COOKING ZUNI

Short Ribs Briased in Chimay Ale

2010-01-28T12:25:00.027-05:00

Most of the time, I think New York City has a perfect climate. We have four distinct seasons,

With days like last Wednesday - 37 degrees with lots of sun and a bright blue sky,

when all you need to keep toasty and warm outside is a down coat, hat, gloves and leather boots - even winter is perfect. And when the temperature drops down to single digits and turns bitterly cold, as it did two weeks ago, there are compensations, such as, being the perfect weather for

Zuni's Short Ribs Braised in Chimay Ale.

I was going upstate for the weekend and thinking of making something comforting like beef brisket

or stew

because the temperature there had dropped below zero, when I got the following chat from Christopher.

Run, don't walk, to your bookshelf and then kitchen and make the Zuni Short Ribs Braised in Chimay Ale. Unbelievable! A wonderful winter weekend meal...

That's advice I wasn't about to ignore.

On my way out of town, I stopped at the Harlem Fairway where I was faced with three different types of Chimay Ale and didn't know which one to get so I called my office and asked someone to check it out in the copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook that I keep there. The picture of the dish in the book shows Chimay Rouge, described in Wikip edia as a dark brown ale with a sweet, fruity aroma and a nutty character, so that's what I got.

Since my freezer is always stocked with the elixir that is Zuni chicken stock,

I left the Fairway parking lot all set.

Apparently, there are three ways short ribs are cut,

One

Two

and Zuni shows a picture of the ones the grocery store down the street calls flanken.

Three

But I didn't know that until I got home with my groceries from Fairway and realized I had the wrong ones (Two instead of Three). Since they were meat from the same part of the animal - just cut across the bones a different way - I went ahead with the recipe.

The first thing I did was to cut the fat off the short ribs, following Judy Rodgers' admonition to leave the silverskin behind because it helps keep the meat succulent, and rendered it according to Carol's instructions at Alinea at Home.

Why would I do such a thing?

My grandfather in New York was a butcher, and the beef cuts he preferred to roast were eye round and rump, not rib. Consequently, I don't have much of a taste for prime rib so I never have sizzling fat drippings from my roasts. Now I have a little jar of perfectly rendered beef fat stashed in the freezer

to make a proper Yorkshire pudding the next time I make a roast beef dinner!

Then because I didn't have two days to salt the meat in advance, which Judy Rodgers recommends, I salted the short ribs and left them at room temperature for about an hour so they wouldn't be cold when I started to cook them.

Other than that, I followed the recipe to the letter.

I browned the short ribs in a mild French olive oil, then added sliced onions, bay leaf, whole white peppercorns, reconstituted dried porcini mushrooms, Zuni chicken stock, and the Chimay Ale. The short ribs simmered in a covered pot for about 2 hours.

I uncovered the pan and, in accordance with Judy Rodgers' clever instruction, let it rest tilted at a slight angle for a few minutes so the fat would collect on one side and be easy to skim off.

I tasted the gravy and added a little salt and simmered it uncovered for a few minutes to reduce it a slightly.

Then I smeared the tops of the short ribs with Dijon mustard

Edmond Fallot Dijon Mustard - the Mustard Recommended by Thomas Keller

and placed the pan under a preheated broiler for about 5 minutes. As Judy Rodgers said would happen, the mustard browned, and the surface of the stew glazed.

When it came out of the oven, the braise smelled better than the best French onion soup I ever ate. It was the perfect recipe to make on a cold winter's day.

The dish was delicious and surprisingly rich. I served it with buttered, not browned, spaetzle, green beans, and a tart escarole salad, which was a good foil for the braised meat and sweet onions.

Before the Gravy was Added

After the Gravy with Onions was Added

After tasting the Chimay Rouge, I agreed with Judy Rodgers' description of it as having "a delicate sweetness, a touch of clove flavor, and only the faintest note of bitterness." It was obviously a good choice of what to drink with the meal in the middle of winter, and I had enough of it left in the bottle for two small glasses.

By the way, when I started to cook, I took the wire cage - apparently called a muselet - off the top of the Chimay bottle and turned around for a minute. Boom. It popped right off so be careful not to leave it unattended and be sure not to aim the bottle in anyone's direction when you remove the cage.

After dinner, I took the leftovers and stripped the meat from the bones, shredded it, and saved it in its gravy. The next night I heated it up, and we ate it

with the leftover spaetzle - browned in butter this time.

It was just as good, if not better, the second time around - but what I was really dreaming about was using the shredded meat to stuff ravioli and serve it with the gravy saucing the pasta pillows. I think it would be so good that I'm going to make the recipe again just to try that!

Now I'm looking forward to trying another Zuni short ribs recipe - the Pot-au-Feu.

Sylvano

Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs

2009-12-09T21:10:00.019-05:00

I live in New York City. Good bread is one block away. GREAT bread is five blocks away. The place where I get sandwiches for lunch uses bread from Jim Lahey's Sullivan Street Bakery. For goodness sake, I can GO to Sullivan Street Bakery.

On my way out of town on Friday nights, I stop at the 131st Street Fairway to shop. I usually buy a loaf of Bread Alone's delicious Whole Grain Health Bread made with organic ingredients, and I eat a piece as part of Sunday morning breakfast - two slices of Sunday Morning Bacon, one poached egg, and a slice of toast

buttered and spread with Swedish orange and elderflower marmalade from Ikea.

So in 2006 when Mark Bittman wrote his article in the New York Times about Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread, I read it, emailed it to myself, and put it in my Recipes to Try folder. I wanted to make it, but it wasn't urgent. It was just there waiting for when I got around to it.

What was I thinking?

That is a picture of the loaf of bread I made last Sunday. Did you hear me? A loaf of bread I made following Jim Lahey's specific instructions in My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method.

It's especially thrilling because not only was it fantastic, now when I'm in the country for more than three days, I don't have to rely on bread I have stowed away in the freezer. In about one minute flat, I can put together ingredients that will rise for 12 to 18 hours in a bowl, then be turned onto a towel to rise for two hours more,

get plopped in the oven, and 45 minutes later emerge as a glorious golden/brown loaf with a serious crust.

When I tasted the first piece of my own bread, I knew The Zuni Cafe Cookbook recipe Kate at Savour-Fare turned me on to would be my next recipe.

And it was.

Fried Eggs in Bread Crumbs
Eggs, Page 179

I sliced a piece of my own bread, cut off the crusts, and blasted it in my small food processor

to make the requisite bread crumbs.

I put the bread crumbs into my carbon steel skillet, sprinkled them with a little Maldon Salt crushed with my fingers. I drizzled the salted crumbs with a little olive oil and heated them.

As soon as the bread crumbs started to color, I washed a fresh egg, dried it, and broke it into the skillet.

I don't like my eggs over easy, so I clapped the lid from a six-quart pot on top of the egg

so the white would cook, and the yolk would stay soft.

I gilded the lily and put the egg with the bread crumbs over Spaghettini Aglio Olio. Since the linguine had garlic and parsley in it, I didn't use the optional thyme, marjoram, or rosemary. For the same reason, I also eliminated the balsamic vinegar step, but it sure does sound good.

An Egg Fried in Bread Crumbs over Spaghettini Aglio Olio with Escarole Salad

Sylvano snoozed through the whole recipe!

The Best Turkey

2009-11-28T08:38:00.017-05:00

A Zuni Extra

Although I love Thanksgiving, the holiday, I am not equally enamored of the traditional feast. Turkey once a year is too much turkey for me. In the oh-so-many years since I have been keeping my own house, I can count - not quite on ten fingers, but almost - the number of Thanksgiving turkeys I've actually cooked.

My favorite Thanksgiving dinner was in 2004, the year I made Shrimp Creole.

My right hand was in a cast that year because I had broken my wrist mountain biking. There was no way I could have carried a turkey home, let alone gotten one in and out of the oven. But I could stir roux and peel shrimp, and with the one exception of having to find a store that was open on Thanksgiving morning so I could buy an electric can opener (since I hadn't figured out that you can't use a regular can opener with a broken wrist - duh), the meal went off without a hitch.

But last year I won a free-range turkey from my market and decided to try my luck with it. Since it was delicious, I decided I would do it again.

Except this year I would make my turkey the same way I make my chicken. The Zuni way.

As it turned out, I wasn't the only one. Kate over at Savour-Fare had the same idea. I always enjoy reading her posts, but when she posted about making cannoli cream as a topping for fruit from Richard Sax's book, Classic Home Desserts, and pointed out that she had never liked cannolis until she had one at Rocco's on Bleecker Street, I knew she was a girl after my own heart.

I got a 13 pound free-range turkey, washed it, dried it, and salted it all over with Kosher salt. I put it breast-side down on a rack in the refrigerator, turning it over, breast side up, after a day and a half, for a total resting time of 3 days.

We left the City early Wednesday morning with the dry-brining turkey in a cooler and stopped at Fairway to get everything else, which included clams to make pasta for dinner that night.

Thanksgiving morning dawned warm and sunny. It was the first Thanksgiving that I woke up in the country to green grass with no frost on the ground.

There was still parsley in the garden.

Good news for cooks; bad news for Jiminy Peak skiers.

Late that morning I put fresh sage and thyme under the turkey's skin since those are the herbs I use in my dressing and let the bird come to room temperature. I don't have a cast-iron skillet large enough to hold a 13-pound bird, so I used the bottom of my All-Clad 13-inch braiser.

I heated the pan on top of the stove, then rubbed a little canola oil on the bottom of the pan with a paper towel, and let that heat up too. I put the turkey in the pan breast-side up and slipped it into a preheated 450-degree oven and cooked it for 55 minutes. Then I took the pan out of the oven and flipped the turkey over, breast-side down, cooking it that way for 35 minutes. Finally I flipped it right side up again and cooked it for 20 minutes more. Using Kate's suggested cooking time of 8 minutes per pound, the total cooking time was 1 hour and 45 minutes.

The turkey was beautiful, fragrant, and brown. I let it rest for 30 minutes before I carved it into slices. I wasn't planning on making gravy, but the unexpected bonus was that there were abundant juices from the turkey in the pan. I heated them on top of the stove and whisked in a slurry made from Wondra flour, a little water, and some of the juices to temper it. It didn't need any salt, and the color was rich even after the slurry was added. I talked Walter into continuing to whisk it with this,

which I got at E.Dehillerin when I was in Paris, while I got the rest of the meal together.

Side dishes were cold broccoli dressed with a lemon/olive oil dressing, sweet potatoes pureed with maple syrup, Molly Steven's Brussels sprouts braised with heavy cream, and dressing made with country bread, sausage, fennel, leeks, shallots, carrots, celery, mushrooms, golden raisins, sage, and thyme.

Dessert was a Marion Cunningham recipe for spicy gingerbread and vanilla ice cream,

the perfect ending to this meal - better than pumpkin or pecan pie in my book any day.

I was so busy getting my meal on the table that I didn't snap pictures as I went along. But you can see Kate's beautiful bird here, and you can see my leftovers.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

P.S. I'm making Shrimp Creole for dinner tonight.

Sylvano in the City

Raffle Winner

2009-07-10T07:42:00.013-04:00

Good Friday morning.

The winner of the raffle and the soon-to-be owner of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is

KATTY

So, Katty, please send an email to me at cookingzuni@gmail.com and let me know to whom and where I should have the book sent. I'm planning on ordering it directly from Amazon, so a street address rather than a post office box is better for U.P.S.; however, since Amazon also uses the USPS, I think a post office box will do too.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do. I know you will enjoy the Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad,

the Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, as well as steamed potatoes with Four-Minute Egg Gribiche (to name a few).

Happy cooking and good eating.

Potatoes Gribiche and a Raffle

2009-06-25T10:38:00.032-04:00

A Zuni Extra

Since I wrote my first Zuni post last June, I thought it would be a good time to raffle off a copy of the book. It's a wonderful book, well worth having in your library to cook from, to read cover-to-cover for pleasure, and/or to keep on your nightstand to peruse at will.

So if your interested, just post a comment saying you want to be included, and on Friday, July tenth, at 7:00 a.m. EST, I'll choose one of you at random and post the winner. The winner can email me his or her mailing address, and I'll send the book right away.

Potatoes Gribiche

This wasn't going to be my next post. But it is summer - even here in New York, where it was s-l-o-w to arrive - and July Fourth is rapidly approaching.

July Fourth always makes me think about........potato salad.

The first July Fourth after I met Carolyn, I had been cooking enthusiastically on a daily basis for ten years. So when Carolyn suggested we have a July Fourth picnic at her beautiful house in Buckhead, with a large back porch overlooking a lush and very private garden, it seemed like the best way to spend the day.

When I asked Carolyn what I could make, she casually said, "Oh, you can make potato salad."

Fine, no problem was my first thought. It didn't even occur to me that - for some inexplicable reason - I had never made potato salad before. I pulled out a cookbook - probably Joy or Fanny Farmer - found a recipe that sounded good, and made it. According to the recipe I boiled the potatoes and then peeled them while they were too hot to handle. It was a HUGE pain; I hated making it. But the salad was delicious, and everyone ate it with gusto. I didn't even mind the little smile (was it a smirk?) Carolyn gave me when I handed her the bowl and said, "Thanks. Next time you can make potato salad."

However, as good as it was, I never made it again. Anytime I was called on to bring something like it to a party or picnic or pot luck, I made The Store Ziti Salad. And if I felt like I needed a potato salad, I left the skins on the potatoes and made it European-style with oil and vinegar, hold the mayo. (Ina Garten has a good one in The Barefoot Contessa called French Potato Salad.)

When I made Four Minute Sauce Gribiche from Zuni, I wasn't thinking about potatoes. I was thinking about asparagus. It was spring; asparagus were everywhere - even in my own garden. So it seemed like a natural recipe to choose at that particular time.

I made the sauce, and served it on top of cold asparagus. It was good. Then I took a tip from Molly and used it to dress the leftover steamed potatoes before I put them in the refrigerator. Voila; the next day I had the best, THE BEST, potato salad I had ever eaten. I knew I had a keeper.

So I made it again just for potatoes, and I was right. They were fabulous - an instant addition to my repertoire.

This time I didn't have chervil so I did without it, and I used tarragon in place of the dill I used the first time.

I liked it, but then I am a big fan of licorice, so tarragon was a good choice for me. The dill was delicious too, so mess around with all your favorite herbs to see what combination you like best and consider what herbs go nicely with the other dishes on your menu.

I served the potato salad with a crisp rotisseried chicken and a mango pineapple salsa I loosely adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook. (In that incarnation it was made with papaya, but I'll take mango over papaya any day of the week.)

There are a few requirements for this potato salad.

(1) Steam the potatoes rather than boiling them. This way they won't be waterlogged. Checking with a cake tester will let you know when they have reached the right consistency.

(2) This is important. Let the potatoes cool before adding the Sauce Gribiche so they won't absorb too much of the sauce and so they won't thin the sauce out. You want the sauce to maintain its mayonnaise-like consistency.

(3) Chill the dish completely before serving, preferably overnight.

(4) Taste right before serving to make sure it has enough salt.

If you're having a picnic on July Fourth, call me. I'll bring the potato salad.

Sylvano

Four-Minute Egg Gribiche

2009-05-17T09:39:00.049-04:00

It didn’t seem like it would ever happen, but spring finally did arrive. Not in a big, exploding way. You didn’t exactly hear the screen door slam. It sort of sneaked through the back door.

All through March and April we had lots of rain

and unseasonably cold weather, followed by an occasional day so hot you would think you flew forward to the end of June, only to get wet and cold again by the next morning. Last week – last week – the Yankees radio announcer said she was wearing her winter down parka at the new stadium, and she still felt cold.

There were, of course, intermittent signs that spring might really appear. The Park Avenue tulips were as beautiful as ever

- except this year they were all deadheaded before the weather matched their cheery hue.

Until Mother's Day there was not a single day when it would have been appropriate to get a spring coat out of the closet. Not even my navy coat, very plain – sleek really – with no collar and brass buttons right down the front.

I’m always happy to reacquaint myself with that coat, but never was I as anxious to get it out as I was this year. Jane and Marsha got me a candy-colored pink beret at the Sunday organic market on Boulevard Raspail when they were in Paris, and it will be perfect with that coat.

And then at last, even though it was very windy, on May tenth the sky was almost cloudless and very, very blue. It didn’t seem like summer, and it didn’t seem like winter, and, thank goodness, it didn’t even seem like fall. Spring was here. Spring was really here.

And with spring, with its flowers – tulips and daffodils, hyacinths, lilacs and hydrangeas -

comes spring food: lamb, soft-shell crabs, salmon, and, best of all, bright green asparagus. We didn’t get to go to the farm to eat our own asparagus; we had to stay in town to work. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t get local asparagus from the farmer’s market and eat asparagus hours (instead of minutes) after being picked.

When I read Molly’s post I knew she was on to something. I didn’t have to look any further for my next Zuni recipe. There it was staring me right in the face.

Four-Minute Egg Gribiche
Sauces & Relishes, Page 291

For this sauce, you start out by making a sort-of mayonnaise using a partly-cooked egg instead of a raw one.

I brought a little pan of water to a simmer

and following Judy Rodgers’ instructions

made an egg with a set white and a runny yolk.

(It’s hard not to stop at this point and just eat that kind of egg right then and there – and if you don’t believe me, check this

and the egg "soldiers" at Le Moulin) out.

But I digress.

Then you add some Dijon mustard. This is my favorite brand.

and a little salt. (Be careful - I added salt with too heavy a hand and had to start over.)

Then you dribble mild olive oil into the bowl very s-l-o-w-l-y, whisking all the while until the ingredients emulsify into a lovely yellow mass to which you add minced shallots, lots of fragrant herbs,

some coarsely chopped capers,

and a little (preferably sherry) vinegar.

We ate this delicious sauce

on cold asparagus, and it was certainly good.

But - as Molly said - it really shines mixed with steamed new red potatoes, quartered and chilled overnight. (I'm sorry, but the next night we ate those potatoes so quickly I didn't even think about getting a picture.) It will be my go-to recipe for potato salad from now on.

Obviously The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is good for more than reading and cooking.

Sylvano

Still Waiting for Spring

2009-04-19T09:42:00.044-04:00

When I was a little girl my English mother would take me home every other year to see my grandparents.

We would sail from New York Harbor to Liverpool on a Cunard White Star liner, the M.V. Britannic

- the last ship that took eight days instead of five to cross the Atlantic - and it was on that lovely ship that I first became aware of how much I liked food.

The meals were all delicious. We had breakfast in the dining room; then elevenses on deck. Next was luncheon, followed by the evening meal. We ate freshly baked hard rolls with sweet butter. Fried eggs and rashers of Irish bacon. Leg of lamb and peas cooked with mint. The stewards wore white gloves and served in the French manner, using two spoons to plate the food we requested.

I ate caviar for the first time when I ordered it off the menu for myself while sailing home after having learned to read - and I mean really read, not Dick and Jane - while I was enrolled at The Rock Ferry Convent School during my stay in England. I was five years old.

The steward got a funny look on his face, and my young and beautiful mother looked at him and said in her most imperious English accent, "As she eats olives and anchovies," (which, by the way, she found extremely odd) "I imagine she will eat caviar. Please bring it to her as she requested." It came on a plate with little pieces of toast and tiny cubes of aspic, which turned out to be only a decoration. My mother was right. I loved the salty caviar on the dry crunchy toast.

At my grandfather's house

the food was wonderful too. We ate beautiful, crumbly, pale orange Cheshire cheese, and Hovis bread sliced thin and buttered. Eggs boiled softly after being plucked from under the bottom of a reluctant hen. Green onions (scallions) and red radishes. Chicken pies. And in the kitchen there was always a Victoria sponge cake and a plate of triangular current scones, not too sweet and perfect with a big cup of tea when I got home from school.

Last week, just when I thought I couldn't stand another miserable day, sure enough, Easter Sunday in the country dawned cold and dreary. It seemed more like Thanksgiving than Easter.

It started to rain and stayed gray, and bitter - the type of weather that comes as fall is heading into winter, not the type of weather you expect when winter is heading into spring. And I couldn't imagine that anyone in the City was thinking about putting on a new hat and patent leather shoes to parade along Fifth Avenue.

But I could imagine a big cup of tea and a scone right from the oven, which was perfect since David - over at Cooking Babbo - had suggested that my next recipe from Zuni should be the Orange-Currant Scones. And it was.

Orange-Currant Scones
Desserts & Pastry, Page 479
(A do-ahead recipe; see Addendum below.)

I got everything ready to make the scones.

I zested the orange.

I combined flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, cut in butter, and added currants and orange zest and mixed well.

I whisked eggs with milk.

I added the egg-and-milk mixture to the dry ingredients in the bowl

and mixed just until the flour was absorbed into the dough.

I followed Judy Rodgers' instructions to pat, roll, and cut the dough into triangles and put the triangles on a half-sheet pan lined with parchment.

I baked them in a preheated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes

until they were golden and orange-flecked, studded with currants.

They were delicious with a perfect texture and crumb.

They are so good that I am not surprised that Judy Rodgers "no longer bother(s) making special pastries for Sunday brunch..."

I know that currants are traditional, but I think these would also be wonderful with dried cranberries. A nice treat for Thanksgiving morning before the rest of the feasting begins!

Sylvano

Addendum

When I made these scones, I froze some of them in quart-size freezer bags. I took two of them out of a freezer bag and put them right into the toaster oven. They toasted beautifully; I split each one in two and lightly buttered the halves (but you don't even have to split them; just butter the toasted tops.) To gild the lily, serve them with this orange/elderflower marmalade available at Ikea. It's delicious.

The Taste of Summer

2009-04-01T23:52:00.008-04:00

Even though I'm still pulling gloves on as I walk out the door in the City, it's obvious that spring is on its way.

But the country - well, that's a different story.

Fall, though brief, is truly beautiful.

Spring, however, seems to be taken over by mud season. The snow melts, and the rains come, and the road, which is not paved, turns to mush. Without a crisp cover of white,

it's pretty bleak.

Last weekend Walter and Peggy stayed in town. Margaret and Tom went back to Baltimore.

And I don't blame them.

It's true. Soon the lilacs will bloom, and the bushes will bud. There will even be home-grown asparagus for breakfast to dip in the yolk of a softly cooked egg.

But, basically, from March through May, upstate everyone's waiting for summer, with its long languorous days, blue skies, and green grass.

Gin and tonics on the porch at the end of the day.

Eggplant from the garden fried crisp and topped with still hot with chunks of our own tomatoes marinated in olive oil and laced with garlic and basil. Zucchini and summer squash. Green and yellow beans plucked from their stalks right before blanching.

Even our own sweet little onions.

This is how the garden looks now.

But THIS is how the garden looked last August

when I walked outside to get some corn

to make this "simple and very rich"

Creamed Corn
Vegetables, Savory Fruit Dishes, Pickles & Preserves, Page 253

I shucked the corn and removed the silk.

Judy Rodgers says the "goal is to harvest the rounded tips of the kernels, leaving most of the tough kernel casing behind while still capturing all the sweet juice." I put the blade of the knife flat against the corn and slid it down the length of the ear, not cutting too close to the cob. I kept turning the ear of corn corn around, repeating this process, until I had all the kernels off the ear. Then I turned the knife around and used the dull side to extract as much of the milk that was left in the ear as I could.

I melted unsalted butter in a black iron skillet, added the corn to the skillet with a pinch of Maldon salt, and stirred the corn to heat it all the way through.

Once the corn was tender I stirred in about a quarter of a cup of marscapone, adding it a spoonful at a time. I only cooked three ears of corn, so I halved the amount of marscapone called for in the recipe. It didn't make it as creamy as if I dumped in a ton of heavy cream. It was more like using a lot of butter - but MUCH better.

It was delicious - better than any creamed corn I ever had before. I can't wait to make it again!

Sylvano

Here I Am

2009-03-14T14:48:00.007-04:00

Apple Tree in Winter

Hi Victoria!

I just made the Zuni chicken. I think Olivia and my heads exploded; it was THE BEST CHICKEN I have eaten. Did marjoram and thyme and a smidge of rosemary and the cast iron skillet. Came out amazing. Thanks again for the great cookbook.

Christopher

I don't think Christopher will mind my sharing his email with you. If there's anything better than Zuni chicken, I don't know what it is.

And it's a great way to get back in the swing of writing Zuni.

I've recovered completely from my surgery in November, got a totally clean bill of health after recent follow-up tests, and am ready to come here on a regular basis again.

So if you've stuck with me for all this time and know I've written this post, thank you. I owe you one. It's a little out of order, but here it is.

Spring is (probably) going to arrive soon in the Northeast, and I will be especially glad to see it arrive this year. And once it does, summer

with all its fabulous garden bounty is not far behind.

In late August and early September, there are tomatoes bright red and bursting with flavor ready to be picked from the garden.

The last of the zucchini and cucumbers make their appearance, and you might even be able to find an eggplant or two if you look hard enough.

But even if the days are hot and sunny, and a gin and tonic on the porch at 5:00 o'clock is still a treat, there is an unmistakable sense that fall is bound to make its appearance sooner rather than later.

And nothing makes me realize that more than the apple tree.

All of a sudden it's laden with fruit, and the air is heady with its fragrance. In a little while the Italian prune plums will hit the farm stands. Before the pumpkins show up, there will be butternut squash and turnips. Pureed potatoes, heavy with cream, come to mind. And roast loin of pork, which I haven't thought about for three months, generally tops the list of what I want to make as soon as turning the oven on actually becomes an option.

And really, does anything sound better in the fall than homegrown, homemade applesauce?

I don't think so.

Up until now, I've made delicious applesauce from a Marion Cunningham recipe in The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, which is the book I turn to whenever I need a basic recipe. It's not that I don't like The Joy of Cooking. It was my first cookbook, after all, and I learned a lot of indispensable basics by reading it. But I have those under my belt now, and as I'm rarely planning to cook something as obscure as a possum, which is one reason to have Joy on the shelf, Fanny Farmer usually has what I'm looking for.

And applesauce was no exception.

But once again I'm discovering as I cook my way through Zuni, old habits are changing, and new recipes are becoming instant favorites.

This one is another keeper.

Roasted Applesauce
Vegetables, Savory Fruit Dishes, Pickles & Preserves, Page 260

I peeled,

cored, and quartered the apples, tossed them with a little salt, and added about a teaspoon of sugar.

Then I spread them on a baking sheet

after which I dotted them with slivers of unsalted butter.

The pan was covered tightly with aluminum foil and baked in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

The pan was taken out of the oven, and the foil was removed.

The oven temp was raised to 500 degrees, which in the country is about as hot as it gets without broiling, since I cook with propane there.

The pan went back in the oven for about 10 minutes. When the apples were barely soft, I removed the pan, put the apples in a bowl, and mashed them lightly because the apples should be chunky.

(Remember, it not's DelMonte.)

Finally, I seasoned the apples with a little salt and a drop of apple cider vinegar.

This applesauce is not something you would want to eat on top of warm, treacle-y gingerbread, but it was definitely delicious with a thick Zuni pork chop, tomatoes in a light vinaigrette, Zuni creamed corn, and green and yellow wax beans fresh from the garden, cooked quickly in lots of salted water then tossed with butter.

And keeping me company, as usual, was my buddy, Sylvano.

Just to Let You Know

2008-11-16T19:40:00.004-05:00

The first thing I want to tell you as you start to read this is that I'm feeling fine and doing well. I'm home recuperating from surgery I had last Monday, November tenth, to remove a cyst on my liver. (Those of you who actually know me, please don't freak out.) I was going to wait until I was completely back to normal and just get back into writing - to avoid being a drama queen - but a few of you have written to see if I'm well since you haven't heard from me for two months.

So the answer is after I very reluctantly went to the E.R. with abdominal pain the end of August, I had a bunch of tests to figure out what what wrong, and then when that was figured out, what to do about it. I also stayed very busy at work so I could get caught up enough that I wouldn't worry while I stayed home to rest and get better.

The bottom line is I'm doing very well - even better than I had dared to hope. With Obama being elected and my surgery being successful, I would have to say it's been a great two weeks.

I do have things I have cooked that I haven't had a chance to tell you about, but, to be honest. I was enough off my feed the past few days that writing about food was just not at the top of my list. I plan to start posting once a week again starting next week. I'm sticking with Zuni; I hope you'll stick with me.

A Promise Kept

2008-09-16T22:31:00.008-04:00

Don't give up on me. I've been busy, busy, busy, working twenty-six days in a row and - very unexpectedly for me - somewhere in the middle of that twenty-six days, I ended up spending a night in the emergency room.

Things seem to be pretty much back to normal, and I'm here to make good on my promise to tell you about how I fared with the Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad.

A few years ago I read an Amanda Hesser column in which she said her sister-in-law-(to be), Timmie, had given her six of her favorite recipes for Christmas - a wonderful way to welcome someone into your family and a great present anytime. This was shortly after Amanda Hesser had written a different article saying that although she cooked often, she hadn't yet developed a repertoire.

Well, I have.

And as much as I like to try new things, I have a basic repertory of recipes. Of course, it's changed over time. I used to make something that my friends call Vic's Chicken, which I don't make at all anymore (but they still do). And I am always happy to try my hand at a new dish. But for the most part, there are things I cook that people are happy to eat on a regular basis so I cook them over and over. And since I add new recipes to that list sparingly, it's been a bit of a surprise to find a lot of the dishes I've cooked from Zuni so far have instantly made it into my repertoire.

Before I started this project, I had already adopted the Zuni method for making chicken stock as my own. But the Pasta alla Carbonara, the Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes (please make these right away), the Chocolate Pots de Crème, and the Roasted Applesauce, which you haven't heard about yet, are now mine too. And in spite of actually having a repertoire, I've never had a dish that I find myself making once a week. Without fail.

Until now.

Zuni Roast Chicken with Bread Salad

Poultry, Page 342

In life-before-Zuni, I already had a way of roasting chicken. And it was good. In fact it was VERY good. And I did read Carol's post about roast chicken, which looks wonderful and is very tempting. But once I made this dish - at EB's insistence - I was a goner. Not only is it a once-a-week dish, it might be morphing into what I eat on most Saturday nights. Adding the bread salad is not necessary in terms of having a lovely roast chicken dinner, but it is delicious and such a perfect accompaniment to the bird that I've been making it a lot too.

Judy Rodgers says that "the Zuni roast chicken depends on three things," (which I had already figured out on my own) - small birds, high heat, and salting the bird twenty-four hours in advance.

Two other things I already had in common with Judy Rodgers when it comes to roasting chickens - the chicken is not trussed nor is it rubbed with oil or butter before cooking. We were in accord so far. I do not, however, have a wonderful wood-burning oven to cook my chickens in, although - I swear this is true - I have a book on how one is built in case I win Mega. (Have you ever seen a picture of Alice Water's home kitchen?)

The one caveat about this recipe is that in addition to salting the chicken twenty-four hours in advance, the bread salad is made with day-old country - not sourdough - bread so you do need to plan to make it the day before you're going to cook and eat it.

The Chicken

I generally buy a D'Artagnon chicken - the smallest one in the batch, and that's what I got this time.

I removed the giblets.

I washed and dried the chicken. The chicken should be totally dry before it's cooked so it won't steam. I sprinkled kosher salt liberally all over the chicken and rubbed it in. Judy Rodgers additionally sprinkles a little salt inside the cavity, but I don't usually do this. She also seasons the chicken with pepper at this point, but I do not. There are some exceptions (for instance Shrimp Creole), but I very rarely add pepper at any time except right before serving.

I removed the lump of fat inside the chicken to discard.

At this point I put the chicken on a rack on a plate upside down to sit in the refrigerator overnight.

The next morning I turned the chicken over on the rack right side up.

I put the chicken back in the refrigerator, and left it there until an hour before I planned to roast it at the end of the day. By then the chicken was all dried out, ensuring a crisp, crisp skin, which is, after all, one of the best things about roast chicken. (If this rack thing, which is my suggestion, not Judy Rodgers', sounds like a pain - and it really isn't - remember, the difference between a good cook and a great cook is attention to the small details.)

I slid a finger under the skin of the breast to carefully - without tearing the skin because it protects the meat underneath - make two little pockets.

I did the same with the thickest part of each thigh.

I inserted sprigs of rosemary into the pockets. I have been using rosemary because I have a pot of it outside the kitchen door. (But Carol, you can use thyme, marjoram, or sage instead. I'm going to try marjoram next time because I love it with chicken - much better than oregano, in my opinion.)

I heated the oven to 500 degrees because it's fueled by propane and runs 25 degrees cooler than the knob says. (This is why you need a thermometer in the oven so you know the real temperature.)

I used a 10-inch black iron skillet to roast the chicken in. It's easy to preheat, and the little chicken just snugs into it perfectly.

I put the chicken breast side up in a pan that had been preheated on top of the stove over medium heat. Before heating, I put a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of oil in the pan and rubbed it around with a paper towel before adding the chicken. The very dry chicken went into the heated pan breast side and sizzled at contact.

The skillet containing the chicken was put into the oven. It started to color within 20 minutes. After a total of 30 minutes I took the chicken out of the oven to turn it over, breast side down.

Once I turned the chicken over in the pan (it did not stick since it was dry when it went into the hot pan), I put it back in the oven to cook for about 15 more minutes. Then I turned it right side up again and cooked it until it was done, about 20 more minutes, for a total of an hour. Count on its taking 45 minutes to an hour depending on your oven, the size of the bird, and how well-done you actually want it.

The Bread Salad

While the chicken was cooking, I took a country loaf and carved off the crusts.

I did the next step backwards. I "toasted" (really broiled) the bread in a toaster oven and after it was golden and crisp, I brushed it all over with olive oil (instead of brushing it with olive oil before broiling).

I tore the bread into uneven pieces, put the pieces in a bowl, dressed the pieces lightly with a tart vinaigrette, and added a little Maldon salt.

I plumped currants in a little red wine vinegar and warm water.

I toasted pine nuts in a small skillet on top of the stove.

I cooked garlic and scallions until they were soft but not colored in a small amount of olive oil.

I added the cooked garlic and scallions and the drained plumped currants, along with a little chicken stock, to the pieces of bread. It didn't need any additional vinegar.

The salad was tented with foil and placed into the oven the last time I flipped the chicken. After the chicken was cooked and removed from the oven, the bread remained in the oven for another 5 minutes.

The chicken was removed from the skillet; the fat was removed from the pan, leaving the drippings behind. A tablespoon of water was added to the pan and swirled around. The skin between the thighs and breasts were slashed, and the juices were tipped into the skillet. The chicken was set on top of the stove - a warm place - to rest and become "more succulent." The remaining juices that collected from under the chicken went into the skillet.

The salad was removed from the oven. Some pan juices were drizzled over and tossed with the salad, the greens were added with a little more vinaigrette and pepper, and tossed again.

The legs, thighs, and wings were cut from the chicken with kitchen shears and served nestled in the bread salad. (The breast meat was saved for chicken salad the next day.) This meal was as delicious as it looks.

Some bounty from the garden.

Taken on Sunday night right before heading back to the City.

And, of course, Sylvano, who, as you can see, likes The Zuni Cafe Cookbook as much as I do.

A Home Cook's Notes

When I remove the giblets from the chicken, I put the neck into a freezer bag where I collect them to use the next time I make chicken stock. I save the liver, and the lucky person who is hanging around drinking a glass of wine while I finish up dinner, gets to eat the liver which has been sauteed and sprinkled with a little salt, pepper, and paprika.

A Treat

2008-08-24T13:15:00.007-04:00

I haven't skipped town or run away with another book. I've just been so busy at work that I haven't had a chance to post. Of course, even though I don't get much sleep, I have had to eat, which means I've been cooking, so it's not as if I don't have anything to tell you about. I hope you'll forgive me for hedging on my promise to write about the famous Zuni roast chicken today. It really will be next. But I have a special little treat that I'm too anxious to write about to put off.

A few weeks ago I was so bewitched by Molly's beautiful rendition of the Zuni apricot tart that I decided to see if I could find some locally-grown apricots and duplicate her success. It's not surprising I would be sorely tempted; I've been drooling over apricot posts all summer, and Molly's was most tempting.

Off I went on my mission and discovered there were actually some apricots grown in New York State - and they were available. But before I committed myself to this flighty endeavor, I checked the source out online. High five! Spike the ball! I felt I had struck gold. These would be just what you want apricots to be - fragrant and juicy and oh-so-scrumptious that you would be longing for apricot season to return the minute it was over. And they were grown in my own backyard, so to speak.

When I found them, they were beautiful to look at in their little basket, all nestled together waiting to be plucked and eaten one by one, or turned into jam, or made into compote - or baked in a tart. I remembered there's a reason apricot is a color. It's happy and sunshine warm; guaranteed to brighten even the gloomiest winter day. And I scooped up that little basket without a second thought and went on my merry way.

You are probably beginning to suspect how this story ends.

What was I thinking? I must be reading too much Harry Potter. It turns out that having perseverance, being on the side of right, and counting on some luck doesn't always work. These were the kind of apricots you would expect from Jardin de Voldemort. They were mealy and tasteless, and instead of ending up in a tart, they ended up on the compost heap.

However, this did make me realize that I hadn't yet made any desserts from Zuni, and I decided it was about time to rectify that lapse. So I turned to the desserts section, where on Page 456 Judy Rodgers says

Dessert has the interesting duty of teasing out the last gasps of your appetite. For me, the best dessert is simple and bright, and often overtly sensual.

Of course, I was hooked. Lots of sweets tempted me, but after my frustrating experience with the apricots, I thought I would go for a sure thing. I decided to make the second most famous recipe in the book.

Chocolate Pots de Crème
Desserts & Pastry, Page 499

I chose Callebaut bittersweet chocolate and did not add any of the optional liqueur, even though one of the suggestions was to add a little Frangelico. Who doesn't like chocolate and hazelnut? And Frangelico has such a lovely toasty note. It's the liqueur I use to scent my crème brulee. Next time I can gild the lily, but this time I wanted pure chocolate. All the way.

I melted the chocolate with some heavy cream in a metal bowl set over simmering water.

I heated up the rest of the cream with whole milk and sugar in a small saucepan, stirring, just long enough for the sugar to dissolve. I hope you can see how small this Mauviel pan is. It's heavy, handy, and oh-so adorable.

I separated four eggs yolks from the whites using my fingers, not an egg separator. (Are you watching, MR?)

I whisked the yolks.

I stirred in the warm milk mixture.

I strained that mixture into the melted chocolate.

I stirred it together.

I strained that mixture too.

I poured the mixture into four 4-ounce ramekins

and put them in a baking pan.

I added hot water to the pan

and baked the pots de crème at 300 degrees until the chocolate was set at the edges but still soft in the center, about 40 minutes. They were not quite as soft as I wanted them so I put them in a bath of salted ice water to make sure they did not continue to cook.

Once they were cool, I refrigerated them, chilled them, and served them unadorned for dessert.

Now I can say it and mean it. High five! Spike the ball! This dessert is wonderful - very smooth and chocolatey but not cloying at all. Everything you always hope chocolate mousse is going to be and rarely is.

Since everyone I know eats tiny, tiny amounts of dessert, next time I'm going to make 2-ounce portions instead of 4 and will use these little pots de crèmes that I found at Sur La Table.

Or these, which I got at Zabar's.

Say hey to Syl.

Prosciutto & Melon in Sambuca

2008-08-09T10:54:00.012-04:00

When discussing Dishes to Start a Meal, Judy Rodgers says

The beginning of a meal is a good place to be adventurous when menu planning, and when learning to cook...You might consider taking risks with appetizers, where you generally encounter hearty appetites and, if the nibbles are entertaining and delicious, open minds.

The appetizers in this book fall into several categories, but all aim to pique the appetite, rather than stun it with complexity or quantity. Small portioning is an obvious strategy for first courses, but I like the little nibble to be big enough to allow you to appreciate the ingredients. Some [of the starter recipes in Zuni] might [even] become the main course of a simple meal.

Judy Rodgers, Page 72.

When it comes to liking (or disliking) licorice, there doesn't seem to be much middle ground. I've never heard anyone say "Licorice? I can take it or leave it." I have a theory that there is a "licorice" gene. There are whole countries - Holland and Australia - where it seems to be an obsession. If this is true, I definitely have the gene.

So based on my love of the anise taste, when I was choosing a first starter to make from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, I picked this one. It's not exactly a recipe; it's more like assembling great ingredients. But what ingredients they are, starting with beautiful, ripe cantaloupe, and delicious Italian prosciutto.

According to Judy Rodgers

Cured meat, paired with a condiment or two or three, makes simple work of the appetizer course in a meal. Buy cured meat where they sell a lot of it, and where they slice it perfectly and are careful to lay down each slice neatly overlapping the preceding one.

We use Parma prosciutto at Zuni, choosing brands that are deep, fleshy pink and firm but not hard...San Daniele can be an excellent choice as well. Fine, sweet-salty, satiny prosciutto tolerates nothing but elegance on its plate ~ in particular, succulent, low-acid fruit. The combinations I describe toy with the softness, the subtle nutty-sweet animal flavor, and the sensuality of the best prosciutto.

Judy Rodgers, Pages 79 and 80

Prosciutto & Melon in Sambuca
Dishes to Start a Meal, Page 82

I found a fragrant cantaloupe at Eli's.

Eli just might have the most beautiful produce department in the City. He might also have the most expensive produce department in the City now that Paradise Market is closed.

When I moved back to New York City after living in Washington, Paradise was open at 83rd and Madison. It was the size of a rather small jewelry shop, and the produce there was treated the same way Tiffany treats diamonds. Each piece absolutely perfect and carefully arranged in glorious display.

One day after I sold my mother's engagement ring for loot (just kidding), I was shopping in Paradise, and I glanced out of the window. Staring into the window were Gerry and Dot Blum, people I met when I lived in Atlanta. They weren't looking at me; they were looking at the glorious fruits and vegetables.

Sadly, Paradise has been closed for a few years now. Rumor has it Mr. Roh got married, had a baby, and moved out of the City. The location has had a number of incarnations since then - a lingerie shop, a cashmere shop; now it's a fancypants chocolate shop. Whenever I walk by, I think about Mr. Roh, beaming happily among his fruits and vegetables, and, like Milton, I miss Paradise. Who wouldn't?

Anyway, at Eli's I also got a few slices each of Prosciutto di Parma (on the left) and San Danielle (on the right) so I could try them both.

I halved and seeded the melon and carved away the rind. I cut the melon into crescents.

I took out my beautiful marble mortar, which I got from La Cuisine in Alexandria, Virginia.

I crushed some fennel seeds in the mortar

and sprinkled the crushed fennel on the slices of melon, which I had put in a wide shallow bowl.

Then I added some Sambuca.

I can't figure it out, and he can't explain why, but Walter has at least five bottles of the stuff. I did see someone give him a little case containing three small bottles as a birthday present one year, but that doesn't account for the rest. I've never seen him drink it. But he sure has plenty of it.

I let the melon sit to macerate in the bowl for about ten minutes. Then I plated the crescents and draped the prosciutto over the melon. It was ready to serve.

It was juicy and delicious with a faint anise flavor, not strong at all, actually rather elusive. We ate it as the main event at lunch. I loved it.

As usual, Sylvano was hanging out with me in the kitchen.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes

2008-08-02T11:33:00.009-04:00

Before the original Cloister Hotel designed by Addison Mizner

was torn down to make room for a larger, more opulent hotel, Sea Island was a quiet golden barrier island off the coast of Georgia. I used to be invited to spend my summer vacations there with the Lauers in a house on Sea Island Drive.

As I walked on the beach

at 6:00 a.m., looking for tracks left by a sea turtle who returned to the same place she was born to lay her eggs, I would see shrimp boats trawling the waters in the distance.

For dinner there was fresh shrimp bought at Gisco's on St. Simon's, and butter beans, corn, tomatoes, and Georgia peaches from the farmer's market where local growers sell their produce. On these islands Spanish moss hangs off the old live oaks that line the drives, and houses made of tabby - crushed seashells - stand proud.

When young John was 3,

he spent a week with Carolyn, big John, and me at Sea Island. Clarke was already in school so Jane (John and Clarke's mother) stayed in Atlanta for the last week of the school year before they came to the beach.

John was a delight. He never cried for his mother. He wasn't cranky, he wasn't whiny, he wasn't demanding, and best of all - for me - he wasn't picky about eating. If it was on the table, he would try it. (Not like some people whose name begins with a C and ends in E.)

One night I made mashed potatoes, which John ate with abandon and gusto.When Jane and Clarke pulled into the driveway, John ran to the door. Even before greeting his mother, the very first thing John did was pull Clarke aside and say, "Clarke, I had mashed potatoes. You should try them. They're good!"

And they were. Soooo good. I had mastered the art of making delicious mashed potatoes along the way, culminating in Joel Robuchon's recipe - rich as Croesus and immortalized by Patricia Wells in Simply French. My mashed potatoes - well, Monsieur Robuchon's - were as good as homemade ice cream. I had achieved mashed potato nirvana. The best there were. Or so I thought. That is, until I started cooking Zuni and along came Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes.

If I hadn't committed myself to cooking every recipe in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, I wouldn't have deviated from my regular recipe. Not ever. I'm sure glad I did.

Judy Rodgers says she is

Almost afraid to run these mashed potatoes at Zuni, because whatever I pair them with will outsell all other main courses four to one...The cook who has buttermilk mashed potatoes on his main course looks upon his fortune with vague dread ~ he will be slammed all night. We always prepare an extra ten pounds' worth for side orders. I offer the recipe to the home cook with no apologies for how popular it will be with diners.

These mashed potatoes are rich in flavor but light, and slightly tangy. Sweet gold-fleshed potatoes, such as Yellow Finnish, Bintje, or German Butterballs are delicious mashed ~ and may not need as much dairy enrichment as white-fleshed russets.

Generally, I don't encourage making extra anything with potatoes. Leftover cooked potatoes usually don't improve in flavor, tending instead to pick up a mineraly or musty taste in the refrigerator. However, the buttermilk in this recipe seems to stall their demise, and I find these mashed potatoes to be delicious baked atop leftover beef stew, a la shepherd's pie, or thinned with rich chicken stock to make a simple soup.

Judy Rodgers, Pages 233 and 234.

So if you haven't tried anything else from Zuni, and you have your own copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, this should be your first. It's a simple dish; easy to make; easier to eat. And, as always, the better the ingredients, the better the result. There are so few ingredients here, each one shines. Although Judy Rodgers suggests the gold-fleshed potatoes mentioned above, she says "russets are fine as well," and that's what I used.

I once saw a recipe that called for whole milk buttermilk, but that would be an oxymoron. It simply cannot exist. Traditional buttermilk is the liquid leftover when cream is churned into butter and is necessarily low-fat.

When making traditional buttermilk, whole milk is left standing at room temperature to allow the the cream to separate from the milk. During this period, the natural lactic acid present ferments the milk, giving the eventual buttermilk its tang.

Today the buttermilk you are most likely to purchase - unless you are lucky and have a source directly from a dairy - is cultured buttermilk. It is made from adding lactic acid to milk; again, giving the buttermilk it's characteristic tang.

With regard to Choosing Among Salts, at Zuni Judy Rodgers uses plain sea salt. She gets a medium grade, most often sold in bulk bins. It has a slightly coarse texture, making it easier to sprinkle than what most of us are able to find, which would be much finer. If you can find the medium grade, make sure it's not iodized, and use it. Otherwise, kosher salt is a good alternative.

Don't use table salt. Because of the shape of the salt crystals, kosher salt is packed less densely than sea salt, so you need to use a little more kosher salt than the amounts of salt specified in Zuni's recipes to achieve the same results. Season to taste, and be your own guide.

I keep kosher salt in a sugar pourer on the counter. I can pour it directly into boiling salted water, or into a measuring spoon, or into the palm of my hand for sprinkling. (Of course, my father did once put it into his tea, so you might have to warn people....)

Fleur du sel, a coarse salt harvested from salt marshes is a lovely unrefined product, and Judy Rodgers says she has liked every one she has ever tasted. But as it's dear, she thinks it "seems most worth the money when you do not dilute its character and squander its crunch through cooking."

My personal favorite salt, not mentioned by Judy Rodgers, is Maldon Sea Salt, an organic salt that is hand-harvested from the sea on on the east coast of England. Instead of being in crystals, it is in beautiful flakes that you pick up and crush with your fingers over your food the same as fleur du sel, before it's eaten, not during cooking. I keep it on my counter in a small covered bowl.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes
Vegetabales, Savory Fruit Dishes, Pickles & Preserves, Page 233

I used plain white flaky russet potatoes.

I put the potatoes in a 3-quart saucepan.

I added cold water to cover by an inch and lightly salted the water. I boiled the potatoes uncovered until they were very tender, which took about 15 minutes. (I use a cake tester to make sure they are soft enough.) I drained the potatoes

and got ready with my Oxo ricer, which works beautifully, and while still "piping hot"

riced the potatoes into a bowl.

I beat in some hot heavy cream and an equal amount of room temperature buttermilk. Then I added the same amount of just melted, warm unsalted butter and mixed it all together.

These potatoes are wonderful, easy to make, and go with lots of things. They have definitely replaced my other mashed potatoes, and I will be making them often. In fact, I'm making them again tonight.

My man Sylvano

Mock Porchetta

2008-07-26T06:59:00.005-04:00

I'm having a real good time. I'm cooking - and, therefore, eating and serving - wonderful food, and I'm meeting great people. Some of the people are food vendors, some of the people are customers near me when I'm buying food, some are the people who stop by here to say hey, and one woman who sat next to me on the subway noticed that I was holding a copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and told me how much she loves to eat at Zuni. So far, I can only dream, but in the meantime, welcome to my kitchen, which with the "guidance" of the chef, I am beginning to fondly think of as Zuni East.

Judy Rodgers was cleaning the kitchen of a restaurant in Paris. It was midnight. She was "tired and uncomfortable from a day working in duck fat." But when she heard the formidable chef tell a line cook to salt the fresh sea bass left over from that day's service, and it would not only keep perfectly but be even better, she was stunned. Because the chef's food was so succulent and because it was this chef's daughter who just months before had surprised Judy Rodgers by sprinkling salt into the chicken stock (with good results), she took note. And what she has discovered over the years is that contrary to the dictum "always salt at the last minute so you don't dry things out," adding a little salt early often makes "for better results than the same amount, or more, later." So another one of Judy Rodgers' principals of cooking, which she goes into as a concept in detail in Zuni and with specificity in individual recipes is

The Practice of Salting Early

Where meats and poultry are concerned, I sometimes use the word "cure" to describe the early salting process, whether it is a dry-salting or wet-brining operation, although I caution that these lightly treated foods are not preserved for the long term. The goal of our "preseasoning" is to manage and improve flavor, succulence, and texture; any resulting "keeping" ability is the nice by-product. In practice where most meat and poultry is concerned, we plan ahead and buy early - one to five days in advance - so we have time to lightly cure them. (Fish is a different case; freshness remains imperative. When I preseason fish, it is for a few hours at most.)

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Page 37.

Mock Porchetta

Page 408, Beef, Lamb, Pork, & Rabbit

In Tuscany it is the fashion to roast a whole, often highly-seasoned, pig. To simulate that feast "This diminutive porchetta is made with a small piece of pork shoulder, an inexpensive, underappreciated cut. Its mosaic of muscles provides plenty of places to stuff the seasonings, and it has enough internal fat and connective matter to self-baste and stay juicy as it slow-roasts." (Zuni, Page 408.)

You remember when I made pork stock I showed you a picture of my trusted butcher, Jeffrey, with the pork shoulder he split in two? Well, half was used to make the stock, and the other half was used for this recipe.

The recipe calls for the pork shoulder to be boned, seasoned, and tied prior to cooking. I got the seasonings all together at home to bring to Jeffrey so he could show me how to do it so I could do it myself next time.

There were capers, rinsed, pressed, and dried; ready to be barely chopped.

There was garlic to be coarsely chopped.

There was sage to be crushed and coarsely chopped.

There were springs of rosemary, from which to strip leaves to crush.

There were fennel seeds, barely crushed.

There was all of the above with cracked black pepper

to be mixed with chopped lemon zest.

I mixed this all up, put it in a baggie, and headed down to see Jeffrey.

This is the piece of pork shoulder to be used for this recipe.

This is it cut to the right size for the recipe, ready to be boned. It weighed 2.84 pounds.

You can see how wide it is here.

Here is is boned. The bone is what what cut into three pieces and used for the pork stock.

All the seasonings were ready when I realized I forgot to bring salt. No matter. We were in the Essex Market after all, so we tooled over to the Formmagio Kitchen, where a lovely lass hooked us up with what she had - damp, grey French sea salt, a little coarser than I would have brought.

Jeffrey lightly sprinkled the salt on, crushing it as he sprinkled.

He added the rest of the seasonings and rolled it up and tied it

and sent me on my way.

I got home, put the porchetta on ice, and took it upstate. I refrigerated it to "cure" for two days before proceeding with the recipe.

The recipe calls for a combination of root vegetables. I used 2 large peeled carrots, a large onion peeled and cut into wedges, 2 small peeled turnips, 3 peeled parsnips, and 3 small unpeeled waxy potatoes. I barely coated the vegetables with olive oil and tossed them with a little salt. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. I put the pork roast, which I had let come to room temperature into a Le Creuset braising pan, which I had lightly heated on top of the stove. The roast sizzled as it was supposed to. I surrounded the roast with the vegetables, all ready to place in an oven preheated to 350 degrees.

After 45 minutes, I checked the roast to see if if it was colored. It was, so I didn't have to raise the heat 25 degrees but left it at 350 degrees. I cooked the roast for 15 more minutes, turned it over, and rolled the vegetables around in the rendered fat.

After another hour of cooking I added 1/3 cup of the pork stock I had made. I put the pan back in the oven. After 20 minutes more it was done, as fragrant and golden as the description in Zuni.

I transferred the meat to a platter

and put the vegetables on a separate plate.

I removed the fat from the pan and added French dry vermouth and another 1/3 cup pork stock. I stirred the pan to dissolve all the drippings on the bottom and sides, adding the juice that had trickled from the roast to make a pan sauce. I sliced the pork, topped it with a spoon of the pan sauce, and served it garnished with the vegetables. It was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s.

I know it was a long time between posts. I apologize, and I owe you one. But this recipe was worth waiting for. It's a real keeper, and one I highly recommend you make. I will add one caveat. I think it's because of the root vegetables, but I am sure this dish would be best served when the weather is cool, not high summer. I'm thinking fall with a dessert made from apples. I'm planning to make it over Columbus Day weekend when my cousins are visiting.

Thanks to Sylvano man who kept me company as I wrote.

Pork Stock

2008-07-14T20:48:00.006-04:00

When I decided to start cooking my way through The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, I wasn't looking for a project. I certainly have plenty to do. And I'm already a serious home cook. I cook all the time. But I was intrigued by how apparent Carol at Fr ench Laundr y at Home and Julie of the Julie/Ju lia Project improved their culinary skills as they moved through the books The French Laundry Cookbook

and Mastering the Art of French Co oking, Volume One.

What I didn't know when I started, was how quickly it would happen. I'm only at the beginning, and I'm already looking at things in a very different way. I have developed what I call Zuni head. Zuni is with me in the market, it's with at the stove (even when I'm not cooking a Zuni recipe), it's with me on the subway, where you can usually find me holding a copy of the book. Zuni is becoming part of me.

One of the reasons this is happening is because Judy Rodgers doesn't just give you recipes. She has delineated the principles she cooks by, the first of which is

Deciding What to Cook

The process of deciding what to cook should always begin with deciding where to shop and what to buy {or, if you are lucky, what to harvest}. Only then should you settle on the preparation, which should suit the qualities of those ingredients, as well as your experience, time frame, and equipment. I add a premium for choosing a dish that suits the weather. To assess and balance these things well is no mean accomplishment, and a good sense of what to buy and how to use it is not developed overnight. Such skills are, however a pleasure to acquire.

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Page 30.

Rich Pork Stock
Stocks & The Sauces They Make Possible, Page 61

What I needed before I could make the next recipe I had my eye on was pork stock, so I had to make that first. At Zuni pork stock is made with a pig's head. However, for homemade pork stock I only needed half a pig's foot split since it has "a comparable combination of skin, cartilage, meat, and bone." Since you won't have the thrill of seeing a pig's head in this post, and I hate for you to feel deprived, go over to Carol's for a minute. Cool, right?

Back to me and my measly piece of a pig's foot. In addition to that I needed either some fresh pork shank or bone-in lean pork shoulder butt. (If you look at a diagram of a pig, you will see that pork shoulder and pork butt are the same. Go figure. Judy Rodgers calls it pork shoulder butt.)

Once again, I headed down to see Jeffrey, my butcher, because I knew he could hook me up with what I needed. He is an engaging fellow and is always so happy to see me that it's one of my favorite things about what I'm doing, especially since he's excited about it too. Jeffrey didn't have fresh pork shank, but he did have pork shoulder butt.

He also had the requisite pig's foot.

Notice the bones in the picture. Jeffrey sawed the bone he removed from the pork shoulder butt into three pieces so there would be more surface area,

I took this all home, and it was time for me to get to work. I removed any visible fat and cut the pork shoulder butt into 3-inch chunks. I had those chunks, the bone cut into three pieces, and a half a pig's foot cut in half again.

I put these chunks with the bones and the pig's foot into a stainless steel braising pan that had been preheated briefly over a low flame so the meat and bones would sear and not stick. You don't want the meat piling on top of itself, but you do want the entire bottom of the pan covered with ingredients because you don't want the meat drippings that accumulate in the pan to burn, which would happen if there were exposed areas.

I put the pan in the oven, which had been preheated to 450 degrees. After 20 minutes I turned the meat and bones over and rotated the pan. After 15 minutes more everything in the pan was a gorgeous color, so it was ready for the next step.

I transferred the contents of the braising pan to a 12-quart stockpot.

I removed all the fat from the braising pan and added a little bit of cold water to the pan, put it over low heat, and stirred to mix the drippings with the water. The instruction was to taste it, and if it was "porky," to add it to the stockpot, but if it was scorched, to discard it. Luckily, mine tasted great, not burned at all, so I was able to use it.

The recipe for pork stock calls for chicken stock instead of water, which makes it a compound stock.

Compound stocks are meat and poultry stocks we make with meaty bones, scraps, and carcasses, browned and then moistened with our chicken stock or chicken stock plus water. Since it is flavorful and slightly gelatinous already, chicken stock gives these second-generation stocks a kick-start. They achieve lovely body in fewer hours, without overcooking the new flavors~beef, pork, lamb, rabbit, duck, squab, or other meats you might make into stock.

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Page 55.

I already had chicken stock waiting in the freezer so I thawed it out overnight in the refrigerator, then brought it to a boil, and chilled it again before I used it. I know freezing doesn't kill pathogens and boiling does, and you want to start with cold liquid when you're making stock, so that's why I heated it only to cool it down again. After the porky drippings were added to the stockpot, I added 4 cups of cold chicken stock.

Then I added cold water to cover the pork by an inch. I brought it to a simmer and skimmed the foam, but, honestly, there wasn't much foam, which, I believe, was because the meat and bones had been roasted.

The recipe called for a 12-ounce onion, which you can see for comparison is the same size as a teacup.

I added the onion, halved, 2 stalks of celery without leaves, one bay leaf, and a few whole peppercorns to the stockpot. No carrot is added because the pork itself is rich and sweet.

This simmered for about 5 hours without further skimming and no stirring. It turned the color of maple syrup described in the recipe.

Then I strained it promptly by ladling the stock through a fine mesh strainer followed by putting the meat and vegetables in a colander placed in a bowl to continue dripping.

I poured a little water into the stockpot, swirled it around to "capture the syrupy stock" that was clinging to the pot, and poured this over the meat and vegetables in the colander to snare any syrup that was clinging to their surfaces. I strained this through the fine mesh strainer into the already-strained stock, cleaned the stockpot, and put the stock back into the stockpot.

I put the stockpot in an ice bath to cool the stock.

Next, I put the cooled stock into a Pyrex measuring cup and refrigerated it. When it was cold, I took it out of the refrigerator and removed the fat from the top of the stock. I think (if you look closely) you can see how jellied it is.

Before putting it in Ziplock freezer bags I heated it up, and strained it through a Chemex coffee filter. This stock started out quite clear so I only had to strain it through the coffee filter once.

I ended up with two cups of beautiful, wonderful-tasting pork stock when I was done to use with Mock Porchetta, which is up next.

A Home Cook's Notes

When I was getting the shoulder pork butt ready to cut into 3-inch pieces, I wasn’t kidding about removing the fat, which I did with kitchen shears.

This resulted in my having lots of little pieces of lean pork shoulder butt. I didn’t want to discard them, but I didn’t want to put them into the braising pan that was going into the oven because I thought since they were so much smaller than the other things in the pan, they would char, so I took a skillet, rubbed it lightly with one of the pieces of pork fat, heated it, then browned these smaller pieces on top of the stove until they were golden brown but not hard. I set them aside.

Then when I added the golden ingredients from the braising pan to the stockpot at the beginning of making the stock, I added these pieces too.

Judy Rodgers suggests enjoying the spent pork while it’s still warm either on focaccia topped with a little fresh ricotta and lots of cracked black pepper or dappled with a spoonful of Chimichurri or Salsa Verde. I’m sure that’s delicious. I tasted it when it was done sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt; it was good. I refrigerated the larger pieces and served it sliced the next day as part of a luncheon platter with a little aioli. That was good too.

I found that using a 12-quart stockpot was so much easier than using a 20-quart pot in terms of handling and washing that I think that if I make a double batch of stock again as I did with the chicken stock, I will use two 12-quart pots instead of one 20-quart pot.

Thanks to Sylvano, who held my place in the book for me.

Pasta alla Carbonara

2008-06-26T05:43:00.006-04:00

When Judy Rodgers, the chef at Zuni, was a 16-year-old high school student in St. Louis, she went to France to study abroad for a year with friends of her neighbors. But these weren't any old friends. They were the Troisgros brothers, who had a famous restaurant in Rouane, Les Frères Troisgros, and it was in their kitchen that the Midwestern teenager absorbed the pleasures of cooking and eating in a way that would direct the course of her life. She spent that year with the Troisgros family, including the Troisgros sœur, Madeleine Troisgros Serraille, who at least twice a week fed Judy Rodgers wonderful, homey meals cooked in her own kitchen. Judy Rodgers inhabited those kitchens, where at the encouragement of her St. Louis neighbor and a nod of assent from the family Troisgros, she became a scribe, keeping notebooks so meticulous that one day they would become her passport into the world of fine American food when Alice Waters hired her to cook at Chez Panisse.

After cooking in America and France, Judy Rodgers went to Italy, where she was bewitched again - this time by Italian food.

Stopping in Roanne on the way home, sharing travel stories with the Troisgros, I could not help but focus on how delicious the food was in Italy. I should not have been surprised that they also shared that view. So much for Gallic chauvinism. No one seemed the least bit bothered by this apparent "defection" - if anything, it was evidence I had inherited their affection for authentic, generous food to celebrate every day.

I had found a culinary home in the Tuscan idiom, and on subsequent trips, fell for the charms of Umbria, Sicily, the Abruzzo, Campania, and so on. By the time I headed back to California that first year I had a goal. I would look for that restaurant where I could settle down to cook both French and Italian traditional food and evoke the spirit of dinner at Madeleine's.

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Pages 23 and 24.

My friend Walter likes pasta, but he doesn't LOVE pasta. He doesn't like pasta in the same way that those of us who adore carbs and who might actually consider eating a potato chip sandwich do. Every now and then he has a little hankering for it, but most of the time, he'll pass. So when I set out to make the Zuni version of Pasta alla Carbonara, I assumed I would like it. However, I wasn't prepared for its being so delicious that Walter would eat every morsel on his plate within what seemed like seconds of my placing it before him and, for the first time, before I finished mine.

Seriously. It's that good. And it's easy. If you have the book - and you know that I hope you do - I recommend that you try this as soon as you can get your hands on some beautiful, fresh ricotta, which is as much of a revelation as just-whisked mayonnaise and as different from what you get in a carton in the dairy case as Hellman's is from your own mayo.

Pasta alla Carbonara

Page 210, Starchy Dishes

My favorite ricotta in the whole world is from DiPalo Fine Foods, which is a wonderful place for all things Italian. DiPalo's, a family-owned business, is run by Salvatore and Louis DiPalo and their sister Marie. The store is located at 200 Grand Street in New York City's Little Italy, across the street from its original location, which was opened in 1910 by the trio's great grandfather, an Italian immigrant. I've been going there since I was a little girl; my grandmother was born in an apartment three blocks from where the store now stands. The ricotta and mozzarella are homemade, and both are absolutely delicious. If you live in NYC, it's always worth a special trip there. (If you don't, very soon DiPalo Selects will come to you.)

At DiPalo's you will find pastas cut on bronze dies - and you might even run into the man from Italy who produces them. You can taste Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese from a wheel personally selected in Italy by Lou DiPalo. Some of what else you will find is the newest harvest olive oil; artisanal Balsamic vinegar; whole grain farro; the three kinds of rice for risotto - Arborio, Carnaroli, and Vialone Nana; dried sausages; fresh sausages; cured meats imported from Italy; all kinds of cheeses; and, as I said, the best - THE BEST - handmade mozzarella and ricotta (which means amazing ravioli made from that ricotta) you will find in any of the five Boroughs.

It's no surprise that when it was time to make my first Italian-inspired dish from Zuni, I headed straight for DiPalo's.

Marie holding pecorino romano cheese and beautiful handmade ricotta

Judy Rodgers suggests using a "chewy, dried semolina pasta shape that does not grab too much sauce: spaghetti, spaghettini, penne, or bucatini." I find it really does make a difference to use artisanal pasta from Italy, which has been made using bronze cutting die, and usually use Pasta S et aro or Rustichella D'A bruzzo pasta.

This time I tried C av. Guis eppe Cocco penne rigate, and it was delicious.

I always weigh pasta before I cook it, planning on 4 ounces a person for a main course and 2 ounces for a starter.

I grated the romano cheese with my trusty Microplane grater.

Be sure to use the aged pecorino romano specified in the recipe; do not substitute Parmigiano-Reggiano. The bite of romano works well in this dish. What I used was Pecorino Romano Fulvi.

Marie with wheel of Fulvi Pecorino Romano

After I left DiPalo's, I jumped off the train at Union Square and headed to the Greenmarket, where I got beautiful blue eggs laid by Araucana chickens from Wi ndfa ll Farms. Araucana chickens are a breed that originated in Chile. The natural color of the shells of Martha Stewart's Araucana hens inspired a glorious collection of paints by Fine Paints of Europe. (I can personally attest to the radiance and quality of these paints, which are fully pigmented and produce a light-reflective finish that has to be seen to be appreciated. If you are interested in this fantastic paint and want some color guidance, give Emmett Fiore a call. He is friendly - and brilliant - and will work with you tirelessly to achieve the result you are looking for. Trust me on this one.)

I often make a special trip here to get these eggs, which have the most wonderful flavor and are so fresh when they are fried that the yolks stand up round and proud the way I picture the breasts of a 16th century Italian courtesan. The picture does not do justice to how blue the eggs are.

I beat the beautiful eggs with the lovely ricotta.

I used bacon (which is what this recipe calls for rather than pancetta) from Niman Ranch.

I put the pasta in rapidly boiling salted water, stirred it once with a wooden spoon, and let the water come back to the boil.

I didn't see any fresh peas at the Greenmarket, so I went ahead and used frozen peas, (arrest me) and it was still good. Actually, I use frozen peas often because if I waited for fresh peas - really fresh peas, not peas that have never been frozen but have gotten mealy and starchy, rather than staying sweet and crisp - to be available every time I wanted to eat them, I would be waiting more than I would be eating. It's not that I don't get the glory of the fresh pea - I actually have peas growing in my garden upstate - but unless you can walk out back and pick your own, good ones are hard to come by. I find that fresh peas in the supermarket are always past their prime. If you can get them from the farmer who picked them only hours before (or, of course, pick your own), you're in luck.

Peas from my garden

I added the frozen peas to the boiling water about 30 seconds before the pasta was done to the perfect al dente stage. To get this right, you have to keep tasting the pasta. When you use a shape like penne, which has a hole in the middle, it can go from being perfect to overcooked in a flash, so you need to be on your toes.

I followed the directions in Zuni, cooking the bacon just before I was going to use it so it wouldn't get stiff. You saw that the bacon was not very lean, so I took it out of the pan for a second while I removed some of the fat.

I added a little bit more olive oil to the pan to replace what I might have removed and heated it slightly, then turned the heat off, and returned the bacon to the still-warm pan. I did this while the pasta was cooking.

I drained the pasta, and shook off the excess water (but not enough to make it dry) and put the pasta and peas in the pan. This needs to be timed correctly because the pan should be warm enough that you hear a "discreet sizzle" when you add the pasta and peas.

I immediately added the eggs beaten with the ricotta and the pecorino cheese to the pan and quickly folded it all together. The heat of the ingredients in the pan "cooked" the eggs to the perfect, creamy, curdy stage. The recipe calls for lots of (do I have to tell you freshly ground?) black pepper, which I passed at the table.

If you use very fresh eggs, lovely cheeses, and excellent bacon, you will produce a highly pleasing dish.

I was going to say that this is a recipe where excellent ingredients shine, but that's really the point, isn't it? If Zuni has a philosophy, this would be it.

And so, the Zuni repertory is an evolving hybrid of the cuisines that I love, made possible by the generosity of many teachers and colleagues. I hope I can in this volume honor and convey some of their collective wisdom and passion. If our food is delicious, it is due to that passion, and to the extraordinary quality of the products we obtain, and to the talent and devotion of every cook who has embraced it with heart.

Judy Rodgers, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, Page 28.

I served this dish with salad made from arugula grown at S & S.O. Farm and sold at Union Square.

S. and S.O. Farm Stand at Union Square Greenmarket

Dessert was a bowl of cold cherries.

As usual, Sylvano was on hand to help out.

A Home Cook's Notes

I like most fruit at room temperature (the exception being citrus), which I think enhances its flavor. Think about a peach warm enough to have been just picked in the sun, so full of juice, it will run down your chin after you take the first luscious bite. Think about a warm, ripe tomato. Putting it in the refrigerator would destroy it. (Never put tomatoes in the refrigerator.) But for some reason I recently put a mesh container of sweet cherries in the refrigerator, and when I took the container out and popped a cherry in my mouth, I couldn't stop eating them. I had never eaten a cold cherry before. They were crisp and just sweet enough with a little bit of a tart edge and better than anything else I could think of at that moment. I polished off half of them on the spot.

The Gold Standard

2008-06-19T06:30:00.006-04:00

If - and I hope this is so - you have armed yourself with a copy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook and have done more than flip through the pages, you know that this book is not just an instruction manual with a lot of recipes, each with a list of ingredients and directions that follow. It's actually a diary as well as an in-depth discussion of how Judy Rodgers cooks. It's as personal a cookbook as I've ever seen - in my opinion it's in a category of one. Listen to what Michael Ruhlman, the apostle of making your own stock, has to say about it.

It was actually written by the chef herself and is thus a true reflection of her personality: eccentric, passionate, articulate, and most important, deeply observant about the way food behaves. This is a cookbook that’s truly valuable to read.

I'm rambling and feeling a little like Bilbo Baggins this morning, trying to decide where to begin. So I guess I'll just start at the beginning....

Meet Jeffrey Ruhalter of Jeffrey's Meat Market located in the historic Essex Street Market. If you live in NYC, and you're going to cook along with me (or not), Jeffrey is a person you want to get to know. He is the real deal - a butcher, who can get you anything you need in the way of meat or poultry and can prepare it any way you want, all without having to take out a bank loan. Plus, he is without a doubt one of the nicest, friendliest people you will ever meet. I promise, if you're embarking on this journey with me and can get to Jeffrey, he will make your life a lot easier - and more fun to boot.

Jeffrey Holding Thelma and Louise

There's no recipe for veal stock in Zuni. (If you want to make veal stock, go see Carol.) In The Elements of Cooking Michael Ruhlman reported that Judy Rodgers said she "hasn't found a good source for veal near her restaurant and so doesn't use veal stock."

Chicken stock is Zuni's basic stock. It's used for most of Zuni's soups, for meat and poultry braises, and for making compound meat stocks, which are other meat stocks that start with chicken stock instead of water. I'm going to need a lot of it. And that's why this is the beginning.

Zuni Chicken Stock
Stocks & the Sauces They Make Possible, Page 58

Whole birds - with their head and feet - are Judy Rodgers' first choice for making chicken stock. Before I met Jeffrey, I used to get my chickens for this stock in Chinatown, so if you don't have access to Jeffrey (or the Jeffrey of your hometown) but can get to an Asian market, that will probably be your best bet. If you can't get whole chickens, don't let it deter you from making this beautiful stock. You can add wings, necks, and feet, but Judy Rodgers cautions against using backs.

Thelma and Louise on Jeffrey's Counter

I've been making this stock regularly for a little over a year now, and I can testify that you want to have one cup increments of this stashed in your freezer to use at will. Oh, yes, you do. You definitely do. This was the first time I doubled the recipe so I used a 20-quart stock pot. Unless you are lucky enough to have a BIG sink, as I do in the mudroom, prepare to wash this baby in the bathtub or the backyard.

The chickens are thoroughly washed inside and out. The giblets are removed, but the lump of fat in the cavity is left there because, unlike any other recipe I've ever seen for stock, Judy Rodgers does not have you skim the fat off as the stock simmers, and she also adds a little salt!

The recipe instructs you to remove the breast meat for another use. But Thelma and Louise were a little small - 3-1/2 pounds each instead of 5-1/2 - so I skipped this step. I also added some chicken wings to up the weight. Other than that I followed the recipe to a T.

Thelma and Louise after a Bath

After starting out with excellent ingredients - fresh chicken, carrots, celery, and onion - and adding only enough cold liquid to cover the poultry and vegetables plus a few inches, the most important part of stock making is to avoid agitating it, which will affect the clarity because the fats, proteins, and impurities will emulsify into the liquid. In a stock pot with the cover off, you simmer it slowly to maintain a steady heat, never stirring it, never ever letting it come to a boil.

During the cooking there's a point at which a transformation occurs - when all of a sudden the simmering liquid smells different - different and wonderful. And it's at that point that you are bewitched by what you are making - and you take an oath to never go back to using those little cans or cartons of chicken broth again. If you don't have any of this lovely stock on hand, you will follow what I call Ruhlman's Rule from The Elements of Cooking and use water instead. And after about 4 hours from the time it reaches the first simmer (longer for a double batch), when it's rich, bright, and chickeny, it's done.

Remember, at Zuni the fat is never skimmed off; only the foam is removed, and this is the little tool I use for that purpose. It's very handy and cost me about $2.50 at a restaurant supply store.

As soon as (I mean as soon as) the stock is done, you want to very carefully remove the solids so you can strain it easily. This is when it's hard not to agitate the stock. I took the solids out with a big scoop and put them in a colander.

This time, because my pot was so big, I transferred the liquid to a large bowl before I put it through a fine strainer.

I strained the liquid into a wide 8-quart pot, which would fit on a refrigerator shelf. At this point I put the pot in an ice bath in the sink to cool it down, but I didn't snap a picture of that. By the time I went to grab the camera, the ice had melted, the stopper had failed, and all the water had gone down the drain.

Once the stock had cooled enough, I put it in the refrigerator to chill overnight. The next day I took the pot out of the refrigerator and used my handy, dandy tool again to skim off the fat, which had risen to the top of the pot. It was congealed and easy to skim but had not formed a solid sheet that could be lifted off the rather gelatinous stock.

Then I heated the stock up to a very gentle simmer - you still do not want to agitate it - so it would return to a liquid state for a final strain. The cooks at Zuni are more proficient than I at not agitating the stock as it cooks so in the Zuni Cafe kitchen this step is accomplished by straining the stock once through a napkin; however, I strained it through Melitta coffee filters once and then twice again using Chemex coffee filters, which remove a little more than the Melitta filters. This guarantees that every particle left in the stock is removed. It sounds like a huge pain, but it's a step that's really worth it - at least to me. Remember, we're talking liquid gold here.With time I will probably improve this skill enough to strain the stock once through a napkin when it's done, but until then, this is what I'm doing.

Next, I measured the stock out into a Pyrex measuring cup and put it in one-cup increments into quart size Ziplock bags. When I was done with the double batch of stock, I had 16 bags full, which means I ended up with four quarts of glorious chicken stock in my freezer!

Ta da!

A Home Cook's Notes

It takes a while to get the hang of maintaining the gentle simmer necessary to get the most flavor from the ingredients while eliminating the danger of emulsifying the fat and impurities into the stock. It's like learning to drive a stick shift. Do it enough times, and it will become second nature. Trust me.

For me, the hardest part is not agitating the ingredients at the point where I am going to remove the solids from the stock before straining it. Using chicken wings to supplement the whole birds made avoiding agitating the stock more difficult because it was simply more stuff to remove.

Another reason I wasn't crazy about using the chicken wings was because in spite of repeated washings, they still looked bloody where they had been removed from the body of the chicken, and blood is a major impurity you want to avoid as much as you can in your stock. The next time I use chicken wings, I'm going to put them alone in a separate pot, cover them with cold water, bring the water to a boil, then remove the wings, and wash them before adding them to the stock pot. That way the blood impurities will have been removed before I start the stock.

I always scrupulously follow the advice to only add enough water to slightly more than cover the ingredients, and I think the reason my stock has the rich, bright flavor so prized by Judy Rodgers is because my ratio of solids to liquids is right.

It turns out I find I prefer to follow the recipe and cook one chicken at a time instead of two as I did here. I don't mind making this recipe often - I love the way my house smells while this stock is simmering away, and I find making a single batch to be more manageable than a double batch.

This is who hung out with me while I cooked. His name is Sylvano. He has beautiful green eyes.

This is the view out the kitchen window.

So all in all, it was a good two days!

Why Me? Why Now? Why Zuni?

2008-06-06T07:44:00.014-04:00

Why me?

A few years ago I spent a glorious ten days with the Lauer’s at Sea Island in a house with a beautiful kitchen overlooking the marsh where Jane and Amy and I cooked dinner (almost) every night for the nine to eleven people who were ready to eat. After calling my office repeatedly to get a recipe emailed to me from my computer and not being able to get any on Saturday and Sunday, I realized there had to be a way to have my recipes where I could access them wherever I was and where I could direct my friends when they called for a recipe. Each idea I had was more cumbersome than the one before.

Then my adorable elderly father died unexpectedly, and for the first time in my life, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. During that sad period, I had an “I could have had a V-8” moment. Do a blog. My own blog. And somehow in the middle of a dark winter’s night, I opened my laptop and figured out what to do. And I was right. It is a huge convenience for me. I live in the city, and weekend in the country, and visit friends, and now – just about anyplace I am – I can get my hands on my favorite recipes.

What I didn’t know was how much I would like to write, how much it would enhance my already passionate enjoyment of cooking, and how many people I would “meet” because they read my recipes, and I read theirs. It’s been quite an adventure, and the journey goes on.

Why now?

This is a question I am answering mostly for myself. I am so busy at work, I have a ton of personal projects going on, and I already write a blog. Am I crazy? (That is a rhetorical question.)

The first blog I ever read was the Julie/Julia Project, a blog on Salon in which Julie Powell was documenting her resolution to cook her way through the 536 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.

Before that I didn’t even know what a blog was. I found it late in the day and had a lot of back reading to do. I laughed out loud, I rooted for Julie to finish on time, and when I got to the Smithsonian to see Julia’s kitchen, I was as interested in checking out where Julie left the stick of butter as anything else in that wonderful room.

And after that I loved her bo ok.

It isn't the blog in print; it's about writing the blog – and how it changed her life – and reading it was a hoot.

It’s different now; there are lots of really great food blogs out there, and I would love to read them all regularly and explore new ones. But I can’t. Just like I can’t read every great book there is (not for lack of trying). So I’ve picked a small number, and they are like my friends that I check on regularly to see what’s going on and how they are doing.

One of them is the wonderful French Laundry at Home where Carol Blymire is cooking her way through Thomas Keller's amazing French Laundry Cookbook.

It’s beautiful, interesting, enlightening, inspiring, and absolutely hilarious. And every time I read the newest post, I think how cooking through TFL is changing and enhancing the way Carol Blymire cooks. I remember I felt the same way about Julie Powell’s cooking her way through Mastering. And a little voice in my head says………hmmmmmm.

Why Zuni?

I have a lot of cookbooks. I mean A LOT of cookbooks. What I call a rude amount (it’s a personal joke, right, Steph?) – what some people call a ridiculous amount – what some people call an insane amount. The question usually is, “What are you going to do with all these books?” I’m beginning to feel like Cecily Brownstone. But I don’t have a lot of cookbooks that make me say “I’d like to cook every single recipe here.” (There are exactly three.) And I’m not looking for a project. So the idea comes. I put it away. But it keeps coming back...Zuni.

I have four copies of the book. Three are in places I cook often, and one is at my office. I give The Zuni Cafe Cookbook as a present all the time. The book is truly wonderful. It is physically beautiful, the hand of the paper is sensual, the writing is mesmerizing, and all that is surpassed by the recipes, which are long, thorough, easy to follow, and absolutely delicious. There isn’t a recipe in it I don’t want to cook when I open it. (And I’ve already made the pasta dish with gizzards and hearts – a number of times – and I make the chicken stock with a chicken that still has its head and its feet all the time, thank you very much. So don’t give me a hard time.)

The answer is

Why not?

This isn’t a race. I don’t have a timetable. I’m not going to rush. Too much of what I do at work is time-dependent. So as I wend my way through and cook every recipe in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, I'm going to have fun and learn all that I can. It will require lots of reading (if you’ve seen the book, you know it’s not just a recipe per page), lots of procuring (where am I going to get glasswort? Maybe back at Sea Island), and, best of all, lots of cooking.

I’m not going to post recipes. If you’re interested, get a copy of the book if you don’t already have it, and follow along. Even if you don’t want to follow along, get a copy of this fabulous book. I promise; you’ll love it.