I adore Charles Phoenix.

Charles Phoenix takes a traffic cone, a set of string lights, and green Jello and makes a christmas tree.

Charles Phoenix demonstrates how to make a melting Frosty the Cheeseball Man using Velveeta and cream cheese.

Finally, Charles Phoenix makes a gingerbread house and sets it free with nearly 200 helium ballons!

For when words fail you (holiday food policing).

Check out this article about the second Julia Child centenary event we helped put on! I am so happy to have this little glimpse of such a wonderful day cast in the stone that is electronic media.

Finally, a timely post!

Monday, November 12, 2012

This morning’s demo was Mexican food with Chef Leo Romero of Boston’s Casa Romero, the oldest Mexican restaurant in New England. He made two different salsas, both cooked. One, salsa Veracruzana, was a tomato-based sauce with the Mediterranean addition of capers, olives, mushrooms, and white wine. He paired this sauce with tilapia fillets sautéed in a 50/50 blend of canola oil and olive oil. I was shocked to find that I liked the tilapia. I’ve never been a fan and I see it as a gimmick fad designed to serve poorer-quality fish to the unknowing diners of America. What do I know? I’m a conspiracy theorist.

The second sauce was a tomatillo and poblano pepper base with a heap of chopped cilantro added at the end. It was my favorite. I love tomatillos and was a little surprised that the chef managed to make canned tomatillos taste good. Chef paired the slightly sour sauce with sautéed shrimp, which I think was an excellent combination as it functioned much like an acidic lemon would.

 Random factoids from his demo:

·         Avocadoes should only be tested for ripeness by pressing gently on the narrow end because the wider end is mostly made up of the pit, not the fruit itself.

·         Traditional salsa casera (translating loosely to “housewife salsa”) is made by grating the tomatoes, not chopping them. When they are chopped they are called pico de gallo.

·         In 2005, the United Nations attempted to pass a bill declaring Mexican cuisine a Heritage of Mankind. The bill was reintroduced in 2011 and passed, but only with the stipulation that French cuisine also be officially declared a Heritage of Mankind. The UN had not wanted to include French cuisine because it was deemed too unhealthy (all that wicked butter and cream!). Mexican cuisine, on the other hand, was considered healthy. Who thought that a concept such as the Heritage of Mankind bill (which was originally designed to address humanity’s equal access to the universe) would end up crumbling under the pressure of popular conceptions of “good” versus “bad” foods? Check out the Wikipedia article on Common Heritage; it's fascinating stuff. IMO, you can't go wrong with theoretical concepts that can encompass both my nerdy science-y side AND my food culture-loving side.

·         Most ancient Mexican dishes are cooked over a barbecue or boiled in liquid because no one ever developed the process of turning corn into corn oil (which would have aided in sautéing).

·         Chef considers Mexican food a cuisine without strict measurements. He said he never measures anything except for his water to rice ratio!

·         Chef said to always use unpolished rice because of the nutrients lost in finishing the product. He cited the U.S.’s rice donations to the Chinese after WWII; even with the rice, people were still malnourished because there were no nutrients left in the rice. I feel like this is a parable for the way the U.S. interacts with the rest of the world. *descends down social justice wormhole*

·         Tomatillos and ground cherries grow very well in New England because of their hardiness.

·         Epazote is traditionally added to Mexican bean dishes. Epazote is also an anti-flatulent. Coincidence?

In the afternoon we created a cornucopia of a meal with Chef Jeff Fournier of 51 Lincoln and his new, 9-day-old restaurant, whose name escapes me at the moment. We made a full meal consisting of: mushroom risotto, flatiron steak with Columbian rice and pepper jelly, deep-fried eggplant “chicharrones”, and pumpkin flan. The first course was absolutely the most intensely delicious risotto I have ever tasted. The components that I believe made it so incredible: pureed braised portabellas mixed in with the rice, white wine, copious amounts of Parmesan, and a topping of musty-sweet sautéed mushrooms. Amazing! The Columbian rice was jasmine rice steamed with whole star anise, cinnamon sticks, annatto seeds, and pepper. The result was more of a scented rice. It was subtle in the best of ways (and not just because I hate anise). It was fabulous with a little of the sweet, sour, and very spicy pepper jelly mixed in. Two classmates and I made the eggplant into a mock-chicharrones dish by cutting it in thick strips and scoring the flesh (like you would do with a very fatty piece of duck or pork belly). We then tossed the eggplant with oil and a spice blend containing ground annatto seed, cumin, turmeric, and other mysterious seasonings (chef’s creation). The eggplant baked until smooshy and then we deep fried them until they were well-browned and crispy around the cut parts. Both the eggplant and the mushroom risotto dishes deserve to be added the small but tasty menu of meaty vegetarian meals. I love my vegetarian and vegan friends! Finally, we finished the day with gently sweet pumpkin flan in individual cups. Some of the caramel behaved and stayed liquid, but a thick candy crust formed on the bottom of each cup. I thoroughly enjoyed crunching through the translucent brown sugar crust. It tasted burnt like toasted marshmallows. I find that most anything burnt tastes palatable if you equate the taste to that of toasted marshmallows or slightly burnt popcorn. (For example, burnt Marcona almonds taste JUST like popcorn. I won’t tell you which chef led to that discovery!)

Edited to add: I completely forgot about the wildcard menu item. Let's call it a round two of Guess That Food. Can you tell what this is? The cut marks may provide a hint.

How about if you see it cooked and sliced?

That would be watermelon braised in sherry cream, butter, and salt. The texture was transformed into an almost gelatinous creature, but with the watery sweetness of the melon. I can't decide how I feel about this. Is it space-aged vegan seared tuna or is it the nastiest thing I tasted today?

Gourmet's list of 50 Women Game Changers in the Food World.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Thursday, October 4, 2012

To cap off our busiest of weeks, we spent all day Thursday on pastry part two with Janine Sciarrapa. For the morning demo, Chef made crepes and had each of us come up and try a few ourselves. She brought in her own crepe pans. One was fairly large and the rest were maybe 4” across. To my surprise, I did very well at the whole crepe-making process. I am adding a crepe pan to my birthday/Christmas wish list! Chef took a few of the first crepes and filled them with chestnut puree, then she filled a few more with Nutella. To fill them without damaging the crepe, she folded them over once before spreading on the filling. Then she did a second fold and that was it—delicious little quarters of, well, deliciousness. The rest of the crepes were turned into a pretty little apple cake using a recipe that Chef learned from watching Julia Child on television. Chef recounted her childhood spent watching Julia’s show, and vividly remembers watching her make the apple crepe cake and being determined to make it someday. She now makes it for every semester she teaches at B.U. And it’s a super simple dessert. All you do is layer crepes with sweetened applesauce and crushed nuts and continue until the cake is as high as desired. She then sprinkled a liberal amount of sugar on top and baked it until caramelized. After morning demo, a few of us went back into the kitchen and heated up leftovers from yesterday and the day before. We had a good lunch of the remaining chowder, gnocchi, and Chef Ming’s duck.

In the afternoon, we split into the same teams as the previous day, with each group making a batch of profiteroles, éclairs, and gougeres. My teammate and I divided things up so we would each be responsible for one of the first two items and then we collaborated on the gougeres. I made the éclairs, which consisted of a chocolate pastry cream, pate au choux dough, and ganache. My teammate, Gab, made a vanilla pastry cream and a separate batch of pate au choux for the profiteroles. It was really fun to pipe out the dough into rectangles and see the magic of the oven and the ingredients as they baked into vaguely éclair-shaped pieces. It was even more fun to fill them! I decided to try the “chopstick” approach; I gently poked a chopstick through both ends of the éclair to make small holes. I then used another pastry bag to squeeze chocolate pastry cream gently through both sides. It was kind of messy, but all of the éclairs I tried were filled evenly and tasted delicious.

The gougeres we made were savory and blended with minced bacon and chives. We piped them out in smallish star shapes and they maintained the nice shape throughout the baking process. The finished product was a bit too spicy for my tastes—I’m not sure if my partner put in the amount of cayenne in the recipe or if he did it to taste.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Today we had another morning field trip, this time to Island Creek Oyster Farm in Duxbury, MA. It was a gray day and the sky kept misting over, but the trip was still wonderful. The farm is in a giant older home on the shore and the hatchery is in a large barn behind it. We started with a tour of the latter, led by one of the workers and his adorable, friendly dog, who insisted on going everywhere we went. We were led through darkened, rambling rooms until we reached the starting point of the hatchery. It was a large-ish room with two massive plastic buckets in which the oyster seeds are initially placed. Next stop, the algae room, where the oysters’ food is grown. Clear plastic tanks around the room were meant to hold different types of algae. The owner special-orders the algae from the government, and feeds the oysters a blend of many in the hopes that it heightens the flavor of the oysters. After leaving the two giant tubs, the oyster seeds are moved into slightly smaller rounds of calcium carbonate (i.e. oyster shell), where they can attach to the side and continue to grow. The oysters spend several week in the hatchery before being transplanted out into the bay when they are only about the size of a speck of black pepper. Our guide explained that this is the most risky part of the process, as many will die off before taking to the real-life ocean environment. He brought us down to the docks to show us one spot where the oysters were boxed into place just under the surface. They were about the size of petite peas.

Finally, the class split up into two small motor boats and we were whisked through the fog and over to a different part of the bay where the final oyster-growing phase happens. All we could see were large, black plastic tubes/barrels floating on the surface. The oysters grew to full size attached to the underside of the barrels. We then motored a bit further and came to a small floating cabin where three workers were busily harvesting and packaging the oysters for sale. They were picture-perfect New England seafood workers with ruddy faces, Fair Isle sweaters, and rubber boots. When we docked alongside them, they were blasting a particularly crude Prince song on their tiny boombox. We got a quick look at the equipment used, including the 3”-diameter ring they use to determine whether or not the oysters are large enough to be harvested for use in Boston. Due to an antiquated city law that was meant to preserve dwindling wild oyster populations in the area, these farmers can only sell and serve oysters 3” or larger in diameter to local purveyors. Smaller ones are sent all over the country. The French Laundry is a one of the larger accounts Island Oyster Farm holds, and they have one menu item that uses a very specific farmed oyster—small ones with large, bulbous bottoms that yield a good-sized portion of oyster meat.

After we docked back at shore, some of the class (including myself) stopped at the nearby French Memories bakery, which is clearly a downtown Duxbury fixture. I tried a regular croissant and a sweetened almond one. They were both divine. The almond one had been split and spread with almond paste and a little almond-infused liquid. I regret nothing.

We got back to campus in time to munch on the leftover arctic char rolls and tiger prawns before we began our afternoon cooking session. Chef Jeremy Sewall came back and led us through a local-themed class using some very excellent ingredients—Great Barrington foraged chicken- and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, clams, oysters (yes, from the farm), craft beer, and lively lobsters that had been harvested earlier in the day in MAINE by Chef’s brother (who, conveniently, is a lobster farmer and provides all the lobster Chef uses in his restaurants).

My team of two (most were three) was assigned to make the clams and mushrooms. Without the aid of recipes, Chef thought up some very basic dishes and helped us through the process of making a New England clam chowder, clams steamed in beer with chorizo, and beautifully-sauteed mushrooms. It was both challenging and meaningful to cook a dish that I associate so strongly with my grandmother. I took the advice of our TA, however, and did exactly as Chef asked, even it was antithetical to my family recipe. The outcome? A chowder more delicious than my Grandma’s, but without the happy memory attachment. For one, we used fresh, whole clams for it. The diced potatoes were also par-cooked separately and added to the pot later on. Finally, Chef squeezed some lemon juice and jalapeno Tabasco before tasting. Both gave a really excellent counterpoint to the richness of the dish. After tasting, I suggested that it needed more black pepper. Chef agreed (love when that happens!).

The other standout was the mushrooms. Even simply sautéed in canola oil and sprinkled with salt, they were absolutely delicious. Not to be a tool, but they sure did taste like chicken…but better. Or maybe it was just that I was eating something that came from Western MA? The rest of the groups made: ricotta gnocchi tossed with lobster chunks and a Long Island cheese squash sauce, baked oysters, fried oysters, and lobster ravioli. Everything came out well and tasted good. I wish that we had been using recipes because I would totally steal the lobster, gnocchi, and squash sauce one!