KitchenSavvy

1,000,000 Readers

At 6:10 PM today, July 9, 2010 (local time), KitchenSavvy had its 1,000,000th reader.  The article read was "Sifting Flour", which is 6th most commonly read page on the site.  The 5 pages that rate higher than "Sifting Flour" are:

1. Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder
2. Peeling Hard-Boiled Eggs
3. Substituting Whole Wheat for White Flour
4. How Long Can Cooked Food Be Left Out and
5. Baking Soda vs. Baking Powder Redux
   

Among them, these six titles account for around 38% of all page reads.

I want to thank all of the loyal and new readers of KitchenSavvy for your interest in the site and curiosity about food and cooking.

Dave

Now That You Ask ... or Substituting Agave Nectar for Sugar

I frequently receive questions from readers about how to change a recipe.  They may want to substitute ingredients, reduce calories, or make  the recipe "healthier" in one way or another.  The problem is, they send me the question without the recipe they are hoping to change and expect me to somehow be able to know the context.  Think of it like calling a restaurant you have heard about and asking, "How do I get to your place?"  You know that the first thing they are going to ask is, "Where are you now?"  They can't tell you how to get from here to there unless they know where here is to begin with.

For example, I recently got this question:

I have a cake recipe from Georges Perrier, Le Bec Fin, Philadelphia, that uses 1T baking powder and 1 tsp baking soda with 3/4 cup buttermilk and 1/2 cup good quality bourbon (Bourbon spice cake).  It's delicious as formulated.  I am substituting agave nectar (a low glycemic index liquid sweetener) for the sugar, which also requires reducing the liquid in the cake by 1/3.  If the target ratio is 1/2 tsp baking soda to 1 c buttermilk, and baking soda is four times as strong as baking powder, then presumably I need 2 cups of acid, not the 1.25 cups of the recipe??  I'm worried about reducing the liquid that much.  The other liquid is 3 eggs, easy enough.  Any suggestions?

Now, I'm not about to publish the recipe, or tell people that so and so eats vast amounts of Bourbon Spice Cake, any more than the new restaurant is going to take out billboards telling everyone your address, but it would sure help understand the context in which the question is asked.  It might even allow me to test my suggested fix in the kitchen to be sure I'm on the right track.

Without the recipe, the best I can do is assume some common reference point -- "Drive to the front of City Hall, and then go right six blocks to highway 16 ..."  Of course, those kinds of instructions may be way out of your way, and may not really help if you live in Podunk and I'm in East Eyebrow.

So, having no mile markers to tell me where the recipe is coming from, what can I say about the above question?

1. General recommendations are to replace the sugar with about 2/3 the volume of agave nectar.  Since agave nectar is supposedly sweeter than sugar, you need less of it.
2. Because agave nectar contains water, most substitutions require that you reduce the other liquids in the recipe.  Depending on what type of sugar is being replaced, the amount may vary between about 1/4 and 1/3 of the volume of agave nectar used. 
3. If you are replacing liquid sweeteners like honey or corn syrup, the ratios and the changes in amounts of other liquids may vary.
4. Substitution guidelines recommend reducing the oven temperature by 25°F (12°C) and increasing the cooking time slightly.

If your recipe, for example, calls for 1 1/2 cups of white sugar, then you need to use about 0.666 X 1.5 = 1 cups of agave nectar.  You also need to reduce the amount of other liquid in the recipe by 1/3 of 1 cup.  Now comes the problem, where to get that third of a cup of liquid.  If you take out 1/3 cup the bourbon, it's no longer going to be much of a Bourbon Spice Cake.  If you take out the 1/3 cup from the buttermilk, you may need to reduce the amount of baking soda by a proportional amount, just over half the total, but there may be other ingredients that are reacting with some of the baking soda, so you may not need to reduce it by that much.  If you reduce the number of eggs, then the structure of the cake may change.

There could be two other ways out of the conundrum about how to change the amount of liquid.  One depends on knowing the entire recipe.  Start by working out the ratio of flour to liquid in the recipe, remembering that butter is around 20% water by volume, each whole egg contains only about 3 tablespoons water (the rest is protein and fat), and that the buttermilk is between 1% to 2% fat.  Armed with this information, you have another option, which is to increase the amount of flour in proportion to the amount of excess liquid in the agave nectar.  A typical spice cake might have around the same weight of flour as liquids, so compensating for 1/3 cup too much water could just as easily be dealt with by increasing the amount of flour in the recipe by 5.3 ounces weight or around 1/2 cup.  Chances are that adding a half cup of flour wouldn't be right either, since that would change the ratios on spices, etc., but adding a 1/4 cup of flour and reducing the liquid by 2 tablespoons could very well work out, maybe without even needing to change any of the other ingredients.

Finally, you could cut the buttermilk by the required amount, in this example 1/3 cup, and then add buttermilk powder to replace it.  Since buttemilk powder is used in a 1 to 4 ratio with water, adding 4 teaspoons of buttermilk powder would compensate for the amount of real buttermilk taken out and should balance the recipe back up.  The water from the agave nectar will make up for the liquid lost in reducing the amount of real buttermilk used.

All of this assumes that the cake contains 1 1/2 cup of white sugar in the first place, which I don't know for sure. 

The point is a) messing around with the balances on ingredients can be fussy work and b) without having the whole recipe, it's hard to know how to change it.  The more information you give about where you are starting from, the easier it is to tell you the directions to get where you want to be.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Insert a Toothpick at 3 O'Clock

Perhaps it was my years of cooking in studio and bachelor apartments using a two-burner hotplate or little more, that attracted me to the book Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens, by Jennifer Schaertl.  For years I lived in small spaces and served good meals to friends.  Sometimes I had the luxury of a real stove top and oven, and our first house actually had about 15 or so square feet of counter space.

Schaertl's book tries to make the the challenge of cooking in small spaces (CLKs) easier by loading in hints on space saving tools and methods.  She adapts recipes like her Better-than-Nookie Sweet Potato Gnocchi  to work in tight quarters, which she accomplishes by piping them from a bag rather than rolling and cutting them in the traditional method.  You can see a video of this particular recipe by going to the CLK website and clicking on the link for the original CLK video.

Some of the suggestions are quite practical.  I had a "D'oh" moment (a la Homer Simpson) at the idea of using a measuring spoon in place of a melon baller. Every once in a while, I have need for a small melon baller, but then somehow I can never remember to pick one up.  Reading Gourmet Meals in Crappy Little Kitchens, I realized I have had a whole array of nice round stainless steel melon ballers hanging in my cupboard for years.  I just thought they were used for measuring stuff and not much else!

Most of the recipes are easily manageable, although this is not a book for the novice cook.  I found that sometimes you need just a little more knowledge.  The Greek-Godlike Stuffed Tomatoes were a hit when I made them, but since feta is not a good melting cheese, I had to increase the oven temperature and move the dish to the upper part of the oven to get it to finish as described.  Some recipes, like My Personal Wellington, may be a bit daunting for beginner cooks.

I admit I do find the title a little perplexing, since there is little said about how to put together everything for an entire meal in a small kitchen.  Gourmet Food in Crappy Little Kitchens might have been a bit more accurate.

And the title of this posting?  In the recipe for No-Space Meatballs, the instructions say, "To serve, arrange the meatballs on your serving tray and insert a toothpick at 3 o'clock."  My perverse mind immediately went to the image of a bewildered cook scratching their head and thinking, "but company isn't coming until 5:30!"  Okay, I knew that wasn't what the author meant, and you would have too, but I still had to chuckle.

Overall, I would have to give this book 3 1/2 out of five.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

TaDa

Breadmaker Jewish Rye Bread
(click for recipe)

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

A Pizza Find

For years, I have been trying to make a good thin crust pizza.  When my wife and I were in Italy several years ago, we really enjoyed a pizza we had in Rome, near the Trevi Fountain.  The crust was so thin and crisp that it was almost cracker like.

I tried everything I could think of to make a crust like that -- varying the water/flour ratios, making the dough with or without olive oil, rolling the crust thinner, using different oven temperatures, placing my pizza stone on a rack as high as possible in the oven, super-heating the pizza stone for a few minutes using the boiler before putting the pizza into the oven, even changing the order of ingredients on the pizza.  These all made some difference.  None of them gave the crust I was looking for.

Then, this past weekend, I pulled "Brother Juniper's Bread Book" by Peter Reinhart off the bookshelf and turned to his section on pizza.  In the inset on Memorable Pizza there was a suggestion I hadn't even thought of trying -- that the pizza stone should be put on the bottom shelf or even right on the floor of the oven and pre-heated for at least 20 minutes at 500°F (260°C) or higher.

Since I use parchment paper to keep the crust from sticking to my peel (actually an old piece of 1/8 inch plywood) I have to keep the temperature at or below 450°F (232°C), but I could certainly try putting my pizza stone on the floor of my oven.  My oven is electric, but the heating element is under the floor so that isn't a problem.  Other than that, I made a plain lean pizza dough with just water, flour, yeast and salt.  No fat, no sugar and no flavorings.  I rolled a thin crust and assembled the pizza in the traditional North American order of sauce, ingredients and finally the cheese on top, and baked it for 13 minutes.

I knew as soon as I sliced the pizza that this was the missing link.  I could hear the knife crunching through the crust.  The result was the cracker thin, crunchy crust I had been trying for.  Because the stone had been heated directly by the element, the crust cooked quickly, before the other ingredients could make it soggy, as sometimes happens.

I know there is still some room for improvement.  Next time, I need to let the dough relax a bit more as I roll it out, and I think I'll try adding a little oil.  Both of those should help the overall texture, but I'm pleased with the result so far.

So, if you have been trying for that thin crunchy crust too, try lowering your pizza stone.    It may just be the secret you are looking for.

If there is nothing to get in the way, try putting the stone right on the floor of the oven. If you have an electric oven with the element above the floor then you will need to use a rack in the lowest position and put the stone on that.   If you are worried about safety, or the warranty on your oven, you may prefer to use a rack at the lowest position.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

KitchenSavvy is Tweeting!

Now you can follow KitchenSavvy on Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service.  Posts on Twitter are called "Tweets" and are limited to just 140 characters.

How will I use it?

• To post random food thoughts
• To answer questions received from readers and that don't require a lot of detail
• To let readers know when a new posting is up on KitchenSavvy
• To tweet about restaurants right then and there.

Restaurant tweets may include ratings in this format:

A9 S9 F9 P5 MV9 App$5-15 E$20-30 R5

Numbers range from 1 (terrible) to 9 (fantastic).  The letter sequence is:

• A - Atmosphere/Ambience
• S - Service
• F - Food
• P - Presentation
• MV - Menu Variety
• App - Appetizer price range in the local currency of the restaurant
• E - Entrée price range, also in local currency
• R - Will I return?  1 - 5 where 1 is "No never", 3 is "Maybe" and 5 is "I can't wait to come back"

Sorry for the brevity of the ratings, but the 140 character limit means there isn't a lot of room for details.

So, how can you keep up?

1. Look on KitchenSavvy.  In the left sidebar you can read the last five tweets.
2. Go to the KitchenSavvy Twitter Page to see all the traffic.
3. If you are registered on Twitter, follow me (Twitter users know what that means!).

Let me know what you think!

Make $100 an Hour in Your Spare Time -- Dicing Onions

Once again, the mind boggles!  On a recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed plastic clam shells full of diced onions -- cost $4.99 for 283 grams (just over 1/2 pound).  I could get yellow onions, red onions, or a mix of diced onions and celery, each for that price.  I checked the cost of whole onions.  A three pound (1.36 kg) bag of yellow onions sells for $2.49 and a one pound (454 grams) bag of red onions sells for $1.69.

For the amount of effort that it takes to dice an onion, this seems like quite an extravagance, especially now, when people are watching their budgets ever more carefully.  Back home, I timed myself and it took 1 minute 40 seconds to dice a 230 gram medium yellow onion.  The result was 182 grams of diced onion ready for cooking.  The yield was about 182/230 or about 80% of the original weight.

Worked out on a per gram basis, then, the cost of onions is:

Packaging	Wt (gr)	Yield (gr)	Price	¢/gr.	Saving ¢/gr
Pre-Diced	283	283	$4.99	1.76	n/a
Whole Yellow	1365	1080	$2.49	0.23	1.53
Whole Red	454	359	$1.60	0.47	1.29

The last column shows the saving in cents per gram of dicing your own onions.  It may not look like much, but when you consider the cost of that 182 gram yellow onion times 1.53 cents per gram, it comes out to $2.78.  Pre-diced onions work out to nearly eight times the cost for the yellow onions or nearly 4 times the cost for the red onions.

So, where did I get the $100 from?

If it takes me 1 minute and 40 seconds to dice one yellow onion, yielding 182 grams, working non-stop I should be able to dice 36 onions per hour (3600 seconds per hour / 100 seconds per onion).

36 onions per hour X 182 grams per onion X 1.53 cents per gram = $100.25 per hour

Let me put this another way.  If every second day for a year you were to cook a dish that used one medium onion, you could waste $501 buying pre-diced onions.  It's almost enough to make you cry!

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Saving Money on Groceries

Recently I saw on TV a news feature saying that families are eating less healthy foods because they are trying to save money during the current economic crisis.  The the Washington Post ran the this article talking about changing consumer habits at the grocery store.

I seem to recall Irma S. Rombauer, matriarch of the Joy of Cooking dynasty, or maybe it was Julia Child , saying that when she was asked how one could save money on food, she would tell the questioner to learn how to cook.  That is certainly still the case.

Suppose you are planning to entertain and need four chicken breasts.

On a recent trip to the store, I noted that skinless, boneless chicken breasts cost $18.72 per kilogram, about $8.36 per pound.   I could find packages of three chicken breasts each, at an average cost around $11.25 a package or $3.75 per chicken breast.  In the same store, on the same day I could find whole chickens at $7.47 per kilo, or $3.33 per pound.  A single whole chicken cost about $10.60.

If you know how to break down a chicken, you can get two chicken breasts, two drumsticks, two thighs, and two wings, as well as the leftover carcass from each whole chicken.  Two chickens provide the four chicken breasts you need, plus enough for several other meals:

• the thighs can be used to make stew, or they can be deboned, stuffed and rolled. 
• the drumsticks are great on the barbecue, one or two per person, and
• the wings can be broken down further to make Buffalo or Asian wings.  The wings from two chickens are about enough for a single serving.

Wrap and freeze the thighs and drumsticks in family sized portions.  Save the wing portions, frozen, until you have enough for a meal, and save the wing tips with the carcass to make stock or soup.  Pick the bits of meat from the carcass, and you have the makings for chicken salad for sandwiches. 

Now the math -- two chickens cost $21.20, roughly.  Four skinless, boneless chicken breasts cost $15.00.  For a difference of $6.20, you get maybe seven or eight more servings of chicken for less than $0.90 per serving, plus you save another three or four dollars on soup or stock, bringing your costs down even further.  Looked at another way, you get 3 meals for a family of four, plus some extras, for $21 versus just one meal for $15.

With a sharp knife and a little extra work in the kitchen, it is easy to find ways to save on groceries, and still maybe to afford a few luxuries, without resorting to less healthy junk foods to stretch your budget.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Chef's Table - in the Middle of the Atlantic!

KitchenSavvy has been quiet for the past few weeks as my Bride of 34 years and I were away on a holiday - three weeks of roaming around France and Italy, followed by an 18 day cruise, aboard the Emerald Princess, from Venice along the northern Mediterranean and across the Atlantic Ocean to Fort Lauderdale.

Of course a trip like that was filled with all sorts of food adventures, and some pretty amazing, as well as a few not so amazing, restaurants.  You can find some of the more interesting places listed in this posting on Pat's blog.  One of the most fun food experiences of the trip, though, was out in the middle of the Atlantic.

Princess Cruises has started to offer a Chef's table on the some of their sailings.  The only way to reserve a place is once you are actually on board ship, so we got to the ship as early as possible and went immediately to the Purser's Desk, only to learn that the Chef's Table was already booked for that cruise.  As luck would have it, though, there was enough demand to encourage them to add another time.

On the appointed evening, we joined 5 other couples to enjoy this experience.  We met the Maître d'Hôtel Nicola Furlan in the public area on the Plaza Deck, where we got a short presentation on the food service operations on board the ship.  After that we were taken on a tour of the ships galley serving two of the main dining rooms.  There we met Executive Chef Joel Directo as well as some of the other staff.

The menu for the night was appropriately titled a "Triumph of Gluttony."  We started in the galley with Heidsieck Monopole Blue Label champagne and appetizers of:

• Blue Crab Salad with Avocado and Grapefruit, served in martini glasses
• Steak Tartar served in Sesame Cones
• Fontina and White Truffle Mini-Quiches
• Buckwheat Blini with Caviar and Creme Fraiche

We then moved to a specially prepared table in another dining room for the rest of the meal:

• Porcini Mushroom Risotto with Stuffed Swordfish Cornucopia
• Drunken Sorbet of Strawberry and Cracked Pepper with Gray Goose Vodka
• "Double Impact" Surf and Turf which included Lobster Tail, Scallop Brochettes skewered on Lemon Grass, Beef Fillet, Lamb Chop accompanied by Chateau Potatoes, Turned Vegetables, Warm Artichoke Salad as well as Mustard Hollandaise, Rosemary Jus, and Lemon Butter
• Baked Camembert with Pine Nuts, Bitter Marmalade and Walnut Bread
• Iced Amaretto Parfait with Marsala Sabayon
• Coffee

Wines were paired with the food, the most notable of which was an Errazuriz Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc dessert wine from Chile served with the Baked Camembert.

There is a saying that you taste first with your eyes.  It was certainly true at the Chef's Table.  Presentations were beautiful and creative.  For example, the bowl in which the parfait was served, shown in the picture, is actually made from melted sugar.

The food was excellent.  Flavors were full and rich, and well balanced.  The only missed note, in my opinion, was the Steak Tartar.  To me, the real pleasure of steak tartar or carpaccio is the subtle yet complex flavor of the raw meat, complemented by ingredients that provide the canvas.  Because of fears nowadays about eating uncooked meat, the steak was marinated in a strong citric base making it more of a beef ceviche than a tartar.  Other than that, the meal was excellent ... even if somewhat daunting in the amount.

All told, it was an astounding experience.  My only hope is that Princess continues to maintain the Chef's Table at this high quality.

Recipe Creep

Creep - To slip out of place; shift gradually (Answers.com)

Recipe Creep - The process by which a recipe changes gradually over time until at least some variations bear little or no semblance to the original recipe

Example 1 - Vichyssoise
The cafeteria I go to most often for lunch served vichyssoise (pronounced VEE-shee-swahz) last week.  Their 'version' was cold leek and potato soup with lumps of potato, bits of potato skin, bits of spring onion, and lemon flavoring.  The lemon flavoring was suspiciously artificial tasting and made the whole thing taste vaguely like a lemon creamsicle!!!

Now I will admit that I tend to be a traditionalist when it comes to food, but to me vichyssoise is a rich, smooth soup made from leeks and potatoes, with absolutely no chunks of anything.  The color is nearly snow white.  In order to achieve that whiteness, only the white portion of the leeks get used, and they are sweated, taking care to not allow even a hint of browning.  Then a white stock or light colored chicken stock is used, too.  The only color, traditionally, is a garnish of minced chives.

According to Julia Child et al in Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One, once the soup is cooked, it is puréed in a blender or food mill and then passed through a fine sieve to remove any solids that may be left.

No other vichyssoise I have ever tasted had any lemon flavor.

Example 2 - Carpaccio
Carpaccio (pronounced car-PAH-chee-o) is made with very thin slices of raw beef, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice or served with a mayonnaise or mustard sauce and garnished with capers and sometimes green onions.  I have seen it served with a mimosa made by pressing cooked egg yolks through a sieve.   Carpaccio is credited as having been served first at Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy.

More recently, concerns about the safety of serving raw meat have scared off many restaurants from serving carpaccio in its original form.  A while back, I ordered carpaccio at a bistro in Regina, Saskatchewan.  What came out was a piece of seared tenderloin, cut crosswise into 1/4 inch (6mm) thick slices and napped with some nondescript tarragon based dressing.  The waiter assured me that this was THE ORIGINAL recipe!

Nowadays, you hear of tuna carpaccio, melon carpaccio and any number of other variations.  I may forgive tuna carpaccio as being at least somewhat similar to the authentic recipe, but if you slice your radishes thinly, then call them thinly sliced radishes, not radish carpaccio!

Recipes may wander due to health reasons, as with the carpaccio, because a chef thinks that they need to put their own impression onto a dish, because of availability of ingredients, or for any number of other reasons, but at some point you need to honestly step back and say that a recipe has crept enough and that it no longer warrants the name.  Cold lemon creamsicle potage parmentier is not vichyssoise!

There.  Now that I got that off my chest, I think I'll go open a bag of Sour Cream and Onion Confit of Potato Carpaccio.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward