Category: Tools

October Favorites

10/1/2017

A Favorite Ingredient

Fish sauce is a recent addition to my pantry of flavorings.   I use canned anchovies for flavoring, but end up wasting the rest of the fishes in the can for recipes that call for just one anchovy. This sauce will add the flavor of one anchovy with a teaspoon of convenient fluid, and store the opened bottle in the refrigerator.

Did you know the yummy, savory, “umami” flavor of A1 Steak Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce is anchovies? Look at the list of ingredients. Yes, both those sauces are fish sauces, along with other ingredients.

Anchovies, when cooked in some oil and mashed, lose their “fishiness” and take on a buttery, meaty flavor that ramps up recipes like Pasta Puttanesca.   It’s also the flavoring in Caesar Salad.

Try putting a shake (has a shaker lid) of this sauce to any recipe that you want to add a meaty flavor to.   Are you making Shrimp and Grits? Shake a little into the cooking grits, and a little into the Shrimp mixture. Try it with your salad dressings and dips.

This is “Red Boat” brand fish sauce, recommended by America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated.

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

1 box sliced baby bella mushrooms, roughly chopped
Butter
1 clove minced garlic
1 cup wine
Fish sauce
A1 Steak Sauce

Put mushrooms in medium hot skillet with no butter or salt, yet. Let them sear and lose moisture until they look drier and smaller, then add red wine, which should bring up the “fond” in the bottom of the skillet. Add a quarter cup of the steak sauce, the garlic and a couple of pats of butter. Cook and reduce by almost half, add one full teaspoon of fish sauce.

A Favorite Tool

You’ve just bought a thick Rib Eye Prime steak from the glass case at Ingles. $18.98 a pound, for a special occasion. If you ruin it, or if the steak doesn’t live up to it’s potential, that’s when the price of this thermometer (around eighty bucks) won’t seem so high. The ability to quickly, easily take the temperature of meat will assure the best results.

If you spring for a digital thermometer, I strongly recommend a probe Thermapen as pictured. This was the thermometer used in a week-long class of cheesemaking at the John Campbell Folk School. It is known for being the most reliable and long-lasting. Cheesemaking demands constant accuracy in temperature.

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

1 pound prime rib eye steak, 2 inches thick
Salt, pepper, butter, one teaspoon sugar

A few hours ahead of time, take the steak out of the refrigerator, salt heavily and wrap in a couple of paper towels. Let sit on a plate at room temperature. If the towels get too wet, change them.

Heat oven to 350. Wipe the steaks dry (the towel will take most of the salt with it), put on pepper and a little more salt.

Using a cookie sheet with a wire rack, place the steak in the middle so air can circulate underneath. Put a pat of butter on the top of the steak. Take temperature before putting steak in oven. After ten minutes, start checking the steak at 5 minute intervals. Put a little butter on top each time you check.

Place a large cast-iron skillet on stove. When steak is between 120-130 degrees remove from oven and let sit. Heat the skillet until it makes a small amount of butter sizzle. Sprinkle half of the sugar on top of the steak, with tongs place steak sugar side down on the skillet. Sprinkle rest of sugar on the other side.

The sugar will carmelize and make for a nice, brown, quick sear, which will only will be about 20 seconds for each side.
You baked your steak! Now, butter it again, let it rest for ten minutes with foil tent. With a sharp knife, slice the steaks into about eight slices, and notice how beautifully pink it is. You may never grill a steak again. I learned to make steak this way from Cook’s Illustrated.

This is very good with my Mushroom sauce recipe

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September Favorites - Cookware

9/1/2017

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It goes without saying that I love my 12 inch cast iron skillet, and I bet you love yours, so I didn’t bother to post a picture. One new thing I do with this skillet is preheat it in the oven for searing meat—at least I do this in the winter when I don’t mind heating up the kitchen. Heat your empty skillet in a 4-500 degree oven for fifteen minutes and remove it (oven mitts) to the working cooktop to sear a steak. Cast iron stays hot longer than other cookware, but it has “cool spots” because it does not conduct heat quickly. You’ll notice this when cooking pancakes; one side gets done faster than the other. Preheating it will make it cook more evenly.

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

Here is one of my prized possessions. Copper heats quickly (cools quickly) and doesn’t have cool spots like cast iron. I have to warn you, this pot is very spendy. I didn’t buy this retail; I bought it slightly used on ebay at a steep discount. For months, I’d do searches on ebay and put bids on this brand/make many times. Finally I won an auction, and here it is.

Have you ever made a big pot of chili or spaghetti sauce or soup, with the idea that you are going to freeze leftovers for future meals—only to have your hard work scorch on the bottom and impart a scorched taste to a lot of food? I’m not going to say that this pot will never scorch, but it hasn’t yet for years of big-batch spaghetti sauce-making. This pot also served a long obsession with cheesemaking. You can bring milk to an 190-degrees quickly and accurately.

You have heard that solid copper is hard to take care of, but that depends on your expectations. It’s hard not to want a fine copper pot to look new, beautiful, and unblemished. This stockpot always goes into the dishwasher. It gets discolored and after a few weeks the “Barkeeper’s Friend” clean. it up. This has made a lot of tiny, interlaced scratches which don’t bother me. It did get a good polishing for the photo!

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Here is the workhorse of the kitchen; hardly a meal goes by without it being pressed into service. It is the copper-core (yes, more copper) All-Clad 4.5 Quart “everything” or “essential” pan from Williams Sonoma. I bought this pan a long time ago, when Rachel Ray’s Thirty-Minute Meal show was on the Food Network and she was always demonstrating one-pot meals. The family calls this the “Mom’s Pot of Food” pot. It is capacious without feeling tall like a stockpot, and the inside walls are rounded to allow for whisks and spoons to get at the ingredients. Stainless steel sandwiches the copper, and the copper goes up the sides instead of just at the bottom.

You need a pot like this to love. You can stand at this pot and brown the meat, remove, make the sauce, add the vegetables/meat and maybe pasta and rice and be done. I use metal implements, don’t baby it at all, and don’t mind it looking well-used.

Rice and Pasta Pots

The cast iron skillet, the Mauviel Stockpot, and the All-Clad Copper-core have one disadvantage. They are heavy, which can be hard on the hands and arms of a weaker cook. The plus side is that you can’t knock them over easily. The Mauviel is not good for cooking plain pasta, because carrying this heavy pot to the sink with boiling-hot water is dangerous. Have some cheaper, light pots for cooking rice and pasta. Here is the pasta pot, from Rachel Ray’s line back in the day, with a quirky shape to accommodate long spaghetti, and a non-stick lining. Use a pot like this with silicone tipped tools.

Sauces and Gravies

Here is the favored pan for making sauces and gravies. The brand is not available, but it is an anodized aluminum with a steel lining. If you recognize this pan, let me know! It is very light, so a weak-wristed cook can lift it off the heat quickly if the sauce is cooking too hot or too fast. Its sides slope steeply like a wok’s, which enhances the evaporation; there is a small flat bottom, which gives good control of heating the sauce. This is a good pan for a tricky egg-yolk sauce like Hollandaise.

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October Favorites

A Favorite Ingredient

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

A Favorite Tool

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

September Favorites - Cookware

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Rice and Pasta Pots

Sauces and Gravies

Author:
Kathy Garriott

Instagram

Categories

Archives

October Favorites

​​A Favorite Ingredient

Recipe: Mushroom Sauce

​A Favorite Tool

Recipe: Rib Eye Steak, medium rare

September Favorites - Cookware

Mauviel solid copper, steel-lined, 5-quart stockpot

All-Clad cooper core 4.5 qt Essential Pan

Rice and Pasta Pots

Sauces and Gravies

Author: Kathy Garriott

Instagram

​Categories

Archives

A Favorite Ingredient

A Favorite Tool

Author:
Kathy Garriott

Categories