Caramelization: I Love You

It's Friday and I wanted to write about one of my favorite cooking techniques: caramelization. True caramelization, not the Maillard Reaction that McGee and others describe as the browning of the outside of meats or vegetables. True caramelization is the transformation of sugars. One photo is of some six hour onions I cooked for a french onion soup (they were darker than this by the end). The other photo is a picture of my current favorite dessert: tarte tatin. Caramelization is one of those things I tell my students to take the long way home on- to eschew shortcuts in favor of "long cuts". I think tarte tatin should involve slow caramelization of the sugar with the apples in the pan, unlike many recipes which call for making a caramel, placing apples on top, and placing in the oven. I like the way the apples flavor the caramel and vice-versa. For onion soup, I hate the recipes that call for a half hour caramelization of the onions, because that's really just burning or "Maillard Reacting" them, not caramelizing the sugars that hide deep within the sharp facade that yellow onions show to the world. BTW, I'm trying to take better food pictures by zooming in a lot more, which seems to be preferred by food bloggers and photographers.

When I cooked the onions for six hours, it was last Friday, which for one eleven week span is my day off. It's a glorious day to have off. Today is only my second one, but I am setting a devilish pattern of doing extremely whimsical things. Today I'm thinking about searching out some super wholesome cream with which to make a prune and Armagnac ice cream. (Yes, I have purchased my first bottle of Armagnac. It's going down the gullet every way conceivable).

But back to the onions.

Last Friday I started those little buggers mid morning. I spent the whole six hours in the "other" room, being the single bedroom of our humble (and very cheap! Goodbye San Francisco, Hello Ballard!) apartment. Seattle is a wonderful town to spend the winter in. If I'm lucky I will not get out of my morning outfit (pajamas, thick housecoat, UGG slippers that are oh so cozy, and a fancy new hipster hat I got for Christmas that I will never wear without the housecoat I received alongside it) until late in the afternoon. I love to sit here all day and watch gray clouds move in and out or not, listen to raindrops fruitlessly attack glass, and occasionally stop to see another float plane pulling up off Lake Union as it heads North.

Back back to the beat, y'all.

I sat in the other room writing the whole day while the onions caramelized on the stove. Smelling them as they went from raw and buttery to aromatic, rich, deepening into an apartment-filling glaze was one of the best days I've ever had. I'm used to these things sending all their aromas up into the powerful hood system of a professional kitchen. I could have drowned on the smell of those onions.

When the onions were finished I made the tarte tatin. That was heaven, too. I love the way a light flaky (pate brisee) crust pairs up with the succulent apples. I used Rome. They hold their shape but when you bite into one they melt in your mouth. I also made mock creme fraiche, though just yesterday I read Judy Rodgers treatise on the subject and I wish I would have found better cream. No matter.

All of this Friday cooking was in preparation for a dinner party we hosted last Saturday night. It was supposed to be a dinner party celebrating the pigs we had back in November. I invited over the people I met and became friends with on that project, promising them spit-roasting leg of pork. Like an idiot I didn't realize when I invited them that I teach all day on Saturday and was going to have to rush home just to get cleaned up for the dinner party. Spit-roasting, I love you, too, but you will have to wait. Leg of pork, I guess I don't love you like I should since I sold your succulent meat down the river for a couple of terrines! Oh I how I treat my beloved food. It's a wonder I haven't choked on something yet.

So I cooked on Friday in order to host on Saturday. I broke a basic rule that states that a dinner should flow harmoniously through textures, flavors, ingredients and techniques.

I served two caramelized courses, back to back.
I love breaking the rules.
I hate breaking the rules.
I'm the worse for it.
I'm the better for it.

Tuesdays with Market

Michou- After the last couple disappointing trips to the Market, we weren't looking to pull any punches with this one. And like trouble, we seem to have found what we were looking for. This takeout lunch place rocks. It's incredible. And cheap. Look hard to find it. It's in a windowless, dungeon-like slot right next to Le Panier, a big fancy expensive, empty place full of windows that serves several of the same genres of food. But at Michou, there will be a long, fast-moving line of locals lunching on huge, artisan-looking sandwiches and tons of great salads like gnocci and ratatouille. I had a bacon, turkey and aoili monster on a large, seeded, flat round roll, kind of like some Americanized gargantuan relative of some short Sicilian dude. No, the flavors were not revelatory, but they accomplished our goal; it reasserted that this eat our way through the entire Pike Place Market mission is worthwhile. Helen had the aforementioned ratatouille, elegantly room-temperatured, and a half sandwich that now escapes me ... Alas. We slaked our thirsts with a couple of those fancy flavored Italian sodas-- not that this place evinces a we-are-fancy attitude, at all-- as we ate our lunch outside. God damn that was a good lunch.

Tuesdays with Market

Soul Food Stop- We can now check off another food served at the Market that falls, sadly, below the mark. Soul Food Stop, that cute little counter next door to the mini donut people, is lacking in, well- soul. We sampled the pulled pork sandwich and the black-eyed peas plate. All too often these days, since barbecue has become the regional American flavor du jour, people substitute slow-cooked shredded pork for what it is in the South: slow-cooked, shredded, SMOKED pork. There is a monumental difference between the two, folks. Pork shoulder is a tough cut of meat that requires special attention to become tender. Normally this means a braise or stew, both cooking methods that employ moist heat. But there is a dry-cooking technique, smoking, that accomplishes the same goal through the sustained exposure of the meat to chemical compounds found in smoke. A bi-product of this is a wonderful, singular flavor. At this place they merely braise pork shoulder and slather it with an oversweet sauce from a jar. Big no-no. Very disappointing. The black-eyed peas were merely okay. Does having a "soul food" restaurant add color and personality to Pike Place Market? Probably a little. But not as much as if they were more dedicated to the traditions of genuine soul food.

Tuesdays with Market

Puerco Lloron- Oh, Marron.

When it comes to our cultural and political figures, we often tolerate a great number of character flaws. Think Bill Clinton. Muhammed Ali. Papa Hemingway. If only restaurants were given the same wide berth. And when a restaurant seems to flaunt its faults as egregiously as Puerco Lloron, it makes me want to cry. Does the name of the restaurant, the "weeping pig", seem to taunt you, too? Can they get away with this? It's thus far unclear. What we do know is that this hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant, tucked away in a long-forgotten lower level of the Market, is wonderfully- blissfully- filthy. Even if Samuel Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction were half-correct in his estimation of a pig's hygienic standards, this place wouldn't pass muster as even a stop-through-for-the-night kind of sty. Allow me to digress, to express my Mexican food bona fides, if you will. Many a wonderful weekend afternoon did Helen and I spend, along with my lifelong buddy Adrian, in the Mission District of San Francisco, sampling many a bottle of beer, hunting down this tostada with room temp ceviche, that tongue burrito, often in the type of establishments in which refrigeration as we know it had not yet made landfall. The difference: the food at Puerco Lloron, I'm sorry to say, just ain't doin' it for me. I ordered the carne asada. In the flavor department (Platonic ideal: rich, juicy complexity of lime juice and jalapeno love) it fell short; the insult was that it was also saltier than hell! And this coming from Mr. Just Regained His Palate After Oversalting Every Meal He Prepared. No, that ain't cool. Helen was happy with her stuffed pepper, and the beans and rice estaban bien, pero ... there was crusted salsa funk spread from one corner of the open kitchen/counter/hot line to the other. Nothing looked fresh, nothing was bustling except the cucarachas. Don't give this place a second chance. It appears to have somehow survived, and I understand the complete and utter paucity of good Mexican this far north, but let's either throw the subpars overboard or starve the beast altogether. Seattlans deserve better, damn it!