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.