Неге I include information basic to the use of this book. These notes on ingredients and techniques are intended to simplify your buying and preparation, and to help assure the quality of the finished dishes.
Ingredients
The following specifications apply throughout the book, with any exceptions noted in individual recipes:
• All ingredients such as meat, fish, herbs, fruits, and vegetables are fresh, not dried, frozen, or canned.
• Eggs are extra large.
• All butter is unsalted.
• All citrus juices are freshly squeezed.
• Pepper is freshly cracked black pepper from a peppermill.
• Flour is unbleached all-purpose flour.
• Heavy cream is cream with a 38 percent butterfat content. Avoid the ultrapasteurized type if possible; cream that is not ultrapasteurized is more perishable but vastly preferable in taste, and it whips better, too.
• Parmesan cheese should be true Parmigiano-Reggiano. When a recipe calls for grated cheese, it should be freshly grated.
• When an ingredient is to be diced or chopped, use a medium dice unless the recipe specifies "finely" diced, "coarsely" chopped, or other variations.
Cracklings: The crisply cooked fat from ducks, geese, chicken, and other fowl is splendid in salads, as a soup garnish, or even, salted and peppered, as a snack. You can save the fat from various birds and store it, tightly wrapped, in the freezer until you want to make cracklings. Then chop the fat into medium dice and add it to 1 or 2 cups of water in a heavy pot. Melt the fat, stirring. Gradually the water will evaporate and the fat will crisp and turn deep brown. Carefully strain the contents of the pot through cheesecloth, reserving the oil for cooking if you like.
Mussels and Clams: Cleaning them thoroughly is a fairly tedious but absolutely essential first step. Put them through several changes of cold water, scrubbing them hard with a stiff-bristled brush each time. When the shells seem pristinely clean and the water remains clear, you've done the job. Debeard mussels by removing the ropy protrusions with a sharp paring knife. Proceed with recipe instructions. If these call for heating the mollusks, with or without liquid, until the shells open, be patient. It could take a while. However, it's a good idea to remove those that open first, lest they toughen while the others are taking their time. And if one or two stubbornly refuse to open, discard them.
Peppers and Chiles: The recipes in this book make abundant use of both bell peppers and assorted chiles. By no means do all require that they be peeled, but you do have to remove the seeds and ribs. This is simplicity itself: Simply slit down one side of the clean pepper, open it up, cut out the main seed pod clustered under the stem, and shake out all the loose seeds. Then trim off the interior ribs and prepare the peppers as instructed.
Peeling is another matter. For bell peppers, there are a number of ways to loosen the skins. You can roast very lightly oiled peppers on a grill until the skin is charred, then put them in a bowl and cover them with a towel so they steam. If you have a gas stove, you can char the peppers by holding and turning them with tongs over the flame. Or you can broil them. Again, you want the skin charred all over, and this could take as much as 20 minutes of turning them occasionally under your oven broiler. Then put them in a paper bag to steam until the skins loosen and the peppers are cool enough to handle. Either way, you then peel off the charred skins completely, slit open one side, and remove the seeds and ribs. The beautiful red, yellow, or green flesh is now ready for use in the recipes.
Chiles can be confusing, and in this country a mystique tends to surround them. I encourage you to read about them in Modern Southwest Cuisine, by John Sedlar, Feast of Santa Fe, by Huntley Dent, or any of Diana Kennedy's books. For the purposes of this book, you need to know how to distinguish chiles in the market, so you can buy the ones specified.
Fresh chiles can be dealt with as are bell peppers (noting any special instructions in individual recipes), except that you should probably wear gloves when handling them, especially if your skin is sensitive, and you must utterly avoid rubbing your eyes with a hand that has just touched a chile.
The same cautions apply to dried chiles, but in addition you should know that they benefit from being briefly toasted. The ancho, a dried poblano chile, stars in several of my recipes. It has a seductive, smoky, toasty, earthy flavor. To toast the ancho, you can either use a comal, a flat stone griddlelike device, or you can grasp the stem with tongs and hold the ancho over a gas burner or a grill, turning it frequently. (Take care not to let anchos catch fire; any sauce you use them in wifl then be bitter.) After they are toasted, soak them in a bowl of liquid (usually water, but sometimes stock or vinegar, depending on the recipe) to soften them. Then remove the stems and seeds.