When the Manhattan chef Marc Meyer opened Rosie’s in the East Village in April, reports focused on the Mexican restaurant’s upscale tortilla-making station in the middle of the dining room.
But the more interesting feature may be the one hidden in the basement - a walk-in freezer left behind by the building’s previous tenants.“The minute I saw it, I thought, 'I’ve got to be taking advantage of this,'” said Meyer, who over the next few months plans to fill it with seasonal fruits, tomatoes and tomatillos, all bought from local farmers at their lowest price and at their sun-ripened prime.While dedicated home cooks buzz over pickling, canning and curing projects, Meyer has joined a growing number of chefs who are quietly employing another time-tested method of preservation: the freezer.
Other techniques rely on sugar, brine or bacteria to conserve foods, said the chef Paul T. Verica of Heritage Food & Drink in Waxhaw, North Carolina, but freezing doesn’t change the way things taste.“I know it’s such a cool and hip thing right now,” Verica said of the clamor over traditionally fermented foods, “but for me, I want pure clean flavors.”As they do with any preserving method, some chefs also freeze produce to offset their food costs and support local farmers, who often send excess product to the compost pile. But to cooks like Verica, a better reason for using the freezer is that it captures a taste of produce at its unadulterated peak - formerly a short-lived sensation.At the Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, the chef Jonathon Sawyer packs away rare mushrooms, nettles and wild black cherries. In Manhattan, the Oceana chef Ben Pollinger saves at least five frozen 5-gallon buckets of shelled cranberry, dragon tongue and scarlet runner beans for the winter, which are sweeter than dried beans, he said, and cook in four to five minutes.And at Verica’s restaurant just outside Charlotte, where he is spending “every waking moment” shelling sweet peas, the kitchen staff will also put up green tomatoes, corn, edamame, all manner of berries, ginger, sunchoke purée, arugula pesto and squash blossoms stuffed with herbs and goat cheese.When those packages are pulled out of the deep freeze come February, Verica said, “it takes you back to a time and place.” Now that even ordinary refrigerators get things colder faster, said Ana Sortun, the chef and owner of three restaurants in the Boston area, all cooks should toss out “the old myth that frozen food was bad.”Indeed while freezing may break down the texture of a plant like blanching, Sortun said, it will still taste fresh. When you use frozen produce to cook with, she said, “you could hardly tell the difference.”At home and at work, she uses her freezer not only as a place to stash leftovers but as another tool - storing some things like tomatoes raw and whole, but also blanched and chopped greens, or roasted peppers. Like most chefs, she uses a vacuum sealer to remove air from the freezer bags, which prevents freezer burn. (Some even use them for a high-tech freezer trick called “cryo-blanching,” in which raw vegetables are vacuum-sealed, frozen and thawed before they’re added to a dish, which provides tenderization and color-brightening without a change in flavor.)Smart farmers are starting to freeze their supply, too. Sortun hopes to team up with her husband, who owns the 75-acre Siena Farms that supplies her restaurants, to create an all-frozen food shop in the next few years.She could take a lesson from Tory Miller in Madison, Wisconsin, who has six chest freezers, a walk-in and a small blast freezer that fully chills in minutes, most of them stashed at his flagship restaurant, L’Etoile. To serve a locally sourced menu in a region where the growing season is often just four months, Miller said he often buys three times as much as he will need at the farmers’ market, toting back loads like 140 pounds of the tart rhubarb he uses as a “Wisconsin lemon” throughout the year.Miller says his blast freezer is so good at preserving the integrity of soft fruits, like strawberries, that he serves them raw after they are defrosted. “In the winter, it looks like Technicolor,” he said of a dish garnished with whole cherry tomatoes.Much has changed since the Chicago chef Rick Bayless started freezing produce in 1996, when a farmer clued him in to the frozen storage lockers sitting empty in nearby Wisconsin. A test run grew into a full-scale program for 30,000 pounds of locally grown paste tomatoes a year, pails of tomatillos, as well as corn and fruit, some of which Bayless uses at his smoothie stand at O’Hare International Airport.Two decades ago, Bayless said, most restaurants were busy proclaiming the freshness of their larders. “We couldn’t say anything about it in the early years,” he said of his lockers. “Everyone was saying, 'We don’t even own a freezer, except for our ice creams.'”
That time has passed. “Now,” he said, “I’m shouting from the rooftops.”Recipe: Muhammara (Red Pepper and Walnut Spread)Yield: About 1 1/2 cupsIngredients:1 large fresh red bell pepper, roasted (see note), or 1 chopped frozen red bell pepper, thawed
1/2 cup chopped scallions (3 to 4 scallions)
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
3 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (preferably Marash or Aleppo), more to taste
5 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup walnuts, lightly toasted
4 to 6 tablespoons fresh bread crumbsPreparation:Combine the pepper, scallions, lemon juice, cumin, salt, 2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 4 tablespoons olive oil and all but 2 of the walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and purée until mostly smooth.Add 4 tablespoons bread crumbs to thicken the spread and pulse to combine. If the mixture is still too loose to hold its shape, add the remaining bread crumbs and pulse again. Season to taste with more salt and red pepper flakes.Scrape the spread into a bowl and make a well in the center with the back of a spoon. Drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses and 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes in the well. Crush the reserved walnuts between your fingers and sprinkle over the top.
If using a fresh red pepper, char on all sides directly on the burner of a gas stove, or roast at 400 degrees until blistered all over. Transfer the pepper to a bowl until cool enough to handle, then peel off the skin and remove seeds and stem. Roughly chop pepper. Continue with the recipe as directed.Freezing Food: Tips From Chefs:Invest in a vacuum sealer, which removes air from special freezer bags to prevent freezer burn and keeps food tasting fresher for longer. It also saves space.
Follow a home kitchen version of the process known as IQF, which stands for Individually Quick Frozen. Many foods (tomatoes, berries, peas) will benefit if you initially freeze them separated and spread out on a sheet pan, then bag them once they’re frozen, rather than bagging them before freezing.The faster you freeze foods after you buy or pick them, the better they’ll taste.Keep your freezer as cold as possible.If you want to thaw produce before cooking with it, don’t rush the defrosting process. Let the produce thaw naturally and slowly, without using microwaves or hot water. Some produce will leach water as it defrosts, which in many cases you’ll want to keep for flavor.© 2015 New York Times News Service
But the more interesting feature may be the one hidden in the basement - a walk-in freezer left behind by the building’s previous tenants.“The minute I saw it, I thought, 'I’ve got to be taking advantage of this,'” said Meyer, who over the next few months plans to fill it with seasonal fruits, tomatoes and tomatillos, all bought from local farmers at their lowest price and at their sun-ripened prime.While dedicated home cooks buzz over pickling, canning and curing projects, Meyer has joined a growing number of chefs who are quietly employing another time-tested method of preservation: the freezer.
Other techniques rely on sugar, brine or bacteria to conserve foods, said the chef Paul T. Verica of Heritage Food & Drink in Waxhaw, North Carolina, but freezing doesn’t change the way things taste.“I know it’s such a cool and hip thing right now,” Verica said of the clamor over traditionally fermented foods, “but for me, I want pure clean flavors.”As they do with any preserving method, some chefs also freeze produce to offset their food costs and support local farmers, who often send excess product to the compost pile. But to cooks like Verica, a better reason for using the freezer is that it captures a taste of produce at its unadulterated peak - formerly a short-lived sensation.At the Greenhouse Tavern in Cleveland, the chef Jonathon Sawyer packs away rare mushrooms, nettles and wild black cherries. In Manhattan, the Oceana chef Ben Pollinger saves at least five frozen 5-gallon buckets of shelled cranberry, dragon tongue and scarlet runner beans for the winter, which are sweeter than dried beans, he said, and cook in four to five minutes.And at Verica’s restaurant just outside Charlotte, where he is spending “every waking moment” shelling sweet peas, the kitchen staff will also put up green tomatoes, corn, edamame, all manner of berries, ginger, sunchoke purée, arugula pesto and squash blossoms stuffed with herbs and goat cheese.When those packages are pulled out of the deep freeze come February, Verica said, “it takes you back to a time and place.” Now that even ordinary refrigerators get things colder faster, said Ana Sortun, the chef and owner of three restaurants in the Boston area, all cooks should toss out “the old myth that frozen food was bad.”Indeed while freezing may break down the texture of a plant like blanching, Sortun said, it will still taste fresh. When you use frozen produce to cook with, she said, “you could hardly tell the difference.”At home and at work, she uses her freezer not only as a place to stash leftovers but as another tool - storing some things like tomatoes raw and whole, but also blanched and chopped greens, or roasted peppers. Like most chefs, she uses a vacuum sealer to remove air from the freezer bags, which prevents freezer burn. (Some even use them for a high-tech freezer trick called “cryo-blanching,” in which raw vegetables are vacuum-sealed, frozen and thawed before they’re added to a dish, which provides tenderization and color-brightening without a change in flavor.)
Smart farmers are starting to freeze their supply, too. Sortun hopes to team up with her husband, who owns the 75-acre Siena Farms that supplies her restaurants, to create an all-frozen food shop in the next few years.She could take a lesson from Tory Miller in Madison, Wisconsin, who has six chest freezers, a walk-in and a small blast freezer that fully chills in minutes, most of them stashed at his flagship restaurant, L’Etoile. To serve a locally sourced menu in a region where the growing season is often just four months, Miller said he often buys three times as much as he will need at the farmers’ market, toting back loads like 140 pounds of the tart rhubarb he uses as a “Wisconsin lemon” throughout the year.Miller says his blast freezer is so good at preserving the integrity of soft fruits, like strawberries, that he serves them raw after they are defrosted. “In the winter, it looks like Technicolor,” he said of a dish garnished with whole cherry tomatoes.Much has changed since the Chicago chef Rick Bayless started freezing produce in 1996, when a farmer clued him in to the frozen storage lockers sitting empty in nearby Wisconsin. A test run grew into a full-scale program for 30,000 pounds of locally grown paste tomatoes a year, pails of tomatillos, as well as corn and fruit, some of which Bayless uses at his smoothie stand at O’Hare International Airport.Two decades ago, Bayless said, most restaurants were busy proclaiming the freshness of their larders. “We couldn’t say anything about it in the early years,” he said of his lockers. “Everyone was saying, 'We don’t even own a freezer, except for our ice creams.'”That time has passed. “Now,” he said, “I’m shouting from the rooftops.”Recipe: Muhammara (Red Pepper and Walnut Spread)Yield: About 1 1/2 cupsIngredients:1 large fresh red bell pepper, roasted (see note), or 1 chopped frozen red bell pepper, thawed
1/2 cup chopped scallions (3 to 4 scallions)
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon kosher salt, more to taste
3 teaspoons pomegranate molasses
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (preferably Marash or Aleppo), more to taste
5 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup walnuts, lightly toasted
4 to 6 tablespoons fresh bread crumbsPreparation:Combine the pepper, scallions, lemon juice, cumin, salt, 2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses, 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 4 tablespoons olive oil and all but 2 of the walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and purée until mostly smooth.Add 4 tablespoons bread crumbs to thicken the spread and pulse to combine. If the mixture is still too loose to hold its shape, add the remaining bread crumbs and pulse again. Season to taste with more salt and red pepper flakes.Scrape the spread into a bowl and make a well in the center with the back of a spoon. Drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon pomegranate molasses and 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes in the well. Crush the reserved walnuts between your fingers and sprinkle over the top.
If using a fresh red pepper, char on all sides directly on the burner of a gas stove, or roast at 400 degrees until blistered all over. Transfer the pepper to a bowl until cool enough to handle, then peel off the skin and remove seeds and stem. Roughly chop pepper. Continue with the recipe as directed.Freezing Food: Tips From Chefs:Invest in a vacuum sealer, which removes air from special freezer bags to prevent freezer burn and keeps food tasting fresher for longer. It also saves space.
Follow a home kitchen version of the process known as IQF, which stands for Individually Quick Frozen. Many foods (tomatoes, berries, peas) will benefit if you initially freeze them separated and spread out on a sheet pan, then bag them once they’re frozen, rather than bagging them before freezing.The faster you freeze foods after you buy or pick them, the better they’ll taste.Keep your freezer as cold as possible.If you want to thaw produce before cooking with it, don’t rush the defrosting process. Let the produce thaw naturally and slowly, without using microwaves or hot water. Some produce will leach water as it defrosts, which in many cases you’ll want to keep for flavor.© 2015 New York Times News Service
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