by Jeff Potter
Alton Brown’s TV show Good Eats has an episode on butterflying a chicken. He creates a garlic/ pepper/lemon zest paste to stuff under the skin, and roasts the chicken above a bed of cellar veggies (carrots, beets, potatoes). It’s a great recipe, as the paste brings a lot of flavor to the bird and the cellar roots pick up the chicken drippings. For another variation, try putting chopped garlic and aromatic herbs such as rosemary under the skin.
For further inspiration, look at Julia Child et al.’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (Knopf), which has an excellent description of Volaille Demi-Désossée—half-boned chicken—starting on page 269. She removes the breastbone (leaving the spine intact), stuffs the bird (foie gras, truffles, chicken livers, and rice), sews it back up, and roasts it. As discussed in Chapter 3, looking at historical recipes—both recent and older—is a great way to understand food better.
Seared Scallops
Scallops are one of those surprisingly easy but often-overlooked items. Sure, fresh scallops can be expensive, but you only need a few for a quick appetizer or part of a meal.
Prepare the scallops for cooking by patting them dry with a paper towel and placing them on a plate or cutting board. If your scallops still have their bases attached, peel them off using your fingers and save them for some other purpose.
Note
Not sure what to do with those little side muscles attached to the main body of the scallop (scallop bases)? Pan fry them after you cook the scallop bodies and nibble on them when no one is looking.
Place a frying pan over medium-high heat. Once the pan is hot, melt about 15g / 1 tablespoon of butter—enough to create a thick coating—in the pan. Using a pair of tongs, place the scallops, flat side down, into the butter. They should sizzle when they hit the pan; if they don’t, turn the heat up.
Let them sear until the bottoms begin to turn golden brown, about two minutes. Don’t poke or prod the scallops while they’re cooking; otherwise, you’ll interfere with the heat transfer between the butter and scallop flesh. Once the first side is done cooking (you can use the tongs to pick one up and inspect its cooked side), flip the scallops to cook on the second flat side, again waiting until golden brown, about two minutes. When you flip them, place the scallops on areas of the pan that didn’t have scallops on them before. These areas will be hotter and have more butter; you can take advantage of this to cook the scallops more readily.
Once cooked, transfer the scallops to a clean plate for serving.
Notes
Try serving these scallops on top of a small simple salad—say, some arugula/rocket tossed with a light balsamic vinegar dressing and some diced shallots and radishes.
If you’re not sure if the scallops are done, transfer one to a cutting board and cut it in half. You can hide the fact that you checked for doneness by slicing all of the pieces in half and serving them this way. This lets you check that they’re all done as well.
You can dredge the uncooked scallops in bread-crumbs or another light, starchy coating. If you have wasabi peas, use either a mortar and pestle or blender to grind and transfer them to a plate for dredging the scallops.
Try crushing wasabi-coated peas and dredging the scallops in them before searing.
Sautéed Carrots
Sautéing vegetables will bring a pleasant nutty, toasted flavor to dishes such as braised short ribs.
In a skillet, cook at medium heat until browned, about 5 minutes:
Carrots, sliced into thin rounds or wedges no thicker than around ¼″/ 0.5 cm
Olive oil or butter to coat pan generously
Notes
Don’t overcrowd the pan. You need the outside of the carrots to get hot enough for the sugars to caramelize. If you put too many in the pan, they’ll end up steaming.
The olive oil or butter helps transfer heat. The oil creates a thin layer between the carrot and the pan surface, convecting heat between the two within that very thin layer.
You’ll probably want to add a pinch of salt as well. Try grinding on a hefty dose of black pepper. Glazed carrots are made by cooking them with sugar (try adding a tablespoon of brown sugar and a tablespoon of water), or by finishing the carrots with maple syrup. Fresh sage or other aromatic herbs can be julienned and tossed in at the end as well.
Skillet-Fried Potatoes
Frying potatoes in a heavy cast iron pan develops rich flavors from the starches breaking down and caramelizing. Try serving these potatoes with the butterflied chicken or as part of breakfast accompanied by eggs and bacon.
In a medium-sized pot, bring salted water to a boil and cook for 5 minutes:
3–4 medium (700g) potatoes, diced into "forkable" bite-sized pieces
Drain the potatoes and transfer to a heavy cast iron or enamel pan on a burner set to medium heat. Add:
2–4 tablespoons (25–50g) olive oil or other fat (leftover chicken, duck, or bacon fat tastes great)
1 teaspoon (6g) kosher salt
Stir every few minutes, flipping the potatoes so that the face-down sides have enough time to brown but not burn. Once most of the potatoes are browned on most sides, about 20 minutes, turn the heat down to low, add more oil or fat if necessary, and add:
2 teaspoons (4g) paprika
2 teaspoons (2g) dried oregano
1 teaspoon (2g) turmeric powder
Notes
If you’re cooking this as part of a breakfast or brunch, try adding diced red bell peppers, yellow onions, and small chunks of bacon.
356°F / 180°C: Sugar Begins to Caramelize Visibly
Unlike the Maillard reaction, which requires the presence of both amino acids and sugars and has a number of interdependent variables influencing the particular temperature of reaction, caramelization (the decomposition via dehydration of sugar molecules such as sucrose) is relatively simple, at least by comparison. Pure sucrose melts at 367°F / 186°C; decomposition begins at lower temperatures (somewhere in the range of 320–340°F / 160–170°C) and continues up until around 390°F / 199°C. (Melting is not the same thing as decomposition—sucrose has a distinct melting point, which can be used as a clever way of calibrating your oven. For more, see The Two Things You Should Do to Your Oven RIGHT NOW of Chapter 2.)
Like the Maillard reaction, caramelization results in hundreds of compounds being generated as a sugar decomposes, and these new compounds result in both browning and the generation of enjoyable aromas in foods such as baked goods, coffee, and roasted nuts. For some foods, these aromas, as wonderful as they might be, can overpower or interfere with the flavors brought by the ingredients, such as in a light gingersnap cookie or a brownie. For this reason, some baked goods are cooked at 350°F / 177°C or even 325°F / 163°C so that they don’t see much caramelization, while other foods are cooked at 375°F / 191°C or higher to facilitate it.
When cooking, ask yourself if what you are cooking is something that you want to have caramelize, and if so, set your oven to at least 375°F / 191°C. If you’re finding that your food isn’t coming out browned, it’s possible that your oven is running too cold. If items that shouldn’t be turning brown are coming out overdone, your oven is probably too hot.
Fructose, a simpler form of sugar found in fruit and honey, caramelizes at a lower temperature than sucrose, starting around 230°F / 110°C. If you have other constraints on baking temperature (say, water content in the dough prevents it from reaching a higher temperature), you can add honey to the recipe. This will result in a browner product, because the largest chemical component in honey is fructose (~40% by weight; glucose comes in second at ~30%).
Temperatures related to sucrose caramelization and baking.
Seeing Caramelization with Sugar Cookies
Here’s an easy experiment to do with kids (or on your own), and regardless of the results, the data is delicious! Since sugar caramelizes in a relatively narrow temperature range, foods cooked below that temperature won’t caramelize. Thus, when making sugar cookies, you can determine whether they wi
ll come out a light or dark brown.
Try cooking four batches of sugar cookies at 325°F, 350°F, 375°F, and 400°F (163°C, 177°C, 190°C, and 204°C). Those cooked below the 356–370°F / 180–188°C range will remain light-colored, and those cooked at a temperature above sucrose’s caramelization point will turn a darker brown. It’s nice when science and reality line up!
This isn’t to say hotter cooking temperatures make for better results than cooler ones. It’s a matter of personal preference. If you’re like some of my friends, you may think sugar cookies are "supposed" to be light brown and chewy, maybe because that’s the way your mom made them when you were growing up. Or maybe you like them a bit browner on the outside, like a rich pound cake.
Note that the flour used in sugar cookies contains some amount of proteins, and those proteins will undergo Maillard reactions, so cookies baked at 325°F / 163°C and 350°F / 177°C will develop some amount of brownness independent of caramelization.
Cross-section (top piece) and top-down (bottom piece) views of sugar cookies baked at various temperatures. The cookies baked at 350°F / 177°C and lower remain lighter in color because sucrose begins to shift color as it caramelizes at a temperature slightly higher than 350°F / 177°C.
Goods baked at 325–350°F / 163–177°C
Goods baked at 375°F / 191°C and higher
Brownies
Sugar cookies
Chocolate chip cookies (chewy)
Peanut butter cookies
Sugary breads: banana bread, pumpkin bread, zucchini bread
Chocolate chip cookies
Flour and corn breads
Cakes: carrot cake, chocolate cake
Muffins
Temperatures of common baked goods, divided into those below and above the temperature at which sucrose begins to visibly brown.
Caramel Sauce
Caramel sauce is one of those components that seems complicated and mysterious until you make it, at which point you’re left wondering, "Really, that’s it?" Next time you’re eating a bowl of ice cream, serving poached pears, or looking for a topping for brownies or cheesecake, try making your own.
Traditional methods for making caramel sauce involve starting with water, sugar, and sometimes corn syrup as a way of preventing sugar crystal formation. This method is necessary if you are making a sugar syrup below the melting point of pure sucrose, but if you are making a medium-brown caramel sauce—above the melting point of sucrose—you can entirely skip the candy thermometer, water, and corn syrup and take a shortcut by just melting the sugar by itself.
In a skillet or large pan over medium-high heat, heat:
1 cup (240g) granulated sugar
Keep an eye on the sugar until it begins to melt, at which point turn your burner down to low heat. Once the outer portions have melted and begin to turn brown, use a wooden spoon to stir the unmelted and melted portions together to distribute the heat more evenly and to avoid burning the hotter portions.
Once all the sugar is melted, slowly add while stirring or whisking to combine:
1 cup (240g) heavy cream
Notes
This thing is a calorie bomb: 1,589 calories between the cup of heavy cream and cup of sugar. It’s good, though!
Some recipes call for adding corn syrup to the sugar as you heat it. This is because the sucrose molecules, which have a crystalline structure, can form large crystals and chunk up in the process of heating. The corn syrup inhibits this. If you heat the plain sugar with a watchful eye and don’t stir it until it gets hot enough, the corn syrup isn’t necessary. (It would be necessary, however, if you were only heating the sugar to lower temperatures—temperatures below the melting point—for other kinds of candy making.)
Try adding a pinch of salt or a dash of vanilla extract or lemon juice to the resulting caramel sauce.
Different temperature points in the decomposition range yield different flavor compounds. For a more complex flavor, try making two batches of caramel sauce, one in which the sugar has just barely melted and a second where the caramel sauce is allowed to brown a bit more. The two batches will have distinctly different flavors; mixing them together (once cooled) will result in a fuller, more complex flavor.
Sucrose has a high latent heat—that is, the sugar molecule is able to move and wiggle in many different directions. Because of this, sucrose gives off much more energy when going through the phase transition from liquid to a solid, so it will burn you much, much worse than many other things in the kitchen at the same temperature range. There’s a reason pastry chefs call this stuff "liquid Napalm."
Michael Laiskonis on Pastry Chefs
PHOTO USED BY PERMISSION OF MICHAEL LAISKONIS
Michael Laiskonis is the executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin, one of only four three-star Michelin restaurants in New York City. A self-proclaimed "accidental pastry chef," he traveled around the United States extensively before working in a bakery, where he had his first big "aha" moment working with bread and discovered a passion for cooking.
What turned out to matter more than you expected? Just in the process of actually learning to cook.
I guess that when I started cooking it was just something to do and once I developed a passion for it, I realized that—and I don’t want to overromanticize it or attach some sort of Anthony Bourdain sort of thing to it, but you kind of enter a culture and it’s a completely different culture. I’m sure other professions have it. I’m sure software guys have it. It’s just a weird subculture and once you kind of enter that it becomes a lifestyle, not really a job.
That’s truly how I feel. With other professional cooks there are obviously colloquialisms and certain physical characteristics that they could have. And then there’s also the reality of long hours, bad hours. You’re working when everyone is playing; I’ve come to embrace it and now it’s just ingrained in the fabric of my being that it’s just—I’m a cook before anything else. It kind of informs everything I do and everything I see. I see through that lens of food. For an outsider that might sound a little creepy, but it’s the truth. So when I started cooking, I had no idea that it would take over my life or present so many opportunities to experience other things. I can’t imagine giving anything up.
Being from a software background—from one weird subculture to another weird subculture—I hear you. I would be curious how you would describe your weird subculture.
And actually I’ve spent time thinking about this: what is it about the actual craft of cooking or the act of cooking that does it, and a lot of it is the stress. Granted, it’s a self-imposed stress, meaning we’re not brain surgeons. We’re making people dinner, but dinner is important to a lot of people and especially at the highest ends there is a constant quest for perfection. You’re never going to attain perfect, but you can always push further. So I think it’s more of the environment of restaurant worlds that kind of informs a lot of that.
I think there is a lot to be said for the power of almost the meditative state that you get, even if you’re cooking alone, because you’re connecting with nature. You’re connecting with things.
You’re making something with your hands. You’re hopefully making something greater than the sum of its parts. It’s something that you can’t fully describe in words.
It’s just what I do. My wife works in a different restaurant. She runs the front of the house, so my work and home life—there’s really no separation. We have the same schedule, we come home, and we talk about the business. We wake up and we talk about the business. So it’s a lifestyle.
As a pastry chef, are you more of a "by the recipe, exact measurements" type of cook or one who adds an ingredient and tastes, and makes course corrections as you go?
Both. I started in bread and kind of worked in pastry, but I bounced back and forth between each side of the kitchen, between sweet and savory, for a little over five years before I decided to stick with the pastry thing. There is a cliché that pastry chefs are the calm, measured, e
xacting, precise kind of person and the line cook or the savory chef is the spontaneous one. There is some truth to that. I think the lines are blurring a little bit, but it’s really cross-training that gave me a solid foot in both, being spontaneous and being precise. Too much spontaneity, and it’s just cook-and-see and you’re ultimately lucky if you get the results that you want, but there is that joy in being spontaneous or even taking it further and taking an attitude of well, if it’s not broken, let’s break it and see what happens. That curiosity and spontaneity are not quite the same thing, but to me, they’re of the same spirit.
So if someone is learning how to cook, it’s not really a question of them thinking about their own temperament and trying to match it up with baking or cooking; they should really do a bit of both to balance things out?
Yes. It almost sounds like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth. Because I rely on a recipe, especially in a restaurant situation, consistency is king. Everything has to be the same from batch to batch, day to day. Recipes are useful.