Pasta al Limone

 This week’s recipe is from Sicily, not Rome, and yet you’ll see so many similarities to the process I laid out in our Roman Pastas series. Sicilians are famous all over the Mediterranean for their citrus crops, especially their lemons. Accordingly, pasta al limone has been an instant hit from the moment of its inception.

I mentioned several times throughout the previous series that a keystone of Roman cooking was to source only the best ingredients and to use them well and simply to create something so much better than the sum of their parts. This is also completely applicable to the cuisine of an island a few hundred miles to the south, in Sicily. It is important to remember that by no means is Italian cuisine monolithic, but that nevertheless, the same basic fundamentals apply to food from any region.

This pasta recipe is one of the fastest I’ve ever put up here on the website. It comes together in the amount of time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta, very similarly to cacio e pepe.

In fact, think of this as a derivative or descendant of cacio e pepe. Recall that for basic cacio e pepe, a pasta is boiled, a paste of pasta water, pepper and pecorino is made, and then the two are combined until emulsified with extra reserved pasta  water. We will follow the same basic steps, and our only modification to this process will come in how we deal with the stars of the show here, the lemons.

Before we get to the specifics on this simple recipe anyone can make—even on the tightest of budgets—let’s talk citrus. As a note to any Brazilian or otherwise Lusophone readers: My family originally comes from Brazil, and so I know that in Portuguese, there aren’t distinct words for “lime” and “lemon” as there are in English. In Portuguese, we differentiate yellow from green by the location which we add to the generic word that means both “lime and lemon.” If a fruit is a “Sicilian lemon,” then it’s a “lemon” in English; if it’s a “Tahiti lemon,” then it’s a “lime.” For any readers from the Lusophone world, this recipe is meant to be made with the former, not the latter. And for those of us in the US or elsewhere where a distinction exists between generic “lemons” and “Meyer lemons,” this recipe is meant to be made with the former; Meyer lemons are sweeter than regular lemons, possibly as a result of crossing regular lemons with oranges or clementines to create the Meyers. That extra sweetness in the Meyers won’t work with this dish, so make sure to get the best regular lemons you can find.

The lemon will be the star of this recipe, so don’t be shy with it. Wash, zest, and juice 2 whole large lemons. Be careful to only scrape off the outermost yellow part. That yellow outer layer is almost entirely natural yellow pigments and scented oils which together make lemons very aromatic, all of which we want to make use of in our final dish. That layer, however, is very thin, and directly underneath it is the much thicker and far more acidic layer of white pith. Generally, don’t get any—or get as little as possible—of the pith when zesting citrus of any kind (oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, etc.). Either before zesting or between zesting and juicing, roll your washed lemons against your countertop or another flat surface. Doing so weakens or even pre-ruptures some cell walls inside the lemon, thereby making juicing easier later, and increasing yield at that point.

We will also make use of fresh mint to balance out the acidity in this dish. Fresh herbs like mint and basil bruise very easily when hacked at indiscriminately with a knife.

Place 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a wide, shallow pan, and as the oil warms, place the zest into the oil together with a few leaves of mint taken directly from the plant, without any chopping or tearing. There are several compounds in both mint and lemon zest which are (only, or in some cases, more) soluble in oil versus water. When the oil becomes noticeably aromatic, turn off the heat and remove the mint leaves.  

Cook 1 pound of a long, dry pasta according to the manufacturer's instructions to al dente doneness. When 3 minutes remain, reserve 1 ½ cups of pasta water. Grate 1 cup of pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano and combine it with the juice and zest of the two lemons juiced and zested earlier. Take 2 tablespoons of that pasta cooking water and combine it with the cheese and lemon juice and zest so that a thick paste forms. Season this paste liberally with black pepper, just as one would make cacio e pepe.  

From here, the process is identical to cacio e pepe. Drain the pasta once it is al dente, and combine it with the aromatic oil, the cheese-zest paste, and thin and emulsify the sauce by gradually adding pasta cooking water and tossing. Garnish with black pepper, Parmigiano Reggiano, lemon zest, and fresh mint leaves.
   

Pasta al limone, as prepared by Vincenzo's Plate

(Photo Credits to Vincenzo and his team) 

Pasta alla Gricia: the Dark Horse of Traditional Roman Pastas

Of all the Roman sauces, alla Gricia is certainly the dark horse—so much so that, when I started learning Italian in early 2020, I mistook “alla Gricia” (the actual name of the pasta, which came from the name given to small-volume food sellers in Rome in the days of the Papal States, before Italy had even unified) for “alla Grecia” (which would’ve meant that this was “[pasta type] in the manner of the Greeks”). There is in fact nothing that is particularly “Greek” about this dish: no feta, no Kalamata olives, nothing else of the sort. I share this with all of you just to illustrate how obscure this dish actually is. But the truth is, it really should not be: many more people should know about, cook, and enjoy spaghetti alla gricia than currently do. And even though I recognize how small my audience is, I aim to do what I can through here, reaching all of you, to try to help put this wonderful sauce (back) on the map.

By now, you’ve probably seen how similar amatriciana, carbonara, and cacio e pepe are to each other. (If not, go back and revisit the other recipes.) The techniques used for those three are very similar, and the recipes only usually differ by an ingredient or two. Alla gricia is no exception.

A few words about ingredients: Alla gricia contains guanciale, a cured pork product from the jowl. (This can be rather hard to find, so in a pinch, if absolutely necessary, you can use pancetta, which is a cured pork product from the belly instead.) As with the other recipes in this series, the guanciale should be cut into small cubes. Unlike the other related recipes, for alla gricia, I will stipulate the use of a short pasta (rigatoni and penne rigate are the best), rather than a long one. This way, the guanciale will be able to enter into the tubular structure of each piece of pasta, providing an essential contrast in taste and texture.

Alla gricia comes together quickly, in the amount of time it takes to bring a gallon of water to a boil in a 6 quart pan, cook it to al dente per the package’s instructions, and drain it. Start getting everything ready for mise en place as soon as you put the water to boil.

As with the other recipes the call for guanciale, this one calls for smaller-than-bite-size cubes of guanciale. Cut the guanciale exactly as you would cut bacon to be made into lardons, if that were called for in a recipe—about that size, and for those reasons. Our objective is to have both meat and fat on each piece of guanciale. Place the guanciale in a skillet in a single layer (or work in batches if necessary). Do not add any extra fat to the pan. There is already plenty of fat in the guanciale, and there will be more added fat from the pecorino still to come.  Without any preheating, bring the pan and the guanciale to the stove, and turn on a burner to low heat. Let the guanciale render slowly. Turn it often to encourage even browning and rendering, and to prevent anything from sticking to the pan. 

A quick word of caution: Longtime readers may have noticed the absence of an instruction I typically give several times throughout each of my recipes in the Roman pasta series (the standalone recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana that I published late in 2021 and the 3 other bases, plus papalina, which I’ve recently put out). Normally, I’ll call for layered salting of dishes. Make a mirepoix? You should season it? Add some chicken stock? Season again. And so on—for each ingredient or set of ingredients. Each ingredient normally only gets a little bit of salt at a time since my philosophy is to add salt continuously as I cook so that nothing is underseasoned. Salt’s primary function in cooking is not to act as a flavor of its own right, but rather to accentuate the flavors around it. (This is why salt, even in small amounts, is called for in sweet baked goods.)

But all of these Roman recipes contain copious amounts of either guanciale, or pecorino Romano, or both. Pecorino is already a very salty cheese which is aged for several months to allow its flavor to become even more concentrated, and guanciale is cured in lots of salt and other spices for months at a time. These ingredients are both, without any additional salt, more than salty enough to round out the dishes they are a part of. No additional salt should be added beyond what is already in the cheese and the guanciale, lest these classic dishes become so salty as to be rendered inedible.

 When the water comes to a boil, place a pound of pasta into it, and cook per the manufacturer's instructions, just to al dente—never further. Grate 1 cup of pecorino romano. If you cannot find pecorino where you live, you can either use parmigiano regiano, or for an even better substitution, a local firm sheep’s milk cheese. However, do not buy or use industrially shredded or grated cheese of any kind: they often contain anticaking agents that, while they prevent the cheese from clumping (and from my experience, not as well as the manufacturers had hoped), those same anticaking agents also make it nearly impossible, if not entirely so, for the resulting sauce to become creamy and properly emulsified.

2 minutes before the pasta has finished cooking, reserve a cup and a half of pasta cooking water. Take 3 tablespoons of that pasta water to create a thick paste with the cheese and black pepper. Drain the pasta when it finishes cooking per the manufacturer's instructions to al dente, and then, away from the heat, combine the cheese-water paste and the guanciale with the pasta. With only the paste of water and cheese, this “proto-sauce” is too thick to be sauce by itself. Little by little, while mixing constantly and never returning anything to an open heat source, add more pasta water until a rich, creamy, emulsified sauce forms which is capable of not only coating the exterior of the pieces of pasta but also of going inside of them and transporting the guanciale into the center in the process. Once you have added enough pasta water to turn the paste into a creamy sauce, you are ready to serve. Garnish with extra pecorino, black pepper, and guanciale.  

Photo credits to America's Test Kitchen

Roman Cacio e Pepe: The Original Mac and Cheese

 Cacio e pepe (“cacio” is the word for “cheese” in several regional dialects in central Italy; the word for “cheese” in standard Italian is “formaggio”) is one of the four iconic Roman pasta dishes together with amatriciana, alla gricia, and carbonara. One could argue this humble dish made with only four ingredients, is the culinary ancestor of the American classic mac and cheese.

As I mentioned in the article about carbonara, Italian—and especially Roman—cooking is all about using the best, freshest ingredients with great technique, but not trying to reinvent the wheel. There is one step in this recipe that can seem a little daunting, but with enough patience and practice, I’m sure you’ll add cacio e pepe to the list of dishes you cook regularly at home for your friends and family.

First, let’s discuss ingredients. In this regard, cacio e pepe could not be simpler: it only requires pasta, black pepper (whole at first, then freshly ground), Pecorino Romano cheese, and the pasta’s cooking water. Italians are very protective of the regionality of their ingredients, so, although it is much easier to find a good quality piece of  parmigiano regiano, that isn’t the right cheese for this application Parmigiano, as the name implies, comes from Parma, in the north. This dish, and thus the ideal cheese, are both Roman, so the natural choice is, of course, Rome’s best-known cheese, pecorino romano, made from sheep’s milk. (“Pecore” are “sheep.”)

This will certainly raise the price, but you cannot buy pre-grated pecorino in a tub or canister, unless you hand-selected the piece of cheese and it was grated in front of you and put into the container. You must buy a block of pecorino and grate it yourself, either with a box grater or a microplane, or do as I suggested and have someone grate the cheese in front of you if you want to bring it home already grated. (When I grate my own cheese, I prefer the microplane, and why that’s the case will be discussed later.) Any industrially pre-grated cheese will almost certainly have cellulose, calcium silicate, or some other anti-caking agent. These anti-caking agents will make it impossible to form the sauce correctly, so you should not use any industrialized cheese packed with them.

A quick word of caution: Longtime readers may have noticed the absence of an instruction I typically give several times throughout each of my recipes in the Roman pasta series (the standalone recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana that I published late in 2021 and the 3 other bases, plus papalina, which I’ve recently put out). Normally, I’ll call for layered salting of dishes. Make a mirepoix? You should season it? Add some chicken stock? Season again. And so on—for each ingredient or set of ingredients. Each ingredient normally only gets a little bit of salt at a time since my philosophy is to add salt continuously as I cook so that nothing is underseasoned. Salt’s primary function in cooking is not to act as a flavor of its own right, but rather to accentuate the flavors around it. (This is why salt, even in small amounts, is called for in sweet baked goods.)

But all of these Roman recipes contain copious amounts of either guanciale, or pecorino Romano, or both. Pecorino is already a very salty cheese which is aged for several months to allow its flavor to become even more concentrated, and guanciale is cured in lots of salt and other spices for months at a time. These ingredients are both, without any additional salt, more than salty enough to round out the dishes they are a part of. No additional salt should be added beyond what is already in the cheese and the guanciale, lest these classic dishes become so salty as to be rendered inedible.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil (with at least a gallon of water in a 6-quart pot), and cook a long pasta according to the manufacturer’s instructions. While the water is coming to a boil, place a tablespoon of black peppercorns in a dry (i.e., no oil) skillet and keep the skillet constantly moving over the burner for between 30 seconds and 1 minute, or until the peppercorns become fragrant. Then, turn off the heat, and using another pan or another suitable food-safe object, crush and reserve the toasted peppercorns. (If you have multiple pepper mills, use one that until now has been empty, if you want an even easier way to break down the pepper. Otherwise, place the heavy object on top of the peppercorns in a single layer, and put your body weight into that object. You need either the burrs of a mill—that is otherwise empty and contains no untoasted  pepper—or the whole weight of your body pressing down on them in order to crack the peppercorns.) Grate 1 cup of pecorino into a bowl and combine the cheese and the pepper.

When the pasta is 3 minutes from being done, reserve a cup and a half of the pasta cooking water. From that, start by taking 3 tablespoons of water and combining the water with the pepper and cheese. Stir. I mentioned earlier that my grating implement of choice is my microplane, rather than my box grater. Microplanes only have one grating setting, but that setting is usually as fine or finer than the finest setting available on a box grater. In order to prevent something that essentially looks like the iconic “cheese pull” (think of splitting open the two halves of a grilled cheese sandwich, or pulling a single slice of pizza away from the rest of the pizza) from happening to this sauce—which would prevent it from becoming creamy—three things absolutely must be true: you haven’t used a cheese that was pre-grated and processed with an anticaking agent, you’ve grated your own cheese as finely as possible, and you are not combining the sauce and the pasta in a hot pan or over a heat source. Be sure all of these things are true before you proceed any further.

When the pasta finishes cooking, drain it, and place it in a saucepan off the heat. Combine the pasta with your pepper-cheese-water paste. As it is now, the paste should be too thick to be a sauce on its own. Stir and toss to combine. Start adding pasta water (and keep mixing) until an emulsified sauce forms. You will probably add another cup or so of water, but I cannot say for sure, since I do not know exactly how starchy your pasta water was, or how thick you had made your paste. Your objective is to make a creamy sauce (without any cream) that coats each strand of your pasta, but which isn’t too watery.

Serve, optionally garnishing with even more grated pecorino and freshly ground black pepper. 

Photo Credits to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Serious Eats 

Classic Roman Carbonara

Italians, but especially Romans, are known all over the world for their basic pasta dishes which are much greater than the sum of their parts. There are four basic sauces from Rome that any home cook can and should master. The first is carbonara, which we will cover this week. Following carbonara, they also have cacio e pepe, alla gricia, and amatriciana. (I covered amatriciana late last year, and you can find that recipe by clicking on this link.)

The four Roman sauces are as follows: carbonara is an egg and cheese-based sauce; cacio e pepe is pasta water, pepper, and cheese; alla gricia is cacio e pepe plus guanciale; and amatriciana is a tomato sauce with chili and guanciale.

Carbonara, authentically, contains eggs which have barely been cooked. My version of the dish cooks the eggs, so any risk of foodborne illness is removed, but, if executed properly, there should barely be any textural change between the raw eggs and the eggs that have gone through my process.

In a wide, shallow pan, dice some guanciale. Guanciale is a cured pork product like pancetta, but they come from different regions of the pig. Guanciale comes from the jowl/jaw, while pancetta comes from the belly (familiar to the average American home cook as the source of bacon). As such, pancetta and guanciale are both deeply flavorful, cured pork products. Because the traditional recipe calls for guanciale, so will mine, but I will add the caveat that if guanciale is unavailable, pancetta is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Add just a touch of olive oil—barely a tablespoon—to your skillet, and when it comes up to temperature, add the guanciale. Cook the guanciale in the oil until rendered and crispy, like you would bacon. Reserve the guanciale.

Carbonara was invented as a dish for the poor in a time of necessity, so the traditional recipe calls for whole eggs. Two eggs per portion will provide enough sauce, but that may be too heavy. My modification is to instead use 1 whole egg and 1 fewer egg yolk for a given number of portions (3 portions should call for 3 eggs and 2 yolks; 4 portions should call for 4 eggs and 3 yolks; etc.). Beat this in a large bowl until no streaks of white remain. Season this very liberally with freshly ground black pepper. The name of the dish may have come from the fact that the copious amounts of black pepper in the dish resembled the carbon dust on men’s clothes when they returned from mining or otherwise working with coal in Lazio and elsewhere. Into the beaten eggs, place ½ ounce of cheese per egg or partial egg (3 portions call for 3 eggs and 2 yolks, giving 5 parts, thus calling for 5/2 ounces of cheese, etc.).

A quick word of caution: Longtime readers may have noticed the absence of an instruction I typically give several times throughout each of my recipes in the Roman pasta series (the standalone recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana that I published late in 2021 and the 3 other bases, plus papalina, which I’ve recently put out). Normally, I’ll call for layered salting of dishes. Make a mirepoix? You should season it? Add some chicken stock? Season again. And so on—for each ingredient or set of ingredients. Each ingredient normally only gets a little bit of salt at a time since my philosophy is to add salt continuously as I cook so that nothing is underseasoned. Salt’s primary function in cooking is not to act as a flavor of its own right, but rather to accentuate the flavors around it. (This is why salt, even in small amounts, is called for in sweet baked goods.)

But all of these Roman recipes contain copious amounts of either guanciale, or pecorino Romano, or both. Pecorino is already a very salty cheese which is aged for several months to allow its flavor to become even more concentrated, and guanciale is cured in lots of salt and other spices for months at a time. These ingredients are both, without any additional salt, more than salty enough to round out the dishes they are a part of. No additional salt should be added beyond what is already in the cheese and the guanciale, lest these classic dishes become so salty as to be rendered inedible.

This dish involves cooking over a double boiler. Put an oven mitt on your non-dominant hand; you’ll need your dominant hand free to whisk and use a ladle. Set a pot of water onto a burner and bring it to a simmer—not a boil!—and place the bowl that contains the egg and cheese over the double boiler. Be sure that two things are true of the water: 1) it never comes above a simmer and 2) it never touches the bottom of the bowl. If either—or worse, both—of those things are true, you will not maintain a loose, “sauce-able” texture, and you’ll end up with tiny curds of cheesy scrambled egg.

Work on adjacent burners. My highest-powered burner is my left-front, so I like to work on my pasta on my left and my sauce (any sauce, not just carbonara) on my right. As soon as the water in the left burner reaches a rolling boil, the pasta goes in. Simultaneously, the right burner should have the pot of simmering water ready to go. With your nondominant (mitted) hand, place and hold the pot into the double boiler, i.e., put it into the top of the pan but hold it steady so your whisking doesn’t destabilize it. Whisk constantly. If you don’t, you will end up with cheesy scrambled eggs. There is a time and a place for scrambled eggs; carbonara certainly isn’t either of those. Periodically, use your mitted hand to remove the bowl from the double boiler, and whisk for a few seconds off the heat, to further help control the temperature of the eggs and prevent scrambling.

When the pasta is about halfway done (about 5 minutes into the cooking process), take the eggs off the double boiler, momentarily put your whisk down, switch to a ladle, and place 2 ladlefuls of starchy water in a heatproof container. Put the ladle down and return to the whisk. Then, practically drop by drop to start with, start pouring the water into the egg-and-cheese mixture. DO NOT dump all the water in at once. If you do, you will end up with irreversible scrambling because the eggs were over simmering water and the pasta water was vigorously boiling; that temperature difference will be enough to scramble the eggs if you are not careful. As you add more pasta water to the eggs, add the remaining pasta water faster. You will certainly need to use 1 ladleful; the second is there in case you want to slightly loosen the consistency of the sauce if it still seems too firm. Curdling is prevented by constant whisking, which disrupts the egg protein networks and prevents them from seizing up when they come in contact with the boiling water, which is hotter than the eggs.

When the pasta is al dente per the package’s instructions, immediately drain it, turn off the double boiler, and, off the heat, combine the pasta and the sauce.

Garnish with parmigiano reggiano (or, more authentically, since this dish is from Lazio and not Emilia-Romagna, use pecorino romano) and the reserved guanciale.




















(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Cured Honey-Dijon Glazed Oven-Baked Pork Shoulder Ham

Ham is often seen only as a grocery store deli counter staple, as something that belongs in a perfectly serviceable sandwich with some high-quality bread and high-quality cheese but confining it to such a supporting role does it a tremendous disservice. Ham, like so many other meats and whole poultry, deserves to be a centerpiece of a wonderful feast. Now, this is the recipe I promised would come out in time for a wonderful Easter dinner. But today is two Saturdays before Easter, and yet the recipe is already posted. This is, in fact, because if you want to make this recipe for a large number of people (and therefore you need a large ham), you need to start working with it today (or at the latest on Monday, if your ham is slightly smaller), and posting this any closer to Easter than now would make completing the recipe nearly, if not outright, impossible.

Technicality-obsessed purists will complain that this recipe isn’t for a “ham” because technically a “ham” refers to a different cut. Technically, “hams” come from pork legs. But after due deliberation and studying different recipes, I’ve concluded that a different cut, the Boston Butt part of the shoulder is superior to the traditional cut, and so this recipe will use it instead. Those of you who like American barbecue are probably familiar with the Boston Butt as a typical choice to be smoked and then turned into pulled pork.

Cooking a Boston Butt and turning it into a worthy ham centerpiece for a feast as extravagant as an Easter dinner (sides will be coming out the day before, in other words, in a week) is an extensive process. Each person you are going to feed will need anywhere from 16 to 20 ounces of pork by weight (1-1 ¼ pounds—because so much of this is bone). This ham will need to be dry brined for 16 hours per pound. So, as an example: a Boston butt being served to 6 people should probably weigh 6-7.5 pounds and will need anywhere from 4-5 days to cure. This will give each person one generous serving on the day of, and it will also provide plenty for everyone who wants leftovers.

For every pound of pork, combine the following into a bowl: 1 ounce of salt, 1 tablespoon of fresh ground black pepper, 2 teaspoons of paprika, ½ tablespoon of garlic powder, ½ tablespoon of onion powder, 1/8 teaspoon of fresh ground nutmeg, 1 teaspoon each of dried oregano, parsley, basil, and thyme. Combine this dry spice mix to ensure homogeneity, and then apply this liberally to the surface of the pork. Set the pork, uncovered, onto a sheet tray so air can circulate around it and leave it in the refrigerator undisturbed for the requisite amount of time. Take care to ensure that there are no cooked meats (or other raw meats), or anything else that could cross-contaminate against the pork shoulder, on the same level of shelves in the refrigerator.

This part of the process, which I first taught in the Super Bowl wings recipe, is an essential chemical process by which a properly seasoned, tender, and juicy final product is ensured. Dry brining works thanks to osmosis. The salt in the dry brine will pull moisture from inside the cells of the pork shoulder because the cells want to equalize the salinity inside and outside their boundaries. Then, given enough time, the salt will dissolve into this moisture and, together with the other seasonings, will be absorbed into the flesh of the shoulder, tenderizing it and rendering it perfectly seasoned. Remove everything else from inside your sink, and run the pork shoulder under cold water, then thoroughly pat it dry with a paper towel. This removes excess cure from the surface, but the chemical work of the osmosis reaction is done—so don’t worry, you aren’t taking away any seasonings. To ensure no cross-contamination occurred, wash your sink thoroughly after you complete this process.

Place your pork shoulder in the largest pan you have, together with 2 quartered onions, 3 sliced and peeled carrots, and 3 sliced ribs of celery. Fill the pot with water. Uncovered, bring the contents of the pot to a simmer, and hold the temperature there until the pork itself reaches an internal temperature of 135 degrees (medium-rare by beef standards, but still not done by pork standards). This will probably happen after about 2 hours, but this depends entirely on the size and shape of your pork shoulder and the intensity of the burner, so go by the temperature, not the time.

In the meantime, after about an hour and half, begin working on the glaze, and preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. In a saucepan, combine 1 cup of water, ½ cup Dijon or whole grain mustard, ⅓ cup raw honey, ¼ cup balsamic vinegar, and ¼ cup brown sugar. Bring this to a boil to dissolve everything and to thicken. Stir constantly, or things will burn, and you will need to start over. When this reaches and maintains a vigorous boil for 90 seconds, take it off the heat.

When the ham reaches 135 degrees Fahrenheit, take it out of the cooking vessel and reserve it somewhere else, discard the other solids, and strain out the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer. Return the ham to the pot. Find the fat cap. With a sharp knife, make several long diagonal cuts across the fat cap (just the fat cap—you’re not trying to slice the ham yet). Turn the shoulder 90 degrees and repeat, forming a grid. This will ensure the fat cap renders, making the pork shoulder perfectly moist even when fully cooked. This also has the effect of doubling or perhaps even tripling the surface area of the top of the ham, giving more space for the Maillard reaction to occur and enhance more flavor, since that increased surface area allows the glaze to coat a larger surface and the Maillard caramelization reaction will occur on the sugars in the glaze. When the shoulder returns to the pot now reading 135 degrees internally and scored, it should be placed fat-cap-up. Once the fat cap has been scored, spread the glaze all over the ham so that the whole surface is covered. Do this all at once, covering the surface in a single, thick layer of glaze.

Many recipes you will find online will tell you to use a slightly different method for glazing the ham, but I see a serious problem with this alternative method. The common way this seems to be done online is to build up the glaze on the surface of the ham over a series of 3 or 4 applications 10 minutes apart. Proponents of this glazing method will rightly point out that layering the glaze like that gives a shiny, lacquered finish that looks good. While that may be true, proponents of that method fail to consider two crucial point: First, that my method would make the ham look just as good, if not better. And second, and certainly more importantly, that my method doesn’t incur substantial heat loss/fluctuations from the nearly constant opening and closing of the oven door. The lacquering method, then, can’t be said to be any better than mine, on account of the fact that the fluctuations in the temperature cause a negative effect that cancels out or even perhaps outweighs the positive effects due to the layering of the glaze.

Bake the ham for 35 minutes undisturbed at 400 Fahrenheit, or until the glaze is set and the pork registers 165 Fahrenheit internally, and then allow it to rest at least 20 minutes before carving and serving it. For best presentation, take the pork shoulder to the table uncarved and carve it table-side. Serve sliced thick with side dishes, or sliced thin in a sandwich or other application.

Lenten Recipes: Week 5: Simple Caprese Salad

1. Wash, core, and slice 4-5 large vine-ripened tomatoes.

2. Slice 6-8 ounces of (buffalo-milk) mozzarella cheese.

3. On the intended serving platter, build alternating overlapping layers of cheese and tomato

4. Season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper

5. Drizzle with olive oil, and optionally (lightly) with balsamic vinegar, preferably aged in oak

6. Scatter whole leaves of Italian basil throughout the salad

7. Serve

(Credit to the Wikimedia Commons)

Lenten Recipes: Week 4: Kale, Butternut Squash, Feta and Golden Raisin Salad with Classic Mustard Vinaigrette

1. Break down and roast 1 butternut squash according to the procedure found here

2. Wash and spin one bunch of kale (or pat thoroughly dry if you don’t have a salad spinner)

3. Roughly chop 2 handfuls of walnuts

4. Crumble 3 ounces of feta from an 8-ounce block (never buy pre-crumbled feta; pure-sheep feta is best, then sheep-goat, then pure-goat; cow feta is not recognized as legitimate feta)

5. Add golden raisins to taste

6. Make a vinaigrette according to this procedure, making changes as you wish to suit your tastes

7. Combine ingredients

8. Toss

9. Serve

Lenten Recipes, Week 3: Simple Pasta Puttanesca with Tuna

1. Place the contents of one can of tuna into a saucepan.

2. Begin to cook the tuna, seasoning it with paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

3. Either make a tomato sauce from fresh using this recipe or use a jarred sauce.

4. Slice as many olives as you’d like (and/or use capers) and place them in the sauce, being careful not to oversalt the sauce if using a jarred one.

5. Prepare a long pasta according to the package’s instructions and drain when al dente.

6. Combine the sauce and the pasta in the larger of the two pans.

7. Serve, without garnishing with cheese. Italians in general never mix cheese and fish (or seafood in general). 

 

(Photo credits to the Wikimedia Commons)

Lenten Recipes, Week 2: Oven-Roasted Salmon Filet with Dijon-Mayonnaise Sauce

1. Line an oven-safe dish with aluminum foil and preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

2. Mix together 1 part water, 3 parts mayonnaise, and 2 parts Dijon or whole-grain mustard.

3. Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.

4. Pat dry 1 salmon filet piece per person, and season with freshly ground black pepper.

5. Place salmon pieces on foil skin-side-down, and then spoon over soy-oyster glaze.

6. Place in oven. Remove after 25 minutes.

7. Serve with rice and vegetables as desired.

Lenten Recipes, Week 1: Simple Soy-Oyster Glazed Salmon

1. Line an oven-safe dish with aluminum foil and preheat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit.

2. Mix together 1 part water, 2 parts soy sauce, and 2 parts oyster sauce.

3. Taste this to see if more salt is necessary. If so, add it. If the sauce is too salty, dilute it with more water.

4. Season this liquid with garlic powder and onion powder, and with freshly ground black pepper.

5. Pat dry 1 salmon filet piece per person, and season with freshly ground black pepper.

6. Place salmon pieces on foil skin-side-down, and then spoon over soy-oyster glaze. Add sesame seeds to glaze if desired. 

7. Place in oven in middle rack. Remove after 25 minutes.

8. Serve with rice; the rice should finish in the amount of time it takes to cook the salmon.

Upcoming changes

Things are going to get very fishy on here in the next few weeks—literally. Practicing Catholics 14 or older who are medically able to do so are bound by liturgical laws not to eat the meat of warm-blooded animals on the 7th Wednesday before Easter (Ash Wednesday) and every intervening Friday (until and including the last Friday before Easter, Good Friday).  It is out of this liturgical law that the custom that Catholics eat fish on Fridays, especially during the season of Lent was created. Furthermore, Catholics who are at least 18 and who have not yet turned 60 who are medically able to do so are told to have 3 meals such that the two small meals do not equal or surpass the large meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Since I definitely fit both categories (I’m 21 and healthy: this means that I’m older than 14, and I’m older than 18 but not yet 60) and you may also be in at least one of these categories, especially if you are Catholic, you will notice a number of changes coming to the content and difficulty level of the dishes being posted here between now and mid-April. This coming Friday, up until (and including) April 8, every recipe will contain fish. The recipes will all be shorter, simpler, and will all be designed to have smaller portion sizes. In addition, there will not be any recipes posted on Friday, April 15, but at least one recipe will be posted instead on Saturday night, April 16.

Beginning Friday, April 22, portion sizes will increase back to normal, and, if the dish is a main course, the protein will no longer necessarily be fish. Recipes will return to their normal complexity.

Hummingbird Tales: A friend's review

{Before we get started: Brittney is a dear friend without whom I definitely would not be so close to publishing my own book. All of the things I say here take into account the fact that we’re friends and have been for years (and all the praise I give her and her book are absolutely genuine, not just because we’re friends). She doesn’t even know I’m writing this review, so no, I’m not being paid to write this. What you’re about to read is about 1700 words of spoiler-free praise of one author’s work by another author who happens to be good friends with her.}

I love to write. I've published dozens of recipes and other short-form pieces on this blog, and I love taking a walk out in nature and just writing down my thoughts for the day. For the most part, I've stayed away from long-form writing, with a notable exception: I have a 100,000-word manuscript I've been working on since I was 15 which I hope to finish soon. Shortly after I opened my Instagram account, I wanted to find out if there was a community of people like me: teenagers who were really passionate about something and who were writing books about their passions as I was. In August 2016, I started working on a book (the manuscript I mentioned above), and I knew I would need community and friends to support me through the project. I found one author around my age fairly quickly, around the time I was 16 or 17. I looked around her profile, and I was pretty amazed by what I saw. So, I followed Brittney, and pretty soon, we had messaged for the first time. We introduced ourselves to each other, and we talked about our books. Forsaken had come out a few months before, so, definitely prematurely (in retrospect, years prematurely, since I’m days away from turning 21, and yet I’m still nowhere near being ready to publish), I had lots of questions about formatting, and editing, her process, and pretty much anything an aspiring author would venture to ask a published author with whom he was messaging on Instagram and who was friendly enough and had enough free time to actually respond.

Through those initial interactions, I grew closer to her, and now I’m lucky to call Brittney a very good friend. I got involved with Brittney’s second novel, Fifty Days (which, by the way, has won several awards, so you should totally check it out!) when it was basically finished. In 2018, she put out a message asking for beta-readers, in the midst of all the adorable shots of her cats and the other glimpses into her life she gave us on social media. I didn’t really know what beta-reading was, so I messaged back saying I was… cautiously interested, but that she’d need to bear with me, explain what I needed to do, and correct any erroneous assumptions a few hasty Google queries might have created.

But eventually, I figured out exactly what I was supposed to do: read Brittney’s book ahead of its release to the general public later that summer and help catch plot holes, grammar issues, formatting quirks—anything that a second pair of eyes would be good for before publication. I loved the idea, so I sent Brittney my email address, and I soon received a PDF of Fifty Days. There were a few minor issues (when aren't there?) if I remember correctly: something had corrupted the PDF, so she had to resend it, there were a few minor formatting glitches once the PDF was in good working order, a few typos, minor plot holes. But the communication with Brittney was great, and all the problems were sorted out. Though I’m nowhere near ready to put out a call of my own, working with Brittney helped me to understand what to expect when my own book will eventually get to that same stage, and so I’m very thankful to Brittney for giving me that wonderful opportunity. Truthfully, by the end of the beta-reading process, once I’d read the fiftieth day in Fifty Days, it was one of my favorite books, if not my favorite outright. A few more weeks went by during which Brittney sorted out the logistics of publishing, promoting, and distributing the book; took our advice into consideration and implemented some of our changes; and made her own final changes to the manuscript. Once the beta process was complete, I got a physical copy of Fifty Days, personalized with a signed message for me.

In 2020, my beta-reading epicenter shifted from North Texas to Singapore, and I beta-read a novel written by another friend I met online. I had no apprehension that time since I knew from working with Brittney what a beta-reader’s role was supposed to be. I enjoyed the experience immensely, and I was impressed with how many of my friends around my age (late teens through early 20s) were published or were on the cusp of publishing. That other friend’s book, as far as I know, is still in final edits, but it’ll be out soon, I’m sure. That book too will be a phenomenal read by another young author who I'm honored to call a friend.

I think it was shortly after I finished working with my friend from Singapore on her book that Brittney put out another post, asking if we wanted a collection of short stories that she’d written to be published. Knowing how much I liked Brittney’s previous work, I was so happy that this was even a possibility. That collection eventually became Hummingbird Tales. 

Hummingbird Tales came out in mid-September of last year, and I got it in the mail having made its way all the way from Texas soon after. Unlike with Fifty Days, I wasn’t one of the beta-readers, so I only read Hummingbird Tales once it was released to the general public. Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t read it when I got it, since less than a week later, I got sick for the first time that semester. That flu lasted a few weeks, I had maybe a week of full recovery, and then I was down again, until just before the end of the semester. Then, I left my apartment for 6 weeks, unfortunately realizing as soon as I got home for winter break that I’d left Hummingbird Tales on my desk.

I came back to my apartment to find a raw, engaging, book that I know was written from the heart, a book that demands emotional vulnerability from both author and reader. And those, honestly, are the best books. I’ve read quite a few anthologies, but none have woven together fiction and non-fiction as Hummingbird Tales did. Britney is an incredible writer, and you’re practically guaranteed to feel like you’re in the scene she’s laying out for you. I had already read some of Brittney’s prior work, and I remember how blown away I had been by her ability to achieve this when she was even younger, and yet, the sky is the limit. Keep it up, friend! You got this! This book truly is one-of-a-kind and should be on almost anyone’s reading list. So, if you like collections of short fiction (and non-fiction) pieces, go get Hummingbird Tales!

I started reading it a few days ago after I finished all the work I needed to do that day, and I pretty much didn’t put it down until I finished it at bedtime, except to send Brittney a few updates along the way. The book is organized into 3 parts which contain a total of 48 short pieces, so in theory, you have 48 good stopping points—more than that, actually, since some of the stories have multiple parts. But trust me when I say that you’ll only want to put it down when you finish. So wait until you have a few spare hours all in one unbroken period and then sit down and enjoy Brittney’s latest. A great storyteller is one who puts words on a page in a way that transports you into the world in which those events occur—real or not—in such a way as though you feel yourself a spectator in that world in real-time. This is a twofold challenge: setting up the world in which the events occur and then writing the events themselves. Fueled both by her real experiences and a vast imagination, the worlds of Hummingbird Tales are among the most vivid I’ve ever read. This book receives my highest recommendation, and surely is and will remain one of the best I’ve ever read. Sometimes, it takes a while to find your style as much as a reader as it does as a writer. As far as reading styles go, I've found what's as close to a perfect match as there can be, in Brittney's writing. Beta-reading or not, having such close access to an author—this is even more true if you're friends with that author—provides a reading experience unlike any other. With this close access comes the opportunity to have greater access to the author and thus to better understand her voice by knowing what her life is like. It creates opportunities for spontaneous discussions about writing or anything else. Most of all, it builds community.

What started out with Brittney has grown to a community of dozens of authors who I know. We all have two common goals: to write as well as we possibly can and to motivate each other to do the same. Even if a book only has one listed author, so many more people are vital to its success. And that’s one of my favorite things about writing: the community. I’ve had a lot of doubts about my own work, but this wonderful little community I’ve found myself in has been nothing but supportive. Thanks to Brittney for being my entry point into this wonderful community, and thanks to everyone else for your support!

If you know Brittney well like I do, you know about the importance of sea turtles in her life, as creatures that give hope, joy, and meaning to life. Well, Brittney, thanks for being a sea turtle in my life through our friendship. I am the writer I am today—and I’ve kept at it for so long—because you’ve always been so kind, motivating, supportive, and friendly. Whoever you are, wherever you are, you are perfectly equipped to take my good friend’s advice: go be a sea turtle in someone’s life! Be for them a source of hope, joy, and life. 

____________

You can find Brittney on any of her social media channels:
On Twitter as Brittney Kristina (@mindfulbrittney) / Twitter
On Instagram as Brittney Kristina Dear (@brittney.kristina) • Instagram photos and videos
On Facebook as Brittney Kristina - Home | Facebook
On Goodreads as Brittney Kristina (Author of Forsaken) (goodreads.com)
Online at Mindfulness Blog | Mindfully Brittney (brittneykristina.wixsite.com)
You can buy her books at Amazon.com: Brittney Kristina: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

Super Bowl Party Wings

Credit

The most-watched broadcast of the whole year in the United States is just a few days away, and with the game come several traditions: listening to see if the singer will spontaneously forget the lyrics and/or the melody of the Star-Spangled Banner, hoping the coin actually flips when someone tosses it, arguing with friends and family about which commercials were the best or the worst, enjoying or thoroughly hating the halftime show… the list goes on. Of course, here I mean to list only the traditions not proper to the game of football itself.

Today’s recipe comes out of another one of those traditions that are integral to the game experience, but which have nothing to do with the game per se: food. Specifically, finger foods, namely, chicken wings.

As I’ve covered many times in several chicken recipes already posted here, poultry and fowl have two different kinds of meat: white and dark. White meat is the meat that has the least myoglobin, hemoglobin, proteins, and connective tissue. Dark meat is just the opposite—lots of myoglobin, hemoglobin, proteins, and connective tissues. Especially because of the differences in that last category, dark meat tolerates a much higher temperature without going dry. (In fact, if you go to my Signature Dish, you’ll see that there I tell you to cook the meat 20-plus degrees more well-done than “well-done” for chicken, according to the government.) 

Connective tissue melts at a very high temperature, which explains why it’s beneficial to “overcook” (according to the FDA/USDA) dark meat—because if dark meat is eaten at 160, the experience will be suboptimal since the collagen in the dark meat will not have fully converted into gelatin. This collagen-to-gelatin melting reaction is part of what makes poultry (and other meats) “juicy.” White meat has very little collagen, so it’s much easier to dry it out, which explains why it's important to stop the cooking process as soon as white meat reaches a safe temperature. Even 5 or 10 extra degrees will feel overcooked and grainy or gritty if you deal with white meat.

Anyways, back to the wings. Chicken wings, if they’re intact, look kind of like a Z. One end was obviously connected to the body of the bird. The first of the three segments of the “Z,” the part closest to that connection to the body via a joint, is the drumette. After the drumette comes the flat, which has less meat on it. Further out still is the wingtip, which has the least meat. When you eat a chicken wing and you find yourself in a part of the wing with one thick bone, that’s the drumette. If you see two thinner bones, that’s the flat. If you can, try to buy wings that only have the first two sections, since the third section is basically only bone and/or cartilage. (But if you’re making chicken stock, buy whole wings—you need the extra cartilage in that case.) If you prefer one of the parts of the wings, of course, buy only that part. For all intents and purposes to a home cook, the flat and the drumette can be treated exactly the same way.

Here, I’ll present 3 recipes for chicken wing rubs. All these wings should be cooked the same way: in a single layer on a baking sheet in a 400-degree oven until they reach at least 180 degrees internally. 40 minutes should be perfect, but that could fluctuate depending on how accurate your oven is, how big it is, how full it is with chicken, etc. Go by how cooked the chicken is, not by how much time has passed. If you deal with wings enough, you’ll know by feel if they are done.

First, let’s begin with a true classic for the chicken wing: buffalo sauce. A day before the wings which will become buffalo wings are to be served, take them out of their containers and place them on a sheet tray (ideally with a wire rack to maximize air circulation). Liberally salt the wings. Leave them uncovered in the fridge on the sheet tray for 24 hours. This process is known as dry brining. It more thoroughly seasons the wings, and it dries out the skin, allowing for more crispy skin that won’t go soggy even when the wings are totally coated in the various sauces. (This method should, like the cooking method, be observed with all the sauce combinations. Buffalo sauce is a mixture of butter, hot sauce, and spices. 

Over medium heat on a stovetop in a small saucepan, 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter per dozen wings, and add to that garlic powder, onion powder, fresh cracked black pepper, and your choice of paprika style (hot, smoked, sweet, or any combination thereof). Whisk to dissolve the powders. Once the powdered spices have been activated by the hot fat in the butter and the spices are fragrant, add to that mixture 1 ounce of hot sauce per dozen wings (more if you like the heat, less if you don’t). Whisk again. Cook over medium-low heat for another 5 minutes. As soon as the wings are done in the oven, place them in your biggest heatproof bowl and transfer your sauce into that same container where the wings are. If you have a big bowl, you can toss your wings by flicking your wrists, but if you aren’t comfortable with the technique, use a pair of tongs to toss the wings and evenly distribute the sauce to coat all the wings.

For lemon-pepper wings, follow the same procedure of dry-brining and then roasting the wings. The sauce is again made up of 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter per dozen wings, plus the zest and juice of 3 lemons per 2 dozen wings, salt to taste, and 20 cranks of freshly ground black pepper per dozen wings. I have worked with “lemon-pepper” seasonings before, and I have also made my own lemon-pepper chicken (not necessarily wings), and the two versions of the seasoning—the premade “lemon-pepper” and the seasoning I make myself—are worlds apart. Lemons are quite acidic, so if you want, feel free to use limes, oranges, or another citrus you prefer instead. If you would like to, you could also add a shot of tequila to the butter, fresh citrus juice and zest, and ground pepper. If you do this and you choose to make tequila-lemon-pepper wings, be sure the alcohol completely evaporates before using this sauce with the wings, especially if you’re making these wings for a party and little kids might be watching the game with you.

This third recipe is a riff on the Signature Dish I mentioned above. Combine the spices from the signature dish (paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, dill, oregano, thyme, basil, salt, fresh ground black pepper) with the butter, and, as before, infuse the spices into the sauce, then toss the wings in the sauce as soon as they’re done.

Finally, a honey mustard sauce. Combine the butter, garlic powder, salt, pepper, paprika, and 2 teaspoons each of good Dijon or whole grain mustard and raw clover or other wildflower honey. Adjust the seasonings as necessary so that the tangy mustard, sweet honey, and rich butter are balanced. As before, prepare the sauce and toss it immediately with the wings.

(Credit to Bon Appetit's BA's Best Wings)

Mac and Cheese

I’m sure almost all of you would agree with me that, as far as traditional American comfort foods go, mac and cheese has to be one of the most iconic, and one of the favorites, especially among the youngsters. As good as it is when you’re at a casual summer barbeque with friends, celebrating Thanksgiving with your family, or just craving some comfort food, there are a few adaptations we can make to the traditional ways of making this dish to make it even better.

There are three key components to this dish that’ll make it or break it. First, sufficiently undercooking the pasta. Second, building a mornay that doesn’t split. Third, creating a topping and baking the dish to completion. Mastering each of these tasks individually is crucial to mastering the perfect mac and cheese. But don’t be too afraid—these tasks may look difficult, but they really aren’t.
Elbow macaroni is the traditional shape associated with this dish. And as good and nostalgic as mac and cheese with this shape is, there are a few shapes that actually hold up better to the sauce and the baking process. Instead of the traditional elbow shape, I suggest gemelli or cavatappi, in that order of preference.

Regardless of its final use, I like to cook each pound of pasta in a gallon of water. But unlike a lot of my other pasta dishes, pasta to be used in mac and cheese should never be cooked in water to al dente. This is a common mistake people make with this dish: cooking the pasta to al dente in the water overcooks it in the oven, and the texture is nowhere near as good as it would be if the proper procedure had been followed. Luckily, pasta boxes or bags give the time required to reach al dente. We can use that information as a baseline, and, in this case, subtract 3-4 minutes from that time, and drain the pasta after that much time.

Bringing a gallon of water to a rolling boil and then parcooking pasta can be quite a slow process, but we can use this time to our advantage. Preheat your oven to 400 Fahrenheit. We need to build a béchamel to eventually turn into a mornay, so this is the best time to do that. By doing things in parallel, the pasta doesn’t get soggy as it waits for the sauce, and the sauce doesn’t develop a skin or thicken too much as it cools. (Sauces thickened by a roux, a mixture of flour and butter, like most of the French Mother Sauces, thicken faster and faster as they get progressively cooler.) We need a mornay sauce eventually, but a good mornay starts with a Béchamel base. Béchamel is one of the five classic Mother Sauces of the French cuisine, so I’ve already covered how to prepare it in a series I did back in October. Since I’ve already covered béchamel, I’ll just create a link to that recipe which you can access by clicking here. 

Once you’ve finished the béchamel as described by that recipe, come back here to learn how to turn the béchamel into a mornay and finish the dish. I will give one tip about the béchamel before moving on: for each pound of pasta, make the roux according to the instructions in the other recipe with 3 tablespoons each of all-purpose flour and unsalted butter.

Once you are satisfied with the taste of your Béchamel, check its texture. A proper béchamel should reach nappe. That is, it should look like a tiny Red Sea if you coat a metal spoon with it and drag your finger across the back of the spoon: there should be two distinct sides of the spoon covered in sauce, a trail in the center where your finger was, and the sauce on either side should not flow back to the center to cover the trail you left. It takes time, but with enough practice, you’ll be able to bring any sauce to nappe. A mornay is a béchamel to which cheese has been added. Cheddar is, of course, the classic cheese for maximum nostalgia in this dish. I already recommended something other than the classic way by suggesting a different shape of pasta, but I’m not going to do that here regarding the cheese. 

Cheddar is a great cheese on its own, and it works really well in mornay sauces, but I do have one recommendation. Just make sure that if you use cheddar, you get a high-quality mild cheddar. Cheaper cheeses (particularly cheddar) usually have extra emulsifiers. These compounds are harmless, and you don’t notice them when you eat the cheese cold or at room temperature, but their presence can slightly change the texture of the cheese when it melts, as it will in this application. Higher quality cheeses lack these additives, so we need to be more careful not to break the emulsion of the sauce, but by using better cheeses, the results will be superior. Milder cheeses, for reasons I don’t quite know how to explain, split less often than sharper cheeses.

I recommend adding a little bit of mustard to a mornay sauce for two reasons. The tang of the mustard cuts through the richness of the cheese quite nicely, and the chemistry of the mustard works in our favor by helping to naturally keep the mornay stable even after the cheese is incorporated and the sauce is heated substantially in a hot oven.

Ideally, it is best to hand-grate a high-quality cheese into a mornay sauce. In any case, however you add your cheese (shredded or grated by the store or processing plant, or grated yourself), do so with the pan containing the sauce off the heat. If direct heat is applied to the sauce before the cheese is combined, the sauce will split. Feel free to adjust the consistency of the sauce with extra milk if it becomes too thick.

Add ¼ cup of olive oil to a skillet, and once the oil is hot, add 1 cup of panko breadcrumbs. Keep the pan and its contents moving constantly and fry the breadcrumbs until they’re golden brown. Remove them from the oil and place them on a paper towel to drain. This should be completed in time with finishing the mornay and the pasta being ready (several minutes shy of al dente). Once all these components are ready, combine the pasta with the mornay sauce, and then transfer the sauced pasta to an oven-safe dish. Top with the breadcrumbs. Cook until golden brown and bubbly. Serve.

(Credit to Fine Cooking)

Revised Bolognese

The Bolognese alla Quarentena has to be one of my most cooked sauces here at home, and a few weeks ago, I made a change to the recipe that merits more than a quick footnote update to the original recipe. The alla Quarentena, as I’ve been preparing it, has always been with a rather lean ground turkey, but traditional Bolognese is made with ground beef (honestly, I don’t remember the last time I worked with ground beef), so I’ll make two changes to the alla Quarentena here: 1) ground turkey will revert back to the original traditional ground beef, and 2) I’ll make the signature change that differentiates this recipe from my other one.

This recipe begins the same way, by sauteing 1 pound of ground beef (a good ground chuck is best). Beef has a significant advantage over turkey: it’s a lot fattier. The most common ground beef sold here in the United States is 80/20. That is, 80 percent of the meat is protein and 20 percent is fat. In general, this is the perfect ratio of ground beef for almost anything. If one of my recipes calls for ground beef, you can safely assume I want you to use 80/20 unless I say otherwise. The ground turkey I’ve worked with, on the other hand, is 93/7. Poultry in general is leaner than beef or pork, but even by poultry standards, this is very lean. (So lean, in fact, that I don’t think I could find beef that lean without going to a specialty butcher shop; most ground beef is 90/10 or higher.)

This higher fat content of the ground beef over the ground turkey (20% versus 7% means that the beef is basically 3 times fattier than the turkey) is important for three reasons: Fat is a barrier that allows for even heat transfer from the cooking surface to the protein. Without that barrier to move the heat from the pan to the food, it cooks unevenly. If that barrier doesn’t exist, I need to create it by adding fat into the system myself, which comes in the form of olive oil. Second, cooking an animal (in any form—ground, as a steak, etc.) in its own fat adds another complex dimension of flavor that is impossible to replicate when cooking an animal in some other fat. With fatty beef, most of the fat is in the beef, and it can be rendered out and used to cook the beef with close to no additional fat. Doing this allows the “beefiness” of the beef to shine, whereas with the turkey, since that fat basically isn’t there, the fat isn’t turkey fat, but olive oil. Don’t get me wrong, I like olive oil, but cooking turkey in olive oil (which obviously isn’t the turkey’s own fat) doesn’t give as robust a flavor to the turkey as the method for the beef. Third, fattier meat stays moister longer. This is why, in general, it’s really easy to prepare a filet mignon terribly, but it’s almost impossible to mess up a brisket in that sense. Beef has more fat than turkey, so I have to put in less effort to keep the beef itself just as good as the sauce it’s sitting in compared to the work I have to do to have the same effect on the much leaner turkey.

In any case, the first step to any good Bolognese is browning the protein of choice. For reasons that will become apparent later, do this in an oven-safe vessel. Whether I use this method or my older method, my preferred vessel of choice anytime I make a Bolognese is my 8-quart stainless steel Dutch oven, but you don’t necessarily need a Dutch oven; anything big, heavy, and oven-safe should do the trick. Protein expels water from within its cells at first, and at this point, it looks gray and, frankly, quite unappealing. However, if you’ve been cooking long enough, you’ll start learning to recognize the different sounds proteins make when they’re expelling that water versus when they’re frying in the fat you put in the pan (or which they already naturally contain). Listen for that sound to change, and with it, watch for the color to change. This is one of the points where I deviate from the original Bolognese alla Quarentena, and one of the keys to making this recipe successful. When you start browning the meat, preheat your oven to 250 Fahrenheit. By the time you finish browning the meat and preparing everything else, your oven should be up to temperature. And even if it’s not quite there yet, that’ll be okay—more on that in a few paragraphs.

This sauce is quite simple, and rather similar to the alla Quarentena sauce or the Sauce Tomate I posted in October when I covered the French Mother Sauces. In a food processor, combine 1 large yellow onion, 6 cloves of garlic, 1 large red bell pepper, and 6 Roma tomatoes, and keep the processor running until the sauce is as smooth as possible, given you’re using a food processor and not a blender. Place the sauce into the vessel you have chosen, where the browned meat should already be. Add to that enough water so that you have 3 parts tomato mixture to 2 parts water. Season this with freshly cracked black pepper, dried oregano, dried dill, dried thyme, dried basil, garlic powder, and onion powder. Stir to combine all the spices and to make sure nothing has burned on the bottom or sides. Place this sauce into the oven (which, again, should be set to 250 Fahrenheit). As mentioned before, it’s totally fine if your prep work is quicker than the time it takes your oven to hit 250. If that happens to be the case, just put the oven-safe vessel into the oven and let it go. In any case, leave the sauce in the oven for at least 1 ½ and up to 4 hours. Resist the temptation to open the oven door for any reason; don’t look at it, don’t stir it, don’t rotate the pan, don’t add more liquid. Leave it alone. This, I think, is one of the areas where home cooks struggle the most: knowing what needs constant babysitting and what can be left alone for hours on end. There’s a ton of liquid in that vessel. Nothing is going to burn, and the oven is at such a low temperature that you don’t have to worry about the reduction process. This is absolutely a recipe that can be left alone.

Up to 4 hours after it went into the oven, turn the oven off and remove the sauce. Stir the sauce again and taste it. Only now, salt it and taste it again. This sauce should never be salted ahead of time (i.e., when you’re preparing it to go into the oven) for two related reasons: 1) temperature and 2) time. I don’t know how accurate your oven is (and, truthfully, you probably don’t know either), and I have no way of knowing how long your sauce will stay in the oven. These are the two variables that control how much something reduces, and reduction is an accelerating process. So if something tastes good before reduction and it reduces just a little bit in my oven, it’ll be okay. But if that same dish tastes good before reduction and it reduces by tenfold in your oven, it’ll be inedibly salty by the end. If you know you have to reduce something, or you even think about reducing it, hold off on salting it until you’re satisfied with the final volume.

As with the original recipe, the ideal serving companion to this sauce is a long, wide, dry pasta, like a good tagliatelle, pappardelle, or fettucine. Cook those according to the package instructions, combine with the sauce, mix, and serve.

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup is a classic rustic French soup perfect for a cold winter’s day. Done properly, start to finish, this soup can take up to 48 hours, so most people are very intimidated by it. But since most of that work is passive, this is actually a very simple recipe that every home cook should know.
Onion soup is so time-consuming because of the soup base, namely, a beef stock. Beef stock is made with beef bones and, at the lowest of simmers, takes anywhere from 16 to 48 hours of stove time. I have a chicken stock recipe already uploaded, and you can find that by clicking here. The process for beef stock is nearly the same: roast the bones and the aromatics, add a lot of water to a tall pot with as much volume as possible, and let it simmer as gently as possible for as long as possible. If you want, you also have the option of following the stock recipe exactly by using chicken wings to make chicken stock, even though the traditional version of the soup uses beef stock. If you are vegetarian/vegan, I suppose you could make this soup entirely vegan by roasting vegetables and mushrooms, adding water and soy sauce, and simmering that to make a vegetable stock to serve as a base.
 

Cut 3 pounds of yellow onions in half pole-to-pole, that is, through the root and the stem ends, like I always recommend for when they are to be chopped. Peel the onion halves, and then cut them thinly, once again pole-to-pole. If you have a mandolin slicer, use it, but be sure to put on a hand guard first, since mandolin blades can be very sharp. If you use a knife, make sure your blade is sharp, not only because sharper blades are safer, but also because sharper blades disturb fewer cell walls and are thus less likely to make you or anyone else around you cry as you slice the onions. Once all the onions have been sliced, melt a whole stick of butter. Once the butter has melted but has not started browning, place all the onions into a large pan or Dutch oven.

Caramelize the onions slowly, over medium-low heat. Stir constantly. Caramelization is not a linear process, so you should never step away from caramelizing onions. Watch and stir them constantly from anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on how much moisture your onions need to expel before they start taking on color.

If you have any, when the onions are almost done, you can deglaze the pan with sherry or cognac. Otherwise, use an equivalent amount of water (2-3 ounces) to deglaze the pan. The caramelization process certainly created fond—the chef’s dream, the sticky flavorful bits that get stuck to cooking surfaces, just waiting to be dissolved. Deglazing a cooking surface picks up that fond with a liquid and dissolves the fond into that liquid, so no flavor is lost. The onions have finished caramelizing when they are deep mahogany brown, have an almost jammy consistency, and are about to burn but have not yet. Monitoring the onions as they get closer and closer to this point is essential. I’ve said it already, but it is worth repeating you CANNOT walk away from caramelizing onions, or they will burn.

For 3 pounds of onions, I recommend about half a gallon of stock. Add the stock to the onions, and let simmer, stirring occasionally for 25 minutes. Once the stock goes in, you can afford to step away, only checking every five minutes or so. There’s a gallon of liquid in your pan/Dutch oven, so surely nothing will burn because there’s no way that a gallon of liquid will evaporate, since the liquid is only simmering, and for not even half an hour. Check for seasoning and adjust as normal, bearing in mind that my stock recipe never called for salt precisely so that at a moment like this, you could season your soup to your liking.

In the meantime, figure out how many portions of soup you will be serving right away (this soup is great for leftovers after the fact, but right now, handle however many people you’ll be feeding right away). Find that many oven-safe ramekins or bowls and cut slices of baguettes about ¾ of an inch thick so that the tops of all those dishes can be covered in bread. At the same time, grate enough Gruyere to generously cover all of the bread.

When 25 minutes have elapsed, the soup is ready to be portioned into the ramekins. Top the soup with the bread, and then top the bread with the cheese. Place the filled ramekins on top of a baking sheet and place the baking sheet into an oven with the broiler (“grill” if you speak non-American English) on high. Check on the soup after 90 seconds, and every 15 seconds thereafter. The objective is for the cheese to take on some “leoparding,” that is, for it to look like the cheese on top of a well-made cheese pizza: taking on some color but not burned. Once you are satisfied with the degree of melting and leoparding of the cheese, turn off the broiler, carefully remove the ramekins from the oven and serve.

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Cream of mushroom is a great soup to have on hand for the winter, and it’s actually one of the simplest soups to make. There are three components to good cream of mushroom: a good bechamel, sauteed mushrooms, and good duxelles.

Whether someone recommends washing mushrooms in an application like this can be quite a point of contention, and, putting this out on the internet, I fully recognize I might be putting myself in a position to have a heated discussion in the comments below. For several years, I was of the opinion that white, baby bella, or cremini mushrooms shouldn’t be washed per se, and that they should just be scrubbed with a moist paper towel to remove any grime that might be on the surface. But now, after dozens of experiments, I’ve concluded that washing mushrooms by submersion makes no difference to the saturation when compared to the moist-paper-towel-scrubbing method. Personally, then, I’ve returned to submerging the mushrooms, but if you would like to, feel free to scrub them individually.

Cream of mushroom makes use of the whole mushroom—the cap and the stem. But unlike other dishes I’ve developed that use mushrooms (like this stroganoff), the cap and stem are not used together. For this, we need to separate the cap and the stem from each other. This is a simple process that can certainly be done by hand. To do this, I like to place the cap of the mushroom in my non-dominant hand; grab the stem with my dominant hand, and then gently twist clockwise until the cap and the stem have come apart. Keep the caps on your cutting board and go ahead and place the stems in your food processor.

Peel and quarter one large yellow onion, and peel half of a head of garlic, placing both the onion and the garlic with the mushroom stems. Run the food processor until the mushroom stems, onion, and garlic cloves have become a relatively homogenous paste. This will eventually become the duxelles.

Slice the caps into relatively even pieces; in general, cutting each cap into 3 to 4 pieces should be a good size. Smaller-than-average mushrooms should be cut only in half, and larger-than-average mushrooms can be cut into up to 6 pieces. Coat the bottom of a Dutch oven or large saucepan (at least 4-5 quarts) with a thin film of oil. When the oil begins to shimmer, place the sliced caps in the oil. Be careful to avoid splatter. Water in the mushrooms may splatter when it hits the hot oil, so a burn hazard certainly exists at this point. Early in this process, there is no risk of the mushrooms burning, but as they expel water and begin to sauté, these mushrooms need progressively more attention. The sound you’ll be hearing when the mushrooms expel water versus when they sauté will be different, and you’ll learn to recognize the different phases of the cooking process by experience. Once the mushrooms start to sauté, add 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and let the vinegar cook down a little with the mushrooms, taking care not to burn anything. Season with salt, freshly cracked black pepper, dried thyme, and dried dill. After a few more minutes, transfer the mushrooms and the vinegar to a separate heat-safe container.

In the same pan, cook down the mushroom stalk-onion-garlic paste from the food processor. Season the paste with salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Once most of the moisture has come out of the onions and garlic (this requires constant stirring since the pieces are so much smaller than the pieces of the caps), reserve this to a separate container. This is the duxelles.

For the last time, start over with a clean pan, being sure to remove anything that may have burned to this point. Build a béchamel using the method I’ve outlined here. Once the béchamel is ready, return the duxelles and the mushrooms caps to the pan. Stir. Adjust the consistency of the soup and check for seasoning. Adjust the consistency and/or the seasoning if necessary.

(Photo credits to Cafe Delites)

Pan-Seared Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Pan Sauce

A few weeks ago, in time for Christmas, I put out a recipe for a rolled pork loin stuffed full of compound butter. I made very sure to draw a distinction between that cut of meat (the “pork loin”) and the “pork tenderloin.” Two loins exist (one on either side of the spine), but only one tenderloin. The tenderloin, is, effectively, the chateaubriand of a pig. (You normally buy the chateaubriand cut up into individual steaks or medallions, which we call “filet mignon” from cattle, but you can and absolutely should buy the whole muscle, which we call a “chateaubriand.”) While the loin recipe I shared several weeks ago was intended for far more people to eat at once and was far more expensive, this recipe can be a meal for one or two, it is much quicker, and it is much cheaper—perfect for a busy weeknight.

You’d be hard-pressed to ever find the loin pre-seasoned and pre-packaged, but it’s actually probably harder to find a tenderloin that isn’t seasoned than one that is. Most tenderloins on the market are going to come sealed in a plastic bag already marinating in some oil and spices. Don’t buy those if at all possible. Instead, look for just the tenderloin. Buying just the tenderloin allows you, the home cook, maximum control over as many parts of the culinary experience as possible. For this reason, in general (that is, not just with pork tenderloins but with any meat, fish, or poultry), my advice is to buy meat that has been handled as little as possible.

A tenderloin isn’t a very big piece of meat—they average about 20 ounces or so, a little more than a pound. That much meat (it’s quite lean and it’s boneless) feeds two people. Plan accordingly, and scale this recipe up or down based on how many people you need to feed. There generally is no way to scale this recipe up other than by buying more tenderloins—their size is relatively fixed in that range.
Tenderloin is quite lean and not as “porky” as some other cuts, so it benefits from marination overnight. I like building a standard marinade not unlike what I make for my signature dish: some kind of vinegar, mustard, and spices mixed together, and then olive oil drizzled in slowly at first (and then at an increasing rate as more oil is added) while whisking constantly. Add whatever you like to your marinade, being sure to season it well. Once the marinade has been prepared, place the pork into it and make sure all the pork’s surface has at least some contact with it. Close the container with an airtight lid and place it in a fridge overnight.

Coat the bottom of an oven-safe skillet in a thin film of oil on the day you want to cook the pork (which must be the day after marination started, so plan accordingly). Remove the pork from the marinade, but do not discard the marinade. Over medium heat, get that oil shimmering. Place the tenderloin in the oil. Allow the Maillard reaction to take place, creating a caramelized crust on the side of the tenderloin in contact with the pan. Wait for the tenderloin to release naturally from the pan. This will tell you the Maillard reaction has finished. If after this side you notice there was too much browning to quickly, lower the heat before flipping to another side. Repeat this process with every surface of the tenderloin, generally flipping a quarter-turn each time. Once the tenderloin has undergone a full revolution, check its temperature. If the internal temperature in the center is between 140 and 160 Fahrenheit, you’re done. If it isn’t, put the pork in the same pan in an oven preheated to 400 Fahrenheit until it reaches that temperature target zone. Where you pull it within the target zone is entirely your preference. Just know that pork will continue rising 5-10 degrees even off the stove or outside the oven, and pork cooked to an internal temperature any hotter than 145 is considered safe in the United States. (If you live in a part of the world where certain parasites are common, cook your pork all the way to 160 Fahrenheit just to be safe.)

When the pork reaches your desired temperature, remove it from the heat, take it out of the pan, and place it elsewhere to rest. There are probably some sticky, caramelized bits of pork crust stuck to the bottom of the pan. These bits form what is called a “fond.” (French viewers, I mean this in the sense of “sucs,” whereas you may use a “fond” – what we English-speakers call a “stock,” or another liquid—to perform this next step.) Deglaze this. That is, bring a cold liquid (water, wine, or stock) to the pan and stir, thereby loosening those bits from the pan and dissolving them into your deglazing liquid. Learn this procedure well. “Sear, finish, rest, deglaze, mount,” is a simple and effective procedure for cooking almost protein with a pan sauce, and thus it is very adaptable. Once the pan has been deglazed, reintroduce the marinade to the pan and, over medium heat stirring often so that nothing burns on the sides or bottom of the pan, reduce the liquid by half. This does several things: (1) it kills any bacteria in the marinade, (2) it concentrates the flavor of the marinade, and (3) it prevents the final texture of the pan sauce from being too loose. By the time the marinade has boiled down enough that its volume has reduced by half, it will be safe. Once this occurs, turn off the burner, and whisk in 3 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter. Check for seasoning, adjusting as necessary. Serve with vegetables and starches as desired.

New Year's Eve: Greek Salad, Potatoes, and Oven-Roasted Salmon

Friday night was New Year’s Eve, and, to celebrate, we had a dinner I’m now realizing would have been perfect for Christmas Eve, exactly one week before. By popular request, I took on a Greek theme for the night’s dishes, and now that I’m actually sitting down to write these recipes for the blog, I’m having the realization that this would have been a perfect inclusion on Christmas Eve’s Feast of the Seven Fish, if we’d done that exactly one week before.

The starch accompanying the meal Friday night was about 2 pounds of the Signature Potatoes. That by far takes the longest to finish—about an hour and 10 minutes. Cut, season, and toss the potatoes according to the recipe, and then immediately begin working on the following dish.

The festivities on the 31st began with a Greek salad. As with almost any salad, the hardest part of a Greek salad’s assembly is the preparation of its dressing. I’ve already covered how to make vinaigrette emulsion dressings on this blog, so rather than explaining the whole process again here, I’ll just link to that post so you can reach it by clicking here. Two major changes were made to that process: 1) the exclusion of raw minced or pressed garlic and 2) the addition of several herbs common in Greek cuisine as seasonings in the vinaigrette, including dried basil, oregano, dill, and mustard powder.

It’s always been my philosophy when making a salad that the dressing should always be complete well in advance of any of the other components. This serves two purposes: first, it allows me o check that the emulsion I’ve made is actually stable (and to fix it if it isn’t) and to allow the flavors to meld and interact with each other, thereby creating a dressing far more complex than the sum of its parts. If the dressing is stable—and I have to confess that mine wasn’t initially stable, but that’s fine because there is a way to fix that! (first by adding more mustard, and then by adding more oil very, very slowly)— it can sit indefinitely, and it won’t split.

When I judged that the potatoes were about half-done, I pulled 3 sockeye salmon fillets I had been thawing in cold water out of the water, removed them from the packaging, Adam Ragusea has a pretty good way of classifying the three general shapes of salmon fillets, as “car,” “flat,” or “tail” pieces. I posted another salmon recipe a few months ago where I seared salmon in the pan. The first category are much longer than they are wide, and, on the profile, they kind of look like a sedan: not very much fish at the front where the “engine” is, lots of fish in the middle “where the people sit inside the car” and not much fish where the “trunk” is. The second category comes from the middle of the side of the fish and looks most like a slice of a cube: from above, it looks like a square, but it’s not a cube, since its much thinner, but the virtue of this piece is that it is almost uniform in its thickness. The third piece is, like the “car” distinctive in its shape: you can very easily tell it came from the back of the fish because one end looks like it would’ve been connected to a flat piece and the other end tapers almost to a point.

That method of pan-searing works best with “car” pieces. They’re the ones that cook the most quickly and most unevenly, so it’s definitely a good thing to be watching those pieces the whole time as they cook on the stove rather than letting them cook unattended in an oven for a longer period. But in this case, and in most cases, I get bags of fish that have mostly flat or tail pieces. That was certainly the case on New Year's Eve, so this oven method is perfect.

Line an oven-safe pan with aluminum foil. It is always better to cook fish skin-on (because already-skinless fish will immediately disintegrate into its flakes when you pick it up, thereby ruining the presentation). Because we’re not searing the skin as we would in the other pan method, the skin will come right off—but the fillet will stay intact and presentable—at the end of the cooking process in the oven. Place the fillets in that pan in one layer, and being careful not to touch the fish so as not to contaminate the dressing, spoon some of the Greek vinaigrette onto the fish. Once the fish have been dressed, place them in the oven with the potatoes. Time this so that the fish and the potatoes will be done around the same time. The fish needs about 20-25 minutes to cook, plus 5 minutes to rest (in the oven, with the oven turned off), and the potatoes usually take about an hour.

While the fish is in the oven, begin working on assembling the salad, but do not dress it with what remains of the Greek vinaigrette yet. Cut, wash and dry one head of Romaine lettuce. Wash one cucumber. Wash, dry, and then cut a cucumber in half along its length and then again in a perpendicular direction. This will create four quarters, each of which, when cut, will create half-moons of cucumber. Wash and dry 1 pint of grape tomatoes. Remove Kalamata olives from their brine and cut them to your liking. Crumble 4 ounces of feta cheese into the vegetables. Combine well. Only when the fish and the potatoes are ready to come out of the oven (cooked and rested), dress the salad and toss again.

Serve.