Left Coast Cowboys

I’ve got a lot of small subjects that aren’t, in themselves, worthy of a whole post, so perhaps, since I’m experimenting with Slow Cooking, I should just throw them all in the pot.

Actually, while we’re on the subject, let’s get right to that Slow Cooker. Long days on the crushpad or in the vineyards, then Sonoma’s cool nights creates a perfect environment for the kind of cooking you start early in the cool morning, then let simmer all day unattended to eat at night when it’s cool again. But I’d been having unsatisfactory results until I started to experiment. Maybe it’s because I’m armed with the chemistry of winemaking that I started looking at Slow Cooker cookbooks with a more critical eye. And my conclusion is that most are clueless about the dynamics and physical properties of what happens in a slow cooker — hence so many tasteless watery results. Firmly pulling my Alton Brown Food Science Nerd cap on, I set out to experiment.

The key thing to remember about Slow Cooking: condensation. The liquid recycles and never evaporates. So you need to take other steps to concentrate flavors.

First off, don’t accuse me of not doing my research. I think I own every current Slow Cooker cookbook out there. Sadly, the vast majority are of the “chop stuff up, throw it in the pot and let it stew” variety. Nothing with that little effort is ever going to yield anything good. And as I added ingredients and experiments, I’ve found some Slow Cooker secrets that most cookbooks will never tell you:

1) The Slow Cooker, by the nature of the way it cooks, can’t concentrate flavors (nothing evaporates), so don’t fergawdsake ever add water to any recipe. Substitute the appropriate stock for anything that calls for water. I had wild success with beans cooked in stock and a very special beer as documented here. You’ve got to try these beans. FABULOUS!

2) Poultry skin, raw bacon and any other fat is nasty unfried and uncrisped. Why on earth would a recipe to ask you to put such a thing in the Slow Cooker where it will just stew and get slimier? But most of them do. Bollocks, as my English husband would say. Add bacon, by all means, but fry it up crisp first. I did this with my fabulous beans and with a recent Cassoulet and it was just the ticket. All the bacon flavor and, after hours of slow cooking, it was still crunchy.

3) And while you are crisping up all that bacon, use the rendered fat to brown any meat or root or hard veggies you are planning to put in the pot. That goes for onions, carrots, parsnips, etc. Believe me on this one point. When you brown things first, you get a depth of flavor that the Slow Cooker can never achieve on its own. And stop freaking out about that fat. Most of it stays behind in the skillet. Just enough makes it to the Slow Cooker to make a world of difference in the result. I used these techniques in my Slow Cooker Cassoulet and Cousin John had three helpings and declared it “restaurant quality”.

Did I mention that one of Cousin John's careers was a deejay at fancy European ski resorts? Cousin John knows his food!

Okay, there is a reason that I am not a food blogger, nor do I play one on the Interwebs. Because, I’m not a trained enough cook to come up with anything original. Yet, 99.9% of Slow Cooker cookbook authors don’t tell you what I’ve just learned, but one does.

If you buy only one Slow Cooker cookbook, make it this one. Andrew Schloss has cracked the secret code of the Slow Cooker.

Andrew Schloss is no “throw it in the pot and hope for the best” slow cooker and he’s way ahead of me on all the things I thought I discovered. He explains the science of the Slow Cooker, what it can do and what it can’t do. He will only steer you to cooking with the ingredients that are truly enhanced by the cooker. And he’s got some great ideas, such that one about removing all skin from poultry, rendering it and using the fat to brown the veggies and the meat. The result: the same depth of flavor you get from cooking something long and slow in the oven — without the oven’s requirement that you hover over the pot and make sure it isn’t scorching.

Another great suggestion/technique he advocates: thicken liquids and sauces BEFORE you put them in the Slow Cooker. Or, strain the ingredients afterwards and thicken the strained sauce by boiling it. Hey, it’s a bit more work. But if you want to do zero work in cooking, go to McDonalds!

New subject: Cousin John and the great Fermentation Face-Off. Twitter and Facebook have been lit up since I told of this culture clash now happening on our crushpad. (People, talk to the blog!) I hear the odds are changing in Vegas hourly as our college educated UC Davis yeasts compete with Cousin John’s juvenile delinquent local yeasts. Which will produce the best wines? It’s going to take at least a week for us to see how fermentation goes, and months after that to assess the final results. Meanwhile Cousin John, on behalf of his yeasts, has thrown down the revolutionary rhetoric:

“My wild yeast shall prosper after the revolution while your decadent intellectual yeast shall be sent to reeducation camps in the countryside to learn how to be productive members of the ecosystem without sucking at the tit of the corporate funded dogs of Davis!”

Signed The FSRF
(Free Saccharomyces Revolutionary Front)

Just call Cousin John’s yeasts Che, Ho, Cinque and Patty Hearst.

Hey, Did Someone Mention Salma Hayek?

I once mentioned the Mexican Bombshell in connection with a Spanish class I’m taking. I was unprepared for the groundswell of worldwide interest. My web hits quadrupled. From around the world. So I had to follow with this completely gratuitous Salma Hayek post. And since that date back in June, the most frequent Google search that drives hundreds of readers to my blog, from Internet cafes as far-flung as Indonesia and Mali, is “Salma Hayek Cleavage”.  Then just the other day, a sometime reader sent me an email telling me that he’d be a more frequent visitor if I’d include more pictures of Salma Hayek.

Okay okay. Can we count this as the post that seamlessly melds wine, terriers, slow cooking, eccentric English friends and husbands into one post, and still open the door for dozens of completely gratuitous shots of  Salma Hayek’s…er…assets.

Most of my friends would say I’m a pretty good cook, but I don’t think that begins to describe it. Andy is much more what I’d call a good cook as in the bold, adventurous, “cooking as contact sport” Gordon Ramsay kind of cook. Me? I’m all about the gadgets and the processes. I can improvise, but I want the scientific tests to back me up before I chose a methodology or alter the formula. Yes Gentle Readers, you’ve seen The Mother of All Pressure Canners and shared my frustration with what seem to be lacksadaisical instructions from cookbooks about using it. Somehow I managed to muddle through and make some pretty outstanding tomato marmalade. So good that I’m thinking of following my friend Susi’s suggestion and adding “Win a Blue Ribbon at the Sonoma County Fair” to my Bucket List. I think I have a contenda.

But what I want to talk about today are slow cookers. And yes, once again, I had to buy the best one I could afford. Problem is, finding a cookbook that helps me maximize what I think must be its potential. For the next few weeks, my target are beans. Because a) beans, beans, they’re good for your heart and b) because, at 39¢ to $1.79 per pound, you can make a lot of mistakes with beans before you really start feeling bad about wasting food dollars.

I’ve made beans before in this slow cooker. And Lord knows, I’ve got the Western Hemisphere’s most extensive collection of slow cooker cookbooks. The problem is, if I admit it, I’ve never managed to make beans that taste better than some of the stuff you get in cans. Or, as in the case of the cannellini beans I just made last week, they taste as good, but they are kind of mushy and not all perfect like the canned stuff. But I’m not giving up. So today, I tackled pinto beans or frijoles — those classics of the American Southwest.

Okay, I don’t want to be a finger-pointer here. As the Irish say, “It’s a poor workman who blames his tools.” But some of the fault has to be apportioned to the divided food writer community. No one seems to have a clear consensus on how to cook beans. Here’s what I found when scanning through all my cookbooks.

I've got all the cookbooks and nobody agrees!

There’s the school that says, “Hey, it’s a slow cooker, just dump everything in and Hey Presto!”. I’m rejecting that advice. I’m a victim product of a mother who hated cooking and embraced the old Peg Bracken I Hate to Cook Books. Until my brother and I took the reins and started cooking, our mealtimes were an endless round of a mass of stuff covered with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, topped with those orangey crunchy things and lots of hamburger helper. Shudder. Not going back there again. I’ve purged out the cookbooks that share that philosophy. (I say, if you are going to cook, really cook. Otherwise make a salad.)

Then there are the conflicting controversies:

1) Beans should only be cooked on the Low setting.

2) NO! Beans should only be cooked on the High setting.

3) Spice it up before you turn on the crock.

4) Nope, all spices should only go in just before serving.

5) Nothing salty or you’ll toughen the skins.

6) What?! Gotta add stock or it will be bland. Who cares if stock has sodium in it?

7) Don’t need to soak the beans for slow cooking.

8 ) Fool! You ALWAYS need to soak the beans.

Then there are the alleged secret ingredients. A bit of Kombu seaweed. Or something called Epazote or Mexican Tea. I almost embarked on a safari to the Mexican side of Sonoma in search of the elusive herb until I read that, in large quantities, it’s toxic. I quickly reassessed how committed I was to tasty beans

Actually I found what I’m hoping will be my own secret ingredient. Let’s not even get into the controversy about what liquid to cook the beans in. But I did find one cookbook that recommended at least part of the liquid should be beer. Yes, JACKPOT!

My friend Keith has backed an outrageous Scottish Microbrewery, BrewDog. Needless to say, during Keith’s long and illustrious career in what he, with British quaintness, calls “The Drinks Industry”, we’ve always been well stocked with his product. So I could put my hand on just the thing, BrewDog’s Paradox MacCallan.

BrewDog's Paradox is an Imperial Stout (that's hearty dark beer for the uninitiated). They have several flavors, based on the whisky or sherry casks they age it in. This one spent several months in one of the casks used to age MacCallan fine malt whisky.

So I found the recipe that sounded the best because it included steps like blackening Serrano chiles, onions and garlic, then cooking the beans in stock and beer liberally sprinkled with cumin and coriander. (For reference, it was from The Gourmet Slow Cooker by Lynn Alley. Ten Speed Press.)

Of course, into it I added a full bottle of Paradox MacCallan. See, I’m betting the Scottish and the Mexicans have a lot in common. In fact, I’m sure we could find some sort of historical connection — maybe having to do with the Spanish Armada — that proves Scottish Stout is THE KEY INGREDIENT to a good bowl of frijoles.

I know the proof will be in the eating, but barely an hour in the aromas wafting through the kitchen made me think I was really on to something here. Scottish and Mexican. Hmmm. Okay, hear me out. Think of a classic old Western. The wagon trains are rolling through the Southwest. Many of them are driven by the Irish and Scottish. Hey, I have history to back me up here. Where do you think the Teamsters came from? So they get ambushed by Mexican bandits who relieve them of a load of beer destined for the thirsty miners in the gold fields. Mexicans, being a thrifty and industrious people, and preferring their Tequila as a drink, figure out something else to do with the casks of beer. Frijoles. Yes!

Okay, if you aren’t buying this, I do have proof that Buffalo Bill took his Wild West show to Scotland frequently. So there.

Anyway, the only test that matters: the taste. The taste. THE TASTE!

These are beans from Charro Heaven -- by way of Aberdeen.

I’ve been my own worst critic on beans. (‘Cause I’ve always shifted the blame to the cookbook!) But these beans are fabulous. Better than canned. Better than a restaurant. Unbelievable.

What makes it so? A wonderful smokiness. Remember those chiles, garlic and onions the recipe had me broil and char?  Part of it. Then I added two small strips of bacon. Because, well you can’t help but improve anything with bacon. But the largest part of the equation and what I think really underscored everything and brought the tastes together: the dark and slightly peaty flavor of the beer. And that’s not going to be just any beer, Folks, it’s got to be beer aged in whisky casks. It’s got to be BrewDog Paradox. Or back to blaming the cookbook. So thank you, BrewDog. I’m renaming you CervezaPerro.

Ai Yi Yi Yi and Scots Wha Hae. You’ve just proven my point about that Scottish/Mexican connection.