Food in Fiction: Neverwhere

     The angel raised its glass high, staring at the light. "Drink it carefully," it advised them. "It is most potent." It sat down at the table, between Richard and Door. "When one tastes it," it said, wistfully, "I like to imagine that one is actually tasting the sunlight of bygone days." It held up its glass. "A toast: to former glories."
     "Former glories," chorused Richard and Door. And then, a little warily, they tasted the wine, sipping it, not drinking.
     "It's amazing," said Door.
     "It really is," said Richard. "I thought old wines turned to vinegar when they were exposed to air."
     The angel shook its head. "Not this one. It is all a matter of the type of grape and the place it was grown. This kind of grape, alas, perished when the vineyard vanished beneath the waves."
     "It's magical," said Door, sipping the liquid light. "I've never tasted anything like it."
     "And you never will again," said Islington. "There is no more wine from Atlantis."

Neverwhere

by Neil Gaiman

first published in 1996

Day 57: Glace a Vert

Today was our final day of Culinary Foundations II and our final cooking practical. One of our items was pearl onions glace a brun, or in a brown caramel glaze. A pretty simple dish, really – water halfway up, butter, sugar, a pinch of salt, crank up the heat until the water's gone and the butter and sugar caramelize to the desired color. Blanc or blond or brun.

A weird science experiment happened instead. I had randomly grabbed an aluminum pan. Apparently, one of the goofy chemical qualities of aluminum is that it turns stuff green. So, if you ever want to make a vegetable glace a vert, go aluminum or go home.

Day 55: Salad Days

Mozza's Nancy Silverton recently wrote about the art of salads for the LATimes, and I think anyone who's had the sadness that is chopped iceberg lettuce drowned in ranch dressing would agree that, yes, even salad requires some thought.

We were given the following mantra in class. I'm not sure who said it originally, but it was written in quotation marks on a dry erase board, and when you're in school you write things down that are quoted on a dry erase board. Also, it makes sense.

"A good salad will employ complimentary and contrasting textures and flavors."

Apparently, there are three categories of salad dressing: oil and vinegar (a.k.a. vinaigrettes), mayonnaise-based, and cooked dressings.

A few other tidbits filed under the "I knew that but didn't know it had a name" category…

Bound Salad: Food bound by a thick (usually mayonnaise-based) dressing. Potato salad, chicken salad, macaroni salad, etc.

Composed Salad: A salad in which the elements are arranged, not mixed, on the plate.

Salade Nicoise, a composed salad.

How to Clarify Butter

To paraphrase Clarence from True Romance, it's better to have clarified butter and not need it than need clarified butter and not have it.

A quick primer on butter that one can learn in culinary school (or on Wikipedia): butter consists of butter fat, milk solids, and water. When you cook with butter and it starts to burn in the pan – like by the time you get to the third pancake – it's actually the milk solids burning. Clarified butter is butter sans milk solids and water.

In other words, unadulterated buttery goodness. And because it's a fat, it'll keep for eons. Pour it into a jar and throw it in the fridge for a rainy day. As a cooking oil, it has a really high smoke point. I find it easier to make hollandaise with it. Or use it simply as a dip for steamed shellfish like the Red Lobsters of the world do.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. unsalted butter 

*Of course you can make more, but I wouldn't bother making less.

Equipment

• small saucepot
• ladle
• strainer
• cheesecloth (or coffee filter or paper towel)
• bowl to dump milk solids into
• jar or plastic container with tight-fitting lid

Prepping

Plop the butter into the saucepot. Well done, chef.

Cooking

Melt the butter over medium heat.

Almost immediately, the butter will separate into its component parts. Skim the white milk solids off with a ladle. Try not to take any fat with it. After a certain point, it helps to let the milk solids bubble up and drift to the sides of the pot before skimming. If you're using this immediately, now's a good time to multitask.

Adjust the heat accordingly so the butter isn't at a rapid boil, lest the milk solids burn. You'll probably get most of them out before all the water evaporates. If the butter is still bubbling, then there's still water in the pot. Eventually, it'll look something like this…

It will smell warm and nutty and buttery. Refrain from bathing in it. If only because it's super hot.

Some of the milk solids will have stuck to the bottom of the pot and browned a bit. Try not to scrape them up. Ladle the clarified butter through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. 

Different butter producers may vary in their ratios, but (at least here in the US) you should have something in the vicinity of 12 oz. of clarified butter. Pour into your food storage container of choice (you may want to let it cool if using plastic).

Food in Fiction: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

"There was a girl standing on the beach throwing bread to the seagulls. Her back was turned to him. The sea wind played with her long black hair and pulled at her coat, making an arc of her body, like a bow strung towards the sea. He knew what it was then that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England: it was the caring about little things – the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls."

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
by John Le Carre
first published in 1963