Boning the Duck

Here’s the deal: Duck confit is duck meat cooked in its own fat for 2-3 hours, then shoved in the fridge. Later, it’s thrown onto a hot pan or right under a broiler to crisp up the fat, then it is served. There’s almost no way to screw it up.

You can buy duck in pieces and parts in most nice grocery stores, or you can find it whole. (Hint: Either way, it’s probably in the freezer next to the meat counter.) I bought a whole duck for $15, and then went on to prove that while “boning the duck” sounds pretty bad–like, illegal-in-most-southern-states bad–it isn’t. My advice on boning ducks is to follow Julia Child’s advice: Cut a slit down the back, and then scrape the knife against the bone until the meat comes away, whole. You might fuck up a duck once trying to get it right, but it’s not so hard.

Whose Fat?

What you NEED though is fat, and that’s the best reason to buy the whole duck. Cuz once you have two thighs and two breasts cut and set aside, you take the rest of the skin and any hiding fat, and stick all thatin a roasting pan or Dutch oven, cooking it at 300º till the clear fat renders, about an hour or so. Pour off the clear fat into a heat-proof container, and save the skin (cracklin’ duck!) or throw it away. You’ll maybe get a cup or two of fat from a whole duck. That’s the only trouble–2 cups is not enough grasa to make the confit happen. What you want is to submerge all the edible parts of the duck in the fat.

In my case, I returned to the grocery store, and picked up a tin of chicken schmaltz from the kosher section. It was 7 oz., not even a damn cup, but it was enough to put me over the top. Purists (and pretty much any French people) will want my head for using chicken fat to cook a duck, but I confess because I’m not ashamed, and I dare them to taste a difference in the end product.

Mary Nation

The real flavor secret with duck confit is the marinade. Before you place it in its greasy bath, you toss the duck pieces with chopped shallots, garlic, salt, pepper, parsley and whatever else you’re going for (thyme, herbes de Provence), and let it sit in the fridge for a day. Make sure you toss it a few times because a lot of liquid seeps out, and you want that fat especially to soak up all the flavor elements.

Hot (Fat) Tub

When you’re coming up on the 24-hour mark, stick all your collected fat into a roasting pan or Dutch oven, one that isn’t too big, just enough to snugly fit all your duck. Heat the fat in the oven to 200º, and once it’s all melted, scrape all the herbs, onions and marinade off the duck parts, then place them in. Remember, submerge the pieces. If you can’t do it, you don’t have enough fat. (Might want to collect some extra, and keep it in the freezer.)

There’s not much more to the story here. You cook your duck parts in 200º fat for 2-3 hours, until the internal temperature is at least 190º. You’re not going for “medium rare,” and you’re not exactly going for slow-roasted either. It’s a different kind of duck texture, but it’s an easy target to hit. Once you’re done, you can pull the whole thing out of the oven, set it on the stove to cool, and when it’s room temperature, shove the whole roasting pan into the fridge, where it will keep–say the sages–for several weeks.

Then What?

That is not the final product, of course, but the hard part is already behind you. When you are ready to impress your friends, family and honored guests with your French elegance, pop the duck parts out of the fat, wipe off any clumps of fat, and stick it into a preheated pan, fat side down. The goal is to heat the meat through, and brown the skin so it’s crispy. An alternative is to do it under a broiler, though you run the risk of browning the skin before the rest of the meat is heated through.

Duck confit is supposed to be served with something sweet and fruity. My favorite is the Cumberland sauce that comes with duck at the Millbrook Cafe in Millbrook, NY. It’s raspberry jam and horseradish mixed together in even portions, and it’s awesome. I recently used some homemade huckleberry jam instead–just as good. In this case, I served it on a bed of wine-braised beet greens (that in all honesty nobody really liked), following a salad of spinach, roasted beets, baked apples and goat cheese. Duck confit is, of course, good any time of day or night, hot or cold. It’s a very malleable preparation, as good served hot for dinner as it is eaten cold, as you hover over your kitchen counter the following day at lunchtime, too hungry to even sit down.

This is, hopefully, my last duck post for a while. I recognize that I’ve somehow made that a recurring theme, and while you might say it’s one of my favorite dishes, the truth is that I like to focus on one thing and work with it over and over for a while, then move on to something else. I put my wife through a long season of home-rolled sushi back in 2006, and an unfortunate number of homemade sausage sessions in 2007-2008. The next fetish? I really don’t know, but I hope it’s not baking. (I think it’s probably baking.)

• One quart of cream
• 1/2 cup sugar
• Flavorings such as vanilla, cinnamon stick, Chinese five spice, grated lemon rind, etc.
• Two packets of gelatin, dissolved in water

Bring the cream to a boil while adding sugar and flavorings. Once boil is reached, mix dissolved gelatin in cream. Stir it up, pour it into ramekins, leave over night to set. Before serving, cut around ramekins, pop onto plate or shallow bowl, then top with a citrus syrup (sugar dissolved in water over medium heat, with tangerine and/or lemon juice). Done. DONE. What did I tell you?

O’Neal’s knew their mushroom pie: Crunchy puff pastry filled with a glistening mushroom filling that was at the same time creamy, zesty and meaty. I dreamed about that pie for years, tried to whip it up, but it would be nearly a decade before I got it right. Now I have it whenever I want.

Filling Groovy

Puff pastry is easy. I mean, it’s freakin’ hard if you want to really manipulate your own pastry dough, but the good people at Pepperidge Farms are doing a decent job of making the shells you need. As you know by now, I am a fan of “from scratch,” but this is a good place to cut a corner. Buy it, stick the pieces, still frozen, on an ungreased pan for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove and yer done. Then comes the filling.

Oh the filling. Listen, that’s what you’re here for. The secret to eternal happiness lies in wild mushrooms, sauteed in butter, stirred together with herbes de Provence, cupboard-grade sherry and WHAT ELSE??? What is the missing element? I made this dish freestyle probably six or eight times, and every time, I fell short. Mushrooms, even dried ones, simmered in their own re-hydration juices until you have a nice syrup, doesn’t deliver the meatiness required to make a mushroom pie that people will talk about. With other people. You don’t talk about a mushroom appetizer unless it can change your life. So what was that element, the one that changes your life?

Whenever I see a favorite dish from one restaurant on the menu in another place, I order it, but I feel a little like I’m committing some infidelity. Such was the case when, a year after we were married, my wife and I had dinner at the place where we had our wedding, and I spotted mushroom pie on the menu. I ordered it. It was delightful, as reasonably similar to O’Neal’s as I could have hoped. I felt a little dirty, but I ate the whole thing.

Searching for clues to that missing element, I took another look at the menu, and sure enough, right there for all to see, was the phrase “demi-glace.” That must be the missing piece. But what in hell was it?

On Half Ice

So, demi-glace–as I now reasonably well understand it–is brown veal stock used to make a richer brown veal stock, reduced and floured for maximum viscosity, at all times judged in terms of its silkiness. I did make it. Once. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why the author of the classic Gold Cookbook, chef Louis P. DeGouy (say it out loud, just once) wanted me to make a stock using stock. But I did it. And I stirred in a roux at some point, just like DeGouy told me. And you know what, it was glorious. It was something that shined and coated and went down easy. I have no idea what it has to do with ice, but it was definitely as smooth as its mysterious name.

Only I have a secret: After that one demi-glace experience, I have been shit out of demi-glace, and so is everyone I know. I once bought some, under the D’Artagnan brand, at Fairway in New York. Noah, aka Mr. Pushpush, mail-orders his–dehydrated. Yes, even among those in the know, ordering dehydrated demi-glace is often preferable to the painstaking process of making the real deal yourself.

When the clock is ticking and I’m whipping up my mushroom pies, I just reduce some meat stock. What we’re really after is something that tacks a bigger backend onto the mushroom vibe. Close your eyes, think of all that mushrooms can do, and think of the teeny part of the equation they can’t pull off. Then reduce some meat stock, and aim it right at that hole. You’ll be surprised, or not surprised, just happy. And the pie will be retardiculously good.

Brass Tacks

You’ve indulged me this far with my ravings, so I will in turn indulge you: Here’s the run through of the actual mushroom pie recipe:

For the Pastry
Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Shells – Keep ‘em frozen! Stick them in the oven 25 minutes before you’re ready to serve the dish. And no, I am not endorsed by the good people at PF, but damn if I shouldn’t buy stock in them, we eat so many Milanos, Sausalitos and flippin’ Goldfish.

For the Filling
1.5 lb fresh wild mushrooms – You can mix or go straight up on one type, but try to keep it lively. I like chanterelles, hedgehogs and lobster mushrooms, but just look at what’s around. I’d avoid the Asian mushrooms for this dish, though I love ‘em in other stuff.

Quick Tip #1: If you go with dried, soak them for a long while and then preserve the soaking liquid, strained if needed. You can pour it in later and reduce it for gran sabor!

3 Tbs butter
1 large shallot (or two smaller ones)
2 tsp herbes de Provence
1/4 cup sherry
2 Tbs demi glace, or 2 cups meat stock reduced to 2 Tbs in a separate pan
A touch of cream
Salt as needed – Careful not to over salt when working with the demi-glace or reduced stock

• Get your heat up to high, toss in the butter and once it’s melted, throw in the shallots. Cook them until translucent and soft, then add the mushrooms. Add a small pinch of salt, if butter is unsalted. Cook the shroomage down a bit, but be careful not to let them shrink too much. Obviously, this is a bigger problem with fresh mushrooms. (You may actually want to have extra just in case.)

Quick Tip #2: In the past, I have small-diced a potato and stuck it in the pan first, with the butter and shallots, but before the shrooms. This adds some body to the dish, but it’s optional.

• Making sure your heat is up, pour in the sherry, add in the herbes de Provence, and cook until the wine has all but vanished. Add the demi-glace or reduced stock, and stir till evenly mixed in. At this point you should have a nice thick gravy at the bottom. If you don’t, add more meat stock and cook it down, again, taking care to not over-salt.

• Just before you’re ready to serve, stir in the cream. I said a “touch” not just because it’s waiter poetic, but because it’s up to you. I would start with a tablespoon or less, and go from there.

• As long as you’ve begun baking your pastry shells 25 minutes before serving, you’ve pretty much idiot proofed this stuff. Carefully take out the pastry caps, scoop a little extra pastry dough out of the bottom of the cups, and ladle in your shroom goo, taking care to artistically overflow the shell. I have found that the ratio of mushroom to pie should be about 2:1, which can’t happen if you keep it inside.

Serve it up, eat it up, and wish you had more. Seriously, if you like mushrooms, this dish will do great things for you.

In Memoriam

I can’t say my grandfather and I had the perfect relationship, but we were close, and we spent a lot of time together in his last years. I loved him, and it is our mutual enjoyment of our Monday night opera excursions–the secret fact that we probably both attended it more for the post-opera meal than the opera itself–that I will remember with the most uncontaminated fondness. This one’s for him: LDR – 1911-2006.

There’s not a lot more to say, except that I followed the basic panna cotta recipe from Gourmet April 1997, also found in the Big Yellow Cookbook and on Epicurious.com, though you gotta wade through a lot of flavored PC recipes if you use the Epi iPhone app. I might point out that Silver Spoon does have a recipe for gelatin-based panna cotta, among its 4 or 5 PC recipes, but they talk about “leaves” of gelatin, and that just scares me.

Most (American) recipes are basically the same, a packet of Knox gelatin, about 3 cups of cream, enough sugar to sweeten things up, and some vanilla. You bring the cream to a boil, stir in sugar, then add the dissolved gelatin. Take care in this step to really get the powder dissolved, and disregard the disgusting odor it gives off during the dissolving stage–I was haunted by it, by the thought that this powder is I dunno ground-up horse hooves or something, but the smell went away almost immediately.

I recommend grating in some orange or tangerine zest, maybe using a real vanilla bean to jazz things up. You can even float things like cloves and cinnamon stick in there while you’re bringing the cream to a boil, then pull it out as you’re pouring it into ramekins. (My ramekins were too large, I think, though as you can see the custard popped out and kinda flattened, so the end result was fine–ideal even.) I went with straight vanilla extract this time around, but I did reduce some fresh-squeezed tangerine juice with a little sugar dissolved in as a syrup topping, which I think made all the difference. (Jenny begs to differ, but she’s just not as big a fruitivore as me.)

As long as you stick to the main ratios, you are free to do whatever you want. Besides flavorings and syrups, you can even make it in a glass with stuff at the bottom, or make it in a parfait with layers of God only knows. You won’t mess it up. Why? Because it’s basically milk Jell-O. But holy shit is milk Jell-O good.

One quick semi-related tip: Anyone making potato leek soup should do what Julia Child did, and run it through a food mill. I love stick blenders, but I’m never using them on potatoes or leeks again. Food mill doesn’t glue up the potatoes, and it doesn’t let the super stringy parts of the leek through. You get fluffy flavorful soup that you don’t have to futz with to get the right consistency. More on soups later. For now, just wash your damn leeks!

A few years back, I went into a dim sum craze, making all variety of dumplings six ways from Sunday. I found recipes in my ancient Chinese cookbook (Taiwan, actually, copyright 1978 or something, loads of MSG); I bought a modern beautifully photographed guide to dim sum; I even found recipes from computer users groups. (Dumplings are actually the nerdiest non-cheese-related food on earth.) I was focused on the dim sum experience, but at the same time, I was cooking (and eating) a lot of Korean and Japanese hot foods too.

One day I was sitting there, post-prandial, with a satisfying but presumably anti-social aftertaste in my mouth, and I put it all together. Suddenly, I knew what happened every time I tried–and failed–to whip together an authentic tasting stir fry with nothing but chicken, water chestnuts, baby corn, onions and soy sauce. I had been missing this holy trinity. Now revealed unto me, I felt whole.

I am proud of myself for having grasped the notion of the Asian mirepoix, but it turns out it’s pretty much common knowledge in the grown-up cooking world. I don’t want to shame my imaginary dead Chinese great grandmother by making shit up, so I’ll just say this: If you want to fake a quick Asian meal, don’t forget GGS. It’s the kind of thing I wish I had been told, a useful foundation for cooks who either don’t read cookbooks, or read too many.

Here’s a quick example–what I cooked tonight, in fact–to get you started. It serves two as an entree, four as a piece of a larger dinner spread:

Spicy Asian Lettuce Burritos*

For the Meat
1.5 lbs ground turkey meat (or other ground meat)
1 cup minced scallions
1/2 cup minced garlic
1/2 cup minced ginger
3 Tbs soy sauce (adding more at the end, to taste)
2 Tbs chili paste (or some other source of spice heat; add more to your liking)
2 Tbs Chinese cooking rice wine (buy the bottle you see at right–I have no idea of the brand, but I keep that stuff on me at all times, and splash it into just about every Chinese dish I cook)
Oil as needed
Other stir fry ingredients you feel like throwing in there, like green peppers, mushrooms, perhaps a little yellow onion (remember, nothing too bulky or unwieldy–no bok choy, no baby corn–since this is finger food)

For the Rest
Iceberg lettuce, carefully peeled from the head so they retain some kind of cup form
Chinese white rice (cook it, cuz I am not gonna tell you how to do that)
Sriracha (in case not everyone likes the kick as much as you)

• If you’re using ground turkey, heat some vegetable oil in your saute pan or wok, get it nice and hot, then add your turkey meat. Fattier meats don’t need the added oil. If you are adding some regular yellow onion, do it now. Cook the meat until its liquid boils away, and the stuff really does start to turn brown. It might stick to the bottom a little, but that’s okay. The term “brown the meat” is not a euphemism, so don’t be a pussy.

• Once you’re to that point, pour in your soy sauce. If you have green peppers or mushrooms, add them now. Cook a bit then throw in your GGS and stir it in good. Remember, garlic isn’t very pleasant when burned, but at this point, it’s hard to really burn it. Keep the heat up! Once you feel like the GGS has softened and integrated, stir in your chili sauce and then splash in that rice wine. Only after you feel the alcohol has cooked off the wine can you turn the heat down, but at that point, you’re done. Taste the meat, fix your seasonings, and put it into a large communal bowl.

• Hopefully you’ve got a rice maker, and you remembered to put it in motion. Scoop out rice into bowls, then serve everything all at once, each person getting their own lettuce cups and rice. The key is to roll up the meat in the lettuce, and eat it over the rice. That way, if you mess up and explode meat out the back of your lettuce burrito, it lands safely–and tastily–in your rice bowl.

I don’t know if this is Korean or Chinese or some kind of bastardization that my imaginary dead Chinese great grandmother is rolling over in her imaginary grave for me having mentioned here, but damn if it’s not a good quick totally non-boring meal to put out at a moment’s notice. And remember, it’s a documented fact that anything, when wrapped in lettuce leaves, becomes 60% healthier. Just don’t forget the GGS. Ever.

*Not their real name, if there’s any justice in this world

Process: I read a recipe, look at its picture. Usually it’s either boring or hard–very rarely square with my abilities. The voices in my head start up in a hurry. In the case of Southern Living’s lemon squares, they said: What if you made it with Meyer lemons? What if you made it in that brand new shallow cupcake pan? What the hell is a pastry blender, and why is its only substitute a fork?

For those of you who have never made lemon squares, they’re basically a shortbread bottom layer browned in the oven, then covered with a lemon custard which is then baked. Cool the whole thing down, and carve the squares from a single giant rectangle. Dust with powdered sugar, then immediately call your dentist. I can’t think of anything with a more dentally unfriendly combination of sugar and gooeyness.

If I had made them this way, I wouldn’t have had any trouble. But I wouldn’t have learned jack shit. I’m not saying I’m coming out of this the Einstein of lemon squares, but I know five things I didn’t know before, thanks to my botched job.

Though I learned the hard way that a “pastry blender” was not simply “any blender currently in the act of blending pastries,” I managed to press my butter chunks into flour and powdered sugar using a combination of potato mashers, wire whisks and bare hands. Hey, it worked.

After I pressed the shortbread mixture to the bottom of each tiny cup in my baking pan, I had a lot left over, so I grabbed a Pyrex pie pan and layered it too. I baked each at 350ºF for 20-30 min.

I don’t know whether I would have gone with a metal or Pyrex 13×9 pan but it never would have occurred to me to think about the difference. But a-ha! When I backed my way into doing both metal and Pyrex, I found out the difference is huge. I got more or less the same degree of top browning on both the metal pan and the Pyrex, I later noticed that the Pyrex hadn’t browned at all on the bottom. It was still tasty, but it lacked the richness and crunch–it still tasted like butter, flour and sugar mixed together with a fork. The cups within the metal pan tasted as good as I can imagine shortbread to taste. (That sounds dramatic, but honestly, I don’t have a particularly wild imagination when it comes to shortbread.)

My real trouble started with the custard fillings. I have a notoriously love-hate relationship with custard. I’ve made some desirable crème brûlée in my day, and I once had to apologize in advance for the awesomeness of some Boston cream I made for a DIY doughnut initiative. Still, you may recall I recently made panna cotta (secret confession: I actually made it twice) and failed quite clumsily. The lemon custard is little more than a lemon-and-sugar quiche filling, but I messed it up.

One thing I did was overbeat the egg. The recipe calls for whipping, but really just to combine all the ingredients evenly, not to change the egg’s physical properties. But there I was, with my mother-in-law’s stand mixer, flipping it on and off as I combined ingredients. I noticed things getting a little frothy in there, but I chose to ignore it. At my peril. The meringue crust that formed atop my cups and the Pyrex-contained lemon-square pie may have been enticing and a novel twist, but it remains undesired, not least of all because it was suddenly impossible to remove the desserts from their cooking vessels without cracking or crumbling the tops.

The primary lesson here is that it’s easy to accidentally start to make a meringue, so don’t beat too much unless instructed to.

In hindsight, when comparing this to other eggy dishes similarly prepared in the oven, I realized a secondary lesson too: When in doubt, cover with foil. You’re not really going for a crust. Hell, the fact that you’re supposed to dust with powdered sugar means to me that you want to avoid a crust at all cost. Foil might not have helped me out of my meringue bind, but it wouldn’t have hurt either.

Oddly enough, though I fucked up much of the recipe, I did happen upon a good way to make individual lemon cups. I might go with a slightly taller cupcake pan, and I might even try cupcake liners for easy ejection, though truth is, a little butter or other grease around the rims, and they should pop out.

As close as I might have come to the mark, hitting it would have been a tragedy. Fuckups are what help me understand stuff. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve botched a hurried sauce to pour over broccoli or chicken. Yet little by little, with every error, the mysteries of reduction, thickening and emulsion are revealing themselves to me.

I’d never have learned about working with whole wheat flour if I hadn’t once substituted bread flour for whole wheat in a 1:1 swap, producing a right nutty brick of a loaf for my pains.

I wouldn’t have understood why gelatin is a key component to panna cotta, regardless of what the Silver Spoon cookbook says. I would not have gotten the message that re-boiling stock meat once a first stock has been made isn’t as smart as it sounds. (OK, it sounds dumb, but I know why now!) I wouldn’t know why it’s vital to keep those short ribs braising in the oven for at least four hours, or how meat changes over a day even at super low heat. Sure that particular overnight-at-165ºF operation produced a mealy, fall-apart piece of pretty much inedible chicken, the lesson of it was invaluable.

A real chef can make the same thing hundreds of times, refining little by little, like a concert pianist taking on Rachmaninoff. Me, I don’t have time to do something right 341 times in a row. So my solution? Fuck it up once or twice, and learn big lessons in the process. And if, after reading this, you are afraid to come eat at my house, think but this: I never invited you anyway.

Note to self: This is a pastry blender:

The meal plan–and indeed the meal prep itself–was driven largely by Noah, who is more of an artistically minded cook than me. I mostly think in grease and goo, the rudimentary science of cooking. I get ideas in my head like “I think I’ll make mayonnaise,” not because I have anything to put it on, but because that seems like something worth learning how to do. Noah contemplates restaurant preparation and presentation. The finished product, plated and ready, is what he has in mind. If it has mayo, then by God, we better make some mayo. Our palates are similar, though, and neither of us is an ego headcase, so the end result of our collaboration was peaceful and productive, with moments of genuine symbiosis. (OK, I’ll admit it, Noah did most of the work.)

As I was saying, Noah steered the meal plan. We agreed on a mildly Italian-colored modern menu, drawing from the greats–Mario Batali, Ina Garten, Thomas Keller, etc.–plus a little help from the fundamentals-themed tomes: Practical Japanese Cooking, the Silver Spoon cookbook (I know what you’re thinking this is notRicky Shroeder’s celebrity recipe volume; it’s essentially the Italian Joy of Cooking) and of course Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Since it was the last week that I had the SousVide Supreme out on loan, we knew we had to make good use of it. After a few days of emailing back and forth, the destined lineup revealed itself:

• Gruyere and Parmesan Gougères
• Fritto Misto of Radicchio & Fennel with Homemade Aioli
• Ravioli Carbonara with Fonduta di Parmigiano
• Pork Belly with Romano, Swiss Chard and Balsamic Glaze
• Rack of Lamb & Cherry Mint Relish with Cauliflower Gratin and Sous Vide Carrots, Parsnips and Snap Peas
• Panna Cotta with Caramel and Blueberry Compote

Here I’ll run through every dish as thoroughly as possible, with copious notes from Noah, and astounding pictures–a veritable food pornucopia–mostly taken by Noah’s wife, Molly, who stole my camera early on and wouldn’t give it back.

Gruyere and Parmesan Gougères

From Noah:

I referenced Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris, Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Alain Ducasse’s Food and Wine recipe for these cheese puffs.

The basic premise is the same in all recipes and the proportions don’t vary much. Heat liquid + butter + seasonings (but not pepper) to just boiling. Reduce heat to medium and mix in flour. A big dough ball will form and it smells sort of like a roux. Cook this ball for about two minutes. TK says this is to get rid of some excess moisture.

Transfer the dough to a mixer. Run for a couple minutes to diffuse some heat. Start adding eggs one at a time until the dough is more of a sticky goop. TK says that that when you lift the paddle out of the mix that it should form a peak that droops back on itself. If the goop is too stiff then add more egg. Again TK is particular here… he says to add first an egg white and then the yolk if it is too stiff. My guess is that this depends on a few factors such as how moist your dough is pre-eggs, how much water is in your butter, how big your eggs are and how much gluten is in your flour.

Once your goop is right then you mix in your cheese. I used mostly Gruyere and a little raw milk Parm. Push the mix through a pastry bag into about 2Tbs-sized globs onto your baking sheet (a recipe makes 3-4 dozen depending on how big your globs are). I followed TK’s baking instructions: Bake at 425ºF for 7-8 minutes (until the puffs start to hold their shape) and then drop temp to 350º for 20-25 minutes.

I used mini ball cake pans instead of a baking sheet. In my test run, I found that my gougères baked on sheets were flatter than I wanted so I thought that a round cooking surface would help them puff up more ball-like. The pans worked and I was very pleased with the shape of the puffs, but I discovered that because the puffs sit in the bottom of the cake bowl that the puff cooked faster; this has to be because the sides of the rounded cooking surface get hot. The puffs were good, but with TK’s cooking times plus the mini ball cake pans they were slightly overcooked. Next time I need to reduce the cooking time if I use the ball pans. I did have another problem with these mini ball cake pans: They are pretty poorly made and are not coated. Despite a ton of butter, the gougères had a tendency to stick to the pans and had to be popped out with a butter knife. I can’t imagine that getting cakes out of those things would be easy.

We served these with a bottle of Oregon bubbly: Argyle Extended Tirage Willamette Valley 1999 (WS 95 #18 in WS 2009 Top 100).

I have nothing to add except that they were the best Cheesy Poofs I ever tasted, and Noah was kind enough to let me take home the leftovers, which I shared (begrudgingly) with people who were equally impressed, a day later.

Fritto Misto of Radicchio & Fennel with Homemade Aioli

I first espied batter-fried radicchio in the Silver Spoon cookbook, but when I brought it up to Noah, he immediately hit upon the biggest problem element: Radicchio is bitter as a mofo. Noah recommended we counter the radicchio with something a bit sweeter, fennel. I was always planning to whip up some kind of a dip–I call it mayonnaise but for the purposes of our Italic lineup, we went with aioli.

The night before our dinner, at like 1am or so, I got good and drunk and decided it was time to make some mayonnaise. I whipped out Julia’s Mastering the Art, read through her mayo lecture twice, scratched my head, pulled out the Kitchen-Aid, and proceeded to do my best to screw up her recipe.

Basically, mayo is egg yolks primed with an acid, some salt and some mustard in order to accept large amounts of oil. It is a miraculous process, though it sounds a lot like the force-feeding of foie gras geese: Once you can get the yolks to take a little oil–a dribble at a time with your mixer relatively cranked–you can then start pouring it in wholesale. I highly recommend you try this, because as long as you have a mixer it’s almost impossible to screw up, despite Julia’s repeated warning of an impending “crisis.”

Sadly, my mayo–which I made with equal parts white-wine vinegar and lemon juice–did turn out on the bitter side though. I assumed it was that my EVOO was a bit turned, and that the mayo was highlighting the spoilage. I made mayo again the next day at Noah’s. (Like I said, really friggin’ easy.) But though I had a fresh bottle of EVOO, the same thing happened. Bitterness. (I made mayo a third time, a week later. I used regular vegetable oil and only fresh lemon juice. It was slightly less bitter.) In the end, I realized that I was concentrating too much on the taste of the mayo by itself. I roasted a little garlic to stir in, salted a bit more to taste, and let’s face it, the stuff became a fine thing to dip fried veggies into.

Truth be told, I didn’t think about the fried veggies again until five minutes before we made them. I had left the Silver Spoon cookbook at home, but I knew that I wanted a tempura batter. Fortunately, Noah loves Japanese cooking as much as I do, and had a wonderful resource on hand, Practical Japanese Cooking by Shizuo Tsuji and Koichiro Hata. I believe their tempura batter was 1 egg, 1 cup ice water and 1 cup flour. Ridiculously simple, like so much of great Japanese cuisine.

Noah and I both have deep fryers, and you’d really be a fool to try this without one. We filled his with (slightly used) peanut oil, and I dipped the wedge-cut fennel and radicchio into the batter and fried them up in there at 375º. They came out wonderfully: Crispy outside, cooked tender inside.

Noah, sensing both the need for a more color-balanced presentation and the need for his wife Molly to have a salad that was not completely batter-fried to a crisp, whipped up a quick greens-in-vinaigrette garnish.

Ravioli Carbonara with Fonduta di Parmigiano

This is one of Noah’s most masterful creations, so I am not going to say anything, just let him tell it like it is. Follow these instructions, people, if you want the greatest raviol’ in the history of non-traditional Italian cooking:

This dish I made from scratch and winged a fair bit of it, but I’ll recount what I can.

For the Pasta:
1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1 Cup semolina flour; extra for dusting work surfaces
3 large eggs
½ Tsp salt (optional)
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil (optional)
Ice cold water (not used this time, but on hand if the dough was too dry)

I make my pasta using the Kitchen Aid. I also use their roller attachment. I can do it the traditional way by making a flour well, but I have twins and time is always of the essence so I cut corners here… sue me.

• Mix flour and salt in the bowl and stir with the Mixer paddle or whisk

• Add one egg at a time until the dough comes together

• Add the oil after the eggs or mid egg. I do mid egg myself, but if your house is humid or your eggs are larger than you expect then the oil might be too much liquid for your pasta. Just add a little extra flour if your dough is too sticky.

• If the dough is still sandy after the eggs and oil then I add one tblspn of ice water at a time until it comes together. If I go too far then I balance with more flour.

• Knead the dough for 2 minutes or so

• Rest the dough on a lightly floured surface for at least 15 minutes and up to a couple of hours

• Lightly over the dough with plastic wrap while it is resting

• Cut the dough into 4-5 balls and roll until desired thickness.

• I find that for me the dough can become a bit unmanageable past 6 on the dial of the Kitchen Aid roller. This could be because of the extra oil, the amount of protein or the way I mix my dough. I don’t go past 6 and kind of prefer the thickness of 5 on the dial. The ravioli this time were made with pasta rolled at 6.

For the Filling:
4 oz slab bacon or pancetta
1.5 medium onions; minced
2-4 cloves of garlic; minced
¼ to ½ Tsp red pepper flakes
¾ cup Parmigiano
½ cup Ricotta
Parsley (probably ¼ cup finely chopped)
¼ cup Heavy Cream
3 Tbs cooked spinach (w/onions, garlic, nutmeg, bacon and cream) – OPTIONAL
Salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg all to taste
1 egg

• Fry the bacon, chop and reserve

• Remove all but 2 Tbs of bacon fat

• Saute the onions until they are pretty soft and starting to brown (7-8 minutes)

• Add garlic and red pepper flakes; cook until fragrant (1 minute)

• Add bacon back to pan and toss with onions and garlic; then take off heat and set aside

• Mix cheeses and cream in food processor

• Add onion mixture and pulse until well mixed

• If adding spinach mixture then add it here and pulse until well blended (you don’t want any stringy spinach in the ravioli)

• Add parsley and pulse 1-3 times to break down the parsley

• Remove to bowl and season to taste

• Add egg and thoroughly mix

• Set aside, can be refrigerated overnight

Assembling the Ravioli
(There has to be a better, more efficient, less wasteful way to do this.)
1-2 eggs per person plus 1 egg mixed with 1 Tsp of water for an egg wash
½ recipe of pasta should be more than enough for 4 people
1/3 recipe of filling should be enough for 4 people

• Separate eggs; you need enough yolks for 1-2 per person. I placed my yolks in individual small prep bowls.

• Lay out 1 sheet of pasta; call it 12”-18” long

• Place 1-2 Tbs of filling evenly spaced apart down the center of the pasta sheet

• Make a well in each dollop of filling

• Gently nestle 1 yolk in each well

• Brush the egg wash around the outside of each filling mound

• Gently layer a second sheet of pasta over the filling

• Very gently begin pressing the pasta together around the mound of filling. Your goal is to press all of the air out of the ravioli.

• Cut the ravioli using a ravioli crimper. Here is what I used. It isn’t a very sturdy tool, but it did the job.

• Cook the ravioli in gently boiling salted water for 3 minutes

For the Fonduta di Parmigiano (aka the sauce)
This sauce I pilfered/modified from a Batali recipe, but I didn’t add the yolks to the sauce because I figured that the yolk from the ravioli would mix with the cream/parm mixture.

1 cup heavy cream
½ cup parmigiano
¼ tspn freshly grated nutmeg

• Heat the cream to just boiling. Remove from the heat and add the cheese and nutmeg. Seems really similar to a Mornay sauce without the roux.

• In a small sauce pan poach 4 cloves of peeled and trimmed garlic over low low heat in clarified butter (30 minutes). The butter should almost cover the garlic. Be careful not to burn.

• Press garlic into butter and mix.

• Transfer mixture to a larger sauté pan.

• Fry 1-2 slices of bacon or pancetta per person and reserve; Cut the bacon so that you have 4 evenly sized pieces per person. We used the Mangalitsa Pig Jowl Bacon.

• Assemble the whole thing.

• Heat garlic butter mixture in sauté pan.

• Boil the ravioli for 3 minutes and gently remove from pan.

• Transfer ravioli to sauté pan with butter and garlic. Quickly sauté the ravioli (you do not want to overcook your yolk here) and baste with the butter-garlic mixture in the pan.

• In a pasta bowl place pieces of bacon at the compass points of the bowl or whatever way suits you best.

• Place 1-2 ravioli in each bowl

• Spoon 2 Tbs of Fonduta over each serving

• Lightly sprinkle with breadcrumbs, parsley and grated parm. Crank some black pepper over each dish and serve.

Notes:

• The filling was made the night before.

• The pasta and ravioli were assembled the morning of.

• Sauce and cooking happened right before service.

• From health perspective making the raviolis in advance was OK (at least none of us got sick). I had read from several sources that yolks would keep out of their shell in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. Supposedly there is danger of them absorbing odors from the refrigerator, but since my yolks were sitting on top of ravioli filling made up of cheese, onion, bacon and garlic I wasn’t really worried about other odors penetrating.

• From a finished product perspective there were some challenges. The biggest of which is that the filling is fairly wet especially once you add an egg yolk so after the ravioli sat in the refrigerator for 6 to 7 hours (from 7 AM to 2 PM) some of them had started to get sticky on the bottom and were splitting/seeping. I quick-fixed this problem by liberally re-dusting everything with semolina, but by the time we cooked everything we lost a few ravioli in the water because the pasta structure had been compromised by moisture. I had pre-made 8 raviolis and only 6 survived the boiling. Fortunately this dish is so rich that you really only need 1 per person (at least at the size they were that night). I had done a test run of this dish a couple weeks prior and it was super easy when I made the pasta, assembled the ravioli and cooked the dish all in one go. The ravioli can be made ahead, but I’d recommend assembling and serving right away if possible. This will give you the best texture for your pasta and preserve the fussy work required to make the dish. In future attempts I’d definitely lean towards making and serving. I would also look into quail eggs for the yolks as I’d like to have smaller raviolis and serve two per plate.

Pork Belly with Romano, Swiss Chard and Balsamic Glaze

This was another of Noah’s master strokes, the piggiest (and most decadently succulent) dish of the night. Fortunately if prep for that ravioli scared you away, you’ll be happy to hear that this one is far more doable by the laity:

For the Pork Belly

For the pork belly we followed the recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Meat Cookbook. Again we used the Mangalitsa meat purchased from Wooly Pigs.

• Bake at 425 for 30 minutes until the fat is crackling

• Reduce heat to 375 and continue to bake for another 60 minutes

• I wrapped the cooked pork belly in foil and threw it in a brown paper bag for an hour or so. We reserved the rendered fat.

• At service I removed the ribs and then cut the pork belly into eight even pieces which we sautéed in reserved pork belly fat and shallots.

• I trimmed the meat from the ribs and reserved this as well for inclusion in the chard.

Preparing the Swiss Chard
• Blanch the chard in a large pot of boiling salt water for about 2 minutes (TK says the water should taste like the sea)

• Plunge the chard into an ice bath to stop the cooking

• Lay the chard flat on cooking sheets and press dry with paper towels

• Set aside until ready to use

• Chop the chard into even squares

• Heat some oil (or use the rendered pig fat like we did)

• Saute some shallots for 3-5 minutes (1-2 shallots. We used minced, but I think I would have preferred thinly sliced rings)

• Saute some garlic for 1 minute

• Add the Chard and the reserve pork from the ribs

• Toss with shallots/garlic

• Liberally douse with black pepper

• Salt to taste

• Splash with red wine vinegar as desired

For the Balsamic Glaze
2 cups cheap balsamic vinegar
½ Tsp instant espresso
½ Tsp unsweetened cocoa
½ Tsp ground star anise
½ Tsp ground ginger

• Reduce the mixture over a super low flame for 2-3 hours. You should have about ½ cup at the end. In reality I got impatient (and tired) so I think I had somewhere between ½ a cup and ¾ of a cup. I will probably further reduce this glaze to thicken it a bit.

For the Assembly
• Saute the pork belly squares in reserved pork belly fat; I believe we threw the rest of the shallots from our prep bowl in the pan for this step

• Make a small dot of balsamic glaze on each plate. (This was a mistake, but since it is what I did I’m writing it down. I wouldn’t do this again.)

• Place a small mound of chard on the balsamic glaze dot (again a mistake by starting with the glaze)

• Shave a couple pieces of pecorino romano over the chard (I used a pecorino that was coated in black pepper in this case)

• Place two pieces of the sautéed pork belly on top of the cheese shavings

• Drizzle with balsamic glaze

• Fresh ground black pepper

Notes:
• As stated above, the first puddle of balsamic glaze was too much and it overwhelmed the plate. I’d not repeat that step in the future.

• I thought that the pork belly was actually a little over sautéed. If I did this again I think I’d either time things so that the pork belly was served straight out of the oven after roasting (preferred) or I’d sauted the fat side to recrisp and take it easy on the bottom and other 4 sides. I’d take lukewarm over overcooked here. That said, the wooly pig meat was still of such high quality that I personally didn’t think the extra balsamic glaze or the slightly over sautéing ruined the dish. It could have been better and more refined, but not a bad first stab at pork belly. I’ve paid for and eaten much worse at fancier tables than my own dining room.

• Last thought on this is that application of the balsamic glaze would have benefited from a squeeze bottle. For the future, rather than apply the glaze directly to the food I might dot the edge of the plates with the glaze and let the diner dip their bites as they chose.

Rack of Lamb & Cherry Mint Relish with Cauliflower Gratin and Sous Vide Carrots, Parsnips and Snap Peas

During our meal planning, Noah expressed an interest in leg of lamb, but since I had the SousVide Supreme for just one final weekend, I wanted to do rack of lamb: Sous vide is a way to cook tender meats to near perfection; tougher cuts do well in the water bath, especially for several days, but there are plenty of other slow-cook methods that are just as good–or better. We vacuum-sealed our meat with salt, pepper and thyme sprigs, and set the sous vide machine for 135ºF, leaving them in for a few hours.

At the same time, we’d purchased some nice root veggies at the farmer’s market, and wanted to sous vide them with butter. Vegetables need to cook at 183º though, so we couldn’t do them at the same time. This would end up causing a little bit of grief later on, because it meant that a) we had to remove the lamb early, causing it to cool down unnecessarily before we seared it, and b) we didn’t have as long to cook the carrots and parsnips, the latter of which turned out on the chewy side.

We also did up some snap peas, spotted by Noah at the local Whole Foods, cooked sous vide with butter and mint. As Noah puts it, “The butter and mint were a nice subtle addition that I felt worked well with the lamb.”

Just before serving the lamb, we pan seared it, and sliced it for each plate. It was served with a cherry relish, as Noah describes:

From Josh Silver chef owner of Syrah Bistro in Santa Rosa (as presented in Wine Spectator Magazine June 30, 2009)
For the Relish:
1 1/2 cups fresh black cherries, pitted (I had to use frozen cherries which was an OK substitute, but not great as the sugar level was too concentrated and they just didn’t tast as fresh. I also didn’t love their texture.)
1 Tsp vin cotto (or equal parts honey and red wine) (I used a bit more of this… maybe double)
1/2 small shallot, peeled and minced
6 to 8 mint leaves, chopped
Pinch of fleur de sel
Few grinds fresh black pepper

• Mix ingredients in a small bowl and let stand for several minutes (or can be refrigerated several hours). Makes 1 1/2 cups.

Notes:
In the past I’ve made this, but cooked down about half the cherries and all of the shallots. Basically more of a compote than a relish, but I like it more saucy. I didn’t do this here and I think it was a mistake. Another issue with the relish is that it probably should have been brought to room temperature. We served it straight out of the refrigerator. The chilly cherry relish plus the lukewarm lamb was a bit odd when combined with the hot vegetables and the piping hot gratin.

The final component in the entrée course was the cauliflower gratin, which Noah followed as written in Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook. (Luckily for cheap bastards, somebody reprinted it online here.) Noah points out that he used the yellow curry powder blend TK described in Ad Hoc at Home.

Though the gratin took the fall during our meal, being the thing most of us were too stuffed to enjoy, it took starring role in the leftover lineup the following day. God bless this stuff.

Panna Cotta with Caramel and Blueberry Compote

At this point we couldn’t see straight let alone fit anything into our stomachs, but I had attempted panna cotta for the first time and everyone was willing to humor me by giving it a taste. I’m gonna come out and say it now: I messed it up. The flavor was pretty much ideal, but the consistency was as wrong as wrong can be. I skimmed several recipes in the Silver Spoon, choosing one that resembled, at least superficially, what I had done to make creme brulee in the past, so I felt like it would be easy. But somewhere between folding beaten egg whites into the boiled cream (which I doubt I cooled enough), and baking them in a water bath at an all too low temperature (275ºF??? Really?), the custard just did not congeal. Some panna cotta goes with gelatin, and it is my express intention to read up on this approach. The Silver Spoon cookbook is good, but the panna cotta recipe it has that features gelatin was translated too literally from the Italian, instead of being a useful country-to-country transposition, so I had to skip it. Next time, creamy jello or bust.

Oh, to get that nice consistency you see in the gorgeous picture? Frozen. We froze the ramekins when it was clear they weren’t setting properly. So it was panna gelata, but not in a good way.

Noah whipped up a blueberry compote (Josh Silver’s, from the June 30, 2009 Wine Spectator), which he thinks was unnecessary. I loved it, and by this time I was looking for anything that could cover my mistakes, but in a perfect world, sure, it might have been superfluous.

My Martin may sit on its stand collecting dust, but the All-Clads I got as a wedding gift, shit, they get a workout every day.

It’s been a few weeks since I put anything up on this blog, but as that self-indulgent preamble hopefully indicated, it’s not because I haven’t been cooking. I did individual puff pastry mushroom pies fortified with a reduced leftover goose stock, pulled together a mighty fine crab bisque, whipped up perfect diced potato home fries by taking the advice of America’s Test Kitchen (cut evenly, toss with oil, microwave for 5-10 minutes and then fry in a hot pan with butter), and speaking of whipping, made mayonnaise not once but three times. In one week.

During that time I also read Michael Ruhlman’s The Making of a Chef and acquired both the CIA’s Professional Chef (8th Edition) textbook and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, all three titles combining to get me as close to the inside of a Culinary Institute of America classroom as I will ever be–except for those classrooms that just happen to double as tasty–and highly entertaining–restaurants.

Speaking of restaurants, I did a lot of eating out, and spent a day tasting wine in Woodinville. This site is decidedly not about other people’s creations–as superior to my own as they generally are–but I will note that the wine tasting visit with our friends Julie and Addison (a sommelier who appears in these pages here and there) turned up some fascinating bottles: Efesté, a Cab-Syrah blend called Final-Final; at Mark Ryan, a Cab-Merlot called Water Witch and the white Dissident, which is I believe Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc; at Gorman, the Pixie Syrah and the Big Sissy Chardonnay; and even at Chateau Ste. Michelle, a surprising Cinsault.

When it comes to cooking, the most important thing that I embarked on was a joint cooking venture with my friend Noah, culminating in what will heretofore be known as The Feast of February 13th. We are both cooking nerds, but Noah is such a cooking Poindexter that I at times feel (depressingly) like a dumb jock next to him. Nevertheless, he was kind enough to let me share marquee billing as we masterminded, procured and boiled up a six-course Italy-weighted Continental dinner that tasted and looked restaurant good. Of course, we had a full day and only four mouths to feed (including our own), and there was ample wine from Noah’s cellar to shine bright rays of optimism on any near fuck-ups. But I think it was smashing, and I’m going to prove it to you. The next post I put up will be food porn and liner notes to the Feast of February 13th. Make sure you have something to munch on because I realize that salad and dungeness crab pics might not make you hungry, but everything you see coming up will. Here’s a teaser:

By the by, I know you’ve been sorta thinking about that mushroom puff pastry since I mentioned it up above. Fear not, my fellow mycophiles, it will be the subject of a story all by itself very soon.

The Rule of Threes
Comedy has a rule of threes, tragedy has a rule of threes, and now salad has a rule of threes:

1 Nut + 1 Fruit + 1 Cheese

Think of this as the three wheels of a slot machine, spinning with options. Pretty much anything can be good. We regularly throw together walnuts, dried cranberries and blue cheese over spinach. Swap out the cran for mandarin oranges, and the goat cheese for crumbly feta cheese, and you’ve gone from a wintery hearth to the sunny Mediterranean without so much as a bus ticket.

What I like about the rule of threes is how handy it can be when you want to be creative–strawberries, pinenuts and chunks of Pyrenees cows-milk cheese? I just made that up. How about a white-trash salad bar spin? Cornnuts, pineapples and Gorgonzola. That could be amazing.

But I also like that it works as a simple way to instruct other people without being a dick. You know the other person/people in your house, the one/s who don’t love to cook? This is your way to easily help them along when it’s their turn in the kitchen. “Sure, we have apples, we have sliced almonds, we have goat cheese… coming right up… thanks honey!” You may think the Rule of Threes is super obvious (at least, I do), but it might help your creative process, and will certainly save you from your non-cooking loved ones making weird-ass salads.

Now that I’ve started, I can’t stop. Mango? With… hazelnuts? And maybe… Brie cheese.

Good Tip: I’m not really into croutons per se, but if you have a softer cheese, just toast little bread points and slap it on. Same ultimate end, just different means.

Go ahead, try your own trios, as if this inevitable mental exercise hasn’t already started somewhere deep inside your cerebral cortex. One quick philosophical question, though, before you get too carried away: Do pomegranate seeds count as fruit or nut? I say either, or both.

The Matrix
What about the green stuff? I tend to think of the toppings as a way to jive the salad with the rest of the meal, and the greens I use to determine how much of a course the salad is going to be. During the week, if I put out a spinach salad, it’s basically a confession: “No, there won’t be a green vegetable next to the meat and starch.” Spinach is a vegetable replacement. (Also, a good one to buy large bins of, because you can obviously cook it too, just beware that it takes approximately 47,000 raw spinach leaves to create one 4″x4″ serving.)

Mesclun is the lightest of the salads, with romaine, iceberg and my favorite, red leaf, somewhere slightly closer to the middle, but only just slightly. If you serve any of these as your green leafy matrix, I am pretty sure you are still required by law to cook up some green beans for the main dish.

That said, I have a hard time imagining any trio of fruit, nut and cheese not going well with any particular leafy green. You may grow accustomed to certain combinations, but that’s different than there being absolute rights and wrongs.

You’re Never Fully Dressed Without…
You may start with the Rule of Threes and move on to the greenery, but the most powerful single element in a salad is that dressing, baby. Bottled dressings are salty and xanthan gummy, with unidentifiable bits of this and that and the other. I am not a maniacal foodie, but storebought salad dressings–especially ones in the unrefrigerated aisle–taste like doodoo.

And they cost too much. Add “every salad dressing ever” to my growing list of con-diments, will ya? You have vinegar and olive oil. You have mustard and mayo. You have garlic salt, shallots, salt and pepper. You also have the ability to play with it as it’s going into the jar. Ever tried to doctor up a bottle of Wishbone? Probably not recommended.

So, here’s salad dressing at its simplest (and cheapest):

1 Part Vinegar + 2 Parts Oil + a dash of Sugar + a Tsp or two of Mayo + a pinch of Salt

I make my dressing by eyeballing it, poured into a small baby-food jar. I seal it (as well as I can) and shake the crap out of it, so that for at least half a minute or so, the contents of the jar are a uniform creamy gold.

That mayo business is a tip from Cook’s Illustrated. It’s not a flavoring so much as it is an emulsifying agent. They tried mustard, too, and found it couldn’t hold the oil and vinegar together long enough.

Mustard is certainly welcome in my salad dressing as a flavoring, though. Other favorites are garlic powder, truffle oil, lemon juice, raspberry preserves, even pomegranate juice, which I got by pressing pomegranate seeds against the inside of a tiny strainer. Don’t dump it all in at once, mind you. The real key to awesome dressing is simplicity. Make the basic dressing, and then add in a little bit. Always shake the hell out of it before you taste, or you might not be getting a full sampling.

Another key is sugar. It’s in every restaurant salad. It’s in every storebought salad. It’s what makes it easier to enjoy mesclun and radicchio and all those other bitter greens, and it softens the bitter aftertastes of many nuts, too. Obviously, if you are using raspberry preserves or something else that’s intensely sweet by nature, you don’t have to add any sugar beyond that.

Better than sugar is honey, but heed this advice: Add the honey in with the vinegar first, shake it up till it dissolves, and then pour in the oil. Otherwise you will have a gooey foundation at the bottom of your jar, and a not-so-sweet dressing.

I got a secret for you. Are you ready? White balsamic vinegar. Yeah, you heard me. It’s got a balsamic zing to it, but it doesn’t have the heaviness or the tarry look. I don’t like the darkness of regular balsamic in a nice springy tossed salad. I save that for a honey-infused syrupy drizzle over mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. My absolute favorite green-salad dressing combo: White balsamic and extra virgin olive oil with honey, mayo, truffle oil and a tiny dash of garlic powder. It’s pretty much the best dressing there is.

A Word About Shallots
No matter what you’ve done to this point, there’s still room for shallots. Finely minced shallots, ideally pre-soaked in the dressing itself. Cut up half a shallot and leave it in the dressing. If you don’t finish the dressing, the leftover will keep just fine, and you can add more as necessary.

Shallots are a kitchen addiction. Once you start cooking with them–stirring them into butter for a sauce to go with chicken, or tossing them with green beans Asian style in a super hot frying pan–you get a panicky sweat when they’re not around. When I see that there’s like half a shallot in the fridge, I not only beg Jenny to pick some up on her way home, but I hastily use up that last half, like a chainsmoker with one broken ciggie left in the softpack.

I have mentioned our dear Uncle Gerald before, but I should also mention Aunt Laurie, without whom we would now have the pleasure of knowing Gerald. Because without either of them, we would not have the pleasure of knowing the importance of shallots in salads. I think it’s safe to say that I haven’t intentionally served a single salad without minced shallots since 2006, when Laurie shared the secret of purple gold with me. You will feel the same soon, I guarantee it.

Good Tip: You know how tomatoes in winter can be mushy and unpleasant? My solution is to cut them up into little pieces then stick them in a bowl, covering them with salad dressing. Just like the shallots, these benefit from a little pre-pickling. Pour all the dressing you’re intending to use for the salad itself, and then when you’re ready to serve dinner, just dump the tomato bowl over the salad and toss as needed.

Let’s Go Bowling
You’ve heard it many times, but hear it again: Your greens should not be swimming in dressing. As long as you’ve emulsified it through and through, pour it in a few tablespoons at a time, and toss fully. Check the bottom of the salad bowl. If there’s no dressing at all down there, you can add a little more, but if all the leaves are coated and there’s a puddle forming at the bottom, you are done.

Plate each salad (we use bowls, so I guess you can “bowl each salad” if you prefer). Next, top with your predetermined fruit, nut and cheese trio. If you toss it all together, it will just hit the bottom, and be hard to parcel out, and good cheese can get really messed up by tossing. The stickier the cheese, the later and more carefully it goes on.

Finally, do as the restaurants do, and grind some pepper over the thing. I don’t know why pepper is so omnipresent in our galaxy of foods, but I’ll be damned if I eat a salad without any ground pepper. The end result should be happy people who finish their salad, ask for seconds, and maybe, if you’re lucky, remember it in the morning.

Note: I realize there are a million other salads out there, tricolore, Mexican chopped, caprese, cole slaw, and don’t get me started on potato salad, pasta salad or white bean salad. I love them all, and make them frequently. The above guidelines don’t apply, at least not universally, to them, though some of the thinking certainly does.