Arabic Food Week – Zaatar Manakish

Posted on | October 3, 2009 | 6 Comments

A simple and savory bread

Wow. It’s been a long time since I’ve added a post. Lot’s of excuses regarding travel and enormous projects, but, dear reader, trust that in my time off I’ve armed myself with a host of new influences, ingredients and recipes.

As my first post back from the long break, I’d like to introduce one of the simplest and most flavorful discoveries I encountered abroad: Zaatar Manakish.

This is a simple bread covered in a mixture of thyme, oregano, salt, savory, mint and sesame seeds – though the variations are endless.

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Category: Appetizers, World Cuisine

Fish Tacos with Sweet-tea Brined Pollock and Grilled Slaw

Posted on | May 30, 2009 | 4 Comments

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.

Category: Snacks

The Grill is Back: Brined Chicken Thighs with Chimichurri

Posted on | May 7, 2009 | 4 Comments

Kicking off Grilling Season. Photo courtesy of Christina Dugan

Grilling season is back. Despite the spring rain, and the near-constant threat of afternoon storms, the smell of smoke and the char of seasoned steel grates is just too strong to deny.

I love to grill. So much that each season, when winter truly sets in, I go through a little of what I call OSGD, or off-season grilling depression. It’s like seasonal affective disorder, but you’re also hungry for foods you can’t have.

To show you how much I hate NOT grilling, I’ve taken the liberty of altering, ever so slightly, the great B.B. King song, The Thrill is Gone. B.B., plucking away at his guitar as though they were my heartstrings, couldn’t have said it better. Unless, of course, he was singing about Grilling.

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Category: Cocktails, Comfort Food, Cooking Techniques, Local, Main Dish, World Cuisine
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Why Did I buy the “Ghost Pepper”?

Posted on | May 1, 2009 | 7 Comments

If you look closely, you'll see a King Cobra

I don’t really know, is the simple answer. I suppose I simply had to have it.

And I suppose it makes me feel better, in that way that four deadbolts and a weapon might make someone feel better when living in a deadly neighborhood.

This, you see, is no ordinary pepper. The Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia pepper is the Guinness Book of Records world-record holder for the hottest pepper in the world. It’s name, in Sanskrit, means King Cobra as people who’d eaten it said it’s bite was akin to being struck by a deadly snake. This, of course, caused people around the world to immediately seek it out for all manner of ingestion.

But what measurement scale, you might ask, do world-record pepper judges use to measure heat – to measure the venom of this snake-bite pepper? It’s called the Scoville scale. Let’s take a moment to talk about it.

Wilbur Scoville invented his scale in 1912 as a measure of heat in peppers accounting for the amount of capsaicin they contain. Capsaicin is the chemical compound that stimulate nerve endings in our skin and taste buds.

To provide some perspective for the insanity of owning, and considering the use of such a pepper, let’s provide some perspective.

Jalapeno = 2500 – 8000 rating

Habanero = 100,000 – 300,000

Bhut Jolokia = 855,000 – 1,050,000

Law enforcement grade pepper spray = 500,000 to 5,300,000

Re-read that for a moment and consider your experiences eating, at the very least, Jalapenos and Habaneros, peppers that most people have had exposure to and that, given your sensitivity to capsaicin, may have caused you extreme discomfort.

Now consider that the Bhut Jolokia is likely 5 times hotter than your hottest-ever pepper experience.

As Wikipedia says on the matter, they are often used to develop smoke bombs that keep elephants at a distance. Ummm, and I’m thinking of eating this?!

When I first bought these, Dan Hayward, the knowledgeable Co-Owner of the Savory Spice Shop in Denver, Boulder and Littleton, Colorado, opened the bottle for me and told me to hover my nose just above the opening. “Smell that,” he said with a wicked grin, “You can tell something crazy is going on with these things.” Dan’s explanation is probably the better than any I can provide. Even as I sit here writing, I can smell their “craziness” through the two casings of plastic bags in which they reside (I store them inside a jar, as well, in my cupboard.) My nose is twitching slightly and my eyes have the faintest itch. Paint thinner doesn’t have this effect on me at distance.

So, what am I going to do with these – besides turning them into the police? I’d love for you, oh great sages of food-o-sphere, to share some ideas. As Dan said, you’d probably need to make an inordinate amount of curry, and then shave a small bit into the batch to create some seriously deadly heat. I’m not sure I’m up for that. I’m looking for non-curry interpretations, something that will sustain some heat, but not kill me or cause the neighbors to go into convulsions.

So, any ideas that don’t involve wearing a hazmat suit? Fortunately, I don’t have any immediate need to keep elephants at bay, but I would like to try to use these as some sort of harissa maybe in the next few weeks – if it keeps large, stampeding animals from my home, all the better.

Category: Cooking Techniques, World Cuisine
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Rainy Day Steak Sandy: Flatiron Steak with Grilled Leeks and Sheep’s Milk Cheese

Posted on | April 15, 2009 | 2 Comments

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

Category: Snacks
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