Buffalo Wings

Every Superbowl Sunday I make Buffalo chicken wings. I can never make enough, so I have decided to tutor my ravenous friends on how to make their own:

- Buy a very large package (or two) of chicken wings (on sale, if possible) at most a day or two before their intended use.

- Rinse and dry off these wings well. Cut each wing at their joints into three pieces. Put the expendable tips into a large pan with lightly-salted water, a small onion, and a bit of celery. Simmer long enough to get a nice chicken stock as a side benefit. Cool, drain and save the stock in the refrigerator or freezer for future use.

- Now well salt and pepper all the two bigger wing joints in a big bowl. In a large heated cast-iron frying pan add about an inch and one half of peanut or safflower oil. Fry and turn these chicken wings in batches until nicely browned (about five to eight minutes) adding more oil as required. Drain each batch on copious amounts of paper towels.

- When finished frying all the wings, dump them all into another large clean bowl.

- Depending upon how many wings you have, melt at least one stick of butter in a pan and add ½ a medium bottle of Frank’s Hot Sauce to each melted butter stick. Right before you serve them, pour this hot buttered sauce over the wings and stir (or flip) until they are all covered.

- Serve while hot with cleaned and chilled quartered celery sticks and chilled blue cheese dressing. (I usually make this blue cheese dressing by taking a bottle of such dressing -- Ken’s is good -- and augmenting it with crumbled blue cheese bits bought separately.)

- Make sure you have enough cold beer on hand to cool and lubricate the enjoyers.

Fat of the Land

Much of our nation is lipid-averse. Saturated and trans fats are about as popular these days as Osama Bin Laden. Although animal fat is a saturated fat, it is not chemically identical to artificially saturated fat. About a hundred years ago scientists learned how to bubble hydrogen (with a nickel catalyst) through unsaturated fats like corn oil or vegetable oil to add hydrogen atoms to the existing fat molecules to solidify (hydrogenate) them. That’s how such liquid oils were made into oleo margarine during the Second World War to serve as a substitute for the then-severely-rationed butter. Recently, these artificially hydrogenated oils, particularly trans fats, have been found to be very damaging to our health as they unacceptably push up our cholesterol levels (particularly LDLs). So, since animal fats are also naturally saturated, they have been also condemned by implication.

This development is unfortunate because animal fats add a great deal to the good taste of foods. We have seen over recent years the food Nazis forcing restaurants to substitute bad oleo for good butter … McDonald’s to be required by these same loonies to no longer cook their French fries in lard … and New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has banned all trans fats from the city's restaurants.  But, being a contrarian, I still cook with animal fats and will continue to do so. May I suggest the following uses:

Butter – I cannot imagine many desserts made without butter … perhaps Jello or zabaglione.  It took level-headed cooks like Julia Child sensibly to advocate for butter over oleo. She most often picked butter as the fat of choice in her cooking and baking … but, as she also always said, “in moderation.”  I would like to throw my lot in with Julia’s legacy.

Lard – Pie crust and scones made with lard (or half lard, half butter) have an unique, attractive taste. Although Crisco has generally been called for in pie crusts, I can’t help but think that this fat is (or, at least, was) artificially hydrogenated (ergo, saturated.)  And don't forget to use lard for frying French fries ...

Bacon grease – I find that frying a ham steak in bacon grease works best. As the first side is cooking, sprinkle a few teaspoons of dark brown sugar and some ground cloves on the up side. Quickly turn the ham steak and briefly cook the sugar-covered side and then flip back again so that both sides are covered with the sugar covering. Cook, turning back and forth until both sides are well done but not burnt. Serve with baked beans, and/or escalloped potatoes, and/or carrots Vichy.

Duck fat – Next time you roast a duck, save (in a closed container in the refrigerator) the usually copiously rendered duck fat like it was precious gold. Then, whenever you prepare oven roasted potatoes, use this duck fat in the bottom of the roasting pan. Preheat gently. Next peel, quarter, salt, and pepper some Yukon gold or Russet potatoes and swill them in the melted duck fat. Add a bunch of peeled garlic cloves and sprinkle with rosemary (or thyme). Roast until nicely browned and serve. You will get gastronomic raves from your guests but don’t you dare tell them the secret to these splendid spuds least they turn you in to Jenny Craig.

Chicken fat – This is also known by Jews as “schmaltz”. One cannot make good chopped chicken livers without schmaltz. Since chicken livers are almost free at grocery stores these days, they are very economical (and tasty). To make chopped chicken livers, clean one container of livers of their white sinews and connective tissues, separating each pair into singles. Dry them off well. Melt some schmaltz in a frying pan (augmented with butter if you don’t have a good three tablespoons of schmaltz). Thinly chop one very large shallot and add it to the frying pan. Slide in the chicken livers carefully as they tend to spatter. Salt and pepper them well and also add a good pinch of powdered bay leaf. (You can create powdered bay leaf by grinding two dried bay leaves in a spice grinder or in a mortar and pestle.) Cook the livers until medium (just a hint of pink). Deglace the pan with a good shot of cognac, letting it flare up. Turn off the heat and let cool. Place this mixture in a blender with half a hard-boiled egg and pulsate until a course pate is formed, adding a little cold water if needed. Place in a small bowl topping with the rest of the cooked egg white, finely chopped, and finely chopped parsley. Stand a bay leaf on the top so that its consumers will know what that elusive taste is. Refrigerate overnight and then serve the next day with rice crackers.

Meat Loaf

There must be ten thousand good meat loaf recipes. Mine is unique only in a few ways, but I like it and I think you will too.

First the meat: a mélange of ½ pound of ground beef, ½ pound of ground pork and ½ pound of ground veal is certainly a winner. However, if your taste runs to all beef … cajole your butcher into grinding you 1 ½ pounds of beef neck meat. It’s the sweetest and tastiest of all the beef cuts. A German butcher in New York City put me onto this trick and I think he was the only man I was ever tempted to run away with.

Next make the meat extenders:
- Chop and sauté one medium Bermuda onion in good olive oil until mahogany in color … adding toward the end two minced garlic cloves or ½ teaspoon of garlic powder. Also add two big pinches of Kosher salt and two grinds of black pepper. Let cool.
- Cut the crusts off of two slices of sturdy white bread and dice into ½ inch cubes. Soak this bread along with seven or eight cut-up dried mushrooms (Polish is best) in enough milk to cover and let stand until all milk is absorbed..
- In a dry non-stick frying pan heat six generous marrowed bones, turning frequently until the marrow browns and starts to loosen from the bone. Cool and scoop out this marrow into a small bowl. Save the fat in the frying pan to make the meat loaf gravy.
- Whisk one large egg (two eggs if you like your meat loaf “tight”) in a bowl along with six`squirts of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, ½ teaspoon of dried thyme (or 1 teaspoon of fresh), two more pinches of Kosher salt and two more grinds of pepper.

Combine all the above with the meat in a large bowl and mix well with your impeccably clean hands. Butter the bottom and sides of a square oven-proof dish (rectangular is better) that fits into your toaster oven (or you can use your regular oven). Preheat this oven to 350 degrees. Place the meat mixture in this dish and flatten out the top. Put about ½ a bottle of Heinz’s chili sauce on top of this meat loaf and place it in the oven for about 45 minutes (alternate topping – cover with three thin slices of good Swiss cheese.)

Remove from the oven and let stand for about twenty minutes. Then pour off any fat and juices from around the sides of the meat loaf into the frying pan that cooked the marrow bones. Add an equal amount of flour or Wondra and heat until all the fat is absorbed and the flour is light tan. While still on the heat, add some good beef stock and stir well until this gravy reaches the consistency you prefer. Correct the salt and pepper seasoning, perhaps adding a bit of Magi and marjoram to your taste. Stir and heat further briefly.

Serve this meat loaf and gravy with mashed or escalloped potatoes and briefly-cooked fresh peas (with butter and a bit of chopped-up fresh mint). You might also enjoy a bit of prepared horseradish with your meat. Enjoy.

You Say Scalloped, I Say Escalloped

Potatoes that is. This is a relatively low-calorie version of the classic lyonnaise potatoes … without the heavy cream and loads of butter. I prefer saying “escalloped potatoes” because it makes it clearer that it does not contain those shellfish.

This recipe is quite simple and delicious: Peel and thinly slice (a Mandolin helps) three or four medium to large Russet potatoes soaking the slices in cold water for about fifteen minutes. In the meantime peel, crosscut and thinly slice a very large onion (or two smaller ones) and saute these slices in some olive oil and a dollop of butter until they are dark brown but not burned. Add a little salt, pepper and dried thyme and mix well. Butter the bottom and sides of an oven-proof dish that fits in your toaster oven.

Now, layer the dried-off potato slices and onion mixture in this dish, lightly salting and peppering the potato slices as you go. Don’t go above four or five layers stopping on the potato layer. Now add enough boxed chicken stock to come up to the top of these layers. May I suggest the new product called “rotisserie chicken stock”. It is darker and more flavorful (or make your own chicken stock from a leftover rotisserie chicken.) Cover the top with grated Gruyere cheese.  (Don’t skimp on the quality or quantity here.)  Place in the toaster oven set on 350 degrees and bake for 45 minutes. At the end, if the top is not bubbly and brown, put the toaster oven on broil for a few minutes until it is.

Enjoy with a baked ham, a meat loaf (with some bottled horseradish), or a roast beef (ditto on the horseradish).

Boobalaise

When I was a very callowed youth still dewy behind the ears, I was attending an American Management Association seminar all gussied up in my suit and tie and all (I just recently reread The Catcher in the Rye). Around noon, the leader of the seminar passed out menus from a local restaurant so we could order lunch. I said, “Oh, they have boobalaise!” to whit the guy next to me said, “I think it is pronounced bouillabaisse …” I was chagrined to say the most. As a red-faced penitence, I have learned to cook this South-of-France dish to the point where I can improvise with just about any seafood combination. However, there are certain necessities around which this dish is constructed -- leeks, garlic, an orange, olive oil, fish stock, saffron, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, and either a fennel bulb or some Pernod or Ricard.

The seafood in the American version of this dish traditionally consists of a sturdy, meaty fish like monkfish or halibut, a flaky fish like cod, haddock, or hake (even better, cod cheeks), maybe a few crabs, some cleaned/deveined shrimp, possibly some scallops and/or squid … maybe even octopus (double sucker-down-the-arm type, not single sucker), some shellfish like clams and/or mussels and, as a pièce de résistance, some lobster of whatever variety.

First start with the fish stock. This is best made with fish heads and fish frames begged from your local fish monger (as Julia Child used to say). To do so, sauté a handful of chopped onion, carrots and celery in some olive oil until “sweated” in a big enameled or stainless steel pot. Then add a few quarts of water and the fish heads/frames, a small palmful of sea salt, some grinds of pepper, a sprig of fresh thyme (or ½ a teaspoon of dried), and a few bay leaves. Simmer about an hour until all the goodness is rendered from the contents. Then cool and strain the stock into another container to use in the main dish. If you don’t want to jump through this hoop, use bottled clam juice or store-bought fish base/stock … which is now increasingly available. But the result won’t nearly be as good (and you will need to augment it with the herbs mentioned above.).

Next prepare a garlic mayonnaise (rouille) using two garlic cloves, a handful of bread crumbs or Panko , an egg yoke, a pinch of Cayenne pepper, the juice of ½ a lemon, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of fresh pepper. Place everything in a blender and process adding ½ cup of good virgin olive oil until you achieve a mayonnaise consistency.

Now split a good-sized leek in two and clean out all the sand between the leaves. Chop the leek crosswise up to and including most of the green part (my departure from the classic recipe). Again sweat this chopped leek in a good quantity of virgin olive oil in the same (cleaned out) large enameled or stainless steel pot until transparent. Add and sweat one fennel bulb cleaned and cross chopped just like the leek (save the gossamer top for a garnish) and about three cleaned and chopped up garlic cloves. Clear a space on the pot and place there a tablespoon of good tomato paste. Stir this with a wooden spoon until it is well heated and a little toasted. Next add back the fish stock, a large can of crushed tomatoes, and two good pinches of saffron. Stir well. Now, either grate and add just the zest from ½ an orange or cut two half dollar sized pieces of orange peel (the classic procedure) and add them to the fish stock.

Now for the seafood. To this base, first add the cut-up lobster, if available, and any larger cut-up crabs (such as Dungeness) remembering not to cook them for more than a total of 15 minutes. Then add the meaty fish (like the monkfish). Cook two minutes or so. Next the flaky fish (like the cod). Cook another minute or so Next add the well-cleaned clams and mussels. (to rid them of sand, soak in water with flour or corn meal for about an hour), any octopus, and any small crabs such as blue crabs or rock crabs.. Cover and cook about five minutes (making sure all the shellfish open ... if not, discard). Add the scallops, calamari and the shrimp. Cook a few more minutes until the shrimp change color. Season to taste with salt and pepper, some chopped up Italian parsley (don’t put the parsley in earlier as it tends to get bitter) and the chopped-up fennel gossamer. If you haven’t included fennel, add a jigger of Pernod or Ricard now. Stir well again and take off the heat.

Serve over crusty French bread in a large soup bowl adding a good dollop of rouille on top of the bread. Enjoy with a good glass of white wine (a Sancerre, a Pinot Grigio, a Chenin blanc, or even a Piesporter.) Have enough friends and family over to eat it all up because it doesn’t keep well.

Ham It Up

Ham, to me, is a production in three acts: baked ham, ham salad, and split-pea soup with ham. Generally every Easter we have ham and I follow the following ritual with a certain compulsive slavishness:

Baked Ham – first make sure that you have a real ham, no boneless varieties, none of those “modern” hams with a cuticle of some sort of plastic coating (ugh!), no ham overly plumped up with a saline or nitrate solution, and, preferably, not a spiral-sliced one (the front slices always dry out when it is baked). And if you must use a country ham (not recommended), make it a sugar-cured one and not a salt-cured one. I am talking about a real old-fashioned smoked ham with all its bones, a nice coating of pork fat and as little skin as possible. Now bake it according to the directions on the label. About a half-hour before it is done, baste it with a glaze made as follows: place ½ cup of dark brown sugar in a sauce pan with ½ cup of orange juice and ½ teaspoon of ground cloves (takes the place of whole cloves stuck in the ham, but you can do it the other way it you must). Stir and simmer this mixture until it is about the consistency of honey. Cover as much of the baked ham as possible with this mixture and return it to the oven, continually basting it with any glaze that slides off. Serve with whatever is traditional in your household (how about some real home-baked beans, escalloped potatoes, and a tossed green salad?)

Ham Salad – the next day, after you have had your fill of ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches or Blodgets  (see earlier recipe), take the majority of the remaining ham meat from the bone (with its fat, but not its skin – at least two good handfuls) and put it through a meat grinder (not a food processor) alternating it with the contents of a jar of sweet gherkin pickles. Into this salad base add at least two heaping tablespoons of mayonnaise and a little bit of the pickle juice. Mix well and serve either on some lettuce as a scoop of salad (even better, also add a scoop of tuna salad and some Thousand Island dressing), on a sandwich, or as hors d'oeuvres  on some nice crackers.

Split-pea Soup with Ham – dice two ribs of celery (avec leaves is better), one medium onion, and three large cleaned carrots and sauté them in some good olive oil until transparent. Rinse well in a colander one package of picked-over, dried split-peas (I like the green ones, but you can use yellow) and add to the vegetables with a large pinch of salt. Immediately add about three quarts of water, three bay leaves, five whole allspice, and seven whole peppercorns. Then slip in the ham bone with as much meat remaining as you favor. Cover and simmer for at least four hours until the ham meat is falling off the bones. Turn off the heat and let cool until you can safely handle the ham bone. Remove it and pull the ham meat from the bones and discard all the bones. For those with an old-fashioned pallet, you might also save some of the softened gristle. Chop up and put this meat (and gristle) back in the soup, adding more water if it seems necessary. Remove the bay leaves and add about ten squirts of red Tabasco sauce. Reheat briefly and stir well. Eat some of this soup now with some crusty French bread and butter, but it is even better the next day. The soup might appear a little thin now, but, trust me, it will thicken up over night in the refrigerator. The next day, ask over your best friends, heat and devour what’s left.

Applause for the emoter.  Curtain …

Welsh Lagomorph

OK, it’s not Welsh rabbit, it’s Welsh rarebit, but it is still a delightful lunch or dinner treat. Besides, this name is much more romantic than an open-face grilled cheese sandwich. This is a dish that seems to have been pretty much relegated to old, forgotten cookbooks … but it is well worth resurrecting. To serve two people follow these simple steps:

- First open a bottle of good beer, I prefer a hoppy (excuse the pun) ale, and pour about half of it into the top of a double boiler along with a large dollop of butter. Drink the rest of the beer. Maybe another one too.
- Fry or bake four to six rashers (an old-fashioned name for "slices", look it up) of good bacon.
- Place two to four pieces of good rustic bread (such as a 7-grain, seeded rye, or ciabatta) in the toaster set on medium dark. (Toast isn’t toast unless it is at least medium dark. Otherwise it is just warm bread.)
- Grate about a cup (or slightly more) of good-quality sharp cheddar cheese (Cabot’s or better).
- Heat up the beer or ale until simmering. Add the cheese in stages.
- Stir well. When fully melted add about five squirts of Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 Tsp. dry mustard, and pinches of salt, white pepper and cayenne pepper. Stir again.
- Butter the toast points on two plates and pour the Welsh rarebit over them.
- Put under a broiler if so inclined until somewhat browned. But make sure the plate(s) are ovenproof. Put the bacon rashers on top of the cheese.
- Open another few beers to serve with this dish.
- Also, I suggest a salad accompaniment made with frisee and cross-cut Belgian endive. To make the dressing for this salad, place a good pinch of Kosher salt in the bottom of a salad bowl. Add two slivered garlic cloves. Mash with a fork until it becomes a paste. Add a few grinds of black pepper, about a scant tablespoon of Dijon mustard and the juice of half a lemon and maybe a squirt of red-wine vinegar. Mix well with a fork while drizzling in about three tablespoons of good virgin olive oil. Then add the greens and toss.

Watch out since, after all this beer and greens, you are not tempted to start hopping around.

Real Deal Veal

First let me give credit to Lidia Bastianich for the essentials of this recipe for veal parmigiana. This dish never fails to impress friends and even I constantly marvel at how good this tastes. My daughter, who claims to hate veal, will eat this Italian entree.

The most essential part of this meal is the veal. It must be pale, pale, pale leg meat cut across the grain in very thin, somewhat large pieces. If it is even the color of a baby girl’s blanket … forget it. It must be almost white. I know. I know that this means that the baby calf donor must be only milk-fed and kept in a crate, but I like to imagine that it does this to make me deliriously happy. Also use good quality virgin olive oil (light pale green and fruity tasting) and buffalo mozzarella cheese would also be a big plus.

Now, prepare the veal (about 7 or 8 pieces) by pounding them even more flat and thin with a meat mallet. Then salt and pepper them generously on both sides. Heat up a large frying pan and coat the bottom with the olive oil. Fry on both sides all the veal pieces in shifts, replenishing the oil as needed, until they are a crusty brown but still relatively pink on the inside. (If you are more ambitious and capable, you may want to quickly deep-fry these pieces.) Put a bit more olive oil on the bottom of a sheet pan and place the veal pieces a few inches apart.

Next, in the same frying pan (very important to incorporate all these good meat juices and the cooked-on veal fond or sucs) put some more olive oil, about four or five garlic cloves slivered, and about two or three pinches of red pepper flakes (Lidia calls them peppernchino (sp?)). Be careful about not putting in too much peppernchino as it can spoil the dish. Stir well with a wooden spoon to incorporate the meat juices and fond. Then add a large can of good-quality peeled Italian tomatoes (either small diced or, if whole, well crushed with your hand in a large bowl – I recommend Muir Glen or Red Pack tomatoes). Salt and pepper to taste and, if you like the taste, sprinkle some fennel seeds in too.  Cook briefly … about four or five minutes.

Place a good dollop of this quick tomato sauce on top of each veal piece and then cover them well with the mozzarella cheese (either sliced or grated through the large holes of a food grater) and, if you have it, sprinkle on a little good-quality parmesan cheese. If the veal is still quite warm then place this pan under the broiler until the cheese top is bubbling and the color of George Hamilton’s suntan. If not, then first bring it back up to heat in a 350 degree oven (about 3 minutes). Remove from oven and sprinkle with some chopped Italian parsley and maybe a few drops of olive oil (if they look dry) and serve immediately

Two good accompaniments with this veal are some al dente cooked pasta shells dressed`with olive oil, briefly sautéed minced garlic and chopped parsley as well as broccolini, dealt with the same way. You may also spoon some of the extra tomato sauce over the cooked shells. Enjoy with a glass of good Borolo and crusty baguette pieces (torn from the loaf, not cut). Bella sera