Eyewitness Cook
Friday, Oct 29, 2010 20:30 ET
Introducing: Sausage-roasted squash
Many avoid hard squashes because they're bland and watery. The magical lard will quash your qualms
If you are an even occasional vegetable cook, you're probably already friends with zucchini and his cousin summer squash, but the hard winter squashes have always been a bit more ... distant. Butternut, acorn, delicata and all the rest of them: They sit there, unrefrigerated, unmoved by your entreaties, hiding themselves behind their thick skins. But don't mistake their shyness for aloofness, because deep inside, they're sweet and tender. OK, I'm going to stop with this stupid vegetable psychology.
The point is this: Winter squashes, once you get past the intimidation factor, are fantastic vegetables, no harder to cook than a potato, and they have a unique combination of texture and flavor. The different varieties will vary, but most share a clean, clear sweetness, a scent like flowers and wet earth, and a texture, properly cooked, like a juicy sweet potato.
To amplify their autumnal goodness, lots of recipes call for brown sugar or maple syrup, which I approve of, but lately I've been enamored of a more – how shall we say? – aggressive approach: roasting them in sausage fat. Something about that lardy goodness makes the squash -- butternut, in particular -- smoother in texture, its flavor rounder and more intriguing, both more fruity and mineral. Does that make sense? OK, well, whatever. I'm telling you to roast a perfectly good, perfectly healthy vegetable in the fat that melts out of sausage. Most people don't need much of a "why" after that.
But I'll give you a "why" anyway. Different fats have different effects on food. There is the question of the actual flavor of the fat, of course -- who can deny that butter tastes different from corn oil? But there is also something a little more obscure, a little more alchemic at play, too. Extra-virgin olive oil ingratiates itself with fresh tuna unlike any other oil -- it actually slides its way in between tuna's fibers, making it exceptionally luscious. Butter and olive oil bring out sautéed garlic's flavor in totally different ways; rounder and softer in the butter and brighter in the oil.
And so I think there's some of that kind of magic going on when you roast squash in sausage (or bacon, or pork, or chicken, or duck) fat that's utterly unlike cooking it in olive oil, which is what I'd always done before. (I'd bet butter or shortening, for our vegetarian and vegan friends, would be delicious as well, but they wouldn't have the same savoriness.) The texture goes from moist and pleasant to silky, and the flavor deepens, dropping about an octave, which allows its high, vegetal sweetness to sing a little more.
Sausage-fat roasted butternut squash
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 pound fresh pork sausage (hot, sweet, Italian, etc., is up to you. Just make sure it's not lean. Or substitute enough bacon or chicken or other meat fat to give you a generous coating on the bottom of your pan.)
- 1½ pounds butternut (Other hard-skinned squashes, like acorn or delicata, are also great, but may finish cooking at different times; the denser it is, the longer it takes, usually.)
- Olive oil, as needed
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 400°.
- Place a large, heavy skillet over medium-low heat with a splash of olive oil, just enough to coat the pan. (If you don't have a big pan, use two medium-size ones; you need to hold all the squash slices in one layer.) With a sharp paring knife, prick holes all over the sausage links. Wield one of the links and dip it into the pan; when it's hot enough to give you a light, mellow sizzle on contact, place the sausages in. You're not trying to char them, just leave them alone and let them slowly render out their fat.
- Cut the squash: I don't bother peeling them, because the skin comes off easily once it's cooked and it helps to keep the squash's shape while cooking. Cutting hard squash freaks some people out. Don't be scared. You'll be fine, but you will want a good, sharp knife. Some suggest resting the squash on a towel and using a rubber mallet to bang a cleaver through it, but if you are the sort of person that owns a rubber mallet and cleaver for kitchen use, you probably don't need any encouragement from me. For the rest of us, plunge the tip of the knife into the middle of the squash lengthwise, and push down on it, like a lever, to cut through. Then turn it around and repeat on the other side to split the halves. (Do this in three strokes if your knife isn't long enough, etc.) Scoop out the seedy part with a spoon, and cut the squash slices 1½ inches thick.
- Check on the sausages; if they're lightly browned and starting to look nearly halfway cooked, flip them to start rendering the other side. By now, there should be a generous slick of greasy goodness in the pan. Once there's a little pool of the stuff, set the sausages aside and turn the heat up to medium.
- Salt and pepper the squash chunks generously, and place them in the pan for a couple of minutes, just enough to start to change the color a bit. Don't worry about browning them; just get them to start turning from bright orange to yellow. Flip the squash, tuck the sausages back into the pans, and put them in the oven. Right about now, your house is going to smell fantastic, and will continue to do so possibly well after you're tired of it.
- Check on the pan after 15 minutes; if the pan-side of the squash is nicely browned, flip the pieces and, if you haven't already, take out the sausages. Continue roasting until you can slip a paring knife in and out of the squash with no resistance, another 20 minutes or so. Say hello to your new little friend.
Note: Some people can't imagine roasting hard squash without some maple, brown sugar, cinnamon or some such. I'm not going to stop you, but I'd suggest adding those things when you check on them in the oven. I also wouldn't stop you from tucking in some chile flakes, orange peel, onions or hearty fresh herbs, like rosemary or sage. But that's up to you.
How to sear and saute mushrooms
A perfect flavor of fall -- unless they're watery and limp. How to make them golden brown and delicious every time
Look, no offense, but chances are your sautéed mushrooms aren't very good. But I'm on your side, and it's not your fault. It's just that mushrooms don't really want to be sautéed; they don't want to have a beautiful sear, browned color and a flavor -- almost like meat -- that lasts and lasts and lasts.
You see, mushrooms are delicate little things and they get easily stressed out. You know that guy who just starts sweating at the slightest provocation? Mushrooms are that guy, and when they hit a hot pan, the perspiration is unbelievable. They sweat, the sweat turns to steam, the steam gets the other mushrooms sweating, and next thing you know, your searing-hot pan is a fungi Jacuzzi, the mushrooms are getting boiled -- boiled! -- and boiling is pretty much the opposite of searing. Mmm, how about a nice boiled steak? It's a mushroom hater's nightmare -- studies show that 99.98 percent of all mushroom haters think they're slimy -- and even for mushroom lovers, there is a much better world out there.
The key to searing and sautéing mushrooms -- to getting that gorgeous color and a texture that's appealingly chewy, not squeaky -- is to know that water is the enemy of the sauté pan and to recognize that mushrooms are going to release lots of water. So how do you mitigate? Easy. Don't sweat the technique, homie.
Get the pan ripping hot, and don't be shy with the oil: Heat is what gives you browning, which is why can't brown food with water lying around -- once the pan starts to flood, all that water caps the cooking temperature to the boiling point, 212 F, far below the 310 at which browning happens. And using plenty of oil to transfer that heat will also help quickly evaporate any water the mushrooms do sweat out.
Don't crowd the pan: It might seem maddeningly inefficient, but cooking the mushrooms in one layer, with a little bit of room between them, will keep the pan dry. If the mushrooms are stacked on top of each other, the heat will cause the upper layers of mushrooms to cook and drip their water down, cooling the pan and again keeping you from getting that nice sear.
Let them cook! Look, I know the temptation is strong to shake the pan, to toss your food and look totally super cool. I love tossing food in the pan. But mushrooms, if you remember, are delicate little things, and if you start tossing them before they've fully seared, they'll just get all harried and start that whole sweating thing again. Put them in the pan and let them be.
Add aromatics or flavorings after the mushrooms are seared: This is simple – you're trying to keep your pan ripping hot, which means that minced garlic will burn up in that disco inferno in a second. If you want to use onions, it's best to cook them separately and then toss together with the finished mushrooms, or mince garlic or shallots and herbs finely and toss them in the pan with the mushrooms when they're nearly done.
Don't salt until the end: I am fanatical about seasoning with a little bit of salt and pepper at every stage of cooking. But in this case, salt also draws water out of mushrooms, so salt them when they're nearly done cooking, after the cells have collapsed and you've already sizzled away most of the liquid.
Oh, and a note on washing: So there's this old wives' tale that mushrooms will soak up water if you wash them. It's wrong. Period. So feel free to do so, but make sure to dry them with towels, or let them sit out in a well-ventilated area for a while. That said, I don't wash. I rub my mushrooms lightly with paper towels. I'm babying these things in the pan already, so I feel like I might as well baby them with some sweet, touching caresses beforehand, too.
Perfectly sautéed mushrooms
While this technique works with all kinds of fungus, I find it best with the more common kinds you can find in supermarkets: white buttons, cremini, portobello, fresh shiitake. Chanterelles, lobster and other more exotic mushrooms work well this way, but their subtle flavors are sometimes even better served with other methods -- cooked more lightly, for instance, in an egregious quantity of butter. But whatever – they're too expensive for anyone to have enough to mound up a pan with anyway.
Ingredients
- Mushrooms, halved if small, quartered if larger, in sixths if really big
- Oil of your choice
- Garlic, minced fine, optional, to taste
- Shallots, diced, optional, to taste
- Onions, sliced, optional, to taste, cooked separately
- Fresh herbs, chopped, to taste (I like parsley, thyme, chives or tarragon)
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions
- Put a wide, heavy pan on high heat and add enough oil to rather generously coat the bottom of the pan. You don't need the mushrooms to go for a swim, but they will need to get a little lubed up. (You'll get rid of much of it later. Relax.)
- When the oil is shimmering, showing a wavy pattern when you swirl it, carefully load the pan with as many mushrooms as will fit in one layer. (Don't splash yourself!) They will sizzle immediately. Don't touch them! After a minute or two, carefully lift a few from different areas of the pan. If they're showing a nice golden brown color, success! You're well on your way to fungal nirvana.
- Now you can look like a line cook hero and toss your pan to flip the mushrooms and get a sear on the other side. (Or just flip with a spatula, or just stir with a spoon. The Top Chef cameras aren't on, it's OK.)
- After another minute or two, taste a mushroom. If it's got a nice, bouncy, juicy texture and deep flavor, add your aromatics or herbs. Let them cook together for another minute or so, just to take the rawness off and to let the flavors mingle, season with salt and pepper, and drain on paper towels if they're oily. Congratulations! You've got killer sautéed mushrooms!
No comments:
Post a Comment