All those holiday roasts that we painstakingly prepare and from which we covet each luscious bite sometimes seem destined to be the prize at the end of the road: the leftovers.
The Christmas menu was roast prime rib, thrice baked potatoes and carrot souffle
Franks and beans are as much of a tradition in New England as attending the Magic of Christmas celebration at Portland’s Merrill Auditorium. I’ve only gone once to that wonderful extravaganza, but baked beans have a much larger meaning for me. For one I’ve not been a great baked-beans cook. I usually add too much liquid and over- or under-cook the beans—basically it’s not my culinary métier. Though I’ve found that the recipe on the back of the State of Maine beans package sold in local supermarkets is a classic, standard recipe that works well. But this go round last Saturday night, I used a recipe that was one of those wonderful hand-me-down formulas–often the hallmark of great home cooking. I found it in Linda Greenlaw’s wonderful book, Cooking on a Very Small Island–chockful of regional recipes that are so good.
Baked Bean Supper
Perhaps the enjoyment of comfort food—seeking out solace with knife, fork and spoon—is more warranted than ever. We have the growing morass of Washington politics within The New Disarray as pathological as urinary incontinence as some Americans grapple with the likes of the threats to put an end to climate control policies, the EPA agency and the standards it protects, cannulating immigrants to what amounts to exile and even the department of Education is under the gun as the new leader-to-be of the free world takes an ax to all that we’ve been used to for decades in the name of shaking up the establishment like a deadly virus. Or was it all a fatal scam to get elected?
That’s why I may turn to my favorite palliatives–butter, cream, sugar, flour, beef, poultry, anything sweet, pastry–loading up on carbs and the like, at least for a while as classic comfort food fills my fantasies. I’m even renewing my penchant for Dunkin Donuts.
The basic beef pot roast
I don’t know how I developed my passion for the cooking of the south. In fact I haven’t traveled to the south much at all. I went to Savannah once and recall a wonderful meal at The Olde Pink House. I’ve been to Williamsburg and dined at the Williamsburg Inn that evokes the old south with black waiters in livery. I’ve been to Atlanta and Florida but didn’t seek out regional cooking. I wish I had also spent more time in Charleston, South Carolina where it has the biggest concentration of southern chefs doing great things. I subscribe to the southern lifestyle magazine Garden and Gun and import soft wheat southern flour milled in small granaries in the South. What more can I do from my perch up north?
Clockwise: fried chicken at the old Caiola’s; a generic portrayal of fried chicken ; fried chicken at BJ’s
Based on the French classic gratin dauphinois, creamed–aka scalloped–potatoes are a classic dish to serve alongside roasts of any stripe. My favorite is with lamb. The French method is basically to cook the potatoes in milk and/or cream and layered into a buttered gratin dish that’s rubbed with a cut clove of garlic. The potatoes and most of the milk mixture are spooned into the gratin with a generous amount of salt, pepper and a trace of nutmeg. It’s then coated with Gruyere or Emmenthaler and baked until the potatoes are soft and the top has browned nicely. For this method I cut the potatoes 1/2- to 3/4-inch thick.
Scalloped potatoes
The American version is simply scalloped potatoes. Here they’re sliced fairly thin and layered into an enameled cast-iron gratin dish or better yet into a cast-iron pan—or any other vehicle that can be put on the stove top before baking. When the dish is done it tastes as if it’s loaded with cheese but it’s not. The milk and cream absorb the starch from the potatoes and the whole thickens up beautifully. The potatoes should be cut fairly thin, though not paper thin as a mandolin would cut. I use the food processor slicing blade, preferably one that can be adjusted to cut the potatoes somewhat thinner than the standard slicing blade, or a bit less than 1/4-inch thick.
Recently the New York Times ran what was deemed a ground-breaking food story on the modernization of chicken pot pie (link). Theirs was a so-called contemporary version “ditching the gummy white filling and frozen vegetables.”
If I encountered such a chicken pot pie it would have been served at an old Howard Johnson’s or out of a box of Banquet brand of frozen chicken pot pie. But the denigration of the old-school formula seemed a bit of a stretch. If all the elements are made well, without the use of processed ingredients or gummy sauces, the classic chicken pot pie is eminently delicious
And if you ever had it at my house, you’d encounter a wonderful pie under a dome of a very special cream pastry dough similar to puff pastry and a filling that’s in a light cream sauce made from chicken stock whisked into the standard roux and further enriched with heavy cream. Gummy? Not a chance.
Chicken pot pie
As for the frozen vegetables I admit to frozen peas. But these are one of the few vegetables that survive flash freezing. They taste nearly as fresh as right out of the shell. As for the typical pile of frozen pearl onions, forget it. If I want those in my chicken pot pie I buy them fresh and take the few minutes to prepare them.
Sooner than later the two most revered crops of summer—corn and tomatoes—will disappear from our farmers’ markets. Replacement vegetables such as cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, squash and roots will be bright and colorful on their farm-table displays until we have a few hard frosts that make the growing fields strain under the chill of seasonal change. But corn and tomatoes will be sorely missed.
Merrifield’s $1 per pound tomatoes
Still these two stellar crops have been showing up as great specimens from the growing fields. Ears of corn started out small and slim earlier in the season because of the drought but eventually became sweet and delectable. My favorite growers included Harris Farm’s ultra-sweet corn available in southern markets such as Saco Farmers Market and at their farm store in Dayton. The various varieties that are grown at Beth’s Farm Market in Warren are some of the best and sweetest. And more locally Jordan’s Farm in Cape Elizabeth put on a good show with their large, sweet stalks stacked on the table at their farm store in Cape Elizabeth.
Forget about cheffy burgers, artisanal farm-to-table pork buns or the progression of locally sourced, pastured and sustainably raised datum of dishes one must eat for culinary correctness and instead plunge your fork into the classic pot roast.
It’s so old-fashioned—but never out of style–it may rank as the perfect helping of comfort food. And the thing is it’s so easy to make at home as an especially good Sunday supper. All you need is some time for low and slow oven roasting in a covered pot.
A Dutch oven is the cooking receptacle of choice, and the best are those enameled cast-iron pots made by Le Creuset.
A chuck roast is braised in a Dutch oven with onions and surrounding vegetables of potatoes and carrots
Traditionally the two best cuts for pot roast are the chuck roast or brisket. Other cuts such as shoulder, rump and top round don’t have the same marbling as the very fatty cuts of chuck.
At last Saturday’s farmer’s market on North Haven, there was a wealth of produce, meats and cheese to stock up on. There was also a table filled with home-baked pies and cakes; but since I was extensively doing my own baking, I didn’t choose any of those luscious looking desserts even though they were all very tempting, especially the chocolate cream pie (center).
Standout goodies at the market included a selection of pies, Sheep Meadow’s wonderful honey and lamb and display of yogurt and flowers from Turner Farm
Loafpan chicken is one of those barbecue oddities that delivers a uniquely flavored chicken dish. As the name implies a chicken is put into a standard loaf pan; it’s then covered in apple sauce and massaged with a spice rub. Use smoking woods like hickory and applewood as you cook it all low and slow. It emerges very juicy with a wonderful crisp, burnished skin.
Loafpan chicken
