Soup, salt, acid, heat

As the mornings gets crisp and the days get short, every single food publication in the world will be writing about soups.  Sometimes I wonder if we need yet another recipe for butternut squash soup, or parsnip soup, or cannellini bean soup.  Have we improved them in the last year, or even in the last 10?  I have no doubt that you'll be making some sort of soup in the near future and I'd like to equip you with something better than a recipe. I'd like to demistify the phrase that appears so often in soup recipes: "Season to taste." You see, those 3 little words make or break a soup. Get it right and any soup recipe you'll make this fall will be stunning.

By seasoning, I don't mean adding something from your spice drawer, like cumin or coriander, or those horrific dry herbs.  In fact, I suggest you head over to your spice drawer right now, pick up that lifeless dry parsley and basil and put them in the trash.  Good!  Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about real seasoning: salt, acid, and heat.

Salt

I'll start with salt because it's the most important and the most misunderstood.  I write about salt an awful lot.  Here is a one line summary of my salt views.  No table salt.  No fancy salt.  Use Diamond Crystal Kosher salt.  Don't use salt shakers.  Use your hands.  Taste constantly.  Another important thing to understand about salt is that it's not just how much that matters, it's when.  Salt brings out the flavor in the ingredients, so you need to use it throughout the entire cooking process.  When you are sweating out your aromatic vegetables (like onions, carrots, and celery), you need to add salt.  It helps them release their juice and brings out their flavor by helping expel the volatile molecules.  As you gradually start to build up your soup, add salt to every ingredient that goes in the pot.  I prefer to add my root vegetables before liquids.  I season them generously with salt and cook them covered for 10-15 minutes to concentrate their flavor.  

When the liquid goes in, bring it to a simmer before tasting.  This will help the salt from the vegetables get distributed and give you a better idea of where you stand.  Unless you are using boxed stock (not the best move, by the way), your soup should need a lot of salt.  Not pinches, but spoonfuls (assuming you are making 3+ quarts of soup).  You want to season your soup about 80% at this point.  What 80% means will become clear with cooking experience, particularly if you do the following seasoning exercise.  Separate a bit of soup in a bowl and taste.  Add salt a little pinch at a time, stir well, and taste after each addition.  Concentrate and try to remember what the soup tastes like.  Keep on going until you make the soup too salty.  Now remember what it was like before that final pinch of salt?  That was perfect seasoning.  It was as intense as the flavors could get without salt dominating.  You want to bring your soup to that level of salinity at the very end before serving.  This will brighten up the flavor as the salt releases new volatile molecules.

Acid

You have probably seen recipes use white wine in soups.  It's not because we want our soups to be boozy.  Almost all the alcohol evaporates by the time you finish cooking the soup.  The reason we use wine is for acidity. The acidity the soup gets from wine is soft, mellow, and round.  Since it's usually added in the beginning, it dulls by the time the soup is done.  Adding wine at the end does't work.  It gives the soup unpleasant alcoholic taste.  That's where vinegar, lemon, or lime juice come in.  They go in at the very end, and make all the flavors come into focus.  It's really amazing what a couple of teaspoons of balsamic vinegar can do to a soup.  I use it in hearty fall and winter soups.  Spring and summer soups made with tender green vegetables go better with a squeeze of fresh lemon or lime.

The presence of acidity influences how you experience salt.  You might need a bit more salt after the splash of vinegar or citrus.  Alternate between salt and acidity in the end until the soup comes into focus.  If you are worried about ruining the whole pot, practice on a small bowl first.


Heat

Piment d'Espellete is a fairly mild chili from Espelette region of France (on the Spanish boarder).  I learned about it during a couple of days I spent at Craigie on Main.  It's good on many things, but what it does to soups is miraculous.  I don't normally like black pepper in soups.  It seems out of place in liquids.  But a bit of chili might be just what your soup need.  I like to add it in the beginning along with my vegetables before the liquid goes in.  If you are averse to spicy foods, don't worry.  This gentle chili gives a soup a warm glow.  It makes it linger in your mouth after you swallow each spoon, like a wine with a long finish.

The question is where do you buy this chili.  I couldn't find it at any of the stores in the Boston area (including Penzy's spices), but it only took 1 click and $18.50 to buy it on amazon.  $18.50 for a 1 oz jar?!  Ok, don't panic yet.  Are you breathing?  Breath.  Good.  Think about it this way.  It's really no more expensive than buying fancy salts.  Salt might look cheaper per ounce, but you need way more salt than chili in a dish.  If you don't have it, use the chili powder of your choice in small amounts.

Taste.  Taste.  Taste.

Blendtec (after 3 weeks of use)

Kids, don't try this at home

Giving a woman a blender for her birthday can result in tears, someone sleeping on a couch, and even broken off engagements.  At least, that's what I was able to garner from Hollywood movies.  But in our family, a blender is not a symbol of outdated domesticity; it's a symbol of freedom.  A good blender means freedom to transform virtually any ingredient into perfect smoothness without the elbow grease of straining through a fine mesh, re-blending, and re-straining.  What can be sexier than that?

The question was not whether I wanted a blender or perfume for my birthday.  The question was Vitamix or Blendtec.  Every molecular gastronomy book I've read endorsed Vitamix.  Every professional chef I knew was happy using Vitamix.  Cook's Illustrated reported that Vitamix was indeed a super-blender and Blendtec choked on ice.  It took me months to decide that a mere blender was worth $400.  But I finally made my decision and asked Jason for a Vitamix.

How did I end up with a Blendtec after all that research?  I saw a demo of it at Costco.  It handled ice with no issues.  Raw kale was pureed smoothly enough that it masqueraded as mint in an ice-cream.  It seemed to do everything Vitamix was doing for $100 cheaper.  The only thing I found disturbing were the electronics and cycle buttons.  I was buying a blender, not a laptop.  From my experience, electronics in the kitchen don't last long.  Besides, who needs "soup," "ice-cream," and "smoothie" buttons?  Can't I just turn it on and adjust the speed?  The good news was that there were normal speed buttons, so I could just ignore the gimmicky cycles.  As far as that LCD screen going toast?  There was a 7 year warranty.  What was the harm in try it?  If I didn't like it, Costco would take it back; and if I did like it, we'd save $100.

After 3 weeks with Blendtec, someone would have to pry this machine out of my cold dead hands for me to part with it.  I love it and I have a confession to make.  Surprisingly, those gimmicky cycle buttons work better than my own speed adjustments.  My first test was a lentil soup.  Any blender can turn butternut squash into a smooth puree, but lentils posed a real challenge with their pesky little skins.  The soup button turned my lentil soup into a puree so smooth, I couldn't find even the tiniest specs of skin.  The parsley puree came out completely smooth with no straining required.  The plum "sorbet" I made with frozen peeled plums using the ice-cream cycle was a huge hit.  So that you don't get your hopes up about making real sorbet or ice-cream with a blender, let me explain.  The texture was like a thick slushy, not really like sorbet, but it was smooth, creamy, and cold.  To help it out in the smoothness department, I removed the skins from the plums before freezing them.  Since the friction of the blade heats up the food, it's good not to give it more than it can chew for cold preparations.  If I was making a plum syrup, I bet I could throw the skins right in.

Blackberries were my next challenge.  I dumped a pint of them into the blender with a bit of agave syrup to make a blackberry sauce.  The blackberry seeds got broken down into tiny pieces but were still noticeable and unpleasant.  After straining, most of the unpleasant grittiness got removed, but some bits were tiny enough to make it through a fine mesh sieve.  At this point the sauce wasn't gritty, but had a slightly muddy texture.  As long as the sauce was used as a garnish, this problem was not noticeable, but I wouldn't call it a perfect puree if I had a large spoonful of it.

The last test seemed a bit crazy, but since this blender should in theory be able to blend credit cards, I thought I'll give fish frames a shot.  I would normally strain them out when making a Provencal Soup de Poisson.  But in the interest of testing the blender and increasing our family's calcium consumption, I left them in.  Blendtec chopped them up into tiny bits making the soup very prickly.  That problem was solved relatively easily by straining through a fine mesh, but getting all those tiny pesky bones out of the strainer was not fun.  I don't think I'll be pureeing any more fish bones.

Any Vitamix owners out there?  How does Vitamix do with blackberries?  I doubt anyone out there is pureeing fish bones, but if you are, drop me a line and we'll start a fish head-to-tail eating club.

A few words about clean up.  Although it does take more space to dry Blendtec than my immersion blender, it doesn't take much more effort to clean it.  Just rinse, fill with 2 cups of water and a drop of soap and blend for 20 seconds or so.  Do that on low speed unless you'd like a soapy explosion on your counter.  Rinse and you are done.  Will I be getting rid of my immersion blender?  No way.  I still want it for tiny quantities of 1/2 cup or less, but for most applications, I am now using Blendtec.

So far so good.  The question is how will the electronics hold up.  I'll try to make follow up posts in 6-12 months to report how my Blendtec is doing.

Roasted Apple Sauce

If your children are as prolific apple pickers as ours, you are probably faced with a bag of apple so large it doesn't fit in the fridge (the best way to store apples, by the way).  The answer to this overabundance of apples is apple sauce, but not the kind you think. The words "apple sauce" usually conjure up images or baby food and school lunches.  It's so mild and bland that American pediatricians recommend giving to a kid who is recovering from a stomach bug.  I always found this strange.  Any old world doctor would recommend chicken stock, but I am guessing American doctors don't expect you to have real chicken stock on hand, but they have faith in you opening a jar of apple sauce.  You can of course make this kind of apple sauce from scratch instead of opening a jar of Mott's, but why bother.

Luckily, an extraordinary apple sauce does not take much more effort.  Brown your apples in the oven for 20 minutes before simmering them, and you'll be rewarded with a deep caramel specked sauce that's thick enough to stand a spoon in, and tasty enough to make 20 Lb of apples disappear in one week.  You'll think of apple orchards and tart Tatin, not baby food.

I make this sauce with Cortland apples, but any soft flesh tart apples will work.

Roasted Apple Sauce

3 Lb Cortland apples (or Rhode Island Greening, McIntosh, Gravenstein)
4 tsp olive oil


Preheat the oven to 450F and set a rack at the bottom of the oven.

Peel and core the apples.  Cut eat apple pole to pole into 6 pieces and spread on a rimmed baking sheet in a single layer.  For 3 Lb, you'll need a half sheet (13x18 inches).  Drizzle with olive oil and rub the apples all over so that they are coated with a thin film of oil.

Place on the bottom rack of the oven.  If you have a convection fan, turn the heat down to 400F and turn on the fan.  If not, keep the heat at 450F.  Roast the apples until golden brown, 15-20 minutes, checking after 10 minutes and rotating the baking sheet at that point.  Without convection, the tops might not brown, but don't worry about that.  As long as there are some brown surfaces, you'll get lots of good flavor.

Move the apples to a heavy saucepan (I use a dutch oven).  Cover and cook on the stove top on low until apples bubble up and fall apart, about 20 minutes.

Stir thoroughly, scraping any caramelized bits that stuck to the bottom of the pot and distributing them through the sauce.  Serve hot, warm, or cold. Will keep in the fridge for a week.

Tips on large batches:

Roast the first batch of apples while peeling, coring, and slicing the next 3 Lb batch.  When the first batch is roasted, move it to a big pot while roasting the next batch.  When all the batches are roasted, cook them together in the pot.

Serving suggestions:

This apple sauce is robust enough to stand up to a pork shop or duck.  But it's also great turned into a parfait.  To do that, warm up the apple sauce and alternate it in a glass with vanilla ice-cream.  Top with crumbled ginger snaps, or granola.

2012 Harvard Public Lecture Series on the Science of Food

Every fall, Harvard holds a public lecture series on the science of food and cooking.  Here is the schedule for 2012.  Luckily, all the lectures will be available on YouTube and iTunes, so if you can't make it to the actual lecture, you can watch it on video.  

Sakanaya in Allston

Want to know the number one rule of food blogging?  "If you don't have any thing nice to say, don't say anything at all."  Since my views on food are often controversial, I try to avoid reviewing anything in the Boston area like the plaque.  But when it comes to fish, I can't help it, particularly when it comes to raw fish.  A friend of mine told me about Sakanaya in Allston.  It's a Japanese fish market that carries varieties of fish rarely seen in the Boston fish markets.  How exciting is that?  I packed my camera and ice-packs and headed to Sakanaya.

As I was battling Boston traffic, I couldn't figure out what I felt more nervous about.  Suppose I loved it and wrote favorably about it.  Would that upset my standby fishmongers?  Suppose I wouldn't like it.  Would that upset Sakanaya and its cheerleaders on chowhound?   So, before anyone gets upset, let me just say that I am describing an experience of a single person on a single day.

Let me start with the good.  Sakanaya has a very friendly staff who knows a lot about fish.  One of the questions I ask when I sea fluke, mackerel, or other parasite prone fish sold for raw consumption is "Was it previously frozen?"  Freezing will reduce the risk of live parasites to almost zero.  But freezing sounds unappetizing to most consumers, so many stores like to dock the question.  H-Mart told me that their fish is so fresh it doesn't need freezing.  Hmm?  Chef's usually joke that if the worms are moving the fish is fresh, so that's not a good answer.  Kotobukiya (used to be in Porter Square, but now closed) told me that they freeze all their fish to kill bacteria.  Not a good answer either.  Freezing temporarily stops bacteria growth, but doesn't kill them.  No beating around the bush at Sakanaya.  Yoshi, the fishmonger, knew which species are parasite prone and need freezing.  He said that everything they carry was flash frozen.  They don't have to freeze tuna, he said, because tuna doesn't get the parasites harmful to humans.  But the day I came all the tuna they had was previously frozen too.

Indeed, the varieties Sakanaya carries are not easy to find at other stores.  Besides salmon, hamachi, branzino, and yellowfin tuna that I can get at other markets, there were needlefish, cobia, sweet shrimp (raw -- not the usual shrimp you get at sushi restaurants), and fatty big-eye tuna.

Cobia, Sweet Shrimp, Mackerel

Shiso leaves, needlefish, fatty tuna

Octopus, cooked shrimp, squid

Salmon, Tuna

Mackerel, branzino, sea urchin

The prices seemed on the high side at first.  But when you realize that you get relatively even blocks of fish that are easy to slice, they are not necessarily higher than what New Deal or Marden's would charge.  Most fish were around $30/Lb.  The only big splurge was fatty bie-eye tuna that was $60.  Their price for prepared nigiri puts it in perspective.  It's $1 per piece.  A pound of fish will easily give you 30 slices and by sushi standards, that's dirt cheap.  So, don't think $30/Lb of fish.  Think $1/slice sushi.

I tried both nigiri made in store and bought fish to make my own.  So, how was it?  Unfortunately, it was lackluster.  The fish tastes tired.  There was none of that glow or juiciness one gets from a perfect piece of fish.  Most fish had no flavor (including the fatty-tuna).  Eel tasted pasty and dry -- freezer damage?  Cobia was exceptionally tough, but not due to mishandling.  I've only had Cobia cooked before.  It's a very firm fish.  I was surprised to see it sold for sushi and wanted to try it.  Maybe it's just not my kind of fish.

Of course, it's possible that I caught them on an off day when they don't get new deliveries.  But if they are freezing the fish, why should it matter?  Besides, New Deal and Marden's get deliveries daily, so there is no bad day to shop.  The only thing that might differ day to day is the variety, but the quality is uniformly high.

I find that there is an aura of authenticity around Japanese markets selling fish for sushi.  But freshness is not that complicated.  If a market moves a lot of fish, the fish is fresher. I don't remember last time I set a foot into my usual fish markets and found myself to be the only customer.  Fish is constantly sold and replaced by other fish.  At Sakanaya I was the only one during 20-30 minutes I spent there.

If you are not sure of your butchering skills and want slicing to be easy, Sakanaya is worth a shot.  But if you want the freshest, tastiest fish in Boston, you should look elsewhere.