In The Kitchen

Cooking great pasta is as simple as:

1. Salt the water – you want to be able to taste salt in the water. Pasta by itself has so much flavor. Salting the water pulls out the amazing, natural wheat flavor of the pasta. This is one of the secrets to adding depth of flavor to your pasta dishes.

2. NO 0il in the water – I am sure you know better than that. Stir your pasta a couple times after you drop it into the water (make sure you have plenty of rapidly boiling water) and it won’t stick together. All oil does is coat the noodles and keep the sauce from doing the necessary embrace with the noodles. You want the sauce to sink into the noodles and absorb not bounce off.

3. Simmer the cooked pasta in the sauce for a minute. Pull your cooked pasta out of the water and drop it directly into the large sauté pan of sauce. Toss and simmer the pasta in the sauce so that the sauce can absorb into the pasta and the flavors marry. You want enough sauce to coat the noodles but you don’t want the pasta to swim. The noodles should stand tall and proud on the plate as if they are proud of their beautiful “coat”. They should not look like they are taking a swimming lesson 🙂

4. Finish with a small nugget of butter! Just a Tablespoon. Drop it into your pasta that is simmering in the sauce. Turn off the heat and toss or stir the pasta until the butter disappears. This small amount of butter brings the sauce together and polishes the flavors of the sauce. Your pasta will look silky on the plate and taste great!

Spices!

One of my favorite curry blends:

½ teaspoon each of the following goes into the spice grinder:
Black cardamom seeds, cumin seed, coriander seed, fenugreek, green peppercorns, brown mustard seeds, black poppy seeds. Add ½ piece of cinnamon stick (I used an Indian cinnamon, any will do). Grind all of these in the spice grinder until finely ground.

I used:
1 ½ teaspoons of this ground mixture to
½ C heavy cream and
2 C of chicken stock to feed four.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the type and amount of spices. It is easy. Once you go on-line and buy them you will have them stock in your kitchen. As soon as you start playing with them you will discover great new combinations and flavors you did not imagine exist!

Quick Lasagna

I love lasagna but I do not like how long it can take to make a traditional one. I love to make this quick version of lasagna. You buy the Barilla par cooked pasta sheets. They are incredibly tasty. Barilla pasta always has that full wheat flavor. These are great for traditional lasagna as well. I boil them for about five minutes. Lay one sheet down on a plate. Top it with your sauce (meat, veggie, whatever you like) and some cheese. Lay another sheet over the top. Spoon some more sauce over the top and sprinkle with basil and Parmesan. You get the same stacked feel and look as lasagna. It has that great mouth feel of the layers of pasta, filling, sauce and cheese. The presentation is awesome as well.
You can also do just one sheet of pasta open face as I did in today’s blog.

Perfectly ripe tomatoes

Check out these perfect tomatoes. This is what a truly ripe, perfect tomato looks like. It feels firm but gives. It is almost like a small water balloon that you know will pop if you push too hard. When you cut it the slices stand on their own but they immediately give off their juice. They taste sweet and clean with just the perfect touch of acidity to balance the sweetness.

The magic of the Morel mushroom

These puppies always amaze me. I love their earthy, mild mushroom flavor but it is their texture in the mouth that makes them so interesting. The porous body allows them to collapse in your mouth giving you two different taste experiences. They absorb sauce and flavor well. Unlike many mushrooms that I like to sauté to golden and then reduce with alcohol or stock these are great cooked fairly quickly in a touch of butter and olive oil. You want to keep their shape but just cook them to soften them and allow them to pick up the juice or sauce that you are serving them in. They love cream; they are great with just butter and olive oil. Over polenta they are heavenly.

Size does matter!

Having a great recipe does not always equate to a great dish as many of us have learned the hard way. You can also have a pretty good idea of what flavors taste great together which is the next level of cooking but that is not always enough either. What allows both of the above to translate into a great dish is an understanding of how the size, shape and texture of the ingredients you are using affect the final outcome of the dish. The following (which I will continue to add to) are some examples.

Bell Peppers – When left in large raw chunks that get briefly cooked or not cooked at all they are awkward in the mouth, have an acrid taste. I recommend the following:

For a salad or a pasta dish – Cut paper thin strips. This way you get the flavor of the bell pepper and the right amount of texture without having the bell pepper take over the dish.

A brief sauté with garlic and the sauce of your choice for pasta will be perfect. The peppers will soften and sweeten quickly without having to cook for a long time.

For bruschetta, pizza, sandwich, or soup garnish – Set the whole pepper on the open flame of your burner. Turn it with tongs occasionally until it is black. Place it in a bowl and cover with foil for 15 minutes. Remove the pepper and allow to cool. Wipe the charred skin off with your hands (don’t use running water or you wash away the precious flavor), cut in half, take the seeds out and chop into ½” pieces. This is a great pantry item that you can use in many dishes. Roast a couple peppers during the weekend and you can then use these sweet, charred yummy peppers all week long. You will have lots of flavor quickly when you are cooking on the fly.

Steak on the grill is another very size sensitive item. Last night’s dinner was a perfect example. Here is what you want to know:

1. Have the butcher cut your steaks 1 1/2 “thick. It is better to share one steak between two people that is thicker than to have two thin steaks. When the steak is thick you can get a really great, golden brown, beautiful, salty, mouth-watering crust and still have the meat be medium rare or medium if you like. If you cook it more than medium we need to talk. Sorry to be a food snob but the flavor completely changes when you go past medium. When you grill a thin steak by the time you have a nice crust your steak is overcooked. When the salt and pepper combine with the meat to form a crispy, salty, crunchy crust it is like nothing else. That is why a restaurant steak always seems better. But there is another reason…

2. Buy Prime which is the best grade of meat. It is the most marbled (lines of yummy fat running through the meat that melt and make the steak juicy and flavorful as it cooks!) It is more expensive but so worth it. My wife and I decided that we can not live without meat but we can eat it less often thus justify buying the best.

3. Be generous with the salt and pepper. Because you have a thick cut you can put a nice thick coating of salt and pepper on top. It will allow you to get that magical crust and it will not be too much salt because you have a lot of meat to back it up. When you have a thin steak you will not only overcook the meat by the time you have a crust but it will be too salty because the steak is thin.

4. Rub a touch of olive oil or canola oil on the seasoned steak before it hits the grill. This will keep it from sticking but most important aid in the development of that magical crust.

5. Make sure the grill is really hot. You are good to go! Enjoy!

Making ok tomatoes good and good tomatoes great!

There is no faking a good tomato. A perfectly ripe tomato reminds you that a tomato is a fruit! Sweet, luscious flesh with a touch of clean acidity and a skin that is just thick enough to keep it from exploding. When I can’t get great tomatoes I like to oven dry them to intensify their flavor. This process removes the water and concentrates the flavor. It also changes the flavor to more of a “sun-dried” concentrated tomato flavor. It is so easy to do.
1. Set the oven to 200.
2. Rub a large sheet pan with olive oil.
3. Slice the tomatoes ½ “thick and lay them out on the sheet pan.
4. Drizzle them with a high quality olive oil and salt.
5. Place them in the oven for 4-6 hours.
It is up to you how dry you want them. Taste them at each level and you will be able to decide what you like best. I then use these to make a simple tomato and caramelized onion tart, in salads, chopped in pastas, etc. Enjoy!

The beauty of the seed!

I love cooking with spices. What I enjoy even more is cooking with whole seeds. Many seeds can add texture as well as flavor to your dish. Play around with one spice at a time. Eat one whole. See how the flavors develop in your mouth. See what the texture is like. Then try toasting the seed in a pan for a minute. Now taste it. See how the flavor and texture changes. You can add one type of spice in whole seed form to many of your favorite dishes and you will totally transform it. I have been adding fennel seed to my Chinese bean stir fry. Long Chinese beans, peanuts, chile arboles (the chile flake chile), garlic, hoisin sauce and a tsp of fennel seed. The fennel seed adds a mild anise flavor with a warming quality that balances out the sweet hoisin sauce perfectly. You get crunch, flavor and balance just by adding a small amount of fennel seed. Enjoy!