Risotto Isn't Just For Rice

I love risotto.  I mean, I simply adore risotto.  There is something magical about a rice dish so delicate it almost tastes creamy.  Wine, onion, stock, all come together and sing in beautiful harmony.  So I was going to make a mushroom risotto last night when my dad came over for dinner.  I picked out some wonderful portobello mushrooms and proceeded to the rice aisle at my local market and... there was no arborio rice.

I panicked, then thought of my options.  I could use a long grain rice, but would it hold up to cooking process and still keep some structural integrity and a little bite?  Probably not.  Brown rice is a bit starchier.  Maybe that could work?  But alas, basmati was the only brown rice in stock and again, it would likely lose the delicious al dente quality in a good risotto.  I scanned up and down the shelves, hoping there was just one bag of arborio, or any short grain rice, simply misplaced.  And then my eyes found... barley.

Something shouted out to me, and I found myself reaching for it, wondering, could this work?  So I added it to my cart and home I went, resigned to ordering pizza if it didn't turn out.

Barley certainly takes a long time to get soft.  But, and this is key, it doesn't need to be 100% soft in order to taste amazing.  It is perfectly wonderful done slightly al dente.  So I figured I would just need to increase the amount of stock I used, but that I could keep the basic recipe of a risotto intact.  And sure enough, it was wonderful!

This is topped with an arugula salad with a lemon vinaigrette, which was my acidic component in the finish of the dish.


Mushroom Barlotto
2 cups pearl barley
2 quarts vegetable stock
1 cup white wine
1/2 onion, diced
8 oz portobello mushrooms, diced
2 tbsp butter
Salt, pepper, red pepper flake to taste
Melt the butter in the bottom of a pot, then add the onion and sweat.  Add the barley, stirring constantly until it is all coated and starts to toast.  Add the wine to deglaze, then add the stock a cup at a time, adding more when it is nearly all absorbed.  After 4 cups of stock, add the mushrooms and red pepper flakes.  When the barley is nicely al dente, add salt and pepper to taste.

I guess risotto isn't just for rice.  What would Joe Bastianich say?

The *New* Succotash

A traditional succotash is a thing of beauty on a summer evening: corn, beans, onion all floating together in sweet harmony.  But what do you do when the fresh beans at the store look, frankly, lousy?  The answer, you substitute a child's other favorite vegetable to lima beans: brussels sprouts.

Now normally, I am not a big fan of brussels sprouts.  I don't like the taste or the smell.  However, that might be because my stepfather makes them whole in the microwave.  For those who feel the same way I did, the key to making brussels sprouts tasty is to julienne them finely, then saute with garlic.  Lots of garlic.  In this manner, they can even make a very delicious summer succotash.

Brussles Sprouts Succotash
1/2 a red onion, diced
2 ears sweet corn, kernels cut off the cob
8 large brussels sprouts, finely julienned
4 cloves garlic, minced
Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes to taste
Heat a pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, then add the onion.  When it begins to sweat, add the garlic and red pepper flakes and reduce the heat.  Add the corn, then after a few minutes, the brussels sprouts.  Saute until the brussels sprouts are cooked through, but still a bit al dente.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Tonight we paired the succotash with my version of "lazy mac," a very simple mac and cheese inspired by my dear friend Anna's recent trip to the grocery store to get the orange powder stuff.  This one I made with a packet of ranch seasoning for a little added zip.  Sandra Lee would be proud.  Sigh.

Cooking with Cousin

Cooking is amazing.  Spending time with someone you love is divine.  So is it any wonder that spending a day with my incredible cousin Emma cooking a classical French tasting for a dinner party we catered was one of the better days I have ever had?

The menu:

• Gougeres
• Mushroom bisque with foamed milk
• Homemade French bread
• Tilapia en papillote
• Roasted asparagus with mint
• Potato mousseline
• Vegetarian cassoulet
• Chocolate pot de creme with lavender salt

Not bad for our first catering gig, huh? The diners were so impressed with our menu that we may even have a part-time business on our hands.  Once that launches, I will keep everyone posted.

On a more personal note, I know the blog has been very slow in recent weeks.  While I don't exactly have a good excuse, I can say that blog posting speed and work craziness are exact opposites, so as work quiets down heading into July, I hope to ramp things up on here.  I also hope to cook with ramps. 

Finally, Emma, who will be my equal partner in our new catering venture, is also in the process of launching her own food blog.  Once she is ready for the public, I will post it on here, and it is my sincere hope that you all support another foodie!

I will leave you with one of the recipes from our dinner.

Tilapia en Papillote (Each is a single serving)
1 small handfull thinly sliced (and well cleaned) leeks
1/2 tbsp butter
1 tilapia filet (about 1/4 to 1/3 lb)
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp white truffle oil
A pinch of salt (we used black truffle finishing salt, but any kosher or sea salt will do)
Put the leeks just off center on a small piece of parchment paper.  When cutting the paper, keep in mind that these are going to have to fold over and seal, so you are going to want about a 1 foot square.  Place the pad of butter on the leeks, and place the tilapia filet on that.  Pour lemon juice and truffle oil on the fish, then add the salt to the top of the fish.  Fold the parchment over and crimp the sides, stapling if necessary to create a sealed package.  Add to a 350 degree oven and cook until the top of the parchment package browns (appx 25-30 minutes depending on the thickness of your filets).  Cut open and serve either on a plate or directly out of the package.  Note, you can also add vegetables to the papillotes if you are so inclined.  A favorite combination of mine is diced apples and parsnips.

What the $*&# is Chawan Mushi?

A couple of months ago, I found myself trapped in a hotel room with very little to do, so I flipped through a couple of cookbooks.  (Yes, I know this is rather pathetic, but such is my life.)  On one page, I saw a very interesting looking savory Japanese egg custard, dismissed it as being weird, and moved on to things more familiar.  But I never forgot about it.

Fast forward to last night.  Sitting on the couch, I thought about what to make for dinner tonight.  Nothing really seemed to make sense, or get me all that excited.  Suddenly, my brain returned to a weird savory Japanese egg custard, and I thought to myself, what the heck?  So today I attempted the weird looking, weird sounding, and weirdly named chawan mushi.

I topped mine with an ahi poke made with cilantro, jalapeno, srirocha and lime for some needed texture and substance, but this is basically what a chawan mushi is: a savory egg custard made with dashi (a cooking stock made from dried bonito flakes), egg, mirin (rice wine) and soy.  The texture is creamy, a la flan, but it has a flavor almost miso-soup-esque, if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Chawan Mushi
3 eggs
2 cups dashi
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp soy sauce
Start by preparing your dashi.  Strain out the bonito and chill the dashi until it gets to room temperature so as not to scramble your eggs.  In a bowl, lightly beat the eggs, making sure not to get too much air whipped in, as whipped air becomes bubbles in a custard.  Stir in mirin and soy sauce, then the dashi.  Divide the mixture into four ramekins, then cover the ramekins with foil.  Place the ramekins in a bain marie or other large oven-safe dish and add water to the dish, making sure nothing splashes into the ramekins, until the water reaches about 1/3 to 1/2 way up the side of the ramekins.  Put in a 425 degree oven for about 30-35 minutes, or until the custards set, then remove from bain marie and chill until serving. 

Top this with your favorite raw seafood preparation, and you have yourself a nice light meal or a nice heavy appetizer.

Crispy Skin Isn't Just For Chicken

I have come a long way as a cook since I began only a few years ago.  Back then, I used to think only of flavor.  After all, food has to have good taste.  But I thought nothing of balance.

A good dish needs balance.  There needs to be balance in color; after all, nobody really wants to eat a plate of brown.  There needs to be balance in tastes, utilizing heat and acid to balance richness.  Just as importantly, a good dish needs balance in textures.  There needs to be an element of crunch in an otherwise soft dish.

There is really something magical about cutting into a piece of protein that is crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.  Most people look to fried chicken as a good example of this.  For a pescatarian, the same effect can be had with a great piece of fish, like salmon.  Take tonight's dinner, for instance.

Tonight, I made a crispy salmon with a potato hash over a fennel puree.  While everything was good, the crispy salmon skin made the dish.  It added a crunch where something was needed to break up the texture.

There are a couple things to keep in mind when cooking skin-on fish and trying to get the skin crispy.  First, score the skin (meaning cut thin stripes into it with your knife).  This will better allow it to render, more easily crisping up.  Secondly, and most importantly, cook the fish in a hot skillet SKIN SIDE DOWN for about 98% of the time, turning once for only a few seconds to color the flesh side.  Resist all urges to flip the fish.  Salmon, like most fish, will cook just fine through the skin, but if you cook it on the flesh side and then try to crisp the skin, you will end up with dry salmon, as it will have long overcooked.  Finally, don't put a sauce on top of your fish.  There is no sense in having wonderfully crispy salmon skin if you are going to moisten it with a sauce and cause it to lose that texture.  Sauce your plate before adding your fish.

A little sea salt and lemon over the top and you have a perfect dish!

(For those of you who like crispy salmon skin, you can also cut the skin off before baking, grilling, or poaching salmon.  Just remove any additional flesh on the salmon skin with a spoon, and bake it on parchment paper between two baking sheets to keep in flat.  When it comes out, add a bit of salt and you have a great salmon skin cracker!)

Crack Rolls

Generally, I find bread at restaurants to be more of an afterthought, both for me - I don't typically indulge - and for the establishment - they don't typically have good bread or put effort into something creative.  Garlic bread at Italian restaurants is especially pedestrian for the most part.  It has too little garlic, too little oil, too little salt, too little flavor.  And then there are the garlic rolls (I call them crack rolls) at C & O Cucina in Marina Del Rey, CA.

These things are amazing!!  Ruth and I try to get to C & O once every few months.  The food is great (tonight she had penne with tomatoes and mushrooms in a smoked mozzarella sauce while I had fettuccine in a lemon vodka sauce), but what really makes the trip are the crack rolls.  Servers will bring replacements as often as you can stuff these little rolls, covered with oil, basil and minced garlic, into your mouth, which is very often.  In fact, we typically eat so many of the rolls that most of our pasta returns home with us.

So for those of you in LA, please do yourself and your tummy the favor of checking out C & O Cucina (http://cocucina.com/).  And for those other Italian places out there, please learn a lesson.  The bread DOES matter.

The SUPER Food

Ruth and I watch a good amount of Food Network.  In fact, our relationship is largely based on Iron Chef America.  You see, only a few months after we met, I moved to Arizona while she was still in college in California.  Our weekly tradition together was to be on the phone while we both watched Iron Chef America from our separate locations.  (This was pre-DVR, so it had to be live via phone.)  While Bobby Flay did not accept our invitation to our wedding, ICA remains a tradition of ours to this day, 8 years later.

So we watched the show this past weekend, and were thrilled to find a secret ingredient that is a personal favorite of mine: kale.  Kale is really the super food.  Ounce for ounce, it has more calcium than a glass of milk and more iron than a steak, plus LOADS of other vitamins and minerals, all wrapped up in what is actually quite yummy.  Now I don't really like raw kale, as I find it a bit fibrous.  But cook it down a bit and you have something really special.

Normally, I braise kale and serve it with something to give a bit of texture, like smoked white beans.  But this time, I wanted to do my own take on something we saw on the show.  The challenger made a smokey (he used bacon) kale chowder.  After a big round of "If not for the bacon, I would totally want that right now" from Ruth and me, I jumped into action.

Kale and Corn Chowder
1 bundle of raw kale
2 ears of corn (or 1 large can)
Vegetable stock
1/4 cup heavy cream
Juice of 2 limes
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp each cumin, coriander, ground mustard seed
1/2 tsp allspice
Salt, pepper, cayenne to taste
Start by prepping the kale.  Remove the thicker parts of the stem (they are way too fibrous and are tough to cook down), then roughly chop the rest.  Smash your garlic, and add to the bottom of a stock pan with the butter, and cook until the butter melts completely.  Then add the kale along with a generous pinch of salt.  Stirring frequently to prevent burning, cook it down over medium-high heat until the kale softens slightly.  Add vegetable stock until the kale is about 2/3 covered, along with the dry spices.  Cover and simmer over medium-low heat until kale has broken down (about 30 minutes).  While this is going on, lightly grill your corn (if using fresh) directly on your gas burner, then cut the kernels off the cob.  Reserve these to the side.  When the kale is soft, blend the soup fully with an immersion blender.  You should have some small pieces of kale remaining, but nothing of any real size.  Add the corn, cream, and lime juice, along with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

Once again, my life has been enriched by my small addiction to food television.  Thank you Iron Chef America for my superfood, and for this incredible new way to enjoy it!

Weird Desserts and Other Adventures in Thai Town

There are lots of great things about living in Los Angeles.  The weather is generally very nice, there is a ton of culture, and our sports teams don't normally completely suck.  But the best thing about LA for me is the amazing variety of ethnic neighborhoods for Ruth and me to explore.  Having conquered Little Tokyo a couple of months ago, yesterday we set out with a couple of friends to find the best that Thai Town had to offer.

Thai Town is actually the only neighborhood of its kind in the world.  This makes sense, as LA is home to the largest Thai population outside of Thailand.  Located just east of Hollywood, it is a nice and convenient stretch of Hollywood Blvd and filled with noodle houses, massage parlors and ethnic markets.

We started our tour at Thailand Plaza, since there is actually a garage to park in (that even offers validation with dining at the restaurant there which, while not nearly as good as another we went to, was decent enough).  The four of us then set out walking.  Our first stop was a restaurant called Thai Patio, where we indulged on green curry with fried tofu, pad see ew, and mango fresh rolls with peanut sauce.  It was so amazing that it will not be pictured here because we ravaged all three dishes as soon as they hit the table.  The green curry is something uniquely Thai, made of Thai basil, coconut milk, kefir lime leaves and Thai chilis, and is TO DIE FOR.

After that, we went to a dessert shop, where we had some very interesting concoctions.

From left to right: pandan custard (pandan is a leaf, and it was actually quite good), banana sticky rice that was grilled in a banana leaf, a pancake made of taro, corn and coconut, and a weird coconut cake with a coconut jelly inside.  All were actually pretty good, with the key commonality that they were not too sweet.  As a mostly savory cook, I actually prefer more savory desserts, so this was right up my alley.

After red curry, Chinese broccoli with salted fish (WAY too salty) and spicy papaya salad back at the Thailand Plaza, we did some shopping at one of the markets for some interesting produce to stir fry for dinner, and bid farewell to another amazing day and LA neighborhood.

When Cookies Aren't Approved Breakfast Foods

Those of you who know me out there (and let's face it, at this point that is most of you) know that I am not really a breakfast person.  Sure, I enjoy going out for brunch as much as the next guy, and breakfast for dinner is always a winner in my book.  But food in the morning?  Just not really a fan.  A substantive morning meal for me is a reach into the always-present box of cookies on the coffee table on my way out the door, much to Ruth's disappointment and consistent head shaking.  So today, I decided that the best solution would be to make something relatively sweet but much healthier that I can have a handful of in the mornings: homemade granola.

This was something I had always wanted to do, as I have never really found a granola pre-made that had the stuff in it that I wanted.  For instance, I like cashews and honey-roasted peanuts, but most other nuts aren't really my style.  I am not a huge lover of raisins, but dried cranberries or cherries make me smile.  So making my own granola seemed fairly logical and, as it turns out, it was very simple.

Homemade Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup of your favorite nuts (cashews in my case)
1 cup dried fruit of choice (cherries today)
1 cup of something else exciting (peanut butter chips for me)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
Preheat your oven to 250.  Mix together the oats and nuts in a large bowl.  In a smaller bowl, whisk together the honey, syrup and oil until it comes together.  Pour wet ingredients into the dry and stir to mix, adding the salt as you do so.  Then bake on a baking sheet for about an hour and a half, making sure to stir the mixture around so it all cooks evenly.  When done, transfer back into a bowl and mix in your dried fruit and other exciting ingredient(s).  If, as in the case of my peanut butter chips, things melt together, throw the whole thing back on the baking sheet, spread it out, and refrigerate until it isn't so messy.  (Or just dig right in and deal with hand washing afterwards.)

This particular mixture tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but you could just as easily make a tropical version with dried papaya and mango and some coconut flakes, or use dried blueberries and dark chocolate chips for a slightly sweeter version.  The possibilities are endless!  Go granola!  Much better breakfast than Oreos!

Can Bacon Be Replaced?

One of my favorite things to do is to make pescatarian versions of dishes that have always looked, smelled, and sounded good to me, but that are not traditionally things I can eat.  Some of these attempts have been wildly successful; others have been less so.  Tonight, I tried something I have always wanted to eat: spaghetti alla carbonara.  But I tried to make it without its principle ingredient: bacon.

A traditional carbonara is made with crispy bacon - pancetta specifically - in a creamy egg sauce.  Basically, garlic, bacon, egg.  Very simple, but the bacon obviously plays a large role in the flavor profile.

I was forced to ask the question: what does bacon bring to the party, and more importantly, how can I replace that to get as authentic a dish as possible.  First of all, bacon adds fat to the dish.  So how can I add a little fat while still keeping it authentic?  I chose to supplement my sauce with a bit of heavy cream.  Secondly, bacon adds smokiness.  A little liquid hickory smoke took care of that in mine.  Finally, using crispy bacon adds a crunchy element for some texture.  This was the biggest hurdle for me, and I chose to use a totally different ingredient for this: toasted pine nuts.

Spaghetti Alla Carbonara (The Pescatarian Version)
1/2 lb boxed spaghetti
4 cloves garlic, finely smashed
1/4 cup heavy cream
4 large eggs, beaten
1/4 tsp liquid hickory smoke
1 small hand full pine nuts
Salt, pepper, red chili flakes, to taste
Freshly grated parmesan cheese
While you are making your spaghetti, add about a tablespoon of olive oil to the bottom of a pan, and lightly toast your pine nuts, making sure not to burn them (about 2-3 minutes at most).  Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and saute until the garlic starts to brown.  Turn the heat off, and whisk in heavy cream and liquid smoke.  Add the pasta when it is nicely al dente and mix it in, then, making sure the stove is still off, stir in the eggs.  The residual heat of the pasta will turn your mixture into a very creamy sauce, but if the pan is on, it will scramble the eggs.  This won't ruin the taste, but will definitely not give you the look or mouth feel you want.  Finally, add salt and pepper to taste, and grate parmesan cheese on top.  If you don't run out of eggs like I did, add a whole egg yolk to the top of the pasta for a lovely effect when you cut down into it.

All in all, the taste (I was assured by non-pescatarians in attendance) was fairly authentic, and an altogether pleasant experience.  So there, who really needs bacon anyway?

Butter and Wine

There is a common misconception when cooking with wine.  Some people seem to think that when cooking with wine, the quality of the wine itself doesn't matter.  After all, they will say, you are cooking the alcohol out.  Well, let me put that to rest right now.  While certainly cooking an expensive bottle of wine down into a reduction or sauce is not a great use of that expensive bottle, make sure that the wine you use is one you are happy to drink.  When you reduce wine, you concentrate its flavor.  Hence, a good wine will make a better reduction than a bad wine.

So with that in mind, tonight my wife had some family over, and so I made a simple dinner of salmon, mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus.  But to top it, that wonderful French creation of reduced white wine, cream, and butter: a beurre blanc.

A beurre blanc is fairly easy to make, though temperature is a big concern so your sauce doesn't break.

Beurre Blanc
1/2 bottle of a good white wine (I find that chardonnay works the best)
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 sticks cold butter
Herbs of choice
Salt and pepper, to taste
Add the wine and lemon juice along with your herbs (for a classical French feel, rosemary, thyme and sage are a great combination) to a small sauce pot, and reduce on high until you have about a cup of liquid remaining.  Strain into another pot to remove the herbs.  Whisk in the heavy cream and bring to a bare boil.  Then reduce the heat to low and whisk in the butter a tablespoon at a time.  If your mixture is still boiling, the sauce will break. You can always add an ice cube if you need to bring the temperature down more rapidly.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Butter and wine are a really great foundation to any meal, but this goes very well with seafood especially, as the citrus notes will obviate the need for any lemon on your fish.  Just please make sure to use a good bottle of wine.  If the label says "Table Wine," just walk away.

Gadgetology 1: Immersion Blender

One of the best parts about being a home chef is the wonderful assortment of gadgets I have ended up with over the years.  Some are, as Alton Brown would say, unitaskers, things that really can only be used for a single purpose.  Take your average citrus juicer, for instance.  It is really only useful for juicing citrus.  To try it in another purpose seems rather wasteful, and hence it sits in the back of a cupboard until needed.  Other gadgets are much more useful, and this is the first in what will be a series about these amazing objects.

If you have been following this blog, you will notice that I use my immersion blender a lot.  I mean, an awful lot.  There are a couple reasons for this.  First, it is very handy.  When I make a soup or sauce that needs to be blended, I can simply blend it in the pot it is already in.  That saves time and dishes.  Secondly, there is no limit to the amount it can blend, so it is not important to have too many blenders of varying sizes (and yes, I have at least 4 others that I can think of off the top of my head).  But most importantly, an immersion blender - or boat motor as it is lovingly referred to in the kitchen - is really really fun!

So how does this lovely creature work?  The shiny blender portion is an attachment, coming apart for easy cleaning.  You put the blender end into your substance that needs to be blended and turn it on.  Mine has power settings 1-10 with the same settings also available on "turbo."  Testing Turbo 10, I put a pot of water in the center of my kitchen floor and could spray every wall at once.  It was quite exciting!  Now, the average immersion blender comes with a few other attachments, like a whisk, but really, blending is joy enough and those other parts just sit in a drawer, while my toy typically is out on the counter, waiting to be used.  (On a side note, my sister does leather working and offered to make me a holster at one point.  So, Karen, where is that?)

But, you ask, I don't really make soups, so why do I need one of these?  Well, it is a wiz on mashed potatoes, great for sauces, useful for smoothies, capable of shaving ice and, if you use the other attachments, able to whip meringue in a fairly efficient manner.  And look at it!  It is awesome!!

So if you don't yet possess an immersion blender, take it from your friends here at THP, and go get one.  You will never look back (except maybe to clean up what you have sprayed all over your kitchen on Turbo 10).

Matzah Ball Soup: The Upgrade

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the holiday where we Jews celebrate the Exodus from Egypt and the miraculous journey through the desert by eating a flat, dry cracker for the next eight days.  But there is one part of the holiday (other than watching The Prince of Egypt - much better than the original Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston aside) that I have always looked forward to: matzah ball soup.

Traditionally served in a chicken soup (vegetable for me), matzah balls are little dumplings made out of the crumbled up flat, dry cracker.  In this form, it is not only edible, but very enjoyable.  But in my family, we have used roughly the same soup recipe for years.  Well, not this year.

I should preface this recipe with a disclaimer for any observant Jews out there.  First off, yes, I am posting this on the holiday itself, which would not be allowed in an Orthodox household, which I don't keep.  Secondly, Ruth and I keep a version of the Passover dietary laws that is used by Jews of Sephardic descent (mostly Spain and North Africa), which has a few less restrictions.

Ok, with that out of the way, here was my soup for this first night.

Chickpea Matzah Ball Soup
2 cans chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 medium onion
2 large carrots
4 sticks celery
3 cloves garlic
Vegetable stock
Turmeric, paprika, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, cardamom, cumin, to taste
Your favorite matzah balls, from scratch or a mix
2 tbsp lemon juice
Rough chop the onion, carrots celery, and garlic (or use garlic powder) and add to a very small amount of olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt and pepper.  Add crushed red pepper when the onion begins to sweat (I use about a tablespoon, but I like my food with a kick).  When the vegetables start to get soft, add chickpeas and cover with stock, adding the remainder of your spices (for me, again, about a tablespoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of cumin, 2 teaspoons of paprika, and half a teaspoon of cardamom).  Cover the pot, and simmer until the mixture is soft, or about 40 minutes.  Remove it from the heat and blend with an immersion blender until smooth.  The soup should not be too thick, or the matzah balls will not absorb any of it, which would be a shame.  Add lemon juice.  Then cook your matzah balls in the soup until they are soft and fluffy and have absorbed some of the liquid.

Sweet and Salty

Earlier this week, I was in San Jose for business, and was able to stay with my college roommate and his wife, two of my closest friends.  Dinner Monday night was breakfast for dinner, part of which was cinnamon popovers with a compound cinnamon butter (though they used margarine).  These were lovely, but there was extra butter (margarine), so the question became, what to do with it.  Well, I came up with an idea, we made it, and I told my wife - who was not traveling with me - and therefore had to make it again tonight.

Now I am normally not very into desserts.  Throughout my life, I have always preferred savory to sweet, and second dinner to dessert.  But add a savory element to something sweet, and you have me hooked.  Like these, for instance.

Peanut Butter and Cinnamon Bananas
2 ripe bananas, sliced
1/2 stick butter (yes, butter)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp creamy peanut butter
Melt the butter in a nonstick pan.  Add cinnamon and sugar and stir to mix in.  Add bananas and peanut butter and saute over low heat until the bananas are caramelized, but not too soft.

For a little extra savory kick, add 1/2 tsp of Thai garlic chili paste.  Sweet, salty and spicy!  Or, for a more desserty feel, serve the original recipe over vanilla ice cream or your favorite bread pudding.  Any way you do them, these will be the perfect end to a great day!

It's So Easy Eating Green

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, but we weren't home.  Thus, today became our day to have a green dinner.  Let me say ahead of time that I find most holiday themed meals to be at best contrived and at worst really bad.  I mean, nothing is worse in my book than using food coloring to make green salmon or something of that nature.  And don't even get me started on the crap people pull for Mardi Gras, the 4th of July, and any other reason to do some sort of party with matching styled food and beverages.  However, when you are pescatarian, green food is fairly normal.  It just involves a bit of imagination to come up with good flavors to go with the color.  Tonight, I made asparagus soup and spinach-parmesan crostini.

Asparagus Soup (Serves 4-6)
2 bunches green asparagus, chopped
2 leeks, cleaned and chopped (discarding the dark green fibrous ends)
3 potatoes, peeled and quartered
Vegetable stock, to cover
Garlic powder
Dried basil
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 8 oz container of sour cream
Add vegetables and potatoes to stock and boil until soft.  Puree with an immersion blender or in batches in a stand blender, and season to taste.  Stir in sour cream before serving.


Spinach-Parmesan Crostini
1 loaf French bread (sourdough would work, as well)
Fresh baby spinach, washed
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, to taste
Parmesan cheese
In a blender, puree spinach with oil and lemon juice until it is the consistency of tomato paste.  Season to taste.  Slice your bread and smear with spinach mixture.  Top with cheese and back at 350 until the cheese melts (about 8 minutes).

So please, next year, skip the food coloring.  Nature provides such wonderful green foods if only you use them.

The Beauty of Bok Choy

Every dish needs color.  Every dish needs texture.  Every dish needs a variety of tastes going on.  Occasionally, you run into a substance that gives you points in all of these things.  One of those is the underused and under-appreciated bok choy.

Bok choy is a necessity for a good stir fry, which is incidentally what we had for dinner tonight.  It has a vibrant green color and a great crunch; even when sauteed with your other veggies the stem will retain some texture.  More importantly, it also gives you a flavor from one of those rarely used taste buds that most people forget is around: bitter.

There is a bit of bitterness with bok choy.  Now if you are like me, that is just something to be celebrated, maybe even accentuated, just as collard greens' bitterness is one of the better things in life if made right.  But, if bitter is something that gives you pause, there are easy ways to get around it.

First, cut your bok choy into manageable sized pieces.  If your hunks are too big, you will have just bok choy in a bite and the bitterness will come through more strongly.  Second, don't be afraid to braise it or saute it.  There is no rule that states that bok choy must only be blanched.  Pour in a little vegetable stock and cook it down a bit with some salt and red pepper flakes.  Put it in a good pan, add soy sauce, rice vinegar, srirocha, and sesame oil and let it break down that way.  It will absorb flavors, so the bitterness will be a little more hidden.  Finally, pair it with some sweeter vegetables.  Red bell pepper goes well, as the sweetness in that makes for a really good pairing with the bitter notes in the bok choy.

Bitter is your friend.  Embrace it, and embrace the bok choy!

Breakfast for Dinner

I am not a big breakfast fan.  That is to say that I don't often eat in the morning, beyond perhaps a cookie or two on my way out the door, much to my wife's chagrin.  (To balance things out, I rarely eat dessert.  My sweet tooth is 9am or before, but rarely later in the day.  I know, I am bizarre.)  However, I really do like breakfast foods, just more often for dinner.

To be honest, I am not sure what the fascination is.  Maybe there is just something comforting about cereal at all hours, or scrambled eggs.  Pancakes or french toast make spectacular evening meals.  But my favorite is a simple omelette.

This one, which wouldn't close thanks to the amount of cheese and spinach in it, was my dinner tonight, as Ruth was not home. 

Spinach and Cheese Omelette
3 eggs, beaten
1 handful washed spinach
Cheese (this is mozzarella, but swiss would be better if I had it in the house)
Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper
1 small pad of butter
Melt the butter in a hot pan, and add salt, pepper, and red pepper to bloom a bit and release the oils.  Add eggs and cook until it gets a bit crispy around the edges, stirring to prevent burning.  Add spinach and cheese, and fold onto a plate (if you can and it doesn't have too much in it).

Now I just have to make cookies for tomorrow's breakfast.  =)

Balance in a Salad Bar

Tonight was just my father, who is staying with us right now, and me for dinner, so we went out to our old stand by: Souplantation.  For those who have not been there, it is one of those all you can eat salad, soup, pasta, bakery, and ice cream places.  The food is decent, not so expensive, and all you can eat leaves you with a nice full feeling in your belly afterward.

Best of all, Souplantation marks very clearly which items are vegetarian, vegan, and even gluten free, something many fine dining establishments could certainly learn from, as I am quite sick of having to ask whether things are made with chicken stock or beef gelatin or things like that.  (As an aside, the cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory is made with beef gelatin.  Why?  It just makes me sigh at something that could so easy be vegetarian not be made that way.)

So there I was in the salad bar, and it occurred to me that most places don't really offer balance in their salad bars.

A good salad needs a variety of things.  You need differences in color, texture, heat (both temperature and spice), along with some things that make what can be a weird combination of ingredients on any given plate sing well together.  Now most of the vegetables at such a place sit out for a while, so crunchy really needs to be had in the form of other things, but all we had were croutons and chow mein noodles.  Where are the roasted walnuts or almonds?  Easy things that would add much to a salad.  Colors are pretty good, but a few additional fruits (there really aren't any other than tomato on the bar) would help.  Everything is served cold, so that does it with temperature, and other than the occasional banana pepper, the spiciest thing is a sliced green bell.  How hard would it be to pickle a few jalapenos and put that out?  Or serve warm roasted peaches for some temperature difference?  Finally, there is really no good acid or herbage to add to make things go together.  Drowning a salad in dressing is not the right solution when you need to make olives, carrots, and beets go well together.  Maybe some lemon segments?  Fresh cilantro?

Any of these things would add to my experience.  I suppose I can't expect too much for the $10 or so my dinner cost, but I think the salad bar is something that is in dire need of a societal makeover.  Anyone with me?

Top Chef: Texas Restaurant Wars

Maybe this is taking the easy way out.  After a long afternoon and evening of cooking yesterday, I didn't feel like doing much tonight, so Ruth and I just snacked more than anything.  We also had a chance to catch up on a little television on the DVR, and so we watched this week's episode of Top Chef, which happened to be my favorite of each season: restaurant wars.

I found myself a bit disappointed, as I have been with most of this season.  It isn't that the chefs aren't talented; they are.  I just find that I don't really have a rooting interest.  While certainly there are contestants I DON'T like (generally for personality things - there is never a cause to belittle another chef), there is nobody whose food and personality inspire me to cook better and more interesting food.  At no point this season have I really looked at an episode, or even a dish, and said, "Wow.  I have to figure out how to make a pescatarian version of THAT."

To top things off, while the Texas theme is fun, please producers, enough with it.  We have had a steak challenge, a chili challenge, a BBQ challenge.  What about those of us who don't partake in meat?  Don't we matter?  Maybe not in Texas, I guess.

I suppose the only real way to look at it is that at least this will make nine champions when this season is done, and I am hopeful that after ten, we will see a Tournament of Champions.  (If we do, you heard it here first, and I want some props!)

The Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale

I was recently watching How I Met Your Mother (great show, but not as much the past two seasons, sigh) and in one episode, Barney makes up the Hot/Crazy Scale.  He says that a woman's hotness needs to outweigh her craziness to be worth dating (or just sleeping with, in his case).  I think a similar scale should be created for cooking, so I am hereby announcing the invention of the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale.  (It's going to be a thing.)

Some foods, let's face it, are a real pain to make.  Some are time-consuming, others have difficult techniques involved.  Yet other dishes are just really tough to get to stay in their shape or form, while there is the group that make severe injury a likely occurrence.  To counter this pain-in-the-ass-ness, food needs to be yummy.  The Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale states that a food has to be yummier than it is a pain to cook.  Back to this in a moment.

Tonight, one of the students I used to advise when he was in high school came over for dinner; he is currently on winter break from college.  I made spaghetti with a white wine tomato-garlic sauce and, to go with it, my first ever shaved asparagus salad.

This dish walked the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass line very closely.  Shaving asparagus was very time consuming, as the mandolin we have is only really good for going a single stalk at a time, and each stalk was only good for four or five shavings, unless I wanted to discard the hand guard, making injury not so much likely as guaranteed.  (And as someone who has in the past run a finger through a mandolin, it is not something I care to repeat.)  Combined with making the dressing, brunoising the shallot and shaving the parmesan, this was a pretty lengthy process. 

But it was yummy, and the two dinner participants who did not have to prepare it said it was well worth MY efforts.  I will leave it to you to judge, but I would not recommend making it for more than a few people, as it would then fall well under the line.

Shaved Asparagus Salad
1 bunch of fresh asparagus, tips removed (but saved) and stalks trimmed to be of manageable length and fibrousness
1 shallot, brunoised (finely diced)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp white truffle oil
Olive oil until it comes together
Salt, pepper to taste
Shaved fresh parmesan cheese, as much as you like
Shave the asparagus using a mandolin, being careful to use the hand guard so as not to shave the hand.  put shavings (and asparagus tips) into ice water until you are done.  Make your dressing, adding shallot, vinegar, lemon juice and truffle oil to a bowl, and whisk in just enough olive oil to make it come together (should not be more than a couple tablespoons).  Toss in asparagus and add salt, pepper and cheese.  Toss once more to coat.

This makes it sound pretty easy, but the shaving of the asparagus will take you a while, and possibly a few tries with different settings on your mandolin to get right, as it should be thin enough to be flexible, but not so thin that it will break when being tossed.

But asparagus salad or not, please make sure to tell your friends about the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale.  It really is going to be a thing.

Wet and Stuffed

I was not sure what to make for dinner tonight.  Then I received a text from Ruth.  "I want Mexican food."  Ok, that made it easy.  Since I didn't want to spend too long cooking today, we would have a burrito night.

I would say we have something like this at least once a month.  Burritos are easy, can be filled with anything, and can be filled to each person's specifications.  If you don't like black beans, don't put them into yours.  If you like yours spicy, add more hot sauce.  The only real challenge with burritos is getting them to stay together if you, like I do, put much more than should be stuffed into a tortilla and try as hard as you can to get it to roll up, knowing all the while that there is no way under the sun that it will, but you try anyway.  That feeling sucks.

Not eating meat would typically be a hindrance in making burritos.  After all, most would argue, without meat, it is just veggies in a wrapper.  While this might have been the case years ago, today it is not so much.  Morningstar (and a dozen other brands, but this is the one carried at every store near us, so the one we use most often) makes some pretty good soy-based meat products.  Tonight we used the veggie crumbles, which give you the mouth feel of ground beef, but without the flavor.  (The texture is a bit off, but if you season the stuff up, I at least don't really miss meat.)

So tonight we had Morningstar veggie crumbles, black beans, sweet corn (always a hit in my house), and black olives (most of which never seem to make it to the plates, but rather get eaten out of the can), along with cheese and lettuce.  And a red chile sauce - hence the wet.

A "wet" burrito is simply one that has the sauce and cheese all melty and gooey on the outside, so it generally requires a fork and knife to eat.  Either that, or a willingness, even eagerness, to get you, your clothing, your table, and your dinner companions all saucy.

"So," you ask, "what goes into a red chile sauce?"  It is very easy.

Red Chile Sauce
3 dried ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed
1 clove garlic
A pinch of ground cloves
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
Put your seeded and de-stemmed chiles into a small saucepan with boiling water, and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the chiles are soft.  Put into a blender with garlic, cloves, salt, pepper, olive oil and honey.  Add about a cup of the cooking liquid from the pot (or just water).  Blend, and adjust seasonings until it is as you want it.

Just remember, with chiles, the spicy elements (the capsaicin) is found in the seeds and membranes.  Anchos have a bit of heat to begin with, but if you like your food hotter, leave more of those in.  Milder, take them out.  Also, just as with raw chiles, handle them with care.  Don't touch chiles and then rub your eyes, pick your nose, or touch any other sensitive parts until you have washed your hands thoroughly with warm water and soap.  They really do burn.  Trust me, I know.

A Disclaimer Regarding Recipes

I can recall vividly (which is a shock to many who know me, as my memory is mediocre on its best day) my first time picking up my very own copy of "The Joy of Cooking" as I drove off to my junior year of college.  I would now have a kitchen of my own (well, one shared with the four fraternity brothers I would be living with) and hence a reason to cook.  Little did I know that our fridge would soon find itself void of anything but beer and mustard, but that is another story entirely.

I picked up my book and thumbed through the recipes found in its pages.  I determined then to make a number of the items.  Well, I still have "The Joy of Cooking" and still thumb through it on occasion, but I don't think I have ever followed one of its recipes to the letter.  You see, for me, a recipe is a guide, not an absolute.  Making pancakes or risotto or soup is not the same thing as building a cabinet from IKEA.  For the cabinet, if you do not follow the instructions precisely - or sometimes even if you do - you will not end up with a piece of furniture resembling what you thought you were buying.  Using only some of the pieces, or adding more that you think you like better, will lead you to disaster.  A recipe is not the same.

I use recipes as a basic roadmap and to help with some of the tougher parts.  For instance, if baking a cake, a recipe will tell me the ratio of flour to sugar to use, and how many eggs.  That is not something I can just do by feel.  But if I like my spongecake with a bit more vanilla than normal - which I do - I might double the vanilla extract I put in.  That is ok.  If you like garlic, I mean REALLY like garlic, add garlic to a recipe I post that doesn't call for it.  It likely won't do anything harmful.  (Within reason, obviously. Garlic coffee buttercream isn't something I would ever crave.)  If you are on a diet, use milk instead of cream.  If that changes the consistency a bit, add cornstarch or arrowroot to thicken it, or eat it with the new consistency.  It might even be better than mine.  If you like your risotto softer than I do, add more stock and cook it a bit longer.

What I am trying to say is this: cooking, unlike building a cabinet, is completely subjective.  If the cabinet only has three legs and no shelves, it is not so useful.  But food is not like that.  Use recipes to get a basic outline of what you want to make, but then make it your own.  Trust me, I won't be offended, and neither will the author of any cookbook out there.  (But if yours ends up great, send it to me!)

A Blank Canvas

Perhaps my favorite thing to do when I cook is to riff.  Not having any musical ability, hence not being able to just fiddle around on a guitar or piano and make it sound any better than two very angry hippos sparring with each other while a cat is screaming, my only real version of creative improv comes in the kitchen.  So I just adore Italian food, specifically pasta and risotto.

Pasta and risotto are basically blank canvases.  They provide you with the support structure for whatever you are in the mood to eat.  Want fish?  It can go well in either one.  How about the leftover veggies you have in the fridge?  Sure thing!  In a bad mood and want to break out the jalapenos (or spicier) and leave the seeds in so others will suffer as you are?  That can work, too.  Anything you can crave or imagine (yes, even chocolate) can go into one of these wonderful dishes, making any mood deal-with-able.

Ruth has been bothering me for a while that I need to eat more fruit, so at the grocery store today, pears looked appetizing.  (More to the point, it being early January, they looked more appetizing than the few other in-season fruits, and significantly cheaper than out-of-season fares shipped in from Chile.)  I also had some extra baby spinach from the salmon and mushroom cream sauce dinner from late last week - it was buy one get one free, so this was the one free.  I thought: pear, spinach... let's make a risotto.

Now a purist would tell you that risotto takes a minimum of 45 minutes to get right, that it is about the art of extremely slow cooking.  In a perfect world, I agree.  But for people who work all day and just want dinner ready at a normal hour, it can be done a bit faster than that, and not much - if any - worse for the wear.

Parmesan, Pear, and Spinach Risotto
1/2 cup arborio rice per person (if you can't find arborio, make sure you use a short grain rice, as long grain will break down like it's nobody's business)
1/2 cup white wine per 1 cup rice (pear brandy would work nicely for this particular recipe as well)
2 cups vegetable stock per 1 cup rice
1/4 stick butter per 1 cup rice
1 or 2 pears, peeled, cored and diced
A couple handfulls of raw baby spinach
A small handfull grated or shredded parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper, to taste
Melt the butter in a hot pan.  Stir in the rice and over medium heat, stir constantly until it becomes a bit translucent.  Add the wine, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed, stirring frequently.  Add the stock (room temperature at coldest, but it works best if it is simmering) about a cup at a time - adding more when it is mostly absorbed, still stirring frequently if not constantly, until the rice is soft, but al dente.  It should not be crunchy, but should have a bit of toothsomeness.  Just before it is done, add the pear.  Stir in the spinach just before serving so that it wilts inside the risotto, and add the cheese to taste.

The secret is a fairly constant babysitting.  Because you will only be adding the stock a bit at a time, there will never be too much in the pot, so the danger of burning rice is high.  The stirring will also help to release some of the rice starch, thickening the risotto until it looks and tastes creamy - without any cream!

All in all, a wonderful way to get a warm filling meal and use some of my leftovers.

New Year's Japan-Style

While none of the people I spoke with today at the Japanese-American Heritage Museum in LA's Little Tokyo neighborhood seemed to know exactly when Japanese New Year is or was - the most common answer was that Japanese Americans seem to celebrate New Year's the entire first week of January, which sounds wonderful to me - today marked the annual celebration of the Oshogatsu Family Festival held at the museum.  This being the Year of the Dragon, there were lots of dragon-themed activities (as well as general Japanese new year fare) for us and for our three-year-old nephew, Garrett.

There was a contest for the best decorated new year's rice ball.  My car with seaweed windows and grape wheels finished on the "honorable mention" table, a fact I am immensely proud of, since my artistic ability is so limited that even my stick figures come out quite lopsided.  (And ha ha ha to Ruth, since she didn't even make it that far.)

Garrett ended up with a dragon head on a stick with ribbons that he scribbled on, a dragon hat of similar makeup and an awesome dragon balloon animal to hold as he watched candy stretching being expertly designed into dragon (and other) shapes.

This was all fun, but for me, the highlight was the trip across the street to Wakasaya.  Walking by, Ruth spotted a $7.99 lunch special for wakame (seaweed) udon served with a side.  Sounded good to us, and it sure was!

Udon is a thick noodle served in soup.  In this case, the soup was fish broth, and the noodles were joined by seaweed, green onions and fish cakes that look like radishes.  My "side" was tuna belly served over rice; Ruth got the spicy tuna.

Now I love Japanese food, but noodle soups in particular.  In Japanese society, it is not only not considered impolite to slurp your noodles - which I do naturally, societal norms or not - it is even a compliment to the chef, as it signifies how much you are enjoying them.  So I slurped, Ruth slurped, though a little more daintily, and our conversation quickly turned into grunts of enjoyment.

Good day, good food, honorable mention in art.  Can't ask for too much more than that in life.

The Problem with Tea

Today being another beautiful Los Angeles winter's day, we spent the day at the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena.  First of all, if you haven't been there, it is an amazing botanical garden, art museum, and library, and I strongly recommend it.  Ruth and I have been members for a few years, and try to get out there as often as we can.  Today, we celebrated Ruth's birthday with tea service at the Tea Room.

The Tea Room is lovely.  The tea is good, if you like barely flavored water that smells like it should have more taste than it does.  (No, I am not a big tea fan, but Ruth is, so I go with it.)  The scones are wonderful - unless you happen to get a day they serve raisin ones.  Today was cranberry orange as well as vanilla and while the vanilla were better, both were fantastic.  Fruit, cheese, little chocolate thimbles with mousse inside, other pastries, salads, even caviar; all are good, excellent even.

And then there are the sandwiches.  The sandwiches bother me.  Why?  Take a look.

A sandwich is as big as my thumb!  While cucumber-mint finger sandwiches might be the in thing with some tea (they also had watercress-cream cheese, carrot-ginger, tuna, and smoked salmon versions), it takes a mountain of such things to make lunch.  And the plates are small, so it really means an Everest-sized pile.  But people give a guy funny looks when he passes by with a towering pile of sandwiches too small to see on the camera without a zoom.  "That guy is a pig," they think.  "This is why only women should come to tea."  After several return trips to the buffet so that I only took eight or so single-bite sandwiches at a time, I have to agree.

Tea is no place for a man.  (But please, if you go, bring me back a scone or two!)

Foodie vs Food Snob

My dad came into town today for work, and we had very little time to grab lunch.  So we walked to the nearest eatery: Subway.  This prompts the question, can you still be a foodie and eat at a place like Subway?

I am a firm believer in yes.  You see, there is a big difference between being a foodie and a food snob.  Only a food snob would refuse to eat at Subway or a similar venue.  So what are those differences?  I am glad you asked.

A foodie enjoys the experience of eating, regardless of where that eating takes place (within reason; off a bathroom floor at Dodger Stadium would likely not qualify).  A food snob will only eat at "acceptable" places.  That is, those that are culturally accepted in his circle, typically being more exclusive and more expensive, and almost never chains.

A foodie will order his eggs medium over, but if they come over easy will eat them cheerfully anyway, because he realizes that in this very busy brunch environment a few degrees of temperature difference is acceptable as long as it doesn't interfere with health concerns.  A food snob will send those things back so fast the waiter's head will spin, all the while mentally deducting it from the tip.

A foodie enjoys good food and good drinks, regardless of the pairing.  A food snob would never eat eggplant parmesan with a pina colada, and would give me a dirty look for ordering such.

A foodie understands that ballpark nachos, fast food subs, greasy potato chips and packaged artery clogging cookies are also foods worthy of respect and the occasional indulgence.  A food snob will eat nothing that is not organic, seasonal, and prepared by the highest educated and qualified chef, and will make a little throaty chuckle with a head shake when I do eat these things in front of him.

Basically, the foodie is the person who appreciates all things culinary, but is not so full of himself to think that his way is the only way to experience these things.  That is the providence of the food snob.  So the moral of this little story is: don't be a food snob.  Eat at Subway if you feel like it, or Chipotle, or wherever you wish.  Eat Oreos or Top Ramen.  These are foods, too, and they also have feelings.  Well, not really, but you get my point.

What the French Got Right

You hear many jokes about the French and their ability to fight wars, conduct diplomacy, act nicely.  I am in no position to comment on any of those things as an expert (those French citizens I know are lovely people), but they sure got something right: food.  Something magical happens when one cooks simple ingredients simply, with the help of a bit of butter, wine, and cream.

Take last night for example.  I happened to have about a quarter of a bottle of a good California Cabernet lying around and some extra cream from my potato soup.  Those things combine with some butter into an amazing sauce with, say, mushrooms and served over, say, salmon and spinach.

This one is also pretty easy to make and MAN, is it good!

Baked Salmon with Mushroom Cream Sauce
1/3 lb salmon per person (the rest of the recipe makes enough for 4 servings, so adjust accordingly)
One package sliced mushrooms (any kind you want, but button work just as well as anything more expensive)
Appx 1 cup red wine
Appx 1 cup heavy cream
1/2 stick unsalted butter
Dry thyme, salt, black pepper
Fresh spinach, lightly blanched
Bake your salmon with a little salt and pepper at 350 until flaky and pink inside.  Meanwhile, melt butter in a hot pan with a pinch of dry thyme to bloom.  Add mushrooms, reduce to medium, add a little salt and pepper, and saute until the mushrooms begin to brown.  Add red wine and bring to boil.  Simmer until reduced by about half, then add cream.  Again simmer until thickened.  Serve over salmon and spinach.

French cooking, like Italian, is about using simple ingredients and letting them sing for themselves.  In this dish, you will really taste the mushrooms, brought out by a little wine and thyme.  There is nothing fancy, no complicated spice blends or weird techniques, just straightforward simplicity.  The spinach will provide color, while the salmon will give you a bit of substance.  Bon appetit, and merci, my French friends!

THP Is Going to Europe!

With the airfare just booked after a horrible two hours on the phone with Orbitz customer service followed by a very pleasant ten minutes apiece with Air France and Alitalia, our Danube River Cruise for Summer 2012 is now officially finalized!

 


I am really excited to go to a part of the world I have never seen, but a bit worried about keeping a pescatarian lifestyle in mostly meat and potatoes countries.  You will hear a lot more about the trip when it gets closer, and especially when we get back, but in the meantime, here is where we are going.

Uniworld Eastern Europe Explorer
Day 1-2 - Vienna, Austria
Day 3 - Bratislava, Slovakia
Day 4-5 - Budapest, Hungary
Day 6 - Osijek, Croatia
Day 7 - Belgrade, Serbia
Day 8 - Viminacium, Serbia
Day 9 - Iron Gates, Serbia
Day 10 - Vidin, Bulgaria
Day 11-12 - Rousse, Bulgaria
Day 13-15 - Bucharest, Romania

For more information about it, go to http://uniworld.com/Destinations/Europe/Eastern_Europe_Explorer/2012. 

If you have any suggestions of things not to miss in any of these places, be sure to let me know!

There's Something About Soup

It is a beautiful winter's day in Los Angeles: few clouds in the blue sky, mid 80s, light breeze blowing.  Basically, weather from a postcard, and the reason property costs what it costs here.  But despite this, what do I want for dinner?  Soup.

Soup has always been my go-to.  Even as a child, if my parents wanted me to eat something I normally wouldn't (think lima beans), they would put it in soup and I was off to the races.  So combine that love of soup with an incredible Chanukkah present from my college friends Justin and Ashley, Bacon Salt, and a cheesy baked potato soup just had to happen, lovely warm weather or not.

Magic happens, at least for me, when warm soup is poured into a bowl, and perhaps served with a crusty bread, or even IN a crusty bread.  And while people think a good homemade from scratch soup is tough to make, they would be wrong.

Cheesy Baked Potato Soup
3 large Russet potatoes
1 quart vegetable stock
Bacon Salt (or substitute a mixture of salt, black pepper, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, and smoked paprika)
1/2 pint heavy cream
2 small handfulls medium cheddar cheese
Salt, pepper to taste
Peel and quarter your potatoes and add to a large pot with the vegetable stock and enough water to just cover the potatoes.  Boil until they are soft enough to break up with a fork or potato masher.  Using an immersion blender, blend until smooth.  (If you don't have an immersion blender, first off, GET ONE, they are amazing.  Second, you can just blend it in batches in a normal blender.)  Add cream and Bacon Salt (or seasoning mixture) to taste then slowly whisk in the cheese.  Garnish with chives, green onions or cilantro to give it a bit of color.

I try to make soup at least once a week, regardless of weather.  If you find it is too hot for soup, move to Siberia or just make a chilled soup.  This one would taste just as good cold, though you might need to add a bit more stock to thin it out, as the potato starch would thicken it a lot sitting in your fridge.

The Secret of Cupcakes

I turned 30 just over a year ago, and my present from my wife was a very exciting one: a BINGO board of things (30 of them) to complete by the time I turned 31.  Well, the best laid plans and all, and I turned 31 last month without accomplishing a few.  So today, we rectified a bit of that.  Three things we didn't get to in the past year were wine tasting, a cheese party, and a cupcake party.  This afternoon we held what I hope will become a tradition, the first annual Wine, Cheese, and Cupcake New Year's Party!

Now cupcakes are one of those things that are tough to make really poorly.  I mean, cake and frosting is generally pretty yummy, barring a major mishap.  However, they are just as hard to make truly well.  But the secret to a great cupcake is simple: the buttercream.

This is my wife's cupcake contribution to the party.  A simple yellow cake with her (actually, her friend's) coffee buttercream that is to die for.  It is simplistic to make also.

Missy's Coffee Buttercream
1 stick of unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 a box of confectioner's sugar* (a small sized one)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 tablespoons of espresso, to taste (more if you like it a bit stronger)
Mix until fairly thick (adding more sugar if needed) and chill in the fridge before icing.
*Add the sugar as you go.  Depending on your desired consistency, it might be more or less than this.

This buttercream is so incredible that even if you are faced with dry store-bought cake mix, they will still be the hit of the party.  Guaranteed.  It is even cheaper to make than it is to buy a tub of frosting at the store.  No excuses!

Other contributions to the party included a few amazing store-bought cupcakes from my sister who was in town visiting and did not have access to a kitchen, Jonathan's vanilla cupcakes with chocolate-rum ganache, and Heather's funfetti cupcakes made with sparkling red wine.  All amazing, but the buttercream is the key!

On New Year's Resolutions

I am not a big fan of New Year's resolutions.  Typically, they involve habits (losing weight, gaining weight, going to the gym, saving money) that will quickly be back to the status quo by January 10th at the latest.  In principle, they are fine, but in practice, it is a tough thing to change anything based on a simple recycling of last year's calendar and putting the new one on the fridge.

This one is different.  At least I hope it is different.

I have always loved food.  I enjoy eating it.  I get a thrill out of cooking it.  I have rarely before written about it.  This New Year's Day, I hope to begin to change that.

In starting a blog, one is faced with a dilemma: what is the goal?  Is the goal to get my thoughts down on paper (internet?) so that I can look back over them?  Is the purpose of this to simply get in the habit of appreciating my food - and the life surrounding it - a little bit more?  Or is the point of what will often seem like random ramblings about all things culinary, and pescatarian in specific, so that one day others will also read them and perhaps come out with a greater appreciation of food (or of me)?  I don't know.  I only know that my friend Sydney and my wife Ruth have teamed up to make me do something I have often said would be fun to do.

New Year's seems like a pretty good excuse to me.