I8NY

Moving!

2011-05-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

And two years later, I'm opening sandwich stand. It's going to be all summer at the Brooklyn Flea, Williamsburg. Head over to i8nyfood.com for updates!

Black Tofu

2009-06-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

Photo by Sarah Funroe

Earlier this week my friend Nora filmed a movie at my house for a school project. She is using black and white film and wanted to film me doing something with squid ink. After a little research, I found this incredible recipe for calamari cracklings at one of my favorite food blogs, Ideas In Food. Here's what my own squid chips looked like

I haven't seen the footage yet, but Nora says it's very "dramatic." She'll have a digital version in a week or two. I'll be sure to post it here."

After the shoot I had plenty of squid ink left over, so I just had to make something else black. I made tofu. I've been wanting to recreate store-bought baked tofu at home for a long time, and this seemed like a good opportunity. The texture turned out just like I wanted. I'm quite pleased.

To make the tofu, I began by compressing the block in between two plates weighed with a cast-iron frying pan. Be sure to purchase extra-firm tofu for this task, otherwise, it will collapse under the weight. After about an hour the tofu firmed up significantly. I made a marinade of squid ink, fish sauce, lime juice and brown sugar, then sealed the tofu in a ziplock bag overnight. The next day, I baked the tofu on a wire rack at 260 degrees for about four hours. Meanwhile I reduced the marinade, and thickened it with a little cornstarch, then laquered the tofu every 30 minutes or so. Here's what the end product looked like:

Pretty cool, huh? Oh! Oh! And here is a picture of that Lamb Sandwich with the Fava Beans Puree:

Ok folks – see you next time!

Update: here's the video!

Squid Chips from nora tennessen on Vimeo.

Fava Beans

2009-06-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Fava beans, also known as broad beans, are my favorite springtime treat. They are delicious and also a total pain to prepare – painful because the beans must be shelled twice, first to extrude the beans from their pods and then again, after blanching, to remove their tough outer skin.

Truth be told, I actually love peeling fava beans. There is something therapeutic about it – you just zone out and do your thing. And if you can convince your friends to help, it's a great way to spend an afternoon.

If anyone out there has never brought home a bag of favas I've illustrated the process above, along with some pictures of a puree I made with homemade ricotta, mint, and olive oil.

Homemade ricotta? Why yes. It turns out that making ricotta at home is actually very easy and yields superior results to the store bought variety. It might also be cheaper, but I'll have to do some more research to say so definitively.

Ricotta, literally "recooked", in Italian is traditionally made by recooking the whey leftover after curdling milk in cheesemaking. I've made ricotta like this before, while making fresh mozzarella and it's absolutely incredible, but the method has a disappointing yield, maybe 4-5 tablespoons of ricotta from a quart a milk. For the puree above, I used a a simpler, higher yield alternative.

All you need is:

Half a teaspoon of cirtric acid disolved in 1/4 cup of water (I found mine at the Damascus bakery in Park Slope, adjacent to Sahadi's)
Some salt
A quart of the best, least pasturized, unhomogenized milk you can find (I like Ronnybrook)

To make the ricotta:

Slowly heat the milk and a pinch of salt in a saucepan, stirring constantly to avoid scorching.
Once the milk reaches 190 degrees F, stir in the citric acid
Remove the milk from the heat, let it sit for about half an hour, during which time the milk will separate into curds and whey. If the milk doesn't separate, add a little more citric acid and wait it out.
Finally, Line a colander with cheesecloth, then strain the contents of the pan, tie the four corners of the cheese cloth together and hang for another half hour

It's that easy. If you're feeling ambitious, you can also get an even higher yield and make some legitimate ricotta by recooking your leftover whey. Simply repeat the recipe, but omit the citric acid.

To make my Ricotta-Fava Bean puree:

Combine 1 cup of ricotta, 3 cups fava beans (about 3lbs before shelling), and about 20 mint leaves in a food processor.
Turn the machine on and slowly drizzle about 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil, to emulsify the the puree (I used Olave).
Season with salt, lemon.
If necessary, thin the puree with warm water, keeping in mind that the puree will thicken significantly as it cools in the fridge.

If you put too much cheese or olive oil in the mixture, it may break and turn in to an oily mess that resembles green spackle. If this happens to you, as it has happened to me – fear not! It'll be a pain but you can save your puree with another handful or two of beans. Just empty the food processor, puree the new beans and slowly add broken puree back in – just like you would fix broken mayonnaise.

The puree is great on toast. In the picture above, put some extra fava beans and mint on top and grated some Parmesan. Stay tuned for a lamb sandwich later this week.

2009-05-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

Strawberries at the Greenmarket today. I forgot how good they can be. They taste incredible.

Ramp Butter

2009-05-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

Alright. I'm back, after an inappropriate month-long hiatus. Since we last spoke, ramp season has pretty much run it's course. We've only got a week or two, max.

The good news is that you can enjoy your ramps year-round if you act now and preserve them. One popular, delicious option is to pickle your ramps. Another, less commonly suggested, is to make a compound ramp-butter. I like this second option. A few ramps go a long way, and while pickled ramps taste great, this butter gives me the same flavor I crave when I think of spring.

The process was simple: I separated the leaves from the root ends of my ramps, then blanched the two parts separately in salty boiling water, leaving the larger root-ends to cook for just a few seconds longer. Afterwards, I dried the ramps as much as I could and pureed them in my food processor. I wanted the butter to have a smooth texture and a bright green color, so afterwards I pushed the puree, with a ladle, through a fine mesh strainer, ensuring a smooth consistency. Finally I folded the puree into a pound of butter at room temperature, seasoned aggressively, and rolled the butter into torchons.

I've found that this ramp butter will hold in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and almost indefinitely in the freezer.

As for what to do with the butter, there are plenty of options. Of course, it's really, really good on toast. Eggs, slowly scrambled with parmesan and lots of ramp butter is heavenly. Pasta is good too. Ramps and pasta are always good. In the picture below, I combined pecorino, ramp butter and parsley.

Quick side note on the pasta: I've been using this brand lately which has totally changed my pasta life. It's called Rustichella d’Abruzzo. It's the same brand that Franny's uses for all of their pasta dishes. It's a family run business, which has been producing superior dried goods since 1924. Their pasta is slowly dried at a low temperature and extruded using a bronze mold which produces coarser, starchier pasta that absorbs sauce better and has a wonderful, dense flavor.

Is it pricey? Yes it's pricey – about 6 bucks a pound at Whole Foods. I like to think of it as an affordable luxury. Sure, it's expensive for pasta, but it's not, say, expensive for dinner.

Ok that's it folks. Tune in later this week for fava beans, and maybe some bone marrow or celery soda.

Red Beans and Rice pt. 2

2009-04-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

After letting my pickled pork shoulder sit for four days, I was ready to cook up the beans for Sunday's sunny BBQ. The method I used here is the one I like use for all beans: slowly saute all the aromatics, then transfer everything into a deep pan. Cover with salted water and braise at a low temperature in the oven.

For 1.5 lbs Red Kidney Beans, I used:

2 large onions
3 stalks celery
1 bell pepper
4 cloves garlic
4-5 sprigs fresh oregeno
4-5 springs fresh thyme
1 tbps cayenne
1.5 lbs pickled pork

About beans and salt: I like to season my beans aggressively from the outset. There is an old adage which warns against seasoning your beans too soon, because the salt allegedly toughens the beans. I have never found this to be true. On the contrary, I have found that beans seasoned early are plump and delicious. Also, by seasoning early, the beans have a chance to absorb the salt as they cook. If they are seasoned after the braise, they won't have the same opportunity – imagine cooking an unseasoned steak, then sprinkling some salt on at the end.

Also, I chose not to soak my beans. My reasoning was to give the pork adequate time to braise along with the beans. Red Kidney Beans take a relatively short amount of time before they become tender, about 3 hours. If I had soaked the beans, they would have turned to mush by the time the pork had become tender.

This was probably the best batch of beans I have ever cooked up. My only regret was that I used too little pork. I discovered half-way through the pickling process that the pickled shoulder meat was delicious sliced thinly and seared on a smoking-hot cast-iron pan or grill. By the time it came time to cook the beans, I had already gone through a third of my pickle.

Allium tricoccum: Spring is Here

2009-04-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

On the east coast, for the next couple of weeks, we get a treat: ramps, the first green vegetable of the growing season are the temperamental, wild member of the allium family (garlic, onions, shallots), usually described as a cross between leeks and garlic. Before moving to New York, I never ate a ramp. They only grow on the east coast, and unfortunately, they're an endangered species in Quebec, where I went to college.

east coast delicacy

I'm glad I'm eating them now. They're beautiful, and delicious – much more so than the garlic-leek comparison can express. They also come quite dirty and are relatively expensive thanks to excessive demand, a short growing season, and the inevitable mania that signals the end of winter. Look for Rick Bishop from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket. He's the the go-to guy for ramps, usually standing in front of a wooden placard signed, with recipes, from celebrated chefs from around the city.

To clean your ramp, first give it a preliminary bath in cold water to wash away the majority of the dirt. Then, cut off the root-end with a pairing knife, like you would a scallion. Slide off the slimy outer layer that surrounds the bottom of the stock, and finally submerse the whole plant in cold water again, taking care not to leave any dirt in the folds of the top leafs.

At this point, depending on how you want to cook your ramps, you may want to section off the leafy green top from the root end, reserving for use like you would a spring onion. I used my ramps this way for a pasta dish:

Linguine with Ramps, Cockles and Calabrian Chiles

I sauteed the ramp roots with with the cockles and chiles in white wine, then added the pasta and folded in the leafs off the heat.

Alternatively you can leave the plant intact and saute, or ever better, grill them whole, like I did here.

Charred Ramps and Pickled Pork

Incidentally, the pork shoulder I pickled turned out to be unexpectedly delicious sliced thinly across the grain and charred on a white-hot grill.

Red Beans and Rice pt. 1

2009-04-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm making red beans and rice for a (god willing, rain ceasing) barbecue on Sunday. The secret ingredient here is pickled pork – shoulder meat, submersed in an aromatic pickling liquid for anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks. After giving the pork adequate time to sit, I'll stew the meat with red kidney beans, celery and onion.

The pickle recipe I devised here is a variation on Alton Brown's. It will provide enough liquid for about two pounds of pork shoulder.

1 cup cider vinegar
2 cups water
1/4 cup kosher salt
2 T sugar
4 bay leaves
8 cloves garlic
2 tbsp yellow mustard seed
3 tbsp coriander seed
1 tbsp whole black peppercorn
1 tsp spanish smoked paprika
1 thai chili
1 tbsp tobasco
1 tbsp worcestershire
2 cups ice

Bring all ingredients up to a boil and let simmer for a few minutes, allowing the spices to infuse the liquid. Kill the heat, and toss in the ice. As the liquid cools, taste, and season with vinegar, salt and sugar if necessary. It shouldn't taste noticably sweet. It should be quite salty and acidic, but not so much so that it is unpleasant to taste.

Once the liquid is cool, pour in a ziplock bag with 2 lbs pork shoulder cut into 2 inch cubes.

Afterwards, you want to expel all the excess air in the ziplock bag, so that the pork pickles evenly:

Fill a large pot with cold water.
Seal the ziplock bag, but leave a small portion unzipped in one corner.
Submerge the bag in water, all the way up until seal. The water pressure will squeeze out all the excess air air.
While the bag is still submerged, close the seal.

Here's a video of the process.

I learned this trick from Montana Forest (real name), the prep cook at WD-50. It is my favorite thing that I have learned in 2009. Thanks Monty!

Restaurant Olive Oil Roundup

2009-03-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Trader-Joe's, I've only recently come to appreciate good olive oil. This is one way in which working (for free) at Chez Panisse changed my life. I learned an invaluable lesson: all you need to make fantastic food is really fresh food, some lemon, a lot of salt and copious amounts of good olive oil. That's basically it. That's all you need.

Recently, my affection for olive oil has turned into a sort of obsession. Every time I trail (try out for a job) at a restaurant I sneak into the pantry when no one is looking and write down all the brand names I see. Below, I have summarized the results of my research. Most of these are available at any decent super market, and all of the oils listed are great values, because restaurants hate spending money on food far more than you ever will.

Oleificio Chianti - Produced by Alice Water's ex husband, Stephen Singer, this is the work-horse oil at Chez Panisse. It's only 40% extra virgin which makes it heat resistant. Ideal for sautéing and roasting, it also makes fantastic aiolis and vinaigrettes, where using all extra virgin produces an overly bitter or peppery flavor. Singer also makes a great finishing extra virgin olive oil.

Frantoia – I love this one. I love the green-gold color. I love the grassy buttery flavor and given how good it is, I love the price. You can usually find a liter of for about 25 bucks, which is steal when you consider how good your food will taste. You can find Frantoia at pantries all around town. I've seen it on the shelves at L'Artusi, Esca and Centro Vinotecca

Olave – This is a favorite of April Bloomfield at the Spotted Pig. Produced with organic olives grown and pressed in Chile, this olive oil has wonderful, round mouth feel. The flavor starts off clean and grassy and moves to an aggressive peppery finish – which makes sense if you've ever eaten the food at the Spotted Pig. The price is great too; expect to spend about 20 bucks for a liter.

Monini – It's pretty good and it's dirt cheap. I first saw this oil while staging at Convivio and expected to find myself paying a hefty amount of cash for a bottle. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a liter for a mere 13 bucks. This is my olive oil of choice until I get a job.

Agrumato – This olive oil is really expensive and it tastes freaking incredible. The secret here lies in the process. Rather than infusing the oil, Argumato presses the olives and citrus together. The result is hard to express. The taste and aroma of Argumato oils is redolent of citrus in way that I didn't think was possible. The company makes a few different flavors. The tangerine and lemon varities are my personal favorites. You'll find Argumato all around town, everywhere from L'Artusi to WD-50.

Tutto Calabria!!!!

2009-03-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

Recently, I spent a day at Convivio, and came across this gem. These spicy little peppers are quite sweet and acidic, a little bitter and ridiculously spicy. They (secretly) make their way into many dishes at the restaurant and are, I think, one of a few secret weapons that make Michael White's food so delicious (the others being really good anchovies, olive oil, and cheese).

They come from Tutto Calabria – an Italian company in the business of the Calabrian tradition. Calabria, geographically at the toe of the boot, has historically suffered frequent occupation, crop failures, and economic depression. As a result, they developed the sort of near-future pessimism that leads to a real talent for preservation. Calabrians pickle and preserve everything. They excel in chartcuterie, particularly 'Nduja, a spicy, smoked, spreadable sausage . They love salt cod, anchovies, and a bright-red sardine paste called sardella. In short, they love everything I love.

Calabrians also love chiles, another fortunate upshot of their historic poverty. Unlike pricey, temperamental black peppercorns, the capsicum plant is easy to cultivate in the southern Mediterranean climate. When Columbus returned from the new world with bounties of chile peppers, the capsicum flourished and the trajectory of Calabrian cuisine changed forever. Tutto Calabria represents an extension of this culinary tradition, borne from the hardships of past generations.

The sad irony here is that Tutto Calabria products are expensive and difficult to find. I bought mine at the Italian importer at Chelsea Market, a place I can no longer go until I am gainfully employed. They cost something like $8, but frankly I think they're worth every penny.

Lately, I've been using the chiles in pretty much everything I make. The oil that the chiles are preserved in is good, too. It's like an extra bonus which helps justify the price. They were particularly good in this dish I made the other day:

Farro pasta with anchovies, cauliflower and calabrian chiles. It was freaking intense.

Foie Gras de Mer, AKA Foie de Lotte, AKA Foie de Failure, AKA Foie de Gross

2009-02-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Monkfish liver. It is the alleged foie gras of the sea. It is a delicacy in Japan.

Before this experiment, I had never worked with monkfish liver before, nor had I ever even eaten it. Incidentally, I don't think monkfish is so great and I don't particularly care for foie gras.

But the fact of the matter is that I was in Whole Foods in Union Square wandering aimlessly around and thought it would be a good idea to impress the fish monger with an austere request.

My idea worked. The fish monger got really excited and offered to sell me a pound of livers for $5. This is when it dawned on me that I was going to have to go through with this.

My first idea was to do a torchon, which I found is what everyone else does. All the recipes I could find on the internet (there weren't many) suggested steaming instead of the usual poaching. The only exception was Jonathan Benno's recipe, which involved covering the liver in powered gelatin, then cryovacing, then poaching for 3 hours at 64 degrees Celcius. Evs.

A lot of recipes also suggested curing the liver for a couple of hours, then soaking it in sake, which I didn't have. I soaked my livers in milk instead, something I saw on a clip of Iron Chef Japan. This guys soaks it in milk too.

The reason why you want to soak the monkfish liver in milk or sake is that it smells absolutely horrendous. You also need to clean the liver – that is, remove all of the blood veins. These two steps mitigate the smell.

I made the mistake of cleaning my livers before soaking them in milk and it wasn't a pleasant experience. Imagine scooping blood off a rotten smelling lobe with the texture of an eyeball

After soaking the liver in milk over night, it still smelled fishy, but I thought (hoped) that the smell might cook off. I made my first attempt. I (poorly) rolled the liver into a torchon and steamed it on some curry leaves.

Then I hung it in the fridge and let it cool. Oh god, it was gross:

The torchon tasted like bitter cat food. Realizing that I was not smarter than Japanese people at preparing weird cuts of fish, I soaked the remaining two livers I had in vodka, hoping that the alcohol would mellow the smell. It did, but the second torchon was only marginally better than the first... I still had to spit it out.

I'm not saying that monkfish liver is gross. What I am saying is that either I have no idea how to prepare it, or that I bought a pound of rotten fish for five dollars.

I threw out the last liver. I give up.

Jonny vs. The Octopus

2009-02-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

This was the first time I cooked octopus at home. I've finished it off by grilling it in kitchens before but never made the slimy guy start to finish. What I remembered was that to get an octopus tender, you really need to cook the hell out of it. Usually this is done by boiling it in salted water for 30 minutes or more. This seemed a little violent to me – I can't think of any other animal in any preparation that calls for boiling for half an hour.

Braising seemed a good alternative, same idea, gentler approach. After a little research, I learned that octopus has a very high moisture content which allows you to basically braise it in its own juices.

Making the octopus turned out to be a remarkably easy, albeit time consuming task. I briefly sweated some garlic, along with lemon zest, marjoram, thyme and chili. Then I threw the guy in there whole, and watched him grow:

Look at that!

Anyway, the octopus did in fact release a lot of liquid, though it didn't seem like quite enough in the pan, so I added some white wine.

1 and 1/2 hours later, the octopus was done. I paired it with potatoes, as the Galicians do, and
finished with chopped parsley, red onion, a little extra chili and tons of olive oil.

Beans

2009-02-20T12:47:00.001-08:00

For two weeks I worked at a restaurant which chose to throw away the rinds from Parmesan cheese. This is a shame because Parmesan rinds make a delicious base to either cook grains or make soup. I was fortunate enough to inherit all of these rinds, and yesterday I used them to flavor the broth for some cannellini beans. I didn't want to wait a day, so I skipped soaking process by briefly boiling the beans and allowing them to sit in the warm water for an hour. Meanwhile, I (very) slowly sauted onions and garlic with chili, and a huge bouquet of thyme. Once the onions were completely soft and about to start caramelizing, I added the Parmesan rinds and a couple quarts of water. I then rinsed my beans and combined them with the Parmesan broth in my crock-pot and cooked them on high for a about 3 hours. The result was fantastic, though I wish I had cooked the beans in a little more liquid. Once they cooled, the beans soaked up most of the broth.

Today I paired the beans with some kale, sauted with garlic and fished with pecorino, fresh thyme and lemon. Delish: