Read Online Saveur: The New Comfort Food by James Oseland - Free Book Online Page B

wedges
    Serves 2
    1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the linguine; cook until al dente, 8–10 minutes. Drain the pasta; reserve ¼ cup pasta water.
    2. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green and red peppers, garlic, and onion; cook until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the wine and the mussels; cook, covered, until the mussels open, about 2 minutes. Add reserved pasta water, tomatoes, butter, and shrimp and cook, stirring, until the shrimp are just pink, about 1 minute. Add the cooked linguine, toss to combine, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce thickens and clings to the pasta. Stir in the basil and season with salt and pepper.
    3. Divide pasta between 2 bowls. Sprinkle with more basil and Asiago and garnish with lemon wedges.

Everyday Fried Noodles
    Tian Tian Chao Mian
    In this Beijing-style noodle stir-fry, ingredients go into the wok in a measured progression so that each one cooks to the point of optimal flavor and texture. Carrots and onions are stir-fried just long enough to reveal their sweetness; pork, ginger, and garlic release their fragrance into the hot oil; then soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar cook down quickly into a sauce that clings to the noodles, which get a final toss in the wok along with salted cucumber and a drizzle of sesame oil. The subtle, surprising result is a beautiful testament to what a little care applied to a few simple elements can produce.
½ small seedless cucumber, peeled and julienned Kosher salt, to taste
    3 tbsp. canola oil
    1 medium carrot, julienned
    1 medium onion, thinly sliced
    ¼ lb. ground pork
    4 cloves garlic, minced
    1 1-inch piece ginger, minced
    6 scallions, minced
    1½ tbsp. dark soy sauce
    1½ tbsp. rice cooking wine
    1½ tsp. sugar
    2 cups bean sprouts
    6 oz. dried flat noodles, boiled and rinsed under cold water
    1 tbsp. Asian sesame oil
    Serves 2–4
    1. Toss the cucumbers and a pinch of salt together in a small bowl; set aside for at least 5 minutes. Heat a 14-inch wok (or a stainless-steel skillet) over high heat until it begins to smoke. Add 1 tbsp. oil around the edge of the wok and swirl to coat the bottom and sides of the wok. Add the carrots and onions and cook until softened, about 1 minute. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
    2. Return the wok to high heat and add the remaining oil. Add the pork, garlic, ginger, and half of the scallions and cook, breaking the pork into small pieces, until browned, 3–4 minutes.
    3. Add the soy sauce, rice cooking wine, sugar, bean sprouts, and reserved carrots and onions. Cook, stirring, until hot, 30 seconds.
    4. Add the reserved cucumbers, remaining scallions, noodles, and sesame oil and cook, tossing, until hot, about 1 minute. Season with salt. Divide between plates and serve hot.

Nice Slices
    Uniformly sliced vegetables are essential to stir-fries, so that the ingredients will cook evenly. To transform carrots into the thin sticks called julienne requires patient slicing. Most professional cooks chop their carrots into 2-inch-long segments, square off and discard the edges, and cut the segments into thin planks, which they then stack up and slice into slivers. It’s a perfectly serviceable way of going about it, but it produces a lot of wasted carrot. We prefer the following technique, which we learned from Shirley Cheng, a professor of Asian cooking at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Here’s how to do it.

    A Trim and peel a carrot. Using a large, sharp knife, slice on a deep diagonal into thin, broad slices, keeping the overlapping slices nestled close together as you work. Cutting on the diagonal allows you to use almost the whole carrot; slices from the tapered end will be about the same length as those from the thicker end.
    B Spread the carrot slices out like a deck of cards, so that one slice overlaps most of another.

    C Working from one end of the pile to the other, cut the carrot