New York Times Magazine
January 27, 2008
Cooking isn’t the kind of job you leave at the office. Friends are often surprised by the frequency with which I cook dinner at home — often their homes — but the truth is that it doesn’t feel much like work. It’s not like casually asking a lawyer to review a contract as you hand her a pre dinner martini. Chefs love to cook, especially those of us who started working in kitchens in the days when “celebrity chef” was an oxymoron: it allows us to connect with people whom we care about in ways that our generally meager social skills would not otherwise allow.
Cooking is not, however, without its discontents. My pantry is an odd and not particularly useful assemblage of disparate elements — an ancient can of sardines, half a chocolate bar that I didn’t like and a small, sealed box containing wickedly expensive Italian balsamic vinegar that I can’t bring myself to open. The refrigerator is reliably populated with milk, eggs, a few farmers’ market vegetables and a bottle of Gay Caballero Very Hot Sauce (don’t ask), but there’s one staple that I never have on hand: stock. For someone who prefers cuts of meat that require long, slow cooking, this is a considerable handicap.
It was not until my wife and I visited friends in the Hudson Valley a few years ago that I found an elegant solution for the perennial problem of the no-stock braise. We were driving north heading out of Manhattan, and as I dodged a minivan that had taken a sudden interest in our lane, my wife casually mentioned that she volunteered me to cook dinner that night. No problem, I said.
I had forgotten, though, having lived in California for 15 years, the wasteland that is an upstate New York supermarket in February. The produce section, filled with distressed-looking vegetables from South America and limp West Coast greens, was less than inspiring. I felt sorry for local vegetarians.
Fortunately we were an omnivorous group, so I turned my attention toward the meat counter, where I found some nice duck legs. I bought red wine, onions, limes, cilantro and serrano chilies to cook them with, imagining kind of a coq au vin by way of Vietnam.
What I failed to imagine was the resulting dark, watery and oily cooking liquid, which rather unpleasantly put me in mind of the Exxon Valdez. I’m usually pretty good at predicting what will happen during any given cooking process, but as I stood in our friend’s kitchen eyeing the pot, it was clear that the limpid, viscous sauce that I was going for had not materialized.
So I did something that I’d never done with a stew. I strained the liquid and then blended it with some of the onions, chilies and lime zest from the pot to thicken it into a sauce, which I seasoned with lime juice and cilantro. I flinched a bit as I did it; having been trained in French technique, with its long-cooked stocks and slow reductions, this seemed like a cheap shortcut. But there was no arguing with the sauce’s dynamic flavor or its smooth texture.
The basic technique is simplicity itself: use some of the vegetables that cooked with the meat to emulsify the cooking liquid into a sauce, much like making a soup. The softened fiber of the vegetables thickens the sauce and binds the free fat, capturing all of the flavor of the braise. Herbs, spices or other aromatics added to the blender can refresh the long-cooked flavors, and a little acidity, like cultured cream, citrus or vinegar, balances its richness.
A water braise is slightly different from a stock braise. It’s especially important to brown the meat well, developing crusty bits on the bottom of the pan that will flavor the cooking liquid. And don’t remove the fat! The fat is what will give the stew its flavor and the resulting sauce its silky texture. Once the sauce is made, don’t bring it to a vigorous boil, which can cause it to break.
When I returned home I made a version of beef stroganoff using this technique. Traditionally the dish calls for seared steak and a quick pan sauce, but browned and slowly simmered chuck gave the dish deeper flavor. Yogurt and a little mustard blended into the sauce was a lighter, tangier alternative to sour cream, and sautéed button mushrooms and buttered egg noodles completed the 1950s culinary diorama. I sent the recipe to an out-of-town friend, who pronounced it delicious.
I just wish that I could have been there to cook it myself.
