Best Food Writing 2012

by Holly Hughes (ed) (epub)

  You’ll have about 8 to 8½ cups of sauce but will only need 4 for the lasagna. Discard the thyme and bay leaves and put half in the fridge for lasagna assembly tomorrow and the other half in the freezer for up to a couple months. Ours was still as good as day one after 6 weeks.

  Day 2: Make your pasta: Combine all of the pasta ingredients in a food processor. Run the machine until the mixture begins to form a ball. You’re looking for a dough that is firm but not sticky. If needed, add water a drop at a time until it comes together. Place ball of dough on a lightly floured surface and invert a bowl over it. Let it rest for an hour. (You’ll have about 10 ounces or a little less than pound of fresh pasta dough.)

  Get your work area ready; I like to line a large tray with waxed paper. Dust the waxed paper with flour. Keep more waxed paper and flour nearby.

  Working with a quarter of the dough at a time, run it through your pasta roller on the widest setting (usually “0”), then repeat this process with the roller set increasingly smaller (1, 2, 3) until the pasta is very thin. My Atlas machine goes to 9, but I almost always stop at 8 because this setting makes for thin, delicate pasta that’s not so fragile that I’m pulling my hair out with frustration trying to move it around.

  If you find your dough sticking, lightly flour it. If it gets too big to handle, cut it in half. If the piece gets too wide for the machine or becomes annoyingly irregularly shaped, I re-”fold” the dough by folding the sides of the dough into the middle, like an envelope, and press it flat. Then, run the piece back through the machine with the open sides up and down on the widest setting again (0) working your way thinner. This allows the machine to “press” any trapped air out.

  Lay your pasta on the floured waxed paper in a single layer, trying to keep the pieces from touching. Flour the tops of them and place another sheet of floured wax paper on top. Repeat this process with the remaining dough and as many layers of pasta as you need.

  Next, cook your pasta: Cut your pasta lengths into square-ish shapes. The fun thing about making fresh pasta for lasagna is that the shape doesn’t much matter; you’re going to tile together whatever you have and nobody will care if it took 9 or 16 bits to patch the layer together. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Have ready a skimmer, a large bowl of ice water and a large tray or platter that you’ve drizzled or spritzed with oil. Boil several squares of noodle at a time for 1 to 2 minutes each (1 minute if you, indeed, went to the thinnest setting on your machine; 2 if you, like me, stopped one shy of thinnest). Scoop them out with your skimmer, swish them in the ice water and lay them out (still wet is fine) on the oiled platter. Repeat with remaining pasta. It’s okay to have your noodles touch; they shouldn’t stick together in the short period of time until you begin assembling but if you’re nervous, you can drizzle or spritz each layer very lightly with more oil.

  Make your béchamel: Melt your butter in the bottom of a medium-to-large saucepan over medium heat. Once melted, add your flour and stir it into the butter until smooth. Cook the mixture together for a minute, stirring constantly. Pour in a small drizzle of your milk*, whisking constantly into the butter-flour mixture until smooth. Continue to drizzle a very small amount at a time, whisking constantly. Once you’ve added a little over half of your milk, you’ll find that you have more of a thick sauce or batter, and you can start adding the milk in larger splashes, being sure to keep mixing. Once all of the milk is added, add the salt, garlic, nutmeg (if using) and few grinds of black pepper, and bring the mixture to a lower simmer and cook it, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

  At last, you may assemble your dish: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a 9×13-inch or equivalent rectangular baking dish, spread a generous ¼ cup of the béchamel. I mostly use this to keep the noodles from sticking. Add your first layer of cooked noodles, patching and slightly overlapping them however is needed to form a single layer. Ladle 1 cup bolognese sauce over the noodles, spreading it evenly. Drizzle ½ cup béchamel over the bolognese; don’t worry about getting it perfectly smooth or even. Sprinkle the layer with ⅓ cup parmesan cheese. Repeat this process—pasta + 1 cup bolognese + ½ cup béchamel + ⅓ cup parmesan—three more times, then add one more layer of pasta. You’ll use 5 layers of pasta total.

  There are two ways to finish the dish. You can simply sprinkle the top layer of pasta with your remaining parmesan before baking. This makes the crunchiest lid. I like a semi-crunchy lid and first spread 1/4 cup béchamel over the top layer of pasta before sprinkling it with the remaining cheese. It still gets crunchy—and has corners that are worth fighting over—but never unpleasantly so.

  Bake your lasagna for 30 to 45 minutes, until bubbly all over and browned on top. You should do absolutely nothing but put your feet up and drink a glass of wine while you do; you’ve earned it. When it comes out of the oven, I like to let it rest for 10 minutes before serving it.

  Do ahead: Lasagna can be prepared right up until the baking point a day in advance, and kept wrapped in plastic in the fridge. Theoretically, you could also freeze it at this point but I haven’t tried this. I’ll update this to say “go for it” if many people respond in the comments that they’ve done so successfully. Lasagna will also reheat well for up to three days, possibly longer but in my apartment, we’ve never had the chance to find out.

  * Yes, cold is fine. I divert from the proper béchamel method here as I’ve found that as long as you add your milk slowly, you do not need to heat it separately first. Hooray for fewer steps and pots!

  THE FORAGER AT REST

  By Christine Muhlke

  From Bon Appetit

  Two of the world’s hottest chefs—Noma’s Rene Redzepi and Momofuku’s David Chang—meet for Sunday lunch, and who’s lucky enough to cover it? Bon Appetit executive editor Christine Muhlke, who co-authored On the Line with another star chef, Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert.

  It’s Sunday morning, and Rene Redzepi is gliding around the kitchen in his socks while obscure Aboriginal music drifts through his bright, cavernous, just-moved-into Copenhagen apartment. His wife, Nadine, smiles and hands the couple’s 13-week-old daughter to her mother so she can make everyone a second cappuccino. New York chef David Chang, whose photo hangs in the kitchen next to family portraits, is in town and has called to say he’ll be by in an hour. It’s the type of scene—kind, calm, lovely people in a spare yet creatively furnished space—that makes you wonder why we don’t all live in Scandinavia.

  As the chef at Copenhagen’s esteemed Noma, Redzepi has inspired cooks around the world to find their ingredients as close to home as possible. So what does that mean when the man behind what many consider the world’s best restaurant—a place where fried reindeer moss and coastal flowers have appeared on the menu—is actually cooking at home?

  Today’s menu is, of course, seasonal and local. But it’s also quick. Nothing takes more than 90 minutes to cook. Reindeer-horn-handled knife at the ready, Redzepi takes a parsley plant off the windowsill and cuts off a handful, leaving the stems. “There’s so much flavor in the stems!” says the man who has made foraging the ultimate in locavorism. “In the winter we saute them—incredible.” Next, he slices small biodynamic fennel bulbs so that the open V’s resemble the slender mussels that were gathered in a fjord: “I’m imagining that if a mussel slides out of its shell, maybe it will slide in here.” So this is how his restaurant dishes come to mimic nature—a gnarled breadstick mistaken for a twig, a snail replacing a nasturtium stamen.

  Redzepi’s talent for reconnecting natural flavors runs through the rest of the dish: The mussels will be steamed open in gooseberry juice, pressed from the sour berries that grow wild in Scandinavia. “Berries are so underestimated in savory cooking,” he says. “They’re so versatile, and they’re not all sweet—you just associate them with pies.” White wine balances the acidity. “People cook savory dishes with wine, and that’s fruit juice, so what’s so strange about this?”

  Mussel prep finished, he starts work on
the appetizer, a toast inspired by the bo ssam (pork shoulder served with a dozen raw oysters) served at Chang’s Momofuku Ssam Bar in New York’s East Village. Wild chanterelles are sauteed over high heat on the induction cooktop (below which is a clever ventilated IKEA drawer that keeps butter and other ingredients cool and close at hand; cue Scandi lifestyle envy). The mushrooms get a few tablespoons of cream, some minced shallots, parsley, and roughly chopped oysters. After several brisk shakes of the pan, the rich mixture is spooned onto sourdough toast that has practically been caramelized in butter. Translucent sheets of paper-thin Speck fat are laid atop a layer of sliced raw chanterelles just as Chang arrives.

  The Momofuku chef loves the expansive, earth-forest-sea flavors of the toast, even though it’s not yet breakfast time in New York, where he was just 36 hours prior. The toasts are even better with the spicy Noma beer brewed from birch sap by Skovlyst. Then the mussels are cooked for five minutes and served in mismatched bowls made by Noma’s ceramist. “Samples,” explains Nadine.

  For the entree, there’s a pot roast. But this one is celery root, not beef. At Noma, Redzepi has been treating vegetables like meat: braising them, basting them, flavoring them with lots of herbs and butter (preferably that made from sweet, rich goat’s milk). He’ll even throw in a handful of coffee beans from the excellent local roaster Coffee Collective to see what happens. Earthy celery root takes extremely well to the treatment, browned and tender with herbal undertones. A quick sauce of warm buttermilk and olive oil—“basically a vinaigrette”—adds a complex tanginess. Garnished with black olives heated through in the herb butter, it’s deeply, shockingly satisfying.

  “This is a very good example of how we eat at home,” Redzepi says: “It’s vegetable based, there’s a little twist to it, and it’s very, very simple.”

  Seated at the sprawling dining table is an easy crowd. There’s Alessandro Porcelli, himself an important tastemaker in the international food scene. He’s a co-founder of the Cook It Raw chefs’ adventure series, as well as closely involved in the inaugural MAD Foodcamp symposium, which is what has brought Chang to town. Noma sous-chef Trevor Moran, an Irishman with the most fantastic hair, is tucking into his day off. Nadine’s mother holds a very sleepy infant, while toddler Arwen works on her princess drawing. And then there is the serene young Nadine, a reservationist at Noma, where the 12 tables are booked three months ahead. If people knew how beautiful she is, an Ingres portrait come to life with a smile as quietly sure, they wouldn’t be upset when she tells them that the dining room is full. Possibly forever.

  Maybe Nadine could send them some of her walnut cake to alleviate the sting. It’s made with over a pound of nuts and a half pound of butter. “This is one of the best desserts I’ve had,” Moran says a little sheepishly as he glances at his boss. But Redzepi isn’t slighted; the British food critic Jay Rayner is coming over for dinner tomorrow, and Redzepi asks Nadine to please make another one. Everyone nods imploringly.

  After coffee, Redzepi buckles Arwen into the front carriage of his dad bike and everyone walks alongside them to the King’s Gardens. “This is where the king used to grow his vegetables. You can still get food here!” he says. While locals laze in the late-afternoon sun or play petanque, he heads straight for the trees. In the middle of the city—just blocks from his home—is a mulberry tree jeweled with untouched fruit. A few dish ideas are batted around by the chefs as they stare up into the leaves. “I know where we can find walnuts, too,” Redzepi says and bikes ahead. Soon he and Chang are cracking open the green orbs and picking at the jellied flesh, running it between their fingers. “Trevor,” he says decisively, “it’s time for walnuts.” Noma might be closed Sundays, but a true forager knows no bounds.

  Pot-Roasted Celery Root with Olives and Buttermilk

  In this surprising main course, Redzepi pot-roasts whole celery roots. Be sure to use small celery roots; larger ones will not cook evenly. The chef also cooks small heads of cauliflower in this way.

  6 servings

  Ingredients

  3 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil plus more for drizzling

  6 small celery roots (celeriac; each about 4 oz.), unpeeled, trimmed with some stem still attached

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1” cubes

  Kosher salt

  12 sprigs thyme

  6 sprigs rosemary

  6 sprigs sage

  1 tablespoon coffee beans (optional)

  1 cup buttermilk

  ½ lemon

  ¼ cup oil-cured black olives, pitted, quartered lengthwise

  Preparation

  Heat 3 Tbsp. oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add celery roots and cook, turning frequently, until golden, 8–10 minutes. Add butter and a large pinch of salt. When butter begins to foam, reduce heat to medium-low. Add herb sprigs, coffee beans, if using, and 1 1/2 cups water. Cover and gently cook, adding more water by tablespoonfuls if pan is dry, until celery roots are very tender, about 1 hour.

  Remove herbs and coffee beans (if using) from pot and discard. Baste celery roots with buttery juices in pot. Remove from heat. Transfer celery roots to a cutting board, slice in half through stems, and place 2 halves on each plate.

  Meanwhile, very gently warm buttermilk in a small saucepan over low heat (it will break if warmed too much). Squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice and add remaining 2 tsp. oil and a pinch of salt to make a loose sauce. Spoon sauce around celery roots on plates. Garnish with olives, drizzle with oil, and squeeze a few more drops of lemon juice over each.

  Walnut Cake

  Nadine Levy Redzepi created this incredibly rich, moist cake. “Fat with fat—what could be better?” asks her husband. Serve it for dessert or with coffee or tea for breakfast.

  18–24 servings

  Ingredients

  1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan

  6 tablespoons raw sugar, divided

  7 cups walnut halves

  ¾ cup all-purpose flour

  1 ½ cups almond flour or almond meal

  ¾ cup granulated sugar

  6 large eggs

  ¾ cup heavy cream

  ½ cup plain whole-milk yogurt

  1 teaspoon kosher salt

  1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

  Whipped cream

  Ingredient Info

  Almond flour is available at some supermarkets and at natural foods stores and specialty markets.

  Preparation

  Preheat oven to 350°. Butter a 13x9x2” metal or glass baking dish; sprinkle bottom evenly with 3 Tbsp. raw sugar. Set aside.

  Pulse walnuts in a food processor until coarsely chopped. Set 2 cups aside. Add all-purpose flour to processor and pulse until walnuts are very finely ground, 1–2 minutes. Add almond flour; pulse to blend. Set aside.

  Using an electric mixer, beat 1 cup butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, 2–3 minutes. Add eggs, cream, yogurt, and salt. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean (reserve bean for another use). Beat until well combined, 1–2 minutes. Add ground-walnut mixture and beat just to blend. Gently fold in chopped walnuts, being careful not to over-mix. Pour batter into prepared dish; smooth top. Sprinkle with remaining 3 Tbsp. raw sugar.

  Bake until cooked through and a tester inserted into center comes out clean, 50–55 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack. Serve with whipped cream. DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Cover and chill. Cake is best served cold.

  BETTER COOKING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

  By Corby Kummer

  From Technology Review

  Poised at the apex where gourmet cooking meets high-tech technique, Nathan Myhrvold dazzled the food world with his 2011 multi-volume Modernist Cuisine. Corby Kummer, longtime senior editor for The Atlantic, reviewed and interviewed Myhrvold for a tech-savvy audience.

  To see Modernist Cuisine is to covet it. Which is why, one day in May, the team that spent six years creating the oversized, over-everyt
hing five-volume work came from Bellevue, Washington, to New York City to demonstrate the wondrous object. And it is why a group of chefs, writers, and TV personalities (so stellar that one guest remarked, “The only other event that could bring these people together is a funeral”) gathered one morning at Jean-Georges, the flagship restaurant of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, at the invitation of Tim and Nina Zagat. They were there to meet Nathan Myhrvold, the mastermind and financier of a book so expensive to create that he refuses to say how much he spent (other than to say it was more than $1 million but less than $10 million). They wanted to try the pastrami cooked sous-vide for 72 hours, the “tater tots” dunked in liquid nitrogen before being fried, the fruit juices spun in a centrifuge, the mushroom omelet striped with powdered-mushroom batter so that it looked like a piece of upholstery, with a perfectly spherical, magically just-cooked egg yolk right in the middle. But they really wanted to see the book.

  And it is a wondrous object. Modernist Cuisine’s five volumes comprise 1,522 recipes and 1,150,000 words of text on 2,438 pages, almost every one of them illustrated with color photography and charts, with dozens of gee-whiz, never-before-seen photographs of beautiful free-form color swirls that could be textile designs but turn out to be life-threatening pathogens; or sculptural objects that could be outdoor art installations but are mussels suspended in clear gelatin; or stunning anatomies of a painstakingly shelled lobster or flayed monkfish or whole chicken; or spectacular cross-section cutaways of pieces of equipment you never thought would or should be sawed in half, like ovens, woks full of hot oil, and kettle grills with white-hot smoldering coals. It weighs 40 pounds, four of them just ink. When Wayt Gibbs, the book’s editor in chief, met me later that week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Toscanini’s, an ice-cream parlor and intellectual salon heavy with MIT students and faculty, he painstakingly unwrapped the gigantic carton he had lugged on a portable dolly from Bellevue to New York and then to Boston. The café-goers grew silent and stared at the huge white volumes in their clear Lucite case, one of them later wrote me, as if they were the monolith in 2001.