This week, the latest season of Top Chef ™ (Season 21: Top Chef Wisconsin) began streaming. If you want to watch, it’s on Bravo on Wednesdays, or Peacock on Thursdays.
I love all the cooking shows, mainly for the food. I’m a lifelong foodie, and I learn so much from the streamed shows. I’ve decided to publish my learnings each week.
Here goes. Let me know if something different would be more interesting?
Developing flavor in a soup
This is a phrase I’ve heard for years. I hear experts say things like “the flavor needs to be developed in layers”. So, what exactly does that mean? I watched Chef Manny make his Pozole Soup, that ultimately won the elimination challenge. Pozole, by the way, is the same as white hominy and a pozole soup is a very traditional Mexican soup. Anyway, the question is, how did Manny ‘develop the flavor’? Let me confess that I make soup by putting a pile of things into a pan, maybe frying the onion, but usually just covering all my ingredients in liquid and when it’s all well stewed, I put it in a blender and season it. My soup is fine. BUT Chef Manny added a lot of steps to ‘develop the flavor’. First we see him talking about how he refuses to use shop-bought stock, even though he has never come close to making a decent stock inside two hours. He decides to risk using a pressure cooker, despite the fact that he’s never used one before. We see his breaking down a chicken, browning the bones, chopping onions, celery and bell peppers for his stock. See how he’s browning the chicken to add a layer of extra flavor to the stock, which in turn will bring an extra layer of flavor to the soup? We see Manny char-grilling his vegetables over open flame. It’s hard to see exactly what he’s charring, but it definitely included garlic, onion and green chili peppers. He says “I’m roasting a salsa verde” so we’re left to assume that he’s also roasting tomatillo. Developing flavor is about paying attention to every single ingredient and checking that it will contribute to the balance of the whole soup. If you add a vegetable, think about whether or not you are peeling it first. Think about the pulp, and the fiber it might contribute. Consider roasting, charring or pickling it before adding it. Taste, taste, taste and make sure that every tiny thing is well considered.
About White Hominy
Hominy, known as maiz pozolero in Spanish, is a food made from corn kernels that have undergone a chemical process to make the grain softer and bigger for use in cooking and eating. Hominy is a staple ingredient of Mexican cuisine, traditionally used in soups, stews, and casseroles. You can buy it canned or dried, but the latter needs soaking before use, so with the limited time on this Top Chef ™ challenge, Manny almost certainly used the canned corn. Most often, the canned versions come with salt and some acid (often lime) so that needs to be taken into consideration when adding it to anything. Hominy is a great substitute for regular corn, or for beans.
Pho-spiced chicken
Most of us have seen, or tried ‘pho’ (Vietnamese soup) but I admit this is the first time I’ve seen someone talk of ‘pho spiced’. It turns out that pho is generally spiced from a jumble of many of the following spices. If you make a blend like this, you can describe the result as ‘pho-spiced’:
ginger
charred onions
star anise
cinnamon
cloves
cardamom
coriander seeds
What is Gremolata?
Two of the chefs in Top Chef ™ Wisconsin added a ‘gremolata’. What is it? Gremolata is traditionally made with just three ingredients: flat-leaf parsley, fresh garlic, and lemon zest. You finely chop the parsley, and mix it with crushed or grated garlic and lemon zest. Similar to chimmichurri but that has oil and vinegar, which gremolata strictly does not. Tom Colicchio said of Chef Amanda’s dish “your gremolata is way too salty” but strictly speaking, there is no salt in a gremolata. (It turned out, behind the scenes, that the saltiness actually came from Yuzu Kosho, which is a fiery Japanese pepper sauce.) The second chef, Savannah, described her roast chicken dish as being served with ‘chicken skin gremolata’. Given what we know about gremolata, my best guess is that Savannah made a true gremolata, added it to soft butter, pushed the gremolata butter under chicken skin and later crumbled the crispy, flavored skin into a garnish. Sounds pretty great.
Shiro Dashi
At least two of the Top Chef ™ chefs referred to Shiro Dashi. This is a light-colored, savory, salty, and sweet soup base used in many Japanese dishes. It is made with dashi (fish stock), light-colored soy sauce, mirin, salt, and sometimes sake or sugar.
Morels from Wisconsin
The following is extracted from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: “Make no mistake, Wisconsin is the unequivocal center for morel hunting. You can take my word for it, consult the plethora of culinary magazines that have featured the state’s morels or make note of something more fun — the Muscoda Morel Mushroom Festival.” Morels are most likely to appear in May, but can also appear earlier or later depending on the weather. They prefer sandy soil near ash, aspen, oak, and elm trees, and can also be found in old apple orchards.
Yoghurt Soup from Turkey
There are many versions of yoghurt soup, but the Turkish version is made of rice, yoghurt, butter, eggs and mint. We all fear curdled yoghurt, so the technique is to cook the rice, then very slowly add warm rice and warm water into yoghurt, stirring well, so that the yoghurt comes up to heat with the help of the other ingredients.
Tom Colicchio on roasting a chicken
Tom Colicchio said the following, and who am I to add a single word? “Roasting a chicken is a simple thing that every decent chef should know but in reality, they don't. Good roast chicken should have a crisp skin. The breast meat should be cooked through at approximately the same time as the leg meat is. It has to rest a little while, but not too long.“ There are more notes about roasting a great chicken in this article.
Putting butter under the skin of chicken
What you’re NOT going to do, is pierce the skin and stuff butter all over the place. What you’re going to do instead, is take the prepared chicken and find where the skin is already loose, and gently work your fingers under that skin, loosening it as much as you can, and then you’ll follow up by using your hand to ease the butter over the breasts and also between the breasts and the legs. There are lots of youtube videos - this is a good one. Adding that butter has a double benefit - firstly it makes the skin wonderfully delicious and crispy, but also it helps protect the meat from drying out.
What is leek tombee?
Chef Kevin (former finalist of Top Chef: France) made a squid ink raviolo with leek tombée. It turns out that leek tombée is a French phrase that means "leeks in white wine". To “faire tomber” is a French cooking technique that involves cooking a vegetable over very low heat, usually with a hint of oil, until most of the water has evaporated but the vegetable is not browned. The result of this technique is called a tombée. I think it’s the equivalent of ‘sweating’ and works on all veggies that are high in water - spinach, squash, leeks etc. Incidentally, I noticed that Chef Kevin used the term ‘raviolo’ in place of the more common ‘ravioli’ - a minutes research tells me that ‘raviolo’ is the singular form of the word, so if you’re discussing, or serving, a single one, then that’s the right word for it!
Putting Speck in a Ragu
Speck is a cured meat from Italy, similar to Prosciutto, but with far more aromatic spices. It is a luxurious element to a ragu and it is possible to buy ‘Speck Ragu’ in jars.
Kozhukkattai
Chef Rasika was in the group of chefs charged with making a stuffed pasta dish. She went slightly off the brief to make a dish based on kozhukkuttai. This is a popular South Indian dumpling made from rice flour, with a filling of grated coconut, or jaggery. Kozhukattai, although usually sweet, can sometimes be stuffed with a savory filling.
Pasta - thickness
If you have a pasta roller, then you’ll know that it comes with a thickness setting and that the way these things work, you start off by rolling the pasta with the thickness setting wide open, and then roll it a couple of times, then notch it down a little. Rinse and repeat until the pasta is as thin as you can make it. I heard Kristen Kish, the new host of Top Chef ™, say “I love it when I can see my hand through the pasta.” That feels like a lovely measure. I can’t honestly think of any valid reason for wanting anything other than the thinnest pasta imaginable.
Pasta - seasoning
I’d somehow always thought that the seasoning of the pasta itself was mostly immaterial, since the seasoning of the filling would carry the dish, but on Top Chef ™ this week, I heard Gail Simmons criticize pasta parcels because the pasta itself was underseasoned, leaving the dish out of balance since the filling dominated. I find that useful to think about. I’ll think more about salt, spices, and zests in my pasta dough in the future.
Pressure Cookers
Under the right circumstance, a pressure cooker is a really great thing to have in a kitchen. It is efficient and powerful and will retain nutrients and flavor while shortening cooking time. If everything in your dish needs to be cooked together to generate one complete soup/stew, then a pressure cooker is the way to go. However, once it builds up a head of steam, a pressure cooker is a complete mystery box until you turn it off. Unlike an instapot, you can’t add things along the way, or test the progress. You won’t know if you added too little liquid, or over-seasoned your stock, until it’s far too late. Most chefs avoid pressure cookers because they remove control, but in the opening episode of Top Chef ™, Manny won the elimination challenge in part by resorting to a pressure cooker to make chicken stock.
I’ll be writing culinary findings from each episode of Top Chef ™. I’m hoping that other people will be interested.
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