I'm Just Here for the Food (37 page)

Application:
Rub

Toast the spices separately as described in
Spice Rubs
, using a small nonstick sauté pan, then grind in a spice or coffee grinder.

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, then transfer to an airtight storage container for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to use the rub, add salt as necessary.

Notes:
The measurements in all of the rub recipes are provided as ratios: just make sure you stick to one measuring device (thimble, ladle, dump truck) and the result will be perfect. I generally use a 2-ounce ramekin. For this Chicken Rub, use half a ramekin of toasted ground fennel seeds, 1 full ramekin of toasted ground coriander seeds, half a ramekin of toasted ground cumin seed, and so on. Note that these proportions are based on ground—not whole seed—quantities, so measure the spices after they’re ground.

As far as chile powder is concerned, I try to always use those that are pure. For example, a powder that is made of nothing but passila chiles is better than a mixture of several varieties (along with who-knows-what other spices and fillers).

Software :

½ part toasted ground fennel
seeds (see
Notes
)
1 part toasted ground coriander
seeds
½ part toasted ground cumin seeds
½ part toasted ground celery seeds
¼ part toasted ground white
peppercorns
¼ part toasted ground black
peppercorns
½ part toasted ground red pepper
flakes
1 part dried, rubbed sage
1 part filé powder
1 part ground dried onion flakes
¾ part chile powder (I use passila;
see
Notes
)
1 part confectioners’ sugar
¼ part garlic powder
½ part ground cinnamon

Hardware :

Small sauté pan, preferably
non-stick
Spice or coffee grinder
Mixing bowl
Airtight storage container

This rub is amazingly good on popcorn.

Fish Rub

This is great for grilling, broiling, and blackening all types of fish, and it’s also good on shrimp, scallops, and lobster. Just keep in mind that rubs require high heat to “activate” their flavors.

Application : Rub

Toast the spices separately as described in
Spice Rubs
, using a small non-stick sauté pan, then grind them in a spice or coffee grinder.

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, then transfer to an airtight storage container for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to use the rub, add salt as necessary.

Software :

½ part toasted ground fennel
seeds (see
Notes
)
½ part toasted ground cumin seeds
1 part toasted ground celery seeds
¼ part toasted ground white
peppercorns
½ part toasted ground black
peppercorns
¼ part toasted ground red pepper
flakes
½ part confectioners’ sugar
¼ part paprika
¼ part garlic powder
1 part ground dried onion flakes
1 part chile powder (I use guajillo; see
Notes
)
½ part filé powder

Hardware :

Small sauté pan, preferably
non-stick
Spice or coffee grinder
Mixing bowl
Airtight storage container

Beef Rub

This is great for pan-searing, grilling, blackening, or broiling just about any cut of beef. Just remember that rubs need a high-heat cooking method to “activate” their flavors.

Application: Rub

Toast the spices separately and grind them as described in
Spice Rubs
, using a small non-stick sauté pan and a spice or coffee grinder. Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, then transfer to an airtight storage container for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to use the rub, add salt as necessary.

Software :

1 part toasted ground coriander
seeds (see
Notes
)
1 part toasted ground cumin seeds
½ part toasted ground celery seeds
¼ part toasted ground white
peppercorns
¼ part toasted ground black
peppercorns
¼ part toasted ground red pepper
flakes
¼ part confectioners’ sugar
¾ part garlic powder
1 part mild chile powder (I use New
Mexico; see
Notes
)
½ part ground dried onion flakes
½ part filé powder
½ part dried rubbed sage

Hardware :

Small sauté pan, preferably
non-stick
Spice or coffee grinder
Mixing bowl
Airtight storage container

Haste Makes Paste

A rub and a marinade in one, use this for roasts that will be broiled, grilled, or—roasted. It’s not pretty (the paste will burn in places), but the meat will be delicious, especially if the meat is lamb. The paste will also make a mess of the grill (it will stick, but the meat won’t). I usually fire up some extra charcoal and throw it right on the cooking grate just after I remove the meat. The charcoal burns off the offending residue and then falls through to the bottom grate—no muss, no fuss.

Application: Rub

Place the garlic in the bowl of a food processor and finely chop. Add the remaining ingredients and process to a pastelike consistency.

Rub the mixture over the entire surface of the target meat, cover, and refrigerate from 4 hours to 2 days. Cook as desired.

Do not add any more paste once the cooking begins.

Software :

4 cloves of garlic
10 mint leaves
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black
pepper
6 tablespoons strong mustard
Target meat

Hardware :

Food processor

CHAPTER 8

Sauces

Once used to smother the taste of spoiled food, now used to enhance natural flavors.

All the World’s a Sauce

By and large, most home cooks don’t do sauce… and that’s too bad. Traditional sauces are indeed scary—as all dinosaurs (even the cute ones) are. They’re scary because they are not of our time. They are of a time when toqued Frenchmen walked the earth, backed by armies of fourteen-year-old apprentices who probably didn’t live to see forty because the air in the kitchens, with their wood-burning ovens, would rot their lungs. The kitchens these culinary T-Rexes occupied bear no resemblance to the rooms we cook in, nor did the groceries that filled them. These guys worked with whole everything: they didn’t buy a steak, they bought a side of beef. They didn’t buy a fish filet, they bought the fish. They purchased cartloads of produce and had that army of apprentices at the ready to clean it all. This meant a lot of leftovers: meat scraps and bones and fish heads, carrot tops, mushroom stems—that sort of thing. Being clever and innovative, the ancient chefs didn’t want to waste these items. They made sauces, and everyone was happy.

Fast-forward a couple hundred years and people are still buying books packed with recipes for the mother sauces and their archaic offspring. This makes about as much sense as going to the barber to have leeches slapped on a wart.
³⁰

Still, there are lessons to be learned from
les dinosaurs
. They made sauces out of leftovers and so should we, as long as the process doesn’t require that you hire a brigade of assistants.

Most classical sauces fall into these extremely overgeneralized categories:

• Sauces based on stocks

• Sauces based on emulsions

• Sauces based on roux

A stock
is a liquid in which collagen from animal bones and connective tissue has been dissolved and converted into a protein matrix called gelatin. Broth and stock are not the same thing. A broth is essentially any liquid that’s had food cooked in it, be it meat or vegetables. Bones are not required for a broth, but they are for a stock. Thus, there is no such thing as vegetable stock.

An emulsion
is a colloid
³¹
: two liquids, which do not like each other, are forced into a colloidal relationship via dispersion of one into the other in the form of microscopic droplets. Vinaigrette dressings are temporary emulsions; unless there is an emulsifier present (such as lecithin or Polysorbate 80, for instance, or pulverized vegetable matter, like mustard) vinaigrettes will always separate in the end. Mayonnaise and hollandaise are also oil-in-water emulsions (mayo is raw, hollandaise cooked), but they are more stable than vinaigrettes because of emulsifiers present in the egg yolks. Butter is an emulsion made up of water droplets in fat.

A roux
is an equal mixture of starch (usually from wheat flour) and fat, which are mixed together and cooked. A flavorful liquid is then added and the starch particles, encased in the fat, are free to be distributed in the liquid. With the addition of heat, they swell and burst, thickening the liquid. American gravy (the kind usually served at Thanksgiving), “sawmill” gravy, and most pan gravies are examples of roux sauces.

Stock

I don’t make stock often, but when I do I always feel like I’ve gotten away with something, like I’ve pulled some kind of alchemical con job on nature.

Stocks have always provided a way to juice a little more value out of the ingredients on hand. Veal bones are a pretty terrific source of collagen, but I rarely have a cow carcass lying around the house. I do, however, have chicken bones, hen bones, and duck bones from time to time—and a freezer to store them in.

When I’ve got five or six racks of chicken plus a couple of duck carcasses, I break out my biggest pot and a pair of tin snips. Since smaller pieces mean faster collagen extraction, I break the frozen carcasses into pieces (if they’re too tough, I use the snips) and add them to the pot. I add enough cold water to cover the bones and bring to a boil.

Now here’s the screwy part. Collagen is not the only thing in the pot. Many other water-soluble substances will emerge from the bones once the water hits a boil. They will collect at the top of the pot and, since their presence serves to reduce the surface tension of the water, once water vapor starts to rise from the bottom, there’s going to be a whole lot of foaming goin’ on. Ever seen foam riding the waves on a windy day at the beach? Same stuff.

As soon as it does, drop the heat so that you maintain a low boil.

Many stock makers, wishing to discard this foam, turn to slotted spoons, ladles, you name it. I use one of those little square nets they use to catch neon tetras down at the pet store. As soon as I get a big netfull I unload it by turning it upside down under cold running water. After five minutes or so of defoaming, stop and watch. Odds are you’ll be in the clear and can go ahead and toss in a couple of quartered onions, a couple of carrots split down the middle, at least three ribs of celery broken in half, and a palmful of black peppercorns. No green herbs yet. And no salt.
³²

THE WHOLE BIRD

One of the reasons I always buy whole chicken is to get the rack: the carcass, complete with wings, rib cage, and backbone.
³²
There are, of course, other reasons to buy whole:

•
The less processing a food has undergone, the cheaper its per-pound price will be.

•
All things being equal, whole birds will keep longer than pieces will.