The Escoffier Series continues, Chapter 13, Vegetables and Farinaceous Products
Corn and peas. Not together, of course. Those are the vegetables for today’s episode. From corn on the cob to corn fritters and creamed corn, there is a lot to do with corn and nearly all of it yummy. Peas are yummy too, but are less popular, probably. A simple buttered peas dish is just fine.
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We are continuing with chapter 13 of the Escoffier series.
Corn is our first veg.
With summer coming, corn on the cob is a big deal with weekend grilled meals with burgers, brats, and hot dogs. It’s also a great time for creamed corn, which is not a recipe Escoffier offers.
We can chuckle at Escoffier’s cooking procedure for ears of corn, which he calls heads of maize. Escoffier’s recommended cooking procedure is to boil or steam the head in the husk. To serve it, pull back the husks, leave the husk attached, it seems, and present it on a napkin with butter.
Of course, today, we husk and de-silk the corn before boiling.
There’s one change to cooking corn on the cob in boiling water that goes against everything we teach about cooking veggies. Corn gets no salt added to the water. Salt toughens the corn husk. So, boil in salt-free water and add salt to your preference after it is buttered.
Corn off the cob has many options including creamed corn, corn Maques Choux, corn fritters, and corn chowder. Corn Maques Choux is a Cajun recipe with some interesting and speculative history. Going into that here is too far from the topic. It is an interesting rabbit hole for you interested enough to dig.
We served corn Maques Choux with a salmon dish, I think. I’ll add a link on the show notes page to the recipe on the blog.
The other recipe worth making this summer is creamed corn. If your only memory is the canned stuff, give this a shot. I started with an Alton Brown recipe called Better Than Granny’s Creamed Corn. I’ve made a tweak or two of my own to what he wrote. What he wrote is just fine and is worth making. When the corn is excellent, I make a lot and freeze some.
The one last recipe to discuss, which does bear some resemblance to his croquette recipe, is a fritter. The croquette is in the shape of a hush puppy, made with very thick Sauce Bechamel, egg yolks, and corn. The fritter is more batter-like and is pan-fried. If you are using fresh corn it needs to be cooked first. Frozen corn needs to be thawed and canned corn needs to be drained. I’ve dabbled with a variety of recipes, gluten and gluten-free, and mostly they seem equally good. If you are making a gluten-free version, let the batter rest for 10 minutes before you fry. Low heat on the stovetop and several layers of paper towel either on a plate or a used bread bag to keep the oil off the counter. That’s just a step to reduce cleaning. I use the same produce bag/paper towel set up for my bacon. I like fresh thyme in my corn fritters. You can add any flavor you like and also consider what it is an accompaniment to. Dry spice heat is good, but salsa would not work.
Escoffier has a fritter recipe. To him, a fritter is a beignet, which is not the same thing as those doughnuts a Cafe du Monde in Nawleans. For Escoffier, a beignet is a thing battered and fried. Some of his procedures are Beignets d’Anchoirs, which is tuna and anchovy filet battered and fried. Salt cod and mashed potato, Beignet a la Bénédictine are walnut-sized flattened ovals battered and fried. That sounds pretty good.
For us, the corn fritter is more like a crepe batter with garnish, corn, and chives or scallions, then placed carefully pan-fried until golden brown, turned over, finished, and drained on a paper towel. As these are, they can resemble pancakes in shape and consistency.
There are scores of recipes. Some have more egg which will make less of a pancake and more like a funnel cake, with a loose shape and more crisp.
A basic recipe is 1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1 egg, half a cup of milk, and 12 ounces of corn, thawed, drained, or cooked.
The crepe method starts with the flour in a bowl. Add the egg and whisk to form a stiff paste. It is very likely you’ll not incorporate all the flour into the egg. That’s expected and it’s fine. Add a small amount of the milk and whisk that in. Add a few more additions of milk to form a stiff batter. Add the corn, salt and pepper, and any green garnish you prefer–chives, scallions, diced Jalapeño, cilantro–let stand for 2 minutes, 10 if it is gluten-free, and fry.
The tighter the batter, the more like a pancake the fritters will be. The looser the batter, either with two eggs or more milk, the runnier the batter will be and you’ll get that funnel cake-style fritter. Those eat more like popcorn as in they are a bit addicting. The pancake style are good sides for dinner of maybe smoked brisket or pulled pork.
You can spice it up, too. Cumin or ground coriander, chili powder, paprika, or any other spice that makes sense with your meal. They don’t need a sauce, exactly, but sour cream is a fine addition, or horseradish sauce, or just plain.
Peas, or petit pois, are next. In some cases, Escoffier will say the canned version of a vegetable is an acceptable substitute for the fresh version. Not so for peas. He makes no such statement. He does point out that peas should be shelled as close to service as possible since they lose their quality if not cooked carefully and that, “[w]hen prepared with care, the flavour of peas is of incomparable delicacy but the slightest negligence will result in a vegetable of poor flavour and little value.”
Peas are probably a love them or hate them vegetable. The simplest way to cook them is to boil them in salted water. When done, place them in a saute pan to dry them a bit, and add butter, a pinch of sugar, and salt. That’s it. Escoffier’s ratio is 5 ounces of butter to 2.2 pounds of peas. That’s a quarter of a stick per quarter-pound of peas. Not really too much.
Peas and mint is a classic combination almost certainly rarely seen these days. A cold minted pea salad would be a nice picnic dish. I would probably use homemade mayonnaise as the binder or sour cream and in either case just enough binder to coat the peas.
The last one for today is pimentos. He doesn’t mean the stuff in the jar or the olive, but the pepper before that happened.
Red bell peppers and pimentoes look very similar. Unless you handle a lot of peppers, it might be difficult to distinguish one from the other. Either will work for his preparations. The pimento has a thick flesh wall and tends to be very uniform and consistent in shape and size. They have a heft to them. In all cases, the pepper should be skinned. Red peppers are especially easy to skin. Yellow and green get a bit more difficult. There are three ways to achieve the task of skinning a pepper. Char the skin either in a hot oven or a broiler. You can also put the whole pepper into the flame of a gas stovetop burner. Tend to it and as it burns, use tongs–yes, I said tongs–to turn the pepper and burn more sides. The last method and one I’ve not tried, is to fry the whole pepper in a deep fryer. I’m a fan of the burn method, broiler, or gas eye since there is also a flavor development that is pleasing.
When the pepper skin is charred, place the whole pepper into a stainless steel bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Let that stand for about 10 minutes to cool enough to handle it easily. The steam produced also makes removing the skin pretty easy. It’s a bit of a mess. You’ll need two more bowls, one for the peels and one for the peppers. I pull the stem end out and tear the pepper in half. Let the seeds and top stay in the first bowl. You’ll get liquid, too, which is too little to be of much use. The skin should pull away pretty easily. Once you’ve peeled the peppers, it is almost certain you’ll need to rinse them to remove the charred bits. Drain them on a paper towel.
Now that you’ve done that, you can make this.
Slice 1 large Spanish onion and cook in half a cup of good extra virgin olive oil to develop a light color. Add 18 ounces of peeled pimentos cut into half-inch strips. Cook for 15-20 minutes. Add 1 1/4 Cups of good vinegar and reduce by half. Add some garlic, 1 Cup of tomato puree, and 3 ounces of raisins, he writes sultanas. Cover and cook for an hour and a half on low heat. Serve cold.
That’s his recipe for a cold meat accompaniment. The addition of raisins seems very Sicilian. It would be great with hams or other cured deli meats.
I overlooked turnips. I like turnips. I alone like turnips. Turnip greens are a good Southern dish. Mustard greens and collards, too.
Next up in this chapter is potatoes. That’s an episode alone. There are a lot of potato procedures. There are some important procedures to cover so those will be the focus. Every one of his procedures is worth making since potatoes are so versatile. That’s too much to listen to, of course. The basics of a few are worth learning so you can adapt to any potato situation.
