Another reason to love bistro food: Chicken with Lentils (Poulet aux Lentilles)

A dry spice/herb/salt rub replaces liquid brining for the chicken, which is then roasted atop the lentils and vegetables, flavoring the entire dish. Recipe below.

YOU KNOW ME AND THE B WORD. Sure, I’m an unrepentant Francophile, but I’m an even bigger bistrophile. Still, when I came across a cookbook titled Bistro Chicken and promising 101 bistro recipes with chicken, even I thought that was drilling a bit deep. Then I looked inside. Continue reading “Another reason to love bistro food: Chicken with Lentils (Poulet aux Lentilles)” →

Mushrooms, Mardi Gras and spicing things up

A quick round-up of food-related stuff, including a lighter, quicker Red Beans and Rice recipe.

Turns out a healthy dose of spices is good for your health. In the March issue of Bon Appétit, Jack Turner reports on the health and weight loss benefits of spicing up our meals. He writes in “The Spice of Life” that flavor boosters that make dinner taste better also satisfy our hunger faster, so we eat less. And when you cook with plenty of spices, you need less fat to make food taste interesting.

Even more interesting, spices are proving beneficial in “the treatment and cure of a range of illnesses and chronic conditions.” Turmeric has been linked to slowing the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have used ginger to kill ovarian cancer cells. And as Turner tells us, “In clinical trials around the world, spices such as ginger, pepper, cumin, and cinnamon have been credited with helping ailments as diverse as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, depression, and multiple sclerosis.” Continue reading “Mushrooms, Mardi Gras and spicing things up” →

Potage Crécy: French for “It’s cold outside—you need some creamy carrot soup”

A handful of basic ingredients—carrots, potatoes, leeks, stock, fresh thyme and cream—proves once again that the French are masters of sublime simplicity, in this colorful, subtle soup. Recipe below.

The thing that keeps me coming back to French food is its perfect simplicity. And yes, classic French cuisine is littered with plenty of complex creations, all wonderful, to be sure. But what really wows me is how they can take a half dozen or so ordinary ingredients and in a few simple steps make something perfect.

The French get food. They celebrate it. Much as their wines are named for the regions where the grapes are grown, many French dishes are named for their places of origin. According to Williams-Sonoma Collection: French, a gem of a cookbook, Crécy-en-Ponthieu in northern France is known for producing some of the country’s best carrots. Hence, the name for this creamy soup. [According to other sources, the town is even better known for a crucial battle in the Hundred Years’ War in 1346, a battle that did not end well for the French.] If I have to choose between dusty history and this subtle, satisfying potage, give me the soup, please.

A soup by any other name. Depending on who’s doing the counting, the French have either three or four distinct categories of soups. At one end of the scale is consommé, a clear broth that may or may not contain garnishes. At the opposite end is soupe, a “thick, hearty mélange with chunks of food,” according to epicurious.com. Potage falls somewhere in the middle, a thick, creamy soup that is often puréed. The Williams-Sonoma cookbook here calls out another category, bisque, a smooth, velvety soup most often made with lobster or shellfish and cream. Continue reading “Potage Crécy: French for “It’s cold outside—you need some creamy carrot soup”” →

Rooting for the new year: Braised pork and cabbage

Cooked separately, paprika-seasoned pork and red cabbage with caraway seeds come together beautifully as Braised Pork and Cabbage. Recipes below.

As I said when I wrote about simple Christmas gifts last week, my maternal grandmother grew up on a farm. Even after she moved to the big city of St. Louis as a young woman, many of her ideas, traditions and even superstitions remained firmly rooted in that rural life. For New Year’s Eve dinner, she always insisted on eating pork. Her reasoning? Pigs root forward when searching for food; chickens scratch backward. In the new year, you want to move ahead. So for this New Year’s Eve post, I’m delighted to share this heavenly pork dish Marion made using humble ingredients. I think my grandmother would have loved it. Continue reading “Rooting for the new year: Braised pork and cabbage” →

Humble ingredients made restaurant-ready: Braised beef short ribs, puréed cauliflower

Buttery-flavored braised short ribs are complemented by the mild tang of puréed cauliflower for a restaurant-worthy meal. Recipes below.

This week, you’ll find a pair of cooking posts here again. Individually, they’re quite good—together, they’re stellar. Also, Blue Kitchen has made the big time! Last week’s Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies are featured in Bon Appétit’s Blog Envy holiday showcase. Go to the website and you’ll find nearly two dozen holiday recipes in all, all from bloggers—including me. Woohoo!

We watched the utterly charming film Ratatouille again this weekend [in case you’ve not seen it, I’ve included a clip at the end of the post—and even if you have seen it, you’ll enjoy it just as much the second time around]. As the lead rat-turned-chef Remy produced his beautifully architectural take on the title peasant dish, I suddenly remembered short ribs.

Increasingly, celebrity chefs everywhere are rethinking humble ingredients and dishes—reinventing them, elevating them to starring roles on elegant menus. Indeed, the ratatouille in question was actually created by Thomas Keller and served in his legendary California restaurant, the French Laundry. Pixar Animation Studios hired Keller as a consultant on the film and, according to an article in New York magazine, Remy is the embodiment of the famously fastidious, focused chef.

Short ribs are one surprising ingredient getting the star treatment these days. Layered with meat, fat, bone and connective tissue, they are as big on flavor as they are inexpensive [well, used to be before they hit the big time—but at four bucks or so a pound, they’re still reasonable]. As such, they have long been a popular ingredient for soups and stocks. Because of the long cooking times usually demanded by those chewy connective tissues, short ribs have also been a cut of choice for the traditional French boiled dinner pot-au-feu [“pot on the fire”]. Interestingly, Korean cooks take an opposite tack, butterflying short ribs almost to the bone, then marinating and grilling them. Continue reading “Humble ingredients made restaurant-ready: Braised beef short ribs, puréed cauliflower” →

Homemade for the holidays: Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies

Fresh rosemary adds a subtle, mysterious something extra to Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies, perfect with a cup of tea—and when holiday guests drop by. Recipe below.

YEAH, THE GUY WHO SAYS HE NEVER BAKES BAKED. But these are cookies. No yeast, no punching dough down and letting it rise again in some mysterious warm, dark place. Or is it a cool, dark place? [On a side note, the term cool, dark place invariably makes me think of the Empty Bottle or the Green Mill or some other welcoming bar, and any thoughts of baking immediately vanish.] Continue reading “Homemade for the holidays: Hazelnut Rosemary Jam Cookies” →

Warm and sunny: Moroccan Braised Beef

Moroccan Braised Beef, made with golden raisins and an international mix of spices, delivers the warm, sweet/savory flavors of Morocco. Recipe below.

Last week, I sang the praises of oven-braising cheap cuts of beef for flavorful, juicy tenderness. With winter maintaining its icy choke hold on the Midwest, I was inspired to explore this technique further. Nothing like firing up the oven for a couple of hours and enjoying a hearty, meateriffic dinner to take the edge off the cold. Eventually, my virtual explorations led me to Morocco.

“Morocco.” The name alone conjures up exotic visions—Marrakesh, Casablanca [and Bogart and Bergman], souks [Moroccan markets] filled with dates, nuts, fragrant spices… Traditional Moroccan cuisine is as influenced by Europe and the spice trade routes as by being part of the African continent. Indeed, it is a mere eight miles [13 kilometers] from Spain at the narrowest point of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Lamb, chicken and beef all figure heavily in Moroccan cooking, especially in their stewlike tagines [the name for the dishes themselves as well as the special ceramic pots in which they’re cooked].

As do spices. Cumin, ginger, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne, saffron… Various takes on the Moroccan spice blend Ras-El-Hanout use some or all of these and other spices. The emphasis is on bold flavor, not heat. The recipe that became the basis for my braised beef even called for [authentically or otherwise] the Indian spice blend garam masala. Again, given the centuries of the spice trade through the region, it didn’t seem off the mark. And when the spice mix hit the hot pot early in the cooking process, it gave us an instant preview of the exotically delicious meal to come.

Mixing sweet with savory is also a big part of this cuisine. Besides onions, the vegetable that appeared most frequently in the recipes I found was carrots. And raisins showed up in more recipes than not. Once I’d settled on the beef dish, I started looking for a Moroccan side to accompany it. After the fourth or fifth recipe with raisins and pretty much the same spice mix, I served a simple salad on the side. And I opted for spooning the beef over a bed of ditali, instead of the recommended couscous. I felt the scale and texture of the tiny tubes worked better with the chunks of beef.

The beef itself was tender and full of flavor; the raisins [which plumped up to resemble small, golden grapes] and spice blend lent a definite sweet note to the savory meat. The cayenne delivered a bit of heat that sneaks up on you without overpowering the dish. Together, they served up a bit of warmth and sunshine on a cold Chicago night. Continue reading “Warm and sunny: Moroccan Braised Beef” →

Slow good: Oven-braised beef stew

Slow, moist cooking in the oven makes inexpensive chuck roast juicy, flavorful and fork tender for this Oven-braised Beef Stew. Recipe below.

A couple of quick notes before I get started:

First, is green the new color of Valentine’s Day? Carmen and Aimee of the website Ecoscene report that Chicago high-end chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat not only makes exotic treats guaranteed to spice up your Valentine’s Day—they do it green. In fact, they’re soon to be LEEDs certified.

Next, a quick little toot of the Blue Kitchen horn. Sometime last Sunday evening, the odometer clicked over to 100,000 hits. Very cool to see. But enough about me—let’s talk about stew.

I work in advertising. In just about every agency where I’ve worked, you’ll either see the following sign [usually in the print production manager’s office, if the agency’s big enough to have one], or creatives will bring it up when they think the suits aren’t standing up to the clients enough, particularly regarding deadlines:

GOOD
FAST
CHEAP
Pick two.

I know this sign isn’t unique to advertising—I’ve seen it in at least one car repair place, for instance. But wherever you see it, the message is clear. If you want something done good and fast, it’s going to cost you [almost anything can be done fast, if you throw enough money at it]. If you want something fast and cheap, it ain’t gonna be pretty. And if you want something good and cheap, it’s going to take some time.

Which brings me to beef stew meat. Stews were made for the cheap cuts. Chuck roast, the cut most commonly used for stew meat, has lots of connective tissue in it, which requires a long cooking time to break down so the meat will be tender. Conversely [and somewhat perversely], more expensive cuts of beef—steaks, for instance—get tougher the longer you cook them. This is why you should never order steak more than medium rare in a restaurant; and according to Anthony Bourdain, if you order a steak well done, you are guaranteed to get the worst steak the chef has at hand, because the steak is going to be ruined and it’s assumed you wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Here’s what the Restaurants & Institution’s Beef U site says about connective tissue:

“Connective tissues are the tendons and ligaments that attach muscles to the bone, and help give muscles their shape and form. The amount of connective tissue determines the meat’s tenderness; the greater the connective tissue, the less tender the meat. Muscles that are used for locomotion and power (i.e., in the legs and shoulders) have more connective tissue and typically yield less tender meat. The muscles of support (i.e., in the back—rib and loin) move less, are not as important for locomotion or power and, as a result, are more tender.”

Chuck comes from the shoulder, one of those locomotion and power sets of muscles. No problem—you just cook it a long time. Well, except the problem with that is the meat can tend to dry out when cooked a long time—especially, it turns out, on the stovetop. It’s nearly impossible to keep the temperature low enough with the pot sitting right there on the flame.

Blake over at The Paupered Chef wrote about cooking short ribs, another notoriously tough cut—wrote about it twice, in fact, once admitting his failure and once telling how he got it right. I remembered reading the second post and storing away in my brain that the difference was cooking them in the oven instead of on the stovetop.

Now, I’ve cooked stew for years. Good stew, not great stew. Oh, it’s always been hearty and satisfying, and I’ve generally gotten a nice mix of flavors going with wine and herbs. But often, the meat has tended toward the tough, dry, stringy side. Even if I cooked it over low heat for a couple of hours, same deal. So when stew weather hit with a vengeance—a spate of snowstorms, frigid temperatures and howling winds—I decided to solve this problem once and for all.

When meat’s the problem, start with meat solutions. I already knew what vegetables I wanted in my stew and how to prepare them, so instead of looking for stew recipes, I focused on the meat—specifically ways to braise beef, a slow, moist method of cooking. Remembering Blake’s tale of two short ribs, I rejected any stovetop recipes I found. Once I settled on a basic oven-braising recipe, I did what I always do—borrowed from other recipes I’d stumbled upon in the process as well as my own cooking experiences to morph it into my own take. And that take was delicious, if I say so myself—the beef flavorful, juicy and fork tender. Continue reading “Slow good: Oven-braised beef stew” →

Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail

Coriander-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail fillet, barely sautéed and served with wasabi mashed potatoes and a mixed green salad. Recipes below.

A quick note: The two fish recipes in this post call for a specific type of fish. They can also be made with others—I’ll mention some possible substitutes with the recipes. The wasabi mashed potato recipe doesn’t call for fish at all.

I was recently invited by Kona Blue Water Farms to sample some of their sushi-grade Kona Kampachi. This is their name for their own sustainably farmed Hawaiian yellowtail or Almaco Jack, a crisper textured cousin to the Japanese hamachi popular in sashimi and sushi.

Doing a little research, I discovered these 5- to 6-pounders aren’t just your typical farm-raised fish; as CNNMoney.com’s Business 2.0 puts it, “Hawaii startup Kona Blue is pioneering deepwater aquaculture to farm ocean fish and take the pressure off wild species.” The Seattle Post provides further details, explaining that they do this by growing the fish “in large, space-age cages submerged in 200 feet of ocean and by controlling what the fish eat. The fish are given no antibiotics or medications, just a pellet feed containing fish meal, fish oil and wheat. The fish meal and oil come from sustainable wild fisheries and the wheat comes from an organic source.” Healthwise, Kona Kamachi is rich in Omega-3 fish oils, and independent testing showed “no detectable” levels of PCBs or mercury.

Taking pressure off wild species is a particularly timely topic. Just the other day, The New York Times ran an editorial entitled “Until All the Fish Are Gone” about “the disastrous environmental, economic and human consequences of often illegal industrial fishing.”

Next, I took a look at who’s selling and cooking Kona Kampachi. The answer was restaurants and seafood stores in nearly 30 states across the country. Here in Chicago, respected restaurants Blackbird, Meritage Café & Wine Bar and Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo are among the dozens who serve it. And leading purveyors like Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop and Burhop’s Seafood carry it for home cooks.

All of the above was enough for me. Yes, I wanted to try it. In the interest of full disclosure, Kona Blue generously sent me a, well, generous sample for free. I warned them I wasn’t afraid to bite the hand that fed me—if the fish was less than wonderful, I would say so. They didn’t seem worried. And as it turns out, they had no reason to be.

A big box arrived at my office Friday. When we got home, I immediately tore it open. Inside, I found two fresh fillets, each a little more than 1-1/4 pounds, carefully wrapped and nestled in multiple ice packs. When I say fresh, I’m talking the kind of fresh we don’t take for granted in the Midwest, even in a big city like Chicago. The smell was absolutely clean, with just the wonderful briny hint of the ocean that only the freshest saltwater seafood can deliver.

Also in the interest of full disclosure, the first thing we did was slice the little tapered end off one of the fillets and devour it immediately. This was supposedly sushi-grade fish—that demanded testing, didn’t it? Marion sliced it into thin little pieces, and we had some lazy man’s sashimi. Just the fish and a little soy sauce. And soon we were skipping the soy sauce. It was that fresh, that good, satisfyingly meaty.

Now then, what to do with the rest of the fish? At a party, I had discussed our impending bounty—okay, maybe I bragged a little—with our friend Karen. I said that since it was sushi-grade, one thing I wanted to try was based on a tuna recipe long ago read but never tried, in which the fish was barely cooked on one side only and served cooked side up. Karen had just seen Ming Tsai do something similar with Japanese hamachi on his TV show Simply Ming. Since my half-remembered tuna recipe was long gone, this sounded like a great place to start.

The Ming recipe is simplicity itself. Fish fillets seasoned only with salt and pepper and then coated with a crust of coarsely ground coriander seeds and seared for a mere 30 seconds per side. I’d already rejected various recipes with soy sauce or orange juice or countless other ingredients that sounded delicious but might mask the flavor of the fish itself. But this sounded like it would let the fish shine through, with the citrusy brightness of the coriander as just a flavor note.

Ming serves his version of this dish sliced over a shaved fennel salad. I was just here for the fish. So I served my fillets whole, along with a simple salad and wasabi mashed potatoes. You’ll find the recipe below, along with one for the potatoes. You’ll also find more of a description than a recipe for the even simpler preparation I served the next night. Continue reading “Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail” →

Meaty secrets and Argentine chimichurri sauce

Salt-tenderized steak with chimichurri sauce and a side of spicy roasted potatoes. Recipe below.

My Brazilian buddy Patricia over at Technicolor Kitchen recently surprised me with a present from the trip she and her husband Joao took to Europe this past fall: a lovely package of coarsely ground flor de sal [“flower of salt” or sea salt] from Portugal.

As much as I love food and ingredients, I hate to admit that my go to for salt is just the plain old salt shaker. It’s there. And it’s iodized—and who wants a goiter, right? We have kosher salt [somewhere] and some finely ground fleur de sel, but I seldom think of them when I’m ready to season a recipe. Patricia’s gracious gift gave me the kick in the pants I needed to think outside the shaker.

Next I needed a recipe to do it justice. Well, one found me. Poking around on various food blogs and search links [okay, I was scoping out links that had brought people to Blue Kitchen—happy?], I happened on a wonderful post from last August by Jaden over at Steamy Kitchen that involved coating steaks in a heavy layer of coarse salt for 15 minutes to an hour before cooking them, then rinsing and drying them before throwing them onto the grill or into a hot pan or broiler. I gasped just like you did just then—isn’t salting ahead of time supposed to dry out steaks?

Turns out it does at first, a little. But then reverse osmosis takes over, drawing salt deep into the meat, seasoning it throughout and making it amazingly tender. Or as Jaden puts it, turning cheap “choice” steaks into Gucci “prime” steaks. In her post, she thoroughly and wittily explains the science behind it and gives lots of helpful tips. So check it out later. Below, I’ll give you a highly simplified version of what may well become my go to method for preparing steaks. In fact, check out the Kitchen Notes below to see how else I’ve made use of this cool tenderizing technique.

Parsley? On steaks? Well, parsley is a key ingredient of chimichurri sauce. But here, it gets together with dried crushed red pepper, garlic and lemon juice to become something altogether different, lively and big. I first discovered chimichurri sauce at Tango Sur, a lovely little meat-centric Argentinean restaurant here in Chicago. Argentineans know thing or two about beef. I mean, we’re talking the land of gauchos and the pampas. So when the steaks arrived at the table, I ignored the side dish of sauce for a few bites and just savored the meaty goodness of a rare steak treated right. Almost out of idle curiosity, I dipped the next bite into the sauce. Oh. My. God. This was steak to the power of ten. I didn’t even remember the name of the sauce from the menu, but suddenly I was obsessed with it. The garlic hits first, but it is closely followed by the fresh, subtly peppery taste of parsley and the heat of the crushed red pepper; the lemon juice is a bright foil to the olive oil that holds it all together.

Noise, a crush of incoming diners and the late hour drove us from the tiny restaurant before I could get another look at the menu. A little creative digging on the Internet told me chimichurri sauce originated in Argentina, but spread throughout much of Latin America [indeed, my Ecuadorian friend and former colleague Cristobal fondly remembered his mother adding it to soups when I described it]. Further digging not only turned up a recipe, but showed me it was wonderfully easy to make—suspiciously so, in fact. Five simple ingredients and time to let flavors swap around. The first time I made it, I was skeptical that something so easy could deliver the transcendent flavor I’d found that night at Tango Sur. But deliver it did.

I’ve since discovered other versions of this amazing, big-flavored sauce, many using vinegar in place of the lemon juice and even crumbled bay leaves, but I keep coming back to the original. Once you try it, I think you will too. Continue reading “Meaty secrets and Argentine chimichurri sauce” →