All You Need Is Love . . . and Sauce

Quick; who said, “Hunger is the best sauce”?

If you guessed “Shakespeare,” you would be in the company of most people. He, along with King Solomon and the Apostle Paul, with honorable mention going to Ben Franklin, is the go-to guy for quotations.

But in this case, you would be wrong, at least according to WorldofQuotes.com. It was actually Cervantes who wrote, in Don Quixote, “Hunger is the best sauce in the world.” Honorable mention must go to Socrates, who, according to Cicero, said that "the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst."

I tested this saying recently with a recipe from one of my favorite books, Everyday Pasta, by Giada De Laurentiis. You have to wonder about a lot of cookbooks or sections of cookbooks labeled “Everyday.” Are these recipes really suited for using every day? On one of my typical days, if I’m not working until closing, I get off at 6:00 and come home to feed my family, the hungriest member of which is usually me. Would Giada’s recipes stand up to that kind of day?

I decided to find out by cooking “Chicken in Lemon Cream with Penne.” Chunks of skinless, boneless chicken breast are first seasoned and then browned. A pan sauce is constructed from the fond, some chicken broth, heavy cream, lemon juice and zest, cayenne, and parsley. Then all is tossed together with penne. That’s it. Couldn’t be simpler.

When I first made the dish, I cooked some broccoli on the side and then, on a whim, tossed it in with the chicken and pasta, too.

Truth be told, it didn’t look like much, not really, despite Giada’s calling its presentation “elegant,” but it turned out to be a really delicious dish. The chicken was tender and had that yummy brown crust in patches. But the sauce, the best part, was rich with chicken flavor and a burst of lemon, with a kick of heat at the end. That night, I bolted my food, murmuring all the while, “This is good; this is really good. Mmm. So good.” And to my husband, “Don’t you think this is good?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s good. Uh-huh,” he replied.

I thought about that later. While we both liked the dish, we obviously experienced differing degrees of enjoyment. He thought it was an adequate, maybe even good, weeknight meal, while I was ready to open a restaurant with this dish in the lead-off spot. It made me wonder—why did I think it tasted so much better than he did? Was it because I was hungrier? Food tastes better when one is hungry, doesn’t it? In fact someone, it might have been Shakespeare, I thought, once said that hunger is the best sauce.

So I performed a scientific experiment. The next week, on a night when I again got off at six, but when I wasn’t quite as hungry, I made the dish again, replicating it exactly, down to tossing in cooked broccoli. I took a tentative taste. There was the flavor of chicken, the burst of lemon, the finish of heat. It tasted exactly the same, and it was still just as good as it had been the week before. I bolted another plateful.

I’m no Socrates, but here’s what I think—no matter what day it is, hunger does make a good sauce, but sometimes all you really need is sauce.

Chicken in Lemon Cream with Penne
from Everyday Pasta, by Giada De Laurentiis

1 pound penne pasta
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, diced into 1-inch cubes
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence*
Pinch of salt, plus ½ teaspoon
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper, plus ¼ teaspoon
1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cups heavy cream
Zest of 1 lemon
Pinch of cayenne pepper
¼ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Season the cubed chicken breast with the herbes de Provence and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the chicken until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the chicken and set aside. Pour off any excess oil from the pan. Add the chicken broth to the pan and ook over medium0high heat, using a wooden spoon to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Add the cream, lemon zest, and cayenne. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the pasta, chicken, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, chopped parsley, and lemon juice. Toss to coat the pasta and chicken with the sauce and serve.

[*Herbes de Provence is a French herb blend usually composed of thyme, marjoram, fennel, basil, rosemary, and lavender. If you can’t find it premixed in your grocery store, feel free to substitute your favorite herbs. An Italian seasoning blend of thyme, basil, and oregano is good with this dish. The flavor is different, of course, but still good.]

Letter to Kevin

Dearest,

I wish I could be with you tonight to put the finishing touches on dinner, because food eaten with those we love is most savory. Since that cannot be, however, I leave you these instructions for getting cold short rib ragú and dried egg noodles into warm and supple shape.

First, fill the large pot on the stove about 2/3 with water. Add a couple teaspoons kosher salt and bring the water to a rapid boil over high heat.

Meanwhile transfer the ragú into the large glass bowl I left on the counter for you. Heat it in the microwave for two minutes to a minute and a half at a time until it is hot, stirring after each interval.

When the pasta water is boiling, pour in all the egg noodles and stir. When the water returns to a boil, begin timing. It shouldn’t take much more than five minutes to cook the pasta, but begin tasting after four minutes. When it is al dente, carefully scoop out about half a cup of the water, more or less is fine, using the small measuring cup, and set it aside. You will use it to thin the sauce, if needed. Using the colander, drain the rest of the pasta and return it to the pot.

By this time, the ragú should be hot. If it is thick, stir in a little pasta water, a tablespoon or so at a time, until it has a more flowing, but not runny, consistency. Be sure to taste it to see if it needs a little more salt or pepper. Pour the hot ragú over the pasta and toss gently.

If you want something green to go along with the meal, you can fix up a simple salad while the pasta is boiling. Toss the salad greens in the fridge with about a tablespoon of olive oil, a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar, which you will find in the very back of the bottom shelf of the cabinet to the right of the stove, a pinch or two of kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

And that’s it. You asked for detailed instructions, and I feel clever couching the directions within this little love note. Perhaps it’s not a traditional declaration of the emotions of the heart, but I know how you can read between the lines.

With all my love,
R

Cooking with Julia

Yes, I’m going to jump on this train, because it’s traveling in the direction I want to go. Having enjoyed the film Julie and Julia, and having received a copy of Julia Child’s memoir My Life in France from a friend and a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking from my husband, what else could I do?

I don’t intend to cook through the book in a year and blog about it; I’m not such a copycat as that. But from time to time I’ll share with you the dishes I make, starting with the classic Boeuf Bourguignon, Beef Stew in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms.

Everything Julia says about boeuf bourguignon is true. It truly is “one of the most delicious beef dishes concocted by man.” The recipe does require a bit of fuss. First, you have to simmer lardons of bacon and then crisp them in oil. Next, you have to cut three pounds of beef chuck roast into cubes, pat them thoroughly dry and brown them a few pieces at a time before getting on with the rest of the stew. Finally, you have to braise pearl onions in beef stock and sauté mushrooms in butter, both separately.

But when you eat the results, you will be eager for your next day off so that you can go through the whole process all over again. I know I am. Mostly I want to make the dish again because we ate almost every bit of it. Granted, I got to take the small amount of leftovers to work for my lunch the next day (cook’s privilege!), but we three adults and two children easily put away nearly three pounds of boeuf bourguignon. In one sitting. It is that good.

And I want some more. We all do.

In the film, three people—Julia, Julie, and Judith Jones, the editor at Knopf who first saw Mastering for what it is worth—cook boeuf bourguignon, and each time the making of the dish contains three visual elements, patting the beef dry (an essential technique for browning the meat, the discovery of which Julia raves about in her memoir), pouring in the burgundy, and lifting the lid of the casserole to inhale the savory aroma. As I completed these iconic tasks, and as I contemplated the trouble I had taken to follow Child’s directions precisely, I realized the point of the dish. Cooking is partly about following directions. Precision of direction, in fact, is one of the hallmarks of Mastering, a book that contains six pages of notes and variations on the humble poached egg. Child intended the book to be so precise that any American woman could use it to duplicate the flavors of Child’s beloved France. But cooking is about more than following directions, and Child knew this. Cooking is about discovery, cooking is about sharing, cooking is about joy. The point of making boeuf bourguignon is to experience the joy of the dish.

If that's not a joyful face, what, pray tell, is?

This Week: A Reading Foodie

I never intended to leave this blog for two and a half weeks, but sometimes that’s the way life rolls. I recently started working out of the home again, an arrangement that leaves me not as much time for messing in the kitchen. But I have been enjoying reading cookbooks, particularly since my family was so generous this year with another foodie Christmas. An early present was Chef John Besh’s My New Orleans. My husband took me to a book signing where we met the great chef and purchased a copy of his book which he signed. We had hoped to snap a quick picture of him, but the gracious Mrs. Besh insisted we let her take the photo of all three of us.

My New Orleans, The Cookbook: 200 of My Favorite Recipes & Stories from My Hometown is just as ambitious yet accessible as its title. It’s a book that’s one part recipes and one part stories, stories of how John Besh’s love for food, cooking and sharing has grown out of the region into which he was born and from the forces, attitudes and experiences that shaped who he is today, experiences like fishing and hunting in and around the bayous, cooking through Europe and raising his own produce and protein for his restaurants. This book takes us through a year of cooking and eating in New Orleans, from winter’s harvest of crawfish and celebration of Mardi Gras with dishes such as Jalapeno Cheese Grits and King Cake through shrimp and speckled trout seasons, to summer’s bounty of vegetables and fruits, into crab season, and the time to forage for mushrooms, to oyster season, gumbo weather, and Thanksgiving and on to a traditional Christmas-time standing rib roast and bread pudding with brown butter sticky rum sauce named for his son Brendan. The recipes in each chapter accompany a narrative in which Besh shares how he came to love this total way of cooking and living immersed in the process of hunting, fishing, planting, feeding and harvesting one’s own food before cooking it gently and sharing with others. If I could live a year in his world, it would be an enriching year indeed. Along the way, vintage photographs, images from his family collection, and food photos by photographer Ditte Isager so clear you think you can smell what’s on the plate beckon you further into this massive volume.

Prior to embarking on his journey through a year of food, New Orleans-style, Besh shares the building blocks of his cooking, Basic Recipes for roux, stocks, pan sauces, Creole spices, vinaigrettes, remoulade, and more. These recipes are the backbone of many dishes in his repertoire. It may seem a little daunting to have to prepare a recipe in order to prepare another recipe, but when Besh explains how to save the bits and bones and scraps of ingredients to make the stocks and sauces, it doesn’t seem out of my realm of possibility to do so. Besides, I imagine there is no substitute for carefully prepared Basic Shrimp Stock.

The prescriptive detail of his recipes—he instructs us to cook ingredients separately or in a certain order and combine them at the end; for example even in a dish simply titled August Chopped Salad, he says to “blanch the chanterelles, baby carrots, baby turnips, potatoes, and asparagus separately and in that order”—may seem overwhelming and slightly pedantic, but what it really demonstrates is his respect for the ingredients and his careful attention to extracting the best flavor and texture from them.

When I read the recipes in the chapter titled “Boucherie”—the hog slaughter—I was a bit nonplussed. Directions for cooking a whole pig’s head and for making boudin noir, or blood sausage, using two cups of fresh pork blood, are a bit out of my reach. I have no idea where I’d even buy the requisite ingredients. But when I turned back a few pages to the chapter’s narrative, I understood that he included these recipes because they come from his heritage. His grandfather’s tales of butchering hogs are tales of self-reliance and survival. They are stories of families and neighbors working together to ensure they all had enough meat to last all year. There are lessons of thriftiness and mastery over ingredients that these pioneers taught the next generations. And now Chef Besh has put them in this book with clear directions and amazing photos that bring the earthiness of the process back to us. It’s important to preserve these techniques and recipes for future generations. Chef Besh’s penchant for educating his cooks and chefs and all the rest of us makes this possible. This way of life will not die. In fact, it is thriving.

In spite of the ambition of several sections of this book, in spite of its armchair-cook-quality in places, my copy is studded with strips of blue sticky notes stuck to recipes I want to try: Rice Calas [rice balls] with Blackberry Filling; Beignets; Wild Strawberry Flambée over Lemon Ricotta-Filled Crêpes; Pasta Milanese; Besh Barbecue Shrimp; Chanterelles, Chicken, and [ricotta] Dumplings; Busters [soft-shelled crabs] and Grits; Oyster Gratin with Horseradish and Parmesan; Hot Blueberry Pie; and Cornmeal White Chocolate Biscotti. I have already made his Basic Cornbread, and it truly was the best I’ve ever made, with a crisp crust and a tender middle. I was also pleased to see his directions for cooking a perfect fried egg, something for which I have been on a quest for quite some time. I like the white to be tender, not rubbery, and with no brown on the bottom, and a yolk that oozes voluptuously when broken with a fork on the plate. Following his directions to the letter yielded me exactly what I was looking for.

Throughout the book, you’ll find Master Recipes for Crawfish Étouffée; Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Jambalaya; Crab Bisque; Drew’s Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo; and Beef Daube Glacée (Terrine of Beef Short Ribs). These recipes present Besh’s signature dishes and preparing them will provide an education right into the heart of how he cooks his French-inspired Cajun and Creole cuisine, with respect for where ingredients come from.

The people of New Orleans have prided themselves for living on the edge. The hurricane of 2005, no matter whose fault the terrible aftermath was, may have set them back, but it did not squelch their determination to enjoy the lifestyle their region allows. Chef John Besh is on a mission to restore to New Orleans its culture, people, and food sources, yea, its very self-esteem. My New Orleans is a gastronomical autobiography of literary and epic culinary proportions, and if there is the occasional touch of loftiness in how he raves about the advantages of breeding his own pigs over opening a package of pork chops, it’s hard to fault him for an enthusiasm born of a lifetime of handling, cooking, eating and sharing the bounty of a region he has always called home. His New Orleans can become mine, if only in small measure, as I test and taste the flavors and spirit of his recipes.

Basic Corn Bread
from My New Orleans, by John Besh

3 tablespoons rendered bacon fat
1 cup white cornmeal, organic if possible
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted

1. Put the bacon fat into a medium (about 9-inch-diameter) cast-iron skillet. Put the skillet into the oven and preheat the oven to 425˚.

2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cayenne in a large mixing bowl.

3. Put the eggs, milk, and melted butter into a small bowl and mix well.

4. Pour the egg mixture into the cornmeal mixture, stirring until just combined.

5. Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven and pour the batter into the skillet. Return the skillet to the oven and bake the corn bread until it is deep golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Serve immediately.

Oeufs au Plat (Fried Eggs)
from My New Orleans, by John Besh

2 teaspoons softened butter
2 eggs
2 pinches salt

1. Rub a room-temperature 9-inch skillet with the butter. Place the skillet on the burner without turning it on. Crack the eggs into the skillet on opposite sides of the pan from each other.

2. Turn the heat on to medium-low and cook the eggs until the whites have coagulated and turned opaque. Season the eggs with salt.