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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.
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
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.
Spiced Shrimp
Some foods are blank canvasses. Off the top of my head, these tend to be white: rice, cream of wheat, pasta, a variety of white-fleshed fish, etc.
Rice can be the basis for paella, rice and beans, different risottos, and so on. Pasta can be twisted and torn and stretched into a variety of shapes and paired with an even greater variety of sauces. You can do anything with white-fleshed seafood. We’re about to make the summer Cape pilgrimage, which means the grill, probably our favorite fish-cooking method.
Simple peeled shrimp is white enough and bland enough to qualify as a blank canvas. Unlike the mildest white fish it really needs a boost. Even my late grandfather, a believer in blandness and stuffed sole, would agree: the only good shrimp was a fried shrimp served with cocktail sauce.
Cocktail sauce, one of history’s great concoctions, was probably inspired by a bowl of flavorless boiled shrimp and a dinner party in need of an hors d’oeuvre.
Shrimp is God’s gift to the caterer: it’s bite-sized and doesn’t slide off a toothpick. Hors d’oeuvres have to be a delicious little mouthful, which is why, if you’re using shrimp, treating it like ceviche is a good idea. A lime juice bath donates acid, a dusting of spice and a bit of pear add sweetness to shrimp, a truly blank canvas.
(NOTE: serving on a pear slice makes for a nice presentation. The down side is, from our experience, whenever you serve an hors d’oeuvre on a slice of something edible, such as cucumber, guests tend to eat that as well. The upside is it looks nice, so use an extra pear if presenting it this way. Green-skinned Bartlett pears are more attractive than Bosc.)
Spiced Shrimp w/ Pear
Makes 12 pieces
12 peeled, deveined shrimp
10 limes
1 teaspoon chile powder
1 teaspoon nigella seeds
kosher salt
1-2 Bartlett pears (see note)
- Boil a pot of water and blanch the shrimp for 5 minutes. With a slotted spoon add to a bowl of ice.
- Juice the limes into a medium bowl. Add the shrimp, toss and refrigerate a few hours.
- Before serving, cut the pear into ½ inch dice or ½ inch by ¼ inch rectangles. To serve, drain and dry shrimp. Dust with the chile powder, nigella, and salt. Spear the shrimp followed by the pear and serve
Artichoke Confit
If you want to encourage a non-cook to use his kitchen, the artichoke is not a great place to start. The majority of this globe is inedible, woody fiber. Getting to the “food” is like hacking through the Amazon with a machete: tough, army-green plant matter flying all around, settling, finally, on your kitchen floor.
Other poor starter foods may include: unpitted olives, beets, leeks, fennel, and mangoes. These are fruits and vegetables that inspire a special kind of listlessness. No one wants to go home and have a death match with the Thomas train you bought for your kid, and which requires a surgeon’s touch to install the batteries. So why take home produce that seems equally labor-intensive and annoying? Which is one reason why markets sell more cucumbers and lettuce than fennel.
Unfortunately, nature doesn’t accommodate the produce shopper, who misses out by passing on items such as fennel and artichokes. In his photographs, Charles Jones, the late 19th century gardener and photographer, captured the complexities of these vegetables. Their odd structure-curves and crevasses, folds, points, humps, and waves-requires a little finesse with the knife.
There is a labor factor hierarchy here. An olive pit is an annoying little nub. Beets (unless shaved very thin) require long cooking. Leeks come embedded with grit, and fennel has a difficult structure to make sense of.
Artichokes, however, conjure the most terror in home kitchens. Rather than a vegetable, they seem an object to conquer, a beast of prey genetically designed to withhold its treasure.
There is a quick way and a relatively slow way to extract the heart of the choke. The quick is really a restaurant method mastered by practicing on crates of chokes under the whip of a sadistic chef. There are more peaceful systems, and this is my preferred method:
- Squeeze a bunch of lemons into a bowl of cold water. Drop in the squeezed halves.
- With your hand, rotate the artichoke and snap off most of the bottom third of the leaves. Make sure not to pull down, as that will tear off edible choke. When you hit the light green layer, use a super sharp or serrated knife and slice just above it (about a third of the way from the bottom of the choke). Discard everything but what you’re holding (choke and stem)
- Using a paring knife and/or peeler, trim off the remaining green parts. Peel the stem as well.
- Using a spoon, scrape out the fibrous choke. Drop into the acidulated water.
Step-by-step photos would be easier perhaps, but this isn’t a glossy food mag. If I haven’t explained it well, email or consult the web. I prefer this method.
As for cooking, you can do pretty much anything: sauté, roast, add to a braise, steam, parcook and add to pasta, etc.
While these are all fine, to bring out the essence, the pure artichoke flavor, I prefer to confit in a few cups of olive oil. Unlike cooking in a liquid medium, none of the flavor is leached out, and unlike sautéing or roasting, there is no caramelization, which alters the taste.
Gently poaching in olive oil gives you a creamy, unadulterated artichoke. And after all that work, you may as well enjoy the real thing.
(Note: For this recipe, pureeing the already creamy flesh with the cooking oil makes for a luscious product. Topping it with the tender confited leaves adds flavor and texture. Be sure to use only the bright yellow leaves! Even slightly green leaves turn into chewing tobacco. Save the remaining oil for a vinaigrette.)
Artichoke Puree w/ Tender Artichoke Leaves
Serves 2
1 globe (large) artichoke, quartered, yellow inner leaves reserved
2 lemons, halved
2-3 cups olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ cup parmesan, grated
salt and pepper
- Prepare the artichoke as described above and reserve in the lemon water.
- Drain and dry. Add the quartered heart (you can cut in large chunks) and the leaves to a small pot and pour in the oil just to cover. Place under low heat and cook until very tender. You may need more oil than called for. Also, be sure not to let it bubble too much. You want a very low simmer. Remove from heat.
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the choke (not the leaves) to a blender along with the garlic and parmesan. Turn on blender and puree, adding enough of the flavored oil to achieve a very smooth texture. Season with salt and pepper.
- Plate the puree, sprinkling with the confited leaves.
Summer brunch-preserved cherries
A restaurant menu is like an anagram. Ingredients are shuffled, puzzle-fashion, from dish to dish, facilitating smooth and quick service. It’s often said the test of a chef is if he can he make a perfect omelet. Equally important, he should be a good Scrabble player.
This is especially necessary when it comes to pricey perishables. Those parsnips, tossed in olive oil, salted, and roasted to a rooty candy? Glance over at the next table; there they are, pureed with cream and butter, peeking out from underneath a braised short rib.
Brunch is the ultimate mix and match meal. Brunch dishes tend to be fatty, sweet, salty, and confined to homey tastes. It’s a time to splurge rather than strain the mind choosing between cod and calf’s liver or lamb curry and four types of dal. Hence the heavy use of a a limited number of ingredients: eggs, bread, etc.
Still, there’s brunch and there’s brunch, and the Barbuto version is exceptional: frittatas, strawberry and ricotta filled crepes, fontina and pancetta panino, spaghetti carbonara, poached eggs on crusty bread with a small salad.
Untangle the menu, you’ll discover the same 5 or 6 items woven throughout. The same wonderful caramelized onions melted into the fontina on my panino show up in the spinach frittata. The same fontina oozed like a warm blanket over the charred brick oven pizza. Not to mention the crusty bread and arugula salad, which lands on every table and plate in one form or another.
Behind the scenes lies a truly utilitarian universe. Celery trimmings, onion peels, meat and fish scraps: all chucked into a vessel for stock, sauce, flavored oils, preserves, and so on.
It’s possible to construct a similar, miniature, larder at home: condiments and sauces which cut down on food cost and complement a variety of foods.
Only three people occupy our apartment, one of whom is 3 ½ and likes to dress up as Buzz Lightyear, leaving two normal (sort of) inhabitants. Pots of relishes, pickles, preserved lemons, oil-packed vegetables, multiple varieties of salt, etc. would wither and die a sad, moldy death.
One or two such items, however, prove nearly as useful as the caramelized onions in Barbuto’s brunch kitchen. Especially if seasonal, as they pair with other timely items. Right now, cherries are everywhere; preserved, they can be spooned into a small bowl and served with cheese. Or heated and arranged around slices of roasted lamb. The liquid alone can be reduced to a glaze, brushed on grilled meats for a last minute sear. Or dunk those meats and poultry into the liquid and marinate a few hours.
Toss a few cherries with vinegar and stick them in a jar. Follow your tastebuds and play around with combinations, which is a lot easier than mastering Scrabble.
Preserved Cherries
Makes 1 quart
½ cup sugar
1 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 sprigs thyme
1 pound cherres, pitted and halved
- In a small saucepan combine all ingredients except cherries and bring to simmer, stirring to dissolve sugar.
- Pour liquid over the bowl of cherries. Let cool, pour into a container, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.
Anatomy of a Crummy Cookbook
Note: we have a cookbook out there (on apples) and plan on future ones, so what follows is risky. But irritation is too powerful an instinct to ignore.
Cookbooks are seductive little packages. Like the dictionary or a math textbook, or Knicks box scores. They carry the unusual stamp of accuracy and authority. Which is why often we succumb to their spell, even for the simplest dishes. Next up: Mastering Toast.
Last week, Greek was on the menu, i.e. tzatziki and hummus, tabouli, taramosalata, etc. It’s easy, and the tastiest meal requiring more or less a whisk and a bowl. If you have neither, order in. However, if you have a small kid and a little kitchen, do what we do and use the accompanying mini whisk, easily located under the couch.
Yogurt, whisk, bowl, chopped up garlic and cucumber, we were ready to assemble. Until I glanced on the counter to a new purchase, Michael Psilakis’ How to Roast a Lamb. He’s a celebrity chef with a bunch of Greek restaurants, but not too famous to have his picture on the front. Instead, the cover photo is a classy shot of a few lemon halves, a garlic bulb, thyme bunch, dish of green olives, and olive oil bottle. All arranged on a muted grey background. Turning a sad eye to our worn burners, the greasy olive oil jug, and circular red wine stains dotting the marble counter, I reached over and flipped through the index to tzatziki.
You know those moments when you do something you know is wrong but continue on anyhow? Not drugs or any of that. I mean the time you ate Chinese food in Alabama, paid 12 bucks to see The Hulk, played slots, or took a bus to Atlantic City.
That’s exactly how I felt I smashing and finely chopping 10 cloves of garlic, according to Psikalis’ recipe. Other than a delicious roasted piece of meat, I can’t think of any food product improved by 10 garlic cloves. Especially a raw application like tzatziki. Same goes for the obscene 1 cup of distilled white vinegar. And yet, there I was measuring it out and pouring it into the blender along with the aforementioned garlic, yogurt and a whole (!?) cup of dill.
At least I wasn’t burdened by the hope often accompanying cooking. I knew it would suck. But it was my fault for following this prescription. Of course, it was a disaster: a stinging blow of garlic merged with a near chemically astringent vinegar assault. I dashed to the freezer for a shot of vodka in the hope the alcohol would burn off the searing nightmare coating my palate.
As offensive was the recipe for Fried Pork and Beef Meatballs (Soutzoukakia). Calling something by its Greek name seemed charming and authentic. Doing my usual pre-recipe scan I ran across 15 slices of Wonder Bread. Once again I was back at a Chinese restaurant in Alabama, taking the plunge. I’ve never seen or even considered a meatball recipe requiring 15 slices of bread, and the result proved my skepticism: crumbling meatballs barely held together by a mass of soggy bread
So too the Eggplant Spread (Melitzanosalata) which supposedly makes 1 quart. It was actually tasty but how one eggplant produces an entire quart of dip is beyond me. More like a scant 2 cups buddy.
There are numerous lessons here, so I’ll just go with bullet points:
-don’t trust a celebrity chef
-homey ethnicity does not a great recipe make
-don’t trust nice, heavy paper and fancy, understated pictures
-don’t trust a book with pretentious chapter titles: “Open Water”, “Dinner, Family Style”, My First Recipes”, “The Hunting Trip”, “A Lamb and a Goat”, “Psilakis Birthday Dinners”, and so on.
Oh yeah, beware a cookbook leavened with text about family remembrances and cute memories. To wit, page one of the introduction:
“It was never specifically my dream to write a cookbook. My passion is for the kitchen and I love sharing this passion for food and my Greek culture with other people…But as my father’s health declined and I spent hours and long nights with him sitting in his hospital room and revisiting the wonderful life I was fortunate to share with him, the idea for this book was born. Telling these stories, the pictures of my childhood, and coupling them with the food of my youth would be a way to honor my father.”
For obvious reasons, beware a cookbook beginning with the phrase “It was never my dream to write a cookbook.” Also, why not do what you’re best at and serve the food of your father in your restaurant? That seems more soulful than forcing out a book.
Most important, don’t follow recipes. Go with your gut. In that spirit, we don’t offer a recipe, just ingredients. Taste as you go, as you should with all cooking.
Tzatziki
Unstrained Greek yogurt
White wine vinegar
Plenty of garlic (we like to chop it into a paste)
Dill
Cucumber (fine dice or grate or whatever you like)
Salt and pepper
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.
Steak Tartare-the joy of raw beef
Steak tartare is perhaps the only item I immediately go for on a menu. It’s a pretty rare (no pun) find, even at a steakhouse. We recently ate at Quality Meats which, happily, serves the dish, though unfortunately, what you get is the ubiquitous do it yourself version: a ramekin of semi-seasoned ground beef, topped with an egg yolk, accompanied by a platter of condiments. In other words, a meat salad bar.
Such a presentation displays a chefly cowardice. Queasy about sending out raw beef, he hands it off to you. I say, if you’re going to serve steak tartare, mix it in the kitchen and drop it in front of me where I can release my inner carnivore.
Fueled by disappointment yet still jonesing for ground animal, I figured I could make the real, bloody deal at home. Which I did, and which I recommend to everyone if they could overcome common issues with eating raw meat.
And I get it: e-coli etc. But apply a little common sense: I’m not munching raw meat from my local deli. Find a good butcher. Or buy a good steak from a decent market, bring home and grind or finely chop. From what I hear, chopping your own meat is safer for this purpose (bad stuff on the exterior gets mixed in when meat is ground in the factory). But I like to play with food, and pre-ground meat is too easy.
For the truly paranoid I’ve added my own little twist: dousing the toast with molten bone marrow, which is then salted and served alongside the tartare. Of course, with this you’re introducing the whole mad cow thing, and I can’t help you there. Even if you wade through grassy fields and hack the leg off of a wholesome cow I assume you’re taking a risk. If not, let me know. I’m no expert, as you may have guessed.
Still, roast bone marrow, being all fat, is delicious, and it boosts the unadulterated beefiness of your bowl of raw flesh which is in itself balanced by the acid in the dressing.
Staring balefully at my tray of condiments, I thought of our 3-year-old, who possesses a NASA-quality radar when it comes to food. Faced with a plate of mixed vegetables, he’ll use his little fingers to carefully select only the peas. The same goes for the Flintstone vitamins, which he’ll pick over in search of the scrumptious purple option. I made him homemade green (spinach) pasta, but he immediately sensed something fishy going on, as if someone in the house was trying to trick him into eating spinach.
Steak tartare isn’t spinach pasta. It’s not a vehicle for serving yummy pickles and mustard. Or Caesar “salad”, the ultimate in culinary misnomers. It’s raw, it’s meat, and it’s incredibly satisfying.
Here, torn bread is better, as it absorbs the melted marrow fat better than toast points. Think English muffin, crannies, and butter. The cold steak goes nicely with the warm marrow. Think fried ice cream.
(Note: Seasoning to taste is perfectly fine, which is NOT a contradiction of all of the above. Just don’t make it into a Worcestershire soup, and KEEP TASTING. Once you’ve over seasoned, there’s no going back. Unless you go get more beef and prepare for an iron overdose. I like Anthony Bourdain’s recipe, which I’ve adapted here, but feel free to do your own thing.)
Steak Tartare (recipe from Anthony Bourdain)
Serves 6
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ketchup
1 teaspoon Worcestershire
Tabasco
Fresh ground pepper
¼ cup corn or veg oil
1 ounce Cognac
1 small onion, fine chop
2 ounces capers, rinsed
2 ounces cornichon, fine chop
4 sprigs parsley, fine chop
1 ¼ pound fresh sirloin, fine chop or ground
Bone Marrow Toasts (below)
- Place yolks in a large stainless steel bowl (I like to place it in another bowl partially filled with ice but whatever). Add mustard and anchovies, mix then add ketchup, Worcestershire, Tabasco, pepper, mix again. Slowly whisk in oil then add Cognac. Fold in onion, capers, and parsley then add meat and mix well.
- Divide among the plates. A ring mold works best but you could just spoon into ramekins. Serve with the toasts. You could also place a marrow bone on each plate next to some bread. It’s also nice to serve the bones and bread on a separate tray family-style.
Bone Marrow Toasts
6 marrow bones
1 loaf crusty bread torn into roughly two inch hunks
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 425.
- Season bones on both ends with salt and pepper.
- Place in a large sauté or roasting pan and roast about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, spread the bread on a tray and toast lightly. Check the bones. You want the marrow soft but slightly resistant on top. You may have some melted fat in the pan, in which case just spoon onto the bread. Serve bones and bread on a platter or individually with the tartare. Spread marrow on bread and season with salt. Top with cold tartare.
Sous Vide – My New Toy
For those of you who’ve been semi-conscious, Julia Child has been undergoing an extraordinary pop renaissance. Movie (Julie&Julia), book (Julie&Julia); newly super-selling book (Mastering the Art of French Cooking); honorary degree from Harvard, and other stuff I can’t think of and would be easily Googled if I weren’t feeling lazy.
I’m just old-enough to remember her show-not the very early black and white version-where she stood, hulk-like in her small kitchen (especially by today’s tv kitchen standards), engaged in an inelegant dance/wrestling match with various forms of poultry. She knocked about, cracking eggs and pots until the show’s end, when she moved to the table, glass of wine in hand, before the soufflé and chicken galantine. An elegant finish to a frenzied hour.
Julia has been heaped with (well-deserved) praise for inspiring Americans to cook and think about the food they cook. Whether she instructed her watchers and readers how to cook, is debatable. In her later years, aged and less nimble, she soldiered on, in a homey duet with her friend Jacques Pepin, who, to my mind, is our most valuable cooking teacher.
Pepin, who can debone a turkey with a butter knife while transforming a cucumber into an orchid, moved elegantly about his tiny set and its four-burner stove. You got the sense he could whip up a Chinese New Year’s feast in a closet. He makes today’s tv chefs look like manic thugs, with their crashing pans and flaming grills. Unfortunately, I fear people all over the country favor this undisciplined approach rather than the quiet exactitude of Pepin.
A chef once told me that, contrary to public opinion-and food tv programmers- cooking is a feminine art. It requires attention to detail, a soft, artistic eye, and a sensitive palate.
For Christmas, I got a sous vide machine. To cook something sous vide, you fill the machine with water, set the desired water temperature, vacuum-seal the food, and dunk it in the bath. I say bath because the water’s hot but not simmering, and as it’s relatively warm, the cooking time is quite long.
Attempt number one was duck breast and lamb loin chops. I left each in at 140 degrees for about 2 hours, stuck them in an ice bath and seared them later. The meat, as advertised, was superior. It was a perfect medium rare, and velvety in texture, with none of that tough graininess inevitable in even the most accurately cooked meat.
Octopus, which requires a long pot-braising, was successful but not extraordinary, the central benefit being that you could dunk it, go out, do stuff, and return home five hours later to a tender, vacuum-sealed mollusk. A fancy version of Ron Popeil’s famous “Set it and forget it” chicken roaster.
Because we don’t employ pot washers (though I’m trying to teach our 3-year-old that skill), sous vide is nice in that it doesn’t wreck the kitchen with encrusted pots and so on.
Unfussy, clean, relaxing, precise, quiet, artful, sous vide feels like cooking as it should be. I still enjoy pounding chickens and cranking up the stove to high, and sous vide isn’t a miracle maker. But to get its appeal, you also have to understand where we live: we step outside the door onto Broadway, with its crowds and Holland tunnel traffic. To produce a meal using little more than a warm bath is a nice thing.
If you don’t have a sous vide machine, the following recipes are (almost) as peaceful and flavorful: a simple gamy or mild protein paired with a fresh, bright condiment.
Duck Breast and Lamb Loin with Roasted Lemon Aioli
1 duck breast, skin scored in a crosshatch pattern
2 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed
3 cloves
4 sprigs thyme
½ cup plus two tablespoons olive oil
4 loin lamb chops, about 2 pounds total
3 juniper berries, crushed
salt and pepper
1 recipe Roasted Lemon Aioli (below)
- If cooking sous vide, place duck in a vacuum bag along with one clove of the garlic, cloves, two of the thyme sprigs and ¼ cup of the olive oil. Seal. In a separate bag, combine the lamb with remaining garlic, thyme, ¼ cup of olive oil, and juniper. Cook at 140 degrees for a minimum of 2 hours. Can hold in the water for another hour or so. If using immediately, remove, drain, and sear (see following). If not, remove bags to an ice bath and refrigerate.
- To finish, place a small pan on medium heat. Season duck on both sides with salt and pepper. Cook, skin side down until very crisp, draining fat as necessary. Flip and cook until lightly colored. Remove to a platter, rest for 5 minutes. Add the two tablespoons olive oil top a medium pan over medium high heat. Season lamb on both sides with salt and pepper. When oil shimmers, add lamb, sear until well colored. Flip, do the same on the other side, remove to a platter with the duck and rest a few minutes. Place a spoonful of aioli on four plates. Slice duck, divide slices among the plates along with the lamb and serve.
- To cook without a sous vide. Cook the duck in a pan in the same manner. Add the cloves, garlic and thyme as the skin is lightly colored but not fully crisp. For the lamb, sear on both sides, adding the garlic, thyme and juniper halfway through the process. The cooking time will be longer, as the interior is not done, but with lamb and duck err on the side of medium rare rather than medium so be vigilant.
Roasted Lemon Aioli (adapted from Michael Psilakis’ book How to Roast a Lamb
4 lemons
1 tablespoon mustard
1 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 325
- Place a lemon on a sheet of foil. Roll it up jelly-roll fashion and fold the ends over to form a seal Repeat with remaining lemons, place seal side down on a baking sheet and place in oven. Roast the lemons for about 1 ½ hours, remove.
- When cool enough to handle, place lemons on a cutting board, quarter the lemons and scoop out the flesh into a bowl, removing the seeds. Flatten a lemon quarter and, scrape off as much of the white pith as possible. You may have to hold the knife parallel to the board and carefully slice it off. Chop the rind and add to bowl. We found that the chopped rind of two lemons adds enough flavor to the aioli, but you can use all of the lemons.
- Add the pulp and chopped rind to the bowl of a blender (blender is a little tricky, as it’s tough to make mayo in a blendedr-thick) or food processor along with the mustard and pulse. Slowly add the oil until the aioli comes together. Season and reserve.
Charred Octopus with Roasted Lemon Aioli
1 Octopus, 2 1/2 to 3 pounds
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 sprig rosemary
salt and pepper
To cook without sous vide (from Aliseo restaurant, The New Brooklyn Cookbook):
1/3 cup salt
1/2 cup cider or white vinegar
2 cups white wine
5 garlic cloves, peeled
7 bay leaves
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 sprig rosemary
20 juniper berries
6 parsley stems
1. Have the fish seller clean the octopus. Slice off the tentacles, trimming the webbing. Dry and vacuum seal in a single layer with the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary. Cook at 170 for 5 hours.
2. Remove the pouch, drain, dry well and season with salt and pepper. Sear in a hot pan slicked with a film of oil (you may need two pans) until charred on both sides. Serve over the aioli.
3. To cook without sous vide: combine all the ingredients in a large pot with 6 quarts of water. Add the octopus, weigh down with a stainless steel colander to keep immersed in the cooking liquid. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to medium and simmer for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the pot from the heat, remove colander, cover with a lid, and let the octopus sit in the liquid for 45 minutes.
5. To finish, sear in a hot pan (or two) as in Step 2.
