Ruhlman's Twenty (39 page)
Authors: Michael Ruhlman
/SERVES
4
AS A SIDE DISH
This easy, refreshing, and colorful side dish is especially suited to white meats and fish. It uses medium rather than high heat and finishes in a couple of minutes. The squash and carrots can be julienned by hand, but it’s far easier to use a Japanese mandoline if you have one. It’s a tool I recommend for numerous cutting jobs.
1 medium zucchini/courgette
1 medium yellow squash
1 large carrot, peeled
2 tablespoons butter
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ lemon
If cutting the vegetables by hand, julienne the squashes and carrot into pieces as thin and long as possible. Use only the exterior flesh of the squashes; discard the interior seeds. If using a mandoline, fit it with the julienne blade. Work from the sides of the squashes until you reach the seeds; discard the seeds. The vegetables can be cut up to 4 hours in advance and refrigerated, covered with a damp towel.
Heat a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the butter. When the butter has melted, add the squashes and carrot and cook just until softened. Season liberally with salt and pepper, and with a squeeze of lemon. Serve immediately.
/SERVES
4
Sautéing cooked green vegetables is a great strategy for transforming the commonplace into the dramatically delicious. The method here can be followed for any green vegetable—beans, peas, spinach, celery—but something about brussels sprouts goes especially well with bacon and hot pepper flakes. The technique is to boil and shock the sprouts, then reheat them gently in the bacon fat. Rather than halve the sprouts, you could shave them on a Japanese mandoline; the raw shaved leaves sauté very quickly.
½ pound/225 grams bacon, cut into ¼-inch/6-millimeter lardons, cooked, fat reserved
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 pound/450 grams brussels sprouts, halved, boiled until tender, then shocked in ice water
Kosher salt
In a large sauté pan, reheat the bacon and its fat over medium heat. Add the red pepper flakes and cook for 30 to 60 seconds. Add the brussels sprouts and cook, stirring to coat them with the spicy bacon fat, until heated all the way through, 3 to 4 minutes. Taste and season with salt if needed. Serve immediately.
This technique could very easily have gone in the water chapter, because it takes advantage of water’s consistent low-heat capacity to begin cooking the bacon and rendering the fat. I first saw this method done when spending time in the kitchen of Primo, Melissa Kelly and Price Kushner’s restaurant in Rockport, Maine. One of the chefs told me to cook the bacon by first covering it with water. It seemed almost counterintuitive, given that water leaches out flavor and salt. But it’s a brilliant method.
The water cooks the bacon at 212°F/100°C or so, tenderizing the tough muscle and starting to render the fat. This is the chief benefit, the tenderizing effect, so it’s especially apt with lardons or larger chunks of bacon. Also, you don’t have to pay attention to the pan until the water is gone and the bacon is calling you with a noisy crackling. Yes, the water pulls out the flavor and salt, but once it cooks off, the bacon sautés in all that flavorful fat.
Because bacon freezes so well, I keep thick slabs in the freezer, so any time I need lardons, for a salad or stew, they can quickly be ready to go. Starting the bacon in water is the perfect way to cook it when it’s frozen.
“It was taught to me when I was at An American Place, Larry Forgione’s restaurant in New York City, by chef Rich D’Orazi,” Kelly told me. “Since then I have never cooked lardons any other way.”
Neither have I.
Bacon as desired (strips, lardons, slabs)
Choose a sauté pan in which the bacon will fit snugly in one layer. Put the bacon in the pan and add cold water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat. When the water has almost cooked off, you’ll begin to hear a noisy crackle and popping. Reduce the heat to medium low and sauté the bacon until nicely browned and crisp on the outside and tender and chewy inside. Serve immediately.
LIKE SAUTÉ, “ROAST” IS DEFINED BY WHAT
instructors in culinary schools call dry heat—that is, cooking without the cooling, moderating effects of water. It can be divided into two subtechniques: high-heat roasting and low-heat roasting.
Terminology about roasting is erratic given that there’s no difference between roasting and baking. Roasting may once have referred solely to meats cooked over an open flame, whereas baking referred to anything cooked in an enclosed oven. Today we typically say we roast meats and we bake doughs and batters. That will be the distinction here (even though we do bake ham, we don’t roast meat loaf, and we both bake and roast potatoes).
High heat is used to develop flavor. Browning the skin of fowl and the exterior of meats makes it taste delicious. We use low heat for cooking larger items uniformly. Thus, we roast a chicken in a very hot oven to develop flavor, and we roast a big prime rib in a low oven to cook the center before the exterior is overcooked.
Because roasting does not involve water, and water is required for dissolving the connective tissue that makes meats tough, we usually don’t roast tough cuts of meat. You would not roast a pot roast because it would go from tough to dry. I do roast a leg of lamb, on the other hand, for flavor; after being cooked, the tough collection of muscles is tenderized by being cut into thin slices.
That’s really all there is to know about roasting. It’s one of the simplest, most common, and best methods of cooking. It also fills up the kitchen with irresistible aromas. When you are determining how to roast something, think about its qualities. Is it naturally tender? How big is it? Does it have skin (which is mostly water that needs to cook off before browning happens)? Is your goal to make the exterior tasty or to have the item cook uniformly all the way through? To put it generally, use high heat to develop flavors of what we call caramelization (though you’re not actually caramelizing anything unless you’re baking a tarte Tatin). Caramelization, the sweet, savory complexity of roasted things, only starts to happen at temperatures of 300°F/150°C and higher. If you only want to cook something through without developing additional flavors, and without overcooking the outside while keeping the inside rare, use temperatures well under 300°F/150°C.
I almost always do high-heat roasting at 425°F/220°C/gas 7 to 450°F/230°C/gas 8. At the higher end, all fats begin to smoke, so you need a clean oven and a ventilation fan for the most efficient roasting temperatures. For large cuts such as a big roast, I use a low oven, 225°F/ 110°C/gas ¼ or so, which is virtually a poaching temperature, especially given that moisture evaporating off the surface of the food has a cooling effect on the food.
Vegetables are delicious roasted. The flavors developed in vegetables cooked at high heat are so distinct from the flavor of the same vegetables boiled that they almost ought to have different names. Roasted asparagus spears are more complex in flavor than boiled asparagus. Roasted brussels sprouts are a dream, roasted broccoli a revelation.
There are only a few matters of finesse in roasting. They apply to other forms of cooking and are mainly common sense. Let your food come to room temperature before roasting it. The food also should be relatively dry; any moisture has to cook off before the good roasted flavors can develop. And always preheat the oven.
Many ovens come with a convection feature, meaning a fan in the oven can be activated to continuously circulate the air. Convection is especially helpful in achieving a crispy skin on poultry because the moisture cooking out of the skin is carried away from the bird. Convection
also prevents hot and cool spots in your oven. I recommend convection cooking for most high-heat roasting. Because the circulation makes the heat more efficient, acting as a kind of turbocharger, convection cooking can be faster than cooking without convection. Pay attention to how your convection works and adjust your cooking times accordingly.
Try to avoid roasting in a vessel with very high sides, which prevent hot air from circulating around the food you’re cooking. My favorite vessel for roasting is an ovenproof sauté pan or a cast-iron frying pan.
Don’t cover food that you’re roasting. Covering food will result in steamed food rather than roasted food. Putting a top on a pan or covering it with aluminum foil is a method more like a braise than a roast because it turns what would be dry heat into moist heat. This can be used to your advantage if what you’re roasting is tough. You might first cook a pork shoulder roast at a low temperature covered, allowing the steamy heat to work on the connective tissue, then, when the roast is tender, uncover it and develop the exterior color.
I’m starting with roasted vegetables because they’re so delicious and because my sense is we don’t roast them often enough. Also, when they’re roasted, they become a bigger aspect of the meal because of the increased complexity of the flavors. Boiled cauliflower is fine, but you need a decent sauce, in my opinion, or a garnish to make it interesting. Roasted cauliflower can almost be the centerpiece of a meal the way a beef or pork roast would be.
The only vegetables not suitable for roasting are leafy vegetables. You wouldn’t roast spinach, as it would dry out, and you wouldn’t roast kale, because it would never become tender (though you can bake this green into wholesome “chips”). All other vegetables are suitable for roasting—green and root vegetables alike. Because vegetables are almost entirely water, some care must be taken to prevent them from drying out. I like to coat most vegetables in a little oil before putting them in a hot oven. The oil also helps deliver the heat evenly over their surface. And when you’re roasting, pay attention to the moisture level. Some vegetables that you might prefer crispy, such as broccoli, and others, such as root vegetables, are best when their exterior is nicely browned but their interior is moist.
/SERVES
4 TO 6
(DEPENDING HOW BIG THE CAULIFLOWER IS AND HOW YOU’RE SERVING IT)
When you roast a cauliflower, it develops caramel-nutty flavors that are beautifully enhanced by the flavor of the browned butter. This robust dish can be the centerpiece of a vegetarian meal or a side for roasted meat. It’s also a good substitute for roasted potatoes if you’re looking to reduce your carb intake. The cauliflower needs to cook for more than an hour, with the butter added toward the end of the cooking and used as a finishing baste.
1 cauliflower
1 tablespoon canola oil
6 tablespoons/85 grams butter, at room temperature or softened
Kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C/gas 8 or 425°F/ 220°C/gas 7 if you’re concerned about smoke.
Cut off the stem of the cauliflower as close to the base as possible and remove any leaves that may still be attached. Rub the oil over the cauliflower.
Put the cauliflower in an appropriately sized ovenproof sauté pan or frying pan. Slide the pan into the oven and roast the cauliflower for 45 minutes. Remove the cauliflower from the oven and smear the butter over the surface. Sprinkle with a three-finger pinch of salt and return to the oven. Roast for another 30 minutes, basting the cauliflower a couple of times with the melted butter, until the cauliflower is well caramelized and tender; a knife inserted should meet no resistance. Slice and serve from the pan.
/SERVES
8
Leg of lamb is an interesting cut to roast because it’s composed of several different muscles that are fairly tender on their own but are bound to one another by tough connective tissue. This calls for moderate roasting so that you get some tenderizing from the cooking yet don’t cook the lamb so hard that the exterior is overdone while the meat is still cold at the bone. As with
pan-roasted pork tenderloin
, I prefer a healthy coating of crushed coriander seeds and black pepper and add garlic and thyme to the pan. The simple sauce is mint based, traditional with lamb; but cilantro/fresh coriander also works well if you want something a little less traditional. Roasted potatoes with onion make a great accompaniment. They can be cooked along with the lamb, then crisped in the oven while the lamb rests.
Roasted leg of lamb is a festive offering for a group, and because the roasting results in varying levels of doneness, it can satisfy a variety of palates.
1 garlic head
4- to 6-pound/1.8- to 2.7-kilogram leg of lamb
Kosher salt
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
3 tablespoons canola oil
4 to 6 stems fresh thyme
1 to 2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup/240 milliliters Greek yogurt
¼ cup/20 grams minced mint
About 2 hours or as many as 2 days before cooking the lamb, peel 3 garlic cloves and cut them into large slivers. Insert a paring knife into the lamb and slide a sliver of garlic down the blade into the meat. Repeat until the leg is uniformly studded with garlic. If you are preparing the lamb well in advance, give the lamb an aggressive salting, about 1 tablespoon’s worth, then refrigerate until 2 hours before cooking it.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/gas 4.
Place the coriander seeds and peppercorns on a cutting board and crush with the bottom of a pan. Rub the lamb with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Sprinkle with the coriander and pepper and with salt if you haven’t already salted the meat.
