The Escoffier Series, Ch 13, Vegetables and Farinacious Products
Oh, the ways to cook vegetables and the many vegetables to cook. Truly speaking, some fruits are added here, cucumbers and tomatoes, since they are more often considered veggies.
There is also added potatoes and some noodles.
This episode starts with some of the cooking basics. I’m going in alphabetical order as Escoffier lists the vegetables. We cover just a few here including artichokes and asparagus.
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Text from the show
The Escoffier series continues with chapter 13.
For many of us, and I include myself here, steaming fresh green beans or broccoli might be all the veg we eat. You who have kids know even that might be a challenge.
Sometimes it is just steamed frozen peas or corn kernels.
Those veg are fine. I add butter and salt and pepper. I have some habits in the kitchen that are carryover habits from my service days. I have more than a few stainless steel bowls here. Probably close to 20 of various sizes. They’re small and don’t break, are easy to clean and store, and light. I put some butter in a small bowl and wait for the steamed veg to be done. Tip the veg into the bowl, toss to coat in butter, season, and serve. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I usually overcook the green beans on purpose. I think they taste better and the way they’re growing green beans they are so woody it’s like eating twigs if they aren’t cooked enough.
I’m pretty sure that’s not a procedure to find in Le Guide Culinaire.
Escoffier lists some popular vegetables and presents some of his preparation ideas. Artichokes are first. I’ll not go through every vegetable. I will touch on a few, though.
Artichokes require labor and effort. If not before cooking then during eating. The leaves have thorny barbs on the end and the choke part can get everywhere. They’re a mess to clean and can take time. Those aren’t reasons to avoid artichokes. That’s just information for planning.
The best way I learned to prepare and keep artichokes was to clean them down to the heart and poach them from cold in salted lemon water. When they are just tender, remove them from the water and place them into extra virgin olive oil to cool. Once cooled, they’ll keep for a while in the cooler.
Extra virgin olive oil gets viscous when cold. To get those artichokes out, let the container warm up on the counter until you can easily lift out the ‘chokes with a spoon. Don’t put your bare hand in the oil since what’s on your hand, bacteria-wise may stay and grow in the oil.
Those cooked, preserved, artichoke hearts can be added to nearly any dish which takes artichokes. We used to add them to the risotto for a Grouper Picatta.
Perhaps the most popular way to cook and eat artichokes is to cut the thorns off the tips of the leaves, scrape out the choke, fill them with seasoned cheesy bread crumbs, and bake with a white cream sauce. They look impressive. The wee bit of artichoke meat at the end of the leaf isn’t motivating to me. I do like the artichoke heart and am happy to work to get that.
There is one other way I enjoy the artichoke heart. Clean it down to the heart. Scrape out the choke and cut the raw heart into thick pieces, maybe a quarter of an inch thick. Saute them in extra virgin olive oil until they brown then turn them over and finish cooking. They can be as a side alone or added to a pasta dish.
Asparagus is next. Escoffier identifies 4 kinds of asparagus: Argenteuil which is a typical French variety, the green variety, the violet asparagus of Genoa typical of Italian asparagus, and the white Belgian variety.
A quick Google search turned up one page discussing 15 varieties of asparagus. White asparagus is pretty rare in grocery stores. Asparagus is the first veg of the season and is pretty quick. By mid to late June it might already be done.
Asparagus can be quite woody at the bottom of the stalk. Asparagus can be woody, that is, have fibrous outsides that cooking doesn’t remove. Asparagus larger than my finger is peeled. It’s a bit of a challenge sometimes to peel, but well worth the result when it comes to eating it.
White asparagus is said to be sweeter. I have not found that to be so. When I ate it, I found it to be bitter. I cannot say that bitter and sweet cannot exist together in one food. Bitter is pH and sweet is not.
Most often restaurants simply put asparagus on the plate as is. Buttered and seasoned we hope and that’s it. There’s a lot to do with it. Escoffier offers a variety of ways to serve it and most involve placing the cooked asparagus in an oval dish, covering the tips with buttered bread crumbs, and browning that under a small broiler. Also, baking them in an oval dish in a cheese sauce and gratineeing that under a small broiler.
He also offers asparagus with Sauce Maltaise. That’s Hollandaise sauce with blood orange juice.
That’s pretty good. Blood oranges aren’t in season yet. Blood oranges have a robust berry citrus flavor. Usually, it’s strawberry and raspberry with the orange flavor. The color, too, is impressive and makes a nice sauce. Regular oranges will do nicely. Seville oranges are bitter which will go well with the rich of the Hollandaise and sweetness of green asparagus. Also, orange butter sauce, or beurre blanc. Similar fat levels and flavor profiles as Hollandaise.
Cooked and cooled asparagus is a nice summer treat. Serve with an orange mayonnaise or an orange vinaigrette and you keep the pairing of asparagus and orange, kind of a classic.
One suggestion I would offer for cooking asparagus is to tie it into bundles. The advantage is it is easy to lift all of the asparagus out of the water to shock it. That’s a good tip if you plan to heat it later or keep it cold. The other advantage is it’s easy to lift one bundle out of the ice bath. Hunting around in ice water for all the asparagus can get chilly.
Two more to mention.
Eggplant and carrots. We’ll pass over cardoons since I’ve only seen them once or twice in grocery stores and that was 15 years ago.
Eggplant is known to be bitter. That can be good or bad depending on what flavor profiles you like. It also works well for compatibility. Many recipes and many chefs suggest salting the cut side of eggplant and letting it rest for up to an hour to draw the water and with it, the bitterness. I’ve done this and I’ve not done this. I like bitter. I don’t notice much difference either way.
Eggplant Parmesan, eggplant parm, is pretty tasty. Escoffier even has a procedure for that. He calls it Eggplant a la Napolitane. He says Aubergine, of course.
Peel the eggplant and cut into 6 pieces lengthwise. You can make rounds if you wish. Salt them, dry them, bread them in the usual three-step breading procedure, and pan-fry over medium heat. You can deep fry them if you have a deep fryer. Arrange them in an oval casserole dish layering them with reduced tomato sauce and parmesan cheese and bake until fully heated throughout.
You can make modifications to this, of course.
Another procedure he repeats with alterations is cutting the eggplant in half lengthwise, scoring the flesh, deep frying, we would bake them, and scooping out the cooked insides. He saves the skin for a serving vessel which seems a clever idea. One procedure that interested me and one I’ve never seen before is eggplant souffle. Procedure 3996 if you are interested. I’m sure the Google will find it.
If you have a deep fryer or are familiar with deep frying on the stovetop, peel the eggplant, and cut it very thin on a mandoline or electric slicer. Being very thin is important. Thin as in 2 millimeters or so. Season them, flour them, and deep fry them. Basically, it’s the fried vegetables of the 80s. Eggplant chips are wonderful. They have to be cut thinly, fried crispy, and eaten quickly. The residual moisture will make them soggy pretty fast and then they are not amazing.
What Escoffier doesn’t offer about cooking eggplant is what happens when you saute it in large dice. Or even in small dice.
Eggplant is like a sponge for oil. Start with a hot pan, add a good layer of oil to that pan, and add your eggplant and you’ll say what happened to the oil? So, add some more because the eggplant will scorch. You add some more, then probably a bit more, and maybe a touch more after that. Your eggplant is now browning nicely, not scorching. You have started to toss the pan to turn the eggplant pieces or you’re using a tool for that then, Woooosh, all this oil just appears in the pan. It doesn’t actually make a noise; it just shows up.
The cells in the eggplant that absorbed all that oil start to collapse from the heat altering the structure of the cell walls. When that happens to the point where the cell walls give up, you get back a lot of that oil.
That oil can be used to then saute the rest of the ingredients for the dish. Suppose you’re making an eggplant pasta dish. Start with the eggplant. When the oil comes out, add onions and garlic, maybe a fresh herb. Some peeled cherry tomatoes and then the pasta. I would use a rigatoni or penne, but a long noodle would also work. Red pepper flakes for some heat and a decent amount of cheese and it’s time to eat.
The last one today is carrots. Escoffier does note that some carrots are very tough, woody almost. We might call them horse carrots. The carrots you buy in 1-pound bags are not going to be too tough.
The most popular French carrot dish is probably Carrots Vichy, named after the town Vichy, known for pure water. Carrots Vichy is substantially the same as glazed carrots, except Carrots Vichy is garnished with chopped parsley. I’ve seen online recipes add lemon juice to Carrots Vichy. That’s not how Escoffier wrote it. However, if it improves the dish, he would be the first to approve. Carrots Vichy is rich and sweet from both natural and added sugar. A touch of acid seems a good idea to break that up a bit.
Cut carrots into uniform pieces so they cook mostly at the same time. Put the cut carrots in a pan and just cover with water. Add half a teaspoon of salt, an ounce of sugar, and two ounces of butter. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook until the water is almost a syrup. Shake the pan once in a while to ensure even distribution of glaze. When they are done, carefully taste for seasoning. Stir to coat all the carrots with the glaze and serve.
Glazed carrots will be Escoffier’s basic method of cooking carrots regardless of the final use. Vichy is simply adding the parsley. I add the parsley while the carrots are still in the pan. The residual heat boosts the green color a bit and opens the aroma. If you decide to try the lemon juice, add that a minute before you decide the carrots are done.
That’s pretty basic. I find them a touch too sweet. I cut back on the sugar. Also, no one here likes cooked carrots so it’s mostly a moot point.
What else is possible with that basic process? Parsnips respond very well to glazing. No one here likes parsnips either, so that’s all me. Turnips and beets would work. Beets would make a great colored sauce. So might pearl onions. You might have to remove the onions before the glaze develops and then add them back to coat them.
Rutabaga might work. They break down pretty quickly after they are cooked.
Sticking to carrots, you can add spice to the water. Coriander or cumin will create a warm flavor profile. Add chopped cilantro or scallions at the end.
Remember that caramel is flavor. Let those glazed carrots develop a small amount of color and that really opens up the flavors.
Instead of butter, use coconut oil and add curry powder to the water. I just thought of that. Should work. You can really play with flavors and heat on a dish like that to come up with your own specific recipe.
