Wednesday, September 17, 2003

It's a secret

By KRISTIN EDDY
Chicago Tribune

When Ina Pinkney was developing a recipe for gingerbread pancakes for her popular Chicago restaurant, Ina’s, she knew she wanted more than ginger to come across in the flavor.

“People can be overwhelmed by the taste of ginger; you often get a bitterness in gingerbread,” she said.

So she added something unexpected to the batter: dry mustard.

“You can’t taste it, but it adds a flavor profile that boosts the other ingredients,” Pinkney said.

Professional cooks often have tricks like these up their sleeves. Maybe it’s adding coffee to barbecue sauce, or vodka to a grapefruit ice cream. These additions aren’t just a matter of adding novelty, but are a way of tinkering with the overall flavor to make an even more interesting dish. The unexpected ingredients are worth experimenting with at home, too, to explore the many levels of flavor a recipe can offer.

A traditional example would be the chocolate that goes into a spicy Mexican mole, such as the red mole that chef Kevin Kerales serves at Platiyo in Chicago.

But other chefs like to play with ingredients to put a twist on the classics. Jay Lovell, chef of Lovells of Lake Forest, Ill., was inspired while creating the menu for a wine dinner. Starting with a duck breast, Lovell dusted the poultry with a mixture of sugar and cocoa powder and seared it in a skillet, letting the sugar caramelize on the crisp skin. For a sauce, the chef added to a reduction of white wine and veal stock.

But the recipe wasn’t simply whimsical, he said. “For me, the cocoa and coffee bring up a richer, darker flavor in the bird. It also matched the wine. You can taste chocolate and coffee notes in some wines, and it was there in the cabernet for this course.”

Home cooks have their own tradition of combining surprising ingredients, such as doctoring tomato sauces with a pinch of sugar when the tomatoes aren’t up to snuff, or giving barbecue sauce and cake a little pizazz with cola. Campbell’s tomato soup spice cake, developed in 1949, is still one of the company’s most requested recipes, according to spokesman Lawrence Faulkner. The cake has appeared in dozens of community cookbooks since its introduction.

Don’t just leave it up to the chefs to play with their food. Interested cooks can try their own concoctions. Consider matching up flavors that had not seemed compatible before — think of it as a blind date for your food — and see what happens.

It could be good, it could be bad, but it certainly won’t be boring.

Gingerbread pancakes

1 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup potato starch

1/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground mustard

1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

2 cups buttermilk

1/2 cup sour cream

2 eggs

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons molasses

Sift together the flour, sugar, potato starch, whole-wheat flour, baking soda, ginger, salt, cloves, mustard and pumpkin pie spice in large mixing bowl; set aside. Combine buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, oil and molasses in a large bowl; stir into flour mixture.

Heat an oiled griddle or skillet over medium-high heat. Heat oven to 200 degrees. Pour 1/4 cup of the batter onto griddle for each pancake. Cook until batter bubbles, about 3 minutes; turn. Cook 1 minute. Place pancakes, uncovered, on oven-safe platter in the oven until all pancakes are done. Makes 20, 3-inch pancakes.

Braised pork with cocoa

1 pork shoulder roast, about 4 1/2 pounds

4 teaspoons salt

Freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons peanut oil

6 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) chicken broth

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 white onion, thinly sliced

3 green onions, thinly sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 whole star anise

2 dried hot chilies

1 piece (2 inches long) ginger root, peeled, thinly sliced

1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1/4 cup cornstarch

2 teaspoons Dutch-process cocoa powder

1/2 cup plum or rice wine

Season the pork with 2 teaspoons of the salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Heat the oil over high heat in a large Dutch oven; sear the meat on all sides until well-browned, about 3 minutes per side. Add the broth, brown sugar, soy sauce, onions, garlic, star anise, chilies, ginger, peppercorns and remaining 2 teaspoons of the salt. Heat to boiling; reduce heat to simmer. Cover; cook until fork tender, about 3 hours.

Remove meat from liquid; set aside on a platter. Increase heat to high; boil liquid uncovered until it reduces by one-fourth, about 20 minutes. Strain liquid; return liquid to Dutch oven. Combine cornstarch, cocoa powder and plum wine in a small bowl. Whisk into liquid. Heat to a boil; cook, stirring, until thick, about 2 minutes. Shred meat with a fork or hands; return meat to sauce. Cook until heated through, about 1 minute. Serves 8.

Mushroom syrup

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 pound white button mushrooms, quartered

1/2 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper

2 shallots, sliced

1 clove garlic, halved

2 tablespoons minced parsley

Heat butter over medium-high heat in a pan large enough to hold mushrooms in a single layer. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring constantly, until mushrooms are deep brown and have caramelized, 15-20 minutes.

Stir in shallots, garlic, parsley and just enough water to cover mushrooms; scrape up any browned mushroom bits clinging to pan. Boil mushrooms over medium-high heat 15 minutes. Strain through a fine mesh strainer, pressing down on vegetables; discard vegetables. Return broth to pan; cook over medium-high heat until reduced to a syrup, about 10 minutes. You should end up with no more than 1/2 cup.

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