Deconstruction, Whimsy, and Riffs

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida introduced the term "deconstruction" in his 1967 work Of Grammatology. In the most simplistic terms, deconstruction is a kind of criticism that involves breaking a text into its component parts and influences, and examining those components to establish context and meaning for the original text.

You might ask why I mention this in a food blog. Well, the concept of deconstruction spread from literary criticism to various other fields and disciplines, including the culinary. In cooking, deconstruction has come to mean taking classic dishes and preparations and reinterpreting them in different ways, maintaining the fundamental flavor profile while updating and elevating said classic.

I'm having some friends over for dinner tonight, and while I was thinking about menus, a character on TV mentioned "franks and beans". Franks and beans - they're a simple comfort food from my high school days, and probably from many of yours. But, they weren't complex, and certainly not fit for company.

DECONSTRUCTION!

So...how do you take franks and beans and turn it into a big-boy dish worthy of serving to friends? I've decided to inject a bit of whimsy into the mix, creating what is (hopefully) a great blending of flavors that captures the essence of simple dishes.

The Concept

I've decided to create a modern riff on franks and beans, AND the classic sausage with sauerkraut. Components - bratwurst poached in Guinness, then seared on the grill, baked beans made with molasses and poaching liquid, a "sauerkraut" made with red and Napa cabbages, grated Gala apples, and grated fennel with a brown sugar and apple cider vinegar reduction, and a mustard, horseradish and baked bean purée.

This takes the basic flavor profiles of franks and beans, and sausage and 'kraut, but updates it with additional flavors, different techniques, and new spins. It's risky - I once tried a deconstructed BLT risotto that didn't work so well. But it's all about being bold!

Results to follow!

Poaching...the legal kind.

As a kid, I hated fish. It's not unusual - our palates are underdeveloped when we're young, which is why there are so many foods that we wouldn't eat then that we love now. The addition of previously-despised foods to my list of "things I love to have in my mouth" reads like a timeline of palate development. Onions, shrimp, tomatoes, avocados, beets (also pâté, blue cheeses, fois gras, escargot, and a variety if other obscure gustatorgasms) - one by one, they all wooed and seduced me into loving them.

Seafood had its own timeline. It started with things like popcorn shrimp from Red Lobster (I hang my head) or your standard fried fish. I clearly remember the first time I was enticed to eat Shrimp Scampi; for the next several years, it became my dish of choice at The Country Gentleman, back when that was THE good restaurant in Rome, GA. Then came grilled salmon, then grilled tuna, then salmon en papillote, then mussels, then calamari, then crayfish, then crab and lobster, then...whew! You get the idea.

Eventually I got to the point where all of those delicate fish - too delicate to appeal to an under-developed palate - tasted great, and offered a welcome change from the chicken-beef-pork-salmon-tuna grind. So, TONIGHT'S DISH IS:....

Cod fillet, slow-poached in wine, with a saffron-infused bechamel made with poaching liquid, served over bacon-gratin potatoes, with roasted leeks.

The Plan:

First, slice red and yellow wax potatoes into fine slices on mandoline. Parboil for a few minutes in milk. Shock in cold water, reserve milk, dry potatoes. Put several bacon slices on medium-high heat and sizzle until done. Drain bacon, then crumble, and reserve bacon fat. Take potato slices and carefully overlap into a SQUARE or RECTANGULAR pan. As each layer is complete, lightly brush with bacon fat, and lightly sprinkle with bacon crumble, salt and pepper - go REALLY LIGHT on the salt. Once all potatoes have been layered, add back sufficient milk to cover, and add to 350 oven.

Second, heat oven to 180-200. slice one leek longways into planks. Maintain form, while fanning layers under cold water to clean. Dry well. Slice long planks in half, shortwise. Mince a couple of shallots. Melt a bit of butter over medium heat in a saute pan - 1TB or so, then sauté shallots. Season cod. Add planks of leek to pan in center to create a platform. Pour in white wine (GOOD white wine) enough to cover about 1/3 of the fish atop the leek platform. Bring liquid to a bare simmer (around 130-140 degrees) then add fish atop platform. Cover, and move to oven. For a thick filet, you're looking at 10 minutes. When done, remove fish and keep warm. Reserve liquid (strain).

Third, make béchamel. This mother sauce is a roux (equal parts flour and butter by weight, though a good non-weight rule of thumb is 2 parts flour to 1 part butter, where the butter is melted and the flour added and cooked to various degrees - in this case, a very light cream color) plus milk or cream. Warm milk - 1 cup of dairy for each 2TB Flour/1TB Butter in the roux - then slowly stir in until sauce thickens. For this sauce, first add a pulverized 1/4 t or so of saffron threads after the butter melts, but BEFORE adding milk.

Once fish is done, add strained poaching liquid to béchamel, thicken slightly, taste and adjust seasoning. The sauce should be velvety, but not gummy.

Plating

Slice the gratin so you have rectangular lengths, two overlapping potatoes wide.

On a square plate, drizzle sauce over one half. On the unsauced half, place a rectangle of gratin so that the edge is just at center. Place the cod filet parallel to the gratin, and slightly overlapping so that it leans against the gratin. Dot or streak with some additional sauce, then arrange the grilled leeks so that they are perpendicular to the fish/gratin, leaning against the fish on the sauced side of the plate.

Results

This dish turned out really well. The béchamel with the poaching liquid was subtle but very rich, and the potatoes were delicious. I decided to go with scallions instead of leeks, more for visual reasons. Leeks are pale and straight, while scallions have brilliant green ends, and curve. They also crisp up nicely when roasted.

I will make this one again!

Update: Corn purée

Revisiting the purée, I reincorporated the strained portions, and puréed a second time, adding in a little more cream for emulsification and stabilization. Worked much better!

Tonight's evaluation - pork chops w/ roast corn salsa and caramelized corn purée

So, tonight's dish was all about corn. How did it go?

What worked:

The salsa - yummy and simple...roughly equal parts roasted corn, avocado, sliced leeks, and diced tomato, along with a couple of tablespoons of lime juice, a little cilantro, and salt and pepper.

The chop - pretty basic. Dredged in flour, the dipped in egg wash and panko.

What didn't work:

The purée. Flavor was good, but texture was all wrong. Way too thin after being pushed through strainer.

How to fix it:

Fix the purée. The immersion blender was probably the wrong tool choice. Use a food processor or standard blender to purée more thoroughly, adjust seasoning on the purée.

What's for dinner, hon?

"What's for dinner tonight?"

It can be the hardest question of the day to answer.  Maybe you aren't inspired, or maybe you ate a late lunch, so you aren't hungry.  One way or the other, there's nothing worse than standing in the produce aisle staring blankly at the arugula wondering what in the hell you're going to do.

Until fairly recently, I always started planning dinner around the protein - did I want beef, chicken, fish, pork...or something else?  That path leads to repetition and a distinct lack of options.  Lately, I've been thinking about things like taste and texture.  Do I want a stew or soup, or do I want something crunchy?  Do I have a craving for some particular ingredient?  If so, how to I satisfy that want/craving creatively?

So, today (after racking my brain for an hour) I hit on corn.  So - tonight's dinner is all about corn.

Seared pork chops with a roast corn salsa and caramelized corn and Cognac puree

That's what I've decided on.  Here's my plan:

Roast 2 ears of corn, strip kernels.
Strip 2 ears of uncooked corn of kernels.

For Salsa:
Combine roasted corn with roughly equal parts medium-dice tomatoes and avocado.  Toss with fresh-squeezed lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste.  Let rest for an hour or so.  Toss with finely chopped cilantro, test seasoning and adjust if necessary.

For Puree:
Saute leeks in oil for a couple of minutes.  Add corn kernels, and stir together.  Lower heat, and caramelize corn and leeks.  Deglaze with a little Cognac, and flame. (Long lighter or match - I have burned the hair off my hands more than once!).  Place mixture in food processor/blender.  Puree.  Add in cream to taste, then push through Chinoise (a fine-mesh conical strainer).

For Pork:Season, dredge in flour, dip in egg wash, dredge in panko crumbs.  Saute until done, and panko is crispy.  

Plating:
Sauce bottom of 1/2 plate with puree.  Place chop in center of plate, top non-sauced half with salsa.  Eat.  And hopefully...enjoy!

On Experimentation and Failure

“It doesn’t always work.”

That’s my philosophy for great home cooking. “It doesn’t always work”.

On shows like “MasterChef”, or “TopChef”, or “Next Iron Chef” or…all of those great competition cooking shows to which I’m addicted, there’s no room for dishes that don’t work. You screw up, you pack your knives, remove your chef’s coat, or leave the stadium – and go home.  Thankfully, at HOME, there are no judgmental super-star celebrity chefs waiting to eviscerate your dish (before they tell how much they appreciate your talent, dedication and passion) and send you packing.

At home, we get to screw up – a lot.  Even with good technique and an understanding of flavor profiles, it’s pretty easy to produce a culinary disaster.  Great cooking is an iffy business.  But by going down in flames (hopefully not literally, though there were a couple of times a decade or so ago where I was minus more than a few eyelashes and had no hair left on my hands) we learn things!

Case in point: recently, I was working on my ravioli technique.  Having gotten comfortable with homemade pasta dough (it’s really easy), I’ve been trying to develop some good fillings.  So, I made a filling from roasted cauliflower (by itself, incredibly delicious) and pine nut puree, with a blue cheese cream sauce and grated gingered beet topping.

Not a great combo.  The gingered beets and the cauliflower worked well together, but the pine nuts overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the pine nuts, and the blue cheese was the wrong flavor choice.  The sauce itself was also too thick, and ruined the texture of the ravioli. Out of 10, I give the dish a 4.

However, I learned a lot. First, while blue cheese and cauliflower may pare well traditionally, that is not necessarily the case when savory is emphasized.  Second, saucing of ravioli can be a BITCH!  Third, I should pay attention to what I already know, and not serve a sauce that isn’t complementary in color to the dish being sauced.

If I were to try this dish again, I would remove the pine nuts from the stuffing, make the sauce by pureeing the gingered beets, and leave the cauliflower puree inside the ravioli to shine on its own.  The pine nuts would be lightly sprinkled on top of the dish.

Failure – it’s what leads to better things.

On Intimidation

My dad is a fantastic bread baker.

When I was a kid, he regularly made these dense, flavorful, sweet loaves of whole wheat bread. I would "help" him knead the dough, and then watch anxiously over the rising dough. By the time the loaves were ready to go into the oven, it was usually time for me to go under the covers, so I would fall asleep surrounded by the amazing aroma of baking bread. Sometimes, I'd be lucky enough to be up after the loaves had come out of the oven, and finished resting.  The taste of that still-warm bread was...indescribable.

So, what's the point of the reminiscing? Well...it's about the intimidation factor. For me, bread baking was this esoteric activity in which my father engaged, that resulted in delicious food, and which invoked all kinds of childhood memories. It was intimidating to even think about baking bread.  However, a couple of months ago I baked my first loaf of bread, and I haven't looked back.

Cooking is a science and an art, but sometimes we amateurs let one or the other (or both) discourage us from trying new techniques because the process seems so complex. That's what bread baking was for me. But I jumped in, made a few really BAD loaves, and then started to learn. Now, my bread is...well...pretty damn good!

So, try things that seem intimidating. You will surprise yourself! And have great food to show for it.

In Which I Talk About Loving Food...

I come from a family that loves to cook. And...we're a little unorthodox about it. 

My dad was (and is) the day-to-day cook in the house, and if he sometimes gets a little carried away with ingredients (we won't talk about the great Cayenne Pepper Debacle that occurred after he attended an academic conference in Louisiana) he also taught me to cook from the gut, and to rely on recipes only as starting points.

My mom is the quintessential entertainer.  She can put together a dinner party menu that will knock your socks off, and sets tables that should be featured in Martha Stuart Living.  I've got two sisters who are also great cooks, but again - a little unorthodox.  One is a vegetarian surrounded by familial omnivores (including this younger brother, who constantly attempts to get her to eat of the flesh) and the other is a gluten-free, all-organic sort of cook. The former produces baked goods (and fried chicken for the omnivores) that are indescribably delicious, and the latter makes incredibly flavorful food out of simple ingredients, while dodging a variety of verboten foodstuffs.

And then there's me.  I'm the quintessential omnivore.  There is almost nothing I won't eat.  The list of foods I don't like can be summed up pretty simply: Okra (yeah, I'm a bad Southerner), Melons (shut up with the ironic jokes, people that know me)... umm...yeah, that's pretty much it. Well...ok, I'm not a huge fan of chicken livers in their unadulterated form, but they aren't bad in some preparations!

I love cooking - and I love being adventurous.  Thanks to shows like Top Chef and Iron Chef, I've learned the value of experimentation and lateral thinking where food is concerned.  When I think about what to cook, I think "What can I do differently today...".

So, this blog is all about my adventures with food.  I want to share my techniques and experiments, and hear about yours as well.  It's all about tips and tries and being daring.  Not everything is going to work, but hey - that's what it's all about!

So...tuck in!