Verjus

Picking green grapes for making vertjus; Tacuinum Sanitatis

I have a secret ingredient. It’s called Verjus (from Middle French vertjus "green juice"). Prized for a thousand years, you can buy it today fairly easily but I have a recipe that is the BEST EVER and I’d like to share it with you. It comes from Madeleine Kamman’s In Madeleine's Kitchen (you need to buy her books!!). It is a little expensive to make and takes a few months to be brilliant but verily I say unto you… your patience will be rewarded! After two months it is delicious, in a year it is insanely good… if you can leave some for a few years it will take your breath away.


Unripe Grapes

Verjus has its roots in the wonderful idea that nothing should go to waste. Unripe grapes (left after the harvest) or sour crab apples (common in England) would be used to make this vinegar-like liquid.


crab apples

The 14th century cookbook, Le Menagier de Paris’ recipe made Verjus with sour grapes and sorrel. Later recipes ask for sour grapes with salt to act as a preservative. In the Middle Ages oil was precious and this would often be the only thing that would go on salads and greens for flavoring. Called husroum or ab-ghooreh in the Middle East, it is still used in Arab/Persian and Syrian cooking. It is somewhere between a vinegar and a wine (my version still has a bit of alcohol in it!).

I had a small portion that I had stored for 7 years quite by accident (a gift that never got given!). I used it last summer with hazelnut oil on a salad and the result was transporting. Gossamer light, complex yet subtle, it is Aristocratic vinegar, if you will.

Carolyn at 18th Century Cuisine shared a slightly different version of Kamman’s recipe on her wonderful blog. Kamman recommends a version with yeast in it in her latest cookbook. My particular recipe uses Armagnac and honey with the strong savor of the flowers the bees dined upon (thyme, heather, acacia)* to anchor the sherry vinegar and tart grapes. The use of Armagnac was a happy accident the first time I made it many years ago… an accident that I now repeat every time I make it.



Perigord Verjus from Amazon

If you don’t have the time or the inclination, the store bought variety can be amended with the addition of some of these elements. Good honey* and sherry vinegar with a small shot of a good brandy will give a purchased verjus some of that quality I love in Kamman’s recipe. I really recommend taking the trouble. Use it with a nut oil on butter lettuce or baby greens and you will see salad in a new light. It is also wonderful on mangoes and tomatoes or even avocado. It gives a delicately nuanced brightness to the fruit. I can’t lie… I have taken small glasses of it!

I usually halve this recipe (Armagnac is pricey!).




VERJUS

30 large green grapes (unwashed organic)

1 quart grape juice (crushed and strained) from sour grapes (or the hardest green grapes you can find---I have always used market grapes myself)

2/3 c Honey (thyme, acacia, heather, evergreen etc.)*

2 Quarts 90 proof alcohol (I used 750 ml bottles) of Armagnac (or brandy, vodka)

2 c sherry vinegar


Prick the grapes with a needle, and place in the bottom of a ½ gallon jar. Filter the grape juice through a coffee filter (this was tough… in the end I used a fine sieve) and pour over the grapes. Add the honey and stir until dissolved then add the alcohol and vinegar. Seal the jar with several layers of cheesecloth (I used a snap lid jar and put the lid down but not snapped over the cheesecloth). Do not disturb for at least 2 months… it is ready to use when the berries have fallen to the bottom and the liquid has clarified, although there will be a fine layer of sediment at the bottom. I poured off the liquid into a bottle and left the grapes in the sediment. They are delicious. (9 months old, this batch is unbelievably good!!)

*** I imagine you could try this with crab apples if you have a tree!





I’ve used this bottle for nearly 20 years. I keep adding new Verjus as they do with the solera system for Sherry in Spain (it’s called in perpetuum in Sicily and used to make marsala) leaving a little from the old batch to enrich the new batch!

Smoked Chicken Salad with Orange & Chili Sauces

When you get a wonderful cache of peppers from Marx Foods with the only proviso being to use your imagination and see what you can come up with… the possibilities that stretch before you are staggering. What can’t you do with dried peppers (I was going to say facials… but given the wonders that capsaicin can do for your circulation… even that might not be so bad -as long as you miss your eyes and nose!)??

Chili Photos from Marx Foods

I know by now all of you are familiar with the term Scoville Heat Units (SHU) to describe the heat in peppers. Bell peppers start at a dismal 0 and pure capsaicin tops out at 16,000,000 -- with pepper spray (yeah, the kind that cops use) coming in 500,000 to 5, 300.000 and the hottest pepper on the planet, the Bhut Jolokia at 855,000 to 1,050,000 (the jalapeno is a puny 2500-8000!) Humidity and soil play a great part in what part of the scale a particular pepper will take. * The heat scale is determined by human tests. The moment the heat appears in the tester’s mouth, the scale is set. Pure capsaicin is identifiable in 16 million parts of water!!!! Imperfect measuring to be sure, but an industry standard nonetheless.*

That said, Marx Foods sent me a package of medium heat chili. Being dried… the Scovilles seem to register higher that they do with the fresh variety since their chipotles (dry jalapenos) measure in at 25,000! With peppers this good you can smell how fresh they are… not like those sad peppers at the market in those little plastic packages that have been hanging there FOREVER! When I saw the Guajillo, New Mexico, Puya, Chipotle, Japones, smoked Serrano and De Arbol chilis, I knew I wanted to show them off in a fairly pure form… so I settled on a beautiful mole. Now, what else?

Madeleine Kamman, Photo by Lois Siegal

I thought I’d borrow from one of my favorite cookbook authors and legendary cooking teacher, Madeline Kamman who should be up there in the cook’s pantheon with Julia Child save for the fact she is so precise and brilliant (with a laser sharp, peregrine-fast mind and an insatiable curiosity about all things edible) that she might seem less accessible to the general audience than sweet, chicken-dropping Julia. Even she said "My own intensity has been a lifelong battle”, in a NYT interview with Molly O’Neill and wondered out-loud: ''I am French!'' she said in the interview in 1982. ''Why would they want an American 'French Chef'?''.

When I looked online to check into her history I discovered a legion of former students who will tell you she walks on water (and is the best cooking teacher ever) and that her classes changed their lives but also that she was one of the first of the Europeans to start playing with chili and lime and new world flavors. There we go, a connection! The Global Gourmet’s bio of her revealed that Kamman has been working at the stove since she was a teen, moving to the US when she got married in the 60’s after taking classes at Le Cordon Bleu. In the states she taught classes and opened a restaurant in Boston that was a real game-changer, named Chez la Mere Madeleine -- considered to be one of the finest in the country during its 1975-79 run. Although she has done many wonderful books, her most recent book The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques, And Science Of Good Cooking

derives from her brilliant but much less ambitious The Making of a Cook, from the 70’s, a book I have had forever. It was always an amazing guidebook that explains why things work (or don’t) with charm and precision. The new version is an encyclopedia of cooking that teaches you what to do and most important, why things go wrong or right. A few of her recipes are among my favorites ever (I also love In Madeleine's Kitchen, she’s that good. I don't usually do this but I can't recommend buying her books enough... you will love them and I have linked to all of them on Amazon for you!!!

Many years ago (this is how I get in the history part), I started making this insanely good sauce of hers. I thought to myself, how would it be if I put a little heat into it? It is fabulous with the smoked chicken she recommended, avocado, orange slices and arugula… but I’ve also done it with smoked fish, duck and plain old chicken and turkey breast…honestly, I could see it with pork too. It’s that good. It is a riff on the famous orange sauce bigarade but without the meat stock element--with egg and oil and cream providing the body instead of reduced stock and flour so it is vegetarian ( I seem to be on an orange kick these days, don't I). I did make it with blood oranges instead of the regular Valencia. The taste is a little less sweet but I love it and the color of the orange sections is just too beautiful.

Orange Sauced Salad Inspired by the Inspiring Madeleine Kamman

Serves 4

½ c orange juice*
1 egg yolk

½ c dry Madeira or fino sherry
 ½ c virgin olive oil

juice of 2 lemons

½ t. lemon zest 

½ t orange zest
¼ c cream

2 avocados
 2 blood oranges (peeled and sectioned)
1 kiwi, peeled and sliced
1 small garlic clove
1 green onion,
1 small red onion, sliced

salt to taste 

small bunch arugula
small radicchio

^ Mad Mole sauce ^
 1- 1 ½ pounds of boneless cooked meat **

*I used blood orange, if you do so, you might want to add a tsp. of sugar as they are not as sweet as a regular orange...taste and see.

** 2 smoked chicken breasts, or the equivalent in smoked fish or turkey, pork or duck. I got my smoked chicken from Nodine’s online.

Combine orange juice, Madeira or sherry, half the lemon juice, zests and a pinch of salt and boil till reduced to 3 T and it is a thick syrup - add zest.

Cool, then whisk in the egg yolk and slowly add the olive oil, whisking all the while.

Add the cream and the rest of the lemon juice to taste… you may not want to use it all. I have also made this without the cream, adding a little more olive oil instead. Add salt to taste.

Place a handful of arugula or endive on a plate. Add your meat/fish of choice, avocado and orange slices and the onion. Drizzle the orange sauce on the plate and dot with the chili mole.

****I used dandelion and it makes great dramatic swoops in the photos but decided in the end… the arugula is best.

^ Mad Mole Sauce ^

2 dried New Mexico chili (seeded)

2 smoked Serrano chili (or chipotle) seeded

3 dried apricot halves (or 3 T raisins)

2 T Madeira (I used Boston Bual)

2 T espresso (liquid-or dark roast coffee)

1 t of anise

Salt to taste

1 t pepper (I like grains of paradise… but black is fine)

2 t. molasses

Re-hydrate the chili and apricots (or raisins) in enough water to cover until softened. You can speed the process by popping it in the microwave for a moment. Puree the softened chili and apricots (or raisins) with the anise and Madeira and coffee in a blender, use some of the soaking liquid so that it has the consistency of ketchup.

*As always, facts come from the great and glorious Wikipedia!