November 25, 2009
Posted by Chichi Wang, November 20, 2009 at 1:30 PM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
This week concludes our three-part installment of Thai curry pastes. Red, green, and yellow curries are common offerings in restaurants, yet these colors are merely part of the Thai curry range. Two of the lesser-known curry pastes—Penang and Mussaman—are variations on the red and yellow pastes, though with distinctive attributes of their own. Penang curry paste, most similar to red, includes a sizable dose of roasted peanuts. Mussaman curry paste is comprised of the same spices as those of yellow, except the spices must be toasted whole, then freshly ground before being added to the paste.
Just about every guest passing through my apartment this month has been subject to my collection of curry pastes.
"Would you like some red curry with shrimp?" I ask. "No? Well, how about some curry fritters? Curry fried rice? Noodles with curry sauce?"
Eventually the target will succumb to my entreaties. Last night I wooed a friend with pork shoulder stewed in Penang curry. Claiming that eating Thai curry usually leaves her with "stuff pouring from every facial orifice," my friend was pleased to discover that Thai curries don't have to be painfully spicy.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 18, 2009 at 4:15 PM
[Photographs: Nick Kindelsperger]
You know what? I don't think I've ever actually cooked catfish before this meal. I'm sure I must have eaten it at some point in my life, but it has escaped me as a potential meal. That was until I got hooked listening to this NPR Science Friday program about sustainable fish.
Sylvia Earle was on air talking about her new book The World is Blue, and just casually mentioned that catfish was one of the good kinds of fish to eat. That's how I ended up at Whole Foods looking for fillets of a fish I'd never thought much about before.
I decided to also go with this Whole Foods recipe, plucked from their website. It doesn't get much simpler than this: a glaze is whisked together from white miso, sugar, and olive oil, then brushed on the fish. The fillets are sautéed for five minutes and come out of the pan with a rich color and aroma that belays the amount of time you actually spent on it. But the bok choy is not just a throwaway side—it's a perfect match with miso, and comes out tender and bright green.
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Posted by Blake Royer, November 17, 2009 at 5:00 PM
[Photograph: Blake Royer]
Fall is the one time of year I really look forward to getting my vitamins. When the season is in full swing, I cook up a batch of simple sautéed greens almost every night. Kale, collards, chard—doesn't matter, as long as it's full of sliced garlic, a pinch of chili flakes, and finished with a hint of lemon juice. They're completely addictive, especially when fresh from the farmers' market, when they're still tender and sweet. They're also affordable and healthful. Hardly a meal goes by without them.
However, sautéed greens do not a full meal make. Enter this recipe, which I found torn out of a copy of Bon Appétit in a bulging recipe file, from the May 2008 issue. Described as "a spicy main course that's popular in Tuscany," it's basically the typical greens recipe with the addition of squid, which is braised first in red wine. It gives the dish a rich, inky color and a complex flavor. If you don't like squid or if the squid isn't fresh, it's just going to taste fishy. But I loved it.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 16, 2009 at 4:45 PM
[Photograph: Nick Kindelsperger]
I was looking for a baked pasta, which can be a recipe for disaster. Any luck I've had with baked pasta has been by subverting the original procedures in the hope of making something lighter (such as this baked ziti recipe). But it was cold outside, and I really wanted something that would be warming and relatively easy to throw together for a dinner party.
At some point I went from bland and cheesy versions of baked manicotti to this recipe from Closet Cooking. The use of orzo, fresh herbs, shrimp, and feta cheese, really jumped out at me because it didn't seem needlessly heavy. It actually looked balanced.
This is actually a spin on a Greek dish called Garides Saganaki, which certainly explains the use of feta instead of something like mozzarella. I also love the orzo. It provides a great contrast to the sauce, which is bright and fresh, thanks to a healthy sprinkling of herbs and just enough red pepper flakes to provide that warming hum of spice.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 13, 2009 at 12:45 PM
[Photograph: Caroline Russock]
After a week of recreating recipes from How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis, it occurred to me that I haven't had such consistently healthy meals in a long time. During normal weeks I'll go through at least a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, and more heavy cream than I care to admit.
My shopping list this week—tons of vegetables, a little bit of meat and fish, barely any dairy aside from some crumbled feta and a few spoonfuls of yogurt—was almost puritanical compared to my usual haul. Thinking back over a week's worth of healthy Greek-inspired meals, I didn't miss a thing.
This recipe for Grilled Sardines with Chopped Salad and Skordalia Soup is a prime example of how a seemingly humble combination of fish and vegetables can be turned into a thing of beauty with Psilakis' Aegean expertise.
If you have never grilled sardines, seriously, you have to try them.
If you have never grilled sardines, seriously, you have to try them. They have nothing to do with the oily, sometimes stinky variety that has turned so many people off of the lovely little fish. This particular preparation couldn't be easier since your fishmonger does most of the work for you. All that's left is for you to debone them (it takes about 30 seconds per fish), season, and grill them. The Skordalia is a Greek garlicky puree of potatoes and vinegar, which serves as the glue that brings this plate together.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 11, 2009 at 5:00 PM
The following recipe is from the November 11 edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
One of the best things about the recipes in How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis is that they involve several recipes within recipes. Take this Octopus with Chickpea Salad for example: Not only do you learn how to braise a perfectly fork-tender octopus, but there is also a recipe for a fantastically bitey Red Wine-Black Pepper Vinaigrette and a method for infusing normally pedestrian chickpeas with aromatics that turn them into something worth being enjoyed on their own.
Putting these three components together to make one octopus salad is a recipe for success. The canned garbanzos that went into the Chickpea Confit came out of the oven redolent of cumin and almost buttery from the olive oil that they braised in. The octopus was cooked three times: first seared, then braised, and finally charred for a crunchy exterior and a meaty interior. Fresh herbs, chewy-tart sun-dried tomatoes, and a just tart and peppery enough vinaigrette finished the mix.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, November 6, 2009 at 1:30 PM
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
Taking a hiatus from my usual spoilsport-y self, I caved into the pressure of Halloween and served a menu built around orange foodstuffs. To start, a persimmon and daikon salad. To end, a kabocha cheesecake. The entrée was considerably more difficult to settle. What meat or fish, besides the obvious choice of salmon, comes in hues of orange? Deliberative indecision turned to panic—the persimmons had been peeled, the cheesecake was biding its time in the fridge, and still no orange entrée of which to speak! Sometimes the best ideas are right under one's nose.
I reached into the freezer and grabbed a few packs of my Thai yellow curry paste, the mildest of the curry pastes stored in my refrigerator. Traditionally, curry paste is made by pounding together aromatics like garlic, shallots, chiles, ginger, galangal, lemongrass, and kaffir lime, with ground spices like coriander and cumin. With fewer chilies and more garlic than either the red or green variety, yellow curry paste is gentler on the tongue. In place of the assertive galangal root, ginger is used. And, unlike the red and green, yellow curry paste takes a sizeable dose of ground cinnamon.
Turmeric is responsible for the color of the resulting curry sauce. (While the paste is called yellow, the color actually corresponds to the resulting broth rather than the paste itself, which is ruddy in tone.) We generally find the plant in its ground form, yet turmeric is a root. The interior of the turmeric root is a brilliant shade of orange; the outside looks remarkably similar to the more commonly found ginger. (This comes as no surprise given that turmeric is a member of the ginger family.) Coriander, also known as cilantro, produces the round, beige-colored seeds that are ground and used in many Thai curry pastes. Yellow curry paste happens to employ ground coriander in greater proportions.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 6, 2009 at 12:45 PM
After a week of labor-intensive recipes from New Classic Family Dinners by Mark Peel, I was ready for something that required a little less work. I had originally picked up some trout to make Peel's take on matelote, a fish stew braised in red wine. But after the two-day bolognese project, I was ready for a meal that came together in under an hour.
In Peel's recipe for Cornmeal-Crusted Pan-Fried Trout, the trout is fileted with the skin left intact. The flesh side of the fish is dredged in a cornmeal and flour mixture while the skin side is left naked, aside from some salt and pepper. Pan-frying both sides leaves you with a duo of distinctly crunchy textures: the crispy skin and the toothsome cornmeal-coated crust.
The fish fried up golden brown in a matter of minutes and I used the rest of the ingredients for the matelote to improvise some sides. I sauteed the wild mushrooms with the butter, chicken stock, pearl onions, and herbs called for in the recipe, and served the bottle of wine meant for braising the fish along with the meal. I'm still intrigued by a red wine braised fish stew but these cornmeal-crusted trout filets were just what I needed after a week of serious cooking.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, November 2, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Raw salmon. [Flickr: This Year's Love]
Raw foods isn't just about crudités. Sushi and rare steaks are just the tip of the iceberg, and I have yet to meet a carpaccio, crudo, or tartare that didn't make my day.
As much as I enjoy these raw preparations, in my mind they have always been restaurant dishes. It was an absolute revelation when I saw this recipe for Giant Tuna or Salmon Tartare in Mark Peel's New Classic Family Dinners. Reading through the recipe I realized that while tartare is an elegant dish requiring the best-quality fish, it's one that can easily be made at home.
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Posted by Kerry Saretsky, October 29, 2009 at 4:45 PM
[Photographs: Kerry Saretsky]
Last week I wrote about my trip to Provence this past summer, and my stay in a little seaside town called Cassis. I thought, from the name of the town, that I'd be sipping Kir Royales made with Burgundy's specialty crème de cassis (made from the homonymously named blackcurrant), but I ended up spending my entire trip in pursuit of the perfect bouillabaisse.
Bouillabaisse is a saffron seafood stew with a past. As the fishermen in Marseille harbor went out to collect the great fish they would sell to the upscale restaurants, they would also collect little local rockfish for themselves, like rascasse or scorpionfish. These they would throw jumbled into a stock nearly identical to the equally iconic soupe de poisson, along with some potatoes. And that would be dinner.
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Posted by Blake Royer, October 29, 2009 at 4:00 PM
[Photograph: Blake Royer]
The recipe, from Nigel Slater, sounded like a fancy version of fish and chips: Fat, meaty fillets of haddock are coated in bread crumbs and shallow-fried until brown and crisp. I substituted cod, but what intrigued me especially about this recipe was the coating, which is a combination of bread crumbs, tarragon leaves, and minced anchovies.
Tarragon is a powerful herb that is best used in small doses, and for the same reason also perfumes the whole dish. Even better, though, are the anchovies, which melted away during the frying but left their nutty signature, deepening the dish's flavor to amp up the relatively mild flavor of cod. Meanwhile, the cod's flesh itself was meaty and dense, offset by the breadcrumb crunch. I was amazed at how much flavor the recipe was able to achieve with just a few ingredients and a short time.
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Posted by Kerry Saretsky, October 26, 2009 at 11:30 AM
Note: Throughout October, Kerry's secret ingredient is liquid smoke.
[Photographs: Kerry Saretsky]
My inspiration for experimenting with liquid smoke came from a dish I had in a restaurant once, which is where I get many of my ideas for home cooking. We were traveling in the South of France where many meals involved trout. It's horrible to admit that I got bored of trout, yet I did.
But along came a dish at the bistro in Cap d'Antibes which sounded simple enough: Trout Escabeche. When it arrived at the table, it was two filets of crispy-seared trout, covered in this delicate pepper and fennel escabeche with a smoky foam and a tomato skin crisp as a cracklin'. I awoke from the trout lull, licking the foam from the fork, wondering, "what is that flavor!?"
The original dish at Le Jardin in Cap d'Antibes. [Photograph: French Revolution.]
I can't make foam at home, but I wanted to try a more rustic form of the dish. I used hogfish, a fish local to Florida, and a simple escabeche, which is just an acidic marinade for fish made from fennel, onion, and stoplight peppers, accented with the smoky hint of liquid smoke.
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Posted by Caroline Russock, October 23, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Whenever I travel to a new place, there are two topics I exhaustively research: restaurants and local markets.
My first trip to Palermo was no exception. Our hotel was reasonably priced and well-reviewed, but most importantly it was steps away from the Ballarò, one of Palermo's biggest and most beautiful markets.
The seafood stands were piled high with shiny black mussels, silvery sardines, and squid still filled with their ink. Rising from the center was a massive head of a swordfish, encircled by giant slabs of its pink flesh. The sword must have been at least three-feet long, and the whole scene was a still life come to life. As someone who formerly considered the Whole Foods seafood counter to be pretty fancy, this display blew me away.
I hadn't felt too strongly about swordfish before that day, but ever since, I've developed an affinity for it—and let me tell you I ate a lot of it on that trip. This recipe for Salt-Seared Swordfish with Garlic and Mint from The Southern Italian Table by Arthur Schwartz is just about as Sicilian a preparation as their is.
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Posted by Kerry Saretsky, October 15, 2009 at 5:30 PM
[Photographs: Kerry Saretsky]
I think the frequent recurrence of rissoles in this column of late reveals more about me than about French cuisine. When the weather turns too cold for me to go outside and fry myself, I come inside, and fry other things. Two weeks ago, it was summer fruit wrapped in puff pastry—a very conventional rissole. This week's shrimp and sorrel leaves wrapped in filo dough are about as unorthodox as the day is long—although, admittedly, with winter crouching towards us, the shorter days may not be the best yardstick.
I began a somewhat torrid love affair this summer with sorrel. As they say, the most important ingredient in any fiery relationship is mystery—and sorrel held that for me. It started at culinary school, where the chef conjured up salmon and a creamy sorrel sauce to match. My first question was, "Why do we always use lemon?" Sorrel speaks with the same acidic accent, but in a language far more grassy, earthy, and velvety.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 6, 2009 at 9:30 AM
[Photograph: Chichi Wang]
This week, The Nasty Bits leaves the world of bones and innards and treks to the other side of nasty. Generally, this series chronicles the unconventional parts of conventionally eaten animals, but what if we examined entire animals that are just plain ugly? There are too many to name comprehensively, but a few candidates come to mind: furry guinea pigs, scaly alligators, armored armadillos, slithery snakes and eels, tiny birds like ortolan, twitchy squirrels, wart-covered sea cucumbers, and grasshoppers and other insects.
Whereas we may fondly gaze at the pig and think of bacon, or look at a cow and anticipate a steak, there's nothing ostensibly appetizing about the majority of the meat and seafood we eat. As Jared Diamond has argued, only a few animals on the planet (something like fourteen out of one hundred and forty-eight possible candidates) are suitable creatures for domestication. These are the animals that, over centuries of breeding and manipulation, have come to look like things we'd want to put in our mouths. On the other hand, the rest of what's edible in the animal kingdom is often unseemly and feral in appearance.
Eels are sly, wild creatures that look distinctly out of place in the kitchen. Nevertheless, their delicate meat, akin to a flaky and lean fish, is worth seeking out. I almost never turn down a chance to work with eel, so when I spied a water tank filled with the slithering creatures, I knew that dinner would involve some wrestling.
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Posted by Chichi Wang, October 2, 2009 at 5:30 PM
"When the cleaver enters the crab, its legs will flail wildly—fear not and press onwards."
[Photographs: Chichi Wang]
The crabs are in full force at Asian markets. Bins of blue claws rest beneath burlap covers, while the water tanks hold the larger, sweeter Dungeness crabs. The blue claws that I'm used to crabbing for on the southern coast of Long Island are usually about five inches from point to point—compare that to the gargantuan Dungeness crabs that typically measure seven to eight inches in length, not even counting their fat and meaty legs.
I'm generally inclined to steam my Dungeness crabs, while blue claws benefit from a crab boil in Zatarain's or a healthy dosage of Old Bay, Dungeness are nearly perfect on their own. With nothing more than a little rice vinegar on the side, a steamed Dungeness crab is my idea of healthful eating.
That being said, Asians are good at taking apart and preparing Dungeness so as to retain the crab's natural goodness. Across Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese recipes, ginger, green onion, fish sauce, and oyster sauce are typical flavorings for a crab stir-fry. Such seasonings are added with a restrained hand. The combination of fish sauce and oyster sauce is a fine balance of sweet and savory: both sauces derive from oceanic creatures, and there's a hint of oyster and a hint of umami-like, anchovy intensity in the dish.
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Posted by Tam Ngo, October 2, 2009 at 1:00 PM
[Photograph: Tam Ngo]
Speak to chef Tadashi Ono about this hot pot and he at once turns dreamy-eyed—its milky broth reminds him of lakes frozen over. Black cod, also known as sablefish, thrive in the frigid seas off Alaska and Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. Black cod comes into season in the winter as Japan's oceans cool and the fish migrate south. The cod's high fat content—crucial for survival in arctic waters—is what gives the flesh its silky, buttery richness.
In Hokkaido, a region renowned for its bucolic dairy farming, the broth is traditionally made with milk. This particular hot pot is a specialty of Aomori where the use of soy milk reflects a trend toward healthful ingredients.
Sweet, rounded, and delicate in flavor, this soothing winter soup found in Japanese Hot Pots by Ono and co-writer Harris Salat was our family's favorite. Though it doesn't have the spectacular visual appeal of other hot pots we tested, it's the kind of soup that hugs you inside. A primal comfort and so simple to prepare!
Win 'Japanese Hot Pots'
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Japanese Hot Pots to give away this week. Enter to win here »
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Posted by Tam Ngo, October 1, 2009 at 5:35 PM
[Photographs: Tam Ngo]
This week's Cook the Book recipes represent the ongoing research of the Japanese Hot Pots project—undertaken by Matsuri chef Tadashi Ono and journalist of all things Japanese Harris Salat.
Last Christmas, I had the pleasure of testing three hot pot recipes from the book. The soups were a great foil to the sleet outside and a nourishing way to entertain our guests, to boot!
The Squid Hot Pot is a specialty of the Noto Peninsula. The peninsula's rural coasts jut into the Sea of Japan and bear the brunt of the sea's savage storms. Along these rugged bluffs, the area is scattered with squid fishing villages. Noto is particularly known for its ishiri sauce, made with the intestines of the Ma-ika squid. Salty and made pungent by extensive periods of fermentation, it's the squid and the sauce that give this hot pot its flavor.
Win 'Japanese Hot Pots'
As always with our Cook the Book feature, we have five (5) copies of Japanese Hot Pots to give away this week. Enter to win here »
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Posted by Caroline Russock, September 29, 2009 at 1:45 PM
You know that old adage, you can't judge a book by it's cover? Well, when it comes to cookbooks the rule might not be so hard and fast. Case in point, the stunning Salmon Hot Pot that graces the cover of Japanese Hot Pots by chef Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. One look at this perfectly composed dish of salmon, tofu, mushrooms, and roe and you'll probably come to the conclusion that the recipes within are going to be pretty good.
Before I set out to replicate this salmon hot pot my previous experience with making Japanese food was limited to a few attempts at rolling sushi at home to varying degrees of success. I was a little concerned that replicating the hot pot would prove to be something of a challenge. As it turns out, the recipe was very straightforward and the resulting hot pot was insanely delicious, satisfying, and will certainly making a repeat performance some time very soon.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, September 25, 2009 at 10:58 AM
- serves about 6 -
Published with permission from Arthur Schwartz.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
1/4 cup finely chopped jalapeño pepper (with or without seeds, depending on how hot you want it)
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
3/4 to 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds salmon fillet, on its skin and in one piece approximately 8-inches long and 8-inches wide
Procedure
1. In a small bowl, mix together all the ingredients, except the salmon.
2. Assemble the dish at least 2 1/2 hours before serving and as much as 12 hours: With a very sharp, long-bladed knife, slice the salmon as thin as possible, working at a sharp diagonal and cutting in the same direction as the grain of the fish—in other words, the way smoked salmon is usually sliced. Discard the skin.
3. Arrange half the salmon slices in one layer (they may be very slightly overlapping) in a large, shallow serving dish or 9- by 12-inch glass (or stainless steel) baking (or roasting) pan.
4. Drizzle on half the sauce.
5. Cover with the rest of the salmon slices and spread with the remaining sauce.
6. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.
7. Serve with wedges of lime, if desired, and thinly sliced white toast or black bread.
