Perhaps you think the apple tart illustrated here, with its precisely fanned slices, came out of a fancy French bakery. “Not so,” chef and TV personality Sara Moulton told a group of food writers and bloggers recently at a demo and book signing at Melissa’s Produce in Vernon. “Anyone can do this,” she said. “The trick is to slice them paper-thin, but don’t cut all the way through. If you slice all the way down to the cutting board, the apples will become detached, fly all over the counter and be very difficult to arrange in a pattern. You want them to stay lined up like the Rockettes.”
The apple trick, accompanied by detailed photos, is just one revelation you’ll find in Moulton’s latest cookbook, “Sara Moulton’s Home Cooking 101: How to Make Everything Taste Better” (Oxmoor House, $35). More than just a collection of soulful recipes, it is actually a teaching manual for the home cook. “Each recipe specifically demonstrates a tip or method that can make you a better and more confident cook while also teaching you to make your dishes taste better,” she writes.
Illustrated instructions show you how to trim an artichoke, mix pie dough, peel and devein shrimp and pit an avocado safely. Even experienced “old dogs” will learn some “new tricks.” One of my favorites: a quick way to clean mushrooms (yes, you can toss them briefly in water!) And, darn, throwing a potato into an oversalted stew doesn’t really work.
You’ve been making hard-cooked eggs the same way for a million years, right? Try steaming them over boiling water, covered, for ten to 12 minutes, and you’ll be a convert for life. “The whites are more tender, and they’re easier to peel,” she said.
Pound cutlets of chicken, pork or veal between sheets of plastic wrap or in a resealable bag sprinkled with water. “The water prevents the meat from sticking to the bag and shredding,” she said.
The biggest surprise: “Forget about mise en place,” that once sacrosanct admonition to prep and measure all your ingredients before cooking. “While heating up the pan, you can chop the onions. While the onions are cooking, I mince the garlic. You could waste up to 20 minutes with mis en place.” (The one exception: stir-fries.) Most important of all: “Read the recipe first from start to finish, so you don’t miss ‘chill overnight.’ “
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, Moulton spent seven years working in restaurants. “I thought only about what chefs do and was disdainful of things like flavorless oils and freezers,” she recalled. Her years in Gourmet magazine’s test kitchen and as host of Food TV’s “Cooking Live” switched her focus to home cooks. “The show was a continuing education on what home cooks are really up to, all the regional differences and new ingredients they were using,” she said.
But it was having a family that brought together her chef skills and focus on the home cook. “I don’t entertain at home,” she said. “My husband and I both work at home, so there is stuff all over the place. Also, people expect a gourmet meal with wine for each course, and I don’t have time for that. But we have a daily religion to have family meals every night of the week. I started thinking about how to make that happen. “
The result is a comprehensive and very approachable guide to making better meals happen easily in your own kitchen. “I took my chef knowledge and applied it to home cooks,” she said.
Fancy Stuffed Eggs
Yield: 12
Ingredients
6 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon truffle oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Snipped chives, for garnish
Procedure
1. Cut eggs in half lengthwise, remove yolks and set whites aside.
2. Push yolks through a medium sieve into a bowl. Add mayonnaise, crème fraîche, mustard, Parmesan and truffle oil to mashed yolks and mix well with a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste; transfer mixture to resealable plastic bag. Cut off one corner of bag, pipe mixture evenly into hollow of each of the whites, and garnish each egg half with chives. For a fancier look, transfer mixture to pastry bag fitted with star tip.
Sautéed lemon chicken
with fried capers
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
1 pound skinless chicken breast cutlets, preferably thinly sliced
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, preferably grapeseed, divided
3 tablespoons capers, rinsed, drained and dried very well
All-purpose flour for dredging
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large lemon, sliced very thin crosswise
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons minced shallots
1 1/4 cups homemade or store-bought chicken stock
Procedure
1. Working with 1 cutlet at a time, pound chicken until it is 1/8 inch thick; transfer to plate. Pat dry and cut pieces in half if too large to sauté easily.
2. In large skillet, combine 2 tablespoons of the oil with capers and heat pan to medium-high (capers can pop if added to a hot pan). Cook, stirring, until crisp, about 2 minutes. Transfer capers to small bowl with slotted spoon.
3. Spread out flour on piece of parchment on counter. Heat skillet over medium-high heat. Working with half the chicken at a time, season cutlets on both sides with salt and pepper and coat them lightly with flour, lifting parchment paper on both sides to help coat chicken and shaking off excess. Add chicken to oil in pan and cook until lightly golden, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to plate. Add 2 tablespoons oil to pan. Season and flour remaining chicken and sauté, transferring it as it is done to plate.
4. Dip lemon slices in sugar, coating them lightly on both sides, and add them to skillet. Cook over medium heat until they are lightly caramelized, about 1 minute per side. Transfer to plate with chicken. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil and shallots to pan and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, scraping up brown bits on bottom of pan. Return chicken and lemon slices to pan, along with any juices from plate. Simmer gently, turning chicken over several times until it is heated through.
5. Transfer chicken to 4 plates and simmer sauce until thickened slightly. Spoon sauce and lemon slices over chicken and top with fried capers.
French apple tart
Yield: 1 (10-inch) tart, about 8 servings
Ingredients
1 recipe pie dough, see below, or 1 (12-ounce) store-bought pie dough
All-purpose flour for rolling out dough
6 Golden Delicious apples
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons cold butter, sliced thin
1/2 cup apricot jam combined with 2 tablespoons water, heated and strained
Vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream, as an accompaniment
Cook’s Notes
If you are using store-bought pie dough, which usually comes rolled out, fitted into an aluminum pie tin and fluted at the edges, let it warm up a bit on counter so that it is malleable, then lift it out of tin and lay it on lightly floured surface. Roll it out slightly and transfer it to tart pan.
Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. On lightly floured surface, roll out dough to a 13-inch round and fit it into 10-inch tart pan with removable fluted rim, trimming excess. Prick dough all over with tines of fork. Cover and chill 1 hour.
2. Meanwhile, peel, halve and core apples. Arrange apples, cut side down, on cutting board and use very sharp knife to slice them crosswise, but not all the way through.
3. Arrange eight apple halves like the spokes of a wheel on pastry and remaining slices in diminishing concentric circles in middle of spokes. Sprinkle sugar evenly on top of apples and top with butter slices. Bake in middle of oven 45-50 minutes or until crust is cooked through and apples are golden brown. Brush with heated apricot jam while tart is still hot. Serve each portion with small scoop of ice cream or small spoonful of whipped cream.
Pie dough
How you measure your flour can make a huge difference. That’s why you should weigh, not measure, your flour.
Yield: enough for a large (10-inch) single-crust pie
180 grams (about 1 1/2 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon table salt
10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 to 4 tablespoons ice water
Procedure:
1. Stir together flour and salt in large bowl, add butter, and, working quickly with your fingertips or a pastry blender, mix dough until most of mixture resembles coarse meal, with the rest in small (roughly pea-sized) lumps. Drizzle 2 tablespoons ice water evenly over mixture and gently stir with fork until incorporated. Gently squeeze a small handful: it should hold together without crumbling apart. If it doesn’t, add more ice water, 1/2 tablespoon at a time, stirring 2 or 3 times after each addition until it comes together. (If you overwork mixture or add too much water, pastry will be tough.)
2. Turn dough out onto clean work surface and divide into several portions. With heel of your hand, smear each portion once in a forward motion on work surface to help distribute fat. Gather smeared dough together and form it, rotating it on the work surface, into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least one hour.
Slicing and arranging apples:
1. Peel and halve apples; arrange them cut side down on cutting board. Using melon baller, remove and discard cores. With very sharp knife, slice apples crosswise, but don’t cut all the way down with back side of knife; stop just before it reaches cutting board so that apples stay attached at the bottom.
2. After slicing all apples, turn each on its side to expose bottom. Cut off about 1⁄4 inch of bottom to remove the part of the apple that has not been sliced through.
3. Arrange 8 apple halves like spokes of a wheel on pastry, leaving a gap in center of the spokes, and press down on apple halves to spread slices slightly. Arrange remaining apple slices in concentric circles in center of tart starting from the outside and working your way in further and further until there’s a small space left in center. Shape center apple slice into a cone to resemble shape of center of a rose.
Tips for rolling out pie dough:
1. Make sure there is light dusting of flour on counter before you start rolling out dough. Lightly dust top of dough and rolling pin with flour, too. The dough should be able to move on counter at all times; if it starts to stick, sprinkle a little more flour on counter. If it sticks, you will end up overworking it.
2. To roll dough into a circle, roll over the disk going just to but not over the edge, and then turn it an eighth of a turn. Roll it again and turn it an eighth of a turn. Repeat until you have a circle of dough about 1/8-inch thick. If you turn it a quarter of a turn each time, you will end up with a square or rectangle.
Source: “Home Cooking 101” by Sara Moulton
Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” (Workman) and can be found on the Web at cookingjewish.com
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