Farofa

 Unlike American steakhouses, where you’re given one big piece of meat and a limited number of sides ordered ahead of time, Brazilian establishments serve you much smaller quantities of meat per portion, but there are many more options, and the selection is virtually unlimited. The salad bar is open, and depending on the set-up of the restaurant, you either form a line at a grill and select meats from spits being rotisseried on a coal or wood fire, or waiters come with those spits from table to table and you, the customer, indicate with a card if you want the next meat rotation or not. In any case, farofa is found at every Brazilian steakhouse and is an integral part of not only the traditional Brazilian barbeque experience but also a staple of home cooking and a regular accompaniment to red meat or chicken.

The concept of “farofa” is a rather difficult one to explain to an American audience because no true analog exists. Perhaps the best approximation of the dish lies in what we Americans call “stuffing” or “dressing,” although I’ve never seen farofa presented as “stuffing” is here in America, that is, inside of a whole bird or roast of meat. However, it is my hope that using “stuffing” as an analog in the American culinary vernacular will make this dish substantially more accessible to even the most novice cook. 

Whether someone can make good farofa might well be a good litmus test for how well any given chef has mastered Brazilian home cooking: everyone has their own family recipe, there exists an enormous variety of interpretations of the dish. 

Every farofa has a few common elements: eggs that are somehow scrambled, some sort of flour, and an assortment of mix-ins. The following is my immediate family’s recipe—my mom and I use this, but, just for the sake of showing how much variation there is in this dish, I’ll point out that my aunt does something totally different from what my mom does, which is probably totally different from what my grandmother would do—and that’s just on one side of the family. This immense variability will definitely play to the advantage of any American home cook wanting to try farofa: whatever your tastes, you can adapt your farofa to include those ingredients prepared exactly as you like them. 

Farofa is a quick dish, so I strongly recommend two technical points: first, put your phone away. You cannot afford to be distracted while preparing farofa. I’ve learned this from experience; they burn very quickly if you’re on your phone and not giving them the attention they need by stirring pretty much constantly. Second, reach and maintain a state of what the French call “mise en place.” This term, French for “everything in its proper place” means cutting, washing, seeding, etc. anything you need well in advance of when you actually need it, and even before you start properly cooking. Do all your washing, chopping, and other prep work early; this dish comes together quickly enough that a few seconds cutting an onion might mean the difference between good farofa (if you had already cut the onion) and a bad, burned one (if you waited until you needed the onion to cut it). If you learn nothing else from farofa, learn to always maintain mise en place, even in your home kitchen. 

I like to start my farofa by sweating out any alliums—relatives of garlic, like garlic itself, yellow or white onions, shallots, scallions, or leeks— I might have in my fridge. The objective when sweating vegetables out, especially alliums, is to minimize browning. That’s a different technique, caramelization. When sweating, cook the alliums gently until they are translucent, but don’t really pick up any color.  

Once the alliums are sweated out, place 3 beaten, seasoned (just salt and pepper) eggs in the pan, and keep the eggs moving until cooked through. Your objective is not to form an omelet here, but to fully cook and scramble the eggs without burning them, and without integrating the alliums into the eggs either. (This is the main difference within my family—some people cook the eggs with everything else and break them up in the same pan, while others cook the eggs separately, break them up, and then introduce them to the other ingredients.)

Once the eggs are fully cooked, add in some sort of flour or meal. Cassava or yucca flour is traditional, but, probably because of the quarantine associated with the coronavirus and the shortages that have resulted, I can’t recall the last time we’ve had cassava-based farofa; instead, we’ve been using cornmeal, which has been much more readily accessible, and, I’d argue, produces an even better flavor profile than with the cassava. Keep everything moving so as not to scorch either the now-fully-cooked eggs or the (yucca or cornmeal) flour. Your only objective at this point is to lightly toast the flour until aromatic and to introduce the other flavors in the pan to the flour. 

Once enough flour has been incorporated, the dish should resemble an American stuffing with small particles, not a batter. At this point, if desired, fold in whatever accouterments you wish to add. Remember, to an American home cook, you’re assembling something similar to stuffing. By this point, you’ve already taken care of your starch base (flour here, bread in stuffing) and your binder (eggs in both dishes). Feel free to add in whatever you like, exactly as you would when assembling a stuffing with your favorite mix-ins. We normally add white raisins and/or black olives, just keeping the pan on the heat—and stirring constantly—until incorporated and heated through. Once all your flavorings are incorporated, turn off the heat and taste the farofa for seasoning. 

As mentioned before, farofa is traditionally served as an accompaniment to red meat or chicken, also accompanied by rice, beans, and the vegetable side of your choice. 

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Ragù Bolognese alla Quarantena

Ragù Bolognese is a true comfort food, a welcome quasi-nostalgia in this time of uncertainty as we deal with the worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus. Because of this new virus, I’ve had to make some changes to how I prepare Ragù, so this is not a traditional recipe as would be seen in Italy by any means, but it’s similar enough that I’ve coopted the name and adapted a few elements of this classic to make it my own, in part to leave my individual mark on the dish as a home chef, in part because I had to since supplies were limited because of the virus-related lockdowns.

Technically, I’ve only made a proper Ragù Bolognese once or twice since coming home from campus back in March, while we still had wine at home. We haven’t had wine since our only bottle finished very early in the pandemic, and because wine requires handing over an ID for age verification in Georgia, to limit contact with others when we go out, we haven’t bought any in months. Technically, Ragù Bolognese is a simple meat, wine, and stock sauce with a proportionately very small amount of a tomato product (usually highly concentrated tomamto paste, which is just a tomato sauce left over the heat for hours and hours). But since we’ve been out of wine for months now—and we probably won’t get more wine until well into 2021—I’ve made several changes to Ragù Bolognese to fit what we have at home during the quarantines imposed because of the Coronavirus. And while Ragù Bolognese is typically made with ground beef and/or ground pork and/or ground veal, we’ve been using ground turkey since the pandemic broke out. 

My variation on the sauce, in common with the traditional version, starts with browning ground meat: in my case, turkey (traditionally, any combination of beef, pork, and veal). I start with enough olive oil to coat the bottom of my 3-quart sauté pan (or my 9-quart Dutch oven, if the grocery store’s substitutions give me much more meat than I asked for), and I leave it over high heat for several minutes. The oil should be hot enough that a quarter of a teaspoon of water evaporates almost instantly—3 seconds or less—before any meat ever touches the pan. Once the pan is hot enough, the ground meat can go in. When it goes in, it’s okay if the entire block of ground meat goes in as one piece. You will need to stir pretty constantly until it’s broken up into individual grounds of meat. Ground meat doesn’t immediately brown. Before it can do that, it needs to release some moisture which then needs to evaporate. (Don’t worry, this won’t be dry or gummy.) Once the moisture is released and evaporated, the meat will begin to fry in the oil and in its own rendered fat. It takes some time to learn to tell the difference, but the two parts of the browning process sound different.

As with many of the recipes I’ll share, mise en place (“putting everything in its proper place” by having everything chopped, washed, processed, etc. ahead of time) is critical. Part of mise en place here is to process 5 tomatoes, 2 red bell peppers, and one yellow onion until smooth and emulsified (to where you cannot distinguish pieces of tomato from pepper from onion, and you are left with a relatively thick, red liquid in your blender). Once the meat has been browned, this mixture (about 32 ounces of liquid) should go into the pan with the browned meat. Further, add one cup of cartooned, homemade, or reconstituted chicken stock (stock from a powder or bouillon cube is fine). Season with dried oregano, thyme, bay, and dill. Grind in fresh black pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and let simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring every 7 minutes or so. If the sauce starts to evaporate too quickly, add in more stock. When the sauce is otherwise complete, taste for salt—you added chicken stock, which may have a considerable amount of salt in it already, so taste the sauce before you add any more salt. 

Cook one pound of long pasta (fettucine, spaghetti, pappardelle, etc.) to one minute short of what the manufacturer lists as the time for al dente pasta. At that point, drain the pasta, and finish the last 60 seconds folding the pasta into the ragù. Serve garnished with parmesan and or pecorino romano. 

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Creamy mashed potatoes

This recipe, set to go live with the others, is my go-to mashed potato dish, especially for special occasion dinners like birthdays, anniversaries, Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. However, this dish is versatile enough that it can be used at any time of the year and works well in any context where mashed potatoes are appropriate. As with its companion recipes, don't get scared by the length of the recipe that follows. It's only this long because I explain not only what to do and when to do it, but also why to do it. Great chefs separate themselves from good chefs in their knowledge and execution of a good potato dish. 

There are generally three kinds of potatoes on the American market: waxy, mealy, and somewhere in between. This recipe works best either waxy or intermediate potatoes, like Yukon Golds. Mealier Russets, the typical baking potatoes, don’t have the right consistency for this dish. 

The dish starts with 2.5 pounds of peeled potatoes left soaking in water. Keeping the potatoes soaking in water once they’ve been peeled to prevent them from oxidizing. Remove any eyes (brown spots/blemishes deeper than the surface of the potato) as you peel; most peelers have potato eye removers. However you decide to peel your potatoes, exercise caution. Keep things as organized as possible in a kitchen, and peel them into a single pile for easy cleanup. Do one task at a time, do it completely, and do it well. After all the potatoes have been peeled, cut them into uniform 1-inch cubes. This will ensure the potatoes all cook thoroughly, and that they do so at the same rate. 

Drain the potatoes from the water in which they sat while being peeled to rinse off some of the extra potato starch. Refill a large lidded pot—somewhere between 4 to 6 quarts is ideal—with fresh water to cover the potatoes entirely, plus about an inch and a half. Lightly salt the potatoes; a teaspoon or so is fine at this point. More can be added later if necessary. Cover the pot and place it over high heat. All else equal, salted water takes longer to boil than unsalted water, so be patient with your potatoes as they come to a boil; after all, they have been salted and are starting from cold, so this will take a while.  From cold to done, this should take about 35 minutes, but the time depends on the size of your potato pieces and the power of your stove, so after 20 minutes or so, periodically check your potatoes. When you feel minimal resistance, after however much time has elapsed, they are done. 

Drain the potatoes, returning them afterward to the same pot in which they were boiled. Add 3 to 4 ounces of low-fat milk and 3 to 4 tablespoons of butter (about half a stick) and stir in rather vigorously with a spoon until incorporated. You can alternatively use no milk and more butter, or no butter and more (whole) milk if you wish. Taste for salt content. Salting the water infused the potato pieces, which have by this point become mashed potatoes, with salt, but you may want to add more now. Add seasonings to taste. I go with dried dill, thyme, oregano, and paprika, plus freshly ground black pepper and freshly grated nutmeg, but the spices you add can certainly be tailored to your palate. Stir, not only to combine but to attain your desired creamy consistency. (Yukon Golds and other similar potatoes have the notable advantage over Russets, etc., that no amount of mixing done by hand will deteriorate the texture.)

Serve. 

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Lemon Garlic Herb Roasted Chicken with Vegetables

If you, like me, live with a small family (especially now, in the age of quarantines and COVID-19, it's just been my parents and me at home alone together for the better part of the last 9 months or so) or are cooking on a tighter budget, roasting a chicken can be just as good, if not better, than roasting a turkey for a special occasion like a birthday, anniversary, Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. Don't get scared by the length of the recipe that follows. It's only this long because I explain not only what to do and when to do it, but also why to do it. Every good chef should know this recipe, and an even better chef can take this recipe and adapt it as they see fit.

Roasting a good chicken starts well before you enter your kitchen; it actually starts even before you leave home to go get the ingredients you need at the grocery store, only starting to roast when you come back home. At least in the US, our Agriculture Department has different classifications based on the age and/or weight of the chicken that can tell you why to buy which kind of chicken. Basically, there are 3 really common categories you'll see in grocery stores nationwide: broilers, fryers, and roasters. Roasters are the biggest of the common categories (but bigger categories do exist), probably coming in at 5 to 7 pounds. Any bigger, and you might as well buy a small turkey, and any smaller, and you might as well buy a broiler or fryer-- but their names indicate their purposes, and we are neither broiling nor frying, so do not buy a broiler or a fryer. If you can find it, I'd recommend a free-range chicken-- it's more humane, lowers the carbon footprint, and actually improves the flavor profile of the chicken. Even more technically, look for an air-chilled chicken rather than a water-chilled chicken. Air-chilled chickens are cooled by cold air, while water-chilled birds essentially sit in an ice water bath. You'll get better color and crispier skin from an air-chilled chicken because the water chilled chicken introduced excess moisture that inhibits what's known as the Maillard Reaction-- the chemical process that gives a great steak, chop, (or in this case, bird) its great color by changing the structure of the sugars and proteins when heat is applied, forming a flavorful crust or creating crispy skin. To summarize: buy a sustainably raised, air-chilled roaster chicken if at all possible.

Now, a few comments on food safety. First, at least in the US, your bird almost certainly will come with its neck, heart, and maybe some other organs (liver, etc.) in a plastic bag inside the cavity. That plastic is not oven-safe and will melt if you follow my recipe. Take that bag out and throw it away-- you won't need it or any of its contents for this recipe. Second, especially among older generations, the conventional wisdom is to wash a chicken. NO! Washing a chicken just increases the potential for cross-contamination and the transmission of food-borne pathogens. Do NOT wash your chicken. What you do want to do is to pat your chicken dry with a disposable paper towel: this removes moisture from the skin. Moisture is the enemy of Maillard browning, so get your chicken as dry as possible. To that end, let your chicken stay, uncovered, in a clean, dry, ventilated place at room temperature for about half an hour before you roast it. Room-temperature birds roast more evenly than refrigerator-temperature birds.

Once you have a good-quality bird, the other half of the battle can begin: deciding on seasonings. I like to be pretty traditional here, so include 3/4 of an onion; a bunch each (1/2 an ounce, 14 grams-- one package) each of fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme; a lemon; a whole head of garlic, chopped open at its equator to open up every single clove (don't bother peeling it); salt; and pepper. These last two, but especially the salt, are often left out by inexperienced home cooks-- and this omission alone might explain why people don't like to cook and/or why they do like their own food. Salt has two purposes: removing moisture and intensifying existing flavored. That whole long list of ingredients will go inside the cavity of the bird. This will serve to flavor the bird from the inside out. Another list (olive oil, salt, and pepper) should be applied to both the breast side of the chicken and its opposite side. This will season from the outside in. Truss the chicken simply by bringing its drumsticks together so they either meet at a point or cross over each other and tie them together with a length of kitchen twine. This does 3 things: ensures the chicken cooks evenly, improves the presentation, and prevents anything stuffed in the cavity from falling out and imparting any burned flavors to the chicken.

Carrots, celery, and onions are some of the classic flavor combinations in innumerable cuisines worldwide. The French call it "mirepoix," the Italians "soffritto," and the Portuguese "refogado." I'll call it mirepoix from now on simply because that was the first term I learned for it. For this, which will form a bed on which to roast the chicken, I use a whole rib of celery (that is, a whole bunch of stalks attached at the root), two onions, two shallots, and a pound of carrots.

Each of these four components is prepared differently. First, the carrots. I cut off just enough from the top to get rid of the point at which the green stems are or would have been connected to the body of the root. Then, cut the carrots each into thirds or quarters depending on their length. If the carrot is particularly thick, cut each piece through its long axis so that the end result is two half-cylinders of carrot which each lie flat on a cutting board thanks to a rectangular base created by this cut. For the celery, make one cut at the top of the whole rib to remove any excessively leafy or woody parts. Then, disconnect every stalk from the whole rib at once by making a cut near where the stalks all meet. Now, cut each stalk at least in half, if not in thirds. For each shallot, peel it, cut off both the stem and root ends, and slice the shallot into halves or thirds depending on its size. For each onion, prepare it in much the same way as the shallots: peeling, removing the stem and root, cutting in half from stem to root to create a flat surface, and cutting each half into thirds pole-to-pole. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Seasoning here can be light since these elements will be indirectly seasoned by the drippings that come down from the chicken.

Lay the mirepoix in an even layer on a roasting pan--I like a 9qt Dutch oven, the biggest roasting-suitable vessel we own-- and then place the chicken breast-side up in the same tray on top of the mirepoix. Having removed all but the bottom rack from the oven and having preheated it to 500 Fahrenheit (or as high as your oven can go—but not engaging the broiler), place the roasting pan in the oven. Leave the chicken in the oven at this temperature for 30 minutes, and then drop the temperature to 350 and cook for about another 15 minutes per pound, or until the thickest part of the thigh registers 165 Fahrenheit. A 6.75-pound roaster like the one I’ll be preparing a few days after this recipe goes live, should be ready in about 2 hours 15 minutes.

Once the chicken is done, move it and the vegetables to a serving platter to rest. Return the roasting vessel with all the drippings from the pan still intact to the stove, adding in a slurry of about a teaspoon of cornstarch in a cup of chicken stock or water, if no stock is available. Also add in a tablespoon or two of low-fat (but not skim) milk. Bring the sauce up to a boil, whisking constantly to disperse the starch and fat granules as much as possible and to prevent any of it from scorching. Once a boil is reached, back off the heat to a simmer and continue whisking until a stage the French call “nappé.” Inexperienced chefs make the mistake of only taking the sauce to a simmer before killing the heat; your sauce will never reach the right consistency if you make this mistake. You know your sauce has reduced enough to reach nappé when you can put a metal spoon in the sauce, drag your finger across the back of the spoon, and see a trail leaving distinct left and right sides. If the sauce comes back together immediately and the trail disappears, keep going; you are not yet at nappé. If the sauce is so thick that you have to fight it to get the trail, you've reduced too far and have now passed nappé; thin out the sauce with more stock or water, and attempt to approach nappé again. Once nappé has been reached successfully, transfer the sauce to the serving vessel of choice.

Serve the pan sauce as an accompaniment to the chicken which is sat on the same bed of vegetables on which it was cooked (and both the vegetables and the chicken are on a platter).

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!

Signature Dish

Every chef—even a home chef—needs a perfected signature dish. The recipe you’ll find below is mine, but you’ll notice one component of a typical recipe is totally gone: the measurements. That omission is entirely intentional. Early in the quarantine, we were under because of the Coronavirus, in either March or April 2020, I had a ton of chicken thighs in my home fridge and I didn’t really know what to do with them. This recipe, which I’ve prepared pretty much every time we’ve bought large quantities of chicken thighs since then was born out of the quarantine—a time when I was fairly limited in what I could use and what or when I could restock. My philosophy in the kitchen is this: “The best chef is not the one who follows a written recipe the most correctly but the one who produces the best results without any recipe at all.” I haven’t included many measurements here (other than the intentionally vague “pinch,” “dash,” and others) because one of my firmest convictions as a home chef is that the average home chef doesn’t know how to cook without a recipe—by coming up with ideas and tasting and adjusting through the course of assembling a dish. If every home chef in America knew to taste food and what to look for in the intermediate steps of cooking, so many more people would realize their great untapped potential and in doing so, would realize that cooking is not a task or a chore, but an incredibly fulfilling activity—if done with good technique. Good technique will yield good results. If nothing else, let this be a lesson in tasting and proportional cooking.

In some sort of bowl (I like the largest circular-ish Pyrex bowl I can find in my kitchen, which holds 7 cups), combine about equal parts of three different acids (I like balsamic and red wine vinegars, plus the zest and juice of some citrus, usually lime and/or orange). Whisk lightly to combine. These things just need to mingle, so it’s perfectly acceptable to go easy on the whisking at this point. Whisk in about the same amount of reduced-fat homogenized milk as any one of the acids. Again, here, it’s okay to whisk lightly. Now, whisking quickly, stream in about 3 times as much liquid oil as there are (total) acids and milk in the bowl. Oil doesn’t like the acids or the milk (because the milk is mostly water and the oil doesn’t like water), so the two will try to stay separate from each other; whisking constantly and adding slowly will essentially “make the molecules hug each other” in such a way that they won’t separate. Basically, you need to get the fat cells in the oil of your choice (again, use a liquid oil like olive or canola, not a solid one like coconut) into units that are as small as possible—in the best case, just one molecule— which are surrounded by and attracted to the water molecules. The chemistry of water allows us to create this “molecular hug” just by whisking long enough and adding in the oil slowly enough. Here, whisk vigorously. An unbreakable emulsion has been achieved when the fat particles are small enough as to be invisible to the naked eye and thus small enough to be held in suspension in the other liquids.

Technically, what this step does is it creates an emulsion, a mixture of two things that chemically don’t like each other but which are held together either by physical force (applied by whisking) or by each bonding to one side of something that both things are attracted to. (This is why people like to put eggs in meatballs: the eggs not only add protein, but they bring together elements of the meatball which chemically repel each other per se, but are both attracted to the egg, so they can be held together if they hold on to the egg—the egg thus gives the meatballs the structural integrity they need not to fall apart too soon.) Every good marinade has four components: fat, acid, spices, and salt. Whisk in spices. I’ve always used smoked and sweet paprika, basil, oregano, thyme, dill, garlic powder, bay leaves, fresh-cracked black peppercorns, and salt. Especially if you’re inexperienced in the kitchen, I recommend using Kosher salt. Kosher salt has the advantage of being coarser than normal “table salt” that isn’t Kosher, so it’s easier to see how much you’re actually salting something if you use Kosher salts rather than non-Kosher. I recommend having tasted the marinade at least three times by now: when only the acid, the milk, and the oil have gone in; after everything but the salt has gone in, and after the salt has gone in, adjusting what you already have in the bowl at each round.

Move this out of the container in which it was built into a container whose lid’s area is big enough such that the container could reasonably hold all the chicken in as close to a single layer as possible. If there are some spices left over in the container where the marinade was built, use some water to loosen the spices and pour them over the chicken. Close the chicken container, and shake it for a few seconds, just long enough to get the marinade moving around and coating all the pieces of chicken. Leave this in a refrigerator for at least 12 hours, but no longer than 48. Any longer than 48 hours and the acid in the marinade will actually begin to “cook” the chicken rather than just tenderizing and flavoring it.

Once ready to continue, after no less than 12 but no more than 48 hours of marination, move the chicken into enough baking dishes so that they all lie flat in one layer. If you have any more than 4 thighs on an average-sized baking pan, you will need more than one. Preheat an oven to 375 Fahrenheit (190 Celsius); once the temperature has been reached, place the thighs on the same level rack of the oven, and leave them there for an hour. Transfer the marinade into a sauté pan (something that’s wide, has a lid, and has sides that are maybe 2 inches tall), and let it come to a boil, reducing by a third. At this point, the sauce is safe to taste, so you should do so for likely the fourth time in this process.

While the chicken is roasting, it will release two things that together can only be described as “culinary gold.” The first is some of the juices from the chicken—don’t worry, this always happens, no matter how you cook chicken, and this chicken will still be particularly moist. The second is “schmaltz”—that is, slowly melted, flavored chicken fat. Move the chicken onto a separate plate and reserve it. Transfer all the schmaltz from all the roasting trays used into the pan where the sauce is being assembled. Whisk to combine—try to start emulsifying the sauce, but don’t be alarmed it stays separated; in fact, it won’t be until the next ingredient is added.

Cook one pound of some sort of long pasta—I like fettuccine with this recipe—to one minute short of the manufacturer’s instructions. Time the pasta so that it is drained as close to at exactly the same time as when the chicken comes out of the oven and the schmaltz is added to the sauce. Drain the pasta and reserve momentarily. Add anywhere from 2 to 3 heaping tablespoons of sour cream to the sauce and whisk until emulsified. You should not be able to distinguish the schmaltz from the marinade or the schmaltz-marinade from the sour cream. Once everything is thoroughly incorporated, the schmaltz does not appear separated, and there do not appear to be any visible white specks of sour cream in the sauce, it has been properly emulsified. Check for seasoning, adding salt and/or freshly ground black pepper as desired.  Bring drained long pasta into the sauce and stir or toss to combine. Serve chicken atop pasta, garnishing with as much grated Parmigiano Reggiano and/or pecorino romano cheese as desired.

 If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!