My Big Food Night In

Michael was out of town on business last night which meant  I was flying solo for dinner.  There are certain things I cook when he is out of town.  I use ingredients and methods for cooking for me that I love that he doesn't neccessarily like or love.  Most seafood items, soups, chowders, spicy dishes, and pastas are the culinary building blocks of my food pyramid.  It's not that Michael doesn't like those partucular foods, he just doesn't love them enough to eat them as often as I can and do.  Bouillabaisse, Cioppino, Bermuda Fish  Chowder, Noodle  Bowls, Cajun anything, and blackened anything are all examples of my sub categories under my basic food groups, along with alot of vegetables.  Michael is more of a meat and potatoes person and I am everything else.  He likes lean  steaks.  I like well marbled fatty steaks.  He likes white meat.  I like dark meat.  I adore duck for that reason.  He doesn't. I crave spicy food.  Michael doesn't care for spicy food. It makes for interesting interpretations of recipes and dinners.

So, when he is away, I have carte blanche and the world is my oyster, sometimes literally.  His one night excursions are the most difficult menus to plan because I have one opportunity to cram everything I want into one meal. It makes my head spin. Two nights and over excursions afford me the chance to gradually ease into my dining desires and expectations.

Last night, I killed two birds with one meal. I satisfed my desire for seafood and soup.  My one night only selfish meal.  I couldn't decide between bouillabaisse or cioppino,both  tomato and wine based fish stews similar in technique and style, but with very different flavor profiles.  I decided on Cioppino with a nod to bouillabaisse.

I sauteed a thinly sliced fennel bulb, cipollini onions, and garlic in our new find: Plugra Clarified Butter.  With  the butter fats removed, this butter has a higher smoke point and can be used to saute and flavor without fear of burning, similar to an olive oil and butter saute combination.

Once they softened and started to color, I added tomato paste to color and  white wine to deglaze.  Fish stock, crushed san marzano tomatoes, fresh parsley, orange peel, salt and pepper finished the sauce. 

I let that simmer for about an hour to thoroughly infuse and combine before tossing in gorgeous tagged & labled fresh farm raised littleneck clams and pearly white fresh halibut.  Topped the pot with a lid to steam open the clams and within minutes, orange fennel tomato dripping steamed clams and halibut.

I tumbled the clams and halibut into a large pasta bowl, bathed them with the briny anise sweet acidic sauce, drizzled it with Pernod and olive oil, and garnished it with the fennel fronds and parsley.

• 
  
  I normally have  good crunchy bread on hand to sop, but  last night used two slices of regular untoasted unadorned  white sandwich bread to absorb and soak up the broth. The very ordinariness of it made it the perfect sponge. It was messy. I ate the first fennel draped clam and used the empty half shell as a scoop to pry the remaining clams from their shells and to spoon broth from the bottom of the bowl. Even though both  fork and spoon were within reach I turned it into finger food, alone in my pajamas in front of the television devouring a heaving bowl of Cioppino, clam by clam and scoop by scoop.  I was sticky and covered in clammy tomato broth with shiny olive oil lips.  I was in heaven.

I ate 25 clams, a half pound of halibut, and drank every drop of broth straight from the bowl.

It was my night.

Boeuf Bourgiugnon

Boeuf Bourguignon. Beef Burgundy. Beef in Red Wine. Under any guise, it is a fairly straight forward dish.  It is beef stewed in red wine. Good ingredients and careful preparation can elevate a good beef stew into a great beef stew.

Last night I had great ingredients, albeit unconventional and non-traditional ingredients, but still great.  I started with a beautiful bone-in Not For Sale  shoulder roast that was a gift from Banjo and  marinated it overnight  in a full bodied (and affordable) Perrin Cotes du Rhone Villages Rouge.

I had nice slab bacon rendered fat that was used to flavor and brown the cubed meat.

I sauteed trimmed pencil-thin carrots, stemmed shitake mushrooms, peeled cipollini onions, and blanched pearl onions in butter, olive oil, fresh thyme, and honey until browned and tender.  Reserved with saute juices.

After browning the meat in the bacon fat and adding tomato paste  for a touch of acidity, I flambe'd  it with brandy to deglaze the bottom of the pan and pick up the flavorful fond.  I poured the wine marinade into the pot, added a few bay leaves, some parsley stems, crushed garlic, fresh thyme, and let it bubble and simmer for 3 hours.

While the stew was making the house smell amazing, I made fresh pasta to serve with it.  I love making pasta.  It takes no time, little effort, and is totally worth the trouble.  It simply feels good to work the dough, feel the dough, to roll it out, and to cut it.  You can actually taste the love and tenderness that goes into fresh made pasta. 

When the stew had simmered the meat into tender morsels, I removed the meat, discarded the bay leaves and parsley stems, skimmed the fat, and thickened it slightly with a beurre manie, a kneaded flour butter mixture.

Once the stew was at its perfect gloss and texture, I added the reserved meat, carrots, onions, and their juices to heat through and coat with the luscious braising sauce.

Served it over al dente' pasta with a shower of fresh parsley for grassy freshness and a sprinkle of fleur de sel for crunch.

It was a bowl of rich velvet textures wrapping and lapping around each other.  The shoulder roast melted into the sauce while the vegetables retained their form and flavor.  Earthy and fresh.  Delicious.

Squash

Army retirement is a funny thing.  There is the first retirement when the retiree retires and then sticks close to base and does army related work.  The second retirement is the final one.  And so it was with my father.  He retired from the army and we moved back to the United States and settled in Washington DC. After a few years with no nanny, housekeeper, or cook, he retired retired from the Army and moved us home to a small town in western Kentucky to live with his parents, my grandparents.  In 12 long short years, I lived and moved  from Stuttgart, Germany to Washington, DC to Heidelberg, Germany to Vienna, Austria to Asmara, Ethiopia Africa to Washington, DC to small-town, Kentucky. That was my normal.  I thought that's what everyone did. That move was different, though. That move was a shock, a cultural shock. I was treated differently.  I wasn't liked. I didn't fit in.  I didn't belong. Officials almost didn't let me enroll in school because my birth certificate was German.   I was called saurkraut for years, which, at least, was a food term. Thank God army brats were tough and thick-skinned.  We had to be. We were used to rejection and change.  I was normal.  They weren't.  I could deal.

The biggest shock from the move was living on a farm, my grandparents farm. It was edged by Barren River Lake with deep jagged cliffs overlooking the water and had acres of rolling green fields with cattle and horses. The farm had cornfields, tobacco fields, oil wells, and vegetable gardens. There was a chicken coop with chickens, roosters, and brown eggs nestled on straw beds.  Next to the coop was a smoke house with dangling hams hanging from the ceiling smelling like salt and pig. I loved that smell. There were grape vines and apple trees. I would eat the tart green un-ripe fruits until my baby belly ached with misery and delight. Most importantly, for a mischievous and outcast boy, the farm had a pond.  A big brown muddy water pool, filled with catfish and frogs and algae.

It was Eden.

There were things to get used to and new termonology to accept.  All of a sudden, what I had always known of as lunch became dinner and dinner became supper.  It was confusing.  My accustomed breakfast of soft boiled eggs, halved grapefruit, and boxed Sugar Pops cereal  morphed into fried country ham, scrambled eggs, biscuits, and gravy.  Dinner  was always an army of meats, sides, and desserts; smothered  pork chops with onions, fried chicken, baked beans with ground beef topped with sweet bacon candy, green beans, chess pie, transparent pie, and those orange sugar-coated jelly candies.  Supper was usually a warm-up and rehash of leftover dinner. It was crazy to me and I loved every bite.

In the summer, Granny would can things.  Everyone canned things.  That confused me as well.  Everyone was canning, but there were no cans. There were plenty of glass jars.  Why didn't they call it jarring? I never really got over that issue.  I would help shuck corn, snap beans, pluck peas, and squeeze tomatoes.  Those things pleased Granny.  We would be sticky, sweaty, and hot, but we were always happy and laughing, whispering secrets to each other. Country women doing country things, Granny and me.  Legacy.

I was the fetcher in the family.  Come supper time, it was always "Tommy, fetch Granny some green beans and potatoes from the cellar".  Or, "We're having stewed tomatoes.  Tommy, fetch some canned tomatoes from downstairs."

Downstairs.  The cellar.  Me, the fetcher.. I hated that cellar.  It was like those cellars on television in mid-western America where sweet kind families would flee from tornados.  Cold and dark, swathed with cobwebs.  One lone dim light bulb illuminated that cellar. Sinister.  Dusty jars (not cans) of tomatoes, green beans, beets, onions, pickles, and carrots were stacked ladder high.  Fetch.  The potatoes, mid-winter, had arms growing out of them and looked like aliens wishing and wanting  to crawl away.

I did as I was told. I fetched.

Granny was a fairly good cook.  She paired great ingrediants with simple techniques.  Some things were delicious. Some were not.  Her squash was a mystery.  I never knew what it was.  It was always black from too much pepper.  It wasn't very good.  For years, I thought squash was one big pot of all the garden's  vegetables cooked, peppered, and squashed into a pulp with a potato masher. Squished vegetables.  Squash.

After four years on the farm, my father re-married and we moved into a regular house with a yard. Another move. Another mother. Another woman. I thought, here we/I go again. Marge was different.  She was inspiring.  She loved to cook well. She taught me to cook and to care about cooking.  I lapped at her ankles. I adored her. I am me because of her.  Legacy.

The first time Marge made squash for me, I was undone.  I didn't know it was yellow.....or delicious.

Spatchcocked

The weather has been so nice lately and I have been yearning to grill out on the back deck.  I have also been craving mediterreanean flavors, especially those of Greece; lemon, olive oil, garlic, and oregano.  I had a whole chicken in the refrigerator, but didn't want to cut it up.  Cutting up a whole chicken is not that big of a deal, but I was being lazy and simply didn't want to deal with the mess.  I decided I would spatchcock the chicken, a method of cooking  a whole chicken evenly.  It was fairly simple to do;  using kitchen shears, I cut the backbone out of the chicken and threw it in the freeze for future stock, turned it over, snapped the breast bone to make it lie flat, and skewered the breasts and thighs through and across the bird.  The cock was therefore spatched.

To infuse it with as much flavor as possible, I whisked up a marinade of fresh squeezed lemon, olive oil, oregano, mint, onions, garlic, salt, and pepper, poured it over the chicken and marinated it overnight.  While it was innocently marinating, the Mr. Hyde part of my brain went into overdrive, planning an entire Greek meal.  We had beautiful whole squid at work, so brought some home to make Kalamarkia Yemistra  or Greek stuffed squid.

I cleaned the squid, leaving the bodies whole, jiggly cone-shaped squid vessels. The filling was a traditional rice mixture cooked in  a tomato, fresh lemon juice, and white wine stock.  After the rice had absorbed all the flavors of the liquid, I added finely chopped peppers and shredded fresh spinach. Once filled, I skewered the squid pockets shut, sprinkled them with smoked paprika, and grilled them until browned and cooked through.

 I then braised them for an hour in the remaining tomato, lemon, and white wine stock.  For perfect squid tenderness, squid must be either flash cooked  or long braised.  Nothing in between.  The in between cooking time creates shoe leather.

While the stuffed squid Kalamarkia Yemistra braised away in the oven smelling heavenly, I readied the spatchcocked chcken for the grill.  I pulled it out of the marinade, dried it, reserved the marinade as a baster, and showered it with sea salt, pepper, and dried oregano.  I grilled it skin side down to caramelize and flipped it over to fully cook, gently moving it to the cooler side of the grill.  I tossed some lemon halves onto the grill to impart a smoky citrus tent and also for later squeezing. 

The chicken took some time to grill, but the smoky aroma alone made the wait enjoyable.  During the process, I sampled the cook's treats;  marinated livers, gizzards, and hearts.They were delicious,  charred lemony garlicky chicken offal-candy.

I served the chicken with the grilled lemons, the braised squid with its sauce, and topped them both with snipped chives and sea salt.  A Kalamata olive, green pepper, sliced onion, caper, and feta cheese salad provided a bright acidic balance to the voluptuous chicken. 

 The stuffed squid swelled from the filling expanding during the long braise, almost to the popping point.  They were fork tender, savory and rich from the tomato sauce, tart from the lemon wine addition, and earthy from the spinach and peppers.  The chicken was moist and tender, exuding smoke, garlic, lemon, and oregano with charred crackling salty skin.

Greek Surf 'n Turf, with some spatchcocking thrown in.

  

The Possibilities

I love this time of year when everything is blooming.  The garden is glistening green with new growth.  The early bulbs are showing their stark and gentle colors through the gardenscape.

As corny as it sounds, it still amazes me that things come back.  I forget from year to year exactly what is in the garden.  It  always surprises and amazes me. Sometimes it's not my forgetfulness, but the amusing interloping of squirrels moving bulbs around,  hiding their "nuts" for the cold hard winter.  Some are moved about by the wind whirling dried seed pods everywhere.  Sometimes they move because I moved them and forgot that I moved them.  The winter months can do strange things to the mind.

What I  cherish are the possibilties that come with starting seeds inside when the weather is breaking into spring and before the spirit is broken by winter.

 At first, it always feels useless starting those tiny black seeds, those dots, in little peat pots, keeping them in the dark away from the sun and watering little patches of dirt.  Then,  out of nowhere, little green leaves poke up and out leaning toward the light.  The uselessness turns into hope and the possibilties begin.

The herbs are my garden and cooking backbone, always within  steps of the kitchen.

I look at the tiny basil babies and start planning their futures;  freshly torn onto pizza Margherita, tossed into marinara sauce, or pounded into pesto with a fine reggiano, good olive oil, and toasted pine nuts.  Will I snip them into salads,  roll them around smoked salmon, tear them into a Tuscan ribolita soup, or layer them with gruyere for a grand grilled cheese? Our good friend, Banjo,  is basil growing,  longing for salad caprese, the ultimate fresh basil bite. 

Parsley, the workhorse of the herbal garden, will go onto and into everything.  Nothing will go to waste..  The stems will go into stock and the leaves will flavor soups and stews.  The parsley will freshen and finish almost every meal during summer. 

One of my favorite herbs is fresh dill.  Delicate dill.  When bushy and fragrant it will adorn chicken noodle soup, matzoh balls, grilled salmon, or chowders.  I love to cure huge salmon filets slathered in fresh dill, salt, and sugar, turning it for several days until the sweet salted dill infuses the salmon and cold cooks it and cures it.    In late summer, when pickling time rolls around, fresh dill shines and delivers.

With limited space to garden, my vegetable growing is relegated to tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. I grow several varieties of each and we never tire of them. Tomatoes are the darlings of summer; fresh cut into salads, roasted until intensely sweet and concentrated, or sliced onto white bread with salt, pepper, and mayonaise as a summer sandwich.  I love them plucked straight from the vine still warm from the sun, eaten like apples, dripping juice down my chin and leaving seeds on my cheeks.

I can't wait.  I must wait.  I will wait. I'll watch them and help them grow.  These tiny seedlings have so much potential and endless possibilities.

Meatless Friday: Good Friday: Finis

The seventh Friday of lent came and went.  Aside from the St Joseph Feast Day reprieve and the Fifth Fourth Friday cooking competition,  we did pretty well not eating meat.  There are alternatives.

Yesterday being Good Friday threw a different spin on the meatless Friday concept.  It was also a day of fasting until sundown.   Fasting.

I work in a restaurant,  Fasting in a restaurant with the aromas and sights of juicy steaks, grease dripping hamburgers, and  crisp salty fries was almost unbearable. Liquids are allowed, including broth, so I had some vegetable broth around noon with a liberal crack of pepper, a few cans of tomato juice, lots of water, and some skanky crab broth mid-afternoon.  It was difficult to not eat just by habit.
The Head Chef was prepping lobster butter-lettuce cups for dinner service.  He offered me a lobster claw!  An entire claw, glowing pink-salmon colored, limp and firm at the same time, and cracked right from the shell shiny.  I  stared at it, at him, and back at the claw.  Who would know the difference?  I could taste the  luscious meat swiped through drawn butter, slapping my cheeks with sticky lobster meat.  I could actually taste it. 

Maybe that was enough.  To imagine tasting it.  I went back to work, feeding those not bound by Good Friday fasting rules.  There was pleasure in watching others eat.

We had planned a simple dinner after church and the hours long service last night.  By the time we got home, we were hungry.  We could have eaten oven brasied flip-flops served over sauteed shredded newspaper, buttered of course. 

I asked Michael how a pureed pepper soup sounded, knowing he was tiring of my soup making.  His reply, "I don't care, I'll eat anything."

After cramming a few pieces of crackers and cheese down our thoats to have to stength to even drink wine, I started dinner.

I sliced and satueed red, orange, and green bell peppers, onions, and brussel sprouts in olive oil and butter until tender.  I thawed vegetable stock from the frezzer and added it to the soup along with fresh thyme leaves, and let  it simmer for about 30 minutes.  After pureeing in a blender and pouring into serving bowls, a simple drizzle of white truffle oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh thyme, and parsley finished it off.

We had  the soup with Michael's fantastic double-cheese grilled cheese sandwiches for dunking.

Simple.  Nourishing.  Light.

Good Friday. Easter. Peace.

Jungle Curry

Michael was in Washington DC for a few days this past week.. He had to fly to Chicago for a connector flight to Washington.  I don't fly.  I don't even like it when people I know fly.  So, to keep my mind off his flying escapades, Banjo and I had dinner together while he was in transit.  We talked about where we should  go for dinner.  Indian? Thai?  We both wanted a little food adventure.  We chose Thai and ended up at a sweet little Thai restaurant that had lavender walls and white tablecloths.  The lighting was very subdued.  We started out with Fried Tofu and Mini Shrimp Straws, both served with a sweet Thai chile sauce.  The Mini Shrimp Straws, served in a martini glass with finly julienned carrots and cucumbers, were great.  Crunchy, shrimpy, and light.  Very light.  Almost like eating air.  Banjo ordered the Green Curry Chicken becasue that's the bar she sets to measure Thai restaurants.  Couldn't argue with that plan.  I could critique and compare every hot & sour soup in this town.  I go where the better soup is.  In fact, that night, I would have normally ordered Tom Yum, Thai hot & sour soup, but we were on a food adventure.  I ordered Talay Treasure; shrimp, calamari, and scallops in a spicy red chile sauce.  Our dinners were delicious, but were missing that final fresh basil and sliced pepper finish.  They needed that finish for the eye and for the tongue.  We not only wanted and needed it,  quite frankly, we expected it.  Didn't happen.

The following night of Michael's three city flying tour, I wanted Thai again with all the missing elements from the night before. I thought, I could order carryout and embellish it myself.  The more I thought about it, the more I obsessed about making it.  Off to the asian market I went with a scribbled list of ingredients written in Chinese and Thai to correctly identify things.  I. Was. In. Heaven.  A kid in a candy store?  I was giddy.  Crazed.   I was there for two hours looking and loading my basket. People were staring at me with my reading glasses and list.

I came home with fresh galangal, ginger, lemongrass, Thai sweet basil, Thai eggplant, shallots, green onions, bird chilies, cilantro root, shrimp paste, and palm sugar.  I also picked up a bag of asian fruit gummie stars.

I was going to make Jungle Curry, a very hot curry common to the northern countryside of Thailand. 

I started with the red curry paste.  I tossed 10 small red chilies, 3 dried chilies, a stalk of lemongrass(white part only), a one inch piece of galangal, lime zest, 5 garlic cloves, 4 shallots, 4 cilantro roots, 2 teaspoons of shrimp paste , and toasted ground coriander into a blender and whizzed it up.

I sauted coconut cream (not traditional for Jungle Curry) until it thickened and started to brown around the edges before adding the red curry paste and letting it simmer for ten minutes to cook out the raw tones and deepen in color.  I poured in a cup of coconut milk and added quartered eggplant, mushrooms, halved roma tomatoes, Chinese purple eggplant,, and green peppercorns.  When it thickened and came together, I added pan-seared beef filet tips to absorb and curry coat.

I plated it over leftover rice noodles and topped it with sliced orange and red bird chilies, thinly sliced green onions, and fresh Thai sweet basil leaves.

Jungle fever!!  It was not a tame dish.  It was fiery hot.  The eggplants bitterness cut through the sweet foil of the coconut cream.  The steak was perfectly cooked and provided brief respites from the fiery bites. The burning crunch of the fresh chiles exploded in my mouth sending popping pepper seeds everywhere.  Wow!  A very complex spice assault.

It was fantastic.

Michael would not have eaten it, but he was flying after all and eating Nuts On Clark Popcorn in flight.

Banjo might have liked it. It was properly garnished, but it wasn't green curry.

In one bowl of Jungle Curry, I found the elusive line between pleasure and pain.