Culinary Heresies

[Gabriel Lewis]

OK, I'll ask, what's wrong with using a garlic press???

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There's nothing wrong with using a garlic press, provided crushed garlic is what you want. Alliums take up sulfur from the soil and incorporate it into chemical precursors. When acted upon by certain enzymes, these precursors produce the compounds that comprise the characteristic raw allium pungency/flavor. In whole cells the precursors float freely in the cell fluid, whereas the enzymes are stored in storage vacuoles. When allium cells are damaged, the two are mixed and the enzymes break up the precursor molecules, creating "irritating, strong-smelling sulfurous molecules" (Mcgee 311).

What this all means is that the extent to which the tissue is damaged stipulates the degree to which enzymes and precursors mix. Hence mincing, pulverizing, slicing thinly, whole cloves, etc all have different effect. This is especially true of garlic as it has a "hundredfold higher concentration of initial reaction products" (Mcgee 311).

My theory is that the convenience of garlic presses led some people to start using exclusively crushed garlic. This produced a backlash against them, as others knew pulverized garlic produces a specific effect.

[purplewiz]

Not only do I use a garlic press, I use that chopped garlic that comes in jars. I can't taste the difference when it's simmered for a long time in a sauce. I only use the fresh when I know I can taste a difference.

I make my chicken stock with leftover ends of vegetables despite the exhortations of many cookbook writers to use only fresh vegetables. I get spectacular results with my bags of frozen garbage.

Marcia.

[MaxH]

I feel very strongly ... In one of Mark Bittman's books he mentions that every chef has certain ironclad rules some of which are pure nonsense, and in my experience this is true. My ironclad rule is this-be fearless! ... whatever works, works! ... why-WHY, the irrational prejudice against the use of garlic presses? You can't do this, you must do that-it's all jibber-jabber for the most part.

No kidding. No kidding. (Good comments, dave s.) The problem with so many cooking "rules" is that they're presented as mindless dogma. Do this because I said so. (Not "do this for the following good reason.")

Crushing garlic (with or without a press) leaves it one way, slicing it leaves it another. Whether you wash mushrooms or not affects how much water they retain because they are dense little sponges (so in a soup, it matters not). When I was taught some French pastries 25+ years ago the chef (who happened also to be a scientist) pointed out that salting masks rancidity and so traditionally only the freshest butter could be sold unsalted, therefore "salted butter" wasn't the same as unsalted butter plus salt. (Others have said this is less of an issue today.)

Imposing rigid rules is also so much easier than trying things and seeing what actually works ...

[DCP]

The problem with so many cooking "rules" is that they're presented as mindless dogma.  Do this because I said so.  (Not "do this for the following good reason.")

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Imposing rigid rules is also so much easier than trying things and seeing what actually works ...

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MaxH, I think you've hit on a key point right there: those who want cooking to be a series of straightforward steps find rigid rules pleasing. Rather than learning, treat it as a set of instructions. This applies to any number of skills that people don't care to learn.

I'll admit to being this kind of 'cook' years ago. When I first figured out how not to ruin a steak, it was with a very formulaic method - but it worked. I had to make sure to buy steaks of a very specific type and thickness, but the reproducible success was appealing when I just wanted to make food without buying it pre-cooked. Prior attempts based on recipes called for assumed knowledge of doneness and a working understanding of thermodynamics (and I feel completely justified in saying that with a straight face after reading this eGCI course material a few weeks ago )

Not to go off-topic, but I think many people treat cars the same way - turn the key, push the pedal, go. Doesn't work? Turn the key again. What if not then? Look at the lights. It gets too complicated to actually diagnose, so it's easier to call a professional. Or in the case of food, go out to eat.

Learning the how and why is a wonderful thing for those of us who appreciate cooking as a malleable set of techniques and loose guidelines from which we may grow (and there's so much to learn), but that requires treating it as an art/science: not a utilitarian technique. Cook to survive and be nourished, or cook to make and enjoy culinary masterpieces? It's two completely different approaches to what (I'd argue) is not the same end result at all.

Pardon the rant.

[MaxH]

I posted this elsewhere early 2004 to discussion on people learning rigid rules in formal trainings, then later exploring and (with luck) really learning their occupations:

A veteran restaurant manager with diverse experience described new grads from culinary schools with rigid ideas of how to do things (most trained cooks I've talked to mentioned this school rigidity and their own process of unlearning it) and also, the new grads' notion that their credentials free them from mundane chores like making sauces -- Knorr-Swiss mixes [!] were even proposed as a substitute by one such new grad. Another [veteran] in the same line was Tell Erhardt, German-born Philadelphia chef with spots on US nightly TV news a generation ago and a follow-around magazine interview, collected in Quinn's US restaurant book But Never Eat Out on a Saturday Night (ISBN 0385182201). [The interview is classic and necessary reading for anyone curious about restaurants -- MH.] Erhardt apprenticed young in Europe, and had bitter memories of the chef he worked under as a teenager, who whacked him on the head, he said, for mistakes. (It reads like Charles Dickens.) A positive side effect was that it quickly disabused Erhardt of some childhood food dislikes. "I put in onions [in the stockpot] one time and the chef says, 'First taste.' 'I can't,' I say. 'I don't like onions.' He beats me, he kicks me. I taste the onion and ever since I eat onions all the time. . . . That bastard, I still remember him. . . . But [Erhardt reflects philosophically,] "he teaches me to eat onions." (Quinn P. 38).

[LaurieB]

"

What this all means is that the extent to which the tissue is damaged stipulates the degree to which enzymes and precursors mix. Hence mincing, pulverizing, slicing thinly, whole cloves, etc all have different effect. This is especially true of garlic as it has a "hundredfold higher concentration of initial reaction products" (Mcgee 311)."

So, to ask the question, which method (mincing, slicing, using a press, etc.) would be (in general) best for which basic sauces/dishes?

LaurieB

[Eden]

On the last one about food safety, I watch Good Eats and I think Alton goes overboard, boarding on OC. I'm careful with meat -- getting it to temp, keeping it separate, etc.

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You don't have an officeful of corporate lawyers vetting everything you do and say in front of a national television audience, and Mr. Brown very likely does. They believe (rightly or wrongly I can't say) that if even one of the hundreds of thousands of people who watch Alton gets sick because they were doing something he did, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. And regardless of merit, their job is to keep that lawsuit from happening.

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There's another layer to it though beyond just fear of lawsuits. When I am teaching people about cooking, or when I am leading a team of cooks I am always much more fussy about food safety than I am on my own, mostly because I can't know how carefully they'll follow my instructions, so if they're a little lax from a starting point of careful that's probably fine, but if they get lax, when starting from laxness things could get ugly...

[Gabriel Lewis]

"

What this all means is that the extent to which the tissue is damaged stipulates the degree to which enzymes and precursors mix. Hence mincing, pulverizing, slicing thinly, whole cloves, etc all have different effect. This is especially true of garlic as it has a "hundredfold higher concentration of initial reaction products" (Mcgee 311)."

So, to ask the question, which method (mincing, slicing, using a press, etc.) would be (in general) best for which basic sauces/dishes?

LaurieB

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I'm no expert by any means, but I'll take a shot at this. Hopefully other more knowledgeable people can weigh in too.

As with anything in cooking, the method you select will reflect your desired outcome for a particular dish. I keep two main principles in mind. They are somewhat similar; the first relates specifically to garlic and aliums, while the second more is more general.

1. The more you smash up the garlic, the more enzymes and precursors are going to mix, and the more pungent/"hot" garlic flavor you are going to get.

The molecules generated by these enzymes are pungent defensive sulfur compounds, evolutionarly designed to make garlic distasteful to predators. In aioli for example, this is considered a good thing and is sought after, but it may not be what you are after in a salad dressing. Maybe you just want some of that meat/savory garlic flavor, but not too much "hotness", and so you opt to mince the garlic.

These differences are greatest I think, in methods in which the garlic is used raw/lightly cooked. Heat deactivates the enzymes, and destroys or changes a lot of the molecules that give raw garlic its pungent/"hot" flavor.

2. How you manipulate the garlic physically determines how it will react in specific situations.

Take whole cloves as an example, this leaves the cells relatively intact, and little mixing between enzymes and precursors should occur. This also means enzymes are deactivated by heat before they have a chance to act. This is also more or less the case for precisely minced garlic, where only minimal cell damage occurs. What's the difference between a saute with minced garlic and one with crushed garlic? This I don't know; I'm hoping to do a little experimentation soon and maybe that will reveal something. At any rate, I'm willing to bet the difference is fairly subtle, and, as purplewiz indicated, the two may be interchangeable for certain applications.

The second thing to keep in mind is how much surface area is exposed to the cooking medium. In whole cloves, a limited surface area of the garlic is exposed to the environment, and so not you aren't going to get as much garlic flavor into your food. You get more of a light garlic flavor and perfume I find. Minced/crushed garlic on the other hand, has nearly maximal surface area exposed to the environment. Bits of minced garlic are small enough that effectively all of the garlic can participate in diffusion. When you tossed some minced garlic into hot oil, you are extracting most of the fat soluble flavor compounds out of the garlic and into the oil.

Slivers of garlic might be considered an intermediate. They have more surface area than whole, but less than minced, and are large enough to provided noticable "bursts" of garlic flavor when chewed. They might be ideal lightly sauteed and tossed with fresh herbs and pasta for example.

I hope this helps. This is the way I like to approach cooking, and this sort of approach is what I think this thread is about. I don't think it makes sense to have hard/fast rules like minced garlic for dish x and whole for dish y. I'm guessing you feel the same way though, and just needed a way to phrase your question.

[MarketStEl]

I often tell people interested in pursuing a writing-related career, "You must first learn what the rules are in order to break them properly."

Cooking differs from this in that it's the processes and the reactions -- the chemistry -- that matter more than the rules (except those governing sanitation and food storage. There the writing analogy holds).

In culinary school, they teach rules. The graduates then head into the real world and learn about the processes and what happens after they've run their course.

I'm surprised there aren't more peer-reviewed papers on sauces and cooked food in biochemistry journals. (There was such a paper, "Sauce Béarnaise," published in the journal Biochemistry in 1985.)

[MaxH]

I'm surprised there aren't more peer-reviewed papers on sauces and cooked food in biochemistry journals.  (There was such a paper, "Sauce Béarnaise," published in the journal Biochemistry in 1985.)

Wow! I had no idea. (Greetings MSE!) Fernand Point, interviewed by Wechsberg (in an oft-cited little green book), described another side of it, the craftsmanship of Béarnaise -- just a few ingredients, yet it could take years to learn how to do it well, if you ever did.

Having chased a grant or two myself before, I wonder if it might be hard to justify getting funding for further projects of that kind. Also, years ago (before the subject became fashionable) there were a few refereed papers about absinthe pharmacology -- an informal but diligent 1997 review of them is Here -- but if I remember, some of them turned out to reflect poor science. (Which rarely happens in "serious" research, needless to say. :-) :-)

[Peter the eater]

Must I cook noodles al dente?! No I say! I like my noodles silky, soft and otherwise welcoming but certainly not mushy and definitely exhibit no resistance. 

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I agree 100%.

Same goes for risotto - there are few things with worse mouth feel than under-cooked rice.

[Peter Green]

Meat must be cooked. Pfah! A little bit of mad cow here and there, and suddenly you can't get anyone to do a tartare anymore.

Similarly, I think the restrictions on pork are somewhat anachronistic.

Mind you, I would probably still avoid chicken tartare in most places.......

[Megan Blocker]

OK, I'll ask, what's wrong with using a garlic press???

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I just hate cleaning mine.

[MaxH]

Must I cook noodles al dente?! No I say! I like my noodles silky, soft and otherwise welcoming but certainly not mushy

Of course there's some range of preference here (as always) but I wonder if another separate concrete factor enters (as with some other "heresies" that reflect unexplained rules):

Italian cookbooks I originally read (in English) spelled out the point: Pasta continues to cook for at least a couple of minutes after draining (because of residual heat, like other cooked foods unless you chill them fast) and point of the "to the tooth" test was the signal to pull the pasta, slightly undercooked, so that it would be just tender when served. (Not to serve it "al dente.")

[cdabney]

I use my microplane for garlic...

[Pontormo]

And what's the deal with no cheese with fish, especially in pasta concoctions? Pfui. I love a little Parm on my spaghettini con vongole.

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Briefly, in Italy, the dairy producing regions and the seafood producing regions in Italy didn't overlap so, due to the hyper-regionalised nature of Italian cuisine, there weren't any dishes that contained seafood and cheese. When Italian cuisine arose in America, those regional boundaries were erased and the uniform "Italian-American" cuisine was created. "authentic", regionalised Italian cuisine was created largely as a backlash to this and the no cheese with seafood rule became an emblematic touchstone of all that was wrong with Italian-American cuisine. It eventually made it's way back to Italy too but it was essentially largely popularised by Americans.

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Guy, I've never heard that explanation. Interesting. There are some traditional regional dishes in which cheese and fish are both ingredients. However, Alberto, an Italian expat returning to the homeland on vacation, mentions a modern dish that pairs tuna with fresh cheeses: See Post 29, then exchange with Docsconz in #37 & 38.

Cf. Faith Willinger: The biggest lie

And this example: Kevin72's calzones or Post 75.

Finally, while more about San Francisco and fish stews, cf. this general discussion.

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I never knew there were people who actually preferred stuffing/dressing baked in casseroles. Of course the moist glop retrieved from inside the bird is choice!

Edited April 27, 2007 by Pontormo (log)

[Idlewild]

I use my microplane for garlic...

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Brilliant! But do you find the garlic flavour cleans off easily? I use my microplane for a lot of stuff and wouldn't want to garlic all of it up. (Most of it... just not all of it )

[Shalmanese]

Here's one I've always found particularly odd. You read everywhere that the reason you make a roux is that if you add raw flour to a liquid, you need to cook it about an hour to "cook out" the raw flour taste. Before I found out about this, I had been using flour and water slurries all the time and never noticed any raw taste. And Beurre manie is raw flour kneaded into butter and I don't see how that could do anything to remove that raw taste. Frankly, I think the "raw flour" thing is a myth unless someone else is willing to claim otherwise.

[jumanggy]

I've noticed that juice cartons tell me to finish the box within ~4 days after opening. NEVER happens. It usually takes a little more than a week, but nobody's gotten sick yet.. I'm wondering if the 4 days takes into account people drinking from the carton or something.

I'd like to un-believe the Best Before dates on the bag of flour I have (one box I bought doesn't even have one... d'ough!). Can it really go bad in a few (about 5) months?

[chromedome]

Here's one I've always found particularly odd. You read everywhere that the reason you make a roux is that if you add raw flour to a liquid, you need to cook it about an hour to "cook out" the raw flour taste. Before I found out about this, I had been using flour and water slurries all the time and never noticed any raw taste. And Beurre manie is raw flour kneaded into butter and I don't see how that could do anything to remove that raw taste. Frankly, I think the "raw flour" thing is a myth unless someone else is willing to claim otherwise.

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You can do it either way, Shalmanese. You can precook your roux, or you can add it "raw" to your food and then let it simmer. I find that an hour is not usually required unless you're working with large quantities; at home a bit of quick roux or flour-and-water "whitewash" will be cooked out in a matter of 10 minutes or so...twenty at most. Like you, I was struck by the contradiction that roux "must" be cooked for an hour, but beurre manie was fine to add at the last minute (relatively speaking).

I would love to tell you that cooking out the flour is entirely a myth, but I'd be lying. I've tasted (and made...I have to cop to this one) sauces in which the flour was not adequately cooked out, and it was unpleasant. Pre-gelatinized flours are handy for those last-minute scenarios, or cornstarch can be used if appropriate to the dish.

[MarkIsCooking]

A few thoughts.

Several people in this thread have poo-pooed a variety of things relating to sanitation and food storage. A word of caution. 35 million people each year get sick from improperly handled food in their homes. The risks of poor handling are real. No, you won't get sick every time you skirt the rules, but it's not something to be taken lightly; and if you're very young or old or pregnant or have a suppressed immune system for some reason, your risks are far higher.

Re: the pot top question. Having the top on will help the boil quicker (i.e. before you add the product). Also, if you add your stuff to the water and the water stops boiling, it will come back to the boil faster with the top on. I don't know of any reason why the top would need to be on during the cooking process (once the water boils).

-mark-

[Shalmanese]

Heres something else I thought of. Lots of cooking books and shows will instruct you on the importance of mise en place and how you have to get everything anally arranged into neat glass bowls before you're even allowed to turn on the stove.

I think mise en place is essentially for restaurant cooking where you need to bang out 300 covers in an hour and I think mise en place is great for amateur cooks who are approaching a recipe for the first time.

For everyday cooking though, who has time to actually do mise en place? Personally, once I get a feel for a recipe, I can pretty much figure out when I should be doing what.

For example, say I'm doing a beef stew, then I'll cube and salt the meat while I'm heating up the oil in the pan. Once the meat is broken down, the pan should be hot enough so I start searing the meat. While I'm searing the meat, I'll start breaking down the mirepoix. While I'm doing this, I'll be turning the meat and pulling the wine, stock, tomatoes, flour etc. from various places. Once the meat is done, I'll start sweating the mirepoix while I dice the garlic. Once I add the garlic, I'll start chopping my tomatoes. Add in the flour, tomatoes, wine, stock etc and set it in the oven. By doing it this way, I can keep everything on a single chopping board and never have to transfer anything. If I'm running a bit behind, I can just take the pot off the stove and give myself a breather.

I know some people prefer to cook ultra-organised and others prefer to cook chaotically and my preference has always been that I love the rush of the kitchen where I'm doing multiple things at once.

[NWKate]

I really think that a lot of our rules come from that with which we are most comfortable. In other words, if my mother said so, it must be true. Also, for me, many of my rules found their origin in my childhood.

Okay- and here's the biggie-" Matzoh Ball Soup MUST be made with chicken stock- chicken stock I tell's ya- none of this VEGETARIAN wannabe cr-p!"

I argued with a friend of mine over this at length as I have made plenty fine soup using a good vegetable stock- but then, what do I know? I'm a convert which practically makes me a goyim in some circles...

Kate

Edited May 2, 2007 by NWKate (log)