Blog | Chez Alaska Cooking School

Everything in the kitchen is going silicone these days, and the trend shows no signs of stopping.  Heat-proof rubber spatulas…what’s not to like?  Gone are the days when our kitchen drawers were full of burned and melted spatulas.  Or maybe that was just me?  Anyway, the silicone  baking mats are great also.  Cookies and other goods just slip right off.  You can even melt parmesan cheese into crisps to use as a salad garnish.  Trying that with even a teflon pan would be a recipe for disaster.  A pair of silicone baking mats are a very useful addition to the kitchen.

Personally, I’m tough on kitchen equipment.  I like to cook at high temperatures to brown, blacken, sear, crisp and otherwise mistreat my food.  I can ruin a non-stick skillet in an afternoon.  So silicone is like a godsend.  There are now inexpensive muffin and cake pans, versatile steamers, and tools of all kinds made of nearly indestructible silicone.

Baking paper or parchment paper is useful also.  I love it for baking, especially because it simplifies clean up.  If you’ve never used baking sheets, you can find them in stores next to waxed paper and foil.  Place a baking sheet on your sheet pans or cookie sheets when you make baked goods or roast vegetables.  The foods will come right off (unless you burn them), and then you can just throw the paper away.  No more scrubbing with steel wool to sand off baked-on cheese or sauce.

You can also use baking sheets to cook things in parchment, what the French call cooking en papillote.  This is a technique where you seal foods in a paper parcel, and then bake them inside the parcel.  The foods steam as they bake.  It makes for a very impressive presentation!  We’ll discuss this more next time…

- Derrick Snyder

If you’re visiting Juneau this summer, we’d love to have you stop by Chez Alaska.  Many visitors enjoy cruising the beautiful islands of the Inside Passage, and when they stop in Juneau, they like to drop by our cooking school.  At Chez Alaska, we hold cooking demonstrations several times a day throughout the summer.  We also offer special, more intensive hands-on classes exploring various aspects of Alaskan cuisine and other subjects.  Please e-mail us here for more information, or call 907-790-2439 to reserve an opening.

Here are some pictures of Juneau:

- Derrick Snyder

Chef Gerry Donohoe taught the Valentine’s Day Dinner class 2010 at Chez Alaska last night.  This class has become something of a tradition at Chez Alaska.  The idea is that couples get some hands-on instruction on how to create a romantic dinner, and then everyone sits down and eats the dinner they’ve prepared.  Champagne is provided, of course.

Gerry’s menu this year included appetizers, Halibut in Phyllo Dough, Chateaubriand, and Molten Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Coulis.  Here are some pictures:

- Derrick Snyder

Here’s wishes for great happiness to you and your loved ones!  May you find spice and romance every day.

The thought occurs that some foods happen to have aphrodisiacal qualities.  Entire cookbooks have been written concerning this subject.  I can’t offer a compendium of love foods, but I can offer some opinions.

1)  Raw beets.  To stimulate libido, I can think of nothing better than raw beets.  Peel the beets, and then puree them with enough water to make a thin beverage.  Use a blender; I would advise against using a juicer, because that just pulls out the fiber, and you need the fiber.  A big glass of raw beet smoothie will light a firestorm in your blood.  Don’t water it down with carrots or fruit juice; this isn’t cuisine, it’s a tonic.

2)  Oyster shooters.  This is cuisine, and it will still fill you with fire.  Make a sauce using half cocktail sauce and half salsa (as hot as you like).  Drop a fresh raw oyster into a 4 oz. rocks glass, top with 1 oz. (2 Tbsp.) of sauce, then carefully pour in a shot (1&1/2 oz.) of decent tequila.  Don’t mix it; the tequila should stay clear.

3)  Avocados.  They are luxurious.

4)  Basil.  Raw.  Pesto is good, but better is a ton of fresh basil tossed with pasta just before serving.

5)  Honey.  To me, honey has an aroma that is almost musky.  It’s difficult to bring that quality forward through cooked goods, but it comes off great used raw with butter, ginger, dijon mustard.

6)  Chocolate.  Chemically, chocolate is probably the trueist aphrodisiac.  But it needs to be intense.  Chocolate should be gooey, it should be capable of sticking to a wall.  Lindor balls, chocolate mousse, molten chocolate cake, chocolate tres leches, triple chocolate brownies with chocolate frosting.  The chocolate should seem like a deadly muskeg into which one has become ensconced, like a pool of dark and delicious quicksand.

- Derrick Snyder

Before we get too far away from beer-battered halibut, I would just like to point out that one of the best thing you can do with beer-battered fish is to use it to make tacos.  Practically any kind of white fish will make great fried fish tacos, and halibut is one of the best.  Here are a trio of very nice-looking fish tacos as illustration.

An axiom of the modern world is that for any given edible object, there is someone, somewhere willing to deep-fry it.  But fish tacos are the pride of Baja California, not simply some cheap fair food.  As you can see in the picture above, these tacos are made with fresh tortillas.  This is how they are served in Mexico, of course, using corn tortillas made on the spot.  When I have visited Mexico, the only times I ever encountered processed tortillas were in hotel restaurants.  Freshly-made tortillas are noticeably better, but I’d advise you to use store-bought whenever you make any tortilla dish for the first time.

The other components may include shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, salsa blanca, and of course the fish.    The tacos are often served ala carte, but you can serve them with beans and Mexican rice to make a larger meal.  Condiments are a Mexican-style chile sauce, either red or green, and slices of fresh lime.

Green cabbage, sliced as thinly as possible, is much preferred over any sort of lettuce for fish tacos, because of its crunch.  Also, it stands as a simplified cole slaw (often served with American fish and chips), providing a familiar element.  Sliced romaine is the best substitution.

Pico de gallo is a the ubiquitous Mexican salsa fresca, a fresh tomato salsa.  Mexicans prefer Roma tomatoes because they are firmer and produce less juice.  Pico de gallo is a sort of play on words; it means beak of the rooster, but pico is similar to picante, which, like piquant, means sharp-tasting…and the beak of the rooster is also sharp.

Pico de Gallo

4 ripe plum tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-3 serrano chiles, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, roughly chopped
juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 tsp salt

Salsa Blanca, white sauce, is used as a sort of simplified tartar sauce here.  Its creaminess offers a contrast to the clean, sharp pico de gallo.

Salsa Blanca

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp ground cumin

Finally, the fish itself.  A very good way to prepare the fish is to beer-batter it, exactly as described in a previous post here.  However, a simple tempura batter (made from ice water and flour, slightly thinner than pancake batter) works well also.  You can also marinate and grill the fish if you like.  The important thing is to cut the fish into strips you can fit in the tacos.  Make sure you have everything else prepared before you cook the fish.  Wrap the tortillas in foil and heat them in a 300ºF oven until soft, or place them in a plastic bag and microwave until soft.

- Derrick Snyder

Oven fries are certainly nice, but when you want your potatoes to be irresistible, french fries are tough to beat.  Studies have shown that the average American consumes approximately 15 tons of french fries per year.

Okay, that’s not quite true, but the point is that you can win friends and influence enemies with a nice plate of spuds.  The best way to make french fries is the pommes frites method, which involves frying the potatoes twice.  First you fry the potatoes at 300ºF, and then finish at 390-400ºF.  The idea is that the first fry (the par fry) cooks the fries all the way through, and the second fry is then better able to crisp the surface.

If you’ve ever made french fries at home, you might have noticed that although they turned out okay, it’s difficult to make them crisp.  You can fry them until they are cooked inside, but the surface might still be quite soft.  And if you continue frying them, they just get darker and bitter.

Bear in mind that no matter how great your fries are, they really need to be enjoyed immediately.  The hot fries give off moisture as they cool, and five or ten minutes after frying, they start to get soft.  There’s not a lot that can be done about this.  Many brands of fast food fries are coated with an invisible batter that helps them stay crisp longer.  You can do this at home with a thin beer batter, but this is the subject for another post.

For great fries, the first thing to do is cut them all to the same thickness, so they’ll all cook in the same amount of time.  It doesn’t matter what sort of shapes you cut them into, though you don’t want them thicker than a half inch.  A third of an inch is nice.  If you’re going to the trouble to make french fries at home, there’s no sense in making skinny little fast-food fries.  As you cut the fries, throw them in a container of cold water.  You should do this an hour or more before using, and if you like you can refrigerate the fries like this for several days.  The water allows starch grains on the surface of the fries to fall off (don’t worry, there’s still plenty of starch inside), which helps the crisping process.

When you’re ready, heat up your deep fryer or pot of oil to 300ºF.  Drain the potatoes into a colander, then pat them dry with paper towels.  Fry in batches for about 5 minutes, until they are softened, and just barely cooked inside.  Break one open to check.  They shouldn’t be at all browned.  Matter of a fact, if they look all limp and gross, you’re right on track!  Transfer them to a sheetpan and allow to cool — you don’t really even need to worry about draining them, since they are going to be fried again.  If you like, you can now refrigerate these par-fried potatoes for up to a couple days.  When you’re ready to use, just make sure you pull them out of the fridge and allow them to warm up for an hour…in general, you don’t want to put cold food directly into a small deep fryer, because it cools the oil and increases the cooking time.  Another thing to watch for is to make sure your oil recovers its temperature between batches.

The second fry is going to be quick, since the potatoes are already cooked.  Make sure this is the last thing you do before serving the meal.  You can hold fried fish in a warm oven, and any cole slaw and condiments, etc., should already be placed out, so that last thing you have to do is fry the spuds.

You want the oil to be as hot as possible this time, so try to keep the temperature between 390ºF and 400ºF.  Depending on the type of oil, you might be able to go higher than that, but some oils will start to smoke.  Fry the potatoes in batches small enough to allow the oil to remain above 350ºF, and make sure to let the oil recover to 390ºF before frying the next batch.  Fry the potatoes until golden brown.  Drain the fries, season with salt and pepper, and if necessary, keep warm on paper toweling in a 200ºF oven.

- Derrick Snyder

If you’re going to make some beer-battered halibut, you’re going to need some spuds to go with that.  You can make french fries or oven fries.  Roasting fries in the oven is still going to require some oil, but you can get away with much less.  On the other hand, if you make french fries, your guests will shower you with jewels and precious metals.  Okay, that’s probably not true.  French fries have acquired a bad rap, but provided you’re of reasonable health and you don’t eat fried foods every day, then what the hey.

Oven fries are simplicity itself.  Slice some potatoes lengthwise into 1/2” lengths.  Toss them in a container with hot tap water and let them soak for at least 10 minutes.  Drain them and pat dry.  Toss in a big bowl with some oil, salt and pepper, and roast on a sheetpan at 475ºF, stirring every 15 minutes until browned.  The big advantage is you can do this while preparing the rest of the meal.

The amount and type of oil you use is up to you.  If you’re concerned about the glycemic index of your spuds, you might just spray the fries and the pan with some canola cooking spray and leave it at that.  But you’ll get crisper potatoes the more oil you use.  For 2 pounds of spuds, try 3/8 cup of vegetable oil, and salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste.  I know, that’s a ton.  Pour all the excess on the sheet pan…you’re essentially oven-frying the potatoes with this method.  Just make sure when they’re done to drain them well on paper towels before serving.  Refined peanut oil, canola, safflower, sunflower, soybean and corn oil work great.  If you want to use olive oil, you will need to reduce the oven temperature to about 425ºF, and cook a bit longer, else the oil will smoke, which isn’t optimal for the flavor.

I usually use Russet potatoes for fries, because they are big and yield long fries, and I like the fluffy, baked-potato texture inside.  But almost as great are Yukon Golds, which I think have just about the best flavor of any potatoes (they taste like you’ve put butter on them before you put butter on them).  If you use Yukon Golds, select big ones for long fries.  Red potatoes, I don’t like the flavor, the aroma or the texture for oven fries, so let’s try to just leave it at that.  As far as the skins go, I love them, so I never peel potatoes for oven fries.  Also, I’m incredibly lazy, and this simplifies my life.  So, peel the Russets if you like, though even if you enjoy peeling potatoes, you might consider leaving the skins on Yukon Golds, which have thin, papery skins the same color as the flesh, and which don’t detract from the appearance at all.

If you have a non-stick or coated sheetpan, you can fancify the seasonings a bit.  I suggest a non-stick or coated pan because I’ve had trouble with the fries sticking to the pan, especially if the seasoning contains sugar or cheese.  I’m not suggesting you throw sugar on your fries, but even the small amount found in salad dressing or soy sauce may cause a problem.

One way I enjoy making oven fries is to lightly toss the raw fries with prepared Italian dressing, and then sprinkle on some masa harina, the kind of corn flour used to make tortillas (cornmeal won’t achieve the same results).  I use about 1 tablespoon dressing per pound of potatoes, and then about 1 tablespoon of masa flour.  The idea is not to coat the fries with masa flour, just to add a little texture.  The masa helps crisp the surface of the fries, and adds a nice aroma.

Another nice way to season oven fries is with grated parmesan.  The problem is that by the time the fries are cooked, the cheese tends to be over-browned and bitter.  The solution is to pull the fries halfway through the cooking time, and add the parmesan then.  Start by roasting the fries with olive oil, salt and pepper.  After roasting for 20-25 minutes, pull the fries out of the oven, and transfer them back into the bowl.  For two pounds of potatoes, crush a couple cloves of garlic, and mix the garlic with a tablespoon of cider or white wine vinegar and a teaspoon of cornstarch, and very carefully toss the half-cooked fries with this mixture.  Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of grated parmesan, and carefully toss again.  Then transfer the fries to the sheetpan and toss back in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until browned, stirring at least once.

- Derrick Snyder