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Spending quarantine in a town in Extremadura, at the whim of fate or because it surprises you by picking wild strawberries, makes the penalties seem less. Not just for the scenery. As one of those who spend the confinement cooking, take advantage of visits to the supermarket to talk about food , ingredients, recipes and tricks, many tricks of a lifetime: how you give extra tenderness to meat, you get that the muffins rise well, the lettuce does not remain soft, the batter is fluffy, the cauliflower smells less ... everything that is not taught in the books.
Take advantage of unsuspected milk versatility
That a lady in the local butcher shop comments that "the steaks a little hard (she sibyllina) are softened in milk and are very rich" makes us distrust the local genre. But if when you go to the fish shop, in the next door, the same woman returns to bring up the milk ... or it is that she has milk left over or something has the liquid element. "I use it to dip frozen fish in it," he says this time. What if he is right? Admittedly, perhaps picking up beef fillets is easy, but other meats, such as pork, give problems to even the most seasoned cooks; it is enough to separate from the stove just to pick up the phone, when they are busy with some pork loin steaks, so that they pass and are completely dry. Well, science is on the lady's side.
"It is probable that the addition of milk has several effects that may influence the final texture of a fried meat, or to which heat is applied. First, there may be a phenomenon of swelling on the proteins of the meat. The presence of milk when frying can also act as a coagulating agent, providing a tender texture. Something similar could occur in fish, as the fibrillar protein structure is similar, although I don't think it has any effect on frozen fish, "he explains. the coordinator of the master's degree in Gastronomic Sciences at the Basque Culinary Center, Juan Carlos Arboleya.
If you are looking for a trick, apart from the doubts that frozen fish generates, there is a clear drawback: normally, one has better things to spend milk on than bathing fillets. The solution is in another trick that allows you to save it in another game: substitute half of the milk used to make the béchamel sauce for the broth related to the filling. What are cooked? Stew broth What are ham? Ham broth. They will be spectacular.
Over the days, and pulling the thread of the housewife obsessed with the dairy thing, one ends up learning that "cooking the cauliflower with a little milk makes it smell less" or that "a little soaked bread in milk and together with the meat it gives shape to championship hamburgers ". The second is more than proven, the first is more doubtful. What would the doctor in physical biochemistry say? He says yes: "The presence of milk in the cooking water helps to neutralize the sulfur components that characterize the typical cauliflower odor." In exchange for so much information, I can only do one thing: reciprocate the lady with a trick of my own harvest. If the mayonnaise you have to cover the Russian salad is very thick, I say, put a splash of milk and stir well so that it bathes potato, hard-boiled egg and tuna as the mountains of Heidi melt.
Food must also be colored (sometimes)
You will not be in the Alps, but color is not lacking in the environment or, therefore, in the casserole. The landscape is priceless, as well as a local man to drop a bunch of spinach on your doorstep, especially if he comes with a tip for the pin. "After cooking them, put them on ice so that they don't lose the green, so beautiful they have," one tells me. It is not verbiage.
"The pigments that color food are very sensitive to heat or acid, for example. If we dip spinach in ice as soon as we finish cooking it, we lower the temperature quickly and, therefore, the pigments that give it its color green no longer continue to degrade. If, on the contrary, we let spinach cool down by themselves, they will stay longer at high temperature and the color will degrade more, "explains the researcher at the Council's Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology Superior of Scientific Research María Dolores Rodrigo.
Pulling the thread, more tricks appear so that the vegetables do not turn pale, like the one a friend tells me through WhatsApp, which encourages cooking the green beans with a pinch of baking soda so that they are a "precious green". There is no doubt that his assessment is completely subjective, and perhaps the color will not change, says Arboleya, but what leaves no room for discussion is that "the addition of bicarbonate can reduce cooking time," he says. This trick, which can be applied especially to legumes , is based on the fact that bicarbonate has a basic average pH, and that makes the cell walls of these ingredients break down more easily. In other words, they cook faster.
Maybe in the time you save you can even give the lettuce a perfect touch to prevent the salad from acquiring an irritating soft texture. Peeking into the neighbor's patio we discover that his supports the trunk in a bucket of water so that, as if it were a plant, the leaves remain shiny, and he says that in summer he puts them 10 minutes in the freezer after washing them so that the salad is crispy. Although not as much as a good batter ...
The mysteries of the long tradition of battering
"Who would not like the batter, with how good it is," the great chef Nacho Manzano once told me. I remember the phrase while I shop because the head of the fishmonger's section of the only supermarket in town belongs to the legion of fans for dressing food, who, while dispatching chicharro and conger eel, gives away two tricks of cracking. "Put a little soda in the hake batter to make it more foamy," he says. Pointed. "The best way to coat the squid is to put them in a plastic bag with flour inside and stir. They are perfect. That must be dry," he continues. And a client asks: "Is this the same for anchovies?". Without looking up from the salmon she is cutting, the fishmonger says: "Well, no, because you are carrying them. Or do you not see that they are more delicate?" Deathly silence.
Until Rodrigo speaks. "The soda has dissolved a gas that provides the bubbles. The main difference between gases and liquids or solids is that their molecules are not fixed, they tend to expand as much as we leave them. Therefore, when incorporating that soda with gas to the batter make the mixture less dense, which is what gives the feeling of more fluffiness, "he says. Long live the bubbles, and not only in the batter. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I can say that I understand what it means that the experiments have to be done with soda, because this drink not only improves the hake a la Romana, it also raises the level of fruit salad (but be careful, with the fruit you can also pass ).
Regarding the case of the bag and the anchovies, Arboleya believes that "it is probably simply because of the difference between the surface of the squid and the surface of a anchovy. Due to this difference, the adhesiveness may be greater in the case of the squid." Too technical? No problem, it's all a matter of trying, as a local recommends in a conversation about the most roasted bird in Spain. "Are you from Madrid? Well, I lived in Embajadores for a few years and bought the roast chicken on Sundays in El Murciano, on Valencia street. It was delicious and it was because, when roasted, they put rosemary and more aromatic herbs behind ...", says from behind? "Yes, yes, through the hole. And I do it that way at home too, but adding a cut lemon and, if I come upstairs, a splash of beer ."
Faced with such a revelation, what less than to share with him a trick from my mother, who puts a tip of super-tasty tomato sauce in the onion sauce of the meatballs. Raise this sauce and any other that is white to the touch of umami (this is what I say, not my mother, but it is so). Of course, when it comes to lifting something, there is no trick like the one that helps give strength to a cake that is unrivaled.
Preserve, revive and nail the muffins
Usually, what we look for in the kitchen tricks is that solution to the problems that are repeated over and over again, inconveniences such as cupcakes that do not rise as one would like. It is also usual that, no matter how much you look for them, the answers do not come until you hit them, often by chance. It happened to me during the quarantine with the muffins. I have come across some that had the most spectacular pompadour I have ever seen, and the cook confided her secret to me: "Let the dough go into the oven very cold, from the refrigerator, so that the temperature contrast pulls the cupcake upwards ", he told me.
Arboleya stresses that he would not talk about the temperature contrast, but accepts that the dough is cold. "Perhaps the most important thing in this regard is that the flour used for the dough has a high content of protein (gluten), since this makes it have a great capacity to absorb water and thus provide the gluten network with a great capacity for retain gas. At lower temperatures, this gluten network is more compact and the gas retention power makes the cupcake rise higher. "
Looking for tricks to solve problems, one quickly realizes that there is no more recurring one like how to preserve and take advantage of food. In this chapter the secrets abound when there was no online shopping , not even supermarkets. During quarantine, I have witnessed quite a few conversations around this. And with dialectical battles. For example, the day someone said: "I have some potatoes in lemon water so they don't rust" , he only got an answer for "well, they will get flavor, put parsley instead of lemon in the water, which gives what same "... But how can lemon be the same as parsley?
"When cutting a potato, an enzyme called polyphenoloxidase is released, which oxidizes certain compounds, causing their color to turn brown. By immersing it in water, better cold, it prevents it from being in the presence of oxygen and delays oxidation. Yes in addition, an acidic medium is added, by adding, for example, lemon, the pH is lowered and the action of this enzyme is less, "explains the coordinator of the master's degree at the Basque Culinary Center. On parsley, the researcher from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology María Dolores Rodrigo adds: "It has abundant flavonoids and beta-carotene, all of them antioxidants, with which we also prevent oxidation effectively."
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