12 avril 2006
12 avril 2006
Slow and easy - that's Easter lamb
It's two hours or so of roasting but very little work. This chef's advice : Make a jus rather than gravy, and skip the neon mint jelly
James MacGuire
Longtime Montreal chef James MacGuire writes an occasional series on how to cook like a chef - at home. That means incorporating some of the secrets the experts bring to the kitchen in relatively simple but elegant recipes.
Before I quit school to become a cook full time, I spent a few summers working in a great big seasonal hotel on the ocean, where I noticed that the roast cooks were usually older guys, often bachelors, who performed their tasks with patience and method.
At breakfast, as the cocky, sweaty young cook grandstanded to the college-girl waitresses - juggling innumerable pans of eggs "up" or "over easy" - it was the roast cook's job to make the occasional perfect omelette. And in the afternoons, while the younger guys were still napping off the excesses of a night on the town, he would arrive long before the dinner shift to put his roasts into a slow, sure oven.
There is much to be said for roasting meat bone-in in a slow oven. Lower temperatures allow for the slower penetration of heat and more even cooking. I'm not sure there is proof that the bone adds flavour, but, unlike some anonymous, string-tied cylinder of flesh, it reminds us of the beast that once was.
What could be more appropriate for the Easter dinner than roast lamb with spring vegetables In these parts, that has more to do with the calendar than with the weather, as the Saxon spring goddess, Eostre, is not yet prancing about. Fortunately for us, ewes are now tricked into lambing year round.
Every time I see a frozen New Zealand leg of lamb, I am reminded of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode where one served as the murder weapon and the evidence was destroyed at the dinner table. Although the one I recently tried was better pink than cooked to death, the woolly, muttony flavour was still very much there, especially when reheated.
Fresh Australian and New Zealand lamb found in supermarkets works better, and lamb from western Canada is better still. As for the local product, the production of salt marsh lamb agneau pre-sale from L'Ile Verte in the Gaspe is so tiny that few of us will encounter it. But Kamouraska lamb, produced by a group of nine committed farmers, though not technically pre-sale, does have a hint of the characteristic saltiness. They also produce limited quantities of delicately flavoured milk-fed lamb, which all paschal lamb once was.
The tactic here is to buy the best you can afford and keep it simple. The two hours or so of roasting requires little work and is worth it - as is making a concentrated jus, which in reality is hardly more trouble than the more common gravy. The butcher can remove the hip bone to help flavour your jus, and I suggest having the shank removed as well, and scrounging a few extra bones to add to the roasting pan to intensify the pan juices' flavour.
Then there are the side dishes. The weather is still cool enough that the French potato-and-cream accompaniment gratin Dauphinois seems appropriate. And as the first fiddleheads are still weeks away, I would add rapini with a hint of garlic, which will not only benefit from the lamb jus but counter the richness of the gratin.
Peeled green asparagus with a walnut-oil vinaigrette would be a further reminder that spring is truly on its way, and a sprinkling of chopped hard-boiled egg a reminder of Easter, or at the very least, some vernal equinox fertility rite.
As for flavour-enhancers, my advice is to go easy. When I was a child, it took me quite some time to realize that even the well-done lamb we ate tasted better without the glow-in-the-dark mint jelly. Although inserting strips of garlic into the incised flesh doesn't make me shudder the way mint jelly does, there is no point in masking good lamb's delicate flavour. Instead I would opt for whole roasted garlic cloves, which will provide a wonderfully sweet yet robust condiment.
For wine, Bordeaux is a classic with lamb. Pauillac, at the heart of the region, used to be as famous for its lamb as it is its crus classes. But the reliable Chateau de Parenchere 2003, a less expensive Bordeaux superieur, would also suit, as would heavy hitters from sunnier climes.
James MacGuire Bio
James MacGuire was born into an Irish-American family in Manhattan in 1951. At the age of sixteen, he landed his first summer job as a dishwasher at Porky Manero’s Steakhouse in Westport, Connecticut. He was quickly promoted to salad boy -- preparing iceberg lettuce with bottled dressing – and soon got hooked on the pressure-cooker high of the professional kitchen. He continued to work in restaurants while attending McGill University in Montreal but quit after two years to wield a knife full time.
MacGuire’s culinary career then brought him back to the States. He worked in San Francisco (Ernie’s), Los Angeles (The Biltmore Hotel, Le Chambord), Dallas, Ketchum, Baltimore, and finally back to New York where he worked at The River Café under Larry Forgione.
Next came a sojourn to France where he toiled in the kitchens of L’Auberge de L’Ile in Alsace, Orsi and Bernachon in Lyon, Auberge Henri IV in Chartres, and Jean Delaveyne in Bougival. At his final stop in Tours, he worked for the man he still describes as his mentor, Charles Barrier.
“Barrier remains a great friend and huge influence,” says MacGuire. “He made everything in-house, and was totally unafraid to delve into charcuterie and other specialties. He did things right, including a professional bread-making operation to make bread for sixty customers at lunch and another sixty at dinner. When he wasn’t satisfied with the results, he called on his friend, bread expert, Raymond Calvel, who has since become a friend of mine and my biggest influence on the baking side.”
MacGuire then returned to Montreal, where he opened Le Passe-Partout in 1981. The thirty-seat restaurant featured a small changing menu of cuisine du marché. Almost everything was made in-house. He later added a bakery, where his bread and viennoiseries were considered the best in the city. In April 2004, after 23 years in business, he closed both operations.
MacGuire now works as a consultant and teacher, and has held bread seminars for The American Institute of Baking, The Culinary Institute of America, and The American Breadbakers’ Guild. He also contributes articles and cookbook reviews to Ed Behr’s The Art of Eating.
With Dr. Ronald Wirtz, MacGuire translated Professor Calvel’s last book, The Taste Of Bread (Aspen Publishing, 2001) into English.
Posters should bear in mind that MacGuire's point of view has, of course been greatly influenced by Raymond Calvel, so he has asked two friends to look over his shoulder :
-Hubert Chiron, of the INRA in Nantes, France, author with Philippe Roussel, of Les Pains Francais : Évolution, Qualité, Production (Mae-Erti Editeur), a clear and extremely useful book which takes the science of things as far as most bakers would want to go but also reflects Chiron's love of baking history.
- Jeffrey Hamelman, Head Baker at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont, and author of Bread, A Baker's Book Of Techniques And Recipes (John Wiley and Sons, due out this fall)
In cases where either's input goes beyond approval of MacGuire's own answers or if opinions differ, they will post their answers following MacGuire's.
Jason Perlow
Founder, eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters
jperlow@eGullet.org
source : eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters
Dear Chef MacGuire,
Would you please grant me a favour? Can you provide your recipe for mousse au chocolat? I would be forever grateful !
Jun 19 2004,
There are various ways of making chocolate mousse, and probably the biggest problem is making it bitter enough. For "structural" reasons, there has to be sugar in the egg whites (yolks, whatever) to hold things, and if the chocolat used isn't extremely bitter, then things will be too sweet. Valrhona makes what they call " Cacao Pate Extra", what pastry people used to call "pure Pate", and this is what I use when there's a fair amount of sugar elsewhere in the recipe so that I don't end uo adding even more. I have never been a believer in adding such things as instant coffee to make things more bitter. The very old fashioned chocolate mousse made by people at home was done by melting the chocolate, and whisking in the chocolate and some butter. The whites were then whipped, with a bit of sugar folded-in, and folded into the chocolate mixture. I don't have the exact amounts ( my stuff is all in piles since the place closed) but stay in touch and I'll see what I can do.
The mousse we made at Le Passe-Partout is based on Italian meringue :
400g Valrhona " Cacao Pate Extra" melted, cooled to lukewarm
250 ml egg whites
75 g granulated sugar
275 g granulated sugar cooked to small ball
1,000 heavy cream ( whipped but not stiff, no sugar)
Melt the chocolate
Whip the cream and refrigerate
Put the 275 g of sugar on to cook with some water, taking the usual
precautions
In the meantime, whip the whites, and add the 75 g of sugar to "hold"
them
Be sure the small ball syrup is ready at this stage ( the whites will dry out
if left) gradually pour the boiling syrup into the whites with the machine
on. DON'T BURN YOURSELF. Keep the machine on while the Italian
meringue whips and cools to room temperature.
fold the meringue into the chocolate ( first about half, well-incorporated then the rest)
The fold in the whipped cream ( same 1/2 + 1/2 system as the
meringue)
refrigerate, but don't serve cold.
Be careful of the temperatures of the various components : As you can imagine, on a hot day, with the chocolate and the meringue insufficiently cooled, the whipped cream will melt and fall. On one of those really cold days, with everything too cool, the chocolate will "sieze" and the mousse will be lumpy.
Good luck
James
source : forums.egullet.org
Q : There was a topic on the pastry and baking board a while back entitled : Why are baguettes so much better in France ? Ingredients ? Water ? Skill ?
Jun 5 2004
The baguette could not exist before certain conditions were in place, and this happened after the 1st world war :
- Stronger flours
- Widespread use of mixing machines
- Steam-injected ovens
- and above all, the general use of baker's yeast (only) to ferment the dough
Although beer yeast (to become baker's yeast) had been known for a very long time in France, it's general use began gingerly as a way of pushing the classic levain doughs along. Before yeast-only breads appeared, there was a long period during which levain de pate and other mixtures were used. Raymond Calvel remebers making pure levain loaves in summer and levain pushed with a bit of yeast in the winter as he was learning the trade in the Haut Languedoc. Calvel has also written of seeing Parisian bakers come to his region to demonstrate the use of baker's yeast using the straight dough process ( what little amount of baker's yeast recipes used in France were made by the poolish method, introduced in Paris by bakers from Vienna c 1825 ), and he remembers being fascinated, and went to Paris first to learn the trade, but then stayed on to teach at the Ecole Nationale de Meunerie (In Paris witnessed not only the introduction of the baguette, but also the Parisian croissant . viennese croissants were more of a rich croissant-shaped roll. Parisians had the idea of rolling the butter in as for puff pastry to make them flaky). The French had been used to large sourdough loaves which kept for many days, and frugal housewives would never serve on the day they were made because people would eat too much. Better flours, kneading machines , steam in the oven, and above all, bakers yeast permitted the production of lighter, crispier loaves. Consumers were fascinated by the crackly-crispy crust, and the overall delicacy of the result. longer,skinnier loaves - i.e. the baguette- began to be made to satisfy the demand for a greater proportion of crust. This new category of bread was called "pain de fantaisie" and at first was a purely Parisian phenomenon: the loaves were more delicate, more expensive, and perfect for conspicuous consumers because they had to be eaten the same day. Professor Calvel is quite clear that the golden age of this French bread ( the French have had good bread for a long time, but Voltaire never trapsed around wearing a beret with a baguette under his arm...) was between the two world wars. Kneading was done by machine, but at slow speed ( therefore sufficient, but not excessive), and the fermentation of the dough went on for three or four hours ( for a total production time of 7 or 8 hours). In this way, the resullts were indeed light and delicate but had character. A good baguette should be very yellow on the inside ( more about this soon), with large to very large holes, and (slowly fermented straight dough baguettes especially) allow the wheatty, nutty nuances of the flour to come shining through. Bakers have long endeavored to produce sourdough baguettes, but in my experience sourdough loaves do not spring well in long skinny shapes, and the crust softens and becomes rubbery. Above all, the assertive sourdough flavors mask the delicate wheatty flavors, and these days, after many years of working with poolish, I wonder if the baguette en direct might not be the best way to go.
Calvel (who is still around at 90) also witnessed the disaster of the modern baguette at the end of the 50's early 60's. One morning a baker named Abert had his kneading machine break down, and being a resourceful guy, he rolled-uo his sleeves and fixed it. When he turned it on, however, he realised that he had made a mistake, for it was working at double the speed. He made bread anyway, and to his amazement, the loaves were as light as manna (sp?) and the crumb was almost as white as snow. Ecco! the bad baguette. People were fascinated, and the new method conquered France, becoming generalised within a few years. The new baguette was also easier for bakers to produce, and to make things worse, machines were invented to divide and shape the dough to increase production, but which required atypically stiff, unfermented doughs. Unlike most food scientists, Calvel has always though of the taste of things, and he reacted against this new petrissage intensifie. Basically, the Calvel school finds two things critical for baguettes (and for bread in general) :
Unbleached flours contain carotenoid pigments, which give a nutty, wheatty flavor to the loaf. Too much high speed mixing destroys them, and when they're gone, they're gone. Too much mixing also changes the texture of the crumb, and the extra formation of the gluten strands permits shortening the fermentation of the dough.
Long, cool fermentations lead to the formation of fatty organic acids which give flavor, texture, and keeping qualities to the finished loaf. Overmixing, stronger flours, and oxydising additives permit the drastic shortening of fermentation times.
Put most simply, it is much better to knead little and ferment a lot than knead a lot and ferment little. Poolishes and other preferments permit the rejuggling of the fermentation schedule and this helps things, but we can't forget in these discussions that here, but especially in France, the economic pressures of running a bakery are daunting ( flour is cheap, but even 1,500 baguettes a day don't bring in that much cash). Add to this the long, strangr hours, the difficulty of finding emoloyees and the right flour, and instead of lamenting the sorry state of things or on the other hand start waving flags, we should rejoice every time we find a good baguette, be it here or in France.
In my effort to answer a question about U.S. recipes with European flours, I tried to delve into the difference between the wheats and the milling practices. The more I look into it, the more I see that certain millers both here ond in France produce flours which, because of greater care in the overall process and, increasingly, the variety of wheat being milled, are producing results which are remarkably different from -- excuse the expression-- run of the mill. I hope that this tendency to go the extra mile ( mix those metaphores!) continues so that those who dismiss the baguette entirely, or feel that it must be boosted with sourdough or other "improvements" can retain an open mind until they finally taste the real thing, somewhere, sometime, with some luck.
In recent months I have found a Canadian flour which has assuaged my fear that great baguettes cannot be made with Canadian flours, there certainly exist U.S. flours which fit the bill, and hope one day soon to conduct a controlled experiment/tasting against a French control (Stephen Kaplan, would you be interested ?)
James MacGuire
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