Crème fraîche at home

Remember my ricotta experiment and my quest for farmer's cheese? Well, I have a confession to make. I cheated. I found a very decent farmer's cheese in a local Russian store and thus my quest for malolactic fermentation died a sad death. Except for one thing... I started making my own crème fraîche inspired by Diana at Off the Bone and got kind of addicted to it.

No, it's not real crème fraîche. For the real stuff you have to go to France. Real crème fraîche is what happens when unpasteurized cream matures on its own. It gets thicker and much more complex tasting (sweet, nutty, and a little tangy). Mock crème fraîche is what happens when you introduce lactic bacteria to pasteurized cream and let it ferment. It's not quite the same thing, but on this side of the Atlantic, it will do. You can buy crème fraîche in most upscale super markets (like Whole Foods), but I am not crazy about it. That stuff is as stiff as mascarpone and drizzling it over soup or dessert doesn't work. When you make it at home, you are in full control of thickness, so that's one reason I started doing it myself.

The second reason was practicality. My favorite brand of cream is High Lawn. It's inexpensive and has great flavor, but spoils extremely quickly. I used to view it as a drawback, but after I got onto my crème fraîche kick, I realized it's a blessing. Since this cream is only pasteurized (not ultra-pasteurized), you can ferment it. That's the same reason, it spoils fast. Once it's fermented, it can live in the fridge for a very long time. I am not sure how long exactly because my jar of crème fraîche disappears too quickly. But I've kept it as long as 3 weeks, and I am sure it could go even longer.

The good news is that unlike other fermenting activities that require washing lots of dishes (strainers, pots, bowls, cheesecloth, slotted spoons, and thermometers) and a good bit of active time, crème fraîche requires almost no work and no dishes.

1. Pour heavy cream (pasteurized is fine, but not ultra-pasteurized) into a clean glass jar. You want to start this process when your cream is still perfectly good. In other words, don't wait for it to sit in your fridge for a week and spoil and then try to ferment it.
2. Microwave until very warm, but not hot. If you want to use a thermometer, you want to get to 110-120F.
3. Add plain yogurt (full-fat if possible). I use Stony Field Farm's. The rough proportion is 1 cup cream to 2 Tbsp yogurt, but I never measure it. The exact ratio is not crucial as long as you are introducing some lactic bacteria and have way more cream than yogurt. Stir well and leave uncovered (or covered with cheesecloth) at room temperature until it thickens, 24-48 hours.
4. If your cream is not homogenized (the one I use isn't), you'll get a thin yellow fat cap on top. Do not stir it in or you'll get little chunks of solid fat in your cream. To test if your cream is done, shake the jar gently. If the fat cap doesn't jiggle (or only barely), it's worth a real test. Carefully remove and discard the fat cap and check the consistency of cream. How thick you want it is a personal preference. Keep in mind that it will thicken slightly after it's refrigerated. If it turns out that it's too thin, try to keep it in a warm place and continue fermenting it.
5. When the cream is done, cover and keep in the fridge for several weeks.

The tough part is getting the bacteria to grow and the cream to thicken. Here are some guiding principles and tips on that. Every ten degrees, bacteria growth doubles (up to 120F -- after that the heat might kill them). The warmer the better. Bacteria grow really well between 90-120F. As you can imagine that's a hard temperature to maintain especially in winter. My guess is that my kitchen is at about 65F right now. At that rate, the cream might spoil faster than it ferments. How will you know if it spoils? You'll know -- it will start to smell and taste absolutely awful, not tangy and pleasant, but disgusting.

Here is how I get it to ferment in about 24 hours in winter. I put the jar in a bowl of hot water and change the water whenever I remember. I also found that my oven keeps the heat extremely well. It will still be warm 4 hours after I turn it off. If yours is like that, you can pre-heat it to 200F, then turn it off, and put your cream into it.

If you start your creme fraiche today, you will have it ready for Christmas, and that's not a bad thing to have on hand over the holidays :)

At least Samantha thinks so.

Happy and Delicious Holidays to you, my dear readers!

Butternut squash with green beans

My blogging laziness in the past month is embarrassing. I do have an excuse -- I am swamped with Helen's Kitchen gift certificates. But still enough is enough. I have a ton of yummy pictures on my camera and a ton of recipes in my head. It's about time I get off my ass and posted something useful for the holidays.

Here is my new favorite side dish for the Tender at the Bone class: roasted butternut squash and sauteed green beans with cranberries and nuts. It has two unbeatable qualities: yumminess and flexibility. It tastes good hot, it taste good warm, it even tastes good cold. I bet you can't say that about mashed potatoes. In the Tender at the Bone class, I want my students to concentrated on the meat. Sure, the braises are forgiving, but the medium-rare dishes require a lot of attention. Who has time to worry about the side dish when the doneness of their steak is on the line. This veggie dish is a savior. It goes well with any meat or poultry and can happily sit for a few hours at room temperature while you fret over your meat.

I don't peel the squash. The skin crisps up beautifully during roasting and becomes delicious. If you have some picky guests, they can easily remove it at the time of eating, but I find that most people love it. The grassiness of the beans is such a wonderful contrast to the squash with its caramelized edges and creamy flesh. Once the beans are done, I toss them in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, Japanese style soy sauce, and honey. It coats them in a light glaze, and elevates the boring old green beans to a whole new level.

If you need to feed a crowd this holiday season, this dish might come in handy.

Serves 8

For the squash:
1 large butternut squash
1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper

For the green beans:
1 Lb snapped green beans (I prefer to use the thin "French" ones)
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp Japanese style soy sauce (or Teriyaki sauce)
1 Tbsp honey
1/2 cup chopped cashews or almonds
1/2 cup dries cranberries or cherries or golden raisins

Roast squash:

1. Preheat the oven to 425F and set a rack at the lowest position.
   
2. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and slice crosswise into 2/3 inch thick half circles.
3. Arrange the squash in a single layer on a large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides, drizzle with olive oil (enough to generously coat all squash slices), and rub all over with your hands. Arrange the squash slices so that the solid half circles are around the edges of the pan, and the thin slices (cut from the part of the squash that had seeds) are in the middle of the pan. This way they'll cook more evenly since the edges are hotter than the center of the pan.
4. Place the baking sheet in the oven (on the lowest rack) and roast until the bottom of the squash slices is golden brown (30-45 minutes). Don't move the squash around until you get some browning. When the bottom of the slices has a nice color, flip, and roast until the other side is golden brown (15-25 minutes longer).

Cook green beans:

1. Spread the green beans on a towel after washing to remove extra moisture. This way, they won't splatter quite as much.
2. Set a 12 inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and wait for it to heat up. Swirl the pan to coat it evenly with oil. Add the beans and cover the pan. Cook covered for 3-5 minutes depending on the thickness of green beans, uncovering the pan and stirring the beans with tongs every minute. The beans should be developing little brown patches. As soon as they are crisp tender (err on the side of too crisp), take them off the heat and uncover.
3. Mix vinegar, soy sauce, and honey in a little bowl and pour over the beans. Sprinkle with nuts and cranberries. Return beans to medium heat and cook tossing constantly until the liquid is syrupy, about 2 minutes. Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed.

Pour the beans into a serving dish and arrange the squash slices on top. Serve whenever convenient.

Sweet and Sour Rabbit

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with Mark DesLauriers from Artepicure and his wife Daniela. Mark is starting to teach cooking classes after retiring from a long career in the restaurant business. I was looking for chef instructors for Helen's Kitchen to help me meet the growing demand. It looked like a very promising collaboration, and Mark invited me to his place to show me his kitchen and his cooking.

You know you've found the right chef instructor when you go to his house for lunch and stay until 4:30pm. When I looked at my cell phone, I jumped. Hmm, maybe I should start wearing a watch. I had to make it to daycare by 5pm to get Samantha. How didn't I notice that four hours passed? But somehow I didn't. I haven't had this much food fun in ages. We talked about knives, stoves, butchers, fishmongers, restaurants, sauce thickeners, smoking temperatures of oils, food magazines, and teaching philosophy.

What did Mark cook for us? The first course was a salad with watermelon radish, cucumber, croutons, sun-flower seeds, and tomato vinaigrette. That vinaigrette is seriously addictive. Last week, I made it both for us and for my Sauce class. What a simple but versatile concept: you peel and seed a tomato, add vinegar (I used red and balsamic), olive oil, and buzz with an immersion blender. Shallots and dijon mustard make welcome additions too. I served it with a salad like Mark did; then enriched the leftover vinaigrette with creme fraiche, added some tarragon, and served it on seared tuna.

The main dish Mark made for our lunch was Sweet and Sour Rabbit with pasta. This braise was a happy marriage of polar opposites: briny olives and capers, sweet raisins and honey, and a strong kick of vinegar. After spending a couple of hours mingling in a pot, all the flavors rounded out and fused into a beautiful sauce -- bright and comforting at the same time.

If this was a normal lunch, I'd be too full for dessert. But this was a deliciously slow meal I haven't had since living in France, so by the time Mark placed in front of us plates of chocolate and ricotta filled crepes topped with poached pears, I couldn't resist.

The meal was made with thought and skill. Nothing showy, but perfectly executed and delicious. It made me want to go home and cook these dishes and infinite variations on their theme.

I asked Mark if he'd like to teach for Helen's Kitchen. To my delight, he said he would.

Here is my interpretation of Mark's Sweet and Sour Rabbit.

Serves 6-8

Notes: If you have a large dutch oven, this rabbit braise can be a one pot dish. You brown the rabbit in batches, remove it, make a sauce, and return the rabbit back to your pot. Cover and cook in the oven. If a large dutch oven is not available, you can cook the rabbit in a large skillet, remove it, make a sauce in the same skillet, and then bake everything in a large roasting pan.

If you are not sure how to cut up a rabbit, go to Savenor's (if you are in the Boston area) and get rabbit legs, or ask them to cut up a whole rabbit for you.

I prefer to buy olives with pits and pit them myself by smashing them with the flat side of the chef's knife. They have a cleaner flavor this way.

2 rabbits, cut into 8 pieces (or 8 rabbit legs)
flour for coating the rabbit (2-3 cups)
olive oil for browning the rabbit (about 1 cup)
2 onions, thinly sliced
2 celery stalks, small dice
2 carrots, small dice
4 Tbsp small salted capers, rinsed
1/2 cup sultanas (or other seedless raisins), plumped in water for 5 minutes
3/4 Lb large green olives, pitted, roughly chopped
1/2 cup honey
1 cup red wine vinegar
6 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 325F. Dry the rabbit thoroughly on paper towels and coat with flour on all sides, shaking off access. Heat enough oil in a large frying pan to make 1/4 inch layer. When hot, add the rabbit in batches without crowding and brown on all sides. Remove all the rabbit from the skillet into a large roasting pan and season with salt and pepper on all sides.
2. Add the onion, celery and carrot to the pan. Season with salt, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 10 minutes.
3. Add capers, raisins, and olives, and cook stirring for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the honey and vinegar. When the honey has dissolved, add stock and bring to a simmer.
5. Pour the onion mixture over the rabbit, cover tightly with foil and bake until the rabbit starts to fall off the bone, 1.5-2.5 hours. The dish is even better reheated the next day.

To cook or not to cook (roux vs. beurre manié)

The difference between roux and beurre manié has bothered me for years. Both consist of 1 part flour to 1 part butter. Both are used to thicken liquids. But roux is cooked in a pan for a few minutes over relatively low heat while whisking and beurre manié is mashed in a bowl with a fork until it forms a smooth paste (you need butter at room temperature for that).

Making roux is one of those culinary rites of passage, which I found strange because I thickened sauces happily for years with no roux. The first sauce I learned to thicken about 10 years ago was a cream sauce for poached fish from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It called for thickening with beurre manié, which was so incredibly easy, reliable, and delicious that I used that method whenever I needed a thickener. Eventually, I found out that beurre manié is supposed to be a lazy way of thickening. One should cook the flour and butter first to "cook out the flour taste." Even Julia herself said that in one of her shows.

There was a good discussion of beurre manié and roux on Michael Rhulman's blog, where no one seemed to agree on anything (these were mostly professional chefs, so I assumed they knew what they were talking about). Some people claimed that if roux is not made with clarified butter, it has less thickening power. Others claimed that sauces thickened with beurre manié would thin out after several minutes of simmering, particularly if you double dip when tasting since your saliva contains a starch digesting enzyme. Proteins, enzymes, catalysts, and other big "sciency" words were summoned to give more weight to the arguments that seems quite empty to me.

Cooks are funny people. They have this awe of "food science." If Alton Brown or Harold McGee said something with the word "protein" in it, it seals the deal. After all, science is always right. Well, that's not really science to me. That's just regurgitation of something someone said. Real science is all about setting up a proper experiment with good controls and that's what I decided to do to answer this thickening question once and for all.

I made 4 sauces:

• bechamel with roux
• bechamel with beurre manié
• velouté with roux
• velouté with beurre manié

The liquid in bechamel was whole milk. The liquid in velouté was chicken stock. Here are some parameters that I kept the same:

• same pot
• exactly the same amount of liquid, flour, butter (I didn't clarify it), and salt
• same simmering duration (3 minutes after combining hot liquid with flour/butter)

Well, I tell you what folks. I don't know about proteins and enzymes, but there was no discernible difference. Beurre manié thickened sauces didn't have any unpleasant flour taste. They were just as smooth and just as thick as roux thickened sauces. Out of curiosity, I continued to simmer them while intentionally double, triple, and even quadruple dipping my spoon to test the hypothesis that continued simmering or saliva can thin out beurre manié thickened sauces. At some point I wondered if I should just spit into the pot (don't worry, I wasn't going to serve these sauces to anyone ;). Well, no thining out happened. If anything, the sauces got thicker due to more water evaporation.

This sealed the deal! Beurre manié wins. I am a one pot kind of girl and roux requires a whole other pot, so that you can cook your flour/butter. Beurre manié requires just another little bowl and a fork, which can easily go into the dishwasher.

Vegetable Sauces

Taking a picture of a sauce without a protein is like taking a picture of lingerie without a woman. This roasted red pepper and smoked paprika sauce was actually served with seared bluefish. But at dinner time, the light was terrible, and there was no hope of taking a picture. The next morning, the light was great and there was still a bit of the sauce left, but by then all the bluefish was eaten. Luckily, this post is not about a fish. It's about a sauce. So the somewhat bare pictures seems almost appropriate.

I am in the middle of re-designing my sauce class. We do two pan sauces in that class (a red wine reduction for steak and a porcini sauce for chicken). Both are keepers. They are yummy and loaded with techniques that are easy, but not necessarily familiar to home cooks. We do a bechamel because it has many uses and is a good demo of how to work with a roux thickener. We do a vinaigrette because it's hard to live without it (unless you want to rely on store bought dressings and what fun would that be?!). The other two sauces I've been losing a lot of sleep over. Usually, it's a cilantro lime butter and a salsa verde (the Italian kind). While they are yummy and extremely versatile, I feel like I am not really teaching my students anything interesting with them. We are just executing recipes that any 10 year old is perfectly capable of following.

My criteria for choosing dishes we cook in class is their screw up potential. If not much can go wrong, I feel like it's a wasted opportunity. For this Saturday's sauce class, I am going to try something different. I'll try replacing cilantro lime butter and salsa verde with a pureed vegetable sauce to serve with our seafood dish.

Pureed vegetable sauces mostly appear in upscale restaurants that charge $25 and up per entree, but they are nothing more than good pureed vegetable soups served as sauces. In fact, I often do that at home when I have soup leftovers. Plop a piece of seared fish into some leftover asparagus soup and voila -- it's fine dining. Of course, these sauces are only as good as your soup making skills and there is a lot to learn when it comes to soups.

Instead of writing up a roasted red pepper sauce recipe, I'd like to write some general guidelines for creating vegetable puree sauces. This will free you up to improvise with whatever vegetables strike your fancy.

Choosing the vegetable
One way to choose a vegetable to use for sauce is to pay attention when you eat out. If you see a sauce you like, try recreating it at home. Another way is to check whether this kind of vegetable is commonly used for pureed soups (you can do that by googling). Here are some examples of vegetables that work well and produce beautifully smooth and rich purees:

• asparagus
• sweet peppers
• cauliflower
• celery root
• salsify
• parsnips
• butternut squash
• green peas
• carrots

Here are some examples of vegetables that wouldn't work because they don't puree well:

• swiss chard
• kale
• cabbage

Choosing the cooking method
At some point during this sauce making process your vegetable will be simmering in the flavorful liquid that you'll create, but some vegetables might benefit from being roasted first to enhance their flavor. I find that cauliflower and butternut squash come out very nicely when roasted first. Red peppers are great charred under an open flame until black and then peeled. That's what I did for my red pepper sauce. The easiest way to char a pepper is to cut off the flesh around the seeds into 4 flat pieces and put them under the broiler skin side up until they are black. Move to a bowl, cover, and let them steam for 20 minutes of so. They'll get softer and easier to peel just by rubbing with your hands. Once they are peeled and cut into medium dice, they are ready for simmer. Green vegetables, like asparagus and peas don't benefit from roasting and should be added to the simmering liquid raw to preserve their green color.

Start with the onion family
Like all vegetable soups, vegetable sauces need an onion to give them that wonderful sweet savory balance. My favorite onions to use are shallots. Leeks are also very nice paired with green vegetables. If you don't have either on hand, just use plain old yellow onions. Any onion is better than none. For 1 Lb of vegetable, you'll need roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup of finely diced shallot (or leek or onion) sweated in 1-2 Tbsp olive oil or butter. Sweating means that you cook the onion on very low heat stirring often until it's completely soft and translucent, but develops no color. At this point, you are ready to add your main vegetable and liquid.

What liquids to use and how much
First let's get out of the way what not to use. Don't use boxed stocks. They make mediocre soups and sauces. Believe it or not, water works extremely well. If you happen to have some home-made vegetable or blond chicken stock (made from raw, not roasted chicken), you can use it in any vegetable sauce. If you have some brown chicken stock (made from roasted chicken), you can use it with anything but green vegetables. You'll also need a splash of dry white wine (use a ratio of about 5 parts stock to 1 part wine). This will give your sauce the necessary acidity. But if no wine is on hand, you can adjust acidity in the end by adding lemon juice to taste. When cooking green vegetables, I like to add some lemon juice to the cooking liquid to help preserve color.

Now the question of how much total liquid to use. I find that it works best when the liquid just barely comes to the top of the vegetables. Keep in mind that it's always easier to thin out the sauce in the end than to thicken it, so don't get carried away with liquid.

Don't forget the salt. Season, taste, and adjust.

Aromatics
Here is where you can let your imagination take over. Any sauce can benefit from a bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme that you'll fish out before pureeing. There are also aromatics that pair particularly well with certain vegetables:

• asparagus and lemon zest
• salsify and orange zest
• sweet peppers and smoked paprika
• cauliflower and truffles (though it's best to add the truffle oil in the end rather than add it to the cooking liquid)
• celery root and vanilla bean (don's use the extract)
• carrots and ginger and/or oranges

How long to cook
Once your pot is assembled, simmer it gently until the vegetables are tender. Err on the overcooking side for root vegetables. Err on the undercooking side for green vegetables. But even those should not be crisp. They are lovely crisp when served as a side dish, but not in a soup or sauce. This can take as short as 5 minutes for green vegetables or as long as 25 minutes for root vegetables (maybe even longer if you chopped them rather large). Check the green ones often.

Pureeing, Straining, and Thickness Troubleshooting
You'll need a blender. An immersion type is my favorite since it makes the clean up easy. As tempting as it is to leave your sauce in the pot when using an immersion blender, I find that I get a smoother puree if I move it to a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup of some other tall container that fits the immersion blender snugly. Start on low speed until all the chunks are gone. Then puree on high speed for about 3 minutes unless your sauce is silky smooth before that. This might seem really long, but it will result in a much smoother sauce. Take a look at what you've got. It should look thicker than the sauce you were hoping to get because the straining process will thin it out.

If you are wondering if it might be smooth enough, stop wondering, and start straining. The texture difference between home-made soups and restaurant soups often just boils down to straining.

Set a fine mesh strainer over a bowl and pour the sauce into it. When using a fibrous vegetable (like asparagus, particularly white asparagus), it's helpful to let it sit in the strainer undisturbed for 5 minutes to shed excess liquid since it will be a lot thinner after straining. Pour the liquid that accumulates after 5 minutes into another bowl and reserve it for thinning out the sauce if necessary. Then force the sauce through a strainer by rubbing it with the back of the ladle in circular motion. Discard the fibers that didn't get through the sieve. Rinse out the sauce pot and return the strained sauce to it. If too thick to your liking, you can thin it out with reserved cooking liquid or more stock/water.

I know -- this does sound like a lot of work, but the good news is that you can make your sauce up to this stage a day in advance. Cool, cover, and refrigerate until ready to use. The only thing you'll have to do last minute is warm it up and enrich it with a little butter or cream.

Enrichment
When ready to serve, return the sauce to a gentle simmer. To enrich with cream, whisk it in and wait for the sauce to return to a simmer for about a minute. Make sure to use heavy cream (also sold as "heavy whipping cream," not half and half or light cream. But you are welcome to use as much or as little as you'd like. To enrich with butter, first take the sauce off heat. Then whisk in 1-2 Tbsp of butter per pound of vegetables. Since I only serve 1/4 - 1/3 cup of sauce per person, I make my sauces a lot richer than my soups.

Seasoning
Don't even think about pouring this sauce onto someone's plate without tasting it first. It might need more salt or a squirt of lemon. Taste and adjust until you are happy with it.

Phew -- you are done!

As far as protein/sauce pairing goes... Most of my vegetable sauces end up with seared and pan roasted seafood because making a pan sauce with the fond left over from searing seafood doesn't work (too fishy).