Waste not, want not

I went to Trader Joe the other day and reached for a pre-packed bag of salad greens. The Joe working in TJ said "Not that one, it expires today". He gave me a bag with greens with a date of next week. He then continued to take bags and bags full of perfectly edible produce off the shelves.  I felt I was watching mega-waste in action, and it did not sit well with me. 

 

I recently red The Apprentice - my life in the kitchen by Jacques Pépin. His humble beginnings not only made him appreciate the less desirable parts of animals and produce. His mother's restaurant only could make a profit if they kept the food cost low and used every single leafs and stem. Ditto organs and bones. They went so far as to save the tomato skins and seeds to make tomato stock when making tomato concassé. Same with the stems from parsley and the cut off from mushrooms.

Anthony Bourdain called restaurant cooking the art of transformation; turn undesirable products into dishes people want to eat.

I am by know means at their level, nor do I pretend to be. I just hate to waste food. Case in point: We didn't eat rice in days, so the left over rice in the cooker was already turning hard. Since throwing out would be a sin, I decided to the next best thing. Turn the rice into congee, or rice porridge for breakfast.  It is as simple as phi: put the rice in a saucier, cover with water. Simmer for hours until the rice is completely dissolved resulting in a smooth porridge. Just make sure you stir the congee so once a while to prevent burning your precious pot. 

How much grain is still left over is subject of intense debate, depending where you are from and how your mother cooked congee. 

You could eat this with Pork Sung, fermented bamboo, pickles or the like. I like mine with smashed ginger, white pepper and either white fish or marinated ground pork. But then again, my mother never made congee for me: it's my white skin :-)

Another quick tip. 

I usually only need use the caps from mushrooms, leaving me with stems. Take stems, sautée them for a couple minutes with a shallot in a little butter. Add water, thyme, left over parsley stems and a bay leaf. Cook for at least 45 minutes. Strain the broth and reduce until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Use this mushroom demi-glace whenever you cook vegetarian. They will thank you for the restaurant-like taste of your dishes.

Of course I buy a lot of whole chickens, so the entire chicken can be used. By the way: next time you make chicken stock, add the giblets. Your stock gets a much deeper mouth feel. 

And yes, I still throw more than I want to. It is a work in progress 

Grilled lobster with compound butter.

Ingredients 

• Live lobster
• Compound butter.

Buttering
Compound butter is going to augment the taste of the lobster. In order to prevent the butter from becoming too overpowering, stay away from very powerful spices like cardimon, cloves and such. Another point is to start with butter at room temperature. This butter will be soft and easiest to handle.

For me the following ingredients work the best:
a couple cloves of garlic smashed into a puree
parsley
chives
salt, pepper and lemon juice

I use a food processor to mix all ingredients. However, make sure the garlic and herbs are chopped finely. With all the butter, the food processor will not do a good job of chopping the herbs if they enter in too chunky.
Continue pulsing the food processor until you have smooth, rich and creamy butter.

Lobstering
if you are looking for a guide on how to best kill your lobster, check this out:check this out: It is very insightful and helpful. Usually my killing spree is the steaming method. Take the biggest stock put you can find (I had a 10 quart pot which is perfect for this), put a little bit of water in the bottom and place a steaming rack on top of it. Take your lobsters straight from the fridge into the pot and close the lid. In 2 minutes the lobsters are dead and can be handled.
Cut the lobsters lengthwise and remove the sack.

Grilling
Fill the lobster with compound butter and place them meat side up on the grill. After a couple of minutes turn over, add more butter and cook on the grill until the butter starts to sizzle.

Eating
'nuff said.

Perfect Risotto

Every time I try to make risotto, I brace myself for the contineous stirring required. At least 30 minutes of stirring, adding a little bit of liquid at a time until the kernels open up and release their starch.

I always struggle with the amount of liquid required. Sometimes too wet, sometimes not completely cooked through. Blame the gene pool, my grandmother was not northern Italian.

Thirty minutes during which I cannot do anything else. Mostly in that time I have visions of perfect accompanying side salads, roasted peppers antipasta, mushroom tapas, even chicken milanese as a second course. Ah, the waisted time.

There must be a better way to make perfect risotto each time without chaining myself to the stove. I know that restaurant cooks don't cook each risotto serving from scratch, but still make each plate to order. How do they do that?

The answer is parboiling. During prep they cook the risotto until just done, right before it starts to open up. When it is time to assemble the plate, they sautee the rest of the ingredients and cook the rice in the mixture until perfectly cooked.

Parboiling however is not easy. Again it depends on how much liquid you need to use to create the right consistency, which requires skill and training. How can us simple house cooks mimick this without a stage in an Italian restaurant?

Well: risotto is rice and rice you cook with your trusty kitchen companion the rice cooker. I measure out a cup (perfect for 4) and add enough liquid to cook the rice. Same way as I would cook any other rice. I just replace water with chicken stock.

Out comes perfect rice. My risotto was never better.
Here is my risotto recipe:

• 1 cup of cooked risotto
• 1 onion diced
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 1 red bell pepper diced
• couple of asparagus cut on the bias 1 inch thick (when you feel like them, of course)
• pancetta diced
• white wine
• parmagiano cheese

Render the pancetta and sautee the vegetables until translucent
Deglaze with white wine
Add the risotto
Add a little bit of stock and stir for a couple minutes until the kernels burst open
Finish with the cheese and maybe a little bit of milk

As you can see I ommit the butter and cream from the recipe. It is just too rich for my taste, and for our household's taste buds it is not required.

Chef Pappa's dream theater

Some people dream of a white Christmas. Won't happen if you live in southern Cal or the Sun belt. Dream on.
I dream of having my own restaurant. I also have a pretty good idea what the restaurant is all about: seafood. Daily fresh seafood, never overcooked, always letting the seafood shine. No refrigeration; everything prepared fresh daily.

The location is also set: close to a harbour where there is year round supply of fishing boats offloading their fresh catch. Again, sun belt or southern Cal. Don't worry. I don't care for a white Christmas. Good seafood is good enough.

The menu: each day we cook up what the fishermen bring in. Ample garlic, onions, peppers and tomatoes. Maybe a paella special so now and then, when the bounty is especially plentiful. A cioppino with fresh tomatoes and garlic. Steaks of firm white fish (butter fish or mahi mahi) on a bed of mixed vegetables drizzled with basil oil. Grilled scampi over rice with a white wine sauce. Diver scallops with lemon caper brown butter. Clams with minced pork noodles. Sauteed mixed seafood over a bed of lettuce. Fried Calamari with home made marinara sauce. Spaghetti Vongole. Oven roasted red snapper, filled with lemon, garlic and thyme, finished with basil oil. Garlic shrimp. Ceviche. Home smoked fish guacamole. Screaming fresh fish crudo. Beet salad with trout. A couple of seafood pizza specials. Baby octopus salad.

I can keep going. Cooking seafood is my passion lately. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea on how to cook some piece of seafood. My prefered protein for dinner. My family's favorite protein. I can cook seafood every day and I'll still see nothing but empty dishes. Very versitile, every cuisine known to men has dynamite seafood methods and recipes.

Of course, everything is accompanied by dill cucumbers, or pickled peppers, or tomato relish. And pommes resolees or yummy wheels (potato tortilla). Maybe Spaghetti pomodore on the kids menu.

A small wine collection, but BYOB encouraged.

I know I am dreaming. Ain't going to happen. I already ran some calculations, and we cannot afford it. Not with two children to save for college and our own retirement plans. Not while living in the same house as we now live.

So dream on, chef Pappa; dream on. May your dream be filled with gorgeous plates of perfectly cooked seafood.

Taking stock

How come your stews taste so creamy and rich? Did you use a lot of butter? (Sound the alarm, quick!!) Just a couple of questions I get a lot. More often than not the answer is:No, don't worry. Those extra pounds you'll gain will not be from my stuff.

The trick is the stock. I am not talking about those evil little cubes with compressed powder. A little disclaimer: I sometimes use the cubes as a cop out, when I'm lazy boned and for that I deserve to administer myself 40 lashes right here and now.

Now, what is stock, you might ask. The easy answer is bones from an animal or fish cooked for so long that all the inherent flavor is in the water. It's also cheap. Bones are the unwanted parts of the animal. We "civilized" people eat the breast from the chicken, maybe the wings (if we have a party) and more often than not we pass on the thights and drum sticks. The stock comes from the carcass and the drum stick bones, if you decide to.

It is also very easy to do. Yes, it takes hours to make, so make a lot on a rainy Sunday and freeze it in little cubes. When you need it, just stir it in... I use chicken bones for stock. Chicken bones make for a nice sweet stock, it is cheap and when you buy a chicken whole, you get the bones for free.

Also very important is a pressure cooker. Otherwise, you'll still be cooking stock when the sun comes out again on your rainy Sunday and you rather be out again. Oh, I'll just turn off the flame and start up again when I'm back. Wrong! The bones will start to harden, the stock will start to taste bitter and become cloudy. Just invest in a pressure cooker, or beg your mum for the one she has. She never cooks with it anyway and it's taking up too much room in her kitchen anyway.

Bones in the pot, cover with cold water and bring to a boil uncovered. This will take a while, but it is an important step. When the bones slowly come to a boil, it releases more alumbin. You want to take out all the albumin, because that's what makes the stock cloudy. You want clear stock. You eat with your eyes, no?

When the stock boils, skim off the white stuff and the fat with a ladle or a spoon until the water is clear. Add an onion (quartered with skin), a couple cloves of crushed garlic (with skin), a tomato (quartered), a carrot, a couple sprigs of thyme, parsley and two bay leaves. Clamp the lid on and pressurize the cooker. Cook for 3 or 4 hours and your stock is done. Discard all solids and strain the broth. Congratulations, you just elevated your cooking. Use at will and with reckless abandonment.

To intensify the flavor, I usually reduce the stock until it becomes demi-glace, which is a fancy cooking word for reduced stock. Put your strained stock back in a pot and on high flame cook it down. When the color starts to change to darker brown, your demi is done. This something I usually divide in portions and freeze separately.

Here are some possible applications for the stock:

When you sear meat in a skillet what to do with brown bits on the bottom of the pan? Do not throw away; make a pan sauce. Your meat needs to rest anyway, so you can use the time to make a sauce. Remove the fat, cook in the skillet some mushrooms, garlic and onions, deglaze the pan with a little white wine, add some of your stock and reduce until it thickens. You can add some butter to monter au beurre, but that is not necessary.

When you make a stew, substitute water for your stock. You'll never go back to plain water again.

Adding a little of your stock to stir-fried vegetables make converts from carnivores. First in hot oil stir-fry the aromatics (ginger, scallions, garlic etc). Add the vegetables and stir fry a little bit. Add some of your stock and reduce until it's all evaporated. Plate and watch picky eaters chow!

What's for dinner - Salad again?

Our dinner modus operandi has changed quite a bit. Everybody used to eat the same thing, but now more times than not I cook separately for the grown ups. In most families the usual pattern is that the kids eat something simple while the grown ups eat more elaborate and difficult food. So call us counter-culture: the kids eat their rice with 2 or 3 stir fry dishes, while the grown ups pick on a salad. We both do not want to eat much at dinner anymore, so a salad is for us a good choice.

Enter the challenge: Make the ordinary salad into something the troops want to eat. It took me a little to get warmed up to the salad thing. Rabbit food was the term I used for salads. Also, salads are the afterthought in most restaurants; they make them hours in advance and serve them straight out of the cooler. Forget about tasting any ingredient, it's so cold, it is like eating ice cream.

To take the salad out of the rabbit food category, we need to get beyond the Caesar salad or the thoughtless house salad and treat them as an entree. So that means proper techniques: each ingredient roughly the same size, all ingredients at room temperature or warmer, dressing added at the last moment to prevent soggyness. Do not forget proper plating. Take a flat plate, pile the salad in a nice mountain and add the toppings over it. Food goes in your mouth, but you eat with your nose and your eyes.

I said this in an earlier post and I still stand by that: do not serve the dressing on the side. This means your eaters need to toss their own dressing, leaving some parts raw and some parts oversaturated. You don't want raw food, you want a nice balanced salad, Your dressing is the binding agents in your salad; it ties the whole thing together.

Finally: use your hands to toss the salad. Tongs or other tools bruise the lettuce leaves and that does not look appealing. Also your hands give you much more control over mixing all ingredients together to ensure proper coating.

I think I have a couple of winners assembled. I will share them with you:

Insalata Milanese

A classic italian salad: Onions, pear and spinach with a pear vinaigrette topped with gorgonzola and toasted walnuts or almonds.

Blend a pear with red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, dried oregano, fresh parsly and olive oil. Strain the vinaigrette to get rid off the pear seeds and hard parts.

Sliver white onions and a pear. Toss with a little vinaigrette. Add baby spinach leaves to the bowl and toss with more dressing. Plate with crumbled gorgonzola and toasted walnuts.

Currently ranked number 1 on our household.

Avocado and fish with citrus dressing

For the fish I use either talapia or flounder, but any white fish does well. I slice the fish thin, and marinade in a little lime juice, olive oil, onions and garlic. Stir fry over high heat until the fish is seared and done.

For the dressing use lime zest, cilantro, lime juice and olive oil. Combine and season well. Should be citrusy and tangy.

Toss spring mix with this dressing. Plate with slices of ripe avocado and top with the warm fish... Money in the bank...

Spring mix and orange salad

Orange zest, orange juice, balsamic vinegar, honey (optional and according to taste), olive oil and salt and pepper. That's the dressing.

Toss spring mix with this dressing and plate with orange parts and crumbled blue cheese or almond slivers.

Fresh, brightness of the oranges, and the richness of balsamic vinegar dressing. Every day is like spring with this salad..

Honey , it's chicken, salad

When I grill chicken breast, we usually have some leftovers. Perfect for this salad. Slice the chicken nice and thin.
Make a honey mustard dressing: honey, mustard, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil. Season and emulsify. It should be thick like a sauce, and not sweet and not sour and not mustardy. It takes a couple tries to get the exact balance, but then you're off to the races.

Toss spring mix (frisee or lambs ear works well too)with the dressing, toss in some tomatoes for good measure and plate with the chicken. And, please give the chicken some of that dressing too.

Honey-mustard dressing is my favorite. Easy to make and always good.

As always, the moment it gets back to tasting like rabbit food, I'll try something new, but for now salads rule in our household.

Happy eating and keep the crunch going.

Smoke grilled Pork Chops

"When there's smoke, there's dinner" - Aaron Guidotti 05/31/2011



Smoking your meat. Like the settlers did. Ok, we do not raise our own hogs anymore, and we outsourced the nasty butchering to the professional, but smoking brings us back in time. It's like when you drive a pick up truck, you immediately feel you need to do a project. Yes, you can call the smoking pit the ultimate man cave for cooking inclined males. Where boys learn the ropes from their fathers, and secret family rubs and barbeque sauces are passed down from generations. A fraternity with its own mores and rules.

Well not me. I grew up in a country where summer fell on a Tuesday and it only rains once a year: from January to December. Although I was born in July, my ultimate birth day gift was a barbeque outdoors, and I received it only once during my entire time at home.

Coming to the East Coast meant 6 months of grilling season; I am still catching up and I am not done grilling yet!!

This weekend was pork chops. Safely covered from the hash weather rest my friend the barbeque, Charcoal, mind you, not that propane nonsense. A real apparatus. And yes, I am very proud to have a barbeque. Also, no briquettes and heaven forbid gasoline soaked coals, just the real charcoal. I use a chimney, for Pete's sake. No lighter fluid, just a little vegetable oil on a piece of paper will do just fine: the chimney is a work of art. I prefer charcoal taste over petrol.

Anyway, for this smoking I use a combination of Apple wood and Mesquite wood chips, soaked for a couple of hours to generate an abundance of smoke. Why this combination? Dunno, I guess. The supermarket sold them both and it sounded intriguing... Lady Luck was on my side.

For good smoking stack the glowing coals on one side of the grill, cover them with the woodchips, open up all the vents and let in a draft. When it starts going, you can lay the food on the cold side of the grill. The hot smoke will do most of the cooking.

On with the food stuff. First up the barbeque sauce:
- Grate an onion. Chop two garlic cloves. De-skin and de-seed 3 roma tomatoes
- Sautee onions, garlic and tomatoes for a couple of minutes
- Add water, ketchup, vinegar, red wine, worchestershire sauce, fish sauce, oregano, smoked paprika and sugar. Blend with a stick blender or bar blender until all is smooth
- Cook over low flame until it is much reduced (about the consistency of ketchup)

It should be sweet, sour and salty. Like barbeque sauce :-)

This is my recipe. You can use it at will, or make your own. Does not bother me, I do not have a secret recipes.

On to the pork chops. Buy the bone-in pork chops, because bone equals flavor and when you smoke the pork chops bone side down, the juices stay in the meat making it less likely to dry out.
Season the chops with salt and skewer them together, with room in between the pork chops. This way they stand up better, and smoke can penetrate the chops from all sides.

Smoke the pork chops for 30 minutes until the ouside is smoky brown and the internal temperature is about 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Remove from the grill, and slather on the barbeque sauce. On direct heat grill the pork chops a couple minutes until you have nice grill marks and the internal temperature is 140 degrees.
Remove and rest for at least 5 minutes.

Last tip, you Pit-boss: cook extra. They will ask for seconds...