Holy Mole!

This week’s topics include WF’s continued transformation into a Mexican woman, holy mole, a diatribe on salt, another diatribe on salt, a note about salt’s sassy brother from another mother, and a mini review of Ad Hoc in Yountville. 

What Am I Working On?  As you can imagine, I have cooked a lot since I went my little culinary boot camp.  A lot.  I’ve been recreating some of the dishes we prepared and creating some of my own. 

One of my favorite recent dishes is chicken with smoky peanut mole.  Mole is a commitment to make.  Lots of ingredients and you have to baby the sauce along.  You simply can’t rush it.  You have to ‘fry’ the paste until you start to smell a rich nuttiness and the paste has a rich, deep color.  If you get it right, it’s magical and worth all of the work.  Rich, deep, and complex flavors that permeate whatever you cook in the sauce.  If you get it wrong, it’s still decent.    

Here’s the photo of the mole I made at culinary school.  This one was with quail rather than chicken.  Note the deep and rich color.  Oh baby.  

By the way, have you ever partially boned a quail?  I now have. Those little bastards are tiny and very difficult to carve up well.  Frankly, I’m underwhelmed by quail generally.  A lot of work for very little meat.  Quail is the poultry version of artichokes.  Give me a good chicken and you can keep the fancy quail.

Salt.  It’s What’s for Dinner.  Most of us are scared to use salt in our cooking.  For years, we’ve heard “Salt’s bad for you.  It causes hypertension and other nasty things.”  While this is accurate, I think it only tells part of the story.  This fear is also the cause of a lot of bad cooking.

Here’s my theory.  Most of us eat prepared food or heat up processed food and call it cooking.  Inevitably these foods contain copious amounts of salt.  Why, you ask?  Because it preserves food forever so it can sit on a grocery shelf. 

Which means that most of us eat a lot of salt without even knowing it.  No need to add salt.  It’s already salty as hell.

As a result, if we actually cook from scratch, we have no concept that food actually needs some salt to taste good.  If you start with fabulous fresh ingredients and don’t add any salt, your dish will taste like crap.  Every single time.

At the store at the Culinary Institute of America, there is a t-shirt which simply says “Needs more salt.”  During culinary boot camp, our chef instructor repeated the phrase often.  Preach it, sister.

Don’t be afraid to use some salt in your dishes if you’re making stuff from scratch.  If you don’t, you’ll be disappointed.

Salt, Part Deux.  Most of us use normal table salt for everything.  Do you and your family a favor and throw it away.  It tastes like crap.  If you truly need a source of iodine, find a different source.  A need for iodine can’t justify using crap salt.

Try this.  Buy some good sea salt or simply a box of kosher salt.  Try a little of each.  Then try your table salt.  The flavors from the sea and kosher salts are much more complex.  I think you’ll find that the table salt tastes horrible by comparison.  I personally think it has a bitterness that’s simply unpleasant. 

Salt’s Sassy Brother From Another Mother – Pepper.  Fresh cracked black pepper is crucial to good cooking.  Pre-ground pepper is no substitute.  Don’t believe me?  Try the following. 

Pour some of your pre-ground pepper into a bowl.  Grind some peppercorns into another bowl.  Look at them.  The fresh ground will have a lot of black colors and some gray.  The pre-ground stuff will be gray with a little black.

Now smell them.  The fresh stuff has aromas of berries and, well, pepper.  The old stuff has a faint aroma of something, and sometimes it’s not good.

You tell me which one you think would taste better in your food.

Mini Review – Ad Hoc.  When the Red and I were in the Napa valley, we ate at two Thomas Keller restaurants.  I fawned over Bouchon in a prior blog.  Man that was a great steak!

A couple nights later, we had dinner with some new-found friends at Ad Hoc, which is right down the street from Bouchon.  All the food is served family style and the menu is basically set.  You eat what they’re serving that day.  Very cool concept. 

The review of Ad Hoc in one word?  Underwhelming.  The ingredients were fabulous, but the food was just ok and the vegetables were overcooked!  

At a Thomas Keller restaurant they served overcooked veggies!

I know what you’re thinking.  “WF – you had too much wine or you’re just stupid.”  While one or both of those may be true, those veggies were overcooked.  Here’s what I mean.  The main dish came with a medley of roasted vegetables, including baby potatoes.  Do you know how you can tell if potatoes are overcooked?  They’re dry and crumby and taste like dirt.  That’s how these potatoes tasted. 

I can get overcooked potatoes and veggies at Chili’s!

However there was one bright spot.  One of their daily specials was rabbit confit.  “Sir – would you like to try the rabbit confit?”  The answer is yes.  Every single time. 

This rabbit was very good.  Rich flavor and fall off the bone tender.  One odd thing is that they called it rabbit confit.  How can that be true?  Confit means to cook something in its own fat (as opposed to another critter’s fat) and this was not.  Perhaps confit just sounds better than “cooked in duck fat.” 

In short, I was not impressed by Ad Hoc.  I’m not saying I wouldn’t go back, but I wouldn’t run back there.  

Next week.  Deep fried turkey, with step by step photos!

Happy cooking. 

WF.