My article in this month's Chronogram mostly consists of a few recipes designed to make the traditional feast a bit less stressful and a bit more tasty. There wasn't room in the piece to cover all the dishes mentioned or photographed, so I'm doing it here. Anybody with a question about any of it should leave a comment and I'll try to help.
First, the poached pears. I bought some local, organic Seckel pears at the farmers' market in addition to the Bartletts and plums that ended up in the tart. These little guys are brilliant for poaching, because they hold their shape well even after quite a bit of cooking. You'll notice the reappearance of some of the spices used to make the turkey stock.
Pears poached in red wine
Local, organic Seckel pears
Decent local red wine
1 cinnamon stick
1 thumb of ginger
2 star anise pods
2 cloves
6-8 cardamom seeds
Local honey or maple syrup
Cut the bottoms off so they'd sit up straight, and cut out the core with a paring knife, making a conical void in the center of each one. Leave the stems on. Arrange the pears in the bottom of a pot or saucepan so they fit fairly snugly. Pour in enough wine to reach the widest part of the pears. Add the spices and pour in the sweetener; the amount is going to depend on the number of pears, the size of the pot (which will govern the volume of wine) and how much you reduce the sauce at the end. I would suggest about 2 tablespoons per cup of wine to start, since it's easy to add more before serving. Bring to a simmer, cover, and let cook until the pears are tender but not mushy. Remove pears to a bowl or container and strain the wine into a smaller pan. Over low heat, reduce the wine to a syrup and adjust sweetness. Put one or more pears in each bowl and pour a little syrup on top. For extra credit, try them snuggled up to a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Plum-pear tart with blue cheese crust
Plums and blue cheeses share a couple of flavor compounds, as I learned here. I meant to make this as an entry, but was too busy to get to it before the deadline passed. Here, belatedly, is a version of what I had in mind.
For the crust:
2 oz. butter (1/2 stick, frozen)
2 oz. Old Chatham Ewe's Blue (local Sheep's milk cheese inoculated with Roquefort bacillus, also frozen or very chilled)
1.5 cup AP flour
pinch salt
Cold water (about 2 tablespoons)
Cut the butter and cheese into pieces about 1/4" thick. Put them into a food processor with the flour and salt. Pulse until the butter and cheese are well-incorporated as small crumbs. Add water a bit at a time while running the machine until the dough just comes together- it should not be sticky. Form into a ball, divide in two (this makes enough for two tarts; the second piece can be frozen for a month or more if wrapped tightly) and refrigerate for half an hour or more.
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Cut plums in half longitudinally and remove pits. Quarter pears longitudinally, cut out cores, then cut quarters in half to make eighths. (Originally this was going to be a straight-up plum tart, but I didn't have enough to fill the crust; feel free to do it either way). Roll the crust out into a circle big enough to fit a 9" tart pan (a shallow one with fluted edges is best). Butter the pan and place the crust inside, gently pressing the crust into the ridges around the edge of the pan.
Blind-bake the crust for about 10 minutes covered with parchment/foil and pie weights, then remove the weights and covering to lightly brown the top for another 5 minutes or so. If the crust starts to bubble or distort, take it out of the oven. (This crust will be thin enough that you can skip the blind-baking if you like, though it may not be quite as crisp underneath). Arrange the fruit in a pleasing manner and sprinkle with about 1/4 cup of white or brown sugar. (I like my tarts on the, well, tart side; feel free to add more if you want). Drip a bit of lemon juice over the top to dissolve the sugar a bit, add a twist or two of black pepper, and put in the oven for about 40 minutes until the fruit is bubbling and the crust is a good medium brown.
Remove the tart and let cool. To make a glaze, take 2 tablespoons of apricot jam, apple jelly, or similar and put in a small saucepan with a glug of apple cider, fruit liqueur, or brandy. (I used ginger jam and Calvados because that's what I had). Simmer and stir until the jam is dissolved, then use a brush to lightly coat the all the fruit on the tart. Let the glaze cool and serve either at room temp or rewarmed a bit. Ice cream also does not suck with this one, and a white dessert wine can really sing with the cheese in the crust, or some more of the Ewe's blue could make a wicked ice cream with some sweet wine mixed right in. If demand is sufficient, I'll try to make such a thing and report back with measurements.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Brothers From Another Mother
I'll keep this quick, since I have a date with my mattress.
For my November article in Chronogram (out on the first) I did a Thanksgiving recipe piece that sort of remixes the traditional dinner in what I hope is a more interesting and lower-stress way than many people are used to. A central ingredient is phở made from the turkey carcass and used to flavor several other components of the meal. The intensely aromatic pie spices in the broth are ever so compatible with things like squash and sweet potato, and dance intricately with the umami of well-prepared turkey, stuffing, and the like. So I've been thinking about and playing with those spices in a bunch of savory applications lately.
A while back, I wrote a post about the happy overlap between traditional phở seasonings and the spices used in Moroccan cooking- another grand tradition of pairing "sweet" spices with savory meats. And it's a very real and very happy Venn diagram indeed. Our freezer still has a quart or two of the turkey stock left over from the article (recipe-checking and subsequent photoshoot) and said freezer also coughed up a pound of ground lamb which I had wisely bought and socked away a couple of weeks ago for such a busy day as this.
I flavored the lamb fairly strongly with cumin, ras-el-hanout, ground fennel and coriander seeds, minced garlic and preserved lemon, salt, and pepper, then let it sit for about half an hour to approach merguezitude while I got some other things ready. I wrapped morsels of the meat mixture in wonton skins and poached them in batches in the phở until they were cooked through, removing them with a strainer to bowls before adding chiffonaded black kale to the soup (just until it turned bright green) and then ladling kale and soup over the wontons.
And that was the beginning, middle, and end of dinner. Beguilingly simple, and yet so devastatingly tasty. The meat and the broth were as long-lost siblings reconnecting because Facebook suggested that they do so. It was both ends of the silk road/spice route circling around and melding deliciously, Ouroboros-style. This vein of flavor is wide and deep, and consarn it I aims to mine it hard despite the fact that I do not have a shred of a claim to either tradition. There's gold in there, I tells ya.
For my November article in Chronogram (out on the first) I did a Thanksgiving recipe piece that sort of remixes the traditional dinner in what I hope is a more interesting and lower-stress way than many people are used to. A central ingredient is phở made from the turkey carcass and used to flavor several other components of the meal. The intensely aromatic pie spices in the broth are ever so compatible with things like squash and sweet potato, and dance intricately with the umami of well-prepared turkey, stuffing, and the like. So I've been thinking about and playing with those spices in a bunch of savory applications lately.
A while back, I wrote a post about the happy overlap between traditional phở seasonings and the spices used in Moroccan cooking- another grand tradition of pairing "sweet" spices with savory meats. And it's a very real and very happy Venn diagram indeed. Our freezer still has a quart or two of the turkey stock left over from the article (recipe-checking and subsequent photoshoot) and said freezer also coughed up a pound of ground lamb which I had wisely bought and socked away a couple of weeks ago for such a busy day as this.
I flavored the lamb fairly strongly with cumin, ras-el-hanout, ground fennel and coriander seeds, minced garlic and preserved lemon, salt, and pepper, then let it sit for about half an hour to approach merguezitude while I got some other things ready. I wrapped morsels of the meat mixture in wonton skins and poached them in batches in the phở until they were cooked through, removing them with a strainer to bowls before adding chiffonaded black kale to the soup (just until it turned bright green) and then ladling kale and soup over the wontons.
And that was the beginning, middle, and end of dinner. Beguilingly simple, and yet so devastatingly tasty. The meat and the broth were as long-lost siblings reconnecting because Facebook suggested that they do so. It was both ends of the silk road/spice route circling around and melding deliciously, Ouroboros-style. This vein of flavor is wide and deep, and consarn it I aims to mine it hard despite the fact that I do not have a shred of a claim to either tradition. There's gold in there, I tells ya.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Slow Food
I placed an order for a pork belly (half, really) and it weighed in at 11 pounds. It's hard to tell in the picture, but it's at least two inches thick- more in places. I cut it into two large pieces that would just fit in the two biggest vessels I could stack in the fridge, and rubbed it well with miso, ume paste, maple syrup, and a bunch of spices. There it sits, slowly absorbing umamitude and gorgeousness. I'll smoke it this weekend, then bag and freeze it in roughly one-pound hunks. It will nurture and protect us all winter.
The was one little piece- maybe 2/3 lb.- from the end that wouldn't fit, so I packed it in salt, sugar, curry and spice powders, and toasted seeds (fennel, coriander, pepper, mustard, fenugreek) and it sat for about 4 days. This morning I rinsed it off and put it in a pot, covering it with a quart of turkey phở left from the Thanksgiving shoot (there are three more quarts in the freezer) and some apple cider. I also threw in a thumb of ginger, smashed garlic, cardamom, raisins, and a kaffir lime leaf. I brought it up to a bare simmer, then put it into an 180˚ F oven for six hours.
Towards the end of that time, I made dal with red lentils, onion, spices, and water. I chopped a nice head of pak choi and gave it a two-part braise with garlic and lemon juice: the white stalks cooked for about 20 minutes until they were nice and soft, and the greens went in just before the end so they'd stay bright. I pulled the meat out and strained the liquid into another pot. I cut the belly into hunks, and seared around the sides of the pieces in a little bit of duck fat until they were brown and crisp. A ladle of lentils, a spoon of broth, a nestled belly cube, and a few raisins. Cilantro for color and treble.
Woah. The similar spices in all the components got all kinds of busy in this bowl. Just the liquid- leaving aside the heavenly fat belly- was amazing. The multiple layers of flavor in there were pretty sublime, and combined with the earthy lentils and (here's a word I hate, but it fits) succulent meat it was ridiculous. Versions of this will henceforth be a standard untilspring summer forever. A bottle of good Spätlese Riesling would have really gone beautifully with this, but we didn't have any.
The was one little piece- maybe 2/3 lb.- from the end that wouldn't fit, so I packed it in salt, sugar, curry and spice powders, and toasted seeds (fennel, coriander, pepper, mustard, fenugreek) and it sat for about 4 days. This morning I rinsed it off and put it in a pot, covering it with a quart of turkey phở left from the Thanksgiving shoot (there are three more quarts in the freezer) and some apple cider. I also threw in a thumb of ginger, smashed garlic, cardamom, raisins, and a kaffir lime leaf. I brought it up to a bare simmer, then put it into an 180˚ F oven for six hours.
Towards the end of that time, I made dal with red lentils, onion, spices, and water. I chopped a nice head of pak choi and gave it a two-part braise with garlic and lemon juice: the white stalks cooked for about 20 minutes until they were nice and soft, and the greens went in just before the end so they'd stay bright. I pulled the meat out and strained the liquid into another pot. I cut the belly into hunks, and seared around the sides of the pieces in a little bit of duck fat until they were brown and crisp. A ladle of lentils, a spoon of broth, a nestled belly cube, and a few raisins. Cilantro for color and treble.
Woah. The similar spices in all the components got all kinds of busy in this bowl. Just the liquid- leaving aside the heavenly fat belly- was amazing. The multiple layers of flavor in there were pretty sublime, and combined with the earthy lentils and (here's a word I hate, but it fits) succulent meat it was ridiculous. Versions of this will henceforth be a standard until
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
When I Was 21... That Was A Very Good Year
Sunday and Monday I did a heap o' cookin' for the November article, and Jen the photographer was scheduled to come Monday evening to shoot the results. The article will be a Thanksgiving thing, showing some ways to make the preparation easier and flavor richer than the normal version without going completely off the reservation (as it were). And John was around. Like waterboarding Dick Cheney, it was a no-brainer.
Jen came early, and shot four dishes (on the homemade plates) from a million angles, including a bunch of Milo with the plum-pear tart with blue cheese crust. If they don't run them, I may post one here later on. John showed up a little later, toting some serious juice, and we decided to go with an all-1990 evening. We began with the squash soup paired with his Boyer-Martenot Meursault-Perrières, which didn't suck. I love old white Burgundy with food.
Next up were his Chapoutier Côte-Rôtie "La Mordorée" drunk alongside my Vieux Donjon. A Nice North-South comparison, showcasing the amazing structure of the North against the riper, silkier South. Both worked very well with the turkey and various accompaniments (which you can read about on November first). We moved on to my Lynch-Bages (the first great wine I ever had- a 1985 drunk in Provence in 1992- first lit up the Great Wine centers of my brain, and it's one of the best bargains in Bordeaux) which was a leathery, luscious treat and eased us seamlessly into the desserts. That's right, two. Seckel pears poached in red wine and then the tart. The tart was particularly great (and this is where we left the 1990 theme) with a 2001 Doisy-Vedrines Sauternes, but the wine was best of all with our homemade sourdough and Old Chatham's Ewe Blue (inoculated with Roquefort bacillus) A half-bottle was just the right amount.
By this time, Jen had left and Christine had gone to bed, so we were off the leash. We killed the two Rhônes, and since I had thrown the latest piece of bacon on the smoker while I had the turkey breasts going, we developed a powerful, industrial-strength hankering for some of that there belly. So sometime around 2 AM I made some quick bacon and kimchi sandwiches on the bread with a little cultured butter. Trust me, it was necessary. And then we popped a 1998 Gaja Barbaresco, which was really something. His wines are so beautifully made; it was an astonishing thesis on the entire range of flavors and textures of the region but without the precision and depth of a single-vineyard wine.
Tuesday was pretty ugly, but I'd do it again in a second. Life is too short not to get stupid at this high level once in a while.
Jen came early, and shot four dishes (on the homemade plates) from a million angles, including a bunch of Milo with the plum-pear tart with blue cheese crust. If they don't run them, I may post one here later on. John showed up a little later, toting some serious juice, and we decided to go with an all-1990 evening. We began with the squash soup paired with his Boyer-Martenot Meursault-Perrières, which didn't suck. I love old white Burgundy with food.
Next up were his Chapoutier Côte-Rôtie "La Mordorée" drunk alongside my Vieux Donjon. A Nice North-South comparison, showcasing the amazing structure of the North against the riper, silkier South. Both worked very well with the turkey and various accompaniments (which you can read about on November first). We moved on to my Lynch-Bages (the first great wine I ever had- a 1985 drunk in Provence in 1992- first lit up the Great Wine centers of my brain, and it's one of the best bargains in Bordeaux) which was a leathery, luscious treat and eased us seamlessly into the desserts. That's right, two. Seckel pears poached in red wine and then the tart. The tart was particularly great (and this is where we left the 1990 theme) with a 2001 Doisy-Vedrines Sauternes, but the wine was best of all with our homemade sourdough and Old Chatham's Ewe Blue (inoculated with Roquefort bacillus) A half-bottle was just the right amount.
By this time, Jen had left and Christine had gone to bed, so we were off the leash. We killed the two Rhônes, and since I had thrown the latest piece of bacon on the smoker while I had the turkey breasts going, we developed a powerful, industrial-strength hankering for some of that there belly. So sometime around 2 AM I made some quick bacon and kimchi sandwiches on the bread with a little cultured butter. Trust me, it was necessary. And then we popped a 1998 Gaja Barbaresco, which was really something. His wines are so beautifully made; it was an astonishing thesis on the entire range of flavors and textures of the region but without the precision and depth of a single-vineyard wine.
Tuesday was pretty ugly, but I'd do it again in a second. Life is too short not to get stupid at this high level once in a while.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Pharmaceutical Grade
Nobody got very sick, but it was dicey for a minute. And it was very cold this weekend, so soup was in order. I picked up a good chicken, and very unusually decided to make soup from the whole raw bird. Normally I like to roast them and make stock from the carcass later on, but for maximum medicinal impact I thought that doing it this way was the right call. And the soup was pretty great.
To the initial stock I added the usual- an onion, some carrot, parsnip, celery, and parsley. After a couple hour simmer, I strained it, stripped and chopped the meat and added it back in along with diced carrot, onion, celery root, turnip, parsnip, pak choi, garlic, and thyme. While that simmered anew, I made a batch of pâte à choux seasoned pretty heavily with minced tarragon, chives, and rosemary and loaded it into the pastry bag. I cut gnocchi into a pot of boiling water, then served them in the soup. It was well worth the minimal effort- they were so rich and tasty and brought the humble bowl of soup to a much more interesting and satisfying level. And it deftly fended off the microbes.
To the initial stock I added the usual- an onion, some carrot, parsnip, celery, and parsley. After a couple hour simmer, I strained it, stripped and chopped the meat and added it back in along with diced carrot, onion, celery root, turnip, parsnip, pak choi, garlic, and thyme. While that simmered anew, I made a batch of pâte à choux seasoned pretty heavily with minced tarragon, chives, and rosemary and loaded it into the pastry bag. I cut gnocchi into a pot of boiling water, then served them in the soup. It was well worth the minimal effort- they were so rich and tasty and brought the humble bowl of soup to a much more interesting and satisfying level. And it deftly fended off the microbes.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Lies Make The Baby Jesus Cry
So this isn't about the excellent shellfish-kielbasa stew in Vermont. I'll get to it later, though I don't actually have a picture of it. Maybe some fall foliage instead for atmosphere.
This is about a wife coming down with something, and the lack of anything easy to prepare in the house. A quick trip later, we were the happy owners of some lovely short ribs. And since we have a pressure cooker, shreddy, falling-off-the-bone-ness was a mere 40 minutes away. Roots (carrot, celery, parsnip, turnip, burdock) plus onion, garlic, herbs, tomato paste, a little soy sauce and rice vinegar all went in there with the meat.
Perfect. Beefy, with a wonderful sweetness from all the roots, and a slavericious sauce that had us all drinking out of our bowls. The leftovers were even better, providing an excellent lunch on an absurdly chilly day.
This is about a wife coming down with something, and the lack of anything easy to prepare in the house. A quick trip later, we were the happy owners of some lovely short ribs. And since we have a pressure cooker, shreddy, falling-off-the-bone-ness was a mere 40 minutes away. Roots (carrot, celery, parsnip, turnip, burdock) plus onion, garlic, herbs, tomato paste, a little soy sauce and rice vinegar all went in there with the meat.
Perfect. Beefy, with a wonderful sweetness from all the roots, and a slavericious sauce that had us all drinking out of our bowls. The leftovers were even better, providing an excellent lunch on an absurdly chilly day.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Hugs Not Drugs
We went to Vermont last weekend, and there was some good eatin'- most interesting was a shellfish stew with local kielbasa that I'll describe in the next post. This afternoon I got busy trying to turn the last of the season's tomatoes- bought at the farmers' market yesterday because ours are done, and now dead from frost- into a couple of kinds of salsa to compensate for the complete lack of home-canned tomato sauce this summer, using our last (and best; they're just coming in now due to ridiculously cold and wet summer, so I have them under plastic to try to prolong their lives) pepper harvest as the other main ingredient.
First, I washed the tomatillos and heirloom green tomatoes I bought, chopped them coarsely, and spun them with cilantro, lime juice, garlic and serranos to make two quarts of super-clean, bright green, pretty damn hot salsa verde. I fridged one quart and froze the other. They are a lovely, near-flourescent green. The rest of the serranos went into the smoker, along with two hunks of bacon I'm sending out as gifts and the pasta for tonight's dinner and a bunch of Amish Paste tomatoes. The rest of those fat red beauties got cut up and cooked with red onion, garlic, coriander and cumin seeds, and more lime juice, then had smoked tomatoes and peppers added in after a quick blast in the processor. The result was two pints of smoky, spicy-ass goodness that will take the sting out of whatever winter throws at us (which may well include several inches of snow on the ground when we wake up. On October 16.)
Taking a cue from Aki and Alex, and not wanting to waste any of the precious smoke, I also put a box of whole wheat shells into a metal colander and popped them in the smoker for about half an hour. Then I soaked them in some of the wonderful, raw Taylor Farm milk we brought back from Vermont until they softened up a bit. I mentioned this last time I made lasagna; pre-soaking pasta- especially for baked applications- is much more effective than boiling. Plus, the soaking liquid can be flavored, and can in turn benefit from the addition of some of the pasta's starch. Say, for example, if you want to then make a liason with some fat, flour, and cheese. Which I did.
To begin, the final little nub of the last batch of bacon, diced, rendered in some butter because I'm crazy like that. I added flour to make a roux, then whisked in the milk which the smoked pasta had soaked in until half-tender. The resulting roux didn't quite have the body I wanted to handle the volume of milk (since I never measure anything) so I mixed a bit of the glorious fat that sits on top of the local yogurt we buy with a bit more flour to make a tangy, yogurty version of beurre manié and used that to thicken the béchamel to the right consistency. Then I added salt, black pepper, fresh thyme, rosemary, chives, and parsley, and then stirred in the shells to coat them thoroughly. Then they went into a pyrex loaf pan with a layer of panko and truffle oil on top.
It looks kind of drab and beige, but rest assured it was orgasmically wonderful to taste. Smoky, creamy, tangy, rich as shit- it was sort of like a Bacon-Cheddar Loaf™ even though there was maybe a teaspoon of bacon actually in it. It was like a neutron gut bomb- it pummeled the stomach, but left the grinning, beatific soul miraculously intact- even fortified. I instantly realized how I am going to turn this into the apotheosis of itself at a future fancy dinner to be named later. Seriously, though- smoked mac and chee? It's a cream dream. And it doesn't even get your bong all greasy and clogged with cheese.
Not wanting to disrespect the vegetable kingdom, as a first course, I took some of the pink heirlooms from the market (I've forgotten their names) and puréed and strained them into a saucepan. Over gentle heat, I added some thyme, pepper, and salt, and then served it. Bright, sweet, tart, and perfect, it was summer's last sweet rosy echo as the rain turned to sticky wet snow outside.
Or, less diplomatically put, an upraised middle finger to the foul weather we've been under for the better part of six months now. Giving said finger an extra stiffening was a bottle of 2000 Hilberg-Pasquero Nebbiolo. I've been a fan of theirs for a long time; their "Vareij" (a Barbera-Brachetto blend) is the wine that first taught me that feet and ass belong in good wine. It tastes like blueberries and night-blooming jasmine strained through a virgin's dirty gym socks. I drank that fateful first bottle in Vermont, actually, when I was up there for Christmas 2002 with my Mother two months before she died. It was a hard winter, needless to say, and I reverently worked my way to the bottom of the bottle after I got her to bed, rotating the flavors in my mind and trying to reconcile the tension between the flowers and the feet. All of their wines are biodynamic, and their single-vineyard Barbaresco is pretty damn good, as is this Nebbiolo. They age nicely; at 9 years they're really roaring right now. Sadly, I have finished my stash. Time to stock up for future bliss.
First, I washed the tomatillos and heirloom green tomatoes I bought, chopped them coarsely, and spun them with cilantro, lime juice, garlic and serranos to make two quarts of super-clean, bright green, pretty damn hot salsa verde. I fridged one quart and froze the other. They are a lovely, near-flourescent green. The rest of the serranos went into the smoker, along with two hunks of bacon I'm sending out as gifts and the pasta for tonight's dinner and a bunch of Amish Paste tomatoes. The rest of those fat red beauties got cut up and cooked with red onion, garlic, coriander and cumin seeds, and more lime juice, then had smoked tomatoes and peppers added in after a quick blast in the processor. The result was two pints of smoky, spicy-ass goodness that will take the sting out of whatever winter throws at us (which may well include several inches of snow on the ground when we wake up. On October 16.)
Taking a cue from Aki and Alex, and not wanting to waste any of the precious smoke, I also put a box of whole wheat shells into a metal colander and popped them in the smoker for about half an hour. Then I soaked them in some of the wonderful, raw Taylor Farm milk we brought back from Vermont until they softened up a bit. I mentioned this last time I made lasagna; pre-soaking pasta- especially for baked applications- is much more effective than boiling. Plus, the soaking liquid can be flavored, and can in turn benefit from the addition of some of the pasta's starch. Say, for example, if you want to then make a liason with some fat, flour, and cheese. Which I did.
To begin, the final little nub of the last batch of bacon, diced, rendered in some butter because I'm crazy like that. I added flour to make a roux, then whisked in the milk which the smoked pasta had soaked in until half-tender. The resulting roux didn't quite have the body I wanted to handle the volume of milk (since I never measure anything) so I mixed a bit of the glorious fat that sits on top of the local yogurt we buy with a bit more flour to make a tangy, yogurty version of beurre manié and used that to thicken the béchamel to the right consistency. Then I added salt, black pepper, fresh thyme, rosemary, chives, and parsley, and then stirred in the shells to coat them thoroughly. Then they went into a pyrex loaf pan with a layer of panko and truffle oil on top.
It looks kind of drab and beige, but rest assured it was orgasmically wonderful to taste. Smoky, creamy, tangy, rich as shit- it was sort of like a Bacon-Cheddar Loaf™ even though there was maybe a teaspoon of bacon actually in it. It was like a neutron gut bomb- it pummeled the stomach, but left the grinning, beatific soul miraculously intact- even fortified. I instantly realized how I am going to turn this into the apotheosis of itself at a future fancy dinner to be named later. Seriously, though- smoked mac and chee? It's a cream dream. And it doesn't even get your bong all greasy and clogged with cheese.
Not wanting to disrespect the vegetable kingdom, as a first course, I took some of the pink heirlooms from the market (I've forgotten their names) and puréed and strained them into a saucepan. Over gentle heat, I added some thyme, pepper, and salt, and then served it. Bright, sweet, tart, and perfect, it was summer's last sweet rosy echo as the rain turned to sticky wet snow outside.
Or, less diplomatically put, an upraised middle finger to the foul weather we've been under for the better part of six months now. Giving said finger an extra stiffening was a bottle of 2000 Hilberg-Pasquero Nebbiolo. I've been a fan of theirs for a long time; their "Vareij" (a Barbera-Brachetto blend) is the wine that first taught me that feet and ass belong in good wine. It tastes like blueberries and night-blooming jasmine strained through a virgin's dirty gym socks. I drank that fateful first bottle in Vermont, actually, when I was up there for Christmas 2002 with my Mother two months before she died. It was a hard winter, needless to say, and I reverently worked my way to the bottom of the bottle after I got her to bed, rotating the flavors in my mind and trying to reconcile the tension between the flowers and the feet. All of their wines are biodynamic, and their single-vineyard Barbaresco is pretty damn good, as is this Nebbiolo. They age nicely; at 9 years they're really roaring right now. Sadly, I have finished my stash. Time to stock up for future bliss.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Oh Fishy Fish
Yesterday was the weekly market, so I went over to poke around- grabbing a couple of huge nappa cabbage for the next batch of kimchi, since ours got either eaten by slugs or are too small- and to pick up some fish. Gerard actually took the week off, but did bring John and me some lovely sardines because John is famous and I am, well, special. So I ran home and put some dinner together.
I steamed half a cauliflower, and when soft I blended it with pimentón, yogurt, salt, and truffle oil. There was some leftover plain quinoa, so I tossed it with olive oil, kimchi juice, and leftover bitter green mash to make a pretty nice pilafy thing. The fish I seared in the iron pan with garlic and thyme, then removed them and made an insta-escabeche by deglazing with sherry vinegar, lemon juice, beer, tomato paste, more herbs, and a little mustard. Normally, of course, one marinates the fish in this overnight, but I just used it as a sauce. It worked decently; the sharp acidity is just what nice oily fish like these cry out for. Marjoram flowers made a pretty and tasty garnish.
Tomorrow will be a busy day of kimchi, stock, and bread-making, plus smoking more bacon if there's time. At the market yesterday I ordered a big-ass hunk of pork belly for next week to make us a winter's worth of bacon.
I steamed half a cauliflower, and when soft I blended it with pimentón, yogurt, salt, and truffle oil. There was some leftover plain quinoa, so I tossed it with olive oil, kimchi juice, and leftover bitter green mash to make a pretty nice pilafy thing. The fish I seared in the iron pan with garlic and thyme, then removed them and made an insta-escabeche by deglazing with sherry vinegar, lemon juice, beer, tomato paste, more herbs, and a little mustard. Normally, of course, one marinates the fish in this overnight, but I just used it as a sauce. It worked decently; the sharp acidity is just what nice oily fish like these cry out for. Marjoram flowers made a pretty and tasty garnish.
Tomorrow will be a busy day of kimchi, stock, and bread-making, plus smoking more bacon if there's time. At the market yesterday I ordered a big-ass hunk of pork belly for next week to make us a winter's worth of bacon.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
It's A Beautiful Day, You Should Be Outside
I've been lax about blogging, obviously, but not about cooking; I just can't find time to do any writing. I even busted out a pretty nice 6-course dinner for a couple of friends up from the city last Friday, but the only picture I took was a repeat of the gravlax with corn-avocado ice cream and pickle sauce. Other courses were grilled chicken-miso soup, a sort of frisée aux lardons- curly endive tossed with a thick egg-yolk vinaigrette and fat lardons of our luscious bacon- mussels steamed over a sauce of tomato, red pepper, fennel, celery, carrot, wine, kaffir lime leaf, ginger, garlic, lemongrass, curry leaf, and lemon thyme that I slow-cooked for an hour before adding the mussels, serving them with crusty baguette slices as soon as they opened, lamb chops with preserved lemon mustard, beet tapenade, and bitter green mash, and a plum-pear tart for dessert.
We drank a bottle of Gaston Chiquet Champagne, then a 2002 Cheze Condrieu, then a 1998 Tignanello which took a while to open up but then delivered mightily. The progression of bottles suited the trajectory of flavors quite nicely, and the conversation was lovely; they're planning to open a restaurant soon and it was good fun to hear their ideas.
We're having a glorious fall, which is helping to make up for the wretched summer. As a result, I've been trying to fit in as much outdoor work as I can in between all the other things I need to do at any given time. Today, for example, I borrowed a friend's truck and drove down to Lee's; I wrote about him in my piece on permaculture, and he had offered to sell me some of his huge and beautiful 20-year-old blueberry bushes. He had root-pruned them ahead of time, so we levered them out with a shovel and got them into the back of the truck. One of them, a Sierra, divided when we lifted it, so I got three for the price of two. He also threw in a couple of currant bushes- a pink champagne and another pink or white variety. Next spring I'm going back to his plant sale to get some new blackcurrant cultivars to fill in the bed. It's an inspirational place, and makes me look at our spot with new eyes; by this time next year I think we'll be at a different level of food production and aesthetic splendor.
Lee writes a blog, too, and it's always worth checking in to see what he's up to. I'm too sore from diggin to type any more, so here's a picture of the blueberries, happily (I hope) ensconced in their new home. Best of all, we now have a use for the leaves we rake every fall: mulch for the acid-loving berry bushes.
We drank a bottle of Gaston Chiquet Champagne, then a 2002 Cheze Condrieu, then a 1998 Tignanello which took a while to open up but then delivered mightily. The progression of bottles suited the trajectory of flavors quite nicely, and the conversation was lovely; they're planning to open a restaurant soon and it was good fun to hear their ideas.
We're having a glorious fall, which is helping to make up for the wretched summer. As a result, I've been trying to fit in as much outdoor work as I can in between all the other things I need to do at any given time. Today, for example, I borrowed a friend's truck and drove down to Lee's; I wrote about him in my piece on permaculture, and he had offered to sell me some of his huge and beautiful 20-year-old blueberry bushes. He had root-pruned them ahead of time, so we levered them out with a shovel and got them into the back of the truck. One of them, a Sierra, divided when we lifted it, so I got three for the price of two. He also threw in a couple of currant bushes- a pink champagne and another pink or white variety. Next spring I'm going back to his plant sale to get some new blackcurrant cultivars to fill in the bed. It's an inspirational place, and makes me look at our spot with new eyes; by this time next year I think we'll be at a different level of food production and aesthetic splendor.
Lee writes a blog, too, and it's always worth checking in to see what he's up to. I'm too sore from diggin to type any more, so here's a picture of the blueberries, happily (I hope) ensconced in their new home. Best of all, we now have a use for the leaves we rake every fall: mulch for the acid-loving berry bushes.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
A Good Walk Decomposed
As inevitable as dawn, the beginning of a new month means another comestible-themed missive from yours truly.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Fishin' Accomplished
Yesterday we had a super-simple dinner of zucchini soup (our friend gave us some of her squash, since ours perished) and penne tossed with local Roquefort-inoculated blue. I've been demolishing our entryway, since it's a way to make the place much nicer for very little money; so far I've spent under $100, since it's mostly been demo and then a bit of framing and drywall to clean it up. Tomorrow begins the mudding, and then some trim and fixtures in the new coat closet, and then it's up to my wife to paint it.
The zucchini soup was benefited from two ingredients that set it well apart from many an ostensible peer: grilled chicken stock and feta. I added a few pine nuts, too, for extra thickness, and it was a slurpable delight. A little pepper and a flourish of truffle oil gave it everything it needed to become a sublime transubstantiation of summer's most ubiquitous crop.
Tonight, after my family returned from the farmers' market with fruit and fish, I kept it simple since I am- to use technical parlance- wicked tiyahd. So I heated the soup, rubbed some of the über-fresh, sweet, fat scallops with salt, pepper, and pimentón, then gave them a good sear in the iron pan. Getting seafood this fresh makes all the difference; it's like eating a different kind of food. I made a pan sauce with kimchi juice and a splash of wine, adorned each plate with a pile of the just-finished new batch of kimchi, and that was it. Boo to the yah. There was leftover rice and beans, but we didn't even touch it. If you'll excuse me, there's some videographical entertainment waiting for me downstairs.
The zucchini soup was benefited from two ingredients that set it well apart from many an ostensible peer: grilled chicken stock and feta. I added a few pine nuts, too, for extra thickness, and it was a slurpable delight. A little pepper and a flourish of truffle oil gave it everything it needed to become a sublime transubstantiation of summer's most ubiquitous crop.
Tonight, after my family returned from the farmers' market with fruit and fish, I kept it simple since I am- to use technical parlance- wicked tiyahd. So I heated the soup, rubbed some of the über-fresh, sweet, fat scallops with salt, pepper, and pimentón, then gave them a good sear in the iron pan. Getting seafood this fresh makes all the difference; it's like eating a different kind of food. I made a pan sauce with kimchi juice and a splash of wine, adorned each plate with a pile of the just-finished new batch of kimchi, and that was it. Boo to the yah. There was leftover rice and beans, but we didn't even touch it. If you'll excuse me, there's some videographical entertainment waiting for me downstairs.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Yum Kippur
Today, being a day of atonement- and more saliently, a day in which Milo's school is closed- begged for some time-devouring activities to chew up the portion of the day in which I was the sole parent in charge. Copious swinging helped, as did some garden-checking (the rutabagas and black radishes are actually swelling a tiny bit! At this rate they'll be big and fat by Christmas, except for the whole not-growing-in-winter thing, so they won't). And since we had been the happy recipients of a big box of avocados from the gallery in Miami, I had an idea and figured that making ice cream is always a good hour-chewer when a kid is involved.
He was excited, to say the least, and not at all put off by the notion of a savory ice cream. For him, busting out the machine means good eatin'. And when I told him he could have it for lunch, well, that sealed it. So we puréed an avo with the kernels of one ear of corn, lemon juice, cayenne, cumin, salt, a drip of agave, and a little juice from a jar of salsa verde. Then I pushed it all through a tamis and spatulated it into the frozen whirligig for a chugging, adding about half an ear's worth of kernels as it spun.
And lo- it worked. Smooth, creamy (avos being basically all fat) and with a citrus tang, and a solidly earthy warmth from the spices, it made a splendid substrate for our homemade gravlax of Arctic char, sliced thin. To finish it off, I put a couple of chopped cornichons, some capers, pickle juice, parsley, kimchi juice, a little mustard, olive oil, and pepper into a jar and stick-blended it thoroughly. Once all blended, I strained it and then blasted it again with a bit of Ultratex 8 to make it thick and sexy, then spooned it around the scoops. Very subtle, complex, and interesting- this will make a spiffy appetizer down the road. The char has a lighter flavor than salmon, so it worked better with the delicate ice cream. The pickle sauce is excellent, and cries out to be used with everything from salmon on bagels to tuna, egg, or potato salad; shit, even a burger or a dog would get off on this, and there are a million ways to tweak it for best effect.
So that was lunch. For dinner, local grass-fed sirloin well-crusted in butter and with our homemade lardo grated on top. Freaking genius. On the side, fresh-dug potatoes roasted with fat cloves of garlic and lots of olive oil, and a green mash made from the dandelions I weeded out of the potato bed while Milo dug, with lemon, walnuts, ume plum, and truffle oil, plus a pan sauce made from the butter, wine, a pinch of flour to stabilize it, and some of the super-jiggly chicken broth I made last night. Good fall fare all around.
We drank another of the just-rediscovered bottles from the cellar in VT- a 2001 La Jota Cabernet Franc from our Napa tour in 2004. It's not bad, with good firm tannins and some layers between the grip and the fruit. Nobody's going to confuse it with a Chinon any time soon, but it has some of the same flavor profile, if a steroidally enhanced version of it. Another 3-5 years would serve this well, allowing the tannins to relax enough to bring the other facets into better focus.
He was excited, to say the least, and not at all put off by the notion of a savory ice cream. For him, busting out the machine means good eatin'. And when I told him he could have it for lunch, well, that sealed it. So we puréed an avo with the kernels of one ear of corn, lemon juice, cayenne, cumin, salt, a drip of agave, and a little juice from a jar of salsa verde. Then I pushed it all through a tamis and spatulated it into the frozen whirligig for a chugging, adding about half an ear's worth of kernels as it spun.
And lo- it worked. Smooth, creamy (avos being basically all fat) and with a citrus tang, and a solidly earthy warmth from the spices, it made a splendid substrate for our homemade gravlax of Arctic char, sliced thin. To finish it off, I put a couple of chopped cornichons, some capers, pickle juice, parsley, kimchi juice, a little mustard, olive oil, and pepper into a jar and stick-blended it thoroughly. Once all blended, I strained it and then blasted it again with a bit of Ultratex 8 to make it thick and sexy, then spooned it around the scoops. Very subtle, complex, and interesting- this will make a spiffy appetizer down the road. The char has a lighter flavor than salmon, so it worked better with the delicate ice cream. The pickle sauce is excellent, and cries out to be used with everything from salmon on bagels to tuna, egg, or potato salad; shit, even a burger or a dog would get off on this, and there are a million ways to tweak it for best effect.
So that was lunch. For dinner, local grass-fed sirloin well-crusted in butter and with our homemade lardo grated on top. Freaking genius. On the side, fresh-dug potatoes roasted with fat cloves of garlic and lots of olive oil, and a green mash made from the dandelions I weeded out of the potato bed while Milo dug, with lemon, walnuts, ume plum, and truffle oil, plus a pan sauce made from the butter, wine, a pinch of flour to stabilize it, and some of the super-jiggly chicken broth I made last night. Good fall fare all around.
We drank another of the just-rediscovered bottles from the cellar in VT- a 2001 La Jota Cabernet Franc from our Napa tour in 2004. It's not bad, with good firm tannins and some layers between the grip and the fruit. Nobody's going to confuse it with a Chinon any time soon, but it has some of the same flavor profile, if a steroidally enhanced version of it. Another 3-5 years would serve this well, allowing the tannins to relax enough to bring the other facets into better focus.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Whine
I was in Vermont on Friday going through the cellar and giving at least half of it to someone from an auction house. On the plus side, it's one of the few assets we own that has actually- and significantly- appreciated in value, so it's going to make us some much-needed cash. On the minus side, I parted with some special bottles of Bordeaux, some of which I've had for 15 years. Back during the first semester of grad school in 1994, I found a little working color TV in the alley behind my first Chicago apartment. So I looked in the free weekly paper for moving sales to find a VCR (remember those?) that would make the little 13" screen much more useful. By complete chance, the guy I called was also selling his wine collection; he was broker even than I, and had to move back to Austria in two weeks.
He had an excellent collection, and I bought everything I could from him. In retrospect, I should have bought more, even selling my car, since I could have flipped some of these bottles right away for a big profit. I bought a case of 1990 Mondavi unfiltered Cabernet for $7 a bottle, and some big-name Bordeaux for next to nothing. Four of those bottles- for which I paid about $30 each- are now worth about $800 each. So notwithstanding the many intervening years in which I have mulled over what occasion would prompt the opening of these precious bottles, I decided to part with them.
Wine, after all, is replaceable, and most of the stuff I sold is wine that I don't enjoy any more. The top-notch Australian bottles- The Dead Arm excepted- are not going to be missed. The problem is that big-name Bordeaux commands the highest prices, and as a result my collection has now diminished from one bottle of Cheval Blanc to zero. The 1989 Palmer was another that it was hard to say goodbye to, and there were others (I'm talking to you, '85 Haut-Brion). But it's hard to argue when a mixed case of 1995 Bordeaux (Margaux, Cheval, Mouton, Cantemerle, Pichon-Baron, Pichon-Lalande, Haut-Brion, etc.) that I spent a grand on six years ago is now worth around eight times that much. These are hard times, and the art market is circling the drain. I console myself with the knowledge that this investment has performed handsomely and was bought low and sold high. Not all the way high, but far enough.
I saved some: the 3 bottles of 1989 La Conseillante aren't fancy enough to sell for much, but are utterly sublime. I still have my mini-vertical of Lynch-Bages ('82, '85, '86, '89, '90) and the '82 and '88 Gruaud-Larose, and a few others. The Rhône and Italy are still intact. I'm drinking a 2000 Ascent Syrah by Terre Rouge right now; it's making me almost regret all of the Cali Cab bottles I let go of, including the mixed six-pack of fine 1997 magnums that I had big plans for in another 10 years. And the Montelenas will be missed, without a doubt, as will the Sine Qua Non, not least due to its scarcity (but then again I kept half of the SQN stash; the dessert wines are good for 100 years, after all, and some were gifts). The Ascent is a Syrah, not a Cabernet, the second of two bottles we had socked away (I mentioned the first one here, right after we moved up) and it has an interesting sourdough toast thing happening which I normally associate with Burgundy; maybe it's the yeast they use. In any case, it's refreshingly lean and elegant for a Cali Syrah.
At the end of the day, this is a good thing. It's an exercise in non-attachment, and an opportunity to make some room for Burgundy, Barolo, and other miracles. My cellar didn't match my taste any more, and now it does. Moving forward, it will be a very different animal; there's a $15 Riesling I plan on buying a couple of cases of, since it will age well for a long time, and when the economy improves I'll be well-positioned to fill it back up with winners both cheap and dear. Having said that, though, I do hope that this will be the only time I call upon my collection to do anything more than taste magnificent with my dinner.
He had an excellent collection, and I bought everything I could from him. In retrospect, I should have bought more, even selling my car, since I could have flipped some of these bottles right away for a big profit. I bought a case of 1990 Mondavi unfiltered Cabernet for $7 a bottle, and some big-name Bordeaux for next to nothing. Four of those bottles- for which I paid about $30 each- are now worth about $800 each. So notwithstanding the many intervening years in which I have mulled over what occasion would prompt the opening of these precious bottles, I decided to part with them.
Wine, after all, is replaceable, and most of the stuff I sold is wine that I don't enjoy any more. The top-notch Australian bottles- The Dead Arm excepted- are not going to be missed. The problem is that big-name Bordeaux commands the highest prices, and as a result my collection has now diminished from one bottle of Cheval Blanc to zero. The 1989 Palmer was another that it was hard to say goodbye to, and there were others (I'm talking to you, '85 Haut-Brion). But it's hard to argue when a mixed case of 1995 Bordeaux (Margaux, Cheval, Mouton, Cantemerle, Pichon-Baron, Pichon-Lalande, Haut-Brion, etc.) that I spent a grand on six years ago is now worth around eight times that much. These are hard times, and the art market is circling the drain. I console myself with the knowledge that this investment has performed handsomely and was bought low and sold high. Not all the way high, but far enough.
I saved some: the 3 bottles of 1989 La Conseillante aren't fancy enough to sell for much, but are utterly sublime. I still have my mini-vertical of Lynch-Bages ('82, '85, '86, '89, '90) and the '82 and '88 Gruaud-Larose, and a few others. The Rhône and Italy are still intact. I'm drinking a 2000 Ascent Syrah by Terre Rouge right now; it's making me almost regret all of the Cali Cab bottles I let go of, including the mixed six-pack of fine 1997 magnums that I had big plans for in another 10 years. And the Montelenas will be missed, without a doubt, as will the Sine Qua Non, not least due to its scarcity (but then again I kept half of the SQN stash; the dessert wines are good for 100 years, after all, and some were gifts). The Ascent is a Syrah, not a Cabernet, the second of two bottles we had socked away (I mentioned the first one here, right after we moved up) and it has an interesting sourdough toast thing happening which I normally associate with Burgundy; maybe it's the yeast they use. In any case, it's refreshingly lean and elegant for a Cali Syrah.
At the end of the day, this is a good thing. It's an exercise in non-attachment, and an opportunity to make some room for Burgundy, Barolo, and other miracles. My cellar didn't match my taste any more, and now it does. Moving forward, it will be a very different animal; there's a $15 Riesling I plan on buying a couple of cases of, since it will age well for a long time, and when the economy improves I'll be well-positioned to fill it back up with winners both cheap and dear. Having said that, though, I do hope that this will be the only time I call upon my collection to do anything more than taste magnificent with my dinner.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Pause That Refreshes
After a week of epic frustration, it's been pure luxury to have a day off, reveling in the clarity, aroma, and Proustian recall of early fall. I dug a good variety of the annual herbs, potting and soaking them well in advance of their imminent repair to the dining room where they'll sit basking in the waning sun shining through the big windows. The only hitch is that the radiator under the windows dries them out fast, so they need a ton of water if they're going to make it through the winter. This year's array is much more interesting than last: thyme, rosemary, chives, tarragon, curry, marjoram, za'atar, savory, and lemongrass. It should make for a richer palette for stews and the like. I also uprooted the verbena plant and hung it to dry on the porch so we can capture it for ice creams and such later on. Tomorrow it's time to make the giant pot of mirepoix and freeze it in individual bags.
Tonight's dinner was emblematic of the day: a return to autumnal simplicity and gratitude for a bit of rest. The stresses of life right now have not actually lessened- quite the opposite, in fact- but the key is to focus on the stuff one can actually control at any given moment. And that would be dinner.
A good local organic chicken- duly spatchcocked and rubbed with a blend of sea salt, smoked paprika, cumin, garlic, herbs, and pepper- got all roasty-like in the oven while I picked, washed, and spun a mixture of pan di zucchero and curly endive with garlic, lemon juice, brown mustard, and copious olive oil to make a wonderfully bitter-acidic-spicy condiment to the rich bird. There was some leftover sweet potato purée, and a bit of brown rice, so I combined them with an egg yolk, a bit of flour, and the rest of the spice rub to make little cakes which I browned in the (homemade) bacon fat left from breakfast. The bones from the grilled birthday chicken had been lurking in the fridge, so I threw them in a pot with the back from this bird and made a bunch of stock, some of which was lucky enough to form the bulk of a gravy I whipped up with the drippings once the chicken emerged from the oven.
Super-simple and traditional, and sublimely spot-hitting. When I was in Vermont, going through the cellar, I found a bunch of bottles I had all but forgotten about, so I brought them home since they're all good to go. Tonight's foray into the mixed case was a 2001 La Jota Petite Sirah; we bought it from the vineyard in May of 2004 on our last trip before Milo was born. (A word of advice to all the guys out there: go on wine-tasting trips with pregnant women. You have a guaranteed designated driver. It's pure genius.) I don't buy wine anything like this any more, but it's nice enough; there's some interesting spice sandwiched between the ludicrously opulent California fruit and just-softening tannins. Petite Sirah is notoriously dense and decadent, so it's what I expected, given what I remember from the tasting back then. We have one more; I'll try it in a few years to see if anything exciting happens to it as it relaxes. A bit too fat for chicken, really, but honestly there's still some pleasure to be had for me in these behemoths. In a way, it was perfect- heavy on the pleasure, light on the self-awareness. The way weekends were meant to be.
Tonight's dinner was emblematic of the day: a return to autumnal simplicity and gratitude for a bit of rest. The stresses of life right now have not actually lessened- quite the opposite, in fact- but the key is to focus on the stuff one can actually control at any given moment. And that would be dinner.
A good local organic chicken- duly spatchcocked and rubbed with a blend of sea salt, smoked paprika, cumin, garlic, herbs, and pepper- got all roasty-like in the oven while I picked, washed, and spun a mixture of pan di zucchero and curly endive with garlic, lemon juice, brown mustard, and copious olive oil to make a wonderfully bitter-acidic-spicy condiment to the rich bird. There was some leftover sweet potato purée, and a bit of brown rice, so I combined them with an egg yolk, a bit of flour, and the rest of the spice rub to make little cakes which I browned in the (homemade) bacon fat left from breakfast. The bones from the grilled birthday chicken had been lurking in the fridge, so I threw them in a pot with the back from this bird and made a bunch of stock, some of which was lucky enough to form the bulk of a gravy I whipped up with the drippings once the chicken emerged from the oven.
Super-simple and traditional, and sublimely spot-hitting. When I was in Vermont, going through the cellar, I found a bunch of bottles I had all but forgotten about, so I brought them home since they're all good to go. Tonight's foray into the mixed case was a 2001 La Jota Petite Sirah; we bought it from the vineyard in May of 2004 on our last trip before Milo was born. (A word of advice to all the guys out there: go on wine-tasting trips with pregnant women. You have a guaranteed designated driver. It's pure genius.) I don't buy wine anything like this any more, but it's nice enough; there's some interesting spice sandwiched between the ludicrously opulent California fruit and just-softening tannins. Petite Sirah is notoriously dense and decadent, so it's what I expected, given what I remember from the tasting back then. We have one more; I'll try it in a few years to see if anything exciting happens to it as it relaxes. A bit too fat for chicken, really, but honestly there's still some pleasure to be had for me in these behemoths. In a way, it was perfect- heavy on the pleasure, light on the self-awareness. The way weekends were meant to be.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Brevity Is... Wit
I'm too tired to write much about our dinner last night; today was such a giant, frustrating waste of time that it has given me a new understanding of the phrase "wit's end." Those of you who stalk follow me on Facebook may have already read all about it, but suffice it to say that I drove 220 miles round trip to Brooklyn for an appointment that was canceled the very minute I arrived. There's really nothing more satisfying than making time, gas, money, and sanity evaporate in a big wasteful cloud all at once.
Last night, though, was the opposite. I picked up some more of the luscious line-caught swordfish and some corn and came home to try out our new shichirin that had arrived a few days earlier along with a box of binchotan charcoal. It takes a while to heat up, but once it does it's like your own personal volcano; strips of fish cook to perfection in a matter of seconds, and the vegetables get a delightful char as they soften. In addition to the fish, which I marinated in soy sauce, mirin, and agave nectar, we had the chicken mushrooms from Sunday's foraging trip (also marinated in a similar mixture for a couple of hours), two of our eggplants cut into batons and soaked in soy, garlic, ginger, nam pla, vinegar, and agave, and slices of sweet potato with salt and yuzu juice.
Apart from how nice it is to cook everything just so- and how much Milo loved it- once it gets cold we can do this indoors with a couple of windows cracked and not smoke ourselves out of the house. The charcoal burns so clean and so hot- next up is finding a good bowl to fit on there so we can have shabu-shabu.
Last night, though, was the opposite. I picked up some more of the luscious line-caught swordfish and some corn and came home to try out our new shichirin that had arrived a few days earlier along with a box of binchotan charcoal. It takes a while to heat up, but once it does it's like your own personal volcano; strips of fish cook to perfection in a matter of seconds, and the vegetables get a delightful char as they soften. In addition to the fish, which I marinated in soy sauce, mirin, and agave nectar, we had the chicken mushrooms from Sunday's foraging trip (also marinated in a similar mixture for a couple of hours), two of our eggplants cut into batons and soaked in soy, garlic, ginger, nam pla, vinegar, and agave, and slices of sweet potato with salt and yuzu juice.
Apart from how nice it is to cook everything just so- and how much Milo loved it- once it gets cold we can do this indoors with a couple of windows cracked and not smoke ourselves out of the house. The charcoal burns so clean and so hot- next up is finding a good bowl to fit on there so we can have shabu-shabu.
Monday, September 21, 2009
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Milo's birthday party was Saturday, and I kept it simple: grilled chicken legs and farfalle tossed with homemade pesto, feta, and cherry tomatoes. And cake. A vanilla cake with raspberry filling and chocolate frosting that had a bulldozer on it. Which I did not make. I don't do cakes. If you search very hard, you might find a blog or two out there that touch occasionally on desserts, but this ain't one of them. I make about three desserts, and I am OK with that because they are very good, and include pie and ice cream. Actually, I busted out a pretty badass pumpkin panna cotta for Thanksgiving a couple years ago, and have been known to make a sex-inducing molten chocolate cliché from time to time, so I've got that going for me.
Which is nice.
I've also got this wonderful family, without whom I would doubtless dine on nothing but sad bachelor sandwiches moistened with lonely, lonely tears.
I've been sleeping particularly horribly of late, so by the time dinner rolled around (or, rather, by the time I got busy and made dinner) I was fully beat. Also, there was lots of screaming- and a little crying- as a horde of kids rampaged through the house and after four or five hours of that most of my neurons felt like they'd been scoured with a wire brush. I had some grandiose plan for a fabulous meal that I was going to cook for all the adults who had come for the weekend, but it degenerated into a low-budget slasher production that verged on the comical.
It started off all right, with kebabs of cubed swordfish and hokkaido pumpkin from the garden (The two small specimens represented about a third of our total crop this year). I love the gradient at the edge of the squash, and the way they sweat when you cut them:
I relit the grill, still warm from lunch, and set them to doing their thing, surrounded by a bunch of our poblano chiles stuffed with polenta enhanced by the addition of parmigiano and water from the tub of feta I used to make the pasta for lunch. The peppers charred up pretty well, aided by slipping some maple bark through the grill to goose the BTUs of a flagging fire, and the fish cooked in no time. The problem was the pumpkin. I cut them too thick so they'd hold together when I skewered them, and they did, but they were much too big to cook through by the time all else was ready to eat. So I rushed back inside and dumped all the pumpkin hunks into a saucepan along with a little water and cider vinegar, and steamed them hard for a few minutes so they'd soften. Wet heat can be a wonderful thing sometimes.
We served it on a bed of steamed kale, and with a salad, and it tasted pretty good. The issue was visual, mostly; char-grilled peppers turn black, swordfish turns milky grey, and grilled squash that is then sloshed around in boiling liquid trades its sexy grill marks for a patina the color of an orange magic marker tip that's been carelessly dragged through a big area of black magic marker- by, say, a five-year old. So the resulting plate looked like something only a North Korean could love, and the ugliness was only accentuated by the ring of nasturtiums I hastily threw around it. I should have picked more, along with the lily pad-sized leaves growing from the one in the compost, and covered the whole damn thing with them.
Behold:
Be honest, now- it looks like Wild Tofu Surprise™ made by your useless stoner college roommate when it was his night to cook, right? Perhaps after a long night watching kitchen gadget infomercials? Prepared shirtless, with that fucking Phish bootleg warbling the whole time? Of course it does.
In a couple of days I promise there will be a post that redeems the execrable fail of this one.
Which is nice.
I've also got this wonderful family, without whom I would doubtless dine on nothing but sad bachelor sandwiches moistened with lonely, lonely tears.
I've been sleeping particularly horribly of late, so by the time dinner rolled around (or, rather, by the time I got busy and made dinner) I was fully beat. Also, there was lots of screaming- and a little crying- as a horde of kids rampaged through the house and after four or five hours of that most of my neurons felt like they'd been scoured with a wire brush. I had some grandiose plan for a fabulous meal that I was going to cook for all the adults who had come for the weekend, but it degenerated into a low-budget slasher production that verged on the comical.
It started off all right, with kebabs of cubed swordfish and hokkaido pumpkin from the garden (The two small specimens represented about a third of our total crop this year). I love the gradient at the edge of the squash, and the way they sweat when you cut them:
I relit the grill, still warm from lunch, and set them to doing their thing, surrounded by a bunch of our poblano chiles stuffed with polenta enhanced by the addition of parmigiano and water from the tub of feta I used to make the pasta for lunch. The peppers charred up pretty well, aided by slipping some maple bark through the grill to goose the BTUs of a flagging fire, and the fish cooked in no time. The problem was the pumpkin. I cut them too thick so they'd hold together when I skewered them, and they did, but they were much too big to cook through by the time all else was ready to eat. So I rushed back inside and dumped all the pumpkin hunks into a saucepan along with a little water and cider vinegar, and steamed them hard for a few minutes so they'd soften. Wet heat can be a wonderful thing sometimes.
We served it on a bed of steamed kale, and with a salad, and it tasted pretty good. The issue was visual, mostly; char-grilled peppers turn black, swordfish turns milky grey, and grilled squash that is then sloshed around in boiling liquid trades its sexy grill marks for a patina the color of an orange magic marker tip that's been carelessly dragged through a big area of black magic marker- by, say, a five-year old. So the resulting plate looked like something only a North Korean could love, and the ugliness was only accentuated by the ring of nasturtiums I hastily threw around it. I should have picked more, along with the lily pad-sized leaves growing from the one in the compost, and covered the whole damn thing with them.
Behold:
Be honest, now- it looks like Wild Tofu Surprise™ made by your useless stoner college roommate when it was his night to cook, right? Perhaps after a long night watching kitchen gadget infomercials? Prepared shirtless, with that fucking Phish bootleg warbling the whole time? Of course it does.
In a couple of days I promise there will be a post that redeems the execrable fail of this one.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Che Cozze
I always try to let the circumstances of a day inform the dinner that I make, incorporating as much foresight as I can in the from of procuring certain ingredients in sufficient quantity to feed whoever will be around. Then there's the amount of time I have to actually cook, and whatever the season offers in the way of things that are fresh and perfect from the garden. In the case of today, Milo's Grandmother arrived for his party tomorrow and it looks like we're one day away from a frost that will end the lives of a good portion of what we have growing.
Put simply, this summer has sucked balls (and not in the good way). We had cold and rain every day of June and most of July; real summer weather arrived in August and now we're back to seasonal coolness and rapidly shortening days. Yes, I know that bitching about the weather is about as useful as explaining radiocarbon dating to a young-Earther, but this summer has been a fucking wash. Literally. Almost all of the things I planted for fall are still stunted little babies- we'll have no turnips, rutabaga, or black radishes bigger than a thimble- and since I was away for a critical week there's no tomato sauce or grape jelly in the pantry for winter. Even if I had been around, we still would have had to buy most of what we canned. And our peppers are only just beginning to ripen, meaning that all of the lovely hot sauces I like to make may not happen at all this year.
I love our friends, and I like this place, but if this is the new normal I don't want to live here any more. I'm not living through full-force winters and then getting wet, chilly, useless barely-summers. No matter how perfect spring and fall are- and they are- it's not going to be enough.
So to make best use of the non-spicy garden, I yanked a pile of stuff to form a saucy substrate for a whole pile of mussels we got from the fishmonger. Onion, garlic, fennel, carrot, parsley, chioggia beet, celery, Roma tomato, thyme, beet greens, chard, and scallion all went in the big pot along with some leftover dashi from lasagna night and about half a bottle of cheap (yet tasty) Alsatian Riesling. It simmered while I washed and checked the mussels for aliveness, then dumped them in until they all opened. Meanwhile, a pound of spaghetti boiled, and then it all collided in a big bowl to great effect with a crusty local baguette on the side. Apart from how damn good it tasted, the best part was watching Milo figure out that this meal is all about the bread and the sauce; he quickly abandoned both bivalves and noodles alike in favor of diligent dippage. I've got some ideas about how to use that fact as a jumping-off point for future dinners, but for the time being this did just fine.
Put simply, this summer has sucked balls (and not in the good way). We had cold and rain every day of June and most of July; real summer weather arrived in August and now we're back to seasonal coolness and rapidly shortening days. Yes, I know that bitching about the weather is about as useful as explaining radiocarbon dating to a young-Earther, but this summer has been a fucking wash. Literally. Almost all of the things I planted for fall are still stunted little babies- we'll have no turnips, rutabaga, or black radishes bigger than a thimble- and since I was away for a critical week there's no tomato sauce or grape jelly in the pantry for winter. Even if I had been around, we still would have had to buy most of what we canned. And our peppers are only just beginning to ripen, meaning that all of the lovely hot sauces I like to make may not happen at all this year.
I love our friends, and I like this place, but if this is the new normal I don't want to live here any more. I'm not living through full-force winters and then getting wet, chilly, useless barely-summers. No matter how perfect spring and fall are- and they are- it's not going to be enough.
So to make best use of the non-spicy garden, I yanked a pile of stuff to form a saucy substrate for a whole pile of mussels we got from the fishmonger. Onion, garlic, fennel, carrot, parsley, chioggia beet, celery, Roma tomato, thyme, beet greens, chard, and scallion all went in the big pot along with some leftover dashi from lasagna night and about half a bottle of cheap (yet tasty) Alsatian Riesling. It simmered while I washed and checked the mussels for aliveness, then dumped them in until they all opened. Meanwhile, a pound of spaghetti boiled, and then it all collided in a big bowl to great effect with a crusty local baguette on the side. Apart from how damn good it tasted, the best part was watching Milo figure out that this meal is all about the bread and the sauce; he quickly abandoned both bivalves and noodles alike in favor of diligent dippage. I've got some ideas about how to use that fact as a jumping-off point for future dinners, but for the time being this did just fine.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
All Nighter ≠ Increased Productivity
Yesterday I drove to NYC and back in one evening- showing the apartment, and having a nice dinner at the Good Fork with friends who are planning their own restaurant- it's nice to drive on empty highways, but arriving back home at 2 AM to find that I didn't have my house keys and thus was forced to "sleep" in the Pilates studio so as not to wake my lovely wife was not the ideal finale to a tiring day. On the plus side, I had put a comforter in the car in case I wanted to sleep in Brooklyn and there is a nice mat on the floor which doesn't make the world's worst bed. On the minus side, there's no no running water in the studio and I had left my toothbrush and paste in the apartment. In the morning, my breath peeled much of the paint before I made it outside.
While I was gone, though, my family went to the farmers' market and picked up our fish order, which included a couple of gorgeous Branzino fresh from the Aeolian sea. Local, no- but sustainably caught and very tasty. We conveniently had a bunch of egg whites left over from making Milo's birthday mousse, so I whipped them into stiff peaks and folded in a bunch of sea salt and herbs to make a good crust for baking. Thusly slathered, they went in the oven while I made a super-simple Ragout de Jardin™ of carrot, onion, garlic, celery, shallot, fennel, chard (and stems), and two kinds of kale sautéed in a bit of olive oil. I also steamed a celery root and some fresh-dug potatoes until soft, then puréed them with a bit of cream and yogurt until they got all silky and smooth.
The fish emerged from oven and crust with a delightful aroma and fleshy firmness; the salty skin lifted off like a lid to expose the perfect white meat beneath. I gingerly lifted it onto dollops of purée and garnished it with our home-grown bounty.
A little lemon-butter sauce might have been nice, but deglazing the vegetables with some wine gave them enough moisture to function adequately as a sauce of sorts- or at least an elegant foil to the fish. And the cream and yogurt in the purée added a nice heft to the sweet starch. There's another whole cooked fish left over, so tomorrow I might make it into a salad of some kind- either for sandwiches, or as a topping for crostini to embellish plate of greens. We had another bottle of the 2005 Longval Tavel- it's quickly becoming my wine of the moment, especially for these season-spanning meals; it's nimble and elegant- served cool, but not cold, it has enough skin and age to cavort expertly with heartier fare- or with food like this, which screams (shaking a metaphorical, impotent fist at the mute heavens) "IT'S STILL SUMMER, DAMMIT!" despite all the evidence to the contrary.
While I was gone, though, my family went to the farmers' market and picked up our fish order, which included a couple of gorgeous Branzino fresh from the Aeolian sea. Local, no- but sustainably caught and very tasty. We conveniently had a bunch of egg whites left over from making Milo's birthday mousse, so I whipped them into stiff peaks and folded in a bunch of sea salt and herbs to make a good crust for baking. Thusly slathered, they went in the oven while I made a super-simple Ragout de Jardin™ of carrot, onion, garlic, celery, shallot, fennel, chard (and stems), and two kinds of kale sautéed in a bit of olive oil. I also steamed a celery root and some fresh-dug potatoes until soft, then puréed them with a bit of cream and yogurt until they got all silky and smooth.
The fish emerged from oven and crust with a delightful aroma and fleshy firmness; the salty skin lifted off like a lid to expose the perfect white meat beneath. I gingerly lifted it onto dollops of purée and garnished it with our home-grown bounty.
A little lemon-butter sauce might have been nice, but deglazing the vegetables with some wine gave them enough moisture to function adequately as a sauce of sorts- or at least an elegant foil to the fish. And the cream and yogurt in the purée added a nice heft to the sweet starch. There's another whole cooked fish left over, so tomorrow I might make it into a salad of some kind- either for sandwiches, or as a topping for crostini to embellish plate of greens. We had another bottle of the 2005 Longval Tavel- it's quickly becoming my wine of the moment, especially for these season-spanning meals; it's nimble and elegant- served cool, but not cold, it has enough skin and age to cavort expertly with heartier fare- or with food like this, which screams (shaking a metaphorical, impotent fist at the mute heavens) "IT'S STILL SUMMER, DAMMIT!" despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Milo's Birthday
The party will be on Saturday, but today was the actual day. So I planned a simple meal of his favorites, and yet which also allowed me to refine my favorite variations on a couple of standards. He loves lasagna (he used to call it "Za-zagna" when he was little, and the name stuck). Since I'm still tinkering with my version, I gave it another whirl that took full advantage of the season's bounty. The winning combination of veal and dashi has pretty much defined the dish for us- I've written about it before- so this time around what made it even better were two components that came from the garden. Christine made a big batch of roasted tomato sauce while I was in Miami, so I added that to some ground (humane, pasture-raised) local veal and let it simmer into a luscious sauce. The dashi, once made, I stirred into a roux along with a pesto made with roughly equal parts of curly endive and basil.
I get pretty annoyed dealing with lasagna noodles; it requires boiling a big pot of water, and then dealing with big, hot, slimy, crinkly noodles before they all stick together. Plus, the act of cooking them ends up knocking most of the crinkles off anyway, which is vexing in and of itself. So this time around, I just soaked them in a big bowl of hot water; in 30 minutes or so they were perfectly pliable and yet just tepid and fully intact. In a perfect world, I would have rolled out fresh pasta- maybe flavored with caramelized onions for some more depth and complexity- but store-bought served just fine. These were supplemented with some sunchoke flour for a nice silky texture. So I alternated layers of veal ragù and pesto-dashi velouté, and topped it all with fresh mozzarella and grated parmigiano. It baked up beautifully.
Originally I had planned to make some serious dark chocolate ice cream- something he loves a very great deal- so I did my usual thing: beat eggs and extra yolks, heat cream/milk mixture, vanilla, and vanilla sugar, pour onto shaved chocolate (Scharffen Berger unsweetened 99% cacao), temper eggs with the ganache, whisk over double-boiler until thick, then chill in the fridge. It set up so lusciously thick in the fridge that I asked him if it would be OK for us to have chocolate mousse instead of ice cream. He agreed, delighted, so that saved a whole step. I took some local raspberries out of the freezer, and cooked them with a splash of dessert wine left in the fridge, some maple syrup, and a little red wine until they were all busted up and gooey, then I strained the syrup into a bowl. After dinner, I scooped mousse into bowls, garnished them with strawberry slices and mint leaves, and served them. He was so excited to eat it that he didn't want a candle, but when he asked for seconds he decided that he did. Using the 99% cacao allows one to use the normal proportion of cream and milk and still have the mousse/ice cream taste fully dark. It's very grownup and sophisticated, and further proof that the kid really knows how to eat. And thus did he enjoy his fifth birthday.
I get pretty annoyed dealing with lasagna noodles; it requires boiling a big pot of water, and then dealing with big, hot, slimy, crinkly noodles before they all stick together. Plus, the act of cooking them ends up knocking most of the crinkles off anyway, which is vexing in and of itself. So this time around, I just soaked them in a big bowl of hot water; in 30 minutes or so they were perfectly pliable and yet just tepid and fully intact. In a perfect world, I would have rolled out fresh pasta- maybe flavored with caramelized onions for some more depth and complexity- but store-bought served just fine. These were supplemented with some sunchoke flour for a nice silky texture. So I alternated layers of veal ragù and pesto-dashi velouté, and topped it all with fresh mozzarella and grated parmigiano. It baked up beautifully.
Originally I had planned to make some serious dark chocolate ice cream- something he loves a very great deal- so I did my usual thing: beat eggs and extra yolks, heat cream/milk mixture, vanilla, and vanilla sugar, pour onto shaved chocolate (Scharffen Berger unsweetened 99% cacao), temper eggs with the ganache, whisk over double-boiler until thick, then chill in the fridge. It set up so lusciously thick in the fridge that I asked him if it would be OK for us to have chocolate mousse instead of ice cream. He agreed, delighted, so that saved a whole step. I took some local raspberries out of the freezer, and cooked them with a splash of dessert wine left in the fridge, some maple syrup, and a little red wine until they were all busted up and gooey, then I strained the syrup into a bowl. After dinner, I scooped mousse into bowls, garnished them with strawberry slices and mint leaves, and served them. He was so excited to eat it that he didn't want a candle, but when he asked for seconds he decided that he did. Using the 99% cacao allows one to use the normal proportion of cream and milk and still have the mousse/ice cream taste fully dark. It's very grownup and sophisticated, and further proof that the kid really knows how to eat. And thus did he enjoy his fifth birthday.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Miami
It was a busy week, and it's good to be back; it's so clear, mild, and perfect here after the tropical heat and humidity. Despite the hard work, there were some good meals (and not a little time in the pool at my gallerists/hosts' house). Initially, it was just me staying there; the other artists arrived later in the week. I had one evening to myself, so I rummaged around in the fridge to construct a dinner. Finding fingerling potatoes, half a fennel bulb, some onion, shallots, cream, and a bit of old sparkling wine, I assembled it all into a decent gratin, seasoned with herbs from their back yard, making a salt-rubbed cucumber salad as well.
The next day, we (now numbering four) went to Hiro's Yakko-San in North Miami. It's a wonderfully authentic and unpretentious place, serving a wide variety of izakaya-style small plates. We had fried shishito peppers, triggerfish skin jerky, seaweed salad, spicy clams (with an insanely good sauce, which we refused to let them take away; we asked for rice to soak up the last of it) fried udon, kimchi, broiled mackerel, and a few other things that I'm forgetting, washed down with Kirin Ichiban and a good Daiginjo sake. Fantastic, and a welcome alternative to ubiquitous sushi-joint fare. As an example, take a look at the lovely seaweed salad:
The following night I offered to cook for them, since they had opened their home to me for a week and I wanted to reciprocate a little bit. So after closing up the gallery, we headed off to the WhoFo in South Beach to stock up on things. Hot, muggy weather notwithstanding, I was in an autumnal kind of mood, so I incongruously grabbed a bunch of the vegetables that we have in the garden now. It's a pity, really, that the big national chain is now precluded by its size from dealing with local suppliers in different regions; the produce looked exactly the way it would in any other branch. Had I not been there to work, I would have sought out the great local fish market and tried to find some produce as well. But such is life.
We ended up with some beautiful wild coho salmon, a flank steak, a turnip, a head of radicchio, brussels sprouts, and some sweet potatoes. Positively screams tropical, right? The one nod to locality was a bag of key limes. When we got back, I minced the salmon super-fine with their two cleavers (it's so much easier that way) and folded grated ginger, lime juice, soy sauce, fish sauce, and a little Bragg's into it and let it sit. I served it plain, with lime, and it was good. What it really needed, though, was soy sauce thickened with raw egg yolk and pooled around it like a little moat of awesome, but I didn't think of that until my now-normal bout of insomnia around 4 AM. Which, obviously, is the most useful time of night to have these thoughts. Since Tyler is pregnant, I cooked hers up like a little burger.
I cubed and caramelized the turnip in a pan, adding a few drops of vanilla when done, then chopped the radicchio and tossed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and set it aside to marinate. The brussels sprouts got a simple sautée with a strip of minced bacon, and then a quick steam with a splash of wine to soften them up. The sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into discs, went in the oven to bake with a good glug of cream and herbes de Provence. I once again raided their garden bed for arugula, basil, and oregano, which I made into a pesto along with a little key lime juice and some habañero mustard I found in the fridge and then rubbed all over the steak after I pounded it nice and flat. Then I rolled it up tight, pinned it with a wooden skewer, and put it on the grill with a cedar plank (not on the plank, but next to it; the wood caught fire and smoked the chamber up pretty nicely).
Once the roulade was done, I sliced it up and set a piece on top of a sweet potato round, then scattered sprouts, turnips, and radicchio, finishing with a little pan-deglazement action involving wine, cream, and minced herbs. It turned out pretty well, despite the geographical/seasonal inappropriateness.
Friday night we went to a BBQ at some big collectors' house; it's an annual event and they invite the entire Miami art world. Last, on Saturday night, after the opening we went up to Red Light, a hip café in a semi-dicey neighborhood where the food is playful, heavy on local ingredients, and well-executed. I, being in the mood, had both mussels steamed with wine, garlic, and herbs AND shrimp in a thick, sweet, tamarind-inflected coconut curry that I could have just eaten by itself with a baguette and called it a night. It's the kind of place- along with Hiro's- at which I would surely become an instant regular if I lived down there, and it's another reason why I love to stay with people rather than at hotels; it's the quickest way to find all the cool places that tourists don't go to. It's also particularly nice when one's hosts are kind enough to treat at both venues.
For dessert I ordered a scoop of carambola (star fruit) sorbet for us all to try, and it opened up a whole bunch of interesting ideas; there's a slight smokiness to it that got me excited, and it did some pretty special things with- of all things- the Bandol rosé I was drinking. I've done some fancy eating in Miami before- Nobu, and a few of the schmancy "fusion" joints that are all over the place- but these two are so much more satisfying for their humility, conviviality, quality, and affordability. I like the city even more now than before, and hope to get back there soon- but next time with the family. A week- even a busy and exciting one- can feel like a long time to be away.
The next day, we (now numbering four) went to Hiro's Yakko-San in North Miami. It's a wonderfully authentic and unpretentious place, serving a wide variety of izakaya-style small plates. We had fried shishito peppers, triggerfish skin jerky, seaweed salad, spicy clams (with an insanely good sauce, which we refused to let them take away; we asked for rice to soak up the last of it) fried udon, kimchi, broiled mackerel, and a few other things that I'm forgetting, washed down with Kirin Ichiban and a good Daiginjo sake. Fantastic, and a welcome alternative to ubiquitous sushi-joint fare. As an example, take a look at the lovely seaweed salad:
The following night I offered to cook for them, since they had opened their home to me for a week and I wanted to reciprocate a little bit. So after closing up the gallery, we headed off to the WhoFo in South Beach to stock up on things. Hot, muggy weather notwithstanding, I was in an autumnal kind of mood, so I incongruously grabbed a bunch of the vegetables that we have in the garden now. It's a pity, really, that the big national chain is now precluded by its size from dealing with local suppliers in different regions; the produce looked exactly the way it would in any other branch. Had I not been there to work, I would have sought out the great local fish market and tried to find some produce as well. But such is life.
We ended up with some beautiful wild coho salmon, a flank steak, a turnip, a head of radicchio, brussels sprouts, and some sweet potatoes. Positively screams tropical, right? The one nod to locality was a bag of key limes. When we got back, I minced the salmon super-fine with their two cleavers (it's so much easier that way) and folded grated ginger, lime juice, soy sauce, fish sauce, and a little Bragg's into it and let it sit. I served it plain, with lime, and it was good. What it really needed, though, was soy sauce thickened with raw egg yolk and pooled around it like a little moat of awesome, but I didn't think of that until my now-normal bout of insomnia around 4 AM. Which, obviously, is the most useful time of night to have these thoughts. Since Tyler is pregnant, I cooked hers up like a little burger.
I cubed and caramelized the turnip in a pan, adding a few drops of vanilla when done, then chopped the radicchio and tossed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and set it aside to marinate. The brussels sprouts got a simple sautée with a strip of minced bacon, and then a quick steam with a splash of wine to soften them up. The sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into discs, went in the oven to bake with a good glug of cream and herbes de Provence. I once again raided their garden bed for arugula, basil, and oregano, which I made into a pesto along with a little key lime juice and some habañero mustard I found in the fridge and then rubbed all over the steak after I pounded it nice and flat. Then I rolled it up tight, pinned it with a wooden skewer, and put it on the grill with a cedar plank (not on the plank, but next to it; the wood caught fire and smoked the chamber up pretty nicely).
Once the roulade was done, I sliced it up and set a piece on top of a sweet potato round, then scattered sprouts, turnips, and radicchio, finishing with a little pan-deglazement action involving wine, cream, and minced herbs. It turned out pretty well, despite the geographical/seasonal inappropriateness.
Friday night we went to a BBQ at some big collectors' house; it's an annual event and they invite the entire Miami art world. Last, on Saturday night, after the opening we went up to Red Light, a hip café in a semi-dicey neighborhood where the food is playful, heavy on local ingredients, and well-executed. I, being in the mood, had both mussels steamed with wine, garlic, and herbs AND shrimp in a thick, sweet, tamarind-inflected coconut curry that I could have just eaten by itself with a baguette and called it a night. It's the kind of place- along with Hiro's- at which I would surely become an instant regular if I lived down there, and it's another reason why I love to stay with people rather than at hotels; it's the quickest way to find all the cool places that tourists don't go to. It's also particularly nice when one's hosts are kind enough to treat at both venues.
For dessert I ordered a scoop of carambola (star fruit) sorbet for us all to try, and it opened up a whole bunch of interesting ideas; there's a slight smokiness to it that got me excited, and it did some pretty special things with- of all things- the Bandol rosé I was drinking. I've done some fancy eating in Miami before- Nobu, and a few of the schmancy "fusion" joints that are all over the place- but these two are so much more satisfying for their humility, conviviality, quality, and affordability. I like the city even more now than before, and hope to get back there soon- but next time with the family. A week- even a busy and exciting one- can feel like a long time to be away.
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