Perfectly Thin, Duck Fat-Fried Potato Crisps

Oh, dear readers. So much to write about but so little time. This summer has been flying by. It's been a hot one, too, which doesn't seem to jibe. Doesn't heat usually seem to make things drag? Well, not here. Between doing lots of work (I published my second book! Go grab a copy of Reading Toward Success on Amazon!), doing a good bit of travel, and having lots of guests, I feel like I've barely been able to keep up—in a good way. Chef Reiton and I love to entertain, which goes hand-in-hand with having lots of guests. Whether it's for one friend, two friends or 30 friends, we've been cooking up a storm this summer.

One of the things that I've gotten really into making is potato chips. I found a recipe in one of my Alton Brown cookbooks, I believe, and I made them on a whim one night. After our friend Mario's "Dear God!" exclamation after his first bite, I haven't been able to stop making them.

The first time I made them, I cut them with a standard vegetable peeler, per Alton's instructions. These chips were delightfully thin, but they were a pain-in-the-butt to cut. Careful, even pressure needs to be applied to get a whole slice of potato and not a wonky sliver, and for those who know me and my hand-eye coordination, that didn't work so well.

The next time I made them, I hand-sliced them. Using a beautifully sharp chef's knife, this worked out just fine. Except the anal side of me was upset at the lack of perfect uniformity in slice-thickness.

I finally came to a decision: it was time to visit Amazon.

For a long time, I have been wanting to replace my mandoline. No, I do not play a stringed instrument. I'm speaking of a kitchen tool that makes insanely thin slices of just about anything you want. The Norpro version that I have just hasn't held up. The blade has become dull, which means the mandoline has become dangerous to operate, and, frankly, I don't want to be losing any parts of my fingers or hand, no matter how tiny a slice. Bon Appetit magazine has highly recommended the Benriner Old Version Vegetable Slicer, and so that was the one I bought.

Baby, is that thing awesome! When I took my first swipe, the slicing was so smoothly done I had to check to make sure that it had actually sliced (unlike my Norpro that gave my veggie a tug every time I swiped downward. Yikes!). And for about the same price as a Norpro—AND the ability to change blades—I'm never going back.

Another thing I'm not going back on? Duck fat.

Yes, my friends—duck fat. After having a couple jars for a stupidly long time and "being afraid to use them" (MAJOR eye-roll here...), we let our friend, Chef Wilkinson, use them when he came over and made us a French meal the other night that included pomme frites: French fries fried in duck fat.

Potatoes fried in duck fat, once tasted, will change yet another aspect of your kitchen life. Trust me. The taste is full and deep, unlike vegetable fats. It's not a cheap fat, but it is an insanely delicious and healthy one that can be reused over and over again. Just strain it after it cools down and store it in the fridge.

So. Now for another test: I sliced my exquisitely even potato chips using my beautiful Benriner mandoline, gave the slices a good 20-minute soak in some hot water, rinsed them, and patted them dry. Meanwhile I heated about 3 cups of duck fat in a medium saucepan to 355°F. Once the fat was hot, I slipped four or five slices of potato into the fat one at a time, held them under the surface with a spider strainer and flipped them occasionally. When they were a lovely golden brown, I pulled them out, immediately sprinkled them with kosher salt, and drained them in a paper-towel lined bowl.

How did those duck-fat potato chips turn out?

Perfect.

The Cooking and Eating of Vegetables: The Simple Truth

When I was growing up, my mother was a huge proponent of "Eat your veggies."  Like, HUGE.  Not in a disturbing "Here's a cupcake (i.e. bran muffin)!" kind of way but an I-will-serve-salad-with-dinner- EVERY-night-alongside-another-vegetable-on-the-plate kind of way.  I cannot remember sitting down for dinner once without there being vegetables in a variety of forms on the table.

By the time I had entered this world, frozen vegetables had kicked canned veggies out of the kitchen for good (thank GOD), so, yes, my veggies tended to be "zapped" in that monstrous new-fangled machine that took up almost the entire counter in our kitchen called a "microwave."  But no matter—we were getting our veggies.  My mother even figured out how to microwave frozen vegetables to be "California-style."

Needless to say, because of my childhood home dining experiences, as an adult, eating dinner without two vegetables on my plate seems like half-assed meal planning and flat-out vaguely scary.  Like, "Now I may not be able to poop tomorrow" scary.  And "Maybe I should go take that multi-vitamin..." So I buy and cook a lot of veggies.  A LOT.  To the point I get comments at the checkout in the grocery store. The other day the teenage bagger was trying to guess what I was going to use each vegetable for. Then he picked up this one (pardon the stock photo): 

https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2016/01/11/10/04/fennel-1133309_960_720.jpg

This is the vegetable that always gets a lot of questions, the most common one being, "What IS this?"

This delightful root vegetable can be found under two different names in the produce section: fennel or anise.  It can be eaten raw or cooked, and it has become one of my all-time favorite veggies.  It's seeds are what give Italian sausage that distinctive peppery, pungent, almost licorice-y flavor and are what most people think of when you say "fennel."

I use the seeds in my pasta sauce and in my meatballs, but I have mostly learned that I love the fennel bulb the most.  I love it straight up, unadulterated, sliced and then roasted.

You heard me, people.  ROASTED.  The prime way, and easiest way, may I add, to cook vegetables.  Roast them in your oven or toaster oven, or even pan-roast them in a skillet.   I don't care which way.  But roasting vegetables does two things that I just absolutely love: 1) it changes the flavor of the vegetable completely because it essentially is slowly caramelizing all the sugar in the veggie.  The flavors become deeper, more mellow.  And 2) because your veggie is slowly being cooked in a single layer by hot air or a hot surface, you have more control of how cooked it gets.  You can fork several pieces every 10 minutes or so and see how "done" they are.  Some veggies I like with a bit of bite left, like zucchini or carrots or cauliflower.  Others I like until they are just soft enough to bit straight through, like potatoes or the hard squashes or this fennel, here.  There is just not a simpler, more delicious way to cook vegetables.  Not to mention the prep time is, like, two minutes. Look how gorgeous...:

 On the far, far opposite side of my Favorite Ways to Cook Vegetables spectrum is cooking vegetables in water.  In any kind of water. If you come across a recipe that tells you to boil a vegetable, RUN—hard and fast.  Boiling is a technique that leaches the vitamins out of your veggies so fast and reduces their deliciousness to a murky-tasting pile of mush.

Don't even let the French talk you into it.  They may call it something fancy: braising.  It sounds nice, doesn't it? So nice that I tried it the other night.  Julia talked me into it.  So I took these gorgeous leeks:

and put them in a pot of water.  I stupidly thought the butter would make a difference...  She told me to simmer them for some God-awful amount of time, which I convinced myself was because they were leeks and that somehow would make them better.

And then when MOST of the water had simmered off, I put it all (including the water that was left) into a roasting pan and roasted them for another quarter of an hour.  Here's what ended up on my plate:

I know.  I know.  I mean, LOOK AT THEM.  They scream "overcooked," "mushy," "slimy," and "I-won't-need-teeth-to-eat-this" right from the plate! But, being the experimenter that I am, I tried them, anyway, with a very timid bite...

I almost titled this post, "Mastering the Gag of French Cooking," but I decided to come at it from a more positive angle.  And to not offend the devoutest of Julia Child's fans.  

So.  Learn from me.  Roast your veggies.  Roast them.  It's the easiest.  The yummiest.  The best.

Here's how:

Ingredients: 

• your veggie or veggies of choice, cut up however you want; just try to make the pieces all the same size
•  (NOTE: if using multiple types of veggies, roast similar "hardnesses" together so that they can be done in the same amount of cooking time OR add veggies that are softer/will cook faster to the pan a bit later after the longer-cooking ones)
• olive oil or your favorite type of oil (I like the flavor of olive oil best)
• kosher salt
• fresh ground black pepper

Equipment needed:

• a medium bowl
• a sheet pan or a casserole dish or skillet to lay your veggies out in a single layer 
• (NOTE: the more wiggle room the veggies have where they aren't doing a whole lot of touching, the better the browning will be.  Too much contact makes them steam more than brown). 
• aluminum foil or parchment paper to line the pan (easier clean up; skip if you don't have any)
• a flat metal or plastic flipping spatula

Directions: 

• Preheat your oven to 425°.  If using a toaster oven, do 375° to 400°, depending if it is tiny or big.  If you are using a skillet on the stove top, heat it over medium heat.
• Line your pan with foil or parchment for easy clean up.  If using a skillet, just leave it alone.
• Place your veggies in the bowl.
• Drizzle the veggies with olive oil.  Toss the veggies with the oil really well with your hands.  If the veggies don't all look coated, drizzle with more oil and keep tossing.  You want the veggies coated well but not swimming in oil.  
• Sprinkle the veggies with salt and pepper and give them one last good toss to coat.
• Dump the veggies in the pan and spread them out in a single layer. If you are using a skillet, use a spoon or spatula to spread them out; you don't want to burn your fingertips on the hot skillet...
• Place the pan in the hot oven and roast for 10 minutes.  Take the pan out of the oven, toss the veggies to recoat and flip, then put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.  If you are using a skillet, toss them a bit more frequently.  You want browning, but the smaller surface area can make them cook faster.
• After the second 10 minutes, you are going to be making a judgement call on how well done you want your veggies.  Spear a couple pieces with a fork to test how crunchy they are. When they feel good to you, remove them from the oven and dump them in a serving dish.  Garnish however you want.
• Eat with abandon.

Bonus Tip!  If I feel like jazzing my veggies up a bit, I'll toss them with a little something extra when I add the salt and pepper.  Something like:

• lemon zest from the peel of one lemon
• a few smashed garlic cloves (don't even peel them!)
• a couple shallots quartered lengthwise right through the root
• a sprinkle of a favorite spice or spice blend
• a few good shakes of my Regan's orange bitters

Get creative! I bet you it will taste delish.  And if it doesn't? Well, you don't know until you try, right?

So go get roasting! Comment below and share what you've tried! And if you have any questions, please ask below.  I am happy to help!

A Foodie Honeymoon: Friday Lunch at August

Going to August was like going to church (at least the last church I used to go to).  You knew that there was a good chance that you were going to experience something great when you went, and perhaps the best part of going was that what you did experience was not this big, communal experience.  It was--as church should be--completely private and personal.

Such was our experience at August.  Even its architecture and decor felt church-like: its main dining room with its vaulted ceiling and soaring windows; its private dining rooms with their cloister-like spaces, dimly lit and glowing with wood and candles.  Age poured from its pores.  Even the stairway that led to the bathrooms on the balconied second floor was banistered with heavy balustrades.

(Speaking of church, I need to confess to you, dear reader, once again.  Thanks to the same damn iPhone incident mentioned in the previous post, we lost almost all our pictures and most of our notes of our August experience.  Please pardon the lack of pictures besides that of the gorgeous entrance.  And to our amazing servers, we loved you just as much as all the others.  I just, ashamedly, don't remember names after so many months.  I sincerely apologize.  And, now--on to the food.)

The dishes that appeared before our eyes at August were miraculous.  An egg cup was placed before me (an hors d'oeuvre that came with the meal, unordered).  Nestled in the bottom of its carefully cracked shell was a delicate seafood custard topped with a creamy truffle mousse.  Its crowning adornment was a tiny scoop of caviar, a beautiful fennel frond, and a brioche toast stick.

Five years ago, there was no way in hell I would have eaten such a thing.  Eggs??? And CAVIAR??? It is just another example of the wonders of becoming a foodie.  When you are constantly creating your own food, you suddenly have an understanding of what it means for someone to create a dish for you.  You know what the processes are.  You know what the ingredients are and what is involved in collecting them.  Food and its evolution become a reality for you.  So much of the unknown in food preparation is removed (remember those moments as a kid? When your mom would set a casserole on the table and you had NO idea what was buried in those layers of stuff?).  With the removal of that unknown comes the removal of fear.  Sure, I had never had caviar before.  And, yes, I knew that I was about to eat the eggs that some mama sturgeon laid somewhere in the Caspian Sea.  I didn't know if I would like them.  But, god, they were mine! Tiny and round and purple and beautiful.  I knew that many people love caviar--and since I'd never had the experience, I wanted to try it.  I wanted to remove a foodie unknown.  So I took my tiny little spoon and scooped down through the multiple layers of meticulous food-turned-art and spooned them all into my mouth in one inhaling bite.  

Dear Lord--DIVINE.

And then came my Pimm's cup (finally! I got to try one!).  And my baby greens salad with fresh figs, goat cheese, and pistachio brittle.  My gorgeously homemade pasta ribbons with porcini mushrooms in a silky cream sauce.  Chef Reiton's unbelievable trout on the thinnest toast imagineable.  Goat milk cheesecake with balsamic caramel. Homemade pralines (god, I can still see these pictures in my head!). 

Speaking of pralines, we got to meet the chef who made them.  We were getting ready to leave August, ready to head to the airport,--and I had to use the restroom one more time.  Chef Reiton and I headed upstairs, giving the restaurant one last perusal before we left.  Passing by the dessert kitchen, I paused; I couldn't help but be nosy and poke my head a fraction of the way into the room.  One of the chefs saw me.  "Hey! Come on in!" she called.  

I think my eyes must have popped out of my head at the invitation.  "Are you serious?" I asked.

"Of course!" she said.  "Come here."  

Chef Reiton and I tenaciously stepped into the kitchen.  The chef walked toward us with a tray of pralines.  "Try one," she offered.  "They are my grandma's recipe."

Beautiful little golden plops of brown sugar and butter stood in perfect rows on a baking sheet.  I peeled one off of the parchment and popped it into my mouth.  Angels started singing.  What a perfectly heavenly way to end the honeymoon of honeymoons.

With the sincerest of thanks we headed back into the hall.  "I can't believe this is it," I said, so strangely happy but sad at the same moment.  I didn't want to leave.

But it was time to go.  Time to head back to our own life, to our own home, to our own kitchen.

And yet I wasn't going home empty-handed.  I had a myriad of experiences that I was taking home: tastes, and conversations, and drinks, and laughs, and generosities beyond anything that I ever had imagined.  

A Foodie Honeymoon: Thursday Dinner at La Provence

The drive to La Provence from downtown New Orleans perfectly suited my love for suspense.  For--what? more than two years?--I had been dreaming of eating at this Besh restaurant nestled on an idyllic little farm where a majority of the food served at the restaurant is grown.  I could tell from reading My New Orleans that La Provence was Besh's baby, and my desire to eat at the restaurant only grew all the more as we entered onto the very long but very beautiful Lake Pontchartrain Causeway for our 45-minute drive to dinner that Thursday evening.

To tell you how badly we wanted to dine at this little restaurant, we actually rented a car just to drive to it.  Extreme? Maybe.  But for us, this honeymoon was about love--love of each other and our happy, obsessive love of food, and come hell or high water, we would see our goal through.

After a half hour ride across the causeway and some sauntering through a tiny town or two, we blew past the tiniest little house on the righthand side of the road with a gravel parking lot and a non-chalant sign that bore a crest and the words "La Provence."

"That's it..." I spoke to the window, and Chef Reiton slammed on the brakes.  We wheeled into the parking lot, just in time to see a trio of piglets wrestling in a fenced-in yard.

Despite the fact that I was wearing 3.5-inch heels, I trekked across the gravel to get a closer look at what would eventually be someone's dinner, laughing as they head-butted each other and tumbled in the mud.  So cute.  And so yummy.  I remembered lunch at Borgne with a smile.

Across the way stood the chicken coop, the beautiful birds sauntering outside, casting wary golden eyes at this stranger in a red dress as they strutted and pecked their way across the yard.  Across a lawn was a kitchen garden, glowing green in the coming twilight.  It was so beautiful that it reminded me I was hungry; we picked our way across the gravel and headed into the restaurant.

As aforementioned, La Provence is a tiny little house that has been converted into a restaurant.  I immediately fell in love with the wide plank wood floors, the giant fireplace in the middle of the dining room, and the low ceiling and lighting that added a natural atmospheric warmth to the place. It made me  want to just sit and eat slowly for the rest of the night, staring at the roaring fire...  Unfortunately, being the dog days of August, there was no fire in the fireplace.  I instead was left to imagine what it would be like coming here at Christmastime...

Within moments our waitress approached the table.  Her name was Cassandra (spelled the right way, we discovered), and she was delightful.  Just like all the other servers we had had thus far, she was completely down-to-earth, very professional and very knowledgeable about the food she was about to serve.  She brought us a basket of toasts and the chicken liver paté we had had at Besh Steak, went over the menu with us, answered any questions we had, then took our wine orders while we sat and tried to decide what to order.

(Now, readers--I have to be honest about something here: due to an iPhone mishap, I've lost our notes and pictures.  And due to the fact that Besh's menus are largely seasonal, I can't even cheat and go look at the menu to remember what I had.  So this next part is going to be a little sketchy.  I sincerely apologize.)

The market menu (Besh's version of a prix fixe menu) intrigued me, so I decided to go with it: included in the meal were a green salad, roasted pork neck, and a little cherry cake for dessert.  I had never heard of pork neck, let alone knew that you could eat it.  Sounds like something to try.  Chef Reiton opted for the duck, something he had never had before.

The restaurant was quite empty, seeing it was a Thursday night, and the manager of the restaurant was walking from table to table, checking in to see how everyone was doing.  Soon she came round to our table, and she asked how we were enjoying our honeymoon in New Orleans.  She paid attention to the reservation information, too! I thought, and soon we were telling our honeymoon tale once again.  She introduced herself as Carrie Kelley, and continued to give some Besh advice of her own: go to Lüke.

"But--it's closed," we said.  "We had to cancel our reservation because of the remodeling."

"No, but it is opening tomorrow for lunch! You must go!"

My heart sank at the missed chance.  "We're having lunch at August," I said.  "And then heading to the airport straight from there."

"Wait," she said.  "I'm going to make a phone call."

Carrie Kelley disappeared into the tiny reception area, and moments later our food arrived at the table.  Oh, glorious food.  If only my brain could accurately remember all the beautiful details of what then sat before us.  But it doesn't.  All I can remember is that the pork neck was served rolled up with herbs and then sliced--a presentation that surprised me but then made sense when I thought about the cut of meat that I was eating.  And its texture and taste was an interesting cross between pork roast and bacon.  Definitely different from any pork I had ever eaten--and not necessarily something that I would order again.  (There are other cuts of pork that I just like better.)

Chef Reiton's duck was gorgeous, roasted to a deep, dark mahogany brown.  Crispy skin, meat that melted in your mouth, and a taste that was deep--nothing like the oily horror stories I had been told of.

A few minutes into the meal, Carrie Kelley was back.  "Okay," she said.  "Lüke is opening up at 11  tomorrow morning.  What time is your August reservation?"

"Noon," I said.

"Okay, here's what you do. Go to Lüke at 11.  Have some oysters and a beer, then walk to August for your lunch.  It's only a few blocks away from Lüke.  That way you can hit them both.  And you've got to try Lüke.  And August.  They are both just amazing."

I loved it.  It seemed that everyone was on our mission with us.  We were going to get to hit them all as we had hoped!

As the remains of our meal were cleared and we sat sipping our wine and digesting, we both remarked with sadness that tomorrow was our last day.  What a trip this had been! It wasn't a trip of happy moments; it had been happiness in one freakin' awesome continuation.

And we were getting a bonus! We were going to get to all the restaurants as we had hoped in the beginning! What a fantastic surprise that was. A little aperitif at Lüke and then a luncheon at August.

Were we saving the best for last? I wasn't sure.  Tonight's experience satisfied every longing that I had dreamt La Provence could fulfill.  The atmosphere, the service, the wine, the food (even if it wasn't my favorite pork dish).

I guessed there was only one way to find out...