Ben Cooks Everything

Scones, it turns out, are not the hardest thing in the world to make. Bittman says you can mix the batter in the food processor, so that’s exactly what I did.

For some reason, my batter ended up incredibly runny when I plopped it onto the counter out of the food processor, so I added some more flour to the mixture before kneading it (“10 times; no more”). I also forgot to add the dried currants, which would have been a nice touch. Oh well. Bittman says to cut circles out of the dough after rolling it out to 3/4 inches, but I decided to just roll it into a square and cut amorphous triangle things off of that. They didn’t look great, but they tasted fine and cooked evenly. These were really good for plain scones, but next time I’d definitely use the currants, or anything else Bittman suggests in the adjacent list, “13 Additions to Virtually Any Quick Bread, Muffins, Biscuits or Scones.” He’s always got you covered.

The best part of the scones recipe is, you can do it all way ahead of time. Deb at Smitten Kitchen even says in her scone recipe that she rolls and cuts them out, freezes the dough, then throws them in the oven the morning of brunch to save time.

It’s big, filling, cheap, and you can cook the whole damn thing at once: Spanish Tortilla is the best thing to make if you have some friends coming over for brunch.

The Spanish Tortilla recipe in How to Cook Everything is basically a big pile of potatoes, eggs and onions cooked together in one pan. You sauté some onions and thinly sliced potatoes until soft in a large skillet (it helps a lot if it’s nonstick). The potatoes and onions cook together in a whole bunch of olive oil–one cup. It’s a lot, but you drain it out before adding the eggs. After draining the oil, 6-8 eggs go in a bowl with the potato-onion mixture, and that goes back into the pan (add some of the oil that was drained before you add the potato-egg mixture to the pan. You just cook this over medium heat until the edges firm up. Then, using a spatula to loosen the tortilla from the pan, transfer it to a large plate, turn it upside down using another plate, and finally return it to the pan, thereby flipping the tortilla. Cook it for another five minutes or so, and it’s done. This thing is damn tasty, and it can be served warm or room temperature. I want some right now.

The How to Cook Everything recipe for Carnitas is a variation on Bittman’s Shredded Pork recipe. Both, I assume, are great taco fillers, which is what the carnitas I made were used for. Crispy little pieces of shredded pork: major drool factor. There are probably more authentic ways of doing this, and they may taste better, but these were damn good and they certainly did the trick.

In the mother recipe, you simmer chunks of pork shoulder along with a quartered onion, a bunch of smashed garlic cloves, bay leaves, cumin, a dried chile (I used ancho) and water to cover for about an hour or longer, until the meat is tender. Then you shred it, and you’re done. The carnitas variation has you shred or chop the meat at this point, but then return it to the pot to cook further until all liquid is evaporated and the meat is getting nice and crispy.

Now, I simmered the pork in my enormous 8 qt. dutch oven and it took over 12 cups of water to cover the pork. I was not about to simmer this stuff for 12 hours waiting for all that water to cook off. So I shredded the meat, removed most of the liquid (strained it and froze it as pork stock, natch), returned the meat to the pan, added a bit of neutral oil and simmered until the meat was getting crispy. Then I let it cook a while longer, because in my book the crispier the pork is, the better.

It worked, and it was great. There are more authentic ways of making carnitas, I’m sure, but let me tell you: these tacos were pretty effing good, especially with the leftover Red Beans with Meat I’d stashed in the freezer. The remaining toppings were roasted tomato salsa (Trader Joe’s) and ricotta salata–could’ve used something green like lettuce or my favorite, the gringotastic cucumber, but these were pretty delicious as it was. The leftovers I just ate mixed with a big bowl of rice and beans (cheese on top) for lunch.

Hey everyone! More cooking going up as soon as the pictures of my first attempt at carnitas are ready. In the meantime, here’s some stuff from around the internet you might be interested in.

First off, I’m thrilled to tell you that I’m writing a column for Serious Eats! I’m so siked to be involved with them–you may notice I mention them a lot around here–and I hope you’ll check out my stuff, and all the other great stuff over there. The Talk section can answer just about any question you have. I’m contributing to SE: New York with a column called Apps Only, where I go to restaurants I can’t afford a whole meal at, and try to construct a meal composed of sides, appetizers, and small plates. Check it out.

I love Momofuku, and I love to stare at the pictures in the cookbook, but the only thing I think I’ll ever make from it is the simple ginger scallion sauce. Badass chick Steph is not scared like I am; she’s making every recipe in the Momofuku cookbook. Her blog is well written, beautifully photographed, and lovingly executed. A ton of the shots, like the signature pork buns, for example, look better than the photos in the book itself. As a bare bones kind of home cook, I am flabbergasted by how adventurous she is in the kitchen. Check it out.

The always helpful Paupered Chef shows us how to make a pizza stone from about $3 worth of tiles from Home Depot. Check it out.

Finally, last week I attended a FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics) in Brooklyn: a community dinner where the price of admission goes to fund art and community projects. I wrote a short writeup of the event, also for Serious Eats: New York. Check it out and also check out the FEAST site for more info on this amazing organization.

Apps Only [serious eats: new york]
Momofuku Pork Buns [momofuku for two]
How to Make a 3 Dollar Pizza Stone [paupered chef]
FEASTing in Brooklyn [serious eats: new york]

This recipe couldn’t be much easier, and it’s pretty versatile: broccoli is a good accompaniment to almost everything in my opinion. You could probably just add some meat or tofu to this and have a whole main course to serve over rice.

Basically you take your broccoli (I used this thin-stemmed kind that I can’t remember the name of, but you can also use cauliflower, broccoli raab, or a terrifying hybrid I never heard of but Bittman suggests called Broccoflower) and cut the tops into florets, then peel the stems and chop them up. Stems are like the chicken wings of broccoli: so often overlooked, but so clearly the best part. Jacques Pepin agrees, so it’s true.

Then you heat up some neutral oil over high heat and throw in the broccoli until it’s just starting to brown. Add salt, sugar, and stock, then keep stirring until most of the liquid is evaporated–you end up with a slightly thickened sauce. Add soy sauce, and you’re done.

Ate this with a salad and roast chicken parts in ginger scallion sauce (David Chang’s recipe, not Bittman’s). It was a fast, easy meal that felt more like a feast.

Sorry, guys. I’ve been totally MIA lately, I know. It’s not my fault! OK, well, it is my fault, but let’s just move on.

On Christmas Day my friend Melanie and I observed the time honored Jewish tradition of Chinese food and a movie (Dim sum at Madarin Court on Mott Street and Up In The Air, if you’re wondering). Mandarin Court is the place where I discovered how much I love baby bok choy–simply steamed and slathered with a bunch of oyster sauce. It’s so good, and there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to do it at home.

Sure enough, How To Cook Everything has a recipe for Asian Greens, Chinese Restaurant Style. It suggests using gai lan, but I opted for mustard greens (you can use any kind of Asian greens or broccoli, kale, collards, and the like). Basically you just separate the stems from the leaves, sautee the leaves in some neutral oil until the wilt, put them on a plat, sautee stems, add some water, and toss until the stems are tender. Then add the stems to the aforementioned plate, hit it with a bunch of oyster sauce, and you have pretty much the best preparation of greens possible, and also the easiest. It might not look like much, but it’s damn tasty and really good for you.

“A pot of beans flavored with meat–sometimes just what you want.” True. This recipe is not for the faint of heart–it includes both ham hocks and sausage. I was hoping it’d be like the beans at Margon, my favorite Cuban spot in NYC.

I didn’t soak the beans, so they took forever (at least I think that’s why they took so long). It works like this: you take the beans, cover them with cold water, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, and add the ham hock. I was using a trotter from Flying Pigs’ Farms, purveyors of the finest pork I’ve ever had. It cost about four dollars, and was worth five times that in flavor. Easily.

While that simmers, brown the sausages all over in a skillet, pricking them to release fat. When they’re nicely colored, and there’s a good bit of grease in the pan, remove them and cut into small chunks (it’s cool if they aren’t totally cooked, they’re going right back in a few minutes anyway). Sautee onions, garlic and red peppers in the sausage grease until soft, then remove, add the sausage back to the pan, cook it through until it’s all nice and brown, then return the onion mixture back to the pan with thyme, bay leaves, allspice and tomato (I used canned, which worked great). Stand over the pot, trying not to eat all of this mixture with a spoon.

So now the meat in the beans should be pretty soft, and you can take it out and chop up the meat and return it to the beans if you like. When you do, also add in the sausage and veg mixture. From there, it’s “anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on whether you soaked [the beans].” Apparently, though, it’s more like 4 hours if you didn’t soak the beans. Lesson learned, Bittman!

Enjoy with anything, really. I paired with Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, Roast Chicken with Cumin, Honey, and Orange, a salad we forgot to serve, and family friends.

It was weeks ago already, and I’ve been totally missing in action ever since. Probably because I just came out of the resulting food coma. I know, I know, it’s halfway to New Year’s already, but I’m just now getting around to posting a wrap-up of the big day.

Ari, my cousin, made the turkey. He’s been doing this for a few years now, and he’s really good at it. Look at that turkey thigh! It’s moist as can be. And I got a wing, which is always fun, because, you know, it’s like a chicken wing, only HUGE.

I made the stuffing I talked about earlier, doctoring up some Whole Foods’ brand stuffing mix with Dipaola turkey sausage (IT’S THE BEST) and a ton of fresh celery and onions. It was really good, just what I was hoping for.

I also made a bunch of roasted root veggies: blue potatoes, purple carrots, shallots, and jerusalem artichokes mixed with a ton of fresh rosemary and minced garlic, pimenton, salt and pepper. What could go wrong? Nothing, that’s what.

There was also a lentil salad I brought along. It was really good–lentils cooked in vegetable stock, some chopped up carrots and shallots, lemon zest, sherry vinegar, mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper, mixed just til combined. This one’s great to take to a party because it keeps really well, and it tastes even better if you make it a few days beforehand.

I also made an incredibly large–3+ gallons–batch of the Potato Leek Soup, a recipe that I’ve now made more times than I can count. How can just three ingredients come together to be so rich and satisfying? It’s particularly good for tiding people over while various sides go in and out of the oven in preparation of the big feast.

So, that was Thanksgiving! Thanks to Aunt Susan and Uncle Jay for hosting everyone (I believe there were about 300 of us in total) and to everyone who brought or made some form of deliciousness, and especially to Mom for decorating the tables and making everything so pretty (that’s her handiwork pictured above). I am truly thankful for such a large, loving family that I genuinely look forward to spending time with. And that’s to say nothing of how thankful I am for all of you out there reading this. There’s more on my list, but those two will have to do for now. Hope you all had a great holiday, and good luck with all the Christmas, Hannukah, New Years’, and whatever else parties you all have coming up!

“How to Improvise a Soup,” p. 125, has five steps that tell you everything you need to know. It could be a whole book in itself, but it only takes one minute to read.

Earlier:
Quickest Chicken Stock
Better Chicken Stock
Vegetable Stock
Smoky Black Bean Soup
Pureed Pumpkin Soup
Potato Leek Soup
Miso Soup

When I said I’d bring four sides to Thanksgiving this year, it seemed like a good time to make the vegetable stock in How to Cook Everything. There’s a bunch of vegetarians in the family, so I couldn’t use chicken or pork stock where I usually would–cooking beans, finishing soups, moistening stuffing–so, vegetable stock.

It’s pretty simple. What you see above is a whole mess of chopped up veggies–carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, parsley, some garlic–with some soy sauce and peppercorns. Throw them in a pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, reduce to very low simmer, and let cook for at least thirty minutes, more if possible. Bittman doesn’t suggest a maximum time but if you’ve read Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking, you’ll be completely terrified to simmer for anywhere more than an hour (though if you’re like me, you probably don’t remember the reason he gave). Also taking a queue from Ruhlman, I browned some of the veggies before adding the water for a deeper color and flavor.

Then you just strain, squeezing any excess water and flavor out of the veggies. The broth is delicious: savory with a touch of sweetness. It’s very complex. The mushrooms even add a touch of meatiness, without imparting their distinctive–and, for people like my cousin Sara, dealbreaking–mushroomy flavor. You don’t taste this and think “mushrooms.” I can’t wait to see how it works in the dishes I’m planning to make (the lentils, which I cooked beforehand in this stock, were good).