cooking

Want to Save $140? Fix Your Chipped Knife

Food and Drink, Health
knife holder with arrow

My chipped knife on the magnetic knife holder.

Why Knives Chip and What to Do About It

I recently found this knife of ours had become chipped pretty badly. I didn’t care all that much. Not only was it a castoff from a friend who’d downsized her kitchen. It was just a $40 item from Chicago Cutlery. Had the chipping appeared on our $140 Wusthof chef’s knife, I would have cared a lot.

This knife? Nah. When I found it chipped, I sneered briefly planned obsolescence. My Filipino parents would say of this scenario sayang, as in, What a waste.

knife chipping closeup - snip tool

I cook without my reading glasses, so didn’t notice the chipping ’til it got pretty bad.

Turns out, I should have been sayang-ing at myself. The chipping wasn’t caused by cheap, flawed steel or poor quality control. It was me.

After hand-washing my knives, I stand them on edge to air dry. I learned somewhere that air-drying is best for keeping knives sterile after washing.

Turns out, air-drying is perfect — if you want droplets of water to collect on the cutting edge, weakening the steel as they slowly evaporate. Then, when sharpened, the weak spots flake rather than grind. Hence, the chips.

Now for the happy ending.

By chance in an airport lounge, I learned of my errant ways from The Today Show. A quick Google search then led me to this YouTube tutorial. Have a look-see at how to easily repair a chipped knife.

Murray Carter of Carter Cutlery going to town on his knife

Murray Carter of Carter Cutlery going to town on his knife

For regular-maintenance sharpening, I’d been using a rolling-wheel sharpener (below). Bad. Not only is the grain to coarse. Its design makes it impossible to keep a consistent grinding angle. This contributes to the chipping–this blunt instrument (as it were) wreaking havoc on the weakened steel. We do have a rarely used whetstone. I’d never used it because the user manual insists on a technique that’s slow to the point of absurdity. (“Pull the knife toward you five times, for two seconds each time. Then reverse directions, away five times. Repeat this alternating cycle fifty to one hundred times.”)

knife sharpener rolling

Little roll-ie sharpener

Wrong! The whetstone used Murray-Carter style (GIF-image, above) is actually a real pleasure. And fast, too.

knife whetstone

Whetstone, extrordinaire

Wisconsin Friday Fish Fry — Japanese Style

Food and Drink
The Spot cobia2

Seared cobia and a snifter of Louie’s Reserve Imperial Scotch Ale

(Before I start, I should mention this isn’t a fried fish review.)

Lately, the Friday fish fry menu has been the draw for us at The Spot. While I enjoyed the fried walleye last week and the grilled salmon the week before that, tonight the seared cobia gets my vote.

Cobia is a firm, fairly fatty, flavorful white fish. The Spot flash sears it: the skin side comes crispy, the meat side, bronzed, and the core, wonderfully raw.

Think sashimi, but add carmelized fat (if you eat the skin) and a more succulent lusciousness. Searing collects the juices and drives them inward, concentrating the moisture and fat to boost the flavor into the realm of the highest-quality toro. The Japanese call seared fish or meat tataki. But rather than pounded flat or sliced thin as in tataki, the Spot’s seared cobia is an inch-and-a-half thick.

What a surprisingly adventurous dish for such a straight-ahead, casual restaurant. Anyone squeamish of sashimi or tartare might want the grilled salmon or fried walleye, instead. But I’m sure the palates of Madison’s Near Eastsiders will take to it, no problem.

I’m not used to any sauce on a seared piece of fish. But the chef adds TWO: a) a pesto cream, which seems a 21st Century update of the traditional mustard-mayo on tuna carpaccio — perfect for this mostly raw fish; and, b) a balsamic reduction. But, wait! There’s more. The fish floats atop a fluffy cloud of Parmesan risotto. Sound like an overwrought train wreck? Nope. It’s an ingenious amalgam of surprising textures and flavors that scores brilliantly. The sweet/tart drizzle of the balsamic reduction weds the rich sauce to the fatty fish perfectly. And the humble Parmesan risotto, which rivals the best I’ve had anywhere, causes no confusion with its only moderately-rich, mildly salty cheesiness. (I actually don’t love the Vegetable Quinoa Risotto elsewhere on the menu.)

Just a side note: at first blush the piece of fish seems small. But one feels that mild disappointment only relative to the portions of restaurants charging twice the price of this dish. There may not be a lot to take home in a doggy bag. But with the risotto and the nice pile of broccoli, it’s plenty substantial, especially at just $17. I actually do have some left over and look forward to my midnight snack.

We then totally enjoy dessert: a savory, pumpkin cheesecake. The muted sweetness of the filling leaves the pumpkin really prominent. The dish gets its sweetness instead from candied pepitas (so flavorful and chewy, they’re clearly fresh-roasted) and a dollop of sugary fresh cream. The bartender tells us the pastry chef is formerly of the fancier restaurants Harvest and Graze.

When we first started eating at The Spot, I was addicted to the burgers. I’ve tried all three of the burgers on the menu and would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. They’re all half-pound (I think) patties, grilled to order on a beautiful roll, with a side of wilted mustard greens (or any side dish). $8 for the basic burger, including the side dish? No wonder I was addicted.

I have tried the pork tenderloin and the sirloin steak. But I return again and again to the fish. I love the salmon from the regular menu. And another standout special has been the escolar.

Fish. That’s the chef’s strong suit.

Check out their menu, here.

To Soak or Not to Soak?

Food and Drink

Kidney_beans - photo by Sanjay Acharya

My biggest cooking frustration? Waking in the morning to assemble ingredients for the slow cooker, only to find I’ve forgotten to soak the beans overnight.

No problem, Plan B is always the “quick soak,” i.e., boiling the beans for five minutes then covering and leaving to soak for an hour. That is, if you have an hour to spare before leaving for work.

Turns out, there’s no reason to soak beans, at all. Or at least that’s what food editor Russ Parsons contends in a recent LA Times piece. In it Parsons surveys the history of the soaking question, talks with food writers on both sides of the aisle, attempts to put the question to bed with science, and crows that he’s been anti-soak for decades. The article even looks at the question of beans and flatulence!

“That’s wrong,” says my wife, when she asks me about the bag of unsoaked beans among the rest of my ingredients. She recites the main reasons an overnight soak is necessary: cook time, tenderness vs. mushiness, flavor, and, yes, reduced flatulence. I’m not surprised by her recalcitrance in the face of legume reform. Every bit of advice I’ve ever seen, heard, or read sides with my wife.

Yet, here’s Parsons from the LA Times article.

Letting dried beans sit overnight in a bowl of cold water does nothing to improve their flavor or their texture. In fact, it does quite the opposite. . . . Finally, soaking does absolutely nothing to reduce the gas producing properties of beans.

We shall see. I’m dumping the bag of unsoaked pinto beans into my Crockpot, now . . .

Bean Soup with Tamarind and Ginger (7-qt. slow cooker)

1 lbs. dried  pinto beans

0.5 lbs. ham hocks

2 lbs. chicken drums

5-inch piece fresh ginger sliced

1 can tomato, diced 24-oz.

3 med onion, cut in 1/8th’s

 6 dried red chile peppers

5 tablespoons tamarind soup base

7 cups stock + 2 cups water

12 cloves garlic, sliced

1 bunch kale or collards

Directions for SEVEN QUART Slow Cooker:

Wash and sort beans.

Place all ingredients (except for greens) into slow cooker.

Switch slow cooker to high until simmering.

Switch to low.

Cut greens into 2-in. strips and add 10 – 20 min. before serving.

Cheesecloth? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Cheesecloth (To Drain Yogurt)

Food and Drink, Health
Coffee Maker yogurt

Coffee maker: the better yogurt strainer

The Better Way to Drain Yogurt

In the past when a recipe has called for strained yogurt, my wife and I have always gone with the conventional method, rigging up some version of the mouse-trap variety involving cheesecloth and gravity.  Hanging the yogurt-filled cheesecloth from a banana hook and draining the liquid into a bowl seems to perform well.  But it sure is a pain to set up.  The most commonly recommended method, fitting the cheesecloth inside a colander, simply doesn’t drain well; the larger surface area disperses the force of gravity, and the yogurt drains at a snail’s pace.

It finally occurred to us to try a Melitta coffee maker.  It sets up in a New York minute.  It drains the yogurt faster.  And it streamlines the task on the back end, as well:  after the yogurt fully drains, just tip the strained yogurt out of the filter, and finally squeeze what yogurt has stuck to the paper — like squeezing cake frosting from a pastry bag.  With cheesecloth, you’re left with a gooey mess that requires a spatula to salvage what you can, leaving wasted yogurt smeared in the woven fabric.

The finished product (drained yogurt)

The finished product (drained yogurt)

Cooking Black Bean Soup “Together”

Food and Drink

Above is a photo of my wife handing off “Black Bean Soup” to me midstream, as she leaves for work in the morning. With me working nights, we’ve developed a system that leverages the benefits of tag-team cooking even when we can’t work on a meal together, and, as in this case, when we don’t even see each other in the morning because our waking schedules don’t overlap.

She and I each like to cook well enough on our own, but it’s way more enjoyable cooking together. Cooking together also allows us to take on more complex recipes, in part because the total number of tasks is cut in half. And since our cooking skills and preferences are so different from one another, I usually get to trade away my least favorite culinary chores in exchange for one’s my wife despises but I enjoy.

(Recipe from Cooking, Chic Simple)
black beans soup recipe