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” →

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” →

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?” →

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” →

Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad

Fresh, flavorful and quick: Pan-grilled Citrus Yellowtail and Soba Noodle Salad. Recipes below.

Last week, I posted two recipes for cooking fish that ranged from simple to simpler. I kept them simple because I didn’t want anything masking the taste of the Hawaiian yellowtail I’d been asked to try by Kona Blue Water Farms. This week, two more recipes. First, Marion shows just how well this fish plays with other flavors. Then she streamlines a complex side dish into something quick, simple and simply delicious.

Terry and I both love to cook, but our tastes in cookbooks and food authors don’t particularly overlap. He avidly reads Anthony Bourdain; I go for obsessive re-readings of M.F.K. Fisher. His cookbook tastes run to the school of It’s Better If It’s French. My favorite cookbook is an obscure, grubby, out-of-print one about Szechwan food.

So we think it’s pretty interesting that, when Terry received that lovely shipment of Hawaiian yellowtail, we each, independently, turned to the same author. Ming Tsai—chef, restaurateur, star of two televised cooking shows and author of some very nice cookbooks—really has been our guide in understanding this amazing fish. When it was my turn in the kitchen, I found a pair of recipes in Ming’s Blue Ginger: East Meets West Cooking with Ming Tsai that became the foundation for a meal.

By the way, this morning a friend called and asked me what this fish tastes like. It tastes like standing on the edge of a high bluff looking straight out over the open Pacific, with the surface of the water like light beaten silver, and a faint cold morning wind washing over your face, and the wind has come four thousand uninterrupted miles straight to find you. It’s that clean and beautiful and pure.

The original and very delightful version of this recipe calls for ponzu sauce and snapper, and the fish, once cooked, goes on to become part of a salad with pea sprouts and a Dijon vinaigrette. Here is my foreshortened, non-salad take, abbreviated into a simple grilled dish. This recipe goes quickly once you begin it. Make sure your side dishes are in progress before you start on this. Continue reading “Two delicious: Pan-grilled fish, soba noodle salad” →

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” →

The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice

Brazilian rice teams up with spicy Cajun shrimp for a satisfying dinner on a cold night. Recipes below.

Wintry weather can put me into a stew-soup-chili-hearty-heavy-food rut. And while I do love all these foods [and jones for them in warm weather], when I saw a lively sautéed shrimp first course in the January issue of Food & Wine, it sounded like just the break I needed—something I could morph into a satisfying main course. Light, but big-flavored with a lively kick of lemon. And when I turned up the heat a bit with cayenne pepper, it got even more interesting.

Because it was intended as a first course, the recipe didn’t say what to serve with it. My first thought was pasta. After all, with the garlic, lemon juice and parsley, this Cajun-inspired dish that was meant to transport you to the Louisiana bayou was coming dangerously close to Italian for me. But then I remembered the wonderful Brazilian rice that was part of the Brazilian rice and beans Patricia over at Technicolor Kitchen had posted here at Blue Kitchen a while back. That sounded perfect.

And it is. The rice is a nice, deceptively simple balance for the spicy shrimp. With the sautéed onion, it brings much more to the party than rice alone, and its snowy whiteness is the perfect visual foil for the colorful shrimp dish.

Best of all, this whole meal comes together fairly quickly and easily. Add a salad and you’ve got a dinner that blends cultures beautifully and delivers more flavor and appeal than something this simple should be able to get away with. Continue reading “The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice” →

Tomato-free Italian: Rosemary sage chops

Fresh herbs and garlic give these pan-roasted chops a satisfying depth. Recipe below.

Italian chefs and home cooks are rightly renowned for their way with tomatoes. Others may well use the tomato—the French even dubbed it the pomme d’amour, or love apple, for its supposed aphrodisiacal powers—but the Italians own it.

Unfortunately, as a result, we sometimes forget that there’s a whole world of Italian cooking beyond insalate caprese and bolognese sauce. At least I do. So I was happy to stumble upon Tastes of Italia magazine recently. A number of recipes caught my eye in this issue. I’m sure my takes on more than a few of them will turn up here sooner or later. I’ll start with this one that had me thinking outside the tomato.

This recipe for juicy, quickly prepared chops calls on three other stalwarts of the Italian kitchen—garlic, sage and rosemary. I’ve already pronounced rosemary my favorite of the herb world, and as far as I’m concerned, just about any savory dish can be improved with the addition of garlic. Sage falls more into the category of good intentions for me, though. I always feel I should explore its pungent flavor more, but never quite get around to it. So when I saw this recipe that married it with garlic, rosemary and pork, I had to try it.

The chops are pan roasted, cooked in a covered skillet with the herbs, garlic and some olive oil. Covering the pan holds in moisture, keeping the chops from becoming too dry or tough. This is especially important with today’s pork production methods that create leaner meat; the reduction in fat may be good for our waistlines, but it also makes the meat more prone to drying out. Sometimes when I’m searing chops, I’ll add a little vermouth to the pan when I turn them and cover it to finish the cooking. This also introduces some moisture to the meat, along with a very subtle flavor note, thanks to vermouth’s fairly neutral taste. I may try that the next time I fix these chops as well. Continue reading “Tomato-free Italian: Rosemary sage chops” →