Recently in Culinary Terms Category

I've mentioned the phrase "amuse bouche" before, but I guess it's been long enough for me to bring it up again. It's a simple "amusement for the mouth", and in this case it was the few last slices of hot Italian bread we had on hand, along with a small ramekin filled with Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva with some parm reggiano tossed in.

It was sort of a joke when I presented it to Julie, but it really did serve to wake our palettes up before dinner last night. The Tibvrtini oils we carry are absolutely magical all by themselves, but the parm gave it a really nice flavor. I just wish we would have had more bread left!

Note: Apparently there's no accent in amuse. Thanks, Gail!

(TPC's Standing Rib Roast with Salt Crust)

I'm traveling until the 17th, so here's something from the archives that I thought merited updating. It's been a year since I wrote it, and one thing I would add is how important salt is to cooking.

Salt increases the succulence of food by stimulating saliva production on the tongue and in your mouth. More saliva spreads the food you're eating over more taste buds, so more taste bud contact, more perception of flavor. This is why even sweet foods like fruit and dessert benefit from light salting. There are so many types of salt out there that the topic deserves its own post at some point, but whatever salt you use, get rid of the table salt! If you need iodine in your diet, fine, supplement it but at least upgrade your pantry to include kosher salt!

What's your favorite salt? I have some Hawaiian Sea Salt from a friend's back yard that just blows me away every time I use it on a great steak.

Here's my original post:

Or, denaturization of proteins during cooking. I heard the crickets when I mentioned this before, believe me, but I had an interesting conversation during an excellent brisket dinner I had over the weekend, so I thought I'd share it.

Brisket is an excellent example of a cut of meat that can easily be ruined by improper cooking. The cut, located at the breast area of the cow, is heavily exercized and contains a great deal of elastin and collegen, the two types of connective tissue found in meat. There is a third type, located only in the hide, so a cook never encounters it. Elastin is the tougher of the two, it is the tough thread-like sinew you find and is little affected by the cooking process, so proper fabrication and slicing before service are required to remove as much of it as possible.

The other type of connective tissue, collagen, can be mitigated by proper cooking. A piece of meat has pretty much done all the contracting it's going to do by the time it reaches around 170º. As this contraction occurs as collagen begins to denature, liquid is squeezed out that used to be trapped between the fibers that used to allow them to move freely. This is the time that fat is so important. Without fat entering to keep the collagen fibers seperated, it becomes more difficult for the fibers to break down and you get the dry, mealy, over-cooked pot roast most of us grew up with. (Except me- Mom makes an excellent pot roast! Whew!!)

Let's talk about temperature now. We know that the meat has shrunk and lost as much juice as it's going to by the time it reaches 170º. Is it time to eat? The answer is, sometimes. If you've been lucky enough to get a cut with a nice fat cap, and you've cooked it fat side up so the fat can melt through the collagen fibers, they may be denturing nicely and you're good to go. But if you're not so lucky, you're going to dry your brisket out at 170º while you're biding your time.

The solution? The breakdown of collagens happens most effeciently around 205º, just below boiling. By smoking or baking at 205º, you're going to expedite the secondary denaturization, and you're going to do it more quickly, so your brisket will actually retain more of the fat that's dripped down into the fibers and keep the afore-mentioned mealy texture from developing.

And slicing. Terribly important. Take the time to figure out exactly which way the grain is running, and slice across it. This helps cut whatever elastin is present and any collagen remaining into short enough pieces that you won't notice them.

Our host, Chad, was doing all this instinctively. Served with a great homemade BBQ sauce, some awesome mashed potatoes and a terrific selection of grilled veggies I almost felt guilty about not helping to cook. Almost.

(Photo: www.wayward.com , which looks like a nice B & B)

Love it or hate it?

Have you ever tried to make Hollandaise or Bearnaise?

Horror stories or tips to share? Me, I've got a few but I want to hear what you have to say.

I found a very good article at Slate on the re-emergence of sous vide, or slow cooking. It's such a good read that I won't belabor it here, other than to emphasize what Sara Dickerman said about the idea of cooking something at its finished temperature to eliminate the possibility of over-cooking. This is especially important when poaching fish or chicken.

Why hasn't sous vide cooking been more prominent until recently? Sara has some good points:

Initially, American chefs may have avoided sous vide because they had concerns about food safety, but I suspect a more significant reason for this delay was aesthetic. For a couple of decades now, we have been carrying on a romance with the fire-bitten flavors and textures produced by high-heat roasting, pan-searing, and grilling. Because we Americans are so closely associated with the bad aspects of the food industry—mushy white breads, microwaveable pap, skinless boneless chicken breasts—high-minded American chefs have felt more of a need to distance themselves from the food industry than Europeans. Burnished, crackly food was the obvious alternative. In the late '80s and '90s, restaurant menus were rife with crusts, be they horseradish, potato, cornmeal, or just the dark amber veneer of a well-seared piece of meat. Barbara Kafka, who had written the definitive microwave cookbook, wrote a very popular book on roasting that advocated daringly high oven temperatures. Photographs in magazines like Saveur further fetishized the crust, lingering on the caramelized pan juices, for example, pooled beneath a glorious roast. And we shouldn't overlook dentistry: Food scientist and texture specialist Malcolm Bourne also argues that as more Americans kept their teeth longer in life, they chose to eat more challenging foods: "A lot of [the] crunchier, tougher food on the marketplace has been a result of a revolution in the dental industry."

Good stuff. Check it out if you have the time.

My post on sushi a few weeks ago got a lot of great comments from those familiar with sushi and some who had never tried it, so I thought I would link to an interesting series of posts from Noriko Takiguchi on how to eat sushi along with some of sushi's great traditions. Check it out.

h/t Instapundit

For those who aren't familiar with the term, a Supreme sauce is an incredibly rich sauce traditionally based on chicken velouté that is terrific on roasted chicken or even pork. A bit time consuming but the WOW factor is huge if done properly. It's sort of a very upscale country gravy in a way.

The recipe is in the extended entry.

A dovetail joint is a strong, efficent way to join 2 pieces of wood. Dovetailing is also a restaurant term you may have never heard but probably do without knowing it. To dovetail your menu refers is to efficiently use of your ingredients in inventory to reduce (and ideally eliminate) waste.

In the molé dinner, I had used chicken thighs that were cooked but not eaten the day before, the chile pureé was made in bulk earlier to fully utilize the large bag of New Mexico chiles I got a great deal on, the dried oregano was once fresh home-grown, and I had bought the tortillas to make grilled quesadillas the day before.

Restaurants must do this to keep food costs down, and you should, too. Knowing how to dovetail will keep your grocery bills down, and challenge you to create new dishes with what you have, which will make you a better cook!

(Photo:Smoked Salmon wrapped around Chardonnay-marinated onions and English cucumber tied with chive with crème fraîche, chive oil and caviar. Googled from Wendy Brodie.com)

Okay, after getting a few emails, I'll expand on my amusé bouche reference in the Chirac post below.

Amusé Bouche literally translates to "Amusement of the Mouth". Presented to a guest usually as a gift from the chef, it is traditionally rarely more than a bite or two. They have become larger and more elaborate in some establishments over the years, which to me gets away from its true function, to awaken the palate before the first ordered dish comes from the kitchen, a sort of pre-appetizer appetizer.

I haven't seen this book, but the reviews seem very favorable and Rick Tramonto is a respected chef. This book is not for the faint of heart, though, not a peanut-butter stuffed celery stick or Vienna sausage anywhere to be found:

Photo: Holmen Meat Market

Dr. Biggles, proprietor of the terrific food blog MeatHenge, mentioned lardonaise yesterday and it got me thinking about larding and barding.

A lot of you might not know these terms, so here's my take on it. They both involve adding fat to prevent moisture loss and contribute flavor to a dish. The main difference is that larding involves adding fat to the inside of your dish and barding is outside. Larding can be done by creating pockets stuffed with your fat of choice, bacon, salt pork, etc. or just rolling it up inside to create a roulade.

Barding is wrapping with fat on the exterior. Again it can be strips of bacon, pancetta, ham, or sheets of cowl fat. What's cowl fat? That's another post...

While I'm thinking about keeping meat moist, let's talk about basting. You should never baste with a liquid with less fat than what you're basting or you'll actually dry your dish out, because the hot liquids (your basting liquid and the juices in your turkey, for example) will try to reach equilibrium, which translates to a dry bird.

Sound familiar? Now you know why.