My friend Dean Kumbalek does some seriously fine cooking, growing, and preserving of fantastic things to eat. When Dean posted up sauerkraut braised pork chops and dumplings, I knew I was gonna have to take a swing at it and share the results, just as he did.
Dean’s glorious dish
Dean prefaced his post with the following, which speaks perfectly to what great cooking really is all about – ‘As Igor Stravinsky once said, it is best to work within limitations’ – Rarely do we have everything we want when figuring out what to cook, but we almost always have what we need. What Dean worked up was a truly delicious dish that may sound complicated, but is really quick and easy to prep and cook.
Braising is a two step cooking process, with an initial high heat sear followed by a low heat finish. The quick sear locks flavor into a protein, while a slow, steamy finish develops deep flavors and makes for seriously tender vittles.
We both did this with pork chops, but you could do the same with chicken, or beef, or extra firm tofu. As for what to do to the protein prior to cooking, Dean oiled and seasoned with sage, nigella seed and paprika, then rested his chops, while I went for a dry coating just prior to searing.
For searing, Dean mentioned cast iron or grilling, and both will do a great job and impart some great flavor notes to the finished dish. We both went with cast iron – then I decided I needed a bigger pan, and ended up deploying a heavy braiser for part two of the cooking process.
The low and slow was done with sauerkraut and stock for the liquid and flavor components, and savory dumplings added to the mix. Dean did mushroom/garlic/chile for his, but my crew nixed the shrooms, so I had to pick another umami bomb – I went with fish sauce. What we got was fork tender pork, delicious slaw, and fluffy, spicy dumplings. It was stunningly delicious, so Big Thanks to Dean, and I can’t wait to do this again with chicken and tofu!
For the Chop/Chicken/Tofu Sear
1/2 Cup Wondra Flour
2 Tablespoons Pineapple Vinegar (cider is fine)
1/2 teaspoon Granulated Onion
1/2 teaspoon Ground Pepper
1/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
2-3 sprigs fresh Rosemary
Pat your proteins dry with a clean towel.
Combine all dry ingredients and blend well.
Lightly dredge each side in the flour mix.
Heat a Dutch oven or braiser over medium high heat.
Add a tablespoon of butter and allow to melt, then add the vinegar and whisk with a fork to incorporate.
Set proteins in hot pan and sear for 2-3 minutes until a golden brown crust forms.
Flip the proteins and repeat on the other side(s)
Remove proteins from pan and set on a platter.
Turn heat off but leave the pan as is.
For the Dumplings
2 Cups All Purpose Flour 1/2 Cup Whole Milk 2 large Eggs 2 Tablespoons Avocado Oil 1-2 Tablespoon Green Hatch Chile Powder 2 Cloves fresh Garlic 2 teaspoons Baking Powder 1 teaspoon Sea Salt 1/2 teaspoon Red Boat Fish Sauce
Pull and milk and eggs from fridge and allow to come to room temperature.
Peel, end trim, and mince garlic.
Combine all dry ingredients and blend well.
Combine wet and dry and mix with a spoon – you want a fairly loose batter to begin with.
Let batter rest for 15-30 minutes or so, during which it will tighten up and become more elastic.
You want batter just loose enough to drop from a spoon – not sloppy, as it will absorb liquid from the braise – add a little flour or milk to adjust if needed.
For the Protein Low and Slow
2 packed Cups Sauerkraut
1-2 Cups Chicken Stock
Heat the dutch oven or braiser back up over medium heat.
Add about a half cup of stock to the reheated pan and scrape all the naughty bits off the bottom.
Add the sauerkraut and enough stock to bring the liquid level just below the top of the kraut level.
Place proteins evenly across the top of the kraut and stock mix.
When the mix starts to simmer, give dumpling batter a good stir, then place nice big dollops on top of each protein, and more in the gaps if you’ve got enough batter – you want dumplings about the size of a small lemon.
Cover the pan and reduce heat to low. Allow dish to simmer and steam for 30 minutes.
Remove lid and test dumplings with a toothpick – if it come out of the middle clean, you’re there.
Serve with a crisp salad, devour, and dream about what version you’ll make next.
Alert blog follower Hannah sent this note from southwestern Oregon – ‘I read about you guys changing up stuff you made earlier, for subsequent meals – The last one was an Instagram of tacos where you did “a complete 180° on the seasoning” but you didn’t explain how or what you did. The same thing happened with the Chinese barbecued pork you converted to Italian, but you didn’t tell how to do that either. We’re not all wizards, so you need to explain this better!’
Hannah, with my sincere apologies, you are absolutely correct. Allow me to rectify that – And if it seems like Hannah’s reading me the riot act, she’s got a right to – I didn’t explain any of that stuff. Now, in my defense, these were both follow up images and short descriptives, secondary to a post, that as she mentioned, were on other social media sites – FB, Instagram, Twitter and the like. I though of them as throw away stuff, home food porn, but no longer – Hannah is 100% right – If I’m gonna crow about our mad skills, I gotta share the goods.
Before we talk about conversion, we gotta back up a few steps. If you’re making a French dish, what should the core seasonings be? What if it’s Italian, Spanish, Indian, North African, Mexican, South American, Caribbean, and so on? There are so many regional variations in all those examples that this kind of thing can be a bit hard to pin down – In northern France, you might find thyme, sage, and coriander, while in the south, it’s likely to be something more Provençal – marjoram, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and lavender, maybe. Same thing in every place I mentioned, frankly. With the very welcome spread of cookbooks and recipes focusing more on regional cuisines than some perceived national pastiche, us home cooks are blessed with many more options than even a decade ago. All that can make things a bit tougher to convert to something wholly different, but frankly, we don’t need to do that to succeed at the game.
Pork rib tacos? Absolutely!
So what is the trick to turning those ribs into tacos? Not as much as you’d think – Hell, you could probably do not a damn thing, call it fusion, and be on your merry way… But seriously, the trick, such as it is, is simply knowing what the major and minor seasoning notes are for the thing you’re working with, and building up or down from there – I say up or down purposefully, because if you want something Chinese to taste reasonable Italian, the task at hand may be to add, but it could also involve subtraction. Let’s use those two examples Hannah cited to dig into this thing.
In both instances we’re talking about proteins. This comes up as a thing we tweak fairly often because of how we cook and plan meals – A big ol’ batch of poultry, pork, or beef is oft what we cook early in the week, and then make a buncha meals thereafter, (and we covered this pretty well in our Meal Planning post btw). First step in swinging the seasoning profile of a protein in another direction is having a pretty good grasp of what’s powering it currently. If you made it, that’s easy enough, but what about a leftover from somewhere else, or taking a step farther out – tasting something and thinking, ‘I could do this at home, and I’d like to’ – How do you parse that? Far and away, the easiest way to suss it out is to ask the Chef – Chances are good they’ll tell you, and then you’re off to the races.
But what about sleuthing things out for yourself, how does that work? There’s no cut and dried formula for doing this that I can think of offhand, other than to state the obvious – The more herbs, spices and other seasoning constituents you own and use with some frequency, the better you’ll be at identifying them in the wild – Consider it a delicious form of behavioral conditioning. Again, not everybody has the same palate, but nonetheless, practice makes perfect, so build a great pantry and familiarize yourself with as much as you can – Getting curious about world cuisine is the way to discover new tastes and combinations.
OK, so Hannah’s Bane – starting with the ribs to tacos. The ribs were a first run experiment by M from something she’d found and tweaked to her liking – Ribs done in the slow cooker, with a nontraditional twist on the marinade and sauce. She did, for two racks of ribs,
For the Rib Marinade
1/2 Cup Water
1/3 Cup Live Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 Cup Sweet Onion, minced
6 Cloves fresh Garlic, minced
2 Tablespoons Yellow Mustard
2 Tablespoons coarse Sea Salt
2 teaspoons Lemon Thyme
1 teaspoon ground Tellicherry Pepper
For the Glaze
1/2 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
1/4 Cup Agave Nectar
1 teaspoon Arrowroot
1/2 teaspoon Chile flake
Pinch of Sea Salt
They were killer by the way – Try this on nice fresh baby backs and then thank M later. We had a slew of these things, and after 3 days of ribs, ribs, and ribs, we were kinda tired of that, so I decided to strip all the meat off the remainder and turn it into taco fodder. Now, looking at that ingredients list, you can see right off that I took poetic license with the line Hannah quoted, “a complete 180° on the seasoning,” ‘cause yeah – in a word, Eben? Bullshit. That’s already pretty damn close to a bunch of Mexican regional seasoning blends you’ve got on there. What I did was to throw diced chiles and more onion in a sauté pan, sweat them, then added chicken stock, cilantro, lime juice, and tomatoes to the mix, and let that simmer until everything was heated through and married – Boom, taco ribs. Get the picture? No, they won’t taste at all like they did as whole ribs, and yeah, now they are reasonably more Mexican in taste profile.
Char Siu in all its glory
Now, how about that Chinese barbecued Pork to Italian thing, then? This one admittedly took a bit more work to pull off effectively, but nothing earthshaking, and again – I made the original dish, so I knew exactly what was in there, right? The pork was my latest swing at Char Siu, derived from a Grace Young recipe in Breath of a Wok. I’ve not posted this previously, so here’s first look for y’all, (and John Joyce? This one’s for you, Buddy!)
For each Pound of Pork Shoulder
2 Tablespoons Dark Soy Sauce (I recommend Pearl River)
2 Tablespoons Tamari
2 Tablespoons Hoisin Sauce
2 Tablespoons Pixian Doubanjiang Chile Bean Sauce
2 Tablespoons Shao Hsing Rice Wine
2 Tablespoons Bakers Sugar
2 Tablespoons Agave Nectar
2 teaspoons Sesame Oil
1/2 teaspoon Ground Grains of Paradise
The Pork marinates in this mix for 48 hours, then is seared over an initially hot grill, basted with the remaining sauce and finished on a medium grill until internal temp runs 145°, then rested. If you use charcoal, a two zone grill set up will do this to perfection.
Seriously tender Char Siu
This stuff was fork tender and incredibly tasty, but again, after so many meals, I just needed to switch things up, and so I decided to make tomato based pasta sauce with the remainder. Granted, there are some potent Chinese regional tastes involved in that pork, but again, it’s not as discordant as it may seem at first glance. Central and northern Italian tomato pasta sauces can and do have some of those warm, earthy, and spicy notes, albeit not the same ones.
I gave the pork a quick rinse and ground it with the attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer, (you don’t need to do that, a simple rinse and mince would do just fine). As you can see from the plated image, the marinade, even after 48 hours, doesn’t get all that deep into the pork, so doing what you can to expose a bunch of the unseasoned meat gives solid ground for new flavors – The old stuff becomes interesting background that you can’t quite put your finger on, rather than a very forward Chinese.
Italian from Chinese? Yes indeed.
Next comes the Italian rebranding – A big stew pot over medium heat, with a generous slug of olive oil gets soffritto – the classic Italian aromatic base mix of onion, carrot, celery, parsley, and garlic. Add stock, tomatoes, the pork, bay leaf, oregano, rosemary, lemon thyme, lemon zest and juice, salt and pepper, and basil to finish, and wham, you’ve got a complex, earthy pasta sauce that tastes like you put far more work into it than you did – Never a bad thing.
Now, who caught the trick I used in these examples? Somebody, anybody, Bueller? There was one ya know – A small but potent anchor to all such conversions – It’s the aromatic bases. For the switch to tacos, it was onion and chile. For the Italian, soffritto – See that? Fortunately for you, we wrote a very nice piece on aromatic bases that you can use as a launching pad for further exploration. It really is a key – When you take those deep, fundamental roots of a flavor profile and set them as your new solid base, switching gears becomes a simple matter of preference thereafter.
Now, resources – A thing I’ve mentioned here several times and online a lot – Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg’s magnum opus, The Flavor Bible. This is a reference work with some serious horsepower – Whole menus can be worked up from the stuff therein, and should be – For my mind, with that book, and Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, you’ve got a very solid basic research library to design a world cuisine of your own from.
Garde Manger – The Art of Transformation
Now – One final note – This concept is not mine, and it’s not new. In fact, it’s very old, and it stems from common sense, first and foremost. In French, it’s called Garde Manger, and it loosely translates as ‘Keeper of the Food.’ This is way cooler than you can imagine if you really dig cooking. The first fine dining restaurant I worked in, back in the mid ‘70’s, was French, (and that cuisine is where the term comes from and from where, arguably, the art reached its pinnacle). The second was in Sun Valley, Idaho – Another kitchen run by French Chefs. In those places, the Chef de Garde Manger was the best there was – Old guys with a wealth of experience, tremendous patience, and endless inventiveness. Garde manger is still around, albeit not as prominent, or as likely to display that level of experience. It’s always the cold dish station – Salads, hors d’œuvres (horse doovers as my Sis and I like to quip…), appetizers, canapés, pâtés, terrines, and such. Although it’s less prevalent now, the key role of that Chef was transforming leftovers into something new, something appealing, something that would sell – And it was magical, indeed – That spirit is sparked within me every time I do something like we discussed today. If any of this strikes your fancy, then I’ll recommend another great resource – Frederick Sonnenschmidt and John Nicolas’, The Art of Garde Manger – It’s the real deal, and a delightful read. Dig in.
Do you know Old Bay seasoning? If so, it’s not unlikely that you have some in your cabinet for use specifically with crab or shrimp boils. If you don’t know if it, ya aughta, ‘cause it’s a venerable mix – and if you do, you aughta let it out to play more. Old Bay is hugely popular on the east coast, from New England to the gulf, with an epicenter in Baltimore, where it was first made. The story of its creation is one of great triumph over adversity, to say the least.
Gustav Brunn, a German Jew, founded the Baltimore Spice Company in 1939, with the Old Bay seasoning blend as his flagship – Yet his epic journey didn’t start there, it landed there. Brunn had owned a wholesale spice business in Worthheim, Germany since shortly after WWI, but the rapid rise of fascism and the Nazi party forced a move to Frankfurt. There, on Kristallnacht, he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. His wife paid a massive bribe to get him released, and they immediately fled to the U.S.
With his broad experience, he was hired by McCormick, where he worked for a grand total of two days – when it was discovered Brunn was Jewish, he was fired. That was the impetus for his founding his own company and the blending of Old Bay, the ‘Delicious Shrimp and Crab Seasoning,’ named after a passenger liner that plied the Chesapeake Bay. It’s beyond ironic that the rights to his iconic seasoning blend were bought out in 1990 by none other than McCormick. Personally, that’s all that I need to know to want to honor the blend at home.
As mentioned, many an Old Bay user hauls it out exclusively for crab or shrimp – While Gustav won’t roll over in his grave over that, we could all get a lot more creative with this stuff, and on the eastern seaboard, they do – You’ll find Old Bay seasoned beef, chicken, pork, fish, soups, stews, peanuts, popcorn, corn on the cob, deviled eggs, potato salad, tuna salad, pasta salad, bean salad, scrambled eggs, baked potatoes, potato chips, a raft of dips and sauces, bloody mary mixes, and the rims of margarita glasses – and that’s just for starters.
Like many a proprietary spice blend, they’re not giving away an exact recipe you can follow – McCormick claims 18 ingredients in the mix, so figuring those out, plus ratios, is quite a job – which is why you’ll be far happier leaving the heavy lifting to idiots like me. We know that 3 or 4 ingredients in the commercial blend are preservatives and anti-caking agents that they don’t have to list (and we don’t need), so the sweet spot is 14.
Spice blends don’t need to follow the List Ingredients In Order of Percentage of the Whole Mix rule like most foods do, so long as what they include are GRAS ingredients, (Generally Accepted As Safe), hence we see ‘spices’ instead of specifics.
What they do admit to has varied over the years with packaging – the most common version is, ‘celery salt, spices (including red and black pepper) and paprika.’ An older version offered, ‘celery salt, spices (including mustard, pepper, laurel leaves, clove, pimento, mace, cardamom, cassia) and paprika.
Taste it and the major players are fairly well evident – celery salt, paprika, and pepper are definite top notes, with mustard and bay laurel as majors, and the warm spices – clove, cinnamon, cardamom, mace, and so on, are minors. Take a look at the color of the blend, and it’ll substantiate that list and my ratios.
You can use ground or whole spices – either way, you’ll need to grind the whole stuff (leaves, etc) prior to blending. Make sure your ingredients are fresh, of course. This blend is what I think is very close to the original – and what I like best – You get to tweak yours as you see fit.
Urban’s Faux Old Bay
1 Tablespoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Sweet Paprika (Smoked or Hot are fine if you prefer)
1 Tablespoon dried Celery Leaf (celery seed will do)
2 teaspoons Black Pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons Dry Mustard
5-6 Turkish Bay Leaves
1/2 teaspoon ground Nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Chile Powder (mild or hot)
1/2 teaspoon ground Ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground Cloves
1/8 teaspoon Black Cardamom
1/8 teaspoon Allspice
1/8 teaspoon Mace
Grind whole spices and leaves, then blend all ingredients thoroughly.
Store in an airtight glass container, away from heat a d bright light.
I love a creamy pasta salad, and with lots of veggies springing forth from the garden, summer is a great time for them. The majority of recipes you find are pretty heavy though, with mayonnaise or sour cream based dressings. I wanted something lighter and brighter, and came up with this excellent yoghurt powered lemon dressing.
There’s no real magic here, just a very nice combination that blends the brightness of lemon with the mouth feel of good yoghurt, and a touch of umami from garlic and fish sauce. With balanced sweet and tart, and a hint of backbite from the pepper, it compliments whatever you pair it with.
Pasta salad should be made with good stuff – so so leads to meh, otherwise – I t’s worth a splurge on a bag of high quality, local dry pasta. You want something short, that picks up easily and affords a good opportunity for the other ingredients to be there in every forkful, (spoon, in my case). Ridges are a must as well – they’ll hold onto the dressing better.
You can add whatever you like, of course. Celery, tomato, onion, sweet pepper, carrots, chives, and thyme were all available fresh as they can be, so we went with that, along with good olives, a little hard sausage, and an amazing five year old cheddar Casey made. Use what you love and have before you – the palette will always be changing.
Of course, you can leave out the meat and cheese and have an excellent vegetarian offering.
For the Pasta Salad
1 Pound Dry Pasta1/4 Cup of Hard Salami
1/4 packed Cup Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
1/2 Sweet Onion
1/2 Red Bell Pepper
1-2 fresh Tomatoes
1-2 fresh Carrots
2 stalks fresh Celery (with leaves)
5-6 fresh Chives
2-3 stems fresh Thyme
3 finger pinch Salt
10-12 twists fresh ground Pepper
Add the pasta to plenty of well salted, boiling water. Boil until al dente, then drain through a colander.
Give the pasta a quick rinse with cold water, then drizzle with roughly a tablespoon of oil and toss to coat evenly.
End trim, peel and dice onion.
Top trim, and trim inner white membrane, then dice bell pepper.
End trim, gut and dice tomatoes.
End trim and cut carrots as you prefer, anything from rounds to dice.
Remove tops with leaves, and white bottoms from celery stalks. Carefully slice stalks lengthwise so you can dice.
Select 3-4 good sized leaves, roll tightly, and chiffenade cut them, (cut across the rolled leaves in roughly 1/8” widths)
End trim and fine dice chives.
Dice salami and cheese.
Starting at the top of the thyme sprigs, gently rub down the stem with 2 fingers, removing the leaves. Toss stems.
Combine all ingredients and toss to thoroughly incorporate, then dress. Let it sit for at least 30 minutes, refrigerated, so everything can marry.
For the Dressing
3/4 Cup Avocado Oil, (Olive or Canola are fine too)
1/2 Cup Whole Milk Plain Greek Yoghur
1/3 cup fresh Lemon Juice
3 cloves Garlic
2 teaspoons Dijon Mustard
1-2 teaspoons Honey
Zest from 2 small Lemons
2 finger pinch Sea Salt
6-8 grinds Black Pepper
3-4 drops Red Boat Fish Sauce
Zest, grate and juice lemons.
Smash, end trim, peel and mince garlic.
Combine all ingredients, but start with 1 teaspoon of honey, then add more if desired.
Let it sit for 15 minutes, taste test, and adjust balances as desired, then refrigerate and let it sit for at least 30 minutes before deploying.
Ah, the noble chimichanga. Noble? Noble?! Yes, you read that right – here’s a little ode to one of the best damn vehicles for leftovers there is. Sure, we might assume it’s a mongrel member of the Fake Mex Food Club, designed only to fool gringoes into a simulacrum of adventurous eating – but I think we’d be dead wrong.
There’s a raft of origin stories for the chimi, all based in U.S. Tex Mex bastions. Whether it’s the owner of El Charro in Tucson accidentally dropping a burrito in the deep fat frier and uttering a Mexican curse that lead to the naming of the dish, or Woody Johnson of Macayo’s in Phoenix experimenting back in ‘46, they’re likely all a bit of a tall tale. You can bet dimes to dollars they originated in Mexico.
Fill a flour tortilla with frijoles, queso, picadillo, adobada, machaca, seca, pollo, fish or shellfish – that’s the root of a chimichanga. The name probably is a thinly veiled gringo teaser, but who cares when they’re delicious?
Great chimis needn’t be bad for you. You can bake, or as I prefer, shallow fry to crisp and then finish in the oven – that marries the delightful crunch of a crisp tortilla with a perfect hot filling, and avoids the hassle and greasiness of deep frying. What you choose to stuff with will also have obvious bearing on how healthy your finished dish is.
Chimis are perfect for repurposing leftovers. While a traditional stuffing theme will certainly be a nod to Mexican staples, you can make them out anything you want – green chicken curry chimi? Hell yes. Stuff one with veggies, rice, beans and cheese, and you’ve got a delicious, healthy dish. From chicken wings to char siu pork, or firm tofu to refried beans, your imagination is the limit.
When you’re ready to stuff your chimis, layer ingredients in ratios that yield a harmonious blend – there’s no hard and fast rule, it’s all what floats your boat. How much to stuff is largely dependent on the size and elasticity of your chosen tortilla, but avoid overstuffing to a silly degree – that just leads to filling leaking out during cooking, or gods forbid, to CCSF – That’s Catastrophic Chimichanga Structural Failure – and nobody wants to see that…
The typical mix is beans, rice, veggies and cheese, and another protein if you have something that needs to get used. For veggies, you can’t go wrong with onion, garlic, chile, and tomato, but any mix is fine – you can sauté them prior to assembly, but if you go with my two step method, you don’t need to.
For a traditional version, Mexican cheeses are what you want – Asadero, Chihuahua, Manchego, or Oaxaca for filling, and Queso Blanco, Cotija, or Enchilado for topping would be great choices – and they’re easier to find these days with the flowering of local Latin groceries.
If you’ve attempted chimis and exacted less than stellar results, it’ll come as no surprise that there are techniques you need to employ to achieve consistent and attractive results – and yeah, it matters – we eat with our eyes, ya know. There are four points of order to avoid a frustratingly sloppy chimi, and they’re as follows.
1. Fresh tortillas are your best option – they’re far more pliable and tastier than store bought stuff. Pliability is critical to a successful chimi, so if you’re using store bought, here’s your solution – wrap them in a clean, lightly moistened kitchen towel, put them on a plate, and then microwave for 30 seconds – that’ll give you fairly flexible tortillas to work with. Works great for burritos, too.
2. Get your mise en place together, and set out a generously sized station for assembly. Having everything portioned into bowls makes the process more efficient, less frustrating, and far less messy.
3. The tuck – how to properly stuff eludes a lot of folks, so don’t feel bad if you’re one of ‘em. Think of the tortilla as an unfolded envelope – you want to stuff the lower middle section of the tortilla, leaving room on both sides, some below, and a bit more than that above. Next, fold the bottom over your fillings, then the sides over the bottom, and finally, bring the top flap over all, and you’re there. You can seal with a little egg wash, but once you get the hang of it, you won’t need it. Line them up, prepped for cooking.
4. As mentioned above, I firmly believe you’ll get the most consistent flavor blend and crunch from a two step cooking process – a quick shallow fry, then a quick bake. That’ll also give you ingredients that are thoroughly heated through – something often lacking in the deep fried version.
It’s a simple deal – preheat your oven to 350° F, then heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium high heat until the oil shimmers. Add chimis two at a time, and fry them just long enough to get a golden brown crust on the tortillas, flipping with a spatula to get every side done. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment, and bake for 20 minutes, and you’re done.
Top chimis with whatever you like – crema, pico de gallo, salsa, lime wedges, cilantro, fresh tomato or onion. Fresh greens make a perfect bedding – we do mixed lettuces and cabbage – use what you like best. Serve ‘em with an ice cold Mexican beer and enjoy.
Do have cookbooks in your house? Do you use ‘em, and if so, how do you do that? Weird questions? I don’t think so, really – it’s a thing that maybe we should discuss more. It’s an opportunity for me to share some love I don’t think I’ve really every fleshed out before.
First off, have you read any cookbooks, cover to cover, page burner style? If not, I suggest you’ve not yet found the great ones – James Beard’s American Cookery, Claudia Rosen’s Book of Jewish Food, Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Grace Young’s Breath of a Wok, Diana Kennedy’s Essential Cuisines of Mexico, Rick Bayless’ Authentic Mexican, Shizuoka Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking, Fuchsia Dunlop’s Food of Sichuan, Lihn Nguyen’s Lemongrass Ginger & Mint, Claudia Rosen’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food, Claudia Roden’s The Food of Spain, Georgia Friedman’s Cooking South of the Clouds, Grace Young’s Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, Jeffrey Weiss’ Charcuteria, Carolyn Phillips’ All Under Heaven, Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee, Felicia Campbell’s Food of Oman. Every single book in that list will captivate you – They’re meant to be consumed like the amazing cuisines and techniques they lovingly describe.
Others are more for reference, like Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, Page & Dornenberg’s Flavor Bible, Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise, Russell Van Kraayenburg’s Making Dough, Kenji Alt-Lopez’s The Food Lab, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking, Josh & Jessica Applestone’s Butchers Guide to Well Raised Meat, Ruhlman’s Ratios, Ruhlman and Polson’s Charcuterie, Larousse Gastronomique, The Escoffier Cookbook – These provide a solid grounding in the science, technique, and history behind what we do in the kitchen – you’ll go back to those again and again over the years.
Celebrity cookbooks are, by and large coffee table stuff meant to impress and delight the eye, though there are notable exceptions. I should clarify that the pablum put out by TV or social media created people who’ve never worked a shift in a kitchen in their lives, and who generally couldn’t cook their way out of a paper bag on their own are not even considered herein – those folks and their output should be roundly ignored.
Stuff written by and with chefs who really can cook is another matter. While the books they offer tend to be part of their brand as much as anything, don’t discount the fact that most of those folks have put in their time and got where they got because they know their stuff. Thomas Keller’s French Laundry cookbook was written with Ruhlman, so it’s done well without a doubt, and that Chef wants to share what he knows and loves. Bourdain was by his own admission a journeyman Chef, but he was CIA trained and steeped in French country food, and his Les Halles cookbook is a joy. Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin book is stunningly good, and his 32 Yokes memoir is a delight.
Memoirs from real Chefs are wonderful genre. If you’ve never read Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain’ s raucous tell all that brought him to fame, you must do so. Bill Bruford’s Heat, Amy Thielen’s Give a Girl a Knife, Bob Spitz’ Dearie, Anya Von Bremsen’s Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, M. F. K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating, James Beards Delights and Prejudices, Jacque Pepin’s The Apprentice, Jonathan Gold’s Counter Intelligence, Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood Bones and Butter, and Eddie Huang’s Fresh Off the Boat, just to name a very few – There are stunning gems in this genre, and delightful tales.
Anyway, those cookbooks you got – I asked, ‘what do you do with them?’ It’s a serious question to wrap up this ramble. If, gods forbid, you’re just copying a recipe now and again, you’re frankly wasting the true magic of this genre. In a nutshell, that magic is this – If you read a cookbook, really read it – study it, work with, take some notes about what you really liked – let’s say one of Grace Young’s stellar offerings, like Breath of a Wok, then you’ll reap some of the passion and energy she put into that work. More to the point, one day out of the blue, you’ll think ‘I’m gonna do a stir fry,’ and before you know it, you’ll be pulling the core ingredients for that – veggies, herbs, sauce ingredients, without much of a thought. When that happens, then you’re getting what you should out of that wonderful book – and somewhere, a Chef-Author smiles.
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