasting. To actually get such an amazing amount of detail correct is more the exception than the rule, but if you pay attention to what’s in your glass, it’s amazing on how close you can get to the above scene. Hopefully, sans stained teeth.
Last night, Fred Dexheimer, a Master Sommelier, gave a class in blind tasting at the Astor Center. To get the Master Sommelier certification, one must pass a grueling test consisting of general wine knowledge, wine service and a blind tasting of six wines. Only about 100 people in the US have this designation and most people who have it took the exams several time to pass it. So, I was ready to absorb whatever knowledge he had to impart.
Fred started off with a brief description of how wine is made. He had a great slide using Pacman to demonstrate how yeast eats sugar to make alcohol. Right then, I knew this was going to be a great class.
As he moved through the steps of tasting a wine, he was framing the lessons in the context of discerning more about the mystery in your glass. How the color of the wine changes with age so you can at least place the vintage of the wine into newer or older. He talked about how climate affected the alcohol level and viscosity of wine. You could then use this information to place the wine into a warm growing region or a cool growing region. Is the nose of the wine more fruity or more earthy? This gives you important clues into whether it is a wine from the Old World or a New World upstart.
We finally got to put our new wine tasting acumen to the test by blind tasting seven wines. I know, I know, it was a tough assignment, but you have to do what you have to do. The wines were all from standard grapes and regions so they be great wines to cut our blind tasting teeth(taste buds?) on. We worked our way through the wines starting with three white wines. Fred led us through the FEW TAL tasting steps. That is Fruit, Earth, Wood, Tannin, Acid, and Length. The class no problem of identifying the first wine as a New Zealand sauvignon blanc.
We soon started sipping and zipping our way through the wines, throwing around adjectives like barnyard and pencil lead like the most jaded wine critic. We did great in identifying the wines. Only the last one had the class a little confused, about half thought it was a Zinfandel, the other half a Syrah. I was in the Zin camp myself and was a little disappointed to see it was indeed the Syrah.
This was a really fun and informative class. Fred Dexheimer proved to be a great instructor, making the material really fun to learn. Now please excuse me, I have blind wine tasting to practice.
Every obstacle possible was thrown in my way as I tried to make it to the last session of charcuterie class at the French Culinary Institute. Just missing the bus, construction on the train tracks, and other wrenches were thrown my way as I hurried to Broadway and Grand. I made it to the kitchen with just a few minutes to spare for the most interesting class yet.
First up was saucisson a l’ail, garlic sausage with pistachios. A version of this makes its way onto just about every charcuterie plate. We cubed up some pork butt and mixed it with TenderQuick(salt and nitrate mixture), sugar, black pepper, red wine(very cold) and garlic. We chilled this down a bit before giving it a medium grind and mixing in the nuts. This was put into a medium beef casing so it was a fairly fat sausage. We pooled are sausages and they were put into a water bath to cook.
While are current project was simmering away, last weeks marque project, the foie gras terrine, was given a taste test. OH MY GOD, it was good, very, very, good. Getting elbow deep in duck liver was so worth it.
The garlic sausage was done by lunchtime, so they added an additional element to the meal. They too were, very, very good. They did pack a powerful garlic punch. A pungency that would certainly preclude them from a first date menu. but would satisfy Francophiles everywhere.
Our last hands on challenge was bratwurst. Bratwurst are emulsified sausage. You have to make the meat and the fat play nice and mix together as making a mayonnaise or a vinaigrette. After the ingredients goes through the grinder, they get to take a spin in a food processor with some crushed ice to make a smooth paste. Before it could be stuffed in a casing, this mixture had to be cooled down.
While our bratwurst was cooling its heels, Chef Pascal announced he had a surprise, he would demo how to make blood sausage. Making sausages in general is not the most genteel undertaking, but making blood sausage was a very messy process. The kind of project you do in other people’s kitchens. The family story of Grandpa John unsuccessfully passing on his Polish blood sausage recipe was writ large in the aftermath of this undertaking.
All too soon, our bratwurst was cooked, our stations were cleaned, and goodbyes were said. This was a very fun, but far too short of a class. I think we need to reconvene next year to taste the prosciutto Chef Pascal made.
Charcuterie, the art of preserving meat was born out of necessity in the time before refrigeration. Today we embrace it because it just tastes so darn good. Any art that gave us bacon deserves further study. To that end I returned to the French Culinary Institute for a three Saturday class.
It was deja vu all over again walking into the locker room at the French Culinary Institute. I was even found my old locker free and waiting for my use. I quickly donned my chef’s uniform and was about to leave when I was besieged by requests for lessons on how to tie the neckerchief. Once my satorial lesson was over, I climbed the stairs back to the kitchen where I spent six months of Saturdays learning the basics of French cuisine. This time, I was going to learn the intricacies of charcuterie. The giant pig laying in front of the class left little doubt on the source of today’s protein.
Chef Pascal would be our instructor in all things cured and aged. He has quite the sense of humor. Chef had the class laughing even before roll was taken. As we went around the class introducing ourselves, it soon became apparent that about 2/3 of the class was from NJ. But average that in with a student flying in for the weekend classes from Canada, a woman here for a few months from the Philippines, and one student from Australia and you have quite the geographically diverse class!
Class soon began in earnest with Chef Pascal butchering the 210 pound star of our class, the pig he named Fifi. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, Fifi was reduced to tenderloins, racks, bellies, and other primal cuts of pork. Chef took that carcass apart with such skill and ease that Tony Soprano probably had Chef on speed dial. Chef Pascal then demoed how to turn a pork butt into prosciutto. Since the process takes about a year, we will not get to taste the one he made in class. He did have some others at different stages of their aging, including one that was ready to eat. It certainly was great tasting and I may have to take a trip back in a year to found out how ours came out.
We left the porcine world for a while to make some duck confit. This time we got to join in the fun. We had to make the cure mix and bone out two duck legs. After a short cure they will be cooked in copious amounts of duck fat. They will be kept in the fat as it cools and forms a covering over the duck meat. In the old days this was done for food preservation as it will keep the duck meat for about six months. Now, it is mostly done because it tastes so darn good.
Class was really rolling at a fast pace now. We jumped right in making the cure to make pancetta, Italian bacon. It differs from American bacon in that it is not smoked. These will be ready next week, so I will have to dig up some good recipes to make with it.
Lastly, we made what Chef called Italian salami “Slim Jims”. These are just really thin salamis. This was the most involved preparation of the day. Both pork and beef had to be cut into cubes then ground. Spices were mixed into the meat along with some sugars. The sugars were not to make the sausage sweet, it was a snack for the bacteria. Yes, we wanted bacteria in our salami. We would add a culture of a lacto bacillus to our salami and promote its growth. This good bacteria would prevent the growth of bad bacteria. It is sometimes left to chance to have this happen, but Chef doesn’t like leaving things to chance.
Stuffing the meat into the casing proved a little challenging. The casings would only fit on one of the stuffing machines, so we all had to wait in line for that one. The act of stuffing it self was not as easy as it seemed and some mishaps did occur. One casing burst with a sound so loud our ears were ringing! Never would I have thought that a little artificial casing would blow up sounding like a gunshot.
We have to finish up our salamis at home. We had to let them ferment over night in the oven to get the good bacteria going. We then have to let them hang out in a place that is 50-65 degrees for 4-5 days to dry. They are sitting behind me right now in the wine refrigerator aging away. It’s going to be a long 4-5 days.
I have seen the light! More exactly, I was fed the light. Saturday’s dinner at Per Se was definitely one of the best meals I have had in my life.
Several months ago, I received an e-mail from American Express. It was their standard monthly e-mail listing of upcoming events for cardmembers. There, among the concerts and sporting events, was Chef Thomas Keller doing a demo at the French Culinary Institute followed by dinner at Per Se. I was so in. I immediately lunged for the phone to dial in when I noticed that tickets were not on sale yet. As the days wore on, the memory of the event slowly faded. Another e-mail from Amex reminded me of the event, and it has been on sale for some time now. This time I did lunge for the phone and dialed in for a reservation. I was lucky and space was still available. It was a total Charlie Bucket finding the golden ticket in a Wonka bar moment.
I waited for the day with the same excitement of a 6 year old waiting for Christmas. When the day finally arrived, I had to find chores around the house to keep myself from showing up 4 hours early and pacing impatiently in front of the FCI. The rain that was falling all day ended as I left for the bus to NYC and the FCI.
I entered the FCI and was directed to the theater where all the big time demos are done. If you’ve seen “Chef Story” on PBS, you’ve seen this room. There before us, was an array of pastry from Chef Keller’s Bouchon Bakery. It was hard to pick one to eat as they all appeared wonderful. I took a seat and waited with bated breath for the class to begin. Chef Keller and some assistants were a blur of activity getting things prepared for the demo. Satisfied that the mise en place was complete, Chef worked his way through the audience greeting all the participants.
The demo was part cooking class part philosophic discussion. Chef Keller explained his view on the importance of ingredients by talking about some of his suppliers. The suppliers he use are just as dedicated to creating the perfect ingredient as Chef Keller is in creating the perfect dish. The lady who in Vermont who makes his butter that had to go out and buy more cows to create the amount of butter that was ordered. The sheep farmer that can document everything about the lives of his livestock. The complete perfectionism of his Italian olive oil producer. These products are outstanding because the people behind them are outstanding.
Most chef’s are expert multi-taskers and Chef Keller was no exception. Chef Keller was able to carry on a discussion of the various issues of organic, sustainable, and being green while poaching a lobster tail in butter and making a corn pudding. Some very interesting issues were raised as he made a lobster stock. What should a farm that has farmed naturally for decades but does not want to pay the government to have an organic label slapped on their produce be called? Is it better to support a farmer that does incredible artisinal products but has to ship them to the restaurant?
The actual cooking being done was not overshadowed by the discourse. We were witness to true culinary alchemy. None of the dishes demoed were out of the reach of a home cook. The ingredients were common, but what elevated them to the celestial level? One word, technique. The lobster was not simply boiled. It was boiled for a few minutes then taken apart. The tail meat was removed from the shell and poached in beurre blanc(YUM!). The claws and legs went back into the water for a few more minutes of cooking. The bodies were cleaned and used to make a lobster stock. The meat was removed from the legs using a rolling pin. Who ever thought of that was a freakin’ genius, it worked so well. Corn kernels were juiced then heated in a sauce pan. The natural corn starch made the puree thicken into a corn pudding. It makes perfect sense that that would occur, but again, who thinks like that. The answer is obvious, Chef Keller. During a Q & A session after the demo, Chef left us with this pearl of wisdom, cooking is all about product and technique.
With the demo over, it was time for round 2. This necessitated a wardrobe change as I needed to throw on a suit for the dinner at Per Se. Per Se is located in the Time Warner Center. The word urban mall is bandied about when discussing the Time Warner Center and it is pretty apt. A mall with the world’s most exclusive and pricey food court that is! I was a few minutes early so I browsed Williams Sonoma trying to cool down from the infinitely hot subway station. I took a series of escalators to the fourth floor and entered Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory, oh I mean Per Se.
Before dinner proper started, we were treated to Champagne and various appetizers. Among the offerings were the famous salmon cornets. This is a salmon tartare served in a cone shaped tuile with a red onion creme fraiche. This is Chef Keller’s philosophy in a bite or two. Really high quality ingredients, prepared with the utmost attention to technique. They also taste amazing. In one or two bites you get a spectrum of flavors and textures. While we were greedily shoving little bites of heaven into our mouths and washing them down with gulps of Champagne, Chef Keller was leading small groups on tours of the kitchens. We were going to get a glimpse of the guts of the chocolate factory.
Entering into the first kitchen you are blinded by how clean and shiny everything is. I’m sure there are operating rooms that are not this clean. You then notice some things that make these kitchens special. There is a flat panel tv showing a live view of the French Laundry’s kitchen in Yountville, CA. A quick scan of the ceiling reveals a camera giving a reciprocal feed of Per Se’s kitchen. You notice intriguing signs hanging on the walls. The phrase “Sense of Urgency” is posted under every clock. The word “finesse”, along with it’s dictionary entry is over the exit to the dining room. You may have noticed that I have been using the plural when referring to Per Se’s kitchens. That was not a typo as they have two. One for the main dining room and one for the private dining room. The coolest feature was a room dedicated to the production of chocolate. See, the Willie Wonka references were not totally out of left field.
We sat done for dinner and the parade of amazement began. A server approached the table with a bottle of Champagne. First, I thought is was the same Champagne we were drinking when I noticed the tell tale shield shaped label of Dom Perignon. Holy shit, they were pouring Dom Freakin’ Perignon, vintage 1999. It was like tasting stars, as the Monk Dom Perignon is credited with saying. The first course was the perennial favorite “Oyster and Pearls”, a sabyon of tapioca with oysters and caviar. This is one of those dishes were you scratch your head when reading the description, but totally get it before the first bite is swallowed. These disparate sounding ingredients form a delicious whole. The next course was a panzanella salad with heirloom tomatoes and lobster claw meet. No mere hunks of bread for this panzanella, a piece of bread was sandwiched between two silpats and toasted in the oven until it was paper thin and crisp. Our old friends the butter poached lobster and the corn pudding made their appearance. The lobster was great but that corn pudding was a standout, sweet, creamy and corny in a good summertime kind of way. These two dishes were paired with a white burgundy that was absolutely dynamite.
We moved on to a Snake River Ranch steak with a sauce bordelaise that was great. There was only a small amount of sauce, so there was no place for the steak to hide any imperfections. Needless to say, no imperfections were apparent. A meritage from California was served with this course. A meritage is California’s ode to the red wines of Bourdeaux, made from a blend of grapes. I have run out of superlatives in describing the wines served with this dinner. The wine was no exception, it was spectacular. Dinner began to wind down, the cheese course came followed by a pair of desserts. The desserts were paired with a Loire Valley dessert wine that was great. It wasn’t overly sweet and had a nice acidity to it. It paired well with the strawberry sorbet and collection of small pastries that were served.
The night came to a close and we were presented with two gift bags! They contained a copy of Chef Keller’s latest cookbook “Under Pressure” along with olive oil, wine, pickled veg tables and other goodies. I struggled under the weight of the gift bags into the Wonkavator. Oops, sorry, real world no Wonkavator. I struggled under the weight of the gift bags onto the escalator and into the night, thinking about one of the best culinary experiences of my life.
Hoboken loves it festivals. Art, religion, ancestry, and just plain good times are celebrated with equal gusto here in the Mile Square City. Every August for the past 10 years, Jersey’s favorite summer crop gets the spotlight.
The Heirloom Tomato Festival is a low key affair, only occupying the passage way in front of the Hoboken Historical Museum. The physical size of the festival does not seem to diminish the buzz it generates judging by the lengthy queue of people waiting to pay for their bags of summer’s bounty. An equally long queue was formed at the highlight of the festival, the tasting table. There, spread out in a sea of reds, yellow, purples and greens were about 25 varieties of heirloom tomatoes cut up for your tasting pleasure. Pink brandywines, ramapos, yellow plum, mortgage lifters and others formed a gastronomic gauntlet for the festival goers to taste their way though. Each bite added to the lively discussion of the pros and cons of each variety.
The festival would not happen without the Catalpa Farms in Wantage, NJ. They provided the 1,000+ pounds of tomatoes along with corn, peppers, garlic, tomatillos and other products of their land. This is an event where everyone is a winner. The people get access to wonderful, locally grown produce. By buying the produce, the people support the farm and the Hoboken Historical museum.
The late blight has played havoc with the tomato harvest in the Northeast. It was great to see one of NJ’s icons, the tomato, alive , well and ready for its closeup.
The mission of the James Beard Foundation is the promotion of American cuisine in all its varied forms. When people hear cuisine, they immediately think white table cloths, fine china and wine lists the size of phonebooks. But American cuisine encompasses myriad choices such as fine dining in San Francisco, lobster shacks in New England, and the smoky barbecue of the South.
Ed Mitchell is a legend among the BBQ cognoscenti. With numerous TV appearances, including beating Bobby Flay in a ribs throw down, he is getting noticed outside of his usual area. Judging by the lines for his food at the Big Apple BBQ, the message is being received.
I was very excited to hear that Ed had accepted an invitation to cook at the James Beard House and was packing up his pork for a trip up North. A sold out crowd was greeted with moonshine mojitos and some very tasty appetizers. I don’t know what it is with pork liver, but like the “Swine and Wine” dinner a few weeks ago, a liver dish was the standout. In this case, it was liver pudding served on a ginger snap. A very strange sounding combination, but it really worked well. The zestiness of the ginger snap melded well with the richness of the liver pudding. The other appetizers were also well received, especially the bacon wrapped figs with goat cheese and the North Carolina mountain trout mousse with cracklin’s.
In a break in the usual routine, we were invited to head out back and get our own pork for the first course. Both chopped pork and pulled pork were on offer for the diners to grab to make their own sandwiches with. Back at the table, cole slaw and bread were waiting to enhance the pork. Of course, it really did not need any enhancement. This is the dish that Ed is rightfully known for.
Fried green tomatoes were served with an arugula salad dressed with a bacon-sherry vinaigrette as a second course. All the components of this dish worked really well together. The zippy acidity of the Fire Road sauvignon blanc from New Zealand proved to be the perfect foil to this dish.
A grilled pork loin with beautiful grill marks was the next dish to grace our plates. While the pork was excellent, it was upstaged a bit by the sweet potato hash.
Next up were the Flay felling ribs with macaroni and cheese. They were indeed ribs worthy of accolades, they were simply falling off the bone mounds of goodness. A banana pudding rounded out the dinner that was over all too soon.
Ed Mitchell came out after dinner bringing with him the other chefs that helped him prepare this wonderful dinner. Lauren Thompson, Executive Chef of The Pit, Corey Palakovich, Executive Chef of Empire Eats and Matt Scofield, Chef at Sitti all received well deserved kudos from the crowd. As the Q and A session was going on, a huge storm was raging outside. This provoked a few more questions to be asked as no one wanted to venture out in the tempest.
It’s going to be a long wait till the next Big Apple BBQ after getting this extended taste of Ed’s food. A road trip to NC may have to be planned.
Where would we be if we did not cook for each other? This question is usually simmering on a back burner somewhere in my mind, but Pollan’s article on the decline of home cooking and Michael Ruhlman’s insightful response to it, made me move it to the front of the stove.
So many of my memories are of family gatherings. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner before sunrise so that we can eat at Grandma’s at 11AM. The wonderful smell of the turkey thankfully winning the aroma war with Staten Island’s Fresh Kill land fill as we sped along to Bayonne. Peeling pounds of potatoes and trimming pounds of string beans on Christmas Eve. The wonderfully chaotic mess of the blue claw feast the day of the annual family crabbing outing.
These are powerful images that encourage me, maybe even compel me, to cook for family and friends. People who do not cook will never have the pleasure of seeing loved ones faces en rapt in eating something they prepared. It may not be the best, or sometimes even edible, but the love of preparing the dish seasons it perfectly.
If I did not cook and if my father did not cook, I would have been robbed of one last good memory of him. My father was suffering with mesothelioma and had spent the lion’s share of November 2001 in the hospital. He was well enough to come home two days before Thanksgiving. He was not strong enough to make the meal himself, so he set up court in his kitchen and directed me on how to prepare all the dishes we would be serving that day. If there ever was a Thanksgiving were we truly gave thanks, it was that one. Dad did not live to see Christmas that year.
I now cook Thanksgiving dinner without Dad’s input. I cook it for how many, or how few come. I cook that meal, and every meal, knowing that cooking for people is an act of love. People who just microwave some pre-cooked meal or just order in all the time are missing out on a huge part of connecting with people. If you cook a stranger a meal, they are now longer a stranger.
Everything took more time than normal yesterday. The frittata I made for brunch seemed to take forever to prepare. I’m usually pretty quick in the knife skills department, but I seemed to be moving in slow motion. What were suppose to be quick shopping trips turned into shopping treks and the day slipped quickly by. We came home, did a few chores, then we sat down to relax. I preceded to relax too much and quickly fell asleep.
I eventually awoke and stumbled to get my wallet. I needed to go across the street to the grocery store to pick up some garam masala for the chicken tikka masala I was making for dinner. That’s when I realized it was already after seven and dinner would be a long way off.
True to form, the A & P across the street did not have the needed spice mix. I had to walk over to the ShopRite about half a mile away. Luckily, the did have the needed spice mixture. I had to pick up a few other items just to make the walk seem more useful. I finally made it home and began dinner preparation in earnest.
I got my mise en place all set up and started up the grill to cook the chicken I had marinating in the refrigerator. I re-read the recipe and saw that I had a lot of simmering time coming up. A big oops! I didn’t do a thorough enough job getting the marinade off of the chicken thighs and they stuck like glue to the grill. I was able to pry them off and get the other side cooked with some elbow grease and expletives.
The second side of the chicken grilled up fine and released its death grip on the barbecue without as much fuss as the first side. It was pretty smooth sailing after this. Getting everything prepped ahead of time prevented dinner from becoming breakfast. In the end, it was a tasty dinner. I don’t know if it was the lateness of the hour or the tastiness of the food. When we eat the leftovers, I’ll let you know.
A link to Grace Parisi’s recipe in Food & Wine is here: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chicken-tikka-masala
| | Do-over feverRevisiting September’s effortsWhat an essay, grape jelly, and my house have in common. |
The Culinate InterviewJacques PépinThe technician | Local FlavorsThe beauty of breadcrumbsCherish the humble crumb |
The Produce DiariesChia seedsThe latest superfood | First PersonDinner of a lifetimeA changed man |