What to do with a tropical storm sitting over us? We still had power…but had no idea if that would continue, or how long this storm was going to last (we’re all fine, by the way. Wind, rain, but no drama).
We didn’t want to do anything too elaborate and be left with a half completed meal…so why not make cookies?
We did a switch again, Christey baked, and I took the pictures. The recipe was an adaptation of my grandmother’s peanut butter cookie recipe.
cookies….
We’ve done a couple steak dishes, a flat iron done mojo style, and a more classic filet mignon with béarnaise and fried matchstick potatoes.
I sorta played with both a little more this time and made a simple grilled flat iron steak, with an herb butter inspired by Thomas Keller’s recipe from his Bouchon cookbook, and classic french fries as described by Anthony Bourdain in his Les Halles cookbook.
sizzle sizzle
Grouper is not the only ingredient that’s seasonal in Florida right now. You can’t walk the neighborhood without a mango hitting you on the head. When I lived on the beach in the Tampa Bay area, my neighbor had a mango tree over the fence that divided our property. In June, I’d find dozens of mangoes (I don’t personally believe that mangoes ends in ‘es’ — where did that ‘e’ come from? Does one write of tangoes with one’s amigoes? But my spell-checker, and wikipedia says it’s so, therefore who am I to debate spelling) sitting in my lawn. My current neighbors aren’t as well stocked with mango trees, so I bought a few from my local market. I also found some local scallops on sale, U-12s, so I grabbed a few of those. Mango and scallops might be considered Caribbean, but I wanted to do some Asian spice, so I went for a sriracha-glaze, with a mango-bacon risotto.
As fate would have it, What’s For Lunch Honey is having a mango-themed challenge until July 14th, which is actually Bastille Day in another coincidence which is probably completely irrelevant to mangoes. But, it’s enough coincidence that we’ll play along and have a lot of fun.
Is Mango the next Tango?
MMMmmmmmm, Tuna. So, the whole seared tuna thing is about as cliche as you can get these days. Even Nebraska steak houses have a seared tuna appetizer, and there’s not much originality you can present with the fish these days.
On the other hand, why is that different from a steak bearnaise or a shellfish bisque? It’s relatively new, but it is somewhat of a fusion classic in modern cuisine. It could be worse — it could be fried mozerella sticks or something.
My favorite restaurant in South Beach Miami is Nemo’s (which opened long before Pixar). One of their signature dishes is a softball-sized chunk of tuna, rolled in nori seaweed, seared, and presented with a sesame seared rice-ball. It’s too good for words.
Today, one of my fish suppliers had AAA-grade sashimi yellowfin tuna on sale, ruby-red and glistening, and the muscle grains were tight and compact. So, I did my part to riff off of the Nemo’s.
I made a honey-lime-soy glaze, and served the tuna over a glaze-wasabi stir fry of vegetables and pad thai noodles.
toooooooona
This is probably more of a fall or winter recipe, rather than a sunny spring one. But, I was in the mood for duck breast, and duck goes well with fruit. A lot of fruits like orange and cherry are a bit overdone, so I went with apples instead, but cooked them in butter and orange juice for a least a nod to à l’orange. I wanted a rich, rich sauce to be able to hold up to the duck, so I used beef and mushroom stocks with a couple kicks. Wrapped in crepes with some exotic mushrooms and feta, and the richness was definitely on target, and it was tasty.
more recipe and tons of pictures
We live on a canal, which in turn feeds into the mouth of a river, which then feeds into a lagoon, which makes its way to the Atlantic. Which is a roundabout way of saying I could sail around the world from my backyard and return, except I don’t think our canal is deep enough to take the draft of a world-cruising sailboat, even if I could afford one. Our canal does, however, host plenty of salt water blue crab, free for the eating.
I love making a more or less classic bisque, from fresh caught crab straight through to the plate. The many steps involved just kind of make it more real.
Blue Crab Bisque and Shrimp Stir Fry follow. And yes, crabs have been boiled alive to create this post
One of my seafood stores had nice big scallops for sale, 8 to a pound, and I knew I already had key limes and cilantro at home, so I kinda went with a Latin/Caribbean feel.
More pictures and Recipe
 Last night, I finished work late and didn’t want to go to the store, so I kinda whipped something up based on what ingredients I just happened to have in the house. It worked out in the end, but there were a few back-and-forth ideas, and one side that just didn’t work out.
I had: boneless-skinless chicken breasts, celery, onion, roasted red bell peppers (in a jar), a single egg, olive oil, butter, one large potato, risotto rice, homemade chicken stock, half a bottle of sparkling wine, sour cream, some key limes left over from the pompano, and a lot of spices.
The original plan was a cajun chicken over a crisped potato pancake, but I tried to be healthy and used egg white instead of a whole egg to bind the potato, and it just fell into a mess trying to fry it up in a pan. I’ve had potato pancakes most of my life (Polish/German background not to mention I was raised Catholic — good meatless Lent dish), and I’ve made them zillions of times, but things were just not binding last night. So, instead of salvaging a soupy mess of scorched pan/liquid potato-oil for something that was just going to be dressed with the main course, I changed tack and decided to make a semi-instant risotto thing I do.
The basis of most Cajun food is a “trinity”, similar to a French mirepoix. I once heard that the French Acadians substituted bell pepper for carrots after settling in Louisiana because it was tough to grow carrots in the warm, swampy soil. I don’t know how true that is, but trinity is onion, celery, and bell pepper, diced or chopped. I like using roasted red bells instead of green because they’re sweeter, and they look prettier.
More Pictures and recipe here
So. Braising.I’ve hit a lot of classical cooking in the last few months or so, trying to add some knowledge to my cooking improv. However, most of my experimentation has been in sauces, from mother- to derivative-, with just a bit of French technique.
I recently bought Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef (he of the Top Chef hosting). Colicchio, though a four-star chef, started from no classical training, and never got around to the CIA. So, his cookbook is not necessarily about classical recipes, but more about techniques of classic cooking. Since I tend to ignore recipes, but am intrigued by techniques, I think his is the most interesting cookbook I’ve read in the last year.
One of his big techniques as a meat-centric chef is braising. I have never really braised, at least as a formal technique, and real meat like beef, as opposed to the quicker (yet still classic) techniques of seafood.
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