The Kitchen Counter Cooking School (22 page)

By the end of it, the sweaty crew stood with their mouths agape. “Some bread is healthier than this one. Read labels. Consumers have a voice in a free market. If people buy bread without a lot of additives, you'll see more bread without them. Or you can make your own. You can control what's in it, and it's way cheaper.”

Jeff settled a big plastic container with flour on the worktable. “Okay, first we're going to talk about the right way to measure flour. Don't dig a measuring cup into it. Instead, use one measuring cup to fill another.” I spooned flour into a stainless steel cup measure. “When full, use a knife to scrape it level across the top.”

Trish raised her hand. “So I've always heard that, but why do you do it?”

Jeff fetched a kitchen scale from a side table. I set a metal bowl on top and zeroed out the scale. I measured a cup of flour as I'd just demonstrated and plopped it into the bowl. “Okay, 150 grams.” I poured it back into the flour bin, set the bowl atop the scale, and zeroed the scale again. This time, I dug the scoop directly into the flour and scraped the top. “This is 190 grams. If you add 40 grams on each cup, you'll completely ruin a baking recipe. In baking, weight is more precise than volume. That's why most professional recipes are outlined in weight, not cups.”

Dri slapped the table. “I think this explains most of my baking failures.”

Yeast went in next. “Any yeast will do. You can buy fresh yeast in the supermarket, like this,” I said, holding up a cube of fresh yeast. “Or you can use instant yeast in the packets or jars. If you think you'll make a lot of bread, buy a block of yeast at a warehouse store. Then invite a couple of your friends over, show them how to make this bread, and divvy up the yeast with them.”

“Yeast is a living thing, be nice to it,” I continued. I reached for a pitcher of warm tap water on the table and measured out a cup and then stuck an instant-read thermometer into the water. It registered 100°F. I handed it to Cheryl. “Feel this and pass it around. It should feel lukewarm. If it's too cold or too hot, you'll kill the yeast. Go for around body temperature.” The little metal cup went around the table as each person dutifully stuck a finger into the water. As it got to Donna, she shook her head.

“And
this
explains a few of
my
baking failures. I think sometimes my water is too hot,” she said, passing the cup back to Jeff, who drained it into the sink.

I measured the water, yeast, and salt and added them to a large bowl, dumped in the flour, and stirred. The dough became a stiff, lumpy, sticky, and moist mass. “That's it. Here, pass it around. Smell, touch it, so you can remember what it's like.” Everyone peered into the bowl, sniffed, and tentatively poked a finger into it. As it made the rounds, I pulled out a five-quart clear plastic bin.

Earlier, I'd made a double batch of the same dough recipe. We'd left it in the back of our car while we shopped for ingredients for class, a point that reminded me of the state health exam and the question about not leaving meat to defrost in the trunk of one's car. It had shifted from a dense, gloopy mass to a bubbling, airy beige blob three times the size. I took back the original bowl and compared them side by side. “So this is ‘The Blob.' It's what it looks like after it has risen.” The volunteers looked suitably impressed. “Now we're going to shape some loaves.”

Everyone grabbed a hunk of the risen dough with floured hands and slathered it in a cloak of flour. Mike, our resident baker, stopped videotaping the class for a moment. “The point is to cover it lightly all over,” he advised. “I think of it like creating the shape of the top of a mushroom by smoothing and stretching the dough out and tucking it under the loaf.” He and I went around the table helping everyone mold their little grapefruit-sized balls of dough into round
boules
. The volunteers smiled and patted their blobs tentatively at first, and then with a bit more gusto, rather like kids making mud pies. Jeff carefully set up trays lined with parchment paper and cast a generous handful of cornmeal on each to keep the loaves from sticking. I watched as Dri set her loaf on the sheet and wrote her name next to it on the parchment paper. She gazed at it wistfully. If no one had been watching, I wondered if she might have kissed it. I knew the feeling. Baking can do that to you. The loaves needed at least a half hour to rise, so we moved on to pasta.

Pasta earned its place as a household staple in the space of a generation. Italian immigrants started commercially producing the tender, pleasantly neutral-tasting white pasta known to most diners in the early twentieth century, back when it was considered an ethnic food. In the United States and Canada, pasta consumption doubled between 1975 and 1995. Even with the rise of low-carb diets and an increased appetite for gluten-free foods, dried pasta is still a nearly $2-billion-a-year business. Ever since the major food companies took notice, they've found big profits trotting out various forms of flavored, prepackaged pasta dishes. We may have a vision of a group of Italian grandmothers in some countryside locale turning out noodles, but the retail arena is controlled by a handful of multinationals. In the 1990s, Hershey's was the largest pasta manufacturer until it divested itself of a couple of brands to focus more on its main business, chocolate and confectionaries.

One of my longest conversations with the woman in the supermarket was around her presumed inability to make a simple sauce. Pasta was a staple in the diets of all the volunteers, more ubiquitous than even chicken. But not all pastas are made the same. For that day's tasting, I had compiled a wide selection, including traditional white spaghetti and a couple of gluten-free alternatives, but mostly focusing on whole wheat options, mixing expensive and inexpensive brands. Shifting from white semolina pasta to 100 percent whole wheat pasta can double the fiber and nearly triple the protein of any dish.

While we were all playing with dough, Lisa tended six pots of boiling water, preparing to cook the twelve different types of pasta to the same exact level of al dente and keep track of them all. On its face, this seems a simple task. Some had to cook for six minutes, others fourteen. As the rest of us worked on the bread, I could hear her clanging around in pots to dig out pasta to settle into colanders and slapping down a dozen small plates on the stainless side table.

By the time we were ready to taste, Lisa looked ready to melt. The walls behind the stove dripped condensation. “Okay!” she said, blowing out a huge sigh. “Ready?” As everyone circled the plates, she disappeared into the walk-in cooler and shut the door behind her. I'm fairly sure that Jeff was already in there, possibly with the wine.

Everyone nibbled. The results intrigued. Favorites included the store-brand whole wheat pasta from a warehouse store. “It's got a nice nutty flavor to it,” Terri noted. The least favorite was a national whole wheat brand that I had bought months earlier but left untouched after Mike insisted on referring to it as “dirt pasta.” I used to give him a hard time for not liking it, but then I discovered no one else did either.

“No, it really does taste like dirt,” Shannon said earnestly. “I mean, it's got a strange grit thing going on. My kids would never eat that.” She set down her small plate and pushed it away.

Mike leaned out from behind the video camera. “See?” he said, vindicated.

Trish pointed at some brightly colored rotini on her plate. “What are these colored pastas? They're kind of odd tasting.” They were pasta spirals flavored with vegetables, another pasta reject from my household. “Oh, yeah, I bought these for our friend's kids who come over to visit a lot. Neither of the girls were crazy about it, though.”

Tasting one of the two white pastas, Donna said that she detected something fishy. “It's like tuna. I mean, that's probably not right. That's just me.” Then we looked at the package. It contained omega-3. That would explain the fish flavor. No one else had picked it up, but on tasting it again, it was obvious.

Shannon seemed enthused. “This is a great tasting to do,” she said. “I'm going to start buying a couple of different pastas and trying them out with my kids. In some ways, I think this was my favorite tasting so far since it's something that I cook all the time.”

When it comes to cooking pasta, a few tips make or break the whole experience. First, be sure that you use plenty of water. Second, the pasta will take on the flavor of the water that it's boiled in. One classic way to add flavor to pasta is by salting the water. “The water for pasta should taste salty, kind of like the sea,” said Lisa, who was back and looking refreshed from a turn in the walk-in. Finally, don't overcook it, especially whole wheat pasta.

“Don't rinse the noodles,” I added. “Sauce will stick better to drier pasta.”

“Why do they say to rinse it, then?” Terri asked.

“As long as it's hot, it will keep cooking,” I replied. “In fact, if you're going to put pasta into a sauce, which you will be doing in a couple of dishes, undercook it a bit. It will cook a little bit as it cools down and a bit more when it sits in hot sauce.”

“Did any of you know that?” Dri asked the group. They shook their heads and kept listening intently. “Okay, good, I thought maybe it was just me.”

“Pasta can be a fridge-clearing powerhouse,” I explained. “Clean out your crisper drawer, chop up the contents, sauté, steam, or boil them, and add them to a bowl of pasta. Add a little olive oil and some Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or a classic tomato or Alfredo sauce, and voilà, dinner.”

We began with a basic cream sauce. Having worked in a restaurant that served a popular Alfredo dish, Lisa grabbed a whisk and a pan and took over. “Okay, I know it's hot, but everyone over to the stove,” she commanded. “You know that fifteen dollars you pay at the Olive Garden for Alfredo pasta? Here's what they start with,” she said, and she poured two cups of cream into a pan atop the six-burner stove. “It's just cream reduced with a little bit of pasta water. It's such a simple recipe that you'll wonder why you ever bought it in a box with a flavor packet.”

The stove still radiated massive heat from the earlier pasta cooking. She pointed at the cream gurgling in the pan. “See how it's starting to bubble? When this happens, add in half a teaspoon of salt.” She kept stirring. Large glassy bubbles popped then died on the surface slowly and then quickly until it resembled slow and lazy foam. The smell changed from bland milk to a strong, intoxicating, almost cheeselike scent. “Smell that? Now let it keep doing that until it thickens.” After a minute, she took a spatula and pulled it across the bottom of the pan, painting a wide swath in the stainless steel. She grabbed a spoon from a holder near the stove and stuck it into the sauce, then held it up. The cream cleaved thickly to the back of the spoon, melting in a glacial slide of goo.

“When the sauce thickens enough to cover the back of a spoon or leaves a clean line in the bottom of the pan, it's time to add some pasta water.” She dug a ladle into one of the still-hot pots of pasta water and splashed it into the pan with the cream. She simmered it over medium-high heat until bubbles erupted again. “Now add a little bit more cream, heat it through, and then add some shredded cheese, maybe some garlic, and a few cranks of pepper. Jeff, can you hand me some of that cooked pasta?” Jeff brought over a colander of cooked linguine. She took hearty grabs with tongs and swirled the strands into the sauce.

“And that's it. Cream, pasta water, some cheese, maybe some garlic. Easy, right?” She poured it into a pasta plate. “That's just a start. Add in some leftover chicken, some ham, peas, sautéed mushrooms, steamed asparagus, cooked shrimp, and chopped basil, whatever. Just think of dishes you've seen on restaurant menus when you're looking in your fridge thinking, Huh, what could go into pasta? You want to make macaroni and cheese? After the cream reduces, just add shredded Cheddar cheese and macaroni.”

She brought the warm pasta with the Alfredo sauce to the worktable. Jeff ladled out a serving to each person on a small plate. For comparison, I had asked Jeff to prepare a boxed version of fettuccine Alfredo. The fresh Alfredo was white with a velvety texture and had a faint scent of garlic in the warm cream. The boxed version had a thin sauce and an unnatural sheen; it smelled strongly of cheese.

“Don't make us eat that,” Jodi said sternly, screwing up her face. I knew from the inventory that I had made of her overstuffed pantry that she had at least half a dozen boxes of this exact same stuff.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You need to taste the difference.”

She sniffed it. “I can actually smell the iodized salt in it.” She took a bit and put it on her plate, then lifted it to choke down a bite.

The rest of the group tentatively picked up a single ribbon of the boxed pasta. “This doesn't taste anything like that,” Donna said, motioning to the freshly made sauce. “It's not terrible, but it's not good, especially compared directly to the real version we just had. I never thought to do that.”

I tried both, too. The cream sauce had a luxurious, fat mouthfeel with the slightest spikes of pepper and garlic. By comparison, the boxed version had an almost overpronounced sweet cheesy flavor at first bite that vanished into a salty aftertaste. It was an obvious knockoff, like an inexpensive purse attempting to stand in for an authentic Italian leather bag.

“Oh, wow, look at the bread!” Dri said as we set the first of the baking trays onto the worktable. In the half hour that had passed, the raw loaves that they had left to rest had plumped and softened. Mike grabbed a chef's knife and slashed three diagonal slits lightly across the top of the loaves as I explained: “Scoring the bread allows a bit of steam to escape during baking, resulting in a better crumb and a prettier loaf. You can do a pattern if you want.”