Vocabulary Lesson #3

Today's discussion covers one notion that is both applicable in the home and in the restaurant, and the other is used mostly in restaurants, but can be used in a home setting.

The first term I've used many times already in this forum: "nice", as in "that would make it nice," or "we're trying to make nice food from our meager offerings in the fridge."

This is actually a mostly specific word about the quality of the food and it's relative proximity to the fine cuisine of the fanciest restaurants. People in New York understand fine and nice, but they have a more developed sense of snobby eateries and food culture. It doesn't all have to be duck confit croquettes (which, in reality, would probably be considered going too far) to be fine and nice, something I learned at the most serious restaurant I worked in Manhattan, you can do regular things, season things, local things in a style that's nice.

That's the basic premise of this entire sight, really, to make nice (fine cuisine) food using what's on hand. Using brown sugar, soy sauce, and nicely cut mirepoix you can make a nice Asian flavored stir fry. This may not be a dish you could serve at Grammercy or Savoy, but if you made a ball shape out of rice and spooned the mix nicely over the top on a large record-sized China plate, you could pull it off. Mostly. Like art, sometimes it's in the attitude. That's the idea anyway.

Peeling carrots, potatoes, and asparagus is nice. Even and uniform dicing of vegetables is nice. Keeping similar sized objects throughout a dish is nice. (Don't get me started on mashed potatoes versus potato puree.)

In restaurants, well, fine dining kitchens anyway, nice is the adjective thrown around angrily (where lacking) or proudly (in the affirmative) when the food is being inspected on all levels.

The next topic is something we used to say with frequent regularity: "easy money".

It typically is used to describe a large pending order that will be easy to accomplish and therefore, can be considered logically, easy money. As in, "We've got this big order tomorrow, but it's all spaghetti and Caesar Salad, so it's easy money."

This came from the $10 million a year corporate experience, as a sliver of that business is the takeout.

We started using it more regularly, but only in similar settings, like when there was something that had to be done and if it were simple in execution, however long winded that simplicity may be, it could be called easy money.

In the home, I've begun to call certain dishes easy money, dishes that are simple to make and can be a kind of home-nice.

More than in food, "easy money" can be applied to many different things, and I'm going to attempt to bring it into more common usage in other industries.

Local Agricultural Economics

While living in Brooklyn we were blessed with New York's collective heightened sense of food awareness, basically the desire to know where our food came from, how it was processed, and how it was brought to our markets. Our neighborhood, while on the lower level of the socio-economic scale, didn't really have the immediate access of a better heeled one, but if you knew where to go, and on what day, you had the luxury to get answers to any and all of those question.

Living where we do now, in Southern California, doesn't mean that people care less or want to know those things less (but it is kinda that way), it's just hasn't yet reached the overwhelming cultural awareness levels that it has back east. 

I think one reason for that is a pair of phenomena happening: the first is that you have New York, the most urban environment in this country, having long ago abandoned farming meant having to basically import food for long enough to start to ask, "How can we make this a better situation for us, the farmer, and then as a consequence, the environment?"  Seasonal, sustainable, and local were the three ideas that capture the imagination and are the final results of that query.

Out here, the second similar phenomena is that we're so close to farming sources that many people lose track of the fact that the vast majority of our food, while grown within a few hundred miles, is under the yolk of the enormous agri-business conglomerates, entities that are having a very specific effect on the environment, one that is demonstrably different that sustainable and organic. There are enough people out here, though, to support CSAs, which is a good sign. 

We also have farmer's markets, and while they may pale in comparison to Union Square's farmer's market, that comparison might not be fair: you might have to go to London or Amsterdam or Marrakesh to find a more lively farmer's market than Saturdays at Union Square.

The CSA that Chef Gonzo and the missus use is Farm Fresh to You, a company located in California that utilizes different farms around the state, ensuring that their customers ranging all over can get seasonal produce from relatively close by, can know the food is grown with their interests at heart, and can feel good about to whom they give their money.

Our produce is delivered Friday morning. Right now we get the smallest box, and while there are lots of choices on box-combos, just take a look at a typical week's contents:

Not bad. Our closest farmers market is held on Fridays, but it's a little like the Wednesday Union Square market: a different crown of both vendors and customers. The real major market in our vicinity (by which I mean any place we don't need to drive to) is on Sunday's, and is a bit further afield, down by our Marina.

I make a point in this blog to discuss food items that are what I deem Mr. Eames considers Gonzo: made from scratch from random things in your cupboards and still attains a level of fineness. I try to come up with things that I make from a simple jumbling of ingredients, but really the idea is to give you as a reader enough resources to use your own material in a way consistent with our idea of Gonzo Cuisine.

I do put a certain emphasis on non-negotiables, like a nice Kosher salt and the specifics for when to use Extra Virgin (and only Extra Virgin) olive oil and when to use regular vegetable oil.

Giving readers the tools of knowledge in the kitchen is what the heart of this blog is about, but, I'm also interested in helping readers learn how to use their purchasing power as a tool against the destructive status quo. It's not politics, it's just good for everybody: you, the farmers, the environment.

Nobody expects anybody to live off of farm food solely, unless you live in Siberia, or on a very varied farm (I'm looking at you in Honduras), but just little actions in everyday life do add up.

Bronx Sofrito

"Soffrito" is the Italian word for mirepoix. "Sofrito", with the lone 'f', is a Spanish thing that has finely diced mirepoix and finely diced tomato and is simmered in oil for a while until it is soft and can be used as a flavoring agent, similar to mirepoix.

In my usage, Sofrito is the name of a dish that has also been called "Dominican Risotto", even though it's only like risotto in that they're both rice dishes. Sofrito is the name that a friend called the dish, and has stuck with me to this day,and I added 'Bronx' to give a shout out to the friend who I credit with calling it Sofrito in the first place.

The basic idea is a baked chicken and rice dish. It's quite easy, as long as you have patience and are comfortable in a kitchen. "Quite easy" doesn't mean that there are only a few steps, as I'll show with the pictures, but this dish doesn't need to many objects, takes only rudimentary steps, can be made to make a large amount, and will impress anyone who will be eating.

This dish can be made a few different ways...I've made it using only my stock pot, but this time, having a few different tools/toys at my disposal, I used them instead. You can use water or stock, but stock will give the flavor more richness.

In a nutshell: using your biggest pot brown both sides of the chicken pieces and remove them; then add the mirepoix to the oil used for browning and saute until soft; then add the rice and toast for about a minute or two; then add the water/stock and other embellishments (Bronx Sofrito calls for green olives and canned tomato pieces), bring to a boil, replace the chicken and cover; put in the oven (preheat to 350) until done, between 20 and 60 minutes.

That's the nutshell summary. Here's a little photographic progression, with explanations.

This first picture is the start for me, early in the day. I decided, since I had mirepoix and chicken bones, that instead of regular chicken stock, I was going to make brown stock, which is when you roast your bones and vegetables long enough to nearly burn them. Then you put them into your stock pot and make stock. This adds a wonderful roasted flavor for all dishes to which it's added. Here are my bones and mirepoix roasting away.

Here's  my misen place for the dish: two cups of white rice; oil; a bowl with a diced onion; a bowl of diced carrots, celery and garlic; a bowl with quartered green olives; white wine; and, of course, salt and pepper. My tomatoes were still in the cupboard. Set the oven to 350.

For me with this evening's dish, I was using chicken leg quarters: thighs and drumsticks. Here you can see them prepped out and ready to go: seasoned (salted and peppered).

Browning them means to fry them in hot oil on one side until it gets good color...

...and can be turned over to get the other side...

...until all pieces are seared. It's not important to cook them all the way! If you try to cook the chicken through, or anything that all you need to do is sear, you'll burn the outside. Searing is what you want to do to lock in the flavors. Here are the seared chicken thighs and drumsticks.

Into the searing oil first put the onion. It will help deglaze the pan and turn the oil into a mix of flavor and liquid.

Next, add the rest of the mirepoix: the carrots, celery and garlic. The onion almost always goes in first. I find that onion does its important work by itself, and the carrots and celery, when diced for nice mirepoix, are better served by going in after the onion is halfway done.

Then the rice goes in. Let it toast for a minute or two. After that I added the tomato and olive, folded them in, and the added about a half cup of the white wine. This, like any alcohol, enhances the flavor. By the time the brown stock is added, all the alcohol from the wine has been evaporated, and the aroma is delicious.

Since I have new gear, I transferred everything to that (now cleaned) casserole dish I used to roast the bones. The rice will feel like a thing between gravel and sand in the stock--don't worry, that's how it should be.

Put the chicken on top, cover it (with a lid if you have it), and put it into a pre-heated 350 degree oven.

The time it takes to finish will really depend on how much rice you have chosen to use. Two cups of rice and four cups of stock will give you plenty of food...well, plenty for two people, maybe just right for four.

Usually I put up a recipe here, but I'm assuming the photos explain it well enough. Hoping anyway.

Vocabulary Lesson #2

For the next vocabulary lesson I've decided to clarify two concepts less likely to be used at home, but still good knowledge to have. Today we're talking about "running the line" (or "running the expo") and the verb phrase "sell it".

To "run the line" or "expo", which itself is an abbreviation and changing of the verb "expedite" to a noun, is to organize the food that is being put into the "window" into the specific orders and tables. The window is the structure that accumulates food and separates the cooking area and the line cooks from the area where the food is taken to tables.

Being an expo can be extraordinarily hard work. Sometimes you'll need a few extra hands, and during those times you'll definitely need a posse of well-trained food-runners to make sure the entrees don't get cold waiting. "Running the line" is the phrase I'll use from time to time to explain the background of why something is known as this or that, as sometimes the view from someone running the line is from where certain things derive their names.

The next term is another verb phrase and is also less likely to be used in the home, but in future anecdotes it will help to understand it. It is "sell it". When a line cook instructs the runner of the line that the food is finally done working hard, and can start being sent to the table, they shout, "Sell it!" Selling it means that even if the entree is still in the pan, it is close enough to being done that you can start sending the other entrees out to the table.

Like "working hard" is a promise, "sell it" is another promise, but just past working hard, into the realm of "now I really mean it, this is done, you can start sending it out".

Since home cooking meals don't really have the same time crunch that you get in the restaurant, selling it is a little out of place, as is running the line, since obviously the purpose and setups are different.

Chef Gonzo's Lunch

The other day I made myself a quick lunch that was tasty and used the random things I had floating around my kitchen. This was true Gonzo Cuisine.

I cooked a tiny bit of rice and put it in the bottom. I put a little cheese on top and let it melt. Then I found the core remnants of some farm-fresh green lettuce, sliced it fine, and sauteed it in a tiny splash of vegetable oil that is shimmering hot. I put that on top of the cheese. The last bit was our last egg, poached in water and a splash of vinegar (the vinegar keeps the whites from detaching), then dusted with salt and pepper.

From the previous post: I used my slotted spoon to fish the egg out of the poaching water; I used my knife to slice the lettuce; I used my kosher salt and fresh ground pepper on the egg (and rice and lettuce); and I used some vegetable oil to saute the lettuce.

Some Bare Essentials

Here's a picture of some bare kitchen essentials, some basic necessities to any busy working kitchen. These essentials were, for me, assembled over time from working in busy, serious kitchens.

In the upper left corner you may catch a glimpse of my old bain marie full of tools accrued. Each one of those has a purpose, but I've grown accustomed to using my other main tools in their place. Look at what I've assembled here: a knife, a spoon, a pepper mill, a pour bottle of extra virgin olive oil, and my working supply of salt.

My knife is a Shun chef's knife. I like to say it's the cheapest of the expensive Japanese knives. I would never tell someone they should buy a Shun, or whatever kind of knife. That's really a decision for the person to make, and that decision is just a reflection of the relationship that person has with the knife they get. When you work professionally in a kitchen, your knife is an extension of your being, and while it may matter at some places what kind of knife you wield, the main thing is that you be comfortable using it all day. I held that Shun every day until I worked at a place where you didn't have to bring your own gear. All the cool (fake) wavy tiger marks have work off. The steel is double edged (sharp on both sides of the edge), rare for Japanese knives, and it holds its edge longer than most German steel.

My spoon is slotted (it has holes) and the 'bowl' portion is as large as those spoons you'll see in any greasy spoon or Chinese restaurant, but the handle is small like a regular spoon. I worked at a place that didn't let you use tongs--only spoons--and while I have a matching non-slotted spoon, I use this far more often. Everybody at that job had the exact same spoon, and we all carved our initials into the back of the handle. There was one store on 31st that had them, and they made a bundle off us. It was not an inexpensive spoon. I would never tell someone to buy a specific type of spoon, and in many cases tongs will be just as good, but you'll need a trusty tool to just use as a hand extension that isn't sharp.

My pepper mill is the result of that same job I had that made me get my nice spoons. It's a Peugeot, and when you get it in your hands you can see why it's the price it is. When you use it almost as much as your spoon, and still less than your  knife, you want something quality made. In any case, fresh ground pepper is superior to the alternative.

A variety of oils should be at hand; I'd say at least two kinds, a vegetable and some extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin is the only way to go. I worked with a caterer once who used olive oil pomace. His wife would come in and say, "Just put some of that olive oil on it," to make it taste better I guess she thought. Pomace oil was just recently made edible by the addition of some chemical esters. Olives are pressed and the first oil that comes off of it is extra virgin. After all the subsequent pressings, the pits and debris are collected, mixed with solvent that separates the remaining flesh, and pressed a last time. This oil is called pomace, or pomace oil, and was mostly used for industrial gearing and piping. It's only recently that it has been made edible, but it doesn't taste very good.

I keep my salt in an easily moved and easily refillable container, specifically a tiny jam jar. I use Diamond Crystal kosher salt. I would suggest using a similar setup, a refillable container that easy to move around. I would definitely recommend Diamond Crystal kosher if it's available, but other kosher salt would be sufficient. Kosher salt is one of the few non-negotiable in a nice kitchen, especially one like my Gonzo kitchen.

Vocabulary Lesson #1

I'll be using some terms that are born during a life spent in professional kitchens in this blog. These terms can have applicable meanings to home cooking, and in a series of posts about "Vocabulary", I'll discuss what those meanings and home applications are.

Sometimes, like today, the vocabulary units will be phrases. Other times they'll be words.

The phrases today will be "in the weeds" and "working hard".

1) "in the weeds": swamped with work; needing, but possibly not willing to ask for, help.

This happens more often in the restaurant setting, but can happen in the home setting. This doesn't only happen to cooks. Being "weeded out" (a variation) can happen to chef that's running the expo (a phrase that itself will appear in a later post), and it can happen to servers and bartenders alike.

Being in the weeds, I imagine as a phrase, has an origin in the idea that you're off in the wilderness, alone, and overwhelmed. It is a way of life that anybody having ever worked in the industry has experienced at least a few times. If not, that restaurant isn't busy enough.

In the home setting it can occur when you have too many projects about to be done at once, probably revolving around a holiday season when help is scarce or less than actually helpful.

2) "working hard": two connected definitions. The first is a variation on 'working'.

'Working', in the restaurant industry is what you tell your boss who's asking for something now. "Working!" is what you yell out to appease the chef. It's a promise that the needed dish is very close to being done, when it may not have yet been started. That happens. That also gives you agita when you're the one running the line and the guys tell you "Thirty seconds," and you see them scrambling with the pan.

When that person running the line comes back to you in two to three minutes and demands that dish and tells you they needed it five minutes ago, you shout "It's working hard!" That's the essence of the first definition of 'working hard': it's an even more strenuous promise that whatever it is will be ready very soon. Seriously. I mean it. It's in my hand.

The second connected definition I used in the post yesterday, and derives from the fevered pitch to get a dish done. Usually you don't want to let things boil like crazy unless you're trying to boil all the scuzz off of beef or chicken bones. I've worked placed where a giant kettle would boil--and then discard--the water from a set of bones three times before it would actually go to make stock. Fill the kettle up, boil it like crazy for a five minutes, then toss it. Do it again. And one more time. Now fill it up for a fourth time, all those impurities should be boiled away, let that guy simmer for and we'll get serious.

Generally, you don't want anything to uncontrollably boil, and that's the essence of the second, connected, 'working hard' definition. If something is boiling wildly, you'd say it's working hard. Simmering would just be 'working', but for a real hard boil, used mainly for impurities and cooking pasta, we call that hard.

Meat and Tomatoes

For this gonzo dinner I had a variety of things to work with. My wife and I have joined a farm delivery organization; they deliver a box every Friday morning of hippie-grown local in-season produce, and then we spend the week trying to figure out how to use everything. With apples and strawberries, that takes far less time than the entire week. For the treviso-style radicchio...that borders on the ultra-bitter and excels at giving me agita...it takes some time.

I started with a piece of beef that was left over from the previous meal's stir-fry. It wasn't so much, and I knew that I wanted to stew it a little, and eat it on the side of a pasta dish. I had some shells that didn't go into an earlier mac&cheese dish, and wanted something lite and cold, like a pasta salad. I don't use mayo generally, and this was going to be a more Italian style pasta salad, with cheese and olives.

I didn't end up making it cold. I was impatient. After the noodles were done cooking, I put them in a large bowl and mixed in black olives, green olives, crumbled feta cheese, diced red and yellow peppers, sliced farm fresh celery, and the sliced treviso leaves. Ugh. That stuff's really not for me, but it didn't totally ruin the noodles. That was a pretty easy starch with a tiny veg component, and since the amount of protein was small, I thought a tomato-stewing could add another vegetable component and ultimately balance the meal out.

I procured a tin of whole peeled pear tomatoes. In one sauce pot I started rendering the fat and sinew I cut off the cheap beef I was using (I sliced the meat into small pieces). This means I kept it on low hear so it would liquefy the fat. This was going to be my stock. I didn't have any chicken bones, so basically I was going to have a veg stock--the beef fat was just going to add a little flavor. After I got a little of the fat there, I started to brown the sliced mirepoix in it, and then added water and set it to boil and reduce.

In a second sauce pot I started browning the meat in oil, and then I added minced shallot (only because I had it and not regular onion) and garlic. After a few minutes I added dried red chili that I sliced myself that were a gift from family. Too early and capsicums turn bitter. Once this became aromatic, I added my tomato. I prepped the tomato in the "nice" Indian fashion, but feel free to used other products. I grated the tomato on my box grater (that what we in the industry call a common cheese grater), and then added it to the meat.

Once that starts to churn and burble, I added some vegetable stock, probably a cup and a half to two cups. it was more than the tomato pulp, but not drastically more. Let that simmer away until the meat is fork tender. If I had any basil, I would have added it, but some fuzzy infestation killed it along with the cat-nip. Actually, it was this meat that caused me to realize it was inedible, or at least not safe for consumption.

The lower quality the meat, the longer this takes, but you get the idea.

Here are some action shots:

I've started grating the tomato, which is in the blue bowl on the left, but it would eventually be half-full. In the plastic cup at the top position sits the beef fat, which has yet to be rendered. The white dish had my shallots, garlic, and red chili, which I incorrectly all threw in together (shallots need less time than onion, and I didn't want to wash even more dishes, so risked adding it at the same time). In the glass bowl is the sliced treviso radicchio. Always present at each juncture: my kosher salt and black pepper mill.

On the right the vegetable stock works hard (boils vigorously, yet more so than it really should), while on the left the beef is working with the shallots, garlic and chili. People who know will realize that because the stock wasn't started as early as it should have been, it was forced to work a little harder than is generally appropriate.

I won't put up any pasta salad recipe here. My hope is that if desired, someone can cook small shaped pasta, add olive oil and salt and pepper, and whatever fresh or canned vegetables they'd like.

Gonzo Cheap-beef and Tomato Stew

6 ounces, cheap beef (more is okay), sliced and browned
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 red chilis, minced

6 whole peeled pear tomatoes, grated
1.5-2 cups Gonzo-brand Veg Stock

kosher salt and fresh pepper to taste, of course

Basil would make it nicer...

We ended up just mixing everything together--the noodles and the beef stuff. It turned out pretty good.

At least, for me, once I pulled out the treviso.