Globe trotting and persistence pay off: Tilapia with Miso and Scallions

Miso, mirin, rice vinegar and garlic create a flavorful Japanese-inspired marinade for mild tilapia fillets. Quickly sautéed scallions and toasted sesame seeds add a beautiful finish. Recipe below.

Food is at a particularly cool intersection these days. On one hand, we’re thinking more about how our food gets to our plates, and locally sourced ingredients are getting much deserved attention. At the same time, global influence has never been stronger in the kitchen. Home cooks everywhere have ever increasing access to flavors, ingredients and ideas from around the world.

This week’s recipe is of the global variety. It will send you on a hunt for a number of Japanese ingredients. But don’t worry—they’re readily available lots of places, some of them in supermarkets, in fact. And in the Kitchen Notes, I’ll give you some ideas for other uses for those ingredients as well as a couple of substitutes if you can’t find them. Continue reading “Globe trotting and persistence pay off: Tilapia with Miso and Scallions” →

What the staff eats before the restaurant opens: Baked Mussels with Saffron and Tomatoes

Adapted from a staff meal at Atlanta’s Bacchanalia, mussels are quickly baked over sautéed scallions, garlic, parsley, oregano, saffron and tomatoes. Recipe below.

Open kitchens in restaurants are popular for one reason: We all like a peek behind the culinary curtain into the world of chefs, sous chefs, line cooks and even dishwashers. And I’m not just speaking of high-end restaurants where tables in the kitchen come at a premium price. I remember a lunch years ago at the counter at Heaven on Seven in Chicago, watching line cooks crank out order after order with practiced skill, plating the food beautifully and effortlessly and tossing used skillets, still hot, into a deep stainless sink. The hostess apologized for not having a table for me during the busy lunch hour, but I was in, well, heaven at the counter.

So imagine my delight when I heard about Marissa Guggiana’s new cookbook, Off the Menu: Staff Meals from America’s Top Restaurants, published last month by Welcome Books. This is the ultimate peek behind the curtain. It’s not just watching chefs cook, it’s getting to see what they cook for their staffs before the restaurant opens. Continue reading “What the staff eats before the restaurant opens: Baked Mussels with Saffron and Tomatoes” →

Everyday French made easy: Roasted Shrimp and Green Lentils

Shrimp roasted with garlic, scallions and tarragon tops French green lentils for a quick, satisfying, quintessentially French meal. Recipe below.

For all the complex, multi-stepped recipes that give French cuisine its daunting reputation, everyday French home cooking is filled with countless utterly simple dishes as perfect and impressive in their own way as the hautest restaurant cuisine.

Wini Moranville’s new book, The Bonne Femme Cookbook: Simple, Splendid Food That French Women Cook Every Day, proves this with recipe after recipe. La bonne femme is French for “the good wife,” the introduction tells us, but in French cuisine, “it refers to a style of cooking—namely, the fresh, honest, and simple cuisine served at home, no matter who does the actual cooking, femme, mari (husband), or partenaire domestique (significant other).” Continue reading “Everyday French made easy: Roasted Shrimp and Green Lentils” →

Small Bites: A sustainable, seaworthy CSA and I’m in good company at Gojee

A seafood CSA in San Francisco is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And I’m rubbing virtual shoulders with Amanda Hesser!

Sustainability is becoming an ever bigger part of the food conversation. What we eat, how it’s grown and how it gets to our plates affects our health, the health of animals and farm workers and, indeed, the health of the planet. Nowhere is the dialogue more complex than with seafood. Whole species are being fished to the verge of extinction. Some fishing techniques destroy habitat and kill unintended bycatch. And while almost everyone agrees that fish farming must be a big part of the future of seafood, it presents its own challenges—to the environment, to wild species and to the healthfulness and quality of the fish we eat.

So I’m delighted to report on a small, local solution that could serve as a model for similar local efforts. Continue reading “Small Bites: A sustainable, seaworthy CSA and I’m in good company at Gojee” →

Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche

Citrus juice quickly “cooks” sushi-grade tuna for this light, fresh, colorful first course, Tuna Watermelon Ceviche. Recipe below.

As American psychology professor Abraham Maslow once said, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Los Cabos, at the southernmost tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula, is surrounded on three sides by water. To the lucky inhabitants there, everything looks like a seafood buffet.

I saw this firsthand on a recent culinary press trip to Los Cabos (yes, I’m on about that again). Did you know that there are flights at 5:30 in the morning? Me neither. But being on one meant I grabbed an airport breakfast sandwich and cursed when a mad dash for my connecting flight in Atlanta precluded getting something more. So late afternoon found me at my hotel, the Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa, desperate for a light meal to tide me over until the group dinner. I found it at the hotel’s oceanside restaurant, La Roca. It was called, quite simply, Seafood from the Pacific. Continue reading “Cooking in Cabo II: Tuna Watermelon Ceviche” →

A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish

Steaming infuses fish fillets with the flavors of ginger, star anise, garlic, cilantro and other aromatics for Chinese-style Steamed Fish. Recipe below.

STEAMING FOOD IS A HEALTHY WAY TO COOK. As practiced in Western kitchens, mostly on vegetables, it’s also often a bland way to cook. In Chinese kitchens, it is an art. Chinese cooks use both steaming and smoking to infuse foods—especially meats and fish—with delicate, complex flavors. Continue reading “A healthy cooking technique made fragrant, delicious: Chinese-style Steamed Fish” →

Sustainable and mayo-free: Tilapia Fish Tacos

Chunks of pan seared tilapia fillets seasoned with chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and lime juice are topped with cilantro, tomatoes and green onions for a healthy, flavorful meal. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap] like fish. I like tacos. So why has the charm of fish tacos always eluded me? Maybe it’s the fact that mayonnaise is used in so many recipes. I do use mayo on occasion (and appreciate its creamy tanginess every time I do), but putting it on fish tacos sounds like tuna salad in a tortilla to me. Some recipes even call for chopped cabbage—tuna salad and coleslaw in a tortilla.

Recently, though, two mayonnaise-free events had me reconsidering fish tacos. The first was in New York. Continue reading “Sustainable and mayo-free: Tilapia Fish Tacos” →

The delicious taste of sustainable success: Sautéed Walleye Fillets with Tarragon

Incredibly fresh, sustainably caught walleye fillets from the Red Lake Chippewa reservation require little more than salt, pepper and tarragon, then a quick sauté in butter to be delicious. Recipe below.

Fish are the last wild food. Well, they’re the last wild caught food humans eat on a large scale. And unfortunately, we’ve been eating them on too large a scale—according to the World Health Organization, we’ve doubled our per capita fish consumption in the last 50 years. Many species are in serious decline, and the fishing industry as a whole faces major challenges.

In his book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Paul Greenberg says this growing appetite for fish cannot be sustainably satisfied by wild fish alone and that fish farming or aquaculture will actually overtake wild catch in the next few years. Aquaculture is not without its own problems—efforts must be made to greatly reduce its environmental footprint. That’s why the success of the Red Lake Fishery’s wild caught walleyes is particularly heartening. Continue reading “The delicious taste of sustainable success: Sautéed Walleye Fillets with Tarragon” →

Weeknight simple, company elegant: Linguine with Scallops and Meyer Lemons

Sweet, seasonal Meyer lemons add a lively, bright note to Linguine with Scallops and Meyer Lemons, but regular lemons can be substituted. Recipe below.

When life gives you Meyer lemons, make lots of stuff. A couple of weeks ago, Marion made Cornish Hens with Meyer Lemons and Olives for our Valentine’s Day post here. We were pleased with ourselves for finding beautiful, seasonal Meyer lemons at a bargain price.

Then we got an email from the lovely Christina over at A Thinking Stomach. Seems she has a Meyer lemon tree growing right in her own yard, producing more fruit than she knows what to do with. She offered to send us some. Being no fools, we answered with a grateful, enthusiastic “Yes, please!” Still, we were unprepared for the bounty of fragrant, yellow beauties that arrived on our doorstep days later. Continue reading “Weeknight simple, company elegant: Linguine with Scallops and Meyer Lemons” →

Big flavor drives Cuban seafood dish, not big heat

Cuban-inspired Fish Fillets and Tomatoes rely on garlic, cumin, cilantro and capers to deliver big flavor; crushed red pepper flakes add just a touch of heat. Recipe below.

When a Cuban-inspired seafood dish caught my eye recently, I was intrigued as much by what wasn’t there as what was. Where were the chiles? Where was the heat? Sure, the recipe called for red pepper flakes, but a mere 1/8-teaspoonful. That wouldn’t even register on our heat-loving palates.

But then I thought about the Cuban sandwich place near my office. The sandwiches I’ve had there all aim for savory flavors, with little or no heat. The salsas they bring to the table alongside follow this pattern too—only one of the two is at all spicy, and even then, not in the sinus-opening way salsas found in Mexican restaurants can be.

So I did a little research. It seems that fiery heat just isn’t part of the Cuban culinary vocabulary. Continue reading “Big flavor drives Cuban seafood dish, not big heat” →