More Stroganoff

For some reason, I try making chicken stroganoff. Chicken stroganoff, you say? Isn't it beef stroganoff? Well, yes, it is. But chicken is cheaper than beef, and chicken thighs cheaper than chicken breasts.

But you know what? It doesn't taste quite right. Chicken thighs need something to cover up its taste, like chicken curry or a Chinese dish. The beefy taste taste good in a simple sort of way.

I tried a recipe from Cooks Illustrated, and boy is it kinda complex. It requires tomato paste and brown sugar and white wine. It uses a kind of roux as well. A roux, for those who don't know, is a combination of flour and fat, usually butter, but oil will do. You heat up the butter, and mix it with about a tablespoon of flour, and once it's pretty warm, it thickens like no one's business. It's amazing how well it works.

Beef stroganoff usually has sour cream and, say, stock or water, which if you add too much, makes the result pretty watery. Thus, the roux to thicken it.

I've also made it using beef and a recipe from Cooking for Engineers. This is a site developed by an engineer devoted to cooking. Its recipe is simpler than Cooks Illustrated, and therefore I prefer it. Anytime I can use less ingredients, I'm all for it. They claim it takes 20 minutes to do the Cooks Illustrated to make the dish, and it took me almost an hour. What a pain.

So I think I'm going to follow the recipe out of Cooking for Engineers from now on, but because it's so fatty, I don't think I'll do it too often.

I think it's time to try something different.

Making Stroganoff

It's been a while since I made beef stroganoff, the last few times, I suspect it was chicken. The problem with using beef, at least beef from Whole Food's is that it's very expensive. By buying any reasonable amount of beef (a little over a pound), I've already made a dish that's ten dollars or more, for a dish that's considered, well, not the highest end.

The few times I've made it, the sauce has been too watery, and nor particularly thick. I used a trick by essentially making roux, but was still moderately unhappy with the results. I decided to follow a recipe from Cooking for Engineers.

Cooking for Engineers is run by one Michael Chu. Most food blogs illustrate the ingredients with pictures, showing step by step what to do. It's funny how, even good cookbooks often lack pictures, and how the average Joe can do something better than the pros.

The standard recipe in Joy of Cooking and also the one in Cooks Illustrated essentially also opt for the roux approach, requiring butter and flour to thicken the result.

Chu takes a different approach, and it works remarkably well provided you don't mind the amount of fat involved. In particular, the recipe from Joy of Cooking asks for 3 tablespoons of sour cream. Cooks Illustrated asks for 1/3 cup (that's about 5 tablespoons). Chu opts for an entire cup! that's 3 times as much as Cooks Illustrated, and more than 5 times used in Joy of Cooking.

However, sour cream isn't all that sour, and I feel that beef stroganoff needs a pretty strong sour cream taste. Plus sour cream is pretty thick, and you can mostly avoid a roux by using a lot more sour cream.

The one drawback of the recipe was the way I made the beef. In particular, it came out pretty hard (it might be the cut of beef I had) and kinda bland. I believe that I should have lightly salted and peppered the beef either prior to cooking, or slightly after.

I'm likely to try it with chicken again, just to see how that works out.

So, the trick, such as it is, is to use a ton of sour cream (one cup) instead of the roux. Oh, Chu also suggest adding a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Also, a good idea, as it gives a nice mustard tang. Cooks Illustrated opts for a lot of additional ingredients including tomato paste, brown sugar, wine, etc. I might give that a try, but the recipe is more complex (by just a touch) and I hate dealing with tomato paste, because even if I have a tiny can, I only ever use about a tablespoon at a time. I might use it more in my Indian cooking though, since I never seem to get through even a tiny can.

So lessons from this? Get a little less beef. Add salt/pepper to beef to season it.

But it is quite pricey, so chicken might be a better alternative, even if it lacks as much flavor as beef.

In And Outlet

In my blatant paean to commercialism, I ended up asking a friend where I could get a Le Creuset dutch oven. For those who don't know, a dutch oven is typically a cast iron pot (doesn't have to be) that can sit on the stovetop as well as go in the oven.

Did I mention that cast iron is heavy? Think bowling ball.

Cast iron pans come in two varieties. Those meant for shepherds and cowboys and campers on the range that want a heavy pot to do their cooking over the campfire. And those meant for people who want to show off at home.

I fit in the second category. Those who fit in the first can find a pretty good cast iron pot for 40-60 dollars from a company called Lodge. These cast iron pots look the part. They are heavy, rough, rugged and black. Those who fit in the second have one name that is the Rolls Royce of pots: Le Creuset. A mediumish to tiny pot might be 5 quarts and typically goes for a shade under 200 dollars.

A largish pot at 13 quarts costs 350 dollars. When you can get a pot of that size at IKEA for 60 dollars, it makes you wonder why you would shell 6 times that amount for a pot that weighs a ton.

So the claim goes like this. A cast iron pot is so heavy that the pot doesn't really have hot or cold spots. The entire pot radiates at the same heat (once it heats up, that is). And the enamel coating on Le Creuset gives it a shimmering beauty. You don't want to do any cooking that is sticky, like eggs. Instead, it's better for stews and casseroles.

I was looking for a cheap alternative, but nothing seemed to shine as a good alternative. Back when people used film in their cameras, many found the excessive prices of Leica and Hasselblad, German makers of film cameras with superior optics, whose prices ran into 4 digits, far too steep for their pocketbook. Instead, they opted for Japanese makes which could give you pretty decent optics with great electronics at less than half the price. Many pros relied on its precision to do their work. Only classic portrait photographers opted for the pricier German models.

Much like the car industry.

Le Creuset doesn't have a particular challenger. There's at least one other brand that sells in their price range. Chausseur also makes similarly priced pots. Even Lodge, the guys I said made rugged pots have gotten into the swing of things, offering their version of enamel pots, priced similarly to Le Creuset.

Even so, I resigned myself to the fact that were I to find a pot, even at an outlet store, it would still maybe be 20 to 30 percent cheaper, which, while a relative bargain, still cost a lot.

A coworker recommened I go to Leesburg Premium Outlet Shops out on Leesburg Pike, which is kinda in the middle of nowhere. You head to Tyson's Corner, get on Leesburg Pike, and head out about 20 miles. It's off on US 15 North. You could also head to Frederick and come in from the north. Frederick, Tyson's Corner, and Rockville form a kind of triangle from which you can access the other two points via parts of 270, 495, and Leesburg Pike.

Let me just say that these outlet malls are like Disneyland for the shopper. Shops are lined up everywhere. There are some drawbacks. For one, the food court is pitiful, geared primarily to fast food eaters. Places like Burger King and Sbarro's abound. Abound is too generous a word. There's maybe 5 fast food places, and none too great. The better not to distract you from your shopping.

The prices aren't tremendously great. Some places do have reasonably good discounts. The Williams-Sonoma store seems to have fewer items than their main stores, but has more seasonal items they want to get rid of. They have a "professional" ice crusher, for instance. Feed in ice cubes. Get out crushed ice. I was tempted, but ended up saying no.

What is cool are the specialty shops, from the Nike only shop, to the Adidas only shop, to Ralph Lauren, to Seiko, to yes, Le Creuset. Unlike, say, the Gap, which was packed with people looking for bargains, Le Creuset isn't packed. Let's face it. Selling pots at 5 times the going price doesn't attract lots of customers. But I went in looking for a Dutch Oven.

The only key was how big and whether I picked round or oval. I eventually decided on oval, because I thought I might be able to put a small bird in their (like a chicken). This was suggested by the young man with the bizarre accent. Furthermore, the oval one was 5 quarts as opposed to 5.5 quarts for the round one. That half a quart meant 10 dollars, and 5 quarts seemed plenty big for what I needed.

I picked from the second choice pile which was about 20% cheaper than the normal pile, which is "discounted". That discount is pretty much the same everywhere. You're an idiot if you buy Le Creuset full price, at least, the price they claim is full price (one could argue you're an idiot buying Le Creuset, but let's not indulge in this point, shall we?).

I decided to shop their last because I was going to be carrying the equivalent of a bowling ball (albeit a light one) home, and I wanted to postpone that as late as I could. I went to shop at various clothing places, one where I didn't really get a discount, but the prices seemed OK, so I bought it anyway, and two others which had good prices.

I'm not sure I would make the journey down there too often. It's quite a far trek. It is nice to visit, but the savings aren't so ridiculous that I would go there all the time.

Even so, going to my first outlet mall, and getting my first Le Creuset was something of an adventure.

Now to do some cookin'.

Broil, Broil, Toil and Trouble

I've heard the term broil for a long time, but never quite knew what it was. It sounds like boil, but sound-alike isn't the same as being alike. I know there's a setting on the oven for it, but what does it mean?

And why do I care?

It turns out I have a recipe for chicken tikka masala, which, apparently, is a Westernized version of an Indian dish, something like Chicken Hunan is a representative Hunan chicken dish.

I don't mind that's it's not perfectly authentic, since I'm trying this for the first time. Here's the issue though. It requires-you guess it-broiling.

It turns out broiling is kinda like the inverse of grilling. When you grill, you are cooking meat with direct radiant heat, typically from charcoal. Ovens, on the other hand, use convection heat, i.e., heat from the air getting hot.

It's easier to understand broiling with an electric stove. At the top, there are coils. You move a broiling pan which is typically two very flat pans. The top pan has slits and lets the juices fall through to the bottom pan, which serves to catch this so it doesn't fall to the bottom of the oven.

You typically stick the pan as high as it will go, so it's near the radiant parts. The direct heat, unlike grilling, comes from above, instead of below, but otherwise behaves much the same as grilling.

Some ovens have a separate chamber below the main oven which is much smaller (so the heat is more direct) and serves the same purpose.

Here's a good article on the subject.

The key to broiling is to keep an eye on it, as you will only spend a few minutes heating it, as opposed to 20 minutes to several hours with conventional baking.

The things you learn on the Internet. It's really quite an invention.