Smashed
“ugly delicious” food is preferable to anything too neat." Julie Lin (chef)
It's a trend. A recent one I thought, but of course it's not. Smashing food that is. And more about that in a moment.
First the inspiration for this post? Well two things reinforcing the concept of smashed in my head. First this brief note in a recent Guardian list of food trends in Britain:
"Smashed tacos, smashed burgers, smashed croissants, smashed smash. We’re all for crispy edges, but not all our food being smooshed until it’s paper thin." Gurdeep Loyal
Then the October edition of the Coles Magazine has a section called Smashed dinners.
The above photo by the way is not really real - it's from an American app designed to show children how many bad things there are in the food they eat - the above are jam donuts. I suppose the concept of smashing here, is meant to show the hidden things that ooze out when you squeeze them.
I guess I should also add to the 'starters' this grill press - one of the cast iron items in the latest set of 'free' equipment from Coles - supposedly from Curtis. This is a grill press, an item which is used to squash your hamburger patty flat, thus improving the Maillard reaction and making it tastier and crispier. You could of course achieve the same effect by pressing down hard with a fish slice or even a tin of beans.
Because:
"Sometime during the 1960s, decades before the fast food chain Smashburger launched in Denver, a fry cook at a Dairy Cheer in Ashland, Kentucky figured out how to maximize flavor by smashing ground beef with a 10 ounce can of beans.
The Coles Magazine, of course has a hamburger opening their Smashed dinners section, but it's a simpler one than another Coles recipe - this one from Curtis himself Curtis Stone's best ever smash burgers - the ones in the current edition are simpler, as they are also in a 5-ingredient section - all Coles products, including the smash burgers themselves, already flattened and a salad kit.
The writer on the Chowhound website quite rightly adds:
"One might postulate that smash burgers are as old as the American diners that bloomed in the early 1900s. Burgers have long been thin-patty affairs layered with griddled onions and served up in greasy kitchens by loud, angry guys with names like Mel. But Bill Culvertson, owner of an Appalachian diner called Dairy Cheer, made history when he realized the value in his cook's burger-griddling method, which created ultra-thin patties and flavorful, crispy-edged" Chowhound."
Personally I like my hamburgers thickish and oozing juice. Not crispy. Although I do admit that on the rare occasions that I do cook a burger, I do squash them a bit as they cook with a fish slice. Ditto for fish cakes, although they might be better crispy. And a quick look did bring up a few 'crispy' fish cakes but not smashed ones.
Besides you sort of smash hamburgers when you eat them don't you, just so that you can fit them in your mouth? One of the messiest foods to eat I always think, so I suppose if the meat was thin and you didn't have a huge amount of anything else, then it wouldn't be so messy. But having now perused many photos of smash burgers, it seems to me that they layer several of the thin meat patties with lots of other oozy stuff like mayonnaise, sauces and cheese. I never, ever order a hamburger when eating out - it would be far too embarrassing. Really you need to be wearing some kind of protective clothing up to your neck - or a massive bib before you try. And the guy above has a moustache. What would a smashed hamburger do to that?
Smashing food is ancient of course, as this ancient Egyptian painting shows. But they were pounding stuff back in the stone age I'm sure. Sometimes it was grains or roots being pounded into some kind of flour, sometimes they were just tenderising meat or at least stretching it to go further. A stone and a rock is all you need.
The stone and the rock are still with us today in the form of the pestle and mortar of course. In modern times the pestle and mortar has mostly been replaced by the electric blender and food processor, although if you want to consider yourself a 'real' cook you will still be making your pesto in one or crushing your spice mixes there too. I have a very small one, which I do indeed use from time to time - mostly for crushing juniper berries or peppercorns, but not much else. I'm lazy, and also because small seeds and nuts tend to jump out of the bowl. I have yet to test out whether basil made in a pestle and mortar is better than that made in a blender. I suspect my taste buds are not up to tasting the difference.
Back with the ancients - on a more sophisticated basis they pounded various things together to make sauces, and pastes and later on they starting mashing things to make pastry and softer foods, combining with this and that to make them tastier.
Today however, if you pay attention to the food writers, we seem to be in a frenzy of smashing things, other than the things you would normally smash like meat to make it tender - or thinner - like chicken breasts to wrap around things.
I also wonder whether the trend for smashing didn't really get its current boost from Bill Granger and his smashed avocado. And here's a thing. Bill Granger's avocado on toast, was not really smashed at all - see below on the left. It was just lightly mashed - not even that surely? Just chopped. Smashed avocado seems to have come later, but all the versions I found online in Google Images were not from Bill Granger. Although the Mexicans have been smashing avocado for guacamole for centuries.
Today however, we seem to be smashing everything we can and not everyone is happy:
"Smashed tacos, smashed burgers, smashed croissants, smashed smash. We’re all for crispy edges, but not all our food being smooshed until it’s paper thin." Gurdeep Loyal/The Guardian
And then there's smacked - is that different - or just less violent, more erotic?
"smashed food is “pressed with a potato masher to increase surface area and optimise the Maillard reaction, which gives those delicious crispy bits. You want to compress food without destroying it.” ... 'smacked', which most commonly applies to cucumbers, [is] a bit more haphazard – usually bashed with the back of a knife or a rolling pin until they break apart, before marinating them”. Lisa Harris/The Guardian
Which to my mind is applicable to all those smashed roast vegetables as well. They are more smacked that smashed and they are also usually tossed in something before cooking. And besides we've been shaking our parboiled potatoes in the pan to give them rough edges before roasting, for ages now.
Back to Coles which, with its four recipes which probably cover most of the bases in terms of popularity. Other than the hamburgers they are: Chickpea smash tacos, for which the chickpeas (from a tin) are first mashed with a fork - mixed with sriracha mayonnaise and coriander, and placed on half a tortilla with some grated cheese. The tortilla is folded in half, and then smashed again with that Coles grill press before baking in the oven. Could be nice if you like chickpeas - although I guess you could use other beans and other sauces.
Then there are Smashed chicken Caesar schnitzels - the Caesar bit being supplied by the Coles Caesar salad kit. For this you spread some chicken mince on a tortilla, cover with panko breadcrumbs and then turn into a frying pan to cook. I can see the whole thing falling apart at that stage. The salad is on top - for the vitamins and the look, as well as a different kind of crispy.
And last of all in similar vein we have Smashed pork dumplings. In this case the tortillas are replaced by wonton wrappers, the meat is mixed with an Asian spice mix from Coles, and pressed with that grill press on to the wrappers, then fried, meat down. And this time you serve with an Asian salad kit.
Two versions of the same thing really - which, if you want to be positive, shows you that you can extemporise to your heart's content. Less positively
“We’re all craving comfort food, and this leans into that. And the aesthetics of it all makes it perfect for Instagram – a jumble of texture and colour.” Alice Grier
These are just examples but it is indeed a trend. I constantly come across recipes - especially for various vegetables - Brussels sprouts and potatoes seem to be the favourites - for smashed this and smashed that. And for me this approach for vegetables - more smacked than smashed I think - is indeed a good thing. The rough edges do indeed make for crispier food and we all love crispy. And there's a side benefit too - again to do with appearance:
"smashing is a great way to use the kind of vegetable seen as 'second-class' … helping the farmers and the growers out. Just because they haven’t got something that’s really premium to the eye, it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be served.” Sami Harvey (chef)
But it's definitely not new. Such dishes have been around for a long time. The Guardian article on the concept of smashed food mentioned two examples from other cuisines - Musabaha - the version shown here is from Urban Farm and Kitchen - from Lebanon - chickpeas again; and Ayam penyet from Indonesia - smashed fried chicken served with a spicy sambal and rice - this version from Yummy Tummy.
Tonight we are eating Alison Roman's Baked shells which will involve making a tomato sauce with crushed tomatoes. I suspect that virtually every meal we make involves some kind of crushing at some point - even if it's just grinding pepper over the finished result.
YEARS GONE BY
October 4
2024 - Nothing
2022 - The kitchen dilemma
2021 - Missing
2020 - Missing
2019 - What is matcha?
2018 - Coconut oil - who is right?
2016 - Prawn pathia
All I can say at the end of this piece is "SMASHING" Ho Ho Hum! Or is smacking - a bit naughtier. I await tonights culnary adventure with excitement or is it trepidation? 🤔😜😜