Christey and I met in St Pete Beach, Florida. We both lived in the area and a friend of a friend of both of us was in town, and we all met for drinks and dinner at Sloppy Joe’s, on the beach.

Yeah, it’s Hemingway’s Sloppy Joes, except the one in Key West that’s named Sloppy Joes isn’t the one Hemingway went to. Sloppy Joes either moved, or got bought out, I don’t remember which, nor do I know why they decided to put another on the Gulf Coast in Tampa Bay, but the sunsets are pretty and the beaches are white and powdery.

Sloppy Joes has a grouper sandwich on the menu, of course. Almost every restaurant on the Gulf Coast of Florida does, from the dingiest dive (where the grouper is most likely not grouper, but basa), to the high end resorts. One of my favorite grouper sandwiches was at south Clearwater Beach at the Bellevue Biltmore Beach Resort. They took the classic fried grouper, red onion, lettuce, and tomato, and substituted a chipotle aioli for the mayo.

Tonight, I made a beer-batter fried grouper sandwich, with a cajun spice and jalapeno aioli, on a toasted bun. A summer beach classic, and nostalgic for us both.

Can you hear the surf?

Before I get to the food, there’s a lot of buzz in the foodie blogsphere about the experience Melissa at Alosha’s Kitchen had recently concerning recipe copyrights, especially when it comes to adapting, or being inspired by, someone else’s recipe. The whole post is here: http://aloshaskitchen.blogspot.com/2008/07/illegal-or-not.html

It’s an interesting read. Many of us foodies, as well as professional chefs, are constantly inspired by the works of others, from professional chefs to an ancient grandmother in some remote patch of the globe. If we post someone’s recipe or adaptation, with or without changes of our own, does it violate copyright law? After all, not only can I not post an MP3 of a popular song on my blog, I can’t even post an MP3 of me performing a popular song, even if I changed it up a bit.

However, copyright law in the States specifically excludes lists of ingredients from protection, and unless there’s something uniquely personal or unique in the description, the “process” of cooking is usually not covered, either. In fact, an idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery is specifically not copyrightable (though some of these may be covered by patent). The idea is that works of art, such as music, is the work itself — the song is the product. A recipe, on the other hand, creates something else — a generic recipe isn’t the product, the dish the recipe creates is the product. A slightly legalese description, with good examples, can be found here: http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/copyright/copyright-realworld/recipe-copyrighting.html

If reposting recipes is relatively legal, there does seem to be a balance in that there seems to be a communal culinary etiquette which generously tries to attribute the original concept or inspiration (and comes down pretty hard on those cooks who don’t). Personally, I try to link back to the original recipe, or at least name the city and restaurant that inspired me, if not the name of the chef. To me, the only recourse Melissa’s nemesis would have is to ask her to remove the attribution, lest it “pollute” the reputation of their “perfected” recipe. Instead, many of us in the foodie blogosphere are now considering our current and future subscriptions.

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Okay, on to more palatable subjects: Cuban Steak. One of Christey’s favorite Disney meals is the steak mojo at Bongos (Gloria Estefan’s place) in Downtown Disney. I was looking up mojo recipes when I happened upon an recipe from Bon Appétit magazine. I was intrigued by a recipe that takes two days (yes, two days) to make a steak. So, here is my adaptation of Chef Rodriguez’s riff on vaca frita, which can be found right here at Epicurious.

carne delicioso

This is July’s entry for The Royal Foodie Joust, from Jenn, The Leftover Queen.

Last month, Peter over at Kalofagas won the joust and selected the ingredients: Seafood, Cilantro, and Sesame in any form.

I could think of a few Latin seafood/cilantro recipes, or Asian seafood/sesame recipes, but the cilantro and sesame together made me scratch my head a bit. I definitely wanted to skip sesame as a garnish and wanted to use the taste, but sesame oil and cilantro can both be strong, assertive ingredients. I needed an assertive seafood to make a triad, I thought, or use a very little sauce.

Oysters popped into mind for both reasons. This will be a love-it-or-hate-it recipe, because in my experience, oysters on the half-shell have strong proponents and opponents. In fact, I only converted into the pro-oyster camp about a year and a half ago, now I can’t get enough of them.

A traditional garnish/sauce for oysters is the mignonette, a mix of wine vinegar, shallots, and cracked black pepper. I made a faux-mignonette using lime-juice as the acid, with sesame oil, shallots, salt, pepper, and cilantro. Just a drizzle of sauce, and yum:

open wide

For every modern nation, there is a line drawn in the sand at which historians believe it was impossible to reverse the course of events. For the US, the birth of our country could have been acceptably marked at the passage of the Stamp Act of 1765, or the Boston Massacre in 1770, or the Tea Party in 1773, or the first shots fired at Lexington and Concorde in 1775. Washington’s final victory over Lord Cornwallis on October 17th, 1781 is hard to argue with. John Adams, himself, assumed that July 2nd, the day the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, would be celebrated in history. In fact, New York abstained that day as it didn’t have authority to agree to independence (and wouldn’t get that authority for a week), and Jefferson immediately insisted that a paragraph condemning the Slave Trade be removed. July 4th was the day the revised edition was approved again (with New York still abstaining), and the whole thing was finally sent to the printer.

For France, there were similar points in history. Financial and propaganda support of the American Revolution may have given legitimacy to the anti-monarchy ideas in the minds of the French everyman. In May, 1879, Louis XVI reconvened the Nobility, Clergy, and Commoners to hear their greviences — in a sense, limiting the monarch’s limitless authority. There was the June 20th Tennis Court Oath by the commoner leaders declaring they would not separate until a constution was established. In early July, a constitution was being written with, if not the blessing, then at least the knowledge of Louis. The arrest of Louis on August 10, 1792, or his beheading on January 21, 1793 may also be considered as final as Washington’s victory.

However, the storming of the Bastille, on July 14th, 1789, is the act historically considered to be the point of no return. Though the Bastille once housed political prisoners, it was being decomissioned, and there were only seven prisoners there at the time (four convicted of forgery, two lunatics, and an actual aristocrat who might have been there for reasons of insanity). Ironically, if it had been July 4th, 1789, one other notable aristocrat, the Marquis de Sade, would have been released, but he had been transferred. Given the lack of prisoners, the mob was most likely looking for weapons, not free thinkers.

Open treason against the monarch, whether solemnly approved and printed, or blatently stormed, is hard to retreat from.

For the US, after the Revolution, we shipped the grouchy Royalists and Loyalists out of the country. Some went back to England, some to Canada or the other colonies around the world. When the War of 1812 came a couple generations later, we had few serious Royalists left in the States, and our nation was more or less united against the possibility of British re-acquisition. France, on the other hand, did not have the luxury of shipping out its Royalists. France was France, had been for a thousand years, and those who lost the Revolution were killed or exiled or went into a grumbling, muttering underground. France would see the Revolution, the Reign of Terror, an Empire, another Republic, another Empire, another Republic mixed with flavors of an Empire, and a couple dips back into monarchy of various nuances. And that was just in the first 80 years.

So, Happy Birthday France! Perhaps not the modern nation as it exists today, but definitely France the people, the birth of the idea.

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I’m a culinary Francophile, even though I attempt to fusion its techniques with world cuisine. I’m not a dessert person, however. Most baking is chemistry and science, the lack of a scant tablespoon, the loss or addition of an ingredient on a whim, can completely destroy a recipe. Mousse, however, is pretty forgiving. Mostly whipped cream and whipped egg whites for the base, the flavoring can be just (just!) chocolate, or a menu of other items. I’ve gone fairly classic here with a dark chocolate syrup with egg yolks. A bit of playing, substitution, and improvisation doesn’t hurt this dessert, which is why it’s one of my favorites.

après vous

Michelle, at Thursday Night Smackdown threw a smackdown challenge: Pick a recipe or technique you’ve never tried before, and do it. Christey and I took the challenge to another level, and switched roles. She cooked, and I shot the pictures.(Snarky comments in italics are Christey’s)

Christey cooked 40 clove garlic chicken (yes, 40 cloves of garlic), with a side of fettuccine carbonara. I struggled with a macro lens and had to have my white-balance and strobes set up for me (and film speed, shutter speed, and fstop, but who’s counting ). Between the two of us, we created this:

Garlic and bacon, what’s not to like?

This is a pork-only weekend. We haven’t posted any food in a week, life and work getting in the way. So I wanted to do as much as I could over the weekend, and if we’re doing a double header, why not concentrate on pork?

I have wanted to do a pork loin dish for a while, and there are a lot of marinades using Coke and fruit juices, but Christey found an espresso maker at a garage sale for $2, so why not inaugurate that? After sterilizing and de-calcifying, I figured it was a good chance to break it in.

I made an espresso-pineapple marinated pork-loin, with grilled pineapple and an espresso-pineapple-cream sauce. Bitter, sweet, pork, and cream. Oh yeah, there’s bacon, too.

Here, piggy piggy piggy

Jenn, The Leftover Queen, has a monthly Royal Foodie Joust. This month, the ingredients are: apricots, ginger, butter.

I made a pan seared duck breast, served it over stewed apricot slices, and made a ginger and apricot sauce with shallots and chives. When the duck breast had finished cooking, I fried long potato crisps in the duck fat to serve as a garnish.

Let the jousting commence…

For the past, oh, 6 months this word has been the one word that has been most prevalent in my head; “CAKE!!!”

I have been on a Just-Had-2-Kids-in-2-Years-and-Want-My-Body-Back Diet, for the past 6 months (lost 26 lbs, have 9 more to go ). Because of this, my head yells ‘CAKE!!!’ at me way too often.
Seriously, you have no idea.

So far I have been able to silent this, but today I started looking at that chocolate chip muffin recipe I took off a blog (I really wish I knew whose), printed out and stuck on the refrigerator to make for the kids (yeah, the kids. The same kids that made me fat). I then started to hit the pantry and hidden places for ingredients for, first the muffins, but then I found the white cake mix box (!!!!), but no frosting.

However, I married into, not only a cooking family, but a baking family as well.
JACKPOT!
Peter’s grandmother has made everyone’s wedding cakes from scratch for years, she even made ours.
The frosting is to DIE for. Seriously. I never knew that frosting was so simple, or consisted of so. much. fat.

So I pulled out the family cookbook and looked up her frosting recipe and then asked Peter to make it for me if I make the cake (cause it is really easy, but I do not have patience to read the whole damn recipe, so I glanced it over and begged Peter, I’m like that.)

This is what I ended up with:

Sweet sweet heaven, I tell ya.
The cake, even though white and I was really looking forward to chocolate, but I am not that close with the pantry gods, so this is all they provided me (and I am very grateful, i promise), was soo good and fluffy. The frosting was SUPER fluffy and mocha chocolately (we followed the chocolate frosting part).

I am now very very stuffed and I think I have had my cake fix for the next two years. Except there is an entire cake still sitting here to eat. So I guess I have to finish it up for dinner and breakfast and lunch tomorrow. There is no reason for that kind of waste.

cakey goodness recipe

Christey joins a for-fun photo expo every month on Flickr where food is the subject. This month is a diptych, “From the market to the table”. The idea is a picture of food at the store (or soon after), and a picture of a prepared meal using that food ingredient. There are bonus bragging rights for getting the ingredient from your backyard.

So, I immediately thought of something with blue crab (because my tomatoes are still green, and my jalapeño plants are still tiny because I planted them too late, and my French herbs are refusing to grow in the Florida sun), so I threw the trap in the canal. I was already thinking of the crab as a rich sauce, using the shells for a brief stock. It’s firmly grouper season in Florida — you can’t go to any fish market without tripping over a dozen grouper heads — so I used that as the main fish. As usual, though, I think the sauce would go well with any large white fish, like halibut or maybe cod, or one of my favorites (and fiendishly hard to get in Florida) hake. Given the blue crab theme, it would probably go pretty nicely with a nice striped bass, too.

I made a sauce supreme from the crab stock, used some roasted red jalapeños and cilantro and lime to kick it a little Caribbean, served it with pan-seared grouper with the crab meat as a garnish, and crispy plantain bits over the top for some texture and fun.

Who needs Top Chef when there’s a photo expo involved?

For those who haven’t seen the post, Christey sprained her right foot over the weekend.. So, she’s not climbing ladders, shooting over my shoulder, or dancing and weaving around getting shots. I think these turned out great, but they’re more planned than our usual impromptu cooking candid documentation. Photojournalism will resume in roughly 3-6 weeks.

Last Thanksgiving, our family and friends had an epic meal with close to 20 adults, and over 10 kids. I was responsible for the sweet potato dish. Now, I actually do kinda like the marshmallow and oven-browned sweet potato thing (though I almost think you could put marshmallows on foie gras and it would be good…). But, I was looking for something different, so I brought my mandoline (that wonderful, yet blood-sucking, infernal tool), and sliced up a dozen sweet potatoes paper-thin, deep fried them, and sprinkled them with feta. The feta on the sweet potato chips almost looked like marshmallows, which is kinda what I was going for. They turned out pretty good, but Thanksgiving in Florida was rainy and 78 degrees, so the crispiness definitely fell off as the dinner progressed.

The other day, Jonathan, from the wonderful food blog We Are Never Full commented on my roasted chicken with feta green beans, and that reminded me that I haven’t made sweet potato chips with feta in a long while. So, I did, with some grilled lamb loin chops.

boil and bubble