To this cook, a good meal is in the can
Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton made her name in the shop La Brea Bakery, which she sold recently. Now she's given up baking baguettes and is concentrating on making crostini and things to spread on them.
The restaurateur and author of several other cookbooks was in Boston last week to launch "A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes. " Silverton wrote the book with Carolynn Carreño, and it offers recipes from other chefs, including Rialto's Jody Adams. Silverton's cooking demonstration was held at The Butcher Shop in the South End.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Silverton had a soft spot for artichokes from a jar and canned tuna. Once she had a family of her own, she says, she "did not wince at grabbing a jar of prepared tomato sauce to make the kids dinner." Her children, Vanessa, Benjamin, and Oliver Silverton-Peel, are now 24, 22, and 13 , respectively.
At the cooking demonstration, many canned ingredients invariably found their way into the main course for the evening, a skirt steak with broccolini. But these were no ordinary cans. Whole grain mustard and French cornichon pickles, capers, and anchovies flavored the butter sauce while pickled garlic jazzed up the green stalks. In addition to those, Silverton likes to improve upon bases like mayonnaise, thick Greek yogurt, and commercial tomato sauces by adding her own fresh herbs, more salt and freshly ground pepper, generous squeezes of lemon juice, or chipotle peppers, also from a can. For sweeter courses, she might start with commercial ice cream and imported pizzelle or amaretti cookies, then finish the dessert with fresh fruit or fruit jams.
The curly-headed, girlish chef provided commentary and the occasional stir of the pot as Ben Elliott, The Butcher Shop chef de cuisine, did most of the heavy lifting. "I like to talk , and he likes to cook," the visiting chef explained. She composed crostini by arranging fresh ricotta on slices of baguette. For the salad course, she set delicate paper-thin slices of prosciutto on radicchio-like treviso leaves. They were garnished with a vinaigrette of dates and anchovies mixed with orange and lemon rind.
Each course was a combination of something fresh mixed with a top-notch pantry item. Silverton is quick to note that she only uses a prepared ingredient if it's pure. You can find "all sorts of kooky things" in jars and cans, she says, but if she calls for it, anyone will be able to read the list of ingredients and understand them. Before writing the book, she scoured supermarket aisles, from the freezer cases to the stacks of canned soups and just kept buying. As a result, she says, she "threw away a lot of gross stuff." So the quality of the item is one rule. A second rule is simple: "If we were served this in a restaurant, would we be happy?"
About 30 guests seated around the restaurant's butcher block and at high tables along the window enjoyed the food and wines, eventually becoming chatty enough during Silverton's presentation to drown her out. "Now I'm gonna have to cut the wine out, you guys, if you're going to be talking," she said. Later she told them about plans to open Osteria Mozza, a mozzarella bar, in Los Angeles; it's a joint venture with Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich. "It would be much more difficult to open a gorgonzola bar," she said.
This serious chef doesn't just concentrate on preserved foods. What she really wants is for home cooks not to think about what's missing when it's time to make dinner. "To have a roast chicken in your refrigerator," she says, "you can do anything." For a quick meal, she'll shred the meat and toss it with mayonnaise and fresh cilantro.
Buy a cooked chicken, fill your pantry with gourmet items, and you, too, can make chicken salad. 