These lamb shanks look delicious! Unfortunately, they are not my shanks . . . (photo by Jennifer via Wikimedia Commons)

So, the stressful, senseless holiday season had finally given way to calm, cool, January. OK, maybe calm, cool, overabundant in its snow production January — but a good month nonetheless to tackle a braise. The day of the Pats – Jets play-off game seemed a perfect day to let something sit in the oven for hours — I could have the braise braise while I watched the late-afternoon Sunday game and then enjoy a leisurely if somewhat late dinner since neither Gary nor I had to work the following day (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

A perfect plan, but what should I braise? Meat? Fish? Chicken? Or did I want to make a stew? Beef, lamb, or pork made the most sense at the time if I wanted to stretch the cooking time to at least three hours — the usual length of a pro football game. Short ribs were an option — the short ribs in cherry sauce we made in our Moist Heat Cooking class were great, especially the sauce. Hm. Pork was out because I made a pork roast just two weeks before and I wanted to attempt something totally different.

I wanted to give The Art of Simple Food another try, and wavered between Alice Waters’s Long-Cooked Lamb Shoulder and her Braised Lamb Shanks. The headnote of the shoulder recipe mentioned that “You might have to ask your butcher for a whole, bone-in roast,” which led me to believe the correct cut was not all that easy to come by, so I opted for the shank recipe. After all, as this headnote declared, “The shank is the best part of the lamb to braise.” Well, there you go! I would braise me some lamb shanks.

Saturday morning I eagerly walked up to the Whole Foods meat counter, hoping to find a pile of lamb shanks from which I or the meat counter guy could choose the best four. Panic quickly set in when I noticed that the lamb section was rather small and did not have any signs that said “lamb shanks.” Meat Counter Guy approached me.

“What can I get for you?”

“I’m looking for lamb shanks.”

Meat Counter Guy shook his head. “Sorry, we’re all out.”

“Hm. What would you recommend as a substitute?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I’m not familiar with lamb.”

I gave him a cheerful “OK, thank you,” but I was starting to get upset. Not only could Meat Counter Guy not help me choose a lamb-shank substitute (given the price of Whole Foods’s meats I had expected knowledgeable meat counter guys), I could not remember the cut of lamb required by the other Waters recipe. What really irked me was that I myself was as useless as Meat Counter Guy in selecting an alternative meat or cut.

My mood quickly became grim and cranky, not knowing what to do next. “Don’t worry about it,” Gary said, “you don’t need it until tomorrow — we can try someplace else this afternoon.”

Later that day we visited The Meat House. A place called The Meat House must have a great selection of meat, right? I was excited about my new lamb-shank prospects. I went straight the the counter and asked Meat Counter Guy 2 for four lamb shanks.

“Sorry, we’re all out of those. You really need to call ahead for those. And even then they’re going to be frozen or previously frozen, which may or may not be what you’re expecting. You didn’t need those this weekend, did you?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow. Thanks, anyway.”

I regrouped with Gary and we decided to can the lamb and go with short ribs. I went back to the meat counter and asked Meat Counter Gal for short ribs.

“Sorry. We’re all out.”

“OK, thanks.” I said, making a mental note to never come to The Meat House again.

As a last resort, Gary and I tried Johnnie’s Foodmaster. It’s our last resort for anything because though it’s a bare-bones kind of supermarket, it sometimes surprises us by having items we cannot find at our local Stop & Shop, such as tomato juice and frozen okra.  (Believe it or not, tomato juice was nonexistent at Stop & Shop save for some V8; Johnnie’s offered at least three brands of it.)

Needless to say, we found barely any fresh lamb at Johnnie’s. Of short ribs, they had just shy of two pounds—I was seeking three pounds—and one of the packages had a slit that exposed the meat. (I might have taken the risk with the slit package if they had the three pounds I needed.)

Not lamb shanks. Not short ribs. Pot roast.

OK. So. No lamb. No short ribs. Let’s go with a big hunk o’ beef. Neither of us had committed to memory which cuts of beef are best for each mode of cooking (braise, grill, roast, etc.), so we were at the mercy of the labels slapped on each package of meat. I zeroed in on a package of pot roast because the cooking instructions on the price label were “Simmer in a covered pan in a small amount of liquid for 2–3 hours.”  Sounded like a braise to me!

Somewhat disturbing, however, was a second label on the package, a quaint blue circle also offering cooking instructions:

POT ROAST (Cooking in liquid)
1. Brown meat on all sides in heavy kettle.
2. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Cover with liquid, cover kettle, cook below boiling point until tender.
4. Add vegetables just long enough before serving to be cooked.

The price label specifies a “small amount of liquid,” the round label tells me to cover the meat with liquid. As I did with my query on whether or not to make my own pumpkin purée (see earlier post), I’d let Alice Waters break the tie.

In the meantime, I had to quickly decide what I’d need for the pot roast without a “real” recipe to reference. I grabbed a bag of baby potatoes and headed toward the check-out lines.

Fortunately, there was a Beef Pot Roast recipe in The Art of Simple Food. And to break the suspense, I’ll note that Waters tells me to add to my meat and aromatics (carrots, onion, celery, garlic) “enough water to come almost to the top of the meat.” A semi-tie breaker.

Though Waters’s pot roast recipe would have me cooking carrots and potatoes separately to be added to the pot roast towards the end of cooking, after the aromatics have been strained out, I decided to just roast the cute li’l baby potatoes and serve them as a side, and forgo the carrots. Why? I had already opted to serve sautéed chard with the meal when I thought I’d be serving shanks, so I already had chard in the fridge. In fact, I had planned on trying yet another Simple Food recipe, Wilted Chard with Onions.

Green chard: Big, bold, and beautiful

Finally, I had a menu:

• Pot roast with salsa verde (the salsa verde also a Simple Food recipe)
• Wilted chard with onion
• Roasted baby potatoes

Despite a planned serving time of 7:30 p.m., I found myself in the kitchen by 10 a.m. to start prepping dinner (and, granted, the day’s lunch as well), in theory so that I could somehow enjoy the game AND have dinner ready to serve shortly thereafter.

But I had no idea I’d be in the kitchen most of the day. Dinner-related tasks included, in semi-chronological order:

• Salt and season roast, return to fridge and remove one hour before cooking
• Prepare aromatics for roast (onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bouquet garni)
• Sear all sides of roast, which had six sides, two of which were relatively small, requiring me to stand and hold the roast while searing each side 7–10 minutes
• Cook roast
• Prepare salsa verde (chop parsley, garlic, and capers and mix with grated zest of lemon, salt, pepper and olive oil)
• Dice 1 onion
• Pull leaves from two bunches of chard, cut into wide ribbons
• Trim ends from chard ribs and cut into thin slices
• Rinse and drain chard parts, put all chard dish ingredients in fridge until needed
• Cook up chards with onions
• Prepare potatoes (scrub, then halve or quarter depending on size), toss in olive oil and seasonings
• Roast potatoes

Thank goodness I hadn’t planned to make a dessert!

I should have known better than to assume anything about the day would be leisurely, though it was fun to work with a “new” cut of beef and the gorgeous chard leaves.

Chard leaves are royalty compared to, say, lowly iceberg lettuce. I stopped for a moment to admire — then photograph — an enormous, hardy, forest-green chard leaf before ripping it apart.

The braise that never was: pot roast with salsa verde, wilted chard with onions, roasted potatoes

Many hours and an extremely disappointing football game later, an evening meal emerged. Here’s a summary of my thoughts and observations:

• The meat was a little dry but tasty. Should I have cooked it longer? Taken it off the heat sooner? Admittedly, I had repressed the knowledge that the meat may not be done exactly when Alice Waters says it should be. But I rushed to serve it nonetheless, since the potatoes and chard were done and waiting to be served. I could have attempted to keep the side dishes warm, but it was getting late and I was getting lazy.
• Was the cut of meat (bottom round roast) the same what is is used for corned beef? The texture was exactly the same as corned beef, which was distracting because all I could think of was how I’d love some corned beef ‘n cabbage real soon. It was also odd to have the texture of corned beef without the pink color and excess marbling.
• The salsa verde seemed oilier than necessary, even though I had already used more chopped parsley and less olive oil than the recipe prescribed. Still, it was a fresh, colorful accompaniment for the long-cooked grayish meat.
• The chard was yummy but I wished there were a lot more of it. As do most cooked greens, it wilted away into near-nothingness. I had doubled the recipe that was to yield four servings, yet the what-should-be-eight-servings-of-chard, when finished, looked like it would barely serve three. I also think much less oil would have been just fine; the greens and onions seemed over-lubricated.
• The roasted potatoes were good, if slightly undercooked.

The next morning (MLK day), Gary and I went to Roche Bros. to gather up the week’s provisions. Gary beckoned me to the refrigerated meats section and pointed at an ample pile of lamb shanks. My first reaction was to grab four for later use, but I soon came to my senses and just made a mental note of their abundance. (Shanks, but no shanks!)

Lesson learned. Next time, I’ll go to the supermarket or meat mart with a list of braiseable cuts, choose the most attractive option from what’s available, THEN build an entrée and meal around it.

Though I thoroughly savored my culinary exploits in the year 2010, I look forward to more learning, cooking, and enjoying in 2011. Here are some of my anticipated achievements:

1. Declare at least six weeks “no-recipe” weeks.

Or use only recipes of my own devise or adaptation. Attempting familiar foods or recipes from memory is allowed.

2. Use fennel, winter greens, and other newly discovered fabulous vegetables more often.

Fennel is an extremely versatile and vibrant vegetable that’s great in salads, braises, and even lasagna! I’m sure I can devise a fennel casserole of sorts. Same with winter greens such as kale and swiss chard — they offer assertive flavors and textures that hold up well in soups, sautés, and baked dishes.

3. Continue to make homemade chicken stock, and add veal and fish stocks to my stock repertoire.

Alas, this will be challenging with limited freezer space . . .

4. Make at least one home meal of fresh mussels.

I must go beyond frozen shrimp and scallops! Fresh lobster? Er, maybe in 2012.

5. Carve or cut whole poultry into parts with confidence.

I estimate at least a dozen more chickens will be badly butchered before I can do this with finesse.

6. Buy a “real” chef’s coat or apron.

I’m in the kitchen more than ever now . . . I need proper coverage!

7. Try at least five new restaurants.

New to me, that is. Plain or fancy. Pricey or cheap. At least two new cuisines or variations of familiar cuisines.

8. If in a pricey or quality restaurant and something is not OK, don’t tell the waiter that everything’s fabulous.

If a simple roasted chicken is throat-clogging dry, someone in the kitchen should know about it. And if the black beans that caught my interest in the entrée description turn out to be barely a garnish, I want someone to know I am not happy about it.

9. Make several voluptuous cakes or fancy pastries and enjoy these experiences to the max, without one shred of guilt.

Génoises? Tortes? Dacquoises? I cannot decide; maybe I’ll make them all! But I shall start with éclairs and my own white-on-white birthday cake. With frosting flowers! Yum!

10. Keep counting those Weight Watchers points!

Ah! There’s the rub!

Photo credits: “Fennel” by Rolf Krahl, “Mussels @ Trouville Fish Market” by Claude Coro-Farchi, “salle2″ by efaucon, “Chocolate Torte at Nino’s Tuscany in NYC” by Ralph Daily.

Those are pie weights, not mini marshmallows!

This year Gary and I decided to politely turn down any Thanksgiving day invites and just do our own thing. Though I had wanted to have my Thanksgiving feast at a fine but unpretentious local restaurant, I quickly warmed to Gary’s suggestion of cooking up our own festive dinner.

We discussed entrée and side-dish options, and for desserts we concluded we would each make (or at least choose) a favorite or promising dessert, and there was no question that his was going to be of the pomaceous persuasion and mine was going to be pumpkin pumpkin pumpkin. I was eager to make a perfectly pumpkin something — though something other than my usual goof-proof cookies, breads, and muffins — and do it right this time.

My last attempt at pumpkin pie required a phalanx of floor fans assembled inside and outside my galley kitchen to contain the smoke emanating from the oven from after I spilled most of the pie’s raw contents onto the preheated oven floor. I don’t recall actually producing a pie that day.

For this Thanksgiving, I had decided I would enthusiastically (and carefully) reattempt pumpkin pie.

That is, until I watched Secrets of a Restaurant Chef’s “Secrets to Seared Skate” episode in August. Anne Burrell whipped up what looked to be an easy and scrumptious Pumpkin Ginger Bread Pudding. Her recipe featured fresh pumpkin (kabocha squash, specifically), heavy cream, and chunks of brioche. (See the video clip here.) It sounded amazing. Screw the pumpkin pie! This year it’s pumpkin bread pudding! I printed out the recipe and kept it in a safe but visible place, eagerly anticipating making and eating it.

That is, until two months later, when Gary and I, seeking T-day turkey pointers, watched America’s Test Kitchen’s “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving” episode. In this episode, the test-kitchen folk demonstrated a slow-roasted turkey and their latest pumpkin pie. (The video of this pie demo is at http://www.cooksillustrated.com/video/default.asp?newVideo=y&docid=17766 and the recipe is at http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/login.asp?docid=17662, though you might have to register online to see either of them. Alternatively, you can track down the November/December 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated to get the recipe.) As America’s Test Kitchen so often does, they made their recipe, techniques, and method not only look practical, easy, and delicious, but also mandatory for achieving a successful result. They convinced me their pumpkin pie would be a winner.

Alton Brown (top) and America's Test Kitchen (middle, bottom) promise pleasing pumpkin pies

And so I was back to making pie. I bought all the ingredients for the test-kitchen recipe, including canned pumpkin purée (“We did test [between] fresh and canned pumpkin; no one could tell the difference, and canned saves you so much time,” said Julia Collin Davison), fresh ginger, heavy cream, shortening, and a can of candied yams — something I wouldn’t normally consider purchasing.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Alton Brown’s Good Eats’ “American Classic IX: Pumpkin Pie” episode aired. Along with his latest pumpkin pie recipe, Brown demonstrated how easy it was to make fresh sugar-pumpkin purée (save having to use a cleaver to whack one open). He also implied that NOT making your own purée was insanity. Said he, “Pumpkin puree is tasty and versatile stuff. Since it’s stupid-simple to fabricate, and it freezes well, there’s no excuse not to keep it on hand at all times.”

I started to feel very, very guilty about planning to use canned pumpkin in my holiday pie.

I searched my small cooking library for further guidance, thinking I would go with the first pumpkin-puree opinion I could find to break the test kitchen-Alton Brown pumpkin-purée stalemate. The tiebreaker: Alice Waters. In her book The Art of Simple Food she claims that “It’s easy to make your own pumpkin or squash purée and it makes the best-tasting pie.”

I mused about trying the test kitchen recipe with both fresh and canned pumpkin; that is, make two test-kitchen pies — one with fresh pumpkin, one with canned.

Early the next morning I lay awake in bed, obsessed with thoughts of “with the maple syrup and the candied yams potentially masking any true pumpkin flavor in the test-kitchen pie, is it really fair or feasible to use that particular recipe to compare fresh and canned pumpkin?” Before long, I jolted out of bed and searched online for the Alton Brown pumpkin pie recipe. It too called for assertive flavors that may overpower the relatively gentle pumpkin taste, namely dark brown sugar and a rather gingery crust (ginger snaps plus ground ginger.)

I decided to try both recipes as written to see which one I like better and compare the fresh and canned pumpkin along the way.

Yummy pumpkin purée

Pumpkin prep

Preparing and puréeing a sugar pumpkin might be easy, but it ain’t quick. I casually tracked my time:

• Removing stems, sawing in half (I did okay with just a chef’s knife, though my halves were not quite even), removing seeds and strings, and picking escapee seeds off the floor: 30 minutes
• Baking: 40 minutes
• Cooling: 50 minutes
• Scooping cooked pumpkin from skins and pureeing: 20 minutes
• Eating purposefully leftover puree straight from food processor bowl: 5 minutes
• Cleaning and drying food processor: 7 minutes

So that’s two and a half hours necessary to bake and purée a small sugar pumpkin or two — not including time required to clean and roast the squash seeds if you so desire. If you just count the active time, yes, it’s more like only an hour, but this is certainly something you might not want to do the same day you make the pie. Thank goodness I did this Tuesday evening for the Wednesday baking day.

Alton Brown’s pumpkin pie

Some of the early reviewers of the Brown pumpkin pie recipe stated that it did not yield enough crumb matter for adequate pie-plate coverage. So I one-and-a-halfed the crust part of the recipe. My first attempt at loading the crumby crust into the pan (after following directions to the letter) resulted in more or less a bunch of crumbs piled along the sides of the pan. There were too many crumbs and they did not have much binding them together, resulting in a house-of-cards situation — will it hold, or will it fall if I look at it the wrong way?  I added more melted butter in 1-tablespoon increments, ultimately adding a total of 3 tablespoons extra butter before I was satisfied with its crust-building properties. As instructed, I baked the crust for 12 or so minutes in a 350-degree oven. I trusted the recipe’s crust baking time, perhaps to my own disservice, as I discovered later . . .

From the top: Alton Brown's Pumpkin Pie, 2010

(Note: Missing from the Alton Brown recipe I found online was the tip, conveyed in the broadcast episode, to transfer the pumpkin mixture to a pitcher and then pour the mixture directly into crust, which would already be on a half-sheet pan already on a partially pulled-out oven rack in the preheated oven. Also missing from the online recipe was the note that there may be leftover filling, and the internal temperature at which the pie filling can be considered done (195 degrees in the center, 205 degrees at the edges).

The gingersnap crust did burn around edges towards end of the cooking time. And as the pie cooled it sank and cracked a bit. Neither event contributed to a pretty pie!

When serving the pie, I had trouble removing pieces from the pan with the “crust” intact; I tried various tools to no avail. The “crust” was a soft, buttery cookie goo. Maybe I had added too much extra butter after all.

And perhaps there was too much “crust” overall — the side view of a slice revealed a relatively narrow (three- or four-to-one) filling-to-bottom ratio.

America’s Test Kitchen’s pie

The making and rolling of the test-kitchen “vodka crust” pie dough went very well. My new tapered-end rolling pin worked beautifully. I didn’t center the crust perfectly in the pan, but I wasn’t too concerned at the time since it looked OK to me. What was unclear was whether or not one package of pie weights (about a cup?) was enough, or if I should use a whole quart of weights, as they did in the test-kitchen demo.

To blind-bake this crust, I was instructed to line it with foil, fill with the weights, and bake on a rimmed baking sheet for 15 minutes, remove foil and weights and bake 5 to 10 minutes more.

Once my crust was in the pie plate, and the overhang pinched and fluted to the best of my ability, I found it difficult to transfer the empty unbaked crust pie plate to hot baking sheet — how do you do that without burning hand or jeopardizing the edges of the crust with bulky oven mitts? And then the pie plate went swoosh swoosh across the smooth pan — how could I add friction, I wondered. By lining the pan with crumpled-up aluminum foil?

Puffy pie crust!

From the top: Pumpkin pie via America's Test Kitchen recipe (after I gingerly removed plastic wrap that had "kissed" the top)

In addition to the pie plate sliding across the hot sheet pan, the entire crust shifted inside the plate while baking, yielding a crustless pie-plate rim on one side and overly overhung crust on the other.

When I removed foil, the crust was still the color of uncooked pie. While it baked the 5 to 10 minutes longer without foil or weights, it got extra puffy. Should I have poked holes in the crust to avoid this? Or baked it longer while it still had pie weights and foil? Did I not use enough pie weights to begin with? And the most pressing question concerning the over-puffed crust: would all the filling fit? (The answer: no! There was two small ramekin’s worth of filling left over.)

Lack of vigilance led me to remove the pie from the oven when the temperature reading in center was five degrees higher than the amount specified in recipe (which was 175 degrees).

Some moisture had accumulated on the top of the pie as it cooled. I tried to carefully blot it away with a paper towel, but that was marring the beautifully smooth surface so I quickly aborted that operation. Another conundrum was how to protect the pie while in the fridge — plastic wrap turned out to be a bad idea, as the plastic stuck to the filling, further marring its silky surface.

Serving and tasting

The Alton Brown pie was slightly denser, deeper spice, definite pumpkin flavor. The crust was a failure, though.

It was not easy to  to lift slices from the Alton pie with all that ginger mush at the bottom. (It was slightly easier to remove slices the next morning with the pie straight from the fridge, and, yes, that does mean I had pumpkin pie for breakfast that day.)

When it came time to serve the America’s Test Kitchen pie, I had a hard time getting the crust off the edge of the pie plate. I had to apply the culinary eqivalents of sawing and chiseling! The test-kitchen pie had a sweeter, less spicy flavor profile than the Brown pie. I got a fresh, clean flavor from the filling and crust, though the candied yam seemed to upstage the pumpkin. (Perhaps this was a symptom of knowing there were yams in the filling in the first place — neither Gary nor my mom could taste the yams.) But both crust and filling had luxurious textures, though I’d prefer something slightly more fork- and knife-sturdy for the filling. I didn’t like having to wipe filling off the pie server after each cut.

Conclusion

Pumpkin pie via recipes from America's Test Kitchen and Alton Brown

The test-kitchen pie offered a better presentation by far — it was much nicer to look at, even with its lopsided crust. And that crust really liked to scoot around the pie plate; but that did made it easier to pick up half the pie at once and transfer to the other pie plate after half of each had been eaten.

For both pies, there was the dilemma how to neatly add the liquid filling to the pies with the pie plate, half-sheet pan, and oven rack pulled out of oven. This was an important step to me after my burned-filling-on-oven-floor mishap. The pulled-out oven rack was always at a slight angle toward me, enough to affect the level of the pie filling so it was hard to judge if I had poured in the right amount of filling.

And what about the pumpkin purée? The homemade purée was lovely to behold with its healthy orange color, delicious without any embellishment, and worth the effort for minimally produced savories and sweets. And as I mentioned earlier, though it is not too hard to make, you definitely want to allow yourself two or three hours extra time. Compared to purée straight from the can (for this taste test, I used One Pie pumpkin), the fresh purée had fresher taste and appearance, though the canned version tasted better than I had expected it would.

If I could only have one more piece of either pie, I’d probably go for the test-kitchen pie, but it’s close. I guess the textures of filling and crust win me over. Gary, however, preferred Alton Brown’s pie.

Next year I’m going to make that bread pudding. . . !

Honey Spiced Pork Roast

Whereas the moist-heat technique braising offers a slow, comforting, easygoing cooking experience for which you can judge doneness of meats by sight (meat falls off bone) or feel (skewer gets no resistance going in or out), the dry-heat methods require more speed and vigilance.

The dry-heat cooking techniques — sautéing, pan searing, pan roasting, oven roasting, grilling, broiling, and deep frying — demand higher cooking temperatures and shorter cooking times than stewing and braising, so they require more attention to avoid overcooking.

In this post:
→Dry-heat cooking candidates
→Dry-heat cooking methods
→Prepping for dry-heat cooking
→Finishing dry-heat cooking
→This week’s eats: a sampling

Dry-heat cooking candidates

Tender, well-marbled cuts of meat are best suited for dry-heat methods. Fattier cuts such as rib-eye are moist and flavorful so they don’t require any breakdown of collagen to be enjoyed. Some cuts dry out more quickly than others, tenderloin being one of them, and therefore require additional watching during cooking.

Hard or semi-hard cheeses are also good candidates for dry-heat cooking, as are hardy vegetables and fruits such as squashes, root vegetables, apples, and pears.

Dry-heat cooking methods

In general, dry-heat cooking features high oven, grill, and stovetop temperatures, or very hot frying oil. Unlike braising and stewing, in which foods cook in covered vessels, foods cooked by dry-heat methods are generally uncovered to avoid creating steam, which can toughen meat or encourage soggy crusts. Other than hot oil for the deep-frying, barely any liquids are used. Here’s a quick run-through of the dry-heat options:

Sautéing. In a hot pan coated with very little oil, quickly move small cuts of meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables around to ensure even, fast cooking. “If the pan is not hot enough,” said Hong, “onions won’t sweat; meat will stick.”

Pan searing. In a hot pan coated with very little oil, if any, brown meats on one or more sides by letting them sit undisturbed until browned. Searing produces a nice color and flavor by way of carmelization, but doesn’t necessary ensure moisture retention.

Pan roasting. Sear one side of meat, flip, then place in oven seared side down. You can use the same pan you used on the stovetop, or transfer to ovenproof vessel after searing. Potatoes and vegetables can be pan roasted, too — but you can skip the searing part. In pan roasting, the food is in direct contact with the pan, as opposed to oven roasting, in which the food sits on a rack.

Oven roasting. This is often the method for big roasts, so searing is optional. Oven roasts sit on a rack in the pan to allow air circulation and prevent the roast from stewing in its own juices, thus upping your chances of even cooking and getting a nice crust or crispy skin.

Grilling. Grilling features a high-heat source below the food being cooked. Grilling over a fire gives nice grill marks and flavors to foods; gas grills and non-fire grilling methods may not impart as much flavor. Rule of thumb: High-fat meats get high heat, low-fat meats such as chicken breasts without skin, and fish, get low heat. Do not grill fragile fish; use a grill rack when grilling fruit or small items. Hong advised, “You never want to grill meat until it is done; finish it in the oven. You can even finish in the oven the next day.” But small steaks and such are OK to cook to doneness on the grill.

Broiling. The opposite of grilling, broiling features a high-heat source above the food being cooked. Hong recommended leaving the oven open a crack during broiling. You can sear meats under a broiler.

Deep frying. Deep frying is submersing food in hot oil. Make sure oil is 375° F. Use enough oil to fully cover food. Chill food before frying to keep oil absorption to a minimum. If you’ll be coating the food with breadcrumbs, put the coat on before sending it to chill.

Grilled Diablo Skirt Steak with Fresh Tomato Salsa

Prepping for dry-heat cooking

Rubs, marinades, and brines

Dry rubs are salt-free mixtures of dried and ground herbs and spices that flavor meats and help create nice crusts. Pat dry rubs directly, thickly, and firmly on the uncooked meat. (Don’t salt meat too early or the meat will start to dry out.) For best taste results, toast and grind your own spices.

Wet marinades are sauces that add flavors before a food is cooked. They usually contain an acidic ingredient such as tomato juice, citrus juice, or vinegar.

Brines are baths of water and salt that can help tenderize meats and poultry. Meats and poultry can brine for a few hours or up to two days. (Don’t brine for more than two hours without refrigeration.) Rinse and pat dry the brined food before cooking. Generally, you use one gallon of water per one cup of salt, depending on the coarseness of salt used. Sometimes flavorful ingredients such as molasses, orange zest, cinnamon, onion, and ginger are added to brines.

Temperature concerns, inside and out

For all dry-heat techniques other than deep frying, the internal temperature of the food should be at room temperature.

Oven type and temperature is important, too. In conventional ovens, heat radiates from above and below — a good environment for roasting. In convection ovens, hot air blown around oven. This situation is ideal for baking — a situation ideal for baking, but it can cause roasting meat to dry out too quickly. (“You do not blow air on tenderloin!” explained Hong.) If following a recipe designed for cooking in a conventional oven, set the convection oven 25 degrees lower than the recipe recommends.

Finishing dry-heat cooking

Carryover cooking

The temperature of fast-cooked meats and poultry can climb eight to ten degrees after removal from oven — this is one reason why you should always let a roast rest before cutting and serving. (Another reason is to let the juices redistribute themselves.) You must take carryover cooking into account when checking doneness — you want to take your meat out of or off of the heat BEFORE it reaches the desired temperature. In other words, if your pork roast is registering 137°, you should remove it from the oven because its temperature will rise to 145° or so while resting outside the oven.

Testing for doneness

You can test the doneness of meats using any of the methods listed below. Until you’re comfortable with your skills when using any of the first three methods listed, always double-check your guesses with a meat thermometer.

Your fingers. Testing doneness using finger-flesh firmness comparisions takes lots of practice to get it right. Because I’m not totally familiar with this method myself, I shall quote the Culinary Institute of America’s instructions:

To approximate what meat should feel like at various stages of doneness, press together your thumb and forefinger and feel the flesh on your palm, right below your thumb, with the index finger of your other hand: that’s rare. Now press together your thumb and your middle finger, them your thumb and your ring finger, and finally, your thumb and pinky. As you change fingers, you will be able to feel that the flesh is tightening. These changes represent an increasing degree of doneness, all the way from rare (your forefinger) to well-done (the pinky). —The Culinary Institute of America, Culinary Boot Camp, page 18.)

Skewer or fork. If you poke a fork or skewer into the meat and the meat’s juice runs red, the meat is not done. If the juice pink, it’s getting there. If it’s clear, it’s done. If no juice comes out, you’ve overcooked your dinner.

Metal cake tester. A metal cake tester is basically a very thin metal skewer. Insert the skewer into the food then judge doneness by how hot the skewer feels when you touch it to the top of your lip. If the skewer feels cool, the meat is nowhere near done. If the heat causes you to wince, the meat is probably overcooked. Hong says this is the method favored by chefs in professional kitchens because it’s faster and produces smaller holes than the other testing methods. It evidently take a lot of practice, for I’d actually been doing a similar routine for some time — using a fork — when reheating foods at home, and I usually go straight from cool to “ouch” stage.

Instant-read thermometer or continuous-read digital probe. Depending on the actual thermometer you use, this may be the most foolproof—if not always the quickest—method of testing for doneness. I never trust my instant-read thermometer fully, so I’m glad there are other ways to determine doneness that rely more on instinct than technology.

The USDA recommends certain minimum internal temperatures, as specified in the box below. Remember to remove your meat from the heat when its temperature comes to seven to ten degrees below these figures.

USDA Recommended Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures

• Steaks and roasts – 145° F
• Fish – 145° F
• Pork – 160° F
• Ground beef – 160° F
• Egg dishes – 160° F
• Chicken breasts – 165° F

—USDA brochure, Is it Done Yet? (www.fsis.usda.gov/is_it_done_yet/brochure_text/index.asp)

For steaks, rare is generally just under 120 °F, medium-rare is anywhere from 120 to 130° F, and medium is between 130 and 135° F.  If cooking whole poultry, check temperature at the thigh.

This week’s eats: a sampling

Scotch Eggs with Honey-Chipotle Mayonnaise and Grilled Swordfish Verde

Warm salad of fruits, endives, and pancetta. Make dressing of pomegranate juice, red wine vinegar, and canola oil. Cook quince and pears in sugar water (three cups water, one cup sugar), then grill until tender and the sugar carmelizes. Grill endive halves and grapefruit rounds. Sauté some pancetta until crisp. In skillet with some leftover pancetta fat, toss endive, quinces, pears, pancetta. Garnish with grapefruit or orange slices. Drizzle with dressing, sprinkle with tarragon and pomegranate seeds.

Scotch eggs with honey-chipotle mayonnaise. Soft boil eggs, submerge in ice bath, set aside. Combine ground sausage meat with freshly ground spices. Combine breadcrumbs and herbs, coat otside of each egg with sausage, roll in flour, brush with beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs. Shake off excess and deep fry until brown and sausage is cooked, four to five minutes. Remove, drain off excess fat, and serve warm with honey chipotle mayonnaise (mayonnaise with honey, chipotle pepper, and adobo sauce, of course!).

Honey spiced pork roast (Gary’s in-class contribution). Toast juniper berries, peppercorns, cardamon seeds (from the pods), allspice berries, and fennel seeds, grind to a coarse powder. Blend in salt. Pat 1.5-pound pork loin dry, brush with honey to coat well. Pat spice mixture all over loin, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (if possible). Place loin on rack. Roast in middle of 400° F oven for ten minutes, reduce heat to 350° and continue roasting for another 50 minutes or until thermometer reads 144º in center of roast. Remove roast from oven and rest ten minutes before carving into thin slices. Once the meat is sliced, salt the meat lightly.

Diablo skirt steak with fresh tomato salsa (my favorite of the week!). Whisk together salsa and cider vinegar, sugar, oregano, and salt. Transfer to plastic bag, add two pounds of skirt or hanger steak, and marinate 30 minutes or up to four hours. Remove meat from marinate and grill over high heat three to four minutes, turn, then grill a few minutes more or until rare. Slice the meat thinly against the grain. Serve with fresh salsa.

Indian flavored roasted vegetables with paneer (in-class assignment for me and a classmate). Make paneer. Prepare a vat of marinade made of toasted and ground cumin seed, cilantro, chives, tomato juice, jalapeño peppers, red wine vinegar, ginger, dijon mustard, salt, sugar, vegetable oil, and garlic. Cut a nice variety of vegetables such as summer squashes, eggplant, onion, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, and cauliflower into pieces about one-fourth inch thick. Cut up some red bliss potatoes similarly, but keep them separate. Reserve some marinade for the paneer, then toss the nonpotato vegetables in the remaining marinade. Toss potatoes in vegetable oil. Put vegetables and potatoes in 400° F oven to roast until tender. (Hong recommends roasting vegetables before adding marinade, however.)  Grill paneer carefully and briefly over low flame just long enough to get grill marks on both sides, then cut into cubes. Arrange vegetables, potatoes, and paneer on serving platter, drizzle with remaining marinade.

Other entrees created and enjoyed in class were quinoa with sauteed carmelized onions and mushrooms, grilled swordfish verde, and grilled cranberry-orange zinfandel bread with an absolutely luscious and dreamingly smooth orange mascarpone cream.

Sea bass over braised fennel

Moist heat cooking is, in a word, braising. Well, stewing, too, but this class focused on braising. (Boiling, blanching, poaching, simmering, and steaming fall under wet heat cooking, not moist heat cooking.)

(Note: Hong was absent today; the ebullient, talkative Ted substituted.)

Why braise?

Braising is a standard cooking technique in which you cook meat, poultry, fish, or vegetables “low and slow” — at a low oven or stove-top temperature for a relatively long period of time. Braising works wonders on lean or tough (read: cheap) cuts of meat because the slow cooking breaks the meat’s collagen into gelatin, which results in the mouth feel of a rich, fatty dish without adding any fat. But even items low in collagen, such as vegetables, can benefit from a braise. Braising tender cuts of meat, though, is not worth the time or effort.

Braising techniques

When braised correctly, the meat, when done, will fall right off the bone. You’re essentially cooking the meat until it falls apart; “it’s very hard to screw up a braise,” said Ted. You don’t even have dirty your instant meat thermometer. But though the cooking part of the braise is often foolproof, setting the stage for your braise takes some solid prep work. Here’s what you need to know:

Temperature. Braising temperature must be high enough to break down the collagen, but not so hot that the proteins contract into tight clumps. A cast-iron enameled pot, such as those gorgeous LeCreuset dutch ovens that I can barely lift let alone afford, in a 325°F oven is usually a good bet, as it will get its contents nice and hot, but not hot enough to, say, boil water. Thinner vessels might require lower cooking temperatures.

Food prep. Sweat your aromatics (onion, fennel, tomato, whatever) to release their moisture and concentrate their flavor. Do not brown the aromatics: if you hear them sizzling, turn down the heat. Sometimes you want to sear or brown your meat (veal or short ribs, for example), sometimes you just want to cook it in advance just a bit, sometimes no pre-heating is necessary (white fish, for example). Sometimes you’ll pre-cook some parts of your braise and not others.

Add all concentrated aromatics, stocks, liquids, and other flavor and moisture vehicles to the pot with the featured food.

Equipment prep. Though the food to be braised should fit comfortably in the cooking vessel (the pot should be two or three times as high as the food, says Ted), you want to ensure maximum moisture retention by creating an inverted lid to use in conjunction with the vessel’s regular lid.

An inverted lid is easy to make: take a large sheet of aluminum foil (about at least as long as four times the height plus two times the longest flat dimension of the vessel, or you can just eyeball it after you read the rest of these instructions), and press the center of the foil onto the center of the food in the pot. Then carefully mold the foil around the food, then up along the sides of the pot, then over the edge. The seal around the food should be as tight as possible.

To prevent the foil from reacting to any acidic content in your braise, put a piece of parchment directly on top of the food before adding the inverted foil lid. This is easier than dealing with the foil: on the parchment, just trace the outer edge of cover of the pot, cut along your tracing, then drop the parchment in your pot. Then add the inverted foil lid, and you’re ready to braise.

Doneness test. As mentioned, braised meat should simply fall off the bone. Another way to tell if the meat is cooked: stick a skewer in a thick part and pull it out. If the skewer came in and out easily, the meat is done. White fishes, of course, will be opaque and flaky when done; vegetables should be as tender as you’d like them to be.

Sauce prep. Strain vegetables and solids out of the cooking liquid, then pour the liquid into a clear measuring cup and let it sit until the fat begins to separate from the liquid. Defat the liquid using a turkey baster, spoon, or your favorite defatting device. Reduce the strained, defatted liquid. Combine with your braise and serve.

Our fabulous braises

We had to prep our braises and stews quickly, especially those of us making the short ribs, pork, and veal recipies. Oh, and the rabbit fricassee (!). The class is four hours long tops, including lecture, prep, cooking, workstation cleaning, and a sit-down lunch of our delicious creations, so there was little time to spare. I was making sea bass and Gary was preparing chicken, so our prep time was a little more relaxed.

My must-make-at-home selections are the Osso Buco alla Milanese (veal shanks in the style of Milan), the pork and butternut squash stew, and the sea bass, so I’ll focus on those here; let me know if you desire more information about fricassee de lapin (the rabbit fricassee, of which I loved the creamy sauce and velvety mushrooms, but I found the rabbit a bit dry, which I thought was impossible for a braise), braised short ribs with dried cherries (I was not impressed with the ribs, but I could make a meal of the cherry sauce), and poulet au vinaigre à l’estargon (braised chicken with vinegar and tarragon). Though Gary did cook up a nice, moist chicken, the sauce made my throat lock up a bit — I don’t handle vinegary sauces very well, I guess. Pucker up!

Osso Buco alla Milanese. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly flour eight veal shanks. Heat olive oil in large casserole and brown shanks on all sides. Discard oil, add butter and sauté finely chopped carrots and onion, and minced garlic, until soft. Return shanks to casserole and add dry white wine. On high heat, reduce wine by half and add canned peeled Italian tomatoes, a strip of orange rind, saffron, basil, parsley, and two cups veal or chicken stock. Season. Cover with parchment and inverted foil lid, add casserole’s lid, and braise in oven for one to one-and-a-half hours, or until a skewer can be inserted and taken out without resistance. Remove shanks and reduce cooking juices. Add gemolata and garnish with strips of orange and lemon rind.

Pork and butternut squash stew. (Fabulous fall dish alert!) Preheat oven to 325°F. Reduce two cups chicken stock to one cup. In large casserole, heat some olive oil and brown pieces of pork butt or shoulder (fat trimmed) in two shifts. Season. Add more olive oil to casserole, sauté onions in casserole until soft. Add garlic, cumin, crushed red pepper, and bay leaf and cook one minute. Add white wine and boil until reduced by half. Stir in canned crushed tomatoes, chicken stock, and browned pork. Bring to simmer, cover with parchment and inverted foil lid, add casserole’s lid, and bake one hour in oven. Remove from oven, place on stove top and add a butternut squash cut into one-inch cubes. Cook over medium heat until the squash is tender. Remove bay leaf. Add cider vinegar. Stir in cilantro.

Sea bass over braised fennel. (Pictured above.) Preheat oven to 450°F. Chop some fennel fronds for garnish, set aside. Cut two fennel bulbs into one-quarter inch slices. Cook fennel, sliced onion, and anchovy paste in olive oil over medium heat. Season, then add chicken broth and braise, covered, until tender. Remove lid and boil, stirring occasionally, until liquid is evaporated. Transfer to 1.5-quart shallow baking dish. While fennel braises, cook chopped onion, red pepper flakes, and salt in oil in a separate skillet over medium heat, until onion is soft. Add canned whole tomatoes with their juice and simmer, breaking tomatoes and stirring occasionally, until thick. Arrange sea bass fillets (three-quarter-inch thick, boned to the extent possible) on top of fennel mixture and season with salt. Spoon tomato mixture over fish. Cover with parchment and inverted foil lid, add baking dish’s lid, and bake until fish is just cooked through, about 20 to 25 minutes. Sprinkle with reserved fennel fronds.

Chicken soup with noodles (no more Parmesan croutons!)

“Start with a good stock.”

This instruction was the gist of the lesson on stocks and soups. Soups are relatively easy to make, after all — you toss a bunch of stuff such as protein, produce, and pasta in a big pot and you heat it all up. But you only get out of that pot what you put in it; if you use a good homemade stock with well-chosen quality ingredients, you’re likely to get a very good soup.

So, what is stock, anyway? It’s not broth — it’s much richer and, in the case of veal or beef stock, considerably thicker than broth — the veal stock Hong showed us was the consistency of gelatin, a natural result from the slow cooking of a lot of bones. Also, stock does not come in a packet or a cube. It may come in a can, I suppose, but I’ve never seen a can of real stock, only cans of chicken or beef broth claiming to be stock. (I’m sure “broth” isn’t the right word for what might be found in many of these cans . . .)

Making stock

Stock is the soup base, the heart of the soup. But it’s often not a just-throw-it-in ingredient. It’s an ingredient best prepared in advance—the recipe before the recipe. Here are the basic techniques:

To make chicken stock: Rinse five pounds of chicken bones under cold water and trim any excess fat. Put bones in large stockpot; add just enough water to cover the bones. Bring to a simmer. Skim any scum that rises to the surface. Add big chunks of onion, carrot, and celery, and bouquet garni and continue to barely simmer for up to three hours, removing the scum every so often. Strain, cool quickly (in an ice bath if you can manage it), then refrigerate or freeze.

To make veal stock: Wash and dry eight pounds or so of veal breast and shanks. Brown in 400° F oven. Place in large stockpot. Deglaze roasting pan with water and white wine, add this liquid to stockpot. Add just enough cold water to cover the bones by one inch. Bring to a simmer. Skim any scum that rises to the surface. Add big chunks of onion, carrot, and celery, and bouquet garni, and continue to barely simmer for up to 24 hours, or at least nine hours, removing scum occasionally. Strain, cool at room temperature, then refrigerate or freeze.

To make fish stock: Wash about five heads and frames (eyeballs OK, gills not so much) from white, non-oily fish. Place in large stockpot; add just enough cold water to cover the bones. Add some white wine. Bring to a simmer. Skim any scum that rises to the surface. Add finely chopped onion and carrot, coarsely chopped mushroom, and bouquet garni and continue to barely simmer for 30 minutes. Strain.

To make vegetable stock: Put chunks of most any vegetables you desire in a large stockpot; add just enough cold water to cover. Simmer for 30 minutes. Strain. You can, of course, eat the simmered vegetables!

You may have noticed that none of these stock techniques called for seasoning other than the bouquet garni and whatever flavors would come from the bones and vegetables. You don’t season stock—you season the  soup or whatever you’re making from your stock — gravy, perhaps. And, though I hate to admit it, you’re gonna have to add more than a little salt, “the secret ingredient,” according to Hong. “Adding salt and pepper to your soup will round out the flavor profile. If you don’t add enough salt, you will just taste chicken” or whatever the main ingredient is.

From stock to soup

If this week’s recipes are representative of the wonderful world of soups, then chicken stock is by far the most widely used stock for soups. We made delicious renditions of southwest squash soup with ancho cream (ancho is a dried poblano chile, according to Wikipedia), fennel corn chowder, chicken soup with noodles and Parmesan croutons, and pappa al pomodoro (bread and tomato soup) from the chicken stock. There was a full-bodied onion soup au gratin made from beef or veal stock, but chicken stock would have been OK for that, too.

Gary and I have already started to buy whole chickens, cutting them into parts for meals, and freezing the carcasses. A four-pound chicken, we found, yields about one pound of freezable bones (not including leg, thigh, and wing bones). One down, four more to go before we can make our own chicken stock.

Salad afterthoughts

The class also made a couple of salads: mixed greens with chicken, shrimp, and basil dressing, and salade nicoise.

I first heard of salade nicoise about two years ago while viewing disc 1 of The French Chef DVD set. (I cannot post a video for you, but you can find Child’s recipe here.) I liked that the recipe could be easily made into lighter fare, and that you could add or subtract whatever you wanted from the recipe; the fun part was you can be creative in the way you arranged the salad on the serving platter. Other than that, I didn’t consider nicoise any special kind of salad.

But because you arrange salad nicoise on a platter or individual plate instead of tossing it all together, it is a special kind of salad — a composed salad. (I learned about composed salads from Alice Waters in The Art of Simple Food.) And Hong did continuously refer to this salad as a composed salad. Believing that the salad components were to be artfully arranged on a platter lined with Bibb leaves, I carefully cut some boiled potatos into wedges, and directed Gary to halve his hard-boiled eggs carefully. Each group of vegetables or proteins was to be tossed separately before it was added to the platter, or so our recipe stated. Imagine my surprise when Hong instructed us to dump our tomatoes, onions, pepper, radishes, green beans, celery, anchovies, and beautifully sliced eggs and potatoes into one large bowl, to be tossed together with dressing. How anti-climatic. So much for the composed concept. Ah, well, I guess class time was running out by the time we got to the salads and the “dump, toss, and dress” technique was the most time efficient. We needed time to sit down and enjoy our luscious soups, after all!

Eggs. Photo: bella_domanie via www.morguefile.com

Though marketing slogans are often crafted of lies and hyperbole, I must admit that eggs are indeed as incredible as they are edible. Through heating, beating, baking, whisking, steaming, boiling, poaching, or interacting with myriad other ingredients, these palm-sized ovate spheroids prove they are among the great shape-shifters of the culinary world.

Background and agenda

In the eggs class — the second of the back-to-basics series at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts — we learned about egg safety, egg storage, egg beating, egg-white whipping, poaching, coddling, and hard and soft cooking. Hong, our instructor for the series, presented these eggy topics plus the proper techniques for creating Hollandaise sauce and mayonnaise, two famous and familiar egg-based preparations that in turn form the basis of countless sauces, dressings, toppings, and spreads.

Disappointingly, Hong didn’t show us her preferred methods of cracking open or separating eggs; nor did she whip up any egg whites for us to show us the different stages of beaten whites (soft and stiff peaks, for example) and what they’re used for.

How can you tell an egg is fresh? If you shake the egg and can hear the yolk move, or if you crack it open and the yolk is nice and firm, the egg is fresh. When might you not want to use the freshest eggs possible? When hard boiling them: As an egg ages, the insides dry up little by little and pull away from the shell, making them easier to peel when hard boiled. Of course, other factors influence ease of peeling, such as the temperature of the egg when you peel it, and where on the egg you start peeling.

Budding chefs and eggs

In class, everybody made their own batches of hollandaise and mayonnaise, and various individuals or teams worked on:

• Cheese souffle. To be baked in single-serving ramekins: Butter ramekins and dust with grated parmesan cheese. Make a béchamel sauce. Prepare a souffle base from the béchamel. Pour into prepared ramekins, bake, and serve. “Eat soon.”
• Frittata di cipolle (onion omelet). Heat butter in a skillet then add and sweat some garlic and lots of onions. Add some rosemary, then make sure mixture is spread evenly across the skillet.  Beat eggs; pour on top of onion mixture. Cook over low heat until eggs are set but not dry.
• Eggs Benedict. Poach eggs. Cook some Canadian bacon. Toast some English muffins. Assemble Benedicts by stacking, bottom to top, English muffin, bacon, poached egg, hollandaise sauce.
• Quiche. Make pastry dough; roll out and place into pie pan. Make custard of eggs, egg yolks, cream, swiss cheese, and seasonings. Pour over crust; bake 35 to 40 minutes.
• Pipérade and scrambled eggs. Concassé the tomato. Saute onion and garlic in butter, add peppers (mirepoix dice!) and tomato, cook until liquid evaporates “and mixture becomes a thick pulp.” Beat the eggs and add them to a second skillet, prepped with heated butter. Whisk until eggs become creamy; mix in tomato mixture. Spoon into a serving dish on top of garlic croutes (slices of crunchy garlic bread, essentially).
• Crepes. (Gary and I volunteered to make the crepes.) Clarify a lot of butter, cool the butter, then pour into liquid measuring cup. The butter will be used mostly to constantly “oil” the  crepe pan, though two tablespoons will go into the crepe batter. Blend together eggs, milk, water, flour, salt, clarified butter. Let batter rest for at least 30 minutes. Heat crepe pan (we used really small pans!). Pour some clarified butter into pan, swirl it around the pan, and pour the excess back into the measuring cup. Tilt buttered pan away from you, add some batter to the lip of the pan, “quickly tilt the pan from  side to side so that the entire bottom of the pan is covered with a thin layer of batter.” Cook until browned and lacy and then carefully turn crepe with spatula; brown the other side. Unmold onto plate; continue with rest of batter.We quickly learned that, when making crepes, the turning is the hardest part. Once you erringly fold the crepe onto itself, it’s not easy to unfold it in the pan. And none of our crepes browned evenly. Whether this was a shortcoming of stove, pan, or technique we were unable to ascertain.

Frenzied egg whiskers

Mayonnaise in the making. Photo: FotoosVanRobin; for this mayonnaise, honey mustard was used because the cook doesn't like dijon mustard.

Why buy mayonnaise when it is ridiculously easy to make at home?  All mayonnaise requires is egg yolks, mustard, salt, lemon juice or vinegar, vegetable oil, and a few minutes of your time. And, okay, maybe a little bit of whisking restraint.

Whisk together all the ingredients EXCEPT THE OIL, then start whisking in oil teensy bit by teensy bit until a creamy emulsion forms. At this point you can ease your control of the oil a bit, but still, add it slowly — don’t just dump it in. Adjust seasonings; can be thinned a bit by adding a bit of water. (Bit by bit by bit!)  It’s fun to watch how egg and oil mixed together slowly becomes a thick creamy liquid, then quickly transforms into a thick, yellowish cream. I had a taste. Mmm. Tastes just like Hellman’s, I thought to myself. That caught me off guard; I corrected myself: Nooo! Hellman’s tastes just like homemade. Despite my fascination with the mayo magic, I have little room for full-fat mayonnaise in my daily, weekly, or even monthly diet. If someone could present me with an easy recipe for low-fat mayonnaise consisting only of fresh, straightforward ingredients — a homemade Hellman’s Light — THAT would be truly magical.

Before this class, I had shied away from making my own mayonnaise in part because I was freaked by the raw egg and that mayonnaise isn’t cooked. No need to fear, I Iearned: the acid (usually the vinegar or lemon juice) “cooks” the egg and prevents bacteria growth. Makes sense, if only in a heartening way. However, it is worth noting that the American Egg Board claims that your average homemade sauce or mayonnaise recipe has nowhere near enough acid to cook the raw eggs effectively. What also befuddles me is Alice Waters’s aioli (garlic mayonnaise) recipe from The Art of Simple Food. Her aioli calls for fresh garlic, salt, an egg yolk, water, and oil. Unless pounded garlic releases acid, there’s nothing in this recipe that would cook the eggs.  Then again, the the American Egg Board claims we should always to cook the eggs when a recipe calls for raw, and offers tip on how to do this. Or you can use pasteurized eggs, which are more expensive than nonpasteurized eggs, but other than that there should be no differences.

I was considerably less excited about the Hollandaise sauce, both the making and the tasting, than I was about the mayonnaise. First, the Hollandaise had to be made at the stove, around which a half dozen or more fellow students had already congregated, each trying to constantly whisk and watch their hollandaises, all on separate gas burners. I watched as my comrades disappeared into and then emerged from of the crowd, the ones unable to penetrate the mass stretching their tippie toes and whisk-wielding arms to the extent necessary to reach the back burners. Gary and I waited until the crowd had thinned before approaching the stove to give our own whisking a whirl.

Second, I don’t sauce my food much, at least not with overly creamy or buttery preparations, so I didn’t imagine I would gain much by mastering hollandaise, which is basically just egg yolks and butter. You mix egg yolks with water and lemon juice, heat that mixture until it bubbles around the edges of the pot, then you whisk in a total of one-half cup of butter, piece by piece, until the butter is melted and the sauce is thinkened. Missing from the printed recipe was the “whisk constantly” instruction, which Hong repeated umpteen times, mostly in my general direction. The whisking is necessary, she explained, to incorporate enough air to make the sauce sufficiently thick.

Before I had added all the butter, the souffle team announced that their puffy, cheesy creations were ready for consumption. When one of the souffle’s creators came by to hand me a souffled ramekin, I gestured toward a melting chunk of butter in my sauce and asked him to set the souffle down; I’d enjoy it very soon.

“Eat your souffles NOW!” Hong ordered from across the kitchen, “before they collapse! You can turn the heat off under your hollandaises; they’ll be fine.”  Wow. Okay, I shut off the heat under the hollandaise. Stat!  The souffles were perfectly cheesy and fluffy; totally worth the, er, nonwait.

For some reason I had believed that making hollandaise — or any “French” sauce — was a super-tricky feat, a belief reinforced by the “how to fix broken hollandaise” discussion in this class’s opening demonstrations. Apparently it’s not so delicate an operation that you cannot temporarily turn off the heat and walk away if an epicurean emergency arises. What is delicate, however, is the hollandaise itself. You have to keep it between 165 and 180 degrees Fahrenheit to kill any bacteria, and you should serve immediately or within two hours. What you don’t use, toss. “It’s easy to make a new batch, and cheap;” said Hong, “much cheaper than going to the hospital.”

For more information on eggs and egg safety

• Playing it Safe with Eggs: What Consumers Need To Know from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• Shell Eggs From Farm to Table from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Egg Facts from the American Egg Board

Slicing celery with a Chroma 301 chef's knife. (This is neither me nor my knife.) Photo: M. Brandt at Kochmesser.de

Staying true to my “relearn how to cook” objective from earlier this year, I’ve enrolled in a six-class back-to-basics course at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Gary’s taking the course as well as he, too, would like to be able to cook simple or gourmet dishes without cracking open a cookbook each time.

First up: Knife skills

In this first class of the Back to Basics series, Knife Skills, we learned the parts of a knife (tip, edge, spine, bolster, heel, tang, handle, rivets) and the materials or structure that makes a quality knife a quality knife. I now know how to hold, hone, sharpen, clean, and store my knives, and how several knife-users can safely coexist in a busy kitchen. I organized all the tips and tenets learned into two categories: Respect Your Cutlery and Respect your Safety.

Respect your cutlery

• Keep knives sharp.
• Keep knives honed.
• Keep knives clean; wash immediately after use if possible.
• Use the right knife for the task.
• Store knives smartly and securely.
• Only use knives to cut food.
• Do not wash knives in the dishwasher.

Respect your safety (knives edition)

• Always use a cutting board.
• Secure cutting board to counter (put a wet dishcloth or rubber shelf liner under the board, or use a board with rubber feet).
• Use the right knife for the task.
• Find or create a flat surface on the item to be cut. Rest this surface against the board. (Not sure how to follow this advice to create onion rings.)
• Cut away from yourself.
• Keep an eye on your blade.
• Keep the other eye on your fingertips.
• Clean one knife a time.
• Don’t leave knife in sink full of water.
• Hold the supporting hand in a claw position to prevent fingertipectomies. (The hardest tip for me to follow.)
• “A falling knife has no blade; do not attempt to catch it.”

Choosing the right knife for the job

Hong (our instructor) showed us some common types of kitchen knifes, their uses, and how best to use each type:

• Chef’s knife. The most-used kitchen knife. Common blade sizes are 8-inch, 10-inch, and 12-inch (8-inch is a popular size). The blade can be narrow or thick. A thick-bladed chef’s knife can be used like a cleaver to hack away at chicken bones and such.
• Bread knife. My favorite kind of knife. It is serrated (has teeth) and has a narrow blade. Serrated knifes, especially bread knives, are great for slicing items with a lot of different surfaces and textures going on, or items such as cakes that have compressible, spongy textures too fragile for a toothless blade to slice through without damaging the food. A bread knife is good for slicing crusty bread (of course), tomatoes, pineapples, pies, and chopping chocolate. (This surprised me; I’ve always used a chef’s knife to chop chocolate.)
• Paring knife. Perfect for in-hand peeling of foods such as garlic and apples. Also good for chopping small items such as garlic, separating citrus fruit into sections, and hulling strawberries. Because paring knifes are used for a lot of in-hand tasks, using one safely requires a lot of control. One caveat of many: Make sure you can see the tip of the knife when paring.
• Boning knife. Use a boning knife to trim meats from bones. A flexible blade that can easily slide through and around bones is key. We don’t own a boning knife probably because we rarely buy whole chickens or bone-in meats. We shall strive to be more adventurous in this realm!
• Fillet knife. For filleting fish, of course. Has a thin, flexible blade that can slide right through the flesh of fish and detour around bones as necessary. Another knife we don’t own; we generally buy our fish already filleted.

When I had my own Henkels 4-star knife set, I used the chef’s knife and the paring knife most of all. The bread knife was a noble runner-up, as I was always happy to have some extra crusty bread, or pumpkin or banana bread at the ready. Gary had his own Henckels Professional “S” set, so after a period of cohabitation and our respective knife blocks commandeering precious food-preparation space, I offered to find a new home for my blades (I kept the bread knife, though, because Gary’s set didn’t have one). I am in love with his Wustof Culinar Santoku knife, which I now use more often than the chef’s knife, even for slicing and chopping. But love can be blind; after the brief these-are-some-common knifes presentation, I decided to reacquaint myself with the chef’s knife.

Practicing knife techniques

Hong had set up cutting stations for each of us before class. Each station included a cutting board anchored to the counter with a sheet of something akin to nonskid shelf liner, a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a vegetable peeler, plus our test subjects—an orange, a carrot, an onion, a pepper, a celery stalk, a few garlic cloves, and a potato. Every two students were given an enormous zucchini to share. Also shared were bench scrapers, bowls of salt, and large garbage bowls.

Per Hong’s demonstrations and instructions, I peeled and de-pithed my orange by cutting off one end, placing the flat end on the board, and using curved, downward strokes of the paring knife to detach pith ‘n peel simultaneously. Then, with the naked orange resting in my left hand, I cut it into segments, leaving the inter-segment membranes behind. Then I ate the sections. The carrot was julienned, then minced. Half the onion was sliced into equal-sized pieces by way of a method I’d never used before but won’t describe here, the other half was diced. The pepper was also julienned after its top and bottom were lopped off, the remaining torso cut vertically then flattened into a strip, and the membranes cleared away. Rondelle was the technique used to prepare the celery stalk. I smashed the garlic cloves with a side of the chef’s knife, peeled and minced them, then added some salt and tried to mush them into a paste. The potato was sliced into batonnet sticks (about 2.5″ by .25″ by .25′). (Please pardon my naive use of these French cooking terms.)

The fruits (and vegetables) of our labors were collected throughout the session; we then prepared ourselves a very tasty lunch of fresh vegetable salad, pasta with vegetables, grilled crusty bread, rosemary-parmesan french fries, and sliced pineapple and watermelon. (Hong’s demo included cutting up pineapples and melons and carving little flowers out of celery root, but we did not practice these techniques in class.)

I’d still like to know how to make uniform onion coins (for sandwiches and onion rings) without using a mandolin. The two techniques I need to practice most are keeping my left-hand in the claw position while the right hand cuts away, and keeping my slices, dices, and minces uniform. I’m not watching what’s happening behind the knife; I’m not making sure my cuts will be the right size before I make the cuts. So much to learn, so much to practice . . . !