Chef at Home

Archive for November, 2009

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I have not grilled a fish in a long time. I believe the time gap in my fish grilling is due largely to the patience and skill required to grill well. Cooking meat on the grill is certainly not easy and still it has plenty of wiggle room for mistakes. Crustaceans are also a bit more forgiving above the lapping flames of a grill. Fish is fickle. It points out the cooks mistakes immediately and makes even the skilled question their abilities. Yesterday morning I was faced with the task of cooking breakfast. I figured a few grilled fish, some toast and homemade butter would do the trick. As I readied the grill and looked at the fish I traveled down memory lane. I paid closer attention to how clean the grill was. I lightly brushed the fish with olive oil to prevent the inevitable sticking of skin. I adjusted the heat. I placed the fish gingerly on the grill, listened to the sizzle and walked away. Fish needs time to cook and any movement prior to the right time leaves flesh or at least good skin on the grill and serves the cook up a hefty slice of humble pie. 

I faired pretty well my first time back in who knows how many years. What I do know is that cooking is about ingredients as well as the steps we take to prepare them. Sometimes a bit of sticking sparks solutions into more efficient, functional and better ways to prepare what is at hand.

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The High Line is a park, is nerdy, is hip, is a railroad bed, is a new perspective of lower Manhattan, and the Hudson River too, is art, is life, is the sky above and the pavement below, all a bustle, is quiet, is stone, is plants, is birds and crickets too, is grasses, is pebbles, is design, is random, is history, is New York City, is a gallery, is like nothing I have ever seen before, is radical, is majestic, is the work of thousands of regular people, and special ones too, is open to the public, is a once-in-a-generation piece, as my friend Maury Rubin said recently.

If you live in NY or anywhere near NYC and you have not been to the High Line yet, you have no excuse worth breathing life into. Just go. And if you have New York City on your future plans, fit this beautiful space in.

If you're so jaded to think you've seen and done it all already, go somewhere else and leave those of us crushed out on the High Line alone to enjoy it with each other.

The High Line is my new favorite person, place & thing. I go in the rain and sun and in cool and on warmer days.

I went last week and took too many photos. It was rainy, very cold, and almost completely empty.

There are four sets on flickr that, especially if you go in order, will give you a very close idea of what it feels like to look ahead, side-to-side and all around the High Line…

one, 2, THREE &  f o u r.

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In my quest for a first cut blade chuck roast I came across some beautiful lamb shoulder chops. These chops were in fact the cut of meat I was looking for, just from the wrong animal. The individual pockets of meat, divided by connective tissue, called out and I took pause in my need to procure the chuck roast. Instead we were treated to a delicious cut of meat which I ordinarily would have passed over. A brief bath in feta brine and a pita crust did not hurt the cause.

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Why not?

We hydrated dried pasta shells in an intense lobster stock for four hours and then cooked them in a lobster bisque.

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There are days when nothing goes right. Nothing, it speaks of emptiness of misfortune of times to avoid. And still nothing can be wonderful. When nothing goes wrong everything goes right.

Nothing, like everything is all about context and application. The key is getting everything out of nothing. Turn ideas and approaches on themselves and see something different. These observations may provide insight and they may waste time. It all depends on what angle you are looking from.

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What is everything? It’s an interesting question. Funny since we often talk about giving everything we have. An everything pizza does not contain everything nor does the everything bagel. Sometimes the term means whatever is necessary to achieve an ideal and bountiful balance. A burger on a bun is not an everything burger. It is what it says it is. A burger with bacon, guacamole, cheddar, pickled jalapenos, lettuce, tomato, onions and smoked ketchup for the fries may well fit the bill as an everything burger. (Could we really fit anything else on it.) In any case, the term everything is often as diluted as it is all encompassing.

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An issue we have with creamed spinach is the inevitable water weeping out of the spinach into the cream component and creating a mess. Traditional creamed spinach is made with bechamel, relying on the hydrocolloid flour, to keep everything together. We borrowed from tradition and created an excessive gel with milk and gellan, our interpretation of bechamel. We then vacuum sealed spinach and blanched it. When the spinach was cooked and cooled we pureed it with the bouncy milk gel. As the puree came together we added some cayenne, salt and nutmeg. The end result is a silken puree of creamed spinach which shows no signs of syneresis. The puree can be spread thin and frozen to drape over presentations. It may also be simply reheated and served with pita points as a decadent spinach dip. When dried this spinach becomes wafer thin and crispy, the essence of creamed spinach. With all of these options at hand, our main goal was to make an intense creamed spinach filling for our preserved lemon pasta. The results show promise for many more extrapolations.

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