Archive for March, 2012

An Asparagus Almanac

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Nothing says spring like the abundance of bright green asparagus showing up in markets and grocery stores. A member of the lily family, asparagus is actually the tender shoot of a fern-like plant that grows four feet tall and bears red berries. Its harvest season is from February to June, depending on where it’s grown, and the height of asparagus season is usually April and May—so the best is yet to come for all of us who enjoy asparagus.

Most asparagus you’ll find is green, but you may also see some gorgeous purple asparagus, and occasionally white asparagus, grown with soil mounded over it to prevent it from coloring, which is common in Europe. Asparagus spears can be pencil thin, or as big around as your thumb. Thin spears come from younger plants and are more tender, while the thicker spears come from older plants and have a sturdier texture and a more robust flavor. Which is better? I like both—the thin ones raw or blanched, the thick ones roasted or grilled.

Buy asparagus with bright color, firm texture, and tightly closed tips. This vegetable has a high water content, so avoid shriveled spears, which indicate that it’s not fresh. The best way to store asparagus is to cut about ½ inch off the stalks, stand them in a container in an inch or two of water, cover the tops with plastic wrap, and keep them in the refrigerator for no more than 3 days. As with corn, it’s best to cook asparagus as soon as possible because it contains sugars that start converting to starches as soon as it’s harvested. The sooner it’s eaten, the more sweet, tender, and flavorful it will be.

To prepare asparagus for cooking, clean it and then remove the tough ends of the stalks. The thinner ones will break naturally where the stalks begin to get tough. For thicker asparagus, use a knife to cut off the bottoms of the stalks just where they begin to change color. Some cooks swear by peeling asparagus, I don’t usually bother with it. If the asparagus is trimmed properly, it’s tender when cooked.

One of the great things about asparagus is that it can be cooked in so many different ways: steamed, boiled, sautéed, roasted, or grilled. Roasted asparagus has become a favorite at our house—just coat it with a little olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and roast it in a 400-degree oven for 12-20 minutes (thicker spears need longer cooking time). Roasting concentrates the flavors and sugars in asparagus and reduces the water content so it accepts sauces and dressings more readily.

Asparagus loves butter, olive oil, cheeses (especially goat cheese and Parmesan), herbs (like dill, parsley, and tarragon), leeks and sweet onions, mustard, mushrooms, other spring vegetables (like baby carrots, peas, artichokes, and snap peas), eggs, and lemon (especially when they’re combined in Hollandaise sauce). Spears of the tender green asparagus are terrific raw in salads or as a crudité. Cooked asparagus can be added to omelets and pasta.

Here are a few favorite asparagus dishes to celebrate spring:

Asparagus Risotto

Braised Spring Vegetables

Asparagus Soup

Braised Salmon with Asparagus and Mushrooms

Spring Vegetables with Orzo

Lemon Asparagus Barley Soup

Morel Sauce for Asparagus

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Market to Table, Tips and Techniques

Season to Taste

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

I love the “aha moment” in cooking: when I’ve been tasting and seasoning a soup and finally it’s just right, when I bite into a perfectly ripe pear that doesn’t need another thing, when a drizzle of sauce on roasted meat brings out its deep, savory taste.  Something just clicks.  The flavor is just what I want.  That’s what makes good cooking: adding flavor, enhancing flavor, or just bringing out the naturally great flavor of good food.  And it’s not that hard to do.  A simple step or two can take a dish from OK to amazing.

I sometimes say that the most important thing I learned in cooking school was how to season food.  It’s a small thing with big results: the difference between a bland, unsatisfying dish that you eat out of necessity and a delicious, wonderfully nuanced experience is often just salt and pepper. Seasoning is a key way to build flavor.  Whether you’re making chicken soup, mashed potatoes, a roasted beef tenderloin, or sautéed snap peas, seasoning with salt and pepper early in the cooking process, and then again near the end (if necessary) will make the flavors dance in your mouth.

Kosher salt is popular with chefs because it dissolves quickly, and sea salt works, well, too.  Always go for freshly ground pepper (from whole peppercorns ground in a pepper grinder, not pre-ground pepper from a jar or tin) for maximum flavor. There are many specialty and flavored salts and exotic peppers available now–it’s fun to experiment with them, but always taste them before using them to season a dish.

In addition to salt and pepper, traditional French cooking includes grated or ground nutmeg and cayenne on the list of standard seasonings. The nutmeg and cayenne are added in very small quantities, and they give a subtle, tasty complexity to soups, sauces, and vegetable and meat dishes. (Ground allspice is substituted for the nutmeg with beef and lamb.) Try adding a little nutmeg and cayenne to your next soup, sauce, or batch of mashed potatoes and see what you think.

The seasoning in your cooking should always be according to your taste, meaning you taste the food and season it until it tastes right–really delicious–to you.  Once you get to that point, stop: your food should taste seasoned, not salty or peppery.  Finally, it doesn’t matter how much salt and pepper your recipe says to add.  No cookbook author or celebrity chef or food blogger knows how your food should taste.  You do.  You’re in charge of your kitchen, so season to your own taste.

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Posted in Tips and Techniques

Savoring Ireland

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

Forget about green milkshakes, green beer, and plastic shamrocks—St. Patrick’s day is a great reason to explore and enjoy fine Irish food and drink:  artisan cheeses, from vintage Cheddar to Cashel Blue; rich, creamy butters; salmon from the rivers and scallops, oysters, and mackerel from the coast; venison, beef, and lamb transformed into stews and pies with flaky, golden crusts; dark soda bread studded with sweet raisins; earthy carrots, parsnips, turnips, and cabbage.

And then there is the Irish potato: grated and formed into cakes, it’s boxty; mashed and combined with spring onions and topped with melted butter, it’s champ; mashed and melded with savory cooked cabbage or kale, it’s colcannon.  What to drink?  Silky black dry Irish stout, sweet and toasty Irish red ale, or crisp, light-bodied Irish lager.  For dessert?  Often a humble cake, pie or pudding made with apples, or perhaps with chocolate with a whisper of fine Irish whiskey (and the whiskey is very nice by itself, too).

So much great inspiration comes from Irish cooks, brewers, distillers, and food artisans, it’s hard to narrow it down enough to choose what to eat come March 17.  At our house, I think it will be lamb stew, or maybe corned beef and cabbage, or maybe shepherd’s pie.  Maybe we should just celebrate a St. Patrick’s week instead—so we can get it all in.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons

Go Fish

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

From Salmon Filets Poached in Tomato and Olive Sauce to Seafood and Chorizo Paella, to Thai Scallops and Spinach over Rice, what’s not to love about seafood? It’s flavorful, versatile, good for us, and can be prepared quickly—and we now have more good fish and shellfish choices available in markets and grocery stores than ever before. At MTG we love cooking with seafood and have learned some things about it over the years. Here are a few of our favorite tips:

–Take your fish out of the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so before cooking. Letting it warm a bit allows it to cook more evenly.

–A wide, slotted spatula is a seafood cook’s best friend. It’s perfect for lifting a filet out of a pan or moving chunks of seafood around without causing them to fall apart.

–Fish cools rapidly after cooking, so warm your plates or serving platter ahead of time.

–There are many cooking methods for seafood (frying, baking/roasting, poaching, steaming), but only one primary pitfall to avoid: overcooking. We have always relied on the Canadian Department of Fisheries rule of thumb for cooking fish: 10 minutes of cooking time per inch of thickness, measured at the thickest point. Fish does continue to cook after it’s removed from the heat, however, so we usually start checking at about 8 minutes per inch and stop cooking just before the fish is done. If the fish is wrapped in foil, we add another 3-5 minutes per inch.

–To check if fish is done, insert the tines of a fork or the tip of a sharp knife into the fish and twist it slightly. The fish should have turned from translucent to opaque, the top should just begin to flake, and there should be some resistance closer to the center. Some people like fattier fish, like tuna and salmon, a little less done—opaque on the outside, but still translucent in the center.

–Baked or roasted fish needs a little help to stay moist. Add some insulation by covering the pan, or coat the fish with buttered crumbs, sliced or julienned vegetables, or a tasty sauce.

–When broiling or grilling fish, place it 3 to 6 inches from the heat source. The larger the piece of fish, the further away from the heat it should be. If a fish filet is very thin, it may not need to be turned over.

–To keep fish from sticking to the pan when you’re frying or sautéing, heat the pan first, then add the oil. When you see the first faint wisps of smoke from the oil, add the fish to the pan and turn the heat down a bit.

–A delicious sauce can make good seafood even better. Here are a few we like: Basil Sauce de Mer, Curry Sauce, Mediterranean Mushroom-Olive Sauce, Pea Sauce with Chives, Sauce Bercy, Mustard and White Wine Sauce, Tarragon Cream Sauce, Roasted Red Pepper Sauce, and Corn Cream Sauce.

–To learn more about choosing seafood that is good for you and good for the planet take a look at the Seafood Watch web site sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium: www.montereybayaquarium.org/seafoodwatch. Lots of great info there.

 

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques

Pot Pie

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

It’s a blustery day, just about right for the first day of March, and just about perfect for making a quintessential comfort food—chicken pot pie.  Something about tender chunks of chicken and vegetables swathed in a savory sauce and blanketed with buttery, golden pastry makes the gray skies and damp, chilly winds seem not quite so gray and chilly.  I remember burning my mouth nearly every time we had pot pie when I was growing up.  I’d be so eager to dig in that I couldn’t wait for the thing to cool first.

Pot pies are a little homely and old-fashioned, perfect for hungry kids or hungry grownups, but they’ve attained a sort of retro glamour lately.  You see pot pie proudly featured next to the gourmet mac and cheese on many restaurant menus now.  And guess what Wolfgang Puck included in the feast he prepared for the Governors’ Ball at this year’s Oscars?  Yes, chicken pot pie, with shaved black truffles, of course.

What I like best about pot pies is how simple and versatile they are.   There are just two basic components, the filling and the crust, and both can be easily varied, depending on what you have on hand.  For the basic chicken pot pie filling, you sauté some vegetables, sprinkle them with flour, stir in some stock, and cook for a few minutes.  Then you stir in a little cream if you like, along with chunks of cooked chicken and a handful of peas.  The filling goes into a pie dish, you top it with pie crust, and into the oven it goes.

The ingredients in the filling could be almost anything—leftover roast beef and mushrooms make a delicious pot pie, as do turkey, roasted vegetables and seafood.  As far as the crust goes, if you’re not a baker, you can buy commercially prepared pie crust dough or puff pastry.  If you want to change things up a bit, try making the crust with buttered layers of filo dough.  You can also substitute a layer of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, or butternut squash for the pastry and voilá, you have an equally delicious dish, a shepherd’s pie.  One of my favorite pot pie variations is a Tex-Mex style one with a cornmeal and Cheddar crust.

The pot-pie possibilities are probably endless, but I can tell you one thing.  No matter how much the howling winds of March make you want to go for some instant gratification when your pot pie emerges golden and great-smelling from the oven, do your best to give it time to cool a bit before you devour it.

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Posted in Cooking with the Seasons, Tips and Techniques