Coq au Vin

For my dinner party last night, I had the brilliant idea of making coq au vin. How hard can it be, chicken in wine sauce, right? Ok, lesson learned.
Coq au vin is NOT a weeknight dish... 30 steps later, and I remembered why I never attempted it before. Literally more work for one bird than preparation of an entire Thanksgiving dinner. First- there's the marinade. No wine in a baggie for this bird- the wine was simmered for 10 minutes with celery, carrot, onion, and peppercorn. Sufficiently aromatic, it is then acceptable for the bird to meet the wine (for the first time). In the fridge it goes for two days, until it's time to fry more bacon than I wish to think about, brown the chicken, separate the marinade (usually mine hits the disposal, much less getting separated for use). After sufficient chicken browning, then the veggies are browned, mixed with flour for a roux, and combined with the liquid marinade, chicken stock, shallots, and garlic. Do not burn the flour.... quickest way to ruin a coq au vin. Chicken returns to pot for a little swim, while a pound of mushrooms are fried in as much butter (yum). After 45 minutes, call the chicken done- then separate the sauce AGAIN, but make sure to keep the liquid not the solids. Boil sauce for the last time, add the mushrooms, spoon over the cooked bird and voila- coq au vin. At this point, I was sweating... but damn, it was worth it. As with any piece of meat, the French cooking has a way of making it more tender, more flavorful, and more juicy than simply baking, grilling, frying, or poaching. Seriously, if they can make chicken, the most bland and dry of all meats, taste like a delicacy... imagine the wild game (mwahaha).

Arepa!

When scouring Manhattan a few weeks ago for an interesting place to go to dinner, I ended up not at the trendy new restaurant in Meatpacking... but at the tiny Caracas Arepa Bar in East Village. Becky, I'd never heard of an arepa before- have been seriously missing out. The corn cake is slightly thicker than a tortilla and ten times as crunchy. Normally I'd say the filling is the best part but really, it was the hot cake that tastes like cornbread with the texture of a tortilla (kind of). Sadly, no arepas at home... hoping someone will open a Venezuelan or Colombian restaurant soon!

(L-R)- Pork arepa, chicken and avacado arepa, black bean/white cheese arepa.

Salted Lemons

So I tried a salted lemon last weekend... it was sliced around my plate of braised lamb shank at a Moroccan restaurant called the Sultan's Tent in Toronto. The meat itself was the melt-in-your-mouth variety, with underpinnings of cinnamon and paprika. So I thought a bite of lemon would be a complement. I should have known better... I don't like olives because of their saltiness... what did I think a salted lemon would be? Actually, it was worse than salty- it was sour, salty, pungent in almost a sickening way. Honestly, it was easier to eat pig lung in China...

Hey Becky-

Tried a new recipe today... lamb ragu. It's amazing how a $4/lb shrink wrapped appendage can be transformed into such a richly delicious stew. Anthony Bourdain wrote in The Nasty Bits that "any cretin can grill a steak after a few tries. It takes a cook to transform a humble pig's foot into something people clamor for"(20). Think about it... the steak in the grocery store on display beckons hungry customers to purchase it's cleanly cut and trimmed slab, an orb of red bloody perfection.
Meanwhile, the lamb legs, beef cheeks, and calf livers are piled into a cooler like the leftovers that they are. I tried beef cheek pierogis at a restaurant called Lola in Cleveland a few months ago... rich, marrowy flavor that I've been dying to recreate. Then I found the package of beef cheek not at Whole Foods or Fresh Market but at WalMart- $2/lb and it was enormous... literally half of a cow face trimmed. "How in the hell am I supposed to cook that?" I pondered. I don't even own a pot large enough to cook the monstrosity. A package of flank steak hit my basket.
So there I was yesterday, reading the recipe for lamb ragu- and it called for "lamb shank." Ok, leg of lamb, how bad can it be? Said leg of lamb was located in the requisite cooler next to the other parts... shrink wrapped five times and on sale. Covered in a layer of skin and fat, no less. It's amazing what slow cooking for three hours will do to even the most offending cuts. The fat dissipated, the marrow created a deep, flavorful broth and the remaining meat was tender. Ok, so it probably doesn't take a real cook to prepare unsavory cuts of meat... it just takes one to have the nuts to do it.

RIP, Yuca, and Becky's First Post

Hi Anna,

I always hoped that my first post on the blog would be a thoughtful and well-written piece that would herald my entry into the food-writing world. Alas, you'll be getting a slapdash post that was cobbled together in between my studying for 2 horrifying midterms this week. Oh well.

This is probably bordering on food-blasphemy, but I've never actually read Gourmet magazine, though I know how much it means to you. Our house subscribes to Cooks Illustrated, Cooks Country (by accident) and Food and Wine. We own one issue of Gourmet that highlights Latino cooking from 2007, but we haven't read it (...yet. It's on the list.)

On my chili...for the life of me, I can't remember the story about the knife. I recall that I fed myself on chili for a good part of our sophomore year and that I paid an outlandish price for the knife (a cleaver, really) at Wegman's.

I haven't really been up to any food adventures lately, mostly because grad school and my internship are sucking out any culinary creativity I might have had. My food world has consisted of oatmeal, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's frozen entrees lately. On the other hand, The Boy has been having fun with The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart; he made pizza dough from scratch last weekend, and it turned out awesome.

Well, this social policy and human behavior material isn't going to study itself. Talk to you later.

Becky

RIP

Hey Becky-

Can you believe Gourmet is shutting down? Found out at work today when a co-worker sent the below via instant message:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/conde-nast-to-close-gourmet-magazine/?hp

Responses I've seen have been succinct:

"Noooooooo."
"Why?"
"Wtf"

Really, it's worse than if Pepsi swallowed Coke or NBC merged with ABC. My food magazine choices will now be limited to Bon Appeptit and smaller publications like Food and Wine and Saveur. Granted, both Gourmet and Bon Appetit are owned by Conde Nast, with the latter beating in circulation by 400,000 issues each month. But who didn't wait in breathless expectation each month to crack open Bon Appetit and Gourmet to decide which magazine had better content.

In the late 1990's, it was definitely Gourmet that boasted more interesting recipes, prettier photos, and more attractive menus. Actually, reading Bon Appetit was like reading a dowdier, more cluttered version of Gourmet. Then, the magazine took Gourmet by storm in January 2008 with a redesign that suddenly made it the more useful, practical, and interesting of the two publications. Even I- among the most die hard Gourmet fans- began gravitating toward Bon Appetit's newly sharp, luscious covers that highlight the details of the featured dish while simultaneously crafting the shot into focus (ancho beefsteak chili with butternut squash, anyone?)... its aptly organized recipe spreads (mix and match Thanksgiving, by course)... and its punchy, entertaining articles (good call on featuring blogger Molly Wizenberg).

Hence, Gourmet became the dowdier version of Bon Appetit. But I really don't understand why Conde Nast would shut the door on a magazine that has accumulated 68 years of brand recognition... surely that is worth more than a few subscriptions? And I'll miss Ruth Reichl's uplifting Letter to the Editor... there's always an anecdote about food, life, enjoying both... hope she keeps signing book deals.

You Say Yuca

Hey Becky... this one might sound familiar... the whole situation just makes me chuckle. Reminds me of the first time you made chili. Not the yuca part, but the knife struggle.

~Love from, Anna

“What is food to one, is to others bitter poison”

--Lucretius (96 BC - 55 BC), De Rerum Natura

My Wüsthof knife quivered through the sluggish flesh, apt to slip at any second and turn my relaxing evening into a bloodbath at the emergency room. In a moment of frustration, the knife was flung as an attempt to dislodge the perpetrator… how dare it not slice? No movement. The offender was pummeled against the counter to separate its thick starchy hold from my precious blade, resulting in a “thud” on my kitchen floor. There was a showdown in my kitchen, and it was time for the big guns—my hair-splitting cleaver smuggled from Shanghai. One whack and it didn’t stand a chance. My first attempt to cook cassava root at home sounded more like the beginning of a CSI episode.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have questioned why on earth people willingly enter such hell to prepare a root vegetable. The appearance of cassava isn’t particularly appealing (it looks like a long piece of withered ginger root), the thick skin is coated in wax (to keep the vegetable moist), and the amount of starch makes removing gum from the bottom of your shoe look like a cake walk. All this, without mention of the woody, invisible core, which is capable of breaking teeth if not removed. Also note that raw cassava contains trace amounts of cyanide, 40mg of which is sufficient to kill a cow. It must not want to be eaten.

In spite of its best efforts, cassava became the main food source in parts of Central and South America well before the Spanish conquest. Its toxicity might even be referenced in the creation story of the Taino, a Pre-Columbian Caribbean tribe. Deminán, the tribe’s Adam-equivalent, sprouts a painful cyst on his back as punishment for stealing cassava bread. The cyst becomes a female turtle with which Deminán cohabitates. What exactly is the story’s moral—creation of humankind… or don’t eat that poisonous undercooked cassava?

Not to be confused with the Southwestern agave perennial shrub “yucca,” cassava’s popularity in present time rages globally. While visiting Brazil, I stumbled upon an amazing fish stew in a viscous tomato broth and pão de queijo (buttery cheese puffs). According to my Portuguese-speaking friend, manioc flour was the main ingredient in both recipes. Not knowing what the hell manioc was, I inquired at a local market. It’s amazing how much can be understood by the pitch in one’s intonation. The ignorant inquiry “Manioc?” resulted in three ladies pulling me toward the large display of long, brown roots. Light bulbs flashed in my head.... Long brown root equals manioc flour equals Brazilian cuisine. Brilliant.

In Africa, cassava root acts as a staple for 30% of the population[1], due to its high level of “food energy” per cultivated area. Ever tried Chinese bubble tea or sneaked a spoonful of grandma’s tapioca pudding? That’s right… tapioca pearls, flakes, and powders are derived from cassava root paste. And really, have you tasted a more satisfying fry than the yuca frita? Bite through the thick, super-crunchy exterior coating only to have the profuse pulp stick to the roof of your mouth. Though not in the potato family, cassava is like a French fry on steroids—it’s crispier, it’s five times starchier, and it’s sweeter to boot.

So—back to the question of why the hell anyone would risk an appendage to cook cassava root? Because, it’s delicious, versatile, and embedded in the cuisines of multiple cultures. But honestly… my kitchen is not a tapioca factory, and I am not a villager subsisting on home-grown crops. My fingers and knives are too important to risk damage. Thank goodness for the Whole Foods frozen food section. Next time, preparation of this particular root will be limited to snipping the freezer bag with a pair of scissors.

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[1] http://www.idosi.org/wasj/wasj4(6)/16.pdf