Articulated

Adventures in pasta

This weekend I took a break from my newly established ritual bread baking to try my hand at home-made pasta. I’ve seen it done several times on television and in person. Recently, I have been reading Bill Buford’s “Heat” and have been inspired to try it myself. Pasta is easily my favorite food item; I feel an obligation to know how to make my own.

The Recipe

Once again, I consulted the bible. Pasta dough is very simple. No fancy ingredients are required. All it takes is flour and egg. A little salt is added for flavor. You can add some oil (if you like) to make the dough easier to work and (in the case of a fine extra virgin oil) add some flavor. Water is used to adjust the level of moisture. The ratio of flour to egg is roughly one egg for every quarter-pound (~112 grams) of flour, which results in a healthy serving of pasta. I used 3 eggs and measured 337 grams of flour which made more than enough for two people (I have leftovers).

Making the Dough

Following the directions, I mixed some salt into my flour and then added my (very slightly beaten) eggs. Starting with a spatula and then switching to my hands, I combined the two until the dough would take no more flour. There was quite a bit of flour left over, but my eggs were small and probably didn’t provide the correct amount of moisture. I added enough water so that all the remaining flour was incorporated and the dough was just soft enough to knead. I was a little worried that I was over-working the dough, but it did eventually become smooth, consistent, and elastic. At that point I stopped, wrapped it in plastic wrap, and let it rest for an hour.

When it was time to roll, I separated the dough into halves so I would have enough rolling room. This was when I realized how elastic the dough had become. It was slightly difficult to separate. Rolling the dough with a standard wooden rolling pin was a significant challenge. I was concerned that I would break either the rolling pin handles or the portable kitchen island on which I work. The dough was so stretchy that it would shrink back every time I rolled it out. Eventually, I achieved a thickness I was happy with and, using a knife, cut the dough in to thick pieces of fettucine. Enough flour had adhered to the surface during the rolling that I did not have to worry about individual noodles sticking together.

Cooking

Water and lots of salt. The noodles plump up when you put them into boiling water. This is where I realized that my dough had not been rolled thin enough. A pasta roller would have been a big help, but I didn’t want to buy one without having tried to make pasta at least once. Because the pasta was thick, it required a longer cooking time than what would be normal for fresh pasta (mine took 5 or 6 minutes, double what the bible recommends). I finished the pasta in my sauce – a mushroom cream sauce with bacon and peas. Despite the extra cooking time, the noodles stood up very well to the sauce, remaining toothy and maintaining a good texture. They were also very filling.

The Economics

A 1 lb. box of cheap dry pasta will cost around $1.20 at the supermarket. To make my pasta, I used some pretty good ingredients. I purchased King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour on sale from Whole Foods ($4.50 for 5 lbs.). The eggs were not organic, but they were ‘no-antibiotics’ eggs from free-range hens ($3.80 per dozen). I used 3 eggs ($0.95) and 3/4 lb. of flour ($0.68) for a a total of about $1.63 for 3/4 lb. of pasta. This works out to about $2.17 per lb. More expensive than the cheap dry pasta, but much less expensive than a similar size package of fresh pasta from someplace like Wegmans or Whole Foods, and likely made using much better ingredients. And while you can argue that I have not factored in the labor required to make the pasta, I still think the money saved over store-bought fresh pasta and increase in eating satisfaction justify the extra work involved. I’m definitely going to buy dry pasta much less often.

Pasta makes me happy. It has since I can remember. When I was growing up, our family had a set number of different meals, and pasta with meat sauce was always my favorite one. I love mac and cheese, chicken noodle soup, 牛肉麵, lasagna, dumplings… I can’t begin to convey how happy it makes me to be able to have my pasta. I should have tried this a long time ago. But better late than ever.

Now, it is time to succumb to a contented pasta food coma.

Nothing finer

Is there anything better than a holiday that celebrates a bounty of food? I don’t think so. From the contrived fall drinks that are marketed by Starbucks (gingerbread latte, anyone?) to Food Network specials about holiday cooking traditions to the smell of roasted turkey bones boiling in a pot of water, we collectively celebrate our love of eating foods that remind us of the late autumn – harvest time. And while most of us are (or ought to be) routinely thankful for the fact that we can enjoy pork tenderloin, perfectly cooked green beans, fair trade dark chocolate, fresh cherries, or dried mango; this is the time of year when we say it loud and proud: “thank you [deity] for all of this [explicative] great food and for the absolutely gluttonous way I’m about to eat it.”

I particularly enjoy learning about and participating in food traditions. Thanksgiving is an obvious one. There are many other food traditions that may be less festive or involved but still important to a person’s cultural fabric. Every time I visit North Carolina I try to have some pulled pork. Many people I know make a point of visiting their local state fair every year. Here in the big city, there are seasonal or annual events featuring specific food genres or seasonal ingredients. My mother regularly made a seemingly odd but very comforting dish when I was a kid (something my sister still loves): spanish rice, chopped hot dogs, and corn. Every morning I wake up and boil water to make a pot of green tea.

Lately I’ve been working to establish a new food tradition: weekly bread baking. It’s an early success. Thanksgiving has inspired me to consider adding a second periodic activity: making stock.

Boiling turkey carcass

After the Thanksgiving turkey meat is finished, we are left with the bones. Bones are the base of a good stock. This year, I searched for some advice on how best to utilize the bones. I stumbled upon a goldmine of cooking thought and trivia: Michael Ruhlman’s blog. Ruhlman is a food writer and (like Alton Brown) advocates skillful yet practical home cooking through the acquisition of basic cooking fundamentals. I devoured (pun intended) his book “The Making of a Chef” and am very interested in his latest offering, “Ratio”. Combining information from his posting about turkey stock with information from “The Professional Chef”, I simmered the turkey carcass for a few hours. Once the apartment was thoroughly saturated with the aroma of turkey (again), I added chopped onion, green onion, celery, marjoram, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, garlic, and a little bit of soy sauce. After another hour of simmering the mixture was poured through a metal colander into a bowl and then ladled from the bowl through a strainer lined with cheesecloth into a clean pot for cooling.

I have zero experience with stocks. I don’t know the difference between a good one and a bad one in terms of color or flavor. My turkey stock has a pretty good color. The flavor is a little weak, but I can’t say if that’s due to a lack of salt. It possesses a nice turkey essence. Perhaps that’s the goal. Once it’s cooled, I can figure out what to do with it.

If the stock is a success, I hope to repeat the process with chicken. For the normal price of cheap, boneless chicken breasts ($3.99/lb), I can buy a whole organic chicken at a Whole Foods market. Roasting chicken shouldn’t be any more difficult that roasting turkey. Once I’ve cleaned the bird for all the meat (which can then be used in any number of week-day preparations), I’ll boil the bones and see if the result is any better than the canned chicken stock I get from the store.

Browsing around SOHO today (we went to Crate and Barrel and Sur La Table), I reflected on how much joy is possible through good cooking. The end product is only the final shade of joy (unless you count the pleasant feeling of fullness that follows). The whole process of conceiving a meal, planning a recipe, obtaining ingredients, preparing them carefully, and serving them to yourself and others is an endeavor that engages creativity, challenges the body, and satisfies the senses. And anything you’ve made on your own tastes better for the effort applied. I also feel a connection to history. There is my own childhood (watching my mother cook, or eating something my grandmother’s made) as well as the centuries of food prep knowledge upon which modern cuisine is based. While the methods change over time, the preparation and consumption of food in a human society – dare I say, ‘gastronomy’ – is always worthy of a bit of grateful celebrating.

So thank you, [deity], for the good fortune of fine food and folk to share it with.

Feast plan

Time for a pleasant task: planning Thanksgiving dinner. This year there will be 4 of us. I hope that will be enough people because I’ve planned an ambitious menu. In order to prepare all of the food on time, I’ll need to begin a day or two early and get the big items (like the bread) done to make sure there is enough kitchen space on the big day.

One of the first things to make will be the sweet potato pie. I decided to make this instead of the typical pumpkin pie. I’ve been meaning to make something with sweet potatoes. I’m attracted by that beautiful, orange beta-carotine. The mad-genius-scientist Alton Brown has a SPP recipe on the Food Network website that looks perfect. I wonder if he’ll be remembered as the Julia Child of our generation.

Another unusual item we will prepare this year is a broccoli soup. Originally, we were going to make an onion soup as that is one of my girlfriend’s favorite items. However, in order to have more “green” (read: healthy) items at dinner, we visit the Food Network site again. Michael Chiarello (whose show I’ve never seen) has a recipe for a Very Green Broccoli soup. The soup actually incorporates a number of vegetables (including spinach, probably for color) and will satisfy our requirement for something healthy at the dinner table. I will pair this soup with fresh baked bread. The Professional Chef has a Soft Dinner Rolls recipe that makes 144 rolls. I think a 1/5 recipe will suffice.

In a nod to tradition, we’ll make boxed stuffing. I know, I feel a little guilty about it too. However, it’s what we know, and we like it. I’ve made my own stuffing before, and Saveur has a great Oaxacan stuffing recipe in the latest issue, but Thanksgiving is about comfort food. I won’t try to swim against the stream.

Saveur does have something else I would like to try: a chili rub for turkey. They’ve published a whole article describing a Mexican-style Thanksgiving feast, and the turkey (rubbed with a mixture based on toasted pasilla chilies and a toxic amount of garlic) is an attractive spin on a traditional bird. They also stuff their bird with an onion and an orange, but we’ll probably only roast a half-bird since I’m not serving a whole platoon of thanks-givers. I guess you can still stuff half a turkey, but physics, anatomy and geometry say the stuffing might fall out.

That leaves me with one last item: the veg. I cooked Brussels sprouts last year and that was pretty good. I’m willing to make them again this year, but perhaps I should try something different. A salad? Sweet corn? Asparagus? Fortunately, I have a few days to figure it out. Perhaps there’s some obscure Chinese vegetable my girlfriend would like to stir fry.

As a side note, the All Recipes website has a really great “print” feature. When you choose to print a recipe, the site displays several options for how you want to print the page. You can select a page (or card) size, text size, and whether or not to include some of the ancillary content (like nutritional information or photos of the dish). This is a great example of how to present printable pages to a user.

Weight Post Script

My first attempt making focaccia.

So here it is, folks. Weighing out the ingredients takes some of the guesswork out of making bread. I admit my perception of the process could be tainted by the confidence of having a kitchen scale, but this was the easiest time I’ve every had baking bread. It was a bit cold and dry in the apartment today, so I don’t think the dough was rising as fast as it could have, but the bread was golden brown with a good crust and a reasonably good crumb. I wasn’t using any particular kind of flour (I just used the “all purpose” flour I had available) and so the flavor was not quite as good as it might have been if I had used a good bread flour. I also went a little light on the toppings. I definitely could have used more Parmesan cheese and a little bit of Kosher salt sprinkle. However, I am quite pleased with the result. Some time this week I’ll have to try making baguettes so that I can make sandwiches. Maybe by next weekend I will have received two additional new items: more baking sheets and some new cooling racks. As I told my girlfriend, I would like bread baking to become part of my routine. I don’t thing she’ll object.

Real men weigh it

For years I’ve had this book on my shelves gathering dust: The Professional Chef (7th Edition). It is (or was) the primary textbook published by the Culinary Institute of America. Several years ago, when my interest in the culinary arts bloomed and I briefly toyed with the idea of learning to cook like a professional, I purchased this book in the hope of gaining some kitchen insight and knowledge. I found neither. Instead, I wound up with a book of recipes that I could not replicate.

Why? Simple. Most of the recipes I wanted to follow called for ingredients to be measured by weight. And I did not own a kitchen scale.

That changed today. After weeks of my girlfriend repeatedly telling my that I forgot to purchase a scale for our kitchen, she went and did it herself. The long-awaited appliance (if such a large word should be used for such a small device) arrived while I was preparing a simple dinner of beef, bean, corn, and ancho pepper chili.

The first task was to reorganize the kitchen to create a place of honor for the new instrument. The microwave, knocked from it’s perch on our countertop, has been exiled to the space on top of the refrigerator where many lesser kitchen tools are banished. Our old yellow CD player was kicked out of the kitchen entirely. Surfaces were cleaned and dried. A new order was established with the toaster, rice cooker, and kitchen scale given highest status.

Years after it’s initial purchase, that old dusty copy of The Professional Chef still makes my mouth water as I turn back the cover. Once so foreign and unattainable, the recipes within are now in my grasp, mere trips to the supermarket away. Forget the stocks and sauces. I’m not interested in grilling and frying. I turned to the back of the book where the authors discuss the ancient art of baking. I’m talking about yeast bread, folks. This is the great culinary invention of civilization. Very few things on this earth can provide the kitchen amateur with so much frustration and yet so much simple joy. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good, fresh piece of warm baguette, just cooled – a dish of extra virgin and ground pepper for dipping… I can taste it already. But I’m getting ahead of myself and not sympathizing with those people who have a wheat allergy. Sorry folks, but you guys are missing out on one of life’s miracles.

I think my first experiment this weekend will be a nice pesto focaccia. Basic pesto is made with pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and fresh basil. What I will likely do is take those ingredients individually and use them as toppings on fresh focaccia bread. We have fresh basic in the Aerogarden and Parmesan left over from lasagna. Olive oil as part of the focaccia recipe. We’re never without garlic. I just need some pine nuts and I’m good to go.

All is Pork

The Big Apple BBQ Block Party (and associated congregation all available letters “b”) is going on right now in New York’s Madison Square Park. For blocks around (depending on which way the wind blows) you can smell the sweet, low grey smoke that instantly gets the mouth watering. Meat is being cooked nearby. Follow your nose.

This, to me, is a really good idea. The only passable BBQ restaurant that I went to in New York – The Lookout, formerly in Park Slope, Brooklyn – inexplicably closed down. Monica dug into the internet rumor mill, and scuttlebutt has it that it wasn’t very popular. This only serves to reinforce my notion that New Yorkers have no clue about real BBQ. What’s doubly disappointing is that The Lookout was also a very fine restaurant. They had one of the most imaginative drink menus I have ever seen (top prize in that category continues to reside with Employees Only) as well as very fresh food. Oh well, it’s Brooklyn’s loss if they couldn’t appreciate what they had. Still, it’s damn frustrating for a real food lover to live in what is widely considered one of the world centers of fine dining and I can’t get a decent pulled pork meal.

Since we’ve been watching quite a bit of The Food Network, my better half and I have seen lots of different kinds of BBQ being made. Ed Mitchell, a pit master from North Carolina, was featured on an episode of “Throwdown with Bobby Flay”. As luck would have it, Mr. Mitchell brought his smoke rig to this year’s BBQ Block Party and I was able to verify, for the record, that he is cooking up the real thing. It was like being back in North Carolina, digging into that unique sweet/sour/spicy meat. Eastern North Carolina’s style of BBQ – whole hog roasted, pulled, and mixed with a vinegar-based sauce – is a singular style and clearly not for everyone. His stand at the Block Party was one of the least active. I suppose that disappoints me a little bit, since it is sooooo good, but hey! That made it easier for me to get some.

The most popular (and most marketed, based on all the signs) was Big Bob Gibson’s pulled pork shoulder. The pit master, Chris Lilly, was hawking his book and various sauces but the real attraction was the meat. I will grant that I have not had a wide variety of BBQ in my lifetime. I’m pretty partial to the North Carolina stuff. But this guy really did have the best meat at the event. It was smoky, with good moisture and flavor, and despite all the sauce options, really didn’t need any. It was a special treat. It’s too bad that I have work to perform at home tomorrow, or I would go back and get more.

Pink

Something interesting I saw today on the Food Network: pink peppercorns. I actually saw them used in two different shows. They can be used for a really beautiful effect. There is one dish in particular, a chicken and waffle dish from Bar Americain, that is made mouthwateringly attractive with these tiny berries. I’m not sure where around here I can find them.

Black beans and rice

I love black beans and rice. Since I don’t have much time to cook during the week, I normally purchase boxed or bagged beans and rice from the store. Since rice, beans, and spices are typically sold dried, the prepackaged mixes are not bad. I like them. However, I have occasionally tried to make my own beans and rice. This is one of my favorite dishes. I feel like I should know how to make it. I use black beans and rice as a side, to make quesadillas, in burritos, or as a simple snack.

Usually, I do not have a lot of luck with beans and rice, but today I came up with a good recipe. It’s not perfect, but it is good enough for me to record and share and probably make again.

Ingredients

• 1 to 2 Tbsp. cooking oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cloves shallot, minced
• 1 Tbsp. cumin (at least)
• 1/4 tsp. thyme
• 1 14.5oz. can of chicken broth
• 1 15.5oz. can of low sodium black beans (I like Goya), drained with water reserved
• 1/16 to 1/8 lb. ground pork, chopped to minimize the grain size
• 1 cup of medium grain rice
• The leaves of a sprig of oregano, minced
• The juice of half a lime
• Half a jalepeno pepper, thickly sliced
• Salt

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a deep pot over medium heat. Add the garlic and shallot and saute until starting to brown.
2. Add the cumin and saute for about 30 or 45 seconds, when the aroma should develop. Quickly add the ground pork, if being used, and saute until just brown.
3. Add the black beans and saute for a few minutes.
4. Add the chicken broth and the water from the black beans. To make sure I got it all, I poured my chicken broth into the bean can and then poured the broth into the pot. Add the thyme, sliced jalepeno, lime juice, oregano, and salt as desired (I added at least a teaspoon). Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add the rice, stir and bring back to a boil. Cover and cook over very low heat until the rice is cooked.
6. Once the rice is ready, fluff and serve.

Health

My girlfriend’s mother gave me a very interesting book to read on my flight back from vacation. It is “Complications” by Atul Gawande. For me, the book is a fascinating, real life look at the kind of things that go on in episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. Personally, I think that the show’s creators have read it. They may have been inspired by or informed by it. At least one of the cases mentioned in the book was enacted in an episode during the second season.

This is one of those books that really ought to be read by everyone. Occasionally I come across a book like this. It has important information in it. The author talks about issues and ideas that most people don’t really think about. They probably don’t need to think about them all the time but there occasions when it could be very important. We all get sick and we all have to deal with the healthcare industry. At some point we will all put ourselves and our well-being into the hands of another person. This book deals with the circumstances and possible ramifications of that act.

Found online: MenuPages, on of my most-often consulted resources for restaurant information, has recently received a new design. This is a huge improvement over the previous website. It’s always nice to see a website redesign result in improvement. It doens’t always.

More food

A new restaurant opened up in our neighborhood, specializing in Vietnamese sandwiches and bubble tea. Questions about the “authenticity” of Vietnamese sandwiches aside, I have been eager to give it a try since I saw their new awning first go up. For weeks I have been able to look through the windows as I a pass and see a small crew of renovators or their equipment. Tonight as Monica and I went by, the lights were on and people were sitting at tables. We decided to stop for dinner.

While the place may have some wrinkles to iron out, I enjoyed one of the best sandwiches of recent memory. It was tasty, meaty, spicy, and the bread was perfect. In addition, the bubble tea was very good. Monica and I have decided we will do our best to help them stay in business. In a ‘hood where really good asian food can be hard to find (with the exception of the ubiquitous sushi restaurant) and vietnamese places are basically non-existent, this place is a gem.