While shopping for a smoker, we came across some grilling skewers made of 3/32″ stainless steel preformed cable. They have a loop on one end and a fixed probe on the other. With meat and veggies strung on the cable, the loaded cable can be dangled, loop-side-down, and formed to fit onto the grill any which way that works best, straight out, serpentine or circled–with the probe end extended over the edge of the grill grate, if you wish. Since stainless steel is non-reactive, raw product, skewer and all, can be marinated if you are using only one marinade for both veggies and meat (not to my liking). They are really long–30 inches! Sufficient to load enough food for two on each skewer. Manufactured by Inno-Labs (firewiregrilling.com), the FireWire won a kitchen gadget award last year. Big Green Egg vendors have them and others too. Preformed cable is expensive–the skewers are $20 the pair. But neato!
Archive for the ‘Information’ Category
FireWire –Flexible Skewer
Saturday, March 20th, 2010Recipes
Saturday, March 20th, 2010I’ve cleaned up and better organized the Food Page Recipes. There are over a hundred now and it was getting cumbersome. Have a look.
Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010I’ve had a copy of Elizabeth Schneider’s Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables for about three years and refer to it quite often. Flipping through the book, I note page markings for arugula, cilantro, spaghetti squash, mangoes, radish sprouts, Swiss chard, Chinese cabbage, tomatillos and others. When published in 1986, most of these items were hard to find “curiosities.” Schneider’s book is recognized today as a classic that influenced not only cooks but also the produce market. Now, 15 years later, Schneider has produced an updated and upscale version of the 1986 book. In Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, she has dropped the fruits and winnowed out the veggies. Cilantro and other “spice” type veggies are not in the new book. Sprouts, squash and other single items in the old book are presented now within generic headings. Hugely informative, more fun to read and with lots of new material, the format and presentation of the new book—with large heavy weight glossy paper, 275 superb photos, 500 meat and meatless recipes and 220 more pages—is as elegant as the old book is text bookish. The 1996 reprint of Uncommon Fruits costs 28 dollars; Vegetables goes for $60! If I had neither and wanted a book on veggies, I would go Vegetables, price notwithstanding. Schneider has been writing for 30 years. Quite likely, this book is her magnum opus. It is a 2001 nominee for a James Beard Foundation book award.
Chef’s Privilege
Monday, March 15th, 2010I’ve spent a week deciding if I should get into Sous Vide. Sous Vide cooking involves vacuum sealing food in airtight pouches, then submerging them in a water bath at precisely controlled temperatures well below the boiling point for a relatively long period of time–30 minutes (fish) to 72 hours (tough meats). This “under vacuum” water oven technique has been evolving in labs and professional kitchens since the mid 70’s. Its advantages are that the heat is low and precise and precludes overcooking; the pouches are packed with food and spices to produce a finished product; textures are impressive as meats and veggies are cooked uniformly and to perfection; food in pouches are stable, can be prepared hours or days ahead and then served a la minute. Sous vide products are finding there way into stores everywhere as pouched sauces, prepared veggies and meats. Costco, for example, carries an excellent lamb shank, a veal osso buco and a line of Indian vegetarian sauces that I wrote about earlier. Fine dinning restaurants are using sous vide prepared off and on site to the chef’s specifications. Culinary literature abounds with name chef cookbooks touting the technique and their skilled use of it.
Now, a compact home water oven is on the market called the SousVide Supreme. It goes for $450. Also needed is a vacuum sealer, like the one I’ve used for many years, which runs another $150 to $250, plus the pouch material at 50 cents a running foot. It would be fun to have this thing and prep a stack of steaks to a perfect 125F ready to be grill marked and served; to buy veggies in large quantities and sous vide them and then freeze ‘em; to toss in a seasoned Boston Butt and forget it for a couple of days and have it emerge as ready to serve pulled pork.
On the other hand, sous vide is essentially a slow cooker. A smart crock pot with water in it. For us geezers who no longer leave home for work at 0700 to return 10 hours later, planned and slow cooking methods have lost their time saving attractiveness. (We haven’t used our crock pot or an oven timer in years.) Which leaves the culinary value of sous vide, which is substantial and attractive enough to the seasoned home cook that I’m writing about it. Sur la Table carries the SousVide Supreme and reportedly sold out their initial buy of a thousand units in two months. I’m going to pass.
Now on to the Big Green Egg . . .
Mediterranean Street Food
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou. Anissa Helou, born in Lebanon and living in London, is an experienced culinary writer who appears regularly on British TV and writes a column for the Financial Times. She is also a photographer and the book is nicely composed and presented with her black and white photos throughout. Helou states in her introduction that as a kid in Beirut she was never allowed to eat street food in as much as
“ . . . girls from good families don’t.” That set the stage for her enduring fascination with street food vendors and their dishes.
As I read on, I began to wonder if she was going to address the health risks of non-natives eating street food. (I ate the stuff without regret in Japan and Hong Kong, as a young dashing naval officer, but I doubt if I would do it now.) She views a perceived lack of hygiene as often more apparent than real, and leaves it at that—save for a note to herself to carry her own cutlery when next in Cairo. Mmmm.
If you give a thought to what street food in all about (quick and/or uncomplicated), the chapter headings here are intuitive, namely soups, snacks-salads-dips, breads and pizzas, sandwiches, BBQs, one-pot meals, sweets, desserts and drinks. She presents about 135 recipes, most capable of being prepared quickly without the need of much more than fire, a pan, product, spices and oil.
Readers of Wright’s A Mediterranean Feast or Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco will find much familiar here. If you have prepared some of Wolfert’s dishes or my tagine dishes you have the pantry and spice rack to tackle Helou’s Mediterranean street food.
We did her Moroccan Eggplant Salad the other night following the recipe, which was straightforward. It was delicious, though a bit too oily. This led me to check her other recipes to determine if Helou is a bit heavy on the olive oil. She is, at least in her salads. So, as you should do with all recipes, mark them up to your liking after following the author’s recipe. Fair enough. Next time I do this dish, I’ll cut the oil by 20%.
We’ll try, I’m sure, some of the snacks, salads and dips as well as the kebab BBQ’s. Her one-pot meal recipes look good and I should try one or two as quick-prep variants of the more elaborate lamb dishes that I favor. But, given the cost of fresh lamb shanks, maybe I won’t.
I bought the book because I liked the concept. You might too. It’s a welcome addition to the two related books, aforementioned.
The Fourth Star
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010The Fourth Star, by Leslie Brenner. This book chronicles a year (2000) behind the scenes at Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s New York City restaurant. Brenner, a food writer, observes restaurant operations for endless hours as Boulud and his staff of 140 work for endless hours to create and sustain a successful French restaurant. Upon opening in 1999, the New York Times gave Daniel only 3 stars. Hurt and miffed, Boulud broods silently as all under his employ know that getting the deserved fourth star is what the year 2000 is going to be all about. Of course, they succeed. Two other restaurant books are reviewed on this page. The kitchen scenes at Daniel are at another, higher, level than those portrayed by Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, and Brenner’s narrative lays waste the dismal title of Patric Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Fine dining is alive and well. Still, the three books are of a piece. A dark side of Kitchen Confidential is here too, where cooks at Daniel, albeit in a prize kitchen, endure long hours, low pay, burn out and high turnover. Front of the house operations at Daniel are apace with those described historically by Kuh. Brenner documents the key requisites of success in today’s restaurant world: culinary flair, command leadership and marketing genius. Daniel Boulud has all three. If your interest in fine dining includes diners as well as restaurant operations, Brenner portrays them–the regulars and VIPS–as quirky yet lovingly catered to by Boulud who recognizes them as vital to the success of his restaurant. A lot of pointers are provided here for the eccentric diner.
The Fourth Star
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Fourth Star, by Leslie Brenner. This book chronicles a year (2000) behind the scenes at Daniel, Chef Daniel Boulud’s New York City restaurant. Brenner, a food writer, observes restaurant operations for endless hours as Boulud and his staff of 140 work for endless hours to create and sustain a successful French restaurant. Upon opening in 1999, the New York Times gave Daniel only 3 stars. Hurt and miffed, Boulud broods silently as all under his employ know that getting the deserved fourth star is what the year 2000 is going to be all about. Of course, they succeed. Two other restaurant books are reviewed on this page. The kitchen scenes at Daniel are at another, higher, level than those portrayed by Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential, and Brenner’s narrative lays waste the dismal title of Patric Kuh’s The Last Days of Haute Cuisine. Fine dining is alive and well. Still, the three books are of a piece. A dark side of Kitchen Confidential is here too, where cooks at Daniel, albeit in a prize kitchen, endure long hours, low pay, burn out and high turnover. Front of the house operations at Daniel are apace with those described historically by Kuh. Brenner documents the key requisites of success in today’s restaurant world: culinary flair, command leadership and marketing genius. Daniel Boulud has all three. If your interest in fine dining includes diners as well as restaurant operations, Brenner portrays them–the regulars and VIPS–as quirky yet lovingly catered to by Boulud who recognizes them as vital to the success of his restaurant. A lot of pointers are provided here for the eccentric diner.
The Last Days of Haute Cuisine
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010The Last Days of Haute Cuisine, by Patric Kuh, traces the evolution of fine dining from the opening of Le Pavillon in 1941 to the present time. Kuh has written a nostalgic essay wrapped around Henri Soulé, the maître d’hôtel of Le Pavillon, portrayed to excess in mythic aura. The rise and fall of great restaurants across the land and the influences of iconic foodies—chefs and writers—are woven into this very readable narrative. This book is essential reading for high-end restaurant goers, studious foodies and ambitious chefs. It has been nominated for a 2001 James Beard Foundation book award. If you read Kitchen Confidential, cleanse your pallet with The Last Days of Haute Cuisine.
¡Ceviche!
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010¡Ceviche! The little woman loves ceviche. Our favorite Mexican restaurant is our most frequented restaurant because they make a great ceviche and have it on the menu most nights. It’s so good I consulted the chef there before preparing it for 200 as a demonstration dish at school.
Well, along comes a single subject cookbook on ceviche. Better still, the book has been nominated for a James Beard Foundation book award this year. “Got to buy this one,” says I. “ No need to look at it at the bookstore, just go Amazon.”
¡Ceviche! by chef Guillermo Pernot and Aliza Green, offers 48 ceviche recipes—and everything you need to know about this little side dish—along with chapters on salsas, salads and cocktails—all tied together with extraordinary full-page color photographs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that ingredients called for in most of the recipes are not readily available. To their credit, the authors have a chapter on special ingredients and sources, as well as a glossary of 54 entries pulled out of the recipes. Nonetheless, to make the dishes in this book requires a commitment to shop for and stock the pantry with niche spices, condiments, veggies, fruits and booze. The material on escabeches, salads, salsas, vinaigrettes, garnishes and cocktails is more user friendly, but even here the ingredient requirements are daunting.
The book is impressive from the culinary point of view. Pernot’s techniques are well grounded. The text is to the point and fun to read. His interest in Japanese fresh fish cuisine influences his ceviche creations in inventive and delightful ways. The food presentation, serving dishes and settings for the photos are terrific. In all, Pernot presents an in-depth look at ceviche.
No, there is more to this book. Upon reflection in the process of selecting some recipes that I might use in class, I now conclude (a week or so after writing the above) that Pernot takes civiche to new and creative heights. This book is “way out there,” in the manner of The French Laundry. It is full of ideas that experienced cooks will ponder and use. Which, come to think of it, is a desired outcome of reading any cookbook. Few chef/authors, however, reach this level of creative substance.
Baking by Flavor
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010Baking by Flavor, by Lisa Yockelson. We spent a lot of time at school learning the correct techniques for baking the classic repertoire of cakes and tarts, along with icings and fillings; and an equal amount of time devoted to pastries—probably six weeks in all. I survived and even enjoyed it, my strong preference to savory cooking notwithstanding. Yockelson is well known to readers of the food section of the Washington Post. She has published extensively. Her signature is “flavor-accenting baked goods.” I remembered that getting my lemon-sugar cookie to where I liked it was all about enhancing flavors. So, maybe it was time to pick up a tome on baked desserts and see what a current master baker is up to.
To get a feel for the level of detail and soundness of techniques, I baked her lemon tart, which called for using cookie dough instead of pate sucrée to make the tart shell. Her instructions are clear and very detailed. Laborious in fact (she takes two paragraphs to tell the reader how to “blind bake” a tart shell without ever using the technical term). The ‘by flavor’ organization of the book is as inviting as it is innovative. An average of 22 pages is devoted to each of 13 flavors (chocolate gets 35). If, like the Little Woman, you don’t like almond, you can flip past it with the assurance that you will not see it again.
Yockelson knows her subject. She presents all the classics here, updated and inspired. If you do not have a confectionery baked goods cookbook, Baking by Flavor is well worth a look. For sure¸ this book will win an award next year.