Cooking with duck fat

 

Megan, my oldest daughter, told me recently she’d made the best smashed potatoes using chicken fat. That startled me a bit: “Schmaltz?” I asked. In traditional Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, chicken or goose fat is called schmaltz—it’s what makes everything from chicken soup to chopped liver taste so good. But I don’t see it in stores or recipes often (you can find it at Central Market if you look hard). Duck fat, however, is trendy these days, particularly noted for what it does to fried potatoes. So I decided to try Megan’s directions—not that I don’t trust her (she’s a really good cook), but I did confirm by looking at a New York Times recipe. The result was every bit as crispy and wonderful as Megan promised. Here’s what I did (roughly for two people, so multiply by however many mouths you’re feeding).

Start with about three-quarters of a pound of those tiny Yukon gold potatoes, not much bigger than your thumbnail. Bring to a slow boil in salted water and cook until just tender Let them cool until you can handle them but don’t let them get cold. Meantime, melt two Tbsp. duck fat in your sheet pan. Spread the still-warm potatoes on the pan, and smash each—using your thumb or palm or the back of a wooden spoon. Toss the smashed potatoes in the melted fat, season with salt and pepper, and roast at 400^o twenty minutes; flip the potatoes and roast ten more minutes. Optional: you can throw a couple cubes of garlic or sprigs of rosemary or both in the pan if you want. Seems like gilding the lily to me.

After that success I was enamored of what duck fat does, so I used it in my adaptation of another New York Times recipe: chicken with caramelized onions and croutons. Here’s what you need:

Chicken thighs, bone in and skin on, at least one per person

Sliced sweet onions and shallots

Homemade croutons (homemade is the key here)

To make croutons, cut leftover artisan bread into cubes—do not use sandwich bread. You want sourdough with a good crust or something similar, chewy bread with texture. It’s best if it’s a day or two old and beginning to dry out; if not, let the cubes sit out a bit on the counter. Toss the cubes in melted duck fat until each is coated. Season with salt and pepper and roast in a 350^o degree oven, tossing occasionally, for about twenty minutes or until cubes are a lovely golden color. Don’t let them get too dark.

Separately, grease a sheet pan, slice onions and shallots and scatter all over the pan. Lay the chicken thighs on top, skin side up, and season with salt and pepper; brush the skin with melted fat (yes you can use duck fat or olive oil) and roast at 400^o until chicken skin is brown and crispy and meat is cooked through. About half an hour. (My toaster oven runs hot, so I always shave something off the recommended temperature and time—you may want to try 425).

To serve, put the croutons on a platter, and dump the chicken and onions over them, letting the juices soak into the croutons. If you don’t have enough juice, deglaze the sheet pan with just a small bit of chicken broth and pour that over the dinner.

Serve with a green salad. Christian liked it so well, he gave his extra thigh to Jordan and went back twice for more croutons.

You’ll probably find other uses for duck fat. It sure is good!

Revisiting a long-forgotten recipe

 

One of my pet peeves is dry chicken. If I’m going to eat a chicken breast (I really prefer the thigh), I either want it pounded thin or covered with a sauce. Christian does the pounding thin better than I do, and I usually leave things like piccata to him. But the other night I had four skinless, boneless chicken breast halves. Right there, to me, you have the dilemma—boring! Did I say I also prefer skin-on, bone-in chicken because it stays moist and is more flavorful?

So there I was, thumbing through recipes (yes, mine are almost all still print) with those chicken breast pieces staring at me. When I came to green chile chicken breasts I was lukewarm about the idea, but Jordan and Christian really like dishes with green chiles. I surprised myself--it was delicious!

Green Chile Chicken Bake

Four skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

One 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese

One 4 oz. can green chiles

½ tsp. garlic powder

¼ tsp. cumin

¼ tsp. each salt and pepper

1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated

Let the cream cheese soften to room temperature. In a bowl, mix cream cheese, garlic powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. Stir until thoroughly mixed. Then stir in green chiles.

Lay the chicken breasts flat in a baking dish. Spread the cheese mixture evenly over each piece. Don’t aim for a thin spread—pile on as much as you can. Top with grated Monterrey Jack.

Bake at 375 for 40 minutes, watching that cheese doesn’t burn—it should be brown and crusty when you serve it.

Serve with rice or tortillas. We actually had asparagus—some of the thickest asparagus stalks I’ve ever seen, which I thought was really wrong since spring is the time we get those tender, thin new shoots. Christian, however, was delighted—he likes the thick stalks. And sauteed in a little butter, they had lots of flavor and hit the mark between crisp and tender just right.

Warning: eat heartily, because the chicken does not keep well. The next day, for lunch, it was once again a dry piece of chicken, with fleeting hints of green chiles.

Guacamole with feta

Want to serve something special with it on the side? Try adding crumbled feta to your guacamole. Make guac the way you usually would with a couple of good-sized avocados, tomato, red onion, lemon, salt, and pepper. Then stir in about a quarter cup of crumbled feta. Sit back and wait for the raves.

Read the recipe!

 

When my kids were teens, I occasionally (more often than that) fixed something for supper that went awry. They would patiently ask, “Mom, did you read the recipe?” But now, after probably seventy years in the kitchen, many of them cooking for four, five, or six people, I often think I know how to do something. Who needs a recipe? In fact, Sam Sifton of the New York Times often posts no-recipe dishes. If Sam can do it, so can I.

Except I’ve recently tried recipes for things I usually make off the top of my head and found out that the recipe is a good idea. For instance, there is egg salad: I have had trouble with proportions, getting too much mayo so that my salad was soupy. And I was always trying different ingredients to give it a little pizzazz. Now I rely on pickle relish for that pizzazz. Here’s what I do:

Egg salad

6 hard-boiled eggs

3-4 Tbsp. mayonnaise

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

2 Tbsp. dill pickle relish

Salt and pepper to taste

Everybody has their favorite way of boiling eggs. Here’s mine: put eggs in saucepan and cover with cold water; add a splash of vinegar. Bring to a rolling boil and immediately cut heat to simmer. Simmer exactly eight minutes and then rush to an ice both. Let eggs sit in ice water until cool enough to handle. I sometimes refrigerate them after that. Peel under running cold water.

To make salad, mix everything together. Serve chilled.

Deviled eggs used to give me the same problem—to be sure I had enough to fill all the whites, I often added too much mayonnaise and I got runny filling. Besides I was in a rut, so I followed

 a new recipe and really liked the results:

Deviled eggs

6 hard-boiled eggs

2 Tbsp. mayonnaise

¼ tsp, sugar

1 tsp, white vinegar

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

½ tsp. salt

Sprinkled with paprika or minced chives. Note: I cut way back on the sugar that was originally recommended. Event then, someone said, "I detect sugar." With the vinegar, I think you need the sugar.

And one more: pea salad. I rarely make it because I’m the only one who eats it. I used to buy it at the deli counter in the grocery, but it too often had chunks of cheddar and bits of bacon. The latter added a discordant taste, I thought. Then I found a recipe—yes, it called for bacon, but I simply omitted it. And I grated the cheese instead of cubing it--made a big difference.

Pea salad

1 lb. frozen petite peas

½ small red onion, sliced thinly

2 oz. sharp cheddar, grated

¼ c. sour cream

¼ c. mayonnaise

1 Tbsp, apple cider vinegar

1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

¼ tsp. each salt and freshly ground pepper

Soak the sliced onion in cold water for about ten minutes.

Mix sour cream, mayonnaise, vinegar, Worcestershire, salt and pepper in bowl. Add peas, drained onion, and cheese. Mix thoroughly. Chill at least four hours before serving.

Picnic time is coming, and there are all good ideas for that first picnic of the summer. Enjoy!

 

The simple pasta dish that tests even the best chefs

 

Cacio e pepe

Is past on your summer menu rotation? Sure, traditional Bolognese or lasagna  seems a bit heavy once warm weather arrives. But there are light pasta sauces that make a lovely summer supper, maybe accompanied by a green salad.

The simplest pasta dish of all is cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper pasta). It has four ingredients: pasta, pepper, pecorino cheese, and pasta water. Today’s chefs sometimes use a mixture of parmesan and pecorino, because the pecorino is a strong cheese with a bold flavor. The parmesan softens it. So why is it so difficult that it’s considered the ultimate test of a chef’s skill? It takes talent—and practice and patience—to swirl those ingredients together until they form a smooth, velvet-like sauce that coats every strand of pasta. The starchy pasta water must combine smoothly with the cheeses—it is a slow process. The temperature, the swirl of the ingredients in the pan—both have to be just right. Get it wrong, and you’ll have pasta with clots of cheese.

The recipe is an old one. The usual story is that shepherds, off to spend long, lonely stretches with their herds, could take the ingredients with them because nothing would spoil. They could make cheese from the sheep milk.

Here’s what you do to make cacio e pepe for two:

6 oz. pasta

Tbsp. butter

Tsp freshly cracked pepper

¾ cup Parmesan

½ cup pecorino

Bring three quarts of water to boil, season with salt, and add 6 oz. pasta—spaghetti, fettucine, or other long, thin pasta. Stir it occasionally and remove from the water just before it gets to the al dente stage. Drain, but reserve a cup of pasta water (you probably won’t need it all)

In a separate large skillet melt a Tbsp. of butter and add a tsp. of freshly cracked black pepper. Cook over medium heat, swirling the pan, for just a minute. The pepper should start to toast. Add ¾ cup parmesan and swirl until cheese melts.

Add half the reserved pasta water to the skillet and let it simmer. Remove from heat and add one-half cup pecorino. Again, stir until cheese melts. Add pasta and stir until pasta is coated. Tongs are best at this point. Add more pasta water if needed. If you get it right, cacio e pepe is rich food for the gods.

What started as a peasants’ dish has gone upscale in some restaurants, served as an off-menu luxury items for VIPs, topped perhaps with shaved truffle, or served in a bowl carved from a wheel of pecorino. Italians are however fussy about the purity of the ingredients. Using cream in your cacio e pepe for instance will bring down the wrath of chefs throughout Rome.

Want a less challenging recipe? Here’s one I got from reading Cleo Coyle’s Village Coffee House mysteries—if you haven’t read those, I highly recommend them. Matteo is one of the main characters in the novel, the antagonist in the triangle at the center of the stories. (It’s complicated—read it and see!)

Cacio e Matteo

6 cloves garlic

½ c. olive oil

1.5 tsp salt

16 oz. spaghetti

1 c. Pecorino

1 tsp. coarse ground pepper

1 tsp Italian herb mix

Peel garlic cloves and mash just a bit; put them in a small pan and cover with olive oil. Heat until oil barely simmers. Cover pan and se aside.

Cook pasta, drain, and return to the pot. Immediately pour the warm oil over the pasta. Sprinkle with cheese, pepper, and herbs. Toss and serve immediately.

If you want to be fancy, serve in warmed bowls with crusty bread. A green salad is a nice accompaniment.