Digest and discussion: Fine Cooking

[Marlene]

Fine Cooking, May 2006 - Issue 78

Before we get to the menu, other news from this issue include thoughts on various pieces of kitchen equipment, including the relatively new Box Grater from Micoplane . Now, I have one of these and I find the removable sliding food holder useless. It doesn't really hold much food, and you've got to cut your pieces to conform to it.

The new Maytag Ice2O French Door refrigerator with bottom mount freezer and an ice and water dispenser in the door. Until now, if you wanted the convenience of in door ice and water, French door fridges were not an option.

Fine Cooking editor Lida Bastianich takes us through the steps of making

Risotto, which snowangel will demonstrate for us next month.

Other recipes in this issue, but not tested here, include various sauces for vegetables, including a Lemony Tahini Sauce, Curry-Yogurt Sauce, and a Balsamic Bacon Vinaigrette Sauce.

Other meat and poultry dishes include Broiled Spice Rubbed Lamb Chops, Osso Buco, and Paprika Chicken with Keilbassa.

Our menu for this month:

Creamy Tomato Soup with Zucchini

Spicy Korean Style Pork with Asian Slaw

Vanilla Butter Cake with Chocolate Buttercream frosting and Raspberry filling.

Let's start with the Tomato Soup. This was very easy to make and can be easily made ahead. Excess portions can be frozen.

Gather all your ingredients, whole tomatoes white wine, cream, zucchini, garlic, onions, chicken stock.

Saute the zucchini and garlic till tender crisp then set aside:

Saute the onions, then add the whole tomatoes and sugar.

Add the broth and wine and simmer

Puree with an immersion blender:

Sprinkle with a little fresh or dried basil for serving. If serving as a starter, serve in soup cups, otherwise, this makes a nice light meal with some great crusty bread all on it's own. If you are making this soup ahead and not serving for a while, don't add the zucchini back in until just ready to warm again. I haven't made a lot of soups, but this one was easy with lots of flavour to it. I'll definately make this again.

Our main course this month is simplicity itself, but very tasty.

Start out with a pork tenderloin or single pork loin and slice it into 1/2 inch slices

Make the marinade:

Pour it over the pork slices and chill for a couple of hours.

In the meantime, make the dressing for the coleslaw:

Chop the cabbage and shred the carrots, slice the green onions and mix with the dressing:

Sear the pork slices:

Until nicely browned:

Arrange the coleslaw on a serving plate:

And arrange the pork medallions on top:

Served with steamed rice, the coleslaw acts as your side dish.

I really liked this dish because it was not only very flavourful, but very easy to make and a fairly quick. This would work very well as a week night meal when you need to get dinner on the table fairly quickly.

Dessert this month is a Vanilla butter cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting. Fine Cooking bills their buttercream frosting as fuss and stress free. Not for this girl. My stress levels were at an all time high after I tried and failed twice at it.

The cake itself is simple enough and delightfully light and airy.

Basic Ingredients:

This issue suggests a different way of combining your cake ingredients. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar first, they suggest starting with the dry ingredients and mixing in the wet in two stages:

I use magic strips for my cake pans always:

This method did indeed produce a wonderful light tasty cake:

Now onto the buttercream. No matter how hard I tried, and I tried twice, I just could not make their method work for me. In the end, in sheer frustration, I add a lot of icing sugar just so I could get it to a spreadable consistency. It was still good, but no way was it their method.

First time around I may not have whipped the egg whites enough:

The second time, I thought I had them right though. But no matter what I did, I could not get it to a spreadable consistency. Pourable, yes. Both times the egg whites did not stand up to pouring the corn syrup in. Add more liquid in the form of chocolate, and forget it. As I noted, I finally added icing sugar just to get it to spreadable consistency and even then, it wasn't great, but I was afraid to add any more.

I can't say for sure what went wrong here, but after trying it twice, I'm not optimistic about a third try.

Next month, Snowangel dishes fish and risotto!

[Chris Amirault]

Great stuff, Marlene! I'm interested in the buttercream blues. What happened? What were their instructions, and how did it fail? Inquiring minds...!

[Marlene]

I wish I knew for sure what went wrong! The instructions indicate to whip egg whites with a bit of sugar until medium peaks form. They describe this as the whites being "full, smooth and shiny with the peaks forming soft curls". I'm pretty sure I did that. They also use a mix of corn syrup and sugar which they say removes the need to monitor the sugar temp with a thermometer. Add that mixture, once it's melted to the egg whites and beat them until they are almost cool. Then add the butter one bit at a time until smooth and then the chocolate. It is possible, I suppose that the egg white/sugar mix hadn't stabilized properly, but I tested it and according to their instructions, the mix was "barely warm". I threw the first batch out and tried again with exactly the same results.

[Anna N]

WOW! Where is everybody? This is a terrific effort by Marlene.

I am no baker and though I read the buttercream recipe when I got my copy of Fine Cooking, I wasn't even tempted to try to make it and Marlene tried twice.

There must be lots of cake enthusiasts out there who can offer clues as to what might have gone wrong. Please chime in so we can all learn something.

[snowangel]

Marlene, I noted in the recipe that the cake layers (2 of them) are each sliced to make four layers. How easy/difficult was this? This is a step that has so intimidated me that I haven't even considered it.

And, more comments on the pork dish, please!

[Marlene]

Never having made a four layer cake before, I was a touch nervous about trying this, but it turned out to be very easy. Fine Cooking suggests tracing a line around the middle of the cake first with a serrated knife. Putting the cake on a turntable and rotating it as you slice makes this really simple, and helps someone like me who can't cut a straight line to save my life keep it pretty even.

What exactly do you want to know about the pork?

[snowangel]

In your initial post, you noted it was an amazing dish. Why? And, was the quantity of slaw to pork about right?

[Marlene]

Good question. And questions folks, will help me remember things to look for when I do the next issue! The pork was amazing for both its simplicity and it's flavour. On a busy night when we've got music, etc, its nice to be able to put a dish on the table in under an hour with very little fuss. Most of it can be prepped ahead of time - chopping the cabbage, shredding the lettuce and making the dressing. Then it's easy to throw together. The marinade for the pork provides a nice spice that sticks with the pork even after removed from the marinade and seared. The pork literally takes minutes to sear.

The one thing I recall now, is that I didn't think the recipe provided enough quantities for the dressing and since they also suggest reserving half of the marinade to pour over the finished pork, you'd need to up those quantities as well. I found I needed every bit of marinade I had for the marinade itself.

[Jake]

A large slicing knife comes in handy for slicing cake layers evenly, I find. They are very reasonably priced (read: cheap) at any supply store.

Can you chat a bit about the dressing for the slaw....it's called "Asian" why? Soy sauce? Fish sauce? Did you find it overly sweet?

[Marlene]

The ingredients for the dressing are basically Sesame Oil, rice vinegar, brown sugar salt, canola oil and asian chili sauce. It provides a nice kick, but no fish sauce!

[Anna N]

Marlene opted to make the Korean-Style Pork Medallions but as soon as I opened this issue I knew I wanted to try making the pork tenderloin steaks. I opted to go with my favourite pork seasoning Napa-style fennel rub rather than the rub given in the recipe and to forgo the sauce. These were excellent and a different way of using pork tenderloin. I have used a tenderloin to make medallions, butterflied and stuffed one, grilled one, roasted one and now I have made steaks from one.

Edited to add link to recipe for fennel rub.

Edited April 3, 2006 by Anna N (log)

[birder53]

I haven't made anything from this issue yet, but the pork dishes look really good. I've found that many of FC's recipes do not produce as much sauce as I would like, so I try to figure out a way to increase the sauce without totally ruining the recipe. I also increase the vegetables called for since we seem to like more than called for. I run the risk of overcrowding the pan and steaming/boiling instead of sauteing.

Marlene, the cake looks great. Other than the problems with the buttercream, how did it taste? I'm an occassional baker, so I need to know I've got a good recipe for the rare occassions when I actually bake a cake!

Has anyone else found FC to be less interesting over the last 6 months or so? I used to end up drooling as I read each new issue, but lately I haven't been very inspired by their offerings.

[Marlene]

Anna, I' ve been looking at the other pork tenderloin recipe and contemplating it. Now I'll just have to try it!

birder53, the cake was really really good. And easy. Like you, I don't bake a lot so it's nice to have a recipe onhand that I know works.

I've only been getting Fine Cooking for about six months. So far, I've made at least one thing from every issue I've received. I agree with you about sauce quantities though. There was definately not enough for the pork medallions and the coleslaw could have used more as well.

I could have wished for more vegetable/side dish receipes in this issue though. Hopefully as we are moving towards spring and fresh produce the next issue will provide some interesting sides for our monthly meals!

[choux]

If you want a lot of veggie ideas, they have just put out 'Cooking Fresh', in which they collect recipes from the old issues and re-issue them. I't great to have them all in one spot, and it reminds of all the recipes I forgot to try. It's not part of the subscription, I ordered mine from the website and got it today, so it should be in stores soon.

I'm trying to figure out your buttercream dilemma, I make a very similar recipe and have no trouble. After reading the recipe in the magazine, I am wondering if you kept your mixer on while pouring in the syrup. The directions are a bit vague there. You should end up with very fluffy egg whites, they should at least double in volume. It will taste like marshmallows. Yum. (If you take a bit and brown it with a blowtorch it is just like toasted marshmallows.) Then you whip it until it is cool and then add the butter. It may look like total,crap at some point when you are adding butter (curdled and lumpy), But just keep whippin' and it will emulsify.

[Marlene]

I did in fact recently order the Cooking Fresh along with three other ones, Dinner with Friends, 101 Quick and Delicious Recipes and Comfort Foods. It comes as a set. In addition, I managed to snag the Weekend Cooking edition from my newsstand the other day, which is also not part of the subscription. I'll look forward to checking out the veggie dishes when the set arrives!

So, to the buttercream. Yes, I kept the mixer on while adding the syrup. Maybe I didn't whip it long enough after I added the butter? How long would that be do you think? It is entirely possible that I'm going to have to try this recipe again.

[Shaya]

I made the creamy asparagus soup tonight, it was really nice. I added just a hint of cream although it was great without it too. I made the veggie stock the other night so making the final dish tonight was pretty quick. Although mine is not terribly photogenic, you can see a picture here on the Dinner thread.

[Marlene]

Shaya, did you have any soup leftover? The recipe notes this one can be served warm or cold, and I'd be interested in how it comes across cold.

[LaurelH]

I might be able to help with the buttercream. I haven't tried that particular recipe but it looks like it should work.

First, I use Rose levy Berenbaum's method for icing which is fail safe.

She recommends that you pour the boiled sugar syrup into a greased glass measure so that it does not continue to cook and is easier to pour.

Also, if using a heavy duty stand mixer you should stop the mixer add a dribble of sugar syrup, mix for 5 min. add another dribble, mix 5 min. and so on; adding a greater amount of syrup each time as you go so that it doesn't end up stuck to the side of your mixer bowl.

It seems that your icing was just too warm.

Try whipping the meringue for at least 10 minutes before adding the butter. It should be at room temperature.

Make sure that the butter is at room temperature as well. Still firm, but soft enough to put a thumbprint in.

And once you have added all the butter continue whipping until you reach the right consistency. It shouldn't take too long if your ingredients are at the correct temperatures as you go.

Good luck, if you do try to do it again.

I love the fact that you are documenting your adventures while cooking your way through the issue of Fine Cooking.

[Marlene]

Laurel, I've been thinking about this and I think you're right. It was just too warm. I'm off on a week's vacation, but I think I will definately try this again when I get back. Who knows, maybe third time is the charm!

In the meantime, Part Two of this issue's digest will appear in this space tomorrow!

[MollyB]

I tried the Spicy Korean Style Pork recipe a couple of nights ago, and it was excellent (although quite salty). The Asian slaw was great with the pork the night I made it, but, in case anyone needs to know, it does not hold up well. I took leftovers for lunch the next day, and the slaw had become limp and a bit slimy. (The pork was still really good.) If you're planning to have leftovers, I would recommend holding back part of the slaw and the dressing and tossing it just before eating the leftovers. Or maybe regular green cabbage would work better in the slaw if you want it to hold up OK as leftovers?

[Shaya]

Shaya, did you have any soup leftover?  The recipe notes this one can be served warm or cold, and I'd be interested in how it comes across cold.

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I did have some left over - only because we had a big meal following the soup. There's enough for one lunch portion. The 2 adults had one bowl each and my 5-year-old had 3 small bowlfuls. I'm still not sure he knew it was asparagus but he loved it! (Then again, he recently told me his favorite part of miso soup is the seaweed, so he obviously has very tolerant taste buds!)

[CaliPoutine]

[

Dessert this month is a Vanilla butter cake with a chocolate buttercream frosting.  Fine Cooking bills their buttercream frosting as fuss and stress free.  Not for this girl.  My stress levels were at an all time high after I tried and failed twice at it.

←

Marlene, I'm glad to see that I am NOT alone. I tried that buttercream as well( the vanilla version) and It would not thicken up at all. I tried to pipe it on some cupcakes and it was too runny.

I thought " ok, maybe its the recipe". So, i went looking at a buttercream thread and after reading thru it, I saw that a lot of ppl reccomend RLB Mouselline buttercream. I tried that( bad idea, on the day I had a cupcake tree job) and that didnt work either. It just wouldnt come together. So, I chucked it into a tupperware and made a standard icing sugar( confectioners sugar) and butter version. Oy, I just dont think me and italian buttercreams work well together.

[Marlene]

It's really nice to hear that I'm not alone in my buttercream failure. It concerns me a little that the magazine bills this as stress free and damn near foolproof. It's not either as far as I can tell!

[snowangel]

Welcome to part two of our Fine Cooking, Digest with a Difference from the May 2006 issue of Fine Cooking.

Some notes on articles. They reviewed Today's Top Toasters. One of their top picks was a KitchenAid toaster (a new product not available until May). They commented that this particular toaster did very well on even toasting when toasting just one slice, but that "with two slices you get one side that comes out a little lighter than the other." I can't recall the last time that I only toasted one slice.

I loved the article on Asparagus, and it prompted me add it to the grocery list!

Our menu for the second part of this digest includes:

Goat Cheese Spread with Herbs & Olive Oil

Crispy Breaded Tilapia with Classic Tartar Sauce

Risotto

Caesary salad (not in the magazine)

Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies and Cream

Mid-afternoon, I got the Goat Cheese Spread with Herbs & Olive Oil ready:

Everything is set out.

I used a Wisconsin goat cheese that I really like. For the herbs, I chose chives and parsley -- I knew that would be the most friendly to the kids. The little plastic container that is peeking out has white wine in it. I'm not a big white wine person (it gives me a pretty fierce headache), so when we have extra, I freeze it in two tablespoon amounts.

Minced herbs:

Mixing the goat cheese, cream, olive oil and wine. I opted not to use the food processor, but stir up in a bowl. The recipe says you might need a bit more cream, and I did.

Mixed in the herbs (reserving a teaspoon for a garnish), lemon zest (reserving some for the garnish) and salt and pepper to taste.

Tasted and adjusted the pepper up a bit (no measurements specified for s/p).

Lined a custard cup with plastic wrap (as per the recipe) and spooned in the spread.

Now, there should have been a bit more of the goat cheese mixture than this. Diana walked in the door as I was finishing this up, and before I got it into the plastic wrap, I had to get Heidi off the bus. When I got back inside, a portion of it was sitting atop half a toasted bagel -- Diana's after school snack. This stuff is absolutely wonderful. I liked the chives very much. The lemon was very much in the background, we were aware that it was there. This is definitely an easy-to-spread mixture. Very nice mouthfeel.

If I made this again with chives, I would up the quantity of chives. In fact this stuff was so good that I'm thinking of putting it on a menu for a 50th anniversary open house I'm hosting for my parents in June.

I also got the tartar sauce ready before the kids got home from school. First, gather ingredients:

The recipe did not specify brined or salt-cured capers; I had the latter so that's what I used. The flat-leaf parsley at the market was a little limp, so I snipped off the ends and put the bunch in a glass of water, and it perked up nicely.

Mis:

Mixed and ready for plastic wrap and the fridge:

A quick taste of this makes me very happy!

Knowing that the risotto will require a lot of attention, I started to get things ready for the tilapia:

Plain country style white bread, crust removed, and made into crumbs in the trust KA. The two eggs and flour container are out.

Then, on to the risotto. More ingredient gathering:

Hiding in the background is extra-virgin olive oil. I neglected to pull out the salt and include it in the photo of the ingredients. The Rubbermaid Takealong container has very concentrated stock, which I diluted. This is an interesting recipe, because it is more of a technique, offering different suggestions for layering flavors. Given the potential pickiness of my kids, I opted to go with shallots as a base and finish with scallions. Dried mushrooms or saffron had the potential for an "eeww, I'm not touching that" factor. I opted for Romano on the table with the risotto since my kids prefer it to Parmesan.

So, I chopped shallots and sliced scallions.

One thing I appreciated was a measurable quantity of the shallots. I'm always puzzled when a recipe says "1 medium onion" or "3 large garlic cloves." What is medium or large to you might not be medium or large to me.

I set the stock on to heat, and opened the bottle of wine.

Then, I sweated the shallots in olive oil and when they were translucent, added the rice. The directions say to toast the rice for about 3 minutes, and that you "should hear a clicking sound when you stir it." Well, mine had that clicking sound from the beginning, so I went with the three minutes.

I added the wine:

And when it was absorbed, ladled in (actually, scooped out of the stock pot with a 1 cup Pyrex liquid measuring cup) 2 cups of stock, as per the instructions.

Now, I've never made risotto before, but I don't remember my brother-in-law adding that much stock initially when he made it. But, I forged ahead.

About now, I realized that I had the potential to be in trouble. Risotto doesn't wait, and needs attention, as did the fish, so Diana to the rescue. She read her honors English assignment while stirring risotto, while I got busy with the tilapia.

Now, try as I might, I couldn't find four 4 oz fillets, so I opted for five fillets which totaled one pound, and give that we are a family of five, it worked out great. In the above photo, I have everything in place, and the fillets have been salt and peppered.

This is a messy process. Meantime, the oil is in a pan and heating, and I test the temp as they suggested (and I usually do) with a few crumbs:

It's sizzling, so it is time!

Someone during this, I had Peter come in and tear up some lettuce. He took over stirring the risotto so Diana could dress the salad and grate some romano for the risotto.

Dinner!

Comments:

That tartar sauce was absolutely fabulous. Neither Diana nor I generally like tartar sauce, and this was perfect. The red onion added a crunch, the capers a nice salty edge, lemon juice (next time I'd not do 2 t. but 1 T.) just made this right, and kept the sweet pickle relish from making it too sweet. Peter wished I'd doubled the recipe because it would make a great dressing for tuna salad.

The fish. We often fix fish, especially when we're at the cabin or ice fishing and catch it ourselves. Normal prep is dip in egg wash (I use one egg beaten with some water, which this recipe didn't call for -- they just used egg). I think cutting the egg with water is a good thing -- the egg doesn't seem so "glumpy." I usually eliminate the flour step (which I didn't think added anything). And, until now, I've done what my MIL always did -- breaded in crushed up saltine crackers. Quite frankly, I'm going to revert to the saltine crackers. This particular might have been easier with drier bread crumbs. The bread crumbs also "glumped" up and didn't provide nearly as crispy a coating as my typical method. Plus, I had a dirty food processor instead of a plastic bag (I crush them in a plastic bag with a rolling pin, which doesn't get dirty) to toss.

Further to the fish. A 3-4 oz. fish fillet does not fill up, even with sides, a 10-year old boy who has spent the afternoon racing on a bike for 2 hours, nor does it satisfy a 15-year old girl who has weight training and volleyball practice after school. Depending on who's eating, adjust quantities.

The risotto was perfect. I was glad I made it so "plain" because I have leftovers which I will patty and fry. This is not a recipe per se, as I mentioned above, but a technique, with all sorts of suggestions for modifications, which might put some people off -- those who want precise amounts and prescriptions. My one annoyance was that in the introduction, they refer to you to page 72 and their Test Kitchen section for a discussion of rice, when actually, the discussion is on page 74 (the third page of the Test Kitchen section). But, that Test Kitchen section does discuss using leftover risotto to make fried patties.

Just after lunch, I got the dessert ready. Actually, I had started on this a couple of days ago, because they suggest creme fraiche (noting that you can use all whipping cream if you'd prefer). Since my market often doesn't have creme fraiche and when they have it, they want an arm and a leg for it, I made my own:

Creme fraiche is so easy to make; I wish they'd had a little note about how to make it. But, a quick google reported that I needed to mix 2T of buttermilk with 1 C of cream in a glass jar, let stand at room temp for 12-24 hours -- or until thickened -- and then refrigerate.

I had not thawed the raspberries, so I measured out what I needed and gave them a quick defrost in the microwave.

The instructions tell you to add sugar to 1 cup of raspberries and sugar to 2 cups -- in separate bowls, and let them sit for a few minutes before mashing them up with a fork.

Then, for the sauce (the 2 cups of raspberries), you strain through a sieve, pressing with a spatula to extract all of the juice.

Normally when I've made a raspberry sauce, I have combined the raspberries in a saucepan with the sugar and cooked it for a bit. I think it's easier to get every bit of juice when you do it "my" way.

I added a bit of lemon juice and kosher salt and had a tasty sauce.

The cream and creme fraiche:

Whip together with a bit of sugar. They say to use a medium bowl and a hand mixer. I don't have a hand mixer, and my medium bowl seemed too tall and narrow. Whip to tall, firm peaks.

Fold in the remaining 1 cup of mashed raspberries, "leaving streaks."

I crushed up 15 of the chocolate wafers and folded them in. I transferred it to a different bowl after that and pressed plastic wrap to the surface prior to refrigeration.

They suggest scooping this out with an ice cream scoop, but the one I have doesn't have one of those wire things for releasing the scoop. So, the stuff stuck to the scoop and I just used two big spoons.

I must admit I was a bit hesitant about this dessert because I am not a big raspberry/chocolate fan, but when I think about it, most desserts with this combo are pretty heavy and there isn't much to cut the intensity of the chocolate and raspberry. But, this dessert was absolutely outstanding. I was hesitant about the instruction to let it sit in the fridge long enough for the cookie bits to soften, but since there is a cookie on the side, it was wonderful. The silky of the whipped, but somewhat more substantial of the softened cookies...divine. This would make an outstanding dessert when entertaining because other than plating, it is all done in advance. It's so pretty and so unusual -- different than the cakes, tarts, etc. which are so often served.

One of the neatest things about this meal is that the combo of dishes I chose made this a sort of "a la minute" menu that required more than the two hands I have. So, I called on the kids and we had a lot of fun doing this together.

[Anna N]

Excellent, Snowangel.

Last night I made the Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies and Cream and it was delicious. It's one of those recipes that is fairly simple but so much more than the sum of its parts.

I have never been able to source creme fraiche around here (Whole Foods might carry it but I rarely get there) so I make my own. Usually I use buttermilk and heavy cream but I was out of buttermilk and used sour cream instead. It is not nearly as good as with buttermilk but it worked OK in this recipe.

We like Tilapia and used to eat it quite a lot but the last couple of times we found it to be bland and insipid and have not had it in quite a while but I might give it another go. Have you tried using panko instead of breadcrumbs? We find it gives a lovely crisp coating to most things.

Thanks for doing this as I really enjoy these cook-alongs.