What Nana and Papa missed

My parents were supposed to come for a visit this week. Dad, aka Papa, was slated to spend two days in town, while Mom, aka Nana, was going to stay longer to watch Sam, thus freeing me up for some serious house and garden work. Alas, the flights didn't work out, so they are still in SF, and Sam and I continue to battle things out on our own in Seattle. To add insult to injury, the Fates smote me with sour weather. Is it almost June or not? Curses. Being indoors with a mischievous (read: delightfully curious) toddler can drive even the most patient of nuns to drink. I've been having my own tipples this week.

Another crying shame about them not making it is the now complete waste of a fabulous menu. Highlights include artichokes with bagna cauda, barbecue pork, crab cakes, and a chickpea ragu with sausage. I hit my new Jacques Pepin cookbook hard while deciding on my dishes. JP is my father's culinary hero ... come to think of it, my mother would have been the one enjoying the dishes, since Dad would have already left. I know; you're thinking, Jen, you can still make all these fabulous things, take photos, and tell us all about them. And this is incentive to continue as planned, dear readers, it is.

And yet.

I have a toddler. These meals take time and require someone to watch the boy. I suppose Elmo has watched him occasionally ... but I don't wish to rely on E too often. Although Sam can count to 14, and I didn't teach him that. Thank you Sesame Street.

By the time I got the news that they definitely weren't coming, I already had all of my ingredients for Tuesday's dinner. So, onward.

Orecchiette (or, rather, the pasta I had on hand) with cauliflower and croutons. The recipe is from the May edition of Bon Appetit. The magazine focused on a few countries and created menus with expert, native input. The most attractive to me was the Italian (Puglian) menu, so I chose a couple dishes (originally, I thought I would make four or five, but realized that I was only cooking for four, so I should just settle down). I think this pasta is something that would be thrown together, perhaps at the end of the week, with leftover veggies and old bread. I have made a couple recipes like this with pasta and garlic croutons or breadcrumbs. So good. The "dressing" is olive oil and anchovy paste. Add some Pecorino and Parmesan and parsley - minding your P's - and you are good to go. I opted for the broccoflower, as you can see, instead of cauliflower because I wanted to and it was on sale.

Who can resist a whole fish? I don't know when certain fish are in season. And I don't know which fish are the best to get when they aren't local. These are bass, but they are from Taiwan. I paused before I got them, but went ahead noting that they were fresh, blah blah. I got them at Uwajimaya, of course, and I have decided that I will only shop there on Tuesday mornings and with Sam. I have mentioned before that Tuesday is their senior discount day and Sam is an elderly person magnet. He has had members of the older set speaking to him in several languages on any given Tuesday at U. This is in contrast to the parking booth guy who thinks that Sam is ill because he is so blond and pale. I tried to explain Scandinavian coloring to this Ethiopian man, but something was lost in translation. "He sick? He so white." Yeah. It's natural, really. Anyway, this particular Tuesday was the best ever! We walk in to our usual smiles and waves in the produce section and at the butcher counter. And then! Fish counter! Bam! Asian Grandpa is there again and comes out to poke Sam and get in his face. Thank goodness this makes Sam laugh and not scream because Asian Grandpa then gives Sam an enormous lump of crabmeat! This is from the $24/lb. case. I hold it in front of Sam, as my mouth waters. AG then gives Mommy some, too. Sam poo-poos his and Mommy scores two chunks of sweet sweet crab. But AG doesn't stop there: "Does he like shrimp?"

Is this the chasm in toddler eating culture? Compare what Japanese two-year-olds eat to American. Let's say American kids who have a parent that cooks. I have a feeling they are eating fish and pickled things and slurping noodles. And then there's Sam. I make Sam his own meal because, in my experience, he doesn't eat what I make for Josh and me. I want him to eat something other than Cheerios. But, what if it's just a war of attrition that I am refusing to fight? What I mean is that if I serve him normal homemade, wholesome, tasty food every night and allow him to turn his nose up, will he eventually give in and eat his artisanal pizza instead of chicken nuggets? When will he say yes to coq au vin? I keep thinking that the magical age is two because that's when I go back to work and will only have time for one dinner that he and I will eat together at the table. I'll be damned if I'm going to make two different meals, do all the cleanup, wrestle a toddler into the bath, and then grade papers. No way.

So, anyway, the trip to U was awesome and Asian Grandpa told us to call him that, and the guy with the cross-eye yelled that AG was going to scare Sam, and it was all fun and games. I was so glad that I ordered whole fish because the quiet one took a while to scale and gut, thus leaving more time for all of that other stuff.

I pan sauteed the bass (after a dusting with flour) to get a nice crust on the skin (yummy), then stuffed them with garlic and parsley and lay them on a bed of fennel, red onion, tomatoes and oil-cured olives (I found the last jar at QFC - bring back the oil-cured olives!). It was good but really needed lemon to complete it. Maybe I'll do it again when Nana and Papa finally make it up.

Italian(ish) fare

I have been trying to get a post out for a week now. I think that toddler who lives here and demands my constant attention was more demanding than usual this week. Plus, I just couldn't sit down for the time necessary. Do you have days like that? You just can't get into a sit groove. Anyway.

I must confess my love for Mario Batali. I used to watch his show religiously - Monday at 11am on the Food Network. He wove in personal stories as well as historical and sociological information from the various regions in Italy. I appreciated that. I have made a few of his meals, and one has become a favorite in our house: fritelle sarde, or sardine fritters. A couple things, right off the bat: (1) I often use trout instead of sardines because I am (was) afraid of sardines due to a bad experience. ... Oh, okay, I'll tell you. I tried one straight out of the tin! I tried to backpedal and forget the experience by trying one again and working really hard to tell my taste buds to just give it another shot. I had #2 with mustard and on bread, but there was no going back. (2) I don't make them "fritters" in the sense that I don't deep fry them. Mario had a whole jug of olive oil for frying and I just can't bring myself to use that much oil, so I pan fry and simply flip.

I've been using canned trout (the recipe is for canned fish), but Josh recently read that sardines are good for us - all of us, that is. They have more omega-3's than salmon; their place on the food chain means they aren't full of toxins, unlike other canned fish I could mention. So I decided to give sardines a try and made the fritters for lunch. Well, I'll be horn-swaggled, they were great. Lovely with a little pa amb tomaquet, or tomato bread, which was standard fare in my adopted city of yore, Barcelona. Notice that I threw on some capers because I saw a fellow blogger with a similar Maltese bread dish that uses the little briny fruit, and I though, Why not? Indeed! A delight!

Speaking of tomatoes in Spain. I recall marveling at the distinction between salad and bread tomatoes. I lived with an older woman and a Dutchman who both bought greenish, rock-hard tomatoes for use in salads, while saving the red ones for bread. Not only did they save these, but they let them further ripen on the counter, getting to the point where the skin started to wrinkle. Yuck, I thought! I came around pretty quick - never to the hard salad tomatoes, but definitely to the bread tomatoes. If you've never had it, it's quite lovely. You take a red, red tomato, slice it in half horizontally, then squeeze the guts out onto a nice baguette (toasting is optional). I think it's nice to let it sit for a bit to soak in. Then, you drizzle e.v. olive oil over that, and sprinkle salt generously. Simple and so nice. Slap some jamon on there, perhaps a fritelle, or a tortilla (omelet, to my Western friends who will think I am talking about a Mexican corn or flour tortilla). When I have really good garden tomatoes, then I put the whole slice on the bread instead of just the guts. Enough salt is the key to really unlocking the flavors.

I also made this beauty. I already told you that I got a new cookbook, by Lydia Bastianich, right? It's on my cookbook list. I made the meatballs in broth from it. I was looking to do something with greens that didn't involve simply sauteing them, not that this isn't a fabulous way to do greens. I mean, no fuss means you get unadulterated greens flavor, not to mention fewer calories and a way easier preparation. But I was looking to fuss, I suppose, when I happened upon erbazzone with chard filling. Yes, please. I created shortcuts by using store-bought pie crust instead of making my own dough. But I definitely am going to make some dough out of this book because many of the recipes use olive oil as the fat. What?! Italians are so crazy. Don't even get me started on Berlusconi, am I right?

Trout/Sardine Fritters:

2 tins of trout or sardines (packed in water or oil, smoked or not, according to taste); 2 eggs, lightly beaten; 2 cloves garlic, minced; 1/4 cup parsley, minced; 1-2 T chopped pepperoncini; 1/2 cup bread crumbs; 1 T grated caciocavallo/Pecorino/Parmesan cheese.

Mix everything. Then make fritters any size you like, I guess. Mine are a couple inches in diameter. You can deep fry them as balls, or slightly flatten them and pan fry in as much or as little oil as you like. Serve simply with a salad and lemon wedges.

Erbazzone with Chard Filling:

1 lb. chard, cleaned, cut into thin slices, ribs cut out and tossed (or saved for stock); 2 T olive oil; 2 garlic cloves, sliced; 1/2-1tsp. salt; 2 eggs, lightly beaten; 1/2 grated Parmesan; 1/4 bread crumbs; 1 tsp. fresh rosemary, minced; 1 batch dough of choice.

Prep the chard by bringing a pot of water to a boil and mixing in the chard. Turn the heat down to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Drain chard really well, squeezing excess water out. Heat olive oil over medium heat, add garlic and saute lightly. Mix in chard and salt to taste, and saute until the chard is dry, but not browned, just a couple minutes. Put the chard mixture, and the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Roll out your dough. Add the mixture to the dough and fold over the corners so it's like a picture frame. You can bake either on a stone or on a sheet pan, at 375. The time will depend on your dough. My pie crust took about 25 minutes.

Restaurant Quality II

Well, the recipe is from a restaurant, so I guess that makes sense. I will still pat myself on the back for proper execution. Thank you.

What makes these mushrooms patties restaurant quality is all the prep and the two different sauces. But the steps really didn't take that long, and you can overlap a couple to save time. I was still able to make a main course protein and a grain.

First, I made the red pepper sauce. I needed to blacken the peppers over a gas flame or under the broiler. I chose the burner open flame because I love charring peppers, and something about an open flame increases that affection. You would think, what with my aversion to peeling garlic because of the sticky skin et. al., that I would also find charring, peeling and seeding peppers to be wretched. I don't know what it is ... charring peppers is just cool. And don't be tempted to rinse them under water to get all the blackened skin off. I once watched Bobby Flay peeling his roasted peppers and he said that you wash away the good char flavor with the water, and why would anyone want to do that? A few pieces of carbonized skin won't kill you.

Then, while the peppers were sitting in a bowl with plastic over them to steep off the skins, I rinsed and chopped my mushrooms. You better believe I bought pre-sliced button mushrooms because I could! And oh, ugh, the shiitakes I got (Oh! Shiitake!) were so tiny that I was washing and pulling out stems forever. Also, I was convinced that removing portobello gills was unnecessary, but I wanted restaurant quality, so I did what the directions directed. After the mushrooms cook, it's really just throwing all the patty parts into the food processor for processing.

Your processor gets a serious workout with these guys, by the way. I used the small bowl for the pepper "coulis," which may be an abuse of the term. I used the big bowl for the mushroom patty ingredients. I then reused the freshly rinsed small bowl for the avocado "pesto."

Then, of course you have to shape the patties and brown them. Oh, and you must save making the pesto for shortly before serving because brown, mushy, oxidized avocado is gross.

Josh asked why this should be considered a pesto and not a guacamole. I realized that it's both because they are one in the same. That is, "pesto" means "pounded," and pestos are traditionally prepared with a mortar and pestle. "Mole" is from Nahautl and means "concoction," but "moler" is Spanish and means "to grind." Moles can also be made with mortar and pestle. I'm going to go ahead and believe that it all works out, etymologically, and definitely culinarily so that what is a pesto in Italy may just be a mole in Mexico.

The instructions even tell you how to plate. To wit: spread an even layer of pesto on the plate, top with two mushroom cakes, and top that with pepper coulis. The combination of all three elements was awesome. Was more than the sum of its parts. Was restaurant quality.

The aforementioned main dish was halibut with raisins and almonds. The fish was dredged in corn flour and baked just that like. The sauce was made in a skillet with butter, wine, lemon juice, raisins, with the parsley and almonds added at the end. Simple and quite good.

Lest I get too big for my britches, I should mention the wild grain rice. I have always been afraid of making rice in a pot - it never goes well for me ... like bechamel. But I tried. And failed. This looks cooked and normal, but there is a puddle at the bottom. The rice had a gross, undercooked, chewy layer, and a gross, overcooked, soggy layer. I tried to get Sam to eat it. No dice. He also refrained from trying the mushroom cakes. "Refrained" being a euphemism for "spitting them out and making yelping, pained sounds while sticking his tongue out."

Salmon Pot Pie

I offered to make lunch on the day Irene came over to bake bread. I chose Salmon Pot Pie from Dad's Test Kitchen binder. I thought it would be a crowd pleaser, as well as easy and quick. But I did what I always do when I am cooking for people other than just Josh and me - I started to doubt everything. I doubted my choice of meals, my ingredients, my abilities, everything! I just get so keyed up with adrenaline that I worry worry worry. Ug. Relax already. Why so much worry? Well, Irene is a good cook, good with a knife ... then there is my dad, who is no slouch in the kitchen either. So, lunch had to be good. Lunch had to impress.

Allow me to segue into a gush about Irene's kitchen prowess. She took a cooking class with my dad and I can't remember if it came up here or at another class, but there was an opportunity to work behind the scenes of Yan Can Cook, with Martin Yan. This is an old school cooking show on PBS. Is it safe to say it was one of the first cooking shows, along with Graham Kerr and Julia? If not, Yan is at least part of the older set from the pre-celebrity chef days when cooking shows were on public TV, only. So, anyway, Irene gets in line to show her skills to see if she has what it takes - and does she. Knife skills! So she gets to chop for Yan, who is particular and demanding and actually has no Chinese accent at all. It's a put-on for the show. And he went to UC Davis, my alma mater. So, I had Irene mince my garlic because, as you may recall, I find the task odious AND I wanted to see her skills. I should have taken a photo. That was the finest most finely minced garlic I have ever seen.

Back to the pot pie. The recipe required fresh dill, and I found the biggest bunch in all of the San Francisco Bay Area. I maybe used 1/4 of it when all was said and done for this meal plus the beets I made the next day and forgot to take a picture of.

I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that the meal came out well.

Of course, I learned a valuable lesson while preparing this meal because how could I go on with this blog if I wasn't constantly making errors to learn from, or going through existential crises in the kitchen? Right.

The grand lesson: When a recipe tells you to let something sit for X number of minutes, DO IT. I would add to this: especially if said recipe included a thickener like flour, as this one did. You can see it in these shots of the final dish, actually; see the lesson, that is. So, we were hungry. The recipe says to let it stand for 7.58 minutes, but I was like Oh, 1 minute sounds good. I could hear everyone's stomachs growling. So I slice into it and tears immediately begin to well because it looks ruined! Ruined. Bad. Awful. Well, I had cut into it before it had time to gel or something. When we all went back for seconds, it looked fine and solid. Lesson learned.

Any recipe which calls for a bechamel, or anything remotely resembling a bechamel, makes me nervous. This one has you mix in your milk after you put flour in, and I think my hands were shaking. The naysayer in my head was all You suck at anything that requires flour and water! If it doesn't clump, it will be grainy, or worse! How can it be worse? Well, all the water can separate out and it can look curdled, as it did when I sliced into it too soon. Ug.

In the end, it tasted good, I learned a lesson, and everyone's seconds looked normal. In fact, my serving for lunch the following day looked even better.

And the dill made a wonderful centerpiece.

Halibut with Green Bean and Shiitakes

I highly recommend the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In it, the main character, Oscar, uses the word "shiitake" to curse. Say it out loud. Go ahead. It works, and it's funny.

So halibut is a lovely, meaty fish, low on the "fishiness" scale. I have a frozen bag of fillets in the deep-freeze, which is definitely not as good as fresh, but hey, it works. It works especially when your fishmonger isn't a hop, skip and a jump away. I recently discovered that there is a halibut season, which I should have figured out on my own because there are salmon seasons for the various species, aren't there? The season for wild halibut ended about a month ago. That would be an instance where my fishmonger - whom I have maligned in the past for not offering advice on fish substitutes - offered interesting, useful and unsolicited information that I appreciated. So he's just at -1, instead of -2.

You make the cilantro sauce there and roast everything else together. It's simple and delicious. And a good example of a meal made for two that comfortably serves just two. I haven't been including recipes because they can be tedious to type out, especially when someone still has to look at her hands to type. What?! I took Art instead of Typing in high school. I can recognize the Impressionists' work, but I don't stick to my homerow. Sue me.

Sauce: Blend/mini-cuisinart together 2 cups cilantro, 2 T lemon juice, 1 green onon, 1/2 jalapeno, 3 T veg. oil, 1 tsp. sesame oil, and 1 tsp. soy sauce. That's your sauce to serve over the fish.

Fish-veg. bake: 2 -8oz. halibut fillets, 1 lb. green beans, 1 lb. shiitakes. Prep those, like you normally would. I put them in a glass baking dish and nestle the halibut in among the veggies. The original recipe says to place everything on a baking sheet in a single layer. Then pour over the following all blended up with a whisk: 2 T veg. oil, 1 tsp. sesame oil, 2 tsp. soy sauce. I pour a bit over the halibut and the rest over the veggies. Then I mix the veggies around a bit to make sure they all have sauce on them. Sometimes I get a little overzealous with my veggies and include over a lb. of each, so I double the sauce here.

Bake at 450. The time to bake depends on the thickness of the fish. If yours are only 3/4in. or so, then 10 minutes might be enough. My fillets here were fat and they needed 15-17 minutes. I like to remove the fish when it's done, mix the veggies, and send them back for about ten minutes more.

Serving with rice is advisable.

Last Night: Revisited

I cannot, for the life of me figure out this photo thing. Arg. I can do it on my cat's blog. Hm. I'll have to work on this.

Last night's adventure in the kitchen:

I made the dessert, almond cake, in the morning, so that it was done. When people are coming over, I do a timeline of the evening, so that dinner can be on the table when I want it to be ... although last night we were off, weren't we. Anyway, part of the timeline is always "Morning" and then an extensive list of the dessert and sauce and chopping prep. So, I made the dessert in the morning - this was after my grocery shopping, of course - and it came out super. I love this almond cake. It's perfect for people with wheat or dairy restrictions because it doesn't have those things in it. And it's lovely with sorbet, namely Blackberry-Cabernet and Blood Orange, by Ciao Bella.

Next is the appetizer: Bruschetta with rosemary-white bean spread, and red onion and arugula (dressed with balsamic vinegar), by The New Best Recipe. It was really good! I also rubbed the toasts with garlic and painted on some olive oil, so there was lots of flavor. The roof of my mouth is all torn up today, though. Do I have the softest palate in the world?

The salad, fish, and vegetables (not pictured) were out of "Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm." It's our new cookbook. The salad was delicious: Winter Salad, to be precise. Those greens were so refreshing in their bitterness, and the carmelized nuts (also on the Morning list) and cheese were perfect with the dijon vinaigrette (Morning). Of note is the fact that Jason Morgan does not like walnuts. AND he didn't know what a pecan was, but decided that he didn't like those, either. He said it is a "texture thing." What? It's not Spam. It's crunchy, which is a universal happy texture. I said, "They're covered with sugar, man!" No dice. He didn't take any cheese, either. Good thing I make a mean vinaigrette.

Now we get to the aioli, as promised. Pictured is the second batch of aioli made. The first, I whipped by hand. It was super thick and a gorgeous yellow. I was so proud. Then, I tasted it. Nasty! There was a metallic finish and a raunchy bitterness. Ug. No salvaging that crap. I went back to the recipe and noticed what I had mocked before: "Use only fresh garlic from the local farmers' market." But the book doesn't say why. It doesn't say, "Heed this advice or your aioli will be completely unpalatable." Simultaneously, Josh looked on the handy dandy interweb and found Rosemary-Thyme Aioli, from Cook's Illustrated - so trusted, so true, so thorough in their explanations. To wit: "Remove the green germ in the garlic ...; [it] will give the aioli a bitter, hot flavor." AND, CI implores you to use regular olive oil, NOT extra-virgin. So my sins were two-fold, it would appear. I threw out the disgusting aioli (that's the smell in the garbage right now! tmi?), and replaced it with the velvety, delicious one pictured. This one I made in the mini-chopper. Holy Moly, that mini-chopper will complain if you use it for more than a minute. As the smell of burning motor filled the air, I tried to reason with it: slowly add the olive oil! Slowly! Please, don't explode!

The trout! I believe I mentioned that I went to get Arctic Char. That was the second time that I went with one thing in mind, only to find that I couldn't have it. And, for the second time, I thought I could rely on my fishmonger to help me. I guess I have watched too many "Good Eats" episodes, with Alton Brown addressing his butcher by name and casually asking how said meat-man likes to prepare his dead flesh. The butcher always has an answer! Well, my fishmonger did not have an answer, and his smile faded real quick when he put the second fish back that I asked to look at. (I tabled the idea of asking to smell the trout he was wrapping up.)

So the trout worked out swimmingly (ha ha), but the incident brought up a whole host of thoughts about my identity as a cook. I decided that I am a Home Cook. The "home" is an important adjective - just as important as the "cook," note: not "chef." (I like the colons today.) What this means is that I cook from cookbooks - recipes written by others. Yes, I can put my own mark on things and I know some technique and how to experiment. But I am not too bold with experimentation or new territory, and I am shy with the spices. I definitely don't garnish. I make my list of ingredients and I go to the market to seek them out. If I were a Chef, I would go to the market, sans list, and let the produce speak to me. I could probably also better stick to my timeline! I know that I make good things, but I get really bent out of shape when what I make is not good, especially if it's for company. I think a good goal for the serious Home Cook is to migrate into chef territory little by little. Summer is good for experimentation - there is glut of good stuff out there to work with. In Seattle there is a Farmers Market every day of the week full of organic this and sustainable that. AND the vendors cook what they sell, so can give guidance.

So little by little. For this week, however, I already shopped with my list.

Tonight's dinner: leftovers. There are two whole fish in the fridge.