Wednesday, May 7, 2014

z. Odds and Ends

We are all different. Some people plan all their meals for the week and buy accordingly. You meet them at the market with their list in hand. I may have been like that before, but I have since changed. Now, I buy what appeals to me and I fill the pantry and the refrigerator. At that point, I start to feel secure enough for the next few days, ready for any impromptu invitation and waiting to be inspired by the produce, which is patiently waiting to be consumed.
Before, I used a few processed foods to save time, but now I do practically everything from scratch. This means all my produce is fresh, at least when it comes from the market, and I have to prepare it before it turns too old, in short managing its shelf life in our home. As I do not spend all my time planning, buying, or cooking, this is easier said than done.
Plastic wraps and plastic bags help tremendously for keeping produce fresh longer. Another way to achieve a better staggering of the week’s ingredients is to partly prepare them while they are fresh and keep them for future use in plastic wrap or containers in the refrigerator. 
Still, I occasionally discover a forgotten vegetable in the back of the refrigerator which only a compost pile would like. This waste is a sure reminder of my inefficiency and I find it morally wrong, two good reasons to be mortified.
Most recipe authors honestly try to share their favorite way to reach a certain taste and balance in a dish, and avoid health risks. This being said, their taste may not be yours or mine. They also want, unfortunately, to contribute something original, improve on this well-honed technique or that combination of ingredients, sometimes with arguable results.
Searching the Web today, you encounter a great number of different recipes for a given dish (or pastry), all competing for your preference. Like in the old days when confronted by math problems, you should pause first, understand what taste you want to achieve, why such an ingredient is added now (1), and depending on how long it takes to cook, if it should be added later on instead. In other words, you have to interpret, which can be a big waste of time. Some recipes are too simplified, some others over-complicated with lots of pseudo-scientific explanations or magical practices. (2)
If you want to be efficient, my advice is to go to a good used books store and browse through books written by the very best restaurants’ professional chefs. These people have been recognized by experts for their contribution to the cuisine corpus. They do have a talent to associate flavors and create new dishes. We should humbly follow them. (3)
Look at the photographs. Select the few recipes which inspire you. Check if you can possibly simplify (not improve) them, in order to make them yours. Try to imagine what would be the impact of changing this expensive ingredient with a much more affordable one. This is what the best home cooking should be about.
This is the new natural and irreplaceable source of knowledge, for cooking as well as brain science or fashion trends. However, it has its pitfalls. On the Web, everyone has an idea about everything. Being referenced in the first pages of a search tells more about Internet skills than cooking abilities. In the end, there is such a profusion of entries on any subject that it is hard to find those that you can trust.
This is worse in the area of recipes than it is in the political arena where you quickly detect an ideological bias you can feel comfortable with or not. Again, if you want to learn something valuable, search primarily top restaurants and chefs. They know a lot and they are happy to teach and share.
One of your best bets is to use YouTube or its equivalents, where you can familiarize yourself with numerous techniques.  Let’s say you want to prepare a foie gras terrine, something you have never done and probably will never do again in the foreseeable future, considering the cost and the increasing legal bans. (4) You would need advice on:
1.     The selection process at purchase time (although you may have to do with what you can find)
2.     The de-veining technique
3.     A simple delightful cooking technique
 
Apart from choosing the foie itself, deveining is the most important step for the visual quality of the terrine. And there is no substitute to seeing the way it is done before doing it yourself: How can you be sure to take out most of the veins? What amount of visual damage can the liver stand without ill effect? You will still need to identify what advice is proper or not. I remember a clearly misleading video where bejeweled hands (a sure sign of hygiene and competence!) left most of the veins inside.
For French cuisine, it will help if you understand French, because it will open more doors for you. You will still have to be cautious, as the French chef you are watching may actually be trying to sell you a branded utensil or what not. But even “creative” French chefs would not add chili flakes to duck liver. At least, not on a first date.
Except in recipes based on boiling ingredients in water, every cook tries to brown them because this process creates the flavors we humans crave. One browning reaction is caramelization, a transformation of sugar used mainly in pastry and desserts but also with many vegetables. More complex are Maillard reactions which involve sugar and protein components to create hundreds of new aromatic molecules which were not there before. We try to brown when we sauté and also when we grill or roast.
But you also want to recognize what you are eating: The crust of that steak is nice, but the rare meat inside is the real reason why you identify beef. If taste alone does not convince you, health issues may: Remember that excess browning produces its own DNA damaging compounds.
According to my English dictionary, searing’s definition is to burn or char. This seems hardly appetizing but searing is advised in countless recipes, mainly for a benefit it has never provided.
Justus von Liebig, a very productive German chemist famous for many achievements and inventions (including bouillon cubes), hypothesized one day that searing would seal the juices inside (in 1840?). This was such a pleasant “logical” idea that it became a galloping myth. Despite their everyday experience to the contrary and countless dry pieces of meat or fish, even famous cooks came to believe it and spread the gospel.
This has become the simplest test to turn away from any acclaimed or self-proclaimed expert, in print or on TV, who continues to utter this expression. However, it is true that seared meat offers nice flavors which we find appetizing, causing us to salivate more. Are we ourselves producing the “juices” we end up appreciating?
Can water be better than stock? Of course not. Any cream sauce based on a reduction of stock will be richer, with a deeper flavor, which will often contrast happily with more acidic further additions. 
But there are two reasons why I rarely use meat stock. Initially, it was because it must be made separately in advance and might turn bad before I used it for a second recipe. Then, I discovered that I did like this absence of a rich meaty taste, which ends up being the same for all dishes.
On the other hand, for fish recipes, fish stock can be quickly prepared with the unused head and bones of that particular fish and can enrich the final sauce better than a reduction of a foreign element like wine.
Except for quick marinating used for raw fish, I rarely use this technique because I like to recognize the original taste of the product. If it is not good enough for my taste, I should prepare something else.
On the other hand, I have used marinating to conserve a product safely several days for future use, for example “Oriental” chicken brochettes. Of course, if you are forced to cook a bland industrially-raised chicken, lemon, spices, and olive oil can add needed flavor safely.
Beyond the obvious practical aspects of dividing a bird or other piece of meat or fish so that it can be served to different people, carving and filleting are also a way to know these animals more intimately and pay our respects to their sacrifice. Carving and filleting thus belong to the realm of the sacred. This applies also to vegetable or fruit preparation. We just need to be aware and present.
All animal anatomies have a lot in common. This is why, when carving a rabbit or a different bird than usual, you are at the same time in known territory and in terra incognita: Where exactly should I apply my knife, so that I detach the leg from the thigh cleanly? Do not deny yourself this simple pleasure of continuous exploration. Please avoid the two pitfalls which had their glorious time once, the cleaver, and the scissors.
Filleting a fish is also a great pleasure, and in the US a rare one as well, as rare as the availability of whole fish. It is interesting, by the way, to explore Japanese techniques, including the Japanese way of skinning fish that you can then apply to any meat as well. Working with Japanese knives is actually a wonderful experience in itself, and you might adopt some of them.
The same is true for vegetables or fruit. Take an orange for example. You can peel it in so many ways: with your hands or with a knife, just taking out a generous zest or plunging deeper and cutting away the thin outer skin of each segment. With some practice, you can even cut out the skins between segments and just show each segment skinless, with the juicy pulp vesicles apparent. It’s fun (and may be noticed and appreciated).
As soon as you start eating or drinking, danger is everywhere. We are afraid of high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, diabetes, alcohol, sugar, red meat, eggs and more.
Margarine was supposed to save us from butter’s ill effects in the 1950s, but 40 or 50 years later, we learn that its transfats are much worse! Mushrooms can kill you and the sweet and soft spinach can combine its oxalic acid with cheese’s calcium to build kidney stones. Red wine will kill you while adding to your life expectancy. No wonder new diets are invented every day. We want to believe in something that will save us, not realizing that the biggest risk to our health would be to stop eating altogether! 
As the margarine story tells us, nutrition science is still in its infancy with new contradictory definitive conclusions issued every day. At this stage, I listen to all this advice with a distracted ear. So far, I only believe in variety and moderation, pillars of a balanced diet.
Variety is essential. We are omnivorous animals and probably we do well with a little bit of everything, including antioxidants, trace elements, and natural easily absorbed vitamins of all kinds. Even fibers that we do not absorb are good for us, and a full orange better than its juice.
Pregnant women show us the way: Suddenly, they crave red meat, which they did not like before, or require pickles and oysters. I think we can all do the same, learn to listen to the demands of our own bodies and respond accordingly.
Moderation is the other important factor of our well-being. This applies to every meal you are having, including exceptional ones, and I can attest that it requires some willpower. Another point is to limit your intake to meals. In the US, surrounded by people snacking all the time, it is hard to resist doing the same but you must forgo snacking.  Regularity of meals has been shown to regulate our metabolic processes better and lead to weight control and better health.
Finally, especially if it is easy for you to gain weight, you may need to eat a little less than “moderate”. This is really the hardest part for me if what I am eating tastes good. My father always depicted wartime shortages as the best provider of health benefits. (5) I do not want to wait for the next war, this is why I have to try now, and try again. I promise: I will start tomorrow.
Everyone has his or her pet peeves. You will have noticed that I have systematically excluded sugar and flour (and any form of starch additive) from all recipes except desserts. This is because they are the essence of desserts, sweet and rich, while in other preparations they are just a silent passenger with dangerous side effects. It is the same reason that makes me avoid processed foods with their load of unnecessary sugar and additives.
There are two ingredients I use practically every day with mixed feelings from a gustatory point of view: salt and garlic. I fear abuse of either can mask all other flavors and play against the complexity good cooking should achieve.
Regarding salt, most recipes assume that all cooks naturally use the proper amount. I do not mention any proportions myself but I urge you to stay on the safe side (too little) so that you can fully appreciate what you have prepared and let the addicted guests add their own salt. Actually, in some cases like the French Pot-au-Feu, the juxtaposition in your mouth of slightly under-salted meat and coarse salt can be wonderful in itself. (6) 
In the kitchen as well as in the office or on the factory floor, proper equipment allows us to be more efficient and productive. However, in your own kitchen, many appliances and utensils often prove to have more cons than pros. For example, they can take up a lot of space, they need cleaning which means more work and less fun, they are used a lot in the first few days of utensil honeymoon and forgotten 12 months later, although they still occupy some shelf space.
Among the appliances I have personally rejected (but which can be very useful for some people), the top 3 are:
1.     The food processor. It would deprive me of the sensual experiences it is supposed to replace plus… I would have to clean it after use. It could be useful if I had a restaurant and prepared pâté terrines or sophisticated emulsions for 20 guests, but I just cook for friends and instead of trying to guess what flavors the sauce, they will find the little bits of chanterelles swimming in it. It is less sophisticated, but is it less good?
2.     The pressure cooker. Just look at these limp brownish string beans: Are they appetizing? Have you really saved any of your precious time?
3.     The microwave oven. I have never felt I needed the functions it offers. And where would it go on my small countertop?
I have grown weary of aluminum pots and pans, as well as foil, which all react with food in a somewhat ominous way. Although it is much less expensive than other cooking utensil materials, I now think aluminum should be saved for building airplanes.
If you have an urge to invest, do it in carbon steel frying pans, stainless steel saucepans and a large size stockpot for soups, pot-au-feu, and crab). Enameled cast-iron pans or Dutch ovens have reached undeserved stratospheric prices but are extremely versatile and healthy.
A wok is a beautifully designed utensil: thin in order to transfer heat quickly and react to heat changes immediately, round so that it is easy to scoop up and turn over its contents, naturally non-stick, and very cheap if you go to the right store. Its only drawback is that most US gas ranges have rather inefficient burners, which do not reach the right temperature, and where the wok sits too far from the flame to stir-fry properly.
Buy a manual vegetable mill, a manual grater, and, in the Electric department, a good immersion hand blender and a hand mixer. I prefer not to beat egg whites manually anymore.
Buy a few good knives, heavy and light, long and short. Cleavers are useful too, for their original purpose, but also to cut a pie or a pizza, because you can use two hands and your own weight to help. I find the act of using a knife against a wooden board to slice or chop some vegetable one of the most symbolic, meditative and enjoyable parts of cooking. It requires skill and, if you want to keep your fingers, total concentration. For some reason, I particularly enjoy using a knife that is clearly oversized or not adapted to the task at hand, and therefore requires extra attention for the self-inflicted challenge.
Get yourself a good wooden board too. For hygiene, no plastic will ever approach it. And also get a good potato peeler which may double up as a cheap version of a mandolin.
Other equipment could include cooking chopsticks, spatulas, a steamer, colanders, a salad spinner and a deep-fryer if you are so inclined. As cooking a roast is all about reaching a given inside temperature and many modern recipes use temperature instructions, a thermometer could actually be a good idea, even if it takes away some of the ambiguity I appreciate so much.
To make eating the ultimate enjoyment, everything must be in place: Eating is best done with food-loving peers, pleased to be together, ready to enjoy the meal, in command of table manners similar to yours. Having “appetizing” but not necessarily fancy linen and china, efficient silverware including sharp knives and good wine glasses also helps.
When the time comes to serve, two main solutions are possible. They come up naturally in general, but can be happily tailored to the situation. Objectives for both are unstated but real: tickling appetites, building expectations, and distributing portions among guests as fairly as possible. Aesthetics also play a key role.
Individual plates are the only solution when you want to display your artistic sense on every plate and make sure every table companion will have the same experience, eating the same ingredients, hopefully in the same order. It is also convenient when plates absolutely need to be warmed up. This is both thoughtful and festive.
In all other cases, serving will be done more communally by bringing serving dishes and bowls to the table. In general, guests are supposed to serve themselves, taking turns around the table, displaying varying degrees of skill, and inadvertently tampering with the fairness principle. One of the table companions, more dexterous or simply more assertive, may emerge as a serving leader. He or she had better be thoughtful and concentrated and do the best job possible. I am watching! 
Over the years, I have accumulated many recipe books, which have all contributed to my education. I feel that you should do the same and build your own library, electronic or hard-copy, according to your life encounters and preferences.
I will just share with you (and recommend) a few books I have really loved and still use. They belong to a different, broader register, one of knowledge, wisdom and love. Here is my short list, starting with the absolute masterpiece.
 
On Food and Cooking. The science and lore of the kitchen
By Harold McGee (Scribner)
I once took up that book on a 10 hour flight, started to read it and never put it down until landing. It is an exhilarating trove of facts about food, origins, and the chemistry of cooking which has made my life tremendously richer. I own the first and second editions. I constantly come back to it and, every time, I am confounded by its scope and spirit. I have never met Harold McGee, but he is like a friend to me. Thank you, Harold!
A History of Cooks and Cooking
By Michael Symons
I love these books which synthetize thousands of years of civilization’s history through some new but factual prism. This was another hard one to put down. Of course, no Frenchman could ever write such an ambitious book; this is usually done by American intellectuals. In this case, it took an Australian writer. And you thought all they loved was surfing!
Ma Gastronomie
By Fernand Point (Comp)
Fernand Point was a driven, passionate restaurant chef who modernized and reinvented French cooking, training generations of disciples in the process. His cookbook gathers some witty ruminations, followed by rough sketches for recipes culled from his personal notebook. Although dishes are far too rich and many ingredients are no longer readily available, especially in the US, it remains for me the ultimate in meaningfulness.
Physiologie du Goût
By Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Brillat-Savarin was a bachelor, lawyer, and politician living in the early 19th century. But his fame comes from this book, a compendium of thoughts and aphorisms regarding the place gastronomy should have in our lives. Among the many quotes you can extract from this rich opus, I will mention this one that few people would relate to today but made absolute sense to him:
"The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star."
The Gastronomical Me
By Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher
It is a rare person who, at the age of 35, already starts reminiscing about her discovery of eating pleasures, but MFK Fisher was unique. Is this book her best? Maybe not, but the title is. I like her quest. I love her writing style. I would have loved meeting her in her later years and I could have! Why did I discover her far too late?
 
 
(1)   Flour is the best example. Sprinkling flour on a piece of meat at the browning stage means that, later on, this will be the thickening agent for the sauce. If you are like me, overlook that instruction, and maybe, the entire recipe.
(2)   See Searing. Another good one is that flambéing’s purpose is to get rid of alcohol, when evaporation from boiling takes care of that already.
(3)   This is even more true for pastry. You may love the recipe from your best friend’s mother for all kinds of sentimental reasons. But a recipe signed by Alain Ducasse or Pierre Hermé will probably taste better.
(4)   For some reason, fattening ducks and geese is considered inhumane in the US and is being gradually banned, while fattening an entire population with sodas is not really an issue.
(5)   He used to say “On ne s’est jamais si bien porté que pendant la guerre quand il n’y avait rien à manger” (French people were never healthier than during the last war when there was nothing to eat).
(6)   A low-salt diet is also officially recommended for your health, but it is another issue I do not want to address.

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