Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Quick post.

Just a quick update since it's 1 am and I have a large amount of Math and English to be working on...

To all my readers..you know, all...what, 3 of you? Perhaps you noticed I changed the name of my blog. Culinary Journeys of a Midwestern Foodie just didn't quite mesh right. I'm not a true midwestern(I'm a damn nomad), I don't know that I'm necessarily a foodie per say...I'm not a food snob. I'm not dining out, critiquing a different fine dining restaurant every night of my life,...though I might on occasion. I want to call this blog a food blog, but at the same time I don't, because some entries aren't solely focused on food(although most will involve food in some way). Some are merely mind vomit that has ended up in cyber space. Really, it's a record of my passions. I have many. Cooking, writing, photography, the combination of the 3, family, friends, art(especially when presented on a plate), music. So, right now, I'm just doing what I love. I know it lacks structure. It's unorganized. Sometimes it doesn't make much sense. But that's my life.
Read at your own will.

Other than that, I am working on a couple more entries that are soon to come(maybe in the next week, we'll see how my schedule works out). One about my consommé that I made in Soup/Sauces this past Tuesday(that had the flavor profile comparative to watery chicken juice), and the other I throw in some good ol' nostalgia.

Tonight I had food styling...got a few good shots of the drinks we made. I'm happy to share. It was a fun time til the weather turned nasty.




Monday, December 13, 2010

Le Fond

The new quarter has started. I’m 2 weeks in but still don’t feel like I’m in it full swing. For some reason I’ve been dealing with a lack of motivation. I’ll blame it on the depression I’m feeling from the holidays. (Bahumbug). I’m taking Soup and Sauce Cookery, Oral and Written Reports, Culinary Math, and Food Styling. 14 credits, 18 classroom hours. I’m sure I can narrow my two favorite classes down to Soup/Sauce and Food Styling. To me, doing any form of Math is equivalent to gauging my eyes out with a ball point pen. Oral and Written Reports is all research and presentation, but at least it’s geared toward something I have an interest in.

My first night of Soup and Sauce didn’t contain near the amount of excitement that my first foundation’s class did. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because everything was so new and there was a lot of nervousness. The first lesson in foundations was on egg cookery. I already wrote about it once, but how excited can one be about an egg? I ask this because I know all of you are thinking it. Really, though, an egg is very exciting. In fact, in the culinary world, it is thought about with almost a religious-like devotion. From the beauty of its design, to its many functions from binding to leavening to coloring, to its ability to be delicious solely on its own (poached, shirred, over easy, sunny-side up, boiled, scrambled) to be paired with other things and become even more heavenly. The egg even sauces itself. And makes other sauces when combined with cream and butter and whisked into oblivion (hollandaise). I assume you’ve gotten my point by now. Onto Soup and Sauces.
We learned THE, if not one of THE, most important elements to the foundation of a great culinary education.

Making a great stock.

Why must a stock be great, you ask? Because it is the base to everything else in a kitchen. Great stock gives the potential for a great end result. If you start with something less than great, as with anything in life, generally its potential decreases from there on. There is reason for the French’s reference to stock as “le fond” meaning “the foundation.
The steps to creating a great stock are fairly simple: low heat and great, fresh ingredients. There are 5 types of stocks: chicken, beef, fish, vegetable, and the most versatile of all: veal. From Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking: “ Stocks are a distillation of flavor, an extraction by water of the ingredients. If those ingredients are old, or if they are pale and weak, those qualities will be reflected in the quality of your stock. Ask yourself: Do these ingredients look good, would they be tasty if I were to cook and eat them as they are? If so, they are suitable for stock."

Onto heat. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of low heat. The stock must NEVER boil. In fact, it should almost not even simmer. Let’s say just barely simmering. The temperature should range from 170-180 degrees, but never more than that. When a stock boils, the bubbles stir up the impurities and fat resulting in a cloudy looking and tasting liquid. Cooking too high will also overcook the vegetable causing them to soak up your precious liquid.
You should begin by cooking the bones first to enrich the flavor. You would blanche them for a white sauce or roast them for a brown. Follow up by pouring cold water over the bones and allow the temperature to rise gradually. Once reaching ideal temperature, strain for impurities.
Cooking times for stock will vary. 1-4 hours for chicken, 4-6 for beef, an hour for vegetable, less than an hour for fish, and 8-12 for veal. Once reaching doneness, the liquid should be passed through a strainer or chinois, then through cheesecloth to remove as many particles as possible. After the stock has cooled, the fat should rise to the top to be removed easily. Once reaching room temperature, you can transfer it to the fridge. The stock can be used for up to 4 days in the fridge and frozen for later uses.

I don’t know if anyone reading this was hoping to get a lesson in making stock, but it couldn’t hurt. In my opinion, it makes the world a better place.

Classic Veal Stock

7 pounds veal or beef bones, cut into 2 or 3-inch pieces
1 can best quality tomato paste
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped carrot
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup red wine or water, for deglazing
Small handful peppercorn
4 bay leaves
3 sprigs thyme
Cold water

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, F.

Spread bones in a roasting pan and roast for about 30 minutes, turning once. Remove from the oven, and paint a thin layer of tomato paste over the bones. Put the vegetables on top of the bones, and roast an additional 15-20 minutes, until the vegetables begin to caramelize.

Remove the bones and vegetables to a stock pot. Deglaze the roasting pan with wine or water, and pour this into the stock pot. Add peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme. Cover the bones with cold water.

Over medium heat, slowly bring the bones up to a very gentle simmer. Don’t let the stock boil. Adjust the temperature to maintain a gentle bubbling. Every thirty minutes or so, skim off any foam that rises to the top of the pot.

Let the stock simmer gently for at least four hours. If you have the time, it can simmer for up to 12 hours. Add a little more water and lower the heat if you are getting too much evaporation.

When the stock is done, remove the bones and discard. Strain through a very fine mesh strainer or through a colander lined with three or four layers of cheesecloth. Chill quickly, then refrigerate. Skim off the fat from that has solidified on top, and discard.

Monday, December 6, 2010

So, you want to hear about Tennessee?

Going back “home” as people like to say…it’s a weird thing for me. I’m not quite sure where my home is. I didn’t grow up in one place with one solidified family. I’m not sad about that fact….I’ve just begun to think about it from an objective perspective since I’ve gotten older.
I’ve been “homesick” few times in my life. Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? Where things just don’t feel quite right in your gut and nothing you do can make it better. Nothing. Unless that something is to pack your bags and head right back where you came from. For me, I would get homesick for certain smells. They say that smell is the strongest sense when it comes to memory. I would go on month long road trips with my father in the summer(he was a truck driver), and I always handled it well. Never really got homesick. But once arriving home, walking through the door of my mother’s house, a comfort would surround me. At that time in my life, I would usually come home to some kind of a soup on the stove. Onion, garlic, and other various aromatics sprinkling the air. (As my Aunt Terry would say, “Your mother, I swear that woman could make a soup outta rocks!!”) She’d greet me with a hug. She usually smelled of a combination of Estee Lauder’s White Linen, Virginia Slims, and hard farm work.
My father on the other hand, I never really got “ homesick” for. He wasn’t around much when I was younger. I would see him for a bit probably on average about every 3 months. He would send cards and call often and every meeting was a joyous occasion. It had to be. There were so few, I certainly would hope they wouldn’t be bad ones. I remember mom dressing me up in my best dresses. There were bows in my hair, and bells and lace on my socks. My shoes shined. I would pace back and forth struggling to contain my excitement, driving my mother up a wall, making her regret even telling me he was coming. I’d sit at the French doors of the back porch. Nose and hands stuck to the glass, condensation from my breath fogging the rectangular windows. And then I’d spot him. He was rather hard to miss, really. A great big green Peterbuilt truck parked across the street at the Shell Station. And I had the same reaction every single time. I’d leap to my feet, wrench open the front door, and run as fast as my 3,4,5,6,7,8 year old legs could transport me. I was pelting towards him while he walked his typical carefree gait. A 6 foot 2 inch broad shouldered man wearing a Kansas Jayhawks cap and a big smile, with arms wide open. He smelled just like his cards that came in the mail. Clean, aftershave, coffee grounds.
Now as a grown woman (and it’s still hard for me to write that….me? a woman?), I still remember those smells and how they made me feel. They can transport me back to a world where my biggest worry and concern was where my favorite stuffed dog, Peanut, had disappeared to. When going back to Tennessee in November, I was slapped in the face with those smells. And let me tell you, it had been a LONG time. It had gradually started to sink in on the 14 hour drive down. The grassy plains rescinded into rolling hills, rolling his transformed into highways carved through mountains. The air became heavy, damp, and cold. It was fall on the edge of winter in the South.
My car hugged the outrageously curvy roads with much success surprisingly, and they seemed to grow more twisted the closer I got to my mother’s house. Finally I pulled in at the very top of the ½ mile long driveway. A rusted gate overgrown with grass was pulled off to the side. A large portion of open pasture was interrupted about halfway down by an elegant red barn on the left, and another random outbuilding on the right. The driveway was washed out like a riverbed and had a steep slope leading to what used to be remnants of a thriving garden on the right, Up the hill a little ways was the log house. What used to be considered my “home”. A structure built from a family’s 2 log cabins from over 200 years ago, torn down to make 1 big, fairly modern one. It sat there staring at me, almost completely choked in green ivy. Stoic, it reminded me of something beautiful in its sadness, a picture out of “The Secret Garden”.
I could go on and on and paint you picture by picture with words and descriptions of smells and sights, but none of it would encompass the feeling I felt when stepping over the threshold of the back door into my mother’s kitchen and similarly a couple more steps into her arms. Years later, the same smells remained. The house and land had undergone some major wear and tear, but it was all still the same. Unfortunately, though the house seemed to still hold its noble ground, my poor mother seemed quite simply, exactly what she was. Older. More tired. More sadness. More pain. I won’t go into it any more than that. Describing the house is much easier to do.
One of my fondest memories of the trip was cooking dinner for her, my brother, and his wife. We had just had a lab on braising the day before I executed the drive so, I was determined to practice my learned skills. I have to say, braising might be my favorite of all the cooking methods. It’s humble. It doesn’t ask for much more than a little love and a lot of time. You don’t have to be pretentious and buy the most expensive piece of meat off the cow. Tough, inexpensive cuts from the shoulder, breast or lower chest, or hind sections. These sections of the cow work much harder than the middle sections and are therefore much more exercised with stronger connective tissue. By cooking them slow and low in a flavorful liquid, the muscles and fibers are tenderized resulting in an exquisitely elegant piece of meat.
The braising liquid is very important. Veal stock is ideal. I realize this is difficult to come by in some cases…if you don’t have the bones or time to make you own, you might be able to purchase it at your local butcher’s shop. Otherwise, try to make a beef stock…but if you’re unable to do that, I suppose the only option is to buy commercial beef stock off the shelf of a grocery store. If you do this however, be expectant that the great potential of your end result will be stifled. The 2nd important liquid is a good red wine, preferably a burgundy. Once again, better the wine, better the end result. It’s a personal choice.
Here is the recipe from my class Copyrights Chef Timothy O’Donnell:
RIBS:
6 pounds beef short ribs, cut 2" thick,
trimmed to include one bone each
to taste salt
to taste pepper
3 each onions, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 each leeks, white and pale green
parts only, roughly chopped
1 each carrot, peeled and roughly
chopped
2 each plum tomatoes, roughly
chopped
6 cloves garlic, smashed
6 sprigs thyme
8 sprigs parsley
3 each bay leaves
1 ½ cups red wine
3 cups veal stock, hot

GREMOLATA:
¼ cups parsley, chopped
½ each lemon, zested and minced
1 clove garlic minced

1. Season ribs generously with salt
and pepper and refrigerate 4 to 6
hours, or overnight.
2. Arrange ribs bone-side down in
roasting pan and roast at 475
degrees until lightly browned, about
20 minutes. Meanwhile, saute onions
in olive oil in large skillet over medium
heat until lightly colored, 6 to 7
minutes. Add leeks and carrot and
cook until slightly softened, 3 to 4
minutes. Add tomatoes, garlic, thyme,
parsley and bay leaves and saute 2
minutes more.
3. Spread vegetables in roasting pan
large enough to hold ribs.
Arrange ribs on top of vegetables,
bone-side up. Add wine and enough
hot stock to barely cover ribs. Cover
pan tightly with foil and place in oven.
When braise begins to simmer, after
about 20 minutes, loosen foil and
reduce heat to 350 degrees.
4. Begin to test for doneness after 1
1/2 hours. A skewer or paring
knife inserted into meat should
encounter no resistance, and meat
should be nearly falling from bone.
When they are tender, uncover ribs and
turn them again so that bone side is
down. Pour off and reserve braising
juices. Raise heat to 450 degrees and
return ribs to oven for a final
browning.
5. When they are beautifully glazed,
after about 10 minutes, remove
from oven. Strain braising liquid into
bowl, pressing down on solids to
extract juices. Allow liquid to settle,
then spoon out grease. Pour liquid
back over ribs and reheat if serving
immediately, or cool, refrigerate and
serve next day with Gremolata.
6. Gremolata: Just before serving,
mix parsley, zest and garlic and
scatter over short ribs. (These
ingredients should be prepared at the
last minute.)

I served these with vichy carrots, celery root puree, and steamed asparagus.