“The Ultimate Roast !”or the science behind the fundamentals of roasting

    The other day I was passing by a supermarket from which came the gorgeous smell of roast chicken. Like Proust and his madeleine, this brought back memories of the traditional Sunday roast at home when I was a kid. Now that I am a chef, I am rarely able to recreate this for my customers as it is difficult to serve a whole chicken or leg of lamb on the same table. 

How to make sure that the outcome of a roast becomes a great gastronomic experience everytime?  I thought kitchen science could give it a push to the right direction.

    Before starting to cook our roast, I would like to talk about the chemical reaction behind the flavour of roasted meat. It is produced by a chemical reaction called the “Maillard reactions”. The understanding of this principle will guaranty us a great outcome every time.

In simple words, the maillard reactions begin when, under the action of intense heat, a carbohydrate molecule (a sugar) reacts with a molecule of amino-acid (a protein) to create an unstable, intermediate structure. This new molecule called Amadori by-product will, then, be able to combine to other compounds in the meat, further along, during the cooking process. The final result of the Maillard reactions, is hundreds of different by-products that combined together create the meaty savoury flavour of the roast crust.     

    Just few words here about how to choose a cut of meat for a roast.I’m not going to talk here about the birds as most of them are eligible for roasting. But choosing a cut of lamb, beef or pork in the supermarket isn’t always simple as most of us go by the price. In an animal there are two types of muscles, therefore two main types of cut of meat.

The first one, are the working muscles like the leg, shoulder and arm. They do most of the work of supporting the animal, they contain a large proportion of what is called reinforcing connective-tissue, rich in collagen they are tough and require a long cooking to dissolve that collagen.

On the other hand rib, short loin and sirloin do less work, so have fewer connective-tissue and are tender and more suited to short cooking at high temperature. 

A roast is always done in three steps : searing, cooking and resting.

     The first step in cooking a roast is to sear the meat. It is simply done by cooking every sides of your cut of meat or bird (for this one stick a large wooden spoon through the inside cavity, it is then, easier to move it around), for a short time, in a very hot pan to a golden brown color. This is an important step, because this operation will ensure, first of all, that the meat will keep its moisture during the cooking process by creating a protective shell. It will also lay the base for the Maillard reactions by generating the Amadori by-product.

There are few tips to obtain a good searing result. First, make sure that your cut of meat or bird is dry on the outside. Then do not season the meat yet as the salt will extract some moisture out of the meat and the pepper will burn and give a very bitter taste. Using a brush, oil the meat on all its surfaces (do not over do it though!), it will help the transfer of heat from the pan to the meat.   

 The second step is the actual cooking of your cut of meat. This operation seems pretty simple, just throw the meat in a roasting tray, put it in the oven for what ever amount of time and forget about it. In fact it isn’t that simple. If you want to achieve a crispy outside crust and a juicy, tender center, you will have to keep a close eye on the temperature of the oven.

 Kitchen science tells us that the principle of cooking meat in the oven is to minimise the loss of moisture and compacting the meat fiber while maximising the conversion of tough connective-tissue, collagen, to fluid gelatin. Unfortunately, these to actions are contradicting. To avoid the loss of moisture the meat cannot be cooked over 130-145F or 55-60C (at core) but the collagen needs prolonged cooking above 160F or 70C for a long period of time. This is a problem when roasting a chicken, turkey or other birds because the meat in the breasts is made of fewer connective-tissue, but the meat in the legs is mainly made of such tissue. The result is dryer, tougher meat in the breasts, and under cooked juicy meat in the legs. There is the answer to why meat connoiseur will prefer the leg to the breast of a roast bird.

So, to obtain a good result while roasting your cut of meat or bird, start with a relatively hot oven 180-200C, turning the meat from time to time (use a wooden spoon, you don’t want to break the protective shell created earlier) until the crust is done. Then, only, reduce the temperature of the oven to 160-170C to cook the meat trough. When roasting a bird, protect the breast with a bit of tin foil to avoid that they over-cook. You can season the meat now, just before putting it in the oven.  

 How long should you cook your roast? There is no definite answer to that. The usual will be a minutes per pound of meat. The new research on the subject shows that isn’t accurate, the cooking time is proportional to the weight squared, or to the weight to 2/3 the power of the oven. So, the best way is to check the temperature at core or like chefs do by touch. There a guide line on doneness :

• Bleu              110F/45C, soft raw like to the touch.
• Rare              120F/50C, becoming firmer to the touch.
• Medium-rare 130F/55C, resilient to the touch.
• Medium         140F/60C, begins to shrink, losing resilience, exude juice when pressing it.
• Medium-well 150F/67C, little resilience, less free juice when pressing it.
• Well-done     160F/72C, stiff, dry.
• V well-done  170F/75C, stiffer, very dry, grey color.

    The last step is the resting. The purpose of this final step is to allow the meat fiber to “relax” and allow the juices to migrate to the center of the roast. It take from 5 to 15 minutes depending on the doneness of the meat. A rare meat will require 5 minutes and a v-well-done one 15 minutes. Little tip place the meat on rack or grid on the top of the opened oven door while the oven is still hot.

Then skim the fat out of the roasting tray, put it on the ring, add a couple of carrots coarsely chopped,  an onion prepared in the same way, 2 crushed cloves of garlic, some thyme and halve a bay leaves. Cook it for 10 minutes, add a cup of wine and scrub the brown bits at the bottom of the tray. Allow to simmer for another 10 minutes. Filter that juice it make a great gravy base or as we call it in France “jus de roti” (roast juice).

I hope it can help!

Chefs !

     The main reason behind my decision to start a blog was that I had to stop cooking for a while because of a serious injury that happened while at work. I have to say it was very difficult to deal with the idea that I would have to be out of my kitchen for a long period of time. Like most chef I am passionate about cooking despite the hardship.

One day my worried girlfriend brought me an article from VHI healthcare web-site by Ann Papert called “FOOD FOR THOUGHT : Many chefs work passionately to turn food into work of art. But is their job a recipe for injury?” This piece relates the words of Jacques Pepin, Skip Larsky and Robert Unsworth explaining in their words the hardship of a kitchen and numerous types of accidents that can happen in that line of work.

I had to agree with most of what they said as well as the conclusions of that VHI report. But I think this is not going far enough. It is all well to say that chefs have to work hard, long hours, in hazardous conditions, under a huge amount of pressure but still love it! We are not masochists. It is in our blood.

Here in Ireland, most customer don’t have a clue about the work involved before their plate come before them. Another report in an Irish catering magazine was saying that 85% of chefs were either alcoholics or drug addicts.  In France, it is normal to work under military conditions, 14 hours a day for the minimum wage. In England some young chefs committed suicide, even. We all are used to read these type of stories.

In my case, when I injured myself, I was working under a great deal of pressure very understaffed. I kept on going, injured, for another 10 days before going to my general practitioner. He then, told me : “you are not going back to work until this condition is fully settled”. He then, refereed me to the emergency room of the closest hospital from my home.

The doctor there asked me several questions but didn’t seem to understand the fact that I could not be sure how my injury occurred. From there, a long battery of test were done to try to find out what is exactly my condition. I then met a neurologist, same story again no understanding that when we are in the rush of service we can be in a state of mind that would be comparable to the state of mind of an athlete before a 100m race. We are focused to a point that nothing else than the cooking of the food counts, we are not aware of pain at this point.

That made me wonder about, all this articles explaining that chefs are a passionate breed that work themselves into depression, addictions or serious injury. I think that we are mainly misunderstood.

To be continued… 

Green blueberries!

  Green blueberries? No, it is not an Irish specialty for the St Patrick’s celebrations. This may happen when you bake using blueberries. Why would a deep, dark blue fruit turn green when baking it?

This could happen if the muffin mix contains too much baking soda or if the soda isn’t evenly mixed in the batter. This would result in some alkaline pockets throughout the mix which could get in contact with the fruits.

You’ve maybe read in my post on blueberries, that bilberries and blueberries are rich in anthocyanin pigments specially under their skin. These pigments are extremely sensitive to PH changes and are generally associated with acidic fruits. They are concentrated in cell vacuoles as in purple beans or sometimes, just in a superficial layer of cells under the fruit skin, as in grapes or blueberries. 

In the fruit, these anthocyanins are surrounded by a acidic environment as the pulp of the berries is quite rich in hydrogen. When you add the berries into the muffin batter their skin may break allowing the soda in the alkaline pockets to get in contact with the pulp and the anthocyanin pigments. The result of this action will be the elevation of the PH therefore changing the pigmentation of the anthocyanin. Turning the dark blue of the blueberries into a greenish pigment.

 This is not as mouth watery looking!

So, to avoid this to happen, make sure that all the dry ingredients are mixed well together before adding any liquid into your muffin or other type of cake mixes and batters.

“un homme averti, en vaut deux”

French saying

Fruit of the month : Blueberry

    Here we are, it is September, the beginning of the Autumn, the day shortens, kids are back to school. But to me September means blueberry picking. I have to say, I find quite enjoyable spending my days off wandering around the Wicklow way to look for these juicy, tasty little berries.

Blueberry or bilberry? As I was reading a book called “Mc Gee on Food and Cooking” I became puzzled about the true name of what was resting at the bottom of my basket.

    Blueberries are the small fruit of a group of flowering plants of the genus Vaccinium. This genus includes the blueberriesV. Cyanococcus, the bilberries V. Myrtillus, the cranberriesV. Macrocarpon and the lingonberries or cowberries V. Vitis-idaea. 

The blueberries are a native of North America (V. Cyanococcus), Northern Europe and Eastern Asia (V. Myrtillus). The shrubs sizes varies from 10cm to 4m. The smaller species are also known as lowbush blueberries which are mainly the wild species, the larger shrubs are called highbush blueberries which come from the selection and cross breeding of wild species since the beginning of the 19th century.

    The blueberry shrubs can either be deciduous or evergreen. Its leaves are ovate (oval outline) or lanceolate (shaped like a lance head), from 1 to 8cm long and 0.5 to 3.5cm broad. The shrub favours poor, acidic soil to grow and is a pioneer plant of burned fields. It produces flowers that are bell-shaped, white, pale pink or red.

      In Europe, the only true blueberry (genus V. Cyanococcus) that you will be able to find are farmed. The principal producers are France, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy. The largest producer of blueberries in the World is the U.S but their production is mainly for the U.S and Canadian markets. Farmed blueberries can be found on the market from the mid-June until the end of September.

    Here in Ireland and in my homeland of Brittany it is the peak of the seasons for the wild bilberries (genus V.Myrtillus). The bilberry shrub looks like a short bush with small oval, evergreen leaves. They grow pale pink flower from mid-June until July and produce small round, dark blue fruits. They can be found in clear wood lands as well as rocky, bushy areas such as the Wicklow mountains or wild areas of Mayo and Donegal.

    Bilberries and blueberries are true berries or single fruits derived from the plant’s ovaries. They have a distinctive, spicy aroma due to several terpenes, phenolic antioxidants. They are also rich in anthocyanin pigments, especially in the skin.

Terpenes are flavour compounds that provides the citrusy, floral, leaf like and fresh flavour to the blueberry. It is also known to inhibit the growth of cancer cells and tumors. This type of flavour compound is very fragile and would be destroyed when exposed to heat.

Phenolic antioxidants are aromatic compounds that provides a spicy flavour to the overall taste of the blueberry but it is also beneficial the body. Antioxidants of the phenolic types are known to reduce the body’s own production of DNA-damaging chemicals. This type of flavour molecules are more resistant to heat and provide persistence of the flavour in the mouth.

Anthocyanin is a natural pigment. It gives the blue color of the bilberries and blueberries. It is also this pigment that gives red wine its color. Anthocyanin are, in fact, a polyphenolic compound which means that it is made of two or more phenolic flavour molecules linked together, which also gives antioxidant qualities to this pigment. They help in slowing the development of heart disease.

Recent studies, also shows, that blueberries or bilberries help prevent urinary track infections and have a significant impact in reducing the degradation of brain functions, as in Alzeimer’s Disease or Parkinson’s condition.

The nutritional breakdown for a 140g of blue/bilberries is as follow : 1g fat which no cholesterol nor saturated fats, 27g carbohydrates which 11g sugars and 3g dietery fiber, 1g protein. A 140g serving of fruits brings 15% of the daily needs in vitamin C.

    In cooking, blueberries or bilberries are excellent fruits to make jams or tarts (use them raw as a topping) , they also make great mousses and gratins. They are a traditional accompaniment of pancakes and muffins. Try it, too, with creme brulees, it brings a nice acid/spicy cut through the richness of this type of dessert. Now blueberry juice have been introduced on the market. Not all of them are great now, I have to say, it is a good thing to have a good look at the label and check for the total content of pure blueberry juice a lot of them are mixed with apple or grapes juice. 

Another great way to eat them is, of the bush!

“bad men live that may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they live”        

Socrates              

Rice flour and Coconut Pancake with Roasted Bananas

    There is a gluten free recipe that I came across while researching facts on rice flour. It is a traditional Vietnamese recipe known as Banh xeo. In Vietnam it is used to wrap mince meat or stir fried vegetable and dipped in nuoc nam. I modified it, a tiny bit, to make a gluten free dessert for the restaurant.

It goes like this :

• 430g Rice flour.
• Pinch Turmeric.
• 20g Dessicated coconut.
• 60g Icing sugar.
• 1 tea spoon Baking powder.
• 500g Coconut milk.
• 3 Bananas.
• 50g Brown sugar.

First toast the dessicated coconut and let it cool down for a while. Then in bowl mix well all the dry ingredients, excepted the brown sugar, then whisk in the coconut milk. Allow to rest for and hour.

Cook a small amount of the batter on non-stick pan placed over a medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Meanwhile cut the bananas in pieces a couple of inches thick, roll them in the brown sugar and roast them for 6 minutes in a very hot oven.

Serve a couple of warm pancakes alongside 5 pieces of bananas and top it up with a spoon of sweet whipped cream.

The batter can be kept for 3 days in the fridge.

“Never eat more than you can lift”

Miss Piggy

Buckwheat muffin with pesto and toasted pine nuts

    There is a quite interesting gluten free recipe that I was used to serve with an accompaniment of parma ham and a poached egg. Take the parma ham away and you get a nice vegetarian dish too.

For this recipe you will need :

• 200g Buckwheat flour.
• 15g Baking powder.
• 1 tea spoon Baking soda.
• 1 large spoon Pesto.
• 20g Pine kernel.
• Pinch of salt and pepper.
• 125g Greek yogurt.
• 1 large spoon of Double cream.
• 80g Butter.
• 2 Eggs.
• 125g Milk.

First toast the pine nuts and cool them down. Then mix, well, all the dry ingredients and add the eggs and the pesto, whisk energetically for a couple of minutes. Finally mix in the yogurt, cream, melted butter and milk. Leave to rest for 1/2 hour.

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

Orson Welles

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Fill some small (individual size) well greased mould up to 2/3 of its height and bake them for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. 

Quinoa tortilla

    There is a simple recipe that is suitable for gluten intolerant people, vegetarians and vegans. They can be used as a substitute wrapper for burritos or fajitas.

You will need :

• 375g Quinoa flour.
• 50g  Quinoa seeds.
• 15g Rock sea salt.
• 187.5g Luke-warm water.

First of all wash or roast the quinoa seeds (follow the indications described in my post on quinoa flour). Mix all the dry ingredients and add the water progressively. Gather the dough into a ball and knead until it is no longer sticky. Leave to rest for at least 1 hour.

Roll down some of the dough a disc of 4 inches of diameter and 3 to 4 mm thick. Cook them on a thick pan heated on a medium fire for 30 seconds on each side. 

                                                                                                                       

“Thou shouldst eat to live, not live to eat”

Socrates

“Gluten free” : noodles, wrappers and bun dumplings

    Most of the pasta that we know are commonly made with wheat or durum flour. Their making is mainly made possible by the presence of gluten in the dough. Since 7000 years Asians have been making pasta without the holding properties of gluten, only using starch and water. They’ve, also,  been making wrappers and steamed bun dumplings in the same way. But, how do they do it?

    Starch noodles are usually made of pure starch from mung beans or sweet potato in China or rice in Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Korea. The first step, for this type of noodles making, is to cook a small amount of pure dry starch with water to make a sticky paste that will bind the rest of the starch into a cohesive dough. Then the paste is mixed with the rest of the starch and more water to form a dough with a 35 to 45% moisture content. This dough is pressed through small holes, in a metal plate, to form the noodles.

They are immediately boiled to gelate all the starch and form a continuous network of starch molecules throughout. Then, they are drained and held at the ambient temperature for 12 to 48 hours before being air dried. During this holding period, the starch molecules will fall into a more orderly arrangement or retrograde*. The dry noodles are, therefore, firm and strong.Never the less, not all of the starch molecule will retrograde, allowing the noodles to absorb hot liquid and swell and become tender without the need for an active cooking.

Starch noodles are translucent because they are a uniform mixture of starch and water with no particles of protein or intact starch granules to scatter the light.

Rice noodles are made by soaking some high starch content rice in water, grinding it into a paste and cooking it for a short period of time only (to avoid the complete gelation* of the starch). This paste is, then knead to form a dough. It is then extruded through the small holes of a metal plate to form the noddles.

Here again, the noodles are cooked (by steaming) immediately to gelate the starch throughout, cooled and held for 12 hours at the ambient temperature to allow the retrogradation process. Finally, they are air-dried, excepted for the Chinese Chow fun type of noodles.

Because rice noodles contain some protein and cell-wall particles, inherited from the grain of rice, that scatter the light ; they are opaque rather than translucent.

Asian noodles come under various names depending on their origins. There are few of them : in China, lai fen or chow fun ; in Vietnam, banh pho ; Thailand, kway teow and in Japan, harusame which means “spring rain” ; a lovely name don’t you think?

    Rice paper or Banh trang in Vietnamese, are thin paper like that are used as wrappers for the making of Nem ra or Cha gio. They are traditionally made by soaking and grinding rice, soaking it again, pounding it into a paste and spreading it into a thin layer, steaming it and then, drying it. 

Rice papers are re-hydrated briefly in luke-warm water, then used immediately as wrappers that can be eaten either fresh or fried.

     Bun dumpling is an Asian speciality that mainly comes from the Chinese traditional cooking. It is, also, made with rice or rice flour. Rice based bun dumplings are made by soaking, cooking and pounding sticky rice to form a paste that will be used the same day. 

Then rice flour based buns are made by using sticky rice flour mixed with a little water. Then knead into a dough of soft consistency (it would remind you the texture of cake icing), and used quite quickly as it would dry out within the hour.

 Such dough are used as a recipient for a meat or fruit stuffing, then fried or steamed. They can also be mixed with various spices such as aniseed or red bean paste then wrapped in lotus leaf to be steamed.

    * Starch gelation and retrogradationprocess occurs when a starchy cereal is cooked. Under a microscope starch looks like compact and organized long chains of granules called amilopectine. When starch is cooked in a wet environment, water penetrates the granules and separates the chains from each other. At same time, the granules will swell and soften. This is the gelation process. 

When the cooked cereal cools down, the starch chains slowly re-bond to each other in tighter, more organized associations, and the granules becomes firmer and harder. This is the retrogradation process.

There is quite easy experience to demonstrate this processes : mix some flour with some water you will get a “glue” kind of paste called a gel. Then, cook it. It will take a different shape and texture, it becomes thicker. Then, let it cool down, the mix becomes hard. 

The same process happens when you bake a cake.

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’own relatives”

Oscar Wild

Tempura batter

    Tempura refers to Japanese deep fried, batter-deeped seafood or vegetables. The word tempura or tenpura, in Japanese, come from a Latin expression “ad tempura cuaresmae” which means in time of lent. In fact, batter-coated deep frying was introduced to the Japanese by Catholic Portuguese missionaries during the 16th Century. 

Nowadays, a wide variety of ingredients are used in tempura, from seafood to vegetables, fish, tofu and fruits even buckwheat noddles, ice-creams and bananas.

It is also an interesting, type of batter for people with intolerance to the gliadin protein as the rice flour used in the batter is gluten free.

    There is a recipe for tempura batter :

• 0.400g Rice flour.
• 1 Egg yolk.
• 0.100g Iced water.

It is very simple, as traditionally a good tempura batter must have lumps, you don’t have to worry about  them. Just mix all the ingredients in a bowl with a whisk. Be careful though, you may not need all the water as the right thickness is like the one of creme fraiche or yoghurt. Allow to rest for 1 hour.

It is easy to use, pre-heat your frier to 140 degres celsius, coat the dry ingredients in the batter and deep fry them, 2 or 3 at the time, for 3 to 4 minutes.

“Talk doesn’t cook rice”

Chinese proveb

Gluten intolerance “quinoa flour”

    During my search for alternatives for wheat flour, my girlfriend brought to my attention the plant quinoa . She is vegetarian and makes good use of its excellent nutritional values. I have to say that, until then, I had never heard of this South American pseudo-cereal.

    Quinoa is a plant from the Chinopodium family which includes beets and spinach. It is a native of South America and was domesticated about 5000BC near the Lake Titicaca in the Andes. Quinoa was the staple food of the Incas, second in importance only to the potato. It is still widely used in Peru and throughout the Andes. The Chinopodium Quinoa is extremely tolerant to drought and frost. It also has the ability to grow on poor soil and at high altitudes.

    The quinoa plant produces a small grain of spherical shape sized between 1 and 3 mm across. The outer pericarp of many varieties contains a bitter defensive compound called saponin.

Saponin is a glycosidic compound which works like a natural anti-biotic for the plant. It is not only present in the outer shell of quinoa, it’s also present in the shell of plants like yuca, soya beans, soapberry or  the skin of grape and olives. It has a very bitter taste. Dissolved in water, it forms a soapy froth. This quality is used in detergent and shampoo. In the diet phytochemical saponins have a wide spectrum of activities such as anti-fungal, anti-bacterial agents, lowering of the blood cholesterol and the inhibition of cancer cells. But some saponins can be toxic such as the ones originated in the quinoa outer shell.

    So before cooking quinoa you must remove this compound either by roasting the seeds briefly in a hot oven or by a brief washing and rubbing in cold water. You should be careful not to submit the seed to a prolongued soaking as the saponin could deposit itself within the seed.

    Quinoa seeds and its flour has a very high nutritional value. Quinoa is composed of 10 to 18% of protein, 69% of carbohydrates and 6% of oil for 374 calories. What makes quinoa a valuable asset in a healthy diet is its protein content. All of the 12 essential amino-acids are represented. The protein breakdown is as follow : 0.48g phenylalanin, 0.88g isoleucin, 0.91g lysin, 0.98 leucin, 0.33g methionin, 1.02g arginin, 0.63g theonin, 0.85g valin, 0.15g tryptophan, 0.37g histidin, 0.39g tyrosin and 0.33g cystein. It is gluten free. It is also rich in folate, zinc, potassium, calcium and iron. 

    Quinoa flour is the most interesting substitute to wheat flour. Besides its high nutritional value, the quinoa flour is used in a wide range of baking and panfried dishes. In a proportion 2/3 quinoa flour, 1/3 rice flour it is possible to bake cakes such as chocolate fudge cake, on its own quinoa flour is traditionally used to bake flatbreads, such as tortilla or nachos. It can also replace wheat flour in the batter for sweet pancakes or waffles. It can be used to make baked oven chips. Unfortunately, it is not possible to bake yeast breads as quinoa flour lacks of elasticity and plasticity qualities.

The quinoa seeds are cooked like rice. It can be used as a base for a salad, added to soups or an accompaniment for meat or fish. It, also, can be popped like popcorn or toasted and used for the base of a herb crust. Finally it is used in some breakfast cereals blends.

“He that takes medicine and neglects diet, waste the skills of the physician.”

Chinese proverb