Simple details, beautiful results: Seared salmon with mixed greens and miso vinaigrette

Thin slices of salmon cook quickly and slightly warm the mixed greens, green beans and snow pea pods tossed with a Japanese-based miso vinaigrette. Recipe below.

SOMETIMES A SINGLE DETAIL CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN A DISH. Recently when Marion and I had lunch at Lulu’s, an Asian-inspired restaurant in Evanston, she ordered a salmon salad that, as words on a menu, had done little for me. But when the dish arrived at our table, it was a whole different story. Instead of the expected chunks of cold salmon tossed with greens, there were thin slices of fillet, still warm from being quickly cooked, simply arranged on top of the salad. Continue reading “Simple details, beautiful results: Seared salmon with mixed greens and miso vinaigrette” →

Lemon Caper Butter: An elegantly simple sauce for fish and more

Lemon Caper Butter adds a lively, delicate finish to Sole Fillets—or cod or chicken breasts or turkey cutlets… Recipe below.

We all have certain little tricks, techniques and simple recipes up our sleeves—versatile weapons in our culinary arsenal we can turn to when we want to liven up or elevate a dish or a meal. A healthy sprinkle of herbes de Provence when roasting chicken, for instance, or [especially lately for me] whisking a little flour and butter together in a hot skillet to make a faux roux to thicken a sauce. Continue reading “Lemon Caper Butter: An elegantly simple sauce for fish and more” →

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. I make this classic dish so infrequently that I always forget this about it. Guess I’m so focused on the shrimp, garlic and parsley—for me, these are the ingredients that define the dish.

But when the hankering for shrimp scampi hit last weekend and I started looking at recipes, there it was. One recipe called for five tablespoons of butter, along with 1/4 cup of olive oil—more than half a cup of fat for a pound of shrimp. This was typical. And another recipe called for 3/4 cup of butter [12 tablespoons! 1-1/2 sticks!] for a pound and a half of shrimp.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cooking with butter. It imparts a rich flavor to foods and a luxurious, silky texture to sauces that only it can deliver. But while I usually agree with Mae West that “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” sometimes it’s just, well, too much.

So I decided to see how much I could ease up on the butter [and fat in general] and still have have my shrimp scampi taste satisfyingly rich. I ended up with a mix of two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil. Still not a skinny minnie recipe, but since it makes four servings, that’s a tablespoon of fat per serving, minus whatever stays in the pan and serving bowl. Not bad. And please don’t try to convince me or yourself that you can achieve the same taste with butter-flavored Pam cooking spray. You’ll just make me sad. Continue reading “Shrimp Scampi—easy on the butter, please” →

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” →

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” →

Riffing on the Minimalist’s Summer Express

Penne with Shrimp and Arugula is a satisfying meal that comes together in minutes. Recipe below.

Let me start by saying thank you, Mark Bittman. Last week, the New York Times’ Minimalist ran a piece called “Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less.” Kristen over at Gezellig Girl immediately announced her new purpose in life was to cook all 101 recipes. And everywhere around the globe, I’m sure printouts were magnet-nailed to refrigerator doors like so many copies of a modern-day Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. [Okay, how many of you were awake that day in high school Western Civ class?]

Myself, I took a printout of the article to the supermarket on the way home from work the other day. There were a couple/few ideas I was ready to try immediately, and I needed the list at hand as I checked out ingredient availabilities.

Mr. Bittman’s 101 simple meals aren’t so much recipes as they are basic approaches. The one I settled on that evening at the store read, in its entirety, “11. Warm olive oil in a skillet with at least three cloves sliced garlic. When the garlic colors, add at least a teaspoon each of cumin and pimentón. A minute later, add a dozen or so shrimp, salt and pepper. Garnish with parsley, serve with lemon and bread.”

Sounds pretty wonderful as is, right? But as I started thinking about possible sides to go with this, I decided instead to expand on this simple dish and turn it into a meal. Here’s how I did it. Continue reading “Riffing on the Minimalist’s Summer Express” →

A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes

All you cook is the pasta for Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes. Recipe below.

I first posted this recipe over at Patricia’s Technicolor Kitchen in May. She had done a delicious Brazilian Rice and Beans dish here at Blue Kitchen, and this was my chance to return the favor. Now that we’re in the thick of summer heat and other excuses to avoid the kitchen, I thought it was worth repeating here.

This one of my summer favorites—a quick, colorful pasta that makes a great lunch or light supper. The only thing you cook is the pasta, so the kitchen doesn’t get too hot. It’s also another great example of just how versatile pasta can be once you think beyond red sauce.

In Italy, a no-cook pasta sauce like this is called a salsa cruda. The room temperature sauce slightly cools the cooked pasta, and the pasta slightly warms the sauce, making for a meal that feels less heavy than many pasta dishes. The shells catch bits of tuna and the other ingredients, delivering big taste with each bite.

There are so many wonderful flavors at play in this dish too—garlic, lemon, parsley, tuna, artichoke hearts… and my favorite, the briny tang of the capers. They combine for a fresh, bright meal that just tastes like summer. In fact, I’ve been known to make it as a winter lunch for that very reason.

A note about the tuna. For this dish, bring out the good stuff—quality tuna packed in olive oil. The olive oil becomes part of the sauce. I use a brand imported from Italy. As you can see in the photo, the quality of the flesh is far superior to the ground-up mush you often find in canned tuna. Spain also produces excellent olive oil-packed tuna, so whichever you can find locally will work. Continue reading “A cool, quick summer night dinner: Pasta Shells with Italian Tuna and Artichokes” →

Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables: Better late than never

Steaming salmon over a bed of vegetables in wine keeps fish moist and delivers delicate flavor. Recipe below.

This is the salmon dish I was going to prepare last week, before painting the living room got in the way. So it’s a week late—and given my history with fish, it’s much later than that.

Fish and I haven’t always been on the best of terms. I grew up in the midwest—St. Louis, to be exact—before reliably fresh fish was readily available in just about any supermarket. Fish for my family was frozen, breaded ocean perch, fried up and served with canned stewed tomatoes, cold from the fridge, and my grandmother’s sour German cole slaw. Even though we weren’t Catholic, this dreaded meal appeared without fail every Friday. So Friday became my day of semi-fasting at the evening meal, breaking up the fish and tomatoes with my fork and redistributing them around the plate, while consuming as little as humanly possible. I don’t think I fooled anyone at the table—I just outwaited them. Eventually, I would be excused so dinner dishes could be washed.

If this weren’t enough to put me off fish, every winter also brought daily tablespoon-sized doses of cod liver oil, which tastes exactly like its name. I can’t remember now what my mother thought this vile, viscous liquid would ward off. What it in fact warded off was any hope of me liking fish for many years to come.

So of course I married a fish lover. Marion, to her credit, was patient and gentle with me as she gradually reintroduced seafood to my palate—much as one would be with any rescued abused creature. She only served fish occasionally and then, only milder-flavored species. That she is a superb cook also helped. But it took years before I willingly chose fish in a restaurant if any creature that had walked the earth was also offered on the menu. And even more years before I attempted to cook fish.

Now I really like fish—like cooking it too. Thanks, Marion! After you try this simple, quick, delicious dish, I think you’ll thank her too. Continue reading “Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables: Better late than never” →