Gravlax

During my mother's tenure as gar-manger at a petit restaurant in Paris she learned how to make such luscious things as terrine of foie gras and salt cured fish. While there is still a bit of cold left in the air I'd like to try my hand at making tourchon, rillete and other charcuterie delicacies. But as I was needing a break from making food that looks brown, I decided to re-hash a well known and loved recipe that requires bright pink, glistening salmon. Making gravlax couldn't be simpler, each time Ive made it I used different proportions of curing ingredients (salt, sugar, liquor) and it turns out tasty and safe to eat. This time I took note of my measurements, and I am glad for that, as I think it is my best yet.

Begin by layering a pyrex, ceramic, or non reactive dish with 2 long pieces of plastic wrap running both vertically and horizontally on the dish.

Rinse and pat dry 1lb of super fresh salmon. It is important to tell your fish monger that you will not be cooking the fish and need salmon appropriate for curing.

Place the fish in the dish.

In a bowl mix
-1/3 c. kosher salt
-1/3 c. cane sugar

Grate
- 3 tablespoons of orange zest

Chop
- 1 tablespoon dill

With very clean hands, gently massage the salt and sugar into the fish. If you like you can score the salmon in a few places and rub the salt into the crevices. Crack some fresh black pepper. Then massage in the orange peel and dill.
Gently pour
- 1/3 c. good vodka over fish

Make sure the fish is evenly coated on top and all sides with the ingredients. Lay a handful of dill over the salmon to cover.

Wrap well in plastic. You will likely need to wrap the bundle again in plastic and put it in a bag as the juices will likely leak when pressure is applied. Do not use aluminum foil as it will react with the fish. Wipe the pyrex and place the bundle inside the dish. Wrap a book or heavy object the size of your dish in a plastic bag for protection. Place your weight on the salmon. If you do not have something heavy enough I recommend using a rubber band wrapped around the book and dish to squeeze the salmon. Place in fridge.

Every 12 hours for 2-3 days flip the salmon and replace the book and band. If you like a softer salmon you can remove the book after a day and half. After at least 72 hours of curing, rinse the salmon and slice super thin. These sumptuous slices can be certainly enjoyed alone, or on crackers or toasts with creme fraiche, or thick plain yogurt, blended with chives and dill. So lush!

Polenta

When I made the luscious vibrant yellow Polenta Bramata to accompany the ragu, I decided to reserve half of it to experiment with making antipasti. In this first attempt I made two versions of Rebecchini, hot mini polenta sandwiches. Inspired by another simple satisfying snack, Spiedini alla Romana, layers of fried or broiled mozzarella and bread drizzled with anchovy and parsley oil, I decided to add mozzarella to my polenta sandwich.

To make the polenta squares, I spread out the loose cooked polenta on to a parchment lined baking sheet. I let the polenta cool and set. After about an hour it was ready to be sliced. I cut mine into small squares but given my addition of bocconcini mozzarella, a disc shape makes more sense. The rim of a small glass will do the trick. I assembled thin slices of mozzarella between two squares of polenta. I then dipped the sandwiches in a beaten egg and dredged them in flour before setting them carefully in a pan of almost smoking oil. There should be just enough oil to allow the sandwiches to properly fry. As long as the oil is hot enough, the high heat will cause water vapor to escape from the sandwiches and repel the oil. If you do not see bubbles on the surface of the oil, it is not hot enough. The mozzarella should quickly melt and the polenta brown, once this happens they can be flipped and then pulled from the pan and rested on paper towel. If they are cooked in the oil for too long, much of the water will be lost and the oil will begin to penetrate the food leaving it soggy and greasy. To make the sauce I minced 2 cloves of garlic, 5 anchovies and a teaspoon of capers and incorporated them together in a saute pan of hot extra-virgin olive oil. To lighten the sauce and provide some acid I added the juice of half a lemon. The sandwiches should be eaten immediately with the anchovy sauce and chopped fresh parsley. While these are meant to be snacks, I think they would go well plated too with a puntarelle salad. Puntarelle is a variety of chicory. The root end of the shoots are used, split many times and soaked in cold water for about 1/2 an hour to curl up the straight stems. Puntarelle is traditionally dressed in vinaigrette of anchovy, raw garlic, olive oil and vinegar. To give a fresh vegetal crunch Id lightly toss the shoots in dressing, and pile them on top of the hot undressed sandwiches. Either way- oozing cheese, crispy polenta 'bread' and with a salty, tart sauce is going to be yummy!

The remaining polenta squares I anointed with either a shaving of salty, nutty, hard, spanish goat cheese or a pungent, grassy, creamy french slice. On to a pan and under the broiler they went. The hard cheese was finished with a buckwheat honey, thyme and black pepper; the soft with orange blossom honey and red hawaiian clay salt. They were both satisfyingly sweet, salty and earthy, but Im not sure when I'd make them again. I love fresh ricotta with honey, thyme and good finishing salt, so I thought I'd try an iteration for polenta- not my greatest success but pretty nonetheless.

Ragu

Spring seems to be creeping upon us, but while we are still bundling up to go outside I figured I might as well try my hand at one of cold weather's most comforting cures- ragu. There are infinite ways to make it. Everyone seems to agree that there should be more than one kind of meat- whether it be a ground veal, pork or beef, pancetta, prosciutto, mortadella, braised lamb shank, or sausage. Some variations include porcini mushrooms, anchovies, chicken livers, herbs and peperoncino. Most all ragus include at least a thread of diced, crushed or concentrated tomato. The addition of cream and red or white wine can enrich the ragu with flavor while keeping the meat from drying out or over browning. During the three hours I let my ragu simmer I added delicate pours of milk or white wine when the sauce appeared 'thirsty'. When I couldn't wait any longer to eat it I tore sections from yesterday's boule, toasting it before dunking it in to the thick succulent ragu.

I had made more than I could possibly eat, so I continued to experiment with the rest. I let it sit in the refrigerator overnight and firm up. To reheat it I put 2 cups of the ragu in a wok with 1/3 of a cup of reduced broth I had made with lamb neck, beef shank, and lamb and beef bones. The presence of collagen, calcium, minerals and the amino acids proline and glycine from the bones made the stock velvety,  gelatinous and nutritious. With the heat on high I incorporated the meat and liquid quickly so as not to loose moisture while also allowing the meat to maillardize on the hot thin surface. Raising the lush level, I spooned the revised ragu over slow-cooking smooth soft Polenta Bramata, a gorgeous intensely orange corn flour from Desana, Italy, a tiny town in the Piedmont region of North West Italy. I finished with a grate of Parmagiano-Reggiano from the Emilia Romagna Region, where Ragu Bolognese is one of the most common dishes. Here is my latest interpretation of this classic.

Ragu Bolognese

In a medium heavy bottom sauce pan heat:

-1 large spanish onion, diced

-2 celery stalks, diced

-2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

in

-3 tablespoons of hot extra-virgin olive oil

Add and cook for about 5 minutes until translucent and brown, then increase the heat to add:

-1/2 pound ground veal 

-1/2 pound ground pork

- 1/4 pound of pancetta, diced

Do not overcook meat, it will have hours to cook fully, and browning may create a seal that will keep it from softening in the braising liquids. Stir in:

- 4 oz of tomato paste

- 1/2 cup of whole milk

- 1/2 cup of white wine

- 1/2 teaspoon of fresh thyme and rosemary

Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and let simmer on low for 21/2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.

This is not meant to be a tomato cream sauce, the liquid serves to bind the ingredients and moisten the meat, but a little can be added with wine if the ragu needs hydration. Season with salt and pepper. When serving with pasta, heat ragu in a pan with a splash of starchy pasta water, incorporate and then toss pasta to bind. What is not immediately devoured can keep in the fridge for a few days and in the freezer for a month. 

Bread

I believe there is a real art and magic to making bread. Ive had a handful of opportunities to assist. The most memorable being in the mountains of Catalonia, Spain when I was living and working on a vegetable farm. One day I went down to the cellar to fetch a loaf of bread. The house had no refrigerator- just a door in the kitchen floor that lead to a cool dry basement- which works remarkably well, but without preservatives in any of the food (yay!) perishables did not last too long. The bread I found was hard and starting to develop mold. So it was time to make fresh bread. The next day friends were invited over for an all day event. Rob prepared the indoor wood burning oven while Gaella led us in the preparation. This was knead bread and we did it together standing in a circle around a large wooden table in the front room of the old stone house. We would toss our loaves back and forth tearing and recombining various loaves- this was a super soulful experience but resulted in overworked bread, dense with good energy. Fresh out of the hearth, the bread was nonetheless delicious spread thick with the soft cheese we acquired from the farmers on the other side of the hill for a trade of our elegant zucchinis. Back at school in Vermont I learned how to make bread the hearty way with lots of grains and seeds. Years later, I am in this new phase of cooking where I seek to break from my regular way of working and I thought bread baking would be a wonderful way to explore a precise chemistry.  In my hours of online research I discovered Jim Lahey's no-knead bread. Sullivan Street Bakery is without a doubt one of the better bakeries in New York City and so I decided to give it a whirl. Ummm- this is so easy- Jim, I thought I had to have a scale, and a perfect oven and ruin at least a dozen loaves before getting one right... instead its been only success. The unusual thing required is a dutch oven. You can certainly make his dough and cook them as baguettes on a baking sheet (image 1: olive and seed demi-baguettes), but to get that perfect snap of thick crust and a pillowy airy rustic crumb, I recommend a cast-iron or enameled dutch oven. I tried using an all-clad stainless steal deep pot lined with parchment and it worked just fine (image 2). It wasn't as airy and the crust was just a slip cover but that probably makes a more ideal sandwich bread. Here is the link to the Sullivan Street Bakery No-Knead Bread Recipe. I had great success using unbromated, unbleached white bread flour made from high-gluten U.S. Number 1 hard red wheat. I'd like to begin using other flours and additions, such as fruits, nuts and cheeses. Image 3 documents a finished olive baguette and a boule I made using Lahey's recipe except for that instead of using 3 cups of white bread flour, I used 2 and 1 cup of an organic whole wheat, rye and spelt mix. The baguette additionally was brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with maldon smoked salt. The olive oil and salt add flavor but will eventually soften the bread, so if you like a crackin' crust, eat immediately, or toast upon serving. The final image is of the oat bran that did not stick to my bread- cornmeal is also another good alternative to plain flour in keeping bread from sticking to surfaces, and is ideal in pizza making.

Canning

I have been in the kitchen experimenting since I was old enough to sit upright on the kitchen table, but only now I've begun to document. My first attempt began last autumn when I felt compelled to photograph the beautiful bounty I was about to can. Only now am I breaking the first seals, so I thought it relevant to make an entry. This experience was also my first in canning. It was a frenzied experience canning so many things at once, each with their own cooking times and requirements for balancing ph. Most people who can, do so because they are harvesting more tomatoes than they can eat, for example. I on the other hand, was working on a set for theater and decided that the kitchen necessitated some home-canned goods. To try to simulate a cupboard's collection in one day is totally nuts. Improper canning can cause the development unfriendly bacteria's, so I did my best to follow recipes accurately. This was quite a balancing act preparing all ingredients to be ready at just the right time for their entry into can and into boiling water. Each recipe of course required different times in the water ranging from 10-25 minutes. This proved beneficial as I could create the less cooked items as the longer ones processed, but 5 minutes before the next round was not always enough time to finish a series of recipes. The tricky part is that the recipes cannot be entirely finished in advance and left aside to cool as they must be hot upon entry into the jar and I did not want my vegetables to go soggy in reheating. Next time I'll just undercook everything and bring it up to heat at the last minute. That might help to avoid the rather uncomfortable burns I got all over my arms. Miraculously despite the pandemonium I gained confidence and began to riff on recipes, finally producing my own inventions. Today I opened a cross between a pickle and conserva- delicata squash with sage leaves, garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey and olive oil. The other day I opened my long slender deep purple beets, which are still firm and absolutely delicious. Their own sweet, earthy flavor and the brine they absorbed make them a perfect addition to a gin martini. The color slowly seeps out over time. I also pickled crownes specifically for cocktails. My batch was inspired by two incredible martinis. 1) a fennel/fennel pollen martini at the Hayword Gallery in London and 2) New York City's Blue Hill Restaurant dirty martini, which used crownes in lieu of olives due to their seasonal availability. I had never seen these maggot looking little roots before but low and behold the following week they were available at the farmers market. I paired them with whole cilantro root and shaved fennel bulb in a tincture of salts, sugars, spices and white vinegar.

I also found the most beautiful slightly purple tomatillos at the market and so I made a tangy salsa, though I would have been just as happy to let the fruits in their delicate papery husks sit on my kitchen table as eye-candy. Im also a huge fan of physalis, commonly known as ground cherries; these artfully packaged gems have a tart pineapple/tomato flavor. My canned cognac pears are worth mentioning as well because they involved little effort and are so decadent. Their reduced syrup make an excellent addition to rye and whisky cocktails. Less successful was a green olive pickle for muffelata sandwiches. The neon green romenesco was a fractal masterpiece, and the multicolored carrots and sweet peppers were just as marvelous. Unfortunately the colors were lost in the processing and I felt the vegetables were a bit too soft so next time i'll only blanch them briefly and add more peperoncini to amp up the capsium quality.

This is a log.

This is a collection of experiments with food.
I can hardly go a day without cooking.
Normally I create without recipe from what inspires me at the market.
Lately I have been reading quite a lot in books and online on specific dishes and cooking techniques. Harold McGee and Italian grandmothers have been equally important in my education.
As I begin a more focused study of food I've decided to chronicle my interpretations of such research. Allow me to elucidate...