A perfect and easy summer dish for all those leftover tomatoes

At a recent afternoon party, I found, much to my dismay, that “meat only” sandwiches are apparently in vogue. Thus, I had a TON of lettuce and leftover beef tomato slices, initially intended for sub sandwiches, with no readily apparent home.

The lettuce was gonzo, but what to do with already-sliced tomatoes that surely wouldn’t last the weekend?

I began looking through my pantry, which was a bit on the skimpy side in terms of creative devices and alas I found a box of always useful gelatin packets and I had my idea.

First, roast tomatoes in a pan. Add crushed garlic, a swig of olive oil, Mr. S and Mrs. P. 1.5 tbls dried basil if you have it. Fresh is even better, and will come in handy later.

Remove from oven after about 30-35 minutes roasting on 400 degrees. Check the tomatoes often. They should not burn against the bottom of the pan. If this begins to happen, turn down the temp.

Add to bowl and let cool for a few minutes and then add to food processor. It won’t take much to break the tomatoes down to a chunky liquid.

Push tomato liquid into a bowl through a sieve or fine colander to remove the larger chunks.

Add the gelatin per the instructions. Once the mixture is ready, add the roasted tomato gelatin mixture to a container of your choice. I used an ice tray, but you might try silpat and a cookie cutter to create a flatter , more artistic dish. No snowmen, please. Tomato snowmen are just weird.

Place in the fridge on a stable surface.

Once the mixture is cool. remove the jelly cubes — probably an hour at least. Cut thin — slightly larger than a Ritz cracker if you can imagine that.

Lay jelly atop a melba toast or thin slice of crunch bread. Mozz would have been good here, but all I had was goat cheese. So, crumble some goat cheese atop the jelly. Then, cut up a bit of fresh basil – tear it if you’re hard core — and then crack some black pepper and drop a pinch of sea salt over the top. Add a quick drizzle of olive oil and you’re all set. You’ll be amazed by the tomato flavor.

Perfect for the end of summer, but it will also work into the fall. If you’re making this in the winter, ditch the mozz and serve atop cooked and cooled Parm crisps.

Do more with your sandwich

Obviously, I’m on a bit of a Meyer Lemon kick these days.

I’ll write this one equally as quickly as it came to me. While thinking of lunch yesterday, and, yes, thinking of what to do with my remaining Meyer Lemons, something occurred to me: perhaps the light citrus and floral notes of Meyer zest would carry well through a subtle goat cheese. This, friends, is how most of my recipes begin – thinking of single experience, matching it against an ingredient, and building outward from there.

So, it all started with Meyer Lemon goat cheese. So then what? I looked in the fridge and knew I had some nice pieces of brined chicken breast that I’d included in my batch from the night before (my “don’t steal my bike!” baked meyer lemon chicken).

I also knew I had a handful of washed and dried spinach from my CSA and one slice of prosciutto remaining from my last trip to Marcayk fine foods here in Denver.

Last but not least, I had one remaining onion roll from Turkish lamb burgers we’d made a week ago.

Add it up: Chicken, Prosciutto, Spinach, Meyer Lemon goat cheese. As Emeril might say….bam.

I first pan seared the chicken breasts, which moments before I’d flattened ever so slightly. I despite biting into a chicken sandwich only to be rewarded by an inch-and-a-half of chicken. In sandwiches, I’m a believer in most ingredients playing equal roles and being of equal proportion.

After searing the chicken breasts for several minute per side (probably about 4-5), I removed and tented with foil. Next – and for no particular reason – I turned to the goat cheese. I plopped two heaping tablespoons of the cheese in a bowl and then, with zester in hand, zested about 1 heaping tablespoon of lemon zest. I added a pinch of pepper and folded all the ingredients together before setting the mixture aside.

Next, I smashed one clove of garlic and set in the chicken saute pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. When the garlic started to turn golden, I removed it and added the spinach, wilting it down with a pinch of salt over medium-low heat for about 2-3 minutes before removing to a plat.

Next, I tossed in the oblong slice of prosciutto and toasted it ever so slightly.

Lastly, I toasted the onion bun, spread the goat cheese mixture on the bottom bun and added the remaining ingredients: chicken breast, prosciutto, garlic spinach.

Et voila. A fabulous lunch in 15 minutes. The goat cheese mixture, though, was the real standout. If you like the idea of this, but aren’t in the mood for the sandwich, you might try the mixture tossed with pasta and crumbled pancetta, or spread on a piece of prosciutto and rolled up for an appetizer.

Enjoy.

There is something uncanny about the call of chicken wings in January. Whether it’s the Pavlovian combination of football, beer, and long bouts of time holed up in the house, or the warming comfort of spicy wings – as well as the effort to eat them – the dog days of Winter is the ideal time to perfect the oft-bastardized art of The Wing.

I’m not typically one for hyperbole, but if you’re a wing fan, and especially if you’re a spicy wing fan, the following recipe is the one to end all recipes. I shouldn’t recount it in detail, here; I should bottle it and sell it  at county fairs.

Why, you might ask, do they deserve this distinction?

I’m a closet fan of wings, but have grown extremely tired of the prevalence of the “buffalo wing” – you know, the rubbery, underdone (often poorly fried) skin and flesh, and that piercing vinegar hot sauce flavor of Tabasco.  I have nothing against Tabasco, but I think wings can be a whole lot more. What makes these wings really stand out is the complex, but far more savory, flavor of the Sambal – the famed Southeast Asian chili garlic sauce available for sale in most Asian markets, and increasingly, in our banal neighborhood stores.

Combine this magic ingredient with the cooking method I used below, and the result is a fall-off-the-bone wing with sticky-crispy flesh, elevated but reasonable mouth heat, and a depth of flavor not often found in your common pub or wing-shack grub.

Full disclosure, the basic idea for these emanated from the wings served at Rick’s Press Room in Meridian, Idaho. Rick made a version of these on the food network show Diners Drive-ins & Dives (what I believe is, quietly, one of the best shows on the food network for Guy’s subtle kitchen play-by-play and focus on real cooks).

I took a few notes during the show, jotted down a few potential modifications, and vowed one day to test them out. Yesterday was that day.

I decided to go against the cooking guidance from Rick and make the entire batch in my 14′ cast iron skillet. This method takes a little longer, but it produced the best wings I’ve ever had. If you’re patient, you’ll receive quite a reward.

I’m going to list the ingredients here as they are called for in the cooking process:

• 20 wing pieces (a good mix of wings and drumettes)
• 1.5 tablespoons salt
• 1 generous pinch of black pepper
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked, hot, Paprika

1. Add wings to a large bowl.

2. Whisk together salt, pepper, onion powder, and paprika.

3. Shake mixed spices over chicken and toss to coat evenly.

4. Add enough oil to the cast iron skillet just to cover the bottom with a thin layer. Heat to medium high.

5. When oil is hot, add wing pieces to the skillet and brown on both sides. The timing here will depend on your stove and your pan, but it should take about 1-2 minutes per side.

6. Remove wings to a large glass or metal bowl, cover lightly with foil and set aside.

7. Pre heat oven to 400 degrees F. NOTE: Cooking time is a touchy subject. Ovens, ranges, stove tops, fire pits – whatever device you may use to cook your food – very greatly from one to the next. The key, here, is to listen to your nose and your eyes. I know, it’s a strange idea. But your eyes will tell if you if something is moving too quickly  – bubbling too aggressively, for instance. Your nose will tell you of something is burning, or is close to burning. Pay attention to these senses and adjust your temps if they just don’t seem right. It’s better to slow your food down then start fresh because the batch you’re working on is burnt to a crisp.

Turn the skillet to low, or, if it’s bordering on smoking hot, remove it to a cool burner. The cast iron will hold quite a lot of heat, so don’t worry about it going cold. Next, I added the following ingredients to large bowl:

• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2  cup rice wine vinegar
• 4-5 heaping tablespoons sambal (red chili garlic paste)
• 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup minced (macerated in a food processor is better) green onion
• 1 teaspoon turmeric (great for adding color and depth of flavor)

1. Add the ingredients to the bowl and give the ingredients a gentle whisk.

2.Return to the skill to the heat, pour in the ingredients from the bowl and simmer, on med-low, until the sauce starts to bubble and thicken – likely about 5-8 minutes. Depending on the heat, the cooking vinegar is going to give off quite a strong smell. Don’t worry about it. Turn on the fan and think of the joy to come.

3. When the sauce has thickened, pour it into the bowl over the chicken wings. Grab a rubber spatula to pick up all the stubborn bits of sauce and small charred pieces. NOTE: cast iron skillets are heavy and typically very hot after being on the stove or in the oven. Be sure to use pot holders to handle your skillet when pouring its contents into the bowl. If your skillet is too heavy for you, have a friend scrape out the sauce into the bowl while you provide a secure grip on the handle and the opposite side of the pan.

4. After a quick toss in the bowl, making sure to cover all the pieces thoroughly with sauce, return entirety of ingredients to the skillet.

5. Arrange the wings around the pan so that there is little overlap.

6. Cover the skillet in foil and add to the hot oven.

7. Set a timer for 45 minutes.

While I’m a believer that wings should stand on their own, I do think a great dipping sauce can vastly improve the wing-eating experience. This is especially true when consuming spicy wings, where some sort of cooling sauce can make the difference between bliss and, well, serious pain.

At this point, I focused on my sauce.

• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 3 tablespoons minced yellow onion
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 1 heaping tablespoon mayonnaise
• 2-3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, depending on taste
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1-2 teaspoons black pepper

1. Mix above ingredients and adjust to taste. You may find you want more cheese, more Worcestershire, more pepper – or even more sour cream to offset any extremes in in the previous ingredient list.

2. Once you’ve mixed this thoroughly, cover with plastic film and add to the fridge.

When the timer goes off, pull the skillet out, lift the foil (careful, there will be steam) and take a look at your little babies. The sauce should be bubbling calmly and the wings should be glistening, and breaking down. Gently turn the wings with thongs, careful not to tear any of the tender flesh away from the bone.

Turn the oven down to 225 degrees and cook uncovered 10 minutes longer.

Once the second timer goes off,  turn on your broiler to high. Broil the wings, uncovered, for 4 minutes, checking frequently to make sure they do not burn. The last-step broil will ensure the sauce thickens and the wings receive one last crisping before serving.

Remove the skillet from the oven, and let cool, lightly tented with foil, for 3-5 minutes. While the skillet will be very hot, serving the wings within it at the table on a solid trivet, and with tongs for removing the wings, makes for a nice touch.

Serve with cold tecate beer (in the can, and with lime) and the blue cheese dipping sauce.

Please let me know how it turned out and of course if you found any ingredient or recipe modifications that worked for you.

Enjoy.

Serve

As with most recipes on this site, this dish started with a single ingredient and a dream. In this case, the ingredient in question was  Kaffir Lime Leaves. I bought them at my favorite spice store in the country – Savory Spice here in Colorado. Kaffir lime leaves, for those of you who aren’t familiar, provide a faint floral-herbal sweetness that acts as an incredible base for sauces. I’d bought a few recently (with no other intention in mind then having them on hand) and, after my move to Denver, opened the cupboard to see them staring back at me on a cold winter day. A mere two shelves up sat a can of coconut milk. I had my start. Coconut milk and kaffir lime sauce. I wanted some heat as well, though, so I looked to my growing chili collection and found Korean red chili threads, which I’ve found provide a subtle and balanced heat without much chili flavor. Perfect.

I now had the foundation of my sauce, but a sauce for what!? I began, as I always do, to turn circles in my kitchen – the confused pirouette of over abundant options.

I next spied my new crock pot, which actually wasn’t all that new. I’d received it as a Christmas gift a year prior. As I had no room in my then tiny galley kitchen, I gave it a place of honor at the top of my giant box collection within my storage closet. There it remained until my move to Denver, and a new plethora of cupboard space allowed me to work it in to my routine.

Crock pots as you all well know are intended for slow, often absentee cooking. I knew I wanted a protein, and so I ran through my options – what protein could I add to the crock pot for a day without having to worry about it? Pork, of course. And more specifically, pork shoulder. Pork shoulder is a versatile and affordable cut of meat. It contains a significant amount of marbling, which means that the meat remains most after long cooking times, and, because of this, it’s quite difficult to screw up. I recommend experimenting with it.

On to the two-day process, which, I promise, is less arduous then it sound as most of the time is spent waiting.

Day 1

I went to my local whole foods butcher about bought a three-pound bone in pork shoulder for $7.80.

When I arrived home, I whipped up a quick brine (recipe below) and added the pork shoulder (trimmed of some, but not all fat) to it for an overnight bath. At the same time, I began on my sauce. I wanted it to sit overnight to allow the subtler flavors of chili and the kaffir lime leave to come together and soften in the coconut milk.

I started off by rendering out the chili threads in a small bit of oil. The compound in chilis that make them hot is called capsaicin and its fat soluble, meaning one can conjure chili’s unique “chili-ness”  by cooking them in hot fat. I used a small amount of light vegetable oil so that I could crank the heat and not impart any one particular oil flavor into the mix. After about 30-45 seconds, I added two cloves of crushed (not minced) garlic to the fat and cooked for another 30-45 seconds until the garlic was just golden (at this point, remove the garlic. I added crushed cloves because they are much easier to remove and discard).

I then removed the pan from the heat and added in one can of coconut milk, 8 kaffir lime leaves, a teaspoon of ginger and two tablespoons of thai fish sauce (a must have for any kitchen – I’d put it in cereal if I could, and well, I may). I added this mixture back to the heat on a robust simmer for about five minutes and then removed again from the heat and let it come to room temperature. I poured this mixture into a bowl, covered with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge overnight.

Day 2

The next morning, I removed the pork from the brine and patted dry with paper towel. I let the shoulder come up to room temperature and then added to the crock pot – fat side up- on medium cook and set the timer to seven hours. Yep, seven hours. This gave me plenty of time to do important things, like break down moving boxes in the snow-covered alley outside my new house.

Now, when cooking a pork shoulder that long, you’ll be amazed at how volume shrinks. Most of the fat will render to the bottom of the pot and the top will begin to take on nice browned color. Once the timer goes off, remove the shoulder from the pot, tent with foil on a cutting board, and let sit.

Turn your attention to the sauce. I removed it from the fridge, brought it up to a warm temperature in a sauce pan. Once it is warm, not hot, I removed and ran the mixture through a sieve, which ridded the sauce of the leaves, the chili threads, ginger and other matter. I was left with a silky smooth sauce, redolent of lime leaf, ginger and garlic, with light, nutty sweetness of coconut milk. I added this back to the sauce pan on simmer to await it’s date with the pork shoulder.

At this point, the pork shoulder was rested adequately. I removed the foil, grabbed a fork and began to pull gently on the meat, in essence shredding it. Add the shredded pork to a plate and set aside.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan until it’s quite hot and then, in batches, add the shredded pork. The hot fat in the pan, mixed with the natural fat of the pork shoulder will brown and crisp the meat almost instantly. You don’t want to burn it, so watch it closely and work quickly to move through all the shredded meat.

This, to me, is the beauty of pork shoulder. In it’s first life as a slow cooked protein, it was tender and quite juicy, with a full-fat mouth feel. This would be perfect with any starchy, fall vegetables, and indeed it is (try it with roasted sweet potatoes).

However, simply shredding the pork and adding it to the pan provides an entirely new dish. A great deal of the fat is cooked off in the crisping, and the browned shreds take on a smokier flavor.

To finish off the dish, I added cooked white jasmine rice to a ramekin and upended it. I topped the rice with the shredded pork, the Kaffir Chili Milk Sauce, roasted red and yellow peppers and leafy cilantro. Now, for those of you who like more significant heat in your food, you may want to experiment with a different pepper. Korean chili threads are warm, not hot – and warm was exactly the level I was looking for here. You might try a thai green or red chili to bring this up to sweat-on-your-brow heat, but be sure not to let the vegetale or smoky chili flavors to overwhelm the kaffir lime or ginger, which provide incredible balance across the palate.

Lastly, and yet another beautiful aspect of this dish, it would work quite well as a sandwhich. Remove the rice and add these same ingredients to a soft BAP roll, top up your cilantro and voila, you’ve got a fabulous lunch.

Enjoy

Brine Recipe

• 10 cups of water
• 1 cup of kosher salt
• 1 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1 whole head of garlic, mash the cloves with the flat side of a knife
• 4 crushed bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns

Combine ingredients in a large pot and bring to a low boil. Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature (I sometimes use ice cubes. Don’t, however, be tempted to put a hot brine in the fridge or freezer, it will adversely affect the temperature of those respective spaces, which can damage your food).
Kaffir Lime Chili Milk Sauce

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 8 kaffir lime leaves
• 2 heaping tablespoons of korean chili threads
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed but in tact
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce

The bitterness of the grilled cabbage balances the briny sweetness of the Pollock

A famous joke in Boston goes a little something like this:

A man goes on a business trip to Beantown and for three days all he hears from colleagues is that, before he leaves, he has to try Scrod – a whitefish known in the area. Day and and day out, scrod, scrod, scrod – yet none of the lunch or dinner joints serve it.

So, on his last day in town he finds he has some time to spare before his flight. He jumps in a cab and tells the cabby, “listen pal, I really need to get Scrod before I leave Boston.”

The cabby tips his cap and says “Mr., I’ve been driving a cab in this town for 20 years, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone ask for that in the plu-perfect subjunctive.”

I considered this joke carefully as I stood at the seafood counter in Boston last week looking at a healthy looking collection of Scrod next to an equally healthy, and strikingly-similar looking, collection of Pollock, the fish, not the artist.

The Scrod – 12.99/pound
The Pollock – 6.99/pound

When I asked the fish monger the difference, she shrugged, leaned over the counter and whispered, conspiratorially, “They taste the exact same to me.” Not exactly the breakdown I was looking for, but at least she was trying to save me money. Furthermore, Pollock was in the “Best Choices” category within my handy wallet-sized Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide (I’m not quite I-phone equipped just yet.)

Both Scrod and Pollock are white fish, and most of the research I conducted upon arriving home with my discounted dinner suggested that Scrod can be a young cod, or, on occasion, can be mislabeled as Pollock. Both fish have a light-pinkish/white hue with silvery sheen on the flesh. It’s actually a gorgeous looking fish. It has a strong, but not unwelcome, smell and a slightly strong flavor.

But what to do with it? Well, after having read about his brines (a great seafood brining overview) and then interviewed D.C. local chef Barton Seaver – sustainable seafood expert and soon-to-be chef of D.C.’s new Blue Ridge Restaurant – I was anxious to apply brines to fish. Barton is a big fan, and rightfully so.

I’m amazed I’d never read about this or tried it before. So simple, brining something that comes from the sea. I don’t think I’ll ever cook  fish on the grill again without applying a simple brine to it (well, some fish certainly aren’t amenable to it, there texture or flavors being too delicate, but hey, doesn’t hurt to experiment). Better yet, you only need to brine most fish for about 25 minutes, as opposed to 8 hours-to-overnight with pork and chicken. The fish stays moist and flavorful on the grill, and it also removes, ever so slightly, any of that “fishy” taste that people don’t always love (I’m not among them – I LOVE it.)

So, brined pollock. Done.

It was a gorgeous spring day in Boston and I wanted to hit up the grill. So, I decided to go the fish taco route. Good fish, great veg and a simple sauce, rolled up in corn tortillas. Everyone wins.

My little sister had just opened a gargantuan bottle of sweet lemon iced tea and as soon as I saw it I knew that would be my liquid. I used the simple brining guidance of 2 cups liquid-2 tablespoons Sugar-1 Tablespoon salt, though I cut the sugar back to one tablespoon due to the use of the sweet tea.

I placed the pollock flesh side up in a dish and poured the brine over the top of it – covering it and then adding it to the fridge for about 40 minutes.

While the brine settled, I worked on the “slaw.” I cut up a gorgeous purple cabbage laying about into finger sized slices, then cut up a red and yellow bell pepper, and finally, cut a handful of green onions the lengthwise. I tossed the veg together with some light oil and fired up the grill. When it was smoking hot, I placed the veg on a vegetable grill pan (a fabulous addition for any grilling aficionados out there.)

After the veg had been on the grill about 12 minutes, and all the pieces had a nice char on them, I removed the fish from the fridge and the brine and gave it a quick pat dry with paper towel. I rubbed a bit of olive oil on it and placed it on the grill at medium heat. Now, Pollock is not an oily fish so it’s not THE best choice for grilling, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it, just that you must pay attention to the heat and the timing, because if you’re distracted it could dry out quickly. I gave it a nice char on either side and left it on the grill for about 6-8 minutes.

At this point, I brought the fish and the veg inside and covered the fish with foil. I then poured all the veg onto a cutting board and gave it a rough chop with a chefs knife. Then, I tossed it back in the bowl and added a bit of salt and pepper, red wine vinegar and just a touch of olive oil. Give it a toss and cover it.

Wrap up your corn tortillas in foil and throw them in a warm oven for about 5 minutes. While they are warming, make your sauce.

I like homemade tartar sauces, and I’m pretty liberal with what I use. For this version I used Mayonaise – 3 tablespoons or so – a heaping teaspoon of catchup – 2 teaspoons of sweet pickle relish – a teaspoon of the juice from a bottle of capers, and about a teaspoon of mashed capers. What came out was a creamy-sweet-briny sauce that I knew would go well as the topper for the fish and slaw.

The next step is the best. Pull apart your grilled fish and place on a platter next to your bowl of slaw. Grab the tortillas from the oven and create your own little assembly line. Super casual, super easy, super-summery deliciousness. And, as you’re using Pollock, you’re neither Scrodding the ocean or getting Scrod at the cash register. Not that you shouldn’t try it next time you’re in Boston…

Fish tacos go well with cold beer, black beans and cold beer. Enjoy.

Had he eaten this, perhaps T.S. Eliot's poem would have turned out differently

It’s a cold rainy day here in Washington, a shining example of T.S. Eliot’s tortured plea: April is the cruelest month.

I’m guessing, though, that if T.S. turned his attention to a scrummy steak sandy, as another man might say who knows a little something about cold rainy Aprils (Mr. Jamie Oliver), it wouldn’t have seemed quite so bad.

One of my favorite aspects of a steak sandwich is how one rarely plans to make them. They just kind of show up, emanating typically from leftovers or moreovers, and those moments at the dinner table when everyone looks at their plates and then around at each other and nod in agreement “steak sandwiches, tomorrow.”

They are proof positive that one can be creative with ingredients outside the confines of meal planning.

As an aside, a friend stated to me, a few weeks back, that “yes, cooking is easy of you have all these ingredients around.”

Well, my good friend “these ingredients” are merely those that are fresh, healthy (no pesticides, antibiotics, heavy processing) and available, and those that come in the weekly haul from the CSA. It’s amazing what one can do with food if you stick to simple, fresh and available ingredients as well as those products you have taken the time to get to know. And this last facet, that of self-education, isn’t really that difficult. Our country is the most advanced consumer nation in the world. We ask multiple rounds of questions and do academic-level research for most of the purchases we make, what we put on and around our bodies. Yet, when it comes to what we are eating, what we are putting IN our bodies, education somehow becomes inconvenient. Remember, we are what we eat…and as Michael Pollan said so eloquently, “it turns out we are also what we eat, eats.”

But I digress…

My particular foray into the steak sandwich pictured above began with a quick analysis of my fridge after a weekend/early week busy with house guests and multiple dinner parties.

I had several moreovers:

• Leeks (Dupont Circle Farm Market) from Molly’s delicious Leek and Black Pepper Risotto with Truffle Oil (coming soon)
• Grass-fed flatiron steak from a repeat attempt at my chipotle rubbed rib eyes
• Everona Dairy (Virginia-and-proud) Sheep’s milk cheese (Stony Man, made from Everona’s Friesan Sheep)
• Half an organic baguette, just this side of french-toast worthy authentic pain perdue

The leek provided the onion flavor I wanted, and Everona’s sheep’s milk cheese – among my favorite cheese provided what I can only describe as the taste of the farm – nutty, hay and milk, and fresh, sweet air; Everona manages, somehow, to capture all these flavors in their cheese.

I grilled the leeks quickly under the broiler, then sliced the flatiron steak and placed the pieces atop the leeks and atop one half of the baguette. Next, I placed three slices of the sheep milk cheese over the steak and leeks and placed back under the broiler until the cheese melted and browned.

I whipped up a quick mix of horseradish and brown mustard to slather on the other side of the sandwich and, voila; a cup-a-tea later, and steak sandy in hand, I successfully warded off the persistence of the cold and rainy spring day, and resisted the urge to turn to poetry.

Will

The slightly bittersweet stout toffee sauce drizzled over ice cream and cake

Webster’s dictionary defines decadent as being characterized by or appealing to self indulgence. Reading this in a dictionary, and absent the presence of a beguiling gustatory temptress, one might understand this definition to carry with it negative connotations; for the very essence of indulgence applied inwardly implies a certain imperfect longing for sinful experience.

But when you get right down to it, words like longing, indulgence, and sin transform into virtuous labels when applied to a dish that appeals precisely to one’s notion of what any good dessert should really be.

I am not a dessert fan, and so when I hear the words decadent applied to this course, I often dismiss it as hyperbole.

Such was not the case with root – the raison de etre – of the dish in the above picture: Guinness Toffee Sauce. Say it again, slowly, sounding out each syllable of each word. That’s how it tastes.

I first saw it one morning, embedded in a note that The Daily Spud had kindly delivered to my inbox, notifying me of a recipe that the Online Pastry Chef – Jenni – had passed on to her. The Spudmeistress, knowing of my particular affinity to cooking with Guinness – really, just an excuse to imbibe it in some way shape or form – thought I might want to give this recipe a try. Her instinct was spot on.

For those of you thinking that Guinness doesn’t sound particularly appetizing as dessert, think again. Stouts are basically strong beers that take on their flavor and coloring from the process of roasting the ingredients – commonly barley, hops, malt, etc. This roasting process gives the beer a dry, nutty almost coffee-like flavor; a flavor profile particularly attuned to dessert duty.

On her blog,  Jenni recounted an experience in which she’d served this particular sauce over malted ice cream. She’d heaped high praise on it, and while it sounded incredible, I wasn’t sure i had the time to recreate it exactly.

I was on the spot for a family Easter dinner dessert and I needed something simple that would play well across an age, and palate, range of 55 years.

What came to mind was a simple spice cake and plain-Jane vanilla ice cream, brought to the level of indulgence via this bitter-sweet, ever-so-salty, stout toffee sauce.

My aunt, through some pre-meditated brilliance of dessert presentation, had set out over-sized wine goblets in which to serve the mixture. I placed two-by-two inch squares of the spice cake, and one scoop of vanilla ice cream into the glass and then topped with four tablespoons of the Guinness Toffee sauce.

It was, quite simply, one of the most decadent desserts I’ve ever had.

I won’t recount the recipe here, as Jenni’s instructions are precise and easy to follow. As Jeni often writes on her site, when you begin with sound processes and ingredients, with a strong foundation rooted in solid fundamentals, the possibilities for the application of any given food are endless. My application of this sauce was admittedly modest, but believe me when I write that the potential for this sauce, both savory and sweet, is vast.

For those of you out there who feel adventurous, and want to experiment taking this sauce to some new heights, please write to me recounting your experience and I’ll post it here on Recipe Play.

Stout Toffee Sauce from Online Pastry Chef

Enjoy,

Will

A picture is sometimes all you need to create something new

Inspiration. From where does it come? It’s a topic I talk little about, but perhaps should explore further, for it is inspiration that really drives, for me, the what, where, when, how and why of cooking. The Web is abuzz these days with talk of no recipes, short recipes, twecipes and the like, yet for all our sharing of notes in the hallways of the food-o-sphere, it is inspiration that drives us to create – whether the words, lists and step-by-step directions are present or not. And inspiration is deeply personal.

With food, thankfully, inspiration often takes the convenient form of hunger. We need food and crave sustenance; those cravings come from mysterious places. Often times they are base; we crave salt, sweet, acid. Or, they are more complex; we crave memory, comfort, adventure. Whatever the reasons, the simple fact of the matter is that for those of us who feed ourselves, and do it in our own kitchens regularly, we require, we demand, inspiration in order to keep our food interesting. For when we lose inspiration – or don’t know where to find it – we lose interest in food, in the act of creating the valuable, familial experience at the table. It is, however, at the point of pondering creation, of listening to our animal needs for food, that most people flinch; they reach for fast or processed foods and claim “I just don’t have the time.”  And this is a sad moment. As we see, more and more each day, our national food health – our culture of collective food tradition – is poor. And for all the ratings booms for food t.v., the proliferation of food blogs, nutritional advice, diet fads and health books, the bitter truth matter is that we, as a country, as a species, need to take more interest in our food – where it comes from and how it’s treated. We need to be inspired to create deeply personal experiences that serve the dual purposes of feeding us and establishing something deeply lasting and binding. The creative and wondrous depths of our minds, the capacity for creative vision, after all, is what separates us from animals eating merely to survive.

My quest for sustenance suffers from the unfortunate affliction of requiring that inspiration is a near permanent fixture of food creation. I use the word “unfortunate” because I often have to work hard not to impose this search for deeper meaning upon those who just want to join me for a meal and a few laughs. I try to tell these people that the meal is the source, the base element, woven into the social DNA of a good meal and a few laughs, but I don’t overdo it.  I keep my search for inspiration mostly personal, and I find a great deal of it’s secrets rooted in pictures, images, art, photography. I scan the recipe books, magazines and blogs, of course, but I also find inspiration in design and news magazines, in scientific Web sites and travel journals.  I look for images that capture me in some personal way, and then set out to create a dish that recreates that personal moment using whatever food is on fresh and on hand.

Such was the case two weeks ago, when, waiting for a friend on a cold, early spring day, I ducked into a supermarket to page through the food magazines. There, toward the end of one of the mags – I can’t remember which – was a picture of a beautiful white fish, covered in green herbs and topped with scrummy-looking cooked tomatoes. I quickly jotted it down in my notebook – white fish, green herbs, red tomatoes with butter. I didn’t have time to take down the recipe, and wouldn’t have had time been in abundance.

And there’s the rub: I create without recipes not as a crusade against them, but rather, for the sole reason that this personal, somewhat free-form method of cooking inspires me to continuously feed myself and others in new and interesting ways without feeling confined. And don’t get me wrong, I am a novice cook. I used recipes for years to practice, to learn new methods and how to work with new ingredients. I still do, especially with baking. I simply have found that most of what is contained on a given page doesn’t always translate to the table in my own image. In many ways – most ways, I suppose – that’s what Recipe Play is about; playing with your food, toying with convention, finding inspiration in a photo, or behind the glass case at your market, in the dish served at a neighborhood joint that you wish were just a little different.

So it was with this fish. I had colors and ingredients, but no idea really where to start. It wasn’t grilled, that much I knew – though I suppose it could have been. I remember that it looked roasted. The herbs were bright green and looked like tarragon. Again, I can’t be quite so sure. The tomatoes? Definitely cooked in brown butter until they’d split.

What to do next? I started with the fish, which I sourced at Whole Foods. As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy their Whole Catch line of seafood and the store’s approach to sustainability in our oceans. As anyone will tell you, sustainable seafood is one of the most elusive topics in the sustainable food world. There are no simple answers, and so I do the best I’m able, finding that Whole Foods does quite a lot for me at the outset to ensure I’m buying and eating responsibly. The fish is affordable and has always, without fail, tasted nearly as good as fresh. With today’s freezing and shipping methods, it’s probably about as close as one can get to fresh anyway. Using my handy Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Guide, I chose Flounder. It was on the list as a “good option” for my region, and so I plucked up a bag – a meal for two – for 8 bucks and headed off to the farm market.

One stall I frequent was selling garlic chives, which, when I can find them, I buy without fail. They have slight vegetale taste; grassy and sweet, but then the finish is all garlic. They are phenomenal. So I had my green herb for the fish. The tomatoes – beautiful, sweet little cherries – came in the weekly haul from Washington’s Green Grocer. I was set.

First, I dealt with the tomatoes. I washed them and set them aside – no need to cut them. Then, I added a quarter stick of butter to the pan, set it to medium high, and cooked it just to the point of bubbling. Then, I tossed the tomatoes in, gave them a quick few turns, and covered the mixture with a lid for about 10 minutes.

I washed the fish in lemon water, a method that I find removes any unwanted flavors and also ads a subtle and welcome hint of citrus. I then thought back to the picture; the deep spring green of the herbs, the pure white of the fish, and the golden red of the brown butter tomatoes. In my mind, it was all color. The image, quite simply, reminded me of flowers. So, where to go to complete this floral arrangement.

I removed some lavender from my spice rack to provide that needed element and complete the floral scene. I added about a teaspoon to the mortar and pestle. On top of that I added a pinch of salt and black better and then ground the mixture up to a fine lavender-based powder.

Next, I dried the fish and patted the lavender spice mixture into into it, setting it aside for the moment. I chopped the garlic chives in strips about as long as the last knuckle of my index finger. Then, I poured a bit of olive oil into the the bowl, added the fish, and tossed with the herbs so they would acquaint themselves nicely with the exteriror of each piece.

I then placed the fish in a shallow baking dish covered with foil and added to a 375 degree oven. Now, my oven is a terrible creature. An apartment flippers chop-shop baseline brand. You know, the one that looks like an oven more than it acts like one? So, when I say I cooked the fish for 7 minutes, please believe that it will have no bearing on your own cooking time. Flounder goes quickly, and, as such, dries out quickly if left too long in the oven, or unattended in a hot pan. Cook it towards the end of your meal prep and serve straightaway after it comes out of the oven. It will be warm and flaky and all sorts of lovely in just under the time it takes to boil a pot of water.

While the fish was cooking away, I turned up the heat on the tomatoes and removed the lid. The butter was starting to brown nicely and the tomatoes had split and added their sweet juice to the pan. I added a glug of chicken stock and a shot of white wine and deglazed the pan, which created a nice amount of brown butter sauce to spoon over the fish. As this bubbled away, I removed the fish, plated and and poured the tomato butter sauce over the dish.

And voila, a picture comes to life. This is the essence of cooking for me. It is why I preach the merits of learning to cook, of learning to enjoy yourself in the kitchen and at the table with friends and family without feeling the pressure so often implied in recipes.

I say it now as I’ve said before: This is our food, people, spend some time with it, befriend it, and take the chance to learn how to make food personal to you, to find inspiration in your kitchen and on your plate; to make it worth your while.

W

Afternoon Delight

Curry is incredibly addictive. Once the taste for the junk hits you, it’s difficult to escape its clutches. The smell, mostly, is what gets me, but it’s also the randomness of creation – akin, I imagine, to cooking up some magical witches brew. With a mortal and pestle and a few whole spices, curry creations are limitless. Just toast the spices ever so slightly, grind them up and voila, you’ve got a good base for a curry.

Store bought curries are a bit of a mystery to me – rarely am I able to ascertain what, exactly, is in them. That doesn’t mean I’m immune to their convenient call, just that I aspire to make my own more often. And, oh, the reward of a fresh made curries – few smells in my kitchen are as welcome as those of toasted and fresh ground spices that go into these special sauces.

So do yourself a favor, visit the Spice House and order a supply of various curry spices, which can be any combination of the following plus much, much more: caraway coriander, cumin, ginger, nutmeg, fennel, cinnamon, fenugreek, white pepper, arrowroot, turmeric, cardamon, cloves, Tellicherry peppercorns, red pepper and saffron. The flavor combinations are endless.

Also, check out this fabulous curry primer from The Reluctant Gourmet.

Yesterday, hungry and looking for an afternoon snack – and left with a few red potatoes that were quickly going the way of the DoDo- I quickly toasted whole coriander and mustard seeds, ground them up with a pinch of sea salt and mint, then added the magical powder to a pan of oil set to simmer. I quartered and boiled the potatoes in salty water for 5-7 minutes and then drained and added to the oil in the pan with a pinch of curry powder, tossing the mixture a few times before transferring to a baking pan and whacking in the oven under the broiler.

While the potato wedges broiled away, I added a half tablespoon of curry and a small pinch of ground red pepper to a quarter cup of mayo for the topping.

12-15 minutes later – who counts in the afternoon – I pulled the wedges from the oven, let cool ever so slightly and dumped them into a bowl.

Spoon a generous dollop of the curry mayo on top of the spuds, and et voila, a potato snack even the Daily Spud might be proud of.

Look at this picture long enough and you'll see Mark Twain

One of my favorite experiences in cruising farmer’s markets is the discovery of something new, or the purchase of something familiar, yet untried. I don’t often find this at the local grocery store, which increasingly looks like the week-old discount bin of the country’s worst produce.

If you’re up for it, feel adventurous, and don’t mind asking questions, the farmer’s market can provide needed inspiration, whether in finding new things to eat, or discovering new ways to cook.

Last Sunday, I found a little of both. That morning, I was, admittedly, not feeling adventurous. I felt unprepared, didn’t have a list, hadn’t taken an adequate stock of my fridge, and hadn’t brought a shopping bag, which I’ve grown accustomed to carrying most everywhere.

Molly, however, reminded me that it is often on these very occasions that farmer’s markets provide some unknown, yet fortuitous bounty. And, once again, she was correct. Ten minutes into our stroll through the market, we came across a familiar stall selling a tumbling mountain of nubby, golden sunchokes.

I’ve seen sunchokes everywhere in the past year, yet I’ve never tried them. Otherwise known at the Jerusalem Artichoke – yet in no way related to Jerusalem or artichoke-like at all – the sunchoke emanates from the sunflower family and looks quite a bit like ginger. It’s incongruous shape and bark-like skin don’t immediately shout “eat me” and even if they did, I would answer “okay…but how?”

Molly and I both hadn’t ever cooked with sunchokes, and couldn’t remember any memorable restaurant meals containing them either. So, with two large handfuls, and some fabulous buffalo sausage from Virginia’s Cibola Farms, we headed home to discover how to turn them into dinner.

A quick search of the web wasn’t entirely helpful. Most information highlighted their history, and the name’s etymology, but there was little – save a handful of healthy recipes recommending a light steaming – ehw – that seemed very compelling.

One facet of the sunchoke that was helpful, however, was their similarity, both in flavor and texture, to potatoes. This, I could work with.

I washed and peeled the sunchoke – not has difficult as many people claim – and cooked them in chicken stock on simmer for about 7 minutes. I set them aside in a bowl, covering them with a dish towel.

I then used half a moreover yellow onion I had in the fridge. I sliced it lengthwise and caramelized with a small bit of olive oil and chicken stock, finishing it off by adding two diced cloves of garlic.

I then added the sunchokes and caramelized onion to a food processor. As the mixture blended, I added salt, pepper and 1.5 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar and a tiny bit of chicken stock. I pulsed the mixture for about 2 minutes, until I had a mash that would stand up. I added the mash to small baking dish and threw it in the oven for about 10 minutes so the top would crisp up slightly.

I then broiled the sausages for 7 minutes and sauteed a handful of moreover brussel sprouts I had from earlier in the week.

The sausage and sunchoke mash with caramelized onions turned out quite well. The mash had a slightly sweet and nutty flavor, and the texture was excellent. Paired with the sausages, they made a fine meal, worthy of a stout – say, Guinness, maybe?

As we sat at dinner and enjoyed our new find, I was reminded of the joy of experimentation in the kitchen, and of discovery at the market. Most of us who love to cook and eat do not do so because we enjoy re-hashing the same old dishes, and mollifying our palettes with the same old flavors and textures. We do it to find something new and exciting.

There is also quite a lot of talk these days about recession diets, and literal and figurative belt-tightening. Yet, I’m still of the belief that diversification has, and always will be a good strategy for saving money, a fabulous way to feed yourself and to keep your hungry mouths interested in food. This is our food, people; let’s not allow what we put in our bodies to suffer for the sake of what we put on and around our bodies.

So, please, do yourself a favor and the next time you go the market, pick something you’ve never tried before, bring it home, and learn how to cook it. Expand your repertoire, and should you discover something new and fabulous that you really love, send it to me and I’ll post it here on Recipe Play.

Cheers,

Will