My Inner PETA

Shrimp and Chicken Piccatas

I know I'd never survive as a vegetarian. It's not that I simply can't live without meat (although, with my history of weight loss, I'd make one emaciated vegetarian), nor am I of the Tony Bourdain philosophy that they can have my steaks when they pry them from my cold dead arthrosclerotic fingers. My problem with going vegetarian is that I'm pretty sure the gas would kill me. It would at least force me into a celibate lifestyle.

Frankly, if dietary choice were simply a question of ethics, I'd have a rough time. I love animals. Sincerely. This is not a setup for a W.C. Fields joke.

Don't get me wrong. I won't be throwing away my leather boots and running out to join PETA. Although I admire the sentiment and the conviction of animal rights activists, PETA members always strike me as a bit off kilter. Maybe it was that incident a few years ago when PETA members demonstrated that life, at times, is just one big recycled WKRP Cincinnati rerun. Just before Thanksgiving, on a major freeway overpass, a group of PETAzoids freed a bunch of domestic turkeys. Turkeys are none too bright, though, and the birds just stood there in the open cages. No doubt the gobblers just thought it was feeding time. The PETA members, wanting their gesture to look more dramatic for the captive audience of rush hour traffic streaming past below them, grabbed the birds and threw them into the air. Wouldn't you expect at least one of that crowd of animal lovers to know that domestic turkeys are flightless? Well, the lucky birds just landed on the bridge with a thud. Sadly, several of the birds fell into the oblivious stream of traffic below.

So, I do apologize if this comment ruffles any PETA members' feathers, but on the whole you guys are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. Perhaps you should eat more fish; some nutritionists consider it brain food.

As I suggested, however, I do understand the whole concept of guilt over eating animals. Like many modern omnivores, I am conflicted in my quests for a fine cut of meat or the correct fish for dinner. I see this effect at work all the time. Some people just can't bear the thought of ordering the death of a lobster. They're perfectly willing to eat a lobster tail, they just don't want to be directly involved in its death. An even more common effect is the Vein That Ruins Dinner. One person at the table cuts into his steak and diagonally opens a vein, allowing a few drops of fluid to bleed onto the plate. I've actually seen people lose a meal over such an incident.

Also, of course, many of us learn to think of some animals in ways that make it difficult to see them as food. My foster daughter, the champion horsewoman, becomes incensed at the mention of horsemeat. Similarly, most Americans are disgusted at the thought of cooked dog. One of my most recently developed quirks is a refusal to eat grouper. I've been diving for a few years, now, and I can't help thinking of grouper as friendly, inquisitive critters.

And then there's veal. What can I safely say about veal? I Googled the term and immediately found the usual complaints about veal calves being raised in slatted paddocks designed to restrict their movement (thereby limiting muscle development) and about the iron-poor, antibiotic-rich milk substitutes fed the calves to get that wan "milk-fed" look you see in the supermarkets. Back in the eighties, many markets simply stopped carrying veal, citing either the unhealthiness of the meat or animal cruelty. I know a quite a few non-vegetarians who won't eat it, and I'm still not comfortable cooking or eating it either. I don't mind killing my food. I'm not even squeamish about cooking with fresh, wriggling lobsters or eels. Torturing my food is another matter. As far as I can see, the intent to kill an animal does not justify torturing it.

Even if not produced by torture and antibiotics, veal is an odd meat. Oh, sure, it's beef--young, but still beef. The flavor (as I recall from a few decades back) is far milder than adult beef, and the color attests to that mildness. Because it lacks much in the way of fat, many preparation methods require either the addition of fat from other sources (wrapping in a fat net for roasting, for instance) or inclusion of a healthy quantity of marrow rich bones (thus the necessary shoulder in osso bucco). Frankly, veal is so mild that many of the traditional recipes seem to be designed to give the meat some sort of flavor. I recall that I enjoyed the my first several veal piccata, but even as a teenager I recognized that the flavor in the dish was the result of the butter, lemon, artichokes, and capers. The veal and stock provided nothing more than a canvas. The veal components provided the protein base and none of the flavor. This proved true for every veal cutlet dish I ever tried.

[On a side note, I am toying with the idea of making veal stock. Hey, I said I was conflicted. I believe veal bones make more sense than beef bones as a source for stock because of the lower ossified bone content. More on this later, if I'm lucky.]

I guess it's no surprise, then, that so many Italian restaurants in the US offer chicken scallopini and piccata in lieu of (or as an alternative to) the veal versions. It really makes very little difference to most diners. Chicken breasts, unless browned and boosted with the proper flavor enhancers (for chicken, the best amplifiers I know are mushrooms and olives), offer vary little in the way of distinct flavor. The same is true for breaded veal cutlets. Oh, sure, veal and chicken breast scallopini or cutlets or Milanese will provide some teeeeny bit of flavor to a dish. Don't write to tell me that I'm wrong because you can taste the chicken even if my allergy-addled taste buds no longer can. I can taste it, too. Likewise, probably, the veal. But let's be honest: it's not a principal component in the flavor.

So, piccata is really not an ideal treatment for an Iron Chef-style enhancement of veal or chicken. If you want to enhance the chicken or veal flavor, make something else. That said, I like piccata. If the chicken provides nothing more than a base upon which to enjoy the other ingredients, I can accept that. I like the other ingredients.

Still, I began to wonder, could anything else work as a base in which the piccata treatment would actually enhance the base ingredient? Lemon, capers, butter, and artichokes.

Well, duh. Shrimp.

I thought about fish, but most fish would be overwhelmed by the capers. I might consider a really strong fishy fish like mackerel or bonito, but I wanted to give the treatment a bit more thought. I'd probably have to grill to subdue the fishiness, and I'd rather keep my piccata in the sauté pan, if possible.

I tried the shrimp piccata dish with two different homemade pastas: once with Italian parsley spaghetti, once with tarragon spaghetti. I expected the parsley to be the better of the two (I was concerned that the tarragon would be just one flavor element too many). I was wrong. Both were good, but the tarragon was better.

Initially, I tried this shrimp dish with my chicken piccata recipe, substituting only shrimp for chicken. After making this once, I realized that the mushrooms (which I initially began using to enhance the chicken) were an unnecessary complication, and I eliminated them.

Shrimp Piccata

dramatis personae

1 package frozen artichoke hearts
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound enormous shrimp tails
1 cup white wine
1 half cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 quarter teaspoon lemon oil or the zest of one medium lemon
2 tablespoons capers, non-pareils

preparation notes

Yes, I said frozen. Feel free to use fresh artichoke hearts, if you like, but that will add a good forty minutes to your prep. I start with Bird's Eye brand artichoke hearts: thaw them in warm water, drain them in a colander, slice each artichoke half into fourths, discarding any tough leaves. Heat the olive oil over a medium flame, and sauté the hearts until they're just beginning to brown. Remove the hearts from the pan, but leave the oil and fond behind--chopsticks work well for this task.

Get the biggest shrimp you can find. The ones I used were six tails to a pound. Shell, devein, and halve the shrimp longitudinally. To get a more cutlet-like effect, I ran a bamboo skewer down the length of each tail half to keep it from curling during sautéing. You can forego this step if you don't want the shrimp tails flat.

In the oil and fond from the artichokes, cook the shrimp tails until all the translucent bits are opaque (a couple three minutes--who times this stuff?). If you do this, you'll want to remove the skewers immediately upon removing the tails from the pan to keep the skewers from becoming an integral component of the shrimp. The best technique I've found is to hold each tail firmly with a paper towel, and twist the skewer while pulling it out.

Turn up the flame a bit and deglaze the white wine. When the majority of the liquid is gone, add the stock and the lemon oil or zest (both work about equally well, but some folks don't like the grainy texture of lemon zest in their sauces). Simmer until the majority of the liquid is gone. Toss in the artichoke hearts and immediately mount the sauce with the butter. Toss in the capers and remove the piccata sauce from the flame.

For each serving, arrange two or three shrimp tail halves on or aside a cup of cooked spaghetti (see below) and pour on a portion of the piccata sauce.

Chicken Picatta

dramatis personae

Same as the shrimp, but substitute four boneless chicken breast halves for the shrimp

You'll also need

- four cremini mushrooms (roughly golfball size)
- two tablespoons all-purpose flour

preparation notes

I prefer to remove all the fat and and the ropy wing muscle from the breasts and then pound them flat--roughly 3/8 inch thick cutlets. Pat the flattened cutlets dry; slice them in half or thirds, whatever size you prefer (it's mostly a matter of aesthetics); and dredge them in the flour. Shake off the excess.

Slice the mushrooms about 1/8th inch thick and, before cooking anything else, sauté them in a non-stick pan without oil until they are beginning to turn golden brown on the edges. Remove the mushrooms (don't clean or wipe the pan, though), and pour in the oil. Prepare the artichokes as for shrimp piccata.

Once you've removed the artichokes, sauté the chicken breasts in the fond and oil from the veggies. How long? I don't know. They should be golden brown and done through. Remove the breasts from the pan.

Turn up the flame a bit and deglaze the pan with white wine. When the majority of the liquid is gone, add the stock and the lemon oil or zest (both work about equally well, but some folks don't like the grainy texture of lemon zest in their sauces). Simmer until the majority of the liquid is gone. Toss in the artichoke hearts and immediately mount the sauce with the butter. Toss in the capers and remove the piccata sauce from the flame. For each serving, arrange two or three shrimp tail halves on or aside a cup of cooked spaghetti and pour on a portion of the piccata sauce.

Tarragon pasta

dramatis personnae

a dozen spinach leaves
2 tablespoons water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup semolina flour
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 extra large eggs
1/4 cup tarragon leaves (chiffonade)

preparation notes

You do not have to use a fancy mixer to mix and knead the dough. It is my considered opinion, however, that you do need a pasta roller. I have attempted hand rolling pasta, and it hurts like hell. If you hand roll pasta, you actually like hand rolling pasta, you think the sun rises and sets on hand rolled pasta, you think those of us who rely on pasta machines are wimps--hey, knock yourself out. Personally, I make the dough, turn it over to my wife, and she rolls out fresh spaghetti on the Atlas (this one: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000CFNCP/qid=1098303893/sr=8-9/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i9_xgl79/002-3201007-8799252?v=glance&s=kitchen&n=507846 ) while I'm preparing dinner. She usually has the pasta drying on the rack well before the water boils.

Note: make the dough at least a half hour before you plan to begin rolling the pasta. The dough has to rest to relax a bit. Otherwise, it will be like trying to roll tire rubber.

Puree the spinach leaves in a food processor in the two tablespoons of water. Strain out all the solid bits in a mesh strainer. All you want is the green liquid.

Before you begin mixing everything, set aside the eggs to warm to room temperature. If you don't want to wait, run hot tap water over them for a few minutes to take off the refrigerator chill.

Oh, and about that chiffonade: these herbs are going into a pasta dough. That means they have to be minced into excruciatingly tiny bits. If the bits are too big, they won't stay in the dough.

If you're not using a mixer, wash and dry your hands, and remove any rings, watches, and bracelets. Clear some counter space and dust it with flour.

Mix the flours in a large bowl. Make a crater in the center and pour all the other ingredients in there. If you are not using a mixer, blend everything from the inside out with a fork. Once the dough becomes too thick to mix with the fork, use your hand. When the whole mass becomes one bolus of green dough, transfer it to the floured counter top to knead. Knead until the dough is uniform, pliable, moist, but not sticky--about five minutes of steady kneading should suffice.

Flour a small plate. Plop the dough ball in the middle of the plate. Wet one hand and wipe the wet hand over the surface of the dough. Cover this with a piece of plastic wrap and let it set for a half hour. If you have made the dough more than a half-hour in advance, put it in the refrigerator, but take it out and let it warm up a half-hour before rolling the pasta.

Professional (ish) Dessert Construction

Birth of the Topple

The key word here is construction. You can build some pretty impressive desserts from simple materials. No, I don't mean you should make your desserts from baling wire and toothpicks, but the ingredients don't have to be outlandish or even take much work. I'm not sure when I hit upon the realization, but I know it was during a Texas summer. Normally, I tend to think of desserts as something having a baked or poached-fruit component, but 100-degree days put the kibosh on that sort of preparation. I know, in moments of utmost laziness, you can always opt for store cookies (I prefer Pepperidge Farms Milanos or Brussels) and sorbet, but where's the fun in that? I want to put stuff together and have my family ooh and ah before falling on their dessert like ravenous hyenas (having learned quickly what gets repeat performances from the kitchen, my wife and kids are great oohers and ahers, by the way).

Generally, for constructed desserts, I find that the key elements are pretty much the same as the keys to any successful meal: balance and sensory appeal. Desserts are most pleasing when they are sweet but not too sweet, colorful but not gaudy. Tart flavors should balance against buttery and creamy flavors. Smooth textures should be highlighted with crisp fruit or a crunchy component. Vanilla, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, herbs, and citrus can add aroma as well as texture, but too much of a good thing is just bad.

Inspiration counts for a lot, too, and the calendar always plays a role in inspiration. If a fruit catches your eye in the grocery store--something looks particularly fresh, sweet, ripe, juicy, colorful--well, that just might be nature's way of telling you to start planning tonight's dessert. This was my experience early this summer with Texas blueberries. The local markets were packed with fresh bulging blueberries. I bout a pint and immediately began scouring my taste memory for things that would go well with blueberries.

Balance is also important in the workload. I think every cook agonizes over the question of what to buy ready-made and what to make from scratch. I don't want to oversimplify the answer to this question, but sometimes it's just a matter of advantages. Will I gain anything by making my own Caesar dressing over buying Cardini's? Well, that depends what else I'm serving. If the Caesar salad is the principal player in a meal, I might want to make my own with whole anchovy strips and shaved Parmesan and fresh lemon juice. If the salad is just a minor player, I'll opt for the bottled stuff. Other considerations include

1. Can I make something markedly better than the store-bought stuff?
2. Do I have time to make whatever it is from scratch?
3. Does this effort require tools that I do not possess?
4. If the effort is expensive in either funds or time, will it make much difference?

For instance, no matter the situation I'd sooner brush my teeth with a nail file than use store-bought Hollandaise or Bearnaise sauces. On the other hand, I'd never think of making my own hoisin sauce or Dijon mustard.

But we were talking about desserts. What all this listing and justification and juggling of nuances is leading up to is my excuse for buying a cake. The nearly-100-degree weather convinced me that I should buy an angel food cake to use as the base for my dessert. I was not baking a cake that night. Besides, frankly, I've never cared much for baking cakes, I don't have a bundt pan, the cake was destined for a supporting role, it was hot, and it was a Thursday night (I never can seem to get my shit together on Thursday nights). Anyway, I call this dessert a topple, because

--uh--

because it looks like one.

dramatis personae

• one angelfood cake (well, probably not a whole cake)
• zest of one small orange (or tangerine or Meyer's lemon)
• one cup heavy whipping cream
• two tablespoons confectioner's sugar
• one quarter teaspoon cream of tartar
• a dash of cardamom powder
• one quarter cup marscapone cheese
• one quarter cup pear butter
• one half pint of berries (blue, black, rasp)
• two tablespoons hulled pistachios

quality of ingredients

The cake should be uniform in shape and texture, moist but not sticky, sweet but not too sweet. I realize it's difficult to determine all of this if you've never tasted this particular bakery's cake, but you won't need the entire cake, so taste a bit. If the cake is too sweet, halve or forego the sugar in the whipped cream.

The berries have to be fresh and should not be mushy. Freshness can be tricky with some berries. Blueberries can be especially tricky; I think green blueberries deliberately masquerade as fresh berries to confound me. As with the cake, you'll need to taste the berries before you use them. If they're a bit on the tart side, cut each berry in half and use half as many on each topple.

When selecting the orange remember that you are going to use only the zest. Well, okay, you can use the rest of the orange in something else or eat the damned thing while you're whipping the cream, for all I care. But the zest is where your attention should be when you purchase the orange because that's the part you're using in this dessert. For this application, the color of the zest is unimportant. The aroma and overall health of the zest are the only important aspects. You want an orange (or tangerine) with no blemishes in the zest. Test the aroma by nicking it with a fingernail. It should have a strong, sweet, pleasant citrus aroma. If it smells too acrid or if it has little aroma, pick a different variety. If you can't find a decent orange or tangerine, a lemon (preferably a Meyer's lemon) will work.

preparation

Remember I said this is a construction. Since you've purchased the only cooked components of this dessert (the cake and the pear butter). Begin by preparing the filling and the whipped cream.

The filling's pretty quick. Combine the pear butter with the marscapone in a small bowl and whip them together with a fork. I like a uniform consistency, but you might prefer the filling to have a slightly striated appearance. Either way works. You might also be wondering, why the hell is he using pear butter? Apple butter is far easier to find, and it tastes good with berries, too. I suppose you could substitute apple butter for pear, but apple butter has a more assertive flavor than pear, so you'll probably want to use less.

I've never understood why anyone would use ready-made whipped cream. It's simple to make, takes less than 10 minutes, keeps for a couple of days, and tastes many times better than the ready-made. The topple uses orange-cardamom whipped cream, which sounds fancy but is damned simple. Combine the zest (if you don't own a microplane zester, get one) sugar, cream of tartar, cardamom, and cream in a large mixing bowl and whip it good. This is not rocket science. Whip it until it peaks. Use a silicon spatula to scrape the sides every minutes or so to ensure even distribution of the ingredients.

Break up the pistachios a bit. They needn't be chopped or ground. You want pieces that are in the neighborhood of a third pistachio size.

Slice the cake radially, like you slice a pie. You need two half-inch thick slices per serving. Use a large, extremely sharp knife and slice down slowly to avoid crushing the cake. On each plate, place one slice of angelfood cake, spread on a tablespoon of filling, place a second slice atop the filling offset slightly, so that it looks like it's sliding off the first. Top this with a large spoonful (a quarter cup? hell, I never measured) of orange-cardamom whipped cream. Sprinkle eight or ten berries and a teaspoon of pistachio chunks on each topple.

What Italians Really Want

I want to talk a little about the virtues of marscapone. Naturally, this relates to sex. Everything relates to sex.

There is an old (old as in, having Medieval origins--even Chaucer takes a stab at a variation on this via the Wife of Bath) sexist joke that goes something like this:

A young knight rapes a beautiful young lady. The king, for the reason du jour (low ratings with the female population--big-hearted sense of justice--desire to see the matter swept under the rug without any authentic adjudication--brain tumor), decides to let the queen and her ladies try this matter in the Court of Love. The ladies, using some arcane or arbitrary system of judgement decide that, rather doing anything so rational as tying this Y-chromosomatic over-achiever to the nearest pole and allowing a rabid polecat to search in his codpiece for mice, send him on an educational quest. If he can return with the correct answer to the council's Question in a year-and-a-day, they'll set him free. If not, it's the pole and ferret treatment for Our Hero. From this point onward, the young man's life (or at least that of his genitals) hinges on his discovering the answer to a fairly straightforward-sounding Question: "What does every woman really want?"

So, our Medieval Mike Tyson goes a-questing. Wherever he wends, he requests an interview with whatever woman the locals have deemed the wisest in the area. Because each maternal sage gives him an answer decidedly different from the previous answers, it quickly begins to look like this scumbag will get his just desserts. By various sources, he is told that all women really want:

1. Financial security


2. Frequent rogerings by accomplished young studs


3. To be young and pretty


4. Jewelry


5. To be told that they are young and pretty


6. A nice house


7. True love


8. A room of her own


9. Exquisite desserts


10. To be left alone

The requisite year-and-a-day passes, and Our Hero finds himself once more before the council of ladies. They put the Question to him and, having heard the same contradictory evidence as he, we are fairly certain this young fellow will soon be singing soprano.

"What every woman really wants," he says, "is"--

pause for dramatic effect--

"her way."

And they set the slimy bastard free.

I'd like to use this old joke to make two points. First, before you start getting steeped in the irony of progressive elitism, remember: the Clarence Thomas hearings weren't that long ago. Yeah, I know, that was a non-sequitur.

Second, that old sexist joke really demonstrates the dual nature of stereotypes. We tend to believe them even as we deny them. The stereotype of women from the men's perspective is that we never truly know what women want. The subtext of the joke, however, is that men actually know exactly what women want, but we also consider it an unreasonable desire.

In light of that stereotype, I'm sure you can see that we shouldn't be too quick to assume we know exactly what someone wants based on stereotypes. My wife, for example, is half-Italian. It's amazing how many people in this country think they know exactly what an Italian wants to eat based on nothing more substantial than a vague sense of ethnic origin. Italians are all supposed to love pasta, garlic, tomato sauce, Italian sausage, roasted peppers, langostino, and white truffles. Bollocks. Princess Valiant doesn't care, for example, for Parmesan cheese (she's also none too fond of roasted peppers or sausage of any description, but I'll address those matters another time). She's none too keen on Romano or any other stinky cheese, for that matter. Peccorino, Reggiano, Asiago, it makes no difference. She just doesn't like it. Her multa italiana Aunt Mary shares this sentiment; she says parmesan smells like a sweaty sock and won't allow it in her kitchen, much less near her pasta.

This puts me in a rather delicate position when I attempt to make risotto for the family. Authentic risotto is made with arborio rice, stock, white wine, cream, and parmeggiano, and I adore a good traditional risotto. Oh, I admit, I skimp on the parmesan for seafood risottos: shrimp, squid, lobster, and scallops just don't need the competition. Note I said "skimp." Seafood-based risotto still needs a little cheese for body. For most risottos, though, without sufficient parmesan, the results are rather bodiless and bland.

In most American households, this doesn't seem to be a problem. These days, folks in the US seem to be sold on the value of Reggiano Parmigiano as a flavoring agent. The Food Network and the boys at Queer Eye praise it to the heavens. Italian restaurants dole the stuff out like most places pass out cracked black pepper. This is unfortunate. It's rather like bathing your sushi in wasabi and soy sauce. Sure, it tastes good that way, but all you're going to taste is wasabi and soy sauce. At sushi prices, that's a waste of money. Likewise, if all you want is the taste of garlic and parmesan cheese, sprinkle 'em on a burger. What's the point of spending good money on a lasagna, risotto, or manicotti if all you're going to taste are the parmesan and garlic?

Recently, I discovered the answer to both of my risotto needs. First, I needed a the body of cheese for the seafood risottos, but I needed to eliminate the aged-cheese-stench. Second, for other risottos, I needed both the body and a certain extra flavor agent that would not provide too much grease (tried butter, threw away the results) nor too strongly cheesy. The answer I happened upon is marscapone.

Most folks are familiar with marscapone from a rather different source: marscapone provides the body and a degree of piquancy to tiramisu and cannolis (if you are not Italian and weren't an adult in the 1980s, you may have to look up this term--trust me, it's a dessert). Marcaspone is young mozarella. It has nearly the consistency of whipped cream cheese but with a slightly tarter flavor. What I found truly amazing is that marscapone not only makes an outstanding substitute for parmesan in risotto, not only works with (vice against) the flavor of seafood, but also makes the cream superfluous and allows the risotto to mount much faster than with cream. It's so easy to use, it almost feels like cheating.