How many times can one person write the word crispy in one post title? Guess five times was enough.  Now how many times can one person write crispy within a post? Word count at the end of this post – I know you’ll be on the edge of your computer chair. Seriously, the other night I was craving crispy like something fierce!  I didn’t want fried chicken crispy or thincrust pizza crispy, but I wanted that delicate balance between baby food smooth and crunchy/crispy. Am I loosing you yet, folks?  Does anyone ever have this craving? Well, my craving was quelled by this fabulous mix of fish that was pan seared until the skin went super crispy (the trick? get all the moisture off your fish by patting it dry with paper towels and running your knife against the skin to remove any excess moisture and then putting it in a hot pan that is immediately turned to medium once the fish hits it skin side down), laid on a bed of creamy parsnip puree and sprinkled with all sorts of roasted vegetables.

One new thing that I discovered upon my crispy craving was that roasted broccoli rabe is really, really good.  I tried it and it worked.  The leaves and sides of the florets went super crispy with the stem staying perfectly crunchy.  I also roasted other things that were rolling around in my fridge including onions, a bit more leftover parsnip, cauliflower and shiitake mushrooms.

Ahhh, roasted mushrooms, my newest obsession.  They are sliced thinly and roasted until they almost become concentrated in flavor and crunchy.  If someone came out with a bag of roasted mushroom “chips” I’d happily snack away all day.  These are the perfect topping to any fish, pizza, chicken or bruschetta dish and I highly recommend you trying them.

I topped off this whole dish with a little “sauce” of reduced seafood stock with a squeeze of lemon and some butter mixed in.  The whole thing satisfied my crispy craving and made my cold winter night a little bit warmer.

Crispy count? 10.  How annoying was this post on a scale from 1 to 10? 10.  Deliciousness factor of this meal?  10.

CRISPY FISH WITH ROASTED VEGGIES AND PARSNIP PUREE (serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

• 2 filets of trout with skin (or any other mild flavored fish)
• 1 8oz. package of mushrooms (we used shiitake, you could use cremini, white button, etc.), sliced in 1/4 inch slices
• a variety of vegetables including cauliflower, onions, parsnips
• 1/2 bunch of brocolli rabe
• 2-3 large parsnips, peeled
• 2 cloves of garlic, roasted in the oven for 20 minutes (optional)
• 1 teaspoon whole grain mustard
• 1/2 cup milk (may need a bit more depending on size of parsnips)
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 lemon
• truffle oil (optional)

What to do:

1. Heat your oven to 450 degrees and boil and pot of salted water for the parsnip puree. 
2. In a bowl, toss the cauliflower in a bit of olive oil and (optional) a few drops of truffle oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Spread on a baking sheet lined with foil.  Next, toss the mushrooms with the same – olive oil, optional truffle oil and then salt and pepper. On a seperate part of the the baking sheet, add the mushrooms.  Repeat this “toss and season” thing with each vegetable you will roast, including the broccoli rabe, and add to a baking sheet, giving enough space for each vegetable to roast evenly.  Put in oven and roast at first for 15 minutes (total roasting time will vary for some veggies depending on how crunchy you want them to be).
3. Peel your parsnips and cut into 2 inch chunks.  Add to the boiling water and allow to cook until soft – about 15 or 20 minutes.
4. Pat your fish dry with paper towels and make sure you get the excess moisture off the skin by running your knife up and down the length of the skin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides and allow to rest until ready to cook.
5. After the first 15 minutes of roasting time is up, turn the vegetables in order to promote even browning. Your mushrooms will start to be looking more dried out than the other vegetables.  Turn each mushroom slice on to the other side – if they are to your liking, remove them to a bowl and reserve until you are ready to plate.  The broccoli rabe will need to be tossed around as well, ensuring that the delicate leaves don’t get too burnt. Put all the vegetables back in the oven and roast again – the mushrooms will only need another 5 to 8 minutes and the rest of the veggies will need another 15 to 20 minutes.
6. Remove your soft, boiled parsnips from the water and add to a blender or food processor along with the milk, roasted garlic, whole grain mustard and salt and pepper.  Add a bit of olive oil to bring it all together and taste for seasoning.  Keep warm in a pot or by keeping the lid on the food processor.
7. Heat a pan up on high heat until it comes up to temperature.  Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and your fish filets skin side down in the pan.  As soon as the fish hits the pan, turn your heat down to medium-high (or medium if your range has a very strong flame).  Allow to cook skin side down for 5 to 6 minutes.  Carefully flip the trout filets over and cook for a minute and then turn off the heat.  It will continue to cook in the hot pan while you assemble your plate.
8. Remove all the veggies from the oven and plate – add the roasted broccoli rabe on the bottom then a dollop of the parsnip puree and then lay the trout filet on top. Sprinkle some of the other roasted veggies around the plate, top the trout with a few of the crispy mushrooms, squeeze some lemon and drizzle with olive oil.  Enjoy.

Nonetheless, the skate and its delicious wings are definitely worth appreciating. A comparative rarity on menus this side of the Atlantic, skate wing is fairly common in French bistrots and used to be a regular on the menus of fish restaurants across the UK, but the common and white skates are now critically endangered in UK waters and are officially listed by the Marine Conservation Society as “fish to avoid”. In the Americas, almost the reverse is true, at least for the time being, as meatier fish tend to dominate fish menus at the expense of the more delicate white fish, the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska is full of the big (or giant – it can grow up to 8 feet in wingspan!) and longnose skates which make for some fine dining.

Skates are a cartilaginous fish in the ray family (you know, stingrays, manta rays, etc.) which is linked comparatively closely (in evolutionary terms) with the shark family, meaning that they are relatively slow breeding and give birth to live young, and are therefore more susceptible to overfishing than the more prolific egg-producing gill fish.

But don’t let this put you off trying skate. Just make sure to ask your fishmonger where the skate he’s selling comes from, and if he doesn’t know, make him find out for you. All good butchers know the provenance of their meats, so why should fishmongers not be as knowledgeable about their wares?

When purchasing skate, make sure it’s fresh and without any ammoniacal odor, as for some reason I could find no explanation for they tend to go off faster than normal white fish. Also, you should ask your fishmonger to remove the “bones” from the skate for you. This makes it easier to cook and eat because the wings contain a fan of bones that can otherwise be a chore to remove with a knife and fork.

The classic preparation is pan-fried au beurre noisette, or with a brown butter and caper sauce, which adds richness and acid to what is basically a flaky white fish, but because for us a fish meal tends to be a cathartic measure (albeit an enjoyable one) designed to make us feel healthier, we combined our pan-fried skate wing with a salad of finely-sliced fennel, fennel tops and tomato, and some steamed asparagus with a simple vinaigrette. However, feel free to also enjoy it in the typical manner as a little fat not only helps the fish remain moist, it brings out the best flavors of the delicate skate flesh.

Pan-Fried Skate Wing with Fennel & Tomato Salad (serves 2)

Ingredients:

1 whole skate, bones removed (8-10oz, uncooked)

1cup regular (not extra virgin) olive oil, or canola/vegetable oil

1 fennel bulb, sliced finely. Reserve fennel tops and chop finely also.

1 large tomato, diced

1/2 fresh corn cob, boiled and kernels removed

3tbsp good olive oil

1tbsp lemon juice

1tsp smooth dijon mustard

3tbsp plain flour

salt & white pepper to taste

Recipe:

Put fennel (including tops), tomato and corn into a non-reactive bowl and mix well with vinaigrette. Allow to sit and steep for at least 30minutes or as long as overnight.

Heat oil in a frying pan to medium-high, around 350F.

Dust skate with flour and season with salt. Pat off excess and gently lay in the hot oil until nicely browned and crisp all over (2-3mins per side, approx.)

Remove fish to a plate and gently pat dry with paper towels. Dress with the fennel salad and add an extra splash of olive oil to moisten the whole thing a bit, then serve.

Check out these other posts you might enjoy:

Orecchiette with Sausage and Kale

Lebanese Food in A Small Brooklyn Kitchen

Another Easy Meal – Tortilla Soup

Something’s Fishy ‘Round Here: Livornese Fish Stew (il cacciucco alla Livornese)

The Italian region of Liguria is famous for its dramatic landscape of mountains plunging into crystal clear waters, and narrow terraced fields leading down to tiny, colorful villages precipitously perched on the edges of cliffs of which the Cinque Terre (five lands) of Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore in La Spezia province are the most famous. It’s a region of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, though the rugged terrain creates many tiny sub-regional micro-climates, and driving through it, you can go from dry scrub oak and wild thyme to olive groves to chestnut forests and back again in half an hours’ journey.

So it is that Ligurian food, like all Italian regional cuisine, reflects the landscape from which it comes, and because of this much of the local food has traditionally come from the few plants that are able to withstand the poor, dry soil, the salty air at low altitudes, and the cold at higher elevations, supplemented by seafood and, occasionally, game and poultry.

**Sorry for interrupting your reading, but I had to find a place to put this picture in. No lie, we passed this goat going about 45 mph in the Ligurian countryside and I thought I was hallucinating. I made Jonny reverse about 1/4 of a mile down a very winding, thin road to find out if I really was on drugs. This Gandolf-looking creature was smiling from behind a very primitive and small barn about 5 inches off the side of the road. I fell in love at that moment. He looked mythical!

In her recent paean to the Liguria of her ancestors, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, author Laura Schenone recalls that while things have changed in modern times, for millenia the fortunes of most of the region’s inhabitants have been directly related to the availability of chestnuts from which many staples were made — including the ubiquitous gnocchi and pasta.

Another plant that grows very successfully in Liguria’s poor soils, as they do a few hundred miles west in the rocky garrigues of Provence where they remain the principle diet of many peasant farmers and, indeed, their livestock, is the chick pea (ceci/garbanzo), and like the chestnut, Ligurians pound the dried cecis into a flour which they use to make a kind of flat bread found nowhere else in Italy save certain parts of Sicily (which is deep fried chickpea dough often used in between bread or as a snack called Panelle – we hope to make this version soon), farinata. The French have their own version of this called Socca, but today we will focus on farinata. Farinata is a kind of street food found in Liguria and can often be treated like pizza as it is often cut into wedges and can come with various toppings like onions.

While we were in Genoa last summer, we saw farinata in bakeries all over the city but, curiously, found that it wasn’t offered in restaurants, though it was probably because of the glut of delicious seafood and various pesto preparations we gorged ourselves on rather than this reason, that we missed out on trying farinata in the region of its origin. Not to be denied though, we sought out some chick pea flour (yes, I know, if weren’t such post-modern bourgeois slacker-tourists we would have pounded our own from dried beans…) at a wonderful gourmet grocers in Park Slope and proceeded to use the wonderful invention that is Babelfish to translate any number of recipes on Italian websites to find out how to make it authentically. If you can not find chickpea flour in your local grocery store, check out some health food shops, Indian and/or Middle Eastern specialty stores. Chickpea flour is a key ingredient to many Indian and Middle Eastern foods.

Regular readers will know that we strive to find and make the most authentic preparations we can, but you will also know that this kind of research often leads to the unfortunate conclusion that there is rarely only one “authentic” version. Referring again to Laura Schenone, who describes farinata as almost like a chick pea flour focaccia – crispy on top and soft and chewy underneath and baked in a wide, shallow pan in a brick pizza oven, we found that this conflicted with our recollections and other recipes we had come across for thinner, almost completely crispy flatbreads. In fact, what we discovered was that the longer the cooking time and the less batter you add to your skillet, the crisper the farinata. Like, duh, right? For a more baked polenta-like consistency underneath with a crisp top, I would recommend pouring enough batter so that it is 1/2-deep and cooking our recipe for 1/2 the time, possibly finishing it off under the broiler for a few minutes. The recipe below will be for a crispy version of farinata – one that almost can crack like a cracker.

**Window shopping in Genoa – check out the farinata being served in the upper right-hand corner

We would like to try the softer version so we can decide which we prefer. Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the crispy, thinner and darker bread with its nutty, salty flavor that we made and are enthused to attempt the latter as soon as possible.

Typically, farinata is eaten either alone or dipped in good Ligurian olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, whereas we decided to use it almost as a canvas for a rather overly decorative carpaccio of zucchini (courgette) with pine nuts, shaved pecorino, and lemon juice. We encourage you to make yourself a farinata or two (preferably not in the hot months as we did, unless you have a good AC!) and eat it anyway you like, reminding yourself, yet again, that peasant food made from humble ingredients is almost always good, and because that’s often all there was/is to eat, it has to be.

CRISPY FARINATA (LIGURIAN CHICKPEA FLATBREAD) WITH ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO SALAD – (makes about 1 12-inch farinata)

Ingredients for farinata:

• 1 1/4 cup of chick pea flour
• 1 1/2 cups of water (maybe a bit more to get the consistency somewhere between whole milk and lite cream)
• 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or enough to cover your pan)
• plenty of freshly ground black pepper
• 6 sage leaves, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon of chopped rosemary (optional)

Ingredients for zucchini salad:

• 1 large zucchini, sliced into paper-thin slices using a mandoline
• 1 ripe roma tomato, sliced into small dice
• 2 tablespoons pignoli nuts (pine nuts)
• 1 scallion (spring onion), sliced into thin rings
• 3 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole grain mustard
• 1 salted anchovy filet
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• pinch of salt and black pepper

What to do:

1. Sift your chickpea flour in a bowl and add your salt, pepper, sage and rosemary. Stir generously.
2. Slowly add your water, whisking the whole time allowing everything to be incorporated (again, you want the batter to be about the consistency of whole milk/light cream).
3. Allow your batter to rest for at least 1 hour or as long as overnight.
4. When you are ready to cook, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. If any foam has surfaced on your chickpea batter, remove with a spoon.
5. Pour olive oil into your 12-inch baking pan – preferably a cast iron skillet. You want the olive oil to generously coat the bottom and sides of your skillet.  Add your batter until it is about 1/4 of an inch  if you want it super crispy or  1/2 inch deep if you want it thicker and possibly softer.
6. For a crispier farinata, bake for about 30 minutes. Check on it, though, as ovens differ and you do not want the batter to burn! If you want it a bit softer, I would recommend baking for about 15-17 minutes and then finishing it under the broiler for a minute. Allow to cool before cutting!
7. Slice zucchini into very thin, long slivers using a mandolin or a very sharp chef’s knife and thinly slice/dice your other veggies. Arrange everything on top of your farinata and sprinkle with pine nuts.
8. Using a mortar and pestle, pound the anchovy and the mustard together and squeeze in the lemon juice and then mix well. Immediately before serving, whisk in the olive oil to make the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle all over the zucchini carpaccio and farinata.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BEET AND RICOTTA FILLED RAVIOLI WITH BROWN BUTTER AND POPPY SEEDS
• ITALIAN-STYLE SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER WITH SALSA VERDE
• FUSILLI WITH SALSA DI NOCI AND MUSHROOMS (WALNUT PESTO)
• European Roast…? (Why Coffee Tastes Better There)
• Drink of the Month: Vin Santo (May, 2008)

We decided against posting a recipe for each roll we’re featuring in this pictorial. This is simply to give you inspiration for making your own rolls.  One of our favorites which we have yet to find at any other Japanese restaurant is a vegetarian roll simply called Peanut Avocado.  It is sweet, salty, crunchy and rich and we recreated it with cashews instead. 

Finally, we would like to share the recipe for the Sweet Brown Sauce that accompanies many rolls like Salmon Skin, Shrimp Tempura and others.  It is a keeper in our recipe book, so if you ever are making sushi, go a bit further by topping some of your rolls with this delicious sticky sauce. 

Oh, and one last hint on sushi-making:  those deliciously, crunch Salmon Skin rolls so many of you love?  Remove the skin from the bottom of a filet of salmon, thinly slice into 2 inch pieces and deep fry in some oil for a few minutes. Yes, it’s that simple! But be sure to use and eat it immediately – it doesn’t stay crispy for long!

Sushi-Stuffing Ingredients

Putting on the sushi rice and preparing a spicy scallop roll with crunch

Spicy Scallop Roll with Crunch and Scallions (spring onion)

Shrimp Tempura Roll with Cucumber and Avocado

Salmon Skin Roll with Cucumber and Sweet Brown Sauce

Cashew and Avocado Roll

Tamago (sweet omelette) Roll with Masago (Smelt Roe) and Tobiko (flying fish roe)

Same roll as above, just a whole plate of it!

Tamago – Rolled Sweet Omelette
Ingredients:

• 4 medium eggs
• small pinch of salt
• 1tbsp water
• 2tbsp granulated sugar
• 2tbsp good soy sauce
• 3tbsp dry sake
• 3-4tbsp vegetable oil

Recipe:

• Beat eggs together in a bowl and add the salt.
• Add water to mixture and continue to beat until fluffy.
• In a separate bowl, mix together sugar, soy sauce and sake, then mix in with egg mixture.
• Typically, tamago is made in a square frying pan. We don’t own one so we used a boring old round one, but if you have one waiting around for just the proper occasion, go ahead, knock yourselves out.
• Heat your pan to medium heat and add a splash of oil and rotate pan to coat evenly.
• Pour in a third of the egg mixture and allow to become firm.
• Before bottom of pan is completely dry, roll omelette towards you so that at one side of the pan you have what looks like a thick rolled crepe
• Re-oil pan and add second third of egg mixture making sure to lift rolled omelette from first round so that egg coats whole bottom of pan.
• Again, allow to cook all the way through before rolling it up and placing it on top of the first one.
• Oil pan a third time and add remaining egg. Repeat cooking and rolling steps and then remove all three rolled omelettes to a plate.
• Allow to cool enough so you can handle them and spread plastic wrap on your chopping board.
• Then unroll omelettes and place them on top of one another so you have three lying on top of one another.
• Roll them up tightly and wrap tightly in plastic.
• Allow to cool in refrigerator until use. Then slice against the grain to reveal a beautiful layered pancake-type look and add to your sushi rolls. Enjoy!

Sweet Brown Sauce for Sushi
Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of soy sauce
• 1/4 cup of mirin
• 1/8 cup of sugar

****This recipe can easily be doubled to make a larger batch!

Recipe:

• Mix everything together in a pan and reduce until thick and sticky on medium-low.  Watch it though, it can really reduce quickly.  This needs to be served soon after it has been reduced because it can be so thick in it’s cooled version it is impossible to drizzle on things!

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• SANDWICH DE MERGUEZ (BAGUETTE FILLED WITH MERGUEZ SAUSAGE, FRENCH FRIES AND FRIED LEEKS)
• GRILLED STEAK WITH TARRAGON GARLIC BUTTER BLOOD ORANGE MARGARITAS
• WHOLE FISH BAKED IN SALT
• FRIED LAMB RIB CHOPS WITH ROSEMARY-GARLIC REDUCED BALSAMIC
• CREAMY LEMON PASTA
• SAUSAGE AND PEPPER SANDWICHES

It’s the Thursday after Easter and most people out there are still picking the candy and chocolate out of their teeth having just gorged themselves on all manner of Easter Bunny-shaped confectionery. Ever the destroyers of convention, we have been doing something altogether more real and, some may say, sinister. Yes, friends, cover your children’s ears, for over the weekend, we — like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction — put the Easter Bunny in the pot.

Easter traditions have a lot to answer for in the removal of rabbit from the American table. It is no coincidence that around the turn of the 19th century, fifty years or so after German immigrants had brought the habit of fashioning rabbits out of chocolate and sugar to the New World at Easter-tide, the amount of rabbit being eaten in the US fell into an almost terminal decline. It is only really in the last fifteen years that it has returned, and even now is commonly regarded with suspicion and, in many cases, horror. For what could be crueler than eating a lovely, cute and furry bunny?

Now, lest you think us heartless carnivores, I should point out that I am a big fan of rabbits – and I mean live ones. Not only did I have rabbits as pets for many years as a child and have very fond memories of how much fun they were, but I also believe that contrary to public perception, rabbits are in fact quite intelligent creatures with individual personalities and do make excellent pets.

So, you ask, how could I possibly, as my vegetarian sister puts it, “eat my friends”? Well, readers, first of all, sadly, my rabbits both died nearly twenty years ago, so I am not (and would not) eat the rabbits that were my friends, and secondly, we did not put a pet rabbit in the pot as Ms. Close did, but rather we bought two skinned, headless and footless rabbits (at quite a hefty price) from a local butcher, rather like you would a couple of chickens. And, few, save perhaps fellow poultry, mourn the passing of a couple of chickens.

Then, to immortalize this fortunate (it was making an important contribution to our dinner – what an honor!) and extravagantly-priced creature, we prepared a delicious Provencal-style stew with olives, capers and tomatoes, the making of which we recorded to fashion our first We Are Never Full podcast! What better way to give thanks for the life of a noble beast than to prepare it for the hereafter with a savory, herby sauce and record this event for posterity in mp3?

But, regardless of your feelings about eating rabbits, it really was a truly memorable meal and an excellent recipe (see below). We hope you’ll listen to the podcast and let us know what you think about our first, amateurish foray into the world of multimedia production. We’re planning more podcasts for the future and expect to get much better at it with every attempt.

****Sorry to interrupt. It’s Amy. Before you download this podcast please keep a few things in mind: 1) I have a naturally deep, raspy voice, but in this recording I really do sound like I have a penis. 2) I am naturally loud (hey, I’m Italian-American) and Jonny definitely has a more refined speaking voice, but in this podcast I am SO loud… for this, I am sorry. 3) This is our first try at this. We have no special programs and no money to buy one, so we downloaded a free audio-editing program and attempted to use it with no directions. Ok, if you’re still up for it… ENJOY.

Provencal Rabbit Stew with Olives and Capers (serves 4)

Rabbit can dry out quickly when cooked because it lacks fat, so this stew works perfectly to keep the meat moist and to tenderize it through long, slow cooking. We ate it with some boiled potatoes for the first meal, then over some tagliatelle as a ragu the second time. Either way it’s delicious and would also work well over rice or just served with some crusty country bread.

Ingredients

1 large rabbit (2-3 lbs)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
½ cup plain flour
½ cup smooth Dijon mustard + 2 tablespoons extra
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
½ cup coarsely chopped carrot
1 cup white wine (whatever you plan to drink with the meal)
1 large sprig thyme
1 medium sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
1½ tsp tomato paste
5 finely chopped garlic cloves
3-4 cups chicken stock
1 16-0z can of whole, peeled tomatoes (tomatoes only, no juice)
¾lb brine-cured green olives (without pimentos)
1 can black olives, drained
¾ cup capers (large, not nonpareils)
¼ cup finely chopped/chiffonaded parsley

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Cut rabbits into 6 pieces: hind legs (2), forelegs (2) and center-loin/spine (cut in half) or have your butcher do this for you.
3. Brush the rabbit pieces with mustard and then dredge them lightly in flour, shaking off excess.
4. Put a large, high-sided ovenproof pot (we used our big enameled cast-iron Le Creuset) over medium heat and add olive oil.
5. Add rabbit and brown on both sides – 2-3 mins per side or until golden brown. Remove and set aside
6. Add the onions and carrots to the pot and cook over a slightly higher heat until onions have some color. Sprinkle in the leftover flour, if any remains, and stir well into onion. (Additional oil may be necessary here if pan is dry.)
7. Deglaze pot with white wine over high heat and mix well to get all the crusty bits off.
8. Add the thyme, rosemary and bay, extra two tablespoons of mustard and tomato paste and garlic. Mix well.
9. Return rabbit to pot. Add plum tomatoes, olives and capers and add enough chicken stock to cover meat and vegetables by about an inch. Bring to a boil. Cover and braise in oven for 1½ hours or until meat has begun to pull away from bones.
10. Return pan to stove top and reduce sauce by about half. You may also thicken sauce with flour, if desired.
11. Check seasoning and sprinkle with the parsley.
12. Serve. Bowls are best, we found. Enjoy!

Thanks to Dean & DeLuca for the base of this recipe.

Please note that we are FINALLY up on iTunes. Check out all our podcasts

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY:

• Spanish Easter Bread – Hornazo
• The Wrong Message from a Former Prophet (Delia Smith Jumps Ship)
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• Jamon, Jamon
• FRITO MISTO DI MARE (FRIED MIXED SEAFOOD AND VEGGIES)
• PERFECT BROCCOLI DI RAPE WITH SWEET SAUSAGE
• ROASTED PORK SHOULDER (Pernil) – The Low and Slow Method
• PAPPA AL POMODORO (Tuscan Tomato and Bread Soup)

Just to get your excitement level up even more about salt (if you aren’t already on the edge of your seat panting), I’ll continue with my brief history lesson. We kind of take salt for granted. Unless it’s fancy like that fleur de sel or that Hawaian lava salt stuff, people kind of think, “Whateva… It’s just salt” and then throw it over their left shoulder as if it were nothing or get a giggle out of loosening the lid on a shaker at a diner and watch someone use it (heee heee, teee heeee heeee!) only to waste it as it falls all over the table and floor. But salt IS something. God damn it! If salt was a person, she’d be older than God (salt’s the oldest known food additive), or at least Jesus. Hell, she IS God (can you imagine cooking without it?). Did you know that at certain points in time and in certain places, salt was used as currency? Wars were supposedly waged in the name of salt. Hell, Northwich, Cheshire (United Kingdom) wouldn’t be the awesome, contemporary and trendy metropolis it is today if it weren’t for their salt mines – they even have a museum dedicated to it! ***Note: My husband wanted to let you all know that the Salt Museum was so stimulating to him that on a fun, weekend trip at age seven, he fell fast asleep on a pile of salt – ok, it was a bench, but whatever.****

One of salt’s main use back in the day was in preserving fish (remember, besides salt, you also seem to take ice and refrigeration for granted – are you feeling like shit yet?) and other foods. Ever eat bacalao/bacala? Yes, thanks to the days before fridges and freezers, the Portuguese and Spanish used a “wet” method to salt-preserve their fish on-board their boats while the French and English used the ‘dry’ method by drying their fish on racks onshore (www.saltinstitute.org). Maybe this is also why salt is mentioned in the Bible 30 times?

Which leads me to the point – baking a whole fish in salt seems natural to me now. When I decided to cook this after seeing Jose Andres do it recently, I couldn’t believe how delicious this cheap, easy and simple way of cooking a fish could be. Please, I beg you to give this a shot. I’ve read that you can cook chicken and squid as well as many other things in a salt crust. I recommend a whole fish mainly because you can fillet it and remove or not eat the skin. Yes, you remove most of the salt from the fish after it has been cooked, but there is still a very, very salty residue on the skin. Just eat the moist meat under the salty skin with just a squeeze of fresh lemon and a drizzle of really good olive oil. So rustic (see picture – I couldn’t really plate this in a pretty way), so “salt-of-the-earth” kind of a meal (pun kind of intended) and so freaking easy. Paired with some crunchy, spicy okra fritters and you’ve got a great and pretty healthy meal. This is also a great meal to have around Lent or Easter (meat free) – kind of seems a bit Biblical to me.

SALT CRUSTED WHOLE SNAPPER WITH OKRA FRITTERS AND LOUISIANA REMOULADE – Serves 2

For the Fish:

• 1 2-lb whole fish (we used snapper)
• 1/2 lemon sliced up
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 2 bay leaves (optional)
• 1 big box of kosher salt
• water

For the okra fritters:

• 2 cups sliced okra (thinly sliced)
• 1 cup chopped onions
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cornmeal
• milk (enough to moisten batter if necessary)
• salt and pepper
• pinch of cayanne pepper
• pinch of garlic powder
• veggie oil for frying

For the Remoulade (this makes alot):

• 1 cup light mayo
• 1/2 cup dijon mustard (if you have creole mustard, even better)
• 1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 scallion, thinly sliced
• 1 stalk celery, thinly diced
• parsley, chopped
• juice of 1/4 lemon
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. Prep your remoulade so it has some time to sit and the flavors can meld together. All you need to do is add every ingredient together and stir. Done.
2. Prep your okra fritters. Slice your okra and onions and saute for a few minutes to soften. Add to a bowl and allow to cool for a minute. Add your flour and cornmeal and season with some salt, pepper, cayenne and garlic powder. Stir all together. Beat your eggs with a fork and add to your veggies/flour/cornmeal mixture. Stir. If batter seems way too thick, add a bit of milk and stir. We kept our mixture pretty thick because I wanted a few thick, big fritters instead of a bunch of small ones. You want it thicker than pancake batter, but not as thick as bread dough! Reserve on side for a moment.
3. Preheat your oven to 450.
4. Now, let’s get your fish started. In a LARGE bowl, mix your salt with some water. We used about 2 pounds of salt and a cup or so of water. Lay about a half-inch to one-inch of salt in the bottom of your baking pan. Add two bay leaves (optional) for the fish to lay on.
5. Stuff the fish (where it has been gutted) and add some lemon wedges, some crushed garlic cloves and a few thyme sprigs. Try and close the ‘gap’ as much as possible – you don’t want to get too much salt in there. Lay your fish on the bed of salt and (now the fun part) pile the rest of your salt on top of the whole fish. You want it to be at least an inch or two thick.
6. Once you have your salt mound perfected, throw it in to your 450 degree oven for 25 minutes.
7. While fish is cooking, fry up your okra fritters. Put about 2 cups of vegetable oil in a pan and heat till it’s ready to fry. Using a large tablespoon, shape a fritter and cook in the oil – I pressed down on the fritter to make it more like a flat disk instead of a ball. Allow to cook about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes tops before flipping (depending on how hot your stove is). When finished, allow to drain on some paper towels and sprinkle with a bit of salt and a squeeze of lemon.
8. When your fish is ready, allow to sit for a few minutes and then break the salt crust with a sharp knife. Don’t cut into the fish, though! Throw away the bits of salt crust that come off and when you remove your fish, dust the extra salt off of it.
9. Filet your fish by slicing one side of the meat against the bone. Remove the bone and plate your filets. Squeeze some fresh lemon juice and drizzle some of your favorite extra virgin olive oil on top of the fish. Serve with some okra fritters that are topped with the remoulade. Dig in!

CHECK OUT SOME OF OUR OTHER LENT-APPROVED FISH RECIPES:

• BREAD-CRUSTED FISH WITH A LEMON BUTTER SAUCE
• WHOLE, FRIED SNAPPER WITH A PARSLEY GARLIC SAUCE
• ANISE-FLAVORED SALMON IN PARCHMENT POUCH
• LIVORNESE FISH STEW

The reason I put the word ‘kabob’ in quotation marks is because these technicaly are not kabobs. Most people associate the word kabob with grilled meat on a skewer. Well, that is partially right. Kabobs are cubed, marinated pieces of meat. Because we are using ground meat it kind of loses the ‘kabob’ title and becomes a Kubideh/Kafta in Lebanon or a Kūbide in Iran. The word Kubideh is the Persian word for “chopped” or “mashed”. Altough not traditional, free to substitute ground lamb for ground pork or beef but technicaly Kubideh should be a mix of ground lamb and beef. Also, traditionally the onion you mix with your ground meat should be almost pureed in a food processor before it is mixed in. I didn’t do this, but feel free to go traditional!

Also, do not fret if you don’t have any skewers, you could just roll the ground meat into the oval-ish shape and just cook that way. Another non-traditional element I added to our kubideh is tzatziki sauce which is traditionally a Greek dip or sauce which tops souvlaki and gyros. I think the tzatziki sauce really brings this meal together and gives keeps it moist. I highly recommend making it to go with the kabobs.

GROUND LAMB ‘KABOBS’ (LAMB KUBIDEH)

Ingredients:

For the ground meat:

• 1 lb. of ground lamb (use more ground lamb if you’re really hungry!)
• 1/2 onion, finely minced
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• some ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon minced parsley (fresh, preferably)
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped mint (fresh, preferably)
• 2 tablespoons of feta cheese, crumbled
• some lemon zest
• 1 egg, beaten

For the tzatziki:

• 2 small containers of low-fat or fat-free plain yogurt (if you can get greek yogurt, go for it!)
• 1/2 of cucumber, seeds taken out, peeled and cut into small pieces
• the zest and juice of one lemon
• 1 big clove of garlic, smashed and minced finely
• 2-3 tablespoons of fresh mint, chopped
• pinch of salt

Other ingredients:

• White or whole wheat pitas
• 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
• lettuce, thinly sliced
• feta cheese, crumbled
• hot sauce (optional)

What to do:

1. Line a sieve with cheesecloth or 2 paper towels. Put yogurt in this and allow to drain for 1/2 hour. This will create a thicker tzatziki sauce.
2. Combine all the ground meat ingredients except egg. Whisk egg and add to ground meat. Use those hands to mix it up – get in there! Heat up your griddle pan and turn on your overhead fan – this creates lots of smoke.
3. Shape the meat into thick, oval shapes. Poke a skewer into the middle of the meat. Once griddle pan is hot, cook meat. Make sure to turn so every side gets cooked (about 45 seconds per side). You want it to be kind of crispy on the outside.
4. Meanwhile, slice up your garnish – red onion and lettuce and crumble some more feta.
5. When tzatziki is drained, transfer to a bowl. Mix in other ingredients and allow to sit while you assemble the kubideh’s/kabobs.
6. Toast one side of your pita on the griddle pan. If there’s still some ground meat fat on there, allow the pita to soak some of it up while it’s grilling – about 1 minute.
7. Layer the ground meat first, topped with some crumbled feta, a squeeze of lemon, lettuce, red onion and a squeeze of hot sauce. On one side of the pita, put 1-2 tablespoons of tzatziki, roll up and ENJOY!!

CHECK OUT THESE OTHER SUPER EASY AND QUICK MEALS:

• POTATO AND LEEK SOUP
• TORTILLA SOUP
• CHORIZO, CHICKPEA AND POTATO SOUP
• PASTA WITH LEEKS, ASPARAGUS, MUSHROOMS AND GRUYERE, TOPPED WITH A FRIED EGG
• ORECCHIETTE WITH SAUSAGE AND KALE
• GROUND LAMB KABOBS (Lamb Kubideh)
• SWEET ANISE-FLAVORED SALMON IN A POUCH (SALMON EN PAPILLOTE)

***No, this is not a grilled-cheese sandwich!

I have to give it up to my favorite cooking mag Saveur (and subsequently the chef who created this recipe, Bruce Sherman of North Pond in Chicago) for introducing me to one of the coolest, most creative and tasty ways to cook fish. In the October, 2007 issue of Saveur, there is a recipe for Bread-Crusted Halibut. When I read the recipe, I got so excited to try it. I had never (nor would ever) thought of utilizing white bread as a way to encrust a fillet of fish – BRILLIANT! First of all, I haven’t purchased a loaf of white Wonder Bread in about, well… hmmm… maybe since college? Actually, screw that. I couldn’t afford a loaf of Wonder Bread in college. I believe the last time I ate the 99 cent special was 1985, until my mom realized it was not as good for us as wheat bread and made us switch.

So there I was in the store, bypassing my stupid (but delish) and ridiculously overpriced $4 loaf of organic whole grain bread, and grabbing the soft, airy 99 cent white-bread loaf. Although I was glad I was saving some dough (no pun intended), I wondered what the hell I was really going to do with 25 slices of uneaten white bread. PB&J for two weeks? Baloney and Cheese? Crutons, anyone? Whatever, for 99 cents I could throw the rest out! (Guess what? I figured out a way to use those extra slices!! See the “Update” down at the end of this post).

The recipe in Saveur called for halibut, but I didn’t feel like biking the 15 blocks to the fish monger so I bought the nicest looking fish at my grocery store, red snapper. You can definitely substitute a fillet of any type of firm white fish for this recipe. And let me tell you, using white bread as the crust for a filet of fish is absolutely delicious. It was buttery and crispy. I highly recommend trying this!!

WHITE-BREAD CRUSTED FISH WITH LEMON BUTTER SAUCE (feeds 2-4)

Ingredients:

• 1 lb of snapper (or whatever firm whitefish you choose)
• 4-5 slices of cheap, white bread, crusts removed
• 1 eggwhite
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• Salt and Pepper

Lemon Butter Sauce

• 1/2 of small onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of white wine
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter
• Juice of one lemon
• 2 tablespoons cream or sour cream
• Salt

What to do:

1. Slice your snapper into pieces the width of a piece of crust-less white bread. Feel free to use a piece as your ruler.
2. Season your fish with some salt and pepper.
3. Brush one side of the fish with the eggwhite. If using fish with skin, make sure you brush it on the skinless side. (You can use skinless fish or fish with skin on. Just make sure you score the skin to avoid it from curling up when cooking).
4. Press a piece of crustless white bread on to the side of fish you just brushed with eggwash. Press down so it adheres. Do this with each piece of fish.
5. Cut away any of the excess bread that is overlapping the sides of the fish.
6. Meanwhile, make your lemon butter sauce. Saute your diced onion in some butter or oliveoil until translucent. Deglaze with your white wine. Let the wine simmer down until only about 1-2 tablespoons remain. Add the lemon juice and let simmer for another minute or so then add your cream and the butter, allowing it to simmer for a few more minutes so it’s thick. Add a pinch of salt if necessary (sometimes this helps balance out the tartness of the lemon). Keep warm.
7. Now, back to the fish. Heat up a tablespoon or two of butter along with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. When melted, add the fish, bread side down, to the pan. Allow to saute about 2 1/2 minutes on the bread side, then flip to saute the skin side. Cook about 5-6 minutes depending on the thickness of your fish. The bread side should be crispy and browned. If you think it needs more time to brown, allow to saute for another 30 seconds or so.
8. Serve topped with your lemon butter sauce and with your choice of sides. We liked grilled asparagus and roasted potatoes/carrots medley. Enjoy!

***UPDATE: Four days later I had friends over for dinner and ended up using all the rest of the white bread for some appetizers. These appetizers were very gross-looking, very 1950’s, but very delish to eat. You mix about 3/4 of a cup of mayo (I know… it already sounds gross), with a tablespoon of Worcestershire Sauce and a good handful of parmesean cheese. Mix. Spread on crustless white bread and toast in oven for 10 minutes. Cut into triangles. Voila!

CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS YOU MAY ENJOY: 

• WHOLE FISH BAKED IN SALT
  
• SWEET ANISE-FLAVORED SALMON IN A POUCH (SALMON EN PAPILLOTE)
• SQUID WITH GOLDEN POTATOES
• COCONUT CHILI SHRIMP WITH ROASTED VEGGIE RICE
• WHOLE FRIED SNAPPER WITH GARLIC AND PARSLEY SAUCE
• Could Cheap White Bread Be the Answer to the End of World Hunger?
• Free Lunch for Inner-City Kids – If It’s Free Does It Have To Be Crap?

So maligned are pressure-cookers that it seems almost sacrilegious of a food blog like this, that likes to extol the virtues of fresh ingredients and traditional cooking methods, to even consider adding a recipe that calls for using one. Undaunted, here we are flaunting convention and defying the culinary thought-police once more with a recipe for red wine and herb braised lamb shanks made in our brand spanking new pressure-cooker. Of course, this is but an exaggeration. We’re perfectly happy to try almost any food and any cooking method, and since we’d got given a pressure-cooker for a wedding present, and yesterday was the first autumnal feeling day of the year, we thought, why not give it a try?

Pressure-cookers got their bad name originally for two principal reason. Firstly, they were fundamentally quite dangerous contraptions that were liable to explode and inflict either physical injury by launching scalding lumps of food at those in the kitchen, or enduring damage to your kitchen decor, or both. And secondly, because they tended to stew food, boil out it’s goodness and turn everything to mush. However, advances in design and therefore safety mean that modern pressure-cookers are regaining popularity for their astounding ability to cook dishes that normally take several hours, within forty minutes, while preserving the food’s goodness.

We were first put on to the beauty and convenience of the pressure-cooker by the humble, and vastly underrated, Jacques Pepin. On more than one episode of Fast Food, My Way, Monsieur Pepin gets out his trusty pressure cooker and makes a delicious braised dish (beef, mushrooms and pearl onions, from memory) in about half an hour, while describing how he was inspired by his mother who used to use her pressure cooker on weekday evenings to create a hearty family meal in under an hour. Apparently, Maman Pepin would chop the vegetables and meat while still in her coat, and then slap the lid on the pressure-cooker, while she did various other household chores, and while we used our pressure-cooker for the first time last night (a Sunday) we can definitely see how using it on a weekday meal in the winter would work extremely well.

Here’s the recipe for the dish we made, but there are probably hundreds of different things you could make, all of them inside forty minutes. Next time, we’re going to make lamb rogan josh curry.

Check out some of our other pressure-cooker recipes: Lemongrass Beef Shortribs, Korean Style Pork Ribs and Lebanese Fatteh Blahmeh.

Wine-Braised Lamb Shanks with Rosemary and Thyme in the Pressure-Cooker

1 1/2 – 2lbs lamb shanks (probably 2 shanks)
1 spanish onion, roughly diced
3-6 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 large carrot, roughly diced
1/2 lb mushrooms (whichever kind you like) quartered, halved or whole depending on size
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
7-10 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 bottle red wine (whatever you like drinking)
1pt chicken or vegetable stock
3 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp flour
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper

1. add a couple of good pinches of salt and pepper to the flour in a bowl and dredge lamb shanks until lightly coated.
2. add half the oil to pressure cooker at medium-high heat and brown lamb until colored well on all sides. Remove and set aside.
3. reduce heat to medium and add onion, carrot and mushrooms to pot and remaining oil. sautee until onions go opaque and carrots soften a bit and get sugary. add garlic and sautee for three more minutes.
4. add herbs and the lamb shanks back to the pot. turn heat back to high and add wine and about 3/4 of the stock.
5. bring liquid to a boil then place lid on pressure cooker. keep heat turned to high until pressure monitor shows maximum pressure has been reached, then follow manufacturer’s directions for keeping pressure at the right level for the right amount of time. On our model, I turned the heat to medium, and cooked it for 35 minutes.
6. release pressure and stand back until steam clears.
7. season to taste before plating, but be careful! I burned the sh!t out of my mouth tasting the sauce
8. Enjoy.

I served the lamb with a smoked provolone, cream and parsley polenta and wilted broccoli di rape, and it worked very well indeed. It’s worth noting that the whole thing tasted much better the following day, as is often the case with sauces – they improve until finally they go off.

Do any of you have good pressure-cooker recipes? And, if so, are you brave enough to come out and say that you too appreciate the noble pressure-cooker for what it is – a much-maligned invention of genius? Well, come on then, let’s have them!

This brings me to the point of this post – when traveling in Northern Italy last month I had many “D.A.H.M’s” but the one that stands out the most is a dish that Jonny had at a small, random little restaurant in a small town on the island of Elba off the coast of Tuscany. The dish was Pasta con Tonno. Pasta with Tuna… huh? Yes, many of you may be thinking…. naaaasty. Eww. Why would you put something you mix with mayo on top of warm pasta. Forget it. Well, don’t. It’s awesome. The key is to buy actual TONNO -not “Chicken of the Sea” or any other American-style Tuna Fish in a can. You must buy Italian Tonno in Olio/Olive Oil (usually about $2.99 a can but WELL worth it). Bumble Bee brand makes an OK one… but not as good as the European kind. Whatever, all the Yellowtail in Oil tastes good in this dish.

While waiting for my husband to come home after a night of hanging out at the pub, I was starving and couldn’t wait any more. I threw this dish together at 9.30PM in 12 minutes w/o having to go to the store. You may also substitute the radicchio in this recipe for swiss chard, as we recently tried. Delish!

Here’s my attempt to help you recreate it:

PASTA CON TONNO (Serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 cans Tonno in Olive Oil (if you can’t find, you could try it w/ a can of tuna packed in oil – not water!)
• 3-4 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (use Extra Virgin – it’s the sauce… don’t skimp on taste for calories, please…)
• 1 big clove of garlic – sliced or chopped
• 1 small onion – chopped
• 1 handful of cherry tomatoes – sliced in half
• juice of 1 lemon
• optional (just tried this last night and it added a nice extra layer of flavor) – thinly sliced red radicchio
• Salt and Pepper
• Sprinkling of Parmigiano Reggiano
• 1 Box of your fave short pasta – I like Fusilli, Gemelli or Penne

How to Do It:

1. Start boiling the water for your pasta – don’t forget to heavily salt and throw a tablespoon of olive oil in there!
2. Add about 3 tablespoons or so (eyeball enough olive oil so that it covers the bottom of the pan)
3. On Low-Medium (closer to Medium) heat, add the chopped onion. After about 2-3 minutes, when onion is partially cooked, turn heat down to low and throw in the garlic.
4. Throw your pasta into the water – make sure you know how many minutes till it’s al dente! I usually subtract at least 2 minutes from the package’s cooking time to make sure I get it right.
5. Let the garlic flavor get absorbed by the olive oil. When you slowly and lowly heat the oil, the garlic will almost create a garlic oil. This will give your “sauce” more flav-a.
6. About 3 minutes before your pasta will be done, throw in the tomatoes… add a bit of Salt and Pepper. Feel free to stir the stuff around a bit. Keep that heat on low!
7. Check the pasta for al dente. Drain the pasta but reserve 1 Tablespoon of the pasta water for the sauce.
8. Throw the pasta into the pan w/ the oil, onions, garlic and tomatoes and add the tablespoon of reserved pasta water.
9. Add the whole can of tonno with it’s oil.
10. Squeeze some lemon all over. Stir. Add a bit of S&P to taste. Throw your thinly sliced, optional radicchio in there. Sprinkle some Parmigiano over it. Stir again and VOILA! Serve w/ some fresh basil if you want.

This meal takes however long it takes for pasta to boil to be completed. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.