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SEASONING CAST IRON
David
has a new cast iron pan. Cast iron skillets require a different
kind of attention than other pans and must be seasoned before
use. The manufacturer claims that it came pre-seasoned, but
don’t believe it. When you heat a cast iron skillet, the metal
expands and the molecules separate and oil gets in between them;
as the pan cools, the molecules close back up and the oil gets
trapped between.
To
season the pan, wash it when it is new to clean off the shop
dirt. Then heat the pan and when it’s not too hot put in some
oil, the lightest film, and bring it up to a very hot
temperature, almost smoking. Then turn the fire off and let the
pan cool. When cool, wipe the oil out with a paper towel. Then
sprinkle the pan with salt, about 1/8 cup, and then wipe it with
a paper towel to get the residue of the oil out. Then just put
it away. Never wash it with soap, which will dissolve the
grease and cause rust. You can wash it with water and a Teflon
pad or brush.
FRYING FISH
A
great technique for frying fish is called meuniere, which
means like the miller’s wife, which means it’s going to be
dredged in flour. That tends to seal the fish and keep the
moisture inside and make a crispy crust on the outside.
Doyle’s favorite new product, which he uses in this recipe, is
white whole wheat. You can only buy it in this town at
Meijer’s, and there is only one brand, King Arthur; but Doyle
gets his from Kansas from Hudson Cream Flour. White wheat is a
wonderful new product, it’s softer than red wheat and cooks
beautifully.
First
moisten the fish with almost anything – water, milk, milk and
egg, egg by itself. Then coat it with flour (and the whole
wheat flour is nuttier than refined flour and doesn’t lump up).
Next dip it again this time in an egg wash (Emeril uses egg and
water), and coat a second time with something crunchy.
You
can use cracker crumbs, bread crumbs, or panko, but Doyle is
going to try ground up Triscuits, which are made from whole
wheat flour. Potato chips or instant potato flakes can work
too. A caller from Urbana recalls that her mother used to grind
up corn flakes to use as a coating. She mainly used it in the
oven for baked goods, but it would work for frying fish too. A
caller from Champaign recommends using gram flour (made from
chickpeas) mixed with instant pancake mix.
Some
folks like to chop up herbs and parsley and put that in the
crumbs at the end. Herbes de Provence or an Italian herb mix
would work well. One caller reports that her son, who likes to
cook, uses dry mustard, paprika, salt and pepper. That would
make it very spicy.
Fry it
in about ¼ inch of oil, which seems like a lot but it doesn’t
soak it up because of the coating. Use a medium to not high
heat, a nice hearty fire; cook it quickly, 2½ minutes per side.
You
can use this technique with chicken and lamb chops too. You get
a sealed in crust and moist interior.
A
caller from Danforth asked, what kind of fish is best for pan
frying? Doyle relies on the people behind the counter at this
town: ask what is your freshest fish that I can fry? Sometimes
catfish, tilapia, ocean perch. You can do a whole fish like a
trout, but that takes longer to cook. Fillets are quite fine
and take only 5 minutes to cook. You want a thin fillet. To
avoid the odor of frying fish, buy fresh fish that is not full
of odor.
NON-STICK SKILLETS
A
caller from Savoy recently bought a round all-purpose wok-shaped
pan made of hard anodized aluminum with a special non-Teflon
coating and some plastic utensils to use with it. It’s all
scratched up already. She read in Cooks that if you want
to preserve non-stick pans you should use silicone implements,
but silicone spatulas are not thin enough to work well for
turning food over. Doyle agreed that if you’re scratching into
the coating, it is coming off and you are destroying the
surface. Wood implements work well, but it would be hard to
find thin turners or lifters. Emeril has a thin curved lifter
which appears to be metal, but it’s light so it doesn’t
scratch. There are pans coated with Silverstone which is a
good scratch-resistant coating. Another one called Circulon has
little grooves in the finish, and that doesn’t wear off so
much. Calphalon is also very good, and they make a special
pancake turner that is compatible with the finish. A caller
from Urbana recommends Le Creuset pans, which have a porcelain
coating on top of cast iron, it’s really fantastic. The
porcelain coating is a perfect nonstick surface, and while he
doesn’t use metal in it, it doesn’t ding up like a lot of the
nonstick surfaces. You pay for it though.
SEARING
A
caller from Savoy asks, how do you sear something? How can you
sear it and still assure that it cooks through? Searing is the
technique of sealing the outside surface to keep the juices
inside the meat. Searing should be done early and thoroughly,
but then cook the meat longer to cook through. Sear on all
sides, then go ahead and braise or roast. Searing is the same
thing as browning, you want it brown and crusty. Do it on
medium-high flame.
A
caller from Champaign mentioned that Harold McGee’s On Food
and Cooking (Scribner, 2004; ISBN 0684800012) debunks the
idea of sealing in juices by searing meat. Both searing and not
searing have been in and out of fashion; right now, most cooks
recommend searing; among other things, it provides eye appeal,
the meat looks cooked. David thinks browning does affect the
flavor.
SKILLET BREAD/BISCUIT
A
caller from Chicago reports that her great-grandmother used to
make bread on a skillet. It wasn’t cornbread. Her mother can’t
remember the recipe. It was a kind of biscuit, flipped, one big
fried biscuit you took out and then cut. She seeks a recipe for
this original “fast food.” Her great-grandmother was from
Alabama.
Doyle
thinks that this can be done with any simple biscuit recipe, so
long as you use self-rising flour to make the biscuits, it will
raise up while you’re cooking it. It would definitely speed up
the process.
Doyle
makes a tiny Welsh cake that is a fried biscuit, but it’s small,
the size of a shot glass, and it has currants in it. You have
to get them just right on either side, but then they’re good for
many days.
A
caller from Danforth reports that her mother called that fried
biscuit “campfire bread” and she used an iron skillet. The
biscuit was quite thin: she rolled them out quite large, then
she fried on one side and flipped it over. They ate it with
butter or jelly.
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