slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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Bollito is such a common dish around our house in cool weather that I always have some broth in the refrigerator or freezer.
I am planning on a big bollito misto party once it gets cold. No doubt there will be plenty of broth left over from that. I think I'll take Marcella Hazan's advice and poach the cotechino and zampone separately so they don't change the flavor of the broth too much.
By the way it was cool and rainy here for two days so I have a nice batch of broth to use - so in a few hours friends are arriving for ossobuco e risotto Milanese.My favorite! I'll be right over...
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First of all, congrats on a great article!
I wonder what you think of the technique Rachel and I were discussing yesterday in the Straining, defatting and reducing Q&A thread. In a nutshell... I don't usually have time to make a brodo for risotto as you suggest. I also never measure the amount of rice. There are several problems I have encountered in making risotto: a) the brodo is too strong and the risotto ends up tasting too strongly of brodo; b) I run out of hot brodo before the rice is fully cooked; c) the rice is perfectly cooked before I have used up all the brodo, which then must be saved/frozen/etc. which is a real pain in the neck. So... since I usually have a lot of of super-concentrated stock in the freezer, I simply determine how much broth flavor I want in my risotto, start out adding the corresponding amount of concentrated stock and thereafter use simmering water for my liquid additions. This way I always have just the right degree of broth flavor and never run into too much/too little hot liquid problems. Any thoughts/comments?
I have long been of the impression that Americans serve risotto too thick. Seems like you agree?
I think my favorite rice for risotto is vialone nano. I think it's especially good for seafood risotto, which I like to serve quite wet (all'onda, as they say). A favorite nontraditional risotto around the slkinsey household is made with vialone nano, fresh sweet corn, corncob broth and a touch of chicken stock. An interesting variation on this would be to include clams for a kind of "corn chowder risotto" effect. Very untraditional (especially as Italians seem to think of fresh corn as animal feed only), but very good. Risotto can also be great way to use up leftover ragu.
Speaking of leftover ragu... here's a reason to always make too much risotto: arancini di riso! I make mine by adding an egg, some fresh bread crumbs and some grated parmigiano to the leftover risotto, and I like to put a touch of leftover ragu in the middle if I have any around.
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Why? It'll melt right quick, maybe add a little water to go with it at the same time.
Because you don't want to add cold broth to the risotto. You want all the liquid additions to be hot. Granted, if you toss in a few cubes together with a ladle full of simmering water, you're probably OK.
Now that I think about it, there's no reason you couldn't just start the risotto off using simmering water and throw in a couple of reduced stock cubes with every addition of hot water until you reached the level of flavor you wanted, at which time you could go over to 100% simmering water until the rice was perfectly cooked. Until you made my mind go there, that hadn't really occurred to me. I had tended to nuke up the reduced stock and use the warm reduced stock as my first liquid addition.
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Wow, that's a great tip for making risotto. I totally wouldn't have thought of that.
Thanks. We'll see what the maestro dei risotti, Signor Camp, thinks of this method a little later on...
You save washing on the second pot too (if all you do is boil some water in it).Yep! But only if you heat up the reduced stock in the microwave. You don't want it to be cold when you put it in.
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Oy, turducken! So 1998!
I made this a few times (Thanksgivings 1997-1999 I think)... actually quite easy to do if you're handy boning out poultry. And since it cooks at such a low temperature for such a long time, it is almost impossible to overcook. The one problem for people with only one oven is that it makes it very difficult to bake anything else for 12 hours (the turducken takes up most of the oven and the temperature is too low to be useful anyway).
The one trick I worked out is to strip out the turkey tenderloins and a fair bit of the breasts to make room. This meat can be saved for scallopine later, or used to augment some of the less-meaty areas.
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An ice cube equals about 2 tablespoons. I would normally have stopped the stock at about 6 quarts - that's when it tasted good. So how much water should be added to a stock cube to make a cup of stock for a sauce, soup, or other recipe, like risotto?
Well, since you said you liked the taste at 6 quarts and reduced that down to approximately 2 quarts... I'd say you should add two parts of water to every 1 part of reduced stock to get back to the taste you like.
Whether or not the "6 quart strength" represents a good concentration for sauce, soup, risotto, etc. is up to your own taste. I imagine it is probably perfect for soups with the addition of 2 parts water to make it "6 quart strength" -- although you may want to make it weaker if you have other elements in the soup that will contribute flavor to the broth
If you're going to add a little bit of the chicken glace to enrich sauces, you can use it at ice cube strength.
For risotto, it's more complicated. Since part of the risotto process involves a concentration of flavors as the hot broth is repeatedly boiled away, one normally uses a fairly weak broth. I have a less traditional method I use: What I like to do is determine how much broth flavor I want in the risotto and use the corresponding amount of hot reduced stock for the first few additions. Thereafter I simply use simmering water. That way I don't end up either short on broth or with extra broth once the rice is cooked perfectly. I haven't been able to taste the difference between a risotto made this way as opposed to mixing the same amount of reduced stock and simmering water to make a weak broth that is used throughout.
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I am shocked to hear you say that your Calphalon warped. I have pieces that are 20 years old and they have never warped, even under broiler heat. Were you putting them in the dishwasher?
The dishwasher in my apartment is named Kathleen, so... um, no.
Even a brief survey of Usenet will reveal that warping is a major issue with Calphalon, and indeed with all unclad aluminum cookware. The broiler, by the way, isn't likely to put all that much heat into your cookware as radiation is a fairly inefficient way to transfer heat.
If you want to put some serious heat into your cookware, try leaving an empty 11" Calphalon skillet on a full-blast burner for 5 minutes or so and then dropping in a couple of large bone-in chicken breasts (skin side down, of course)... Or try taking that same skillet out of a 500F oven, removing the chicken and pouring in a cup or two of white wine to deglaze... A few months of this treatment -- which is pretty standard treatment for cookware -- and I guarantee you'll see some warping.
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Your points on the stovetop are well taken; I forget that not everyone has gas. I'll give using my sauteuse evasee a try-- never occurred to me. However, now that I'm thinking about it, seems that a wok would likewise be very good at quick evaporation.
I have a traditional residential gas stove... kind of crappy but quite big for a Manhattan apartment. I still find that I can't get a wok hot enough on my stove to make decent use of it. This is complicated by the fact that the heat capacity of most woks is so low that theylose any stored heat if you put much of anything into them. This may not be as much of an issue with normal "cooking-for-one" amounts of food, but is problematic if you want to stir-fry a whole cut up chicken or something that size. Special wok burners make up for this by cranking out so many BTUs that the heat is replenished immediately.
As for using a wok for Western style thick reductions... you would run into several problems: 1) only a very small area of the wok is heated by the most intense part of the flame as oposed to a saucepan or sauteuse evasee where there is a comparatively large area; 2) most woks are made of materials that have poor thermal conductivity, therefore the sides of the wok would not conduct much heat into the reducing liquid and almost all the heat would come from the small area at the bottom of the wok; 3) that small area at the bottom of the wok is a "hot spot" by another name, and could burn the reducing liquid.
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I may try the clarifying process.
Can or indeed should it be done to the reduced stock?
You can definitely do it with reduced stock, although I wouldn't do it with something that is approaching a glace in concentration.
It's all a question of how much work you want to do. You can always get your stock clearer and closer to the ideal. Whether it's worth the effort is an open question.This is always the question, of course. I personally don't find clarification that much trouble (I don't bother with the minced chicken breast and vegetables) as I simply whisk the egg whites into tepid stock, stir until it comes up to a simmer and let it sit for 20 minutes or so. After that, it's more or less the same as straining the stock anyway.
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Anodized aluminum has many benefits, for sure. However, as I pointed out in my article, the main drawback is that it is very prone to warping at high temperatures. For certain tasks such as making roux, etc., people also find the dark coloring a difficult distraction to work with.
I think Calphalon is very good stuff, although significantly overpriced at regular retail. In terms of guality, I'd put it somewhere in the middle of second-level cookware. I have owned many pieces of Calphalon over the years, but ended up getting rid of most of them because I never found the cooking surface any more non-stick than stainless steel, which is compounded by the fact that it is much more difficult to keep clean, and because every single piece I had eventually warped. At the present I have only one piece of Calphalon (a large roasting pan) and I'll try to pick up two or three of the large commercial non-stick skillets if they go back on deep discount at Amazon.
All this is to say that I think Calphalon cookware can be a good addition to a well-constituted battery of quality cookware, but I don't think it makes much sense to have an all-Calphalon or mostly-Calphalon kitchen.
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Johan,
I didn't include woks because they aren't standard stovetop equipment in the Western kitchen. In my own personal experience I have also found that most of them do not work very well in the home kitchen unless one has special burners. Back when I used to have a wok, I made two stir-fried dishes at the same time -- one in a nice wok and the other in my stainless lined heavy copper curved sauteuse evasee. The stir fry in the copper piece worked 100 times better. I haven't used a wok at home since. I find the curved sauteuse evasee by far the most versatile pan in the kitchen. Mileage, opinions and preferences may differ on this matter, of course.
Hard to say what your wok is made of without more information. Does your wok look anything like this or like this? I have a feeling it is probably enameled cast iron, even if it isn't very thick.
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If you are really interested in making this dish with >$30 industrial balsamic, you should go ahead and reduce it to a thin syrup.
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A large part of my decision to go with All Clad or some other stainless interior rather than tin lined copper was less the difference in cost of the new pots, but that retinning didn't seem to be much cheaper than buying All Clad pots and it was clear that the way I used my pots, that retinning was going to happen several times in my life.
Exactly the reason to get stainless steel-lined copper!
Besides fear and laziness, there was one other thing that bothered me about retinning my pots for use--as I've never seen the tin go down the drain when I washed the pot, I've assumed it went into the stews I've had from those pots. Perhaps it's as non reactive as gold and has left my body the same way as the gold leaf on some super decadent chocolate desserts, but no one's told me that yet. Okay science guys, where is that tin today, in the sewer or my bones?There are no known functions for tin in humans. In fact, it is sometimes considered a mildly toxic mineral. The good news is that there are no known chronic or serious diseases from tin exposure or ingestion. Furthermore, tin is poorly absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract -- probably less than 5% -- the rest being excreted primarily in the feces. Since the average diet contains somewhere around 2 mg of tin/day, there is little to worry about where tin-lined cookware is concerned (provided the tin alloy does not contain lead).
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Not in Chicago, but:
Atlantic Retinning and Metal Refinishing
Rocky Mountain Retinning Company
A look through the Chicago Yellow Pages brought me to:
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I just made an ungodly amount of stock this weekend, because I had around 13 raw chicken skeletons in the freezer. Am I the only one who routinely clarifies his stock? I find it makes them a cleaner-tasting, better looking and, I like to think, a bit more versatile.
It's easy to do: For around 3 gallons of reduced stock I just whisked in a dozen egg whites, continued to stir as the stock came up to temperature and then let the stock simmer for around 20 minutes so the "raft" forms and coagulates nicely. After that, it is simply a matter of straining the stock. I carefuly lift out the raft bit by bit with a slotted spoon and strain that separately, so for the vast majoroty of the stock it is simply a matter of pouring through cheesecloth or a fine sieve.
Of course, you're left with a dozen egg yolks... But that's why they invented things like egg yolk pasta, lemon curd, pastry cream, etc...
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You don't need to invoke superstition or arcane techniques like shaking, swirling or swinging a live chicken over your head.
Man... my pet chicken is going to be really glad to hear that!
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I solve the turkey problem by braising the leg meat in red wine and roasting the breasts by themselves. Since I plate the servings in my multi-course Thanksgiving dinner, there is no percentage in trying to present a roasted whole bird at the table. I really think more people should just forget about roasting a whole turkey. The breasts, in particular, are getting ridiculously large, which only compounds the problem. My strong suspicion is that any perfectly cooked turkey one has had in a restaurant has had the legs and breasts cooked separately.
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Going to Grand Sichuan this evening... shall try to talk companions into ordering the chicken skin... will report back.
Forgot to read this:
My fascination was revived recently at the Grand Sichuan restaurant on Second Avenue near 56th Street, where I had a stir-fry of chicken skin and whole dried chiliesWent to the one on 9th Avenue as per usual. No stir-fried chicken skin to be found.
Was forced to make do on pickled cabbage with red oil, dan dan noodles, spicy beef tendon, fresh-killed kung pao chicken and spicy twice-cooked pork (the fatty kind, of course). Our lips were tingling big-time until I remembered Fat Guy's tip and we went across the street for some black and white malteds at Island Burger.Still plan to check out the stir fried chicken skin over on Second Avenue and will report back if someone doesn't beat me to the punch.
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I have to confess to being absolutely and totally baffled by all this. The notion of eating something that is painful to ingest, is to my mind one that belongs in the pages of the Marquis de Sade. In a pot on my stove? On a plate at my table? No, no and NO.
I think the idea that
pleasure + a little pain = more pleasure
has been around for quite some time in various forms.
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edit: just found some info on the thickness of the aluminium base on pro-inox: 0.25". how's that? not quite enough?
0.25 inches = 6.35 millimeters. This means that it is either 6 millimeters and they are rounding up to 0.25 inches, or it is 7 millimeters and they are rounding down. I am unaware of any aluminum bases thicker than 7 millimeters. So either way, it's at or near the best available -- which is what one would expect from Mauviel. At this point it becomes a matter of price, aesthetics and perhaps percentage of the base covered by the base (although I don't expect there is a big difference between the top manufacturers in this regard).
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According to this article, there is a "loophole" in the NY State smoking ban that allows "cities and other municipalities across the state the right to grant waivers to bars and restaurants that have lost business because of the ban" if such businesses can prove financial hardship.
The NYC ban has no such provision, and as a result the loophole in the NYS law would not apply in the City (although I suppose a business that was under a certain restriction under the NYS law that would not apply, or might have a different application under the NYC law could petition to abide by the NYC law instead of the NYS law).
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Always nice to follow up dinner with a refreshing jump from the Castel Sant'Angelo, I'm sure...
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Going to Grand Sichuan this evening... shall try to talk companions into ordering the chicken skin... will report back.
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by the way, slkinsey, do you think the big s.s. saute pans on that site look good, too? i don't see any information on what the base is, but i could check that out, too...
I assume you're talking about these?
Mauviel is one of the oldest and most respected cookware manufacturers, so I am sure it is quality stuff. That said, you will want to get some data. I am a little bit wary of these lines for cooking over a flame, simply because they seem to be primarily designed to work with induction hobs.
One thing go keep in mind is that Mauviel actually makes two stainless steel lines. The "Pro-Inox" line has an aluminum base while the "Induc'Inox" line is fully clad with the interior layer being magnetic steel. We have data for the Induc'Inox line (2 mm thick), but it is not particularly encouraging for traditional cooking. I would stay away from Induc'Inox. Pro-Inox could be good, but I think you would want to inquire as to the thickness of the aluminum base. You can email them at this address, and I gather that French or English is okay: v.leguern@mauviel.com
Let us know about any data you collect!
Q&A -- Risotto-- Rice in the Spotlight
in The eGullet Culinary Institute (eGCI)
Posted
It is a rice dish, IMO, but not risotto that they're making. One of the nice properties of a well-made risotto is that it is creamy and rich-seeming without being cloyingly rich and heavy. I don't see how the Ladenis/Ramsay method you describe could possibly duplicate this effect. Basically they are making "Italian rice in a cream sauce." I abhor the practice of adding cream to risotto.
The most common restaurant compromise on risotto is to cook a gigantic batch risotto around 2/3 of the way, refrigerate it and then finish cooking individual portions as orders are sent in to the kitchen. Not too fond of this one either. Personally, I always think it's a good sign if the restaurant tells you it will be at least 20 minutes before your risotto is ready.