Pommes Anna

When your life is in total disarray as is wont to happen from time to time, only Julia Child will do.

Structured potatoes and butter because you need some structure in your chaotic life. And as Julia says, butter makes everything better.

(A judicious amount of duck fat makes it even better. Oh, Julia!)

Most likely, the dish was prepared by Adolphe Dugléré who was a pupil of Marie-Antoine Carême who was quite possibly the greatest celebrity chef of all time. The eponymous Anna is unknown although theories proliferate.

Do we care? No, we don't bloody care. Potatoes and butter, does the CC really need to upsell this?

It's on pages 394-397 of Vol. II.

It should be trivially obvious that when a recipe features just four ingredients — butter, potatoes, salt and paper towels — and yet occupies three whole pages of explanation, it's going to be awesome.

Ironically, it's not hard. It's very easy. It just requires the one thing that's missing in modern cooking — patience.

All you have to do is "nothing". Can you patiently sit with your thumb up your ass for a longish time? That's all it takes.

That and a mandoline.

What is it?

It's a potato pie that looks really pretty and bejeweled if done right except it's made in a skillet.

It's been modified somewhat from Julia. This is more la bonne cuisine femme than it is la cuisine de roi.

Thank me no thankings, Julia, nor proud me no prouds.

Ingredients

potatoes
melted butter
salt

pepper/herbs (optional)

patience (metric tons of it!)

Note 1: You will need a cast-iron skillet or a non-stick pan with a loose cover. Don't sweat it. Even a simple aluminum foil will do. The heat never goes above medium. It's much more important that the heat be uniform than anything else.

Note 2: You need to cook the potatoes as soon as you slice them. You need the starchiness of the potatoes to make sure the dish sticks correctly.

Recipe

Melt some butter in a pan. Take off the heat. (This is what makes the recipe awesomely stress-free. No need to work in real-time. Chillax is the name of the game.)

Now, slice the potatoes as thinly as possible on a mandoline. Layer them in the pan so that they all touch and overlap and look pretty.

Drizzle some more butter over them. Season with some salt. (Add some finely chopped herbs here if you'd like.)

Overlap a second layer. Repeat with the butter, salt, and a third layer and a fourth one.

Put the pan back on the stove at medium heat. Once the butter melts, you should start hearing it sizzle at a low pace. This is when your patience kicks in.

(A generous pour of butter or olive oil around the edges doesn't hurt at this point.)

The pan will sizzle and the fat spit a little. Cover the pan for just  a minute so that the potatoes soften gently. Uncover.

Gently rock the pan to see if the starch in the potatoes have made them attach to each other. Let them keep cooking at medium heat. There should be a continuous sizzle.

When you smell the potatoes turn golden and toasty, it's time to gently turn them over. This is a bit tricky. Use a dish if you need to. You most likely will not need it.

Cook until the other side is also golden and crispy.

Enjoy your, "Oh sweet baby Jeebus, Julia is so much better" moment!

Caesar Salad

Probably the CC's favorite salad. Its salty umami-laden magic is just off the charts and it's truly sad that it's turned into a bad cliché with horrible ingredients.

Years ago, the CC visited April Bloomfield's justly famous restaurant where the "star" of the dinner was a whole pig. The lead-in to the dinner was this amazing Caesar salad and since the entire dinner was unlimited (minus the pig), at some point there was a call for salad seconds.

The table was ambivalent and after a pregnant silence, the CC shouted out a very loud, "YES!"

The table staff got some more and then they teased the CC while they served him, "I guess you don't want any more, right?"

Right.

This is her recipe unexpurgated. The CC doesn't know why it took so long to make it. It's literally perfect and the CC is smacking himself upside the head as we speak.

If you have a deep measuring cup and an immersion blender, this is a cinch to make.

There are a few changes. She prefers "neutral" oil but the CC overwhelmingly prefers olive oil. The vinegar change is marginal.

She goes with a a classic Caesar salad. Romaine, dressing, croutons but if you want a complete meal, feel free to top it with a grilled chicken (along with the filleted anchovies mentioned below.)

(Source: Directly from April Bloomfield's book A Girl and her Pig.)

Ingredients

Dressing

1 large egg
7 whole anchovies (separated into 14 fillets)
1/4 cup champagne vinegar
2 medium garlic cloves
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/2-1 cup olive oil (very approximate!!!)
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano (grated coarsely)

Salad

romaine lettuce (separated, washed, dried)
croutons
parmigiano-reggiano (for grating)
a "few" anchovy fillets (for topping)
pepper to taste

Note 1: The raw egg is non-negotiable. Buy eggs from a reputable source. Wash them thoroughly in warm water with soap and dry before you crack them. All the germs are (mostly) on the surface. The egg has strong properties to repel invaders even if mildly cracked. That's why raw eggs last longer in the fridge than cooked ones!

Note 2: You only need half the dressing since there's no way to make "half" an egg. That's how it goes.

Note 3: The dressing will last for at most 3 days in the fridge afterwards because of the raw egg. You'll just have to eat this excellence twice. The CC's heart bleeds for you.

Note 4: The CC used a blend of 1/8 cup champagne vinegar and 1/8 cup sherry vinegar. It makes a difference. The champagne vinegar by itself would be too tart.

Recipe

Drop everything for the dressing into a deep measuring cup except the oil. Blend gently. Add the oil a little at a time and blend it.

(She dumps the stuff one at a time but frankly, the CC saw no difference between dumping everything (minus the oil) in at once. Adding the oil a little at the time is mostly because you want it to get to a certain consistency. The CC did not need anywhere near 1 cup of oil. Chances are the CC's egg was larger.)

Taste.

It should be sharp (from the mustard and vinegar), salty, and umami-laden. You should not need to add salt. The ingredients should be salty enough. Balance the ingredients if necessary.

Mix the salad thoroughly with half of the dressing. The filleted anchovies and the parmesan are on top. Chill for at least 5 minutes and then serve.

Sinigang na halaan

This is a Filipino meta-recipe.

You can have Sinigang na X where X can be a large variety of different kinds of meats and seafood. The three classic versions for the X would be pork, chicken and bangus respectively.

A word about bangus (milkfish). It's a fish that was traditionally found in the sea but can grow in brackish water. It's one of the older examples of aquaculture — at least 800 years old in the Philippines. The fish are bony — very bony and it's a skill to eat them.

Sinigang is a sour clear broth with one or more sources of meat and/or seafood, a ton of vegetables, and one souring agent. There is a purity of flavor coming from one very clear-cut souring source which neatly dovetails into the umami of the broth from the meat/seafood.

It is traditionally eaten with rice. The rice is frequently topped with fried garlic and/or fresh scallions but these are all details.

There are traditional recipes but there are clearly two dimensions to the dish — what meat/seafood you choose and what souring agent you choose.

Filipinos love sour food. This is a necessity forced by a tropical climate and a few millennia of no refrigeration turned into a cultural trait. It's one of the few ways to preserve food in a tropical climate so that there is no wastage. There is a difference though. The souring agents are cooked through. It gives them a "rounded mellow" flavor rather than the aggressive hit of acidity that you would get without cooking. There has to be enough sourness to wake up the taste buds but not so much as to make it pucker and inedible.

The list of souring agents is endless — vinegar made from all sorts of sources (coconut, palm, sugarcane, pineapples, etc.), tamarind, calamansi, kamias, santol, green mangoes, green guava, star fruit, green pineapples, even leaves of various plants, etc. This list barely even scratches the surface of this subject. The Philippines probably has the longest list of souring agents of any culture that the CC knows about.

Needless to say the souring agents are not substitutable for each other. It does matter whether you are making a sinigang with a hearty ingredient like pork or delicate ones like seafood. Santol which has an astringent tannic component would be most inappropriate for a seafood sinigang while almost all delicate fruit-based versions would work wonderfully.

There are also some classic touches about the choices of vegetables in a sinigang — a starchy root (taro, banana hearts or "New World" potatoes), some "green protein" typically long beans, and some greens in many many different forms — everything from sili (chili leaves) to bok choy, kang kong, and malunggay. Needless to say once tomatoes were discovered and transferred to the "Old World", they became irresistible additions for reasons we have covered on the blog before.

The ingredients are rotated with the combinatorial game that we have talked about extensively on the blog — you will see corn, carrots, radishes, eggplants and all kinds of other vegetables in there. There's a pairing bias though. You see lighter vegetables with seafood and more aggressive ones like eggplants with meat which makes logical sense based upon the palate profile.

Make no mistake though. The star is the sour broth.

One last word about the use of Filipino-style fish sauce called patis. It's basically the same concept as the Roman garum or the Thai nahm pla but it's arguably different. The CC would have no trouble distinguishing it in a blind tasting. You could substitute but it won't be the same.

Just like in Thai recipes, you don't add salt to the dish. The salt comes via the addition of the patis. Additionally, for this recipe with clams, they will give off plenty of salty liquid. Traditionally, the patis is always added towards the end where you can control the level of saltiness. (It also adds substantial umami to the dish.)

This makes a perfectly good soup even in the absence of rice which is heresy as far as the Filipino world is concerned but the CC can live with that.

After all this long explanatory buildup, this is not a difficult recipe. It's what Filipino moms make when they are too lazy to make something. It's really so simple as to defy its excellence.

Sinigang na halaan

Ingredients

1 large onion (sliced)
1" ginger (chopped thinly)
2 pieces ginger (chopped thinly)
1 chili (sliced lengthwise - optional)

2 small tomatoes (chopped into large pieces)
24 clams
2 cups tamarind water (read below)
2 cups water

1 lotus root (cut into 1/3" slices)
2 cups long beans (sliced into 2" pieces)
4 pieces baby bok choy (tough bottom parts cut off)
2 sprigs chili leaves (sili leaves)

patis (to taste)
vegetable oil

Recipe

Note: Various markets (Filipino, Indian, Thai) carry frozen "green fruits" and both fresh and dried tamarind. They are perfectly excellent in making the various sour broths because the textural component is not important in the least.

First make the tamarind water. Heat up 2 1/2 cups of water with tamarind pods and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Let it sit in the cooling water. When it has cooled down, separate the water from the pods using a strainer. Discard the solids. Retain the tamarind water.

Heat up the oil in a sturdy pot. Add the onions, ginger, garlic and chili (if using) and fry for a bit till soft. Roughly 6 minutes.

Add the tamarind water, the water and bring to a boil. Add the lotus roots and let cook for 3 minutes. Add the long beans and let cook for 4 minutes.

Add the clams. Let them cook till they open. Roughly 8 minutes.

Turn off the heat.

At the very end, add the tomatoes, the bok choy and the chili leaves and let them sit for a few minutes to wilt. Add the patis to taste.

Serve immediately with rice (or not.)

Laziness

Everyone is too lazy to cook sometimes. That's when the twin forces of laziness and the need for good food collide. Thankfully, in the CC's case, the latter always wins. And those are the times to get back to the basics.

Since, this is a post about laziness, first read this about technique.

Then, the basic concept is "loosely cooked rice" stir-fried with cumin, vegetables (carrots, peas, corn) and cashews.

If you can't grasp the recipe, read the archives.

Peace, man!

Vegetable Pulao with Cumin

The Happy Threesome

This trio may be clichéd but it works: walnuts, stilton, pears.

In the modern culinary world, this trio is really like watching your great-aunt put on the latest hip flower-laced jeans and rappin' it out with Fitty Cent.

Which is embarassing.

However, your great-aunt was alive before Fitty so it's important to know why she's the way she is.

It's the sweet-salt combo plus the crunchy-velvety combo. Texture matters so do the taste buds.

Sweet are the pears and salty is the stilton. Crunchy is the texture of the walnuts, and differently crunchy are the pears; velvety is the stilton which blends beautifully with the equally velvety texture of the chewed walnuts and pears.

What's most important to note is that humans may have evolved but their palates haven't. We still love the same things our two-thousand year old ancestors did.

That still means sweet, salt and fat, mes amis, and rappin' it out with your great-aunt.