How did I miss it?!?

Katy Ridgway told me that she's really disappointed that week two is turmeric. Not because she doesn't like turmeric... but because I could have said "Week Twomeric" and didn't.

I'm disappointed in myself. I feel like I really let everyone down.

Turmeric Eggs

In response to my first turmeric post yesterday, Mike passed along this link to a NY Times article: (Registration may be required, who knows.)

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/the-11-best-foods-you-arent-eating/?em

Unrelatedly, Neil sent me the following via chat:

"Fuck meat. Eggs are the perfect food. Goodbye."

Which leads me to two questions: First, should I tone down the profanity that I typically use while writing? (Probably yes. I'm a dad now. I need to learn to stop swearing.) And second, why did he leave it at "goodbye"? That's so wussy, especially when he could have said something like THAT IS ALL or AND I AM OUT.

Anyway, between the Times article and Neil's obvious (though milquetoast) push, I figured I needed to make eggs with turmeric for breakfast.

Turmeric is complex stuff - I don't really know how to describe the taste. I don't even really know if I like it - but I enjoy it, if that makes any sense. I enjoy the way that I can feel it rolling over my tongue, lighting up different taste buds - first the back of my tongue, then the left side, then the back again. I'd love to see what it looks like, if the nerves were wires, crackling with lightning all the way into my brain...

Eggs. Eggs are what started all of this, actually - eggs are the first thing I ever really cooked. It's a good story - remind me to tell it some time. For now, let's take five large eggs - three for me, two for Victoria - and toss them in a mixing bowl. (I use a two-cup Pyrex measuring cup.) Add in a glug of milk (a glug [I think this comes from Bill Cosby] is the amount of milk that comes out between the time you tip the bottle over and the time it makes that glug noise.) and a pinch of kosher salt. Then a half-tablespoon of turmeric. While this is all happening, get a pan warming on the stovetop, high heat, and maybe chop up a few mushrooms, if you've got them handy.

Get out a fork and mix up the eggs. Watch out - the turmeric really clumped up when I was mixing, and I don't know how to stop that from happening. Sift it, maybe, or simply don't drop the whole amount at once into the mixture. Make sure the eggs get broken up and everything gets mixed, then toss the whole mess (mushrooms first, so they get coated in the egg mixture) into the pan. Get out a spatula, and just make everything stays moving. If a skin forms on the bottom of the pan, scrape it off; what you want is to get even heat and let the eggs firm up. Should take about two or three minutes. Take the eggs off the heat slightly before they're at your preferred level of firmness - they'll still cook for a while on the plate.

Voila - scrambled eggs. Easiest hot breakfast in the universe. The turmeric gives it a nice orange color - turmeric is a great food coloring - and a mellow, earthy flavor, as well. I almost never make eggs without cheese, but that didn't seem like the thing to do here. (Actually, I tend to consider eggs that don't include at least three types of vegetable and two types of cheese a bit underprepared, but that's neither here or there.) All things considered, a really nice way to spice up a simple dish.

Tomorrow... I'll talk about the dinner I made tonight, Kashmiri rice and salmon with turmeric in a coconut milk sauce.

Getting lost (and a call for contributions)

If you’ve ever argued with me – and if you’re reading this, let’s not kid ourselves, you have – you might have noticed that I’ve got a thing for analogies. I like analogies. I find them to be an incredibly useful rhetorical device. Analogies can make things clearer to the person you’re talking to, sure – but they can make things clearer to yourself, as well. You’re gaining two things – an easier way to look at a particular subject, primarily, but just as importantly, the idea that these two things are similar. If that similarity breaks down - if your analogy turns out to be inapt - then that can reveal a great deal about your original subject; likely, things that you had missed, the first time around.

I’m not sure if this is making much sense… let me find an analogy for you.

I cook, in a lot of ways, in the same way I learn a new area. When I’m living somewhere new, I spend a lot of time getting lost. Not simply because I don’t know my way around; I get lost on purpose, as a method of learning. I’ll pick somewhere big and obvious that I want to go – the mall, the Washington Monument – and just go. No directions, no nothing, just hop on my motorcycle and do what feels right. (And when you’re on a Harley, baby, it all feels right.) Pick a time when there’s no traffic, nothing else to do – where you can just drive, take in the roads, get a feel for the lefts and rights, for the way the city streets curve, for where the big roads take you and where they don’t. If you never get there, who cares? As long as you can find your way home again and start over, that’s all you need. Getting lost does two things that getting where you’re going never can, and I don’t know which one is more important. Getting lost on purpose teaches you how to get found, when you’ve gotten lost not on purpose. And getting lost often introduces you to amazing things, things that you would never see if you were just heading from point A to point B.

When I’m cooking something new, I’ll come up with an idea. Most of the time, that idea will be based off of something I’ve eaten before, or at least heard about. I’ll look through my toolbox, and try to figure out if I’ve got what I need to get from here to there. Is the place I’m going big enough to see from where I am? It’s still rare for me that the answer to that question is “yes” – that I can just come up with a recipe in my head for something new. Most of the time, I’ll search Internet for hints. I’ll do a quick Google search, and take a look at a few recipes. Most of the time, all I’m really looking for are the broad strokes – the major directions – because if I follow the directions to the letter, I’m likely to get a perfect, delicious dish.

I’m unlikely to get lost, in other words.

Making dishes wrong is far, far more educational than making them right, in more or less the same way that getting lost is more educational than getting to your destination. (Unless, I suppose, you’re heading to a school, library, museum, or that sort of place.) (And you’re the type of person who gets more benefit out of those things than out of experiential learning.) (And you were going to be so late that if you got lost, you weren’t going to make it on time.) Pointing yourself in a direction and winging it means that sometimes you’ll wind up with food that tastes terrible (or even worse, food that tastes boring) but sometimes you’ll wind up with something that tastes amazing. And when you make the dish again, you’ll be able to correct your errors – much more useful, in the long run, than never having made them at all.

Even more than that, getting lost is exciting. It’s scary, no doubt – especially when you’ve got a half-dozen people coming over for dinner, and you don’t really know if you’ve cooked anything that’s actually worth eating. But at the same time, there’s a tingle that goes through my system every time I figure something out, or every time I think “I bet it would taste even better if I…” It's worth occasionally having mushy cashews.


So I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. This blog is open to anyone and everyone who feels like contributing – and I’ll let you define how you’d like to contribute. I’d love to have people writing guest entries, or even a weekly column, but if you’ve got something else in mind that you think would be fun – get in touch! I’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying watching me get lost.

Week 2 - Turmeric

So last week, I was looking through my spices for spices, and I thought, “Turmeric. I’ve got this big jar of it, and really have no idea what the heck it is.” It goes in Indian food. That’s why I have it, and that’s pretty much the only thing I know about it.

Then I thought, “wait – don’t I have a blog for precisely this reason?”

I’m not joking, either. One of the advantages of having a terrible memory is that you occasionally surprise yourself like that.

Up until then, I had been spending a lot of time waffling about what I should do next. Should it be something else critical, along the lines of salt? Sugar? Pepper? (No. Very no. Week one took three weeks in large part because salt is an immense topic. I need to pick something that’s reasonable.) (And pepper is probably at least two weeks, maybe as much as a month – a week for black peppercorns, and then I’ll look and see if the other colors are deserving of weeks to themselves, or should just be handled en masse.)

At this point it seems like a good idea to get down to business as usual, or at least figure out what business as usual will be. This week I’m just gonna pick something nice and normal, cook a few dishes, make a few funny quips, and try not to get sucked in too deep. (Fair warning – if it turns out that, upon examination, turmeric is as rich in history and usage as salt, has as many variations and requires the same kind of in-depth understanding… I’m going to quit.)

I also like the idea of doing spices in themed groupings – so I’ll probably wind up, over the next few weeks, doing a bunch of the spices that are commonly used in Indian dishes, and trying out a bunch of Indian stuff, in addition to doing my best to find dishes that show off each spice’s individuality.
In a lot of cases, of course, there won't be a dish that really focuses on spices like, say, turmeric - because spices are usually used in conjunction with particular other spices, just like music tends to happen in chords, rather than individual notes.

I’m not going to cook anything for at least a day or two, because honestly – between the dinner on Friday and a birthday dinner we made last night (sushi for my friend Yousef’s thirty-fifth… I need to find a better source for sushi-grade fish around here, but all in all the meal was great) I’ve got to clear out some of these leftovers. But that gives me some time to figure out exactly what turmeric is, where it comes from, and what it does - as well as some thinking about how I can make sure this blog remains a reasonable amount of work for me, and a reasonable amount of reading for you.

Five Salt Dinner 4 -- Salt-Crusted Red Snapper

Hi blog readers, this is Victoria.

As you know by now, my husband is a city boy who shrieks like a sissy when confronted with a harmless one-pound fish. Fortunately for him, I spent years working on living history farms; plowing with a team of oxen, milking cows and goats, stuffing sausage casings, and plucking and gutting ducks. I have never cleaned or gutted a fish, however, so I was relieved to hear that he had bought one that was already prepared. I got home from work, still amused by the panicked phone call in which he begged me to “deal with the fish.” I was even more amused to realize that it was basically a large red minnow.

Gross? Definitely. Scary? Not even a little. I showed Mr. Snapper to our nine-month-old son, Benjamin, and he just laughed.

Unfortunately, Aaron hadn’t realized that although the vendor at the fish market had assured him that the fish was cleaned and gutted, it hadn’t had the scales removed, and our recipe called for a cleaned and scaled fish. Aaron hadn’t been able to bring himself to look closely at it (or to bring himself close enough to the fish to take a look) and he assumed it had been scaled. I picked it up and realized instantly that it hadn’t. So task one was learning how to scale a fish.

Fortunately, the internet gave me instructions.

The instructions included: “You will want to do this outside, or in a place where you can clean up easily -- scales will fly everywhere. I learned this the hard way: I scaled many fish in an old apartment of mine, only to find scales attached to the ceiling when I moved out, years later.”

After reading these instructions, I took Mr. Snapper out to the balcony, placed him on some wax paper, and started scraping firmly from tail to head, i.e. against the direction of the scales. The internet was not kidding about scales flying everywhere – they literally went flying in a four-foot range and in many random directions. If you ever try this, remember to keep your mouth closed! Also, wear a high-necked shirt. I was itchy later that evening and discovered that a fish scale had flown down my shirt and lodged under my bra. Uncomfortable as well as yucky!

The important thing when scaling the fish is to achieve full coverage (or uncoverage, really). Run your fingers over the body of the fish to make sure you haven’t missed anywhere, like behind its ears or under its little armpits (finpits?). Any stubborn scales can just be plucked out with your fingers. I didn’t get too picky about the part closest to the head, which I had no intention of eating anyway.

 Success!  I feel like a pioneer woman!

Once I realized how easy this process is, I resolved to go to the fish market and buy whole fish on a regular basis and to learn how to clean and gut them as well. My husband is going to be SO happy!

Now that the fish was finally ready, I cut some slits in the skin, rubbed olive oil on both sides, and sprinkled it liberally with Old Bay seasoning. I equal my husband in general over-enthusiasm, and used far too much Old Bay, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t hard to scrape it off before eating the final product.

 












The second challenge was adjusting the proportions and the timing. The recipe that Aaron found online was for a bulky (I almost wrote “beefy”) 6.5 pound fish, and our Mr. Snapper was a classic one-pound weakling. I bet the other fish picked on him in school.

Ha! “in school” -- get it?

I prepared the salt crust, which called for mixing a large amount of kosher salt with chopped fresh parsley, basil, tarragon, freshly-ground black pepper, orange zest, lemon zest, a little orange juice, and some lemon juice. Since this was just flavoring the salt crust, I figured the portions didn’t matter too much.

The timing was more of a problem, and I resorted to looking for recipes for salt-encrusted fish that were much smaller than the one in the recipe Aaron had recommended. I decided that 20 minutes would probably work.

Unlike the recipe for the salt crust for the roast, this recipe did not call for egg whites – probably because the fish is flat and could be easily coated with a top and a bottom, without worrying about the sides standing up on their own. The recipe assured me that I could leave the head and tail uncovered, which made me feel like I was tucking Mr. Snapper into a little bed. Time for Goodnight Moon . . .

Goodnight little fishie...

After 20 minutes, we pulled Mr. Snapper out of the oven. He looked pretty much the same. 

I gingerly tried cracking his salt crust with a hammer, hoping for the same dramatic effect Aaron had achieved with the roast. There was an unresounding smush as the hammer sank slightly into the salt, and I realized that the egg whites turn the crust into, well, a CRUST. Sigh.

If I ever salt encrust a fish again, I will use egg white just for the gratification of being able to crack the crust open with a hammer.

Anyway, I was able to lift the salt crust off mostly in large-ish pieces, and to sweep off the remaining salt with a pastry brush. Then I was faced with a whole fish, apparently cooked.

Um, what next?

Since we’ve never cooked a whole fish before, I wasn’t sure what to do next . . . Well, actually I knew that I needed to cut it apart in some special way that would leave the bones behind and preserve the meat for serving. To the internet again!

The internet said: “To serve, slide a spatula under a section that had been scored and simply lift it out and onto a plate. For the section closest to the head, move the spatula into the top of the fish over the ribs, which start below the backbone, then around the top and down toward the ribs in a semicircular motion. This ensures a boneless piece.”

Sound great!

Only, it turns out that was one of those “easy to describe, difficult to do” things. I ended up with a lot of pieces of fish, and quite a few of them still had bones in them. Grrr. I love fish, but I HATE fish bones. Obviously, this will take more practice.

This is not easy.

The internet also said: “Oh, and don't forget the cheeks of the fish, which are my favorite part. They will be orbs of yummy fish right under each eye. And the tails, if not burnt black, are crunchy and nutty-tasting. You can also pick at the meat between the ribs, as well as in the belly.”

To which I responded: “No frickin’ way am I eating fish cheeks!” Now I’m grossed out too! Maybe Aaron had a point after all.

On a happier note, the fish was delicious: flaky, moist and perfectly cooked. I shredded the leftover pieces onto a salad for lunch today, and discovered that the spiciness of the Old Bay was a great complement to the lettuce and spinach.

But the result was pretty tasty!

My conclusion: it was a lot of work for a good, but not spectacular, dish o’ fish. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt that way if I hadn’t been learning so many new skills at the same time. I’ll try cooking and serving whole fish a few more times, then try it again.

Five salt dinner 2.3 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib Finale

I had expected the prime rib to take about four hours, based on the weight. However, I was judging doneness based on the internal temperature, rather than time, and three hours into the process it hit 130 degrees - the bottom end of medium rare, for prime rib. (As an aside, this is the first time I have used the thermometer for any large project, and I absolutely loved it. I never had to open the oven, touch the meat, or do anything else that might disturb the cooking, and I could feel comfortable the whole time that I knew exactly what was going on.)

There was definitely a problem, though - carryover heat. The purpose of the salt crust is to absorb the heat of the oven and re-transfer it to the meat in a controlled fashion. And while the salt never got particularly hot (it was warm to the touch out of the oven) it kept cooking that meat for about an hour after I took it out of the oven. I was chewing my fingernails, as I watched the thermometer creep from 130 (when I took it out) all the way up to 150 (when I finally served it.) Part of the problem there is the fact that I had thought it would take about four hours - so I put it in at 3:00, planning on taking it out at 7:00, resting it for a half hour and serving it at 7:30. Instead, I took it out at 6:00, and it sat for an hour and a half.


Oh, also - I totally screwed up the placement of the roast - whenever you're cooking any sort of roast, the fatty part needs to be on top, so the fat can drip down during cooking. I'm not sure HOW I could have worked that out - the roast's shape would have made it really difficult to coat in the salt mixture if I turned it the other direction - but I wasn't thinking when I set this up, and put the fat on the bottom. So, if you do this yourself, don't be dumb like me.

In any case, it came out fine - a bit overdone (I think rare or maybe medium rare are really the only temperatures that do prime rib justice; this was solidly in the medium range, with a pinkish center. (This picture makes it look more overdone than it actually was, though.)

Guess what? It still tasted amazing, though.

But wait! I'm skipping right past the fun part!

Honestly, if you look at the first picture in this post, you'll notice that the crust had fallen apart towards the bottom of the pan - if I had wanted to, I could have just lifted the top crust off of the meat. But this was so much cooler.

Carving was also an issue; I've never cooked a prime rib before, and I wasn't familiar with how the bones are configured. What I had was three ribs off of a cow, connected by a big piece of what one assumes is vertebra, slightly deeper in the meat.

While I was dithering and trying to form a carving plan, my friend Laura stepped up to the plate and started slicing. She worked the knife around the vertebrae, creating opening up a space so that when she parallel to the ribs, she could then pull the whole bony section right off. (It's still sitting in my fridge. When my wife leaves, and I feel like I am safe acting like a caveman, I am going to pick those bones clean.)

All in all, I really liked the salt crust - I would definitely do this again, circumstances permitting. I think the presentation is really cool, the crust does a good job of keeping the meat evenly cooked, traps juices in and really lets the natural flavor of this great cut of meat come out. If I did it again, I would definitely try the crust I suggested in an earlier part of this. Also, I would take it out of the oven at 115 or 120, depending on how well done I wanted it. It was a great centerpiece to a really nice meal... and as a bonus, I've got about two prime rib lunches left over!

Five salt dinner 3 - Stuffed Mushrooms

Oookay... So I was going to do salt-crusted red snapper next. Then I took the fish out of the bag to work on it. Then I shrieked like a little girl, and ran across the room to get away from the bag with the GIANT FISH EYE staring at me.

I am a city boy at heart. I do not want to be close to nature; I don't want to be part of the food cycle. I want my meat in fillets, steaks, or other forms that don't remind me at all of what they once were. What I do NOT want is a GIANT FISH (and by giant, I mean literally the smallest red snapper the market had) that is likely to start flopping around any second. (Despite being dead and gutted.)

Are you trying to tell me that thing doesn't freak you out at all?

I really wish I could describe how freaked out I am right now. I was barely able to get the fish back into the bag and into the fridge. I really, really hope Victoria is willing to deal with that thing.

You know what the funny thing is? I KNOW all this about myself - yet I bought a whole red snapper anyway.

Well, I'd better get working on something else, then...

Five salt dinner 3 - Salt-Crusted Red Snapper Stuffed Mushrooms

(Picking this entry up the next day - I just didn't have time to keep blogging and still get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour.)

As I said earlier, in the interest of science, I'm going to be making the following stuffed mushrooms every week - the only alteration being the spice I add for flavoring. It's a simple recipe, the point being to have something yummy, but which doesn't overwhelm the flavor of the spice. I had intended to make it exactly the same way every week - but honestly, at least in the beginning, I'm not going to be able to stop myself from tinkering. The mushrooms tend to come out a bit more watery than I would prefer. More on that later.

Also, I like to say mushrump a instead of mushroom. I do it enough that Victoria bought me a stuffed hedgehog and named him Mushrump. (What? It makes sense. His girlfriend is Pinecone, obviously.) Here is a picture of Mushrump - doesn't he make my baby look cute?

Seriously... I am shameless.

Right. Mushrooms.

Okay, so the parts:

 

Mushrooms, spinach, a baking pan, some salt, that's it. Well, since I'm cooking for eight this evening, and I've got plenty of mushrooms, I decided to spice things up a bit - I had an extra chorizo in the fridge, so I fried it up and threw it in the mix.

De-stem the mushrooms, and put them in the baking tray. Take the stems, and add an equal volume of spinach. Then, chop the hell out of them. My favorite tool for going nuts on stuff like this is a knife I found out last night is called a Mezza Luna - a curved knife with a handle on both ends. It's really good at mincing things, and it's really fun to use.

Cackling evilly is not a requirement when you use this thing, but every little bit helps.

After I chopped everything up, I decided I had too much stem, not enough spinach, so I threw in another half-handful or so. Half of this got enbowled at this point. I chucked the chorizo in the pile, kept chopping for a bit. Eventually, I wound up with this.

Now, as I said earlier,  the last few times the mushrooms have been a little too much... let's say juicy. Not bad - but a bit too much water in my mouth when I bite down. I've learned a bit about the cooking uses of salt, recently - and so I decided to sprinkle some kosher salt on the mushrooms, figuring that it would pull some of the water out of them.

 

In to the oven for seven minutes - and when I pulled them off, it was pretty clear that water had been pulled out - the salt on the bottom of the tray had been dissolved, then the water it dissolved in evaporated.

Perfect! Flipped 'em over, (to be honest, I don't know why I was cooking them face-down then flipping them... I'll try it the other way next time and see if anything different happens.) stuffed 'em with the mushroom and spinach mix, covered 'em with a little bit of cheese (a parmesan/asiago mix) and threw them back in for seven minutes.

Result:

They look better than they tasted. Not that they tasted bad - actually, they tasted really good - but to me, at least, that picture looks like some kind of Platonic ideal of stuffed mushrooms. I'm drooling looking at that picture.

They were definitely less watery than they were last time, but I think there's still room for improvement. Anyone have any suggestions?

Pro Tip:

Don't let a cement-like mixture of egg and salt harden on your countertop, unless you're looking for a workout.

Don't ask how I know this.

Five salt dinner 2.2 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib 2

(If you couldn't tell by the title, this is the third post in a series about the dinner I'm cooking this evening.)

When we last left our hero, he was having two problems - first, his salt mixture was not a good enough consistency to stick to the sides of the roast, and second, the amount of salt was probably insufficient to coat the entire roast.

I tried some half-assery for a while - piling the salt up, scraping some off the bottom... nothing really worked particularly well. Not only that, but the more I looked at the crust, the more I realized that I really expected something a bit more solid - the rock salt left a bunch of openings on the surface.

What was really called for here was some sort of spackle. I don't own any edible spackle, which means that this was a job for makin' it up - something that I enjoy doing. Okay, theory - if rock salt + egg are supposed to make my "cement", kosher salt + egg should make a decent spackle. Only one way to find out - otherwise I'm heading to the supermarket for another box of rock salt.

I took the whites of two more eggs, (running out of eggs!) and added salt until it turned into a paste. I started out with a fairly large amount...

And kept mixing, adding, mixing, adding, until I got the consistency I wanted. What I wanted, as it turns out, was about a pound and a quarter of kosher salt and two egg whites. At that point, the mixture was firm enough that it was capable of standing on its own. I made a snowball, went and washed my hands, and when I came back it was still standing.

Never let it be said that I haven't made a snowball out of salt.

Now, it was time to start spackling. Everywhere that looked like it needed more crust got some salt. I finished up with what I had made, and decided I still needed a little more, partly for aesthetic purposes, partly for cooking ones. I got out two more eggs, and mixed in the last of the box of kosher salt.

Don't eat the yellow snow.

Remind me never to do anything for aesthetic purposes - I had gotten some yolk in the mix, and as a result... well, you can see for yourself. In the end, this is what I wound up with:

 

I will be the first to admit that it is not the prettiest thing that I have ever seen. But still, once it got into the oven, I felt hopeful about the eventual result.

I'll know in about four hours!

If I had this to do over again, I would start with eight eggs, three pounds of kosher salt and three pounds of rock salt, and mix in extra kosher as necessary. I feel like that way you'd get the consistency of the kosher salt, but at the same time the solidity and volume of the rock salt. As it is, I've basically got a layer of kosher covering a layer of rock, which doesn't seem efficient.

I've also got a screaming baby in the other room. Not upset, not angry - just a baby who has decided that now is screaming time. This is why I haven't been posting much. Well, four dishes to go - I'll keep updating as things go in the oven.

Coming, my little master...

Five salt dinner 2.1 - Salt-Crusted Prime Rib 1

Warts and all cooking, folks, that's what you'll get when you roll with me. This is the story of how I screwed up the main course. I'll tell you in about five hours if what I did to fix it actually worked.


When it comes to meat, I'm one of God's grillers. I like the grill. Meat? Fire. Fire? Meat. They love each other, I love both of them, and without a whole lot of effort you can make something that generally tastes amazing. So the opportunity cost of cooking meat NOT on the grill is high. It's hard, and the results are uncertain. However, in keeping with the theme of the week, I figured I needed to do something other than just slap a little kosher salt on a tenderloin and throw it on the grill. So I decided to salt-crust a prime rib.

Now, salt crusting something is different from salt encrusting something, in the same way a jewel encrusted sword is different from one surrounded in a giant diamond. As I talked about the other day, when you're cooking something IN salt, you're using the salt as a medium, not as a flavoring. Let me show you.

Here are my working parts:

If you ever do this, do me a favor and actually take the time to wrap the edges of the foil around the pan. 

Trust me - it'll be worth the effort.

I've got a 3-bone prime rib, four pounds of rock salt, the whites of four eggs, several mixing bowls, a pan lined with heavy foil, a little bowl full of salt and pepper, and a digital probe thermometer. (The eggs are in the bowl nested in the larger one. I have a picture that actually allows you to see the eggs... but I noticed that picture also features my socks on the floor in the background. The kitchen seemed like a better call.)

Okay. Step one is easy - that little bowl is full of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Apply liberally.

There are those who would say I do almost everything liberally.

Step two, we're making the crust. Now, the recipe that I read called for five CUPS of egg whites, beaten stiff. (For those who don't know what that means - it does not mean that the eggs are BDSM freaks. For this recipe, it's sufficient to just go at them with a fork until they're frothy.) That couldn't possibly be right, so I started with the whites of four eggs - about half a cup - and eventually added another four in.

This is my picture of eggs and rock salt.

Now, add the two together, a bit at a time, and mix.

NOTE: Rock salt is basically two things - a rock, and salt. It's hard, and it's sharp, and it's salty. Here's what mixing hard sharpy salt rocks with your hand feels like:

OW.

Put on a glove. Like this.

I learn these things the hard way so that you don't have to, folks!

Your goal here is to get a consistency that you can basically pack a snowball with. My problem was, the best I got to was this:

 

Wet and sticky, but not quite where I wanted to be. I figured it was probably going to be enough, so I decided to get the party started. First, you lay the bottom part of the crust down in the roasting pan:

 

Then, put the meat down, and pack the salt mixture all around it.

 

Before you start on the sides, insert the meat thermometer, then pack the salt around it.

Now, here's where my problems started. I was wrong - that wet, gloppy mass of rock salt WASN'T, in fact, strong enough to stick to the sides of the roast; most of it wound up down in the pan. And four pounds of rock salt wasn't really going to be enough to coat the whole piece of meat. Unfortunately for you, my son just woke up - and from the smell, he's been dreaming about toxic waste. In part 2, I'll tell you what I did to solve those problems.

Oh dear God, Benjamin.

Five salt dinner : 1

Benjamin and Victoria returned home from Canada at the beginning of this week... I'm having more problems balancing taking care of the baby and writing than I expected. Hopefully next week I'll do a better job, and things won't be so feast or famine.

In the meantime, I'm having some friends over for dinner tonight. The theme? Why, salt, of course! The menu will be as follows:

Stuffed Mushrooms
Salad
Twice-Baked Potatoes
Brown rice (Variously flavored with salt)
Salt-Crusted Prime Rib
Salt-Crusted Red Snapper
Various fruits

I'm going start cooking almost immediately. I'll be taking pictures and putting small posts up all day.

My Salty Friends

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. It’s the kind of thing that you always SAY that you’re going to do, but never actually get around to. There’s just never enough time, with work and everything… someone says they can’t come, someone else gets called away to work, and it winds up being just two people eating popcorn in the corner.

Anyway, I want to introduce all my human friends to all my salt friends. Some you know already; some you’ve heard me talk about recently. Some of them are pretty normal – but I have to admit, some of them are something of an acquired taste. I really think you guys on the whole will get along with them, though.

Without further ado, here’s the gang!

The gang. The salty, salty gang.

Table Salt

Everyone knows table salt – it’s the Kevin Bacon of salt. (Or, as table salt says, Kevin Bacon is the table salt of movie stars.) Table salt does his best to make himself a bit more interesting; he’s big into iodine – but it’s the wrong kind of interesting, if you know what I mean. In the end, he’ll never be more than plain ol’ table salt – reliable, but not that good in the pinch; decent at a lot of things, but not really great at any.

The Kosher Twins

These are David and Morton, the Kosher twins. It’s really hard to tell the difference between the two of them sometimes, but there are telltale giveaways. Morton is a bit more regular, if you know what I mean, whereas David is a bit… flakier, less uniform. David is definitely bigger, too – he grew up in Israel, they must put something in the water there. These guys are good for almost anything – but just like any Jew, they’re always going to make sure that they’re heard, so if you don’t want the salt to speak up, you might want to consider using salt with a little less character.

Rocky

Rock salt – Rocky, to his friends – is not exactly the most subtle of the group. You don’t want rocky anywhere near your Beef Filet en Croute a la Provencal. Like everyone else, though, he’s a good guy, you just need to make sure you’re giving him a job that’s within his abilities. He’s great at stopping ice crystals from forming – so if you want to clean off your walkway, he’s your man. You know where else you don’t want ice crystals? Ice cream! Like so many big guys, Rocky is great with the kids. Without him, ice cream is just chunks of flavored ice. Finally, Rocky is, well, a rock – so if you want to cook something using salt, or encrust something, he’s the guy you want to do it with.

Himalayan Pink Rock Salt

Himalayan Pink is Rocky’s cousin from the mountains, but honestly, the two couldn’t be more different. Pink is a bit… crystal weirdness for my tastes, to be honest; hippies seem to think that because she comes from Tibet she’s got magic powers. She is so popular these days, and it’s easy to see why – she’s pretty, and she’s a bit exotic… but not too exotic, which is what I think people like about her. In the end, she’s just salt.

Garlic Salt

There’s always someone who just hangs around because you can’t think of a good reason to get rid of him. There’s really nothing that garlic salt does that’s unique enough to really want to spend time with… but I have to admit, sometimes you’re not in the mood for anything exotic, you don’t even really care that you could have something better – it’s here, right now, you don’t have to do anything, and you’ll have a decent time. That’s when Garlic Salt really shines.

Sea Salt

I don’t know what to make of this guy. He puts on airs like he was out to sea, but the truth is that he comes from a mine in Utah. Still, this guy is interesting enough that we’ll forgive him his affectation. He’s got great flavor, and his size and shape make him decent for just about anything, from cooking to serving at the table. And who cares that he came from a mine, rather a salt evaporation pond? Honestly, if he didn’t make such a big deal about being from the sea, I never would have noticed that he wasn’t.

Kala Namak

I have to admit, I’m kinda jealous to let anyone else know that this Indian salt exists. I’m married and all, but what guy wants to introduce someone dark, sultry, and exotic to all his friends? It’s just going end up with her leaving with one of your single friends, and who wants that? Man, Kala is fine. And when I say fine, I mean it – so fine, that she’s almost a powder. She gets that color from sulfur, and you can taste it on her too – a bit of an eggy taste, definitely like no other salt I’ve ever had. What do you do with her? I have no idea – but she’s pretty and fun to have around, so she doesn’t need to be useful.


Most of these I picked up over the last few weeks, in preparation for this project. All but the Kala Namak were available at grocery stores (I’m including Whole Foods in that category.) but as I said, I honestly have no clue what, if anything, I’ll use the Kala for.

If I were stocking my kitchen right now, I’d probably go with the sea salt as my general-purpose salt, the David’s Kosher salt as my cooking salt (it’s much more expensive than the Morton’s, but the bigger flakes are nice) and the rock salt to play around with. I’d also keep a few ounces of the Kala Namak. I really am enamored of it, and maybe someday I’ll find a dish that really wants some extra sulfur.

The taxonomy of salt

I didn't learn much about cooking when growing up. I doubt many boys do - after all, cooking is not exactly a manly activity. I was far too busy engaged in macho pursuits like collecting comic books, or waging 1/80th scale war against Shahram and Yousef in one of our basements. No, I came to cooking fairly recently, which is why I feel like I'm playing catch-up all the time – and why I’m writing this blog.

Prior to a few years ago, when I started to learn how to cook, I might have been intellectually aware that there were different types of salt in existence, but that’s about it. I probably assumed that the kosher salt my mom had was a Jewish thing. (And it is, of course – more on kosher salt later.) And I had seen sea salt as well, smaller and not nearly as flaky as the kosher salt. So, in my head, I figured there were three types of salt – table salt was the smallest, then sea salt, then kosher.

Well, I was partially right – that’s gotta be worth something. What I didn’t realize is that I was looking at one factor about the salt – size – when really, to classify different salts, we need to ask three different questions. First, where does it come from? Second, how big are the crystals? And third, has anything been added to it?

Where does your salt come from?

Go back far enough, and all salt comes from the sea... but we’re really not that interested in where our salt was in the Precambrian era. We’re interested in where the salt was shortly prior to its being packaged. Three options – the sea, a mine, or a refinery. I’m counting the refinery as a separate place, even though the salt that comes out of the refinery came in as either sea salt or mined salt – the thing is, what comes out of the refinery, no matter where it came from originally, is like all other refined salt and unlike the precursor salt that it was refined from. Of course, any salt that gets to your table has been fairly heavily refined; what I’m really referring to when I’m talking about refined salt is the 99.99+% pure mix that winds up in your salt shaker at home.

So what makes refined salt all the same, and other salts, be they rock (mined) or solar (sea) be so different from one another? It’s what the refining process takes out – the impurities. Different salts from different places are going to have vast differences in their precise chemical makeup. (Let me be precise. The salt will be the same no matter where you get it from – it’s 1-2% of “other stuff” mixed into the salt that will be different.)

A quick search for salt merchants will give you some idea of how many different types of salt are commercially manufactured. Every different mine, every different seashore is going to have a slightly different taste; the ones that are unique or exciting-tasting will get a reputation. (Himalayan pink is soooooo hot right now.) Fleur de Sel is the Champagne of salts – hand-harvested from salt pans (evaporating ponds) in a specific region of France. At $2 an ounce, it’s about 25 times as expensive as the kosher salt I’ve got sitting on my table. And since you’re going to have to explain to people that no, this is actually a super rare, expensive salt that you’re putting on their food… I think it counts as showing off. But hey! Maybe I’m wrong, and it does have a sublime taste. I wish this was the “year of having tons of money to spend on gourmet spices.”


How big are the crystals?

I’m going to make this point a few times – these three axes are unrelated to each other. You can have kosher sea salt, for instance – salt from the sea, harvested and processed into large, flaky crystals. Some salts and/or harvesting methods are going to restrict that somewhat – for example, Fleur de Sel has small, delicate crystals; you could make it into Kosher salt by dissolving it and then reforming it, but in doing so you’d be losing what you had wanted to get in the first place.

You can get a good idea of the different sizes of salt available at this site. The salt in their example – the Himalayan Pink (soooooo hot right now!) – goes from less than a millimeter average grain diameter to almost a centimeter. The smallest size would be pickling or popcorn salt – salt that you want to dissolve easily into a brine, or that you want to get caught in nooks and crannies. (If I had it around, I would have used pickling salt for the cashews the other night.) As you go up the line, you get to table salt, then kosher. (which isn’t just larger, it’s harvested so that it’s got a flat, flakier shape) After that, you’ve got pieces of salt that you really need a grinder to take advantage of, and at last proper rock salt. (Which you can still grind, of course. However, this isn’t recommended – rock salt is edible, but is more likely to have nastier-tasting impurities.)



What has been added to it?

There are three reasons to add stuff to salt – public health, marketing, and flavoring.

Every kid in America knows two things about salt: 1. Iodine gets added to it, and 2. This prevents goiters. It’s pretty successful, too – I mean, have you ever even heard of anyone getting a goiter? It doesn’t happen any more, at least in the US – and the cost of iodizing salt works out to about five cents per person per YEAR.

Adding stuff to salt is an incredibly cost-effective way to achieve public health goals. Worldwide, about 66% of people use iodized salt, up from 25% in 1990, when the UN started a push to reduce the worldwide incidence of iodine deficiency. In some places, rather than fiendishly fluoridating the water, the government controls people by putting fluoride in the salt. Devious.

You can also add stuff to salt to make it look better. (Marketing seemed a reasonable thing to call it.) Almost all table salt, and some other salts, will have agents added in prevent it from clumping. They’re generally harmless and minor – but honestly, given the choice, I prefer to leave the sodium silicoaluminate out of my food, thank you very much.

Finally, there’s flavoring. Seasoned salts are pretty popular – I’ll confess to having garlic salt in my pantry – but I’ll defer to Alton here, who points out that such mixes are mostly salt. So, to add a little bit of garlic flavor, you’re adding a lot of salt. Why not just add garlic and salt separately, and put the amount of each that you want on your food? Still, there are some pretty awesome seasoned salts out there.

One neat flavoring device that I’d love to try out is smoked salt. It’s not hard to figure out why it’s called that; after the salt is vacuum dried, it is smoked for a week or so, for the same reason you’d smoke any other kind of foodstuff.

Once again, I want to make it clear that each of these items is totally independent from the others. I don’t think anyone makes iodized kosher salt, but there’s no reason you couldn’t have it. At the same time, you can buy kosher salt with or without clumping agents, etc, etc.


Well, that’s the different varieties of salt. Tomorrow, I’m going to take a closer look at a few of the salts I’ve picked up to cook with, and then maybe, FINALLY, get around to pickling – making Pao Cai, Chinese pickled vegetables.


Addendum: Kosher salt

It’s worth taking a second here to talk about kosher salt. Or maybe to kosher salt.

Yo, kosher salt! Sup wit yo name? I don’t call pickling salt “pickle salt”, why I gots ta call you kosher salt? Yo dang JIZOB is makin’ stuff kosher, but there ain’t nothing kosher about you, because ain’t nothing kosher about ROCKS!

(Of course, if you want religious Jews to buy it, you still need a rabbi to put a stamp on your product saying that yes, it’s salt and not actually small pieces of crystallized pig.)

Okay, so it would be clearer what kosher salt was if it was named properly – koshering salt. Halacha – Jewish law – has a lot to say about how animals should be killed and prepared – and the biggest proscription is against the consumption of blood. The blood is the life, after all. Leviticus 17:10 – “And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among you, who eateth any manner of blood, I will even set My face against that soul who eateth blood and will cut him off from among his people.” Consuming blood was an offense which could get you excommunicated – so it was pretty important to get it all out of your food. (The next chapter, Leviticus 18:22, is the bit about man not lying with man as he lieth with a woman… I’ve never understood why that passage is the only one of the hundreds of laws in Leviticus that people who believe that the Bible is the literal word of god ever bother to follow. I think the next time I see someone eating a steak and cursing gays at the same time, I’m going to get my excommunicating stick out.)

Now, take a steak out and throw some table salt on it. What happens? The salt dissolves into the surface of the meat. Try the same thing with kosher salt, and you’ll see something different – the large flakes are too big to simply up and dissolve in the surface moisture. That means that they’ll sit there, being all hygroscopic…y, and suck the liquid out of the meat. The liquid, in this case, being blood. So if it helps, think of kosher salt as tiny little vampires that you’re sprinkling on your food. Maybe it should be called vampire salt!

Kosher salt gets a lot of usage, because it’s easy to handle and generally additive-free. You can pinch a nice amount of it, then spread it where you want, whereas table salt just tends to slip through your fingers and go all over the place. Two things to watch out for when cooking with kosher salt – first, remember, the point of it is that it’s hard to dissolve – so it’s not great for baking (for instance) where you WANT your salt to dissolve nice and evenly. Second, it’s lighter per volume than smaller salts. (This makes sense. Take a big pile of rocks. Fill a bucket with as many rocks as it can hold. Then smash the rocks to sand, and fill the bucket again. The sand bucket will be heavier – it’s the same substance, but the smaller version fills the available space more completely.) So, if you’ve got a recipe that calls for a specific volume of salt, rather than weight, make sure that you note what type of salt it uses. A teaspoon of table salt weighs about six grams, so that’s a good place to start.

Mmmm…. Vampire salt.

Stupid salt tricks

Did you know that salt has plenty of uses in the kitchen besides simply seasoning food? Here are two, courtesy of Alton Brown.

First, in addition to being tasty, salt can also be pretty abrasive – abrasive enough that you can use it as an easy way to clean cast-iron. While the pan is still hot, get a tiny bit of fat in it – just enough to provide a slight amount of lubrication – toss in a good-sized handful of salt, and scrub. Here’s Alton demonstrating:



Salt can also be used to clean off a lot of other things – including your teeth! (Grind the salt up as fine as possible. Mix it 1:2 with baking soda, add just enough water to give it a toothpaste-like consistency, and brush. Cleans and whitens. Definitely one of the odder toothbrushing experiences of my life. My teeth don’t look significantly whiter, but they’ve never felt more squeaky-clean. For all that, brushing with salty toothpaste is definitely something to give a miss.)


Second, remember how salt is the only rock that you eat? Well, it’s still a rock, and it shares some properties in common with other rocks. Specifically, it holds heat well, and does a good job of distributing it evenly. This is why you use a pizza stone to cook pizza – it ensures that your oven (which is prone to having hot and cold spots) doesn’t leave your relatively delicate pizza dough burnt in some places, and raw in others. The thing about using salt, as opposed to a flat rock like a pizza stone, is that salt is granular; it flows, to a certain extent, and you can surround things with it.

In this next clip, Alton cooks with salt. Not cooking using salt as an additive – cooking using salt as the medium to transfer the heat into the food. Like frying, which it in a lot of ways resembles.



The “why” here is pretty simple. Air, as a cooking medium, leaves a lot to be desired. (Never let it be said “Aaron is a dude who thinks air leaves a lot to be desired.” I’m strongly pro-air. It’s just not the best thing to cook in.)

Think about different ways to cook things. Here’s a quick list off the top of my head of methods, then what they’re actually doing.
1. Baking – Using the heated air within the oven.
2. Boiling or frying – Using heated water or oil.
3. Broiling or grilling – Using the radiated heat from a flame, with secondary cooking from the heated air.
4. Pan-frying or griddle cooking – Using a heated metal plate to conduct the heat.
(There are three basically ways to transfer heat – radiation, convection, and conduction. Radiation is the heat you feel off a fire, or from the sun. Conduction is you burning your hand on a hot pot. And convection is the hot water at the bottom of a kettle rising to the top.)

So what advantages does air have, over the others? Well, air can get hotter than any of the others, first of all. Water tops out at 212 degrees, even the best oils can only get to about 500, but air can go as hot as your oven will take it. (Technically, aluminum would melt at about 1100 degrees. Air would still just be air for another ten thousand degrees or so.) Air heats up quickly, too, compared to any of the other methods.

Unfortunately, the fact that air is a gas is a huge downer. Air’s specific heat is about 1/4 that of water – that means that a given mass of air will take a quarter as much energy to heat one degree as an equivalent amount of water – or give up that amount of energy to your food. The big problem there is the word “mass” – a kilogram of air versus a kilogram of water. The thing is, your oven doesn’t contain a kilogram of air. An average oven probably contains from about a half to a quarter kilogram of air. And that’s in your whole oven!

Let’s look at a real-world example. Let’s say your oven is fairly small – a 2 foot cube. (This makes my math easy.) That means it will have about .3 kg of air in it. Now, let’s say you really want to put the spurs to something – you’ve cranked your oven up to 500 degrees. Me, I’m taking it easy – I’ve got a liter of water, heated up to a nice and easy 200 degrees. My little electric teakettle has about six times as much energy stored in it as your whole oven!

So that’s the first problem. The second is that air has a much lower thermal conductivity than water. Not only does my water contain more energy, but it gives that energy up to food at a rate thirty times faster than air!

Finally – and I wish I had a better engineering background, so that I could express this better – air just isn’t very pushy. And for even cooking, we want pushy. Think about the difference between broiling a turkey and frying it. Why is frying so much better? Well, first, you’re actually cooking the bird at a LOWER heat. You wouldn’t think it, but you are – your oven is going to be at 325 or so, but the fry oil is only at about 175-180. It’s just that you’re getting that heat into the bird much more effectively. Second, though, is that the hot oil is going to flow over, around, into, and through every nook and cranny of that bird, and stay hot – meaning that the inside is going to get cooked at the same time as the outside. Those same nooks would certainly get air as well – but without the density and pressure of the oil, it will just find a happy nook, cool down, and not do much of anything.

So finally, we’ve got this rock salt cooking method. Alton takes care to tell you to pack the salt down tight – the goal here is for the heat to be transferred into the salt, then distributed quickly and evenly across the food. I would imagine that a salt-crusted roast is basically doing a similar thing – using that salt crust to absorb the heat then transfer it quickly and evenly into the roast.


On a related heat-transfer note… ever wonder why you put a pinch of salt in the water when you’re cooking pasta? It’s not for flavor – it’s to speed up the process. Again, salting the water raises its boiling point, so rather than boiling your pasta at 212 degrees, you’re boiling it at 220, or 225, or whatever. More hotter cooking = more faster cooking.



Bonus salt trick - Create a city which is such a blight in God's eyes that he determines He will annihilate it utterly. Make sure it's so bad that even if your uncle tries to talk God down, he will fail. Escape from the city, but make sure your wife is the curious type... presto! A salt pillar in the shape of your lady!


You know, I never got this part. I mean, Orpheus, sure - I can kinda get Orpheus. Neil Gaiman does a really good take on the Orpheus myth... in it, Eurydice was a shade - she wouldn't take mortal form unti they hit daylight - and after hours and hours of walking, hearing NOTHING behind him, Orpheus managed to convince himself that Hades had tricked him, and looks back. But Lot's wife? No. God himself tells you "I'm going to be smashing the living shit out of your town. I can't really enjoy getting a mad-on when people are watching, so just head to Zoar and don't look back.” Is this a parable about how weak women are? How disobedient? Because, honestly, while random sexism isn’t exactly out of place in the Bible, I just don’t understand the point that’s trying to be made here. Why did she look back?

It's not like Sodom and Gomorrah were nice places. Lot had some angels over to his place the night before, and all of his neighbors stopped by to rape them. That's what the town was like. Your neighbors might want a cup of sugar; Lot's neighbors wanted a cup of man-rape. (And check out Genesis 19:8, for possibly the most messed-up part of the whole story. And remember Lot is the GOOD guy.) And I can't imagine that Lot's wife's aunt or something was stuck back in the city; God was generally good about families. The angels gave them time to grab their stuff, so it’s not like she felt bad about what she was leaving behind. I can’t imagine she had a whole lot of great memories of the place. Maybe they had a really nice house? And she felt bad about losing the real estate?

Why the heck did they stay in Sodom anyway? It’s not like they lived in Queens, and housing prices were ridiculous everywhere around them… this is biblical Israel. Not exactly heavily populated. If they wanted out, they could just pack up, go five miles west, and start a new city – bang, done. Their neighbors weren’t just bad people – they were literally a mob of rapists. I guess they only raped strangers? But they were really nice people once you actually were a local landowner?

Maybe God was quiet, like in the Orpheus story? And Lot's wife wasn't really sure anything was actually happening? I don’t really imagine “rain of brimstone” as being a stealth attack move, though. Still, if it was quiet… and she was probably pissed off at her husband, what with the Genesis 19:8 thing and everything… maybe she thought he was just being a douchebag, and made up the whole “angels told me to flee the town.”

Maybe she was suicidal. I had a discussion today about the perverse urges people sometimes have – that moment when you’re looking over a railing when you can just feel your body shouting “Jump!” Maybe she gave in to that. Maybe she just couldn’t get over what her husband had done (19:8 again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go take a look.) and decided to end it rather than go on living with him.

Man, that there Bible has got some weird stuff.