Kitchen Guy

Blog Topic: Slow Food

Posted by Chef Jim on March 1, 2010  |  Comments Off

With the proliferation of fast food restaurants throughout the country, there is a growing movement of chefs and foodies called the Slow Food Movement, with a very simple premise: slow food is generally better food and it’s better for you.

As someone who cooks for a living, I’m an automatic adherent. As someone who needed (and still needs) to lose weight, I gave up patronizing fast food joints 14 months ago, only the second time in my life that I’ve been able to keep a New Year’s resolution. (The other was quitting smoking and I’m 20 years good on that one.)

So on the occasion of the visit of Julie Powell, the woman behind the “Julie & Julia” blog, book and movie, I participated as a demonstrating chef, along with three others, in food preparation technique. My colleagues were head chefs in restaurants; I, as you know, am a TV cook and personal chef. No matter, we’re all slow food advocates.

I decided to demo the most popular item on my personal chef menu. It’s the dish that clients want over and over again and it’s probably one of the simpler ones I make, proving another point I often make when I’m speaking to groups: Simple is best.

In fact, there are two versions of the dish – one beef and one pork. The technique is the same, as is the end result: succulent fall-off-the-bone meat in a flavorful braise liquid that doubles as the sauce. It’s boneless pork (or beef) ribs in sweet and sour “barbecue” sauce.

These faux ribs are sold in supermarket meat departments. They are generally tougher cuts of meat that require long, slow cooking in order to break down the proteins and create that luscious texture. It’s meat near the rib of the hog or the cow, so it passes for ribs. For such flavorful meat, the price is generally pretty good because it’s often more difficult for meat departments to sell these cuts. But like flank steak, chuck roast, pot roast, and other meats that need long and slow cooking times, this makes for a hearty and satisfying dinner.

As I told my live audience, I’m a believer in layering flavors and that, of course, adds to the tastiness of this dish. I start out with the two most important spices in my kitchen: salt and pepper. The second layer is searing the meat to get a nice crust on the outside, which also helps to begin breaking down the toughness of the cut.

An additional attribute of this dish is that it can be cooked three ways: In the oven for a couple of hours; in a tightly covered pot on the stove top for a couple of hours; or in a pressure cooker in under 45 minutes. The result is always the same.

I use only two aromatics: diced white onions and diced celery. But I sauté them briefly in the same pan that I seared the meat, for another layer of flavor.

My “dear friend,” Henry John Heinz of Pittsburgh, Penn., gives me my main ingredient for the sauce: ketchup. As it already has a variety of spices and herbs, it’s a shortcut I use to great advantage. I also use Worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar, spicy brown mustard and brown sugar. That’s it. If you want to add a smoky flavor, you can also add a few dashes of liquid smoke at the end, before thickening the sauce.

After about two to two-and-a-half hours in the oven, covered, all of those flavors come together, including melted fat from the meat, some of which has to be skimmed.

I remove the meat from the cooking vessel and then thicken the sauce. You have the option of straining the liquid, to exclude the cooked onions and celery, or going “undiluted.” Here’s the full recipe:

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 lbs. boneless beef of pork “ribs”
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup celery, diced
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 cup ketchup
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. coarse salt
3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp. spicy brown mustard
Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Salt and pepper meat on all sides. Heat oil in Dutch oven or deep heavy skillet and sear meat on all sides. Remove the meat and sauté the onions and celery in the pan until soft. Place the meat back in the pan, and add the ketchup, vinegar, Worcestershire, sugar, mustard and additional salt and pepper. Cover tightly and bake in the oven for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. The meat should be very tender. Skim off excess fat and remove the meat, covering to keep warm. Bring the remaining sauce to a boil and thicken with a cornstarch slurry, then pour the thickened sauce over the meat.

Blog Topic: That “Julia” Thing

Posted by Chef Jim on August 23, 2009  |  Comments Off

I don’t generally go to movies because following the advent of the VCR and DVD eras, moviegoers seemed to treat theaters pretty much the same as their living rooms and generally have no regard for others around them.

I also have a huge problem with those enormous tubs of overpriced popcorn and soft drinks that certain people in the theater feel obliged to chew and slurp so that everyone else is forced to listen to their boorish ways and extraordinarily bad manners.

Despite all of the forgoing, I had to make an exception for the recently-released “Julie and Julia,” a bio-pic paralleling the lives of the legendary Julia Child and the blogger-cum-gourmet cook Julie Powell.

The producers and distributors of this film have spent enormous sums promoting the movie on television, radio, and online – the new hot place to promote a la Facebook and Twitter. As a Facebooker and Twitter user as well as a TV viewer, I saw quite a number of excerpts from the movie. That Meryl Streep can morph into anyone she chooses is a given, but this was an exceptional impersonation.

And Stanley Tucci (as Paul Child) manages to find himself cast in some of the greatest food movies ever – starting with “Big Night.” Lucky guy. Amy Adams, in my opinion, is a talented actress who probably ought to stay in fantasy musicals. I think she was miscast in this film.

Nora Ephron, the director, is well-respected in food circles herself. Read her book, Crazy Salad Plus Nine, if you need proof.

Many professional movie critics have called this film a chronicle of two love stories, with food playing a secondary role. The reviews have been lukewarm, at best. Tell that to the foodies of America. To me, the food looked great. It should have. Ms. Ephron hired some very talented chefs who made every dish numerous times so that scenes could be re-filmed until the director was satisfied.

I enjoyed this movie, for the most part, but felt the ending was rather abrupt. I left the theater feeling as though I had eaten a fine French meal and had to leave before dessert was served.

Long before I considered the culinary profession as a career, I used to watch Julia Child. The food she prepared in those days seemed secondary to the character she was playing – herself. She was a funny lady and I think she knew it. Nevertheless, all of the plaudits and honorifics accorded her, as the one person who changed the way Americans cook and eat, are correct and richly deserved.

Julia Child predated Food Network by decades. She used a kitchen that was primitive by today’s standards, but proved that fine food could be prepared in any home kitchen (which is actually the premise of my weekly television show). Unlike so many of today’s celebrity chefs, she refused to endorse or be associated with any brand-name product. She also declined to put her name on cookware, knives and other kitchen equipment. She felt it demeaned her authority as a cook. It’s a quality to be admired. The economics of today, regrettably, don’t give television cooks any such luxury of choice.

Nevertheless, the legions of us who do cook on television owe our livelihoods to Julia Child and the ground she broke so many years ago. She proved that cooking could be educational and entertaining at the same time. Her own mistakes on camera became the stuff of legend, but proved that even the most seasoned cook or chef is human.

The Saturday Night Live spoof of her, performed brilliantly by Dan Akroyd (and a favorite of Julia Child’s), is replayed in the movie.

I was only casually aware of the blog that Julie Powell wrote about cooking everything in the Child masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I tip my toque to her for the accomplishment.

What it reminded me of, though, was that I lent my copy of this book to someone some time ago and it was never returned and I can’t remember who borrowed it.

Happily, however, I will contribute to the royalties the Julia Child Foundation will receive when I replace my long-lost copy with a new one from the 49th printing.

When my cookbook is published, I should only be so lucky.