Kitchen Eclectic

 

Previously, I was under the notion that everyone knew that one of the best ways to cook 96% of all vegetables was to oven roast them at a really high heat with olive oil, salt and pepper – and sometimes, a few herbs and spices. I mean, seriously. You name it, roasting is the tastiest.

• Potatoes? Roasted, duh.  (rosemary and bacon)
• Green beans? Hells yeah! Roast the shit outta those. (chili flakes or sesame seeds/oil)
• Brussel sprouts? Of course! (lemon and chili flakes)
• Carrots? Well, we already know that…

Bring it on, I dare you….give me a vegetable that isn’t delicious when roasted. Especially in the fall. I don’t think there’s a single one….

 

And for sure….

 

Cauliflower and Beets! (ahem…purple cauliflower and yellow beets…)

It was cauliflower, actually, that helped bring to my attention the sad fact that not every cook feels, in their soul, the value of roasting. I was reading an article in an old issue of Gourmet (RIP) that preached to the reader the glory of roasting, specifically for cauliflower. I’ll tell you – roasting cauliflower is the only way I cook it. It’s amazing. High heat, til it browns and it’s out of this world. Well, second to the breaded and fried cauliflower from Bar Bambino.

And, being fall and all … all the veggies that you want to roast anyways – they’re extra pretty. Purple cauliflower and yellow beets…

 

chioga beets…

purple and yellow wax beans…

romanesco (aka geometric broccoli)…

and so many more!

So here’s how you do it for a head of cauliflower and about 3 medium sized beets….

 

Cauliflower:

• Trim it of leaves and the bottom stalk that hold most of the florets together, keep trimming down the stalks and the florets will naturally fall off into small pieces.
• For the large ones, cut them in half down the middle so they’re about this size: 

Give or take… having some a little bigger, some a little smaller is fine. In fact, the smaller ones are crazy good because they get real crispy!)

For the beets:

• Cut off the tops and greens (but save the greens, they’re delish!) and then slice them into rounds, about 1/2 inch thick, then cut those rounds like a waffle fry – crosswise, then the other way, so they end up being ’bout an inch square: 

• Beets, too, are just a little bit “more of less” in size. Because they’re round, and because you’re not a restaurant that is willing to waste a little bit of beet in order to get them all the same size, they’re gonna vary just a tad.
• Then, put both in a large bowl, toss with tasty olive oil, fresh ground black pepper and salt. I highly recommend using Alaea Hawaiian Red Salt – it’s great for roasting, because it naturally helps to retain moisture. Its iron content (what makes it red) and residual minerals also add great, but subtle, flavor.
• After tossing it, lay it all out flat onto a baking sheet and drop into an oven preheated for 425 for 25-3o minutes, until there is good visible browning on both the beets and cauliflower, but not so long they’re mushy. Taste-test along the way.

 

 

This is how we wake up.

This is how we have lunch.

 

And here’s how you can have a bangin’ lunch too:

• Dinner Rolls
• Mayo
• Spicy Mustard
• Fresh Taragon leaves (not optional, it makes the sandwich incomprable!)
• Mixed Greens
• Very Thinly Sliced Onions
• Avocado
• Salami

 

1. Put it all together into a sandwich, making sure to put the mayo into hearts.

 

This is how we follow up, with dinner on the fire:

Marinate your steak in a ziploc bag, grill it up on a fire that looks like this:

Get those grill marks, and serve it with some fennel potato salad:

You’ll be a happy camper, too.

Thanks to Amy Tso for photos

I’m no master baker by any means; without a sweet tooth to call my own I generally stay on the savory end of the kitchen. Baking also requires a certain kind of attention to detail and scientific organization that after the daily patience my day job requires, I just can’t hang with. But I’ll tell you – you could be missing an arm and think a whisk is is some kind of sex toy and still be able to make this bread awesome! You can even get creative with it and use your savory skills to combine flavors without opening your oven door to yet another baking catasrophe.

Apart from being a quick simple recipe, the delicious secret to it is FRESH spices. If you’re using cinnamon and nutmeg, don’t use the janky stale powdered stuff that’s been sitting in your cabinet since three Thanksgiving’s ago when you made pumpkin pie. Get a zester or fine grater, some cinnamon sticks, and a hard nutmeg nut and make yourself sneeze with the freshness.
If you’re using cardamom, toast the fresh seeds quickly on the stovetop (not pods, but for extra freshness, you can get pods and crush them to extract the seeds) and grind them in a spice grinder (which you have already, right? It’s just a little coffee grinder that you use for spices instead of coffee….)

Get this together:

1 cup smashed banana, ¾ cup toasted chopped walnuts (or)
1 cup grated carrots (or)
1 cup semi-smashed blackberries , 3/4 cup oats

(or….):

1 cup any fruit, veggie, etc (wet ingredient that you choose and up to 3/4 cup any nuts, oats, small chopped dried fruit, coconut, choco/butterscotch/peanut butter chip or combination thereof that your heart desires

And here’s how to do it:

1. Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease 9×5 pan or (2) 6×3 pans

2. Mix 1 ¾ flour ¾ c sugar 1t each baking powder and salt and ½ t baking soda cinnamon nutmeg in large bowl (except blackberry bread, replace with a couple pinches cardamom), add dry ingredients (nuts, oats, dried fruit, coconut etc)

3. In separate bowl whisk 2 eggs, 1/2 c cooled melted butter or vegetable oil, ½ c. yogurt or sour cream, 1t vanilla, stir in wet stuff and fold into dry mixture until nicely combined.

4. Spread batter in pans and bake until tooth pick comes out clean. Cool in pans on rack bout 30 min, then pop out to cool the rest of the way, on a rack.

5. Eat it!

I, for one, thought it was illegal to sell abalone. Did you? Well apparently, we were both wrong. A little while ago, my mom and I found some sushi grade abalone at the Japanese market. It’s pretty expensive, real small and a pain and a half to clean – but what a novel treat! And mighty delicious, I might add…

But, back to the point. It seems that the focus of the regulations is to specify what kind you can catch and when, how many and how and that each and every one caught is reported and tagged. Take a peek here, if you care to learn the simple rules of abalone hunting. Apparently lots of them are just north of San Francisco. That’s just north of me! Perhaps I’ll drag the other half out for some abalone fishing sometime soon in order to recreate this most delicious abalone recipe.

Before you can cook it, though, you gotta clean it. And it goes a little something like this:

Cut it out of the shell. An oyster shucker works well, otherwise a small paring knife is a-ok.

Use a small paring knife to gently cut away all the dirty and the black membranes from the beefy meaty abalone. It seems more daunting than it is; once you start cutting, you’ll be able to feel where to cut. This is a decent video on how to do it. There are a couple on youtube that will help out.

In the end, it will look like this. Wrap it in plastic on either side and pound it just a bit to tenderize it, then (for this recipe) cut it into thick strips. (Other ways to cook it besides this recipe – slice in half long-ways pan fry it in a cast iron skillet with lots of butter, salt, pepper and some cayenne and lemon juice – like calamari. Or, breaded and deep fried, also like calamari.)

The cream sauce for this is similar to something for linguini and clams, but it’s pretty versatile – use it on pasta, as a base for chowder etc. And super delish. Apologies for not offering the exact measurements for the ingredients, but mess around with it, and you’ll figure it out ok.

Ingredients

Few Tablespoons Butter
1-2 Shallots, finely minced
2-3 cloves Garlic, finely minced
large palmful of Fennel fronds, finely minced
1/3C. or so White Wine – Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio will be just fine
1C. or so Heavy cream
1teaspoon, give or take Hot Sauce – preferably Tabasco
juice from quarter to half a Lemon
Black pepper to taste

How to do it:

1. Heat a large, deep frying pan and melt the butter.

2. Once melted, add shallots, garlic and pinch of salt and let it just start to brown and get aromatic.

3. Add white wine and fennel fronds, moving often to keep the garlic and shallots from burning. Let it just start to simmer up in order to reduce the wine.

4. Add cream, and stir often and reduce. Salt to taste.

5. As it reduces reduces, add hot sauce, lemon and fresh ground black pepper and keep stirring.

6. In the simmering sauce, add the strips of abalone and cook carefully and briefly on both sides until heated through, about 7 minutes total.

7. Serve the abalone and sauce over sliced, toasted baguette.

You can get lollipops anywhere; big ones the size of your head at the carnival, semi-questionable corn-syrupy ones from Walgreens, germ ridden 6 month old freebies from the receptionists desk at work (my personal favorite) – but did you realize you can make your own!? You can make them tasty, you can make them pretty, you can make them big, or you can make them small. And you can make them with booze, which is what this little post is all about. It’s not too difficult, and it’s definitely fun as shit!

The inspiration for this came from Argentina. The last time we were in Buenos Aires, we went to La Vineria De Gualterio Bolivar. The chef from La Vineria is from Spain and built his career at El Bulli with Ferran Adria – the pope of molecular gastronomy. (If you don’t know Ferran Adria or El Bulli, take a peep at this video of Ferran Adria explaining some of what he does. The translator is one of my favorite chefs, Jose Andres, who was the sous chef there at El Bulli before he moved to the US and opened his own mindblowing restaurants in Washington D.C.) Needless to say, I was somewhere between “hyped” and “hysterically enthralled” to be eating food from a guy who learned to cook there, at what is recognized as the best restaurant in the world.

The meal was somewhere around 14 courses with wine pairings (which is why I can’t remember exactly how many courses it was). Three dessert courses and one of ‘em was a big huge spun sugar looking lollipop. Though it wasn’t the tastiest part of the meal, it was the prettiest and most playful part – I fell in food love with this gorgeous lolli!

Yes, I fell in with a piece of candy – and had to made it happen with my own hands. Unlike the rest of the meal at La Vineria, making some lollipops at home is really no feat of molecular gastronomy. But you do have to pay some close attention and I hope you have a strong dishwasher.

Take a peek, there’s a decent instructional video on making lollies on Howcast.

You could do it their boring way, with plastic forms that you can get fairly cheap at Sur la Table – but just so you know, they don’t work very well. So instead, why not have some fun and try some playful artsy free forms:

You will need:

Silpat (silicone cooking sheet) or wax paper coated with non-stick spray. I strongly suggest getting a silpat, though. They’re magical, nothing works quite like one. You’ll thank me.

Lollipop sticks

Candythermometer that goes up to 300 degrees

As well as:

2/3C. water
2C. white sugar
1/4t. cream of tartar

1. Mix the ingredients together and bring to a boil.

2. Boil for about 10 minutes without stirring until it turns an amber color. It should reach 300 degrees on a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can spoon a bit out and dip it into an ice bath; if it solidifies real quick, it’s ready.

3. Remove it from heat and add the booze you choose (also color, if you like). Add 1-2 ounces of alcohol, depending on the strength and flavor of your choice. Fun ones to try are peppermint or other flavored Schnapps, Sambuca, Fernet, Cointreau, Red Stagg Black Cherry Whiskey, just to name a few. These ones that I did are with peppermint Schnapps.

4. Make sure your sticks are laid out on your silpat or wax paper ahead of time, and right away start spooning the thick sugar water on top of them with some pizzazz! If the lollipop syrup starts to thicken or harden too much, put it back on the heat for a minute to loosen it up.


5. Let them cool like this for 20 minutes, or until solid, then peel carefully off and wrap in pretty little wrappers that you can get at Sur la Table. If they seem a little soft, keep them in the fridge. Depending on the amount of sugar in the alcohol you use, it will sometimes keep the syrup for fully hardening.



And now you have pretty little homemade lollies!