Spaghetti Marinara with any Seafood I Could Find in the Freezer

Last Night’s Challenge: Make a dinner for two plus leftovers to be had for lunch from a smallish portion of frozen salmon remnant from the huge fillet I bought last week and a half dozen small frozen squid.

Last Night’s Anser: Pasta!  Fill the plate out with starch, that’s the way.  So, spaghetti with marinara sauce, salmon, squid.

The Marinara Sauce:

• Sautéed half a diced onion in olive oil.
• Sprinkled in some salt and ground ancho chile.
• After a couple of minutes, added two cloves of minced garlic.  Continued sautéing for a couple more minutes.
• Stirred in a big lump of tomato paste.  I finally went out and got some tomato paste with real flavor, and it does make a difference, who knew?  And, it’s in a jar – i.e. with a resealable lid, which is so much more awesome than those damned little cans.
• Continued cooking and stirring, until the aroma seemed to indicate that the tomato paste was cooking but not turning acrid.
• Poured in the liquid from a large (double size) can of whole tomatoes that were canned “with thick sauce”.  Stirred more.
• As that was simmering, I chopped up all the canned tomatoes into small pieces and added them in workable cutting batches.
• Salted a little more.
• Poured in some of the pork stock that I made the other day.  It was a fairly gelatinous stock, which is nice for keeping things thick.  I added enough to get the right consistency for a marinara sauce.
  
• Added ground thyme and smoked paprika.
  
• Pressed to get some more flavor in, I hacked down what will probably be the second to last contribution from my dill plant.  I chopped it up and stirred it in.  And, well, one way to say it is to say that cooking will soften the dill flavor.  Another way to say it is that by adding it early on, I wasted half the flavor I put in.
• Still not quite right, I added some ground coriander seed and black pepper.
• I simmered everything more or less until the sauce was the right thickness, and not a moment longer.

The Seafood:

• Once everything was thawed and the squid was cut into rings an it’s guts and backbone-things were removed, this is what I did:
• Pulverized a small garlic clove by mincing it then scraping it across my cutting board with coarse salt.
• Rubbed the garlic & salt mixture over both sides of the skinless salmon fillet.
• Cooked the salmon in smoking hot oil for a couple of minutes on each side, flipping as soon as the fish browns enough to unstick from the pan – not a moment sooner or later.
• Removed the salmon from the pan and let it sit, sliced it before serving it on top of the pasta.
• Added the very lightly salted squid to the same pan, still hot and still on the burner.
• Stirred the squid around for a second while the juices coming out of the squid deglazed the brown bits from the salmon and contributed their flavorful goodness.
• Took the squid off after two or three minutes.

Served With:  Arugula and Tomato Salad

I’m still working my way through the bag of Arugula I bought the day before yesterday while it’s still fresh. So, last night’s version of an arugula salad was:

• Tossed the arugula with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
• Tossed in some cranberry cheese I found on sale at a tourist boutique a while back.  It’s a crumbly, lightly flavored cheese similar to ricotta salata, but slightly softer and not salty, that must have had dried cranberries stirred in while the cheese was still soft enough to do that.
• Spread that out on a plate.
• Sliced a (flavorless, cheap) tomato and arranged the rounds on top of the arugula.
• Lightly salted the tomato in hopes of making it taste like something.
• Cut super thin slices of Parmesan cheese and sprinkled them on top of everything.

What I liked: I’m a growing fan of thyme and smoked paprika in marinara sauce.  It’s a flavor combination that, especially together with saffron, reminds me of Spanish cooking.  It’s like a hint of paella Valenciana in a bowl of spaghetti.  Um, sort of…

Actually, part of my rush to finish off the dill plant (other than that it’s already flowered) is to free up some space to put in some thyme plants that will do well on an inside window sill once winter comes around.  Boy will the thyme fly then…

The reality of dinner at home vs. cooking on the teevee: This was a precise combination of exactly what was in my freezer and the drawer & shelf that suffice for my cupboard.  It’s akin to something that a nice restaurant would serve with some clams, mussels, and a few shrimp.  And, although those things are relatively cheap here on the east coast, I’m just not making a trip to the store for Wednesday night dinner unless not doing so means not eating.

Tuna with Spicy Mayo, Shiso & Basil Mushrooms, Arugula & Dried Tomato Salad

The Sauce for the Tuna:

• I made what was more or less a spicy mayonnaise.  In it was:
• mayo…
• a tablespoon or so of hot sauce.  I use Co-op Image hot sauce. It’s rich and smoky, and even comes in nut and nut free varieties.  It’s made by kids in arts and job-training programs.  And, if you order some, the proceeds benefit that non-profit.
• I also put in about a table spoon of SE Asian chili garlic paste.  It’s called Sambal Olek, and is probably the second most common asian hot sauce in international stores and restaurants, after Siracha.
• a little splash of sesame oil.
• about a teaspoon of honey.
• salt.
• about two tablespoons of rice vinegar.
• I whisked it all together until it was smooth, thin enough to be a sauce and not a paste, but thick enough to stick to things.

The Tuna:

• I had two small, vacumm-packed, frozen steak cuts of Yellow Fin tuna.
• Once they were thawed out, I spread the sauce all over them, and let them sit out until I was ready.
• When the time had come, I put the tuna into a blazing hot skillet with a tiny amount of oil.
• The idea is to get some crust on both sides while leaving the center red and juicy.  That only takes a minute and a half or two on each side.  But, if you like your tuna all well done and dry, and I know some people do, then you know, cook it longer.
• When it was done, I let it rest on the cutting board for a few minutes, because that’s what all the cooking shows do…  Once my patience had expired, I cut the tuna into strips so that it could be eaten with chopsticks.
• Then, I spread some sauce on a plate.  I put the cut tuna on top and poured a little more sauce on top of that.

Mushrooms:

• For some reason, the last time I was at the store, baby portabella mushrooms were cheaper than the regular white ones, so I had some baby portabellas.
• I also had a few white mushrooms from the last pack I bought that needed to be used soon.
• So, I chopped up a mix of white mushrooms and baby portabellas.
• I also finely chopped about four shiso leaves and eight or nine small basil leaves.  For whatever reason, now my basil plants are only producing small leaves.  I think it’s because they’re getting old and want to flower and die quietly, if only I’d let them.
• I sauteed the mushrooms in a very small amount of oil for two or three minutes, seasoned with a little salt.
• Then, I added the shiso and basil and sauteed for about another minute.
• That’s all.

Arugula Salad:

• Unfortunately, I ate all of the arugula I was growing some time ago.  It’s not too late to plant a second round.  But, I don’t have any more pots to grow things in out on my balcony.
• I did, however, find a bag in the salad greens section of the store that was all 100% arugula.
• I did this:
• finely chopped a bunch of the tiny cloves of garlic that grow at the center of the bulb, because that time had come again.
• diced up a half a handful of sun dried tomatoes that were preserved in oil.
• I sauteed the garlic for a moment, then added the tomatoes to a little pool of olive oil in my smallest pot.
• then, I poured the hot oil & garlic & tomatoes over the arugula and tossed it all together.
• Then, um, I put it in a bowl.

Served With:

• a bowl of rice
• miso soup
• a half of a corn cob per person.

What I liked:

The mayo-based sauce did well to moisten and perk up some cuts of tuna that turned out to be a bit light on flavor, and, well, overcooked…  The vinegar is important to it.  Think sushi rice level of vinegar and sweet (with spiciness), not sprinkle on your “chips” fish & chips vinegar.  On top of that, everything here required fairly little effort.

Pot Pies

Sometimes when I remember that British people call pot pies “pasties”, I think of the difference between  a sturdy Midwestern grandma cooking up rib-sticking goodness and a 22 year old girl twirling tassles from her breasts and I chuckle.

To that let me also mention the chasm of difference between pot pies and pot brownies…

The pie crusts:

The recipe I use, more or less, is here: ehow.com/how_2023378_pasty-dough.html.  I not much of a baker, and I’d be remiss to offer my own recipe here.  I’ll just say that, to that recipe, I add about a tablespoon of rice vinegar (I can’t remember why, but I remember that it’s supposed to be good for something).  And, of course, the most important thing is to never let the butter melt until after everything’s the oven.  The water should be the absolute minimum to hold everything together.  Kneading, and thus forming gluten, should also be avoided.  Because I don’t own a pastry cutter, I use a scraper and a meat cleaver to mix and chop and fold and corral the flour/dough on a very large cutting board.  I give it a little panache and it might even look like I know what I’m doing, but probably doesn’t.

The filling:

• First, I defrosted all of the pork in my freezer – a mixed assortment of cuts and chops – then removed all of the removable chunks of fat as well as the bones.
• In a large sauce pan, I sauteed the fat and bones, to render off as much as would render off in a few minutes.
• After I removed the solid fat and bones, I added a dab of butter to the liquid fat fill it out (because there wasn’t enough).

Then, I boiled all the fat and bones to make stock, although I didn’t use it in this recipe.

• To the rendered fat and browned bits, I added:
• chopped carrots.
• chopped celery.
• diced onion.
• a couple of cloves of minced garlic.
• I put in some salt and stirred occasionally until the veggies were beginning to become tender.
• Then, I added a fair amount of flour and stirred occasionally until the flour was cooked too.
• Next, I poured in beef stock (the pork stock wasn’t ready yet and beef stock is what I had.  I would have used any kind).
• To that, I added chopped fresh marjoram and dill.  I also added:
• sweet corn, freshly sliced off the cob.
• the remaining leftover lentils from the other night (less than 1/2 cup).  Because, what are pot pies for but using up scraps?
• about a double handful of broccoli.
• With some more salt, black pepper, red pepper, ground thyme, and a dash of smoked paprika, I simmered it all until the sauce was thick and everything was cooked.
• I cut the pork (from which I’d already removed the fat) into small cubes and browned them up in a separate skillet.  Once they were all nice and well colored, I added them to the vegetable stew in the other pot, turned off the heat, and let it all sit until dinner time was approaching.  In any case, it sat long enough to cool down to lukewarm.

Assembly:

• After the dough for the crust had rested about half as long as it should have (about 15 minutes), I decided to roll out the crusts.
• One section at a time, I pulled enough from the big ball of dough to make a mini pie crust and rolled it out into a circle, about 1/8 inch thick.  I made four of them.
• I fit each bottom crust into a small cazuela, molding it into the corners and over the edges of the side, cutting off any excess.  As I finished each one, I put it into the refrigerator to rest.
• I made the tops after I made the bottoms, making 1/8 thick circles slightly larger than the size of the cazuelas.  I pre-cut slits in the tops before sticking them into the refrigerator to rest along with the bottoms.
• When the time came and the oven had been preheated, I ladled the filling into the bottoms, covered them with the tops, then used a fork to crimp the edges of the top and bottom together.
• I baked them at 400ºF.
• Then, my wife called.  She’d gotten on the wrong bus and ended up a half mile from here at the mall.  Yeah, really.  So, I turned the oven down to 300ºF to slow things down and went to pick her up.
• When I got home, they were done.   They probably cooked for about 35 minutes.

What I liked: Making pot pies makes me feel all homey and maternal, even though I’m a guy.  It uses up all the little bits of food that are too small to serve on their own.  I also generally like marjoram with pork.  It all tasted good and I’d make it again.  I also liked the individual mini pie servings, rather than slicing out portions from a bigger pie, as I’ve done in the past.  But, this recipe wouldn’t win a reality TV show or anything.

Room for improvement: I really don’t know how to make a perfect pie crust.  This one was good enough by most home cooking standards.  But, super flaky deliciousness has thus far eluded me.  I usually only make one sweet pie a year – a pumpkin pie that I make right after all of the pumpkins go on sale after Halloween.  (That’s its own ongoing culinary saga.) Then, I usually make some sort of savory meal-sort-of-pie about twice a year.  At that level of engagement, it might be a while before I master the art of the crust.

Salmon with Lentils, Spinach with Curried Lentil Puree, Baked Sweet Potato

Salmon:

• Sprinkled salt and squeezed lime juice over skinless fillets, let sit.
• Cooked in smoking hot skillet with a little olive oil – hot enough to put some brown color on the fish.
• Cooked until the salmon was slightly less than half way to the temperature I like salmon cooked at, then flipped.  In this case, I put fairly thick fillets on for 3-4 minutes per side.
• Removed from heat and seasoned with pepper.

Lentils:

• Rinsed off any remnants of cracked lentil shells, non-lentil material, etc.  Then, soaked in cold water for an afternoon.  Drained before cooking.
• Diced half a small onion and a garlic clove and added them to a pot with a tiny amount of hot olive oil.
• Added ground cayenne pepper, sauteed for 2-3 minutes.
• Added lentils, stirred.
• Added lime zest.
• Added soup stock to cover lentils.  As the contents of my fridge would have it, I used a mixture of home made vegetable, fish, and beef stock, each of which there was too little of to use on it’s own.
• Boiled, adding water when the lentils were threatening to dry out, until the lentils were soft.  I have no recollection of how long that took.
• Added salt.

Sweet Potatoes:

• My favorite preparation of sweet potatoes is baked, sliced in half, cut side oiled, then placed cut side down on a baking sheet in an oven at 400ºF.  I usually serve it by putting it on a plate just like that.  Or, if I feel like I need to impress my wife, I’ll peel the skin off…
• Yesterday, I put some dried rosemary in olive oil and let it sit all afternoon to soak up the flavor.
• When things came to it, I was pressed for time and decided to cut the sweet potato into quarters (spears) so that they’d cook faster.
• I rubbed the oil over the cut sides and put the sweet potatoes in the microwave/oven combo on convection oven setting at 400ºF for a half an hour.

Spinach:

• I washed it, de-stemmed it, then chopped it up.
• I heated up a tiny, tiny amount of olive oil and used it to saute one clove of minced garlic and a pinch of cayenne pepper for about a minute.  Then, I added the spinach (the entire package) and put the lid on it (over low heat).
• Occasionally, I stirred the spinach to make sure there was no burning on the bottom.
• The water inside the spinach and residue from washing it provides plenty of liquid for steaming.  So, I don’t see any need to add any liquid unless it’s for flavor.
• I seasoned it with salt.

Lentil Puree for putting on the Spinach:

• I poured off the liquid remaining in the cooked lentils into a small pot.
• To that liquid I added:
• mustard
• honey
• ground cumin
• turmeric
• salt
• pepper
• I put it all in a blender until it was super smooth.
• I cooked it over low heat for a few minutes to thicken it up or maybe just because I thought it might bring out a little flavor.

Serving:

I made a little bed with the lentils and put the salmon on top. I put the spinach next to it and dabbed small amounts of the lentil puree onto it.  A sweet potato went next to them.  I grabbed a beer, and then it was dinner.

What I liked:

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize or witness that salmon and lentils compliment each other really well.  The freshness and light flavor of the salmon vs. the earthiness of the lentils, the fish-fattiness of the salmon vs. the lack of any oils in the lentils.  I also enjoyed the curry-ish honey mustard flavor of the lentil puree with the spinach.

Why I wouldn’t make this for you if you came over for dinner:

This was one of the ugliest presentations I’ve put together in quite a while.  The flavor combination of lentils and salmon was pretty good.  But, I really didn’t do it right.  I know there’s a better way.  Also, the idea of pureeing the lentils to make a sauce for the spinach was to mix earthy flavors and to find more than one use for the lentils.  But, maybe I should have made it a lot thinner so I could drizzle flashy zig zag lines of it over the spinach or something.  As it was, I looked like a baby threw up his Gerber’s all over the spinach and I really would have hesitated at the sight of it had I not put made it myself.  Also, baking the sweet potato in spears is fine when your in a hurry.  But, it shifts the balance of baked-on skin and tender insides, and really isn’t as good as baking them as halves.

Salmon with Dill & Garlic, Scalloped Potatoes with Dill

Last Night’s Treat: The wife tagged along to Costco with a friend who has a membership and picked up a deal on a beautiful salmon fillet.

Last Night’s Challenge: We’re running pretty low on vegetables

The Salmon:

• We had an entire side of a fresh, wild caught Atlantic Salmon.
• I cooked 3 portions (one for today’s lunch) and saved the rest for tonight
• I chopped up 2 small cloves of garlic and a respectable amount of fresh dill (my plant is almost finished, and what remains is mostly flowers) as finely as I had the patience to do.
• I rubbed the garlic & dill, some salt, and a little pepper over the fillets.
• Then, once my cast iron skillet was hot, I put all three fillets in, skin side down, and cooked for about 90 seconds.
• Finally, I put the skillet in the broiler, and cooked until the salmon had a little tiny bit of browning on top.

Rather than try to manage different cooking times, my wife, who likes her salmon cooked through, gets the tail end and I, who like my salmon toward on the rare side, eat the thickest cut.

Scalloped Potatoes:

About a year and a half ago, I bought my wife, who loves Spanish cooking, some cazuelas – little terracotta baking dishes that can handle direct heat from a burner.  They’ve turned out to be quite handy for a couple without kids who need to cook smaller portions.

• So, faced with only two remaining potatoes, I decided to slice them and bake individual portions in the oven.
• In my little cazuelas, I alternated layers of sliced Yukon Gold potatoes with:
• a sprinkling of flour
• salt
• minced garlic
• minced dill
• a pinch of ground ancho chile
• a grind or two of pepper.
• Once I layered the last of my potatoes, I poured in just enough milk to keep it all moist and to soak into the flour and make a coating to absorb the flavors.  Here’s the thing:  I really don’t like the heavy, dripping, milked-soaked scalloped potatoes of my Middle-American upbringing.  I’d rather have scorched, dry potatoes if that’s what it comes to.  So, I only add as much milk as necessary, erring on the side of less milk.  I wish I could measure, but I can’t.
• Finally, I drizzled some olive oil over the top to help promote some delicious crusty brown skin.
• I baked them in my microwave/conventional oven combo on the convection oven setting at 400ºF until I began to fear they’d burn, about 25 minutes.

Tomato Salad:

• Alas, the time of year is arriving when we in North America can get tomatoes with flavor at affordable prices.  My own tomato plants are still at least a month away from ripe fruit though.
• So, sliced up a tomato, laid the slices out on a plate and salted them.
• I made a little chiffonade of four or five small basil leaves and sprinkled them over the tomatoes.
• Then, I took the small amount of (lightly) curried celery leftover from the other night, cut it into thin strips, and arranged it over the tomatoes and basil.
• Next, for dressing, I took the leftover miso soup from last night, and poured off as much water as I could while leaving in as much of the miso settled at the bottom as possible.
• To that I added a fair amount of balsamic vinegar, a spoonful of honey, and some salt.
• I simmered it until it was thick and gooey, stirring occasionally.
• I sprinkled my balsamic-miso reduction on top of everything.
• Then, to finish, I grated some Parmesan cheese on top that.

Oh, I need more vegetables…

• The veggie cripser is down to cabbage and a couple of brown lumps I’m afraid to inspect more closely.
• Hmm, looks like cabbage is the perfect compliment to salmon.
• Easy enough, I love the taste of cabbage with a little bit of charring/scorching.
• So, I chopped up the cabbage and put it in a hot pan with nothing but a little salt.
• At about the time that the wonderful charring aroma threatens to turn into a not-so-appealing burning smell, I added some vegetable stock (made from boiling kale stems).
• I cooked it until the cabbage was just the right combination of tenderness and crunchiness.

What I liked:

• A fresh salmon is a fresh salmon is a fresh salmon…
• Cooking scalloped potatoes in the cazuelas helps the dish cook through the center quickly without burning the top.  They were rich with the garlic and dill and had just the right combination of moistness and oven-baked crust.
• The faint hint of curry (I do mean faint) on the celery made a great addition to the tomato salad.
• Miso and honey added a sweet complexity to the reduction of some pretty cheap balsamic vinegar.

Reality:

• The cabbage was fine and all, but it doesn’t make sense with anything else on the table in terms of flavor.  But, when you need vegetables and all your fridge has is cabbage, you eat cabbage.

The Sage Plant Has Made a Comeback

Following a slow recovery from a near death experience, my sage plant is finally healthy enough to eat without just killing the whole thing.

So, for tonight, I made pork chops with sage, something that was essentially creamed onions (also with sage), snow peas, curried celery, miso soup with (leftover) mussels, and rice.

I served it all “family style”, which is big around here and lends itself well to cooking extra portions for tomorrow’s lunch with every dinner.  As it is, in my apartment – being a ½ American and ½ Japanese home, eating Japanese style more or less means cutting things up small, a lower ration of meat to vegetables, low fat, rice, and miso soup.  And so tonight was Japanese style.  It doesn’t have anything to do with traditional dishes or flavors.  And, when I’ve been in Japan, I’ve seen western dishes and flavors mixed right in with everything else on the table at big family gatherings.  So, eating western food Asian style just doesn’t seem that odd.

The onions:

• First, I peeled a large and a small onion and chopped them in half.
• Then, I boiled them until they were tender (and water logged), about a half an hour.
• When they were finished and barely cool enough to handle, I sliced them.
• Next, I sliced some white mushrooms and sauteed them with:
• a little olive oil mixed with a dab of butter.
• about three small sage leaves, chopped very finely.
• a little lime zest.
• juice from half a lime.
• a pinch or two of smoked paprika.
• salt and pepper.
• when they had sauteed for a couple of minutes, I added some flour and continued cooking until the flour had soaked up the oil and cooked long enough to be suitable for a roux.
• after this had happened, I added some milk.
• I stirred the chopped onions into the mushrooms & milk.
• then, I put it all in the oven at 350°F until things browned enough on top to make me happy, perhaps 20 minutes.

The pork:

• I had pork chops (bone-in) with a fair amount of fat marbling, so I trimmed off all the big chunks of fat, then seasoned the meat.
• I smashed up about five small sage leaves and minced a big clove of garlic, then added them to a skillet with hot olive oil.
• Immediately after that, I put in the pork chops, searing them on each side.
• then, I put them in the broiler to finish.  I’ve got a gas oven with the broiler at the bottom with it’s own drawer.   So, with the onions already in the oven at 350°F, I put the pork in the broiler drawer and just gradually edged up the heat to make sure the flames were still going until the pork was done.  That way I could take advantage of the proximity of the fire to heat the pork without totally scorching the stuff in the other part of the oven or transform my kitchen into a raging inferno by bringing the oven up past the “broil” setting.
• When it was done I let it rest.

The sauce for the pork:

• Once I had removed the pork from the skillet to rest, there was a fair amount of juice and liquid fat in the pan, along with the sage leaves.
• So, I added some flour and cooked it until I had a nice, medium-dark roux.
• Then, breaking my heart to see it not go into my stomach, I added some red wine and a little water.
• I let that simmer until enough alcohol had evaporated to keep my wife from complaning.
• Then, poured it over the sliced strips of pork chops I’d placed on a plate.
• It was a neat shade of purple that I thought would look good with some specks of green, so I sprinkled some dry parsley on top.

The snow peas:

• All I did was pour some leftover liquid from cooking clams into a little frying pan, then boiled the peas in it until they were a texture I liked.  (I mean, you can eat them raw, so cooking is more or less just for texture.)

Curried celery:

• I used the same pan that I had used for the snow peas.  And, even though I had poured out the liquid, the residue from the clam liquid turned the skillet brown as soon as I put it back on the burner.  I think it lent some flavor.
• I put in little vegetable oil and a couple drops of sesame oil.
• Then, I stirred in a small amount of curry paste from a jar.
• I tossed the cut celery in it, then added some water and cooked it until the celery was done.

Miso soup:

• For a change of pace, we just switched to white miso.
• I make stock from almost every inedible part of every edible thing I buy – a practice driven by a frugality that’s evolved from a life of not having enough money.  So, I had some combination of fish stock and veggie stock that I used as the base.
• I added the miso paste and stirred it in simmering water, until I had added enough to make it taste right.
• Then, I put in a small amount of chopped shiso leaves.
• And then… I discovered a yogurt container that had been repurposed to house leftover mussels, and not a minute to late because who knows what they’d have turned into if they stayed in there too long.  So, I didn’t sing any Squeeze, but I did pull the little critters out of their shells and put them in my soup.

There was also rice.

What I liked:

• I was happy to finally have some sage flavor from my own flower pot.\
• The pork chops were delicious.  And, served in a setting where people are eating western flavors and curried veggies with chopsticks and miso soup, the purple (wine colored) sauce on top didn’t seem all that out of place.

What I would do differently if I were cooking for a hot date or something like that:

• My onions & mushrooms were inspired by creamed onions, but they really weren’t as good as good creamed onions.  If you want to do this right, use all butter instead of adding olive oil.  And, by all means, use heavy cream.  Sure, my version is lower fat, and I think it’s good for a weeknight dinner, but…  I also think that normally the dish uses lemon instead of lime.  I used lime because it’s all I’ve got.  And, it would look cooler if you used small onions and served them whole with the sauce poured on top.  My version was only cut for ease with chopsticks.  The smoked paprika and sage combo is nice though.

Shiso Pesto Linguine & Grilled Chicken Brava

Tonight’s Challenge: Significantly cut back the shiso growing on the balcony and make use of blast-frozen chicken slabs.

Tonight’s Answer: Shiso pesto on pasta with grilled chicken on top.

The Chicken:

• Again, I’m dealing with blast frozen, somewhat rectilinear slabs of chicken breast.  They don’t have much flavor and they dry out very easily. So, I defrosted them by brining them.
• Once brined, the marinade:
• I still had some leftover sauce from the patatas bravas I made the other night (this is the 3rd meal I’ve used the same batch of sauce in), so I just used the brava sauce as a marinade.  (See last night’s dinner for link to recipe.)
• But, there wasn’t enough sauce, so I added:
• some miso paste (miso soup is a staple around here)
• a little balsamic vinegar
• lime juice
• let sit in the fridge for an hour or two…
  
• let it sit out to bring up to room temperature…
• cook on a grill-skillet

The pesto:

• a whole bunch of shiso leaves
• olive oil
• a few drops of sesame oil (really, a few drops, don’t overdo it)
• a tiny bit of (all natural) peanut butter.  (yeah, really for this too.  Pesto needs nuts – and this is the closest thing I had. In any case, peanuts are delicious).
• ricotta salata
• chop up anything you can chop and mix everything in a bowl
• then, mash it to hell.  A mortar and pestle is great.  But, I use the nub of a big stick that came with a Japanese spice-grinding bowl for a pestle and a well-shaped regular old bowl for a mortar.  Anyway, mashing helps bring out the flavors and you need to do something to incorporate the hard cheese.  And, I do, in fact, have all day.

Served… I used linguine pasta, because that’s all I had.  So, you know, like pesto, you just toss the pasta in the sauce, put it on a plate, slice up the chicken then throw it on top.  I also made a salad that was in every way what you’d expect if you orded a house salad at Denny’s.  I put sesame dressing on it, which meshed well with the nutty shiso-y flavor of the pasta.

What I liked:

• This turned out to be a great twist on basil pesto.  Basil and shiso are related plants (apparently).  And, this tasted new and interesting but not odd or altogether unfamiliar.  The saltiness and lightness of dried ricotta did well with the shiso in a way that heavier-tasting parmesean wouldn’t.
• The zestiness of the (altered) sauce from patatas bravas on the chicken went well with the shiso flavor.

What I’d do differently if I planned this before I went to a store:

• This pasta would be terrific with grilled tuna.

Spanish Night!

A friend brought us some jamón serrano and chorizo from Spain.  Because my wife used to live in Barcelona, and I loved every moment I spent visiting her there, this was a big deal.

If you’re familiar with (good) Mexican food, but not Spanish food, I should say that Spanish chorizo is a hard, dry sausage, and nothing like the also delicious Mexican sausage of the same name.  Jamón serrano is similar to prosciutto, although it’s easy to taste the difference between the two.  If you can find a place that sells jamón ibérico in the U.S. (it is possible now), it’s is the ham of the gods.

So, I put out a plate of the sliced chorizo and jamón serrano.

Then:

Pan con tomate:

• I grated one tomato on the “fine grating” area of the cheese grater, discarding the skin.  (What do you do with tomato skins without tomato insides?)
• To that I added about a half clove of garlic, grated on a microfile style grater.
• Stirred in olive oil and a little salt, and the tomato… spread is all done.
• It goes over toast.  For whatever reason, since the price of bread has skyrocketed, now the really good quality bread at Trader Joe’s is the same price as the cheap stuff at the big box supermarket, so we have some great, chewy, stone hearth variety Italian bread.  (I toasted it.)

Patatas Bravas:

I had some of the brava sauce left over from the other night, so I wanted to use it.  And, again, the inspiration for my recipe is here: spanish-fiestas.com/recipes/patatas-bravas.htm.  Let me just say that if you come across a recipe for patatas bravas for which the sauce is basically a jazzed up thousand island, don’t do it.  Just don’t.  The basic ingredients of ketchup are all in the real recipe, true.   But, still…  Let me also repeat that I boil my potatoes then put some color on them in a minimally oiled cast iron skillet, rather than frying them.  I do it for better health, and it’s good.

Kale:

• OK, there’s nothing Spanish about Kale (at least I don’t think so), but I wanted some greens and I like Kale.  So…
• I rinsed the Kale and removed the stems.
• I made some vegetable stock from the stems.  There’s no reason to waste things.
• I heated a little olive oil.
• When it was hot, I added some chopped walnuts, maybe a ¼ cup, and 2 cloves of minced garlic.  The walnuts were raw, and needed a little flavor sauteed into them/ rawness sauteed out of them.  And, I think nutty flavors do well with cooked greens.
• I also put in a couple of pinches of red pepper flakes.
• Next, I smashed the kale into the pot and poured a some of the vegetable stock into it.
• Seasoned with salt, pepper, and a bit of ground caraway seed.
• Cooked, stirring occasionally, until it became a texture that satisfied me.

What I liked:

• Do I need to say that the chorizo and jamón serrano were delicious?  They were.
• Pan con tomate is an easy, low effort path to tastiness.  It’s goodness doesn’t have anything to do with anything I did though, it all depends on quality ingredients.
• Walnuts (or just about any nut for that matter) and caraway jive well with greens.  I don’t fight the bitterness, I just try to compliment it.  And, no, you don’t have to put in bacon or back fat to make greens good.  Although, I did eat them with two kinds of fatty pork, so…
• Oh, yeah, chorizo and jamón serrano are both fatty enough that it’s worthwhile to have some red wine with them – if you need an excuse to drink more wine…

Squid & Leftover Rice

Tonight, my wife was out with friends, I wasn’t very hungry, and that left me with a zero effort night.

My solution: squid with fried-ish rice.

I’ve got a box of frozen squid in the freezer – a good standby for a quick low-fat protein.  Some of the brown rice I made with the beef shank a couple of nights ago was still in the fridge.  So:

The squid:

• They were little ones.  That’s just how they were.
• I cleaned out the guts and the “backbone”, then cut them into rings.
• Then, I salted the squid and let them sit in lime juice until I was done screwing around washing dishes and stuff.
• Once I was ready, I drained off the liquid and threw the squid into a smoking hot pan with a little olive oil.  The pan was hot enough, by the way, that it sent up a big fireball when I tossed it (so, yeah, watch for that).

In the case that you made it here searching for answers because you don’t know how to cook squid, they’re done as soon as they turn bright white and opaque.  With a pan as hot as mine was, and with relatively little squid, it took about 90 seconds.  If you overcook them, they turn to rubber.  But, if you turn the heat to low and keep them moist (simmering), they’ll return to being soft in about a half an hour.  For quick cooking, I usually find it best to keep the cooking process as liquid free as possible, i.e. grilling, frying, or using such a high heat that liquid evaporates before it can interfere with the texture.

The rice:

I had some brown rice with diced carrots, celery, and poblano left over from two nights ago.  I also needed to use the remnants of that same poblano and the last little bit of the ginger, and chopped them up to cook with the squid.  But, when I spaced out and cooked the squid without them, I decided to add them to the rice.  As soon as I took the squid from the pan, I put the pepper and ginger in with the juices I saved from the squid (with lime).  I also added a little bit of mirin and some water to deglaze the squid bits from the bottom of the pan.  I let it cook for a minute or so, then added the rice to soak up the liquid, cooking it enough to reheat.

I mixed everything together on a plate as if I were a bachelor again.  Because, that’s what husbands do when their wives go out…

What I liked:

• I like squid.  I grew up in the Midwest and eating squid still makes me think of Jules Vern.  More than that, citrus flavors are good on squid.
• It took almost no effort.

FYI: For those of you in the habit of throwing limes in the microwave for 15 seconds to ease getting the juices out, accidently putting them in for 1min 55seconds will make them erupt in a little geyser.  While that’s kind of cool in a 7th grade boy sort of way, it’s also kid of messy.  On the plus side, lemon and lime juice make decent cleaners, and now my microwave is sparkling inside.

Mussels with Basil & Shiso, Patatas Bravas

Mussels:  I threw a bunch of basil and shiso into a little water; added salt.  Steamed mussels in it.  Fresh mussels are good no matter what you do with them.  And, one of the joys of living near the coast is that fresh mussels are cheap.  Anyway, if you have shiso and basil growing in flower boxes sitting on your balcony like I do, they make a good combo for mussels.

Patatas Bravas: I got my recipe for patatas bravas here: http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/recipes/patatas-bravas.htm.  Of course, I didn’t really follow it… not because it isn’t good, just because I couldn’t be bothered to go back to the computer to check it.  I added orange zest to the sauce; that did nice things.  I’m still working through the bag of Yukon Gold potatoes I got, so I used those.  I’m also trying to keep my fat/oil intake low, so my patatas were mostly boiled rather than blanched, then just sort put through a  half-assed effort at browning.  They’re good and a little healthier that way, but I’d also be a little pissed if a tapas restaurant served them to me like that.

White Eggplant: Sure, by this point I wasn’t really trying to orchestrate a meal full of complimentary “taste profiles”.  I bought a white eggplant because I tried to grow some last year.  They all turned back to green after they turned white.  I never got to eat any, and I thought I should show the white eggplants of the world that they haven’t seen the last of me.  I sauteed them with some diced poblano, because I cut up part of the pepper last night and need to use the rest before it goes bad.  They were tolerable.

Very run of the mill salad: Iceberg lettuce, a surprisingly good tomato, and some other stuff.  Vegetables are good for you.