Friendly Spirits
Go for the gusto and enhance your food with a bit of booze
Catherine Lombardi's zabaglione requires real Marsala from Italy and the freshest egg yolks available. Here it is served with fresh berries.
Creative cooks know that spirits aren't just for drinking. Practically any dish can be perked up by adding a splash of liquor to the pot.
Used with discretion, the addition of alcohol to food enriches and intensifies its flavor. Spirits can invigorate your culinary repertoire, from appetizers to desserts, particularly during these languid days when the thought of grilling yet another piece of chicken seems like deja vu all over again.
The "New Food Lover's Companion" (Sharon Tyler Herbst, 2001, Barrons Educational Series Inc.) defines spirits as "a general term for alcoholic beverages." Although "spirits" generally refers to hard liquors such as bourbon, rum, brandy and the like, for our purposes, wine and beer are included. All will give a lift to your cooking--and spirits.
Local chefs and food professionals sing the praises of enlivening dishes with alcoholic beverages. Wine and beer are particular crowd-pleasers.
"A dash of wine can make all the difference between a blah dish and an exciting one," says Dominic Merlo, general manager at Gary's Wine & Marketplace in Bernardsville. "Even if you prepare something as simple as sautéing mushrooms with shallots and garlic in butter, adding a bit of brandy or cognac makes an amazing difference. It imparts a bright, lively character to the dish."
As cooking agents, "Wine and spirits are taken to another level, or looked at through a different lens," says Francis Schott, co-owner with Mark Pascal of Stage Left and Catherine Lombardi restaurants in New Brunswick. "Wine and brandy are a concentrated and unique expression of the character of grapes. Whiskey and beer are the same to grains. Why wouldn't someone take advantage of such a powerful and unique set of flavors?"
The chefs at Stage Left and Catherine Lombardi do just that.
Chilled sugar plum soup at Stage Left is made with Riesling, basil and mint for a refreshing summer change of pace. It is garnished with heavy cream and honey.
Wine is used to accent a variety of dishes, from a refreshing sugarplum soup with Riesling to a classic Marsala-spiked zabaglione bolstered with whipped cream.
An innovative Manhattan ice cream goes a step further. The clever take on the time-honored drink blends house-made maraschino cherry ice cream ("we put up our own local cherries in maraschino liquor," says Schott) with the ingredients of a Manhattan such as rye whiskey, sweet Italian Vermouth and orange bitters to produce a very "adults-only" confection.
Gary Vaynerchuk, director of operations at the Wine library, a retail wine store in Springfield and host of www.winelibrary.com, a popular wine Web site, enjoys dabbling with wine.
"There are no rules," when cooking with the fruit of the grape, says Vaynerchuk. "Don't box yourself in or be afraid to experiment." He's steamed clams in sparkling wine and drizzled Pinot Blanc on fried potatoes, with delicious results. The bivalves had a fresh sparkle and "the acidity in the liquor brought out the sweetness of the potatoes and added a bit of pucker to the taste."
What's summertime cooking without beer? Fredy Umanzor, executive chef at Tim Schafer's Cuisine in Morristown, known for its creative beer-enhanced dishes, prepares a duck confit quesadilla topped with a chili crema and beer-and-bourbon-enhanced barbecue sauce.
"For hot summer days, I prefer to use beer in dressings and sauces mostly because you can always count on a distinctively light, flavorful dish not dominated by the taste of the brew," he said.
When incorporating beer into any recipe, Umanzor recommends keeping in mind the flavor you are looking for. "If you choose a light pilsner or a Belgium ale, the finished product will have a much lighter flavor than when using a dark beer such as stout. A successful dish seasoned with beer should have a distinctively light, not heavy, flavor."
Says Peter LaFrance, author of "Beer Basics and Cooking with Beer" (1997, John Wiley and Sons): "Summer calls for lighter flavored beers such as pilsners, wheat beers and light flavored amber beers. If you are grilling food, choose a sweet, not bitter, beer. If you're adding beer to a barbecue sauce, keep in mind that as the sauce is reduced, the flavors get stronger. To counter any bitterness, some maple syrup or brown sugar can be added."
Fire Hazard
Only the finest Marsala wine goes into the zabaglione at Catherine Lombardi's in New Brunswick.
David P. Martone, owner of Classic Thyme Cooking School, Kitchen Shoppe and Caterers in Westfield, cautions cooks to keep some important things in mind when cooking with alcohol.
Although cooking with any kind of wine, beer or spirits is like using another flavor enhancement, be aware of the flammability of the alcohol you're using; the higher the alcohol content, the more flammable the dish.
Hard liquors, whether dark (rum, bourbon, brandy, whiskey) or light (vodka, gin, tequila) are much higher in alcohol content - on the average 40 percent alcohol by volume, or 80 proof - than wine, which averages 13 percent alcohol by volume, or 27 proof, or beer, which averages 5 percent alcohol by volume, or 10 proof. (That's why hard liquors are great for flambéing.)
Martone learned this the hard way. He once roasted acorn squash in brandy in the oven. "At the point where the brandy started to simmer in the pan, the oven ignited I and blew the oven door open. It was a startling experience."
One should also consider the taste of the liquor. "Alcohol can have a very sharp aftertaste, a term known as 'hot,'" says Martone. It's more a sensation than a taste - it's like the feeling you get after eating wasabi." Again, you don't want to add too much alcohol, as it will mask the other flavors of the dish.
Also, remember that alcohol helps to tenderize meat, so be careful not to over-marinate, as the alcohol will start the curing process and chemically cook ingredients such as meat and seafood (as with ceviche).
Summertime Booze
At Stage Left, homemade cherry ice cream is scooped atop maraschino cherries flavored as the Manhattan drink, with rye and vermouth.
Though hard liquors may seem more suitable for winter fare, they work quite nicely with summertime dishes. Martone makes a Grand Marnier-spiked orange cranberry sauce that can be served on its own, or as an accompaniment for sweets like an apple cranberry crumble, or savories, like chicken or pork.
Rum is the spirit of choice for Scott Cutaneo, chef/owner of Le Petit Chateau in Bernardsville. "Rum is great now because it's utilized in so many cocktails and desserts meant for the summer season," he says. "Rum reminds me of frozen pina coladas and the beach."
Rum is naturally summer-friendly, says Todd Schuessler, brand manager for Mount Gay rum. "A lot of the rum on the marketplace today is actually produced in countries or on islands where it is summer for most of the year." Mount Gay is produced on Barbados, where warm weather cuisine is savored a good part of the year.
At Restaurant Serenade in Chatham, executive chef/owner James Laird cooks with a variety of spirits. You might find grilled foie gras with black cherries and Port; a pepper vodka-spiked yellow tomato gazpacho; or tequila-marinated grilled chicken on his summer menu.
"Tequila adds a cool, peppery flavor to the chicken," says Laird. "So without much fuss, you're transforming the dish and creating a really unusual flavor." He adds that cooking with alcohol enables him to "go after the senses in a different way. Most spirits will give the alcohol or the flavor of the spirit."
Cooking with alcohol is not a new concept, "although the widespread use of alcohol in cooking is relatively recent," according to 'The Food Encyclopedia" (2006, Robe Rose Inc.).
The practice goes back millennia, to when the Egyptians may have cooked beer flavored with mandrake root, and the Greeks and Romans may have used wine in their recipes in preference to water or as a marinade for tough and salted-meats.
"By 300 B.C. the Aztecs were brewing pulque from the agave cactus, but didn't distill it into tequila until taught by the conquistadores."
The Invention of distillation is attributed to the Chinese, who were most likely manufacturing a kind of rice spirit by 1000 B.C.
When cooking with alcohol, consider the burn-off factor, or how much alcohol actually remains in your food with specific cooking methods.
There's some debate, but the majority of experts agree with the findings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which created an Alcohol Burn Off Chart (to access chart, search "Alcohol Burn-Off Chart" on www.about.com) that shows more alcohol remains in your food than you may think.
"The premise that all alcohol evaporates during the cooking process is not necessarily a true one," says Umanzor. "Alcohol is indeed sensitive to heat, and the longer the dish cooks and the higher the cooking temperatures, the less alcohol in the finished product."
A considerate host should advise guests when cooking with alcohol, since even a minute amount could prove to be a problem for both recovering alcoholics and those with allergies, he says.
Keeping all of the above in mind, open that liquor cabinet--and get cooking!