Making Recipe

08 Mar 2010 at 22:39

Matt

Cooking, Education, Recipe

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While reading a post on the Amateur Gourmet about Weekend Brunch, I ended up reading about Tad’s Roasted Potatoes. In the preamble to the recipe, there was this from Amanda Hesser about her husband Tad Friend:

[He] is a good cook, but not the kind who sees time in the kitchen as a moment for free-association with ingredients. The notion of playing around with recipes in the spirit of experimentation is one that has never occurred to him. Tad is the type of cook who prefers to find a few recipes he likes and master them..

I chuckled and thought “that sounds like me” which got me thinking almost immediately ”but I want to create recipes too”.

Recipe Construction

I’ve been thinking about creating recipes since I started getting into cooking. Googling “creating recipes” doesn’t reveal much on the subject – inspiration, perspiration, investigation and even desperation can and do seem to play a role in the process. Like Tad, I’m usually interested in mastering a recipe so I can make it time and again and enjoy it with family and friends. I’m not one to just “play around” for the sake of creating a recipe. Or am I?

I recently picked up a 1997 copy of The Joy of Cooking and was wading through the recipes on salads over lunch. As I’m eating my hand-made garnished green salad I had one of those “Ah Ha” moments. I realized that I can and do create recipes. I created that salad that morning out of what was on hand in my fridge – a recipe for a salad:

  • 2 cups chopped Romain (about 1/2 a stalk)
  • 10 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
  • 1/4 of a cucumber sliced thin and the pieces quartered
  • 1 scallion cut into 1/4″ pieces, white and green parts
  • 1 carrot peeled and grated
  • 8-10 seasoned croutons
  • 1 left over piece of fried fish

Combine in a small traveling container, store in the fridge until lunch time and dress with 2-3 tbsp of balsamic vinaigrette just before eating.

Now I’m sure that other people have created that same salad before and the ingredient list is not unique, but I consulted no book or Internet site to make it. Likewise, my fish fry recipe is mine – another “seat of the pants” combination as was the one for Chicken Romano. The one for hash browns was the result of a problem solved.

Different Paths

In looking at “my” recent recipes each one started from a different creative point:

  • Salad – I needed to fix a lunch and had left over fish and some fresh veggies
  • Fried Fish – I wanted to explore frying and needed a simple example
  • Chicken Romano – Can I make a passable chicken dish with what I have on hand
  • Hash Browns – I wanted better texture

With the exception of the Chicken Romano, all the others are quite simple. In looking through the salad recipes in Joy, some of those are 3 ingredients! Avocado citrus salad for example has sliced avocado, grapefruit and oranges. That could be sliced up fresh at work for lunch. Recipes do not have to be complex to be good, they just have to be, well, good to eat!

In my day job I write software and people have asked me about how I do that. My usual reply is that its a “creative process” – sometimes it’s inspiration, some times perspiration, or a problem to solve or a “I bet I can do it this way” or “better”. I guess good cooking and recipe construction isn’t that different from writing good software.

Cook what? On What?

07 Mar 2010 at 21:37

Matt

Cooking, LOL

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Any hot device works for me – the rake hot dog roaster is great!

Friday Night Fish Fry

05 Mar 2010 at 22:15

Matt

Cooking, Frying, Recipe

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I can still remember walking with my grandparents over to the local Wayne Township fire house in Indianapolis for the fireman’s summer fish fry. I certainly don’t know if that’s where I got my taste for fried fish but a crispy filet on a warm roll with homemade slaw is still one of my favorite meals.

Being that tonight is Friday and I just happen to have one remaining haddock filet, fried fish seems like a good candidate for pulling all the frying details together. So if you are ready, here we go:

The Prep

While the fish finishes thawing we’ll get out:

  • a 12″ non-stick pan
  • peanut oil
  • 1 rimmed baking sheet, some newspaper, 1 cooling rack
  • nylon tipped tongs
  • candy thermometer
  • 3 shallow containers for holding our breading ingredients for rolling/dredging.
  • Another cooling rack for the breaded, uncooked fish to sit on while they await the oil

If we were deep frying we would start heating the oil first, but since we’re pan frying the fish it won’t take that long for the oil to reach our target temperature. Instead we’ll assemble the draining rack, and position the thermometer in the pan.

prepped frying pan and draining rig

prepped frying pan and draining rig

Time to put our breading ingredients together:

  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 tbsp cornstarch
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tsp milk
  • 15-20 crackers, crushed
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning

In one of the shallow bowls, mix the all-purpose flour and cornstarch together. This is the initial dry layer. In another, whisk together the egg and milk. In the remaining bowl mix the crushed crackers and seasonings.

Add enough oil to the prepped pan so that it will come up about 1/4-1/2 the way on the filets and crank the heat medium-high (high on some stoves – YMMV). Monitor the probe (or set its alarm) so you know when it’s getting close to 375.

In the mean time, pat the fish dry. Since I’m serving mine on bread, I’m cutting the filets into 4-5″ pieces and butterflying the thicker chunks so they fit nice on a roll.

Bread ‘em

Make sure the breading area and the prep rack are close together. For each filet dredge:

  • in the flour-cornstarch mixture to coat and shake off the excess
  • through the egg mixture to coat
  • finally through the cracker mixture. Press each side down into the crackers to get a good coating and then set on the prep rack.
breading the cracker mixture

breading the cracker mixture

Let those sit for a coule of minutes so that breading gets a chance to set up.

ready for the pan

ready for the pan

Fry Baby, Fry

Hopefully the oil is now hot enough. We’re looking for 375. When it hits that mark, in go the bredded filets – don’t forget to use the tongs! Since we’re only frying one small filet we can put the entire batch in – the oil won’t cool that much. More than that and we’d be working in batches.

Let the fish fry for 2-3 minutes. The bubbling will subside somewhat and the underside will have a nice golden brown color. Flip them over and repeat.

almost ready

almost ready

Remove to the draining rig after another couple of minutes when the other side becomes browned. Let drain and cool and then serve.

nice and brown

nice and brown

Out Takes

Watch the oil temperature. While it naturally drops when food is first added it will climb again.

PICT2939PICT2942

If it starts to climb too rapidly, turn the heat down. We want to keep it around 375 max. It’ll be impossible to keep it there but it should be 300 – 375 during a frying session.

Don’t move the food around much. Too much movement will keep the good crust from forming. Once in the pan, just leave them alone until they need flipping or become done.

The crust should stay on the food and not fall off and it shouldn’t end up in the bottom of the pan. Some of it will but there shouldn’t be a lot of excess breading floating around down there. If there is, the breading may be too thick or thin.

Good frying takes practice but the technique is pretty much the same regardless of the food. Experiment – try chicken, chicken fried steak, home made onion rings, coconut shrimp even frozen french fries (but no breading please) - man I’m hungry again!

Hotdogocalypse

05 Mar 2010 at 21:13

Matt

Cooking, Facebook

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They can change the hot dog when they pry the last one from my cold dead fingers.

Bread, Batter, Batch

04 Mar 2010 at 23:15

Matt

Cooking, Frying

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There’s just something about the texture of fried food that sets it apart from the other cooking forms. A super crisp exterior surrounding a moist interior isn’t something that other cooking processes can deliver. Sure, you can get meat to have a “crust” by searing but not in the same way that fried foods develop a crusty exterior. From corn dogs and french/freedom fries to Sunday afternoon fried chicken, fried foods do please the palette.

But the frying process alone won’t produce that juxtaposition of textures. Left unprotected in the hot oil, most foods will overcook and even burn. What they need is a coating to protect and defend the food within and promote development of that amazing crust, potatoes and other high starch foods not included.

There are really two coating choices – breading or battering the food. Breaded foods can be pan or deep fried while battered ones are typically only for the deep fryer.

Bread for Success

Breading food typically involves applying a moist coating to the food and then applying a drier coating on top. The moist coating adheres to the food and allows the drier coating on top to stick to it.

The moist coating is typically eggs or dairy products (milk, buttermilk, etc), or a combination of the two, but other wet “binding” agents containing protien can be used. The outer dry coating can be flour, cornstarch, bread crumbs, crackers, potato chips, corn chips, etc – basically anything dry that’ll stick well to the wet stuff below.

All-purpose flour is a traditional coating but it can develop a chewy texture. Rice flower won’t do that and neither will cornstarch. There are literally thousands of recipes for creating breading for frying. Go on, Google “breading frying recipe” and see how many you get.

Regardless of the exact breading recipe it’s best to follow this simple process:

  • set up 3 shallow pans: 1 with flour based dry ingredients, one with the egg/dairy/wet ingredients and one with the outer coating ingredients
  • roll the food in the flour based pan to coat. This provides a dry, rough surface for the wet coating to adhere to.
  • dredge it in the wet stuff next
  • roll it in the exterior coating last
  • let it sit for a few minutes before introducing it to the 375 degree oil. This’ll give the wet proteins a chance to set before the oil hits them and help keep the breading on the food.

Feel free to season any/all of the components – wet or dry – to give them the flavors you like.

Batter Up

Batter by contrast is one stop shopping. It’s the wet and dry teams mixed together – just like a cake/pastry batter (surprise!). Again, everyone out there has a frying batter recipe but it comes down to wet proteins like eggs and/or milk mixed with dry flour and/or other dry ingredients such as cornstarch, baking soda, etc. plus seasoning.

Once the oil is at that magic 375 degree temperature, the food is submerged into the batter and then directly into the hot oil – no waiting!

Batch, Batch, Batch!

Regardless of method, don’t try to fry all of the food at once. Working in batches and allowing the oil to return to temperature before the next batch will help ensure that a good crust develops and food that is not greasy.

Too many items in the pan will drop the oil temperature below the critical 300-325 degree level and allow the frying oil into the food instead of cooking it from the outside. That would be bad.

A good indicator that the food is done is the lack of bubbles from around the food. Bubbles (really the steam from the moist interior of the food) help keep too much oil from entering. No bubbles means more oil is getting in than you probably want. Extracting or turning/flipping the food (depending on your cooking method) at this point will also help keep the greasiness away.

Almost done!

Frying Side Kicks

03 Mar 2010 at 22:12

Matt

Cooking, Frying

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Besides a vessel, a thermometer and the right oil, a good frying session requires a few additional helpers. At some point the food will have to go into and come out of some very hot oil – hands are not an option. It’ll also need some place to sit after it’s removed from the frying oil both to drain away any excess frying oil and to promote slight cooling. Nobody likes to eat cold fried food (well leftover fried chicken from the fridge is pretty good eating) but you don’t want to eat it right out of the 350+ degree pan either.

The Long Arm

In frying, longer is better – at least when it comes to the handles for manipulating fried food inside the vessel. You’ll want a frying utensil that can withstand the heat of the oil with out degrading and without conducting a lot of heat. It’ll also be helpful for the frying utensil to allow the hot oil to flow off the food while the finished food is being extracted from the oil. So far I’ve found the need to have two kinds of frying utensils depending on the food I’m frying. For small items like potatoes, a perforated metal or wire basket style utensil is a great choice. It can swoop up those small chunks in a hurry.

For larger items, like say chicken metal tongs are the way to go. If you’re frying in a non-stick pan, you’ll want the ones with the silicone tips on them so as not to scratch the pan. The tongs should not be the ones that are hinged in the middle unless you fancy getting your knuckles burned every once in a while. Get tongs that are hinged on the end and plenty long. Here’s are the ones I use.

frying utensils

frying utensils

Resting Place

Fried food needs to be drained. No matter how long you hold that food over the oil, some of it will remain in or on the food. It needs to come into contact with something to wick that excess frying oil away not to mention a place to sit and cool a bit. My favorite draining rig is one I picked up from Alton Brown on Good Eats. You’ll need a jelly roll pan (otherwise known as a rimmed baking sheet), a couple of sheets of news paper and a cooling rack that will fit inside the rimmed baking sheet.

Fold the newspaper so it completely fits into the inside of the baking sheet. Getting the newspaper 2-3 layers thick will keep the drained frying oil from making too much of a mess. If you don’t have newspaper, a couple of large paper bags (not plastic!) will do. Place the cooling rack upside down on the newspaper inside the baking sheet. Yes, the legs on the cooling rack will be point upwards. Looks like this when fully assembled.

fried food draining rig

fried food draining rig

Why upside down with the cooling rack? So that the oil draining away from the food sitting on the wire rack comes in contact with something that can absorb it. If we leave the cooling rack right side up, some of the frying oil will cling to the wires on the cooling rack and stay attached to the food – ick! With the cooling rack inverted the oil hits the paper and drains away not only from the food but from the cooling rack as well. Sweet!

After the food is drained you can wad up the newspaper and just throw it away.

Hungry yet?

Oils Well

02 Mar 2010 at 20:37

Matt

Cooking, Frying

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Frying without oil wouldn’t be frying now would it? It makes sense then to get to know the cooking medium better in order to understand what oils make good choices for frying food and which ones to leave in the pantry.

Break Down Lane

For a good frying experience the oil needs to be able to withstand an internal temperature of at least 375 degrees. Not all oils or fats can withstand that kind of temperature with out breaking down. An oil’s break down temperature is known as its smoke point so we want to pick a frying oil with a smoke point beyond 375 degrees. That rules out some favorites like butter (clarified butter is another story), regular olive oil, lard, vegetable shortening and most unrefined oils. And while extra-virgin olive oil (EVO) could be used, you probably don’t want to impart its taste to the food during frying.

That leaves canola, corn, peanut, sunflower, and safflower oils as good candidates. Most vegetable oils are really soy bean oil which also has a high smoke point – but you’ll need to read the label to be sure. Peanut oil, with a smoke point of 450 degrees, is a good frying oil choice if you can get it in quantity. Most grocery stores don’t sell it in large containers like say corn, canola, or vegetable oils.

Strain and Reclaim

It’s important to know that despite the oil not reaching its smoke point during a frying session (hopefully), it will break down somewhat when it’s used. If you’re considering straining the cool, used oil back into a container for use in another frying session, it’ll only last a few more times before it becomes worn out. The higher the smoke point of the oil the longer it’ll take to completely break down. About 2 more uses is all I tend to get out of fry oil reuse.

So, with a vessel for frying, a trusty temperature gauge and now the frying oil of our choice, we’re almost ready to crank the heat.


Fry Cook 101

01 Mar 2010 at 21:18

Matt

Cooking, Frying, Hardware

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One of the first things I wanted to cook when I initially started preparing the evening meal was fried chicken. Except for getting it at KFC now and again the last time I probably had it was when my Grandmother Jessie prepared it. How hard could it be – hot oil, breaded chicken, some time in the pan and PRESTO!

Well, sort of. I did have one of her cast iron skillets – well seasoned from lots of use – but my fried chicken was horribly greasy. Yuck!! There was much to learn.

After reading a bit on frying and watching several cooking shows – Good Eats and America’s Test Kitchen – and reading a bit in I’m Just Here for the Food there’s a lot more going on than just hot oil.

For starters there’s the method – deep or pan frying. My initial attempt was pan frying like I’d seen grandma make it in an iron skillet but deep frying is another alternative. While you can get a dedicated deep fryer, a dutch oven is a better investment. America’s Test Kitchen recommends this one. At around $50 you can’t beat it and you’ll use it for soups, stews, braising, and even baking. Try that with a fryer. It’s even available at Walmart.

Regardless of the vessel used, the oil temperature within the container is critical. If it’s too low the food will be disgustingly greasy! The only way to tell if the oil is ready for frying is to measure it and that means getting a thermometer. Spend the money and get a digital candy probe thermometer. While a glass one is cheaper, I went through three of them before I gave up. They break sitting in drawers, shelves, when washed and especially when dropped.

Typically the oil should be at 375 degrees or so to begin frying. And since the food being fried is below 375, the oil temperature will drop when the food is added. Typically that means all the food can’t be added at once and hence multiple batches will be required in order to fry it all. The oil should stay above 300 for a good frying session – yes leave the thermometer in during cooking so you can see what’s going on. After removing a batch to drain, let the oil recover to 375 before adding the next batch.

That “fry-a-batch-and-recover” technique works with pan and deep fried foods. I’ve used it on chicken, sea food, vegetable and yes frozen french fries and onion rings. Which reminds me – get a splatter screen if you want to keep clean up to a minimum.

Pulling the Print

01 Mar 2010 at 12:10

Matt

Worth Noting

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Although I don’t consider myself a ‘news’ junkie, I do consume a fair amount of the stuff. However, starting today (or perhaps tomorrow – I forget when my subscription runs out) home delivery of my local news paper – The Keene Sentinel will stop. I’m not renewing my subscription.

I’ve taken the Sentinel ever since I moved to Keene, NH – which is now pushing 18 years. Before that I took the local news where ever I was living – Sunnyvale and LA, California and before that Knoxville, TN. The Sentinel was a nice change from those larger metro papers. I could consume it in less than 30 minutes and it had a nice mix of local, national and regional as well as sports, comics, puzzles, classifieds, etc. When they started a Sunday edition, I took that too.

It’s not that the paper’s gone down hill, lost it’s important coverage or local importance. What’s happened is  my reading habits have changed – from primarily physical (I don’t really watch much TV news) to mostly digital and in particular web-based syndicated news feeds.

Several years ago I started using a service called Netvibes which allows each user to construct web based pages that display different types of information from various online data suppliers, e.g. gmail, Facebook, news feeds, blogs, and the like. Primarily I use their RSS/ATOM feed system to grab web-based syndicated news from national, regional and local sources as well as syndicated technical, lifestyle, book reviews/events, classified and yes, even comics and bring them all together in one spot. In some cases I’ve had to create RSS feeds from raw web pages using services such as Feed43 and Yahoo! Pipes.

At this point my news consumption is primarily on-line via my Netvibes based custom news portal. Yes, having the technical understand of how to leverage web based content and how to create news feeds has helped, but eventually my feeling is that everyone will be crafting their own “newspaper” using feed syndication – even if newspapers and other media outlets start erecting pay-walls for their content.

I’m perfectly happy to consume news and information from sites that offer it for free, including my local paper. But if I have to pay for it I will so long as it’s worth paying for. If news outlets are simply repackaging AP stories, that’s not worth paying for. Original content that’s meaningful and important to me I’ll gladly pay for. Until then I’ll soak up the free stuff as long as it persists.

For now, however, the only thing that I’ll miss about the printed edition of my local paper is the lack of wood stove starting material.

Update: Seems I’m not alone – I wrote this post before I read the article. Coincident?

Garlic Night

23 Feb 2010 at 22:18

Matt

Cooking, Sauce

1 Comment

Confession is good for the soul so I’ll confess that I was a closet store bought minced garlic user. That is until I broke down and purchased a garlic press and started doing it the old fashioned way. Pressed or minced the flavor is 1000x better than from the jar and it’s not much more of an effort.

Tonight’s dinner included garlic on every item – toasted garlic bread, roasted asparagus seasoned with garlic salt, pepper and lemon juice and then fettuccine noodles in a creamy garlic sauce.

I made a cheese based pasta sauce a week ago and ended up with a gooey mess after adding cheese to the hot dairy mixture. This time around I was determined not to repeat that. I read in On Food and Cooking that the cheese should be added slowly and that the dairy into which it is mixed should be no where near boiling. Letting this sauce cool a minute or two off heat and slowly whisking in the cheese kept it from becoming a gooey mess. It was smooth all the way around!

The sauce, adapted from Get Saucy, goes like this:

  • 1 head of garlic
  • 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1.5 tsp fresh thyme leaves
  • 1 tsp chopped basil, divided
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. The garlic gets sliced in half horizontally and placed sliced side up in a glass pie pan or other small glass dish. Drizzle the EVO over the top and sprinkle garlic halves with the thyme and basil. Cover with foil and roast for about an hour. Garlic should be tender, gooey and golden. Let cool.

Pick out garlic centers with a tooth-pick, removing any skin and place in a small sauce pan. Mash until smooth. Stir in the cream and heat over medium-low heat until slightly reduced – 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool for a minute or so. Whisk in cheese a little bit at a time until combined followed by pepper, basil and salt to taste.

I prepared this a day a head of time and refrigerated it in a sealed container. When the noodles were about 5-7 minutes from being done I returned the mixture to a sauce pan and reheated until smooth. After draining the noodles I returned them to the pot, mixed in the sauce and let stand a minute or two for the sauce to be absorbed by the noodles.

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