28 May 2007

Memorial Day Weekend.

Madison.

It's been a weekend of good eating.1 My mom and sister were in town for a wedding shower - to which I, of course, wasn't invited - so I spent the bulk of Saturday cooking dinner.2 And Sunday night we spent with Jared and Emily, who'd prepared a really great dinner for us. (We brought beer and wine.)

With a full day to cook - after a morning of market shopping, since I'd requested the day off - I decided to put together a five-course dinner. It seemed like the right combination of an impressive number of dishes, allowing me to plate everything attractively, without overstretching. I'd wanted to feature some of the best of local produce, while still meeting everyone's various dietary needs and preferences, which only becomes more complicated with the more items on the menu. In the end, this is what I came up with:
  • Shrimp salad with microgreens
    Shrimp, briefly seared in butter, then chopped and tossed with a lemon-chive mayonnaise while still warm. Microgreens came from Garden To Be.

  • Onion and sage soup with milk bread rolls
    My mom loves onions - they're such a delicious base flavor, capable of a round sweetness, and don't bother her stomach - so I wanted to feature them as best I could. I caramelized a mix of sweet onions and spring onions over low heat, simmered with chicken stock and fresh sage, and pureed and strained out the chunks. An addition of some extra cream gave a little extra body. For rolls, I'd used a similar recipe to the no-knead bread, but with even less yeast, a little less liquid, and I kneaded it. Given the time frame I had available, the dough was able to rise for about thirty hours, which gave a great yeasty flavor.

  • Sheep's cheese tortellini with spring vegetables
    Homemade pasta - filled or not - is always popular. Plus, I love food that's in little packages3 of some sort. Since I had some clean, simple flavors, I chose to filled the tortellini with only the fresh brebis cheese from Butler Farms, topping the pasta with sauteed red spring onions from Jackson Farm, white asparagus from Blue Valley Gardens, and some hickory nuts.

  • Roast chicken breast with spinach and polenta
    With so much food already, roasting an entire chicken seemed like overkill, so I saved the legs for later4 and just brined and roasted the breast from a JenEhr bird. I kept the brine flavors pretty low-key - some bay leaves and juniper, with a lemon, too - so it'd still have that good, pastured chicken flavor. It did help get some crispy skin, and really seasoned the meat thoroughly, so even the leftovers tasted great for lunch the next day. The polenta I'd loaded up with a sharp four-year cheddar from Hook's, with a pile of wilted spinach from Driftless alongside.

  • Lemon-lavender jelly with orange sabayon and sugar cookies
    Given my current infatuation with egg foams and other protein-stabilized stuff, this struck me as a better choice than something dense and chocolate-based. Plus, this was an opportunity to serve dessert in martini glasses, which had my sister completely tickled. At the bottom of the glass I'd set a sweetened gelatin flavored with lemon juice and zest, honey and lavender, all lightly applied.5 It melted and mixed slightly when I spooned the warm sabayon on top, enough to get a little of each in a spoonful. And, just to add a little texture, I baked a small batch of sugar cookies, using whole wheat flour. They looked like spice cookies, but were delicate, buttery and sweet.
And it's all been eaten by now, save for one last cookie.

Should anyone be interested in making their own, fancy gelatin dessert,6 here's the recipe I settled on. Like the orange sabayon, it's best as a component of a dessert, rather than simply on its own.
Lemon-lavender gelatin
Makes approximately 1 cup

Ingredients
  • 1 cup water
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • zest of half a lemon
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon mild honey
  • ½ teaspoon dried lavender
  • ½ tablespoon unflavored gelatin
Directions
  1. Mix together ¼ cup of the (cold) water with the lemon juice, and sprinkle the gelatin over the surface. Set aside.

  2. Put the sugar and honey in a small saucepan with the remaining water. Heat until it just reaches the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugars, and remove from the heat. Add the lavender and lemon zest, cover, and let rest for at least half an hour.

  3. Pour the lavender syrup through a fine mesh strainer into the bloomed gelatin, and stir to dissolve. Pour the mixture into serving dishes and allow to cool in the refrigerator. It should take three or four hours.

  4. If possible, allow to come to room temperature before serving. The flavors aren't strongly forward, and can get lost if the gelatin is too cold.
Note: If you have an extra day, you can set the dessert with just a teaspoon of gelatin for a softer texture. It takes longer to set solid, and melts more rapidly when in contact with heat - either a warm sabayon or in one's mouth.
Jared put together a great dinner for us on Sunday, since we hadn't all been able to get together for a long time. We just brought along beer and wine - Hopalicious from the Ale Asylum and a Muscat from Domaine Bott-Geyl, in Alsace - and sat back to enjoy. Though I'd missed them, Jared had picked up some fresh beets from the market, and started us off with a plate of fresh beets, borscht, garlic croutons, brebis, and honeyed figs. Then we had some grilled chicken, rice and cooked, young carrots to follow. For dessert, Sharon and Emily ran out to pick up some Ben & Jerry's ice cream: Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream and Dublin Mudslide.

The most amusing thing, I think, is that Jared isn't a beet fiend. In fact, he'd only had beets once or twice before, but managed to make a really tasty borscht right out of the gate.

* * * * *

1More so than usual, even.

2The original plan for their visit was that I'd play chauffeur, and that I'd spend Saturday car-less. Things changed, and I had a car, but still stuck to the initial cook-all-day gameplan.

3Ravioli, steamed dumplings, stuffed grape leaves, and so on. I like both the surprise element and the opportunity to take various flavors and present them in an ordered fashion.

4I'll be making them into a confit tomorrow, assuming all goes well.

5Lavender's potent, and it's tough to find that sweet spot where it's detectable without tasting like potpourri. For a cup of gelatin, I used all of half a teaspoon.

6"You can have anything you want to eat. Even... some sort of gelatin dish. It's made from hooves, you know."

22 May 2007

Egg foams.

Madison.

There's always a cooking obsession1 around here. Currently, it happens to be egg foams. Which, given that we're genuinely in love with eggs in just about all of their various forms - still have to see what we think of pidan, the so-called "thousand-year-old" eggs - makes perfect sense.

It started when I baked a genoise cake for my mom's birthday, which consists of whole eggs warmed and whipped with sugar until more than tripled in volume, then folded with flour and such. I'd still like to fiddle about with it - a savory version, for example - but there are only so many cakes one person can eat. The transformation from delicate, airy foam to a sliceable cake that's both light and firm is pretty neat. Even neater are the foams you can make with just whites or just yolks, given a stout arm and the right amount of heat.

Sure, you can do this stuff with an electric mixer, but the KitchenAid doesn't handle small2 quantities well. A balloon whisk works wonders.

mushroom souffle

Perhaps most impressive is the soufflé, which isn't much more than an egg white foam folded into a flavorful base and heated in the oven until it browns and rises dramatically from its container. They then proceed to fall back down, but they sure look spectacular right out of the heat. (That said, I can see the soufflés falling over the course of a few seconds in the several photgraphs I took of them, right out of the oven.) A few points I've noticed so far:
  • A soufflé is certainly enriched by the addition of yolks to the base, but it's not necessary. The yolks do, however, help thicken the base and give the soufflé a golden appearance. When all you've got are whites, though, you can still make a fine soufflé.

  • A lighter base rises better, but falls faster. Likewise with a higher cooking temperature.

  • Running a thumb around the rim of the uncooked soufflé makes for a sharp appearance, as the center rises much more than the exterior (and keeps it from spilling over the sides). I've been using small ramekins for my soufflés, and haven't needed to make paper collars for the batter to climb.

  • As a general rule of thumb, a quarter cup of roux-thickened base plus a quarter cup of flavoring (cheese, mushrooms, etc.) per egg white seems to work pretty well.
Also impressive are zabagliones and sabayons, which are foamed using only yolks. Unlike the soufflé, which tastes like the base - thinned out by egg yolk and air - zabaglione has a distinctly eggy flavor. It's also wonderfully rich and, in Harold McGee's words, "meltingly evanescent".

The traditional zabaglione is made from Marsala, sugar and egg yolks, whipped together over simmering water until the proteins begin to coagulate. And only begin; it's perfect at that point where it's barely solid, just enough to mound gently on a spoon. Sabayons, dessert sauces derived from the same technique, utilize all sorts of different flavorings, and may be served warm or cold.

Wine is traditional, but we didn't have a bottle open the other night. I had bunch of extra yolks, though, so I tried it with orange juice, which I happened to have on hand. The following works for an amazingly simple dessert - either on its own or as an accompaniment to something richer.
Orange sabayon

Ingredients
  • 4 large egg yolks
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • ½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
Directions
  1. Whisk together the yolks and sugar in a stainless steel bowl until the mixture has lightened in color and forms ribbons off the whisk.

  2. Set the bowl over - not in - a saucepan of simmering water, whisking constantly. Slowly pour in the orange juice, and whisk until the mixture begins to set solid, at about 160°F. This should take five to ten minutes. If it appears to be cooking faster, remove from the heat and whisk for a few moments to allow it to cool slightly. Gentle cooking will provide the most delicate, airiest foam.

  3. Serve immediately, spooned into glasses or atop a rich dessert, like whipped cream.
* * * * *

1Eating obsessions - we're just past morels and ramps, and into full swing with asparagus and pea shoots - tend to cycle with the seasons. The specific cooking techniques that pique my interest seem to come and go at random.

2I.e., two-person sized amounts.

15 May 2007

Beer and smoke.

Madison.

kolsch

The kölsch is about as done as it's going to get. Aside from a bit of an off-flavor - a hint of stale that, I think, came from not cooling the wort quickly enough - it's pretty good. Good enough that half the batch is already gone.

A few bottles disappeared Saturday night during a viewing of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, at Seth's place. Tyler and Julie were up from Chicago, and Jared stopped in for the start of the, uh, festivities. Since we were pretty sure1 it'd be a tough series of films to follow,2 we decided that it was best to have plenty of beer to drink. And that no one should feel obligated to stick around to watch, to stay awake, or anything of that sort.

By the end of Cremaster 3 - which features, among other things: a Masonic demolition derby; traditional Irish songs accompanied by the stack effect whistling through the wedged-open elevator doors of the Chrysler building; Aimee Mullins3 slicing a roomful of potatoes with her feet; and a race through New York City's Guggenheim Museum involving dancing chorus girls, dueling hardcore bands, and Richard Serra throwing molten Vaseline at the wall - it was late, and people were starting to fade in and out. We have yet to experience the subsequent madness that is parts four and five.

But at least we had a lot of good beer.

cold smoker

I devoted most of last Tuesday to playing with smoke, preparing some smoked chicken breasts and a batch of smoked pork sausage. The sausage is for an upcoming cookout to celebrate Sharon's graduation, a) because I'm anxious to get the grill out of storage, weather permitting, and b) because sausages require less attention than burgers.4 The sausages are fairly simple, as I don't want to alienate picky eaters: pork loin flavored with sweet onion, paprika, black pepper and a little homebrew. Two hours of hickory smoke ought to give it that smoked flavor without the intensity of bacon.

Not that I don't love smoky bacon, but it does run the risk of being a bit much.

The chicken was more exciting for me, because I'd been anxious to try it for some time, especially since part of my take home pay from farm work is more than enough chickens to keep me well-fed. I'd been digging through my copy of Charcuterie, looking for something to spark my interest, when I came across a recipe for Hot-Smoked Duck Ham. Cured in a spiced brine and smoked until cooked through, it looks really fantastic.

I modified the recipe to accommodate what I had on hand: chicken instead of duck; bourbon instead of Madeira; cold-smoking instead of hot-smoking. Here's more or less5 the recipe I followed:
Smoked Bourbon Chicken

Ingredients
    2 boneless chicken breasts
  • 1 qt. water
  • 88 g kosher salt
  • 50 g dextrose
  • 10 g pink salt
  • 63 g brown sugar
  • 1/4 c. bourbon
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 4 g juniper berries, smashed
  • 4 g black peppercorns
Directions
  1. Combine all of the brine ingredients in a large pot. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Remove from the heat and chill thoroughly.

  2. Place the breasts in a gallon zip-top bag with the brine, squeezing out all of the air. (You may wish to set the bag inside a pot or dish in case the bag leaks.) Refrigerate for eight to twelve hours.

  3. Remove the chicken from the brine, and rinse under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels, and refrigerate on a rack set over a plate for at least four hours, or up to a full day. (If necessary, the breasts may be frozen at this stage for later smoking.)

  4. Cold-smoke the breasts for two hours, then place in a 200°F oven until they reach an internal temperate of 165°F. Refrigerate until ready to serve, or wrap tightly in plastic and freeze.

  5. Serve cold or a room temperature, sliced as thinly as possible. You may wish to remove the skin; it can be oddly chewy if the slices are too thick.
When finished, it's like a better version of a smoked chicken or turkey lunch meat, good for adding to a green salad or having with some pickles just before serving dinner. I can see how the duck might be superior, with its richer, meatier flavor, but I'm pleased enough to make this a semi-regular addition to my repertoire. The next steps, I think, are to tweak the flavors in the recipe, to come up with a few variations I'm happy with; then, perhaps, look into curing and cold-smoking the leg quarters, following up with a confit preparation. Smoked confit can only be a good thing.

smoked chicken

* * * * *

1And we were right. Oh, man, was that hunch ever right. My head is still murky with Cremaster imagery.

2Quite possibly the most obtuse films I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man.

3Later on, she also appears as a cheetah, the effect of which is eerily enhanced by her prosthetic running legs. They're called Cheetahs, incidentally, and there's an article in today's New York Times that discusses some of the controversy over them.

4Assuming they're poached or otherwise pre-cooked, which I always do. That enables me to avoid overcooking them (using a thermometer to get them just right), so that the grill simply reheats them and puts a little color on the outside.

5I forgot to write down my ingredients, so this is as best I can recall.

02 May 2007

On gin.

Downingtown.

Excerpted from today's "Spirits of the Times", by Eric Asimov:
Before we discuss the findings, though, we need to clear up a little matter. It’s come to my attention that some people believe martinis are made with vodka. I hate to get snobbish about it, but a martini should be made with gin or it’s not a martini. Call it a vodkatini if you must, but not a martini. Gin and vodka have as much in common hierarchically as a president and a vice president. Vodka can fill in for gin from time to time and might even be given certain ceremonial duties of its own, but at important moments you need the real thing. Vodka generally makes a poor substitute for gin in a martini or any other gin cocktail.

The panel found common ground here. Each of us is partial to the classic martini made with gin, although Audrey was sensitive to the desires of her clientele.

“You have to revisit which generation is drinking the martini,” she said. “We might be classicists, but is the newer generation?”

Still, after perhaps 8 or 10 martinis, Audrey fessed up, referring at one point to “a generation lobotomized by vodka.”

Indeed, gin is more of a thinking person’s spirit.