Authors: Michael Ruhlman
Ruhlman's Twenty (44 page)
2 celery stalks, cut into 1-inch/2.5-centimeter pieces
2 tablespoons tomato paste/purée
3 cups/720 milliliters Zinfandel or other fruit-heavy red wine
1 garlic head, halved horizontally
One 1-inch/2.5-centimeter piece of fresh ginger
2 bay leaves
1/3 cup/75 milliliters honey
1 teaspoon peppercorns, cracked beneath a sauté pan
1 tablespoon butter
1 pound/455 grams
mushrooms, seared
GREMOLATA
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon grated or minced lemon zest
In a Dutch oven or other heavy ovenproof pot, add enough oil to reach ¼ inch/6 millimeters up the sides and heat over high heat. Put some flour on a plate. Dredge the short ribs in the flour, shaking off the excess. When the oil is hot, add the ribs and brown on all sides. You may need to do this in batches; you don’t want to crowd the pan, or the ribs won’t brown. Remove the ribs to a plate lined with paper towels/absorbent paper. (This can be done a day before cooking the ribs; cover them and refrigerate until you’re ready to proceed.)
Preheat the oven to 250°F/120°C/gas ½.
Wipe the pot clean and sauté half of the onions in a film of oil over medium heat until softened. (Refrigerate the remaining onions until needed.) Add a four-finger pinch of salt and stir. Add the half of the carrots (refrigerate the remaining carrots until needed) and the celery and cook for about 4 minutes longer. The longer you cook the vegetables, the deeper the flavor of the sauce will be. For intensely deep flavor, cook until the carrots and onions are browned. Add the tomato paste/purée and cook to heat it.
Nestle the ribs in the pot. Add the wine (it should come three-fourths of the way up the ribs), garlic, ginger, and bay leaves. Season with a three-finger pinch of salt and add the honey and pepper-corns. Bring to a simmer, cover the pot with a
parchment round
or a lid set ajar, and slide into the oven. Cook the ribs for 4 hours.
Remove the pot from the oven and allow the ribs to cool, covered. When the ribs are cool enough to handle, put them on a plate, cover with plastic wrap/cling film, and refrigerate. Strain the cooking liquid into a tall vessel (a 4-cup/960-milliliter glass measuring cup is best), cover, and refrigerate. When the liquid has chilled, remove the congealed fat and discard.
Melt the butter in your braising pot. Add the reserved onions and carrots and sauté until softened, 3 to 4 minutes. Return the ribs to the pot and add the seared mushrooms. Add the reserved cooking liquid. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook over medium-low heat until the carrots are tender and the ribs are heated through, about 15 minutes.
MAKE THE GREMOLATA:
In a small bowl, stir the parsley, garlic, and lemon zest until evenly distributed.
Serve the short ribs with the carrots, onions, mushrooms, and sauce. Garnish with the gremolata.
WE USE THE POACH TECHNIQUE FOR ITS
gentleness and for its impact on the moistness of the finished dish. Fish or meat that might dry out or seize up in the high dry heat of a sauté pan or oven can remain tender and succulent when poached. Shrimp/prawns and lobster, which can become tough when cooked over high heat, emerge tender when cooked at poaching temperatures
(see Butter-Poached Shrimp).
When we use the term
poach,
we almost always refer to cooking something that’s already tender. I think it’s a meaningful distinction. You can poach a brisket in stock for hours and hours until it becomes tender, but I like to reserve the terms
braising
and
stewing
for this kind of long, slow, moist cooking meant to tenderize. With one exception, I will only use the term poach here, in basic techniques, as a method to cook tender foods or foods without abundant connective tissue: fish, tender meat and sausage, root vegetables, legumes/pulses, and eggs.
Also, when we use the term poach, we mean temperatures below simmering. Since there are few tender foods you want become hotter than 185°F/85°C, there’s no reason that poaching temperatures should be above that. Poaching is best accomplished between 160° and 180°F/71° and 82°C, below simmering. Water only begins to bubble at about 190°F/88°C.
The most commonly poached food is fish. Poaching is probably the easiest way to cook fish well for those less experienced with fish or cooking generally, especially thick, rich varieties such as salmon and halibut. I prefer poaching fish to sautéing it—sautéing or roasting fish at high heat tends to bring out the oils in fish that can make it taste “fishy.”
We also poach some delicate sausages, seafood, or chicken mousselines, for instance, to ensure that the fat stays bound within the food. Quenelles, mousselline dropped off a spoon, are always poached. Tender meat, such as beef tenderloin, can be
poached to good effect
. Boneless chicken breast can be poached, but that strikes me as something you’d need to make if you’re cooking for the infirm. Root vegetables are best poached, rather than boiled, so that their interior cooks before their exterior begins to disintegrate. Similarly, legumes, dried beans, are best cooked at poaching temperatures for the same reason, so that they don’t start falling apart before they’re cooked.
The temperature is the defining attribute of poaching, as it has a highly controlled and uniform impact on the food. The second attribute is the liquid itself. It can be water alone. It can be water flavored with aromatics, in effect, a quick vegetable stock—thus the French court bouillon, literally “short broth” or quick stock. This stock, a preparation most commonly used for fish, usually includes something acidic, such as vinegar, wine, or citrus. The poaching liquid also can be a traditional stock or any flavorful liquid, such as tomato water. However your liquid is flavored, so too will be your food. Water is very dense and so is an excellent transmitter of heat to the food. Salmon poached in 180°F/82°C water will cook twice as fast as salmon in a 175°F/80°C oven. Another advantage of water is that it retains heat well—when you get it to the right temperature, it stays there.
The other option for poaching liquid is fat. Halibut in olive oil or duck fat is heavenly. The richness of the oil that coats the fish when you serve it makes oil a superb poaching medium. You can poach duck legs in duck fat or pork belly in lard (or olive oil) to
make a confit
, my one exception to the only-poach-tender-meats rule. Confit is more a subtechnique of poach than of braise. Fat has the advantage over water of keeping more of the flavor in the food. Water pulls the flavor out of the food, but
oil doesn’t extract flavor as much. Yes, juices are squeezed out of the flesh as it cooks, but meat tends to retain more of its flavor when cooked in fat as opposed to water. The main thing you need to be careful about when you prepare a confit is oil temperature; oil can get much hotter than water, and if you let it get too hot, the meat can become tough and stringy, rather than meltingly tender.
A final category of poach is called shallow poach. Though used seldom at home, it is simple and is a great example of a technique that
creates its own sauce
.
Contrasting textures are an important part of composing any dish. Keep in mind that poached foods are always soft and delicate. Always try to serve something crunchy along with them, whether crackers, a toasted baguette, or a crunchy vegetable.
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4
Poaching salmon, or poaching most any fish, is an easy way to ensure perfect cooking. The gentle heat, the low temperature, and the fluid environment are a perfect match for the way that fish, delicate by composition, respond to heat. By deep poaching the salmon, you’re less likely to overcook it or dry it out. The fish that respond best to poaching are the fattier fish with tightly bound muscle fibers, the strong-swimming and meaty fish: salmon, halibut, pike, snapper, and grouper.
Salmon is commonly poached because it responds so well to the technique. Good salmon properly poached will become almost buttery in flavor and texture. Always flavor the poaching water, or court bouillon, to enhance the flavor of the fish. I like roughly a two-to-one ratio of water to wine if using wine, and a ten-to-one ratio of water to vinegar if using vinegar (though you can make the liquid even more acidic if you wish). Aromatics standard in stock are added to the liquid.
This method works with salmon of any size, such as two fillets or a whole side. Use a pan that just fits the salmon so that you use as little court bouillon as possible. You may need to double the bouillon, depending on the size of your salmon and the size of your pan. It’s best to portion the salmon before cooking so that all pieces cook evenly. I prefer to remove the skin beforehand, but you may find it easier to remove it after cooking. The following quantities should be enough for four pieces of salmon fit snugly in a pot. If you’re unsure how much to make, put your salmon in the pot and cover with cold water, then measure that quantity of water and make that much court bouillon.
I would serve the salmon with
Hollandaise
, a traditional sauce for salmon, or simply with a squeeze of lemon.
VINEGAR COURT BOUILLON
6 cups/1.4 liters water
1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
Small bunch fresh thyme (optional)
½ to ¾ cup/120 to 180 milliliters white wine vinegar or lemon juice
WINE COURT BOUILLON
4 cups/960 milliliters water
1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
Small bunch fresh thyme (optional)
2 cups/480 milliliters white wine
One 24-ounce/630-gram side of salmon, pin bones and skin removed
MAKE THE COURT BOUILLON:
Combine the water, onion, carrots, bay leaves, and thyme (if using) in a pan just large enough to contain the salmon. Bring the water to a simmer, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Raise the heat to high and add the vinegar or wine.
Bring the liquid to 180°F/82°C. Slide the salmon into the pan; it should be completely submerged in the liquid. Cook the salmon until medium-rare, an internal temperature of 135° to 140°F/57° to 60°C, about 10 minutes, depending on the salmon, or longer if you like it completely cooked through. Use a slotted spatula to remove the salmon from the court bouillon and serve.
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This is a fancier take on pot-au-feu, the French boiled beef dish, but what makes it special is the lemon vinaigrette, seasoned with garlic, cracked coriander seeds (it’s fine to leave some seeds whole, as they give an intriguing crunch and flavor burst), and the amazing umami ingredient, fish sauce. I began making a version of this in the early 1990s after reading a similar recipe in the
New York Times,
but I can’t seem to find it. I include the recipe because I like the nature of the poached beef, which we don’t normally think of poaching. It’s important to use fresh beef stock; anything else would ruin the elegant flavor and texture of the meat. The stock, which should be good to begin with, picks up the flavor of the beef and celery root and leeks to become an intensely flavorful broth served with the finished dish.
This is a wonderful winter dish. It calls for sliced tenderloin, but if you buy a whole tenderloin and trim it yourself, you’re left with abundant trim, irregular-shaped pieces that would work beautifully here.
VINAIGRETTE
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons finely minced garlic
2 teaspoons fish sauce
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons coriander seeds, toasted and lightly cracked
1 teaspoon butter or oil
2 fat leeks, trimmed, halved, thoroughly rinsed, and thinly sliced in 1-inch/2.5-centimeter pieces
Kosher salt
4 cups/960 milliliters fresh beef stock
2 carrots, sliced or cut on the diagonal
1 large potato, peeled and cut into large slices
1 celery root, cut into large batons (like big french fries)
Freshly ground black pepper
12 slices beef tenderloin, each about ½ inch/12 millimeters thick, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper (See the head note about using trim from a whole tenderloin; plan on 6 ounces/170 grams of meat per portion.)
1 tablespoon minced cilantro/fresh coriander
