Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer

Chilled, chunky and chock full of healthy vegetables, this lively gazpacho makes a refreshing, simple first course all summer long.

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HAD PIZZA. I remember the first time I used chopsticks and the first time I made a pot roast and the first time I saw Terry and my first actual cocktail in an actual bar (it was a brandy Alexander—hey, I was an entry-level drinker—and it was Chumley’s). I no longer remember the first time I had gazpacho,though. Continue reading “Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer” →

Shrimp Scampi—easy on the butter, please

Shrimp, garlic, white wine and parsley get together with just enough butter for a rich, indulgent flavor in easy-to-make Shrimp Scampi with Fettuccine. Recipe below.

COMING FROM THE OCEAN AS THEY DO, IT’S FAIRLY SAFE TO ASSUME THAT SHRIMP CAN SWIM. And if you look at most recipes for shrimp scampi, they apparently love to swim in butter. We make this classic dish so infrequently that we always forget this about it. Guess we’re so focused on the shrimp, garlic and parsley—for us, these are the ingredients that define the dish. Continue reading “Shrimp Scampi—easy on the butter, please” →

Spring, schming—It might as well be chili dogs

The lack of reliably warm weather this spring calls for comfort food, and Turkey Chili Dogs don’t just hit the spot—they obliterate it. Recipe below.

This week’s post was supposed to be a light chicken sandwich celebrating the flavors of spring. I’d already created it in my head, and just thinking of it now, I can actually taste it.

But spring is being especially coy this year. We should be flinging windows open, airing out the apartment and waking to birds singing. Instead, we awoke this weekend to a cold rain being blown hard against the windows. The temperature was in the 40s and not predicted to do a lot better than the low 50s, and besides the rain, there was a wind advisory.

I had to absolutely will myself out of the warm bed to get my day started. Clearly, some light sandwich celebrating spring was not going to happen. Comfort food was called for. And to my way of thinking, there are few foods more comforting than a chili dog on a raw day.

We’ve sung the praises of chili here before. And we’ve presented various takes on it—my three-bean chili, Marion’s amazing chili and even a white chili. Whatever your regional preferences—beans, no beans, meat, no meat—chili is just plain good.

Hot dogs are less universally understood. Growing up in St. Louis, hot dogs were what you got at the ball game or something you threw on the barbecue grill for the kids when the grown-ups were having burgers. So I was somewhat mystified when I moved to Chicago the first time [this is our second tour of duty here, as I like to put it] and there seemed to be a hot dog stand every other block or so [outrageous real estate prices have diminished the number of hot dog places severely, but Chicagoans can still find plenty of places to get a great dog].

Then I had one. The word revelation springs to mind. As Doug of Hot Doug’s says, “There are no two finer words in the English language than ‘encased meats,’ my friend.” Unless you live in Chicago or New York, you may not get this level of fervor for the seemingly lowly hot dog. And even if you do get them, you’ll get all kinds of takes on what makes the perfect dog, some of them regional. Here is how NPR’s Daniel Pinkwater, born in Chicago but now living in exile in upstate New York, describes a Chicago dog:

“First, it’s on a poppy-seed bun which is doughy and substantial, but not heavy. The bun is lightly steamed at the point of serving.

“The hot dog is all beef, spicier than the New York variety. It is steamed and has a natural casing. It snaps when you bite into it, and squirts hot deliciousness. A variant is the Polish sausage which the gods ate on Olympus.
This is what goes on it:
• Yellow mustard
• Bright green pickle relish
• Chopped onion
• A kosher pickle spear
• Two slices of tomato
• Two tiny but devastating peppers
• And all-important, celery salt

“All of this is fitted together with fiendish cleverness enabling the eater to get most of it in his mouth, and only a little on his shirt. If there are fries, they are hand cut, skinny and glorious.”

Chili + Dog: The whole equals waaaay more than the sum of its parts. Okay, we’ve established that these foods are wonderful in their own right. I’d heard that chili dogs were even better, but it took Marion to introduce me to their delights. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, as I recall, and we suddenly found ourselves in the lovely semi-deserted darkness of the original John Barleycorn, a long, rambling bar and restaurant on Lincoln Avenue. I had a burger in mind, but Marion started exclaiming when she found chili dogs on the menu. I was skeptical, but even back then, I’d learned to trust her taste buds.

So we each ordered one. Honestly, it fell a little bit short of amazing. But it showed me amazing could be had. As with almost every chili dog you’ll find in a bar, restaurant or hot dog stand, there wasn’t enough chili. Here’s how you can tell: If you can pick up the chili dog and eat it without utensils, there’s not enough chili. Hell, if you can see the hot dog or much of the bun, there’s not enough chili. We bury them. In fact, for the photo above, I kind of skimped on the chili just so you could see the dog and bun.

But the wonder of the combined flavors was undeniable. Our first impulse was to order more there and tell them not to be so shy with the chili. But then we had a better idea. We hightailed it out of the bar, headed for the grocery store and then went home and cooked up the first of many chili dog orgies. Continue reading “Spring, schming—It might as well be chili dogs” →

Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated

Peppers, Parmesan and leftover pasta come together beautifully to give eggs a rustic sophistication, as Pasta Frittata. Recipe below.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in Chicago, gas has already blown past four dollars a gallon. And milk is getting close to that price. So when I saw that Ginny over at Just Get Floury had posted a challenge to make a dish that serves at least two people for five dollars or less, it sounded like an idea whose time had come.

Ginny calls her event the Dollar Dish Duel, and while she just challenges her readers to “make a dish for $5 that must feed at least two people,” I took it to mean more than a simple side dish [who can’t steam some green beans for under five bucks, for instance]. To me, the challenge was to make something substantial that either stood alone as a meal or became a meal with the addition of a small salad or the aforementioned green beans or, as I chose at the last minute, some fresh strawberries.

Ginny says in her rules that you can use three staples from your pantry—salt, pepper and oil were her examples—without counting them in your budget [there’s still time to enter, by the way—the deadline is May 5]. I further interpreted the rules to mean that if I only used a portion of something and the rest were saved for a later use, I could count the cost of only the portion I used against my five-buck limit.

With this wiggle room, even meat could work within the guidelines. And after all, I’ll often buy a package of chicken breasts or ground beef planning to get two meals from it. But as much as I love meat, I decided it would be more interesting to make a meal without it for this event.

Most important, though, it had to be good. I wasn’t interested in simply proving I could whip up a meal for cheap. The meal had to be something I would happily serve, if not to company, then as a family dinner. Something we would happily eat. And something I would happily make again.

Soups and scrambles and stir fry all immediately came to mind, but nothing really got me excited. Soups and I are taking a little break right now; I just feel the need to see other courses. Scrambles sounded too breakfasty. And stir fry main courses without meat almost always involve tofu. Yawn.

Then I thought of an elevated form of scrambled eggs: Italian frittatas. Specifically, a frittata Marion has made a number of times, using leftover pasta. She hadn’t made it in so long that we’d forgotten where she first saw a recipe—or even what to call it. The classic frittata is kind of an Italian omelet and doesn’t include pasta.

A little noodling around on Google, though, turned up boatloads of frittata recipes using pasta—and leftover pasta, at that. Some were baked, some were started on the stovetop and then broiled to finish [the classic frittata technique]. Some used cheese, some didn’t. Some even insisted on using pasta mixed with red sauce, which sounded more like a desperate measure than a recipe to me. But virtually all of them involved mixing the beaten eggs with the boiled pasta before any of it went into the pan. I followed Marion’s approach instead, sautéing the cooked pasta in the skillet before adding the eggs. It gives the frittata a satisfying crunchy quality we really enjoy. Continue reading “Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated” →

The taste of spring: Seasonal fava beans and pasta

Celebrate spring with colorful, lively Fettuccine with Fava Beans, Red Bell Pepper and Bacon. Lemon juice and zest help brighten things up. Recipe below.

Fava beans have always sounded like too much work to me. I mean, you have to shell them twice—once to get them out of their pods and then again to remove the tough, waxy skin on each bean. It didn’t sound like there was an actual degree of difficulty involved, as they say in certain sports competitions, just more like a degree of pain-in-the-buttedness. But then Susan over at Food Blogga did a post that made shelling them look fairly easy, maybe even semi-fun. Okay, I was semi-interested.

Then the current issue of Bon Appétit featured a beautiful pasta dish using fava beans, Italian sausage and plum tomatoes. I was a little more interested. So I started poking around on epicurious.com, where more than one recipe compared them to edamame, the delicious protein-rich, slightly crunchy, slightly nutty Japanese soybean snack. Sign me up.

Taking my usual approach, I read a number of recipes and then came up with one of my own, a pasta dish that celebrates the seasonality of fava beans—they’re only readily available a couple/few months in spring/summer. I added red bell pepper as much for color contrast with the bright green beans as for flavor, along with some onion and garlic. Then I brightened the flavor with lemon juice and zest. And I balanced all this lively produce goodness with nature’s perfect food, bacon.

Shelling the beans. This is the elephant in the room. May as well get it out of the way right now. I’d always been put off by what sounded like a labor intensive, time-consuming task. Susan made it look easy—just blanch the beans and squirt them right out of their skins. The truth fell somewhere in the middle for me.

One food blogger called shelling fava beans almost zenlike, and I could kind of see what he meant. Simple, humble processes like this are why we cook. Why I cook, anyway, or part of the reason. The very act of making something with my hands, something I will eat and share with others, is one of the most direct things I do in the everyday living of my life. By way of contrast, my equivalent of hunting and gathering, of helping put food on the table and a roof over our heads, is writing advertising copy.

Zen, schmen. How do you actually shell them? Put a pot of water on to boil so you can blanch the individual beans for part two of the shelling process. While you’re at it, put something on the boombox or radio or TV or whatever for company. Then have at it.

Grasp a fava bean pod in one hand and twist/snap/tear off the end that attaches to the plant. Then tear open the pod and remove the beans. Sometimes the pod will split open along the seam, sometimes not.

When the water is boiling, dump the shelled beans in and blanch them for 2 to 3 minutes. Then drain them and plunge them into a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking. When they’ve cooled, remove the tough outer skin. According to Susan, you can just squeeze them at one end and the beans will pop out. That didn’t happen for me, so I was delighted to later read that even Clotilde over at Chocolate & Zucchini had not been able to do this. We both came upon a similar simple solution, though. Just pinch a little tear in the skin with your thumbnail; then when you squeeze it, the bean will indeed shoot right out.

A pound of unshelled fava beans in their pods will produce about a cup of shelled beans. While producing my cup for this recipe, I remembered wandering through my Aunt Veta’s Mississippi kitchen one summer as a boy. Three or four women were in there shelling just-picked butter beans, bushel basketsful of them, probably still warm from the summer sun. It didn’t look like my idea of fun, but they were having a high old time, gossiping, laughing and “carryin’ on,” as Aunt Veta would put it. Continue reading “The taste of spring: Seasonal fava beans and pasta” →

Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean

Easy, flavorful Shrimp Rougail (Rougail de Crevette), originally from tiny islands in the Indian Ocean, is one of many exotic taste treats found throughout Paris—and in The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Cumin, fresh ginger and a fiery little Thai pepper make it a lively main course.

LAST WEEK I WROTE ABOUT CRÊPES, calling them the ultimate French comfort food. And they are indeed quintessentially French, as are old men in berets, accordion players on the Paris Metro and six-week vacations. Continue reading “Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean” →

Crêpes: A delicious way to always have Paris

I’ve been thinking of Paris lately, and that has me thinking of crêpes. And as wonderful as dessert crêpes may be, the savory variety is what I always crave. Recipes for these delightful, paper-thin French pancakes and a satisfying poulet aux champignons (chicken in mushrooms) filling below.

THIS WEEK, BLUE KITCHEN IS ALL ABOUT FRANCE. A couple of events conspired to put me in this state of mind. First, the excellent biopic of French singer Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose, has come out on DVD (more about this at What’s on the kitchen boombox?). And just last Friday, our friend Cara Black was in town promoting Murder in the Rue de Paradis (An Aimée Leduc Investigation), the latest in her acclaimed series of Paris-based mysteries (more about this at WTF? Random food for thought). If you’re still hungry for Paris and France when you’ve finished here, you’ll find some interesting links at the end of this post. Continue reading “Crêpes: A delicious way to always have Paris” →

Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus

Cooking for the calendar, this weekend saw some beautifully skinny fresh asparagus, simply prepared. Cooking for the actual weather, though, called for a hearty pot roast. Recipes below.

Before we get to the food, a quick little digression about blogging.When I started Blue Kitchen a year and change ago, I knew it would be a way to indulge my passions for food, photography and writing. I also knew it would make me think more about food and cooking, ultimately making me a better cook. What I didn’t know is what a wonderful international network of warm, sharing friends and fellow bloggers I’d be plugging into.

This kind of welcoming environment isn’t necessarily unique to food blogging, but it seems to be more prevalent here than elsewhere. Interestingly, according to a food blogger who specializes in restaurant reviews, it’s mainly found among bloggers who write about making food, not critiquing it. My friend Ronnie writes two blogs, the wonderfully eclectic Out Of My Head and the advice-filled Work Coach. She also reads a wide range of blogs and says she hasn’t found this kind of community anywhere else.

The latest example of this comes from Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry. She was just given the E for Excellent Award—by four different bloggers, no less. She then took a turn, passing the award along to five other blogs. Including this one. Thanks so much, Lydia! I learn something new every time I read your blog, so it means a lot that you thought of me.

And now my turn. The easiest thing would be to award it to everyone in my blogroll. They’re all wonderful sources of information and great reads to boot. But I’ll try to narrow it down to five. And I’m sticking with food blogs, just because [we food bloggers are a clannish lot]. Just as Lydia was in her choices, I’m every bit as swayed by entertaining writing as I am by good food. Maybe even more so. These bloggers deliver, post after post. Every one of them has made me think—and made me a better cook in the process:

Ann, at A Chicken in Every Granny Cart; Christina, at A Thinking Stomach; Jennifer, at Last Night’s Dinner; Patricia, at Technicolor Kitchen and Toni, at Daily Bread Journal.

Okay, back to the kitchen. Here in Chicago, the calendar says spring [yeah, it says that everywhere north of the Equator, I know]. The thermometer takes a different view, often dipping below freezing. In fact, the tulips you see here were an impulse purchase, something to remind us that it is indeed spring. So when we were planning one of those Sunday dinners we don’t do enough of, I decided to split the difference. For the calendar, I made fresh asparagus, suddenly plentiful and affordable again. And for the chilly weather, I made a satisfying pot roast, complete with chunky vegetables. Let’s start with that.

I’ve been on an oven braising kick lately. Soon the weather will heat up and I won’t want to do the same to the kitchen. But for now, it’s a great way to let tough cuts of meat like chuck roast get all nice and tender without drying out. You’ll find more about the technique here. My other pot roast recipe in the archives is a more exotic take on this humble, hearty meal, made with Biryani Curry Paste and pan roasted on the stovetop. I call it Terry’s Mysterious Pot Roast. You can use the stovetop technique for the more traditional recipe below, but honestly, oven braising will keep it more moist. Continue reading “Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus” →

Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?

East meets Nor’east in an improvised Chinese chicken dish that gets its heat from potent chili paste, its complexity from five-spice powder and its subtle sweetness from New England maple syrup. It’s paired with another improvisation, my first attempt at Szechuan green beans with garlic. Recipes below.

The first full day of spring in Chicago saw snowflakes the size of dinner plates. Lots of them. Just to the north of us, near the Wisconsin border, they got 11 inches of the heavy “heart attack” snow. Having lived here as long as I have, I’m not even surprised by this anymore. I am annoyed by it, though.

My first thought for this week’s post was something hearty—a soup, a stew—something that reflected the actual weather, not the calendar. But then I decided to turn up the heat with spiciness instead. My patented poking around—online, at the library, in our cookbook collection—got me started down the path to making something Chinese. When I found a pork dish that combined chili paste [you can also use chili sauce with garlic—see Kitchen Notes], five-spice powder—both Chinese staples—with maple syrup[?], I was intrigued. But having just served up pork here last week, I decided to adapt it for chicken.

The main course sort of nailed down, I started thinking vegetables. Just about our favorite restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown is Lao Sze Chuan [the only reason I slightly hedge my bets here is that owner/chef Tony has recently opened two new restaurants, also wonderful, Lao Shanghai and Lao Beijing]. And one of our favorite vegetable dishes at Lao Sze Chuan is the Szechaun green beans, crisp and garlicky. I knew I wouldn’t match these, but I thought I might find a recipe to help me come close. What I found was a bewildering array of recipes, none of them even sounding vaguely close to this pared down dish. So I improvised, coming up with something very different but pretty good, if I say so myself. Best of all, the most exotic ingredient in it is soy sauce. So if the chili paste and five spice powder have put you off the chicken, give these a try.

But first, about those exotic ingredients. Living in Chicago, I have access to a dazzling array of ingredients from many cultures and cuisines. And in many cities, both these ingredients are available in Asian markets and in a growing number of supermarkets.

Chili paste or sauce is made of crushed chili peppers, oil, vinegar, seasonings and sometimes garlic. It has been accurately described as fiery hot, but you can control the heat by adjusting the amount you use.

Five-spice powder is a dry spice blend that incorporates the five basic flavors of Chinese cooking—sweet, sour, bitter, savory and salty. Used widely in Chinese cuisine, there are many variations on the theme. But a fairly standard recipe calls for fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns. It is a very intense spice mix, not in terms of heat, but in terms of flavor. Recipes tend to call for fairly small amounts. Trust them.

I searched the Internet for what seemed like minutes for substitutes for these ingredients. Alas, no luck. The couple of recipes I found for chili paste sounded pretty dubious. And every recipe for five-spice powder called for Szechuan peppercorns. If you can find those, finding actual five-spice powder should be a breeze. And as Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry rightly points out, they’re not even really peppercorns, so substituting regular peppercorns will yield something that falls far flat of the real thing. If anyone out there has substitutes they’ve tried and like, please leave a comment.

Well, blah, blah, blah. How about some recipes? Continue reading “Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?” →

Delicious, delicate: Tarragon mustard sauce with Pork Medallions

Cream, tarragon, wine and mustard add up to a sauce that brings a delicate finish to pan-seared pork medallions. Recipe below.

I JUST CHECKED OUR FRIDGE. We currently have six different mustards in there, most of them either from France or French in style. And ironically, even our über-American yellow mustard is French’s brand. Obviously, mustard is big with us. Continue reading “Delicious, delicate: Tarragon mustard sauce with Pork Medallions” →