Season your food (and freshen your face) with ghee
Welcome to June cooking and June exchanging.
The question from J. Rorex is this: “What is the best oil to use for cooking? First I heard canola was bad, now not so much. Then coconut oil, but is it still supposed to be good for you? If so, what are some ways or recipes for using it?”
The other requests are part of repeated conversations in this column. Who has homemade gluten-free bread that is really good? And we would like more uses for hard-boiled eggs. Is there an advantage besides convenience for buying eggs already hardboiled?
CLASSIC COOKIES
This recipe from E. of Henagar, Alabama, was originally published in The Gadsden Times.
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon allpurpose flour 1 tablespoon ground
cinnamon
1 1⁄2 teaspoons baking
soda
1 1⁄4 teaspoons kosher salt 1/ 4 cup plus 1 1⁄2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1⁄2 cup plus 3 1⁄2 tablespoons lightly packed brown sugar 11 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1⁄4 cup beaten eggs
1 1⁄4 teaspoons vanilla
extract or paste
2 cups old-fashioned oats 1 cup raisins or mix of black and golden raisins
Place the flour in a medium bowl. Sift in the cinnamon and baking soda; add the salt, and whisk together. In a small bowl, whisk together the granulated and brown sugars, breaking up any lumps.
Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Turn to medium-low speed, and cream the butter until it is the consistency of mayonnaise and holds a peak when the paddle is lifted. Add the sugars, and mix for 3 to 4 minutes, until fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottoms of the bowl. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix on low speed for 15 to 30 seconds, until just combined. The mixture may look broken, but that is fine. Overwhipping the eggs could cause the cookies to expand too much during baking and then deflate.
Add the flour mixture in 2 additions, mixing on low speed for 15 to 30 seconds after each, until just combined. Scrape the bottom of the bowl to incorporate any dry ingredients that have settled there. Stir in the oats and raisins until thoroughly
combined. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
Position the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and heat to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
For gigantic cookies, use a 2 1⁄2-inch ice cream scoop to divide the dough into 6 equal portions. For large cookies, divide dough into 12 equal portions. Roll each portion into a ball between your hands.
For gigantic cookies, place 3 of these dough balls on each prepared baking sheet, placing each one as far away from the others and the sides as possible. For large cookies, place 6 balls on each prepared sheet.
Bake until golden brown, 21 to 23 minutes for gigantic cookies (15 to 17 minutes in a convection oven) or 18 to 20 minutes for large cookies (14 to 16 minutes in a convection oven). Reverse the positions of the pans halfway through baking. Set the pans on a cooling rack, and cool for 5 to 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies to the rack to cool completely.
The cookies are best the day they are baked, but may be stored in a covered container for up to 3 days.
— Recipe from Thomas Keller’s “Bouchon Bakery”
GHEE GLEANINGS
In a recent letter from Pauline Field, she identified herself in part as “a big fan of ghee, and would love to share what I have learned.”
Ghee is the pure butterfat left over after the milk solids and water are removed from butter. It’s used widely in Indian cooking, and the word ghee is the Hindi word for fat.
Ghee might as well be a synonym for clarified butter, although there is one slight difference. Like clarified butter, ghee is made by melting butter, cooking off the water and separating the clear, golden butter fat from the milk solids. The only difference is that in some traditions, ghee is simmered for a little while, thus browning the milk solids and adding a slightly nutty flavor to the finished product. Not all ghee recipes necessarily specify the browning of the milk solids, however, so for all practical purposes ghee is clarified butter with an Indian name.
Here are some of the benefits. Ghee is better for high-heat cooking than butter since it has a smoke point of between 450 degrees and 475 degrees, as compared with about 350 degrees for ordinary butter. It also has a longer shelf life than ordinary butter, and when stored in an airtight container can be kept at room temperature.
Another advantage of ghee is that the chemistry is changed in the process. The long fatty acid chains of saturated fat change to medium and short chains that resemble the wonderful qualities that coconut oil has. It is still saturated, just not as saturated, making it a more healthy fat. And like coconut oil, it is liquid at temperatures above 70 degree. I never store my ghee in the refrigerator because it gets really hard, and hard to use.
I am careful to always use a clean utensil, to avoid bacteria. I love the summer, when my ghee is liquid and really easy to use. I use it for seasoning my cast-iron pans, and it is my preferred oil for anything I grill on the skillet. Use it in place of butter.
I make my ghee, rather than buy from the store, but in my experience if the container doesn’t say “refrigerate after opening,” refrigeration is not required.
I don’t have a specific ghee recipe, but it’s funny how I found out about ghee. I was looking for a recipe for halva, the yummy fudge-like Mediterranean confection. In my recipe was an ingredient that was foreign to me, ghee. When I researched it, I found Rujuta Diwekar, an Indian nutritionist who has even more neat stuff to say about ghee.
Ghee has antibacterial and antiviral properties, helping you recover from sickness or ensuring that you don’t fall sick. The antioxidants in ghee make it a miraculous anti-wrinkling and anti-aging therapy. Ghee is excellent for joint health as it lubricates and oxygenates them. Ghee takes nutrients from your food and delivers them through fat-permeable membranes like in the brain.
Ghee improves your satiety signal and ensures you eat the right amount of food, works as an antiseptic, helps with digestion, is an immunity enhancer, cartilage and joint lubricator, while protecting the heart and body in general from sun damage.
Include one teaspoon a day in your diet, and your skin will glow. And stubborn fat will melt away.
I never made a successful batch of halva, but enjoy my ghee every morning when I cook my eggs in it.
JUST A DASH
A college senior who is learning to cook, Abba D., shared her simple mango salsa, “good with just about everything.” Finely chop colored peppers, purple onions, mangoes, cilantro, add lime juice and salt. Serve with chips or on any meat or fish.
So glad you are here, and so hopeful you will be next week as well.