Grilled Salmon and Good Conversation

Rather than go out last night like we usually do on Wednesdays, we decided to cook and eat on our patio to take advantage of the beautiful evening weather, so on the way home I picked up some fresh Atlantic salmon for the grill and invited Amanda and Evan for dinner. This dish is a rarity in that I both suggested it and I usually cook it, although I still need quite a lot of practice to get all the elements of a dish ready at the same time the way Melissa does. That is truly an under-appreciated talent...

The salmon fillets are briefly marinated in soy sauce and maple syrup, grilled to (hopefully) perfection, then topped with a spoonful of soy and maple reduction. The dish is great with grilled asparagus, but since I couldn't find any spears at the grocery store I used zucchini instead.

As the evening wore on into the night, we lit up the courtyard with string lights, candles and good conversation. We had a few of our standard wines open last night, including some Kiwi sauv blancs and a California chardonnay, but with dinner we served a 2007 Whitehaven Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ), which I picked up on sale for $15 (usually a $20 bottle, so we don't often buy it). This is a pretty special wine -- the quintessential New Zealand sauv blanc with strong notes of capsicum, fresh cut grass and herbs, with plenty of crisp acidity from the passionfruit flavors.

We were a little surprised when Amanda pulled out a shopping bag full of rhubarb. I wasn't sure where she was heading with this, but Melissa hatched a plan for dessert in record time. She had no milk, eggs or white sugar, but she did have some apples on the verge of being lost to over-ripeness, and she cobbled together a sort of shortbread crumble topping from flour, butter, brown sugar and baking soda. What came out was a superbly tasty apple and rhubarb cobbler. Tart from the rhubarb and not too sweet -- a toothsome treat, indeed.

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Recipes and Notes

Soy and Maple Salmon

Salmon fillet, 1/3 to 1/2 lb per person
Soy sauce
Maple syrup
Olive oil
Zucchini

Marinate salmon fillets for 10-20 minutes in a mixture of about 2/3 soy sauce and 1/3 maple syrup in a shallow dish. Place fish flesh-side down and try to avoid getting the marinade on the skin as this will cause it to stick to the grill. Make another mixture of about 1/2 soy and 1/2 maple syrup and reduce on medium heat in a sauce pan until thick and syrupy. Set this aside to glaze the cooked fish for the finished dish.

Salmon fillets should cook skin-side down on medium flame until skin is crispy -- this will also cook the flesh about 3/4 of the way to done. Carefully turn the fish -- it should come loose quite easily once the skin is a little charred but will stick fiercely if the skin side isn't yet done. Cook briefly on the flesh side to make some nice grill lines. Cut zucchini into strips about 1/4-inch thick and bruch with olive oil, then grill to soften and put lines on them. Serve the fish on the zucchini strips and drizzle with glaze.

Apple Rhubarb Cobbler

Makes 4

2 Apples, cored and sliced
5-6 sticks of rhubarb (no leaves)
½ cup of brown sugar
~½-1 cup of water

Put above ingredients into large pot or pan with fitting lid. Cover and simmer for around 30-45 minutes until everything is soft and the rhubarb has become mushy. Spoon mixture into ramekins.

Topping:

100g (1 stick) of butter
¼ cup of brown sugar
~1 cup of flour
¼ cup of almonds
½ tsp of baking soda

Preheat oven to 425oF. In food processor cream the butter and sugar and almonds. In large bowl mix flour and baking soda. Add butter mixture to flour and mix to a crumbly consistency. Adjust flour amount so large crumbs are formed. Too much flour and the crumbs are smaller, too little and the butter isn’t coated fully. Don’t over mix. Spoon crumbly mixture on top of rhubarb apple mix in ramekins but don’t press down. Bake in 425oF oven until topping is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool a bit before serving. Garnish with a sprig of mint.

Beef Curry

After a considerable hiatus of almost a week, we finally have a chance to post again. Last Thursday we went with Evan to an open house at the Sam Adams Boston Brewery. They were serving their Summer Ale and Pale Ale along with special ice cream concoctions that local company J.P. Licks came up with using Sam Adams beers as ingredients. The Summer Ale ice cream was pretty nice, but eating it while drinking actual beer was not a good combination. They had a grill going with a nice outdoor tented seating area, so the scene had great potential. However, the food coming off the grill was unimpressive to say the least -- the "pork sausage" was completely devoid of flavor and contained about 90% sawdust (or recycled cardboard) judging from the texture. We bailed and went to Acapulco's, a low-end Mexican restaurant in Jamaica Plain, for some cheap margaritas and enchiladas. The service was inexcusably slow considering that we were the only occupied table in the place, but we don't go there for the stellar wait staff...

Last weekend Melissa hosted her annual "Boston Massacre" Diplomacy tournament (see Evan's blog for a few photos and commentary), and since I was the designated go-fer, that kept us both busy from Friday morning to Sunday evening. We hosted a cookout for about a dozen participants on Friday night with Italian sausages, hot dogs, grilled vegetables and beer on the menu. Along with a long evening at work and a couple of convenience meals out, that didn't leave much room for cooking.


After a day home from work with a sore throat, last night Melissa made a spicy beef curry to chase away the germs. This dish paired beautifully with a 2004 Brancott Riesling (Marlborough, NZ). The Brancott label is actually Montana winery, but to market their wines in the US they wisely changed the name so that potential consumers wouldn't think the wine came from the state of Montana. See Melissa's recipe and notes below...

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Melissa's Recipe and Notes

Beef Curry

The day after the Diplomacy tournament my throat felt a little scratchy. As the day wore on it became obvious to me that this was not from overuse but a cold or an attack of tonsilitis brewing. That night I fell asleep only to wake up about 3am barely able to swallow. I managed to get back to sleep but decided to spend the next day in my 'jammies keeping warm, sleeping and reading Kai's grant. Food-wise, I ate lots of oranges (apparently Diplomacy players don't eat a lot of fruit) and tried to get as much garlic into me as possible. After two naps of more than 2 hours each and a head of roasted garlic with potatoes I was feeling quite a bit better, but decided to hit the last of it with a hearty curry for dinner. Halfway through the recipe I thought a couple of dollops of salty peanut butter would be nice addition, but as we didn't have any I threw in some ground almonds instead. There was something missing from the curry spices as well, so I threw in a little pre-made spice mix too. Cheating I know, but I was sick, and trekking out to the supermarket to pick up things like garam masala wasn't an option. I also had some plain yogurt in the fridge I was going to put with it, but alas it was off. Still, all and all it was a pretty tasty curry.

Olive oil
1 onion - sliced
5 garlic cloves
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp of black pepper seeds
1 tsp of dried chilli flakes
1 tbsp of ground cumin
1/2 tsp of ground cloves
1 tsp of ginger
1 tsp of curry spice mix
1 tsp of chicken stock paste
1/2 cup of ground almonds
400g of sirlion steak tips
A few small whole potatoes (optional)
Water to stew everything together
Salt to season
1 cup of rice

In a food processor, or with a mortar and pestle, grind coriander seeds, fennel seeds and pepper seeds into a fine mix. Find a medium to large pot with a good fitting lid. Drizzle some olive oil in it to coat the bottom and add onions to sautee on medium to high heat. Let them get a little golden colour. Add beef, garlic and all the spices and stir fry until meat has been sealed. Add water to cover and chicken stock paste and bring to a boil. Add ground almonds and simmer for about 1 hour to tenderize the meat, cook the potatoes and let the spices permeate the dish. Keep topping up water if it gets thick enough to start catching on the bottom of the pot. Serve on rice.

Wednesday Stir Fry

Melissa was taking requests last night, so I asked for her special beef and onion stir fry over rice. She sent me to the grocery for an onion and something green, and I came home with broccoli rabe (a.k.a. raab, rapa, rapine, rappi, rappone, turnip broccoli, taitcat, Italian broccoli, and Chinese broccoli). It looks similar to broccoli but isn't actually a broccoli relative, and it works quite nicely as a steamed green in Asian dishes. The really special thing about Melissa's beef and onion stir fry is the wasabi mayonnaise she uses as a garnish.

She tends to hide a big, face-slapping whack of wasabi in the rice just to mess with me (actually it's because she has a passion for wasabi), but I love it despite the booby trap. I brought home a six-pack of Weyerbacher Merry Monks' Belgian Ale, which worked quite well with the sinus-clearing stir-fry, although the 9.3% alcohol content took us a bit by surprise...

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Melissa's Recipe and Notes

Beef and onion stir fry

Ingredients:

500 g beef eye fillet (tenderloin)
soy sauce
pepper
1 onion
olive oil
broccoli rabe
1/2 cup sushi rice
1 1/4 cup water
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Kewpie (Japanese) mayonnaise
wasabi paste


Thinly slice beef and drench in soy sauce with cracked pepper to marinate. Bring rice and water to simmer, then place bamboo steamer on top of the pot with broccoli rabe and leave to steam for approx 5 minutes. We're going to let the pot do double-duty by steaming the greens while the rice is cooking.

Remove the steamer after 5 mintues and replace with a lid, then turn heat to low for a further 15 min. Cover bottom of frying pan with olive oil and heat. To the hot pan add sliced onion (half rings) to soften, then add sliced and drained beef. Stir fry briefly to seal in the meat juices and then remove from heat. Remove onions and beef to a bowl and toss steamed broccoli in the pan juices. When rice is ready, drizzle with rice wine vinegar and serve in a bowl with 1/2 tsp wasabi paste.

Add in the steamed greens as shown in the finished dish photo, streak in Kewpie mayo and top with beef and onions. Mix wasabi paste and Kewpie mayo to taste and use it to top off the dish. Optional: Warn your diners about the wasabi booby trap...

Spicy Pork and Mushroom Spring Rolls

We had to take advantage of the nice weather Tuesday evening to finish off Melissa's trophies for the diplomacy tournament she is hosting this weekend and get another layer of clear-coat on the more-or-less repaired patio table top.

This is the fourth year Melissa has had hand-made trophies for her tournament (dubbed Boston Massacre). Her design and her workmanship -- I just helped cut and sand the bases. Pretty nice, eh? They're better this year than ever before because we finally have a power saw to make clean, accurate cuts for those hardwood bases (a DEWALT DW713 heavy-duty 10-inch compound miter saw with a 15-amp, 5,000 rpm motor, to be exact). It sure beats hand-sawing through oak or poplar 2x4, as we've done before, and it should help me through a couple of other projects I have planned for this summer. I may not be into sports, but when it comes to power tools my stereotypical male inclinations shine bright and clear, much to our neighbors' chagrin...

So while I was browsing the hardware store for some new storage bins for the kitchen cabinets, Melissa was forming a cunning plan for a dinner that seemed to take just minutes to execute (about 20, actually). After I cleaned out and re-organized the kitchen cabinets Monday night, the spring roll wrappers that had rotated to the front of the shelf gave her an idea. Enter: spicy pork and mushroom spring rolls with leafy greens and Greek yogurt. Very fresh, very nice indeed. And that's the last of those cute little enoki mushrooms, for now. We had a bottle of 2006 Redcliffe Sauvignon Blanc (Marborough, NZ) that we were already drinking before we knew what dinner would be, and the dish was predictably too spicy for the wine. If we had actually planned this dinner we would have had a nice dry Riesling or an Alsacian Gewurztraminer. Here's to planning...

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Melissa's Recipes and Notes

Spicy Pork and Mushroom Spring Rolls

Here’s a shout out to my brother Cameron who’s managed to lose around 60 pounds this year. I asked him if he’d been reading my blog, but he replied, “too calorie rich, Mel, too calorie rich for me.” I did convince him that the grilled skinless chicken thighs and asparagus from June 2 would probably be fine for his diet, but I also thought this dish would probably fit too.

Ingredients:

4 large round spring roll wrappers. (These are translucent and made from rice starch)
Few crispy lettuce leaves
200gm of pork tenderloin (lean, fat trimmed)
4-6 cloves of garlic
1 tsp of John West Red Thai Chilli paste (Fairly mild compared to the green version)
½ tsp of Sambal Oelek Chilli Paste (hot)
Enoki Mushrooms
Crimini Mushrooms
Peas
2 tbsp of non-fat Greek yogurt
A little Kimchi (Korean fermented spiced cabbage) – optional

So from the above ingredients even the most naïve reader will be able to guess that these aren’t anywhere near traditional spring rolls. The crispy lettuce leaves I used were from a Boston lettuce, the chilli flavour came from a Thai sauce and an Indonesian sauce for that extra kick, the mushrooms are Japanese and Italian, the yogurt Greek, and if you add the Korean spiced cabbage you have a mélange of flavours from across the world…. What on earth was I thinking? In hindsight I should have probably made the Vietnamese dipping sauce of fish sauce, rice wine vinegar, sugar and chillis to top it off, but I’m not sure it needed it as the yogurt bound it together well. These rolls were pretty yummy despite my scattershot use of whatever ingredients I found in the fridge.

So here’s the method to my madness:

Cut the pork into cubes and peel garlic. Blend both in a food processor to make mince (ground meat in American). Add both the chilli pastes and cook well in a hot pan with a little olive oil (or just a non-stick pan if you want to skip the oil, Cameron). Once the meat is cooked, put it in a bowl and stick it in the freezer to hasten the cooling process. Flash cook the peas by dropping into boiling water and drain a minute or two latter. Rinse with some cold water to make them stop cooking and remain bright green. Fill a wide, shallow bowl with water from the tap (cold is OK). Take one spring roll wrapper and submerge it in water for about 60 seconds and then take it out. This should be enough to make it pliable. If you leave it in the water too long or try and do all four at once they’ll simply turn to glue, so just stick with one at a time and take them out as soon as you can bend them without snapping them. Towards one edge of the wrapper place some pork mince (2tsps), lettuce, two or three slices of crimini mushroom, a few Enoki mushrooms, some peas, a little Kimichi and a couple of small dollops of yogurt. See diagram below to judge how much filling you should have and how to roll your spring roll.

Repeat until you’ve made all the spring rolls. Arrange on plate and garnish with anything you like. I used a bit of the extra meat filling, Enoki mushrooms and a little yogurt.

Sunday Scallops Revisited

Melissa is really good about using up the leftover ingredients from previous dinners, and this time around I made her job quite easy by buying way too many sea scallops when she sent me to the grocery store last Saturday. The seafood guy said I should have 1/2 pound per person, even though I told him there would be a risotto base for the dish. I talked him down to 2 pounds total, but it still felt like way too much food to me. Sure enough, Melissa only needed one pound for five of us. I am a terrible judge of these things.




Despite my aspirations with regard to lab work on Sunday afternoon, I got sucked into a marathon of LOST episodes (second season, available online) and spent a rare Sunday watching television with Melissa. For dinner, she pulled out the rest of the scallops she had frozen and served them on a salad of arugula, pear and walnuts topped with the remaining enoki mushrooms (aren't they cute?). This time she lightly coated the scallops with flour, salt and pepper before pan-frying them in olive oil to give them a nice crust. We had a bottle of Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc (2007, Marlborough, NZ) to pair with this dish as we pondered the significance of the numbers 4, 8 , 15, 16, 23, and 42 in the ongoing plot of LOST...

Mushroom Risotto and Sea Scallops

Melissa and I got up early last Saturday morning and accomplished a lot before noon. We cut and sanded seven trophy bases for Melissa's upcoming Boston Massacre Diplomacy Tournament, and while she stained them I worked on some repairs to our outdoor dining table and a rickety old garden table. Then an early afternoon idea to try out a risotto dish turned into a great Saturday dinner with friends.



Amanda, Evan and Jason joined us for a dinner of mushroom and truffle risotto with pan-seared sea scallops. A combination of Shiitake, baby bello and small white mushrooms sauteed in butter and olive oil formed the base for the risotto, which was further flavored with a nice oaky chardonnay and truffle oil after cooking. The scallops were seared in a non-stick pan with sea salt, fresh ground pepper, butter and olive oil. Served on a bed of risotto and garnished with arugula leaves and enoki mushrooms, the little jewels were just begging to be eaten.

We were lucky to get Jason here on Saturday, since he was working feverishly on a talk for his upcoming interview for a faculty position at Rockefeller University in NYC. I figured he needed a break anyway, but a Saturday night dinner at our place can sometimes be bad news for someone trying to get back home at a certain hour (or stay sober)...

With dinner we had two California chardonnays: a bottle of 2006 Bogle, which was also in the risotto, and a bottle of 2006 Pietra Santa. Both were nice wines, but the Bogle was better hands down. There was a time not too long ago that I wouldn't have liked this wine, but it has everything good about California chardonnay without the things that turn many people off so easily. It's not light on the oak, but it comes across with great vanilla and toffee flavors and still leaves room for the fruit. The finish is long and creamy -- I really like this wine, and we usually get it for about $10. Other wines* we enjoyed as the night wore on were Avondale Pinotage (2006, South Africa), Stoneleigh Pinot Noir (2006, Marlborough, NZ), and Dona Paula Los Cardos Sauvignon Blanc (2007, Mendoza, Argentina). Well -- there were five of us...

For dessert we had a really special wine. When Ramon and Gijsje arrived in Auckland, New Zealand for our wedding back in March 2007, we took them directly to the Villa Maria Winery just a few minutes drive from the airport. We had a fantastic tasting out on their patio, and Ramon and Gijsje got to unwind in the best way possible after the long flight. They bought us a bottle of Villa Maria's 2004 Reserve Noble Riesling Botrytis Selection desert wine that we have been saving for a worthy meal. All I really need to say about this wine is that the winemaker's notes include the word "hedonistic." The raisin, apricot and nutty goodness in this wine perfectly complemented Melissa's selection of aged cheeses, ripe pear and candied walnuts (that was an afterthought that Melissa put together on the spot). The cheeses (all from Whole Foods) were Uniekaas Reserve Aged Gouda, Saint Agur French Blue, and cave aged Brillat Savarin, the latter of which we were introduced to last weekend at polo. That little red dollop at 5 o'clock on the cheese plate is a spoonful of fig jam, which really complements ripe cheeses beautifully.

What a rich finish...

*Disclaimers: (1) Wine list for the night not necessarily in chronological order. (2) Wine list not necessarily complete.

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Melissa's Recipes and Notes

I’ve been a fan of Mushroom/Truffle risotto since we were given a gift voucher to a North End restaurant (Marco’s) by Matt's brother Brian and his wife Casey for Christmas a few years back, where we had a delicious rendition of this dish. Since then I’ve recreated it from time to time. I think the most important part of risotto is the type of rice you buy and the method to cook it. The basic idea is to lightly toast the rice in a pan with oil, and then gradually add a broth till the rice becomes tender. If you get the right type of rice it releases starches to thicken the liquid and become quite creamy with continuous stirring, but retains its shape to provide a wonderful texture. Using this method the rice becomes a blank canvas to which one can add any manner of flavour. I had a hankering for mushroom risotto, but for a main course I felt like it needed something else… and it wasn’t an instant Kiwi ticket. (You might have needed to grow up in NZ to get that reference…*wink*). I did a Google search and found a few references adding scallops to mushroom risotto. A perfect pairing, both go so well with a buttery, oaky chardonnay, so surely they’d go well together!

I sent Matt on a mission to buy a selection of mushrooms and scallops from Wholefoods. Chantrelles are the quintessential mushroom for risotto (for me anyway), but I’ve yet to find them readily available fresh in my local supermarket, so it was no surprise when Matt came home with regular crimini (small white button) and baby portobello mushrooms along with two types of mushrooms that are typically used in Asian Cuisine. The Shiitake mushrooms hold their form well to cooking and the regular button and baby bella mushrooms soak up all the flavours they encounter, so nevertheless they’re well suited to the dish for which they were destined. He also had some beautiful juicy scallops sans yellow/orange roe -- for some reason they throw that part away in America, but the scallops are yummy nonetheless.

Mushroom and Truffle Risotto with Pan-fried Scallops

Ingredients:

Shiitake Mushrooms
Crimini Mushrooms
Baby Bello Mushrooms
Enoki Mushrooms
2 cups of Risotto Rice (Arborio)
Chicken Broth
Wine - Chardonnay
Butter
Parmesan Cheese
White truffle oil
Arugula

Slice up the Shiitake, Crimini and baby bello mushrooms and sautee them in butter. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and add olive oil and rice to lightly toast. Start adding a chicken broth/wine (50:50) mixture ladle by ladle to cook the rice. Add one ladle of liquid and wait till it is mostly absorbed before adding more. After around 20 minutes the rice should be cooked al dente – soft, but still separate with a little firmness in the center of each rice granule. Add back mushrooms and add parmesan cheese to taste, arugula and white truffle flavoured olive oil. I’ve had my truffle-flavoured olive oil for more than a year now, and quite frankly it’s too old. A lot of the flavour has been lost over time. I think a good rule of thumb would be to use the oil up within about 3 months if you’re a big fan of the pungent truffle flavour you can’t get anywhere else.

Once the risotto is made, simply cover and heat another pan with lavish amounts of olive oil until a fairly high temperature is reached (not yet smoking). Season scallops with salt and pepper and place into the pan. Cook for around 1-3 minutes on each side, depending on thickness. Scallops should go golden brown, but still remain squishy when you poke them and not shrink too much.

Spoon risotto on dish and arrange scallops with fresh arugula as garnish.

Candied Walnuts

Ingredients:

½ cup of white sugar
Walnuts
1 tsp salt

Heat oven up to 350oF. Put walnuts on a metal tray and lightly toast in oven for 6 minutes. In small sauce pan place sugar and salt on high heat. Watch carefully while tossing sugar till sugar evenly melts. Sugar should be golden brown rather than deep brown if you move the sugar round enough. Take toasted walnuts and toss into the melted sugar. Pour coated walnuts out on greased tray and separate with fork. The sugar should harden with a few minutes, and be cool enough to touch within around 15-20 minutes.

Got Poultry and Melon?

Last night we had our regular Wednesday dinner and drinks at a local bar -- something we try to continue through the summer despite the suspension of the Wednesday Immunology Seminar Series at Harvard Medical School. We usually end up at The Mission, a place that is doing its part to revitalize the Brigham Circle area. The wait staff is friendly and attentive, the atmosphere is comfortable and sophisticated, and the veal osso bucco special last night was particularly good.

Speaking of wonderful food, Melissa was yet again inspired by things we needed to use or lose in our fridge, and with a little help from Google she put together an exciting dish that I hope to see again in one incarnation or another. Very nice with a Leffe Blonde Belgian Ale. Check it out...

Bloody Mary Chicken with Cantaloupe Salsa

Evan brought a wonderfully ripe cantaloupe to Polo last Saturday and in our over-stuffed state we weren’t even able to break into it. We ended up with it in our fridge after we got back, and I got to thinking -- I’m not much of a melon person. I don’t mind it when it’s wrapped in prosciutto, or the odd slice here and there, but I wasn’t quite sure what Matt and I would do with a whole one. So I got to thinking that maybe some sort of chicken dish with a melon-made-savory-salsa might be quite good. Google knows everything, so a search of Chicken and Cantaloupe (excluding salad) yielded this recipe:

Bloody Mary Chicken Breasts with Cantaloupe Salsa

Shauna Struessel, Security, CO

Ingredients:
4 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 Tb. Celery salt
2 Limes
2 Tb. Freshly ground horseradish
1 Tb. Worcestershire sauce
1 Rocky Ford Cantaloupe
1 Jalapeno
1 Red Onion
¼ c. Cilantro
Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions:
In glass bowl, combine; tomato sauce, celery salt, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce and the zest and juice of one lime and mix well. Marinate chicken breasts at least one hour, but up to 6. In small bowl, combine; 2 c. diced cleaned, and seeded cantaloupe (approximately 1 cantaloupe), 1 jalapeno diced finely with seeds and membranes removed, 1 c. red onion diced, ¼ c. cilantro chopped, juice of one lime and salt and pepper to taste. Let set covered in refrigerator at least two hours. Preheat grill to medium. Remove excess marinade from chicken and grill until done. Serve topped with fresh Cantaloupe Salsa. To complement this meal perfectly, serve with either Ptarmigan Vineyards 2004 Late Harvest Muscat OR Fat Tire Sunshine Wheat, both made proudly in Colorado.


I like bloody Marys, and while I didn’t have exactly all the ingredients I thought I could make do. Here’s my variation.

3 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 lime
2 tbsp of horseradish paste
1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp diced fennel stalk (to replace celery taste from celery salt)
1 tsp of chili flakes (I like my bloody mary’s spicy)

½ Cantaloupe
¼ cup of fresh tomato salsa (Trader Joes that we had left over in the fridge)
1 tbsp of cilantro sauce….. (unfortunately I broke the container pulling it out of the fridge, so then I really had to improvise)
1 Shallot (in place of the red onion)
½ tsp of chili flakes (no fresh jalapeno peppers in the house)
1 tbsp of chopped fresh basil leaves (to make up for the lost cilantro)
Salt and pepper to taste

First, blend the diced tomatoes to make “tomato juice.” When I read the recipe above I thought tomato sauce might be a ketchup-like product but the high vinegar content probably wouldn’t go so well so I replaced it with the can of diced tomatoes. After talking to Matt, though, I think the author of the original recipe probably meant something along the lines of a fairly plain tomato pasta sauce (no vinegar) rather than what Kiwis (like myself) would think of (Wattie's tomato sauce). So to the blended tomatoes, add the juice of one lime, horseradish, fennel, and chili. I might be tempted to throw in a shot or two of vodka here *wink*. I divided the bloody Mary mix at this point to marinate the chicken with one half and reserve the other half for garnish. From previous experience, I’ve found the horseradish loses its edge as soon as it hits the heat, so I wanted to preserve this in the finished dish.

While the chicken was marinating I diced the cantaloupe and mixed it with the remaining ingredients, then left it to steep in the juices to combine all the flavours.

The chicken was grilled on the BBQ after the requisite marinating time. To plate, I covered one half of the chicken with the cantaloupe salsa and spooned some remaining bloody Mary mix around the chicken (of course don’t use any bloody Mary mix that came in contact with raw chicken for this part), and then topped the dish with a single basil leaf.

Thoughts on next time….

I forgot that I had thought about putting peach in it before I did the Google search (Evan also left us with some peaches that were perfectly ripe). I got Matt to dice a little peach into the left over salsa, and it was really quite good and added an extra dimension to the flavour which could make it quite special.

As I was making the bloody Mary marinade, I was also reminded of a recipe for bloody Mary fish ceviche that I got from Cuisine Magazine (http://www.cuisine.co.nz/). I think that replacing the chicken with fresh snapper would make a delectable meal.

Tuesday Tasting

Last night we went to a wine and food tasting at a new restaurant on Newbury Street called Cafeteria Boston. Cafeteria is an "upscale" establishment that purports to fill the massive void left in Newbury Street culture when Armani Cafe closed down last year (see this review by Boston.com).

Usually these events are designed to showcase the restaurant and build a customer base. Consequently, restaurants tend to lay out a generous spread and put their best culinary foot forward, often at cost or even at some expense to the restaurant in the interest of building business. While the restaurant interior was nicely cool and welcoming on such a hot day, the event was a massive disappointment for several reasons. First, our $19 pre-booked tickets (they were $29 at the door) bought us three tickets to taste wines. You may notice there are four wines on the tasting menu. Second, the guys pouring wine were unbelievably stingy with what we knew to be rather inexpensive wines. On offer were Nobilo Sauvgnon Blanc ($15 retail but we usually find it for $12), Hogue Pinot Grigio ($9 retail), Blackstone Pinot Noir ($18 retail) and Toasted Head Cabernet ($15 retail). They are all nice wines, although it was hard to tell with the whites since they weren't even properly chilled for the first hour or so.

Now to the food. There were some potentially interesting items on the menu: two types of gourmet pizzas, Kobe meatballs, stuffed mushrooms and beef carpaccio all came out hors d'oeuvres style. The stuffed mushrooms were quite good, but the pizzas and meatballs were mediocre and the carpaccio was shockingly bland. We were waiting with baited breath for the shrimp and crab cakes in what by now was a vibrant and crowded room, but only got more of the same. We pulled aside a waiter and jokingly remarked that the shrimp and crab cakes weren't actually going to be served, to which he responded that he had seen no evidence of such items in the kitchen. To be fair, we don't know whether they were ever brought out; since we had all exhausted our three "wine coupons" we left shortly thereafter to move to a place where we could get a full glass of wine and some really special food -- our favorite Spanish tapas joint, Tapeo, which is right across the street. They have fantastic sangria, and currently feature a menu of special dishes built entirely around asparagus.

This event was clearly designed to make a tidy profit rather than to showcase the quality of wine and food at the restaurant. It was part of the Tuesday Tasting Series hosted by BostonEventGuide.com, so we don't know how much of it's underwhelmingness can be blamed on the restaurant itself, but we are not rushing back to Cafeteria Boston anytime soon. Certainly they are responsible for the quality of the food, and their "showcase" hors d'oeuvres didn't do much to excite the palate. Besides, if $19 bought us a total of about $5 worth of wine and a finger-food tasting menu that was incomplete as advertised, what is to be expected for a full dinner? At least we didn't pay the $29 at the door like some poor bastards undoubtedly did.

My restraint is probably unduly generous -- check out Evan's account of the event...

Monday Evening Cooldown

Monday was another scorcher with high humidity. The hazy day topped out at 95 degrees to make our Northeast heat wave official. However, by early evening a cooling sea breeze had broken the heat, and by the time we got home around 7:30 pm it was perfect weather for cooking and eating out on the patio.




We had grilled pork tenderloin with asparagus spears and a light, citrusy summer bruschetta. The pork was briefly marinated in soy sauce and coarse-ground pepper, and the asparagus were blanched and tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper before grilling. This is the way we always do asparagus spears -- it's quick and easy, and I have yet to encounter a better way to enjoy the vegetable. The bruschetta was made from grilled sourdough bread topped with olive oil, fresh tomato and onion salsa and Melissa's cilantro, lemon, olive oil and Greek yogurt sauce (also used in Sunday's grilled steak pitas). A glass of 2006 Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ) for Melissa and a cold Smuttynose Summer Weizen Ale (Portsmouth, NH) for me topped off a relaxing dinner outside. I love summer.

Sunday Evening Pita Pockets

After a day of lab work and shopping in the stifling heat on Sunday, Melissa put together a meal inspired by the pita bread we were left with from the polo picnic on Saturday.

First she grilled some zucchini and flank steak marinated in soy sauce, ground black pepper and the brine from a jar of marinated green peppercorns. Then she added fresh tomato and onion salsa and her walnut chili salsa (recipe to be listed in an upcoming antipasti post).

Sliced steak, zukes and salsa were stuffed into a pita pocket and garnished with a tastebud-jolting sauce of cilantro, lemon, olive oil and Greek yogurt. Wow. The walnut chili salsa is what made the dish. The combination of textures and flavors is amazing -- meaty, slightly crunchy, zesty and spicy. A glass of Nobilo 2007 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ) rounded things out nicely.

A Saturday Well Spent

We got up at around 7 am Saturday so Melissa could start prepping the food for our picnic and I could make a brief but necessary trip to the lab. We got out of town at about 12:30pm with Evan and our Canadian friends (Québécois, actually) Etienne and Angelique from the Dana-Farber.

Our first stop was Buzzard's Bay Brewery in Westport, MA, for a tasting and a tour. The brewery is owned by the same family as the Westport Rivers Winery, which we visited in a recent trip to the area. We fully intended to see the brewery that same day but time ran short, and we'd hate to rush such a thing. This time around we didn't need to be in a hurry, so we lingered with the tour guide to discuss the details of fermentation and filtration, and we all enjoyed the brews (the black lager was my favorite). We did stop by the winery to pick up a bottle of Imperial Sec and spread out on a picnic table for an early afternoon nibble. Angelique made a really nice hummus for the day -- we'll have to hit her up for that recipe.

The main event of the day was the first international match of the year at the Newport Polo Club in Portsmouth, RI. Evan and Philippa discovered this club a few years back, and it has since become a favorite summer excursion for us. Spread out on a blanket with a gourmet picnic and a cold glass of bubbly is pretty much the only way Melissa and I end up involved in any sporting event, so for now this is our only gig. The USA team was playing Canada, so Etienne and Angelique had to turn out the support. They (Canada) lost 11 to 9 in the highest scoring match we have seen since we started going a couple of years ago.

The picnic fare consisted of a roasted and stuffed chicken Melissa prepared Saturday morning, bread and cheese brought by Etienne and Angelique, and a mango mousse cake with fresh berries provided by Evan. Melissa's chicken is always wonderful, and this one did not disappoint. Her sage stuffing was a huge hit, and with Boston lettuce, ripe tomato, aged Gruyere cheese and a generous swipe of Japanese mayonnaise (a favorite of Evan's), I have never met a better roast chicken sandwich. We brought along a couple of bottles of Zardetto Prosecco Brut (Conegliano, Italy) and some Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc (Villa Maria and Nobilo), all of which make great summer picnic wines.

Etienne is a talented home-brewer, and he brought a litre bottle of his latest creation for us to taste. The brew got a great reception from our crowd, as evidenced by the smiling faces holding almost-empty tasting glasses -- it was a light ale with a heady aromatic nose and not too heavy on the bitter hops, something I have come to dislike in beer. A very well-balanced brew.

No picnic would be complete without the requisite insect life -- this little creature was taking a rest on my pant-leg in between chukkas (periods in a polo match).

Etienne and Angelique brought what way have been the most heavenly cheese I have ever tasted (we knew leaving them in charge of cheese would be a good idea). This is cave-aged Brillat-Savarin, a triple-creme brie-style cheese made from goat's milk. It was so magnificently melted in the near-stifling heat of the day that it resembled ice-cream left out of the freezer. The taste and texture were not far off that comparison, either. This is so rich and creamy that it's actually worth the $30/lb price tag -- and although you don't need much of it, it can be difficult to stop eating.

The half-time in a polo match is like recess in grade-school, but with drinks. Everyone floods out onto the field to play, socialize and stomp back in the divets made on the lawn by the horse's hooves during play. We may be milling around with champagne and martini glasses, but this is truly a family affair, and even the smallest fans get into the act while the players rest up and strategize for the second half.

We ended the meal with a mango mousse cake and fresh raspberries and strawberries, all compliments of Evan, which were so good that we almost finished it all despite our already quite full bellies. We did share the final serving of mousse cake with the couple seated next to us, much to their delight. What a great day-- even the terrible traffic on the way back to Boston couldn't taint it...

Thursday Night Stew

A cool night and another wonderful dinner. Melissa's description of her creation speaks for itself...




Lentil, black bean and pork stew

Proper summer weather begins in June in Boston, but today it was decidedly chilly again - anything below 60oF/16oC may as well be the middle of winter to a kiwi like me. So after spending a day at the lab with the inside air conditioning being a little cooler than usual (they’ve turned the heat off now that it’s “summer”) and with the apartment also a little chilly (again no more heat) I had a hankering for something hot for dinner.

This dish has been influenced by a number of sources. First up was my attempt to make a vegetarian version of sausage rolls which involved a lentil/tofu/mushroom base. It’s pretty good but it’ll have to wait for another post. While making the base for the vegetarian sausage I decided I quite liked lentils. They have such a wonderful nutty flavour and unlike many other pulses do not require overnight soaking before cooking. But the real inspiration for this dish was Evan. We were getting a bit peckish one night when Evan was over but I was feeling a bit of a lack of inspiration in the cooking department. I asked Evan if he could have anything he liked for dinner what would it be? I think he had recently had a lentil and pork soup that he liked at a restaurant somewhere and it was the first thing that popped into his mind. It just so happened I had lentils left over from the vegetarian sausage rolls and frozen pork steak in the freezer so Evan’s obscure suggestion became reality in less than an hour.

Since then I’ve made a few variations, and here’s tonight’s effort.

½ cup of lentils
2 cups of water
1 tsp salt
Pork bone (optional)
few drops of liquid hickory smoke
½ can of black beans
1 tbsp of chopped fennel leaves
1 head of roasted garlic
1 pork loin steak (~300g) – cubed and soaked in brine
½ cup of peas

Cut pork into cubes and soak in brine while lentils etc are cooking. Boil lentils in salted water with pork bone for around 20 mins. Remove pork bone and add drops of liquid hickory smoke, black beans, fennel and garlic. Simmer together to combine flavours for ~10 minutes. Drain pork cubes and sear in a frying pan to seal. Add pork to lentil/beans and simmer till pork is cooked through. Add more water if stew becomes too thick or starts to "catch" on the bottom of the pot. A few minutes before serving add peas to pot and cook for a few minutes to soften peas. Serve in bowls and garnish with fennel sprigs.

Monday Chook on the Grill

Another glorious weather day in Boston today. We've finally broken into warm weather here in New England. Spring blooms are nice but the rain and cold don't let up reliably until June -- so here we are...


We enjoyed a nice walk home from the medical center around 7 pm and I got out to join up another pair of poplar planks for our new patio table top. This project is coming along really slowly because I got all soft and caved in to a neighbor's complaints about my using power tools on weekends and evenings. I'm going to have to take a couple of half-days off work to make some cuts with my circular saw and power miter saw while no one else is home, not to mention the hours of power sanding I'll need to do when the table top is fully joined up and cut to size...

While I wrestled with the wood glue and bar clamps Melissa was preparing a grilled dinner in honor of the good weather. Grilled chicken thighs marinated in lemon-lime, cilantro and red onion with a bit of Thai fish sauce for flavor. Grilled asparagus is always a favorite -- blanched and tossed in olive oil, sea salt and ground black pepper before finishing on the gas grill.

We had a bottle of 2006 Cono Sur Gewurztraminer (Casablanca Valley, Chile) with dinner. We discovered this winery through their reasonably priced Cabernet Sauvignon (a steal at $7.50), which we bought by the case for some time. The moderating effects of the coastal breezes and the Chilean Andes provide good growing conditions for a wide range of grapes, and it turns out they make a nice pinot noir and, a surprise for us, a Gewurz that is both crisp and flowery with strong citrus and perfumy aromatics in good balance. We got this bottle a few times for $7 at our local Shaw's supermarket, which turned out to be a pricing mistake on their part, but it's still worth the corrected price of $14. It paired beautifully with the citrus and cilantro in the chicken, although I thought it didn't work so well with the smoky, creamy flavor of the grilled asparagus. Live and learn...

Sunday Evening Experiment

I didn't intend to spend the whole day in the lab on such a beautiful Sunday, but time has a way of getting away from me when I get my head into my NMR data. I am relatively new to structural biology, but I'm told that this is how it always works -- people lose entire days, miss meals, and time accelerates when you're in that dark room full of computers...

We picked up some flank steak at the grocery store looking for a relatively thin cut that's good for marinating quickly and pan frying. Melissa made up a fresh, zesty marinade of lemon and lime juice with salt and pepper, then seared the steak in a ridged, cast iron griddle pan. Leeks and baby portobello mushrooms were sliced and sauteed in olive oil before she added the last of the chive butter she had made up a while back to have with hot sourdough rolls. Steak and vegetables were served on a base of white bean puree. Melissa uses canned small white beans pureed with roasted garlic and a bit of lemon juice to make this flavorful base with a thick, mouth-filling texture.

The 2006 Sebastiani Chardonnay (yes, we buy quite a bit of it) picked up both the crisp acidity from the citrus marinade and the buttery, earthy tones of the leek and mushroom accompaniments. The wine actually brought the dish together a bit since the disparate flavor palates in the lemon-lime marinade and the buttery vegetables had some clash potential. Melissa says next time she would probably leave out the citrus and sear the steak with just salt and pepper.

The lemon-lime marinade made us think of good steak fajitas, though, and we finished the last scraps of steak in resepctable Tex-Mex style with fresh guacamole and tortilla chips. Lucky we had those avocados...