I started my new job last week and celebrated by seriously overindulging--not in celebratory drinks, but in food. My new schedule is much more flexible and I went a little crazy taking advantage of all the food events around town. As with any bender, the details started to get a little hazy after a few days and things that seemed like a good idea at the time ended up being, well, somewhat less than satisfying.
It started on Wednesday at NGI. Class was Grain Practicum 2, or Things to Make with Cooked Grains So You're Not Always Serving a Big Pile of Cooked Grains--Plus Risotto. The main variations were cakes (baked, broiled or fried), stews and salads. Risotto isn't really a secondary cooking method, but more of an alternate method of cooking rice, and the school has developed a lovely method for making brown rice "risotto" by using a pressure cooker to blast through the bran. It was a bit of a minefield for me since many of the recipes called for shoyu, vinegar, onions, or beans (migraine triggers) or butter. I nibbled at the low-risk dishes, but made a critical error when I mistook the brown rice risotto for the vegan risotto my team had prepared. Rookie mistake.
Thursday was gray, rainy and miserable--perfect for an outing to Ellis Island and a charity dinner for Molly O'Neill's One Big Table and the New York Harbor Conservancy. The panel featured Ms. O'Neill, the legendary Calvin Trillin, Judge George Chew, Food Network Star Aarti Sequeria, and Chef Iliana de la Vega. My history lesson for the day was the impact that the 1965 Immigration Act had on America's melting pot. Once quotas were lifted, the influx of legal immigrants meant traditional cuisines could be served without catering to mainstream tastes. And so the quest for authenticity began--or as Molly O'Neill put it, from melting pot to tossed salad. The food was actually quite good, and plenty for me to enjoy: Kansas fried chicken, South Carolina pulled pork sliders, NY-Persian kebabs, Maine lobster rolls, Saigon-Biloxi shrimp, and New Orleans wood-fired oysters. Looking forward to exploring more recipes.
Friday (really?), well let's just say officially marked me as either a glutton for punishment of a punisher for gluttony. Friday was another book panel, this time in Brooklyn, for Primal Cuts, Marissa Guggiana's mash-note to the reviving art of butchery. The panel--Tom Mylan of the Meat Hook, Andrew Dorsey of Marlow & Daughters, Mike Yezzi of Flying Pigs Farms--spoke thoughtfully about the challenges in reviving a lost craft and the broader implications of our weakened food infrastructure on safety. I don't know if it was the seriousness of the subject or the hour or the weather, but although there was clear pride in their work, there didn't seem to be a lot of joy. Beleaguered, I would say. Anyway, the food was amazing in the way only pasture-raised meat can be: pork rillon, perfectly cooked steak, duck rillets, pork pate. And that's probably what got me. All meat, no veg, and a dangerous attraction to rillets and pates. I should really know better.
From there, well like I said, the details get foggy. Saturday class was seitan (all hail!). I'm glad to know this mystery ingredient better--wheat kneaded to a properly gluten-ous consistency and then rinsed of remaining starches--but I stayed well away from the marinated protein. It looked remarkably meaty. I might actually try a make-and-serve version one day.
Sunday was a class on the Healing Kitchen, at-home herbal remedies. I'll probably find lots of good info in my notes once my head is unstuffed enough to look at them.
Ugh, food hangover. Prescribing myself simple, home-cooked meals for at least a week and I'll try to pace myself from now on.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Fats for the Memories
More adventures in culinary arts. This week at NGI covered grains, beans and Basic Quality Ingredients-Fats.
The fats fascinated me. We drilled down to the nitty gritty of the chemical composition of fatty acids. Saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and the dreaded trans fatty acid. Sounds dry, but I was transported back to the college course that, had if I had known then what I known now, could have changed the course of my life. Instead, it took about 15 years to gestate and is one one the key reasons I find myself in cooking school today.
The year was 1992 and the class was Chemistry of Foods at Williams College. It was a gimme class--science for non-sciencey people. I had actually done well in math and science in high school, but had just burnt out and was indulging in a liberal arts bender. But this was something I could sink my teeth into: enriched nutrients come from a nozzle, fortified with iron means iron shavings (dip a magnet into your oatmeal and see for yourself), and transfats will kill you.
Now today we know that transfats lower good cholesterol, raise bad cholesterol, and generally wreak havoc on our delicate ecosystems. But back in ’92, it was still the awesomest of awesome additives. Fat without fat! Better living through chemistry! Well, our professor walked us through the composition of fats and fatty acids--hydrocarbon bonds, free-floating electrons, double carbon bonds--and how the bonds determine the shape of the molecule. It was the first time I had a glimpse into the alchemy of the chemical to the physical. Molecules move through our bodies through an elaborate lock-and-key system, and there was the problem.
The health miracle of transfats was created by the artificial partial hydrogenation of fatty acids that resulted in an unnatural kink in the shape of the molecule. The key will no longer fit, so eat all the fake fat you want. (Olestra, anyone?) Our professor had one simple argument, a countless number of environmental conditions led to our bodies’ intricate chemistries. Since almost no transfat had ever been found in nature, even if we know what an artificial substance won’t do, we have absolutely no idea what it will do.
And now we know. Thanks, professor.
The fats fascinated me. We drilled down to the nitty gritty of the chemical composition of fatty acids. Saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and the dreaded trans fatty acid. Sounds dry, but I was transported back to the college course that, had if I had known then what I known now, could have changed the course of my life. Instead, it took about 15 years to gestate and is one one the key reasons I find myself in cooking school today.
The year was 1992 and the class was Chemistry of Foods at Williams College. It was a gimme class--science for non-sciencey people. I had actually done well in math and science in high school, but had just burnt out and was indulging in a liberal arts bender. But this was something I could sink my teeth into: enriched nutrients come from a nozzle, fortified with iron means iron shavings (dip a magnet into your oatmeal and see for yourself), and transfats will kill you.
Now today we know that transfats lower good cholesterol, raise bad cholesterol, and generally wreak havoc on our delicate ecosystems. But back in ’92, it was still the awesomest of awesome additives. Fat without fat! Better living through chemistry! Well, our professor walked us through the composition of fats and fatty acids--hydrocarbon bonds, free-floating electrons, double carbon bonds--and how the bonds determine the shape of the molecule. It was the first time I had a glimpse into the alchemy of the chemical to the physical. Molecules move through our bodies through an elaborate lock-and-key system, and there was the problem.
The health miracle of transfats was created by the artificial partial hydrogenation of fatty acids that resulted in an unnatural kink in the shape of the molecule. The key will no longer fit, so eat all the fake fat you want. (Olestra, anyone?) Our professor had one simple argument, a countless number of environmental conditions led to our bodies’ intricate chemistries. Since almost no transfat had ever been found in nature, even if we know what an artificial substance won’t do, we have absolutely no idea what it will do.
And now we know. Thanks, professor.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
How to Cook: The Big Picture
I can't believe we're in our fifth week of cooking school (47 to go!). It's been a slew of bite-size bits of know-how with occasional flurries of cutting and cooking skills, but last night it all settled into The Big Picture...sort of.
Chef Barbara started class with an overview of heat techniques, a General Theory of Cookitivity for Dummies. There are 3 heat elements: Dry (air, metal or fats), Moist (add liquid), and Combo (sear dry then add liquid). Each element comes with its own hotly contested areas of linguistic relativity. What's the difference between baking and roasting? Same as the difference between pastries and parsnips--sweet vs. savory. Poaching and simmering? The degree to which it is not boiling. Braising and stewing? Is it more than a mouthful? Size, it turns out, does matter.
Then it came time for the hands-on portion of our evening, and we little cheflings knew we were graduating from kindergarten to first grade. As chef listed our ingredients and instructions, something in her voice left not doubt: You will be tested on this later.
Fortunately, I was again blessed with an awesome team: clicking, contributing, confabbing and generally each carrying our own weight. The biggest drawback was--as chef had forewarned--the actual cooking time of the food. Be it roast or bake, with 4 teams and 3 ovens (open, close, open, is it done yet?, close), it seemed the night would never end. Then in a whirlwind of activity, we were plated and ready to be judged.
Though there were plenty of learning opportunities left on the table, with roasted potatoes and carrots, butternut squash, red peppers, baba ghanoush, even extra pita duty for my team, we all agreed it was our best meal yet.
P.S. Migrainer disclosure? I skipped the baba ghanoush.
Chef Barbara started class with an overview of heat techniques, a General Theory of Cookitivity for Dummies. There are 3 heat elements: Dry (air, metal or fats), Moist (add liquid), and Combo (sear dry then add liquid). Each element comes with its own hotly contested areas of linguistic relativity. What's the difference between baking and roasting? Same as the difference between pastries and parsnips--sweet vs. savory. Poaching and simmering? The degree to which it is not boiling. Braising and stewing? Is it more than a mouthful? Size, it turns out, does matter.
Then it came time for the hands-on portion of our evening, and we little cheflings knew we were graduating from kindergarten to first grade. As chef listed our ingredients and instructions, something in her voice left not doubt: You will be tested on this later.
Fortunately, I was again blessed with an awesome team: clicking, contributing, confabbing and generally each carrying our own weight. The biggest drawback was--as chef had forewarned--the actual cooking time of the food. Be it roast or bake, with 4 teams and 3 ovens (open, close, open, is it done yet?, close), it seemed the night would never end. Then in a whirlwind of activity, we were plated and ready to be judged.
Though there were plenty of learning opportunities left on the table, with roasted potatoes and carrots, butternut squash, red peppers, baba ghanoush, even extra pita duty for my team, we all agreed it was our best meal yet.
P.S. Migrainer disclosure? I skipped the baba ghanoush.
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