Mythbusting Pol Martin
When you have little kids, you have a delicate balance to walk with media. While I'm not terribly censorious -- I don't think any given kid is going to be traumatized by hearing the f-bomb, plus largely it was me dropping them -- but there's plenty of media that can be upsetting with no cusses at all. I don't think the kids ever saw the sketch on Robot Chicken called "Tooth & Consequences", but I do remember vividly thinking, whelp, make extra sure they never watch THAT shit. While I think The Family Guy sucks, it was more that the one kid would repeat the most annoying punchlines for days that got that show banned from the house.
But then the grownups in the house also had to contend with children's media, which runs the gamut from awesome to the fuck outta here. I loved Yo Gabba Gabba!; tolerated Dora the Explorer; and absolutely banned both Calliou and Barney. All this is winding up to say there were two shows (for lack of a better word) that everyone in the family could absolutely agree on: Homestar Runner and Mythbusters. If you've never watched Mythbusters, the format is thus: they find a myth and then try to recreate the conditions. If they can't -- if it's busted -- then they try to make the myth happen by any means necessary.
Which brings me, inevitably, to Pol Martin.
I made two Pol Martin recipes this week: "Braised Rib-Eye Steaks" and "Pepper Rice." (They were for different meals, because I've learned my lesson about ruining dinner.) When I started the Pol Martin project lo, these many months ago, I declared I was going to follow the recipe as closely as I was able. This resulted in me doing things like boiling leeks for half a godamn fiscal hour which I will never do again, thank you very much. I was in my recreating conditions phase, to put it in terms of Mythbusters. This resulted in a lot of busting.
Since then, I've decided to cut myself some slack sometimes. (Not always, because I followed the ridic instructions for "Fish & Vegetable Salad" to the letter, to Wet Ass Pol results.) But for the two recipes that are the subject of this essay, I decided to hew to the ingredients list and proportions as closely as I could -- with some minor deviations -- but I more or less chucked his cooking instructions. I'm a better than decent cook with decades of experience in the kitchen, and I'm just going to say it: sometimes his recipes are wrong. So I'm just trying to make them work, like the Mythbusters do once the myth gets busted.
The first recipe I tried was "Braised Rib-Eye Steaks." I'm of the opinion that it's difficult to fuck up a good cut of meat. To be fair, I've seen Pol give it the college try, like when, in one of the digitized video tapes, he goes to the market for a salmon steak and then microwaves that bitch to death. I suppose the amendment to my declaration being: it's difficult to fuck up a good cut of meat, except if there's a microwave involved. Like I've never made scallops because I'm terrified of screwing up something that's roughly $30 a pound. But I got some nice rib-eyes from Costco, and was ready to get to it.
The major change to this recipe was that I made it in the Instapot. Braising requires time, time which I didn't have. The Instapot, with its pressure cook setting, can cut two hours of braising down to 20 minutes. (My mom, who was a working single mother, used a pressure cooker all the time to get dinner on the table, so this feels really regular to me.) I also rearranged the order the ingredients went into the cooker. Pol almost always puts the spices in too early, which makes the volatile aromatics in, say, garlic cook off. I also cut the ... everything smaller than Pol directs. One thing that drives me crazy in his videos is how enormous his dice is. No.
[image description: a photo from one of Pol's cookbooks. Very wet looking sliced beef with vegetables that are diced too big on a pink and green plate. The caption reads "Braised Rib-Eye Steaks (serves 4).]
"Braised Rib-Eye Steaks" turned out good, not amazing, but good. Per usual, the recipe was way too wet. He had me pour a cup of clamato juice and two cups of beef stock over two pounds of meat, which is a ridiculous amount of liquid. But Wet Ass Pol's gonna wet. I was intrigued by the inclusion of clamato juice -- and even added some anchovy paste to punch up the umami -- but honestly I don't know that it added much more than vibes. I liked the turnips which soaked up all the flavor of the broth but still had a little crunch. Usually I think turnips are boring. I had the whole thing over mashed potatoes, which was the right call.
Honestly, my biggest criticism is that braising a rib-eye is kind of a waste of a rib-eye. Like it'll be good, but braising is usually reserved for tougher, more fibrous cuts of meat. Braising is when you sear something to get a nice crust, and then basically poach it in some kind of liquid -- broth is common, but you can do use anything from wine to coconut milk, or a combo -- in an enclosed dish. The low and slow cooking breaks that structure down and makes the meat tender, but the meat isn't submerged so it doesn't go to mush. The rib-eye basically tasted like stew meat, which is obviously delicious, but stew meat is also like half the price of a rib-eye. I liked this enough to do again, but I'd chill on the braising liquid and use a shittier cut of meat.
Oh also? I added a bunch of flour as thickener trying to get the braising liquid to approach something like gravy-like consistency, but there's no overcoming this amount of wetness.
[image description: sliced beef and diced turnips & tomatoes served over mashed potatoes in a dark blue bowl. There's an awful lot of liquid.]
The next recipe I tried was "Pepper Rice." You might think pepper refers to black pepper, but he means bell peppers, just to get that out of the way. I needed a side for this chicken shish kabob recipe I've been wanting to try since my newest collection of sick fucking antique skewers showed up. (Pol has a lot of kebab recipes, and his skewers are all immaculate. The fact that I can't find the sword-shaped ones that aren't a grillion dollars still makes me mad.) I'd run across the "Pepper Rice" recipe and filed it away for a rainy day: it's simple, has normal ingredients, and cooks fast.
[image description: grilled chicken on sick fucking antique skewers with birds and stuff for handles sits on a silver tray.]
I'm going to admit that like the braised rib-eyes, I utterly disregarded his instructions. I've run into this with Pol's recipes before -- notably the "Fish & Vegetable Salad" -- but he often pre-cooks ingredients. I simply don't get this. "Pepper Rice" isn't so different from my go-to Spanish rice recipe, which involves softening the vegetables and then pouring in both the dry rice and chicken broth so that everything cooks together. Instead, Pol wants us to fry up the veggies and then mix in already cooked rice? Why? This is a terrible idea.
[image description: pepper rice and grilled chicken in a dark blue bowl on a bright red tablecloth.]
Hilariously, I didn't get the ratio between the rice and cooking liquid quite right, so I kind of ended up with a Wet Ass Pol situation inadvertently. I just boiled it off. I though the pepper rice was kinda bland, but then my husband waxed all philosophical about letting the subtlety of the pepper's mild sweetness become the focus, without distracting with stronger flavors. Maybe he was humoring me slash Pol, but it's also an interesting way to start thinking about the meta-philosophy of preparing food.
I'm a Midwesterner, so I'm not ever going to go too crazy with spices, but I almost automatically double the garlic in any recipe, add fish sauce, anchovy paste, or capers at every opportunity, and otherwise garnish with soy sauce, sriracha, or whatever condiment seems appropriate, and some that don't. On some basic level, I must value a certain kind of complexity of flavor ... or that's not the right way to put it. Fresh ingredients cooked right without much seasoning can be complex, but they're subtle. It's more like I want the flavors to be more forward.
The best articulation of this is in the cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat which, like it says in the title, argues that the best dishes balance those four attributes, but then also really digs into the various ingredients that contribute to that balance. The recipes in that book aren't amazing, ironically, but articulating a philosophy of cooking and writing a decent recipe are two different skill sets. I think the author is onto something there, at least in the ways flavors interact. Pol's recipe has all the attributes in pretty decent balance: salt from the broth, fat from the oil, acid from the tomatoes, and heat in the browning. But I want something that explores other registers: sweet, hot, green, bright, any of a dozen flavors I can't describe but nonetheless enjoy. I want those four attributes to be a base I can build on.
So. I've made a couple dozen Pol Martin recipes so far. There have been high highs and low lows, and everything in between. I've followed recipes exactly and not so much. I've attempted everything from appetizers to main dishes to desserts. I've used a microwave. But I feel like this is the first time I've really understood that he and I have sometimes fundamental differences in what we value in cooking. So if I take an ingredient list from Pol, which is balanced in one way, and cook it the way most makes sense to me, which is balanced in another, I can really get the most out of his recipes. I think I've really begun to vibe on our differences, Pol and me.
Woof, did that gummy kick in or what? Yeah.
