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Post your questions here --> Q&A The Potato Primer Author: Jack Lang (Jackal10) This is by no means a definitive survey of potato recipes, although it contains (with all the variations) over 130 recipes. However, I hope it explains some common myths and offers a few surprises. For even more dishes watch for Potatoes - Part II or consult some of the references. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Anatomy of a Spud •Skin •Flesh •Pith Variables to Consider When Cooking Potatoes •Texture •Sugar Content •Skin Thickness Potato Varieties •UK •USA Cooking Methods •Boiling 14 variations, including Basic boiled potatoes, Persilles, Delmonico, and Potato Salad •Pureed 38 variations in total Basic Mashed Potatoes with 14 variants. including Champ or Stelk and Colcannon; 5 sauteed mash, 6 deep fried mash, Duchesse (3 variants), Dauphine(6 variants). Potato Soufflee, Potato Scones and Gnocchi (3 sauces) •Baking and Casseroles 24 variations, including Basic Baked Potatoes, Alphonse, Stuffed (double baked), Menagere, Classic and Quick Potato Gratin a la Dauphinoise •Deep-Frying 21 variations, including Basic Chips (UK) or Fries (US), Chip Butties, Pommes Soufflee, Basic Crisps(UK) or Chips(US) and Oven Crisps •Shallow Frying 36 variations, including Potato Latkes, Chateau, Fondant, Plain Sauteed, Rosti and Hash-browns both Cubed and Grated •Roasting 3 types including Basic Roasted Potatoes, Hasselbacks and Potatoes and Rice Introduction Potatoes are one of the great staples of the western-style diet. In the US over 500 million cwt are produced in a trade worth billions of dollars. The average American eats 142.7 pounds of potatoes each year, mostly fried. That diet is broken into the following proportions: 48.1 pounds Fresh Potatoes, or cooked from fresh 58.9 pounds Frozen products: French fries, hash browns, etc. 16.0 pounds Potato chips (crisps and snack foods) 18.0 pounds Dehydrated - mashed potato flakes, au gratin mixes, etc. 1.7 pounds Canned In Ireland, and some parts of Europe the average annual consumption is over 200lbs per head. However, the spread of potatoes is quite a recent event and it has only been a major component of the diet since Victorian times. Potatoes are native to the highlands of Peru in South America, and were enjoyed by the Inca peoples. The Spanish Conquistadores discovered them about 1537, with some of the earliest written descriptions dating from about 1550. They were introduced to the UK in about 1590, with legend (and the scribe Gerard) ascribing the introduction to Drake and Raleigh bringing them from Virginia. Presumably they were taken to Virginia by the Spanish who had obtained them in trade with the Incas. It was, however, not until the mid-eighteenth century that selective breeding allowed the potato to be more than a small knobbly curiosity, grown as much for its decorative flowers as for its roots. Marie Antoinette wore potato flowers in her hair. The change from a feudal society, the increased demands of towns, and poor cereal harvests in the late eighteenth century, all helped the spread of potato cultivation, since they were easier to grow than corn, and more tolerant of cold and wet. The Corn Laws of 1815 kept the price of corn high, and made potatoes the food of the poor. Indeed, the over-reliance on a single food crop led directly to the Irish Potato famine of 1845-50, when blight caused the crop to fail Potatoes are now grown in over 80 countries. There are over a thousand named varieties, with about 700 in major seed banks, but only about 100 in commercial cultivation and 50 or so in good seed catalogues. The Latin name for the potato plant is Solanum tuberosum, which indicates that it is part of the Solanaceae or nightshade botanical family. This family includes tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, as well as deadly nightshade. In fact, every part of the plant, apart from the tubers, is mildly poisonous and should not be eaten. Potatoes should be stored dark and cool, but not frozen. If they are stored in the light they may go green. The green parts should not be eaten as they may also be mildly toxic. Anatomy of a Potato A potato has three main regions: The skin or periderm: A good source of fibre and minerals. The thickness and toughness vary with variety and with age. Although higher in fibre and minerals than the rest of the potato, the skin is so thin in most varieties that this is not a significant source of these elements for human nutrition, so there is no need to feel guilty about peeling old potatoes and discarding the peelings. For new (immature) potatoes the skin is even thinner, and there is no need to peel, since the skin in these varieties contributes to the flavour. For very fresh new potatoes the skin will rub off. The main flesh: This can be white or golden yellow, or in specialist varieties even red or purple. Salad Blue, Salad Red and Arran Pilot. The red and blue are old varieties rescued by Heligan Gardens and sold as microplants by Mr Fothergill and other specialist suppliers. They keep their colour best if dry cooked: fried, microwaved or steamed. There is a photo of some fries made with blue potatoes in the section on deep-frying. The Pith: Some varieties have a watery or even a hollow core. Variables to Consider When Cooking Potatoes Texture. There are three main categories: - Low moisture/high starch/high dry-weight/floury These tend to be larger, main crop potatoes, like Idaho (Russet Burbank) or King Edward that are good for baking, mashing, and roasting, but will disintegrate if boiled too long. When cooked the texture is dry and floury. - Moderate moisture/starch/dry-weight/waxy All-purpose potatoes such as Yukon Gold or Nicola. Their flesh may be yellow, and they keep their shape after cooking. Good for sauté, potato salads and casseroles like Dauphinoise. - Low moisture/starch/dry-weight/new Typically immature or new potatoes, and some fingerling varieties such as Pink Fir Apple. Delicious simply boiled, and served in their skins. Sugar content, which affects browning when frying. Sugars increase if the potatoes have been stored for some time, or have been harvested late in the season. Too high a sugar content means that the chip will colour before crisping. Skin thickness. Older potatoes have thicker skins, and should be peeled. New potatoes should just be well scrubbed. Potato Varieties In the UK Potatoes can be divided according to season into: Extra Early (May): Lady Christi, Rocket, Swift, Maris Bard, Jersey Royal First Earlies (June): Duke of York, Red Duke of York, Foremost, Sharpes Express, Epicure, Arran Pilot, Wilja Second Earlies(July): Charlotte, Kestral, Yukon Gold, Edzell Blue Maincrop (September): Desiree, King Edward, Cara, Valour, Majestic Salad and specialty: Nicola, Pink Fir Apple, Salad Blue, Salad Red You can find the British potato Database here. My personal favourites are: Jersey Royal from Jersey for the first taste of new potatoes First Early: Arran Pilot – waxy, wonderful heritage potato taste Second Early: Yukon Gold Maincrop: King Edward: floury, Cara waxy Salad: Nicola, Pink Fir (fingerling), Salad Blue In the US skin colour is used. There is a good guide to US varieties here: Russet: e.g. Burbank Russet White: e.g. Kennenbec Red: e.g. Norland Other These days all types are available all year round, flown from various parts of the world. Various techniques of storage and cultivation, such as second cropping, even allow fresh new potatoes in December. Personally I try not to eat out-of-season potatoes, as I think that it spoils the first magical taste of a fresh new potato in May, heralding summer. Bring back heritage and local, seasonal varieties! Cooking methods. Boiling Basic technique What could be simpler and nicer than a good new potato, scrubbed, and boiled, in lightly salted water until it is just soft, drained and anointed with a knob of good butter? (Pink Fir apple fingerling potatoes) Older potatoes should be peeled and cut into pieces of equal thickness, so that they all cook in the same time. In a classical kitchen they would be turned to identical 7-sided barrel shapes. (Thanks to Marsha Lynch (zilla369) for the picture from the knife skills course) Plain boiled are called • Pommes de Terre Anglais or • Pommes de terre au Natural in Restaurant French, or • Pommes de terre au vapeur if steamed. Variations • Persilles: Roll the cooked potatoes in melted butter and in chopped parsley. • a la Menthe: Add a bunch of mint to the cooking water, and then dress the potatoes with fresh mint leaves or chopped mint. Some find mint essential with new potatoes. • Irlandaise: Ribbon shaped. • Berichonne: Cook in stock. Dress with fried bacon bits, fried onions and chopped parsley. • Au Lard: Dress with chopped fried bacon bits. • Bretonne: Cut into large dice then cook in stock. Finish with garlic and tomato dice. • A la crème (also called • Maire): When cooked slice into thick roundels, moisten with boiling cream, season and reduce. • Maitre d’Hotel: A La crème with chopped parsley. • Delmonico: as A La crème, cover with breadcrumbs and brown in the oven. • Flamande: Cook in stock with small onions and carrots. • Hongroise: As Bretonne but with paprika, onions and chopped parsley. • Paysanne: Cook in stock with garlic, add shredded sorrel or spinach and parsley. • Crushed: Cheffy version of lumpy mash. Use leftovers for hash. • Caramel Potatoes This is a Scandinavian dish, also found in Iceland. For 1lb/500g of boiled potatoes, make a soft caramel with 5 Tbs of sugar and 1 Tbs butter heated in a pan until well coloured, then pour over the potatoes. • Salad Several religious debates here. However, all versions are authentic. Develop one to your own taste. New potatoes or old? If new potatoes peeled or unpeeled? Minted or not? Peel when hot or cold or before cooking? Vinaigrette, Mayo, or even Salad Cream? Hot-dressed or cold? Chives, Spring Onions, diced onions, gherkins, cubes of cheese? Don’t overcook the potatoes or they will crumble. Cook until they are only just tender, and remember they will go on cooking as they cool. My ideal potato salad is made with a waxy potato like Nicole, cooked until just tender, but slightly undercooked, cooked with the skins on then peeled, diced into about 1 cm/½ inch dice, hot dressed with plenty of strong mayonnaise, plus some additional white wine vinegar, or even with Heinz Salad Cream, with plenty of chives, or spring onions. <a name="Pureed">Pureed</a> This section starts with mash, and then looks at variations. Too often, mashed potato is either a lumpy or a gluey mess. Worst of all is the reconstituted dehydrated packet offering that can easily double as wallpaper paste. What goes wrong? We need to consider the structure of the potato. It consists of lots of cells, held together with pectic polysaccaride material, which is similar to the pectin that is the setting agent in jam. Each of these cells is a bag of starch. The trick to making good textured mashed potato is to break the cells apart without rupturing them and releasing their starch to float around in the water. When you heat starch in the presence of water it swells and gelatinises – think of making custard or wallpaper paste. The starch molecules bond to each other to make a gel. That’s wallpaper paste. Overcook, and you break up the cells and get glue. Over process, such as with a blender and you mechanically shear the cells and get glue. As Steingarten says “Any cookbook that sanctions the use of a blender or food processor should be carefully shredded”. If you let the starch out you get gluey wallpaper paste. If you don’t break apart the cells enough you get lumps. You are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Fortunately we can use another property of starch, which is known as “retrogradation”. If you cool a starch gel down it thickens and solidifies (think of pastry, or custard), and it retains its structure even if reheated. This property is widely used in the commercial processing of potatoes for dehydrated potato flakes (instant mash, such as the brand that was promoted with TV adverts featuring tin Martians), and has been adapted and written about for home and restaurant use by Steingarten, Blumenthal and others. The trick is to pre-cook the potatoes to about 71C/160F for about 30 minutes and then cool to room temperature or below. The starch swells and gelatinises in the cells, but the temperature is not hot enough to melt the pectic material and break or separate the cells The ensuing cold step is essential, as it causes the starch to retrograde and fix. Temperature control is critical. Use a digital thermometer. Having fixed the starch we can be much rougher in the treatment of the potatoes. We can dissolve the binding between the cells by cooking the potato slices in gently salted water above 82C/180F and ideally below boiling so they don’t get knocked about too much – say 90C/190F or a very gentle simmer for 30 minutes, and then drain, dry and puree. This method ensures that the mash does not go gluey, but at the same time can be cooked long enough and pureed well enough to ensure no lumps. Furthermore it can be allowed to go cold and reheated without loss of quality. Before giving the definitive mashed potato recipe we need to cover some other points: Choice of variety: Floury (high starch) or Waxy (medium/low starch) variety? There appears to be a cultural difference here, with the US preferring a floury variety such as Idaho to make a fluffier mash, and European tradition preferring waxier varieties such as Belle de Fontenay, Bintje, Charlotte or Desiree. Floury potato varieties have more irregular cells, waxy potato varieties have more regular and closely packed cells. Hot or cold water to cook in: There is an old tradition of putting root vegetables in cold water and then raising the heat until boiling. Opinion is divided as to whether this is beneficial. On the one hand it ensures the food is more evenly cooked, and the slow heat rise may allow better gelatinisation of the starch granules before reaching temperatures that disrupt the cells. On the other hand some Swedish studies have shown more Vitamin C leaches out into the water because of the extended cooking times. How much butter? To some extent this is a matter of taste. Authorities differ, for example for 2 lbs of potatoes Mrs Beeton advises 2oz, Escoffier 10% (3 oz), Blumenthal 33% (10oz) and Joel Robochon a massive 50% (16oz). Lady Clark of Tillypronie (1909) adds ¼ oz, and half a cup of cream. Personally I follow Escoffier and add 3oz/100g for 2lb/1Kg of potato. How much cream or milk? It is hard to lay down a hard and fast rule about how much cream or milk to add. It depends on taste, the variety of potato, how much you dried out the puree, and on the desired texture. I find a tablespoonful more than enough. I prefer milk to cream, and add the fat and richness from the butter. Hot or cold milk, butter? Most authorities agree that one should use cold butter and hot milk. Why? Is something more going on here? I believe there is. I think what is happening is that the emulsified form of the butter is acting as a sort of butter sauce, in which the separated potato cells now float. Butter emulsions are only stable if the butter is melted at a low temperature, and not heated over 190F. You are unlikely to get your mashed potatoes that hot, but beating the butter in at a temperature that just melts the butter seems like a good idea. I am much less clear why hot milk or cream rather than cold is specified, since the amount added, compared to the mass of potato, would have no effect in terms of temperature. I suspect it is a holdover from the days when milk may have been of dubious health. Milk first or butter first? Adding the milk after the butter is better, since it allows for easier control of texture. How to puree? More choices. Most agree on the use of a potato ricer or, failing that, a mouli-legumes (food mill), since the pressing action damages the cells least. Personally I prefer an old fashioned potato masher, or even a fork, since I like the slight variations in texture. Escoffier advises and high-end establishments will laboriously rub the puree through a sieve, possibly twice to ensure smoothness. Don’t tell Jeffrey Steingarten, but once the starch has been fixed by the method here described, and if the cooked potato slices are allowed to cool to warm and then an electric whisk can be used with care without the puree turning gloopy and gluey. Don’t over process, however. The Recipe This is for two people. Take a couple of spuds. These are Estima, a floury variety. Peel and cut into 1 cm/½ inch slices. The size is to allow the heat to reach the centre in the cooking time. Put into water at 71C/160F for 30 minutes. Cool to room temperature to allow the starch to retrograde. Putting the pan under a running cold tap is easiest. Note how the potato slices have become waxy and translucent. Cook them at a gentle simmer (80C/180F) for 30 minutes. Drain, and allow to dry and cool for a few minutes. Note how the slices have begun to break up. Mash. Here with a hand masher, or you can even use an electric whisk. Add salt, white pepper, cold (room temperature) butter and then correct thickness with a little milk. Perfect Mash. Sausage and Mash with a Port and Onion confit and buttered cabbage for supper. Is it worth it? Why go to all this trouble for basic mash? It depends in part on your attitude to food. You can always reach for the packet of instant mashed potato, and many chefs do. It can make a satisfactory product, but for perfection a little more effort is needed. Pre-cooking the potato has advantages for the professional kitchen and for the busy home cook in that the product can be reheated, and held cold or warm at both the pre-cooked and the finished stage, so much can be prepared beforehand. Variations. There are literally hundreds of variations. Each culture has its own, depending on the local ingredients and culinary traditions. Hungarians, for example, add sour cream and paprika and in Provence they add meat glaze. There are spicy versions from India. Here are a few. • Flavoured mash: Blend in 10% of the desired flavouring. Examples include Horseradish, Grain Mustard, Tomato (use Ketchup), meat glaze, sour cream and paprika. • Olive Oil Mash: Substitute EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) for the butter. • English Mash: Substitute good beef dripping (with the jelly) for the butter. Sadly outlawed by the food police, but a fond memory. • Root vegetable puree: Blend with 50% of the relevant vegetable puree, or cook the vegetable with the potato. Examples: Celeriac, Carrot, Parsnip, Turnip (called Punch Nep). Turnip and Parsnip together is good. • Cheesy mash: Add a sharp grated cheese to the hot potato. Parmesan is good. • Champ, or Stelk the quintessential Irish potato dish: With milk or buttermilk to drink, it sustained the Irish peasant until the potato crop was wiped out by the blight. Champ is mashed potato with greens, traditionally scallions/spring onions, but also made with chives, or peas or parsley, or even nettles. For 2 lbs of potatoes blend in one of: Scallion (spring onion) 1 bunch (6-8) chopped finely and blanched. Chives: ¼ cup, chopped. Peas: One cup, cooked until tender. Parsley or other herbs: Quarter cup blanched and finely chopped. Leek: Shred finely and sauté with a clove of garlic until soft. • Colcannon: For 2 lbs of potatoes, mashed, mix in 1 lb of cabbage, shredded and cooked. Make a well in the centre and fill with 2oz/50g of melted butter. Some add spring onions or chives. Spinach can be substituted for cabbage. • Bubble and Squeak: Leftover mash and cabbage, mixed together with a little onion and then fried. Best if fried in good beef dripping. • Au Gratin: Sprinkle with cheese and breadcrumbs and brown under the grill. • Pommes de Terre Biarritz: Add a dice of ham and herbs. • Pommes de Terre Macaire: Make thin patties of mash, fry golden brown on both sides in good butter. • Pommes de Terre Byron: Pommes de terre Macaire, sprinkled with cream and grated cheese and browned under a grill. • Pommes de Terre Robert: Add 3 egg yolks per lb and a large pinch of chopped chives. Make patties and brown on both sides in good butter. • Mousseline: Mix with 1/3 rd volume of whipped cream. • Croquette: Make into 2 oz/60g cork shapes, roll in egg and breadcrumbs, deep fry. • Amandine: Roll croquettes in flaked almonds. Here dressed with deep fried parsley. • Berny: As Amandine, but include truffles in the puree, and make into the shape of apricots. • Chester, Cheddar, Gruyere, Parmesan, etc: Mix with the relevant cheese before making croquettes. Better than you might think. • Royale: Add chopped ham, egg and breadcrumbs. • Algerienne: Add 1/3rd chestnut puree. Originally sweet potato. Bind with egg yolk. • Duchesse: A classic restaurant garnish, but much abused, and fallen into disrepute. If left to stand can get dry and nasty. Beat in 1 egg yolk per lb (400g) of potato puree. Pipe onto a non-stick baking tray or silpat using a star tube. Brush with egg wash and brown in a hot oven. Brush with melted butter. • Marquise: Duchesse coloured with tomato paste. Beat in 2oz/50g Tomato concasse per lb/400g of mash. A modern version is to make a duchesse nest and fill it with a tomato salsa. • Rosette: Rose-shaped. • Dauphine: Duchesse with choux paste and deep fried. Add 1/3rd of Choux paste to the potato puree, and form into 2oz/60g cylinders. Chill and deep fry. • Elizabeth: Dauphine stuffed with creamed spinach. • Chamonix: A version of Dauphine with cheese – add 50g of Parmesan per lb. • Lorette: Chamonix, cigar shaped. • Bussy: Lorette with chopped parsley and truffled. • Brioche: Duchesse shaped as Brioche. Many cultures have fried potato cakes or croquettes, often filled with tasty morsels, such as coxina, papa rellena, or bhajis. • Potato Soufflee This is a souffle de pommes de terre; see separate recipe under deep fry for Pommes de Terre Souffle Butter 4 ramekins or 1 souffle dish and sprinkle with grated parmesan. For 1 pint/2lbs of mashed potato add the yolks of 3 eggs. Season well. Beat the 3 egg whites stiff. Mix some of the white into the potato to loosen it and then mix the potato gently into the egg white. Put into dishes, and bake as for an ordinary souffle at 400C for 20 minutes or until risen and browned. Many variations, such as adding ham or other flavours, are possible. See also Pommes de terre a la Roxelane. • Potato scones Ingredients 25g/1oz butter 1 leek, finely chopped 175g/6oz plain flour 2tsp baking powder 50g/1¾oz butter 125g/4½oz mashed potato 50g/1¾oz fresh parmesan cheese, grated 2 Tbs fresh thyme, chopped 2 Tbs milk 1 egg yolk, beaten salt and freshly ground black pepper Method Finely chop a leek and sauté until soft in a knob (25g/1oz) of butter. Put the flour, baking powder and remaining butter into a food processor and whiz until it resembles fine breadcrumbs, or rub in by hand. Add all the remaining ingredients except the egg, and combine well until a soft dough is formed. Press or roll out on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 1 cm/½in. Use a 2.5 cm/1 inch fluted cutter to cut out the scones. Brush with a little beaten egg and then bake for 10-15 minutes in a hot oven until golden and risen. Split and serve with the filling of choice. Shown here with marinated herring and crème fraiche. • Gnocchi 1 lb/500g mashed potato, well-seasoned 4oz/100g flour 1 egg Mix together into a dough. You can add grated parmesan, or spinach or herbs if you like. Roll out into a sausage, and cut into about 1cm cubes. You can make any shape you like, but the traditional shape is a slightly curved oval, with one side grooved by the back of a fork. The ridges hold more sauce. Put the shaped ones on to a lightly floured plate. Poach the gnocchi in about 1 inch/2cm of lightly salted boiling water with a little olive oil to prevent sticking. When they float they are cooked. Drain and dress. Here with butter, cinnamon and sage leaves, but any pasta sauce is good, such as Pesto, or Tomato sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan shavings. Baking and Casseroles Basic technique: Plain Baked (Pommes au Four) You may like your baked potato limp and soggy, but for me the ideal is a crisp skin (the best part) encasing a floury, nutty almost overcooked centre, the flesh beginning to form valleys and cracks to sop up the melting butter To achieve this - Pick the right floury (high starch)variety: Idaho russet, or King Edward. - Score though the skin, or the potato might explode with the steam. Some prefer a slit on the side, others a cross on the top. - Do NOT wrap in foil. - Bake in a hot (425F/200C) oven for 90 minutes or so. - Cut in half and mash the contents or press the sides to reveal the flesh. Serve, with butter, pepper and salt. Eat the lot. Extra butter is allowed for the skin. Some people add all sorts of gloop to make more of a meal: cheese, sour cream and chives, sweetcorn, baked beans, chilli, curry etc, but a good baked potato really doesn’t need them. Gadgets, like skewers or upturned spikes are sold where it is claimed the metal conducts the heat to the centre of the potato, thus reducing the cooking time. They may well work, but reducing the cooking time reduces the crispness of the skin. Other people in a hurry might microwave the potato. Again, no delicious skin, and the cooking time is not significantly shorter. Variants • Alphonse: Slice, add Maitre D’hotel butter, sprinkle with grated cheese, brown. • Bohemienne: Take a core out of the centre and fill with sausage meat. • Stuffed (double baked): A good supper dish. Bake some potatoes. Remove the flesh from the skin and mash with butter, cheese, crispy bacon bits, parsley. Stuff back unto the skins and bake until browned. Classical variants: • Arlie: Mix with chives, season well, sprinkle with grated cheese, brown under grill. • Menagere: Add dice of ham and onions, softened in butter. • Surprise: Bake. Cut a small hole and remove the flesh, mash with butter and cream, and refill the skin though the original hole so that it looks as though nothing has changed. Some people should get out more! • Pommes de terre a la Roxelane: Bake some potatoes, and use the flesh to prepare a potato soufflé (soufle de pommes de terre) mix as above. Put the mixture back into the skins and bake as a soufflé. • Dauphinoise: The classic potato gratin, rich, unctuous and welcoming. A great party dish. Also good for banquets as it is easy to portion. Much debate as to whether to include cheese and eggs, and how much garlic. Escoffier adds to 2 lbs of floury potatoes 1 egg, 1 ½ pts milk and 4oz Gruyere and he rubs the dish with garlic. Pomaine omits the egg and cheese, but includes 4 cloves of garlic. Classically the potato slices, washed of their starch, are carefully layered with the grated cheese into a gratin dish, and the milk or cream, and egg poured over, and baked for 40 minutes. My version is not traditional, but easy and quick to prepare. I like to include onions, and flavour with a bay leaf and thyme. The starch from the potato thickens the milk, so don’t wash the potato after slicing. Quick Potato Gratin a la Dauphinoise 2 lbs waxy potatoes (you can use a floury variety, but they will break up more) 1 large onion peeled and sliced thinly 2 or more cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed 1 bay leaf 2 sprigs thyme (or ½ tsp dried thyme) ½ tsp salt, lots of pepper 1 ½ pts milk, or cream if you want it very rich. 2 oz butter Peel and thinly slice the potatoes. Use a mandoline (mind your fingers!), or the slicing disc on a food processor, or good knife skills. If you are unshaven and knit your own you can leave the peel on the potato, but scrub them well. Put everything in a large pan and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and the thyme sprig, check the seasoning. Tip into a gratin dish so that it is a layer about 5 cm/2 inches thick. Smooth the top a bit, dot with butter. Put into a hot oven for 15 minutes or until the top is brown and bubbling, the potatoes soft, and the liquid adsorbed. Let cool a bit before serving. Lots of variations and addition. Dauphinoise with some added protein component, and perhaps a plain salad makes a great bistro dish or a supper when friends drop round unexpectedly. Add one or some of: • Anchovies (this is called Janzon’s Frestelse (Jansson’s Temptation), after Adolf Jansson, a 19th century Norwegian fisherman turned opera singer) • Bacon Bits • Leeks (shredded). This dish was known as Gratin a la Normande. • Mushrooms, especially morels or shiitake or wild mushrooms, with a little truffle oil. • Cheese • Cubes of chicken breast. • Tofu • Salmon • Smoked fish, such as smoked haddock or smoked salmon. • Sliced salami • Diced Ham • Confit of duck (off the bone). • Savoyarde or Chambery: Like dauphinoise but replace the milk with stock. • Boulangere: Sliced potatoes cooked round a joint/roast with onions and moistened with the meat juices. Pommes Anna and variants are under shallow frying, to which they are more akin. Deep-Frying Chips (UK) or French Fries(US) Basic technique The issue with chips is how to get the inside cooked and the outside crisp but not burnt. Worse, the steam from the fluffy inside will make the outside go soft. The normal solution is to par-cook the chips and then finish frying to brown and crisp the outside. Heston Blumenthal adds drying stages. After much experimentation, he finds the best way to dry them is to put the chips on a cake rack in the fridge for some hours. One problem with this is that the cold can increase the sugar content of the potato, which means they tend to colour before crisping. I would therefore not refrigerate before par-cooking, but just leave them at room temperature until dry. For finish frying it doesn’t matter, since the finish is just browning anyway. The recipe 1. Cut the chips 2, Wash off the surface starch 3. Cook in salted water until nearly soft 4. Drain, and dry 5. Cook without colouring in oil at 130C/275F 6. Drain and dry 7 Finish frying at 190C/375F 8. Salt and enjoy! I like my chips quite well done – dark mahogany colour. Most chip shops cook their chips much too light. Salt while hot – it helps the salt to stick better. The type of salt doesn’t matter much, but a fairly coarse but not crystalline salt will give the saltiest taste Since the browning is caused by the Maillard reaction, which occurs in alkaline conditions, I have recently, with some success, tried dipping the chips in a weak solution (1tsp to a pint of warm water) of baking soda, before drying and frying. Choice of variety is important – use a floury potato like Burbank Russet (Idaho) or King Edwards. Ideally do not keep them in the fridge, as the cold can increase the sugar content and make them brown too easily. Keep all potatoes in a cool dark frost-free place. Frost damages them, and light makes them go green. Choice of cooking medium: Since the finished chips will include some of the cooking medium the choice of medium is important. Firstly it must be capable of getting hot enough. Not all fat or oils can – they start to decompose and smoke. You need an oil whose smoke point is well above the 190C/375F cooking temperature. Secondly it must taste good. Thirdly it must not foam too much. Beef dripping is regarded by all except the health lobby (or some with specific beliefs such as vegans), as the finest medium. Otherwise use a high temperature oil such as canola (rapeseed). New oil doesn’t work as well as middle aged oil, so often some old oil is mixed with the new. Keep the cooking medium scrupulously clean, and filter it often. Size: Personally I like the mix of sizes that hand-cutting gives, but some prefer larger sizes, with less oil adsorption, and others prefer them finer, with more crunch. A little peel left on helps the flavour, but large amounts of peel are only for health- food people. Wedges with skin on are horrid – overcooked in the thin part and undercooked in the fat part. Fried salmon goujons in batter, tomato salsa, mushy peas, and chips made from blue potatoes Classical variations and special shapes: • Bataille: Large dice – ¾inch cubes • Benedictine: Spirals • Collerette: Slices of grooved cylinders • Copeaux: Ribbons • En Liard: Slices • Gaufrettes or LouLou: Waffle shaped: Cut on a grooved blade in a mandoline, rotating by 90 degrees each cut. Size matters In decreasing order of size • Chips • Pont-Neuf Rectangular in cross section 1.5 cm/¾ inch by 1 cm/½ inch • Frites (1 cm/½ inch) square in cross section • Paille (straws) Large Julienne or game chips • Juliennne: Small Julienne • Allumetes: matchsticks • Cheveau: hair thin • Nid (nests) Julienne potatoes deep fried in a special mould, and then filled with various things, including more fried potatoes. Now fortunately almost unknown. For more deep frying see Croquettes, and also Pommes Dauphine in the puree section. • Chip butties Hot Chip sandwich. Nothing better at the end of a good evening. Thick sliced white bread; thick salted butter; Heinz Tomato ketchup; Hot chips. Press together. Eat over the sink, with the wonderful goo from the melted butter and the ketchup running down your arms. • Skins, wedges, and other inventions Skins were originally the skin left after the pulp had been extracted from baked potatoes, deep fried and served with dipping sauces, or smothered with melted cheese. Nowadays they are cut thicker, and fried like chips. • Pommes Souffle: Pommes souffle are remarkable, and worth the little extra trouble. There is the usual discovered-by-accident story. Take 1/8th inch/3mm rounds of floury potato, and par-cook in oil, like chips. When you finish frying they soufflé, or puff. Variants: • Chatoullaird: Ribbon shaped Crisps (called Chips in the US) The fried snack-food industry is a major business. Potato crisps and snack foods sell at margins of some 25 times the cost of the raw materials. A typical formulation will start with reconstituted dried potato, possibly with additional starch, such as tapioca (cassava) to modify the ratio of amylose to amylpectin to give the desired texture, extruded to shape, dried and fried. With some starches there is considerable expansion on cooking. • Fried Thin slices of potato, well washed to remove surface starch and then deep fried at lowish temperature (165C/325F) until golden and then salted or dressed with all manner of natural or artificial flavourings. Black pepper or Worcester sauces are good flavourings for the home cook. Look here for an interesting eGullet thread on fried crisps. • Oven Crisps Slice as thin as possible, wash well to remove surface starch, dry and place in a plastic bag. Add 2tsp melted butter, cooled down, and shake well to coat all the slices with a film of butter. Place on a baking tray (use a silpat if you have one). Bake at 275F for 15 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. Shallow Frying (sauté) General notes Temperature When frying there are several processes happening: a) Dehydration and drying by evaporating the water b) Maillard reaction browning c) Melting and caramelisation of the sugars d) Cooking the starch. The secret of crispness is to cook cooler and slower, rather than hotter and faster. The ideal (for most potato varieties) is around 190C/375F to allow heat transfer to interior of the food and to give the drying and cooking processes time before the outside gets too dark and burnt. If you cook at too high a temperature the surface will locally char, and the food stick to the pan. Cooking at lower temperatures takes longer but gives a better result. Some potatoes with high sugar content, perhaps as a result of being stored for a long time at low temperatures, may need even lower heat. Choice of cooking medium. Some of the cooking medium will be adsorbed by the food and add flavour and mouth texture. The cooking medium should have a high smoke point so that it does not break down in use. Goose fat is wonderful and the best cooking medium for potatoes if available Worth cooking your goose just for the delicious fat to fry potatoes in. Duck and chicken fat (schmaltz) are also good. Beef dripping is excellent, but derogated by the health police and some people’s beliefs. The usual choice is a high-temperature neutral oil, such as canola (rapeseed) oil or peanut oil. Clarified butter or ghee are good, but need to be used at lower temperatures. The milk solids in butter on its own can brown too quickly; butter and oil is often mixed together to get the butter flavour but with a higher smoke point. EVOO can be used, but it is better on a salad, and it has a comparatively low smoke point. Oil can be omitted altogether and frying can take place in a non-stick pan. However, the flavour and feel of the food will be different. The oil also acts as a heat transfer medium, so the food will tend to overcook where it is contact with the pan, and undercook where it is not. Get the pan and cooking medium hot first. The food adsorbs less oil and the surface dries better so that the food has less tendency to stick. When you put the food in the pan it will tend to stick at first, and then as the drying/browning proceeds, free itself. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to move it about. Recipes •Latkes Latkes are traditionally eaten during the Jewish festival of Hanukah, the Festival of Lights, while the candles of the Menorah burn. In some traditions the Latkes are prepared by the men of the household, as Hanukah is a half-holiday for the housewife. The festival is in remembrance of the Maccabee rebellion, and the miracle that occurred there when the only un-polluted flask of holy oil, only enough for one day, lasted for seven days to light the holy light in the Temple. Latkes are eaten because they are cooked in oil and so a reminder of the miracle. Other traditional Hannukah oil-cooked foods are soufganiyot (jam filled doughnuts) or in the Sephardi tradition Bimuelos or Zalabia, oil-fried fritters in syrup. Of course, potatoes were not available in Jerusalem in biblical times despite the tradition that they were cooked to feed the Maccabean troops. Latkes may be a derivative of the German Kartoffelpuffer, also eaten with apple sauce. During Hannukah, also called the Festival of Lights, the dreidel (spinning top) is spun and traditionally a gambling game is played betting on the result. Like eating Latkes, this is similar to a German Christmas Eve tradition, and to the Indian tradition of playing gambling games during the Indian Festival of Lights, Diwali. There are many different versions. Here is mine. These disappear fast, and you will need to cook more than you expect. The most I have known anyone eat are 17 at one sitting, but we were younger and thinner then. 1lb floury potatoes (about 2 good size baking potatoes), peeled. This is sufficient for 4 latkes, normally enough for 2 people. 1 onion Plenty of salt and pepper. Peel and grate the potatoes and the onion coarsely. A food processor with a grating blade is easiest. Put into a cloth and squeeze out the excess moisture. Add plenty (½tsp) of salt and pepper and mix well. Heat about 1 cm/½ inch deep oil or fat in a frying pan and put in large tablespoons of the mixture, squashing down a bit to form a thinnish tablespoon-sized patty. Let cook until golden brown, then turn over. When both sides are cooked remove and drain on adsorbent paper. Keep warm in an oven. They can be reheated in a microwave. Add more fat to the pan between batches – they adsorb a lot of oil. Note that there is no additional egg or flour. Some add these, but they are mistaken. I do not understand why people add the extra moisture in the egg, and then have to add flour or matzo meal to sop it up, which I think makes the texture insipid. For reference, the traditional version adds one or two beaten eggs, ¼ cup of flour or matzo meal, and a teaspoon of baking powder. You can, but I don’t know why you would since the original version is so good, add sweet potato, cabbage, grated carrot, cheese or other vegetables to the mixture. I would not call these Latkes. You can leave the peel on the potatoes if you need the fibre. You can bake the mixture on a silpat or non-stick paper, but they are not the same. The raw potato mixture will discolour if left standing. If you have to hold it for a while add Vitamin C or lemon juice. •Potato Kugel: For a tasty Potato Kugel, pack the grated potato and onion, mixed with 3 Tbs oil, butter or schmaltz, into a layer about 2 cm/1 inch thick and bake in a hot oven until brown. As with Latkes, some people add eggs and flour or matzo meal while others add chicken stock or other vegetables, or, for dairy meals, cheese. •Chateau potatoes: New potatoes don’t roast well. These are a good alternative. Classically these are made with potatoes turned to seven sided ovals about the size and shape of a large olive. 1lb small new or fingerling potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled 1 oz/25g butter Put the potatoes in a single layer in a heavy pan with a lid. Add the butter. Cover. Cook on a low heat for about an hour, shaking occasionally. When cooked season with salt, and optionally chopped parsley. Dropping the potatoes, whether dusted with flour or not, in the deep fryer instead of cooking them slowly in butter, is a restaurant and catering practice to be discouraged. Variations • Alsacienne: With bacon pieces and small onions or shallots • Bordelaise: Parmentier (see below) with chopped garlic. Add late to prevent burning. • Cocotte: Smaller version of Chateau • Bonne-femme: Cocotte with braised onions • Fondantes: When browned, drain off the butter and add a glass of stock (Escoffier suggests fresh butter instead) and cook gently until the stock is adsorbed (one way to reheat) • Champignol: Fondants, sprinkle with grated cheese and glaze under a grill (make fondantes for the mise, glaze for service) • Cretan; Fondantes with thyme • Gastronome: Add chopped truffles (or truffle oil) • Mongolian: Cocotte with half Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) • Noisette: Cut small (½ inch/1 cm) balls of potatoes with a melon cutter. Brown well. • Parisienne: Larger balls, rolled in meat glaze when cooked. • Parmentier: Cut in 1 cm/½ inch cubes, Antoine Augustine • PARMENTIER did much to popularise the potato in France in the 18th century. It was during the Seven Years War, 1756-1763, that Parmentier, who was in the French Army in Hanover, first met the potato. He had become, for the fifth time, a prisoner of war in the hands of the Prussians, and having only potatoes to live on, he appreciated to the full their value as a food. Indeed, without them, he tells us, he could scarce have survived. It was his war experiences, which inspired him to work for the reintroduction of the potato into France. In 1789, the same year as the fall of the Bastille marked the beginning of the French revolution, he published a treatise “Traité sur la culture et les usages des pommes de terre, de la patate, et du topinambour” (Treatise on the growing and use of potatoes, sweet potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes), which was in all good republican bookshops, and the growing of potatoes helped the people avoid starvation in those difficult days. By year III of the Republic (1795), the Tuileries Gardens were being turned into potato fields. He also published a treatise on using potato flour in bread. Dishes called Parmentier always involve potatoes. • Mirette: Small dice, cook like Champignol, but add meat glaze and truffle. • Plain Cut boiled potatoes into thick (¼ inch 5mm) slices or into chunks. Saute until golden brown. Season. Variations • Allemande: in butter • Brune: Deep brown and crisp • Colombine: with julienne of peppers • Lyonnaise: with onions • O’Brian: Brune with diced peppers • Ortiz: As O’Brian, but cook from raw • Provencale: With garlic • Home fries: Cubes of potato, like Parmentier. Onions, diced peppers, leeks, etc optional. They differ from Parmentier or Lyonnaise in shape and geography • Sablees: Cut in dice, when nearly done add breadcrumbs to brown for that extra crunch. Rosti 2 lbs/1.5 Kg potatoes. Peeled 4oz/50g butter. Put the potatoes in cold water and bring to the boil. When they boil turn off the heat and let get cold. Ideally do this the day before. Grate the potatoes. Melt the butter and mix into the potatoes. Season. Put the potatoes in a pan in one large cake about 1 cm/½ inch thick. Cook slowly and allow to brown on one side before turning. You might find them easiest to turn by inverting the plan onto a plate. Invert the rosti by putting another plate over the first and turning upside down. Finally put the rosti back in the pan by putting the pan over the second plate and inverting. Let the second side brown. Serve, cutting wedges. You can also cook these in the oven on a baking sheet. Variants • Add grated cheese (preferably Gruyere) to the cooked side when you have turned then over and let melt You can include various chopped or grated vegetables (onion, carrot, peppers etc) with the potato. • Galettes: Take the grated and buttered potato as above, and scatter a thin layer on a non-stick baking sheet in a hot pan. Alternatively, press a thin layer into a circular cookie-cutter or egg ring on a non-stick baking sheet and remove the mold. Cook until brown on both sides. Used as a carrier for many savoury towers of restaurant-style food presentations. The Great Hash Brown Controversy. There seem to be two schools of thought about which is the best way to cook hash browns. I favour the second (grated). •Cubed Cut the par-cooked potatoes into cubes, as for Parmentier or Home fries. In a puddle of oil on the griddle or in a pan, brown the cubes on all sides, and then with a spatula squash them into a patty, and brown the resulting patty on both sides. •Grated Like small versions of Rosti above, similar to Latkes without the onion and from par-cooked potatoes. The advantage of par-cooking is that the potato shreds will stand without discolouring, and the cakes cook more quickly. Par-cook and grate the potatoes, as in Rosti above. They will hold for service at this point. Season well. Pour a pool of oil on the griddle or in a large frying pan over medium heat, and put a large tablespoonful of the grated potato in it, squashing down a bit. Let it brown on one side, then flip it, and brown on the other. Medium heat and longer cooking is the key to crispness. As "Waffle House" notes they can be: Scattered: Spread the potato out more thinly so they crisp more. Smothered: with sliced onion, sauteed. Covered: with grated cheese when you turn them. Chunked with diced ham. Topped with chilli. Diced with tomato dice. Peppered with chopped peppers. You can also include sliced onions, grated carrots, sweet potatoes, sliced cabbage, grated sunchokes and all manner of things with the potato. Pair with eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread or pancakes, or sausage for breakfast Dropping the potato mix, frozen into cakes, into the deep fat fryer is not the same. •Anna and her sisters Anna are rounds of potato covered in butter, arranged in a circle on a buttered parchment or silpat and then baked at 250F/120C until crisp. Some, for garnishing, have only a layer or two, others are a full cake of 5 layers or more, and these remain soft in the centre. To make the rounds cut a cylinder out of a potato with about a 2.5cm/1 inch cookie cutter, and slice into 1/16th/1mm slices. Wash well to remove the surface starch. Pommes Anna are also called Pommes Maxim, expecially when there are only one or two layers, as here Variations: • Mireille is Anna mixed with artichoke bottoms and truffled • Voisin or Ambassadeur is Anna with cheese between the layers • Darphin is Anna but with julienne not rounds, similar to a galette. • Nana is Darphin cooked in a dariole mould • Jetee-Promenade is Darphin with julienne of artichokes (sunchokes) and truffles mixed with the potato • Ideale is Darphin, truffled (dress with truffle oil if you can’t afford the real thing) Roast Basic technique • My version: Choose floury potatoes. Peel and cut into even, but largish chunks. Classically they should be turned. Par-boil for ten minutes. Drain in a sieve, and roll them around so the edges fray a bit – those rough bits will crisp deliciously. Season with salt and pepper. Heat clarified butter (or good dripping) in a roasting tin. Add a peeled onion cut in half. Add the spuds. Roll in the fat. • Hasselback potatoes are sliced nearly all the way through to increase the area available to crisp. This is frequently done by running a skewer through the potato to prevent cutting right through it. They are on the right in the pan. Cook for an hour in a hot oven, turning occasionally. Season and serve. Although it is traditional to roast potatoes around the joint, I find that they cook better if cooked in a separate pan. Here are two eGullet threads on roast potatoes: The Great Roast Potato cook-off (Goose fat vs Olive Oil etc) Heston Blumenthal on Roast Potatoes. • Potatoes and Rice One dish I remember from student days was roasted rice and potato. It was made by a fellow student who said it was a family dish. She put in a roasting tin some potatoes, oil, salt, a cup of rice, and two cups of stock (OK, stock cube), then put it in a hot oven for an hour or so beneath a chicken we were roasting. It was delicious and filling. There are many other dishes where potatoes form a major part, including Tortilla Irish Stew/Lancashire hotpot Aloo Bhaji Various recipes for potatoes in pastry: Potato pie, pasties, pierogies, knishes, Samosa, etc. Potato bread Fishcakes, rissoles, crab cakes.... Chowder Vichyssoise Shepherds' pie/cottage pie Corned beef hash/Lobscouse We will cover these in a future unit. And finally, from the Still-Room Book of Madam Susanna Avery, 1688 • Potato Pudding Half pound Potatoes, Qtr pound butter melted to oil, a Quarter (lb)of powdered Sugar, five eggs, half an ounce of Jordan Almonds blanched, half a nutmeg (grated); the potatoes to be boiled and peeled; and then together with ye almonds pounded in a mortar; the eggs to be well beat up: and when all ye ingredients are well tempered together to be boiled in a bason for an hour; you may add to the above a small glass of sack or mountain (e.g. Malaga, Sweet Sherry or Madeira) with a little orange flower or rose water; the sauce to be melted butter, sack and sugar. Further reading: Escoffier : The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery by H. L. Cracknell (Author), R. J. Kaufmann (Author) ISBN: 0471290165 Le Repertoire De La Cuisine by Louis Saulnier ISBN: 0812051084 In Praise of the Potato: Recipes from Around the World by Lindsey Bareham ISBN: 0879514973 Post your questions here --> Q&A

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Vinegar added to the ingredients list.

Post your questions here -->> Q&A A Sampling of South Indian Breads Authors: Monica Bhide and Chef K.N. Vinod Introduction Kerala, situated in the southern part of India, is one of the most blessed places in the world. It is a gorgeous state boasting luscious green landscapes, magnificent waterscapes, and a cuisine to match. It also boasts a unique and healthy cuisine that has benefited greatly from the influx of settlers and traders throughout the history of India. Kerala hosts Hindus, Christians and Muslims and reflects Portuguese, Chinese, Dutch, French, Arabic and of course the British influence in its cuisine and culture. Chef Vinod, his charming mother, Pushpavathy, and I would like to present to you some of the unique breads from Kerala. We have borrowed a few from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu as well ( the Dosas and the Idlies) to give you a birds-eye-view of the breads of South India. Most Westerners are more familiar with the standard North Indian breads that are available here in most restaurants, the Naan, the Tandoori Roti etc. We would like to introduce you to an entirely different concept of bread. Perfectly steamed breads made with rice flour and coconut. Some sweetened with jaggery (cane sugar), some drunk with pickles, others alive with peppers. Come join us on this wonderful journey into a world that will entice you. This is a mere sampling to whet your palate. You will notice that some of the preparations require special utensils. We have tried to show you the authentic way in which these dishes are prepared (at the Chef’s home in DC). Where possible we have indicated alternate utensils for the home cook. Many of the utensils, ingredients etc. can be purchased from www.namaste.com (Unfortunately, they do not ship outside of the United States). Banana leaves are readily available at most Korean or other ethnic food stores. A tip: Be sure to read the recipe completely before you begin. Please note that these are the Chef’s rendition of these recipes. There are always regional quirks and variations. Chef Vinod and his mother Pushpavathy. Cracking the Coconut We wanted to start with the basics! This will show you how to crack a coconut. Step 1: You can see that the Chef is holding the coconut and breaking it with large sickle-like knife. I would suggest you take it outside and bang it once or twice on hard cement!! Step 2: Here you can see the cracked coconut. (If you like, drink the water, which is unbelievably sweet. It's even better if you have green, young, tender coconuts). The water of this mature coconut may not be that sweet. Step 3: Here are two very traditional methods of grating the coconut. In the first method, Pushpavathy is sitting on the floor with a floor-based grater and in the second one, we have the grater fixed to the side of a table. Step 4: Being ever practical (remember – “What would your mom say”) I suggest you can also buy a bag of grated coconut, now so easily available! Puttu: Rice flour moistened and mixed with grated coconut and steamed. Ingredients • 1 cup rice flour • ½ cup grated coconut • 1 teaspoon cumin • ½ cup water • Salt to taste Method Mix all the ingredients and set aside. This recipe uses a pressure cooker and a very special cylinder called a Puttu Kutti (some people use bamboo). We will show two different ways to prepare this dish – one using the cylinder (hollow at one end, small hole at the other), one using a coconut shell. You can also create your own contraption to prepare this dish (see method 3 below). Method 1 Add about 8 cups of water to your pressure cooker. Cover and allow the pressure to build. In the meantime, using a spoon, fill the cylinder with mixture. Be sure to pack it tight Place the cylinder on the steam nozzle of the pressure cooker. Cover. Steam for about 3 -4 minutes. Remove the cylinder from the heat. Use a spatula to push out the steamed rice flour cake onto a plate. Repeat process until all the dry mixture has been used up. Serve hot. Method 2 Here we used a coconut shell to prepare the Puttu. Drill a small hole in the bottom of one of the coconut shell halves. Fill the half shell (with the hole), with the mixture. Place the shell on the steam nozzle of the pressure cooker. Cover with the other coconut shell. Steam for about 3 -4 minutes. Remove from the heat. Use a spatula to push out the steamed rice flour cake onto a plate. Repeat process until all the dry mixture has been used up. Serve hot. Method 3 Heat water to a rolling boil in a deep dutch oven or a deep pan. Place a hollowed cylinder in the center (hollowed at both ends). Place the coconut shell (with mixture as described in method 2) on the cylinder and follow directions in method 2. This dish is best served hot. It is traditionally served with bananas, Indian wafer (papadams) and black chickpeas. (We ate it with North Indian style with chick peas). Pushpavathy indicated that in some places in South India, it is also eaten with plain sugar. Puttu Served with plantain and channas Ada: Steamed and stuffed rice flour bread Ingredients • 4 cardamom seeds • 2 small lumps of jaggery • 7 tablespoons grated coconut • ¾ cup hot water • 2 cups of rice flour • A pinch of salt Method Roughly pound the cardamom seeds. If you use a mortar and pestle to pound the seeds, remove the skins after pounding. Alternatively you can use a spice mill, in which case you would leave the skins on. Using a grater, grate the jaggery. Add the powdered cardamom to the jaggery and set aside. In a bowl, mix the water, rice flour and salt. Knead into a loose dough. Divide the dough into seven equal parts. Heat a skillet or griddle or a hot plate on high heat. While the skillet is heating, prepare the bread. Place a banana leaf on the counter top. With moistened hands, place one dough ball on the leaf. Gently begin to press the dough out. Keep pressing and stretching until the dough is about 8 inches in diameter. Now we will add the stuffing. Stuffing 1: Using a spoon, spread about 1 tablespoon of coconut on flattened dough. Stuffing 2: In a small bowl, mix a tablespoon of coconut with a tablespoon of the jaggery mixture. Spread on the flattened dough. Fold the banana leaf into half, press down gently. (If the leaf is too large, trim the edges.) Repeat for all the dough balls. Place the folded banana leaf on a skillet. Brown for 3 minutes on each side (it might be a bit longer depending on how high your heat is). Cover and steam for about 7 – 8 minutes. Serve hot. The perfectly melted and caramelized jaggery oozes sinfulness from the bread. Another version of this dish is called the Kozhi Katta – here the dough is tighter and is stuffed with jaggery and steamed. Pathiri A divine and delicate bread made by the Muslim community (also known as the Moplahs of Kerala). This is the Chef’s own rendition of this South Indian classic. Prepare the dough as you would for Ada. (Some people use coconut milk instead of water to prepare this dough.) A touch of cumin seeds may be added for taste. It is prepared in a similar method as the Ada. The difference is that the dough is flattened out much thinner to obtain the “flat bread” appearance. Serve hot. Dosa One of the most famous South Indian breads. A perfect crisp crepe-like bread prepared with rice and dal (lentil). These days, you can buy packaged mixes from your local Indian grocer. They save the soaking and fermenting time. (you can also purchase these online at www.namaste.com.) Ingredients • 4 cups long grain rice • 1 cup white urad dal ( also called Dhuli Urad) • ¾ cups water (approximately) • Salt to taste • 2 -3 tablespoons vegetable oil Method Soak the dal in water for at least 3 -4 hours. Drain and set aside. Soak the rice in water for at least 4 – 6 hours. Drain and set aside. Put the the dal and a few tablespoons of water into a blender. Blend to a smooth consistency. The trick here is to try to do with it as little water as possible. Remove from blender and place in a bowl. Now add the rice and salt to the blender, again with ½ cup of water. Blend to a paste – this will not be as smooth as the dal paste. Add more water if needed. Add the rice batter to the dal batter and mix well. Your batter should have the consistency of thick pancake batter. Leave the batter to ferment overnight. This needs a warm environment. I generally warm the oven. Turn it off and then place the batter in it to ferment. An oven with a pilot light works well as well. Now we are ready to make the dosas. Heat a non-stick skillet. Using a paper napkin, dipped in a bit of oil, wipe the skillet. Using a small glass bowl or a metal bowl (anything with a flat base), pour a ¼ cup of batter onto the skillet. Using the bowl, make concentric circles to spread out the dosa. Sprinkle a few drops of oil to prevent the dosa from sticking. You will begin to see small bubbles forming and the dosa will begin to crisp. Using your spatula, carefully roll the dosa off the skillet. Serve hot. There are many ways to stuff the dosas. You can also eat them plain with your choice of chutneys. See the Indian Forum for some lively discussions on Dosa and some noteworthy chutney recipes. Uttapam: A savory pancake topped with chopped bell peppers, onions and cilantro. Serve with your choice of chutney. Ingredients • Leftover Dosa batter • 1/4 cup, each, chopped bell peppers, onions and cilantro leaves Heat a non-stick skillet on medium heat. Pour a ¼ cup of batter onto the skillet. (If you have a large skillet you can make more than one at a time). Add a generous helping of the mixed peppers. Cook for about 2 minutes. Flip over and cook for another 4 -5 minutes. Serve hot. Appam Madhur Jaffrey once described Appam as a marriage between a French crepe and an English muffin. This classically Keralite dish consists of rice batter mixed with coconut and fried like a pancake in a wok called cheena chatti (This wok gets its name from the fact that it was historically a Chinese utensil. This shows the influence of the Chinese on this cuisine). Ingredients • 1 cup rice • ½ cup water • ½ cup coconut milk • Salt to taste • 2 tsp.sugar • Pinch of baking soda Soak the rice overnight. Drain. In a blender, blend the rice with 1/2 cup of water and half cup of coconut milk. Place the batter in a bowl. Take about 3 tablespoons of the batter and place it in a small non-stick pan. Bring it to a boil. Remove from heat and add it back to the main batter. Mix well. Leave to ferment overnight (see directions under Dosa for fermentation environments). Add salt, sugar and baking soda to the batter. Mix well. Adjust the consistency if necessary with water (Pancake batter consistency). Heat a small (about an 8 inch) skillet. Add about a ¼ cup of the batter. Swirl the pan so that batter sticks to the sides. It will remain a bit thick at the center (think – French crepe on the sides, English muffin at the center). Cover and steam for about 2 -3 minutes. Once the appam is cooked, the sides appear lacey and the center is spongy. Remove gently from the skillet. Serve hot. Appams are traditionally served with mutton or chicken stew. Idlies These are another famous South Indian treat. These steamed rice cakes have found a happy home in almost every South Indian restaurant abroad. They are served with chutneys and the tantalizing Indian lentil based Sambhar. Many people swear the best way to eat them is warm, drizzled with hot clarified butter (Ghee). Ingredients • 2 cups rice • ¾ cups white Urad Dal • Salt – to taste • For stuffing – Your favorite Indian Pickle *(optional) • cooking spray Method Please note that this dish needs the Idli steamers. You can purchase these at your local Indian grocer or at www.namaste.com. Alternatively you can steam these in small bowls placed in steam baths. These can also be microwaved (a few tablespoons in a glass bowl, and about 4 minutes in the microwave) – although this does alter the taste. They are best steamed. Soak the rice and dal together for 4 – 5 hours. Drain. In a blender, blend the dal and rice separately with a few tablespoons of water to a pancake-like consistency. The Dal should be ground very smooth to make the idli light and fluffy. Mix the ground dal and rice together and let it sit to ferment overnight. Add salt to taste and mix well. Using a cooking spray such as Pam, grease the Idli steamers. Now heat water in a deep pan (the pan needs to be deep enough to hold the steamers and it needs a lid). Place a few tablespoons of batter in each holder If you are going to prepare stuffed Idlies, pour in about a tablespoon of the batter and add half teaspoon of the pickle and then top it off with more Idli batter. (You can use any thick chutney like Mint, Coriander, Tomato or anything of your choice.) Place the steamer inside the deep pan. Cover and steam for about 7 – 8 minutes. Idlies are done (like cakes) when they pass the toothpick test. Uncover. Sprinkle a few drops of water on the idlies. Remove with a sharp knife. Serve hot. Post your questions here -->> Q&A

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Please post your questions here. Autumn and Festive Preserves Author: Jack Lang (Jackal10) Jack's first course on preservation can be found here. The introduction to that course contains some scientific background to preservation and should be read in conjunction with this course. Now the end of the growing season is here and Xmas approaches it is time to make the last preserves of the year. Here we will look at Apple Jelly Green Tomato Chutney Damson Gin Mincemeat Xmas pudding Quince comforts (contignac) Pamelas: Candied orange and grapefruit peel Apple Jelly and variations Apples have lots of pectin, so apple jelly is easy, and a basis for many other flavours. It is made much like the Redcurrant jelly in the previous preserves section. It can be made from windfalls, or from crab apples. I make it from the apples that get left on the tops of the trees that we could not reach to pick, and that then fall off in their own good time. I know I should prune out these top branches, but then I would not get the apples for apple jelly Small jars of jelly make nice presents or shop goods. 6lbs/3kgs apples 3pts/2.5l water 3lbs/1.5kg sugar Chop up the apples and discard the bad bits, but keep the pips and cores – they contain the most pectin. For 6 lbs/3kg of apples add 3pts/2.5l water, and simmer for an about an hour Pass though a jelly bag, or a coffee filter, or a double thickness of muslin in a sieve Resist the temptation to squeeze or force it through Measure the juice. Allow 1lb/500g of sugar to each pint/750cl of juice Boil until setting point is reached (221F) Skim and bottle. When cold, label and store in the usual dark cold place. Variations Everything except the spices are added after the sugar has dissolved and show in the final jelly: Spiced apple jelly: Add cloves to the apple when you boil them. You can add them to the juice which gives a brighter flavour, but they then need straining out You can use other spices, such as pumpkin pie spices, or ginger, or lemon peel. Mint Jelly: Add chopped mint to the juice. Some like to add some vinegar as well. Other herbs: Parsley, thyme, rosemary (strain out the bits), tarragon, lavendar etc Rose Petal: Makes a lovely rose petal jam, Use fresh red rose petals from a fragrant variety. Wash well, and add 1 cup of petals after the sugar has been dissolved. You can increase the rose flavour with rose germanium leaves or with rose water. Gold leaf spangles: Add pieces of gold leaf, or a liqueur like Goldwasser that contains them. Flavour with cinnamon or aniseed.. Hot Chilli: Add chopped hot chillis: 12 chillis are about as much as even serious chilli heads can stand. Green Pepper: Add chopped green peppers, and green food colouring Green Tomato Chutney At the end of the tomato growing season there are always green tomatoes left, as well as the odd straggler or misshapen fruit. Those that don’t get fried make magnificent chutneys and pickles. They are pretty tough and make a good sweet pickle: 3lb/1kilo small green tomatoes 1pt/750mls vinegar 2 lb sugar flavouring: 1tsp vanilla or q tsp ground cinnamon If you want to peel them put the tomatoes in boiling salted water for 10 mins, refresh under cold water and peel. I don’t bother. Put the peeled green tomatoes with the sugar, vinegar and flavouring into a non-corrosive saucepan and boil for 5 mins. Pack into jars, and seal with non-metallic lids. You can pickle them just like the cucumber recipe given in the first lesson, except they take at least 3 weeks to mature. A good chutney is mellow from long cooking and maturing. It is quite different from Indian style chutneys, although the origin may have been Anglo-Indian. This style is deep brown. long simmered, ends up like a like a brown sauce with texture. Essential with cold meats, pork pies, or with cheese for a sandwich or ploughman’s lunch. 4lb/2 kilo green tomatoes, chopped up roughly 1lb/500g windfall apples, after peeling and coring 1/2lb/250g small raisins or sultanas 1 lb/300g brown sugar 1lb/500g shallots or onions, chopped 1/2 pt/375ml vinegar 1/2oz/25g fresh ginger, chopped. ½ oz/25g salt Spices and chillis to taste (2 chillis, 2 bay leaves, tsp mustard seed, tsp black pepper) Put the spices in a muslin wrap. Chop up everything small, except the raisins or sultanas. Put it all to simmer on a very low heat for a very long time (6-8 hours), until it is thick, and apart from the raisins, although there are chunks, the origin of each is not really discernable. The bag of spices is on the left. Remove the spices, bottle with a non-metallic lid (because of the vinegar) and seal. Leave to mature for at least a month. Variations: For a lighter chutney use white sugar and vinegar. If you want it sharper, add some of the vinegar towards the end of the cooking period. You can make it with almost any fruits or vegetables such as windfall apples, or marrow, plums or winter squashes that did not quite grow right Damson Gin Fruits in alcohol are a wonderful and easy dual preserve. Not only do you get the delicious liqueur, but also the preserved fruit. This recipe is a more delicate version of sloe gin, made with sloes (wild plums), but also just as traditional. First pick the damsons 1lb/500g damson plums, I bottle (70cl) full strength gin, as the water in the fruit will dilute it 8oz/250g sugar (more or less to taste) Freeze the damsons. This is a short cut and the object is to crack the fruit so that the gin penetrates You can hear the fruit crack when you pour on the gin. Freezing is much easier than the traditional method of pricking each fruit with a silver bodkin. Put into a jar and shake. The sugar will dissolve slowly, and the gin takes on a wonderful pink colour and fruit flavour. After 24 hours Put the jar somewhere (under the bed is traditional) where you see it from time to time and give it a shake occasionally. After a month it is ready. You can leave it, or strain the liqueur, and bottle it back into the original gin bottle, relabelled. It improves in the bottle if allowed to do so without being drunk. If you manage to leave it, it will gradually mature to a rich brown and full flavour. This is from 3 years ago. The fruit can be added in moderation to an adult fruit salad, or pureed and set with a little gelatine into an amazing jelly. Variations: You can add almond essence or lemon peel Many fruits can be preserved in alcohol this way, for example Peaches in Brandy, Cherries in Brandy or Rum. We covered Rumtopf in the last lesson. Mincemeat Ahh mince pies! I don’t know why more people don’t make their own mincemeat, as it is so easy and so much better than shop-bought. Making mince pies with home made micemeat to the sound of the carol service broadcast from King’s College marks the start of the festivities for me Mincemeat originally was a way of preserving meat for the winter, with lots of spices, dried fruit, alcohol and sugar. The meat was used as a pie filling, or part of a porridge or stuffed into a sausage skin for a pudding After a while people noticed it tasted even better if they left out the meat, except for some fat to melt and give richness and unctuousness. A few people still include neck meat or kidney, but mostly out of tradition rather than taste On the other hand if you can get real kidney suet from your butcher and shred your own, your mince meat will be all the better and more authentic Otherwise you will have to make do with the packet stuff. If you don’t eat meat then butter is better than the dubious (and often stale) hydrogenated fats that pass for some vegetable suets. 1lb/500g each of cooking apples, weighed after peeling, coring and chopping Use a firm apple like Granny Smith. currants seedless raisins sultanas brown sugar finely chopped suet 1/2lb/250g chopped mixed candied peel, glace cherries etc grated rind and juice of 2 lemons 2 oz chopped almonds (optional) ½ tsp ground sweet mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves – as for pumpkin pie) 1/2pt+ 1 glass rum or brandy. (Not optional!) Mix it all together. Pack into jars. Seal. Drink the spare glass of rum or brandy. Leave for a month before using as a pie or tart filling. One jar nicely fills an 8 inch pie dish. Also great as a filling for baked apples. Will keep a year, but may dry out a little. Revive by stirring in another glass of spirits, Xmas pudding George I (sometimes called “The Pudding King”) ate this Christmas pudding at 6pm on December 25th 1714. These puddings may originally have been a thick spiced porridge version of the mincemeat above, called frumenty, sometimes cooked as a pudding in a sausage skin. In the sixteenth century people discovered that they were better if they boiled the ingredients in a bag (“bag pudding”), they preferred the texture given by eggs, breadcrumbs and flour, rather than oatmeal. The original would have been the traditional cannonball shape from being boiled in a floured cloth, often in the wash-day copper. Once boiled, they will keep for up to a year in a cool dry place.. 1 1/2lb/750g eggs, weighed in their shells 1lb/500g each of dried plums (prunes) seedless raisins mixed peel currants sultanas flour brown sugar breadcrumbs 1 tsp mixed spice ½ nutmeg, grated ½ tsp salt Juice and grated rind of a lemon Large glass of brandy ½ pint milk. Mix all the dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre and mix in the wet ingredients. “a stir and a wish” Let stand, covered in a cool place for 12 hours. Put into basins or a floured cloth. Boil for 8 hours. A half lemon in the water helps preserve aluminium pans. When cold recover with clean silicone paper and muslin Store cool and dry. Before serving boil again for 2 hours. Dress with a sprig of holly Take to table flaming: pour over a ladleful of flaming rum or brandy (care). Serve with brandy butter (Hard sauce), cream, or rum custard or all of them. My variation: Omit the flour. This gives a lighter pudding Replace the milk with Guinness. Drink the rest of the bottle. Wartime versions used carrots to add some sweetness and bulk instead of some of the sugar, which was in short supply. Versions which omit the alcohol should be ignored. These make puddings which are mostly fruit, held together with a little pudding stuff. You can increase the breadcrumbs and flour if you want to economise, or like more stodge. Left-over Christmas pudding is great fried with bacon and eggs next morning. Traditions Many traditions and superstitions are associated with Christmas pudding. When mixing you should invite the family for “a stir and a wish” They were the original “Plum-duff” of naval catering, and dried plums are, at least to me, an essential ingredient and link with tradition. Traditionally they were made by “Stir-up Sunday”, the last Sunday before Advent, which is around the end of November, so that they have time to mature before Christmas day. It is called “Stir-up Sunday” because the Collect begins “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”, reminding the faithful that it is time to make puddings The old game of Snapdragon puts raisins or currants around the flaming pudding, the dare is to snatch one from the flames (take care!). There is a reference from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass where Alice meets the fanciful Looking-Glass insects. One of them is the Snap-dragon-fly, with a body made of plum-pudding, its wings of holly-leaves and its head a raisin burning in brandy. It lives on frumenty and mince pie, and nests in a Christmas box. It is traditional to hide a silver three-penny bit or other silver coin in the pudding. Whoever gets it, according to tradition, will receive wealth and riches in the coming year, or in other traditions are made king or queen for the day. This is part of an older and wider lore, such as the bean in the French Three kings cake, or in the Greek Vasilopita cake for St Basils (New Years Day). Originally the coin was in the Twelfth night cake The coin stood for riches. Other symbols and their objects were A bean for King A pea for Queen A clove for Knave A twig for the Fool A rag for the Maid One theory is that these traditions, together with the yule log, the holly and mistletoe, are the last remnants of the pagan traditions of the winter solstice festival of Saturnalia, taken over in the Christian tradition by Christmas. The king, chosen by the bean or the coin, is the Lord of Misrule and rules over the Revels for the day. There is deep symbolism and ancient magic here. The health police remind us that there is a remote chance of someone choking on the small coin in their food, so warn people to be on the look out for it, and check for the very young or old. Polish and wash or boil the coin well before adding to the pudding. Make sure the coin is real silver – modern nickel coins (like nickels and dimes) leave a nasty taste. Real silver (pre-1920) English three-penny bits are still available, for example on ebay or at coin dealers for modest prices if they are not in mint condition. I just purchased some Victorian 1887 ones for about 50c each . Others replace the coin with a silver charm. You can bribe youngsters to return it by offering a reward. Other places have their own traditional preserved foods or rich matured breads and cakes for Xmas: Speculoos (spiced cookies) in Belgium, Stollen in Germany, Vasilopeta and Chridstopsomo in Greece, panetonni and panforte in Italy, Turron in Spain, Medivnyk Honey Cake in Ukraine, not forgetting all the preserved ginger, gingerbreads, hams, game pies, and turkeys raised for the season. Quince comforts/Quince Cheese/Contignac/ Dulce de Membrillo Quince paste, known by different names in different places Depending how much you reduce and dry it it can be variously Butter, Cheese, Leather or Comfits. Comfits are an old name for a fruit jelly, served after dinner. 2lbs/1 Kg quinces About 1lb/500g sugar Pick the quinces Quinces are as hard as iron when raw. Some recipes suggest stewing them, but I find baking them for an hour or so easiest Let them cool, and remove most of the skin and bones – the pips, stalk and any hard bits. Puree and sieve. This stuff is tough to sieve and sticks to everything. It is easier when the puree is warm. Add an equal weight of sugar, and simmer, stirring frequently. It will get much looser at first, then stiffer as it dries. Take care, as it bubbles like molten lava, and spits. When you can see the bottom of the pan when you draw a line it is stiff enough. Pour into an oiled tin, or a tin lined with silicone paper, and let it set. You can now dry it in the sun, or in a barely warm oven. Turn it over after a day or so so it dries evenly. Traditionally these cheeses were wrapped in Bay leaves and muslin, and served with cheese. To make comfits cut it into ½ inch/ 1cm cubes and roll in sugar. Keep either loosely wrapped in the fridge, or in a closed tin in sugar. Variations: Add spices, such as cinnamon Use other fruit, such as apple or Damson Pamelas: Candied grapefruit peel Making true glace fruit is a long business, and there is little advantage in making it yourself. However here is a quick version, adapted from a recipe originally by the Troisgros Freres. 6 Grapefruits (about 2kg or 4lbs), preferably unwaxed 1lb 6oz/600g sugar Cut off the top and bottom of the grapefruit. Cut into quarters. Cut off 2/3rds of the flesh from each quarter and any seeds. You can eat it for breakfast. Cut each quarter into 4 sticks, (some orange crept in there) Put them in a saucepan and cover them with cold water. Bring it to the boil. Strain off the water. Repeat this four times to remove the bitterness. The fifth time don’t add the water but add the sugar instead. Bring to the boil and simmer on a low heat very slowly uncovered for 50 to 60 minutes or until the syrup has evaporated and peel is transparent and tender. If you cook too fast the syrup will evaporate before the slices are cooked. Spread the slices out to dry on a rack, and when cold roll in sugar. Damson comfits and Pamelas Variations: For true indulgence dip into good chocolate. You can do the same with other citrus fruits. Orange peel needs rather longer than grapefruit. Please post your questions here.

Please post your questions here for Autumn and Festive Preserves.

Post your questions here -->> Q&A Cooking with Kids Instructor: Flory Loonin (afoodnut) Many thanks to Varmint (DM McCord) and the L'il Varmints for the photography. Why cook with kids? For those of us who love cooking, hanging out in the kitchen, and eating, cooking with kids is a great way to share our enthusiasm and introduce kids to the pleasures of food. Learning to cook lets kids acquire and practice skills other than just food preparation. Reading and using recipes benefits reading skills. Measuring helps develop math skills. Learning to cook improves organization skills. Cooking can be all about science and experimentation. Cooking together is also just plain fun, and at the end of it all, we just might have something good to eat. I am assuming that you are already at least comfortable in the kitchen, that you have basic cooking skills, that you can define culinary terms, and can demonstrate techniques. (That’s not to say you’re forbidden from learning along with the kids.) You'll have to be the final judge of what you're comfortable with having kids do in the kitchen; as with all skills, kids develop at different rates. But here's a rough guideline of pre-cooking and cooking skills for different age groups. The very youngest kids can play with pots, pans, plastic bowls, wooden spoons, measuring cups etc. From ages 2-4, kids can wash/scrub fruits and vegetables, tear lettuce, peel fruits like bananas and oranges, and juice fruits using a reamer. Kids can use a table knife to cut fruits like bananas and strawberries, and can spread jam, soft butter, and peanut butter. They can use craft scissors to cut herbs. They can mash potatoes. They can stir food in a bowl, and pour liquids from a small pitcher. They can count ingredients. They can sprinkle grated cheese and put toppings on pizza. They can sift flour, use cookie cutters, and pat or roll dough. They can add pre-measured ingredients and stir. They can grease pans. They can also press the button to start the mixer or blender when the adult says "turn it on now." They can combine ingredients to make trail mix, and stir to make chocolate milk. From ages 5-8, kids are able to measure ingredients. As soon as they can read, let them be the recipe reader. They can learn to crack eggs, beat ingredients with a whisk, and roll dough with a rolling pin. They can learn to stir, mix, fold, and beat ingredients. They can toast bread in a toaster, and do most of the work to make muffins, cookies, cupcakes. They can organize ingredients. They can peel vegetables with an Oxo-type peeler, and learn to use a box-grater for cheese. They can shape burgers and meatballs, use a melon-baller or scoop, and start to learn how to knead dough. From ages 8-10, kids can learn to use a knife to cut, chop, dice, mince, and slice. They can learn to separate eggs. They can stir hot foods. They can learn to use a toaster-oven, blender, mixer, can opener, microwave, stove, and oven with supervision. They can cook simple foods like scrambled eggs, hard-boiled eggs, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches or quesadillas. They can heat soups and prepared foods. (To work at the stovetop, they need to be tall enough to see into the pot.) From age 11 up, kids can learn more exacting techniques and be able to cook with little direct supervision. They can use appliances and equipment on their own, and be responsible for following safety rules. Basic rules for kids (and grownups) in the kitchen The adult should talk about "rules we follow in the kitchen" with the kids starting from day one, as part of normal kitchen conversation. As kids get older, they take on more responsibility for knowing and following the rules. Sanitation: Most important: Always wash your hands before you start. With a two-year- old, for example, say, "Let's wash our hands now; we always wash our hands before we cook," and help the kid stand on a chair at the sink to reach the water and wash up. If any of you have long hair, tie it up or use a clip. Wear short sleeves or roll up your sleeves. Wear shoes to protect feet from hot spills. Cleanliness matters. Explain to younger kids that there are rules you follow because you don't want anybody to get sick from food you prepare. Older kids can understand the idea that you don't want to cross contaminate foods. Cross contamination occurs when bacteria are transferred from one food to another (most often from raw poultry or meats that will be cooked to food that will be eaten with no further cooking). To avoid cross contamination: Use at least two different cutting boards or work areas-- one for raw meat/fish/poultry and the other for fruits and vegetables that you will eat with no further cooking. Wash utensils with hot soapy water after you use them with raw food. Wash your hands after touching raw food. Safety Safety is important. Kitchens can be dangerous places. There are hot surfaces, hot foods, sharp knives, and electrical equipment. Up until the age of about 10 kids don't necessarily understand the dangers involved and require close supervision. As the adult, you are responsible for following these rules, but as you do, talk about the rules with the kids, telling them what you're doing and why you're doing it. If you're working with older kids who are new to cooking, explain all the rules and the reasons for them. If you're working with older kids who are experienced in the kitchen, you should still review the rules. Keep pot and pan handles turned towards the back of the stove. Always use a dry potholder/mitt/towel to touch or pick up hot things. Using damp or wet cloths causes burns. If you need to walk with a knife, hold it, point downwards, close to the side of your thigh. Never put or leave a knife in the sink. When you're finished using a knife, wash it in hot, soapy water and put it away. If you need to leave a knife out on a counter or cutting board, make sure it is far back and the sharp edge is facing away from where anyone is working. If a knife falls, don't try to catch it. Let it fall to the floor. (Move away from it if you can.) Dry your hands well before plugging in any electric appliance. Always pay attention to what you're doing. When you're using an appliance like a mixer, for example, don't put your fingers or hands in the bowl while it's running. Wipe up any spills on the floor right away; you don't want a slippery floor. A few more suggestions Okay, and now some more suggestions. These suggestions go beyond health and safety. They will make cooking with kids easier, more fun, more likely to be successful, and less stressful for everyone. Disregarding them won't hurt you, but following them will make your life easier. Always start with a cleared, clean work area. As much as possible, use sturdy, unbreakable utensils. Use large bowls, with plenty of room for mixing, stirring, and tossing. Be relaxed about making a mess, but clean up as you go. Foods spill; that's okay, but wipe up the spill (watch for the possibility of cross contamination, though; don't use the unwashed dirty sponge that just wiped up the drips from raw chicken). Move used bowls, spoons, etc. to the sink. Read the recipe before you start. Read the recipe from beginning to end before you do anything else. Read the recipe carefully. (If you are not working from a written recipe, go over everything you will do with the kids; you or they might want to use the opportunity to write out the recipe.) Talk about the recipe with the kids, explaining, defining, or reviewing any techniques or cooking terms. Clarify any abbreviations used in the recipe, for example, point out that "tsp." means teaspoon, and "Tbsp." means tablespoon. If the recipe includes an instruction like "bake at 350º," now is a good time to turn on the oven. Assemble all of the utensils you will need, including items like bowls, measuring spoons, and measuring cups. Take out all of the ingredients you need. Read the recipe again, making sure you have everything you need, and that you know what you will be doing. Let's start cooking So, let's finally get to cooking. Please note: I'm not using the word cooking according to its technicalIy correct definition, "applying heat to food." Rather, I'm using it more broadly to refer to food preparation. I know that eGullet would prefer that we use weight measures, but I'm just not there yet. Feel free to convert these recipes and use a scale if you want the kids to learn the more accurate way of weighing the ingredients. Better yet, if you're working with kids with math abilities, have them convert the recipes, and let them try them both ways. Baking Muffins Baking muffins using a simple recipe is a great introduction to baking skills. After presenting the recipe to you, I'll go through it step by step, pointing out how I would teach the recipe for each age group. Blueberry Muffins Makes 12 muffins Equipment needed: Microwaveable dish for melting butter, or small saucepan for melting butter on the stovetop 2 large mixing bowls Measuring spoons Measuring cups Wooden spoons or large metal spoons for mixing Whisk Colander for washing blueberries if using fresh blueberries Small bowl for blueberries Muffin pan (12 muffin size) Timer Paper muffin cups, or oil and a paper towel to grease the muffin tins if you're not using paper muffin cups. (If you are using paper muffin cups, put them in the muffin pan. If you are not using the paper cups, use a paper towel with oil to grease the cups of the muffin pan; Paper cups make removing the muffins from the pan and cleanup easier; with a greased muffin pan, you get a crisper crust on the muffin.) Ingredients: 2 eggs 1 cup milk 1/4 cup butter 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup sugar 1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) Method Preheat the oven to 400º Melt the butter. Crack the eggs into a bowl. Beat the eggs with a whisk. Add the milk and butter to the eggs and beat with the whisk. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Stir with a spoon to mix. Add the milk mixture to the flour mixture. Stir to mix them together until barely combined. The batter should stay lumpy. You don't want it to be smooth. Add the blueberries and stir just enough to mix them in. Fill the cups of the prepared muffin pan with batter about 2/3 of the way. (Use a spoon or 1/4 cup measuring cup to put the batter in the muffin pan.) Bake at 400º for about 20 minutes. Working with an 18 month old who is in a high chair in the kitchen: Give the child a muffin pan and paper muffin cups, and have the child try to put the paper muffin cups in the muffin pan. The child could have a mixing bowl and wooden spoon to play with. Make the muffins. Working with a 2-4 year old: Work at a height where the child can participate (such as at a kitchen table.) Read the recipe to the child, telling her/him what you'll be doing. Tell the child that the first thing you'll do is turn on the oven, and you should then go ahead and turn on the oven. Tell the child that next you will get everything ready that you need for making the muffins. First assemble the equipment. The child can get all of the equipment (if your kitchen storage is set up so the child can reach everything); you can say, "Get two mixing bowls." "Now get the measuring spoons." (if the child doesn't know yet which are the mixing bowls or measuring spoons, you show the child the mixing bowls and measuring spoons etc.) Assemble all of the ingredients. Have the child help as much as possible. (i.e., get the blueberries from the refrigerator.) Say "Let's wash our hands before we start." The child can stand on a chair at the sink and wash the blueberries in a colander, then pour them into a bowl. If you are using paper muffin cups, have the child put the cups in the muffin pan. If you are greasing the muffin pan, the child can use the paper wrapper from the butter or an oiled paper towel to grease the muffin pan. Measure and melt the butter. Crack the eggs into a bowl. Measure out the milk into a measuring cup or small pitcher that the child can pick up without spilling. Have the child pour the milk into the eggs, and stir with a fork or whisk. Add the melted butter, let the child stir. You will probably need to beat the mixture with a whisk to blend completely. Measure the flour. Have the child pour the flour into another bowl. Measure the baking powder, salt, and sugar, and have the child add each to the flour. The child can stir the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. Have the child pour the egg/milk mixture into the flour mixture. The child can stir with a wooden spoon. (You may want to start the stirring to avoid major splashing.) The child can add the blueberries and stir. Fill the muffin cups 1/3 full. (The child may or may not be able to help, using a spoon (a 1/4 cup measuring cup also works well) to put the batter in the prepared muffin pan.) Put the muffins in the oven, and set the timer. When the muffins are done, take them out to cool. When they are cool, have the child be the first to taste them. Working with a 5-8 year old: Let the child do as much as possible, but with you supervising closely; for example, the child should measure ingredients, but not add them until you check that amounts are right. Work at a height where the child can participate (such as at a kitchen table.) If the child can read, have the child read the recipe. Go over the recipe with the child, reviewing all the ingredients, steps of the recipe, and terms used. Tell the child that the first thing you'll do is turn on the oven, and you should then go ahead and turn on the oven. Tell the child that next you will get everything ready that you need for making the muffins. The older child can help get all of the equipment and ingredients. Remind the child about hand-washing. The child can wash the blueberries in a colander, then pour them into a bowl. If you are using paper muffin cups, have the child put the cups in the muffin pan. If you are greasing the muffin pan, the child can use the paper wrapper from the butter or an oiled paper towel to grease the muffin pan. Show the child how to measure the butter (using the markings on the wrapper, weighing it, or water displacement, as you wish.) You should melt the butter. Show the child how to crack an egg, and let the child crack the eggs into a bowl. Show the child how to measure the milk, and let the child measure the milk and pour it into the bowl with the eggs. The child can use a whisk to beat the eggs and milk, pour the melted butter in, and whisk until well combined. Show the child how to measure flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. (To measure the flour, for example, spoon the flour into a one-cup measure until it's heaping, then level it off. Do this over the flour container.) The child can add the dry ingredients to a bowl, and stir. (Gently combine.) Have the child pour the egg/milk mixture into the flour mixture. The child can stir with a wooden spoon. The child can add the blueberries and stir. The child can fill the prepared muffin pan cup 1/3 full, using a spoon or 1/4-cup measure. You should put the muffins in the oven. Show the child how to set the timer. You should remove the muffins from the oven when they're done. Let them cool, and then the child can remove them from the pan and taste. Working with an 8-10 year old: A child 8-10 years old will be able to do this recipe independently so long as you are there to supervise and help. If the child you're working with does not already have kitchen skills like measuring, follow the instructions in "working with a 5-8 year old" above. The child should read the recipe. Go over the recipe with the child, reviewing all the ingredients, steps of the recipe, and terms used. Remind the child that the first thing to do is turn on the oven. By this age, you can show the child how to turn on the oven and set the temperature. The child can get all of the equipment and ingredients. Remind the child about hand-washing. The child should put the paper muffin cups in the muffin pan or grease the muffin pan. The child can wash the blueberries in a colander, then pour them into a bowl. After the child measures the butter, show the child how to melt butter, either stovetop or in the microwave. (In the microwave: Set the microwave for 20 seconds; if the butter isn't melted yet, microwave it for a few more seconds, until melted. Stovetop: melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan.) The child can crack the eggs, measure and pour the milk, pour in the butter, and whisk. The child can measure the dry ingredients and mix. The child can add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir them to combine. The child can add the blueberries and stir. The child can fill the prepared muffin pan cup 1/3 full, using a spoon or 1/4 cup measure. The child can open the oven, and you or the child (you should decide based on child's strength/coordination) can put the muffins in the oven. The child can set the timer. When the muffins are done, the child can open the oven door, and you can then remove the hot pan from the oven. When the muffins are cool, remove from pan and enjoy. Working with children over 11 years old Children older than 11 will be able to make these muffins on their own, if they are comfortable in the kitchen. Once the kids learn the muffin making technique, this basic recipe can be used for all kinds of muffins: Substitute other fruit for the blueberries. You can use chopped fresh peaches and add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the dry ingredients for a delicious variation. For corn muffins, use 1 cup of cornmeal to replace 1 cup of the flour. Make "Surprise Muffins." Fill each muffin cup 1/3 full. Put a teaspoon of jam in each muffin, then fill the muffin cup to 2/3 full. For Lemon Poppy muffins, you'll need 3 Tbsp. poppy seeds and 1 lemon. Add the poppy seeds to the milk, and heat it in the microwave before combining the milk with the eggs and butter. Grate the zest of the lemon, and juice the lemon. Add the zest and juice to the muffin batter. Try using brown sugar instead of white sugar. Make chocolate chip muffins. Baking Cookies Everybody seems to enjoy baking and eating cookies. This is a basic recipe for chocolate chip cookies (the classic TollHouse style cookies,-- the perennial favorite.) As with the muffins, once the kids learn the technique, variations are possible. I’ll suggest a few. This raw dough freezes well. After you make the dough, you can shape it into a log, roll it in parchment and wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer. Then you can slice off cookies (no need to thaw first) and bake fresh, home-made cookies when you want them. Chocolate Chip Cookies (About 100 cookies) Equipment needed: Electric Mixer Cookie sheet(s) Mixing bowl Measuring cups Measuring spoons Rubber spatula Metal or plastic spatula Spoons, wooden spoon Parchment (or extra butter for cookie sheet) Rack or brown paper bag for cooling Ingredients: 1 cup butter (2 sticks) 3/4 cup sugar 3/4 brown sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 1/4 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 12 ounces chocolate chips Method Preheat oven to 375º Have all ingredients at room temperature. Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Cream the butter and sugar together using the mixer. Start the mixer at slow speed, then increase speed. (Creaming means mixing the softened butter and sugar together until they're light, smooth, and creamy.) Use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix , at medium speed, until smooth.. Add the flour mixture a few spoonfuls at a time, mixing slowly after each addition. Add the chocolate chips and stir them in by hand. Put on cookie sheets using a teaspoon (not the measuring teaspoon). Place them about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 12 minutes (until golden brown). Let the cookies cool for a few minutes, then remove them from the cookie sheet using a metal or plastic spatula. Let them cool in a single layer on a rack or on a brown paper bag that you have cut open so it lies flat. If you line the cookie sheet with parchment, it will be easier to remove the cookies. If you don't have parchment, rub the cookie sheet with butter. (You will need to make several batches of the cookies, so you will probably need to re-use the cookie sheets. Using the parchment also lessens the chance of having burnt cookie dough on the cookie sheet in subsequent batches.) Using the same basic technique, make variations of the cookies: Add 1 cup of any kind of chopped nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, macadamias, peanuts etc,) with the chocolate chips. Add 1 cup of raisins or dried cherries. Omit the chocolate chips, and use raisins or nuts. For oatmeal raisin cookies, reduce the flour to 1 1/2 Cups, and add 1 1/2 Cups uncooked oatmeal (not instant) and 1 cup raisins in place of the chips. Everyday Cooking It's a weeknight and you've been busy all day. Kids of all ages can help to get dinner ready, whatever your menu. Even very young children can wash vegetables. Have a sturdy chair at the sink that they can stand on, and have them rinse the vegetables in cold water. Quite young kids can learn to use vegetable peelers safely, and peel vegetables such as carrots. Be sure to show them how to hold the peeler, and emphasize that it is sharp. (Once again, you have to judge the capabilities of the kid you're working with.) Let kids practice peeling with a peeler, without worrying about whether or not they're doing a "good" job at first. Let them get the feel of it. Eventually, you'll have a prep helper. If you want a salad, the kids can wash the lettuce, spin it in a salad spinner or dry it gently with paper towels or a clean cloth towel, tear it up, and put it in the salad bowl. A kid who can use measuring spoons can make a simple vinaigrette. (A kid who is learning multiplication can double or triple ingredients, but that's only useful if you want more salad dressing. If you want less vinaigrette, find a kid who is learning division.) Simple Vinaigrette Salad Dressing Equipment needed: A bowl and a small whisk or fork. 2 Tbsp. vinegar (red wine vinegar or balsamic) 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard 1/4 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 6 Tbsp. olive oil Put the vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper in the bowl. Mix with the whisk, or beat using the fork. Add the olive oil while continuing to mix. You can vary this recipe by adding any herbs you might like. Other Ways that Children Can Help Most kids enjoy hands-on, touching food jobs. If you're making hamburgers, the kid can shape the patties. Emphasize that the most important thing in working with ground meat is that you want to handle the meat as little as possible. The meat should not be squeezed or squished, rather gently shaped into a patty. And, of course, wash your hands with soap and water immediately after handling the ground meat. Use the opportunity to improve math skills: if you have one pound of meat, and want four burgers, how much each burger will weigh? If you have a scale, have the kid weigh out the meat. If you don't have a scale, have the kid divide the meat into four portions. Kids can do many jobs in the kitchen. Just break the job down into small tasks, and put the kids to work! Some simple foods kids enjoy cooking: (I’ve given a few barebones recipes and suggestions. You can figure out more.) Baked potatoes: Wash potatoes. Dry potatoes and rub with oil. Prick with a fork or knife so they don't explode. Bake at 400º until soft (about 45 minutes). You can also cook potatoes in a microwave for about 10 minutes, but you'll have something closer to steamed potatoes than baked. Stuffed baked potatoes: Wash potatoes. Dry potatoes and rub with oil. Prick with a fork or knife so they don't explode. Bake at 400º until soft (about 45 minutes). Remove from oven. Let cool slightly. Cut open horizontally, and spoon out the potato from the skin. Add a little butter, grated cheese, a tablespoon or so of milk, salt and pepper and mix. Put back in the potato shell and return it to the oven to heat through. Quesadillas: Take a flour tortilla, sprinkle with grated cheese, top with another tortilla. Heat in the microwave, or crisp in a saute pan with a bit of oil. Grilled cheese sandwiches French toast Egg dishes of all kinds. Scrambled, fried; get fancy with omelettes or frittatas. Recipe for easy hard cooked eggs: Put eggs in saucepan in cold water to cover. Add 1 teaspoon salt. Heat until water just comes to a boil. Cover the pan, turn off the heat, and let the eggs sit for 12 minutes. Drain the water, and cover the eggs with cold water to cool. Pasta (any shape or style they want) with butter and grated cheese. Hummus (eat with Pita) Ingredients 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed 1 clove garlic 2 Tbsp. tahini 2 Tbsp. olive oil Juice of 1/2 lemon 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 2 or 3 Tbsp. cold water Method Puree all of the ingredients except the cold water in a food processor. With the processor running, add the water gradually until the texture is creamy. Teach older kids how to use a knife properly. (Refer to Zilla's basic knife skills lesson http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...f=108&t=25958&). Most important is to teach kids to use the hand that is not holding the knife to hold the food, curling their fingers under, using their knuckles as a guide. It is often easier and safer for kids to start with a serrated blade knife, and learn to cut with a slightly sawing motion. The knife can be lighter weight and easier to control, and a kid may not yet have the strength and/or coordination to use a heavier knife and chopping motions. At holiday times, cooking with kids can create long-lasting memories. Cooking together can be a way of passing on old family stories, recipes, and traditions, or creating new ones. Involve them in menu planning as well. Include the kids in your holiday planning and cooking. Celebrate and create holiday traditions centered on food. Plan and prepare your Thanksgiving meal with them. Bake holiday cookies. Talk about what you're doing, tell stories. You're providing food for the spirit. Cooking for School Assignments Whenever my daughter needed to do a major project for school, we managed to figure out a way she could use food. Some of the simplest ideas, that even very young kids can do, make original science fair projects. When she was in kindergarten, she froze different kinds of fresh fruit, and made observations about the fruit in its fresh, frozen, and subsequently thawed state. Another year, she tried air-drying different types of food (possible in our dry Colorado climate; if you live in a more humid climate, not quite as realistic). We were all amazed at the rubber butter she produced. Still another year, she tried to grow molds on different foods. Sure enough, the best molds developed on food abandoned in the back of the refrigerator. Kids can experiment with freezing water and different water/sugar and water/salt solutions, and observing the differences in freezing times. Another project was "No more brown apples for lunch." (Cut up different kinds of apples [choose from pink lady, golden delicious, Jonathan, rome beauty, macoun, etc.] put lemon juice on some of each, orange juice on some of each, apple juice on some of each; leave some plain. Observe which ones brown, which hold their color.) Let the kids use their imaginations. (For inspiration you can also read books like Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking and The Curious Cook, or Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook.) To graduate from middle school, my daughter had to do a "culminating project." She researched, planned, and prepared a Mediterranean dinner for her teachers (they came to our home for the dinner). Her menu included Hummus and Pita, Spanakopita, Chicken with Lemon and Garlic, Rice Pilaf, Salad with Feta and Kalamata Olives. (And her favorite "Very Chocolate Cake" for dessert, because it's the best, even though it's not Mediterranean.) Needless to say, the project was a hit with her teachers. For the very youngest kids: Let them start to play with food early. Sure, it's messy. Cover the floor and any surfaces with newspaper or paper towels and have fun. Cornstarch Goop Mix up some cornstarch goop. Just mix cornstarch with water in a bowl until it's a texture you like. I find that 1/2 cup of cornstarch mixed with about 5/8 cup of cold water makes a goop that seems to go back and forth between solid and liquid, but experiment to find the texture you like. Older kids will enjoy mixing up the goop themselves and experimenting with it. It's just plain fun to fool around with. Note: If you leave the goop uncovered, the water will evaporate and you'll be left with cornstarch. Playdough Home-made play dough: There are countless variations, of both cooked and uncooked versions. I'll give you one of each; if you google "homemade play dough" you'll get hundreds of hits. Cooked: 1 cup flour 1 cup water 1 Tbsp. oil 1/2 cup salt 2 tsp. cream of tartar A few drops food coloring (optional) Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, for about 3-5 minutes until you have a smooth mass. Uncooked: 3 cups flour 1/4 cup salt 1 Tbsp oil 1 cup water food coloring (optional) Mix the flour and salt. Combine the water and oil, and slowly stir into the flour and salt. (You can add a couple of drops of food coloring if you want.) Other Ideas Major cooking projects are fun if you want to spend a day or a weekend cooking. You can explore different kinds of food. Researching and finding the recipes can be part of the project if you don't already have a recipe you want to try. Activities can include shopping for ingredients, prep work, some preliminary cooking, assembling, and final cooking. Once again, how much the kids can actually do will depend on their ages and abilities. Tamales are a great project. If you don't already have a recipe you want to try, the packaged Quaker Masa Harina (which you can use to make the tamales) actually has a good recipe for tamales right on the package. Other possibilities include Chinese potstickers, Spanakopita, and Blintzes. Baking bread is another good activity. Post your questions here -->> Q&A

Please post your questions here for Cooking with Kids

Post your questions here -->> Q&A Report on Dan Lepard's Baking Day Authors: Dan Lepard, Andy Lynes and Jack Lang. Jack took the photographs and Brendel Lang kindly provided the sketches. On Sunday August 31st, 10 fanatical, bread-loving eGulleteers gathered outrageously early (actually 10am) in the kitchens of Locanda Locatelli in London, eager to experience at first hand the bread making magic of Dan Lepard, Master Baker extraordinaire. Andy Lynes persuaded Dan to conduct a masterclass in baking and Giorgio Locatelli generously provided the use of the kitchens at Locanda Locatelli. The day was organized as a hands-on bakers' workshop, where questions were encouraged and happily answered. A selection of flours was available, and attendees made several different styles of dough concurrently so that there was an opportunity to compare crumb textures and crust types. Dan encouraged and guided each participant to craft their own recipe that would produce a loaf with those specific characteristics they look for in bread and that would be specific to their home ovens and choice of ingredients. This report consists of two sections: Jack Lang’s memories of the day. The course notes provided by Dan. Jack Lang's memories of the day After introductions, and a very welcome cup of coffee, Dan showed us some photos of his wonderful breads, and we discussed what we would like to do. Dan provided notes and recipes from his forthcoming book that will be published next year. Dan also gave the obligatory safety lecture – a professional kitchen has hot and had sharp things in it, and powerful mixers. We all washed our hands. Dan had already made up some sourdough, and he demonstrated how to fold the dough sides to middle, and top to bottom. This gently stretches the dough, and gives better texture. He does this roughly every hour during the bulk fermentation phase. Dan putting the dough back to continue bulk fermentation. Next we made up the dough for the focaccia. Dan measured everything, and demonstrated how to use Bakers' percentage formulas in practice. Andy Lynes watching. Mixing Dan demonstrating the "windowpane test". A well-kneaded dough can be stretched until it is transparent. Of course, having good Italian "OO" flour helps. Surprisingly, Dan explained he preferred softer flours as very strong flour, with a high gluten content, does not always have the best flavour. The dough then fements in a pool of olive oil, which is slowly absorbed. The dough is dimpled to help absorption of the oil. Next we individually made pugliese, with Dan supervising and advising. A chance to get the hands messy. The dough has a small amount of chickpea flour for flavour and to add enzymes to help the development. Andy staring pensively at the dough. Messy hands Annie Baxter getting to grips Back to the focaccia dough, plumped and adsorbed the oil. Portioned out. The pugliese resting in the warmth on top of the oven. Dan demonstrating how to stretch the focaccia. adding olive oil and salt Then we all took turns. Into the oven. A short time later... Yumm!! Time for lunch...we went to a local kebab house. When we came back we shaped the pugliese. They proved in bannetons (cloth lined baskets). Just to be different, I had made sourdough for Baguettes au levain. Dan showed how you could see the developing texture by cutting a small slit in the dough. Shaping into baguettes and sealing the seam . Time to bake. Following Dan's instructions, we inverted the bannetons onto the large wooden peel, slashed the top of the loaf, and put it in the oven. Some had made baton shapes. Dan adding the finishing touches. In the oven.. My baguettes. Finished bread cooling.. We all took home samples of what we had baked, although most of my focaccia got eaten on the way.. A fantastic day, and it is impossible to thank Dan enough, and also Giorgio for letting us loose in his kitchen. I think we all learnt a lot with some real insights. It is such a privilege to be able to learn from such a master. Dan Lepard's Course Notes On starting a leaven A leaven is simply a fermented mixture of cereal flour (e.g. wheat, barley or rye) with water. Before the growth of modern science, the occurrence of fermentation was thought to be spontaneous, or dependent on luck or the faithful repetition of long-established methods. For example, the American food writer John Thorne describes one traditional practice, of moistening the flour with rainwater, shaping it into a ball, then burying it for several nights under pine needles in a forest of fir trees. Earlier writers talk of the disaster that would befall a leaven if a bewitched woman were to touch or even gaze upon it. And still we hear talk from bakers, chefs, and passionate food lovers about the magical way wild and ‘untamed’ yeasts awaken the flour. Though I find the process remarkable, a little knowledge of botany and biology tells me that it is wrong to describe it as magical. Before humankind interfered, yeasts, bacteria, grains and animals were interacting to initiate the process of fermentation. I’d like to briefly go through the high-school science bit, as it is important in helping us understand what happens when we put together the ingredients for our ‘starter’ (the initial fermenting mixture of flour and water). It was a lesson I missed at school, so if you’re like me, read on. But if you’re already up on your studies, skip it and move on to the recipes. The life we see around us can be divided into 5 distinct types, or Kingdoms. The first is called Monera, and denotes single-celled organisms that do not have a nucleus, e.g. bacteria. Bacteria are often useful to man, in fixing nitrogen in the roots of legumes, in creating some foods such as yoghurt or cheese, and in the production of some antibiotics used in modern medicine. Lactic acid produced by some bacteria can create that distinctive sour and acidic taste. However, the flipside is that bacteria can also cause disease and food spoilage. Bacteria are commonly found in or on animals, water, plants, and the soil The second is called Protoctista, and denotes multicellular organisms that have a nucleus, but which do not fall into the other categories of Fungi, Plantae or Animalia. Generally, this kingdom describes algae, seaweed and kelp, along with microscopic organisms e.g. plankton. Water collected naturally from rain and underground springs, if unfiltered, will contain many organisms from this kingdom. The third is called Fungi, and denotes an organism that has a nucleus, but is incapable of movement, and which develops from a spore. Fungi break down dead organic material, recycling nutrients through the ecosystem, and many plants could not grow without the symbiotic fungi inhabiting their root systems. Other useful fungi include penicillin, yeasts and mushrooms, though fungi can also cause plant and animal diseases such as ringworm, athlete’s foot and leaf, root and stem rot. Fungal spores are commonly found in or on animals, fruits and vegetables, plants and the soil. The fourth is called Plantae, and denotes organisms that manufacture their own food using chlorophyll, e.g. mosses, ferns and seed plants. In order to do this, they need sunlight. Wheat, rye, barley and corn are members of this kingdom. Finally, the fifth is called Animalia, and that includes the worms, the sheep and you and me. The order of the kingdoms suggests a rough evolution from single-celled life through to multi-celled organisms. However, the relationship between the life in each kingdom is very complicated and symbiotic - that is, dependent on each other. So if we simply mix together, say rainwater and wheat-flour, then at once this action will involve members of at least one, and probably all five, of the kingdoms. The action of collecting the ingredients involves us. What happens next depends on whatever species from each kingdom is present. This is something we cannot strictly control but can encourage by placing together the ingredients that may contain the life forms we are looking for. The analogy I think of is that of the gardener and the garden. We ‘husband’ rather than control. The recipe below adds both sour milk and a fruit, which are not strictly necessary. My thinking behind the sour milk is that it adds lactic acids to the mixture, and sets the stage (though I’m not suggesting there is science behind this, only successful results). Despite some suggestions to the contrary, grapes and currants do not add yeast to the ferment, but simply release sugars and nitrogen as they decompose. However, I find that both these ingredients and method works for me. Making the leaven Here we are trying to encourage the growth of yeasts and lactic bacteria in a mixture of flour and water. 0.130 kg buttermilk 0.130 kg warm water 0.150 kg white flour 0.040 kg rye flour 0.040 kg whole-wheat flour 0.040 kg currants Day 1 Pour the water and buttermilk into a small bowl and mix together. Next stir in the flours, until you have a thick batter. Finally stir in the currants, then cover the container and leave in a warm place for 24 hours, stirring once after 12 hours. Note, at the very beginning, and up until the fermentation takes hold, it is best to keep the water, dry ingredients and ambient temperature warm, at least above 24C but below 32C. This is because a warmer environment is preferable to encourage the growth of microscopic yeasts. However, different types of yeasts will be present initially and only a few are useful or preferable in baking. Some yeasts are putratitive, and will create a disagreeable flavor and aroma. The initial addition of acidity, with the lactic acids present in the buttermilk, will go a little way towards preventing unwanted yeasts taking hold. These acids will multiply best though at a lower temperature, ideally 14C - 18C, so as soon as fermentation takes place, it is important to keep the mixture cool. Day 2 Nothing will have visibly changed, other than the mixture being thinner than on the previous day. The changes that are taking place are at a microscopic level so be patient. Add 0.260 kg water and stir until the mixture has thinned evenly. Next stir in 0.150 kg white flour 0.040 kg rye flour 0.040 kg whole-wheat flour and stir until you have a thick batter again. Cover and leave in a warm place for 24 hours, stirring once after 12 hours Day 3 You should start seeing small bubbles forming, perhaps a slightly alcoholic smell Remove 0.450 kg starter Stir in 0.260 kg warm water then pour through a strainer and remove the currants Next, stir in 0.200 kg white flour 0.050 kg rye flour 0.050 kg whole-wheat flour Mix until you have a stiff batter, then cover the container and leave in a warm place for 24 hours, stirring once after 12 hours. Day 4 By today, the mixture should be fermenting - that is, there should be bubbles forming and the smell should start to appear slightly wine like, though there may not be much acidity Remove 0.450 kg starter Stir in 0.200 kg water This time you are adding slightly less water, which will make the batter slightly thicker, Next, stir in 0.200 kg white flour 0.050 kg rye flour 0.050 kg whole-meal flour Mix until you have a stiff batter, then cover the container and leave in a warm place for 24 hours. It is not necessary to stir the mixture again once the fermentation has begun Day 5 By now you should notice that the aroma has become sharper and more acidic. This signals the development of lactic bacteria. From now on the mixture will be mixed and kept cooler, to encourage the optimum development of these bacteria. Now it is time to start adapting the leaven, by the choice of flours and grains, which reflect your own taste in bread, and requirements for your final recipe. For example, if you want the final loaf to be white, then you might add: 0.500 kg cold water (here we begin to keep the mixture cooler) 0.500 kg white flour Then each day I will remove 1 kg of starter, and refresh the leaven with the ingredients and quantities above - equal amounts of flour and water The next step is to take this leaven and use it to create a loaf of bread. A naturally leavened loaf Makes 2 x 650g loaves (a strange weight, I know, but it makes the measurements easier to convey) 0.600 kg strong white flour 0.100 kg strong wholemeal 0.375 kg white sour starter 0.500 kg water 0.020 kg salt (3 level teaspoons) 8.30 am In a large bowl mix together the flours, water and leaven. Stir together with your hands until the mixture has been roughly and evenly combined. Cover the bowl, either with a plate, cling film, or a dampened cloth, and leave for 20 minutes. 9.00 am Add salt, and knead gently on a flour-dusted work surface for 1 – 2 minutes. Cover and leave for 1 hour. 10.00 am Repeat above 11.00 am Repeat above 12.45 pm Divide into 2 x 800g pieces, give initial shape 1.00 pm Round dough once more, and place seam side up in rye flour-dusted linen baskets. Leave at room temperature 5.30 pm Check breads have risen, turn oven on and heat to 220C 6.30 pm Bake at 220C for 40 minutes covered with foil (see note), then reduce the heat to 190C and bake for a further 30 minutes, or until the loaf feels light in weight and sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. On simple ingredients The characteristics of the breads typical to each region around the world owe as much to the ingredients used as to the hands and skills that shape and construct them. If we assume that the basic ingredients used to make bread are flour and a liquid (usually water) often accompanied by salt and a leavening, then the qualities of those basic ingredients help define and create the characteristics of the final loaf. Perhaps we take this for granted when we think of the other compound foods, wines, and cheeses produced in a region. We might speak sweetly about a wine as we describe each nuance from the grape to the cask. But there is a complexity to the structure and chemistry of wheat and flour that is often overlooked. Often bakers talk mindlessly of gluten and protein content, laugh when questioned on the quality of the water, yet will happily weave a web of myth around their secret leavening, or keep guarded the source of their mineral rich salt. On flour. When a baker looks for quality in flour, assuming there is a variety to choose from, they often look at the flour’s protein content. This first step is taken because there is a relationship between the levels of protein a flour contains, and its ability to produce gluten when mixed with water. Gluten is a complex, sticky, elastic substance, which traps the carbon dioxide released by the yeast cells as they multiply inside the dough, and for many breads it is vital to help create a bold, well-risen loaf. However, not all the protein in flour will potentially become gluten, nor is gluten a simple part of protein. Up to 1% of the protein in wheat-flour is soluble, only thickening with the application of salt or heat, much like the white of an egg, and once dissolved will eventually add to the texture of the finished baked loaf. But the remainder of the proteins, insoluble in water, forms a complex substance called gluten, bound together with very small quantities of carbohydrates, fats, and minerals present in the flour. The gluten itself has no flavour or aroma, though some may be trapped in its form. It is like the skeleton to the loaf. Starches and lipids (oils) in the flour carry the flavours and aromas from the wheat. Host bacteria and enzymes found naturally in the flour, or introduced by the yeast or ferment, add to the final characteristics of the flavour. So, as these elements add to the taste of the loaf, surely they are important criteria when determining the quality of the flour. The two main constituents of gluten are gliadin, a sticky substance that helps to bind the gluten into a cohesive compound; and glutenin, which gives the compound gluten strength and elasticity. But these constituent parts of gluten will vary widely in different flours, both in quality and quantity. So, though two flours might have similar protein levels, and might be termed as ‘high gluten flours’ by millers and bakers, these flours might produce quite different types of doughs. For example, some proteins might absorb water more slowly than others. As 19th century writer John Edmund Driver notes, “the gluten from one flour may be extremely tough and tenacious; that from another may be soft and springy. In this connexion, it will be recalled that gluten is a complex mixture, and not a single chemical compound.” It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Have gluten flour, have good bread. But in order to mix the perfect dough for the bread you want to bake, then achieving to right match of flour to a recipe becomes more complex. To answer this, we must first look at what happens when wheat flour is mixed with water. Gluten is created when the gliadin and glutenin are hydrated with water and mixed together. What kneading does, in this respect, is to make the moisture evenly available to all the protein in the flour, and potentially hydrates all of the insoluble protein (the gliadin and the glutenin). For each turn, stretch and fold the dough takes while it is kneaded, moisture and protein combine to create the compound gluten. Once the gliadin and glutenin are fully saturated, they bind to form the gluten that gives the dough its strength and elasticity. Now, in newly-milled flour there is one obstacle. There is a naturally occurring chemical called glutathione dehydrogenase (GSH), that can inhibit the bonding of the gliadin and glutenin. As this chemical naturally oxidises over time, aged flour often produces a better result. But time is money, and it is expensive to store flour. If Vitamin C is added, this potential problem can be overcome. What happens, during a series of chemical reactions, is that ascorbic acid (Vit C) oxidises during fast mixing, becoming another compound (ascorbate oxidase), which then removes any excess GSH. As all of the ingredients in the dough are evenly combined, with minerals and nutrients dissolved, the temperature of the dough rises both through the action of the yeast and the speed of the mixing. As the ferment is spread evenly throughout the dough, it is in contact with nitrogen, maltose, and dextrose present in the flour. These are the foods yeast thrives on and uses to reproduce. But we will never know the sort of gluten flour contains, though we may have a rough idea from the label. If a flour is termed ‘strong bakers' flour’, we can assume it has a high level of protein with a combination of gliadin and glutenin that will produce a good balance of elasticity and strength in the dough. Scientists and biochemists are constantly searching, creating hybrid wheat strains, and testing new varieties in order to discover their bread-making potential and, in that search, analysing the gluten produced from the flour. But since it is very difficult for anyone outside the science of cereal production to know and understand the qualities of the gliadin and glutenin present in the protein of any given flour, why the emphasis and concern? Do we want a flour that produces a specific loaf we have in mind, or do we want to work with a flour to determine what bread it will best produce? Are we willing to change our techniques and recipes to enhance the qualities present in the flour we buy? For the industrial baker supplying the strict specifications of the supermarket and wholesaler, flour that is predictable, consistent, and reliable is desired; a quality many demand from the food they buy. For some bakers, ingredients that can be mixed into a dough and then extruded and positioned for the factory production line, is the aim. Ingredients change with the seasons, and to my mind that is part of their quality, their beauty perhaps. We have become demanding customers, looking for consistency, regularity, and ‘perfection’ in the food we buy. But like the wines we prize for the excellence of a particular year, the qualities produced and enhanced by the grape-vines’ adaptation to the prevailing weather conditions are a dominant part of the final wine. Winemakers could look at all changes to the year’s crop of grapes as faults. Very few do, and in the name of consistency, some rogues will taint the fermented juice with chemicals to enhance characteristics. But most don’t, or need to. There are two ways of analysing the flour used to create different breads. Firstly, look at the typical traditional breads produced in a region by bakers using locally grown and milled wheat. Look at the crumb structure, the baked height of the bread, and the texture of the crust. It is probable that the particular qualities inherent in the local flour have helped create these breads, in addition to local custom, equipment, and technique. Secondly, think about the type of bread you want to make and ask yourself: "What are the qualities I need this flour to have"? If you are proving the dough in flour-dusted baskets, cloth-lined or not, then these contain the dough and stop it from spreading. Why would there be a need to do this? It could be that the dough and ferment used need protection from the atmosphere and warmth during their final prove. It could be that the water content of the dough was so high that the basket would help keep the shape of the loaf, allowing it to rise upwards rather than outwards. Perhaps it could be that the type of gluten available traditionally in the flour used was low in elasticity and strength and needed support during the final hours of its fermentation. By looking in detail at the recipe and technique, we can either include or discount the first two reasons. But in the third might be the evidence of the particular qualities of the local flour. Potato & porcini focaccia 350g leaven (refreshed 24 hours earlier) 150g warm bottled sparkling water 1 tsp easy blend yeast 1 tsp malt extract 1 tsp runny honey 350g '00' flour 2 tsp fine sea salt 10 tbs extra-virgin olive oil for the topping: 1 large potato, unpeeled, washed and finely sliced 1 small onion, finely sliced 2 fresh porcini mushrooms, or a handful of sliced dried 2 tsp Maldon sea salt 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil In a large, warm bowl mix together leaven with the water, yeast, honey and malt extract and whisk together until the leaven has combined with the water. Next add the flour, and salt, and squidge the mixture together with your hand (I try and do this with one hand, keeping the other hand clean and dry – helps keep things neat!) The mixture will be very soft, slightly lumpy and very sticky. This is good. Scrape the dough down from around the sides of the bowl, then give your hands a good wash to remove any excess dough. Return to the bowl and tip a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil on to the palms of your hands. Pick the dough up out of the bowl, and rub the oil all over the surface. Place the oiled dough on the worksurface and knead 5 times (about 10 seconds). Cover the dough with cling film and leave for 10 minutes. Rub an additional tablespoon of oil on the dough’s surface and knead 12 times (20 sec). Cover again and leave for a further 10 minutes. Knead the dough for a further 12 times (20 sec). Cover and leave to prove for 30 minutes. Then knead the dough a further 12 times (20 sec). Cover and leave the dough a further 30 minutes. The dough should, after kneading, be elastic. Prepare the tray and the topping: Preheat the oven to 220C. Take 2 x (30cm x 40cm) trays and rub the inside surface liberally with olive oil. In a small bowl mix together the thinly sliced potatoes, onions and mushrooms, together with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a good large pinch of salt. Stir the lot together until the potato slices are well coated with the oil. Put to one side while you finish the dough. Divide the dough in two, and knead each piece into a ball. Place each ball of dough on a tray, and with a rolling pin lightly flatten the dough out. Don’t worry at this point if the dough springs back. Just cover the tray with cling film and leave in a warm place for 20-30 minutes. After this time, pick up the corners of the dough and stretch them out until they reach the corners of the tray. The idea at every stage is to keep the dough as aerated as possible. Next tip the potato mixture evenly on top of each sheet of dough. Cover the dough with cling film and leave for a further 15 minutes. Remove the cling film and dimple the surface of the dough with your fingers. Sprinkle with a little additional Maldon sea salt. Bake for 30 – 45 minutes, until the surface is golden brown and the potatoes tender. Remove from the oven, and slide the focaccia off onto a cooling wire. Pane Pugliese 350g leaven (refreshed 24 hours before) ½ teaspoon easy-blend yeast 100g water, sparkling 350g ‘00’ flour 2 tbs farina di ceci (chickpea flour) optional 2 tsps fine salt extra virgin olive oil In a large, warm bowl mix together leaven with the water and yeast, and whisk together until the leaven has combined with the water. Next add the flour, (chickpea flour, if you are using it) and salt, and squidge the mixture together with your hand until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Tip an extra teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil on to the palms of your hands, and knead the dough 12 times (about 20 seconds). Cover the dough with cling film and leave for 10 minutes. Next knead the dough 12 times (20 sec) once more, cover again and leave for a further 10 minutes. Finally knead the dough for a further 12 times (20 sec). Cover and leave to prove for 30 minutes. Next take a small bowl measuring 15cm – 18cm in diameter (and roughly the same depth) and line it with a small tea towel (or old cloth napkin). Dust it lightly with flour, then knead the dough into a ball and place that ball seam side upward in the cloth-lined bowl. Lightly fold the corners of the cloth loosely over the top of the dough, and leave in a warm place for 45 minutes. Preheat the oven to 220ºC. Lightly dust a metal tray with semolina or polenta. Gently peel back the cloth from the top of the dough, then quickly and carefully upturn the dough on to the palm of your hand. Next peel off the cloth from the base of the dough, and then finally place the dough seam side up into the centre of the tray. Place the tray in the centre rack in the oven and bake for 45 - 55 minutes, or until the loaf is a good dark golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving. Post your questions here -->> Q&A

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Post your questions here -->> Q&A The Festival of Lights – Diwali Authors: Monica Bhide with recipes by Sudhir Seth Close your eyes and picture this: You are on a hilltop, looking at a dark moonless sky. The dark night suddenly bursts with brilliant light. Colorful sparkles light up the sky as the firecrackers do their magic. You sense a glow, you look down towards the earth. A stunning view awaits you. Lights as far as your eyes can see. Lights in every shape and size, from small terracotta lamps to large lamps, a visual delight. You start to smell: delicious rice pudding, mouthwatering carrot halwa. You hear the children laughing, the bells in the temple chiming, the sounds of chants and prayers being offered. You feel a sense of warmth and wellbeing. Then you feel as though a gentle hand has patted your head. You, and those around you, have been blessed -- it is Diwali. Welcome, to my memories of the quintessential Indian festival of Diwali or Deepavali (translates to “Rows of Lights”). This festival has crossed boundaries of religion and faith, creating a magical feeling of one community. Passed down through generations, the different intriguing stories of how Diwali originated, all focus on the eternal truth of good triumphing over evil. The festival of lights is celebrated for five days every year during the darkest part of the Hindu month of Ashwin (October/ November). The celebrations include the lighting of lamps and candles and the bursting of crackers. Prayers are offered. Sweets are prepared. There are frantic shopping sprees, spring cleaning of home and repainting of walls. People buy new clothes and in fact, in certain communities, it is absolutely essential to wear new clothes on this day. And if you forgot to snail mail your Diwali greetings, you can always send a quick Diwali e-card. Did I mention, there is one other custom – gambling. It is all in fun, though, in a spirit of merrymaking. Diwali, in North India, celebrates the return of the exiled India God Lord Rama after his enforced abdication as the royal heir to the Ayodhaya (an Indian city) throne. The people of Ayodhaya illuminated the kingdom with earthen lamps to celebrate the return of their king. The business community in India also begins its new year on this day. It is celebrated by inviting the Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, into the house. According to a myth, Lakshmi will not enter a dark house. So homes are adorned with a multitude of lights and lamps. The lamps also welcome home the spirits of dead ancestors, who are believed to visit on this auspicious night. Prayer or puja is performed to welcome Goddess Lakshmi. In some parts of India, mostly in north India, gambling with cards is an intrinsic part of Diwali celebrations. It is believed that the Indian Goddess Parvati played dice with her husband, Lord Shiv on this day. The legend goes on to say that anyone who gambles on Diwali will prosper throughout the year. Each part of India offers its own legend as to why Diwali is celebrated. In western India, the legend of Diwali focuses on the demon of hell, Narakasura being defeated at the hands of the Hindu God Krishna. The demon was defeated and killed at the dawn of “Narakachaturdashi”. In South India, Diwali celebrates the Ramayana, the 24000-couplet epic that tells the story of Lord Rama. In eastern India, Diwali is celebrated in honor of the Goddess Durga slaying the buffalo demon. Durga is a powerful Goddess holding the javelin of Agni (the Fire God), the trident of Shiva ( The destroyer) , and the discus of Vishnu ( the Preserver). Diwali would not be Diwali without food, and lots of it! Every kind of imaginable sweet dish in multitude of sizes, shapes and colors grace the tables on this day. Savories of every kind are prepared with equal enthusiasm. It is quite amazing to see the variety and the styles of the boxed sweets and baskets now available for Diwali. All the women in our household seem possessed a few days before Diwali! Kneading Chickpea flour for Besan Laddos, frying flour dough in sugar syrup for Jalebis, boiling milk to prepare rice pudding, cutting, chopping, dicing. From Kulfi (homemade ice cream) to Carrot Halwa, the kitchen smelled like heaven on earth. These delectable pieces are first offered to God during prayers and then to the family to eat and celebrate. However and wherever it is celebrated, Diwali is an occasion of joy and renewal. As the Bengali poet and novelist, Rabindranath Tagore, put it: "The night is black/ Kindle the lamp of love/ With thy life and devotion." Chef Sudhir Seth and I would like to present you with some mouth- watering recipes that are served at Diwali meals. Enjoy these simple recipes. We have thrown caution to the wind as we present some Indian favorites (two are even deep-fried ) Chef Sudhir Seth and his team. He is in the middle Aam Ki Lassi (Mango Yogurt Drink ) Serves 4 Prep Time: 5 minutes Cook Time: None Note: You can use fresh ripe mangoes for this recipe if you like. Ingredients • 2 cups plain yogurt • 1 cup canned mango pulp • 1/2 cup water • 10 ice cubes • Sugar to taste (approx. 4 tablespoons) Method In a blender, add the yogurt, mango, water and ice cubes. Blend well. Add more water if you like a thinner consistency. Serve immediately. Aloo Ki Subzi (Cumin Flavored Potatoes) Serves 4 Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 20 minutes Note: Cumin adds a heady aroma to any dish. You can even add dried fenugreek to this dish. Serve with Poori (fried Indian bread) from the recipe given below. Ingredients • 4 medium potatoes, boiled • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil • 2 teaspoons cumin seeds • 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, roughly pounded • 1 Jalapeno pepper, slit lengthwise • 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder • 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder • 1 small tomato, roughly chopped (optional) • Table salt to taste • Water, as needed Method Peel and dice the potatoes. Set aside. In a large skillet, heat the vegetable oil on high heat. Add the cumin seeds, coriander seeds and the pepper. Lift the pan off the heat. Add the turmeric, red chili and salt. (The chef has added a bit of water here to show you how to keep the spices from burning ) Place the pan on the heat and add the potatoes. Mix well to coat the potatoes with the spice mixture. Add about 3 – 5 tablespoons of water. (At this point, if you like, you can add the tomatoes and sauté for another 5 minute or until the tomatoes are soft ). Cover and cook for about 5 -6 minutes until the spices have released their flavors. Serve hot garnished with chopped cilantro. Poori (Indian Balloon Bread) Serves 4 Prep Time: 25 minutes Cooking Time: 25 minutes Note: This is a classic Indian bread – to be enjoyed this is best eaten hot. Ingredients • 2 cups Indian atta flour (whole wheat flour) • 1 teaspoon salt • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil • Water, as needed • Vegetable oil to deep fry Method In a bowl, combine the wheat flour, salt and vegetable oil. Mix well. Add water, slowly and begin kneading. Continue to add a little water at a time and knead until you have a smooth dough that is not sticky, 4-5 minutes If the dough sticks to your fingers, add a little bit of vegetable oil and continue to knead. Cover the dough with a damp cloth or a plastic cover and leave to rest for at least 30 minutes. Divide the dough into 18 -- 20 equal pieces. Roll into balls and cover with a damp cloth. Heat vegetable oil in a deep fryer or a deep pan to 325 degrees F. Roll out each poori to 4 inch circles. Deep fry one poori at a time. Lower it into the oil and use the back of your slotted spoon, to press down lightly on the poori. This will make it puff up. Turn it over and fry for another 20 seconds or until golden brown. Remove poori from the oil using the slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. Serve immediately. Shahi Tukra ( Royal Bread pudding) Serves 4 Prep time 30 minutes Cooking Time: 45 minutes Ingredients • 4 thick slices sourdough bread or plain bread • Sugar Syrup: 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 2 -3 cardamom seeds, crushed • Cream Sauce 1 quart milk ¼ lb. sugar • Vegetable oil to deep fry • 1 teaspoon slivered almonds • 1 teaspoon unsalted cashews, roughly pounded • 1 teaspoon raisins • 2 teaspoons slivered pistachio nuts Note: To save time, prepare the sugar syrup and the cream sauce side by side. Method Slice the bread into triangles. Cut off the crusts. (TIP: See the picture – the chef cut off the sharp edges of the bread). Place the bread on a flat tray and refrigerate for an hour or so. This removes the excess moisture from the bread. While the bread is cooling prepare the sugar syrup and cream sauces. To prepare the sugar syrup: Combine the water, sugar and cardamom seeds in a deep nonstick bowl. Heat over medium heat, bring to a boil. Simmer for five minutes. Simmer until the mixture gains a syrupy consistency. Remove from heat and set aside. To prepare the cream sauce: Add 1 quart of milk to a nonstick pan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat Continue to cook the milk until it reduces to about 1 pint. During the cooking process, scrap the cream that sets on the sides, back into the milk. Set aside to cool Remove the slices from the fridge. Heat oil in a deep fryer or deep wok to 150 F. Add one slice of bread to the hot oil. The oil will begin to bubble around the edges. Fry for about a minute, flip over and fry the other side. The bread is done when the oil stops bubbling and the color is a dark brown. Preheat the oven to 350 F Remove the slices with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel Now dip each slice into the sugar syrup, remove and place on an oven-proof dish. As you can tell we had a lot of extra syrup that we made.. way more than 1/2 cup! Sprinkle the almonds, raisins and cashews on the bread. Pour on any remaining sugar syrup on the bread. Now pour the cream sauce over the bread. Cover this dish with foil Place in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 175 F. Bake for about 30 minutes Remove the foil. Increase the heat to 500F. Bake uncovered for 1 minute. Remove from heat Sprinkle pistachios and serve warm For more simple Indian recipes: The Spice is Right :blush: Post your questions here -->> Q&A

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Post your questions here -->> Q&A Preservation Basics Watch for Jack's follow-up course on preservation which will appear in early November! Author: Jack Lang (jackal10) This course is intended to cover some of the basic methods of food preservation. It does not purport to be a complete treatise, but should give you an introduction to the basics and hopefully stimulate further study. The course chapters are: 1. General Principles 2. Bottling/Canning 3. Pickling 4. Drying 5. Jam and Jelly Making 1. General Principles Until recently, the need to preserve the summer’s bounty was a matter of survival through the winter. Preserving food often changes its taste or texture, and people came to like the taste. Today, although fresh food is easily available throughout the year, we preserve some foods, (bacon for example), primarily for the taste. Some of us have gardens that overproduce in summer, and we cannot abide to waste the food, or we want to take advantage of a market glut. Having a larder full of delicious things widens the choice of what to eat and can act as a handy back-up for inclement weather or when the power fails. To understand how to preserve foods, we need to first understand what causes them to spoil. A. Biological spoilage The environment, and raw food, are chock full of little critters (micro-organisms). Many of these are benign, but a few have the capacity to make us ill or they excrete toxins that can be extremely poisonous if eaten in any quantity. Preserving doesn’t make bad food good again, and although it might kill the bugs, the excreted toxins (and bad tastes) are left. So it is important to start with food that does not already have significant spoilage and to process it quickly so that it does not spoil in the process. The main groups of micro-organisms are: Bacteria. such as Salmonella, Staphylococcus, Shigella, and Clostridium. Cl. botulinum. (Botulism) excretes botulinum toxin, an extremely potent muscle-paralysing agent. It is used in minute quantities in plastic surgery as Botox to paralyse the muscles that cause wrinkles. Cl. botulinum is a spore-forming organism: in adverse conditions it forms viable spores, which are extremely heat tolerant. Fortunately it cannot stand an acid environment, and needs a pH of 4.6 or higher to grow, so most pickles are safe. (pH is a measure of how acid things are; 7 is neutral, lower is acid, higher is alkaline. Lemon juice is about pH 4, vinegar about 3, baking soda about 8). Yeasts and moulds. These are more likely to produce off-flavours than to be actively dangerous if eaten. Some yeasts can live on the surface of jams despite the high sugar concentration. The yeast can just be scraped off, with some of the jam underneath. Some moulds grow, albeit slowly, even at freezer temperatures. B. Enzymatic spoilage. If you leave a cut apple in the open, it goes brown. This is not burning (oxidation), nor is it the same mechanism that browns food while cooking – the complex Maillard reaction, but is the natural enzymes in the food released when you cut the surface. Enzyme activity can be desirable, for example tenderising meat when it is hung, but can lead to discolouration and off-flavours. Though it is not actually poisonous, it is not good to eat. Enzyme activity is slowed by deep freeze temperatures, and most enzymes are destroyed by heat or acid. C. Oxidation Oxidation happens slowly, even at deep-freeze temperatures, if the food is exposed to oxygen, such as in the air. If the food is in a sealed container, oxydation will cease once the oxygen in the sealed air is used up, that is it until the container is unsealed. The defence against spoilage is to use one of the following: Heat. Most organisms are destroyed by heat. The trick is to heat the food long enough and to a high enough temperature to destroy the micro-organisms without destroying the food. Cold. Cold doesn’t destroy bacteria (deep freeze temperatures may destroy some yeasts). It does, however, slow the biological activity. At deep freeze temperatures the activity is effectively stopped. However, freezing creates ice crystals in the frozen food, and in some foods these crystals can puncture the cell walls, causing the food to go mushy when thawed. In addition, the environment in a freezer is very dry indeed since all the water is frozen out of the air. So, if the food is not sealed well, the surface can dehydrate, causing “freezer burn”. Dehydration. All life needs water to multiply. Drying stops the multiplication, and in some cases kills the micro-organisms, and has the side effect of concentrating flavours. Acid. Pickling in A strong enough acid kills most bugs. It also flavours and transforms the food. Salt. Salt both kills the bugs and draws out water, drying the food. Once the agents of spoilage have been eliminated, it is important to keep new agents away by sealing the food in a sterile environment. 2. Bottling/Canning In the USA the term "canning" applies to sealing the food in any container and then sterilising it. In the UK and Europe "canning" only refers to preserving in a metal can,. The term “bottling” means sealing in a preserving jar, usually with a rubber ring and lid, and then sterilising the filled jars. I will discuss only preserving in jars. If you are lucky enough to have a metal canning machine and a supply of metal cans, then the principles are the same, but follow the instructions that came with your device. Preserving jars can either have a separate lid and screw-on ring, or a glass lid held on by a wire clip. Both are sealed with a rubber ring. Its important to ensure that the top of the jar is not chipped, and the rubber ring is in good condition for a proper seal. If the design is one with a thin rubber ring bonded to a metal cap, make sure you use new caps each time. It is good practice, when you have made the preserve and it has cooled to check the vacuum and the seal. You should be able lift the jar by its lid without it coming open. In the US preserving jars are often called Mason Jars. Ball and Kerr are well known brands. In the UK you may be able to find Kilner jars or the French “LeParfait” brand, which is stocked by Lakeland. The ones used here are “Le Parfait”. Disclaimer: Although Kilner and "LeParfait" type jars have been used for decades, the United States Dept. of Agriculture no longer considers them "safe". Only jars whose seals can confirm the presence of a vacuum, are approved. The jar that meets their standards has the rubber bonded to the lid and "pops" when properly sealed. Gage Plums I will discuss the bottling of plums, but the principles can be applied to any fruit not needing prior preparation. For amounts refer to this handy reference. A quart jar will need about 2lb- 2 ½ lb of fruit and 1 pint of syrup. Plums on the tree. Plums picked. Wash them, and discard any doubtful ones. Wash and dry the jars. Check the rubber rings. Check the tops of the jars for chips. Fill the jars as full as they will go. Oh dear, there are a few left over that I will have to eat fresh. Fill with hot syrup (140F/60C) (1 sugar: 2 water, by volume). A wide neck funnel may be useful. Put the jars into a pan with hot water to cover the tops by at least 1 inch. Note that they are standing on a plate to stop the bottom of the jars getting too hot and overcooking. You can use a proper rack, bits of wood or any other suitable material to keep the bottom of the jars away from the pan bottom. Cover the pan and simmer for the process time, about 20 minutes. Process times are given in the table below. The compromise is between getting the centre of the jars hot enough to kill the bugs, without overcooking the fruit. Cool quickly under a tap and lift out the jars. (The metal tool is a jar lifter for handling hot jars.) The fruit will rise a little in the jars as it cooks. To minimise this, make sure the jars are tightly packed with fruit, and cool quickly so that they don’t overcook – leave them in cold water until they are quite cold. Store in a dark, cool cupboard. Peaches Bottling peaches is a little more complex, since they need peeling and preparing. You need to work quickly to prevent their discolouration. To peel the peaches, dip them for one minute in boiling water, then into ice water to stop them cooking. A teaspoon of Vitamin C powder (Ascorbic Acid) in the ice water will help stop discolouration. Wash and dry the jars, check the rings and tops to ensure a good seal. Pack the jars and fill with hot (140F/60C) syrup. Peaches can use a heavier syrup, maybe equal quantities by volume of water and sugar. Spiced peaches (cloves, cinnamon) are excellent, and make good gifts. Close, and like the plums above, simmer for the process time, 20 mins. Cool, label and store. Cucumbers This is essentially a bottled refrigerator pickle. I’ve adapted melkor’s recipe posted in the Gardening thread. I upped the vinegar and reduced the salt. Fabulous! Mix 1 cup (240ml) white vinegar 2 cups (480ml) water 4 Tbs coarse sea salt (or kosher salt) until the salt is dissolved. place in the bottom of each quart jar: 1/2 tsp mustard seed 1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional) 2 tbs chopped fresh dill (or more) 2 tbs chopped garlic (or more, lots more) 4 cucumbers scrubbed and sliced lengthwise into quarters and lengths to fit the jar. Pack the cucumbers in the jars and cover with the liquid mixture leaving ¼ inch (6mm) of head space. For new green refrigerator pickles, that’s it. Just put them in the refrigerator and in three days they will be perfect. You can refill the pot with fresh cucumbers when you have eaten some, which will not be long because they are so delicious. You may need to top up the liquid with a little more vinegar. To keep them without refrigeration, they need to be sterilized. To keep the pickles crisp, you can only heat them for a short time, but because of the acid environment this will not be a problem. Once all the jars are filled place them in a large pot and fill with enough cold water to cover the jars with an inch of water. Bring the water to a boil and boil for five minutes. Remove from heat and add cold tap water to overflow the pot. Keep running the tap water until the jars are cool. These can in theory be stored in a cupboard but I keep mine in the fridge. They are ready in a day or two and will continue to improve for a few weeks. Tomato sauce When I have a glut of tomatoes I make tomato sauce. Great for instant pasta sauces. Wash, remove the stalks and any moldy or doubtful fruits. Classically, for 10lb (5Kg) of raw tomatoes, start by frying 5oz (140g) of salt pork or unsmoked bacon (can be omitted: substitute extra virgin olive oil or butter) until the fat runs. Then add a mirepoix of 6oz (170g) of carrots and 6oz (170g) of onion cut into fine cubes and fry until they begin to brown. Add the tomatoes and put the pan over gentle heat. Add a bay leaf and a small sprig of thyme, ½ (14g) oz of salt, 1oz (28g) of sugar and a pinch of pepper. Alternatively one can make a puree. A puree in some ways is more flexible in that it consists of tomatoes and more tomatoes. Simply omit the bacon, mirepoix and seasonings. Simmer until all the tomatoes soften and burst. Puree. For large volumes a stick or immersion blender is by far the easiest option. Reduce the puree to your desired thickness – tomatoes contain a lot of water. Cool so that you can handle it easily, and sieve out the pips, skin etc. Put into jars and process for 10 minutes if the puree is very hot, or 40 mins if starting from cold or warm. Processing times There are many sets of processing tables published on the web and in books, for example http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/foods/348-594/348-594.html If you have a canner, use the instructions that came with it. The method presented here is the quick water-bath method. Other methods include using a pressure cooker, the oven, or adding cold syrup or other liquid and processing for longer. The quick water bath method: Fill jars with hot (140F/60C) syrup or water, process starting with warm (100F/38C) water, raise to 190F/88C within 25-30 min. Maintain as below: Soft fruit, normal pack, in water or syrup. Process for 2 minutes. Blackberries: If packing with apples, scald the apples as for solid pack apples. Raspberries, Loganberries, Mulberries: Remove unsound fruit, leaves, stalks. Strawberries: Not usually satisfactory. Red or black currants: Remove stalks, rinse in cold water. Rhubarb, unsoaked: Cut into short lengths. Use soft water, as hard water may leave a harmless white deposit. Gooseberries: Top and tail. Apple slices: Dip into lemon juice, or vitamic C (ascorbic acid) to prevent discolouring. Soft fruit, tight packs: minimum space between the fruit. Process for 10 minutes. Stewed gooseberries, Soaked rhubarb: Cut into short lengths. Pour hot syrup over the fruit and leave for 8-12 hours. Syrup can be concentrated to the original volume before filling. Stone fruit, tightly packed. Process for 10 minutes. Remove stalks and rinse in cold water. Apricots, Cherries, Damsons, Plums, Gages. Solid packs: no space for liquid. Process for 20 minutes. Apples: Dip slices in boiling water for 2-3 min or steam for 3-5min until softened. Apricots, halved. Nectarines, halved. Peaches, halved. Plums, halved. Process for 40 minutes. Tomatoes, whole in brine. Pears in syrup. Quinces in syrup. Process for 50 minutes. Tomatoes solid pack. Tomato puree. 4. Pickling Pickled shallots are more delicate than pickled onions, but the same method can be used with small onions. Shallots are easy to grow as well. For about 4lbs (2Kg) of shallots you will need: 3 pints (1.4L) of brine made with 6 oz (168g) of salt and 2.5 pints (1.2L) of vinegar. (I prefer brown malt for these). 2 tsp whole coriander seed 2 tsp black peppercorns 4 bay leaves 10 cloves 4 birds-eye hot chillies ( less if you don’t like them, more if you are a chilli head) 4 oz (112g) white sugar 16 thin slices fresh ginger root Freshly harvested shallots. Peel and trim the shallots. This is the most tedious part of the whole process. As with onion it helps to do this under or near running water, as the eye-watering fumes will then dissolve in the water rather than making you weep. Soak them for 24 hours in the brine. This makes them crisper. In a non-corrosive pan bring to the boil the vinegar, the spices (except the ginger and the chillis) and the sugar. When it boils, turn off the heat and let the spices infuse while it cools to room temperature. Strain out the spices. Pack the jars tightly with the onions. Add the ginger slices and the chillis if you are a chilli-head. I like a bay leaf as well. Pour the cooled vinegar over the onions. Seal, label and store in a cool, dark place. Because of the acid in the vinegar they do not need to be sterilised further. Leave for at least a month, preferably two if you can. They will keep for at least 6 months, and probably a year if allowed to do so. 4. Drying Without water there is no life. Drying kills or inhibits most bugs. If the climate is appropriate you can dry in the sun. Home drying kits are also sold, but you can do a lot with just an oven and some patience. Tomato crisps Delicious tomato crisps can be made easily. Slice tomatoes with a very sharp knife (or a mandolin, if you have one) about ¼ inch/5mm thick. Put onto non-stick baking parchment or a silpat. Put into a very low (65C/150F) oven for 24 hours. For domestic ovens set it as low as it can go, and prop the door open an inch or so. Check every now and then to ensure the tomatoes are not burning. A good oven digital thermometer makes this much easier. Peel them carefully off the non-stick surface, and store in a jar, if you can resist eating them then and there. Keep them in a closed jar in a dry dark place. The refrigerator is a good place to keep them as it is a dry dark place, but they do not need to be kept cold. They will keep for a year or so, if allowed to do so without being eaten, but eventually they will discolour and oxidise. Mi-cuit tomatos in oil Mi-cuit means half-cooked. These are even easier and even more delicious than tomato crisps. Here oil acts as an air-tight seal, keeping the bugs out. This works best for cherry tomatoes. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half and put on a non-stick parchment or baking sheet. One or two larger tomatoes crept in there, but that is OK. The small yellow variety is Sungold, the small reds are Gardeners Delight, and the larger ones Fireworks and Rose de Berne. Brush with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and crushed garlic. Bake in a low (150C/300F) oven for an hour. Pack into jars, and cover with good olive oil. The tomatoes are sufficiently acid for botulism not to be a worry. If kept in the fridge the olive oil may cloud, and should be allowed to warm to room temperature before use. Dried Herbs Herbs can easily be dried in a very low oven (65C/150F) for 8-12 hours or overnight. Traditionally they were dried in the residual heat in a bakers' oven. First the overnight stews would be cooked, then the meringues and finally, the remaining heat would dry herbs. The dry brick and gentle heat ensured rapid drying. You can dry herbs in the sun in dry climates, or hang bunches of woody herbs, like rosemary or lavender, upside down in a warm dry place. Fresh herbs. Fresh herbs. 12 hours in the oven. Basil does not dry well, and much of the volatiles escape, but enough remain to be useful. Crumble, and remove the stalks. Dried herb mix ready to enliven forcemeat stuffing in the winter with reminders of summer. 5. Jams Jams set because the pectin in the fruit will form a jell in the presence of sugar and acid. As long as there is a sufficient concentration of pectin and sugar in an acid environment, the jam will set. The usual reason for a jam not setting is not enough sugar or acid, rather than too little pectin. The normal process of making jam is to boil the fruit with water to extract the pectin, reduce somewhat to concentrate it, then add the sugar and if need be some acid such as lemon juice or citric acid. This mixture is then boiled and concentrated until the setting point is reached. Sugar increases the boiling point, and the pectin is destroyed slowly at the elevated temperature at which the sugary jam boils, so the boiling time, once the sugar has been added, should be minimised. The setting point can be determined by a number of methods: a. By observation: Strongly setting jam will jell on the spoon and fall off in flakes rather than drips. This method can be reliable for an experienced jam maker. If some jam is put on a cold plate it will set, and wrinkle when pushed with a finger. b. More reliable methods measure an approximation of the sugar concentration. The ideal sugar concentration is 65% by weight, of which 60% is the added sugar and 5% the sugar from the fruit. Hence a standard recipe yields 10lbs (5Kg) of jam for 6lbs (3Kg) of sugar. Using electronic scales makes this very easy. Tare the scale (see The Kitchen Scale Manifesto) to include the weight of the pan and spoon. If you are making the jam with 6lbs of sugar, reduce the starting weight of fruit by boiling to 4lbs (2Kg) before adding the sugar, bring to the boil again, and check that the final weight is 10lbs (5Kg). c. By volume: Fill your pan with the water from 10 x 1lb (500g) jam jars. Mark this depth clearly on a stick. When you want to test the jam, take it off the heat, let the bubbles subside, then check with your stick. When the jam has been reduced to the marked level the setting point should have been reached. d. By temperature. Use a special jam thermometer or your trusty digital thermometer. When the jam reaches 222F/106C setting point should have been reached. Redcurrant jelly Redcurrants (like blackcurrants, whitecurrants, gooseberries) are naturally high in pectin, and consequently are easy ingredients for jam or jelly. For jelly don’t bother to strip the currants from the stalks. Dump the lot in a pan, add 1pt/500ml water and heat until the juice runs. Tip into a jelly bag or sieve lined with muslin, kitchen towel or a coffee filter and let the juice run through into a basin. Do not be tempted to squeeze or stir or you will get cloudy jelly. If you don’t think enough has been extracted, reheat with another pint/500ml of water and filter again. Measure the amount of juice. For each pint of juice allow 1lb (500g) of sugar. Put the juice in a pan with the sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to the boil. Boil rapidly for 4 minutes. Add a knob of butter to disperse the scum, or skim it off. If you like you can add a glass 1/4cup/60 ml of port or brandy now (and drink another). Adding it earlier would let too much flavour evaporate. Bottle while hot into jars that either have a lid that seals, or seal some other way. Traditionally a paper disc dipped in brandy covered the jam, and the top was tied down with greaseproof paper and a gingham cover, but the food police no longer consider this adequate. I have always just scraped any mould that occurs off the top of the jam from a poor seal, but others do not recommend this. Strawberry Jam Strawberry jam is more difficult, because strawberries are low in pectin, the gelling agent in jam. Raspberries and blackberries are also low pectin. You have three options: a. Mix the fruit with a high pectin fruit, such as redcurrants. Other combinations are blackberry or elderberry and apple, rose petals and apple. b. Use commercial pectin. c. Follow this recipe, but accept a softer set. You can always add liquid pectin or use Jam Sugar that has pectin in it should you need a firmer jam, albeit at a slight dilution of flavour. Pectin is mostly contained in the cell walls of the fruit. The problem is that breaking the cell down to allow the pectin to dissolve also breaks up the fruit. In strawberry jam people prefer the whole fruit. The trick is to divide the quantity of fruit into two halves. The first half is stewed to release the pectin, and the second half then added as whole fruit. To help prevent the fruit rising to the top of the jam, the whole fruit is marinated in the sugar overnight. For 10lbs (5Kg) of jam start with 7lbs (3.5Kg) of hulled strawberries. The easy way to hull the strawberries is to simply cut the stalk off with a knife. Put 3lbs (1.5Kg) of the berries in a basin with 6lbs (3Kg) of sugar and leave in the fridge overnight. The next day, put the other 4lbs (2Kg) in a pan, with the juice of two lemons and reduce over gentle heat by half (or more if you can) without burning. Add the sugar and the remaining strawberries and boil rapidly to setting point. Note the digital thermometer probe. Remove from the heat, stir in a knob of butter or a spoonful of oil to disperse the foam (or skim it, and have it on toast next day as cook’s perks). Stir to disperse the fruit and bottle into sealable jars. Label and store in a cool dark place. Further reading The Joy of Pickling - Linda Ziedrich Blue Ribbon Preserves - Linda Amendt Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving - Topp, Ellie and Howard Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables - R.N. Crosset Links to food safety sites www.solutions.uiuc.edu www.fcs.uga.edu www.extension.iastate.edu Post your questions here -->> Q&A

Preservation Basics -- Post your questions here

Post your questions here -->> Q&A Chinese Cooking : Southern home-style dishes Author: Trillium Blackmer General Introduction While it is not possible to even begin to cover the broad range of dishes cooked at home in the kitchens of families who live or have migrated from the southern Chinese provinces, I’ve chosen dishes that I hope will convey some of the variety of tastes and techniques that are frequently utilized. The food that goes on the rice (fan in Chinese) has its own broad category, called sung. The sung is seasoned with the expectation that it will be eaten with a significant amount of rice. You may want to cut back on the salty ingredients such as light soya, if you think you’ll be eating it more like a western dish (with less rice, more meat). Dishes from the southern provinces are seasoned more delicately, and some might say simply, compared to their counterparts to the west and north. For a dish to be successful it relies as much on the freshness and quality of the ingredients as the seasoning. To cook the tastiest southern food you must not only be a good cook, but a superb shopper. Let what looks best at the market drive what you will be eating for supper. I’ve tried to choose things that are fairly simple in their execution, but reward the cook with a complexity of taste that can be greater than the sum of its parts. Because these are dishes that fall under the category of “home cooking” you can imagine that there will, within the confines of a certain dish, be a multitude of variations within a household and between households. I’m going to tell you how we do it at our house, and suggest variations that we might use depending on mood and availability. This is by no means meant to imply that any other recipes or techniques for the same dish are invalid. In fact, I encourage discussion and instruction from other cooks, during the Q&A session, on variations that I might not have mentioned. Objective: I hope that by the end of the lesson, the students' appetite for exploring home cooking from the southern provinces will be piqued and they won’t just think of chop suey, broccoli beef, sweet and sour pork and egg foo yung when they think of “Cantonese” food. Rice Serves 4 – 6 with other dishes Introduction: Rice is pretty damn important to your southerner. Even 2 or 3 generations removed from the ancestral homeland, many people don’t feel right if they haven’t had rice at least a few times a week. At our house, due to the SE Asian influence, we use jasmine rice as our “everyday” rice and not just any jasmine rice, but one brand in particular, Golden Phoenix. Rice really varies from brand to brand and you may want to try different ones until you settle on a favorite. You’re not going to find a nice selection of brands until you go up to the 25 lb bags. Most households buy their rice in 50 lb bags. Forget the bulk rice in health food stores, it tastes terrible. Ingredients • 3 cups long grain rice • 3 1/4 cups water I’ve read western instructions for cooking rice and they usually use 1 part rice to 2 parts water. This ratio results in a much wetter and softer rice than most Asian families like to have. We use a rice cooker because the convenience outweighs the slight loss in quality in the cooked rice, but cooking rice Asian style in a pot is not very difficult either. You want something slightly more than a 1 to 1 ratio of rice to water. How much more depends on preference and the age of the rice. Newer rice takes less water. For 3 cups of rice, start out using about 3 1/4 cups of water and adjust to your taste. Bring the rice and water to a boil in a pot that is good for slow cooking. Once it boils, put a lid on it and turn it down to the lowest your burner can go. If you have one, a diffuser works well here. Cook for 15 – 20 minutes. All the water should be absorbed. Turn off the heat and let it sit for another 15 minutes or so to finish steaming. Try not to peek too many times. Fluff with chopsticks before serving. Steamed beef with black mushrooms, lily buds and cloud ear Serves 4 along with other dishes Introduction: While most people think about stir-frying when they think about Chinese food, steaming is often used to cook food that will be eaten with rice. Sometimes the partly cooked sung is added to the rice pot before the rice is finished cooking and left to steam the rest of the way while the rice cooks. This also imparts the flavor of the sung onto the rest of the rice. Other times the sung is steamed separately and then brought to the table to be placed on the rice by the eaters. For dinners where there will be more than one or two dishes besides vegetables, it’s a nice balance to include as many steamed dishes as stir-fried ones. I strongly encourage anyone interested in Chinese cooking to acquire a bamboo steamer. While you can steam your dish in anything that works (like a steamer insert in a pasta pot set or a pressure cooker), it’s my contention that the bamboo itself will lend a special fragrance to the dishes. The Cantonese, in particular, steam seafood very often. My favorite dish ever is a steamed whole fish, bathed in ginger, scallions, light soya and a little sesame oil. This much-loved dish requires that you start by picking your victim from a tank full of healthy, lively fish, having it killed to order, rushing it home, and steaming it, without ever storing it in the refrigerator. I like sea bass best, and don’t like tilapia at all, so I’ve had some trouble finding a suitable fish to steam where I live. Instead, I’ve decided to show you another classic steamed dish that can be made with beef, pork, chicken or even tofu. This dish is simple enough to be part of your everyday cooking routine but also nice enough to include in a meal with guests. I’m showing you the way to make this dish with beef, but you can substitute any meat you might like. This is not the time to use beef from the mark-down section of the meat department. Steaming requires that your meat be very fresh, no stickiness or off-odors. Chicken is also good, and if you decide to use the fair fowl please do not use boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Best is a free range, fairly lean, freshly killed chicken that is chopped into bite size pieces while still on the bone and then steamed (see the photo of cut chicken in the claypot recipe). If you must go the boneless, skinless route, use thighs. Black mushrooms come in different grades. I don’t buy the really expensive kind, but I do like upgrading from the cheapest ones with all-brown tops to a higher grade. I usually buy a grade that has a certain degree of flowering or creamy white cracks on the brown tops. This results in mushrooms with a firmer, less chewy texture when reconstituted. Lily buds are a great ingredient to have in your repertoire. They have a subtle, sweet smell reminiscent of dried fruits, and add an interesting textural variation to any dish. Shaoxing wine should not be the kind labeled “cooking wine” on the bottle, its flavor isn’t as good as it could be and you don’t want the additional salt in the dish. Substitute sherry if you must, but it’s worth finding a bottle of non-salted for the larder. The non-salted ones start around $3-4 dollars a bottle and go up to about $10 dollars a bottle, depending on how long the wine has been aged. Ingredients • 3/4 lb of flank steak • 3/4 ounce dried black (dong qwoo or shiitake) mushrooms • 1/4 ounce dried cloud ears (wun yee) or wood ears (or use fresh – scant 1/4 cup) • 1/4 ounce lily buds (gum tzum) also found labeled in English as golden needles, tiger lily buds, lily stems • 1 1/2 tablespoons finely julienned ginger • 2 teaspoons shaoxing rice wine • 1 tablespoon oyster sauce • 2 tablespoons light soya sauce • 1 teaspoon dark soya sauce • fresh ground black pepper • 1 1/2 teaspoons potato starch (you can substitute cornstarch, which gels to a harder consistency, but use a little less) • 2 green onions, julienned, white and green parts separate • a handful of cilantro leaves The mushrooms, cloud ears and lily buds need to be reconstituted in water before you cut them up. If you are a super-organized person, it’s nicer to soak them in cold water for an hour or two. I’m never that prepared, and I opt for the boiling water routine. In separate bowls, cover the mushrooms, cloud ears and lily buds with boiling water. Top with a saucer and let steep for around 30 minutes. The cheaper your grade of mushrooms, the less time you’ll need to soak them. While you’re waiting, cut the flank steak into pieces about 1 1/2 inch long and 1/4 inch thick, taking care to cut across the grain of the meat. Sprinkle 1 T of the light soya over the meat, and a few turnings of the black pepper. Toss and sprinkle the potato starch over the beef and toss again. Let it sit while you prepare the green onions, ginger and cilantro. I use beef that has been dry-aged. If your beef is more wet, you may want to add a little more thickener if you do not care for a more brothy dish. There should be no pools of liquid, but it should not be completely dry either. Depending on how it looks, I may add a couple tablespoons of the reserved soaking liquid from the mushrooms to the mixture. When the dried ingredients have plumped in the water, squeeze the mushrooms dry, reserving the soaking liquid (for use in this or other recipes), and remove the stems. Thinly slice the caps. Remove the hard bits from the cloud ears and thinly slice. Squeeze the lily buds, discard the soaking water and cut them in half crosswise (see photo). Hopefully you have better ones than what I could find…these started out faded and brown, but they’re best when they’re a brighter gold color. Spread the meat in a Pyrex pie plate and sprinkle on the mushrooms, cloud ears, lily buds, ginger, shaoxing, oyster sauce, the rest of the light soya, dark soya, and the white part of the green onions. Place in the steamer, taking care that no sides of the dish are touching the sides of the steamer. Place over about 2 inches of boiling water and steam on medium-high, 10 minutes for medium rare beef, 15 for well done. Removing things from the steamer can be tricky, but since this dish does not have a lot of liquid, it’s a good one to practice with. Using potholders, tilt the steamer while grabbing the side of the pie plate as seen in the photo. Sprinkle with the cilantro and green parts of the green onions and serve. Variations You can omit the ginger, or instead of ginger, you can use a couple of tablespoons of preserved mustard greens (hum choy – usually sold in the refrigerated section) that have been rinsed and chopped, or the same amount of Teo Chew- preserved mustard and olives (blackish-green, oily and very savory concoction, usually in glass jars in the “pickle” section). A tablespoon of aged, dried tangerine peel (chun pay) that has been soaked in cold water and julienned is also a nice addition, use it by itself or with the ginger, but not with the preserved vegetables. Stir-fried vegetables Serves 2 – 4 with other dishes Introduction: One of our favorite parts of the meal are the stir-fried greens and the variety of different greens available to stir-fry are seemingly endless. We generally choose whatever looks best to us at the farmers' market and then use it during the week. Sometimes we’ll have gai lan (Chinese broccoli), or Shanghainese bok choy, spinach, dau gok (long beans), ong choy (water spinach), dau miu (pea shoots), long cabbage (Napa), or even just plain old bok choy. What you’ll see in the photos goes by the name choy sum, flowering Chinese cabbage or yu choy. Some people have trouble telling it apart from gai lan when it gets older. In general, it will have yellow flowers while gai lan has white ones. These were so young they had no flowers at all. While the home cook cannot mimic the feet-tall flames of the restaurant stoves used to stir-fry vegetables and impart that delicious smoky “breath of the wok”, we’ve come up with something that comes very close. We use a flat bottom frying pan because our home stoves do not have a large enough output to use a wok. There are a few tricks to getting this right, and it takes a little practice, but it’s a very satisfying pursuit. The first trick is to make sure your greens are as dry as possible. If you don’t think to wash them hours before you’ll use them, spin them several times in a salad spinner and then lay them out on a towel. The second trick is to be fearless when it comes to how hot your pan is, both during the preheating stage and when you heat up the oil. We're talking a minute short of a grease fire, here…keep the lid handy in case you wait too long and remember, oil fires need suffocating! Do not pour water on an oil fire. You need an oil suitable for hot temperatures, preferably peanut oil, or if you don’t want to use that, then safflower oil. Please don’t use canola oil, it tastes like crap and makes your house smell bad when you heat it up this high. For the garlic, it’s worth hunting down the smaller, purple, hard necked type. We’re buying a Korean one from the farmers' market that is just great…lots of spicy garlic goodness. I’ll also note that I may be advising you to let your pan get hotter than the manufacturer recommends. We feel it’s worth replacing a pan in 10 years to have delicious vegetables. You may feel differently. The last trick is to be very fast. I’ve timed what we show in the photos below, you may find that your stove needs more or less time to preheat your pan enough to get the desired flavor. Ingredients • 1 lb of greens, washed, cut or torn to manageable sizes and dried • 3 – 4 cloves of garlic, smashed • 1 1/2 tablespoons of peanut oil • light soya to taste Heat a large frying or sauté pan over high heat. For the aluminum pan shown, we heat it for 3 1/2 minutes on full blast. A cast iron pan would take longer. Add the oil to the pan and heat it until it just begins to smoke, about 2 minutes further. Add the smashed garlic and stir it around while it browns and blackens, as shown in the photo. Add the greens all at once and do not stir. Wait 30 seconds, pressing down on the greens to let as many come in contact with the pan as possible. This is your best chance at getting that nice smoky flavor. The rest of the greens that come in contact with the pan later will not sear because the greens will begin releasing liquid. Begin to stir and toss, about 1 minute for these, a little longer for more mature greens. Once they have mostly wilted, splash in soya sauce, stir for 40 seconds and then put on a plate, fast! As you might have noticed, it takes longer to preheat the pan than it does to stir-fry the greens. Don’t worry if a few pieces of your vegetable are black or dark brown that means you’ve done it correctly. Variations For things with thicker stems, tear off the thick, outer leaves until you get to the heart. Remove the very thick and tough bottom pieces. For cabbage, cut into 2 inch squares. Vegetables like gai lan or dau miu may need to be very briefly blanched in boiling water and then dried off before stir-frying, depending on their toughness. I tend to prefer not to do this, because I think the flavor is diluted, but many other cooks like to use this method. You won’t have as much smoky flavor. You can also use other aromatics such as ginger or chillies in addition to, or in place of, the garlic. Claypot casserole of chicken and salted fish Serves 4 with an additional vegetable dish Introduction: The claypot, sandpot or sapo, a pre-iron age cooking vessel, is inexpensive, and is available in almost any Asian grocery store. Like other cultures who prize claypot cookery, southerners use it for long, gentle cooking. These pots need to be brought up to heat very gently, and not subjected to abrupt changes in temperature (like heating one up and then dumping something very cold into it. I lost my first pot doing that). Chinese grannies believe that things cooked in a claypot are more nourishing than the same dishes cooked in metal pots. However, if you do not wish to go to the trouble of finding and caring for a claypot, please do not let that stop you from making claypot dishes. Use an enameled casserole pot or anything suitable for slow and low cooking. Claypot dishes are true comfort food, they’re not usually very pretty but are delicious and homey, perfect for cold evenings. Salted fish (hum yue) is used a lot by the Hakka peoples, and we’re pretty fond of it at our house, too. Well, we’re fond of almost any form of salted, preserved fish (baccala, anchovies, sardines, ikan belis, you get my drift). It’s a wonderful match with chicken. It has a very pungent taste and needs to be used with restraint or it can overpower a dish. The long simmering in this recipe mellows the fish and adds a wonderful rich taste to the dish. If the thought of dried fish repels you, you can use preserved soya beans in its place (Yeo’s is a good brand) but do try it with the fish. A classic fried rice dish is also flavored with chicken and salted fish. If you like this dish, you might try that as well. Use fresh tofu packed in water for this dish, Nasoya or Sunshine are good brands. Ingredients • 14 oz package of firm tofu cut into 1 inch cubes and pressed down to drain (see photo) • 3/4 lb Chinese cabbage, about a half of one. Cut in half lengthwise and then sliced into 1/4 – 1/2 inch pieces. • 2 legs, 2 thighs and 2 wings from a chicken (use the breast for the soup recipe) • 3 tablespoons minced salted fish, rinsed • 1 tablespoon of chicken fat or lard (homemade lard only, not the disgusting non-refrigerated store-bought kind) or safflower oil • 3 –4 cloves of garlic, sliced • 1 slice of ginger (1 inch wide, 1/4 inch thick) • 3/4 cup chicken stock or water (store bought, low sodium is ok, homemade is ideal) • white pepper and salt • 1 tablespoon of light soya sauce • 1 teaspoon of sesame oil • 1/8 teaspoon MSG (optional) • 1.7 ounce packet of mung bean or cellophane noodle • potato or corn starch (optional) • 2 green onions, julienned Chop the chicken into pieces with a cleaver. Set aside the wingtips for use in stock. Clean off any bone chips, and sprinkle with salt and white pepper. Allow to sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. If you do not like chopping legs and thighs bone-in, try it with 1 lb of wings instead, they’re easier to cut. If you prefer to use boneless chicken, use about 3/4 lb, but again, please do not use boneless, skinless breasts, thighs are nicer. Preheat the claypot on very low, using a diffuser if you have one, for about 10 minutes. Brown the chicken in a frying or sauté pan in about a teaspoon of the chicken fat or lard on as many sides as you have the patience for. When you’re done, put the chicken in a bowl, pour the fat into the claypot, deglaze the pan with a little water or stock and pour it on top of the resting chicken. Add more fat to the claypot to make about 1 tablespoon. Turn the heat up under the pot to medium and fry the garlic and ginger until it begins to brown. Add the chicken and the deglazing liquid, the stock or water, sesame oil, light soya, dried fish, white pepper to taste, MSG, and cabbage to the pot. Put the lid on and allow the pot to come to a simmer. This will take some time because the cabbage takes a while to wilt down and start to cook. Cook until the chicken is tender, about 20 - 30 minutes after it reaches a simmer. Soak the mung bean noodle in cold water until it is pliable, and then cut it into 2 – 3 inch lengths. At this point you should have quite a bit of liquid from the cabbage in the pot. If you don’t, you could add some water and let it come back to a simmer. Add the mung bean noodle, let it heat for 5 minutes with the lid on, and then add the tofu. Stir it in gently so you don’t break it up too much. Allow the pot to come back to a near simmer. If you like, you can stir in a couple of teaspoons of a slurry made from 4 parts water to 1 part potato or cornstarch to slightly thicken the liquid, but it’s optional. If you do, stir it in gently and allow 5 minutes or so for it to thicken. Sprinkle with green onions and serve. Winter melon soup with peas and chicken velvet Serves 8 Introduction: Soups can play many roles in southern Chinese cooking, especially to the Cantonese. They can be a snack, such as ground roasted black sesame soup, lightly sweetened and thickened with rice flour, a medicinal health tonic, such as those containing ginseng and other herbal medicinals, or as a soothing part of the family meal. The best writing I’ve read on the role of soup in Cantonese eating was in a Usenet post by Timothy Ng. Winter melon (doong qwa) is very favorably considered for medicinal soups, fancy banquet soups presented in carved melons, or in a soup for the family dinner. Unlike a medicinal soup where the whole melon is used, peel, seeds and all, we’re going to peel and remove the seeds for ours. You can usually find pieces of winter melon cut for home use in the refrigerated section of the produce area in an Asian grocery. Many cooks believe that the more white powdery coating a melon has on its peel, the better it is, so I always look for that coating on the pieces I pick out. Avoid melon pieces that have been cut for too long, they’ll start to be soft and transparent near the rind. I’m giving a recipe for a fairly large amount of soup, because the pieces I can buy are quite large, but it scales down very nicely. The stock should be clear and light, made from meat, feet and bones that have not been cooked or roasted previously. I like to make mine with just a little salt, although some people add a few slices of ginger to theirs. Avoid adding any other aromatics, you’re going for a clear stock full of chicken “essence” and not much else. Ingredients • 4 1/2 cups homemade chicken stock (store bought is not an option for this) • 3 lbs winter melon • 14 oz frozen peas, thawed • 1 recipe for chicken velvet • salt and white pepper to taste The easiest way I’ve found to prepare the melon is to de-seed it, cut it into 1/2 inch slices, slice it off the peel and then cut the slices into pieces about 1/4 inch thick (see photo). If you want it to be prettier, you can peel it whole and cut it into cubes. Heat the stock to a light simmer and add the melon pieces. You’ll hear them hiss as they are warmed in the stock. Simmer covered until the melon is transparent, depending on the melon and the size of your pieces it can take 15 – 30 minutes. Add salt to taste, around 1/2 teaspoon, and a few turns of white pepper. You have two options with the chicken velvet: you can add some warm stock to it to thin it out and then stir it in, which will result in a more refined texture, or you can just put it in straight and stir it as it cooks, to break it into the larger pieces. You can see these larger pieces in the finished soup in the photo. What I do depends on mood and occasion. After you’ve added the chicken, stir in the thawed peas, let them warm, and then serve the soup with fresh ground white pepper on top. Chicken velvet (adapted from Yan Kit So’s Classic Chinese Cooking) • 1 whole chicken breast, about 1 lb, cut into rough chunks • 1/2 teaspoon salt • 1 egg white • 2 teaspoons ice water • 2 teaspoons cornstarch Put all of the above into a food processor or blender and puree. Variations Instead of peas, you can top your soup with finely minced Yunnan ham. Country hams (like Smithfield Virginia ham) or prosciutto are substitutes for Yunnan ham. Instead of chicken, you can add 1 cup of fresh bamboo, julienned, and top with a little roasted sesame oil and green onions. Fresh bamboo can usually be found already prepared in tubs of water in the produce section in Asian groceries in larger cities. For smaller cities, look for cryovac packages where you find tofu. You can use fuzzy melon (mo qwa) in place of winter melon if you can’t find winter melon. Stir-fried clams with black bean sauce Serves 4 with other dishes Introduction: This is such a classic combination I couldn’t resist including it here, although you can probably find it in just about any Chinese cookbook. I like all of the saltiness to come from the black beans. If you find their flavor too strong, you may want to use only 3 tablespoons and substitute 1 tablespoon of dark soya for the rest. I don’t like to eat leftover clams, so I’ve halved the recipe for the photo shoot. If there are only 2 people eating, you may want to do the same. Ingredients • 3 lbs clams, scrubbed well and rinsed, discard any that do not close when you wash them • 4 Tablespoons preserved black beans (dau see) • 1 teaspoon of peanut or safflower oil • 4 Tablespoons of ginger, finely julienned • 4 large cloves of garlic, finely minced • 4 green onions, julienned, white parts separate from the green parts • fresh red chilli, thinly sliced on the diagonal (optional… we’ve used way more then a normal Cantonese cook would in the photos, call it the Singaporean influence) • 2 –3 tablespoons shaoxing wine • 1/2 - 1 cup chicken stock or water (use water if you don’t have homemade, otherwise it will be too salty) • 2 teaspoons of potato flour stirred into 2 tablespoons of water (or use 1 1/2 teaspoons of cornstarch) Rinse the black beans in several changes of water and set aside. If they are very dry, leave them with a little water. If they were moist to begin with, pour out all of the excess rinsing water. Heat your pan until it’s very hot, about 5 minutes for cast iron, less for aluminum. Put in the oil, swirl it around and add the garlic, ginger and white part of the onions. Stir-fry until they begin to color, about 30 seconds. Add the black beans and stir-fry until they stick a little. Pour in the clams and toss them around in the sauce for 30 seconds. Splash in some shaoxing wine, about 2 –3 tablespoons. Flip the clams around and when the wine stops sizzling, add the stock or water. If the clams do not open after a minute or so, then cover them briefly to allow them to steam open. When 3/4 of the clams are open, stir in the green parts of the onion and the chilli. Toss and add the potato flour and stir until the sauce is thickened. If your sauce is too thick, don’t panic, just splash in a little more water and stir. Put into a warmed bowl and eat with plenty of steamed rice. Further Reading on Chinese home-style cooking: The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen: Classic Family Recipes for Celebration and Healing - Grace Young Every Grain of Rice: A Taste of Our Chinese Childhood in America - Ellen Blonder and Annabel Low Classic Food of China - Yan Kit So Post your questions here -->> Q&A

Post your questions for Chinese Cooking : Southern home-style dishes here.

Post your questions here -->> Q&A Non Stock-based Sauces Author: Jack Lang (jackal10) Various sauces have been discussed in the eGCI - see Stock Based Sauces and Cream Sauces. In this course I will discuss a selection of savoury sauces not previously covered: Vinaigrette Mayonnaise and its Derivatives Beurre Blanc and other Butter Sauces Pan Sauces and Gravies Vinaigrette Vinaigrette, or in classical parlance Sauce Ravigote is easy to make yet has ample potential for individual creativity. It is a thin sauce which coats leaves well so its traditional role is as a dressing for salads. Vinaigrette is a water-in-oil emulsion. Droplets of water are suspended in an oil, which is the opposite way round to a mayonnaise. A vinaigrette is quickly made, but without additional emulsifiers, it is not stable, and will revert to oil floating on water. To make vinaigrette, put 1 part of vinegar and 2 parts of oil (see below) in a jar. These proportions are sacred for the best and thickest vinaigrette. Say out loud “Two of oil and one of vinegar”. Now say it again. Two of oil and one of vinegar If you increase the proportion of water to oil, you can get “inversion”. Now, instead of having water droplets suspended in the oil, you have oil droplets suspended in water. This is why you should make sure the salad leaves are dry before adding the vinaigrette, lest the water on the leaves invert the emulsion. Shake well (make sure you have the lid or stopper on tight). You have vinaigrette. That is it. Serve it with salad, or marinate fish in it. Garden salad of little gem lettuce, and edible flowers: nasturtium, viola, borage, and rose petals, chives. When you dress a salad, do it at the last minute, otherwise the acid in the vinaigrette will start to wilt the greens. However, that is not the whole story of vinaigrette. It can be a lot more interesting. Garbage in, garbage out. Make sure you have the very best ingredients. Nasty oil or vinegar will make nasty vinaigrette. A good olive oil is ideal, but some find that the very strong olive oils are too assertive, and need diluting with a neutral oil, like corn oil. The better the oil, the better the vinaigrette. See note below on olive oils. Not all vinegars are created equal. In particular they have different levels of acidity. Here I’ve used a mild wine vinegar. You would want to cut a normal malt vinegar by half with water, so that the proportions are 1 of vinegar, 1 of water and 4 of oil. Check the level of acidity on the bottle. I think something in the range 3% to 4% is ideal for a vinaigrette that doesn’t burn the throat. You could use lemon juice, or orange juice, or even plain water. You can use a flavoured vinegar, such as raspberry or basil. You can use aged balsamic vinegar, but it will make the sauce very dark coloured. (I prefer to save my balsamic to dip bread into or adsorbed on croutons). Vinaigrette has the reputation of being unfriendly to wine. If this is a concern, use wine instead of vinegar as the acid. You might want to reduce the wine by about half to concentrate the flavour. Plain vinaigrette separates easily and quickly. To slow this down you need to add an emulsifier and stabiliser. In commercial practice a vegetable gum, such as Xanthan gum is used to glue it together. That stuff stays mixed for weeks, but you eat it at your peril. Read the fine print on the ingredients of commercial vinaigrettes next time you are in the supermarket. An emulsifier we can use at home (and avoid a chemical cesspool) is mustard, dry or ready mixed. It doesn’t stop the vinaigrette from separating, but it does slow it down. The fine grains act as nuclei for the water droplets to attach themselves to. Use a half a teaspoon for a cup or so of vinaigrette. Notice how much smoother the sauce is. Other emulsifiers include hard-boiled egg yolks or a little mashed potato. Now comes the creative part. You can add all sorts of flavours, such as garlic or herbs or spices in moderation. You can add sweetness, such as sugar, or honey, fruit or even jam. You can add salt or salty things, such as soy or anchovies. You can add meat glaze. You can use different oils or vinegars. There are infinite variations. Be creative. Stake out your claim to a "house vinaigrette". Here are some of my favourites. All are for 1/2 cup vinaigrette: Honey-mustard-garlic vinaigrette. Honey-mustard-garlic ½ tsp mustard. 2 tsp honey, 1 clove garlic, crushed (if liked). Pinch salt. You could also add some chopped dill. I use this for most of my green salads. Sometimes it's nice to have just a plain salad: fresh, crisp buttercrunch or cos lettuce tossed with this vinaigrette. Or, you can serve it with avocado. Raspberry-pepper 2 tsp raspberry puree or raspberry jam, ¼ tsp white pepper, salt. Blackberry puree or jam is good too. This makes a light, fruity vinaigrette that matches well with a chicken or turkey salad. Asian 2 tsp light soy, 1 tsp crushed fresh ginger, 1 spring onion, chopped. A little sesame oil would go well, also. Use this to dress Pak Choy or steamed Chinese broccoli or perhaps a rice salad with peas and fresh corn (you could add a few shrimp for a more substantial salad). Sauce Ravigote 1 Tbs each of chopped shallots, capers, herbs (tarragon, chives, parsley, chervil). Ravigote with crabmeat salad or crab cakes is a classic. Thousand Island 1 Tbs chopped hard-boiled eggs, 1 tsp tomato ketchup, 2 tsp chopped shallots or spring onions, 1 tsp chopped parsley, 1 tsp chopped tarragon, and for that authentic touch of luxury, the cooked and sieved coral of a lobster. Most cheap imitations just colour it pink with a little tomato ketchup. Some people also add sweet pickle and mayonnaise. This is the sauce to dress the salad on a burger. Hot bacon Use hot bacon grease for the oil part. Fry some fatty bacon chopped small until the fat runs. Remove the crispy bacon bits from the pan and add them to the salad, splash in some vinegar (roughly half the amount of fat), swirl and pour over the salad. A salad of spinach leaves, with this dressing is simple and good, or you can be extravagant and pretend it's breakfast with baby green leaves, some quail eggs, fried potato cubes, mi-cuit cherry tomatoes, and, if you like it, black pudding. The last word has to be from Sydney Smith (1771-1845), poet, and gastronome, written in a letter to Lady Holland in 1839. To make this condiment your poet begs The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs; Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen seive, Smoothness and softness to the salad give. Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, And, half-suspected, animate the whole. Of mordant mustard add but a single spoon, Distrust the condiment that bites too soon; But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault To add a double quantity of salt; Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown, And twice with vinegar procur'd from town; Lastly o'er the flavour'd compound toss A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce. Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat! Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat; Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul, And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl! Serenely full, the epicure would say, Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today. Note on Olive Oil Olive oil is graded according to the amount of oleic acid it contains. This represents how much the fat molecules have been broken down in treatment. It is quite a complex subject:- for example the US and the European Union have slightly different definitions. See here. for example. To be considered "virgin", an olive oil cannot be sujbected to heat during processing. Apart from pressing, washing, decanting, centrifuging and filtering, it must not be subject to additional treatment. Neither can it be mixed with oils from other sources. Oil obtained by the use of solvents or re-esterification cannot be labelled "virgin". Oils that have undergone further treatment than that allowed for virgin oil can be labelled "olive oil", "refined olive oil" and even "olive-pomace oil" (pomace is the matter left after the olives have been pressed). Roughly: Extra Virgin Less than 1% free oleic acid. This grade generally has all the nuances and characteristics of the olive it is taken from. It is full-bodied and can be astringent, peppery, buttery, green, piquant. A vinaigrette made from it will reflect these elements. Virgin Less than 2% oleic acid. This grade has less flavour, but some reflection of the olive can still be present, especially when you pair it with a light vinegar. Ordinary Virgin Less than 3.3%. This grade will be taste neutral . Lampante Virgin more than 3.3%. Not edible without further treatment. The terms “Cold Pressing”, “First Cold Press” or “Light Oil” may be descriptive, but are obsolete. Mayonnaise and its derivatives The legend is that mayonnaise was invented by the cook to the Duc de Richelieu in 1756 as a field expedient while the French forces under his command were besieging the English at Port Mahon in Minorca. However, there are older versions of the sauce, with records dating back to Roman times. Some say the name is derived from the French manier to manipulate, others that it derives from moyer an old French word for egg yolk. You can make it in a blender in a minute or two, but I think that a better sauce is made by hand. For me, it curdles easily in a blender, as I am tempted to add too much oil at once. To quote Elizabeth David: I do not care, unless I am in a great hurry to let [a kitchen gadget] deprive me of the pleasure and satisfaction to be obtained from sitting down quietly with bowl and spoon, eggs and oil to the peaceful kitchen task of concocting the beautiful shining golden ointment that is mayonnaise. Mayo is an oil-in-water emulsion, with many small drops of oil dispersed in a watery base. There are so many (about half a pint of oil to a few teaspoons of water) that they jostle together and make a thick sauce. They are kept from coalescing by the emulsifiers in the egg yolk, principally Lecithin. The oil droplets are the original fat globules from the egg yolk, swollen by the added oil. The watery stuff they swim in is some of the watery components of the egg yolk, but mostly the added water phase components. Traditionally this is something acid, such as lemon juice, or a mild vinegar, but it could be just plain water. We will start by making a classic mayonnaise, and then look at derivations and other ways to make the sauce. To make mayonnaise you need an egg yolk (see note one), 1 cup/250ml mild, room temperature olive oil (see note two), half a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of mild vinegar or the juice of half a lemon. Oh, and a bowl and a spoon. Put the egg yolk in the bowl. Put the oil in a measuring jug, so you can see how much you have added. Beat the egg with a spoon until it is smooth. Add the salt and beat that in. Do not add the lemon juice or vinegar yet. Add a drop of oil—literally a drop. The biggest mistake is to add too much oil at once in the early stages. Beat with a spoon until the oil has completely disappeared and the sauce is shiny again. Add another drop and repeat. Have patience, and do not be tempted to rush it. Slow down. Relax. It’s a beautiful thing you are making. After about 10 drops you can add a little more at a time- say a teaspoonful. You must beat it in completely before adding more. Pretty soon it begins to look shiny - more like a sauce. Be patient - cooks have been doing this for two thousand years or more. After about a third of the oil has been added it will begin to be very stiff, and look like mayo. Time to add a squeeze of lemon juice or a little vinegar, or whatever water-phase liquid you are using, and beat it in. This will thin and whiten the mayo. Keep adding the oil a few teaspoonfuls at a time, and beat in. Never add more than about a third of the volume of the sauce you have already made. The mayo will stiffen again. Make sure to beat in each addition of oil before adding more until the mayo comes together and looks shiny again. If it gets too stiff, add a little more lemon juice or equivalent. If you are bold you can now start to add the oil in a very thin stream, while beating with the other hand. Remember that the oil in the emulsion prefers to dissolve into a pool of oil if it can, rather than be absorbed into the tiny droplets in the emulsion. Don’t add too much at a time. If it begins to pool, stop pouring and beat the mixture until the oil you have already added is absorbed. When all the oil has all been incorporated you have mayonnaise. Taste it, and adjust the seasoning. If it is too thick you can add more of the lemon juice, or whatever you are using. If too thin beat in more oil, assuming it hasn’t split. Mayo is fairly stable at room temperatures, and should keep for a day or two, covered. The acid in it kills most bugs. If you refrigerate it, especially if you used an oil that thickens in the fridge, for example an unrefined oil like extra virgin olive oil, it will tend to separate. Escoffier, as always, is definitive: Unless it is exposed to too low a temperature, the mayonnaise...never turns, and may be kept for several days without the fear of anything happening to it. Merely cover it to keep the dust away. He also says It is an error to suppose that it is necessary to work over ice or in a cold room. Cold is deleterious to mayonnaise, and is invariably the cause of this sauce turning in winter. In the cold season the oil should be warmed slightly, or at least kept at the temperature of the kitchen, though it is best to make it in a modestly warm place. Derivative Sauces All quantities are for 1 cup/250ml mayonnaise. Aioli – Garlic mayonnaise Peel and crush two cloves of garlic and add to the egg yolk at the beginning of the process. Ideally pound the garlic to a paste with the salt in a pestle and mortar. This is the French version. In some parts of the south of France (Provence) it is used much as ketchup is used in the US, and sometimes called “the butter of Provence”. Aioli Garni is aioli served with cooked and raw vegetables, potatoes, hard-boiled eggs and sometimes salt cod or other fish to dip into it. With good bread, it makes a wonderful summer lunch or supper. The garlic flavour should be so strong it makes your throat tingle. Elizabeth David writes: The aioli garni is a Friday dish as well as one of the traditional Christmas Eve dishes; on non-fasting days the beef from a pot-au-feu or even a boiled chicken may form part of the dish. It then becomes le grand aioli. Le Grand Aioli. The Provencal advise those who find aioli indigestible to take a trou or coupe de milieu in the form of a small glass of marc (the local spirit) as a digestif in the middle of the meal. Aioli is also used as an ingredient, for example in bourride, the fish soup. Pureed roast garlic makes a nice flavouring for mayonnaise, but it is not Aioli. The excellent Catalan Allioli is made without egg yolk, but is based on a paste of garlic and a little vinegar. It is lighter, but more fragile than the French version. Rouille fiery mayo. Rouille means rust in French, and refers to the colour of the sauce. It is an indispensable accompaniment to bouillabaisse and other Mediterranean fish soups, slathered onto the accompanying crouton. There are as many versions as there are cooks but broadly in Nice it is Aioli with lots of cayenne pepper (2tsp) and sometimes some saffron, while in Marseilles chillies (deseeded) are pounded with the garlic, as well as a handful of bread which has been soaked in hot water and then squeezed dry. Tartare Originally the sauce for Steak Tartare, now more generally used for fish and fried foods. Add 1 Tbs each of chopped shallot, gherkins, capers, chervil or parsley and chives to 1 cup mayonnaise. This delicious sauce, named after the bold Tartars of old, is often sadly abused in chemical commercial offerings. Remoulade Add 1 tsp anchovy sauce, ½ tsp Dijon mustard, 2 tsp chopped capers and chopped gherkins. This is traditionally served with shrimp but it is also good with hard-boiled eggs or any cold meat or fish. Sometimes horseradish is added. Cambridge Puree together 2 sieved hard boiled egg yolks, 2 anchovy fillets, 1 tsp each of chopped chives, tarragon and parsley. Pass the resulting puree through a sieve and mix with the mayonnaise. Good for cold meats etc. Gloucester 2 Tbs sour cream or yogurt, 1 tsp chopped fennel and 1 tsp Worcester sauce. Excellent when served with smoked meats and fish. Tyrolienne Soften 1 Tbs chopped shallot or onion in a little oil, add 2Tbs tomato paste, a bay leaf and a clove; simmer then pass through a sieve. Cool and add to the mayonnaise with chopped fine herbs. Verte Puree together 1Tbs/25g of each of blanched spinach, watercress, tarragon, chervil or parsley, and chives. Pass the puree through a fine sieve and add the green liquid to a stiff mayonnaise. This makes a lovely green mayonnaise and can be served with an Aioli Garni (as illustrated above) for those who dislike garlic. Vincent Mix equal quantities of Sauce Verte and Sauce Tartare. This is a green version of Tartare and is used similarly. It makes a nice colour contrast with salmon. Andalouse Add 2Tbs very red tomato paste, and 1Tbs julienne of red pepper. This sauce is used more for its colour than for its taste. Use it with hard-boiled eggs, for example. Cleared Add 1/3rd the amount of a firm melted aspic. This was formerly used to coat decorative pieces, now replaced by Chaud-Froid. Gribiche Not quite mayonnaise, more a salad cream, but still a lovely sauce. Like Cambridge but without the raw egg yolk. Mix together 3 hard boiled egg yolks, sieved, 1 Tbs French mustard, a little salt and pepper. Work in 1 cup oil, as for making mayonnaise. Finish with chopped herbs, capers, gherkins and the chopped white of the eggs. Since it has no raw egg, it can be served with hot food. Try it with hot boiled ham or tongue. Notes on egg yolks 1. Mayonnaise contains raw egg yolks. Some are concerned that raw eggs can contain Salmonella and other bugs, although there is also evidence that the acid environment is not conducive to their survival. If this is your concern, or if you are serving the sauce to potentially vulnerable people (the very young or the very old, or people who are otherwise immuno-compromised), then use pasteurised egg yolks, or use a technique to pasteurise them first. 2. How much oil can a single large egg yolk emulsify? Traditionally it is about ¾ cup of oil; with 2 tablespoons of water ( or its equivalent) per cup of oil. McGee in the Curious Cook (see "Further Reading" below) gives the theoretical limit as about 15 cups of oil, and experimentally 100 cups, or 6 gallons. He also gives a technique using frozen egg yolks. For some not well understood reason, freezing an egg yolk liberates a much greater emulsifying power. Freezing whole egg yolks makes them almost rubbery and too hard, but freezing 1 whole yolk for four hours or 1 whole yolk whisked with 1T lemon juice (not vinegar) for eight hours or 1 whole yolk whisked with 1T water for 24 hours and then using ¼ of the thawed result gives a low-egg yolk mayonnaise. Dave the cook gives a full recipe in the eG Recipe Archive. Substitutes It is possible to make an oil-in-water emulsion using many other emulsifiers besides egg yolks. They may be fine sauces, but they are not mayonnaise. Examples include egg white, evaporated milk, gelatine, mustard and mashed potato. Garlic, onion or shallot puree, either raw or from the roasted bulb, also work. Notes on Oils 1. Since a mayonnaise is mostly oil, it is important that the oil is good quality. However, using a full-flavoured oil will result in too powerful a taste in the finished mayonnaise. Milder oils, or a full flavoured oil cut by half with a more neutral oil, will give a better product. Some flavoured oils, such as lemon infused oil, work well. 2. As noted above, unrefined oils, especially those that cloud when cold, tend to make the sauce break when kept in the fridge. Notes on Vinegars and other watery ingredients In the section on Hollandaise, we said that not all vinegars are created equal, and it is easy for a strongly acid component to overwhelm the delicate taste of the sauce. Use lemon juice, or a mild vinegar, or cut the vinegar with water. There is much less chance of the emulsion inverting and the sauce splitting if you don’t add the additional water-phase component until after the initial oil has been added and the mayonnaise has started to thicken. Many authorities (including Escoffier) advise adding 2 tsp of boiled water at the end to both hollandaise and mayonnaise to improve their standing properties. I think it is a bit of a myth. To quote McGee: Finishing the sauce by adding a dollop of boiling water is a piece of conventional lore not to bother with....The important thing is not the temperature of the of the water or when it is added. The important thing is that there be enough water in the sauce to accommodate the amount of oil you've beaten in. The consistency of the sauce will tell that: if it is getting stiff and sweating oil, it is clearly in need of a drink. In any case a tablepoon or two of boiling water in a cup or more of room-temperature sauce is not going to raise its temperature enough to do anything useful. It's fine to adjust the flavour and texture at the end, but there is no need to put on the kettle. Blender mayo It is perfectly possible to save all that stirring by making mayonnaise in a blender. Same proportions. Put the egg and the salt in a blender, set it running, and drizzle in the oil, slowly at first, then a little faster. If it gets too stiff add the lemon juice or equivalent. The strong mechanical agitation helps the emulsification, but it is easy to add the oil too fast. Rescuing split mayo If it splits either the oil was too cold, or you added too much at one time. Take a clean bowl and another egg yolk, and use the split sauce as though it was oil, adding it to the new yolk no more than a teaspoon at a time and beating well before adding more oil. Beurre Blanc and other Butter Sauces Beurre Blanc means white butter. It is reputed to have been discovered when a hurried chef forgot to add the eggs when making a hollandaise. It is also attributed to Mme. Clemence as a sauce for salmon and other fish of the Loire, but there are many similar sauces from historic times. Beurre blanc has periods of fashion: it is a quickly made sauce, and low in carbohydrates, but you are basically eating softened flavoured butter. It is a very rich sauce – use sparingly. Like mayonnaise, beurre blanc is another oil-in-water emulsion. It uses the ready-made emulsion in butter as the emulsifying component. You can’t use margarine, or any butter substitute as they are held together differently. Butter is already a stable emulsion, provided it does not get too hot. If it gets too hot the emulsion breaks. If, after it is melted, it is allowed to solidify again, the emulsion will also break. Thus the secret to beurre blanc is temperature control. McGee says the temperature should be between 100F and 130F, (38C and 54C), but Keller indicates it can go up to 190F/90C. It should feel warm, not hot. If you can’t keep a finger in it comfortably, it is too hot. On the other hand if the butter is not melting into the sauce it is too cold. The vinegar or wine and the shallot are just dilutants and flavourings, rather than contributors to the structure of the sauce – the butter already contains enough water. However if you add more than 1 stick/8oz/250gms to a tablespoon of liquid the sauce becomes vulnerable to overheating. You can make things a little easier by adding some cream (ideally reduced by half over a gentle heat) at the beginning. Cream is another emulsion, and you are adding additional emulsification. To make a classic Beurre blanc, start with 4 Tbs of dry white wine and 4 Tbs of wine vinegar and add a finely chopped shallot. Put in a good solid pan. Reduce until about 1 Tbs of liquid remains and the shallot has softened. Have 1 stick/250gm of best unsalted butter ready, cold, and cut into pieces. Whisk in the butter. Correct the seasoning. Add a squeeze of lemon juice if you like. That is it. Keep it warm, not hot, for service. If you need to keep it for some time, a thermos flask rinsed with warm water works well. It cannot be kept in the fridge, or frozen. Traditionally, Beurre blanc is served with seafood. Here it is shown with pan fried scallops. There is a debate as to whether to sieve out the shallot pieces or not. It depends on the dish you are making. For a classical dish sieve them out, for a rustic style dish keep them in, Use a solid pan that does not have hot spots or the sauce will overheat locally and break. Some pans with thin walls and a copper sandwich have hot spots at the corners. Don’t use a non-stick pan either, since the non-stick surface forms an oily film which can break the sauce, and a metal whisk can easily damage the surface of the pan. To rescue an overheated sauce: cool, add a teaspoon or two of water and whisk until the oily streaks disappear. To rescue a solidified sauce, you need to re-emulsify it. You can sometimes rescue it by whipping the melted sauce into cream, but it is easier to treat it like a split hollandaise, and make hollandaise instead. Instead of wine as the liquid component, you can use water, mild vinegar, lemon or other citrus juice or even some of the poaching liquid from the dish you are making. If you use red wine or madeira as the liquid, you will be making a Beurre rouge. Beurre Noisette is butter heated in a frying pan until it is nut brown, then, off the heat, lemon juice is whisked in (1/2 a lemon for 4oz of butter). Beurre Noir or black butter is made the same as Beurre Noisette, but when it has coloured, it is taken off the heat and a tablespoon of vinegar (for 4 ozs butter) and a large pinch of chopped parsley is whisked in. I like to add a tablespoon of capers as well. Traditionally, Beurre Noir is served with skate wing. First fry the skate wing in butter and remove it from the pan and keep it hot. Wipe out the pan, and with fresh butter make the beurre noir. Beurre a la Meuniere is butter cooked gently until it just begins to colour – slightly nutty, but not as dark as Beurre Noisette. Once it has reached this slightly nutty stage, add the lemon juice and chopped parsley. This is the traditional sauce for Sole a la Meuniere. Pan sauces and Gravies A brief survey of a large subject In one sense, a pan sauce, prepared quickly in the same pan the main ingredient was cooked in, and hence flavoured primarily with the cooking residues, is the original and true sauce for the dish. Because the pan residues are essential to a pan sauce, it is only used for pan-fried or roast dishes. However, those cooking residues residues are only there if they have escaped from the main ingredient. The main ingredient is typically a piece of meat or fish. The residue is the result of partial over-cooking which breaks down the structure so that the juices escape. These then reduce or dry in the pan. Brillat-Savarin, the gourmet, in The Physiology of Taste (1825) (see "Further Reading" below) tells the tale of how he managed to take the pan juices of a leg of lamb being prepared for another party, and serve them with eggs. He says We feasted indeed…we were swallowing the very essence of the roast, and leaving nothing to [the other party] but the dry remains. Some argue that it is better if the main ingredient is cooked at a temperature that does not leave much residue in the pan, and the sauce is then made separately. They also point out that the pan residues may not have been cooked under ideal conditions, and may be burnt or otherwise inappropriate. Let us assume though that there is enough residue, for example from the initial browning, or from ingredients, such as onion, explicitly added to assist in making the sauce. Then the steps are: Remove the pan-fried (or roasted) main ingredient and keep it hot. Pour off any excess oil or other cooking medium. Add additional components to the pan to add flavour (chopped shallots or onions for instance) or to change the texture and adsorb the fat (flour to make a brown roux). Deglaze the pan by adding liquid to the pan and stirring over heat to dissolve the dried and caramelised deposits. The liquid can be water, stock, cream or wine, vinegar, or even black coffee for red-eye gravy. You might want to reduce the liquid to concentrate the flavour. Finish the sauce by correcting the seasoning and, if appropriate, strain it and add a squeeze of lemon or give it a gloss with a knob of butter. I will illustrate the required processes first with pan fried chicken breasts with a shallot and sherry vinegar sauce and then with steak and a red wine sauce. Finally, I'll offer suggestions for variations of pan sauces. Sauteing the chicken breasts Saute the chicken breasts until done and remove from the pan and keep warm. Pour off any excess fat leaving about 2 Tbs in the pan. Add some finely chopped shallots and a little garlic to the pan and saute briefly. Sautéing shallots. Deglaze the pan. I used sherry vinegar but you could use balsamic vinegar though it will make the sauce darker. (Demi-glace is used for classical meat dishes, but the use of reduced meat sauces is a becoming a cliché, and the universal spread of brown sticky goo can make everything taste of Bovril (commercial meat glaze)). Deglazing with sherry vinegar. Note the steam from the rapid reduction. Bourdain puts it well in Kitchen Confidential …we finish nearly every sauce with [butter]…that is why my sauce tastes richer and creamier than yours, why it's got that nice thick opaque consistency. Finishing with butter. Completed sauce. Poured over the chicken and served with fingerling potatoes and a salad (omitted for clarity). Red Wine Sauce This is traditional with steak so first, cook the steaks to the desired doneness. Remove the steaks and keep them warm. Note the flavoursome pan deposits Add a generous slug (1/4 cup/60ml) of good red wine. If you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it. Add any juices drained from the steak. Reduce at a rapid boil until syrupy. Finish by stirring in a generous knob of butter into the rapidly boiling sauce. Correct the seasoning. Steak with a red wine pan sauce. Variations on the Pan Sauce Theme Flavourings might include soy, garlic, ginger, mustard, pepper, peppercorns, capers, brandy or liquors. The sauce is reduced to concentrate the liquid component, if required. The sauce is thickened if a thick sauce is desired. Often a thin gravy is nicer. Thickening can be divided into: Emulsification: An oil or high fat ingredient like butter is added, and the contents whisked vigorously or boiled rapidly to achieve emulsification. This works best if there is plenty of gelatinous material to act as an emulsifier in the pan residue.Like beurre blanc, a ratio of 2 of fat to 1 of liquid is desirable. Starch: A starchy thickener is added. Essentially a sort of veloute is being made. Be sure to cook it sufficiently for the floury taste to disappear. Don’t add too much starch. Pan sauces should be moderately thick, not glue-like. Typical thickeners include: Cornflour (cornstarch), slackened in twice the amount of water. This is often used for Chinese wok cookery. Commercial gravy powder is mostly cornflour, with some seasoning and colouring. Roux, or roux made in the pan with the fat (and extra butter if required) and flour. Beurre manie: butter mashed up with an equal part of flour. This provides both thickening and a finish in one step. Use sparingly, and cook out properly. Vegetable purees, such as onion puree. Finishing. The sauce is typically finished by correcting the seasoning, and if appropriate, straining, adding a squeeze of lemon, or a giving a gloss with a knob of butter. Ham with red-eye gravy Red eye gravy Whether the origin of the name was President Jackson’s red-eyed cook, or because the evaporating gravy is said to make a red “eye” in the centre of the pan, this a traditional southern accompaniment to county ham. It is often served with eggs or grits and biscuits. The distinguishing feature is that the pan is de-glazed with black coffee. This is my version, and I’m not even American. I may be treading on sacred topics. I break with tradition, partly to illustrate the technique, and partly because I prefer my gravy thick—I finish the sauce with beurre manie to provide instant gloss as well as thickening. Of, course, it must then be cooked for a few more minutes to get rid of the raw taste of the flour. Remove the ham from the pan, and deglaze with about 4 Tbs of coffee and a teaspoonful of sugar. If you want a less pronounced coffee flavour, use half coffee and half ham stock. Beurre Manie is softened butter and an equal quantity (by volume) of flour. Mash them together with a fork. Add a knob of the Beurre manie (about 2 tsp) to the pan and stir rapidly. Instant sauce! Country ham and egg, red eye gravy . Further reading The Curious Cook - Harold McGee Physiology of taste - Brillat-Savarin Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making - James Peterson Post your questions here -->> Q&A

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Post your questions here -->> Q&A Thai Cooking Authors: Matthew Amster-Burton (mamster) and Pim Techamuanvivit (Pim) Introduction Why cook Thai food at home? Matthew: Even if you have a Thai restaurant across the street from your house, like I do, you can produce better food and a wider variety of dishes at home. Unlike Chinese food, Thai food doesn't require a blazing hot wok for most dishes, and Thai ingredients are now widely available in large supermarkets. What do we plan to do in this class? Pim: After discussing what to cover for this class, Matthew and I came to an agreement that it would be far too ambitious to even try to cover the subject of Thai food in just one class. Our plan instead is to give you an introduction to Thai ingredients and teach you how to make three dishes, each one representing a different approach to Thai cooking. We hope that these three recipes will at least whet your appetite and give you a bit of inspiration to learn more about the cuisine. The three recipes given here are for Massaman Curry, Nam-sod Kao-tod (pork salad and seasoned rice patties), and the perennial favorite, Pad Thai. I chose the Massaman curry because it is one of the best and most approachable Thai curries. It need not be fiery, rather aromatic, spicy and, of course, delicious. The principles of making curry paste, discussed at length here, can also be used for other types of curry pastes. The Nam-sod recipe is chosen because of the popularity of the Laab Thread. Nam-sod is sort of a cousin to Laab, so I thought it would be a fun thing to make together here. To close, Matthew provides his favorite Pad Thai recipe. Pad Thai is arguably the most famous of Thai dishes, and Matthew swears by his rendition. We hope you try them all. Enjoy. Key ingredients: (by Matthew with comments from Pim) Chilies. Thai chilies if possible, but substitute serrano chilies. Availability: Supermarkets and Asian groceries. Fish sauce. Made from salted, fermented anchovies, fish sauce smells terrible and tastes incredible. For those who love it, living without fish sauce would be like living without oxygen. Availability: Supermarkets, but worth going to an Asian market, where it will be cheaper and available in a wider quality range. Look for Squid (inexpensive and medium-quality), Tra Chang (high quality), and Baby (aka Golden Boy, high quality). Even the high quality brands shouldn't cost more than $2 for a large bottle. Tamarind paste. Tamarind trees, a member of the bean family, grow all over Thailand and produce pods full of tart and sticky pulp. Harvested and compressed into a one-pound brick, tamarind paste should be reconstituted in hot water and strained before using. It gives a tart, woody flavor to a variety of sauces and curries. Pim’s comment: Tamarind paste should not be confused with fresh tamarind in pods available at certain well-stocked Asian markets. The tamarind pods are “sweet tamarinds”, which are different from the type of tamarind made into paste. The sweet tamarinds, as the name suggests, are not sour enough to be used as a seasoning, and are for eating plain. Availability: Asian groceries. Galangal. If you could take a length of ginger root, skin it, and inflate it to an embarrassing diameter, you'd have something that looks like galangal. Often called "Thai ginger" (though regular ginger is also widely used in Thai cooking), galangal has a much stronger flavor that includes pine pitch notes not unlike retsina. It's used most often in chili pastes for making curries, soups, and salads. Availability: Asian groceries and large supermarkets and health food stores. Lemongrass. We humans eat a lot of grass, and I don't mean that in the Alice B. Toklas sense. Rice, wheat, and corn are grasses. Lemongrass is one of the few grasses where we eat the leaves rather than the seeds. These hardy stalks need to be peeled of their tough other layers, then thinly sliced. Slices of lemongrass are simmered in soups and stocks (and are not meant to be eaten) or pounded into curry pastes. Pim’s comment: There are two general ways of preparing lemongrass. If the lemongrass is to be eaten as part of the dish, as in salads or in curry pastes, only the tenderest part should be used, and should be sliced very thinly. On the other hand, if the lemongrass is to be used as an aromatic only, as in soups, you would only need to peel off the outer most layer of the stalk. The rest can be cut into 1-2 inch pieces and perhaps smashed slightly before adding to the soup. Availability: Supermarkets. Shallots. Think French cooks use a lot of shallots? A Thai cook can handily out-shallot Jacques Pepin. These small onion relatives are essential, along with garlic and chilies, in most curry pastes. Some cooks say that the shallot-garlic balance determines whether the paste will make a better curry for fish or meat, with fish preferring a shallot-heavy paste. Availability: Supermarkets, but often better at farmer's markets, where you can find smaller shallots similar to those used in Thailand. Garlic. In season (mid-summer through fall), it's worth seeking out hardneck purple garlic, which is easier to peel and has better flavor than white, softneck supermarket garlic. Used in curry pastes, stir-fries, and salad dressings. Palm sugar. Made from the cooked sap of the coconut palm, palm sugar is a vital ingredient in many curries, where it rounds out the sour, salty, and hot flavors without making the curry taste sweet. Buy palm sugar in compressed blocks and break them up into small chunks with a hammer and chisel. Don't buy palm sugar in a tub, because you will never get it out. Pim’s comment: I think Mamster’s testosterone is getting the better of him here. I don’t usually resort to the hammer or chisel> I find that using a sharp knife to slice off small pieces is quite sufficient. Availability: Asian groceries. Curry pastes. We will teach you to pound your own curry paste in a mortar and pestle, but you can also buy decent commercial pastes at Asian groceries and well-stocked supermarkets. Our favorite brand is Mae Ploy, which lasts months in the refrigerator. You can also make a hybrid paste by starting with commercial product and pounding in fresh garlic, shallots, and chilies. Pounded pastes are used in soups, salads, and stir-fries as well as curries, so many cooks call them "chili pastes." Availability: Supermarkets and Asian groceries. Equipment: No special equipment needed, but a Thai mortar and pestle will be helpful for this class and a variety of other kitchen tasks. You know that small ceramic mortar and pestle sitting in the back of your cupboard? Give it to your pharmacist and get a real one. Thai mortars and pestles are made of indestructible green granite and weigh a ton. They are made for turning tough, fibrous ingredients like lemongrass and dried chilies into smooth pastes. Pounding garlic and fresh chilies together to begin a Thai salad dressing will make your kitchen smell like heaven, and that's even before you stir in the fish sauce. A wok is useful for deep-frying, but for stir-frying (especially noodles), a 12" nonstick skillet works just as well. The Recipes: Recipe 1 Massaman Nuea (Beef Massaman Curry) (by Pim, courtesy of her Aunt Chawiwan) for about 4-6 servings This recipe looks daunting, but I promise it will be the best Massaman Curry you have ever tasted. Even if you opt for the canned paste rather than using this recipe, the process of marinating and simmering the beef in coconut milk and the addition of spice during the cooking will improve the taste dramatically. Ingredients Massaman Paste 15 medium pieces of dried chili, soaked, seeded, chopped 1/4 cup sliced garlic 1/3 cup sliced shallots 1 Tbsp coriander seeds 1 tsp cumin seeds 1 tsp white pepper 1 tsp lemongrass, chopped 1 tsp galangal, peeled, chopped 1 tsp kaffir lime zest 1 tsp cilantro roots, scraped, chopped 1 Tbsp salt 1 tsp shrimp paste, roasted Beef and Marinade 1 kg. beef (I use the Chuck cut) 1 tsp ginger, julienned 2 cups coconut milk* 2 tbsp fish sauce To finish the curry 2 Tbsp oil 2 cups coconut cream* 1 Tbsp cardamom leaves 1 Tbsp whole cardamom 1 inch piece of cinnamon 150 g peanuts 5 whole shallots, peeled ¼ cup palm sugar 1 Tbsp tamarind, mixed with 1/3 cup warm water and strained 2 Tbsp fish sauce The Massaman paste will have to be used the same day if there's any water added. Otherwise it will keep for a few days in the fridge. It does not, however, freeze well. On Coconut milk: In Thailand, the first extraction with very little, if any, added water is called coconut cream (Hua Gati). This compares to sort of an extra virgin pressing of olive oil. The next extraction, with added water, is called coconut milk (Hang Gati). If you use canned coconut milk, just spooned off the thick "cream" part to separate it from the milk. Process: First you marinate the beef: Cut the beef into large chunks and marinate them in the coconut milk and julienned ginger. Set aside for at least 30 minutes before proceeding to the next step. Simmer the beef chunks in the marinade in for another half an hour. Next you pound the curry paste: (Note: This step is optional. You could just skip it if you opted for a commercial canned version. The resulting Massaman won't be as good, of course, but still quite acceptable.) While the beef is simmering, grind all the Masaman paste ingredients together in a blender until the paste resembles a fine puree. You can add a little water to the paste if it became too thick to be processed. Take care not to add too much water or the paste will create a nasty splash when cooked. If you want to use the Thai mortar and pestle to pound the paste, read the section “On the pounding of curry paste” below. Now you make the curry: Heat up a large wok or sautee pan with 2 Tbsp oil, add the massaman paste and cook for a few minutes, stirring vigorously. Add a cup of the coconut cream to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until the paste is completely dissolved into the coconut cream. Let the mixture bubble for a few minutes until a layer of oil begins to separate from the mixture. Add the rest of the coconut cream and let it bubble away for another few minutes until the oil begins to separate again. Add the whole cardamoms, cardamom leaves, whole shallots, peanuts, palm sugar, tamarind water, and fish sauce. Add the contents of the beef pan, and continue to simmer until the beef is tender. Be careful not to let the curry boil too vigorously at this stage or the coconut cream will curdle. Just let the pot simmer gently until the beef is tender. Check the seasoning before turning off the stove. The taste should be spicy (not too hot, but very spicy), salty, sweet, with an ever-so- slightly sour aftertaste, in this order. Do not let it be cloyingly sweet. Serve with freshly steamed Thai jasmine rice, or Naan bread. On the pounding of curry paste I know the thought of pounding your own curry paste could be quite intimidating, however, there is no need for alarm. There is definitely an order to this seeming chaos. First, you will need an appropriate tool. For this I suggest a good quality Thai mortar and pestle (Krok and Saak). I hope you know what I am talking about. Otherwise watch Jamie Oliver, his Krok is a constant presence on the countertop. You will need to "mise en place" all your ingredients. If your recipe calls for some ingredients to be roasted, do so. You can use your toaster oven or just dry roast in a pan. You should, however, roast the shrimp paste regardless of what the recipe says. Wrap it loosely in foil and roast in the toaster oven for about 5 minutes at 450F. Dried chilies are a main staple for all curry paste. Soak them in warm water for at least 15 minutes or until soft. Seed and chop them finely. While waiting for the chilies to soften, turn your attention to the other ingredients. Chop them as finely as you can. You can use your old workhorse Cuisinart for this, but don’t chop all the ingredients together, do each separately. When the ingredients are prepared and ready, start your pounding. The first ingredients into your Krok are chilies and salt. Pound them until very fine, then add the harder stuff such as kaffir lime zest, cilantro roots, galangal, lemongrass, turmeric, or others. Pound them until fine, it will help if you do one at a time. Then add your garlic, again pound finely. The next ingredient is a shallot. After you’re done pounding the shallot to a fine paste, the mixture in your Krok will be quite moist. This is the time to add powdered spices were they called for in the recipe. The last to go in should be the shrimp paste, since it is, as the name implies, already in paste form. Remember not to stare too closely while admiring the progress in your Krok, lest your eyes burn with excruciating pain from flying bits of the paste. If you are new at this, take a piece of paper or foil,cut a circle slightly larger than the diameter of your Krok, position the circle over your Saak or pestle and push gently downward. Your Saak should now be dressed with a homely little skirt. This will save your eyes from flying ingredients. After all the pounding, you should end up with a very lovely fine paste in your Krok ready for the next stage. You can keep the paste for up to a week tightly wrapped in the fridge, though the sooner you use the better it will be. Should you find yourself in a pit of self pity and depression after reading this, do not despair. It is entirely acceptable to dump all the ingredients at once into a good sturdy Cuisinart or even a blender, and let it do the dirty work for you. Your paste won’t be so lovely, and you will never pass for a good Thai daughter-in-law. Unless the latter is somehow your goal, your curry paste will do just fine. If you still not liberated from the bottom of the pit, get over to the nearest Asian supermarket and buy yourself some ready-made curry paste. Just don’t tell anyone, at least not around here. Recipe 2 Nam-sod, Kao-tod (Nam Pork Salad and Fried Rice Patties) By Pim Ingredients Kao-tod (rice patties) 1 Tbsp galangal, finely chopped 1 tsp dried chili, soaked in warm water for 15 minutes then seeded and finely chopped 3 Tbsp lemongrass, finely chopped 3 Tbsp shallots, finely chopped 2 Tbsp garlic, finely chopped 2 cups cooked jasmine rice 2 Tbsp fish sauce 1 egg Nam-sod (Nam Pork) 4 Tbsp finely chopped garlic (about 10 cloves) 1 pound ground pork 2 oz. pork skin, boiled for 10 minutes then sliced very thin ½ cup cooked jasmine rice 2 tsp salt To finish the salad 1/3 cup shallots, finely sliced 3 Tbsp cilantro, chopped 1 Tbsp green onion, finely sliced ½ cup young ginger, julienned 3 Tbsp lime juice, or to taste ½ cup of peanuts 10-15 dried chilies 2-3 Tbsp fish sauce 2 more limes, each cut into six slivers Making Kao-tod Pound the galangal, dried chili, lemongrass, shallots and garlic together into a fine paste. This is best done in a mortar and pestle. You could use a blender, but do not add any water, otherwise your rice patties will splatter during the frying. In a medium bowl, mash the herb paste, rice, egg, and fish sauce together by hand. Cover and set aside for later. The Kao-tod should not be fried up too long before serving as they will become soggy. Making Nam-sod Pound the garlic into a fine paste. In a large bowl, use your hand to forcefully mash together the garlic, ground pork, pork skin, jasmine rice, and salt. Knead the mixture a bit to build up gluten which gives the Nam a nice structure. Roll the ingredients into about 10 equal size balls. Steam the Nam balls for about 10 minutes or until just cooked. Do not over-cook them as the salad will be dry. Make-ahead note: You can make both Kao-tod and Nam-sod up to one day ahead. Follow the recipe to finish the salad before serving. To finish the salad: First you prepare the Kao-tod. Pat the Kao-tod mixture into patties, each about 3 inches in diameter and ¾ inch thick. Fry these in hot oil until golden brown. Set aside. Quickly fry the 10-15 dried chilies, only for 10 seconds or so, until crisp. Be careful not to let them turn too brown. In a large bowl, break up the Nam balls and mix in the lime juice and fish sauce. You can serve the salad two ways a) mix all the ingredients together, garnishing with the Kao-tod, fried chili and slivers of lime. b) on a large plate, put the Nam-sod in the middle. Arrange the rest of the ingredients around the Nam-sod and let your guest mix their own salad at the table. Recipe 3 Pad Thai Adapted by Matthew from Cook's Illustrated, July/Aug 2002 Ingredients 2 Tablespoons tamarind paste 3/4 cup boiling water 3 Tablespoons fish sauce 1 Tablespoon rice vinegar 3 Tablespoons sugar 3/4 teaspoon cayenne 1/4 cup peanut oil 8 oz thin rice stick noodles 2 eggs 1/8 tsp kosher salt 12 oz shrimp, peeled 2 cups water 1/4 cup kosher salt 1 Tablespoon minced garlic 3 Tablespoons minced shallots 2 Tablespoons minced preserved radish 6 Tablespoons chopped roasted unsalted peanuts 3 cups bean sprouts 5 scallions, sliced 1/4 cup cilantro leaf lime wedges Make tamarind water by pouring boiling water over tamarind paste. Let sit for a few minutes, stir well, and strain. Discard the solids. To the tamarind water, add fish sauce, vinegar, sugar, cayenne, and 2 tablespoons oil. Soak noodles in hot tap water 20 minutes. Drain. Beat eggs with 1/8 teaspoon salt. Dissolve the 1/4 cup salt in 2 cups water, and brine the shrimp in this solution for up to 30 minutes. Drain the shrimp and dry well on paper towels. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in 12" skillet over high heat for 2 minutes. Add shrimp. Stir-fry for 2 minutes or until nearly cooked through. Remove shrimp to plate. Add the last 1 tablespoon oil. Place over medium heat and add garlic and shallots. Stir constantly for 1.5 minutes. Add eggs and scramble 20 seconds. Add noodles and salted radish. Toss with two wooden spoons to combine with eggs. Add sauce and raise heat to high. Toss constantly until coated. Add 1/4 cup peanuts, bean sprouts, most of the scallions, and shrimp. Toss 2-1/2 minutes or until noodles are tender. Add up to 2 tablespoons of water if it begins to look too dry. Transfer to platter. Top with remaining peanuts, scallions, and cilantro. Serve with lime wedges. Optional: If you can get good dried shrimp, a couple of tablespoons added to the pan along with the noodles is a nice touch. Recommended reading Now that we've whet your appetite for Thai home cooking, here are some recommended books and web sites for learning more: Web sites thaifoodandtravel.com. Kasma Loha-unchit is the author of two cookbooks (see below) and she and her husband publish many fine recipes and articles on their web site. Pim’s comment: Her site also contains very good information of sources for Thai ingredients for those in the US. pai-kin-khao.com. Based in Thailand, this site has extensive Thai food articles, recipes, and menus. Pim’s comment: I find articles in this site to be quite interesting, but I am less impressed with some of the recipes there. My impression is that the site is more in the mold of Martha Stewart rather than the serious cooking of, say, Julia Child. The recipes there are mostly simplified, or even a bit too “fusion” for my taste. Books It Rains Fishes and Dancing Shrimp by Kasma Loha-unchit. Two excellent introductory books, the first a survey of Thai cooking and the second a book of seafood recipes. Thai Food by David Thompson. The biggest and most complete Thai cookbook available in English, but not for beginners. Lonely Planet World Food Thailand by Joe Cummings. More travel guide than cookbook, the author attempts to fully document Thai cuisine as it exists on its home turf today. That's a tall order, but Cummings, who has lived in Thailand for decades, is up to the task. Do not travel to Thailand without this book. Post your questions here -->> Q&A

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Post your Questions here -->> Q&A Amateur Cooking Competitions: Strategies for Success Instructor: Andy Lynes Introduction In this course, I will share my personal experiences of cookery competitions and suggest a method of producing dishes, menus and recipes that will catch the judge's eye and make you a winner. On completion of the this course you will : • Be able to identify opportunities for entering cooking competitions (both recipe only or recipe and cooking). • Know where to look for ideas • Learn some strategies for passing a paper sift/interview round • Learn a method for developing winning recipes/menus. • Have learnt to balance flavours and methods of cooking in a dish and over a number of courses in order to produce a winning entry, • Plan the production of a dish/menu under competition conditions • Be aware of some the obstacles and barriers to success in cooking competitions Before we begin… An important note about this course: I am an amateur cook based in the UK and the material included in this course is aimed soley at my fellow amateur cooks. All the competitions I have taken part in have been in the UK or Europe and have involved writing recipes, creating menus, cooking, or all three. This course excludes competitions which are knowledge-based i.e. that require only the answering of questions. I have no personal knowledge or experience of the world of professional competition, but from what I have read, I know there is a big gap in terms of degree of difficulty, pressure and levels of expected performance from that of the amateur arena. It may be interesting to discuss those difference with any professionals who have experienced professional culinary competition first-hand in the Q&A that accompanies the course . Cooking is not a competitive sport It could be argued that cooking is not suited to the competitive arena. Cooking is about providing nourishment for oneself and ones family and friends. It's an act of creation, something verging on the sacred, and should therefore not be devalued by being reduced to a mere spectator sport. The amount of love and care someone has taken to provide food for others is not something that should be judged. On the other hand, cooking is a craft, and the results of its application can be compared one against another to determine who in a group of people has the greater mastery. In addition, recipe writing and menu creation are measurable skills and can therefore be subjected to evaluation. Given such measureable criteria, it is therefore possible to say who within that group is the best cook or writer of recipes. Whether that actually means anything outside of the confines of the competition is another matter entirely, and something I will leave for readers to decide for themselves. Then Why Compete? I have derived a great deal of personal satisfaction from my participation in cookery competitions. They have provided me with the opportunity to travel, to appear on television, to have my recipes published in magazines and books, but also to learn more about the craft of cooking. The prizes have been nice, but have never been my main reason for entering. First and foremost competitions provide an impetus to create, to refine an idea further than I normally might and then to formally document that idea. Too many times I have thrown something together in the kitchen, stumbled on the beginnings of a successful dish, only to let it slip away, half forgotten. Competitions have afforded me the time and reason to retrieve some of those ideas and also create new ones. Identifying Opportunities. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. It is simply a matter of keeping your eyes open and being aware of where opportunities to compete might arise. In-house supermarket magazines may have recipe-based competitions, perhaps linked to the promotion or launch of a single product or range of products. These will require that you write a recipe that includes the product, or utilize products from a particular range. This type of competition will often appear in what are colloquially known as "woman's magazines" such as "Woman's Own" or "The Family Circle". Specialist food magazines such as the BBC's "Good Food" magazine may also be the source of similar competitions. In addition, they may from time to time organize those that involve the submission of a recipe for an initial paper sift, then the actual cooking of the recipe under competition conditions, often in a catering college or cookery school. These rounds are called "cook offs". Specialist interest cable TV channels such as UK Food TV have in the past organised competitions to find the next celebrity TV chef, and of course BBC TV had until recently its "Masterchef" format which also had a brief American incarnation. It is worth scanning the internet food and drink sites for announcements of competitions, although this really is something of a lottery. However, I did spot the invitation to enter the Sofitel Amateur Cook of the Year when it appeared on www.dineonline.co.uk, so it may bear fruit. Where to look for ideas Although most competitions will demand that your recipes and menus are "original", it is difficult to define what that might mean when it comes to cooking. What we do know is that you must not plagiarize the actual wording of any published recipe. Beyond that, who can say that your interpretation of wild mushroom risotto is not all your own? Therefore, the source of recipes and menus is wide open to the prospective competitor. It may be stating the obvious, but every time you open a cookery book, every time you read an article about food or a restaurant review, every time you eat out, you have an opportunity to gather ideas and inspirations for new dishes to add to your repertoire. You should not be looking to copy, but rather to draw inspiration from combinations of ingredients, the use of flavour, texture and temperature, the way food is presented on a plate and the language used to describe food. The internet is of course an essential tool for tracking down ideas. If nothing else, you have access to thousands of restaurant menus from all over the world which can be a wonderful starting point for triggering the creative process. We will expand on this and look at specific examples to illustrate as we progress through the course. Getting Over the First Hurdle In any competition, the way to succeed is to ensure you are not discounted, and that means having your act together at every stage. For some competitions, there will be only one stage, the submission of a recipe or several recipes to make a full menu. Others however will involve an intitial paper sift and/or an interview stage. For the BBC's Masterchef competition (now sadly discontinued), thousands of applicants were whittled down to the 144 invited to take part in 9 non-televised regional cook offs by means of a paper sift. This required the applicant to answer general culinary knowledge questions, say what their favorite cook book was, state why they would make a good contestant and describe what they would cook for a three-course dinner party menu for two people. In order to convince the programme makers I was a serious contender , I ensured I had the correct answers to the food quiz, told them I loved Marco Pierre White's books, and simply restated the rules of the competition and said I would meet them. So I reiterated that I will cook a three course meal in 2 1/2 hours. It will contrast flavour, texture, colour, etc. I also said that I loved to talk about food and that I could demonstrate skill in its preparation, attributes I imagined would be desirable for a TV show. I took particular care in composing the menu to ensure first that I could actually cook it, and secondly that it was well balanced—an absolutely crucial factor in cooking competitions. A poorly conceived dish or a menu that ignores the basic rules of balancing flavour, texture and cooking methods will mean certain failure. We will return to this point and expand upon it a little later on. The Sofitel Amateur Chef of the Year required a face-to-face interview with representatives of the competition organizers and with the mentor chef that would accompany the successful candidate to the cook-off in France. In this instance, it was necessary to convince the panel that the proposed dish met the stated competition criteria, and that it could be successfully prepared within the time allowed. As it happened I had little time to prepare for the interview and had only cooked the dish I had submitted once, which showed me that the dish was overly complex and required far too much last minute fiddling around. During the interview, I therefore had to think on my feet in order to answer the many technical questions posed by the chef who had spotted the deficiencies in my thinking just by reading the printed recipe. I relied heavily on my previous Masterchef experience and many hours spent cooking at home to essentially bluff my way through and suggest alternative ways of creating the dish that would be less risky to execute under pressure. So again, there is no easy, simple method to ensure 100% success, but that old standby, thorough preparation and a rigorous and unflinching critique of your ideas by you and, whenever possible, a friend whose opinions you respect, will help enormously. Developing Recipes and Menus Regardless of whether the competition you enter requires only the submission of a single recipe, recipes for a 3 course menu, or requires that you then cook those dishes, you must endeavour to maintain a balance between the elements of the dish and between the dishes within a menu. The general principles of menu planning are covered brilliantly in Janet A Zimmerman's eGCI course of that name which you can find here and which I would strongly suggest you read if you have not already done so. As the principles outlined can also be applied to creating a single dish, I won't cover those in general terms here, but rather take an example of a menu and its composite dishes and talk specifically about how I developed them for competition. The following menu won me the title of Masterchef of the South East 1997 : • Wild Mushroom Risotto with Salad of Herbs and Parmesan Crisp • Smoked Haddock with Grain Mustard Sauce, Deep Fried Leeks, Warm Potato Salad and Spinach. • Plum and Almond tart with Spiced Plum Sauce and Clotted cream Reading this now, it seems to a certain extent a meal of its time, certainly influenced by the likes of Marco Pierre White with its deep fried leeks and "salad of herbs", a dead give away! However, it embodies the sort of classic approach I was after, and avoided any ill-advised fusing of cuisines or ingredients that so very few people, professional chefs included, can pull off with any conviction. First, the menu reads well, like something you might enjoy eating. It also has a pleasing progression: from the simple but robust flavours of the risotto, a little extra textural interest being provided by the parmesan crisp and a little explosion of taste from the herbs; to the more complex construction of the main course with the smokey, tart notes of the fish and mustard balanced by the cream and starch with the refreshing green of the spinach to cut the richness, all topped off by the crunchy leeks which, formed into a loose ball and perched on top of the whole create an additional visual feature; finally the clean and classic frangipan and fruit tart, a treat without being overly sweet or heavy. The menu also provides the opportunity to demonstrate a variety of skills: stock and sauce making, cooking with grains, deep-frying, poaching and pastry work and thereby avoids any obvious duplication of ingredients or methods that might appear dull or unbalanced to the judges. The menu deliberately follows a seasonal theme, using ingredients associated with autumn in the UK e.g., mushrooms, leeks and plums. Here's how I remember the creation and development of the dish for the Sofitel competition. The criteria was to create a recipe using cod, new potatoes and another vegetable that reflected your region: I could think of a hundred and one ideas for cod and new potatoes, but nothing that seemed to reflect my own region's cuisine. Was this, I fretted, due to a fundamental lack of culinary knowledge or an ignorance of the rich gourmet history of Sussex? The answer, I realised was that there simply is no such thing as South of England cooking—except for fish and chips of course. And cockles and mussels. Or maybe that staple of the nursing home from Eastbourne to Bournemouth--boiled cod and parsley sauce with boiled potatoes. I began to brainstorm ideas. What about cod and mussels with a lemon and parsley broth served with new potatoes. Why not roast the potatoes with garlic and rosemary in some olive oil? Not sure about two such strong herbs together. Forget the broth but keep the potatoes, and instead braise the cod in some mirepoix and wine that has also been used to steam some shellfish. That would give the fish a lovely soft texture and should pick up some flavour from the cooking process. Why not take the cooked cockles and mussels from their shells and deep fry them in batter? A nice contrast of textures both within itself and with the fish, and a twist on the classic cod in batter. So we have our cod, batter, and "chips" in the form of the roasted potatoes. Why not go the whole hog and have some mushy peas and tomato sauce? Just whizz up some frozen peas with some butter and seasoning for the puree and how about baking some tomatoes slowly in the oven for a couple of hours, pureeing the pulp and adding it to some home-made mayonnaise. You could then thin it with some of the strained cooking liquor from the seafood to add some punch and bring the dish together. I cooked the dish for chef/mentor for the competition, Bruce Poole, at his restaurant in London, and got his feedback: "Cod perfectly cooked, if a bit on the large side. The batter is no good, we have a much better recipe, you can use that. There's a lot of oil coming off those potatoes, try using fondants instead. Pea puree is good, some mint might be nice". Preparations underway with Bruce in the Sofitel kitchen. Bruce and I with the completed dish. I cooked the dish again and talked over the results with Bruce on the phone. We agreed further simplifications and refinements: "Why cook the fish with mirepoix? Just a splash of wine will be fine, it will still be "braised". Don't bother combining the mayo and shellfish liquor. Make a buerre blanc with it, and pour over the mayo separately. Don't deep fry the cockles, the're too small and will over cook. Just reheat them in the butter sauce, and add some tomato concasse for a bit of extra color. The cod on a bed of spinach would really enhance the dish." Planning for the Competition If the competiton involves a timed cook-off, the most important consideration when planning your dish or menu is—will you actually be able to cook the food in the time allowed? If you only have to submit written recipes then you are, of course, free to create a variation on the braised lamb shank theme. However, if you have just 2.5 hours to cook 3 courses, then "braised lamb shanks" will be undercooked when it comes time to present to the judges. To take an actual example: The non-televised cook-off of the eventually abandoned Taste Cook of the Year competition required a chicken pie and chocolate dessert for 2 people to be cooked in 90 minutes. It seemed to me unlikely that I would be able to make a shortcrust pastry, rest it sufficiently so that it could be rolled out, and then bake it within the time allowed. I toyed with the idea of a pie topped with mashed potato, but decided that it lacked the visual appeal and depth of flavour to grab the judge's palate at first bite. Eventually it was my wife who found the solution and came up with the brilliant idea of using a suet crust, which is easy to make, requires no resting, rolls out like a dream and produces a crisp and tasty finish. To cut down further on preparation time, I simply wrapped a chicken breast in a mushroom duxelle and parma ham and enclosed it in the pastry and served it with fondant potatos, asparagus and a verjus sauce—simple-to-prepare but stunning. Warm chocolate cake, based on the Vongerichten recipe, finished what turned out to be the winning menu. You must never give yourself too much to do. It is worth bearing in mind that you are not feeding the judges, they are simply tasting your food, so there is no requirement to provide a lot of food. If you are tempted to add a little garnish here or a side dish there that you think might impress, don't. Simplicity and restraint will demonstrate your confidence and impress far more. I remember arriving at the TV studios for my first Masterchef heat with all my ingredients in one bag, whilst the other contestants ferried what appeared to be the entire contents of their local farmers market on palettes. I was horrified and thought I must have miscalculated badly. My food would be unimpressive compared to the wonderful creations these people would magic up. The truth was that the relatively simple and inexpensive menu I prepared was more to the taste of the judges than the complex and unbalanced menus of the other finalists. Cooking during the Masterchef competition. Shaun Hill, guest chef, is on the the left and the show's presenter, Loyd Grossman is on the right. Barriers to Success If you follow the advice contained within this course, I believe you will have every chance of succeeding in amateur cookery competitions. The biggest barrier between you and the prize is trying too hard. Cook what you know, what you love to eat, not what you might imagine to be competition food. The judges do not want to know how clever you are, but how much you understand food and how to prepare it. Most often, they want to be assured that you can identify the best seasonal ingredients and cook them in the most appropriate manner. Make sure you fully understand the criteria of the competition and that you are in a position to meet them. You must also be prepared to practice your recipes and menus as many times as is necessary to ensure you can complete them in the time allowed without incident. Eventually you will be sick of the sight of your own food. But only by trying out the recipes over and over will you become familiar enough with them to eradicate the logistical shortcomings of your method and be able to execute them without reference to recipes. Referencing your recipes may be disallowed by the rules anyway. But you will need to be confident enough to reproduce your menu in an unfamiliar kitchen, with other people cooking around you, perhaps even in front of an audience or TV cameras. The need to refer to recipes will help you with none of this. Here is the recipe for main course entry in the the Masterchef competition. Smoked Haddock with Grainy Mustard Sauce, Potato Salad and Deep Fried Leeks Ingredients For the fish • 4 x 175g fillets of smoked haddock • 600ml milk • 1 bay leaf • A few black peppercorns For the sauce • 50g butter • 2 shallots, finely diced • 250ml white wine • 250ml dry vermouth • 300ml vegetable stock • 150ml heavy cream • 1 tablespoon chopped chives • 1-2 teaspoons of wholegrain mustard For the salad • 225g waxy salad potatoes • 10ml olive oil • 5ml white wine vinegar • 1 teaspoon of chopped chives For the leeks • 2 leeks, trimmed • groundnut (peanut) oil for deep frying For the spinach • 225g spinach leaves, stalks removed • freshly grated nutmeg Method Trim the fish and remove any bones using tweezers. Sweat the shallots in 25g of the butter, add the wine to the pan and reduce to a syrup, repeat with the vermouth. Add the stock and reduce by half. Add the cream and reduce to a coating consistency. Add the chives and mustard at the last moment before serving and season with salt and pepper. Boil the potatoes in their skins until tender, then slice and toss with the oil and vinegar whilst still warm. Add the chives when cooled slightly. Split the leeks in half along their length and take the outer 4 layers or so and roll up. Slice along the roll to produce a fine julienne. Heat the oil to around 180 degrees C (360 F) and deep fry the leeks until crisp, then drain on kitchen paper. You must watch the leeks very carefully as they will quickly burn. It is worth testing a small batch first in order to properly judge the time required to crisp the vegetable. Heat the milk in a pan with the bay leaf and peppercorns until simmering, then poach the fish until just tender. You can add a little of the poaching liquid to the mustard sauce to enhance the flavour if you wish. Cook the spinach in the remaining butter, heated in a pan, until only just wilted. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. To serve, arrange a pile of the potato in the centre of a large white plate, and place 5 small piles of spinach around it. Place a fillet of the fish on top of the potatoes then pour around some of the sauce. Make a ball from a quarter of the leeks, seasoned with salt, by rolling them very gently between your hands (you will find that they tangle together quite naturally), and place on top of the fish. Post your Questions here -->> Q&A

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