Ruhlman's Twenty (51 page)

2
/Add the flour.

3
/The flour will absorb the water.

4
/The paste will pull away from the pan.

5
/Beat in the eggs one at a time.

6
/Stir until the eggs are completely incorporated.

7
/Add the apples.

8
/Scoop out the dough with a plastic bag.

9
/Slice a corner from the bag.

10
/Pipe the dough into the oil.

11
/Fry until golden brown.

WHEN WE DEFINE COOKING, WE ALMOST
always do so in terms of applying heat to food. Rarely do we recognize that part of cooking is often taking the heat away. Yes, we take things out of the oven or out of the pan. Anyone can put food into heat. The real skill is the awareness of when to take the heat away from it.

Moreover, few skills teach us as much about the way food and cooking work than understanding the power of stopping or reversing the application of heat. It forces us to pay attention to the stages of cooking—learning how a vegetable goes from hard to tender to soft helps us stop its march to mush. We learn to envision a steak as it goes from soft to firm on the outside and soft on the inside to firm throughout and therefore overcooked. We learn to see and understand the power of “carryover cooking”: that food continues to cook well after it’s removed from the oven or pan, whether a leg of lamb or a custard. Ultimately we learn to have greater control over our food so that we’re more agile in the kitchen.

Restaurant kitchens have mastered heat removal by necessity. If restaurants cooked the way most people do at home, by making a dish from start to finish when it’s needed, they would be out of business in days because getting all the food out of the kitchen would take too long. Restaurants function only by cooking much of the food ahead, then cooling it. They’re not precooking tender meat and fish, but soups and sauces, vegetables and starches, absolutely. Sometimes a restaurant kitchen will start meat to get a good sear, then finish it in half the time when the order is called.

In a sense, restaurants exist by serving really good leftovers. There’s no reason why home cooks can’t benefit from the restaurant tactic of precooking food. This will give you more time to spend with your guests at a dinner party or to prepare a nutritious and tasty meal for your family midweek.

The chilling-cooling technique can be divided into two categories: simply removing food from the heat or plunging food into coldness—in other words, gentle, gradual cooling or abrupt cooling.

The gentle or gradual cooling is the inevitable result of serving what you’re cooking, but paying attention to it as part of the cooking process makes you a better cook. We know that a blueberry pie has to cool before you can cut into it, and that you don’t want to let eggs get cold or they won’t be as delicious to eat. We also need to be aware that a chicken or leg of lamb, when pulled from the oven, is like a little heat bomb. It’s filled with heat, and it doesn’t release this heat quickly. Items that are high in fat tend to hang on to heat as well. Items that have a lot of surface area, a batch of green vegetables, say, or pasta, release their heat quickly.

Usually, when we want to arrest the cooking of something, we put it into a very cold environment, a refrigerator, a freezer, a bowl set in ice, or a bowl of ice water. More times than not, the item we’re chilling this way will be heated later. Tender green vegetables are perfect to shock and reheat—they may be better that way, more vividly colored, more precisely cooked.

Pasta can be cooked in advance and shocked in ice water, drained, and tossed with oil. Hard-cooked eggs must be shocked to prevent the exterior of the yolks from turning green from the iron and sulfur in the egg. Large cuts of tender meat can be seared or grilled, then chilled and finished when needed. Vanilla sauce and other custards must be chilled by straining them into a bowl set in ice so that the eggs don’t overcook.

Many things shouldn’t be cooked and chilled. Fish is not good reheated; most don’t even benefit from resting. The same goes for thin, tender cuts of meat, such as veal scaloppine. But generally speaking, most food can be partially cooked, chilled, and reheated with good results.
Learning how to shock and reheat is a restaurant kitchen skill that is enormously useful at home.

Almost all foods can be cooked in advance and reheated, except for those that would dry out or those that rely on a crisp crust—such as lean meat and fish and many fried foods. Some things cook so quickly that even if you wanted to cook them ahead, it’s not practical (fresh corn, for example). Also, the faster you cool the food, the better it will reheat.

FRUITS:
Any fruit that you would cook—from apples and stone fruits to peppers/capsicums and eggplant/aubergine—can be cooked ahead, chilled, and reheated as needed.

GREEN VEGETABLES:
All green vegetables can be cooked in advance, shocked in an ice bath, and reheated. Tender green vegetables (peas, beans, broccoli) that are boiled should be shocked the moment they’re done, drained, and stored, covered, on paper towels/absorbent paper. Leafy green vegetables can be cooked and cooled the same way. They can be sautéed and allowed to cool, then refrigerated and later reheated. The same goes for roasted green vegetables. Braising greens, such as kale and collards, can be cooked and reheated.

NONGREEN VEGETABLES:
Onions can be cooked in advance. If root vegetables such as carrots or potatoes are to be served hot, it’s usually better to keep them warm until you need them rather than refrigerating them. Mushrooms can be cooked in advance, usually over very, very high heat, then gently reheated. Cauliflower and cabbage can be cooked ahead.

GRAINS AND GRAIN PRODUCTS:
Just about all foods in this category can be cooked in advance. I routinely cook pasta ahead of time. Rice reheats very well.

DRIED BEANS:
All dried beans can be cooked in advance.

MEAT:
Thick, tender cuts of meat can be cooked to flavor the exterior, then refrigerated and reheated when needed. Thick, tough cuts of meat are usually improved by being braised, chilled, and reheated.

FISH:
As a rule, fish should not be cooked in advance. Shellfish can be cooked, chilled, and eaten cold, but if you want to serve it hot, it’s best to cook it when you want to serve it.

When we remove heat drastically from food, it freezes. We use freezing to turn a delicious sauce into an even more delicious ice cream. Or we add sugar to a fruit juice and freeze it into sorbet.

Freezing food to preserve it is part of our routine cooking. We once relied on canning and curing to preserve food; now we put it in
the freezer. We freeze food so routinely that we scarcely think about what a wonderful luxury it is. As happens with most things we take for granted, we forget that freezing can be done well, or done poorly. It’s a skill like any other in the kitchen.