Minimally Invasive

It’s not unusual to plan a meal around one ingredient, I think. You find a beautiful cut of grass-fed beef or see a flat of ruby red strawberries and the wheels start spinning as you think about the best way to highlight their natural beauty. This sort of thinking influenced a couple of our meals this week.

Usually when I buy beets, both root and green are destined for a salad inspired by an episode of Lidia’s Family Table — roasted beets, boiled greens, and sliced green apple are tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with hard goat cheese, and seasoned only with salt & pepper. It’s simple and delicious, especially when the produce is at its freshest and most vibrant.

But wanting something different last weekend and thinking (incorrectly) I was prepared to deal with a certain amount of frustration, I decided on a beet tart adapted from this one. The process involved me buying my first tart pan from a store that fascinates and repels me in equal measure — New York Cake & Baking Distribution, conveniently located across the street from my office. I’m attracted to its bare bones design and singularity of purpose; this isn’t a place you go for a comfortable shopping experience with easily navigable aisles or readily located merchandise. No, you go here for baking supplies (pretty much anything at all) at a good price. Period. I’m repelled only because I’m woefully ignorant about baking and expect to be given the bum’s rush when I walk in. Insecure much?

And, you know, there’s a reason for my insecurity — I’ve never once made a pie crust that hasn’t frustrated me to the point of tears. Part of the problem is a lack of counter space, but mostly it’s simple inexperience. Is the dough too dry? Is it too wet? I DON’T KNOW! I think the problem you see above was a too-dry crust, but couldn’t say. My quick fix was to jam bits of dough into the areas where it broke apart, figuring the filling would hide my mistakes from sight, if not taste.

But what a filling it was! While the beets were roasting, I threw in a whole head of garlic, too, which I later sautéed with a chopped onion and copious amounts of thyme. Just meditate on that for a minute.

And then I topped that layer with an egg, crème fraiche, and goat cheese cheese mixture before the roasted beets and even more cheese found their way to the tippy top of the tart.

It was a lot of work, I won’t lie, and I don’t really know if I’ll be preparing the crust again since I’m such a numskull with the pastry-making, but that filling definitely will be featured again in future meals, the layers alone or in some combination. For you see, it was DELICIOUS.

OK, it looks a little pizza-like, but warm from the oven with the sweet caramelized onions, garlic and beets sandwiching that creamy filling, mmmm…

We polished off about half of the tart on the spot, calling it dinner, and put the other half away for quick lunches later in the week.

The other (and probably the more surprising) ingredient I planned a meal around was … coconut juice. I picked it up on a whim at the grocery one day and couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it, so it languished in the pantry for a few weeks. Then I thought — hey, Thai! So I broke out my new rice cooker and set about making coconut rice with brown basmati and a mixture of coconut milk and strained coconut juice. I was on a roll!

To top the rice, I defrosted about a cup of sofrito from my stash, thinking the cilantro and culantro would be right at home with the coconut, and made a thick stew with the addition of lime-marinated shrimp, shrimp stock, hot pepper paste, and the rest of the coconut milk/juice. I topped it all with thinly sliced green onions and toasted sweetened coconut to balance the tartness from the lime and have to say I was pretty pleased with the outcome:

But I think it could’ve used more heat and possibly a little funky fish sauce to bring the whole thing together. I’ll try that variation next time and report back to you.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with this post, really, but because ’tis the season, I have to show you what I did with my garlic scapes last weekend instead of grilling them.

I made a chickpea dip inspired by Mark Bittman’s white bean dip with lemon zest. I could eat this everyday. I just whirled together some canned chickpeas (drained of squack), the zest of one lemon, the juice of the same, quite a few chopped garlic scapes and harissa. While the machine was running, I drizzled in some good-quality olive oil until the mixture turned creamy; I topped it with more lemon juice, olive oil, and another sprinkling of harissa before we dove in. Yum.

recipe after the jump

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I was very disappointed to read of Martha Stewart’s plan to fold Blueprint recently, despite my initial lukewarm feelings toward the magazine. Each issue managed to teach me a little something new and always inspired me with its eye candy and functional-yet-beautiful design. To say my sad goodbye, I had the bright idea to cook a recipe from the last issue and frame a post around it; since I’ve been on a bit of an Asian kick lately, the pho from the soup story sounded promising. I knew not to expect authenticity, but expected better than I got.

It all started so well, too. I made the beef stock a day early and it smelled heavenly — rich with chuck roast, bone marrow, star anise, and fish sauce. After looking forward to it all the next day, I got started as soon as I walked in the door.

While the noodles were boiling,

I assembled the vegetables we’d use as garnish.

When the noodles were ready, I drained and rinsed them in cold water, then added the thinly-sliced beef

before pouring the boiling broth over, which immediately began to cook the meat.

We sat down with our soup and veggies and a big bottle of sriracha and … I thought maybe I still had a cold. It tasted like absolutely nothing — hot water flavored with chili sauce. It was so lackluster, I only had a few bites before pushing it aside for some Triscuits and leftover peach sauce.

Feh.

Fuh.

Happy 2008, everyone! Keeping with our tradition, Gil and I stayed in for a movie marathon last night rather than endure the crowds in the city and the loooong drive home. This year’s feature: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (No, really, it was his idea. Something about the big screen HDTV, battle scenes, I dunno. I wasn’t going to argue.) We started late and only got up to about the 45-minute mark of The Two Towers, but it’s a rainy day, so I’m sure we’ll finish what we started before nightfall.

With hours of Middle Earth fun ahead of us, I wanted to make something festive for dinner that wouldn’t require too much time in the kitchen, and after my success with two recipes from Simple Chinese Cooking, I turned to its pages again for inspiration. The shrimp dumplings practically leaped off the page and demanded an audition, so I obliged, despite the potential for disaster — eviscerated dumplings churning in a pot of boiling water isn’t as appetizing as you might think. But Kylie Kwong’s step-by-step photo illustrations of dumpling assembly made the technique seem easy enough, and it really was.

Oops, looks like a bit of shrimp got away from me there. We’ll just ignore that.

Didn’t affect the outcome, at least:

Awww … they couldn’t be cuter if they were a pile of puppies frolicking on the cutting board. Hairier and much less sanitary, yes, but definitely not cuter.

Wonton regiment 24 reporting for duty!

And you may find this hard to believe (I certainly did), but not one dumpling burst in the boiling water! That’s a success rate I haven’t come near with homemade ravioli, so I think there’s something to Ms. Kwong’s techniques. Hmmm, maybe I’ll start making “tortellini” instead — sneaky, sneaky.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Gil and I have to get back to our movie research; he has a theory that Ed Wood was resurrected to direct Orlando Bloom in this trilogy, and I’m having trouble disproving it.

After our gluttonous journey through south Louisiana, I wanted our first home-cooked meal to be fresh, light, healthy, and flavorful. As luck would have it, all of these conditions were met in the pages of Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking, a holiday gift from my mother-in-law. The size of this cookbook is the only downside I’ve found so far — it’s really more of a kitchen atlas than a useful cookbook in its current form. I lack counter space in my kitchen, so I had to copy the recipes I’d chosen to a notebook and cook from there. But in all other respects it’s a wonderful book — great recipes, clear instructions, gorgeous pictures, and handy step-by-step illustrations of some of the more difficult preparations. (Cutting a whole chicken the Chinese way and making wontons are two of my favorites.)

The dish pictured above is steamed cod with ginger and green onions. I’ve made steamed fish before, but this was far beyond the Cooking Light recipes I’ve used in the past. It’s a very refined dish elevated by the surprising element of hot peanut oil drizzled over the top just before serving; it finishes the dish with a roasted aroma and ever-so-slightly nutty flavor.

To accompany the fish, I decided on stir-fried Chinese cabbage with oyster sauce, also from the pages of Simple Chinese Cooking. The two dishes were linked by their use of Chinese cabbage, though this stir fry had much more delicate flavors and texture than the fish. They both paired nicely with a bottle of muscadet I’d chilled, and left us feeling satisfied and healthy, a combination we hadn’t experienced in over a week.

R - red bell pepper
O - carrots
Y - yellow bell pepper

G - green cabbage, cilantro, basil, mint, lime juice, green onions

B - OK, the conceit breaks down a little here
I - yeah, yeah, so sue me
V - purple bell pepper! Ha-HA!

To look at this site, you’d think we only eat brown or red food around here. I guess my weekday meals are more multi-hued than the dishes I make (and post about) on weekends, but still: They say you should eat the rainbow to get the most nutritional benefit from foods, so I thought I’d give it a go in one dish last weekend with a Vietnamese chicken salad from the pages of my beloved Cooking Light.

For once, I didn’t really depart from the recipe much, except to use a little less chicken and a little more veggies than called for. I might use the proper amount of chicken next time, but this salad already was delicious with its balance of salty, sweet, and sour, with unami thrown in for kicks. In fact, it was Gil’s favorite dish of the weekend!

Goooo, Roy G. ‘v!

recipe after the jump

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No matter how hard I tried this morning (after waking up at 4am), I couldn’t get the idea of pasta out of my head. It was a little frustrating, as that’s the last thing I wanted to attempt following our week in Milan. After pondering for a little while, nothing else would come to me, so I resorted to searching through my files for something to cook today. That’s when I ran across a soy-poached chicken recipe I’d filed away a couple of weeks ago and it dawned on me: Umami!

So off we went to Zeytinia at 7:30, where we had the place to ourselves. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future sleepless weekends. Don’t laugh — it happens. While we were shopping, I saw a nice package of bone-in country ribs and thought I could get a lot of my cooking for the week done in one day, so we came home loaded with groceries and I set to work.

Soon after, one of Gil’s friends called with ONE ticket to the Giants-Jets game today, so I cooked up a storm. Alone. Oh, woe unto me! Actually, it wasn’t a bad day at all, and I finished a lot of nagging chores that I usually put off when Gil’s around.

So back to the food. This poached chicken recipe couldn’t be easier, just as promised on the Cook Think blog. Assembling the poaching liquid was the only thing that took any effort, but seeing (and later smelling) the result was so worth it:

After simmering it for 30 minutes, I dropped a whole chicken into the pot breast-first, simmered for 15 minutes, then covered the pot to let it poach in the residual heat for 3 hours. I didn’t bother crisping the skin in the oven as instructed because I didn’t want to eat the skin, anyway, but I’m sure it would be a delicious addition to the recipe.

It wasn’t much to look at, I’ll admit, but I can’t rave enough about it: The house smelled glorious, waiting three hours for the chicken to cook was maddening (as was taking the picture before eating), and the chicken itself was perfectly moist and tender and a great counterpoint to the aggressively seasoned broth. This stuff is magical: I’ll be freezing any leftover broth to use in future dishes.

Immediately after covering the chicken, I set to work on the ribs, this time without a recipe. I’ve been reading about increasing the umami of meat dishes by coating the raw meat in porcini powder before browning, so I thought I’d give that a go. I whirled a few dried porcini mushrooms in my spice grinder, and added the powder to a hefty dose of chipotle chili powder, ground coriander, and a touch of salt.

I coated the ribs in the mixture and browned them in a pan in a few batches, then transfered them to my slow cooker. Once they were all browned, I deglazed the pan with 2/3 cup each of soy sauce and beer (Pacifico, because it’s what we had in the fridge), lots of garlic, the zest of one small Valencia orange, 1/2 teaspoon grated ginger, a bay leaf, and one whole clove. I poured the mixture over the ribs and set the slow cooker to 7 hours, then started my chores. Whew!

Seven hours later, Gil and I sat down to our slow-cooked dinner and were really pleased with the results. It’s a cliché, I know, but the ribs really were fall-off-the-bone tender, and they picked up a lot of orange flavor from the zest while staying savory. The taste of the mushrooms wasn’t really noticeable, but they added a nice depth to the dish.

We ate the ribs with long grain rice and sautéed bok choy, and won’t mind eating leftovers at all.