I'm Just Here for the Food (23 page)

Fats for Sautés

You don’t need a lot, but you do need some. A thin coating of fat brings out flavors and promotes caramelization. The trick is in using the right fats at the right time. Highly flavorful oils like extra-virgin olive oil, sesame oil, and nut oils provide an additional layer of flavor, but they burn easily. So do your cooking in a neutral oil like safflower and finish with a flavorful oil, or blend the two before adding them to the pan in the first place.

When picking an oil, consider the ingredients you’re cooking. Asian ingredients will be complemented more by sesame oil than by olive oil, whereas foods with a Mediterranean slant will prefer the olive oil. French classics like green beans and shallots lean toward walnut oil. That’s just the way things work.

The Toss

The airborne food antics of many TV chefs are just that: antics. Your food doesn’t need “big air” to sauté properly, it only needs to move. Until you get the hang of it, concentrate on turning the food over itself by pushing the pan away from you, then snapping it gently back toward you. With a little practice you’ll be able to turn everything in the pan over in a second or two without removing the pan from the heat.

Try this: Combine 1 cup of dry black beans and 10 individual white beans in your sauté pan. Practice your toss and watch where the white beans go—can you gather them all together and then move them over every inch of the pan?

Building the Perfect Sauté

1. Prepare all foods to be cooked: cut them into uniform, bite-size pieces. (Aromatics should be chopped smaller so that they release more flavor.)

2. Add the cooking oil only after the pan is hot.

3. Add the aromatics (onion, celery, garlic, ginger, and so on) and toss for 30 seconds or until fragrant. (If finely cut, aromatics can be added later in the process.)

4. Add firm vegetables or meats and toss until half-cooked, then add quick-cooking or high-moisture ingredients like zucchini or tomato and toss for another 30 seconds to 1 minute.

5. Add final flavors such as citrus juice or vinegar. If vegetables are still too firm, cover to steam briefly.

6. Toss a final time with salt and pepper, taste, adjust seasoning if necessary, and turn out into a bowl or platter.

7. Top with grated cheese, toasted nuts, bread crumbs, or additional herbs.

THE STORY OF TEFLON

The year was 1938, and DuPont chemist Dr. Roy Plunkett was at work on the creation of a new type of Freon refrigerant. Plunkett plopped some down and left them in his lab overnight. The next day, he found that something had happened. The gas had somehow polymerized into a waxy, slippery substance, which with further testing proved to be almost utterly inert, chemically speaking. He called it Poly-tetra-fluoro-ethylene or Teflon® for short. Some guys out at Los Alamos caught wind of the blunder/discovery and decided to order up some of DuPont’s new goo. (Turns out they were working on something that required the containment of a uranium byproduct that’s highly corrosive—Teflon was the only material that would hold it.) Once its slipperiness became celebrated, Teflon was used to coat the nose cones of missiles carrying later generations of the Los Alamos spawn. Then, in the 1950s, a French fisherman came up with a method of applying Teflon to his fishing tackle, rendering it tangle-free. And when his wife got the idea of putting some on her pots and pans… well, the rest is non-stick history. Teflon is still considered the slickest solid on Earth.

Butter

It is the fat most commonly called for in sautéing.

Butter is a flavoring agent, and a little in the sauté pan can go a long way. Because of its low smoke point, using butter in combination with a high smoke point oil can prevent burning. Butter is made by churning cream until it reaches a semi-solid state. By United States law, butter must be at least 80 percent milk fat. The other 20 percent is made up of water and milk solids. Many high-end butters contain up to 88 percent milk fat. The USDA grades butter based on flavor, body, texture, color, and salt content. These grades are: AA (or 93), A (or 92), and B (or 90); AA- and A-grade butters are what are commonly found in the grocery store.

Unsalted butter
contains no salt. It’s also referred to as “sweet butter,” though it is not made with sweet cream (any butter made with sweet instead of sour cream is sweet butter). Since it has no salt, unsalted butter is more perishable than ordinary butter, which typically has a salt content of about 1.2 to 1.4 percent.

Whipped butter
has had air beaten into it, thus increasing its volume and making for a more spreadable consistency.
Clarified butter
, also known as drawn butter, is butter minus its milk solids. To clarify butter, melt it slowly, thereby evaporating most of its water and separating the milk solids (they sink to the bottom) from the golden liquid on top. Skim off the foam and pour off the clear or clarified butter. Because the milk solids have been removed, clarified butter has a higher smoke point and won’t go rancid as quickly as regular butter. The down side is that it loses some of its flavor along with the milk solids.

Traditionally,
buttermilk
was the liquid left after the butter was churned. Today, buttermilk is made by adding bacteria to low-fat or non-fat milk.

Margarine
is a manufactured product made with vegetable oils; it was developed in the late 1800s as a butter substitute. It contains trans fatty acids, which result when hydrogen is added to a fat so that it will be solid at room temperature. Recent studies have linked trans fatty acids to health problems, including heart disease.

BUTTER FACTS AND TIPS

•
Two cups of cold heavy cream will produce about 6 ounces of butter.

•
The color of butter is dependent upon the cow’s diet.

•
If mishandled, even top-grade butter will oxidize. The butterfat reacts with the oxygen either in the air or in the water inside the butter itself to create butyric acid, which leads to rancidity. But if the butter contains salt, it will not be able to oxidize as readily.

•
Check the expiration date on the package to make sure you’re buying fresh butter. The date is almost always 4 months from the date the butter was made.

•
Butter contains stearic acid, a substance known to be heart-friendly.

•
To cut butter without it sticking to the knife, chill the blade or wrap it in waxed paper.

Chicken in Garlic and Shallots

This dish is an interesting hybrid. At first glance it appears to be a braise, but because it’s cooked in fat, it’s technically a fry. But nothing about the fragrant and amazingly flavorful results suggest frying. The oil itself comes out as the best garlic-herb oil you’ve ever tasted—perfect for sautéing greens or making garlic bread. Then there are the garlic cloves and shallots: soft, sweet, spreadable—stir them into mashed potatoes and prepare to amaze your friends and frighten your enemies.

I have to say that this dish sums up everything I love about cooking—in fact it is my favorite dish of all time to cook because it is amazingly easy, requires only one pan, can be made with any chunks of chicken (though I prefer the thighs), and it makes the house smell the way I like to think the south of France smells.

Application: Slow-Frying

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Season chicken liberally with salt and pepper. Toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil and brown on both sides in wide frying pan or skillet over high heat. Remove from heat, add garlic, shallots, herbs, and remainder of the olive oil (there’s no reason to chop the herbs, just distribute them around and in between the chicken chunks). Cover and bake for 1½ hours.

Yield: 6 servings

Software:

1 whole chicken (broiler/fryer)
cut into 8 pieces or 10 chicken
thighs
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
10 peeled cloves of garlic
10 shallots, peeled and split in half
from stem to root
Several sprigs parsley, sage, and
thyme (sorry, rosemary would
put it over the edge)

Hardware:

Large ovenproof sauté pan with
tight fitting lid (Straight sides are
needed. If you don’t have such a
pan you may need to brown the
chicken in one pan then finish the
dish in a casserole.)
Tongs for handling meat

Carrots and Zucchini with Garlic and Ginger

Application: Sautéing

Heat the sauté pan and, when hot, add the oil. Add the garlic and ginger to the pan and toss for 30 seconds. Add the carrots and toss until they are half-cooked, about 2 minutes. Add the zucchini and toss for 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Add the mint and the vinegar; if carrots are still too firm, cover and steam briefly. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss, and turn out onto a serving platter. Top with the sesame seeds.

Yield: 4 side servings

Software:

1 tablespoon peanut or safflower oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
2 large carrots, cut into 2-inch sticks
1 large zucchini (unpeeled), cut
into 2-inch sticks
1 tablespoon mint, cut into fine
chiffonade
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons sesame seeds, toasted
in a dry pan over high heat until
you just begin to smell them

Hardware:

Sauté pan

GARLIC

Garlic wasn’t grown commercially in the United States until World War I, when some farmers in California started doing so in response to a government call for garlic to ship to troops overseas for use as an antiseptic. By 1920, Gilroy, California, in the San Joaquin Valley, established itself as the nation’s garlic capital. Today, more than 1 million pounds of garlic are processed there each day, and the town is the proud host of an annual three-day garlic festival that regularly attracts more than 100,000 people. An old folk saying goes “Shallots are for babies, onions are for men, garlic is for heroes.”

Scampi V2.0

Application: Sautéing

Chop the garlic together with the parsley until it almost reaches a paste-like consistency. (When salt is added, the French—yes, them again—call this mixture
persillade
.)

Heat the sauté pan and, when hot, add the oil. Add the shrimp and toss. When halfway cooked, about 1½ minutes, add the tomatoes and toss for 30 seconds to 1 minute more. Add the garlic and parsley mixture, the salt, pepper, butter, and lemon juice and toss one last time. Turn out onto a plate and serve.

Yield: 2 servings

Software:

2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons finely chopped
parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound jumbo shrimp (headless)
2 ripe Roma tomatoes, seeded and
diced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon butter
Juice of half a lemon

Hardware:

Sauté pan

Believe it or not, you can substitute firm tofu (of all things) in this application. I’m told that crickets do well, too, although I haven’t tried them.

Hot Melon Salad

I also prepare this using a roasting pan on the grill. You really want to work with as much surface area as possible.