Debriefings

Near Misses

This past week I served the family two stew-like dishes. Both were dishes I've prepared in the distant past. Both were well-received (Girltzik declared both dinners delicious). Both, frankly, disappointed me. Maybe I'm just too demanding. Maybe I'm never satisfied. Maybe I'm having Prince flashbacks.

I go through this all the time with new or re-visited dishes. The girls will be enjoying the meal and I'll start with open questions ("What do you think?" "Anything you'd change?") and move to leading questions if I don't hear anything that answers my own inner critic's concerns. Princess V calls it the debriefing.

Khoresh-e Fasenjan

The dish I was attempting to revise is called khoresh-e fesenjan, and I have no idea how that translates, but what little I know of Persian foods tells me that (1) khoresh literally means "eating," (2) all Persian stews are called khoresh-something, and (3) khoresh-e fesenjan is always made with (at the very least) pomegranate molasses, walnut meal, onions, and poultry. I think the name essentially means "pomegranate stew," but I wouldn't bet a paycheck on it. This khoresh is unique in that the inclusion of pomegranate sweetens the stew; most Persian stews are decidedly savory, containing no sweetener of any kind.

If you google khoresh-e fasenjan, you'll find numerous recipes, including dozens of redactions of Maideh Mazda's recipe from In a Persian Kitchen. Mazda's goal appears to have been making Persian cooking possible without access to authentic Persian ingredients. For this reason, her version is far from iconic, relying as it does on shortening, poultry seasoning, and pomegranate juice instead of pomegranate molasses.

One of my objections to most versions of this dish is the walnut meal, which in addition to providing a bit of flavor, thickens the stew. I like walnuts, but in this particular application, they give the dish a gritty texture. In the past, I've tried substituting ground cashews, which is smoother than the walnuts, but the cashew flavor is pretty assertive and radically changes the flavor. I decided, for this latest revision of khoresh-e fasenjan, that I would eschew the walnut meal thickener entirely. Instead, once the vegetables and chicken were fully cooked, I simply removed them to a bowl and reduced the liquid. I think this worked quite well, but it was a wee bit sweet for my taste. No surprise. The pomegranate molasses makes khoresh-e fasenjan tart and sweet, and it can easily become cloying. Princess V commented on this, noting that my khoresh fell just short of being too sweet. Some recipes I've seen actually add sugar, and that would be entirely too much.

Khoresh-e fasenjaan is usually quite spicy and will typically contain cayenne, turmeric, and cinammon. I decided to replace the traditional spice selection with ras al hanout and turmeric. The ras al hanout I used on the chicken pieces as a spice rub prior to searing them. I used the turmeric because I like the way it works with pomegranate. Searing on the ras al hanout worked well, imparting a warm, smoky spice to the dish.

A khoresh usually includes onions and will often include zucchini, eggplant, or artichokes. For vegetables, in addition to the onion, I elected to use artichoke hearts and pistachios. Both are meaty and rich, and pistachios match well with pomegranate. Besides, Girltzik and I are big artichoke fans.

The sauce for khoresh-e fasenjan is often made even tarter by the addition of lime juice, tomatoes, or tomato sauce. I don't care for tomato with pomegranate but I did include a little lime juice.

The poultry component of khoresh-e fasenjan is often a whole chicken or duck or just chicken legs. I decided to use thighs and breasts. The girls don't care for dark meat, but it does a better job of flavoring stews. Breast meat is problematic in acidic stews: it dries out and takes on a slightly astringent quality. That turned out to be the case in this instance. My biggest objection to our meal was the dryness of the breast meat. Next time, I think I'm going to try chicken meatballs or possibly chicken meatballs fortified with duck fat.

Bouillabaise

Bouillabaise is a dangerous dish. To be more precise, it's major food snob fodder. Like Pad Thai, lasagne Bolognese, gazpacho, and teriyaki, if you don't follow a strict traditional recipe and technique, purists will pooh-pooh the dish and accuse you of being a poser. The traditional bouillabaise of Marseille, according to the Michelin Guide, must be made with rascasse (a Mediterranean scorpionfish), fish caught that day, fine olive oil, and quality saffron. Others will tell you that three specific fish must be used and no more than seven.

In practice, bouillabaise was the Provençal version catch-of-the-day stew enjoyed by fishermen. These stews are found all round the Mediterranean. Bouillabaise, like most such stews, was originally made with lesser quality fish. The good stuff was their livelihood, so the fishermen used the bony, gelatinous they wouldn't be able to sell. Because rascasse, grondin (sea robin), and conger were common on local reefs, they were an ubiquitous set of components in the fishermen's stews of Marseille. Crabs, octopus, and various shellfish were often included. Saffron was a must as was aioli.

So here's what the real hardcore food snobs will tell you (yes, many of these points are in conflict):

- An authentic bouillabaise is impossible outside of Marseille because you have to have the three (and only three) authentic fish, and they have to be fresh. Anything else is just a fish stew.

- An authentic bouillabaise can include no sea creatures but lotte (monkfish), hake, turbot, sea bream, mussels, octopus, sea urchin, and crab.

- Bouillabaise does not contain lobster or shrimp.

- Bouillabaise can include tomatoes, leeks, celery, and potatoes.

- Bouillabaise must include fennel, garlic, onion, bay leaf, thyme, orange peel, saffron. Any other vegetables make it not a bouillabaise.

- The fish and shellfish for bouillabaise are served separately from the broth.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the broth is poured over the fish just before serving.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the fish is lightly grilled or pan seared and finished in the fumet.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the stock is heavier than a fumet and is made by straining the racks with a foodmill or bu crushing them in a chinois.

- Authentic bouillabaise is served with aioli and baguette.

- Authentic bouillabaise is served with toasted slices of baguette and rouille (aioli with saffron and cayenne).

So, here's what this food snob says: bouillabaise is a fruit de mer stew with saffron and vegetables that should be served with a crunchy baguette and aioli or rouille (both are good). In my experience, the very best bouillabaise is made with a variety of the freshest available fish. Lobster and squid in bouillabaise may not be traditional, but anyone who refuses a bouillabaise because it contains these is robbing himself of a divine dining experience.

I would also place one other limitation on the fish in a bouillabaise: no oily fish. As delicious as tuna, salmon, and Chilean sea bass may be, their fat overwhelms the the subtler flavors in the dish.

Everyone enjoyed this most recent bouillabaise I prepared, but I only found two types of suitable fish, and I returned them to the fumet too early. They disintegrated. Clams always take longer to open than I expect (more about that when I write about my pasta alla puttanesca). So, next time I'm doing bouillabaise, I'll alter a few of these aspects and throw in a lobster tail. Then I'll write about it.

The Secret Language of Fish, Part 8: Three Crusts

Synchronicity Goes Crunch

In the past few weeks, we've had three different varieties of crusted fish. I hadn't really planned a study in crusting fish. It just sort of happened. I only recognized the threesome as part of a pattern the day after the latest such preparation. Now that I've recognized the pattern, I can either continue experimenting with crusting one thing and another on various types of fish, or I can go back to looking for inspiration day-by-day.

Actually, that's only partly true. Although I am constantly on the lookout for a new preparation or a new take on an old preparation, I don't cook something new every day. Lately, we've been ordering out about five times each fortnight. Of the remaining nine, probably three are more or less original meals. On the other six nights, I fall back on frequent favorites: chicken piccata, Thai crab soup, chicken tacos, chicken or fish en escabeché, spicy pork tenderloin.

Generally, I'm not all that fond of crusted fish filets. Too often the crust hides the flavor or, if the crusting agent is a bit too absorbent, adds a layer of mush instead of something toothsome. Why then are so many crusts popular with so many varieties of fish? Essentially, any crust should provide at least two of three possible attributes: enhanced texture, enhanced flavor, and protection from direct heat. Admirable goals, but all too easy to screw up. A battered coating can provide too much insulation, resulting in overcooked crust and undercooked fish. Flavor enhancements all too often overwhelm the thing they're meant to enhance—doughy breadings making delicate fish taste like bread, spice rubs burning out every other flavor. Textural elements can also go too far. Crusts should add a delicate crunch not a layer of mud.

Curry-Crusted Tuna



The first such crust treatment I tried recently was a lightly dusted seared tuna. I've frequently coated tuna steaks with pepper, sesame seeds, or both. I had in mind something summer-heat-appropriate: a salad with spicy seared tuna. Over all, the salad wasn't a great success. The tomatoes I used, a fairly new orange variety of apricot-sized fruit called mandarines, turned out far less flavorful than I'd hoped. They were bland and not at all sweet. Girltzik said she liked them, but Princess V and I were underwhelmed.

The one element of the salad that I thought truly fine was the seared tuna. Girltzik didn't like it, which surprised me, but the adults enjoyed it. After patting the steaks dry, I coated them with a layer of curry powder and let them stand for half an hour before searing them. The curry powder seared nicely, forming a light but crunchy layer of spice.

Sadly, the mango-tamarind dressing I made for the salad was too thick and a bit starchy. I wanted something chutney-inspired to match with the curry, but I blew it. I'll try a variant on this salad again later this summer while Girltzik is off visiting her bio-dad. If I come up with one that works, I'll post the recipe.

Pecan-Crusted Orange Roughy

One obvious crusted fish example is breaded, fried whole fish or filets. This class of fish can be further divided into deep-fried and pan-fried. Deep fried fish without the breading would be pretty nasty. The outer flesh would be blistered and dried out, and the hot oil would invade the slippery spaces between the flakes. Of course, many varieties of fried fish are pretty nasty even with the breading. I've had fish and chips, for example, in which the fish was perfectly done, the breading light and crispy, and the oil content was surprisingly low. I've also had fish and chips where the filets could pass for biofuels: the breading soaked up the oil or the fish did or both.

When I was a youngster, whenever my father took us fishing, he always ended up cooking the fish the same way: battered, dipped in corn meal, and pan-fried. Trout, bass, bluegill, crappie, catfish all received the same treatment both at home and on camping trips. For years, I thought it was the only way you could cook freshwater fish, and I didn't much care for it. Fried cornmeal already has, I think, an inherently fishy aroma. I always picked off as much breading as I could to get to the sweet fish flesh underneath.

On the positive side, the cornmeal breading did protect the delicate flesh from the heat. More important, it kept the oil out of the fish, so picking off the breading meant I didn't have to taste oil. With either deep-frying or pan frying, the real trick is to cook the fish without creating an oil sponge.

These memories were very much on my mind when I decided to try pecan-crusted filets. I didn't want to reproduce the negative aspects of Dad's pan-fried trout. Pecan crust is almost as tricky as bread crumbs. You don't need a lot of oil in the pan (I found a tablespoon per orange roughy filet is sufficient), but it has to be hot enough to brown the crust before it can saturate the pecan meal. Pecan meal also, however, burns more readily than bread crumbs.

I considered serving the filets with a vinaigrette to cut any oil the pecan crust absorbed, but I wanted a sauce that would enhance the pecan flavor, which is delicate and easily overwhelmed. I decided on a lemon and caper beurre noisette. The beurre noisette made a beautiful bridge between the buttery sweetness of the orange roughy and the nuttiness of the pecan meal crust, and the capers and lemon juice added just enough sparkle.

I served the filets with a dense, crunchy baguette and a fennel kumquat salad dressed with olive oil and a drizzle of reduced balsamic I had left over from the last time I made Niçoise salad. Tart, sweet, and crunchy, the salad made a beautiful counterpoint to the buttery, nutty filets.



Pecan-Crusted Orange Roughy with Lemon Caper Beurre Noisette and Fennel Kumquat Salad

(serves three)

dramatis personae

fish
three orange roughy filets
one half-cup milk
juice of one small lemon
two eggs
one half-cup pecan meal
one teaspoon kosher salt
one half-teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
two tablespoons olive oil

beurre
one half-cup unsalted butter
juice of one small lemon
two tablespoons nonpareil capers

salad
one fennel bulb, cored and sliced thin
one tablespoon fennel fronds, chopped
one dozen kumquats
three ounces roasted ricotta ensalata, sliced thin
two tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
one teaspoon balsamic reduction
salt

balsamic reduction
one cup balsamic vinegar
one tablespoon light brown sugar

quality of ingredients

As with other white-flesh fish, the orange roughy filets should be firm, white, blemish-free. They should have relatively little aroma and no sour fishy smell.

See Purity of Essence for my notes on capers.

Fennel bulbs in the grocery store slowly develop brown translucent parts. The whiter and more opaque bulbs will be the freshest. Fresher bulbs are sweeter and stronger tasting.

You want kumquats ripe but not overripe. Kumquats don't ripen quite as uniformly as oranges. A perfectly ripe kumquat will be firm and mostly orange with a bit of yellow around the stem-end. An overripe kumquat will be completely orange (no yellow) and slightly soft.

If you can't find roasted ricotta ensalata, substitute fresh mozzarella.

One nice side effect of reducing balsamic vinegar with a little brown sugar is that it dramatically improves the flavor. Don't waste expensive, aged balsamic on a reduction. Use the cheap stuff.

preparation notes

In a small sauce pan over a low flame, mix the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and allow the liquid to reduce until it reaches a consistency like maple syrup. You should be able to finish the meal while the vinegar reduces.

Mix the milk and lemon juice and let it stand for five minutes to curdle. Whip the two eggs into the milk.

Mix the pecan meal with the salt and pepper in an oversized bowl.

Dip each filet in the milk-and-egg mix and allow the majority of the liquid to drip off. Dredge them in pecan meal.

In a non-stick sauté pan, heat one tablespoon olive oil over a medium flame. Once the oil begins to shimmer, gently place one filet in the hot oil. Allow the filet to cook undisturbed for two minutes. Using a fish-turner and one other spatula, gently turn the filet over and allow it to cook, undisturbed for two minutes.



Orange roughy filets are thicker toward the collar. The tail-end will be done after four minutes, but the collar end will nead another two minutes. I've seen cookbooks occasionally recommend cutting the thinnest part of the filet and folding it back towards the head, but I find that slipping the fish turner under the tail end of the fish for the last two minutes will allow the thick portion of the filet to cook without overcooking the thin portion.

In a stainless steel sauce pan over a low flame, melt one stick of butter and allow it to cook, stirring occasionally, until it takes on a light brown (hazelnut) color. Add in the lemon juice and capers and continue cooking the butter for one minute, stirring constantly. This is your beurre noisette.

Drizzle the filets with a bit of the beurre noisette to serve.

For the fennel kumquat salad, you only want the zests of the kumquats. The pith, juice, and seeds are bitter and tart. Halve each kumquat. Cut off the stem end and scoop out the pith, juice, and seeds with a melon baller.

Combine the sliced fennel, ricotta ensalata, and kumquats and toss them with extra-virgin olive oil. After plating, drizzle about a teaspoon of balsamic reduction over each serving.

Jerked Salmon

Tony Bourdain makes a good point about fusion dishes—sometimes they're just silly. The example he gives is a monkfish tagine, and the example is apt on several levels. Tagines are used to slow-braise meats, and monkfish—which will overcook if you just look at it crossly—would gain nothing in a slow braise. Besides, Moroccan cuisine doesn't include any monkfish recipes. In fact, aside from pork, I can't think of a less Morroccan ingredient than monkfish. There is something a little discordant—possibly pretentious—about applying a traditional technique to a non-traditional ingredient just for the sake of saying you've done it.

On the other hand, if applying a treatment to a non-traditional ingredient works, why argue with success? Pork tagine is a good example.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up some jerk-rubbed chicken breasts at Central Market. I thought jerked-chicken tacos with guacamole would be an interesting change from the jalapeño-lime marinated chicken I usually use in our tacos. The jerked chicken was good, but I kept thinking, This rub would be terrific on salmon. I also thought the idea of jerked salmon sounded kind of silly. I was surprised at the incredible number of jerked salmon recipes online. Then again, the internet hosts a pretty astonishing number of monkfish tagine recipes.

Ah well. For the Jamaican purists out there, yes, I know, you're supposed to jerk pork or goat, possibly chicken. Okay, and some people have started using jerk spice rubs on beef and fish. Yes, I know, salmon is geographically silly choice. Snapper, you could at least argue, is something you can actually expect to find in Jamaica.

It's not my fault. Jerk has become one of those broad cooking terms like curry, salsa, or mojo. The only consistent requirement from one jerk spice mix to the next is Scotch bonnet peppers and allspice. Typically, though, jerk is sweetened with sugar, honey, or molasses. Thyme and an alium or two usually slips in there, too—garlic, shallots, scallions, onion.

Sorry, but salmon flavor really blooms in a sweet and spicy treatment. Jerk spice and salmon—it was simply meant to be.


Jerked Salmon with Mango Ginger Barbecue Sauce

(serves three)

dramatis personae

salmon
three five ounce portions of salmon filet, scaled
two garlic cloves, pressed or finely minced
one Scotch bonnet or habeñero, seeded and finely minced
one tablespoon salt
two teaspoons allspice
one teaspoon cinnamon
one half teaspoon powdered cloves
one half teaspoon powdered coriander
one tablespoon dark brown sugar

barbecue sauce
one small mango, peeled and seeded
one half-cup tomato catsup
one tablespoon grated ginger
salt

quality of ingredients

Yep, sock-eye salmon again. See Flesh for Fantasy for my quality notes on salmon.

Ginger should not look shriveled and dry. Buy only roots that are plump with taut skins. Store ginger in an open sack in the crisper. If you close it in a plastic bag or similar container, it rots rapidly.

preparation notes

My jerk rub is almost a dry rub, but the garlic makes it more paste like. Coat the flesh side of each filet with the rub. Allow the salmon filets to stand for one half-hour before cooking.

Combine the ingredients for the barbecue sauce in a blend and purée it.

In a non-stick pan over a medium-high flame, heat one tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking. Place each filet portion, rubbed side down, in the hot oil and sear it for two minutes. Turn up the flame to high. Using a fish turner and spatula, carefully turn over the filets and cook the skin-side for one minute. Remove the filets from the pan and immediately slice each piece into one to one-and-a-half inch strips. Slicing the fish allow it to begin cooling so that it doesn't continue to cook.

Plate the strips and drizzle each with barbecue sauce.

The Problem of Evil

Without the Darkness How Can We Know the Light?

My Catholic friends call it The Problem of Evil, but it exists in many forms in many cultures. If [insert name of principal deity] is omnipotent and desires that we be good, why does [insert gender-appropriate pronoun] allow evil to exist? The answer they've come to accept is that [deity] wants us to grow and learn and ultimately do good as a result of reaching a state of grace. That answer kept the clergy happy until the Calvinists came along and muddied the waters by asserting that you're either born with grace or you aren't, but that's a tangent I'd rather avoid for the moment. The topic here is bad things—pain, evil, unpleasantness—and the way we respond to them.

My philosophy professor (one of them, anyway) called this issue the Pain Rationale. The Problem of Evil, he argued, is just a subset of the Pain Rationale. Every society deals with the Pain Rationale on a daily basis at every level of human endeavor. Essentially, the issue is pain, discomfort, evil, and anything else that most of us don't like. Why should we put up with bad things when we have the capability to overcome them? We can go back to the age of Stoics and Epicures and ask, with them, why should we put up with pain when pleasure is so much more—uh...pleasant?

On one extreme of this question is severe pain and oozing hideous evil. Severe pain has been on my mind a lot lately. For the past four months, I've been dealing with pain management issues because of disc injury. The disc compresses my sciatic nerve any time I sit upright, and the resulting pain can be excruciating. Combating this problem has entailed three epidural injections of corticosteroids, several thousand dollars worth of physical therapy, and a pharmacological journey through NSAIDs, anti-spasmodics, and opioids. I have Celebrex, Tylenol, and Tramadol coursing through my veins as I type, and their efforts still leave a bit to be desired.

If I could throw a switch and permanently turn off this pain, I would do it without a regret or even a second thought. Clearly, I've come down on the side of the Epicures with respect to this particular pain.

Clearly.

But, no, my goal is not to banish all pain. I enjoy exercising, and a good workout always creates a degree of pain. Oh, sure, a good personal trainer will tell you never to work yourself until it hurts, but the distinction between the discomfort you feel at the end of a productive workout and the pain you feel when you've overexerted yourself is one of degree, not one of type. It's all pain. One level of pain whispers, "Move carefully, stretch gently, and be nice to these muscles, or we'll make you sorry." The next level of pain screams at you, drowning out everything else.

Even if you're a couch potato, you need a certain amount of pain in your life. You need that ache in your shoulders and hips on Sunday afternoon that tells you to haul your lazy ass out of bed after you've slept for fifteen hours. You need those pangs in your belly that drive you to the refrigerator. You need that sharp prickling feeling on your fingertips telling you to let go of the handle of that hot cast iron skillet. Pain, in moderation and where appropriate, is a necessary element in our lives. Without it, we'd all eventually just lie down and starve to death.

Honestly, though, without hunger, eating wouldn't be as much fun. I'm not recommending fasting as an aperitif, but isn't a meal just that much more satisfying when you're really hungry? We "work up an appetite," and it makes a fine excuse for working harder. Anticipation, someone said, is the savor of the dish. In a way, all this working and waiting is really just one step removed from banging your head against a wall in anticipation of the relief of stopping. Okay, it's an easy topic to slip into hyperbole, but is there really any savor without the preceding hunger pangs? Can we enjoy life in the absence of pain? If there is no darkness, what good is the light?

Spice and Pain

Much of Eurasian philosophy has really led us astray on these questions of absolutes: good, evil, pain, pleasure. Some of our earlier philosophies—Skeptics, Gnostics, Zoroastrians, Manichees, the Medieval theory of humors—and much of surviving Chinese philosophy (Yin and Yang) point to a different set of goals than the absolute. Those philosophies suggest that the enlightened goal is always balance. Pleasure, says the philosophy of balance, is not the absence of pain—it's the proper balance between pain and relief. Note, that's proper balance and not fifty-fifty split. The most extreme examples I know of pleasure—sex and food—always contain an element of pain.

No, I am not saying whipping each other with razor wire and splashing around in a pool of vinegar will enhance your sexual pleasure (although, for a few it probably will), but sexual pleasure is born of friction, tension, restriction, collision, and a bit of hair-splitting between the realms of pain and relief. One man's teasing is another's torment. What hurts enough to fire your jets and what hurts enough for you to leap back and say, "Stop right there, Tex," depends on your own thresholds.

Pleasure from food also involves a degree of pain. Think of all the food items we consume that, in high concentrations, are just downright painful. Capsicums and piperines, ginger and galanga, onions and garlic, all create a burning sensation that can be disagreeable. In the cases of capsaicin and piperine, high enough concentrations can actually raise blisters in your mouth. Likewise, extremes of bitter, salty, and sour tastes (think quinine, sea salt, and white vinegar) can also reach a point of discomfort that at least encroaches on outright pain. These elements are spice. Without them, food falls to the level of sustenance. Without them, eating isn't fun.

Recent decades have seen a blossoming of fusion in cuisines that has done much to spread the word about the primacy of balance. The Thai standard of a balance between salty, sour, sweet, and hot has even inspired a number of titles for cooking tomes and classes. The broader sense of balance demonstrated in the best cuisines all round the world (Kyoto, Provençe, Spain, Sichuan, Yucatán, Piedmont, to name just a few), has begun to edge its way into the public consciousness, but it's been slow coming. The big secret, the big unspoken rule of thumb, is that foods succeed best when they present the right sense of balance in every aspect of a dish. Flavors have to be balanced between not four but six basic flavor elements: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, hot, and umami.

Quick digression here on umami. Every time I hear some Food Network or PBS commentator rediscovering umami, it makes me a little sad for the state of world scholarship. Dr. Kikunae Ikeda identified this taste element in 1908. Here we are discovering it a century later. Pish. Umami is often translated as savory, but I'm comfortable with giving its discoverer his due and using the name he gave it. For the three or four people in America who still don't know, umami is the richness of glutamines that comes through in MSG, clams, shiitake mushrooms, seared tuna, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. For those who will quibble that these things don't taste alike, I would point out that apples, sugar cane, mango, and chocolate cake are all foods strong in sweetness, and those don't taste alike, either.

Meanwhile, back on the topic of balance, I think most cooks understand the concept of balance in flavors. Many even grasp that balance has to be visual—dark against light, red against green. The place where many American cooks fall down, in my opinion, is in the area of textural balance. Oh, we know to balance the soft and the spongy with the crisp and the crunchy. We even understand the joy in the delicate pop of caviar eggs or tapioca berries. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way we've pretty much eliminated a broad range of food textures from our diet.

Over the years, diners in the US and Canada have decided, for reasons of habit or health, to eliminate a lot of textures that we find unpleasant in large portions. We don't like chewy meats, sinew, gristle, cartilage, fats, and the jiggle of natural gelatins, so we banish them from our plates. Other cultures revel in the texture of gelatins in marrow, fish skin, and organ meats. We call it icky, and lose some remarkable flavor elements in the name of removing icky bits from our dishes. I remember watching a cooking competition some time back in which the contestants had to produce an original dish at streamside using fresh-caught cutthroat trout. Every contestant—professional chefs all—fileted the damned fish. Every one. Not one of them thought to use the whole body and head of the trout. I wonder if they know how much their dishes were lacking as a result?

We treat gristle and cartilage with the same disrespect. One of the more popular forms of yakitori (grilled skewers) that I remember folks enjoying on the streets of Yokosuka, bonjiri (chicken butts), would never sell in the US—too little meat and too much fat and gristle, to say nothing of the negative connotations of That Part of the Body. Even the yakitori tebasaki (skewered chicken wings), which you frequently see the American GIs buying, are enjoyed differently by the different cultures. The Americans would gnaw off some of the skin, pick out the bits of white meat, and throw the rest of the wings away. When the locals finish theirs, they're throwing away nothing but bones and skewers. After stripping a wing of meat and skin, they splash on more sauce and gnaw the cartilage from the joints. "Maybe they're just hungrier than we are," a sailor friend commented. "They do eat smaller meals, you know."

Maybe. Or perhaps some of us have lost the ability to enjoy some textures because it was easier to eliminate them. If the gristle is difficult to chew, strip it from the meat. We're not so poor that we have to try to ingest every conceivably digestible bit of the animal. I'm as guilty of this as the next American. More, in some cases. I don't often enjoy gnawing food from bones even though I know some of the most flavorful meat is butted up against the ribs. I admit, there is something very satisfying about stripping all the edible matter from a spare rib—stripping it down to the calcium—but I don't do it often.

I guess I need to work on that.

Arroz con Pollo

I could probably discuss this dish in two tiers—arroz con pollo classico and the flavorless crap that passes for arroz con pollo in most places nowadays. Arroz con pollo, a Spanish dish, probably started as a simple method for stretching a single chicken to feed a large family: cut up the chicken, brown the pieces, remove the chicken, bloom the flavors of a sofrito (a sauce base of tomatoes, onions, and garlic) in the schmaltz (melted chicken fat), pour in some rice, pour in some stock and wine, sprinkle with spices, put the chicken back in, and simmer the whole until the rice absorbs most of the liquid.

Sounds simple enough, but arroz con pollo does offer a few little challenges. First, in the Good Ol' Days, the chicken was likely browned in either collected schmaltz or in lard—not exactly healthy choices. Schmaltz, I would argue, is okay in small doses. Better to start with a small quantity of a healthier oil like olive, grapeseed, or canola. Okay, I have to admit, I'd rather eat plastic wrap than cook in canola oil, but many cooks swear that it's flavorless. If you think so, go ahead and use it.

Second, the outline I gave for a basic arroz con pollo is also an outline for a lot of problems. White meat and dark meat, for instance, don't cook at the same rate. If you leave the whole chicken in the pot long enough to cook the thighs through, the breasts will be dried out. Likewise, the long-standing Spanish tradition of cooking a sofrito as a single element results in flavorless tomatoes and harsh burnt garlic.

Third, many cooks have discovered that the chicken pieces can be a problem. Who wants to pick a chicken breast out of hot rice and gnaw it off the bones? Too messy by far. Add to that the current health concern that tells Americans to avoid the dark meat to eliminate cholesterol and saturated fat from their diet. Replacing a whole chicken with boneless, skinless chicken breast meat is a huge mistake, robbing the rice of flavor and leaving only dry fibrous meat. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of chicken thigh meat, but breast meat dries out easily and doesn't give up anything in the way of flavor to the surrounding rice. Arroz con pollo made with no chicken but skinless boneless breast meat will make for a dry and flavorless dish.

So, I may not like thigh meat or drumsticks, and I may not like chicken fat or bones, but I need both if I'm going to make a moist, flavorful arroz con pollo.

(serves six)

dramatis personae

one heavy dutch oven

one can whole tomatoes
one tablespoons olive oil
four chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on)
two boneless chicken breast halves
salt and black pepper
one large white onion, diced
four medium garlic cloves
three Serrano chilis, minced
one and one half-cup Arborio rice
one half-cup dry white wine
two cups chicken stock
one healthy pinch of saffron threads, crushed
one quarter teaspoon cumin
one quarter-cup cilantro leaves, chopped

one large ripe avocado, sliced
one cup shredded Monterey Jack
lime wedges

quality of ingredients

A good, stout dutch oven is crucial for this dish, preferably enameled.

One three pound whole chicken can substitute for the pieces I've outlined. In any case, the chicken should not be too fatty. Remove any large clumps of fat under the skin before you begin browning the chicken.

See my comments on the quality of garlic in the Bang/Wow entry.

Jalapeño peppers can take the place of the Serranos, but the dish will have less heat. If you want more heat, cayenne or Thai bird peppers will work.

Most recipes I see for arroz con pollo call for long-grain rice. Frankly, I can't see why. Paella, a similar dish in some respects, is traditionally made with Spanish short-grain rice. I have found that Arborio produces a richer, creamier dish than any other I've tried. The results won't be quite risotto-creamy, but it will take up more stock than long-grain rice.

Saffron threads should be red or dark orange. It's not unusual to find a few yellow threads (say, one in ten), but don't buy saffron with too many pale threads. I really hate that so many spice companies package the threads in opaque containers. Don't buy it if you can't see it.

preparation notes

Open the can of tomatoes and remove and discard the tough core from each of the tomatoes. Tear each tomato in half and set them aside in a bowl. Reserve one half cup of the canning liquid.

Over a medium high flame, heat two tablespoons olive oil to smoking. Place the thighs and breasts in the bottom of the pan, skin-side down. Let the chicken pieces brown, undisturbed, for six minutes. Turn down the flame as necessary to prevent burning. Turn over the chicken pieces and brown the opposite side for an additional six minutes. Remove the chicken pieces from the pot.

Remove any excess oil (anything more than two tablespoons). Stir in the chopped onion and a pinch of salt. With a wooden spoon, stir the onions constantly as they sweat. The liquor from the onions will help lift the fond left by the chicken. Scrape as necessary to loosen up all of the fond.

Once the onions are softened and translucent (three to five minutes), stir in the garlic, chilis, and spices. Continue stirring for about thirty seconds to allow the flavors of the garlic and chilis to bloom.

Stir in the rice. Stir the rice continuously for one minute to thoroughly coat the rice with oil. The outer portion of the kernels will all appear translucent.

Stir in the tomatoes, stock, wine, and reserved tomato liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil. Place the thighs on top of the rice mixture, reduce heat a simmer. Cover the pot and simmer the dish for fifteen minutes. While the rice is simmering, chop the chicken breasts into bite-sized morsels.

Remove the thighs from the rice. Stir in the breast pieces. Remove the meat from the thigh bones and return the thigh meat to the pot. Cover and simmer the rice for ten minutes or until the rice is done.

Turn off the flame and stir in the cilantro. Recover the pot and let the rice stand for five minutes.

Serve the rice with lime slices, avocado slices, and grated cheese.

Comfort Angles

Comfort Zone Food

I've never really seen the attraction of backyard grilling. Oh, grilling has charms I understand, but I prefer cooking indoors. I keep all my cooking equipment and supplies—to say nothing of the food—in the kitchen. Grilling outdoors involves carting all that stuff outside and setting up a makeshift alternate kitchen. I've known dedicated backyard grillers who actually do have a second kitchen out by the grill: tables, cutting boards, knife blocks, even a second refrigerator. Great, but they still have to contend with the vagaries of weather, and dinner time for us coincides a bit too precisely with dinner time for the mosquitoes.

Generally, I'd rather stay inside and cook.

My ex-wife didn't see it that way. As far as she was concerned, if the weather allowed, I should be cooking over charcoal. Occasionally, I managed to talk my way out of grilling on the patio; usually, I did not. She had a tendency to read any disagreement as a deliberate assault, and I didn't want her to think I was refusing to grill her dinner just to spite her. What can I say? I'm an appeaser.

I remember one such appeasement twenty-one years ago. My daughter, then seven, was still living with us. My ex's son, then just turned eight, had come to visit. Miss Charcoal wanted rib-eye and so did her eldest (my ex's eleven-year-old daughter was also living with us at the time), the younger two wanted hot dogs. The eight-year-old initially said he wanted a hamburger, but when he learned that I would be grilling it and not picking one up from Burger King, he changed his mind.

Now, naturally, since hot dogs are composed of pre-cooked meat and similar substances, they finish up on the grill in a matter of seconds. I started the steaks, turned them when the texture was right and then went in to get the hot dogs. The two little ones—arguing amongst themselves under the swing set—saw me go inside, return with a small plate of wieners, and lay them out on the grill. Immediately, I was besieged by two screeching little harpies yelling that I was ruining their hot dogs and that I was Doing It Wrong and that they were not going to eat anything coming off the grill.

"Whoa. Slow down. What the hell are you two talking about?"

"You'll burn 'em," said the boy. "I'm not eating any burnt stuff."

"You're supposed to put it in the microwave," said the girl.

I shrugged them both off. "Nonsense. They won't be burnt, and they'll taste better this way. Coming out of the microwave they taste like plastic." I opened the lid of the grill and retrieved the slightly browned wieners with my tongs, holding up the last one. "See? No black stuff."

The boy pointed to a blistered patch on the side of the wiener, "What about that?"

"What about it? It isn't black."

"It's nasty," said the girl. "I'm not going to eat that."

Both of the little darlings continued to protest. My daughter not only refused to eat the grilled dogs, she wouldn't touch or even look at the grilled dogs. Eventually, I convinced the boy to taste at least a bite. Technically, I don't think I can say he actually tasted it. Pouting, he prepared a hot dog (on a bun with catsup, mustard, and relish) and then bit into the very last quarter-inch of the wiener. Before his teeth could even pass beyond the outer skin, he threw the thing to the ground, spitting and wiping his mouth even before his little hot dog bomb exploded against the concrete, sending condiment shrapnel every which way (but mostly all over my pants).

"It's yucky."

I promptly went inside to inform his mother (1) that the steaks would be finished in the short time it would take for me to change clothes, and (2) that her son was about to die a horrible screaming death.

Everything eventually worked out peacefully. The boy's mother put him to work cleaning up his hot dog strafe (at which, being eight, he did a thoroughly half-assed job), and I microwaved a couple of wieners for the kids.

The kids are adults now, and both excuse the whole incident with, "pssh, I was a little kid." Many others have offered the same explanation over the years. "They were little kids." So, kids don't have a palate? I'm pretty sure I would eat just about anything when I was eight. Not that I would have wanted the hot dog either, mind. I'd have wanted a steak. No, I don't believe their taste buds were unformed at that age.

I think, at the time, the problem was that both kids ate hot dogs—a lot of hot dogs—toxic levels of nitrates worth of hot dogs. The little monkeys had unassailable expectations. The boy was just visiting. He lived with his father, who didn't do much cooking. Microwaved hot dogs were a staple in his diet. My daughter, who was raised primarily by my mother (long, weird story), was the most finicky eater I have ever known. Hot dogs and pizza cheese constituted 99% of her protein intake. What I didn't understand when I put those wieners on that grill was that, for both of the kids, the microwaved wiener was for them a key element of a comfort food item. For each of those kids, the term hot dog meant specifically a white-bread hot dog bun, a microwaved wiener, catsup, and yellow mustard. The boy also wanted relish. Both kids, I would later learn, were equally put off by any and all substitutions: no wheat rolls, no barbecue sauce, no Dijon mustard. I think they would have balked if the buns weren't stale enough.

One difficult aspect of cooking for anyone is that you are dealing with likes and dislikes, and while most folks can tell you exactly what they do and do not like about any given movie, song, or politician, they're more often than not clueless as to why they dislike most foods. Ask why they don't like a dish, and if the response is anything but a sour face and a bleah, the answer most will give is "I just don't."

One overriding prejudice in this regard is the comfort food category. As exemplified by my kids and their microwaved dogs and acidy yellow mustard, most comfort food prejudices are more matter of familiarity than of taste. Take the simple example of macaroni-and-cheese. Yes, a gruyere-basil-cream sauce on fettuccine would probably taste much better than elbow macaroni in pasteurized processed cheese food product thinned with milk, but to someone who grew up with mac-and-cheese as a staple Sunday lunch item (or, in the South, a staple holiday meal item), the latter is likely to look more appealing under certain circumstances. Yes, crazy as it may sound to a dedicated foodie, some folks in some applications will actually choose thick, dry pasta with imitation cheese rather than fresh-rolled pasta with a fine aged Swiss cheese. Sad, but such is the power of memory.

Usually, comfort food is not the kind of dish you want when you're celebrating a promotion, a holiday, or a birth. Comfort food is what you want when you don't get the promotion you were sure was yours. Comfort food is what you're likely to crave when you're dumped, when you hear that an old friend has a terminal illness, or when a Republican is elected President of the United States. The purpose of comfort food is nostalgia—to put you in a better mental place by transporting you back to a time when you were at peace.

The nostalgia effect is both good news and bad news for the cook. It's good news because, once you know how to make a comfort food dish, it won't require any special effort to recreate, and your diners will be joyous and grateful. It's bad news because, if you don't know the right recipe, you might have a hell of a hard time working it out. You may never work it out. For some diners, comfort food has to be note perfect, or they just won't eat it. I went through this kind of trial several years ago, trying to make mashed potatoes for a friend the way her mother made it. We finally got it right after a dozen tries but only when I figured out that what she had assumed was nutmeg had actually been mace. Lucky guess.

Even more exasperating, the nostalgia-effect of comfort food acts as a restraint. Some folks are willing to accept minor changes, enhancements, but most are not. Even if your diners are willing to accept changes to their pasta sauces, for example, they will usually have limits to how much change they're willing to tolerate. Fresh onions are a must, and they have to be caramelized, or onions are utterly taboo. Garlic, sliced cellophane-thin and sautéed in extra virgin olive oil, or garlic roasted and mashed, or garlic powder. Peppers are mandatory or verboten. The sauce must be savory unless Grandmama always added a half-cup of sugar. Tomatoes must be roasted, stewed, a particular brand of canned purée, or fortified with sun-dried. Yes, good luck finding those limits.

Classics and Comfort

Once upon a time, you only heard the term comfort food applied to starchy low-brow dishes: spaghetti with meatballs, meatloaf, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, mashed potatoes, macaroni-and-cheese, chicken-fried steak. The term can, however, be more broadly applied to any dish that any family was likely to serve frequently. Couple that attitude with a more international view of food, and you can come up with a vast array of dishes. Everything from paella and bulgoki to steak frites and Welsh rarebit. In my home it's chicken tacos, Thai crab soup, chicken piccata, and arroz con pollo. For Princess V and Girtzik, it's pastina in chicken broth.

Chicken piccata (originally veal piccata until veal was deemed Evil in much of the US) is a classic preparation: delicate breaded cutlets, lemony sauce with artichoke hearts, capers, and a light pasta. I can taste it just at the mention of the name. If you haven't seen a piccata in a while, keep your eyes open. The recent trend toward capturing comfort foods in haute cuisine (haven't noticed? really? how many high-end restaurants do you know that now serve grits, mashed potatoes, or both?) has also begun to turn to classic preparations of yesteryear: chicken à la king, turkey tetrazzini, steak au poivre, pot roast, even meatloaf are making a comeback. I know this because I not only see them showing up on fancy new restaurants but also because I keep seeing references to them on cooking programs and cooking competition programs.

In recent weeks, I've seen four such references to steak au poivre and the American derivative, pepper-crusted steak. After the most recent one, I decided it had been too long since I last prepared a steak au poivre. That coupled with Girltzik's recent plea for bison convinced me to give it a shot.

Steak au poivre relies on peppercorns and butter to enhance the beefiness of strip loin steak. Bison already tastes like intensified beef. Bison steak au poivre seemed like a no-brainer: beef squared. Just to be certain, though, I decided to pair the bison with scallops. The traditional surf-and-turf, I know, is filet and lobster. I love lobster, but I think scallops are a better pairing.

It was the best meal I've had in weeks.

Bison Steak au Poivre with Pan Roasted Thai Red Curry Potatoes and Seared Scallop Disks on Braised Leeks Dijonnaise

(serves three)

steak
one pound bison strip loin (1.5" thick)
three tablespoons cracked black pepper
six tablespoons butter (four tablespoons cut into half-inch cubes)
kosher salt
one tablespoon peanut oil
one shallot, minced
one cup Amontillado sherry

potatoes
one half-pound red potatoes
salt
one tablespoon peanut oil
juice of one lime
one teaspoon Thai red curry paste

leeks
one cup julienned leeks
one cup chicken stock
one half-cup white wine
one tablespoon Dijon mustard
one quarter cup chopped garlic greens
salt

seared scallops
three U-10 scallops halved (in disks)
one tablespoon olive oil
kosher salt

quality of ingredients

Bison is lower in fat than beef, and that's fortunate because bison fat is funky. It's not as foul-smelling as lamb fat, but it definitely does not have the inherent sweetness of beef tallow. The meat is darker than beef—almost purple. Don't worry about marbling. You won't find much. Even in beef, strip loin (New York strip) is a pretty lean cut. If you can't find bison, find a good New York strip.

This recipe demands freshly cracked black pepper. Accept no substitutes. The magically sweet, chocolaty flavor of seared pepper and steak depends on a two step process. The first step, heating the cracked peppercorns in butter and then allowing them to cool, converts much of the piperine (the source of heat) into piperdine, an amine with a similar structure to the principal flavor agents in chocolate. The second phase, searing, releases those amines and some other volatiles. So, you want as high a concentration of piperine as possible. White pepper contains less piperine than black, and pre-cracked pepper gradually loses both volatiles and piperine. In short, buy whole black peppercorns and crack your own.

Real butter, unsalted. Nothing else will work.

Shallots are a traditional ingredient in the pan sauce for a steak au poivre. Some will tell you that a bit of onion and garlic can act as a substitute, but they really don't taste the same. Shallots are decidedly sweeter and have a faint but distinct something different (a molasses note?).

I used Amontillado, but cognac, brandy, or dry vermouth also yield excellent pan sauces.

For the pan-roasted potatoes, small Yukon golds or gold fingerlings are also good. I tried purple Peruvians this way once. Bleah.

I've gotten lazy about Thai curry pastes. I used to make my own, but Thai Kitchen makes excellent green and red pastes, so I just keep a jar of each on hand.

As I've said before, always select leeks with the largest possible white portions—at least three inches.

Every Dijon mustard I've tried tastes quite a bit different from every other. My favorite is Grey Poupon, which has a richness lacking in most.

Scallops for searing should be intact and not marinating in their own juices. If they're labelled previously frozen, an hour before cooking, cover both sides of the scallops with a layer of kosher salt and allow the liquor to leach out. Every fifteen minutes, pat the scallops dry and replace any salt that wipes off.

I love extra-virgin olive oil, and I frequently pooh-pooh so-called experts who say not to cook with it because the rich olive flavor is lost or overwhelms whatever it's cooking. I prefer extra-virgin for some applications (eggs, for example). For searing scallops, however, extra-virgin olive has far too low a smoke point for searing anything. Use a good olive oil.

preparation notes

Roughly crack the peppercorns with a heavy skillet or rolling pin. Be aware that doing this on a wooden cutting board or with a wooden rolling pin, will result in dimples on the wood. Over a medium flame, heat two tablespoons of butter to foaming. Add in the cracked peppercorns, turn down the flame to low, and simmer the pepper in the butter for five minutes. Do not let the butter brown. Remove the pan of peppercorns to a trivet to cool for five minutes. Push the peppercorns together in a single layer.

Trim the bison strip and cut it into thirds. Press the three pieces down onto the peppercorns. Place a plate atop the steaks and press them down onto the peppercorns, and leave them to soak up the butter for at least thirty minutes.

Blanch the potatoes for eight minutes in boiling salted water. Strain out the liquid and spray the potatoes down with cold water to halt the cooking. Let them rest in the strainer or colander for five minutes to dry. In a sauté pan, heat the peanut oil to smoking and add in the potatoes. Turn all of the potato quarters so that a flat side is down, and allow them to fry, unmolested, until brown (three to five minutes). Tip each quarter so that the other flat side is down and fry the potatoes until that side is also brown. Combine the curry paste and lime juice and stir it to break up the paste. Pour the curry and lime mix into the potatoes and sauté them vigorously to coat the potatoes uniformly. Be warned, the steam coming off of the potatoes during this last phase plays hell with your sinuses (although the girls in the next room frequently remark on how delightful they think the aroma at a safe distance). Remove the potatoes to a serving bowl and tent them with foil to keep them warm.

Preheat the oven to 275F.

Bring the chicken stock, white wine, and Dijon mustard to a boil. Add the leeks to the boiling liquid and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer the leeks for ten minutes. Turn off the flame and add the garlic greens and salt if necessary. Allow the vegetables to stand for ten minutes in the braising liquid. Pour off the liquid or pluck the vegetables from the liquid with chopsticks and move them to a serving bowl.

Once the steaks have rested on the cracked peppercorns for at least a half-hour, give them one last firm press and then gently lift them so that the peppercorns remain affixed to one side. Place them on a drying rack atop a cookie sheet, pepper-side up and bake them for ten minutes at 175F. Remove the steaks from the oven and, with a quick-read thermometer, verify that the steaks are at least 98F. In a stainless steel sauté pan over a medium-high flame, heat one tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking, and place all three steaks peppercorn-side down in the hot oil. Let the steaks cook for two minutes (no matter how tempting it may be to turn them early). Using tongs (a spatula will knock off the peppercorns), carefully turn each steak over (peppercorn-side up) and cook them, unmolested, for a minute and a half. If you have a high-power burner (12,000 BTU or better), turn down the flame as necessary to keep the oil from burning. You want brown-residue from the steaks but not ash. Turn the steak and allow each of the remaining four sides to cook for 30 seconds each. For irregular sides, hold the steaks in place with the tongs. Remove the steaks to a cooling rack and tent them with foil. Allow the steaks to rest at least ten minutes.

Reduce the flame to low medium and add in the minced shallots. Stir the shallots constantly for at least a minute while they sweat. The liquid from the shallots should at least begin to deglaze the pan. Pour in the sherry and let it cook down until the pan sauce is reduced to about two tablespoons. Turn off the flame and whisk in the four tablespoons of cubed butter to mount the pan sauce. If the pan sauce is mounted before the steaks are done resting, pour the sauce into a cool container (measuring cup or gravy boat) to prevent its breaking.

In a non-stick sauté pan, over a medium-high flame bring a tablespoon of olive oil to the smoke point. If your scallops are previously-frozen and you've been salting them to eliminate moisture, wipe off any remaining salt. Place the scallop disks in the hot oil and allow them to cook, unmolested, for two minutes. Once the scallops have developed a nice crust, flip them and sear the other side.

After at least ten minutes of resting, slice the steaks very thin and plate them. Plate the leeks and potatoes. Plate the scallops atop the leeks. Drizzle a spoonful of pan sauce over each set of steak slices.

Wednesday Night Tragedy

Down in Flames

Dinner Wednesday night was not a success.

After wowing the girls and Girltzik's guest over the weekend with a redux of my Sriracha shrimp on fried noodles, accompanied this time by braised leeks and Chinese long-bean, I crashed and burned at midweek. Dinner looked good on paper—seafood sausage and fettuccine with tarragon-almond pesto. What's not to love about choice seafood, fresh herbs, and pasta? Sadly, no ingredient is foolproof. Princess V soldiered through, but clearly did not enjoy the meal. Girltzik managed a couple bites of the seafood and one of the fettuccine. Looking up from her plate with big puppy-dog eyes, she asks, "Can we have buffalo again?" Girltzik's dinner fed the dispose-all.

Seafood sausage still sounds like a good idea, but I have to face it: I blew it. I screwed up. I can think of soooooooooo many ways in which I screwed up Wednesday's dinner that it's hard to pick a starting point.

I should have dried the scallops more thoroughly.
I should have beat the egg whites before adding them to the seafood.
Since I was making the sausage without casings, I should have steamed it instead of poaching.
I should have used more seasoning.
I should have sauced the sausage.
I should, knowing the girls' distaste for minty things, have used less tarragon.
I should have ground the almonds a bit finer.

I have a pretty good palate. More to the point, I have confidence in my palate and in my ability to combine flavors, textures, food elements. That confidence allows me to create some pretty spectacular meals. That same confidence also allows me, now and then, to royally screw up. My hamartia. And so it came to pass, from previous heights of Sriracha shrimp and crispy fried noodles, the sin of hubris threw me down, casting me to the wretched depths of bland sausage and overstrong pesto. O, the catharsis of the learning experience.

Aristotelian hyperbole aside, when you experiment with foods, you're bound to have a few misses. Especially when I'm trying something I haven't done in several years.* All in all, we've been pretty lucky. I think this is only my second big miss this year. So far.

Next time will be better. After a suitable mourning period (or at least after the girls have managed to rinse the bad taste from their memories) I'll try it again. My next seafood sausage will contain a bit of chili and wasabi, will include a second type of fish, will include lobster or crab, will be steamed, will be accompanied with a lemony sauce.

It will be glorious.


* - Technically, I've never made a true seafood sausage. Last night's "sausage" was actually more like a terrine, which I have made in the distant past. For last night's disaster, I used no sausage casings, wrapped the mix in cling wrap to hold it together during cooking, incorporated egg whites to firm it up, and sliced the things for serving.

Out of the Ashes

Clearly I will not be sharing details of the seafood sausage dinner. Here's the recipe and directions for a meal you won't enjoy, seems more than a little silly. When I get the sausage right, I'll write the success story. For now, I guess I need to reach back a few weeks and bring forward an earlier success.

I don't think any fish preparation is really foolproof, but fish filets baked en papillote comes pretty close. As long as you include the right aromatics and don't overcook the fish, filets baked en papillote make for a great presentation and a terrific meal. Wrapping single-serving-sized filets individually allows each diner to open her own, each packet releasing a cloud of steam laced with the aromas of the fish and other flavor elements.

Typically, I like to include one or two stout herbs (thyme, basil, dill, curry leaves) an allium (sautéed shallot or leeks or roasted garlic) and an intense fungus or two (truffle, black trumpet mushroom, morel, Portobello, porcini). Cooking en papillote infuses the fish with all the flavors of the aromatics. As fancy as it looks, the whole process is really pretty simple. It also helps that parchment paper has recently become more readily available at many supermarkets and independent grocery stores.

Salmon with Portobello Mushrooms en Papillote

(serves three)

dramatis personae

two medium Portobello mushroom caps, sliced (quarter-inch slices)
one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
one shallot, thinly sliced
one teaspoon fresh thyme
one half-cup dry vermouth
salt
black pepper
one dozen large basil leaves
three five ounce salmon filets, scaled

quality of ingredients

Portobello mushrooms were all the rage in the late 80s. Eventually, though, they fell out of favor. The problem is the gills. Most of the intense meaty mushroom flavor of the Portobellos resides in the spores and gills. Unfortunately, when the mushrooms cook, their gills release dusty black spores. This imparts some marvelous flavor but also looks very much like dirt. Many cooks try to correct this situation by removing the gills, but of course, that also removes a good deal of flavor.

Baking en papillote works remarkably well with Portobello mushrooms because it transfers flavor from the mushrooms to the fish without mixing them into a sauce.

Portobellos should be firm, and the caps should be intact.

I love shallots, but they do piss me off. From a gardening perspective, shallots are just another allium. They don't even require mounding, like leeks and scallions. Somehow, though, they command a higher price by weight than any other onion. Locally, they're running four dollars a pound.

Salmon again. I do seem to be cooking a lot of salmon, lately. Here again, my first choice is sockeye. See my quality notes on salmon from Flesh for Fantasy.

preparation notes

Preheat the oven to 400F.

In a dry non-stick sauté pan over a medium high flame, arrange the Portobello mushroom slices in a single layer and salt them lightly. Sweat the mushroom slices without turning until droplets of mushroom liquor appear on all of the slices (about three minutes). Turn the mushroom slices over and brown the other side for an additional three minutes. Remove the mushroom slices from the pan.

Without deglazing the pan or turning down the flame, add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into the pan. When the oil begins to shimmer, add in the shallots and a pinch of salt, and sauté them until translucent. Add black pepper, thyme, and the vermouth and simmer the shallots until the liquid is reduced to about two tablespoons.

For each filet, on a work surface, lay out a 15" by 15" sheet of parchment paper. About three inches from the near side of the sheet and centered, place three basil leaves, parallel to one another and overlapping a bit. Place a filet, skin-side down atop the basil leaves. Arrange one third of the mushroom slices atop the filet and spoon one third of the shallots atop the mushrooms. Place a fourth basil leave atop the shallots.

Add a pinch of salt to one egg white and beat the white with a fork to liquefy it.

Paint the outer inch of the parchment with egg white. Fold the far edge of the parchment over the filet to the near edge. Fold in all three edges toward the filet. Seal off the last fold on each side with egg white.


Arrange the filet packets on a cooking sheet in the center of a 400F oven. Bake the filets for seven minutes.

With a pair of scissors, snip open a corner of each packet and let the diners tear it open at the table.

Bang/Wow

What You See

When I was a kid, the standard presentation for damn near anything in an American restaurant was The Implied Y: one third of the plate held the protein, one third held a vegetable side, and the last third held the starch. Appetizers, soup, salad, and bread were typically served separately. A lot of restaurants today still serve meals in that same dull presentation. It's simple, logical, and recognizable. Mostly, it's the simplicity that makes the Y so prevalent. How hard is it to slap down a slab of protein and blop on two scoops of stuff?

These days, the better restaurants all understand the importance of presentation. Plating can mean simple physical arrangement: centering, layering, stacking, positioning. Do the principal elements form a geometric shape, suggest a shape, imitate a flower? Sauces and pestos can be drizzled, painted, streaked, dusted with spices or herbs. The shape, size, and color of plates and use of white space also receive consideration. Balance of color may not be as important as balance of flavors, but it does affect our expectations. It might sound silly—far-fetched, even—but how often do you walk away from a meal thinking, "That looked great, but it tasted like crap"? Oh, sure, it happens now and again, but the converse is far more likely. Haute cuisine, as a business, thrives on the truism that we feast with our eyes first.

Yet, astonishingly, I often hear home cooks apologizing for even the most meager of efforts at presentation. "I'm not really into garnishes, but...." "I know it's silly, but I thought maybe just this once...." Afraid of appearing pretentious? Hell, if you make a habit of clever presentation, you're not pretending—you're practicing. Besides, if someone puts in a little extra effort to make your meal look more appealing, which of these goes through your head:

A - "Wow! All that trouble for me?"

or

B - "Wow! What a pretentious wiener."

If you chose B, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you're a self-centered prick.

If you put in a little extra effort to make your meals looks special, you're just extending the effort you put in to make the food taste special. At worst, you're trying to better your audience's meals. At best, you're an artist.

Afraid of being viewed as an artist? Tsk. If you want people to enjoy your meals, you want to be an artist. A good cook is an artist*. If you don't want to be an artist, let someone else do the cooking.

Sure, family-style offerings—with every component of the meal offered in its own big bowl with its own big spoon—allow your diners to control their portions. So, yes, plating for individuals does take away a wee bit of control. I have to argue that control is less important than appearance, though. Otherwise, the only successful restaurants would be those that serve family-style, and family-style restaurants are decidedly in the minority. Besides, even family-style service can incorporate bang/wow presentations. I prefer family-style presentations for some meals (pasta, for example, or arroz con pollo).

Seriously, though, what's so bad about hearing friends and family ooh and ah over the appearance of dinner? Sure, the first time or two might throw folks. You're likely to hear a "What's the special occasion?" or two. Why should that be intimidating? Don't assume they're insulted. Answer honestly: the special occasion is dinner. If they press the issue, say that you were trying to impress them, that dinner is an occasion, that a meal at home should be able to compete with a restaurant meal. Above all, they're your family and friends; tell them they deserve bang/wow meals.

Of course, there is one danger in fancy meal presentations for friends and family.

They might come to expect it.


* Concerning artists and cooking: Princess V enjoys baking, studies baking, teaches baking, and receives much praise for her baking, but generally she doesn't care for cooking. She'll tell you that cooking is an art and baking is a science, and in many ways I agree. Cooking requires a lot of control based on judgment, perception, and intuition. Baking requires a lot of control based on trial and error resulting in precise quantities, temperatures, and timing. In the end, though, it's the baker adding finishing touches with a piping bag.

What You Get

Girltzik was eating dinner with her boyfriend's family, so I saw an opportunity to try out a new seared-scallop recipe (Girltzik doesn't care for scallops). I'd seen some beautiful diver scallops at our local grocery store recently. Unfortunately, someone else had also seen them. They had only a few scruffy looking scallop remnants. They also, however, had just unpacked a shipment of big, beautiful, fresh gulf shrimp.

I had been thinking about bacon-wrapped shrimp, a popular item on a lot of restaurant menus and—all too frequently—a huge disappointment. Bacon-wrapped shrimp is usually prepared under a broiler or on a grill. As a result, the bacon is usually burnt, and the shrimp are usually rubbery. Baking doesn't work too well, either. Bacon's high fat content virtually ensures that either the bacon will be rubbery or the shrimp will be over-cooked or both.

I decided to use prosciutto instead. Since I was already going to be wrapping the shrimp, stuffing them seemed an obvious addition.

Prosciutto, shrimp, and crab suggested a range of sauces, but I got the idea of a spicy pasta sauce stuck in my mind. I could taste it before I'd finished purchasing the ingredients. Even though I wanted to use rice, I chose a sauce traditionally served over penne or ziti as Penne all'Arrabbiata. I love that name: Angry Penne. Far more graphic than spicy penne.

Snow-Crab-Stuffed Shrimp with Arrabbiata Sauce

(serves two)

dramatis personae

shrimp
eight large (12-15/pound) shrimp
one snow crab cluster
one-quarter pound prosciutto

sauce
three unpeeled garlic cloves
two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
one 14 ounce can diced tomatoes
one 10 ounce can tomato purée
two dried chili arbol, seeded and crushed
two tablespoons fine chiffonade of basil

long grain rice or pasta

quality of ingredients

This recipe demands large, plump, firm shrimp, and they have to be fresh. Stale shrimp will be too mushy. Most fish mongers won't let you handle their shrimp, so insist on only shrimp tails with solid shells and intact legs and tail-fins. Don't let them just randomly scoop up a questionable handful of crustaceans. As a shrimp tail ages (weird thinking of a dead thing aging), the legs and tail disintegrate, the shells dissolve, and the flesh discolors and becomes opaque and mushy. More to the point, when you cook a stale shrimp tail, it comes out mushy, bitter, and limp.

See Keeping Cool—the crab course for my notes on crab quality.

Like most American cooks, when I say prosciutto, I mean prosciutto di Parma or a similar dry-cured ham like jamón serrano. Be careful: some prosciuttos are waaaaaay too salty (this is true of a lot of the pre-sliced, pre-packed prosciuttos). Ask the folks at the deli counter to slice your prosciutto as thin as possible. The slices should be thin enough to read through.

Garlic comes in many varieties, but most American grocery stores provide just one or two. The most commonly available garlic is a softneck variety called silverskin, and the next most common is a hardneck variety called purple stripe. For most cooking applications, silverskin is fine; it mellows and sweetens when sautéed. For raw uses (gazpacho, for example) silverskin is my last choice: harsh, hot, metallic. Conversely, raw purple stripe is sweet, juicy, and has hardly any heat. Unfortunately, sautéed purple stripe has a limp musty flavor. The best all-around garlic is also one of the more difficult to grow: porcelain, a hardneck variety with a complex, spicy, garlic flavor but with no bitterness, no burn, and no bite. The good news—for this recipe, anyway—is that roasting mellows and sweetens garlic and gives it a smoky nuttiness, so any variety will work.

Next time I prepare this dish, I might try roasting some tomatoes in lieu of the canned tomato products, but the canned products worked just fine. For the best product choices, I consult the Cooks Illustrated online tasting lab results. This is a subscription service, but well worth the money.

preparation notes

Roast the garlic in a clean, dry skillet over a high flame. Once the garlic peel is mostly black on one side, turn the cloves over (chopsticks work well for this) and char the other side. Remove the cloves to a ramekin to cool. The cloves will be soft. Once they're cool, remove the peels, scrape off any black bits, and mash the cloves.

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Pick through the diced tomatoes and discard any hard pieces of tomato core. Reserve one quarter cup of the liquid from the can.

In a saucepan over a medium flame, heat the extra virgin olive oil to shimmering and add the diced tomatoes, tomato purée, and reserve liquid. Once the liquid begins to bubble, add the dried chili and roasted garlic. Turn the flame down to low, cover the pot, and allow it to simmer for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.

Shell the snow crab. (Eventually, I ought to videotape this process.)

Peel the shrimp, leaving the tail fin and last segment of shell on the tails. Devein the tails and, with a sharp paring knife, cut the tails almost all the way through to the lower vein. Stuff each shrimp with a portion of the snow crab flesh, and wrap with a layer of prosciutto. Arrange the shrimp tails on a cookie sheet

Bake the shrimp tails for 10 minutes on a center oven rack. Turn the tails over and bake them for an additional five minutes or until the shrimp are fully cooked.

To serve, spoon a portion of the arrabbiata sauce and four of the shrimp over rice or pasta.

Dubious Success

The Fine Art of the Backhanded Compliment

Once about ten years ago, while I was still in grad school, I ran into one of the professors in the hallway. I'd taken a few classes from her. This particular professor, despite being brilliant lecturer, was plain to the point of extreme anonymity. She would have been the ideal criminal—no witness would ever be able to recall any details about her appearance. She wore no make-up or jewelry and draped herself in shapeless garments of brown, beige, and grey. On this day, for the first time that I could remember, she wore a bright summer dress, her hair was up, her lips were red. She was even smiling, probably at the realization that she looked good.

Perhaps because I was accustomed to her typical Witness Protection Program appearance, I took a step back and said, "Wow, Doc, you look great."

She gave me an owl-eyed look in return and said nothing. Something clouded her expression—anger, irritation, embarrassment? I couldn't quite parse the expression, but I had clearly said exactly the wrong thing. After an uncomfortable silence, I made some excuse or other ("Gotta go grade some papers.") and hurried off.

I wondered what I'd said to insult her. Did she think I was hitting on her? Even if I found her attractive (I didn't), I knew she had no interest in men. Was that it? Was it just the fact that I'm male? Were men not allowed to compliment her? Was it a matter of protocol—student/teacher fraternization?

"Wow, Doc, you look great."

A few weeks later, one of the other grad students, a close friend's fiancée, complimented my appearance. "Don't you look nice today."

And then I understood. Don't you look nice today. It's the today that's the deal killer. That's the element that fills out and ultimately bursts the compliment: Don't you look nice today—unlike most days when you look like you should be carrying a cardboard offer to work for food. Gosh, I had no idea you could look like a civilized adult.

Wow, Doc, you look great. I think it was the Wow that defeated my good intentions. Wow seems to say, "Incredible. Unbelievable. I'll be damned. Who could have imagined? What a shock to see you not looking bland and shlumpy."

A compliment to someone you know usually implies a negative observation. That turtleneck looks great can imply that you should wear clothes that hide your ugly neck.

That jacket looks really sharp, might be saying, it hides your bubble butt.

Even a simple, Nice shirt, seems to say, compared to all that crap you usually wear.

Mother's Day

So good intentions as paving material and best-laid plans and all that. What has any of this to do with Mother's Day?

This Mother's Day, I wanted to do something special for Princess V. With my particular skill sets, something special comes down to a choice of food or poetry.

I opted for food: brunch, dinner, and dessert. For brunch I prepared Eggs Benedict and mimosas; for dinner, saumon en croute with Dijon dill whipped cream; for dessert bosc pears poached in red vermouth.

Everything went well (well, not counting the aftermath of over-indulgence). Princess V was pleased. Dinner got raves. Dessert got raves. I got raves.

All's right with the world.

So why do I feel guilty?

Why am I asking you? I know why I feel guilty. Brunch, dinner, dessert—I do that much on most Sundays. Oh, sure, champagne for the mimosas was a minor splurge, as was reducing an entire bottle of vermouth for the pears, and I did put some effort into making the salmon pastry look right. Still. Seems like I should have done something a wee bit more Bang/Wow.

I mean, when Princess V is at her staff lunch this week and the other ladies are bragging about the gifts their husbands got for them, what can she say? "I got dinner"?

Saumon en Croute with Dijon Dill Whipped Cream and Tomato Vinaigrette
(serves four)

dramatis personae

vinaigrette
four medium tomatoes (mixed variety and color)
one shallot, thinly sliced
two tablespoons fine chiffonade of opal basil
three tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
two tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
salt
black pepper

saumon en croute
one medium leek (about 1" diameter) thinly sliced, white and light green parts only
one tablespoon olive oil
one pound of salmon filet
salt
two puff pastry sheets
one egg white

whipped cream
one pint heavy whipping cream
two tablespoons Dijon mustard
one tablespoon finely minced dill

quality of ingredients

Tomato vinaigrette is a perfect match for the richness of salmon with cream. Over the years, I've served dozens of variations on this very simple, satisfyingly tart and sweet salad. This time, my local market had red, yellow, and orange tomatoes on the vine, so I combined slices from one red, two orange, and one yellow to make the salad. Whatever tomatoes you find, be sure they're firm, bright, and ripe.

If you can't find opal basil, sweet basil will suffice.

In Flesh for Fantasy, I extolled the virtues of sockeye salmon. For this meal, I was fortunate to find my local fishmonger well-stocked.

Always select leeks with the largest possible white portions—at least three inches.

Use fresh dill. Dried dill will make the whipped cream smell stale.

preparation notes

At least an hour before beginning preparations, put the mixing bowl and mixer whip in the freezer.

Mix or stack the tomato and shallot slices and the chiffonade. Emulsify the vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Cover the tomatoes with the emulsion. Salt and pepper the vinaigrette to taste and chill the salad in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

In a sauté pan over a medium flame, heat to shimmering one tablespoon of olive oil. Add the leek slices and a pinch of salt, and sauté the leeks until soft (about 10 minutes). Transfer the sautéed leeks to a bowl to cool.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Remove from the salmon filets any pinbones, the skin, and the brown flesh. Your puff-pastry can be as simple as a rectangle or as complex as you like. The obvious choice is a fish, but nothing says you can't make your pastry look like a grizzly bear, kraken, Harley-Davidson, or Angelina Jolie. Pick something you know you can draw. If the shape is something more complex than a rectangle, you'll need to cut the filet into pieces to make it fit the pattern. Place the filet or filet pieces on a sheet of parchment paper and draw the outline of your pattern around the filet, leaving a half-inch allowance on all sides. Remove the filet pieces to a plate and cut out your pattern. Roll out your puff-pastry sheets and cut out two sheets according to your pattern.


Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and transfer one of the cut pastry sheets to the parchment. Arrange the salmon on the pastry. Cover the salmon evenly with the sautéed leeks. The leeks will act as an insulating layer and help slow the cooking of the salmon enough to finish the pastry without drying out the fish. This is why the leeks have to be cool—if you used them straight out of the pan, they'd start cooking the salmon. Place the second cut sheet of puff-pastry atop the leek-covered salmon. Pinch together the edges of the two pastry sheets to seal in the salmon. With a sharp paring knife or pastry knife, score in any details you want to show (scales, fin rays, gills, an eye, claws, fangs, spokes, gears, nostrils, pouty lips, whatever).

Bake the salmon for twenty minutes or until golden brown. With a quick-read thermometer inserted through a scoring mark into the thickest part of the fish, verify that the fish is at least 120F.

Combine the cream, mustard, and dill in the chilled bowl and whip the ingredients to stiff peaks.

Slice the salmon into two-inch-wide sections and serve with individual bowls (ramekins) of the savory whipped cream.

Learning to Taste Food

Tasting with Your Teeth

Princess V and I watched a cooking program, recently, in which the cooks demonstrated how home cooks anywhere in the United States can make more-or-less authentic-tasting hot-and-sour soup. Their recipe was interesting, but a lot of their substitutions struck me as unnecessary and, ultimately, unsuccessful. I feel strongly that, if you want to make a hot-and-sour soup, your results will be most satisfying if you stay with the traditional ingredients. Hot-and-sour soups vary a bit from restaurant to restaurant, but the most exotic ingredients in a typical hot-and-sour soup are black vinegar, daylily buds, and sliced black fungus. Now, I can see where those items might be difficult in a small town, but I know a half-dozen grocery stores in Austin that carry these ingredients, and that's not counting the Asian specialty markets. If all else fails, you can always order these items through the Internet, and they're not expensive items.

Thinking about (and, yes, disagreeing with) the cooking show got me mulling over what I like and dislike about hot-and-sour soup. My first experience with hot-and-sour soup, twenty years ago, was in a Chinese restaurant in, of all places, Vermont. Their version contained fresh cloud ears and fresh lily buds. Cloud ears are similar to—but lighter, more flavorful, and harder to come by than—wood ears, the more common variety of what is generically marketed as black fungus.

The name sounds generic, and many regional and national cuisines do include a soup that is essentially both hot and sour. Thailand's tom yum gets its heat from bird chilis and its tartness from lemon grass, galanga, and keffir lime leaves. hot chilis and horse radish. Philippine sinigang gets its heat from fingerhot chilis and its tang from tamarind. Yucatan's sopa de lima gets its sourness from limes; heat is added by spooning in fresh pico de gallo.

Remarkably, delicious though they may be, none of these other spicy sour soups has much in common with the hot-and-sour soup popular in American Chinese Cuisine. Hot-and-sour soup recipes vary a bit, but most rely on white pepper for their heat rather than any kind of chilis. The resulting burn builds more slowly than the heat from a capsicum, and white pepper provides a piney note. I have had hot-and-sour soups that rely on chili oil or red chili flakes, but those are the exception. Hot-and-sour soup—rather than relying on the citrus and other tart fruits and vegetables typically used in spicy sour soups—gets its unique tartness from black vinegar. Black vinegar, brewed from black glutinous rice, has a distinctive flavor: slightly sweet, a bit smoky, faintly like molasses, and with a distinct taste of malt. Hot-and-sour soup is both hot and sour like no other soup.

Hot-and-sour soup is also, frankly, somewhat unappealing in appearance. It's brown and tan and gooey-looking. The only color, typically, is a small scattering of scallion. It doesn't look the least bit appetizing. Hot-and-sour soup pretty thoroughly ignores the French maxim that you feast with your eyes first.

Fortunately, the Chinese know a thing or two about enlisting our other senses in their foods.

Although Chinese acquaintances have assured me that hot-and-sour soup is an American Chinese invention, hot-and-sour soup does incorporate a lot of the best elements of Chinese cuisine. In addition to the balance of hot, sweet, sour, and salty elements, hot-and-sour soup balances the hot yang of white pepper with the bland coolth of tofu (or tofu skins, in some cases).

More impressive than those balances, however, is the delightful play of textures in the best hot-and-sour soups. The softness of tofu and egg-drop strands parallels the chewiness of pork tendon and black fungus, the crunch of bamboo shoots and daylily buds, and the slipperiness of the corn starch used to thicken the broth. Asian cuisines have a lot to teach European and American cuisines about incorporating and balancing textures. A frequent American foodie's complaint about black fungus is that it has little or no flavor, but that's not the point of black fungus. In hot-and-sour soup—as in so many other dishes—black fungus is a pivotal element in the interplay of textures: black fungus invites your teeth to nibble and test and then breaks cleanly when they sink into it.

So What Am I Gonna Do About It?

Initially, yes, the cooking show inspired me to try my hand at a hot-and-sour soup. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted something more substantial than a soup, and I wanted something with a bit more visual appeal. I decided to promote the pork to a point of prominence, and—though I knew I would be drastically modifying one of the textural elements—I substituted pork tenderloin for the tendon.

Since I was already promoting tendon to tenderloin, I decided to demote the broth to a sauce. This dish, then, is my riff on a classic: deconstructed hot-and-sour soup. Although—as I mentioned earlier—hot-and-sour soup typically looks less than appetizing, I wanted this dish to incorporate the flavor and texture elements of a hot-and-sour soup while still making a strong visual presentation.



Hot-and-Sour Pork with Charred Tofu
(serves three)

dramatis personae

one pork tenderloin (one pound or so)
six cups cold water
one quarter cup table salt
two tablespoons light brown sugar
one pint low sodium chicken stock
one block extra firm tofu
one half cup black fungus, julienned
one half cup daylily buds
one half cup bamboo shoots, julienned
one third cup black vinegar
two teaspoons toasted sesame oil
one teaspoon fresh-cracked white pepper
one scallion, chopped
one half pound egg vermicelli
one quarter cup peanut oil

quality of ingredients

Unless you're using your own chicken stock, use low sodium stock or broth. It's going to concentrate quite a lot, and salted stock will result in a gaggingly salty sauce.

My preference is for fresh black fungus. The texture of fresh black fungus has a velvety element that disappears when it's dried. Still, the rehydrated black fungus is better than none.

Canned bamboo shoots are okay. The Asian markets occasionally have whole shoots packed in salt water, and these are usually a bit more succulent than the canned strips. In either case, bamboo shoots should be drained and thoroughly rinsed.

I've seen fresh daylily buds in hot-and-sour soup just once, and the chef in that case grew his own. Fresh daylily buds have a brighter flavor and a slightly less fibrous texture than the rehydrated ones, but the rehydrated buds are still tasty. If you find a source for the fresh ones, by all means use them. And tell me how to contact your source.

Yes, it has to be white pepper.

preparation notes

Brine the tenderloin: combine the pork, water, salt, and brown sugar in a gallon Ziploc bag. Express as much air as possible from the bag, and refrigerate the tenderloin for one hour to allow the brine to season the meat thoroughly.

Slice three half-inch slabs of tofu from the block. Place the slabs on a flame-safe surface. I used an upside-down cookie sheet (not a non-stick sheet). With a paper towel, gently pat the tofu dry. With a propane or butane torch, lightly char the surface and edges of the tofu slabs. Don't char the whole surface black; you want to see some blistering and a little mottling. This will suffice to give the tofu a slightly toasty flavor. Besides, it looks cool.

Soak, for at least thirty minutes, a cup of dehydrated daylily buds in two cups of hot water.

If you're using dehydrated black fungus, soak, for at least thirty minutes, a loosely packed cup of fungus in two cups of hot water seasoned with a tablespoon of table salt.

See my directions in Evolution for frying the noodles.

Preheat the broiler to 500F.

Once the tenderloin has marinated for a full hour, thoroughly rinse and pat it dry. Trim and set aside the fat and silver skin.

In a skillet or sauté pan over a medium flame, heat two tablespoons peanut oil to smoking. Fry the reserved pork fat and silverskin until any attached bits of meat are brown. Push aside the browned bits of fat to make room for the tenderloin, turn up the flame to medium high, and lightly brown the tenderloin on all sides (no more than a minute on each side). Pour in the stock and black vinegar, and bring the liquid to a boil. Turn the liquid down to a simmer and braise the pork for two minutes. Turn the tenderloin over and continue braising for another minute. Remove the tenderloin to a plate and allow it to rest for five minutes.

Dissolve the cornstarch in two tablespoons of the braising liquid and set it aside.

Bring the liquid back up to a boil and, with a wooden spoon, deglaze the bottom of the pain. Once the majority of the brown bits are freed from the bottom of the pan, remove the skillet from the fire, and strain the braising liquid through a wire mesh strainer or chinois into a heat-safe, non-reactive container (a Pyrex bowl or an enameled pot). Discard the strained solids and return the liquid to the skillet. Drain and rinse the vegetables (fungus, daylilies, and bamboo) and pour them into the braising liquid. Stir in the sesame oil and a half-teaspoon of white pepper, and braise the vegetables over a medium flame while the tenderloin broils.

Brush the tenderloin with peanut oil and season it liberally with fresh-cracked white pepper. Broil the tenderloin fore three minutes, turn it over, and broil it for an additional three minutes. Remove the tenderloin to a cool plate to rest for five minutes.

Strain the vegetables from the braising liquid and return the liquid to the heat. If the liquid has not reduced by at least half (to about a half-cup), bring it to a boil. Stir the liquid occasionally while it reduces. Stir in the cornstarch slurry. Once the sauce begins to thicken, remove it from the heat.

Slice the tenderloin into quarter-inch thick slices.

Atop each noodle wedge, mound a half-cup of the vegetables. Lay a five or six overlapping slices of tenderloin atop each mound of vegetables. Drizzle a little of the sauce over the tenderloin slices and top them with one slab of charred tofu. Drizzle a little more sauce over the tofu and top with a scattering of scallion.