A New Year's Surf n' Turf Shout Out to All Guys: Caesar Salad, Sauteed Shrimp, Grilled Steak, Baked Tomato, and a Dirty Martini

My good friend Hank who lives in a converted church in Lincoln, R.I. reacted to a piece I wrote about Skinny Bitch's vegetarian advocacy with a strongly worded email:

hmm, let's see-give me a pack of Camels....a 5th of bourbon and for lunch I'll have tuna and steak tartar....with bacon.

Clearly what's good for the goose is not good for my friend Hank. And I have to agree with him--except for the "pack of Camels"--all the rest sounds good.

So for Hank and all other guys, here's my version of a dream meal: Caesar Salad, Sauteed Shrimp with Shiitake Mushrooms, Grilled Steak with a Baked Tomato, and a Dirty Martini.

Baked Tomato

Get the tomatoes started while you prepare the rest of the meal, so they'll be ready to serve when you've finished the other dishes.

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

4 tomatoes, farmers' market fresh, washed
2 tablespoons bread crumbs, preferably homemade
Olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cut the top off the tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil, season with sea salt and black pepper, top with a sprinkling of bread crumbs, and drizzle with olive oil (again).

Put on a Silpat sheet or piece of aluminum foil on a baking sheet. Bake for 30-45 minutes or until the tomato has started to collapse.

Caesar Salad

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 garlic clove, skin off
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
4 anchovies
1 egg, farmers' market fresh
1/4 teaspoon Worcester sauce
2-3 drops of Tabasco, optional
2 hearts of romaine
3-4 tablespoons olive oil depending on taste
1 teaspoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/4 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, freshly grated
1/2 cup croutons
Black pepper

Method

Use a wooden bowl if you have one. Sprinkle the sea salt on a wooden cutting board. Mash the garlic back and forth on the salt with the flat side of a chef's knife, then sweep the garlic-salt mash into the salad bowl.

Boil water in a small saucepan. Add the egg and cook for 4 minutes. Remove the egg, let cool, then open, scoop out the yolk and white with a small spoon, and add to the salad bowl along with the Worcester sauce, Tabasco (optional), olive oil, and lemon juice.

With a fork, mash the anchovies into pieces against the side of the salad bowl and dissolve them in the dressing. Mix well.

Tear the romaine leaves into pieces, add to the salad bowl, top with the grated cheese, croutons, and season with the pepper. Toss to coat the leaves. Taste and adjust the flavors by adding more lemon juice or sea salt.

Sauteed Shrimp with Shiitake Mushrooms

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 pound shrimp, washed, shelled, deveined
1/2 pound shiitake or brown mushrooms, washed, ends trimmed, sliced thin
2 garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped
2 shallots, peeled, finely chopped
2 teaspoons sweet butter
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper

Method

Heat a frying pan, drizzle with olive oil, season with sea salt and pepper, add the shrimp and 1 teaspoon of the butter. Cook until pink and lightly browned on both sides, 5-6 minutes total. Remove from the pan.

Drizzle olive oil into the same pan, add the mushrooms, garlic, and shallots. Saute until lightly browned, add the other teaspoon of butter. Season with salt and pepper. Move the mushrooms to one side and return the shrimp to the pan to reheat.

Serve either mixed together or separated on the plate.

Grilled Steak

Yield: 1 serving
Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 10 oz. steak, T-Bone, Porterhouse, Rib Eye with the Bone-in, washed, pat dry
Olive oil
Sea salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the grill or broiler. Drizzle olive oil on a large plate, season with sea salt and black pepper. Dredge the steak through the olive oil. Put on the hot grill or on a tray in the broiler. Turn every 5 minutes until done to your taste.

Put on a plate, cover lightly with a piece of aluminum foil for 5 minutes, then transfer to a dinner plate, top with the juices, and serve immediately.

Dirty Martini

Yield: 1 serving
Time: 2 minutes

Ingredients

3 jiggers of vodka, freezer cold
Vermouth to taste
1 cocktail olive
1/4 teaspoon olive juice

Method

I avoid the shake vs. stirred debate by keeping the vodka in the freezer. Stick a toothpick in the olive and put into the bottom of the martini glass. Add the vodka, vermouth, and olive juice.

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Roasted Walnuts

And for the ideal dessert: a piece of flourless chocolate cake with roasted walnuts, topped with whipped cream. Recipe will be forthcoming. Until then, here's the photograph.

No. More. Cookies.

Berry Pavlova

To break up the decadence that is christmas cookies, I made a pavlova one night, using this recipe with the addition of ~1/3c unsweetened coconut at the end. Thinned a little apricot jam by warming it in the microwave, then piled it high with blueberries, blackberries and pomegranate arils. I was on cloud 9 ;-) hehe!


More on how I get my arils in the next post...

Potato Pierogies

Any thoughts on the new header? I've been meaning to do something for awhile and played around last night... Now, onto the excitement that is homemade pierogies :)

These are present at many family gatherings, not just christmas! My great grandmother used to make them all, but she never let anyone watch... so we've had to adapt it from several sources to get ones that closely match the ones she used to make! While you can put many different fillings inside these, the two most commonly at our table were potato and cabbage. Since I didn't like cabbage as a kid, these quickly became my favorite and the ones I enjoy making now. I tried to take some photos along the way to illustrate the process...

The filling

The dough

The dough rests while you clean the mess

Rollin and cuttin

Assembled

Up close and pinched

*drool*

Potato Pierogi
Yield: 48



Filling:
3c mashed potatoes (cook ~2lb yukon gold potatoes in well-salted water, drain **SAVE WATER** & mash)
10oz cottage cheese, drained
3 slices american cheese
1 onion, sauteed in butter

Mix all ingredients together. Can be prepared ahead and refrigerated until needed.

Dough:
6c AP flour
1-2c potato water (saved from boiling the potatoes, see above)
2 eggs, beaten
2t salt

Make a well in flour, add salt, eggs, and 1c water. Mix well to make soft dough, adding more water if needed. Knead until smooth and does not stick (you may need to add more flour). *Today I made another batch (made too many potatoes last time!) and did most of the dough mixing in the mixer with the dough hook. It worked well and contained the mess, so that was nice! I added some of the flour, salt, eggs, water, then added the rest of the flour a cup at a time. It came together and started pulling off the walls of the bowl. Then I took it out onto a floured surface and added some more flour until the dough was no longer sticky.* Cover with a dish towel and let sit a few minutes.

Clean the counter, line 2-3 baking sheets with wax or parchment paper, get a glass or cookie cutter (I think the glass I used was ~3" in diameter). Dust your working surface with flour, and get ready to roll :)

Cut dough ball in half, working with 1 half at a time. Keep dough that's not being used covered. Same goes for pierogies as you make them. Roll out dough on floured surface (i'd guess it was about 1/8-1/4" thick) and cut rounds with glass. Stretch out rounds a bit in your hands, and fill with ~1T filling (this will depend on the size you use). Seal edges and pinch with fingers for the scalloped edge, or press with the tines of a fork. (If you do different fillings, this is a good way to differentiate them) Place pierogies in a single layer on the prepared baking sheets.

You can do one of two things at this point, cook them immediately (7min in boiling salted water) or freeze them on the baking sheets. Since I was doing these by myself, I stuck them in the freezer, and a few hours later, repackaged them into freezer bags for safe keeping. When ready to eat, cook the frozen pierogies in boiling salted water for ~7min, or until they float. Drain and then toss with onions cooked in butter. Once you have these, you just can't have them any other way!!

Christmas Barszcz

In case you're interested, I (finally) added a search tool on the right side of the blog if you want to find anything you'd seen one time or another. I'm trying to come up with a better way to tag my posts, and create some sort of archive for the recipes I've featured. From the Christmas Eats, some of the dishes (the ones that weren't mine) have the recipe linked by name.

First up for the family meals is a polish soup that's present at most holidays. This is the mushroom-based Christmas version, likely the Easter one will follow around then :) Alot of this is "to taste," as you see in the recipe that mom had from my grandmother (click to enlarge)...


Umm, yeah :) Do you see any amounts or measurements?? I wondered if it was invisible ink, but no such luck. Mom guided me a bit, and I guesstimated the amounts I put in... and after some tasting and adjusting, it came out JUST like my great grandmother and grandmother used to make it, I was thrilled!!!


Christmas Barszcz
Reczek family recipe


~1/2c dried mushrooms
4c boiling water
scant 1T oil (I think i used smart balance oil, for a mild-flavored fat)
1/2c minced celery
1/4c minced onion
4c "kielbasa water" (water used to cook kielbasa, with the fat skimmed off- can be kept in the freezer)
3/4c evaporated milk
1 bay leaf
3 mushroom bouillon cubes
~1/4t dried dill
barley (?? we forgot about this until afterwards... but i think it's supposed to go in ;) )


Pour boiling water over dried mushrooms (or drop them in), cover with lid or saran wrap, and let sit for ~30min. Once they are reconstituted, roughly chop mushrooms (I ran my knife through 3 or 4 times). Reserve some of this liquid (I probably kept 1/4c or so out, but the exact volume isn't important) and mix well with 3T flour.

Add oil to large pot over medium-low heat. Saute onions and celery until softened, but don't brown them! Add remaining ingredients (the water-flour mix last) and adjust to taste. Be careful adding the mushroom liquid, as there may be some sediment at the bottom from the mushrooms that doesn't need to go into the soup. We also added one bouillon at a time, as the amount needed may vary depending on the mushrooms and broth (or water) that are used. I prepared this ahead of time and just kept it on low heat until the rest of dinner was ready! The flavor will deepen as everything comes together. Enjoy!

Holiday Vacations, Vietnamese Food & A Lobster Roll Lunch

How lucky we are that holidays allow us to take time off from our daily routines. Right now we are enjoying the in-between time that begins with the day after Christmas, extending until the day before New Year's Eve. In the retail world this is the make-or-break period when the year's profits will tip one way or the other. Besides the year-end sales, a few other price breaks are helping make the season merry.

Lower gas prices definitely help. Filling up for half the cost of a few months ago continues to be a treat. On the food front, while many commodities continue to cost more, a very few have come down in price. One in particular, lobster, surprises and delights. Mark Bittman recently wrote about lobster prices coming down on the East Coast. Even in LA, prices have fallen. At Gelson's, the upscale supermarket, lobster has been on sale for most of December.

For the holiday our family makes a yearly pilgrimage to a week's time share we bought when the boys were young. Less than two hours drive and we're in our home away from home.

Driving south from LA, we have an excuse to stop in Little Saigon, where we can have lunch at Ha Noi and shop at ABC Supermarket. At Ha Noi we had three of our favorite dishes: a shrimp spring roll, pho ga (noodle soup with chicken), and vermicelli noodles with bbq pork and shrimp.

In Vietnamese supermarkets like ABC, the cost of fresh produce, meat, poultry, and seafood tends to be 1/3 to 1/2 the price in mainstream markets. Which means we splurged and bought a lobster and lots of produce, shrimp, and a crab.

Our first lunch on vacation was a simple one: lobster salad and a Persian cucumber salad. The salads are easy to make, fresh tasting, and delicious courses to serve over the holiday or to help you welcome in the new year.

Lobster Salad

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

2 lobsters, 1 1/2 pounds each
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup Italian parsley, washed, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, washed, finely chopped
1/4 cup capers, finely chopped
2 scallions, washed, ends trimmed, finely chopped, white and green parts
1/4 - 1/3 cup mayonnaise
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
Cayenne (optional)

Method

The lobsters can be steamed or grilled, either technique is fine. Use the one that's easiest. If steamed, boil 2" of water in a large pot. Hold the live lobsters, head down in the boiling water for 10 seconds. Cover, reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Take the lobsters out of the pot, let cool so they can be handled, remove the meat, and clean away the liver.

If you want to make lobster fume for sauces or a soup, reserve the cooking water. Add any liquid inside the lobster and all the shells to the cooking water, simmer for 20 minutes, reducing the liquid by half, strain, and discard the shells and solids. Add the fume to a finely diced saute of olive oil, celery, potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic, simmer for 30 minutes, strain, use the fume as the base for a pasta sauce or lobster-vegetable soup.

Saute the corn in olive oil, seasoned with sea salt and pepper until lightly browned. Cut the lobster into bite sized pieces and mix with the other ingredients. Season to taste with sea salt, pepper, and (optional) a light dusting of cayenne.

The lobster salad can be served many ways: with romaine lettuce leaves, grilled rolls or a halved baguette with drizzled olive oil or a heated tortilla, either traditional or ones made from brown rice (found at Trader Joe's and favored by my wife, Michelle).

Christmas Eats

As mom is recovering (thanks for all the well-wishes!!), we stayed home this year and had a very nice, relaxing Christmas. I had a great time preparing the holiday meals, which weren't too extravagant, just included some of the favorites. Today will just be the pictures, I'll feature the family recipes soon!

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Barszcz

Shrimp- Dad's tradition

Potato Pierogies

Asparagus with Egg Topping

Cardamom Roasted Beets and Carrots

and a parfait!

I made some French Vanilla Mousse from a box, cooked down some blueberries to make a sauce, and layered the two with blackberries and pomegranate arils. Very yummy, and a nice way to end the night.

everything was SOOOO good, i did a happy dance at the table :)



Christmas Dinner

Ham with Champagne and Vanilla Glaze

Sweet Potato Salad

Roasted Green Beans and Peppers

and...

CHRISTMAS COOKIES!!
As requested by mom, I made:

Seven Layers

Snowballs

Flourless PB Blossoms

Christmas Oatmeal Cookies (with craisins and white chips sub'd for the cherries)

Don't be surprised if i don't do too much baking for awhile... :) Hope everyone had a wonderful couple days with loved ones as 2008 comes to a close!!!

White Christmas

I shoveled the porch the other night and couldn't help snap that picture of our front yard! Loving the beautiful-ness that is the snow :) If only the roads clear up a bit so I can get out for a run...

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday (whichever one you celebrate)!! Lots and lots of food coming soon, but for now I'm off to enjoy the family. Best wishes to you and yours!!

~~~
Until then, go comment on this post, to help Katie say ENOUGH to genocide.

Nick is also celebrating the big 100 by giving away peanut butter, so click on over!! As contradictory as that seems, it's nice of him to think of others at the time of this great accomplishment :)