Chicken liver paté

I recently got a copy of Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking, and have read it cover to cover. Her style suits me, and her recipes suggest delights and enjoyment of simple fresh food beyond measure. Her recipes are also for the more advanced and adventurous cook, because they do assume a certain knowledge and because they are not precise. She expects a cook to be a person who loves food, who loves to taste and think about flavor and texture, a person who makes use of the senses with intelligence.

I went to the market yesterday for milk, butter, eggs, etc and stopped at the butcher who makes my favorite lamb/garlic/pine nut sausages. As he wrapped those up, I noticed a container labeled “young fresh chicken livers, $1.99/lb”. I’d been debating buying a chunk of paté from the cheese shop around the corner (they carry the standard Marcel & Henri brand), but thought well why not try making some?

Cold Eggplant Salad, Indonesian Riff

When I saw this recipe on Bitten, I knew I had to try it: I love eggplant, and now is the time for savory cold salads. But when I started making it up today, my eggplant all cubed and salted and draining, I realized I’d made all the soy sauce in the house up into kecap manis a few weeks before. Since Bittman’s recipe called for both soy and sugar, I substituted 2 tbsp of kecap manis for the soy, skipped the sugar and mixed in 2 tbsp of lemon juice for the dressing. Instead of just white sesame seeds, I used a mix of 2/3 white and 1/3 black dry toasted and because I really like the toasted sesame flavor, I added a few drops of toasted sesame oil to the dressing as well.

First taste says “Oh my YES, will make this again!”

jaq

Seafood Lust

I’ve got it bad. The urge was satisfied this past weekend with a trip to Stewart’s in Amagansett and a batch of bouillabaisse from Mark Bittman’s Fish. We followed the recipe fairly closely, with a few changes: Pastis instead of Pernod, no fennel seeds, and a healthy pinch of saffron added towards the end of cooking (for some reason, he omits the saffron - insanity). We also added a bit more seafood. In total, we used about a pound and a quarter each of monkfish and squid, plus a pound of mussels, 2 dozen littleneck clams, and a half pound of amazing sea scallops. Success! I’m looking forward to making this again.

Peas Aren’t Just About the Pods

I am so excited to be starting a garden at the p-patch across the street this year. Along with tomatoes and basil and leeks and fennel and rainbow chard, I’m going to try growing some peas. But instead of growing the peas for the pods, I’ll be growing them for their delicate shoots. Apparently these shoots have been used in Asia for centuries, but they are pretty new to me. The young leaves and vines can be lightly sautéed and have a lovely fresh pea flavor.

I don’t have a specific recipe but the general idea is that you use the young tender vines and leaves from a snap pea or snow pea variety. You can also add just the leaves from the hardier stems. They only need to be sautéed for 10-20 seconds or so. I think they would go well with any dish that has light, fresh flavors, such as fish, stir-fry, risotto (with lemon!) or a pasta dish.

My first encounter with pea shoots was at Crave. Chef Robin Leventhal uses the shoots in a dish of goat cheese gnocchi. It is my favorite dish at Crave and I highly recommend it if you have a chance to stop by for dinner.

boxofbirds

Roast chicken, asparagus, and hollandaise

First, roast a chicken. You can do this several days in advance. Get a nice 5 pound or so bird, pasture-raised if possible. Rinse it inside and out and dry it thoroughly (paper towels or a hair dryer, or leave it uncovered overnight in the fridge. Set in a shallow roasting pan breast-side up (put it on a rack if you want, I don’t generally use one), and sprinkle generously with thyme and lightly with cayenne, black pepper, and salt. Let it sit while the oven heats up to 450 deg F.

Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 2

There came a moment—for me it was a little more than a year ago—when cash-strapped music lovers like myself realized that, even without file-sharing or bit torrent, one could download all the songs on a newly released record if enough bloggers wrote about it. The avalanche of mp3 blogs (coupled with better search engines and aggregators for these things), in addition to ‘legitimate’ media giving away free promotional content, has made it very, very easy to get your hands on most new releases.

As it is for records, strangely, so it is for cookbooks.

Stealing Recipes

I’ve tried my hand at “stealing” a few recipes from restaurants. I started with something simple a few years ago, mango quesadillas from Agua Verde. Later I stumbled upon Penne alla Sorrentina from my family’s favorite restaurant, Vince’s. It’s fun, kinda like a puzzle, to try and recreate your favorite dishes.

Eating in museums

Over the past week, I’ve had the opportunity to eat in 3 different museums: at Puck’s in the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), the Eiteljorg Museum’s Sky Cafe, and Taste at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). Circumstantially, all 3 museums had also finished extensive renovations in the past 2 years, with the restaurants all being part of the work.

Experiment #45

Yes, you can use Trader Joe’s Minty Hot Chocolate mix instead of sugar in your butter cookie recipe. But you might want to add a little extra mix, or maybe a little bit more sugar. I like unsweet cookies as much as the next person, or really probably much more, but there was something a little off about the unsweet chocolate mint cookies. Although everyone else liked it well enough. Perhaps it is my dislike of chocolate showing through again (see also: why I am trying to come up with things to do with this minty hot chocolate mix).

An Entreaty

Please, please, please, make this dish. With the crumbled raw sausage, like he suggests. OMG.