Nine days! Yikes!

I knew I was deliquent in posting, but nine days without word is unacceptable! My apologies to you all. Tonight's post is pretty much shooting from the hip, albeit an Asian hip.

It is 11 p.m., Wife Zube is out of town, I just got home from work and cleaned up, and I am hungry. I had originally planned on some form of Asian take-out for tonight, but didn't follow through. But I still want Asian flavor. Huh. I thought about the contents of my pantry, fridge, freezer and came up with this dish. It is a bastardized version of multiple different Asian cuisines, but I am a white honky and I don't know any better.

Epiphany number 1: I have really good chicken stock.
Epiphany number 2: I have fresh ginger.
Epiphany number 3: Enough said.

Here is the dilly-o for tonight's recipe:

2 cups of chicken stock
1 tbs fresh minced ginger
1 tbs miso paste (not really needed, but I had some)
1 scallion sliced thin
some celery leaves
a small handful of rice noodles, you pick which type
1 egg, beaten
crushed red pepper, if you like-a da heat.

Bring the stock to a boil and combine all ingredients except the egg. Cook this until the noodles are just shy of how you like them. While stirring the soup, slowly pour in the beaten egg and then keep stirring for a few moments. Pour into a bowl, wait a couple minutes, and devour.

In retrospect I am happy to have forgotten my take-out fantasy. This bowl of delight was beyond easy, used up random stuff in my fridge, and made my tongue thank me. It is a fair reminder of how delicious food can be made in minutes with basic ingredients.

P.S. Good chicken stock is key for this dish. Actually it is key for any dish that calls for chicken stock. And so on and so forth for beef, veggie, and fish stock. Good stock is what separates most home cooking from restaurant quality. I keep saying to Google it, but one of these days I will post a recipe for it. Until then though, Google is your friend in stock.

P.S.S. The photo is from my phone. I scrounged around but the ol' digital is no where to be found. Let your mind visual the flavor, succulence, and smell that my image completely lacks.

Celery Root with Melted Onions

Two nights ago my tongue, in a fit of sheer joy, did a back-flip and high-five'd a molar. What would make my tongue do such acrobatics, you ask? Celery root with melted onions is the culprit. The rather benign looking pile of soft, wilted looking stuff is the celery root with onions. This is another TK recipe from Ad Hoc and it is another home run. In traditional TK-style he breaks components down and then loads each step with maximum flavor. This dish needs cooked onions. You could a) simply saute them for about 5 minutes or b) sweat all the moisture out and then simmer them in butter with garlic, thyme, a bay leaf, and peppercorns for 30 minutes. Option A is a fine choice, but B will make you write your mom. (I am killing two birds with one stone, because my mom reads about it here...)

To melt your onions take about 4 cups of sliced onions that have been sliced from end to end, not cross-sectioned. (End to end cut onions hold their shape better when cooked.) Put them into a saute pan over medium heat, and without adding any oil, slowly cook them for about 15 minutes or so. You are removing moisture from the onions and concentrating their flavor at this point. The onions shouldn't really brown at all, but just soften up a bit. Next add in a bay leaf, two whole cloves of garlic that have been lightly crushed, a dozen peppercorns, and some sprigs of thyme. If you have cheesecloth on hand, and I never do, this would be a good time to wrap all that stuff in it. Fancy people call this a sachet. You don't need to wrap it up, but it saves time at the end when you are individually picking peppercorns out... Melt half a stick of butter (in cubes) into the pan, swirling as you do to keep it emulsified. Now the recipe calls for a parchment paper lid. TK has a huge crush on parchment paper lids, and I finally broke down and made one. It took 2 minutes and I think it really made an impact on the dish. I'm not going to describe how to make it, but just go ahead and Google it. It is as easy as falling down and I am sold on it now. The onions are going to gently cook away on medium low heat for the next half hour. Other than stirring every 10 minutes don't do anything else to the pan.

While your onions melt take your celery root (a.k.a. celeriac) peel it, quarter it lengthwise, and thinly slice it using a mandolin or your mad knife skills. (Mandolins are cheap an exceedingly useful. Go buy one. And some band-aids.) Get a pan hot over medium heat, once again no oil, and add the celeriac and let it sit for 10 minutes or so to soften. Then add in another bay leaf, crushed garlic cloves, more thyme, and some canola. Cook until completely soft, 10 minutes or so. Remember to keep the heat on the medium side. You aren't looking for color, but just to cook and soften your veg.

When your onions are sufficiently melted, mine browned a bit, and the celeriac softened drain them both on paper towels. Combine them in a pan to heat them together and add a cup or so of good chicken stock. This helps with the creamy factor.



I didn't make enough of this dish. I used one large celery root for four people and that was a bad decision. From now on, we use one large root per two people. We also had some delicious grilled asparagus and Arista pork chops (also an Ad Hoc number). The frenched pork chops are from DuBreton and the others from Windy Hill Farms.



When in doubt, eat pork.

Chicken, Mushrooms, and Cauliflower "Mac"

I have decided to treat mushrooms like bacon. To clarify, I am including them in almost every dish I now make. All foods have different properties (bacon's is that it is awesome!) and mushrooms have the ability to satisfy. They are high in the chemicals (the carboxylate anion of glutamic acid) that contribute to the taste, umami. (Leave it to the Japanese to give a name to the taste that is difficult to explain.) We are use to salty, sweet, sour, and spice as the four primary tastes. However, we are now aware of the fifth taste; umami. It is the feeling of savory, fulfillment, and soul-restorration that comes from eating foods high in it. My favorite example is miso soup. I would always eat it and think that there was something fundamentally awesome with it. It turns out that dashi (a component of miso soup) and seaweed are both quite high in umami! I am a genius.

The color palette of this dish is just shy of institutional boring-ness, but the flavors ran strong! As the photo (And yes, it was taken on the railing of our deck. I thought I would mix up the scenery a bit.) shows we have a big ole pile of cremini and button mushrooms. These were sauteed with about a tablespoon of minced thyme and then had about 1/4 cup of chicken stock ladled in near the end. The chicken stock gave its flavor to the shroomies and picked up flavor from the pan. This became the delectable sauce you see floating around on the plate. It was included because the chicken was un-marinated and needed some moisture. The cauliflower "mac" is blanched cauliflower florets that I mixed in with a cheese sauce. I miscalculated and ended up with far too much cheese sauce, but some would argue that is impossible. The cheese sauce starts with the classic bechamel sauce and then I whip in some grated cheese. I have read about bechamel for years and have just started making it. I think the fancy French name got all big, tough-guy on me and intimidated me away. Well not no mo'! I kicked Mr. Bechamel in the face and now realize the ease and utility of it!

Take two tablespoons of butter, melt over medium heat, and then whisk in two tablespoons of flour. Bring this to a light simmer for a few minutes. Slowly pour in hot milk while whisking until it thickens. This only takes a few minutes and it is like an ankle in a tattoo parlor: a blank canvas. The cheese goes in at the end. You want the milk hot because cold milk will make the sauce seize and then you have to whisk more. A lot more.

Enjoy this dish, we were both quite happy with it, and it was around 8 points on the WW scale.

p.s. good chicken stock makes a huge difference in every dish.

Speaking of yum...

YUM!

This is a blog I read a lot feel free to click the link on the right hand side of my page to get there. Between Ruhlman's prose/cooking and his wife's photography it is a pretty killer site.

Yikes, that was a fast week!

Time flies by and suddenly I haven't posted anything in a week! On a side note as a restaurant manager, another Mother's Day successfully cooked, plated, and served with only minimal effects to blood pressure.

Life has been hectic and without time to do too much involved cooking. However, I did have time this week to compose a meal with some thought behind it. Sometimes it is those quick little jobbies that come out blazing and make you sit back and smile. This one was tasty albeit not mind-shatteringly stupendous.

What we got here is a case of Pa Zube caught brook trout stuffed with thyme and lemon, and then it was pan-roasted. The glazed carrots from a previous post (still cut with the "oblique cut" method). Lastly some asparagus that was also pan-roasted with lemon and minced shallot. Nothing like wild caught fish to make you feel good about eating. Yum.

My apologies once again for being a bad poster and this one being short. The next one will be better. And remember the first one is free... but then you pay.

Healthy Eating

Americans are catching on to the fact that our diet (the "Western Diet") is pretty much killing us. Processed food has become the mainstay of our cuisine and this is bad. You keep reading about new "scientific discoveries" about this and that, being good or bad, in our diet. The truth is that the diet itself is bad. Consuming oodles of corn by-products and chemicals that we have no idea about is not healthy. Eating vegetables is healthy. Eating meat that you bought from the farmer in the next town is healthy. Moving away from processed foods and towards foods that you get in their raw form is healthy. A friend of mine stopped eating processed foods for one month. He lost 16 pounds. He is an active, physically fit guy, and that was all he did to lose weight.

Michael Pollan put out a little book called "Food Rules" and it is pretty awesome. It contains 64 rules towards healthy eating. He doesn't want you to follow them all, but certainly a few. The rules are common sense, but a good reminder of what healthy food choices are. One of my favorites: "Don't eat cereal that changes the color of your milk."

I don't like weight-loss diet plans. They tend to be one-sided, focused on abolishing some things and main-lining others, and they are short-lived. In my opinion it is better to teach yourself healthy alternatives, cook for yourself, and limit your portion size. And while I am not plugging Weight Watchers, I do like how they operate for the most part. I think that if you were to sit down and read "Food Rules" and the Weight Watcher handbook you would have a pretty dynamite way of eating.

"Food Rules" focuses you on raw ingredients and cooking for yourself, WW teaches you portion control and how to account for what you put in your body. You even get rewarded for exercise! And something I just learned is that when WW assigns you your "daily point value" you are actually suppose to consume that many points! A negative that I see in WW though is they push you towards some foods that aren't good alternatives. Margarine is not an acceptable food. It is hydrogenated corn oil. You don't need more corn.

I have seen WW work and I want to promote healthy eating to my readers. So I am going to try and post a WW point total with my recipes. Does this sound like a good idea to all you readers out there? If not, I can keep it a secret. :)

Seared scallops and shrimp with spaghetti squash "pasta"
Serves two

8 sea scallops
10 shrimp
1/2 red pepper -large dice
1/2 yellow pepper -large dice
1/4 cup red onion -large dice
1 tsp lemon zest -minced
1/4 cup feta
3 cloves of garlic -skin on
3 sprigs of thyme
1 tbs canola oil
salt and pepper to taste



Cook half the spaghetti squash the same way as in "Dinner from the fridge.." but this time put the garlic and 2 sprigs of thyme under it. Roast at 350 until the outside is soft when you push it, about 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven and while it cools saute the veggies, lemon zest, and the sprig of thyme on medium-high heat with 1/2 tbs oil. When tender remove them from the pan, add the remaining 1/2 tbs of oil and cook the scallops and shrimp.
Using a fork, pull the "noodles" out of the squash and toss with the veggies and feta. The garlic cloves should be nicely roasted so peel 'em, chop 'em, and mix 'em in!
Make a pile of spaghetti squash love on your fancy square plate, arrange the scallops and shrimp, and feast away!

Cost per plate ~$6.00
WW points per plate ~8

Red Onion Pickles

In a previous post I listed pickles as one of my not fancy foods that I enjoy. This is a huge understatement and doesn't begin to address my undying passion/zeal/hunger for all things dill/bread&butter/sour/spicy that are pickles. Where others find solace in a chocolate chip cookie or warm brownie, I want to slurp down a Kosher dill spear. (I like cookies and brownies too, don't get me wrong.) I love the refreshing tang of a nice, cool pickle. My current ranking favorite store bought pickles is, as you may have guessed, the nuclear-green Vlasic Kosher Dill. Yum.

Today we are talking about pickled red onions however and using a recipe that I stole from the "Zuni Cafe Cookbook". The Zuni Cafe is in San Fransisco and they do a pretty killer job of cooking what they want, making it tasty, and keeping it seasonal. Judy Rodgers, the chef, actually modifies the day's menu depending on the weather outside. She will make a nice light soup when it is clear and sunny, and then thicken it up if clouds roll in. Pretty cool, and would be so hard in Maine where the weather changes direction like a squirrel in the middle of a road.

Not to be sidetracked from this delicious and EASY snack, let's get picklin'! First you need a couple of red onions and a pickle. Throw them all in the food processor or blender and puree to smooth. Drink. AHHHH! Gotcha good! While this recipe does take more effort than that, it isn't much.

Into one stainless steel pot (important or chemical reactions ruin the coloring of the onion) goes: 3 cups white vinegar, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 star anise, 2 bay leaves, 1 cinnamon stick broken up, and a couple of peppercorns. I would have added the allspice berries and whole cloves, but I am sadly out. Bring all of this to a rolling boil. Rolling boil not included in photo below...



While the pot is working on boiling, take two red onions, peel, and slice them into 3/8" rings. Try to get only the nice thick rings and not the thin weird ones.



Once the pot is boiling full-tilt chuck a third of the onion rings in, tuck them underwater, and wait 20 seconds.



At the end of the 20 seconds the vinegar should be boiling and you want to remove the onions to a cooling rack/plate. Repeat this with the remaining two thirds of onion rings. Let the rings cool completely and then do it all again, twice more. In the end your pickled onion rings should have gotten 3 dunks in the tank. At the end let the liquid cool completely and then pour over the rings in a tight-sealing container. They last indefinetely, but you are going to eat them quickly. I like 'em straight, and they serve them on burgers at Zuni Cafe.

A Mitch Hedburg quote for the day:
A pickle is a cucumber that sold its soul to the Devil. And the Devil is dill.