2/25 Soy Poached Mackerel and Pickled Celery Root

I'm working a little outside my comfort zone on this one. Yesterday I bought a mackerel fillet at the Japanese grocery store. I decided to poach the mackerel in a soy/marin (japanese cooking wine) broth and made a very thinned out mayonnaise sauce with sambal (chili paste) and yuzu (asian lemony citrus). The fact that it didn't really ever thicken up was my fault, but in the end worked quite well with the fish and wasn't too heavy. According to my unhappy roommates the result was that the entire house smelled really bad (to me it just smelled like soy... but whatever).

Along with the fish I made some "pickled" celery root. It's really just celery root cooked in just a bit of slightly sweet lemon broth. Not really a pickle, but it cut through the fattiness of the fish nicely.

I also started some "real" brined pickles which should be ready in a weeks time or so... never made those before either, so we'll see how they turn out.

2/19 Salmon Tomliatelle

Question: You've got an egg, some left over fish and an hour to cook dinner - what do you do? An omelet? Nah, that just won't cut it tonight. So with a little inspiration from old friend Jamie Oliver here's my solution to the problem.

I got home from work at 5:45. After taking off my jacket I immediately mixed 3/4 cup flour with an egg. I added in a squirt of tomato paste and a heap teaspoon (as Jamie would say) of fresh ground pepper. I gave it a whirl in the mini-cuisinart for 45 second and formed a dough. Some would call this a pasta dough. I let the dough rest 45 minutes in a covered bowl, which apparently develops the glutens or something technical like that. After 45 minutes I brought my water to a boil and started running the dough through the pasta machine. This takes just under 10 minutes - and I'm pretty bad at it. Miraculously, in that time the (well-salted) water had just come to a boil. I cut the pasta sheets into thickish strips. Tagliatelle? I'm not sure. I prefer to call them tomliatelle (because there's tomato in them of course).

In any event, I dunked my pasta in the water and quickly made a sauce - butter, parseley, capers, anchovies, yuzu (more on this another day - but it's an asian citrus fruit like a very flowery lemon) and the leftover steamed salmon from last night. Nothing here needs to cook - so 2 minutes on high heat was sufficient to melt the butter. Turns out this is exactly how long the pasta needed too - crazy how these things work out! Once done, everything was combined onto one glorious plate. Tomato-pepper tomliatelle and salmon. BAM! Parmesan? Nah... call me old-school but a drizzle of olive oil is the only other thing this dish needed.

Dinner was served at 6:43.

chicken a la delicious

Not sure what to call this one. It was inspired from a few different sources and came out pretty well. I think we'll work up from the bottom. First, a base of.... polenta! Nothing fancy here, just some salt, pepper, olive oil and.... polenta!! Go figure! On top of that we have a Zuni Cafe radicchio and parseley salad with bread crumbs, anchovy vinaigrette, and a grated boiled egg? yup, grated. Apparently Judy Rodgers knows what she's doing. Next up we have the hero of the night - roasted chicken with a parmesan/breadcrumb coating. "This reasonably slowly roasted chicken was butterflied and baked with tender love and care." Sorry, just practicing my marketing skills... As it turns out, despite being Italian, parmesan ain't half bad. And finally, to pull everything together, we have baked onions and bacon which provided a nice cushion for the chicken to roast on and an even better topping. I did not need inspiration for the bacon... All in all, i think this dish deserves a solid A-. Very tasty stuff.

2/4 Vancouver: Guu!

Guu with Garlic... or maybe its Garlic Guu... I'm honestly not sure what this place is actually called, but it pretty much wrapped up the best day of eating ever. This is one of three related Izakaya restaurants in Vancouver. In short this is a Japanese tapas restaurant - but really, it's so much more.

Unlike the last meal, when I felt like Rachel Ray getting advice from the host at Salt (see below); this time, I felt like Anthony Bourdain, eating more food than one would think possible in a single sitting, while drinking my fair share of sake and simply taking in all the craziness around me for two solid hours.

When you first walk in to Guu, the first thing you notice is the noise. I literally felt dizzy after 5 minutes while waiting for a seat and had to step outside for a bit. It's loud. Every single order is yelled out by every member of the staff from one corner of the dining area to the back of the kitchen. Actually it's not just the orders... every time someone enters or leaves the room, sits, gets up or is brought a dish - it's announced by the entire staff. To be perfectly honest, this actually cut my appetite at first. You really have to experience it to understand how loud it can get. However, after a few shots of sake, this all becomes very enjoyable.

Anyways, on to the food. After I sat down at the end of the bar, my appetite quickly returned. I started off with an order of Ocha-Zuke (a Japanese rice porridge of sorts) and an order of Ton-Tore (salt cooked pork cheeks with a ponzu sauce and daikon). Both were excellent. The Ocha-Zuke was topped with Salmon and seaweed while the pork cheeks were very tender and extremely flavorful - kindda like the best pork chop you could imagine and then maybe a bit better than that.

When I'd made my way through those, I quickly ordered the Kaki-Mayo-Yaki (baked oysters with spicy cod roe, corn, and mayonnaise served in the shell) which were amazing. The oysters themselves were good, but the dish as a whole really puts any other baked oyster dish to shame. Really, really, good.

Before I was done with the two oysters, I had the courage to order Agedashi-Dofu (deep fried tofu in a soy based broth topped with spicy cod roe, green onions, and dried seaweed). Now anyone who knows me realizes this is very uncharacteristic. The reason I opted to go with the dofu was simple: the chowhound post that had directed me to Guu in the first place had described this dish as a highlight despite the diner's ambivalence towards tofu. As it turns out - they were right. This was great. I didn't think it was possible, but I really, really enjoyed the tofu. The broth was very salty and the fried tofu was a perfect contrast. Really great.

I was on a roll now and couldn't give up just yet. I had room for one more dish. And so in came the sweet shrimp sashimi. Fantastic. Actually, better than fantastic. These were ridiculously fresh and whatever it was that I sucked out of the heads was so sweet and briny I could have easily eaten ten more. There's no way I can do these justice so I'll just say that contrary to what others may have written once upon a day, you can have great seafood on Mondays.

So there it is - a truly tremendous meal. Memorable, simple, inspired and inspiring. Everything a meal should be.

2/4 Vancouver: Salt Tasting Room

We're gonna try something a bit different and blog about some of our dining adventures in addition to our standard cooking posts. We're gonna try to keep these interesting and only post about dinners that are particularly inspiring or memorable for some other reason. I think we're also going to stay away from "reviewing" the restaurant. This is more about what inspires us.

I'm gonna start this off with my first meal in Vancouver, where I'm spending a few days. I solicited some recommendations from the chowhound message boards and received a number of great ideas. I definitely recommend this approach if you want a local's take on great food when traveling. So off I went this morning in search of the Salt Tasting Room. Located in a back alley in the Gastown district, this is definitely not something you just stumble across. Basically the concept is that you create your own tasting plate from an ever changing list of charcuterie, cheese and condiments. There's a great wine list and they will pair wine's with your tasting plate.

I was one of three patrons in the restaurant - which actually worked out really well. I saddled up to the bar where the plates are prepared and chatted it up with the host who had plenty of great recommendations. He let me try some free extra bits and pieces and even served me a free glass of Merlot from British Columbia. He also gave me some other great dining tips. I'd be lying if I told you I didn't feel like Rachel Ray... My plate included Beef Tongue, Jamon de Ardennes (a very smoky cured ham) and Ginocchiaona (a salami cured with tiny bits of orange zest). All three were awesome and locally produced - the salami was especially tasty; the orange really made the difference. My condiments included Guinness mustard, quince paste and cipollini onions - all served with a big basket of bread. Not bad for $15.

All in all, I couldn't have started my stay in Vancouver any better. If my remaining meals are anywhere near this great, it'll be a great trip.

1/26 Black and White Pizza

I've been sick for almost a week now and there appears to be no end in sight. Not sure what I have, but it's been a while since I've had anything quite this bad. The worst part is I don't even know who gave it to me, so I can't blame anyone! Anyway, I wasn't cooking much earlier in the week because I felt tired and groggy. Sitting around the house doing nothing has gotten rather boring though, so I went and picked up a few things at the megamart today. The goal was to take advantage of the pizza stone I received for Christmas and had yet to use.

What I ended up concocting was nothing short of delicious. I call it a black and white pizza. I made the dough with some regular old flour, yeast and water. After kneading and proofing, I topped it with Italian Fontina, fresh ricotta w/ hot pepper flakes, wood ear mushrooms (a mild somewhat chewy yet thin mushroom) and caramelize shallots. And that's about it. The mushroom add an interesting texture and I certainly liked the "black and white" look. I'm glad I didn't make it red all over though.

1/22 mughal mushroom curry

Oh man. Start this out by stir frying raisins, a green apple from the backyard, and blanched almonds (this gets fluffed into the jasmine rice).

I have a great cookbook called Silk Road Cooking (so far, its crowning achievement is a fava bean braise with dill and poached eggs). This curry is one of its offerings, and it was quite good. The basic components are sliced white and brown mushrooms, onions, 1 tomato (canned, this time of year), celery, garlic, ginger, serrano chiles*, and whole milk yogurt. Seasonings are 2 tsps garam masala and 2 tsps curry powder, salt, and pepper.

*I decided not to seed the chiles (2 of them) since I like spicy. Wow. This was hot. Hot. But in a good way. Damn. I had seconds.

1/20 spinach and goat cheese custard

I'm really trying to get better at making homemade pastry crusts. A good pastry crust is both one of the world's simplest things and seemingly the most fleeting.

This was a decent use of a big bunch of spinach, scallions, garlic, and a nice goat cheese. I think the crust still needs more work - although this was my first version with veggie shortening (sure, I used the Spectrum naturals organic version, but its still mechanically pressed palm oil). It needs to be, like, browner, and more flaky. And, like, it needs to be higher up over the edge of the pan so I don't leak out custard guts all over the pan it was sitting in, forming some sort of horrible, burnt egg/fetus/thing.

01/09 Seasonal Chicken with Beer!

After being blamed for Heather's inability to post anything or carry the weight while I was busy with other... how should I say... endeavors, I decided I should take matters into my own hands and cook up a little somethin' somethin' for the kids. Truth be told, I don't actually have kids. But I digress. I've actually been cooking from time to time over the last couple months, but there were certainly weeks where I was living off of burritos and Indian food. I even grew to like the Anna's Veggie Burrito, which is a sure sign of needing to get back into my own kitchen.

Anywho... I was sitting on the Red Line last week, flanked by two people with very large rear ends, considering my options for dinner. I had a bunch of random things in the fridge including a whole chicken that didn't seem like they would amount to a whole heck of a lot. It being winter time, and me living in the northeast, there's not much in the way of fresh fruits and veggies this time of year. Then all of the sudden I had one of those "light bulb" moments, just like in a cartoon - in fact it was just the lights in the train that had turned back on, allowing the fat people to whip out their 'south beach diet' books. Anyway, my inspiration was a Mario Batali dish I'd made a while back, though I never referred to back to it and actually, I couldn't even really remember what it was.

Basically, what I came up with was chicken braised in Harpoon Winter Warmer beer. Yup, beer. Into the dish went two clementines, a bunch of green olives, pancetta, extra pancetta fat for good measure, some celery, one onion, maybe two - i forget, fennel/cumin/celery seeds, salt&pepper. Now I know what you're thinking - "that sounds awfully weird!" and "what Batali dish could possibly inspire that crazy concoction?". Well, I can't really speak to your first thought, other than to reassure you that it came together nicely fed me for several days. As for the Batali dish - after some searching, I realized what it was that I was thinking about on that bone-crushing train ride back from work. It's a lamb shank braised in white wine & tomato sauce with olives and oranges... not exactly the same thing, but you know what - the final product was pretty similar.

So there you have it, my first post since mid October. Now that I have my life back to some degree, I'm hoping I'll have more time to entertain you and make you hungry. So keep checking back as we bring this blog back to life!

1/14 fresh pasta with lemon/onion/pepper sauce

Its been exactly one month which is way to long to go between posts. I've been cooking this whole time, and plenty of decent things too. I blame the holidays and Tom and his stupid b-school distractions. Tom! Let's get back to basics!

And when I say basics, I mean butter.

Here is a very simple Mario Batali dish that can be thrown together in no time at all. It is sort of an italian/mexican hybrid dish; a tribute to the many mexican cooks who work in every kind of restaurant and influence flavors and preparation. The basic idea is to saute onions and jalapenos until nice and tender, throw in about 4 lemons worth of juice and zest, and then melt in one whole stick of butter. Just in case you want to know what a stick of butter looks like melting into a sauce, this is it:

**hint** lots of fresh ground black pepper is important here.

Toss with fresh parmesan and pecorino cheese:

Don't worry: I ate a huge portion of leftover brussel sprouts with pistachio nuts. That's right. It's healthy.

12/15 two winter soups

Have you ever looked into your refrigerator and been truly horrified by the amount of produce that is lurking therein? I guess I haven't been as vigilant as is needed on the cooking front, and this is the season of bulky, space-taking leafy greens (arugula, cabbage, spinach, beets and their greens, etc.)

This soup, of the roasted carrot variety, used up onions, carrots, and potatoes, roasted until very caramelized with garlic, bay leaves, and thyme. I pureed the soup, thinned it a little with milk, and topped it with goat cheese.

And here we have what I have decided is the new Christmas soup - borscht! Look at how lovely and seasonal the borscht appears with its ruby red broth, creamy white creme fraiche, and ivy green italian parsley. Into the borscht goes cabbage, potatoes, celery, onions, leeks, garlic, carrot, and of course, beets. Borscht is a real powerhouse at reducing an intimidating pile of produce into a ...well...giant pot of soup. Ohwell, at least I can freeze it.

The common element uniting both of these soups was a large batch of vegetable broth, started with a base of frozen bean cooking water and dressed up with the vegetable trimmings from both soups.

12/10 winter squash and seared radicchio risotto

Well this is a bit illogical, but I had about 4 butternut squashes which had arrived in my pantry over a series of weeks, so last weekend I cubed and roasted and froze all of it. The illogical part is that this recipe only called for one cup of roasted winter squash, and yet somehow I felt good about how I was making progress in "using up" an entire crop's worth of squash.

Here we have a simple risotto recipe with the addition of the cup of squash and one head of radiccho, cut into wedges and seared until caramelized a bit (about 10 minutes). For some reason I worried that I would mess up the radicchio and this would come out "gross" (in the parlance of our time), but it was actually awesome - just the right balance of sweet and bitter. I am no longer afraid of searing radicchio.

12/1 black bean enchiladas

I wanted to finish up the last of the year's crop of tomatillos (just for the record, these came in the CSA box at least a couple of weeks ago and have been "chillin'" in the fridge) and I also had about a cup of heirloom black beans that were lookin' for a place to do business. The inevitable result was black bean enchiladas. This was definitely a "weekend" meal. Its a lot of steps and a bit time-consuming. Just to fully reveal my process, I decided to document a more step-by-step narrative.

First, I had to make a black bean chili. Typical of recipes by Deborah Madison, this one involved making your own chile powder from ancho chiles and making your own chile spices from a toasted and ground medley of oregano, cumin, and cayenne. Here's a shot of the chili cooking (keep in mind I had already soaked the black beans all day). Also present are two cans of diced tomatoes, garlic, and three yellow onions:

I also made a tomatillo sauce with red onions, garlic, and cilantro, which was hand-pounded in my mortar and pestle. I did that because I hate technology. Here's a shot of the tomatillos cooking (they've already turned a nice cooked, "yellow" color):

You need to briefly heat the corn tortillas in hot oil so that they are nice and pliable. Here is the assembly line:
Last but not least, making the enchiladas. Yet another assembly line:

You can see the tomatillo sauce (middle) flanked by extra-sharp cheddar (left) and black bean chili (right).

At long last (15 minutes in a 400 degree oven), the enchiladas emerge in their full glory.
Here's a money shot, just to show how black beans + cheese=crazy delicious. This is what makes it all worth it:

11/26 leek, olive, and duck tart

The photo here is of a half-eaten tart. You should take that as a fair indication of the results from this relatively easy recipe. I made a yeasted tart dough in advance (Sunday) and stuck in in the freezer, so the only thing that needed to be prepared night of was sauteing leeks, chopping olives and herbs, grating parmesan, and whisking eggs and cream.

PLUS chopping leftover duck. I picked this recipe precisely because it seemed it would take to duck leftovers so well - and this time, instincts did not disappoint. I think I could have eaten the whole thing if I was properly motivated (although I'm sure I would have regretted it).

11/23 My first duck

The first time is always difficult. I was nervous, especially since I never make meats in general. Plus duck needs a little bit of extra special care to make sure you render the fat out from under the skin during the cooking process. It only took me two different days of two different roasting sessions to get it right - and I learned a lot in the process. I was supposed to be eating/serving duck on thanksgiving day, but instead I had a little post-thanksgiving feast.

The duck is served with one of my favorite recipes: marjoram pesto with beets and their greens, with thinly sliced onions marinated in red wine vinegar (it's supposed to be red onions - but I didn
t have any. A small sweet white onion worked fine). I thought this might need a little extra starch to round out, so I roasted some potatoes (boiled whole in advance to speed up the cooking) in a bit of the duck fat still left in the roasting pan.

10/20 pasta with butternut squash and tomatoes

Mark Bittman ("The Minimalist") wrote a great piece last week about the ratio of pasta-to-sauce. I have to say I've always been a bit of a fan of the 1/3 pasta - to - 2/3 sauce ratio (when cooking with dried pasta - not fresh), so this was merely a nice reinforcement of an informal practice I was already observing to some degree. I decided to try out one of the featured recipes with this article, because - guess what - I had more squash from the CSA.

I modified Bittman's recipe a bit, making it a little more complex. For one thing, I blanched, peeled, and seeded the tomatoes, reserving the juice and throwing it back in with the sauce. For another thing, I cooked the sauce longer than Bittman seems to recommend here (probably close to 45 minutes). This ensured that the tomatoes had broken down and bit more and that the sauce had time to thicken. The squash, while tender, didn't break down with the increased cooking time. I also added several good glugs of olive oil at the end to give the sauce a bit more flavor and a nice sheen.

Experiment = successful! I'll be adding this to the rotation.

10/18 Breakfast: black eyed peas and brown rice

I have this thing for savory/spicy breakfast foods. Waking up to a cold bowl of sugary flakes and milk does nothing for me - I like a nice hot bowl of ramen noodles with a poached egg, or pho, or grits and grilled veggies.

Before embarking on an epic drive up to Sacramento for "state business", I needed some fuel for the fire. Leftover spicey black eyed peas and brown rice with red kale did just the trick.

10/20 Battle Chestnut

As usual, I waited till the last minute to cook my chestnut dishes, but here they are. It was my mom's birthday, so it was a good opportunity to try out some dishes. The first is a chestnut ravioli from the french laundry cookbook. Now, i've cooked a few of Keller's dishes, and every single time, I realize why they charge as much as they do at the Laundry. This food is complicated, and doing it alone is a tall task. So, definitely want to thank my mom for the help pulling all of this together. So back to the ravioli... the filling was a puree of roasted chestnuts, mascarpone and butter. The recipe was actually for agnolotti, but after struggling to roll out the pasta dough, i decided ravioli was going to be far easier. The sauce was made with pureed celery root, potato, heavy cream and fontina cheese. The sauce to me was the highlight, it was amazingly light and refined.

The second dish was quite a bit easier. Just a chestnut and fennel soup recipe I found in Gourmet. The fennel provided a nice bright finish to the chestnuts. The soup could have been a bit smoother, but the flavors were there.

To be honest, i'm somewhat happy battle chestnuts is over. Peeling 4lbs of roasted chestnuts was not fun. Rolling out the pasta dough was frustrating and trying to do all this in one meal was maybe a bit much. But, everything worked out in the end and the food was quite tasty. What else can you ask for.

10/18 Meat and Potatoes

Once in a while everyone needs a pick-me-up kindda meal. A meal where calories just don't matter and you're just after delicious satisfaction. Thursday night was one of those meals. I coated a rib-eye, my favorite cut of meat, with three kinds of peppercorns (green, black and szechuan). At the same time i boiled some parsnips, potatoes and carrots to make a mash. I heated up my cast iron skillet and seared the meat nicely. Flipped it over and and threw it in the oven. While it finished, i mashed up the root vegetables with a fork and added heavy cream. yup. no skim milk here. 3 minutes later the rib-eye was done and it was time to max out the calories. Accordingly I made a nice heavy cream & mustard sauce in the skillet. Oh I did serve all this with a nice arugula salad - but fear not, i did cover it with some tasty olive oil.

10/15 The Quickfire Challenge

Hungry and with not very few things other than beer in the fridge, I watched the Top Chef season 3 reunion show last night. For those of you who don't watch it (shame on you!), chef's compete against one another each week in various, often ridiculous, challenges. This is not a gimmicky show however. The contestants are very skilled executive or at the very least sous-chefs and the food they make is top notch stuff. Unlike anything shown on the food network, they actually cook on this show (it's on Bravo). Anyway, each week, the show begins with a "quickfire" challenge, where contestants are given a very limited time frame (often 10-30 minutes) to come up with something based on some ingredients or theme. So... as I was watching the reunion show and some of the quickfire highlights, I decided I should do the same and make something quick and tasty with whatever I could scrounge up in the house... (my theme was "be less hungry"). So here it is: Gnocchi with Apples, Turnips and Gruyeres.

I guess it's pretty self explanatory, I pan seared the frozen gnocchi i'd made a few weeks back, while I cooked a finely diced apple and turnip in butter in another skillet. Tossed each a few times before adding them to one another with some parseley and grated gruyeres. All in all a very successful 10 minute meal if I do say so myself.