Leveling Up!! A Monday morning recap

This weekend I kept things very simple. I had access to some great vegetables from Young’s Farm on Long Island and I wanted to showcase them in this current form. As I mentioned in a previous post, vegetables this time of year are fully hydrated and contain a lot of natural sugar. I don’t need to add any liquid to my cooking process. Cooking simply is not easy, its just not complicated. It is paring down your technique and process to a minimum number of steps and ingredients. For example, if i’m just going to simply grill Broccoli and serve it basically as is, it better be great. I need to think about utilizing all of the facets of a small piece of broccoli. What I mean is that there are several flavors, textures, and experiences you can get. There is raw texture and flavor, a steamed one, a roasted one, a burned one, etc. There is something nice about all of those,but I want them all, at the same time. That is how you make “simple” cooking, exciting.

Years ago I read about a Carrot “Stew” that Daniel Boulud was serving at Daniel. He said he wanted to combine all of the different carrot flavors and textures. Slow roasted, raw, sweet, vegetal, juiced, pickled, etc. So he used 3 different techniques, several seasonings, carrot juice, lime and it was a full spectrum, great chef way of approaching an ingredient. Trying to be the alchemist. Take a simple ingredient like a carrot and transform and elevate to an exciting experience for a diner.

Well I want to make the complexity in Carrot stew without a ton of prep work, an army of cooks, and more efficient thinking. In a previous post I wrote about roasting vegetables that are in season around November. An example I used was a Kohlrabi. One of the attributes of this vegetable is that it is great raw, slightly cooked, and slow cooked. Crudite' to soup, depending on how you cut them. I want the carrot stew effect in the same bite, not just the same dish. The way to achieve this is through your knife work and cooking placement and technique.

Cut the Kohlrabi into a 1.5inch shape. Irregular is great. Toss with oil, salt and pepper. Heat a pan to Medium heat and place Kohlrabi as flat as you can in the pan. Don’t crowd them. Let them develop some color on your stove for 2 or 3 minutes and then throw in the oven at 400 for 2 or 3 minutes. Take out and let rest for a minute. The part that was touching the pan should be nicely browned and sweet, the “middle” should be cooked through and have less sweetness, and the part farthest from the pan should be just warmed through and still be a little crunchy. Finish with extra virgin olive oil, lemon, and a sprinkle of salt. This is an amplification of all the facets of a Kohlrabi within one bite.

Anyone who has ever seared a piece of protein to get a crust and kept the center medium rare has done a version of this. The vegetable world needs this treatment too.