sauce

There and Back Again: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

maki — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:00:24 +0200

I love pasta in many guises, but when it comes to ultimate Comfort Pasta, there is nothing that compares to a spaghetti bolognese. By spaghetti bolognese, I mean spaghetti topped with a rich, ground-meat and tomato based sauce. No fancy ragu or such. I don’t think it’s that authentically Italian, but I don’t really care. It’s one of my favorite cool-weather dinners.

Once upon a time, I had what I thought was a perfect recipe for spaghetti bolognese. Then, about a year ago I lost my way. After a year of bewilderingly off-target bolognese, I’ve found my way back.

I blame Heston Blumenthal for messing with my head. (Disclaimer: I am otherwise a big fan of Mr. Blumenthal.) Last year, he tackled spaghetti bolognese on his In Search of Perfection television series (and in the book of course), and came up with a “perfect” version. The perfect Blumenthal version of spaghetti bolognese is, naturally, extremely complicated, but compared to the other “perfect” versions of various popular dishes it seemed to be the most doable. So, we (note the plural: it required a team effort) tackled it, piece by piece. It does help in life to have an almost equally food-obsessive partner for such quests.

It took us 3 full days to accomplish, starting from the pre-ordering of the meaty oxtails at the butcher counter (it’s not a commonly used cut here), finding the perfect spaghetti, ripe tomatoes in December (yes, I know) and the final slow cooking of the sauce. And the result?

It was good, yes, but perfect? Neither of us was sure. But yet it had flashes of something great in there; the meatiness of the gelatinous oxtail, the unctuous richness. So, we embarked on a long journey of trying to tweak that recipe. We tried different meat combinations. (Turkey is a definite no.) We experimented with bacon, chorizo, various sausages, salami. We tried less or more of the vegetables, canned tomatoes alone or fresh alone.

All were interesting, but I still felt off kilter. Then, the other day I made bolognese more or the way I had made it for years until the Blumenthal experiments - and, it was just about perfect.

Mind you, it’s probably because my criteria for a perfect bolognese are different from the great chef’s, as I explain below. And some of the ideas gleaned from the Blumenthal version and the ensuing experiments did creep in, making the sauce even better. In any case, I’m now happy that this is my Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese. I can now move on to perfecting other things.

Defining my Perfect Bolognese

I prefer my bolognese to have a rich, deep taste of tomato, wine, and meat. I also like the meat to be ground quite finely so that you get an integrated ‘meat sauce’, rather than ‘bits of meat suspended in a sauce’.

The experiments with cured meats convinced me that I don’t like cured-meat flavor or smoke flavor in the sauce, but a little bacon is added for richness.

I like the sauce to be rich, but not swimming in fat (a pronounced feature of the Blumenthal version).

It’s key to let the sauce cook for a very long time - minimum 3 hours after the preparatory stage - in a thick-walled pan, ideally a Le Creuset or similar.

The only pasta to use is a robust, dried spaghetti. The kind we use all the time now is substantial and rough textured, as you can see from the picture. That rough surface absorbs sauce in a very satisfying way. It costs almost twice as much as Barilla spaghetti, but is worth it. (If you are using Barilla or other mass-produced line though, I’d go for the spaghettoni rather than spaghetti.)

(For readers in Switzerland, this is the Spaghetti alla chitarra from the Migros Selection line.)

Things I liked and didn’t like about the Blumenthal version

The Heston Blumenthal bolognese is described in great detail in his first book, but also appears on this page. There’s another one on The Times web site, which is quite different.

Mixing fresh and canned tomato is a great idea, as is adding some cream - though I used butter instead, for that dairy unctuousness.

Long cooking, of course, is a good thing, though his version takes 9 hours.

The oxtail meat idea was interesting, but obtaining and then cutting the meat off the fiddly bones is way, way too much work - and ultimately, I felt, not quite worth it. It’s also quite expensive here in Switzerland. For the gelatinous quality I use some veal in the meat mixture instead.

His version was too sweet for me for some reason. I also didn’t like the star anise addition at all - this may have added to that sweet flavor somehow. I do like adding star anise to many meat dishes, especially pork, just not this one.

There was also too much added fat overall, which cause a very substantial oil slick to appear on the surface of the sauce.

I’ve always used red wine in bolognese, and he used an ‘oaky Chardonnay’. I prefer the robust red wine.

Recipe: My Perfect Spaghetti Bolognese

For the sauce:

The meats:

450-500g / 1 lb top loin or chuck
225-250g / 8 oz veal breast
225-250g / 8 oz. pork shoulder
100g / 3 oz non-smoked bacon or pancetta or speck, chopped fine

(Note that the beef and pork should be rather marbled, not very lean, if you need to use other cuts.)

Have all of the meats (except the bacon, which you’ll chop yourself) twice ground by the butcher, or grind it yourself (use a grinder or a food processor) until fairly fine but not a paste. If using a food processor, it helps to cube the meat and then half-freeze the cubes first. You can buy already ground meat if you prefer, but it should be not too lean as well.

The vegetables:

2 cups finely chopped onion
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup finely chopped carrot

Other stuff:

About 1/4 cup light olive oil
1 cup (250ml) red wine such as a Barbera or a Côte du Rhone (but I usually use whatever is handy, as long as it’s robust it’s fine)
1 large can (800g) canned tomatoes, the tomatoes smashed up (do this with your hands or in the food processor)
2 Tbs. tomato paste
4 cups peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes, seeds and all (If in the dead of winter, use another can of canned tomatoes instead)
2 bay leaves
Crushed dried or (preferably) fresh chopped rosemary leaves
Dried thyme
Dried oregano
Grated nutmeg
About 2 Tbs. butter, more or less to taste
Stock (veal or beef preferred) or water
Salt and pepper

And…the pasta etc.:

Spaghetti or spaghettoni, cooked al dente
Butter to toss with the spaghetti
Freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano (freshly grated Grana Padano is acceptable)

Equipment needed:

a heavy pan - I use an enamelled cast iron pot
large frying pan or sauté pan
Recommended to have: a food processor.

Heat up the olive oil in the heavy pot over medium heat. Toss in all the chopped up vegetables, then lower the heat to about midway between low and medium. Sauté the vegetables over the low heat, stirring occasionally, until it’s limp and very lightly tan.

In a large frying pan, sauté the ground meats until browned, and add it all into the pot. Deglaze (add a bit of the stock or water to the hot pan, scrape off the bits ) the frying pan and add that to the pot too.

Add all the other ingredients except the butter, water and salt and pepper. (The amount of herbs you add really depends on your taste. I like to add quite a bit of chopped fresh rosemary, about 2 tablespoons, because I have childhood memories of happily chewing on bits of rosemary leaves in my mother’s spaghetti bolognese. Add about a teaspoonful of the herbs and several grindings of the nutmeg, then taste after a few hours to see if you want more.)

Bring up the temperature until it’s bubbling, then lower the heat to ‘low’ and simmer, stirring up from the bottom of the pot occasionally, for at least 3 hours, preferably 4 or longer. Add a little stock or water whenever it starts to dry out too much. (You may also do this in the oven, but I prefer to do it on the rangetop and have just a tiny hint of burnt flavor in there.)

At the end of the cooking process, take out the bay leaves, stir in the butter, and add salt and pepper to taste.

This makes a lot of very rich sauce. About 1/2 cup is enough I think for a plate of dinner-portion spaghetti (allowing about 100g or 3 1/2 ounces dry weight per person). Portion and freeze the rest - it freezes beautifully.

To enhance the flavor, toss the freshly cooked spaghetti with a knob of butter prior to ladling on the sauce. Optionally top with freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano, or Grana Padano.

The only thing to serve with this is a green salad with a sharp vinegarette.

Notes

While the oil slick on this sauce is not as pronounced as the one that appears on the Blumenthal version, it is impressively deep. You can scoop some of this off if it scares you. (I would scoop off the excess oil prior to adding the butter…which may seem illogical, but you’ll be taking out ‘other’ oils and adding in butter flavor.)

You can also ‘stretch’ the sauce by taking a cupful and adding 1 small can (400g - about 8 oz) of crushed canned tomatoes. Adjust the salt and pepper. Sometimes I prefer this less-rich version.

Or, you can add one cupful to 1 cup of cream…for a very rich creamy sauce indeed.

Adding some sauteed mushrooms enhances it too.

The sauce as-is is perfect for layering in lasagna, stuffing cannellini and such, paired with a perfect Bechamel.

Don’t ruin it by covering it with pre-powdered cardboard ‘parmesan’. If there’s one thing I’ve learned while living in Switerland it’s that mystery cheese products taste really, really bad compared to the real thing.

Finally, in case you are wondering, spaghetti bolognese (also known as ‘spaghetti meat sauce’) is very popular in Japan. It has to be one of the most universally loved dishes in the world, no?

(Somewhat different and lighter pasta.)

Basics: Kaeshi, soba and udon noodle soup or sauce base

maki — Mon, 14 May 2007 17:18:14 +0200

When the weather gets warmer, we eat a lot of cold Japanese noodles: soba (buckwheat noodles), hiyamugi (thin wheat noodles), so-men (even thinner wheat noodles), Sanuki udon (thick wheat noodles- Sanuki is the name of a region famous for udon) and harusame (bean or ‘glass’ noodles). For most cold noodle dishes a salty sweet soy sauce based soup or dipping sauce called mentsuyu is used. You can buy pre-made mentsuyu concentrate, but to me most of them taste too sweet or are overwhelmed by a too-strong MSG or similar artificial tasting umami flavor. Making mentsuyu at home from scratch is not so difficult, and the difference in taste is quite worth the little extra effort.

The base of mentsuyu is a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and mirin called kaeshi (or hon-gaeshi: hon means “real” or “authentic”). It can also be used as a flavoring base for many other things. You just need good quality dark soy sauce, white sugar, and good quality mirin. It keeps for months in the refrigerator, or even in the freezer (where it will stay liquid) so I like to make as big a batch as I can afford to price-wise and fridge-space-wise.

This is similar to the Japanese essence mix, but doesn’t include the kombu seaweed or bonito. If you are a vegetarian you can use kaeshi safe in the knowledge that it’s totally vegan, and combine it with a vegetarian stock. Kaeshi also lasts a lot longer since the basic ingredients are indefinite keepers.

I’ll be talking about cold noodles and such in upcoming posts, so if you’d like to follow along, you may want to make some kaeshi to be ready.

This is a very traditional basic recipe.

Kaeshi

This makes about 6 cups.

4 1/4 cups (or 1 litre, the standard size for a soy sauce bottle) good quality dark soy sauce
3/4 cup / 180ml mirin (hon mirin, the kind with alcohol in it, is preferred)
3/4 cup / about 150g granulated or superfine white sugar (see notes)

Put the mirin in a pan and bring up to the boil; lower the heat and let simmer a bit to evaporate much of the alcohol content.

Add sugar and stir until melted. Add the soy sauce, and let it warm up slowly, stirring. It should never boil - once it starts barely bubbling, take it off the heat.

If any cloudy scum has accumulated on the top, skim off carefully. I t can be used right away, but is best when allowed to rest for at least a day.

Let cool and store in a glass or other non-reactive, airtight container in the refrigerator. (I keep it in preserving jars with screwtop lids.) It will keep for several months under refrigeration.

Notes

I like this to be not that sweet, but I am from the Kanto (Tokyo) area. People from the Kansai area would use 1 cup of sugar for this instead of 3/4ths. You may want to adjust the amount of sugar to your taste.

In Japan, use san-on-to- (三温糖) or cooking sugar.

If you are sugar-intolerant in any way, a heat-safe sugar substitute should work, though it’s not tested here.

Honmirin (本みりん）is regular mirin, which is a fortified sake, with alcohol content. There is also mirin cho-miryo- or mirin flavoring, which is alcohol-free mirin. I mostly just buy and use hon mirin, especially since the better quality mirins only come as hon mirin.

IMBB 23: Brandade de Morue

maki — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 22:33:13 +0100

This is my entry for Is My Blog Burning #23, hosted by Cucina Testa Rossa. The theme is Vive La France. I cogitated over this for a while, but settled on something extremely simple to make, figuring that the other entries might go more elaborate. I'm also a bit cooked-out at the moment due to the Masterchef cooking! But anyway...onwards we go.

The picture above is a little misleading. The star of the show is not the golden brown crêpes. It's the unprepossessing little bowl of white sauce. This is a Provençal staple called brandade de morue. It hasn't become as trendy around the world as other delicious sauces from this much lauded region such as tapenade or pistou, but is, in my opinion, one of the most delicious tastes in the world.

It's possible that brandade de morue is not as renowned because its star ingredient is salt cod. Any seafaring culture has a tradition of heavily salted fish, and since cod has always been a popular fish, there are variation of salted cod everywhere: Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and of course France. Marseilles was at one point the major salt cod manufacturing point for the whole of Europe, and it still produces a lot of it. Salted fish does not really fit well into our modern lifestyle, since it needs an extended period of soaking. I love the taste of it though, coming from a culture (Japanese) that has always relied on salting and drying to preserve seafood. I also love the slowness of it: soaking the fish overnight, planning ahead for the meal that it will be the basis of. It's an entirely different experience from popping a frozen dinner tray into the microwave.

Making a brandade is so easy with our modern food processors and mixers, it's almost not a recipe. The one key to it is to soak the fish in cold water beforehand for at least 24 hours, changing the water several times, to reconstitute the cod and to remove much of its salt. You should also use a good, fruity olive oil, preferably from Provence (but any good extra virgin olive oil will do). A brandade can be used for any number of things: as a dipping sauce for raw or steamed vegetables; on crusty bread; even as an interesting pasta sauce. Here I have used it as a stuffing for crepes. This isn't very traditionally Provençal I admit, but the very first time I had brandade was in a creperie in the small, charming town of Grillon, in the northern part of Provence. It was simply spread onto a large, crispy Galette Bretonnière (a buckwheat crêpe from Brittany) which was folded over at the edges, the dark brown lacy edges framing the white sauce so inticingly. One mouthful, and I was a brandade convert for life. It is salty, just slightly fishy (but in a good way, like the freshest anchovies, but less so), garlicky, and full of fruity olive oil flavor, with the slight acidic edge provided by the creme fraiche, that elevates it to the highest level of taste.

As for a wine to accompany a meal with brandade, why not a rosé? There are many rosés in Provence; light and refreshing, to cut through the sometimes intense flavors of the food of the region. Nothing is quite as evocative of summer as a chilled glass of rosé and a meal redolent of olive oil and garlic. The one we had on hand is Domaine de Montine, from the Tricastin region, which is near Montélimar, the self-proclaimed nougat capital in the northwestern corner of Provence.

This area is not nearly as touristy as southern Provence, but I almost prefer it over the more famous areas near Arles or Aix or Marseilles. If you want to see the Provence cliché of lavender fields stretching out as far as the eye can see, go to the north.

Brandade de morue

200g / 7 oz. piece of salt cod
3 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil, preferably from Provence (it should be a bright green)
4 garlic cloves
150g / 5 oz. creme fraiche

Soak the salt cod in cold water, changing the water several times, for at least 24 hours beforehand.

Cook the drained cod in water to cover, simmering for about 10-15 minutes.

Take out the cod, let it cool and take off the skin if there is a skin. Carefully go over it and pick out any bones.

Roughly flake the cod into the bowl of a food processor or mixer, with the garlic cloves. Pulse to chop it up, then add the olive oil and creme fraiche. Puree intil smooth. The consistency should be that of thick mayonnaise. Add a little more olive oil if necessary.

This makes about 2 cups. Store any left over sauce well covered in the refrigerator, and use up within a few days.

For the crêpes, please refer to this recipe for a good all-around version.

Technorati Tags: brandade de morue, imbb23

Homemade mayonnaise without tears (Basics)

maki — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 03:06:06 +0100

If there is one food that has defeated me over the years, it's mayonnaise. For the longest time I couldn't figure out how to make a good mayonnaise. I read the instructions in numerous cookbooks. I watched the Good Eats episode about it. I tried using a food processor, a stick blender, whipping by hand.

Every time, I'd end up with a mess - eggy globs floating in a sea of oil, sort of like a Chinese eggdrop soup. Eggdrop soup is delicious, but eggdrop oil is not.

Why would I even bother to make mayonnaise? All I can say is that once you've tried homemade mayonnaise made with real fresh eggs, the store bought stuff would just not be enough. Even my favorite commercial mayonnaise in the world, Kewpie Mayonnaise, pales in comparison.

But finally and completely by accident, I discovered how to make mayonnaise that is creamy, eggy, and smooth without fail.

So if you have had mayonnaise problems too, read on....

Technorati Tags: mayo, mayonnaise

The ingredients

You will need:

2 large, fresh, organic or pasteurized eggs. The egg is not cooked so it must be certifiably fresh and/or pasteurized. I use date-stamped eggs, or the fresh ones I can buy from a local farm.
1 to 1 1/2 cups of oil. The choice of oil varies based on what you intend the mayo to be used for. Normally I use a flavorless oil such as peanut or safflower, but for making a mayo for dipping vegetables in, or as a basis for aioli (garlic mayonnaise) I use either a mixture of safflower and extra virgin olive oil, or olive oil alone. If you use all olive oil, the predominant taste in your mayo will be olive oil. My usual preference is for the egg flavor to be more forthcoming.
1-2 Tbs. lemon juice or white wine vinegar. Again, the amount of acidic liquid you add will influence the flavor of your mayo.
1/2 to 1 tsp. salt, to taste.
Optional: 1/4 Tbs mustard powder, OR 1 Tbs. mustard. Again...the type of mustard and the amount will also change the flavor. I actually prefer no mustard at all, or just a smidgen of mustard powder.

The equipment

I prefer to make mayonnaise with an electric whisk. You can use a food processor or a stick blender, but I find that both of those methods make a mayo that is very stiff. Whisks seem to make a lighter mayo. A hand whisk would work too, but electric is easier. The hand-cranked type of beater will not work because it requires two hands. One hand for your beater of choice, one hand for the squeeze bottle, is what you will need.
2 small to medium sized bowls.
A moistened kitchen towel, to place under the bowls to keep them from moving about. This is critical since you will be using both hands as mentioned above.
A plastic squeeze bottle with a small nozzle. Mine is a $1 'dressing bottle' that I bought at the almost-everything-for-$1 store in Japantown in San Francisco.

Optional equipment: an iPod. You'll be standing around drizzling oil s-l-o-w-l-y for some time so the iPod will keep away the boredom. (You may choose to substitute another MP3 player.) For maximum effect use noise-cancelling headphones to shut out most of the egg beater racket.

The procedure

Put your chosen oil into the plastic squeeze bottle. My pink capped bottle just happens to hold exactly 1.5 cups.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites; discard the whites or keep them for something else. Put the two egg yolks in the two bowls - one yolk per bowl. Why? You will see.

Add about 1/2 tsp of salt and the optional mustard to one of the bowls.

Start beating at low speed. In short order the egg yolk will look rather sticky. Add the oil, drop by drop, to the egg yolk mixture. And I do mean drop by drop. This is really critical to creating the emulsion that is the basis of mayonnaise.

Keep adding the oil, drop by drop.

After a while you'll get tired and bored and start thinking, it's safe to add the oil faster now, and you'll squeeze that bottle a bit harder. It's human nature to do so, and besides, the books tell you that you can add the oil faster once the emulsion has started. Now, if you are lucky your mayo will still be smooth and cohesive. But in my case this is rare. Usually it separates into that icky eggdrop oil:

This is where the second yolk comes in. Transfer your whisk or beater to the other bowl, the one with the second yolk. Beat this one like the first one until it looks a bit sticky. Now add the egg-oil mixture from the first bowl to this, one spoonful at a time, making sure to beat each spoonful in. Here you see the eggdrop oil mix going into the new emulsion:

It's quite safe to add that partially emulsified but separating mixture in spoonfuls rather than drop-by-drop to the new egg yolk emulsion. Just be sure that each spoonful is incorporated. Keep adding until all the eggdrop oil is gone. At this point you can resume adding the rest of the oil in the squeeze bottle, in a thin stream - keep beating, and it will not separate.

When all the oil is added, add the lemon juice. Start with 1 tablespoonfull, beat in, then taste. Add more if you want it a bit more lemony. The lemon juice will lighten the color of the mayo. Adjust the salt too, if needed.

You will end up with approximately 2 cups of beautiful mayonnaise.

This is pure, preservative-free mayonnaise, so use it up within a couple of days. Store it well covered in the refrigerator.

Variations and uses

Add 1 to 2 crushed garlic cloves to turn mayonnaise into aioli.
To make saffron aioli like you are served with a bouillabase in Marseilles, soak a pinch of saffron threads in a tiny bit of warm water. Whisk this into the garlic aioli above.
For Japanese style mayonnaise a la Kewpie, use rice vinegar for the vinegar component, a neutral flavored oil such as canola or safflower oil, and add a little sugar (about 1/2 teaspoon) when you add the salt.
Add about 1/2 cup of finely chopped pickles to turn it into tartar sauce.
Add a bit more lemon to the mayo than you normally might, and use as a sauce for seafood like shrimp and other shellfish. (At a certain restaurant in Strasbourg, France, they serve a humongous assiette de fruits de mer (seafood platter with a variety of steamed and chilled shellfish) with home made mayonnaise that is almost green because of the use of extra virgin olive oil.)
To lighten up mayonnaise, mix with plain yogurt or totally emulsified (in the food processor) cottage cheese.
Add chopped hardboiled eggs, or even just the egg yolks, to make it very eggy. Incease the amount of egg to make it egg salad.
My stepfather loves to eat grilled himono (dried fish), especially dried octopus or squid, with mayonnaise sprinkled with a little red pepper powder.
Mayonnaise is used as a sauce for okonomiyaki - Japanese veggle pancake, and takoyaki octopus balls.

Perfect roux and bechamel

maki — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:19:32 +0100

I have two articles on the back burner at the moment, and both of them use roux. Roux is a basic that every cook should know about, but for various reasons it's rather shrouded in myth.

Roux is basically a mixture of flour and oil, which are brought together to become a thickening agent for liquids. It is used for anything from gravy, stews, soups and various sauces. The most commonly used oil is butter, clarified or not.

Now about the myths: during the 1970s and 1980, when Nouvelle Cuisine became the rage, roux fell into disfavor. Roux-based sauces were regarded as being symbolic of "old-style" "heavy" traditional cooking. Instead of using roux, chefs used other methods for thickening and emulsifying their sauces. So here are the top three myths about roux:

Roux is somehow horribly fattening. Well, roux is fattening in the sense that it's a mixture of flour and oil, but it's no more fattening than the alternative method of thickening sauces that is often used in restaurants - that of whisking in tons of chilled butter.
Roux-based sauces destroy or mask the 'natural flavor' of ingredients. If a roux is prepared correctly, it won't destroy any flavors. Any times you apply a sauce too heavily, regardless of the way it was thickened or not, you're going to mask the natural flavors. Also, if a roux is undercooked, you will get a floury flavor. So a properly cooked roux is going to thicken without being obstrusive.
Roux is difficult. It's not - as a matter of fact, I find the buerre blanc method to be a lot easier to screw up (ending up in a oily, separated mess). The two basic things to remember: cook the flour enough in the butter/oil so that it loses its floury flavor, and only add hot liquid to it.

One of the best known, and much maligned, roux-based sauces is a bechamel - otherwise known as "white sauce". It's a flavored milk sauce thickened with roux. If you have never mastered bechamel, here is how to get it perfect every time.

The roux

You will want 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter to 2 tablespoons of plain white flour. If you want to be even more precise, you want 1 weight unit of butter to 1 weight unit of flour (say, 10 grams - 10 grams), but I find that the 1 Tbs - 2 Tbs ratio works fine and is much easier to measure.

1 Tbs butter + 2 Tbs flour will thicken 1 cup of liquid, to produce a sauce of the consistency that is perfect to use as a pouring sauce, and for making lasagna and gratin dishes. It's also the basis for Sauce Mornay, otherwise known as plain old cheese sauce. So, if you want 4 cups of sauce, you'll use 4 Tbs + 8 Tbs, and so on. If you want a stiffer sauce, say for making cream croquettes, you would use more roux.

Melt the butter over a medium-high heat in a heavy-bottom pan. Add the flour, and stir around vigorously. It wil first turn creamy looking, then start to look a little grainy - this means that the flour granules have absorbed the butter. For a bechamel, stop right here and take the pan off the heat before it starts to turn brown. This is the basic light or "blonde" roux you want for thickening liquids in an unobstrusive way. The longer you cook a roux, the darker it gets, and stronger tasting - a toasty, deep taste. Dark roux is used for Cajun/Creole dishes like gumbo, for example. You can also use dark roux to color up a pale gravy.

The bechamel sauce

To make 4 cups of bechamel, put 4 1/2 cups of milk (whole if you want the richest sauce, but you can also use low-fat..skim really doesn't work well) in a heavy-bottom pan. The extra 1/2 cup is to account for evaporation. Throw in 1 whole peeled onion stuck with 1 clove, and 1 bayleaf. Bring this up to heat and simmer for a while (at least 15 minutes) so that the milk becomes steeped with the flavors of onion-bayleaf-clove.

When the milk is piping hot and suitably steeped with flavor, make the roux using 4 Tbs butter + 8 Tbs flour, as described above. Now add the milk to the roux, one ladle at a time (straining out the flavoring incredients), and mix vigourously until the roux and liquid are amalgamated. Do not add the next ladleful until the mixture is smooth. Continue adding the liquid until the sauce is the thickness you require. Season with salt and pepper (white if you must have a pure white sauce, but I always just use black) and a little grated nutmeg

What if your bechamel (or any other roux-based sauce or gravy) is lumpy despite all your precautions? There is one thing that will fix any lumpiness: an immersion or stick blender. It's not just for pureeing veggies in soups or whirring up your powdered protein drinks! A few seconds of blending with this tool will de-lump your sauce in no time. A basic stick blender such as this one doesn't cost much, takes up very little counter or drawer space, and is endlessly useful. If you don't have a stick blender, you can try to get as many lumps out of as possible by vigorously mixing the sauce with a whisk, and then if you want a perfectly smooth sauce, simply strain it through a sieve.

Now, you have conquered roux and bechamel - what to make with it? Stay tuned.

Addendum 1: for a very traditional bechamel, the onion (or shallot) is sautéed in butter along with a small amount of chopped veal, but I find that for most modern dishes requiring bechamel this is not really necessary.

Addendum 2: In Japan, 'white sauce' is available in cans. I don't know why other countries don't have canned bechamel, since t's so useful.

Japanese basics: the essence of Japanese flavor, in a bottle

maki — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:56:25 +0200

I’ve got an amazing bottle in my refrigerator now. It’s filled with a mixture that forms the base for just about any sort of Japanese food. It takes all the drudgery out of making a clear soup, or a Japanese style stew, or the dipping sauce for noodles. I can’t live without it anymore.

No this is not some amazing new product. It’s just a simple mixture that can be made in about 20 minutes, but it really is a great “essence of Japanese flavor”. It was in a Japanese magazine my mother brought for me last month. If you like Japanese food, you might want to make a bottle of this too. It will keep for up to three months in a closed container in the refrigerator.

It is simplicity itself to make, but some of the ingredients may be unfamiliar to you. You can get them all at a Japanese food shop.

Soy sauce. You will need regular dark soy sauce for this.
Mirin. This is labeled as “sweet rice wine” or “fortified rice wine”. It’s used strictly for cooking.
Sake. Again, you don’t need an expensive bottle, but do get one you won’t mind drinking.
Dried Bonito flakes (katsuobushi) - this can be a bit expensive, but is really essential. Be sure to keep it stored in an air-tight container. Mine is stocked in the freezer.
Dried konbu seaweed. This comes in big sheets. Cut up the sheets with some scissors into about 10 cm / 3 inch lengths for ease of use. (Don’t confuse this with dried wakame seaweed, which is quite different.)

To make the essence, combine 1 1/2 cups of soy sauce, 1 cup of mirin, 1 1/2 cups of sake, about 3 pieces of konbu, and a huge handful of the bonito flakes in a pan. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer it gently until the liquid is reduced to about 2/3rds. Let it cool, then strain through a fine sieve and store in a jar or bottle in the refrigerator.

That’s all there is to it! You can use this as a sauce for vegetables, or tofu, or meat…add a bit of sugar to make it a teriyaki sauce…add water or basic Japanese stock to make a dipping sauce for cold noodles (soba or udon, etc)…add hot stock or water to make a soup for hot noodles…add some lemon juice or rice vinegar plus oil to make a Japanese style salad dressing….and on and on. It really is great stuff!

Example: to make chicken (or pork, or beef..) teriyaki, saute a piece of boneless chicken (either breast or thigh) until browned on both sides. Add the essence and optionally a little sugar, and cook on high until the essence has been reduced to a dark, rather sticky sauce. Delicious!

Wild garlic pesto

maki — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 18:53:00 +0200

I've mentioned our local organic farm where we buy our eggs several times before. They also sometimes sell some locally produced food items. We spotted this wild garlic, or bärlauch pesto the other day and had to try it. (Ironically it turns out it's made by one of our neighbors who lives across the street.)

Wild garlic grows in some forests, and it's said that cows love it so much that they break away from the herd to make their way into the forest and munch on this spring delicacy. People even claim that the butter sold in spring has a faint garlicky flavor because of this. I've never been able to detect that...but maybe I'm not buying the right brand of butter.

Anyway, this pesto was quite assertively redolent of garlic, with some onion-like flavor too. It's sort of like a cross between chives and Chinese garlic, or nira. Besides the wild garlic, it had olive oil and ground pine nuts and almonds in it. I had it on hot pasta with some grated cheese (Spanish Manchego, since that's all that was in the refrigerator), and it was quite delicious.

I'm not sure we have wild garlic in the woods around here, but I may try to emulate this pesto with the chives growing in the garden.

Basics: tomato sauce

maki — Sun, 11 Jan 2004 01:06:13 +0100

I've been posting some of the basic building blocks of Japanese cooking, and I thought I would add some other basics too. While I like to experiment with a new recipes sometimes, for everyday cooking this isn't too practical. So I rely on a few basic recipes that I have more or less memorized, and vary them to produce different results.

This tomato sauce is one of them. It's very easy, and can be frozen if you make it in bulk. It's best made with fresh tomato pulp from really ripe tomatoes in the summer, but can be made with half tomato pulp and half canned crushed tomatoes, or just canned tomatoes. I don't add any spices or herbs to the basic sauce - these can always be added later.

To skin tomatoes, dunk them for 30 seconds in a pot of boiling water. To de-seed them, cut in half and squeeze each half so the seeds pop out. You can be tidy and chop up the tomato pulp with a knife or in the food processor, or - just smoosh them up with your hands.

Basic tomato sauce

1 large can of crushed tomatoes, or about 4 cups of peeled, seeded tomato pulp, or a mix of half fresh tomatoes and half canned
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 bay leaf
Olive oil for cooking
Salt to taste

Sauté the onion in the olive oil until golden. Add the garlic and sauté a bit more. Add the tomato and the bay leaf. Let simmer for about 30 minutes. You can add other flavorings and herbs such as thyme, oregano, saffron etc. but I prefer to keep it fairly plain and add herbs later as needed. This produces a fairly thick tomato sauce that is great over plain pasta or as a pizza topping. It can also form the basis for many other sauces.