Today is international Eggs Benedict Day. Time to make my version, take pictures, and put them on the site. Make and eat at your own risk, they’re slightly addictive.
This is the version to which I added freeze dried chives instead of bacon powder.
Generally speaking, Eggs Benedict have several components, each of which has its own challenges and rewards. There’s a base, usually always an English Muffin. So integral to the dish is this muffin that using anything else (a toast for example) seems unacceptable to true EB fans and must lead to a renaming of the dish. Not so, I say, after all there’s so much that can be done here and, at the risk of offending purists, we will.
Then there’s the protein. Canadian bacon or ham is used rather commonly, and we’ll only stray from this in the preparation department but leave the ingredient alone.
An egg, poached, is set atop the protein. Nothing to change here, only a quick reflection on poaching needed.
Lastly, the egg is covered in Sauce Hollandaise. Which, finally, gives me a chance to upset some more people and show off my no-fail perfect hollandaise recipe. Tradition be damned, this one tastes better and is easier to make.
On top of that we’ll sprinkle some bacon powder and chives for taste.
The Base
English muffins have all the qualities of a good base for this dish. They’re sturdy but fluffy, they toast easily without turning into a cracker, and they mop up egg better than most anything. Go for it, if you must. If you are in the market for some experimentation and enhancement, let me suggest an alternative: German potato pancakes. Some call them (wrongly) latkes, but in a nutshell they’re just grated potatoes and seasoning, mixed together.
- 2 medium sized potatoes for about four to five potato pancakes
- 1/2 onion, small dice
- 1/2 egg per two potatoes, beaten
- salt, pepper, oil
- nutmeg, grated freshly (optional)
For a fluffier product boil one of the potatoes and mash it, but this is not necessary for our potato pancake base. Grate the potatoes and place in ice-cold water for five minutes. Remove, dry, and combine well with onion and egg. Season with one teaspoon of salt, a pinch of pepper, and (if you’d like) some nutmeg.
Form patties. I use a large ring mold to control size across the individual parts, but that’s optional too. Make them about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. Heat a little oil in a non-stick pan (not “non stick spray”, that stuff apparently kills the nonstick coating – any chemists can explain why?), then place the patty and cook until the outside is nice and brown and the inside cooked through (about 4, 5 minutes).
The Ham
Nothing to change, here. Buy a ham, slice into 1/4 inch slices, saute or steam to soften up some (I smoke mine), and use. I use the same size ring mold as for the potato base to punch out nice evenly sized discs.
The Egg
There are as many techniques for poached eggs as there are cooks in this world. Since I am a little bit of a whack job when it comes to size and presentation and lazy to boot, here’s how I make mine.
Some people like to use the “vortex” or swirl method in which a vortex is formed in the center of the pan and the egg is dropped into it. Others prefer the “bath” where the egg is simply placed in the water. In my application for this dish, I use a ring mold 2 sizes smaller than the one used for ham and potato base and place the egg inside that.
Bring enough water in a shallow pan to a simmer to cover an egg dropped into it. Add a tablespoon of vinegar per quart of water. Vinegar expedites coagulation but, if too much is added, will turn the egg grey. Use fresh eggs for best results, the older an egg gets the more of the albumin in the egg white thins out, setting slower. Drop your egg into a ramekin and then pour into the ring mold. 3 minutes for soft-boiled is perfect. Move the ring mold around a little after 30 seconds or so, to allow the egg to rotate and set evenly.
Hollandaise
Ahhh, hollandaise. Few other simple preparations strike as much fear into the hearts of cooks. Curdling, cooking too far, becoming watery, or rubbery, are just some of the fears. No need, this is very easy.
- Three egg yolks
- A cup of water set next to you with a measuring spoon on the side
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (optional)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- a pinch cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon sugar
- 1.5 sticks (12 tablespoons) of unsalted butter, chilled and small-cubed.
In a medium sauce pan bring an inch or so of water to a simmer. Let simmer until everything else is set up, then reduce heat to low.
Combine three egg yolks and a teaspoon of water (water is absolutely necessary, it is – after all – what we emulsify with) in a bowl and whisk until it gets lighter, about 2, 3 minutes. If your arm gets tired just stop, leave the whisk inside the mixture, and resume at leisure. Add a the sugar and whisk for another 30 to 45 seconds. Don’t add the sugar ahead of mixing the eggs, sugar is hygroscopic and will make it harder to emulsify the egg.
Now we need to add some warmth. Reduce the heat on the water to low, give it a second for the simmer to dissipate, then move the bowl on top of the pot. Add 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice to the eggs. Whisk. Whisk. If your arm gets tired again move the bowl off the water, set away from the heat source, leave the whisk inside the egg, and relax. Move back at your own leisure. Whisk. Whisk. Whisk until the mixture has firmed up enough to coat the back of a spoon and leave “valleys” when you drag your whisk through it. This will take between three and five minutes, depending on breaks.
Remove from heat and slowly, one by one, add the butter. Whisk every small cube into the mixture before adding the next. If the butter refuses to dissolve move back on top of the (now warm, not hot) water, and whisk for a few seconds before moving back. If the mixture feels too stiff add another 1/2 teaspoon of water, gradually.
After all the butter is incorporated turn off the heat on your water, give it a few seconds to cool down some, then add the salt, cayenne pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and remaining lemon juice, move over the water bath, and whisk it in.
You’re done. That wasn’t hard, now, was it?
Bacon Powder and Chives
You can skip this, if you’d like. Combine bacon fat and tapioca maltodextrin in a 60:40 ratio by weight and blend in a blender until powdered. Pass through a fine mesh sieve or tamis, and set aside in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Freeze chives with liquid nitrogen or in a blast freezer (or buy freeze-dried ones, though this is less fragrant) and powder in a coffee mill or mortar. Combine with bacon powder and sprinkle over finished dish.
Today is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich day. The GCS, as we shall call it in short from now on, lives a double life of epic proportion. It is, after all, the ultimate in fast comfort food. So great is the idea of cheese on toast, that even the most atrocious concoctions aren’t all too bad as long as the cheese is hot and the toast has crunch.
Did you know, until 1960 American “Grilled Cheese” sandwiches had only one slice of bread to the cheese. The familiar two-slice version didn’t become popular until over 100 years after its first recorded appearance in the United States. Which, incidentally, makes a lot of sense since the U.S. version is derived from the French “Croque Monsieur” which is open-faced, as well.
On the other side, our humble companion is also the Holy Grail of many cooks’ lives. I know it is for me, alongside Mac and Cheese, Croque Madame, and the perfect omelet. All too often, even in “fine dining”, are gourmet GCS nothing but the same stuff you make at home, only with some cheese no one ever heard of. No more, I say, time to apply some real culinary craft onto the product and let some sound science speak in the process.
Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen.
Immediately a few properties I love about my GCS should come to mind: its cheese is runny but not soggy. A bite into the sandwich won’t leave a feeling of chewing rubber or gum but also won’t drip hot cheese all over one’s plate and clothing. Our toast is satisfyingly brown on the outside, crunchy without being dry, and still nice and moist on the inside.
Also, there’s an alibi salad on the plate. It’s to make the nutters happy, this cheese sandwich can (and will, generally) stand well all on its own.
The Toast - now, here’s one thing we can not, shall not, will not, compromise on. None of the store bought varieties is satisfying for our needs. Many “toasts” sold on shelves are actually treated in more than one way to prevent drying out on your counter. That’s a bad thing, since toasting is essentially drying. Maillard reactions don’t happen in very moist environments (water steams at 220 degrees F, browning happens at 310) and is slower in completely dry ones, so treated toast will brown not on its own volition but because the “baker” (I am using that term very loosely) stuck even more additives into the bread.
Find a baker and buy unsliced toast bread. If that isn’t an option, use non-toast bread of the lesser treated variety. Anything with more ingredients than slices in the bag is bad, mmkay? Especially all those HFCS laced ones.
The Cheese – listening to the “gourmet grilled cheese” crowd, one would assume that all it takes for a good grilled cheese sandwich is smuggling some unpasteurized young cheese into the country in one’s underwear. Not so, I say. A much faster (and less criminal) approach would be to turn local household cheese into something great. Today we’ll use a 40:60 combination of Brie and Camenbert, both soft cheeses with a lot of inherent runniness but also great flavor and, more importantly, high fat content.
Why “high fat” you ask? Well, simple. Fat absorbs aroma. That’s a bad thing if the fat is your stick of butter and the aroma is a ripe fridge, but it’s great if the fat is cheese and the aroma comes from a smoker in the backyard.
Step 1: The making of cheese! Well, not really, we’ll buy the cheese pre-made (unless you have a cow and a lot of spare time as well as the right environmental and additive cultures…). And then we make it tastier. For that I cold-smoked my cheese for 12 hours in a cherry wood smoker. Since cold smoking happens at 35 degrees C and Brie and Camenbert start to soften up too much at 38 degrees C, this is perfect. If no cold smoker is at hand, follow me to step 2 and add a teaspoon or two of liquid smoke into the marinade.
Step 2: Suchly smoked, our cheese now needs to marinade. I prepared my marinade by combining a cup of 2004 San Francisco Bay Zinfandel (Rosenblum), one clove of garlic, minced, cloves, salt and pepper, in a pot and bringing to a boil for 5 minutes. Add some herbs, too. Whatever is on your window garden’s menu, oregano and basil go really well with Brie, tarragon goes well with anything and everything.
Let cool and add to a vacuum bag or a simple ziptie bag (remove as much air as possible) with the cheese. Refrigerate for at least six, better eighteen, hours.
One point of contemplation: some of the wine will stick around after grilling. Anyone on the wagon should consider substituting grape juice or red wine vinegar in a 2:1 dilution.
Step 3: The bread. All the points above considered, I slice my bread for use. This is somewhat important to avoid drying out of the individual slices. And now we’re getting to the point where we offend all the “foodies” of this world. Not the real ones, of course, the ones with a love for food and taste, rather the air-quotes version. For, you know, we need to find a way to make the cheese melty, the bread center moist and lovingly springy, and the outside nice and crunchy.
Layer one layer of Brie and Camenbert, alternating, onto the toast. Don’t cut off the rind, both the acid in our wine and the heat in a second will make it nice and smooth while its cohesion helps keep the cheese inside the sandwich.
Grilling doesn’t work. While Brie and Camenbert might, given their low meting temperature, Gruyere won’t. Melt the inside and you’ll have cheese in a cracker. Don’t, and you have rubber inside toast. To the rescue comes this very handy but much-maligned tool in most everyone’s kitchen: the microwave. While it’s a myth that microwaves heat “from the inside out”, we’ll get a warming of the whole sandwich without drying the toast. 15 to 20 seconds should be more than sufficient, depending on power.
Having so heated our GCS we move to a hot (but not searing hot) pan, brush a little butter onto the toast, and toast to golden brown. Done.
Serve with a small cup of cranberry compote and some alibi salad. Eat. Be Merry!
I hope this GCS will answer your cravings for a good Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day Sandwich. I dedicate this post to the many “gourmet” grilled cheese sellers (here’s looking at you, Tillman’s Roadhouse) who think it’s OK to just add more costly ingredients and call it “gourmet”.
The German “Jägerlaiberl” or “hunter’s loaf” in English, used to be as common as bratwurst and beer, at least in the southern regions of the country. Its advantages were a simple and fast preparation even in larger quantities and ingredients that directly came from the diners who would devour them – mushrooms, meat, and herbs.
Preparation was easy, as mentioned above:
A freshly baked loaf of bread was decapitated and hollowed out, leaving only 1/2 inch of bread and crust. Beef, wild boar, venison, or duck was grilled to medium while mushrooms and onions were sautéed in a generous amount of butter (French cooks know this as duxelles). The mushroom reduction was then finished with herbs, a good shot of red wine, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sometimes duck or bacon fat (Gänseschmalz or Griebenschmalz, which also had pork cracklings in it).
A thin layer of horseradish was spread into the bread bowl, followed by alternating layers of meat and duxelles.The top was sealed with mustard and the loaf was wrapped in butcher’s paper or a dry cloth.
Weights were placed onto the loaf, pushing it down, and it was stored overnight in a cold place. The morning hunting parties then were just given the loaf, a small tin of red wine mustard, and a bottle of wine and sent on their way. No work for the cook who could go back to bed and sleep another few hours until sunrise.
My "squeeze" is just two cutting boards and bungie cords.
I slightly changed mine, using a much more fragrant version of the classic duxelles by using brandy instead of red wine, Worcestershire sauce, and a mix of shiitake and chanterelle to add some interest to the dish.
My meat is beef sirloin which I marinade in a pepper sauce and cook only to medium rare, resulting in a medium cooked product since the meat continues to cook after being pushed into the bowl.
Compression, in my case, comes from a simple contraption of two cutting boards and bungie cords, and the fridge (top shelf where it’s warmest but not too warm) serves as my cooling device for 9 hours to 24 hours, after that my bread simply gets too tough to be enjoyable.
Variations could include the use of duck breast, medium-well, fine slices of pork or veal, or – for the vegetarian in all of us – grilled Portobello mushrooms. In one more decadent moment, I braised pork belly and stuffed that, together with chives, sliced sautéed apples, and white wine boiled pearl onions. It was a hit but went from fab to flab much faster, about fifteen hours into stuffing.
So, next time you feel like sandwich, why not make one of those and stick it into the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch? You’ll be sure to be the envy of your coworkers :) Make a few more and hand them out, because sharing is always caring.
Sous Vide Controller
If you, like me, are somewhat in the market for a nice sous vide cooking setup but a little short on funds to afford the excellent $800 Polyscience model, this might be for you. Auber Instruments sells a $150 “Sous Vide” controller which is essentially a PID controller stuck between a non-digital rice cooker and a power outlet. A sensor inside the cooker allows the controller to turn on and off power to the vessel thusly regulating temperature to 1/2 of one degree, which is extremely suitable for sous vide cooking.
For my experiment I connected a loaned (a friend had one, at home I am generally using a “borrowed” older Polyscience model, but since people started asking questions I figured it’s a good time not to take the work stuff home every other week) controller to a few vessels I had. I also connected a Grainger thermometer to log temperature in 1-minute intervals and used a short Ruby script to feed the final data into the Google Chart API.
First Experiment: Bain-Marie
This was my biggest hope. The Bain-Marie I am using is a non-digital electrical model which, by itself, doesn’t hold temperatures within 20 degrees Farenheit. I was used to keep sauces together and had been living a sad life in the back of my cupboard ever since I purchased a more modern, digital, version.
I connected the Bain-Marie to the controller, attached the sensor, and started a 1 hour ”63 degree egg” routine. I chose this approach because a) I like egg and it’s less waste than doing veal or venison, and b) 63 degrees are somewhat of my white whale since the older Polyscience model seemed to have issues holding at that level for more than fifty minutes.
The thermometer recorded a variance of +/- 4 degrees C which is within the acceptable range for eggs but not for other foodstuffs. Affixing the sensor closer to the vessel’s center and covering it with the provided lid helped some:
Now we had a variance of +/- 3 degrees. The issue, as it turns out, is simply with the vessel. Such a sturdy and rather unwieldy bowl simply gives off too much heat when warmed and doesn’t “maneuver” as well in the single-degree range.
Second Experiment: Slow Cooker, non-digital
Same setup as before, this time with a slow cooker (an Asian model without any discernible branding, I bought it for $30 at a Chinese restaurant store when I purchased the rice cooker [see below]).
… and an amazing variance of +/- 1.48 degrees was the result. This is close, if not equal, to the $800 Polyscience model.
The Rice Cooker Experiment
I had issues getting the rice cooker to jump back online after having been disconnected from power. A quick solder later it “kind of” worked and stayed, again, within the 1.5 degree variance. Which is, all things considered, perfect. The one issue here is the rice cooker’s size. I could barely sink four eggs and would have a harder time cooking sufficient meat for a party of six than in the much roomier slow-cooker. For smaller dishes I’d certainly recommend it.
Conclusion
Because we love conclusions. At $150 this is a steal, considering how well it worked. Get a foodsaver vacuum for less than $200 and you have a $4k setup at one tenth the price for home. Of course Polyscience will still rule the professional kitchens of this world (and mad foodies’ homes), but for my personal gear this is just what the Dr. ordered.
[notice_box]As always on this blog, I don’t shill for things. None of the above mentioned paid me or otherwise enticed me to write. It’s kind of sad that I have to say this, but considering the shilly nature of food bloggers (all bloggers, actually) who will happily take money, items, or other sweet deals to “like” something, I feel it’s important I do.[/notice_box]
Recently, the Wall Street Journal published a photo essay titled “A Day In The Life of a Chef” featuring Tom Colicchio’s day of playing guitar, reading to his son, and “plating 500 dishes”. Chefs, the real ones without TV contracts, rightfully complained. This wasn’t the day of a Chef. With that, “A day in the life of a Real Chef” was born.
Below I’ll make the first move, asking other chefs, corporate, sous, executive, personal, and otherwise, to join me in telling the story of one of their days in the life. Our jobs aren’t as glamorous as fielding press calls and posing for fan photos, but we get stuff done, and it’s pretty exciting stuff, too. Comment or email me and I’ll link your day in the life from mine (if we reciprocate this could become a heck of a great collection…)
6:20am – getting up, shower, and making my first cup of coffee (running coffee tally: 1). I am using an AeroPress coffee maker.
6:45am - waking up Misha, making breakfast. He gets waffles with strawberries and hot coca, daddy makes a 2-egg omelet with spicy sausage and a cup of cereal.
7:20am – dropping Misha off at Kindergarten, driving 20 minutes to meet with our baker for the week’s orders. There’s a problem with the toast we’re getting, it gets too crunchy too fast and I want to try out some new recipes. Bakers get up at 3am so we have fresh rolls at 7, 8am is an early afternoon meeting for them.
9am - arrived at La Maison, checked produce delivery for returns, call purveyor and let them know we’re not interested in getting more than the ordered amount. They’ve been trying this for weeks, now, adding a box here, a sack there, hoping I won’t notice on the invoice and sign. It’s not an uncommon thing to do, vigilance is key.
10am – setting up stock for the evening, taking the finished court bouillons off the fire, grinding down meats for terrines and sausages.
11am - Sous comes in, takes over terrine making, so I have time to get a quick coffee (2) and the morning paper done.
11:20am – Lionel, fish station, calls in and quits. Got a better offer from his brother’s boss down in Florida. Starting to call around to find a replacement. None to be had today, so we’ll be short one line. Sam calls in, she’s sick, make that “short two”.
noon - family meal with the four of us who are around. Sonya made pirogies from yesterday’s leftover potatoes and fresh dough, it’s delicious. Needs to go on the menu some day.
12:30pm – hopping in car, driving north to talk to our butcher. Something has come up, someone screwed up, we don’t have enough product to make enough t-bones. Nothing he can do, butcher says, he’s short, too. On drive back I call Maitre d‘ and we change menu from T-Bone to Porterhouse and add a filet mignon.
1pm – coffee (3) is done, hefty gulp and into the paperwork of last night. Cover report seems to be good, we had enough butts in seats and on the “complaints and returns” list only two things stick out. Calling Marie, yesterday’s SiC (Server in Charge), to find out more. One goes into the shoebox of “funny” complaints, one will get a call from the restaurant later for an apology and an invitation to come back on the house.
2pm – cover reports done, new food ordered, walk in inspected and inventoried. Ordering some new kitchen tools and calling AC guy and hood guy for inspections and cleaning.
2:30pm – Coffee (4) and ten minutes 1 on 1 with servers. All is well in flatfood-land, Stacey might be pregnant, but if she is she’ll be able to work (not her first time) for another few months if all goes well, and we have too many people fighting for the good days and shifts anyways.
Here, Fishy!
3:00pm - we’re starting prep. Since Lionel is out, I am doing fish and chicken.
4:00pm – tons of meat later, I decide to take a break (Coffee: 5 and 6) and drive down to pick up Misha. “Daddy cooking” he tells the lady. Not bad for a 2 year-old. We read a book, play with Mr. Sniffles, and take Falco, the dog, for a walk.
5:30pm – back in the kitchen. Beer and pretzels for the staff, more coffee (7) for me. Prep is mostly done, roasts are in the ovens and look good, now we need diners.
6:30pm - an early group of 12 scuttles into the almost empty dining room. Three off-menu items, the rest is standard fare. Before we can send mains for the 12-top, more diners arrive, a family of eight with a 95th birthday, a few salespeople on an expense report binge. Now we’re juggling 20 apps and 22 mains at the same time, short on hands and even shorter on personnel to satisfy off-menu orders.
8:15 – we’re in the weeds. Badly. Aside from everything else, Sonya cut herself on one of the protruding sharp edges in the back of our steamer while trying to rescue a few potatoes that had fallen off the half-sheet when pulling out, which cost us five minutes in time, an eternity during the best of times. Jakob, always the inventive son of a gun he is, uses a brulee torch to fix a broken terrine de-molder, we’re pushing more and more hot stuff onto Sonya in apps and desserts, and someone notices that half the oysters we got in this morning, hidden in the last box, are deader than Dallas’ dining scene.
9:00 – out of the weeds, we’re slowly winding down on apps (the last four-top would come in at 10 sharp and expect a special vegan-friendly, gluten-free, variation), have a dine-and-dash on 12, someone brushed up against the coffee maker in the hallway (luckily I had just pulled a double (9, 10)), breaking the carafe, so the flatfoots have to navigate over and around Gisela who is trying to clean and de-slippery the floor.
10:00 – we’re dealing with a few special menu requests and start cleaning the apps station and prep area. The last orders will be in before 11, so we’re winding down most non-essential operations.
10:30 - the last mains of the day go out, pastry gets shut down, I’m tossing all the equipment for our terrines back into the freezer and am cleaning two of the three lines with Sonya. Another coffee can’t hurt, the pot’s fresh and smells delicious (11). I realize I haven’t eaten since that one pierogi at noon, so I am tossing some leftovers into a pan with butter and prepare to call the last desserts. “Ey, dude,” Washka, one of our servers, yells, “we need a refire on eight, he doesn’t like his steak.” A quick look and, it’s a little over “medium rare”, just as ordered. Well, ‘nother muscle on the fire, “fire sides au poivre,” I yell, Sonya springs back into action from texting her wife, when the phone rings. It’s the sitter. Misha has been crying for an hour, asking for me. That’s the parts of the job that truly suck. “Hey there, little man,” I scream into the phone over the sound of sauteeing veggies. “Daddy cooking,” he croons, then “Love You, Daddy”. “Love you too, little man,” I respond, then I hear the sounds of him being put back to bed. I’ll be home, soon, sitting in front of his crib, watching him sleep. It’s my zen.
11:00 – we’re shutting down. Cleaning crew starts to disassemble the hood, beers are opened, and I drink the last of the coffee (12). Sonya and I are going over “dropped” chits, that’s meals which came back or did not get sent out for one reason or another. Not much, today, so we quickly write down orders for the next morning, take a quick look at the kitchen which is cooling down and begins to smell that particular smell only kitchens in restaurants develop, not bad, just specific, and Sonya heads out.
11:30 – done talking on phone with Exec. Chef. He doesn’t like my menu ideas, I hate his, so we meet in the middle. Discussing new hires, conferencing GM in who wants us to stay understaffed (“the Economy, Jonas, the Economy”), and talk about covers over the week. In the mean time, listening with one ear to Exec and GM fight, I read the latest reviews on the web, clip a quick article for the collection, file my hours, and eat my, now cold, veggies in butter.
12:24 – finally home. I take a shower, pour a glass of milk, and check Facebook and Twitter. Misha is snoring nicely, so Falco and I just check in for a second, go for a quick walk around the block, and I am falling over and passing out.
6:30am – another day, another dime.
Our days aren’t glamorous. There aren’t any calls from agents or fans, no emails from publishers, and no one wants to take their picture with us. But they’re filled with people, with work, with art, craft, and science. And, best of all, they’re filled with a sense of purpose and almost single-minded dedication. We work with the best, with people who signed their life away to the culinary gods, not for money, not for fame, but for the love of the product.
A few years back. A well-stocked kitchen in the heart of Campbell, CA, at the (now) West Coast campus of the French Culinary Institute. We’re talking Chili and, as whim and whimsy had it, decided to make some for an impromptu Chili cook-off.
To understand the complex world of Chili cook-offs, one must understand the governing rules thereof. Anything identifiable (such as, say, real chopped onions) is expressively verboten in official judgings. The International Chili Society, faced with a decision between gourmet inventions and the needs and wants of a mostly retirement-age amateur home cook crowd signing up for such things, decided for the latter (and Andrea Geary agrees with me. Writing in the Feb. 2011 edition of Cook’s Illustrated she found that in the past 20 years of Chili Cookoffs all winning chilis had been flavored with varying strengths of supermarket powders as their only distinguishing mark).
Bacon: how CAN you resist? Yes, yes, I know I am reusing that picture. But, hey, first it's a great one and second it's a much bigger size :)
It is no secret that I am a lover of bacon. A representative and shining example of all three culinary baselines, fat, sugar, and salt, bacon is to food what Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” is to a first date.
FIVE lbs in one sitting? If he divorces her over this, I want to marry her.
Going about adding more bacon to one’s diet offers a number of different venues. At the very bottom are bacon bits. They, along with Justin Bieber, Twilight, and drunken phone calls after 11pm from your ex, are part of Satan’s devious ploy to punish us for our wicked ways. And, like the others, better not talked about.
“Real” bacon comes in many forms and shapes. Mostly the flat-ish, artificially colored and flavor injected, kind. Supermarkets sell those by the pound and, in a pinch, that’s what works for most dishes. Just don’t get too offended if the “thick cut” slice of goodness shrivels under heat like a pro-Baseballer’s baby maker on the juice. All that injected salty brine needs to go somewhere, and right up into the air is as good as any place.
Real eaters prefer “artisan” bacon. Which is code for “the stuff I could have made myself but didn’t because I am lazy or overworked and have a suitcase of cash from my last bank heist or divorce settlement with ready funds for such decadent indulgences.” Artisan bacon is expensive, usually well made and cured, often sold in places that come with a free foodie guilt trip for still eating Ready Mac from the box, and tastes delicious.
Those among us who prefer to spend less money and a little bit more time make their own. Which is nowhere as complicated as it sounds. Surprisingly enough, making bacon is fun. It also gives us, the end-user of said porcine gift, a choice of flavorings. And the satisfaction of knowing we got as close as possible to our ancestors’ dietary pursuits.
You waited for it: Let’s make some bacon
THIS abomination is a thing of the past from now on!
Before we start, let’s set some basic terms. Bacon comes from the pork’s belly. At least American bacon, that is. Other cultures have used shanks, butt, or even the compressed remains of heads and tails. For this exercise we’ll stick with pork belly.
Aside from the meat (we’ll get to the selection criteria in a second), you’ll need a smoker. Your local market should have at least one, often for less than thirty or forty bucks. Electrical smokers are a little less maintenance and easier to operate well, charcoal smokers on the other hand do have a certain pre-industrial charm. If you’re feeling completely hack-ish (or, just in case you want to wait that long, bought my forthcoming book “Blowtorch and Spatula, a 21st century chef’s pursuit of culinary clarity and degustatory delights” which has the plans in it) you could rig a smoker from a portable hotplate and some bricks, too.
Whatever your choice, make sure it has a hanger-bar. Build yourself (or purchase) some pronged bacon hangers ($8 at SausageMaker.com) and you’re all set.
Choose your belly from the back (that’s the part that borders on the loin) and don’t skimp on size. A well cured and smoked slab of bacon can be kept for quite a while and, while easy, the process takes a little bit of time and isn’t something you want to do every weekend.
Rub the belly with salt and sugar at a mixture of three to one. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store in your fridge for at least twelve, better twenty-four hours. The combination of salt and sugar will act hygroscopic, pulling water from the outer layers of the belly through absorption (not adsorption).
In the mean time combine the same sugar/salt mixture (three parts salt to one part sugar) for your brine. Shoot for two cups of salt/sugar mix per quart of water. Everything else, now, is your decision. Personally, I love to add a little bit of chipotle, some maple syrup, and cloves, but the final taste is up to the cook, here. Bring your mixture to a boil (mine comes below) and stir to dissolve all the solids. Take off heat, add another quart of water, and let cool to room temperature. Finally, add a cup of vinegar. I use apple cider vinegar because I love the flavor it brings to the product, but whichever you prefer is cool. The vinegar helps raise the acidity of your brine and acts as a deterrent for many bugs that would otherwise spoil the party. If you feel very experimental, try cane vinegar and reduce the quantity by one third since it’s more acidic than other white vinegars.
Unwrap the bacon-to-be and submerge in your brine. Since the bugger has a tendency of floating up on me, I usually weigh it down with a plate on which I placed the “brick in a ziptop bag” I keep handy in my kitchen.
Until this is invented we'll have to stick to the old-fashioned way of curing and smoking!
Chefs need rest, and so does your bacon. Which, coming to think about it, makes perfect sense. Both chefs and bacon are essential to a perfect meal, which must mean we’re related. Oink! Give it four days, five on the upper end, in your fridge. But careful, fridge temperatures above 39 degrees and below 35 are detrimental to the full brine flavor development.
On the fifth day (or fourth, or third if you’re hungry and desperate) fire up your smoker. Again, the choice of flavor is yours. Applewood makes for great breakfast bacon, images of the Canadian forests, Maine fishermen on their way home, Seattle grunge bands. Pecan wood chips conjure dreams of southern hospitality, blues at the bar around the corner, chicken and waffles. Cherry wood is fruity, California on a warm day, goes great with seafood and game, and has notes of autumn winds in the Napa vineyards. Nothing says “John Deere and a twelve-gauge” like hickory smoked bacon, serve with pulled pork, hush puppies, and Shiner bock. Stay away from mesquite. It might sound great and taste great, too, but it’s one of those flavors that are hard to pair.
Take the bacon-apprentice from the brine and shake off extra brine. Dry in front of a household fan or hanging in the breeze for about thirty minutes. The bacon should be dry to the touch to allow a pellicle to form while smoking. The pellicle is a layer of coagulated and tightened fat which will keep juices in (unlike the whole “sear to seal in juices” hoax, this one is real) and prevents the bacon from drying out. It also prevents juices from dropping onto the smoker rig which keeps smoke coming and carcinogenic smoke from developing. Hang onto hangers and smoke at 85 to 95 degrees F for nine to twelve hours. Longer smoking makes for a stronger flavor (but you knew that already).
Remove from hangers, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and let cool down a bit before moving into the refrigerator for twelve to sixteen hours. Remove, chill for an hour to get some stiffness into the slab, then cut to desired thickness. Keeps in your fridge for a week or your freezer for up to three months. Not that it’ll ever last that long.
Parting Thoughts and Gift
Making bacon is easy. It’s not a labor intensive job, either. Along the way your choices of flavors are many, only limited by your imagination. During winter I like to make orange zest brines and apple cinnamon ones, in summer I gravitate towards fresher and spicier versions. Home cured and smoked bacon stays firm and tender under heat, unlike supermarket brands which are injected with saline solutions to sell at higher weights. They make great gifts, too, because nothing says “I love you” like a pound of home-made goodness.
And here’s the parting gift. My secret brine recipe :)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup salt
- 2 quart water
- 1 quart apple cider vinegar
- 3 chipotle peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 tbsp crushed black pepper
- 1 tbsp nutmeg
- 2 tbsp dried red currants
- cloves
Make the brine with everything except the cloves and pepper. Stud the cloves into the belly and rub the pepper over it before applying the salt/sugar rub. I smoke this one with applewood.
And don’t forget to comment and let me know how it was for you :)
Imagine for a second, if you will, that your business isn’t doing well. Customers are staying away, you are hemorrhaging money, and your staff is unhappy. Something has to be done.
You could hire someone who knows the industry, has a proven track record of fixing failing businesses, and does so with honesty, integrity, and decency while treating you as a client with all the confidentiality that such a job requires.
Of you could hire someone whose own business is failing. Who spends more time borrowing from Paul to pay someone who will tell Peter to wait another month. Someone whose own staff is more than unhappy and only tied to him with above and beyond punitive contracts. Before his work begins, he will make you sign a contract that, pretty much, states that he, as your consultant, is not only allowed to tell everyone how much your restaurant sucks, he is allowed to embellish and make you look worse for the element of drama such a consultation requires.
Think about it for a bit, then follow me along the path down which madness lies. Enter Robert Irvine, the man tasked by Food Network to fix up restaurants like that Ramsay dude does on Fox. Some things are similar – both Kitchen Nightmares and Restaurant Impossible require lengthy contracts from participants, including the right to embellish and dramatize the faults of the restaurants which they are “saving”.
Irvine’s “empire” consists of a shuttered St. Petersbug eatery for which Irvine still, five years later, owes money in the hundreds of thousands to designers and builders. That much is truth. The lies start once Irvine boasts his own accomplishments. Friends with Prince Charles and the late Lady Di? A lie, as is his claim to have baked the wedding cake for the royal couple. Or his alleged time spent as a “force recon” Special Ops combat operator in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy? Bunk. A lie. Not to mention his Master Chef exam (liar), his Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of Leeds (liar), and his employment as a personal chef at the White House to President Bush (pants on fire).
But nothing, nothing, tops his claim to a Knighthood as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Complete with an order for a black display case for Irvine’s royal uniform.
Irvine is the epitome of a “celebrity” TV chef. A stack of lies upon which, prostrated, lies the massive FoodTV promotions machinery. Beyond there, a mediocre cook, rotten businessman, and support beams of hype and hubris.
Think of that when, on January 19, you tune into Restaurant: Impossible!
A friend just recently, when I told her about Traveling Table and the idea behind it, asked “I thought you were anti-Locavore”. I’m not. I am anti-idiot.
Take this example (two Jamie Oliver stories in one month? People might start to think I am a fanboy or something):
It has emerged that Jamie’s Italian in Glasgow’s George Square, one of 15 in an ever-expanding chain, has been supplied with sauces manufactured nearly 400 miles away on an industrial park. His chefs then reheat batches of the sauces and add the finishing touches at the popular restaurant.
Not exactly “pukka”, to use the chef’s catchphrase. The sauces originate from Oliver’s Fabulous Feasts Ltd, the chef’s event catering firm situated on a distribution park in Bicester, Oxfordshire, some 380 miles from Glasgow.
A spokesman for Jamie Oliver said: “We use a central kitchen for a very small number of base ingredients – not so much sauces as the base of the sauces, to which each restaurant adds fresh ingredients.
The whiny foodies this article (and all the others about this “scandal”) quotes are really, really, peeved. How dare this man import sauces! And right there is the “idiot” factor. Sure, let’s make tomato sauce in Winter in Scottland. I am sure, more than sure, the watery-bland greenhouse version will do for all those “locavores” who eat what’s “in”, not what’s good and good for the environment.
Sauces, that’s the very basic building block of dishes: Veloute, Mournay, Tomato, Espagnole, Bechamel, Hollandaise, Mayonnaise, Bearnaise, to mention a few. What all of these (aside from Hollandaise, Bearnaise, and Mayonnaise) have in common is – they stock well. Really well. And they all, again aside from the ones mentioned in the previous sentence, take copious amounts of bones, marrow, and vegetables to make.
Locavorism, that’s about reducing the strain on the planet. Now, I ask you, which one has less an environmental impact: shipping 500lbs of bones or 100lbs of sauce? Furthermore, what’s better for the environment: canning at the source in season and shipping, or shipping from Mexico or Holland, discarding half of the product due to spoilage?
Locavore for Locavore’s sake doesn’t work. It imposes the same strains and issues and yields inferior product as thoughtlessly shipping everything does. The “foodies” crapping their pants over pre-made mother-sauces being canned and shipped to be turned into dish-ready sauces at the restaurant should take a good, hard, look at the ilk of Ramsay and Co. who premake their whole meal, reheat, and serve even at the Chelsea Flagship.
Update: In a sleep deprived stupor I’ve published a version chock full of spelling errors and grammatical weirdness. In the interest of online honesty it shall remain almost unchanged, please forgive the obvious mistakes.
Every once in a while, when the topic comes to food, I shock my friends. Self-described “foodies”, all of them, some of the things I do on a daily basis seem foreign to the idealized world of fantasy chefs, where every meal is constructed ad-hoc and mystery baskets appear magically on doorsteps, waiting to be integrated into today’s menu.
In those conversations, I find myself forced to defend the “indefensibles”, ingredients and techniques considered un-cheflike and verboten by sacred decree. Today, I’ll mount a defense of five of them. Let the purists come…
Microwaves
Microwaves truly have an undeserved image problem. Virtually all of it stems not from what they are, modern machines to heat things evenly, but from what people tend to shove into them, the truly abominable ready-meal. Ask any food-conscious person out there, and defenses sound a lot like the “only for the jokes” Playboy defense.
I use Microwaves a lot. Re-heating ingredients that require a stint in the fridge, melting butter, making sauces and gels, toffee, or dulce de leche, Microwaves are my friend. Being able to heat food “inside out” instead of having to constantly rotate it in a pot or pan benefits delicate meats and fish, blasting doughs and gels with magnetron rays allows me to evenly develop substrate without fear of overcooking the outside while having a raw inside.
Microwaves aren’t crutches just as Kitchenaid mixers, anti-griddles, cryovacs, immersion circulators, or walk-in fridges aren’t. We have come to accept some, even revere others, while Microwaves still suffer the stigma of being a poor man’s cooking implement. If it’s truly a question of what goes in, consider this: walk in freezers make McDonalds possible. Doesn’t diminish the role they play at the French Laundry, now, does it?
Liquid Smoke
I love liquid smoke. It’s an all-natural product, created by passing smoke through water and reducing the resulting infused liquid. When used as a shortcut, a means to make stuff taste like BBQ without ever having seen a pit, liquid smoke is bad, true, but that’s not what it should be used for. In BBQ and related preparations, smoke flavor is a by-product of a much more important step – slowly transforming the collagen in meats into tasty and mouth-feely gelatin. Stick any food over coals long enough and it will adopt a smoky flavor. We have come to cherish that flavor while enjoying succulent, fall-of-the-bone ribs.
But what about food that can not or should not be smoked? What about preparations which are much easier or better done in a non-coal-involving way? Adding a smoky tinge to those might not always be a bad idea – and that’s where liquid smoke comes into play. One of my favorite menu items is a modern take on an old, 1840s, chili recipe. While, back then, the meat was grilled and smoked for hours, today’s protein is tender enough to not need this step. Instead, after preparing a number of servings the “old” way, I use a drip of liquid smoke. Even the most discerning tasters did not notice a difference in flavor but complimented the softer texture of the meat in my second, liquid smoke, batch.
Facit: don’t use it to “fake” BBQ. Use it to enhance non-BBQ items.
Lard
This one’s a real turner. Tell someone to use lard in a recipe and, nine times out of ten, questions will be asked along the lines of “can I use X instead”. My answer, usually, sounds a lot like a grunted “if you want it to be less healthy, sure”.
Lard is a victim of its own success. Widely used in Europe and the United States until the advent of Margarines and processed cooking oils, it became the number one enemy of those products. Building from its already wobbly image as a “poor man’s butter”, lard was targeted by advertisement campaigns and industry-sponsored medical research, decrying it as “the stuff that comes from unhealthy pig bellies”.
Today, of course, the truth is more widely known. Unlike margarines, lard contains no trans fats, and much less saturated fats than butter or industrial cooking oils. In the face of the dangers of hydrogenated vegetable oils, substances once hailed as the savior who would deliver us from the evils of unhealthy animal fats, lard sports a lower cholesterol count and gives more oomph per ounce than butter or shortening (most of which is hydrogenated) in baking and cooking recipes.
Unless religious reasons prohibit the use of pork based products, I’ll always try to use lard before reaching for the much less healthy margarine variant.
Frozen or Canned Vegetables and Fruit
Luckily this one is much less of an issue today than it used to be a mere five years ago. Fueled by Alice Waters’ scary claims about the unhealthy properties of canned vegetables, many “foodies” argued for the exclusive use of freshly harvested produce. Which, all other things aside, is still the best way to make tasty and healthy food.
Fact is, however, that most vegetables and many fruits begin to deteriorate the very second they are harvested. Tomatoes, once removed from the vine, rapidly lose taste and nutrients, leading to the tasteless, watery, versions sold at supermarkets everywhere. As a rule of thumb, I use fresh vegetables and fruits when the time between harvest and use is less than two days. For tomatoes I tighten this rule to a blanket “my garden or a can”.
Canned tomatoes and flash frozen cherries, to name two daily ingredients in my kitchen, allow me to use fresh and still nutritious ingredients outside of the product’s season. Many great Italian cookeries in parts of Sicily and southern Italy, close every year for one week at the height of tomato season in late July to make as much tomato sauce as can be made and preserve it for the months to come. Stored airtight in cellars around the country, there’s not one good restaurant that would sink so low as to use off-season tomatoes over those “canned” pomodori.
Using off-season produce or even long-haul fruits and vegetables in season is almost never a good idea. Modern canning and flash-freeze technology gives us the tasty and nutritious version all year long, so there’s nothing bad, and a lot of good, about using canned goods when the ingredient you are looking for isn’t hanging of a tree, bush, or vine in the garden right now.
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There are many things where substitutions or shortcuts just won’t do. Blender pesto will never be as good as the real deal, made in a mortar. Blender mayonnaise will never reach the creaminess and velvety texture of its hand-beaten variant. No amount of tenderizers, tools, oven contraptions, or beating will ever even come close to the fruits of the BBQ pit, and gels or gums don’t beat the gelatin in well-made sauces.
But the culinary arts move on. To many of his contemporaries, the things described by Escoffier, a man regarded today as the gold standard for old-school cooking, bordered on blasphemy. Canned sauces? Escoffier sold them by the truckload to buddying restaurateurs around London, Vienna, and Paris. Using tools formerly only used in carpentry or medicine? The Ritz employed a dough kneading machine built from the skeleton of an old grist mill. Today’s culinary blasphemy will be tomorrow’s old-school, while other great things, maligned by industries and persons with agendas and bank accounts to fill, will come back as cooks and chefs see the hype and hubris for what it is.
Don’t be afraid to butcher a sacred cow (little known fact, by the way, cows are not sacred, even in India :) every once in a while and try an approach no one else will. Sometimes, with a little luck and a lot of chuzpah, something cool and new might emerge.
Tour De Food
