Kissed with cream
Used with a light touch and not by the glug, luxurious liquid provides the perfect finishing touch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/10/04
hink back to that restaurant meal that turned you off cream. It may have been at a French place in the unreconstructed 1970s, when your fillet of sole came in a cream sauce so reduced it rippled and buckled when you tried to dislodge the fish. Perhaps it was in a trendy New American bistro in the '80s, over a bowl of penne pasta draped in a thick chador of chipotle cream. Or maybe you dropped your spoon more recently, in mid-crème brûlée.
Restaurants — in their relentless quest to stupefy their guests with excess — pour on the cream when a touch is all that's needed.
Home cooks, fearing for their gallbladders, don't buy the stuff. Oh, they whip a half pint to top a special dessert. But when it comes to dressings, marinades and the sauté pan, they'd rather reach for olive oil (or WD-40) than cream.
Maybe not all home cooks. "I have cream around all the time," says Marion Cunningham, the "Fannie Farmer Cookbook" author who has made her life's work the preservation of American home cooking and the family dinner hour. "It sometimes is exactly the finishing touch you need."
If it really is added to food by the touch rather than the glug, cream is no enemy to your health. It is half as caloric as olive oil and loaded with vitamin A and calcium. In today's Atkins age, its high level of dietary cholesterol is less of a concern.
Cream — good, heavy whipping cream — has cooking properties that other fats lack. "It coats your mouth in a way; it adds just that touch of richness," says Anne Quatrano, chef at Floataway Cafe and Bacchanalia.
"We finish off almost all our soups with a little bit of cream," says Quatrano. "I really mean just a little bit — maybe a quarter cup of cream for 4 quarts of celery root soup — but it makes all the world of difference."
Quatrano says that cream not only enriches dishes but also brings out their flavors. As an example, she mentioned a pear and pecorino cheese ravioli she recently sampled at Felidia restaurant in New York. "It was a really remarkable combination of flavors. The ravioli wasn't served with a sauce but was rolled in just a little bit of cream and a little bit of cheese. I think without the cream it wouldn't have had that fullness."
Food scientist Shirley Corriher, author of "Cookwise," agrees that "cream is an incredible flavor carrier," and the reason is in its composition. Like all fluid dairy products, cream contains a suspension of milk-fat globules in a watery medium. (To meet U.S. Department of Agriculture standards, heavy whipping cream must be between 36 percent and 40 percent fat.) "All the fat-soluble flavors dissolve in cream . . . and then all the water-soluble flavors do, too," Corriher says. Whereas stock or wine might pick up some flavors and olive oil others, cream will underscore both. Corriher believes the intrinsic, complex flavors of vegetables come out with a touch of cream, since they are high in fat-soluble vitamins that may help carry flavor compounds along.
In her latest book, "Lost Recipes" (Knopf, $22), Cunningham features a recipe for creamed corn that includes little more than fresh corn cut from the cob and softened with a touch of cream.
Home cooks and chefs alike have learned that simple flavors can seem a bit more profound on the tongue when a touch of cream is involved.
Bacchanalia's Quatrano adds some to mussel liquor flavored with parsley, shallots and wine, then serves the shelled mussels in this broth as a "Billi Bi," what she terms a classic, simple French dish. She resists the temptation to reduce cream until it is thick, coating, glossy and overly rich. "I like cream when it's really diluted, where it beads up a little bit. It's beautiful."
Then again, cream's ability to reduce — to boil and thicken over high heat without losing its integrity — is what makes it so attractive to chefs.
"It's the first thing you grab when you want to bring something back, say when a sauce is breaking," says Quatrano. "I think it's indispensable."
Cunningham calls it a "medicine cabinet you're able to reach for and fix whatever recipe is ailing."
To see how well heavy cream can find a place in the home kitchen, I decided to keep it around for a couple of months and use it whenever it fit into quick weekday meals. I cooked these meals fast for variously picky children. I tried to use up whatever vegetables and leftovers had to go. I tried to keep things healthy. A touch of cream, not a glug.
The first thing I noticed is that my quart carton of cream showed little sign of separating or souring. This stuff keeps. In fact, since the mid-'70s, when the process of ultrapasteurization (heating fluid dairy to 300 degrees in 3 to 4 seconds) came into practice, cream has had a shelf life of up to 90 days.
Then I found that a mere kiss of cream could make anything from taco filling to macaroni and cheese taste better.
I learned to love real creamed vegetables — creamed corn, creamed spinach, creamed leeks, even creamed celery. I softened each veggie in a little oil or butter with the occasional chopped green onion or shallot, I added a couple of spoonfuls of cream, covered the pot and let the vegetable express its juices and simmer in the cream. I finished them with a touch of white pepper, nutmeg or lemon zest that, thanks to the cream, came through cleanly.
I also began making more and better pan sauces. One night after sautéing pork chops for the kids, I looked around for something to deglaze the pan and loosen all the brown bits into a sauce. My eyes lighted on an open jug of apple juice. I reduced the juice with the meat scrapings, added a splash of cream and in five minutes had a dark, complex sauce that everyone liked.
And since there was a container of cream in the fridge, I dusted off a couple of old recipes for James Beard's cream biscuits and rich, dark caramel sauce. I remembered that a little cream works better than ice water to cohere pie dough without toughening it.
Plus, it's good to have cream around when you're in a pinch. Cunningham recalls that she recently served a pan of brownies to guests. "When they were finished baking, they seemed too dry to me. So I just whipped some cream and plopped it on top. Everyone thought that's the way they were supposed to be."
TWO CREAM MYTHS DEBUNKED
1. You can't boil it
Does cream break (i.e., separate into oils and solids) if you turn up the heat? Au contraire. Any chef will tell you that heavy cream, bubbling merrily away, will first turn thick enough to coat a spoon, then take on an ivory hue and eventually turn grainy and pasty. But it won't break.
2. It curdles easily
Poor recipes advise you against adding lemon juice or vinegar to cream to keep it from curdling. While acid can and will curdle milk or half-and-half, heavy whipping cream contains too much fat in its liquid suspension for a little lemon juice to matter. In fact, a teaspoon of lemon juice boiled with a pinch of salt and a quarter cup of cream makes as good a sauce for fish or chicken as you could hope for.
IS OLIVE OIL BETTER FOR YOU?
Depends what you consider "better":
1 tablespoon of olive oil has:
• 124 calories
• 14 g fat (2 g saturated)
• 0 g cholesterol
• 0 ugRE* Vitamin A
• 0 mg calcium
1 tablespoon of heavy cream has
• 52 calories
• 6 g fat (3 g saturated)
• 20 g cholesterol
• 63 ugRE* Vitamin A
• 10 mg calcium
* RE = retinol equivalent. A healthy adult woman needs 800 ugRE daily.
Sources: "Bowes & Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used" by Jean A.T. Pennington and "Master Cook: The Complete Suite"
WEIGHTY DISTINCTIONS
Light cream (table cream):
Can contain anything from 18 percent to 30 percent fat, but generally contains 20 percent.
Light whipping cream:
Contains 30 percent to 36 percent fat, along with stabilizers and emulsifiers.
Heavy cream
(heavy whipping cream):
Contains 36 percent to 40 percent fat, generally processed with stabilizers and emulsifiers. Better restaurants may use 40 percent fresh, pure cream; this product is not commonly available to consumers.
Source: "The New Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst
DEL.ICIO.USUsed with a light touch and not by the glug, luxurious liquid provides the perfect finishing touch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/10/04
hink back to that restaurant meal that turned you off cream. It may have been at a French place in the unreconstructed 1970s, when your fillet of sole came in a cream sauce so reduced it rippled and buckled when you tried to dislodge the fish. Perhaps it was in a trendy New American bistro in the '80s, over a bowl of penne pasta draped in a thick chador of chipotle cream. Or maybe you dropped your spoon more recently, in mid-crème brûlée.
 Styling: JEANNE BESSER; Special; Photo: PHIL SKINNER/AJC | |||
| Cream adds depth and — of course — a reasonable element of richness to Pork Chops and Apple Sauce. | |||
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Home cooks, fearing for their gallbladders, don't buy the stuff. Oh, they whip a half pint to top a special dessert. But when it comes to dressings, marinades and the sauté pan, they'd rather reach for olive oil (or WD-40) than cream.
Maybe not all home cooks. "I have cream around all the time," says Marion Cunningham, the "Fannie Farmer Cookbook" author who has made her life's work the preservation of American home cooking and the family dinner hour. "It sometimes is exactly the finishing touch you need."
If it really is added to food by the touch rather than the glug, cream is no enemy to your health. It is half as caloric as olive oil and loaded with vitamin A and calcium. In today's Atkins age, its high level of dietary cholesterol is less of a concern.
Cream — good, heavy whipping cream — has cooking properties that other fats lack. "It coats your mouth in a way; it adds just that touch of richness," says Anne Quatrano, chef at Floataway Cafe and Bacchanalia.
"We finish off almost all our soups with a little bit of cream," says Quatrano. "I really mean just a little bit — maybe a quarter cup of cream for 4 quarts of celery root soup — but it makes all the world of difference."
Quatrano says that cream not only enriches dishes but also brings out their flavors. As an example, she mentioned a pear and pecorino cheese ravioli she recently sampled at Felidia restaurant in New York. "It was a really remarkable combination of flavors. The ravioli wasn't served with a sauce but was rolled in just a little bit of cream and a little bit of cheese. I think without the cream it wouldn't have had that fullness."
Food scientist Shirley Corriher, author of "Cookwise," agrees that "cream is an incredible flavor carrier," and the reason is in its composition. Like all fluid dairy products, cream contains a suspension of milk-fat globules in a watery medium. (To meet U.S. Department of Agriculture standards, heavy whipping cream must be between 36 percent and 40 percent fat.) "All the fat-soluble flavors dissolve in cream . . . and then all the water-soluble flavors do, too," Corriher says. Whereas stock or wine might pick up some flavors and olive oil others, cream will underscore both. Corriher believes the intrinsic, complex flavors of vegetables come out with a touch of cream, since they are high in fat-soluble vitamins that may help carry flavor compounds along.
In her latest book, "Lost Recipes" (Knopf, $22), Cunningham features a recipe for creamed corn that includes little more than fresh corn cut from the cob and softened with a touch of cream.
Home cooks and chefs alike have learned that simple flavors can seem a bit more profound on the tongue when a touch of cream is involved.
Bacchanalia's Quatrano adds some to mussel liquor flavored with parsley, shallots and wine, then serves the shelled mussels in this broth as a "Billi Bi," what she terms a classic, simple French dish. She resists the temptation to reduce cream until it is thick, coating, glossy and overly rich. "I like cream when it's really diluted, where it beads up a little bit. It's beautiful."
Then again, cream's ability to reduce — to boil and thicken over high heat without losing its integrity — is what makes it so attractive to chefs.
"It's the first thing you grab when you want to bring something back, say when a sauce is breaking," says Quatrano. "I think it's indispensable."
Cunningham calls it a "medicine cabinet you're able to reach for and fix whatever recipe is ailing."
To see how well heavy cream can find a place in the home kitchen, I decided to keep it around for a couple of months and use it whenever it fit into quick weekday meals. I cooked these meals fast for variously picky children. I tried to use up whatever vegetables and leftovers had to go. I tried to keep things healthy. A touch of cream, not a glug.
The first thing I noticed is that my quart carton of cream showed little sign of separating or souring. This stuff keeps. In fact, since the mid-'70s, when the process of ultrapasteurization (heating fluid dairy to 300 degrees in 3 to 4 seconds) came into practice, cream has had a shelf life of up to 90 days.
Then I found that a mere kiss of cream could make anything from taco filling to macaroni and cheese taste better.
I learned to love real creamed vegetables — creamed corn, creamed spinach, creamed leeks, even creamed celery. I softened each veggie in a little oil or butter with the occasional chopped green onion or shallot, I added a couple of spoonfuls of cream, covered the pot and let the vegetable express its juices and simmer in the cream. I finished them with a touch of white pepper, nutmeg or lemon zest that, thanks to the cream, came through cleanly.
I also began making more and better pan sauces. One night after sautéing pork chops for the kids, I looked around for something to deglaze the pan and loosen all the brown bits into a sauce. My eyes lighted on an open jug of apple juice. I reduced the juice with the meat scrapings, added a splash of cream and in five minutes had a dark, complex sauce that everyone liked.
And since there was a container of cream in the fridge, I dusted off a couple of old recipes for James Beard's cream biscuits and rich, dark caramel sauce. I remembered that a little cream works better than ice water to cohere pie dough without toughening it.
Plus, it's good to have cream around when you're in a pinch. Cunningham recalls that she recently served a pan of brownies to guests. "When they were finished baking, they seemed too dry to me. So I just whipped some cream and plopped it on top. Everyone thought that's the way they were supposed to be."
TWO CREAM MYTHS DEBUNKED
1. You can't boil it
Does cream break (i.e., separate into oils and solids) if you turn up the heat? Au contraire. Any chef will tell you that heavy cream, bubbling merrily away, will first turn thick enough to coat a spoon, then take on an ivory hue and eventually turn grainy and pasty. But it won't break.
2. It curdles easily
Poor recipes advise you against adding lemon juice or vinegar to cream to keep it from curdling. While acid can and will curdle milk or half-and-half, heavy whipping cream contains too much fat in its liquid suspension for a little lemon juice to matter. In fact, a teaspoon of lemon juice boiled with a pinch of salt and a quarter cup of cream makes as good a sauce for fish or chicken as you could hope for.
IS OLIVE OIL BETTER FOR YOU?
Depends what you consider "better":
1 tablespoon of olive oil has:
• 124 calories
• 14 g fat (2 g saturated)
• 0 g cholesterol
• 0 ugRE* Vitamin A
• 0 mg calcium
1 tablespoon of heavy cream has
• 52 calories
• 6 g fat (3 g saturated)
• 20 g cholesterol
• 63 ugRE* Vitamin A
• 10 mg calcium
* RE = retinol equivalent. A healthy adult woman needs 800 ugRE daily.
Sources: "Bowes & Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used" by Jean A.T. Pennington and "Master Cook: The Complete Suite"
WEIGHTY DISTINCTIONS
Light cream (table cream):
Can contain anything from 18 percent to 30 percent fat, but generally contains 20 percent.
Light whipping cream:
Contains 30 percent to 36 percent fat, along with stabilizers and emulsifiers.
Heavy cream
(heavy whipping cream):
Contains 36 percent to 40 percent fat, generally processed with stabilizers and emulsifiers. Better restaurants may use 40 percent fresh, pure cream; this product is not commonly available to consumers.
Source: "The New Food Lover's Companion" by Sharon Tyler Herbst
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