Beer steamed mussels

Beer steamed mussels, dressed with tomato, shallot, parsley, and lemon zest.  Served with tangy fennel, green apple slaw and red cabbage slaw.

Mash potatoes

Each region, hell each family, has their own way of making mash potatoes. Lumpy, smooth, peppered or not, skins or no skins. And the most excellent thing about mash potatoes is they are all correct. If it tastes good then it is correct.

Key techniques to get the most out your mash potatoes:

• Mealy or starchy potatoes are the best to soak up the butter and cream. Though, I have had waxy mash potatoes like yukon gold that are also terrific. The key is to use the starch in the potato for all it’s worth.
• Cook the potato pieces as large as possible to retain the most starch in the potato.
• Oven dry the potatoes after draining them to drive off the extra moisture from the cooking liquid making room for the butter and cream.
• Use a potato ricer or food mill. A potato ricer will not activate the natural gluten in potatoes as a hand-mixer or KitchenAid will, which according to Chef Brian will turn the mash potatoes to “wallpaper paste”. He knows what he is talking about. Knowing him as a person who researches information to insure it’s validity… he may have eaten a few too many paint chips and wallpaper paste as a kid to develop this first hand knowledge.
• Don’t use skim milk, margarine or any other unholy reduced-fat fat in your mash potatoes. The end result will taste like shit. You will want to eat plate after the plate of it, in search of that true mash potato taste. Then you will be fat from too many plates of mash potatoes and still haven’t eaten any mash potatoes worth eating. Make them correctly and just eat less of them.

Mash potato technique as described in class:

1. Idaho potatoes. Peel and cut into large pieces. Cover with cold, salted, water. Bring to a gentle boil. Cook until the potatoes fall off a pairing knife when poked, they won’t hold to the knife. Drain. Put the potatoes back in the pot and put in a warm oven to dry, at 300 degrees. Don’t brown. You are just trying to dry the potatoes out. Rice the potatoes once the cream is ready.
2. Heavy cream. In a pot, add flavors like thyme, garlic, cheese, salt and pepper.  The flavors are completely your choice. Nutmeg — just a little — it should not scream of nutmeg. Simmer to reduce cream by one quarter volume to lightly thicken. This is to increase the ratio of milk fat to liquid. Strain out the flavors.
3. Fold in some cream a little bit at a time. Fold in some butter a bit at a time. Season with salt and pepper. You are looking for a creamy well-seasoned puree. Keep adding cream and butter until it is not pasty but not soup. The mash should still hold their shape in a mound.

Alternate: Gently use a hand masher to get lumpy or skin-on mash potatoes. Don’t over mix or you will get wallpaper paste.

Enjoy.

Potatoes the incredibly versatile tuber

How do you like your potatoes? Mashed, French fried, hash-browned, all of the above and more? Lumpy or smooth mash potatoes? Mayonnaise or vinegar style potato salad? Do you eat the skin, discard them, or butter them, stuff them with good eats, broil, and then eat them late-night?  It is hard to beat a well-prepared mash potato–even harder to write one post about potatoes. So there will be three… for now.

Here I will post a few key preparation facts I picked up in class.  In later posts I will cover the “perfect mash potatoes” assuming you like them smooth, (my wife is a lumpy mash potatoes person).  And in a later post: French fries.

What’s in a potato?

There are two type of potatoes, in culinary terms.  Mealy and waxy.

It is a matter of taste to which you prefer.  If you grew up in Idaho or Peru (birth place of potatoes) you probably have a set opinion about which potatoes to use.  That said, the characteristics of mealy and waxy potatoes make them each suited for different preparations.

Mealy potatoes are the high starch potatoes a good example is the good old American Russet potatoes. Mealy are best used for creamed or buttered preparations because the starch will soak up all that deliciousness.

Waxy have less starch and are denser, like Yukon gold.  They are better suited for stews or pan frying.  Their denser texture and lower starch will hold up to prolonged cooking, won’t over thicken the stewing liquid and won’t stick to the pan in sauté preparations.

Soaking to prevent oxidization and to rinse out starch

Most people know that to prevent peeled potatoes from turning colors on the counter put them underwater until ready to prepare them.  But there is another reason to soak potatoes: to pull starch out of them.

Sometimes pulling starch out of potatoes through soaking is good.  Other times it is bad.  It depends on what you are cooking.  Mash potatoes are best when the starch is preserved so it can hold all the cream and butter.  French fries don’t want as much starch because it will cause them to stick to each other in a clump or to the fryer.  In all cases soak them to prevent discoloration.

To retain starch in the potatoes leave them whole, or in as large of pieces as possible.  Peel and use the potatoes as quickly as possible.  For mash potatoes to retain starch also cook them in as large a pieces as possible to prevent the cooking water from leeching out all the starch.  Baked potatoes make the best mashed potatoes because there is no water to leech the starch out and the moisture of the potatoes is baked off allowing all the room for butter and cream.

Baking a potato takes longer.  And if your house is like mine, you don’t have enough time to bake the volume of potatoes need to appease the masses.

If the preparation would benefit from rinsing off the starch then cut them into smaller pieces and soak them for longer.  The smaller pieces increase the surface area exposed to the water, giving more opportunity for the water to rinse the starch off.  This is an important step for French fries or pan-fried potatoes.  Rinsing off the starch will prevent them from clumping together in the oil or sticking to the pan.

Next up: Mash potatoes.

Clarified Butter

If you are like me, clarified butter seems like an extravagance.  Oil or whole butter is sufficient for any application calling for clarified butter.  And like me you are wrong.  Whole butter will never get as hot as clarified butter so it can not be used to sear or sauté.  If you tried to use whole butter in this way, it will just burn and taste bitter.  Some oils like safflower, grape-seed, and peanut get will get how enough to sauté, but they will not taste the same as clarified butter.

A simple test… pop some popcorn and dress with melted whole butter, oil (don’t laugh), and clarified butter on separate samples.  Which do you like better?

Another test.  Make three grill cheese sandwiches.  Make one with pats of whole butter on the bread, one brushed with oil, and the other brushed with clarified butter.  The whole butter will taste soggy because the water in whole butter will steam the bread.  The oiled sandwiched will taste “off”.  The clarified butter will taste perfectly toasted and crispy on the outside, and moist but firm bread on the inside.

There is no meaningful substitute for clarified butter when it is called for in a recipe.  Well, perhaps duck fat.  But that is entirely different animal.  Pun intended.

Below is the technique for clarifying butter.  There is no timing to note here.  You have to look, listen and smell for when it is done.

Butter is part milk solids, water, and butter fat.  Clarified butter is just the butter fat.  The water is driven by evaporating through heating.  The milk solids settle to the bottom.  The butter fat is skimmed of impurities and decanted away from the solids.

1. 1.    Heat a half a pound (2 sticks) of butter in a pan, medium-high heat.  Note: It is easier to clarify butter in larger batches than smaller because there is more room for error.  Lucky you!
2. Heat the butter until all the water has evaporated.  How do you know?
   1. As it is evaporating you will hear the butter crackling.  This is the water vapor boiling off.  Listen for when this sound beings to slow.  When it has almost stopped turn off the heat.  The residual heat in the butter fat and pan will drive off the rest of the moisture.
   2. Do not wait until all the sounds stops.  Butter will not raise above 212 degrees F, while the water is evaporating.  However, once the water is gone, the butter temperature will raise quickly like all pure fats when heated.  If unwatched the heat will burn the milks solids that have settled at the bottom of the pan.  This is burnt butter suitable for only the trash can to eat.
   3. Look for steam rising from the pan.  As long as their is steam, there is water evaporating.  Once the steam stops the butter is clairified.
   4. Smell for a barely toasted butter smell.  This will also tell you the butter is clarified.  However, this is less reliable because the conditions your kitchen.
3. Once the butter has clarified and cooled enough to put into a container skim the surface and decant the butter taking care to leave the milk solids in the pan.  This keeps for 6 weeks in the refrigerator.

Clarifing butter is not something you can put on the stove and forget about.  I recommend starting the butter when first get into the kitchen and listen and watch for it as you prepare the rest of your meal.

A note on nutrition, as I laugh to myself.  Ask a Frenchmen and they are likely to tell you clarified butter (and duck fat, for that matter) is one of the essential elements for life.  After you have used clarified butter, you, yourself, may wonder how life was possible without it.  Needless to say clarified butter is not “good” for the body in large quantities but my how it feeds the soul.  Like everything, use it to make a portion of your meal luxurious.  Fill the rest of the menu with well dressed greens, perfectly prepared lean proteins, and properly cooked grains.  Eat everything is proper amounts and you will live a long and satisfied life.  Then again, if you are like me, you take everything in moderation.  Including moderation.

Enjoy.

Rice Pilaf

Grains today.  My effort on rice pilaf was weak.  A simple technique, with no place to hide. You either get it right or you don’t.

Chef’s crit of my effort: “Dry. Undercooked. Needs more butter.”  Summary: It sucked.  He was right and I was pissed me off.  Not at Chef, but at me. I immediately drove home to cook rice pilaf again at 11 pm tonight.

My second rice pilaf of the night was better, but not perfect.  It was much moister and buttery.  Still undercooked.  Either the ratio of water to rice was not correct or the fact I could not finish the cooking in the oven as technique calls for.  My oven does not work, so I had to complete the entire thing on stove-top.  It probably was unevenly cooked with the lower grains of rice cooking more then the top grains.  The oven would heat evenly all around the pot.

I know, what you are thinking.  Why is he taking rice so seriously?  It’s just rice.  Well that’s my issue.  It iratates me to no end when I can not do the simple things right.  The simple things are the most important.

Below is the “simple” technique for rice pilaf.

Rice Pilaf

1. Sweat diced onions in butter.
2. 1 cup of rice, “converted rice“.  Uncle Ben’s is an example.  Stir to coat all the grains with butter.
3. Add parsley stems, sprigs of thyme, bay leaf, whole clove of garlic, salt and pepper
4. 1.5 cups liquid.  Either all chicken stock, half chicken stock and half water, or all water.  You will have to adjust for the flavor rice.  Half and half, chx stock to water is what chef, and I used.
5. Bring to boil.
6. Cover with parchment paper pressed down on top of the ice.
7. Place in an oven at 350 degrees for 17 minutes.
8. Check for tenderness.
9. Pull out parsley, thyme, and bay leaf, and garlic.
10. Adjust seasoning and finish by stirring in a bit of butter.

Options: finish with chopped refresh spinach, lemon zest, or minced parsley leafs.

P.S. I am probably going to do it again tomorrow.

Southern French flavors: fennel, saffron, and orange

Chef Patterson, while demoing Fish Head Soup a variation of Bouillabaisse, tossed out an small bit cooking knowledge: a signature flavor pairing in southern French cuisine is fennel, saffron, and orange.

This evening I was faced with a half a can of diced tomatoes, a half an onion, and a piece of pacific cod.  I tried to put this knowledge to the test.  Here is the result.  Enjoy.

Fish with a Marseille inspired sauce

Prepare a tomato concassé, which is sweating diced onions in butter, then add diced tomatoes and cook it down until you drive off all the extra tomato moisture.

Add a bit of ground fennel, a few saffron threads, a bit of zest of orange, and few chopped capers. You want to add enough of these so you can tell that they are there but not so much that that is all you taste. You want good blends of tastes and smells.

Finishing enough milk, or half and half, or heavy cream + fish stock to thin the sauce so that is flows, a little bit thicker than soup.  Heat on low long enough to warm the sauce through, but don’t boil or the cream will break (i.e. separate until a clear liquid and milk solids… never pretty).

Fry, sauté, bake or broil a piece of white flaky fish.  I used cod.

Plate: Place fish, spoon sauce over fish, finish with minced chervil, tarragon, parsley, or chives.

Options

For a more refined plating, blend the tomato concassé with everything but the capers.  Pass through a strainer before finishing with the capers and herbs.

The capers can be omitted.  I just wanted that little punch of brininess with the cod.

Snow closing…

…no class this week due to blizzard.  Boo.

Remove water and add flavor

A theme is emerging three classes in. All the techniques: sweating, sauteing, braising, etc., have a common theme. Expel some, or most, of the plain water moisture from the ingredients and replace it with flavored moisture in the form of stocks, butter, cream, and oil.  Even with poaching and blanching you’re replacing bland water with seasoned water. I started seeing this emerge with the classic Ratatouille.

There are five key vegetables in Ratatouille: onion, bell pepper, green and yellow summer squashes, tomatoes, and eggplants.  All the vegetables are cooked in olive oil. The onions and bell peppers are sweated separately in olive oil to drive off moisture and concentrate their flavor. The squashes and eggplants are sauteed to develop a little color for flavor, to replace their high water content with olive oil.  The tomatoes have a naturally flavorful moisture and do not require a lot of cooking for this dish.  The dish is finished with sauteing a bit of garlic and tossing all the ingredients together with a chiffonade of basil.  The result is a delicious dish of vegetables each retaining their individual character while their bland water content is replaced with flavorful olive oil.

It makes me look around at different recipes and techniques to see this theme in action, or to see how I can introduce it to see if it is applicable.  But I promise not to try grilling rutabaga. Some things should just not be done.

Cooking green veg

Green veg (e.g. green beans, broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts) should be served bright green, no “squeak” when you bite into them, tender but not mushy, and seasoned properly. So what is the method to achieve this?

Technique:

1. Salt the boiling water to taste like the Atlantic.  I am not kidding.  Your veggie will come out perfectly seasoned with not too much salt.
2. Don’t crowd the pot.  The water should remain boiling as you put the veg in.  Cook it in batches if needed.
3. Have a large bowl filled with ice and water, an ice bath, ready.  Once the veg is cooked to the desired doneness you are going to move the veg to the bath to stop the cooking.  Tip: Place a strainer in the ice bath so that when you are ready to pull your veggie out you don’t have to fish around in the ice water pulling each out separately.
4. While the veg is cooking, keep tasting it. Pull one out, plop it in the ice bath, and taste.  You want it to be tender, not squeaky against your teeth when you bite into it, but still have a little give to it. Not crunchy.  Not al dente like pasta.  Just a little bit of life still left in it.
5. If you are going to serve right away, you do not have to put it in the ice bath.  However, you are most likely preparing other items. Unless you just want to eat a big plate of broccoli—which you will want to if you follow this technique. If you are eating more than the veg, shock it down in the ice bath and then bring it back up to temperature in boiling water or sauté it in a pan with your choices of flavors when you are ready to serve.

Common mistakes:

Bland taste.

If the water is under seasoned, they will taste like the veg your mom made you eat–probably the reason you don’t like veggies.

The veg look like they have put on their army green jump suits and enlisted in the 4th armored division.

The veg are either crowed in the pot so it took too long for the water to return to boiling, or their cooking was not stopped with an ice bath.  The common theme is they cooked too long.  As green veg cook they release enzymes, pigments and gas underneath their skin.  This is what discolors their skin.  Cook the veg quickly at high temperatures to keep the amount of discoloration to a minimum.

Only rodents should squeak, not green veggies.

This means they are undercooked.  Keep tasting, tasting, and tasting.  You will hear when they stop squeaking.

Go forth and cook green vegetables.

Green veggies look and taste delicious when cooked in properly seasoned water and to their proper tenderness.  Trust me, you will grow to love them.

Thickening by cooking down…

… you can accelerate this by using a wider pan and even further with a pan with sloped sides.  The wider the pan, the more surface area from which to drive out moisture.  The sloped sides allow the vapor to ride up and out, rather than hitting the pan wall and bouncing back into the food.

I mention this, in case you are in the midst of prepping for a party and only have minutes before your guests arrive. Your butternut squash puree is staring up at you like a soup.  You know there is no chance of mounding it on a plate for your perfectly cooked duck breast to perch on.  The solution, besides remembering next time to slowly add the fat/liquid to your puree, is to switch pans, crank the heat, and stand over it stirring to prevent it from scorching.