Striped Bass

Today I made one of the most perfect, gorgeous, luscious pieces of fish I have ever eaten. Most likely the best pieces of fish I've ever cooked. And it took a few mere minutes of effort.

Admittedly, the quality of the fish was like, 80% responsible. I was lucky enough to get striped bass fillets the store had gotten that day. As instructed by an article in the NYT Magazine a few years ago (clipped and carefully saved by my mom), I dusted the skin with Wondra flour. Wondra flour is this super-cool, uber-fine four that looks like cocaine, or something. In a hot pan with olive oil and butter, I placed the fillets skin side down. After that lovely intial sizzle, those damn fillets started curl up! But...but... the NYT article specifically said NOT to score the skin!

(This is the point in the dinner preparation that my mom comes in to the kitchen to see what I'm doing. The exact moment I start to worry, she wants to see how it's going, and I respond with "I don't know, it's all eired but maybe it's supposed to be like that I don't know I'm sure it's fine I did everything right I swear oh my god stop looking at me!")

And somehow the fillets chilled the hell out, layed back down, and decided they were ready to flip over. And damn, they could not wait to be flipped. That gorgeous stripped skin had no intention of sticking to the pan. insteaad, it crisped up like a strip of bacon without slipping off the fillet.

This fish was gorgeous. The Wondra flour is like some molecular gastronomy triumph. You wouldn't guess it was flour that did this to the skin. It's morelike some supernatural shimmering glaze than a breading. As I cut bite-sized pieces off the fillet, the skin still refused to slip off the fish. The effect was simillar to tempura, but still light and not remotely greasy. We had the fish with spinach and roasted fingerling potaotes.

Slaws

Cabbage is an under-appreciated summer veggie. Everyone gets excited about heirloom lettuce greens, but cabbage can be pretty remarkable too. They're preposterously cheap, something like 50 cents a pound. I love cole slaws for snacking on. The shredded cabbage is such a great canvas for all kinds of flavors, and the crispy-coolness makes such a nice pallet cleansing snack. I like anything I can eat a massive bowl of and feel good later.

I'm noming on some classic cole slaw now- shredded Savoy cabbage and grated carrot with a very very small amount of a dressing made with mayo, yogurt and white balsamic vinegar. I also put preposterous amounts of pepper in it. It's crunch and spicy and cold; it's like the savory equivalent of a popsicle.

I also made a slaw from Fine Cooking with cabbage, jullienned mango, raddichio, and sriracha, and it was So. Good. Especially with a gingerey tuna burger on top. I especially love how, unlike a salad, I can make a big giant bowl of it and eat it for several days without it getting soggy.

Swiss Chard is pretty.

This is a pretty great time for the farmer's market. Not a ton of tomatoes, or eggplant, or even zucchini yet but there are huge piles of leafy green things everywhere. I can barely fit it in my fridge, but of course I've been buying a lot of it. I love the rainbow Swiss chard. It's like spinach, but a little firmer with an earthier flavor. The bright colored stalks are just too cool to pass up. I've taken to keeping it in a vase on my coffee table, like flowers.

The first time I made this, I cut it into big pieces and sauteed it in olive oil, like spinach. This was ok. It took a pretty significant amount of time, and by the time it was soft enough, the whole mess was kind of brown.

Blanching before is the way to go. It does mean an extra pot to clean, but whatever. I cut the leaves off the stalks and washed those a few times (it's always filthy), and I diced up the stalks. I blanched the leaves for about 2 minutes, and did the stalks for about 5 minutes.


I soaked some golden raisins in the boiling water, and toasted up some pine nuts. I breifly considered adding bacon, decided that was unnecessary. Maybe next time. I sauteed some garlic in some olive oil, added the chopped up, blanched stalks, the blanched greens, the raisins and the pine nuts, ans seasoned with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Chickpeas with Chorizo

I love any dish made up of beans, some vegetables, and a little meat. Cassoulet is a good example, and a dish I make with canellini beans, kale and hot Italian sausage. Right now, the Spanish permutation is my favorite.

At home, there is an really great Tapas restaurant called Ole Tapas, inconspicuously hidden in a poorly lit strip mall between a Dunkin Donuts and a liquor store. The quality of the food (and drinks) has consistently been better than the more well-known Jose Garces restaurants in Philadelphia. Not that they aren't great, but Ole Tapas does a phenomenal job on vegetables. My favorite is a platter of roasted seasonal vegetables.

My second favorite is a little bowl of chickpeas and chorizo. Maybe because chorizo is the greatest thing ever. Better than bacon. I don't usually set out to recreate things from restaurants, but this isn't exactly restaurant food. After two attempts I've got a version I like quite a bit.
I sauteed a small, thinly sliced onion, added chorizo cut into 1/4 inch half circles, a gratuitous amount of smoked Spanish paprika, a much more conservative pinch of saffron, and a dash of cayenne. I added in a can diced tomatoes, drained, and a can of chickpeas. I stirred in one bunch of spinach, and covered to simmer. I like the fully cooked chorizo, not the hard, cured stuff (although that's pretty amazing as well). I made it once with two sausages (1/2 lb) and once with one (1/4 lb) and I think I like it with just the one but its pretty flexible.

Cauliflower

Cauliflower was the last thing I developed a love for. I always thought of it as a washed out, sub par version of broccoli. But the beauty of cauliflower is its versatility.

I had to buy a very very large head of cauliflower. This was a big commitment. This means I'm going to eat many different cauliflower containing dishes. First up was a pretty classic Indian stir fry with cauliflower- I sauteed onions, garlic and diced carrots, and stirred in some spices. I added cauliflower in florets, stirred, and cooked covered for a surprisingly long time, somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes. Then, stirred in frozen peas and garam masala.

Next, I wanted to try a pasta dish from Fine Cooking- the recipe called for orrichette, roasted cauliflower and cherry tomatoes, and arugula. I really love doing this with pasta- adding tons of a really sturdy kinda vegetable so that the bulk of the dish comes from veggies, not pasta. Artichokes and zucchini are good for this. This dish was really good- I used spinach, because arugula seems to be illegal in southern Virginia, I used bacon instead of prosciutto because, come on, and I halved the cherry tomatoes even though they said to leave them whole. It was a good choice.

Tonight I made an Indian vegetable curry stew (I just love Indian when it's cold outside, and the high has been in the 30's). I basically just put in everything in my fridge- onions, celery, garlic, carrots in round slices, cauliflower, canned tomatoes, a diced potato, chickpeas, some leftover cooked collard greens and frozen peas. I might have gotten a little carried away, but with a little bit of chicken broth and lots of hot curry and cumin, it made a really amazing warm, happy winter stew.

With the rest, I'll either try a cauliflower gratin with tomatoes and parmasean and pine nuts, or I'll just roast it. Roasted cauliflower is amazing.

"Your face is depressing."

Over break, I cooked dinner for a some family friends. We started with smoked trout and champagne cocktails, then a salad of shaved fennel, arugula and oranges, then braised short ribs over mashed potatoes with roasted broccoli. For dessert we had poached pears with whipped cream and amaretto cookies. It was a menu I was pleased with- a rich appetizer that had some good protien to it, a crisp light salad, a meat-potato-vegetable combo (good in theory, the broccoli needed help) and a fruit dessert that was more elevated than a fruit cup, more seasonal than a sorbet. With a few adjustments, I'd make almost the same meno again.

A friend of mine from high school was there. "Do you cook, at school?" she asked. "Oh yeah, of course". Why would I not? What kind of a question is that? Do you eat at school?

"Do you have dinner parties??" Umm. No. What? For whom? I launched into my speech about my teeny tiny kitchen, and how I'll make soup Saturday afternoon for the week, and often roast chickens Sunday night, saving most of it for the 4 other dishes I'll get out of it...

"It's kind of depressing, to cook for just yourself."

You know how sometimes, you have no idea what to say at the time and you keep thinking of the things you wish you'd said?

I think it's depressing to think that cooking is just a party trick, and not the way that you feed yourself. I think it's depressing to think that you can only cook if there are four other people involved, that you alone aren't worth the effort. I think it's depressing if the only time you eat very good food is when it's immediately followed by a bill being dropped at your table. I think it's depressing to eat mass produced, prepared, pre packaged food that you know nothing about. I think it's depressing to always be either trying to tell someone how you want your meal prepared or resigning yourself to whatever they churn out. I think it's depressing to pay $20 for a mediocre meal that cost the restaurant $5 to make.

I'm back to my little apartment at school, and before I left I did a very good job of using up everything in my fridge. I came home to plenty of space to fill with groceries. Last night I made an Indian- style lentil soup, with green lentils (that I brought back from France) a piece of local Virginia bacon, regular mirepoix, lots and lots of Indian spices (cumin, corriander, cinnamon, cayenne, a little ginger..), half beef broth/ half water, and yogurt and cilantro on top. I've made lentil soup a lot. This one wins. I had that with stir fried cauliflower and green peas with garam masala. For dessert, I broiled some slices of grapefruit with vanilla, sugar and caramom and ate them hot out of the oven with yogurt.

I wouldn't have made that for dinner at home- for one thing, my mom doesn't like Indian food. Also, that's an appetizer and a side dish. Cooking alone is amazing. I love that I could eat two vegetable dishes and cheese. I could eat brushetta, hummus and olives. I could eat soup 10 days in a row.

I know it's sad, I don't have dinner parties. I have food.

Chicken Parts

I've been anticipating learning to cut a whole chicken into pieces for a long time. For one thing, I love playing with large pieces of meat. I would be pretty happy being a butcher. I find the idea of buying an entire animal and cutting it into pieces to use much more appealing than buying a package of boneless skinless breasts one day, a package of thighs the next week, and a big carton of chicken broth every time I go to the store. I love making my own stock. Everything is better.

This weekend, I'm having people over for dinner and as I was looking through recipes for inspiration, the one that involved taking apart a chicken was the most appealing. Chicken is an obvious choice, and while I love eating a one-in, skin on thigh, I know that a lot of people don't. A whole chicken gives you a natural mix so everyone gets what they want. I've also heard that cutting up a chicken yourself yields better chicken than buying the same pieces.

I was nervous about taking this on, since I'd committed to the meal, bought these two chickens, and had arranged to serve it to people (people I've never cooked for) and I was attempting something I'd never done and been warned was difficult. But at the very least, I would still have chicken, and even if it was hacked up and weird, it's going into a stew.

Cutting up the birds went perfectly. The cuts all went along natural delineations, bones popped out of joints effortlessly. Taking out the breastbone was a challenge, but once that was done, even de-boning and splitting the breast was easy. Now I have a big pile of neatly cut up chicken parts and a big pot of stock simmering on the stove.