Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Pan-frying, shallow-frying, Sautéing

It’s all just a flash in the pan

Jamie Oliver, Food Network star and best-selling cookbook author, is on a mission -- to make cooking at home easy and fun for everyone. He bills his new book, “Jamie’s Kitchen,” as a “cooking course for everyone.” Armed with this cookbook and his new line of pots and pans from T-FAL, The Jamie Oliver Professional Series, there is no technique a new cook can’t master.

Jamie Oliver offers the following tips for one of his favorite and most healthy cooking techniques, sautéing, or what he calls “pan-frying”:

1. Get yourself a pan and make it hot

“The single biggest mistake that new cooks make is cooking in a cold pan,” Oliver explains. “You must heat the pan before you start cooking. If you start to cook before the pan is hot enough, the food steams instead of caramelizing and frying. You want the heat of the pan to sear in the juices, making the food taste better.”

Oliver has just worked with T-FAL to design his own line of stainless steel cookware, the Jamie Oliver Professional Series, which comes with either pure stainless or nonstick coated sauté pans. Oliver says he often uses nonstick at home, because some dishes are simply easier to cook on a non-stick surface. The new Jamie Oliver Professional Series nonstick sauté pans feature T-FAL’s Thermo-Spot heat indicator that helps home cooks tell when the pan is ready. It turns bright red when the pan is ready to go. “My wife loves my new nonstick pans because they’re easy to clean and the cool little red Thermo-Spot lets her know when it’s ready to go. Her cooking has already improved,” he says.

2. Size matters

“When it comes to frying pans, size matters! If your pan is too small, the ingredients will crowd each other, and they’ll end up steaming instead of sautéing. But if the pan’s too big, all those great pan juices will end up evaporating too fast and you may burn what you’re cooking,” Oliver points out. “So be sure to use the right size pan for the amount of ingredients you have. Also, look for some key features in the pan such as a good heavy bottom that distributes the heat evenly, shallow with rounded sides to make food easy to toss, and an easy-to-hold handle -- long enough to be comfortable to grasp, not slippery, and cool to the touch even when the pan is hot.”

The Jamie Oliver Professional Series by T-FAL was created with input from Oliver for optimal cooking and includes all of these features. They’re heavy-bottomed stainless steel pans with handles that stay cool and have a soft insert for a comfortable grip. They’re oven-safe so you can sauté on the top of the stove and then finish the recipe by baking or broiling it in the oven, up to 500 degrees F.

3. Want less fat? Use nonstick pans

“Using nonstick pans lets you use less oil or butter, which means healthy cooking. To get great flavor, what you really need is a good sear. And a good sear doesn’t necessarily require lots of fat in the pan,” notes Oliver. “When you do this properly, not only do you end up with glorious, flavorful food, but you also seal the juices and the nutrients right in with the flavor and you’re cooking healthy food as well.”

The Jamie Oliver Professional Series nonstick pans are extremely durable and feature T-Fal’s Metal Safe Nonstick coating. Oliver tested these pans in his London restaurant and they stood up to the hard knocks of a professional kitchen.

4. Your mum was right! The gear’s the thing

“You don’t have to go crazy buying equipment, all you need to cook well is a good set of pots and pans (I’m partial to my own!), a couple of good knives, including an eight-inch chopper, a heavy mortar and pestle, a set of tongs and a speed peeler,” says Oliver.

5. So what’s for dinner?

“This is the fun part -- planning what goes into the pan. Think seasonally and try to shop for organic products if you can when you’re at the market,” Oliver urges. “Be intuitive; pan-frying is a fast cooking method, so you want things that are thinly sliced and cook quickly (unless you are finishing in the oven.) You can also score thicker cuts of meat and fish to speed up the cooking time and add more surface area to the food. But what gets me going? Chicken marinated in some fresh herbs and garlic that you’ve pounded in a mortar and pestle. Steaks that have been liberally seasoned with salt and freshly cracked pepper. Or this fantastic salmon dish that I am including a recipe for below. “Go ahead guys. Get stuck in!”

Jamie Oliver’s Pan Roast Salmon with Green and White Asparagus, Rosemary, Wrapped in Bundles with Pancetta and Red and Yellow Cherry Tomatoes

“The lovely thing about this recipe is that everything in the pan takes the same time to cook,” Oliver comments. “Try to get the salmon cut no more than an inch thick or it might need a little longer.”

Serves 2

16 spears of asparagus - green or white or a mixture of both

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

6 slices of pancetta

2 thin salmon fillets, weighing around 7 ounces each

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil

a handful of red and yellow cherry tomatoes

a small handful of Kalamata olives

1/2 a lemon

Preheat your nonstick T-FAL frying pan until the Thermo-Spot turns solid red.

Snap the woody bottoms off the asparagus spears and divide the tops into 2 bunches. Add a sprig of rosemary and wrap each bunch up in 3 slices of pancetta to form a neat bundle.

Season the salmon steaks with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and drizzle with a splash of olive oil. Place the salmon in the hot pan with the cherry tomatoes, the olives and the two bundles of asparagus and fry on each side, turning the asparagus over in the pan from time to time so that the pancetta and salmon brown evenly.

By the time the salmon's cooked, the pancetta should be lovely and crisp, the asparagus just cooked and the cherry tomatoes softened and bursting with sweet sticky juices. Squeeze the 1/2 lemon over the whole dish to finish off, and tuck in!

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