The Heat Goes On

Hell Is Other People


I completed the majority of this entry a month ago, so the references to the summer heat might sound odd. Still, the dishes are pretty good for a day when you don't feel like doing much cooking.

I spent the majority of the 80s in the U.S. Navy, running reactors and reactor protection equipment aboard nuclear submarines. In the early 80s, while the submarine I was assigned to was laying over in Guam for repairs, the crew was billeted in some old WWII vintage barracks up on a jungly hill. The place had no A/C, huge open-bay rooms full of bunk beds tented with mosquito netting, lots of perpetually-open windows, and just a few old slow fans for cooling. For our first few days, during the day, with temperatures in the upper 90s and humidity ditto, having become accustomed to the consistent air-conditioned comfort of the sub (well, except for occasional hot moments in the engine room) most of us just lazed under our mosquito nets, waiting for sundown and practicing our sweating. I remember one of the guys waxing rhapsodic about his hometown in Vermont. Making angels in pristine, new fallen snow. Getting a tongue stuck to a flagpole. Sledding in the mountains. Snowforts and snowball fights with his brothers. Apparently they were a very frolicsome family.

Lying there with what felt like a large tributary of the Mississippi running down from each armpit, the thought of snow didn't cool me at all. Maybe I was just feeling disagreeable, but my crewmate's burbling just reminded me how much I hated snow. I grew up in Colorado, skiing from pre-adolescence, and I absolutely hated snow then no less than now. I've never liked cold weather. Okay, I loved skiing—during which I could forget how cold it was—but I always wished it could have been possible to ski in warmer climes. That sweaty day in Guam, as I lay simmering in my own bodily fluids, I realized that, as bad as I felt, I've always preferred hot weather.

So what was keeping me in that hot room with those other shlubs, watching the geckos scurry across the netting? Was the humidity really that enervating? I mean, if I got up and Did Something, would I feel any worse? I decided not. I got out of the sack and strolled off toward town to find something to do in the beautiful sunshine. For the next several days, whenever I wasn't required to be on the boat, I was touring Guam—hiking in the jungle, birding, taking pictures, snorkeling, window shopping, restaurant hopping. Gradually, a few of my crew mates joined me on these excursions. What had started out as a soul-sucking layover in a suburb of hell turned into a free vacation in paradise.

Now, I'm not saying the heat was all in my head, but certainly there is a mental component to the malaise wrought by hot, humid days. So here I am in Austin, Texas, in one of the hottest summers in the past decade (temps in the triple digits, only occasional cool snaps down to the upper 90s), and I've been staying indoors with the air conditioning. As I noted last time, I get up at 5 a.m. to do my (almost) daily walks just to avoid the heat.

Well, last week, I finally took a plunge I'd been avoiding for a decade: I bought a grill. I don't think I'm suffering any kind of testosterone crisis, but I have been getting quite tired of heating up the whole house at every other meal. I also realized that I had been avoiding grilling because it didn't make much sense to stand over a hot grill on a hundred-degree day. Me, avoiding the heat? Why? CAVEAT: this blog entry won't include any grill recipes. I'm a grilling novice. Sort of. I've cooked on charcoal grills, and thirty years ago, I worked for a few months as a grillardin, but that was a long time ago. I have a lot to recall, relearn, reinvent. I've got a start on it—I've grilled chicken breasts, carnitas, tuna steaks, spatchcocked chicken, shrimp, sirloin kebabs, and pizza—but I'm not there yet, confidence wise. I'll get back to you on this.

Chill

Of course, one of the simple solutions to the heat is to avoid cooking, altogether. Salads, tartares, sashimi, carpaccios, crudos—no fire in the house means the house stays cool. Fresh baguettes or artisanal crackers from the grocery store round out the meal. That's more or less what I was doing, frequently, prior to getting the grill.

Last year on an episode of Top Chef one blogging food critic (*cough* pretentious jerk-off New Yorker *cough*) made a negative comment about a tuna tartare before even tasting it. Essentially, his complaint was, "This dish is so last year." Now, yes, I know that foods of one sort or another do go in and out of style, and I understand that the passion for a particular food or treatment can make it seem old even faster, but I don't think tuna tartare is quite there yet. In all fairness, I'm in Austin, maybe the restaurants in New York have overdone the presentation of tuna tartare. I hope not. Tuna tartare, done right, is sumptuous, rich, and satisfying.

Another caveat: all measurements are approximations—guesses, really. I just toss in what looks right, taste, and adjust as I go along.

Tuna tartare Japonaise with fennel-apple salad
serves 4

dramatis personae

tartare

sashimi-grade tuna
one small carrot
two tablespoons minced chives
two tablespoons minced basil
one tablespoon sesame seeds
juice of one lime
one tablespoon tamari
two teaspoons wasabi
one teaspooon sesame oil

salad

one quarter cup pignolis
one medium Fuji apple, unpeeled, cored, and sliced thinly
juice of one lemon
one fennel bulb, cored and sliced thinly
one quarter cup radicchio chiffonade
four ounces ricotta salata, cut or broken into half-inch chunks

dressing

one teaspoon fennel fronds, minced
two tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
one tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
one teaspoon tarragon vinegar
dash of tabasco sauce
one teaspoon Dijon mustard
black pepper
salt

quality of ingredients

I've never had any trouble with tuna steaks. for raw preparations. You want either the freshest, reddest tuna steaks you can find (first choice) or frozen steaks labeled "sashimi-grade." If you're selecting from fresh tuna steaks, the tuna should be glistening and slightly translucent and have a gentle, sweet aroma. If you smell even a hint of ammonia, pass it by.

Carrots should always be crisp. Don't use rubbery carrots; they tend to be bitter.

Chives should be deep green and neither limp nor bruised. Dice from the tips of the chives, which are more flavorful than the base.

Basil leaves should also be dark green and neither limp nor discolored.

Limes should be dark green (as much as half yellow is okay) and firm but not too hard. Unlike lemon zest, which softens with age, the zest of a lime desiccates with age and takes on a texture like melamine.

If you don't have tamari, you can use soy sauce. If the soy is too dark, thin it one-to-one with water.

Pignolis should be solid and free of blemishes.

Fennel bulbs should be white and firm. A few light brown blemishes are acceptable, but deep, translucent blemishes can't be removed. The fronds should be dark green and not wilted.

Fuji apples should be solid and free of bruises.

Lemon juice should always come from fresh lemons, not from a green bottle.

Radicchio leaves should be purple and white, and free of brown splotches. If the outer leaves are becoming brown at the edges, remove and discard them. The leaves underneath should be okay.

White balsamic vinegar is a fairly recent introduction to American supermarkets, and it's one of those special foods that excites a good deal of anger and excitement among purists. Frankly, I don't understand the problem. Real balsamic vinegar (labeled "aceto balsamico tradizionale") is made by cooking grape musts to carmelize them and then aging the resulting liquid in a series of successively smaller wooden barrels for a minimum of 12 years. The traditionally aged stuff costs a small fortune, and fine restaurants dole it out in drops. The stuff we get in the supermarkets that does not say "aceto balsamico tradizionale"—even the aged stuff—is made differently. Most of the commercial grade balsamico is made in Modena and Reggio Emilia, near where the tradizionale is produced. The commercial grade stuff is made by adding the same cooked musts to a little bit of wine vinegar. So, the only difference between white balsamic vinegar and the dark stuff is that the musts in the white balsamic aren't caramelized. What's really important here is that white balsamic is a tasty substitute for balsamic where the dark, caramelly richness of OTC balsamic vinegar would be inappropriate.

preparation notes

Unlike beef, tuna for tartare should not be minced too finely. A quarter-inch dice works great. This not only reduces the amount of work you have to do, it provides a dish with a better mouth-feel. Chopped too finely the tuna feels mushy. Mix the solid ingredients before adding the liquids.

For the salad, first, toast the pignolis over high heat in a non-stick skillet with no oil. Shake the pan constantly to prevent burning the pignolis. Once the pignolis are uniformly golden brown, pour them into the salad bowl. Slice the apples, put them in a small bowl. Toss the apple slices with the juice of one lemon and set them aside. Combine the fennel, pignolis, radicchio, and cheese.

Mix the dressing and set it aside.

When ready to serve, pour the excess lemon juice off of the apple slices and toss them into the salad. Dress the salad either just prior to serving or at the table.

Serve the tartare and salad with a baguette or similar crunchy bread.

Where's the Beef?

Not the Heat

In October of last year I had spinal surgery. My lowest disc had been ground to the consistency of hamburger, and—despite epidural steroid injections, physical therapy, and a river of opioids—my back pain just kept getting worse. So, they removed the disc and fused the associated pair of vertebrae. After the surgery, I spent a painful week in the hospital followed by two weeks in a rehabilitation facility. Returning home, a big part of my post-operative rehabilitation has been long walks. I've had my share of ups and downs with the rehabilitation process, but walking Lately, I've been trying to get in at least one long circuit (at least a mile and a half) every day.

A typical summer in Austin, Texas, means daily high temperatures in the triple digits, with humidity just high enough to ensure runnels of sweat just from walking down to the mail box. As I type, it's 3:30 in the afternoon, the temperature outside just hit 102F. My back-patio thermometer says it 96 degrees in the shade. I hear the sizzling trill of cicadas in the trees, and it's hard not to think of the neighborhood as a giant skillet. As much as I love the Texas heat, it's not the kind of weather you want for a long walk. It's also a bad idea to walk any time around or just after dusk. That's when the mosquitos come out, and they're wicked hungry. So, like a lot of other Austinite walkers, runners, joggers, and cyclists, I end up having to get up before dawn to get in my day's exercise. It works. I get in a long walk without being braised in my own juices, and I get to watch the sun rise.

I wish it were that easy to solve the cooking heat dilemma.

Baking is the worst. Crank up the oven to 400F for half an hour, and the house can heat up five degrees for the rest of the evening. Open flames, naturally, have pretty much the same effect. Too many cooked dishes in a meal can mean an uncomfortable night all around. Plus, no one really wants a meal that warms them up when the air is this hot. If I even mention soup, Princess V makes a sour face. Sure, we can eat lots of sashimi, carpaccio, tartare, and salads; and we do. After a while, though, the cold foods leave me wanting some of the complexity that can develop only with the addition of heat: roasting, grilling, sautéing. Also, summer places its own culinary demands on us. For most people, apparently, summer means grill marks. It's rare, this time of year, that you find a food-porn magazine without grill marks on the cover. I understand the attraction of the grill in summer: you get all of that caramelized, smoky goodness without heating up the house. Then again, standing over a bank of hot coals in 102F weather isn't the ideal cooking experience.

Continuing the Boycott

For me, summer has always meant hamburgers. I don't know where the association originated, but hot weather always leaves me craving juicy burgers with molten cheese. Ironically, I don't eat a whole lot of beef, and I never buy ground meat. As I mentioned in Beauty in the Beast Princess V is more than a little concerned about the possibility of BSE. Also, I find that beef makes me logy and generally plays hell with my digestion. I like the flavor of beef once in a while, but I can't eat much of it, and I try to avoid ground beef altogether. This is why I started experimenting with alternative meats, and I think I've come up with a success.

First, here's a brief run down of the failures:

• Bison. I love rare bison, but bison tallow is gamy. Bison burgers always taste a bit too much like liver, for my taste.


• Pork. Too greasy or too dry, and ground pork just doesn't hold together. Plus, the flavor profile is just wrong.


• Turkey. Lean ground turkey is way too dry and a little too sweet. Adding in a little dark meat helps a little, but the result is far too sweet.


• Ahi tuna. Luscious, but this is a burger? Also, this strikes me as a waste of good tuna. I can think of a thousand dishes I'd rather make with fresh tuna. Similarly, I have no interest in even trying shrimp burgers or lobster burgers.


• Chicken (version one). Lean ground chicken is as dry as lean ground turkey, but the flavor of pan seared ground chicken is more like ground beef than turkey.


• Chicken (version two). The grocery store carries a variety of ground chicken that's not so low in fat. As with the turkey, they mix in one part dark meat with three parts white meat. The result is moist, but the burger tastes too schmaltzy.

And the winner, believe it or not, is: chicken (version three). The secret is to replace the chicken fat with tastier fat. Blow off the pre-ground chicken, use lean breast meat, and add some good streaky bacon for the fat. Of course, everything is better with bacon.

For the sake of a little of the old bang/wow, it also helps to design your own condiments. Catsup and mustard seemed like no-brainers, and the chipotle in the catsup was begging for some avocado to balance the heat.

Chicken Sliders with Chipotle Catsup, Dijon Tapenade Mustard, and Avocado Cream

(serves six)

dramatis personae

four boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
eight slices center cut bacon
one teaspoon cornstarch
one teaspoon worcestershire sauce
two tablespoons olive oil (if frying)
black pepper

catsup

one small can tomato purée
chipotle chilis in adobo
cider vinegar
dark brown sugar
a pinch of kosher salt

mustard

one quarter cup niçoise olives (pitted)
two tablespoons non-pareil capers
three anchovy filets
one quarter cup dijon mustard

avocado cream

one large hass avocado
juice of one small lemon
juice of one medium lime
one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
one half tablespoon of avocado oil
one quarter cup milk

quality of ingredients

The chicken breasts should be free of freezer burn. These days, you'll find many options for high-quality chicken: free-range, cageless, hormone-free, antibiotic free, air-chilled. As far as I can tell, each of these adjectives adds a great deal to the cost of the chicken and next to nothing to the taste.

I like the fat-to-lean balance in center cut bacon, but that's also our go-to variety for breakfast. A good applewood, mesquite, or hickory smoked bacon might work. Possibly pancetta. I'd avoid the maple syrup stuff, though.

Some of the TV chefs and foodies of late seem determined to use extra-virgin olive oil for everything. As much as I love extra-virgin olive oil, using it in any high-temperature application is just stupid. Use a good quality olive oil if you're frying your burgers but leave the extra-virgin on the shelf.

Even if you live in an area (like Austin) where you can get dry chipotle chilis, the canned ones work better for uncooked sauces.

Be sure your cider vinegar does not say "cider-flavored vinegar" on the label. That's not cider vinegar. Some brands sell both cider vinegar and cider-flavored, so read the label every time you buy it.

Salt. I like kosher or sea salt. It doesn't matter which you use, but be aware that you'll use half as much if you choose to use table salt.

I prefer Niçoise olives in my tapenades. In a pinch, you can use kalamata olives for a tapenade, but in this case—for a mustard—I think the kalamatas would be too tart.

Taste the capers before you use them. Some brands are too salty to use directly out of the jar. If they're too salty, soak them in fresh water for a few minutes before using them. Be sure you don't get the kind steeped in balsamic vinegar.

Avocados are difficult to get at exactly the right degree of ripeness. If they're just a little too soft, they might be overripe. Overripe avocados have nasty brown portions. For this application, however, where the avocado will be puréed in a blender, it doesn't need to be quite as soft as it would for a guacamolé. Buy an avocado that yields to a slight pressure.

preparation notes

Cut away all the fat from the chicken breasts, dice the bacon, and combine the chicken, bacon, corn starch, and worcestershire sauce in a food processor. Process the ingredients until you no longer see chunks of bacon in the mix.

Wet your hands (ground chicken is very sticky) and form the chicken into patties at least one half-inch thick. Cook the chicken patties until they're golden brown on one side (about four minutes in a hot skillet, a little longer on a grill). Flip the patties and cook them until the other side is equally golden brown.

You can make the patties burger-size and serve them with hamburger buns or slider-size and serve them on biscuits or dinner rolls.

You may have noticed that I didn't list quantities for any of the ingredients for the catsup (except the tomato purée, but you have to start somewhere). I find most store-bought catsup cloying and vile, but I know this is a matter of taste. For this reason, you should make the catsup to suit your own taste. I recommend starting with one chipotle. Remove the stem, cut open the chili, and scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Add the chipotle and the purée to a blender. Add a splash of cider vinegar, a teaspoon or so of brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Blend the ingredients until the chipotle is completely puréed. Taste the concoction. If you want it hotter, add another chipotle. Add more vinegar, sugar, and salt as your taste dictates.

For the Dijon tapenade mustard, first make the tapenade. Combine the ingredients in a food processor and pulse them a few times. The anchovy filets will disappear immediately. You just need to process the ingredients until the bits of olive are about the same size as the capers.

For the avocado cream, in a blender, purée the ingredients until smooth.

Debriefings

Near Misses

This past week I served the family two stew-like dishes. Both were dishes I've prepared in the distant past. Both were well-received (Girltzik declared both dinners delicious). Both, frankly, disappointed me. Maybe I'm just too demanding. Maybe I'm never satisfied. Maybe I'm having Prince flashbacks.

I go through this all the time with new or re-visited dishes. The girls will be enjoying the meal and I'll start with open questions ("What do you think?" "Anything you'd change?") and move to leading questions if I don't hear anything that answers my own inner critic's concerns. Princess V calls it the debriefing.

Khoresh-e Fasenjan

The dish I was attempting to revise is called khoresh-e fesenjan, and I have no idea how that translates, but what little I know of Persian foods tells me that (1) khoresh literally means "eating," (2) all Persian stews are called khoresh-something, and (3) khoresh-e fesenjan is always made with (at the very least) pomegranate molasses, walnut meal, onions, and poultry. I think the name essentially means "pomegranate stew," but I wouldn't bet a paycheck on it. This khoresh is unique in that the inclusion of pomegranate sweetens the stew; most Persian stews are decidedly savory, containing no sweetener of any kind.

If you google khoresh-e fasenjan, you'll find numerous recipes, including dozens of redactions of Maideh Mazda's recipe from In a Persian Kitchen. Mazda's goal appears to have been making Persian cooking possible without access to authentic Persian ingredients. For this reason, her version is far from iconic, relying as it does on shortening, poultry seasoning, and pomegranate juice instead of pomegranate molasses.

One of my objections to most versions of this dish is the walnut meal, which in addition to providing a bit of flavor, thickens the stew. I like walnuts, but in this particular application, they give the dish a gritty texture. In the past, I've tried substituting ground cashews, which is smoother than the walnuts, but the cashew flavor is pretty assertive and radically changes the flavor. I decided, for this latest revision of khoresh-e fasenjan, that I would eschew the walnut meal thickener entirely. Instead, once the vegetables and chicken were fully cooked, I simply removed them to a bowl and reduced the liquid. I think this worked quite well, but it was a wee bit sweet for my taste. No surprise. The pomegranate molasses makes khoresh-e fasenjan tart and sweet, and it can easily become cloying. Princess V commented on this, noting that my khoresh fell just short of being too sweet. Some recipes I've seen actually add sugar, and that would be entirely too much.

Khoresh-e fasenjaan is usually quite spicy and will typically contain cayenne, turmeric, and cinammon. I decided to replace the traditional spice selection with ras al hanout and turmeric. The ras al hanout I used on the chicken pieces as a spice rub prior to searing them. I used the turmeric because I like the way it works with pomegranate. Searing on the ras al hanout worked well, imparting a warm, smoky spice to the dish.

A khoresh usually includes onions and will often include zucchini, eggplant, or artichokes. For vegetables, in addition to the onion, I elected to use artichoke hearts and pistachios. Both are meaty and rich, and pistachios match well with pomegranate. Besides, Girltzik and I are big artichoke fans.

The sauce for khoresh-e fasenjan is often made even tarter by the addition of lime juice, tomatoes, or tomato sauce. I don't care for tomato with pomegranate but I did include a little lime juice.

The poultry component of khoresh-e fasenjan is often a whole chicken or duck or just chicken legs. I decided to use thighs and breasts. The girls don't care for dark meat, but it does a better job of flavoring stews. Breast meat is problematic in acidic stews: it dries out and takes on a slightly astringent quality. That turned out to be the case in this instance. My biggest objection to our meal was the dryness of the breast meat. Next time, I think I'm going to try chicken meatballs or possibly chicken meatballs fortified with duck fat.

Bouillabaise

Bouillabaise is a dangerous dish. To be more precise, it's major food snob fodder. Like Pad Thai, lasagne Bolognese, gazpacho, and teriyaki, if you don't follow a strict traditional recipe and technique, purists will pooh-pooh the dish and accuse you of being a poser. The traditional bouillabaise of Marseille, according to the Michelin Guide, must be made with rascasse (a Mediterranean scorpionfish), fish caught that day, fine olive oil, and quality saffron. Others will tell you that three specific fish must be used and no more than seven.

In practice, bouillabaise was the Provençal version catch-of-the-day stew enjoyed by fishermen. These stews are found all round the Mediterranean. Bouillabaise, like most such stews, was originally made with lesser quality fish. The good stuff was their livelihood, so the fishermen used the bony, gelatinous they wouldn't be able to sell. Because rascasse, grondin (sea robin), and conger were common on local reefs, they were an ubiquitous set of components in the fishermen's stews of Marseille. Crabs, octopus, and various shellfish were often included. Saffron was a must as was aioli.

So here's what the real hardcore food snobs will tell you (yes, many of these points are in conflict):

- An authentic bouillabaise is impossible outside of Marseille because you have to have the three (and only three) authentic fish, and they have to be fresh. Anything else is just a fish stew.

- An authentic bouillabaise can include no sea creatures but lotte (monkfish), hake, turbot, sea bream, mussels, octopus, sea urchin, and crab.

- Bouillabaise does not contain lobster or shrimp.

- Bouillabaise can include tomatoes, leeks, celery, and potatoes.

- Bouillabaise must include fennel, garlic, onion, bay leaf, thyme, orange peel, saffron. Any other vegetables make it not a bouillabaise.

- The fish and shellfish for bouillabaise are served separately from the broth.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the broth is poured over the fish just before serving.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the fish is lightly grilled or pan seared and finished in the fumet.

- In authentic bouillabaise, the stock is heavier than a fumet and is made by straining the racks with a foodmill or bu crushing them in a chinois.

- Authentic bouillabaise is served with aioli and baguette.

- Authentic bouillabaise is served with toasted slices of baguette and rouille (aioli with saffron and cayenne).

So, here's what this food snob says: bouillabaise is a fruit de mer stew with saffron and vegetables that should be served with a crunchy baguette and aioli or rouille (both are good). In my experience, the very best bouillabaise is made with a variety of the freshest available fish. Lobster and squid in bouillabaise may not be traditional, but anyone who refuses a bouillabaise because it contains these is robbing himself of a divine dining experience.

I would also place one other limitation on the fish in a bouillabaise: no oily fish. As delicious as tuna, salmon, and Chilean sea bass may be, their fat overwhelms the the subtler flavors in the dish.

Everyone enjoyed this most recent bouillabaise I prepared, but I only found two types of suitable fish, and I returned them to the fumet too early. They disintegrated. Clams always take longer to open than I expect (more about that when I write about my pasta alla puttanesca). So, next time I'm doing bouillabaise, I'll alter a few of these aspects and throw in a lobster tail. Then I'll write about it.

The Secret Language of Fish, Part 8: Three Crusts

Synchronicity Goes Crunch

In the past few weeks, we've had three different varieties of crusted fish. I hadn't really planned a study in crusting fish. It just sort of happened. I only recognized the threesome as part of a pattern the day after the latest such preparation. Now that I've recognized the pattern, I can either continue experimenting with crusting one thing and another on various types of fish, or I can go back to looking for inspiration day-by-day.

Actually, that's only partly true. Although I am constantly on the lookout for a new preparation or a new take on an old preparation, I don't cook something new every day. Lately, we've been ordering out about five times each fortnight. Of the remaining nine, probably three are more or less original meals. On the other six nights, I fall back on frequent favorites: chicken piccata, Thai crab soup, chicken tacos, chicken or fish en escabeché, spicy pork tenderloin.

Generally, I'm not all that fond of crusted fish filets. Too often the crust hides the flavor or, if the crusting agent is a bit too absorbent, adds a layer of mush instead of something toothsome. Why then are so many crusts popular with so many varieties of fish? Essentially, any crust should provide at least two of three possible attributes: enhanced texture, enhanced flavor, and protection from direct heat. Admirable goals, but all too easy to screw up. A battered coating can provide too much insulation, resulting in overcooked crust and undercooked fish. Flavor enhancements all too often overwhelm the thing they're meant to enhance—doughy breadings making delicate fish taste like bread, spice rubs burning out every other flavor. Textural elements can also go too far. Crusts should add a delicate crunch not a layer of mud.

Curry-Crusted Tuna



The first such crust treatment I tried recently was a lightly dusted seared tuna. I've frequently coated tuna steaks with pepper, sesame seeds, or both. I had in mind something summer-heat-appropriate: a salad with spicy seared tuna. Over all, the salad wasn't a great success. The tomatoes I used, a fairly new orange variety of apricot-sized fruit called mandarines, turned out far less flavorful than I'd hoped. They were bland and not at all sweet. Girltzik said she liked them, but Princess V and I were underwhelmed.

The one element of the salad that I thought truly fine was the seared tuna. Girltzik didn't like it, which surprised me, but the adults enjoyed it. After patting the steaks dry, I coated them with a layer of curry powder and let them stand for half an hour before searing them. The curry powder seared nicely, forming a light but crunchy layer of spice.

Sadly, the mango-tamarind dressing I made for the salad was too thick and a bit starchy. I wanted something chutney-inspired to match with the curry, but I blew it. I'll try a variant on this salad again later this summer while Girltzik is off visiting her bio-dad. If I come up with one that works, I'll post the recipe.

Pecan-Crusted Orange Roughy

One obvious crusted fish example is breaded, fried whole fish or filets. This class of fish can be further divided into deep-fried and pan-fried. Deep fried fish without the breading would be pretty nasty. The outer flesh would be blistered and dried out, and the hot oil would invade the slippery spaces between the flakes. Of course, many varieties of fried fish are pretty nasty even with the breading. I've had fish and chips, for example, in which the fish was perfectly done, the breading light and crispy, and the oil content was surprisingly low. I've also had fish and chips where the filets could pass for biofuels: the breading soaked up the oil or the fish did or both.

When I was a youngster, whenever my father took us fishing, he always ended up cooking the fish the same way: battered, dipped in corn meal, and pan-fried. Trout, bass, bluegill, crappie, catfish all received the same treatment both at home and on camping trips. For years, I thought it was the only way you could cook freshwater fish, and I didn't much care for it. Fried cornmeal already has, I think, an inherently fishy aroma. I always picked off as much breading as I could to get to the sweet fish flesh underneath.

On the positive side, the cornmeal breading did protect the delicate flesh from the heat. More important, it kept the oil out of the fish, so picking off the breading meant I didn't have to taste oil. With either deep-frying or pan frying, the real trick is to cook the fish without creating an oil sponge.

These memories were very much on my mind when I decided to try pecan-crusted filets. I didn't want to reproduce the negative aspects of Dad's pan-fried trout. Pecan crust is almost as tricky as bread crumbs. You don't need a lot of oil in the pan (I found a tablespoon per orange roughy filet is sufficient), but it has to be hot enough to brown the crust before it can saturate the pecan meal. Pecan meal also, however, burns more readily than bread crumbs.

I considered serving the filets with a vinaigrette to cut any oil the pecan crust absorbed, but I wanted a sauce that would enhance the pecan flavor, which is delicate and easily overwhelmed. I decided on a lemon and caper beurre noisette. The beurre noisette made a beautiful bridge between the buttery sweetness of the orange roughy and the nuttiness of the pecan meal crust, and the capers and lemon juice added just enough sparkle.

I served the filets with a dense, crunchy baguette and a fennel kumquat salad dressed with olive oil and a drizzle of reduced balsamic I had left over from the last time I made Niçoise salad. Tart, sweet, and crunchy, the salad made a beautiful counterpoint to the buttery, nutty filets.



Pecan-Crusted Orange Roughy with Lemon Caper Beurre Noisette and Fennel Kumquat Salad

(serves three)

dramatis personae

fish
three orange roughy filets
one half-cup milk
juice of one small lemon
two eggs
one half-cup pecan meal
one teaspoon kosher salt
one half-teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
two tablespoons olive oil

beurre
one half-cup unsalted butter
juice of one small lemon
two tablespoons nonpareil capers

salad
one fennel bulb, cored and sliced thin
one tablespoon fennel fronds, chopped
one dozen kumquats
three ounces roasted ricotta ensalata, sliced thin
two tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
one teaspoon balsamic reduction
salt

balsamic reduction
one cup balsamic vinegar
one tablespoon light brown sugar

quality of ingredients

As with other white-flesh fish, the orange roughy filets should be firm, white, blemish-free. They should have relatively little aroma and no sour fishy smell.

See Purity of Essence for my notes on capers.

Fennel bulbs in the grocery store slowly develop brown translucent parts. The whiter and more opaque bulbs will be the freshest. Fresher bulbs are sweeter and stronger tasting.

You want kumquats ripe but not overripe. Kumquats don't ripen quite as uniformly as oranges. A perfectly ripe kumquat will be firm and mostly orange with a bit of yellow around the stem-end. An overripe kumquat will be completely orange (no yellow) and slightly soft.

If you can't find roasted ricotta ensalata, substitute fresh mozzarella.

One nice side effect of reducing balsamic vinegar with a little brown sugar is that it dramatically improves the flavor. Don't waste expensive, aged balsamic on a reduction. Use the cheap stuff.

preparation notes

In a small sauce pan over a low flame, mix the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and allow the liquid to reduce until it reaches a consistency like maple syrup. You should be able to finish the meal while the vinegar reduces.

Mix the milk and lemon juice and let it stand for five minutes to curdle. Whip the two eggs into the milk.

Mix the pecan meal with the salt and pepper in an oversized bowl.

Dip each filet in the milk-and-egg mix and allow the majority of the liquid to drip off. Dredge them in pecan meal.

In a non-stick sauté pan, heat one tablespoon olive oil over a medium flame. Once the oil begins to shimmer, gently place one filet in the hot oil. Allow the filet to cook undisturbed for two minutes. Using a fish-turner and one other spatula, gently turn the filet over and allow it to cook, undisturbed for two minutes.



Orange roughy filets are thicker toward the collar. The tail-end will be done after four minutes, but the collar end will nead another two minutes. I've seen cookbooks occasionally recommend cutting the thinnest part of the filet and folding it back towards the head, but I find that slipping the fish turner under the tail end of the fish for the last two minutes will allow the thick portion of the filet to cook without overcooking the thin portion.

In a stainless steel sauce pan over a low flame, melt one stick of butter and allow it to cook, stirring occasionally, until it takes on a light brown (hazelnut) color. Add in the lemon juice and capers and continue cooking the butter for one minute, stirring constantly. This is your beurre noisette.

Drizzle the filets with a bit of the beurre noisette to serve.

For the fennel kumquat salad, you only want the zests of the kumquats. The pith, juice, and seeds are bitter and tart. Halve each kumquat. Cut off the stem end and scoop out the pith, juice, and seeds with a melon baller.

Combine the sliced fennel, ricotta ensalata, and kumquats and toss them with extra-virgin olive oil. After plating, drizzle about a teaspoon of balsamic reduction over each serving.

Jerked Salmon

Tony Bourdain makes a good point about fusion dishes—sometimes they're just silly. The example he gives is a monkfish tagine, and the example is apt on several levels. Tagines are used to slow-braise meats, and monkfish—which will overcook if you just look at it crossly—would gain nothing in a slow braise. Besides, Moroccan cuisine doesn't include any monkfish recipes. In fact, aside from pork, I can't think of a less Morroccan ingredient than monkfish. There is something a little discordant—possibly pretentious—about applying a traditional technique to a non-traditional ingredient just for the sake of saying you've done it.

On the other hand, if applying a treatment to a non-traditional ingredient works, why argue with success? Pork tagine is a good example.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up some jerk-rubbed chicken breasts at Central Market. I thought jerked-chicken tacos with guacamole would be an interesting change from the jalapeño-lime marinated chicken I usually use in our tacos. The jerked chicken was good, but I kept thinking, This rub would be terrific on salmon. I also thought the idea of jerked salmon sounded kind of silly. I was surprised at the incredible number of jerked salmon recipes online. Then again, the internet hosts a pretty astonishing number of monkfish tagine recipes.

Ah well. For the Jamaican purists out there, yes, I know, you're supposed to jerk pork or goat, possibly chicken. Okay, and some people have started using jerk spice rubs on beef and fish. Yes, I know, salmon is geographically silly choice. Snapper, you could at least argue, is something you can actually expect to find in Jamaica.

It's not my fault. Jerk has become one of those broad cooking terms like curry, salsa, or mojo. The only consistent requirement from one jerk spice mix to the next is Scotch bonnet peppers and allspice. Typically, though, jerk is sweetened with sugar, honey, or molasses. Thyme and an alium or two usually slips in there, too—garlic, shallots, scallions, onion.

Sorry, but salmon flavor really blooms in a sweet and spicy treatment. Jerk spice and salmon—it was simply meant to be.


Jerked Salmon with Mango Ginger Barbecue Sauce

(serves three)

dramatis personae

salmon
three five ounce portions of salmon filet, scaled
two garlic cloves, pressed or finely minced
one Scotch bonnet or habeñero, seeded and finely minced
one tablespoon salt
two teaspoons allspice
one teaspoon cinnamon
one half teaspoon powdered cloves
one half teaspoon powdered coriander
one tablespoon dark brown sugar

barbecue sauce
one small mango, peeled and seeded
one half-cup tomato catsup
one tablespoon grated ginger
salt

quality of ingredients

Yep, sock-eye salmon again. See Flesh for Fantasy for my quality notes on salmon.

Ginger should not look shriveled and dry. Buy only roots that are plump with taut skins. Store ginger in an open sack in the crisper. If you close it in a plastic bag or similar container, it rots rapidly.

preparation notes

My jerk rub is almost a dry rub, but the garlic makes it more paste like. Coat the flesh side of each filet with the rub. Allow the salmon filets to stand for one half-hour before cooking.

Combine the ingredients for the barbecue sauce in a blend and purée it.

In a non-stick pan over a medium-high flame, heat one tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking. Place each filet portion, rubbed side down, in the hot oil and sear it for two minutes. Turn up the flame to high. Using a fish turner and spatula, carefully turn over the filets and cook the skin-side for one minute. Remove the filets from the pan and immediately slice each piece into one to one-and-a-half inch strips. Slicing the fish allow it to begin cooling so that it doesn't continue to cook.

Plate the strips and drizzle each with barbecue sauce.

The Problem of Evil

Without the Darkness How Can We Know the Light?

My Catholic friends call it The Problem of Evil, but it exists in many forms in many cultures. If [insert name of principal deity] is omnipotent and desires that we be good, why does [insert gender-appropriate pronoun] allow evil to exist? The answer they've come to accept is that [deity] wants us to grow and learn and ultimately do good as a result of reaching a state of grace. That answer kept the clergy happy until the Calvinists came along and muddied the waters by asserting that you're either born with grace or you aren't, but that's a tangent I'd rather avoid for the moment. The topic here is bad things—pain, evil, unpleasantness—and the way we respond to them.

My philosophy professor (one of them, anyway) called this issue the Pain Rationale. The Problem of Evil, he argued, is just a subset of the Pain Rationale. Every society deals with the Pain Rationale on a daily basis at every level of human endeavor. Essentially, the issue is pain, discomfort, evil, and anything else that most of us don't like. Why should we put up with bad things when we have the capability to overcome them? We can go back to the age of Stoics and Epicures and ask, with them, why should we put up with pain when pleasure is so much more—uh...pleasant?

On one extreme of this question is severe pain and oozing hideous evil. Severe pain has been on my mind a lot lately. For the past four months, I've been dealing with pain management issues because of disc injury. The disc compresses my sciatic nerve any time I sit upright, and the resulting pain can be excruciating. Combating this problem has entailed three epidural injections of corticosteroids, several thousand dollars worth of physical therapy, and a pharmacological journey through NSAIDs, anti-spasmodics, and opioids. I have Celebrex, Tylenol, and Tramadol coursing through my veins as I type, and their efforts still leave a bit to be desired.

If I could throw a switch and permanently turn off this pain, I would do it without a regret or even a second thought. Clearly, I've come down on the side of the Epicures with respect to this particular pain.

Clearly.

But, no, my goal is not to banish all pain. I enjoy exercising, and a good workout always creates a degree of pain. Oh, sure, a good personal trainer will tell you never to work yourself until it hurts, but the distinction between the discomfort you feel at the end of a productive workout and the pain you feel when you've overexerted yourself is one of degree, not one of type. It's all pain. One level of pain whispers, "Move carefully, stretch gently, and be nice to these muscles, or we'll make you sorry." The next level of pain screams at you, drowning out everything else.

Even if you're a couch potato, you need a certain amount of pain in your life. You need that ache in your shoulders and hips on Sunday afternoon that tells you to haul your lazy ass out of bed after you've slept for fifteen hours. You need those pangs in your belly that drive you to the refrigerator. You need that sharp prickling feeling on your fingertips telling you to let go of the handle of that hot cast iron skillet. Pain, in moderation and where appropriate, is a necessary element in our lives. Without it, we'd all eventually just lie down and starve to death.

Honestly, though, without hunger, eating wouldn't be as much fun. I'm not recommending fasting as an aperitif, but isn't a meal just that much more satisfying when you're really hungry? We "work up an appetite," and it makes a fine excuse for working harder. Anticipation, someone said, is the savor of the dish. In a way, all this working and waiting is really just one step removed from banging your head against a wall in anticipation of the relief of stopping. Okay, it's an easy topic to slip into hyperbole, but is there really any savor without the preceding hunger pangs? Can we enjoy life in the absence of pain? If there is no darkness, what good is the light?

Spice and Pain

Much of Eurasian philosophy has really led us astray on these questions of absolutes: good, evil, pain, pleasure. Some of our earlier philosophies—Skeptics, Gnostics, Zoroastrians, Manichees, the Medieval theory of humors—and much of surviving Chinese philosophy (Yin and Yang) point to a different set of goals than the absolute. Those philosophies suggest that the enlightened goal is always balance. Pleasure, says the philosophy of balance, is not the absence of pain—it's the proper balance between pain and relief. Note, that's proper balance and not fifty-fifty split. The most extreme examples I know of pleasure—sex and food—always contain an element of pain.

No, I am not saying whipping each other with razor wire and splashing around in a pool of vinegar will enhance your sexual pleasure (although, for a few it probably will), but sexual pleasure is born of friction, tension, restriction, collision, and a bit of hair-splitting between the realms of pain and relief. One man's teasing is another's torment. What hurts enough to fire your jets and what hurts enough for you to leap back and say, "Stop right there, Tex," depends on your own thresholds.

Pleasure from food also involves a degree of pain. Think of all the food items we consume that, in high concentrations, are just downright painful. Capsicums and piperines, ginger and galanga, onions and garlic, all create a burning sensation that can be disagreeable. In the cases of capsaicin and piperine, high enough concentrations can actually raise blisters in your mouth. Likewise, extremes of bitter, salty, and sour tastes (think quinine, sea salt, and white vinegar) can also reach a point of discomfort that at least encroaches on outright pain. These elements are spice. Without them, food falls to the level of sustenance. Without them, eating isn't fun.

Recent decades have seen a blossoming of fusion in cuisines that has done much to spread the word about the primacy of balance. The Thai standard of a balance between salty, sour, sweet, and hot has even inspired a number of titles for cooking tomes and classes. The broader sense of balance demonstrated in the best cuisines all round the world (Kyoto, Provençe, Spain, Sichuan, Yucatán, Piedmont, to name just a few), has begun to edge its way into the public consciousness, but it's been slow coming. The big secret, the big unspoken rule of thumb, is that foods succeed best when they present the right sense of balance in every aspect of a dish. Flavors have to be balanced between not four but six basic flavor elements: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, hot, and umami.

Quick digression here on umami. Every time I hear some Food Network or PBS commentator rediscovering umami, it makes me a little sad for the state of world scholarship. Dr. Kikunae Ikeda identified this taste element in 1908. Here we are discovering it a century later. Pish. Umami is often translated as savory, but I'm comfortable with giving its discoverer his due and using the name he gave it. For the three or four people in America who still don't know, umami is the richness of glutamines that comes through in MSG, clams, shiitake mushrooms, seared tuna, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. For those who will quibble that these things don't taste alike, I would point out that apples, sugar cane, mango, and chocolate cake are all foods strong in sweetness, and those don't taste alike, either.

Meanwhile, back on the topic of balance, I think most cooks understand the concept of balance in flavors. Many even grasp that balance has to be visual—dark against light, red against green. The place where many American cooks fall down, in my opinion, is in the area of textural balance. Oh, we know to balance the soft and the spongy with the crisp and the crunchy. We even understand the joy in the delicate pop of caviar eggs or tapioca berries. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way we've pretty much eliminated a broad range of food textures from our diet.

Over the years, diners in the US and Canada have decided, for reasons of habit or health, to eliminate a lot of textures that we find unpleasant in large portions. We don't like chewy meats, sinew, gristle, cartilage, fats, and the jiggle of natural gelatins, so we banish them from our plates. Other cultures revel in the texture of gelatins in marrow, fish skin, and organ meats. We call it icky, and lose some remarkable flavor elements in the name of removing icky bits from our dishes. I remember watching a cooking competition some time back in which the contestants had to produce an original dish at streamside using fresh-caught cutthroat trout. Every contestant—professional chefs all—fileted the damned fish. Every one. Not one of them thought to use the whole body and head of the trout. I wonder if they know how much their dishes were lacking as a result?

We treat gristle and cartilage with the same disrespect. One of the more popular forms of yakitori (grilled skewers) that I remember folks enjoying on the streets of Yokosuka, bonjiri (chicken butts), would never sell in the US—too little meat and too much fat and gristle, to say nothing of the negative connotations of That Part of the Body. Even the yakitori tebasaki (skewered chicken wings), which you frequently see the American GIs buying, are enjoyed differently by the different cultures. The Americans would gnaw off some of the skin, pick out the bits of white meat, and throw the rest of the wings away. When the locals finish theirs, they're throwing away nothing but bones and skewers. After stripping a wing of meat and skin, they splash on more sauce and gnaw the cartilage from the joints. "Maybe they're just hungrier than we are," a sailor friend commented. "They do eat smaller meals, you know."

Maybe. Or perhaps some of us have lost the ability to enjoy some textures because it was easier to eliminate them. If the gristle is difficult to chew, strip it from the meat. We're not so poor that we have to try to ingest every conceivably digestible bit of the animal. I'm as guilty of this as the next American. More, in some cases. I don't often enjoy gnawing food from bones even though I know some of the most flavorful meat is butted up against the ribs. I admit, there is something very satisfying about stripping all the edible matter from a spare rib—stripping it down to the calcium—but I don't do it often.

I guess I need to work on that.

Arroz con Pollo

I could probably discuss this dish in two tiers—arroz con pollo classico and the flavorless crap that passes for arroz con pollo in most places nowadays. Arroz con pollo, a Spanish dish, probably started as a simple method for stretching a single chicken to feed a large family: cut up the chicken, brown the pieces, remove the chicken, bloom the flavors of a sofrito (a sauce base of tomatoes, onions, and garlic) in the schmaltz (melted chicken fat), pour in some rice, pour in some stock and wine, sprinkle with spices, put the chicken back in, and simmer the whole until the rice absorbs most of the liquid.

Sounds simple enough, but arroz con pollo does offer a few little challenges. First, in the Good Ol' Days, the chicken was likely browned in either collected schmaltz or in lard—not exactly healthy choices. Schmaltz, I would argue, is okay in small doses. Better to start with a small quantity of a healthier oil like olive, grapeseed, or canola. Okay, I have to admit, I'd rather eat plastic wrap than cook in canola oil, but many cooks swear that it's flavorless. If you think so, go ahead and use it.

Second, the outline I gave for a basic arroz con pollo is also an outline for a lot of problems. White meat and dark meat, for instance, don't cook at the same rate. If you leave the whole chicken in the pot long enough to cook the thighs through, the breasts will be dried out. Likewise, the long-standing Spanish tradition of cooking a sofrito as a single element results in flavorless tomatoes and harsh burnt garlic.

Third, many cooks have discovered that the chicken pieces can be a problem. Who wants to pick a chicken breast out of hot rice and gnaw it off the bones? Too messy by far. Add to that the current health concern that tells Americans to avoid the dark meat to eliminate cholesterol and saturated fat from their diet. Replacing a whole chicken with boneless, skinless chicken breast meat is a huge mistake, robbing the rice of flavor and leaving only dry fibrous meat. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of chicken thigh meat, but breast meat dries out easily and doesn't give up anything in the way of flavor to the surrounding rice. Arroz con pollo made with no chicken but skinless boneless breast meat will make for a dry and flavorless dish.

So, I may not like thigh meat or drumsticks, and I may not like chicken fat or bones, but I need both if I'm going to make a moist, flavorful arroz con pollo.

(serves six)

dramatis personae

one heavy dutch oven

one can whole tomatoes
one tablespoons olive oil
four chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on)
two boneless chicken breast halves
salt and black pepper
one large white onion, diced
four medium garlic cloves
three Serrano chilis, minced
one and one half-cup Arborio rice
one half-cup dry white wine
two cups chicken stock
one healthy pinch of saffron threads, crushed
one quarter teaspoon cumin
one quarter-cup cilantro leaves, chopped

one large ripe avocado, sliced
one cup shredded Monterey Jack
lime wedges

quality of ingredients

A good, stout dutch oven is crucial for this dish, preferably enameled.

One three pound whole chicken can substitute for the pieces I've outlined. In any case, the chicken should not be too fatty. Remove any large clumps of fat under the skin before you begin browning the chicken.

See my comments on the quality of garlic in the Bang/Wow entry.

Jalapeño peppers can take the place of the Serranos, but the dish will have less heat. If you want more heat, cayenne or Thai bird peppers will work.

Most recipes I see for arroz con pollo call for long-grain rice. Frankly, I can't see why. Paella, a similar dish in some respects, is traditionally made with Spanish short-grain rice. I have found that Arborio produces a richer, creamier dish than any other I've tried. The results won't be quite risotto-creamy, but it will take up more stock than long-grain rice.

Saffron threads should be red or dark orange. It's not unusual to find a few yellow threads (say, one in ten), but don't buy saffron with too many pale threads. I really hate that so many spice companies package the threads in opaque containers. Don't buy it if you can't see it.

preparation notes

Open the can of tomatoes and remove and discard the tough core from each of the tomatoes. Tear each tomato in half and set them aside in a bowl. Reserve one half cup of the canning liquid.

Over a medium high flame, heat two tablespoons olive oil to smoking. Place the thighs and breasts in the bottom of the pan, skin-side down. Let the chicken pieces brown, undisturbed, for six minutes. Turn down the flame as necessary to prevent burning. Turn over the chicken pieces and brown the opposite side for an additional six minutes. Remove the chicken pieces from the pot.

Remove any excess oil (anything more than two tablespoons). Stir in the chopped onion and a pinch of salt. With a wooden spoon, stir the onions constantly as they sweat. The liquor from the onions will help lift the fond left by the chicken. Scrape as necessary to loosen up all of the fond.

Once the onions are softened and translucent (three to five minutes), stir in the garlic, chilis, and spices. Continue stirring for about thirty seconds to allow the flavors of the garlic and chilis to bloom.

Stir in the rice. Stir the rice continuously for one minute to thoroughly coat the rice with oil. The outer portion of the kernels will all appear translucent.

Stir in the tomatoes, stock, wine, and reserved tomato liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil. Place the thighs on top of the rice mixture, reduce heat a simmer. Cover the pot and simmer the dish for fifteen minutes. While the rice is simmering, chop the chicken breasts into bite-sized morsels.

Remove the thighs from the rice. Stir in the breast pieces. Remove the meat from the thigh bones and return the thigh meat to the pot. Cover and simmer the rice for ten minutes or until the rice is done.

Turn off the flame and stir in the cilantro. Recover the pot and let the rice stand for five minutes.

Serve the rice with lime slices, avocado slices, and grated cheese.

Comfort Angles

Comfort Zone Food

I've never really seen the attraction of backyard grilling. Oh, grilling has charms I understand, but I prefer cooking indoors. I keep all my cooking equipment and supplies—to say nothing of the food—in the kitchen. Grilling outdoors involves carting all that stuff outside and setting up a makeshift alternate kitchen. I've known dedicated backyard grillers who actually do have a second kitchen out by the grill: tables, cutting boards, knife blocks, even a second refrigerator. Great, but they still have to contend with the vagaries of weather, and dinner time for us coincides a bit too precisely with dinner time for the mosquitoes.

Generally, I'd rather stay inside and cook.

My ex-wife didn't see it that way. As far as she was concerned, if the weather allowed, I should be cooking over charcoal. Occasionally, I managed to talk my way out of grilling on the patio; usually, I did not. She had a tendency to read any disagreement as a deliberate assault, and I didn't want her to think I was refusing to grill her dinner just to spite her. What can I say? I'm an appeaser.

I remember one such appeasement twenty-one years ago. My daughter, then seven, was still living with us. My ex's son, then just turned eight, had come to visit. Miss Charcoal wanted rib-eye and so did her eldest (my ex's eleven-year-old daughter was also living with us at the time), the younger two wanted hot dogs. The eight-year-old initially said he wanted a hamburger, but when he learned that I would be grilling it and not picking one up from Burger King, he changed his mind.

Now, naturally, since hot dogs are composed of pre-cooked meat and similar substances, they finish up on the grill in a matter of seconds. I started the steaks, turned them when the texture was right and then went in to get the hot dogs. The two little ones—arguing amongst themselves under the swing set—saw me go inside, return with a small plate of wieners, and lay them out on the grill. Immediately, I was besieged by two screeching little harpies yelling that I was ruining their hot dogs and that I was Doing It Wrong and that they were not going to eat anything coming off the grill.

"Whoa. Slow down. What the hell are you two talking about?"

"You'll burn 'em," said the boy. "I'm not eating any burnt stuff."

"You're supposed to put it in the microwave," said the girl.

I shrugged them both off. "Nonsense. They won't be burnt, and they'll taste better this way. Coming out of the microwave they taste like plastic." I opened the lid of the grill and retrieved the slightly browned wieners with my tongs, holding up the last one. "See? No black stuff."

The boy pointed to a blistered patch on the side of the wiener, "What about that?"

"What about it? It isn't black."

"It's nasty," said the girl. "I'm not going to eat that."

Both of the little darlings continued to protest. My daughter not only refused to eat the grilled dogs, she wouldn't touch or even look at the grilled dogs. Eventually, I convinced the boy to taste at least a bite. Technically, I don't think I can say he actually tasted it. Pouting, he prepared a hot dog (on a bun with catsup, mustard, and relish) and then bit into the very last quarter-inch of the wiener. Before his teeth could even pass beyond the outer skin, he threw the thing to the ground, spitting and wiping his mouth even before his little hot dog bomb exploded against the concrete, sending condiment shrapnel every which way (but mostly all over my pants).

"It's yucky."

I promptly went inside to inform his mother (1) that the steaks would be finished in the short time it would take for me to change clothes, and (2) that her son was about to die a horrible screaming death.

Everything eventually worked out peacefully. The boy's mother put him to work cleaning up his hot dog strafe (at which, being eight, he did a thoroughly half-assed job), and I microwaved a couple of wieners for the kids.

The kids are adults now, and both excuse the whole incident with, "pssh, I was a little kid." Many others have offered the same explanation over the years. "They were little kids." So, kids don't have a palate? I'm pretty sure I would eat just about anything when I was eight. Not that I would have wanted the hot dog either, mind. I'd have wanted a steak. No, I don't believe their taste buds were unformed at that age.

I think, at the time, the problem was that both kids ate hot dogs—a lot of hot dogs—toxic levels of nitrates worth of hot dogs. The little monkeys had unassailable expectations. The boy was just visiting. He lived with his father, who didn't do much cooking. Microwaved hot dogs were a staple in his diet. My daughter, who was raised primarily by my mother (long, weird story), was the most finicky eater I have ever known. Hot dogs and pizza cheese constituted 99% of her protein intake. What I didn't understand when I put those wieners on that grill was that, for both of the kids, the microwaved wiener was for them a key element of a comfort food item. For each of those kids, the term hot dog meant specifically a white-bread hot dog bun, a microwaved wiener, catsup, and yellow mustard. The boy also wanted relish. Both kids, I would later learn, were equally put off by any and all substitutions: no wheat rolls, no barbecue sauce, no Dijon mustard. I think they would have balked if the buns weren't stale enough.

One difficult aspect of cooking for anyone is that you are dealing with likes and dislikes, and while most folks can tell you exactly what they do and do not like about any given movie, song, or politician, they're more often than not clueless as to why they dislike most foods. Ask why they don't like a dish, and if the response is anything but a sour face and a bleah, the answer most will give is "I just don't."

One overriding prejudice in this regard is the comfort food category. As exemplified by my kids and their microwaved dogs and acidy yellow mustard, most comfort food prejudices are more matter of familiarity than of taste. Take the simple example of macaroni-and-cheese. Yes, a gruyere-basil-cream sauce on fettuccine would probably taste much better than elbow macaroni in pasteurized processed cheese food product thinned with milk, but to someone who grew up with mac-and-cheese as a staple Sunday lunch item (or, in the South, a staple holiday meal item), the latter is likely to look more appealing under certain circumstances. Yes, crazy as it may sound to a dedicated foodie, some folks in some applications will actually choose thick, dry pasta with imitation cheese rather than fresh-rolled pasta with a fine aged Swiss cheese. Sad, but such is the power of memory.

Usually, comfort food is not the kind of dish you want when you're celebrating a promotion, a holiday, or a birth. Comfort food is what you want when you don't get the promotion you were sure was yours. Comfort food is what you're likely to crave when you're dumped, when you hear that an old friend has a terminal illness, or when a Republican is elected President of the United States. The purpose of comfort food is nostalgia—to put you in a better mental place by transporting you back to a time when you were at peace.

The nostalgia effect is both good news and bad news for the cook. It's good news because, once you know how to make a comfort food dish, it won't require any special effort to recreate, and your diners will be joyous and grateful. It's bad news because, if you don't know the right recipe, you might have a hell of a hard time working it out. You may never work it out. For some diners, comfort food has to be note perfect, or they just won't eat it. I went through this kind of trial several years ago, trying to make mashed potatoes for a friend the way her mother made it. We finally got it right after a dozen tries but only when I figured out that what she had assumed was nutmeg had actually been mace. Lucky guess.

Even more exasperating, the nostalgia-effect of comfort food acts as a restraint. Some folks are willing to accept minor changes, enhancements, but most are not. Even if your diners are willing to accept changes to their pasta sauces, for example, they will usually have limits to how much change they're willing to tolerate. Fresh onions are a must, and they have to be caramelized, or onions are utterly taboo. Garlic, sliced cellophane-thin and sautéed in extra virgin olive oil, or garlic roasted and mashed, or garlic powder. Peppers are mandatory or verboten. The sauce must be savory unless Grandmama always added a half-cup of sugar. Tomatoes must be roasted, stewed, a particular brand of canned purée, or fortified with sun-dried. Yes, good luck finding those limits.

Classics and Comfort

Once upon a time, you only heard the term comfort food applied to starchy low-brow dishes: spaghetti with meatballs, meatloaf, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, mashed potatoes, macaroni-and-cheese, chicken-fried steak. The term can, however, be more broadly applied to any dish that any family was likely to serve frequently. Couple that attitude with a more international view of food, and you can come up with a vast array of dishes. Everything from paella and bulgoki to steak frites and Welsh rarebit. In my home it's chicken tacos, Thai crab soup, chicken piccata, and arroz con pollo. For Princess V and Girtzik, it's pastina in chicken broth.

Chicken piccata (originally veal piccata until veal was deemed Evil in much of the US) is a classic preparation: delicate breaded cutlets, lemony sauce with artichoke hearts, capers, and a light pasta. I can taste it just at the mention of the name. If you haven't seen a piccata in a while, keep your eyes open. The recent trend toward capturing comfort foods in haute cuisine (haven't noticed? really? how many high-end restaurants do you know that now serve grits, mashed potatoes, or both?) has also begun to turn to classic preparations of yesteryear: chicken à la king, turkey tetrazzini, steak au poivre, pot roast, even meatloaf are making a comeback. I know this because I not only see them showing up on fancy new restaurants but also because I keep seeing references to them on cooking programs and cooking competition programs.

In recent weeks, I've seen four such references to steak au poivre and the American derivative, pepper-crusted steak. After the most recent one, I decided it had been too long since I last prepared a steak au poivre. That coupled with Girltzik's recent plea for bison convinced me to give it a shot.

Steak au poivre relies on peppercorns and butter to enhance the beefiness of strip loin steak. Bison already tastes like intensified beef. Bison steak au poivre seemed like a no-brainer: beef squared. Just to be certain, though, I decided to pair the bison with scallops. The traditional surf-and-turf, I know, is filet and lobster. I love lobster, but I think scallops are a better pairing.

It was the best meal I've had in weeks.

Bison Steak au Poivre with Pan Roasted Thai Red Curry Potatoes and Seared Scallop Disks on Braised Leeks Dijonnaise

(serves three)

steak
one pound bison strip loin (1.5" thick)
three tablespoons cracked black pepper
six tablespoons butter (four tablespoons cut into half-inch cubes)
kosher salt
one tablespoon peanut oil
one shallot, minced
one cup Amontillado sherry

potatoes
one half-pound red potatoes
salt
one tablespoon peanut oil
juice of one lime
one teaspoon Thai red curry paste

leeks
one cup julienned leeks
one cup chicken stock
one half-cup white wine
one tablespoon Dijon mustard
one quarter cup chopped garlic greens
salt

seared scallops
three U-10 scallops halved (in disks)
one tablespoon olive oil
kosher salt

quality of ingredients

Bison is lower in fat than beef, and that's fortunate because bison fat is funky. It's not as foul-smelling as lamb fat, but it definitely does not have the inherent sweetness of beef tallow. The meat is darker than beef—almost purple. Don't worry about marbling. You won't find much. Even in beef, strip loin (New York strip) is a pretty lean cut. If you can't find bison, find a good New York strip.

This recipe demands freshly cracked black pepper. Accept no substitutes. The magically sweet, chocolaty flavor of seared pepper and steak depends on a two step process. The first step, heating the cracked peppercorns in butter and then allowing them to cool, converts much of the piperine (the source of heat) into piperdine, an amine with a similar structure to the principal flavor agents in chocolate. The second phase, searing, releases those amines and some other volatiles. So, you want as high a concentration of piperine as possible. White pepper contains less piperine than black, and pre-cracked pepper gradually loses both volatiles and piperine. In short, buy whole black peppercorns and crack your own.

Real butter, unsalted. Nothing else will work.

Shallots are a traditional ingredient in the pan sauce for a steak au poivre. Some will tell you that a bit of onion and garlic can act as a substitute, but they really don't taste the same. Shallots are decidedly sweeter and have a faint but distinct something different (a molasses note?).

I used Amontillado, but cognac, brandy, or dry vermouth also yield excellent pan sauces.

For the pan-roasted potatoes, small Yukon golds or gold fingerlings are also good. I tried purple Peruvians this way once. Bleah.

I've gotten lazy about Thai curry pastes. I used to make my own, but Thai Kitchen makes excellent green and red pastes, so I just keep a jar of each on hand.

As I've said before, always select leeks with the largest possible white portions—at least three inches.

Every Dijon mustard I've tried tastes quite a bit different from every other. My favorite is Grey Poupon, which has a richness lacking in most.

Scallops for searing should be intact and not marinating in their own juices. If they're labelled previously frozen, an hour before cooking, cover both sides of the scallops with a layer of kosher salt and allow the liquor to leach out. Every fifteen minutes, pat the scallops dry and replace any salt that wipes off.

I love extra-virgin olive oil, and I frequently pooh-pooh so-called experts who say not to cook with it because the rich olive flavor is lost or overwhelms whatever it's cooking. I prefer extra-virgin for some applications (eggs, for example). For searing scallops, however, extra-virgin olive has far too low a smoke point for searing anything. Use a good olive oil.

preparation notes

Roughly crack the peppercorns with a heavy skillet or rolling pin. Be aware that doing this on a wooden cutting board or with a wooden rolling pin, will result in dimples on the wood. Over a medium flame, heat two tablespoons of butter to foaming. Add in the cracked peppercorns, turn down the flame to low, and simmer the pepper in the butter for five minutes. Do not let the butter brown. Remove the pan of peppercorns to a trivet to cool for five minutes. Push the peppercorns together in a single layer.

Trim the bison strip and cut it into thirds. Press the three pieces down onto the peppercorns. Place a plate atop the steaks and press them down onto the peppercorns, and leave them to soak up the butter for at least thirty minutes.

Blanch the potatoes for eight minutes in boiling salted water. Strain out the liquid and spray the potatoes down with cold water to halt the cooking. Let them rest in the strainer or colander for five minutes to dry. In a sauté pan, heat the peanut oil to smoking and add in the potatoes. Turn all of the potato quarters so that a flat side is down, and allow them to fry, unmolested, until brown (three to five minutes). Tip each quarter so that the other flat side is down and fry the potatoes until that side is also brown. Combine the curry paste and lime juice and stir it to break up the paste. Pour the curry and lime mix into the potatoes and sauté them vigorously to coat the potatoes uniformly. Be warned, the steam coming off of the potatoes during this last phase plays hell with your sinuses (although the girls in the next room frequently remark on how delightful they think the aroma at a safe distance). Remove the potatoes to a serving bowl and tent them with foil to keep them warm.

Preheat the oven to 275F.

Bring the chicken stock, white wine, and Dijon mustard to a boil. Add the leeks to the boiling liquid and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer the leeks for ten minutes. Turn off the flame and add the garlic greens and salt if necessary. Allow the vegetables to stand for ten minutes in the braising liquid. Pour off the liquid or pluck the vegetables from the liquid with chopsticks and move them to a serving bowl.

Once the steaks have rested on the cracked peppercorns for at least a half-hour, give them one last firm press and then gently lift them so that the peppercorns remain affixed to one side. Place them on a drying rack atop a cookie sheet, pepper-side up and bake them for ten minutes at 175F. Remove the steaks from the oven and, with a quick-read thermometer, verify that the steaks are at least 98F. In a stainless steel sauté pan over a medium-high flame, heat one tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking, and place all three steaks peppercorn-side down in the hot oil. Let the steaks cook for two minutes (no matter how tempting it may be to turn them early). Using tongs (a spatula will knock off the peppercorns), carefully turn each steak over (peppercorn-side up) and cook them, unmolested, for a minute and a half. If you have a high-power burner (12,000 BTU or better), turn down the flame as necessary to keep the oil from burning. You want brown-residue from the steaks but not ash. Turn the steak and allow each of the remaining four sides to cook for 30 seconds each. For irregular sides, hold the steaks in place with the tongs. Remove the steaks to a cooling rack and tent them with foil. Allow the steaks to rest at least ten minutes.

Reduce the flame to low medium and add in the minced shallots. Stir the shallots constantly for at least a minute while they sweat. The liquid from the shallots should at least begin to deglaze the pan. Pour in the sherry and let it cook down until the pan sauce is reduced to about two tablespoons. Turn off the flame and whisk in the four tablespoons of cubed butter to mount the pan sauce. If the pan sauce is mounted before the steaks are done resting, pour the sauce into a cool container (measuring cup or gravy boat) to prevent its breaking.

In a non-stick sauté pan, over a medium-high flame bring a tablespoon of olive oil to the smoke point. If your scallops are previously-frozen and you've been salting them to eliminate moisture, wipe off any remaining salt. Place the scallop disks in the hot oil and allow them to cook, unmolested, for two minutes. Once the scallops have developed a nice crust, flip them and sear the other side.

After at least ten minutes of resting, slice the steaks very thin and plate them. Plate the leeks and potatoes. Plate the scallops atop the leeks. Drizzle a spoonful of pan sauce over each set of steak slices.

Wednesday Night Tragedy

Down in Flames

Dinner Wednesday night was not a success.

After wowing the girls and Girltzik's guest over the weekend with a redux of my Sriracha shrimp on fried noodles, accompanied this time by braised leeks and Chinese long-bean, I crashed and burned at midweek. Dinner looked good on paper—seafood sausage and fettuccine with tarragon-almond pesto. What's not to love about choice seafood, fresh herbs, and pasta? Sadly, no ingredient is foolproof. Princess V soldiered through, but clearly did not enjoy the meal. Girltzik managed a couple bites of the seafood and one of the fettuccine. Looking up from her plate with big puppy-dog eyes, she asks, "Can we have buffalo again?" Girltzik's dinner fed the dispose-all.

Seafood sausage still sounds like a good idea, but I have to face it: I blew it. I screwed up. I can think of soooooooooo many ways in which I screwed up Wednesday's dinner that it's hard to pick a starting point.

I should have dried the scallops more thoroughly.
I should have beat the egg whites before adding them to the seafood.
Since I was making the sausage without casings, I should have steamed it instead of poaching.
I should have used more seasoning.
I should have sauced the sausage.
I should, knowing the girls' distaste for minty things, have used less tarragon.
I should have ground the almonds a bit finer.

I have a pretty good palate. More to the point, I have confidence in my palate and in my ability to combine flavors, textures, food elements. That confidence allows me to create some pretty spectacular meals. That same confidence also allows me, now and then, to royally screw up. My hamartia. And so it came to pass, from previous heights of Sriracha shrimp and crispy fried noodles, the sin of hubris threw me down, casting me to the wretched depths of bland sausage and overstrong pesto. O, the catharsis of the learning experience.

Aristotelian hyperbole aside, when you experiment with foods, you're bound to have a few misses. Especially when I'm trying something I haven't done in several years.* All in all, we've been pretty lucky. I think this is only my second big miss this year. So far.

Next time will be better. After a suitable mourning period (or at least after the girls have managed to rinse the bad taste from their memories) I'll try it again. My next seafood sausage will contain a bit of chili and wasabi, will include a second type of fish, will include lobster or crab, will be steamed, will be accompanied with a lemony sauce.

It will be glorious.


* - Technically, I've never made a true seafood sausage. Last night's "sausage" was actually more like a terrine, which I have made in the distant past. For last night's disaster, I used no sausage casings, wrapped the mix in cling wrap to hold it together during cooking, incorporated egg whites to firm it up, and sliced the things for serving.

Out of the Ashes

Clearly I will not be sharing details of the seafood sausage dinner. Here's the recipe and directions for a meal you won't enjoy, seems more than a little silly. When I get the sausage right, I'll write the success story. For now, I guess I need to reach back a few weeks and bring forward an earlier success.

I don't think any fish preparation is really foolproof, but fish filets baked en papillote comes pretty close. As long as you include the right aromatics and don't overcook the fish, filets baked en papillote make for a great presentation and a terrific meal. Wrapping single-serving-sized filets individually allows each diner to open her own, each packet releasing a cloud of steam laced with the aromas of the fish and other flavor elements.

Typically, I like to include one or two stout herbs (thyme, basil, dill, curry leaves) an allium (sautéed shallot or leeks or roasted garlic) and an intense fungus or two (truffle, black trumpet mushroom, morel, Portobello, porcini). Cooking en papillote infuses the fish with all the flavors of the aromatics. As fancy as it looks, the whole process is really pretty simple. It also helps that parchment paper has recently become more readily available at many supermarkets and independent grocery stores.

Salmon with Portobello Mushrooms en Papillote

(serves three)

dramatis personae

two medium Portobello mushroom caps, sliced (quarter-inch slices)
one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
one shallot, thinly sliced
one teaspoon fresh thyme
one half-cup dry vermouth
salt
black pepper
one dozen large basil leaves
three five ounce salmon filets, scaled

quality of ingredients

Portobello mushrooms were all the rage in the late 80s. Eventually, though, they fell out of favor. The problem is the gills. Most of the intense meaty mushroom flavor of the Portobellos resides in the spores and gills. Unfortunately, when the mushrooms cook, their gills release dusty black spores. This imparts some marvelous flavor but also looks very much like dirt. Many cooks try to correct this situation by removing the gills, but of course, that also removes a good deal of flavor.

Baking en papillote works remarkably well with Portobello mushrooms because it transfers flavor from the mushrooms to the fish without mixing them into a sauce.

Portobellos should be firm, and the caps should be intact.

I love shallots, but they do piss me off. From a gardening perspective, shallots are just another allium. They don't even require mounding, like leeks and scallions. Somehow, though, they command a higher price by weight than any other onion. Locally, they're running four dollars a pound.

Salmon again. I do seem to be cooking a lot of salmon, lately. Here again, my first choice is sockeye. See my quality notes on salmon from Flesh for Fantasy.

preparation notes

Preheat the oven to 400F.

In a dry non-stick sauté pan over a medium high flame, arrange the Portobello mushroom slices in a single layer and salt them lightly. Sweat the mushroom slices without turning until droplets of mushroom liquor appear on all of the slices (about three minutes). Turn the mushroom slices over and brown the other side for an additional three minutes. Remove the mushroom slices from the pan.

Without deglazing the pan or turning down the flame, add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into the pan. When the oil begins to shimmer, add in the shallots and a pinch of salt, and sauté them until translucent. Add black pepper, thyme, and the vermouth and simmer the shallots until the liquid is reduced to about two tablespoons.

For each filet, on a work surface, lay out a 15" by 15" sheet of parchment paper. About three inches from the near side of the sheet and centered, place three basil leaves, parallel to one another and overlapping a bit. Place a filet, skin-side down atop the basil leaves. Arrange one third of the mushroom slices atop the filet and spoon one third of the shallots atop the mushrooms. Place a fourth basil leave atop the shallots.

Add a pinch of salt to one egg white and beat the white with a fork to liquefy it.

Paint the outer inch of the parchment with egg white. Fold the far edge of the parchment over the filet to the near edge. Fold in all three edges toward the filet. Seal off the last fold on each side with egg white.


Arrange the filet packets on a cooking sheet in the center of a 400F oven. Bake the filets for seven minutes.

With a pair of scissors, snip open a corner of each packet and let the diners tear it open at the table.

Bang/Wow

What You See

When I was a kid, the standard presentation for damn near anything in an American restaurant was The Implied Y: one third of the plate held the protein, one third held a vegetable side, and the last third held the starch. Appetizers, soup, salad, and bread were typically served separately. A lot of restaurants today still serve meals in that same dull presentation. It's simple, logical, and recognizable. Mostly, it's the simplicity that makes the Y so prevalent. How hard is it to slap down a slab of protein and blop on two scoops of stuff?

These days, the better restaurants all understand the importance of presentation. Plating can mean simple physical arrangement: centering, layering, stacking, positioning. Do the principal elements form a geometric shape, suggest a shape, imitate a flower? Sauces and pestos can be drizzled, painted, streaked, dusted with spices or herbs. The shape, size, and color of plates and use of white space also receive consideration. Balance of color may not be as important as balance of flavors, but it does affect our expectations. It might sound silly—far-fetched, even—but how often do you walk away from a meal thinking, "That looked great, but it tasted like crap"? Oh, sure, it happens now and again, but the converse is far more likely. Haute cuisine, as a business, thrives on the truism that we feast with our eyes first.

Yet, astonishingly, I often hear home cooks apologizing for even the most meager of efforts at presentation. "I'm not really into garnishes, but...." "I know it's silly, but I thought maybe just this once...." Afraid of appearing pretentious? Hell, if you make a habit of clever presentation, you're not pretending—you're practicing. Besides, if someone puts in a little extra effort to make your meal look more appealing, which of these goes through your head:

A - "Wow! All that trouble for me?"

or

B - "Wow! What a pretentious wiener."

If you chose B, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you're a self-centered prick.

If you put in a little extra effort to make your meals looks special, you're just extending the effort you put in to make the food taste special. At worst, you're trying to better your audience's meals. At best, you're an artist.

Afraid of being viewed as an artist? Tsk. If you want people to enjoy your meals, you want to be an artist. A good cook is an artist*. If you don't want to be an artist, let someone else do the cooking.

Sure, family-style offerings—with every component of the meal offered in its own big bowl with its own big spoon—allow your diners to control their portions. So, yes, plating for individuals does take away a wee bit of control. I have to argue that control is less important than appearance, though. Otherwise, the only successful restaurants would be those that serve family-style, and family-style restaurants are decidedly in the minority. Besides, even family-style service can incorporate bang/wow presentations. I prefer family-style presentations for some meals (pasta, for example, or arroz con pollo).

Seriously, though, what's so bad about hearing friends and family ooh and ah over the appearance of dinner? Sure, the first time or two might throw folks. You're likely to hear a "What's the special occasion?" or two. Why should that be intimidating? Don't assume they're insulted. Answer honestly: the special occasion is dinner. If they press the issue, say that you were trying to impress them, that dinner is an occasion, that a meal at home should be able to compete with a restaurant meal. Above all, they're your family and friends; tell them they deserve bang/wow meals.

Of course, there is one danger in fancy meal presentations for friends and family.

They might come to expect it.


* Concerning artists and cooking: Princess V enjoys baking, studies baking, teaches baking, and receives much praise for her baking, but generally she doesn't care for cooking. She'll tell you that cooking is an art and baking is a science, and in many ways I agree. Cooking requires a lot of control based on judgment, perception, and intuition. Baking requires a lot of control based on trial and error resulting in precise quantities, temperatures, and timing. In the end, though, it's the baker adding finishing touches with a piping bag.

What You Get

Girltzik was eating dinner with her boyfriend's family, so I saw an opportunity to try out a new seared-scallop recipe (Girltzik doesn't care for scallops). I'd seen some beautiful diver scallops at our local grocery store recently. Unfortunately, someone else had also seen them. They had only a few scruffy looking scallop remnants. They also, however, had just unpacked a shipment of big, beautiful, fresh gulf shrimp.

I had been thinking about bacon-wrapped shrimp, a popular item on a lot of restaurant menus and—all too frequently—a huge disappointment. Bacon-wrapped shrimp is usually prepared under a broiler or on a grill. As a result, the bacon is usually burnt, and the shrimp are usually rubbery. Baking doesn't work too well, either. Bacon's high fat content virtually ensures that either the bacon will be rubbery or the shrimp will be over-cooked or both.

I decided to use prosciutto instead. Since I was already going to be wrapping the shrimp, stuffing them seemed an obvious addition.

Prosciutto, shrimp, and crab suggested a range of sauces, but I got the idea of a spicy pasta sauce stuck in my mind. I could taste it before I'd finished purchasing the ingredients. Even though I wanted to use rice, I chose a sauce traditionally served over penne or ziti as Penne all'Arrabbiata. I love that name: Angry Penne. Far more graphic than spicy penne.

Snow-Crab-Stuffed Shrimp with Arrabbiata Sauce

(serves two)

dramatis personae

shrimp
eight large (12-15/pound) shrimp
one snow crab cluster
one-quarter pound prosciutto

sauce
three unpeeled garlic cloves
two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
one 14 ounce can diced tomatoes
one 10 ounce can tomato purée
two dried chili arbol, seeded and crushed
two tablespoons fine chiffonade of basil

long grain rice or pasta

quality of ingredients

This recipe demands large, plump, firm shrimp, and they have to be fresh. Stale shrimp will be too mushy. Most fish mongers won't let you handle their shrimp, so insist on only shrimp tails with solid shells and intact legs and tail-fins. Don't let them just randomly scoop up a questionable handful of crustaceans. As a shrimp tail ages (weird thinking of a dead thing aging), the legs and tail disintegrate, the shells dissolve, and the flesh discolors and becomes opaque and mushy. More to the point, when you cook a stale shrimp tail, it comes out mushy, bitter, and limp.

See Keeping Cool—the crab course for my notes on crab quality.

Like most American cooks, when I say prosciutto, I mean prosciutto di Parma or a similar dry-cured ham like jamón serrano. Be careful: some prosciuttos are waaaaaay too salty (this is true of a lot of the pre-sliced, pre-packed prosciuttos). Ask the folks at the deli counter to slice your prosciutto as thin as possible. The slices should be thin enough to read through.

Garlic comes in many varieties, but most American grocery stores provide just one or two. The most commonly available garlic is a softneck variety called silverskin, and the next most common is a hardneck variety called purple stripe. For most cooking applications, silverskin is fine; it mellows and sweetens when sautéed. For raw uses (gazpacho, for example) silverskin is my last choice: harsh, hot, metallic. Conversely, raw purple stripe is sweet, juicy, and has hardly any heat. Unfortunately, sautéed purple stripe has a limp musty flavor. The best all-around garlic is also one of the more difficult to grow: porcelain, a hardneck variety with a complex, spicy, garlic flavor but with no bitterness, no burn, and no bite. The good news—for this recipe, anyway—is that roasting mellows and sweetens garlic and gives it a smoky nuttiness, so any variety will work.

Next time I prepare this dish, I might try roasting some tomatoes in lieu of the canned tomato products, but the canned products worked just fine. For the best product choices, I consult the Cooks Illustrated online tasting lab results. This is a subscription service, but well worth the money.

preparation notes

Roast the garlic in a clean, dry skillet over a high flame. Once the garlic peel is mostly black on one side, turn the cloves over (chopsticks work well for this) and char the other side. Remove the cloves to a ramekin to cool. The cloves will be soft. Once they're cool, remove the peels, scrape off any black bits, and mash the cloves.

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Pick through the diced tomatoes and discard any hard pieces of tomato core. Reserve one quarter cup of the liquid from the can.

In a saucepan over a medium flame, heat the extra virgin olive oil to shimmering and add the diced tomatoes, tomato purée, and reserve liquid. Once the liquid begins to bubble, add the dried chili and roasted garlic. Turn the flame down to low, cover the pot, and allow it to simmer for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.

Shell the snow crab. (Eventually, I ought to videotape this process.)

Peel the shrimp, leaving the tail fin and last segment of shell on the tails. Devein the tails and, with a sharp paring knife, cut the tails almost all the way through to the lower vein. Stuff each shrimp with a portion of the snow crab flesh, and wrap with a layer of prosciutto. Arrange the shrimp tails on a cookie sheet

Bake the shrimp tails for 10 minutes on a center oven rack. Turn the tails over and bake them for an additional five minutes or until the shrimp are fully cooked.

To serve, spoon a portion of the arrabbiata sauce and four of the shrimp over rice or pasta.

Dubious Success

The Fine Art of the Backhanded Compliment

Once about ten years ago, while I was still in grad school, I ran into one of the professors in the hallway. I'd taken a few classes from her. This particular professor, despite being brilliant lecturer, was plain to the point of extreme anonymity. She would have been the ideal criminal—no witness would ever be able to recall any details about her appearance. She wore no make-up or jewelry and draped herself in shapeless garments of brown, beige, and grey. On this day, for the first time that I could remember, she wore a bright summer dress, her hair was up, her lips were red. She was even smiling, probably at the realization that she looked good.

Perhaps because I was accustomed to her typical Witness Protection Program appearance, I took a step back and said, "Wow, Doc, you look great."

She gave me an owl-eyed look in return and said nothing. Something clouded her expression—anger, irritation, embarrassment? I couldn't quite parse the expression, but I had clearly said exactly the wrong thing. After an uncomfortable silence, I made some excuse or other ("Gotta go grade some papers.") and hurried off.

I wondered what I'd said to insult her. Did she think I was hitting on her? Even if I found her attractive (I didn't), I knew she had no interest in men. Was that it? Was it just the fact that I'm male? Were men not allowed to compliment her? Was it a matter of protocol—student/teacher fraternization?

"Wow, Doc, you look great."

A few weeks later, one of the other grad students, a close friend's fiancée, complimented my appearance. "Don't you look nice today."

And then I understood. Don't you look nice today. It's the today that's the deal killer. That's the element that fills out and ultimately bursts the compliment: Don't you look nice today—unlike most days when you look like you should be carrying a cardboard offer to work for food. Gosh, I had no idea you could look like a civilized adult.

Wow, Doc, you look great. I think it was the Wow that defeated my good intentions. Wow seems to say, "Incredible. Unbelievable. I'll be damned. Who could have imagined? What a shock to see you not looking bland and shlumpy."

A compliment to someone you know usually implies a negative observation. That turtleneck looks great can imply that you should wear clothes that hide your ugly neck.

That jacket looks really sharp, might be saying, it hides your bubble butt.

Even a simple, Nice shirt, seems to say, compared to all that crap you usually wear.

Mother's Day

So good intentions as paving material and best-laid plans and all that. What has any of this to do with Mother's Day?

This Mother's Day, I wanted to do something special for Princess V. With my particular skill sets, something special comes down to a choice of food or poetry.

I opted for food: brunch, dinner, and dessert. For brunch I prepared Eggs Benedict and mimosas; for dinner, saumon en croute with Dijon dill whipped cream; for dessert bosc pears poached in red vermouth.

Everything went well (well, not counting the aftermath of over-indulgence). Princess V was pleased. Dinner got raves. Dessert got raves. I got raves.

All's right with the world.

So why do I feel guilty?

Why am I asking you? I know why I feel guilty. Brunch, dinner, dessert—I do that much on most Sundays. Oh, sure, champagne for the mimosas was a minor splurge, as was reducing an entire bottle of vermouth for the pears, and I did put some effort into making the salmon pastry look right. Still. Seems like I should have done something a wee bit more Bang/Wow.

I mean, when Princess V is at her staff lunch this week and the other ladies are bragging about the gifts their husbands got for them, what can she say? "I got dinner"?

Saumon en Croute with Dijon Dill Whipped Cream and Tomato Vinaigrette
(serves four)

dramatis personae

vinaigrette
four medium tomatoes (mixed variety and color)
one shallot, thinly sliced
two tablespoons fine chiffonade of opal basil
three tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
two tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
salt
black pepper

saumon en croute
one medium leek (about 1" diameter) thinly sliced, white and light green parts only
one tablespoon olive oil
one pound of salmon filet
salt
two puff pastry sheets
one egg white

whipped cream
one pint heavy whipping cream
two tablespoons Dijon mustard
one tablespoon finely minced dill

quality of ingredients

Tomato vinaigrette is a perfect match for the richness of salmon with cream. Over the years, I've served dozens of variations on this very simple, satisfyingly tart and sweet salad. This time, my local market had red, yellow, and orange tomatoes on the vine, so I combined slices from one red, two orange, and one yellow to make the salad. Whatever tomatoes you find, be sure they're firm, bright, and ripe.

If you can't find opal basil, sweet basil will suffice.

In Flesh for Fantasy, I extolled the virtues of sockeye salmon. For this meal, I was fortunate to find my local fishmonger well-stocked.

Always select leeks with the largest possible white portions—at least three inches.

Use fresh dill. Dried dill will make the whipped cream smell stale.

preparation notes

At least an hour before beginning preparations, put the mixing bowl and mixer whip in the freezer.

Mix or stack the tomato and shallot slices and the chiffonade. Emulsify the vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Cover the tomatoes with the emulsion. Salt and pepper the vinaigrette to taste and chill the salad in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.

In a sauté pan over a medium flame, heat to shimmering one tablespoon of olive oil. Add the leek slices and a pinch of salt, and sauté the leeks until soft (about 10 minutes). Transfer the sautéed leeks to a bowl to cool.

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Remove from the salmon filets any pinbones, the skin, and the brown flesh. Your puff-pastry can be as simple as a rectangle or as complex as you like. The obvious choice is a fish, but nothing says you can't make your pastry look like a grizzly bear, kraken, Harley-Davidson, or Angelina Jolie. Pick something you know you can draw. If the shape is something more complex than a rectangle, you'll need to cut the filet into pieces to make it fit the pattern. Place the filet or filet pieces on a sheet of parchment paper and draw the outline of your pattern around the filet, leaving a half-inch allowance on all sides. Remove the filet pieces to a plate and cut out your pattern. Roll out your puff-pastry sheets and cut out two sheets according to your pattern.


Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and transfer one of the cut pastry sheets to the parchment. Arrange the salmon on the pastry. Cover the salmon evenly with the sautéed leeks. The leeks will act as an insulating layer and help slow the cooking of the salmon enough to finish the pastry without drying out the fish. This is why the leeks have to be cool—if you used them straight out of the pan, they'd start cooking the salmon. Place the second cut sheet of puff-pastry atop the leek-covered salmon. Pinch together the edges of the two pastry sheets to seal in the salmon. With a sharp paring knife or pastry knife, score in any details you want to show (scales, fin rays, gills, an eye, claws, fangs, spokes, gears, nostrils, pouty lips, whatever).

Bake the salmon for twenty minutes or until golden brown. With a quick-read thermometer inserted through a scoring mark into the thickest part of the fish, verify that the fish is at least 120F.

Combine the cream, mustard, and dill in the chilled bowl and whip the ingredients to stiff peaks.

Slice the salmon into two-inch-wide sections and serve with individual bowls (ramekins) of the savory whipped cream.

Learning to Taste Food

Tasting with Your Teeth

Princess V and I watched a cooking program, recently, in which the cooks demonstrated how home cooks anywhere in the United States can make more-or-less authentic-tasting hot-and-sour soup. Their recipe was interesting, but a lot of their substitutions struck me as unnecessary and, ultimately, unsuccessful. I feel strongly that, if you want to make a hot-and-sour soup, your results will be most satisfying if you stay with the traditional ingredients. Hot-and-sour soups vary a bit from restaurant to restaurant, but the most exotic ingredients in a typical hot-and-sour soup are black vinegar, daylily buds, and sliced black fungus. Now, I can see where those items might be difficult in a small town, but I know a half-dozen grocery stores in Austin that carry these ingredients, and that's not counting the Asian specialty markets. If all else fails, you can always order these items through the Internet, and they're not expensive items.

Thinking about (and, yes, disagreeing with) the cooking show got me mulling over what I like and dislike about hot-and-sour soup. My first experience with hot-and-sour soup, twenty years ago, was in a Chinese restaurant in, of all places, Vermont. Their version contained fresh cloud ears and fresh lily buds. Cloud ears are similar to—but lighter, more flavorful, and harder to come by than—wood ears, the more common variety of what is generically marketed as black fungus.

The name sounds generic, and many regional and national cuisines do include a soup that is essentially both hot and sour. Thailand's tom yum gets its heat from bird chilis and its tartness from lemon grass, galanga, and keffir lime leaves. hot chilis and horse radish. Philippine sinigang gets its heat from fingerhot chilis and its tang from tamarind. Yucatan's sopa de lima gets its sourness from limes; heat is added by spooning in fresh pico de gallo.

Remarkably, delicious though they may be, none of these other spicy sour soups has much in common with the hot-and-sour soup popular in American Chinese Cuisine. Hot-and-sour soup recipes vary a bit, but most rely on white pepper for their heat rather than any kind of chilis. The resulting burn builds more slowly than the heat from a capsicum, and white pepper provides a piney note. I have had hot-and-sour soups that rely on chili oil or red chili flakes, but those are the exception. Hot-and-sour soup—rather than relying on the citrus and other tart fruits and vegetables typically used in spicy sour soups—gets its unique tartness from black vinegar. Black vinegar, brewed from black glutinous rice, has a distinctive flavor: slightly sweet, a bit smoky, faintly like molasses, and with a distinct taste of malt. Hot-and-sour soup is both hot and sour like no other soup.

Hot-and-sour soup is also, frankly, somewhat unappealing in appearance. It's brown and tan and gooey-looking. The only color, typically, is a small scattering of scallion. It doesn't look the least bit appetizing. Hot-and-sour soup pretty thoroughly ignores the French maxim that you feast with your eyes first.

Fortunately, the Chinese know a thing or two about enlisting our other senses in their foods.

Although Chinese acquaintances have assured me that hot-and-sour soup is an American Chinese invention, hot-and-sour soup does incorporate a lot of the best elements of Chinese cuisine. In addition to the balance of hot, sweet, sour, and salty elements, hot-and-sour soup balances the hot yang of white pepper with the bland coolth of tofu (or tofu skins, in some cases).

More impressive than those balances, however, is the delightful play of textures in the best hot-and-sour soups. The softness of tofu and egg-drop strands parallels the chewiness of pork tendon and black fungus, the crunch of bamboo shoots and daylily buds, and the slipperiness of the corn starch used to thicken the broth. Asian cuisines have a lot to teach European and American cuisines about incorporating and balancing textures. A frequent American foodie's complaint about black fungus is that it has little or no flavor, but that's not the point of black fungus. In hot-and-sour soup—as in so many other dishes—black fungus is a pivotal element in the interplay of textures: black fungus invites your teeth to nibble and test and then breaks cleanly when they sink into it.

So What Am I Gonna Do About It?

Initially, yes, the cooking show inspired me to try my hand at a hot-and-sour soup. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted something more substantial than a soup, and I wanted something with a bit more visual appeal. I decided to promote the pork to a point of prominence, and—though I knew I would be drastically modifying one of the textural elements—I substituted pork tenderloin for the tendon.

Since I was already promoting tendon to tenderloin, I decided to demote the broth to a sauce. This dish, then, is my riff on a classic: deconstructed hot-and-sour soup. Although—as I mentioned earlier—hot-and-sour soup typically looks less than appetizing, I wanted this dish to incorporate the flavor and texture elements of a hot-and-sour soup while still making a strong visual presentation.



Hot-and-Sour Pork with Charred Tofu
(serves three)

dramatis personae

one pork tenderloin (one pound or so)
six cups cold water
one quarter cup table salt
two tablespoons light brown sugar
one pint low sodium chicken stock
one block extra firm tofu
one half cup black fungus, julienned
one half cup daylily buds
one half cup bamboo shoots, julienned
one third cup black vinegar
two teaspoons toasted sesame oil
one teaspoon fresh-cracked white pepper
one scallion, chopped
one half pound egg vermicelli
one quarter cup peanut oil

quality of ingredients

Unless you're using your own chicken stock, use low sodium stock or broth. It's going to concentrate quite a lot, and salted stock will result in a gaggingly salty sauce.

My preference is for fresh black fungus. The texture of fresh black fungus has a velvety element that disappears when it's dried. Still, the rehydrated black fungus is better than none.

Canned bamboo shoots are okay. The Asian markets occasionally have whole shoots packed in salt water, and these are usually a bit more succulent than the canned strips. In either case, bamboo shoots should be drained and thoroughly rinsed.

I've seen fresh daylily buds in hot-and-sour soup just once, and the chef in that case grew his own. Fresh daylily buds have a brighter flavor and a slightly less fibrous texture than the rehydrated ones, but the rehydrated buds are still tasty. If you find a source for the fresh ones, by all means use them. And tell me how to contact your source.

Yes, it has to be white pepper.

preparation notes

Brine the tenderloin: combine the pork, water, salt, and brown sugar in a gallon Ziploc bag. Express as much air as possible from the bag, and refrigerate the tenderloin for one hour to allow the brine to season the meat thoroughly.

Slice three half-inch slabs of tofu from the block. Place the slabs on a flame-safe surface. I used an upside-down cookie sheet (not a non-stick sheet). With a paper towel, gently pat the tofu dry. With a propane or butane torch, lightly char the surface and edges of the tofu slabs. Don't char the whole surface black; you want to see some blistering and a little mottling. This will suffice to give the tofu a slightly toasty flavor. Besides, it looks cool.

Soak, for at least thirty minutes, a cup of dehydrated daylily buds in two cups of hot water.

If you're using dehydrated black fungus, soak, for at least thirty minutes, a loosely packed cup of fungus in two cups of hot water seasoned with a tablespoon of table salt.

See my directions in Evolution for frying the noodles.

Preheat the broiler to 500F.

Once the tenderloin has marinated for a full hour, thoroughly rinse and pat it dry. Trim and set aside the fat and silver skin.

In a skillet or sauté pan over a medium flame, heat two tablespoons peanut oil to smoking. Fry the reserved pork fat and silverskin until any attached bits of meat are brown. Push aside the browned bits of fat to make room for the tenderloin, turn up the flame to medium high, and lightly brown the tenderloin on all sides (no more than a minute on each side). Pour in the stock and black vinegar, and bring the liquid to a boil. Turn the liquid down to a simmer and braise the pork for two minutes. Turn the tenderloin over and continue braising for another minute. Remove the tenderloin to a plate and allow it to rest for five minutes.

Dissolve the cornstarch in two tablespoons of the braising liquid and set it aside.

Bring the liquid back up to a boil and, with a wooden spoon, deglaze the bottom of the pain. Once the majority of the brown bits are freed from the bottom of the pan, remove the skillet from the fire, and strain the braising liquid through a wire mesh strainer or chinois into a heat-safe, non-reactive container (a Pyrex bowl or an enameled pot). Discard the strained solids and return the liquid to the skillet. Drain and rinse the vegetables (fungus, daylilies, and bamboo) and pour them into the braising liquid. Stir in the sesame oil and a half-teaspoon of white pepper, and braise the vegetables over a medium flame while the tenderloin broils.

Brush the tenderloin with peanut oil and season it liberally with fresh-cracked white pepper. Broil the tenderloin fore three minutes, turn it over, and broil it for an additional three minutes. Remove the tenderloin to a cool plate to rest for five minutes.

Strain the vegetables from the braising liquid and return the liquid to the heat. If the liquid has not reduced by at least half (to about a half-cup), bring it to a boil. Stir the liquid occasionally while it reduces. Stir in the cornstarch slurry. Once the sauce begins to thicken, remove it from the heat.

Slice the tenderloin into quarter-inch thick slices.

Atop each noodle wedge, mound a half-cup of the vegetables. Lay a five or six overlapping slices of tenderloin atop each mound of vegetables. Drizzle a little of the sauce over the tenderloin slices and top them with one slab of charred tofu. Drizzle a little more sauce over the tofu and top with a scattering of scallion.

Evolution

The Cocktail Sauce Mystery

When I was a kid, my mother occasionally prepared shrimp for dinner. Shrimp, in those days were tiny, rubbery critters that came breaded and frozen in little waxed cardboard boxes. They had to be deep-fried and eaten with cocktail sauce. Since the oil was already hot, we usually had french fries to go with the shrimp. The fries came frozen in a bag, tasted like dryer lint, and apparently were chemically treated to neutralize salt.

My brother and I would go to the kitchen to investigate the sizzle and occasional pop. Mom would see us and, "We're having shrimp for dinner!" with the kind of enthusiasm she usually reserved for announcing apple pie! and ice cream! Despite all of Mom's exclamation points, I just couldn't see why anyone should get excited over greasy cornmeal with a kernel of shrimp-flavored gristle in the center. When I was eight years old, though, it did pass for palatable if I peeled off most of the breading and drowned the little shrimplets in cocktail sauce.

I remember, also, my perplexity at the name cocktail sauce. For me the name conjured images of men in dinner jackets and ladies in sparkling LBDs sipping martini glasses of red goo. Silly. This sauce was clearly too thick to drink, and that much horseradish in a single gulp would have been pretty hard on the sinuses.

I finally learned the solution to the Cocktail Sauce Mystery during a family outing. We were celebrating some forgotten family event at a local steak house. This was in the days before coloring-book-kiddie-menus, so to my little brother, restaurant dining was only a treat if the restaurant in question served cheeseburgers and ice cream. I, on the other hand, have loved dining at fine restaurants as long as I can remember. For a skinny little kid, I was a big eater and fascinated with the variety of foods. I'd been ordering from the adult menu from the time I was six years old, and there was still so much left to try.

This particular trip to the steak house lives in my memory because, when the server took our drink orders, my father ordered a scotch and an appetizer: a shrimp cocktail. Before the dish arrived, I was intrigued. He ordered it with scotch. Did that mean it really was used in a drink? Was my father about to sip some bizarre concoction of cocktail sauce, puréed shrimp, and scotch?

Today, of course, I realize how mundane an appetizer the shrimp cocktail is, but at the time it fascinated me: a chilled parfait glass half-filled with cocktail sauce, its lip supporting a ring of big-shouldered shrimp. At least, they looked like shrimp. These were each as large as Dad's middle finger—a lot bigger than the ones that came out of the grocery store freezer cases. After watching in fascination as he devoured shrimp after shrimp, I finally worked up the nerve to ask for a bite. With two shrimp still hanging from the glass, Dad smiled and pushed the dish over to me, "Go to town."

The shrimp were ice cold, cold enough that it was obviously intentional. I was stunned. Sure, the condensation on the glass should have been a clue, but I didn't expect cold shrimp. I thought shrimp had to be cooked. Had this been cooked? I'd never seen raw shrimp, so it certainly seemed possible. I may have asked. I don't recall. I do recall the crisp meatiness of the shrimp. They were so good—the coefficient of shrimpiness so high—that I completely forgot to try it with the sauce. In one bite, shrimp had evolved in my world from barely edible rubbery little worm-things to a bold, flavorful treat. In ensuing years, every time we went to a restaurant, I scanned the menu for shrimp cocktail. I was surprised at the variations. Cocktail sauces sometimes contained chili, onions, scallions, lettuce, garlic, or honey. The shrimp might be twice as big as the ones I'd first seen or not much bigger than kidney beans.

Over the next few years, I also began looking through menus for shrimp anything and anything shrimp. They were everywhere: broiled, fried, sautéed, poached, barbecued. I discovered garlicky scampis, crispy-fringed grilled shrimp, fiery shrimp gumbo, sparkling citrusy ceviche, politely savory shrimp newburg, and assertive shrimp bisque. With that one order, my father had forced the evolution of shrimp in my world.

Otherworldly Shrimp


Traveling on the U.S. Navy's dime, I had opportunities to sample foods in Japan, Thailand, Korea, Australia, and the Philippines. In Thailand, as in the Philippines, the majority of my shipmates were more interested in the available sexual entertainments than in the local cuisine, but a few of us spent a good chunk of our personal funds on trips to sundry restaurants.

Two things I learned right away about Thai food: they like it hot and they like it sweet. A lot has been made in recent years about the purported Thai balance of salty, sour, sweet, and hot, but trust me, for every ounce of salty and sour, you get three of sweet and hot. I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise. Sweet and hot elements are addictive.

In support of that love of sweet and hot, you usually find on the tables in the restaurants in Sriracha a bottle or bowl of red sauce made of puréed sun-ripened chilis, garlic, sugar, vinegar, and salt. The Thai brands are all hot, all sweet, and all just a bit different from one another. Most brands come in two strengths: medium (hot) and strong (liable to raise blisters). I watched the locals use the sauce on all manner of seafoods: crabs, clams, and shrimp.

Back in the states, I noticed that we have only one brand of Sriracha sauce. You see it more frequently in Vietnamese than Thai restaurants—probably because Thai diners consider the Huy Fong stuff too mild.

This dish is not authentically Thai. My green mango salad lacks three elements I saw in every green mango salad I had in Thailand: peanuts, fish sauce, and dried shrimp. I left those items out because I think the dish matches better with the shrimp this way.

Broiled Sriracha Shrimp with Sesame Vermicelli Cakes and Green Mango Salad

(serves four)

shrimp
one and a half pounds shrimp (20 per pound or larger)
one half cup peanut oil
two tablespoons seasoned rice wine vinegar
three tablespoons Sriracha
two tablespoons dark soy sauce
three tablespoons honey

cakes
one pound cooked egg vermicelli
two tablespoons peanut oil

noodle sauce
one quarter cup sesame oil
two tablespoons cashew butter*
one tablespoon Sriracha

salad
one green mango, peeled and shredded
one jalapeño chili, seeded and thinly sliced
one half cup seasoned rice wine vinegar
one half cup water
one half cup thinly sliced romaine
one scallion
one teaspoon sesame oil

*cashew butter
one pound roasted and unsalted cashews
one quarter cup peanut oil
one tablespoon granulated sugar
one teaspoon salt

quality of ingredients

Shrimp has to be fresh, but most grocers really don't give customers an opportunity to verify the freshness of the shrimp. To do that, you have to touch it. You have to verify that the legs are intact, the shells aren't paper-thin, and the flesh isn't mushy. So you go into the store and ask for a pound and a half of shrimp, and the fishmonger slips on a plastic glove and scoops up a handful of shrimp and stuffs them in a bag. Usually, if you tell them you don't want any soft ones or any with papery shells, they'll oblige you. Otherwise, you'll likely be throwing away shrimp when you get home.

I'm probably being lazy with the rice wine vinegar. I like the quantity of sugar and salt in the Marukan seasoned rice wine vinegar (I use it in my sushi rice, too), so why bother calculating sugar and salt for myself?

Huy Fong sells the only Sriracha sauce in the U.S. It's the brand with a rooster on the bottle.

I like a thick, dark soy sauce for this marinade. If I were really trying to be authentically Thai, I'd have used nam pla instead.

I always buy local honey. Don't misunderstand: I think homeopathy is a load of road apples. Local honey is less processed than the Big Brand slop, so it tastes better.

I'm a big fan of fresh pasta, and I'll have to try frying some home-made vermicelli, sometime. For this dish, I used a dry egg vermicelli, and it worked brilliantly.

I suppose I could buy cashew butter, but it's pretty easy to make. I also find that most cashew butters sold in grocery stores (usually sold in the bulk foods) is a bit too oily. If you own a food processor, make your own. It only takes five minutes.

Green mango is a reference to the ripeness, not the actual color of the skin. Red, green, yellow will all work. For this salad, you want a mango that's as solid as oak.

For the pickled chili, use one large jalapeño. You could easily substitute a large Fresno or a red or green fingerhot. If you like your chilis really hot, the pickled jalapeño will disappoint you. For more heat, substitute three serranos. For a lot more heat, substitute four Thai bird chilis.

The romaine lettuce is a trick I learned from a local Thai restaurant. In Thailand they use sprouts or cucumbers (I actually prefer cucumbers, but the girls don't care for them).

preparation notes

The following instructions are written in the order in which I last prepared these dishes. You can simplify this process slightly by making the cashew butter and pickling the chili in advance. Here's a quick outline of the steps to follow:

Marinate the shrimp
Boil the noodles
Pickle the chili
Prepare the cashew butter
Blend the noodle sauce
Preheat the broiler
Toss the salad
Fry the noodles
Broil the shrimp
Dress the salad
Plate the meal

Mix the peanut oil, seasoned rice wine vinegar, Sriracha, dark soy sauce, and honey and whisk them until smooth. Stir in the shrimp and let them marinate for one hour. With a large spoon, turn the shrimp over every ten minutes or so to ensure the best possible coverage of the shrimp. That hour gives you plenty of time to boil the noodles and pickle the chili for the salad.

Boil the noodles to just barely al dente (about three minutes for dry vermicelli, two minutes for fresh). Rinse the noodles with cold water (you don't want them to cook any further) and drain them thoroughly.

Half-fill a large bowl (large enough to hold a small sauce pan) with ice and add a cup or so of cold water. In a small sauce pan, mix the half cup of vinegar and half cup of water and bring the liquid to a boil. Drop the sliced chili into the boiling liquid and immediately remove it from the flame. Cool the sauce pan in the bowl of ice.

If you're making your own cashew butter, in a food processor, process the cashews, peanut oil, sugar, and salt until smooth (about three to five minutes).

In a blender, combine a quarter cup sesame oil, two tablespoons cashew butter, and one tablespoon of the Sriracha and blend the ingredients until smooth. This is for the noodle sauce.

Preheat your broiler to 500F.

Remove the chili slices from the pickling liquid with a fork or slotted spoon, and reserve a quarter cup of the pickling liquid. In a non-reactive bowl, toss the mango, lettuce, scallions, and chili slices.

In a skillet (I've done this in both a cast iron skillet and a non-stick skillet—both work just fine) over a medium flame, heat one tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking. Pour the cooked noodles into the hot oil, forming them into a disc. I found this easiest to do with my fingers: take a handful of noodles at a time and scatter them evenly in a circular swirl. The disc of noodles should be roughly three-quarters of an inch thick. Press them down slightly with a spatula and allow them to fry, undisturbed, until golden-brown and crisp on one side (about six minutes). Flip the noodles by placing a plate over the cake and turning the skillet over. Return the skillet to the flame, pour in a second tablespoon of peanut oil, and slide the noodle cake back into the skillet. Fry the noodles, undisturbed, for an additional five minutes or until golden-brown.

Skewer the shrimp and broil them for two minutes on each side.

Dress the mango salad with the reserved chili pickling liquid and a sprinkling of sesame oil. Toss the salad once more before plating.


To plate this dish: slice the noodle cake. I fried my noodles in a small skillet, this time, and half a cake was about right for a single serving. If you use a larger skillet, you might want to slice the cake, pizza-style, into fourths or sixths. Drizzle a few stripes of the noodle sauce over each serving of fried noodle. A squeeze-type ketchup bottle works well for this. Using a fork, slide the shrimp off the skewers and onto the noodle cakes. Add a scoop of mango salad on the side.

Purity of Essence

Dichotomies
When he was a young man, my father was a steak purist. In recent years, he's done a good deal of experimentation with food and cooking, so I don't know if his attitude about beef has survived the years. When I was a child, it seemed that the least little variation in a meal could initiate Dad's launch sequence into his disquisition On Absolute Steakness: the Proper Preparation and Eating of Beef Steak.

Steak had to be well-marbled, cooked medium-rare, and properly seasoned. Any degree of doneness further than medium-rare was burnt and ruined. Properly seasoned meant liberally salted and peppered (black pepper only) prior to grilling. Only an idiot would ruin a good steak by applying any foreign spice, herb, or sauce. Toppings were acceptable but only sautéed mushrooms or onions or both. Marinades were for game meats only. After a business dinner, my father once complained that he'd had to scrape some goopy sauce off his steak. Only a troglodyte would hide the flavor of a fine cut of meat under a sauce. Dad believed French chefs were all either troglodytes or vegetarians with a mission to make everyone hate beef.

Once I was away from home, I began to experiment with foods, but it was several years before I convinced myself that I really should test Dad's Theory of Absolute Steakness.

In all fairness, I have struggled with my own attitude toward fine meats for many years. Dad's purist line made sense to me. On the surface it makes perfect sense: sauce your steak and you'll taste the sauce and smother the subtle nuances of steaky goodness. In many cases, I believe this is true. I had a Beef Wellington once in Denver that was sauced tableside. The sauce was delicious, but tenderloin is a mild meat. Also, one excellent reason for adding sauce to many dishes—chicken breast, veal, lean pork, many varieties of fish—is to provide moisture. I like my tenderloin rare, though, so my Beef Wellington didn't need any additional moisture. So, yes, in that case the sauce ruined my steak.

On the other hand, grilled flank steak is better with a well-balanced chimichurri; the subtle flavor of tenderloin blooms under the influence of Gorgonzola butter; hot spice rubs focus the sweetness of the marbling in rib eye. In short, sometimes the sauce on a steak is the good guy.

The advertising agency for a popular steak sauce—the one supposedly named for a compliment from King George IV—has argued for many years that their client's product enhances the flavor of steak. In fact, they have long implied an the enhancement is to such a degree that those in the know would never think of eating steak without said royally approved sauce. Frankly, with respect to their client, they're wrong. In my opinion, that sauce completely obliterates every flavor component of steak save the texture. I mention these ads, however, not to ridicule a popular condiment (well, not solely) but because I believe the theory behind the ads to be a truism: the job of any sauce is to enhance a particular food.

So the purists are right insofar as some meats don't require any sauce, but the purists are wrong insofar as a sauce that enhances the flavor of a meat is good. Honestly, I doubt that any meat is so perfect that no sauce can enhance it. Consider the Japanese gourmand eating Wagyu beef sashimi—few will eat it without sauce of some sort.

The Fish Purist

I haven't met too many fish purists. Granted, grilled tuna and swordfish steaks can stand alone (alone as in sauceless, not alone as in without accompaniment) as long as they're not overcooked. Most fish needs something to provide a bit of moisture and maybe a bit of flavor enhancement.

At least, that's my opinion.

Girltzik quietly disagrees. She scrapes my mango salsa off of her mahi mahi filets, the orange/chipotle reduction off of her salmon, the water-chestnut vinaigrette off her albacore. She usually doesn't scrape off Hollandaise, and she likes just about anything soy-based, so my teriyakis she eats as served.

She typically hides her scraping activities behind a book, and she always has a book up in front of her dinner plate. I usually find out only when she takes her mostly-empty plate to the sink and notice that the one thing remaining is a pile of the toppings. Relishes and salsas appear to be on her Particularly Unacceptable list.

I was not surprised, then, to see her dumping a quarter-cup of my sweet-tomato tapenade into the disposal. In addition to prefering her fish steaks naked, Girltzik is none too fond of capers.

*sigh*

Ah well. This is my riff on darne de thon rouge à la provençale (tuna steak the way they do it in Provençe). Princess V and I devoured ours. It was delicious.



Half-seared Ahi Tuna Steak with Sweet Tomato Tapenade and a Side of Pan-Roasted Broccoli

(serves three)

dramatis personae

two tablespoons olive oil
three half-inch-thick, five-ounce ahi tuna steaks

tapenade
one pint strawberry tomatoes, quartered
one half cup Niçoise or Kalamata olives, pitted
one third cup basil, rough-chopped
two anchovy filets
two tablespoons non-pareil capers

one broccoli crown, cut into spears
one sprig green garlic
juice of one lemon

quality of ingredients

See Undiscovering Fire for my quality notes on tuna.

The tomato market has really exploded lately, including a number of fruity, sweet cultivars. If you can't find strawberry tomatoes, look for super-sweet, seriously sweet, or sweet 100s. If none of those are available at your grocer, cherub or cherry tomatoes will do.

Niçoise olives were my first choice (the idea was to stay with Provençal ingredients), but they tend to be harder to find. Kalamatas are a bit oily for this application. Otherwise, both have their charms. Niçoise are nutty. Kalamatas have a winy flavor.

As I've said before, just about any brand of capers should be okay, but I wouldn't recommend the Alessi brand capers packed in white balsamic vinegar. You want tart and salty, not sweet. Taste the capers before you use them. If they're too salty, rinse them and soak them in white vinegar for a while before you use them.

I remember the first time—in some little out-of-the-way pizzeria near Chicago—that I got a bite of anchovy. It was on a pizza with everything. That first little taste of salty fishiness overcame every other flavor and utterly derailed my appetite. Bleah. I doubt that I will ever comprehend the anchovy pizza. I suppose it's like explaining the charm of stinky cheese to someone who doesn't like stinky cheese. Still, over the years I have learned that a little anchovy, mashed and incorporated with other ingredients, can provide a subtle taste of Mediterranean breeze. I keep a jar of anchovy filets (packed in olive oil) in my cupboard.

The broccoli crown should be green or green and purple and the florets should be firm and tight.

If you can't get green garlic, substitute one garlic clove, crushed or minced.

preparation notes

Salt and pepper one side of each tuna steak and set them aside.

Mash the anchovy filets on a small plate with the back of a spoon until the bones are entirely crushed.

If you're using Kalamata olives, press them between paper towels to remove a bit of the excess oil.

Combine the tomatoes, olives, anchovy, and basil in a food processor and process the ingredients until the largest bits are no more than three times as big as the capers. In our machine that took about five seconds. Pour the ingredients into a bowl and mix in the capers.

Over a medium-high flame, heat two tablespoons of olive oil to smoking in a stainless steel sauté pan or cast-iron skillet. Place the broccoli spears in the oil so that each spear has one entire side down on the hot oil and salt them. Let the broccoli spears cook without moving them until they just begin to change color (the green will begin to brighten). Once the color starts changing, you can begin checking the spears for browning. I use chopsticks, but tongs or a small spatula will work. Once all of the spears show some brown, turn them over and brown the opposite side. (Well, another side, anyway. Broccoli isn't exactly rectangular.)

Add in the green garlic, and sauté the vegetables continually for thirty seconds. You want the flavor of the garlic to bloom, but you don't want it to brown. Turn off the flame, pour the lemon juice over the vegetables, and cover. Remove the pan from the burner but don't uncover it. This is, incidentally, one of those moments that makes me want to spend more time in the kitchen. The instant lemon juice flashes to steam, the aromatics from the citrus, broccoli, and garlic engulf you and flood your nostrils. You will salivate, and you will thank me for introducing you to this experience.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil to smoking in a non-stick skillet. Place the tuna steaks, seasoned side down, in the hot oil. Once the steaks are cooked through one-third of their thickness, remove the steaks from the skillet. Plate the steaks, uncooked side up, and cover each with the tomato tapenade. Plate the broccoli or transfer it to a bowl if you'd rather serve it family-style.

The Beauty in the Beast

He Ain't Heavy

Back in 1997, Richard Rhodes published the brilliant Deadly Feasts, a study of the evolution of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, also called mad cow disease. Princess V read it and convinced me to do so as well. A well-written book about a fascinating topic, Deadly Feasts is also something of a deal-killer when it comes to beef consumption. Basically, the BSE threat comes down to three problems.

First, you can't see it coming. If the beef you're eating is infected, you can't see it, smell it, or taste it.

Second, the first symptoms are a death sentence. Once the prions begin to affect your brain, you're well on your way to brain damage and death.

Third, the USDA has been overwhelmingly slow and mind-numbingly stupid in its responses to BSE dangers. Preventing the spread entails essentially just two restrictions, but those restrictions have to be enforced absolutely: (1) no meat (especially not beef) can be fed to cattle and (2) downer cows—cows showing symptoms of BSE—have to be destroyed and not not not fed to anyone or anything.

So we don't eat a whole lot of beef in our house. Some, yes. Girltzik is fond of barbecued brisket and likes my oyster beef. Princess V likes pasta and meatballs. I like an occasional prime rib or some fajitas or maybe a bit of stroganoff. A few months back, I had an outstanding osso buco at a local Italian restaurant (Siena).

Okay, it's not exactly an out-and-out boycott, but compared to the way we ate when I was a kid, I may as well be a vegan. Growing up, I ate at least a couple of burgers every week. Pot roast showed up every week or two. Meatloaf, beef stew, and meatballs also made regular appearances.

Most important of all, my father believed in steak at least once a week—preferably grilled or broiled. Steak had a limited range of meaning for Dad: porterhouse, t-bone, rib-eye, rib steak, and tenderloin all qualified. Top sirloin was something you put in stews. Chuck, blade, seven-bone, and round never got more than a sneer. I think Dad considered steak—good steak—a measure of his overall financial health. Dad spent a portion of his childhood in poverty, so it was not uncommon for him to refuse various foodstuffs (rice-and-beans, collard or turnip greens, stew meat, grits, organ meats of all kinds) because they were "poor folk food." Steak was Dad's anti-poverty food—his middle-class status indicator. If we were eating steak, we clearly were not poor.

Princess V says the steak-as-status-symbol attitude is generational, that her father felt the same way. "Eating steak meant we were upper-middle-class."

These days, I rarely think about steaks, and I can't remember the last time I had a real rib-eye craving. What I've found in the past several years of limited beef consumption is that steak—no matter how beautifully marbled, no matter how well prepared—makes me logy. If I limit my intake to four or five ounces, I can avoid this problem. Sure. Stop after five ounces of juicy, prime cut rib-eye. Just say no to crack.

This week was almost one of those rare exceptions. I had been thinking about sauces. Last week I tried a vermouth Hollandaise on chicken breast. It was okay but a little lacking in sparkle. Next time, I'll try reducing the vermouth and adding some fresh thyme or sorrel. Along this same thought train, I came up with another variation I wanted to try: Côtes du Rhône black pepper Hollandaise. Côtes du Rhône is a fruity blended red wine that works beautifully in pan sauces because it concentrates without becoming overly sweet (like Merlot), bitter (Zinfandel), or tart (Cabernet Sauvignon, Burgundy, and many more).

I realized immediately that I wanted to pair this sauce with buffalo. If you enjoy flavorful beef, you should try American buffalo. It tastes quite a bit like concentrated beef without the least hint of gaminess. Be aware, however, that preparing buffalo differs in many respects from preparing beef. With the internationalization of Kobe beef and Wagyu beef, it's old news that the most flavorful cuts of beef are those with the highest fat content. In beef, marbling equals flavor. Buffalo, on the other hand, is ultra lean and yet manages to taste more intensely flavorful than beef. I don't know for certain, but I would guess the buffalo meat is higher in glutamines.

The lack of marbling may have no negative effect on the flavor of buffalo, but it does make the meat tough and chewy. This is enough of a problem that many cooks just surrender and grind the meat to hamburger which allows them to add beef fat.

Another solution—my solution of choice—is to slice the meat very thin and across the grain. If you slice it thin enough, the chewiness actually becomes something of a virtue in that it allows you to savor the meat without making it a chore to eat.

When I told Princess V what we were having for dinner, her eyebrows formed a couple of question marks. It was one of those looks that seemed to be asking, hmmm, how much do I have to eat to be polite?. She later admitted that she didn't expect to like the buffalo, but she kept an open mind and let it surprise her. Buffalo, because it doesn't rely on fat for its flavor, is savory without making you feel heavy.

The Girltzik also enjoyed the buffalo, but I think she was better pre-disposed toward it. She'd walked through the kitchen while I was slicing the meat. When she saw what I was preparing, she said, "Oh, we're having beef?"

"Nope. Buffalo."

"Buffalo! That is so intense."

I think she was looking forward to bragging to her friends about the way cool adventurous dinner she had.

I accompanied the buffalo with two sides: fried red potatoes tossed with bacon and white cheddar and a sauté of cremini mushrooms with green garlic.

Seared buffalo strip loin with Côtes du Rhône black pepper Hollandaise

(serves three)

dramatis personae

one tablespoon peanut oil
one pound buffalo strip loin
salt
black pepper

sauce
one cup Côtes du Rhône
one half teaspoon cracked black pepper
two egg yolks
one quarter cup melted butter

quality of ingredients

Buffalo steaks won't be marbled, so look for dark red, almost purple meat with no hint of brown and no dry spots.

The typical Côtes du Rhône costs between $10 and $15 per 750 ml, but that covers a lot of blends of varying qualities. If you don't happen to have a favorite Côtes du Rhône, go to a market with a knowledgeable staff and ask for advice.

Black pepper should be fresh-cracked for freshness. It loses pungency rapidly after cracking.

preparation notes

Preheat the oven to 275F.

My thanks to the folks at America's Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated for working out the basics of this process for searing steaks. The goal of this technique is a crispy brown exterior, a warm red heart, and no overcooked band of grey meat in between. If you don't pre-dry the steaks in the oven, the moisture near the surface acts like a heat sink, slowing the searing process.

Trim off the fat and cut the strip steak into two or three cubes (three if the strip's length is closer to three times its width; two if the ratio is closer to two to one). Liberally season the cubes with salt and pepper. On a wire rack over a broiler pan or cookie sheet, bake the meat at 275F for twenty minutes or until it reaches 90F in the center. This will dry out the surface of the steaks and parcook the center, which allows you to sear the steaks quickly.

In a cast-iron skillet, heat a tablespoon of peanut oil to smoking. Sear the steaks on one side for one minute. Flip the steaks and sear them on the other side for one minute. With a pair of tongs, rotate the steaks to sear them on the four remaining faces (twenty or thirty seconds each side).

Tent the steaks with foil and let them rest for ten minutes. This will allow the juices to redistribute so that less is lost when you slice them.

In a sauce pan, reduce one cup of Côtes du Rhône to two tablespoons of liquid.

Follow my directions for basic Hollandaise sauce, with the following substitutions:

two egg yolks instead of four
one quarter cup butter instead of one half cup
reduced Côtes du Rhône in lieu of lemon juice
black pepper in lieu of white

Slice the steaks very thin (about three-sixteenths of an inch thick), and drizzle them with the Hollandaise.

Flesh for Fantasy

Salmon of the Steppes

Steak tartare was supposed to have been named for a Tatar practice of eating raw meat. Also supposedly, this practice was born of necessity. The demanding lifestyle of nomadic raiders didn't allow time for stopping to cook and eat a semi-formal sit-down dinner. Taras Bulba and his buds had to eat on the run. If this is true, the original steak tartare was likely more often horse meat than beef.

If you've never had steak tartare, the feral, rapacious rep of the Tatars coupled with the fact that the primary ingredient in steak tartare is raw meat, probably make the dish sound pretty bloody. It's hard not to picture a Tatar on horseback, wind whipping through the fur of his hat as he tears bloody gobbets of meat from a t-bone. In truth, steak tartare is not bloody—it's not even a true red. With the addition of such traditional ingredients as Worcestershire sauce and Dijon mustard, steak tartare is more of a reddish-brown.

Recent decades have seen the term tartare applied to just about any sort of chopped raw flesh. I've had tartares of venison, buffalo, tuna, salmon, halibut, red snapper, and beef. I have mixed feelings about this expansion of the meaning of tartare. On the one hand, it seems a bit unimaginative. On the other hand, what's not to love about the mental image of our weathered, sword-wielding Tatar whipping a salmon from his saddle pack and tearing it open with his teeth? Tatar as grizzly bear.

Meanwhile Back in the Real World

My version of salmon tartare is pretty traditional in many respects: shallot, dill, tarragon vinegar, capers, and a crispy crouton as a base. My one big departure is that, instead of the traditional wrap of smoked salmon, I serve mine in bacon rings. I settled on this recipe about six years ago, and I have never seen any reason to alter it.

Salmon tartare in bacon rings on crostini

(serves three)

dramatis personae

tartare
one pound salmon filet, skin and brown flesh removed
one medium shallot, finely diced
one quarter cup cup non-pareil capers
one quarter cup dill, minced
two table spoons tarragon vinegar

rings
twelve strips center cut bacon

crostini
one dense baguette, sliced thin
one quarter cup extra-virgin olive oil

quality of ingredients

Allow me, yet again, to sing the praises of sock-eye salmon. Sock-eye is redder than most salmon and also sweeter. If sock-eye is unavailable, king salmon, usually a bit more expensive, is meatier than sock-eye but delicious nonetheless. My next choice (over either coho or Atlantic salmon) isn't actually salmon, but steelhead (an ocean-running variety of rainbow trout) is richer than king salmon and almost as sweet as sock-eye. Ultimately, though, I'll take the freshest salmon available. For the tartare in these pictures, I used coho. The fishmonger had steelhead, but it was too fatty and not quite as fresh as the coho.

preparation notes

Primarily, as I said before, the tartare is pretty simple: dice the solid ingredients and mix them. In order to maintain a uniform consistency, I recommend dicing the shallot and salmon so that the pieces are about the same size as your capers.

I suppose it might be possible to make bacon rings in the oven, but the microwave does a much better job because it allows you to sandwich the strips between paper towels to wick away the grease. You'll want to do this in two stages.

First, on a microwave-safe plate, sandwich the bacon strips between layers of paper towels. Microwave the strips on high for four minutes or so. This will vary by microwave oven; you want the bacon almost fully cooked but still pliable.


Second, make three forms for the rings by rolling paper towels into cylinders roughly an inch and a half in diameter. Wrap four bacon strips around each form and wrap another two layers of paper towel around the bacon. Microwave the rings until crispy.


To free the rings from the forms, pinch both ends of the form and twist them along the long axis. Once the bacon releases the paper, you can slide the rings off the form.


The crostini are blissfully simple. Brush a thin layer of extra-virgin olive oil on each slice of baguette, lay them out on a cookie sheet and toast them under the broiler for about three minutes, turning them every minute or until golden-brown.

To serve, place each bacon ring on a crostino and fill the ring with tartare.

As I type, I just finished four of these, and I'm stuffed.

Undiscovering Fire

Eat Me Raw

I don't remember the first time I heard about sushi, sashimi, or tartare, but I'm pretty sure that I was thoroughly disgusted by the thought of eating fish or beef raw. I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Colorado. These days, it's difficult to relate to some of the attitudes of that era in Middle America: fish, like poultry, was supposed to be fully-cooked, and no meat was served raw. If you tried to order a salmon steak medium rare, you'd have drawn sneers. Undercooked salmon was considered a surefire ticket to the emergency room. And seared tuna? Tuna came in cans. No one served tuna in fine restaurants.

I do remember—vividly—the first time someone offered me raw fish. My submarine had stopped over in Hawaii, and I was visiting my parents who were then living on a hillside overlooking Honolulu. My father, always the gregarious one, had invited a number of friends and coworkers over for a feast of grilled whole Dungeness crabs. One guest, a large islander named Frank, had been deep-sea fishing that morning and had been lucky enough to land a huge marlin. Frank arrived carrying a huge platter mounded with half-inch-thick, two-inch square scraps of raw marlin. Translucent verging on transparency, the flesh looked like chips of sparkling, faintly pink glass. Frank set out dipping bowls of soy mixed with (nope, not wasabi) Chinese hot mustard.

"I hope you folks are sashimi-eaters," Frank said, dipping a piece of fish in the sauce and popping it into his mouth, "'cause I brought five pounds."

"Oh, hell yes," said my dad, tossing a piece of the fish into his mouth on his way out to the grill. At the door, he turned to me and told me I should try a bit of it. "I don't know if you've ever had sashimi, but this stuff is The Shit."

No, I'd never had sashimi—nor had I ever tried sushi or any kind of tartare. Nor, for that matter was I too keen to try any of these raw dishes—the very concept tickled my gag reflex—but Dad's comments had short-circuited my plans to mingle and avoid the sashimi platter. Now, though, I felt that everyone in the room would be watching to see my reaction to The Shit.

Ah well. I was sure I could stomach a single bite of raw fish. If it was too nasty, I could always just wash it down with wine. Lots of wine. Plus, there was all that grilled crab. I'd survive the fish.

Raw marlin, if you've never had it, is tender yet toothsome and has a meaty, slightly sweet flavor. I didn't taste anything that I associated with fish or fishiness except a mild aftertaste reminiscent of cool ocean breezes.

Dad was right. Frank's marlin sashimi was indeed The Shit. I was hooked. I ate half of Frank's sashimi. Five-foot-ten and—in those days—a hundred twenty-five pounds, I ate two and a half pounds of raw fish and a whole Dungeness crab in a single afternoon. My father, who was always sharing with friends and family epic tales of my prodigious appetite, would later report that I had eaten three fourths of the sashimi and two grill crabs. Ridiculous, but I believe I did also consume a baked potato and some salad at that get together.

I vaguely recollect that we all enjoyed the grilled crab, but nearly thirty years later, the only flavor I still recall with clarity from that day is the marlin sashimi. As tasty as the soy and mustard mix was with the marlin, I found myself using less and less of the sauce as I ate my way across that platter. Toward the end, I was eating unadulterated marlin sashimi and wondering why I hadn't been eating like this all my life.

Over the next few years, I surrendered myself to every available opportunity to sample raw-fish and raw-meat dishes. Lucky for me, that era (the 1980s) was the Age of the Sushi Bar. In fact, experimentation with world cuisines was just beginning to take hold in the U.S., so by the time I was twenty-five, I'd sampled all manner of sushi and sashimi, several varieties of poke, and traditional and sundry variations on carpaccio and tartare.

Death Awaits

[Begin quasi-libertarian rant.]

Pardon my schoolyard slang, but when it comes to food, Americans are a bunch of pussies. Our markets sell us beef with instructions to overcook it. We're warned to limit our intake of all the best varieties of fish for fear of building up systemic mercury. We even have laws against importing non-pasteurized cheese, making some of the finest cheeses in Europe unavailable in the United States. Just last week I saw the latest online article decrying the dangers of modern foodstuffs: the ten most dangerous foods, or some such rot.

Okay, yes, eating raw or rare meat and fish entails some risks. Okay, yes, nearly all of our foodstuff—vegetable matter and animal flesh alike—have natural parasites, and some of those parasites can be passed on to us, potentially causing illness and, on occasion, even death. Okay, yes, cooking all of our food to leather will ensure that most of those parasites are no threat.

I'm surprised the warning stickers on the meat packages don't also advise grinding our meat to pablum to eliminate any potential choking hazard.

Life is risk. Each year in the U.S., thirty-nine thousand people die in automobile accidents. We could reduce that number by outlawing alcohol, setting all the speed limits down at 25 mph, and forcing anyone who can do so to take public transportation. Somehow, I don't expect to see any of these measures enacted any time in the near future.

Similarly, we could reduce the five thousand annual deaths in the U.S. from food-borne toxins by refusing to eat raw meat, fish, and eggs. Such a prohibition would only eliminate about 500 deaths each year. Deaths would still occur due to mishandling of crops and produce, inadequate refrigeration, and poor storage. I've made it pretty clear that I'm an avid fan of raw meat and fish preparations. Ironically, the one time in my life that I suffered salmonella was from improperly stored tuna salad made with fully-cooked tuna and eggs. My ex-wife suffered a severe case of salmonella—hers was from escargot (also fully-cooked) at a restaurant in Idaho.

If you were expecting one of those safety disclaimers telling you that this and that food safety expert sez not to do what I'm about to tell you how to do—well, this is as close as you'll get from me.

[End rant.]

Tartare Theory

In some ways, tartares are pretty simple. Chop up some meat or fish and mix in some flavor ingredients. Cooking is usually unnecessary, and the knife work is pretty tame.Essentially, tartares offer three challenges: texture, flavor balance, and presentation.

The texture problem is that chopped meat or fish is a bit on the mushy side, especially after you add flavoring liquids. The traditional methods for correcting for mushiness work best: include crunchy, fresh, diced vegetables in the tartare and serve it with chips, toasts points, croutons, or crackers. To avoid sogginess, you have to be careful to keep the dry crunchies separate from the tartare until it's ready to serve.

Flavor balance can be tricky. Raw fish and beef are subtle, so their flavor is easily lost. Far too many tuna tartare preparations taste like nothing but soy and wasabi. Soy and wasabi pair pretty well with tuna, too much of anything can overwhelm the dish. I've found that it's safest to start with too little of everything but the main ingredient and slowly add more until you reach a balance you like.

I know some home cooks poo-pooh presentation, but when you're serving tartare you have to do something to keep it from looking like something the cat gacked up on the plate. Many solutions present themselves: mold it, garnish it, top it, sandwich it, or use a combination of these techniques. Make it look like something worth eating.

This latest tartare was inspired by a challenge I saw recently in reality television: create an haute cuisine taco. Toward that end I created a Tex-Mex tuna tartare. I accompanied these tacos with pickled onions (a popular side in the Yucatan) and cherub tomatoes in avocado cream (avodaco, roasted garlic, lime juice, and extra-virgin olive oil). I felt something with avocado was necessary to counter the heat of the chipotle in the tuna.

Tuna tartare tacos

(serves three)

dramatis personae

one pound tuna, diced (1/4 inch dice)
one quarter cup finely diced sweet onion
two tablespoons lime juice
two chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
one tablespoon adobo sauce
one tablesoon orange juice
two tablespoons minced cilantro
pinch of sea salt

six corn tortillas

quality of ingredients

Raw tuna has to be glistening, ruby-toned, slightly translucent. The fish should not be bruised or separating and should not smell fishy or of ammonia. If your fishmonger carries sashimi-grade tuna, get it. Yellow fin, blue fin, or big eye will all work equally well. Albacore is too soft. If you use blue fin, the color may vary across a steak from dark, blood red to a salmony orange. This is normal.

With fish, I prefer yellow-skinned varieties of sweet onion: Vidalia, 1015, Maui, or Walla Walla.

I recently began using canned chipotle peppers, which are typically packed in adobo sauce (tomato sauce with onions and a bit of sugar). The adobo sauce really brings out both the heat and the smokiness of the chipotle peppers. It also greatly simplifies preparation. If you just can't bring yourself to use canned peppers and have access to dried chiplotles (most grocery stores here in Austin have them), you'll need to braise the peppers for about twenty minutes in tomato sauce with a quarter cup of onion.

preparation notes

Preheat your oven to 400F.

In a capacious glass or ceramic bowl, combine the onion, cilantro, and citrus juices. With a spoon, press the chipotle peppers and adobo sauce through a fine-mesh strainer or chinois (this strains out the pepper skin and seeds and the solid bits of cooked onion in the adobo sauce).

Tuna preparation for tartare differs slightly from salmon or beef. If you chop the tuna much smaller than quarter-inch chunks, they get mealy. After dicing the tuna, carefully sift through and remove any white fibrous connective tissue.

Mix the tuna in with the other ingredients and add salt to taste.

Lightly brush both sides of the tortillas with peanut oil and arrange them on a baking sheet so that they do not overlap. I wanted a more rustic look and chose to break my tortillas after baking them. If you want triangles or cleanly cut halves, cut them before baking. Once the over is at temperature, bake the tortillas on a center rack for ten minutes or until golden brown.

Arachnophilia

My first wife had a fear of spiders.

No.

My first wife engaged in a fear of spiders. She played—she savored—she revelled in her fear of spiders. She swaddled herself in her fear of spiders and wore it—sported it proudly, like a uniform. Arachnophobia was a defining element of the woman's ego. She positively percolated while sharing the details of her phobia with new acquaintances—boasted of it as though it were her greatest accomplishment.

Once, while I was at work, she sat on a couch for six hours, watching a tiny dark mote on a far wall. Her eyesight was none too keen, and she had been reading, so her glasses were in another room. Had the dot moved? Just a bit? She was certain it had moved, so she couldn't get up and go to the bathroom. If she looked away the tiny potential-spider would surely scurry across the ceiling and drop into her hair. So there she sat, most of the day, staring uncertainly at Schrödinger's spider, trying to ignore her increasingly insistent bladder.

When I got home, she sat hugging a pillow, pointing a shaking forefinger at the far wall. I glanced at the offending mark and informed her that she was pointing at a nail hole. Two days before, she'd removed an ugly painting and hadn't put anything up in its place. She promptly sprinted to the bathroom.

One of the sillier aspects of this phobia was her refusal to eat crab.

I suppose I could almost understand a refusal to touch something that reminds you of a thing you find frightening, but she wouldn't even consider crab cakes, crab salad, crab soup. She would eat shrimp and lobster, but she didn't even like to sit at the same table as someone who was eating crab. She would sneer when the order was placed and shiver with disgust when it was delivered. Every time the individual took a bite of the crab, she would grimace or quietly (but audibly) ugh or ew.

I guess it comes as no surprise that I never told her about the time I had eaten barbecued tarantula. (Just the abdomen, which is remarkably firm and has a flavor similar to rock shrimp.)

I don't get it. I'm frightened by creatures that look vaguely like that food item, so I can't possibly eat it. My ex was the only person I've ever heard refuse crab based on arachnophobia. In my experience, the object of disgust is typically shrimp, crawfish, or lobsters. Almost invariably, the individual expressing displeasure uses the word bugs to encapsulate their sense of disgust.

Me? I adore crab. I love that sweetness and the marvelous range of flavors and textures among the various varieties of crab. Princess V and the Girlchild, too: crab cakes, crab newburg, Thai crab soup, grilled crab, crab chowder, crab salad, snow crab with citrus gastrique, king crab dipped in drawn butter or with Hollandaise or avocado cream.

I am a wee bit picky about crab cakes. I don't care for mushy crab cakes or bready cakes, and I despise the Maryland practice of putting corn kernels or cornmeal in crab cakes.

Here's my favorite crab cake recipe. (The one that makes Girlchild go squeee!)

Panko-dusted crab cakes on apple cole slaw with fire honey and orange-cardamom reduction

(serves three)

dramatis personae

Cakes:
one pound lump crab
three tablespoons peanut oil
one half medium red onion, minced
one garlic clove, minced or pressed
one thai pepper, minced
one tablespoon grated ginger
a dash of sea salt
one extra large egg
panko breading


Slaw:
one cup thinly sliced pak choy
one Granny Smith apple (skin on), julienned
juice of one small lemon
one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
one half teaspoon sea salt

Fire honey:
a cup of water
a dozen chilis arbols
one tablespoon peanut oil
one quarter cup honey

Orange-cardamom reduction:
juice of five valencia oranges
one teaspoon cardamom


quality of ingredients

Lump blue crab is typically sold in closed, nearly-opaque pint tubs. This type of crabmeat is most commonly steamed and picked. Ask the fishmonger to let you see the contents of the tub and smell it. The contents should be almost entirely white and off-white, moist but not wet (definitely no pooling liquid), and should smell like something you want to eat. If it smells fishy, it has not been properly stored or handled, and you don't want it.

I chose pak choy (Napa cabbage) for the slaw because I like the fine papery texture and the sweetness, which matches well with the apple and the crab.

The granny smith should be green and crisp.

Panko is an amazing substance: breadcrumbs made by drying white bread electrostatically. The result is crunchy, dry crumbs that are not burnt or toasted in the process. Because they're so thoroughly dehydrated, panko crumbs hold their crunch. Panko comes in two varieties, white and tan—the tan variety includes the crust of the white bread. I haven't been able to discern any difference in flavor between the white and the brown.

preparation notes

Slaw

Um, you mix everything in a bowl. Duh.

Fire honey

Seed the chilis and braise them in a cup of water over over a medium flame for about five minutes. Remove the chilis and two tablespoons of the braising liquor to a blender. You can remove the chilis with a slotted spoon—I prefer a pair of chopsticks. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil and purée the concoction until the chilis are thoroughly disintegrated.

Strain the chili purée and mix it into the honey.

Taste this stuff very carefully—it's essentially honey laced with capsaicin. A little of it drizzled on the crab cakes adds a slight sweet burn, but taken straight this stuff can raise blisters. (Okay, slight exageration.)

Orange-cardamom reduction

Mix the cardamom and orange juice in a sauce pan. Over a medium flame but without boiling the juice, reduce the mixture to a syrupy consistency.

Cakes
Pick the crab for stray bits of cartilage and shell. I know. The tub said cleaned or pre-picked or something like that. Don't believe it. I have never failed to find cartilage that the processors missed. Never. If you don't pick the crab yourself, someone will get stabbed in the gums by a sliver of cartilage—not fun.

Pour one tablespoon of the peanut oil into a skillet or sauté pan and, over a medium flame, heat the oil to shimmering. Add in the onion, garlic, ginger, Thai chili, and salt. Sweat the vegetables until all of the onion is translucent. Muy importante. If you mix the vegetables into the crab without sweating them first, they'll release their liquor into the crab cakes, which will make them fall apart.

In a large bowl, combine the crab with the egg and the sweated vegetables. Pour the panko into a second bowl. Mix the ingredients thoroughly and form it into cakes. You should be able to get nine or ten two-inch-diameter, inch-thick cakes. Press all sides of each completed cake into the panko. The cakes should be uniformly covered.

Pour a second tablespoon of peanut oil into the skillet and again heat it to shimmering over a medium flame. Arrange the cakes evenly in the skillet (this usually fills my skillet entirely). Cook the crab cakes until brown on one side. Don't turn them or move them around in the skillet for the first four minutes.

Take the crab cakes out of the skillet. I do this by removing the skillet from the flame and placing a plate, upside down, over the skillet and inverting the skillet. Return the skillet to the flame and pour the last tablespoon of peanut oil into the skillet. Once the oil again reaches the shimmering point, return the crab cakes to the skillet (browned side up) for another undisturbed four or so minutes, to brown the other side.

To serve, arrange the crab cakes on a layer of the slaw and drizzle thin parallel lines of the fire honey one direction. Cross the lines of fire honey with lines of the orange reduction.

Joltin' Joe

Addiction

I've been a coffee addict since I was about eighteen. An alcoholic, I had to give up alcohol when I was 23. I gave up biting my fingernails when I was 25. At 27, the cigarettes went.

No way am I giving up coffee. Ever.

On the submarine, back in my Navy days, I would go through a dozen cups every day. When we ran out of coffee filters, I used paper towels that made the coffee taste like dishwater. Hey, even a bad cup of coffee is better than none. Once, in Yokosuka, unable to find a restaurant anywhere that served hot coffee, I purchased a can of iced coffee with a viscosity and sweetness like maple syrup. It was disgusting. In the grip of my addiction, I drank it and another right after.

The only coffee I won't drink is instant. I'm none too keen to try the stuff they glean from civet poop (Kopi Luwak), but I'd probably drink it if someone offered me a cup.

In support of my habit, I have owned percolators, various types of drip coffee makers, espresso machines, French presses. I've made espresso, cappuccino, ca phe sua nong, Turkish coffee, café au lait, latte, and many thousands of cups of straight black coffee. About ten years ago, I got hooked on coffee shop coffee. I had finally come to the conclusion that I just could not make a decent cup of coffee at home.

I know they have a bad name with some coffee-snobs, but Starbucks was my salvation. They're closely approaching ubiquity, and the coffee-snobs have it wrong: Starbucks produces a variety of consistently good coffees. I could get a venti red-eye (20 ounce cup of coffee with a shot of espresso) in the morning, and my java jones was pretty much satisfied for the day.

Of course, this satisfaction came with a price—literally. We were spending an average of $120 per month on coffee.

Princess V to the rescue

Princess V—in addition to being a beautiful, smart, funny, and capable sex goddess—is an habitual researcher. Rarely does a day go by that she's not on the computer or buried in a book learning how to polish her Ajax and Java code, how to properly set in a sleeve or efficiently hem a skirt, how to balance a stock portfolio or improve her credit rating, how to bake artisanal breads or construct the perfect tiramisu. So, naturally, she eventually found a cure for my Starbucks addiction. Reading through customer reviews on Amazon, she discovered single-serve coffee makers. Again and again, a principal element in praise in the reviews was the claim that "it saved me from Starbucks."

In the '90s the ultimate in coffee snobbery was the gold-plated coffee filter. It sounds like a joke, but no. Gold-plated ultra fine wine mesh provides filtration without the need for replaceable paper filters. Gold, chemically, is fairly inert. So, no oxidation, no reaction to the acids and oils in coffee. Even better, put that gold-plated filter in a French press, and you can make coffee one cup at a time—no pot of coffee sitting on a burner for a couple hours getting all stale and nasty.

Sadly, even the gold-plated filter could not solve the biggest problem with home brewing—those nasty wet grounds. Once the coffee is made, you have to deal with the grounds.

Enter the Senseo corporation. In 2001 Senseo introduced the pod-brewer, a single-serve coffee system that used pre-measured, sealed filter pods (called "pads" in some parts of Europe). Coffee in a tea-bag—sort of. The top of the pod-brewer clamshells open to receive the pod. You close it and push a button. The pod-brewer ports a single cup of hot water through the pod. When it's finished, you have just that one pod to throw away. Some of the pod-brewers have reservoirs so that you don't have to pour in water every time.

In the past few years, Cuisinart, Bunn, Grindmaster, and Melitta have all joined in the game of trying to produce the ideal pod-brewer. Krups and Lavazza have introduced pod espresso machines. Machines range in price from $30 to $300 for basic coffee and $200 to $750 for the espresso machines.

Keurig and Tassimo have gone a step further: their pods are encapsulated in plastic cups and discs, respectively, sealed with a foil top. The clamshell tops of the Keurig and Tassimo contain sharp nozzles that puncture the K-Cup or T-Disc. The top nozzle punctures the foil and the filter. The bottom nozzle punctures only the cup. No mess, no grounds, one cup at a time, coffee in mere seconds, a vast range of fine coffees: coffee snobbery has found a place in the 21st Century. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, check out the Single-Serve Coffee Forums.

Last October, when my darling wife shared her research, I was skeptical. Then she informed me that she'd found a Keurig B40 for sale on Amazon. I was interested, but not quite ready to buy the latest coffee gimmick.

Then she informed me that she'd already purchased the thing.

"Try it for a month. If you don't like it, it will already have paid for itself. Just a month. You can do without Starbucks for just a month."

I reacted like a typical addict:

• I was shocked. How could she do such a thing to me? This is my angel, the love of my life, she's supposed to understand me. My Starbucks addiction is an essential part of my personality.


• I went into denial. She could not be doing this to me. No. I won't allow it. I don't even want to see it. Don't open the box. When it arrives, slap a return sticker on it and send it back.


• I bargained. I would cook more chicken, less of the expensive sea food, switch to a cheaper body wash, ration the olive oil more carefully. Surely I could find a hundred twenty dollars a month somewhere else in the budget. Not my Starbucks. Anything but my Starbucks.


• Did I feel guilty about being such a pathetically desperate addict? About making a fuss over ludicrously-priced beverages? For doubting my Princess's motives? Hell yes.


• Still, it did make me angry. Shit yeah. It's my money. I'm a grown man. You can't tell me where I'm going to get my coffee. I spend all that money on coffee because I choose to do so. I can stop—I simply choose not to.


• After steeping in anger for a while, I fell into depression. Why me? Why Starbucks? Oh, what's the difference? I'm doomed to a life without decent coffee. May as well take up herbal teas.


• Ultimately, I accepted that I was being a putz. I survived all those months at sea drinking sludge. A month of questionable coffee would be nothing. So, certain that the experiment would be a failure and that the Keurig would be on eBay in just over a month, I agreed to give up Starbucks for a month.

I began preparing for the month with a more thorough review of the Amazon customer reviews of Keurig single-serve coffee makers. One issue raised in almost all of the negative reviews (less than 10% of the Keurig reviews are negative) and occasionally addressed in some of the positive reviews was the strength of the coffee. The most frequent negative criticism of the Keurig is that its prepackaged, sealed pods (called K-cups) don't contain enough grounds to make actual coffee—just coffee-flavored water.

This concerned me. Like most avid coffee fans, I expect my coffee to have depth and body. Lucky for me this is a known problem. Within the past year, the various coffee purveyors producing K-cups have been producing an alternate set of varieties labelled extra-bold. The extra-bold K-cups contain 30% more coffee.

When the Keurig arrived, Princess V read the instructions and we ran through the set up procedures. Within a few minutes, we had run a couple cups of water through it and I tried my first single-serve cup of coffee. I didn't want to prejudge the coffees. It was always possible that the dissatisfied 10% of Keurig reviewers had tried a bad batch. Possibly they had used the wrong setting. The B40 has two brew-sizes—7 and 9 ounces—but the K-cups come in only one size. So, for my first cup I selected a dark roast (I don't care for medium and light roasts).

It was ghastly.

Not only was it thin and watery, it had a nasty background flavor that reminded me vaguely of the aroma of burning oysters, flavored with a subtle hint of mildew.

It's okay, I told myself, I knew this was a possibility. The sample pack includes a handful of extra-bolds. One of those has to be all right.

My second cup was an extra-bold. It was even worse than the first. True, it was stronger, but stronger and tasting of burnt rubber is not an improvement. And it still didn't have much body.

Now I panicked. What had I gotten myself into? I should have known. Porting hot water through coffee in a cup—why why why would I ever believe something like that could work. I'm screwed.

Lucky for me, the next K-Cup I tried was Van Houtte's Eclipse extra-bold: rich, dark, flavorful with winy and fruity notes. And it had body. This cup of coffee was easily a match for anything at Starbucks.

In the next two months, I tried thirty more blends. I never found any non-extra-bold varieties I could stand (Princess V found a few, but she drinks her coffee with cream and sugar). Ultimately, I found a half-dozen coffees that I like. My favorites are Coffee People's Jet Fuel and Emeril's Big Easy Extra Bold.

Once in a great while, we drop in at a Starbucks to read a paper and do the crossword puzzles. It's been a few weeks, though. Most days, I make my own coffee at home. Most work days, I drink three or four cups. On the weekends, I might drink as much as five cups in a day—the equivalent of four "tall" coffees at Starbucks. In any Austin Starbucks, with tax, four tall coffees would cost $7.49.

We buy our K-Cups through Amazon: thirty-four cents a cup (thirty-seven cents for the Emeril's). You do the math.

Daised

I love Hollandaise sauce.

Let me rephrase that, "I love my Hollandaise." I'm sure that makes me sound like some kind of overbearing ego-jockey—which might not be entirely inaccurate—but I think it's more accurate than some alternatives I've heard. I could have said "traditional Hollandaise," for instance, but that's an imaginary beastie. Ask anyone with a smidgen of training in traditional French sauces and you'll probably get the Escoffier version of the yellow Mother Sauce: egg yolks, clarified butter, lemon, and salt. I learned to add a dash of white pepper. Others argue that cayenne is the traditional spice, and yet another cadre insists only black pepper can spike a proper Hollandaise. Being the nosy critter I am, I've tried all three. Yeah, de gustibus, but I find that black pepper comes across a bit harsh in Hollandaise. Cayenne gives the sauce a slightly skunky quality. White pepper has a piny note that melds beautifully with the lemon.

If you search the Internet for Hollandaise sauce recipes and instructions, you will find sauces made with cream, without salt, with lemon zest and white vinegar. I even found one made with sugar (this last from Alton Brown—I had no idea he dropped acid). None of these additions are necessary, and most of them make no sense. I have no objection to a little experimentation, but somehow it strikes me as disingenuous to describe something with cream or sugar as "Hollandaise." They should at least call it a variant. I've done several Hollandaise and Béarnaise variations with quite a bit of success: most recently basil/lime Hollandaise, Meyers lemon and cardamom Hollandaise. Being a Texan, I've naturally done jalapeño/lime Hollandaise and chipotle/mandarin orange Hollandaise. I would never advertise such concoctions as basic Hollandaise, however. They're variants. They will taste rich and buttery, but they will not taste like Hollandaise. Some of them won't even look like Hollandaise.

Historical research won't help you pin down a "traditional" ideal either. The first recorded version of a sauce with a name like "Hollandaise" was actually listed as "à la Hollandaise," or "the way they do it in Holland" (a description no one has ever been able to connect with any actual Dutch cooking practices). That particular Hollandaise concoction was made with stock and flour and no eggs. As far as any culinary historian has been able to determine, nothing coming out of Holland in the Eighteenth Century resembled either the original Sauce à la Hollandaise or modern Hollandaise Sauce.

Princess V theorizes that Hollandaise is a reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century commonplace that the Dutch are overfond of butter. It's the best explanation I've seen. A quick Internet search on "Dutch fondness for butter" yielded numerous literary references including Melville's Moby Dick and Jonson's Volpone.

How, in two centuries, did this sauce evolve from butter gravy to the more familiar velvety blond Eggs Benedict topping? I don't know, but I'm certainly grateful for the evolution.

What I'm not grateful for is restaurant Hollandaise. No doubt there are many great restaurants where Hollandaise sauce is still produced with a whisk, but most supposedly classy restaurants these days just don't think it worth the trouble. So, unless you're paying fifty bucks for a dish, you're probably getting blender-Hollandaise. It's pretty easy to tell: the blender stuff is paler and somewhat flat tasting. This stuff, made at a lower temperature than stovetop Hollandaise, is essentially eggy mayonnaise. For some reason, blender Hollandaise is also frequently made with too little lemon, which means it tastes like a whole lot of nothing at all.

Also, frankly, I am baffled by many foodies' insistence upon clarified butter in Hollandaise. Plain old unsalted sweet creamery butter produces a lush, full-bodied sauce, so why clarify it? Harold McGee (in the kick-ass food science bible On Food and Cooking) says clarification is a good idea because butter is 15% water, which works against emulsification by adding extra water into the mix (ironically, several of those goofy Internet recipes tell you to add water to the sauce). I've tried clarified butter, and I really didn't notice any fewer strokes of the whisk over the non-clarified stuff. Although clarifying certainly takes out the water, it also removes milk solids from the butter. My theory is that little bit of whey protein actually works to assist emulsification of the butter.

See, the basic trick of "real" Hollandaise and Béarnaise sauces is to combine liquefied butter with water-based flavoring agents (lemon juice, vinegar, herbs, shallots). Oil and water, unfortunately, don't mix. Water molecules being polar and oil molecules being non-polar, the two don't stay together for very long. One effective way to combine such uncooperative molecules is to supply a more complex set of emulsifying molecules that can combine with both polar and non-polar molecules. Some of the amino acid molecules in egg yolk are polar and some are bipolar. Unfortunately for the would-be emulsification, these molecules are combined in a knotted physical mesh. In order to access both the polar and non-polar sites on the amino acid molecules, you have to add enough energy to get the strands to relax. If you maintain that elevated temperature while whisking the mixture, you break up the butter and water-based elements into small enough droplets to link up with the protein strands. At a fairly neutral pH, this process would work best for egg yolks at roughly 160F to 170F. Unfortunately, those protein strands begin to clump up and curdle at just about 180F, and it's damned hard to keep the sauce in such a narrow temperature range for very long.

Isn't it just wonderfully fortunate, then, that adding acids (citrus or vinegar) raises the curdling point of the protein strands? If you drop the pH down to 4.5, you raise the curdling point to about 190F. Thus, the citrus in Hollandaise and vinegar in Béarnaise both flavor the sauces and allow them to be prepared at a slightly higher temperature, which simplifies the emulsification process.

To put all of this into practice, here's my basic Hollandaise sauce:

dramatis personae

Juice of one small lemon
Dash salt
Dash white pepper
Four egg yolks
Eight tbsp butter (one stick)

quality of ingredients

I usually use extra large eggs, but the yolks aren't much larger than those of large eggs.

Lemons are a crap shoot. Some of the plumpest turn out to be mostly pulp. Juice content and tartness vary quite wildly. You have to rely on experience to determine how much of what tartness of lemon juice will result in a bright-tasting but not overly sour sauce. Generally, I would say that you need about three tablespoons of moderately tart juice or two tablespoons of very tart lemon juice.

Use a good quality unsalted sweet creamery butter. I know of no situation in which pre-salted butter is a good idea.

preparation notes

Start some water boiling in a double boiler. Squeeze the juice of one lemon into a ramekin. Add salt and pepper and place the ramekin in the double boiler to pre-warm it while you continue preparations.

Melt one stick of butter in a Pyrex bowl, ramekin, or measuring cup by microwaving it on full power for one minute.

Separate the yolks. Remove and discard as much of the chalaza (the white connective tissue that occasionally forms one or two curd-like white nodules on the outside of the yolk) as possible.

Place a folded dish towel on the counter next to the stove. In order to keep the egg yolks from getting too hot over the boiling water, you're going to switch the top pan back and forth between the double boiler and the towel. This technique makes the process much simpler (no need to drizzle in the butter) and virtually foolproof. It goes something like this:

Remove the top pan from the double boiler to the dish towel and in that top pan combine the yolks and lemon juice. Whisk the yolks briskly for about twenty seconds and then add in one third of the butter. Return the top pan to the double boiler and continue whisking the yolks briskly for about twenty seconds. Remove the top pan to the towel again and, pour in the rest of the butter, and continue whisking briskly for another twenty seconds.

(At any time in this process, if you need to stop be sure that the last place you whisked the sauce was on the dish towel. That will ensure that no part of the sauce gets too hot and curdles while you're not whisking it.)

From this point on, alternate the top pan between the double boiler and the dish towel in twenty-second periods of whisking. The sauce will gradually begin to thicken until a whisk trailed through the sauce leaves a distinct track that refills very slowly. You want a consistency that's just barely thin enough to flow. If your Hollandaise thickens but never seems to thicken as much as you like, leave the top pan sitting on the dish towel for about five minutes and then whisk it again. You'll find that it's thickened a bit in the intervening time. Hollandaise will keep for quite a while at 145F (if you can hold it at that temperature) but you'll need to keep whisking it every few minutes to keep it from skinning over.

The Secret Language of Fish, Part 7

Red Fish, Blue Fish

One Fish

I wasn't thinking about my last blog entry or colors when I decided to treat my family to blue trout (trout au bleu). I wasn't even thinking about the color. Frankly, knowing how hard it is to find live trout in Austin, I was pretty sure we'd not see the blue effect anyway (I was right; we didn't). I was just thinking of leeks. I'd been strolling through the produce section of my favorite grocery store, planning to have some sort of fish for dinner. When I reached the pile of ice where they usually stock leeks, I thought, Yeah, something with leeks would be nice. Then I noticed their selection: two scraggly looking, mostly green bunches, but Aha! one bunch was mostly buried in the ice. I dug them out and was rewarded with three fat, firm, mostly white leeks.

"No fair," said another shopper beside me. She was smiling, though, and didn't try to brain me with a celeriac when I turned away, so I think she was kidding.

Leeks in hand, I decided to do something I hadn't tried since coming to Austin from Idaho many years ago. Growing up in Colorado and later living many years in Idaho, I learned many wonderful preparations for trout. Frankly, most of them require that the diners spend a lot of time picking bones, fins, and scaly skin off of the trout.

Oh, sure, you can filet the fish, but trout is a delicate, mild-flavored fish, so removing the bones and head before cooking all but ensures a lesser flavor.

Blue trout and trout à la nage ("swimming") can be two exceptions, if the fish are handled properly from start to finish.

Essentially, blue trout is a whole trout poached in an acidulated court bouillon. If the trout are fresh out of the water, their slime will be intact, and the fish comes out of the bouillon with a blue sheen. If the trout are more than a few hours old—no matter how well they've been preserved—the slime has broken down and the blue thing just doesn't happen. In other words, this is essentially a preparation à la nage with some vinegar added to cause a litmus effect.

To outline this simple dish: you prepare the court bouillon by simmering aromatic vegetables and a bouquet garni in water with a splash of wine and a little salt. Remove and drain the vegetables. Discard the herbs. Set half of the court bouillon aside and add a little lemon juice. Add a few drops of vanilla to the other half and use that to poach the whole trout. Skin the trout and lift off the filets. Serve the filets, garnished with the vegetables, in a bowl immersed in a half inch of the reserved court bouillon.

Two Fish

The blue trout had been an unqualified success. Everybody raved. The fish was delicate but tasty, and the individual elements managed to work well together while retaining their individuality. I could taste the leeks, the carrots, the turnip (no luck finding a decent fennel bulb that day), and the trout, and everything enjoyed a sparkling sheen of lemon and thyme. Girlchild even ate some of the vegetables. (She did insist on trying to keep the fish out of the court bouillon, but teenagers always have to find something to be idiosyncratic about.)

Less than two weeks later, finding myself once again in the produce section of a grocery store and once again in the presence of spectacular-looking leeks, my mind turned again to thoughts of blue trout. In this case, the trout in the fishmonger's case were not so impressive: golden rainbow hybrids less than ten inches in length. I knew they'd be full of bones.

That same case was, however, sporting some mighty fine looking steelhead filets. Steelhead is ocean-running rainbow trout. Because of their age and diet (steelhead are primarily pescivores; rainbow trout are primarily insectivores), steelhead trout is salmon red—usually redder than king salmon but not so red as sockeye. Steelhead flesh, in addition to being larger and more colorful than that of their landlocked cousins, is chock full of glutamines and omega-3 and -6 fatty acids. Healthy, yes, but also richer by an order of magnitude.


The upshot was, in addition to having no chance in hell of ever turning blue (and thus no reason for adding vinegar to the broth), the steelhead was more savory and complex and far more filling than the little rainbows. At the table, the steelhead rendered up a few pink droplets of savory oils in the court bouillon, a beautiful and artsy effect for which I could take no credit. Aside from a crusty baguette, this dish required no accompaniment.


dramatis personae


two quarts water

one cup white vinegar (for blue trout)

three medium leeks

one medium turnip

one large carrot

one fennel bulb (optional)

three three-inch sprigs thyme

three sprigs flat parsley

two large bay leaves

one half cup white wine

one half teaspoon salt

juice of one lemon

one eighth teaspoon vanilla

three whole trout or between 12 and 15 ounces of steelhead filet


quality of ingredients

Good leeks seem to be increasingly difficult to find. Most of the bundles I see in the grocery stores in Austin have about an inch of white leek, and that's the only part you really want for most applications. The greens are just too fibrous. I avoid anything with less than three inches of white, but five inches of white is damned rare.

Good turnips are easy to find. They're firm. Picking a good turnip is rather like picking a good potato. If it's rubbery or has soft spots, pick another.

Color doesn't matter much with turnips, but it does with fennel bulbs. They should be white. You'll have to cut away any brownish bits, so try to get one that contains as little brown as possible.

Trout should be as intact as possible. If you can get live trout and clean them at home, you might actually be able to see the blue effect. Another great thing about cleaning them yourself is that the trout farms typically screw it up. In order to make the fish look cleaner, they remove the spine. Unfortunately, in addition to removing a part that serves to flavor the cooking fish, removing the spine from a small trout all but ensures that they will leave teeny little pin bones all down the lateral line of the fish. If you can lift the flesh away from the bones after cooking, you are far more likely to pull the flesh cleanly off the bones.

Select steelhead trout fillets the same way you would select salmon. This treatment à la nage should produce the same results with salmon.

preparation notes



Put the water (and vinegar if you're trying to make blue trout) on to boil.


Peel and julienne the carrot and turnip. Thoroughly clean and julienne the fennel bulb and the white parts of the leeks. Reserve and clean two green leek leaves for use in the bouquet garni. Place the thyme, bay, and parsley between the leek leaves and tie them into a tight bundle with kitchen twine. Drop the vegetables and the bouquet into the boiling water. Add in the salt and white wine. Once the liquid comes back to a boil, reduce the temperature and allow it to simmer for 25 minutes.


Remove and discard the bouquet garni, and remove the vegetables to a colander. Set aside half of the court bouillon, and bring the remainder back to a boil. To the cooling reserved liquid, add the lemon juice.


Treatment of the fish is a bit different for whole trout and steelhead filets.

For whole trout:

If you're lucky enough to be preparing fresh-caught fish, clean them completely, removing the gills and internal organs. Leave in the spine, and do not attempt to scale the fish. The scales will be too small and tenacious to remove without ripping the skin and bruising the flesh. Once the court bouillon is back up to a boil, add in the vanilla and drop in the fish and poach them for two or three minutes. When you can slip the tip of a butter knife into the back along the dorsal fin, gently remove the fish from the broth and lay them on one side on a clean work surface.

I don't know any way to do all of this with any tool but fingers, so be prepared to scald your fingertips a bit (keeping a bowl of ice water on hand to dip your fingers in will help). Now, while the fish are still hot, strip away the skin from one side, pluck out the fins, and working from the spine where the dorsal fin was removed, lift the filet from the naked side. If the fish cools, the skin will become increasingly difficult to remove. Carefully turn the fish over and do the same on the other side. Strip and remove all of the filets from their bones before moving on to plating. Before plating them, check over the filets and wipe away any stray scales.

If a single filet will be large enough for a serving, fold it in half and stack the halves in the center of a wide soup or pasta bowl. Mound a handful of the julienned vegetables on top of the fish, and ladle on a cup of the reserved court bouillon. If the filets are small, you might want to plate two together. In that case, just cross them in the center of the bowl, without bothering to fold them.



For the steelhead filet:


Slice the filet into four- or five-ounce sections. Five ounces sounds like a pretty small portion to some adults, but this is really rich fish. It is not necessary to scale the filets. Once the court bouillon is back up to a boil, add in the vanilla and the filets. Poach the filets for five minutes or until a knife inserted between the segments shows them to be cooked through.


Remove the filets to a clean work surface and remove the skin. Separate the filets along the lateral line and discard any pin bones. Lay the filets skin side up and, with a thin knife, carefully slice away the light brown matter from the pink flesh.


Plate the filet segments as described for whole trout.

The Secret Language of Fish, Part 6

Orange, vermilion, and salmon

We are so accustomed to seeing salmon flesh in just that precise persimmony shade of pink that we've even given it place in our lexicons. Truth be told, the flesh color of the salmon (and their closest cousins the trout and char) varies quite a bit and is dependent largely upon diet. A live-fish diet makes the flesh more pink. The slightly more orange color in most salmon is due to supplementing that mostly-fish-diet with squid and shrimp. Trout, char, and salmon in streams, living on a diet heavy with insects and larva have pale, nearly white flesh. A predominantly shellfish diet will turn the flesh bright yellow. Farmed fish are fed supplements to color their flesh because the market just won't bear off-white salmon.

As I've mentioned in earlier entries, I prefer sockeye salmon. Sockeye flesh is redder than that of any other salmon, trout, or char, and it retains a bit more color when it cooks. I believe sockeye has a richer flavor, and it seems to keep better than other members of family Salmonidae. Part of my preference might be simple superstition. I've had bad coho, bad Atlantic salmon, and bad king salmon. I've not yet had a sockeye purchase go wrong. Then again, mine might be a more complex superstition—sympathetic magic: more depth of color equals more depth of flavor.

Still, there's something about that color—that salmon color—that leaves me questioning a lot of choices we all tend to make regarding how we cook and dress salmon. Like many other cooks, I long ago decided that orange juice and orange zest are ideal accompanists for salmon. Is it just the color? Is it my inner interior decorator telling me to pair orange-pink flesh with blood oranges and tangerines?

Well, that might have had something to do with the original selection, but I certainly can't take credit or blame for the pairing. Salmon glazes have included orange-juice almost as long as ham glazes have included pineapple. In Texas restaurants where everything that isn't barbecue finds its way into the Tex-Mex canon, salmon is often served with an orange-chipotle sauce or glaze. (We're so in love with chipotle chiles that I'm surprised no one has yet started a string of Texas chipotle ice cream parlors or chipotle coffee shops.)

If you taste a bit of cooked salmon (yes, or trout or char) with no other seasoning than a bit of salt, you can readily taste the reason oranges work with salmon. Salmon has a light, buttery sweetness. A little fruity sugar enhances the natural sweetness of the fish. A little tartness gives sparkle to that buttery quality just as lemon does for the butter in sauce Hollandaise. I've used the salmon/orange pairing with some success in the recent past (for details, see Charred sockeye with tomato-orange escabeche in my entry Words, words, words).

Of course, if the orange and salmon color combination seems just a little too much like a fashion statement, you can substitute any of quite a few other fruits or berries. Some experimenters have had quite a bit of luck with kumquats, mango, pineapple, blackberry, and raspberry. According to Gordon Ramsay in an episode of his Kitchen Nightmares, strawberries don't pair well with salmon. I also wouldn't bet on cherries. The tartness in strawberries (I'm guessing) is a bit too astringent to work with salmon. Cherry, I think, would overpower the fish.

Recently, I paired a more-or-less traditional glaze with an apple-based salsa. The results were outstanding. I say "partly traditional" because I melded a couple of fairly traditional salmon glaze elements that are not usually used together (maple syrup, orange zest, wasabi, Dijon mustard, and lime juice). I added the salsa to provide texture and to give a little depth. From experience with a number of sushi rolls I've sampled, I knew that hot chiles mixed with wasabi give a different depth of burn than either hot element alone. The chiles burn the tip of the tongue; the wasabi burns the back of the throat.

Glazed sockeye with apple salsa

dramatis personae

glaze:

2 tbsp wasabi powder
2 tbsp lime juice
zest of one medium orange
2 tbsp dark amber maple syrup
1 tbsp Dijon mustard

four five-ounce pieces of salmon filet, scaled
sea salt
black pepper

salsa:

honey crisp apple (with peel), diced
celery rib
serrano chili, seeded and minced
1 tsp cider vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
salt

quality of ingredients

Wasabi powder is sold in most places that sell bulk spices, but it really isn't wasabi. The stuff we're given in most US restaurants is a mix of horseradish and spirulina. Wasabi is damned difficult to come by in the US. I've seen the roots for sale in two stores in Austin, and both places were asking $250 per pound. I have no idea whether real wasabi would work in this recipe. I believe I could substitute Chinese hot mustard for the combination of wasabi and Dijon mustard, but I haven't had a chance to try it.

When I buy oranges to use for zest, I nick the rind with a thumbnail to verify that it's sufficiently aromatic. Some large navel oranges with thick, brightly colored rinds can have surprisingly weak-smelling zest. If you can't smell it, you won't taste it.

I used dark amber maple syrup and strongly recommend avoiding any kind of imitation. I had originally planned to use honey, but I was out of honey. I will probably try honey next time.

For more on sockeye salmon, see Words, Words, Words.

I could only think of three apples that I might have used for the salsa: fujis, pacific roses, or honeycrisps. All three varieties are sweet, crisp, and fruity, and all three have their charms. For this particular recipe, honeycrisps offered the best balance of sweet and tart.

Serrano chilies are variable but tend to be hot without being too hot for my girls. Jalapeños or green hot fingerlong chilies would work.

preparation notes

Preheat the oven to 400F (375F convection).

Mix the glaze ingredients together thoroughly.

Coat the bottom of a flat-bottomed backing dish with vegetable oil. Place the salmon filets skin side down on the oil. Salt and pepper the filets. Cover the filets with the glaze and bake them for 8 minutes or until a fork will readily separate the segments.

The salsa is simple enough that you can prepare it while the fish is baking.

Serve each filet with a heaping tablespoon of salsa.