Pans, Knives, and Fuel

I'm reading Consider the Fork, by Bee Wilson, which explores the history of cooking technologies all the way back to fire. In it, there is an illuminating passage that's very Guns, Germs, and Steel-y in explaining England's reputation for bad food that I wanted to share and expand on since it really struck me as seeming to make a lot of sense. One of those "aha moment" feelings.

Basically, compared to other parts of the world, England was both densely wooded and grassy, providing a lot of fuel for roasting, which is a very energy-intensive method of cooking, and a lot of feed for raising grazing animals. Around Europe, the English were known as masterful roasters, and they developed expertise in open-hearth roasting to the extreme. Wilson also notes that besides roasting, through the middle centuries of the second millennium CE, England was particularly fond of bread and beer, which were also reliant on copious supplies of firewood. However, this blessing of resources was also a curse in that it allowed them to rest on their laurels and not develop more creative and varied cuisine (I suppose it could be related to the natural resource curse that some countries suffer from).

To expand on this point a bit, it's always seemed a little odd to me that so much of more traditional American cuisine, with its roots in England/Europe, relies on roasting and baking since heat transfer through air is one of the least efficient ways to cook (as Scott McGee discusses in On Food and Cooking). So why would so much of any culinary tradition lean on those techniques? At least on the face of it, growing from a tradition rooted in roasting (which evolved toward contemporary methods of baking and "roasting") and in which fuel supply was not a problem could be an explanation or part of one.

In contrast to England's case, Wilson highlights China, which was relatively fuel-poor. Although Chinese cuisine also has roasts, wok frying was and is the basic and dominant cooking technique, and cutting foods into small pieces increases their surface area and enables quicker cooking with less fuel.

After cooking technologies evolved away from open-hearth roasting, though, Wilson notes that "English cooks were left with an entire group of skills that couldn't easily be transferred to other cooking methods." So they were caught up a dead end and have been playing catch up.

Black Bean and Corn Salad

Have I told you how great black beans and corn are together? Because black beans and corn are great together. Toss 'em together and you can't go wrong. Though, of course, you could add other things to them, too, and make a deeper flavored salad.

One note: fresh, raw corn is fantastic in salad; it has a nice crispness to it that is a great textural pairing with the softer, cooked black beans (and other ingredients one might add as I did in this salad). Canned corn, on the other hand, has been cooked through, and thus is soft.

Here's what I did this time:

Black Bean and Corn Salad

1 (14-15 oz.) can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 ears corn, kernels sliced off and separated
1 avocado, diced

1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/4 tsp salt

dressing
1 shallot, diced small, soaked in cold water for 30 minutes (skip the soak if you like the spice/bite)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 lime, juiced
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1. Toss tomatoes with salt and set aside for 10 minutes.
2. Combine shallots, salt, pepper, lime juice, cilantro, and olive oil in large bowl.
3. Rinse and drain tomatoes and add along with all remaining ingredients (black beans, corn, avocado) to the large bowl. Toss ingredients and serve.

 Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Dark Soy Sauce is Less Salty

Well, lesson learned. It's happened a couple times now where I've marinated something in a dark soy sauce mixture, or used primarily dark soy sauce instead of light (which is "regular") soy sauce to season a soup, only to find on cooking the food up that there was very little saltiness. I was mystified because the first bottle of dark soy sauce I bought, myself, was saltier than the light soy sauces I'd used. As about.com tells it though, dark soy sauce is less salty and more full-bodied in flavor than regular soy sauce. Which comports with my subsequent experiences with dark soy sauce. Now I know I need to take that into account for desired saltiness when using dark soy sauce.

As for the picture above, it's of the leftover marinade I used on a pork shoulder recently: a food processor-chopped blend of onion, garlic, ginger, scallion, bird chilies, sugar, and dark soy sauce. I was about to toss it out when it struck me that the texture resembled that of shacha sauce or the blend of food processed ingredients in freshly made curries. So, instead I decided to try using it as the seasoning sauce for some stir-fried peppers.

It smelled fantastic stir-frying. But, as just discussed, dark soy sauce isn't so salty, and the flavors didn't come through very well on eating. Right, light soy sauce next time, or a mixture of light and dark. Or adding some salt.

Looks fantastic, too.

Ebb

Well, I've been blogging my cooking a couple years now, and have learned a lot along way. But, I'm a person of many interests, and my interest and dedication to particular activities waxes and wanes. Although I still cook a lot, I'm finding that I'm moving toward larger batch preparations so that I have more time to do other things. Now, moving forward I'm still going to keep cooking, experimenting, and learning (I mean, regardless, I do have all those meddlesome food sensitivities to deal with, so doing my own cooking is still the best way to get the kind and quality of nourishment I want), but I'm going to relax on trying to post every week.

I'll still be back from time to time when I have something good to share, but for the time being, I'll leave you with this photo of a really delicious pork spareribs dish.  It's part of a story Andrea Nguyen did for the LA Times on Chinese fermented black beans (the other recipes are good, too).

Happy cooking!

Technique Tips: Roast Chicken - Oh Right, Gravity

I've mentioned this before, but I do a fair amount of cooking in general, especially on weekends/Sundays, to prep food for the weekdays in advance. Hence, the tupperware of carved roast chicken pictured above. There were a couple things I learned this time around:

• Kosher chickens are handy because they've been pre-brined as part of the kosher preparation process
• Kosher chickens are also not handy (or at least this one wasn't in this regard) because of stubs of feathers still stuck in the skin...had to pull them out one by one. Know a better way? Please do tell.

The other thing is technique related--about getting the dark meat to doneness without overcooking the white meat. America's Test Kitchen has you roast the chicken on one side for 15 minutes, then the other side for another 15 minutes, and then the last stretch breast up. Thing is, they also just call for roasting turkeys breast down and then breast up, apparently because for turkeys you have to else the breast overcooks and dries out. (I've done chicken the side-side way and turkey the down-up way and results were good in both cases.)

Well, I thought I'd cut out the intermediary side-side steps for the chicken, too. So how'd it turn out? Great! But...well I think I see why they didn't want to do the breast down-up method for chickens. You see, when I flipped the bird breast up, the meat had flattened and didn't look as pretty. A minor detail if your primary concern is flavor and texture. On the other hand, I don't remember that happening with my turkey...hmm. Not sure. But in any case, you can definitely save yourself a step by just doing the down-up technique with roast chicken.

Furthermore, you don't even have to do any temperature adjustment for great results. Some recipes call for starting hot (400+ F) and going cooler (350-375 F). Some call for going the other way. Some call for blasting it at 400 F all the way through. But as Tom Colicchio notes in his book, Think Like a Chef (I've started reading through it gradually; it's great so far), you actually don't need to, and can usually do better treating the meat gently, staying constant in the 325-375 F range (depending on what you're cooking). 375 F for roast chicken.

I roasted this one at 375 F, 30 minutes breast down, followed by 40 minutes breast up. The skin was nice and crisp at the end. But I then tented it with foil for 10 minutes to allow the juices and temperature to redistribute, which of course meant the skin wasn't so crisp afterward being tented with all that moisture coming out of the chicken. Not sure what to do about that. Maybe breast-down time should be longer and breast-up time shorter so that you can cook the dark meat to doneness right at the same time as the white and not need to tent while letting the roast rest? Or--maybe the skin will soften regardless because of the moisture coming out of the meat...