Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Poached Eggs on Toast, Pork Tenderloin, Beef with Mushrooms and Chicken Coq-au-Vin (Sans Vin)

Last Friday's Dana-Farber happy hour ended with the more (*ahem*) dedicated among us being invited up from the 14th floor to the 15th floor happy hour, which apparently was still rich in drinks and pizza and looking for takers. This one was sponsored by Invitrogen, whose sales rep has become a regular at some of our social gatherings, both in and out of the institute. The long and short of it is that we had plenty of food and drink and Melissa and I were sent home with two magnums (plural magna?) of wine that were leftover from the whole affair...

Saturday we got up quite early to get some home improvements taken care of (plumbing repairs that we no longer trust our property managers to do properly) before a quick wine shopping at Trader Joe's with Amanda and an afternoon of lab work for me.



The first food entry for this post is Melissa's Saturday afternoon lunch. When I went to work at the med school, she went to work on something to eat. She started with this heavy German bread she keeps in the freezer (her best approximation of Vogel's toast, something she really misses from home), and topped it with mushrooms pan-fried in butter, a perfectly poached egg and fresh pesto she made from the basil we're growing out in the garden. This was a really tasty treat, as I found out when she replicated it for me on Sunday morning when I was poking around for a bite to eat...




Saturday evening we had pan-fried pork tenderloin (seasoned with only soy sauce and cracked pepper) with mashed potatoes and asparagus. The potatoes were boiled in chicken stock before mashing to give them extra flavor, and then Melissa added in some finely chopped marinated green peppercorns. If you can find these in your local supermarket, buy them. They are great when used whole in stews (as are dried black peppercorns), and they give an unexpected kick to almost anything you dare to add them to. Not tongue-scorchingly spicy, just a concentrated hit of pepper. As is our habit, we had the asparagus simply blanched in boiling water then tossed in olive oil, sea salt and ground pepper. A 2007 Bogle chardonnay was just right for this meal.

Sunday we had a nice, leisurely morning together with some good coffee and an on-demand movie or two, then packed up in the early afternoon and caught the commuter rail with Amanda and Evan out to Framingham, MA, where our friend and used-to-be Dana 14 colleague Kim was having a BBQ at her pond-side home in the 'burbs. It's a nice area, and she has lots of space for grilling and volleyball, the latter of which occupied me for most of the day. We had ribs, chili, German sausages, eggplant, and beer galore to distract us from the really bad weather. After the thunderstorms passed, though, we got right back out in the yard with our volleyball and some water balloons. A great time was had by all, and when we returned to the city we were treated to a night of fantastic sleeping weather with temperatures in the low 60's and relatively low humidity after the all the rain -- open windows and a good fan were just perfect. It really is better then air-conditioning...




We started the work week off quite well with a Monday dinner of pan-fried flank steak (medium rare, as you can see) with roasted portobello mushrooms and Melissa's new favorite salsa (recipe in a previous post). With this meal we worked on the magnum of YellowTail cabernet sauvignon that was donated to our cause by Invitrogen last Friday, but ended up using a large portion of it to build traps for the surreal fruit-fly invasion to which we were subjected without warning last night. I don't know where the hell they came from, but they came in force. There was no rotting fruit in our kitchen, but they sure liked the wine...



Tonight's dinner was chicken coq au vin -- sans vin. Add in dijon mustard and tarragon with some potatoes, onions, peas, whole garlic cloves and black peppercorns in Melissa's own chicken stock, and we didn't miss the vin. Besides, a glass of chardonnay (another 2007 Bogle) on the side did much more for the dish than reduced wine would have.
We continue to fight the Drosophila invasion -- any advice out there?

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Teryaki Chicken, Pork-Ball Soup, Fish Tacos, Couscous, Pork and Lentil Curry

There's really no good reason for having waited so long between posts; there've been plenty of good culinary creations to report on. Honestly, it's mostly the online episodes of Lost that have kept me from the Blogger (we're now up to season 4)...

Last Thursday after leaving work early to attend a gallery opening on Newbury Street with wine and nibbles, Melissa and I made dinner of a chunk of brie and a loaf of bread.

Friday Happy Hour at the medical school ended early for us, since we got the call that the framer had finally finished with the painting we bought for our first wedding anniversary back in May. Evan went with us to pick it up, then Amanda joined us back at our place to help with the installation.



Melissa ended up whipping together a late dinner for four of grilled teryaki chicken, julienned telegraph cucumber and coleslaw (made with Kewpie Japanese mayo this time). You can see the new painting in the background of that food photo, but here's a better close-up:


It's an abstract in acrylics on handmade paper by an artist named Michael Kessler from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and we bought it from Lanoue Fine Art on Newbury Street here in Boston. He does amazing things with layer after layer of thin-stretched acrylic paints on paper or wood panels, and the layers give the pieces a visual depth that sometimes approximates the interior light that you'd see if you were nose-to-nose with a perfectly finished slab of polished maple. We hope to visit his studio when in Santa Fe for a scientific meeting I plan to attend early next year.

I worked a half-day in the lab Saturday, and Melissa decided to make a variation on her much-loved pork-ball soup for dinner.




It was really spicy this time, with Thai green curry paste in the chicken-stock base and cilantro and garlic in the pork balls. Along with lima beans and sliced cabbage, it was a real treat, although the Thai curry began to sneak up on me -- not for the weak of tongue...




Monday we had a favorite meal of ours since I introduced the concept of fish tacos to Melissa a few years ago. Pan-fried tilapia fillets with a little sea salt and flour, sliced avocado (or guacamole if you're in the mood to make it), and Melissa's new favorite salsa (recipe given in our last posting) were wrapped up in a soft tortilla and seasoned with a little smoked chipotle Tabasco sauce. We can't get any decent store-bought flour tortillas here in New England -- they're all waxy and dry. So we use whole-grain tortillas with flaxseed oil; the oil keeps them moist and provides a good soucre of omega-3's to boot. They're not the best-tasting thing in the world all by themselves, but they do a perfectly good job of wrapping up all the goodies in a fish taco.




Tuesday dinner was a great quick-meal tip, the closest Melissa comes to "dinner from a packet." Store-bought parmesan couscous is really easy to make and tastes great. Melissa added in fresh tomatos, red onion, Italian cucumber and sliced avocado to make a fast and delicious vegetarian meal. I licked the pan. Cleaning up is my job, after all...




After our regular Wednesday night drinks and dinner at The Mission with Evan last night, tonight we had a pork and lentil curry. As I type up this post I am enjoying this rich dish with a glass of 2006 petite syrah from Bogle Vineyards (Sonoma, CA). Boiled lentils seasoned with curry powder and parsley from the garden with a little peanut butter for flavor and consistency. To the lentil stew Melissa added carrots, potatoes and cubed, pan-fried pork loin. Mmmmmm.

I'm going to go see if there's any left in the pot...

Recipes and notes coming soon

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Saag Lentils, Flank Steak and Cabbage -- Oh, My!

Wow, what a busy weekend. Melissa's lab hosted the Dana 14 happy hour at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the theme was summer cookout, so Melissa spent much of the day Friday grilling chicken thighs, sausages, mushrooms and eggplant on our grill at home. Great happy hour, by the way, and as usual we closed it out late in the evening. Saturday was full of preparations for and execution of our Gewurztraminer tasting dinner, and Sunday was another great barbecue at the home of Etienne and Angelique in the Allston-Brighton area (check out their Picasa album).

Starting at around 4 pm and going late into the evening, we were regaled with Etienne's always-impressive and increasingly sophisticated home-brews, Angelique's special hommous with its lemony, toasty, sesame-seed goodness, and some toothsome treats from the grill: pork tenderloin cooked to perfection with three different marinades, and Etienne's roast potatoes with caramelized onions done in foil pouches on the grill. A huge shout-out to Etienne on this one -- in the wrong hands, thick chunks of pork loin can come off the grill dry, chewy and flavorless. But Melissa and I agreed that his were some of the very best pieces of grilled pork we had ever tasted; juicy and tender with nicely browned edges and just the slightest suggestion of color inside. Perfect.

Melissa decided to put together a few of our weekday meals this week into this posting, because they have an interesting thread of ingredients running though them. She is in a very experimental mood in the kitchen these days, and that always means good things to eat...

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Monday: Saag lentils with radish-fennel cole slaw and cucumber-cilantro salsa

I had some cabbage. I meant to make coleslaw for a recent Happy Hour we had at work, but somewhere between marinating the chicken thighs, grilling the sweet Italian sausages and salting the eggplant I just forgot. I’m particularly partial to fried cabbage with things like bacon and chillis but I’ve never got into the whole coleslaw thing. This changed when I had a few radishes lying around and went to cuisine.co.nz and typed radish into their keyword search. A radish dill coleslaw came up and I thought what the heck…



I made my own mayonnaise (very messily I have to say) and replaced the dill with fennel fronds (which I have lots of in my garden) and replaced the cider vinegar with rice wine vinegar. Matt gave it the thumbs up and I thought it was a bit of alright, so here’s the recipe for the entire dinner. A bit of a hodge podge of everything, but somehow it ended up working together.

Coleslaw

1 egg yolk
½ cup of very good olive oil
½ tsp of salt
1 tbsp of lemon juice

¼ of a cabbage
~5 radishes
1 tbsp of chopped fennel “leaves”
2 tbsp of rice wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to season

I whisked the egg yolk in the tall narrow container that came with my hand blender (using whisk attachment) until it was light and fluffy. This step is very important. If you try to combine the egg yolk with the oil and whisk from there you won’t get an emulsion and everything will look like oil with globs of egg yolk in it. Once your egg yolk is nice and fluffy, drizzle oil with continued whisking to make a sauce that looks just like mayonnaise. Add salt and lemon juice to season. (alternatively adding roasted garlic instead of lemon juice will make garlic aioli).

Salsa

This is my new favourite salsa recipe…. Very simple

Chopped fresh tomatoes
Diced Cucumber
Coarsely chopped coriander leaves
A few good squirts of lime juice
~ ½ tsp of salt… (a little more than you think necessary will bring everything together)
Ground pepper to taste

Saag Lentils

Left over Spinach sauce from the Saag Paneer (last Saturday)
~1/2 cup of Lentils
Salted Water

Boil lentils in salted water for ~30 minutes, drain and combine with Saag sauce from Indian Feast.

Serve dinner with coleslaw, salsa and lentils…. Paired nicely with a Vouvray white wine Jason brought us on Saturday -- dry and crisp with plenty of fruit. Yum yum yum….

Tuesday: Flank steak with spicy cabbage and cucumber-cilatnro salsa



Spicy Cabbage

Still have cabbage… Just boiling it doesn’t bring out the flavours, but steaming it in a concentrated chicken broth with a good amount of cayenne pepper makes it interesting.

¼ cabbage – chopped
1/3 tbsp of chicken stock paste
¼ tsp of cayenne pepper – ground
Just enough water to cover the bottom of the pot.

Put water in bottom of pot ~1 cm deep, add chicken stock and cayenne pepper. Top with chopped cabbage and simmer on stove (covered) to steam cabbage and create sauce coating.

Flank Steak

This used to be a fairly cheap cut of meat but is gaining popularity which unfortunately has been pushing up the price. Provided you panfry this cut rare to medium rare, leave it to rest and cut it thinly with the grain it remains tender and is quite a tasty treat.

1lb Flank steak
¼ cup of soy sauce
1/8 cup of lime juice
Salt and Pepper to season

Combine above ingredients and marinate meat for >30 minutes. Pan fry for a few minutes of either side until the meat is medium rare.

(Try reading this for the rule of thumb for deciding when meat is cooked rare through well done.)

Serve sliced flank steak on top of a mound of cabbage. Top with same salsa as previous day. We had a Ken Forrester 2007 Petit Pinotage (South Africa) with this meal.

Wednesday: Omelettes


No cabbage today but left over salsa, red onion and a whole chopped tomato make an appearance.

3 eggs
3 egg white (from crème brulee left overs)
~1/4 cup of heavy cream
½ tsp of fish sauce
Salt and fresh ground pepper

Combine above recipes with a whisk

½ red onion (sautéed till lightly browned)
1 large tomato, chopped and fried
~1/2 cup of left over salsa
1 handful of coarsely chopped cilantro

Combine above ingredients ready to add to omelet.

~1/4 cup of parmesan cheese

In a small non-stick fry pan heat oil and pour enough egg mixture into pan to coat the pan. Cook on high heat until egg is almost cooked though. On one half of the egg mixture spoon some of the onion, salsa, cilantro mix and sprinkle parmesan cheese. Using spatula turn over omelet to encase filling and flip out onto plate to serve.

Repeat to make another 1 to 2 omelets.

Garnish with a little cilantro. Mmmmmm...

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Gewurztraminer Tasting with Indian Feast

Ahh, Sunday morning. I inexplicably popped out of bed at 7:30 this morning and went to work cleaning up after our wine tasting dinner last night. We had a really great evening with 10 of our friends, new and old, who all gathered at our place to taste Gewurztraminers from around the world out on the patio on a beautiful summer night. Yesterday was a busy day getting ready: Melissa spent the whole day preparing Indian dishes to complement the wines, while I scoured the bottle stores of Boston for a good selection of Gewurztraminers.

Gewurtz is not the most popular wine, so finding bottles from more than one or two regions at any given store wasn't easy. In the end, however, we got a great selection representing pretty much every part of the world that manages to do something respectable with this difficult grape. Alsacian winemakers certainly set the bar for Gewurz, but other areas with moderate growing conditions are also doing quite well with it: the northwest coast of the United States (OR, WA) and a few areas in California; South America (primarily Chile), South Africa, and New Zealand. We also had one from northern Italy, but that was way past its prime and a huge disappointment (see tasting notes below).








1. Cave de Turckheim, 2006, Alsace, France
2. Chateau Ste. Michelle, 2006, Columbia Valley, WA
3. Huia, 2004, Marlborough, New Zealand
4. Cono Sur, 2006, Casablanca Valley, Chile
5. Columbia Crest, 2006, Columbia Valley, WA
6. Fetzer, 2006, Mendocino County, CA
7. Paul Cluver, 2007, Elgin, South Africa
8. Kellerei Cantina "Lunare," 2000, Terlano, Italy


To our delight, many enthusiastic tasters had done some research and already had some idea what to expect of Gewurz from different areas, so we tasted everything blind (except the Alsacian wine) to avoid being influenced by our preconceptions about particular regions. After we had tasted all of the wines and made our notes, Melissa unveiled the Indian feast she had spent all day preparing: aloo gobi (cauliflower and potatoes), saag paneer (spinach and cheese curd curry), butter chicken and coconut-rolled bananas (possibly more Kiwi than Indian). Served up with hot naan (see recipes and notes below for our naan secret) and raita (cilantro and yogurt); we all but forgot about the wines as we dove into the food.




We were too busy in the course of the evening to get food photos last night, but here's a shot of the plate of leftovers we just finished for our early lunch today. Many tasters noted how much the wines changed when re-sampled with food. The strong, spicy dishes that would overpower most other wines really bring out the fruit in Gewurztraminers and Rieslings, and can suppress some of the less desirable characteristics in the tail end of these wines (see tasting notes below).



We knew we had to top off the dinner with Ramon's spicy creme brulee (habanero, serrano and red fresno chiles this time; the recipe was posted in May when we did it for Amanda's birthday dinner), and we really wanted a nice dessert wine made from Gewurztraminer to bring the evening full circle. Just when I was beginning to despair of finding one in time, I came across this late harvest Gewurz from Vista Verde Vineyard in San Benito County, CA. The wine manager at the store even reduced the price from $22 to $16 for me on the spot, so I bought two bottles and we were all set. It did pair beautifully with the spicy creme brulee and had deep, rich apricot and raisin flavors that lingered long on the tongue...


So here's the summary of our tasting. For those who were here and are looking back at this post to compare notes, the listing above is the order in which we tasted. The comments below are our best recollection of the consensus impressions of the wines, although they are largely reconstructed from the notes Melissa and I made.

1. Alsacian Gewurtz is a very distinctive wine: it's a dry style with a floral and perfumy nose and a minerally finish. The Turckheim hit the mark here. While it was not as spicy as some we've had, the pear and apple quickly gave way to pronounced mineral flavors and a strong hint of petrol that went on and on (and on) in the long finish. These attributes are normal (even prized) in Alsacian aromatics, but being true to form didn't necessarily earn this wine a spot in the top half of everyone's ranking.

2/5. We ended up with two wines from the pacific northwest by accident, but since we had them both, why not include them both? It turned out well that we did, because of the two wines the Chateau Ste. Michelle was better hands down. It came right after our Alsacian choice in the tasting order (not by design), and provided a good contrast. Much more fruit-driven than the Turckheim, it was also sweeter and retained little of that floral bouquet that Gewurz drinkers like. Tasters noted hints of lychee, key lime and orange rind in the mouth and a long-ish finish that featured citrus instead of petrol. The Columbia Crest, on the other hand, was sweeter and much less complex. Some stone fruits (apricot, peach) came through in the mouth but fell flat with the very low acidity of this wine. While it vanished from the palate with almost no finish at all, the lack of bitter aftertaste won them both a few points with some tasters...

3. The Huia from New Zealand was a paler color than most of the others, with a very nice floral and perfumy nose. Many tasters detected oak in this wine, which is certainly unusual for Gewurz. Grass and ripe pear were noted on the nose and in the mouth, and the low acidity and long mineral finish were reminiscent of the Alsacian style. While the oak didn't seem to do good things for this wine, it was relatively well balanced and ended up in the top half for many of us.

4. The Cono Sur was striking in how different it was from all of the other wines we tasted last night. Ramon brought us a bottle on one of his recent visits to Boston, and while Melissa and I have been enjoying this wine for some time now, neither of us picked it out in our blind tasting. It's dry and intensely fruity, with some perfume on the nose and refreshingly tart citrus and peach in the mouth. The finish was not as long as some, but featured citrus and grassy notes with a little undercurrent of mineral and no petrol to be found. I doubt that many of us would have picked this as a Gewurztraminer blind, but it was very popular among our crowd and one of the more enjoyable wines for sipping by itself.

6. The Fetzer from California was sweet, but more complex than the Columbia Crest we tasted right before it, and it probably benefited from this tasting order. It was one of the less floral selections, but had a nice crisp acidity with a bit of spritz, and a little toffee on the nose. Some felt that this was one of the better balanced wines of the night, but its middle-of-the-road qualities may have left it somewhat less memorable than the other wines in this tasting, for better or for worse...

7. The South African Gewurz was interesting. Lightly perfumy on the nose with floral notes that also came through in the mouth; spicy and fruity with relatively low acidity. Some tasters detected a pungent character in this wine that we had a hard time pinpointing: grapefruit peel was suggested, but there was also an earthy element. It came highly recommended from the wine guy at Marty's Liquors, which surprisingly had the best selection of Gewurz of all the stores we went to. It flew a little under the radar for me (perhaps coming seventh out of eight wines did not do it justice), but Melissa quite liked it and ranked it third under the Alsacian and Chilean wines.

8. As I stated above, the Italian Gewurz was a huge disappointment. I should have known better than to buy such an old bottle (Gewurz is not generally considered a robust wine for aging), but I wasn't looking at the vintage when the wine guy at Blanchard's was extolling its virtues and enthusiastically encouraging its inclusion in our tasting. Terlano is apparently very well known for its high-quality wines, and for the original price tag of about $45 on this bottle, it better have been good. I reiterate that the drastically slashed sale price along with the age really should have put me off buying this one regardless of what the wine manager said about it -- entirely my mistake. At any rate, it was golden brown and all vinegar. What a shame...

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Melissa's Recipes and Notes
Indian Feast

To accompany our Gewürztraminer wine tasting I kicked around a few spicy options. Should we try Thai… Vietnamese… TexMex… Indian… or a tasting platter of all? In the end I settled on Indian (despite the warm weather) because my three favourite dishes make a nice well rounded meal and I thought it would be relatively easy to keep it warm while we did the tasting. It’s also self service which makes it perfect to share among 12.
What I didn’t count on was how long it took to prepare. I’ll often whip up a curry in the evening, but this was the first time I’ve attempted 3 dishes at once. I started at around 12pm and was just finishing the last of the cooking at around 6:30pm. Admittedly there was a lot of marinating time and Matt swooped in a few times to “reset” the kitchen. I tend to cook like a tornado pulling things out here and there and never quite get round to putting anything back. Think Petroza on Hell’s Kitchen.

As I write these recipes the hardest thing to remember is going to be the spice combinations as I tended to taste and adjust the dish as I went along. I’ll try and remember what I put in each dish, but it might be better just to list the spices I had in the kitchen and encourage anyone attempting to cook one of the recipes below to experiment with combinations to their liking.

Cumin – I think of cumin as the curry tasting spice. It’s not hot, but forms the base for every Indian curry powder I’ve come across
Paprika – Just because it’s red
Turmeric – Just because it’s yellow – often described as poor man’s Saffron, it doesn’t have the taste of saffron, but it certain has the colour
Chilli Flakes and Cayenne Pepper – to make things spicy
Nutmeg – an aromatic spice that seems to cross over well between sweet and savoury dishes. Try it next time you make a beef stew, just a smidgen mind you, and you’ll be surprised at how it brings out the flavours
Fennel Seed and Caraway seeds– licorice/anise flavour. Crush/grind and add a little at a time as this can quickly over power a dish
Cloves – anyone that’s spiced mulled wine knows what this tastes like. Again a little goes a long way. Often cloves will be added whole early in the cooking process and removed before serving
Coriander seeds – has a flavour like the leaves but is somewhat nuttier. Mix freshly ground coriander with cumin to add body to the cumin’s “curry” flavour.
Generic Curry Powder – a mixuture of many of the above spices and some more besides. I use it as a back up when I’m too lazy to mix my own, or want a starting point to which I add a little of this and that to balance it up.

Butter Chicken

6 Chicken Thighs – skinned and deboned
2 tbsp of plain unsweetened yogurt (I used FAGE 0% - Greek strained yogurt)
Paprika
Turmeric Powder (~1tbsp)
Cumin Powder
Ginger Powder (or fresh paste if you have it)
Cloves (ground) (~1/4 tsp)
Chilli Flakes
2 tbsp of lime juice

Combine above ingredients to make a thick marinade for the chicken and leave to marinate overnight (or as long as possible). I left mine for 5 hours. Grill or roast chicken until cooked though. I recommend grilling it on the BBQ on a wire rack rather than in a roasting pan in the oven. The yogurt based marinade fares better in the BBQ.

Olive oil (ghee is more traditional)
2 Onions – diced
6 cloves Garlic – finely chopped
Coriander Seeds – crushed
Fennel Seeds – crushed (little)
Cumin Powder (lot)
Nutmeg (little)
Cloves (very little)
Carraway seeds (little)
½ tins of chopped tomatoes – blended to puree in food processor
500ml of cream
¼ cup of ground almonds
handful of chopped coriander leaves (cilantro)
Salt and cracked pepper to taste

Sauté onions in olive oil until soft, Add finely chopped garlic and continue to sauté until garlic is nicely caramelized. Add all spices and stir briefly until aroma is released being careful not to burn the spices. Add pureed tomatoes and reduce liquid by ~one ½ until tomatoes become a thick sauce. Add cream and ground almonds to finish the sauce. Chop grilled chicken into morsel size and add to the sauce and briefly heat. Add cilantro just before serving.

Aloo Gobi

1 onion – diced
2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped
1 tsp of fresh ginger paste
1 tsp coriander seeds – crushed
1 tbsp of Tumeric powder
1 tbsp of Cumin
½ tsp of cayenne pepper
1 tsp of salt
Water
2lbs Potatoes
1 head of cauliflower

The recipes I found online all cooked the Aloo Gobi in a pot on the stove, but in our small apartment we can’t afford to store lots of pots and pans, and the only appropriate sized pot I have for this dish was already being used for the Saag Paneer. I decided to cook the dish in a covered casserole dish in the oven instead which worked out just fine.
When cooking Indian food I always start by sautéing the onions, followed by adding the garlic until golden brown and then adding the spices to release the aromas, and the Aloo Gobi recipe is no different. I spooned the onion/spice mixture over peeled and quartered potatoes placed in the casserole dish and added a little water to cook the potatoes. In the covered dish the water should steam the potatoes rather than boil them, so don’t try and cover the potatoes with water or you’ll come out with a stew and dilute all the yummy spices. Place the dish in a 400oF oven and cook until the potatoes are just starting to soften (~20-30 mins). Remove from the oven and add the cauliflower cut into large florets. Spoon remaining liquid over cauliflower so they get covered and turn a nice golden colour from the tumeric and return to the oven for a further 20-30 minutes. The stalks of the cauliflower should lose their bright white colour and start to turn translucent when done. Don’t over cook, as the florets will start to disintegrate when served. Upon serving top with a sprinkle of roughly chopped cilantro to garnish.

Saag Paneer

Paneer is a type of cheese that you don’t see round much. I didn’t have much faith that our local Shaws or even Whole Foods would stock it so did a little research into making my own. Apparently how it’s done is to take a gallon of milk, bring almost to the boil and add lemon juice until all the milk proteins crash out of solution to form cheese curds, which you then remove from the whey and weigh down in cheese cloth to press out all the liquid. My first attempt was a failure. I think I didn’t add enough lemon juice to get all the protein to curdle, stirred it too much once the curds formed and also didn’t have enough of a plan to press the cheese. So instead of paneer I think I ended up with something more like ricotta. Not a bad ricotta, I have to say, but not a firm enough cheese to hold up to cooking in a frying pan. So while I’m sure I’ll perfect making paneer one day, I had no more time to experiment, so it was time for plan B…. Halloumi. Halloumi is a cheese used in Greek and middle Eastern cooking made from goat’s or sheep’s milk. It’s made essentially the same way as Paneer but is much saltier and stored in brine. Because it’s mostly protein (rather than fat as in most cheeses) you can fry it without it melting. In order to Paneer-ify it I cubed the cheese and soaked it in water for to try and extract some of the salt. This worked pretty well, and I was quite happy with the results. It’s also a lot easier to get halloumi because it keeps in the supermarket cheese chiller, whereas Paneer should be used within a few days of manufacture.

1 Onion
Few cloves of Garlic
Cumin
Coriander Seeds – freshly ground
Curry powder
Nutmeg
½ can of pureed tomatoes
1 lb of Spinach
¼ tsp of hickory smoke
¼ cup of cream
1 cube of butter
1 lb of halloumi – cubed and soaked in water for ~3 hrs

You guessed it, sauté the onions, add the garlic till golden, toast the spices and add the pureed tomatoes. Reduce the liquid by as much as possible till you get something resembling tomato paste. Add back water and spinach. Simmer for around 30 minutes to let the flavours combine. Add a little hickory smoke , cream and butter. Puree mixture using a hand blender or food processor. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let Saag sauce stand until ready to serve. Just before serving, fry halloumi cubes until golden brown and add to Saag sauce. Briefly heat and serve with cilantro garnish.

Raita

½ cup of plain unsweetened yogurt
Cucumber (2 inch long slice)
Chopped cilantro
Curry Powder
Salt

Julienne the cucumber lengthwise to make thin long slices. Combine all ingredients together to form a yogurt sauce to serve as a side dish. Raita is an excellent cooling agent for guests who aren’t used to spicy food.

Another side dish I like to serve is banana slices coated in toasted unsweetened coconut. Not a traditional Indian dish, but I think it complements curry quite well. If like me you can’t figure out how to get unsweetened coconut in the USA, I soaked the sugar right out of it by putting it in a colander and letting it sit in a bowl of water. Keep changing the water until the sweetness has gone away.

All of the above was served with Jasmine rice (made according to the package instructions) and Naan breads bought from the supermarket and reheated on the BBQ to give them that straight out of the hot oven taste. The brand is “Fabulous Flats” and they’re the closest thing you’ll get to the real thing without a Tandoor oven.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Grilled Tilapia with Almond and Peach Salsa

A hot, steamy day today turned into a nice evening for sparking up the grill. Tilapia is a staple fish at our place: we use it in fish tacos, ceviche and for poaching with tomatos and garlic, among other things. Tonight it was simply seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon juice and cooked quickly on the gas grill.




Melissa made up an inspired salsa for her perfectly grilled fish. To a base of diced fancy tomatoes she added slivered almonds and diced peach, radish and red onion with a little fresh basil from the garden. Salt and pepper to taste and a beautiful garnish made the dish.





A bottle of 2006 Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ) complemented the meal nicely.


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Recipe and Notes


Talapia Fillets with peach and almond salsa

2 talapia fillets
Salt and freshly ground pepper to season
Juice of ½ lemon

200g of finely diced tomatoes
100g of finely diced peach
50 g of finely diced radish
50 g of finely diced red onion
1 heaped tbsp of finely minced basil leaves
Juice of ½ lemon
25g of finely diced almonds
Salt and Pepper to season

Combine all salsa ingredients and refrigerate until fish is ready to serve. Grill seasoned tilapia fillets on lightly oiled BBQ on medium heat. Tilapia is a moist flakey white fish from Mexico. It has a delicate flavour and provides an excellent blank slate for whatever is added to it. It could be replaced with any other white fish such as Snapper, Striped Sea Bass or even Swordfish in this dish. I wouldn’t try it with something like Mackerel though. Grilling fish on the BBQ is tricky because when you flip it you’re liable to have it all fall apart on you. The trick is to leave it long enough to get a nice golden crust fire side down without poking or prodding at it too much (~5mins depending on whether it’s straight out of the fridge or less if it sat at room temperature for a little while). When it’s ready it should come away from the grill easily when a fish slice/metal spatula is slid underneath it. If you cooked it with a cover to keep the heat in, the top-side should also have turned from translucent to opaque, which indicates the fish is almost cooked through. Flip the fish and cook for a further minute or two to get the golden colour on both sides of the fillet. Carefully transfer fish from grill to plate for serving without risking a second flip. Provided you don’t cook the fish too long it should remain tender and juicy. The aim is to catch it at the point when the last sliver of translucent flesh inside the fillet turns opaque. Not 30 seconds more, not 30 seconds less.

Once on the plate top the fish with some salsa and garnish with a whole basil leaf, 2 slices of peach and 2 slices of small tomatos. I bought a medley of tomatoes from Whole Foods and really liked the deep purple and green striped tomatoes the best. They were listed on the label as “exotics” – a chocolate fish for the first person to find out what they really are….

Beef Tenderloin on Potato and Celery Root Puree with Walnut-Arugula Pesto

We had a fantastic four-day weekend in Montreal, Quebec last weekend. What a beautiful city -- we had some great food, great wine, and perfect hosts with Etienne and Angelique showing off their hometown. Add in the sidewalk art festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival in town, and we were kept busy the entire time. Watch Evan's blog for his synopsis and some gorgeous photos...




We got back into Boston Monday evening and after four days of eating out (or on the road), Melissa was itching to get back into the kitchen. She crafted a dish driven by a couple of unusual ingredients: a perfect cut of beef tenderloin was served rare with a potato and celery root puree and an unconventional pesto. We were fresh out of pine nuts, so Melissa substituted walnuts, and she also subbed about a third of the basil with arugula/rocket to bring in the nutty, peppery flavor. Simple salt and pepper and voila. It's nice to come home to a fabulous meal...
Recipe coming soon.

Hearty Beef Stew

On Tuesday last week, Melissa decided to use that celery root she bought when recently foraging for ingredients she had never cooked with, and out came a savory beef stew. Lightly blanched green peas with just olive oil, salt and pepper made the perfect accompaniment.




Great use of the steak tips we have in the freezer from our last trip to BJ's wholesale club. The celery root was a little tough to chew but added wonderful flavor. Pay attention to Melissa's notes on preparation of the celery root and the stemmy bits can be avoided. This stew was great with a Sam Adams Light, my favorite light beer and the only one I know of that retains a rich, malty flavor despite being a "light" beer.

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Recipe and notes


Beef Stew

200g of sirloin steak tips
1 head of garlic
2 carrots
½ celery root
1 can of diced tomatoes
5 Bay leaves
1 tsp dried thyme
½ tsp dried Rosemary
1 tsp of whole pepper corns
½ can of small white beans
2 tbsp of grated parmesan cheese
olive oil
Water

Use a pot with tight fitting lid. Add drizzle of olive oil and bring up to temperature to sear beef. Add cubes of beef and pan fry until nice colour develops. Add whole peeled garlic cloves, diced carrots and sliced celery root.

To prepare celery root it is important to slice the skin off generously as there are some tough fibrous regions just below the knobby surface that don’t soften with cooking. Kind of the texture of apple core…. not pleasant. Also pan fry the garlic, carrots and celery root to give them a head start on the caramelization process. Then add in the tin of tomatoes. Keep pot on high heat and reduce as much liquid as possible from the tomatoes. The more moisture the tomatoes lose the deeper red they become and the more sugars they release. Keep evaporating liquid until the bottom of the pot sometimes sticks some tomato paste and turns it dark brown – (not black though ;-) ) Add enough water to cover the meat and add whole pepper corns, bay leaves, thyme and rosemary.

Simmer covered on low heat for around 1-2 hours topping up with water if the liquid gets too low. Once the meat is tender add the white beans and remove lid to reduce the liquid until a rich gravy is formed. Add some grated parmesan cheese for extra bite and creaminess before serving if desired. Serve with quickly blanched baby peas tossed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Roast Chicken with Lima Beans and Dinosaur Kale

Sunday turned into a really busy day -- lab work for most of the day, then a repair job on Amanda's kitchen cabinets, which were threatening to fall off the wall. Given that the property maintenance guys had done a pretty Mickey-Mouse job of installing them in the first place, we decided that we were better off doing the job to sure them up ourselves. One toggle bolt and a really big drill bit did the trick...




While I made a run to the hardware store in the rain for that drill bit, Melissa went back home to tend the boiling lima bans for her new dish. The chicken thighs, prosciutto and buttery lima beans paired beautifully with the chenin blanc Amanda brought over (Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc, 2007; Stellenbosch, South Africa). Melissa describes the dish and the inspiration for it in detail below.



Dessert hadn't been planned, but with the bag of frozen mixed berries we try to keep on hand, Melissa can always whip something together in a flash. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries were reduced in a sauce pan and topped with an almond-shortbread crumble (the same topping used in the apple-rhubarb cobbler last Wednesday) and nonfat Greek yogurt to make a super-tasty cobbler.

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**Encore**



Melissa put together a nice medley of leftover ingredients from last night's Sasso-inspired dish. Buttery lima beans and dinosaur kale with prosciutto, onions, garlic and mushrooms -- minus the chicken this time. We had a 2006 Bogle Chardonnay (CA) with this welcome encore.


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Melissa's Recipes and Notes


Roast Chicken Thigh with Lima Beans and Dinosaur Kale

Passing Sasso on Huntington Ave I thought I’d check out their menu for a little inspiration on the way to the supermarket. The Irish Sea trout, fava beans, pancetta and forest mushrooms, with a grapefruit vinaigrette caught my eye. I had left for the supermarket determined to buy some ingredients I hadn’t cooked with before, and I came up with lima beans, dinosaur kale, and celery root. Tonight’s dinner didn’t include the celery root, but I thought I’d include the dinosaur kale for its greenery in the dish inspired by Sasso.

The Sasso menu is simple in that it only lists ingredients, and not how things are cooked. Though inspired by the trout dish, mine was a departure for a number of reasons:

Organic Irish sea trout….. Interesting, I thought trout was a fresh water fish. In any case I had made the Sunday afternoon trek to the supermarket to pick up some veggies to complement the freezer stocked full of meat from our 3 monthly BJs wholesale foods run. I replaced this with roasted chicken thigh, bone and skin on.

Fava beans…. Upon arrival at the supermarket I couldn’t find fava beans anywhere. Of course I was looking through the canned and dried beans selections and thinking that maybe they had another name I just didn’t know I settled on dried lima beans because they looked like what I imagined fava beans to look like. Arriving home I checked the internet to see how close I was only to find fava beans seem to be bought fresh, and it was unlikely Shaw’s had them. Apparently you buy them in a waxy pod that you have to remove sometime during the cooking process, and inside they’re green. My lima beans were white (also known as butter beans) and from the description of the taste and texture I had no problem imagining them going well with the reworked dish I’d planned.

Pancetta…. I didn’t look hard for this, but decided to replace it with prosciutto. I love prosciutto and I thought if I bought ¼ of a pound I could have some for the dish and left overs for eating any which way I liked

Forest mushrooms… Shaw’s had shiitake mushrooms as their “exotic loose mushrooms” so they stood in as forest mushrooms.

Grapefruit vinaigrette…. I’m not a fan of grapefruit so I skipped this ingredient. If it were fish instead of chicken I might have considered it.

My lima beans were pasty white, chicken is white, and the mushrooms were pretty light too… Therefore I needed something green to finish the dish. I was looking through the leafy green section of the produce aisle when the dinosaur kale caught my eye. I’ve never cooked with kale, but I knew it has a substantial texture which I was sure would suit my dish well.

So here’s the recipe:

½ cup of lima beans
a little olive oil
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
~100g of shiitake mushrooms
~5 strips of prosciutto
50g of butter
few drops of liquid hickory smoke
1 tbsp of chicken stock paste
½ lb of dinosaur kale
3 chicken thighs – bone and skin still attached

Soak ½ cup of lima beans in hot water for 1hr and then boil them for ~1hr in heavily salted water. Drain. Coat chicken thighs with ~3/4 tbsp of chicken stock paste. Roast in 425oF oven skin side down till chicken skin is browned. Flip thighs skin side up and roast another 30 minutes or till internal temperature is greater than 160oF. During roasting slice onions and garlic. Sautee in pan used to cook beans with a little olive oil. Add sliced mushrooms and 50g of butter. Cook until mushrooms are soft. Add prosciutto cut up into little pieces. Add ~1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp of chicken stock paste, hickory smoke and cooked lima beans back. On top of pot place bamboo steamer containing dinosaur kale with excess stalks removed. Boil for ~8-10 minutes to steam kale and reduce liquid in pot with onions, mushrooms and beans etc. When I had finished steaming the kale the liquid in the pot had all but disappeared, and the bottom had turned a golden brown. A few minutes longer and it would have burned, but the caramelization provided a wonderful flavour I’m not sure I could replicate by choice.

To serve place kale leaves on plate, followed by bean, onion, mushroom mixture, and topped with crispy roasted chicken thigh.

Walnut, Chilli and Anchovy Bruschetta

After a bratwurst and a hefeweizen or two at my department happy hour at HMS last Friday, Melissa and I made our way home on the early side. Pending the weather (heavy rain had threatened almost every evening last week), we had arranged to cart a king-size foam mattress topper that we no longer required over to Amanda's place for her to try out. Melissa decided a snack was in order before manual labor ensued, so she whipped up a really original bruschetta...




She toasted some sliced sourdough bread we kept frozen for just such an occasion, then topped it with her walnut chilli salsa, chopped basil leaves and a single (large) anchovy fillet. These anchovies are pretty special (deboned by hand somewhere in Spain), and for someone who doesn't particularly like anchovies I have to say I really enjoyed them. Salty and intensely fishy, but when used in the right context with equally strong flavors that balance them out, really wonderful. The citrus, chilli and sun-dried tomato in the salsa did the trick.




After we ate we took our open magnum of 2006 Redcliffe Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ) along with the mattress topper and some power tools over to Amanda's to scope out a cabinet installation job she needed done. We didn't get the cabinet on the wall, but we did get to look through some fantastic photos Amanda had in her albums from New Zealand. She has a really great eye...