The Patience of Bread

               Bread teaches us many things.  Through the mixing and kneading, the proofing, slashing, and baking;  we learn patience and realize that there are so very many different variables that go into a good loaf. 

                Baking requires loads of repetition and persistence.  Getting your hands covered in flour and working the dough to develop gluten gets you involved in the task at hand.  A baker needs (kneads?) to cultivate an intimate relationship when baking bread.  Getting used to how each different dough feels at all of the stages creates an internal bread barometer.  Your fingers will learn when the dough is too wet or too dry, and whether or not it feels like the right weight for its size as it is expanding on your counter.

                I’ve started baking sourdough again recently and find that my average level of frustration throughout the day is rising more consistently then my naturally leavened loaves.  I’ve gotten so involved with my sourdough that I even named my starter.  It’s Stevie Nicks, don’t ask why.  I’ve found a basic and simple recipe that I’ve been making over and over again.  I only change one variable at a time (depth of slash marks, baking stone vs. pan, adding ice cubes to the oven to create steam for better crust) and park my chair in front of my oven window in order to watch the magic happen inside.  

                My suggestion to anyone beginning baking is to be patient and diligent.  Find a simple recipe using good quality (not from the bottom shelf) flour and try to make it twice a week.  You’ll see your loaves consistently get better as you gradually develop a feel for them. 

Matters of the Pot and Pan (Temperature)

              We first started cooking our food to make it more easily digested and to enable it to be more shelf stable (cave stable?). Once we graduated from spit roasting to cooking our dinners in a metal or clay pot, we were able to prepare foodstuffs that were more liquid rather than just chunks of meat skewered and suspended over the fire.  I’m sure the first chefs quickly learned that viscous solutions also have a tendency to stick to their container and caramelize unless their proximity to the fire was attended to regularly.  So much time and energy has been spent on enabling us better control of our heat source through inventions of things like stoves and thermostats, why not take advantage of them?  I always end up telling less experienced line cooks; “the burner doesn’t just go on and off, there’s a whole lot in the middle”.

                A pot on the stove needs constant adjustment.  Sometimes this can be accomplished by merely stirring it or setting it off center of the heat source.  I typically offset a stock or reduction so that the bubbles rising on one side help to push the impurities over to the other more stagnant side giving me the chance to skim them away.  Things change as they cook too.  As soups and stews simmer away on a stove, they get thicker, thicker solutions hold more heat and will require you to routinely lower the temperature of your burner in order to maintain that lazy bubble you’re looking for. 

                Aggressive cooking techniques need aggressive heat.  Grilling, roasting, sautéing, and other dry heat cooking methods are all about evaporating moisture and getting it out of the way to allow browning to take effect.  Hence the sloped sides and large surface area of a sauté pan; its design allows water to escape quickly bettering the likelihood of you achieving the result of GBD (golden brown and delicious).  An attentive cook will listen to the pan and turn it down when the sizzling and popping sounds go from aggressive and evenly paced to violent and turbocharged.  Avoid using too much oil when cooking with gusto.  It has a tendency to burn and spatter or even catch fire.  Experiment with temperature next time you brown chicken breasts in a pan by changing the heat level applied to the pan for each breast, hotter each time.  Take note of how they change in color and appearance as you progress in temperature.   

Matters of the Pot and Pan (Surface Area)

               Much detriment can come from a poorly attended pot or pan in the form of dashed dinner dreams and limp vegetables intermingled with completely raw ones.  Paying attention to both the surface area of your food and that of your cooking vessel is paramount in a kitchen.

 

                Think about your favorite fast-paced cooking show (Chopped, Top Chef, Iron Chef), ever notice the cooks constantly giving their pots and pans a stir or a little shake?  This isn’t a nervous tick or showmanship, they are leveling everything off so that they have evenly cooked product while visually assessing what’s going on in the pan itself.  Vegetables in a pan can be quite fickle when it comes to being consistently tender and to counter act this we want to regularly rotate the layer of food that is in direct contact with the pan bottom.  By leveling out the ingredients in the pan with a shimmy, shake, or stir, we can avoid having that rogue undercooked carrot or potato that never made its way to the business portion of our pan.  None of this stirring and agitation will have the desired result if we have picked the wrong size pot to sweat our vegetables in. 

                Surface area comes into play when we look at our amount of foodstuffs versus the size of the pan that we are going to use.  If we are sautéing onions and desire a bit of color on them, then we will need med-high heat and a pan that is big enough to let the onions settle in a single layer or two.  As vegetables and proteins stack up in a pan, they suck heat from the metal and release water.  If the temperature of the pan drops too much due to being overloaded, we will be steaming our onions rather delivering them to the world of crispy brown perfection.  This is especially important whenever we are preparing vegetables and proteins with high water content (mushrooms, onions, potatoes, fish, etc.).

                       

In Good Taste (part two)

                I wanted to elaborate a little on the previous post about our sense of taste.  Since I’ve never read somebody’s own methods of tasting and analysis, I will tell you the exact process that I go through each time I evaluate something I am cooking.

                First, I look at context.  I ask myself: “self, what’s the overall theme of this dish?”.  Is it a hot summer dish?  Or a late fall dinner that should be comforting and filling?  I give myself parameters to fit into so that I know what the end result should be.  Next, I always use my eyes.  Is this something appealing looking or is it unappetizing?  If I am preparing this component of a dish in accordance with a specific ethnicity or culture, does it look like something I’ve seen in this style before?  Next, I smell long and deep.  Anything off?   I do this because it helps to prime my taste buds by way of the retro nasal passage at the back of my mouth.  It should immediately make me want to take the next step to tasting.  If the texture of my creation is pleasing, I immediately look for balance among the four main tastes (sour, sweet, salty, bitter ) and if I am looking for one of these to stand out, is it achieving that goal.  Should there be heat (spiciness) in this particular part of the dish?  If so, is it at the tip of the tongue and very sharp, or is it at the back of the throat with a long finish?  I look for layers of flavors that develop on my tongue as I roll the mixture around in my mouth and if any overly bitter compounds or flavor holes develop in the structure of the sensation.  Finally, is this component going to perform on the plate the way I want it to with the other ingredients?  Will it compliment, contrast, or enhance the other parts to make a superlative whole? 

                Now is the time to make adjustments conservatively and judiciously—you can always add, but you can never take out.  I am very careful while adjusting so as not to dull my palate.  If I taste something twenty times my senses are waxed over and not as accurate as they were during my first impression of the item.  I then have someone else taste it and hope that I have not wasted my time. 

                This is how I do it all day, every day, and every time. 

         

In Good Taste (part one)

               Our sense of taste is soaked in memories.  One whiff of Pot-pie or a taste of salty, crumbly, biscuit is all that is needed to transport us back to grandma’s kitchen.  Time, place, and our approximate age all come flooding back to us as our brains interpret the signatures of just a few wandering molecules.  If all of our mouths are this sensitive to taste, then why do Chef’s palates seem so capable of identifying particular flavors than that of the average cook?  How do they use this measuring device to its full potential?

                Practice. 

                Humans tongues all taste the same things the same 5 ways.  Every delicious morsel of food and drink is a combination of Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami (we’ll get to umami in another blog). Through constantly thinking about what you taste and the different layers of flavors you experience in each mouthful, evaluation becomes easier.  Try to break down what you taste in the chronological order that it hits your taste buds.  What flavors came first middle and last?  What seemed to be the dominant flavor?  Is there something that seems out of place?  You may not be able to identify what something is “missing” but realizing that things are out of balance is a huge step in the right direction to proper adjustment. 

The reason that a Chef’s palate is so finely tuned is because of the sheer volume and variety of foodstuffs that pass through his mouth each day.  Being able to taste so many different items and analyzing them each time is what builds up our “taste bank”.  Right now you can think about what garlic tastes like, you can almost feel it on your palate and you definitely know when something has too much of it.  Every flavor has its own signature; some subtle and some obvious.  With careful, analytical focus on each mouthful of food that you eat—taking into account sweet, sour, bitter, and salty—you’ll begin to see how flavors build and complement each other.

Game Face

               Sure, cooking is a fun way to use up a few hours especially if you can include a family member or friend.  Accommodating everyone’s particular needs in a menu you write, shopping for ingredients, the pressure of cooking for relatives (possibly a mother-in-law?) and you are surrounded by many hot and sharp things that are all waiting for you to slip up.  Fun right?  Only if you have properly applied your game face. 

                The game face is the result of much time spent planning and organizing a meal.  It’s envisioning yourself doing each step of the prep and cooking process before you physically reach that point.  Time spent visualizing every knife cut and flip of the sauté pan in advance will cement into your subconscious an attack plan.  This enables you to predict possible hang ups and upsets and make adjustments so that they can be avoided down the road.  Most professionals already have a habit of doing this for their everyday jobs. 

You’re going to make a mushroom tart?  Well then you’ll want to have the tart dough made at least hours ahead of time so that it can rest.  While it’s resting, think about the pans you’ll need, rolling pin to shape your tart to the proper size and thickness, a small cup of flour, and your tart filling made and cooling.  Assemble these all together in a kit and at the ready so that you have everything you need for culinary success.  If you’re cooking a large dinner, you may run out of oven space half way through prep time but by planning ahead you can make adjustments to the menu or process in order to account for the fact that you only have one oven and a limited number of racks.

I go to bed each night and drive to work each morning planning out my day so that when I get there, I’m already grabbing the pans and turning on the ovens for the first tasks that I want to accomplish.  A lot of coworkers tell me that I look “pissed off” while I am working.  I do have the brow creases to prove it.  In truth, I’m just very focused.  Usually not on the task at hand, but one that is 10 steps away.  My furrowed brow is my game face.  What’s yours?    

Grind and Grain

Salt and the use of it can sometimes be very intimidating to cooks.  Too much and your family or the reviewer from The Times will see a weakness in your abilities.  Too little and the dish that you so carefully concocted and coaxed to mouth-watering deliciousness will never reach its full potential.  How do we strike that perfect chord of sodium fortified bliss?  Practice.

                Salt is a magical thing that turns the satisfactory into the sublime.  Each crystal comes with the power to pull flavor out, accentuate it, and when used in the right amounts in the right way, will increase retained moisture and depth of flavor (brining, salt & sugar rubs, marinades, etc.).  Making sure to season during the cooking process and not just after is one of the most basic ways to take advantage of this valuable kitchen tool.  If we wait until the very end of our simmering to season, we will not have allowed the sodium to drag the flavors and odiferous compounds out of our carefully prepped ingredients.  These compounds need to have time to marry together to bring out their full potential and salt acts as a catalyst for this. 

                I have no idea what the results will be when I season with iodized salt out of a salt shaker.  Even when using finely ground salt out of hand, it is still terribly hard to both see and feel  the granules of salt before they rain down upon a chicken breast.  That’s why I suggest Kosher salt.  It makes no difference whether its Morton’s or Diamond Crystal (the red and white box), they both feel the same and that’s what is important.  Kosher salt crystals are much larger and thus more easily perceived by your senses of touch and sight.  Keep and dish of it next to your stove so that your fingers can get used to it and eventually become your measuring device.