Corduroy Orange

Happy New Year(’s Eve)!

As we get ready to take down the old calendar and put up a new list of days, it seems a fitting time to ask the tough question that we all face from time to time: what’s the best way to open a bottle of champagne?

Everybody loves to hear the *pop* of the cork coming out, but what the sound actually signals is carbonation rushing out of the bottle. If you actually hear a pop, that’s indicative that the person doing the opening has made a mistake; the louder the pop, the bigger the mistake. An ideal cork removal will make but a murmur of a hiss as a small amount of gas is slowly released. The result of your care will be bubbly that’s more bubbly.

Hold the bottle at your waist at a 45-degree angle with the bottle pointed away from people. Carefully, slowly, and while actually exerting pressure to keep the cork in the bottle, twist the cork one way and the bottle the other. Continue until the pressure of the champagne’s gas eases the cork into your hand with a fizz no louder than a can of soda being opened. Many authorities recommend that you hold a towel over the cork in case it shoots away—not a bad idea if you’re worried (you don’t want to damage a window or a vase), but if you know what you’re doing, it’s no more than a precaution.

Once the cork has been removed, pour some of the champagne immediately or hold the bottle at the 45-degree angle for a few seconds so that the gas dissipates instead of heading straight toward the bottleneck. If you immediately right the bottle, you’ll likely wind up with a waterfall over the top of the bottle.

Have a great evening and a wonderful 2007!

Dear Corduroy:

I am very dependent on my oven for all sorts of cooking and baking. However, the heating element disintegrated overnight while I was cooking a country ham. Do you have any suggestions for making it through the next several weeks while we try to figure out whether to pay the gas company an arm and a leg to put in a gas line so we can have a gas stove or just go buy another electric one? I need to fix quick meals that are going to be healthy. The stove top still works, so I am not completely without cooking equipment.

Do you think the oven might have been objecting to having been used for 14 straight hours yesterday as well as about 6 the day before?

It’s very good that we’re going to be out of town and mooching off our son and his wife for a few days of this emergency.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

It may ease your pain to know that your oven died an honorable death. A real country ham is a delicacy not widely known outside of the South—salt cured, no water injected; it puts the hams commonly found on the mass market to shame.

Fortunately, your oven is the only part of the equipment that is broken and you still have a functioning stovetop. Not only that, but you have full access to all ingredients available in a United Statesian supermarket (I don’t say American because the Americas consist of two continents), and have easy access to produce that you can eat raw. That means that your meal preparation bind is a fair bit less serious than what Derek is up against while working in China. For starters, I’d suggest that you follow the same advice that I gave him: pancakes, hash browns, and eggs if you want a hot breakfast (you could even make waffles—they sure are tasty!); stews, soups, and pan-seared meats for lunches and dinners.

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Including instructions on preparing a pincage

The surprising thing about classically prepared tomato sauce is that it’s made with a roux. The venerable Auguste Escoffier (the generally accepted authority on classical French cooking with whom it’s impossible to argue because he’s dead) directs that a gallon of tomato sauce be started with 5 ounces of salt pork.

Once the fat is rendered from the salt pork, he would have you cook 6 ounces each of small diced carrot and onion in the fat, then add 5 ounces of flour to finish the roux before adding a bay leaf, salt, pepper, sugar, ten pounds of tomatoes, and a half gallon of stock. His variation on the recipe would permit you to use tomato puree instead of tomatoes, in which case (because the puree is thick enough on its own), you would not need to make the roux. In either case, the sauce is finished by straining it through a sieve for uniform consistency, and always contains the salt pork (for apparently a classical French tomato sauce requires the presence of meat).

I doubt many people really follow his tomato sauce instructions anymore unless they’re doing so for the purpose of cooking like Escoffier.

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Hollandaise—it’s not just for asparagus and eggs benedict anymore

In its essence, hollandaise is a very simple sauce, consisting of little more than egg yolks and melted butter seasoned with salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice. Because it is so simple, the results of your sauce rely in large part upon technique. Made incorrectly, the hollandaise will break and greasy butter will float upon slightly scrambled eggs. Fortunately, there is a never-fail technique that takes advantage of modern technology to get perfect results every time.

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The first three: Using a roux

In Classical cooking, there are five sauces that get emphasized over all others because they serve as the basis for hundreds more. These are the Mother Sauces: Bechamel, Veloute, Brown Sauce, Hollandaise, and Tomato. Sure, there are sauces (such as alfredo, beurre blanc, or a simple reduction) that fall outside of the maternal five. But, as a starting point for an accompaniment to any meal from macaroni to mutton, if you know the basic five, you’ll always be able to have a sauce to match your meal.

Because the mother sauces are such a large part of any good chef’s sauce-making potential and I want to give each sauce its due, today I’m just going to cencentrate on the first three (Bechamel, Veloute, and Brown) because these are the sauces that require a roux.

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Hello Jesse,

I just stumbled upon your blog today through various clicks and it has been a real treat to read. I am currently living in rural China as part of World Teach, a volunteer program that sends willing participants to developing countries, teaching their little ones Spoken English. I have 23 classes a week, which translates to over 1000 students.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Chinese food is delicious, and I can guarantee you’ve never had real Chinese food (that stuff from the states is not!). I live in southern Hunan which is known for their spicy dishes, and let me you, they ain’t lyin. However, every once in a while you get sick, as a foreigner this is to be expected. Crops are grown wherever they can and are fertilized with the most natural of fertilizers (poop!) amongst other things. Who knows what it was? Either way, it only reinforced my plan to begin cooking more for myself. Stateside I’m an enthusiastic kitchen dweller with my own favorites. Yet, I’m homesick, and I can’t wait for the day when I can make a proper breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So, my question, I’m looking for a little advice in terms of what to cook for myself. As for implements, I have a two burner gas stove, which seems to have 2 settings, afterburner and not-so-afterburner, and a microwave which I haven’t fully learned how to operate. I have a wok and a frying pan, and two pots, both pressure cookers, however, one does not have a lid. They are maybe 3 quarts? It’s possible to find bigger pots, however, most are incredibly thin pounded sheet metal.

As for ingredients: Of course, rice, lots and lots of rice. Rice noodles as well. I have absolutely no cheese to speak of. However, the kids all drink some “milk” that’s never refrigerated. Vegetables include garlic, ginger, tomatoes, potatoes, red onion, pumpkin, white gourd, cucumber, eggplant, carrot, celery, mushrooms, numerous greens, cabbage, some other unidentified root vegetables, and of course, peppers. Fruits include apples, oranges, bananas.

Meats include pork, beef, duck, chicken, dog, rabbit, cat, boar, goat, and a ton of fish, amphibians, snakes, and I’ve even seen a badger for sale. Now, most of these are sold whole, cleaned, but whole. The pork you can buy by the half kilo, and there is no such thing as a cut of meat. You get whatever you point to.

There’s a plethora of other stuff, dried spices, dried meats, eggs, but much I cannot identify.

Peace,
Derek

Derek–

Surprisingly, I have had real Chinese food, though nowhere near as much as you have, and from Beijing, where I spent a few days in 1999. More often than not, I didn’t know what I was eating. Though some of the foods I tried were quite tasty, each sampling of a new dish took a great deal of willpower (I swear one of the foods I sampled was jellyfish, but I have no way of knowing for certain). My main impression of eating in China was that each meal was an adventure. It sounds like you have a more balanced and positive view of the local cuisine than my short stay provided me, but in any case I can understand why you would like to do some more cooking for yourself.

Your available equipment, of course, puts some limitations on what you can make, the most notable being nothing roasted or baked. Still, with some creativity, there’s still a fairly wide range of what you can accomplish with two burners.

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Cooking Terms to Make Your Food Sound Fancier
Sometimes, part of a food’s appeal is what it’s called. “Sweetbreads of Veal,” for instance, (which incidentally are very tasty) sound much more desirable than “Thymus Gland of Calf.” You don’t have to be cooking varietal meats to be able to spice up your nomenclature, though. Much of the art of menu writing lies in describing dishes to make them sound more desireable than they would otherwise. There are a wide variety of ways to refer to ingredients you already use in hoity-toity terms. Just by using these words to describe dishes you already make, you can turn your casseroles into haute cuisine. It’s a fun game to play at home with your family or at potlucks, dinner parties, and the like.

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Step-By-Step Guide to Using Your Knife Like a Pro
I was looking through all of the knife skills information I’ve posted on Corduroy Orange and realized that, though I have a fairly comprehensive set of instructions, the order in which I posted the various bits and pieces isn’t necessarily the most logical in terms of walking someone who wants to learn the secrets of making excellent knife cuts through the process of learning how from beginning to end. Even if you look at the “How to Use Your Knife Like a Pro” category page, everything is listed sequentially by when I posted. Today, I aim to rectify that situation by providing a table of contents based on the logical order in which a serious knife skills student would want to read the posts:

How to Use Your Knife Like A Pro

A Step-by-Step Guide by Jesse Sharrard
© 2006 Corduroy Orange

1. Introduction: Why it’s better to have good knife skills than a good food processor.
2. Buying Knives: What you should look for when buying cutlery, including choosing a knife to fit your hand, deciding how many different knives you need, and what styles they should be.
3. How to Hold Your Knife Properly: Let’s face it, used incorrectly, the knife can be a dangerous piece of equipment. Holding it in the proper manner is the first step toward using it as a valuable culinary tool.
4. Basic Technique 1: Learn the names of the different sizes of cuts and how to make them, then practice by cutting potatoes: lots and lots of potatoes.
5. A Great Way to Use the Potatoes: Here’s a great recipe for using up the piles of potatoes you’ll be cutting.
6. Peeling Garlic: It doesn’t have to be a time-consuming process. Following this simple technique will help you get it done more quickly than you thought possible.
7. Basic Technique 2: One of the few exceptions to the basic technique involves cutting onions. They’re round, concentrical, and require a couple of special tricks to be cut into even pieces. Better yet, using proper technique will help you get the job done without setting your eyes on fire.
8. Maintaining Your Blade: Over time, your blade will grow dull. Here’s what you need to know to make sure that it constantly stays sharp.
9. Pitting an Avocado: Many knife skills guides give bad advice on how to do this. Here’s a safer way.
10. Intermediate Knife Cuts: Carrots are a fairly hard vegetable, and it doesn’t help much that they’re round. Here’s a time-saving technique that will help you make quick work of your carrots.
11. Advanced Knife Skills: Once you’re feeling comfortable with your blade, you’re ready to tackle this technique of separating the meat of the pepper from its seed core in a single cut.
12. Defining Cooking Methods: You can cut anything you want, but if you don’t know how to cook it, it’s not going to do you much good. Surprisingly, there are only twelve different ways to cook something. Becoming familiar with the options available to you will make you more efficient in the kitchen.

I would love if you posted your cast iron seasoning and storage tips!

And I am glad to hear about the dutch oven and popcorn. Not only does the term “dutch oven” crack me up, but I have one and don’t have a popcorn maker and now I feel like the world is my popcorny oyster.

–Kari

Seasoning cast iron pans is about as painless a process as it gets, but taking the little bit of time to do it will ensure that your cast iron lasts not only for your lifetime, but your grandkids’ as well. Here’s how:
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Corduroy–

I’ve read your advice about knives/ what kind to buy, but really I’m more in the market for better cookware. My pots and pans are old and aluminum. I’m well aware that they aren’t an ideal set of pans, but I don’t know what I should be looking for when I go to replace them.

L.

Dear L.:

Acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step towards solving it. Simply by admitting that you have substandard pans, you’ve begun the path toward correcting the situation.

As you’ve suggested, aluminum is not a good food contact surface. Though it is light-weight and conducts heat well, it is a soft metal and corrodes quickly in the presence of acid. These two factors mean that when cooking in aluminum pans, you’re apt to wind up with trace amounts of aluminum in your meals. Some medical studies have suggested that aluminum intake may be a factor contributing toward the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Additionally, the aluminum may discolor some foods (especially sauces) and contribute an off-flavor to your cooking. For all of these reasons, I do not cook with aluminum pans.

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