Author: lauren
lauren
Steamed Cod and Green Curry
Think of a great steak. You take a juicy bite. And another. Very soon you realize one forkful is more or less the same as the last: same texture, same flavor. Then think of a bowl of steamed clams: a strange and delicious morsel inhabiting a shell and graciously providing you with its own sauce (a little added butter never hurt). Which is more interesting?
Americans eat a lot more meat than they do fish. While the reasons for this have been hashed out ad nauseum, great fish cookery has not. Stand at the edge of the ocean (or riverbank) and imagine what’s under there: a massive variety of edible creatures.
The point of #INTHESHELL is to show just how tasty this bounty can be. You may have recipes for chowder, sauces, fish mousses, fish pies, simple grilled fish, simple raw fish, fried fish sandwiches, pasta tossed with seafood.
We’ll showcase guest posts as well as our own, all in the name of seafood love. Give us your best. Cook a steak. Create with fish.
Several years ago we ate at Le Bernardin, often labeled the “temple of fish”. What I recall is less the food and more the feeling one has after playing the slots, namely an embarrassed sense of defeat. In flush, out broke, wallet emptied and still hungry. My entrée, a white fish resting atop a braised, mushy half-stalk of celery, would fit happily on a punitive spa menu.
Had it been great food, perhaps I’d remember the dish rather than the financial abuse (see Sushi Yasuda). Unfortunately, it was white mush on grey-green mush, not a happy combo and, in fact, one which would turn off non-fish eaters, confirming their suspicion that fish is bland and unsatisfying.
I’ll skip a detailed rebuttal, and just say that fish and seafood go beautifully with all kinds of accompaniments, hearty and light, (mushy celery not being one of them, but then again, is mushy celery ever good?). Not to mention the hundreds of edible creatures swimming the seas, rivers, and lakes.
Like stepping gingerly into a cold sea, this recipe is a perfect starter for those wary of fish. I approximated the curry sauce from David Thompson’s Thai Street Food, but rather than tossing it with braised flank steak to make a delicious bowl of meat curry, I paired it with cod, one of my favorite sea creatures, a fish dense and tasty enough to sate the novice seafood diner.
Thompson, laser-like, anoints each dish with geographical and cultural significance:
“This way of eating comes from the deep south of Thailand, where the sauce and a few morsels of meat from Muslim-style curries and served with roti…It is usually eaten as a mid-morning snack, rather than with rice at a curry shop…simmering the beef in coconut cream until it is soft and tender, leaving just a residue of oil, is an age-old technique, although one that is now somewhat uncommon…”
Aside from chucking the meat, shortening the recipe, and serving it for dinner, I’m being wholly faithful to the denizens of south Thailand. In truth, though, the sauce-apparently the key element of most dishes over there-is generally faithful to the book (without the braising element and so on).
I paired the sauce with fish for a few reasons: the rich and spicy coconut-based sauce should satisfy meat eaters, as well as demonstrate the versatility of fish. Layered with a deep mix of spices, the curry paste itself is complex and phenomenal.
Serving soft celery as a bed for a piece of fish is unwise. It’s also criminal to charge whatever they do for such a dish. I’m not sure what’s worse, but at least the experience clarified the remedy: play around with seafood. Like wine, it’s an expansive world. Unlike wine, you’re less likely to get ripped off. How is a bottle of wine like a stalk of overdone celery…?
(NOTE: some of the ingredients are, as you’ll see, specialty. Galangal and shrimp paste make for a densely-flavored curry, though you can substitute ginger for the galangal. The shrimp paste is pretty necessary, though again, if need be, throw in a splash of fish sauce. As for the chilies, Thompson calls for 20-30 or, as he says, 1 tablespoon. By my estimation that means each chili is about the size of a few grains of rice, and those, frankly, I’ve never come across. I do, however, use small ones, about an inch long, which may or may not be available near you. If not, I guess find the hottest ones you can and use judiciously. In addition, kaffir leaves are irreplaceable. I suppose a few wide strips of lime zest is okay, but kaffir leaves are great because you can get a small bag and freeze to pull out as needed. This thing shouldn’t be scorching hot, or at least I don’t think it should. Note, too, that I use coconut milk rather than coconut cream. Coconut milk is so rich that the idea of boosting the fat level makes me a tad nauseous.)
Steamed Cod with a Green Curry Sauce (loosely adapted from David Thompson Thai Street Food)
Serves 4
Green Curry Paste
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
generous ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
4 cardamom pods, shelled
10 white peppercorns
pinch freshly ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons turmeric powder
5- or 6 small green Thai chilies
2 tablespoons chopped lemongrass
1 tablespoon chopped galangal (or ginger)
3 tablespoons chopped shallot
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro roots/stems
½ teaspoon Thai shrimp paste
Green Curry and Fish
Paste (from above)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups coconut milk plus 1 cup coconut milk or water
pinch salt
1 stalk lemongrass, bruised
1-inch piece cinnamon stick
few tablespoons fish sauce plus more to season
3-4 kaffir lime leaves, torn
4 skinned, cod fillets, 6-8 ounces each
splash white wine
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 400.
- For the paste: toast the coriander, cumin, cardamom, and peppercorns over low heat in a small pan till fragrant. Transfer to a spice grinder, blend to a powder and mix with the nutmeg and turmeric. Reserve
- In a mini chopper or food processor, add the remaining ingredients and puree till smooth. Stir in remaining spices and reserve.
- In a wok (preferably) or medium saucepan set over medium-high, heat the oil. When hot, add the paste and fry, stirring constantly so it doesn’t burn, about 5 minutes. It should be fragrant and the ingredients softened.
- Add the splash of fish sauce, simmer a minute or so, scraping any scorched paste from the bottom of the pot, then add 2 cups coconut milk and lime leaves. Simmer for about 20 minutes. If it is thickening too much, add up to a cup of coconut milk or water, though you may not need to. It should be a sauce consistency. Reserve and keep warm.
- Meanwhile, place the fillets on individual pieces of foil large enough to enclose. Season each with salt and pepper, a splash of wine, and wrap loosely. Place on a tray and cook in oven till done, 6-7 minutes. Test it: a metal skewer or knife inserted should come out hot and the fish should be flaky, not dry.
- To serve, spoon a generous amount of sauce (don’t overdo! the dish is as much about the fish as it is the sauce) in the center of a plate and spread with a back of a spoon to cover the entire plate. Center the fish on top and serve.
Cornets Filled w/ Salmon Tartare and Creme Fraiche
Before we went into catering I’d never made an hors d’oeuvre in my life. Rarely while cooking for myself would I feel the need to preface the meal with a tiny egg roll and a little ramekin of dipping sauce. In fact, before we went into catering I’d never attempted any form of miniature food. Even for guests. I figured if they’re not happy with wine, a salad, and a roast, they’ve come to the wrong place. (That rule applies today.)
Unless required by profession, I wouldn’t recommend tackling the world of eensy weensy food. Imagine feeding guests without the benefit of knives, forks, spoons, and plates. As well as oil and pots since you don’t want your place to smell like frying food. Finally, imagine your guests are allergic to frozen food, which, by the way, you don’t like much either, and, finally, unless each bite must be different from the next they’ll never talk to you again. Such is the nature of the hors d’oeuvre, the ancient brainchild of a sadistic host.
While flavor is critical it’s not the most challenging part of devising an hors d’oeuvre. Rather, the architecture is what confounds and tangles the cook’s brain, haunting him with dreams of parallelograms, wavy curls, blowtorches, mini drills, and heads of cauliflower carved in the shape of a swan.
There is, thankfully, one form which is clever enough and ubiquitous enough to resist the “trend” label, and that is the cone. While you need the correct set of molds and trays, a cone is an heroic shape: vertical (a valued hors d’oeuvre property) and easily filled with any number of cool stuff from tuna tartare to mousses savory and sweet.
For years now, rather than messing around we’ve used the recipe from the French Laundry Cookbook. When it comes to molding paper-thin tuiles around a small cornet I assume he knows what he’s doing.
Here’s the thing: it takes a lot, and I stress, a lot, of practice. Any number of treacherous disasters will occur, you just have to resist the urge to set the book on fire: you’ll burn your fingers on the hot steel cones, scorch batches and batches of batter, layer your countertops with thick smears of soft butter, etc.
All for something you’ll never need-at least I never did-unless you’re catering a party. However, as with any tough project, it’s satisfying to master, and-I have to admit-they’re tasty and impressive enough to warrant at least a try. Now all you need is someone to drill holes in a tray…
(Note: This is one of those recipes that pretty much needs verbatim translation. Unfortunately I was too lazy, so you’ll have to read carefully. It’s my own shorthand. Which makes the whole thing even more annoying. Needless to say, you NEED a bunch of 4 ½ inch cornet molds. Check out Sur La Table or something.)
Salmon Tartare and Red Onion Crème Fraiche Filled Tuiles (adapted from the French Laundry Cookbook)
makes 24 cornets
Cornets
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
8 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
2 egg whites, cold
2 tablespoons black sesame seeds
Salmon Tartare (below)
Red Onion Crème Fraiche (below)
- Get a firm piece of plastic such as the top of a pint container or Tupperware. Place a 3 ½ -inch can on top and with a pen trace a circle. Take a slightly smaller jar, place in the center of that circle and stencil another, slightly smaller one. Using a sharp paring knife, cut around the outlines (you’ll need the can and jar to guide you probably) so that you end up with a stencil that’s “O” shaped and hollow in the center.
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Whisk flour, sugar, salt till combined. In another bowl, whisk soft butter to texture of mayo. Beat the egg whites into the flour till completely smooth. Fold in the butter a third at a time and then whisk till completely smooth.
- Pour the batter into a smaller container (it’s easier to dip into later). Place a silpat on a baking sheet.
- Using a small offset spatula scoop a little batter into the center of the stencil onto the silpat and spread to cover. Remove and you’ll have a cool circle of batter. It takes practice to get the thickness right. Don’t make it too thin i.e. so you can see right through, or it’ll burn. Repeat so you have 8-10 on the silpat.
- Take a few pinches of sesame seeds and sprinkle over each circle. Place in oven and bake. Watch CAREFULLY, it’ll take about 3 minutes. If it browns slightly on the edges you may have gone too far but it may be salvageable. Here’s the key: If it’s bubbling and the edges especially are curling a bit and releasing from the silpat (you can shake it a little and they shift a little), take it out.
- Use a butter knife, flip them all over, seed side down. Work quickly! They dry out. Take a cornet mold, place the tip at 7 o’clock and roll the thing into a cone seam down. You’ll burn your fingers. Move fast.
- Here’s the final obstacle: they tend to slide in the oven, which makes them release from the mold. As you roll each, try (gently) to shift them snugly next to each other so they resist moving around. If that’s tough, do the best you can with just a few-it takes practice.
- Return to oven and bake till evenly golden brown, about 3-4 minutes. Lift gently to a plate.
- Store in an airtight container for up to 2 days.
- TO FINISH: pipe-or use a little spoon-a bit of the crème fraiche to fill the top ½ inch of the cone. Spoon 1 ½ teaspoons of the salmon on top to form a dome. The whole thing should resemble an ice cream cone. That’s it.
Salmon Tartare
4 ounces salmon, skin and bones removed, minced
1 ½ teaspoons olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons chives, minced
1 ½ teaspoons shallots, minced
salt and pepper
1. Stir together in a small bowl, season and store in fridge 30 minutes or up to 6 hours
Red Onion Crème Fraiche
1 tablespoon red onions, minced
½ cup crème fraiche
salt and pepper
1. Whisk the crème fraiche for 30 seconds to a minute to soft peaks. Stir in the onions, season, store in fridge.
Beet Tartare
Last week Frank Bruni had a typically wry piece on Romera, the new ultra luxurious Manhattan restaurant. Several clichés seem to apply to this place: “highly anticipated”, “the new in-spot”, “tough reservation”, etc. But, as Bruni wrote, pretentious is the most apt description. Or, if you must, “over-the-top”.
Rather than pairing wines to food, apparently-and this is part of the restaurants “philosophy”, if you will-Romera pairs infused waters. While I’m mildly curious to taste leek water, or whatever, I doubt it’s worth the $250 check. Pretentious, yes, novel, no. Chefs have been playing with chemistry for quite a while now, inverting peas, reversing eggs, deconstructing chocolate, and so on. Michel Richard transforms pasta into tiny black droplets, packs them into a tin and calls it caviar. Others-and this is apparently common-spoon mango puree in the center of a white emulsion and call it a fried egg.
A chef who engages in this sort of trickery needs to step out of the kitchen. Uniformly, the best chefs say they cook what they like to eat. While it may be fun to play with, I doubt these guys like to kick back with a plate of transglutaminase and various forms of calcium.
It is, on the other hand, kind of nice (and endearingly honest) to play with the labels, as long as the intent is not fanciful recreation. Beet tartare is a tasty and appropriately playful take on the classic steak version. While you’d never mistake minced beets for ground filet, and the mix-ins are wholly different, the result is strikingly attractive, delicious, and playful.
Beets are also a hell of a lot cheaper than filet, and certainly less expensive than a night at Romera. It doesn’t involve test tubes and leeky water, just old-fashioned cooking with a pleasantly modern twist.
(NOTE: you’ll see we don’t call for tossing the beets with the herbs and crème fraiche, which is the point. It’s a “steak” tartare, as in mix it yourself.)
Beet Tartare
Serves 4 as an appetizer
1 bunch large beets
2 tablespoons olive oil
handful (1/2 cup) of mixed fresh herbs such as tarragon, dill, and parsley, chopped
3 tablespoons minced shallots
1/2 cup crème fraiche or sour cream
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 400.
- Coat beets in oil, wrap tightly in foil and roast till tender. Don’t overcook-it’s a salad. About 1 hour or more.
- Remove. When cool, peel using a paring knife and cut in small (1/8 inch) dice. Chill in fridge for at least an hour.
- Season the cold beets with salt and pepper. To serve, divide in small bowls or plates, top each with the herbs and shallots and follow with a spoonful of crème fraiche in the center.
Peanut Butter Ice Cream w/ Reese’s Cups
My recent rant over boxed mashed potatoes concluded with a vichyssoise recipe. The point was that it can be at least as cheap and nearly as quick to cook with actual produce as with fake food. In passing I also mentioned preservatives, which of course is an issue with pouched mashed potatoes and other flaky, powdery, gummy, suspiciously instant items. I’m hardly a puritan on the issue, but there is at least one dish I usually buy but makes me feel especially virtuous when I go the homemade route: ice cream.
For homemade ice cream you need to buy an ice cream maker, which isn’t cheap, and depending on how much ice cream you eat it may or may not pay for itself, as they say. However, unless you and the family are lactose intolerant, I’m betting it does.
From-scratch ice cream is so simple and incredibly pure that even in our apartment, with the gridlock honking and Occupy Wall Street chants crashing through the windows, I feel like I’m on my very own dairy farm. Milk, cream, eggs, sugar. That’s about it.
Unfortunately, ice cream is the most preference-laden concoction I can think of. What other prepared food is sold in as many varieties and commands as much supermarket acreage? Which complicates the issue for the home ice cream maker who can go rapidly from dairy farmer to paralyzed obsessive.
And so I’m here to simplify. In my view there are two types of ice cream: with and without stuff. In other words, say, vanilla versus butter pecan. Personally, I need stuff in my ice cream, and I suspect you do too. However, the beauty of ice cream is that for the stuff and the stuffless the recipe is more or less the same. You just toss the stuff through the chute near the end of the process.
For me, ice cream requires peanut butter hence the following peanut butter and Reese’s cup version. It is delicious, but-unless I’m misreading the Reese’s package-hardly preservative free. There goes my dairy farmer illusion; right out the window…onto the chaos below.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream (from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein)
Makes about 1 quart
¾ cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 ½ cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup crushed Reese’s cups
- In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar and eggs till thickened and pale yellow. Set aside.
- Bring the milk to a simmer in a medium pot, slowly beat the hot milk into the eggs and sugar. Pour mixture back into the pot and place over low heat. Stir constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon till custard thickens slightly. Don’t let it boil. You don’t want scrambled eggs.
- Remove from the heat and beat in the peanut butter. Strain through a fine strainer into a large, clean bowl and cool slightly. Stir in the cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Stir the chilled custard then freeze in 1 or 2 batches in the ice cream machine. When semi-frozen, add 1 cup crushed Reese’s cups and let the machine finish its magic.
A Great Butcher (pork belly and Thai chili jam)
Part of the point of patronizing butchers and craftsmen in general is the joy of criticizing the next guy’s favorite haunt. Arguing about whose Whole Foods is superior is hardly a logical conversation-it’s all the same acreage of steam tables and odd brands of grain. But you have a relationship with your butcher. Even if it’s only skinning a chicken breast, he customizes your food. Pino, our local guy, does a superior job.
Pino the butcher is a small shop on the corner of Sullivan and Houston. It’s a weird area, a half-block, postage stamp-sized remnant of Italian Soho. Not Little Italy, mind you, a (with some exceptions) mall of pasta slinging houses, menu barkers, and Sinatra tunes piped out on a loop.
In the Pino’s time warp, old ladies lean out of windows to speak with their friends on the stoop and guys sit on fold-out chairs smoking cigars. But, as I said, the area is tiny, the size of a small suburban lawn, the faded corner of a loudly colored giant jigsaw puzzle. Or in this case, the Soho mall: Kim Kardashian’s new place is nearby, as is the Apple Store, Michael Kors, Top Shop, etc.
At Pino’s they’re constantly carving, trimming, and boning all sorts of meats, from half a lamb hanging on a hook, to calves liver and sweetbreads. The bucket of trimmings is carried to the back and turned into all sorts of sausage, from winy rabbit to hot dogs to variations of classic Italian.
And there’s the perfect old-world touch: a sawdust-coated floor, the smell of fresh meat, long (formerly white) butchers jackets, all in a small space. It’s a far cry from the hipster Brooklyn butcher with his tattoos, jars of in-house mustards and pickles, twittering, and so on.
But that’s why we love cheesemakers and butchers and good restaurants: to argue about which is best.
(NOTE: we used our handy dandy sous vide machine for this one. It cuts on pots and mess and makes a helluva nice pork belly, though this cut would taste good boiled in dishwater. Pork belly can be roasted straight or braised, chilled, and sautéed. Either way it’s delicious. If you’re going to braise it, remove the skin before or after. Be sure to keep it, as you can roast the skin on a rack for great cracklings. It’s a good idea to cure the belly at least overnight. We used Thai fish sauce. Salt, pepper, maybe some crushed spice like coriander, is also great. You need a Thai or special spice place to find palm sugar and dried prawns. Substitute brown sugar and if necessary omit the prawns. Thai chiles are thin, about 1 inch long.)
Pork Belly w/ Chili Jam and Butternut Squash Puree
Serves 4-6
1 recipe Chili Jam (see below)
1/2 cup Thai fish sauce
2 pounds pork belly, skin removed, scored
1 quart chicken stock
1 cup white wine
½ head garlic, unpeeled, crushed
½ onion, unpeeled
2 carrots, peeled
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 large butternut squash
2-3 tablespoons palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns, ground
2 bunches watercress
juice 1 lemon
olive oil
salt and pepper
- For the pork belly: rub 2 tablespoons of the chili jam over both sides of the belly and coat well with half the fish sauce. Cover and refrigerate for a day or so.
- Preheat oven to 300. Remove and place in a pot with the stock, wine, garlic, onion, carrot and coriander. Bring to a boil, cover and place in oven for 4-5 hours until tender. Check under the top once in a while to see that it’s not boiling. If so, turn down temp. a bit.
- Remove from oven, let cool in liquid, then lift it dry off, cover and refrigerate till chilled.
- Meanwhile, cube the squash, add it to a pan and cover with cold water. Boil till soft and puree in blender or food processer. You may need to add a bit of the cooking liquid to get the blades going. It should be on the thin side anyway. Season well with salt, pepper, and the palm (or brown) sugar. Keep warm.
- Dress the cress with lemon juice and olive oil and season.
- To serve, remove the pork from the refrigerator and slice in even portions, about 2 inch cubes. Heat a few tablespoons olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the pork and sauté on both sides till crisp and browned. Serve on plates with the squash, cress, and pork. Season each piece with kosher or sea salt and the Szechuan pepper.
Chili Jam (from David Thompson’s Thai Street Food)
2 cups onion, sliced thinly
1 cup garlic, peeled, sliced thinly
2 slices ginger, ¼ inch, peeled
10 dried Thai chiles deseeded (see note)
¼ cup dried prawns (see note)
2-3 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm or brown sugar
oil for frying
- Soak the chiles and shrimp in separate bowls for about 15 minutes to soften. Remove and dry well.
- Meanwhile, heat about 4 inches of oil in a large pot to 350 on a thermometer.
- Line a sheet pan with paper towels and have it near the pot. Fry the onions, garlic, ginger, and chilies separately, removing each item to the prepared pan to drain.
- Add the above to a mini food processor. (If you don’t have one, I’m pretty sure a blender or food processor would work.), add 3-4 tablespoons of the cooking oil and the shrimp and puree to a paste. Season with the fish sauce and sugar and pulse again.
- Reserve the jam covered in fridge. It’ll keep for quite a while and makes for a good condiment or last minute addition to stir-fries.
Chiang Mai (Thai Sausages)
I sometimes wonder what our neighbors are cooking. All I have to go on is smell, an entirely unreliable sense, in our case stifled by elevator shafts, drywall, and the general anatomy of the building.
Chinese food, of course, is immediately recognizable: the steam released by an opened box of lo mein floats cloudlike downwind for miles. The same goes for Indian.
I have yet to meet anyone who can, from the lobby, identify a carefully watched stuffed trotter baking on the fifth floor or the fragrance of turbot fillets gently cooking in a buttery bath a few floors above that. Yet while a bowl of Thai curry might be recognizable from afar, the mystery lies in its elements: the raw ingredients as well as the transformation they undergo in the creation of the final product.
Over here we’ve been making our way through David Thompson’s great Thai Street Food, a hardcover coffee table cum cookbook a collection of recipes woven throughout lavish shots of Thai food vendors, farmers, and street life. What comes through, from both recipe and photograph, is a people with an innate feel for what grows, swims, or roams locally, and what to do with them in the kitchen.
Among many images, there’s braised duck hanging on a cart, waiting for customers; betel leaves being bundled and sold on river boats; bowls of cut pineapple; two varieties of corn, and shrimp paste fermenting in the sun
The items are remarkably subtle and interesting, indicative of a nation with a superb collective palate. Lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and holy basil resemble their western counterparts yet are more fragrant and arresting. Even saltiness, achieved by fermenting fish in the sun-resulting in fish sauce-is complex, touching all the senses rather than being a mere accent to a dish.
The downside to all this is that it’s hard to find a lot of this stuff. We’re pretty lucky in this regard: there’s a Thai grocery nearby. But in general, I can’t step outside to pick up a jar of lime paste and a quart of milk. So you have to substitute. The other issue is the extensive chopping, and the fact that minute hairs of lemongrass fiber can find their way into the tiniest of kitchen crevices.
Minced and pounded, these plants and spices come together into a sharp paste, which, though it hits the wok first, is broken down throughout the process as to be virtually unrecognizable in the final dish. Thai cooking is all about standing over the cutting board pounding, mincing, and crushing an array of plants and spices.
When the house smells like coconut and lime leaf, lemongrass, shrimp paste, fish sauce, fried shallots, garlic, and ginger, there’s real Thai cooking going on. And unless he comes over for a taste, the neighbor won’t have any idea.
(NOTE: because this sausage is obviously not a curry, the paste doesn’t get broken down, hence the straight-on blast of curry paste. Smoking it over tea leaves, as Thompson prescribes, mellows out the flavor, but it’s also an extra step, and I was too tired. The sausage is relatively dry, so make sure you get fatty pork shoulder. In lieu of casing and a stuffer just make patties and turn them into burgers or even better, hors d’oeuvres on a toothpick with a sweet sauce.)
Chiang Mai Sausage (From Thai Food by David Thompson)
Curry paste (see below)
9 oz cubed fatty pork shoulder, ground
pinch salt
large pinch palm sugar (brown sugar if need be)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons shredded kaffir lime leaves
handful chopped cilantro
3 feet sausage casing
- In a medium bowl combine the paste with pork. Mix well, season with the sugar, soy and fish sauces, fold in the lime and cilantro.
- If using a sausage stuffer, run the mixture through the machine into the well-washed casings. Twist into links and prick all over to pop any air holes.
- If making patties, form into patties. How’s that? I like making hors d’oeuvres-sized balls and you could also do that.
- Fry in a pan until done. Or smoke, then fry. Serve with a sweet-salty dipping sauce like a mixture of fish sauce and palm sugar. Or pop into a split hoagie roll with spicy mayo, pickled carrots, and lettuce, banh mi style.
Paste
6-10 dried long chilies, deseeded, soaked for 15 minutes, drained and dried
pinch salt
3 tablespoons chopped lemongrass
1 tablespoon chopped galangal (or ginger if need be)
3 tablespoons chopped shallot
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon chopped long pepper (or 2 teaspoons black pepper)
1. Gradually pound the ingredients with a mortar and pestle. Or, if you’re somewhat sane, puree in a small food processor. Make sure the items are well chopped before you add them, as they really need to form a paste. Add a bit of water if necessary, and be sure to keep scraping down the sides.
Vietnamese Eggplant and Mint Lettuce Rolls
For my first ever Nook experience I chose Gay Talese’s “Honor Thy Father”, the definitive mob chronicle. Brilliantly understated and quietly powerful as only Talese can write, it’s also typically informative in a dense yet engaging manner.
The Godfather notwithstanding, the mob existence was quite unglamorous and dull. Horse heads, shootouts, and dead fish calling cards were either extremely rare or entirely fictional. From what I gather, guys spent most of their time in underfurnished rooms watching television.
And, critically, they don’t seem to have spent much of that time browning sausages in the preparation of delicious, long-simmering pasta dishes. Reading TV Guide and making trips to the corner pay phone seem the activities of choice.
Reading Talese has, however, conjured a homestyle Italian craving over here: a lot of labor-intensive Bolognese, lasagna, and overloaded takeout subs. Movie mob food, otherwise known as starch.
It took a trip up 9th Avenue to Co Ba to pluck us from this carb-haze. Small Vietnamese plates are the specialty: steamed coconut and shrimp pudding; fried lemongrass coated tofu; barbecued pork ribs; grilled shrimp served with lettuce leaves, mint and chile-lime sauce.
The shrimp is a classic dish, the elements presented for self-assembly: a few shrimp, some mint leaves, a drizzle of sauce, maybe some sriracha and crushed peanuts, all folded into a leaf. It’s the very essence of Vietnamese cooking, salty, sweet, spicy, and minimal, reflecting a confidence in each ingredient. Even the lettuce, whose ridges and crimps store the drizzles of sauce, is well thought-out rather than a mere wrapper.
The Vietnamese lettuce roll is an elevated sandwich whose components, stripped of starchy interference, are allowed to shine. As you see below, the roll invites creativity, especially of the vegetarian kind, a tasty antidote to starch overload and, as such, perhaps not Sunday Italian supper, but surely a welcome meal for housebound gangsters.
(NOTE: you can use a large eggplant; we like how the small ones, quartered, make for the perfect-sized filling. Instead of vegetable oil, you could use mustard oil.)
Vietnamese Eggplant Rolls
Serves 4
2 small eggplants or 1 large (see note)
1 tablespoon curry powder
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 head romaine
1 bunch mint
1 cup unsalted roasted peanuts, crushed
1 recipe Sweet and Salty sauce (below)
salt and pepper
- If using small eggplants, trim ends and quarter lengthwise into roughly 2 inch strips. For a large eggplant, slice similarly. Make three or four shallow scores on the flesh side of the sections. This will allow the spice and sauce to penetrate the vegetable.
- Toss the sections in a large bowl with the oil, curry powder and salt and pepper. Don’t oversalt, as the sauce is fairly salty.
- Preheat broiler Lay out eggplant flesh side up on a tray (shake the tray a bit to make sure the pieces are well oiled and won’t stick. If necessary, coat the tray lightly with a bit more oil.
- Broil until well browned, about 8 minutes depending on the size. You want to retain a bit of firmness so watch that it doesn’t overcook.
- Arrange on a platter with the lettuce, mint, nuts, and a ramekin of sauce.
Sweet and Salty Sauce
1 cup palm sugar
½ cup fish sauce
2 shallots, minced
1 small chile, seeded and minced
1. Simmer the sugar and fish sauce in a small pot until thickened to a light syrup. Stir in shallot and chile.
hors d’oeuvre hell-lamb meatballs
Mini Lamb Meatballs w/ Grape Jam Recipe to come after I make 200. yeesh!
Char Siu Bao – Roast Pork Buns
Final bun ready to eat (already started)
One of my favorite condiments is Indian pickle. It comes in a jar and with different bases: lime and mango being the most common, though the homemade jalapeno version from Suvir Saran’s cookbook is, I think, the best (see our post). Not that you’d make a grave error purchasing one over the other as they taste about the same: large chunks of fibrous, indistinguishable fruit matter suspended in a broken slurry of vegetable oil and a long list of spices such as turmeric, cumin, coriander, and fenugreek.
start with top quality fatty pork shoulder
While homemade chile pickle is superior, jarred pickle is very good and available at Kalustyan’s or your local Indian grocery. Most people, however, probably live in an area devoid of Indian grocery stores. We just spent a month in Truro near the tip of Cape Cod, which is that sort of place. Hunks of great swordfish yes, jars of mango pickle, no. Which got me thinking about prepared sauces.
Roasted and chopped (need to keep mincing-taking a break)
In New York we’re spoiled by addictive ethnic groceries. Holy Basil (for Chrissakes, pun intended), the Thai form of the herb, is available a few blocks from us on Mosco Street, a tiny curve at the lower end of Chinatown. So when I tackled char siu, the Cantonese marinated roast pork-using the recipe from Corinne Trang’s great “Essentials of Chinese Cuisine” - I took the subway uptown to Kalustyan’s for a box of fermented bean paste.
Kalustyan’s carries shelves of the stuff mostly in plastic boxes covered in Chinese characters and an illustration of a few cubes. Save for the lone English description “fermented bean paste” and unless I pried open the thing, I didn’t have a lot to go on. I had, however, read of a form of genuine, supposedly rank, Chinese fermented beans, and having learned from that promising but perhaps too authentic Chinese restaurant, I decided to pass.
Yet because char siu marinade needs some form of fermented bean-it donates that familiar blast of body and umami common to a lot of Chinese dishes-I bought a prepared chile bean and garlic sauce which, whisked into the other, less esoteric ingredients, worked nicely. I submerged the pork strips for a solid 6 hours, flipping once or twice and then roasted at a high temp. The result was perfect, sweet and savory Chinese barbecue.
The prepared sauce worked great, but I’m no dummy. After all, we live in New York, so while at Kalustyan’s I picked up a bottle of tandoori coloring (red food dye) for that extra Chinese restaurant-at-home result. High quality, fatty pork shoulder is necessary for char siu, so find a butcher, or come to the city and get it from Pino on Sullivan Street.
(NOTE: We turned these into pork buns-recipe below-but it’s great with rice. The pork bun dough, incidentally, is yeasty and if left for a bit in the fridge and steamed, makes for a nice accompaniment without having to go through the chopping and stuffing.)
Char Siu (Cantonese Roast Pork) from Corinne Trang’s “Essentials of Asian Cuisine”
Serves 4
7 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon prepared chile bean sauce with garlic
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon shaoxing wine (sherry would work)
2 large garlic cloves minced
3 dashes red food coloring
1 pounds pork shoulder in 1 ½ to 2 inch thick strips
- Whisk together the first 7 ingredients till smooth. Pour into a baking dish or large bowl. Immerse the pork, coat well, cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, flipping and coating a few times.
- Preheat oven to 450.
- Pour 1 cup water in a baking pan fitted with a flat rack. Roast the pork basting with the marinade occasionally and flipping after 20 minutes. Thinly slice and serve over rice with the drippings from the pan.
(NOTE: You can shape it as large or small as you want i.e. 1 or 2-biters.)
Char Siu Bao (Roast Pork Buns)
Makes 12
1 tablespoon veg oil
3 scallions sliced thinly
2 cups minced Cantonese roast pork (Char Siu recipe above)
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon tapioca starch or cornstarch
1 ½ tablespoons shaoxing wine (or sherry)
12 spongy buns (below)
- Heat the oil in a medium skillet on medium heat. Add the scallions and cook till soft, about 1 minute then add the pork, sugar, soy, oyster sauce and cook, stirring, till warmed through, about 3 minutes.
- Dissolve the cornstarch in the wine, pour into the pork mixture and stir in to thicken, remove from heat and let cool.
- Place a golf ball (or slightly larger) sized bun (see note) in one hand and make a well in the center with your thumb. Fill with 2 tablespoons of the mixture and close by pinching the edges together. Repeat.
- Place the buns seam side up or down (if down, use a scissors to make a small x in the center of the dough) in a bamboo steamer fitted with parchment paper. They should be spaced about 1 inch or so apart to accommodate their expanding. Fill a wok 1/3 high with water and bring to a simmer. Place steamer in and steam buns for about 12 minutes.
Bao Spongy Buns
Makes 12-24 buns (depending on desired size)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
3 ½ cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons lard or shortening, chilled
- Dissolve yeast in a cup of lukewarm water for about 5 minutes in a large bowl. Whisk flour, sugar, and baking powder and add to yeast slowly, stirring. With fingertips work in the shortening or lard.
- Turn to a floured surface and knead about 5 minutes until smooth. Form a ball, dust with flour, place in a bowl, wrap with plastic and allow to rise about 2 hours till doubled.
- Punch down dough, knead till smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Shape into 12 to 24 equal-size balls and cover with plastic wrap till ready to use.
Lamb Kabob Hors D’Oeuvre-spicy/tasty!
Pet peeve: lists of the nation’s top ten unhealthiest foods. double stuffed Domino’s pizza; chicken pot pie from Trader Joe’s; General Tso’s chicken at P.F. Chang’s. It doesn’t take a genius to detect problematic food. Apply common sense to your eating habits and you’ll be okay. I’m no doctor, though.
(Similarly, plastering cigarettes with a skull and crossbones and a 24-point “SMOKING KILLS” warning seems unnecessary.)
Instead of regurgitating dangers, how about doing some real good and telling us what else is out there? It might take a little digging, but hardly a major investigative effort. Give an intern a pen and pad and have him sweep through a bunch of these places. Maybe P.F. Chang’s serves something healthy. In fact, I see from a little Googling that they serve chicken soup. Okay, KFC’s idea of health is the “Crispy BLT Salad” or a variety of Caesar offerings. But if you’re looking to lose a few pounds at KFC you have more complex problems.
A young Marco Pierre White called his former employer Le Gavroche “the most honest restaurant in London. To wit: “You get what you order. If you order beef, you get beef. If you order an omelet Rothschild, you get an omelet Rothschild.” An omelet Rothschild seems to be fancy pancakes with jam, fyi. KFC is no less honest: if you order the “Doublicious” (“two tastes, one sandwich, sweet and savory, fried chicken on a sweet Hawaiian bread bun”), you get the heart attack it suggests. They even have a photograph of the thing on the wall, for God’s sake.
Unfortunately, while the beef at Le Gavroche is probably none too healthy, KFC is cheap enough to present a criminally frequent dining option. But at least they know what we want: fried food. Which is more than I can say about us for the first few years of our catering foray.
It was a bit of a learning curve, this catering stuff, but our quickest lesson was that everyone wants KFC, or the same idea. Underneath the $2,000 suits, slow-resistance personal training, expensive shoes, polished flat screen apartments, and starched doormen, they like greasy food (stylishly done, of course). Mini mac’n cheese, fancy quesadillas, cute dumplings.
So it’s confirmed: everyone loves the same thing. But that doesn’t forgive a chef who has zero respect for the consumer’s health. The answer, obviously, is some sort of middle ground: options across the board, a philosophy best found at home.
A beauty of cooking is that at home, you’re the chef and can design a tasty middle ground. (By the way, this post is to advocate cooking your own food.) At the risk of sounding like Rachael Ray (with an “ae”) or other domestic queens, people do on occasion have people over. And when you do, apply the KFC truism, but stretch your brain. Hit the middle ground. Apply fast-foody, assertive flavors to a less junky foundation.
One time a guest entered the kitchen complaining we were sending out too many “healthy” hors d’oeuvres such as seasonal heirloom tomato crostini. “Where’s the meat?” she wondered. We politely noted there was a tasty lamb option floating around out there. So for your blog pleasure, here it is. Something springy and healthy you can make and serve that’s neither fried nor heavy on the sprouts. It’s a tasty dish for a thoughtful host.
Lamb Kabob Hors D’Oeuvre
Serves about 10
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 tabespoons paprika
1 ½ tablsespoons cayenne
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 pounds lamb shoulder or leg cut into ½ inch cubes
2 tablespoons minced garlic
½ cup chopped parsley
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper
brillat-savarin softened or soft goat cheese
two baguettes sliced into ½ inch crostini
Salsa verde (below)
- In a pan heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the spices and remove from heat. Let cool. When cool, toss well in a large bowl with the lamb, garlic, parsley, and lemon. Season with salt and pepper. Marinate at least 8 hours in the fridge.
- Place on a sheet pan covered with foil. Preheat a broiler. Broil the meat, tossing, until done, meaning medium rare.
- Skewer three or four cubes on a toothpick. Spread the crostini with the cheese, lay the kebabs on top and drizzle over salsa verde. Serve hot.
Salsa Verde
2 cups chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves chopped
1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes
½ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup olive oil
salt and pepper
- Add all the ingredients to a blender except the salt and pepper. Blend till smooth. If you like it slightly coarse, fine.
- Season with salt and pepper.
