APRIL 2013
Sunday 2013.4.28
Cast Iron Cookware
Many people have commented on my little white ceramic saucepans that appear occasionally in my videos and photographs. Those are "Nouveau Princess House Exclusive," formerly made in France—"formerly" because they are out of production and mostly unavailable new. You can often find them listed on Ebay. They were a gift from my dear friend Marilynn.
Marilynn volunteers some of her time at a charity thrift store that is about a 30-minute drive from where I live. I hadn't seen her for a while; so I drove the distance recently. I brought the smaller of the saucepans with me, hoping to find a glass lid for it. Not only did I find one that fits, it is identical in style to the lid on the larger pan and, like the other, is also marked "France" on the inside. I love it when a set is "complete." And the lid only cost me 50 cents.
My friend loves to be helpful. "If there is anything in particular you are looking for, let me know and I'll keep you in mind." I told her I wanted to add cast iron cookware to my kitchen. Griswold is one of the most collectable names, but I'm not fussy. I'm a cook, not a collector, and these won't be for investment potential. "There is one in the back," she said, "but it needs some work. I'll get it for you."
She brought out an 8-inch cast iron skillet that certainly needed some work. It had obviously been placed on a nylon carpet or similar material while very hot. The plastic had melted, burned, and stuck to the bottom of the pan. It could be peeled off, though, but with effort. The inside was well crusted with a black and brown gritty layer, obviously not cleaned after the disaster with the carpet. The store gave it to me for free.
I did research into cast iron about a year ago and I know how to clean them with oven cleaner and then season them. First, however, I carefully chiseled off all the burnt plastic using a small sharp knife and a rubber mallet. Some peeled away quickly, some required repeated light blows from the knife and hammer.
Then came the coating. I sprayed the insides first, covering it with plastic, and waited a few hours. It took several coats, but little by little all the layers came off. Thankfully, I found no rust. Next the outside. I gave it a thick spray of oven cleaner and then sealed it in a ziplock bag, where it sits at the moment. 24 hours in the bag will hopefully be enough. If not, I have plenty of oven cleaner.
So far I can't identify the maker. The only mark I found was a large "5V" on the bottom, near the handle. It also has a heat ring near the outer circumference rather than a smooth bottom. Identity is not crucial, as this pan will be for cooking, not collecting.
The next step, of course, will be seasoning the pan to restore it back to usable condition. As I said above, I did my research. Flaxseed oil, or flax oil, is now the best recommended. It is difficult to find, expensive, and highly perishable. It must be kept refrigerated in a black bottle. Watch the expiration date. Mine expires next month.
Seasoning takes time. You can't rush it. Heat, coat with a very thin layer of flax oil, bake for one hour at the oven's maximum temperature, then turn off the oven and wait at least two hours for the pan to cool. Repeat the cycle five more times. There is a lot of chemistry to explain why flax oil is best—things like omega-3 fatty acids, polymerization, and other stuff you don't need to understand. Just know that if done right, the pan can be given a sheer, stick-resistant black veneer that will hold up well to cooking and cleaning.
The beauty of cast iron, besides the even heat distribution, is that the pans are nearly indestructible. I usually replace my aluminum cookware after a year of use. Okay, toss a cast iron pan in the ocean and the salt water will work its charm. Otherwise, with proper care the pans can be handed down from generation to generation. And that is why you rarely find the good ones in thrift shops. The ones on Ebay, especially the most collectable ones, can cost several hundred dollars.
I now have one in my kitchen. I hope, in time, to gain a few more.
Wednesday 2013.4.24
The Challenge: Tradition with Originality
As I have been blogging about during the past week: I want to add more classic recipes and videos to my web site and my YouTube channel. The goal is to increase YouTube views, because I doubt there are many people searching for Arancini (Little Oranges) videos. While I believe some unique and seldom seen recipes add interest to my cache of recipes, they don't bring traffic to my site and channel. Also, I want more classic recipes for my TV show.
First up: Tiramisu.
There are many recipes for this classic dessert on line, in books, and in kitchen recipes boxes around the world. I wanted to add my own touches. I already have on this web site a recipe for making Mascarpone cheese from scratch. There are also many recipes for making the lady finger cookies from scratch. This would be my first time making them, but as they involve a piping bag (I use a ziplock bag), I felt confident because I know my way around a plastic bag.
Sunday evening I made the mascarpone, doing a video of the process. It needs to stay in the refrigerator overnight. Then I went to the store to purchase the other ingredients I needed.
On Monday the mascarpone looked excellent. I then made the lady finger cookies. They came out barely okay, but usable. Then I made the custard filling. What happens when you stir mascarpone into hot custard? The mascarpone melts into an oil. That's what happened. The recipe I was following was "Classic Tiramisu" on allrecipes.com. I should point out that I expected the mascarpone to melt. It had to. It always does. I use it to make the sauce in my Trout with Tomatoes recipe. I proceeded anyway, if just to prove I was right and allrecipes.com was wrong. (Whip mascarpone into hot custard? Really? You might as well use clarified butter. They both come from cream and butter is cheaper.) Adding further to the problem, the recipe for the cookies didn't make enough of them. I threw in the towel and dumped everything into the trash.
And so on Monday evening I started all over again, making mascarpone from scratch again. I also set about to do things my way. I made the custard, so that it could chill in the refrigerator at the same time the mascarpone was draining. This would allow me to fold cold mascarpone into cold custard and cold whipped cream. No melting allowed.
Yesterday I doubled the recipe for the lady finger cookies and made them again. And, as a side point, I looked for lady fingers at the grocery store when I was buying more heavy cream. The original recipe said to use two packages, 12 ounces each. The packages in the store were only 3 ounces. I would have needed eight packages. And, the cookies looked awful.
Finally, everything was cooked and baked and blended and so forth. The assembly went perfectly. The tiramisu went into the refrigerator to chill overnight and I went to the store to buy one of those fancy pastry serving knives that looks like an elegant cement trowel. (I have a trowel, but I thought it might not be appropriate for serving tiramisu.)
Tiramisu might have been a wise choice. On this site's Facebook fan page I posted a picture of the tiramisu taken before it went into the refrigerator yesterday evening. In the first 12 hours the picture received nearly double the traffic of all the others, many of which have been up for several days, even weeks.
This morning I shot a new introduction to the video, starting off with a look at the finished dessert (a teaser shot—the first time I've done this) before going back two days to the beginning of how the tiramisu was crafted. Then I plated a piece, tasted it on video, and shot my final photographs—my royals—of the day. I feel as if I accomplished something important.
As for the tiramisu, it tasted delicious. The recipe and video will be uploaded to this web site and to YouTube in coming weeks.
Sunday 2013.4.21
Such is the News
I spent much of the day on Friday watching/listening to the news coming out of Watertown, Massachusetts. I was born in Webster, Mass. and lived there until we moved to Mystic, CT when I was four years old. During the evening a friend arrived for dinner and drinks (he brought a bottle of rum and I walked up to the neighbor's mobile home space and picked a few lemons from off her tree). We drank gin and lemonade. It was good.
I know how much that friend likes my olive pesto (traditional pesto to which I add sun dried, oil cured olives I can only find at the Italian market down in the city). I had some in the fridge, so I sliced some chicken breast really thin, sautéed it lightly in butter and olive oil, mixed in some olive pesto, and served it over hot buttered noodles. I put Romano cheese on the table for garnish. The meal was fantastic, and yet so simple.
We also watched the evening news, in which they announced the capture of suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon bombing. Given what often happens to young men in prisons, we couldn't help wondering if he might have done himself more good by choosing another outcome. Like many Americans, I am still trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps it will never make any sense.
CNN was nearly painful to watch the day after the capture. Operating in what was nearly a news vacuum, they were practically creating their one news sensationalism to keep their audience engaged. Ahh, ratings.
Now for a little news of far less national consequence:
On the positive side, yesterday I celebrated a little bit. I made a pizza. It was because I submitted to the TV station the complete second season of my TV show, The Mobile Home Gourmet. Wednesday and Thursday I sat in front of my TV all day and watched all 15 shows, taking notes to identify errors or problem areas. It was a marathon. Only three shows needed to be fixed and re-encoded. Then, finally, everything was burned to DVD blanks, labeled, and put into sleeves for delivery. It feels really good to have the second season complete and submitted.
As I stated in Wednesday's blog, the third season will feature more classic, traditional recipes, in the hope of increasing my YouTube views. Already planned are: Tiramisu, Sloppy Joes (by request), and English Trifle. Naturally, I'll be adding my own brand of originality and creativity to the recipes. For the Sloppy Joes I will make my own hamburger buns from scratch. For the Tiramisu I will make the lady finger cookies from scratch. The third season will be slightly less work because I already have one show "in the vault"—my mom's Christmas cookies recipe, something I set aside for viewing later in the year.
With ten projects in the vault—enough to cover all uploads through the end of June—I have plenty of time to sit down and plan the next 14 projects. That always takes several days.
Wednesday 2013.4.17
Classic Dishes
In Sunday's blog I mentioned my idea of wanting to feature more classic recipes. The idea came from seeing someone's beef stroganoff recipe on YouTube. It wasn't a great video; nor was it a good recipe. However, it had tens of thousands of hits. Why?
Maybe the answer is the popularity of the dish. Everyone knows what beef stroganoff is. Perhaps a lot of people search for the recipe on YouTube. I got to thinking: How many people know what Arancini is? How many people search for a recipe for Arancini? It's a fascinating food. Cooked rice shaped into a little cup, filled with a creamy stuffing, capped with more rice and pressed into a sphere, then rolled in bread crumbs before frying. The name means "little oranges" because that's what they look like after they're fried. Delicious, but hardly a household name.
And so I set about to make beef stroganoff this week, my own version. The first thought that came to mind was my mother's recipe. For the sauce she used a can of cream of mushroom soup and a roughly equal portion of sour cream. Maybe she added a little water or milk. At least she cut up a piece of beef rather than using hamburger. As kids we love it. Although, I do remember the beef being a little too chewy because she overcooked it. As good as it was, I knew I couldn't feature the recipe here.
As usual, I did some research among the recipes I could find on the Internet. Typically, I create a spreadsheet on my computer and list the recipes along the top and the ingredients along the side. Then I plug in what everyone uses, and how much. You can sometimes discover some interesting items about people. Evidently Tyler Florence doesn't like sour cream. To make enough to feed six, all the other recipes use about 1½ cups of sour cream. In Tyler's recipe he uses only two tablespoons.
I wrote my own recipe, averaging the most common ingredients from the other recipes, and adding a few variations of my own. For example, none of the recipes use paprika. I wondered what a little smoked paprika might do. It seemed like a flavor that would go well with the beef. And, of course, I made my own egg noodles from scratch. However, I bought a package of wide egg noodles at the store and featured them prominently in the video to stress the idea that you certainly don't need to make your own. I like making pasta from scratch. The beef stroganoff was delicious.
Today I'll edit the video. That's completes season two. Later this week I'll drive down to the TV station and turn in the DVDs with all 15 shows on them. That leaves only the third season to complete and then I'll decide whether or not I want to do another year of TV shows. I don't make any money from them and I don't know if anyone even watches my show. The station is, after all, just a small local access channel. I do it for the experience, and I am learning a lot. Maybe next year I'll think about approaching the regular local TV station with the idea of my show. They broadcast cooking shows during the day.
In the meantime, I'll focus on more classic, well known recipes and see what happens to the YouTube numbers. As for the beef stroganoff recipe, it will be featured here in coming weeks.
Sunday 2013.4.14
Enjoying a Little Time Off
My friends and I often laugh about the fact that I am working more, now that I am retired, than when I had a job. I started this web site about a year before I retired; so I was busy that year, filling a job and managing a web site. Since then, I added videos and now a TV show.
I have been working especially hard during the past few months to finish the second season of TV shows (I have one more show to do) and put some projects "in the vault." Currently I have ten projects in the vault, enough to keep this web site updated through June 23rd. I can therefore enjoy a little time away from the kitchen and cameras.
Yesterday I drove to my former workplace. The department hosted a major event today, with thousands of visitors expected. If I had still been employed, I would have needed to be at the event at 6:30 in the morning to begin setting up for the day, which wouldn't have ended until around 4:00 if the afternoon, after all the setup had been removed and stored.
it was fun walking around. I saw fewer staff members I knew this year. Most of the people I formerly worked with were close to my age. They've been retiring too. It is also my one day per year to eat two slices of pizza from the little pizza outlet they have there. It isn't great pizza, but when you're hungry it tastes good enough.
Someone gave me an excellent idea I hadn't thought about. Work with a local graphics company that will do one-off screen prints of shirts with my logo on them. I did a quick look through the phone book, but nothing looked promising. I'd like a full-color iron-on graphic. Maybe a search of the web…
An so my leisure goes, until I need to produce something again. There is one more show to produce to complete season 2.
Which reminds me: I am thinking season 3 will feature many classic dishes. My French bread video is the most popular on YouTube, as I mentioned in Wednesday's blog. The classic foods seem to get the most traffic. Maybe I need to focus on some classics for a while—tiramisu, lasagna, someone suggested Sloppy Joes—to drive more traffic to my cooking videos. It's a thought.
Wednesday 2013.4.10
Another Milestone, and Less Than Perfection, and Stats
Collectively, my YouTube videos reached 200,000 views yesterday. The most popular video on my channel is my French Bread recipe, currently at over 45,000 views. I am flattered.
I usually celebrate a milestone with some sort of biscotti, but I wasn't prepared for this one. I concentrated too much on the TV show, the second season of which is almost complete.
And that brings up another issue. Julia Child used to say we could use a mistake if we can make it look like our intention. Yesterday I made an upside-down caramel date cake. Part of the way through the video I realized I'd made a mistake on the caramel topping. I accidentally doubled the butter. I wondered why it tasted more like toffee than caramel. So, I changed the title of the recipe—Upside-down Toffee Date Cake.
I am still trying to learn the techniques for making better cakes. I learned another trick today—always trim the rounded top off the cake before you invert it onto a flat plate. The cake cracked in the center as the sides subsided onto the plate. Oh well. I had enough in one piece to finish the video.
Nonetheless, the cake ended up in the trash, but not because it was a failure. It wasn't. Other than the cracks, there was nothing wrong with it. The flavor was right and the insides cooked perfectly. It just wasn't my sort of treat. I'd rather eat a large order of french fries or a pepperoni pizza. I also wasn't proud enough of the results to offer it to my neighbors. I am still analyzing my feelings about it.
I think it comes to one aspect of me and/or my personality. I'm not a sweets sort of guy. I am much more likely to buy a bag of Fritos rather than a candy bar. I never buy ice cream (but I will make it from scratch). I never order dessert and I rarely have dessert in my home. If I have it at all, it is usually because I plan to serve it to friends after dinner.
So, as for the Upside-down Toffee Date Cake, I think I was more motivated by the challenge of baking it rather than by any desire to eat cake for a snack.
And, finally, stats. I reviewed this web site's stats this morning. Since January the traffic has been flat. My most popular recipes are French Bread, Mascarpone Cheese, Pain de Mie, Finger Lickin' Chicken, and Brioche. Four of these are basics, and the chicken is hardly gourmet. I am wondering if maybe I need to spend less time coming up with original gourmet dishes and concentrate more on classic recipes. Food for thought...
Sunday 2013.4.7
Another Source for Ideas
Numerous times I've mentioned how much I enjoy working with recipes I find in restaurant trade journals—magazines you don't find at the store. There are several reasons for liking those recipes.
1. If you've been following my blog for a while, or if you've seen many of my YouTube videos, you've heard me complain about some cookbook, or even magazine, recipes. They are published untested. One of my favorite cookbooks is Southern Italian Cooking: Family Recipes from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Jo Bettoja. I've discussed this book before as a challenge. Most of the recipes I've tried were complete failures, but therein lies the challenge. How can I make these recipes work? When fixed, the recipes result in excellent Italian dishes.
The story behind the book was ambitious. Bettoja traveled around Southern Italy, asking family cooks to share their secret recipes. Some wouldn't. Those who did agreed to do so only if the book was not published in Italy. And so they recited their recipes, Bettoja wrote them down, and the book was published. We all know the memory can be a tricky thing. Either those cooks forgot a few things, perhaps intentionally, or the recipe was simply their starting point and, without thinking, they simply made adjustments as they proceeded until the food was right.
The restaurant trade journal recipes are tested. They always work. They sometimes need some adjustment, like if the food is intended to feed 40 people, but at least the formulas are correct.
2. The food is often unique, not only in flavor but in presentation. Some chefs devote a good deal of time to designing how their food should look on a plate. For some, it is a magnificent art. Appearance alone, however, won't guarantee a customer will return to the restaurant again in the future. The food must be delicious and satisfy.
When I was in college I had a Vietnamese girlfriend who taught me some recipes. The food was delicious, but everything was brown. I also had a Chinese friend whose wife was a fantastic cook and she made her dishes look as beautiful as they tasted. I still make the Vietnamese fried rice, because it is so satisfying, but I am reluctant to serve it to friends. One of the first people I served it to, a friend in college, looked at it dubiously as I was preparing it. When he tasted it, he was surprised. The flavor was far better than the appearance.
3. They're original. The recipes are not repeats of repeats, as mine often are, of recipes that have been published in various means down through the ages. Each chef created his own recipe from scratch. I've done that too, and it can be a lot of work. Also, success is not guaranteed. More than one of my "creations" ended up in the trash.
Recent visits to the local Chinese restaurant where I received those trade journals have not been fruitful. I don't know if the magazines are no longer going to the restaurant, of if the maitre d' is giving them to someone else. Employees who work there might be taking them home. However, I remembered the magazine's web site. I needed to sign up, which was free, and answer several questions about my "professional" status as a chef and/or restauranteur. I told the truth. I am a retired nobody. However, they granted me entry and now I can get those recipes online. I love the Internet.
And so, with this new source I have already printed some promising ideas for future projects. You'll see them in coming weeks.
Wednesday 2013.4.3
Pizza Bimbo
It is difficult not to make comparisons. I admit to being guilty, if not shamelessly so, when it comes to cooking programs. Naturally, I cannot even begin to compare myself to the "stars" on the Food Network. They are the bright celestial luminaries (with some exceptions—see below) around which we lesser satellites orbit, and some at great distances. It is to those lesser culinarians with whom I cannot help comparing my own body of work.
A few days ago I happened upon a pizza show while channel surfing. The Food Network was broadcasting yet another interminable deluge of DD&D shows with Guy Fieri (an exception), ad nauseam, from sundown to midnight, as they do every Friday and often on other days too. (The network must be in deep financial trouble if they resort to 20, 30, or more reruns for each new episode.) So I stopped hitting the remote's "Channel Up" button when I stumbled upon the pizza show on a different channel.
To be less than fair, the host cook was far more of a wannabe than I. Probably my age, but trying to be a perky bleach blond bimbo in her 30s, the closeups are the image killer. Never let the camera get too close when you are acting half your age.
Seeing her scoop tomato sauce directly from a can onto the pizza dough was the grabber for me. I put down the remote and leaned forward a little, all the better to observe every little foible. I felt like Ignatius J. Reilly at the cinema.
A large part of the show was devoted to explaining where and how to buy inexpensive slabs of tile or concrete to use as pizza stones. These details were necessary to fill the half hour because the pizzas were nothing more than dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings such as pepperoni or mushrooms. No seasonings. No extra virgin olive oil. Not even any advance preparation of the ingredients. Just assemble and bake.
I devote a lot of time to making a good pizza. So immediately I wanted to rush to the store and buy the ingredients to prepare a proper pizza in front of my own video camera. That, thankfully, wasn't necessary. In the Recipe Archive you will find my recipe PDF and a link to my YouTube video for Pizza.
However, what could I do to correct this abomination being perpetrated on an unsuspecting TV audience? I dug into the archives and retrieved my original video files for my pizza. I could use them to create an episode for my own TV show. One problem: The total time was only 27 minutes. I need to fill at least 28. I started editing the video again, but the most I could come up with was an additional 30 seconds. Not enough. Shoot a pick-up? That's another problem: The pizza video was shot with my friend's video camera. His settings are different from mine. What to do?
I changed my camera's settings to match his and shot a clip demonstrating how I chop onions safely (unlike the chefs on TV). I even wore the same shirt and apron so as to avoid any continuity issues. I inserted the clip into my video and only a tweak or two was necessary to make everything work harmoniously. Finished length: 29 minutes, 49 seconds. Yes!
The whole project was complete in one morning, including the encoding. I love it when I can assemble a TV show that quickly. It usually takes two to three days. I felt pretty proud of myself. Paula Deen, Giada De Laurentis, Ina Garten, Emeril Lagasse, and Alton Brown might make a better pizza, but I'll bet they can't edit a video like I can.