Food and Other Causes

I've had a strange relationship with food and my weight for my entire life. I was a chubby kid that wore pretty plus sizes. The one who had a Janet Jackson-esque wardrobe malfunction in a yellow tutu at the age of 6, effectively ending my budding chubby ballerina career. There was a point in my life when I was actually thin, but I still thought I was fat, and by the time I realized I was thin, I was fat again.

Come high school I wore a mother of the bride's dress to my prom and though I evaded the freshman fifteen, I succumbed to the third year thirty. It did not help that I was MVE (Most Valuable Eater) on my college soccer team. Some people got off the bench. I got in the cafeteria line, even going so far as getting cut off one day in the cafeteria line after consuming 13 cheesesteaks. When I returned to the table that day, my friends asked, "Where's your [14th] cheesesteak?"

"I got cut off, " I replied.
"That's amazing, " my friend John said.
"Why?" I queried.
"You made the cafeteria lady care."

And that was my first experience with eating as a social cause.

When I was in medical school, I ran into an old friend from college who asked me to dinner. And two weeks later, we were sitting in a sushi place in Tribeca called Nobu, dining on the omakase, and changing my life forever.

From then on I vowed to myself that I would only eat food that I loved and would not eat for subsistence. But alas, without the skills to cook anything but Spaghettios nor the wallet to buy anything more than one of the X-Large pizza slices that Hoboken is known for, I did not make good on my promise.

These days eating seems more complicated then ever. Do you eat local? Hyperlocal? Regional? Foreign? Are you vegetarian? Vegan? Pescatarian? Lacto-ovo-uh-oh-tarian? Are you steak only? Pork only? Kosher? Glatt kosher? Halal? Do you buy hormone free? Antibiotic free? Non-GMO? Monsanto? Do you eat for yourself? For the environment? For survival only? Do you cook? Order in? Go out? Drive through? Perhaps forage? Farm? Cultivate? Whole Food? Will that be Braised? Broiled? Raw? Super-sized?

You get my point. These days every bite matters. Every meal is a political, social, environmental, and health statement. For my own part, the most common question I get from cancer patients is, "What should I eat?" And though some suggestions can be made, the overwhelming evidence suggests that it is not what you eat once you are diagnosed, it is what you should have been eating for the last 50-odd years of your life.

And on this, day, when I am about 10 pounds above my happy weight and 20 pounds above my dream weight, and I'm toying with pragmatic pescatarianism and more time spent at the gym and Greenmarket, I still can't help but eat for the simple joy of the food, meal and the company. And if, along the way, you can make the world a little better, a farmer a little richer and the cafeteria lady care... well all the better.

Thanksgiving: The Return

And so it begins again. The holiday. Actually the poultry that really started this blog in the first place, is rearing its ugly (but often tasty) beak again. Yes... Thanksgiving is around the corner. As Thanksgiving has gone, I have battled turkeys countless times. I've wet brined. Dry brined. No brined. I've slow roasted. Fast roasted. Both roasted. I've started breast up. Breast down. Breast flipped more than Pam Anderson on a trampoline. And yet still, I've come to no other conclusion but this:

Turkeys were not meant to be roasted in an oven.
Period.

I'm convinced that when I hear my friends say, "My mother's turkey was SO moist! She didn't have to do anything, " that they are merely referring to the oil and salt injected poultry in the neighborhood grocery, which, while state of the art at the time, is the Thanksgiving equivalent of reading the last page of a brainless Candace Bushnell book first: it certainly saves you time, but can't be good for you.

Either way, this year the bird is getting braised. Yes you heard me: BRAISED. There will be no Norman Rockwell moment (but there never, in all honesty). Mark Bittman's braised turkey recipe is the recipe of the year if you must know; made ahead of time in all likelihood. And this year I will not get drunk and burn the brussel sprouts. And I won't give myself carpal tunnel ricing potatoes. No this year, will be a fun, injury free Thanksgiving. This year I'm putting this bird (and this battle) to rest.

Momofuku Cookbook

Last Friday, after wandering around the Greenmarket, I bought myself the Momofuku Cookbook. I bought it as a gift to congratulate myself. I'm not sure what I was really congratulating myself for. Making it through another week? Remembering to put on my sunscreen? Gaining 5 pounds while I'm trying to lose 10? Either way, I felt that I needed congratulations, so I bought it.
It is 5 days later, and I've read 80% of it straight through. I'm obsessed. I think what I like best about it, is that it is not a self-congratulatory tome. I've read a number of cookbooks. One, by a famous French chef, stands out in particular. The chef had another author write the prose and the intervening stories read like a seafood Harlequin novel.

"The tides roar in and Chef SoandSo decides he wants to make us all fish for dinner. As we all turn to go to the car, Chef SoandSo rolls up his pants and dashes into the water. He momentarily disappears under the angry gray foam. We gasp for a moment and then breathe a sigh of relief as he stands, victorious, with a 10 ton tuna in his right hand, shirt ripped open by the currents."

Okay, I know I'm exaggerating. But in my mind, despite the fact that Chef SoandSo is extremely talented, the dramatic stories overshadow the real star: the food.

David Chang's book, on the other hand, really comes off as a humble collection of recipes and the story of his restaurants is a super compelling mixture of luck, temper, hard work, and trial and error. Dropping a mixture of F-bombs, kimchee, and menu brainstorming into one book is pretty cool. Like Thomas Keller, he pays tribute to some of his amazing food sources: Bev Eggleston and Allen Benton. To dispel misconceptions about foie gras, he dedicates a couple of pages to his foie gras source, paying particular attention to the animals' wellfare. His true respect for the talent of Marco Carnora (Hearth, Insieme), Andrew Carmellini (formerly A Voce, now Locanda Verde), Wylie Dufresne (wd-50) and many of his own partners comes off as sincere deference.

Credit is given where credit is due.

My Smart Wine Friend (SWF) thinks that many of the ingredients are inaccessible as are the times and techniques which is true. These certainly are not Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals (thank goodness) and would be a challenge to put together on a weekday. But as a weekend project they are utterly tempting. I truly appreciate Chang's "ghetto sous vide" method. And though many cookbooks do not tell you what can be made ahead of time, Chang's book seems to recognize that while life may be "a la minute" not all cooking can be.

I totally recommend this book. Stay tuned for a demi-glace blog... yup had a major demi-glace triumph this past weekend!

New Year, New Lobster

Every New Year's Day, my best friend, whom I refer to as SWF (Smart Wine Friend) and I have a lobster dinner. This started 8-9 years ago, though the origins are somewhat unclear. Legend has it that there was an old ogre named ... eh. Screw it. The real beginnings were more like this:

SWF: Hey Courtster. Wanna come over for lobster tomorrow?
Me: Uh Duh. Yes.

That first dinner was pretty slamming and since then the tradition has kept up, hangovers not withstanding. Every year we have been getting a little more hardcore culminating in our rendition of Thomas Keller's Butter Poached Lobster on Sauteed Leeks with Pommes Maxim and a Beet Reduction last year. Now smart wine friend is the pragmatic one. He is organized, neat and always insists on impeccable presentation. I, on the other hand, am over-ambitious, under-skilled and not the least bit organized.

But this year, we kept it simple. Neither of us were feeling up to butter poaching, or stacking Portale style, a lobster claw on top of its tail, on top of a puree and underneath some fried thing, much less leaving the warm confines of our apartments with our significant others in tow.

Canneloni was the initial thought weeks ago, before New Year's Eve reveling got in the way. But neither of us could agree on a sauce and on the day of, neither of us wanted to drag out the pasta maker.
Plain old boiled lobster or roasted lobster would have been simple but neither of us could fathom boiling something and just throwing it on a plate.

There were emails. Recipes. Arguments. Smoke Signals. Mom Jokes. And finally we settled on:
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/spicy-lobster-noodle-salad

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Spicy Asian Noodle and Lobster recipe it was. Light enough to satisfy the requirements of most New Year's resolutions, spicy enough to get your taste buds going, yet hearty enough to fill us all up. The only subs we made were using Bean threads instead of cellophane noodles and Elderflower syrup instead of Elderflower Cordial (the latter being much thinner than the former, but an equivalent amount of syrup was fine in this recipe.)

The final product:

Looks a little weird in the picture, but was beautiful in person (my mom used to say that about me a lot when I was a kid). And delicious. Hopefully 2010 will continue to be just that: delicious, light, beautiful and a little spicy.

Chicken Stock

At some point in my life I became moderately obsessed with stocks. No not like "Hi I'm Bernard Madoff and I love spooning with my cellmate because I sold bad" stocks. I'm talking chicken, beef, and veal stocks. Like the bowl cut I had in kindegarten (see Exhibit A), I am not entirely sure why this came to be, but it has. I am fairly certain that Nina Planck's Real Food had something to do with it. I am also relatively certain that it had something to do with my rather unattractive Type-A-I-Must-Control-Everything personality that my 11th therapist told me was irrational. I am positively sure, that it also had something to do with money, because my first 8 years in New York City were spent being broke, tired and hungry. In that order.

Exhibit A: Yeah... you want the knee socks don't you?

Now stocks and stockmaking techniques are essential for so many delicious things. All sauces. Soups. Stews. Remouillage. Broths. Fumes. And unlike my paycheck... a little goes a long way. Now if you are a stock virgin (which we all are at some point), there are a few principals that all good stocks obey. In no particular order, they are:

1. Impurities are bad. Bone stocks are delicious but there are a lot of impurities in bones. Blood. Cartilage. Fat. All of these things will leave a good stock looking (and tasting) like the East River (google it if you do not know what the glorious East River looks like). The "impurities" by the way, end up looking like a gross gray brown foam on the stop of your stock. And getting rid of these impurities is essential. There are a variety of ways to do this. Like most, Thomas Keller espouses skimming and a very slow simmer. But skimming every 5 minutes is only fun for approximately the first 5 minutes... after that it is the equivalent of watching wet furniture dry, Thoreau style. Tom Colicchio swears by a 2 minute impurity removing pre-boil. I was fairly resistant to this at first. All those yummy flavors literally down the drain. But this method (which is my current favorite) does not lose a lot of flavor though it does get rid of a lot of impurities. And then you can skim a little less frequently.

2. Low and Slow. I had a Home-Ec teacher in junior high school named Miss Bacon. Really I did. And whenever we cooked with milk, she would chant, "Low and Slow". Like the lyrics to "Islands in the Stream", those words play back in my head at rather inopportune moments (e.g. during college soccer games). But for stock-making, low and slow is key. Rapid boiling will recirculate impurities back into the stock. Always start with cold water. Warm slowly. And keep at a low simmer. Thomas Keller recommends one bubble per second.

3. Bones first. You can't skim once your veggies go in (because a lot of them are floaters). So simmer your bones first and once you are impurity free (and after about 2 hours... or whichever is longer) add your veggies.

4. Strain. Yeah, you think your skimming got all of the impurities out? You're WRONG like that MTV show "Jersey Shore". And that is where this final step is sort of important. When your stock is done it must be strained. Now Thomas Keller has all this fancy stuff, but a piece of doubled over cheese cloth in a sieve has worked perfectly fine for me. He recommends ladeling the stock into the sieve because pouring can force some of the chunks right on through. Ladel. Pour. Ultimately it is your decision, but I've already drank the Ladel Punch and that is where I stay.

4. Chicken Feet. Cow Feet. With those 4 words, I probably lost both of my readers as fast as I turn off a Cagney and Lacey re-run. And there is something weird about looking at unpedicured chicken toe nails (nee claws), that seems about as appealing as being one of Tiger Woods's girlfriends. But take my word, they do add a lot of flavor, they find a nice use for what is often considered waste, and nutritionally there is a lot of protein is those little feet.

5. Fat. I have no problem with chicken fat, but a fatty stock makes for a greasy soup/stew/sauce or whatever it is that you are making. So after my stock is done, I bring my stock to room temperature and stick it in the refrigerator overnight. Thomas Keller does this ice "shock" thing, but I don't have an ice maker and my little 12 cube tray doesn't fit the bill. The good thing about animal fat in cooking is that it solidifies and is easy to remove. The bad thing about animal fat in your body is that it solidifies and is NOT easy to remove. And not for nothing... (my English teacher just rolled over in her grave with that last piece of fine writing) there is a reason that the day after every Thanksgiving is like winning the lottery for most plumbers. Don't throw this stuff down your sink. Really. Unless you think your plumber is hot. If that's the case, throw it all down there... and find yourself a good therapist.

6. Garbage in... There is a difference between being resourceful and using disgusting. Stocks make good use of things that you might otherwise throw away (bones, etc.). Stocks are NOT, however, good hiding places for rotten vegetables. Garbage in = Garbage out.

7. The Great Celery Debate. Typical stocks use leeks, onions, and carrots. But celery... It depends which camp you join. Thomas Keller and the saucier's at Le Ferrandi do not add celery. They think it is too strong for a good stock or demi-glace. Tom Colicchio will use celery. Alice Waters uses it in her broths. Who is right? Well, I've never done a randomized, double blinded placebo controlled trial to be honest, but no celery means one less thing I have to buy (or one more thing for me to munch on while I skim). And thus, for no particular reason, I've joined the celery-free camp.

8. Brown stocks. You can make brown stocks brown by doing two things. First, you have to roast the bones. Second you add tomato paste. Lest you get romantic ideas of deep brown stocks arising from lovely roasted bones, the brown coloring of these stocks comes from the addition of tomato paste. (Sorry to disappoint you.) Tomato haters: don't worry. the tomato paste is not for flavor. And roaster beware: if you burn your bones you might as well just stop there. Burned bones make a ridiculously bitter stock. Don't bother. I found this out the hard way and expensive way while making demi-glace.

9. Herbs. To add bouquet garnis, or not add bouquet garnis. That is the question. Well sort of. It really depends what you are using your stock for. I tend to add it. Plus it is a great way to use the stalks (as opposed to the leaves) of your parsley. So I throw in some parsley stocks and a few sprigs of thyme.

10. A 10th rule would have been nice. Lots of good things come in 10's. But my rules for stocks do not. Sorry.

Stuffing and other such matters

Stuffing is a bit like underwear. When you are little, you take what your mother gives you. It may inform your later choices. It may cause a deep-seated aversion later in life. But as a youngster, you are a captive audience to your parents' stuffing whims.

Stuffing is also a bit like meatloaf. You can put anything in it, for better or for worse. When I was a child, my then unmarried uncle had us over for dinner. Meatloaf was the cuisine du jour, and it came as quite a surprise to all that it was actually very good. My dad, being my uncle's brother, commended him, "This is pretty good, Jerry. What did you put in it?"

"Everything left in my refrigerator, " he replied, smiling proudly.
"Sour cream, carrots, raisins, mayonnaise, bread, beer...."

I watched my little sister hold back a gag. She was the child who did not like the food on her plate touching and insisted until the age of 14 that all foods went to separate sections in her stomach. Conveniently the dessert section of her stomach, much like a David Hasselhoff concert, always seemed to be empty.

I'm not sure what bothered me more. The fact that I liked the meatloaf, or the fact that you could hide any food in that meatloaf. I became convinced that meatloaf was some sort of culinary conspiracy, capable of hiding anything within its meaty center. But either way, it took another 25 years for me to eat meatloaf again.

Now, I was raised on sausage stuffing. My Italian grandmother made stuffing that was 100% meat: sausage to be specific. My mother added her own mom-tastic blend of bread, Stove-Top, mushrooms, veggies and spices. Over the years I've been working on my own stuffing, and it does, of course, contain sausage. To me stuffing without sausage is like a pool without water. You could... but really, what's the fun in that?

There have, of course been many mis-stuffs along the way. The year of white wine in the stuffing was not a good one. And the year of brioche also tasted pretty terrible. There was another year where I decided "rustic" was the order of the day, but the super large cubes didn't say "rustic"; they screamed "inside out sandwich".

And so it is with no small degree of pride that I present:

The Trial and Error Contessa's Thanksgiving Sausage Stuffing

(because, as always, being barefoot is overrated)

This recipe makes a 14x10 glass pan of stuffing as well as a small 9 x 9 glass pan. It serves a small army.

Bread:

I'm a big fan of plain and simple. But I took a rule from the strata rule book which says: dry out your bread to get rid of the bready-water so that it will soak up all your stuffing-y goodness.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice 2 French baguettes into 1/2 inch cubes. Place cubes in a rimmed sheet pan in a single layer and toast for approximately 20-25 minutes. Don't layer it, or your under layers will stay soft. It may take a couple of pans to get everything toasted.

Sausage and Veggies:

Uncase and saute one pound of spicy Italian pork sausage and one pound of sweet Italian pork sausage. As I put it into the pan, I rip it into 1 inch chunks which makes breaking it up a little easier, instead of chasing large chunks around the pan with a wooden spoon. Cook sausage until just slightly pink in center. Cooking to fully done will make for VERY done sausage in your stuffing. Put your stuffing in a big huge mixing bowl. Don't even think about mixing your stuffing in your glass pan. It is a bad idea and results in stuffing stuck to your pan, not to mention a mess.

When the sausage is done, use the fat left from the sausage to saute your chopped veggies. You can play around with this. I use 3 (peeled, chopped) carrots, (4 stalks, chopped) celery and (2 large, chopped) onion, but certainly this is up for grabs. As this sautes, add chifonnaded sage (about 6-8 leaves), fresh thyme (2-3 tablespoons), and 2 T chopped rosemary. I also add some red pepper flakes, though this is purely optional.

When veggies are tender, add to big fat mixing bowl.

Liquids and Extras:

Now this is a matter of taste, for sure, but I like a moist stuffing, but not a custardy stuffing and I certainly love a crispy top. Because of this I combine 3 cups give or take of chicken stock and 1-2 cups of heavy cream together and then add these to the stuffing. Fold in the liquids until all the bread pieces are moist but not swimming in liquid.

This is when I add extra yummies. This year I added 1 cup of dried cranberries, 2 chopped and peeled Granny Smith apples, 1 cup of pecans (toasted in a hot pan, tossing frequently, until slightly browned and nutty smelling, but not burned!) and 1/2 - 1 cup of chopped flat leaf parsley. (No, please don't use that curly parsley. It's useless.)

This is when I add salt and pepper to taste, because once you add your raw eggs, you probably aren't going to want to do the "taste" part of "to taste". Taste some bread with a bit of sausage because the sausage adds a lot of salt and if you don't taste it with the bread, you will over-salt your stuffing.

Whisk 4 large eggs together and add to the mix as well. Spread this mixture into buttered ceramic or glass pans. These can be refrigerated up to 12 hours. Make sure that you take your stuffing out of the refrigerator about 45 minutes prior to cooking so that it comes to room temperature.

When your turkey comes out to turkey perfection, increase your oven head to 425 degrees. Once heated, cook your stuffing, covered with foil, for 35 minutes. Remove foil for the final 15 minutes of your cooking if you like a crispy top.

The Morning After

As the sun rose, and the dust cleared, one thing was certain: Nothing was left. The rising sun slowly drew an outline around each remnant of the prior day's battle. There was no evidence of the lives that were at that very spot just 12 hours prior. Only carnage and refuse. In this battle, there were no victors. And somewhere, in the distance, just barely audible above the wind rifling through the previous day's remains, the soft sound of "Taps"played.

(insert record scratching sound here)

Yeah, that's bullshit. Let's throw it out there: I've declared victory against my age old nemesis; the Puddy Tat to my Tweety bird; the Tom to my Jerry: The Turkey. This is a victory on a grande scale: so grande that the word grande deserved that extra "e".

So what was on the menu?
Turkey: As I mentioned prior, I had considered dry brining. Certainly would have been far easier given my space limitations, but because my DiPaola's turkey didn't arrive until the day before Thanksgiving I was left with a wet brine. I used Alton Brown's Good Eats recipe, with a couple of tweaks.

Stuffing: There are only two reasons for Thanksgiving to exist: football and stuffing. Growing up, my grandmother, who is Italian, made a bread-less stuffing. I get quizzical looks from most people. "Did she stuff it with air?" ask my favorite anorexics, their eyes glittering with excitement. But, no, my grandmother's stuffing was pure unadulterated sausage. Now before you make some snide comment about a pig crawling up a turkey's ass... well what do you think a terducken is? Now, I've never been able to embrace full-on sausage stuffing for myself, but every year, my stuffing has a healthy dose of pork-a-liciousness. This year I think I have come upon the magic formula.

Pumpkin Soup: I hate making pies. It is the whole crust thing. I hate rolling out pie crust, and the thought of a store-bought crust makes me feel like a David Beckham-size sell-out.  But a Thanksgiving without pumpkin is like a Christmas without a kid peeing on mall Santa's lap: Yeah... it's still Christmas, but it's a lot less fun. And so this year, in lieu of pumpkin pie, I made pumpkin soup. I was going to make Bobby Flay's Pumpkin Soup, but after reading the reviews, I ended up changing it up quite a bit.

Cranberry Sauce: I make a damn good cranberry sauce. I've made approximately 583 types of cranberry sauce, and I think that all of them have been pretty damn good. And yet, every year, 80% of each goes uneaten. (The line my dad used to pound into my head, comes to mind: "Courtney, maybe it's not everyone else. Maybe it's you.") Bearing this in mind, and with my therapist's phone number clenched tightly in my fist, I took a different route this year. Most complain that cranberry sauce is too sour. So I soured up something sweet instead: I made Brian's Pickled Raisins from Susan Goin's cookbook.

Green Beans: I figured a lack of green on the table would be a mistake, and though my preference would have been brussel sprouts, roasting them for an hour would have been impractical. So green beans almondine with lemon it was.... courtesy of the amazing Alice Waters.

Rolls: yeah. I bought these. And then... I forgot to serve them. Oops.

Chocolate Terrine and Caradamom Creme Anglaise: I make Thomas Keller's recipes with very little regularity because I actually have a day job. But Thomas Keller's Chocolate Terrine is easy to make and can be made up to 3 days ahead. His Bouchon version is served with Creme Anglaise and hand peeled pistachios (See: "Day Job"). And so for this iteration, I served it with something that didn't require hand peeling little green nuts: Cardamom Creme Anglaise.

Goat Cheese and Pumpkin Panna Cotta: Approximately 3 hours before guests were to arrive, I panicked: What if there wasn't enough food? Or wine? Or even worse than all of these things: dessert? And so, thinking about as lucidly as Kanye at the VMA's, I decided to come up with a dessert. This is it.

Recipes will follow... I'm going to go eat some stuffing.