Sweet Potato Kale Pizza

I don't know who came up with this pizza at Emma's, but I need to thank them.  Simply known as the #3, a thin, crispy crust is topped with baby spinach, caramelized onions, garlic, rosemary sauce, mozzarella and goat cheese.  Yes, please.  Might've been the quickest decision I've ever made in a restaurant!

Love at first bite, I knew I'd be recreating it at home.  Especially since I didn't get the leftovers ;)

I switched things up a bit and it came out just as delicious.  Maybe even better?   This time there were no leftovers, so I need to make it again.    Soon.

Sweet Potato & Kale Pizza w/Rosemary Goat Cheese Sauce
Recipe by Shannon, inspired by Emma's
Serves 2

The components of the pizza can be made ahead of time-- my dough came out of the freezer, the onion caramelized and sweet potato roasted ahead of time, making for an easy week-night dinner.

1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1-2T olive oil
1 medium-large sweet potato
pizza dough (homemade or store-bought)
kale, chopped/ripped into small pieces  (I didn't measure this, maybe ~1c)
3oz goat cheese
1T chopped fresh rosemary
1 clove garlic (or more if you'd like), chopped or run through a garlic press
1/4c milk (nondairy is fine)

Preheat the oven (anywhere from 350-400deg will be fine).

Poke some holes in the sweet potato with a fork and wrap in aluminum foil.  Roast for ~1hr, until nice and soft (a fork will slide right through when it's done).  Let cool, then cut the sweet potato in half and remove the flesh for the pizza.  The skin is still delicious, I'd recommend eating it right away :)

Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet (or dutch oven) over medium heat.  Add onions and stir to coat in the oil.  Cook for a 1-2min, then turn down heat.  Cook over low heat for 15-20min, until onions become browned and nicely caramelized.  Remove from heat and set aside.

Raise oven temperature to 450deg.  If you have a pizza stone, make sure it's in the oven now!

To prepare the rosemary goat cheese sauce, put goat cheese, rosemary and garlic into a small bowl.  Add milk and whisk until it becomes smooth and spreadable consistency.

Roll out pizza dough on a surface dusted with a little cornmeal (or more flour).  I rolled mine out pretty thin, so it was more like a flatbread, but feel free to make whatever style crust you prefer.

Once the oven is preheated, remove the pizza stone and assemble your pizza.  Spread the rosemary goat cheese sauce over the dough, then top with chopped kale, sweet potato and caramelized onions.  Bake 10-12 min, until crust is crispy!

How was everyone's weekend?

Strozzapreti-Gemelli with Tomato, Shallot and Mint

I have been meaning to make strozzapreti for a while, and since my flight got in relatively early in the day, I figured I'd have plenty of time before dinner to take a shot at them. Strozzapreti are a fresh pasta cut into strips and twisted into an open spiral. The long strozzapreti are usually served with a ragu containing meat, but we didn't have anything appropriate to make that kind of sauce. If you continue twisting the strozzapreti, they double over and become a kind of gemelli, with a dense texture and significant internal capacity suitable for a simple vegetable sauce, so that's what I made. The pasta is simple and conventional, one egg and enough flour to make an elastic pasta that isn't too wet, just under a cup. If the pasta is too wet the noodle collapses when twisted and just becomes a thick, solid lump. The noodle needs to maintain an internal hollow to allow the sauce to penetrate. I used unbleached white flour for this batch, but would prefer stronger flour like bread flour because the higher gluten content makes a more elastic dough. We didn't have any bread flour, and a couple of the noodles did have little breaks in them. Sue me.

I let the dough rest under plastic for about a half hour to hydrate and form gluten before I worked it in the machine. I've found that running the pasta through the machine several times on each thickness setting, folding it double between turns, makes for a stronger, more elastic dough. Elastic is the word for today. I finished the roll-out on setting number 5, which is one shy of the thinnest setting on my machine, and what I would use for any wide-cut noodle.

If there's a quick technique for making these strozzapreti-gemelli I couldn't figure it out intuitively. This noodle isn't traditional in Piedmonte where my family originates, so even if I had a surviving grandmother I don't think I could have learned it from her. I just rubbed them between my palms to get the twist started and then on the board to tighten them into gemelli. I don't know if it's important to let the pasta dry to set the shape, but rather than risk having them unravel in the boiling water I let these dry out until the surface was firm. Most fresh pasta is cooked in a flash, but these are more substantial and require a little more time, four or five minutes in the water, and another minute or two in the sauce.

For the sauce I made a fine dice of a small shallot (we were out of onions) and a couple cloves of garlic and sweated them in about two tablespoons of butter, fortified with a glug of olive oil. Once they were soft, I added some capers and a couple of pickled Thai birds-eye chilies from last summer's crop. The alley garden has totally saved my bacon (pasta) a hundred times since we started it. In addition to the mint, which is making an appearance daily, that one little Thai chili plant produced a bucket of little red firecrackers last year. We dried a bunch and I still have a pint or so that JSP pickled. I added the just-boiled noodles and a ladle of the boiling water, and once the sauce tightened almost to serving consistency, I crushed a couple of canned tomatoes into the skillet and tossed the pasta to combine. On the plate I added some chopped mint, drizzled some olive oil and decorated with chopped almonds and coarse grated parmigiano.

The name strozzapreti literally means "priest choker" or "strangles priests." It is thought to make reference to the priests who charged rent to farm on church-owned land. When the priest came to collect the rent, he would expect a meal, and if the meal happened to choke him to death, so much the better. The curious position the church holds in Italy is a marvel, simultaneously adored and reviled, it has historically been both the moral authority and an example of contemptible corruption. Mama would love her son to become a priest, but fantasized about strangling a priest with her pasta.

I was happy with the pasta, though it choked nobody to death, but I need to get some strong flour before making them again. Also, I need to have somebody show me how to make the noodles faster. (vg)

Moroccan Roasted Veggie Pilaf

Lately I've been craving carrots and brussels sprouts roasted in a bit of coconut oil with some coarse salt.  Easy and delicious, I've cooked them up quite a few times recently.  Something about the coconut oil makes these root vegetables irresistible.

Take a moment and let that sink in Mom...  I've been craving brussels sprouts :)  I never thought I'd say that!!

My most recent creation used something else hiding in my cupboard- a Moroccan Curry Kashi Pilaf.  I played up the spices a little bit on the veggies, added some chickpeas and feta, and called it a meal! 

Moroccan Roasted Vegetable Pilaf
Serves 2-3

1lb carrots, peeled
1lb brussels sprouts, trimmed
1 red pepper
1-2T melted coconut oil
moroccan spices
2c Kashi Pilaf (or cooked quinoa, wheat berries, or other grain)
1 can chickpeas
2-3oz feta (I recommend a block made from sheep/goat's milk; or goat cheese)

Preheat oven to 400deg.

Cut up your veggies so they're a relatively uniform size.  My carrots got thickly sliced on the bias and brussels sprouts got halved or quartered to match.  The red pepper also got chopped into chunks about the same size.

Add veggies to a large bowl and toss with coconut oil.  Season with coarse salt and moroccan spices.  I went with eye-balled amounts of cumin, cinnamon, ginger and a dash of cayenne.  (If you want a more precise mix, try Joanne or Dawn's recipes)  Spread on a sheet pan and roast for 30-45min, until cooked through and nicely caramelized around the edges.

While the veggies are roasting, prepare whichever grains you're using and rinse/drain the chickpeas.  Toss the roasted veggies with the cooked grains and chickpeas, then serve up topped with feta. 

Have you tried coconut oil for roasting your root veggies yet??   How about your most recent favorite easy meal??

Nice and Easy Spaghetti and Shrimp

A friend who is a good cook complains, "I'm too busy to cook. I get home from work and tell my family let's go out or order in."

Personally I feel the same way. I'm very happy when I open the refrigerator and see take out containers filled with Vietnamese lemon grass chicken, broken rice and bbq pork chops with pickled cabbage.

But sooner or later I hunger for a home cooked meal. I crave freshly prepared comfort food. Most of the time I don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so I want an easy to make meal. Salads are easy to make, but so are pastas.

At our farmers market, one of the vendors has a good supply of fish. Just recently he started carrying shelled, deveined shrimp, big fat ones. I bought a couple of pounds for an easy to make Sunday dinner. Sauteed and tossed with pasta, they are delicious.

Spaghetti and Shrimp

To build out the flavors, other ingredients can be added to this easy to make dish. Check out the variations below.

Yield: 4 servings

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 pound shrimp, washed, shelled and deveined
1 pound spaghetti
2 cloves garlic, peeled, finely chopped
2 tablespoons yellow onion, peeled, finely chopped
1/4 cup Italian parsley, washed, dried, leaves only, finely chopped
3 tablespoon sweet butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 cup pasta water
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Instructions

To help with timing the dish, make the pasta first.

Bring a gallon of water to boil in a large stock pot. Add kosher salt and pasta. Every five minutes use tongs to stir the pasta to keep it separated. Place a strainer in the sink along with a heat-proof cup to capture 1 cup of pasta water. In ten minutes or until the pasta is al dente (firm to the bite), strain the pasta and reserve the cup of pasta water.

Return the pasta to the still hot pot. Add 1 tablespoon sweet butter and 1 teaspoon olive oil, season with 1/4 teaspoon each, freshly ground black pepper and sea salt. Stir well with tongs. Lay a piece of aluminum foil over the top of the pot to help the pasta retain heat.

Leave the shrimp whole or cut into bite sized pieces. In a large chefs pan, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and saute the shrimp until lightly pink. Remove the cooked shrimp from the pan. Add the garlic, onion and parsley and saute over a medium flame until lightly browned. Stir well to prevent burning. Add 2 tablespoons sweet butter, 2 teaspoons olive oil and 1/2 cup pasta water.

Simmer, reduce and taste. Add sea salt and pepper if needed.

Add the cooked pasta and shrimp. Stir well to coat with the sauce. Add small amounts of pasta water if more liquid is needed.  Toss well and serve with grated Parmesan.

Variations

Add 1/4 cup home made roasted tomato sauce to the saute.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup toasted bread crumbs on the pasta before adding the grated cheese.

Toss the pasta with 2 tablespoons finely chopped, crisp bacon.

Add 1/4 teaspoon pepper flakes for heat.

Saute 4 shiitake mushrooms, washed, thinly sliced with the garlic, onions and parsley.

Saute 1 cup corn kernels with the garlic, onions and parsley.

Instead of shrimp, use lobster or scallops.

Skirt Steak Spring Roll with V8 Rice, Portobello, Fennel and Mint

I use spring roll wrappers an awful lot. They are a pretty good way to make what would otherwise be an awkward mess of loose parts into a manageable dish. For this effort, I started by soaking some short rice in V8 juice for about an hour. I bloomed some saffron in a glass of white wine in the cooking pot and let it boil off some of its alcohol, then added the rice and V8, a bay leaf, some salt, pepper, and about half-again as much water to keep it loose. Pre-soaked rice expands considerably so you need to just cover the rice with the cooking liquid. The pre-soaked rice cooks in about 8 minutes instead of 20, which is about all the time needed to prepare the rest of the dish. Rice prepared in this way has a ton of flavor without being greasy or pasty. The combination of V8 and saffron is tart with mineral undertones and goes well with a rich savory companion.

Earlier I cut the skirt steak into square portions and rubbed them with salt, pepper and mashed garlic to marinate while the rice cooked. After they had rested for a few minutes I seared the steak chunks and moved them to a platter to rest. I added another lug of olive oil to the skillet, sliced an onion, a portobello mushroom cap and half a fennel bulb into strips and threw them in the skillet to soften. I splashed a little tamari soy sauce on everything, and that plus the liquid rendered from the vegetables was enough to deglaze the pan of the meat and garlic fond.

I don't know if they're properly called portobello, portabello or portobella mushrooms, but you know what I'm talking about. Big as a saucer, open textured, frilly gilled toothy things. They soak up flavors real well and don't get quite as gummy as smaller mushrooms. I used to detest mushrooms because of the rotting smell that we have probably evolved an instinctive revulsion to, but am now able to get past this insult and have come to like them, even really gnarly ones in moderation. They are products of decomposition, born of rotting shit, but they have their uses.

I don't know what the deal is with these Banh Trang rice paper wrappers, but lately about half of them have little holes or fractures in them and they tend to rupture when any pressure is applied in rolling. There's only one brand of them at Andy's, so I don't know if they got a rotten batch or maybe they're just the crap brand and I need to find another kind somewhere. I rehydrate them in warm water, maybe that's the problem. Next time I'll try cold water as an experiment.

I assembled the rolls by laying some fennel frond and mint leaves as a base, then loading the rice on top, finishing with a couple of strips of the skirt steak and some of the vegetables before rolling. They were tasty enough that no dipping sauce was necessary, and the colors looked cool through the translucent wrapper, but the contents were a little loose and probably would have worked better wrapped in something more substantial like lavash bread. Tortillas would probably be too heavy. There's a soybean sheet called yuba that might have worked. It's thin but tougher than the rice paper so I could cinch the rolls up tighter without risking rupture. I'm not into rupture.*

*that's what she said

The Latest Project

We'll need:

7c cake flour
1c AP flour
18.5 sticks of butter
27 eggs
1c shortening
10 1/2c sugar
20c powdered sugar
5c heavy cream
24oz raspberries
1c sliced almonds
12oz white chocolate
4 1/2c mango puree
32oz cream cheese

Any guesses as to what Rebecca and I will be doing in less than two weeks??  Full recap to come ;)

Team Pork Update

Since I still had some bacon and a couple of sausages left I gave it another whack. It's exactly the same with these exceptions:

1. Cut the bacon planks a little bigger
2. Par-cooked the bratwurst by poaching before browning (still used my pioneering ends-first method)
3. Stole some half-and-half from the client fridge to mix with the egg yolks to coat the farfalle

Results: Much improved. A little shocked how big a difference the small changes made, especially how one ingredient can be so pivotal. Also, successfully used up all the bacon and sausage.

Farfalle with Sausage and Bacon

I'm leaving town at the end of the week, and we still have some of the Paulina Market bounty to get through before I go, specifically four fresh bratwurst and a hunk of their house-smoked bacon, which I thought would compliment and contrast with each other in a nice way. I cut a couple 1/2-inch thick planks of bacon and divided them into pieces about the size of a matchbox*. That's a ridiculous size for regular lardons, but pork belly served on its own is served in bigger pieces without complaint, and I thought bigger pieces would play better with the nuggets of sausage being closer in size. The idea wasn't to serve sausage with some bacon as a garnish, but to serve sausage and bacon pieces as a team. Team Pork.

I put the bacon hunks in a cold skillet with a little olive oil and started the fire. When cooking a flat cut of pork like a pork chop or loin medallion I prefer to start with a cold pan and bring the whole piece up to temperature rather than sear the outside in a hot skillet, which tends to make the meat pucker and deform, curling or cupping away from the pan and not browning well. Since this bacon was cut even thicker than some cutlets, it seemed like I ought to treat it with similar respect. The pieces didn't curl and browned nicely, but they shrank more than I expected and made me wish I'd cut them even bigger.

Ideally I'd prefer to poach or otherwise par-cook the sausage to make it firm, then slice it into morsels, then brown them along with the bacon. Unfortunately there wasn't time, as Heather was already hungry. With Italian sausage, chorizo or any other coarse sausage, I'd just peel it out of the casing and cook it either loose or as free-form lumps, but bratwurst is ground too fine for that, almost as fine as English sausage. I cut each sausage raw into four morsels and browned them in the rendered fat and olive oil. I stood them on end in the skillet, turning over once, stabilizing the shape by cauterizing the open grain so the meat wouldn't scatter. By cooking them this way I hoped that when the skin tightened with further cooking it wouldn't squeeze the pieces into hourglass or bobbin shapes and make them ridiculous. It worked and I'm pretty proud of that idea, but on the whole I'd still rather have poached them first.

Both team members were browned nicely, so I added a sliced sweet onion and four cloves of garlic, sliced, and tossed them together. When some of the onion had caramelized a little and all of it was wilted, I added a pretty good amount of white wine. I used the wine not just to make a liquor for the sauce, but to braise everything enough to marry the flavors and make the bacon pleasant to eat, not gnarly hard chips of bark.

I needed a base for the meat, and we had a box of farfalle, so that settled it. While it was boiling, I thought I might coat it with something so the cooking liquor of the meat wasn't the only sauce element, and that's where it got a little weird. I sometimes use a milk-and-egg mixture to coat pasta, but we didn't have any milk. What we did have was coconut milk. Or rather a coconut-based milk substitute, Turtle Mountain So Delicious Coconut Milk.

I'm going to digress here and explain about the coconut milk. In 2003, I went to San Juan Puerto Rico with a bunch of dudes from the studio to see the Montreal Expos play the Cubs during the final series of their freakish split-home-game season. I absolutely loved Hiram Bithorn stadium. The atmosphere was totally different from any mainland ballpark, jovial, informal and open, and access to the players was great. While standing in line to collect our will-call tickets, the pitching staff of the Cubs had to push through the same entrance as everybody else, and nobody batted an eye. The Expos set up some cabanas on the field before the third game, and we were allowed to meet and get autographs from the Expos and run around in the outfield. While I wasn't impressed with much of the food in San Juan proper, there was a stadium treat that has haunted me, coco-piña. Coco-piña as served at the ballpark is a cup of shaved ice flavored with coconut and pineapple juice, and it is absolutely delicious. It is sold out of paint buckets by vendors who scale the bleachers shouting "coco-piña!" for the duration of the game. When I was there, a pint cost a buck, and for another buck the dude would tip a glug of rum in your cup, making a bootleg piña colada. I didn't try that, but the sense memory of coco-piña has stuck with me and every now and again I try to recreate it here in Chicago. I have failed completely. In the effort I have tried coconut water, (which I have come to adore for its own merits), canned coconut milk, coconut cream, dried coconut flakes and most recently, this shit, Turtle Mountain So Delicious Coconut Milk.

I have gotten used to failing with the coco-piña thing. Totally fine with it. Every time I try something in the quest I think, "that was okay. It's no coco-piña, but it's okay." Every experiment has been palatable in its own way, until I tried Turtle Mountain So Delicious Coconut Milk. The geniuses at Turtle Mountain took a perfectly good thing, coconut milk, and added some kind of stabilizer or gelling agent to it to give it a more homogenized look and heavier body. When I poured it into some pineapple juice, it coagulated into little tapioca-like jizz lumps like the novelty "caviars" molecular chefs are so taken with. I tried slurping some of the coagulated drink, but it tasted like not much and felt absolutely repulsive in my mouth. So that's where that came from.

Why I didn't just throw it out I have no idea, but there it was in the fridge, taunting me while I'm under time pressure to knock out a dinner. In a moment of dumb-ass (weakness doesn't deserve the insult) I gave it a shot. I beat three egg yolks into a couple of tablespoons of this shit, seasoned it with some white pepper and salt, and when the pasta was ready, I coated it with the So Delicious and egg yolk. The sauce thickened nicely, no coagulating, no blobs, no caviar, seemed fine. I tasted the sauce and it didn't really taste of anything, but it wasn't bad, and it certainly let me avoid the dry pasta gluing together under the meat, which was my biggest concern.

While the pasta was boiling, I dunked a couple of plum tomatoes in the water, peeled and quartered them and added them to the skillet. I let everything braise and reduce, and when the meat was was tender I plated the pasta, grated some parmigiano over it, and spooned the sausage and bacon on top. I drizzled it with olive oil, seasoned it with some coarse sea salt and sprinkled some chopped chives on everything. It looked pretty good. Heather liked it but said the pasta could have used more flavor, and when I mentioned the coconut milk she said it was like a negative ingredient and it took away flavor. Like a Flavor Elf that robbed Team Pork. Little coconut asshole. Back to your elf hole. I'm pouring that shit out before I leave town.

*People used to smoke tobacco, and they carried matches to light their pipes, cigars and cigarettes. A "Matchbox" is a small wooden or pasteboard box, approximately one-and-a-half inches long, an inch wide and half-inch deep,  that held a convenient number of matches. 

Lunch at L'Espalier

I was lucky enough to get the chance to experience a tasting menu at L'Espalier some time ago and have been meaning to recap ever since.  Hopefully you'll forgive the delay and enjoy our fabulous meal with me now-- I hope you saved room!

We started the meal (although to call it just a meal seems to short-change it) with an Island Creek Oyster with cucumber foam and American caviar.  You'll have to imagine this presentation, as this was the one course I missed :(

Butter-poached Maine lobster

Next up was butter-poached Maine lobster with squash soup and piccalilli; Siberian caviar.  The hand-crafted dish this was served in was incredible, I wish I could've taken it home!  I'm not a huge fan of lobster, but it was certainly done well and sat above a tasty soup.

Risotto with preserved lemon

Risotto with preserved lemon.  Wow.  I was totally amazed by the preserved lemon risotto and need to try to recreate it at home!!  It came with parmesan crisps (tasty of course) and escargot, which was...  earthy.   Kind of reminded me of a mushroom?

Hudson Valley foie gras terrine

Hudson Valley foie gras terrine with apple puree, ginger snap biscuit, and candied ginger.  I had a feeling foie gras would be a part of the meal and here it was.  I tried not to think about it too much and give it an honest chance.  With a texture of butter and a taste that was spicy, almost like Christmas, it actually paired really well with the ginger snap biscuit and topped with some of the candied ginger or apple puree.  It was quite a large piece of foie gras however and I couldn't eat it on its own, so our waiter graciously brought me some more ginger snap biscuits to finish it off...  because, you know, there wasn't going to be more food coming ;)

Georges Bank cod

Onto the Georges Bank cod with PEI mussels, black pudding gnocchi and grilled endive.  The cod was great and perfectly cooked.  The grilled endive, however, was my least favorite bite of the night.  Bitter and ick.  I tried the gnocchi and mussel as well, and that's all I'll say about that :)

You would've thought that was the main course, right?  Well I suppose it was...  along with the next dish of black garlic and oat-crusted lamb loin with fennel pure and Apple Street Farm winter vegetables.  I don't eat lamb that often, but this was delicious!  And the fennel puree a very yummy accompaniment.

Cheese!

Of course there was a cheese course!   From mild to pungent (L to R): Brie de Meaux (France), a sheep's milk cheese (Vermont), Le Chevrot (France), Organic Champlain Triple (Vermont), Cabot Cloth-Bound Cheddar (Vermont), Colorouge (Colorado), Caveman Blue (Oregon).

To accompany the cheese there were wine-poached apricots, candied walnuts, local honey and baguette slices.  This could've been a meal in itself!!  I seem to recall my favorite being the Champlain Triple, but it was tough to choose.

Pear Jasmine Sorbet

The pear jasmine sorbet that followed was delightful.  Light and delicious, this was definitely a winner.   That was dessert, right?  Wrong.

Chocolate Decadence Cake

We ended the meal (appropriately!) with the chocolate decadence torte, served with vanilla ice cream.  Rich but not too dense (or maybe my senses had been skewed by this point?), it stood no chance!!

Beyond stuffed.

A wonderful afternoon with a good friend, incredible food, and a kings' treatment, lunch at L'Espalier was one for the books!  I was proud of myself for trying so many things I hadn't tried before or thought I didn't like (oysters, lobster, escargot, caviar, mussels, foie gras), but if I ever have another opportunity to do something like this, I'll likely opt for the vegetarian tasting :)


Which course would have been your favorite?  One you might not have wanted to try?

*Disclaimer:  This was a gift from a friend (not the restaurant), but was such a fun experience I wanted to share!*

Polenta With Coarse Ragu

I love polenta. I'm not crazy about the way corn subsidy and industrial over-production have destroyed the rest of US agriculture, or the way corn in the form of processed ingredients and animal feed has come to dominate the food chain here, but fuck it, polenta is terrific. It has a lovely texture in your mouth and a welcome flavor that is discernible even against stiff competition, and it makes a nice vehicle for basically any kind of condiment. I've served it with cooked bitter greens, meats, ragu, under grilled vegetables with a drizzle of balsamic, even under fruit or sweet cheese with chopped nuts, honey or maple syrup. If you let it set and firm up, you can cut it into pallets and toast it, brown it in butter or under the broiler or even bread it and fry it. You can make little pockets in slabs of it and stuff them with jam or cheese. You can layer it with ragu, bechamel and cheese and bake it in a casserole. It's basically another kind of bread, and it can be used in as many ways as bread. I used to make polenta with stock pretty often, but lately I seem to prefer the simpler flavor of polenta cooked in plain unsalted water. It's basically perfect the way it is.

I have tried making polenta out of Mexican Masa, and it works fine, but I have come to prefer plain yellow corn meal. I don't know if there's any real difference, but I get the feeling there's more flavor in the yellow corn meal, and the masa seemed grainy when served loose and hot. I love tamales, and I intend to run a similar experiment with them, but it'll probably come out like you'd expect, with masa being better for tamales and yellow corn meal being better for polenta. I tried making polenta from fresh corn in the food processor once and it came out awful, gummy and gluey. I don't mind white hominy grits for breakfast, where meat and eggs provide flavor and body, but grits don't hold their own next to a ragu or other savory companion the way yellow corn does.

Enough already. We get it, you're a goddamn polenta wizard. Boil water and make polenta, what, you want a cookie?

I like to serve polenta with coarse ragu, not a smooth puree or wet sauce. The contrast in texture between the soft polenta and the chunks in the ragu is a big part of its appeal. I've used bacon, ham and steak occasionally, but sausage is my regular choice for meat, though you could make a fine ragu with just vegetables. I get a lot of meat from Paulina Market, and they usually have "torpedos" of sweet Italian sausage that I like a lot. They are about a half pound of fennel sausage formed into ovals. Not having a casing, they are easy to use and one torpedo is the perfect size to make precisely enough ragu for Heather and me. I started the Ragu by pulling lumps of the sausage off the torpedo for browning in a skillet with some olive oil. Once the sausage had a nice color, I added half a sliced onion. Once the onion was tender, I added a couple of fresh plum tomatoes and an apple, all cut into half-inch cubes. I like the flavor of grilled or seared fresh tomatoes, even the hothouse tomatoes we have in the winter, but if used alone they tend to leave the ragu a little dry, so after the tomatoes and apple had caramelized a fair bit, I added a couple of canned San Marzano tomatoes, breaking them open as I did. Once all those ingredients had gotten to know each other. I added three big garlic cloves, sliced, a hunk of ginger, a jalapeno and a serrano pepper, all diced. As an aside, what the fuck happened to jalapenos? They are hardly peppery at all any more. Maybe it's my fault for using them out of season, but it seems like forever since I've had a jalapeno that had any heat to it at all. That's why I'm also using serranos lately. They don't taste like much of anything, but they have a little kick. When all the aromatics had sweated a little, I added a couple glugs of white wine and let the ragu simmer and mellow a little.

I plated the polenta and floated the ragu on top, drizzled it with olive oil and decorated it with some shaved parmigiano and chopped cilantro and mint. Alley news: The mint is coming in like gangbusters in the JSP Memorial alley plot this year, already a shrub the size of a bushel basket. I like polenta soft enough to "catch" or slightly envelop the pieces of the ragu, but not so soft that it's runny and hard to eat with a fork, and this batch came out pretty good. It's easy to add too much dry cornmeal to the water because it takes a couple of minutes to bloom and let you know what its finished consistency will be. It will look impossibly liquid at first when you have it right, but it stabilizes and thickens over the course of about five minutes, and the consistency improves over time, so don't fear letting the polenta sit there going blop blop for as long as it takes to prepare the rest of the meal. You could let it go for an hour if it's wet enough and no harm would come.

Skirt Steak with Jasmine Rice, also Apple Onion Wine Chutney

Skirt steak is one of my favorite cuts, It's a working muscle from inside the body cavity, so it gets a lot of use and develops a strong flavor. It has an open grain and takes marinades and rubs well, and it's thin enough to be cooked simply by searing and resting with no extra steps. It's perfect for the kind of cooking I do for Heather, where I need to make something quickly that's still satisfying. A lot of my food is made under time constraints, so I do whatever I can to make it easy to make delicious food quickly. One terrific time saver is pre-soaking rice, so the kernels are swollen and cook in only a few minutes. The soaking time doesn't seem to matter, anything from an hour to eight hours seems to work equally well, so when I think I'm going to be cooking rice later, I'll throw some in a bowl to start soaking. I have experimented with using green tea and V8 juice as the soaking liquid with interesting results, and at some point I want to try making a quart of fresh mixed vegetable juices and soaking the rice in that, but most of the time I just use water. I was using jasmine rice for this pilaf, which has a subtle floral aroma that could easily be overwhelmed, so water was probably best anyway.

I started the rice by sweating some onions and apples in the pot with olive oil. David Yow once called the combination of apples and onions "magical" in rice, and I concur. I know there's a big difference between different apples, but honestly when I want to put apple in something I just use whatever we have, and in this case we had a big crisp Jona Gold apple, so that's what I used. I drained the rice and added it to the pot along with some dry Chinese mustard seeds, vegetable stock and saffron. I only use additional aromatics or seasoning with Jasmine rice when it's going to be served under something with a really strong flavor, and I love the way mustard seeds hide in rice and occasionally rupture between your teeth for extra zotz. With fish or vegetables I think the scent of Jasmine is enough, and it's best served simply.

The apple was giant, and I only needed about a third of it for the rice, so I decided to make an apple chutney instead of a simple pan sauce to serve with the steak. Chutneys typically take a long time to mature, but I've found that using wine instead of vinegar means that with any decently sweet fruit you need much less time for the flavors to mellow, and basically as soon as the fruit is cooked it's ready to eat. It's not a real chutney, but I don't know what else to call it.

This steak was simply seared in olive oil with a rub of salt, black pepper and little bitter cocoa powder. For the last couple of minutes in the pan, I buried the steak in sliced onions and diced apples both to add some aroma to the steak and get them started cooking for the condiment. I removed the steak to a plate to rest and added another lug of olive oil to the skillet, along with diced jalapeno and serrano peppers. When they had all softened and gotten to know each other, I added considerable red wine, a stick of Mexican (canella) cinnamon, some cardamom, coriander seeds and diced ginger. As an aside, I prefer Mexican cinnamon to Indonesian (cassia) cinnamon for savory dishes. Cassia is used for most packaged ground cinnamon, and I associate it with generic apple desserts, so I tend to avoid it. The sauce reduced on a full boil until the rice was ready to plate, maybe another five minutes. I tasted it and the apples and onions themselves had the perfect chutney quality of being sweet and astringent in proportion, but the mediating wine reduction was a little too bitter, so I drizzled in a little honey and tossed it until it was evenly incorporated.

Part of my struggle with wine cooking is that I know basically nothing about wine. I don't drink as a rule, though I have had wine served to me in Italy and enjoyed it and I have been contemplating forcing the issue for health reasons. Unsurprisingly I have no perspective on which wines to use in cooking for which foods, other than the cliche that reds are hearty and go with meat and whites are less assertive and go with fruit and fish. I end up using whatever we have in the building, which can be anything from a beautiful Italian wine given as a gift to a bottle of celebrity-label plonk bought as a joke. No shit, I have used Don Cooper's "Coopernet" and Enie Banks version of the same, though mercifully the Dave Matthews Band wine was drunk by the poker crowd and I didn't need to suffer it in the kitchen. Capsule review: "A little jammy, hits too many notes, doesn't finish quickly." The chutney in question used a $12 bottle of Syrah I bought because the guy standing next to me recommended it. Unless and until I develop a wine palette, I'm going to rely on strangers and until one of them recommends a magnum of Ditka, I'll assume they aren't fucking with me.

Anyway, I sliced the steak into pieces across the grain and plated it on top of the rice, mixed the meat juices into the chutney and spooned it along side the rice. I know chutneys are supposed to be served at room temperature, but fuck me I'm not going to spray it with liquid nitrogen. We'll call it a warm chutney then, shall we? I sprinkled some chopped parsley and tarragon over everything, and with a scattering of sea salt, I'll admit to being pleased with the way the plate looked. Heather ate it with no complaints.

I still think about drinking wine.

My First Dolma

Bought a jar of grape leaves at Andy's Fruit Ranch on a whim, thinking how tough can it be? Dolma are basically little rice leaf burritos, right? I can do that.

Andy's usually has a bunch of great weird vegetables, but things were pretty dry this trip. They had some cool looking little avocados and some fennel, and I remember reading a thing about female fennel plants having more flavor, and decided I was going to find me a female fennel. You identify the female plant by the shape of the bulb, round and voluptuous is female, longer and more cylindrical is male. I poked through all their fennel and finally found one with a big can on it. I named her Latifa and brought her home.

Classic dolma are stuffed with par-boiled dill rice and finished in stock, but I wanted to bang these out in a hurry, so they could be eaten right away. I sweated some chopped apples and onions, then added the rice and water along with a bay leaf. While the rice was cooking I prepared the other stuff for the middle of the dolma. I sliced the fennel into thin crescents and cut the flesh of the avocado into slices. The little avocado was really cool. The flesh was a uniform ochre color, the seed was small and hard, and the skin was almost like a piece of tupperware. I just had to flex the halved avocado a little and all the flesh popped out in a single kernel.

When the rice was done, chopped a couple of scallions and a mess of mint and stirred it into the rice and made the dolma. Turns out it's totally easy. The grape leaves have a little stem, which may be edible, I don't know, but it definitely interferes with rolling, so I nipped it off. I made each package with a slice of avocado, a couple slices of fennel and a blop of rice, just rolled up like a burrito.

I made a dipping sauce because fuck it, why not. Grated some ginger, chopped some garlic, stirred it into some mustard, tamari soy, siracha and sesame oil. Boom, great sauce. I know it isn't culturally correct, but it's tasty as hell. Chuck got me a ceramic ginger grater a few years ago, and I feel like an idiot not using it until recently. Regular graters, even microplanes, gag on the fibers of ginger. The little ceramic guy is fantastic, makes a great puree of the ginger and leaves the fibers still attached to the root. Super great tool.

Some of the leaves have tough fibers, but you can't tell by looking, you just need to fish them out of your mouth. Otherwise, Dolma are really easy. (v)

Grab a Bucket! Blueberries are in Season Again

We just received an email from Santa Barbara Blueberries, a farm a few miles north of Santa Barbara on I-5. The farm will open their doors (gates?) to u-pickers on May 28th. If you sign up on the web site, you can come a week earlier on May 21st. 

On a trip up north last year, we discovered what locals have known for years: stopping to pick your own blueberries is one of the best features of the area.

When I was growing up, my mom’s favorite thing to do when we hit the road was to stop at the roadside stands and buy fruit and vegetables from the local farmers.  What she dearly loved was when we could actually stop at the farm and do the picking ourselves.

One of her favorite places to visit was Cherry Valley, east of Los Angeles, where she would find an orchard that would let us kids climb up the ladders, buckets in hand, and pick and eat as many cherries as we could handle.

Heading up north I remembered those experiences when I saw the signs for Restoration Oaks Ranch's Santa Barbara Blueberry Farm, with its U-Pick option.

Thirty minutes north of Santa Barbara and three miles south of Buellton (home of Anderson's Pea Soup), from May to early August, keep a lookout on the east side of the highway.  There are signs on both sides of the highway but the turn off comes quickly, so be alert, especially on the southbound side where the exit is from the left lane.

Protected from birds by a high wall of netting, the farm grows several varieties of blueberries: Bluecrisp, Emerald, Jewel, Star, Misty, and Sharpblue.  The plants grow in long rows, stretching from the highway back into the hills.

Blueberries grow on low bushes, the fruit gathering in tight clusters on the branch ends.

Walking up and down the rows we passed couples feeding each other berries as if they were on a romantic date.  Then there were the families with kids, who rushed from plant to plant, picking and eating berries, yelling out, "I found the best ones."

For our part, my wife and I approached the task with determination. Mostly that meant picking berry by berry, but when we found a perfectly formed cluster, a quick sweep of the branch yielded a handful of berries that clattered satisfyingly into the bucket.

Harvesting blueberries is sweet work. You pick a few and eat a lot as you walk down the rows. We enjoyed them all the more knowing blueberries are healthy and nutritious.

The best berries are plump, firm, and colored a dark shade of blue. Ripe berries are on the top of the plant but also down below, so it's worth the effort to crouch down and check the lower branches.

In addition to all those nice plump, ripe berries, you'll also see ones that are slightly wrinkled.  We had a difference of opinion about those.

My wife didn't care for them, but I did because they have a thick, jammy taste, reminding me of homemade blueberry pie. Because my wife didn't want any wrinkled berries in our bucket, I ate them as I picked.

My wife wandered off in one direction.  I, in another. We walked up and down the rows, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the easy quiet of the rolling hills surrounding the farm.

Walking down the rows, I couldn't get over that there were so many berries!  How could I pass by ripe, perfectly formed blueberries, sweet and luscious and not pick every one in sight?

With a quick grab, I could fill my mouth with great tasting blueberries.  So delicious, so available.

With blueberry stained fingers, I placed yet another handful of berries in my mouth when my wife called out to me.  Actually she called several times before I heard her.  "David," she said, "Come on, you've had enough."

I nodded in agreement but managed to run my hand along another branch and enjoyed a last mouthful of berries before I re-joined her. With our buckets filled, we walked hand-in-hand down the dirt road, stopping at the outdoor sink to wash the blueberry stains off our hands, and then to the shack where we paid for our blueberries.

In 30 minutes my wife and I had filled our buckets.  At $15.00 a bucket (about 2 quarts), the blueberries are a bargain, considering that at farmers' markets small containers cost $3.00-4.00.

At our friends' house that night, we proudly served the berries as the crowning topping to a pineapple-strawberry fruit salad.  The combination was perfection.  Each fruit had a different tartness and sweetness.  Their flavors melded beautifully.

With a large bowl in the refrigerator, everyone in the house made frequent stops to grab a handful.  In no time at all, we had eaten all the blueberries.

With a short growing season and given that it was unlikely we would drive up 101 anytime soon, when we headed back to LA, we left early so we could stop at the blueberry ranch and pick another bucket.

Back home I remembered all those ears of corn, peaches, and cherries, I used to pick with my mom and sister and I was very happy to have a bucket of blueberries in the refrigerator.  What a great way to start the week with a breakfast of fresh blueberries, yogurt, and cereal.

We also decided that blueberries and chocolate would go well together. I added 2 cups of blueberries to a Banana Chocolate-Chip Walnut cake recipe, a favorite of my wife. The combination, indeed, is delicious.

A Better Stuffing

I went through a phase in grad school where I made a bunch of recipes for stuffed chicken.  Unfortunately more often than not they were bland and tasteless, so I thought it was hopeless

These days, I splurge for better chicken (organic, vegetarian-fed, hormone free...) every once in awhile and decided I'd put it to good use and really punch up the flavor.  I wanted something in tune with the warmer weather, so basil pesto was getting used.  I decided that sundried tomatoes and feta would be perfect partners.

I made this twice, since the first time I didn't have my camera.  The first time I served up the stuffed chicken with some fresh pasta tossed with basil pesto.  The second time, shown here, the side was kale massaged with avocado, lemon juice and coarse sea salt, tossed with some cooked quinoa, apples and roasted beets.  Both ways were delicious :)

Chicken Stuffed w/Pesto, Sundried Tomatoes & Feta
Serves 2-3

Some chopped olives would also be a good addition here, if you like them :)

~1lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (2-3 breasts)
2T chopped sundried tomatoes
2T crumbled feta cheese (it's better in a block, and with sheep/goat's milk)
1-2T basil pesto, prepared or homemade
salt and pepper

For the filling, combine sundried tomatoes and feta in a small bowl.  Add pesto, 1T at a time, and mix until the mixture begins to stick together.  Be careful to make sure it's not too wet, otherwise it will ooze out of the chicken.

The thickness of your chicken breasts may determine how you roll them up-- for thicker ones, cut a slice down the middle, fan open and stuff as shown in the above photos.  The chicken should be able to seal over the filling, but you can always secure with a toothpick if necessary. 

If the chicken is on the thinner side, pound them out (between layers of saran, if you'd like), add some of the filling and then roll up.  Secure with a toothpick or twine, so it doesn't unroll when cooking.

Heat a medium (nonstick) pan over medium heat.  Cook, 5-10min on each side (2-4 sides depending on how you rolled it), based on the thickness of your chicken.  You don't want to see any pink, and the juices should run clear.  Remove from heat and set aside a few minutes to rest.  Slice on a bias if you want it to look pretty, then serve!