Rich Mintz  

So, as promised, I’m making this recipe tonight, and the house smells like garlic and parsley. It’s fun to cook from a cookbook, or to mimic the technique of Julia Child. But there’s a special pleasure in making something you’ve made many times before, that your hands know how to make, for which (if you’re me) you don’t bother measuring, you just throw in the amount of this and that that “feels right” and trust it will all work out.

The gift of Julia Child (one of the many gifts of this confident, self-actualized woman) is that she made intricate, traditional, intimidating dishes into something accessible. She transformed them from fussy recipes, full of steps and warnings, to a felt process that anyone who paid attention could experience. Well, you had to do more than pay attention — you had to risk failure, and you’d certainly see some failure; but Julia was never afraid of failure, because you learn from failure and pick the chicken up off the floor, or toss out the failed soufflé, and start again, better equipped not to fail the next time.

Last night we watched one of the episodes of Julia Child’s “The French Chef,” which was conceived in Boston in 1962, a few years before I was born, and premiered on WGBH late that year. I thought the early episodes had been lost, taped over back in the days before anyone thought up “syndication”; but apparently someone found them, and they’re available on DVD and on Amazon streaming video. Shot in one take, in a Boston Gas demonstration kitchen, on two cameras powered by a diesel generator in a Trailways bus behind the studio, this is not “Iron Chef” — the blurry black-and-white picture barely shows anything clearly but Child’s cheery face and whatever it is her hands are doing. But there’s nothing else worth looking at anyway, is there? In the episode we watched, in which Child explained how to make a quiche, I actually learned how to make a quiche, start to finish, complete with tips that will be useful the next time I bake anything. I didn’t have to take notes, didn’t have to write anything down — and I have a reasonable expectation that I could make a quiche right now, out of ingredients I already have in my kitchen, and it would look good and taste better.

In reflecting on that episode, it occurs to me that Child was good at teaching cooking, but she was better at teaching mastery– at transmitting the sense that if you simply paid attention, you would have the right to claim ownership of something new. It’s not coincidental that the great book behind which she was the motivating force and the principal contributor was entitled Mastering the Art of French Cooking — not Learning the Art of French Cooking, or 1001 French Recipes, but Mastering.

That is the talent of a great teacher — not that she or he shows you how to do something, but that she or he transmits the skills and the confidence, and the sense of proportion, that you need in order to own that thing.

There’s much more to the story of this incredible woman, who started with some liabilities (being seen in her own context as tall and ungainly and not particularly pretty, in a prosperous but unimaginative family whose women weren’t expected to do particularly much) and through force of character turned herself into a happy and deeply fulfilled person who lived an unusually interesting life. (Before her food career, she and her husband were essentially Cold War spies in Europe — you can read all about that in her exceptional memoir, or, if you must, in that movie.) I found myself within one degree of separation of Julia Child in the late 1980s (I knew people who dined at her home, which was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near where I lived), and I wish I’d taken the opportunities that came within reach to meet her.

So tonight we cooked two things I thought were too hard, and they both came out okay: fried chicken (from Mark Bittman’s recipe), and a pear frangipane tart. (We also made black-eyed peas, of course — what, do you think I’m crazy? — and Tyler Florence’s potato gratin.)

The chicken made me a little nervous. Everyone knows fried chicken is hard, right? Well, turns out it isn’t actually that hard. The three things you need to remember are (1) Use a large, heavy pan, for even heating and so you don’t crowd the pieces; (2) use more oil than you want to; and (3) cook hotter and longer than you think you should. Bittman has you cover the pan for 7 minutes while the first side cooks (which in effect poaches the second side, helping with doneness).

We did one pan with half bacon grease and half canola oil, and the second pan with all canola. The half-and-half batch was in my heavy seasoned skillet, and I expected it to cook more evenly, but the results from the larger but lighter all-canola pan were much better. Maybe the smaller pan was too crowded.

As for the frangipane — we used this recipe. It was a zillion steps, and the crust was fussy (what pastry crust isn’t?), but the end product came out delicious. I’m about to go have some more. And as a bonus, we were left with 3 cups of orange-pear-vanilla-and-clove sugar syrup, which will make a superb ingredient in rye cocktails (I already verified this, can you tell?).

Have a good year, everyone!

OK, the crèmes caramel are out of the oven. They set up fine, more or less, but half the caramel syrup recrystallized into hard little sugar discs on the bottom of the pots, and I don’t know why. Any ideas?

I’m happy to make crème caramel over and over and over and over until this problem is resolved…

Building on the successful coconut custard pie, we’re making crème caramel from Mark Bittman’s recipe. Step one is to make browned sugar syrup to pour in the bottom of the cups, which is essentially a matter of cooking sugar on the stove until it melts, starts to thicken into a candy state, then turns brown. I don’t understand much about candy-making, and on our first try, for no apparent reason, it failed — specifically, the sugar seized up (turned back into chunky crystals) as described here. On a second try, we got what we expected — sugar syrup that thickened, then started to brown.

That blog post suggests that the issue might have been that we had the mixture boiling too early (before the sugar was fully dissolved) — is that possible? Does anyone know any more?

Just saw the late Jennifer Paterson of “Two Fat Ladies” roll out a pastry crust, then roll it up on a rolling pin and then unroll it into the dish, rather than trying to lift it flat and lay it in. This is such an obviously brilliant idea (and I’ve had so many pie crusts fall apart trying to get them into the plate) that I can’t believe I’m only hearing about it in my mid-forties. It makes me want to go make a pie right now, just to prove it’s a brilliant idea!

Today I roasted a mountain of vegetables for Christmas dinner with friends — carrots and parsnips and garlic and a leek, tossed with salt and spices — and we made a batch of potato latkes (for the fourth time in 5 days) to take with us too. In the past few days, I’ve also made a brisket; a modified version of Tyler Florence’s potato gratin (no cabbage); roasted beets and roasted brussels sprouts; fresh-toasted seasoned almonds; a coconut custard pie; and about 400 potato latkes. In the fridge we have the makings for spaghetti and homemade meatballs for tomorrow, along with fresh sausages to grill if we turn out not to be in the mood. So we’re eating very well, and isn’t that what holidays are all about?

This recipe for potato gratin with a layer of garlicky bacony sautéed cabbage in the middle may not look like much, but I just watched Tyler Florence make it on the Food Network, and I think it might be my new favorite dish. I do have a sort of a cruciferous vegetable fetish (they cook up nutty and buttery and rich, especially when roasted or braised), and I imagine that after an hour of cooking, the cabbage layer almost melts into a sort of sauce. After I try this I’ll report back.

I saw this blog post about pie in a jar (not a bad idea, all things considered) and it reminded me that I’ve been wanting to make a coconut custard pie for ages.

(Before I leave the subject of “pie in a jar” entirely: I don’t think I’d go out and buy half-height Mason jars just for occasional use as jar-pie holders, but I do have about a zillion Pyrex custard cups in two sizes that would work fine for tiny pies. They wouldn’t freeze as well, but wrapped in tight plastic wrap, they should do adequately. So maybe I will try this sometime. On the other hand, the real problem with pie-in-a-jar is “who ever wants only six ounces of pie?” But I digress.)

In any case, I poked around for some coconut custard pie recipes yesterday, after laying in extra eggs and some whole milk just in case. I used to love egg custard as a child — I think of it as a food that used to be vastly more common and much more fashionable than it is now, and that’s probably true, given that it has to be cooked rather than simply heated up, and it’s rumored to be fussy, and it’s full of cholesterol and fat and so forth.

It’s also, however, delicious, with a subtlety of flavor that isn’t so common nowadays, what with sugar and fat so cheap and plentiful. I note that I’m now old enough to say “nowadays” only semi-ironically, which is distressing in its own way, but, again I digress.

And if you’re going to put egg custard in a pie, you might as well put coconut in it, because, well, why not?

All the egg custard pie recipes out there seem more or less the same, with a few variations. (I’m discounting the pretenders that use cornstarch instead of eggs; that’s not custard.) I ended up going with Bittman’s. The proportions seem to be roughly 5 ounces milk to one egg to one ounce sugar, with four eggs and 20 ounces of milk and half a cup of sugar to fill a pie shell. Some call for a pre-baked shell and some bake the shell and custard together, but one of the things I hate most is a gummy pie crust, so I decided to pre-bake.

As I said above, people say egg custard is fussy, and I worried. But it came out perfectly, and most of the pie is already gone. The worst part, in fact, was the pie crust — I used a new Cuisinart for mixing, and ended up overbeating and overheating the crumble, then added too much extra flour, then had to correct with a little water. The resulting mass, even after chilling, wouldn’t roll out properly, so I ended up having to hand-place it in the pan in strips and blobs and press them together, and after baking it was more like a short-crust tart than a pie. But, you know, who gives a crap, it sliced up fine and came out delicious, and the custard set up perfectly.

Bittman suggests toasting coconut in a saucepan on the stovetop, rather than in the oven on a baking sheet like we did when I was a child; I actually like the results better (you end up with a more unevenly done product, which is an improvement) and will do it that way in future.

I decided to bake some bread last night, because I’m home for the next 10 days or so and it makes me feel domestic. What a good choice — I made two small loaves in the French bread pan, kneading after dinner and baking about midnight, and we gobbled one up hot and buttered right out of the oven before bed.

As usual it was an impromptu affair, without a lot of careful measuring or tight tolerances. Here was last night’s recipe, which was so successful we’re going to try to replicate it again today:

Dissolve 1 envelope of yeast in a large bowl with 2 cups warm water, about 1/4 cup olive oil, and a generous squirt of honey. Stir. Leave for 15 minutes.

Dump in about 2 1/2 cups white bread flour, about 1 1/2 cup whole wheat bread flour, a generous half-cup cornmeal, a big handful of oats, and a big handful of crushed wheat (I think it was crushed wheat — some grain from the cabinet). Toss in quite a bit more kosher salt than you think you’ll need. Mix with a spoon until it starts to turn into dough.

Knead into a ball (in the bowl) with your hands. Realize there’s too much flour for the liquid and add a bit more water. Knead knead (in the bowl — fold over, rotate 1/4 turn, squish, fold over, rotate 1/4 turn, squish…) for 5 or 10 minutes.

Place on top of the fridge with a wet towel covering. Wait about 2 hours while it rises. Punch the ball down and form into loaves in the French bread pan. Score the tops with a knife. Put in the oven (cold, or still warm from dinner, but off) for 30 or 45 minutes.

Turn the oven on to 450 degrees. (Bread will continue rising as the oven begins to warm up.) Bake for about half an hour, then turn the oven down to about 350 and bake for another 15 or 20 minutes.

You’ll get a bread with a very thick, chewy crust and a moist inside. If you take the bread out a bit too early (as we did), the inside will be moister; if you bake a bit longer, it’ll be crumbier. Either way, it’s delicious.

I’ve always thought of ribs (whether of the beef, pork, spare, or baby back variety) as something that Other People cooked — you know, people who weren’t cut until the fourth episode of Top Chef, or got a culinary degree like my brother, or had a grandfather with a little store out on US 78 near Bamberg. At the very least, I assumed you needed either a restaurant kitchen, or a pit in the sand, or an oil drum cut in half and a stack of artisanal Long Island willow branches, along with a bunch of knowledge I didn’t have the benefit of.

Obviously in a Mason-Dixon world, I’m a Yankee. But I lived in Atlanta off and on for years, and during that whole time I was dating a Southerner — not the sort of Southerner that lives out in Powder Springs and drives a pickup with a gun rack and listens to this, but the sort whose family is still living out in the rural Lowcountry of South Carolina, near where they’ve been for generations. And during that period I also spent months in Arkansas (which we’ll talk about another time), and driving back and forth via Birmingham and Memphis. And, besides, I came to Atlanta with an open mind (it’s a lot more fun that way), and so broadened my tastes in such close-to-the-heart matters as music, home decor, religion, politics, and food (come to think of it, that last link could have worked for “home decor,” too).

My childhood memories of “barbecue” were mostly of “ribs,” and with few exceptions, those were all of either the “Tony Roma’s” (i.e., charred and sinewy) or what New Yorkers would recognize as the “Dallas BBQ” (i.e., boiled and soused in what is essentially syrupy ketchup) variety. Meh.

I learned better barbecue habits when I came South: the sauce-ingredient loyalties that identify one as a partisan of a particular region, state, or in some cases county; what good ribs taste like, in about 40 incarnations in eight states; and what side dishes are worth bothering with. (Cole slaw, rarely, except at Newt Gingrich’s favorite Williamson Bros. in Marietta; cornbread, never within 10 miles of the Georgia State House except in restaurants established before 1950; collards, everywhere that bothers to offer them.)

However, until this week I never tried cooking ribs at home. By “never” I mean I tried it a few times when I was a young adult; the results were always absolutely awful; and I gave it up for 20 years. Let’s face it, ribs are tricky. You start with a rather intricate hunk of raw animal matter. You may need to do a bit of prep to trim off bits here and there, which is a turnoff for the squeamish (e.g., almost everyone under 70 living within a 10-mile radius of Times Square). You need a long cooking period, at a low heat, that keeps the meat moist enough but not too wet. And then there’s the near-religious question of rubs, seasonings, infusions, and/or sauces. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands and put a box of Trader Joe’s frozen macaroni and cheese in the oven.

But when I saw this story in the Times (for what it’s worth, the print paper) — and, in particular, this recipe — I decided to give it a shot. I’ve always had a weakness for a caramelized exterior on a rib (one reason I’m such a fan of Whole Hog, which fortunately was about a 2-minute drive from my Little Rock apartment, aka “Bates Motel Rock Vegas,” right around the corner from a real-live murder house!… but again I digress), and I wanted to see if I could pull it off.

Guess what? I could! And the recipe was not hard to follow, and is hard to ruin and easy to adapt to your taste and/or the sauce ingredients that happen to be on hand, and is so uncomplicated that once you’ve done it a first time, you can do it again from memory. Photo of part of the fresh-out-of-the-oven results at top (click for larger). Here’s what I learned:

Follow your instincts. I wanted something much spicier than the recipe called for, and because I had them on hand, I added both ajvar and Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce (in place of ketchup, which I don’t bother keeping in the house because I don’t go through a whole bottle of it in 3 years). I worried about the ajvar, since it’s full of eggplant and peppers, but with so much sugar and balsamic vinegar as the base, you could probably mix in half a cup of mucilage and the sauce would come out okay. The caramelized coating was a little lumpy, but who cares? I wasn’t cooking for the Queen. Similarly, I like sauced ends, so I cut the racks in smaller pieces so there would be more of them.

Cook longer, and slower, than you think you have to. The ribs came out delicious, but they would have been even better with another 30 minutes in the oven. Similarly, I had to boost the oven for a while because I had other dishes in there too; that probably inhibited my collagen liquification just a bit.

Caramelizing the surface of a rack of ribs is not brain surgery. It is a matter of “put something sweet and greasy under a hot fire for just a little longer than you normally would, keeping your eye on it.” That’s it! The crappy broiler in my run-of-the-mill gas oven did the job just fine.

Like so many other things you cook, ribs are better 3 days later. Not much to say here, except that they were perfectly fine right out of the oven, but that by the third day the flavors had melded such that I could have eaten them cold out of the fridge.

Try a drip pan. The recipe as written kept the ribs tightly sealed in the packet; that essentially braised them in their own juices, which is fine, but it yielded a slightly wetter final product than I like. (The Whole Hog product is dry, which I note is not the same thing as “dried out.”) I think next time I’ll try cutting the underside of the foil for the final 30 minutes and letting the excess liquid fall out the bottom.

Thank God for my heavy saucepan, which I seasoned properly early this year after reading this post from the Clever Cleaver and now use four or five times a week, more than any other item of stoveware that I own. In fact, as you can see at right, it’s sitting on my stove right now. You can make a sauce like this without a heavy saucepan, but you’ll be happier if you use one, and you need one anyway. A good seasoned saucepan is like nature’s Teflon; it can get much hotter and holds heat much better than industrial-coated pans do, which lets you cook more gently and more effectively.