Complements to the Chef

[Ed. note: yes, friends and family who wrote in to correct, I know that the phrase is ‘compliments to the chef’ with an ‘i’. This was an attempt at cleverness – entrepreneurship being a complement to cheffing – that apparently wasn’t so clever after all. Tough crowd.]

Recently, I’ve started to notice how many entrepreneurs are interested in both cooking and photography. Which makes a lot of sense.

Entrepreneurship is basically the art of slogging daily through nebulous victories and vague defeats, for years and years at a time. Successful startups are those where the victories at least slightly outpace the defeats, consistently enough for the edge to compound gradually. Even in today’s world of lean startups, of building minimal viable products and iterating fast and always shipping, the process of slogging and compounding moves excruciatingly slowly. It takes a long time to see anything happen, and an even longer time to see anything incontrovertibly significant – anything big enough to impress your mom or your non-entrepreneur friends.

Like entrepreneurship, cooking and photography are about making something from scratch, and about sharing it with others. Unlike entrepreneurship, they also let you do so exceedingly quickly. Over the course of an afternoon, you can create something that never existed before, yet that’s still good enough to be appreciated by family, friends or the broader world. And it’s not just the immediate validation – that appreciation (or lack thereof) also provides fast and clear feedback to quickly guide iterative improvement.

After a long day of slow slog, it’s hard to explain how very gratifying that can be.

|       

Gone to the Dogs

Though I’ve subscribed to the Paleo Diet in theory for nearly a decade, in practice, my adherence during that time has been 80/20 at best. At the end of the day, while I’m sure that pasta is slowly killing me, I’m even more sure it’s absolutely delicious.

Gemelli, however, is a Paleo zealot. We’ve tried to give him dog biscuits, gourmet canine cookies, and any of the other treats he’s supposed to like, all of which he barely chews before spitting out. Instead, his favorite snack at the moment is freeze-dried beef liver, followed closely by salmon jerky. Last week, as I was making stuffing for Thanksgiving, he snuck off with several just-washed carrots and celery stalks, which he gleefully devoured while hiding under a side table, as if both were so delicious they had to be forbidden.

Similarly, Gem won’t eat any grain-based kibble, so we’ve instead been feeding him Orijen and Stella & Chewy, two essentially Paleo dog foods. Reading through the ingredient lists on both, I realized he eats better than we do: Orijen, for example, is comprised of wild salmon and trout, free-range poulty and eggs, grass-fed beef, bison and lamb, and organic vegetables.

And despite that, his food costs us mere dollars a day. I considered switching Jess and me to the stuff, until I realized that his calorie consumption was probably a bit less than ours, given his six pound bodyweight. Working backwards from our relative sizes, the cost savings stopped looking so good.

Which is probably just as well. I tried one of those Orijen kibbles, and was reminded by its taste that the only thing Mel loves better than Paleo foods is the smell of other dogs’ butts.

|   

McGyver’s Kitchen

These days, in the professional cooking world, sous vide [for those who don’t speak French, it’s said ‘soo veed’] is all the rage. The term literally means ‘under vacuum’, and was developed in the mid-70’s, though it’s only come broadly into vogue within the past couple of years.

The idea itself is simple: vacuum pack food (say, a steak), then place the food into a contant-temperature water bath. After a sufficient period of submersion, the food cooks to the same temperature as the water.

Which, in a professional kitchen, is excellent. You can’t overcook a steak if it’s sous vide – after one hour or five, if the water is 128 degrees, the steak will similarly still be 128 degrees, a perfect medium-rare. You can sous vide an entire evening’s worth of steaks in advance, then pull them out, unseal them, and quickly sear a nice brown finish onto either side in less than two minutes apiece.

But beyond convenience, sous vide won converts through sheer deliciousness. After even an hour or two marinating in their own, vacuum-sealed juices, each of those aforementioned steaks would be far more juicy and tender than after any other mode of cooking. And the same applies to poultry, pork, seafood, vegetables, even eggs – at exactly 146 degrees, an egg is perfectly poached every time.

The downside: most home kitchens don’t come equipped with the requisite constant-temperature water-circulation baths, which are giant and hugely expensive.

Late last year, the very smart physician and nutrition author Dr. Michael Eades, fed up by that problem, brankrolled the development of a smaller, cheaper unit for home chefs – the Sous Vide Supreme. But, even then, “small” and “cheap” are relative. We barely have room for food on our NYC apartment’s kitchen countertops, much less for yet another appliance. And at $500, I was pretty sure I couldn’t justify it to Jess, who could surely line up several dozen smarter ways to spend that money.

So, the Sous Vide Supreme moved to my ‘someday’ wishlist. But my sous vide curiosity still stood.

Enter the beer cooler.

Somewhere in my web trawling, I stumbled across an article on Serious Eats about a ghetto-fabulous sous vide substitution: put the food into Ziploc bags with the air squeezed out, as a substitution for vacuum packing; and then pour water heated on the stove-top into a cheap beer cooler as a substitution for the water bath. At least for foods that can sous vide quickly – in less than an hour or two – a beer cooler can keep the temperature steady for long enough to do the trick.

Obviously, I was intrigued. But also fairly skeptical. I picked up a small cooler from Duane Reade for $14.99, or roughly 97% off the cost of the Sous Vide Supreme. Surely, I thought, something – everything – must be lost in that kind of translation.

Still, as we were on the way home from the Barnes Foundation yesterday (a separate blog post coming, but, in short, an inexpressibly amazing place to visit), we stopped at a Costco in New Jersey to restock some essentials in bulk, and I picked up two nice looking flank steaks. I rationalized that both together were still cheaper than one would have been back in the city, and that I’d have the second on standby if my sous vide attempt destroyed the first.

At home, I placed one of the steaks in a Ziploc gallon freezer bag, then tossed in a liberal amount of salt, some pepper, three or four garlic cloves, and a sprig of thyme. Then I sealed the bag, doing my best to squeeze out the air, before laying it at the bottom of the cooler.

On the stovetop, I boiled water, checking the temperature every few minutes. 110 degrees. 115. 120. I stepped away to slice some vegetables, then came back to find the water had overshot to 150 degrees. So I turned off the heat. A few minutes later, it was 148. So I dropped in some ice cubes, lowering the temperature to about 140. As Jess likes her steak on the medium side of medium rare, and as I figured I’d lose some heat while pouring across, I hefted up the pot, and dumped the water on top of the steak, then quickly sealed the cooler closed.

After which, I did the laundry. We live a life of nonstop glamour.

Two hours later, I popped the cooler, to find the temperature had slid down to about 130. Close enough.

When I pulled out the bag, however, my heart sank. It had leaked.

Or so I thought. The liquid, I quickly realized, was the jus from the slowly cooked steak. I poured the liquid into a small bowl, then pulled out the steak itself, before slicing off a small chunk. Beautifully cooked.

I heated some oil in a saute pan until smoking, patted the steak dry with a paper towel, then laid it down in the pan for about a minute on each side, until it turned a nice golden brown.

I put the steak aside to rest, deglazed the pan with a splash of wine, then poured in the jus from the bag and a little chicken stock, reducing to a pan sauce. And then Jess and I sat down to eat.

Somehow, in that stupid $15 dollar cooler, with nearly no work on my part, the chewy flank steak had transformed into something literally as tender as filet mignon, but flank’s robust flavor.

Even the pan sauce was delicious.

So, in short, I’m sold. And I’m pushing the Sous Vide Supreme a bit higher on the wishlist. But, in the meantime, cooler it is. Just as Homer Simpson observed, “ah, beer; the cause of and the solution to all of life’s problems.”

|   

Lean, Mean, Flavor-Reducing Machine

I talked to a friend today who was buying steaks for dinner, and planning on grilling them on his George Foreman Grill.

About which, I must admit, I went slightly apoplectic.

Because, it turns out, cooking steaks (or, really, pretty much anything outside of a burger or a panini) on a George Foreman is a terrible, terrible idea. Those little machines just don’t get hot enough to do real cooking, yielding steaks, for example, that are burned along the top and bottom, and a dull grey most of the way through.

In fact, cooking steaks, and cooking them well, is exceedingly easy to do. Observe:

1. Take the steak out of the refrigerator, and rub it down with some olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper.

2. Put a skillet or saute pan in the oven, and heat the oven to 450 degrees.

3. Take the skillet out of the oven (don’t forget the towel or oven mitt, rocket-boy; the skillet will be searingly hot) and place it on the stove, over high heat.

4. Put the steak in the middle of the skillet for four minutes.

5. Turn the steak over, and put the skillet back into the oven for five minutes.

6. Check for doneness – you can make a small incision (the rookie choice), use an instant-read thermometer (the techie choice – 130 degrees for medium rare), or poke it with your finger (the pro choice – learn how). Depending on your preferences, either leave the meat in for another minute or two, or pull it out.

7. Plate the steak, let it rest for 5-10 minutes so the juices redistribute evenly, then serve.

Voila. No harder than the Foreman, far easier to clean (the only mess is the skillet, which doesn’t develop inter-ridge crust), and an order of magnitude more delicious.

Try it tonight. Thank me tomorrow.

|  

Let the Flames Begin

As previously mentioned, I’m dangerously susceptible to television. Turn one on while I’m in the room, and I’ll watch it, no matter what’s playing. Commercials, re-runs of Full House; it doesn’t really matter.

But, at the same time, there’s relatively little I’d be too upset to give up. No more American Idol? I’m pretty sure my life would go on.

There is, though, one exception: Bravo’s Top Chef, which starts a new season this evening.

Prior to discovering the show, I already considered myself a bit of a foodie, having eaten my way through much of New York, taken an array of cooking classes, and stocked up on key kitchen gadgetry. But over the course of even my first month of Top Chef episodes, I found myself appreciating cooking, really appreciating cooking, in a way I’d never before.

It was Top Chef that led me to read Heat, The Making of a Chef and Kitchen Confidential, that got me subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated, that got me taking wildly over-long and over-expensive culinary school professional development courses (thank you, thank you, Jess!).

And, more than anything else, it was Top Chef that led me to an ever-deeper exploration of the principles of cooking, rather than simply cooking recipes rote. This weekend, for example, when testing out a new red wine and mushroom pan sauce for the flank steak I pan-roasted, I could puzzle through how much stock to use to balance out the wine pre-reduction, knew to toss in shallots, mustard, and balsamic vinegar to balance tastes, could explain why I chose to ‘monte au beurre’ as a final step.

In other words, I’ve now moved past ‘foodie’ and into ‘total asshole’. And I have Top Chef entirely to thank.

Tonight at 9:00 on Bravo. Bon appetit.

|   

If I Knew You Were Coming

Yesterday, midway through a late-night supermarket run, Jess and I found ourselves standing, transfixed, in the cake mix aisle.

Apparently, a box of Duncan Hines yellow mix and a tub of Pillsbury Funfetti frosting is all it takes to make our week.

|  

Out of the Frying Pan

I lived. My fingers survived. As did my sense of fast-improving cooking prowess. In fact, the teacher – a former professor at Le Cordon Bleu – even pulled me aside with a couple of the other attendees, to assign more advanced homework for the week:

First, find a wine we buy frequently, and create a dish to complement it. Second, roam the Union Square Greenmarket in search of a vegetable we’d never before tasted, then use that as the basis of a second dish to pair with the first.

While reports on both should follow, tonight, according to Jess’ and my Tuesday tradition, we’re taking advantage of the freshest fish day of the week, and heading out for sushi. Not to Mizu (our usual stop, and some of the best bang for the sushi buck in the city), but to Matsuri.

The sushi there is a step down in quality, and a step up in price, but it’s also far closer to the Highline Ballroom, a concert venue where we’ll be catching Julian Velard and the Groove Collective later in the evening.

Tomorrow evening, I’m teaching at CrossFit NYC, my parents come into town, and one of Cyan’s investors is passing through. And the week gets busier from there.

Which makes me, as ever, wonder why – unlike most of Europe – we don’t get to take of the entire month of August. Or, in my case, even part of it. Because I could sure as shit use a break.

|   

Well Done

I’ve loved cooking for most of my life. For my fifteenth birthday, much to my parents concern, I requested a hand-cranked pasta press. But, in the last year or so, I’ve gotten serious.

I’ve read my way through a slew of cookbooks and books on cooking (most recently Bill Buford’s Heat and Tom Colicchio’s How to Think Like a Chef). I’ve started working my way through Jacques Pepin’s seminal La Technique – not as a book, but as an apprenticeship, cooking up a sub-chapter at a time. And I’ve taken to watching Top Chef – to which I also subject poor Jess, who consequently refers to me as Hung when I get too many dishes going at once and start acting a bit manic in the kitchen.

But, like in most spheres of life, I also realize there’s no substitute for live cooking instruction. So, I’d been coveting the Techniques of Fine Cooking course at the Institute of Culinary Education – five five-hour sessions which run the gamut of broad fundamental skills.

The course was way too expensive for me to justify. So I was thrilled and shocked when Jess bought my way in as a birthday gift. In the abstract, that might seems a selfish gift – she being a benefactor of the improved cooking – but I suspect, in truth, it’s a further sacrifice. I already (without meaning to! I swear!) brutally critique everything down to her vegetable peeling skills, and I imagine I’ll be even less tolerable, will functionally drive her from the kitchen, once I make it through the course.

We’ll find out soon enough, though, because the first class is this evening. From 6:00-11:00pm, I’ll be dicing, grilling, channeling Child and Bocuse. Or, at least, trying not to chop off any of my fingers. Bon appetite.

|  

Far Flung Foodie

A month or two back, walking with Jess through Central Park, we passed through Time Warner Center on our way back home. And as we needed to buy a few ingredients for dinner, we headed downstairs to Whole Foods.

A mere eight blocks from our apartment, that Whole Foods had still, previously, seemed needlessly far to go for groceries. But, perusing produce and inspecting butchery, it became clear that Whole Foods’ foods were indeed wholly better, quite possibly worth the trip.

So, since then, we’ve been buying food there. But not all our food, and not our non-food items. Because, for many basics, the price difference for the same thing at any of our more local supermarkets seems too offensively large for me to stomach. And also because, for countless other items, such as plastic cups or Coke, the only available Whole Foods versions appear to be made entirely of hemp.

Of course, as soon as you diverge from the American supermarket model, from the idea that the best way to buy food is to have it all collected in one central place, you instead begin sliding down the slippery slope of preferring quality, and of consequently convincing yourself that shopping three different places for a meal isn’t any crazier than two, which isn’t so much saner than four, then five, etc.

Pretty soon, aided and abetted by the (aside from this weekend) warming weather and your central location, you find yourself, Sunday afternoon, not only at Whole Foods but also the Food Emporium and Amish Market and Duane Reade and that place with the good cookies on Ninth Avenue and the mochi ice cream you can pick up the next afternoon at the place near your office and also don’t forget to stop at the Stiles Farmer’s Market while it’s open because they have such great local produce for so cheap.

And the worst part is, it self-reinforces. Because, after all that walking around, you’re so completely starved that the foods you’ve assembled from across the City taste like – whether or not they really, actually are – the best you’ve ever eaten.

|   

Pancake Suit

The first night of Chanukah upon us, I’m once again returning to my now yearly tradition of making latkes.

Also per tradition, I’ve picked up a few excellent Chanukah gifts for myself (a surefire way to make sure you end the holiday happy with what you’ve received), and will therefore be using the kitchen opportunity to simultaneously test out my brand spanking new chef’s jacket.

I’m hoping that, beyond a debonaire air of officiality, the jacket may also lend an additional measure of cooking skill. As, in years past, I’ve inadvertently ended up with latkes more akin to hash browns or hockey pucks, I could use all I can get.

|