Spiced tomato cream sauce

I had leftover couscous from the Sunday birthday dinner so wanted a chicken stew to go with it. Already had cooked chicken breasts in the freezer, so I made a sauce: 1 14-oz can organic chopped tomatoes 1 T ras al hanout 1/2 t cinnamon 2 t clarified butter 1 T corn syrup 2 T heavy cream Cook the spices in the butter until fragrant. Add tomatoes and use stick blender to take out almost all of the lumps. Add remaining ingredients and simmer, covered, over very low heat for an hour. (I did the slow simmer because I had lots of time; it's probably also fine to cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring.) Add protein, in this case chicken breast in 1/2" cubes. But I'm also going to make this with paneer, an Indian fresh cheese that's easy to make.

Birthday dinner for my Mom

Thought I'd share what I did for dinner for Mom and Jerry yesterday. I have to go down and cook for her once in a while anyway (they live in Tacoma, I'm in downtown Seattle, so it's about 40 miles), got to keep some meat on her bones. And while she is a very good cook, sometimes she'd rather not have to. The menu was grilled game hens, grilled zucchini, seven treasures couscous, pickled cucumbers and onions, foccacia, and an apple and pear crostada. For the game hens, I cut out the backbones to flatten them, and then brined them for a couple of hours. My recipe was a variant of one from Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen. After brining, I made a spice rub that included brown sugar, paprika, chile powder, coriander, pepper, cayenne and some other stuff. Added some oil to that and rubbed it in, let that sit overnight. Skewered the hens and then grilled them, glazing with a homemade bbq sauce in the last ten minutes. It paired nicely with a bottle of merlot. The zucchini were a large globe-type and I just cut them in half and then sliced in ½" slices. Those get salted to take out some of the excess moisture, rinsed and tossed in olive oil. They only need a few minutes on the grill and are good at room temperature, so we did those first, made sure they had nice grill marks, and let them sit while the birdies grilled. I mix the couscous with shallots sautéed in olive oil, minced preserved lemon, chopped dried apricots, raisins, chopped pistachios and almonds, and some saffron. That is also served at room temperature, and I was able to make that in the morning, one less thing to do at dinner time. The foccacia is a variant of my pita bread recipe, I pat it out into a half sheet pan and dust it with fennel salt. Only takes 20 minutes at 400 degrees to cook, and you get a big sheet of 1-1/2" thick bread that is very soft but sturdy. It makes really good panini sandwiches, too. Finally, I made a crostada with organic apples and plumcots. Used the same crust recipe that has cornmeal in it for additional texture. I should mention that nearly all the vegetables I used in the meal were organic and came in a weekly basket we get from a local farm. I do believe in supporting our local farmers!

Bee-yoooo-te-full foccacia from all purpose dough

I've been fiddling with a bread recipe for a while now -- it started out as a recipe for pita bread, but with a few changes it now works for many things. I've made burger buns, blankets for hot dogs, pita bread, and dinner rolls with it. Today I tried a full-size foccacia:

The basic recipe is 3C AP flour, 3C bread flour, 2 C warm water, 5t yeast, 2 t sugar, 1 1/2t salt, 1/3C vegetable oil. I use my KitchenAid mixer. Put 1C flour (either type), yeast, and sugar into mixing bowl, whisk together. Whisk in 1C warm water. Cover and set aside for 30-45 min until foamy. Then dump in all the other ingredients, and turn the mixer (with bread hook) on speed 2 and let it mix for four minutes. Check to be sure that there's no wet flour pushed up on the sides of the bowl (just run a spatula around it). Then run for another four minutes. At this point it should be all mixed, kneaded, and pulling away from the bowl. Gather dough and put into an oiled bowl, turn the dough to coat with oil, and cover with plastic wrap or a lid. Let rise for an hour, then shape into what you want to bake with it. Let the dough rise again for another half hour or so, then bake at 400 degrees. You'll end up with about 1400 grams of dough, which makes 1 dozen pitas, ten burger buns, one full size (13x18") foccacia, or about four small pizza crusts.

Red hands

So first I was doing the cherries, now I've just peeled a bunch of beets. And my hands match my bright pink shirt and shoes! Someday I'll remember to pull out some latex gloves for these things. I think we'll have the beets with yogurt, cucumbers, and dill. I'm also making a tian of summer squash, sweet onion, and tomatoes. Too much good stuff, as one of the commercials says. Sometimes it's hard for me to keep up with all that shows up in our CSA basket each week.

Too Many Cherries?

No, you can never have too many cherries. But I do have too many for us to eat fresh before they spoil. While I was making fruit leather the other day (stone fruits, again too may to eat), I saw directions for making glaceed fruit. So I am trying it today with 1.5 lbs of pitted cherries. I have one of those German cherry pitters with a hopper so I can pit them somewhat faster and with much less hand strain. It's not perfect but it does the job. The cherries are in their initial syrup today (2C water, 2/3C sugar, 1/2C white corn syrup. For three more days they will get more sugar, the point is to replace all the water in the cherries with sugar. And the syrup that's left? MMM, waffles!

New way (for me) with halibut

Had some guests in from the Midwest last week and wanted to do something they might not run into every day. So I picked up a nice big chunk of fresh halibut up at Pike Place Market (no they didn't throw my fish...). I marinated it in a combination of vegetable oil and Goya "Sauzon" with

achiote (seasoning, comes in packets, you can get in most Mexican groceries or some supermarkets). One packet and 2 T oil for each pound of fish. Let it sit and think about itself for 3-4 hours, then wrapped it in banana leaves and put it on the grill.

Side dishes included "calabacitas," a combination of roasted fresh corn, sauteed zucchini and summer squash, and roasted green chiles, and a red and green cabbage slaw with a sweet and sour vinaigrette. And some homemade grilled bread for fun.

It all went surprisingly well with a nice Washington state syrah.

Mmm...Cherry Crostada tonight

Something good for dessert tonight - a cherry crostada (or crostata, depending on where you are). It's a free-form tart with a fresh fruit filling. I use a basic butter pastry recipe, but with 1/4 cup of cornmeal in it. Makes for a great mouthfeel. Last week I made one with nectarines, peaches, and plums.

The plums made it really bright red:

This time it's six cups of pitted, halved sweet cherries. (The season is still going strong here.) My husband was kind enough to process the cherries, so all I have is the sweetening/thickening and the crust to do. I'm using a scant 1/2 cup sugar and 1T of tapioca flour and tossed the cherries in that. They sit and wait while the crust chills for an hour. The tart will take almost an hour to cook. One of the yummy things is brushing the crust with beaten egg then sprinkling coarse sugar (I have raw sugar from Maui) all over it. You get this great crunch in it. I've made this kind of thing before, but got a reinforcement a couple of months ago when I took a "summer fruit" class at Culinary Communion.

The beauty of brining

I'm a big advocate of brining protein. It locks in moisture and adds flavor, so how can you argue with that? I do get questions from a lot of people about how to brine, so I thought I'd get it down in writing. I'll leave it to Harold McGee or Shirley Corriher (or Alton Brown) to describe the way brining works. What to brine: poultry, pork, chicken, fish, shrimp. (For beef and lamb, you usually would just rub the meat with salt a hour before cooking, which is not brining.) Basic brine: I use 1/4 cup of kosher salt and 1/4 cup of sugar for each quart of water. Make sure it's completely dissolved. You need enough brine to cover what you're brining. Put the meat and brine into a non-reactive container that you can put into the refrigerator, or into a zip-top bag you can put into a pan while it is in the refrigerator. When the meat is ready (see timing below) remove the meat form the brine and rinse it thoroughly. Use whatever cooking method you were planning. Variations: - Use brown sugar, honey, or molasses in place of white sugar. Molasses or brown sugar are interesting with pork, honey with duck. - Add flavors to the brine. Start with 2 cups of boiling water and add herbs/spices and the salt and sugar. Try coriander, black pepper, and thyme with chicken, or herbes de Provence with duck or pork. Essentially any seasoning you'd use with an item will be good in the brine. Steep the seasonings for 30 minutes to make an infusion, then add 2 cups of cold water. You can even use black tea in a brine for chicken, especially if you're planning to fry the chicken. How long to brine: - Chicken breasts, pork chops: 45 - 90 minutes, depending on size/thickness - Shrimp and fish fillets: 15-20 minutes, again depending on size - Whole chickens can go overnight, as can a pork loin roast. Turkeys are more like 24-36 hours.

Where has the time gone?

Wow, last post at the end of May. Oh, that's right, my ecstacy over perfectly fried seafood. That jaunt to New England was a good one -- even the Mariners vs. Red Sox game we got into at Fenway was a win for the M's. We had great baked beans at Summer Shack in Boston, and an AMAZING meal at Blue Ginger.

That bears a little more detail -- believe it or not, celeb chef Ming Tsai actually cooks at his restaurant! That dinner was our one splurge on this trip, and we ordered the tasting menu. To our immense joy, Chef came out and served our amuse personally. Camomile-cured salmon. The menu was kind of a "greatest hits" off of the standard menu, but six courses of that was a lot of food. I wasn't wild about the black pepper lobster, but you know I'm not a big fan of black pepper; however, Dave loved it. We both thought the butterfish (aka black cod) was as great as the reviews. To top it off, Chef brought out a signed copy of our menu for the evening and had one of his staff take a photo of him with us. I'm not one for getting my picture taken, but how can you say no when the chef wants it to happen?

Since then? Enjoying the fresh bounty of the Pacific Northwest. We're getting a basket of food from an organic farm every week now that summer's started, and it includes some of my favorite things -- stone fruit. There's nothing -- nothing! -- like a perfectly ripe apricot. Except maybe a perfectly ripe peach :-). And have you ever eaten a sauteed radish? You're missing something interesting if you haven't.

Lobster quest and learning to fry

We're out on the East Coast for a little tour of New England. Of course, that means finding interesting things to eat. We started in Maine, so that meant lobster. Lobster stew, lobster bisque, lobster pie, lobster in phyllo, steamed lobster...and then steamed clams, fried clams, clam chowder, fried haddock. fried scallops...and that was Maine. New Hampshire was just one night, and that was meat loaf at a diner on Main Street in a small town. In Burlington, Vermont, we hung out downtown on the opening night of a jazz festival, and found some good and inexpensive steaks. Best thing so far? A simple lobster stew, at The Lobster Dock in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I asked the owner how it was made, and he said, "Simply." Just a good lobster stock, made with mirepoix and shells, combined with half-and-half, and lobster sauteed in butter until just done and added to the broth. My mouth waters at the memory of it. The most striking thing so far has been the excellent quality of fried seafood we have eaten. I'm talking about the coatings -- light, crispy, and not oily. I had the most amazing fried scallops at Shaw's in the Pemaquod area, the best scallops I've ever eaten anywhere. Over and over I asked the kitchen what they use, and every time part of the answer was "clam fry." What in the heck is clam fry? I scoured grocery stores and found fish fry, clam batter, and various other names for a mixture that includes corn flour and seasonings. So I've picked up six different kinds and will experiment with them when we get home. (Just what we need, another 10 pounds of fish coating to carry along with the grade B maple syrup and blueberry soda I've also picked up.)

Restaurant reviews

Our condo complex here has a quarterly newsletter, and I've been contributing short restaurant reviews to it for a while now. I realized the other day that there are a fair number of readers from the Seattle area out there, so they might be more relevant than I originally thought. So I'm going to post some of them up here gradually. And if you read this and you're not from Seattle, maybe you'll visit sometime...or at least maybe I can make you hungry.

Foodie porn

(That headline may get some unsuspecting Googlers, don't you think?) I really do use this blog to capture things that we need to remember, about things I cook and how stuff works, and I don't want to forget this comical moment yesterday: The last time I got a foie gras, I processed part of it into a torchon and put it in the freezer, so we could pull it out and shave thin slices on to hot toast. Last night we got the last of it out to have with some very nice Champagne. Over the course of time, the shaving of the torchon had shaped one end into a rounded point, and the torchon itself was the diameter of a large carrot. It looked, well...phallic. We looked at it lying there on the cutting board, and I told Dave, "That is foodie porn." I thought he was going to fall down, he laughed so hard.

Preserving sweet onions

Okay, first, yes I know I've been distracted to other things lately. I'll try to get you caught up on the past six weeks gradually. But what is on my mind right now is sweet onions. I adore them, but storage is always a challenge. We got a bag at Costco a couple of weeks ago, and today it was "use 'em or lose 'em." So I cut a few of them Lyonnaise style (top to bottom. for crescents) and am cooking them very slowly to get a batch of caramelized onions, which I will freeze and pull out for burgers etc. The rest of them are diced and bagged for the freezer. They'll keep just fine for a while, and though I won't use them fresh they will be great when I want a sweeter mirepoix or am making Indian food. The last bit of them I am using in a casserole today using my homemade chorizo (Oh, yeah, I didn't tell you that I made chorizo for Cinco de Mayo, and also ginger/sage breakfast sausage, because I got pork shoulder for 88 cents a pound!) and some Mexican rice with zucchini and lots of chopped sweet onion. I might even mince up a fresh jalapeno, a couple are ripe in my Aerogarden.

Rum dinner, part deux

Last year, a rum tasting dinner at Elliott's Oyster House got me thinking about beverages other than wine to match with food. This year, Elliott's once again had a dinner with rum pairings. This year, instead of shots of rum (a challenge not only to pair with, but to drink 5-8 shots of rum and navigate the walk home) the five courses were paired with custom rum cocktails. So along with Chef Jeremy Anderson, the beverage team got into the act. With wonderful results!

First, the appetizers featured the return of "salmon candy," cured with brown sugar and Mount Gay rum and smoked. We also had oysters on the half shell with a Caribbean-style essence of salsa: mango, jalapeno, mint, and other flavors combined and juiced, then sauced on the oysters. That's one flavor I have to replicate here at home; I think it would be a great compliment to a ceviche. With this course we had a Bacardi Limon cosmopolitans and Caribbean margaritas.

Next we get a seafood "mojito" with scallops, rock shrimp, calamari, and ahi marinated in mojito. Very refreshing, and though I thought the delicacy of raw ahi was a little lost in the mix it did contribute a nice texture. The cocktail with this course was rum with blood orange juice, Grand Marnier, and sparking wine. A striking red contrast to the seafood.

Our favorite course came next: smoked black cod with a black rice cake and mango-papaya vinaigrette. The smoked cod was rich and silky, and had just the perfect touch of smoke. The chef said it only took 15-20 minutes for the black cod to take up all the smoke it needed, after marinating in ginger, coconut milk, habaneros. and rum. This course also had the best cocktail pairing: "Le Petite Fleur," with white rum, Cointreau, grapefruit, and lime served up with an orchid. Just the right tanginess to cut through the richness of the fish.

For the main course, we had something I'd never tried: veal cheeks, braised in root beer and dark rum. It was served over a sweet potato cake, with a sour cherry chutney. Somewhat leaner and not as rich as beef cheeks, but very good just the same. The cocktail? A rum Manhattan with Mount Gay Extra Old rum, Vya vermouth, and a rum-infused cherry. I really liked the cherry.

(During this course, I told Dave that I wished that ducks had cheeks -- they'd probably be terrifically good!)

Finally, individual banana tart tatins with a rum-infused ice cream. I don't know why I've never thought to make a banana tart tatin - it's a great little dessert, and there are so many tropical flavors you can then match with it. This was a nice time for "Rhuba Coffee" with Bailey's Irish Cream and Bacardi rum.

Great dinner, and this year it seemed a little easier to walk up the street and roll into bed.

It ain't easy being green

I have no idea why my husband's office decided to have their "green" event on the 19th instead of the 17th, but I'm just the cook, not the organizer. He had to bring a green dessert to be a good team player. I figured everyone would opt for something with lime Jell-o. But we all know that I just can't do what everyone else was going to do. So I made green mint marshmallows. Marshmallows are just gelatin and hot sugar syrup with flavoring. Quite simple *as long as you have a powerful stand mixer.* Because you have to whip it for about 15 minutes at 90 mph to get a good fluffy product. Then handle it with powdered sugar and cornstarch because that stuff is STICKY! Pour it into a prepared pan and let it sit overnight. I used a pizza wheel and some scissors to cut it up into bite-sized squares, dredged them in more of the sugar-cornstarch mix, and they were very cute and minty. Actually, I used a mix of peppermint and butter flavoring to get a bit of a buttermint thing happening. I felt a little like I used to when Mike was in Little League, making cupcakes for the team party.

Homemade Corned Beef (and other cured things)

An update on the "Great Corned Beef Experiment" and other adventures in preserving: It worked! I spent a lot of time trimming the fat from the brisket. I just didn't think it needed that thick coat of fat, so where possible I left just a very thin layer. After a week of sitting in a bucket of brine in my wine fridge I took out all the pieces, cut them into meal-size portions, and vacuum packed them. I cooked one for my mom, who had never had a corned beef dinner before. For comparison, I also cooked a commercial corned beef. I also sent a piece over to my ex-husband, who has always loved corned beef and knows how to cook it, to get his feedback. Overall conclusions were consistent: richer flavor, better texture, good color. For a twist, I turned one corned beef flat into pastrami. (A flat is the flat half of a whole brisket; the other half has two pieces of meat separated by a thick layer of fat and is called the point. The top piece of meat on the point cut is called the "deckle" and it is much more marbled than the other muscle in the brisket.) I never knew that pastrami was just smoked corned beef with a pepper/coriander crust. That turned out with a flavor about as good as any pastrami I've had, once more much leaner so a healthier choice. The bacon also turned out well, though quite mild in flavor. I am turning part of the belly into pancetta, the non-rolled version. That requires some drying time in addition to the time in the cure. So we'll get to taste that in another week. But it smells really good! With the aforementioned pastrami in a sandwich, we had some of the home-cured sauerkraut. It smelled rather funky when I opened the crock, sort of like sour milk, but I knew that was just the lactic acid concentrating on the cloth on the top of the cabbage. The sauerkraut also turned out quite mild. In fact, I think it would be a great substitute for coleslaw on a pulled pork sandwich. Because it is fresh, the cabbage isn't that beige translucent stuff you get at the market; in fact it still has some of the green color and is quite crisp. Now I can hardly wait for August and cucumber season so I can try curing some kosher pickles. Now, since today is St. Paddy's, I'm making a corned beef for my husband to try. He was out of town for all of these curing chores, but is very happy to be eating the results.

Another great "underground" dinner

I've written before about "underground" dinners I have known. Last night, one of the best -- chef Joseph Conrad of Qube in Seattle, who's been in the city for just seven months. Boy, am I glad he's here. A combination of a finely tuned palate, a playful attitude towards food, and an amazing calm efficiency to his kitchen equate to seven+ courses that surprised and challenged my mouth and made it very, very happy. Photos and a little bit of description. Bet it will make you hungry!

An amuse-bouche of cured salmon and pickled cantaloupe inside avocado. Great array of textures and tastes - creamy/salty/ tangy.

This "seaweed" salad was comprised primarily of fennel fronds, with hijiki seaweed and tangerine, dressed with a nicoise olive viniagrette. Honestly, I never thought about cooking fennel fronds to serve; I just use them under fish when I roast it.

This was truly cool: yellowfin tuna "ramen" noodles with minced Asian pear and edamame, and a white soy broth/dressing. the radish sprouts added a nice spicy note, almost like having some wasabe alongside.

How about a little chorizo, made with shrimp instead of pork? The sausage rounds were topped with croutons and had a frisee salad hiding yummy pancetta cubes. The chorizo had some coarse-chopped shrimp integrated with the ground meat so in texture and appearance it looked like the fat you see in the pork sausage.

About here I was beginning to wonder if I'd make it through the entire meal! This is Maryland wild striped bass, over a fennel puree garnished with hearts of palm, pomelo, and trout roe. I usually don't care for fish skin, but I polished this one off.

Now for the pasta course, of course. But nothing ordinary about brioche gnocchi with black truffles and fois gras foam.

You almost can swing a cat and hit someone serving braised pork belly -- but with orange and sambal chile styrofoam and a tangerine jus? I think not. No, that's not a chicharrone on top, it's the styrofoam.

Dessert? Chocolate, of course. A Vahlrona chocolate cake with dulce de leche, Mexican hot chocolate emulsion, chicory coffee syrup, and "chile sugar."

With coffee I got a nice surprise. (When is a second dessert not a nice surprise?) This one was a mind-bender. Foie gras shortbread topped with fleur de sel, and some ethereal marshmallows that looked like chocolate truffles coated in cocoa, but were pretty much the exact opposite in texture.

The final amazing thing about this meal? I didn't have the wine pairings, so it was a little easier to waddle out to my car!

Bacon and corned beef

I've now got about 18 pounds of pork belly under cure -- six pounds for pancetta, with juniper and nutmeg added to the mix. One reason there's only six pounds for pancetta is that I have to skin the belly for pancetta, and it's a lot of work and time. For bacon, you leave the skin on and then remove it after the smoking/heating to 150 degrees, and that's a lot easier. Before I could get the cure on, I had to run out and buy some more tinted curing mix (TCM) because making the brine for the corned beef took more than I expected, or maybe I thought I had more than I did. Either way, the brine for the beef is now nice and cold, so my next task is to trim the briskets. Yes, I bought two whole briskets for this. I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do with 25 pounds of brisket. But it will keep longer than a regular roast, especially since I'll vacuum pack the finished product. Later today: pictures and descriptions from the "underground" dinner I attended yesterday. An amazing meal... .....but for now, back to the kitchen with me!

How Does My (Aero)Garden Grow?

Well, the tomato plants are beginning to bloom, and within a couple of days I expect the pepper plant will, too. I've served at least a dozen salads out of the greens garden, and am now having a hard time keeping up with it (doesn't help that SO is traveling for a few weeks, lots less greens get consumed when he isn't home). Both kinds of basil are a foot tall, so I picked up some fresh mozzarella and some Montrachet so I can have the cheeses with the basil, yum! The dill is threatening to take over the corner, but so is the mint. The chives are a little less robust, their roots have some white fungus or something that might be stunting their growth. The thyme isn't really what they should have put in the herbs package, as it is a low-grower and is getting shaded by all the other plants. However, it seems happy and I'm planning to use some of it in my curing/preserving activities this week, in the bacon. I'd post a photo but my SD cards and my computer aren't speaking just now, not sure why they are mad at each other. Oops, though, this blog is about food, not computers ;-)

Homemade Sauerkraut and Other Brined Things

I have discovered that I like sauerkraut if it is good. By good I mean fresh, certainly not canned. As it turns out, patience (along with some salt and cabbage) is all you really need to make your own. So tonight I am putting it all together, should be ready in less than a week. Tomorrow I'm going on a quest for pork bellies. Gotta make some bacon. I guess that's cured, not brined. Though a dry brine is part of the cure. I'm also going to get a nice chunk of beef brisket and make corned beef (yes, just in time for St. Pat's day). Somehow I suspect that by the end of next week this place is going to be more than a little aromatic!