Another good set of dishes, with just a few caveats.
I’m pretty sure the nation collectively forgot how to cook somewhere about 1963, when pimento cheese and pineapple upside-down cake began to be the far reaches of culinary science — that only your Swedish grandmother knew about. I only discovered how to make a béchamel sauce last year; it never ceases to be shocking how much you can do with just a couple of ingredients, and just a little bit of technique.
flour + butter + milk + technique = kick-ass cream sauce. Just add your favorite flavoring/cheese/whatever and you’re good to go.
Adriá has you build a béchamel sauce here, flavored with nutmeg, and what seems to be a classic onion-studded-with-cloves device. For the sauce, I scaled his proportions for six down from 75, (the proportions for the flour and and butter are WRECKED in the book) and they seemed to work. The only odd bit was calling for only ONE clove stuck in the onion — that seemed weird. The problem with the merciless recipe errors in this book, is that I don’t know if it was supposed to be a subtle flavoring or just a recipe screw up — I used three instead. The other bit was boiling the cauliflower for EIGHT minutes, and not indicating to shock it when you were done. I had my florets a little on the big side, and three minutes was just about right. You couldn’t cut some of the stems with a fork, but they weren’t raw either. Eight minutes would probably reduce it to mush, but I didn’t experiment to test my hypothesis. I used salted water, and rinsed the cauliflower in cold water to stop the cooking process. Once you put them under the broiler for 5 minutes or so, they warm back up nicely. Really, really, really good.
The pork ribs — I punted and used pre-made sauce. The water called for seemed a little much, and the time: TWO hours, ended up being THREE & A HALF before the ribs started looking like the picture, and the meat began falling off the bone. Not much to report here.
The final course was genius — again just a simple syrup and some basic flavoring. The bananas and lime syrup was amazing. One of those fool-proof, bullet-proof, go-to recipes that everyone needs.
Pretty good.
I’m pretty sure the nation collectively forgot how to cook somewhere about 1963, when pimento cheese and pineapple upside-down cake began to be the far reaches of culinary science — that only your Swedish grandmother knew about. I only discovered how to make a béchamel sauce last year; it never ceases to be shocking how much you can do with just a couple of ingredients, and just a little bit of technique.
flour + butter + milk + technique = kick-ass cream sauce. Just add your favorite flavoring/cheese/whatever and you’re good to go.
Adriá has you build a béchamel sauce here, flavored with nutmeg, and what seems to be a classic onion-studded-with-cloves device. For the sauce, I scaled his proportions for six down from 75, (the proportions for the flour and and butter are WRECKED in the book) and they seemed to work. The only odd bit was calling for only ONE clove stuck in the onion — that seemed weird. The problem with the merciless recipe errors in this book, is that I don’t know if it was supposed to be a subtle flavoring or just a recipe screw up — I used three instead. The other bit was boiling the cauliflower for EIGHT minutes, and not indicating to shock it when you were done. I had my florets a little on the big side, and three minutes was just about right. You couldn’t cut some of the stems with a fork, but they weren’t raw either. Eight minutes would probably reduce it to mush, but I didn’t experiment to test my hypothesis. I used salted water, and rinsed the cauliflower in cold water to stop the cooking process. Once you put them under the broiler for 5 minutes or so, they warm back up nicely. Really, really, really good.
The pork ribs — I punted and used pre-made sauce. The water called for seemed a little much, and the time: TWO hours, ended up being THREE & A HALF before the ribs started looking like the picture, and the meat began falling off the bone. Not much to report here.
The final course was genius — again just a simple syrup and some basic flavoring. The bananas and lime syrup was amazing. One of those fool-proof, bullet-proof, go-to recipes that everyone needs.
Pretty good.
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata