by Jeff Potter
Rosemary Mashed Potatoes
This simple mashed potato recipe uses the microwave for cooking the potatoes. If you’re in the anti-microwave category, consider this: cooking a potato—or any other starchy root vegetable—requires gelatinizing the starches in the vegetable. For this to occur, two things need to happen: the starch granules need to get hot enough to literally melt, and they need to be exposed to water so that the granules absorb and swell up, which causes the texture of the tissue to change. Luckily, the temperature at which most starches undergo the gelatinization process is below the boiling point of water, and there’s enough water naturally present in potatoes for this to happen without any intervention needed. Try popping a sweet potato in your microwave for a few minutes—fast, easy, and healthy!
Microwave until cooked, about six minutes:
3 to 4 medium (600g) red potatoes
After cooking, cut the potatoes into small pieces that can be mashed with the back of a fork. Add and mash together:
½ cup (120g) sour cream
⅓ cup (85g) milk
4 teaspoons (20g) butter
2 teaspoons (2g) finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
¼ teaspoon (1g) salt (2 large pinches)
¼ teaspoon (1g) ground pepper
Notes
For a tangy version, trying substituting plain yogurt for a portion of the sour cream.
Different types of potatoes have different amounts of starch. Varieties with high starch content (e.g., russets, the brown ones with rough skin) turn out lighter and fluffier when baked and are generally better for baked or mashed potatoes. Lower-starch varieties (red or yellow potatoes, typically smaller and smooth-skinned) hold their shape better and are better suited for applications in which you want the potato to stay intact, such as potato salad. Of course, there’s still a lot of room for personal preference. When it comes to mashed potatoes, I prefer a coarse texture to the creamy, perfectly smooth potatoes so often seen in movie scenes associated with Thanksgiving, so I tend to use red potatoes.
Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot’s Sweet Corn and Miso Soup
Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot write about their experiences with food on their blog (http://www.ideasinfood.com). A husband-and-wife team, they met while working at one of Boston’s premier restaurants, Clio, in 1997, and in recent years have run their own consulting business, educating chefs in new techniques and creative ideas.
How has having the blog changed your cooking?
It made us more meticulous about paying attention to what we were doing and recording recipes. People would constantly ask us questions, so we needed to have a good answer. Just throwing things in a pan and trying to explain that to someone else really didn’t work. Also, we get questions about a lot of different techniques, I think because we work with a lot of chefs. They’re more interested in how things work than they are with specific recipes.
Where does the inspiration for some of the more unusual approaches you blog about come from, such as using liquid nitrogen to freeze and shatter beets?
When you have stuff in your kitchen and you’re working with it, you just try. You try to figure out what you can do with it and what’s possible. With liquid nitrogen, back in science class they did the demonstration where they put the ball in the liquid nitrogen and then smashed it. So when you have it in your own kitchen, you try to break everything with it.
What advice would you give somebody who wants to learn to cook?
Really just to get in there and start cooking and not be afraid to fail. You probably learn more from failure than you do from success because when something goes right you don’t really think about how you did it or why it worked. But when something goes wrong and you have to fix it, then you learn a lot more about what’s happening.
Why do you think people have a fear of failure in the kitchen?
Because they have a fear of failure in life. Nobody wants to fail. Most people who are cooking at home and trying a new recipe are usually cooking for someone else. And if you screw up in the kitchen, it’s expensive—to ruin a whole thing of food and then you don’t have anything to eat? You have to have a sense of humor in the kitchen. You have to be able to laugh at yourself. You can always order a pizza.
Sweet Corn and Miso Soup
Cleaned squid
3 pounds (1360g) whole squid
Separate the heads and bodies of the squid. Rinse the bodies under cold water to clean the interior and exterior. Remove the cartilage piece from inside each squid body. When the bodies are clean, pat dry and reserve in the refrigerator. Rinse the squid heads under cold water to remove any gritty material. Lay each head on a cutting board with the tentacles extending to the left. Cut the eyes and interior beak off the righthand side of the head. Discard the beak and eyes. Reserve the tentacles in the refrigerator.
Calamari crackling
cup (145g) cleaned squid tentacles
cup (80g) cleaned squid bodies
1 teaspoon (5g) squid ink
2½ cups (260g) tapioca flour
6½ cups (1.5 liters) canola oil for frying
Salt
Purée the squid tentacles, bodies, and ink in a food processor until it forms a smooth paste. Add the tapioca flour and pulse the mixture to evenly combine the tapioca into the squid paste. Turn the machine on and purée the mixture to form a sticky dough. Divide the dough between two large vacuum bags and seal on high pressure.
Use a rolling pin to spread the dough to the inside edges of the bag so that a uniform thickness is achieved. The dough should be about ″ / 2 mm thick. Place both bags in a steamer large enough to hold them and gently steam the dough for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes, remove the bags and cut them open. Carefully pull the dough out of the bags and lay it on dehydrator trays.
Dehydrate the sheets for several hours until the dough is completely dry and brittle. The dough will take on a shiny matte appearance. When the dough is dry, remove it from the dehydrator and break the sheet into pieces roughly 1½″ / 4 cm wide and 3″ / 8 cm long. This recipe makes more calamari crackers than are needed for the dish. You can reserve the dried cracker base in its dry form in a zip-top bag for several weeks.
In a medium-sized pot, heat 6 cups (1.5 liters) of canola oil to 350°F / 177°C. Slide the crackers two at a time into the oil. The crackers will sink to the bottom of the oil and then begin to puff and expand. Fry the crackling until it is completely puffed and there are no dark spots of unexpanded cracker dough. Remove the puffed cracklings from the oil and drain on a paper-towel-lined tray. Sprinkle with salt while still hot from the fryer.
Calamari couscous
cups (725g) cleaned squid bodies
5 cloves (20g) fresh garlic
Use a microplane grater to zest the garlic. Place the zested garlic and the cleaned squid bodies in a food processor. Purée the mixture into a coarse paste. When the mixture takes on a creamy texture and is almost homogenous, stop processing.
Heat a large, nonstick pan on medium heat. When the pan is heated, add the squid mixture. Stir the squid paste in the pan and continue to cook. The mixture will begin to stick to the pan. Use a heatproof rubber spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan and keep the mixture from sticking.
Continue to cook and stir the mixture. The squid will begin to lose its creamy texture and begin to firm up and form small squid pieces, which will resemble cooked sausage. As the squid continues to cook, it will exude liquid. Continue to cook the squid, allowing the moisture to evaporate until the mixture is dry.
Remove from heat. Place the squid in a shallow pan sitting on an ice bath to cool it quickly. When the cooked squid is cold, place it a food processor. Pulse the food processor to chop the squid nuggets into fine granules resembling couscous. Reserve the calamari couscous in the refrigerator.
Broiled corn planks
8 ears of corn, with husks
Lay the corn out on a sheet tray and broil on high heat for five minutes on each side. The husks will blacken. Keep wat
ch over the corn to make sure that they do not catch on fire. Let the corn cool on top of the stove for 10 minutes.
Peel the husks and the silk from the corn. Cut each piece of corn in half. Stand each piece up vertically on the cut end and, using a sharp knife, slice the kernels away from the cobs. They will come away in large pieces and loose kernels. Set aside the 16 largest chunks.
Cut the large pieces of corn into planks ¾″ / 2 cm wide and 2″ / 5 cm long. The width may be adjusted so that the planks are three kernels wide. Place on a small plate or tray, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator. Reserve the trim with the rest of the corn kernels in a covered bowl in the refrigerator. Reserve the cobs for corn stock.
Corn stock
8 corncobs
½ cup (150g) white miso paste
~2 cups (250g) sliced onion
6½ cups (1.5 liters) water
Cut the top tip and bottom end off each corncob and discard. Cut each corncob in half. Combine the corncobs, miso, onion, and water in a 6-quart pressure cooker. Cook at high pressure for 25 minutes. Allow the pressure to dissipate naturally.
Alternatively, combine all ingredients in a heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook for one hour, skimming as needed. Remove from the heat, cover, and let steep for 30 minutes. Strain the finished stock through a fine mesh conical strainer. Chill and reserve until needed.
Prepare the corn soup:
5 cups (1150g) corn stock
~7 cups (975g) broiled corn
(200g) white miso paste
Combine the cold corn stock and miso in a bowl and whisk gently to blend. Add the broiled corn. Transfer batches of this mixture to the blender. Purée each batch until it is completely smooth. Strain the soup through a fine mesh conical strainer. Refrigerate the soup in a covered container until needed.
Sliced chives
1 cup (50g) chives
Slice the chives into very thin (1 mm) rounds. Reserve.
Assembly
Place the soup in a large pot and gently bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Place the corn planks in a sauté pan over low heat and spoon several spoonfuls of warm soup over the planks. Gently cook until the planks are heated through, flipping once to make sure the top and bottom are both hot. In a small pot, heat the calamari couscous. Stir occasionally to prevent the couscous from sticking. When the couscous is hot, fold in the sliced chives.
In each bowl, stack two of the corn planks at the nine o’clock position extending into the center of the bowl. Spoon two spoonfuls of the calamari couscous on the inside edge of the bowl at the five o’clock position. Pour the soup into the bowls, leaving the second half of the top corn plank exposed. Place a calamari crackling on the edge of the bowl and the corn planks so that the corn planks are partially exposed and the crackling rests between the edge of the bowl and the corn planks. Serve immediately.
310°F / 154°C: Maillard Reactions Become Noticeable
The Maillard reaction turns foods brown and generates mostly pleasant volatile aromatic compounds. You can thank Maillard reactions for the nice golden-brown color and rich aromas of a Thanksgiving turkey, Fourth of July hamburger, and Sunday brunch bacon. If you’re still not able to conjure up the tastes brought about by Maillard reactions, take two slices of white bread and toast them—one until just before it begins to turn brown, the second until it has a golden-brown color—and taste the difference.
The nutty, toasted, complex flavors generated by the Maillard reaction are created by the hundreds of compounds formed when amino acids and certain types of sugars combine and then break down. Named after the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in the 1910s, the Maillard reaction is specifically a reaction between amino acids (from proteins) and reducing sugars, which are sugars that form aldehydes or ketone-based organic compounds in an alkaline solution (which allows them to react with the amines). Glucose, the primary sugar in muscle tissue, is a reducing sugar; sucrose (common table sugar) is not.
Maillard reactions aren’t solely dependent on temperature. Besides temperature, there are a number of other variables that affect the reaction rate. More alkaline foods undergo Maillard reactions more easily. Egg whites, for example, can undergo Maillard reactions at the lower temperatures and higher pressure found in a pressure cooker. The amount of water and the types and availability of reactants in the food also determine the rate at which Maillard reactions will occur. It’s even possible for Maillard reactions to happen at room temperature, given sufficient time and reagents: self-tanning products work via the same chemical reaction!
All things considered, though, in culinary applications—cooking at moderately hot temperatures for short periods of time—the 310°F / 154°C temperature given here serves as a good marker of when Maillard reactions begin to occur at a noticeable rate, whether you’re looking through your oven door or sautéing on the stovetop.
Butterflied Chicken, Broiled and Roasted
You might be the type who prefers to let the butcher do the butchering, but it’s worth learning how to butterfly a chicken (this is also known as spatchcocking), even if you’re squeamish about raw meat. A butterflied chicken is easy to cook, and the crispy brown skin of a well-cooked chicken has a very satisfying flavor from the Maillard reactions. It’s economical, too, yielding four to six meals for not much money and a few minutes of surgery.
A chicken that’s been cleaned and gutted is topologically a cylinder. It’s basically a big, round piece of skin and fat (outer layer), meat (middle layer), and bone (inner layer). Cooking a whole bird intact is harder than a butterflied bird, because invariably that cylinder is going to get heated from different directions at different rates. That is, unless you have a rotisserie grill, which heats the outside uniformly, cooks it uniformly, and makes it uniformly yummy.
By snipping the spine out of the chicken, you transform that cylinder into a plane of chicken—skin on top, meat in the middle, bone on the bottom. And the topology of such a surface is well suited to heat coming from a single direction (i.e., broiling), meaning it’s much easier to cook to develop a nice, brown, crispy skin.
Prepare your working space. I do this in a roasting pan, because it’s going to get dirty anyway. Unwrap the chicken, removing the organ meats (discard or save for something else), and fetch a pair of heavy-duty kitchen scissors. The chicken should be dry; if it’s not, pat dry with paper towels.
Flip the bird around so that the neck flap is facing you. With the scissors, cut down to the right side of the spine (or left side, if you’re left-handed). You shouldn’t have to apply that much force. Make sure you’re not cutting the spine itself, just to the side of it.
Once you’ve made the first cut, flip the bird around again—it’s easier to cut on the outer side of the spine—and cut down the second side.
Once the spine is removed (trash it, or save it in the freezer for making stock), flip the bird over, skin side up, and using both hands—left hand on left breast, right hand on right breast—press down to break the sternum so that the chicken lies flat. Formally speaking, you should remove the keel bone as well, but it’s not necessary. (The keel bone is what connects the two halves of the butterflied chicken together.)
Now that you have a butterflied chicken, cooking it is straightforward. Because the skin is on one side and the bone on the other, you can use two different heat sources to cook the two sides to their correct level of doneness. That is, you can effectively cook the skin side until it’s brown from Maillard reactions, and then flip the bird over and finish cooking until a probe thermometer or manual inspection indicates that it is done.
Rub the outside of the butterflied chicken with olive oil and sprinkle it with salt. (The oil will prevent the skin from drying out while cooking.) Place the bird on top of a wire roasting tray in a roasting pan, skin side up. (The wire tray raises the bird up off the pan so that it doesn’t stew in the drippings that come out.) Tuck the wings up, over and under the br
easts so that they’re not exposed to the broiler.
Broil at medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until the skin develops a nice level of brownness. Keep a good 6″ / 15 cm between the bird and the heating element of your oven. If your broiler is particularly strong and parts of it begin to burn, you can create a "mini-heat shield" with aluminum foil.
Once the skin side has browned, flip the bird over (I use folded-over paper towels instead of tongs to avoid tearing the skin). Switch the oven to bake mode, at around 350°F / 177°C. Ideally, use a probe thermometer set to beep at 160°F / 71°C (carryover will take it up to 165°F / 74°C). If you don’t have a probe thermometer, check for doneness after around 25 minutes by cutting off one leg and checking that the juices run clear and the flesh looks cooked. If it’s not done, set the two halves back together and return it to the oven, checking periodically.
Notes
Some people like to brine their chickens. At the very least, it adds salt into the meat, changing the flavor. Try brining the chicken in a salt solution for half an hour or so (½ cup / 150g salt, 2 liters ice water—but really, you can just dump salt in water until it’s saturated). If you’re going to brine it for longer than an hour or so—longer times yield saltier chicken—use cold water (add ice!) and store it in the fridge to keep the chicken below 40°F / 4°C while it brines.
