Homemade Condiments

May 28, 2010

Why, you ask? Why not, the fat man smarmily retorts (or is it "smarmishly"? Perhaps "the smarmy, fat man"...yeah, that's what I am.)

We ran out of ketchup. That most basic of Reagan-era vegetables that our kids are once again permitted to consume now that we've found one without high fructose corn cyanide.

It shouldn't be a family crisis, but we have three children. Those of you who were also stupid enough to venture beyond the recommended 1.6 children know what this means -- one of them must be a fuss pot. In our case, it's the middle girl
and, in her case, she's a giant fuss pot. She orders her food in restaurants as "clean" (i.e., without sauces or garnishes of any kind). She likes blueberries and she likes pancakes but she won't even consider blueberry pancakes. The piece of resistance -- she's a girl and she despises chocolate. This is a foreign to me as the infield at a Nascar event.

Knowing all of this background, my wife is furious that I would go shopping and miss replenishing such a basic staple.

"I'm sorry, I forgot"

"You remembered to BREATHE didn't you? You can remember THAT! Selfish."

I'm in it deep. As in a pit. Hopping in the car and running to Kings (as in "priced to sell to royalty") doesn't get me out of this hole and more affordable Shop Rite is 7 miles each way. I'm seconds away from getting the hose again, even if I DO rub the lotion on my skin.
Creativity is my only salvation. I've already been making our own mayonnaise with great success (except that it's awfully tempting while it's in there -- my new blog handle might be Mr. Creosote), so why not ketchup?

The proper way to do this is to simmer and puree fresh tomatoes, but this requires time. I claim that the real Jersey tomatoes (Ramapos or Rutgers) with the acidity/sugar ratio at 0.3%/3% or better are not available now, so I'll use cans of tomato paste from the pantry. This is, of course, laziness in a bullshit wrapper, but Contadina it is.

So What of Ketchup?

Ketchup (from the Malay word kecap) started as a fish sauce. In fact, we wouldn't even recognize it. It would've been dark, much more savory and have no hint of sweetness (the typical sugar/vinegar balance we have come to think of as central to ketchup didn't evolve until the 19th century). Original ancestors of our beloved red thickness would have been made with mushrooms and walnuts. In our country's culinary calamity, however, it would become overly sweet and loaded with chemicals. It caused Hal Boyle, a war correspondent, to write in 1951, "This country is held together by a democratic constitution and a cement paste called ketchup."

Some weird facts about ketchup:

• Nixon put it on cottage cheese (and we elected this guy president twice?!? Sheesh!)
• Ketchup was proscribed as medicine in the 1830s
• Heinz produced dyed ketchups in the early 'naughts, in such unappetizing hues as green, blue and purple. Predictably, and to the chagrin of the producers of carcinogen Blue Dye #83, it was pulled from the market after a brief, colorful stint.
  
• The Republicans were so worried about John Kerry's connection to Heinz ketchup that they launched their own brand called "W Ketchup". You can't make this sh#@ up.
• In the chariot race scene in Ben Hur, a small red car is visible in the background.*

The Recipe:

4 cans Tomato Paste

1 Tbsp Onion Powder

1 Tbsp Garlic Powder

1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon

1/4 Tsp Ground Allspice

1/4 Tsp Ground Cloves

1 Tsp Celery Seeds

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup Red Wine Vinegar

Salt to taste

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate over night. Correct seasonings, serve and accept compliments.

Mayonnaise

Nouvelle cuisine was supposed to be the death knell for white sauces like mayo. Henri Gault and Christian Millau wrote the Ten Commandments of Nouvelle Cuisine in 1976. Number 7? "Thou shalt eliminate white and brown sauces". But mayonnaise has the benefit of being absolutely delicious on its own and the basis for hundreds of other sauces (aioli, remoulade,sauce verde, rouille, anyone?) I may be part Belgian as I prefer my fries dipped in mayo to ketchup (and, yes, I am never more than 5 miles from a cardiologist).

Mayonnaise Trivia:

• Jennifer Aniston's favorite meal is mayonnaise on white bread. No wonder she's permanently single.
• In Japan, a pizza topping of squid, bacon, potatoes and mayonnaise is very popular.
• Mayonnaise is the only effective way to get crayon marks off wood furniture.
• The spelling 'mayonnaise' is the result of a printing error in an 1841 cookbook (the original name was 'mahonnaise'.
• No one knows the true origin of mayonnaise
• It is the oldest of the five "mother" sauces in French cooking (along with bechamel)

Once you've had homemade mayonnaise, however, you will shun the jarred stuff.

The Recipe:

2 Egg Yolks

1 Tbsp Dijon Mustard

1 3/4 Cups Soybean Oil

1 Tbsp White Wine Vinegar

Salt and Pepper to taste

Whisk yolks together with mustard, salt and pepper.

Whisk in a droplet or two at a time until you've blended in 1/2 cup of the oil.

Drizzle (slowly) the remaining 1 1/4 cups of oil, whisking constantly.

After all oil has been absorbed, whisk in vinegar.

The Keys:

• Patience: it can take as long as 2o minutes to make two cups of mayo
• Strong wrists: Master of My Domain jokes, anyone?
• Room Temperature: bring all ingredients to room temp before starting

So a couple of things will happen when you switch to homemade condiments. First, you'll be shunned by society. Accept this price. You're reading this blog, so you're already a little off-center. Reactions to our homemade ketchup have ranged from "he has too much time on his hands" to "who does that?!?" Get them to eat it, however, and you'll get a little feeling that must've been what motivated people like Bocuse and Beard and Brillat-Savarin. Second, you'll become a snob about the most casual of foods. Embrace it. No one likes a snob, but everyone likes being a snob.

Memorial Day rolls around and I wanted to bring something different, in addition to the de rigueur bottle of wine. We bring the mayo and the ketchup to Chris and Tara's house. Chris' dad is in the "time" criticism camp, but he does enjoy the condiments as everyone seems to. Mission accomplished. Except:

...I still wind up losing and Little Fuss Pot still winds up teary-eyed. When she realizes I've given the homemade ketchup to our friends, she weeps "My ketchup! Gone, as mysteriously as it came."

* - True, this has nothing to do with condiments. But I stumbled across this stupid fact while researching this post and the next time I watch Ben Hur, I will be completely distracted looking for the red car. Now you will, too.

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Pratique de Base -- Lessons 5 and 6

Lesson 5 -- April 4-5, 2010

We get off to a bad start because I break a fundamental rule: never send anyone shopping for you. Donna hits a wall quickly as Kings has no whiting or trout (see Cassoulet de Poissons below). I give her several alternative suggestions and the guy working the counter tells her "you know there's a big difference between tilapia and whiting, right?" She'd better love this dish.

Summer Harvest Salad -- Artichokes! I now know why I should have considered myself lucky in avoiding working with them for all these years. This is a mean-ass plant! The spikes on the end of these leaves defend themselves to the last (in clean-up the next morning, I am stabbed again from hell's heart by an artichoke burr hiding on the floor). But my wife loves them. It garnered me nothing (save the gratitude of an aging but still cute woman and half a dozen holes in my hands) but it was tasty. The big improvement here is in my mayonnaise-making skill. I've been working this concoction for years, but for some reason became hooked on blender mayo. This time, attempting to be faithful to the book, I go back to hand-made. Wow, it's clearly better! And my track record of blender mayo, no disrespect to my wonderous Cuisinart high capacity pureeinator, is 50-50. Half of the attempts separated. I do the whisk-work and am reminded that I can do this successfully 100% of the time. Now, it's wrist-breaking work, but as someone who has been working his right hand on a steady regimen since age 13, I am up to the task (sorry for the reference in the middle of a mayo discussion).
Fish and Bean Stew -- I substitute black-eyed peas for great northern white beans. A deft use of a pantry item, but a mistake as these beans shed and break up under heavy cooking. As the tilapia also breaks up, I wind up with some sludge. Very tasty, though. Deidre likes it. Andre loves it. LFP was a no-show. We get lots of leftovers and I freeze four portions (an update will come after the thaw).

Sponge Cake with Creme Anglaise -- I am keeping my commitment to dessert. It keeps the Fuss Pots engaged with my cooking exploits, if not bought into every production. This one goes over like a sister-kiss
Time: 4 hours Complexity: 10 (of 10) Cost: $76.59 Mess: 9


Lesson 6


Onion Tart -- delicious, and a double winner. The first win is that four of the five of us love it. The second: my wife is now convinced that our friend, who recently made a similar dish, used a store-bought crust. It's a rare feat to get a victory from a couple of jagged, overbaked edges. This keeps nicely in the fridge and would be a good choice for Donna's future luncheon meetings where she needs food she pretended to make for her fellow charity moms and board members. The crust was slightly overworked.



Mussels with Wine and Cream Sauce -- deferred.


Vanilla Bavarian Cream with Coulis -- (substituted blueberries we have in the freezer for raspberries called for in the book). This came out perfectly. I used a small spring pan and got a beautiful looking, delicate tasting dessert. Even LFP loves this one, though my attempts to get her to mix in blueberries (which she loves separately) fail. Some future therapist is going to have a yacht from the fees this kid will have to pay.


Time: 3 hours Complexity: 5 (of 10) Cost: $40 Mess: 6

Pratique de Base -- Lessons 3 and 4

Lesson 3

Gratin of Hard-Boiled Eggs -- one of the oldest recipes known in France (cookbook claims there are copies from the 17th century), this is simple and elegant. The problem is that my family has preconceived notions about eggs -- what they should look like, when to eat them, etc. Their closed minds meant my intake went up (along with my cholesterol). Delicious, but not even The Boy liked them.
Poached Swordfish with Pearl Onions and Mushrooms -- A variation on the veal chop recipe (my concession to Donna's insistence that we limit meat intake). This is delicious! BFP pushed aside the pearl onions, but loved the 'shrooms and fish. Donna and Andre loved the whole thing. It was fabulous. LFP was a no-show.
Time: 3.5 hours Complexity: 6 (of 10) Cost: $76.59* Mess: 7**

Lesson 4

Smoked Salmon Crepes -- Wow! A big winner all the way around. Macerating the salmon (soaking in milk for 2 hours) made it really tender and less "fishy". Disclaimer: I am intensely annoyed by the non-specific complaint "it's too fishy". When's the last time someone complained that a t-bone was "too meaty". It's a stupid comment that should die a quick and unhonored death. However, this maceration method will help certain people with the designation FP (Fuss Pot) transition into more fish consumption. LFP ate the plain (but homemade and nicely prepared) crepes. For the rest, it cut like a sushi roll. A big winner that should be repeated. Leftovers were (nearly) equally good. Update: Deidre has made this dish the buzz of Mendham Township Elementary School, Grade 3. Julia Neihoff tells Deidre: "I hate salmon, but I want to try it!" Confidence is low.

Roast Leg of Lamb -- Another bastardized recipe (hey, no one in France is actually reading this -- which reminds me: Deidre, Alaina and their friend Grace Shin call me "Uncle Fritz" for reasons which escape/do not interest me. Andre looks at me and says "Hi, Uncle France!" Ok, I'm Uncle France.) I used a yogurt marinade (Donna gets an endorphin rush when I use already purchased ingredients from the 'fridge), including thyme, oregano, garlic, marjoram, lemon juice and sliced onions. Will definitely do this again, but four hours was not enough -- this is what will now be referred to as a Spitzer -- it's an overnighter. Convection roasted it for about 50 minutes (6 lb. leg) and it came very rare.

Swiss Chard Gratin -- Another surprise winner! First time cooking chard -- it's expensive (about $8 for two servings for the family). Difficult to work with the white part (it's stringy and needs to cook a while) but the greens, after blanching, baked up deliciously. I screwed up by layering too much gruyere cheese (12 ounces, grated) thinking that would be a selling camouflage for the kids. Turns out they would've been fine with half that much. Good for leftovers.

Chocolate Mousse with Hazelnuts and Whisky -- (substituted for Pineapple Sorbet, as I find non-machine-made ice creams and sorbets to be slushy ice baths...the kids enjoyed fresh cut pineapple much more than they would have liked the sorbet). I need to work on this one -- sugar did not dissolve properly. I skipped the hazelnuts (forgot to buy them) and that would have covered up the crunchy granules of sugar. Kids were ok w/it, but it wasn't ready for a more sophistimacated palate. Oh, and I was out of whisky, so I used dark rum instead. It was a good substitute.
Time: 3 hours Complexity: 5 (of 10) Cost: $62.65 Mess: 7*

*- Why do roast pans with drippings drive Donna crazy? And what possesses me to leave them crusting on the counter until the next day...every time?!?

Non-Lesson Meal

Grilled Swordfish (marinated in soy sauce, garlic, ginger, sesame oil and olive oil) -- wonderful! 5 minutes/side undercooked the fish...needed about 7 minutes/side to do the trick on the giant Weber grill.

Hamburgers -- again, a freezer leftover item that just sent Donna into happyland that we used it. I could smell the estrogen from across the room (but it resulted in nothing as I ruined the romantic mood by making her watch Hurt Locker...big Pollack dummy).
First day this year we were able to eat outside. Deidre and I had planned an April Fools joke to play on Donna (telling her I was taking a job in Taipei and she should start learning to speak Mandarin now...Deidre was ready to say "wo bu mingbai" -- I don't understand...Donna's key foreign language phrase) but we didn't get it done. I substituted with a trick on Deidre -- she cut her toe and I put a giant bandage on it, covered it with a plastic bag and told her she had to hold it up in the air all night. I even offered to get rope and tie it to the ceiling light in their room to help. She fell for it, but said afterward she was humiliated. She has such a good heart, she can't believe anyone would ever lie to her. I am a bad person.

Pratique de Base

Pratique de Base?!? Sounds like something I should've done as a kid if I wanted steady work in bar bands.

Lesson 1

• Cucumber Salad with Mint -- this is the hit of the meal! Surprisingly, the whole family enjoys this simple dish. The only planning required is salting and draining the cucumbers. Fresh mint allows my "anti-mint" wife to enjoy the dish without her ingredient affectation rearing its ugly head (stereotype alert: this appears to be a very Italian trait -- see Thrifty Fifty post on garlic and cilantro).
• Roast Chicken -- I've gotten very comfortable with roasts over the last decade. Three keys to success here: 1) know your oven. Too many people assume "425F for 12 minutes/pound" is a universal directive. That's like saying "buy her a drink and tell her she's got a nice a*@" to get lucky. Ovens, their installation/insulation and the size/shape of the items you put in them introduce variations that inevitably lead to overcooked food. Get an oven thermometer, a meat thermometer and practice. 2) Don't rely on {in pompous PBS-produced cooking show voice} "when the fleshiest part of the poultry reads 170F, it is done". Yup. In fact, it was done half an hour ago and will be at a gravy-evaporating 185F by the time people eat it. Get accustomed to pulling roasts out early and testing. Think of it as desirable premature ecookulation. When a chicken is at 160F, it will cook through on the counter while the juices return to the meat. 3) Brine. Briny briny brine. OK, Le Cordon Bleu doesn't call for brining chicken. Screw them. Brine the bitch. It is easy, doesn't cost much and only requires a little advanced planning (in this case, a 6-pound Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster required only 4 hours in the salt bath).
• Spring Peas with Lettuce, Chervil and Onions -- ok, just because it's 39F outside and raining, we're pretending it's spring vegetable time. Again, this went over surprisingly well, though LFP and BFP (Little Fuss Pot, aka Alaina and Big Fuss Pot, aka Deidre) pushed the pearl onions aside. And that after I painstakingly peeled 3 dozens of the little bastards...the onions, not the fuss pots.

Time: 2.5 hours Complexity: 3 (of 10) Cost: $37.28 Mess: 3

Lesson 2

• Country-Style Vegetable Soup with Noodles -- wow! First time I'm cooking with cabbage
  as a main ingredient and realizing I've misunderstood this smelly beauty all these years (feel this way about several women I know as well). Thinly sliced, blanched, sauteed then boiled with the homemade stock, this stuff comes sweet and tender. Even the fuss pots (save FP extraordinaire, Alaina) love it! Used Contadina dried vermicelli to put in the soup (half a pound) but should have cut it in fourths instead of in half. Lots of tableside mess while we tried to cut down the brothy pasta into some size that was manageable.
• Veal Scallops with Apples and Calvados -- the baked apples (used golden delicious) was a big hit. Will think about making desserts around this aromatic, simple dish in the future. Everyone loves the veal (even Donna "Eat Right for Your Aging Blood Type" Thompson). Of course, as with so many things, we have to call it "steak" to get the kids to eat it. I think when we take them to the dentist, we'll call it "lunch at Morton's" in the future. Had trouble finding calvados in the liquor store, but it's a nice addition. Thought I'd thrill the kids by flaming it on the stove and Deidre screamed bloody murder (dragging the other two down with her). I grumbled something stupid about never doing anything fun for them again (why didn't they think of me potentially burning the house down as fun?!?) and got on with the meal.
• Caramel Custard -- this is a clear attempt to move outside my comfort zone (yes, I bring tired business cliches to the kitchen -- get used to it...I'm several months away from a diet and exercise regimen that will be called "rightsizing"). I typically don't do dessert. When guests come and insist on bringing something, I feign "just bring an appetite" before I tell them to bring a dessert. The problem is, with time constraints, health crazes and general American laziness, everyone goes to the store to buy dessert (and not even a bakery these days, people go to Kings for dessert -- yes, I'm aware they make desserts on the premises, but my snobbery forces me to look down on this practice). The Custard goes exceedingly well. I have used a bain marie before, so I'm ok with this (even though I am criticized for not using the hot water feature on our Poland Spring water dispenser -- I am so appalled at this hypocrisy in my tree-hugging approach to life that I pretend it's not there...except when I need a cold drink of water, of course...in which case I grumble something about my wife forcing me to do this and I chug it down). I use my creme brulee dishes -- first time they've had a dessert in them, even though they were purchased during a Chef Central splurge about 6 years ago -- which gets me a snide "'bout time" from the Unnecessary Expense Police. I make one without caramel for LFP, but she still doesn't bite. BFP puts up an argument about caramel until I show her what it is (sugar and water). In my fustication with BFP, I let the caramel cool too long in the pan and make stained glass
  instead of caramel. I have to reheat the image of the Virgin Mary that I've created and get it into the dishes. This is a serious imposition on my blustering (an important part of cooking), but I get the dish right. Delicious! I'm back in the dessert game.

Time: 3.5 hours Complexity: 6 (of 10) Cost: $71.15* Mess: 7**

*-The creme brulee dishes killed me here -- a full cycle through the dishwasher, then hand-washed, 2 minutes/dish.

**-Though there are no veal or custard leftovers, we have two full soup meals and stock chicken left over, so -- veal costs aside -- this is not as expensive as it first appears.