Acknowledge My Hippo!

Leek and Potato with Mussels

2011-04-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

Vichyssoise? We don't need no stinking Vichyssoise! We have this Leek and Potato with Mussels, which I debated calling "Green Chowder," to go along with the traditional red and white chowders (you could serve all three side by side, an Italian flag of chowders!), but "green chowder' just doesn't sound too appetizing, it sounds like one of those undergraduate euphemisms for something I can't even bring myself to mention on a food blog, so, "Leek and Potato with Mussels" it is. I will let the pictures tell the story, they are after all worth a thousand words each:

Pan-Broiled Veal Chops

2011-02-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

These incredible, big, thick veal chops are more than a little exstravagant, but a beautiful thick chop cut from a boneless pork loin would make just as tasty a dish with this treatment, with less damage to your pocketbook and your waistline.

These things were just beautiful, and I almost felt obligated to honor them, somehow, to honor the meat, express my appreciation for its beauty, by accompanying it with some kind of sauce or garnish worthy of it (like Marilyn Monroe, these veal chops would have looked great in a burlap sack, but I felt I had to try, for the chops, you understand, as a matter of respect).

The night before, I had dinner in a little-known Italian restaurant in Atlantic City called Cafe 2825, a tiny place with only 12 tables, which is simply the best restaurant I have ever been to. The story of this place is something worth a post of its own, but this is absolutely no exxageration, this place truly is the best restaurant ever in the history of the universe. The cuisine of Cafe 2825 is old school Italian, as is much of the clientele, with items like "Traditional Sunday Gravy with Meatballs, Sausage, and yet it is different from every other Italian restaurant I have ever been to because every dish, everything I have tried, anyway, is so light and fresh, minimally seasoned, with all the flavors based on the quality and freshness of every ingredient. And the night before, I had tasted the Veal Milanese, a breaded and fried veal chop, and it was served covered with a simple mix of arugula, tomatoes, and shaved parmesan. It was this dish which inspired me to decide that rather than make any kind of a heavily flavored or rich sauce for these chops, I would garnish them with a mix of roasted vegetables, minimally seasoned, and topped off with a light gremolata. Because its what I happened to have, I used tomatoes, scallions, garlic cloves, and strips of roasted poblano pepper left over from that pico de gallo I made for the shrimp cocktail.

Pan-broiling I explained in detail just last month; it involves meat, and a hot pan, no oil, just enough to make the meat shiny, and a throughly hot pan. In the case of these chops, because they were so thick, and because I did not want to sear them as much as I did the chuck-eyes I discussed in that post, I did not have to use the old cast-iron skillet. Because of their thickness, these chops would be cooked at a slightly lower temperature, for a longer period. Nevertheless, it remains vitally important to keep the pan hot enough so that liquids cannot pool in it, if juices seep from your meat and form a puddle in the pan, you are no longer pan-broiling, you are boiling your meat, and as a general rule, one thing you want to avoid in life is boiling your meat.

And so, now for the gremolata. This is something I learned from Mario Battale (sorry to say, one of the only ideas I took from him, for all the hype, Mario, well, just "meh," you know? Cafe 2825 is much better). A gremolata is a finely chopped, grated, or diced mix of various ingredients with interesting tastes and textures that you sprinkle on a dish to add just a little burst of fresh, complex flavor, but without overpowering. Its like a fresh version of an herb or spice mix. For this, I used a pretty basic gremolata, grated lemon peel, grated parmesan, ground black pepper, and chopped nuts, it would normally have been pine nuts, but I still have that bag of roasted pumpkin seeds I bought at Whole Paycheck-Costing Food, so I went with those.

And Voila! I love that word, "Voila," If I ever get a tattoo, I think I should think of a good place to just put the word "Voila."

Those thing next to the veal, frozen mini-potato pancakes, which makes them kinda a big flat tater-tot. Don't tell anyone I made frozen tater-tots, I had too few hands and too little time left on the clock. I would havepreferred to make something contrastingly bland, and less rich, to accompany this, maybe even just a bit of garlic-mashed potatos, or my zuchini spaghetti, which I will get around to showing you one of these days.

Shrimp Cocktail!

2011-02-09T10:19:00.000-08:00

Is there anything better than shrimp cocktail? When I was a kid, and my mom and dad would take me with them to a "nice" restaurant, I always wanted the shrimp cocktail. This was really something, back in those days, before every grocery store started carrying bags of cheap, pre-cooked, farmed shrimp from southeast asia and giant mounds of bad shrimp cocktail started appearing right next to the bowl of pretzels at even the humblest of parties. Back in the '60s, a shrimp cocktail meant you were dining fancy. Its the kinda thing you would see on the table during a restaurant scene in Mad Men, A big, beautiful shrimp cocktail, sitting on the white linen tablecloth right between the martini and the ash-tray.

My love for shrimp cocktail even survived my years working for a chain of seafood restaurants where, starting when I was 12 years old, and continuing until I was 25,I would often literally spend an entire day, 8 hours, doing nothing but peeling shrimp. It got to the point that the stink of shrimp penetrated my skin and became a part of me that no amount of soap could wash off,no matter how hard I tried. Even then, in the middle of a day spent peeling shrimp, I would sneak to the walk-in and eat the shrimp cocktails stored there.

As the great Homer once said, when it comes to shrimp cocktail, "lamentably, my gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety."

Size Matters!

Its true, big shrimp are mroe equal than little shrimp, and the more oxymoronic your shrimp, the better. I look for shrimp so big I could carve them like a turkey! These were enormous, U-8s, which means it takes less than 8 of them to make a pound, twice the size of what is usually sold as a "jumbo shrimp." I put a few bay leaves, some old bay, and a good amount of salt in the water, and then I poached these big guys gently for about 5 minutes. After that, I put them in salted ice-water flavored with lemon juice.

During my travels in Mexico I fell in love with the way a shrimp cocktail is made there, served in a liquid salsa which reminded me of a bloody mary. I was looking for something of this flavor in a sauce for these shrimp, so I thought I would make something like a pico de gallo, but with some of the characteristics of the traditional US "cocktail sauce." The thing that US cocktail sauce has, and mexican salsa doesn't, is sugar, but I knew I could supply that by adding a bit of Heinz Chili Sauce to the pico do gallo (chili sauce is a variant of catsup, and it is the base for properly made cocktail sauce, not catsup). The chili sauce also thickened the pico and made it a bit stickier. Its sorta like kinda a Heinz-Mex fusion, with roasted poblano:

So then it was just to put it on a plate and serve it forth! I am slowly learning the art of presentation, I like how this came out, but then, its shrimp cocktail, I like those wretched jars of "Sau-Sea" shrimp cocktail!

Simple Pleasures

2011-01-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

Skirt Steak with Spinach and Pumpkinseed Pesto Pasta Shards

Skirt Steak, until recently, a poverty food

What I most want to do with this blog is to show people the joy that can be had in one of the most basic human activities, preparing and eating our food. We must have air, water, food, and love, those are the essentials of life. And since we have to cook and eat, every day, anyway, why not make it a joy, rather than a dull routine? Why not approach it with reverent abandon, aware and thankful appreciation for one of the greatest sensual gifts of life? Go for it with gusto, but also with appreciation and awareness!

I want to share my love of cooking, and of making the most with the least, I want to show that the most everyday, economical, simple meal, can be as enjoyable as a gourmet dinner in the finest restaurant, and I want to show that creating something special from the simplest things is something that anyone can do. We have to prepare our meals and eat them, and we have a choice, open a can of Ravioli-Os, plop it in a bowl, and microwave it, then shovel in the calories we need, as a mindless act of simply fueling our body, or we can make it an act of loving creativity in the preparation, and an act of reverential appreciation in the consumption. It costs no more to make preparing and eating a meal an act of loving creativity and sincere appreciation, and very little more effort, and that extra effort itself can be a joy, and an act of love.

I have made many allusions comparing cooking and eating with sex, my favorite being the observation that with both activities (and they can overlap), you get out if it what you put into it,or as Paul McCartney said, in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make. I hope these comparisons are not off-putting, because I think the comparison is perfect. The difference between appreciating the act of creating a meal, and mindfully and thankfully taking joy in its consumption,and simply scarfing down some awful fast-food, is exactly the same as the difference between making love, and a cheap one-night hookup (followed by the dreaded "walk of shame.") The basic, animal appetite may have been sated, but the soul and the spirit are left unfed.

The walk of shame, cab to door version. Do you think he paid for the cab fare?

Savoire Vivre

George W. Bush may or may not have said "the problem with the French is they don't even have a word for 'entrepeneur'" (if he didn't, he should have, its such a perfect W thing to say). But the French do have a phrase that perfectly defines the theme of this blog, which is,to paraphrase the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, "making the mostest with the leastest." The French phrase is "savoir vivre;" literally it translates as "knowing how to live," but there is a strong element of "living well without waste," of knowing the secrets to finding the greatest pleasure with the least expenditure (this is not to be confused with "Savoire Faire," who is an omnipresent Canadian cartoon mouse).

I promise there will be a post soon devoted to the joy of canalboating in France!

Savoir Faire is everywhere!

This meal is a modest example of living well, creating and taking extra joy, from the most mundane, taking the most ordinary, simple Wednesday night dinner, made from the most economical ingredents, and making something simple but delightful. Putting in the extra effort, putting in the love, that comes back in love of life, appreciation and mindfulness for the everyday gifts that too often go unnoticed.

Its just skirt steak, seared in a very hot antique cast-iron skillet (it was given to my mother when she married my father in 1945, 66 years ago). Coooking meat this way is not frying, its not sauteeing, this is "pan-broiling," and it cooks a steak better than the so-called "broiler" in most home ovens.

One important note: you cannot do this with a non-stick pan! Nonstick pans are evil (I think I might get sued if I say Teflon; its a good thing it doesn't count if its in parentheses) and I won't have one in the house. You simply cannot cook properly with these pans, because they cannot stand the heat required. This is most true if you want to pan-broil anything. And there is this ugly ugly secret about That Substance Which Must Not Be Named, that the Major Corporation that owns the State of Delaware and rhymes with "Dumont" works very hard to suppress: the stuff emits a noxious gas when subjected to high temperature, which can make you sick as a dog. This is absolutely true, you can Ask Cecil if you don't believe me.* In fact, its probably happened to you, but you just thought you had a 24-hour bug or something. The gasses produce flu-like symptoms in humans, mostly extreme headaches and vomiting, and can kill small birds (the proverbial canary in a cold mine effect).

So anyway, there is nothing simpler than pan-broiling a steak; start with meat at room temperature, and take it out of the package some time before you are going to cook it, too, and wrap it in a towel, or paper towels, to let it dry out. Most beef has too much moisture, and will always cook better if you let it dry out a bit, you can even squeeze it and wipe it with a towel to get some of the excess moisture out. This is important with pan-broiling, because there is noplace for any seeping liquid to go, it stays in the pan and all of a sudden, you are poaching the steak, rather than broiling it, and you do not want that.

I seasoned the meat (meat is murder, tasty, delicious murder) with salt and pepper, and coated it with just enough oil to make it glisten. I heated the pan over my biggest burner at the highest heat, for several minutes, (this is where your bird would keel over dead, if you were using a Teflon pan) and threw the meat on the smoking hot iron. You know its working right if there is a lot of smoke. After the initial searing on both sides, you can turn down the heat a bit, but never let it get cool enough that moisture puddles in it, of you see anything bubbling, you're doing it wrong. The whole process takes 5 minutes.

Now to the spinach-pumpkinseed pesto pasta shards. You aren't often served pasta with meat, and I think its a matter of texture, a skinny noodle, like spaghetti, just doesn't seem right with a chewy, rich, piece of steak. But I think that a thick, chewy pasta works great with grilled meats, fettucini alfredo, for example, the Italian version of mac and cheese, can work. The only problem was I had no fettucini, and this is the Wednesday, mid-week after work, I am gonna make do with what I have meal, so I looked on the pasta shelf, and I had some lasagna, the thickest, chewiest pasta of all. And its not just for making lasagna anymore. I hesitate to say I got this idea from Martha Stewart, the famous ex-con (she was railroaded) and my fellow New Jersey-ite, but yup, one of her cookbooks is among my favorites, "Good Food Fast," and in it, she had a recipe for "pasta shards," lasagna broken up into random pieces, not too small, thusly:

So, what would I make for a sauce? Alfredo, nah, I'm trying to lose some pounds lately. Tomato sauce would not complement the steak very well, so again, I went to the refrigerator to see what I had on hand. I was low on fresh vegetables, but, there in the freezer, a bag of spinach! And some lima beans, which would thicken the spinach sauce, (once pureed) so this became my plan.

First, I finely diced a half an onion and several cloves of garlic, and slowly sauteed these in olive oil until they were soft and translucent. Then in went the spinach and lima beans, along with a hocky puck of veal stock (this will be the subject of a future post; I make veal stock, which is a magical all-purpose elixir, and freeze it in a muffin pan, then take the frozen hocky-pucks of stock and store them in a bag in the freezer, so I can just grab a half-cup at a time, when needed, which is almost always).

I had also thrown in some parsely, to intensify the green color, and the fresh parsely livens up the flavor of any herb or vegetable, it perked up the frozen spinach. When it was well-cooked, I added salt and pepper, a tiny bit of cayenne, about a half-cup of grated parmesan, and a handful of those roasted pumpkinseeds I have been going on about for a week now, they are great in so many things, again, here, they replaced the pine nuts that are more common in a pesto, and now I prefer them, they are lighter, more delicate. Then it all went into the venerable cuisinart, and in the end, I added about two tablespoons of cream, and it was divine.

So then, it was simply tossing the pasta shards with the spinach-pumpkin pesto, and serving it forth. I should have made a gremolata as a garnish, that would have been the final little "something special," it does look a little bare, next time, gremolata, in this case, I would have coarsely chopped some of the pumpkinseeds, and mixed it with some grated parmesan, along with perhaps some scallions, or finely diced shallot, and some lemon zest, then sprinkle it on top of the meat and the pasta.

I can't wait to make this same pasta sauce, with squash substituted for the spinach, next time. Or maybe cannellini substituted for the spinach, look at that, three different sauces, one recipe, damn I love this cooking thing.

* Cecil Adams, author of The Straight Dope, the wonderfully funny advice column published for years now in The Chicago Reader: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2748/are-teflon-coated-pans-a-health-risk-to-birds-and-humans
Cecil has a helpful and humble FAQ which explains why you can trust his advice on any and all topics:
1.Who is Cecil Adams?
Cecil Adams is the world's most intelligent human being. We know this because: (1) he knows everything, and (2) he is never wrong.

2.How do we know that Cecil knows everything and is never wrong?
Because he said so, and he would never lie to us.

3.No, really.
Listen, read the columns. Soon you will agree this is no ordinary man.

4.What do you mean, "columns"? You're telling me the world's smartest human being works for the newspapers?
We all gotta eat. Yes, Cecil works for the newspapers. His syndicated weekly column, the Straight Dope, presently appears in more than 30 newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. Ballantine has published five collections of his work, a Straight Dope TV show aired on the Arts & Entertainment cable network, and we'll be starting on the biopic as soon as we can line up Sly Stallone.

Yet another snowstorm!

2011-01-26T09:02:00.000-08:00

I think I know what is happening now. This incredible spell of awful weather, clearly, this is karmic payback, the Jersey Shore is being made to suffer, for foisting Snookie and The Situation on the world . . .

Yearning for a Taste of Summer!

2011-01-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

Thai Chicken Salad

This winter has been so hard, with the unrelenting cold and storm after storm as Nor-easters barrel up the coast as if they are on a regular weekly schedule. My cabin-fever is running about 103° and comfort food isn’t comforting me any more. Right now I need a taste of summer, to help me hold on till winter breaks its grip and I can walk on the sand along the beach again and bask in the warmth of the sun. Damn, it hurts to even think of it, while another storm is brewing up outside as I write.

So, to provide this taste of summer I have never needed so badly, I decided to make one of my favorite dishes, one of the few that I make consistently, the same way every time, and make often, because it is, quite simply, one of my favorite foods ever and it is perfect as it is.* The dish is Thai Chicken Salad, and it is the perfect summer food, the only things that rival it, for a picnic on the beach or on my boat on a hot sunny summer day, are Tabouleh, and Bahamian Conch Salad (really a conch ceviche’). I will be getting to those recipes soon, but I think I may have to save them, for when I need a reminder of summer again, June is still far off, and April is the cruelest month, as Prufrock said, because it tortures with the promise of summer, but then relapses into the harshness of winter.

Thai chicken salad is simply the perfect summer food; it is cold, crisp, light, spicy, tart, tingly, as refreshing as a crisp cold pilsner on a hot afternoon (and a crisp cold tart pilsner, say a Bitburger, would be perfect with this). Much of Thai cuisine is based on balancing five essential flavor components; sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and hot (spicy). In this dish, the balancing results in a tingling, refreshing piquancy, a startlingly lively taste, and a perfect crunchy-chewy texture that cools you down if you are out in the sun. This dish brings to mind the taste of sea-salt and sweat on your skin, the texture of the beach sand, the heat of the sun, and the sweetness of coconut oil, the smells and flavors and sensations of the beach. It is light, low in calories (always welcome, to help preserve our beach-bodies, as much as can reasonably be achieved, anyway, while still enjoying life) and it doesn’t leave you full or torpid from the effort of digestion. Trust me, taste this, and you will see, it’s the perfect summer-beach-bonfire-boating-picnic food, this chicken salad, served on lettuce leaves, with some kind of a crisp to crunch on, and ice-cold beer, nothing more is needed.

The first step is to grind boneless skinless chicken breasts. There is no way around this, the ground chicken you can get in a grocery store is ground to a pulp, its yucky. I use the grinder attachment on my “immortal beloved” Kitchenaid, with the coarse cutting plate. This results, strangely enough, in a coarsely ground texture, with noticeable, identifiable chunks of chicken. If you don’t have a grinder, you could mince the chicken breasts with a knife, you can get the perfect texture this way, too, but, if you are making a lot, you will also get blisters. I have never tried with a food processor, it might work, I find that if you go for a coarse-ground texture in the food processor, you won’t get uniformity, you will get some very large chunks, and some tiny shreds, along with the perfect coarse-ground pieces. Whatever you do, don’t chop up cooked chicken breast, it will be nothing like its supposed to be. Grind the chicken raw.

(I even cleaned up the Kitchenaid for this picture!)

The next step is to cook the chicken, I use a wok, and a little oil, its not too critical, I prefer to be able to say I stir-fried it, but in the end a lot of liquid comes out, and the chicken is half-poached anyway. Just don’t scorch it and don’t boil it or overcook it, the texture of the dish is a result of the coarse grind, more than the cooking method.

This is a crunchy , savory salad with just so many flavors, its like a party in your mouth (I’m not gonna say it, its taking all my willpower, but I’m just not gonna say it, this is a family blog; there may be double, triple, and quadruple entendres in every other sentence, but I am not gonna go overt on this one). All the ingredients are chopped to about the same size as the ground chicken pieces, about 1/3 to ¼ inch squares or parallelograms (see, there is a use for geometry in real life). There is celery, carrots, sweet red peppers, sweet yellow peppers, if you have them, mildly spicy green santa fe peppers, and spicy fresh jalapenos (diced much much finer). These components add the crisp in the texture, and some of the the sweet and some of the hot. This dish has so many flavors, combined in such complex ways, it’s a wonder it somehow fuses them all into one incredible, enjoyable sensation.

Finally, you chiffonade scallions and cilantro, and add two tablespoons of chopped fresh lemongrass, and a teaspoon of chopped fresh Thai hot chili. At this point, I am going to tell you the greatest little tip, this alone will make reading this worthehile: in Asian markets, they sell frozen blocks of chopped fresh lemongrass, with or without chili. Is this not the greatest?

These ingredients give a good part of the sour and bitter components to the dish.

Now comes the “dressing,” and this dish is a perfect example of one of the ways Asian cuisine is so different from classic European and American cooking, in its reliance on a vast array of condiments. This is over-simplifying, but western haute-cuisine tends to rely on building up complex flavors from scratch ingredients. We have all seen the old cliché’ of the French chef who is infuriated that the oafish customer wants to put ketchup on his creation, we view condiments as lowbrow, something for the ballpark, not the high table. But Asian cooking tends to make much more use of condiments, prepared sauces, of which there are an incredible array, and the art is in combining the right condiments, in the right amounts, to get the flavor you are seeking.

In this dish, I use fresh lime juice (you didn’t see nothing in no jar up there, capiche?), fish sauce, toasted sesame oil, and “cock sauce,” the only proper name for Srirache sauce.

The lime juice is bitter and tart, the fish sauce is “umame” (basically, this means “meaty”) and salty, the toasted sesame oil, which really isn’t a traditional Thai ingredient, but I love it in this, is just lovely, its just beautiful, and the cock sauce is both sweet and spicy. Finally, the last thing I add is usually toasted pine nuts, for just another kind of crunchy chewiness, but they recently went up to $22 a pound, and suddenly, I find I like these $2.99 a pound toasted pumpkin seeds just as much.

There it is, summer on a plate, a summer day at the beach, swimming in the water, baking in the sun, sweating breathing salt air and getting sand between your toes, all on a plate, right there. Here is the deal, make this dish one day in the summer, and take it to the beach and have a picnic lunch, eat this with a cold crisp German Pilsener. Then, the next winter, when the dark and the cold have you down, and you need a taste of the joy of summer, make this again, and you will find that Proust and his madeleines have nothing, compared to the evocative power of this amazing food.

* I have so many “favoritest ever” things, I have dozens and dozens of “favorite things in the world,” and so many things are “the best thing ever in the history of the universe.” On any given day, any one of about 200 songs might be my favorite song of all time, and that’s before I start breaking the universe of my most favorite songs ever into the hundreds of different categories of favorite song (for example, the category “favorite song about skinny-dipping that is so beautiful it could make you cry when it talks about the photo on the dashboard that reflects in the window whenever he drives under a streetlight and he sees her face again,” the winner in this category, of course, is Nightswimming, by REM). I get yelled at for having so many favorites, but I fail to see the harm, in loving so many things, in finding just sheer joy in so much in life. Fun is, after all, the best thing to have, what the French call “joie de vivre.” In the end, that’s what this blog, and life, is all about.

The Comfort Food Kama Sutra

2011-01-24T11:20:00.000-08:00

Its amazing how the same ingredients, in different combinations, can create an adventure out of the most familiar. . . . . food.

Its been the worst six weeks in memory here in the fancy-scarf wearing, Amtrak-riding Northeast, as far as the winter weather. Winters aren’t all that harsh here on the Jersey Shore, as a general rule. Its common to go for a year or two without any snow, and its rare for the ponds and lakes to freeze solid enough for skating. This is the Mid-Atlantic, not New England (if they extended the Mason-Dixon line due East, it would cut right through southern New Jersey), but the last 6 weeks have been downright Vermont-y, with over 40 inches of snow, temperatures rarely rising above freezing, and Barnegat Bay nearly frozen over.

So, of course, this is the kind of weather when you long for the proverbial "comfort food," soups and stews and warming, soothing dishes. “Comfort food” has been something of a food fad the last several years, first there was French Bistro, then the rediscovery of the American cultural parallel,“Diner Cuisine,” which has in turn led to this year’s new black, the mac and cheese and bacon-with-everything craze, and I can’t help thinking the cupcake thing is related.

Comfort food is, of course, first and foremost, comforting. But you don't usually think of it as exciting or adventurous, but there is no reason it can't be. As soothing and enjoyable as a warm bowl of something substantial, like beef stew, lentil soup, chili, or a chicken pot-pie may be, it can still be improved with some extra attention and inventiveness. As with most things in life, and perhaps food and sex most of all, you get out of it what you put in, you can sleepwalk through the same old routine, and put together what will still be a satisfying, if mundane, missionary-position meal, or you can bring some enthusiasm and creativity to the fore, incorporate an unexpected spice, dress your dish in something more provocative, consult the culinary kama-sutra for some inspiration, a new way of combining those familiar ingredients. And as always, its about making daily life your art and your love, and through making the everyday special, appreciating life and its beauties and joys all the more, being more mindful of the blessings of life.

Today’s dish was inspired by a rare trip to Whole Foods. My home town is located out in the boonies, surrounded by the Pine Barrens of south Jersey, and does not have much in the way of sophisticated purveyors; “not much” as in “none.” So, whenever my travels take me past a place where I can find the rarities unavailable at home, I tend to stop, and yesterday I stopped at a Whole Foods. To my surprise, nothing in the seafood section looked very tempting (where have all the fishes gone?), so I decided to stock up on some of the hard-to-find bulk items they offer. I wound up buying a few pounds each of green DePuy lentils, toasted pumpkin seeds (to throw on salads for the crunch), bulgher wheat, and on a whim, some falafel mix (I was hearing Jonathan Richman’s “Dancing Late At Night” in my head, when he sings “you can smell the late night falafel stand, dancing dancing late at night”).

As Du Falafel, a fixture of the Marais district in Paris

At home, I already had a boneless chuck roast I planned to put in the pressure cooker, and the falafel mix gave me an idea. Over in the produce section of Whole Foods there were bags of mixed winter greens, colorful cabbages (the leaves from the ornamental cabbages, purple, green, and white) mixed with green, red, and yellow swiss chard, all chopped and washed and ready to cook, I have bought these mixes before, and they are so easy to cook, quickly saute, and they come out so colorful, so I bought one of those, and for just an extra dash of color and flavor, I bought some yellow beets, which, if you glaze them, cook to an amazing golden color. I had no plans to infuse a great deal of beet flavor, just add that beautiful golden color to contrast with the greens and the red of the pot-roasting sauce (I had decided to pot-roast the chuck with tomatoes).

First, however, I must digress, and offer my praise for pressure-cookers. I got into pressure cookers years ago, all part of my planned career as a pirate, a voyaging sailor. People who go on long sailing voyages like pressure-cookers for two reasons; first, they cook foods fast, so you use less of your precious fuel, and second, long-distance voyagers tend to eat a lot of dried legumes, which would take hours of cooking, without a pressure cooker, but only 40 minutes, using these magical devices. I have owned several over the years, but this electric model is
the best pressure cooker I ever used; its computerized controls keep the pressure perfect without the constant “hissing” from the steam-release valve that usually accompanies pressure-cooking.

Pressure cookers take advantage of one of the physical (as in "Physics") properties of water, which is that the boiling point of water is proportional to the ambient pressure. This is why recipes have to be adjusted for a longer cooking time at high altitudes, because water boils at a lower temperature under the lower atmospheric pressure present at high altitude. Pressure cookers only work with simmered or braised dishes, because they rely on water, but they allow you to, for example, braise a pot-roast in 45 minutes that would take 3 hours in the oven or on a stove-top. The pressure cooker traps the steam with its air-tight lid, and this makes the pressure go up, and under high pressure, the liquids in the cooker can reach much higher temperatures than the normal boiling point of 212° ƒ.

Of course the first step in braising anything is browning. This cooker has a setting for that, it makes it so easy.

This dish was pot-and-pan-intensive, but what the heck, you have to suffer for art:

So, in the end, I am braising the chuck roast with red wine and whole Italian plum tomatoes, crushed by hand, with garlic, onions, celery, parsley, carrots and bay leaves, everything will be strained out after cooking to make a smooth sauce that I will reduce and thicken. I am sautéing the greens with garlic, just a bit of red pepper, and olive oil, I am making flat falafel pancakes, I am caramelizing one diced yellow beet, for that golden color, and I am also sautéing some shiitake mushrooms as a garnish.

The final presentation: a bed of the greens, a falafel pancake jauntily tilted across one side like a frenchman’s beret, some torn chunks of the fork-tender braised chuck on top of the falafel, with the shiitakes and golden caramelized beets on top for color.

Only I forgot the beets, I cooked them early on, and put them in a bowl in the microwave to re-heat when everything was done, and I totally forgot them.

Next time, I will do this with a white corn polenta cake. The falafel made this dish very different, very rich, and full of flavor, and maybe just a bit too “busy.” And a meat-substitute and a meat in the same dish, that’s a bit much. A fried cake of white corn polenta, that would be a gentle, creamy counterpart to the lovely tomato-red wine braising sauce, so next time, or when I get to put this on the menu of my someday dream restaurant, it will be made with a white corn polenta cake. Or maybe one of those Swiss potato-cakes. . . There is so much to look forward to, so many positions in the culinary Kama Sutra.

The first meal from the almost-finished kitchen

2011-01-16T19:55:00.001-08:00

So, this is what I made tonight, after spending a day installing trim and various finish detail work for 8 hours. We have had 40 inches of snow here since Christmas, which is more than we usually get in 3 years combined, since December 26, the yard has been covered with snow, getting dingier and nastier every day, but its not going away, and I refuse to do the sawing and sanding inside, so all day I was running outside to cut and sand pieces of trim and countertop in the 30 degree air outside, then sweating inside installing it.

A day like this begs for soup, and one of my favorite comnfort-food soups is beef-barley soup, braised bits of beef, kale, and pearled barley. But I didn't want soup for dinner, so it occurred to me to deconstruct beef-barley soup and reconstruct it as a meal.

I went to Wegmons, the greatest grocery store in the world, on Friday, and I bought some boneless short ribs, and I also bought a bag of the most beautiful greens I ever saw, it was a mixture of red and yellow chard, with some purple kale, it was so pretty, deep green and yellow and red and purple, all chopped and washed and bagged and ready to cook.

And I had the barley on hand, because I make beef barley soup frequently.

So, I was thinking, make beef bourguignon with the short ribs, make barley rissotto, and saute' the chard and kale mix, like you would make brocolirabe, with olive oil, hot pepper, and garlic, I also added some red onions for more color and flavor.

I have no pictures of the process this time, but this was the finished product, it was just what I imagined, perfect for a snowy hard day of sweating and working.

Kitchen Renovations, Conitnued

2011-01-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

So this has been the third weekend of aggravating my sciatica, and there has been a major improvement.

Ingredients:

Home Depot off-the-shelf cabinets. Yeah, they are as cheap and chintzy as what was here, but they are NEW, and I am not planning to keep this house for long, they look good.

Oak butcherblock countertops from Ikea. Once again, CHEAP, but the warmth of the wood, it looks great against the white cabinets.

Six days of sweat, aggravation, dirt, sawdust, sciatica, aggravation, and 1,000 round trips to Home Depot getting that thing I forgot, returning that thing that didn't fit, buying something else that didn't fit, repeat ad nauseum.

But its almost done now, really came together, it ties the room together, man!

Nobody better pee on it, because I would not let that aggression stand.

Kitchen Renovations

2011-01-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

So, I have not posted any recipes in more than two weeks, all my available time has been taken up with my kitchen renovation project, 3 weekends so far, and I have made great progress. When we bought this house, the kitchen was abysmal, it was a tiny, dark, dingy "galley," with nasty cheap cabinets that were old, beat up, and nasty, not to mention ugly.

Clams Casino

2011-01-04T19:44:00.001-08:00

Picture Time

2011-01-04T19:40:00.000-08:00

Alt-Rock Lobster

2010-12-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

How can you improve lobster? What is better than a boiled or steamed Maine lobster, or a broiled or grilled Florida, Brazillian, or South African lobster tail? I rarely try to improve on nature when it comes to lobster, lobster is almost on the level of oysters, which can never be improved, should not ever be cooked, even, they should be eaten raw, alive, with nothing more than mignonnete, some fresh ground black pepper. But, I got these Thomas Keller books for Christmas, and his presentation caught my eye.

He doesn't like to boil or steam a lobster, he prefers a method that involves briefly par-boiling the beasts, then extracting the meat, and slowly poaching it in butter. This sounded fine to me, so I decided to try it.

I know, it sounds so arrogant, but I never follow recipes, I just take inspiration from them, and besides, my cooking is almost always driven by making use of what I have on hand, so I was neither inclined nor prepared to follow any of Keller's recipes precisely. But, I was ready to follow his general scheme, the main ingredient is usually stacked on top of a portion of some complementary (not complimentary) side, a vegetable preparation, I didn't have any of the things he uses in his recipes,so I took stock of what I had, and here is what I came up with: Lima beans. I had lima beans, I had red peppers, I had scallions, and some red pepper coulis sauce, leftover from something I made yesterday that I will blog tomorrow. And I had this, its something you can find in asian markets, you can buy frozen blocks of chopped lemongrass, either with or without hot chilis in it, its the greatest thing, any dish that calls for lemongrass, you pull this block of frozen chopped lemongrass out of the freezer, chop of a hunk,you are golden. This one has the hot chilis, I thought this would add that little something different:

I gently cooked these vegetables in a little white wine, then added the red pepper coulis, and the cream, it worked perfectly:

So, I wanted three elements for this dish, and I love potatoes with lobster, french fries with boiled lobster is heaven, but I am trying to be Keller-esque, so I went with something that turned out to be easy, but kinda cool, different, I never did this before. I buy these bags of tiny little exotic potatoes from Costco, little red, yellow, and purple potatoes, and I love to roast them, toss them in olive oil and herbs and roast them. But tonight, I had some goat cheese, and I thought, how about blending some goat cheese with the olive oil, tossing the potatoes in the goat cheese mix, and then roasting:

And, Voila! Goat cheese roasted fingerling potatoes:

Now, to gently poach the lobster in butter:

And then it was just the frantic effort to plate these elements, in some attractive way, and I am not so good at presentation, its certainly not Keller level, but here is the result:

I do just have to mention, there was one little secret ingredient in the lima-bean mix, white truffle oil, I was inspired, somehow, to remember, I had this truffle oil, and truffles and lobster, thats a good thing. The red pepper coulis-lemongrass-truffle oil sauce, on the lobster, was better than butter. As I said at the beginning, some things, fresh seafood and lobster most of all, are usually best kept as simple as possible, pure and simple, but this worked fantastically. In the end, I think it was those few drops of truffle oil that did it.

Brandade, You're a Fine Girl

2010-12-27T19:02:00.000-08:00

Tonight's big success was my Thomas Keller inspired presentation of a classic provencal dish, brandade de morue (I think thats how it is spelled). I've been talking about it for three days, I need to backtrack to explain how it came about.

First, who is Thomas Keller, why do I keep talking about him? He is the chef-owner of a restaurant called The French Laundry, its somewhere in the San Francisco area, all I know about it is, its supposed to be the best restaurant, or at least the best French cuisine, in the US, and you cannot get a reservation. Foodie people (I hate this, when my passion of 30-some years is suddenly everyone's latest fad, I used to be ahead of the curve, now I am one of millions) just worship Keller. Julie and Julia was a cultural phenomenon, this year, cooking your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking has become a mainstream fad. Well, real fanatics, they are working there way through Keller's French Laundry cookbook, they call it "doing the Laundry" ha ha, how drole.

So, for my birthday, just a month ago, I got Keller's first two books, The French Laundry, and Ad Hoc at Home, I have to say, I was a bit unimpressed. The French Laundry dishes are all of them, every one, of that oh so precious, tiny little layer cake variety, various ingredients all cut into a small round shape with a cookie cutter and layered up, "vertical food," pretty, not so much my cup of tea. Yet its what I did tonight.

For Christmas, I got Keller's Bouchon, his bistro-style restaurant cookbook, and this is more my style. And it was a recipe for salt-cod and potato fritters that caught my eye immediately when I opened the book on Christmas morning. I happened to have a bag of frozen, vac-packed cod filets from Costco in the freezer, and I was unhappy with the quality. But some time ago, I had done a recipe where you salt your fresh cod, to make fresh, home-made salt cod, and I thought, this was a fitting purpose for this mediocre cod, so yesterday, I defrosted two cod filets and salted them, you just put them in a bowl filled with kosher salt, cover them with kosher salt (I used Camargue sea salt, no difference, its what I had) and let it sit, after a day or two, you have salt cod, then you can soak it in water and milk to turn it back into something like fresh cod, what a journey, out and back.

So today, totally snowed-in from the blizzard, I had time to make this salt-cod dish.

Its not really complicated, this is peasant food, basically salt cod mashed in with mashed potatoes, its peasant food from the south of France. Its salt cod, mashed potatoes, garlic, olive oil, thats it.

How does this become haute cuisine? Well, in Bouchon, Keller took little balls of this brandade, coated them in batter, and deep-fried them, to make fritters. Lovely, I would have liked that, but deep-frying, at home, is yucky, all that oil, it gets in the air, coats everything in the kitchen, lots of work and mess for a few fried cod balls? No sir.

But I figured I could pan-fry it, like a crab cake, and I have panko on hand, so thats what I decided to do.

And in the end, I wound up inspired by the French Laundry style of vertical, layered presentation, driven mostly by what I had on hand.

For a sauce, well, I had cucumbers and tomatoes, garlic and lemon juice and some hot peppers, so I made a spicy gazpacho in the food processer, I didn't take a picture, and I had a red pepper, so I roasted it on the range, and cut a disk of roasted red pepper, using the same cookie cutter I used to shape the little discs of brandade.

And I had a little bit of jumbo lump crabmeat left over from Christmas eve's special seafood dinner, so I figured I could put a couple of lumps of crabmeat on top of the roasted red pepper, put a little more gazpacho on top, and drizzle some unfiltered extra virgin olive oil over all, and this was the result, suprised myself, I did.

A Blizzard of Cooking!

2010-12-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

This is certain to go down in history as the Blizzard of 2010 or "Snowpocalypse II: The Shitstorm" or some such. It snowed from Christmas night, all day yesterday, till this morning, with the wind howling the whole time, gusts of 50 mph. Its hard to say how much snow fell, because there just drifts everywhere, many of them 6 feet high, the windows of our house are half-covered. What to do, what else, cook, stuck in the house with tons of leftovers from christmas, no way I was shovelling (I found someone on Craigslist who would come over with a snowblower), I was free to create.

First, breakfast, saute'd greens and diced tomatoes over toast, with a poached egg and pieces of ham I had briefly browned in a pan:

The next project was obvious; of course we had a ham for the Christmas brunch, and therefore, it was time to make split-pea with ham soup.

So this is the progress so far, the split pea soup is just about finished, and I have started on that brandade de morue that I have been going on about for two days now:

And I think it may be possible to escape the house now, the man with the shovel seems to have freed one of the cars, so I am going forth to get a few items that will allow me to try one of the French Laundry recipes I have had my eye on.

2010-12-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

So earlier today I was all set to try to make brandade de morue, using the cod I had already started salting, but, then, snowed in and with a blizzard raging, I did what any reasonable person would do, and took another nap, and woke up, with dinner time upon me. The salt-cod fritter recipe in Bouchon involved a bit of unfamiliar work, so, hey, the cod will just get more authentically salt-cody by salting for another day, so I put it in the fridge, and then I surveyed the contents of the fridge, took stock of what I could make, from what was there.

So, this first pic, this shows the ingredients I decided I would use. I had an idea for a white pasta sauce, with clams and sausage, but, thickened not with cream, but with pureed white beans, I have done this before, its nice on pasta. And yes, its not really believable, but I actually just happened to have this stuff around, I had bought a dozen clams on Christmas Eve, meant to make clams oreganata along with the other tapas, but I ran out of time, and yes, I bought the fresh kielbasa the day before, because fresh kielbasa is a delight, and rarely available, if you have never had it, its nothing at all like the smoked Hillshire Farms crap-ola, its just the garlickiest pork sausage you ever had, its perfect for what I wanted to do, combine sausage and clams in a white pasta sause.

So, that was the plan, sausage and clams, I would steam the clams open in the leftover champagne, because it was there, reduce the clam stock-champaigne mixture a bit, thicken with pureed white beans, with this combination of flavors, there is little seasoning needed, black pepper, parsely, really is it.

And so, the mis-en-place:

And the final result:

December 26, 2010

2010-12-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

Its a blizzard! I am snowed in, and for the first time in forever, have the time to post on my foodblog. Its going to be pictures, lots of pictures, from now on, taking off from what had become my habit of posting pictures of almost all of my creations on Facebook.

First, we have Christmas Eve tapas:

And here we have the making of my version of Thai green curry with beef and thai aubergines.

First, the assembled ingredients:

Then, there is the mis en place:

And then the finished dish. Where I stray from tradition is that instead of slicing the beef into thin strips, which would of course be cooked well through in the curry sauce, instead, I cut the beef into much larger pieces, almost small steaks, and pan sear them in the wok prior to cooking the curry and aubergines and other vegetables, then I put them back in the sauce just before serving, so that they remain medium-rare, this was really good.

Tonight, truly, we are snowed in, there is a blizzard going on, we may get as much as 20 inches of snow tonight, so I will be making up something with what I have on hand. I had some frozen pacific cod, from Costco, not the greatest stuff, but, I have had an idea for a preparation that will overcome its shorcomings, I am salting it, and plan to use it in a recipe that would call for salt-cod, maybe a brandade de morue, or, in my new Thomas Keller book, Bouchon (a Christmas gift) there is a picture of some kinf of deep-fried salt-cod fritter that looked interesting. Fresh cod can be "salted," and attains a texture very similar to properly soaked genuine salt cod, in just a few hours, so I started that procedure this afternoon, you just lay the cod fillets in a bed of salt and cover with more salt.

I will follow up later, with pictures.

2008-11-30T19:34:00.000-08:00

I need some input on a recipe idea that struck me today, I have not made this yet, but the idea just hit me while looking at some corned beef in the supermarket.Lately I have been trying to make homemade sausages using the sausage attachment to my kitchenaid. I tried some morrocan lamb sausages, but I way overspiced them, did some simpler lamb sausages that were good, but then put it away for a while.So today in the market I just happened to pass the corned beef, and I thought, "corned beef sausage?" I quickly realized that would not work, but then I thought, make corned beef hash, and stuff it into sausage casings, corned beef hash sausages. Think about it. Really think about it. Many people don't like hash because, well, it looks like it has been eaten already, and then brought back up. Yes, its a sign of the decline of our culture, that too few people appreciate the wonder that is corned beef hash. Now imagine it, corned beef, potatoes, onions, made into a good hash, then stuffed in sausage casings and fried again, a nice, neat hash package, with even more crispiness from the second frying. I am determined to try it.

My New Avatar!

2008-11-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

The mystery 80s chick!

Blogging Creation: The Birth of a Recipe

2008-11-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, I am right in the middle of the process of invention, and I wanted to start recording whats going on, if only to have a record of my thoughts and predictions to look back at, when it is done, and see whether it came out as hoped, or whether there were unexpected turns.

I will boldly predict what I think is going to come of this; something like Coq-Au-Miso-Lemongrass, a braised chicken dish, possibly with some vegetables, similar to coq-au-vin, but in place of the wine, a spicy miso-lemongrass sauce, but the sauce will not just be a combination of asian condiments, it will be a slow-cooked rich sauce, with a base flavor of sweet, deeply caramalized shallots.

How did this come about? Its very very complicated, and thats why I want to record this, the story of how a recipe comes to me.

This all started last Thurday, when I stopped at Wegmons on the way to my psychiatrists office (a 50 mile drive, its the only time I am ever near a Wegmons) and among other impulses, grabbed a big package of red miso, something I have never eaten or cooked with, just because I like the crappy miso soup they throw at you before the sushi at my favorite sushi place.

Then this past Saturday, once again as a side trip, I stopped at a large asian market in Pleasantville to stock up on asian basics that are unavailable where I live, thai curries, a big block of frozen, minced lemongrass (this is worth a post on its own; lemongrass is sparse and wicked expensive where I live, this product I found was a frozen block of minced lemongrass and chilis, in plastic, you can open it up and chip off a chunk, and when it defrosts, it is as fresh and pungent and wonderful as if you just chopped a fresh stalk, and I now have a years supply of lemongrass that will not go stale or get old, for $2.99, about what I would pay for 2 stalks fresh), bean thread noodles, sririhuacha sauce, fish sauce (smiling baby, of course), and some cool things like baby bok-choy and tofu and kimchee. All ultra-cheap.

So thats how it began, as of last Saturday, I had lemongrass, and I had miso, both random, impulse purchases. But of course I know they are there and they nag at me, they call to me, "use me, use me, Prommie" I hear them begging from the pantry and the freezer.

But I have been busy, because I have been working on another major culinary project, I have been making sausage, something new for me, and completely fascinating once you get into it. I got the meat grinder and sausage maker attachments for my Kitchenaid mixer 2 weeks ago, and have spent the last two weekends making lamb sausage with varying degrees of success. The details of that are another story, but the sausage making definitely played a role here.

Over the weekend, while looking for ways to use up all the surplus of sausage I had made, I started looking through some of my huge food porn books, the really big, stupid "Culinaria" books, not really much good food information, but great photos, and I get almost all my ideas from photos, and I saw this stuffed chicken wing dish, you take the outer two segments of a chicken wing, arduously remove the two bones from the bigger segment, without breaking the skin, then stuff that segment with some kind of stuffing. This had me thinking I would use up some of my lamb sausage stuffing some chicken wings. Last night I bought the wings, and I also bought some skinless boneless chicken thighs, thinking I would stuff those too.

Well, when I got home, I found out that when they bone thighs, they filet them, they can't be stuffed unless you sew them back up again, and I was not in the mood for post-mortem chicken surgery, so I set the thighs aside and stuffed the wings.

Now there is a method of cooking I like to do with chicken, I suppose it is a kind of braising, but it involves adding very very little liquid, and it can make the skin-outside of the meat a very dark brown and though not "crisp," nevertheless something I will call "snappy." You start out browning the chicken in a pan over high heat in a small amount of fat, as you would at the start of, for example, coq au vin. Doesn't matter really if its big or small pieces of chicken, skin on or off, just season, flour is optional, and brown in a hot pan with a small amount of oil. When the chicken pieces are browned all over, you lower the heat, add aromatics, and cover, but add no liquid. The only moisture in the pan will be that given off by the chicken.

Cook very very slowly for an hour or so, turning the chicken pieces occasionally, and the aromatics (in the case of my wings, I just added shallots and garlic cloves) will caramalize to a dark brown and meld with the tiny bit of chicken essence, and this will cause the chicken to turn an even darker brown and infuse its concentrated flavor into the chicken.

So thats what I was doing to the wings, but they were wings, and by now I have an instinctive, unthinking urge to always make wings hot, so I also added some dried red chilis. And then I thought of the lemongrass, how it lightens and brightens everything, so before you could say "bam," there went some lemongrass into the pan. And then I thought, OK, some fish sauce, and just a bit of vinegar, because now I am thinking "hot and sour lemongrass braised stuffed chickenwings," which is what it turned out, though just so I don't forget, it was not hot enough and was not sour enough, so next time, more chilis, and right at the end, a better jolt of vinegar, and some black pepper, I want that hot and sour next time, I think it will be epic if I can make it come out tasting like what I am imagining tasting right now.

But okay, thats where I was in the evolution of the "Coq-au-miso-lemongrass" as of last night, I had these skinless boneless thighs, and I had already thought I must make coq-au-vin, thighs are really good for that, better than breasts.

But this morning, the miso was calling to me again. I am sitting at my desk, where I ostensibly work, and I started googling for miso recipes, and I quickly discover that red miso is often used in stews. And that its not unheard of to combine miso and lemongrass.

Thats all I needed to hear. My vision of tonight's creation hit me suddenly and all at once just before I began to write this.

I am going to use the same cooking method as last night, and produce that same rich base of deeply browned, caramalized shallot and garlic (it was fantastic with the lemongrass and chili, on the wings last night) and then, at the end, fortify it with the red miso, and add some stock, to make a rich, brown sauce. The accent will again be lemongrass, which I was suprised to learn can be very subtle and unobtrusive in a braise. And there will be mushrooms, baby bok choy, and maybe parsnips, that yellow would be beautiful with this, so would the sweetness. And some chilis, always the chilis.

Professionalism, AKA going through the motions even though the passion is long gone.

2008-10-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have been suffering through a long dry spell. I have not come up with anything good for too long, it started before I stopped posting, I was reduced to posting rants about Emeril's bologna and my Hippo's love of lobster, without even caring enough to describe the lobster dish there before the Hippo. It just wasn't that great (I can now see in my mind, just before the famous food-fight scene in Animal House, Mandy tells Otter, "face it, you weren't that great;" he looks directly at the camera, points to himself, and mouths, with expression of disbelief "not that great?")

I am bored, I have lost my enthusiasm, nothing interests or excites me. It always happens to me this time of year, right about when the days get so short that its dark when I get home from my commute. Is is Seasonal Affect Disorder?

Or is it fear, fear and uncertainty over what is happening with the economy? Grocery prices seem to be rising daily, its not in the news, but its alarming, everything costs $4.00 now, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread (OK, good bread). A can of Italian tomatoes costs $3.79, a pound of butter, $3.69, a single fucking lemon, 99 cents. Since when is a fucking lemon a dollar? The stock market is in a meltdown, my industry has just driven off a cliff, people are being laid off, my association is looking at a tough year. The value of my house, bought at the top of the market, is falling, my equity is disappearing. There is plenty to fear, even without the usual fears this time of year, of ghosts and witches and zombies and Palins.

Is it the election? The never-ending election that began in 2006 and now has only five days left, five days for Obama to lose his 5-point lead, thats only one point a day, it could happen, and there is Diebold and voter purging and intimidation and maybe still a November surprise. I am so obsessed, so keyed up, so twisted and expectant and dreading and hopeful, This time, this time for real, this one is critical, this one determines the future, will my son grow up and live in a totalitarian christian theocracy, in a climate of racist anti-intellectual paranoia and suspicion, or will he live in a prosperous free society that celebrates differences, values knowledge and allows opportunity for everyone? Sorry to sound so melodramatic, I am supposed to be the great Cynic, but this one, this election, this is the Big One, I am convinced.

I have filled the time the last two weeks with a few tentative steps towards a realistic, attainable goal, a way to make food my living. A Delicatessen. A european style, high end, gourmet deli and cafe and catering operation. Is it possible? Who knows. But instead of making up recipes, lately I have been making up menus.

Here is one:

Ray’s Place Deli (Provisional Working Name)

Meats
Barbecued baby back ribs
Smoked Entrée du Jour (Turkey, Chicken, Duck, Beef Brisket, Pork Shoulder)
Roast chicken
Roasted, Stuffed Poulet
Buffalo Game Hen
Stuffed Veal Breast Gallotine
Braised short ribs
Buffalo Wings
Roast Pork, Chipotle Bourbon Sauce
Satay of the Day (Chicken, pork, or shrimp)
Lamb Sausages
Stir fry of the day
Curry of the day
Ettoufe’
Lamb shanks
Osso Buco
Rissotto of the Day (saffron, mushroom, whatever is left over from the cooked meats the day before)
Lasagna of the Day

Sides
Sautéed Broccoli rabe
Asparagus with vinaigrette
Mixed Roasted Seasonal Vegetables
Roasted red peppers
Sautéed eggplant
Roasted Onions
Sauteed Mushrooms
Scalloped Potatoes
Basmati Pilaf
Israeli CousCous
Cous Cous (variations)
Pasta du Jour

Soups
Clam Chowders
Crab and Corn Chowder
Portuguese Sausage and Greens soup (I forgot the recipe)
Lentil Soup
Beef Barley and Kale
Cream of Mushroom
Dubliner Cheese and Asparagus
Chicken Noodle
Smoked Turkey and Rice Gumbo
Chili
Veal Stock

Salads
Larp – Thai Chicken Salad
Tuna Salad
Lentil Salad
Tabouli
Individual Antipasto Platter
Pasta Salad of the Day
Potato Salad
Cole Slaw
Mozzarella-Tomato
Isreali Cous Cous Pesto Salad

Dips, Spreads, Dressings
Pureed White Bean Dip
Hummus
Dubliner Cheese-Horseradish Dip
Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon
Spinach-Cheese Dip
Bruschetta
North African Bruschetta (pita, peppers, cumin)
Crab & artichoke Dip
Baba Ganoush
Cinco de Mayo
Ceasar Dressing
Blue Cheese Dressing

Sauces
Pesto Pasta
Roasted Tomato Puttanesca
Alfredo
Vodka
White Bean and Sausage
Sausage Bolognese
White Clam Sauce
Veloute
Bechamel

Specialty Sandwiches
Lamb Sausage Gyro
Thai chicken salad in Rice Flour Spring Roll Wrappers
Roast Pork and Broccoli rabe
Muffaletta
Hummus and Bean Sprout Pita, Feta, tomatoes, scallions
Prosciutto, Mozzarella, and Roasted Peppers
Roasted Vegetable Burger with Chipotle Mayo
Lamb Sausage and Peppers
Chicken Pesto Wrap
BLT with Chipotle Mayo
Vietnamese French Bread Sandwiches

Enter The Hippo

2008-10-15T05:35:00.001-07:00

The original Hippo; he likes lobster.

Baked Bologna. There is no Fucking Justice.

2008-10-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

The first time I ever discovered the Food Network, and the first time I ever saw Emeril, this is what I saw. Baked bologna, freaking troll (he has to live under a bridge, he has to, and I KNOW he has eaten billy goat gruff, you can just tell) took a whole fucking baloney and put it in the oven and baked it. Oh, he put brown sugar on it, and cut crosshatching on it to make it "classy" (I can just hear the short-fingered vulgarian every time I see the word "classy," Nojo, that one's for you), but Jesus Christ, its baked baloney. WTF? This guy is a celebrity chef, a star? Baked motherfucking Baloney?

Go see. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-live/emerils-favorite-brown-sugar-crusted-baked-bologna-recipe/index.html

Bam, my ass. Living proof that the race is not always to the swiftest, nor riches to the wise.

Baked fucking baloney.

Random Food Porn

2008-10-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

Hungry Hungry Hippos

2008-10-13T16:31:00.000-07:00

I bow to the judgment of better minds, and to Nojo's threats. Acknowledge my hippo is born.

Israeli CousCous Risotto Mediteranean

2008-10-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Gotta put a recipe up here every now and then; I feel guilty when I don't, so here's one for the vegetarians. This was a risotto made with Israeli cous cous. Its a little spicy, a little sweet, a lot mediterranean, and its a hearty comforting kinda thing for a cold day. In a small portion it could be a side for a rich dish, but to me its also the kind of thing that would make a great main dish, served with just a salad.

Isreali couscous is nothing like cous cous, the grains are pure white and much larger. Its more like pastina or acini de pepe, but its different in texture and not as apt to get gluey. It stays a little chewy on the inside after the outside gets quite soft, and for some reason the resulting texture reminds me of tapioca. Anyway, it makes a good risotto-like dish, and I needed a side with enough oomph to withstand a main dish of smoked pork chops fricasseed in a chipotle-lemon-date sauce. And I didn't want to make a seperate vegetable dish, and god knows, its not a meal without a meat, a starch, and two veggies, but I didn't want to get three pans dirty. So thats what inspired this faux-risotto in which the flavorings outweighed the cous cous which substituted for the rice and which was really neither cous cous nor rice.

So, everything I make is always driven by what I have around, and what looked good at the store. I have a supply of acorn squash picked up at the same front-yard market stand where I bought the home-grown tomatoes (they are sadly all gone now), and I had some shitake mushrooms, I almost always do, because they are the best tasting commonly available mushroom and I use them all the time. And there were onions and carrots, and I just bought some beautiful large white raisins, for just the sort of use.

So, for two, I used a third of a cup of cous cous, a third of a cup of butternut squash, diced to the same size as the cous cous, a third of a cup of shitake mushrooms, diced to the same size as the cous cous, and maybe 2 tablespoons each of carrots and onions, likewise diced. And a tablespoon of toasted pine nuts and a tablespoon or so of the golden raisins.

Also, a chicken boullion cube, a package of this cool Sazon Goya, its a picante mix with chipotle and works with absolutely everything under the sun, and some cumin, and salt and pepper.

You cook the Iraeli cous cous the same way you would any pasta, in salted boiling water, strain in a wire strainer, stop the cooking a little early, and let them go ahead and clump together, you want the starch to bind it all up like a risotto.

Heat a saute pan, add a teaspoon of olive oil, saute the squash first for a litttle while, then add the onions and carrots, then the shitake mushrooms. When they all just right, add a half cup of water, half a boullion cube, a sprinkle or so of the sazon Goya, a half teaspoon or so of ground cumin, and the raisins and nuts, once its boiling-simmering, add the cous cous, and stir thoroughly. Reduce the heat and just keep stirring until you like the consistency. I may have added some grated parmesan, but then again, I may not have, so you can do likewise.

Food Taxonomy Chart

2008-10-13T11:24:00.001-07:00

Click for a legible view.

There's Nothing New Under the Sun

2008-10-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

All is vanity, saith the preacher. Or as the Bare Naked Ladies sang, "Its All Been Done." I mentioned earlier my belief that there are really only about a dozen "recipes" in the world, that all the seeming variety of dishes and foods is a result of myopia, a tendency to see only the trees and not the forest, something which is easy with food, as our relationship with it is so intimate, and individual preferences are so strong and so often based on tiny differences in flavor or texture.

In my area of Joisey, for example, its easy to get into an hour-long debate (argument, screaming match, fistfight, this is important stuff) over pizza, which will go into amazing detail as to different styles and within styles, different effects and characteristics, and the relative merits and demerits which should be accorded these variations. Thick or thin crust? Thats not even a debate, thin crust; and the bottom should be just slightly scorched and crispy. Sauce is of course vital, not too much, and the quality of the cheese is of utmost importance; most strip-mall garbage pizzas use horrid, oily, industrial mozzarella, and too-much of it, creating a leaden, grainy mass of disgusting smegma, covered with pools of oil. Dreck pizza. Real pizza has a thin crust, just a smear of an aromatic, herby sauce, and just enough cheese, not too much, not too little, cooked till not just melted, but slightly browned with some crsipy areas, and a generous crust around the outside edge with giant bubbles in the dough there which turn dark brown and crispy. The product sold in Pizza Hut, everyone around here would agree, simply isn't pizza. Its "Pizza"(tm). That foodstuff which is consumed in Chicago under the name "pizza" is a mystery, something closer to lasagna than pizza. Pineapple does not belong on pizza, acceptable toppings are sausage, pepperoni, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, and anchovies. Period. If you disagree on any of these points, I pity your benighted ignorance.

Clearly, the closer you examine something, the more you know about it, the more you become a connoisseur, the more lines you will draw, and the more divisions and definitions you will employ. Humans seem to love distinguishing, making distinctions, it seems to come naturally, and to produce a satisfaction somewhere within. Stepping back and trying to see hidden relations among superficially different things seems harder to do, less natural. People look at me like I am insane when I insist that chili, good old chili con carne, is the same as coq au vin, is the same as tahini, is the same as osso buco, is the same as thai green curry, is the same as beef stew, is the same as pot roast. But they are, they are in their most important characteristics the same recipe, they just vary proportions or substitute ingredients. Here is the recipe: take meat, brown it in oil, add liquid and vegetables or legumes, and spices, cook for a long time over low heat. The meat might be beef, pork, chicken, lamb, veal; it might be ground, it might be cut up, it might consist of whole chops or whole cuts. The liquid might be tomatoes, it might be stock, it might be wine, it might be coconut milk. The vegetables and legumes could be anything under the sun, likewise the spices. Its all one recipe. Meat slow-cooked in liquid, with more or less vegetables, herbs, and spices. I call it "stew."

Here is a rough, preliminary listing of the fundamental recipes, the deep roots of cuisine, the Ur-recipes common to every culinary language:

Meats subjected to dry heat. Barbecued, grilled, broiled, pan-broiled, saute'd, and roasted meats (flesh, fish, or fowl). This includes roast beef, grilled steaks or chops, scallopini, stir-fries, meatloaf, some of the simplest of the simple things, but also some surprises. This category can overlap with the stews, depending on how you look at it, my distinction is the difference between a meat cooked dry and then sauced (a stir fry) and a meat cook inn the liquid (a curry). A subcategory would be vegetables subjected to dry heat.

Grains subjected to dry heat. Breads, leavened or unleavened, tortillas, pitas, pizzas, cakes, pastries, baked potatoes (I don't care, its the same as bread, imagine the potato is a single, giant wheat berry), popcorn, pancakes.

Grains boiled. Rice, pasta, cream-o-wheat, oatmeal, risotto, polenta, mashed potatoes.

Vegetables boiled.

Stew (see above).

Soup. Foodstuff floating in water. Or pureed into and thickening the water.

Sauces.

Is there anything out there that doesn't fall into these categories?

Post-Apocalyptic Food Porn

2008-10-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Available from Costco, but Act Now, supplies are running out! Look at the fabulous meals, including "western stew," "potato ba-kon" and "corn chowder."

Purina human feed would be cheaper, I think.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11219554&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC

How to Make Risotto

2008-10-08T08:41:00.000-07:00

I have been told, by persons who shall remain nameless, that my recipes are too vague, that they fail to provide enough detail to allow someone to follow along and recreate the dish. Well, my response to that is, tough shit, this isn't a recipe book, its an outlet for my narcissim, in which I preen and pose and show off all my wonderful opinions about food; my opinions amuse and fascinate me endlessly, so they must do the same for everyone else, no?

Having acted out and given voice to my petty rebellion, I will now address the valid criticism by offering an in-depth, opinionated, guide and master recipe for the making of risotto.

Risotto is wonderful, and once you have made one risotto, you can make them all. You can make them dry-ish, you can make them wet and soupy, its a wonderful comfort food, a main course or a luxurious side dish, its great leftover for lunch the next day, its simple, but sophisticated, its just cool. If you aren't much of a cook and can only make 3 or 4 dishes, risotto must be one of them. For the bachelors out there, trust me, invite her to your place for a dinner of ceaser salad, a risotto, and one of those oozey little chocolate cakes, and you will be in there, guaranteed.

I am going to describe what I call "plain" risotto, I really don't know what it is properly called, but its risotto with cream and parmesan cheese. Its mac and cheese, really; whats the difference? A starch, milk, cheese, same texture, essentially identical. Thats a theme I will be returning to over and over, there are only about a dozen dishes in the world, 99% of the recipes out there that claim to be unique and different dishes are just minor variations on a very few basics. Spotting the relations is fun, like discovering the cognates in the languages descended from Indo-European.

Step One: Assemble the Ingredients

Anthony Bourdain, whom I worship, worships the mis en place. Literally, he does. It is a chef's expression which means "everything in its place," more or less, and it refers to the process of gathering all necessary ingredients, measuring the appropriate amounts, and arranging them in reach. It is more than half the work of cooking.

1 cup arborio rice (fat round rice)

5 cups chicken or vegetable stock (no purist here, canned, boullion cubes, homemade, whatever)
The stock must be in a pan, on the stove, simmering.

1 whole large shallot, minced fine

2 tablespoons of butter (Or olive oil, or your fat of choice, I could imagine using toasted sesame oil or rendered beef fat, for some really interesting flavor nuances)

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup grated parmesan (I do care about this, this is the main flavor of this dish, and the difference between Kraft and real imported Reggiano is the difference between Applebees and Lutece.)

Step Two: Saute the Shallot

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the shallots and gently sweat until soft and translucent, its not really sauteeing here, I just liked the alliteration.

Step Three: Fry the Rice

Now add the rice to the pan, raise the heat a little, and stir constantly for a while, you will be familiar with this step if you have ever made Rice-A-Roni. What you are doing is partially cooking the outer layer of starch, so that the rice grains, as they cook, will retain their independence and not clump into a glutinous mass, an essential characteristic of Risotto, so this is an important step. The rice is ready when all the grains have become slightly translucent; NO BROWNING ALLOWED, its a soft process, low heat. The butter should not turn brown.

Step Four: Add the Stock and Stir

Now you are going to spend about a half hour pouring in the stock, a little at a time, and stirring almost constantly, let it alone for no more than a minute or two at a time. Add the hot, simmering stock about a half a ladleful at a time, and stir until its almost all absorbed by the rice, then repeat. Over and over.

Now comes the tricky part: deciding when its done. Its tricky, because you have to make your determination before its done; you have to decide when to stop adding stock before the rice is completely cooked, because you are going to add more liquid, the cream, in a minute. Well, its not that hard, really, because you can always add more, but you know, if you want to do it with panache, you don't want to mess around like you never made it before.

You have a broad range of discretion, and you have options with regard to two completely different attributes; one is the toothiness of the rice, and the other is the soupiness of the risotto. Some like their rice to be quite toothy, chewy, distinctly hard on the inside. Others like their rice to be nice and soft, and somewhere in between is always a safe choice. You determine this by testing, chewing on samples until you like what you feel in your mouth, but not quite, because you also have to compensate for the fact the rice is going to continue to cook for some time after you stop cooking it. As to soupiness, this really is a distinct thing, you can, within limits, serve hard little al dente rice either soupy or dry, and likewise with the well done rice. Of course, the rice in all soupy risottos will tend with time to get soft. Soupiness is determined by how much liquid you add, and when.

Step Five: Cheese and Cream

Stir in the cheese, stir in the cream. Serve. Accept the slavish compliments of those fortunate enough to be witness to your performance art, to the transient beauty of your work.

The variations of this are endless. You can add lots of thin sliced mushrooms, the more flavory, the better, and hey, add a dash of truffle oil, why not!. Or add a cup or two of fresh grated pumpkin. Its October, steal one off your neighbors porch, or use up the pieces after your kids carve yours. Delete the cheese and add pumpkin spice so it tastes like pumpkin pie; I never did this, but it sounds good to me. Use different cheeses. How about a Humboldt Fog and Sensimilla Risotto, anyone?

Get Yer Smokin Hot Food Porn Here!

2008-10-07T12:04:00.000-07:00

Boneless short ribs braised in a mediterranean mole, with polenta, the povertiest-poverty food on earth, and now that its enriched, no chance of getting pellagra! One single shitake mushroom between Mrs. P and I, its still poverty food. There's nothing like the feeling of eating like a king for pennies!

Poverty Food Porn

2008-10-07T11:48:00.001-07:00

This is lamb shanks and lobster rissotto, the ultimate in poverty food, my perfect poverty surf and turf. The lamb shanks I always have in the freezer, I buy them whenever I see them. The lobster, that was a fluke (budum dum). I had splurged the day before, Mrs. Prom and I had lob ster, I was mad at Bush or something and needed to treat myself, as is my wont, and it was probably on sale, but we did not delve into the bodies, I so I saved them. The next day I carefully picked them and came up with a good half-cup or so of nice chunks of lobster meat, and I still had the shells, and so, I thought, rissotto, this would stretch the flavor of the lobster out maginficently. You should know the drill, don't make me teach you, minced shallot, butter, saute, add arborio rice, cook the rice a little like its rice-a-roni, of course you already have stock made and simmering, 4 or 5 cups for each cup of rice, start stirring in the stock, little at a time, stir stir stir, towards the end, add the lobster, add some tomato paste (you didn't think a few shells and a half cup of meat turns your rissotto such a pretty color, did you?) cream, and I added some brie, I believe, brie tastes like lobster, you know, I am not kidding here, I also make "mock lobster rissotto," this same recipe without the lobster, you can hardly tell the difference. Alright, yes you can.

The lamb is pretty much the recipe given below in Poverty Food.

Poverty Food

2008-10-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

I get paid every two weeks. As soon as I get paid I go out and buy a liter of Hendricks Gin, bottles of decent wine, lobster tails, truffles, veal chops, whatever catches my fleeting fancy, for I owe it to myself to indulge myself, dammit. Half of my household budget is gone by Monday, the rest is spoken for, and I am imitating Mario Battali, living off of hooves and entrails, by the next week (I must give credit to Bourdain, who calls Battali and chefs like him "lips and hooves" chefs, those who love to take the most humble ingredients and create magic with them). So my life is a series of fortnightly cycles, veering between lobster, foie gras, and Veuve Cliquot, and the humblest of poverty food served with box wine.

So, today I am going to talk about my poverty food discoveries and inventions. Its getting harder and harder to economize, this much is for sure, as the Emeril-watching foodie masses (fucking johnny-come-lately bastards, I was here first, you fucks) have started snapping up all the veal shanks and skirt steaks and hangar steaks and who knows what else has been a bistro-comfort food fad lately. But there are still some neglected meats out there.

Lamb shanks. I can still get big old lamb shanks for $3 or $4 each, and one feeds two people, at least two people whose new years resolution was smaller portions. These are tough and ugly, filled with connective tissue and sinew, but when slow cooked, in a sorta mediterranean-morrocan style with beef stock, maybe some cumin, some tomatoes, garlic, onion, anise, beans, and something sweet, dried apricots, currants, even just raisins, and served with plain couscous, they are just to die.

Lamb ribs. These are a very odd item my grocery store throws out there every now and then, almost the entire rib section of a lamb, they look like a whole slab of pork spareribs, just smaller. These sell for about $0.99 a pound. They are very very fatty and rich and artery-clogging, but its possible to render them into a real treat, again it calls for long, slow cooking to coax out all the fat and leave only meltingly tender lamb. Genuine barbecue-smoking is best, but that would take hours and cost more in charcoal and hardwood chunks than a years supply of these things, so instead, a long, slow braise in the oven, in a tightly sealed pan with some kind of liquid, I am fond of oriental sweet-hot things on ribs, some thai sweet and hot sauce, some Soy Vey teriyaki, one of my favorite things on earth, some pineapple juice, even orange juice, for just a bit of acid. Then when the fat is almost gone, a short time on the gas grill, basting with your sauce of choice, again, I prefer homemade, clear, zingy asian tasting barbecue sauces for lamb, and the result is something unique, the texture and feel of eating pork ribs, except its lamb, smoky, tender, falling-off-the bone-lamb, and its so rich that 2 or 3 ribs is a whole serving, s a rack could feed 4 or 5, for $3.00.

Veal Breasts. A veal breast is a big chunk of the veal's rib section, I am not sure where it comes from, but I think its forward and up high, and its about the size of a laptop computer. These also sell for $0.99 a pound, but they are big so a whole one can be $5. There will be 4 or 5 very large rib bones, and on one side of the ribs, one or two inches of meat, I believe this is what would be the brisket, but when its veal, they don't bother to cut it out and sell it as veal brisket, they leave it attached to the bone. Most recipes suggest taking this big hunk of meat, slicing under that slab of meat, and stuffing it with something, and then braising it forever in a huge braising pan. I don't like this, its a crude, ugly dish, and there are massive amounts of fat in with the meat, it actually looks like a slab of bacon with strips of meat running through the fat. So instead, I get out the filet knife and go to work, first remove the whole slab of meat and fat from the bones, then trim the fat, as much as possible, from the meat, until you have a square, flat slab of meat, say 3/4 inch thick and still the size of a laptop. You can take this, lay it flat, season it, throw chopped garlic and fresh herbs on it, maybe even some proscuitto or a piece of bacon, then roll it up like a joint and wrap securely with kitchen twine. Season the exterior, and then sear it all over in a good pan. Hmmmm. Then you get out your pressure cooker. You chop up all those huge rib bones, because just as a side benefit making this dish, you are going to wind up with a quart and a half or so of real veal stock, which you feeze and use a tablespoon at a time in every single thing you cook because it adds richness and gelatin to everything. Throw the bones in the pressure cooker with bay leaf and onions and celery and carrots, then add water, a few chicken boullion cubes, season, and place the rolled up veal breast in there, and pressure cook for an hour. When its done, you have many options, you can make a nice, white stew of some kind, even a pasta sauce, with some of the stock, shitake mushrooms and onions, thats good, lots of herbs; or you can put the roast back in the oven for just a bit and serve more as a roast, with whatever on the side you wish. Lots of variations on this I will take up later. Save that stock.

Prosciutto de Parma for $3.99 a pound. Yup, available almost everywhere, if there is a large enough Italian-American population that your local deli stocks and goes through prosciutto, and if yhour local deli is dumb. The deli stops slicing the prosciutto once it gets down to about the size of your hand, nobody wants to pay $15 a pound for little pieces of prosciutto. So these ends get sold in the "ends" bin, usually for $3.99 a pound. You're chances of coming across one in the bin, however, are low (or if you live in elite environs, your store might be the kind that would never do such a thing as put the deli "ends" out for sale), so you've just got to ask. Nothing like carrying home your own little miniature whole prosciutto. I love the stuff and put it on salads all the time, and use it to flavor or stuff other dishes. Its good to have your own little slicer, by the way, that and the pressure cooker are instruments I could not live without.

So thats it for poverty food for today. I know, I know, it was all baby animals, I can't figure this out, I suppose I have PETA to thank for the fact that the cheapest cuts of meat anymore are the off-cuts of veal and lamb, they are just too politically incorrect to become a fad, unlike the hangar steak and such. Oh, for something from a grown-up animal, there is chuck eye steak. Chuck eyes look a little like a filet mignon, taste much better, are quite tender, are the perfect size for a sensible portion, and usually sell for only $3.00 a pound or so. Great, great buy.

If the economy continues to melt down at this rate, I will soon do more on the topic, maybe something on where to find poke sally, and how to remove the anal glands from a muskrat.

2008-10-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Thats a veal chop, a thick, beautiful veal chop, yes, product of misery, but sooooo good, I cannot stay away, at least I honor the veal, I treat it reverently and with respect, worshipfully, even, honoring the soul of the animal whose death allows me to live. Thats my line of bullshit and I am sticking with it, sometimes I even believe it.

Its a pan-seared veal chop cooked to medium rare, then set aside, while olive oil and butter were added to the pan with chopped garlic and diced shallots, followed by sliced shitake mushrooms, canellini beans, and a cut-up potato. After sauteeing, browning, sweating and all that mysterious stuff has gone on among these ingredients, I added a cup of veal stock, a large pinch of saffron, and a diced tomato of the orange variety. Then the waiting veal chop went back into the barely simmering stew for just a few minutes, not to cook further, just to heat to a proper serving temperature. Its a flavorful comfort-food stew with lots of provencale influence, italian influence, the broth drenched with flavors and herbs, caramelised pan searing residue and browned garlic and shallots, basil and thyme (did I mention the thyme?) and black pepper and a tiny touch of cayenne (everything has some cayenne in it) and garlic and the smoky woodsiness of shitake mushrooms and the lovely texture of the beans and the smooth creaminess of potatos, and the saffron, the mysterious saffron flavor gently suffusing all. Yum. But its also got this sinful, enormous, beautiful, sybaritic, self-indulgently rich, ethically repugnant and amazing veal chop sitting there in it as well and each bite of the tender veal is bathed in that same broth and you just don't care, you don't, because you really are reverently, respectfully, worshipping it as you eat it. At least thats how I eat it.

2008-10-06T13:08:00.000-07:00

2008-10-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes again, and crabs and tomatoe essence martinis. Again, a relic of happier times when the august sun was hot.

New Jersey is actually known for its truck farms, fresh vegetable farms, and especially, tomatoes, and sweet corn. There is a reason Campbells soup is headquartered here, and their biggest seller since time imemorial is tomatoe soup. My brother’s in laws have a farm in south jersey, and they have their entire tomato crop under contract to a high end salsa company, Green Mountain Gringo. Jersey tomatoes are the best. And at the farmstands you can get sweet corn picked that morning, you stand in the field when you buy it, the only way to have sweet corn.
Another product for which we are rightly famed is Blue claw crabs from the Barnegat Bay. I catch them in my backyard. They are a nuisance, I prefer to go to the bayman’s shack across the highway and buy picked backfin crabmeat. Heaven.
So I wanted to combine all these Jersey summer treats. I made a pure New Jersey salsa, diced fresh jersey tomatoes, put them in a bowl with a little salt and that beautiful nectar, clear liquid tomatoe essence seeps out, its the most heavenly liquid on earth. Sometimes I take a few tablespoons of that essence, which takes a couple of pounds of tomatoes to produce, and strain it out, and put it in a cocktail shaker with black pepper and just a few slivers of scotch bonnet pepper, and a few sprigs of cilantro, and muddle it, then add good vodka and shake with ice, and make tomatoe essence bloody mary martinis.

But, to get back to the recipe, so far I have diced tomatoes. I take a couple of ears of sweet corn, shuck them, and put them on the grill to roast, just a bit, gently, just browned. Then cut the corn from the ears and add to the tomatoes. Then I dice some jalapenos very fine, throw that in. Then a good garlic clove, lay it on the cuting board, and smash it with the blade of my chef’s knife. Then sprinkle a bit of kosher salt on it, and turn the knife upside down, and using the back of the knife, crush the grains of salt into the garlic, carefully, over and over, until it is paste. Scrape that up and throw it in. Dice a little bit of fresh sweet green peppers and put that in, and the chiffonade some scallions, and chop a big handful of cilantro. Add some kind of acid, I am not yet sure whether it is best with lime or lemon or vinegar, vinegar makes it more genuinely a northeast thing, lime makes it more south of the border. Splash some olive oil on it, oil can extract some flavors the tomato essence cant, and chill it in the fridge.
When its cold, add jumbo lump crabmeat. As much as your budget allows. Serve it over a good lettuce, with some avocado slices. I have invented Jersey-Mex. You can serve steamed, chilled shrimp or lobster this way, too. Avocados would be a nice addition.

2008-10-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

I wrote this back when I was happy, back in the summer when the real tomatoes were still to be had and the world was not so black:

Know what’s the best thing on earth on top of a sliced home-grown sweet, tart, juicy, beautiful beefsteak tomato? It just may be basil pesto. Sure, its old hat, it was one of the first food fads back before the Food Network, and everyone OD’ed on it in the 80s, but enough time has passed for it to become retro-chic, I think. And really, what is better on top of tomatoes than a little olive oil, basil, anchovy, and parmesan?
It’s August in New Jersey and I am overrun with one of the greatest joys of summer, home-grown tomatoes. I don’t grow them, but I have discovered several of the best of all vegetable stands, not the farm stand, but the front-yard picnic table with an honor box at which some hobbyist sells his home-grown tomatoes that were raised in the backyard stand You get the true, genuine home-grown tomato experience without ever touching dirt, and you know they’re genuine because you can see the tomato plants off in the distance. Its nirvana to me. My kitchen is bursting with them; I have an infestation of fruit flies, they rise in clouds from the bowl of tomatoes on my counter and dive-bomb my wine glass as soon as I pour. Makes for an interesting texture to my wine. But I digress, the only downside is, what to do with this surfeit of riches, you see, I cannot stop myself from stopping at these stands, I can’t control the urge. So I have to eat them.
As I was making my usual salad, with beautiful sliced beefsteak tomatoes, which I usually top with various sizes and textures of things like basil and anchovies and some cheese, usually mozzarella, the hard crumbly version of ricotta is great, too, and olive oil.
And as I was about to start, I realized, that’s just a deconstructed pesto, so why not go all the way and make a pesto?
So I made a pesto designed just for the purpose of complementing home-grown August in New Jersey tomatoes, a little spicier and more rich than a typical pesto. I made it with olive oil, crushed, smashed garlic, lots of fresh basil, freshly grated real parmesan cheese, pine nuts, a little bit of hot red pepper, a few anchovies, and a teaspoon of the oil from the anchovy can, and lemon juice, all just pureed in a food processor. Make an insalata caprese, sliced tomatoes topped with sliced fresh mozzarella, just a bit of salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and its your choice whether to use an acid at all, and whether it should be lemon, wine vinegar, or balsamic. And then, as the last ingredient, the climax of the dish, speckle it all over with this pesto. The brilliant green pesto looks nice sprinkled, dotted, and drizzled from a squeeze bottle.
Its actually harder to think of things which wouldn’t benefit from a spurt of this pesto, than things that would. You can drizzle it all over a grilled steak, or a grilled or pan seared filet of grouper or halibut. It’s a pasta sauce, it can add richness and flavor to other pasta sauces, spread it on a sandwich, add it to plain vinaigrette for a great salad dressing, what the hell, put it on an omelette.
And as long as you have this pesto hanging around, you can try this amazing, rich, complex, but still fresh and simple pasta sauce: In a medium saute’ pan, do a gentle, slight browning thing with a tablespoon of olive oil, two minced or finely sliced garlic cloves, one finely sliced fresh tabasco or similar small thin hot red pepper. Then add one large tomato, diced fine, and two or three tablespoons of the pesto sauce. Take from the heat, there’s no need to cook it, just soften the tomato, then mash it with a fork. Add black pepper to your liking. Then add two tablespoons of grated hard ricotta (ricotta salata), and a bunch of chifffonaded basil. Cook two portions of plain old thick spaghetti, preferably DeCecco, and when its done, drain and throw it in the saucepan with the sauce. Turn on the heat just to medium and toss the pasta and sauce for a couple of minutes. The sauce is so complex and rich, despite being composed of all fresh ingredients and hardly cooked at all. It tastes almost like a meat sauce, somehow, its got umami. I think its the pesto. Pesto is Italian soy sauce.

2008-10-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

Food? Politics?

2008-10-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

Everything sucks. I can't even find any joy in looking forward to my nightly gourmandizing. The election news does nothing for me but make me more bleak. Summer is over and the real tomatoes are no more.

Thats clams and mussels roasted with grape tomatoes, garlic, herbs, cayenne.

Big fucking deal. Roasting does beat steaming, boiling in sauce, all that, it concentrates the flavors.