I have indeed been in the kitchen an enormous amount since returning home. It has been delightful. ( I could, though, do without washing dishes or even loading the dishwasher. Am I lazy or what?) In any case, in addition to a renewed desire to peruse cooking magazines and cookbooks, I am, in fact, cooking. Part of this is inspired by our CSA micro-share and the need to use what I pick up. Part of this is because I prefer not to cook only for myself and so more or less abandoned it in Chicago, and part is just. . . because.
Here are a few things I have been cooking:
Vietnamese Pork has long been in our dining repertoire, originating in one of my favorite cookbooks. The book is an amazing -- dare I say shocking -- pink, which means it is easy to find on the shelf, and focuses on a variety of curries. Yes, it is Madhur Jaffrey's From Curries to Kebobs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail. You know when a recipe is well loved when a cookbook opens to that page or when there are loads of smears on the page or . . . and all of that is true of this recipe for us. (This, by the way, is why you should be amazed when you find a rare used cookbook that is pristine. These are books to be used -- though I have to admit that some of mine are basically bookends and some are picture books I peruse -- so the inspiration is less immediate.) In any case, inspired by the recipe "Vietnamese Pork with Lemongrass" on page 66, here's what I do:
- Buy a pork loin -- or on occasion boneless chicken breasts. Both work and the latter gives some variety to the tale if you make this recipe often. Make sure all ingredients (see below) are on hand (or improvise as noted).
- Use the rice cooker to make rice -- often red rice but any rice will do.
- Place pork loin in freezer for a while (30 minutes verges on too long). This is to help ensure you are able to slice it very thin. It is less necessary if you are making the chicken version.
- Make a marinade as follows: (a) 1 Tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce (I often put in a bit more); (b) 2 teaspoons fish sauce (again, a splash more is ok); (c) a teaspoon cornstarch (sometimes I just don't do this but it does enhance the sauce eventually); (d) 1 finely minced stalk of lemongrass; (e) 3 tablespoons -- or a small handful of finely minced onions or shallots; (f) 2-3 chopped (usually without seeds but this is all about how heated you want the dish) bird chilis (and I use whatever I have to hand from the freezer); (g) a swirl of ground pepper; (h) 1 teaspoon of sugar; (i) 1 tablespoon of oil (usually canola but occasionally something else I have on hand); (j) around 1/2 teaspoon of hot curry powder.
- Thinly slice the meat and stick tin the marinade in the bowl, using your hand to squish it all around. Stick to the side for a minimum of an hour.
- Think slice either shallots or onion -- the recipe calls for 1/2 cup but I just go with the flow.
- Stir fry the onion/shallot in a few tablespoons of oil -- and then add the meat. The recipe says to add it all at once; only do that if you are using a fairly large pan as you do not want to inadvertently stew the meat. Sometimes this means doing one batch of meat, taking it out, doing the second batch and then recombining them.
- Toward the end add a very large handful of cilantro leaves.
- Serve happily with rice -- and one of the cucumber salads listed below.
Hard Boiled Eggs and their many variations are not something that I usually turn towards, but these days they seem to be a mainstay. How do I make them and what do I do with them? First: make sure you have the best eggs you can obtain from your CSA or the grov=cery store or, in our case on more than one occasion, from your partner's yoga teacher. Then: place as many eggs as you want to hard boil in coolish water and pop that pan over a hi flame. Once you see signs of boiling, turn the flame off, put a top on your pot and wait 12 minutes. You won't be sorry. And, by the way, fresher eggs are definitely harder to peel.
What to do with them once you make hard boiled eggs? Make deviled eggs (for my views on deviled eggs generally -- and a book about them -- you could click here for an older blog entry) or egg salad (which in my case means mash the darn things with a fork, add mayo and hope for the best), cut into quarters and place alongside the freshest tomatoes you can find, grate over a salad (to be honest, I finely mince the white and push the yolk through a mesh strainer), or. . . whatever comes to mind! If you want to link your hard boiled eggs up to murder mysteries, try clicking here for other reflections from bibliochef, including another recipe!
As for me, my best deviled eggs incorporate some store mouth HOT mango chutney into the yolk along with mayo and. . . .
Pizza (gluten free): My partner tends to keep certain things around in case she (or we) arrive(s) home and are too tired to do something serious for dinner. One of the basics is a frozen gluten free pizza shell (brand name? Against the Grain) Add to that the fact that we have home made tomato sauce in the freezer and . . . well, pizza at home is always delicious even when made with (as it always is) whatever is around. Bacon? Mushrooms? Pea shoots? Arugula? Eggs? All of them can be part of an amazing pizza.
Add to that this approach my partner's tendency to do the same thing with D'Artagnan duck confit legs (that is, have them around in case of emergency) and. . . voila! Here's the best pizza idea ever (well, it is always best to involve bacon or prosciutto, but this does not).
*Cook the duck confit by placing it in a dish and sticking it in a 375 degree oven until it is crisp. Don;t over do it. Then remove the meat from the duck confit (snagging a few pieces of totally amazing skin but trying to control yourself.)
*Cover the pizza shell with a cup or so of your home made sauce (or store bought if you must -- a kind of thick sauce works best).
*Then cover with a mixture of grated mozzarella and grated parmesan.
*Distribute duck confit meat and either argulula or pea shoots (if the latter, do so AFTER you cook the pizza for a bit or they shrivel too much). Perhaps include a few red pepper flakes.
*Cook for a while -- maybe 15 minutes -- and then let it rest briefly.
*Consume. Smile.
Tuna Salad I actually love tuna salad made from tuna in cans. Well, perhaps I do not love it, but I have a strong, more than occasional liking for it. This is not that. This, instead, is a nice piece of wild tuna (the recipe I started with called for albacore, but hey, I already had the tuna and . . . it was not albacore. Here's what I made (which is rooted in a recipe found here but tweaked by preference and by absences in the available ingredients.
*Dump a cup or so of olive oil (one that tastes good not just some junk) into a sauce pan and add fennel seeds and black pepper corns (the original recipe called for green ones but hey. . . you do what you can). Warm the oil up for a while to infuse with the seeds. Let cool.
*Warm the oil up again (Or just never cool it completely if you are like me) and add the tuna to it. I used a single tuna steak, about 1/2 pound. Cook it for a bit on each side and ensure that the edges are also poached in the olive oil.
*Voila: olive oil poached tuna. Remove tuna, and cube or rip up. Retain the oil as you will use it later in this recipe and in other contexts.
*Toss together: mayonnaise (about 1/3 cup?), two tablespoons capers (drained in my case, but not rinsed), squeezing of one lemon, finely diced red onion (some is all I can say on quantity), some chopped black olives (again, no help on the quantity as I just used what I had). Add tuna and lightly toss. (the original recipe called for celery. I had none. Ditto with anchovies.)
*The original recipe asks you to serve this in avocado halves. Indeed, it suggests 2 avocado halves per person. I disagreed. What I did was slice an avocado and artfully distribute the slices on a plate. I then topped the avocado with the tuna salad and drizzled with the fennel/peppercorn oil and some lemon juice.
Amazing. Original source: Food and Wine on line.
Cucumber Salads are something we fell for as a result of a cookbook called Hot Sour Salty Sweet, reviewed on this blog but yet again I simply cannot find the review. Yes, I should have planned better in 2006 or whenever. Not only have I reviewed the book but I have reviewed many of the books she has done and own many as well. So: whether i can find it or not, it is her book that inspired many of our cucumber salad adventures -- and we are also inspired by parental cucumber salads (one with vinegar and sugar and one with cream and black pepper, but I digress). Here are two I have been making lately, one from the aforementioned book and one from a google search on my phone.
Basic Asian Cucumber Salad inspired by Hot Sour Salty Sweet. This salad is accomplished in various ways, but here are the basics. First: if you are using a European seedless cucumber, just cut in half; otherwise, cut in half and seed. I often use a peeler to make it so the halves are kind of striped. Then: cut very thin crescents of cucumber. Place in bowl. Add: around 3 Tablespoons of vinegar. The original recipe calls for black rice vinegar and rice vinegar. I have been known to use only unseasoned rice vinegar. And, to be honest, if you use another kind you will not be making anything Asian, but it will still taste good. Then add a smidgen of sugar and a bit of salt. Let sit. Sprinkle minced ginger on top when you serve. Variations include: add some sxechuan pepper corns. Or. . . whatever you want. There is another recipe which makes a kind of oil with spices in it at the very end and tosses that on top. Tasty too.
Cucumber Ribbon Salad was an iPhone discovery and was par of a recipe for a full dinner which involved salmon as well. You can find the recipe for the whole darn thing here. Yes, salmon and herb salad and cucumber ribbons. What I did, instead, was simply make the cucumber ribbon salad as I a) had no salmon and b) had no herbs to make herb salad. TO do what I did: a) using vegetable peeler, and seeded cucumber, make long very thin ribbons; b) make lemon grass ginger dressing which consists of 1 minced lemon grass stalk; 1/4 cup oil; 2 tablespoons rice vinegar; 1 tablespoon minced ginger; and 1 tablespoon soy sauce Tamari). I can say this: looks different, tastes different, expanded my repertoire, and I like it. Plus, cucumber ribbons for some reason are more impressive than crescents despite the knife skills required of the crescents to be close to identical.
So: back to the kitchen!
