Toyota Farm To Table Tour Comes To Athens Farmer’s Market

Next Saturday, from 9:30am to 1:30pm at the Athens Farmer’s Market, Toyota will be hosting a Farm To Table event where up to twelve of our very talented local chefs, in partnership with one or more local farmers, will be presenting samples of delicious dishes with ingredients sourced right here in Athens County. Guests will have a chance to not only sample the delicious foods presented by our chefs, but they can also take in the sights and sounds of the Athens Farmers Market as well as take a ride in Toyota’s 3rd generation hybrid Prius cars.

I’m thrilled to be a part of this event, but I am even more pleased that out of all of the farmer’s markets in the US, Toyota is choosing twelve to feature on this tour, and Athens is one of them. That just goes to show what I have been saying all along–that the local food scene here in this little corner of Appalachian Ohio really is something special that we should be proud of.

As for me, I will be spending lots of time this week preparing for the event; I am going to be partnered with Rich Blaizer of Harmony Hollow Farms and will be presenting his amazingly delicious rabbit and bacon in my dish: Marsala Braised Rabbit with Wild Mushrooms served over Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Caramelized Tomato Confit. This means that I may blog less this coming week, but for those of you who cannot come to the event, have no fear–I’ll be posting a short video featuring my dish as well as other exciting footage from the market.

And yeah, after the event, I will post the recipes!

For those who are interested in attending, I will be in Tent 4 from 11 am to noon.

Wish us all luck!

Test-Driving Lodge Enameled Cast Iron

I have a small collection of Le Creuset cast iron: a grill pan and a round French oven that were gifted to me by Zak’s grandmother when she became too frail to lift them anymore, a tiny skillet I got free for registering for Le Creuset back when Zak and I got married (fifteen years ago or so) a large braiser and a skillet that were given to me by Karl and Tessa for my birthday last year.

And I LOVE, absolutely love these pieces and I use them all the time.

I wanted to get a few more pieces of enameled cast iron, considering my new fascination with French cookery and braising, so I looked at the oval French ovens and tried hard not to flinch at the price. I say tried–because I failed. I still flinched.

Now, I could have gone on eBay, and gotten either Staub or Le Creuset cast iron at pretty great prices, but I remembered somewhere in the back of my mind that Lodge, the makers of the old American standard cast iron skillets (both traditional and pre-seasoned, both of which are fantastic) beloved by chefs and grandmas everywhere, had taken up making enameled cast iron cookware.

Hrm.

I looked on Amazon and found that not only is Lodge making colorful enamel-coated cast iron, so were a bunch of other manufacturers, most of them in China, and many of them sold under the names of famous chefs and cooks, such as Paula Deen and Mario Batali.

Mind you, the Lodge enameled pots are made in China as well, but I read that they had the same number of layers of enamel coating, fired between each coating, as the Le Creuset models, and I read that they have been reviewed favorably by Fine Cooking Magazine.

I trust Fine Cooking, so I decided to get a smaller, round casserole dish (3 quarts) to replace the buffet casserole that I gave to Morganna when she moved out (another gift from Zak’s grandmother) and a Dutch oven that is larger than the French oven I have–it is a four quart model, and I bought Lodge’s six quart oven.

I bought them from Amazon.com with free shipping, and paid easily two hundred dollars less for the larger pot and one hundred dollars less for the smaller one than I would have paid for the French cookware.

They are very pretty, as you can see. The three quart brown one has graduated color that is absolutely lovely, and the green is very similar the old style green that you can only get in Le Creuset these days from Williams Sonoma. They look great in my kitchen, which is all greens, browns, and blacks.

They are also just as hefty as their French counterparts (actually, they are a bit heavier as the walls a tiny bit thicker)–it takes a significant strength to hoist these babies up and down, around and through. That’s fine–I have strong arms!

How do they cook?

The truth is, I can detect no difference between these pieces and the French ones. They all cook like a dream. Food sticks if anything, a bit less in the Lodge cookware, perhaps because of the thicker walls, though in truth, few foods stick to either the Le Creuset or Lodge enameled surfaces. They both heat evenly and hold heat perfectly, allowing the cook to use less energy to cook braises, stews and roasts than they would in pots made from other materials.

Alas, however, Lodge doesn’t make oval ovens that you can use to roast or braise a whole chicken, so I will have to look into other possibilities.

I am thinking Staub for my next enameled cast iron purchase, though I might try out one of the cheaper Chinese manufactured ones -if- I can stand to buy something with Paula Deen’s face on it. (That said, I’d be more likely to get one from Mario Batali, just because I like the persimmon color a lot and the folks on Chowhound seem to like them!)

Does anyone else have a favored brand of enameled cast iron cookware?

Poulet Roti

I realized last night when I was thinking about French cuisine, that I remembered only one actual recipe, probably because I made it more than once, and that was Boeuf Bourguignon. Now, I am not counting the recipes for sauces: bechamel, veloute, brun, demi-glace, tomato, and hollandaise along with many of their derivatives, are indelibly imprinted on my memory. I am talking about recipes for specific dishes. (Wait, wait–I have another actual recipe committed to memory, again, from making it multiple times–Creme Brulee, though in truth, it is debatable over whether or not this dessert is of British or French origin.)

What I do remember of French cuisine, and this is the important part–is the techniques.

French cuisine, especially as it is practiced in restaurants, is all about correct, precise technique. And once these techniques–of cutting, of sauce making, of braising, roasting, of sauteing–are mastered, one can apply them to any collection of ingredients and produce a dish which may not be French in a traditional sense, but will certainly be French in character and spirit.

That is the true glory of French cuisine, at least in my eyes–the techniques that are used in its production can be used in the creation of any dish from any cuisine and you will almost always get an excellent result. (Chinese cuisines are also technique-based and as such, these techniques can be used in other cuisines to produce a superior dish as well. French and Chinese cuisines are like the Western and Eastern pillars of grand food culture in the world.)

So, now we come to the topic of the day–Poulet Roti–or as we say in English, Roast Chicken.

This is one of the most basic dishes in any sort of European-based cookery, and is one of the dishes I think that anyone, even a complete kitchen novice can learn and quickly master. (Anthony Bourdain says that if you can’t make a decent roast chicken, “you are one helpless, hopeless. sorry-ass bivalve in an apron.” I don’t think I would put it so harshly, because the fact is, very few people are taught any of the good techniques for roasting chicken in the United States. No, you don’t just stick in the oven.)

And once it is mastered, Roast Chicken is extremely versatile. You can make pan sauces for it, gravies, or you can baste it in cream and wine, then reduce that into a sauce with sauteed mushrooms. You can serve it hot or cold and you can use leftovers for panini sandwiches or salad.

Now that I have said all of that, the truth is, there is no one “right” way to roast a chicken! I have my way to do it, Bourdain has his, and Julia Child has hers. And every other good chef and cook has their method. Some folks truss the birds up like Bettie Page (as Bourdain would say), while others slit the skin of the bird and tuck the legs in the flaps as a sort of self-trussing method. Some folks lay the bird down in a roasting pan on the top of a bunch of tasty vegetables which get to roast in the flavorful chicken juices. Other folks set the chicken on a rack of some sort, and scatter vegetables around the rack. Some baste in stock, some in wine, some in butter. Some stuff their birds with elaborate dressings, while others just stick aromatics inside, while others just leave the cavity empty.

And the really cool thing about this fact is that most of those methods result in really great roast chicken.

I think that the secret to great roast chicken is two-fold: first, obtain a really good chicken that is naturally full of flavor, preferably from a local farmer, but failing that a free-range or kosher bird from the grocery store will do. Second, don’t overcook your chicken once you have expended all the time and effort to find it, obtain it and prepare it for the oven. That’s the thing, if you start with a good bird in the first place and don’t dry it out by cooking it for longer than is necessary, you are pretty well guaranteed a good dinner.

So, here is the way that I make Poulet Roti, and my method is based on Julia Child’s along with a couple of methods I learned in culinary school. The seasonings I happened to use this time are based on the flavors of the blend of herbs called Herbes de Provence, which includes fennel, basil, tarragon, thyme, lavender flowers, marjoram and rosemary. You can use other herbs if you like. The type of wine can be changed–you could use sherry or marsala instead, for example.

Poulet Roti
Ingredients:

1 3 pound roasting chicken
2 tablespoons of softened butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons mixed fresh herbs (I used rosemary, tarragon, thyme, basil, and lavender buds), well minced
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon zest
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 tablespoon softened butter
1 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 lemon, cut in half
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 large sprig fresh rosemary
1 large sprig fresh thyme
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 cup dry white wine, or sherry or vermouth
3 cups chicken stock or broth
2 tablespoons of the same mixed fresh herbs, this time chopped roughly

Method:

First, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. (The general roasting time for a 3 pound chicken is about an hour and 10-20 minutes. For the last half of the roasting time, check the bird often for doneness–prick it in the fattest part of the leg and if the juice runs out clear yellow, it is done. If there is still a rosy color to the juices, it needs to roast longer.)

Then, prepare the chicken. Remove any giblet packet (mine just had the neck), and rinse well with cold water. Remove any feather bits and then pat well to dry. Trim any excessive skin and excess interior fat from the bird.

Then, blend together the two tablespoons of softened butter with the first measure of salt, the minced herbs, the lemon zest and minced garlic.

Gently, with your fingers, loosen the skin of the chicken at the edge of the breast, and carefully stuff half of the seasoned butter under each side of the breastbone, spreading it over the flesh of the breast as evenly as possible, so that the butter is between the skin and meat. You have to be careful not to pierce the skin from underneath with your fingers, but other than that, this is a simple operation.

Rub the outside of the skin with the 1 tablespoon of butter and then sprinkle it with salt and however much freshly ground black pepper you like. Salt and pepper the inside of the chicken as well.

Now stuff the cavity with 1/2 of the lemon (when you put it in the bird, squeeze it a bit to get some juice in there), one clove’s worth of the garlic slices and the rosemary and thyme sprigs.

Now your chicken is prepared for the oven. Set it breast side up on a V-shaped roasting rack or just a plain old cooling rack inside a roasting pan which has been rubbed all over with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil (I prefer V-racks as you can see–lots of hot air gets around and in the chicken with those and you get crisp, golden brown skin all over that way) and put it into the oven.

Meanwhile, put the 1/2 of the wine, stock, the remaining clove of garlic slices and the giblets into a pot and bring to a simmer. Cook at a simmer until the liquid is reduced to about a cup. Turn the heat off and let the giblets and the garlic steep in the pot.

After the chicken has been in the oven for about ten to fifteen minutes, the skin should be fairly evenly browned. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees F. and pour the remaining half cup of wine in the bottom of the roasting pan. Baste now and again with the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil. If the chicken drippings begin to burn, turn the heat down slightly, and if the skin darkens too much, cover it lightly with a tent of foil.

Check the chicken for doneness after about a hour and five minutes of roasting: the signs that it is finished cooking are that the breast swells up slightly and will spring back when pushed with a forefinger, the aforementioned clear yellow juices when the leg or the meaty part of the thigh are pricked, the skin should be lightly puffed and crisp. If you take hold of the drumstick, it should joggle easily in its socket. For a final check, lift the chicken slightly and drain the juices from its vent–they should also be clear yellow. If they are still rosy, then roast it for another five minutes or so.

When the bird is done, remove it from the pan with its rack and set it on a carving board or serving platter to rest while you make the pan sauce.

Put the roasting pan on top of the stove and turn the burner up on medium high heat. Remove all but 1 or 2 tablespoons of fat from the pan. Strain the stock, discarding the giblets and garlic slices and pour the liquid into the pan. Stir and cook, scraping up all the browned bits (which are called fond) from the bottom of the pan, dissolving them in the stock. Reduce the liquid until it barely coats the back of a spoon and then sprinkle half of the roughly chopped herbs into the sauce, whisking them in well. (If you want, you can add a teaspoon or two of butter to the sauce to enrich it–but really, we have used plenty of butter already, so it is up to you if you want to do it.) Drizzle a spoonful of the sauce over the bird and sprinkle it with the rest of the herbs, then serve the rest of the sauce on the side.

This bird is great with roasted vegetables like baby carrots, fingerling potatoes and pearl onions.

Cooking For Others

For me, and it turns out, lots of other folks, cooking is about love.

It really is that simple.

If I didn’t have a family, or roommates or friends, and I didn’t work as a chef or line cook–in other words, if I was completely and utterly alone, I probably wouldn’t cook much that was interesting, and I certainly wouldn’t write a food blog.

Cooking for myself is bloody boring, not to mention a pain in the wazoo–why make that much of a mess just for myself? Especially since it would be myself cleaning up that mess without help or companionship in the kitchen.

So, were it just me, there would be no Beouf Bourguignon, Hillbilly Fried Rice or Panko Fried Catfish. No Chicken with Bitter Melon. No Thai Green Curry. No Bacon-Filled Waffles with Chili-Fried Apples. Nothing that really required multiple steps, lots of oil, large vegetables, hand-made curry pastes, special electric appliances or leftovers.

It isn’t as if I would never cook at all.

I would probably still make simple Indian curries, very simple stir-fried dishes, soups, dals, and easy cold noodles, and quick hot pastas, but falafel would be out of the question.

If it was just me, I would barely bake. Why make cheesecake just for yourself? Or Aphrodite Cakes? Or Aztec Gold Brownies? Or even my beloved sour cherry pie, for goodness sake? No one should eat an entire pie, for various reasons, and if I wasn’t going to eat the entire thing and it was just me, well, then, I would just not bake the pie in the first place.

Luckily, few cooks live in completely isolation. We almost always have someone around for whom to cook and it is a good thing too. Not just for our waistlines, but for our sanity as well.

I fully believe that most people who love to cook, and this includes line cooks and chefs, do so not only because they love food and the challenge of working alchemical arts upon it, but because they love people, and their favored way of showing that love is through feeding them.

Every great chef or cook I have ever known, even the cynical and cranky ones, even the most crusty and snide ones, all have a heart filled with love for other people, and the desire to show that love through the most intimate act of cooking them food which feeds both body and soul. Often all of that cranky, crusty and cynical demeanor is armor which protects those sweet and loving hearts from the slings and arrows that an often rough world flings in a professional kitchen.

Most home cooks I have known are the same way; they will not hesitate to cook for their loved ones, but can’t be bothered to do much more than scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches for themselves. My Gram, from whom I learned to cook fried chicken and delicious beef vegetable soup, and who taught both my mother and I how to make homemade noodles, as she got older and after Pappa died, barely cooked for herself. I would go to her house on weekends and cook for her, even though I was in the middle of a divorce and was living forty-five minutes away. I did it because I loved her, she was losing much needed body weight and she would delighted eat whatever high-calorie food I would create for her, and would dutifully heat up the leftovers over the week.

After going to see Julie & Julia with me, Heather said that the main reason she is moving into a house filled with young roomates was so she would have someone to cook for. She had already made her reputation as a cook in her office by bringing batches of Aphrodite Cakes and Aztec Gold Brownies to share, but she wants to do more. (And, as she noted on her Facebook page, she now wants to learn French food! Yeah, Julia–still inspirational after all of these years!)

When she said that, Dan, who also went to see it with us, pointed out that Neil Peart, famed drummer for Rush, has a food blog on his website. In the opening essay of the blog, Peart talks about how he learned to cook for his first wife when she was ill, and as such, has come to see cooking as a very visceral expression of love. Left to his own devices, he’d not cook–he doesn’t love it for itself. He loves cooking for the people he loves– and that is a distinction that I believe most people would understand and agree with.

My first guinea pig, I mean, cooking student, Bill, figured it all during the hours of a long evening of the two of us cooking a multi-course Chinese feast at the home of a friend who had never tasted our food before.

It was a stressful evening for Bill–me–I was in my element. When we had gone to Krogers here in Athens (we were visiting from Maryland), I had found that there was no ground pork to be had, so I had shrugged, bought pork shoulder and loin and had declared I would simply mince it by hand with two matched cleavers–mine and Bill’s. This process is loud and flashy, and before long, half of the twenty-odd diners had popped their heads into the smallish kitchen to see what the ruckus was about.

Bill worked quickly and efficiently, but had the air of a wild rabbit harried by hounds–breathless and wide-eyed.

By the time we served the first course, a hot and sour soup fragrant with lemongrass and galangal, Bill’s face had taken on the look of a whitetail deer in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler on a rainy night. He was terrified.

I whispered in his ear, “Relax. Remember, no apologies, and no fears. Ever.”

When everyone had filed through the kitchen and ladled up their soup, he and I both two small bowls, and slipped into the nearly silent living room.

I say nearly silent because while there was a lot of sipping and noisy slurping going on, no one, but no one was talking.

Everyone’s head was bowed over their bowls as they busily ate the soup in great gulps.

I smiled, sat and sipped my soup, while watching everyone else eat.

When I looked up, Bill was sitting across from me on a floor pillow. He hadn’t touched his soup, even though he hadn’t eaten all day.

He was just gazing around, smiling goofily.

“Now I understand,” he whispered, “Why you barely eat anything when you cook for people. You don’t need to.”

I grinned and rose, heading back to the kitchen after finishing my last swallow of my meager bowl of soup.

When Bill followed me, I nodded. “My food is their delight, not the food I cook.”

As he sipped his soup, I turned back to the stove.

“Let’s get back to work,” I said. “Spring rolls can’t roll and fry themselves, you know.”

Meatless Monday: Vegetarian Arroz Gratinado

I was going to make quesadillas for this week’s meatless recipe, but after eating Boeuf Bourguignon for dinner Friday night and Provencal Roast Chicken (yes, you get a recipe for that this week!) on Saturday, that for Sunday, I absolutely did not want anything fried. Sure, sure, you -could- make quesadillas by baking them, but they don’t taste as good that way!

And yes, refrieds are made by lightly frying mashed beans in olive oil–but I use much less oil in frying beans than I do when frying quesadillas.

So, I had the inspiration of making a vegetarian version of arroz gratinado, the delicious Mexican casserole of rice, salsa and shredded meat covered with melty-gooey-cheesy goodness. My version includes refried beans anyway–so I decided, what if I left out the meat?

And what if I added sauteed kale and chard?

Oooh.

That sounded ever so delightfully tasty to me.

Look, you don’t need a recipe to make this–just do something like what I did.

So, what I did was make a batch of Wholly Vegetarian Refried Beans, and a pot of jasmine rice that I cooked with a mixture of V-8 juice and vegetable stock in my rice cooker (2 cups of jasmine rice with 1 cup of V-8 juice and 1 1/4 cups of vegetable stock go in the rice cooker with a sprinkle of salt and then the lid gets clapped down and the button is pushed and in 45 minutes, we have some nice pinkish rice that has the light flavor of tomatoes and other vegetables), then I simply caramelized two thinly sliced onions with 1 big clove of thinly sliced garlic and then sauteed about a pound of mixed kale and chard. (Here’s a basic approximation of what I did with the kale and chard, minus the mushrooms and truffle oil.)

Then I shredded some sharp cheddar cheese and started layering.

First a spray of some olive oil to keep the goodies from sticking. A smear of about three tablespoons of salsa, (you can use homemade or from a jar–I like Frog Ranch Chipotle if I don’t have homemade on hand) to cover the bottom of the pan, and then a layer of rice that gets packed down a bit. Then beans, a tiny bit of salsa, then greens,a little more salsa and finally, the cheese.

And then, into the 375 degree F. oven it goes for about twenty minutes, or until the cheese is melted, bubbly and browned in a couple of spots, and out it comes. Cilantro gets sprinkled over it and away we go!

I served it with freshly made Calico Salsa and some blue corn tortilla chips on the side.

Some other vegetables you could layer into this casserole would be roasted corn on the cob (cut off the cob, of course!), sauteed summer squashes seasoned with caramelized onions and garlic, roasted tomatoes and red bell peppers, roasted poblano chiles, or sauteed mushrooms.