Mark Bittman could save you from the annual Thanksgiving disaster brought about by too much food in too small a kitchen. In 101 Head Starts on the Day, he opens with an obvious suggestion:
For cooks, most Thanksgiving problems are brought about by the sheer number of dishes competing for the stove: It’s not easy to roast a turkey and sweet potatoes for 20 at the same time. The best solution is to make food in advance, like one of the dishes that follow.
Read through the list, or, better still, print it out and send it to whomever is managing your Thanksgiving kitchen. The list of relishes, chutneys, and jams alone will save you from another year of the gloppy red stuff that schlorrps out of a can.
(A digression: The fire extinguisher in that demo is a CO2 model, which is hardly ever sold for kitchen use. Kitchen extinguishers are usually dry chemical models, which I don’t recommend for smoothies unless you need to address a monoammonium phosphate deficiency in your diet.)
Twenty years ago I was given the gizmo pictured above as a gag Xmas gift, something I was never expected to actually use. The raised lettering across the top read “Eggmighty Almighty Egg Cooker.” It’s not actually a cooker, but something that assists you with egg cookery. It unstacks into a collection of tools, as shown here:
In order of unstacking, there’s a soft-boiled egg shell cuter, a shell piercer (the pin is below the spring-loaded cap, an egg stand (used with the shell cutter), a hard-boiled egg cutter (cuts into six wedges), an egg cutting stand (used with the wedge cutter), a v-knife for separateing hard-boiled eggs into two toothed halves, a standard egg slicer, and an egg separator.
I have used the standard and wedge slicers to cut mushrooms. The v-knife and stand make lovely kiwi halves. Everything else, however, seems to have only one use. So my question is: Do I have a multitasker, or multiple unitaskers? Regardless of the answer, I’m not getting rid of this gizmo, since I’ve never seen it again in any store — Asian or otherwise.
The farmer’s market is closed, but my meat CSA continues throughout the winter. So I had to brave the near-hurricane weather to pick up this month’s share at a parking lot in Cambridge. The line of people huddled under the awning that shaded the back of a refrigerated van reminded me of the turkey giveaway scene in New Jack City: everyone shivering and waiting for their fix.
What did I score? Another perfect chicken, two ham steaks (mmm… ham), a half slab of pork spare ribs, a lamb leg steak and a bonus. Before handing me the bag, the pusher, er, farmer asked “Would you like some fatback?”
“You’re giving away free fatback?”
“Yes, we are.”
“You realize we’re already hooked, that you don’t have to up the ante? But I’ll take as much as you want to give me.”
Now I have two slabs of fatback and a lardo recipe. Stay tuned.
(Sorry about the post title, but that Carol Kaye bass line has been running though my head all week.)
When it’s time to prepare the family Thanksgiving meal this year, I’ll start by thawing the frozen bird in cold running water the morning before. I’ll let the turkey sit in a big cooler full of a spiced brine and ice overnight before roasting it unstuffed. I’ll make a cornbread pudding and cranberry-orange-ginger dipping sauce to serve along with the usual mashed potatoes and gravy. I’ve cooked the meal this way for the last ten years or so.
Why? Because Alton Brown told me to.
Alton Brown is the host and creator of Good Eats, the second-greatest cooking show ever to appear on television. (The first? The French Chef, of course.) He took a basic idea: Julia Child + Mr. Wizard + Monty Python and turned it into an Awesome Cooking Show that’s equal parts cooking, science, and humor. This year marks his tenth season on the Food Network — a remarkable feat, considering FTV’s usual treatment of anyone with a large vocabulary and no catch phrase. To commemorate the occasion they published Good Eats: The Early Years, a compilation of recipes, photos, and facts from the first eighty episodes (six broadcast seasons). If you’ve never seen the show (and if not, how did you come to be reading this?), you can watch episodes here. (Thanks, FTV, for your non-embedding policy.)
As I read through the book I realized that I had absorbed many of his suggestions into my cooking style, and had tried techniques I thought difficult because he made them seem easy. I brine turkeys, sear steaks in a cast-iron skillet before finishing them in an oven, make pickles, put up jam, and always season with kosher salt dispensed from a salt cellar. He Who Will Not Be Ignored deigns to eat Brown’s stovetop mac ‘n’ cheese recipe because it tastes better than the boxed stuff.
He also taught me to look skeptically at new kitchen gadgets, firmly ingraining in me a distrust of “unitaskers.” He has famously declared that the only unitasker in his kitchen is his fire extinguisher. At least it was until about a month ago:
I though I had busted him on his electric waffle iron — what else can you do with it? — until he used it to cook bacon. What else should I have expected from the man who smoked a whole salmon using a cardboard box, a hot plate, sawdust, and a cheap battery-powered fan?
I don’t want this to degenerate any further into a fanboy rave about a major influence on my cooking. Just watch the shows, and get the book. As Brown describes it:
So this Good Eats book is like a retospective double album in a sense.
Actually it’s more like four hundred pages of liner notes, but really good liner notes.
I’m so relieved he didn’t call it his Tales from Topographic Oceans.
One of my secondary careers — book designer and typographer — began with a commission to design this book. Before the project started, the author gave me a copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, telling me that he wanted me to emulate the book’s production values, editing, and clarity of graphical representation.
So I read the book and had my aha! moment in the very first chapter, triggered by the presentation and description of this map (lager version here):
This is the “Minard Map,” which Tufte singlehandedly rescued from obscurity and made famous. His description is as eloquent as the pictorial display:
Described by E. J Marey as seeming to defy the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence, this combination of data map and time-series, drawn in 1869, portrays the devastating losses suffered in Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812.…Minard’s graph tells a rich, coherent story with it’s multivarate data, far more enlightening than just a single number bouncing along over time. Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army’s movement, and temperature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow. It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.
Tufte published Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations, both of which developed ideas from the first book, but he has become less relevant in the world of online media. His most recent book, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, is a statement of the obvious: PowerPoint presentations are the worst graphical representations of information ever seen.
Graphs have become the new humor meme of the internet, usually in the form of clever Venn diagrams. Randall Munroe, author of the geek webcomic xkcd, recently published a movie plotline map (enlarged) clearly influenced by the Minard map:
But what about serious online displays of information? Is there anything out there beyond CNN and print magazine infographics? There is, and it lives at Information Is Beautiful, a web site of data visualizations by David McCandless. He’s not above the occasional humorous representation, fr example, the hierarchy of digital distractions:
…or the 25 most common words in Michael Jackson’s songs:
But as you make your way through the site, you’ll find some serious data analysis: causes of death (represented as a spiral), billions of dollars spent in the US, estimated remaining world supplies of non-renewable resources, and more. McCandless is taking commonly available information from reports and news articles and turning it into visual representations that are much easier to grasp, which is the function of good visualizations.
Now, rather than paging through the site or his flicker pool, you can read The Visual Miscellaneum, which collects the site graphics and contains new material created specifically for the book. McCandless picks up where Tufte left off, but lets his graphics speak for themselves. As he explains in his brief introduction:
So, that’s what this book is. Miscellaneous facts and ideas, interconnected visually. A series of experiments in making information approachable and beautiful. See what you think.
We were finishing the main course of our anniversary dinner when our waiter returned. He asked “Are you still enjoying this course, or may I take your plates?” I was shocked: he was the first waiter not to ask me “Are you still working on that?” My unspoken response to that question is “You’re working, I’m eating,” but It didn’t even cross my mind.
I could argue that “Are you still enjoying this course?” could be interpreted as “Have you stopped enjoying this course?,” but I’ll stick with the positive interpretation.
Al of this came to mind after I read “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do,” a two-part feature in The New York Times Small Business section (part 1, part 2). There you can find item 78:
Do not ask, “Are you still working on that?†Dining is not work — until questions like this are asked.
I don’t disagree with any of the rules, and I agree with the author’s qualifier:
I realize that every deli needs a wisecracking waiter, most pizza joints can handle heavy metal, and burgers always taste better when delivered by a server with tattoos and tongue piercing(s).
The only thing missing is a set of rules for dealing with waiters who have Too Much Personality: I’m looking at you, Tony at the Summer Shack.
I had big plans. I had placed an advance order for Ad Hoc At Home, the cookbook from Thomas Keller’s casual restaurant, with the intent of setting up a separate blog where I would cook through the entire book. When it arrived I was ready, I had a spreadsheet set up to plan the recipe progression based on seasonal availability of ingredients, a schedule of no more than one major recipe a week.
Then it all fell apart. The domain name I wanted — adhocathomeathome.com — was already taken , as were many of the obvious variations. Then I learned that someone had already beaten me to the punch: Cooking Ad Hoc At Home (shouldn’t it be Cooking Ad Hoc At Home At Home?) was already up and running. Check it out, show your support.
I had just begun reading the book when I received a perfect chicken from my meat CSA. I wanted a simple recipe that would show off the chicken and use some of the vegetables that had accumulated in the kitchen. I also wanted a relatively simple preparation and recalled that Whole Roasted Chicken on a Bed of Root Vegetables — one of the first recipes in the book — might fit the bill. It did and it couldn’t be easier to make.
I started with the chicken, six garlic cloves, six thyme sprigs, two leeks, four carrots (a mixture of purple and yellow), eight small potatoes, and a large parsnip. I peeled and quartered the carrots, peeled the parsnip and cut the bottom into discs and the top into quarters, and quartered the potatoes.
I should mention here that I made liberal substitutions based on what I had in the kitchen. The “8 small (golf ball sized) red-skinned potatoes” were replaced by four garnet red potatoes cut into quarters, the “3 tennis-ball-sized rutabagas” and “2 tennis-ball-sized turnips” were replaced by the parsnips. Shocking, I know, to take liberties with a Keller recipe prepared for the first time, but I figured it would put his claim of “simpler recipes” to the test.
I preheated the oven to 475° and prepared the chicken by seasoning the cavity with salt, pepper, three garlic cloves and five thyme sprigs, and then trussing it closed. If you had struggled with the written explanation of chicken trussing from The French Laundry Cookbook (as I did), the new book has d’oh!-inducing photos that make the technique obvious.
I combined the vegetables in a large bowl and added the remaining garlic and thyme. I tossed everything in a quarter cup of canola oil, then seasoned with salt and pepper. I placed the vegetables in a large dutch oven. (Keller sugests a roasting pan or cast iron skillet; I figured the pot was a good compromise.)
I rubbed two tablespoons of oil on the chicken, seasoned the outside with more salt and pepper, and placed it in the pot on top of the vegetables. I scattered four tablespoons of butter (cut into five pieces) over the chicken breast.
I placed the uncovered pot into the oven and prepared to roast it for 25 minutes. It was at this point that I realized I had forgotten an ingredient — one quartered yellow onion —so I quickly sliced and oiled one and tossed it into the pot. (A rare Frugal Gourmet moment for me. What I hated about that show was Jeff Smith’s haphazard approach to linear recipe presentation: “Oh, and don’t forget to add the ginger!”)
After 25 minutes at 475°, I lowered the oven temperature to 400° and continued to roast for another 50 minutes, until the temperature at the thigh was 160° (you do have a good digital instant-read thermometer, don’t you?).
I transferred the chicken to a carving board and let it rest for twenty minutes. During the last five minutes of resting I set the pan of vegetables over medium heat and turned them to glaze with the pan juices. I carved the chicken and plated it with the vegetables.
This is probably the best roasted chicken I have ever made: perfectly crispy skin, moist breast and thigh meat, and deep, richly flavored vegetables. I think the plate needs something green, so I’ll probably add simple green beans as a second side.
I never thought I’d hear myself describing a Thomas Keller recipe as an “easy one-pot meal,” but it lived up to the claim. There’s still a certain amount of fussiness in his descriptions — the leeks, turnips, and rutabagas have to be cut and trimmed just so — but they can be taken with a grain of salt as long as you’re comfortable with improvising. And that’s certainly the heart of these recipes: comfort.
For our 16th wedding anniversary dinner, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had dinner (menu here) on Craigie on Main, site of the Whole Hog Dinner. It has become a tradition with us, and besides, chef Tony Maws (or his customer database) had personally invited us. I was impressed by how Maws has managed his online presence. He blogs, tweets, and sends out monthly email newsletters.
Two days before the dinner, the October newsletter arrived, with a special feature:
We pinned Chef Maws down — in between his duties as Chef, Wine Director, Human Resources Manager, and Maintenance Director — and begged him to unburden himself of some food knowledge that ordinary mortals would find useful. He came up with 10 thoughts — plus a bonus tip for good measure. Here goes:
If you have room in your cupboard for only one kind of salt, make it Kosher salt
Use herbes de provence (available wherever spices are sold) in meat, vegetables, salads, and even popcorn
Substitute mayo or aioli for oil in many recipes. (Making your own is easy!)
Often lemon, wine, and vinegar can we substituted for each other, or used together for a more dynamic flavor, in recipes.
Clean your cast iron pan only with salt and oil. If you do not have a cast iron pan, buy one.
When in doubt, the wine of the region will usually taste great with the food of the region
Don’t wait til the end to add all the salt a recipe calls for. Taste and season throughout the cooking process and add salt in little bits. This will dramatically increase your flavor.
Only use fresh spices and grind/crush them yourself (especially black peppercorns!).
Sharpen your knives regularly even if you don’t think you need to.
Don’t worry about following recipes exactly; always substitute if you find fresher, reasonably similar, or more seasonal ingredients to those the recipe calls for.
Bonus tip: Add a vanilla bean to sugar; cover and use wherever sugar is called for.
I can report honestly that I do all of those things, but it has taken me years to get to that point. But I thought I’d pass them on because they’re so useful as “meta-tips” that aren’t recipe- or technique-specific.
The first time I saw the title of Michale Pollan’s novel about “a plant’s-eye view of the world,” I couldn’t help but think of the Either/Orchestra, a local jazz ensemble that had released albums titled The Half-Life of Desire and The Calculus of Lust. But The Botany of Desire isn’t about what goes on between humans.
Pollan uses a conceit made popular by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene: Humans aren’t in control, they’re controlled by other organisms whose sole interest is to be propagated as widely as possible. The book’s four sections use different plants — apple, tulip, cannabis, potato — to support his thesis. It had been on my “to read” stack for almost a year, but I was finally prompted to read it last week when I saw that it had been made into a PBS documentary:
It’s a faithful translation of the book, narrated by Pollan (on screen) and Frances McDormand (off screen). But, because no Pollan book is about just one thing, many of his detailed explanations are compressed into a single sentence or scene. You still need to read the book to learn about the “real” Johnny Appleseed, the injustce of marijuana laws, or the political economy of British wheat versus Irish potatoes.
So I advise you to do both: watch the documentary (streamed online here) and read the book. You can see Pollan working toward the ideas he’d develop fully in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and you’ll learn some interesting botany. At the farmer’s market after watching the television broadcast, I found myself paying much more attention to the variety and diversity of the apples available from New England orchards.
That’s a Roxbury Russett, the oldest apple variety bred in America. A week ago I would have passed it over in favor of larger, brighter, redder varieties, and I would have missed out on it’s crisp flesh with a perfect balance of tart and sweet.
And that, to me, is the success of the book: the plant’s-eye view opened my eyes as well.
I failed to make good on my promise to hit Target first thing on Sunday morning to score more old-style Necco Wafers. By the time I got to the store today, the Halloween clearance shelves had been picked over by the local locusts. I did, however, find some of the Haloween edition Jones soda, for which I have a known weakness.
I should have known the taste test wouldn’t have turned out well when He Who Will Not Be Ignored refused to participate, especially after I had decanted room-temperature samples into paper cups.
The cup on the left is the Spookiwi (Frankenstein’s Monster can), and the cup on the right is the Buried Pomegranate (vampire can). After tasting both, I can safely say that if you didn’t tell me what the flavors were supposed to be I would never have identified them as kiwi and pomegranate. They were cloyingly sweet, which was to be expected from a drink pitched to kids. As for the bottled Monster Mojito, the less said, the better. Lime and mint may go together in a mixed drink, but without the alcohol it’s just a flavor disaster.
That’s the public service I perform for you: Tasting the bad stuff so you don’t have to.
