Monthly Archives: July 2009

07.31.09
by

Prep 96 hours, Cook 1 minute

July 29.09
My brother Tom is in the food biz… he has a company called Food Service University. Among other things, he develops online training programs and content, delivering them on a proprietary learning management system. Thus, he receives a number of food industry publications, both as actual magazines and on-line.

Recently, he sent me a link to a recipe with the subject: “You might find this interesting.”

Recipe: Sake-cured Salmon with Spinach Purée and Yogurt
Chef Daniel Snukal
Restaurant/Operation 3 on Fourth, Santa Monica, Calif.
http://www.3onfourth.com/
Menupart Fish and Seafood
Daypart Lunch,Dinner
Region Asian Fusion

Not being one to resist a challenge, the following Saturday I bought an appropriate piece of salmon at the Farmers Market. I had spinach from my Mariquita Box and was wondering what to do with it. I also have this swell ceramic refrigerator dish in which the salmon (almost) perfectly fit. I rarely use that storage dish, as both the dish and the cover are opaque — can’t see what’s inside — but that’s just fine for this dish.

salmon and salt, sugar, oregano mixture

salmon and salt, sugar, oregano mixture

Continue reading →

07.28.09
by

Padron my stir fry

I’m truly cooking for one for a couple of weeks while Carol is visiting her parents in Ohio. Last night, part of my dinner was two big ears of corn, grilled. I ate a little less than one, and cut the balance off the ears. When I started thinking about lunch today, I started thinking about corn.

July 27.09

Who doesn’t love corn stir fried with onions, tomato and peppers? Well, I do. But I had no peppers. Oh… I have a bag of Pimiento de Padron peppers from my Mariquita Mystery Box. I was lucky to receive The Ladybug Letter about Pimiento de Padron, just as I was writing this.

“Padron is a town in Spain north of Portugal in Galicia on the Atlantic coast. The citizens of Padron would have been among the first Europeans to see and experiment with these new “peppers” that the explorers brought back from overseas. They adopted one particular variety out of all these newly arrived peppers to be their own “Pimiento de Padron.”

“Gallegan cooks learned that the tiny, tender peppers are very flavorful, and rarely have much heat at all to them if they’re picked young enough. Only the older, firmer, heavier, waxier peppers are hot, and they learned to pick them out and set them aside. The cooks learned too that these new peppers could be cooked fast, in just a little more time than it takes to heat up a cast iron skillet. They’d get the pan hot, splash a little olive oil onto it, and when the oil was almost smoking hot, they’d toss on a handful of the tiny peppers. The peppers would hop and sizzle for a few seconds. When the peppers were blistered on one side, the cooks would shake the pan, toss the peppers, and let them blister on the other side. Then a quick sprinkle of sea salt, a deft sweep of the pan with a wooden fork, and the peppers were served, ready to eat, sweet, savory, salty, and piping hot.” [excerpted from The Ladybug Letter, linked above]

That’s how I have enjoyed my Pimiento de Padron. But today I had something different in mind. Use the little, bright green morsels like one would a bell pepper. How bad can it be? Better yet, How good can it be? With Carol gone, I’m totally free to experiment and develop new ways with known ingredients. Continue reading →

07.17.09
by

Lemon Chicken with Agretti

April 25.09

This dish is just so beautiful that I had to write about it. It comes from the stephencooks website, one of the quality food blogs out there. He has been a major source of inspiration for me since I became a lapsed architect.

Recently, Stephen was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, so he took some time to get his life together and began anew with recipes to fit his new diet regimen. This is one of the first.

“Skinless boneless chicken breasts — or thighs, if well-trimmed of fat — always work very well for a healthy diet, whether you’re looking to control your blood glucose level or just trying to stay trim. They’re low fat, have zero carbs and are a good source of protein and so they frequently show up in diet regimens or recommendations.

The challenge with boneless breasts is, lets face it: how to make them interesting. The Chinese have a technique, however, called veleting which, with a little planning and a few simple ingredients, turns bland, dry chicken breast meat into a tender, juicy treat with a nice slippery feel in the mouth. I’ve learned this technique from years of cooking from Irene Kuo’s excellent The Key to Chinese Cooking.”

Low fat is not why I cook, but this looked intriguing, so I tried it. I used thighs – at least they have a modicum of flavor, and paired it with agretti, a green vegetable with a bright, lemony taste and succulent texture. Continue reading →

07.16.09
by

Joyce Chen

The wok and the pot.

Back in the day, the late 1960’s/early 70’s, living in Newton, Massachusetts, an urban suburb of Boston, we discovered the Joyce Chen Restaurant in Cambridge. We came in 1968 from Roanoke VA, where nearly everything new and good was “over the mountain” from us. Cambridge was a revelation! Everything was new and different and good, from Design Research to good Chinese food.

three woks

three woks

THE WOK
We went to Joyce Chen on celebratory occasions, often with a like minded group, as the restaurant had big round tables with a lazy susan in the middle. Joyce Chen had a cooking show in WGBH, the Boston PBS station where Julia Child honed her TV chops.

Joyce Chen’s restaurant was on the second floor of a three story wooden building in Cambridge near Central Square, a neighborhood less toney than Harvard Square; a place where new restaurants got their start. Legal Seafood started there at about the same time; another venue celebrating good food that has grown and flourished.

Joyce Chen was content with her single location, but soon enough, she opened a store on the street floor where she introduced a line of Chinese cooking utensils. I’m pretty sure I bought my first wok there, a big, steel 14 1/2-inch wok that over the years has become well seasoned. I still use it.

well seasoned wok

well seasoned wok

Eventually, her name and influence in the restaurant and design world faded. Joyce Chen died in 1994 and her restaurant closed in 1998.

In 1992 my wife and I moved to San Francisco. I moved three months before her, and in barely equipping a temporary bare bones kitchen, bought a small black aluminum calphalon wok shaped pan, only 8 inches in diameter. When Carol arrived with our furnishings and cookware, it got buried the cupboard. Continue reading →

07.09.09
by

Madhur Jaffrey's Noodles with…

Leftover Grilled Flank Steak
Chicken and Prawns
Pork?

One of my favorite Asian cookbooks is A Taste of the Far East by Madhur Jaffrey, the celebrated Indian actress and cookbook author, published in 1993.

The book is one of those big, heavily — and beautifully — illustrated cookbooks and by now is stained and marked from frequent use.

the book

Today, I was faced with the situation of leftover grilled flank steak — not a bad situation to be sure — one I’ve faced many times. A flank steak runs about two pounds or more. Two people — at least these two people — can eat less than half of that for a substantial dinner. The options — steak salad, steak hash, throw it into some kind of soup — are good, but get tiresome after a while.

I remembered the wonderful Madhur Jaffrey dish, Noodles with Chicken and Prawns. It’s comfort food on the spicy side… something I’ve cooked for guests to hearty acclaim. Why not pinch-hit the steak for the chicken and prawns? Continue reading →

07.08.09
by

earthy eats

First Course.
Harbinger of things to come.
Southern Italy brings us soppresatta and Pecorino Romano.
Provencal France lends oil cured black olives.

July 2.09

I’m one of the guys that tests recipes for Cook’s Illustrated – no big deal, anybody can do it, just sign up and they send you recipes – once a month or so, there’s a new recipe to try. They advise that if it’s something that doesn’t appeal to you, just skip it. No pressure.

They also advise:
This recipe is under development and is intended for Friends of Cook’s recipe testers only. We’re glad you love our recipes, but we respectfully ask that you do not post the working recipe online or in any other media until the final recipe has been published in the magazine. And if you do share the final recipe in a public forum, please remember to give us credit. Thank you.

This recipe – Spaghetti with Pecorino Romano and Black Pepper (Cacio e Pepe) – appealed to me, big time. I decided to pair it with a Mark Bittman recipe from the NY Times – Little Artichokes, Provençal Style. That dinner was just so earthy and fabulous I had to photograph it and tell the world on my blog. Continue reading →