Glacé

OK, it's French.

That word.

Glacé.

But what it is, is something better than French. It’s a sauce that is like velvet…

The definition from French means to “have been made to have a smooth glossy surface, like silk.”

For us, we little people who just cook and love food and flavor, it’s a thick, really thick reduction that you add to other preparations to thicken them, add rich meaty-goodness, or to finish a dish or sauce much like adding a pat of butter, but better. And because it's so concentrated, you use tiny amounts.

For example. I took an entire duck carcase, and the wings, added a quartered onion (top and tail removed, but with skin (it adds color)), two carrots (chopped roughly), two celery stalks (again, chopped roughly), three bay leaves, about a tablespoon of black pepper corns, water to cover, and brought to a simmer, and cooked. And cooked. About an hour or two.

When the water level was reduced to about three quarters, I strained it all into a bowl. I put all the strained stuff (solids) back into the pot, added water to cover, brought back it all to a simmer for 30 minutes, then strained it all again into the bowl (adding to the previously strained liquid). Essentially, I rinsed the concentrated flavor off the solids left behind after the first strain - because there is so much flavor left behind.

After pouring the strained liquids in the bowl into a clean pot, I boiled down the liquid until I had about a quarter to a half a cup. This is concentrated goodness. Very concentrated. Very goodness.

I strained the liquid through a pad of cheesecloth to clarify it, into a small clean bowl.

I ended up with enough concentrated duck to pour into two 4 ounce containers, and it didn't fill them.

THAT'S AN ENTIRE DUCK CARCASS WITH TWO MEATY WINGS!

It's like Duck extract. And I didn't add salt. That's for the chef to do when using.

After a night in the fridge, It was a hockey-puck of flavor.

Getting Ducky

OK, the secret will now be out. Dorothy loves duck. Especially Muscovy duck. I repeat. Dorothy loves duck.

So, when I saw a fresh Muscovy Duck at the Toboton Creek Farm stand at the University Village Farmer's Market, I knew I had no choice. We came home with a seven pounder.

My first task was to break it down into legs, breasts, and wings, and get the carcass into a stock pot to make duck stock. I put the wings in the stock pot too.

For dinner, I went with one breast (they are big), did it simply, just salt and pepper, and seared it in a hot cast iron pan to render the subcutaneous fat under the skin, and turned to get the other side cooked too. The goal was medium-rare. I let it rest in a warm oven while finishing the sides and sauce. We went with roasted sweet potato and steamed Brussels sprouts (that were browned in butter to finish).

For the sauce I made a huckleberry gastric. I froze multiple bags of 1-cup portions of huckleberries this past summer; they come in really handy on occasions like this.

I will confit the legs, and am thinking I might make duck bacon with the other breast. Stay tuned...

Huckleberry Gastric

1 cup huckleberries (4.7 ounces)
3.5 ounces sugar
4 ounces water
0.25 ounces dry Basel
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

Place all ingredients except the Huckleberries in a small pot, and bring to a boil. Before the developing syrup becomes too thick, strain out the Basel. Clean the pot, return syrup to pot, and continue to boil down to a medium syrup. Take off the heat, add the huckleberries and stir. Taste and add more vinegar if needed, and season with kosher salt as needed.

Mashed Potatoes?

Tonight, I made the best mashed potatoes I've ever made. And there is no real recipe.

As I said to Dorothy, who was raving - you'll never have these again.

What did I do? How can I get close again?

I started with 3 red skinned potatoes (Red Lasoda, from Olsen Farms), which I peeled. Each was about the size of a baseball.

I cut them into quarters, put them in a pot with water to cover by about an inch, and added about a tablespoon of kosher salt.

Then I simmered them until they were done (a knife inserted into the thickest part met no resistance and did not pull the potato back out of the water when removed).

I drained them into a colander. And let them cool for a while.

After some time, and I mean, enough time so I could pick up the potato quarters without burning my hands but they were still warm, I put the quarters through a ricer.

This is the first time I've used the ricer. I bought it several years ago as a birthday gift to Dorothy, but as it is a "unitasker" it was hidden in the kitchen and not out where we see it every day.

But, a hanging rack holding all our pans and a few other items had a few spots left over, and there went the ricer. Still unused for several years. Until tonight.

I placed a couple of quarters in the ricer, and pressed. What gorgeous potato shreds! Another load. Again, beautiful. I processed all the potatoes, and had a bowl full of beautiful potato shreds.

I use the term "shreds" because I don't want to use the term "Potato worms." But, in essence, if potatoes made pasta, there is a bowl of potato spaghetti, but it won't hold it's shape like pasta - it's mashed potato in spaghetti form.

So I mix in about a half cup of buttermilk, and then about a half cup of cream, and about a half stick of butter. And mix, and mix. Oh, I need to put this back over heat because the buttermilk, cream, and butter, are cold. OK, over the heat it goes. And the butter melts, and the potatoes become glossy…

And that's the dish. Salt and pepper were added, then tasted, and more seasoning added before serving. Oh, and for the photo, finely chopped Brussels sprouts and a sprinkle of red pepper.

Always taste, and correct your seasoning. It was so good.

Stuffed Cabbage

It’s simple, it’s delicious, but there are so many variations on the idea of a stuffed cabbage. So simple, you take a cabbage leaf, and put good stuff in it, then roll it up, sauce it, and bake. Right? So many ways…

This post is different in that I didn’t do research on recipe variations. OK, I looked at about a dozen. And there are so many variations, so many ethnic variations, I just decided to ignore the “traditional ethnic it-must-be-done-this-way” variations. I made it like I cook every night, meaning, no recipe. That can be scary to some, but I just do it by feel.

The biggest decision was whether to use cooked vs. uncooked rice. Recipes out there differ on this. My reasoning was thus: If I use cooked rice it will absorb a minimum of the juice produced during cooking and perhaps get gummy or mushy; if I use uncooked rice, it will absorb a maximum of juice and retain its integrity. I went with uncooked rice. Knowing this, I used an extended cooking time to allow the rice to absorb the juice and cook. Crunchy uncooked rice is not good eats. And, if you have leftover cooked rice on hand to use? I won’t say anything bad about using that - my suggestion is that cup for cup (cooked vs. raw), use 1.5 to 2 times more cooked rice than raw. Because rice expands as it cooks, and a recipe that starts with uncooked rice, say a cup by volume, equals a recipe with cooked rice at, say, 1.5 to 2 cups. Or so.

So, now that that’s all out of the way, what do I know of stuffed cabbage? Uh, um, not a meal I had as a kid. My mother was not a good cook. Adequate, mostly. She didn’t like having to be in the kitchen, a role women of her generation were expected to play. Like her mother before, she wanted a life of ease, say, at the country club, and, perhaps, servants. Servants would be nice. As mother of four kids (three boys then a girl), she did what she had to do, and really, did pretty well in spite of her lack of a food history, to make dinner for the family every night, but she did not know how to cook. She was a fan of processed and packaged “foods.” But her mother was even worse. Even more social-climby, even more hateful that life did not give her staff…  I’ll stop for now. But in some future post I’ll explain what drove me to cook. And it’s related to my mother’s “cooking.”

So where did I first encounter stuffed cabbage?

I’m thinking it was not at table, but rather in a cookbook or a magazine. Certainly not a restaurant because I, as a college then grad student, had very limited “entertainment” money and didn’t eat out. And I can’t think of one place in Storrs, CT, or Bloomington, IN, back then that would have had stuffed cabbage on the menu. Way too simple and ethnic.

What a loss. It’s a great dish, a canvas that can be painted in many ways.

So I guess it was a cookbook or magazine. Regardless, the idea of seasoned and spiced ground meat rolled in a leaf and topped with sauce took root in my head and I’ve been making them without a recipe for years. What pushed me to make them now? The incredible Savoy cabbages at the Farmer’s Market this season. Tonight’s challenge was to write down what I did to create dinner:

Stuffed Cabbage

Makes 6 generous servings (two rolls each)

There are four parts to this process: Make the filling, make the sauce, assemble the rolls, and bake the combined result. I wanted to keep the sauce as simple as possible to let the stuffed cabbage sing.

Materials and Methods

Filling
Savoy Cabbage	12	leaves
Onion	1	small-medium, chopped fine
Ground beef	1	lb
Ground pork	1	lb
Rice, uncooked	1	cup
Red wine	1 to 2	Tbs, optional
Egg	2	large
Garlic	3	cloves, crushed
Salt, Kosher	1	Tbs1
Black Pepper	2	tsp
Parsley	3	Tbs, chopped fine
Fenugreek	2	tsp2
Thyme, Dried	2	tsp
Coriander, ground	2	tsp
Sauce 3
Tomato sauce	2	28 oz can diced or puree
White vinegar	2	Tbs
Sugar, white	1	Tbs
Garlic	3	cloves, crushed
Salt, Kosher		to taste
Black Pepper		to taste

Make the Filling:

Mix all the filling ingredients, except the cabbage, together until completely combined. It’s that simple. Just mix, and mix, and mix. Don’t worry about over-mixing, some idea you sometimes see in meatball or meatloaf recipes. Mixing is good.

For the cabbage, the traditional method is to peel off leaves and then boil them a bit to soften, and then run them under cold water. This works fine. Alternatively, you can peel off the leaves, put them in the freezer for an hour, then defrost them (even under running cold water). Either way, the effect is the leaves are softened enough to roll up stuffed cabbages.

The only additional step is to thin the thick central vein of the leaves. What I do is to place the leaf on the cutting board back side up, and with a paring knife, slice off as much of the thick central vein as possible without damaging the integrity of the whole leaf. I also cut off a bit of the odd end of the bottom of the leaf. It makes for a better roll.

Make the sauce:

It doesn’t get simpler. Put all the sauce ingredients into a large heavy pot, and bring to a simmer. Keep it going for a while until it thickens somewhat, perhaps 30 minutes after it comes to the simmer. This sauce has a distinct sweet/sour loveliness.

Assembly:

It couldn’t be simpler, it couldn’t be harder. It’s all about putting enough filling in the leaf, but not too much, not too little. And each leaf is different, so, add and subtract as needed.

In a rectangular casserole dish, spoon about ¹⁄₄ of the sauce into the dish and spread evenly.

Place a leaf “cup side up” on the cutting board (central rib already trimmed, see above). Roll up a ball of filling, then roll between your hands to make a cylinder that is wide enough to fill ²⁄₃ the width of the leaf. Look at it. Imagine rolling up the leaf. Is there more leaf than filling? Meaning, if you rolled it up, would the leaf meet itself on the roll-up and then some for a, say, ¹⁄₂ or more turn? That means you don’t have enough filling. If you imagine rolling it up and the leaf never meets? Too much filling. Each leaf will be different. Try to get about a ¹⁄₄ turn overlap when rolling.

As you roll the leaves up, place them seam-side down in the casserole on top of the sauce. A 9x12 dish will hold about 12 rolls.

Spoon the rest of the sauce over the top and sides of the rolls, covering all.

Bake:

Place in a 350°F oven for about an hour. The important thing to note for doneness is “Is it bubbling in the center?” If so, and it’s been at least 15 minutes, it’s done. If not, give it some more time. You don’t want crunchy rice, remember?

When done, let it rest for at least 20-30 minutes on the counter before serving. This is a meal in itself - no sides needed.

Notes:

¹ Measuring kosher salt. My tea and tablespoons are calibrated. A teaspoon is 5 mls, and a tablespoon is 15 mls. That’s milliliters. Also, I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. If you use Morton’s or use some kind of “table” salt, you must use a smaller volume. I’d prefer to present salt by weight, and then it wouldn’t matter. If you use Morton’s kosher, reduce the volume of salt by 0.75. (Multiply 1 Tbs by 0.75, and you get, exactly, 0.75 Tbs. (that's ³⁄₄ Tbs)) If you use granulated table salt, multiply by 0.6.

² Fenugreek. This member of the Bean family (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is widely used as a flavoring from India to Turkey, and down into Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia. It is not widely known in the typical US kitchen. For a substitution, I suggest Cumin, or a mild curry powder.

Also, If you're not a fan of "curry" type flavors, skip it altogether. The Coriander will sing.

³ The amount of sauce. When I looked at recipes, they fell in to two categories. Those with one can, those with two cans. I want two. If you choose to go one, you won't have enough sauce to cover everything, so make a change - cover with foil. It will take longer to bake, but it will work.

Icelandic Dark Rye Bread

It's not surprising that rye is used in Iceland. The grain (closely related to wheat and barley) does well in poor soils and in colder environments. Well, that would be northern (in general), central and eastern Europe, and Iceland. It has much less gluten than wheat. As if that matters... Except to a baker.

The latest issue of Saveur (#170, December 2014) had something in it that grabbed my nerdy geology loving mind:

Nanna starts in on her last task, prepping the dense, sweet dark rye bread that she'll bake at a very low temperature overnight to mimic the traditional lava-pit method. The bread was once commonly baked in holes in the ground heated naturally by Iceland's copious geothermal steam.

I'm hooked. I have to do this. Recipe is straight from Saveur.

Dökkt Rúgbraud

Icelandic Dark Rye Bread

Makes 2 loaves

Ingredients

Unsalted butter, for greasing and serving
3 cups dark rye flour
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup golden syrup

Procedure

Heat oven to 200°F. Grease 2 loaf pans with butter. Whisk flours, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. Stir in buttermilk and syrup to form a smooth dough. Pour dough into prepared pans and cover with aluminum foil; bake until cooked through, about 8 hours. Let cool slightly and unmold: serve with butter, if you like.

Discussion

First. 200°F is not a typo. Neither is "about 8 hours." This seems less about baking than Pasteurizing.

Second. OK, that was easy. The waiting to taste it was the hardest part. Seriously, cooking underground with geothermal steam? How cool (hot) is that?

I'll serve this at my party tomorrow night. I snicky-snacked a few slices off after the loaves cooled a bit, slathered with a bit of butter. OK, this is good. Something I've never seen or heard of before, but good.

Oh, and as usual, I made a mistake. As many times as I read the recipe (I blame bad lighting), I read it was one CAN of golden syrup. Not, as I found out when I typed the recipe in, that it is one CUP. The difference? 3 ounces (8 vs. 11). Yes, the bread is a little sweet. But not too much. Delicious. Besides, if you were to pour the golden syrup into a measuring cup, get the right measure, and then pour the syrup into the batter mix, you'd likely leave an ounce or so on the sides of the measuring cup. Meaning, you'd be not adding 1 cup, but something less. So imprecise! My suggestion? Get over the precise stuff, and just pour, and stop when it doesn't flow fast anymore. That should work. And so you won't have to wonder what to do with the leftover 3 or so ounces, I would suggest to anyone making this, just pour the can in, and don't be so fastidious about getting it all in. Yes, waste some. It's OK. And then, you could make yourself and a companion a cup of tea, and drizzle a bit of the leftover syrup into the tea. And turn off your smart phones and have a conversation...

Ginger-Marinated Pork Tenderloin

Note: This could be made as a vegan recipe by switching to tofu and vegetable stock.

I don’t usually buy tenderloin, be it pork or beef or whatever. It lacks the flavor of other parts. Yes, it’s tender. Yes you pay for tender. Too much I’d say. Rib and Loin is almost as tender, and has more flavor.

So, when confronted, yes CONFRONTED! by a pork tenderloin laying in the refrigerator meat drawer (my better half bought it, and I swear, it was saying “Put up your Dukes!”), first thing I think of doing is adding flavor. And my default go-to is Asian inspired flavor.

I recently bought a beautiful large piece of fresh ginger. It was still looking young and tender, almost adolescent, and it was very aromatic. So, ginger would be my main flavor addition. And Soy Sauce of course.

I dug out the November 2003 issue of gourmet. Here is what I found:

Materials and Methods

As Published	As Made	Recommendations
1 2⁄3 cups chicken broth, divided	Actually, the recipe didn’t say “divided” but should have	Use vegetable stock for a vegan option
1⁄4 cup soy sauce	1⁄3 cup
1⁄4 cup packed brown sugar	1⁄3 cup
3 tablespoons ketchup or 2 tablespoons tomato paste	4 tablespoons ketchup
3 tablespoons finely grated peeled fresh ginger	4” piece, about 1⁄4 cup fluffy chopped ginger, no need to peel – you’ll strain it out for the sauce	Do not skimp. Do not.
3 garlic cloves, minced	4 cloves, sliced. Or more. Don’t be shy.	Go bold or go home disappointed
1 tablespoon cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar	Cider vinegar	Actually, about right. I would never go balsamic, but would go Rice Wine Vinegar, seems more "authentic"
1 (3⁄4 pound) pork tenderloin	0.80 pounds	Use firm tofu for a vegan option, and I think I'd slice the brick horizontally, as in, to create two slabs to maximize surface area
1 tablespoon olive oil
		Needed about 1⁄4 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil in the marinade

As Published

Note: Changes required to make this a vegan recipe do not appear in the "as published" recipe. You will need to adjust.

Whisk together ²⁄₃ cup broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, ginger, garlic, and vinegar and pour into a large resealable plastic bag. Add tenderloin and seal bag, then marinate, chilled, turning bag over occasionally, 2 hours.

Bring tenderloin to room temperature, about 1 hour.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 425°F.

Pat tenderloin dry and reserve marinade. Heat oil in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then brown tenderloin on all sides, turning with tongs, about 3 minutes total. Transfer skillet to oven and roast pork until thermometer inserted diagonally into center of meat registers 155°F, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board and let stand, loosely covered with foil, 10 minutes.

While meat is roasting, pour marinade through a fine-mesh sieve into a small saucepan and boil until reduced to about ¹⁄₃ cup, 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in remaining cup broth and bring sauce to a simmer. Serve slices of tenderloin with sauce.
 

Changes I did:

I just put everything into the bag and massaged it all. I set the empty bag in a bowl to hold it erect, added stuff and then more stuff, and when everything was there? I sealed and massaged. It works. One less bowl to clean. Oh, and I left everything out on the counter because I was in a hurry and didn’t have hours to spare. So, marinating was maybe 1.5 hours on the counter, and then the pork (tofu) was on a plate warming to room temp for maybe 20 minutes.

See, in my house, the pork (tofu), the broth, the soy sauce, the ketchup, and the ginger were all out of the fridge. They were cold. And it's winter here in Seattle, and the thermostat is set to 64°F. What, you want warmer? Start vacuuming! That'll get you warm! Really. 64°F is fine. You don't like it? Get off your butt!

The pork (tofu) still needed to warm up after I took it out of the marinade. After 1.5 hours on the counter (in a zip-top bag in a stainless steel bowel), it was still freaking cold.
 

Discussion

I’ve had it with medieval “English” units. The US is partnered with only the military dictatorships of Myanmar and Liberia in still not using metric. What great company. From now on (well, not always, I will relent, and maybe try a side-by-side version - to be determined), I will often use weight and metric. What pushed me over the edge? I messed up. I thought I was putting ²⁄₃ cup chicken broth into the marinade, but I confused something called a quart with something called a pint. Or a cup. Or a tablespoon. Or a teaspoon. How archaic can you get? What next? Using the length of the foot of a king as a unit of length? UGH! So, I put not ²⁄₃ but ⁴⁄₃ cups into the marinade. Then, later, diluted the “syrup” with twice the amount of stock. And then I realized my mistake and let it boil to syrup again. Despite this, yummy! Actually, seriously, yummy.

Oh, in the last issue of Gourmet, November 2009, on page 40. There was a small piece by John Willoughby titled “Spoon Deceit.” Herein, he told that teaspoon and tablespoon measuring devices out there were quite inaccurate, that the difference between available tablespoon measures varied incredibly: “While the average variance between any given two was between 5 and 10 percent (bad enough, you might say), the variance between the largest and the smallest was a full 33 percent.” So, English units are banned. Deal with it. We’re going metric and mostly by weight. In a future post, I’ll demonstrate with a “tablespoon” of salt.

Regardless, the recipe is wonderful. It works as I amended it, and probably wonderfully as published. I usually kick any recipe up in flavor when I make it, even the first time. If you’re “delicate” don’t. Follow the original. But the point is, it's all about the sauce. You could put this sauce on anything: pork, chicken, fish, tofu, a flip-flop, and it would be good.

Side note: The recipe came from an article feature in Gourmet called “Dinners for One.” And the article was called “Double Take.” What you won’t get on-line is the paragraph preceding the recipe. Which is enlightening. The following is the lead in:

Joyce Goldstein, a San Francisco chef and author of Solo Suppers, recently sent us a note that blended praise with a hint of constructive criticism. “As a single person and professional cook, I think Dinner for One has been a great addition to the magazine,” she wrote. “However, I don’t believe that most people make a salad, entrée, and dessert just for themselves. Instead of preparing a three-course dinner, why not prepare a menu for one dinner that includes planned leftovers to be used in a second meal?” As a theory, it sounded good. So we challenged Goldstein to put it into practice.

Suggested sides were Mashed Sweet Potato with Citrus or Steamed Jasmine rice, and Sautéed Kale.

I cut up some Lacinato Kale and sautéed it with slivered garlic, served the pork with white rice and that lovely sauce, and it was just what was needed.

Oh, again, it's all about the sauce.

Enjoy.

References

Gourmet Magazine, November 2003, page 212.

Link on Epicurious

R.I.P.