Saveur Cooks Authentic American - Editors Of Cook's Illustrated Magazine [33]
Lobster 101
With its sweet, succulent meat, the American lobster, Humanus americanus, is the most luxurious delicacy pulled from the cold waters of the North and Mid-Atlantic. It’s also one of the easiest to cook if you follow a few simple guidelines. Figure on 1¼ to 2 lbs. of lobster per person, and buy only feisty live lobsters that feel heavy for their size from a fishmonger who keeps the specimens in aerated tanks. Some cooks elect to humanely kill lobsters before cooking by freezing them for 2 hours or by putting the lobster belly side down on a cutting board and slicing through the middle of the head with a sharp chef’s knife or cleaver. If grilling or broiling, continue slicing all the way down the lobster through the tail, making sure to remove the gravel sac near the head and the vein that runs along the back.
Poultry
Chef Sara Jenkins, with her son at her side, serves roasted chicken in her New York City home.
These are the dishes that bring us together around the table: the oven-roasted chicken, with crackling herb-rubbed skin and juicy breast meat; the simmering pot of chicken stew rich with paprika and lashed with sour cream; Thai red curry, studded with duck. Across cultures, chicken and poultry are at the heart of the kitchen and are the centerpieces of some of our most soulful meals.
Lemony Roast Chicken
Pollo Arrosto
It sounds simple, and it is: nothing more than chicken, olive oil, rosemary, lemon, and garlic. But when chef Evan Kleiman began serving this rustic Italian-style roast chicken at Los Angeles’s Angeli Caffe back in 1984, it turned out to be everything her customers were craving—honest food prepared with minimal fuss. Serve with rice or buttered noodles.
1 3½ -lb. chicken, cut into 8 pieces
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup fresh rosemary leaves
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
10 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lemon, peel removed, pith and pulp chopped Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Serves 4
1. Toss the chicken pieces with the olive oil, rosemary, lemon juice, garlic, lemon, and salt and pepper to taste in a bowl. Marinate for about 1 hour.
2. Heat the oven to 475°F. Arrange the chicken in a 9 x 13-inch baking dish and add the remaining marinade. Roast, turning once, until cooked through, 30–40 minutes.
3. Divide chicken between 4 plates and serve.
Family Style
Want to get to know your community? Open a neighborhood restaurant, and be lucky enough to have it stick around for a couple of decades. My little place in Los Angeles, Angeli Caffe, has been in business since 1984 on the wacky end of Holly-wood’s Melrose Avenue. The space was a former screen door shop that my partners and I turned into a restaurant with very little money and lots of good will. At the beginning, we were hip, so hip, feeding a generation of partying boomers who were eating out every night. But over the years, I watched our customers go from dancing fools to sleep-deprived new parents to mature stewards of a younger generation of tattooed hipsters. When I was growing up in L.A. in the 1960s, there was nowhere to get food like this; you couldn’t even buy fresh basil at the supermarket. It wasn’t until I went to Italy that I discovered the simple goodness of dishes like lemony roast chicken, dishes that most of us take for granted today. Opening Angeli was my way of bringing that kind of beautiful comfort food home, and connecting with the people I prepare it for.
—Evan Kleiman
Red-Chile Chicken Enchiladas
In southern New Mexico and neighboring El Paso, Texas, brick-red chile colorado salsa is the sauce of choice for enchiladas. We learned to make these from Malú Gonzales, a home cook in Las Cruces, New Mexico, who garnishes her enchiladas with a drizzle of cool crema and crumbled cotija cheese, a refreshing contrast to the gentle sting of the red chiles in the sauce.
Kosher