How to Save Downton Abbey Hollandaise Sauce Then AND Now

The culinary accurateness of the Downton Abbey Series should delight all professionals in the hospitality industry.

From soufflés to silver service, it is more than obvious that great research has gone into every aspect of the script where food is concerned.

But Downton's writers go even further. They show what can go amiss in the kitchen as well as what works. For example, sauces. Sauces are the wonder of cuisine. There are five major ones, entitled "the Mother Sauces", each with seemingly endless variations on their major taste themes. 

One such sauce is Hollandaise, an emulsified sauce in which egg yolks not only serve as the emulsifier, but also as a thickening agent. The final viscosity or thickness of the sauce is determined by how much fat is emulsified in and to what degree the egg yolks are cooked. 

The more the egg yolks are cooked, the thicker the hollandaise will be. However, the more the egg yolks are cooked, the more chance that the final result will be scrambled eggs, not a glorious hollandaise sauce. It's a delicate balance.

And that's just what happened to Ivy, the perky new kitchen maid, in the Dowwnton Abbey kitchen right before a grand meal. Even Daisy, the more experienced assistant cook, panicked when she saw the curdled sauce.

It's Alfred, the very new and very tall footman, who comes to the rescue. Prior to serving at Downton, he had worked as a hotel waiter, where he had caught glimpses of how master chefs save a separated or "broken" sauce.

He quickly strained out the curdle portion of the sauce and whisked one egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of water to the remaining sauce, still keeping it warm during the process. His fast reaction would please any chef and mark this young man as someone to promote. (Is Mrs. Patmore, Downton's cook, observing his flare, leading possibly to future plot developments?) 

A hundred years ago, chefs used double copper pots to make hollandaise sauce. Ouch - that's expensive and a royal pain to keep clean and polished. Today's chef has the advantage of improved cookware, such as Rose Bake and Oven Ware. 

Developed by Rose Levy Beranbau, author of the James Beard's acclaimed The Cake Bible and known as someone with a very sharp eye for technique to a diva level, her Rose Caramel Pot with double pouring spouts is a marvel for sauces sweet or savory.

Additionally, for those sauces requiring the use of a lift KitchenAid Mixer, no busy chef who cares about easy and elegance should be without the Rose BeaterBlade.

Its patented "Wind" design scraps the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl with every turn. When detached, it even doubles as a spatula.  

Alfred saved the day in Downton's Edwardian kitchen with his knowledge of the new and useful. If he lived today, he's surely reach for Rose's outstanding cookware and save the day once again. Tools and technique have always matter and they always will.

 Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2013

The Very Best Cookbooks of 2012

As the year ends, it’s time to bring the best of 2012 forward into 2013.  And that, of course, includes cookbooks.

So here are the outstanding 2012 cookbooks that chefs worldwide have reviewed and declared a must addition to any culinary library.

FEVIKEN

Chef Magnus Nilsson serves a mere 12 covers in a tiny restaurant located on an expansive northern Swedish estate yet he is esteemed by chefs worldwide.

In large, this is due to his promotion of New Nordic Cuisine, which is stunning simple but never simplistic.

The cuisine presented focuses on seasonal ingredients as well as embraces the use of preserved vegetables and aged beef during the cold winter months.

Chef Magnus generously shares his insightful philosophy of food and life, which may well guide future culinary trends worldwide. Well done! 

JERUSALEM

Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi have also created an outstanding cookbook.

The book’s striking photographs capture the bold colors and contrasts of each Mid-Eastern dish. But do not think the dishes listed can only be created if exotic ingredients are available.

In fact, the famed restaurant of the same name, where each dish is served, is located in London.

Perhaps even more inspiring is the fact that the owners are both Israeli and Palestinian and work peacefully together.

Fantastic! Let us hope their cooperation and mutual creativity is a sign of things to come.

HUBERT KELLER’S SOUVENIRS

Memoirs written by chefs can sometimes be a disappointment, as they often relate generalized culinary experiences, rather than perceptive insights into the heart of the Industry.

Such is NOT the case with Chef Hubert Keller’s new book, Souvenirs: Stories and Recipes from My Life. His book contains an amazing 330 pages that provide an intimate glimpse of his extraordinary culinary life, that began when he was age 16 in Alsace, France at his father’s pastry shop, as well as 120 personal recipes with 300 supportive photographs.

Truly worth having, this book makes you want dine at his world renowned Fleur de Lys in San Francisco and then meet Chef Keller, who has set a new standard for culinary journal cookbooks. Congratulations!

THE FOOD OF SPAIN

Claudia Roden is far more that a mere recipe writer. Historian and critic Simon Schama has proclaimed her "No more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker." 

High praise that.

In The Food of Spain, she interweaves hundreds of recipes from across Spain with parallel folk tales, proverbs, stories, poetry, and local history to provide a guide to not only delicious food but also to the diverse population and merging cultures that produced it.

Considered by many as the first new classic on Spanish cuisine to be written in the last 50 years, this is one book to be sure to purchase and then enjoy, and enjoy, and enjoy! A true culinary classic..

ASTRANCE: A COOK’S BOOK

Chef Pascal Barbot’s title says it all but presented in his own unique style via “narrative recipes”. In 50 recipes, he describes how and where he found the inspiration for his recipes, how he finds his products, how he uses, prepares and cooks them at his famed 25 seat restaurant, L’Astrance, in Paris.

Additionally, the "narrative recipes" are completed by texts by Chihiro Masui, who gives her tasting impressions as an introduction for the dishes presented in the book. Chef Barbot also reveals the secrets of his basic recipes in a 64-page separate booklet (including sauces, condiments, pastries!) in the deluxe version of the cookbook. 

His eager guests come from around the world, often reserving their tables many months in advance, to experience dining at L’Astrance, where ten original dishes are served each and every night.

This stunning book provides a glimpse of that world so creative that book dealers can’t keep the book in stock. Order your copy NOW! An astounding text.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

How a Microwave Works Then and Now

In 1945 Dr. Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer working for the Raytheon Company in Massachusetts, discovered quite by accident that a chocolate candy bar in his lab coat pocket had melted while he was experimenting with magnetron tubes, a new kind of vacuum tube developed by the English during World War II.

Besides snacking on candy bars, Dr. Spencer was also fond of popcorn as an afternoon snack. So being a true scientist, he placed a few unpopped kernels next to magnetron tubes and was amazed when they begin to vibrate and then pop.

The next day he and his excited lab associates tried cooking an egg still in its shell.  It cooked and then exploded.

By 1947 his amazing discovery (minus the exploding egg) was transformed into the first microwave test model, which weighed 750 pounds, stood five feet tall and cost $5,000! It also required addition plumbing be installed as the heated magnetron tubes had to be cooled constantly by water.  

At this price range, Raytheon believed only professional chefs would consider purchasing this new cooking tool. In fact, the first field testing was done by valiant chefs in Boston. Thank you brave Chefs.

By the 1960’s the price had dropped to such a low point that microwaves began to appear on the kitchen counter in some homes.

But without the innovative focus of professional chefs, they were initially used largely to reheat and defrost foods quickly.

Then in the 1980’s Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn packets, along with a host of microwave cookbooks for the home cook, appeared on the market. And the rest, as they sat, is culinary history.

Yet there is a problem, for as much as the microwave is now a part of any contemporary kitchen, few of us actually know how it works, except maybe for Chef Ferran Adrià and his amazing staff.

So here’s a quick tutorial – just remember to enjoy some popcorn while watching, thanks to Dr. Percy Spencer and, of course, Orville Redenbacher! 

Post Note, June 30, 2012: Is it our imagination, or is there a a very strong resemblance between Dr. Spencer and Orville Redenbacher?

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

New Titanic Miniseries Can Remind Us Who We Are Today

As the hundredth anniversary of the tragic sinking of the famed ocean liner The Titanic approaches, a fleet of a new TV miniseries will soon seek to find port on television sets around the world.

Leading the way will be a new mega million pound four-part TV series written by Julian Fellowes, co-author of the very popular Downton Abbey PBS/BBC TV miniseries, entitled simply Titanic.

This parallel application of writing talent with the legendary grandeur of Titanic's famed elegance (and sad ending) is almost certain to guarantee the continued popularity of all things Edwardian.

Thankfully the series, which will be released in Canada, the United Kingdom and then the United States, will focus in large part on the passengers and crew as characters before taking the viewers into the sad night of April 15^th.

The delayed tragedy will enable those watching the series to glimpse the grandeur of the ship as well as the hierarchy that ruled society at that time.

It is important to remember that our Industry carries the legacy of that class system and the great estate houses that spawn it. Like the fabled Downton Abbey, we work witihin a daily structure that echoes the labors of Edwardian cooks, footmen and house maids in the modern positions of chefs, bellmen and housekeepers.

Today those positions are better paid professional positions, protected by labor law and owner-worker agreements. Yes, the world has changed a great deal since 1912 – or has it?

Indifference and injust judgment of others still occurs, lurking like an iceberg, offering equal destruction today unless we can see clearer than the Titanic’s esteemed but careless captain that professionalism requires a genuine respect for others, not merely profit by any means available.

Post Note, April 6, 2012: If you have ever try to visualize how something as big as the Titanic could sink (something roughly the size of a major hotel building), the amazing data-visualization company After the Flood has created a videographic for the BBC that explains it all.

Their work is an amazing demonstration of how the new videographic design, using advanced computer technology (and a lot of in-house talent), will change the face of marketing in the hospitality industry. Imagine telling the marketing story of your hotel or restaurant in five brief but unforgettable minutes! 

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012

Liberty Is an Inclusive Feast Mr. Limbaugh!

Currently the American Republican Party is embroiled (pardon the pun) is a cauldron of issues that seem better suited to a Mad Men script set in the 1960s then a critical election of the modern era.

Most recently the Republican spokesperson Rush Limbaugh, who now claims he’s only an entertainer, has decided to defame a law student from Georgetown University (more about 'George' in just a moment) who spoke up for women’s  health issues before the American Congress.

Instead of honoring the courage of Sandra Fluke, Limbaugh decided to slander this individual with such vile sexual language and imagery, it simply isn’t worth repeating here.

Starting with the President down to the average person on the street the response has been shock and outrage to such a vilification and a growing demand for an authentic apology from this nationally popular radio commentator.

Limbaugh in short, who claims to speak for liberty and freedom, does not.

One has only to remember the standards by which George Washington himself lived – it’s no small irony that Ms. Fluke attends a University whose name has come to be identified with America’s first president and who risk his own life and fortune to defend the young nation and its laws.

No book better highlights the high standards of civility, that Limbaugh has chosen to discard, than in the new book Dining with the Washingtons.  Far more than a mere recipe book, this outstanding text edited by Stephen A. McLeod, lays forth for readers the feast of courtesy that George Washington and the first First Lady offered to all.

Those who dined at Washington’s Mount Vernon country estate represented the best and the brightest of their era– no matter their nation, political belief or sex.

French gentlemen dined with rebel soldiers and ladies spoke freely to the country’s leaders on matters of concern to the nation. 

Diversity was accepted and encouraged – both in cuisine and conversation. And though the sad question of slavery was still to be resolved, Washington was proud of the talents of the nation’s first celebrity chef, Hercules.  

Dining with the Washingtons is a must-have visual treasure and historical guide for any true culinary professional or informed reader.

It is a return, in these turbulent times, to a gentler and perhaps wiser age when civility’s value was better understood as a necessity and not a mere social frill.

Just consider for a moment a few of the rules that a young Washington hand wrote in his journal years before becoming famous in a section entitled Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation: 

• Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
• Use no reproachful language against any one; neither curse nor revile.
• Let your conversation be without malice or envy.
• Mock not nor jest at anything of importance.
• Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.  

Those of us who are lucky enough to be in the hospitality industry understand these principles by heart. Indeed, our very industry is named after the concept of graciousness – a graciousness that turns no one away, a philosophy that welcomes all, just as the first President of America did to his hilltop home. 

In these difficult times, our hotels and restaurants should echo that understanding - that democracy is a feast that welcomes all and excludes none.

The dishes served at that feast of freedom may differ, given the history and heritage of each nation, but that fact should never alter the right of all to join in the feast to which each human is inalienably invited. 

One can only hope that persons such a Rush Llimbaugh pause and consider the bitter fare of their words before they sour and soil their own souls.

There is a better wiser feast to serve, one Washington knew well – one of fellowship, respect and cooperation. The future is before us – let us never dine on or serve to others dishes created from past hates or future fears.

Your Culinary World copyright Ana Kinkaid/Peter Schlagel 2012