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.