Kitchen Tools

Daniel Patterson puts his "tools" to work (with the help of an actual tool)

A few months ago I was listening to The Splendid Table, hosted by my new culinary nemesis, Lynn Rosetto Capser. Actually, the show is perfectly pleasant as is she, in a schweddy balls kind of way and they have some great guests. This episode was no exception as they had Daniel Patterson, whose Coi restaurant earned two Michelin stars. The show was fine until he was asked about his favorite kitchen tool. I listened eagerly while clutching my stack of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. Would it be an ergonomic melon baller? Maybe a microplane ginger grater? A Kevlar butchering glove? Something Silpat? Nay. His answer? “My hands.” That’s like Usain Bolt explaining that the secret to his speed is, “My feet.” I would get this kitchen tool if the motor were faster

My least favorite kitchen tool? Daniel Patterson. What a bunch of hippie bullshit. If there is a device out there that saves time, money and improves technique, I wanna know about it. I already got hands, Chef Patterson. Thanks for nothing. Bill Buford demonstrates the suplex

It reminds me of that book, Heat, in which Bill Buford basically tries to get in a pissing match with Mario Batali as he learns more and more obscure Italian culinary skills. At one point, he wants to master pasta making to get that unique “wood on wood” texture that he insists can only be found in handmade pasta rolled by old Italian women. He eventually seeks out Miriam Leonardi, a culinary legend whose pasta he describes as, “life changing,” to coax her to reveal her centuries-old hand rolling technique. She says, “What in the world are you talking about?... No one does that sort of thing anymore. They’re too busy. Modern life. I use a machine.” My machine in action

The pasta machine fits perfectly into my personal criteria of a kitchen tool. It saves me the hundreds of hours I would have to spend learning the dead art of rolling pasta by hand. And it makes a uniform product every time. I got mine at Ross Dress for Less for less than $50 and didn’t use it for a year because it was so intimidating. But now I use it all the time. It’s a snap. Braun, despite rumors, was not involved in World War II

To test this “snappiness,” I made some ravioli. I pulverized some dried porcini mushrooms in my 400 watt Braun Impressions Multiquick Handblender using the handy-dandy blender attachment. Did I mention that its motor has a whopping 400 watts? Seriously, if you don’t have one, get one. The result of three seconds of 400 watt pulsing

Then I pulsed some crimini and fresh shitake mushrooms in the same blender and mixed my mycological mélange with some ricotta and parmesan cheeses along with salt, pepper and a scraping of nutmeg (using my box grater – awesome kitchen tool #3, bitches!).

I put that aside and cracked some eggs in a well of flour to knead my dough and brought into an ugly ball. I didn’t need to work it much because the pasta machine does the kneading for you! My wrist looks morbidly obese

The more you roll it, the smoother it gets! And then you work it thinner and thinner until you can see light. Try doing that with your hands. Point for technology!

Then I brought out gadget #4, a ravioli press I got online for twelve bucks and change. The dimples actually hold a useful amount of filling

You lay the plastic nubby thing onto a pasta sheet which makes little wells in the metal rack part. You fill ‘em, top ‘em and roll ‘em out (I’m going to count rolling pin as a kitchen tool). Chef Boyardee would be proud

I had almost 6 dozen before I ran out of filling. Thanks, knife

I used the rest of the dough to make three double portions of pasta of varying widths and tossed it all in the freezer to be used at a later date. Total time used including prep and cleanup: an hour and a half. Had I used just my hands? Ha. Abondanza...

My hope is that this is more useful to someone stocking a kitchen than some celebrity chef saying, “Make sure you get a pair of hands in there!” As for Bill Buford, he could have saved himself weeks obsessing about la cucina autentica had he spoken to Miriam earlier. Her secret to great pasta? “What’s important is the eggs.” Amen.

Out-Chef Chef Boyardee!

How can anything tasty fit in those itty-bitty things? I almost never order filled pastas at restaurants. Growing up eating dim sum and xiao long bao I’m used to a large ratio of filling to wrapper. Comparing shiu mai to a dinky tortellini is like comparing…something really juicy and delicious and pork-filled to something that isn’t. A menu item like Asiago pumpkin ravioli always sounds yummy and flavorful, but inevitably it just tastes like a wad of pasta because of a paucity of filling and too-thick pasta. Mozza gets it right The exceptions – like Mozza Osteria’s Fresh Ricotta & Egg Raviolo, whose filling includes an entire oozy egg yolk – are reminders that the problem with most filled pastas is in the execution, not the concept. So when I make ravioli, I don’t mess around. I don’t make them obscenely large or overstuffed but I don’t want people to say, “Uh, I think I can taste the mushrooms.” Fillings-wise, I’ll occasionally do the ricotta-based ravioli. It’s ricotta, some Parmesan, a pinch of nutmeg, sometimes parsley, and then whatever sexy foodstuff I have in mind: minced mushrooms, roasted butternut squash, chopped prosciutto, ground meat, etc. But I’m more inclined to fill it with just the sexy foodstuff. I’m a big fan of braised meats in ravioli, like shredded short ribs, or I’ll do seafood. Last night, it was crab. I’ve steamed and shelled my Dungeness crabs before, but it’s a huge pain in the ass. I have to drive a ways to get the live ones, then I have to go through the ordeal of cooking the poor little things and then it takes me a good hour to shell two crabs. It’s so much easier to walk down the street to Trader Joe’s, grab a one pound can of Chicken of the Sea claw meat and pop it open. Plus, it costs less than half as much and tastes almost as good. Blue swimming crab ain’t no Dungeness and its sustainability is in question, but we can't all be Alice frickin' Waters. I forked up the crab, added some green onions, red pepper, lemon zest and a little egg white, which probably isn’t necessary but I had it leftover from the salad dressing. And that’s it. I suppose it really doesn’t matter how you season it so long as the crab is good. Some sort of vegetable is helpful to add texture.Make sure it's the refrigerated kind I’ve retreated to my Asian roots and used gyoza wrappers for my ravioli many times but last night I was feeling show-offy and brought out my pasta roller. I had that thing for a couple years before I actually used it. It seemed like such a messy headache. But it’s actually a pretty easy and forgiving process. And my mess factor was greatly reduced once I got a pastry scraper. If you don’t have one, you should get one. Remember Steve Buscemi’s leg in Fargo? I’m no pasta expert and there are probably a thousand better instructions for making it but here’s how I do it. The basic ratio is 3 large eggs for every two cups of flour. You make a little well in the flour, crack your eggs in it, mix it with a fork while doing a mad dash to keep egg goo from dripping out the well and onto the floor. Eventually, you get a doughy ball that you start kneading to incorporate the rest of the flour. It’ll be hard and rough looking but that’s fine.Cut it in fourths (with your trusty pastry scraper) and start feeding it one of the fourths into your pasta machine (set at 1, the widest setting). It’ll come out ugly, but after you fold it and re-feed it, it will knead into something smooth and manageable. At that point, you feed the pasta through the machine a successively higher numbers on your pasta machine. By the end, you should have a long, wafer thin ribbon of pasta. For once, not cut with a dog food can Time is of the essence as the pasta will dry out and crack within a few minutes so you should have your filling close at hand. I use a pastry ring whose diameter is half the width of the pasta sheet but I’ve also used empty soup cans, dog food cans or whatever works. I lay out a strip of the pasta, put out spoonfuls of filling on the bottom half, using the pastry ring to space them apart. Then I wet the pasta around the filling with water (not egg wash) and fold the top half over. Press to seal the ravioli and cut ‘em out with the pastry ring. At this point, I take each one to check the seal and ensure there’s no air in the ravioli. Air pockets are bad. Then I layer the ravioli with parchment paper and store them in the freezer to keep them from getting mushy. If you store them for longer than a couple hours, make sure they're in an airtight container or they'll dry out and crack. Two cups of flour should make around 60-70 ravioli, which should match a one pound can of crab. Let them eat kibble I rarely sauce ravioli with marinara because tomatoes are pretty dominating. Browned butter is delicious but in small doses. I usually stick with broths or cream sauces so that the flavors in the filling can stand out. For the crab ravioli, I sautéed some shallots, added some cream and saffron, cut it with a little white wine, and cooked it until it turned yellow and fancy. I suppose you could strain it but I think the orange saffron strands are cool looking plus it lets everyone know that you used the real thing. Note the exquisite and rare saffron stamens Boiling the ravioli is a critical step. Once you put them in boiling water, you want to make sure it doesn’t boil violently or your ravioli will rip. A slow bubble works just fine. It should only take a couple minutes and then you plate, sauce and garnish. Or...open a can of this.

What's French for Douchebag?

So I was asked to prepare a high carbohydrate meal for some people who are running the L.A. Marathon tomorrow. I remembered the television coverage of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal (damn, I'm old) where marathoner, Frank Shorter, was showing Jim McKay his pre-race meal of bowls and bowls of spaghetti. It was pretty impressive; sort of like the 1970s version of Michael Phelps' 12,000 calorie diet.

The biggest difference is that Phelps won a zillion gold medals (yes, a zillion) and Shorter only won the silver that year. So my thought was to make the spaghetti and augment it with the protein dimension of meatballs, clearly the missing gold medal element from Shorter's game.

Meatballs in a nutshell:

1 pound of 20% fat ground beef 1.25 pounds of ground turkey 3/4 cup* of bread crumbs 2/3 cup of grated Parmesan Reggiano 1/4 cup of minced flat leaf parsley 1/2 tsp of dried thyme Salt & pepper

* I don't really measure so you should add "-ish" to all amounts.

Mix well, form lump into 1.5 inch meatballs, brown well on all sides (very important), simmer in marinara for 30 minutes.

Notes: I used turkey because Trader Joe's carries neither ground veal nor ground pork and I was too lazy to go to a proper butcher. I also used the fattiest beef I could find because as the fat renders out, it leaves the meatballs more tender. Other recipes call for eggs, but they make meatballs denser and bouncier. They stay together without the stupid egg as long as you're gentle with them in the browning stage.

I served the spaghetti and meatballs up with some deliciously overly buttered garlic bread and a crips Caesar salad (homemade dressing is the way to go: a couple anchovies, an egg yolk, juice of a lemon, clove of garlic, half a teaspoon of sugar (optional, kinda cheating) - zap it with a hand blender and a bunch of olive oil). It's the dinner of champions.

So Elaine says as she bites into a gooey, yet crunchy, slice of garlic bread, "Oh, you used sourdough. Awesome." And without thinking, I say, "Yeah, I was going for more of an Italian-American aesthetic more than a true old country meal. You'd never get spaghetti and meatballs in Tuscany and the Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana." I mean, duh, right? "The spaghetti was not even close to al dente. This is total East Coast quasi-Italian fuggetaboutit pasta. The Lambrusco? The Gabbiano Chianti? We might as well be eating in Bridgeport."

Everyone looks at me, speechless, and I quickly realize that I sound like a complete jackhole.

I try to play it off like I have too much time and too much broadband on my hands but the damage is done. I sound like a foodie. Horror of horrors. After everyone leaves, I look in the mirror. Am I a foodie? To quote Charlie Sheen's character in Wall Street, "Who am I?"

Why do I cringe whenever someone says, "Oh, Marty's a total foodie?" Because I don't want to be that guy. The guy who asks the butcher at Von's where their Porterhouse steaks were sourced from. The guy who asks to speak to the sommelier instead of trusting the wait staff with the wine list. The guy who uses terms like "wait staff" instead of "waiter" or "waitress."

If only I had done a little more research in planning this meal and I would have discovered that Frank Shorter won marathon gold at the '72 Olympics, where he snacked on M&Ms and beer beforehand. I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment (and cooking time) by serving that menu. But did Shorter eat peanut M&Ms or plain? And the beer: was it made in the Pilsner Brauart-style, as the Olympics were in Munich that year? Or was it a bottom-fermented ale in the British style? Or was it a wild yeast lambic? Yeah. I guess I am that guy.