Ruhlman's Twenty (9 page)

Pan steaming is a kind of subtechnique of water, a unique way to cook tender vegetables. It means simply putting the vegetables and a small amount of water into a very hot pan and covering it tightly so that the pressurized steam cooks the vegetables very quickly. It should only take a minute or so.

1 pound/455 grams snap peas, stems and tough veins removed

2 tablespoons butter

Kosher salt

Put a large sauté pan or other shallow pan with a lid over high heat. Combine the peas and ½ cup/ 120 milliliters water in a bowl. When the pan is so hot that water beads on the surface, pour the peas and water into the pan. Cover it immediately and, holding the lid down tightly, shake the pan as the water steams violently. After the peas have steamed for 1 minute, reduce the heat to medium-low and remove the lid, add the butter, and season with salt. Serve immediately.

Chefs know this instinctively but have been hesitant to share it with home cooks: if you don’t have homemade stock, use water rather than open a can of broth. The best chefs would never even think of using canned broth. You shouldn’t either. When you cook with good ingredients, you don’t need to rely on store-bought support liquids. Instead, you build the backbone of a recipe throughout the cooking. Here’s a great example, using a Scottish cock-a-leekie-style soup to demonstrate water’s supremacy and power.

I’ve been known to make a stink about how easy it is to roast a chicken. If you think ahead enough to
roast a chicken
, you can use that instead of the store-bought rotisserie chicken here, and your soup will be better for it. But I wanted this no-stock soup to be as easy as possible for those who might think that making stock is out of their realm or too difficult.

Cock-a-leekie soup often includes barley. Some starch can be added if you wish—barley, orzo, rice, diced potato—or, for body and texture, croutons or chopped toasted bread. But the soup is delicious clean and lean as is, packed with chicken and leeks. Accompany with a crusty baguette for a nourishing and satisfying meal.

1 large onion, sliced

2 carrots, sliced

4 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a knife

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon tomato paste/purée

One 3- to 4-pound/1.4- to 1.8-kilogram rotisserie chicken, meat shredded, bones and skin reserved

6 cups/1.4 liters water

Kosher salt

3 or 4 leeks

2 tablespoons butter

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, plus more as needed

Optional garnishes: grated lemon zest, chopped fresh parsley, slivers of
Lemon Confit
, extra-virgin olive oil, croutons

In a soup pot, combine the onion, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, and tomato paste/purée. Add the reserved chicken bones and skin and the water, which should cover the ingredients. Bring to a simmer over high heat, then reduce the heat to maintain a very low simmer. Add two three-finger pinches of salt and cook uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Meanwhile, cut the root ends from each leek and trim the ragged ends of the leaves. Halve the leeks lengthwise and wash thoroughly under cold water, checking for dirt between the layers of leaves. Cut the leeks off where the pale green turns to dark green and add the dark green parts to the simmering pot. Cut the white and pale green parts crosswise into ½-inch/12-millimeter pieces and reserve.

In a 5-quart/4.7-liter Dutch oven or other heavy pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the leek pieces and cook, stirring, until heated through, about 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to low.

Strain the stock directly into the pot holding the leeks. Discard the contents of the strainer. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. Add the white wine vinegar; you’re looking for a clean, bright, well-seasoned flavor, but you shouldn’t taste the vinegar. Add the chicken meat, bring the soup to a simmer, and cook, stirring, until piping hot, 3 to 4 minutes. Garnish, if desired, and serve.

The French have a dish they call
pâté en terrine
—meat that is ground/minced, pressed into a terrine mold, cooked in a water bath, chilled, and then sliced and served cold. It sounds fancy but all it really is, is meat loaf. The reason it’s cooked in a water bath is to ensure that the meat and fat stay uniformly suspended and that the fat doesn’t separate out and float on top of what would be a dry, rubbery pâté. The same gentle cooking will result in the very best meat loaf possible: thoroughly cooked but still moist and succulent.

The meat here can be any kind, though I like the traditional mix of beef and pork. I always recommend grinding your own—you control the meat and fat and are more likely to have a safer mixture from a bacterial standpoint. But I also know that a middle-of-the-week meat loaf should be easy to make, so call your grocery store in advance and ask for the cuts I recommend here (the preground/preminced meats are almost always too lean for a juicy meat loaf).

This recipe uses the water bath method stolen from the French pâté, along with other techniques to build flavor in the meat, such as
sweating onions
and deglazing with wine. It also uses what’s called a
panade
(pah-NAHD), bread soaked in milk, which adds moisture and keeps the texture from becoming too dense.

The mixture can be made up to four days ahead, wrapped, and refrigerated (the salt acts as a mild preservative). The meat loaf can be finished an hour before you need it and kept warm until you’re ready to finish it. It’s also delicious cold—I love meat loaf sandwiches.

If you’re grinding your own meat, it’s important to keep the meat very cold up until packing it in the mold. I season it ahead and chill it in the refrigerator or freezer. The meat is best if it’s just on the edge of being frozen before grinding.

You’ll need a terrine mold for this preparation or an 8½-by-4-inch/21.5-by-10-centimeter loaf pan.

Because you won’t get any caramelization using a water bath, I like to finish a meat loaf by coating the top with the spicy ketchup and browning it under a broiler/grill. If you don’t have time to make the ketchup, you can use the traditional bottled standby (it’s what my kids prefer, sigh).

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 medium onion, finely diced

Kosher salt

¼ cup/60 milliliters Madeira wine, sherry, or red wine

2 large eggs

1/3 cup/75 milliliters milk

2 to 4 thick slices baguette or other good bread, toasted and roughly chopped

2 pounds/910 grams well-marbled beef chuck roast, diced and well chilled

½ pound/225 grams well-marbled pork shoulder, diced and well chilled

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1½ tablespoons chopped fresh marjoram

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

½ cup/120 milliliters ice-cold red wine

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

Chipotle Ketchup

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and stir to coat with oil. Sprinkle with a three-finger pinch of salt and sauté the onion until transparent and tender, 3 to 5 minutes (reduce the heat if it appears to be burning). Raise the heat to high and add the Madeira. Let most of the wine cook off, then transfer the onion mixture to a plate and refrigerate uncovered until thoroughly chilled (or slip in the freezer if you’re in a hurry).

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with the milk. Add the bread and let it soak until thoroughly saturated and soft. (If you’re not grinding your own meat, the toasted bread should be very well chopped or even pulverized in a food processor.)

If you’re grinding your own meat, put both meats in a bowl and add 1 tablespoon salt and the garlic, pepper, marjoram, thyme, and saturated bread. Pass the mixture through a meat grinder fitted with a medium or small die into a large bowl (the bowl of a stand mixer works well). Add the onion mixture, red wine, and Worcestershire sauce. Using a wooden or metal spoon, mix thoroughly until the ingredients are uniformly distributed (or mix it in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment just long enough to combine all the ingredients).

Fill a terrine mold or 8½-by-4-inch/21.5-by-10-centimeter loaf pan with the meat mixture and cover with aluminum foil. If you’re concerned about scratching the inside of the mold when cutting the finished meat loaf, line it with foil before filling it. The meat can be refrigerated for up to 4 days at this point.

To cook the meat loaf, preheat the oven to 300°F/150°C/gas 2.

Place the mold in a roasting pan/tray and fill the pan with enough hot tap water to come two-thirds to three-fourths up the sides of the mold. Remove the mold and place the pan in the oven. When the water bath is hot (it should be about 180°F/82°C—you can heat it quickly on the stove top if you wish), cover the mold with foil and place it in the roasting pan. Cook until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf reads 150°F/65°C, about 1½ hours. Remove the water bath from the oven and the mold from the water bath.

Turn on the broiler/grill. Remove the foil and coat the top with the ketchup. Broil/grill just to give the top some color. Cut into slices and serve. There will be abundant juices in the pan; spoon the juices over the meat loaf, or mix them with some of the extra ketchup to make a sauce.

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 large onion, thinly sliced

Kosher salt

One 28-ounce/800-gram can whole peeled tomatoes, juice reserved

5 garlic cloves

2 teaspoons ground cumin

3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, seeded

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons red wine, sherry, or cider vinegar

1 tablespoon
fish sauce

Heat a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and stir to coat with oil. Sprinkle with a three-finger pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is tender and translucent, 3 to 5 minutes.

Transfer the onion to a blender and add the tomatoes and juice, garlic, cumin, chiles, brown sugar, wine, and fish sauce. Process on high speed until the mixture is smooth and uniform. Transfer to a medium saucepan. Cook the ketchup over medium-low to low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until it is reduced by two-thirds and is thick and spreadable, about 3 hours. Leftover ketchup can be refrigerated for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 1 month.

This preparation uses water in two ways: as a salt and flavor delivery device (brine) and as a heat delivery device (steaming). Short ribs are a great cut to use because they tend to be less expensive than the more tender cuts of beef, but with long, slow cooking, they become exquisitely tender. Moist heat is needed to turn the tough connective tissue into gelatin. Braising is the customary technique for accomplishing this. Here, the ribs are steamed.