A while back I pontificated on broth. Today, because I want to, is the day for pontificating on roux (pronounced ‘roo’). It’s one of those foundation things that if you know how to make it, you cn make all sorts of things from it, like sausage gravy to go on your biscuits, or a cream-of-something soup, or macaroni and cheese not from a box…anything that wants some thickening, nearly. Mom taught me how to make roux when I was 9 or 10, and it took a bit to get it right, but the ingredients are so simple, if you mess up a batch generally you can do it again without much cost or anxiety.
Here’s a basic recipe, it makes enough to thicken a pot full of cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese, or make cream-of-something soup for 6, or a nice pan of milk gravy.
1/4 cup of oil (or 1/2 a stick of butter. for cream of X soup I use vegetable oil, for milk gravy or mac n chz I prefer butter)
1/4 cup flour
That’s it.
Melt the butter (or heat the oil) and stir in the flour with a whisk. Stirring constantly, over medium-low heat, combine the oil and flour to make a paste, and keep stirring until the flour starts to brown and smell toasty.
Now, if you’re making something like gumbo, the rule is to have the roux the color of an old penny, dark brown. For milk gravy and cream soups, not so dark. Not even brown really, just cook it long enough to start to toast the flour around the edges ot the pot. Stir it constantly so you don’t get bits darker than other bits.
in my experience, the darker the roux, the less it thickens whatever it is you’re trying to thicken.
No, so you can go out and try this, I’m putting up a recipe for macaroni and cheese. It’s almost as easy as making the stuff from the box, and way tastier.
pasta and cheese
1 pound of pasta, cooked (I like shells because they act like cups and grab the sauce)
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
Make a roux as described above, in a medium sized pot. Then add
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon (or more, to taste) salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper (or more to taste)
Stir it all up real good. Then add
1-1/2 cups milk
Stir until it thickens.* If you are uncomfortable with how thick it is, add a bit more milk, a tablespoon at a time. Then add
2 generous handsful (I’m guessing about 2 cups) of shredded co-jack cheese. Throw in some sharp cheddar if you want a sharper flavor, or not..depending on your preference.
Stir until the cheese is melted. Taste for seasoning and adjust as you please. If it seems too thick, you can add a bit of milk.
Mix the sauce in with the hot cooked pasta. Pour into a well greased casserole dish and top with buttered bread crumbs (I save leftover garlic toast in the freezer, and make it into crumbs for topping stuff like this). Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, until it’s bubbly and smells good.
*at this point you have milk gravy.You’ll probably want 2to 2-1/2 cups of milk here. You can add crumbled cooked sausage to serve on biscuits, if you want to make someone happy for brunch.
From The New James Beard: ” The daubes, or wine flavored stews, of Provence derive their matchless flavor from long, slow cooking, traditionally in a daubiere…” He also said “Sometimes the meat was left in one piece, sometimes it was cut up, but invariably it was marinated or cooked in wine, without browning.”
The process started yesterday with the marinade described in yesterday’s post but I’m puttin’ it here too.
marinade ingredients
From the cookbook, with my comments in parenthesis:
Daube Nicoise (probably should feed 6 but in reality fed 4 with leftovers for 1)
Rub 3 pounds beef shin or chuck (I used chuck) and 2 pigs feet (I used 4 halves) with coarse salt. (I didn’t do this step because I have to watch the salt intake). Combine 6 cloves garlic; 1 sliced onion;a pinch each rosemary, thyme, and basil (I used a 2 inch sprig of fresh rosemary, 4 basil leaves, and 3-2 inch stems of thyme);6 peppercorns; and 1 bottle of red wine (cheap merlot) in a pan, bring to a boil and cook 10 minutes. Cool slightly (well, ok, completely…it was a couple of hours before I got to it); pour over meat and let stand 12 to 24 hours in refrigerator.
Put meat and mainade in a heavy braising pan (cast iron dutch oven. I think a crock pot would work nicely)bring slowly to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer very gently over lowest possible heat or in a 275 degree oven for 3-1/2 hours, or until almost tender. Add 3 or 4 ripe (5 romas) tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped (I didn’t bother peeling them, as I think it’s a pain in the butt. Seed them by cutting off the top and squeezing the guts into a bowl) or 2 cups canned Italian plum tomatoes (this is NOT the seasoned Italian Style tomatoes! I think you could use a big can of diced tomatoes), drained and chopped, and cook 45 minutes.
Remove meat and slice thick. Skim excess fat from sauce, remove meat from pigs feet (what meat? I got like a teaspoon of meat off the 4 splits…too much effort in my opinion, but if you have meaty feet go ahead) and add to sauce. Replace sliced meat and cook 15 minutes, add 1 cup pitted soft black olives (1 can of medium black olives) and 1/2 cup chopped parsley. Taste and correct seasoning.
Ok, This was really delicious. The porky flavor from the pigs feet added a something extra beyond the ordinary wine-soaked pot roast. The seasoning was just right- not too much basil or rosemary, nor too little garlic…well balanced, I thought. I would, however, add some fresh ground black pepper at the end, but that can be done at the table.
He recommends serving it with pasta, which is what I did- a whole wheat raddiatore (radiatorre?), because it seemed like a hearty pasta was needed to go with the meat and sauce, and the raddiatore (radiatorre?) shape is excellent for grabbing bits and soaking up the thin sauce. The Thundering Herd enjoyed it and there wasn’t much left over. Next time, tho, rolls will be involved. The sauce kinda begs to be sopped up with a crusty french roll or maybe sliced baguette.
The whole process, from making the marinade yesterday to the slow cooking today, was wonderfully fragrant. You could smell the individual herbs and the meaty, garlicy goodness kind of ticked the nose of the people coming in the back door. “mom, I could smell it as soon as I stepped out o the car” said Will.
Tomorrow I’m fixing Mr. Beard’s recipe for Daube Nicoiu nicious neeeSHWAAA, which is essentially a neeeSHWAAA style pot roast, but it starts today with the preparation of the marinade, and now the house smells like some fantastic herby winery because the marinade is this:
1 bottle of red wine
6 cloves garlic
1 yellow onion, sliced
sprigs of fresh basil, rosemary and thyme
6 black peppercorns
All in a pot, brought to a boil then simmered 10 minutes and let cool.
and this is what the house smells like.
Later today it will get poured over a 3 pound chuck roast and 2 split pigs feet that have been rubbed with kosher salt, and it will all marinate in the fridge until around 2:30 tomorrow.
Until then tho, the house smells goooooooooood.
*edited to add:
it’s Nicoise only there’s a little hoopdy under the c which I don’t know how to make the computer do it. I am sure someone more sophisticated than I am can do it but there we are.
We had friends over for supper last night. They moved here from Chicago and it was my opinion that they needed a good Southern Feast with real honest-to-goodness Southern Fried Chicken. James Beard’s recipe is almost exactly how my mother-in-law makes it, and you don’t get more Southern than her. The only difference is that he prefers it to be fried in lard.
I don’t know how you feel about frying in lard, but as I put the lard bucket in the grocery buggy, all those alarm bells installed by years of indoctrination by health teachers and Government Warnings were banging around in my head, saying that we’d all surely drop dead within an hour of eating. Then reason prevailed, my 98 year old grandmother and Terry’s 101 year old great grandmother didn’t have vegetable shortening…and fried everything in lard, used it in biscuits, all that. And they’d both outlived most of their doctors. My grandmother was recently warned that she needed to cut back on the bacon and eggs for breakfast or she might not make it to 100. She had no comment. Anyway, back to the chicken. Oh, lard: all things in moderation. ’nuff said.
James Beard’s Southern Fried Chicken (my comments in parenthesis)
1 to 1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
(1 teaspoon garlic powder. I am constitutionally incapable of cooking chicken without garlic)
Two 2-1/2 to 3 pound frying chickens, cut into 4 drumsticks, 4 thighs, 4 breast halves (sever the wings if you wish), 2 backs and 2 necks
Lard for frying (I bought a 3 pound bucket and used about 3/4 of it)
Mix the flour and seasoning in a (gallon) plastic bag, add the chicken pieces (4 at a time) and shake well, then remove and rub in the flour so the chicken is well coated. Let the pieces stand on a board for 30 (or 45, or a bit longer) minutes before frying.
floured and resting
In 2 large heavy skillets (a cast iron dutch oven, because I was only cooking legs and thighs) melt enough lard to come 1-1/2 inches up in the pan. When hot (stick a wooden spoon in the fat, when small bubbles come out of it, it’s hot)fit the chicken pieces without crowding (a 9 inch pan will hold 5 drumsticks or 4 thighs) or you won’t get an even color. Start the pan of white meat 5 minutes after the dark. Add necks and backs to the pan of white meat after 5 minutes. Cook at a rather high heat, being careful the flour doesn’t burn, until brown on one side. Lift frequently with tongs tocheck browning. Turn and brown other side, then reduce the heat (just a little!!) to cook the chicken more slowly, and keept turning. You don’t want the chicken to stew in the fat but to cook to a delicious crispness. Total cooking time according to how you like you meat done, is 20 to 25 minutes for dark meat, 15 to 20 minutes for white meat, and 10 to 15 minutes for necks and backs. gauge your timing carefully. (I cooked the meat for 15 minutes with the lid on the dutch oven, then turned, and put the lid back on for about 8 minutes, then cooked without the lid for 2 minutes).
Yum
Remove the chicken to paper towels to drain briefly, then arrange on a hot platter with watercress. If you want to eat the chicken cold, cover with paper towels to absorb surplus fat, and don’t refrigerate, if possible, as fried chicken tastes better tepid or close to room temperature.
That’s his recipe. Here’s what I did:
I bought drumsticks and thighs, to make about 35 pieces. Since I couldn’t cook them all at one time, after they cooked, they were put on a roasting rack over a pan and into a 200 degree oven to drain and keep warm.
In this house, fried chicken is served with a bottle of hot sauce (Texas Pete’s, Louisiana, or Tabasco)
Now, commentary about frying with lard. Yes, it’s a little scary at first. One thing I noticed is that the chicken seemed to soak up far less of the lard than it would have soaked up of vegetable shortening or oil. In times past, large batches of chicken would have required refilling the pan a time or two with more oil, but that wasn’t necessary with the lard. The chicken browned more evenly and was juicier than when fried in shortening. Strangely, it seemed to stay hot longer as well.
The chicken was aggressively monitored by the Household Quality Control Officers, who announced that it was better than any made in the past. Initially, Officer CJ was dubious about the breading, opining that battered is better than just flour, but his opinion changed with the first sampling. This is a case of simpler being better.
Filed under: James Beard Project
from James Beard
Southern fried chicken and roasted pepper slaw (tonight!)
Daube Nicoise (I don’t know how to make the n with the little whoopy under it)(kind of a fancy-pants pot roast)
homemade pasta with raisin and pine nut sauce
Les Oeuf a la Tripe (hard boiled eggs in onion sauce)
I am finding the easy recipes first, getting the proverbial feet wet.
“I usualy like to bring out the pure, natural taste of a vegetable, and that is best done by adding one other simple flavor for contrast, like an aromatic herb, or a speckling of nuts, or a squirt of lemon juice.” James Beard
Now, this is a philosophy I can get ahold of. There are only a few ‘complicated’ vegetable recipes I like, and even those are pretty basic. When Terry and I were first marred, he worked in a produce department at the grocery store near our apartment. The manager would let him bring home the ‘ugly’ vegs that couldn’t be put out, but weren’t actually spoiled. A couple of times a week we would have Vegetables for supper. Steamed cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, green beans,drizzled with olive oil and some salt, sliced tomatoes with a sprinkling of oil and vinegar, maybe a dip…all tasty and FREE. Awesome, no?
nowadays, I still like a simple vegetable. Tossed baby greens from the garden with some garlic infused olive oil and rice vinegar, crisp snow peas in a bowl, that I sort of waved in the general direction of some hot water. I could eat those like popcorn. Chilled cucumbers sprinkled with fresh chopped dill. A perfectly ripe tomato…now that’s straight from the mind of God.
He has many suggestions for vegetable pairings that I am anxious to try:
Baked beets with onion and orange
Sauteed cucumbers with snow peas
Baked stuffed Greek tomatoes
Spiced winter squash with pecans and ginger
and maybe a couple hundred more.
Tomorrow night I am cooking for some friends, and will make his roasted red pepper slaw. (among other things including summer squash casserole which is not his recipe, but will go with the whole fresh summer garden vibe of the meal)
Fresh Summer Squash Casserole
4 or 5 medium sized summer squash (yellow crookneck, pattypan, both are good) sliced thin
1 large vidalia onion, sliced thin
Steam the squash and onion together, then drain and squeeze out the excess water by dumping them into a kitchen towel and wring it over the sink.
Mix together:
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano (or 1/2 tsp dried)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup crushed Ritz crackers+ 1/2 cup set aside (just crush up a whole sleeve and set some aside)
Mix the squash and onions in with the sour cream stuff and pour into a greased casserole dish.
Mix together the reserved 1/2 cup of cracker crumbs with 1 cup grated cheddar cheese (I like sharp, but whatever you like) and put on top of the stuff.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes or so, until it’s bubbly and the cheesy crumbs are nice and brown.
Filed under: afterthoughts
ok…the roasted chicken was just a roasted chicken. It’s the gravy that made it, and the whiskey flame bit. You could taste it on the chicken skin. The skin itself was slightly disappointing. I dearly love a really crispy skin, and pouring the booze over it, even when it was flamed, seemed to soften it up a little. However, the flavor of the whiskey was really good with the tarragon and butter.
The gravy, however…it was (in the words of young men) “Pretty epic, Mom.”
Mr. Beard recommends serving the chicken with new potatoes. However, I made wehani rice cooked in the same chicken broth used to baste the birds and make the gravy. With the rich flavors in the gravy, the nuttiness of the rice was wonderful.
Now, it was ALOT of work, but that was in large part because I made the Quick Brown Gravy as well as everything else. So, I am thinking the thing to do is make up a big ol’ batch of the brown gravy and freeze it, to have on hand just like the stock. It’s in several of his recipes, and won’t go unused.
I realize I kind of improvised all over the place, using ham stock instead of beef, and beef base, etc, but the results were really tasty. Since it’s not Bean Soup season right now, and there’s a gallon of ham stock in the freezer, I’ll just keep doing it that way. After all, he did say ““My emphasis is on options, my motto is ‘why not?’ and my hope is to provide you with inspiration as well as practical guidance”
The entire meal was thus:
Roasted chicken with “Pretty Epic” gravy
wehani rice cooked in chicken stock
lettuce and parsley salad dressed with garlic oil and rice vinegar
I figured on complicated dish in a meal is enough. The simplicity of the salad and rice complemented the chicken nicely, without competing.
ok…yum y’all. I made 2 because the 3 older boys came for dinner, but the recipe is written for one. I doubled most everything.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
4 pound chicken
1/4 pound softened unsalted butter
2 tablespoons dried tarragon
Rub the chicken all over with the butter and dried tarragon. Rub the inside of the chicken with some butter and a bit more tarragon. Set on the rack of a roasting pan.
rubbed all over with butter and tarragon
Roast at 425 degrees until a thermometer stuck in the thigh reads 160 degrees (about an hour). Baste it as it roasts with 1/3 cup melted butter and 1/2 cup chicken broth (I use homemade).
Set the chicken onto a platter, and pour the juices from the roasting pan into a small pot. Then put the chicken back into the roasting pan.
Warm 1/3 cup whiskey in a small pan (do not boil!)
Pour the warmed whiskey over the chicken, and light with a match. Stand back, and wait for the flames to subside.
mind the eyebrows, y'all
Cut up the chicken and pour the whiskey juices into the pot with the ones from the roasting pan.
Make a sauce by combining the pan juices with 1 cup of Quick Brown Sauce (recipe follows) and additional tarragon to taste.
Stand back as the heathens make short work of it.
and just like that, it's gone.
Quick Brown Sauce
Ok, this is a modified version of his recipe. I didn’t have ham, but did have ham broth. I didn’t have beef broth, but did have beef base, so I put the beef base in the ham broth instead of browning the ham and using beef broth. Clear as mud? Good. Anyway, this is HIS recipe, with my alterations in parenthesis.
1 slice ham 1/2 inch thick with fat removed and diced (didn’t have any ham)
2 onions, sliced (used 1 big vidalia)
2 carrots, sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 quart beef stock (I used 1 quart ham stock and 1 teaspoon beef base)
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 large ripe tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped
salt, freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup red wine (optional, I didn’t use it since it was going in a chicken dish)
Saute ham, onion and carrot in the butter until the onion is brown (I didn’t have the ham)
beef base in the little jar
Slowly mix in the beef (ham+beef base). Add the bay leaf and thyme. Simmer gently for 1 hour, uncovered then add the tomato, salt and pepper to taste, and wine if you like. Simmer for another 1/2 hour, then strain through a sieve.
strained and ready to use. The recipe made 1 generous cup
If the sauce does not seem thick enough, boil down to the required consistency or thicken with beurre manie’. I’ll go into beurre manie’ some other time. It was thick enough for me this time.
broth, stock, yeah whatever. Either way I don’t like the packaged stuff, not even the Organic Artisan stuff in a box. And why should I? It’s easy enough to make from scratch, and thanks to ample freezer room, easy enough to store. So, right now the chicken is in the oven, roasting for James Beard’s whiskey flamed chicken and the recipe required his Quick Brown Sauce which, thanks to foresight etc, I had stock in the freezer.
Here’s how I make stock:
bones with a little meat attached. Chicken, beef, ham, pork, lamb…whatever..you want bones. Let’s figure about the amount of a whole chicken, or a hambone left over from Christmas, or a leg of lamb…y’know…bones.
Take the bones and put them in a roasting pan. Or a casserole dish…something like that
Put in the pan with the bones a couple of carrots, chunked up. Add an onion. You don’t even have to peel it, but cut it into 4 or 5 chunks.
Put a couple of cloves of garlic in there, and a few whole pepper corns. Let’s call it 5 or 6.
Roast all that at 425 degrees until the bones are good and brown. The vegs will be brown too. Maybe 45 minutes. Just watch it. Chicken bones are ready sooner than beef bones.
THEN
Put all of it, bones, vegs, everything in a big crock pot or a soup pot and cover with a gallon of water. If you’re of a mind to, add a couple of sprigs of thyme and oregano. Put the lid on it, turn down to low, and forget about it for 12 hours AT LEAST. I love the crock pot because the lid seals on mine and I won’t smell it as it cooks overnight. Seriously, if you intend to do this on a regular basis, consider investing in a crock pot with a lid that seals. If you live in an apartment complex your neighbors might complain…not that it stinks, but that it smells so flamin’ good it will wake everyone up at 2 am.
Anyway, let this all simmer low and slow for a good long time. Then strain it, let it cool and bag up in freezer bags. I bag it in quarts, because that’s a nice round number, and it takes a quart of stock to make rice.
Salt it to your taste sometime in there. I can’t have much salt (thank you, hypertension…) which is how I got to making my own stock in the first place. Even the advertised “low salt” stocks are too salty.
Now that it’s made (label well, because they all look the same in the freezer, rich and brown), you can use it for anything you’d use the canned/boxed stuff for. Use it in place of water when you cook a grain, and for making gravy and tonight I’m using it to make Quick Brown Sauce* for the chicken.
*”quick” is relative. It took a couple of hours to make but I reckon that’s ok, it was that or fold laundry.
There are fancy pants instructions out there for making a “raft” (a slab of ground meat and egg white) that you use for clarifying stock so it’s pretty and stuff, but that strikes this cook as an affectation. I suppose it’s something I’ll eventually have to do, to make consomme, but not today. My reduced brown gravy on the stove is decidedly cloudy and so it will remain.
Mah cookbook showed up today!
These statements in the introduction jumped out:
“My emphasis is on options, my motto is ‘why not?’ and my hope is to provide you with inspiration as well as practical guidance”
“Taste every time you cook, and take nothing for granted-not even your own palate, for it can change.”
“But what truly stimulates, sustains, and rewards good cooking is honor at home. It gives me joy to see so many couples cooking together these days, and to watch their children growing up where they belong, right in the kitchen, as I did long ago.”
Now, I’ve done a quick look-see through the first chapter “Appetizers”. He suggests they could be the main course of light summer meal. They scare me, some of them. Recipes like anything with anchovies…tho since I can indeed find them here, we’ll give them a try. Brains Gribiche terrifies me. Brains anything terrifies me. I’ve never eaten brains, let alone prepared them. Where on Earth am I supposed to find brains? Others sound delightful, Escabeche (sauteed marinated fish), Crabmeat and Proscuitto, Shrimp Kiev.
That’s all I’ve looked at so far. He cheerfully makes suggestions about serving the foods (this one makes a good summer meal, that one is warm and creamy and delicious on a cold winter day), and many of the recipes come with alternative ways of preparing them.
Right now Terry is thumbing through the book, and noticed Brains Gribiche as well, saying that brains are probably available at Ellis’s- the local meat market.
I reckon if I’m going to do this properly, I’ll have to learn to fix brains, livers, hearts and tongues. One doesn’t want anything to go to waste, after all.
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