Toby
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Posts posted by Toby
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Did you use tap water or bottled water? When I lived in San Francisco, my tap water was so yucky tasting that I switched to spring water and it made a big difference in the taste of the coffee.
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Nina, that sounds so delicious, and I'm so hungry.
Was the goat you got at the market really better than buying it in Chinatown or from halal butchers, do you think? (Also, there's a new stand there on Mondays selling very delicious lamb.)
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In fact we were so wrapped up in conversation that I forgot to ask what "Chiogga" and "sauce Salmis" (which since I ate it, one would think I could have figured it out...) chiogga, salmis, anyone?
Chioggia is an Italian heirloom beet, also called Bassano beet from the Venetian hill town where it was first produced. The Chioggia/Bassano beet was introduced into France from Italy, and then later into the U.S. in the 1840s. The skin of this beet is bright red, but when sliced the interior is white with rose-colored rings. It's nice because it doesn't bleed all over your other food. The beet has a very delicate flavor. I think Paffenroth Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket carries it. (More than anyone wanted to know, huh? Seriously, I found this information in William Woys Weaver's Heirloom Vegetable Gardening, a great reference book for gardeners and people who shop at farmers' markets.)
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Chinese dried orange peel is sold in little plastic packages and is called chen pi.
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Fat Guy - You are coorect about saucing having been reduced to a minimum or even being non-existent. Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked. And possibly that is mixed with a natural sauce extracted from a vegetable (shades of Bernatd Loisseau.) Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?
I gave the Italian method for pan sauces in reference to a discussion about modern French haute cuisine dispensing with the older, heavier sauces, and in particular to the above quote "Now the trend is to have the sauces be a natural jus that comes directly from the ingredient being cooked." I wanted to know the difference between the way the French "extracted natural juice" and the "Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat." Anyone know the modern haute cuisine French way and how it differs from the Italian?
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Yet there is a great disctinction between the French mthod of extracting natural juice and the Italian way of getting some natural gravy out of a pan roasted piece of meat. Why is that and what distinguishes one from the other?
In the end, all threads will converge?
I used to make an Italian pan-roasted breast of veal (from Marcella Hazen), in which whole garlic cloves were heated with a little olive oil, and then the meat was deeply browned in the oil, and then seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary. A small amount of wine was added, brought to bubbling, and then the pan was covered, with lid a little ajar, and cooked slowlyfor a long time, turning the meat a few times until it was very tender and browned. Small amounts of water were added if the meat started to stick. After the meat was removed from the pan, some of the fat was skimmed off, and a little water was added and boiled away while stirring any cooking residues into it. The pan juices were then poured over the veal.
In Hazen's recipes, if something was being sauteed (like veal scaloppini), the liquid (wine, lemon) would be swirled into the pan, along with some additional fat (butter, cream) and any juices exuded from the cooked meat (in the pan and on the serving plate) after the meat was cooked and removed from the pan. The meat was then returned to the pan to coat with the sauce.
What do the French do?
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Mai Leung has a nice recipe in Dim Sum and Other Chinese Street Food (called The Chinese People's Cookbook in hardcover, probably now out of print). She marinates, then puts the pork strips on skewers right on the oven rack over a water-filled roasting pan, roasts at 500 degrees for 15 minutes, turns heat down to 450 for 15 minutes, and then brushes the pork strips with a simple glaze of honey, thin soy and sesame oil, and returns pork to oven for 1 minute.
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What did they feed you?
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Well, I just read that you can go into a Chinese herb shop and ask the herbalist for a package of 5-spice seasoning made up to your specs.
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The Art of the Tart, Savory and Sweet, by Tamasin Day-Lewis, is nice for tarts.
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The choice of spices is flexible -- any combination of star anise, fennel seeds, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, licorice, nutmeg and Sichuan peppercorns, but star anise and cinnamon are pretty much always included.
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Sounds elaborate. I wonder if there is a minimalist approach that gets 99% of the result with 25% of the effort.
Ken Hom has a fairly simple recipe in his book, Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood.
He cuts boned pork shoulder into strips about 1" wide, and makes shallow diagonal cuts into the meat for the marinade to penetrate. The pork is marinated overnight in a mixture of salt, black pepper, 5 spice powder, soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, hoisin sauce, bean sauce and sugar and then roasted on a rack over a pan filled with a little water in a fairly hot oven, basting to start. After 30 minutes you turn the heat down to medium, and baste again with a little honey and the rest of the marinade, and roast again for another 30 minutes or so.
Other recipes I've seen coat the pork with honey after marinating it and then broil it on a rack over a pan filled with a little water, for about 10 minutes per side, basting halfway through. Some recipes use pork loin, but I think shoulder is probably better, being juicier. Another recipe uses gin or Mei Kuei Lu Chiew instead of the Shaoxing wine, and also adds oyster sauce, and a little red preserved bean curd (comes in jars) to the marinade.
Apparently the barbecued pork (char siu) hanging in the windows is colored with red vegetable dye.
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This week's "$25 and Under" review in the New York Times covers a Cantonese place and mentions several authentic-sounding dishes:
My Chinese class took our professors there in 1974 for an end-of-year party. I remember the flounder and the clams. The food was wonderful then. I can't wait to go eat at the new place in Queens.
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Fried green tomatoes -- fry some bacon. Dredge tomato slices in mixture of flour, bread crumbs, salt and pepper. Fry in a little of the hot bacon fat till nice and brown. Turn, sprinkle browned side with a little brown sugar, and fry the other side. Serve with reserved bacon crumbled over the tops.
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Once in Sanremo for my pasta course I had rice, which was not risottoized but just cooked quite plainly, maybe butter in there, leaves of basil, a whole peeled garlic clove. Gentle and delicate. I don't think there was even cheese involved. So delicious.
I've wondered ever since about the cooking method...does such a rice preparation ring a bell with anyone?
Both Italy al Dente by Biba Caggiano and Unplugged Kitchen, by Viana La Place have recipes for boiled Italian rice. Basically, arborio rice is boiled in salted water or milk until al dente, and then the rice is drained. Butter (and cheese, if desired -- fontina, parmigiano) are mixed in to melt and coat the rice.
La Place has recipes for hot rice with cold lemon (rice, dressed with olive oil, salt and lemon juice) and rice with the little leaves on broccoli stalks. Caggiano has a recipe for rice with fontina cheese and another for rice cooked in milk (until the milk is all absorbed) with butter and parmigiano stirred in at end.
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And what about kabocha, The Best Winter Squash? Although I gotta say those otherworldly icy bluey-greeny Hubbards or whatever they are are arresting.
Kabocha is great -- not as easy to find on the east coast, though. Does anyone know where to find it in New York?
Are Hubbards the blue gray ones with the bumpy skins? I used to cut those in half, and fill the insides with a pear half, butter, and a little heavy cream and maple syrup and then bake them.
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Thank you, everyone, for your nice comments. I'd be glad to write up some other regions; Cantonese food is what I actually know most about, but I could do some research on other regions and write them up. Or other people who know about other regions could do it.
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There's also a clear, step-by-step description on p. 218 of Batali's Babbo Cookbook (for boning a duck leg).
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The Best Tomato (an aside)
During the height of the tomato season, a customer at the farmers' market asked me for the best tomato we had. I said, "You mean the best variety?" but she said, "No, the best tomato on the table." Including all the cherry tomatoes in boxes, there were probably 2,000 or more tomatoes on the table. I waved my arm over the table as if it were a ouija board and swooped down and picked one up and said, "This one." So she bought it.
The best tomato I ate this season was a pineapple tomato that we cut open and ate standing around on a very hot day. It was probably the best tomato I ever ate, sweet but complex, luscious and juicy. The next week we tried another one and it was nothing special.
Steve, were the green ones you mentioned sort of striped all the way around, green and yellow stripes? Those are green zebras. The little orange ones are sun gold.
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We have had ChuiChow (sp?) redition of Abalone & Chicken Soup, which I must say was very good and quite expensive.
In Chinese Kitchen, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo says, "Though they are referred to as Chiu Chau, Ch'ao Chou, Chaozhou, Teochiu, or Teochew, depending on where they are, they refer to themselves as Chiu Chow, at home and in Hong Kong, where they live by the millions."
I've been eating noodle soup and Chiu Chow duck at a Chiu Chow place in NY for 25 years. (I think they refer to themselves as Chaozhou.) There was a Chiu Chow restaurant upstairs in a corner builidng on Stockton (I think) in San Francisco where I once ate their goose preparation. But I don't know of any places that do such elaborate dishes in the U.S.
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I just got David Thompson's Thai Food. It is very large and beautiful, and although I've only skimmed through it, I seriously doubt I'll ever have to buy another Thai cookbook. It really has everything, and the recipes read as if they'll work. He has a lot of northern and northeastern recipes, areas I'm especially interested in, so I'm quite happy with it.
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Treasures of the Italian Table -- Italy's Celebrated Foods and the Artisans Who Make Them, by Burton Anderson
Thai Food by David Thompson
The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears
French Cookbooks
in Cookbooks & References
Posted
This is a great cookbook -- Simple French Cooking, Recipes from our Mothers' Kitchens, by Georges Blanc and Coco Jobard -- beautiful recipes and pictures.