Cooking Techniques and Kitchen Gadgets

The best way to enjoy summer is to set goals for yourself.  The best summer I ever had was when my friend Becky and I set a goal to eat at every single restaurant on the 25 best cheap eats from Los Angeles magazine.  We failed to accomplish the goal, but is failure really such a bad thing when you’re eating well on the way there? 

This summer, I’ve come up with my first goal: learn how to successfully brew iced coffee, in other words, cold brew it. The first time I ever even heard about the concept was last year.  A new coffee shop opened in the NYU hood called Think Coffee.  I looked at the barista after my first sip and told him, “This is really amazing.”  He looked me dead in the eye and said “That’s because we cold brew it for 24 hours.  The way iced coffee should be made.”  I’m not going to lie, I kind of have a thing for pretentious baristas.  And I developed a major thing for Think iced coffee.  But then Think got popular, and popularity to me means only one thing: crowded. 

There are those who are intuitive cooks. They can just rustle up some ingredients from their pantry and freezer and blithely come up with a smashing meal with the effortless grace that leaves someone like me scratching their head feeling like a pair of brown shoes in a world of Tuxedos.

Sure, I can follow a recipe and that can fool some people into thinking I’m a good cook, but the thing that separates the gifted from the wannabes is baking.  One time I endeavored to create a fat-free, whole grain bar that my friend Marcia Strassman christened ‘tree bark’ after taking one bite.

My cupcakes have come out of the oven with all the promise of a Sprinkles alternative only to cool to the dry sludgy consistency of play dough mixed with sawdust.  I don’t get it. I did everything right. What’s the secret?

I could live with these set backs, if it weren’t for the fact that what I’d really like to master is a stinkin’ Piecrust and I can’t even get that right!  My Aunt Lovey, whose stuffing recipe is in the archives, also made a sensational Piecrust.  Often I considered Piecrust a necessary evil to get to the reward of the sugared fruit interior, but not her crusts. They had a crisp, savory texture of, well, I can’t think of anything to compare them to really. I just know that I loved nothing more than to break off the edges of them and crunch on them and combine their savory flavors in my mouth along with the sweet fruit of the pie.

They, asked me how I knew,
My true love was true,
I of course replied, something here inside,
Can not be denied.

They, said some day you'll find,
All who love are blind,
When you heart's on fire, you must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.

Written by Jerome Kern (music) and Otto Harbach (lyrics) for the musical "Roberta" in 1933

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is supposed to be romantic, but it just makes me hungry. It's completely primal. With all due respect to raw food adherents, smoke has been appealing every since we discovered that the combination of fire plus food equals delicious. The smell of smoky bacon or barbecue has been known on occasion to make even committed vegetarians weak.

Sadly, I have nowhere to put a grill let alone a smoker. I use my cast iron grill pan, and make-shift smokers in the oven and stove top and char my eggplants and peppers under the broiler. But it's not the same. Smoky flavors are elusive. So far my favorite smoke-enhancers are chipotle pepper, cumin and smoked paprika. But now I have a new weapon in my arsenal.

I’m not a big raw bell pepper fan, but the smoky sweetness of a roasted pepper always appeals to me.

Over the years I’ve roasted peppers many different ways—under the broiler, mostly, and sometimes over a gas flame or charcoal grill. But my favorite way is roasting in a covered gas grill. Not only is this method simple and hands-off, but it also yields a roasted pepper that’s easier to peel, because the skin really blisters and pops off, rather than getting too cooked and sticking to the pepper.

The convected heat in a hot gas grill quickly surrounds the pepper on all sides and blackens it in less than 10 minutes. (A couple of flips with the tongs helps.) I take the peppers out when they’re mostly, but not completely, blackened so that they don’t overcook.