The Kitchen Chronicles

camping cooking at home

It's not that we haven't been eating or cooking since October, just that I haven't found the time or need to write about it here.

Frankly I don't really understand how people who blog regularly and prolifically find time to live, since it seems to me that the blogging can take over a huge percentage of one's time, leaving none of it for the doing. Maybe others are just more efficient because they are busier. Or maybe they don't have much of a life. I'm curious.

And I think my cooking was in a bit of a rut for a while. Not that we haven't been eating well, just that I've been repeating a lot of familiar favorites and themes. Innovation comes and goes.

But last weekend, after a huge storm hit Seattle, we were without power at home for three days (and nippy nights). Our heat, hot water, and kitchen are all electric, but we have a working fireplace and a bunch of firewood stacked up outside. So we switched to indoor cooking, camping-style, at home in the fireplace.

The electric stove is about the only disagreeable thing in our kitchen (in a house we are renting), and not just in times of no power. I regularly complain about the inferiority of electric cooking; it is so much harder to control the heat when it takes a burner five minutes to react to a change you make with the temperature knob.

The same is true, worse even, on a wood fire, of course, but it was actually fun to attempt to pull together an interesting meal (not to mention a good espresso) in the fireplace.

But we did succeed, with some chicken breasts cooked in a cast iron skillet with salsa, or some sausages grilled over hot coals, or some kale soup reheated in an iron dutch oven. Nothing fancy, but they all tasted great, probably because you appreciate it more when it's a struggle. Just like camping.

But there were no complaints in the house when the power finally came back on after three days or so. One bracing cold shower was enough, thanks.

salvaged shrimp or piquant prawns

There were some marginally fresh shrimp on hand, smelling rather sketchy when I unwrapped them, even to my practiced and permissive schnoz.

In our house, there are varying degrees of tolerance for food that is in that purgatory between vibrantly fresh and far too spoiled to eat and must be thrown out. One of us, being properly oriented towards the health and safety end of the spectrum, would likely have rejected this particular raw material. The other of us is apparently in possession of a large number of canine chromosomes (and indeed often characterized as part Labrador Retriever). This genetic irregularity results in a remarkable acceptance of sketchy-smelling food and a singular aversion to its disposal.

However, in this case, the inspector was out of town and the chef was convinced that the smell was resident only in the shells and liquid of the shrimp, and that the flesh itself was uncontaminated. This theory was based on extensive empirical evidence and augmented by the exigencies of the situation (there was nothing else to eat in the fridge and he didn't feel like going out).

And so, said chef painstakingly peeled and cleaned these delectable Louisiana prawns, rinsing them continuously with copious quantities of water. Thinking that a strong spicy marinade would cure any residual whiff of the considerable stench now (hopefully) relegated to the trash, he chopped and minced an enormous pile of fresh, bold elephant garlic. This was combined with an entire tub of spicy tomatillo salsa (a regular ingredient almost always on hand in our kitchen) and the shrimp were deeply submerged in the resulting marinade. They remained there for quite a few hours since, theory notwithstanding, no sense taking chances. Who wants to get food poisoning when you're by yourself?

Finally, at dinner time, the shrimp were extracted from the ritual purification bath and quickly grilled in a stove-top pan. (Actually, it was more like a saute than a grill because our most annoying electric range is not really capable of achieving the high heat of a hefty gas model.)

The tasty and piquant prawns were served on a bed of cous-cous cooked with the reserved marinade. They were absent any foul odor or noxious taste whatsoever, at least to this dog's discriminating taste buds. I think even the health and safety chief would have agreed.

porcini mushrooms

Tonight's braised fish was a snapper with fresh porcini mushrooms from the guy at the farmers' market who specializes in foraged stuff. In the summer he had wild huckleberries and elderberries and chanterelle mushrooms and now it's porcini season.

They were sauteed in olive oil, bruised garlic cloves (intentionally, they weren't in a fight or anything), a spring of rosemary, and white wine. The fish was predictably ordinary but a good unassuming foil for the mushrooms. A little arugula and tomato salad plus yet more good corn on the cob.

I don't understand this corn thing going on and on like this into the autumn, but I am not complaining. Unfortunately, there are only two more weeks for many of the farmers' markets. Fortunately, two of them (the University District on Saturday and Ballard on Sunday) will continue all winter, albeit at a reduced level. They are always the best recreational (and nutritional) treat of the week.

braised favas

Some reheated leftover salmon was, let's just say, a little past its prime and leave it at that.

But some improvised braised fava beans with onions, corn, and red peppers, was quite, shall we say, piquant! A Claudia Roden takeoff, it was made with mint and dill (unfortunately not fresh).

Fresh fava beans are always to be savored, especially early in the season, which this is not but they were still excellent. To prepare them is a fair amount of work for the yield, but well worth it. You first have to shell them from the big puffy, woody pods. And then the individual beans, if they are at all of a decent size, have a tough outer shell that has to be removed. To do this, you blanch them really quickly (two minutes at most) in boiling water and then drop them in a pot of cold water to stop the cooking. Finally, you pinch the outer pod of each one and pop the real bean out.

I sauteed some onions in olive oil, then added the corn and beans and peppers, plus the mint and dill, and let them cook for ten minutes or so with a little water in the bottom of the pan. The piquantness was a surprise, because some of the red peppers turned out to be hot rather than sweet.

I can't think of a single Roden recipe I've tried that has not turned out well. The woman is a cook's treasure.

a new mole

A new mole!

This one is also made from scratch from a Coyote Cafe recipe. It was supposed to be a mole verde (green), but I used dried ancho chiles instead of fresh poblano ones, so it came out red. But the flavors were good—no chocolate and so slightly sharp instead of rich. All blended together were cumin, fennel, cilantro, epazote (a strange and pungent Mexican herb), and lettuce.

Accompanied by still more good corn on the cob, even a day old.

smoked salmon frittata

In a hurry to go out to a lecture by the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, tonight I made a quick frittata, the Italian version of an omelet. This is a European-style omelet, not the enormous American version stuffed with the entire contents of a small refrigerator.

It's another dish from my repertory of things that come out different every time they appear, depending on what's available and in front of my nose when I start cooking. This one featured chunks of smoked salmon, feta cheese, tomatillo salsa, onions, and tomatoes. All of that goes on top of the eggs once they set in the pan (ok, maybe that approaches the entire contents of a small fridge), and then the pan goes under the broiler for a few minutes to finish it.

The lecture, unfortunately, was a disappointment. While Mary Ellen Mark is a great and important photographer, she was not very articulate in speaking about her own work. We decided that she is perhaps an example of a wonderful visual artist who expresses herself best through her work and not by talking about it.

braised sturgeon + berries

Tonight was yet another variation on an old favorite recipe for braised fish, this one with a sturgeon steak. It was very much like the classic braised halibut [see 8/22/06], but with some blackened pepper skins mixed in with the parsley. The sturgeon was tasty and moist but not nearly as flavorful (nor as expensive) as a good Alaskan halibut. We also had, surprisingly still available at the market this late in the season, some excellent corn on the cob.

In perhaps a last celebration of summer berries, our new classic dessert is plain non-fat yogurt with warmed blackberries and raspberries in their syrup. Who needs ice cream? The incredibly heady blackberry aroma released by the gentle heating of the berries and the light sauce from just a little sugar sprinkled on the berries, makes this a simply delicious and completely scrumptious concoction.

inspired by Sicily

Tonight I had a business dinner with out-of-town guests at a restaurant called La Medusa in Seattle. It's a casual but elegant place in the up-and-coming Columbia City neighborhood. They serve "Sicilian-inspired" food in a storefront kind of osteria. I was curious about it, since we traveled a lot in Sicily and were certainly inspired by the food there.

We started with a plate of a soft warm flat herb bread with fresh figs and some kind of fig relish (whose exact composition I didn't catch) that was quite tasty. An insalata semplice was just that—very simple red leaf greens with shaved parmigiana, not very exciting but palate cleansing. A grilled pluot salad looked more interesting but I didn't sample it.

For primi, we had three dishes and shared tastes: spaghetti con le sarde; a risotto with corn, fava beans, and crabmeat; and a pasta dish called trofiette with lemon and bottarga (mullet roe).

I recommended the spaghetti con le sarde because it is the signature dish of Palermo and quite delicious, and have made it a few times since experiencing it in Sicily. There are many different versions of it, of course, but they all represent a magical blending of cultures that is evident throughout Sicily (not just in the food, but in the language, architecture, attitudes, and culture in general). At various times in history, Sicily has been conquered and ruled by the Phoenicians, Greeks, Moors, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, and Romans, and you still see traces of all of those civilizations on the island.

Spaghetti con le sarde is made with fresh sardines, fennel, onions, currants, pine nuts, olive oil, and saffron, all tossed in the pasta. Hungry yet? This version, to me, was a bit tame and not particularly authentic, lacking some of the robustness of flavors it should have, but quite good nonetheless. The risotto was also very nice, subtle and perfectly cooked, perhaps a bit on the shy side, and not Sicilian in the least.

The trofiette were the best of the three. It was described by our server as light and delicate and it was that, but wonderfully flavored with (if I were a food writer I might even say redolent of) lemon in a sparse sauce and just a hint of the bottarga sprinkled on top. This was an inspired dish, because of the simplicity and fragrance of the ingredients, allowing them to make themselves known without overpowering.

The wine list was small but sophisticated (and expensive) as far as I could tell, not being much of an oenophile. We had a bottle of a Dolcetto d'Alba, from Piemonte (in the north of Italy near where we lived), which was assertive yet not dominant, with a nose of...oh, puh-leeze. Anyway, it was a good red.

For dolci there was a chocolate cherry biscotto served with vin santo, a slightly sweet wine typical of Tuscany. The biscotti were a bit fussy for the vin santo because you are supposed to dunk them in it, but delicious nonetheless. Also good were a bowl of fresh strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries served with a bit of whipped cream. I had a perfect espresso, ristretto come in Italia.

All in all, even if it wasn't a truly Sicilian meal, it was a wonderful dining experience with excellent food and perfect service (attentive and knowledgeable, yet not hovering). La Medusa is true to its word: Sicilian-inspired food.

serendipity & improvisation

After an excellent 40 mile bike ride (half with Dave on the way back from his school) on a beautiful autumn afternoon, I arrived home close to dinner time with an empty stomach and a hungry and diligent professoressa waiting to see what would emerge from the kitchen for our evening meal.

In the fridge was a nice wild Coho salmon fillet. What to do with it, other than repeat an old standard marinade for oven planking?

The solution illustrates two of my favorite, and related, kitchen happenings—the serendipity of available ingredients, and improvisation under time pressure. Some of my best dishes have materialized when I had no preconceived plan in mind before setting foot in the kitchen. (Or maybe they just seemed that way because of the frenzied feeling at the start.)

With no idea in mind, I often just start pulling possible ingredients out of the fridge and array them on the counter, waiting for inspiration to strike. (Is this akin to what a jazz musician does in improv?) Sometimes, I quickly search the indexes of trusted cookbooks, looking for recipes that contain an ingredient in my field of view. Other times, I just start chopping an onion to stall for time. Occasionally I just get a favorite old cast iron skillet hot with some olive oil and garlic to stimulate things. Then I just start cooking (playing?) and see what happens.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not. At any rate, the process is fun and it forces you to loosen up and let/get the creativity flowing.

The serendipity of ingredients is also a useful constraint and harmonious with the fresh, local, and seasonal doctrine. (I just read somewhere that it was Alice Waters who first articulated this, at least in the American cooking consciousness.) Another strangely satisfying corollary to the available ingredients theorem is clearing out the leftovers. If you can liberate many plastic containers full of assorted avanzi, so much the better.

Tonight, upon surveying the avanzi candidates, I found a small bit of leftover salad (see the stupendous salad of last night), some roasted red peppers and their charred skins, and tomatillo salsa. I had just read a recipe for mole verde that had ground lettuce leaves in it, so into the food processor went the salad and other stuff. Onto the salmon and into the oven for a baked topping.

It was credible if not wonderful, and maybe even tasty, perhaps even more so for the speed of assembly and lack of planning.

Also topical on the subject of clearing out the fridge, was a wonderful recent article in the NY Times Magazine (or here if you can't access that) about the accumulation of ingredients and using them up, creatively, of necessity.

chicken mole disappointment

Another Jewish holiday, another chicken mole. Why not?

This one was like bringing coals to Newcastle, though, and kind of risky as Paul, Ari (a real Mexicana and no slouch in the kitchen, especially with mole), and Isabel came over for dinner.

I attempted to reprise my earlier success with the Mexican mole rojo. This one, on Erev Yom Kippur no less, was not so successful. Emboldened by the last variation, I started more from scratch this time and didn't get the balance of spices right. The clove "note," as the wine people might say, was too dominant and there weren't enough of the chili, chocolate, and other ingredients in evidence.

L's salad of greens, mango, and blood orange was stupendous.

Syrian eggplant purée

Another night of ordinary turkey burgers, but tonight's extraordinary experiment was a Syrian-style eggplant purée, from a recipe by my hero Claudia Roden, the food and cookbook writer. This one is from her book of Mediterranean food. All of her cookbooks are pure winners in my food library. Her recipes are often deliciously and deceptively complex, yet easy to make.

In this one, eggplant slices are roasted then puréed with two knives in a colander, not a food processor, which gives them a slightly coarse texture and lets some of the liquid drain. Then the purée is mixed with chopped garlic and fresh parsley, some olive oil and the magic ingredient -- pomegranate syrup, for a slight sweetness.

She's coming soon to speak in Seattle on a book tour for her new volume, Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, which I intend to buy and get signed!

fresh, local and seasonal

Dinner tonight was very ordinary turkey burgers with some very extraordinary fresh corn, from the farmers' market this morning.

Although an unspectacular meal, it reminds me of my "mantra" for cooking -- trying as much as possible to eat fresh, local, and seasonal. Although long into shopping at farmers' markets, I found that the extended growing seasons of California meant that the Los Angeles markets had a cornucopia nearly all year round.

The situation in Italy was far different. The seasons were more, well, seasonal, and I loved that you could not really get everything you might need for a recipe whenever you wanted it. When asparagus was in season, we ate it all the time and then not until it came back in the market again the next year. Tomatoes only in the late summer, chestnuts in the fall, beets in the winter, etc. And so you adapt your cooking to the rhythms of the fields and forests.

Of course, this is not a new idea, but in much of America we don't eat from local farms, but get our food from supermarkets where it arrives from all over the world. Luckily, the state of Washington is a rich agricultural region and Seattle is blessed with a large number of weekly farmers' markets, some of which even run year-round. In the summer, they are just overflowing with all things wonderful. The philosophy and rules of these markets are that the vendors must be the actual farmers and they must grow everything they sell on their farms.

All of this is completely inspiring. I adore going to the markets and do it at least twice a week. I don't think I've bought more than the occasional ginger root or bananas (or other things that don't grow in Washington) at the regular co-op market since April.

So these days, we are eating a lot of corn, tomatoes, berries, beans and whatever else looks good, which is everything.

disappointing bbq

It's the first day of autumn and gorgeous sunny clear warm weather after a grey, cool, and damp week. We barbecue some chicken outside, but it's not the summer grill flavor we were craving. The sauce, I confess, was straight out of a bottle. Some sauteed favas, carrots, and onions were also somewhat disappointing.

The picnic lunch sandwiches, on a bike ride stop on the lake at Matthews Beach were much better. Leftover salmon (avanzi!) on Essential Bakery mille grane bread with fresh basil leaves and a dressing made from the marinade and a little yogurt.

l'shana tovah

Oy, vay, on Rosh Hashonah – enough with the Mexican food already! A third incarnation of the mole, this time with some Louisiana shrimp. Happy New Year.

knowledge worker food

We have had a few days of knowledge worker meals this week. I've been busy helping L develop her course web site and not paid as much attention to the cookbooks – serviceable but uninspired cooking.

Tonight I almost didn't make anything for dinner except reservations due to a low blood sugar state late in the afternoon waiting for L to come home. But some peanut butter and Brian Eno on the stereo saved the day and, fortified by fuel and music, I plucked something interesting from the precipice of culinary despair.

A nice 2+ pound wild Coho salmon fillet awaited only a marinade and oven-planking to arrive on our plates. The marinade, mildly Thai in flavor, was lots of chopped garlic, fresh ginger, and some hot green peppers mixed with sesame oil, soy sauce and lemon juice, and fresh Thai basil.

Lots of good avanzi!

leftovers

In Italian, leftovers are called avanzi, as in advances. This is not just a linguistic quirk; it signifies a different cultural attitude towards the food you don't finish at a meal. Leftovers are seen not as the dregs of a previous meal, but the potential for creating a new one.

We like this attitude here at Newport Way. Last night's mole for instance, reheated tonight, was even richer and more complex, since all the ingredients in it had more time to commune with each other.

But this is not really what the Italians have in mind for avanzi; the idea is to reuse them as an ingredient in a new dish. Another time…

chicken mole variation

I'm worried about L. I think the stress of preparing for the class she's going to teach is affecting her critical thinking.

Tonight I made another chicken mole dish and she pronounced it possibly the best meal I have cooked for her, perhaps forever if not just in recent memory. Now I was fairly pleased with this new variation I invented and thought it was even quite excellent and indeed eminently guest-worthy. But it didn't strike me as genius quality and certainly not a candidate for a lifetime achievement award!

But then she said that the modern eclectic versions of traditional Mexican and Hispanic cuisine (like the Border Grill in LA of the Two Hot Tamales fame) are just about her favorite class of food. Who knew? Have I been wasting all my considerable efforts on fish, Italian and Sicilian inspirations, and many other innovations over the years?!?! I thought some of those rated a MacArthur Genius grant, but maybe we should go live in Oaxaca now for a few years and I should cook for her there. Learn Spanish and go to all the markets and make friends with the vendors, while she writes a book about a small Mexican town. Hey, it was inspirational for Edward Weston, maybe I could become a photographer/chef. Hmmm.

Anyway, this mole I attempted to do a little more from scratch and it was an excellent amalgamation of flavors, I must say. The starting point was a recipe for mole rojo, from the Coyote Cafe cookbook (p. 29).

Dry-roasted ancho chiles in a cast iron pan, then simmered to reconstitute them. Pan-blackened fresh tomatillos and regular tomatoes. Oven-roasted and blackened red bell peppers. Caramelized red onions and already cooked corn removed from the cob. Oaxacan starter mole paste simmered in vegetable broth and roasted pepper juices.

Everything coarsely pureed and all simmered in one pot. Added some ground toasted almonds and cinnamon, black pepper, salt – could have lots more stuff from the recipe, but wasn't sure what was really in the starter besides chocolate. Chicken breasts sauteed in the pan juices then added to the pot.

Heated Trader Joe's handmade corn tortillas in the oven. Yogurt and heated blackberries and wild huckleberries for dessert later. Quite delicious, even if not the best ever.

braised halibut steak

Continuing the variations on the braised fish theme, tonight with a halibut steak. Favas, carrots, a tomato and garlic sauteed with rosemary branches (plucked from various plants around the neighborhood on a late afternoon walk with L) and chardonnay, then oven-braised at high heat with the halibut.

sauteed shrimp

Oh the perils of improv cooking with low blood sugar!

Starting out reinvigorated by reading recipes for shrimp in an Italian cookbook, I picked one that sounded promising (in Italian) and began the prep, only to watch my enthusiasm rapidly drain away as the dish took shape. Switched to the standard rescue – TJ's tomatillo salsa, which cures all. Added some garlic and shallots and lemon to the saute. Fresh Kentucky pole beans and all is salvaged.

blackened peppers

A good strategy from this day forward might be to use a portable interactive alarm timer when putting something in the oven and just "going down to check email" while the green peppers roast. Otherwise, the result could be some totally scorched peppers that make the house smell great but not much else.

Instead, there's a reprise of the braised fish plus some (carefully watched) oven-roasted tomatoes.