New Year's Party

It's that time of the year again and the CC is hosting his annual party again after a hiatus of a year.

Four cheeses from Bobolink Dairy
Baguette
♦
Chilli-topped Parmesan Biscuits
♦
Candied Walnuts with Rosemary and Lavender
Almond-stuffed Medjool Dates sautéed with Lavender & Sea-Salt
♥
Champagne

Happy New Year!

Tools

No discussion of the culinary sciences can be complete without mention of the role of tools.

Tools are the foundation of any well-organized kitchen, and similar to the pantry, they depend on your needs, desires and wallet.

The goal of any tool in the kitchen is to make the chef's life easier. (This is not the general definition of a "tool". For example, weight-lifting tools are there to make your muscles work harder not make things easier.)

What tools you need fundamentally depend on the three things stated already — what you cook, how ambitious of a chef you are, and how much you are willing to spend.

If you live in New York, you have a fourth constraint — the size of your kitchen and storage space.

None of these four are trivial problems.

What you cook changes as you age. It's just a function of learning new things. You think you know who you are and then you fall madly in love one more time. It's the permanent escalator of new things and with that comes the permanent escalation of what you want out of your kitchen.

If you think you are immune to this, why not take a moment to reflect on what you used to make versus what you make today? Nobody, let's repeat, nobody is immune.

Ambition is a easy target to mock. The CC scoffs at the days when he considered stuffed omelettes as "ambitious". And so it goes. We are "learning types'. We learn new things and we can effortlessly knock that off which moves us on to bigger and brighter desires.

Budgets belong to brute-force reality but never before in history has so much equipment been available for so little. It's just a function of technology and productivity. And it will get cheaper!

Space is the real constraint for most people. Ruthless practicality drags us down to the ground even as our florid fantasies take flight. Even then we are "innovative" types and we figure out new ways to squeeze out extra space out of our limited floor space. (Experienced cooks will be nodding their heads here while Johnny-come-lately's might end up scratching their's.)

Good tools are critical to the cooking experience. They make life simple by doing mundane tasks either faster or better. While it is possible to function without them, they are the critical lynchpin that makes things efficient or easy. They make it possible to make gourmet meals at the drop of a pin in the evening when you are tired.

Good tools are like your helpful friends. You know every quirk, every twist, every angle of their very being. You can handle them without even thinking.

Good tools fit effortlessly into your hands. It's the first sign of excellence when you upgrade a tool which is superior to one that you have already owned. You are not just upgrading the tool but upgrading your ambition as well.

The CC has already traumatized countless friends and relatives by exclaiming that their kitchen was "like going camping" so his insensitivity and ruthlessness are well-known and well-traversed territories. In fact, he just prefers to travel with his own tools because that's what experienced people do.

Moving on though.

There are no "ideal tools" and even more importantly no such thing as an "ideal kitchen".

After tons of descriptions of her "ideal kitchen", Elizabeth David confessed that her "real kitchen" fell short. Remember that this is a woman at the top of her profession who could build any kitchen she wanted and in spite of that didn't manage to.

The dream of the perfect tools and the perfect kitchen is a mesmerizing chimera that can never exist for the simple reason that it would require us to be perfectly omniscient about our ever-changing desires and perfectly unchanging against the reality of our ever-learning selves.

It would also require all future technology to come to a perfect standstill.

What's left then is the imperfect present with three constraints — knowledge, ambition and budget.

Japanese Meal

For the celebration of a special friend's birthday dinner.

Bottom left:

Sautéeed scallops in miso-glaze reduction.

Left placement:

Miso Soup.
Asari Gohan (あさりご飯).

Down the center plate:

Fresh wasabi (わさび).
Pickled cucumber.
Pickled jellyfish with hijiki, ginger & cucumber.
Pickled burdock (ごぼ).
Fresh seaweed salad.

Bottom right:

Scallop Sashimi.

Right placement:

Symmetric placement of left.

Kookoo Sabzi

This is not a difficult dish but it requires effort. The CC assumes that everyone understands the difference between the words "difficult" and "effort".

Ideally, this dish needs a buncha Jamie's in the house all shredding the greens to precise effect. In their collective absence, you'll just have to shred them yourselves (or get a personal Jamie to do it — you do have one, don't you?)

The goal is an almost insane amount of fragrant greens all held together by just the barest amount of egg. This is an "inversion" of the frittata which features eggs as the main ingredient. Here the eggs are just there to hold everything together and they are cooked to a dark brown. The greens, barberries and nuts are the stars not the eggs. We are clear on this concept, aren't we?

It's best served with a sweetish side salad — Green on Green — there's a hit album in here!


Ingredients

All the cup measurements are after the chopping. This means that, yes, there's almost an insane amount of greens but we were clear on that, right?

2 cups Italian parsley (finely chopped)
2 cups dill (finely chopped)
2 cups chives (finely chopped)
1 cup cilantro (finely chopped)
1 cup mint (finely chopped)

4 tbsp. dried fenugreek

1/2 cup.barberries (zereshk)
1/2 cup. walnuts (chopped)

2 tbsp. flour
2 eggs — keep an extra egg or two around.

saffron
milk

salt
black pepper

Recipe

Note: Most recipes online call for turmeric not saffron because the latter is very expensive. However, there is no substitute. Use the real thing. This is for the betterment of your soul.

(The recipe was traditionally served at Nowroz — the New Years' Day because of the obvious metaphor between greens and prosperity.)

Preheat the broiler.

Heat the milk gently. A microwave works great as long as you don't let the milk spill over. Dissolve the saffron in the milk.

Beat the eggs with the flour, saffron, milk, salt and pepper. Add all the greens.

The CC has found it practical to add an extra egg if the mixture looks too stiff. It's very hard to predict this given the variability in the moisture of the greens and the size of the eggs. The mixture should barely hold together.

In a skillet, heat up some oil at medium-high heat. Add the mixture to the pan and cover. Cook for about 12-16 minutes.

At this point you can either flip the omelette or just put it in the under the broiler like the CC does. The top will turn beautifully golden and green.

Let it sit for about 5 minutes. (Yes, this matters and if you don't know why then you really need to read this.)

Slice and serve.

The Flair Factor

Have you ever said to yourself, "That person over there is a great cook." without tasting a single morsel?

A great cook bears the unmistakable stamp of a balance between extreme fussiness and extreme flexibility. These are the absolute flying banner heralds of a confident and experienced cook.

No thyme at the market, no problem. We'll just toss in some sage leaves. Missing some mirin, no problem. We'll add some sugar and some saké.

No eggplants, non-negotiable! We'll switch to a different dish instead.

No casserole, no problem. We'll just roast in this pan over there. No mortar and pestle, no problem. We'll just crush it in a different way.

Thirteen ingredients and seventeen steps, non-negotiable! Just do them in the order and stop fidgeting, for cryin' out loud.

If this sounds familiar then you know somebody like that already.

It is this intense focus and yet seemingly effortless adaptability that makes cooking seem so difficult to those not initiated into the process.

What does "sautée for a short time" mean? What constitutes "short" as opposed to "long"?

Two or three eggs. When would you pick two as opposed to three?

Salt to taste. What happens if it's raw meat and you can't taste it?

None of this makes any sense to an amateur who has yet to understand the internal logic that makes it all tick. However, like all things it's based in the only thing that makes any sense — experience and an intellectually-considered experience at that.

Cooking requires an adaptability to a changing landscape. No two ingredients that you buy are going to be the same or even similar. Things change with the seasons and much more importantly, you never dip into the same pool twice as a person because your very being is changing as you evolve in your experience. You are learning as you go along.

This is not exclusive to cooking.

Experienced musicians behave the same way. So do engineers. So do costume designers for the theater. As do the very best military generals and the finest surgeons.

This is a general characteristic of excellence in any field that requires adaptability based on field conditions that are variable and changing.

There is only one way to get from here to there. As the saying goes, the way to Carnegie Hall is "Practice, practice, practice."

It's rooted in experience but what matters is intellectual richness. The more you push yourself outside your comfort zone and grab new experiences, the richer you are for it. Even if you have absolutely no interest in Japanese cuisine, understanding its principles will enrich the flair with which you make Italian food. That's because you bring a brand new set of skills to the table (sic).

Great cooks are nerdy, by definition. They are continuously reading books to learn what they don't know yet. Almost every single one reads books about food in bed.

And paranoid. They always think they have missed something even though they have most likely not.

And intellectually curious. They revisit an old favorite that they could make in their sleep but they analyze it as if they had never seen it before in their lives to bring their new experiences to bear on it.

Naturally the goal of it all, when all is considered and done, is to don your ascot and say to your guests in a nonchalant manner, "Oh, that's just something I threw together."

That would be the flair part.

Lamb Tagine with Apricots, Dates & Almonds (Mrouzia)

Let's face it, chez CC, we are crazy but not insane. There is a massive difference. We recognize the limits of our ambition.

This dish is a classic of Moroccan cooking and it is great in winter. It needs to be made in a tagine ideally. The lamb is organic, the almonds were peeled by hand, the dates are authentic. The pita, however, at the right comes from Astoria. As we said, we're crazy but not insane. We can't do everything.

This is a rich winter dish. It takes time, effort and excellence of ingredients. Ironically, it's not hard. You throw everything into the tagine and then the dish makes itself while you enjoy a soothing drink.

It's medieval-ness should be obvious. The combination of meat and nuts, sweet and savory in the same dish gives it away on the first reading.

Ingredients

1 lb lamb (cut into chunks)
1 large carrot (cut into large chunks)

1 onion (diced fine)
2 cloves garlic (minced)

1/3 tsp. dried ginger
1 stick cinnamon
2 tbsp. ras el hanout

1/3 cup blanched almonds
1/3 cup dates (pitted and quartered)
1/3 cup dried apricots

6 cups water

butter

pinch of saffron
salt
pepper

Recipe

In a tagine, heat up some butter and fry the onions and garlic. Add the lamb but fry it just for a minute. Add everything except the saffron and let cook at a low heat until tender (roughly 40 minutes.)

Add the saffron. Stir and serve.

Black Salt (Kala Namak)

There are many things in life that are acquired tastes.

Nobody was ever born liking beer (bitter because of the hops) or liking either red wine or tea (astringent and bitter because of the tannins.) Every culture has a characteristic item (or ten) that you are going to have to come to terms with if you really want to enjoy the food.

Japanese food has natto. Indian food has kala namak.

(Chinese has all the gristly bits but that's for a different post.)

Kala namak is just salt which contains a number of impurities including greigite (Fe₃S₄) and sodium sulfate (Na₂SO₄.)

It was traditionally fired in a kiln with charcoal but no air and the reductive process created multiple sulfides which gave it the characteristic smell,. The greigite gives it the characteristic black/violet color (which changes to mauve when ground up.)

The CC cannot sugar-coat this part. It smells like rotten eggs or the sewer. We associate this smell with dirt and rottenness because of the hydrogen sulfide produced by the salt in the presence of air. (You may remember the smell of hydrogen sulfide from your chemistry class.)

However, a vast number of Indian recipes would simply be incomplete without this ingredient. It forms a crucial lynchpin in the sweet-savory-spicy-salty spectrum. The smell and sour taste is inimitable.

The CC has increasingly seen chefs use it in restaurants. Most notable was as a topping on a foie gras terrine. The smell was unmistakable and the salt cut through the fat perfectly as was intended.

Breakfast for Twelve

How do you make breakfast for a horde of hungry hungover guests? Especially if you happen to be hungover yourself?

The tricks are as simple as time. Everything needs to be simple except for the piping hot coffee which should be manageable even by the borderline criminally insane.

It even works for the non-hungry non-hungover times when you are just feeling a bit lazy. Quick pop in the oven and this stuff is ready before the animals start pawing at the breakfast table!


Cheesy "Shirred" Eggs with Tomato Paste

(Everything here is for one unit so you can just multiply by the number of servings. It scales effortlessly.)

Ingredients

1 oven-proof ramekin

1/4 dried-out bread slice
2 tbsp. tomato sauce

1/4 cup shaved blue-cheese
1/4 cup shaved parmigiano-reggiano

finely minced herbs (rosemary, oregano, sage)

2 eggs
salt
black pepper

Recipe

Everything in this recipe is about the assembly as would be logical for something that needs to scale.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Put the bread at the bottom of the ramekin. Top with the tomato sauce.

Mix the cheeses, herbs, eggs, salt and pepper. Whip till finely mixed. Top the ramekin with the mixture.

Put in the oven for 12-15 minutes. You will need to check at the 12-minute mark. The CC's oven tends to run a little cooler so it takes a little longer. Yours will be different by definition. So just check and you can adjust the last few minutes. The top should swell noticeably like a soufflé and be golden.

Smashed Chickpea Sandwich

The CC is not normally into celebrity chef-style recipes but this one is absolutely smashing.

It's from Tom Colicchio's 'wichcraft, and it's an absolute masterpiece in its simplicity, excellence and the fact that it can be made ahead of time.

The original is literally soaking in olive oil but you can go easy on that. However, this is the place to use your finest not the generic stuff. Incidentally, the filling works fine just by itself. It's something you can just eat from the container all day long.

Bookmark this one. The CC personally guarantees that it will rock your world!


Ingredients

2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup black olives (thinly sliced)
1 red onion (finely diced)
1/2 cup parsley (finely minced)

lemon zest (from 1 lemon)
juice from the same lemon

1/3 cup olive oil (your finest!)
salt
black pepper

Recipe

Smash the cooked chickpeas with a potato masher. You want a broken mixture not a puree.

Make a vinaigrette out of the olive oil and lemon. Mix everything together. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Colored Cauliflowers

Recently more and more of the colored cauliflowers have started showing up at the farmers' market so the CC started doing some research on them. They are genetically-modified cauliflowers.

The CC is not afraid of the genetic modification because it has been going on forever. The "organic granolas" put scare-quotes around the "genetic" part but it's part of our legacy. We've been doing this since the birth of agriculture. Cross-breeding to get sweeter varieties or more hardy ones or ones that are more resistant to various pests and fungi.

Carrots were not originally "orange". They were cultivated specifically to appeal to the Dutch House of Orange and in return they became the "Royal Vegetable". They were also markedly sweeter which explains why they became the dominant variety.


The story of the colored cauliflowers is as varied as their colors:

The orange cauliflower was a genetic mutant first found in Canada in 1970. It was crossbred using conventional cross-breeding techniques at Cornell University until it now finds its way into the mainstream. The orange comes from beta-carotene — the same compound that gives carrots its characteristic color and which is absolutely necessary for humans to produce Vitamin A.

The purple cauliflower was a similar mutant found in Denmark in the 1980's. Same idea of cross-breeding. The purple comes from anthocyanins (also found in raspberries, blueberries, grapes, red wine, olives.) They are water soluble so if you want to preserve the color, you will need to gently roast it not boil it or steam it. It has a very characteristic smell when you cut into it and it's a lot milder in flavor than the others.

The green one is a cross-breed between broccoli and cauliflower. There is also the Romanesco cauliflower but that's a different breed.

A classic recipe is presented for your benefit.

Pasta with Cauliflower, Anchovies, Raisins, Pine Nuts & Saffron

Ingredients

2 cups rigatoni (or penne.)

1 head cauliflower (separated into medium-sized florets)
1 large red onion (chopped)
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup raisins
6 anchovies (preferably salt-cured)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp saffron

olive oil

sea salt
black pepper

1/3 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

breadcrumbs


Recipe

Toast the breadcrumbs and set aside. Toast the pine nuts until golden. Be careful not to burn them. Set aside.

Heat an oven to 400°F and roast the cauliflower florets for 15 minutes.

Heat the olive oil at medium heat. When shimmering, add the onions and fry for a further 7-9 minutes. Add the tomato paste, and the anchovies and fry. The anchovies will "dissolve" as they fry. Add a cup of water, the raisins, sea salt, and black pepper, and let cook at low heat.

Meanwhile make the pasta until al dente. Drain.

The cauliflower mixture should be just slightly on the wet side. If dry, add some more water.

Toss in the saffron, cauliflowers and the pasta, and mix thoroughly.

Serve with the parmesan and roasted breadcrumbs on top with extra black pepper to taste.