Pig comes, pig goes

This was going to be a much more interesting post -- last Friday I was planning to help break down a pig, hopefully learning about its anatomy and more wonderful things to do with a pig. So I showed up over in West Seattle with high hopes, and maybe a little trepidation.

And here comes the pig -- actually two halves, each about 122 lbs. Very big pig, and unwieldy. It just flops around, and of course it's somewhat slippery.

Given what we wanted to do with it, having it already cut in half was not a good thing. But it did let me get a look at the structure. And all that lovely leaf lard, which is the long white mass in the center. Finest fat for making pastry! (After you render it, of course.)

Turns out there was more wrong than just being cut in half. The pig had been skinned, and the trotters removed. Now, if you're planning to make prosciutto, or coppa, or many other cured applications of pork, you gotta have the skin on. So this pig just would not do. It had to go back, and my adventures in butchery will have to wait for another day.

Pig Goes:

Going Moroccan: Honey Lamb with Apricots and Almonds

A week ago I was over visiting my son at college. Naturally, I planned to cook. Since he'd recently tried Moroccan food for the first time and seemed to enjoy it, I decided to make honey lamb for him and some of his friends. They really liked it, and I plan to make it here at home sometime in the near future.

I started by reading "Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco" by Paula Wolfert to get some ideas. I combined several recipes and some riffs of my own to get the result:

Honey Lamb with Apricots and Almonds

1 leg of lamb, boned, trimmed of connective tissue and fat, cut into 1" cubes (reserve bones)
1 T ras al hanout (you can use curry powder, but this is more authentic and exotic)
1/2 t ground ginger
olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cinnamon sticks

8 oz dried apricots, quartered

3/4 c slivered almonds

lamb stock (made from reserved bones)

1 c honey

1 T cinnamon

In the morning, rub lamb cubes with ras al hanout, ginger, and garlic. Refrigerate for four or more hours. Use bones to make about 4 cups of lamb stock.

Brown lamb in batches in olive oil. Set meat aside, and cook onion and garlic until translucent. Add meat, cinnamon sticks, apricots, almonds, and lamb stock to barely cover. Bring to simmer, cook for 1 hour or until lamb is very tender, adding more stock if it gets too dry. Add honey and cinnamon and cook for another 30 minutes or until the sauce is very thick.

Garnish with cilantro. Serve over couscous.

Bearnaise as a sandwich spread?

Absolutely! Chilled Bearnaise sauce is a great spread for a roast beef sandwich. I made a nice tenderloin roast over the weekend, and some red-wine blender Bearnaise to go with it. Leftovers of both. When you chill Bearnaise, it ends up like very soft butter (not surprisingly!). Spread on a baguette, with some nice roast beef and tomatoes it makes a wonderful sandwich. Add some Brie and it becomes sublime. Along with this, we had what I ended up calling "Mardi Gras Potato Salad." Why Mardi Gras? Because it had purple potatoes in it (I'd roasted new purple potatoes along with the tenderloin) as well as eggs and celery, so you get the purple, green and gold of Mardi Gras in the salad. I cut the usual mayonnaise with nonfat yogurt and it was quite good.

Oops, time got away from me/Bunny cake

Sometimes work gets busy and I neglect the blog. It doesn't nag, or have deliverable deadlines, so tends to fall to the bottom of the heap sometimes. Sorry.

Let's see, what's new? Easter dinner brought a request for the same maple-bacon Brussels sprouts I served at Thanksgiving. They were very good, but a little tough at this time of year. But since someone asked me to please bring them, what could I say but yes? Same thing went for bringing a potato gratin. Lots of heavy cream, some Swiss cheese, some thyme. Very rich and very good with the ham.

I did do one funny thing for Easter: I made a bunny cake. Not my usual style at all. Even used a cake mix and canned frosting, horror of horrors. But it was for the kids, and they weren't going to notice. Put my energy into figuring out how to make a bunny out of two 9" rounds. Used one cut in half for the body, feet, head, and tail out of the other one. Sugar cookies shaped for ears, tinted coconut for grass scattered with gum drops. Not what I'd call a work of art but cute nevertheless.

No white foods? The hunter-gatherer diet for a while

Okay, maybe not that extreme. But for now I am cutting out white sugar, white flour (and most all things made with it), potatoes, and white rice from my diet as well as corn products. Most sugars are gone for a while, but some will sneak in with marinades where the percentage will be very low. Some fruits, like berries, are okay but no tropical fruits. And unlike my last run at a low-carb diet, I'm cutting back some on saturated fats, too. So instead of a tuna salad full of mayo, I'm cutting the mayo with half low-fat plain yogurt. I kind of like the tang it gives, anyway. So this is the hunter-gatherer diet. Only whole grains, including barley, brown rice, and maybe a little whole wheat. Plenty of proteins like fish, and lots of veg. I'm really trying to find a diet, in the broad sense of the word, that I can live with. I was very successful with a low-carb diet while I was on it, since it seems to suit my metabolism. But I couldn't quite live with it (and neither could Dave). This new strategy, well, we'll see. I can't be slavishly committed to it and keep taking cooking classes, I think, but as long as that is the exception rather than the rule I hope it will be okay. I just won't take any baking classes for a while!

Playing with the new wok

We love fried rice. But all that white rice blows me up like a balloon. Last night we tried fried rice with brown rice instead, and it wasn't bad at all. All of my memories of brown rice were pretty negative, so this was a pleasant surprise. Made it in the new wok, whose seasoning is working out pretty well. I had made some char sui pork this weekend (a Martin Yan recipe, quite yummy) and so that went in with slices of asparagus and chopped onion and carrot. I used low-sodium soy sauce, which I am finding is not so great for seasoning, as the salt level is just too low in the finished dish. So we're going to save that for table use, I guess. Did prove my guess that even though I am allergic to peanuts I can have peanut oil. I had heard that it's the proteins in peanuts that cause the allergy and they aren't in the oil. I didn't have any reaction to using peanut oil in the fried rice.

Dinner for friends: going organic

After seeing the Thanksgiving menu, one of my clients asked if I would please cook dinner for them. Of course, that would be my pleasure. For for three guests, I pulled together dinner. But there was a twist -- one of them is not supposed to eat dairy, sugar, or wheat. And two of them mostly opt for organic foods. So I decided to try out a couple of things: - Make a dinner of things I want to cook and am happy to serve without using dairy, wheat, or refined white sugar - To the furthest extent possible and practical, use organic foods - See how much more if costs (if any) to eat organic The menu was: Salad/starter (wine: sparkling rose) Ahi tartare with preserved lemons, mixed greens and black olive tapenade Homemade sourdough baguette Entree (wine: Washington State Syrah) Moroccan spiced lamb shanks Barley pilaf Roasted carrots and zucchini Dessert (green tea) Rosemary-scented compote of apples and pears with oatmeal granola topping The only place where wheat came into play was in the bread, and of course anyone not wanting wheat can opt out of that. The ahi tartare and lamb sharks are tried-and-true recipes of mine, so the only risk areas were the bread, the barley pilaf, and the dessert. For the bread, I used the Malgieri recipe I've been working with, since my starter is nice and sour now. And I made it into baguettes using the nice new baguette pan. I have to say that this was the best bread I've ever made, in terms of texture and crumb. I think it could have used just a little more salt but by and large it was really great. The barley pilaf was something I had to make up, since I wanted something that could go into the oven and finish while the lamb shanks reheated. I went with 1/2 red onion and 1 cup of barley, sauteed in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil until the barley was toasty, then about a clove of minced garlic. Added three cups of chicken broth and a cup of water. I should note that all of these ingredients were organic. Simmered for about 45 minutes, then put a lid on and put into the oven. It fluffed up nicely and held in there for a couple of hours. The dessert took a little thinking, and I settled on organic brown rice syrup for the sweetener. Simmered that with about a tablespoon of roughly chopped rosemary. The "scent" was nearly overwhelmed by the taste of the brown rice syrup, but it was there. Found organic oat granola with nuts and maple syrup sweetener at the market. I roasted three granny smith apples and three Bartlett pears at 225 for a few hours while I ran out to take care of something else. When I pulled them out they were just barely tender, so I was able to cut them up and just peel off the apple skin with my fingers. The pear skins were nice and tender so I left them on. Tossed the syrup with the fruit, piled it into an 8" square baking dish, and covered the top with the granola. Drizzled more syrup on top, then put into a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes until it was bubbly. Came out pretty good, and it was 100% organic as well. For the lamb, I couldn't find organic, but got them from a good natural producer. Rubbed with spices on Saturday, braised on Sunday, rested on Monday, served on Tuesday. They were really good, as usual. Going organic wasn't terribly difficult, as long as you don't mind spending *a lot* more money. I think this meal cost 50% more because of the cost of not only all the organic produce, but things like olive oil, tomato paste, chicken broth, etc. At least when you buy wild fish (like the ahi) you don't have to worry if it is organic or not. But with wine, the ingredients for that dinner for four cost over $30/person. Personally, I'm going to study that "top ten" list of the produce with the highest levels of pesticides etc and maybe focus on that for going organic in the short term.

Best crabcakes in Seattle, best gumbo too

We first dropped into Steelhead Diner, at the Pike Place Market, last weekend for lunch. They have a counter at the kitchen, which was like magic for me because "I like to watch." Dave is a sucker for gumbo, and so since it was on the menu, he went for that in a flash. I like to evaluate a restaurant by how well they fry things, so I ordered the fish and chips. First, though, we had a crabcake appetizer. WOW. Was that ever good. It was more like a crab salad fried up golden brown, with the poblano peppers and onions in the mix retaining some of their crunchy texture. Absolutely the best crabcake I've had here, and Dave agreed. Dave loved his gumbo, made with a nice dark roux. The fish and chips were light and crispy, with the fish perfectly cooked. And *finally* I've found fries that I like, crisp on the outside but cooked through inside. I don't see anything wrong with using frozen product for fries if you can turn out something great on the plate with them. My problem with "hand-cut" fries is that while the concept is good, the fries usually aren't. It was fun to watch Chef Kevin running the kitchen, and he was nice enough to chat with us some while we were there. This place is a labor of love for him, and it is so great to see his face light up when he talks about his food. Now I understand what Dave means when he says I "glow" when I talk about cooking, because I saw it in this chef too. On a return visit today, I tried the roasted pork sandwich. This is in a po'boy style, which means usually a knife and fork, because this baby was dressed to the nines. Chef Kevin roasts a pork leg for this, studded with serranos and garlic. By using the leg, you get a nice mixture of textures and different levels of chew. A couple of cool surprises, too -- chef handed me a place of fried smelt as kind of an amuse bouche, and I'd never had smelt before. He seemed pretty tickled that he fed me something new. They were very crisp and he served them with a sweet-hot mustard viniagrette. He also shared some fresh divinity with me -- great taste, so sweet it made my teeth hurt, though. He's doing a very good job of making me feel like family. Guess I'll have to take up some of my cured meats to share when they are done, and I told him I'd bring pickles later this summer when I put up some new ones.

Playing with ice cream

We have one of those fancy refrigerated units for making ice cream (but not as fancy as the Simac!). While we've made some good stuff, we're always looking for how to make it creamier. I forgot how we got on the topic, but I realized that I have some vegetable gum powders from my low-carb diet days. It's a combination of guar, acacia, and xanthan gums, and that's what's used in commercial ice cream as an emulsifier. So I thought, why not try it? For a Philadephia-style ice cream (no eggs, not a custard) I used: 1 cup milk 2 cups cream 1 t vanilla 1/3 cup superfine sugar mixed with 1 1/2 t vegetable gum powder You need to mix the sugar with the gum powder or it will clump. Then whisk everything together and dump it in the freezer (according to maker's directions, of course). The result was like soft-serve when it first came out, then after several hours of hardening in the freezer, it was really creamy and just perfect. Very good on some homemade waffles with fresh strawberries, and homemade bacon on the side. Not the healthiest brunch, but we sure did enjoy it!

A rum tasting dinner

Something completely different tonight! Despite all the fun things I like to cook, we do like to go out to dinner occasionally :) On this occasion, Elliott's Oyster House here on the waterfront in Seattle had a special dinner to match rum with seafood. Well, being a salty sailor, that was an invitation I just could not resist! Plus, I was interested in how they were going to balance the alcohol of rum, consumed straight, with food. That can be a real challenge, just as matching high-alcohol wines to food can be. (Oh, and there was the small detail that I learned to drink rum 30 years ago this summer, drinking Mount Gay Rum in Barbados, and the Mount Gay rep was due to be at the event....).

First, they matched a dry-cured sugared salmon with Mount Gay Extra Old. There was a lot of spice in the salmon, which while subtle when you just ate the salmon, blew you away when you took a sip of the rum. It was like the sweetness in the rum just cancelled out any sweetness in the salmon, and you were just left with the heat. The texture on the fish was great, but I am not sure that leaving all the flavor for the heat when you drink the rum was the best thing. But it was an interesting experience.

I should say right now that I did not take pictures, but a well-known food blogger, Ronald Holden, was there, and he did, and he will have his own take on this event. That would be at http://www.cornichon.org/. He will probably have a much more thorough review than I do, as it's something he does for a living. But he was kind enough to share some of his photos of the event with me, so the photos you see here are courtesy of Ronald Holden. In fact, I should digress and say that the diners gathered for this event were fun, and from all over the map. Of course that is part of the fun of things like this!

Second course was scallops topped with what they said was a Bajan (from Barbados) pigeon pea soup seasoned with coconut. While it did not remind me of anything I ate when I was in Barbados for five weeks, it was quite tasty. But it was odd to have a "soup" used as a topping - it was more like a thick sauce. I can say that the Appleton Estate Extra Jamaican Rum served alongside was a nice accompaniment.

The third course is the one I am most conflicted about. They served an eight-year-old Bacardi with seared ahi. The Bacardi was very high in alcohol and so wasn't really a match for any food. I understand that the hosts were trying to progress from younger rums to older, but I could have done without having to deal with a mainstream producer like Bacardi who brought nothing to the party. (Personally, I would have preferred Bacardi Black to the Reserva.) However, the ahi dish was beautiful and I enjoyed the flavors of the rice-stuffed cabbage seasoned with sugarcane that came with it, it was a nice contrast to the jerk seasoning.

Course four was where we got an real winner: Pecan-crusted mahi-mahi with a banana/habanero chutney. Wow, this was incredible. Fish cooked perfectly, chutney a great match. The rum served alongside, a Pyrat XO Reserve-Planters Gold was great, almost a cognac. We loved that rum. However, the hosts talked about the next course before we sere served this one and mentioned that the Whaler's Original Dark Rum we would be served with the next course had a lot of banana flavor. So I ran off to the side and asked for some of that, thinking that it would be good to taste it with the complimentary banana flavors in the salsa. Boy, was I right. That was a marriage made in heaven!

Fifth course, running out of steam a little. Mako Shark Vindaloo. The shark was a little dry, done as a grilled filet slice instead of as a stew. But the flavor was nice. I didn't care for the texture of the grilled plantains -- they didn't seem to have been parcooked before grilling, so the starch seemed a little underdone. But who in Seattle is supposed to know how to cook plantains?

Finally, dessert. A Cafe Diablo with Sailor Jerry rum. Flavors are good, but the drink suffers from trying to serve 22 people at once, and it's not quite hot enough. The "Tropical Paradise" -- a "rum-soaked dacquoise layered with raspberry blood orange fruit mousse, white peach mousse, and apricot rum glaze" is very tasty and light enough to follow all of the the previous courses. I clean my plate...yum, yum.

Well, after all that food and rum I need to go to sleep. (In fact, after all that rum I'm surprised I can even type!) Back tomorrow with some more adventures, like tomorrow night is our first "couples" cooking class. In the meantime, wishing you all tasty dreams....

Italian Beef - did it work?

Yes, I think the final verdict on the beef is that it is very close. However, it has required some tinkering that I need to quantify so I can post it. Bottom line is that I almost followed the recipe on http://forums.cooking.com but messed with it a bit. I rubbed the beef with the seasonings, and then basted it with beef broth, and I really should have just followed the recipe straight up. What I ended up doing was having a base that I still had to add all of the ingredients to, and then it still needed more marjoram and oregano, as well as red chile flake and beef base, to make it taste right. But then it really did taste right. The dicey thing is the balance of the Worcestershire sauce. I had one question about adding fennel, but the recipe did not include fennel and I didn't see that flavor missing. For now, refer to the forum and look in the Recipe section under the thread "LF Italian Beef" and you'll see what I've been working from. In the next few days I will quantify what I have done and get it written down here accurately.

ISO genuine Italian Beef at home

When I was in Chicago a year ago with Dave (who is from Chicago) one of my discoveries was how much I loved Italian beef sandwiches. Portilo's (I think that's the spelling) was one of my favorites. Since then, I've been trying to find a recipe that will at least approximate the gravy -- which I would call jus -- on those sandwiches, since I've accepted that I won't find a bread that is the same. I think I've finally got one, from a posting I made on the Cooking.com forums. I hang out in the forum quite a bit these days, and am having some fun with that. But back to the task at hand... As I said I think I have a recipe, at this point it's not done because the big ol' roast has to cool so I can slice it down, and marinate it in the jus. But it smells right, so I have high hopes.

Mmm, homemade bacon

If I had known how easy it is to make bacon, I would have started doing it years ago. Well, technically it's pancetta I make because I don't have the gear to cold-smoke the pork bellies after I cure them. But I have a solution for that, more on that later. I was feeling kind of blue this morning, because I came in second in a thing on the Cooking.com forum to go a housewares show and report on it for the forum. But I think I am happy just to have had my essay selected as one of the three finalists. And I learned some things along the way, like that I have a lot more friends than I thought I did! Anyway, my cure for the sadness was to get back into the kitchen, of course. I'd finished the bacon on Thursday, the last step after curing it for a week is to bake it at a very low temp until it's 150 degrees, then cut off the rind. This time, I added maple syrup to the cure and, to get that smoky flavor, a couple of drops of Liquid Smoke. Since it's made from the same stuff that makes the smoke flavor when you smoke something, the taste is genuine. This morning I sliced up some of it (this might be the hardest part of using homemade bacon) and cooked it to go on bacon and avocado sandwiches (made with my own homemade sourdough bread, baked last night while I waited for that @*&#$@ contest voting to be over). The sandwiches were very good, and comforted my bruised ego ;-)

One more entry about foie gras (for now)

The last thing we tried with the foie gras was a sandwich with kalua pork and seared slices of foie on brioche. I read that it's something that Chef Alan Wong serves, and since I had kalua pork in the freezer, it seemed like a good thing to try. It was very good. We toasted thin slices of brioche and just piled the stuff together. My mouth waters thinking about it again.

Making bresaola

New project this week -- taking eye of round roasts and making bresaola, Italian dried beef. The process really is simple, from Charcuterie by Ruhlman, but you have to be careful. It requires a special curing salt so that when you hang it for three weeks, there is no bacterial growth. So I've also been very careful with sanitation overall, using rubber gloves when handling it. I'm using the same cure on some pork loins, to get something analogous to prosciutto though it won't have the same marbling. It's a five-week process before I have product to taste, so I'll have to get back to you on how it turns out. But I have high hopes. Oh, and the foie gras torchon (salt-cured with cognac) turned out GREAT! Sprinkled with a little fleur-de-sel, it was as good as anything I've had in a restaurant. The brioche was exellent, as well and a great accompaniment to the foie. We'll be doing that again.

Working with foie gras

So the great experiments began on Friday. I picked up the foie, but of course wanted to wait to play with it until Dave was home to share in the adventure. I pulled out more than a dozen cookbooks with references to and recipes for foie, so I felt like I did a pretty decent literature search and research. I settled on two apps to begin: a salt-cured torchon of uncooked foie, to be served with brioche, and seared slices to be served with pomegranate molasses and an apple-rosemary compote. For the first app I used a recipe from "Jacques Pepin Celebrates" but I only used the small lobe of one foie, not an entire 1-1/2 pound liver. The second app I pulled together from several sources, getting the idea of rosemary with fruit from two different recipes and the idea of using the pomegranate molasses from having had pomegranate seeds with a raw foie app in my class. But first came the cleaning of the foie. I am *so* glad that I got to try this in class last summer, because it can be really scary how the thing is just ragged after you pull out all those nasty tough veins. And it did make Dave stop and do a double-take, I could tell he was wondering if this was the way it was supposed to be. But then you just sprinkle it with salt, white pepper, and cognac and roll it up in plastic wrap. A day in the fridge and the salt-cured lobe is nice and firm. That's for eating on Sunday after the brioche is cooked. For the seared application, I just rolled the big lobe back up after the cleaning (not as thorough for this one, as the small veins just shrink up when cooked) and wrapped it in plastic wrap. Put it in the fridge overnight for prep on Saturday. When Saturday dinner time gets here, I start getting nervous. This is very confusing to me, as I know exactly what I am doing. And I've even seared this stuff in class. But for some reason I have a significant panic reaction, I can feel it in my gut. Annoying as all get out, I must say! So I screw my courage to the sticking point and move ahead. The "surf and turf" was the seared foie and seared sea scallops. So I got the sea scallops seared off and put them in a low oven, then the foie slices went into the very hot skillet for about a minute and a half total. I think I would slice them even thicker, on the thick side of 3/4", next time I do them. But they turned out just fine. The plan was to serve baby greens with a vinaigrette of dijon, shallots, sherry vinegar, and walnut oil, and at the last minute I decide to candy some walnuts to go in it. That was a good move, there were too many soft things and not enough texture in this meal without that. Three scallops and three slices of foie on each chop plate, the salad at one end, a little of the apple-rosemary compote on the other, and a little of the pomegranate molasses drizzled at the side of the foie. Looked very nice, and tasted even better. Served with a Quady Essencia wine, as I didn't have a bottle of Sauternes. The sweetness worked well. And the apple compote was absolutely great with the scallops as well as the foie. I'll do that for another scallop meal another day, I think. Time to go, the brioche smells done...

Duck-fat poaching of potatoes and mushrooms

Last November, when I made my first batch of pancetta, I took some of it and made a confit of it in duck fat. There was still some left on Friday night when I was looking to do some kind of a side for steak. So I took the rest of that and put it and the duck fat into a saucepan. Then I added tiny fingerling potatoes and some crimini mushrooms that we halved. Poached them for about 45 minutes, very low heat, while I did other stuff in the kitchen. Poured it through a sieve, broke up the pork and served small tenderloin steaks beside the "ragout," sprinkled with coarse salt and minced chives. Not bad, not bad at all!

Sous Vide: not that hard

Sous vide: under vaccuum What it really means is that if you have a FoodSaver, you can cook sous vide. You don't need one of those fancy Japanese or French vaccuum boxes, and you don't need some fancy immersion cooker as long as you're willing to pay attention a little bit. I have a FoodSaver, and I finally realized that sous vide cookery is just a fancified version of boil-in bags! My approach? I bagged up some duck breasts with salt and herbes de provence. In fact, the duck ended up in the freezer for a couple of weeks. Then into the pot they go, bring the water up to a simmer at 140 degrees. Use a big pot with a lot of water, the mass of the water means the temp stays more stable. You can pretty much keep it there indefinitely, but it does require watching if you don't have something with a thermostatic control. I put a probe thermometer into the pot, with the alarm set to go off if the temp got a few degrees too high. What do you do with something you cook sous vide? Well, consider the texture. Proteins cooked that gently are very soft -- they don't have the "trauma" of heat that makes them get springy. So go for either a big contrast with something crunchy, or complimentary. I took the latter route, and served the duck breasts sliced over Shanghai noodles, with duck stock flavored along the lines of pho. Added some steamed baby bok choy on the side of the bowl along with some shiitake mushrooms, and it was a very nice meal. Up next? I will try my hand at foie gras preparations. I just read about chef Alan Wong's kalua pork and foie gras sandwiches, and so I need to make some brioche before Dave gets home from his trip tomorrow so we can try that out!

Fancy brownies

We wanted something sweet, and I knew we had dried cherries and toasted hazelnuts. So now our new favorite dessert is chocolate brownies chock full of chopped dried cherries and hazelnuts, topped with a chocolate ganache. It's really easy, use a brownie recipe that is made in a 9x13 pan, put in about a cup of each add-in, then when cool pour over a ganache made with equal weights of bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream. Even better, make a cream cheese swirl to marble in (1/2 c sugar, 8oz cream cheese, 1 egg, 1 t vanilla) before you put it in the oven. Yummy!

Thoughts on foie gras

I'm been deliberating for a few days now about whether to even mention this here, as it seems to be such a touchy subject. But dang it, I love foie gras. And I think it may be more humane to eat foie gras (from the right supplier) than it is to eat chicken. I even like it raw, now. I took a class on Friday night where we used about 7 pounds of foie, and it was just decadently wonderful. (Good thing I don't have a cholesterol test scheduled this week!) I learned how to sear it, which was a biggie for me. Also to make a mousseline, and to do a couple of raw preparations. (I had no idea how complimentary the textures of raw foie and perfectly ripe avocado are, and how well pomegranate works with that.) I'd already learned how to devein it last summer in another class. Now I feel prepared to deal with this luxury, if it ever comes my way. And a little birdie tells me it will, along about the middle of February...yum, yum.

Dinner party fun

Well, maybe cooking dinner for two of my good friends isn't quite a dinner party to some people, but it is to me. It's kind of a delayed birthday dinner for both of them so I want it to be special. So here's the menu: Mediterranean Ahi Tartare in Cucumber Boats Baby greens with lemon viniagrette, orange supremes, and tapenade North African-Spiced Lamb Shanks Mashed potatoes, roasted zucchimi Chocolate Creme Brulee Spiced palmieres and house brandied cherries And of course I am baking bread (as I write this). The good thing about this menu is that the lamb cooked yesterday, as did the custards. The ahi can be a little labor-intensive because you have to mince it, but that's not bad when you're only doing three portions. I just keep finding new ways to serve it. The lamb is an evolution of what I've done a couple of times now, and it's just the most wonderful braise. And the good thing is that I made extra, since Dave is traveling and I know he'll love having it for dinner when he gets home later this week. I'm serving a Cotes du Rhone with dinner, ought to work well and I know both of my friends like it. Should be a very fun evening. Guess I'd better get back to the kitchen!

New gadgets

Just bought a 45-blade meat tenderizer. So now I can make cube steaks, and also pork chop sandwiches. Gee, that sounds healthy ;-) but since it's winter my tummy craves comfort foods!I'm waiting for my Benriner rotary slicer, I have no idea why I bought it except that I've always coveted one. So I guess we're going to have lots of vegetable shreds and ribbons, and I can make shredded potato-wrapped fish fillets. It's fortunate that one thing Dave never begrudges me are kitchen gadgets! My favorite current gadget is a cheap juice extractor. Mostly right now it's for carrot-celery-apple juice for my breakfast, but I had the bright idea this week that I can use the leftover carrot and celery pulp as "fodder" for the mirepoix in a bolognese sauce, since that needs to be pulped anyway. We'll see how that goes later today. I'm also going to juice some cucumbers and make a gelee of them with lemongrass flavor to go with some oysters for a dinner party in March. I'm also thinking of a celery and green peppercorn ice as a shellfish accompaniment. So it will come in handy there, too.

Duck again?

Yep. Gotta face it, Dave loves duck and I think he'd eat it until he started quacking! Made duck confit this weekend, froze the breasts. Kind of a reverse of the usual routine. Also made duck glace, so now I have a nice supply of concentrated stock in the freezer. Poached some fingerling potatoes in duck fat to have with the confit legs, that was very nice.

Filet au Poivre

I did promise to talk about how we fixed that whole tenderloin we bought in Hawaii. Actually, this is what we often do to them at home, too. This recipe is courtesy of my friend Anne. After trimming, I cut one 6-inch roast from the middle, that's for the filet au poivre. For that, you mix up 2 t of kosher salt, two T of minced shallot, 2 T minced parsley, 2 t of herbes de provence, about a T of coarsely crushed peppercorns. Add enough olive oil to make a paste and smear it all over the roast. Refrigerate overnight. When ready to cook, bring meat to room temp and heat oven to 450. Roast for 20 minutes, or until internal temp is 120. Take out of the oven, put on a tray and put into the freezer for about an hour. Slice thinly and serve with horseradish cream. Yum. That's our traditional New Years Eve meal. I made another roast and stuffed it with sauteed shallots, minced parsley, and gorgonzola. Then roasted the same way, but took it to 125-130 internal temp. The chain and tips get to be teriyaki nibbles, and the rest were steaks. Almost too much beef for two people over two weeks.

The best calamari

While we were in Hawaii we ate at Bamboo, way up at the north tip of the island in Hawi. Boy, was it worth the trip. One thing we really like are fried calamari strips, and they had the best we've ever tasted. Simple preparation, done perfectly. They cut their own, dredge in cornstarch, egg, and panko. Then deep fry them. The house-made tartar sauce they serve includes pickled ginger (gari) and pineapple. Absolutely delicious. They also have a Thai coconut sauce that is great, so good that I bought their little cookbook for $5 so I could have the recipe. It's pretty complex with lots of ingredients but they say it keeps well. It would make rocks taste good, so I will have to try it out soon. They also have chicken potstickers that have peanut butter in the filling. I hear those are really good, but being allergic to peanuts I'll have to settle for the hearsay!

We're baaaack....

Mmm. I just love cooking in Hawaii. So many new things to try, and old favorites that only taste right with ingredients I can get there. And of course, the cool things that Costco only carries in Hawaii! Let's start with Costco. We were on the Big Island, so that means a store just north of Kailua town on the Kona side. My favorite thing there are the avocados, Sharwill grown right there on the island. They are firmer than Haas when ripe, and larger. Perfect texture for including in makizushi! Of course, for that you need fresh ahi and they carry that at Costco, too. Toss in a slab of pipikaula (Hawaiian beef jerky), a whole pork butt ($1.59/lb) for making kalua pork, and a tub of Hawaiian-style mac salad and you have all the basic makings for ono grinds (aka great meals). I'm a huge fan of plate lunch, so gotta have the mac salad. I always take along some rice, that way when I use it up I know I have a couple of pounds in the luggage for bringing home Kona coffee (oh, yeah, Costco has that, too). For the kalua pork, since I can't dig an imu (underground oven) at the condos where we stay you make it this way: for each 6-lb chunk of pork butt, rub it with 1T coarse salt (Hawaiian red alae salt is fun, but kosher is fine) and 1T of liquid smoke in the morning. Let it sit all day, then roast (covered) overnight at 225 degrees. I just use a big foil steam pan for 12-15 lbs of pork butt. Then when the meat is cool enough, shred it and pick out the fat at the same time. Bag it up and freeze some, keep some in fridge. This will feed four people generously for lots of things for two weeks. For a kalua pork plate lunch, use about 6 oz pork and a cup of shredded green cabbage, steam together for about 15 minutes. Serve with rice and mac salad. Other ways to use the pork: in a kalua pork quesadilla, you see these on menus all over the island but great homemade. Just some pork, sliced sweet maui onion (easy to get at one of the farmers markets all over the place), a little hot chile (ditto), some shredded jack cheese and of course flour tortillas (okay, yes I go to Safeway for those). You can use a bottled salsa, but why not chop up a papaya, some chile, some onion, and a little cilantro and have a fresh fruit salsa with it? Keeps several days. And you can change it up by adding some pineapple or even some apple bananas as the week goes on. We also use the kalua pork in BBQ pork sandwiches, toss some minced fresh pineapple and maybe some dark rum into the sauce for an island touch. More on all this later, next time I'll tell you what we do with the whole tenderloin we buy at Costco at the beginning of our trip...

Chili for Christmas

Or sort of. Since Dave and I are off to Hawaii for Christmas this year, we're having a family get-together before we leave, and I'm making a pot of chili. I don't use ground meat in my chili. Instead I'm using a mix of meats for different textures -- chuck that will break down and shred, so I cut that in 1/2" pieces, and round for a little chew, cut into 1/4" dice. I do put beans in my chili, and cook them right in the stew without soaking. Since I want to cook it for several hours, there's plenty of time for the beans to get done, even with the salt and acid in the pot. And in fact they hold together better this way. I also use tomato, in the form of sauce and crushed tomatoes. This is a big batch, with 7 pounds of meat, six cups of onion, and a pound of dried beans. But I'm serving 12-14 with it. The good thing is that I get to ask everyone else to provide all the side dishes and garnishes, so I'm done with chopping after I get done with the chili. I'm making it today so we can reheat it tomorrow, always better the day after of course! Which reminds me, I'm taking a break from my computer for the entire time we're in Hawaii, so you won't see another entry here for about three weeks. But when I come back I'll have lots to say about what ingredients I found and how I used them, since we'll be in a condo and I get to keep cooking. Happy holidays to whoever out there reads this!

Using Tom Kha soup as a poaching liquid

Wanted to poach some snapper yesterday and had a hankering for some Thai flavor. One of my pantry staples is tom kha soup base, and I had a little coconut cream left over from making that Whiskey Crab Bisque. So I chopped up some red onion, some carrot, some boiling potatoes hanging around in the fridge (still trying to clean out some before vacation) and a sweet potato. Sauteed the veggies, then added a couple of tablespoons of tom kha paste, a cup of coconut cream, a can of chicken broth, and a can of water as well as the zest from a lime. Simmered about 15 minutes until the sweet potato was about done. Turned the heat to very low and laid the fish fillets on top, covered and let them sit about 15 minutes. Served with rice, it was very nice.

Fondue is fun

I made cheese fondue again this year for my wine groups' annual Champagne tasting. The tasting was fun this year partly because we had magnums, seemed to make it even more festive. Proportions for fondue are pretty simple, after reviewing 6 or 8 different recipies there wasn't much variance from 1 cup of white wine to 1 pound of cheese. I like tossing the cheese with a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch, I think flour ends up tasting too pasty. I've learned to be patient in stirring in the cheese, even though it starts out looking awful it works just fine in the end, especially if you remember to add a tablespoon of lemon juice since the additional acidity seems to help keep the cheese from clumping (I know, it has to do with denaturing the proteins in the cheese, right?). Final addition is a little kirsch mixed with some dry mustard and a grating of nutmeg. Seemed to go over well with the group, and makes me feel justified in having purchased a fondue pot a few years ago :)

Creamy soup with corn...not

Lesson learned the other day. Was using up some turban squash in soup, wanted a nice smooth puree. Also was just trying to clean out the fridge before leaving on vacation, so thought some fresh corn I had would be a nice addition. Taste-wise, it was. Used that along with some ground coriander, fresh ginger, and lemon. Blended it with a stick blender. But there's just no way to blend it enough to get rid of the bits of skin from the corn kernels. Have to use a fine disk on the food mill or a chinoise, way more trouble than I was planning. At least it tasted really good!

Looks like I'll have more artichokes

Last summer I wrote about my one lone little artichoke, harvested after tending a big pot of plants for two years out on our balcony. I thought that was the end of the story, and I gave up on artichokes. Just not much of an ROI! But... I had Dave clean out the pot, pull out all the dead leaves and such, a couple of months ago. I figured to dig out the dead roots and plant some herbs in there next spring. But, lo and behold, the roots are not dead. I now have five 4" tall artichoke plants growing in there. If they can make it through the winter with little or no attention from me, I guess I'll give it another go. I'm still leery, since I haven't figured out how to deal with the biggest pest problem, thousands of little black flying gnats or something that suck the leaves and kill them. Maybe that just means I need to do a little research.

Update to my ahi tartare recipe

I did the ahi tartare thing again this past weekend for a holiday party. Added some minced shallot to the mix, as my chives were looking pretty sad. And served it with cucumber slices, which I have to say was brilliant. Went great with the citrus tang of the preserved lemon, and the texture was a perfect match with the softness of the tartare. Yum. For about 12 oz of minced ahi, I added 1/2 of a preserved lemon, minced, and 1 T minced shallot, salt, and olive oil.

Cooking science is cool

I've always loved to understand how things work, so I guess my semi-addiction to "Good Eats" is really not a surprise. But what I like better, now, is reading Harold McGee, and Shirley Corriher, and "What Einstein Told His Cook." This last book, on loan from Gabe, is a good read because it's essentially a series of short essays answering "why" questions on a bunch of different topics. Usually that means I can pick it up and put it down with ease, but I kept reading last night until nearly 2am. Not good for me, but I was enjoying the education. Now I find that Harold McGee has a relatively new blog (www.curiouscook.blogspot.com) so I guess I have to keep an eye on that, too.

Using preserved lemons

A bit of a hitch in the cooking plans this week. I got really sick so only liquids for a few days. So a hold on the whiskey crab bisque, which is finally cooking today and smells incredible. It has corn and coconut milk in it, a wonderful combination. Recipe comes from cooking class so I can't really republish here, but suffice to say it has bacon, crab stock, coconut milk, onions, garlic, corn (and I added corn cobs to the broth, too), whiskey (I'm using Maker's Mark), and of course crab meat. Since it is a bisque, it's smooth before you add the crab meat. I think Dave is going to love it even if I might not be able to eat any until tomorrow. Anyway, I made preserved lemons a couple of months ago. I love them just plain, I was kind of raised on salty/sour stuff so I like that (so did my mom, when she tasted them at Thanksgiving she just swooned). But traditional recipes only use the peel. And I hate to have waste. With this liquid diet thing, I've discovered two ways to use the salty juice: - in chicken broth. Just a teaspoon or two in a 14 oz can of low-salt broth really perks up the flavor. Add some rice and cook for a while and you have a nice gruel for the bed-ridden! - in low-sodium vegetable juice (V-8). That was icky to me until I put in a fair amount of the lemon juice. Makes me think that when I get to really "drink" again I will have to try this stuff in a bloody mary!

Soup again

I think it must have been the weather. After raining every day except one during the month, we got quite the snowstorm right after Thanksgiving. And now I'm in a soup frame of mind. It started quite naturally with wanting to use up leftovers. That meant the fresh potatoes, leeks, and fennel I had in the pantry went into a nice potato soup. Then I added some of the smoked cured turkey breast from the week before, kind of a smoked turkey chowder. That was really good. Some of that now in the freezer. Then we get to the turkey stock, the first version. First I had to cook down the carcass from T-giving dinner, and made consomme out of that. Because I had spiced the turkey, and some of the skin was in the pot, it has an interesting aroma. Very nice. I took some of that and steeped a prune in it, and served it with homemade preserved-lemon tortellini. This was a riff on the duck/peach consomme with the same tortellini that we had at a Gypsy dinner. We really enjoyed that. Dave wasn't expecting the preserved lemon, so his mouth was pleasantly surprised. And the prune essence was nicely floral. The rest of the consomme is in the freezer for later. Then the second version of turkey stock. This was was because of those 2 $4 turkeys I got (about 19 lbs each!) that I took apart last Monday to cure the legs and breasts for more smoked turkey. I roasted the carcass and the wings and tossed it all into the pot overnight. That stock got onions and celery, and got strained. Then I made vegetable noodle soup with that. Good option for Dave's lunch all next week. Tomorrow, since Dungeness Crab is in season, I'm getting a bunch of it and making a Whiskey Crab Bisque. We made it in class a couple of weeks ago and it was great. So I am looking forward to doing that again.

Of course I have to talk about Thanksgiving dinner

First, though, I apologize for not writing recently. (Some members of my family pointed that out yesterday.) It's not, of course, that I'm not cooking. I've just been kind of busy. Partly because I committed to do T-giving dinner for the family and I don't do much for that that isn't completely from scratch. So this entry will kind of fill you in on some of the cooking adventures over the past couple of weeks that led to the end result. Like: instead of using commercial bacon in my green beans and in the brussels sprouts, I made my own pancetta-style bacon. Cured and roasted to 150 degrees, not dried or smoked. This was my first adventure in curing. It was great. Only did three pounds of pork belly, and it really was on a whim. We were in an Asian market (99 Ranch) and they had great looking pork belly. I'd worked with it last summer in my Preserving class, so figured I'd give it a try. Like: for the dressing, I baked my own seasoned bread. Put extra salt, thyme, rosemary, minced parsley flower heads, and sage in it (does that make it "Scarborough Fair" dressing??). I also used some of the homemade sausage I made a few weeks ago. Like: I made "Le Bete Noire" (see previous post from September 13th). Like: I got a free turkey two weeks before thanksgiving and so I took off the breasts and cured them, too, and then hot smoked them. Boy is that good! I roasted the legs and the carcass and made a couple of gallons of very rich turkey stock, and then reduced it to 2 quarts so I could just take a quart when I needed it and make a gallon of stock for the gravy etc. That worked out great. Like: I tried the Cooks' Illustrated method for salting the turkey instead of brining it. But I combined that recipe with the spice rubbed turkey from the November Bon Appetit, sort of. So I loosened the skin from the entire turkey, and combined some of the spice rub (coriander, cinnamon, cumin, smoked pimenton) with the salt for the rub and put that under the skin for 36 hours. Then I washed it all out and rubbed the skin with more of the spice, refrigerated overnight and so the skin got nice and dry. Turned out very crispy with great juicy meat in all places. And it was beautiful. Like: I made an ahi tartare with minced preserved lemon and some tapenade as accompaniments to the salad, which was baby greens with shaved fennel and red onion dressed with lemon viniagrette. Garnished with supremes of orange. The overall combination tasted great together and the platter was gorgeous. I taught my brother how to make little quenelles of the ahi and he put it together very nicely.

Lobster ravioli

We had an event that called for some over-the-top celebration, just the two of us. So first, we got some caviar. And some very good champagne. And some oysters. But Dave also wanted lobster -- who am I to argue? So I got two 2-1/2 pound lobsters (at only $10.99/lb, it wasn't that outrageous). With that much meat, we wanted to do more than just eat it with butter. So I decided on lobster ravioli. After doing my usual search online, I settled on a couple of starting points for ravioli and sauce. Made a lobster mousse and folded in fresh tarragon and the body meat (yes, these lobsters were big enough that picking the body meat was worthwhile). The lobster mousse was just leg and claw meat (mostly the rubbery stuff) processed to a paste, then cream drizzled in and seasoned. Used wonton skins for the pasta. Then the sauce was reduced wine, chicken stock, and cream enriched with butter and white truffle paste. Used a little lemon juice to balance the flavors. Garnish was caviar and chives. Boy, was that yummy! But filling, what with the oysters and some caviar service. So we saved the rest of the lobster for the next day :) Definitely over the top, but a lot less money to do it at home (and in many ways lots more fun) than going out to a restaurant!

The Oxtail Project concludes

My encounter with oxtails is nearly over. My conclusion? They are a pain in the neck (literally!). Saturday of course I started the broth (has to be called broth since meat was included, stock is only bones as I understand it). Saturday night I pulled out the oxtails and cleaned off the meat, that was the pain in the neck. Tedious. Very tedious. Then I put all the bones and cartilage back in the pot and simmered it overnight. Sunday I did the first level of straining, put the meat back in and put the pot in the fridge so the fat could rise and harden (including off of the meat). Monday was consomme day. I skimmed the broth, strained it again, then reduced it until it was tasty. Then I strained it again, let it cool some, and tackled the "raft" to clarify it. We'd done that in class last week so I hoped that I could pull it off successfully (as I never had before). With Dave carefully documenting every step with photos, I got a real raft and -- perfectly crystal clear consomme! I also turned the oxtail meat into "sunday supper oxtail patties" that I would use in the soup I was planning. Tuesday, last night, we finally ate an oxtail-based dish. I blanched leaves of Savoy cabbage (nice and mild) and wrapped the oxtail patties in them. Put those in a 300-degree oven for 20 minutes. Heated a few cups of the (now jellied) consomme. Cut some carrots into a few tablespoons of brunoise and nuked them for about a minute until tender. Cut some leek into fine julienne and fried it for frizzled leeks. Then the assembly: - wrapped oxtail bundle into the bottom of a white soup plate - ladle consomme around it, not covering it - sprinkle carrot on top of bundle and in consomme - pile frizzled leeks on top of bundle - serve What would I do differently if I were ever to do this again? Make the bundles bite-sized, as cutting up the 1x3" bundle in a bowl of soup was kind of awkward. But it tasted great -- not quite like the dish I had 15 years ago that I was trying to recreate, but good and visually impressive as well.

Soups, stock, and oxtails

Class this past week was on "sexy soups." I do happen to think that soups can be very sexy when they are full of flavor. I think Dave does, too, because he really pays attention when I make soup. This week I had roasted chicken frames so I made chicken stock. And, since I had kale in the fridge, and dried beans in the pantry, and homemade garlic sausage in the freezer, well, that means soup. Yummy soup, with lots of garlic since I cooked the cranberry beans first with lots of fresh sage, garlic, and parsley and then added the chicken stock, kale, and sausage. And of course some habanero chile sauce for a kick. Went over pretty well, and the leftovers will make Dave's lunches this next week far more interesting. One thing we learned this week was doing a raft to clarify consomme. So I am now trying to recreate one of the most memorable soups I've ever had, an oxtail consomme with an oxtail patty wrapped in savoy cabbage. So today we are making the basic oxtail stock -- interesting in that the recipe I am using also includes some fresh cranberries and orange peel. Tomorrow we will tackle making a raft to get a crystal clear consomme. Will let you know how that goes. Right now, it's time to go make shrimp dumplings for dinner :-)

The White Dinner

I have no idea how this notion got into my head: create a meal out of foods that are white, and serve on white china. But not just white: white with intense flavors so that you don't notice the absence of color, only the abundance of flavor. It was very interesting! Here's the menu: Moet et Chandon White Star Creamy cauliflower soup with white truffle oil (served in white soup plate) Steamed white asparagus with sour cream viniagrette (served standing up in individual souffle dishes with sauce in center) Lehman Semillon White chanterelle risotto with Forme d'Ambert (blue cheese) mornay sauce Seared sea scallops with cider beurre blanc (both courses served together on large oval chop plates) Vanilla panna cotta One thing that was very interesting was the interplay of the mornay and the beurre blanc on the plate -- because of course blue cheese and apples are a great match, and so were the sauces with those flavors. I'll get photos later this week and post them. I'm pretty tickled about actually executing this off the wall notion!

Vagabond dinner

Monday night we had our first experience with a "legal" underground restaurant, Vagabond. It's gotten some media coverage that unfortunately made it look like an elitist party, which it certainly was not. It was a fine experience, good company and good food. I'd call it a mix of "elite attitude" and "jus' folks" so I was reasonably comfortable. Having dinner in a wine shop (Portalis), with anything available at retail and no corkage, was a great thing. And we were able to share tastes with each other (and the chef). Seating was all over the place -- crammed into corners, up at the bar, a little on the cozy side overall. But since they were planning on family-style service, that wasn't as much of an issue except for us lefties. Regarding the food, the goal is to do sexy one-pot cooking, with a salad and a dessert course. No plate changes between salad and main course, by the way. Salad was almost a side dish: warm pumpkin cubes with roasted cranberries, gorgonzola, and candied pumpkin seeds with a sage viniagrette. The contrast of salty and sweet with the pumpkin was very nice. The poulet au cidre, with Normandy cider, pearl onions, turnips, and chanterelles, was done perfectly. Nice whole-grain bread to sop up the juices and a little braised swiss chard with pine nuts and golden raisins on the side. Dessert was an apple and olive tart, with ginger ice cream. The filling was interesting, as I've never had kalamata olives in my dessert before, but quite good. Unfortunately, the thyme pate brisee crust on my slice was undercooked. But my husband's crust was fine and he enjoyed it. I think there was some challenge with the kitchen as there were only two burners (yes, I know many people do service every night with two burners!). And it didn't look much bigger than an airplane galley. All in all, it was a great evening with great company, and time and opportunity to talk to the people preparing our meal as well as the others enjoying it. I know there are already a number of other prominent Seattle-based chefs who are interested in cooking for the monthly get-together. I'll be very interested in how it evolves.

Thoughts on celebrity chefs

In the past few days I've gotten involved in the Chef2Chef forum. Partly because I ran across it while looking for the menu for Monday's Vagabond dinner. While there I posted my thoughts to a culinary student writing a paper on celeb chefs for a hospitality class. Thought I'd capture those here, since I appear to have an opinion (and when don't I?). I think that there are two levels of celebrity chefs (maybe 3): local, national, and maybe international. All have different effects on food trends and consumer behaviors. In our area, we have a few local celebrity chefs who seem to be happy being local, and of course others who aspire, with varying degrees of success, to share the national or international stage. One thing that seems to distinguish many of the aspirants is a "publish or perish" attitude. You're nobody unless somebody has published your cookbook. The local aspirants can be good for the culinary community as long as they don't forget where they came from. We have a few around here who are doing an excellent job of self-promotion while stepping on every toe they can. I mean, really, is it that hard to be polite instead of a prima donna? Some times it sure seems to be. Time will tell if they get out of the local celebrity and get to the next level. Another thing to look at, btw, are "foodies" looking to be celebrities. Do a google on Michael Hebberoy to see the rise and decline of someone who aspired to change things. Some things he did (and is doing) are very good, but he took his eye off the ball and instead of running the very good and very high profile business he had, decided to write a book, develop a line of gin, ... Now he's going through a divorce and two of the three restaurants in his business have closed. I met him the other day, and he reminds me of those young turks in the dot com craziness who were sure they were going to get rich if only everyone would listen. I think there is a trap there also for celebrity chefs who try too soon to expand their "brand" and lose sight of their foundation. And then there is dear old David Rosengarten, who seems to be trying to expand into selling all his favorite foods at outrageous prices to other foodies who want to be like him. I used to like his newsletter, but now half of it is trying to sell yet another food club of the month...

Lip-smacking lamb shanks

Always wanted to cook lamb shanks, and when Dave found some for $4/lb I had him pick up a couple. Then of course the challenge was how to cook them. I took some cues from the new CIA cookbook "One Dish Meals." Made a paste of spices, including coriander, fennel, cinnamon, pepper, allspice, caraway, curry powder, cayenne, and some salt and rubbed it into the shanks. Refrigerated for six hours. Chopped some dried apricots and raisins and soaked them in brandy. Browned the shanks in some olive oil in a cast iron dutch oven. Took them out and put in a couple of sliced onions, cooked those until they were starting to brown and added a couple of cloves of minced garlic. Stirred for about a minute, then added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste and stirred until it began to brown. Put shanks and juices back in, added a couple of cans of chicken broth and the fruit and brandy. Put a lid on, put it in the oven at 300 degrees for three hours. Served with mashed potatoes. YUMM! One of the best things I've ever made.

Easy fish

I was reminded this week how easy it can be to cook great fish fast. I was at a client offsite and we were fixing our own dinner. Not surprisingly, I volunteered to cook the entree. They had four-pound chunks of halibut and salmon. Many different dietary restrictions in the group, but fortunately absolutely fat-free isn't one of them. So I made a marinade of lemon zest, pepper, and grated ginger in olive oil, skinned the fish, and brushed on the oil. Found some broccoli stems, celery, and red onion. Set the oven to 425. Peeled the broccoli and then julienned all the veggies, tossed them with a little of the flavored oil, and spread them on a baking sheet. Put the fish on top, sprinkled the fish with salt, and roasted it for 25 minutes. Turned out just perfect, nice topping for the green salad with lemon-dijon dressing that others made.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing!

Another Gypsy Dinner last night. Four chefs and TWENTY COURSES!!! Truly, more than a little overkill. It was great, and some incredible flavors. But by the time we got to the end, I could barely eat the interesting and intriguing desserts (bacon baklava, anyone?). An incredible cured scallop carpaccio with a Thai-style cucumber salad. A corn agnolotti with chanterlles that I could bathe in happily. Wagyu beef tenderloin, slow roasted with butternut squash. Some things were a little too complicated ("too many notes," said Dave, quoting from Amadeus). But others were a symphony of combined flavors and textures, like the suckling pork chope with a clam and house-made fresh chorizo, seared off and slow roasted -- so incredibly juicy I would have sworn it was brined, but it wasn't. Duck eggs scrambled with black truffles, served in an eggshell -- the ultimate aphrodesiac, if you ask me. Mussels in cider with smoky bacon, one of absolute favorite things of the night. There were many times where I was just giggling in joy over the flavors, over the combination of wine and food, over the surfeit of incredble stuff and interactions with such great chefs. Now, to be realistic, this was an exorbitantly priced meal -- nearly $600 with tip for two. But a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get farm-fresh inspriations from some of the best chefs in Seattle, and learn how their minds work in pulling them together. Oh, and the most interesting challenge to get my mouth around? Black truffle ice cream. Loved it, I think, but way different. Not Dave's favorite.

Beef with wild mushrooms

My favorite butcher in Pike Place Market, Don and Joe's, sells trimmings from steaks and roasts for about $7/lb. Mostly these are tenderloin trimmings, so when I see a nice little pile of them in the back of the case I ask for them. Last week I got 14 oz of mostly tenderloin trimmings. Figured that since it's getting to be mushroom season (it's a little late, really, since we've had practically no rain) I'd try a little braise with some wild mushrooms. Picked up 3/4 lb of white chanterelles, hedgehog, and lobster mushrooms and 1/2 lb of fat white mushrooms (vendor was selling for $1/lb, thought they'd carry the flavors nicely which they did). Cut the beef and the mushrooms into 3/4" cubes. Tossed the beef with a couple of tablespoons of minced shallot, pepper and some kosher salt and let it sit for a few hours. Then I slow-cooked the mushrooms in a couple of tablespoons of butter with a little salt, pepper, and a sprig of thyme until they were well-cooked, about 30 min. Set the mushrooms aside (removing the thyme) and sauteed the beef and shallots, deglazed the pan with some Pinot Noir, and put the 'shrooms back in. Sprinked a couple of teaspoons of flour over it and stirred it in, then added another half cup of wine. Simmered for about 20 minutes while I cooked some radiatore pasta. (Garofalo brand is great, I finally found a pasta that is worth eating naked because the flavor is so good. And Costco carries it!) Served the beef over the pasta, with a quick gratin of some thin-sliced zucchini and tomatoes roasted for 20 minutes sprinked with some grated aged Gouda. Dave says I can make this meal anytime :)

Smoking turkey

Dave picked up half a bone-in turkey breast on sale last weekend. I brined it for 7 hours in 1 qt water with 1/4c kosher salt and 1/4c sugar. Then I rubbed it with a spice mixture (cayenne, paprika, cinnamon, cumin). Wrapped 1 cup of soaked mesquite chips in a foil pouch and poked holes in it. Put the left side of the gas grill on high and put the chips on that side (under the grate). Kept the right side off, and when the chips started to smoke put the turkey on the other side. Left it on there for about two hours, until the internal temp was 160F. Nice and juicy! It's great sliced for sandwiches or rollups (sliced up turkey and apples, put in warmed tortilla with lettuce leaves, a little shredded mozz, and a little mayo). Today I chopped some up along with some pears and gorgonzola, mixed with some butter lettuce and raspberry vinaigrette. Made a nice lunch.

Pizza on a gas grill

We bought a fancy pizza stone a couple of months ago. It sits on our gas grill and does a very nice job of cooking pizzas, even though it doesn't do 800-degree cooking. However, I've had a hard time finding just the right dough for pizzas. Pita dough is okay but not quite right. Neapolitan dough is okay, but ends up too tough on the bottom due to the longer cooking time at the lower temp, and it's way too salty. Finally, yesterday I think I got the right thing. It involves Caputo 00 flour, which I picked up at PFI. I did a lot of searching to do a survey of recipes, and this is what I came up with: Pizza dough for four indiviual or two large pizzas 211 g water 430 g flour (Caputo 00 flour, or bread flour) 5 g salt 32 g starter (I use the same starter I use for my bread, which is 50/50 flour and water) 1 g dry yeast Mix 300 g of flour with the rest of the ingredients until just blended. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. In mixer (I use a KitchenAid), mix with dough hook on low speed for 5 minutes, then gradually add rest of flour and mix for another three minutes. Scrape down bowl as necessary. Put dough into oiled bowl, cover and let rise for about two hours. Divide into two or four portions. For four portions, I put them into 16-oz plastic containers and cover them, set them aside for an hour. Now they are ready to stretch into crusts. Bake on a hot stone, either in your oven heated as high as it will go or in a gas grill. Instead of using cornmeal on my pizza peel, I use Wondra flour. It's nice and granular and I prefer the texture.

Dim sum

Boy, do I love dim sum. The ultimate appetizer meal, I think. So of course I took a class on them last week. I've made steamed hom bow before, but nothing else. I really wanted to learn some of the wrapping techniques, like how you get all the little pleats in the ha gao (shrimp balls). I did, and it was fun. We also made baked shrimp toast, sticky rice in lotus leaves, shu mai, potstickers (but we steamed them, so I guess they weren't really potstickers!) and a few other things. Fun but hot and hard work. The sticky rice packets are also some of my favorites, so I was happy to get a chance to try those. We used fresh lotus leaves and soaked them in hot water, but I think you should use dried, pre-cooked leaves and then soak them. The leaves just disintegrated when we tried to fold them around the rice and meat filling. Also, I think the rice needs to steam a lot longer, either before or after putting it in the leaf. Only 15 minutes wasn't enough to get the nice sticky texture and get the flavor of the leaf infused into the rice. Good things to learn. Other thing I learned was that I had some shrimp toast topping left over and I put in into a couple of potsticker skins and put them into the steamer -- it was great. So great, in fact, that I made that at home last weekend for dinner, along with some pork potstickers using filling left over from class. We really enjoyed them. Turns out that Dave is really really good at shaping the potstickers with very even little pleats. I still rush too much so mine aren't nearly as precise. But then, I've never been a real patient cook, one of the things I fight in myself all the time.

Birthday dinner

Dave celebrated a birthday last weekend. He doesn't really "celebrate" per se, but he does like me to cook some of his favorite things and I am more than happy to oblige. This year that meant seared duck breast with Gorgonzola polenta. The duck is easy, I brine it in a brine seasoned with juniper, allspice, and garlic. For the polenta, I am a firm believer in the microwave oven as a great way to make polenta. I've seen some purists sneer at me about this, but you just can't argue with the results. I learned the technique and proportions from "Microwave Cooking" by Barbara Kafka and have since of course put a few spins on the recipe. I use medium grain polenta; you really can just use cornmeal (called for in the original recipe) but the texture isn't as interesting. Gorgonzola Rosemary Polenta 3/4 C polenta 4 C water 1 t minced fresh rosemary 1 t minced fresh thyme 1-2 T minced shallot 2 t salt 3 T butter 1/3 C Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled (or more if you really like it) Mix everything but the butter and cheese in a 2-qt. microwave-safe dish. Cook, uncovered, on high power for eight minutes. Stir and cook for another six minutes. Remove from oven and stir in butter and cheese. (Note: if you use regular cornmeal, only cook it the first time for six minutes.) The "birthday cake" was "La Bete Noire," the cover recipe from the September issue of Bon Appetit. Wow. Another in a string of flourless chocolate cakes, it got additional creaminess by using sugar syrup instead of granulated sugar. Better be sure you have quite a few people to feed, though, since it serves about 16 and it is really rich! Dave wanted it served with flaming cherries, but I decided that would not be a good idea since it would melt the ganache and it would run all over the place.

Date night -- Brasserie Margaux and 94 Stewart

We haven't been out to eat at restaurants much lately, so decided that last night was time (as Dave noted, I've been "cooking a lot of good stuff lately" so no need to go out...). We had a really nice dinner at Brasserie Margaux a couple of months ago, and since at that time everything on the menu looked good, we thought we'd see if we could confirm our initial impressions. We were a little disappointed. Service, while friendly, was pretty slow and forgetful. They did comp a couple of glasses of wine to make up for some of the service issues, which was quite kind. Dave's pork chop had nice flavor but was overcooked (we prefer them medium, this was cooked well-done and was somewhat dry). The prime rib from the carving station was okay, but medium instead of medium rare. I love the truffled risotto with parmesan, but they forgot to bring it to me and so for a while I had to gaze longingly at my dish of risotto sitting in the kitchen. Overall, okay meal but not "over the moon." What was fun was dropping into 94 Stewart for a post-dinner glass of wine. It just feels good to stop in somewhere where they know you. The restaurant was slammed, so we sat at the counter and hung out watching the kitchen until Lindsay, the sommelier, had a chance to chat with us. In the meantime I got plenty of time to exchange ideas with Jeff, the sous chef, as he stood at the stove. Watched him slice off a beautiful strip steak from a loin he was dry-aging himself, about 14 days. It was mouthwatering (and we weren't hungry!). It got us talking about meat curing in general. He also dropped off a spoonful of the red wine-port-shallot reduction he was using on the tenderloin. It was great, both in flavor and in texture. When Lindsay finally had time to catch her breath (she was serving as well last night) she let Dave try both Pinot Noirs she had by the glass so he could pick the one he liked better, always a nice touch. He picked the "funkier" of the two, demonstrating his continuing adaptation and appreciation of the nuances of Pinot. As for me, I tried the "Brown Bag" special where I had to guess what I was drinking. It was easy for me to tell what it wasn't, and Lindsay's hint that it was Old World but not French finally helped me narrow it down to Tempranillo from the Ribiera del Duero, a very nice wine (and quite a bargain at $8/glass). Jeff and I talked more about charcuterie and he shared his current favorite book on the topic, when skimming it I realized that Gabe was using the same book as the source for many of the recipes in the charcuterie part of the Preserving classes I took. I have to get a copy of that book...Jeff brought out some foie gras they are in the process of turning into a torchon -- I felt a little ungracious after I blurted out that frankly I thought it was too salty. But I think he took the comment in the spirit of frank and hopefully helpful commentary. Dave seemed to get a real kick out of watching me interact with Jeff and "talk shop." I know I sure enjoyed it, it was worth spending $40 on wine there for that nice social experience. We've got to get back there to eat more often! (and so should you, if you're reading this...)

Paella

We got a paella pan as a wedding gift last year, and I finally got around to using it this weekend. I've had paella in Spain, and on several other occasions in restaurants and made by people who specialize in it, so I knew what I was looking for in terms of flavor and texture. Did a survey of assorted paella recipes, and decided I (sort of) liked the recipe on spanishtable.com best. What's good about that one is that it gives measurements for each serving, so you can customize it to what you need. I did it for four, and it filled my 15" paella pan all the way to the brim. So I might make three portions next time. I substituted a blend of fish and shrimp stock for the chicken stock, and used calamari, clams, and shrimp for the seafood. Also changed around some of the seasonings etc. You don't have to use a paella pan, of course -- a big saute pan will work just fine but isn't as aesthetic. So here is my version: Per person: 1 chicken thigh, skinned and boned, cut into bite-size pieces 3 medium shrimp, shelled (tail on) and deveined 4 small clams (manila) 1 calamari tube, cleaned and sliced into rings 5 saffron threads 1/2 C valencia rice (or other short to medium grained rice) (Do not rinse!) 1 C chicken or seafood broth 1/4 C peeled, seeded, and chopped tomato 1/2 t smoked sweet paprika 1 soft Spanish chorizo, 1/3" slices 1/4 C chopped onion 1 garlic clove, minced 1/8 C frozen peas Optional: green beans (1" pieces), canned artichoke hearts, halved Per pan: 1/2 C dry white wine 2 T olive oil Heat wine and put saffron in it to steep. Heat oil in pan over medium high heat and saute chicken until browned. Add onion and garlic, stir until translucent. Add sausage and stir for about five minutes. Add rice and stir until the rice is beginning to turn milky. Add tomatoes and paprika, stir, then add broth, wine/saffron mixture, and peas as well as optional vegetables. Stir just to distribute ingredients evenly, and bring to a low boil. Don't stir any more -- a crust is supposed to form on the bottom. Simmer for five minutes, then distribute clams evenly around the pan. simmer for another five minutes, turn the clams over, and distribute the calamari and shrimp evenly over the top. After another five minutes, turn the shrimp over. Let simmer about another five minutes, and discard any clams that have not opened. Serve immediately. A green salad with a caper viniagrette is a nice side dish.

Cooking radishes

Until the other day, I'd only ever eaten radishes raw. But Dave thought we should try cooking some. Since we had a bunch of them from our CSA basket, I decided to give it a try. Looking for recipes didn't give me a lot of help but there was some guidance. So I decided to braise/glaze them. Halved the radishes, put them in a saute pan with some butter, salt, and a little water. Browned them a little on the cut side, flipped them over to cook a little more, then turned back when the water had evaporated to glaze them. They were really good, and held their color well (some of ours were purple). Nice side dish with meats.

Onion jam

Lately the focus is on preserving things so that they don't all spoil before I get to eat them! I had four HUGE sweet onions in my pantry and as you know, they just don't keep. Thus, the onion jam experiment. This stuff is killer on bread with a little stinky cheese or goat cheese, or tossed into pasta with some capers. The hardware: 1 big saute pan (I used nonstick) and a wooden spoon The software: 4 lbs sweet onions, quartered and medium sliced 2 T sugar 1/2 C white wine vinegar 2 sprigs fresh thyme 1 T salt 1 t oil Put oil in pan, pile onions on top and sprinkle with salt. Sweat them over medium heat until the pile is reduced some so you can stir them around without them flying out on the stovetop. Stir in the sugar and about a tablespoon of the vinegar. Reduce heat and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to carmelize and stick. Stir in a couple more tablespoons vinegar to deglaze, and the thyme. Keep cooking and stirring until the onions are very thick and the mixute is a pale beige. Taste and add more vinegar (and salt) for balance if the sweetness is too cloying, and cook a few minutes longer to blend the flavors. The onions should not be browned, because you're stirring in any carmelization and redissolving it into the mixture. Take out the thyme sprigs (there should only be stems left, the leaves will be in the jam). Let cool, then put into a container. Keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge.

Market basket caponata

I was faced with a fridge and counter full of vegetables this week -- not quite keeping up with our CSA basket. So, after taking stock of the stock, so to speak, I decided to try my hand at caponata today. Everything was in the the pantry or the fridge. I am allergic to bell peppers, so I don't use them. But you could roast and peel a couple of green and red peppers, chop them and add to the pot with the rest of the ingredients. Dave always complains that I don't write things down when I cook good stuff, so honey, if you're out there somewhere reading this, this one's for you :) Market Basket Caponata 2 C eggplant in 1" cubes, unpeeled if skin is tender 2 C zucchini in 1" cubes Kosher salt 1 1/2 C carrots, 1/4" slices 1 C onion, rough chopped 1 C celery, chopped 5 cloves garlic, sliced thin 2 T raisins, soaked in hot water and drained 2 T small capers, drained and rinsed 2 T pine nuts 1/2 C peeled, seeded, and chopped chiles (like Anaheim or sweet Italian peppers) 1/2 C sun dried tomatoes, julienned (not oil-packed) 1/2 C black olives, pitted and chopped (I used Nicoise because I had them) 1 14-oz can diced tomatoes in juice 1/4 C red wine 1/4 C red wine vinegar 1/4 C balsamic vinegar 2 T honey 1/2 C chopped fresh basil 1/2 C water 2 T olive oil Salt and pepper to taste Put eggplant and zucchini in colander and toss with salt. Let drain while you're prepping the other ingredients. Then rinse with cool water and drain. Heat the olive oil in a pot or dutch oven, and brown the eggplant and zucchini. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and cook until onion is translucent. Add garlic and stir for a couple of minutes more. Then add all the rest of the ingredients except the water. Bring to a simmer, cover and simmer for 30 min. Check it -- it should be saucy, add some water if it is not. Cover and simmer another 30 minutes, or until the carrots are tender and the flavors have melded. It should be a little spicy, a little tangy, a little sweet with good texture from the vegetables. Serve with just about anything -- pasta, meats, bruschetta, fish steaks. Will keep for about a week, or you can freeze it for longer storage.

Fridge: finally ALL DONE

The repairman just finished replacing the nicked handle on the new fridge, and Whirlpool called me today to apologize for sending the check to the wrong address and assure me they were sending it out today. So I think the saga of the fridge is over. The trauma, of course, still lives on. I check the temp way too often, and actually have nightmares about the whole thing. But I don't think you can sue an appliance mfg for mental cruelty, so I'm just going to have to take the time to get over it. Bless Dave's heart, he came home this afternoon to supervise the handle replacement so I didn't have to worry about it -- because, as I was sure would happen, the tech got here and had never replaced a handle on this model. Sigh. But I went and hid at my computer while they got the whole thing sorted out. The funny thing was that this was the same tech who had come to "repair" the fridge in the first place, so I got the pleasure of telling him that his repair lasted all of 48 hours and then I made them replace it. Dave told him that under the circumstances, he hopes we never have to meet again! Let's hope now that Fridge and I have a long and happy life together :)

Gypsy Dinner

We got to attend our first Gypsy dinner last weekend. What a great experience! (What's a Gypsy dinner, you ask? I can't really tell you, but a Google search might help...) Peche, Peche, Quack, Quack was the theme -- all about peaches and duck. Well, who can argue with that? A couple of memorable dishes, including a duck taco with spicy peach taco sauce, which matched marvelously with a nice spicy Argyle Pinot Noir. (Now I think I'm going to serve Pinot with tortilla chips and fruit salsa, just to confirm that the toasted corn goes as well with it as I thought that night.) The first course -- a peach-scented consomme with a poached quail egg, a couple of little cubes of smoked duck, and a preserved-lemon tortellini -- was a marvel of textures and tastes. It was fun to watch the faces of diners who were unfamiliar with preserved lemon. Boy, were their mouths surprised! I knew what to expect but it was still such a great counterpoint to the quail egg. And the wine pairing, a Scheurebe, was very interesting. With all the different tastes going on, the wine seemed to be different with every sip. Too bad these dinners are seemingly always oversubscribed -- I sure hope we're able to get in on another one. It was so great to be at a communal table where everyone else cared about food as much as I do.

Cuban food and whacking your bread (flour on my face)

Another excellent Culinary Communion class this past weekend: five hours of intensive immersion in Cuban cuisine. Including roasting a whole pig -- I guess you could say we went whole hog on this one, couldn't you ;-) A couple of really good things: ropa vieja ("old rags") made with flank steak instead of some of the other cuts I've seen for this dish. Really flavorful, and great with the Cuban white rice, which was made in a manner I'd never tried before, boiling oil and water together with the rice, not sauteeing it first for nice fluffy grains. And an incredible lamb picadillo stuffed into empanaditas, using puff pastry for the dough and then deep frying them. The pastry was a little greasy for me, but that picadillo was great! Which brings me to the Pan Cubano (Cuban bread). It was made with a different kneading technique: "whacking" the dough on the counter by picking it up in one hand, swinging it over your shoulder, and slamming it down on the counter. Fold it in half, give it a quarter turn, and do it again. Takes about 12 minutes to knead the bread, and takes out a few agressions to boot! HOWEVER!!!! It is very important to manage your bench flour carefully. I decided to bake bread today because I have starter that needed to be refreshed. So I tried the whacking method. Needless to say, I had a light dusting of flour pretty much every where in the kitchen and on me after doing this. Good thing my counters are pretty slick and I could cut down on bench flour. But still, a bit of a mess. Sure did turn out pretty though.

Simple things for summer

Maybe my favorite thing about this time of year is that there are so many good things that can be simple: - really fresh corn - a fresh peach sliced over cottage cheese - tiny new potatoes roasted with olive oil and a little garlic - grilled shrimp with baby zucchini - just-picked cherry tomatoes, pop them in your mouth before you get in the house - beet greens shredded into chicken stock with fresh green beans, carrots, and zucchini - greens sauteed with a little duck confit (okay, maybe not so simple unless duck confit is almost always on hand like it is in my kitchen!) - just-grilled sliced bread rubbed with a cut garlic clove and a cut tomato, with a little coarse salt All of which I've eaten in the past week or so.

Yogurt cheese and tomatoes

I'd drained some Greek yogurt for several days and was trying to decide what to do with it. Minced some fresh dill, added some shredded lemon zest and lemon juice, some salt, and voila! Lemon-dill yogurt cheese. It's really good on top of tomato slices. I'm sure of course that it will be a good topper for fish, too.

I could eat corn every day

At least at this time of year! Just lightly cooked, on the cob. Sometimes naked, sometimes with basil butter, sometimes with a squeeze of lime. And swiss chard, with balsamic vinegar and garlic. Think I'm making a dinner of that tonite. Dave will want meat, of course, so probably some grilled shrimp. Mmmmm.

Back to cooking again!

Funny how you don't know how much you need some things until you can't have them. I learned over the past month that the title of this blog is more than a little true. Last weekend I finally got to start cooking again -- new working fridge and a little trust in it meant I got things restocked and could cook again. It felt like someone took a huge weight off my shoulders when I started puttering again. Nothing really significant, some great meatloaf (notes below), stone-grilled pita bread, tandoori chicken breasts, roasted cod with greek sauce, bean soup...well, maybe I did cook a lot! Meatloaf can be humdrum and I really think that putting an egg in it dries it out (and that's kind of why the egg holds it together). So I tried instead making about a cup of mixed ground carrots, celery, onions, zucchini, and garlic and adding that plus 3/4 cup of fresh breadcrumbs, a tablespoon of worcestershire, and 1/4 cup of water to 1.5 lbs of regular ground beef. It made a nice tender, not quite crumbly loaf. Glazed it with a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar, worcestershire sauce to be a little traditional. I roast my meatloaf on a broiler pan so all the fat drains down, which I prefer to get a firmer but not fatty loaf. The pita bread was so good on Saturday that I made it again on Sunday. Easy enough recipe: 1T yeast, 1t sugar, 1.5c water, 1t salt, 1t oil, and 3.5-4.5c of bread flour. But it is just amazing that it really does puff up! I put a baking stone up on our gas grill and baked the breads on it (heated to about 550 degrees). It was fun and very rewarding. Stuffed with that tandoori chicken and yogurt sauce it made a very nice dinner that went well with a bottle of Spanish tempranillo rose.