The JOY of Cooking

A note from Sly

I'm so glad I asked Joy to write this article.  I had no idea there was a time Joy wasn't as talented in the kitchen as she is today.  We all have a  back story don't we?

 

By NEW Guest Blogger, Joy Malaise

The fact I can cook at all is quite a feat, given I learned from my Grandmother, who was, in essence, an awful cook.  She quite successfully taught me how to burn everything.  I didn’t realize that not everyone charred their toast, then scraped it, and THEN put the butter on.  I also thought that bacon snapped when eaten, and that eggs were solid, with no beautiful golden soft yolk.  Chewy pot roasts, and vegetables cooked to mush.   It was just her way.  But she could bake a pie like no one else, from scratch, and with flaky golden crusts.  So there is the yin and yang of my humble cooking start.

I took to cooking at a very young age, always wanting to experiment and always looking for ways to make it “taste better.”  Being from Iowa, we had a bounty of fresh garden vegetables in the summer, which we canned for eating in the long winter months.  I still remember the pop, pop, pop, of the Ball jars in the pressure cooker as they sealed in their goodness.

At 19 young years of age, I loaded up my Ford Maverick, along with my two girlfriends and headed to California to visit my sister in San Diego.  My girlfriends returned back home, but I decided to stay.  And stay.  It’s been 37 years now, so it’s home.   

I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to bring guacamole to a party and said “sure, how much do you need?” not having a clue what it was. “Oh just a medium sized bowl, should do it”, she replied.  So I went to the supermarket and found some avocados, which felt like rocks to me, and headed home to prepare my guacamole.  I wanted to impress this group, because they were my sister and her husband’s friends and colleagues from the U.S. Navy, and the party was aboard a yacht in Coronado!   I was so young, and everyone else was much older and sophisticated.  I pulled out one of my three pots, and filled it with water to boil.  I tossed in my six hard-as-a-rock avocados and waited fifteen minutes.  When I opened the lid and to test them, not only were they still hard, but there was a green slime surfacing at the top of the water line.  It just didn’t look right.  Given there was no Internet in 1976, and I didn’t own a cookbook that included a recipe for guacamole, I called my neighbor over to take a look.  She burst out laughing and asked what it was I was trying to do.  I told her that I assumed they were like potatoes and when cooked would soften enough for me to peel them and mash them up.  Needless to say, I did NOT bring guacamole to that party and I still have flashbacks of that boiling pot of green slime many years ago.

I worked my way up to casseroles at dinner parties, where I thought adding some chicken to a pan of Rice-a-Roni, and tossing in a few diced carrots and celery was gourmet.  Then shortly after that, a miracle happened.  I got a roommate and she could cook!  Yes …California style.  Her name is Nomah.  She even had a braid of garlic hanging in the kitchen for heaven’s sake!  And she could make homemade cannelloni.  It was magic watching her prepare things, and reading from her cookbooks.  I learned so much from her, and still do.

I got into hosting dinner parties and inviting people over to try my new repertoire of California cuisine.  I got better and better, and accumulated more pots and pans, cookbooks and kitchen gadgets.

Fast forward to Valentine’s Day weekend 2013 and my dinner party aptly themed “An Evening in Paris.”  Yes, I decided to channel Amy Adams, who channeled Julia Child, and made beouf bourguignon from “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.”  My hubby, Gary, bought me the cookbook a few years ago, and while I have read many of the recipes, I had not yet tried making one of her savory meals!

"Midnight in Paris" Helps Set the Mood During Appetizers

Gary went to the supermarket and bought all the ingredients for me, except lardons.  "WTH …lardons?"  Okay, honey, we can use bacon.  Just get some thick bacon.  I trimmed the meat to Julia's precise measurements of 2” cubed, and dried them with paper towels so when they hit the hot oil they would sear and seal in their goodness.  Even using my large Le Crueset roasting pan, it took three batches to get the meat seared.  Our  house was smelling wonderful and it was only 10:30 in the morning! 
    

I had prepared my garlic soup (see my recipe below), chicken liver pate’, and palmierres the evening before, which turned out to be a great idea, realizing how deep into this thing I was getting.  I needed to blanch and ice my haricot verts, so that I only needed to flash fry them in hot olive oil just before serving.  On those lovely beans I made a gremulata of fresh parsley, lemon zest, toasted pine nuts, garlic and Parmesan cheese.  I was able to prep that in advance, and simply toss it in at the end of searing the beans.

Now Julia said that the beef would be best served over noodles or small potatoes.  Knowing how much au jus there would be in the bottom of the pan, I opted for noodles to soak up those layers of goodness.  And it worked.  It was divine!!!!!!!!  And the haricot verts, (recipe compliments of the Barefoot Contessa’s latest cookbook “Foolproof”) were a perfect side dish.  And though we didn’t need it, how could we serve a French meal without a baguette!  

  

Gary took me to Paris for my 50^th birthday, and every single day we went to the bakery and purchased a baguette.  I shall never forget the memory of us walking down the Champs de Elyse with a baguette in our backpack.  But that’s quite another article.

Whether it’s food from a farm in Iowa, or from Paris, France, I’m a good little eater.  I love to eat!  There I go channeling Amy channeling Julia again …

Joy’s Scrumptious Garlic Soup

(makes 6 small cups, perfect for dinner party) 

Recipe is easily doubled for 6 bowls, and can be made the day before and re-heated.  Who doesn’t love that?

  1   TBL Olive Oil

  1   Cup thinly sliced white/brown onion

12   Garlic cloves, smashed

  1   Cup dry white wine

  1   Quart chicken stock

 1    Bay leaf

 2    Cups French bread, 2-inch pieces (crust okay)

 ¾    Cup heavy cream (half/half okay too)

Salt and pepper

½   Cup Gruyere cheese, grated

Heat the oil in a large soup pot, and add onion and garlic.  Cook over medium heat for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they begin to caramelize.  Add the wine and continue cooking for 10 more minutes.

Add the stock and bay leaf and bring to a bowl.  Reduce the heat, and simmer for 3- minutes.  Add the bread cubes and allow them to soak in the sup off the heat for 10 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf, and using a hand-held immersion blender, puree until smooth.  Add the cream and add your seasons.  Garnish with the cheese on top.

 

So Much To Know, Even with a Slow Cooker

I still have so much to learn.  Being in the kitchen, sometimes, proves it to me.

Even with the simplest of kitchen tools, to know how to properly use the item is a must. Just when I think I've mastered an appliance, it becomes a mystery I wasn't even aware needed to be unraveled.  And so was the case with my Slow Cooker.

Who doesn't love their Slow Cooker?  Mine is put to work throughout the year.  Whether it's for a warm meal ready and awaiting my arrival home from work, preparing a meal for guests freeing me up to enjoy their company or cooking on a hot day while trying to avoid heating the kitchen any further...it's my "go to" appliance.

I, like so many others, just plug in my cooker, dump the ingredients in the liner  and walk away not giving it a second thought.  Many, many times.  But not too long ago, as I was dishing out my tasty Mu Shu Pork in a fairly new Kitchen Aide Slow Cooker, I observed this particular preparation was drier than I had remembered.  Odd.  Not until I was transferring the leftovers did I discover there was a hairline crack in the ceramic liner.  All the moisture missing from the meal had leaked into the shell of the cooker.  What a mess!  What had gone wrong?

It's difficult not to ask myself, "did I do something to prompt its failure?"    The answer is maybe.  The liner should not be exposed to dramatic changes in temperature.  I'm guessing I'm not the only one to have left my warm leftovers in the liner and put it directly in the refrigerator.  A big no, no.  I'm also betting I'm not the only one to have put cold ingredients straight from the fridge into the Cooker as it's warming up.  Apparently, I've been testing fate for years. 

Lucky for me, the Kitchen Aide was still under warranty and the company promised a new ceramic liner would be shipped as soon as they had them back in stock.  About 8 weeks, I was told.  Really?  It turns out with this particular model the heating elements in the case surrounding the ceramic liner did not heat evenly.  Kitchen Aide was scrambling to replace hundreds, maybe thousands of liners across the country.  In waiting for my slow cooker replacement, I decided to do some reading and discovered not all slow cookers are the same. Learning from my mistakes, if you want to ensure a long life with your slow cooker I recommend following these tips:

• Don't put really cold items in a warming slow cooker. The shock could make it crack.
• To refrigerate your leftovers don't use the slow cooker ceramic or porcelain lining; alternately use a casserole or other container. Bottom line, putting your liner in extreme conditions could cause it to shatter.
• Hand wash the lid and the vacuum seal. The seal could stretch out in the dishwasher lessening its effectiveness in future cooking.  It's probably overkill, I now hand wash my liner too...to be on the safe side.
• If following a recipe for a Slow Cooker with a specifically treated liner for browning on the stove top and you don't have that treated liner, don't brown on the stove top.  You will surely break it.

Speaking of browning meat, I've always wondered why crock pot/slow cooker recipes instruct the reader to brown the meat prior to starting the slow cooker.   I dug further to find out why.  It is so that one can achieve maximum flavor and texture since the slow cooker environment can't provide the same result.  This reaction I just described is named the Maillard reaction.  Maillard was a physician who discovered that cooking in a high temperature, low moisture levels, and alkaline conditions all promote the flavorful reaction by changing the sugars and proteins on the surface. Low moisture levels are necessary mainly because water boils into steam at 212 °F (100 °C), whereas the Maillard reaction happens noticeably around 310 °F (154 °C): by the time something is in fact browning, all the water is vaporized.  With too much moisture in the environment it actually inhibits browning and hence flavor.  If a recipes says brown the meat first, don't skip this step.  Do it!  You'll be so much more pleased with the outcome.

The more lessons I learn, even the small ones of learning about an appliance, reinforces the phrase I've appreciated recently from Elena Kagan, "with age comes wisdom."  Then bring on the age (just not too fast)!