Food Moves

Background: After shoving takeout food in my feelings hole for a couple years during the pandemic, I got curious about eating differently. My kids only ate beige salty foods at the time. Dinner time, which used to be my favorite time of day, became less about cooking something balanced and interesting and more about just slogging through. I needed a new challenge. So I decided to try to eat only plants between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., M-F. Veg stock became central to this challenge. I remembered a few tricks from my days as a restaurant cook and a learned a few new ones. Here are the steps:

1. Get two pounds of cremini mushrooms and chop them coarsely.
2. Put a small amount of oil in a stock pot and sauté the mushrooms.
3. Salt and pepper the mushrooms to taste and stir vigorously.
4. Cut veg for mirepoix or pull the already cut veg you prepped out of the freeze and add to the mushrooms.
5. Sweat your veg in the bottom of the pan for a while on medium to low heat.
6. Pull out all the veg scraps you have from the freezer and add them to the pot.
7. Add any veg you have that’s getting tired in the crisper of your refrigerator.
8. Look around your kitchen for that onion that’s been there a minute and add that.
9. Add your favorite modality of garlic.
10. Throw some bay leaves in there.
11. Cover the vegetables with filtered water and simmer until all the vegetables can be mashed with a chef’s fork.
12. Add a can of tomato paste and whisk until it’s dissolved into the stock.
13. Adjust seasonings.
14. Strain the stock.
15. Use right away or store in the freezer.

Why It Works:

1. Mushrooms are full of umami and cremini mushrooms have more of it than white mushrooms but aren’t as expensive as some exotic mushrooms or dried mushrooms.
2. Cooking the mushrooms brings our more umami.
3. The salt, pepper, oil, moisture, and bits of mushroom agitated by the vigorous stirring will create a fond in the bottom of the pan, which will give your stock more flavor.
4. If frozen, they might splatter a bit.
5. Sweating means you are drawing the moisture out of the veg by heating slowly.
6. While your veg is sweating, it’s a good time to clean out your freezer.
7. Avoid greens. They will make the stock bitter.
8. You are looking for anything that will add more flavor and use up a resource that would otherwise not be used.
9. This step is optional but encouraged.
10. Do bay leaves do anything? If they are fresh, yes. Dried bay leaves are not fresh and, over time, they will lose their flavor. Because every recipe ever only calls for one bay leaf, everyone has a spice jar of expired bay leaves in their spice rack. So it might take more than you think to taste it. Add one more bay leaf each time you make this until you think, “Hmm…That’s too much bay leaf.” Or “Hmmm…I wonder what fresh bay leaf would do.”
11. One way to use this time and energy efficiently is to throw some whole cleaned or peeled vegetables that you want to use cooked in another way. I throw whole peeled carrots in there and pull them out when they are fully cooked. I add garlic and habaneros to make a nice creamy hot sauce. You could boil potatoes in it or steam broccoli in a covered strainer on top. Dense root veg work well here.
12. Like mushrooms, tomato paste is high in umami. But if you add it too early, the concentrated sugars in the paste can burn.
13. At this point, depending on how you season, you could covert it form stock to broth. Stock can be used in anything. Broth is going to have a salt content and flavor profile that narrows its uses. For example, broth will get saltier as it is reduced for a sauce. The addition of Chinese five spice will take it in a different direction than Italian seasoning.
14. I use a chinois for straining. If the fine mesh one is dirty, I use a coarse China cap strainer and strain into another stock pot or pitcher.
15. I make beans with this right away and store the rest in labeled take-out containers in the freezer.

Mods:

1. Add dried mushrooms when you add the water. This will boost the flavor, but it can be expensive. Because I live in a place where it’s miserably hot most of the year, I sun dry mushrooms in the summer for this purpose.
2. Throw a bumper crops of summer squash, zucchini, and tomatoes in there during the summer, if you’ve got them.
3. Add miso paste at the end when you are adjusting the seasonings. This will boost the salt and umami, too, but go easy until you have it dialed in.
4. When I need veg stock but only have a few odds and ends, I use “Better Than Bouillon” vegetable base. Like miso, go easy. It will add umami, but also sodium.

Background: I grow peppers and sometimes I have a bumper crop. Like many moves, this is both a prepped ingredient and a preservation technique. Roasted peppers are a great ingredient to have on hand. It’s not complicated and the same techniques work with any pepper, regardless where it falls on the Scoville scale.

1. Get a bunch of peppers or grab one that’s about to start getting wrinkly.
2. Pick the method of heat that’s most convenient for you:
   • Electric stove
   • Gas stove
   • Broiler
   • Wood fired grill
   • Coals
   • Blowtorch
3. If indoors, turn on the hood.
4. Unless you are broiling or grilling, you want the pepper touching the heat source or the heat source touching the pepper. Turn with tongs until you get all sides of the pepper.
5. If using a thick walled pepper like a jalapeño or bell pepper, completely char the skin of the pepper so that it’s black and flaking off. If using a thinned walled pepper like a habanero, just blister the skin as best you can.
6. Put the peppers directly in a glass bowl and put a heavy plate on top of it.
7. Go about your other prep work.
8. When the peppers are cool enough to handle carefully, make a slit all the way up the side to the stem. You should be able to grab the stem and most of the seeds and remove them in one piece.
9. Open up the destemmed, seeded pepper and scrape the remaining seeds off the flesh with the back your knife.
10. Flip the pepper over to its charred side and scrape the skin off.
11. Leave in large pieces, cut into strips, or dice.
12. Cover with salt and vinegar to pickle or refrigerate or freeze them as they are.

Why It Works

1. It’s best to do this when the peppers are fresh. The flavor is better and the skin comes off better. But if my options were to throw away a pepper in a couple of days or do this move now, I’m going do this move now regardless of wrinkles.
2. The method doesn’t change depending on heat source
   • Place the pepper directly on the coil burner or flattop burner. (I haven’t tried this with induction burners.)
   • Place the peppers directly over the flame. I use a wire rack or grill grate to position them on.
   • Place the peppers directly under the heating element.
   • These last two will change the flavor in nice ways and are my favorite. Any time I fire up the grill, campfire, I use the time before the fire is ready to cook my main meat or veg to flame roast peppers, char corn, or blister tomatoes. Otherwise, I feel like I’m wasting fuel.
   • Put the pepper directly onto coals, caveman style. This is the messiest method, but it works.
   • The blowtorch method could work if you wanted both blistered skin and a fruity raw-ish pepper taste. It’s not going to result in a steamed pepper the way the other methods will eventually.
3. It’s going to get smoky, but I find the smell pleasant.
4. With an open flame on a grill or firepit, it’s ok if the flame touches the pepper. For most live fire applications, cooks want coals, not flame. This might be an exception.
5. If you go too far you will end up burning the flesh of the pepper and the skin. This will result in a pepper that cannot be peeled in that spot.
6. You are using the residual heat from the pepper to steam the skin off and steam the flesh.
7. I don’t think you can go too long on this step unless you leave it in the danger zone (below 140 degrees) for several hours. It can be done in as little as 15 minutes or you can wait an hour.
8. A few seeds left on the pepper is better than rinsing the whole thing in the name of being thorough. That’s washing away flavor. Sometimes I rinse anyway if it’s a really really hot pepper.
9. If you’ve done it correctly, the skin should lay in flat sheet on the cutting board and be easy to cut into strips.
10. Leave some charred skin on for character.
11. Large pieces will let you decide on your final presentation later. Diced peppers will limit you to, well, diced peppers.
12. I like to do refrigerate some, pickle some, and freeze some.

Mods:

1. Because this move is so versatile and simple, the method mods are mostly related to the peppers you pick and your heat source, but if you’ve done this move and you want to put a twist on it, think about one ingredient or seasoning you could add to it that would change the ingredient. Consider the following:
   • Toss in oil and use in a dish right away, maybe something with goat cheese.
   • Add salt and pepper or seasonings to the peppers before you freeze and see how that changes the applications you think of using them for.
   • This method is the basis for many other stuffed pepper recipes like chile relleno. In fact, I think it should be the first step on all stuffed pepper recipes. It doesn’t have to be fried like chile relleno, but if you can’t cut through a stuffed pepper with a fork, then the pepper just becomes a garnish and a vessel for the stuffing and that’s a waste of a pepper.

Background: I always have about a half a loaf of bread on my counter that’s about to go bad. Usually it’s sandwich loaf of sourdough. Usually going bad means getting moldy. Here’s what I do:

1. Unwrap the bread and save the plastic wrap to recycle at the grocery store.
2. If it’s just a slice or two or three, put the slices whole in the back of the fridge where it will dry out without molding. If you have a half a loaf or more, cube it and chill it on a sheet tray.
3. When you have enough for a good batch, or want to reclaim the fridge space, break it into irregular pieces with your hands, or, if cubed on a sheet tray, move to the next step.
4. On a sheet tray or foil or foil on a sheet tray, toss with grapeseed oil and kosher salt.
5. Bake at 350 until the perfect golden brown color, about 15 to 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it. Ovens vary.

Why It Works:

1. Leaving bread in plastic wrap will speed up the molding process by trapping moisture inside.
2. Putting bread in the fridge will actually hasten the process of staling by changing the structure of the starch molecules. This change results in the bread being less able to hold onto moisture, which is what you want in a crouton.
3. I like the rustic quality of hand-broken bread croutons, but I also appreciate a nice uniform batch of croutons. I let the shape of the croutons I have dictate the style of soup or salad I make with them.
4. Any oil will work. Any salt will work. Seasonings are welcome, but leave off the herbs.
5. The perfect golden brown color is subjective, but burnt tends to be more defined. You want it not burnt. And not too toasted. And not just stale bread.

Mods:

1. Play with different types of breads. Heartier nuttier seedier whole wheatier breads will yield a different result, but they also might inspire a different kind of soup or salad. The healthier the bread, the thinner the croutons should be. With a really cunchy granola hippie bread, I would go with sheets instead of cubes.
2. Try different seasonings, but keep in mind that garlic and dried leafy herbs will burn. If you want certain flavors in the croutons, look for those flavors in the bread.
3. You can add hard cheeses like parmesan, asiago, and manchego just before you bake them to form a latticework of cheesy croutons.

Background: You could go your whole life making chicken stocks and broths from rotisserie chicken like I described in another move. However, if you want to make a richer, more flavorful stock, use this move. It’s still faster than roasting a bird and using its bones.

1. Add to your largest stock pot all the raw chicken thigh bones you’ve been saving in the freezer.
2. Add any raw wings, feet, and heads and that you have saved.
3. Sauté for a bit in fat you have saved for this reason.
4. Add mirepoix from the freezer.
5. Sauté for a bit more. There should be some fond, but no burnt bits.
6. Add two rotisserie chicken carcasses.
7. Cover with water and bring to a boil.
8. Reduce temp and simmer until any chicken meat left tastes bland.

Why It Works:

1. Raw chicken will impart more flavor and collagen into your stock. You know the gelatinous stuff that forms at the bottom of a rotisserie chicken container as it chills? That’s the stuff we want in our stock. The roasting process has released some of it.
2. These parts are rich in collagen. Avoid organ meats though. They change the flavor significantly.
3. You can use chicken fat rendered from raw chicken skin you took off the thighs. This is a good move to do after making chicken burgers from thighs. You can also use a little lard or bacon fat or whatever you have.
4. What do you mean you don’t have mirepoix in the freezer?
5. The fond will add flavor, but the burnt bits will add bitterness.
6. You can add the skin too, if you have it. But it is really salty. There’s some debate, at this point, if you are still making stock if you are adding salt. Stock traditionally doesn’t have salt in for maximum flexibility. Many classic French recipes will call for reducing stock down several times. Salting at the beginning stage will yield a final sauce that’s too salty. This distinction is usually lost once you leave the realm of classic French cooking. Many people and companies salt their stocks. Do what is convenient for you if you aren’t making demi-glace.
7. I bring to a roiling boil to ease my mind. Big bubbles, no troubles.
8. I like to clean our the fridge and/or freezer while I do this. I often find bags of carrots that came home leftover from lunches. I find onion tops or tomatoes or green onions that were about to go bad. Sometimes I find a pork shoulder bone or something. Throw it all in there.

Mods

1. Make broth instead of stock by adding seasonings and more raw meat to the mix. The chicken thighs you were going to use for burgers but didn’t get around to grinding would be perfect.
2. If you don’t have enough veg but you still want to get rid of some carcasses, consider using a vegetable base. I use Better Than Bouillon’s Seasoned Vegetable Base so I can make veg stock quickly.
3. Throw some other roasted meat bones to take it from a whiter stock to a browner stock.