Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Cafe Cubano

So, perhaps obviously, I am not Cuban. But I grew up in South Florida and my fondest food memory there is grabbing a Café Cubano from la ventana at Cuban restaurants around Miami. Whenever I am home, I make a point to enjoy at least one, preferably after a medianoche sandwich.

Café Cubano, also known as Cuban espresso, Cuban coffee, or cafecito, is an espresso drink prepared in Cuba and among the Cuban-American community in which an espresso shot is sweetened with sugar during or immediately after brewing and prior to serving. It is sweet, but balanced, even for those of us who take our coffee without sugar, and an excellent bookend to a meal.

In restaurants, Café Cubano is made using an espresso machine, but the traditional way—and the way it is still made in homes—is with the Italian stovetop espresso maker called a Moka pot or macchinetta, with the iconic Bialetti model remaining the most popular. My recipe utilizes a Moka pot, but you can easily adapt it to an espresso machine.


Moka Pot on the Stove

Traditionally, Café Cubano is made with Pilon or Bustelo espresso; the former is popular in restaurants and the latter in homes. I love Bustelo Supreme, although go ahead and use your favorite espresso.

There are several variants to this recipe, and everyone seems to do it slightly different. I have seen the sugar added to the ground espresso during brewing or directly into the demitasse cup. But the best method whips just a little bit of the brewed espresso with the sugar, maximizing the espumita, the beautiful froth on top of a perfect Cuban coffee. As Moka pots don't generate tons of crema, this is doubly useful for such preparations.

Makes 1 Café Cubano. Easily doubled.

Ingredients:

sufficient ground espresso beans, per your device's directions
sufficient filtered or spring water, per your device's directions
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar

Following your Moka pot's instructions, brew one shot of espresso. (Hint: When using a Moka pot, take it off the heat a few seconds after it starts steaming. It will finish steaming without additional heat, and you won't boil the coffee.)

Add the turbinado sugar to a metal milk frothing pitcher. Pour one teaspoon of brewed espresso into the milk pitcher. Using a small whisk, violently beat the sugar and espresso until fully combined into a thick, brown foam. Gently pour the remaining espresso into the milk pitcher. Pour the pitcher into a demitasse glass. The brown foam—the espumita—should end up on the top of the glass. Enjoy.

Variant: Una colada is a pitcher of Cuban coffee, generally four to six shots, suitable for sharing. To make, multiply the recipe accordingly, using a sufficiently large milk pitcher. If you lose the espumita, beat the pitcher's contents with a whisk or fork as needed.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Gougères

This recipe yields enough for one baking sheet. The dough is so easy to make, and the puffs are so addictively-good, you will want to make two or three batches at once.


Gougères

Makes about two dozen bite-sized cheese puffs.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup filtered or spring water
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon piment d'Espelette, substitute ground cayenne pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
3/4 cup grated comté, substitute gruyère or sharp cheddar
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with a Silpat or parchment paper. Combine the comté and Parmigiano-Reggiano in a single bowl.

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the unsalted butter, sea salt, and piment d'Espelette. Stir until the butter is melted and the salt is dissolved.

Dump in all of the all-purpose flour. Stir vigorously over medium heat until the dough forms a single, smooth ball that no longer sticks to the sides of the pan. Remove from heat and let cool for 90 seconds.

Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring quickly to prevent them from scrambling. Do not add the next egg until the previous is fully incorporated. Keep stirring until the dough is no longer lumpy and forms a smooth, proper pâte à choux.

Fold in about 3/4 of the combined cheese.

Using a pastry bag with a plain tip (or a freezer bag with a corner snipped off), pipe into swirled mounds about the size of a large glass eye, evenly spaced about 1" apart. Top with the remaining cheese.

Bake 10 minutes. Rotate the pan. Bake another 8 minutes. Remove, pierce the side of each mound with a sharp paring knife, and bake another 4 minutes until just golden brown. Remove. Ideally, serve and eat immediately, while piping hot.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Mobile Version of This Blog

Hitting up Food & Love on an Android or iPhone-based device will now render a sleek, mobile-enhanced version of the blog.

Helpful for the upcoming holiday cooking! Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Many Names of Fish

Most food goes by various names. For example, the domestic pigeon is known scientifically as Columba livia. In the US, we call its meat squab, while the French call it pigeonneau and the Spanish pichón. But that all seems pretty comprehensible compared to fish. Some fish are known by literally dozens of names, with their foreign translations bearing no resemblance to or sharing no root with one another. Worse, a single name might refer to dozens of specifies (and even different families) of fish!

This article attempts to document the various names for common culinary fish. I start by giving the common (or at least my preferred) name for the fish, followed by its scientific name, and then a catalogue of the various names and confusions surrounding the animal. With luck, we will all be better consumers of this most delicious food.

In the realm of confusingly-named fish, the worst offender is the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax). This fish is known as loup de mer (or simply loup), from the French word for wolf, as the fish is a carnivore. Along the Mediterranean, loup is the fish's most common name. But along France's Atlantic coast, the fish is called bar. Both regions claim that their variant is superior, although the two fish are in fact the same species. In the US, we also call this fish bronzini, from the Italian branzini. In Southern Italy, however, they call the fish spigola or ragno. In Spain, they call it lubina or róbalo. Other names include sea dace, loubine (French for a small loup), Mediterranean seabass, and simply sea bass, although more and more that final term is reserved for Chilean sea bass.

Chilean sea bass (Dissostichus eleginoides) is in fact not related to the sea bass at all, but is a marketer's name for the Patagonian toothfish. The fish is sold as merluza negra in Spain (confusingly, black hake) and mero in Japan. The fish is listed by SeafoodWatch as a fish that conscientious eaters should avoid, but I find it delicious. On menus in the US, sea bass is generally Patagonian toothfish.

Black sea bass (Centropristis striata) is in fact a species of grouper.

Striped bass (Morone saxatilis) is yet another species of fish called bass. It is also known as Atlantic striped bass and rockfish.

Conversely, Asian sea bass (Lates calcarifer), of yet another family of fish, is called Barramundi.

To compound the confusion, in non-culinary uses in the US, the term bass is most often describing the freshwater gamefish, not the marine fish. Popular game variants of freshwater bass include the largemouth and smallmouth bass. Although edible, they are not caught for their flesh and are generally released.

Many varieties of fish go by the name tuna (various species in the genus Thunnus). They are generally labeled tuna, although some preparations, such as tuna belly (toro) and fatty belly (otoro) go solely by those names when prepared as sushi. Common varieties of tuna include albacore (the stuff in cans), bluefin (in both giant and pacific variants), skipjack (also called aku), and yellowfin (also called ahi).

Cod (Gadidae gadus), that ubiquitous yet delicious white fish, usually keeps to one name. A rare exception is scrod, which refers to a young cod of approximately less than three pounds—generally small enough that its fillets fit in a single pan. (Sometimes scrod refers to any small white fish, such as a small haddock, but such usage is generally regarded as erroneous.)

While cod is usually called cod, there are other cods that are not cod: black cod, blue cod, rock cod, and trout cod are all not members of the Gadidae family.

Once dried and salted, cod's easy naming goes out the window. In the US we generally shorten it to salt cod, but as the food staple integral to Western Europe's expansion, dried and salted cod has many common names, including bacalao, baccalà, klippfisk, morue, and saltfish. Cod that is dried but not salted is called stockfish.

Salmon (several species in the family Salmonidae), perhaps surprisingly, goes by simply salmon, at least in the US. There are, however, several species of salmon, and often the fish goes by those names: Atlantic (also known as black), chinook (blackmouth or king), pink (humpies), and sockeye (red).

Convenient naming goes out the window as soon as salmon is cured. Gravlax or gravad lax is salmon cured in salt flavored with dill. Lox, common adorning bagels in Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine, is salmon that is brined in sugar and salt. Nova Scotia salmon, Nova, or Nova lox is cured in a milder brine and then cold-smoked. Scotch or Scottish salmon is cured with a more aggressive spice rub and then cold-smoked. Salmon smoked without an initial cure is conveniently called simply smoked salmon, although often such a preparation is listed as just salmon. Serving smoked salmon without labeling it as smoked should be a crime.

Yellowtail (Seriola quinqueradiata) is also known as Japanese amberjack. When prepared as sushi, it is called hamachi.

Mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) is a fish whose popularity I have never understood. It is also known as dolphin (the fish not the mammal) and dorado.

Monkfish (several species in the genus Lophius) is as delicious as it is ugly, with firm, meaty, almost lobster-like flesh. It is also known as goosefish, headfish, and, after the Spanish name, rape. The French sometimes call it gigot de mer, or sea leg, because they are making some ridiculous connection to the leg of a lamb. At the market you will often see monkfish sold as monkfish tail—this is in fact the entire fish, beheaded, as the head is hideous.

Atlantic pollack (Pollachius pollachius), the white fish that tastes more like an oily fish, is also spelled pollock. We most commonly eat one of two varieties: Black pollack and Yellow pollack (also called colin). The French call this fish lieu jaune.

Alaskan pollack (Theragra chalcogramma) is also known as walleye pollock. It is of a different family entirely than the Atlantic variety, although the meat is similar in taste, albeit milder. Alaskan pollack is the most common fish used to make imitation crab, which is also called crab stick or krab.

Haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) is also known as offshore hake. The French call it aigrefin. When fried, this fish is sometimes misrepresented as cod or vice versa.

Sea bream (many species in the family Sparidae) are also known as porgies and simply breams. The three most delectable species are the royal, rose (or blackspot), and gray (or black) sea bream. In the US, we call these three species dorade (not to be confused with dorado). The French, to annoy the rest of the world, call the latter two by that same word, but reserve the pompous spelling daurade for the first, the daurade royale.

The most excellent sole generally goes by that correct name, both in fish markets and restaurants. There are, however, several varieties of sole, including the lemon sole, which is of a different (and inferior) variety to the heralded Atlantic sole. Dover sole (Solea solea), also known as common sole, is a specific variety of Atlantic sole and the best. Unfortunately, the lesser (although good) Pacific sole (Microstomus pacificus) is often mislabeled Dover sole on the US's west coast. Sole meunière is a dish, of sole pan-fried in butter, not a variety of the fish (the dish is ideally made with dover sole).

Red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) is a delicious, mild white fish endemic to the Gulf of Mexico, the Southern Atlantic, and the Caribbean Sea. Fortunately, the fish is generally correctly labeled as red snapper. Unfortunately, many other fish are incorrectly labeled the same, including both related fish in the same family and unrelated fish such as Sebastes miniatus and Sebastes ruberrimus.

Hake (Gadiformes merlucciidae) is generally correctly referred to as hake, although that term unfortunately can also refer to a related but distinct fish in the Phycinae subfamily of Gadiformes gadidae. Hake are sometimes referred to by their Spanish name, merluza. Similar to cod, they are an excellent white fish, particularly the Mediterranean varieties prized in Spain.

Halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus and stenolepis) is always correctly labeled as halibut. Unfortunately, several other fish are occasionally incorrectly labeled the same: the California flounder (Paralichthys californicus) as California halibut and the olive flounder (Paralichthys olivaceus) as Bastard halibut.

John Dory (Zeus faber), an excellent fish, is also known as Saint Pierre, after Saint Peter.

Turbot (Psetta maxima) is perhaps the greatest fish. Thankfully almost always called turbot in the US, it is unfortunately mispronounced: TUR-bət not TUR-bo.

Trout, an oily freshwater and marine fish eaten less and less as pollution infects the world's rivers and lakes, is generally correctly labeled as trout. Unfortunately, there are many fish recognized as trout, spanning three genus: Oncorhynchus, Salmo, and Salvelinus. As the taste of these fish vary greatly—both a function of the genus and the diet of the fish—the term trout is a poor indicator of what you are about to eat. Trust the chef or order something else.

Pike (Esocidae esox) is a freshwater fish native to both North America and Europe. It is also known as esox and pike-fish. Confusingly, the term pickerel is used to refer to both young pike and several species of Esocidae that are smaller than the standard pike. In game, the two terms are interchangeable; on a menu the term pickerel generally refers to the smaller species. The fish pikeminnow (also known as squawfish) is unrelated.

…and, unfortunately, many more.

What am I missing? I wager there isn't a fish not known by a multitude of names, so please share your naming confusions. Most notably, freshwater and game fish often have dozens of names, due to regional naming differences and confusions over species. One of our few remaining wild foods, fish do not come with barcodes. They are caught, sold, and eaten in such large numbers that we are often not eating what we think we are. I'm fine with that, but I do wish we could pare back the plethora of names so I am at least ordering what I think I am, even if I am not receiving what I order.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Gazpacho

I love the cold Spanish tomato soup gazpacho in the summer, when the city is hot and tomatoes are gorgeous, in season, and local. I don't have a recipe, just a pattern: lots of whatever tomatoes look best, preferably a mix of various colors and heirloom varietals, a little bit of cucumber, some peppers, a spot of Sherry vinegar, and a lot of top-quality Spanish olive oil. What follows is merely a suggestion, to help you get your proportions right.


Gazpacho

You absolutely want to make this in a blender, which will give you a beautiful, smooth consistency and a perfect emulsion as you drizzle in the olive oil. I'm not a fan of gazpachos made by hand, particularly if you aren't going to peel, core, and seed your tomatoes. It is like eating a weird, chilled salsa. If you don't have a full blender, an immersion blender or food processor ought to work in a pinch, but it won't be the same.

Don't make this recipe ahead of time—despite conventional wisdom. While the flavors will meld, you will also lose some of the raw vegetal taste that is the hallmark of the soup, and the acid in the tomatoes will pickle everything else.

I like to brunoise some peppers and peel some cucumber to make a garnish, which I arrange in the soup bowl and then pour the gazpacho over. The presentation is gorgeous, and the vegetables give some crunch. I don't include that in the recipe below; use whatever looks best.

Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients:

2 pounds ripe tomatoes, assorted shape and color, a mix of heirloom varietals preferred but plum fine
3/4 pound cucumber (about 3/4 a large cucumber), peeled
1/2 red bell pepper
3 green jalapeños, seeded
1 clove garlic, germ removed
about 1/4 cup filtered or spring water
3/4 cup top-quality Spanish olive oil
about 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar
sea salt, to taste

Roughly chop the tomatoes, cucumber, red bell pepper, green jalapeños, and garlic and place in a blender. Run the blender on high, until fully and smoothly puréed. Push the ingredients down with a spoon or add a little bit of water if needed to help the solids purée. Once fully blended, add a little more water as needed to adjust consistency. You want the soup just slightly runny at this point, as it will thicken up considerably once you add the olive oil.

Return the blender to high and slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Continue blending until the contents are fully emulsified. If not thick enough, add a little more olive oil, but taste the soup first to ensure the olive oil isn't already overpowering.

Add the sherry vinegar and several pinches of sea salt. Blend on high again until fully combined. Taste and adjust vinegar and sea salt as needed.

You may refrigerate up to 30 minutes to chill, but no longer—the soup is best fresh. Serve in chilled soup bowls or glasses, garnished as you wish. Pairs well with a chilled fino Sherry or a Rosé (rosado) wine from the Rioja DOC, Spain.