Variation on a Theme

I made another cilantro/lime marinade last night, and I have to say this version is even better (sorry, Stonewall Kitchens). I put a couple of handfuls of washed and dried, fresh cilantro in the blender. I added the juice of two limes, about a half a teaspoon of salt, some fresh coriander seeds, peppercorns, and a little whole cumin seeds. Then I blended. After everything was chopped up, I added olive oil to form an emulsion like last time. I gave it a taste, and it needed something more. Remembering that I had seen salad dressing recipes with lime call for orange juice, I looked in the fridge for something sweet. No orange juice, but I did have mango juice. I dipped a little bit of the marinade on one spoon and a little bit of mango juice on the other to try the two out. Oh my was that good!I added about 1/4C of the juice and blended well.

I marinated chicken breasts in the marinade and then brushed more on while the chicken cooked.

I tried the Cook's Illustrated version of grilled corn on the cob. They say to peel the corn down to the last layer of husk, grill 8-12 minutes, turning every minute in a half. Master Chef Maurice is against the grilled corn idea, but I thought I would try it out. Result: It tasted kind of nice and nutty, but it was a lot of work to stand over the grill turning it every minute and a half. The regular boiling method produces fine corn with much less work.

Out of Gas

I had a pretty good menu planned for last night, but instead I made one of the worst meals of my life. I had intended to grill up some shrimp—seasoned with lemon, garlic, and whatever else, along with a sliced avocado squash. I thought of serving the beautifully grilled shrimp on a bed of rice. So far, so good.

But then the grill wouldn't light. File this as argument number 321 for having both a gas and a charcoal grill.

So I sautéed the shrimp, which became less than memorable, except for the squishy centers. The squash (which cost $2.50 at the Larchmont Farmer's Market!) was bleh under the broiler. The rice couldn't help anything. Besides, it was kind of like paste.

Better luck next time. And I'm going to need it too; Lora is coming to dinner tomorrow!

Announcing: The Summer Food Competition

Here is the first official entry in the category: best dish to take to someone's house for a barbecue. Black Bean Salad.

We were invited to our neighbor's house for a super-casual barbecue, and I wanted to bring something easy, fresh, that would travel across the backyard well, and that most people might like. I love black beans, and I've had lots of variations on black bean salads, so I decided to make one with all the different things that I love all in one big bowl.

When I make a salad I mostly measure with my eye. I want things to be represented but not dominate, so my process is chop a little bit, see how that looks—add more if necessary. Here are the ingredients for the salad, a salad that is so good that I quietly took the leftovers home and am eating it right now for breakfast.

Black beans (of course)— I used one can of Goya beans, carefully rinsed.
Orzo — cooked in salted water
Corn — I cooked one ear of fresh corn. I think I'd use frozen, but not canned.
Red Pepper — diced to about the same size as a black bean
Yellow Pepper — also diced to about the same size as a black bean
Red Onion — I used about 1/4, diced smaller than a black bean
Mango — about 1/2 C, diced
Cilantro — fresh, about 1/3 C chopped
Juice of 2 limes
salt / pepper
Ground Coriander — a couple of shakes
Ground Cumin — a couple of shakes

I'm eating it right now with a dollop of spicy guacamole on the side. I would add some diced jalapeno if I didn't want kids to have any and wanted most of it for myself. Fresh little tomatoes could be good too, but chopped tomatoes might make it a little watery.

Make it. Love it. Submit your own best take-away summer dishes.

You Say "Tomato"; I Say "La Tomate"

I got the latest Penzey’s catalog today. They’re a mail order spice and herb company with what must be very Mid-Western roots. I place orders from them from time to time, unless I run out of something and need it right away. Now they’ve opened up a shop in the food mall at Grand Central Station, so I’ll be able to save on shipping fees.

I thumbed through the catalog anyway because I’m always entranced by the food photography. They offer recipes that use a good portion of their product and the photos that reveal the desired result are shockingly bright. They’re old school, like the photos that illustrate Betty Crocker cookbooks or 1001 Quick Meals Using Campbell’s Soup. You can almost feel the warmth of the wattage used to light the food.

All of a sudden a bunch of bright shiny tomatoes caught my eye, and there it was: La Tarte! Penzey’s was suggesting that we should all make fresh Tomato Tarts this summer. They put the Penzey’s spin on the recipe by calling for Shallot Salt (a new product of theirs) and suggest that you could use either dried or fresh basil (as if!).

The part that truly surprised me, and made The Husband jump, was their suggestion to spread a full 2 T of Dijon mustard on the bottom layer. Regular readers will know the problems that can come from that kind of advice. They leave out the cheese too, which I think is a mistake. The Gruyere adds a nuttiness that balances out the tangy mustard and the sweet tomatoes.

It’s a strange to see something that has seemed so quixotic and unattainable in boldface in a catalog. Everyone will be making Tomato Tarts now, and I wish them luck.

The Squash of Summer

The vegetable of the moment in our house is summer squash. I slice it , length-wise, in thirds. Then sprinkle salt and pepper; drizzle with olive oil. I put it on the grill for about 3-4 minutes a side. That's it.

I used to steam summer squash and zucchini, and it always tasted kind of bitter and watery. Grilling makes summer squash incredibly sweet and succulant. I make sure not to overcook it, so there is still a bit of bite to it. Plus, the grill marks make it look much fancier than it really is.

More on Steak

I can clearly remember the first meal I had with The Husband. We were walking out of an Environmental Ethics class in Berkeley, and he was on his way to The Stuffed Inn on the North Side of campus. He didn’t really invite me to dinner, it was much more casual than that. He was going to get what must have been the cheapest vegetarian meal in town and I could too.

The Stuffed Inn was a darkly wooded den of a place with serve yourself soup, kept hot all day in steam kettles. Split Pea soup was their specialty, it seemed, and you could ladle yourself up a big bowlful and grab a wedge of chewy bread to go along with it. I was nearly in love with him by then, and it just seemed so fitting to be discussing living attuned with the environment and then having a peasanty porridgey bean soup. At that point in my life I knew how many acres of arable soil it took to produce a pound of beef, and I tried really hard to live a life that considered human impact on the planet.

I am not a hemp-wearing vegetarian. That’s a fact. I think my life began to shift when we moved to New York City. It can be extremely difficult to feel in touch with the Earth when you see so little of it. Some things don’t change: The Husband is an avid recycler. I prefer to buy organic food. Some things have.

Once bean soups were satisfying and comforting for The Husband. Now steak does the trick. When I know that he’s been having a hard time and that he needs to feel loved, I make steak. I either pan-fry it in a little bit of peanut oil or put it out on the grill. I like to make a rub out of coarsely ground peppercorns and coriander seeds, and a sprinkling of salt. I’ve gotten pretty good at telling how much it has cooked by how much the steak “gives” when you press on it (the softer it is, the more rare it is).

I usually buy prime beef at Fairway. It’s kind of pricey, but the three of us share one New York or Rib Eye steak, so it doesn’t set us back that much. Once I bought a strip steak at Lobel’s on Madison. It was delicious, but I just couldn’t rationalize the price. (Their ribs though, that’s another story).

The Husband can be less talkative at the table when we have steak for dinner. But that’s also because he’s usually enjoying his meal, as well as busily cutting up The Girl's portion too.

Turkey Because I'm Chicken

I grew up on hamburgers. I used to pinch pieces of the raw meat when my grandma was making meatloaf or burgers. She used a castiron meat grinder that she screwed onto the tabletop and ground it all herself. Years later, when I first saw someone eat steak tartare in France (a plateful of raw ground beef with a raw egg on top), I was overcome by both desire and revulsion.

We were regulars at Val's Burger's in Hayward, California when I was a kid. My cousin and I would get charcoal grilled "baby burgers," grilled by Val himself, and then add ketchup from a squirt bottle, lots of pickles. We'd share a plastic basket of crinkle-cut french fries and be in heaven.

Fear of mad cow disease has pretty much taken me off of ground beef, so whenever I go to a diner I usually order the same thing: a turkey burger, well done with tomato, onion, and mustard. They are usually pretty dry and sometimes taste like cardboard with mustard. I decided that I could possibly do better, so I took a stab at my own turkey burgers.

I didn't do any of the "fancy" things that make diner turkey burgers even worse. I didn't add chopped onion to the meat or add anything else that makes you sorry you ordered it. I simply made patties out of the burgers, put a little salt, pepper and ground coriander on top and then put them on the grill. I pulled out some of the bready part of the bun, gave each a brush of olive oil and let them toast on the grill for the last couple of minutes.

What really set these burgers apart, I think, were the condiments. I'm so tired of getting 1/2" slices of onion and tomatoes at diners. I know it takes more trouble to slice them thinly, but they would save money by having the onion and tomatoes go further. Mine were about 1/8", which seemed perfect. You could double up on tomatoes without having them slip out of the sandwich. I couldn't find dill pickle chips, so I went for sliced, and they were fine too.

I got mixed results with this dinner. The Husband was extremely happy (or extremely hungry—or both); he ate three! I thought they were much, much better than anything I previously ordered, and ate two (they were small). The Girl ate the pickles. Lots of them. At one point during dinner she came over and climbed on my lap and whispered, "I think I'm going to throw up." We waltzed away from the table, and I applauded her for paying attention to her body.

I know I'm going to be dissatisfied next time I go to a diner. Maybe I'll have to be like The Husband and order the fish filet sandwich. Next time I'm in the Bay Area, though, I'm going to Vals.

I Did It - My Way

I'm a big, big fan of Stonewall Kitchen's Cilantro Lime Dressing. Mostly I use it for marinating chicken before grilling, but at about $5.00 a bottle ($5.95 if you buy it through their website) it can get pretty expensive. I can go through a bottle of that with a whole chicken. So, in an effort toward living the frugal life I decided to make my own cilantro / lime concoction.

I put about 2-3 limes (cut away the peel), 1/2C fresh cilantro, 1 heaping Tbl of toasted, whole coriander seeds, a clove of garlic, and about a tsp. of salt in the blender. Then I added 1/4 of olive oil. I blended it really well for about 20 seconds. Then I poured in more olive oil while the blender was running to get it the consistency I wanted: a thick paste. Then I pourerd it over cubes of chicken in a shallow baking dish to marinate.

When it was time to get dinner going I jabbed the chicken cubes on to skewers and grilled them for about 8 minutes. Other grilled vegetables balanced out the menu (e.g., mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, tofu), and it was all served over rice.

Here are some of the good things about this:

1. It took hardly no time at all.
2. I got to use up some of my "older" limes.
3. The thick paste adhered nicely to the chicken, so a lot of the flavor stayed -on- the chicken.
4. It was truly delicious. Everybody said so.

The Trout

I've been immersed in readings about women cooking in France. I finished the recent Julia Child memoir with the definite understanding that not only am I not Julia Child, I don't even want to be like her. I don't have her drive and enthusiasm for the details and technique of cooking. I'm not even especially intrigued by nuanced combinations of flavors. I cook for friends and family, and I'm still trying to figure out my nexus of cooking, pleasure and servitude.

After Julia Child, I picked up Madeleine Kamman's When French Women Cook, a memoir with recipes. She goes through each stage of her life, chapter by chapter describing the women who influenced her with their cooking. There's Marie-Charlotte, her great-grandmother, who taught her La Cuisine Misere ("cooking something from nothing"). A recipe for Cream of Dandelion Soup (Creme de Pissenlits) follows. I haven't tried this recipe, and I can pretty much promise that I never will. It's stipulated that you want two pounds of the early dandelions, and it's already too late for that.

Victoire the mushroom maven is Kamman's next mentor. She starts that chapter saying "Disappointment comes early in life." How true! Her letdown came when she injured herself in the audition for the Paris Opera Ballet and was sent off to a distant relative's care for recovery. This raises all sorts of unanswered questions; Kamman stays focused on her accidental apprenticeship, recording what she refers to as a "France that has disappeared."

She describes a time that she and Victoire celebrated a mushroom windfall by eating out, having Truites au Lard. Following the theme of disappointment, the special meal didn't "measure up," so Victoire promised to prepare the dish the way it was supposed to be. Her story goes on with the older lady catching a trout with her bare hands, and of course they tasted better than those from the restaurant.

Having passed on not only weed soup but Squabs with Grapes and Pineau and Poached Chicken in Vinegar, I decided it was time to recapture lost France in my kitchen. Even though I knew I wouldn't be able to grab any trout except at Citarella, I decided on Truites au Lard. It's basically trout pan-fried in fat rendered from diced pancetta. [Note to self: try to avoid using the word lard in recipes; real turn off.] It was one of those French recipes that are deceptively easy:

• soak trout in milk (I don't know why, but it said to, and I did)
• render pancetta fat (1/2 oz cubed pancetta for each trout)
• take out crispy pancetta.
• flour the trout and saute about 4 min. a side. (I had some big trout, so this wasn't nearly enough time.
When the trout are done, put them on a platter and return the crispy pancetta to the pan along with 2 cloves of garlic, 2 T parsley and 2 T butter. It's done when the garlic starts to color up.
• Pour this over the trout. and serve.

I had the full Madeleine Kamman experience: I was thoroughly disappointed. I don't know what exactly I was trying to conjure. This certainly wasn't the fresh trout my mom used to make when everyone had gone fishing in the Sacramento Delta. Nor did it seem decidedly French with the mammoth fish on offer in New York. I had high expectations, to be sure, anticipating being transported to some little French kitchen where nobody had to hurry about synchronizing dinner, piano practice, bath, and bedtime stories in two hours time.

Iron Chef Maurice!

The Husband's dad (my cooking mentor), Maurice, is here for a visit from California, and this presents an opportunity for both learning and anxiety. After a lunch out at Nick and Toni’s in Manhattan, we drove up to Fairway on 125th street to plan the night’s meal. “What should we do for dinner?” I asked.

Smiling, Maurice offered: “Hey, you decide. It’s up to you. Cook anything you want.” It all seemed so inconsequential to him. So easy.

When in doubt, fix chicken. So I got an organic broiler and had the butcher butterfly it for me. I thought of rice and then an endive salad. Maurice was being completely nonjudgmental, pushing the cart along and oohing and aahing at the shelves of oils and sauces and the tubs of olives and capers. He couldn’t resist though when we came along the little Italian cippolini onions. I had never noticed these before. They’re right next to the shallots and the ginger, across from the cornhusks for tamales. He noted that the price was about a third of that in Sacramento and started stuffing about eight or so into a bag.

We came across a heap of pears (Bartlett, Red Bartlett, Anjou) and Maurice bagged 4 of those, along with some heavy cream from the cold room.

Then we came by some “heirloom” tomatoes. One of the highlights of our annual trip to Sacramento is when Maurice takes me to the Farmer’s Market and we pick out wild and gruesome looking tomatoes to slice and drizzle with olive oil. I was hoping that these New York tomatoes might qualify as worthy. Maurice looked at the $5 a pound price and edged over the cheaper beefsteak variety. “You have breadcrumbs? Parmesan cheese?” We picked up some oregano and then headed over to the check out line.

When we got home I threw together a marinade for the chicken (lime, garlic, crushed cilantro, olive oil, s&p) and Maurice started in on the onions (peeling and trimming).

As I grilled the chicken and cooked the rice (sautéing in butter first, adding a sprig of the oregano, and covering the lid in a linen towel (I don’t know, that’s what a French woman taught me), Maurice was simmering the onions in some butter and olive oil and a bit of water. He was also halving and cleaning the tomatoes, crushing garlic, stuffing breadcrumbs, Parmesan olive oil and oregano into the nooks and crannies of the tomatoes—ready to be roasted in the oven.

Then I washed the escarole and made a 3:1 olive oil/ balsamic vinegar salad dressing. As the onions were perfuming the whole house with their heavy, sweet fragrance, he let the sauce cook down among the tender little buds and then caramelized them with some balsamic vinegar.

So there on the table was a nicely grilled chicken, some white rice, a nice green salad along with the most delectable little onion buttons you have probably ever seen and some squishy bright red tomatoes oozing with garlic and cheesy bits.

If you were lucky you got an onion small enough to pop in your mouth all at once, that way you had that little explosion happening as you bit into it. As for the tomatoes, I’m glad The Girl didn’t like them because that left more for me. I choose to cut them into pieces and plopped it on a piece of baguette. The only thing that would have made it better is if we were sitting in a café in Italy.

I got up to give The Girl a bath, and when we came back down Maurice was sautéing the pears, building up a caramel sauce, to which he added some of the heavy cream. He cooked it down and cooked it down, shaking the pan to keep the pears from burning or sticking. When the sauce started to turn a light brown, they were close to being done, and he carefully waited for that moment when they were just right. I was in charge of scooping up the vanilla ice cream that went on the side. He said he saw this recipe on the America’s Test Kitchen show and that they had said to serve it with blue cheese. We all agreed that cheesing up the caramel pears was just plain wrong.

As I scooped my final bite of pear, scraping whatever bits of caramel sauce I could onto my spoon, I considered not that I had been beat, for this wasn’t a competition. It was more like cooking with Master Kan, and I was trying to snatch the pebble.

It's What's For Dinner

Laurie Colwin told me about flank steak; then it took me years to try it. I passed over the New York and Ribeye cuts at Fairway because I just couldn't see putting all that money on one steak. But here's what made the flank steak good tonight: I smashed up some peppercorns and some coriander seeds, sprinkled in a little salt and then added some olive oil. This made a flavorful rub. I grilled it for about 7 minutes a side and everyone was happy.

I grilled the little pencil asparagus too, without dropping even one down the grates.

Where There's a Will

It started with one of my best qualities: optimism. I was going past the fish case at a nearby fancy-schmancy market when my eyes fell upon some gorgeous wild salmon filets. I wasn’t sure how I would prepare it (broil? grill? Try out one of those smoker bags that stowed away some place?), I just new that a hunk of that salmon was coming home with me.

But then it became Thursday evening and one of my worst qualities set in: lethargy. I think the religious call it sloth. In my defense, I had spent most of the day furiously working on a project (a muslin for a dress that was going very, very badly), and when dinner time rolled around I lost all interest in the salmon.

The Girl fed right into my mood. When she found out that it was just the two of us for dinner she made a winning plea for Arthur Pasta. Still, I knew that I had to do something with the salmon while it was fresh, so I poached the salmon while we spooned up orange mounds of whatever Arthur pasta really is. And actually, the crispness of my Sancerre went well with the tang of the pasta. Well, it was kind of like that.

Now it's the next night, and I have opaque pink salmon, speckled with coriander seeds and peppercorns lying on a plate in the fridge. Again, its me and Es (Evan is at his studio painting again), but my energy is uplifted, having solved one of the horrible sewing problems. Optimism and enthusiasm take over and I make just about the world’s best salmon cakes. I adapated Mark Bittman’s Salmon Croquette recipe, borrowed an egg from next door, and served the delectable crusted patties at about 8:00 p.m.

I can attest to the fact that children love them. My sample size is weak, but according to my sole juvenile test subject they were “great” and “beautiful.” Adults too have raved. “Write this recipe down; it’s a winner,” said The tired and hungry Husband when he got home an hour later. And that was his comment after eating one cold!

Here’s how to make them:

Combine about 1 to 3/4 pound poached salmon with 1/3 C mayonnaise, 1/4 finely chopped white onion, 1/4 C finely chopped red bell pepper, about 2 tsp Dijon mustard, 1/2 to 3/4 C bread crumbs, one egg, 2 Tbl. finely chopped fresh parlsey, 1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce, 1/2 tsp. ground coriander, pepper, and a bit of salt.

Form into 3” round cakes, any bigger and they can be hard to flip.

Cover each cake in panko (Japanese bread crumb).

Pour 1/4 inch of oil in skillet and let it get pretty hot.

Cook each salmon cake about 2.5 minutes per side, letting the crust get golden brown. Adjust heat as necessary.

Let cakes rest and blot off extra oil on paper towels. Serve and enjoy.

Thanks to the Riverdale Salmon Students for the great salmon painting.