Food Fascination

I promise, roux (pronounced “roo”) is not nearly as scary as it sounds. It’s actually a fairly simple mixture that goes a LONG way in making your everyday cooking easier / better.

All that a roux is made of is a fat, a starch, and a liquid. For white sauces like alfredo, this is butter, flour, and milk. It could be sausage grease, flour, and milk in a sausage gravy. It could be oil, cornstarch, and chicken stock in a slightly thickend Almond Chicken sauce. Just about anything that combines these three elements qualifies as a roux.

The benefits of this concoction are that it acts as both a stablizer and a thickener. The fat binds the starch molecules so that when they are exposed to heat and explode (ok, it’s not quite that dramatic, but a fun image) they have enough structure to trap liquid and thicken it rather than becoming lumpy. The higher the ratio of fat and starch to liquid, or the longer it’s heated (to a point) the thicker the liquid gets.

The benefit of this is that other things can be suspended in the “web” that the fat and starch create. Everything from cheese to chicken to spices can also be suspended, creating the creamy sauce we all imagine.

So, imagine my surprise when I pick up a shredded cheese blend from the store yesterday to make some homemade mac and cheese. I look at the back of the package, to see what they suggest, and they give instructions to boil the cheese with pure milk and dump in noodles.

While, at the surface, this appears to be a good idea, it would end up being a greasy, lumpy mess that wouldn’t really taste, look, or feel appetizing. The cheese grease would float to the top of the milk while the solids would sink to the bottom and get slightly gritty. Yuck.

So, don’t be afraid of a little roux. Want to try it yourself? A basic roux to experiment with:

2 Tbsp butter (melt over low heat or in the microwave)
2 Tbsp flour (whisk into the butter with a fork or whisk)
Slowly add 1 cup milk, stirring or whisking. Heat, stirring often, until it begins to thicken.

You usually want to add at least a little salt to roux, since all three ingredients can be a little bland without spice.

There you go! Add a few handfuls of shredded cheese before the milk (it will look like a solid mass, but it will smooth out once you add liquid), some garlic, and a bit of salt and pepper. Pour over noodles, and you’ve got homemade mac and cheese.

Or, use the white sauce with some extra milk, toss in diced-up leftover ham and pototo chunks for a darn good soup.

Or toss in parmesean and feta cheese for a greek sauce to pour over spinach and chicken.

The possibilities run far and wide. Don’t be afraid of roux!

Happy Survived-Thanksgiving week to everyone! This Thanksgiving included lots of food, as always, and lots of conversations about possible new topics for Fascination. Let me know if you came across any questions.  Having had between 10 and 15 people eating at my house or with my family for four and a half days, I don’t have a lot of leftovers. What I do have lots of, however, are eggs. Three dozen or more. And while we go through a lot of eggs at my house, that’s enough that some of them are getting hard-boiled.

Hard-boiled eggs are probably one of the simplest snacks and easiest ways to get protein. They make great lunchbag stuffers and even better midday snacks. While your basic hard-boiled egg method couldn’t be simpler (put eggs in boiling water) this leads to tough, rubbery eggs that are unappetizingly green and a bit bitter.

A truly good hard-boiled egg takes a bit of time and attention, but are very worth it. The first and most important thing - make sure your eggs are NOT fresh! In fresh eggs, the chalaze (the strand of protein that connects the white and the yolk and shell. That opaque strand in the white when you crack open an egg) is very strong and prominent. Hard-boiling the eggs at that stage strengthens the connection and makes the shell stick to the egg.

When you let eggs sit for a week or so, the chalaze begins to break down and the air pocket between the white and the shell gets larger. Boil the eggs at that stage, and getting the shell off is much much easier. So buy “old” eggs in the grocery store (check the container for a date) or let them sit in your fridge for a week or two.

Once you’ve got old eggs to boil, avoid that green around the yolk and the slightly bitter taste with this method:

Place a single layer of eggs in the bottom of a pan. Cover with cold water only until the water reaches barely above the top of the eggshells. Place on medium-high heat. When lots of bubbles begin to roll up from the surface (this is a simmer), turn the heat down to medium, or until only a few small bubbles roll up every once in a while. Let the eggs sit in this almost-simmering water for 20 minutes. Take the eggs off the water, and either fill the pan with cold water or place the eggs in a bowl of cold water. This stops the cooking process and prevents the bitterness.

Store eggs up to two weeks in your fridge. To peel, roll back and forth on a paper towel to crackle the shell and pull off. If the eggs are being stubborn, crackle the shell and then let the shell-still-on eggs sit in a bowl of water in the fridge. The water will seep in and help loosen the shell.

1 small package cream cheese (8oz) - room temperature
1 1/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 large egg
1 Tablespoon baking soda
3 cups white flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips or semi-sweet baking chocolate
1 Tablespoon butter or margarine

Cream the cream cheese and sugar together until fluffy. (The crystal structure of sugar is very angular, and when you mix it in with something rather vigorously, it rubs and scratches the surface, and allows air into the mixture. This air makes the cookies feel “lighter” once they come out of the oven.)

Mix egg and lemon juice into the cream cheese and sugar until fully combined. (The egg adds the proteins needed to give the cookies structural support… once baked especially, they hold everything together rather than turning into soft crumbs.)

Pour in 1 cup of the flour and the baking soda. Mix thoroughly . Add last of flour, and stir until all flour has been incorporated. Dough will be very sticky.

Place butter/margarine and chocolate in a small microwave-safe container. Microwave for 20-25 seconds, or until butter is melted and chocolate is beginning to soften. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. (If you microwave chocolate until it is entirely melted, the water inside of it will evaporate and the chocolate will “seize” - turn into little globules of rather unappetizing chocolate-like product. By adding some fat/oil and applying only minimal heat, you minimize evaporation. The other option is to create a double boiler style setup by placing a glass bowl over a pot of simmering water and stirring constantly. Either way, treat chocolate gently!)

Using a rubber scraper or wooden spoon, drop bits of chocolate over surface of the cream cheese dough still in the mixing bowl. Fold (dig your scraper or spoon in on one side, and very carefully run it along the bottom of the batter, then lift up and over the top) gently until the dough is swirled, but not mixed.

Drop by small teaspoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake 10-13 minutes in 350 degree oven. Cookies are done when puffed and slightly resistant to touch. Edges will not noticeably brown. Pull out of oven, and transfer to cooling rack.

Q: How do you extend the life of spinach or other greens? They seem to go bad SO quickly.

The two things that make leafy greens spoil quickly are moisture and air - they work in tandem with bacteria to break down the cell walls and create the “slime” that coats greens after a few days in the fridge. When vegetables look fresh from the store (or better yet, the garden) the cells are full of water and push out against their cell walls (this is, honestly, known as “turgid”). As soon as a plant is cut off from it’s water source, the cells start to very slowly lose water via evaporation. When this happens, the cell walls start to collapse in on themselves and the leaves begin to wilt.

Eventually, the cells have lost enough water that the cell walls start to break down and create that “slime” that shows up after a few days in the fridge.

The first instinct most people have is to seal up leafy greens in an airtight container in order to prevent evaporation. However, this usually leads to them spoiling even more quickly. This is because the water still evaporates from the cells, but with nowhere to go, it hangs out in the air near the leaves and adds more moisture and “weight” to the air, which encourages the cells to break down even more quickly.

The best way to store leafy greens in the short-term (up to a week or so) is to wash them in cold water, pat them mostly-dry, and wrap them in paper towels (no more than one or two layers of greens - if you have more, layer them with more paper towels). Then put this paper-towel-greens layering into a plastic grocery sack, and store it in your fridge (the “veggie” drawer if you have one.) The slightly damp paper towels get a degree or two colder than the fridge and help slow down how fast water evaporates from the cells. The grocery sack protects the greens from the breezes in your fridge while still allowing what moisture does seep out to actually evaporate.

If you want to freeze your leafy greens, however, you’ll need to treat them a bit more harshly. If you just throw the leaves in the freezer, then the water inside the cells will freeze, expand, and burst. Burst cells equals plant mush. It’s easiest to process leafy greens for freezing in medium to large batches, because you’ll need to get a few things set up.

First, get a large bowl and fill it with half water, half ice.
Second, wash your greens. Don’t worry about drying them.
Third, in a large, wide-mouth pot, boil some salt water (about 1 tablespoon salt for every 2-3 cups water)

Using tongs, take a bunch of the greens and dunk them in the boiling salt water for about a minute. Pull them out and immediately dunk them in the ice water. The boiling water kills bacteria and softens the plant fibers. The cold water stops the cooking process, so you don’t have fully cooked (and therefore mushy) greens on your hands. Once the greens are nice and chilled, either 1- wrap them in paper towel, seal in an airtight zip lock (evaporation isn’t an issue in the freezer) and freeze; or 2- chop them into small bits, seal in a small zip lock bag, and freeze. You won’t want to use these frozen greens for salads, but in dips, baked dinners, or soups, they are amazing.

However you choose to store, process, and use your leafy greens, they’re worth enjoying. Thanks to Laurie, my beloved plant geek, for making sure I remembered my basic cell biology correctly!

This is from a chat I had via the “Ask Me” box - give it a try if I’m online - I can’t *promise* I’ll respond right away, but if I miss your question there I’ll answer it here.
Q: I need help with baking bread - my quick bread loaves always end up soggy in the middle of the top. I’ve tried extending the bake time and it doesn’t seem to help. Any suggestions?

A: There are three possible culprits when a quick bread goes soft in the middle, all of which should be fairly easy to fix with a little bit of trial and error. When baked goods start going wonky (and that is the official term) - I would say first and foremost, if you don’t have one, buy an oven thermometer! Ovens can vary by as much as 30 degrees, even when they are on the *right* setting. Once you are sure you’re baking things at the right temperature…

The first possible guilty party in soggy quick bread is that the batter is sitting for too long before you bake it. At the point you combine the liquids and dry ingredients the leavening starts to act, and if it’s all used up before it goes into the oven, there is nothing left to create “new” airspace in the bread. Those little air pockets help bake the batter around them by acting as an insulator. So put the batter in the oven as soon as you can.

The second possible miscreant is not enough or not powerful enough leavening. If you have old baking powder / baking soda, then it may have lost its effectiveness. If you can’t remember the last time you bought a new container, throw it out and go get a new one. (Usually 2 years is about the longest you want to keep this stuff around.) If you are using new leavening and still having this problem, then the recipe may not have enough leavening in it. Try increasing it 1/4 teaspoon at a time.

The third possible transgressor is too much liquid. Especially if you live in a humid environment, or have a humid home / kitchen, the flour you are using could already have more moisture in it. When your “dry” ingredients contain more moisture, than you don’t need as many “wet” ingredients to get the proper balance of moisture. Try reducing the liquid in your recipe in 1/4 cup increments (either all the main liquid, such as milk; or, try 1 tablespoon of the oil and 3 tablespoons of the main liquid).

Good Luck!

As a nod to my mom, who still supports and feeds my passion for food, this is one of the first “food photos” I ever took… as we were preparing 100+ fresh fruit plates for a luncheonette held at her business. Cottage cheese, fresh cut fruit, and a fresh-baked roll. This photo still hangs in the kitchen of her original building (the business has now expanded to two facilities).

The Shilling House (My mom’s place)

Q: I just bought a dual-mode (convection and standard) oven, and the user’s manual says cakes are best done in standard mode. Why is this?

The short answer: Because they’ll look better

The long answer:  A convection oven is an oven that uses a giant fan to circulate the hot air inside an oven, baking things more evenly (and more quickly) than a standard oven. In fact, they are so much more efficient that when baking convection, it is recommended that you both shorten the baking time and reduce the oven temperature by 25-50 degrees. Put simply, a convection oven is “hotter” than a standard oven.

For most things that most people bake, this is a good thing. However, when you start combining this even, forced-air heat with more delicate baked goods, it can get tricky.

Cakes (and for this case, lighter quick breads such as muffins) rely on baking powder or baking soda to get their airy feel. These two ingredients are simply chemicals that react with the chemicals in the other ingredients to add air to the mix. It’s like in third grade when you put baking soda in orange juice to create “orange soda” - the acid in the orange juice mixes with the baking soda and creates carbon dioxide. When this happens in a batter, the air gets trapped and gives the cake lift. When the batter begins to solidify, the air bubbles are “baked in” and stay there. This allows the uncooked batter to lift even higher, because there is a base for it to grow on - kind of like climbing a ladder.

In a regular oven, the heat rises from the bottom of the oven, through the batter, cooking the bottom first and lifting the cake as it goes. In a convection oven, the batter is bombarded with heat from every direction. This cooks the cake from the edges in rather than bottom-up - so when the leavening does its job and the cake tries to rise, it starts building on itself from every direction. The result of this is a cake with a top that rises a bit at the edges, falls a bit in the middle, and then puffs up in the center. It won’t affect the taste of your cake at all, but if you are going for the classic, even dome appearance, switch your oven over to standard mode.

The other option, especially if you’re planning on decorating the cake, is to level it out manually. Freeze the cake for anywhere from 20 minutes (in the pan) to overnight (turn it out of the pan and wrap in plastic wrap). Then use a serrated knife* to cut off the top of the cake and create a level surface.

Then put the “leftover” cake you just cut off in a bowl, top off with a bit of milk, and enjoy the favorite of caterer’s daughters everywhere!

Have a question? Email jadetater (a) yahoo [dot] com!

* Serrated knives are those knives with edges that look like waves - lots of little points. When you use these in a sawing motion (rather than cutting straight down) they cut breads and deicate foods (such as tomatoes) much more evenly.

6 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Olive Oil
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
1 package crumbled feta cheese (Garlic and herb or sun-dried tomato are both tasty)
1/2 - 3/4 cup Ricotta cheese (If you don’t have the exact amount, don’t worry!)
1/2 - 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese (If you don’t have the exact amount, don’t worry!)

Preheat oven to 350.

In a shallow frying pan, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering (but not smoking - olive oil can and does burn) Place two or three (however many will fit in your pan) trimmed chicken breasts* in the pan, sprinkling the spices to taste over the top. Flip after two or three minutes, and sprinkle the other side with spices. Cook another two to three minutes. DO NOT cook all the way through! Set this chicken aside, on a baking dish covered in foil, and continue cooking in batches until complete.

In a bowl, combine the three cheeses. Set aside.

Allow the chicken to cool just enough to handle. Using a sharp paring knife, cut into the thickest part of the breast - about half the horizontal width. Cut down the length of the breast. Spoon approximately one sixth the cheese mixture into the slice you just created, using the back of the spoon to pack the cheese in.

Once all six chicken breasts are stuffed, cover the baking dish with more foil, sealing the edges. Bake for twenty to thirty five minutes, until the chicken shows no signs of pink and the cheese is heated through.

* Usually the boneless, skinless chicken breasts you get from the store still have some fat attached. Trim this off with a sharp knife. If you cook this fat, it becomes very very tough gristle that is not pleasant to bite into.

Q: Is there any way to bake vegetables without them drying out?

Short answer: add moisture
Long answer: There are several options, depending on what kind of vegetable you’re talking about. To understand why this happens, you need to understand how an oven works. When you bake with an oven, you are using hot, dry air to cook something from the outside in. This hot, dry air caramelizes the sugars in food (turns them brown and crispy), which gives cookies that dark brown edge,vegetables that slightly sweet flavor, and breads their crust.

However, because the air is so hot, it tends to drive away humidity and moisture, much like a desert does. With no source of water, it gets rather parched inside your oven. So when the water molecules in the food you’re baking get hot, they evaporate rather than staying in the food.

So how do you solve this? Several ways:

First, try the microwave. I know, I know, this is sacrilegious. However, a microwave cooks food by exciting the molecules already inside the food, rather than evaporating and baking. This makes it an exceptionally good choice for already dry and/or stringy vegetables, such as squash. You are, in effect, steaming what you microwave in its own water and juices rather than “baking” it. However, this means you don’t get that brown, baked taste.

Second, try wrapping the veggies up in foil, perhaps with a bit of water, then baking them. What happens here is you create a “microclimate” where the water that evaporates from the veggies gets caught, and sticks around to create a humid environment.

Third, take a page from bread bakers in dry climates, and put a glass dish full of boiling water in the oven along with the veggies. You are, again, simply raising the ambient humidity of the oven, so not as much moisture evaporates.

Fourth, try “pan baking” - saute the veggies in a frying pan just long enough to get the carmelization, then add a few tablespoons of water or broth and cover with a tight-fitting lid. “Bake” on the stovetop, over low to medium heat, until the vegetables are tender. This combines steaming and baking. You could also saute and then microwave, although I wouldn’t recommend it, because that would cook everything at different rates, and you’d end up with mushy veggies.

Good luck!

Have a question? Ask the foodie! Email jadetater (a) yahoo [dot] com

Q: Why aren’t you supposed to stir muffins too much?

A: The short answer is, because you don’t want them to be tough.

The long answer has to do with the proteins in flour. Flour has a protein known as “gluten” - long strands that, when developed, act more and more like rubber bands, binding the ingredients around the flour together. When you add moisture to flour and mix, knead, or otherwise work the moisture into the flour, these strands of gluten begin to develop. The result of this is a more “solid” texture. This is why you knead yeast bread and why roux works - the protein holds things together.

However, in muffins, you don’t *want* the proteins to hold the ingredients together. The flour is there more to bulk up the mixture and add body. Muffins (this goes for any quick bread, really) also use baking powder or baking soda for the lift. These aren’t very strong leavenings - they will add some air to the mixture, but they aren’t able to fight against very much gluten (unlike yeast).

What happens when you stir quick bread, is you start to develop those long strands of protein in the flour. This makes it more difficult for your leavening (what makes a baked good rise) to actually add air when it goes into the oven. It also toughens up the baked good, because the protein isn’t nearly as tender once it starts holding things together.

So when you’re making muffins, be very gentle when you mix the liquids and dry ingredients together. Mix as little as you can (it’s OK if some flour isn’t entirely combined) and get them into the oven quickly. This will help your muffins rise even higher, and you’ll have more tender crumbs in those delicious muffin caps!

Have a question? Ask the foodie! Email jadetater (a) yahoo [dot] com