Please Ask.

The other day a friend posted a question. Something about onions and soy sauce. It made me write. I like the idea of being asked questions. Then I can shoot for an answer. It's nice not having to answer anything complicated like what I think about healthcare or why birds don't moo. Things like simmering onions and stuffing quail are much more my speed.

Or better yet don't ask anything and just tell me something. Then I'll write about that. The whole point is that a lot of the time the best things to write about aren't the things I think of.

Some people have been wondering about why I don't write down my recipes. I don't know..., recipes sound boring. No one ever won any poetry awards with a teaspoon fulla this and a teaspoon fulla that. Now "Why do we keep trying surimi even though we know its gross?" That is a good question. And answer. Or "Explain the grossest cheese that's so damn good?" or "What are some of the ickiest sides you ever got at a steakhouse?" At any rate I'm sure whatever you come up with will be on the mark and perfect material. So please help out. Sincerely, J

Frangipane Caflooties

There's a great brunch place downtown. Clafoutis. My dad says cah-flooties. I haven't been yet but he really likes it there.

I made a good many clafoutis this winter. A clafoutis is most traditionally done with cherries. It's a sweet batter thats tossed slightly with the fruit and baked to a custardy finish. For Christmas I did a big one with plums. Mostly I'll prepare the fruit in some way. Poach it. Caramelize it. Plums are never in season around here. I've been using these luscious plums out of the can. The company Oregon has a line I love. Also cherries. Gooseberries. Others. The plums are in this fantastic syrup that's perfect to serve with a Monte Cristo. Stones need to be removed. These plump rich purple egg shaped beauties are tart tart and still have the skin. The pits pop out easily and I let them sit and dry out a bit in the sieve. Pears I'll poach or most of the time let them sear and sizzle in butter and sugar and lemon juice and ground cardamom, until a glassy brown coats them. Pear or plum are my favorite.

The pear caramelizing technique goes as follows:

The pears should be hard but not rocks. Cut to quarter wedges for this dish. Peeled. My favorite kind of pan to use for this is seasoned carbon steel with a good curved shape to flip them around in. Start with a light film of oil. Get the pan smoking hot. Put in not too many pears. Let them crackle and sear and sit there. Throw in a pat of butter. It should smoke some and brown. Gratinee. A splash of lemon juice and a few sprinkles of sugar. Keep the pan hot hot. Shake it. Shake hard and flip them fast if they stick. This is a very cavalier thing. You can burn yourself. Maybe a splash more lemon juice, and more sugar. The sugar should almost burn and caramelize. Throw in a sprinkle or two of ground cardamom. Let it sit and let a fa few sear too much. Do it two or three times to have the amount you want. Too many pears in the pan will ruin the effect. It also works great for apples and cinnamon obviously.

At any rate. The clafoutis I make aren't even real clafoutis. I've been making them in a medium sized cast iron pan. I line the pan with puff pastry in rustic lips that hang over the edge of the pan. The edges get brushed with egg and sprinkled with course ground sugar and baked with beans in the way one pre bakes a pie shell. They've become these huge custard pies with crust. But really they are a combination of a frangipane and a clafoutis. The batter I make is similar to a frangipane batter in that it has eggs, sugar, cream, and marzipan, almond extract, vanilla. But its heavier and there's more of it. The pan is pretty deep. I add a little flour. I'll have to post a real recipe. I usually use about four eggs and no more than 3/4 of a cup of flour. When given a good spanking in the kitchen-aid the result should be a frothy, silky batter with proper ribbons and lots of air. The marzipan might give it a broken look. After piling the pears in and around the pan of pastry I slowly fill the rest of the space with batter much like a typical frangipane.

So the batter doesn't cover the fruit. I pile two or three pears on top of each other to get this effect in the pan.

It should take a solid two hours of non convection 275 degree heat. The pastry will insulate the batter from souffling and it should set like a large cream brulee. Watch it closely. It's finished when the center still jiggles but doesn't want to.

I did a large one in my Paella pan of all things for a larger party and it looked really old world, with the brown flaky sediments of pastry curling all around it.

Dad still called it a ca-flootie. Actually I just said, here dad, I made a ca-flootie. He doesn't care about all the rest. It is a totally delicious dessert though.

Go get a kosher chicken

There was a year there that I cooked Kosher. I was working for the Bekers. After I was under David Honeysetts wing I lied my way into a job agency and with-in two weeks destiny stuck its silver bell because I landed the most fabulous job as a Private Chef. In addition to being the most wonderful people, the Bekers kept kosher. Which made everything very interesting for me. Because I do not.

I can't say I ever loved keeping kosher. For a non kosher person it can seem arduous. The Bekers lived in an area where many people did. So it was a lot easier. Regular deliveries of kosher milk for example. Or a kosher butcher shop down the road.

I think of all this a bit more because as I get ready to visit New York, and by auspicious chance I will see them and we are going to have a grand cooking party.

The year I was with them, was, nothing less than totally auspicious for me. I hurried my way though anything I could dream up to make and had the opportunity to find only some of the best food on the planet, for it was Manhattan. The hub of the universe. Not everything in Kosher cooking has to be special. Parve items abound. I would bring home the loveliest fish,fresh italian truffles, artisan breads, exotic fruits and cooked all day for people who were nothing-less than totally appreciative. What a Camelot.

Everything that could have gotten cooked got cooked. Rich veal stocks, freshly made pasta, tempuras, glaces, nages, compotes, coulis, kugels. French food, Italian Food, Jewish food, Indian food. It was a regular food-o-rama over there that year.

But cooking kosher was hard for me too. I like shellfish, and I like ham, and I like cheeseburgers. I got to the point where when I was mentally putting menus together and I would trip and stumble over words like like shrimp and beef stroganoff. My head would play little games with grocery lists. Bread...crab...eggs...crab...flour...crab...mushrooms crab…… Once when we were up on the Cape there was the sweetest fish stand to shop at. Crystal fresh fish. Black Cod. Eastern Sea Bass. And they had these scallops, freshly caught, sitting in the halfshell, looking like nestled goddesses six inches across. Rowe attached. Now and forever the nicest scallops I ever saw, and I couldn't buy them. And I had no where to cook them. I still covet those scallops now. It's sixteen years later. Please remember, I live in the desert.

I bought a kosher chicken the other day, in honor of the cooking party thats coming. Kosher chickens are delicious. They are rinsed and leeched with salt which gives the poultry a light brining. They are meat of the highest quality and I strongly suggest getting one. I've never had such a delectable roast chicken than that and the one we had last night was no different. I can't wait until New York.

On going against tradition.

We made Sunday sauce the other day. It was a my birthday celebration and I had Dad over so we could cook together. Thought I should grab the bull by the horns and spend some time in the kitchen as he's getting older. The Sunday sauce is a rich Italian bolognese with many different kinds of meat in it. This time we put pork ribs, meatballs made with beef and pork, Hot Italian sausage and little chicken braciole. Dad reminded me that we needed to put a little hard boiled egg in the braciole. Dad gets ravenous now for some reason and was picking constantly and when the meatballs were done ready for the sauce he took one.

He says, "When ma-ma gave us a meatball it was always raw in the middle."

He explained because she would fry the meat balls and they were a little under done in the middle waiting to be put in the sauce. I bake my meatballs. Its difficult frying something spherical. They continually get little browned spots on them and turning and turning is laborsome. So I put mine in the convection at 425 and let them cook fast on the outside and they brown some, especially the bottom. It works fine but I don't come up with fried meatballs with a raw center kids can snack on. Dad was very suspicious.

Whats funny to me is how I truly wonder if it IS fine. Is there something that makes the fried meatballs better? Does a beautiful, cared for, attentively turned, fried, crusty meatball make the sauce better? I've done it both ways and to be honest I find the light browning of the meatballs in the oven to hit the sauce better. The browner, crustier balls I think don't soften as well in the sauce when it cooks. I like the meatballs to start melting in my mouth right away as they hit the tongue. So I do it my way. I'm always a little suspicious of myself when I go against tradition. Even if it tastes good.

Meatloaf Wellington

Julie's told me her mom use to make meatloaf Wellington for the family when she was a kid. Apparently she stuffed the meatloaf with mushrooms and cheese and then wrapped the thing in Pillsbury croissant dough. Mmmm. It sounds decadent and delicious and silly. I'll have to get in tough with her mother and find out weather she baked it for a while before she put on the dough. Its a little harder to sear out a bunch of ground meat like you can a filet. We used to sear out the whole filet on the grill, put duxelles all over the top and then wrap it so the heat of cooking the pastry would finish off an already cooking piece of meat. A meatloaf Wellington would have to be no so huge I can imagine. So it wouldn't fall in on itself. Meatloaf is not fabulous rare either. But I can imagine a juicy, cheesy meatloaf with crisp pastry. It does sound great. Hearing about it makes me also want to do a beef bourguignon pot pie. I haven't made those in a long time.

Smothered Pork Chops

Smuthud. Smuthud'um with mushrooms and onions in a big cast iron pan filled with the sauce and five big pork chops. I put it in the oven and got it bubbling and we ate it with mashed potatoes and broccoli. And the best part is that they was s-m-u-t-h-u-d.

Il Piatta

I hardly ever go out any more. I just don't. It's too much fun to cook to go out for dinner at this point in my life. It's too expensive and a lot of the time, weather it's a great or mediocre place its just not that good.

It was my anniversary dinner and we went out. We went to Il Piatta and what a nice time. Matt has really kept that place in great shape. By doing nothing except keeping it exactly the same. All the old dishes are there that I've loved for years, and new ones. Everything was just great. The help was super friendly as usual. And the food was just out of this world. It was a threefur $20. Which I wasn't expecting so the meal was so economical.
We had Caesers. The gnocci with wild mushroom creme. This loosy juicy scampi risotto that was fresh and lemony and had an excellent fume quality. Hanger steak medium rare and tender. The pancetta wrapped trout that was a solid, delicious array of flavors and cooked flawlessly.

Just a great dinner. We washed the whole thing down with a Barolo. Happy Anniversary. Yum.

story about atole tamale

There was a dish I had to make once, some ultra indigenous quail course for a wine dinner. I made a blue corn tamale with apricots. Nothing could have been more real version of Northern New Mexican. Made with blue corn atole flour, locally dried Chimayo apricots, New Mexico Wild Flour honey. The quail was marinated in apple cider vinagar, sage, and home smoked chipotle. The tamale came from the pot. Freshly steamed we opened it. It was the best we could do. My staff and I were totally committed. The quail was oven warming. The course was picking up. We tried a tamale. It was steamy hot. It was ready and it was authentic. And it was indigenous. And it tasted liked a perfectly steamed apricot flavored energy bar. I said nothing. I love quail that way. Yes,...the quail went so good with the wine, yes, ...thank you...I’m so glad the tamales are good. Thank You. There are times I say nothing, and luckily no one sees what I see. I hope.