Minimally Invasive

Those of you who check out this site from time to time may know of my obsession with bread pudding. It’s all I can do NOT to make one every weekend with whatever variants of bread and fruit we have lying around, but I’ve been health-conscious of late. I don’t think we’ve indulged since before Passover, which is far too long for someone like me.

So when I read about Broadway Panhandler’s Bread Pudding Recipe Exchange Week Taste Off this morning at the always-informative Megnut, I could barely contain my excitement. Meet me there Wednesday? It’ll be amazing. I always imagined myself as more of a BBQ judge, but only because I didn’t know bread pudding competitions existed.

Check out the recipes link in the right column for a few of my favorite bread pudding recipes.

Update: Attend the Taste Off at your own risk. (via The Agitator)

Deb left too early Sunday morning to partake in one of my favorite Creole dishes — shrimp & grits. Sausage or bacon really helps this dish along, but I have no idea where I’d find chaurice up here, so we went with chorizo instead. To keep the Spanish influence going, I used Manchego cheese in the grits, which lent them a subtle depth without overpowering their delicate flavor. It’s one of my favorite non-eggy brunch dishes and cooks up in a flash, the perfect meal for those mornings when your head feels too heavy to lug around for very long.

recipe after the jump

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Clockwise, from left: si gum chi na mul, shredded carrots, ho bak na mul, sook ju na mul, gal bee

There’s no greater treat (or easier meal) than grilled food when company comes calling. Slap some meat over a fire, serve it with a few simple side dishes and copious amounts of alcohol, and you’re guaranteed a good time and satisfaction all around.

But sometimes the burger/hot dog/steak axis wears thin, even early in the grilling season. I’ve had great great burgers/dogs/steaks, but only rarely are they memorable on their own. A kosher dog at Yankee stadium, when Gil and I were dating and he surprised me with a ticket to a Sunday game … totally memorable, but for the company. Steak cooked to perfection by R, my longtime boyfriend in St. Louis … again memorable, but for the secret family marinade I weaseled out of him (and which you won’t get here, dear reader — I made a promise and intend to keep it.).

But I did learn a lot of other things with R during our years together. Apart from the many cautionary lessons (which I choose not to dwell on), he taught me to shoot, something I still love to do whenever I make it out to the sporting clays range. I learned the most basic lessons of fly fishing, but haven’t gone back for years. And I learned a lot about Korean food.

See, R was a Korean cowboy-type from Tulsa, a good ol’ boy and gourmand in equal measure. His family loved entertaining with amazing home-cooked meals, so he learned quite a bit from them. Over the years after we parted ways, I cooked the few dishes I remembered and added my own spin to them, but I wanted more. Sure, I could live the rest of my life without eating the same version of Ja Jang Myun (noodles with soybean paste sauce) ever again, but did I really want to? Nuh-uh.

A few months ago, I finally managed to track down the out-of-print cookbook R had — Korean Cooking for You by Moon Ja Yoon — and have made old favorites many times since. But I can also turn to this cookbook for magnificent grilling recipes and produce something other than the typical cookout fare with minimal effort. So that’s what I did Saturday afternoon.

With the gal bee (short ribs), we had si gum chi na mul (spinach), ho bak na mul (zucchini), sook ju na mul (mung bean sprouts), and some awesomely pungent and fresh kim chi Gil picked up at the market Friday. And to make things super-simple, all of the na muls used the same seasoning ingredients, so it’s easy enough to mix up a big batch and just douse the different dishes at once.

Our weekend guest (Deb, Gil’s ex from college) is a smart girl who knows you can pick up wine anywhere, but a chocolate mousse cake from S&S Cheesecake … I … just … there are no words:

So that was dessert. And yes, we made short work of it:

recipes after the jump

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Our home improvement projects continued this weekend as we reassembled the guest bedroom for an honest-to-goodness overnight guest! We still need to paint the trim, but it looks pretty good anyway, now that the curtains are hung and the bed is put together. Pictures to come.

Our dining room looks about a bazillion times better, too. One of my oldest friends is a very talented artist who wanted to give us a painting as a wedding present. We took a long time to decide what the subject should be, but when Riece saw my photos from Paris, he zeroed in on this image of the chapel at Les Invalides, and we all agreed it would be perfect:

The painting was delivered Tuesday while we were in the city, but because we rarely seem to be home at the same time as our neighbors (who hold onto our deliveries when we’re away), we only got it yesterday afternoon.

I’d say it was worth the wait.

Now our dining room/living room have a focus beyond our obscenely large television.

No pictures (from me, anyway) to commemorate our wonderful dining experience at Tabla last night, but the memory of that meal will stay with me for a long, long time. Gil was less impressed than I and thought he’d had better at Café Matisse, but that’s just because he lost the ordering war: Why would you go for a scallop (that’s one ginormous scallop, btw) when there are more flavorful items on the menu? But hey, that’s just me.

The chef sent around an amuse bouche of cauliflower soup that surprised me on every level. It was brothy rather than creamy, spicy and tangy, and nothing like any cauliflower soup I’d ever had. The naan was pillowy and so fresh steam rose from the bread as we broke it. The sauces served with the naan were green squash- and apple-based and (our favorite) roasted tomato chutney. It was already a meal to savor and we hadn’t even seen our appetizers.

Because I didn’t feel like drinking wine last night, I skipped the foie gras (I know! There’s a first time for everything), and ordered the Fricassee of Oyster, Calamari, Whelks, and Periwinkles (with fava beans, Meyer lemon, mango chutney, and coconut broth). Well! It was my first experience eating fava beans, Meyer lemon, whelks, AND periwinkles and it just blew me away. The broth was rich and spicy, but light with a pleasing sour note at the very end. There was no mention of cilantro on the menu, but I found a strong taste of it in there, so be warned if you don’t like it. Personally, me and cilantro go way back and I gots no beef with it.

My entrée was Smoked & Slow Cooked Scottish Salmon (with French green lentils, fennel, and orange tamarind glaze), served medium rare. The flavors were a little more straightforward than my appetizer, but it was still something I enjoyed taking my time with, exploring the interplay between ingredients. The salmon was topped with ramps, which I’ve been dying to try, and they did not disappoint. I’m pretty sure the chef managed to smoke the ramps before roasting them, so now I have inspiration for the weekend if I’m able to rind ramps at the Union Square Greenmarket tomorrow. The only complaint I have about the dish is the salmon itself was a little bland if eaten alone and had a thick crust on top (from the smoking?). It’s a perfectly fine way to prepare salmon, but not my favorite. Still, the other layers of the dish more than made up for that minor disappointment.

And then it was time for dessert. I like unfussy, very simple desserts. My favorite is probably creme brulée, so you get the idea. Nothing on the Tabla menu fit that bill, so I ordered the cheese plate (which I might have, anyway, being something of a hound for cheese). The goat cheese was delicious if nothing special, but I loved the two cow’s milk cheeses they brought to me — both were creamy and a little melted on the plate. One was funky as hell and the other had a smoky bite to the rind, which I saved for last. I love ending my meals with the best flavor on the plate.

I stuck to one drink the whole evening, a pomegranate gimlet, which was — of course — a work of art. It walked a fine line between sweet and tart and pine-fresh, and really went well with everything I ate, which I was a little worried about going in. Anyway, I can’t say enough great things about this restaurant and I’m really happy my second experience there was just as wonderful as my first. Trying so many new ingredients in one meal was lots of fun for me, and I was so inspired by the flavor combinations that I put Chef Cardoz’s cookbook on my Amazon wish list as soon as I got to work this morning. I predict lots of fish soups and Indian flavors for us this summer!

We welcomed the return of our prodigal Spring last weekend with open windows and grilled meats and vegetables. Winter stamped around a bit throwing a tantrum that it had NEVER left and why don’t we appreciate it the same WAY, but you can’t encourage a hissy fit, so we ignored it.

In a burst of spring cleaning energy and optimism, I thought it was time to do something about the state of the guest bedroom, where the dingy walls and half-finished look have been depressing me for so long I could not stand it one more minute. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am? Ahem, not being completely batshit crazy, we didn’t make it there quite so early, but at around 7:30am (does that make us partially batshit?) we hit the local Despot for a window consultation (new windows! less dust!) and paint supplies. After our brief foray into the world, we went home and got busy with the redecorating.

Moving furniture and cleaning and taping and edging really take it out of a person, so between coats we thought it better to watch sports and grill instead of cleaning the rest of the house or watching paint dry. (The less said about the Yankees, the better, but gooooo Weber Q!) Having the windows open during the games felt like such a luxury after the past few weeks of grayishly brooding about better weather to come. Aaaaahhh…

The only non-grilled dinner we had all weekend involved testing a new recipe for Chinese Chicken and Mushroom Lettuce Cups from Cooking Light for dinner Saturday; it was such a success it’s already moved into the go-to pile for weeknight dinners. (It was really very simple to make, though mincing the mushrooms took longer than expected. I’ll use our trusty food processor in the future when I’m more pressed for time. I only changed the recipe a little — increasing the amount of mushrooms to use the whole container, using regular soy sauce instead of low-sodium, and adding a handful of slivered almonds because we had them.) The dish is light but has an earthy mushroom flavor and tastes remarkably like the wraps we get at Baumgart’s, a New Jersey diner/pan-Asian restaurant institution.

For dessert, we moved over to Thailand for bananas stewed with coconut milk (or Gluay Buat Chee) from Real Thai by Nancie McDermott. As the recipe notes,

When women in Thailand become Buddhist nuns, they wear white robes. This sweet dish of bananas in coconut milk is white as well, giving rise to its charming Thai name, “bananas ordained as nuns.”

Sunday, I grilled instead of heating up the house after painting. Marinated skirt steak (a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, hot smoky paprika, garlic, cumin, chile powder, salt, and pepper) got a quick turn on the grill and paired well with caramelized onions spritzed with lime juice and a dollop of fresh guacamole. Inspired by the abundant sunshine and cool breeze, we even broke out our patio set and ate overlooking the woods behind our house.

God, I’m so ready for summer.

Yankees-Red Sox on the tube, rosé for me, gin for him, and an uncomplicated dinner. Clockwise, from top: Olive oil, Syrian zahtar, chickpea dip, baked oat bran pita chips, Israeli zahtar.

recipe after the jump

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We knew going into this evening that our marriage would face its toughest test thus far — one full hour of American Idol sans alcohol. The Official MI Monkey Husband stayed home feeling sickish today, but had perked up enough by the afternoon to get busy in the kitchen for me:

And if that ain’t love, folks, I don’t know what is. OK, OK, Gil’s the biggest chocolate chip cookie whore I know, so they weren’t exactly for me only, but I did appreciate the bits of dough he left wrapped and waiting for me in the fridge.

With the night of extraordinary tension ahead of us, I didn’t want any frustration in the kitchen, so I thought noshing on something we already had in the pantry/fridge would be the way to go. But you know me, I need that feeling of accomplishment (no matter how easily gained) so I had to do a little more than just open a jar or unwrap some cheese. We had … crostini with spinach and cannellini beans!

The most important thing to remember here is to rid the canned beans of squack. Pardon my foray into technical jargon territory, but while we’re here, I would like to take this opportunity to establish my firm anti-squack stance. Please, please rinse your canned beans! Or, you know, use dried and be entirely squack-free.

Ahem, anyway, the dish came together in about 30 minutes, so we sat down with a plate of crunchy and garlicky crostini to test our marriage with sober Idol. You’ll be happy to know our shared hatred of the same contestants and love of ridicule pulled us through. But I like to think the noshing played some small part in keeping our marriage afloat.

recipes after the jump

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So, let’s check at the zoos, animal shows, circuses — anywhere where an Eastern European with bad teeth could have access to an ape.

Like Gumby, I’m a creature of flexibility. So while The Official MI Husband knows better than to stand in the way of my cravings, he’s comfortable suggesting alternate preparations or asking me to wait a day if the need arises. Thus my flexibility was put to the test this weekend when our excursion to Woodbury Common ran long Saturday. We left famished and ate an enormous, late lunch at Pizzeria Uno, so the hanger steaks I’d prepped with a dry rub paid for our gluttony by sitting overnight in the fridge until we could bear the thought of eating again. That happy occasion was lunch today.

Not relishing the thought of grilling in a downpour (Oh, did I forget to mention we’re in the middle of a nor’easter?), I had to come up with a different method of preparation. Ordinarily, I’d just pound the steak to about 1/4-inch thickness and cook it over high heat in my cast iron pan, then serve it with a quick pan sauce and fries, but the assertive rub made steak frites much less appetizing.

Inspiration struck when I found a site that recommended quickly searing the steak on the stove, then finishing in a 250-degree oven until medium rare. It promised uniformly tender meat, so I ran an experiment to see if we could really tell a difference between oven-finished and stove-finished steak. Both were cooked to an internal temperature of 125 degrees and allowed to rest on a plate loosely tented with foil for 10 minutes.

As you might be able to tell from the photo, there definitely was a difference between the two. The steak on the left was cooked on the stovetop and had more variation in color and texture. The exterior was tougher from cooking over a direct heat source, and the middle had a thin rare line because the meat rose to a higher temperature while it was resting. The oven-prepared steak on the right was much more tender and uniformly rosy. The outside wasn’t as tough and it had a much silkier texture. But both were very good served with a freshly-prepared pineapple salsa and warm spinach salad.

I still have to test grilling against these two methods, but I’m pretty sure steak frites will continue to reign supreme. The reason hanger steak is one of my favorite cuts is because it has great, beefy flavor and a chewy texture, so the silkiness of the oven-finished meat seemed all wrong to me, even though the beef itself was absolutely delicious.

recipes after the jump

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