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Seared Toro: finding gold
It was like plucking a tiny gold nugget from a pan of murky water. Hidden among the hunks of outstanding tuna clustered in the case at the fish market were large cubes of pinkish meat streaked through with a net of white veins. It looked like wagyu beef which, basically, it was, or rather, toro, the wagyu of the underwater world.
Cut from the fatty belly of the tuna, toro has the luscious richness of a great ribeye. In sushi form, folded over a loose ball of seasoned rice, it’s one of my favorite single bites of food. And here I was, on the Outer Cape, presented with a pound of it, freshly caught.
Fish is as interesting and gutsy as meat. The images conjured up are as bloody as any slaughterhouse: a boat deck, crashing waves, a bunch of crazed fisherman wielding a variety of giant knives. Even the fish market, where the animal may be gutted and sectioned, is a pretty violent place.
And out of this violence came our block of toro, which smoked and seared and charred like any fatty, rich steak.
Grilled, it was rich and smoky and quite good, though not as fantastic as if handled by a skilled sushi chef. Standing over the grill with a pair of tongs, eyes fixed on a chunk of fatty meat, I could be any grilling joe anywhere across the land. And yet it was tuna on the grill rather than, say, ribs or steak. For a short while I felt a tiny bit fancy, a little smart. Another un-advertised benefit of toro.
(NOTE: Toro is really expensive, which is why I compared it with great steak. Instead of splurging on a great steak, splurge on toro. The recipe is “surf-and-surf” i.e. two cuts of tuna. It’s nice to compare on the plate. Also, if you can’t find toro, just cook the tuna as directed. The thickness, obviously, will affect cooking time. Toro is available online for mail delivery-google it. Otherwise your local fish guy can probably order it.)
Grilled Toro and Tuna
Serves 4
1 pound sushi grade tuna, about 2-inches thick (see note)
1 pound toro, about 2 inches thick (see note)
olive oil
salt and pepper
- Oil the grates to prevent sticking. Preheat grill over high heat. Season tuna with salt and pepper and coat with olive oil.
- Lay the tuna on the grates and cook 3-4 minutes per side with the cover down. Don’t fiddle with it, just let it cook then flip. The cross section should be about ½ of the way cooked on each side and the center just warmed and perfectly red a la sushi. Especially with the toro.
- Slice thinly, about ¼ inch, and serve.
When a Radish is a Beet
A culinary degree prepares you for being a chef about as much as a B.A. in chemistry prepares you to be a neurosurgeon. It’s a lesson soon learned when thrown (literally) into the fire in a professional kitchen and berated for being too slow or being too fast or burning something or leaving something in the wrong place committing a host of seemingly insignificant errors.
Part of this is kitchen culture, but most is due to the intense and, frankly, unrealistic pressure to push food out the doors to an ungodly number of hungry diners. The lone way to prevent nervous meltdowns is to turn the cooks into a smooth engine whose parts (the staff) work in synch. When you think about it, it’s a miracle a basket of bread gets to the table.
However, culinary school does serve one purpose (other than bankrupting its students): it gives one a semi-official imprimatur, a certificate of admittance into the food fraternity. You can wander through the food world with a sense of belonging. Whether or not you know anything is a different question. Is someone with a B.A. in English a better reader than the guy you last sat next to on the subway?
Anyhow, for us, culinary school is many moons ago, and I like to think we know what we’re doing. We cater parties; we keep up with trends and the rest. We’ve learned to sift through the mountains of food junk out there (overhyped restaurants, bad and overpriced greenmarket produce) and pick out the best (Kalustyan’s the spice guy, our Vietnamese market on Mosco Street), compiling a pretty solid understanding of what to do with what’s available.
We deal with Pino our fantastic neighborhood butcher, and look for the best ingredients around.
And yet, a gardener I’m not. We live in New York City for chrissakes. My idea of recreation is trying desperately not to get hit by Jersey drivers edging greedily towards the Holland Tunnel. Once we grew basil the windowsill until an attack of aphids forced us to bag them up and bring them downstairs to Alphonso who mans the garbage room. I could garden indoors, but prefer an unobstructed street view and sun access. This is New York, after all.
And so we come to beets and radishes. This month we’re on the Cape. Blackberry bushes surround the house much like Gingko trees carpet the upper east side. A cute line of grape vines runs up the hilly lawn, and a fruit tree in the back drops something green and weird that looks like a lime.
It’s a nice bike ride over back roads lined with trees and open meadows. The other day we biked to the Wellfleet farmers’ market and snatched up a nice bunch of radishes for our summer staple salad of radish, cucumber, and sour cream. Sliced paper thin on the mandolin, they were pretty discs of red and white concentric circles, which, tossed with the cukes, made for a lively bowl. It seems we had lucked out on some eccentric, beautiful radishes.
Until the mandatory tasting when we discovered our lovely radishes were, in fact, lovely beets. Some variety whose deviously cute interior was engineered to fool the shopper and wreck his radish cucumber salad.
Having already photographed, posted, and labeled as radishes a pic of these cute bulbs with their candy cane cross sections, I knew someone out there in food nerddom would catch the grave error and I was right. “Aren’t those Chioggia beets?” burst the tweet. “Of course, I wrote, our mistake.”
You learn something everyday, but some things aren’t necessarily worth learning. Yes, it’s a cute little beet, but I tried it, and a thin slice tastes just like a thin slice of your average red beet. It’s nice to discover the Chioggia beet, but I’d rather craft a great short rib recipe or understand curry leaves or figure out the recipe for the steamed shrimp and coconut pudding at Co Ba.
Culinary school opened the door to the food world, a place I’m happy to inhabit. But I’m not a gardener and never will be. And I’m cool with that.
When a Radish is a Beet
(radish?)
A culinary degree prepares you for being a chef about as much as a B.A. in chemistry prepares you to be a neurosurgeon. It’s a lesson soon learned when thrown (literally) into the fire in a professional kitchen and berated for being too slow or being too fast or burning something or leaving something in the wrong place committing a host of seemingly insignificant errors.
Part of this is kitchen culture, but most is due to the intense and, frankly, unrealistic pressure to push food out the doors to an ungodly number of hungry diners. The lone way to prevent nervous meltdowns is to turn the cooks into a smooth engine whose parts (the staff) work in synch. When you think about it, it’s a miracle a basket of bread gets to the table.
However, culinary school does serve one purpose (other than bankrupting its students): it gives one a semi-official imprimatur, a certificate of admittance into the food fraternity. You can wander through the food world with a sense of belonging. Whether or not you know anything is a different question. Is someone with a B.A. in English a better reader than the guy you last sat next to on the subway?
Anyhow, for us, culinary school is many moons ago, and I like to think we know what we’re doing. We cater parties; we keep up with trends and the rest. We’ve learned to sift through the mountains of food junk out there (overhyped restaurants, bad and overpriced greenmarket produce) and pick out the best (Kalustyan’s the spice guy, our Vietnamese market on Mosco Street), compiling a pretty solid understanding of what to do with what’s available.
We deal with Pino our fantastic neighborhood butcher, and look for the best ingredients around.
And yet, a gardener I’m not. We live in New York City for chrissakes. My idea of recreation is trying desperately not to get hit by Jersey drivers edging greedily towards the Holland Tunnel. Once we grew basil the windowsill until an attack of aphids forced us to bag them up and bring them downstairs to Alphonso who mans the garbage room. I could garden indoors, but prefer an unobstructed street view and sun access. This is New York, after all.
(beet)
And so we come to beets and radishes. This month we’re on the Cape. Blackberry bushes surround the house much like Gingko trees carpet the upper east side. A cute line of grape vines runs up the hilly lawn, and a fruit tree in the back drops something green and weird that looks like a lime.
It’s a nice bike ride over back roads lined with trees and open meadows. The other day we biked to the Wellfleet farmers’ market and snatched up a nice bunch of radishes for our summer staple salad of radish, cucumber, and sour cream. Sliced paper thin on the mandolin, they were pretty discs of red and white concentric circles, which, tossed with the cukes, made for a lively bowl. It seems we had lucked out on some eccentric, beautiful radishes.
Until the mandatory tasting when we discovered our lovely radishes were, in fact, lovely beets. Some variety whose deviously cute interior was engineered to fool the shopper and wreck his radish cucumber salad.
Having already photographed, posted, and labeled as radishes a pic of these cute bulbs with their candy cane cross sections, I knew someone out there in food nerddom would catch the grave error and I was right. “Aren’t those Chioggia beets?” burst the tweet. “Of course, I wrote, our mistake.”
You learn something everyday, but some things aren’t necessary worth learning. Yes, it’s a cute little beet, but I tried it, and a thin slice tastes just like a thin slice of your average red beet. It’s nice to discover the Chioggia beet, but I’d rather craft a great short rib recipe or understand curry leaves or figure out the recipe for the steamed shrimp and coconut pudding at Co Ba.
Culinary school opened the door to the food world, a place I’m happy to inhabit. But I’m not a gardener and never will be. And I’m cool with that.
When a Radish is a Beet
(radish?)
A culinary degree prepares you for being a chef about as much as a B.A. in chemistry prepares you to be a neurosurgeon. It’s a lesson soon learned when thrown (literally) into the fire in a professional kitchen and berated for being too slow or being too fast or burning something or leaving something in the wrong place committing a host of seemingly insignificant errors.
Part of this is kitchen culture, but most is due to the intense and, frankly, unrealistic pressure to push food out the doors to an ungodly number of hungry diners. The lone way to prevent nervous meltdowns is to turn the cooks into a smooth engine whose parts (the staff) work in synch. When you think about it, it’s a miracle a basket of bread gets to the table.
However, culinary school does serve one purpose (other than bankrupting its students): it gives one a semi-official imprimatur, a certificate of admittance into the food fraternity. You can wander through the food world with a sense of belonging. Whether or not you know anything is a different question. Is someone with a B.A. in English a better reader than the guy you last sat next to on the subway?
Anyhow, for us, culinary school is many moons ago, and I like to think we know what we’re doing. We cater parties; we keep up with trends and the rest. We’ve learned to sift through the mountains of food junk out there (overhyped restaurants, bad and overpriced greenmarket produce) and pick out the best (Kalustyan’s the spice guy, our Vietnamese market on Mosco Street), compiling a pretty solid understanding of what to do with what’s available.
We deal with Pino our fantastic neighborhood butcher, and look for the best ingredients around.
And yet, a gardener I’m not. We live in New York City for chrissakes. My idea of recreation is trying desperately not to get hit by Jersey drivers edging greedily towards the Holland Tunnel. Once we grew basil the windowsill until an attack of aphids forced us to bag them up and bring them downstairs to Alphonso who mans the garbage room. I could garden indoors, but prefer an unobstructed street view and sun access. This is New York, after all.
(beet)
And so we come to beets and radishes. This month we’re on the Cape. Blackberry bushes surround the house much like Gingko trees carpet the upper east side. A cute line of grape vines runs up the hilly lawn, and a fruit tree in the back drops something green and weird that looks like a lime.
It’s a nice bike ride over back roads lined with trees and open meadows. The other day we biked to the Wellfleet farmers’ market and snatched up a nice bunch of radishes for our summer staple salad of radish, cucumber, and sour cream. Sliced paper thin on the mandolin, they were pretty discs of red and white concentric circles, which, tossed with the cukes, made for a lively bowl. It seems we had lucked out on some eccentric, beautiful radishes.
Until the mandatory tasting when we discovered our lovely radishes were, in fact, lovely beets. Some variety whose deviously cute interior was engineered to fool the shopper and wreck his radish cucumber salad.
Having already photographed, posted, and labeled as radishes a pic of these cute bulbs with their candy cane cross sections, I knew someone out there in food nerddom would catch the grave error and I was right. “Aren’t those Chioggia beets?” burst the tweet. “Of course, I wrote, our mistake.”
Clams w/ Celery and Chiles
I enjoy celery. It’s snappy and refreshing and fat free, though perhaps not technically healthier than a glass of water. In fact, it is water, trapped inside a fibrous rope, a sort of crispy, waterlogged bungee cord.
As such, it’s a challenging ingredient, valued merely for its crunch, and tossed into salads. Occasionally, celery is braised a process which, by definition leeches out the water and softens the vegetable. Unfortunately, braised celery tastes and feels like crummy, slightly bitter baby food, a sad transformation which eludes even the most recognized chefs blinded by their Frenchy allegiance to The Braise. They’d braise a ceiling fan if it fit in a pot (or a sous vide bag).
It took a long time (decades), and an unusual source for me to be awakened by celery’s more interesting possibilities. Our sub-mediocre Chinese delivery place excels in wrecking most dishes: crispy beef comes out limp, and the “chicken” in General Tso’s is lumps of soft, over-sweet batter.
And yet, they fry up a dish of beef laced with thinly cut celery sticks, in which the vegetable salvages an otherwise wan pile of meat. Having been run through the fire of a restaurant wok, the celery loses some of its crunch, but its indescribable flavor lends an edge to the dish. Finally, humble celery comes into its own, proving itself more than a mere mix-in.
It took awhile to see any other creative celery-tinged dishes, until we went to Vandaag, a Dutch-themed restaurant in the East Village. While disappointing-save for the spectacular bread basket of caraway-studded wafer shards, thick brown bread and warm rolls-the waterzooi, a stew of shrimp and mussels in a buttery broth was very good.
I dug into the perfectly cooked seafood, half-finishing the bowl, when I noticed the thin celery sticks threaded throughout the dish. The taste was remarkable, offsetting the richness with, again, that indescribable celery punch. What had been rich and sweet and hearty became instantly more interesting and fresh and almost cooling.
Other than a penchant for biking, the Dutch and Chinese don’t seem to share much. Not a controversial assessment, at least until you see at least a few Dutch delivery guys pedaling down Broadway. Yet, they do seem to understand celery.
And now, thanks to a coincidental Sino-Dutch harmony, so do I. A touch of raw or barely cooked celery adds not just crunch, but edgy flavor to rich or sweet hot dishes. In this sense, celery becomes almost a spice, to be used as one might a bit of crushed coriander or ground cumin or the caraway in those great Dutch breads.
A final word on celery. It suffers the fate of ubiquity. The tiniest market lodged in the cracks of the densest urban jungle will carry celery. It’s hard and seemingly indestructible, a non-perishable green vegetable which resists crushing and is thus stacked in giant piles. A toddler stuffs toys into his chest with more delicacy than the grocer does celery.
A shame, as celery is more than a bite of crunch, it’s a spice, a pleasant discovery that took years of eating and cooking. And the Dutch. And the Chinese.
Clams w/ Celery and Chiles
Serves 2 as an appetizer
20 littleneck clams (roughly 1 ½ pounds), scrubbed well
¼ cup white wine
3 tbs celery brunoise (fine dice)
1 tbs finely sliced red chiles deseeded
½ tsp crushed, toasted coriander seeds
2 tbs unsalted butter
- Combine clams and wine in a medium pot over medium high heat. Cover and cook till opened, 6 or 7 minutes.
- Remove clams to two bowls.
- Raise the heat and bring broth to boil. Whisk in the butter then stir in the celery, chiles, and coriander and spoon the sauce over the clams. Serve.
SUB! Serrano Ham, Manchego, Grated Tomato
About five years ago, I discovered the perfect sub. Sandwich, that is, not the submersible propeller kind. At White House Sub Shop in Atlantic City, it was equivalent to Supper’s caci e pepe being your inaugural bowl of pasta. White House is one of the last legitimate eateries left in Atlantic City, and it’s worth the trip, but bring your track shoes-you may need to dodge bullets on the way in and the way out.
As Caroline Russock at Serious Eats noted, the key to the White House sandwich is the hot chile pepper condiment spooned over the meat. The bread is also superb: fresh, slightly crusty, and not too dense. I also like the sheer size: a full sub is a two foot-long torpedo wrapped in butcher paper. All day people stream out, balancing sacks of them as they sprint to the car. (Bring the shoes.)
While the White House makes a fantastic sandwich, it is summer after all, and with high quality ingredients you can put together a lighter, equally delicious sub. Rather than the papery, bland shrink-wrapped prosciutto from the supermarket, we used a delicious, salty, porky, dry Serrano ham from D’Espana. While there we snatched up some manchego; on the way home we grabbed a few good rolls and tomatoes from a Little Italy market.
The condiment here is a take on tomato bread, a tapas staple (to stay with the Spanish theme of the day) in which a tomato is halved and grated onto crostini. Since we were composing a sandwich, a heartier, more liquid version was called for, so we grated the flesh into a bowl and spooned it over the bread.
As with anything in life, this sandwich is a trade-off: unless you live conveniently near a bunch of great specialty stores, finding first-rate ingredients may be a bit of a hunt. On the other hand, you won’t have to trek to A.C. and risk your life. If you’re within say, 50 miles of the shore, however, I do recommend the White House Sub.
(NOTE: the nectarine adds sweetness (obviously), though you can omit if you don’t want that gourmet stuff. It is nectarine season, though, so might as well go for it now when you can.)
Serrano Ham and Manchego Sub w/ Grated Tomato
Makes 4
1 beefsteak tomato
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
10 oz sliced Serrano ham
10 oz sliced manchego
1 nectarine (optional)
4 ciabatta rolls
salt and pepper
- Halve the tomato. Cut side facing the grater, grate the flesh of both halves into a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper, two tablespoons of the olive oil and the vinegar. Set aside.
- Split the rolls and toast very lightly, until barely colored. Remove and spoon several tablespoons of grated tomato on one side. Top with the ham, cheese and optional nectarines. Serve.
Shrimp Salad w/ Green Peppercorns
We spend August in Truro. Truro is way out on the Cape, nearly as far as you can go, just before Provincetown, the tip of the curl, a place you’d think remote, yet jammed with schlocky shops and summer beachgoers strolling its narrow streets day and night.
No matter. The farther out on the Cape, the more you realize it’s truly a fishing zone. Markets sell giant, thick hunks of swordfish, tuna, and bass, as well as crab and buckets of steamers ready to be cleaned and dunked in clarified butter.
The long drive to this seafood mecca necessitates a roadside diner stop. Last year, either we chose the wrong place, or pureed chicken salad is a tradition among these joints. Needless to say, my mushy scoop went untouched.
“Protein salad”, for lack of a better term, shouldn’t be mushy. (By “protein” I mean chicken, tuna, egg, etc. It must be a remnant of my days working at the cooking school receiving dock where every morning the “protein” guy unloaded the truck, handing over the meat and fish for us to label and cart up to the classes where students would destroy the helpless aforementioned “protein”.)
While I like my “protein” salad at least semi-chunky, it’s tricky to achieve success. Chunks of chicken or, in this case, shrimp, don’t bind well with mayo, a failing perfect for a salad, less perfect for a sandwich. Sandwiches, you see, shouldn’t collapse with one bite. The filling has to remain inside the bread, otherwise you’re left with soggy bread and a handful of whatever.
A handful of bite-sized shrimp tossed with a few herbs makes for a great salad as well as a tasty sandwich.if matched with the right bread. It should be a soft bread (see mayo-less lobster roll): the violent wrestling motion inspired by a crusty roll or baguette causes spillage. Go light on the mayo to prevent soaking, but if need be, use a few leaves of protective romaine.
If you make it to the Cape, you may as well soldier on to the end and taste the purest seafood on the East Coast. Alternatively, a good shrimp salad is a good simulation.
(NOTE: We made an hors d’oeuvre, which works well. You can even use crusty bread, as it’s only a one or two biter. Adjust the seasonings to taste.)
Shrimp Salad Canape
Makes 8
1/2 pound peeled, deveined shrimp (or do it yourself, it’s cheaper)
¼ cup mayo
1 tablespoon dijon
1 teaspoon green peppercorns
2 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon tarragon, minced
1/3 cup celery, small dice
3 tablespoons scallions, thinly sliced
1 baguette, ½ inch slice
salt and pepper
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the shrimp and blanch 5 minutes. Drain, cool under running cold water or an ice bath. Dry well.
2. Chop shrimp into ½ inch pieces and reserve.
3. In a medium bowl whisk together the mayo and Dijon. Fold in the shrimp then the rest of the ingredients. Refrigerate.
4. Spoon salad on bread and serve. Alternatively, serve in a nice bowl alongside the bread and dig in
Yogurt Rice, or the importance of curry leaves
I can’t decide whether Paul Bertolli’s book, Cooking By Hand, is obnoxious, critical culinary instruction, or a bit of both. Bertolli, longtime Chez Panisse chef, is known for his exacting dissection of ingredients. Minutiae are his thing: percentages of hard to soft wheat in flours for fresh pasta; the advantages of milling your own wheat for the same; the crucial distinctions between balsamic vinegars, heritage pork breeds, and so on.
Is he on target? Is it really pointless to make fresh flat noodles out of Baker’s Choice versus the little known but ideal Promotory brand, constructed from a “harder” wheat? If he came to dinner and I served him Baker’s Choice pasta would he toss it out the window onto the Broadway pavement below?
I suppose a massive series of taste tests would put the matter to rest, but that’s one kitchen project I doubt we’ll undertake. It’s messy enough to make one batch of fresh pasta. Pushing out a second batch using special mail-order flour and mineral water would surely coat the apartment with a thick, floury mat. Also, logistics aren’t in my favor: It’s tough to hang sausages in a New York City apartment and even trickier to find the space for a flour mill.
I will concede, however, that there is such a thing as an indispensable ingredient without which a dish is a mere shadow of the genuine article. For certain dishes, “optional”, a term which peppers so many recipes, is at best wishy-washy and at worst criminal. Curry leaves are just such an ingredient.
Living in New York, we’re spoiled by the profusion of specialty items. For most, a lush garden of unusual stuff is a few subway stops, or brief traffic dodging bike ride away. And so I cycle uptown, wearing my empty backpack, past Union Square, into Gramercy, to Kalustyan’s from which I emerge, backpack stuffed with sacks of dals, pink salt, bags of spices, nuts, and, invariably, the aforementioned fresh curry leaves. The ride back is slightly more perilous.
Earthy and almost toasty, fresh curry leaves are a critical component of Indian cooking. Imagine fried chicken without salt, a burger without ketchup, or chicken salad without celery, and you get the idea. Curry leaves round out the dish, adding fragrance, flavor, and color to an otherwise lifeless product.
Yogurt rice is a perfect example. Yogurt rice is a delicious, cold side dish of Basmati rice mixed with yogurt, fried dal, mustard seeds, chiles, and curry leaves. It is Indian food at its purest: quick with an exquisite balance of spices. Minus a handful of curry leaves, yogurt rice is forgettable and frankly not worth the trouble.
Paul Bertolli may know everything about pasta, balsamic vinegar, and sausages, but he can’t convince me I won’t be able to follow his tortelli of tagliatelle with braised poussin recipe and come out with a pretty decent dish of pasta. However, I know for sure that if you come across an Indian recipe which calls for “optional” curry leaves, and you don’t have any, make something else. It simply won’t be the same.
(NOTE: you can use all urad dal or mung dal. Asafoetida is highly useful in Indian cooking, and in the spirit of this post I haven’t labeled it “optional”, but if you can’t find the stuff I won’t be too upset.)
Yogurt Rice
Serves 4
1 cup basmati rice
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon mustard seeds
12 curry leaves
3 dried chiles
2 tablespoons urad dal
2 tablespoons chana dal
¼ teaspoon turmeric
pinch asafoetida
2 cups yogurt
juice ½ lemon
- Wash rice. Combine with 2 cups water in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, stir, cover, simmer slowly until done, then leave 15 minutes before fluffing.
- Heat oil in a small pan with the mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, add the curry leaves, chiles, and dal. Fry, stirring, about 2 minutes, till the dal has colored. Stir in turmeric and asafetida.
- Combine the yogurt and dal mixture in a large bowl, mix in rice, season with salt and lemon juice. Refrigerate. Serve cold.
Chicken Liver Mousse w/ Plum Compote
Sweet and savory is a kitchen mantra of which no other food is a better example than peanut butter: peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and apple, peanut butter and chocolate, peanut butter and ice cream, peanut butter and honey, peanut butter and marshmallows, etc. Salty, earthy, and gamy, chicken livers (like duck and other rustic meats) are the peanut butter of the offal and game world, existing to be matched with something sweet.
I love chicken livers, especially turned into a pate, poured into a crock and set on the table before me with a large spoon and the newspaper. Maybe some bread. If I don’t make it myself I’ll hop on the bike and head down East Houston to Russ & Daughters for a pint of their semi-smooth chopped liver studded with bits of caramelized onion.
The browned onion is partly what makes the traditional deli version so rewarding: the sweet factor folded in with the livers, making for a perfect sweet-savory unit. It’s the Jewish version of a Reese’s cup. The traditional French mousse also has onions or shallots but is less sweet, which is why we came up with an accompanying fruit compote.
For obvious reasons, summer is a great time to fiddle with compotes. We chose black plums and strawberries for their acid/sweet balance, but other summer fruits would work. Set out a container of each with some country bread and enjoy.
(NOTE: If you’re not eating all at once, pouring enough olive oil to cover will prevent the surface from oxidizing. You’ll have extra compote, which is great with toast or ice cream or…peanut butter.)
Chicken Liver Mousse with Black Plum Compote
Serves 2
2 tablespoons olive oil plus more for covering (see note)
¼ pound chicken livers, cleaned
1 cup onion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons chopped thyme
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
1 baguette, sliced or other crusty bread
Black Plum Compote
- Season livers with salt and pepper.
- Heat a medium pan with 2 tablespoons of the oil over high heat. When very hot, add the livers and cook 1 to 1 ½ minutes per side. Don’t overcook, which turns the flavor. They should be pink. Remove to a blender or food processor.
- Add the onions and cook 3 -4 minutes until browned then add the thyme, toss and add the balsamic. Scrape the pan until nearly dry then add to the blender.
- With the blender running, slowly pour in the cream until smooth. Season well with salt and pepper. Pour into a ramekin or similar vessel and refrigerate.
- If using later, cover with olive oil (see note). Refrigerate until cold. Serve w/ the bread and Black Plum Compote.
Black Plum Compote (see below)
Makes 2 cups
5 black plums
½ pound strawberries, stems removed, quartered
1/3 cup sugar
½ cup water
- Peel the plums: Make a small cross in the bottom of the plums and place the fruit in a bowl and pour boiling water to cover. Drain after ½-1 minute and peel. Run under cool water if necessary. If the skin won’t come off, carefully peel with a sharp paring knife. Remove pit and cut into chunks.
- Combine the fruit with the water and sugar in a small saucepan, cover, and place over medium heat.
- When the fruit simmers, remove the cover and lower the heat to a gentle simmer, cooking until thickened, about 30 minutes. Transfer to a ramekin and refrigerate until cold.
Seared Tuna Sandwich w/ Tzatziki
Most people seem to like tuna salad sandwiches. I don’t, but I have a few theories.
One: it’s purely a vehicle for mayo. Two: it’s pretty cheap. Three: it’s easy to make. Four: it’s a social mandate. Five: people like canned tuna.
As to these points:
-Any vehicle for mayo is okay by me. Caesar’s salad comes to mind. However, the underlying ingredient has to have at least a modicum of merit, which, to my mind, tuna does not have. (see #5)
-Tuna is relatively cheap, and thus makes for a pretty reasonable lunch. But so is peanut butter and jelly. Or cheese. Or soup. Or water, which I’d eat/drink before I’d have a tuna sandwich.
-It is easy to make. Can’t deny that.
-Tuna salad does seem genetically inbred from the time we first pack a lunchbox and head to school.
-Canned tuna is a real problem. For one, fish was never meant to be packed into a tiny can. Also, the rule on fresh tuna is it dries out easily if overcooked. And yet, canned tuna is dry as a desert, a violation of the above standard. Hence the NEED for mayo, without which you’ve got a desiccated hockey puck unfit for consumption. (Again, in my view.) A vehicle for mayo is no problem. A NEED for mayo is a different issue. What’s that you say? Romaine needs dressing too? Yeah, but I’d rather eat a bowl of plain romaine. Finally, tuna smells awfully fishy, the not too surprising result of trapping fish in a tiny can.
A chicken salad sandwich is a different story. Chicken is neither fishy nor stringy, and it can be shredded, sliced, cubed, etc. and turned into a great, clean, toothsome, unstringy product.
Now fresh tuna makes a fantastic sandwich. It’s rare, silky interior ensures easy eating; it’s lean, healthy, and a great way to increase your fish intake, and it’s flavorful yet also sort of a blank slate able to pair with any number of condiments and other sandwich accoutrements.
The downside of course, is the expense. To that I have no snappy answer except to say splurge if you can. If you can’t, please, please eat chicken salad.
Seared Tuna Sandwich
Makes 4 sandwiches
2 cups strained Greek yogurt
1 large cucumber, grated
1 clove garlic, minced
1 ¼ pounds fresh tuna
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 head romaine
I baguette
salt and pepper
- Add the yogurt to a medium bowl and fold in the cucumber and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate.
- Season the tuna on both sides. Heat the oil in a medium pan over medium high heat until nearly smoking. Gently slip in the tuna and sear until browned, about 1 ½ minutes. Flip and cook the second side. About 3 minutes total. Remove to a cutting board.
- Slice the baguette lengthwise. (Or first cut in 4 even pieces then slice if too awkward.)
- Slice the tuna thinly, about ¼ inch. Spread the baguette with the yogurt, lay over the romaine, shingle the tuna evenly over the lettuce, slice and serve.
