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.

Words Words Words (like escabache, for instance)

I Am Not Wikipedia

Wikipedia provides fairly succinct and straightforward definitions of both escabeche and vinaigrette. Feel free to use those to describe your own recipes if that's your thing. I have my own definitions. I think mine are a little more practical than the Wikipedia definitions, which are more concerned with the historical significance of the terms.

So, when I say vinaigrette I mean any simple acid-based sauce or dressing. The acid can be any vinegar or citrus juice. Vinaigrettes usually contain one or more oils and some combination of herbs and spices. As far as I'm concerned, hot and cold vinaigrettes are still vinaigrettes. (I realize that "one or more oils" might sound a bit odd, but flavoring oils— like sesame, lemon, or hazelnut oils—and some infusions—like commercially available chili, basil, and garlic oils—tend to be a bit too stout to use as the sole oil base in a vinaigrette.)

When I add vegetables to a vinaigrette and cook the mixture to produce a sauce that I will use to marinate or dress a protein, I call it an escabeche. I could call it lumpy vinaigrette, but it just doesn't sound as appetizing. I know, strictly speaking escabeche is used only for fish, and it's usually chilled before use. I don't care. I need the term and choose to co-opt it in this fashion. So sue me. (Litigious pedants should note, however, that the Persian root for escabeche is sikbag, which means simply "acid food.")

What "Chicken" Means at My Place

A few years ago, while experimenting with ways to make grilled chicken breasts taste more like food and a little less like charred paper, I came up with a fortuitous pairing of a sweet chili marinade and a tomato and onion escabeche that I originally intended for use with red snapper. My daughter liked it so much that she began asking for it every week. Originally, I'd come home from shopping for groceries and answer her, "What's for dinner?" with, "Chicken on escabeche." Later, she started recognizing some of the ingredients and would ask, "Are we having chicken?" Occasionally, she has asked, "Can we have chicken for dinner tonight?"

The first time she asked that question, I countered with, "How do you want it," and was answered with a dumbfounded stare. "You know, the sweet one with the tomatoes." I'm not certain where the transition occurred, but at some point chicken came to mean that specific dish. Any other chicken dish—even a plain old roasted chicken—required an adjective to distinguish it from chicken, which implied the exclusion of non-breast meat and the inclusion of one specific escabeche.

Chicken (grilled marinated chicken on escabeche)

Yes, that's on, not en. Serves three.

dramatis personae

three chicken breast halves

the marinade:
one cup water
one quarter cup white wine vinegar
one quarter cup Sauvignon blanc
three chilis arbol, crushed
one quarter cup light brown sugar
one tablespoon salt (or one teaspoon—see preparation notes)

the escabeche:
one third cup extra virgin olive oil
one small white onion, chopped
pinch of sea salt
three garlic cloves, minced or crushed
one chili arbol, seeded and minced
one large or two small bay leaves
one quarter cup cheap balsamic vinegar
two tablespoons apple cider vinegar
one teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
one pint cherub tomatoes, halved

quality of ingredients

I usually buy split, boned, skinless chicken breasts. If they have chicken at the butcher's counter, I can occasionally find chicken that has never been frozen. Otherwise, I try to find the packages that are still frozen with no signs of having been previously thawed. Sometimes I just have to settle for the least freezer-burnt meat I can find. Freezer burn on chicken breasts creates whiter portions on the edges of the meat, usually where the breasts are thinnest.

Cheap Sauvignon blanc is a good generic marinating wine. It's available in most grocery stores, is fruity, mildly sweet, and not too tart.

The escabeche cooks long enough that it really doesn't matter what type of onion you use. After simmering in hot olive oil for ten minutes, onions all taste pretty much the same.

Use fresh bay leaves. You'll get ten times the flavor over the bay leaves. Dried thyme is strong enough but I find the taste of dried thyme a bit metallic.

See quality of ingredients under Composing a Symphony for guidance on garlic.

preparation notes

The marinade will be plenty effective in about forty-five minutes if it contains enough salt. One tablespoon should suffice. If you plan to marinate the chicken overnight, cut the salt down to a teaspoon to keep from oversalting it. Mix the ingredients in a ziplock bag (no need to seed the chili, you'll be throwing out the marinade once it's done its work). Trim any excess fat from the chicken breasts and drop them into the marinade. Express the air from the bag, seal it, and put it in a large enough bowl to catch the liquid in case of an accident. Refrigerate the marinating chicken for forty-five minutes. Remove the chicken breasts to a plate and discard the marinade. Blot the breasts dry with a paper towel and cover them with plastic wrap while you make the escabeche.

Heat the olive oil over a medium flame until it just starts to shimmer. Pour in the onions, garlic, chili, and bay leaf and sauté until the onions just start to reach translucency. Turn down the flame to low and allow the mixture to simmer for about ten minutes.

Add in the vinegars and bring the mixture to a boil. Mix in the thyme and tomatoes. This is your escabeche. Remove the escabeche from the flame and pour it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate.

Unwrap the chicken breasts and bias cut them into 3/4-inch strips. I usually cook these in a grill pan (over medium high heat, about two minutes per side), but you could also grill them on an actual grill.

Pour the escabeche into a large serving platter and either remove the bay leaves and discard them, or set them off to the side (nice looking but inedible). Arrange the strips of chicken on top of the escabeche.

Serendipity—Salmon and Tomatoes and Orange Juice

Actually, the experiment was a combination of items that I know work together. The sum total of these combinations, however, left not only me but also my wife doubting the choices. The result was one of those fortuitous combinations that somehow manages to be more than the sum of its parts: sweet, rich, and savory with just enough acid to be bright without being downright sour. We all enjoyed it (Girltzik complimented the dish several times during the meal and twice afterward.) All in all, I have to say this was another first-time success.

As is often the case, this particular experiment began with me shopping for one thing (the ingredients for the chicken dish described above) and finding an attractive other. In this case, the grocery store whose aisles I was perusing had some beautiful sockeye salmon fillets on display. Bright, gelatinous, incarnadine—I have no will power where such things are concerned.

Because I was already shopping for the chicken dish, I had escabeche on the brain (not as uncomfortable as that probably sounds). Rather than completely revising my shopping list, I began mentally calculating changes I wanted to make to accommodate the richer, sweeter flavor of pan seared sockeye salmon. I immediately shifted from chili arbol to chipotle. The transition to orange juice and mexican oregano also seemed like obvious choices. Some of the other modifications I made to augment these initial transitions. Ultimately (right up to serving time), I was a little nervous about the combination of orange with tomato. My experience said both ingredients (in separate dishes) would work with salmon, but I honestly couldn't imagine how well the tomato-onion-salmon combination would marry with the orange-chipotle-salmon combination. For the life of me, I couldn't think of a dish I'd ever tried that contained both tomatoes and orange juice.

Charred sockeye with tomato-orange escabeche

This was just enough salmon for the three of us, but the quantity of escabeche would have been okay with enough salmon for four (translation—I threw out about a half cup of escabeche after dinner).

dramatis personae

one pound sockeye salmon fillets (skin on)
one quarter cup plus two tablespoons olive oil
two or more chipotle peppers, seeded and halved (see preparation notes for quantity)
two cups orange juice
one quarter cup white wine vinegar
two tablespoons light brown sugar
sea salt
one small onion, coarsely chopped
three garlic cloves, minced or chopped
one large or two small bay leaves
one pint cherub tomatoes
two teaspoons dried Mexican oregano

quality of ingredients

If the filets don't glisten, they've dried out. Sockeye salmon should be vermilion approaching red. If the salmon smells fishy or if the flesh is beginning to separate, it might be too old. This can be misleading with salmon. If the fishmonger has carefully removed all the bones, the meat might have separated along the rib line. If the meat is beginning to separate into flakes; however, it's definitely past its prime.


Chipotle peppers are the only choice. Anything else is just wrong. If you can't find them in your produce section, buy the canned chipotles.

Mexican oregano (which is actually more flavorful after drying) is pretty easy to find in Texas grocery stores. I'm not sure if that's true elsewhere. If not, substitute a teaspoon each of fresh minced peppermint and oregano.

preparation notes

I haven't separated these ingredients into marinade and escabeche sections because this preparation involves a bit of crossing over.

Place the filets face down in a wide bottomed bowl and pour a cup and a half of the orange juice over them. To the remaining one half cup of OJ, add the white wine vinegar, the light brown sugar, and a pinch of salt. Pour half of this mixture over the salmon filets, too, and set aside the remainder for later.

The fancy-shmancy foodie word for this ingredient will be infusion. We're going to make a quick chipotle infusion with the olive oil. This is incredibly simple. In a non-stick sauté pan, heat a quarter cup of olive oil over medium heat until it just begins to shimmer. Place the seeded chipotle chilis in the oil, insides down. Two chilis (three, if they're from a can) should be enough to just taste a little smoky bite in the final dish. If you like your chipotle dishes to be more assertive, use four chilis (six, if you're using canned chilis). Let the chilis infuse the hot oil for about ten minutes, and then remove (I use chopsticks) and discard the chilis.

Turn up the flame to medium-high and add in the onion, garlic, bay leaf, and a pinch of salt. Sauté these until the onions just start to reach translucency. Turn down the flame to low and allow the mixture to simmer for about ten minutes.

Add in the reserved orange/vinegar mixture, and bring the mixture to a boil. Mix in the Mexican oregano and tomatoes. This is your escabeche. Remove the escabeche from the flame and pour it into a bowl. Cover the bowl with a plate.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil to the smoke point (just a wisp, not a black cloud). Place the salmon filets in the oil skin side up. Do not towel off the orange juice; it's going to caramelize. The trend in upscale dining establishments in the past decade has been to serve salmon medium rare. Personally, I don't see the appeal. I like raw salmon in some preparation, but not in the middle of my cooked salmon. With that in mind, cook the salmon filets for five minutes on the flesh side, turn them over, and cook the skin side for four minutes. While the flesh side is down, do not lift or move the filets as this will cause the just-forming caramel to flake off.

If you prefer medium-rare filets, cook the filets for three minutes on the flesh side, turn them, and cook them for another minute on the skin side.

Place the filets on a platter skin side down. Pour the tomato-orange escabeche over the filets. Remove the bay leaves and discard them or place them to the side of the platter. This is a damned fine looking dish already, so you don't need to bother with any extra garnish.

Composing a Symphony - king crab curry

Beethoven's Ninth versus Nirvana Unplugged

I used to make a variation on lasagna bolognese that tended to go over well at parties and pot luck gatherings. In my lasagna I substituted a layer of spinach leaves for every other layer of noodles, substituted hot Italian sausage for ground beef, and incorporated five cheeses: mozzarella, provolone, ricotta, cottage cheese curd, and reggiano parmigiano. My lasagna sauce was a thick concoction of tomato sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, roasted red bell peppers, onions, garlic, oregano, and basil. In several years, I only received two complaints about the dish. One was from an acquaintance who didn't like mushrooms. The other came from an aunt of mine who tried a few bites and then pushed it away.

"I'm sorry," she explained, "it just contains too much stuff. It's too many flavors for me. My taste buds don't know what to concentrate on."

I shrugged it off: de gustibus. Still, the criticism has stayed with me all these years, and I occasionally find myself thinking much the same thing about overly complicated dishes. I've seen many fine dishes ruined by the addition of one too many stout ingredients. I stopped visiting one of the local Italian restaurants because they insist on putting garlic in everything but the drinks and desserts. Their bread sticks, salad dressings, red sauces, white sauces, and pestos all contain raw or sautéed garlic. Garlic is good where garlic is good, but not every savory dish needs garlic or even benefits from its presence. (Of course, it doesn't help that the restaurant in question uses too much garlic in every dish. After a few bites of any entrée, you can't even taste the parmigiano.) I've seen similar effects in various restaurants from unnecessary addition of balsamic vinegar, chilis, corn, sun dried tomatoes, ginger, citrus, and even cheese. After experiencing this problem enough, it's easy to conclude that a dish can have (to crib from Amadeus) too many notes.

How then do we explain curries? A good curry can include as few as a half dozen or as many as two dozen strong aromatics, and most curry cooks employ cooking methods that enhance the strength of some of the aromatics. Balance of flavor elements is the key. Achieving that balance in a curry—or any complex recipe, for that matter—just takes a bit more thought. The problem in unbalanced dishes isn't too many notes—it's too many clinkers.

For any dish to be a success, every flavor in the dish has to balance with every other. One strong element can overbalance all the rest. Even the best desserts contain some tart or spicy or even bitter contrasts to their essential sweetness. Generally, I want my meals to present a spectrum of flavors and textures. That means sweet elements have to be matched with spicy or bitter offsets, tartness has to play against salt, and buttery tenderness needs a contrasting crunch. You can enhance the sweetness of some items with other sweet items, but then you have to be doubly certain that the dish (or an accompaniment) provides something to achieve a balance. Otherwise, you get a cloying sense of sweetness. If I serve lobster with a peach gastric, for example, I would likely balance the sweetness by plating the lobster upon or against a bit of salad that included endive, cucumber, or celery (perhaps all three) for contrast.

Where this methodology usually goes awry is in adding one strong element too many or just too damned much of one strong element.

Consider, for a moment, two quite different but generally well-received musical presentations: Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as conducted by Herbert von Karajan and Nirvana's MTV Unplugged presentation of "Come As You Are." The former production required the cooperative interaction of the one-hundred plus members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Singverein Chorus, four other singers, and von Karajan. The latter required a three guys playing two guitars and a trap set. Yes, the differences in these two works are vast, but in some ways the similarities. Both of these works are complex, moving, and satisfying pieces of music thanks to the artful employment of harmony, melody, rhythm, and dissonance in balance. Each presentation contains strong elements capable of overwhelming the music if they're not properly controlled. Each work elicits a strong, positive emotional response from its aficionados. The largest difference in these works is a matter of order of magnitude. What Nirvana accomplishes by balancing three instruments and a single voice, von Karajan pulls off with twenty times as many elements.

A good curry works a lot like a well-orchestrated, well-conducted symphony. Too much of any one aromatic can overwhelm the dish. I've had bad curries. Sometimes the problem is just timing: overcooked or undercooked elements. Overcooking is a common problem in restaurants where many curries are prepared at the beginning of a mealtime and lift to simmer for a few hours. More commonly though the problem is too much. Too much cumin or garlic or ginger or cloves makes that particular ingredient stand out. Too much powdered spice makes the concoction taste and feel dusty. Too much curry relative to the main protein component kills the flavor of that component. If the dish is supposed to be curried shrimp, you should be able to taste shrimp.

I've experimented with a number of pre-mixed curry powders over the years. The biggest problem with them is that no single combination of aromatics can match with every possible protein. You can't expect a curry powder that matches well with shrimp and coconut milk to work with chicken. In composing my own curries, I have more success dividing my aromatics into two batches: a dry spice mix (masala) and a curry paste that combines dry and moist aromatics. This allows me greater control of the flavors of the ingredients. The ingredients in the masala are enhanced by a little extra cooking. The ingredients in the curry paste will be ruined if they cook too long. The crab curry I've listed here is one that I originally concocted for use with lump blue crab meat, but I found that—although the paste worked just fine with lump crab—the dry masala overwhelmed the crab. I decided that I needed a sweeter crab: stone crab, king crab, or snow crab.

King crab curry

The Girltzik (my step-daughter) returned from a summer visit with her father on Sunday night (July 29th). I served this dish over basmati rice. The crab proved itself perfectly capable of sharing the stage with my apple-pie spice masala. Everyone ate too much.

dramatis personae

one tablespoon peanut oil
one Fuji apple, cored and diced (skin on)
one quarter of a sweet onion
(optional) one quarter cup chopped snow peas
one pound of king crab meat
one half can of coconut milk

for the apple-pie spice masala:
one quarter teaspoon cinnamon
one quarter teaspoon ground cloves
one half teaspoon ground allspice
one half teaspoon ground cardamom

for the paste:
three tablespoons chopped ginger root
two tablespoons chopped garlic
one teaspoon ground coriander seed
one teaspoon ground turmeric
one quarter teaspoon cayenne

quality of ingredients

I would have liked to include a handful of snow peas in this curry, but the snow peas in my local supermarket were horrid: yellowish, hard as wood, and blighted with little brown speckles. Snow peas, if you plan to use them, should be bright green and pliable but not so pliable that they won't snap if bent too far.

The apple should be smooth, fresh, and crisp. This is usually not a problem with Fujis. I wouldn't recommend the double-sized Fuji apples sometimes sold as Hugey Fujis. They're inconsistent, and some of them are a bit light on flavor. If you cut into the apple and see any brownish flesh, throw it out. If, on the other hand, you see any translucent, lemon yellow, crystallized-looking portions, consider yourself lucky. The crystallized Fujis are sweeter, crunchier, and all around better tasting. As far as I know, there is no way to spot the crystallized apples until you cut them open.

The king crab should be as described in Keeping Cool - the crab course.

The ginger root, once peeled, should be bright yellow, juicy, and have a sharp, clean, lemony aroma.

The garlic should be fresh but not beginning to sprout. Sprouting garlic is bitter. If your garlic is sprouting and have no alternatives available, cut the cloves open and remove and discard the green center portions .

preparation notes

Mix the masala in a small bowl or ramekin and set it aside.

Place the paste ingredients in a food processor and pulse it until you have a uniform consistency with no outstanding bits of garlic or ginger. I have a small (3 cup) food processor that's ideal for small jobs like curry pastes, pestos, and ingredients for vinaigrettes. If all you have is a large food processor, you might find it more convenient to triple the ingredients and put two thirds of it in the freezer for later use.

Heat the peanut oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil begins to shimmer, pour in the masala. Let the spices steep in the oil for about five minutes. This allows oily aromatic compounds in the spices to leach out and blend in the peanut oil. It also makes the kitchen smell terrific.

Stir in the apple pieces and toss them to thoroughly coat the apple. Continue to cook the apple, tossing occasionally, for three to five minutes. This will allow some caramelization of the apple without softening the fruit too much.

Stir in the onion (and snow peas, if you have them) and the curry paste. Thoroughly mix the ingredients in the pan and continue to cook them until the onion is translucent and beginning to soften.

Stir in the coconut milk and the king crab. Continue to cook, stirring or tossing constantly, until the coconut begins to thicken.

Serve the king crab curry over basmati or kasmati rice and with your favorite chutneys on the side.

Acid Tataki

Wowing Myself

I like to experiment with variations and fusion cuisine. Luckily, this works more often than not. Otherwise, my family would probably groan every time they saw something unrecognizable on the plate. One of my most recent spectacular failures was pasta in a thick mushroom cream sauce. The sauce was delicious—cremini and porcini mushrooms in a chicken stock reduction with cream and sherry and a sprinkling of roasted ricotta—but, well, not wanting to be too indelicate, it looked like an unhealthy bowel movement. I'm still trying to figure out how to make that one look like food.

Last night's experiment was more fortuitous. In fact, it was the best success I can recall in quite a while. Even for a success, this meal was pretty amazing, especially for a first time creation. Usually, I try to keep my mouth shut when I serve something new. I want to hear my wife's reaction, and I don't want to unduly influence that reaction by presenting a possibly contrary opinion. Last night, though, when I put that first bite in my mouth, I just couldn't help myself. I was stunned. I was wowed. I couldn't even give my usual, non-committal, "Doesn't suck." Autonomically generated by a beautiful balance of sweet, tart, salty, spicy, creamy, and meaty flavors—before I'd even finished the first bite, came the astonished words, "This is perfect." My wife agreed. Dinner disappeared rapidly.

It's exciting as hell to get one right on the first try. It's even better when "right" is sensual to a nearly orgasmic degree.

Earlier that evening, I'd had one of those little epiphanies that makes the experimentation worthwhile. Like many such creations, this one was inspired by more or less equal parts happenstance and cravings. I arrived at the market with a vague notion of dorado or wahoo with mango salsa. I had already picked out the mango, hot red chili, sweet onion, limes, and a bunch of cilantro for the salsa when I noticed that the greenskin avocados are in. We only get those for a short time in the latter half of the summer. As a rule, I don't have much use for greenskins. They have a watery texture and less creamy richness than Hass and fuentes avocados. They are sweet, however, and mild enough that they can pair well with delicate seafood dishes. In the past, I've served greenskin halves stuffed and heaped with chilled crab salad or tuna poke.

So, not wanting to miss out on the greenskins, I grabbed a couple, thinking, hey, I can always serve them tomorrow. When I got to the fish counter, however, I found that the dorado, wahoo, and kona kompachi weren't too impressive. The dark spots on all three were brown around the bone, so I knew they'd been out on the ice for quite a while. The wild caught sockeye salmon, on the other hand, was a glistening unbroken scarlet, and the yellowfin steaks looked like sashimi waiting to happen. So, okay, I thought, salmon and tuna poke in avocado. I bought enough to prepare poke for the two of us (my stepdaughter is visiting Daddy in D.C. this month), and then I noticed the king crab. They had a big pile of five-inch king crab leg segments at the incredible price of $10 per pound. They're frozen and would keep for a while, so I bought a couple pounds of king crab.

As I thought through the ingredients in the cart, I began to realize that I had two slightly contradictory ideas going in my head at once: I wanted to do a poke with the tuna and salmon, but I wanted to use mango salsa. I could taste it. I even had an idea how it would work. This dish is a ceviche/poke hybrid. Ceviche is a citrus-pickled seafood, often mischaracterized as chemically cooked seafood. Poke is a raw fish salad, typically dressed with salt and sesame oil. The result of the hybrid is like a chemically seared tataki.

Stuffed avocados with mango salsa young ceviche

dramatis personae
one mango, diced
one tablespoon sweet onion, minced
one tablespoon hot red chili, minced
two tablespoons cilantro leaves, chopped
juice of two medium limes
sea salt to taste
one third pound tuna, cubed
one third pound salmon, cubed
one third pound king crab meat, cubed
one tablespoon roasted sesame oil
one large greenskin avocado

preparation notes

Mix the mango salsa, onion, chili, cilantro, salt and lime juice and set it aside. Normally, two limes would be too much liquid for this much mango salsa, but for this application, you need the extra liquid to coat the fish.

In a separate bowl, combine the fish and crab and coat it with the sesame oil. To avoid damaging these delicate bits of seafood, I recommend mixing with your hands. The sesame oil, in addition to being mighty tasty, will keep the lime juice of the salsa from penetrating too rapidly.

Immediately before you are ready to serve the meal, split one large greenskin avocado and remove the pit. Do not damage the skin, but cut out any brown bits and use a knife tip to remove any obvious brown fibers (they'll get stuck in your teeth). Thoroughly mix the fish and crab into the salsa. Spoon this young salsa into the avocado halves and mound enough to cover the avocado flesh.

Serve the avocado halves with spoons. When it gets to the table, the outside of the salmon and the edges of the tuna will just barely have begun to pickle. The trick of eating this dish is digging in to get a bit of avocado in every bite. You'll want to bring the remaining ceviche to the table in a separate bowl so the diners can refill their avocados. Trust me, you'll run out of stuffing before you run out of avocado.

The one element this dish does not have is crunch, so you might want to serve a crusty bread as a side.

Keeping Cool - the crab course

The Case of the Missing Summer

Naturally, as soon as I start preaching about competing with the heat, the heat just up and runs to Montana. It's been raining for forty days and forty nights, now (give or take an order of magnitude), and the temperature in Austin probably won't make it out of the 80s today. So, my incentive for serving cold food is weakened a bit. My joints are achy and I'm bitchy enough that on the drive home I'll probably run down and kill the next moron who cuts me off in traffic.

I did say I'd follow up with the cold crab menu, though, so I'll get that out of the way before going on to some hot crab dishes, fish dishes, and various tartares and carpaccios.

Ice Cap Food

You just can't beat king crab (Arctic) and snow crab (Antarctic) for cold crab dishes. Both provide large, rich, sweet, meaty legs. Both are available year round. Both are usually sold fully cooked. Maybe it's just a matter of personal preference, but to me, blue crab, stone crab, and dungeness all taste a bit off when served cold.

Safety warning: whatever you do, do not use my recipes with artificial crab (also called krab, sea legs, or seafood sticks). Artificial crab is far more artificial than crab. It's actually a surimi (fish purée) of generic fishy white-meat fish like pollack, whiting, or hake. To imitate the sweetness of actual crab meat, the manufacturers add corn syrup. Spam of the Sea: ick. My daughter is fond of California rolls, which are usually made with this so-called food product, so I try to concentrate on other things when I know she's eating said rolls.

But I'm not talking about California rolls. I'm talking about cold crab recipes. Be aware, I have placed a curse on this blog entry. If you use artificial crab meat with my recipes, expect one or more of the following:

• one of your diners will spit it out in a planter when your back is turned, which your cat or dog will eat and later gack up on a fine silk garment or oriental rug


• you will suffer a nine-year bout of constipation following which you will bear a striking resemblance to the late Richard M. Nixon


• you will die (eventually)

King crab with avocado cream

dramatis personae

one pound of king crab legs
one large Hass avocado
one cup cream
juice of one lime
one tablespoon nonpareil capers

quality of ingredients

King crab legs, which are sold pre-cooked (steamed) and frozen, come in various sizes. I used two half pound legs for this preparation, and that was just barely enough to feed three people. In the next recipe, I used a single one-pound leg. Use only the leg meat for this recipe. The claw meat is tasty, but the texture would feel odd in combination with a thick cream sauce. Snow crab should work as a substitute. In either case, the legs should be intact, have no black spots, and should smell sweet.

I discussed avocado selection a while back in Skirting the Name Issue. Those comments apply here. If you can't find ripe avocados in your produce department of choice, see if they sell the vacuum-packed, peeled, and seeded avocados.

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.

preparation notes

I know this is going to be a cold dish, but I recommend steaming the legs for about ten minutes before prepping them for the plate. Once they're done with their little steam bath, let the legs cool enough to handle. King crab legs are covered in thorny projections that are sharper than they look. Wear heavy gloves or wrap a pair of towels around the leg sections. Depending on how stiff the shells are, you should be able to break the legs at the joins. When you pull the sections apart, you should see two cartilage strips pull out of the meat. If you don't see the two strips, you'll have to pull them out another way. Pliers will work for this. To remove the sections of meat intact, snip away a portion of the shell at either end of the section and slide out the crab meat. If the meat won't slide out (usually this is only a problem with snow crab), you might have to cut the shell lengthwise.

The avocado cream is incredibly simple. Blend the avocado with the cream. Once they're thoroughly blended, add the lime juice and blend to a smooth consistency. The lime juice clabbers the cream, so this concoction thickens quite a bit. You might have to stop the blender and scrape down the sides a few times to get it all blended. Depending on how you want to present this, the capers can be scattered over the dish or blended with the cream.

King crab salad

dramatis personae

one pound of king crab legs
one small avocado
one green celery rib, sliced thin
one half cup thinly sliced radicchio
two mandarin oranges

for the dressing:
one quarter cup peanut oil
one half can coconut milk
juice of two limes
one teaspoon wasabi powder
sea salt

preparation notes

I prepared this salad to go with gazpacho, so I didn't want the spices competing. The wasabi powder is just enough to give a hint of heat. If I were pairing the salad with something a less spicy, I would probably add a pinch of nutmeg and a minced red hot chili (probably a fresno or hot fingerlong), and I would also leave out the wasabi.

The coconut milk probably seems an odd choice to some. Mayonnaise is the standard dressing base for crab salads, but I consider this a long-standing screw-up. I don't dislike mayonnaise (my wife and daughter do), I just consider it too heavy for crab.

After you've shelled the crab and removed the cartilage, bias cut the segments into half-inch pieces.

1. You want the avocado skinned (duh), pitted and cut into pieces about the same size as the pieces of crab. Here's how I do it:
2. Pluck out the stem piece, and cut straight down through the stem end until the blade makes contact with the pit.
3. Cut the avocado in half buy running the knife blade all the way around the pit. The cut should come back to the same starting point.
4. Twist the two halves of the avocado and separate them. The pit will stay in one half.
5. Remove the pit. I want to tell you how to do this cleanly, but without pictures to help clarify the instructions, someone could easily find themselves minus a finger or three. So, once I get the pictures, I'll revisit this topic.
6. Once the pit is out, with the peel still on, cut both halves length wise into half-inch strips.
7. Depending on the ripeness of the avocado, the skins might peel off easily. If not, removed them with a paring knife.
8. Cut the avocado strips to half their length.

The mandarins are, admittedly, something of a pain to prepare. They peel easily, but removing the membranes from the segments is a bit of work. I nick the membrane with a paring knife and then peel it off of each segment. Some of the segments tear in two or three pieces during this process, but it looks good that way. If this sounds like too much work, canned mandarins packed in their own juices are okay. If you use the canned fruit, discard the syrup and rinse the segments.

Make the dressing in a separate bowl by pouring in all the ingredients except the coconut milk. Then, with a whisk in one hand and the coconut milk in the other, slowly drizzle in the coconut milk while whisking vigorously. If you do this slowly enough, the emulsion won't separate right away.

One point about the limes: limes vary quite a lot in tartness, juiciness, and size. The limes I used produced about two or three tablespoons of juice. The quantity matters less than the impact of the juice on the dressing. Always taste your vinaigrettes—especially if you're using citrus juice as the souring agent.

Toss the crab, avocado, celery, radicchio, and mandarins in a large bowl with enough dressing to coat everything.

Keeping Cool - the soup course

No, it is not the humidity

Am I the only one who finds it odd that, when the summer heat gets to be nearly unbearable, guys all over the USA decide it's time to leave their air conditioned homes to stand over a barbecue or grill and eat hot smoke? Sure, grilled food is tasty, but backyard grilling always seemed to me an activity better suited for autumn or winter. At least here in Austin. Maybe it's just my genetic make up. I didn't get the beer or football genes, either.

As much as I generally enjoy playing with fire and flipping sauté pans, there comes a time here in Texas when no amount of air conditioning can keep up with the combination of the heat outside, the heat from the kitchen, and a hot meal. Just last night, we had pasta in a mushroom cream sauce. By the end of the meal, I was sweating. Guess it was a bad day for a dish that retains its heat. Usually on such days, to avoid torturing myself in the kitchen and my family at the table, I end up preparing a lot of salads, tartares, carpaccios, and the occasional cold soup preparations. Understand, many of these cold preparations do require a bit of cooking—vichyssoise, for example, requires quite a lot of cooking—but I prepare and serve the key components cold. These past two weekends, I experimented with gazpacho recipes and a couple of king crab preparations.

I'll talk about the crab dishes in another posting, which means this will be my first ever published recipe that is vegan-safe. (I was going to put an exclamation point at the end of that sentence, but even my hypocrisy has its bounds.)

Gazpacho

Tomatoey gazpacho is a long-standing summer favorite of mine. It always astonishes me how grinding up some tomatoes with some cucumber, peppers, garlic, and onion and mixing in a little oil and vinegar can produce such a remarkably cool and surprisingly buoyant texture. Gazpacho is an excellent adjunct to crab, shrimp, lobster, or just a little cheese (oops, so much for the vegan vote).

Purists and food historians will tell you that gazpacho has to be made with stale bread. Yes, gazpacho, which was around before the tomato and chili came to Iberia, was originally a concoction of stale bread, garlic, vinegar, and olive oil. I haven't tried it, but I have to admit: I think it sounds ghastly. Since I don't use stale bread in my recipe, some food mavens might say that mine isn't true gazpacho. I've tried it both with and without the bread, though, and I can't see that the bread adds anything to the flavor or texture of the soup.

I approached the gazpacho prep in these last few attempts with a few extra goals in mind. First, I wanted a recipe that uses a chili other than the traditional green bell pepper. Green bell pepper lends a slight pepperiness but I believe it also gives a flat bitterness to the soup. Besides, bell pepper and my wife don't get along. Second, I wanted to use roasted garlic and chilis to lend a little smokiness to the soup and to reduce the harshness of the garlic. I also tried out two varieties of sweet onion in an attempt to eliminate the lingering oniony aftertaste I have experienced in some gazpachos.

In the first gazpacho experiment, I used two pounds of tomatoes, one English cucumber, two roasted garlic cloves, a roasted poblano pepper, and one quarter of a large Walla Walla onion (about a half cup of diced onion). It was tasty, but I thought the onion overpowered the garlic. I also noticed, about an hour after the meal, that I was still tasting cucumber. I decided I could do without that cucumber aftertaste. Based on these results, I decided that my next attempt would include twice as much garlic, a quarter cup of sweet onion, and half an English cuke.

Here is the recipe I finally settled on (enough for four diners):

dramatis personae

one poblano pepper
four garlic cloves
two pounds red tomatoes, cored and seeded
one half English cucumber, peeled
one quarter cup sweet onion, diced
one cup tomato juice
one quarter cup red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
one half cup extra virgin olive oil
salt

quality of ingredients

The garlic should not be so dry that the husks have cracked. You also don't want cloves that have begun to sprout—they're bitter. If any have started to sprout, you'll see a green or yellow tail poking through the narrow end of the clove.

The tomatoes should be as red and ripe as possible. Fresh off the vine is best. Tomatoes sold as "vine-ripened" are probably the next best choice. Other tomatoes in the grocery stores are likely to have been artificially ripened by storage in ethylene gas, which makes them paler, mealier, and less flavorful. Any firm variety of tomato will do for Gazpacho, but I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than Romas, since seeding them will take a lot more time.

Some folks prefer sherry vinegar in gazpacho. I honestly can't tell the difference, and red wine vinegar is easier to find in the stores. The vinegar is only in the soup to add a little sparkle; it's not a major component. Since you're not going to taste much of it anyway, I certainly would not recommend wasting a premium sherry vinegar in something that's going to swallow up most of its character.

I usually use tomato juice from concentrate in my gazpacho. This boosts the tomato flavor and flavor just a smidgeon, but it has the negative effect of increasing the water content of the soup. Next time I do this, I think I'll try straight tomato juice concentrate instead of the reconstituted juice.

I have used Anaheim chilis and Hatch hot chilis in the past. I prefer the extra heat from the Hatch chilis, but they're not available year round. I like the smoky heat of roasted Poblanos, but their heat ranges from as mild as a bell pepper to not-quite-jalapeño strength. If you want consistency, taste the chili before you roast it.

I used a sweet red Italian onion in my second gazpacho experiment, but I still was not happy with the results. Next time, I'm going to try eliminating the onion altogether.

preparation notes

Making gazpacho is generally damned simple. You toss the ingredients into a food processor and run it till it reaches the desired consistency, chill it for a half hour, and serve it.

As I noted previously, I complicated matters by roasting two ingredients. I think the results proved positive.

You can roast the poblano under the broiler, but that heats up the kitchen and takes a bit longer. I just put it directly on the grate over my largest burner. Use a pair of forks to turn it every few seconds. Once all the skin is completely charred black, remove the chili from the burner and wrap it in a pair of wet paper towels. After about five minutes, wipe away and discard all the black skin. Don't rinse the chili. You'll wash away some of the flavor. You should be able to pluck off all the blackened skin with your fingers. If you can't, you didn't roast it long enough. Remove and discard the stem, seeds and any pulp remaining inside the chili.

The garlic is even easier to roast. Peel off the papery layers, but leave the hard husks intact. Place the cloves in a cast iron skillet or comal, dry, over a medium-high flame. Turn the cloves every three or four minutes (I use chopsticks). Every flat surface of the cloves should be black, and the cloves should be quite soft. Set the cloves aside to cool for a few minutes. Once they're cool enough to handle, peel away and discard the husks. With a paring knife, scrape away any black bits from the cloves.

Now you should be ready to process, chill, and serve your gazpacho.