If your basil looks anything like the picture below then you might not have been aggressive enough with your scissors this summer. Not that I’m casting blame. Every plant in my front garden has grown tall and lanky despite my best efforts.   I think local weather this season was conducive to bolting.

While the flowers may be fun to look at they aren’t exactly indicative of good flavor. Sweet basil flowers like a cranky old man.  Tough leathery leaves have a bitter taste and aroma fairly reminiscent of their tender youthful past. Trimming at this point wont do you much good so now is a great time to yank your plants and devote an evening to pesto.

I’ve pulled all my sweet basil and plucked the most tender leaves while discarding the large tough ones at the base. As for pesto recipes this one works fine. I made a massive double batch and used it all week to flavor pastas and drizzle over garden fresh tomatoes. With the recent heat and humidity it’s hard to believe summer will soon slip away. Devour what’s left of it while you still can.

Flowering Basil

I think these farmers are up to something.  On little plastic plates piled high for grubby hands were the sweetest, most perfect representation of peachy pleasure I’d encountered all summer.  I’d been waiting for peach season for weeks and rumors that the rainy Spring was great for stone fruit was fueling desire.

At home with the sweet taste of peach still fresh in my mind  I pealed my bounty with a paring knife while juice collected in my palm and ran down my wrist.  I fumbled with the glistening skinless orbs as they slid around my cutting board hanging on to stubborn pits.

I popped a slice in my mouth and …

This wasn’t the peach I sampled at all.    Tart, a little unyielding and less than flavorful.  A slice from another confirmed my suspicion.  These peaches were good, sure, but they weren’t the massively sweet specimens I’d hoped for and sampled back at the market.

That’s alright though I’ll hold no grudge.   A little booze can make a perspective mate more attractive so I’ll slather these babies in a healthy splash of bourbon and sugar and let things macerate a while.  I’ll top them with a sweet drop biscuit dough and bake them till they’ve reduced to a sweet and sticky filling.  I’ll make a decent peach cobbler with a less than perfect peach.

Little Choppers

Grill books love to tout huge cuts seared over intense flames and finished  slowly over indirect heat. The results are a charred exterior and if you prefer, a wonderfully rare center. It’s a great technique that works for just about everything except fish and chicken but it requires you commit to a sizable chunk of protein.  If you follow the rule of thumb that a serving of protein should be no larger than the palm of your hand and you don’t want to slice and share steaks like I did here try this method described in How to Cook Meat.

Marinate thin pork chops (no more than half an inch) in lime juice cumin chili flakes salt and pepper.  Because they are thin you’ll need no more than thirty minutes in the fridge.  During the last ten minutes turn your grill on high, crack open a beer, and wait.  You’re looking for something just shy of nuclear fission.  The intense heat will cause a ton of smoking and an angry looking grill that will cook chops in 3-4 minutes with one quick flip.

The results?  A crazy fast pork chop with a tinge of pink in the center and a notably smokey flavor.  At speeds like this you could bang out chops for 20 people in ten minutes flat.

Standing in my garage next to an old gas grill and a stand alone propane burner I told my friend that I was ready to conduct a follow up test run.  Frank was taken back, noting my burgers were already better than most.

“They were fine” as they were.

“Fine?”

I was comparing myself to the great restaurant burgers made after spending hours grinding custom meat blends and baking house made buns.   I knew the burgers I was making weren’t that good.  I think Frank knew too.  But he still thought I was crazy.

The law of diminishing marginal returns states that all things equal, additional units of input yield smaller and smaller increases in output.  There’s a point on that curve where the amount of effort you’d spend cleaning out a clogged meat grinder, or potentially burning down your house with advanced pyrotechnics just isn’t worth the subtle difference nuances in flavor the techniques achieve.   So when is enough, enough?

Consider the following mathematically precise chart, and supporting descriptions of burger utility.

The Bubba Burger: Sold pre-formed into 1/3 ounce patties and frozen solid, you can deal bubba burgers to the grill like playing cards.  10 minutes later you’ve got a meat sandwich that tastes exactly like the amount of effort you put into it.

The Patty Burger:  Pre-formed like Bubba, these patties inhabit your grocery butcher case and are at least fresh.  They’re usually 1/3 of a pound, 80/20 meat, and formed using a burger press.  They take a bit more work (they cant be tossed on the grill like a hockey puck) and taste a little better than Bubba.  But not really.

The Suburban Burger: is what I imagine to be the homemade burger of the masses.   Over worked, under-salted  and over-grilled the suburban burger has some heart.  It’s often dry and tough but made by someone who at least pretended to give a fuck.

The Elevated Burger: This is where things start to get good.  It’s the burger that people compliment at a cook out and is made by someone who handles meat gently, isn’t afraid of salt, and knows their grill.   It takes twice the effort of the suburban burger; And it shows.

The Super Burger: Butchers consulted for custom meat blends.  Carefully selected condiments and buns.  These are the burgers that grace the tables of steak houses and most obsessive home cooks.  Deep rich crusts encase juicy, pink, tender meat in a perfect balance of smoke, flavor and texture.

Jesus on a Bun: I’m almost certain that this is the burger President Obama would eat every day if his wife, Maureen Dowd, and obsessive food bloggers would leave him alone.  This is the burger of the Gods.  When eating a burger of this caliber, the subject no longer thinks of the material sandwich before him.  He focuses on how great it is to be alive.

I’m not certain what it takes to conjure the divine at home becuase I haven’t gotten there.  Sometimes a lot of work is required for marginally noticeable improvements making it easy to question my effort.  I could just go to Palena Grill and bliss out for a 10-spot (and I sometimes do) but when you love things this much pleasure can’t be measured in dollars, and ticks of the clock. Perfection at home may be marginaly costly, but when you hold it in your hands it’s exponentialy rewarding.

Homemade Gyro

The NY times offers a look into the world of gyro manufacturing today.  With so many food writers bashing processed food as of late it’s interesting to see a journalist cover a big manufacturer and not light fires.  The article itself is alright, but the  accompanying video is borderline disturbing.   Not that it’s unsanitary or filthy but watching a 4 ton meat grinder work its magic –  It’s just a little unsettling to watch .

Yet even with images of carnage fresh in my mind I still crave the flavors of lamb, beef and oregano.  When I want Gyro with a little less Spam I’ll take a hunk of beef sirloin, and a section of lamb leg and pound both flat.  I’ll make a paste of herbs garlic, and oil and slather the meat before rolling it  tightly with butchers twine.   When pan seared and roasted, or grilled the beef and lamb flavors stand out.  It’s chewy in a way that makes homogenized meat paste seem wimpy.   It’s no meat popsicle.  You can read more about it here.

Rotisserie birds are made for this shit.  I like to plunge my fingers into tender juicy meat.  Pull flesh from bone.  When it’s hot it leaves my fingers pink.  Nothing fancy or refined about this.  Balance salty, sweet, and crunch, and a breath of spice.

Acid.

Some broiled veg.

Some lovely bread.

It’s chicken salad.

A nice meal.

Favorite Chicken Salad

Ingredients:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/8 teaspoon curry (or not much more)
1 Rotisserie chicken
1/3 cup chopped red onion
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/3 cup cilantro minced
1/3 cup cashews toasted (if you like) and chopped
1 celery rib chopped
Lemon wedges (optional)

Instructions:

Whisk curry powder with Mayo in a large bowl.

Remove chicken from the bone and shred with fingers or forks. Toss with remaining ingredients in a bowl. Season with some salt and pepper.

Serve on grilled bread dressed with lettuce, and an ice cold lager.

If things seem plain brighten them up with a fresh squeeze of lemon.

Outdoor Plancha for Home

When I started reading the Comme Ça burger recipe I quickly identified it as one of those techniques that works well in a restaurant, but doesn’t translate perfectly at home because residential ovens don’t pack the same heat.  It’s the same reason roast chicken skin at your favorite bistro is just a little bit crisper, or the crust on a steak has a little more umph.    Even Viking, Thermador and Wolf “prosumer” ranges come up short for reasons of safety.  To install something truly professional and not burn down your house, you’d also need a ventilation and sprinkler system to match.

The Comme Ça burger tries to replicate the power of a plancha by heating a cast iron skillet over high for 3-4 minutes but that still won’t yeild restaurant heat.  Since I didn’t want to invite the fire inspector for a cookout I decided to take my house out of the equation. Outdoor patio stoves typically enlisted for turkey frying can turn out 50,000 BTUs.  More than some restaurant ranges, and hopefully enough to duplicate the plancha when topped with a heavy cast iron skillet.

This past week I spent my vacation making several of these super burgers and I think I’m on to something.  Smoke surges upward from the cast iron during the intense searing session leaving a charred flavor reminiscent of a grill on steroids.  The oven finish still takes the guess work out of doneness.  375 for four minutes for medium rare, and six for medium.  Is it worth the fuss?  I’ll still use my grill when making burgers for a crowd, but for four or less the plancha burger is outstanding.

They won’t leave me alone.  Today’s NY times piece on burgers has opened up a Pandora’s box of craving.    The same cake tester, potato rolls, handling instructions, pickles and other pointers I’ve been playing with for weeks have been re-arranged and laid out for me in a way that has stoked an absolutely ravenous  burger lust.   I dare you to read it and try not to order a burger for lunch today.  I’m left  concerned for my future well being.

The Comme Ça burger recipe embraces my call for simplicity leaving me smitten, but it’s the quoted chef’s restaurant technique that has me most curious.  The author glances over a plancha as a high end flat grill, but I’ve stood next to these devices at Cafe Du Parc and I’m telling you they get HOT.  I’ve always thought the best burger had to be kissed by fire, but I’m envisioning a crisp uniform crust that amounts to one giant grill mark and I’m starting to drool.

Just a week ago I thought I had burgers perfected, but now I’m forlorn for a commercial source of steady and intense heat.  How do you make your perfect burger?

The quest for Bovinity continues.

Dear Anna,

Whoever is in charge of prepping your tidy station has clearly given up. Illuminated by the cold fluorescence of a sneeze guard everything looks a little tired.  But it’s the chicken I want to talk about most – The chicken salad I order every day.  It wouldn’t take much to go from pale postmortem gray to something much more alive.

The onion and celery you use for texture are lifeless so why not try nuts?  If you really cared for me, you could roast them.  Their toasty aroma would perfume your kitchen as well as my lunch.  Add a handful or two of golden raisins and cilantro for more than bright color –their flavors would brighten taste buds as well.  Perhaps we could finish things off with just a touch of curry?  Just enough to let me know there’s something there, but not quite recognize what.

I’m not trying to be needy.  It’s just I know all these ingredients are at your disposal.  I see them in the salsa, soups and other dishes that are also a little flat.  Let’s shake things up, and let ingredients trapped in monogamous relationships with their recipes get out and swing a bit.  If you truly love them, they won’t betray you I promise.  And we all might have a little extra fun.

While hunting for the perfect hot dog, I spent some time with Peter Smith at PS-7. There was a lull in the interview so I mentioned my recent steak debacle, and asked him if he ever used cake testers to test the doneness of steak. Peter confirmed I was right to not toss my steaks in an ice bath. He then went on to demonstrate the proper technique.

Plunge the cake tester all the way into the meat and mark its depth on the tester with your thumb. This way when its removed you can tell what part of the tester was in what part of the steak. Count to three and quickly pull the tester out and touch it to your face. The area just above my lip where my mustache would start (if I had one) is most sensitive for me. Starting where your thumb marked the outside of the steak draw the tester across your lip. As the tester moves across your skin you can “feel” the steak from its surface, to its center, and then out the other side.

Warm near your thumb, then cold, then warm at the tip of the tester indicates a steak that is rare, or completely underdone. Hot, then slightly warmer than your body temperature indicates medium rare. As you start to perceive heat across the entire length of the tester — it’s game over.

Peter also described how to use a tester to tell the doneness of fish based not on temperature, rather resistance.  I’ll cover that in another post.

Medium Rare