Cook more in the new year
This may sound like a strange question coming from someone whose job it is to suggest places to dine out, but here goes:
Have you thought about making a New Year’s resolution to cook more at home?
All kinds of research studies show that people who order out less and cook at home more from fresh ingredients develop fewer chronic health problems such as heart disease and diabetes. They sleep better, live longer, weigh less and, after particularly delicious home-cooked meals, can on occasion levitate. This is all (mostly) true.
Maybe you’ve made that resolution before, only to resume your “if it’s Wednesday, it must be Chipotle” lifestyle. Well, I’m here to help.
First, let’s determine what kind of home cook you are. Do you follow recipes more or rely on your knowledge base and past experiences to improvise meals from the contents of your fridge?
There is a simple test, much like that one where you pull a finger toward your eye to determine left/right dominance. Visualize yourself in a supermarket reaching into a refrigerated case to pick up a package of cut-up chicken. Now, ask yourself: Is it for a recipe or is it just to have chicken? Me, I buy chicken thinking my spice cabinet will lead me on a virtual trip to India, China or even the Barbary Coast. My wife buys ground beef only when she’s planning to make spaghetti.
So, let’s say you’re a recipe follower. Here are your two big problems: You are bored with the six dishes you make all the time and you abhor the prospect of running to the store when you discover you’re missing a key ingredient.
Your resolution then comes in two parts. First, you have to make an effort to expand your repertoire. Consider these:
- A roast chicken to call your own: Play around with recipes until you find the best bird. I've eventually settled into a chicken that I basically kosher — i.e., rub with salt and let sit uncovered in the fridge overnight. It gets the crackly skin my clan craves. But over a previous decade I liked to cut away the backbone and breastbone (a process known as "spatchcocking") and roast it flat under a weight. I also went through a brief but fondly remembered stuffed chicken phase.
- A one-pot rice dish: Mushroom risotto, jambalaya or cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi's fabulous-looking chicken and rice. Practice will make perfect when it comes to rice.
- One indulgence pasta: You have your spaghetti with meat sauce down pat. Now you need to make the kind of pasta that you crave in a calories-be-damned way. Think carbonara or spaghetti with shrimp, butter and garlicky breadcrumbs. My favorite indulgence pasta is called cacio e pepe, a Roman dish of spaghetti with sheep's milk cheese and black pepper.
- One great international dinner: It can be so easy to stage a Korean barbecue at home if you visit a good Asian market, like Super H Mart, and buy the pre-marinated meat, assorted prepared pickles and salads, lettuce leaves and packaged sauce. Or maybe you need more red chile chicken enchiladas in your life.
Next, you have to keep yourself from running to the store more than you want. Figure out the recipes you want to make for the week, do all the shopping at once, and if you come up short on one ingredient during clutch time, either leave it out or come up with the best substitute you can scrounge from your pantry. You know what we call a mixture of cream cheese and skim milk in our house? Cream.
Now, all you people in the other camp — the fridge improvisers — let’s consider your problems. For starters, you reach constantly into the same bag of tricks, which means your meals end up being variations on a theme. You have your kitchen-sink salads, your pseudo stir-fries, your panful of soupy business to ladle over rice or potatoes.
The other problem is that you spend a lot of time standing in front of the fridge door wishing you had used the cucumbers and peppers before they had gone limp, or wishing you had an onion.
You should resolve to learn some new cooking techniques in the new year. Consider these:
- Braising: A piece of pork shoulder cooked in a covered pot in a bare inch of liquid will yield pure pleasure after a few hours on the stove or in the oven. My basic recipe involves a few spoonfuls of soy sauce, a cut onion, sliced ginger and a can of Coke. Study the braise, and learn the techniques that yield the best textures.
- Indirect grilling: The best grilled chicken, fish and roasts don't happen over direct flames but rather in the circulating heat under your grill dome. If you have a kamado cooker, such as the Big Green Egg, you can simply use a ceramic "plate setter" to keep the heat indirect. But if you use a kettle grill, such as a Weber, then set the coals on one end and cook your meat on the other.
- Pan roasting: The best boneless chicken breast you will ever cook will happen in a pan held continuously over a flame. Modulate the heat, keep flipping it so it doesn't get too dark, and let it rest before cutting into it. Now, try this with a thick pork chop or a fat slice of butternut squash. If you need to slip the pan (with an oven-safe handle) into the oven for a particularly thick piece of meat, do so. You are now a skilled line cook, ready to work in a restaurant.
- Preparing a pan sauce: The corollary to pan roasting is making a sauce from the drippings. Add a bit of chopped shallot to the pan over a flame, scrape it around with the crusty bits, glug in some white wine to loosen every bit of debris, throw in some tomato paste or mustard, maybe a bit of butter or cream, some fresh herbs or pungent spices and, well, are you hungry yet?
In order to make this happen, you might need to resolve to keep a better pantry. Make sure you always have onions, shallots, garlic, carrots and whatever aromatic herbs and spices you crave. (For us: ginger, thyme, cilantro.)
Have canned chicken broth (or frozen stock). Have bouillon cubes for when you’re desperate. Never let the butter or good olive oil run out. No kitchen is complete without a box of spaghetti.
And, if you can find a bottle of wine that’s cheap enough to cook with and good enough to drink, you’ll have the happiest of new years in your kitchen.
