I'm Just Here for the Food (17 page)

Application: Roasting

Preheat oven to 350° F.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs together. Using your hands, combine the rest of the ingredients and blend together. Now is the time to taste your food so you can adjust the seasonings if necessary. So, heat up a small pan and make a tiny patty of the mixture and cook it. If it tastes good, put the uncooked meat mixture into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan and bake on a rack over a sheet pan. (If the cooked patty doesn’t taste good, adjust the seasonings, cook, and taste again). Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Once out of the oven allow the meatloaf to rest in the pan on a rack for an additional 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the meatloaf from the pan and discard the rendered fat. Think about your mom, slice and serve.

Yield: 1 to 8 servings, depending on how hungry you are

Note:
I always sweat the onions before adding them to a mixture such as this—the taste will be sweeter. To sweat onion (or any aromatic vegetable), heat a small amount of fat (oil or butter) in a small sauté pan. Add the diced onion and stir to coat with the oil, cover, and cook slowly over low heat until transparent but not browned.

Software:

2 large eggs
2 pounds ground beef chuck
1½ cups diced onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 slices white sandwich bread, diced
3 tablespoons ketchup
½ teaspoon paprika
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black
pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Hardware:

Large mixing bowl
Small sauté pan
Loaf pan
Rack
Sheet pan

Roasted Beet and Broccoli Slaw

Roasting has the uncanny ability to highlight complex flavors that are often washed away by wet cooking methods. The intense flavor of the beets in this slaw is always a surprise and delight.

Application: Roasting

Preheat the oven to 425° F. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil and roast for about 1½ hours, until they are tender but still firm when pierced with a paring knife. When the beets are cool enough to handle, peel with a paring knife and shred through the large holes of a box grater. Shred the broccoli stems. In a mixing bowl, stir together the oil, vinegar, and sugar. Season the vinaigrette with salt and white pepper. Add the beets, broccoli stems, and onions and toss with the vinaigrette; place in the refrigerator to marinate for at least 1 hour, or preferably overnight.

Yield: 4 side servings

Software:

2 large yellow beets (red beets are
fine, but the whole slaw will be
a deep red)
2 stems from broccoli, peeled (eat
the florets some other time)
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
Kosher salt
Freshly ground white pepper
½ cup red onions, sliced thinly

Hardware:

Aluminum foil
Paring knife
Box grater
Mixing bowl

Beets are one of my favorite foods--roasted, boiled, pickled--there’s no way I won’t eat beets.

Slow-Roast Tomatoes

Roasting doesn’t have to be performed at high temperatures. In fact you’re only limited by how low your oven will go.

Ever wondered what to do with a bounty of summer tomatoes? These homemade “sun-dried” tomatoes beat anything you could buy. Try them warm right out of the oven on toasted country bread with basil and extra extra-virgin olive oil. Add them to salads, soups, risotto, pizza or yes—spaghetti sauce. Bagged and tagged, they’ll keep a month in the refrigerator, or you can freeze them for a century or two.

Application: Roasting

Preheat the oven to 170° F (or the lowest temperature setting on your oven).

Place tomato halves closely together, cut side up, on 2 half sheet pans. Drizzle the tomatoes with the oil, and then sprinkle the sugar over the tops, followed by the herb mixture, and finish with the salt and pepper.

Roast in the oven for a minimum of 10 hours. (Start right after dinner and leave the tomatoes in the oven overnight. When your alarm clock goes off the next morning, you’ll think you’re in Provence.)

Yield: 40 tomatoes

Software:

20 ripe tomatoes, halved crosswise
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons mixed fresh herbs
including thyme, rosemary, and
sage, minced
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black
pepper (a coarse grind is best)

Hardware:

2 half sheet pans with racks if
possible. (I haven’t been able
to find racks that I like for my
half sheet pans so I bought
a heavy-duty full sheet pan
model at my favorite restaurant
supply shop and cut the
thing in half with a hack saw.)

Roasted Tomato Soup

Application: Roasting

During the last 20 minutes of cooking the tomatoes, begin preparing the rest of the ingredients for the soup. Put the olive oil into a 6-quart stockpot and set over medium heat. When it starts to ripple, add the bell pepper, onions, garlic and a heavy pinch of salt and gently sauté until the peppers and onions are tender, approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes, chicken broth, and balsamic vinegar, then boost the heat and bring to a boil. Then back off the heat and hold a low simmer for 20 minutes. If you have a food mill, gently ladle in the soup and mill away to remove the skins. Otherwise, hit it with your stick blender and be prepared to floss.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Software:

1 recipe AB’s
Slow-Roast Tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, seeded
and chopped fine
1 cup onion, chopped fine
3 large cloves garlic, minced
2 cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Hardware:

Cutting board
Chef’s knife
6-quart stockpot
Food mill or stick blender

Turkey and Fig Breakfast Meatloaf

Application: Roasting

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Boil the grape juice in a small saucepan until it’s reduced to 2 tablespoons. Remove and cool slightly.

In a mixing bowl, combine the turkey, breadcrumbs, figs, salt, pepper, thyme, nutmeg, and ginger. Stir in the grape juice reduction. Halve the mixture and shape into two 6 x 2-inch loaves. Place the loaves on a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Bake until the internal temperature hits 155° F, approximately 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and rest 15 minutes before carving.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Software:

½ cup white grape juice
1 pound ground turkey
⅓ cup dried breadcrumbs
2 ounces dried figs, chopped fine,
approximately ½ cup
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground
black pepper
¼ teaspoon dried thyme,
crushed by hand
⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground ginger

Hardware:

1-quart saucepan
Cutting board
Chef’s knife
Digital kitchen scale
Large mixing bowl
Parchment paper
Half sheet pan

Darned good at breakfast.

CHAPTER 4

Frying

Americans adore fried foods and yet we’re willing to entrust the process to tenth graders wearing polyester smocks and funny hats...strange.

I Fry

YOU:
What the heck’s so great about frying?

ME :
Remember the mean Terminator in
Terminator 2
?

YOU:
The guy that was made out of that liquid metal stuff?

ME:
Imagine having a pan made out of that stuff. That’s what frying’s like.

YOU:
How’s that?

ME :
Because you fry in fat, and fat’s dry.

YOU:
But it’s a liquid.

M E:
Just because it’s a liquid doesn’t mean it’s wet. Mercury’s a liquid.

YOU:
Well, it doesn’t matter. Fried food’s greasy.

ME:
Not if you do it right.

Fat is one of the three substances that act as both ingredient and cooking medium, and yet it brings something to the party that neither of the others can. Sure water can add flavor to simmered foods (especially to foods that must be hydrated, such as pasta and rice) and air can also carry flavor in the form of that wondrous vapor, smoke. But in both of these instances additives are required. Frying adds flavor simply through the interaction of the fat with the target food.

Fact:
American home cooks have turned their backs on frying. They say that it’s unhealthy—that it will make them fat and plug their hearts and give them cancer and God knows what else.

Fact:
American per capita consumption of frozen potato products is thirty pounds a year, almost all in the form of fast-food fries. This of course doesn’t include all those orders of fried calamari—and hush puppies and fried fish planks down at Admiral D’s. Obviously, something’s going on here.

In practical terms, here’s how my fry world breaks down.

Pan-Frying
uses enough oil to come one-third to halfway up the side of the food. Unlike sautéing, the food is not moved around during cooking. Unlike deep-frying, the food is not immersed in the cooking medium. Pan-frying is most commonly the first step of a hybrid cooking method, and is followed by pan-braising. In this method the food is dredged, fried in very little fat until a crust forms, then liquid is added and the pan is covered. The food finishes cooking via stewing, and the flour that hasn’t already gelled into a crust becomes available for thickening the liquid into a sauce.

Immersion-Frying (a.k.a. Deep-Fat Frying)
: food is completely immersed in the medium. Unless the food is very high in both water content and starch content (such as potatoes or sweet potatoes), the food needs to be protected from the intense heat and turbulence by either a batter or dredge.

Sautéing:
in sautéing, there is barely enough oil to cover the bottom of a wide, shallow, heavy and hot pan. The target foods are ideally small and uniformly cut. (A sauté is often erroneously called a stir-fry, which is actually performed at even higher temperatures and is not included here because most of us can’t consistently produce that much heat at home.)

Pan- and Immersion-Frying

What makes pan-frying different from immersion-frying? For one thing the food is touching the pan bottom as well as the fat. This provides for darker browning and thus a more intense flavor. Also, the food is not immersed; that is, one half of the food is always exposed to the air. This is especially important when the food first enters the pan and the top side is raw. Unlike with foods that are immersed, heat is pushing into pan-fried food from one side only. (See illustration, above.)

Pan-fry: oil comes ⅓ to ½ up side of food. Food still has contact with bottom of pan.