Saveur: The New Comfort Food (13 page)
Read Saveur: The New Comfort Food Online
Authors: James Oseland
I first learned about the great Italian-American fare at Figaretti’s in West Virginia by reading an old guidebook written by Duncan Hines. Today, Duncan Hines is invariably associated with the boxed cake mixes that bear his name, but before he started hawking mass-produced food products in the 1950s, he reigned as one of the country’s most influential restaurant critics. In the days before Zagat Surveys, the words “Recommended by Duncan Hines” were a seal of approval proudly displayed outside restaurants across the country. Duncan Hines was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1880. He first got the idea of reviewing restaurants for travelers when he was working as a salesman for printing businesses; driving around the country to meet with clients, he filled a notebook with thoughts about his favorite places to eat along the way. Hines published the first Adventures in Good Eating guide in 1936. The guide was a bestseller and was updated every year until 1962. In 1949, Hines launched a line of products on the strength of his steadfast reputation; ice cream came first, followed by the popular cake mixes. Today, I continue to take inspiration from his simple mission: to introduce travelers to “the refinements of good living, while seeing America.”—Todd Coleman
Tian Tian Chao Mian
In this Beijing-style noodle stir-fry, ingredients go into the wok in a measured progression so that each one cooks to the point of optimal flavor and texture. Carrots and onions are stir-fried just long enough to reveal their sweetness; pork, ginger, and garlic release their fragrance into the hot oil; then soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar cook down quickly into a sauce that clings to the noodles, which get a final toss in the wok along with salted cucumber and a drizzle of sesame oil. The subtle, surprising result is a beautiful testament to what a little care applied to a few simple elements can produce.
½ small seedless cucumber, peeled and julienned Kosher salt, to taste
3 tbsp. canola oil
1 medium carrot, julienned
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
¼ lb. ground pork
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1-inch piece ginger, minced
6 scallions, minced
1½ tbsp. dark soy sauce
1½ tbsp. rice cooking wine
1½ tsp. sugar
2 cups bean sprouts
6 oz. dried flat noodles, boiled and rinsed under cold water
1 tbsp. Asian sesame oil
Serves 2–4
1. Toss the cucumbers and a pinch of salt together in a small bowl; set aside for at least 5 minutes. Heat a 14-inch wok (or a stainless-steel skillet) over high heat until it begins to smoke. Add 1 tbsp. oil around the edge of the wok and swirl to coat the bottom and sides of the wok. Add the carrots and onions and cook until softened, about 1 minute. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Return the wok to high heat and add the remaining oil. Add the pork, garlic, ginger, and half of the scallions and cook, breaking the pork into small pieces, until browned, 3–4 minutes.
3. Add the soy sauce, rice cooking wine, sugar, bean sprouts, and reserved carrots and onions. Cook, stirring, until hot, 30 seconds.
4. Add the reserved cucumbers, remaining scallions, noodles, and sesame oil and cook, tossing, until hot, about 1 minute. Season with salt. Divide between plates and serve hot.
Uniformly sliced vegetables are essential to stir-fries, so that the ingredients will cook evenly. To transform carrots into the thin sticks called julienne requires patient slicing. Most professional cooks chop their carrots into 2-inch-long segments, square off and discard the edges, and cut the segments into thin planks, which they then stack up and slice into slivers. It’s a perfectly serviceable way of going about it, but it produces a lot of wasted carrot. We prefer the following technique, which we learned from Shirley Cheng, a professor of Asian cooking at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Here’s how to do it.
A
Trim and peel a carrot. Using a large, sharp knife, slice on a deep diagonal into thin, broad slices, keeping the overlapping slices nestled close together as you work. Cutting on the diagonal allows you to use almost the whole carrot; slices from the tapered end will be about the same length as those from the thicker end.
B
Spread the carrot slices out like a deck of cards, so that one slice overlaps most of another.
C
Working from one end of the pile to the other, cut the carrot slices into thin slivers, holding the carrots down firmly with your free hand as you go.
A fisherman delivers his daily catch to a waterfront fish market on the coast of Tanzania.
Fish markets are some of the most extraordinary places on the planet: from the sprawling wholesale marts of Bangkok or New York City to the dockside stalls in coastal villages around the world. It’s not just the sensory experience—the ocean scent, the glistening fish—that we find alluring; it’s the promise of a great meal. Stuffed clams, crisp-fried catfish, spicy Veracruz-style snapper—these dishes make the most of the ocean’s bounty and reaffirm our love of the sea, no matter how far from it we happen to be.
Despite the name, these shrimp are cooked in a skillet, not on a grill; “barbecue,” in this case, refers to the sweet-hot sauce served with them. Tory McPhail, the chef at the legendary New Orleans restaurant Commander’s Palace, serves this house specialty with plenty of crusty bread for mopping up that mouthwatering sauce.
16 jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails left on
2 tbsp. Creole or Cajun seasoning, such as Tony Chachere’s brand
¼ cup canola oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. minced fresh rosemary leaves
½ cup beer, preferably Abita Amber
6 tbsp. hot sauce
6 tbsp. Worcestershire
5 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
12 tbsp. unsalted cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 loaf crusty French bread, for serving
Serves 4
1. Put the shrimp and Creole seasoning into a bowl and toss to coat; set aside.
2. Heat a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the oil and garlic to the skillet and cook until the garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add the rosemary and cook for 2–3 seconds. Add the shrimp and cook, flipping once, until they start to turn pink, about 30 seconds. Transfer the shrimp to a large plate and set aside. Add the beer, hot sauce, Worcestershire, and lemon juice to the skillet and stir well. Cook, stirring, until thickened, 7–8 minutes.
3. Remove the skillet from the heat and whisk in the butter, a few pieces at a time (the sauce will start to thicken). Return the shrimp to the skillet and toss to coat. Return the skillet to medium heat and cook until the shrimp are cooked through, 2–3 minutes. Transfer the shrimp and sauce to 4 plates. Serve with chunks of crusty bread.
There’s no place I’d rather be on a Sunday morning than Commander’s Palace in New Orleans’ Garden District, with a milk punch in hand and a plate of eggs Sardou, BBQ shrimp, or redfish Lyonnaise on the way. A brass band ambles from room to room, silverware clanks, conversation bubbles forth. In the foyer, Ella Brennan, the matriarch of the family that has run this restaurant for the past four decades, is holding court and telling stories. Her niece, Lally, escorts guests to the bar—which happens to be in the kitchen. No one does restaurants like the Brennans, and no restaurant in that family’s expanding empire, which includes a dozen or so bistros, steak houses, and cafés in New Orleans and other cities across the South, is a more exuberant example of the manifold glories of dining in the Crescent City than Commander’s Palace. It is formal, but good fun. The fare is traditional—a marriage of elegant, European-inflected Creole dishes with more rustic Cajun ones—with just enough whimsy to keep it interesting. With flaming table-side desserts like bananas Foster (a dish Miss Ella invented on the fly one night back in the 1960s at the family’s restaurant, Brennan’s), Commander’s distinguishes itself from other temples of New Orleans gastronomy by embracing the city’s joie de vivre.