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Is Salad Dressing the Perfect Sauce?

I've been thinking about salad a lot lately, which is strange, because how inspiring can a salad really be? The salads I grew up with were made of lettuce with a bunch of chopped vegetables--carrots, mushrooms, peppers, whatever--doused with a dressing from the fridge door. Everyone put their favorite dressing on, and that worked pretty well. It was the typical "your-choice-of-dressing" side salad, and it was just a way to sneak in some vegetables next to the main event.

But in a French bistro setting, a salad is carefully balanced, based around a good vinaigrette and an opportunity for greatness. There is nothing more required than fresh lettuce and a perfect sauce. Elin and I splurged on a meal at Thomas Keller's restaurant Bouchon this summer when we were in California, and we both ordered the bibb lettuce salad, which is tossed with minced fresh herbs and shallots and the house vinaigrette. The lettuce was rich and glistening, tart and refreshing, and the dressing clung to the leaves with this almost milky quality to it. This humble salad is among the dishes we most vividly remember from that fantastic meal. Can you imagine, dreaming about a salad?

A vinaigrette essentially means a combination of fat, acid, and salt--usually oil and vinegar standing in for fat and acid--vigorously mixed so that they emulsify into one. Mustard is a common addition because it aids in the emulsion process, gives the dressing a creamy quality, and tastes great. Made correctly, a vinaigrette wakes up your tongue and feels round in the mouth. It is rich yet bright. As Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook notes, "you might even call it the perfect sauce."

Hold on a minute. The "perfect sauce"? Not hollandaise or mayonnaise or beurre noisette? There are people who devote their lives to sauce--sauciers--who are often considered the most talented cooks in the kitchen, the person Michael Ruhlman calls "the magician and sorcerer" in his book Elements of Cooking. Could it be that the perfect expression of their art lies in a salad dressing?
Guanciale, Or How to Hang a Pig Jowl in Your Living Room
Nick Kindelsperger
Kafka's Herb-Roasted Chicken

This little roast chicken is the direct result of Barbara Kafka, roasting guru, who changed the name of the roasting game in the mid-nineties with her high temperature manifesto that netted her a Julia Child Cookbook Award, inspired acclaimed New Orleans chef Ken Smith, and set my mind wandering.

And by high I mean the absolute maximum temperature a domestic oven can reach: 500 degrees. This will burn anything left in your unclean oven billowing smoke out the side, setting off the smoke detector, and leaving you in a panic waving a towel around the kitchen. At this point you'll wonder aloud what's the point of this high temperature roast? Won't a lower temp cause a few less headaches?

But the rewards will quickly change your mind. She doesn't want you to baste, use a rack, put butter under the skin, or truss the chicken. Again, to reiterate: this recipe calls for no butter and no oil, at all. It cooks in less than 50 minutes, and comes out with crackly skin, juicy meat, and some pan drippings worth pawning for expensive jewelry.
Homemade Yogurt Mistakes

By Nick Kindelsperger Before I start detailing this ridiculous project,...
Croque-Monsieur: The Incriminating Ham Sandwich

A French twist on the American ham sandwich.
by Nick Kindelsperger
"Saucisson" of Pork Tenderloin

I am deathly afraid of salami. Luckily, this recipe removes most of the variables from salami-making and results in something that would kinda-sorta pass for a saucisson. Pork tenderloin, which is already in a convenient salami-like shape perfect for slicing, makes a perfect dry-curing project.

I am deathly afraid of salami.

Just about all the meat-curing/charcuterie projects I've embarked on, from bacon to duck confit, have been moderately to mostly successful. Usually, I'm surprised at how salting and sometime hanging pieces of meat tends to work out just as it's supposed to. It's dumbfounding that no one has died a horrible death at my hands. But the human palate and gag-reflex seems to be well-tuned when it comes to spoiled food. With common sense--and sense of smell--it's pretty clear when something is safe to eat and not.

But this has done nothing to sooth my fears of dry-curing salami.

Where should I begin? There's the issue of buying animal intestines. And then there's the stuffing of them, not to mention the tools required to do so. There's the decision of what cuts of meat to use, which includes the question of fat-to-meat ratios. There is fear that they can be overstuffed, or understuffed, or the texture can be ruined from grinding improperly. There's the fact that special molds need to be bought or cultivated to achieve proper fermentation. And most importantly, there's a fear that with the wrong humidity, the outside of the casing will dry out and the inside will spoil and mold into a goopy rotten sickness that will put me off meat curing for good.

All this to say that I'm quite excited about my latest project, which conveniently removes most of the variables from salami-making and results in something that would kinda-sorta pass for a saucisson.
Memphis Barbecue

Memphis has insanely good ribs, some so mouthwatering and juicy that they make most of the barbecue I've ever eaten fall of their bones in shame. The rub is better, the smoke more lingering, and the sauce more lip-smacklingly suited to the cause. What cause? Sublime barbecue. I wanted to see how good it could be. Which isn't to say that everything went perfectly or that every bite left me in awe. Over the Memorial weekend I made the long drive from Chicago to visit four of the most vaunted barbecue haunts in Memphis and I left with certain opinions --I certainly liked some more than others-- but not many declarations besides the one above.

Why ribs? Around the time I moved to Chicago last year I sampled some ribs that opened my eyes to this culinary artform. These were meaty, laden with smoke, and so much more inspiring than the barbecue I had eaten before, which tended to be greasy, droopy, sweet, and cloying. It made me wonder: If these places in Chicago were this good then what would the barbecue taste like down in Memphis? Could it possibly get even better?

For the past few months my goal was to locate the best barbecue joints in Memphis. But finding any sort of consensus turned out to be a nightmare. After consulting numerous blogs, asking people on Twitter, and obsessing about it to no end, I finally halted the process. I picked up Mike Mill's Peace, Love, & Barbecue, and decided to visit the four "shrines of barbecue" that he listed in Memphis. They may not be the best in the city at that particular moment, but they were the originals, the ones that have constantly pulled crowds for years.

That list included Cozy Corner, Rendezvous, Interstate Barbecue, and Corky's. That's a lot of barbecue to eat in what amounted to 40 hours in a city. But it's the kind of mission I can get into. Sure, I drove by Graceland and drank a Big Ass Beer on Beale Street, but I had a more important mission. This was my barbecue culinary education and I was going to take it seriously.
The Winter Gimlet | Province Restaurant, Chicago
Corned Beef Short Ribs