Otto Tarchin cooking...

When does one become an American? Part 2: Thanksgiving, continued...

2010-12-28T19:24:00.012-05:00

Why does it sound so romantic and sexy to an American when a French says “la vie en rose”?.. even if all she wants to say might be “life is beautiful in America”… Why do so many Americans fancy moving to Europe while so many Europeans dream about America? Let me tell you…

I am a species from an exotic land. In my country, a baby is born at the age of 100; she goes to sleep with the same lullabies her grandma did once, she grows up with the life stories of her uncles, aunts, their uncles and aunts; and she celebrates her 1000^th year at the age of 15. The Crusades are a lively memory for her (*), as if she had lived a 1000 years already… and may be more... When she is in the month of Turkish “Temmuz”, the so called July, she mourns the death of Tammuz, the Babylonian god of harvest without knowing about it, not knowing that he is the lover of Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love, war and sex (**); not knowing that Ishtar is Easter today…

And like Ishtar loved Tammuz so much, she starts loving her land, her country, her people, her culture, her traditions… And like Isthar’s love turned fatal for Tammuz, her love, her unquestioned beliefs and traditions become suffocating for her own people…. It is not that one cannot find a way out for himself, no; it is that one cannot find a way out for his conscience among the labyrinth of that culture, history and traditions. That is what makes one a culture nomad. That is what makes an American fancy France while so many French want to be here…

Yes, Daisy and I are culture nomads. We have settled in America right now; and we are grateful to America for giving us the opportunity to fly freely without fear, like a kite, the strings of which are attached to Mesopotamia and Balkans... And that is actually very American…

Still no word on food, man, this kite thing is getting out of control….

To be continued…

(*) somebody tell that to ex-President Bush, will ya?

(**) fertility, love, war and sex , everything one needed by that time… today we need iPad, too, and so Steve Jobs, the god of technology…

When does one become an American? Part 1: Thanksgiving...

2010-12-26T12:09:00.017-05:00

Let me first tell you what it means to me. Becoming an American is really becoming a world citizen, something that, despite their generous open hearts, many American-by-several-generations-Americans tend to forget when it comes to international politics and American fought wars around the world... Enough said about politics...

Becoming an American... It starts here, on this land of immigrants, where one meets with many cultures of the world. I guess there is no other place on earth that appreciates and encourages differences more. It must be because of that that it all becomes about discovering one's own cultural heritage then. The American experience teaches one what to look for. For example, Istanbul, most gorgeous city of all, had been a big chaotic metropolis for me with lots of sexy things to do. It was not until I came here that I discovered the real Istanbul, a city that cooks its own meal with ingredients from the east, and the west, and a history of 8,000 years; a city which is not eastern, not western either. It is Constantinople, it is Armenian, it is Jewish, and today mostly Muslim, Turkish and Kurdish. It is Istanbul, just Istanbul, and only Istanbul...

And it was not until I came here that I realized we are the lucky keepers, not the owners of it; that 8,000 years of history and the magnificent Suleymaniye Mosque of Mimar Sinan belong to everybody as much as does the magnificent Hagia Sophia (Αγία Σοφία). Istanbul is “our” precious; “we” are the world.(*)

I would probably still have enjoyed the music, the food, the mosques and the churches of Istanbul had I not come here, but not the way I do today. That itself is enough reason to celebrate Thanksgiving, so it is time to talk about food now. But wait; I have not answered my question yet: When does one become an American?

Did I become an American when I got my citizenship? No, probably much earlier.

Was it when I stepped on the American land in Rochester? Oh that was a very humid summer day.

Or was it when I celebrated my first Thanksgiving? Nobody had an idea about what language I was speaking when I spoke English when I came to the US. Oh boy, my pronunciation was so bad. I decided to work on it; I also wanted to learn more about Christians. So what better than attending a free English class at a church? Then I was invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at Houck family's via the church. I only had to arrange some friends to join. The Houck family, our friends, Daisy and I held our hands in a circle around the dinner table, the way you see in the American movies, as the family expressed gratitude to Jesus. That felt a little weird for us Muslims, praying to Jesus, but then what was I expecting really? That was probably the first time I realized that we the people say amen to the same good wishes… By the way, being foreigners to the culture, we did not know that we were supposed to send a thank you note after the dinner, and we did not. So dear Houck family, if you read this entry one day, this is my thank you note to you after so many years...

Was it when Daisy and I held our first Thanksgiving dinner for our friends? Neah, it cannot be that one, we roasted a chicken that day, our first and only chicken mistake on a Thanksgiving. We did not skip the bird later even when we cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for two.

So was it the Christmas party at which we became part of a beautiful all American family? Was it the other Christmas party at which there was only one Christian and several Jews, Hindus and us? Or was it the other one with all Jews and Muslims, no Christians?

Maybe none, may be all...

to be continued...

(*) Probably nobody understood that better than the Ottoman Sultans. Since depiction of the human form is considered to be blasphemous in sunni Islam, the mosaics of Hagia Sophia were covered with plaster by the Ottomans. However, the plaster was periodically removed, the mosaics were maintained and plastered again by the Ottomans.

Dinner for one...

2010-10-16T17:01:00.016-04:00

What do you do when you are at home and alone? I'll be frank, I miss Daisy and want to give her a call, but not that night. This time I was being accompanied by two petit ladies with absolutely gorgeous breasts (vow!) and delicate legs (ohh!); three of us have been looking for an intimate moment indeed. Yes, the two quails I am talking about.

I have been hiding those beauties in the freezer for some time. I wanted something light yet fulfilling and hearty, cheerful and rustic. This is what I came up with.

Put some mixed greens on the plate, no seasoning or oil.

Prepare the quails. Semi debone each quail by removing the the chest cavity bones and the back bones. That is the most time consuming part. It may take about 15 minutes to debone your first quail, and you are likely to spoil it the first time. But don't give up, it is worth it. (I have not been able to locate any instructions for the semi-deboning process on the web. When I perfect my technique, I will post a video here.)

Salt and pepper the birds generously.

Melt 1 tbs butter 1 tbs olive oil in an oven proof pan big enough to take two birds over medium-high heat, closer to medium. When the oil is hot but not smoking, put the birds chest down first. You need a solid and steady sizzle sound, but no smoke at all, if it starts smoking turn the heat down a bit. Don't move the birds around, just press a little if needed. Pan roast each side for 3 minutes.

At the 5th minute, turn the oven on to 350F (we want to keep the sizzling going on in the oven without burning anything). At the 6th minute, cover the pan with aluminum foil and put on the middle rack in the oven. The oven temperature will rise steadily. After 4 minutes, remove the pan from the oven using a heat-proof glove. Place the birds on the greens.

Pour off the oil from the pan. Don't scrap away the bottom of the pan. Put it back on the stove at medium heat. Squeeze generously about half of the juice out of a half of a lemon, add 1/4 cups of water, deglaze the pan, add two tbs olive oil, 1 tbs pine nuts and 2 chopped medjool dates, salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce becomes too thick add some more water. When you get the desired consistency, spoon the sauce over the birds and the greens. Sprinkle with dry oregano. Now click on the picture and enjoy. Bon appetit.

Next time I will try the recipe with another bird and I know exactly what I want: a woodpecker. Yes, among hundreds of trees surrounding our house, that mf that keeps pecking on the walls of our house…

Happiness to share....

2010-10-03T14:44:00.005-04:00

Cooking for friends is happiness. When a friend turns it into a shareable moment, everybody can have a bite. Thanks Serendipity, for the beautiful shooting, editing and production:

Inside Otto's Kitchen from serendipity on Vimeo.

The apron is a beautiful design by Dream, not on sale :)

And the olive oil bottle you see on the counter, I am missing its cork cap. Anybody who took it home, please return asap.

Food that has made me a food enthusiast...

2010-06-16T23:15:00.019-04:00

Every summer, we visit our parents in Turkey and enjoy great food, to us some of the most amazing food of course, made from scratch at home, with freshly bought vegetables, seasoned with memories. This is what has made me a food enthusiast. Too many recipes to post, my mom's simple summer vegetable fries with garlic tomato sauce, Daisy's aunt's incredible stuffed peppers, mother-in-law's small plates, grandma's sautéed dried eggplant dish... It is a long due credit...

Jet lagged, sitting alone in the living room and trying to adopt to the new time around 4:00am in the morning (it is 9pm my regular time), no better time to post about some of the delicious dishes that Daisy's mother has surprised us with after a long flight. Being a perfectionist herself, everything was prepared to perfection, can't tell you how tasteful they were. Here they are.

Let me start with the cheese rolls, a true classic. All you need is "yufka", thinly rolled-out dough made from flour, salt and water, cut in triangle shapes, grated feta cheese, finely chopped parsley, white of one egg. Mix the cheese, parsley and egg white, roll the cheese mix into the dough triangles. Fry the rolls evenly in heated vegetable oil until a little darker than golden brown at medium-high heat. Rest them on paper towel to drain excess oil. The egg white is mother-in-law's genius addition, it avoids cheese puffs while frying. This is probably the hardest of all, as you might have difficulty to find the yufka. Turkish/Mediterranean grocery stores usually carry. If you can find the yufka or substitute, try it, you will not get enough...

Lentil balls, another true classic. 1 cup finely crushed wheat bulgur, 1 cup red lentils, 2.5 cup water, 2 small onions, 3-4 small spring onions, generous handful or two of parsley, 1/2 cup olive oil, 1 table spoon tomato paste, slightly heaped, juice of 1/4 to 1/2 lemon, salt&pepper, cumin and pinch of cayenne for heat.

RInse the lentils throughly, mix them with water in a pan and simmer until very tender. Add the bulgur and mix well, cover with a lid and let rest for 10 minutes. In the meantime, sweat diced onions in oil, when they are done add the tomato paste and give it a stir for 30 seconds. Add the lentil-bulgur mix, finely chopped parsley and spring onions, salt&pepper, lemon juice, cumin and cayenne to taste. Shape and enjoy. I have had those babies with slices of tomatoes, real tomatoes ripened and baked under the Mediterranean sun, oh yeah!!!

Next shakshuka, another absolute simplicity, absolute classic. 3 medium size long eggplants or one big globe, peel in stripes (see here), dice the eggplant in cubes of about 1/2 inch in size. Rest the eggplant cubes in heavily salted water for 30 minutes, rinse and pat them dry well with paper towel. Fry them in heated vegetable oil at medium-high heat until tender. Take the fried cubes out, drain the oil, sprinkle them with 1/2 tbs sugar, set aside. In a saute pan on medium-high heat, add 3 tbs olive oil, saute for 30 seconds finely chopped 3 or 4 garlic cloves and finely diced pepper (if you have a big bell pepper, half of it should be more than enough, or about 3/4 of a smaller one; but if you can, try something with more pepper flavor). Add 2 medium sized tomatoes, in small dices about 1/4 inch, to the pan, saute until the excess juice evaporates, salt to taste and add 1/2 tbs sugar. To mount the plate, first spread about 1/2 pound strained yogurt (they call it Greek yogurt in the US), spread the eggplants on yogurt, then the tomato sauce on the top. Sprinkle or garnish with parsley.

Last but not least, this, stuffed artichoke hearts with peas, carrots, dill and lemon, man this is jackpot! I'll give the recipe later. For now, I will leave it to your imagination while I am enjoying the left overs (click on the image to enjoy them at a larger scale).

And the light you see on the plates, it is the seasoning of life here, the light of the Mediterranean sun, which bakes the land and the people all day, then gives a gentle affectionate touch during sunset... Oh how lucky I am...

Inspired by the season... Baby artichokes, no gimmicks...

2010-05-14T00:21:00.005-04:00

I had to grab a bunch when my eyes met with those little beauties at the market. I did not know what to do with them. But then, I don't need to plan ahead really when I get a hand on such tenderly beautiful, beautifully tender veggies.

Chop about 1/3-1/2 off the head, peel the fibery leaves and the skin off, no need to scoop out any hairy stuff, drop into acidulated water, better wipe with a lemon wedge. I use some cheap rice vinegar and water. Caress them one by one, give a little gentle kiss, place in the steamer flat side down. Steam until tender. Check tenderness by inserting the tip of a knife.

Let it cool a bit on the plate. Chop some fresh thyme. We have some French thyme in the yard this time of the year. Salt, pepper, drizzle of some good olive oil and fresh squeeze of lemon juice...

Ohh....

Eggs with spicy sausage...

2010-04-16T00:59:00.026-04:00

Even if the rose of our love has faded away,

Even if our eyes are filled with tears,

Even if our time has come to an end,

We will get together in our dreams, we will meet with this song...

Oh, what a beautiful song, what a beautiful voice... one does need to know Turkish to feel it... like "sucuklu yumurta", or eggs with spicy Turkish sausage, one does not need to be Turkish to enjoy sucuklu yumurta.

To a Turkish who lives abroad, sucuklu yumurta is more than eggs with some spicy sausage. It is a love lost in the past, a story that has to be told and shared with friends in the new home country...

Yes we want to tell our story to our friends over dinner, but who wants to have eggs with some sausage as main course at a dinner party, really? That was the challenge. The idea came from Daisy and I developed the recipe and the cooking technique. Here is our story, here is my recipe, in which I meet with sucuklu yumurta.

Ingredients:

Equal number of

- thin slices from a baguette

- thick slices of a spicy sausage (we use spicy Turkish soojook, you can go with chorizo)

- quail eggs (bildircin yumurtasi)

and mayonnaise

First thing to do is to crack each quail egg into a table spoon. Lay several table spoons on a plate. Quail egg has a very soft shell. First crack the shell by using the back of a knife, then tear the shell with its sharp tip. Crack it into a spoon, one spoon per each egg.

Next toast the baguette slices either in a toaster or in the oven. Spread a little mayonnaise, a very thin layer, on each slice. It will be an amazing complement to the spicy sausage, but do not overdo it.

Fry both sides of soojook slices in a nonstick pan on medium high heat, place one soojook slice on each baguette.

Each soojook slice will leave some fat on the pan. Now carefully pour one egg from spoon on each fatty area. Once the egg white is set, which will happen very quickly, lower the heat to medium-low, cook the eggs until the white part is done and the yolk is still runny. If you keep the heat high, the white part will be done too quickly and the yolk will stay uncooked. Once the eggs are cooked, transfer them to the top of the soojook slices with a spatula. Salt and pepper, serve as appetizer immediately.

This is a very simple recipe folks, the most tricky part is finding the quail eggs. If you are one of those lucky ones who happen to live in the south like us, in the Raleigh-Durham area to be precise, there is a specialty store in Carrboro, Cliff's meat market, they have it.

Try it, hear our story... no, they don't shoot such movies any longer...

Meyer lemon blackberry bread pudding... Daisy's inauguration...

2010-03-21T18:23:00.007-04:00

[Otto's note: This blog owes Daisy a lot; the ideas and suggestions about the dishes mostly come from her. And the debt will only grow folks, here is her first of hopefully many entries.]

Welcome to Daisy’s first-ever blog entry! I have been picking Otto’s head to post a dessert recipe that I really really love for some time, and he said: “Why don’t you write it?” Well, I can think of many reasons not to write: I am not as good a writer, I have not baked the dessert (Otto did!!) and I am not a cook, not a talented cook like Otto, but not even a modest cook. I love spending time with Otto in the kitchen, but I talk the talk, and he walks the walk… well, this is the perfect division of labor in our world. Anyway, it turns out Otto’s blog is much more structured than I thought: He says he has to have a theme to write a blog on, because this blog is not about recipes, it’s about food but also about life, about so many other things…. In my opinion, you don’t have to have a theme to write about this particular dessert, you just have to have a sweet tooth!!!! And, I have lots of it in me!!! Dessert is the most important part of a meal for me. Even though I enjoy appetizers, and soups, and salads, and entrees very much, I always always always look forward to seeing the dessert menu at the restaurants… I go to some restaurants just for their desserts. What can I do? Dessert is the most important part of a meal... So, here it comes: Meyer Lemon – Blackberry Bread Pudding!!!!!!

We were looking for a bread pudding recipe for our Christmas dinner. We are holiday people, we identify all holidays with good food, so we celebrate as many holidays as possible, let it be religious, secular, national, international, doesn’t matter. No wonder, Thanksgiving (the most food-focused holiday of all!) is our favorite holiday. So, holiday means good food, and Christmas was a good opportunity to hone Otto’s skills in making bread pudding. We started with asking around for recipes, and our generous friends shared quite a few recipes with us, and I, Daisy the ultimate Googler, also googled for recipes online. Out of about 10-12 recipes, I chose Iron Chef Bobby Flay’s Meyer Lemon Blackberry Bread Pudding.

Here is the recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/meyer-lemon-blackberry-bread-pudding-with-meyer-lemon-whipped-cream-recipe/index.html

Bobby Flay obviously explains the recipe much better than I could, so I would just tell you to follow his instructions and you’ll be just fine…. Oops, maybe not! Ok, now I talked to Otto and he sent a message. Apparently, Bobby Flay is not as iron chef as he should be, and he misses a point in the recipe. When Bobby tells you to slowly whisk the warm milk into the eggs and add vanilla, he forgets to tell you that you also have to add the meyer lemon juice at that time. Do not forget the meyer lemon juice, people, it adds a lot!

This is such a yummy dessert that, if you try it, I am sure, you will love it, and send a message to Otto saying that you loved it, and he will regret that it was not him that blogged about the breadpudding ha ha ha. Bon Appetit!

Now that I have warmed up, stay tuned for my next blog! Yeah, next blog, but probably it will not be about a certain recipe. As I mentioned earlier, and as you (the followers of this blog) have already found out, I am not a cook. In contrast to Otto, who grew up watching what her mom did in the kitchen, I grew up going into the kitchen only to get something from the refrigerator. I never wanted to find out what my mom was doing in the kitchen. But even my mom did not want to spend much time in the kitchen; she came from work at about 7pm, and got into the kitchen because she had to feed us, and did quick things (but we never ever ate fast food, or junk food, or lean cuisine, thank you, mom!!) and we ended up eating in front of the TV watching some TV series on our one-channel TV. So, I don’t have that natural love for cooking in my genes, and my strengths lay elsewhere: I love thinking about what to eat for dinner, which restaurant to go, I love spending time in the kitchen helping Otto, taking photos of his dishes, and I am very much into the thing that is the best company to food: Wine! Wine. I’ll blog about wine. I’ll think of some way to blog about wine. After all… tomorrow is another day.

Pide... That's amore...

2010-03-13T00:25:00.024-05:00

Pide, Turkish flat bread baked with some cheese, vegetable or ground meat topping, is to me what pizza is to a Neopolitan. In Konya, my hometown, where love and friendship are king and queen, when friends and loved ones meet, here is what they say: When the moon hits your eye like a thin long pide, that's amore...

My home town makes fame out of pide. There is a pide shop every block --like Starbucks--, and every small village has its own pide shop. Every single pide shop prepares its dough fresh from scratch daily, bakes hand made pide to the order in wood-fired stone ovens. We don't only eat pide in Konya, we talk pide, we swear by pide. We offer pide to express our love and friendship... Finding the best pide in town is a constant quest for truth. Yet we prefer any pide baked in Konya to any pide baked elsewhere. To be frank, we don't like others' pides; we don't even like the pides baked out of Konya by pide chefs from Konya, it never tastes the same... Pide is very close to my heart. No, it is my heart. And I want to bake it perfectly in the US with the ingredients found in the US... Now that is an impossible task, but dream-able, because that's amore...

My pide is still a work in progress. I will give you my recipe today, which I think works better than many recipes that you will find elsewhere, especially the dough recipes that you will find at Google with olive oil, yogurt, egg, all good stuff having nothing to do with an authentic pide dough. But please come back later, as I am sure I will twist it here and there.

The recipe has three parts, the dough, the topping and tips for getting the crust right in a nonprofessional kitchen oven.

Here are the ingredients for four generously sized pide:

2 cups bread flour - 12 oz

1 ts dry active yeast

1 ts kosher salt

1 and 1/8 tap water at about room temperature, OK to be on the colder side, but don't use warmed water; an additional 1/16 to 1/8 cup as needed

To make life easier, pick a big metal roasting pan, much easier to work with dough on a metal surface. Sift flour on the pan, open a well in the middle, add salt and yeast, add 1/2 cup of water, mix with your fingers, once the yeast dissolves add the remaining water, start adding the flour from the wall of the well. Once the water and flour is mixed well, knead about 5-10 minutes until smooth. It will be sticky in the beginning but will develop into a more consistent and less sticky dough in a few minutes; don't panic and don't add extra flour. Make a big ball of the dough, lightly oil to avoid drying out. Rest in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap. Let it rest for 2 hours.

Many recipes suggest much more yeast, warm water, sugar and about 30 minute rise time. This is too quick by all means. It is the slow rise that gives the taste and texture to the pide crust.

Once the dough rises, divide it into 4 to 6 equal pieces, make a ball using your hand on a lightly floured surface. Place the balls on a cookie sheet and cover with oiled plastic wrap, let it rest about 20 minutes.

In the meantime preheat the oven to the maximum heat available, no broil, just bake. The professional ovens reach a much higher heat, we will do with whatever we have.

Prepare your topping. I tried two different toppings with different cheese combination. We have our own local blue cheese in Konya, which makes an excellent pide topping. To capture that taste, I mixed grated caciocavallo (known as kaskaval in Turkey) with a little gorgonzola. I also tried plain grated feta cheese, which is pretty common as pide topping elsewhere in Turkey. Whatever cheese you like, here are the ingredients to be mixed for the topping:

Grated cheese, possibly mixed

Finely chopped parsley, generous amount

Finely diced shallot, rinse and let it drain in a colander, about 1 ts for each pide

Salt and pepper

Once the balls rest, using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a long oval shape on a lightly floured surface. The crust will be very thin. The dough should be quite forgiving at that point, hold it, play with it, try to stretch it, shape it, you will get comfortable after a few tries. And if you get better, you will not need a rolling pin at all to roll it out. I am not there yet but slowly and surely approaching.

You need a thick commercial quality baking pan. When it comes to baking pide, thin cookie sheets are useless. A pizza stone is probably better, but it is also quite pricey and tends to break after a few bake.

Place the rolled out dough on to the baking pan. Depending on the size of your pide, you may place two on the pan. Spread the topping on the dough generously and evenly. Fold the sides. Wet your hands with water and tap pressing lightly on top of your pide all the way. Bake your pide on the medium rack for 8 minutes. Depending on the heat of your oven, the baking time may change.

Once the pide is out of oven, put very thin slices of butter, and if your cheese is not salty enough, a touch of salt. Slice and enjoy...

When you walk in a dream with a slice of pide in your hand, but you know you're not dreaming, signore, scuzza' me, but you see, back in old Konya, that's amore...

Pureed Beet and Ginger Soup...

2010-02-17T23:58:00.005-05:00

There are a few books that I am tempted to try every single recipe they offer; Gordon Hamersley's Bistro Cooking at Home is one of them. More than 150 recipes, so he claims, almost all of them are fascinatingly simple to prepare, and every single dish we have tried so far are fascinatingly deep in flavor. Here comes a delicious beet and ginger soup from it, Daisy's pick.

Ingredients for a serving of 8. We prepare half of it, it is still too much soup:

1/4 cup olive oil

4 medium beets, about 2.5 pounds, peeled and cut into quarters

1/2 red onion, chopped

2 tbs sugar

1/4 cup chopped fresh ginger

2 tbs chopped garlic

1 ts fennel seeds

1 ts dried tarragon

6 cups chicken broth

1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tbs chopped fresh tarragon

1 quart water

Heat the oil over medium heat, add onion, beets and sugar, cook about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the ginger, garlic, fennel seeds and dried tarragon, stir for a minute or so. Add the broth, orange juice, vinegar and water, season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer about 1 to 1.5 hours, until the beets are tender. Puree the soup in a blender until smooth. Be patient and keep pureeing, you can never over-puree. Taste and keep seasoning with salt, pepper and vinegar as needed. I think it is better to prepare the soup early and let the flavors develop a couple hours then warm it up and serve with the chopped fresh tarragon. I spooned some cream just to smooth out the taste a little more. Also, if you do not have dried tarragon, just replace it with finely chopped fresh tarragon and dry the remaining tarragon for later use. I dry most of my herbs from the left over fresh herbs.

Folks were at our place for dinner at Valentine's day. I made that soup. The color was quite appropriate for the day and the taste of it made me everybody's valentine.

Asparagus and Chickpeas with Mint and Asian Dressing

2010-02-09T00:06:00.006-05:00

We wanted to have an Asian dinner tonight. And we wanted to empty our fridge. We had absolutely beautiful baby zucchinis that I had not been able to stop grabbing in bunch the moment I had located them at the market. We had had half of it with some pasta with a creamy zucchini sauce. The other half with beef in red curry sauce tonight. We also had some asparagus, which I had been keeping in fridge in a cup with some water in the bottom for a few days, half of the can of the chickpeas left over from our last chickpea asparagus salad -- just scroll down please--. And mint... So the night called for it, an asparagus and chickpea salad, with the same idea of brightening up some beautiful earthy flavors with herb and citrus, Asian way this time, as the night called.

Prepare your chickpeas and asparagus as before. My asparagus was thin tonight, so I boiled it for just 2 minutes. Also no parmesan reggiano this time. Here is my dressing for the salad (again for two):

2 tbs grapeseed oil, or any neutral flavor oil

1 tbs fish sauce

Zest of half of lime

1.5 tbs lime juice

1/2 ts grated ginger

1/4 ts grated garlic

1/8-1/4 ts sugar (well, just use 1/4 ts)

1 small green Thai chili about an inch long, thinly sliced (something hot like serrano would be fine, too)

Mix everything but oil and sugar in a small cup. Add 1/8 ts of sugar, mix and taste. If you need more sugar to open up the flavors, add a little more. Add the oil and mix. Let it rest for about 20 minutes for the flavors to develop further.

In a bowl, mix your chickpeas, asparagus, sliced green onions, and thinly sliced mint, toss with the dressing and enjoy. If you give me a hug next time you see me, I'll know that you have tried that at home...

Asparagus and Chickpeas with Mint and Truffle Oil

2010-01-25T00:24:00.008-05:00

This is a flavorful and very-easy-to-make salad. This recipe is my own but I am sure I am reinventing the wheel here; somebody must have tried this before, because it is obvious to me: It is all about brightening up some beautiful earthy flavors with herb and citrus.

Raw chickpeas are kids' delicacy during summer time in my hometown. Weird, no? They are sold on freshly rooted plants. Do you know that you need to shell chickpeas to get the chickpeas? You don't need to season or process them, just shell and enjoy...Don't panic, we don't need to be that sophisticated for that recipe. Just buy a can of chickpeas at the market that is closest to you; the brand does not matter at all, because it is really difficult to mess up with chickpeas however incompetent the manufacturer is... As Benjamin Franklin once said for beer, chickpea "is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy", such robust honest impossible-to-fail delicacy...

Chickpeas have a beautiful earthy and fulfilling taste. Match it with asparagus and green onions; highlight the earthiness further with truffle oil; then cheer up the flavors with lemon juice and mint. Salt and pepper and chunks of Parmigiano-Reggiano. This all takes less than 15 minutes to prepare and serve.

Recipes are always given for a serving of 4, 6, 8 ,10 even 12. Nobody gives a recipe for two. I have spent all my life dividing the measures by 2, 3 or 4. Here is my own recipe for two... dos, to be exact, iki, du. Hell yeah, let 'em do some multiplication...

For a serving of two:

Half of a 15oz can of garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained (about 8 tbs, topped)

about 8 asparagus stalks, ends peeled

10-15 fresh mint leaves, sliced in thin strips

half of a young tender green onion, finely sliced, both white and green parts are OK, about 1 tbs, leveled

1 tbs regular extra virgin olive oil

1 tbs fruttato olive oil

1.5-2tbs lemon juice

About 1/2-1 ts truffle oil

chunks of parmesan reggiano

salt&pepper to taste

Peel the asparagus at the tough ends, cut them into four pieces. Bring water to a heavy boil in a sauce pan, salt heavily, add the asparagus, boil for about 3-4 minutes; time may vary depending on the freshness of your asparagus, just keep it on the crunchy side otherwise it will not be able to compete with the texture of chickpeas. Drain and stop cooking under running cold tap water for about 30 seconds. Grab a bowl and mix everything but the cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with chunks of parmesan. I have realized that there are exactly 10 items listed above. Yet this is not the list of ten commandments. It is all about finding the right flavors for your palate. May be it is a little bit more lemon juice for you and a little less truffle oil and it is no sin. But this is a sinful salad, watch out...

No need to make it difficult...

2010-01-22T01:24:00.013-05:00

Life does not need to be sophisticated to be beautiful. Best food is usually not sophisticated at all. Everybody's most favorite food is their childhood food; and not the one that the mother had spent the whole day to prepare in order to impress some friends or relatives. No, it is the most basic one, like simple meatballs, which used to be eaten again and again with the warmth and security of family while growing up. Memories, the ordinary ones, the good ones, even the sad ones that connect to the past, are the best seasoning. To me, preparing good food is not about cooking it to perfection, or shopping for the most extraordinary ingredients... well yes, I try to buy good quality ingredients and try to cook well, but that is secondary to everything about food, which is collecting happy memories.

Our Thursday pasta nights while living in NYC, for example. Daisy would take a train for about 5 hours a day to commute to and from work, she would do it at least three times a week. Thursdays were her last day of work. She would come home totally consumed. We would never arrange anything with friends on Thursdays, I would not even answer the phone, even if it was from my mom, even when Daisy did not commute on that day. Because, Thursdays were our pasta nights. Yes, Daisy would be totally consumed, but as much happy, too. It was our Thursday pasta night after all. That was the beginning of our weekend. We would get into the kitchen, prepare a salad and some pasta, open a bottle of wine and turn on the TV. We would relax all night in front of the TV. We had a couple of shows, Survivor, CSI on TV. It did not matter how shitty those shows were. What mattered was, you got it, the flavors we got from that pasta, wine, and our TV shows, the same flavors of your childhood dish.

Life does not need to be sophisticated. Cokoprens is not sophisticated. But it becomes delicious, full of flavor, when it is consumed again and again, and with good memories. We eat a lot of Cokoprens, at nights when we want to have some tea, when we feel hungry on the road in some place. Cokoprens, Daisy and I have pictures everywhere, on the top of a mountain, on a beach, in front of an old building after being consumed on foot all day. Three of us, Daisy, I and Cokoprens, everywhere we go. Last year, this time of the year, Daisy's birthday cake: Cokoprens....

Happy birthday Daisy...

...shoot, where is the damn cokoprens?!?

Meyer lemon is the new tomato...Pasta with meyer lemon and pistachio...

2010-01-08T22:46:00.002-05:00

I grew up with delicious tomatoes... The sun and soil treat tomatoes differently in Turkey... Italians would understand me...

Waiting for the first tomato of the season all winter and spring was a painful joy. Nobody would ever see one single tomato anywhere during all winter. The first tomato of the year would break the monotonicity of life. Coming from the green houses in the south, it would lack the taste, smell and color, but it would taste oh so good after such long wait all winter. It would be prohibitively expensive, too. Mother would grab one or two at the farmers market, give a slice to each of us with a little salt on top. Tomatoes from the south (Antalya) and west (Manisa) that were picked up a day or two back would start pouring into the market, we would start buying 5-6 kilos (10 pounds) of tomatoes at once. The smell of those tomatoes in the shopping cart would spread out all over the house... Then we would start waiting for the local heirlooms (yerli domates), a conversation topic among 7-to-70. That was a beautiful harmony of life and society knit around seasons. I can't, I really can't explain to you the unique smell, flavor and texture of those tomatoes and the whole experience.

If you live in the US, you must feel good about your shopping for locally grown tomatoes in season, I do. But this is not the same. Your locally grown tomato in NY is not much different than my locally grown tomato in NC. When I was growing up, shopping local was not cool and nobody that I knew of was sophisticated enough to shop locally for the sake of environment. To us, local meant a different taste, our own taste; and it was not a new taste, it was the same tomoto, the seeds of which had been saved for generations, the same old taste that my grandma had grown up with, on which I started developing my first sense of flavors as a child...

Still, every year before my arrival, my mother and sister will fill up their pantries with the most aromatic and most flavorful local tomatoes they can find. The task gets harder every year though. With industrialization, tomatoes are becoming more and more similar everywhere; they are becoming better looking and tasteless every year... This last summer for example, it was my sister's father-in-law who located and sent to me some authentic heirlooms...

Life is even more difficult in the US. The task of catching the harmony of seasons is an impossible task. For one, tomatoes never leave my sight... They are everywhere I look at... They keep their shape and color at big markets all year around... Yet life is not hopeless! I have a savior... We have a savior... Meyer lemon... Yes folks, meyer lemon is the new tomato... I have not had one single meyer lemon all my life in Turkey, I did not even know of its existence... But you can't imagine the joy I felt when the vegetable guy at our supermarket said that meyer lemon had not arrived yet... It was the same joyful feeling that I used to have when the guy at the farmers market said to my mother "local tomatoes have not arrived yet sister, next week" (yerli daha cikmadi abla, haftaya gelir)...

Now is the meyer lemon season in the US. Before it disappears from the market shelves, we will enjoy the following pasta a couple more times:

2 meyer lemons (can be replaced by 1 regular lemon or 1 lime)

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

3/4 cup pistachio nuts, pan roasted

1 large shallot, minced

1/2 cup cream

2 cups wild arugula

1 pound spaghetti of your choice

1 cup pasta water reserved

Zest the lemons, mix with the grated parmesan cheese. Segment the lemons into a bawl collecting all the juice. Removing all the skin makes a huge difference in this recipe and segmenting is an easy process, just work it out a couple times and you will start having fun. Pan-roast your pistachio on medium-low heat and chop them finely in a food processor, add the lemon segments and juice and make a fine paste. While pasta is boiling, sweat the shallot in a table spoon of olive oil until it is soft. Add cream, heat a little, turn off the heat. Set aside. When the pasta is done, drain and reserve about one cup of boiling water, toss the pasta with the parmesan-zest mix. Stir about 1/2 cup of the reserved boiling water into the pistachio-lemon mix, toss well the pasta with the mix and then with shallot-cream. Salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce is still very thick, add a little more water. Once you get the desired consistency, toss the pasta with roughly chopped arugula. And that is all you need to enjoy a taste from heavens...

Meyer lemon is sweeter than regular lemon with a good touch of tangerine aroma. I have replaced the two meyer lemons in the recipe with one lime, that worked pretty well too. I really like the spicy bouquet of lime...

Warm Chocolate Cake... We can do this at home...

2009-12-28T23:52:00.006-05:00

"No, no se puede"...that is what I said to myself when I had that cutie the first time in my life at Vong, NYC, one of the Jean Georges restaurants, which has been closed recently. Then I saw the book, then the recipe in the book, and the next thing I did was melting a of piece chocolate on the stove. I did not know until then how simple it was to make that cake.

Google "chocolate molten cake" or "lava cake", you will come up with many similar recipes. Better yet, Jean Georges' full recipe and instructions are here; I will write them down here later if the link is removed. Instead, I will talk about my adventure with the cake. If all you need is a recipe, you don't need anything else than clicking on the link above, some good quality chocolate, unsalted butter and some stuff you can find in your pantry. Otherwise keep reading to discover the rational psychopath cook in me.

This is a cake that I have baked many times under various conditions, using different utensils, different ingredients, different locations on the planet; it has always come out absolutely delicious, a very versatile cake indeed. And no need for preparation beforehand, except shopping for chocolate, butter and ice cream. We always start preparing it after finishing the entree. Sometimes we even pause the movie in the middle, Daisy and I give each other a look and there we go, we have the cake in front of the TV in 15-20 minutes. Absolute simplicity, absolute delicacy, no magic... Well actually, the whole thing is magic and Jean-Georges hides no tricks...

If you want to master something, you cannot do it by simply sitting on your ass thinking and dreaming about it. You need to walk the walk, most importantly walk the footsteps of the masters and reproduce their masterpieces. That is exactly what I have tried to do with this cake. Although this cake works wonders in any mold or ramekin, I would bake it in the same star shaped mold that JG serves at his restaurants. So I once measured the cake that I ordered at JG. No, of course I did not take a measure out of my pocket, I used a piece of paper to mark the measures on, which I carried with me wherever I go for sometime. The measurement part was easy. The difficult part was to find the mold. The ones I located would either be small or have too many flutes. That also became a mission-impossible in Turkey. Being aware of the problem, apparently Daisy's aunt bought some molds. Nope. Finally Daisy spotted one in NYC, I checked the measures, and yes it would do the job, a 4 inch brioche mold with 10 flutes.

The next thing was the chocolate. JG himself says that he uses Valrhona and everybody cites Valrhona thereafter. If there is one thing that matters most in that recipe, it is actually not the brand of the chocolate, but the percentage of the cacao in the chocolate. To some, the difference between a 56% and 70% may be like the difference between 1 tsp of cayenne and 2 tsp of cayenne. But nobody mentions about the percentage. Folks, keep your breath: 72%... yes, "72%, to be exact" is what the waiter at JG told me after he checked with the pastry chef inside after I gave him the look after he said "between 70-80%" when I inquired about the percentage with him. So this is sound knowledge that you will not be able to find elsewhere. But then, it is my obsession to walk through the exact foo'd'steps of the master. It does not really matter much as long as you are happy with the taste; I have tried it with other good quality chocolates, it has always come out delicious.

One does not always learn everything from masters though. A great trick in the link above is to replace flour with cacao powder while butter&flouring the molds. I don't like the white flour residues in the finished product and that is a great solution...

Don't be a psycho, like me, find yourself some good chocolate bar, good unsalted butter, absolutely fresh eggs, a ramekin (a round 4oz ramekin measures about 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches in depth) and indulge yourself in some warm chocolate cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The only trick you need is.... you know your oven better than JG does, so experiment with the timing. But don't be afraid of undercooking it. If there is one thing that could destroy the cake, it would be baking it 30 seconds longer...

Finally, the legend says that JG invented this cake by mistake, apparently he took it out of oven a little early while trying to come up with something else. Can we bake it at home with the same level of sophistication and delicacy? If he can do it by mistake, with the recipe at hand folks, yes we can...

Pasta with rosemary and lemon...

2009-12-19T16:59:00.014-05:00

Although I could try to claim that the origin of pasta is in ancient Anatolia and Persia, --and some other cultures could put a claim on pasta, too-- I am not stupid enough to claim that we know pasta better than Italians. I can name a few, actually all the traditional Turkish pasta sauces here: ketchup, ketchup and feta cheese, tomato paste cooked in some oil, tomato paste cooked in some oil and feta cheese, and my favorite: cook ground beef and finely chopped onions in oil, salt and pepper, toss with cooked and drained pasta and chopped fresh parsley.

Yes folks, we Anatolians might not have achieved great success in cooking certain things, but we are smart enough to acknowledge and appreciate others' achievements. This is our heritage, this is the very Ottoman approach to culinary expedition. And today, I hope that my 58 million readers in Italy, who are reading this blog right now, are smart enough to appreciate this entry, in which I will give a recipe from a French cookbook, yes a "pasta" recipe from a "French" cookbook...(I have to confess though, I don't have high expectations for my 58 million Italian readers, those are the same folks that keep electing that shitfucker.)

This recipe is from "The Provence Cookbook" by Patricia Wells, tagliatelle with rosemary and lemon (the full excerpt from the book is here):

Ingredients:

- 3 tablespoons coarse sea salt

- 1 pound fresh tagliatelle pasta or imported Italian linguine (use whatever good quality pasta you find, doesn't matter really, the recipe calls for fresh pasta, I have used dried pasta)

- 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

- 2 cups fresh rosemary leaves, finely minced (see below)

- 2 cups (8 ounces) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

- Fine sea salt to taste

Here is how you do:

Cook pasta to your taste in boiling water with salt. Retain 1 cup of the cooking water. Then In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil and lemon juice just until warm. Add the drained pasta and the pasta cooking water, tablespoon by tablespoon, until the pasta absorbs the liquid. Add the rosemary and toss. Add half of the cheese and toss once more. Cover and let rest for 1 to 2 minutes to allow the pasta to thoroughly absorb the sauce. Taste for seasoning. Transfer to individual warmed shallow soup bowls. Serve immediately, passing the remaining cheese at the table.

That woman is out of her mind, 2 cups of fresh rosemary leaves is a lot of rosemary leaves. But then if you adjust the rosemary to your taste, this is an absolutely brilliant recipe. I cut the rosemary by half the first time I made it and I was still suspicious until the first bite. That much of rosemary gives me some dusty feeling at the back of my throat, which is balanced well with the lemon juice. The second time I prepared that pasta, I replaced some of the rosemary with fresh thyme leaves from 6-7 thyme springs. That enhanced the herbal essence of the dish.

It is not easy to find a drink to accompany that dish. Your all time favorite diet coke would just kill it. Our sommelier came up with that wine, a 100% Counoise, a very unusual pick. This is a very highly acidic wine with a potential to kill any of your favorite dish in no time. But it was a brilliant match with the pasta. The lemon in the pasta helped open up the flavors of the wine that would otherwise have been masked by its high acidity. The wine helped clear the palate for the next bite without any distraction.

When you have a box of pasta and some good fresh ingredients, there is absolutely no reason to have a bad meal. It is easy to make, cheap, comes with infinite varieties. I don't know what the hell folks are thinking when they waste a dinner over some shitty food...I'll be posting more pasta entries, because that is what we eat at least once a week...

When a 1990 Hermitage tastes like Coca Cola Zero...

2009-12-09T00:40:00.003-05:00

The dude just shows up at our door step around 10-10:30pm, no call beforehand, nothing. That is bed time at best by our southern standards. The dude does not have any manner of any sort...Well, one does not need any manner when he wants to show up at a friend's place, does he? And just that mannerless act is enough to make us as happy as a clam...

That would be enough happiness for the rest of my life, to tell the truth. But no, the dude shows up with that bottle of 1990 Hermitage under his arm. That bottle must be worth of a lot of greens and I don't think we have any bottle as expensive at home. However, if I had one, that would be exactly how I would like to consume it; grab a friend who enjoys wine, and share the moment...Oh I feel a little dizzy from joy already... And now the moment of heavenly sensation, the first seep: Smooth and pleasing tannins, generous acidity, on the lighter side of red fruit aromas balanced elegantly with the smell of maturity, gasoline and tobacco...

Did I say it tasted like Coca Cola Zero? I should have said "Coke that tastes like a 1990 Hermitage".

The dude just shows up at our door step around 10-10:30am on a Sunday morning, no call beforehand, nothing. That is church time at best by our southern standards. The dude does not have any manner of any sort...

Well, I will give him the benefit of doubt in this case. Coming from a dominantly muslim country, he probably guessed rightly that church would not be in our Sunday to-do list anyway.

Anyhow, just that mannerless act on a Sunday morning would be enough to make us as happy as a clam...But no, the dude shows up with those two beautiful kids on our door step. I get my high five from the elder brother, as usual, and the younger kiddo, who usually practices his newly acquired Kung-Fu techniques on my both legs the moment he sees me, jumps on to me this time and gives a big hug. No no no, it is not me, I am not that charming. It is the coke. Yes, the dude has no manner for his kids either. He does not buy any coke, any sugary soda of any sort for home consumption apparently. However, the kids are allowed to enjoy the heavenly flavors of coke with us whenever they come to our place. And they know that... Three of us get together around the kitchen table, I open a good vintage of Coca Cola Zero, pour a glass for each of us, we savor a southern Sunday morning seeping our heavenly cokes... And that coke, folks, tastes like a 1990 Hermitage to me.

Home-made Baklava...Incarnated as "Kivrim" by Felicia...

2009-12-04T13:31:00.025-05:00

First let me try to strip you off of your biases:

The thing you buy at Greek grocery stores is not "baklava". It is a different species --therefore rightfully called "Greek baklava" by our Greek brothers--, but definitely not baklava. Greeks have some notable contributions to the world culture, like democracy and stuff, but baklava is not one of them...

You think I am funny, eh? Too much pride with a little shaved stupidity on top and salt&pepper, eh? Well, I am right with my claim on baklava... But you are also right with your feelings. When folks talk about food of their homeland, sometimes their voice carries too much pride that they start sounding funny. If you take that pride at face value though, I would suggest you to take another look at it through a different glass, which I tried to explore in my Kunafa post earlier. A funny pride builds up throughout the text in that post; it even creates a little cultural tension by criticizing others' techniques. It is only at the end that that pride reveals its true self as love for one's homeland. It even embraces others' pride via two video links, which use techniques that it has criticized earlier... That is what I mostly see in folks' pride for their own food...

Now you still think that I am hilariously proud of baklava? No of course, not after the intro above... Now you are stripped off of that bias of yours, do you see the love here? Yes? This is the last bit of bias that I will try to strip off of you: There is no love for where I am from when I talk about baklava here, absolutely none. Such implication would be injustice to baklava...This is a completely rational, a completely cold, stripped-off-of-all-feelings piece on baklava... after all, a piece of baklava does not need love to stand out and stand up alone...

Making baklava is a serious craft. The most talented craftsmen come from the city of Gazi Antep, Turkey, where one of the the most important ingredients, pistachio, also comes from. Pistachios of Antep are smaller in size and denser in oil and flavors than their alternatives from elsewhere, like wine grapes being smaller and denser in flavor than table grapes. However it is not simply a bag of pistachios, rather a mix of varieties that gives the right taste and color blend. Some commercial baklava makers take baklava to an unsurpassable level of artistry via their knowledge of pistachio, butter and craftsmanship for preparing thinner-than-paper-thin dough. Some produce so uniquely beautiful baklava, which is available only in Antep and which I am lucky enough to sample every summer, that it is impossible to find an equivalent in another city in Turkey, let alone elsewhere in the world including your favorite Greek grocery store.

However, home cook is not discouraged by the challenge from commercial brands. There is a second class of baklava prepared by self-made cooks at home -- and it is by no means second class --, which we ingeniously call home-made baklava (ev baklavasi). Now to be honest, a little well-deserved pride gets into the picture here. Those who grew up in a tightly knit society know well that it is a fierce but friendly competition among relatives and neighbors to take the spot for the best home-made baklava. It is a special yet humble pride for the cook who holds the trophy... and a not-at-all-humble pride for the lucky who happens to taste her baklava... I am one of those lucky and I am happy and proud to share my otherworldly experience with you today: Our dear friend Felicia's "kivrim" recipe, her incarnation of baklava.

Felicia is from Maras, a neighboring city of Antep, so she is a natural. Most importantly though, she puts her natural instincts into working to make a perfect home-made baklava with ingredients available in the US.

A few things you will need beforehand:

- Unsalted butter

- Thawed fillo dough, keep it under cover to avoid drying out (Felicia's favorite is Ziyad fillo dough; she says Greek brands would be fine too)

- Finely chopped pistachio or walnuts

- A pair of long round chop sticks; attach them by taping on the thick ends, you will use this to roll the kivrim (see the picture below)

Kivrim - baklava rolls:

- Melt butter; it would be better if it is on the warmer side, close to hot, it helps soften the dough

- Take a sheet of dough, brush with melted butter; evenly spread the finely chopped nuts of your choice

- Roll the sheet around your chop-stick-roller; press from both sides of the roll; remove the roll onto your baking dish

- Repeat this until your baking dish is filled with baklava rolls

- Brush butter on top of the rolls and bake them about 25-30 minutes at 400F in a preheated oven.

(Please click on the pics for a better photo)

Syrup:

Boil 1.2 parts sugar with 1 part water until thickened lightly. Add 2-3 drops of lemon juice, give it another quick short boil. Felicia mentions that the consistency of the syrup is one of the most important points. If it is too thin, it will make baklava mushy; if it is too thick, the baklava will be too sweet. She recommends that, if you err on one side, you'd better be on the thicker side. Her test? Spoon your syrup, check how the last drop stretches.

Finishing:

As soon as you take the baklava out of the oven, spoon over your "hot" syrup. You should have about 0.5cm-1cm high of syrup at the bottom of your baking dish. Let it rest at least 30 minutes before serving...Sprinkle with additional finely chopped nuts and serve... bon appetit...

"AFIYET OLSUN :-)) Felicia"

Thanksgiving for two...

2009-11-28T01:36:00.046-05:00

Let's face it, all of us, without fear, without reservation...turkey is the most boring part of any thanksgiving meal...it is the side dishes that we are thankful for on that day...

Daisy and I would have our first TG-day-for-two. Yet nothing, not being away from friends, not even the fear of the blandness of the bird could stop us from having a real feast. Yes, we decided to go all the way, roast a turkey breast and compliment our courage with fascinating side dishes... After all, a thanksgiving day without a bird would be a very boring day...

Picking the menu was as much work and fun as cooking it. We went through many recipes on the internet before settling down on the menu. Our picks somehow reflect our appreciation of the new American cuisine. And the whole thing evolved around the simple idea of making an exciting dinner out of some bland meat. It worked perfectly well, so well that I am not sure if I would change anything in the menu in the coming few Thanksgivings unless I am forced to do so...

Here is our menu, all recipes from internet, and don't forget to click on the pics to enjoy the dishes in larger scale:

Cream of Butternut Squash and Apple Soup from Williams-Sonoma:

This soup is an amazing start. It is bright and refreshing. The sweet butternut squash mixes pretty well with the sour apple, some cream smoothens it out, and a touch of nutmeg gives high spirits. Our sommelier Daisy picked an equally brilliant wine for the soup, a 2006 Burgundy, a medium bodied choice, nicely acidic, fruity and bright.

Green beans, mushrooms and walnut with brown butter and mashed potato with roasted garlic are again from Williams-Sonoma. This green bean recipe turned out to be a hit the first time I prepared it for a TG dinner with friends. Our TG parties and that green bean dish have become a tradition since then. This is an excellent dish that can be served any time any day, no need to wait for a year... The mashed potato. Roasted garlic, a nice mix of rosemary and chives, butter, milk, salt&pepper, and yes I can just have that mashed potato any time as well. We did not have the time and oven space for the garlic, I pan roasted it on low heat instead.

Two sauces for the bird, cranberry sauce and gravy. The cranberry sauce is from Whole Foods. Although we cooked everything together, the cranberry sauce was Daisy's exclusive this time. With the spices, zest, berries and pine apple, this is hedonistic. I have saved the leftover to have it on a slice of bread in the mornings.

The gravy comes with lemon and parsley and it is from Williams-Sonoma. In fact it is part of the turkey recipe we used, brined turkey breast with lemon-parsley gravy.

First, brining worked pretty well and the breast meat turned out to be quite juicy. However, it was the gravy that made the trick. With the lemon zest and parsley, it really brightened up the meat. After having that gravy, I cannot think anything better with the bird any longer.

Stuffing is one of the things that Daisy cannot do without on a Thanksgiving day. That is why we assume the responsibility of stuffing every time we cook TG dinner with friends; we just cannot risk it...Our stuffing is oven-baked separately, from Williams-Sonoma, the recipe is on the box...

And another excellent wine pairing by our sommelier, a pure delicacy from Rhone, that was a very balanced wine with red fruits, pleasant tannins and earthiness. A full bodied wine, an excellent match (click on the pic to get the name).

For the dessert, we picked pumpkin panna cotta, inspired by one of Daisy's friends. The recipe is from Mark Bittman of NYT.

I served it with a topping of whipped cream with a little bit of sugar and cinnamon. The dessert turned out to be so surprisingly good, I think much better than what Bittman was heading for in that recipe. The trick is a simple mistake and an amended correction afterwards. We would prepare half the recipe, 4 servings. The recipe you find in the link above has a prelude in which Bittman tells you to steam the raw butternut squash. Well, the printed version does not have that prelude. So I tried to puree my raw butternut squash in a food processor. Unless you have a professional food processor, having a smooth puree from raw butternut squash is an impossible task. Also, you are not supposed to boil the panna cotta. So I was uneasy with the fact that the butternut squash pieces would not cook by the time panna cotta was done. Then I decided to pass my puree with some milk through a fine chinois, which gave me a very fine and smooth milk-squash mixture. After throwing away the solid parts, I had to cut down the remaining of the recipe by another half -- so we got our two servings eventually. The raw-butternut-squash-milk mixture cooked a little more than half way through by the time panna cotta was ready. This gave a magical flavor to the dessert, a gentle candied butternut squash melon flavor...

It was a happy yummy feast...and we look forward to roasting the next bird just to get the sides...and to get together with friends again...

Warm Potato Salad with Caramelized Shallots and Watercress...A recipe from Jean-Georges' deep generous heart...

2009-11-22T23:55:00.007-05:00

Jean-Georges Vongerichten...We have been to Jean-Georges' restaurants a couple of times. I have not tasted anything superior to his food. This does not necessarily mean that he is the best. We do not have the means to try every single exceptional restaurant to arrive such conclusion... But then even if we had had the means, I would have probably picked him as one of the best. After all, best does not have to be unique...

Today I do not want to talk about the quality of his food though. He is a Michelin three-star chef anyway. And to give some credit to myself, I did not know that he was three-starred when I picked him as my all-time favorite --that was not a difficult pick of course--, yet I have to admit that I underestimated him even then.

I truly appreciated him when I tried recipes from his book. Well, let me start from a little earlier. When I held his book at the bookstore the first time, I said "get out of here, it cannot be that simple." Yes, the recipes of those dishes that I had tried and died for were all several lines long with a few ingredients. I had to buy the book and give it a try. I did. And the dishes turned out almost exactly the way I tried at his restaurants...Telling all the secrets about a dish that is almost impossible to make at home is not a high moral achievement. But revealing your secrets when they are simple is another matter... If I were able to create such delicacies in such simple terms, I am not sure if I would have been generous enough to share them with everybody...Jean-Georges is...

Just to give you an idea, here is the recipe of the potato salad. First, ingredients for four servings:

- 1 pound small new or fingerling potatoes

- 1/2 cup neutral flavored oil, such as grapeseed or canola oil

- 6 to 8 large shallots, thinly sliced (about 6 ounce)

- Salt

- 2 tablespoon grainy mustard

- 2 tablespoon sherry vinegar

- 1 tablespoon chopped chives

- Freshly ground black pepper

- 2 to 4 cups watercress

And here is how to prepare it, in three simple steps:

1. Place the potatoes in salted water to cover and bring to boil, Reduce the heat and simmer about 15-30 minutes until tender. Drain and peel them when they are cool enough. Cut into 1/4-inch slices and place in a bowl.

2. While potatoes are boiling, heat 1/2 cup oil for about a minute at medium-high heat, then add the shallots and cook stirring for about 15 minutes until they begin to darken. Watch out not to burn. As soon as they turn golden brown, move the shallots with a slotted spoon on to paper towel and pat them dry with the towel.

3. To prepare the dressing, mix together the mustard, vinegar and 3 tablespoon oil. Toss the mixture with the potatoes, chives and salt and pepper to taste. Place the potatoes on top of a bed of watercress and top them with shallots. Serve.

Before running to the market to buy watercress, do some good for yourself, run to a bookstore and buy the book:

Kunafa...A Work in Progress...

2009-11-13T21:16:00.028-05:00

This blog serves many purposes. It gives Daisy and me incentive to cook new recipes, an opportunity to take a look at different cultures via food's window, a platform to share life with friends through cooking... Many other unique benefits that I do not list here... Today I would like to utilize it as a sketchbook, though, on which I keep a record of sketches of the dishes that I work on but that are not fully developed to my taste yet, on which I can note my "poof nokta"s and little discoveries, and to which I can come back later to see what rights and wrongs I have done; or hopefully some of you will tell me about your own poof noktas and what wrongs I am doing...(Originally spelled as "püf noktası" in Turkish, poof nokta translates as "tip" or "trick" and püf has nothing to do with poof.)

Of course I already googled kunafa and folks have no idea, absolutely no idea... A good kunafa has all the wrong ingredients, dough, butter, a lot of it, sugar, cheese, good for your appetite, wrong for your health. And some folks replace some of those ingredients with absolutely-wrong-for-all-the-reasons ingredients... Rice flour and cream feeling instead of cheese? Dude, what's wrong with your manners?

I got my training on kunafa in Erzurum years ago when I was at college. Erzurum is in Eastern Turkey, home to many cultures, Armenians, Kurds, Turks and many other. Since each has its own version of kunafa --and each one must be delicious in its unique way-- and since Erzurum is at the crossroads of those and many other cultures, I believe the kunafa masters of Erzurum must have purified and perfected the recipe and the technique of kunafa making over centuries...Yes indeed, I have been trained by the best of the best... And that gives me all the confidence to refute all those folks' claims about kunafa on the internet and to give my own recipe a try...Well OK, as I always do whenever I have the opportunity, I closely watched and interrogated a kunafa master in Erzurum while he was preparing his masterpiece from scratch in front of me. Yes I am a little overconfident, so what?..

My goal is to reproduce kunafa as close as possible to the best ones I have tried so far. Not there yet, but good enough to post, and I will be posting better versions later.

The following is a little more than the standard one serving in Turkey, would be enough to serve three reasonable people though (and I was planning to and did consume it all by myself in two servings). Yes, with all the butter, cheese and sugar, the ingredient list looks scary. But it is healthy when consumed in moderate amounts, and definitely worth the risk when control is lost:

- 3 oz shredded phyllo dough

- 2 oz unsalted butter (may be a little less, but not much less)

- finely diced Armenian string cheese

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 1/2 cup water

- several drops of lemon juice

- 5 inch round pan with 1 inch hight

You can find Greek brand shredded phyllo dough at most mediterranean and middle eastern grocery stores. It comes in 16 oz boxes and thawing overnight in the fridge is suggested on the box. Poof nokta: You don't need thawing. For kunafa, you need to tear the dough shreds into about 3/4-1 inch length. Take the frozen dough out of the box and cut 3 oz in about 1 inch length (not longer), put the remaining back in the freezer. Place your dough in a metallic bawl, cover with stretch film wrap, let it thaw, give a good shake now and then. It takes about 15 minutes to thaw. Some shreds may remain attached in bulks. Once it is thawed, separate by your hands those bulks into individual shreds. There should be no bulky piece in your dough. Keep the dough covered all the time to avoid drying out.

Now thinly slice and dice the cheese into a single layer, about 1/2cm thick, and enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Set aside (don't put it in the pan yet). The cheese has to be unflavored and it should not be too salty. Most Armenian string cheese performs well on the salt side, but they usually come with nigella seeds. That stuff is addictive, take a bite, you will not be able to stop. However I do not want that flavor in my kunafa, yet, so I bought some without the nigella seeds. Mozzarella would work, too.

Butter is actually the first thing you should prepare. Poof nokta: Take 2 oz butter to room temperature. You need to mix the butter with the dough pretty well with your hands. It will have a sticky texture with butter evenly spread. It is almost impossible to evenly spread fridge-cold butter. The warmer the butter is, the easier it is to mix. In fact some even suggest melting the butter and then pouring over the dough. With all due respect, I don't think that would work, and that is definitely how they do not do it in Erzurum. Butter serves two purposes: Taste, of course, and texture. Kunafa does not work with loosely packed dough. You will press the dough into the pan with your hands to have packed layers. If butter is stiff, it helps the dough to keep packed and in shape. One alternative might be to warm the butter a little more so that it is almost melted, then mix with the dough and chill briefly in the fridge...

So, we have the dough-butter mix. Evenly spread half of it in the pan. Give a really good hard press with your fist to pack the dough at the bottom of the pan, press hard, don't worry press harder. Now spread the finely diced cheese evenly. Poof nokta: Leave some space between the cheese and the sides of the pan. Otherwise, cheese will touch the pan, burn and stick to the pan, it would be hard to get the kunafa out. Now get the remaining dough-butter mix, spread evenly on top, press hard, harder please.

Bake your kunafa at 370F in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes. Then increase the temperature to 400F, bake 3-5 minutes more for browning. After minute 20, keep an eye to avoid burning. Take out your kunafa when it is browned nicely. Some kunafa makers pan-roast it, sometimes in front of their patrons. That is the cool but hard way. Try it at your own risk.

While kunafa is baking, mix sugar and water to prepare warm sherbet/syrup. Boil it gently until you get the desired consistency then stir in the lemon juice. When you spoon the sherbet, it should have some thickness and cover the back of the spoon. Too thick or too watery will not work and to get the right consistency is a matter of experience. When you get the consistency, remove from heat, cover and let it rest. Lemon juice mainly prevents sugar from crystallizing. Too much lemon would dominate the buttery flavor of the desert. Some may like it, I don't like too much lemon flavor with my kunafa. Some also suggest adding rose water, orange blossom water and stuff, sounds exotic. I have not tried it with kunafa but I am open to the idea and will definitely try.

To take out the kunafa, go along the inner side of the pan with a knife and move the kunafa to a serving plate with the help of a (may be two) spatula. Spoon the sherbet over kunafa, slice and serve immediately. Some sprinkle pistachio to serve. That is fine...

And finally, here you witness the happy journey of a bite of kunafa to its final destination...

Ok, who am I to lecture you anyway? Here are my mistakes: The kunafa turned out to be a little thicker than I would like, will use smaller amounts or a wider pan next time. Also I don't like wasting food, so I try to prepare everything to measure. Yet sherbet is tricky. I have learnt by trial and error that one cannot prepare good sherbet in small quantities. Next time I will double the measures of sherbet, cry over throwing away the extra sherbet, then console myself with a better kunafa...

And if you have read it all the way down here, here is your prize, two great video recipes, one from a lovely Armenian lady and another from a Moroccon. Both do a better job than I do, definitely... And we are all proud of our recipes... not that one is necessarily better than other... our only common point, however, is our accents... Who knows where and why that lady came from... One thing is obvious though, it is not pride that we put in our kunafas, it is love, a love letter written to our home lands from far away...

Fig Salad..."We can do this at home"...

2009-10-28T01:09:00.021-04:00

I love it, absolutely love it when my mother-in-law says "we can do this at home" (bunu biz de yapabiliriz) after tasting a good dish at a restaurant. This is one of the highest praises a chef can get from a diner, not only being liked, but being liked so much that the diner wants to imitate. The best part for me, though, is the sheer pleasure of sharing a moment, especially if the moment is about some good dish. Yet, the high moment does not blur my vision; I take the challenge with great pleasure. And this is my first post for the "we can do this at home" challenge: Fig salad from Pisticci, NYC...so there goes my praise to Pisticci for creating this delicacy.

Daisy and I have had it several times at Pisticci, pretty much whenever they have it on the menu when we are there. It looks absolutely simple and gorgeous on the plate: baked figs with goat cheese, baby arugula, mango, palm hearts, and a creamy delicious dressing. And everything tastes absolutely delicate and gorgeous on the palate: baked figs with goat cheese, baby arugula, mango, palm hearts, and a creamy delicious dressing. As simple as that.

Let me start with the dressing, which is the most delicate part and better to prepare before anything else. Well OK, set the oven to bake at 400F (200C) first, will ya?..

What do we taste in Pisticci's dressing? It looks like an emulsified sauce, like mayonnaise, but much thinner. It has a pretty pretty balanced mustard-lemon-honey flavor. So prepare a thin mayonnaise with a pretty pretty balanced mustard-lemon-honey flavor combination. That is it, that is what I am doing...think simple, act simple, especially when it is about Italian cooking.

If you have not prepared mayonnaise at home before, first watch this. Then have the following ready for a serving of 4:

- 1 egg yolk

- 3/4th of a teaspoon (3/4 tatli kasigi) dijon mustard

- juice of half lemon (I used about 2 tablespoon)

- about 150 ml olive oil

- honey, about 1 tea spoon

- water, in case needed ( I used about 2 tablespoon)

Mix the egg yolk, 1 ts of lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper. Using a whisk, start emulsifying by dropping little bit of oil at a time. After you have emulsified about half of your oil, mix the remaining oil into the sauce without beating. This will thin out the sauce to dressing consistency. If it is not thin enough, mix in some water until the desired consistency is reached. This little picture shows the thickness of my dressing. Once you get the consistency, develop the flavor of your dressing to your taste by adding honey, additional lemon juice, salt and pepper. Keep tasting constantly and adding more flavor and seasoning as needed without overdoing it. What is great about this dressing is its delicacy, nothing is overpowering, not honey, not lemon, not mustard. With its full flavor, olive oil is actually an ambitious choice. Some flavorless healthy alternative such as safflower oil can also be used just to accentuate the delicate balance among mustard, honey and lemon. I suspect that Pisticci might be using Canola oil, a cheap but not the best alternative. Well who knows, may be they do it in a completely different way there, maybe they simply use xanthan gum...

Once the dressing is done, the next step is to prepare the figs, 3 ripe figs per plate. Cross-cut each about 3/4s down. Shape and insert 1/2-1 teaspoon fresh goat cheese into the cutting of each fig. Bake them in the preheated oven until the cheese is browned, about 10 minutes. A creamy mild fresh goat cheese is a perfect choice for this dish, as it does not dominate the other flavors on the plate... And look at those baked figs. These beauties can be enjoyed alone as appetizer as well...

While the figs are baking, cut mango slices and rub them with a lemon wedge and cut palm heart pieces. Plate the arugula, the mango slices and the palm heart pieces. When the figs are done, place them on the plate and spoon your dressing...Savor your salad, savor the moment...You can do this at home...

Pear Poached in Beer...

2009-10-20T22:39:00.003-04:00

After a long break, hi again... No, I am not out of business. In fact I have just too many things to write about, new recipes that I try to assemble myself, recipes of masters, my take on recipes from restaurants that we try and like, spicy entries about food and things. Daisy and I have been utilizing every single opportunity to expand the horizons of our palates over the last few months, but I have had little time to put them into writing, until now.

Now starting with a little treat for our sweet tooth: Beer poached pear with caramel ice cream... And this first entry of the year is for Plum, who keeps being a driving force behind the blog by pinching me constantly for new entries...

I wish I were the one who invented poaching pear with beer(*). I am not, yet I want to reinvent it.

My palate always enjoys delicate comforts of home cooking. However it also has its moments. There are times when it wants to have a hot and sweaty wrestling session with chillies, lots of cumin, loads of black pepper, bags of garlic. There are also times when all it wants is a gentle touch on its every part from top to bottom by a delicate combination of flavors. It is one of those latter moments and I want to have a dessert that my palate will crave for while and after having it. I want a gentle balance between sweetness, bitterness and a few flavors to tease my palate in a way that my palate asks for more and never gets enough...

The way to such experience is to take the added sugar out of the equation. Yes, just pick the best quality pear and trust your pear. Add some bitterness with beer, let it slightly dominate the sweetness of your pear. When your palate asks for a little more sugar, serve a touch of caramel ice cream. Zest your pear with just a few spices. And that is it. This can be prepared in 10-15 minutes, but the tease will last forever.

For a serving of two, I picked a firm comice pear (**) and a 12 oz bottle of Hoegaarden Witbier. Peel the pear, halve and core it, rub with a slice of lemon to stop discoloration. Put them the flat side down in a 2Qt sautoir, pour about 6-8oz of the beer to the pan, add water to the pan up to half of the pear halves. Squeeze the juice out of a half lemon and reserve the juice for another use. Cut the sequeezed lemon half in half and add them to the pan along with a fresh thyme spring. Cover it with a vented parchment lid (***), bring it to a gentle boil. Let the liquid reduce all the way until the liquid becomes very thick and a little blond. This takes about 10-15minutes. Take the pear halves on to a plate and let them cool. Remove the thyme spring and lemon wedges, reserve the pan with the remaining thick sauce. Just before serving, slice each pear half on its serving plate. Add some water to the pan, a tiny pinch of ground nutmeg and black pepper. Reduce it to sauce consistency. Spoon it over pear halves. Leave a little sauce in the pan, caramelize it on low heat. Add a little more water, about two table spoons, deglaze all the sauce and collect it in a corner and reduce it to a thick sauce. Put a touch of the caramel sauce on the serving plate for an extra kick. Serve the pears with a small scoop of caramel ice cream.

Evaporating the liquid during cooking makes the flavors, especially bitterness, concentrate, which is what I want. So Hoegaarden is a good choice for the recipe since it has mild bitterness with some nice citrusy flavor. The lemon wedges add zest and a little more bitterness. Thyme gives the bouquet and nutmeg and black pepper the spicy touch. When you take a bite from your pear, bitterness slightly dominates and your palate asks for a little sweet. A bit of caramel ice cream gives the treat to your sweet tooth. By the end, you want more...

(*) Google "beer poached pear", you will end up with many recipes. Here is one.

(**) There were "don't even think about cooking with comice pear" warnings everywhere at the market where I shopped. Those folks don't know what they are missing. As long as one picks a pear that is not fully ripened and soft and juicy, it should be OK for cooking.

(***) Here is how to prepare a parchment lid, it starts at around 2min 30 sec.

On Rice and Harmony...

2009-07-15T15:28:00.003-04:00

[Otto's note: No, I am not out of business. To the contrary, I have a lot to write on and actually I have been on the road sampling some new tastes around the world. Yet, despite all that effort to discover new tastes, something else deserves the spotlight. An entry, hopefully the first of many by Almond, a dear friend of ours, an entry with the taste of a Spanish almond...]

On Rice and Harmony

By Almond

According to people who seem to know something about it, harmony refers to “a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts, congruity”. Well, I must admit I rarely have the pleasure of meeting her. She seems quite elusive. Wherever she is, harmony seems pretty hard to come by in our hectic, work driven, overloaded schedules. Imagine one of these hot and humid days in which the sweetness of plums disappears and the bitterness of almonds rises to a new level. Now, add kids screaming and the typical household coordination problems, exacerbated by the heat. Finally, imagine all this trapped in a car that has replaced your limbs. Sadly resembling of reality, the scene is probably as far away from harmony as it gets, isn’t it? Here is some free advice: if you ever find yourself in this situation, get together with friends and prepare a nice rice, also called paella in certain areas of world particularly prone to hard work in the central hours of the day.

It all begins with a quick trip to a certain store that should (?) go out of business. Defy the storms, and get risotto rice (about 4-5 cups), fresh shrimps and mussels (1 lb of each), bay leaves (6-10), pork tenderloin (1/2 kg~2 lbs), a bit of chorizo (100 grs.), some squid (1 lb), a couple of garlic heads, good virgin olive oil (not the watered scum that at times comes from Italy), olives (1/2 lb), parsley, red and green peppers (2-3), some zafran, and one fresh tomato. As you get ready to start cooking, have your friends and relatives put out some starters (goat cheese and fig spread seems ideal) and some nice fresh summer wine (Rosé seems pretty popular these days and quite effective in restoring the sweetness of plums; Vinho Verde, from Portugal, also works). And let the conversation flow.

Along the way, marinate the meat in olive oil, salt, and oregano and prepare a base with olive oil, grinded garlic and parsley. Start by spreading this base thin over the paella pan. Chop the red and green peppers and the onion, and let them cook very slowly with salt and olive oil (you can do that directly in the paella pan, or in a separate pan). At this point, after about ten or fifteen minutes, the air will be breathable again. And the first glimpse of a smile will appear in some faces. Things, all of the sudden, begin to fall into place.

After a quick trip to the cheese plate before the kids erase it, fill up a separate pot, the one you would use to boil pasta for instance, up to about two thirds. Add salt, olive oil, bay leaves and zafran. When the water starts to boil, put in the shrimp and let them cook for about 3-5 minutes. Take them out and keep the water, as you will use it to cook the rice. Stop for a bite and have a sip of fresh wine as the gang of screaming kids is bound to come back even hungrier and more energetic. The wine will help you disarm them the way Gandhi disarmed the British troops. Greet them and share some more cheese and olives with them. Confused by your calm, they will return to their quarters. As they do, the sound of peace will invade the room, and you will be ready to attend to the mussels.

In a separate pot, let them cook until they open up. Once they are done, set them aside, with the shrimp, and add their liquid to the water in which you cooked the shrimp. It will gain a lot of nice flavor (make sure you filter out any shell bits or sand when you do that by the way!).

At this point a small wonder becomes apparent. The Rosé makes everyone forget about the frustrations of the day. The mood turns cheerful. And all the parts are ready to be “orderly arranged together” in the paella pan. To the base, and onions and peppers, add the meat, the chorizo, and the squid, and let them cook until they are half-done. Thereafter, add the olives, and grind a fresh tomato on top of the mix (keep sipping along the way, as you do not want to miss out the change of spirits taking place around you). Finally, add the shrimp, the mussels and about 4-5 cups of rice. Salt, and mix everything up graciously while you wait for the water used to cook the seafood to heat up a bit.

Almost an hour has gone by and the people around you wonder when dinner will be ready: time for some more wine, and for three cups of water for every cup of rice. After about 15 minutes check the rice below the surface and see if needs more water. If it does, use two more cups of water for every cup of rice and turn the burners to its maximum. Depending on where you are doing this, you may need to rotate the pan to make sure that the rice is evenly done. Keep trying until you find the rice below the surface al dente. At this point, set aside the pan and cover it with cloth for about five minutes. This will ensure that the rice at the surface is well done.

Amidst cheers of celebration, gather all your friends at the table. The meaning of harmony will become clear as the paella and some excellent reds (Plum’s Malbec, Almond’s Rioja again) ensure another memorable evening with family and friends. For a few moments, a true sense of happiness will take over you, as it often happens at Otto’s, Daisy’s, and Plum’s. For a few moments, you will feel capable of unwrapping the deepest meaning of every word, including harmony. Learning by doing…..rice.

Cherish these moments, as the next morning you will open your email and…

[to be continued...]

More on Low-Tech Cooking (with a caveat)

2009-06-17T00:17:00.009-04:00

[Otto's note: "ooh baby", here is an as-much-fun-to-read-as-to-cook&enjoy recipe by Plum. Please pour yourself a glass of " ’08 Gurrutxaq Rosado", or just get the bottle what the heck, and enjoy...]

More on Low-Tech Cooking (with a caveat)

By Plum

Cooking while camping offers some intriguing challenges: no refrigerator, only as much food as you’re willing to lug around with you, a sharp limitation on heating elements (two in this case) and cooking instruments. There’s also the problem of your fellow campers, whose predispositions have been shaped by the day’s activities of hiking, or in our case, boogey boarding—hungers have been piqued and patience is a wee bit limited. The good news is that the same meal eaten around a campfire tastes twice as good as one eaten around a proper dinner table. The underlying message might be that we should all raze our dinner tables; then our homes; and finally clear a charred spot for our perma-campsites/outdoor-eating-centers.

This recipe was inspired by an amazing meal of stewed beef over eggplant puree at Daisy and Otto’s place a few months ago. I think the original recipe is called Sultan’s Delight, but that name might be nothing more than the work of my imagination building on how I felt after eating the meal. In any case, given camping constraints and the Asian direction I took things, this recipe has almost no bearing on the original, even if the original inspiration remains.

The ingredients:

3 lbs beef tenderloin, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 sweet onion, diced

A bunch of green onions, diced

2 carrots, chopped

¾ lb of shitake mushrooms

fresh basil (preferably not from a plastic container. See Otto’s fine points here)

2 green peppers

2 large-ish tomatoes

2 roasted red peppers

a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup wine (whatever you’re drinking at the time, but preferably a dry white)

two tablespoons honey

a large handful of basil

salt/pepper

a stick of butter

instant rice

For the marinade:

Some rice wine vinegar

Half a cup of sesame oil

6 cloves garlic

half a cup soy sauce

a healthy dose of red pepper flakes

half of the green onions

a tablespoon of brown sugar

For drinking during preparation:

bottle of ’08 Pepiere Muscadet

bottle of ’08 Gurrutxaq Rosado (ooh baby, the slight fizziness is just enough to make one downright giddy)

For drinking during the meal:

bottle of 2001 Conde de Valdemar Rioja Reserva

bottle of the 2006 Viu Manent San Carlos Estate Malbec

Here’s the caveat: There’s no way in hell you can put this all together at the campsite. Some work before you leave is in order. So…mix marinade ingredients at home and put the beef in before departing. While you’re driving, then setting up the tent, then hiking, then napping, the beef and marinade will be doing their magic. You also might consider dicing all the vegetables ahead of time.

When it’s time to prep dinner, bring half a stick of butter to a brown sizzle and sear the beef on the outside (reserve any extra marinade). Remove from heat. Cook the vegetables, minus the shitakes and tomatoes, until slightly browned (everything on a camping stove is browned in unfortunately short order cuz there’s very little control on the lower end of the stove’s heat). Add the honey, pepper flakes, mushrooms and tomatoes. Cook a minute or so. Add the chicken stock, wine, any reserved marinade, and beef. Cover the pot and turn your camping stove down as low as it will go, with the aspiration that you’ll get it to a simmer. Allow to cook for as long as your starving fellow campers will allow before cursing, whining, and all around rebellious behavior set in—hopefully 1.5 hours, but well less if you have a cantankerous bunch as I did. Note that steady drinking of the Muscadet and Rosado will take the edge off any latent bitching and moaning from the revolutionary masses.

Boil three packets of the rice for 9 minutes (the upside of camping stoves is that they’re damn good at boiling water). Add the handful of chopped basil to the stew just a bit before eating. Serve the stew over the rice, with accompanying red wines (note how this Rioja and Malbec have remarkably similar flavors but irreconcilable structures; I’ve never had two wines that tasted so similar while feeling so different in the mouth).

This will serve a small army of people, or three starving adults and three hungry and very fragile children to the point of utter, disgusting extravagance. Since you’ll be sleeping on the ground, extravagance is almost certainly in order.

[Otto's comment: That face you see above is apparently "an example of sub-optimal behavior from fellow campers awaiting their meal", as Plum puts it. In reality though, she is extremely optimal in making everybody around her happy just by her mere presence. And today I am happy to announce to the millions of followers of this blog all around the world that she has promised to post at this blog. Yes, we are ready to be happy! Yes, we can be happy! Yes we can...]

When a fresh food market should go out of business...

2009-06-14T23:13:00.006-04:00

I know, I am opinionated about many things when it is about cooking, and as always I do not apologize for that. But bear with me for a minute and I hope you will agree with me this time.

Let me first state the obvious that is easy to agree on: The American people owe a lot to Whole Foods, no question about that. If I had said that to my mom, she would have said "why?" And if I had said "ma, it has brought organic and natural food to the relatively wealthier mainstream in the US", she would have been even more surprised and again said "why?". Even during her financially most difficult times, she would always despise vegetables and greens that were grown with chemical fertilizers. She would escape from food that contained additives which did not come out of earth naturally. And she would probably not be the only one, the rest of the world outside the US would do the same. Despite my mom's surprise, what Whole Foods has done in the US is completely revolutionary. But today I am as surprised as my mom and I expect more from Whole Foods...

This is how I want to feel about the vegetables that I buy. I want to fall in love with them at first sight. Those French beans, so young, so tender that you want to touch them the moment you see them, you just melt down when you hold them in your hands. You want to hug them gently, kiss them gently, bite them gently.

Those who follow this blog have probably figured out that our household has an asparagus disorder. We try to eat it in every form and at any occasion. But why on earth is it very very very difficult to find some fresh asparagus at Durham Whole Foods? Is it because Durham WF never gets fresh asparagus? Then fire its management for their insistence on working with those suppliers. Or, they get fresh asparagus but they prefer to let them rot in the fridge until next week while they are trying to sell out the ones on the shelf from the previous week. Now that is a serious crime.

And what is this? A few basil leaves, packed in a plastic box, which is probably more expensive than the basil leaves it holds. Some things should be sold in small batches, as well as in bigger ones. But there is definitely something wrong when a fresh food market sells basil only in small plastic packages. How are you going to teach a kid to love and appreciate greens if the first thing she touches is a plastic pack when she approaches for some basil? You may think that this is a little stretching, well I don't think so. But then have you thought about how many of these you need to buy if you are planning to make a simple basil pesto for dinner? No folks, something wrong here.

Here is how basil should also be sold and how it should make you feel:

Now comes the worst part. Our area has many strawberry fields, all kinds, conventional, organic; every town has its own strawberry festival. When a fresh food market cannot carry fresh strawberries during the strawberry season in an area with many strawberry fields and strawberry festivals, that market should better go out of business, absolutely no question about that...

Don't get me wrong. I love Durham and the area dearly. It is a hidden gem in the south and we Durhamites are the lucky keepers of this beautiful land and beholders of its gentle and sophisticated culture and nature. However, one is always most honest and open, and sometimes brutally so, to his most beloved. In this case, my lucky beloved is Durham WF. Of course, I do not want them to go out of business. The butcher with a gray goatee and a cool hat, who always keeps his patience while I try to decide which cut I want to buy; the hispanic cashier, she is the fastest cashier in the whole south; the African-American cashier, who usually wears a flower on her ear, and whom Daisy thinks I am in love with because I always insist on stopping by her cashier whenever she is around, and in fact whose flowers I am in love with... For the sake of those and many other beautiful people, Durham Wholefoods should do its business, but in a better, fresher and more local way please...We want more local and fresh vegetables, we want them now...

French bistro at home...

2009-06-10T12:56:00.021-04:00

When I was attending high school and college in Turkey far away from home, I would stop by those working class restaurants (esnaf lokantasi) frequently to feed myself to some of the most satisfying food that I could afford with the limited student budget I had. When I am back in Turkey nowadays with some decent wallet, I still stop by the same restaurants. No, not for the sake of nostalgia, nostalgia is not my game, I stop by for the sake of the food. Those restaurants, bistros as French would call, serve on budget, so they have to be smart, so they serve the most tried-out and most-loved-by-folks recipes. And it is by no coincidence that my palate enjoys life the same way when I dine out at a French bistro. The meaning of bistro has probably shifted away nowadays, especially in the US. They all hand out a menu nowadays and they are not the cheapest joints in the neighborhood. But the fundamental reason for why one sees similar dishes while hopping up from one so-called French bistro to another is the same: They serve food that has been tried out so many times and most importantly that works. And it is again by no coincidence that when Daisy and I want to dine on some French food at home, French bistro recipes are the ones we crave for.

We have two bistro cookbooks at home, one gifted to us by our dear friend Plum, which works extremely well, and another, the Balthazar cookbook. Balthazar, being one of the most famous French bistros in NYC, is far from being a bistro when it comes to the price. But no place would survive in NYC as long as Balthazar by simply pretending as a bistro. So I believe that the food at Balthazar must be competitive with the authentic French bistro food. However no belief is scientific and the reader of this blog needs his/her own empirical facts. Here they are...

The starter is a roasted beet salad. The ingredients to serve 6 people are:

- 1 cup walnuts

- 1/4 cup olive oil

- 4 springs of thyme

- 1/2 pound haricot vert

- 4 leeks, thinly sliced

- 1/4 cup sherry wine vinegar

- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

- 3/4 cup vegetable oil, preferably grapeseed oil

- 1/4 cup walnut oil

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

- 4 roasted medium beets

- 1 endive cut into julienne strips (substitute 3/4 lbs mache)

- 1/4 pound blue cheese, preferably roquefort

Roasting the beets takes a lot of time and most importantly a lot of energy. If you do not mind the slight taste difference, using packed roasted beets sold at supermarkets is probably a much more environment friendly option. Otherwise, wrap the beets individually in aluminum foil and bake in the oven until they just lose their firmness to pressing by your index finger.

Toast the walnuts on a baking sheet for about 5 minutes at 375F in a preheated oven until they release their nutty aroma, but don't brown them.

Prepare some ice-water. Bring some salted water to boil and add the haricot verts. Cook them for about 5-6 minutes until tender. Remove them by a slotted spoon and bath them in the ice-water to stop cooking. Next cook the leeks in the boiling water for about 10-15 minutes and transfer them to some ice-water.

To make the dressing, combine the mustard and the vinegar, whisk in the vegetable oil of your choice, salt and some freshly ground pepper.

Dice the chilled beets, toss them with the leeks and 3/4th of the dressing. Lay them on plates. Toss the haricot verts with salt and the rest of the dressing, lay them on top of the beets. You will have a little leftover of the dressing on the surface of the bowl. Toss the endive with that leftover dressing and top your salad with it. Serve it with a slice of Roquefort.

The entree is salmon with dijon mustard crust on a bed of lentils. First prepare the lentils and let them rest while cooking the fish. The ingredients for 6 servings and the cooking instructions are as follows.

For the lentils:

- 1 cup green lentils, go with du Puy if you can find, but don't kill yourself over it

- some kind of fat, the recipe suggests 2 slices of bacon, we used beef fat instead

- 4 springs of thyme

- 1/2 medium yellow onion, dice it small

- 1 minced garlic clove

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 2 tablespoon unsalted butter (so says the recipe, I used salted butter)

- 1 medium carrot, dice it small

- 1 celery stalk, dice it small

- 1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper

After rinsing the lentils, put them in a small pot with 4 cups of cold water, bring it to simmer and cook for 20 minutes. While the lentils are smearing, place the fat and thyme springs in a pan over medium heat, cook about 2 minutes, add the garlic, onion and salt, cook for another 5 minutes. Add the diced carrot, celery, white pepper and butter and cook for 5 more minutes. Drain the lentils and add them to the pan and simmer on low heat for about 5-10 minutes.

For the fish:

- 6 salmon fillets

- 1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

- 1/4 cup Dijon mustard

- 6 teaspoon dry bread crumbs

- 2 table spoon vegetable oil

Season the fillets on all sides with salt and pepper. Spread about 2 teaspoons of the mustard on the rounded side of the fillet and sprinkle bread crumbs, press the crumbs into the mustered by your fingers afterwards. In an ovenproof nonstick pan, heat oil until it smokes. Lay down the fillets the mustard coated side down. Sear the fillets for about 1 to 1.5 minutes. (The recipe calls for 2 minutes, but 2 minutes are more than enough to burn a fillet on a smokey hot oil), turn over and sear the flat side for about 1 minute. Transfer the pan to the preheated oven at 500F, cook about 3-4 minutes.

Serve the salmon on a bed of lentils.

Yes they are not quick to cook. But when the ingredients are decent, those dishes are fulfilling and comforting, which is the case with most bistro experience. But when the ingredients are high quality, they are the finest bistro food one can enjoy, which was the case with our bistro experience at home.

I don't think I really need to comment on those dishes any further. Try it yourself, you will know what I mean. In the meantime, you can simply click on the photos to start enjoying them on larger scale now...

(*) Legal notice: It is perfectly legal to post the ingredient lists as they appear in the cookbooks and to post the rephrased cooking instructions with one's own words. In my case, since I usually adjust the instructions to my taste, I have to follow this legal route anyway. And when it is a big money making enterprise, like Balthazar or Williams-Sonoma, I will not refrain from utilizing my legal rights to post their delicious recipes in my own words, a little service to their enterprise for which I am not asking to be paid for.

A Flounder that never disappoints...

2009-06-08T00:17:00.017-04:00

Google fish+parchment+recipe, you will end up with tens of good recipes. Cooking fish in parchment paper is one of the major steps in humanity, more important than putting a footprint on the moon, no kidding. It is difficult to go wrong with parchment paper; fish steams and absorbs aromas beautifully when sealed and baked in parchment paper. A friend of ours served this particular one to us first and we have been cooking it since then because it works much better than the Apollo 11 mission in making mankind happier. It is no rocket science either.

All you need:

- A couple of still fresh and juicy-to-the-cut yukon gold potatoes

- Fresh flounder fillet, one per serving

- Fresh tarragon springs

- Lemon, salt, black pepper and olive oil

- parchment paper (to replace the Apollo capsule)

Now, freshness (of potatoes, of fish, of tarragon,...) is more important than the quality of your astronaut suit if you are serious about your happiness on earth.

Don't ever peel potatoes. For one, fresh yukon gold has edible-thin and delicious peel, don't waste it; for another, you would not waste anything on the moon, I mean "anything". Slice the potatoes about 1/2 inch (1 cm) thick in rounds. Heat 2-3 tbs olive oil on a nonstick pan, and quickly fry the potato rounds about 2-3 minutes on each side. Don't cook them fully. They will be fully cooked in the oven. Let them cool down a bit on a plate.

Lay down a piece of parchment paper. Prepare a bed of a single layer of quickly shocked/fried potato rounds. Salt the potatoes. Lay a flounder fillet on top, salt, pepper, drizzle some olive oil, then a generous bunch of tarragon springs, finally a slice of lemon. Seal the parchment paper. Bake the fish at 375F (190C) for 15 minutes in a preheated oven. Take it out and let it rest sealed about 3 minutes. Ready to be served. More high tech food and much more delicious than what you can find on the moon. And no rocket science...

The strong anise flavor of tarragon might be a little too much when used too much. But in this case, the sweet aroma of the herb infuses to the fish so nicely that you can simply put the herb aside while enjoying your fish. Here I also served some leftover pasta with basil pesto at room temperature. The sweet and nutty taste of the basil pesto complemented the fish pleasantly... We have tried it with thyme and rosemary springs, and they worked equally well...

If you don't have the means to go to the moon, try this recipe, you will be much more satisfied, guaranteed...

(*) In an earlier post, I promised to give this recipe with a full set of pictures of the whole cooking process. This is not necessary at all since it is really easy to prepare the recipe.

Roasted eggplant salad - Thai style...

2009-06-03T00:37:00.020-04:00

What ingredient comes to your mind first when you think about a salad? Greens? May be some fruits, not too much though, after all we are not talking about a dessert. Eggplants are not difficult to imagine either. For instance, chop some roasted/grilled eggplants, roasted bell peppers, one diced tomato, some sliced red onions, chopped parsley; a little white wine vinegar infused with one finely chopped garlic clove for about 10 minutes; add some salt and pepper; of course some generous amount of extra virgin olive oil and you will have an outstanding Mediterranean meze (the Turkish word for tapas, or small dish).

How about skipping the oil?

In fact when I think about a salad, oil is one of the first ingredients that comes to my mind and it is terribly difficult for me to imagine a salad without any oil. But then comes the roasted eggplant salad, "yum makeua yau", from the Quick and Easy Thai by Nancie McDermott with no oil at all, yes no oil. (full recipe here, another post of mine from that book here)

Cheating with oil is easy. Every palate likes some oil, opinions differ only in the amount to be used. In that regard, I would say, this recipe is quite opinionated indeed, as it does not use any oil at all. And it works surprisingly well.It is refreshing and satisfying. Salt comes from the fish sauce (and a little umami too), sweetness from sugar, sourness from the lime juice, oh hot chilly peppers, peanuts give a beautiful crunchy texture while the sweet eggplants melt down. What else can I ask for?

One of my problems with eggplants is not to be able to find fresh ones even during the season in the US. When I have fresh eggplants, it is just a joy to cook and dine on them. When it is not fresh though, one needs to do all sorts of tricks to get the annoying bitterness out of the fruit. Being a sweeter variety, Asian eggplant does not suffer from that bitterness problem. So I prefer to use Asian eggplants although the recipe calls for either Asian or globe. Also I have always tried it with peanuts instead of dried shrimp to keep things on the lighter side. Finally, before tossing the eggplants with the mixture, I set aside the mixed ingredients for about 10-15 minutes for the flavors to develop and mix with each other.

I am sure "yum" is the short for yummy in Thai... This is an extremely simple and absolutely delicious recipe. Serve it on the lettuce of your choice and have a happy life thereafter. And that is exactly what we are planning to do this evening along with an Asian chicken recipe that I will post later...

On the finer points of non-fine food...

2009-06-02T10:09:00.005-04:00

[Otto's note: Another fancy recipe by Plum, ingredients carefully picked and perfectly balanced. The best part: no cooking needed to enjoy the recipe... My comment follows below]

On the finer points of non-fine food

by Plum

Well, we've now had a solid month of Otto Tarchin Cooking, and the pattern is now set. There are two key characteristics: a) the blog is awesome (far superior to carpedurham, the other food blog i read w/some regularity); and b) it is a blog about fine cooking and fine wine. Let's reflect a bit on point b. Even when the word "simple" is introduced (some variant thereof is, by my count, used 14 times in the blog's first month), you need 12 ingredients, or the money to buy Chilean sea bass from one particular fishery in the world, or both. Even the time to wrap asparagus with brasaola and two different spreads requires a certain, very important luxury, namely time. I love all of this stuff--care to ingredients, attention to the environment, playfulness, subtle flavors, not-so-subtle flavors, etc. But lest these fancy-pantsy tendencies distract us from deeper fundamentals, I present the following recipe inspired by Sunday, May 31 on Falls Lake. The ingredients, including cooking and serving implements, in order of importance:

Friends, preferably good ones who are well accustomed to your idiosyncracies.

Sun and temperatures not exceeding 86 degrees nor lower than 74 degrees.

A beach on a lake, ocean, gulf or any other locally-available body of water.

Beer, preferably a highly-hopped IPA, but given the right setting, even shit beer will do.

A grill.

Hamburger meat.

Cheese for hamburger.

Hot dogs.

Buns.

Chips.

Carrots.

Blueberries for dessert.

A mass of kids--fairly crucial for throwing around the locally-available body of water as a means to generate a serious appetite.

Paper plates.

No silverware.

No cups.

Combine all ingredients for a minimum of four hours. Enjoy!

[Otto's comment: This blog is about cooking, but it is never intended to be solely about cooking, as my fancy imaginations about cooking have never been solely for the sake of cooking per se. And here is an idiosyncratic recipe that deserves the spotlight at this blog and that perfectly fits the most universal purpose of cooking: Enjoying precious moments of life by cooking even when all you have besides friends is shit beer...

But dude, why carrots, why? Why not pears, may be with some roquefort? OK ok sorry...]

Scallops on a puree of kohlrabi, carrot and onion

2009-05-30T00:36:00.010-04:00

[Otto's note: I don't want to intervene with this inspiring entry by our dear friend Plum. Please first enjoy this one, then you can read my comment below, if you like]

Scallops on a puree of kohlrabi, carrot and onion

by Plum

What to do when you get a weekly box of vegetables from a farmers market, some of which you've never cooked before? Here's an answer. Most of my first experiments don't work very well, but this one did. What you need: sea scallops, one kohlrabi, two carrots, half an onion, grated parmesan, dry white wine, chicken stock, butter, salt, pepper, thyme, cayenne. And something to put on the side. Here I cooked some greens on the side w/butter, olive oil and some salt.

The fun part: a quarter stick of butter in a hot pan. Add sliced carrot, kohlrabi and onion. After slightly browned, add a solid dousing of white wine and chicken stock. Cover and let cook until the liquids reduce and the vegetables are pretty soft. Add salt, pepper, thyme, a small handful of parmesan, and a pinch of cayenne. Transfer to food processor and puree. Add a little water if it gets too thick.

While all that's going on, heat half a stick butter and a bit of the white wine over medium high heat. When the butter browns, add the scallops. Sear three minutes per side, adding a bit of salt to each side. The real trick is not to overcook them.

Why did this work? There's the slight bitterness of the kohlrabi offsetting the slight sweetness of the carrots. The creamy vegetable base combines with the soft texture of the scallops. Balance, which is as Otto would have it.

Doing it again, I'd probably replace the side of greens with something else, but the truth is that the entree in this case is so yummy anything else will play second fiddle. And everything is done in 20 minutes, max.

[Otto's comment: Here is another inspiring entry by Plum. No no no, not "inspiring", I should have said "daring". Yes, daring. When was the last time you said to your butcher "gimme whatever cut you like"? "What is butcher?", you will ask. You are right. In the good old days, there was a guy called "the butcher" in the neigborhood, not any longer. If you are lucky enough though, there still is the concept of farmers market. When was the last time you said to your guy in the farmers market "gimme whatever greens and vegetables you like"? So here comes Plum, who dares to say his guy in the farmers market "gimme whatever you like dude". And he gets kohlrabi... Dude, kohlrabi is kind of a vegetable, you know... And he dares to come up with that dish above... Oh man, I love you..]

Opinionated about wine pouring...

2009-05-29T00:14:00.011-04:00

What is wrong with those people? I am talking about the owners of those fancy restaurants and wine bars all around. You know how the story goes. The man keeps saying to his son "you will never become a man", the boy becomes the king of the country, calls his father to his throne and says "you used to tell me that I would never become a man, look I am a king now", and the dad replies, "apparently you have become a king, but not a decent man". Now I have a word for those fellas: Apparently you have become a restaurant/wine bar owner but not a decent wine pourer.

I go to a fancy restaurant, study the wine list and order a glass of wine. Then the waiter pops up with a glass of some juice, I don't know what it is. At that point folks, I think I have all the right to call the owner to my table and say "what the heck is that?". When I pay for my own wine at a wine bar or a fancy restaurant, I am the king and I have every right to be mean when I am not treated decently. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to be treated like a king, I just want to be treated decently. I expect the waiter to bring the bottle to the table, so that I know that I will be drinking what I have asked for, and offer me a little tasting. Is this too much to ask for? Is it really that difficult for a fancy restaurant or a wine bar to follow such proper manner?

How about ordering a bottle of wine? Most of the time the waiter comes, opens the bottle and pours the wine aaaallllll the way up into my glass. I say "thank you" when the glass is full 1/3 up. The guy does not get it and continues to pour. Whenever I get a sip from my glass, the guy pops up and pours more wine again, and again, and again... Dude, don't touch my bottle! How do you know how much wine I prefer in my glass or when I would like to refill my glass? I think it would be OK if I poured my wine myself. I appreciate your availability, but that constant attendance to tables and to my wine is a little too pretentious. Let me have a peaceful dinner please. If I want to dine with a waiter, I will invite you to my table... And don't touch my bottle... Or as one of our friends, a serious wine aficionado, says at restaurants, "we will pour our wine"...

Then how come I don't want my glass filled up when I order a bottle but do like my glass full when I order wine by glass? Well I don't. Please pour my wine into a small carafe when I order my wine by glass... And don't touch my carafe... Or to put it in a nicer way, "I will pour my wine"...

A night that evolved out of a simple idea...

2009-05-27T01:27:00.021-04:00

It was Daisy's idea again, "a surprising appetizer with asparagus and bresaola", then came the idea of a Mediterranean style fish.

Bresaola matches pretty well with asparagus. It only needs a touch of olive oil, squeeze of lemon, some salt and black pepper and shaves of parmesan cheese. That is a little too obvious. But some aromatic kick provided the surprise. I picked parsley and mint for a two-way serving. The result is asparagus with parmesan+herb spread wrapped in bresaola.

Here is the recipe: Bring water to a boil in your steaming pot then add asparagus. Steam asparagus for 4 minutes. Remove and wash asparagus under running cold water to stop cooking (bathing in icy water would work equally well, I did not have the necessary apparatus at the moment). Set it aside. As a side note, warm asparagus is better than warmer asparagus, as bresaola is prone to drying out quickly from the heat of asparagus.

For the spread, take two small mixing bowls. Grate about 3 tbs parmesan into each bowl. Finely chop a handful parsley, add it to one of the the bowls. Finely chop a handful mint, add it to the other. Add 1-2 tbs extra virgin olive oil and 1 tbs lemon juice to each bowl, a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix well. Lay down a slice of bresaola, spread about 1 tbs of the spread evenly, roll it around an asparagus spear diagonally. Once all the asparagus spears are ready to serve, drizzle with a little olive oil, lemon juice and sprinkle some coarse sea salt.

For each plate, I prepared two asparagus with parsley and two with mint. Since parsley peacefully complements the taste of asparagus, it is a good idea to start with the parsley first. Then try one with mint and your palate is pleasantly surprised with the friendly competition from mint against the other ingredients. At this point, it is really the one with mint that surprises most... until you start with your second asparagus with parsley though... By that time, your palate is a little more trained and it truly enjoys the comforting and peaceful harmony among asparagus, parsley, bresaola and all other ingredients. When you start with the last asparagus, the one with the mint, your palate really enjoys the playfulness of the refreshing spring aroma of mint against bresaola and asparagus. I had not tried mint with asparagus and bresaola before and not compared it against parsley either. It was a pleasant surprise for me.

As the main dish, we settled down on this Williams-Sonoma recipe (did I tell you before that I am a proud fan of the Williams-Sonoma recipes?) Seabass is a lean fish. If you do not overcook and undercook it (I baked it for 13 minutes in a covered stoneware, and it turned out to be the right timing), it flakes very pleasantly on your fork and tongue. This recipe is fantastic, it reminds me of all the good things about the Mediterranean, olives, pine nuts, olives, basil, olives, garlic, olives, artichoke, olives... When those all come together and poured over some delightful fish, it just reminds me of a warm and peaceful Mediterranean night enjoyed with friends around a table in a small Mediterranean village. Can't get better...

As for the wine, Daisy suggested Montevertine. We are so impressed with this wine every time we drink it that we even keep a few empty bottles at home (don't ask me why). This is a little pricey to be a daily wine. But it deserves every penny spent and more. And it was a pretty good choice for the night. This wine has the kind of balance that I would like to achieve in my cooking. It is a rebel first of all; it is elegant, down to earth, pleasing and comforting. Don't ask me how all those come together. I don't know how, but this wine brings all those together. It has a very delicate fruitiness between cherries and plum. It also has a very floral nose. A little fruit goes a long way to sooth and comfort your palate. At the same time while being refreshing, it shows its presence and elegance without dominating.

What else could match such a surprising and pleasing dinner? A truly cheerful movie, Man on Wire, the illegal adventures of Philippe Petit on wire, as little and childish as his last name suggests. What a beautiful person, what a beautiful story...

We would have spent the same amount of time and money if we dined out at a mediocre restaurant, and no leftovers. The leftover memories of my palate from that dinner will stay with me for a while...

Filet mignon... eat less, eat better...

2009-05-22T01:16:00.029-04:00

First, don't tell my brother that I have cooked and dined on that filet mignon. When it is about meat, people in Anatolia and the middle east subscribe to a different religion. Yes, preparing, cooking and eating meat is a religious ritual in that part of the world. And to my brother, who is a seasoned cook specialized on meat, that filet mignon is devil's play.

In most of Anatolia, most of the cooking is done via marinating the meat before putting it on fire. The Anatolian and middle eastern marinating techniques have evolved and been perfected over centuries out of necessity. Animals wander freely over lands there, not to graze on green lands, but mostly to look for food over planes or mountains. So they develop leaner but also less tender muscles. That is why tenderizing the meat via marinating becomes an integral part (art) of cooking there. Also, as the meat in the middle east (and in all warm places for that matter) is potentially contaminated with bacteria, cooking the meat thoroughly after a long marination period is a well established standard.

It took me several tries in the US before breaking my taboo about cooking meat. Although I have not converted, I still like kebabs, I have learnt to

and appreciate differences.

The high quality meat sold in the US is truly and simply amazing. There is no need to treat the meat, if bought highest quality. I intentionally emphasize the quality here. My first trick in having a truly spectacular steak is "to eat less in order to eat better". If I have $10-$15 for the meat, I would spend all of it on half a pound (200 gr) of the highest quality meat instead of buying one pound of lower (not necessarily low) quality meat. That makes a huge difference, believe me. Many things can go wrong while cooking, especially while cooking a steak. Of course, a steak is a steak, how wrong can it can go after all? It will turn out to be delicious if it is a decent cut, marinated right and even if it is a little over- or under-cooked. But I am talking about a spectacular steak experience here. And I don't want the most important ingredient to fail me at the start. That is why, when it comes down to a spectacular steak (or any other spectacular dish), I prefer to spend all of my money on tiny amounts of highest quality ingredients.

My next trick is to buy the meat on the day of cooking, and take it out of the refrigerator at least an hour before putting it on the grill. I very generously salt the cuts on all sides with sea-salt and then put some freshly grounded black pepper, then extra virgin olive oil. I set it aside for half an hour until grilling time.

My third trick is to follow the tradition of precision timing for steak. After trying many online suggestions and failing on many good cuts, I have settled down on this Lindauer Farms instructions. It works pretty well for me. That is not enough though. Once the searing is done, I take a few temperature readings, but I am never confident with those readings. I also keep doing the palm test. If you are lucky, you have two hands. Use one of your index fingers and the palm of your other hand. Press with your index finger on your palm just 1/2 inch (1 cm) below the joint of thumb. Now press with your index finger on the middle of the steak. The steak and your palm should have the same firmness for medium-rare.

The side dishes are chosen to complement but not to dominate the taste of the meat. Lightly steamed asparagus and shitakee mushrooms dressed with olive oil that is infused for about 20 minutes with one small chopped garlic clove, and fingerling, red and purple potatoes, baked with only salt, black pepper and olive oil.

I have one last trick that you will not be able to find anywhere else: I put the potatoes in the oven a little early. Once they are roasted, I take them out, place them on the stove and cover the baking pan. Then we start with our salad. Only after finishing the salads, I start grilling the meat. At that point, I turn over another baking pan and place it on a rack in the oven and place two big plates on it for warming. When I am done with grilling, the plates are warm and the oven is no longer hot, actually a little warmer than the room temperature. I place the steaks on a warmed plate and let it rest in the oven for about five minutes. Baking potatoes early gives me a chance to prepare the plates and a resting place in the oven for the steaks. But setting the baked potatoes aside for about twenty minutes also helps the potatoes develop their sweet taste. I prefer that to the taste of potatoes that are just taken out of oven.

I am not here to be humble, especially after cooking such a spectacular steak. I would not be able to compete with only the very best steak houses around the country, otherwise that steak you see here can easily beat the steaks from any other steak house. While chewing the crunchy and salty surface, the juicy meat inside just melts in the mouth. And you drool while magically experiencing the meat in your mouth... You know umami. But have you ever really experienced it? That steak is it...

Chilean Sea Bass with Salsa Verde...

2009-05-19T00:22:00.014-04:00

Speaking of fish... Thanks to my culinary heritage, I may be a little opinionated when it comes to cooking fish. And I do not apologize for that. But I am open minded, too, at least try to be one. And here is a try, which is in complete contrast to what I did with the grouper below: Sea bass with salsa verde.

The recipe is from Williams-Sonoma's mexican cookbook. I am a great fan of the Williams-Sonoma cookbooks, especially the ones that simplify recipes to 20-30 minute cooking time. There is one on asian, one on seafood, a weeknight cookbook that gives simple or simplified recipes from all over the world... I know what you think and I agree with you to some extent; I wish I had the time to cook all day from a completely authentic cookbook. However, I am a very busy folk, like everybody, in my regular life and those books provide a pretty optimal solution especially during weekdays in my second life as a self-made-cook.

The fish. The recipe calls for one whole sea bass filet for each serving. We were able to locate big chilean sea bass filet only, which is not really a sea bass but we like it, so I used two slices from the thick part of it instead. Although the ingredient list is long enough to scare any seasoned chef, it does not take that long to prepare the dish. Pretty much all of the ingredients, tomatillos, jalapeño, parsley, cilantro, mint, garlic etc are all quickly made into a purée in a food processor. A little olive oil on the parchment paper, then goes a generous amount of salsa, then the fish, and another generous layer of salsa tops the filet. This is how it looks like before sealing the fish with the paper.

It takes about 10-15 minutes to bake the fish in a pre-heated oven, then ready to be served with rice.

It is difficult to go wrong with that absolutely delicious salsa verde. Just prepare the salsa, simmer it gently over the stove for about 10 minutes, pour it on a bowl of rice, you will have a full-fledged vegetarian dish right away. And nothing went wrong with the fish either. However, the fish did not absorb any flavor from the salsa at all. I think I would attain almost the same taste and texture if I baked the fish wrapped in paper, simmered the salsa on the stove and served the fish topped with the salsa on the plate. Nothing wrong with that of course. But the flavors would probably penetrate more easily if I had a thinner whole sea bass filet to start with. Also, I would mix the olive oil with salsa directly the next time. Another trick to keep in mind, strain most of the watery juice while pouring the salsa on the parchment paper and the fish. Apparently, I did not strain it enough this time and the resulting salsa sauce was still a little too watery to my taste after cooking. Daisy's suggestion of serving the rice in the paper saved our dish as the rice absorbed that tasty juice...

Now that brings to my mind another fish-baked-in-paper recipe. Even thinking about it makes me drool. I will give the full recipe here later with a full set of pictures of the whole cooking process.

By the way, here is a good read before rushing out to buy chilean sea bass.

Blind Wine Tasting: A Rejoinder

2009-05-15T00:05:00.003-04:00

[Otto's note: Here is the first of hopefully many of our good friend Plum's intriguingly thoughtful, funny, sensational blog entries. In this one, he responds to my "We tasted some interesting wines" entry below.]

Blind Wine Tasting: A Rejoinder

Posted by Plum

Being named after a succulent and agreeable fruit, I hate for my first entry to be contrarian and, well, disagreeable. But on this issue of blind wine tastings I must disagree with my dear Otto Tarchin. Let’s ponder for a moment or two this blind tasting bullshit: we have a host of wines; tasted one after another; nary a meal in sight; nary a wit of culinary NOR social context; wine stripped of all context. Objections, how shall we count thee? First, and I quote from the god of this website himself, in his introduction to this very blog, “Food within context….Things make sense when put within a context and cooking has a context for me, which is a passionate love for life and people and everything else.” Context? In a blind tasting, the wine might as well be dropped from outer space directly onto your palette, context be damned. Which might be why the Barossa Valley shows so well in such settings. Second, there is the issue of exercise. Our good friend Geoff Brennan (aka “The Voice”) enthusiastically notes that blind tastings “exercise” the palate. It’s true, the palate has to work hard, but I tend to think that while my stomach muscles or my biceps or even my sense of irony might need some exercise, my palate does not. It seems to know what it likes no matter how hard or how little it works. Third and finally, there is the topic of this blog itself, namely food. Wine in the absence of food is a drink only slightly elevated above fruit juice or tea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a great fan of juice and tea. But can you remember the last truly memorable juice or tea you had? Me neither. I can remember some nice wines from tastings, but when I think of the truly memorable wines—a Warwick pinotage with Sian and Jon; a 2003 reserve syrah from Cougar Crest w/the same wonderful folks; a Fabre Montmayou malbec in Mendoza w/a crew of Argentine friends; a 2003 Barroche reserve CDP and ’90 Mondavi reserve cab w/Darryl; an ’03 Porter Bass Zin on a beach in Carolina w/Cas, Geoff and Melinda; an ’02 Mt Billy Harmony w/Soskice, Niki, Pablo, Marta, Bahar and my dear web host; a Chateau La Canorgue from the Cote de Luberon w/Jen and Cat—all of these involve both wonderful friends and a freakin meal.

My solution? Fuhgetabout the blind tastings. Pay attention to the wine you’re drinking. Pay attention to the food you’re eating. Pay extra-special attention to the friends you’re loving. And ignore the label on the wine.

Obsession with food...at Pisticci...

2009-05-14T11:17:00.012-04:00

I think I am obsessed with this spaghetti. It is served at Pisticci, NYC, once one of our neighborhood joints. When we lived nearby, we used to go there frequently. I ordered this spaghetti with meat balls the first time we were there, and each time thereafter. I am not kidding. I have tried other dishes only from friends' plates, but I do not recall ordering any other dish myself. Am I afraid of trying new things? No. Is this spaghetti that good? Yes! Am I kind of obsessed with it? Probably. Generously dressed with a delicious tomato sauce, oh meat balls, always three of them, always with some basil on top, and freshly grated parmesan cheese. That is comfort food at its best... To Daisy, it is the Penne Pisticci, penne served with the same tomato sauce topped with fresh mozzarella cubes, basil and parmesan cheese.

This is not the end of the story. If Sarah Palin came to that place all the way from Alaska (God forbid), she would feel so much at home that she would vote for Obama(*). And you think I am kidding. There is something special to Pisticci. The interior decor is so smart and down to earth that it always feels like your neighborhood joint even if you do not leave nearby. Yes, the small bar, the unpretentiously weary tables and chairs, unpretentiously dimmed lights, everything adds to the feeling, and to the taste of that spaghetti.

And I have a word for those folks who question spaghetti, comfort food and my taste for it. Folks, you think that that spaghetti is just comfort food? Think again. This is how I look like and how I see the world after the first bite of that magic food.

(*) 86% for Obama, %14 for McCain in that part of the world

Why you should read my blog and write your own

2009-05-10T10:02:00.012-04:00

even better, go cook and have some nice meal...

One of our friends sent this link, check it out: Obesity and the Fastness of Food.

Check how US compares to the other countries in the graph. And check how well Turkey performs! I am not surprised a bit. Apparently, some folks (and I am not disclosing their identities here) claim that the Turkey data is not that reliable as it also contains personal, medical care etc (which, by the way, usually mean cooking and eating in Turkey). Those folks are simply jealous...

Fish that cannot get any fresher...

2009-05-08T22:58:00.013-04:00

This guy is Daisy's cousin. He is fooking cool, fooking sexy and a fooking diver. The last time I saw him, he was diving below 20 meters without an air tank, which makes about 65 feet in the anglo-saxon dictionary, waiting there with his spear in hand for his prey for minutes without any air. That makes me sick and I wish he did not do it, frankly. He does not agree.

He gives a call in the morning and says that he would bring fresh fish that afternoon. He shows up with that fish later, a black grouper that he caught just an hour ago. That is fresh fish by any standard.

When it is about cooking fish, "[the mediterranean people] created an influential [cooking] style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. [They] strive towards [a cooking style] with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing [aromas of fresh fish and herbs]. [They] seek a rational approach that would guide the creative process of [cooking], and are known for [...] the aphorism "less is more"". (The original quote is here)

Yes, ask any Turkish, any Greek, Italian or Spaniard, they will all tell you not to overdress and not to overcook fresh fish. And if the fish is as delicate as grouper, it becomes more important not to overdress and overcook.

So I followed the mediterranean tradition here. A layer of sliced onions topped with a layer of sliced new potatoes, some salt and olive oil. The fish was salted and olive-oiled generously,some black pepper, stuffed with fresh rosemary springs (just harvested from the garden), garlic and lemon wedges. The whole thing was broiled under high heat quickly to preserve the juice inside, the fish was turned over once.

I think it turned out to be pretty delicious. But in reality, when dining nearby a jasmine tree under an Aegean sky, who really cares about whether the fish is cooked right or not?

Oh, the person in the background in the first picture is a proud and happy aunt, aka my mother in law. And this is the other fish that we did not dare to dine on.

Beef and zucchini in red curry...

2009-05-07T00:57:00.018-04:00

The other night we decided to have one of our favorite Thai dishes, beef and zucchini in red curry.

I made my mind about cooking a long time ago: If I cook somebody else's recipe, it better be traditional. Simple logic dictates that if a recipe has survived a hundred years, something has to be right about it. When I try to come up with something of my own though, I would look for a teasing harmony among contrasting tastes and flavors. Better yet, comes the Thai cuisine: Hot, sweet, savory, sour, all get together in a harmonic and traditional mix.

Many cuisines utilize such contrasting tastes together. For one, the Turkish cuisine uses sugar to lift up the flavors in many vegetarian dishes that originate on the Aegean coast, but in small portions only, pretty much like salt: One teaspoon (or as one says in Turkish, one dessert spoon) of sugar would be enough for a dish of 8-10 servings. This Thai dish, on the other hand, calls for one table spoon (or as we call it in Turkish, one soup spoon) of sugar for 4 servings. Sugar has a standing of its own in this and many other Thai dishes. When mixed with the hot red curry paste in this dish in right portions, not only that sugar balances out the hot spicy red curry beautifully, but also it brings out the fulfilling taste of the meat, and more importantly lightly sweet and sour taste of zucchini, which would otherwise lose the battle against the red curry.

Well, to summarize, that was a great combination of flavors. To complement it, our sommelier Daisy brought out a 2005 Zind Humbrecht Riesling, an equally playful wine and a perfect match. Quince on the nose, mixed with a little smokey dried fig on the palate with significant and beautiful acidity, and a long finish that one enjoys while the hot and sweet tastes of the dish continue to play around in one's mouth.

I got the recipe from the book you see here (and the exact full recipe is also available online here). I have made only a few changes: Dissolve the palm sugar in water first, and cook the zucchini a little longer than suggested.

Although I am very happy with that recipe, I am not completely convinced by the book. The recipes are simple and doable, but how close are they to the authentic recipes? I don't know. However, I know that the book does not get the coconut soup right. And I get suspicious when a Thai cookbook does not get a traditional Thai soup right. I am all for simplicity in cooking and simplifying traditional recipes. But that book might have gone a little too far in some recipes. Until some friend suggests a better book though, we will continue to try recipes from that book. And even after then, I will feel grateful to Nancie McDermott for helping us "cook Thai food at home with pleasure and success". And who knows, may be before then, I happen to meet with her and she tells me what exactly I am doing wrong with her coconut soup recipe...She lives in Chapel Hill, NC, almost next door.

Asparagus with poached egg and olivata...

2009-05-05T00:26:00.016-04:00

If Italians do it, there must be something right about it. And if you don't get it, there is definitely something wrong with you...Asparagus and hard boiled eggs? Hard boiled? When I tried it the first time, I said "dude, is summin wrong here?" Who am I to criticize an italian dish anyway? But some italian dude must have thought the same way I do and come up with the idea of poaching the egg. Now that is what I call progress in humanity.

This dish is absolutely simple, absolutely delicious. In a food processor, prepare some olive tapenada with kalamata olives, garlic, capers, anchovies, thyme, lemon zest, dijon mustard, olive oil and grappa, set aside; boil asparagus for a few minutes, 3 to 4 minutes says the holy book, poach the egg, make sure the white is cooked and the yolk is runny, so says the holy book. Serve the asparagus topped with the poached egg, olive tapenada and fresh basil leaves. Asparagus is not dressed at all. Some salt helps the egg go a long way. The runny creamy yolk beautifully smoothens out the bitter crunchy asparagus, and the zesty olive tapenada gives away all the flavors you need for a happy life. By the way, the full recipe is here.

My only sin in that whole experience was to use a few more asparagus stalks than suggested...

You can find the exact recipe in this holy book of southern italian cooking. All the recipes I have tried so far are extremely, repeat, extremely doable, and delicious. Hats off to the chef, Erica de Mane, and hats off to Daisy for the discovery of the book among thousands of books at the Strand bookstore, NYC (to be precise, 18 miles of books, so they claim).

Oh, save the extra tapenada in the fridge, serve at the room temperature later. It only gets better...

A cheerful delightful summer omelette...

2009-05-03T13:29:00.023-04:00

So it was Daisy's idea, it would be a cheerful delightful summer omelette for breakfast with whatever we had at home. Here is what I came up with:

For the egg shell:

4 eggs

4 fresh thyme springs, use leaves only

2 tbs grated aged Manchego, preferably smuggled to the county by one of your spaniard friends

1 tbs coarsely crumbled feta cheese

Beat the eggs, then add the thyme leaves and manchego, mix them well, add crumbled feta and gently mix well. Put aside.

For the vegetable stuffing:

4 asparagus stalks, tender parts cut diagonally 1/2 inch long

1/4 of a yellow bell pepper, sliced

1 vine ripened tomato, seeded and diced into 1/2 inch cubes

Handful of parsley, chopped

Heat about 2tbs extra virgin olive oil on a pan on medium high heat. Toss asparagus and bell pepper about 2-3 minutes, until just tender but still crunchy. Add tomatoes and toss about 40 seconds just to warm and cook very gently. Add parsley, some salt (those who consume tomatoes without any salt are destined to hell) and a few turns of black pepper, give a good toss and remove from heat.

For the eggs, heat about 2 tbs olive oil on medium high, pour the egg mixture, lower the heat to medium, cook covered about 2 minutes, turn over the omelette (may be with the help of a spatula and a big plate). Cook about a minute covered. Transfer the egg to a plate, transfer the vegetable stuffing on to the omelette, fold the omelette, ready to be served. Some crumbled feta may be sprinkled on top while serving.

And the idea behind that dish: The egg shell and the vegetable stuffing do not mix with each other, so each should have a taste of its own that could do a nice tango with the taste of the other. To achieve this, I chose two summer herbs, fresh thyme for the eggs and parsley for the vegetables. Fresh thyme releases its aroma pretty well when cooked slowly, so I mixed the thyme leaves with the egg mixture before putting it on the stove. On the other hand, parsley releases its best aroma when it just touches some heat, anything more than that kills the parsley and me. So parsley should be put at the end and not cooked at all. Manchego gives a comforting buttery taste to the eggs and feta is used to create small salty teasing islands hidden everywhere in the omelette. The idea is, when you chew the omelette, you enjoy the texture of the egg and the buttery taste of manchego, but your palate looks for more...some salt...and suddenly you bite a little feta piece which gives your palate a quick high. The vegetable stuffing is similarly playful, bitter asparagus, sweet pepper and savory tomatoes, tossed with cheerful parsley.

The best part of that omelette was to share it with a smile. And the best part of cooking it is the thought that it might have something to do with that beautiful smile.

We tasted some interesting wines...

2009-05-02T18:39:00.013-04:00

Here is what I just saw somewhere on the web:

"...blind wine tasting is the way to go. To truly learn what your palate likes, and not what your brain wants your palate to like, there is no better occasion than a blind tasting among good friends and great food."

And that is exactly what we did in a pleasantly warm southern afternoon yesterday. The food was Spanish cheese and almonds, smuggled from Spain by a spaniard who knows his cheese, and salmon pate. The wines were total surprise, from all over the world. From left to right in the picture, a pinot from Tasmania, a sachino (what?) from Georgia, a carmenere from Chile, an amarone (Amore!!! sorry, just lost my objectivity for a second), and a pinotage.

Pinot, amarone and pinotage were ranked highest by three wine aficionados each. Amarone was ranked the second best by four; pinot and pinotage by three each. So Amarone was the winner (of my heart) after twisting the numbers a little bit.

Here are some contrasting and fun quotes from our notes:

About pinot: "not unpleasant", coming from a real wine aficionado this is a huge endorsement for any wine in any category; "super integrated + delicious", coming from a big-wine aficionado, this is the greatest compliment a pinot can get; "not fruity or perfumey at all", coming from a real pinot aficionado, this is a little depressing, I would say. I like that wine, it is a modern touch to an old grape, nice acidity with sour cherry flavor.

About amarone: "dirt on the nose", "mineral, rusty, very tasty finish", "subtle to the point of non-existence, a surprising wine". I guess they all say very very good things about this wine, at least that is how my brain (and my heart) wants me to interpret them.

About pinotage: "good finish, smooth", "lemon nose - malbec?" (nope), "very close to #4", "super floral".

Yes, blind tasting is fun, it can be surprising. Yes, everybody has a story of how the cheapest wine of the night became the most favorite at a blind tasting. And I believe in those stories. However, our last wine tasting revealed an overlooked fact about blind tasting: No bag can save a bad wine. The highest distinction in the category of (oh dude, this is really) bad wine goes to the sachino: "no nose...this wine is off my map", "nail polish remover, not for me", "smells like fertilizer...Nein". Ranked the last by nine out of ten.

So, over all that was a brilliant idea. When would I ever have the courage to try a wine from Georgia and an opportunity to compare it fair and square with a delicious pinot from Tasmania? A big thanks goes to two wine aficionados for the idea and the selection.

And thanks to everybody for another fun day.

Cooking with a friend in his absence

2009-04-30T23:08:00.016-04:00

So Daisy and I decided to share our evening with a friend of ours at his absence, really cool guy. He gave us this cool cookbook:

and this amazing wine:

What did we come up with in his absence? A very tasty starter salad from the book, and an extremely simple salmon with a very refreshing salad, again from the book, and matched perfectly well with the wine.

The salad, mixed greens with sherry vinaigrette, dijon mustard and fried walnut-coated goat cheese:

And the salmon:

What is great with this whole dinner is how simple and delicious it is. The salad was absolutely amazing, the goat cheese balls were covered with egg then a walnut-shallot-bread mixture then fried. The creamy texture of fried goat cheese balls along with the greens that are tossed with a dijon mustard dressing, oh... And the salmon, just salmon with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and the refreshing green salad with new red potatoes, peas and mint, and just some fruity olive oil and lemon juice, oh... and did I mention the wine?

Thanks dude!

Love and My Mom's White Bean Soup

2009-04-30T16:06:00.000-04:00

What is love really? What a big question to answer here. Love, for me, is my mom's white bean soup. I hope to post her recipe here one day, but I am sure you will not get it right. For one, I have never been able to get it right. It is really simple, some vegetable oil, some tomato paste, onion, white beans soaked overnight, salt and spices, and her secret ingredient: bones...meatless...beef or lamb, which ever is available... really... not because she used to choose bones over meat, because she had to. Those were tough times for my family and for almost all our neighbors around; little family income, meat would enter home at most once a week, in very (really very) small portions. Imagine a mother who wants to give the world to her kids, and all she can give is a cup of white bean soup, almost on a daily basis. Imagine the emotional roller coasters she might have gone through. These are the spices my mom used to put in her white bean soup everyday, her concerns, her dreams, her love... With such little and pure ingredients, she has perfected her white bean soup to a level that no five-star restaurant chef can match. Because, even today, whenever I fill in my mouth with her white bean soup, I recall the smell of her thumb, which, from cutting onions in hand everyday, used to have the smell and the surface of an old cutting board, choppy and rough, and which reminds me of her lovely touch on my face whenever she had a break from housework...And I am fortunate to feel this aroma in my heart, because no five-star food critique can feel it the way I do.

My first ever blog

2009-04-30T14:59:00.007-04:00

I have waited for so long to start blogging on cooking... Because, I wanted my first one to be special, to be published at the right moment... and I have waited so long... but life is special, too, and it usually does not wait for the right moment to start. They say, for example, that I decided to come out of my mom's belly while she was dancing at my uncle's wedding night... the way I came to the world, comes to the world my blog... and I thank to a special person for encouraging me not to wait longer...