by Eric

Reinvented Chop Suey

Not your Mom’s Chop Suey

To say that chop suey gets a bad rap is a gross understatement. Its origins aren’t entirely clear, but some believe that while the wealthy miners were eating Hangtown Fry during the Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants with limited funds were scrounging together meals with whatever they could find.

Chop suey can translate as “chop into bits” or “odds and ends.” Everything from celery and carrots to chicken parts and onions (thickened with some kind of starch) went into this ultimate scraps dish.

It was among the first of the “Americanized” Chinese dishes, thought to be mild enough for Western palates.

From Amanda Gold’s 5 Classic Dishes published in the SF Chronicle, May 2009.

c_chop_suey_detail

Ah yes, odds and ends in a wok, my favorite kind of thing. Back in the day, my Mom had a chop suey recipe — which no doubt circulated among the women at Westgate Methodist Church — that was made entirely of canned ingredients. This one — reinvented by the chef at Betelnut, an Asian restaurant on Union Street that’s been there as long as I can remember — is the antithesis of that; nearly everything is fresh. A trip to Chinatown was in order to deal with an ingredient list like this one that includes:

Shaoxing rice wine
fresh water chestnuts
ginger
garlic chives
Shanxi black vinegar
bean sprouts
Hodo Soy brand yuba (tofu skin) omelet

Parked my scooter on Jackson Street at Stockton and went into the store on the corner. Right away, I saw fresh water chestnuts and picked out five. That set me back 35¢. That store had none of my other needs, so I crossed Jackson to the store on the other corner. Not much there, I went to the next store and scored the rice wine $1.59, and the bean sprouts 34¢. They had the black vinegar, but it doesn’t say Shanxi on the label. I have the same black vinegar at home. Most stores have ginger, but its in net bags of a pound or more.

I crossed Stockton to the biggest store on the block and bought one piece of ginger. Nowhere have I seen garlic chives or even chives. No matter, I don’t think this dish is going to break the bank.

I have everything else in my fridge or pantry.

Ready, set, chop… Continue reading →

02.16.11

by Eric

Oh Oh Orangey Mac n Cheese

The next installment: Annie’s saves the day.

Now that I’ve found a happy canned spaghetti, I need to figure out how to make that orange, cheesy tomato sauce. Perhaps that will be the next installment. Meanwhile, I found some recipes starting with a box of Annie’s Original Shells & Cheddar. I’ll give that a shot.

I did… I gave it a shot. I got a couple of boxes of Annie’s pasta; Original Shells and Cheddar and Shells and Real Aged Cheddar.Here’s the recipe I went for, copied from Annie’s web site. s_orange_shells_2

Cheesy Tomato Shells

1 box Annie’s Original Shells & Cheddar

2 ripe Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced (It being winter, I used a can of diced tomatoes, drained.)

1-2 large cloves garlic, finely minced

1-2 tbsp. olive oil

¼ cup low-fat milk

1 tbsp. fresh basil, chopped

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Boil pasta shells according to directions on box. Drain and set aside.
Sauté garlic in oil over medium heat, stirring, until just beginning to color.
Add tomatoes and cook a minute or two longer, stirring, until soft.
Add cooked shells, mix together, and remove from heat.
Whisk together contents of cheese packet and milk until blended; fold into shells and tomatoes, add basil, season to taste, and serve.
Serves 2 grownups or 3 small children

I tried the first box first — Original Shells and Cheddar — but that used white cheddar and milk… adding the tomatoes didn’t make it orange, but mildly tomatoey and pretty good tasting.

Nothing to do but move on to the second, Annie’s Shells and Real Aged Cheddar. I did wait a couple weeks; I needed to take an Annie’s break.

Back in the kitchen, the “real aged” cheddar was orange, so I got me an orange sauce. Now that I have mastered the orange sauce, I am a happy camper. It doesn’t hurt that this stuff is moderately healthy and tastes good.

s_orange_shells Yummy lunch.

02.16.11

by Eric

One Pot Cod Left Over

…and a beet stack.

Three days later:

c_LO_cod_served

“She says she does a smaller version for, “herself and a friend,” but I prefer to do the whole recipe using less fish, then I can eat the leftovers with sausage or something as a change of pace.”

From my original One Pot Cod dinner I had one piece of cod left, plus enough vegetables for two. If you look at the plate upper left, you will see shrimp served with the vegetables for Carol.

c_beet_stack

Saturday being market day, I had some nice fresh roasted beets. They would provide a nice contrast to the meal. (It’s really hard to take a good photograph of red beets. They just suck up the light.) I sliced a spring onion thin and marinated the slices in a tablespoon or so of verjus while I was heating the one pot cod. When it was about ready, I sliced a beet, keeping it together, put the bottom slice on a plate, a slice of onion on top of that, slice of beet, slice of onion, etc, repeat. Over that, I spooned Marie’s Dijon Herb Potato Salad Dressing until the beet stack looked pretty.

c_beet_stack_dressed

Just right.

02.14.11

by Eric

Everyday Soup

Jack Soup… Fat Burning if you want it… and a protein to cancel the healthy soup.

Eric left a comment on I Cooked Topchii Ukrainian Borscht:

Eric:
Cabbage soup is now a hot topic on the NYTimes web site. Have you ever done an Eats article on Jack Nicklaus’s cabbage soup? Do you still make it?
Marcus:
I haven’t made the Jack Nicklaus soup for years, but it was published in the eats iv installment of the original eats4one. Actual title: Barbara Nicklaus Fat Burning Cabbage Soup… For Jack I gleaned the recipe from Sports Illustrated April 1996. It was part of a cabbage soup diet where one would eat the soup every day for a week along with fruit and vegetables. Beef was allowed on Friday and Saturday. It’s actually good soup and I did the diet once or twice, but eating the same soup every day is a chore – even when it’s good. Patricia Unterman wrote a “cleaned up” version in the SF Chronicle. Now that you’ve got me started, maybe I’ll make some soup and do an eats treatment. dad

j_served_detail
It took a couple weeks to get around to it, but I made the soup. It seems that my fabulous Frenched Pork Chops from GG Meat were in the freezer. Not only that, but Carol was in the process of being “crowned,” so soup would be good for that.

The “Jack Soup” as I call it was meant to be eaten every day for a week, so it makes a prodigious amount. I’m not going to eat it for a week, so I revised the recipe to scale it back. I also substituted a couple ingredients, based on my current tastes, but I kept the Lipton Onion Soup Mix — gotta have some ties to authenticity.

So here’s what I did:

Barbara Nicklaus Fat Burning Cabbage Soup… For Jack
Gleaned from Sports Illustrated April 1996; as I cooked it February 2011

1 large can San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes
2 leeks or 6 green onions
about 2 quarts beef, chicken or vegetable broth
1 package Lipton onion soup mix
1 small head cabbage (about 14 ounces)
1/2 pound frozen green beans or fresh (not canned)
1 green pepper (Jacques says peel your green pepper)
1 pound carrots
1/2 bunch celery
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped

Cut vegetables into medium pieces (bite sized).
Put tomatoes in a pot and break with your hands or a wooden spoon. Add everything else to the pot. Season with salt, pepper, curry or if desired, hot sauce or chili flakes.
Boil fast for 10 minutes, reduce to simmer, cook until tender.
Makes about 14 cups Continue reading →

02.10.11

by Eric

One Pot Cod

Shopping at the Farmers Market on Saturday, my head was all over cooking for the Super Bowl, so I limited myself to the bacon and sausage I ordered at Fatted Calf for the Bacon Explosion, eggs, and some pea greens and Bok Choi shoots that I came across. I was well stocked with onions and potatoes.

cod recipe

Wednesday afternoon, I looked up from working on my Income Tax and posed the magical question, “What’s for dinner.” The answer at a time like that is most usually, “fish.” Fish is easy and quick to prepare and I like to buy it fresh on the day I’ll cook it. Looking for inspiration in the Fish and Seafood zone of my cooking files, I came across “cod potatoes greens.” I have potatoes and greens so all I need is the cod. I especially liked the idea of using my unusual greens with this simple dish.

I got the recipe from the Boston Globe back in ought-eight… I think son Brian emailed it to me as he reads the Globe on line pretty regularly for news of the Red Sox and Patriots. It was in a group of recipes called “One Pot Wonders.” Here’s what the introduction had to say:

Alice Miller’s two boys don’t like fish. But the real estate agent, who lives with her sons in Beverly Farms, loves to cook and to experiment with recipes; she has made this one with scallops and with lobster, as well as cod. The reason she finds one-pot cooking appealing is simple: “I hate to do dishes.” Miller makes a smaller version of this recipe, usually for herself and a friend. With only two plates, there’s even less cleanup.

Now I don’t really hate to do dishes, but I do like the simplicity of one pot cooking. She says she does a smaller version for, “herself and a friend,” but I prefer to do the whole recipe using less fish, then I can eat the leftovers with sausage or something as a change of pace.

c1_season_cod

Start by getting out your Black Cod. Rinse it and season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. While you’re cooking, it will come to room temperature. I was lucky enough to find Black Cod at Whole Food – in fresh today. Love Black Cod. I did a Mark Bittman recipe for Black Cod broiled with Miso last week, but they didn’t have Black Cod then, so I used what they call True Cod; good but not great. (More on that later.) Continue reading →

02.03.11

by Eric

Fried Chicken

“The french fry did not become America’s most popular vegetable until industry took over the jobs of washing, peeling, cutting, and frying the potatoes – and cleaning up the mess. If you made all the french fries you ate, you would eat them much less often, if only because they’re so much work. The same holds true for fried chicken…”

Chapter 39: Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. FOOD RULES: An Eaters Manual by Michael Pollan

“Frying chicken is so much trouble that people didn’t used to make it unless they had guests coming over and a lot of time to prepare. The amount of work involved kept the frequency of indulgence in check.”

Chapter 60, Treat treats as treats.

FOOD RULES: An Eaters Manual by Michael Pollan

Back when I was in the Navy, stationed on a destroyer out of Norfolk, I was often invited to my cousin’s wife’s mother’s house in Suffolk, Virginia for Sunday Dinner. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and all the good Southern stuff was a standby. That was the sixties and I’ve eaten fried chicken since – especially in the South when we would visit Eric at Duke or later when Brian lived in Tifton GA – but when I’d think about making it, I stopped when I read, “Pour about three-inches of oil into a deep heavy pot…” and looked for another recipe. And I never cared for Colonel Sanders fried chicken. Besides, how can you beat a roast chicken?

Now, I was fresh from a Knife Skills class taught by Dave-the-Butcher and I had a nice half-chicken from Marin Sun Farms. I needed to cut that chicken up for practice. Why not make Fried Chicken? I searched “fried chicken recipes” on the Internet – there are a gazillion of them out there – and settled on one from Emeril Lagasse when he was with the Food Network. It seemed straightforward and used his “Essence” to “kick it up a notch.” I had used his Essence before in other dishes… its good. I cut up my half-chicken. My knife skills class paid off; the pieces are tidy and beautiful, not “mangled as usual.” Six pieces: leg, thigh, two pieces of wing and two pieces of breast. Perfect for two.

c_six_pieces Combine a pint of buttermilk with 1 ounce Essence, 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed in a large nonreactive bowl. Stir to blend. Immerse the chicken in the mixture and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and for up to 24 hours. Continue reading →

01.26.11

by Eric

Poached Egg on Greens

Saturday – After Market – Breakfast

Breakfast on Saturday is often pretty late, for breakfast. I could call it brunch, but I think of brunch as going out to a nice – usually special – place with Carol. On most Saturdays, I get up, have some juice, go to the Farmers Market, put away the stuff and then think about breakfast. On this day, I started out wanting a poached egg. With what?

beet greens - greens and stems

I had just trimmed the tops off of a bunch of tiny red beets and a bunch of little yellow beets. The greens look good and there really aren’t enough for a real meal. I trimmed and washed and put the beets in the oven to roast and chopped the stems off the greens.
There are two basic ways to cook greens.
Saute in a pan with plenty of olive oil and the water clinging to the washed greens. Call that wilted… takes about 10 minutes. Splash in some vinegar to finish.
bg_greens_in_pot Brown some bacon in a pot with a little olive oil. Add a chopped shallot and a bit of garlic. Cook soft. Add the greens, about 3/4 cup water, a tablespoon of sugar and pinch of red pepper flakes. Cover and braise for about 10 minutes. Splash on vinegar and let it sit while you poach your egg.

I did the latter this time.

By the time I did all that, the beets were roasted. I hadn’t planned on that, but hey, now I can have a couple of beets with their greens.

roasted beets

I don’t poach eggs often. I should, it’s EZ quick and good. I had to ask Carol a bunch of questions:
Which pan? The Revere stainless that you always complain about cleaning up after I poach my eggs.
How much water? About 3/4 full.
Just bring to a shimmer? Yes… don’t let it boil.
Cover? Yes.
Leave the heat on? I turn off after about a minute.
How long to cook? Three to four minutes. Take the egg out with a slotted spoon.
I was going to cook three minutes, but I was peeling a beet, so it went to 3 1/2 or so. Too done for my taste, but OK.

Saturday Breakfast... Yum.

Greens
Adapted from Simply Recipes,. Use with any kind of greens Continue reading →

01.20.11

by Eric

Good Food Awards 2011

I opened my CUESA newsletter last Friday to see this lead paragraph:

Good Food Awards Marketplace ~ Tomorrow
The Good Food Awards — the first national awards platform to recognize American food crafters — celebrate the kind of food we all want to eat: tasty, authentic and responsibly produced. Taste, buy, and meet the producers behind the 71 winning products from across the country. The inaugural Good Food Awards Marketplace is free to the public, and will be held against the backdrop of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market on Saturday, January 15th from 8am to 2pm. Learn more at http://www.goodfoodawards.org. There will also be a month of related events around the Bay Area from January 16 to February 20.

I am so there. When I got to the Market on Saturday at my usual time of about 8:15, I couldn’t miss the many stalls lined up behind the arcade. Since it was my normal shopping day, I knew what I had and what I needed, but never mind that, this was a special occasion.

It wasn’t hard to find special things that I liked, and while I didn’t go on a buying spree, I did indulge myself.

Here’s what I got.

gfa_prosciutto_pkg

Prosciutto La Quercia Americano
Norwalk, Iowa
La Quercia (La Kwair-cha). We make artisan cured meats or salumi–prosciutto, pancetta, coppa, speck, lonza, guanciale, and lardo. Seeking out the best possible ingredients, produced responsibly, we craft them by hand into something that expresses our appreciation for the beauty and bounty of Iowa.

gfa_coppa_pkg

Pine Street Market Dry-Cured Coppa
Avondale Estates, Georgia Continue reading →

01.14.11

by Eric

I Cooked Topchii Ukrainian Borscht

…and it is real good.
Many thanks to Eric for posting the step-by-step Topchii Ukrainian Borscht recipe as taught to him by Nataliya Topchii. I made these pictures to put with the recipe, so I’ll remember which pot I used, how much was made, and so on. They turned out so well, I thought I’d share.

Of course all of the ingredients and methods are included in Eric’s posting of Nataliya cooking. I suggest you revisit that and make the soup. It’s easier than pie, and tastes so good. When I do it again, I will probably use an extra beet and a little more cabbage. Otherwise the proportions of things are just right.

b1_borscht_ingredients

My ingredients. Starting at the bottom left, that’s a purple bell pepper. Green peppers aren’t in season and the pepper guy at the Market said the purple or white is closest in taste to the green. An onion, apple, three red skinned potatoes, two beets, a tiny head of cabbage, some baby carrots equal to two regular carrots, a bunch of cilantro and a wrapped beef shin.

b2_beef_shin

So here’s the unwrapped beef shin. The butcher at Golden Gate Meat called it Osso Buco. I thought osso buco referred to veal shank, but I looked it up and its Italian translation is, “bone with a hole.” Anyway, this one is 1 1/2 pounds; look at that nice core of marrow that’s going to melt into the soup. I trimmed off five ounces of hard fat and tissue.

b4_meat_in_pot

The meat in the pot. It doesn’t look like very much, but it turned out to be just the right amount.

b5_junk_in_pot

I chose the right size pot for the meat and vegetables.

b6_potato_chunk b7_potatoes_mashed

I chose to include the Mikola Option: remove three big potato chunks from the pot and put them in a small dish with a spoonful of broth. Mash into a paste and add back to the broth for “extra flavor.” It took me one hour and 30 minutes to here, working alone. When I added the optional tomatoes, I seasoned with 1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon sugar, two pinches of my salt/pepper mix and several grinds of pepper.

b8_serving_borscht

Here I am serving the Borscht. Lovely.

b9_borscht_served

The Topchii Ukrainian Borscht was served with crudités, toasts and my newly discovered house red wine from Kermit Lynch: Coteaux du Languedoc, St Martin de la Garrigue, Cuvee Tradition 2008.

Perfect.

b10_left_over Leftovers… we’ll be eating borscht for a while. That’s a good thing. Those are two-cup containers.

01.11.11

by Eric

Beans 'n' Eggs

Sunday Breakfast
My waking dream was about breakfast; an egg poached in tomato sauce. But there wasn’t enough left of the nice thick Tuscan Sugo I had made during the week. Keep the egg, substitute baked beans. I’ll have an egg poached in baked beans… Carol usually has a can of Bush’s baked beans in the pantry.

Sunday breakfasts aren’t like other breakfasts. On Sunday, I get up, have a glass of V8 and go someplace beautiful to write in my journal while Carol does her toilette and has her breakfast. Back home, I took a shower, got dressed and looked for a can of beans.

No beans. Dang all. The urge is strong. I need some snacks for the NFL Wild Card games as well, which are about to start. I’ll go to Safeway right now.

In the car at 10am, back in the kitchen at 10:30 with beans, Cheez-It, water, Spicy and regular V8 juices and some nuts. The Chiefs and Ravens are still in the first quarter with no score.
Ready, set, cook.

be_skillet-egg-bread-beans Here we have my Le Creuset cast iron non-stick skillet over a medium-low flame, a square of buttered bread, a Marin Sun Farms egg and that just-purchased can of Bush’s Smokehouse Tradition Grilling Beans.

be_fry_bread Put the bread in the skillet, buttered side down and let it fry a bit.

be_add_beans Spoon some beans into the skillet around the bread.

be_add_egg When the beans are nice and bubbly, slide the egg on top of the bread. This was trickier than I expected… the bread wanted to float. I held it down with a tablespoon, slid the egg into the bowl of the spoon and slipped the spoon out. Cover the skillet.