Meri i boilim wara pinis

we found tía tô in a public park in Buffalo. someone planted it intentionally.
- posted by Jesse @ 9:41 PM 0 comments

 
panem et circenses
The River Cottage Meat Book, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, is published in a new american edition. it is about how to prepare meat, but also has a substantial discussion about meat ethics and quality, with good contributions to the vegetarian-carnivore debate.

a couple of excerpts

...to those who play the socioeconomic card, saying what about the poor, they'll never be able to afford your fancy, organic, rare-breed meat, from pampered farmyard pets . . . I say don't peddle that hypocritical line to me. Flooding the market with cheap meat would be an obtuse way of tackling poverty and dietary privation in a civilized Western country. Hardly anyone in the West is suffering from problems associated with too little meat, whereas millions are not getting enough fresh fruit and vegetables and wholegrain cereals to maintain good health. p.28-29

(i would say that the author is missing the point, though scarcely by much. flooding the market with cheap meat is a slightly more responsible form of social control than the practice common to poor countries of flooding the market with cheap alcohol. those who say what about the poor are advocating measures to keep the poor happy, but still poor, more often than they are advocating measures to change the social structure so that there is less poverty.)

It is ironic, and also fairly astonishing, that the killing methods of many nonhuman predators are considered such a fascinating aspect of the natural world that films displaying them in graphic detail, often replaying the process several times in slow motion, are considered to be at the classy end of prime-time entertainment, fit for children as well as adults. Whereas the final moments of human predation of our farmed livestock are considered too disturbing and shameful to be made available even for information. In fact, such limited footage as does exist has often been filmed undercover and is more likely to be used to fuel the rage of the militant vegetarian than to educate us dispassionately about the way our meat is made. p.18

(i like this point, because i am generally in favor of probing inflammatory issues lest they be left to radicals. you get to see pictures from a humane slaughterhouse on the next page)
- posted by Jesse @ 10:07 AM 0 comments

 
pot au feu
poaching meat makes something between a soup and a stew. the broth is relatively thin and is served separately from the meat. you use enough liquid to cover the meat. vegetables poached with the meat can be pureed after the cooking is finished and used as a liaison.

poached beef with potatoes

a roast of 1-2 lbs is sprinkled with salt, then patted dry. if it is not dry, then the water left on it will become steam and hinder the browning. in a dutch oven brown all sides in just enough vegetable oil.

sweat a half onion, diced, in the same pot, having added butter and vegetable oil in equal amounts. when the onion starts to become translucent, add two carrots and two stalks of celery diced. cook until the celery is softened. lay the roast on top of the diced vegetables. add two bay leaves and enough beef or chicken stock to cover the meat by an inch or so.

then you poach for an hour. the liquid should be just below boiling, but should not actually boil. boiling causes the meat's protein-bound water to be released before the collagen is dissolved, making it tough and dry. if your stove cannot go low enough, then bring it to an almost boil, then cover the pot and wrap a towel around it. repeat after a half hour.

add the potatoes and poach for another hour, until the meat is fork-tender and the potatoes are completely cooked.

remove the meat and all but one of the potatoes, put them in a covered dish. skim any excess oil from the surface of the broth. pass the broth with the vegetables and one potato through a food mill. stir for uniform consistency. salt to taste.

finishing options

1. stir in baked garlic purée and black pepper

2. whisk in a cup of heavy cream

3. for something close to cameroon pepper soup, stir in puréed habanero pepper and ground njansang.
- posted by Jesse @ 3:14 PM 0 comments

 
selecting cookbooks
when my students had to pass a class whose subject matter didn't interested them, i found that they preferred to learn a bag of tricks rather than learn the concepts that could generate all of the "tricks."

if you go to a bookstore and look at the cookbooks, most of them are bags of tricks, with pretty, pretty pictures. they show you how to create something that resembles the picture, but do not give much guidance if you want to improvise or make your own recipes.

so to be picky about cookbooks, look for ones that have been awarded:

James Beard Foundation

International Association of Culinary Professionals

Gourmand Awards (French)

other ideas for finding good cookbooks?

- posted by Jesse @ 8:38 PM 0 comments

 
pure
i moved and i threw out most of my old kitchen so that i'd have an excuse to re-outfit myself. two things that i've come to like are the dutch oven and the food mill.

apple sauce

take as many apples as you like. even pears. cut them into octants, removing the seeds. place them in the dutch oven, which you place in the oven at about 200F, 1-2 hours, until they are mushy and carmelized. run them through the food mill. add sugar and cinnamon to taste, or not.

pan-americas beans

soak a pound of kidney beans overnight. rinse twice or thrice. prepare a garlic stock. cook them at a simmer, open, in enough stock to cover by 1", having added a few bay leaves, until done. in the end, there should be just enough broth to cover the beans. be vigilant during the cooking so that the liquid level does not go below the beans.

cut a half pound of pig skin into thin strips, like tagliatelle. add them to the dutch oven along with a bit of ham fat. cook on the stove at low heat, until all of the fat is rendered and the skin becomes cracklins. remove the cracklins, salt them and set aside. remove all of the rendered fat except for as much as you want to have in your pot of beans.

in the fat, fry on medium heat one diced onion and, optionally, several jalapeños, scorched on a gas flame, seeded and deveined, diced. let the onions become diaphanous.

add the beans and their broth. bring to a slight boil for up to a half hour. add tomato coulis to chicken and to improve the color. add cumin to taste and the cracklins. if you added jalapeños, finish with chopped cilantro.

it is done.

serve with rice or tortillas.

potage parmentier

it is convenient to make this with the food mill.

- posted by Jesse @ 9:01 PM 0 comments