Cutting Cauliflowers

Far too many people don't know how to cut a cauliflower correctly.

The cauliflower is a fractal as has been explored repeatedly on this blog.

Hold the thing upside down and slice into the florets at a 40° angle. The outside florets will fall off. Keep rotating and doing this.

Now, do this again to each large floret cluster. That's what fractal means!

Pizza

It's a bit surprising that this recipe never made its way to the blog.

The simple explanation is that this is a well-oiled machine that is pre-blogger phase.

This was the most requested (and delivered) recipe in the CC's wild youth. Many pies were made and consumed with suitable libations all around (champagne! martinis!) and much merriment was made with all and sundry for very little cost.

Rewind the clock, and once upon a time, the CC used to be a serious bread person. Natural fermentation, mid-night feedings, the whole nine yards. That's all very wonderful, and mind you, it does lead to spectacular bread, but why bother when the bakery literally a block away can do it for you? (That's New York, my friends!)

This recipe adopts the best of both worlds. Dried yeast (= convenience) but the slow development of flavor that comes from natural fermentation. It works perfectly for parties because you can make it in the morning, and it will be ready in the evening.

Standard dried yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) has been bred for exactly one purpose. Fast fermentation.

Live fast, die young.

That's what dried yeast does. Reproduce a lot. Minus the cocaine and the parties. Alas, they also happen to be asexual! Sucks to be them.

The problem with this fast fermentation is while it does make the dough rise quickly, it does not allow it to gain the complexity that it would have if the yeast could chow down on the sugars present in the flour.

The trick is straightforward. Use very little of the dry yeast, and further retard the fermentation process by lowering the temperature. We are undoing what the marketeers want in the interest of taste!

There's a second trick that most ol'-school bakers know. It's called rye flour. Rye flour is the crack-cocaine of the yeast world. They love it (= high sugar content.) They chow down, go nuts and reproduce like crazy.

In this case, the idea is very simple. First make a poolish (slurry of rye flour, yeast, and water.) Let the yeast go completely crazy. Then mix in the regular flour, and stick it in the fridge.

The first two steps are the trick to the amazingness that is this recipe. Do not skip them under any circumstances!

Incidentally, for all you lovers of convenience, this recipe works perfectly well if you skip the retardation process. You will just not get the complexity of taste though.

Thirdly, you need a pizza stone. There's no need to buy a fancy one. Just get some unglazed tiles and stick them in the oven. The reason is very simple. Air has barely any thermal capacity (ability to hold heat.) The oven is filled with air. You need something in there that can hold heat. The ideal objects are things that are impossible to heat (= stone.) They take forever to heat precisely because they have a huge capacity to hold heat.

The CC has the stone permanently in his oven. It works magnificently in holding heat. Everything from mac-n-cheese to braised lamb is helped on its way by the stone.

Fourth, the CC is going to give a caveat. This is a recipe with flour that has a very high "hydration quotient". That means the dough is quite close to being liquid. There's a lot of water in there. Working with dough with a high hydration quotient is quite hard. It requires some experience. The CC has had more than his share of "legendary disasters" with breads that have high HQ's. If you are a newbie, just use less water. You will find it easier and you will have great results anyway (with a completely different pizza texture though!)

Fifth, the CC will not talk about the toppings but he will give a warning. In order to be successful, the toppings have to be reasonably dry. Which means that if you plan to use veggies (onions, peppers, mushrooms), then you must at the very least dry sautée them on a skillet to get the moisture out.

Even a tomato "sauce" must be on the dry side for this to work.

Finally, this is not a Neapolitan pizza. The dough is totally different. In order to be from "Napoli", you need far less hydration and a totally different flour, and a goddamn wood-burning oven (good luck!)

Better to abide by the golden rule: There are many pizzas in the CC's house.

Also, for all you control-freaks, when the dough is this wet, it's near impossible to control the shape. Yes, the pizza will be roughly round, more likely elliptical, or even like the map of Italy. Just enjoy it.

Buon appetito!


Ingredients

Starter

2 tsp yeast
2/3 cup rye flour
4 oz water

Dough

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Maldon sea salt
1 2/3 cups white flour
5 oz water

Recipe

Mix all the starter ingredients together to a starter dough. It should be like sludge. Let it sit for at least 30 minutes. At the end of this, it should be bubbling. If not, your yeast are dead. Bail out.

Mix the rest of the stuff. Add water till you have a sticky dough. You can just use a mixing spoon to mix it. It's quite wet and sticky. Kinda like a runny clay. There will be a light sheen on the surface.

Stick it in the fridge till 5 hours before you are ready to eat.

The dough will have ballooned. Deflate it with a ladle. You will notice it has changed in consistency completely. The dough will be a lot more "dough"-like, the stickiness will be "flowy" rather than "clumpy". There should be a strong sheen on the surface, and a great yeasty smell.

(This yeasty smell is why this pizza goes great with champagne. Ahem!)

Pre-heat the oven to 475°F for at least an hour while the dough rises.

Assemble the pizza dough with a lot of flour on a pizza peel. Assemble the toppings as required. Slide the pizza onto the stone (this requires some back-and-forth motion practice.)

The last piece is the hard part. For beginners, the CC recommends corn-meal rather than flour because it helps the sliding part. Also, ignore the toppings initially, get the pie in there and a few minutes later, top the pizza while it is structurally intact.

Bake for 12-13 minutes.

You'll never go out for pizza again!

Frozen Vegetables

The CC pulled one of those ziploc bags out of the freezer. There was an incredulous sound made by one of the lesser species of the earth.

"What is that?"

"Frozen corn."

"But they're in a ziploc bag."

"???"

The CC was mystified. Had he entered the Twilight Zone?

"What brand are they?"

DOH! The invisible hand of idiocy smacked the CC's head with a powerful whack. The CC tapped his foot to gain his equilibrium (such as it is.)

"What do you think frozen vegetables are?"

"Ummmm .... vegetables that are frozen."

("Exactement, mon pauvre imbécile petite!)

"And who freezes the vegetables?"

This was the exact moment that enlightenment struck the ignorami with much more weight than the afore-mentioned invisible hand of idiocy.

Then the CC expounded at lyrical leisure (as he is wont to do.) Clearly, it made perfect economic and culinary sense to buy excellent summer vegetables (corn, peas) at dirt-cheap prices, and freeze them for future food-gasmic delight!

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Corn Risotto with Crab Balls

This will appear to be a difficult recipe. However, if the CC can make it on a weekday, so can you.

It's called prep and advance planning. Also, if you read the recipe carefully, you will see that there are fairly obvious "synergies" between the three sections. If you use your time wisely, and this is a skill, you will see that this is a fairly simple recipe.

The herbs are fairly interchangeable. You will get great results with basil, rosemary, sage, or thyme. Tarragon can be a little overpowering so should be used with a spare hand. Combinations also work.

After the recipe below, the CC presents the underlying logic -- why is this dish the way it is? (Hopefully, this section will turn into a regular trend.)

This level of analysis which explains the harmony of flavors, aesthetics, nutrition and palate feel is absolutely necessary if you want to get to the "next level" in cooking.


Ingredients

Corn Broth

6 cobs corn (shucked, keep the cobs)
1 large red onion
sage

Crab Balls

1/2 cup crabmeat
1/2 carrot (grated - read below what to with the remaining half carrot)
1 red serrano (yes! it must be red)
2 eggs
breadcrumbs
sage (chopped very fine)

Corn Risotto

4 leeks (chopped fine, white parts only)
2 cups arborio rice (or carnaroli or vialone nano.)
1/2 carrot (grated)
1 cup parmigiano reggiano
1 cup chopped wild greens with a bitter edge (mizuna, arugula, etc.)
1 cup white wine
sage (chopped very fine)
black pepper

olive oil

Recipe

Prepare the corn broth. This step can be done ahead of time.

Sweat the onions in olive oil. Add the cobs, half of the corn kernels and the sage. Fry languidly for 5-7 minutes. Cover with water, and bring to a boil. Skim the impurities, and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove the cobs, blend the mixture, and pass through a fine sieve. (Yes, this is a lot of work. Deal with it!)

Combine the crabmeat, very finely chopped serrano, grated carrot, two eggs, breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. The mixture should be loose but fashionable into balls. Create small balls out of them. Pan fry them in a skillet with a layer of olive oil, and drain on paper towels.

Now, we prepare a standard risotto. Keep the corn broth on a simmer.

Fry the leeks languidly (4-6 minutes.) Add the rice, and fry till the kernels of the rice are visible. Add the white wine and stir. Add ladles of the broth, and stir. Repeat.

Two-thirds of the way in, add the grated carrot. Towards the end, add the greens and the rest of the corn kernels.

Add the grated parmigianio-reggiano and the sage.

Plate.

Recipe Logic

The basic idea started as a corn risotto.

The CC had some corn soup in his kitchen, and it made sense to turn it into a broth, and make the risotto. However, this would've been too mundane - monochromatic if you will - corn flavor would, of course, be amazing but there is nothing to make the dish either visually interesting or amazing on the second bite. For that, we need contrast. Also, there is not enough protein in the dish.

Hence, the need for a topping. Mushrooms were considered but the season for chanterelles is long past. Seared scallops would've been a complete winner. That would be one direction to go into but it was a bit of a cliché. Plus, the texture would be soft on soft. Not a recipe for a knockout.

So the CC went in the direction of a different cliché -- corn and crab -- a classic in many cuisines -- French, American, Vietnamese. From the seared scallops, the CC went with crab cakes but they are mundane so the CC punched it up with a slight sweetness and color (carrot) and spice (serrano). You get a textural contrast as a free bonus -- the soft, wet risotto punched up by a crisp crab ball.

Now, to make the color act as tie-in to the balls as well as a visual punchline, a slight bit of grated carrot would work in the risotto but it would make the dish too sweet (with the corn, corn broth, etc.) so the CC added a base note of bitter greens which also add a dash of green color.

The herbs tie it all together. By making them identical across the board, the dish has a coherent feel.

Please note that the dish has both the aesthetics and nutritional complexity of the very Japanese washoku.

Spam

Not the edible kind!

Ads and other spam are not allowed on this blog.

Apologies to those who have subscribed to "comment updates" for all the recent spam.

The CC is going to keep the blog un-moderated for the time being but if the spam ads increase beyond a certain level, the policy may change.

The Haul

The CC was away on a mini-vacation to Lake Placid.

On the way back, at the farmers' market in nearby Keene, he picked up: celeriac, carrots, garlic, red onions, pearl onions, baby potatoes, lamb shanks and lamb kidneys.

On this nippy Sunday evening, a vegetable broth is being prepared. The carrot fronds, and celeriac fronds will not be wasted.

They will glow with the golden song of a late summer.

Fideua in Barcelona

This was a magnificent meal. The CC had the fideua negra (black noodles with cuttlefish in its ink.)

The second dish, pan con tomate (bread rubbed with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes) is deceptively simple. Make it right, and it's so heavenly that you could just eat it all day long. (Once again, pictures do not do it justice.)

Anchovies with olive oil and sherry vinegar
Pan con tomate
Fideua negra

Summer Risotto

This is a glorious farewell-to-summer treat.

At the farmers' market, the tomatoes were glorious but nobody wanted any because "summer was over" - well, it's not - the CC is still blasting fans and the occasional air-conditioning. That's the problem with going by dates rather than weather. Things are not always quite so.

Anyway, a crazy number of tomatoes were bought, and logic necessitated that a last ta-ta to summer was in order.

This is riot of colors (as you can see below.) Oddly enough, it also happens to follow the traditional rules of the Japanese washoku.


Ingredients

6 pounds ripe summer tomatoes (yep! you heard that right)

1 small yellow squash
1 small zucchini

1 ear corn (if available.)
1 cup peas (freshly shelled)

1/4 cup green beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup purple beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup yellow beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup Italian flat beans (cut to resemble the above)

1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
2 cups arborio rice (or carnaroli.)
purple basil (lots!!!, shredded by hand or snipped with scissors)

3 cups excellent white wine (1 cup for recipe, 2 cups to drink)

olive oil
salt
pepper
1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Bring a pot of water to boil. Dunk the tomatoes in batches for about 8 minutes each (depending on ripeness.) Pass the lot through a food mill to get a rich broth of tomatoes. You should have about 8-12 cups of tomato broth. (This is work. Deal!)

Bring the tomato broth to a slow boil. A lot of foam will rise to the surface. Skim, baby, skim.

Reduce the broth for about 45-60 minutes until it is "sticky" (Logic: this is the Maillard reaction with some caramelization taking place.) This is the "hard" part but since, it quite literally requires no work, it cannot really be called that.

Reconstitute with water to bring it back up to the original 8 cups.

Now, we prepare a standard risotto.

On a seperate burner, keep the above tomato broth at a low simmer. It doesn't have to literally simmer just that it needs to be on the hot side so as to not drop the temperature of the risotto when you dunk a ladleful in.

Fry the onions and the garlic at a medium-low heat for about 6 minutes. Add the beans, and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the zucchini and yellow squash and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the rice and fry till the rice is translucent and the kernel of the rice is visible (this is really obvious if you actually make this recipe as opposed to just reading this post.)

Add salt and pepper to taste. At this point, the CC adds a cup of white wine he's been drinking (read below!)

Add two ladles of the hot tomato broth, and stir. Keep stirring while it cooks. You are releasing the starch in this process. Ladles of broth and stir, ladles of broth and stir. Yes, this is fuckin' boring but deal with it. Have the afore-mentioned white wine.

Towards the end, add the corn and the peas (Logic: they cook really quickly, and you don't want them to turn into mush.)

Turn off the heat.

Add the grated parmigiano-reggiano (the mantecura), and the purple basil. Serve immediately with lots of black pepper.

Olives, Glorious Olives!