Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Best Brussels Sprouts. Ever.

I refer to these as the "Brussels sprouts for people who hate Brussels sprouts."  Sweet and sour.  Smoky and funky, with a punch of umami if you choose to add the fish sauce.  This is a great basic preparation that lends itself to endless improvisation, (add shallots, chiles, apples...)

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
Serves 4 as a side dish



1          pound                        Brussels sprouts, halved
                                             Kosher salt
3          tablespoons               butter
1          tablespoons               apple cider vinegar
3          tablespoons               maple syrup
1          tablespoon                fish sauce (optional)
8-10    slices                         crisped bacon, crumbled
                                             freshly ground pepper      
                            


Bring 3-quarts of salted water to a boil; blanch the Brussels sprouts for about 2 minutes in the boiling water; drain and shock in cold water.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium-high heat; add blanched Brussels sprouts and cook, stirring frequently until the spouts begin to brown, (about 5 minutes).  Deglaze the pan with the vinegar and reduce until almost gone; add maple syrup and fish sauce and reduce, stirring frequently, until the syrup has thickened and coats the Brussels sprouts. 


Just before serving add the remaining butter, and crisped bacon.  Adjust seasoning with salt, pepper and any additional vinegar or maple syrup.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

All I want for Christmas is...


Many years ago I was asked to contribute to an article regarding what chefs prepare for the families/eat for Christmas.  I’m sure that at the time, I composed some God-awful list of “fancy” and “gourmet” foodstuffs that I would be embarrassed to publish now. [Give me a few days to dig and I will start the holiday season shame spiral myself by putting it online]



Years later I realized that my Christmas family meal was the one shared with my team members; a group of people from greatly varying social, economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds all brought together by the common bond of food.
Now I have come to reckon that all of my food wishes for the holidays were forged in the crucible of central New York: I always associate Christmas Eve with Italian food [Feast of the Seven Fishes}; December, 24 remains one of the only days of the calendar that I intentionally cook a menu with an Italian focus.
Christmas…definitively shaped by my two grandmothers: one who cooked from a straight-up Victorian English cookbook, and the other who was Southern and cooked from the 1950’s and 1960’s standard repertoire of American cuisine.  So what do I cook now?
Appetizers:
You really can’t go wrong with shrimp cocktail, (I have a major soft spot for the kind with little salad shrimp tossed with cocktail sauce and served on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce), cheese, vegetables and dips, fruit, relish trays, olives, pickles, salads…cold/finger foods work the best because they can be done ahead of time, no additional cooking is required when guests are in house and everyone can help themselves.
Main Course
I am a big fan of the roast beast: ham, goose, venison, beef, turkey…again, items that can be seasoned and cooked  ahead of time with little to no extra work needed except for carving the meat to serve it.
Side Dishes
While this is where I take the most liberties with tradition, I still refrain from straying too far from tradition.  [The tradition I keep referencing is my/my family’s tradition, and not some worldly ideal]
My memories are of a dinner table brimming with family favorites and seasonal bounty from the local store, (creamed pearl onions, anyone?)  I really like to keep it simple here too: roasted root vegetables, caramelized Brussels sprouts with maple syrup and bacon, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, pureed celery root, or sweet potato souffle.  All prepared ahead of time and bunged in the oven to cook or reheat for Christmas dinner.
Desserts
I will forever associate cheesecake with the holidays, (my grandmother’s recipe made too much batter for “her cheesecake pan” and she subsequently would bake the extra batter in a small loaf pan…which became MY cheesecake).  I also love eggnog…so I have started making an eggnog flavored cheesecake as of late…
This year I am serving warm gingerbread with whipped cream, (thick ginger cake…not gingerbread cookies), no-bake eggnog cheesecake with graham cracker streusel, and dark chocolate mousse with candy cane crunch at the hotel.  
As I wrote this I realized the irony: for a chef who proclaims to “hate repeating dishes” I sure do cook the same thing year in, and year out for holiday meals.  I really do feel that tradition is more important than innovation when bringing family together; that is not to say that you can’t put interesting wrinkles into tried and true favorites, (candied ginger-cranberry sauce).  
My only advice is to make simple and delicious food, taste and season/re-season your food as you go, and enjoy the time spent with friends and family.

Have a cool Yule...log!



In honor of the ancient festivities known as "Yule"...which begin on the Winter Solstice to celebrate the return of increasing daylight, and interestingly lasts for twelve days...

When asked for a holiday dessert that is really unique to Christmas, I really had to search the old memory banks for something kind of distinctive.  Then it came to me while contemplating the accent over the e in “bête”: “Bûche de Noël”…or kindly translated to English, a Yule Log!
 
As I rifled through old papers to find my recipe, I recalled the fact that this was, in fact, the first “complicated” pastry I ever made, (as a project for my seventh grade French class).  As I reviewed Mm. Agati’s recipe sheet, I stumbled upon the history of the “Yule log”:


“In pre-Christian Scandinavia, large bonfires were burned during the Jul (Yule) festivities, which honored the God Thor and celebrated the winter solstice.  As Christmas replaced Yule celebrations, the yule log no longer carried religious significance, but it still carried the traditions and superstitions associated with it.

In France, the log was to be cut only by the male members of the family, and was never cut or supplied by someone outside of the household.  Much pomp and circumstance surrounded the lighting of the Yule log, including singing and the pouring of wine over the log before it was lit.  Once lit, the log was used to cook Christmas Eve supper.  Ashes from the burned log were believed to have special powers, ranging from healing, to promoting crop growth, to increased fertility!

When, in time, fireplaces and logs became scarce in larger French cities, the practice of baking log shaped cakes was begun, to allow those without a fireplace to carry on the tradition.”

While this hasn’t been a tradition in my house in some years, I hope that it may be included in your family’s Yule celebrations this year.


Yule Log
(Bûche de Noël)
Yield:    1 Yule Log

SPONGE:

1        EA    egg white
5        OZ./ almond paste
6        EA    eggs, separated
5        OZ/  granulated sugar
½       tsp.    vanilla extract
2        OZ/  cake flour
1 ½    OZ/  unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted with the flour

FROSTING:

4        OZ    sweet butter, at room temperature

4        OZ    plain or butter flavored Crisco
8        OZ    confectionary sugar
8-10   OZ    sweet dark chocolate, melted, and warm to the touch

FOR DECORATION:

Marzipan holly berries and leaves (optional)

Melted sweet, dark chocolate (optional)
Confectioner’s sugar



1). Pre-heat oven to 425°F.  2). Gradually mix the egg white into the almond paste to soften it.  3). Whip the egg yolks with 1/3 of the sugar until thick and ribbony.  Add the vanilla.  Very slowly, add the egg yolk mixture to the almond paste; if you add it too fast you will get lumps.  4). Whip the egg whites until foamy and gradually add the remaining sugar.  Whip the whites to stiff peaks.  5). Sift the flour and cocoa together.  Carefully fold the egg whites into the egg yolks.  Fold in the dry ingredients.  6). Immediately spread the batter onto a baking paper-lined 9”x11” jellyroll pan, taking care not to “overwork” the batter.  7). Place the sponge in the pre-heated oven and bake for 8 minutes, or until the cake springs back in the middle when lightly pressed.  Dust a piece of baking paper with flour and invert the cooked sponge on top, (this prevents the sponge from overcooking and becoming dry).  Let cool.  8). While the sponge is cooling, place the butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and whip with an electric mixer until combined and there are no visible lumps.  Gradually add the sugar and continue whipping until the frosting is light and fluffy, (it will double in volume and become very white).  Place 1/3 of the buttercream in a separate bowl, and quickly mix in the melted chocolate.  Still working quickly, add this back into the remaining buttercream.  9). Once the sponge is cooled and the frosting complete, spread approximately 2/3 of the frosting over the sponge, leaving a ½” border on the short sides, and a 1” border on the long side of the sponge closest to you, (or else the frosting will ooze out the sides as you roll it).  Roll the sponge like a jellyroll starting with the top long edge, working towards you, using the paper to help you.  10). Remove the paper, and refrigerate the rolled sponge, seam side down, and covered until the buttercream is firm.  11). Once the frosting is firm, cut off 2 ½ inches from one end of the log, and attach the “branch stump” to the log with some of the remaining buttercream.  Proceed to frost the sponge-roll to resemble the bark of a log.  At this point you can just sprinkle powdered sugar over the log to resemble snow and prepare to eat your very own Bûche de Noël, or you can get fancy and decorate with marzipan berries and leaves, (available from most reputable bakeries), and create bark patterns and wood grain with the melted chocolate.  Joyeux Noël!!!



Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Build a better pie crust


I like flaky pie crust.  I also like butter.  In the world of pastry and baking, butter and flaky pie crust do not arrive at the party together, so to speak.  I have long been a proponent of lard pie crusts, because of their crispy and flaky goodness.  Vegetable shortenings are also a reasonable substitute for lard; there is a reason that Loretta Lynn used it instead of the lard she grew up using.

Butter makes everything better though...except for pie crusts: fats (e.g., lard, shortening) have a low moisture content.  When they get blended with flour, as in a pie dough, and subsequently cooked, they crisp the surrounding flour/get absorbed into the surrounding flour, and leave flakes of dough behind.  Butter has a relatively high moisture content, (around 20% for regular butter, 17% for the fancy "European Style" butters).  This moisture causes the resulting dough of butter blended with flour to be tender, (think croissants), and crumbly.

"How do I resolve this?"

I put my thinking toque on, and decided to get a croissant from Vintage Baking in Glen, NH.  As I devoured the almond croissant, I realized that this croissant was the answer!  Why wouldn't laminating my pie dough work to develop flaky layers?  Laminating dough is sandwiching butter between layers of dough.  Puff pastry, croissants, and danish doughs are examples of laminated doughs consisting of a yeast raised dough surrounding whole slabs of butter, and repeatedly folded over to create layers of dough and butter, (Julia Child believed that 73 layers were optimal).  Ciril Hitz, considered to be the best bread baker in the world, is an instructor and dean at Johnson and Wales in Providence, RI.  In this video he explains and demonstrates the technique for dough lamination.

I don't have an $80,000 dough sheeter either, so here is my recommended method for for a flaky, buttery pie crust using your favorite recipe.  You will notice that there is a lot of chilling of the dough: you need to keep the butter cold or else it starts to melt/come out of emulsion, which will result in a "greasy" dough.

Cut chilled butter into small cubes; press together with the flour and salt, add enough ice water to form a dough.  Put the dough into the center of a lightly floured piece of plastic wrap (about 20-inches long) and press the dough into a rectangle; lightly flour dough and cover with another piece of plastic wrap.  Using a rolling pin, beat the dough into a rectangle that cover the plastic wrap; roll with rolling pin to "smooth out" the dough; chill in refrigerator for 15 minutes; then using the plastic wrap to help proceed with the first "book fold" of the dough.  Turn the dough 90-degrees on the plastic wrap, (flour again if getting sticky), and proceed to beat the dough into a rectangle that covers the plastic wrap; fold the dough in-thirds again and give it another beat down into a rectangle.  Chill for 30 minutes.  Repeat the "fold-turn-bash-roll-chill" process two more times, for a total of four turns.  Proceed to use in your favorite pie recipe.

So there you have it.  Despite the fact that it reads really complicated...once you get through your first fold-turn-chill sequence, it's really quite simple...with buttery delicious results as your reward.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

To brine, or not to brine...

Right about now you are starting to feel the pressure.  America's culinary "Superbowl" is only days away. 

You are responsible for the spread, the house is a mess, family needs to be picked up at the airport...AND you're supposed to present an elaborate buffet whose excess would make Squanto blush.

At this moment, I would implore you to think like a chef.  Delegate the cleaning and the execution of livery services to the kids, friends, neighbors...focus on what is really stressful: cooking for 20-plus people.

I remember my Grandma cooking on Thanksgiving, everything made from scratch, and all made on Thanksgiving except for the pies...

Then I started working in professional kitchens and was blown. Away.  There was no last minute struggle to produce the meal for several hundred people!  I love my Grandma, loved her cooking (an immeasurable influence on me as a chef), but, boy, oh, boy was she going about it the hard way!

Now, decades later, when I teach cooking classes or am asked about Thanksgiving dinner, I give the wry "think like a chef" answer as the key to success.  So...just what does that mean?  It means planning ahead.  Write your menu down, determine what you can do ahead of time that can be frozen, (desserts), or days ahead and refrigerated, (cranberry sauce, vegetables prepped for cooking).  As a chef I live and die by my daily preplists which include the big projects like "peel potatoes for mashed potatoes" to the minute, "chiffonade sage for gravy."  The more of the advance work you can do before Thursday, the easier/more relaxing/successful your Thursday will be.  (And, foods like stuffing are WAY more delicious if you make it days ahead and let the flavors develop in fridge...and then all you have to do is re-therm the stuffing on Thanksgiving).

Now, one of the big bones of contention amongst professionals is do you brine your turkey?  Some will say that if you do this, that, and the other thing you don't need to brine your turkey.  I am a full-on convert to the brining of turkey!  I like to break a turkey down and remove the breasts and legs from the carcass.  (This method provides myriad advantages: you can now use the carcass to make stock for gravy, stuffing, soup..., the breasts and legs cook at separate rates so you can control cooking better, a broken down turkey will take up less space in the refrigerator and oven, it is much easier to handle on Thanksgiving, AND it will take far less time to cook than a bone-in bird.)  Brining produces a flavorful, and moist turkey, (even if you cook it a wee bit longer than you should).

Of course, if you break the turkey down you loose that Norman Rockwellian photo opp with Dad carving the turkey at the table.  And yes, it is the Chef's Mantra that if the meat is attached to the bone, cook it on the bone for maximum flavor.  I will take an edible turkey over a photo opp any day.  And, when you brine your turkey you more than compensate for taking it off of the bone.

I hear the grumbling that it is all well and good in a restaurant kitchen, but at home it such a pain, too messy, blah, blahbitty, blah...there are plastic bags available at the supermarket that made specifically for brining turkeys, people will place the turkey, brine, and ice in a cooler...there was one year when the temperature stayed below 40 F and I put the turkey and brine in a 5-gallon bucket and kept it in my car overnight!  Where there is a will...

What about the actual brine?  Here is where I encourage you to experiment with flavors, with one exception: the amount of salt.  There is a scientific ratio, by weight, (scales are for cooks, measuring cups are for building sand castles), for salt:liquid which is:

1:20; 1-part salt to 20-parts water, or approximately 1-1/4 ounces of salt (by weight) to 1 gallon of water.

You can replace some of the water with wine, brown sugar instead of white sugar...just make sure you taste it before you put your turkey in the brine to make sure it is delicious.  I will usually add the salt, water, whole peppercorns, a cinnamon stick, some crushed red chili flakes, sugar/honey, and soy sauce (just enough for some umami) to a pot and bring up to a boil.  This helps dissolve the salt, and sugar while extracting flavor out of the spices.  After the salt has dissolved I will strain the brine into a clean container and put in the fridge to cool; you can substitute ice for some of the initial liquid to chill it faster (like you did when setting gelatin when you were in a hurry).  After the brine is cool, add your turkey parts; I would recommend brining the turkey for 12-24 hours.  (If you brine the turkey for any longer than that, you are going to move from "brining" to "curing" and the texture of the turkey will change dramatically (almost to the point of deli counter turkey).)

Cooking you brined bird is easy-peasy: remove the turkey from the brine and pat dry with paper towels.  (In a professional kitchen we will do this on Wednesday morning, and place the dried turkey on roasting racks- the ones sold as "cooling racks" in kitchen supply stores- and store them uncovered overnight to really help the skin dry).  You want to dry the skin because moisture is the enemy of crispy.  We will then roast the turkey at 275 F until an instant read thermometer reads 155 F (usually less than 1 hour); remove the turkey from the oven and cover with foil.  (SCIENCE ALERT: This is resting the meat to allow the juices to redistribute back into the turkey; it will allow the turkey to "carry over" cook to the government recommended 165 F; it will allow the proteins to relax making your slices nice and pretty).

So plan ahead.  Prepare ahead.  And go through Thursday like Martha Stewart has a thing or two to learn from you!  And, regardless of whether you brine your turkey whole, break it down and roast the pieces un-brined, or order take-out from from your local restaurant, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.




Monday, November 25, 2013

Escoffier didn't have to put up with this...

"I am a hotel chef."

That was a big admission for me.  And a generalization based upon looking at my resume, (all generalizations are false by the way.)  For the sake of this argument, I will accept the label.

I have spent 11 of my 17 years as an Executive Chef in hotels, so I guess it is correct: I.  Am.  A.  Hotel.  Chef.  "But, why is this such a 'big admission' for you?" you may ask.  Well...I have always fought against labels and being pigeon-holed as this or that; as a musician/fan of music I don't like labels...so why would I want to be labeled as chef?  There are some who believe that chefs that work in hotels are less talented, don't really cook, and if they were "really that good" they would have a restaurant of their own.

More disconcerting, is the reaction amongst other hospitality professionals and kitchen colleagues.  I have gone into job interviews for a "Restaurant Chef" only to be sneered at when the interviewer looks at the resume to only see hotels...despite the fact that in a hotel I run multiple restaurants AND a banquet business AND catering AND room service...  Anthony Bourdain has called Hotel Chefs, "sell outs" who cook "schlock food."  And while there are definitely those chefs in hotels, I take umbrage to Mr. Bourdain's assertion, and the general perception of Hotel Chefs.  AND here is why:



1)  It is almost universally acknowledged that Auguste Escoffier, building upon the work of Chef Marie-Antoine Careme, is the Grandfather of Modern Cuisine as we know it.  He was referred to as the "king of chefs, chef of kings."  The Certified Master Chef Test uses the recipes from Escoffier as the basis of its judging criteria.  Almost every kitchen office has a copy of his Le Guide Culinaire.  Odd then, that chefs tend to forget that he teamed up with Cesar Ritz, (you may have heard of the Ritz Hotel in Paris...or the Ritz-Carlton...), the most successful hotelier of the era to become the preeminent chef, possibly of all.  Time.  And even though it is a fact oft overlooked, Escoffier was a Hotel Chef!

2)  I realize that a lot of chefs who have no hotel experience, may look down upon a Hotel Chef as "playing it safe" while they are running a restaurant "without a net."  Which is fair.  Hotels have the "luxury" of having room revenue to offset the costs of the entire hotel; hotel food and beverage operations are often subsidized, and looked at as amenities/loss leaders and not a profit center.  A freestanding restaurant, if lucky, will cover all of their costs with their Sunday through Friday sales with all of their Saturday sales being profit.  Many are not that lucky...

However, as a "restaurant chef" there is a much higher reward to accompany the much higher risk.  If you are a chef in a restaurant and you are a great "Culinary Artist" or are doing something of note, people will.  Take.  Notice.  There is more media attention...which leads to more covers...which leads to more profits...which leads to more and more and more...In a hotel, "high praise" is, "This doesn't taste like hotel food."  Regardless of how innovative or delicious your cooking is, the only media coverage you can expect is from trade magazines.  AND if you are truly awesome and worthy of a national spotlight, the Corporate Chef of your hotel company will swoop in for the photoshoot...while you toil away in awesomeness and anonymity.

3)There are actually working Executive Chefs that work in hotels!

Seems obvious.

There are many Executive Chefs that follow the somewhat antiquated-traditional model of the Executive Chef who do not cook for a living anymore.  They are the chefs that sit in an office, looking out the office window at the kitchen operations.  They embrace the Executive part of their title more than the Chef part..."Clipboard Chefs," (labeled as such because they are more apt to be found with a clipboard in their hands instead of a knife or food); it is the stereotype that I fight against everyday.

In the same vein of the somewhat "new school of thought" which sees hoteliers treating their restaurants as Restaurants in a Hotel instead of the staid model of Hotel Restaurants, I consider myself a Chef that works in a hotel more than I would say I am a Hotel Chef.  Oh, sure...I can still rock the Hotel Chef paperwork with the best of culinary administrators.  And I can multi-task and execute a wedding for 250 people while feeding another 250 people in another dining room.

I just choose to be hands-on.  I choose to cook.  I would rather help you instead of delegating the task of helping you to someone else.  I would rather work on one dish all day until it was "perfect," or I was convinced that it wouldn't work, instead of doing paperwork.  I can work your dinner line and still bring in a targeted COGS and write my budget for next year.  I guess you could say, that I am a Restaurant Chef, trapped in a Hotel Chef's career path.

4) Although I disagree with the general perception, I can see how we may be viewed as "sell outs" or "prima donnas."

Yes, by-in-large, being employed in a hotel affords me things that my restaurant brethren are not: health insurance, 401k's, paid time off, vacation pay, travel discounts, etc...  It is also easier for a hotel chef to budget for new equipment in the next year as part of "Capital Improvements".  In a restaurant, a bad week can mean the difference between buying tongs for the cooks, or requiring them to buy their own!

There are some of us who do not take advantage of our situation, and run our kitchens like an independent restaurant with our name on the door, (i.e., we are not spendthrifts).


5)  I really care about where my food comes from, too.  This has always been another knock on the Hotel Chef:  "Hotels get all of their food out of a box/off of the back of a tractor trailer instead of out of a garden/off the farm."

Going "farm-to-table" in a hotel can be a challenge.  It is difficult to serve locally raised beef steaks for 250 when 1 cow may only provide enough of said steaks for 50 people.  The successful chef does not ask the farmer to scale up his production to suit his/her needs; the chef will scale his menu to the production availability of the farmer.

6)  If running a Hotel Restaurant/Restaurant in a Hotel is such a sell out move, why do more and more successful Celebrity Chef/Restaurateurs keep opening restaurants in hotels?

7)  I don't give a rat's ass where you have worked!  If you are talented, I will call you "Chef."

And maybe I have my mentors to blame for that attitude...  I did my apprenticeship in a private club in upstate NY; versatility was the key to success in that situation:

Learn how to do charcuterie, it is a dying art. (That was the way the wind was blowing then...fortunately there has been a resurgence as of late, part of the nose-to-tail movement).  Learn how to carve ice...work with chocolate...do pastries...pull sugar...I was trained in an atmosphere where cooking a hot dog was just as important as cooking foie gras!  Know how to work the line, run a banquet, pack for a cater-out, cost out a recipe, write a schedule, place an order, budget...these are all essential building blocks, the DNA, of being a chef; it matters not whether you are in a restaurant, hotel, corporate cafe, diner, or hot dog cart!



And maybe it was the last point that is the cause of my ire; the reason for my reticence to be labeled as a certain kind of chef.  The venue should not matter one iota.  I am proud to be a Chef.  I am happy that I learned how to knead bread, temper chocolate, carve ice...how to be a complete chef.  I will put forward the same passion and drive to succeed no matter where I choose to ply my trade.  If you are going to treat me differently because I work here, and not there...then that is on you, (and if you are a potential employer who says I can't work in your industry segment because my experience is in another industry segment, I say to you, "what is this?  Montagues versus the Capulets?")  And if you really need to label me, just call me "Chef."