WBEZ | Fear of Frying

Your 2013 James Beard Book, Broadcast and Journalism Award winners

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

The James Beard Foundation 2013 media awards presented Friday night in New York City included two notable recipients from Chicago.

Congratulations to WBEZ's very own Fear of Frying on winning best Radio Show/Audio Webcast with host Nina Barrett and producer Lynette Kalsnes. Read and hear this year's award-winning episodes, "Grrls' Meat Camp teaches women fine art and craft of butchering" and "Braving the stinkiest of the cheeses: The lighter side of Limburger".

Mike Sula of the Chicago Reader received the prestigious MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his story "Chicken of the Trees" about eating city squirrels. This was Sula's third nomination and first win. Well-deserved and long overdue to one of the finest food writers in the world today.

The chef and restaurant Beard winners will be announced Monday night.

Find the complete list of book, broadcast, and media award winners below, exclusively here with painstakingly added links. (I don't understand why the JBF never includes links.)

2013 James Beard Foundation Book Awards

For cookbooks published in English in 2012.

Cookbook of the Year

Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America

by Maricel E. Presilla (W.W. Norton & Company)

Cookbook Hall of Fame

Anne Willan

American Cooking
Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking
by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart (Gibbs Smith)

Baking and Dessert

Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza

by Ken Forkish (Ten Speed Press)

Beverage
Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavors
by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding, and José Vouillamoz (Ecco)

Cooking From a Professional Point of View

Toqué! Creators of a New Quebec Gastronomy
by Normand Laprise (les éditions du passage)

Focus on Health
Cooking Light The New Way to Cook Light: Fresh Food & Bold Flavors for Today’s Home Cook
by Scott Mowbray and Ann Taylor Pittman (Oxmoor House)

General CookingCanal House Cooks Every Day
by Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer (Andrews McMeel Publishing)

International
Jerusalem: A Cookbook
by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi (Ten Speed Press)

PhotographyWhat Katie Ate: Recipes and Other Bits & Pieces
Photographer: Katie Quinn Davies (Viking Studio)

Reference and Scholarship
The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World
by Sandor Ellix Katz (Chelsea Green Publishing)

Single Subject

Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard
by Nigel Slater (Ten Speed Press)

Vegetable Focused and Vegetarian
Roots: The Definitive Compendium with More Than 225 Recipes
by Diane Morgan (Chronicle Books)

Writing and LiteratureYes, Chef: A Memoir
by Marcus Samuelsson (Random House)

2013 James Beard Foundation Broadcast and New Media Awards
For television, webcast, and radio programs aired in 2012.

Radio Show/Audio Webcast

Fear of Frying

Host: Nina Barrett
Area: WBEZ
Producer: Lynette Kalsnes

Special/Documentary (Television or Video Webcast)
The Restaurateur
Network: PBS
Producer: Roger Sherman

Television Program, In Studio or Fixed LocationCBS Sunday Morning: “Eat, Drink and Be Merry”
Host: Charles Osgood
Network: CBS
Producers: Gavin Boyle, Amol Mhatre, Rand Morrison, Amy Rosner, Jason Sacca, and Robin Sanders

Television Program, On Location
The Mind of a Chef
Host: Anthony Bourdain
Network: PBS
Producers: Anthony Bourdain, Joe Caterini, Alexandra Chaden, Jonathan Cianfrani, Christopher Collins, Peter Meehan, Michael Steed, and Lydia Tenaglia

Television Segment

Friday Arts, Art of Food

Network: WHYY

TV Producer: Monica Rogozinski

Video Webcast, Fixed Location and/or Instructional
How to Cocktail
liquor.com
Producers: Kit Codik, Scott Kritz, and Noah Rothbaum

Video Webcast, On Location

The Perennial Plate: Real Food World Tour

theperennialplate.com
Hosts: Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine
Producers: Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine

Outstanding Personality/Host
Host: Andrew Zimmern
Show: Bizarre Foods America
Network: Travel Channel
Producers: Colleen Needles Steward, and Andrew Zimmern

2013 James Beard Foundation Journalism AwardsFor articles published in English in 2012.

Publication of the Year Award
ChopChop

Cooking, Recipes, or InstructionMatt Goulding, Matthew Kadey with Tamar Adler, and Paul Kita
Men’s Health
“The Butcher is Back!,” “The Six-Pack Foods of Summer,” “Southern Food Rises Again”

Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award
Tejal Rao
Village Voice
“Bangkok Pop, No Fetishes,” “The Sweet Taste of Success,” “Enter the Comfort Zone at 606 R&D”

Food and CultureAnn Taylor Pittman
Cooking Light
“Mississippi Chinese Lady Goes Home to Korea”

Food and Travel
Adam Sachs
Travel + Leisure
“The Best Little Eating Town in Europe”

Food Coverage in a General-Interest PublicationMen’s Health
Adina Steiman

Food Politics, Policy, and The Environment
Tracie McMillan
The American Prospect with the Food & Environment Reporting Network

“As Common As Dirt”

Food-Related ColumnsAdam Sachs
Bon Appétit
The Obsessivore: “I'm Big On Japan,” “Everyone’s a Critic,” “The Tradition Starts Here”

Group Food Blog
Dark Rye
darkrye.com

Health and Well-BeingRachael Moeller Gorman
Eating Well
“Solving the Sugar Puzzle”

Humor
Alice Laussade
Dallas Observer
“The Cheap Bastard’s Ultimate Guide to Eating like a Total Cheap Bastard in Dallas”

Individual Food BlogHunter Angler Gardener Cook
honest-food.net

Hank Shaw

MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award
Mike Sula
Chicago Reader
“Chicken of the Trees”

Personal EssayFuchsia Dunlop
Lucky Peach
“London Town”

Profile
Brett Martin
GQ
“Danny and the Electric Kung Pao Pastrami Test”

Visual StorytellingMichele Outland and Fiorella Valdesolo
Gather Journal
“Starters,” “Dessert,” “Smoke & Ash”

Wine, Spirits, and Other Beverages
Michael Steinberger

vanityfair.com
“A Vintage Crime”

Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares-Baking the Perfect Pie

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:31:00 -0500

In the series Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares, food reporter Nina Barrett has done her part to tame some of the tasks that can make entering the kitchen so unnerving. She’s tackled knife sharpening, party throwing and egg boiling. For this installment, Barrett wraps up the series the way you might end a meal: with a slice of pie.

Once upon a time, there were three disobedient little pie crusts. Even as lumps of dough, they had behaved badly. This was odd since they had all come from a recipe in the otherwise reliable Joy of Cooking, with only the shortenings varied for experimental purposes. One was too moist and needed to be scraped up off the counter with a spatula. One was too dry and kept needing to be patched together where it fell apart. The third one might have been JUST RIGHT, but since it seems pretty clear that some Evil Pie Crust Fairy stood over my cradle years ago and placed a Pie Crust Curse on me, this one, too, looked a little half-baked.

Now, I had heard that somewhere in the suburbs of Chicago lived the Fairy Godmother of All Pastry. So I packed up the three disobedient pie crusts and drove and drove through the River Wood Forest Lake Glens of Chicagoland until I came to her cottage, nestled deep in the woods.

The Fairy Godmother beckoned me into her kitchen and introduced herself.

“My name is Gale Gand,” she said. “I’m the executive pastry chef and partner at Tru in Chicago, fancy-pants fine dining and Michelin star restaurant. And I’m also an author and a television personality, and I also have three kids so I’m a mom and wife. And a massive pie-baker.”

She pulled out a lump of dough she had made that morning, which had been chilling in her fridge. It contained half-butter and half-Crisco for shortening, plus the secret magic ingredient she learned about from her mother—who was, incidentally, the daughter of a chemist.

“And her secret to having a flaky pie crust,” she said, “is that she used a little bit of vinegar in her liquid. And vinegar is an acid, so it inhibits protein from developing into gluten, which is sort of what the enemy is in pie crust. That protein in wheat, if you agitate it, if you work it, if you warm it, turns to rubber, turns to gluten, which is good for bread and bad for pie. So you’re trying to inhibit those proteins from what they want to do naturally, which is get elastic.”

Her dough behaved perfectly as she rolled, staying supple and circular without sticking or cracking. Quick as a flash, she peeled six apples with a vegetable peeler and sliced them into chunks with a sharp knife. They happened to be Granny Smiths, but she told me that “my real favorite, and I feel like whispering this, because I judge a lot of pie contests, and I don’t want to give away every secret. But what I think makes the BEST apple, the very very best apple for an apple pie, are Honeycrisps. They’re fantastic! They’re expensive, so buy em on sale. But a lot of my summer apple pies and fall apple pies are made with Honeycrisps, and they’re terrific.”

She put cornstarch in the filling, along with brown sugar, salt, some spices, and the same Nielsen-Massey vanilla she uses in her signature root beer line. Then she dotted the mound of apples with chunks of butter, which she said would melt into the filling and give it the same velvety decadence as a fine French sauce. When she draped the top crust over the apples and crimped the edges into waves with her fingers, the pie looked just like the kind of granny cap the wolf is wearing when Little Red Riding Hood gets to her grandmother’s cottage. Then she spread heavy cream all over the top and sprinkled it with sugar.

“That part you can leave off,” she said. “That’s like the pastry chef in me that you know, wants a little more sparkle on the outside, wants a little more richness just when there might’ve not been enough butterfat. Let’s just add a LITTLE more.”

When her pie went into the oven for an hour, I brought the three disobedient pie crusts in for her to examine. The one where I had used half-butter and half Crisco was way too crumbly, like shortbread, she said. And the one where I had used half-butter and half virgin coconut oil was too greasy, she said—though the coconut flavor was great. But it turned out that the third one, where I’d used the secret ingredient our grandmothers used to swear by, was pretty magical after all.

“Thath a nith flake,” she said with her mouth full. “See the difference? That’s a nice flake.”

“You can see it when you break it,” I agreed.

“Yeah, it breaks differently,” she said. “See how it’s shearing in layers, kind of like mica? Versus the first one that sort of broke like a rock breaking in half.”

“I really like this one,” I said affectionately.

“I do too! We might have to switch,” she said. “That might be the lesson for today.”

“Lard?”

“LARD!”

Then her six-year-old twins, Ruby and Ella, got home from kindergarten just as Gale’s pie came out of the oven: magnificent, fragrant, and golden-brown, like the Princess of All Pies. But it was still too hot to eat, so Ruby began to nibble on the three disobedient little pie crusts.

“Good,” Ruby said, about the first one.

“Okay try the next one,” her mother said.

Ruby tried the second one. “Gooder,” she announced.

It didn’t seem to bother her that they hadn’t behaved the way they should have.

“This one and this one together, is even gooder,” she decided.

So maybe a pie doesn’t have to be perfect to live happily ever after. It just needs to be good enough to make people happy, when they come home.

Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares-Throwing the perfect dinner party

Thu, 26 May 2011 13:16:00 -0500

Entertaining friends and family for a big shingig can often turn into a nightmare. So in the latest installment of Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares, Nina Barrett takes on the dreaded dinner party.

Whenever I even TRY to think about the housewarming party I still haven’t given 10 months after moving into my new house, I develop a crippling case of Party Panic. In case you’ve never had it before, here’s what Party Panic sounds like:

VOICE OF MARTHA STEWART: It’s my annual Peony Party, and there’s always a LOT to do. From setting the table and making the flower arrangements, to preparing a three-course meal and hors d’oeuvres for all my guests.

No, that’s NOT the voice of Martha Stewart telling you what a beautiful party you can throw. That’s Martha telling you what a beautiful party SHE can throw, with the help of her five-star chef, her recipe developer, and the head of her Styling Department. At your party, where the napkins haven’t been stenciled to match the tablecloths, your 70 guests are going to be walking around clutching plastic glasses of box wine and nibbling on Chex mix. Unless someone performs a little Party Panic intervention.

That’s why I turned to Rita Gutekanst. She’s the co-owner of Limelight, a high-end catering company in Lincoln Park, which means party panic is her business model. It doesn’t faze her, and neither does Martha. In fact, she told me, when she moved into her own house 18 years ago, the first big party she threw was a Martha Stewart Tribute Party—on Martha Stewart’s birthday.

“For me, Martha is those little extra details,” Rita says. “We froze pansies in ice cube trays to make those ice cubes that she makes. So that when you put the ice cubes in your tall highball glass and pour sparkling water and maybe rhubarb syrup in there, you see the beautiful colors of the purple pansies, the orange pansies, the yellow pansies. And it’s just summery, and then you put a cute little straw in there, and it’s adorable, it’s just adorable!”

But my party, she assures me, doesn’t have to be adorable. I could go sophisticated, but still casual, I could go Rustic Italian Farmhouse! I could serve Prosecco and bruschetta and put a big feasting table in the back yard!

“And all you need down the center of it,” Rita adds, “you could do mason jars of pickled vegetables, and mason jars of little cut flowers, or just-picked flowers. It’ll be real pretty, and really simple. RUSSSS-TIC!”

“I can get out my distressed tablecloths for this,” I suggest.

“Yes you can,” Rita affirms. “Absolutely!”

“My distressed, un-ironed tablecloths,” I say, hopefully.

At this, Rita balks. “Alright, we might iron them.”

Noticing that I’m still not quite on message as far as the importance of sensory details, Rita takes me into Limelight’s kitchen for a little more convincing. The staff is preparing a tasting for a late-summer wedding, and the bride is expected any moment to start making her menu choices. Visually, it’s like stepping into an artist’s workshop, where all the little still-lifes make you want to gobble them up.

The centerpiece on one big white plate is a bunch of bright green, blanched string beans standing up straight on their ends and tied together with a ribbon made of leek. The shrimp cocktail is served in a tiny cucumber cup, and sake cups of clam chowder, which she calls “shooters,” are lined up photogenically on a wooden plank.

“It’s very rustic,” I observe. Could we borrow that plank?”

“Un-hunh,” says Rita. “Actually, one of my waiters is making me these trays. He says the wood take a year to cure and he’s been working on them for about a year now, and he said they should be ready any time now.”

A lot of this is vintage Limelight style, but Rita says they always try to personalize the details to express something unique about the client’s style and tastes. In this case, she notices a certain theme emerging from the menu, and calls over to Elias Hildebrand, who’s in charge of the account.

“Lavender crème brulee, lavender mousse…what’s with all the lavender? Hey Elias, what’s with all the lavender?”

“She’s obsessed with lavender,” Elias answers.

“The bride is?”

“The bride,” Elias confirms. “Obsessed.”

Elias has not only worked lavender into the desserts, but into a lavender-pepper crusted ahi tuna hors d’oeuvre, a lavender-lemon martini, and champagne glasses rimmed with a lavender sugar that sparkles like aromatic ice. He’s even soaked the warm towels that will be offered before the meal with lavender-scented water.

“So am I going to get truffled towels?” I wonder.

“No, probably not,” Rita says. “I’m not sure if you want a truffle aroma. Well, YOU might.”

Okay, maybe not truffled towels. But I can definitely see now how a Rustic Italian Farmhouse party with Martha flourishes could be a lot of fun. The question is: is this a party I can pull off?

So a few days later, I took a deep breath and tried get in touch with my Inner Martha. Rita’s parting gift to me was the instructions for the pansy ice cubes and I followed them to the letter. It took hours, and even though I boiled distilled water to eliminate the impurities, the ice cubes were actually cloudier than the ones my refrigerator door spits out on its own. What would Martha do in my position, I asked myself, and I think I know: put those ice cubes in a glass, pour in some gin and some tonic, and then, call the caterer.

MUSIC BUTTON: Pink, “Get The Party Started”, from the CD Greatest Hits So Far, (La Face)

Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares-Steel yourself

Thu, 05 May 2011 13:05:00 -0500

On Thursdays, Eight Forty-Eight presents the series Fear of Frying: Culinary Nightmares – in which various kitchen phobias are explored as well as how to get over them.

For this installment, Nina Barrett takes on a dangerous assignment: She picks up a knife.

[MUSIC: Julie Andrews from “Sound of Music,“ singing: Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A, B, C…]

When you cook you begin with [SOUND OF KNIFE BEING SHARPENED]. Every serious cook knows that a super-sharp knife is the absolutely most basic kitchen tool. It not only performs better, but it’s actually less likely to cut you than a dull one, because it instantly penetrates the flesh of whatever you’re slicing, instead of slipping off your target and slicing into your own flesh.

Personally, it’s not the knife per se that intimidates me. It’s the long, pointed rod that comes with it. The thing a professional wields like a samurai, and I can only wield in a way that makes me feel spastic.

“I see it all the time,” says Marty Petlicki, manager of Northwestern Cutlery. “People come into our store and they say, how do you use this thing, and they hold up the steel. And I go, why don’t you show me what you’re doing and I’ll correct you. And 99 times out of 100, they’re applying WAY too much pressure, they’re going WAY too fast, and their angles are all over the place, and they’re just dulling the knife.”

Petlicki is the go-to guru of knife-sharpening for the city’s professional meat-packers, but he also see a lot of serious foodies and regular folks just coming in for a tune-up before their annual assault on a Thanksgiving turkey.

“Now, would you ever get a sushi chef in here, getting his knives sharpened?” I can’t resist asking him.

“Yup,” he says. “We get that, too.”

“But isn’t it part of a creed for them?” I ask.

“It should be, yes,” he says. “But we still get ‘em in.”
The fact that in 25 years in the business, he’s obviously seen it all, makes it easier for me to expose the dirty little secret I usually keep locked up in a kitchen drawer.

“This is somewhat humiliating for me,” I confess, “because this is the set [of knives] I actually use. What I want to know is, can you tell something about my habits from just looking?”

“You know what?” he says. “I can.”

“Okay,” I say. “Tell me what you read on the blades of my knives.”

“Okay,” says Marty. “Well, they’re real dull, and the angle that you’re using to sharpen them is way too high, and you’re flattening the knife.”

"That’s what I was afraid of,” I tell him.

But the prognosis isn’t hopeless, Marty says. As in any relationship where things have gotten a little dull, it can’t hurt to ask for a few tips on your technique.

He demonstrates. “I want to use the full length of the steel,” he says, “and just start off by the handle, right at the top, and you’re going to finish with the tip coming off the bottom of the steel. So you kind of want to get a rhythm going there. And you want to be consistent with your angle. And a good way to know if you’re consistent is to listen to it. If your angle changes, the pitch will change. I’ll show you. See, I changed the angle halfway through, so the pitch changes.”

Wow! Maria von Trapp would love this! Just like the kids in The Sound of Music, Marty wants me and my knife to learn to sing a little song together.

“Just go nice and slow,” Marty says reassuringly. “Speed has nothing to do with it.

I’m not pitch-perfect to start with, but with a little practice there comes a moment when, by George, I’ve got it!

“There you go” Marty says, as I get my rhythm going. “The more you do it, you’ll relax, and it’s just a lot of muscle memory.”

While we’re at it, I ask Marty about sharpening stones. Unlike the steel, which is used to maintain an already-sharpened edge, an oil stone or a wet stone can be used to actually sharpen an edge that’s become dull. Think of the abrasive little block you might use to buff your nails. It has a rough side you use first to do the very abrasive work, and then one or two finer surfaces you use to polish things up. Like the steel, the stone can actually do more harm than good to your blade if your technique is off, so you have to listen to what your knife is singing.

“And again you can hear it,” Marty says, showing me. “You can hear that my angle’s staying the same because of the pitch.”

“And if you’re doing it wrong, how does it sound?” I want to know, so he makes the knife go waaawowaawo.

Most home cooks, Marty says, don’t really have to bother with the stone, as long as they get their knives professionally sharpened two or three times a year. His shop has automated belts they use to speed the process up, but they still finish the blades by hand on a series of ever-finer stones. And the result, as Marty demonstrates for me, is literally razor-sharp.

“I don’t know if you can hear that or not,” he says into my recorder, “but that’s the knife shaving the hair off my arm.”

Okay, I’m not sure I want to put my knife skills to that kind of a test. But I am convinced that if I can just steel myself to practice regularly, my knives and I can learn to make beautiful music together.
In fact, I think we’re ready to rock and roll.

MUSIC: Bryan Adams, “Cuts Like a Knife”

Took it all for granted, cuz how was I to know, that you’d be letting go. Now it cuts like a knife. But it feels so right…

For WBEZ, I’m Nina Barrett.

Music Button: Bryan Adams, "Cuts Like A Knife", from the CD Cuts Like A Knife, (A&M)

'Fear of Frying' series continues with…Frying!

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:48:00 -0500

Eight Forty-Eight presents the second installment of Fear of Frying – the series explores various kitchen phobias and how to get over them. For this installment, Nina Barrett busts out the hot oil. She'll be tackling the challenge that gave the series its name.

I don’t come from a family of frequent fryers. My mom got frying-phobia from Weight Watchers. I got it around the age of 10, when my sister’s attempt to fry Wiener Schnitzel brought the Putnam, Conn. fire department racing to the rescue. And my 21-year-old son, George Booker, scorched his hand so badly making tempura a few weeks ago that he wound up in the emergency room—under serious sedation.

You may ask: What would make a person with such a traumatic track record even think of frying again at home? Maybe a luscious magazine photo of arancini: Italian rice balls, deep-fried to a crispy golden brown and oozing gooey gobs of melted mozzarella. Can’t get those at the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru!

So on a recent afternoon, George and I decided that a little arancini therapy would help us overcome our fear of frying.

“Tunnel into ball, and insert cheese,” I read aloud.

"The more cheese, the better!" George replied.

"This is fun!" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, nuthin’ like shoving cheese into balls made of risotto and bacon and fennel!" my son replied.

"Sure," you say; it’s always fun—till someone burns down the house. So just to be on the safe side, I decided to notify the Evanston Fire Department in advance. They sent over Captain Dale Fochs, who comes with 25 years of firefighting experience and paramedic training. He also comes prepared for the worst.

"Well, this is what we call turn-off gear. This is what we arrive to a fire scene in. We have the jacket you see here, the helmet, and I also have a pair of boots here and gloves and a pair of pants that are all fire-resistant. They’re made out of a material called Nomex, and Nomex is a material that doesn’t burn so well," Captain Fochs said.

It seems like a vote of confidence that even after we confessed our histories, Captain Fochs didn't ask us to get all dressed up in Nomex for what we planned to do. He did, however, eyeball our outfits to make sure we were wearing natural fibers, not nylon or acrylic, that could easily melt or burn.

"And sometimes I get people on the ambulance where they got burned because they had something that had like a puffy sleeve, something that’s dangling and hanging, and that can be a problem…" Captain Fochs warned.

Nor was he going to stand by pointing a fire extinguisher in our general direction, as I half-expected him to do. Actually, he warned us, this is not the best way to handle a home grease fire.

"The best thing to do is, you shut off the fire underneath the pot, and cover it with a lid. And then let it cool down. What happens too often is, people do those things, and then they don’t let it cool down, and then they open up the lid, thinking well it must be out by now, and it gets the oxygen it needs and then it flashes up again," Fochs said.

When I explained that we planned to drop cheese-filled rice balls into a pan of hot fat, he suggested that dropping things into hot fat, generally speaking, may not be the best technique.

"Now, have you thought of, when you put it in the oil, like using a spoon? So there’s no splashing? That way you won’t get burned again," Fochs said.

Before long, Captain Fochs rolled up his fire-resistant sleeves and is helped George roll the rice-balls in eggs and breadcrumbs. We forgot that when they’re not fighting fires, firemen spend a lot of time cooking for themselves.

"Okay, would you deep-fry at the firehouse?" I asked.

"Well, yes, we’ve made fried chicken and other things that involved oils. There was actually a time that we started the firehouse on fire, because we were cooking, and a fire came in, and the guy thought he was turning off the burner, and actually turned it up…That’s a little embarrassing, when you burn your own house, and I shouldn’t be telling tales," Fochs replied.

"But you’re saying, nobody’s perfect," I continued.

"Nobody’s perfect, absolutely," he assured me.

The moral of that story is: Don’t ever walk away from a pan full of hot oil. But vigilance won’t be an issue, as George kept a watchful eye on our deep-fat thermometer.

"We are at almost 300," he reported.

And Captain Fochs monitored our every move. He praised me for not placing the paper towel (for draining the cooked arancini) too close to the burner and reminded us to keep the handle of the frying pan turned in over the stovetop so we didn't bump it accidentally. That’s how George overturned the pan of tempura oil onto his hand.

"Is it at 360?" Fochs asked.

"It’s at 360!" George replied.

"Okay, here it goes!" I exclaim.

"Oh, look at that! Can’t get much better," George delighted.

The actual frying went very fast. It’s blessedly uneventful: Nothing spills, splatters or burns. The balls came out golden, crispy and oozing cheesy goodness; just like the magazine photo.

"Hey, that’s pretty good!" George remarked.

I agreed with a simple, "Mmmm."

"You can taste that bacon in there! Nice touch!" Fochs delighted.

So happily, Captain Fochs left with a Tupperware container of take-out arancini. George and I were left with the clean-up, eight cups of used frying oil and a house that smells like a greasy diner. But it’s still standing--and so are we--so it seems like a small price to pay for having finally fried—without having gotten fried.

Some tips on making arancini:

The luscious photo that made us want to make the arancini appeared in a special edition of Gourmet magazine called Gourmet Italian Kitchen: 80+ Classic Recipes, but you can also find it online at Epicurious.com. The suggested recipe was for Mushroom and Mozzarella Arancini using a risotto recipe you can also find on the site, but we just used a risotto I had made up from leftovers in the fridge, including bacon and fennel. Once you get the hang of making risotto, you can play with ingredients, but to me, the secret of the whole thing is the stock you use. Recipes usually call for store-bought, and that’s fine, but if you make your own, the flavor of the whole dish will be much richer and deeper.

Since for us, the anxiety in the process wasn’t about cooking so much as potentially setting fire to the kitchen or causing grievous injury to ourselves, I’m including some of the tips Captain Fochs gave us for proceeding safely. After twenty-five years as both a firefighter and paramedic with Evanston Fire & Life-Safety Services, where he is now the fire inspector and prevention officer, he would definitely prefer not to meet you in an ambulance:

1. Whenever you fry, you should be wearing natural-fiber clothes like cotton, wool, or linen that won’t melt, like Nylon and other man-made fabrics. Don’t wear clothes with dangling or baggy sleeves.

2. Make sure the countertops are clear of extraneous stuff, especially piles of magazines, newspapers, or other materials that can easily catch on fire.

3. Though some people feel comfortable with a fire extinguisher nearby, Captain Fochs says it’s not the best solution for controlling a grease fire, and it makes a big mess if you use it. Far better to simply place a lid on the pan, turn off the flame, and leave the pan covered for at least an hour before removing the lid, to give the oil a chance to cool down. (DON’T PEEK! If the oil hasn’t completely cooled, letting oxygen back into the pan may cause it to flare up again in your face.)

4. Get a good deep-fry thermometer and monitor the temperature of the oil carefully; if it starts to rise above 365, lower the heat (adding food to the hot oil will automatically lower the temperature somewhat).

5. Keep the handle of the pan turned in over the stovetop, so you don’t accidentally bump it and overturn the pan.

6. Use a slotted spoon to place the food gently in the oil and remove it, so you don’t splatter hot grease onto your hands and arms.

7. If you are draining the cooked food on paper towels, keep them a safe distance away from the flame.

8. Once the oil is heating up and throughout the cooking process, DON’T WALK AWAY FROM THE PAN at any time. Captain Fochs says many grease fires start because the cook takes a phone call, goes into another room to get something, or is distracted in some other way and just forgets that there’s a pan of very hot oil on the stove.

9. If all else fails, call 911.

10. On a happier note, since if you’ve followed the instructions you’re probably going to do just fine: eat the arancini while they’re freshly fried. You can re-heat them, but arancini are really all about that crispy golden crust and the melty mozzarella.

Music Button: Talking Heads, "Burning Down The House", from the CD Speaking in Tongues, (Warner Bros.)

Making the perfect hard-boiled egg

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:57:00 -0500

On Sunday, many will be celebrating Easter by decorating a few eggs. But there’s more to hard boiled eggs than tossing them in some hot water.

Nina Barrett knows boiling the perfect egg can actually be intimidating. That’s why she chose the subject to kick off Eight Forty-Eight's new series Fear of Frying.

Over the coming weeks Nina will tackle topics that might cause a bit of kitchen anxiety – sharpening knives or catering a dinner party. But first – the incredible, edible, hard-boiled egg.

VOICE OF JULIA CHILD: Boiled eggs! Poached eggs! Fried eggs! Scrambled eggs! These are breakfast eggs. We are doing eggs today, but we’re not doing any of these on the French Chef.

BARRETT: Julia Child skipped right over egg-boiling on her way to demonstrating the much more forgiving omelet.

VOICE OF JULIA: Well, that didn’t go very well. See when I flipped it, I didn’t have the courage to do it the way I should have….But you can always pick it up and if you’re alone in the kitchen, who is going to see?

BARRETT: Unfortunately egg-boiling is unforgiving. Even if you’re alone in the kitchen when you mess it up, you’re not going to be able to fix the results, because it’s not an art: it’s a science. So in the absence of guidance from Julia, I turned to thermodynamics for some eggspert advice.
Monica Olvera de la Cruz, head of the Materials Research Center at Northwestern University, is a physicist who specializes in “soft matter.”

BARRETT: When we say “soft matter,” we’re not talking about egg yolks, normally.

OLVERA: Well it does have egg yolks, and especially does have what is called a “gelation process.” When something gels, you make Jell-O, it turns more solid, it has a chemical reaction that is called a gel, and a gel is made of long molecules like these polymers that are entangled with each other and cross-linked, so they don’t flow any more like a liquid.

Scientists who do this at the atomic and molecular level call it nanotechnology. We are going to do it in Monica’s Wilmette kitchen, where she and her Northwestern colleague William Kung will explain how what we call “hard-boiling” an egg means controlling the process by which these reactions take place.

OLVERA: So, we’re going to put a large and a small room temperature — two and two, and then two and two. We’re going to do four! Nice! We have data to plot!

Two variables that can impact the cooking process are the size and the starting temperature of the eggs. To be helpful, William has brought along the differential equation developed by British physicist CDH Williams to determine the time required to boil an egg, given its size and initial temperature.

KUNG: The first order of partial derivative with respect to distance at the quantity the radius squared times the temperature gradient is equal to the temperature gradient itself times some proportionality construct…

I’m ready to whip out my calculator, when William begins to backpedal. Apparently the equation, impressive-sounding as it is, assumes that the egg will be perfectly spherical, and fails to take into account that the yolk and the white conduct heat at different rates.

So instead we’re going to use the recipe I was given in culinary school. We put one jumbo and one extra-large room temperature egg in one pot, and one jumbo and one extra-large refrigerated egg in another, cover them by about an inch with tap water, and put them on high heat. Fairly quickly, both pots fill with tiny bubbles, and William points out that bubbles are also forming on the surface of the eggs.

KUNG: Basically the egg shell is very porous, and right inside the egg shell, there’s a lot of little air bubbles. So as you boil the egg and bring the temperature up, the air bubbles want to expand. If the temperature from the starting temperature goes too fast, the air is going to want to expand too fast, hence it’s going to leak right through the pores and crack the shell.

All four of our eggs come safely to a boil without cracking, but the cold eggs take about two minutes longer. The recipe says to only let them boil 30 seconds, then seal the pots with, turn the burner off, and let them sit for 15 minutes. This is when, according to William, all the true molecular gastronomy is taking place. Eggs whites, he says, consist of proteins curled up in little balls, suspended in water.

KUNG: So when you cook the egg, you heat up the temperature, so we’re breaking the chemical bonds within each of these protein molecules. So they become long, flexible polymer chains. In addition, the heat is going to drive the further introduction of chemical bonds between neighboring long, linear, polymer molecules, so they form a network. It’s a process called gelation. So the longer you cook it, the more you’re going to add chemical bonds to it, and that’s why it becomes rubbery when the egg is overcooked.

The fact that the eggs are just sitting in the water, rather than actually boiling, minimizes the chance that we’ll overshoot the mark. It also minimizes the chance that iron in the yolk will react with sulfur in the white to make that greenish tinge around the yolk, another sign of overcooking.

After 15 minutes, we run cold tap water into both the pots for five minutes to cool them down slowly. Again, we want to minimize the chance that a sudden change in internal and external temperatures will cause the shells to crack. And now, the moment of truth, when we find out: can physics help us boil the perfect egg?

OLVERA: So let’s just start with the large ones. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions…Let’s see. They are beautiful, these eggs! I’m sorry, they are beautiful. Maybe I put too much salt.

KUNG: They’re good!

OLVERA: Mmm hmm! Very good!

Actually, it turns out all you really have to do is follow the instructions to the letter — and take your results with no more than a grain of salt.

For WBEZ, I’m Nina Barrett, wishing you all bon appetit!

Instructions for hard-cooked eggs

Paging through a few different cookbooks will show you that experts differ about how to produce the perfect hard-cooked egg. The recipe we used in the WBEZ segment was given to me when I was in culinary school at the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Chicago by my chef-instructor, Brian J. Karam, who told me it’s the method he’s come to rely on after years of trial and error.

If you’re making Easter eggs, be aware that there’s a trade-off you might have to make between producing an egg that won’t crack — nice for presentation — and one that’s easy to peel. The instructions below minimize the chance of cracking because they reduce the thermal shock to the egg as it cools off — but the longer you leave the eggs in cold water, the harder it becomes to peel them. If easy peeling’s what you want, many sources, including the January/February issue of Saveur magazine, suggest tapping the shells with a spoon or rolling them on the counter before shocking them in cold water.

For the scientific perspective on egg-boiling, see the equation posted online by CDH Williams.

1. Begin with a room-temperature egg (the shell is less likely to crack)

2. Put in pot and cover with water to cover an inch over the eggs. (If you put in too much water, it will take too long to come to a boil and they’ll overcook)

3. Bring to a boil on FULL HEAT (so it happens fast)

4. Let boil 30 seconds, then cover pan and turn off heat. Need nice tight seal so no steam escapes.

5. Leave it on the stove top for 15 minutes.

6. Put under cold running water (without dumping out the cooking water) for 5 minutes to cool.

Music Button: Beastie Boys, "Egg Man", from the CD Paul's Boutique, (Capitol)