Chef Daniel Angerer's Blog

THE IMMATURE ZUCCHINI FLOWER

Zucchini come in many different shapes and colors at the farmer’s market right now.
They are in the squash family and botanically the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower.

(right now you'll find plenty of different zucchini at a vegetable market) 

Growing zucchini
If you have grown your own zucchini you know that they grow plentifully -- in fact I suggest you pick a good amount in the blossom stage before it grows mature otherwise you’ll have more than enough zucchini on hand.

A zucchini by any other name
Courgette is the French term for zucchini, the Italians call squash zucca, and calabaza is the Spanish term. There are numerous famous dishes that use zucchini in their recipes like ratatouille, a famous Provencal vegetable stew where zucchini is one of the main vegetables used next to eggplants, peppers and tomatoes. Flor de calabaza – zucchini flowers -- are popular in Spanish cuisine especially stuffed with delicious items, and zucchini fritti – fried zucchini sticks - are well integrated in the Cucina rustica in Italy. Most likely you’ll find them next to a classic veal cutlet. “Milanese”. 

(crispy soft-shell crab with ratatouille vegetables) 

I have a beef with zucchini
I like zucchini but every once in a while I have an issue with the cooking of it. When zucchini is cooked too long the inside tends to get to soft and will have a mushy texture – THAT turns me totally off to this vegetable. So instead try cooking it lightly or eat it raw if it’s an heirloom one!

(swordfish with flash fried zucchini sticks spiced with pepper flakes - remember don't cook them to soft) 
 
Heirloom Squash
‘Heirloom’ refers to a pure zucchini meaning it has not been cross bred. Selected seeds have been passed down for several generations. One of my favorite zucchini heirloom varieties is named Costata Romanesco. I like them when they are seriously large – to the point where it takes over your shopping basket. It has ribbed skin which is greenish- yellow, and is clearly better textured and more importantly better tasting with a nutty complexity compared to ordinary zucchini. This type of zucchini is even very good when raw. I like it thinly sliced with a drizzle of a good olive oil and a few grindings of fresh pepper and a sprinkle of sea salt – voila. 

(thinly sliced heirloom squash with pigs tongue and water melon)  

Party snack of the moment.
If you want to show off vegetable cookery - try this recipe - it’s special. It makes a zucchini shine.

Fried zucchini sticks
(4-6 plentiful snack portions)

1 zucchini such as Costata Romanesco (20-inch long)
salt such as Baline (to taste)
fresh pepper grindings (to taste)
2 large eggs
1 cups flour
1 cup bread crumbs
2 cups vegetable oil such as canola or grape seed

1. Cut zucchini into match sticks (2x1/4-inch sized).
2. Line a bowl with a kitchen paper towel then season cut zucchini with salt and pepper and let sit for five minutes (zucchini will start to “sweat”)
3. Prepare three shallow bowls one with flour, second with cracked whisked egg and the third with bread crumbs.
4. Coat cut, seasoned zucchini in first bowl with flour then transfer to eggs and then transfer to bread crumbs (when transferring zucchini sticks from bowl to bowl shake off excess flour, egg and bread crumbs).
5. Heat oil in a pot a on medium heat setting (350ºF) then fry zucchini for 3-5 minutes or until golden in color. Season fried zucchini sticks with salt while they are hot (so that salt will stick to the sticks).

Chef's Tip: serve fried zucchini sticks with a classic tartar sauce or a cocktail sauce spiked with tequilla.

 

WE'RE OPENING A NEW RESTAURANT

I always get a kick out of a new restaurant concept.  Besides all the different design stages for the dining room and kitchen there is serious recipe development going on. For a few weeks our staff in our existing restaurant has been consuming numerous sausages - well someone has to eat the little treats.
 
(duck sausage with coriander and fennel seeds in a bun with red sauerkraut and cranberry mustard) 

Stimulating the senses
One of the standouts was a duck sausage seasoned with coriander and fennel seeds.  It took a few rounds of trial and error to get it perfected but now we are at a point when you bite into the sausage and it’s excellent – it’s what a sausage should be in my opinion. The casing has a pleasant snap and it has the right resistance. Once you hit the juicy inside it's a pleasure for your mouth to taste a hint of coriander and a touch of fennel, which stimulates the senses. It appears to be perfect in its own way, and indeed it reminds me of sausage eating in the “old country” (I'm Austrian).

Ears & hooves anybody, no thanks
Still to these days Middle European countries such as Austria, Poland, Germany and Italy have their own style of making old world style sausages. Traditional sausage stands can be found plentifully similar to burger restaurants here in the US. Generally it is not the kind of mass produced sausage you will most likely encounter here in America at the sports stadium which is probably produced with bits and pieces of animal parts which I don't even want to mention. Certainly those sausages are part of the sports experience with a cold beer and mustard but these are not the sausages that I’m talking about here. I'm talking about handcrafted sausages made with some of the best meats you can find produced in small batches in-house.

(let's get serious the new sausage equipment arrived)  

Piece of cake
For the new restaurant e eagerly awaited our brand new sausage making equipment - a mixer, a 1 1/2 horsepower meat grinder and a sausage stuffer. We were excited like a child must be on it's birthday in front of a big boxed present. I had made sausages before but never with such equipment - which made it a breeze. Grinding, seasoning, mixing and it goes into the casing. A few minutes in the skilled and we had home-made sausages on the plate - it was a piece of cake - and certainly just as delicious.

(pork sausage spiced with cumin seeds and majoran with horseradish mustard)

Duck sausage recipe
I prefer to use lamb casing (28-33 mm diameter).  The following recipe will stuff approximately four strings which I twist into links (4-inch long).

4 strings lamb casing (28-33 mm in diameter)

5 pounds fresh Peking duck legs
2 tablespoons Kosher-style salt
2 tablespoons coriander seeds, ground
2 tablespoons fennel seeds, ground
1 tablespoon thyme leafs, chopped
1 cup soy protein (in powdered form)
2 cups cold water

1. Grind duck legs then mix with rest of ingredients.
2. Transfer mixture into a kitchen processor then emulsify until smooth textured.
2. Stuff mixture into casing (with sausage stuffing equipment).
3. Cook/poach sausage in water (155 degree Fahrenheit for 15 minutes) then dry on kitchen paper towel. Cook sausage in a skillet on low heat setting until browned on all sides.

 
(little Japanese beef links with rainbow radish curls and blueberry mustard)

Chef's sausage tips and tricks
-use a clean coffee grinder to grind spices to a powder
-Keep meat mixture on ice at all steps during the sausage making process (this will make a sausage with good consistency)
-Rinse casing for 1/2 hour under flowing, room temperature tap water (this will rinse off salt and make casing stretchable)
-grease sausage stuffing tube with vegetable oil (this will make sausage stuffing process child's play)
- in case you don't have a sausage stuffer use a pastry bag and pipe into the sausage casing

Chef's note
-soy protein is in the mixture to bind all that terrific duck fat (otherwise it would ooze out during the cooking process)
-the above fresh sausage recipe is not meant to be stored longer then three days in the house-hold refrigerator (38-40 degrees Fahrenheit).

 

THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

Every once in a while I come across a vegetable which reminds me of growing up in Austria and enjoying my mother’s home cooking. One of my vegetable farmers had kohlrabi on his stand. Kohlrabi was bred from the original wild cabbage plant similar to Brussels sprouts and broccoli. Right now kohlrabi is “the new kid on the block” at the farmer’s market next to an abundance of Summer squash and other vegetables. 

(kohlrabi)  
 
Baseball vegetable
Kohlrabi seems to be the best when they are the size of a baseball. If larger, kohlrabi tends to get woodsy in texture. The rugged leaves are edible and have a straight forward flavor. The purple skinned variety tastes the same as the pale green kind, both have a whitish colored inside. It is often mistaken as a root vegetable but it actually grows above the ground just above the top soil.

(kohlrabi roasted with pepper flakes sprinkled with crispy speck and yellow mustard flowers) 

Kohlrabi’s versatility
I use kohlrabi raw and pickled in salads and cook it along pork roast, bake it with a touch of blue cheese rind and so on.

In the recipe below I make sure to slice kohlrabi thinly since it can be hard to bite through thick raw pieces - I give it the Mandolin treatment. When eaten raw the texture will remind you of Granny Smith apples -- not as juicy though -- and has a turnip like flavor, hence the combination with apple.

(kohlrabi sliced on a Japanese Mandolin) 

Spicy kohlrabi slaw with bacon
(recipe yields four appetizer sized portions)

4 thinly sliced bacon strips
2 Kohlrabi (baseball sized)
1 apple such as Granny Smith
½ teaspoon salt such as Baline
3 pinches cayenne
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons Dijon-style grainy mustard
2 hearts of romaine salad

1. Lay bacon flat on a sheet pan then cook in a 280 degree Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes. Transfer cooked bacon to a kitchen paper towel lined plate (this will absorb excess fat).
2. With a knife (such as a flexible fish filleting knife) cut top and bottom from kohlrabi and cut peel off kohlrabi then peel apple
3. Slice peeled kohlrabi and apples with a Mandolin into thin strips (1/8-inch thick).
4. Combine cut kohlrabi and apple in a bowl with salt, cayenne, vinegar and oil then let sit for 15 minutes (this will soften mixture)
5. Cut hearts of romaine in quarters (lengthwise) then rinse with water and dry in a salad spinner

Plating instructions: Put two pieces of quartered romaine salad on each plate then spread kohlrabi/apple slaw on it. Break cooled crispy bacon piece over top of salad.

(kohlrabi/apple slaw on romaine salad with slices of Hudson Valley Havarti cheese sprinkled with Hungarian paprika) 

Chef’s Note: This salad is reminiscent of a Caesar salad – cheese and anchovies move aside – bacon come in.

 

SOME SAY BEER IS FOOD...

Bbq foods, hot dogs a couple of beers and an amazing colorful Macy’s firework display – yes it was an enjoyable 4th of July weekend. I tasted some noteworthy local brews which reminded me of my Beer Battle on Iron Chef America against Bobby Flay which I fortunately walked away as the winner.

(4th of July fireworks)  

(sweet weekend with beers & burgers on our porch...) 

And the secret ingredient is …
BEER – which the chairman revealed in his dramatic manner (with a back flip) and you could see Bobby’s and my facial expressions drop on TV. I guess both of us hoped for something more of a food product such as an exotic spice or an unusual fruit as an ingredient. Being under the show’s 60 minute time crunch to cook five different courses for four judges didn’t make it easier.

(pop corn crusted chicken marinated in beer with purple potato salad and radish)   

Beer as a cooking medium
It turns out that beer is actually a terrific cooking medium. For the first course I prepared shrimp carpaccio with beer/lime vinaigrette – Corona anybody - to top that off I sprinkled some pop rock candy and caper berries over the dish which added significant pomp & circumstance. I prepared smoked sturgeon for another dish with fresh hops which intensified the natural earthy flavor of the fish. For the entrée we bathed a free range chicken in an ale beer and then crusted it with popcorn and fried it (not your usual Paula Deen TV chicken). The judges’ highlight was Hawaiian pineapple which was caramelized in Dutch wheat beer and baked with pretzel crust very much like a cobbler which we topped with porter beer meringue and sprinkled with caramelized bacon confetti – sounds strange - but it was lip smacking. I was surprised and delighted to learn how well beer complimented the different nuances of these foods.
One dish I did not mention is a beer based soup, and here’s the recipe:

(beer chowder with corn and potato chips)  

“Coastal Beer Chowder”
(recipe yields four appetizer portions)

2 cups almond milk (unsweetened)
2 cups porter beer
12 pieces littleneck clams
3 tablespoons vegetable oil such as canola or grape seed
2 stalks celery
1 onion
2 potatoes such as Russet
3 slices of bacon
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
Salt such as Baline (to taste)
3 pinches cayenne
1 teaspoon all purpose flour

1. Rinse clams with water.
2. Combine clams and four cups of water in a pot (1-gallon sized) then bring to boil. Put pot on side of stove and let sit for 10 minutes or so (any sand from inside of clams will drop to bottom of pot). Pour clam juice slowly through a fine mesh sieve (discard very last of liquid which will most likely be sand).
3. Separate clams from shells then rinse with water and chop (1/8-inch pieces). 
4. Cut celery, onion, potatoes, bacon into small pieces (1/8-inch cubes)
5. In a pot heat oil on medium heat setting then cook cut vegetables, bacon and thyme (10-15 minutes, stirring once in a while with a wooden spoon). Season mixture with salt and cayenne then dust with flour and continue to cook (5 minutes or so).
6. Combine clam broth, almond milk and beer with cooked vegetable mixture then bring to boil and continue to simmer on low heat setting (5 minutes or so).
7. Heat chopped clams in almond milk/vegetable mixture.

Chef’s Tip:  You can make an entrée dish out of this recipe by adding seafood such as shrimp, scallops, white fish (e.g. cod, halibut, or flounder).

Bobby went back to his chilies.  I am about to open a new beer driven restaurant…