Smooth as velvet

 

Obviously several years ago, but here are the boys in the kitchen.
Christian is often in the kitchen, cooking for us. Yum!

Christian fixed Mongolian beef for our dinner the other night, using flank steak. It was everything I don’t associate with flank steak—tender, flavorful, delicious. His secret? He “velvets” the meat. So I asked him to explain.

Ever notice that when you eat stir fry in a Chinese restaurant the meat has a special tender quality that you never can achieve at home? It’s due to velveting, a Chinese cooking method used primarily for stir fries but useful in all kinds of dishes.

Christian, a great cook who loves to experiment, was researching Asian cooking and came across the velveting technique. You don’t often, he said, see the words “velvet” and “beef” in the same sentence. The name may come from a velvet-like texture on the outside of meat that has been treated. Or some descriptions say the meat becomes “soft as velvet.” At the same time, velveting locks in moisture.

Christian tried it and found it was genius for cheaper cuts of meat like flank steak or sirloin that you intend to cut into strips for anything from stroganoff to tacos al carbon. Velveting tenderizes round steak for chicken-fried and is magic for some chicken dishes. Recently, I made coq au vin, with white wine and chicken instead of the traditional red and beef, and the sauce was delicious but the chicken too chewy—Christian said next time he’ll pound it flat and velvet it for me.

Velveting is fairly easy but it does add time to the cooking process. You slice the meat against the grain first, to expose all those tough fibers. It does not work as well with one large piece of meat.

Next, make a slurry of 1 Tbsp. cornstarch, 1 Tbsp. rice vinegar, 1 tsp. salt, and one egg white. Whip the mixture as though you’re making scrambled eggs. Then pour it over the meat, stirring to be sure all strips are evenly coated, as you would with a marinade. Let the meat sit in the mixture for thirty minutes, and then dip it in boiling water or boiling oil for 45 seconds. (Christian always uses water because working with boiling oil is difficult and dangerous—and it would take a lot of oil.) Drain the meat on a plate coated with paper towels.

There is another method, slightly easier. Simply coat the meat with baking soda and after the thirty minutes rinse. If you let it sit at all longer than the half hour, the taste of the meat will be affected by the baking soda. Christian prefers the slurry method (though he wishes for a better word).

Christian Burton’s Mongolian Beef

1 lb. flank steak, thinly sliced, cut into bite-size pieces, and velveted

¼ cup cornstarch

½ tsp kosher salt

½ tsp finely ground black pepper

2 Tbsp. sesame oil

1/3 cup light soy sauce

1/3 cup water

2 tsp. freshly grated ginger

3-4 garlic cloves, minced or micro planed

½ cup dark brown sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

¼ tsp. red pepper flakes, optional

2-3 green onioned, chopped, for garnish

Sesame seeds, for garnish

Heat sesame oil, soy sauce, water, ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes in small saucepan and simmer until mixture reduces by one-fourth. Remove from stove and set aside.

Separately toss beef pieces in cornstarch, salt, and pepper.

Heat vegetable oil in large skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, if necessary, cook beef in a single layer. Each piece should have a crispy crust on both sides. Drain excess oil from the meat on a plate lined with paper towels.

After the beef is cooked, wipe out skillet with a paper towel to remove leftover grease. Add the beef and the soy mixture to the skillet and again let it cook over medium heat until liquid is reduced to a thick glaze. Do not cook until all liquid is evaporated—you want that delicious sauce.

Serve at once over white rice and garnish with sesame seeds and green onions. Chopsticks not required.

 

Easy chicken casseroles

 

No, don’t yawn just because I mentioned casseroles. Those venerable reminders of the 1950s dinner table are among my favorite foods. But I am increasingly in the minority. Last night I fixed the entrée for a potluck with three friends. When I said I’d do a chicken casserole, one, watching her carbs, replied, “I don’t mind a casserole as long as there is a salad too.” It was sort of a left-handed compliment, but her thinking was that casseroles are usually heavy with pasta. She was pleasantly surprised last night.

So I thought I’d share two of my favorite chicken casseroles, sans pasta. A caution about chicken: somehow, I have lost the ability to poach or steam chicken so that it is tender. (After I made coq au vin with chewy chicken, Christian said he’d pound and velvet it for me next time.) For these casseroles and a lot of other dishes, I rely on rotisserie chickens. The catch with those ready-to-use birds is that they are often really high in sodium. Locally, I think Central Market chickens have the lowest amount. Since everything from soy sauce to canned soups is available in low-sodium form, you’d think they’d get around to roasting low-sodium chickens. Another hint: it’s much easier to bone a rotisserie chicken when you first get it home and it’s still hot. The meat slides off the bone. If you stick it in the fridge to bone later, it’s a whole different, difficult, and messy chore. (Jordan debones for me as soon as she gets home with groceries.) I usually have one or two deboned chickens in my freezer, ready to use. One chicken  yields about 2 cups of meat. A few stores offer breasts only, which I prefer. More meat for your buck.

Baked chicken salad casserole

2 cups chopped chicken

3 hard-boiled eggs, grated or sliced (I chopped them)

1-1/2 cups minced celery (do string your celery first)

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

4 tsp. finely minced onion (I used green onions)

½ cup mayonnaise

Juice of one lemon

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. pepper

Crushed potato chips

Once you get everything chopped, this is a breeze to make. Layer the chicken, celery and eggs in a lightly greased casserole dish (I used 4 x 6 or thereabouts—I think 9 x 13 is too big). Mix remaining ingredients and pour over meat mixture. Top with crushed potato chips and bake at 350^o for 20-30 minutes. Watch that the potato chips don’t burn.

Curried chicken salad casserole

For this you need to plan ahead, and you need a fridge-to-oven dish. If you have some valuable old Corningware, it’s perfect. This is a cold dish—salad really—with a hot topping.

3 c. cooked chicken

2 cups sliced or diced celery

2 tsp. curry powder

1 tsp. lemon juice

¾ cups mayonnaise

½ cup sour cream

2 cups crushed potato chips

1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated.

           Mix everything together except the cheese and chips. Refrigerate overnight. Just before serving, top the casserole with potato chips and cheese mixed. Run it under the broiler just long enough to melt the cheese. Again, watch carefully—the topping scorches easily.

It strikes me that there is one basic sauce for chicken that you can vary slightly and make several dishes. It involves cream of mushroom soup (I’m not at all shy about admitting I love to cook with canned soups), mayonnaise, and sour cream. The other night I made white coq au vin and realized it was much the same as these two recipes but with wine. And lemon juice is often the distinguishing touch.

The best dinner ever…

 

Picture from The New York Times online cooking column

A few days ago, I bragged on the cooking skills of one of my grands; today I want to brag on my own cooking. The other night I fixed one of the best dinners I’ve done in a long time. In fact, Jordan pronounced it “the best dinner ever,” and Jacob liked it well enough to request the recipe for a file he’s keeping of things he really likes. It was baked cod with a buttery cracker topping.

My local family loves salmon—and those shrimp I’m allergic to—but they weren’t much on fish in general. I sauteed Dover sole one night, but it is as fragile as it is delicate in flavor and fell apart so that we ended up with fish hash—tasty but no eye appeal. The last time I tried cod I overcooked it, so we swore off it for a while. But the other night I got it just right—done enough for Jordan who has a horror of raw, yet still moist and flavorful. And it looked terrific. I am so sorry I forgot to take a picture, but I have “borrowed” the one that came with the recipe.

Cooking hint: when cooking fish filets with crumb topping, spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on the fish before adding the topping. It both hold the crumbs in place and keeps the fish moist. This is my addition and not in the recipe. Texas residents may remember the Black-Eyed Pea chain of restaurants and particularly their whitefish with crumb topping. I learned the mayo tip from them, I think.

Cooking hint two: for buttery crackers, you can’t beat Ritz original.

The crumb topping for this recipe was seasoned with plenty of butter, lemon zest and juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and chives (I used green onion tops). You can find the recipe here: Baked Cod With Buttery Cracker Topping Recipe - NYT Cooking (nytimes.com) I hope the paywall doesn’t keep you out.

The topping was so good on its own that I used it the next night to make salmon patties from my last can of good salmon, canned fresh where it was caught on the Oregon coast. (I hope to be able to order more in the spring when the salmon run again.) Salmon patties are a favorite from my childhood, and I often make them just for me. Mom called them croquettes, insisted on nothing but saltines for binding ingredients together, and then rolled the little round logs in more crushed saltines. I found the croquette shape to hard to deal with, patties much easier, and forgot the idea of a crumb coating. I also switched to Ritz crackers—they crush easily into fine crumbs. Ordinarily I season with salt and pepper, maybe a bit of dry mustard and a dash of Worcestershire, but with those already seasoned crumbs I just added egg to the salmon and then enough crumbs to make a mixture that would hold together. Usually it’s one egg for a 7 oz. can of salmon; last night, because my eggs were small, I used two.

With both the cod and the salmon cakes, I served a lemon/butter sauce: You can find it here: Lemon Butter Sauce Recipe (Versatile & Easy) | Kitchn (thekitchn.com) If I’ve said it before, it’s worth repeating: kitchn.com is a terrific source of recipes—and cleaning tips, though the latter don’t interest me nearly as much.

Next on my fish list: either salmon piccata or salmon with spinach and artichoke hearts. Wish I felt like splurging on lobster.

Betty Crocker cooks Chicken Stroganoff

 

A Betty Crocker catalog from the 1970s

Yesterday about noon I asked Jordan what was for supper, and she said, “I’m working on it.” Off the top of my head, I volunteered to make Chicken Stroganoff which I thought was in one of the cookbooks I’ve published. Turns out it wasn’t. How hard could it be? We just had Hamburger Stroganoff, I had a deboned rotisserie chicken in the freezer, and it seemed to me the principle would be the same—just chicken and chicken broth instead of beef. To be sure, I went online where I found complicated recipes with long lines of ingredients. But I found one that was fairly quick and easy. And guess whose name was on it? Betty Crocker.

Betty is a hundred this year. General Mills, who owns the fictional character, intends to keep her around for another hundred years. The iconic baker first appeared in response to letters from home bakers who wanted cooking advice. When the Washburn Crosby Company (later reorganized as General Mills) ran a contest promoting Gold Medal Flour, they were overwhelmed with letters asking for help, so Betty was born. Her first name was chosen because it sounded friendly; the last name was in tribute to a retired board member named Crocker. In no time Betty was on radio with “Betty Crocker’s Cooking School of the Air.” Her cookbooks appeared, often the first cookbook a young girl was given when she left the nest. The first product to bear her name was a pea soup mix. In the Depression, Betty dispensed advice on stretching what food a housewife had. She was among the best-known women in America, second only to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Today, she has her own web site, an entry in Wikipedia, and an online catalog. You can buy a Bett Crock mug, counter-top pizza maker, or any of countless cookbooks—even one titled Betty Crocker’s Lost Recipes which features vintage recipes. An online search turns up recipes from chili and Sloppy Joe to pineapple upside-down cake—remember when that was classic?  You can buy mixes for cakes, cookies, biscuits, muffins, and even casseroles. And what does this fictional character look like? There have been eight portraits over the years, but today she looks remarkably like she did a hundred years ago—your average American housewife, with straight brown hair framing her face and a slight, pleasant smile. Someone you’d ask for the best meatloaf recipe.

Here's her chicken Stroganoff, slightly adapted:

Chicken Stroganoff

¼ cup flour

1 tsp. paprika

½ tsp. each salt and pepper

4 Tbsp. butter (divided)

½ c. chopped onion

½ lb. baby button mushrooms, sliced

About two cups diced, cooked chicken

1-1/4 c. chicken broth

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire 

½ c. white wine   

1 cup sour cream

              Mix together flour, paprika, salt and pepper and set aside. Melt 2 Tbsp. butter in 12-inch skillet (or thereabouts) and sauté onion and mushroom until onions are translucent and mushrooms have released their liquid. Add remaining butter to skillet, add chicken, and let it brown slightly. Sprinkle flour mixture over skillet contents and stir to coat thoroughly. Gradually stir in broth, stirring constantly as mixture thickens. Stir in white wine. Simmer until serving time.

              When ready to serve, stir in one cup sour cream. Do not let mixture boil! Serve over egg noodles. We had shredded Brussel sprout with lemon as an accompaniment.