Rambling thoughts on Turkey.

When I was younger, I was never a big fan of Thanksgiving, thats mainly because I don't really like turkey. I always preferred the taste of chicken, it was so chickeny. I found the flavor of turkey to be, well, foreboding. As if all the best animals are extinct, and now we have to eat turkey and then soon after we'll have no food at all so you better enjoy this, buster

Now that I have cooked duck, goose, quail, and game hens, I still list turkey as my least favorite bird. I was determined, however, to make a turkey for Thanksgiving that even I would enjoy. I recently acquired a VHS copy of Jacques Pepin and Julia Child cooking together in front of a studio audience; its called Cooking in Concert. There weren't all that many foodies around in those days and so the studio audience is largely comprised of women in their 40s, who were probably the only people who ever cooked way way back then. It was shot in 1992, I believe, so everyone is wearing an enormous sweater. I have not been able to find my doppleganger in the audience. I always look for my doppelganger when I see an audience. I have never seen one. Closest one was on Maury Povich a while back. The guy was making out with Connie Chung in the back row.

Professional chefs generally disrespect the turkey when they talk about it. Kind of like how singers disrespect the Star Spangled Banner as being a bad song with a formidable history that we are stuck with so just enjoy what you can about it. Singers always say that. One problem with a turkey is that it is often so big that in order to completely cook it through, one often ends up overcooking the breast. In 2002 I read an article in the Times, Parlez-Vous Turkey? where some fancy-pants chef proposed to remove the legs before roasting, bone them out, and cook the legs and breast-still-attached to the carcass separately. When I showed the article to my roommates, though, they were horrified. They declared that any changes to the T-Day regime was positively un-American. It probably didn't help that the title of the article was in French.

Well, I had all but forgotten that article when I started watching Cooking in Concert, so I was pretty thrilled to see Jacques bone out a turkey, and stuff it with forcemeat. The only thing that made me nervous was that he roasted it for "about an hour and three quarters at 425 degrees," and if it browns too fast, loosely tent some tin foil over the top. 425?! Only two hours?! Well, I did a lot of web searching and found that most recipes recommends 30 minutes at ~425 and then like 3 hours at ~350. Jacques has never failed me, but, most of America is convinced that you have to lower the temperature after 30 minutes. Who was right? Well, some really extensive googling turned up an article about the recent history of turkey cooking techniques. I wish I had bookmarked it. Anyway, this article claimed that pre-WWII recipes generally roasted at a high temperature, and that post-WWII it started to be in vogue to roast at a lower temp. Both schools of thought claim that their method results in the juiciest turkey. The high-temperature group claims that minimizing time in the oven is the key to preserving moisture, and the low temperature group claims that the key is keeping a low temp so less water evaporates. The author of the article had cooked turkeys using both methods, and claimed that high temp was the way to go. Well, I wasn't looking for the results of an experiment, I just wanted to find one other person who had made the high-temperature method work.

We did not take pictures, but I am recording my recipe here. It is loosely based on the one I saw on the video. I certainly liked the results. I think that the pistachios are key, and its always nice to have some organ meat in a stuffing.

1. Make at least 2 C bread crumbs and shuck 3/4 C pistachios.


2. Bone out a 12-lb turkey.


3. chop an onion, a leek, a lamb kidney, and about 1 C parsley.


4. Sauté the onion until translucent in 3T fat, add the kidney and brown, add 1/4 C tequila and flambé. Place the kidney and about 1/2 of the onions into a food processor and chop finely.


5. sauté the leek until translucent, about 3 minutes.


6. mix together pistachios, 3/4 lb sausage meat and 3/4 lb ground pork. Add 2 Tb tequila, the parsley and vegetables and kidney and mix well. Add 1 tsp salt, and some pepper and some ground allspice.


7. Immediately before stuffing add 2 eggs and enough bread crumbs to make a paste.


8. Season the inside of the turkey lightly with salt and pepper, stuff the turkey. tie with string.


9. Rub the turkey skin with tequila.


10. Bake, breast side up at 425F for about 2 hours, until the turkey meat and the internal temp is at least 165F. Let rest for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

The small kitchen

There is a recent New York Times blog about Bittman, the Times' food writer, and his small kitchen. I agree with everything that he says; food prepared in a small kitchen will taste just fine, but the hassle-factor is quite high.

Food Magazine.

The New York Times magazine this week has an entire issue devoted to food.

I'm into watching videos today:

My favorite one is an excellent video with a recipe for making mac 'n cheese pancakes that is worth watching more for the chef's philosophy on cooking, than for the recipe. (Although let me know if you make the pancakes!)

others:

I would love to have an induction cooktop, which is a stove that cooks with magnetic fields. They heat almost immediately.

Then there's Alice Waters working a farmers market.

Mark Bittman shopping for cookware.

Homemade caviar.

Yep. Damn salty. Explodes in your mouth.
I found instructions at a web site called the Homebrew Chef.

He has a lot of good pictures. Its quite easy, really, all you have to do is soak the egg-packet in salty water for about 30 minutes to kill anything in there, then you remove the membranes.

Two seafoods is the secret.

At left: The shrimp and red snapper (~2.25lbs) for tonight's meal, and some salmon roe for making caviar (stay tuned for the caviar entry).

Recently we've been trying to cook more seafood. I've grown especially enamored with recipes which use 2 different seafoods, an infatuation which began last week when I made broiled halibut with steamed mussels on a bed of sauteed potatoes and chorizo. With two seafoods and chorizo, we couldn't eat fast enough! So I was excited to find a recipe for sautéed red snapper fillets with shrimp. Red Snapper is a lot more photogenic before you fillet it, so this is the only picture I ended up taking. (OK, actually I forgot to take a picture of the finished product)

The flash on the camera seemed to have made his eye look cloudy, which is dissappointing because I was going to hold this fish up as an example of the perfect fish. It passed the three most crucial tests for fresh fish:

1) The most important test is the smell test. A fresh fish should have no smell, or a smell you find appealing.
2) The next most important test is the gill test: look at the gills, they should be bright red and engorged with blood. And I mean bright red. You may have never seen well-oxygenated blood because when you cut yourself and bleed you have almost always cut a vein, which is on its way back to the heart in order to travel to the lungs and pick up some more oxygen. Your arteries are much more well protected, and usually lie fairly deep in your body. The blood returning to the heart travels closer to the skin because temperature regulation, etc, isn't as important. Bright red gills mean that the fish was breathing recently!
3) The eye test. A fresh fish has a glassy eye. A cloudy-eyed fish is still pretty good, really, but that fish has probably been dead at least a week.

When I bought this snapper the fishmonger tried to sell me headless snapper! He said that they were cheaper because you don't have to pay for the weight of the head. I examined these headless fish, but there was no way for me to ensure their freshness. I mean, the only reason that a fishmonger removes the head and gills on a fish is because they don't want you to see how old the thing is!

I guess my new rule is to buy only from a fishmonger that I trust.

All right, lets talk about tonight's recipe. Its from my favorite seafood cookbook, the long out of print The Seafood Cookbook, by Pierre Franey.

You will need (serves 2):
red snapper fillets (or striped bass, or sea trout, or any white fish),
1/2 lb shrimp,
a couple of shallots,
a large tomato,
some fresh parsley,
and a few other things that you probably already have: (red wine vinegar, milk, flour, butter, corn oil, salt, pepper)

You might want to read ahead, so you know what to prepare ahead of time.

1) Fillet your fish.
2) Sprinkle the fillets with salt & pepper. Dip the fillets into a bowl of milk, then dredge in flour to coat them.
3) Heat 1 tablespoon of corn oil in a nonstick skillet over high heat. Sauté on one side for 4 minutes, then reduce the heat to medium-low, flip the fillet and sauté for another 4-10 minutes, until it is done.
4) Place the fillets on a plate in a 180F preheated oven to keep them warm.
5) Clean the shrimp, and slice them in half the long way.
6) prepare the following: 1/4C minced shallots, 1C peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes, and 1 T red wine vinegar. (I seeded mine, but didn't peel them)
7) Melt 3 T unsalted butter in a skillet (I drained the first skillet, and just reused it) over medium-high heat and add the shrimp, sauté for 1 minute, add the shallots, tomatoes and vinegar and sauté for 1 minute more.
8) Scatter the shrimp and sauce over the over the fish fillets. Garnish with fresh parsley. (I put the bulk of the sauce next to the fish in order to keep them crisp)

Serve with a baguette. This is a very easy meal. only about 30 minutes in the kitchen. My favorite part, again, is the two seafood theme. The snapper is essentially garnished with the thinly cut shrimp, which makes this meal look especially impressive.

Make the baby cook!

...but don't make the baby eat!

These are two of the tips that childhood nutrition instructors offer to parents in a recent Times article about parental food-mistakes. Its quite an interesting article about how our food tastes develop as children. There's a lot of common sense in the article, but sometimes, especially if your sense is a little uncommon, its nice to hear some common sense.

One of my favorite tips: if your kid eats too many cookies, stop buying cookies. Its pretty good advice. In fact, I wish that all of our problems were this easy to solve. I suppose that the "opposite" of this advice is also true: "If you are unable to stop buying cookies, your kid will eat too many cookies."

My favorite tip from the article, however, doesn't just work on kids, it works on me, too:

"Don't serve boring vegetables."

It's very easy to add a little zing to vegetables, with only minimal effort. These are easy recipes to prepare, and although they all have some fat added, its healthier for you to hork down 1/2 lb of broccoli with a tablespoon of oil on it than it is to eat only a couple of plain florets while swearing you'd rather starve than be a vegetarian.

Two vegetables:
Choose two vegetables that you think go well together. I like to put a sliced onion (or shallot) with something green, like peas, asparagus, or rapini.

Now saute them. For sliced shallots and peas you would add some oil to a pan, and saute them until they are almost done, then add the peas, and continue to saute everything until the peas are warm.

Now, remove the pan from the heat and melt 1 TB butter into the pan. Serve.

You could also add some sliced garlic, or red pepper flakes, maybe a little cumin.

One vegetable:
mix:
1 T lemon juice
1.5 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
1/4 t Tabasco

Now, prepare your vegetable as you like and toss with the sauce. This works especially well with broccoli, which I steam. I think that the broccoli is done when it is still fairly firm.

Vegetable puree:
This works really well with any squash, but I've also done it with broccoli. The trick is starting with the right amount of water. You don't want to dump any water out after you simmer because that water contains some of your nutrients, and you don't want to spend too much time boiling it all off, or the vegetable might end up like baby food.

Cut 1 squash into 2-inch pieces. Simmer in a covered saucepan with 3/4 C water, a garlic clove, and 1/2t salt for about 20 minutes, until it is tender. You should have a few tablespoons of water left.

Add squash to food processor along with the leftover water, 1/2 C milk, 1 T butter, and freshly ground pepper and more salt to taste. Puree.

Variations on the puree:

• If you want to try it with broccoli you'll need more water, about 3/4 cup for every pound of broccoli, and omit the milk.
  
• You can omit the milk for the squash, too, but you'll want to have at least 1/2 cup of water left over before you puree, so start with more water.
  
• You could add a jalepeño pepper at the simmering step to add some spiciness.
  

Salvia

This is a video from the Times about something that is kind of like a food, its leaves you consume.  Like spinach.  Spinach is a leaf you consume.

Meals for the King.

Elyse hasn't felt like writing recently about meals that she had made in the last month. So I'm just going to post some pictures, maybe later she'll get around to postings recipes, or additional comments about their preparation. I was only involved in the consumption.

This little guy to the right was a beautiful crab that we examined live at the grocery store earlier that day. They even offered to send it home live! I don't know what the plan there was, its one thing to wrap a lobster's claws, but crabs are fairly strong.

I don't know of the dish was, but I think that in Thailand this dish is always served in the presence of a King, so its a very special dish. It was presented beautifully, in fact, I always always always love it when a chef presents the head or face of the animal you are eating as a decoration. We omnivores are a sick, sick crowd. Well, while this little beasties ghost was watching I devoured his scrumptious flesh. I mean really, how can a species survive that tastes so good? We eat every single one of these things that swims on by, and they keep coming. The skunk, now that's a smart animal. That's what I would want to smell like if were an Earthling who wasn't a human.

By the way, I asked Elyse what was in the sauce? (besides the crab meat, ginger and scallions) She listed off a bunch of sauces in Chinese, who-wa sauce, moy chin bayye, Choom ma. I have no idea what goes into all those sauces but we have like 10 bottles of Chinese sauce around here that Elyse picks up from her trips to the People's Republic, apparently, because I wouldn't know where to buy them. Anyway, this was a memorable meal, for sure.


Here was another one that she threw together fast, but it was incredibly good.

First of all those are homemade dumplings, not frozen, and they were great. We have a package of those dumpling-wraps in the fridge, and inside was, I believe, ground pork and scallions, and some awesome Chinese sauce. Then she shredded carrots and garlic, and added some snap peas. The broth is our homemade stock along with some of the several times previously aforementioned Chinese sauces. It was transcendent. The dumplings were a nice meaty mush, and the texture of the peas was crisp and fresh as a contrast, and the carrot was rather hard, as opposed to crisp. It was a great collection of textures, and tasted great, too!


This one was quite simple, especially considering how good it was. You could probably make it based on the picture! You just need to stir fry the shrimp in a spicy red sauce. Whatever you like. Remember to sauté your shrimp with the shells on, it adds a lot of flavor! Its always tastiest - and messiest - to cook a shellfish in its shell, and pick the shells off at the table. We ate this on a very hot summer night with a nice Chablis. The slices of avocado are key.

Yes, that's the same head of lettuce from the last one. We're so economical. With heads of lettuce.

This meal is a standout in our memory because these are the first crêpes that Elyse had ever made in her life. Just last month! You know, I have never made crêpes. But I do own a crêpe pan. I have had it for 2 years! I have never made crêpes in it, and I bought it because I like it for frying eggs because the low sides make it really easy to get the egg out without breaking the yolk. But I knew that, simply by owning a crêpe pan, that I had dramatically increased the likelihood that, one day, I would eat homemade crêpes. It took 2 years, and marriage to an LI girl who made me crêpes with turmeric in them! Great crêpes. Great crêpe pan, too.

Here is another of Elyse's hobbies. This is not edible, it is made from femo clay. I don't know what they are going to be. My hope is for a series of psychedelic models of the Starship Enterprise, but she doesn't seem to be in a Sci-Fi phase, really.

How many cook books must a man read

before you can call him a man?
And how many people must a man serve,
before you can call him a chef?

The answer, my friend
is tasted in the sauce.
The answer is tasted in the sauce.

Those words were the original lyrics to that Dylan song. Not a lot of people know that. There are a lot of food parallels in music. The original lyrics to that one Beatles song were 'Scrambled Eggs', at least according to His Majesty Sir Paul McCartney.

How many cookbooks do we own? I don't know, a lot, thirty maybe. That's nothing compare to Jesse Sheidlower, however, who owns 573 cookbooks. Apparently he just hangs out all day and throws dinner parties, kind of like a modern day Mrs. Dalloway. This guy seems pretty cool, really, his day job is editing the Oxford English dictionary. "Look here now, tool is not just a noun, its a damn verb, why, I went tooling down the road just yesterday." That's a fine life. What am I going to do today? Try to spruce up the definition of a word, or find an excuse to throw a dinner party.

Speaking of dinner parties the Times has an article about dinner parties today, called The Anti-Restaurants. The article is, unfortunately, a meandering beast, and they've buried the lead to the point where you'd think it was just an article about slaughtering a boar. Apparently an Anti-Restaurant begins as a group of people who think its more fun, and cheaper, to cook at home for friends than to drop a Benjamin per, at a restaurant. Then they start cooking so often that they split the grocery bill with the friends. Then their friends start bringing friends, and those friends start bringing friends, and suddenly, its basically a restaurant which isn't inspected by the health department, and its cheap and good, and the wine glasses are plastic, and oh yeah, you might have to chop some veggies.

I think that I went to a restaurant like that several years ago on central park west called the A-train. It certainly wasn't inspected by the health department. Although it wasn't in an apartment, it was in a hole in the wall with about 6 tables on street level. The food was good and the menu was a little off the wall, the 2 chefs were also the waitresses, it was byob, and it was cheap, and there was no sales tax.

I would never want to run an anti-restaurant, I think I'd lean more towards the Jesse Sheidlower model. He has a few favorite books, by the way, I think I'll get them. Its not often that you get a cookbook recommendation by someone who has read 573 cookbooks.

Spaghetti Cat

No, not cat spaghetti, Spaghetti Cat:

Hominy

Hominy is corn that has first been dried, then soaked in lye in order to remove the bran and the germ. germ? bran? lye? The germ is the part that grows into the baby, the bran is essentially the hull of the kernel. I've never noticed the corn germ, personally, I'm too busy stealing its food. Lye is sodium hydroxide, sometimes known as Drain-O, other times known as Liquid Plummer. Now, don't ask me why lye doesn't kill us, I would assume that one uses a very dilute solution of NaOH in food preparation. (kids, don't try this at home, even if you use a diluted liquid plummer to soak your corn in, you'll probably end up dead, by and large). I know what you're thinking, this is some new fad food, or it was created by a biofuels manufacturer that is foisting some gasoline byproduct on an unsuspecting public. Nope. The Guatemalans have been making Hominy in this manner for over 3,300 years. You want fad-food? Try foam.

At least, this is what a little web research has taught me, because until yesterday I had no idea what Hominy was until I prepared it from scratch by opening some canned Hominy and stuffing it into my piehole. Believe me you, Hominy is good stuff, and so I will capitalize it all day long.

Hominy is famous, too, kind of. Remember Menudo? Ever wonder where they got their name? Menudo is a Mexican soup of tripe and hominy. Tripe, as you probably know, is the lining of a cow's stomach. It seems like a bad name for a band, truthfully, I guess they thought that we would like the sound of it. Menudo. Maybe we should take a lesson in marketing. What's the grossest thing we eat? Let's all move to Spain and start a band called The Hot Dogs.

Last night we had Corn & Hominy chowder. It tasted great, and the combination of Hominy with its progenitor, corn, is so wrong that its brilliant. Be sure to use fresh corn. There is no (good) substitute for corn you have removed from the cob yourself.  It was a very easy chowder to make, just chop everything and boil it gently for 15 minutes. We also made corn bread from a box. This is a meal that should be served at the Corn Palace.

Crank. It. Out.

The phone rang. I was asleep. The phone rang again. I woke up. It was Elyse, "Hey, I'm walking home from Yoga class, what should I pick up for dinner?" It was 6:15pm. I had no idea how long I'd been asleep. Was I cooking tonight? I couldn't remember. Was it Tuesday? Thursday? Yesterday? I asked Elyse to pick up a chicken, an onion, and a lime. And some greens for a side salad.

In a fresh sleep-coma I stumbled out into the living room where I picked up the latest copy of Food & Wine. The recipe that I had half-remembered was for steak, not chicken. Well, a chicken and an onion will make a nice meal. The lime can waste away in the fridge until we finally throw it out. Supports the lime growers. Kids in Africa can't survive on limes anyway.

One thing that I have never mentioned in the food blog is that if I nap 20-25 minutes I feel great. Cat Nap City. Refreshed. Mentally engorged. Any longer, and I am out for the night, nothing can wake me up. Not even an entire pot of coffee. By this time I had figured out that I must have been out for about 60-70 minutes. I got home from work at ~5, and laid down for a 20 minute nap. 99 times out of 100 I wake up in 20 minutes. But not today. I was out for the count. Slovenlyville. Dull. Mentally retarded.

Elyse arrived. I took one look at the chicken and realized that I wasn't very hungry, and the sautéed chicken with white wine and piquillo peppers that I had wanted to make wasn't going to be worth the effort. It wasn't just lack of hunger, I didn't have my faculties about me enough to prepare a meal like that. I was still determined, however, to cook. I have no idea why. Was it have been the a coma? When there?

I informed Elyse that the chicken will be for tomorrow and that we were having leftovers night. She whined a little. Spontaneously. Quietly. I like the whining because if the expectations are low, and you run out a grounder, you're Pete freakin' Rose. Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It's 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points. There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week - just one - a gorp... you get a groundball, you get a groundball with eyes... you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week... and you're in Yankee Stadium. Thank you, Crash Davis.

I knew that we didn't have any dying quail, but I looked into the freezer. BINGO. Frozen leek & potato soup that I had previously used to make Vichysoisse, and a whole Tupperware container full of chicken livers that I had harvested over the last few weeks. Trust me, save those livers.

I started cooking. Clumsily. I unwrapped the chicken that Elyse bought because I needed its fat. I removed the fat without hurting myself but then chaos ensued. I was almost completely unable to work Saran wrap. Everytime I yanked the Saran wrap, the whole roll came out! damnit. Then, when I finally ripped a piece off it became totally enamored with itself and would not let go. It took me almost 5 minutes to wrap that bird back up. I was not in the zone. Not in the bird wrapping zone.

I hard boiled 2 eggs. Easy enough. I put the frozen leek & potato soup in a saucepan and started melting it. No problemo.

I chopped the onion. I must have that wired because it took like 15 seconds. I tossed the fat in the skillet preheated to medium, along with a little chicken skin for good measure. When the fat melted I added the livers, there were about 4 big ones, and the chopped onion. I sautéed them on high for a minute, then turned the heat down to medium and covered the pan for 10 minutes, just like Jacques had taught me.

Elyse came into the kitchen and picked up Food & Wine. "There's a recipe in here for sautéed chicken with piquillo peppers you know."

"I know, that's for tomorrow night now."

"You're obsessed with those peppers so I thought you'd make it."

"Tomorrow night, no problemo!" I could do anything tomorrow.

"This recipe is by Mario Batalli! It says here that he's from Seattle, no wonder he can't dress himself. Look at these ugly red crocs!"

I cringed, "The recipe isn't by Mario Batalli, its something that a Spanish lady taught him on his new PBS show with Gwenneth Paltrow."

"She can't cook, she just walks around Spain, looking hot and trying to make people not notice him."

There are sometimes conversations like this when I am cooking. I was holding my own tonight. No screw ups for like 10 minutes here. Dinner is going to happen. Toss the arugula with a little olive oil and red wine vinegar. Drain the livers & onion in a collander. After they cooled, cut the livers into pieces.

Elyse was still reading the article. "Mark Bittman is in the show, too."

That was pretty surprising, how many chefs does a show need? "What? I hope he does 101 ways to use Piquillo peppers in under 15 minutes."

"Michael Stipe is in it, too"

"What the hell? Now I have to see that show."

Meanwhile, I turned off the heat on the soup and melted 1 Tb butter into it. Recall, I had added cream to this same base for the Vichysoisse, and served it cold. You can do worse than having frozen leek & potato soup on hand. I put the chopped livers & onions back into the fat that had drained out of the collander. I put the eggs through the egg slicer, twice, so I had little pieces of egg, and I mixed them into the livers & onions. Violá!

I was pretty proud of this one. A salad of liver, onion, & egg along with a bowl of leek & potato soup isn't bad at all. The key is to keep your eyes open for foods that can be saved in the refrigerator for a night like this. Soups are good, just don't add any fat before you freeze them. Freshly melted butter, or fresh cream added at the last minute is a nice touch. Oh yes, the other lesson is, never agree to cook if you just woke up.

Seafood Bread

Here's a fun one for an informal dinner party (known around here as Catan night). We made this a while ago. The recipe is from Jacques & Julia Cooking at Home. We used a 12" round loaf, hollowed it out, made some flavored butter, and filled the loaf up with seafood, a few mushrooms, and the butter. Then covered the top with a layer of bread crumbs and baked it in the oven. We used 1/2 lb each of salmon, scallops, shrimp, and mushrooms, all cut into 1-inch pieces.

The butter

Put 1 C parsley, 3 peeled shallots, and 5 cloves garlic into a food processor, and cup until minced. Add 1.5 sticks of room temperature butter, 1/2 tsp each of salt & pepper, and 3T dry white wine, and process until blended.

The bread bowl

Hollow it out, and use the insides to make bread crumbs in the food processor. Line it with a layer of butter, the add a layer of seafood, another butter layer, a layer of crumbs, the rest of the seafood, the rest of the butter, and then the rest of the crumbs. Bake at 400F for 1-1.5 hours. You can cover the bottom of the bread with foil if you don't want it to get too brown.

A hot August night, a vichyssoise, corn tempura, pork chops with thyme, and a Viognier.

You are at work. There is blistering heat outside. You are planning to make dinner tonight, and there is no a/c at home. To make matters worse, there are no cookbooks around. What to do?

The names and places may change, but the story is the same for all of us. There are nights where we want to make dinner but none of your no-brainer meals - like roast chicken - seem right. You want something warm and safe. Or, on a Hot August Night, something cold and safe.

I turn to either Food & Wine, or the New York Times. Yes, the Times is more than just election coverage and reviews of candy stores in Wisconsin. It is an enormous repository of recipes from 4 columnists. Some dead. Some alive. Craig Claiborne, Pierre Franey, Jacques Pépin, and Mark Bittman - the current columnist. Go to the 'advanced search' page, and enter the name of your preferred chef, and then a keyword. Yesterday I entered Pépin and summer, which is how I found these recipes, ideal for a hot night.

Vichyssoise
A vichyssoise is a cold soup, a purée of leeks, onion, and potatoes in chicken stock, with cream. The recipe is here, but it calls for 6 cups stock, and 3 cups is plenty, really. I like puréed soups to be fairly thick.

Pork Chops
The pork chops with thyme are here, but all you have to do is pat the chops with salt, pepper, and dried thyme, and sauté them ~4 minutes on each side, and rest in a 180F oven 10+ minutes.

Corn Tempura

The fun one was the corn tempura, to which I added onion slices. Make a batter with 1 C flour, 1 C water and 1 egg. (If you haven't done that before put the flour and the egg into a bowl, and add 1/4 c water, mix well, the add another 1/4 c water, mix well, then the rest of the water. This way you don't get lumpy batter). Refrigerate the batter while you prepare the corn and the onion. Slice 1 small onion into half, and then into thin slices.

Have you ever cooked with fresh corn?  You'll never buy frozen corn again, after you've used fresh. For this recipe you need 2 corn cobs. After shucking a cob, slice the kernels off with a sharp knife: hold the cob in your hand, pointing away from you and make a long slice going away from your body along the length of the cob, slicing off kernels as you go - don't worry if you leave parts of the kernels behind, this is the quick & easy method. Rotate the cob and make another long slice. Finish slicing all the kernels off this way.

Mix the kernels and onion into the batter. Preheat 2T oil to medium-high heat in a large nonstick pan, and make 4 tempuras at a time. Each tempura needs a scant 1/4-cup of the batter mixture. Sauté 3 minutes, then flip and sauté 2 more. Take them out, add another 2T oil, and make 4 more tempuras.  You'll have 12-16 of them. They are good, and a different way to get your vegetables.

Viognier

Finally, we had a great wine, a Viognier, from the Coteaux de Languedoc. If you are looking for a change of pace with a white, the Viognier is nice. This one had an intense flavor and smelled of flowers and a little citrus. By the way, here's a little tip I thought up on my own, if you have trouble finishing a whole bottle over dinner, just start drinking when you start cooking!

Beef consumption

Some interesting beef facts from this article in the WSJ.

Americans are projected to consume 28.9 kg of beef per capita this year. That's 64 lb for each of us! Only Argentinians and Uruguay-ers will consume more. EU-ers will consume only 12.1 kg (26.6 lbs) each.

Making yer own hamburger

You've probably heard me talking about the €35 hamburger craze in Paris.  OK, aside from Jessica, Chris, Christy and Scott, who were over that one time I mentioned it, you haven't heard me talkin' 'bout it.  But I wanted to make a burger that might be worth €35 to a sucker in a restaurant.

I did a little hamburger making research, its pretty simple, as you probably guessed.  You need some meat to grind, and a little fat to add. You don't need a meat grinder, though, just chop the meat with your chef's knife.  (it can also be done in a food processor, but that sounds like a hassle)  I used sirloin, pork loin, and ground chuck as the meats, and pancetta, and beef marrow for the fats.  I also added an egg and covered it with a little flour before I cooked it.  The topping is piquillo peppers and Manchego cheese.

I'm not going to give an explicit recipe, just some general principles.

1) Choose 2-3 meats that you like.  I consider sirloin to be a fancy-hamburger staple.  Add another beef cut, or pork, or even duck or goose if you can find it.  You'll want to make a 1/2 lb burger per person.

2) Cut the meat into 2-3" chunks, and put them in the freezer for 20-30 minutes in order to firm them up and make the chopping easier.  Chop the meat into little pieces.  

3) Choose a fat, or a fatty meat: about 10% of the burger should be fat.  The Pancetta was great, and the beef marrow was a bit of a hassle.  Consider using chorizo.   Use any rendered poultry fat you've been keeping in the fridge.  Also, you can use butter.  Use about 1 tb butter per lb of meat.

4)  Put the chopped meat, and the fat into a bowl, add 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper per lb of meat.  (There is a lot of room for variation in this step: a chopped clove of garlic, some thyme, cayenne...)  mix it up.

5)  Optional step, add an egg and mix that up, too.  I used 1 egg for 1 lb of meat, and that was plenty of egg, I think that 1 egg would be enough for up to 3 lbs of meat.

7)  form your patties and put them into the fridge - or a few minutes in the freezer - until you cook them, to firm them up.

8)  optional step: dredge them in flour just before cooking.

9)  Melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan and cook them about 5-7 minutes on each side, then place them in a 180 degree oven to rest for at least 10 minutes.

Now for the buns, I just bought a baguette and sliced a couple of pieces off, and sliced those in half.  Use whatever you like, I find than buns intended for hamburgers are too heavy.

You'll want some kind of topping.  Let's talk about piquillo peppers.  These things are great - if a little expensive.  They are 2-3" long, and are fire roasted and peeled, and then stuffed into glass jars.  They have a soft texture, and an intense flavor that's sweet, not at all spicy.  I like to keep a jar around, they were great for these burgers, and I have used them on homemade pizza.  They are also good as an appetizer with a piece of Manchego stuffed into them, and sautéed for about a minute.  Keep your eyes peeled for a jar of piquillo peppers!

I also served a side dish of sautéed peas and shallots so we had a vegetable.

enjoy!

Recipes from the New Yorker?

The New Yorker pokes fun at Mark Bittman's minimalist column with Fourteen Passive-Aggressive Appetizers.

Meandering Wine Entry!

The best birthday present ever I received from Elyse last year. It is a wine-of-the-month subscription from KLwines. Every month we receive a red and a white for $20 + shipping. The gift is especially good for a wine-beginner who wants to expand their (my apologies for pluralizing the gift recipient - unless you are gifting the Siamese - but I cringe even more when I read "his or her") repertoire. Although they send a few Bordeaux's and Chardonnays - which you would probably buy on your own anyway - in just the last 6 months we have also received a Côtes du Roussillon, Coteaux du Languedoc, Semillon, Garnacha Blanca, and one of my favorite whites, an Entre-Deux-Mers. Also, they send you a description of the wine which can help you develop your wine palate. Are those citrus flavors? Mocha? Is it a tannic wine? How many rhetorical questions can I ask?

Although the bottles we get aren't (usually) complex, they are reliably good. Last night we opened a 2005 "Line Shack" Cabernet Sauvignon from Monterey which had nice smooth tannins, cherry flavors, and ended with a tiny bit of spiciness that I really, really liked. Not bad for $10! (yes, I know that $10! = $3,628,800 but I don't know how to express an abrupt utterance of delight in print involving money without using the factorial symbol) KLWines prides itself on sending very good bottles for the price. That sounds a little silly, who doesn't pride themselves on stocking very good products? Wait, I know who, American grocery stores stock foods that sell, not foods that taste good (or are healthy). Stores in our country are often all about maximizing profits, so they don't take pride in selling quality things. (not to totally knock that business model, but it is often pushed too far with food)


If you happen to walk into a store you will find my personal wine-buying rules to be useful:
1) Don't buy from a store which does not have a knowledgeable wine-person.
2) Don't buy major-label wine. Major label wines are like chain restaurants, reliably mediocre. You will never love a wine from one of these places. So buy from a little guy.
3) If the label has words like "rat bastard wine", "big blue trucker wine", "friendly bitches wine" just stay away. If you don't believe me, just imagine someone who is excited by these labels. Yuck!
4) Don't spend more than $15 (unless you know what you're doing.) There are a lot of great wines under this price, especially if you stick with the small guys.
5) Don't spend under $7 unless you want to get a headache.
6) Don't buy Merlot, especially if you are following the $15 rule. The name Merlot sells the wine, it doesn't have to be good, I don't know why this is. (Some Merlots are quite good, but you'll have to drink a lot of bad ones to find the good ones, again, especially under $15)

Finally, I generally like to buy wines that are named by the place they come from as opposed to the name of the grape. The locations are more specific. Each region has its own climate, soil structure, and farming methods. These are the types of things that take a chardonnay, for example, and rises it up to the level of a Chablis. I usually look the name of the wine in my handy-dandy little wine encyclopedia. You could also use the wiki, or the wine dictionary at epicurious.

Readers, do you have a favorite wine? What do you remember about the best bottle you've ever had?

Salad Days

I have kind of a strange relationship with salads. As a kid, my parents always made fun of me because I hate fruit salads because I find them “confusing”. I still feel this way! All of the juices blend together and it just ends up as one big soupy sweet mess. If I want a soupy sweet mess, it’d better involve chocolate. I’m just saying.

I’m also not especially into the “salad as meal” types of salad. I mean- a chefs salad can be great sometimes, but that’s just a bunch of cold cuts and iceberg lettuce (I love iceberg lettuce in all of its non-nutritional glory). Also the salads with lots of bits of dried fruits and nuts and thingamabobbers gross me out. Especially when the salad is overdressed- it just becomes kind of a soggy pile.

The salads I love are the simple ones that focus on the greens. I have recently discovered that my favorite salad green is arugula. It is just so manageable and crisp and has a natural spicy taste. It goes so beautifully with a simple salad dressing. I also like this salad with a nice frisse but this is a bit controversial (some people find it too “pokey”). Here is my default salad-

-Take a big bowl

-Add some shredded or chopped garlic to the bowl- what I do is take one clove and grind it against the tines of a fork. Easy! And you don’t have to muss up a cutting board!

-Add a nice dollop of good Dijon mustard.

-Add a splash (or more to your taste) of good red wine vinegar- mush everything up with the fork

-Salt and pepper to taste

-Add some good olive oil and mix a bit- don’t worry about forming an emulsion.

-Add the appropriate amount of greens and toss!

You can add other things if you want, but try and keep it simple. Also, there are so many varieties of salad dressings that you can easily make (see http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/perfect-salad-dressings>this> for more examples).

And if it’s mid summer (which it is) and you have fresh English peas available (if you are lucky!) then you should make this salad because it rules.

Mexican Yang

It doesn’t get hot in Seattle. I truly love this weather phenomenon, being the hot-blooded, easily over heated, lazy with sun screen, sweaty beast that I am. There are a lot of folks in this city who kvetch and moan about the summers here because they want more sun and more heat. Honestly- 90% of this country experiences hot and sunny summers. Why do they even bother living here?

ANYWAY, this past Friday afternoon it was hot. Like 85 degrees and sunny hot. Yuck. I was sweaty and yucky and grumpy from just having ridden the stinky bus home yet I had to cook something nourishing for myself and my mate. But what could possibly be appetizing in this type of oppressive weather? Of course….MEXICAN FOOD! I found the best tostada recipe. (Ok…all of the recipes I’ve posted about so far are from food and wine. So?? It’s a great resource!) This is a real yin yang type of recipe- the sweet mushy pineapple avocado bean mash vs. the chewy smoky spicy shrimp all stacked on a crunchy tostada shell- honestly, though, I think that store bought tostada shells are ga-ross and I prefer this recipe with a baked flour tortilla and some chili powder sprinkled on top. Totally just a personal preference, though.

The coolest part about this recipe is that you get to set it on fire. The first time I set fire to a hot pan full of cooking food I was terrified. It lights up very quickly with a WHOOSH and then it burns a really tall flame for a couple of seconds before it dies down. It’s very fun. You should try it some time.

Anyway- if you don’t eat shrimp you could probably substitute something else in there but I don’t know what. Seitan? Ha ha- I dare you to try that.

Leftovers!

Tonight we had leftovers. Leftovers don't have to be dull! The best advice that I have ever heard about leftovers is don't simply reheat them, use them as ingredients in a new dish.

I got this recipe from Jacques Pépin's Encore with Claudine, which probably the best book of his to buy if you don't have any at all. (It is currently available for <$1 used on Amazon.) The leftovers featured here are the leftover baguette and lamb from two nights ago, but you can use any leftover meat that you have. I hollowed out some tomatoes, made a stuffing out of the meat, the leftover bread, green onions, white onion, garlic, and mushrooms. I used the insides of the tomatoes as a sauce.

For 4 tomatoes which weight about 1.5lbs total, use 4 oz leftover meat and chop it up, 3 oz dried bread chopped into 1/2" pieces, 4 green onions coarsely chopped, 1/3 C chopped white onion, 1/3 C chopped mushrooms, and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped. Combine these ingredients in a bowl along with some salt and pepper, 1/3 C water, and 1 egg. Mix it all together. Cut of the tops off the tomato, and hollow out the insides, reserving the insides for the sauce. Coarsely chop the insides and place them in your baking dish, along with some salt. Fill the tomatoes with the meat-mixture, place the caps on, place them on the sauce in the baking dish and cook them for 45 minutes at 400F, or until the tomatoes are nicely browned.

An important lesson here is that you don't need to use precisely this list of ingredients. You could use chopped leek instead of the onions, or put a T of capers or a few anchovy fillets in there. If I did it again I might use bulgar wheat instead of bread, although Elyse liked the bread. I think that I would also add some olive oil to the tomato innards.

Serve one per person as an appetizer, or two each along with another dish for a light dinner. We began the meal with a turnip, sweet potato, white potato and leek soup, from the same book. It helped that I had some stock on hand for a tasty, hearty soup base! The soup, along with 2 stuffed tomatoes each made for a nice, light, nearly vegetarian dinner.

(Of course, if you really are a vegetarian the chopped lamb in the tomatoes and beef stock in the soup would disqualify this meal as truly vegetarian, but for the rest of us, its a little peak into the world of vegetarianism, sort of like how you can watch a movie about war, without actually having to risk your life.)

Mango infused habanero grilled chicken.

Welcome to my $6 lunch. I got this in the hospital cafeteria today and took the picture with my camera phone. Although the name of the dish might lead you to believe that I work in some kind of foodie heaven I have long since learned that the names of the dishes rarely correspond to the flavors. The names seem to be just that, names. These are curious names, really, mango is fine, but habanero is poor marketing, especially if you aren't even going to cook with it. In this part of the country the red bell pepper is considered spicy, (that is not an exaggeration, but I do hope that your reaction is something like, "I refuse to believe that any sector of humanity has reduced itself to such fecklessness of flavor without tasting the evidence with my own tongue," because, you see, I have an undying faith in the ability of humanity to be positive when faced with an epicurean foe such as a public which prefers bland, tasteless food) and basically steered everyone in front of me towards a hamburger. I still ordered the chicken because they always grill well, and the skin looked perfect. So even if there was a mango and a habanero in the same room as the grill and that's where they got the name, it'll still be good cafeteria food.

I knew the ball was rolling my way today when I ordered the chicken and he asked me "white or dark" as he laid his left hand on some white meat. As you know, white meat is "healthier". He had apparently - subconsciously, of course - determined that I was decidedly healthy looking and for sure got they way by eating chicken breast! A subconscious compliment, I'll take them where I can get them. Imagine the surprise, the chaos, the utter calamity in his id when I decadently and confidently ordered "dark". Of course, if all you saw was the look on his face you would think that he was barely aware of my existence, but his subconscious certainly mulled it over for the better part of a day.

Imagine my dismay when, as I was practically drooling over the stainless-steel food bin of steamed carrots and green beans that for once didn't look overcooked, he asked if I wanted vegetables or salad, and proceeded to quietly lay his left hand on the salad tongs. Again, not one to lose hope in the flavor of food so quickly I craned my neck to see if they had invented a new salad, maybe with mâche, tarragon, sliced beets, Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and some olive oil, and thickened with a raw egg yolk, but no, that must have been a dream I had online, for the only thing in the stainless steel salad bin was iceberg lettuce. So there I was, moments after receiving a subconscious compliment I learned that the other half of his id thought that I was a pansy! Iceberg lettuce is for pansies! I immediately asked for the vegetables but I don't know if he understood, I probably should have beat him up just to prove a point to his subconscious, but without having had lunch first I probably would have lost, and if I went back later his subconscious wouldn't make the connection. So I left him there, id in a swirl, looking for another healthy pansy to feed.

The lunch was well worth $6, the chicken was no more spicy than a red bell pepper, there was some sweetness, maybe not mango, but still good. The carrots and green beans were fine, although the green beans were a little overdone. The cumin-rice, however, tasted like they dumped raw cumin over the rice after it was done. That's not the only thing keeping the place from earning a Michelin Star, however, and for $6 I shouldn't complain, but still do.

Tomorrow I'll wear a power tie, and maybe they'll guess my order right.

Grenadins of Lamb with Morels and Artichoke Hearts

These recipes are a little involved, so I won't go into them, but they are again from a book by Jacques Pépin, called Jacques Pépin Celebrates. This was a Happy Birthday meal for Elyse!

I would like to recommend that you make your own stock. That is the only way I was able to pull this meal off. The sauce is a reduction of my stock, along with a reduction of the water that I soaked the morels in, butter, and some cognac, which I flambéed. Making your own stock will mean that you spend an entire day relaxing at home, and if you have it frozen you can produce an impressive meal in no time.

Most of the effort in this meal for me was in the artichokes. I haven't worked with them a lot, and the artichoke can be a little daunting. Really, make sure that your knife is sharp and then just remove everything that doesn't look edible. (There are a lot of artichoke heart slices on the plate, because I bought jumbo artichokes at Whole Foods today. Half as many would have been plenty.)

I should mention tarragon, the garnish, which you should try to substitute the next time you have a hearty meal which is garnished with parsley or chives. We don't use tarragon often in this country, but we should!

Fried Whitebait.

About 2 months ago we were at HT, our favorite Chinese market, and I had just picked up a pound of frozen smelt. Elyse said simply "what are you going to do with those?" although the tone in her voice was more like "Dude, aside from this package of frozen catfish heads, you just picked up the grossest looking thing in here." Several months earlier I had seen a recipe in Chez Jacques that I was determined to cook if I could ever find Whitebait. I did remember Jacques mentioning that if you can't catch your own you will probably find them at a Chinese market, but these were labelled smelt. I bought them anyway, figuring they would fry up just fine.

Whitebait, as I later learned, is also called smelt and is usually immature Herring, but the word refers to different immature fish in different parts of the world. I had wondered if these whitebait were what I knew as minnows as a kid, but it turns out that minnows are fish that grow up to be small, whereas Whitebait are fish that are still growing up.

The ones I got were headless, and already cleaned, and about 2 inches long. I was disappointed that they were headless, I wanted to eat the head! The head makes the dish all the more hardcore, still hardcore-for-beginners, though, not like eating bone marrow, or intestines, or simmering a chicken in its own blood. Yum! If yours aren't cleaned you will need to squeeze their guts out of their poop hole. This is called dead-pooping your guts out. Squeeze out the parts that are easy to remove, and don't worry if you leave some guts behind.

Lets talk about flour. Flour is an odd one because it tastes real bad when its uncooked, but real good when cooked. If you use flour to thicken a sauce but then fail to cook the sauce adequately, for example, your sauce will be pasty-tasting. If you don't believe me go shove a handful of raw flour in your mouth. You know you don't want to! Its totally bad! Now we are going to coat the fish with it! And its bad! But something happens when you cook it, it turns a tasty fish into a delectable little fish-french-fry. You get, like, notes of bread with the fish. No one ever refers to this flavor as 'notes of bread' or 'hints of bread' but that's what it is.

By the way, if 'notes of bread' doesn't sound brilliant to you then you need to be eating some better bread.

By the way, if ANY food doesn't sound brilliant to you, then are eating a bad version of it. Every member of our species likes mushrooms, liver, and even the occasional beet if is fresh and prepared properly.

So, now we bread the fish with the flour. First you pat the fish dry with paper towels, they should be pretty dry because we don't want any extra water in that hot oil. Jacques says to dissolve a tablespoon or so of flour into a cup of milk because it'll thicken the milk. Add some freshly ground pepper. Dump the fish into the milk mixture. Make sure they are coated. Then put a cup of flour into a 1-gallon bag, and take the fish out of the milk, and drop them into the bag. Close the bag and pretend you have Shake n 'Bake. Dump the fish into a colander and shake off all the excess flour.

Now we will deep fry. You only need to know a few things about deep frying, and you really need a digital thermometer for this. They are cheap, and extremely useful, I bought a Taylor model #9842 from Amazon for about $15 and I use almost every time I cook. There are 2 very important things to know about temperature,

1) Keep the oil below 400F, or it will burn, and your food will taste burnt.

2) Keep the oil above 300F or your food will absorb a lot of oil.

The 2nd rule is the surprising one, I think. If you keep the temperature high enough you won't end up with an oil-bomb of a dish. According to Hervé This in Molecular Gastronomy, the process of deep frying is the process of steaming food from the inside. As the water boils it leaves as steam, and if the steam pressure is high enough the oil doesn't seep in. He goes on to say that if you can wipe the oil off the food immediately after frying if you want to prevent that outer layer of oil from soaking in.

In order to help you control the temperature you should use a lot of oil and a heavy saucepan. I used 1.0 quart of oil, but even 1.5 qts would have been a big improvement. The heavy saucepan will prevent the temperature from falling when you drop the fish in. I recommend a 4-quart saucepan or so, because the fish really fill it up, and you so-don't wanna spill.

Now heat your oil to 360F, and carefully slide the fish in. It'll bubble like mad for the first minute, but then die down. While that happens lets talk about how to learn to cook. Its easy! Most of the things I'm telling you here I figured out as I went. This was the first time I had ever deep fried, though, and I made some mistakes. I used a sauté pan that was too small to do this task safely (2-1/2 qts), and it was too thin to keep the temperature up. After I dumped the fish in the temp fell to 280F and I had to turn the heat on the stove all the way up to keep it from falling any further! And they still tasted great! So if you don't have the "proper equipment" you can still make this dish, but I strongly recommend the thermometer, and a bigger saucepan than I used.

OK, cook the fish at least 3 minutes - stirring occasionally - until they are a beautiful golden brown. As you know, the color is a more important indicator than the timing. Take them out with a skimmer or a slotted spoon. Lightly sprinkle some salt on them. Jacques likens them to french fries! Eat them immediately. They would be especially good on a hot summer evening with friends (this recipe will serve 4-6) and a crisp white wine.

Happily, Elyse was blown away, her initial skepticism went out the door the instant she saw me dump 50 little fish into a bowl of milk. I made this about a month ago, in fact, long before we ever decided to blog, and she pulled out her camera and started documenting my activities. Unfortunately we were too busy eating them to remember to take any pictures of the finished product!

Salt-Baked Red Snapper.

Every once in a while I see a dish that blows my mind and I HAVE TO MAKE it. The first time that ever happened was when I saw Jacques Pépin bone out a chicken. I would have thought that if you removed the bones from an animal that you would have a pile of bones over here, and a pile of flesh over there. Nope! Now I can remove the bones from the chicken, and stuff it, and you can't even tell that the bones are gone. It just looks like a plump chicken.

I haven't been obsessed with a dish in a while, until last week when I was streaming José Andrés Made in Spain on Netflix's Watch Instantly.

This dish uses Red Snapper. That alone had me hooked. I have always wanted to cook Snapper, probably because its red. I think that this is the first red thing I have ever cooked, aside from members of the plant kingdom. I haven't worked with fish very much, because getting a whole, fresh fish around here is a nuisance. Its possible, but you need to spend some time in traffic if you want one for dinner tonight because there are only a handful of places in this city which stock a selection of beautifully fresh fish. Getting a fish with scales is what makes this a hassle. Most grocery store fish are already cleaned and de-scaled. This fish, by the way, had beautiful eyes. The picture makes the eyes look cloudy, but they were as clear as the ocean

Here's the list of ingredients:
a 2.5 lb Red Snapper, cleaned, but scales left on.
3 bay leaves
3 lbs kosher salt.

That's the whole list. There are no typos, that's 3 pounds of salt, and you really need the scales of the fish.

Put the bay leaves into the body cavity of the Snapper. Dump the salt into a bowl, and add water until its pasty. Put a layer of salt onto an oven safe dish, put the Snapper on the salt, and cover the Snapper with the rest of the salt. Bake for 30 minutes at 375F.

When you are done, the salt comes off easily in large chunks, and the scales come off easily with a fork. It'll be the tiniest bit salty, but those layers of scales and salt will prevent any moisture or flavor from escaping the fish! The fish will be perfect.

By the way, cooking times will vary with different ovens. I jabbed a digital thermometer through the salt and scales and into the fish at around 25 minutes, and then cooked it for about 5 more. It didn't hurt.

This dish captured my imagination; it looks impressive coming out of the oven, and it will leave you wondering 'what the hell is going on' while it is cooking. This is the only time that I have ever seen food used for something other than eating. The salt is used partly to keep the flavor of the fish in, and its thermal properties affect the cooking as well. But you don't use it for its flavor! And you throw it away in the end! That's why you need to leave the scales on, otherwise the fish will be very, very, salty. Yes, you throw away the bay leaves, too, but they leave their flavor behind.

I like to make an entire meal from one chef, so I found another of José's dish on Food & Wine, Leeks Two Ways with Morel Mushrooms. He used a different mushroom, but use whatever you can find. The Morels were $28/lb, but I only needed $3 worth for two people.

I like José a lot, by the way. My favorite quote from his show is, "Everywhere you go in Spain you find the perfect combination between tradition and innovation." That's quite a statement! There are no qualifiers, it wasn't even clear that he was talking about the food in Spain. Everywhere the combination is perfect? Well, I've never been so Spain, so how can I argue.? I am going to assume that its true! I never do that! Go José!

The Malay-no Bowl

In college, I basically never cooked any food that didn't come frozen in a bag. Therefore, my humble entry into the world of cooking began in grad school, when I lived in a house full of hippies who actually cut up real vegetables to cook with. I was amazed! So…naturally I began experimenting for myself and eventually developed a style of cooking that resulted in a roommate of mine calling me "Iron Chef Gruel". I cooked these bland colorless meals that were all mushed together in one bowl- starch, veggies, sauce, meat- you name it, all scrambled together. This type of meal is Wade's nemesis. He named it the "Monobowl" and turns his nose up at such dishes when I attempt to cook them. What a spoiled brat, right?

Anyway, there are two exceptions to Wade's monobowl ban- Sukiyaki, and this crazy Malaysian dish I made once, Loh Shi Fun. Loh Shi Fun is this crazy mess of ingredients and flavors that somehow comes all together like a symphony and tastes wonderful (like most Malaysian dishes in my limited experience). Last night I decided to make it again after a trip to my favorite Asian grocery store, HT (I swear- after I shop there I feel kind of dirty because IT IS SO INEXPENSIVE).

Anyway, this is a fun dish to make if you have access to the ingredients. I used watercress instead of pea shoots this time (store was out of them) and rice cakes because I have yet to find pearl noodles in a store (and I'm not even sure what they are, to tell you the truth). Am I looking for the wrong thing?

I should also mention that the egg poaching step at the end of this recipe doesn't work very well. I would either just crack a raw egg on top while it is still quite hot (and if you're into that- I know I am) or poach an egg in a way you are comfortable with.