Holy Mackerel!

Well, holy bluefish to be precise, but any phrase of amazement will do.

I went fishing with Shiloh yesterday and it was way cooler than either of us imagined.

This is the Brooklyn VI, a charter boat that leaves from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn everyday at 7 am. My old roommate Jay has been a bunch of times, I was cooking bluefish he hauled in on this boat all last summer. Shiloh and I decided we had to go, but we had no idea what we were in for.

The ocean is big and the sun is bright, but I had a matching hat!

Okay, so you show up, it costs $55 to go with them and $5 for a pole, reel, lures and instructions for your dumb city-dwelling self. I went fishing with my grandfather Art a bunch of times as a kid, but throwing your worm into Fall River in Kansas is no preparation for trying to reel in a pissed off ocean blue. I needed help if I had any chance of winning the biggest fish pool I paid $5 to get in on.

We were on the water for two hours before we started fishing, working our way out and down the Jersey coast. Everyone was eating egg sandwiches and playing poker for quarters. So far, so good.

Once we threw our lures in, it was on immediately. Shiloh and I both caught a big bluefish on our first cast! It was a real workout too, fighting with the Atlantic's answer to the piranha. These are big, carnivorous fish that are not used to being bested. I asked one of the crew members how they were sure we would only catch bluefish and he said that once you find them you don't have a choice. They run all the other fish off wherever they go.

Catching one was a quick lesson on ethics too. If you felt bad at all, every blue would puke before it came out of the water or once it hit the deck, releasing a huge cloud of blood and smaller, half-digested fish that had been sucked down earlier in the morning. They would eat me if they could, but I'm the one with opposable thumbs! Woo-hoo!

I had a good day, catching over 10 blues that were 6-12 lbs each, but Shiloh was going for Rookie of the Week. He caught at least 15 blues (we both lost count) and 2 HUGE striped bass, one just short of 30 lbs and one just over.

Shiloh with his first striped bass, elated.

Shiloh with both of his stripers, a first-timer reaching his legal limit on sea bass. This is on the way back to Brooklyn and the sea gulls in the air behind him are following us, picking pieces of carcass out of the water as the crew guys empty their cleaning buckets from filleting everybody's fish. There were more than 50 birds in the air by the time we got back to the bay.

I could win the Farmer's Tan Olympics right now, but we ended up with 40 POUNDS of bluefish fillets after they cleaned our catch. Not 40 lbs worth of whole fish, 40 lbs of prime meat, everything else went over the side for the birds. Holy frijoles.

The crew were all Brooklyn roughnecks, trash talkers that will teach you anything, but only once. My favorite one was the cook, of course, a short old man named Jimmy who is best described as Joe Pesci crossed with a pirate and an Old West trail cook. He was missing a bunch of teeth and was chewing on a corn cob pipe all day, walking around the boat in an apron singing profanity-laced versions of old crooner tunes.

I had a good feeling about him when he was slicing garlic for the lunch marinara at 8 o'clock that morning, but I really started to like Jimmy when he came along to help another first timer next to me. The guy had nabbed a small shark and was struggling with the hook, trying to get it out of this strong little bugger's lip without losing the end of any fingers.

Jimmy saw the guy having a hard time and came over.

"Here, let me show you something."

With that, Jimmy grabbed the line about a foot from the shark's mouth and slammed it against the side of the boat twice, jerking the hook out on the last hit. The first timer seemed surprised by how easy it was to both retrieve his hook and render the shark harmless, then remarked that it was now dead.

"You're damn right he's dead, the motherfucker!", Jimmy said in the highest pitched growl I've ever heard.

It was at this moment that the Joe Pesci comparison became really clear.

Jimmy the Cook with the biggest fish caught that day, a 36.5 lb striped bass that's nearly as tall as he is.

The revelation came when we got back to the dock. The crew guys cleaned everybody's fish on the ride in, but they saved the bass until we could come to a stop and take some pictures. As the Captain was cleaning Shiloh's bass, we started talking about sushi. With a quick flick of his wrist, the guy cut off a slice of the bass from near the head and offered it to us, just like that. Shiloh and I looked uncertain, so he popped it in his mouth and then offered us another one.

Well, he did it. Who am I to refuse?

That piece of fish was the best I've ever had. It was a little bit salty, but not too much. Like what you're going for when you dip sashimi into soy sauce, only better, more infused. It tasted like the saltwater, wind and sun I'd been curing in all day. I couldn't believe it was that easy.

This is the day's haul of wild striped bass, including both of Shiloh's.

Sushi, Porkalicious Style

I was dead tired and covered in fish scales by the time we got back to my apartment, but all I could think about was eating more of the bass while it was still fresh. The image of that thin slice of translucent white fish sitting on a boning knife was impossible to ignore.

I never would have imagined myself serving raw fish, but the little bit of research I've done has made it clear that the fish in the best sushi restaurants is usually out of the water 4 or 5 days before you eat it. I felt good about this, but it was going to require adventurous dinner guests.

I found them in Chica and Allison, two ladies who went with me down the curried tillapia trail a few weeks ago. They showed up with rice, pickled ginger, wasabi, steamed spinach and a sushi side tray of pickled vegetables and shredded daikon, a kind of white radish. They also brought a bottle of cold sake to go with the bottle of hot sake I had warming on the stove.

I provided the fish, thin slices of raw wild sea bass from the front of the body, closer to the head. According to the Captain of the Brooklyn VI, this is the prime stuff. At $19.99/lb for wild striped bass in my local market, I expect it's all pretty damn good.

I also sliced up red radishes, scallions, cucumbers, strawberries, a kiwi, a peach, a plum and a little smoked herb gouda. I was trying to think of things that would go with the slightly salty fish, so a fruit and veggie plate seemed like the obvious choice.

Finally, as the real personalizer, I cooked up a little of the home cured bacon I've got waiting patiently in the fridge. The fish is cold and a little salty, the bacon hot and saltier. Not only did they go together well, the bacon was the first empty dish.

Oh my.

It is possible that this is the best meal I've ever prepared.

It is also possible that I was drunk on sake and sunburn halfway through dinner and am dealing in undeserved superlatives, but I think this was the best meal I've ever prepared.

I Love Summer!!!!!!

Oh The Places You'll Go

"Life's been good to me so faaaaarrrr..."

A little Joe Walsh for you? Anyone?

I've been traveling a lot lately, getting out of the city for one reason or another. Or any reason at all. Of course my eyes are always peeled for some kind of local delicacy, and while there isn't much to get excited about in Orlando, I can usually sniff out something worth eating no matter where we land.

Staten Island

New York's outer boroughs are the best for Mom and Pops, so when we drove by Montalbano's Italian Deli it was an obvious stop.

I did not Order Now for My Confirmation, but I did get a hero with three different Italian meats and fresh mozz on balsamic soaked crusty bread. And a tub of cured sweet peppers, a jar of cured hot peppers, a tub of meat sauce, a half-pound of prosciutto, a pound of fresh mozzarella and this:

It was weird, but not much different than a strong iced coffee. Being soda, it was sweeter than I like my coffee, but I think it could become one of those once-a-month treats. And it photographed really well, even at 5 in the morning.

The meat sauce was good, but it was closer to a bland gravy base than most marinaras. Could have used more garlic and some meatballs. Clearly Montalbano's is about the deli, cured meats, cheese, olives and peppers. That's plenty for me.

Florida

My old friend Jay Jacoby married his girlfriend Allison a couple weeks ago, an absolutely brilliant move. Allison is far and away the best decision Jay's ever made in a woman and I was honored to be his best man.

They got married in Cocoa Beach, Fl, but we spent the weekend before the wedding at a big rental house in Kissimmee. Jay's a vegetarian and doesn't drink or have any appreciation for the art of the lap dance, so my traditional best man options were limited. Jay and Allison are raising three beautiful kids and they planned the weekend before around them, with trips to DisneyWorld and SeaWorld during the days. I stuck around the house with Jay's mom Molly so we could clean up, wash pool towels, nap, and, of course, cook!

The lake behind the house at dawn.

The same lake at noon, slightly more ominous. There was a grill by the house, I swore if we could catch one I'd cook it, but there wasn't any luck on the gator front.

With two vegetarians and a vegetable hater on the list of eaters, I had to have a pretty well defined menu. The first night we had herb roasted chicken, boiled corn, caponata, garlic bread, curried roasted sweet potatoes, a green salad and an orange, red onion and olive salad that I've had at my uncle Tom's house a number of times. Mission accomplished. I think the kids ate chicken nuggets, so they were happy too.

Dinner the next night was grilled steak kabobs, deviled eggs, tzatziki, fresh mozz with tomato and basil, an improvised rice pilaf and a four bean salad with red onions, red bell peppers, scallions and an improvised vinaigrette. I'd post recipes for this stuff but it's all either on the blog already or I made it up.

Dinner went best with a beer and a pool.

I was proud of the cooking this weekend for two reasons: 12-15 people were made happy each day and everything was bought at Wal-Mart. I'm spoiled freaking rotten by specialty cheese shops and farmer's markets so cooking fresh food for such varied palettes from the land of just-add-water was a great little challenge for my bourgeois, latte liberal ass.

Jay and his super-dope wife, Allison.

Damn, I look good on a beach.

The ceremony was lovely, then we took pictures, then we rolled our pants up and played with the kids in the ocean. Best Wedding Ever.

After the ceremony we all went to a local Italian restaurant, where I had veal saltimbocca (def - Italian for jumps in the mouth). I was making saltimbocca for a while with chicken, it was fantastic. I can't find it anywhere on the blog, I don't know why I didn't post the recipe. I'll do that soon. But the veal at this place was better than my chicken, thin cutlets crusted and lightly fried with a slice of prosciutto and a sage leaf tooth picked on top. It's like Italian chicken fried steak and is one of my favorites.

And we drank a bunch of wine, then went for a midnight swim in the Atlantic.

Kim's got her swimming shoes, she's ready.

New Jersey

Got back from Florida on Tuesday and by Thursday I couldn't think of anything better to do than go to the beach.

The water off New Jersey isn't quite as warm as in Florida, but it will suffice.

On the way into the town I noticed a permanent farm stand and immediately started saying we should stop on the way back. Jackie didn't seem to think I was serious, but when I spotted the place from two blocks away and started begging like a little kid at the Play Place McDonald's, she gave in.

They were closing up for the evening, but I came running in with two handfuls of peaches and tomatoes, kind of insistent. He turned the register back on and started weighing my fruit, but by that point I'd spotted the strawberries and was on the hunt for corn.

It was all local, farm grown produce and was perfect. I ate a whole tomato, two peaches and probably 35 strawberries in the car, wiping juice off of my chin all the way back to New York.

Now that's the way to travel.

June 13 and 14 - Dinners

Above, dinner from Friday night. My favorite - brats and kraut. Anytime Tzam asks me what I want for dinner, if nothing else comes to mind, it's brats and kraut. Used to be we'd have this at least every two weeks if not every week. Problem is Kathy and Ram aren't big kraut fans so it's been very limited. We only had this because Kathy had other dinner plans (which fell through and she had to suffer Sonic). When Tzam cooked if for them, he cooked the kraut separately from the brats so they could kraut or not. I don't think this is an accurate representation, you have to cook them together. The brats get all tender and yummy and the kraut loses some of it's bite. We had this with potatoes that were boiled then baked with salt and pepper. As always, the meal was served with a large glass of whole milk.
Last night we had yummy pork mans, mashed potatoes and fried apples. Apparently so good that I started eating and was done before Ben mentioned that I hadn't taken a picture. The camera was at my elbow waiting.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Dinner last night was corned beef and cabbage, corn and a biscuit. Love corned beef and cabbage. Tzam is working on clearing out the freezer and this was extra from the St. Patties day sale.
Mam

Charcuterie - Spoiled but Never Rotten

'It's just pork fat and nitrates, Dad, it's disgusting.'

Oh, little Meadow Soprano, on this we disagree. That line is a paraphrase from an episode of the Sopranos, one of the few fictional television programs to ever exhibit an appreciation for cooking. People were constantly eating in that show, good New Jersey eats too, lots of proper sausages and cold cuts from Italian delis that kind of smell like blood, places I get guancialé with names like Montalbano's and Esposito's. Thank you, Tony Soprano, for teaching me the wonders of mortadella.

Charcuterie

My uncle Tom, in his ongoing efforts to craft me into a super-genius, bought me a book by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn called Charcuterie - The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing. I believe it was a reaction to the founding of this blog, kind of a, if you're cooking pig anyway, suggestive kind of thing.

I was intimidated by the book at first, then it took me months to find the sodium nitrate that is central to most of the dishes I wanted to start with. These guys sound so dignified and practiced it took me a while to find the right angle to approach it all from. I almost felt like I needed to cook anything else for a few years first.

But then I reminded myself that people were making all of this stuff before modern conveniences like electric light and refrigerators. In fact, the point of charcuterie is preserving hard-earned protein in it's most concentrated form until you slow or stop the rotting process. By killing the bacteria that want to eat your pork as much as you do, you suspend aging, and as a byproduct, turn a simple cut of bloody dead muscle into something refined and delicious. Even when you use it on a sandwich.

I've done a lot more reading of the book than cooking out of it, but the recipes I have tried are mostly simple and freaking fantastic. They just require a lot of patience, something I've been known to be short on. But for the most part the instructions consist of rubbing salt and spices on meat and then rinsing them off later. It's not rocket science and takes as much time to read as it does to complete.

Most of the dishes I'm listing today require sodium nitrate, commonly known as pink salt. It's hard to find, at least around here. I ended up buying some from a family operated butcher shop in Derby, Kansas on one of my trips home. They were real friendly and let me look around the shop and in the freezers at their huge tubs of curing bacon. I kind of had to talk them into selling me the pink salt. I don't know if it had anything to do with nitrates being the explosive material in the fertilizer used for the Oklahoma City bombing, but I wasn't buying enough to blow my own hand off, so they went along with it.

I know Tom found some online recently, which is probably a much easier method. However you go about it, get some pink salt.

Okay, before we get started, a couple quick quotes because these guys are so in love with cooking pork it makes me feel like a raw-foodist:

Compare [pork] to beef, for example, where you've got everything from the tenderloin to the tough shank-but it's all pretty similar in taste, whether filét mignon, stewing beef, or hamburger.
The pig, on the other hand, gives us ham, fresh sausage, tenderloin, chops, ribs, hocks, trotters, and blood for boudin noir, all of them with distinct differences in flavor and texture...
There are recipes and descriptions of all varieties of food in this book, for vegetables and fish, and all manner of sauces and condiments, but we'd like to make sure that one thing is understood here and now: The pig is king.
pp 33, 35

Yeah!

Bacon

Eventually, bacon became my doorway into this book. It was too easy, too intriguing and too important to my life to ignore. Their instructions are very formal, this is my version. Adapted from pp 41-43.

Ingredients

One 3-5 lb slab pork belly, skin optional
1/4 cup pink salt

Optional Ingredients

1/2 cup maple syrup or brown sugar
or
5 smashed cloves of garlic
3 crushed bay leaves
1 tbl black peppercorns, cracked with the bottom of a pan

The optional ingredients are added to the salt mix before it goes onto the slab. I've tried them both and prefer either of them to the plain salted bacon. Don't get me wrong, fresh bacon is good without added flavor, but the sweet/savory options give it that something extra that brings it out of the salt barrel on the back of a covered wagon.

First trim the belly so it's square on all sides. The book suggests dredging the slab in the salt and spice mixture, I have better results doing it like a dry rub, straight onto the meat with my hands. Use all of the salt, spread evenly until it starts to form a crust.

Put the meat in a Ziploc bag or nonreactive dish. I use a glass baking dish that I have, about a foot long and eight inches wide. The meat will release a lot of liquid while it cures. You want to keep it in a tight space, which will help keep the cure evenly distributed.

That's pretty much it. Throw it in the fridge for a week, slosh it around in the bag or turn it over in the dish every couple days. I typically do half the amount called for in the recipe, so five days is plenty for a 1.5-2 lb piece. I've left it in for almost two weeks though, and just had to simmer it a couple times to get some of the salt out, but the bacon was delicious. Had some last night. Mmmm.

When you're ready to pull the bacon out, preheat the oven to 200°. Rinse the slab under cold water and roast it until it reaches an internal temperature of 150°, about two hours. If you left the skin on, cut it off now while it's hot. Whatever you do, eat a piece of this before it cools, it's one of the truly perfect foods. If it's too salty, simmer it for a minute in water to cover and try another piece. Repeat until it starts to taste right, twice has been plenty for me.

Let it cool and cook it as you wish. Slice it for classic American style bacon, cut it into large chunks to use as salt pork in soups or bean recipes or cut the perfect lardon cube and toast it to use as a garnish. The book says the bacon will keep for 1 to 2 weeks, but that has to be some kind of lawsuit-avoidance advice. I have yet to let it go so long it seems to be spoiling. I'm not going to be responsible for you eating rancid bacon, but seriously. People used to keep this shit in a barrel.

Pancetta

Pancetta is Italian bacon, more or less, but the spices set it apart from anything Canadians or Hormel have to offer. This is the meat called for in Carbonara dishes, but I found myself eating it in chunks with eggs or sliced thin with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella. Also good in marinara, but it's a much different texture than ground meat. This list could go on and on.

Their recipe is efficient but thorough, so here it is mostly unmolested, from pp 44-45.

Ingredients

One 5 lb slab pork belly, skin removed

4 garlic cloves
2 tsp pink salt
1/4 cup kosher salt
2 tbl dark brown sugar
4 tbl coarse ground black pepper
2 tbl juniper berries, crushed with the bottom of a pan
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

1. Trim the belly so that its edges are neat and square.
2. Combine the ingredients for the cure in a bowl, reserving half of the black pepper, and mix thoroughly so that the pink salt is evenly distributed. Rub the mixture all over the belly to give it a uniform coating over the entire surface.
3. Place the belly in a 2-gallon Ziploc bag or in a covered nonreactive container just large enough to hold it. Refrigerate for 7 days. Without removing the belly from the bag, rub the belly to redistribute the seasonings and flip it over every other day (a process called overhauling.)
4. After 7 days, check the belly for firmness. If it feels firm at its thickest point, it's cured. If it still feels squishy, refrigerate it on the cure for 1 to 2 more days.
5. Remove the belly from the bag or container, rinse it thoroughly under cold water, and pat it dry. Sprinkle the meat side with the cracked pepper. Starting from a long side, roll up the pork belly tightly, as you could a thick towel, and tie it very tightly with butcher's string at 1 to 2 inch intervals; it's important that there are no air pockets inside the roll (it can't be too tightly rolled). (Alternately, the pancetta can be left flat, wrapped in cheesecloth, and hung to dry for 5 to 7 days.)
6. Using the string to suspend it, hang the pancetta in a cool, humid place to dry for 2 weeks. The ideal conditions are 50 to 60 degrees with 60 percent humidity, but a cool, humid basement works fine, as will most any place that's out of the sun.

This is my first stab at pancetta, salted pork belly hanging in my old bedroom, loosing the occasional drop of pure fat into the carpet. Sexy!

They go on to talk about the benefits of drying. The important point is that if your pancetta starts to get hard, you should wrap and refrigerate it and get to eating.


One last thing, pancetta is preserved but still raw. Make sure to cook it before you eat it. Pancetta recipes aren't nearly as hard to find as pancetta, so if you've made it this far you're over the hump.

Breakfast Sausage with Fresh Ginger and Sage

Making this dish was a revelation to me, but more on that in a minute. This is their recipe mostly intact, from p 120.

Ingredients

5 lb boneless pork shoulder butt, diced
3 tbl kosher salt
5 tbl peeled and finely grated fresh ginger
5 tbl tightly packed finely chopped fresh sage
1 tbl minced garlic
2 tsp ground black or white pepper
1 cup ice water

1. Combine all the ingredients except the water and toss to distribute the seasonings. Chill until ready to grind.
2. Grind the mixture through the small die into a bowl set in ice.
3. Add the water to the meat mixture and mix with the paddle attachment or a sturdy spoon until the liquid is incorporated and the mixture has developed a uniform, sticky appearance, about 1 minute on medium speed.
4. Sauté a small portion of the sausage, taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

They go on to talk about how to stuff casings, but I don't have a mixer with grinding or paddle attachments, nor do I own or want to bother with pig intestines. I made patties instead.

Okay, the revelation. I only made this recipe as it's called for once. I didn't like it, the ginger was too much of a departure from the maple-based breakfast sausage I grew up on.

But what I realized is that sausage, this kind of fresh sausage, is really just ground pork shoulder with spices in it. Elementary, I know, but who's thinking about things like that?

So the next time I made sausage, using my Grandma's old counter-clamp hand grinder, I used the recommended amounts of pork, salt and ice water, but flavored it with homemade chile powder one time and spicy curry the next. I haven't done a brown-sugar or maple yet, but it's not hard to suss out what the results are going to be. Porkalicious, I'm sure.

The process is so easy here, and the results are adjustable to any kitchen and any palate. And it can be frozen without hurting anything. Mmmm, sausage.

Mikey Meat Grinder

(Please note the sturdy spoon in the background.)

Corned Beef

Last but not least, this dish has taken up permanent residence in my kitchen. I met a friend for lunch at an Irish pub a couple months ago and ordered the special of the day, corned beef and cabbage. I've been known to eat a Ruben or two, but this was nothing like the thin-sliced corned beef you get on a sandwich.

This corned beef was sliced thick, like roast beef, and piled hot over potatoes and pickled, steamed cabbage. It was salty and sweet, hot and meaty, with just enough fat to give the potatoes something to do. It was so good I was forced to get Irish whiskey to go with it.

This is the dumbest recipe, put a bunch of crap in a bag and boil it five days later. But it's so good. It's like falling down and landing on $100.

This is their recipe, from pp67-68.

Ingredients

1 gallon water
2 cups kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
5 tsp pink salt
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbl pickling spice

One 5 lb beef brisket
2 tbl pickling spice

1. Combine all the brine ingredients in a pot large enough to hold the brisket comfortably. Bring to a simmer, stirring until the salt and sugar are dissolved. Remove the pot from heat and allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate the brine until it's completely chilled.
2. Place the brisket in the brine and weight it down with a plate to keep it submerged. Refrigerate for five days.
3. Remove the brisket from the brine and rinse it thoroughly under cool running water.
4. Place the brisket in a pot just large enough to hold it and add enough water to cover the meat. Add the remaining pickling spice and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer gently for about 3 hours, or until the brisket is fork-tender (there should always be enough water to cover the brisket; replenish the water if it gets too low).
5. Remove the corned beef from the cooking liquid (which can be used to moisten the meat and vegetables, if that is what you're serving). Slice the beef and serve warm, or cool, then wrap and refrigerate until you're ready to serve, or for up to a week.

Again, with the up to a week thing. I can't attest to anything on this one though, this dish has never even approached a week in the fridge.

Corned beef with herbed roasted potatoes, pickled sweet peppers and prepared horseradish. And white wine. Don't ask.

I've been happy with all of these dishes, either as printed or with a few customizers. But if I was to recommend any one of them to a busy friend, it would definitely be the corned beef. You can bring the brine to a boil on Sunday, take the meat out on Friday and then boil it on a free afternoon over the weekend. It doesn't require much attention but turns out a meal that is unlike anything I've found outside of (now) 2 pubs in New York.

But whatever you do, don't forget the whiskey!

Dinner - June 11, 2008

The dinner Tzam cooked for me. Chicken with garlic, salt and pepper, cauliflower and fried okra. Yum.

Mam

I Do What The Recipes In My Head Tell Me To

In one of her posts last month, my brilliant sister Rachel did a rundown of everything we made the last time I went to see her, Jen and Kirsten in D.C. She suggested I post the recipes for the pizza sauce and salmon dip that I made that weekend, but alas, such a thing doesn't exist. The pizza sauce is just my improvised marinara with a finer dice and I could never find a salmon dip recipe I liked, so I made one up.

I figure I'll include both of those recipes in this post, as well as the roasted vegetables I've been eating a lot lately and a curried tilapia dish I came up with last week for unexpected but welcome dinner guests.

Marinara for pasta or pizza

One of the things I like so much about cooking is how adjustable the recipes are once you've got the basic ingredients and methods down. Marinara sauce is a perfect dish for really internalizing that concept because it's so easy to make. Olive oil, garlic, basil and tomatoes act as a base for improvising that is pretty hard to screw up.

Ingredients

2 tbl olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red onion, diced
1 large can of whole stewed tomatoes or 2 regular cans of tomato sauce
Dried herbs of choice - options revolve around basil, oregano and marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste

The actual process is very easy. Add the olive oil to a pot big enough to hold all of the ingredients and warm it over medium heat. Add the onion first, let it cook in the oil until it has softened. Add the garlic and stir it around. Let the garlic cook with the onions for about a minute, but keep an eye on it because the smaller garlic pieces burn much quicker than the onions.

When the garlic has started to darken, pour in the tomatoes. I prefer to use one can of whole stewed tomatoes, which I either cut down to bite size chunks or slice large and then crush with a potato masher. They sell crushed tomatoes in the can also, but I've bought a few cans of crushed over the years that were awfully bland, so I stick with the whole stewed.

Make sure to pour the juice from the can into the pot as well, and try to save any liquid that squirts out of the tomatoes as you cut them up. Scissors straight into the pot works best as far as I'm concerned. There should be enough liquid in the pot to sustain a low simmer until it thickens to the point you prefer. I usually let it go for 45-90 minutes, depending on what else I'm cooking at the time, adjusting the heat to keep it from boiling.

At this point it's pretty much just spicing as you prefer and letting it get comfortable. The sauce will lose quite a bit of water and the tomato bits will start to break down, leaving you with a rich gravy that should stick to anything you want to pour it on.

For use as a pizza sauce, let it boil down for a while and go after it again with the potato masher, pushing until you have a fairly uniform consistency. If it's going on a pizza, it's going to spend at least another 30 minutes in the oven after it comes off the stove, so don't let it thicken too much or you'll end up with a pasty pizza topping.

I've also had success using fresh herbs instead of dried, added in the last 15 minutes or so of the simmer. They definitely give off a more lively smell and taste, but sometimes the deeper flavoring that results from the re-hydration of the dried herbs is what I want. I don't know, it's hard to quantify the difference, but that's where experimenting for personal taste comes into play.

Now, when I'm making a marinara as part of the main course, rather than as a sauce for pizza or lasagna, I usually brown some kind of meat separately and add it to the sauce a few minutes into the simmer. A spicy Italian sausage is a classic, but lately I've been really into shredding leftover ribs and dropping them in to fatten up for an hour or so. Beef doesn't really add the right flavor to the sauce in my opinion, but a little ground lamb for texture and shredded pork ribs for flavor and substance has been treating me very nicely this year. The tomatoes are still the thing, but if left in long enough the fat on the ribs melts into the sauce completely, giving a layer that just doesn't exist in a Ragu bottle.

This is a marinara I made in Wichita with small but whole ribs in it, bone included. I had plenty of time to let them stew and was able to pull the bones out of the sauce with no effort before we ate. You could put this sauce over boiled shoe and be happy.

Smoked Salmon Dip

My friend Erin had a few boxes of Alaska smoked salmon that she bought as gifts for Christmas this year. I managed to snag one of them myself and she seemed to pull them out of the woodwork for the next couple months, keeping me in a steady supply of a food that I didn't start eating in earnest until my late 20's. It's one of my favorites now.

This salmon can be used in any number of ways, but the one I like best is to mix it with dairy and onions and spoon it out onto crackers, pretty much what I put together at Rachel's.

Ingredients

1 package of smoked salmon, about 1 lb
1 8 oz package of cream cheese at room temperature
1 small carton of sour cream
1 bunch scallions, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
2 tsp paprika
A dash of prepared horseradish (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

Basically you put everything in a food processor and hit it until you have the consistency you prefer. You could add more dairy if you like, or more spice, but I like a salmon heavy dip that doesn't get overwhelmed by any other ingredient. The scallions and pepper liven it up a bit and give it a fresher taste, the paprika adds a toasted flavor note, but the salmon is the big dog in the bowl and should stay that way.

Roasted Herb Potatoes

Okay, this couldn't be any easier or much tastier. It's been a staple in my apartment all winter long and looks to be keeping it's place into summer, with a few adjustments for vegetables that either aren't available or don't taste good in the winter. That's what I love about this dish, it can be re-invented over and over, depending on what vegetables are around and what spices are on the shelf, with very little thought or effort to maintaining results you've achieved before.

Ingredients

2-3 medium sized sweet potatoes
3-4 large red potatoes
1 red onion
1 bunch asparagus
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper to taste
Dried savory herbs such as chile powder, rosemary, mustard seed, thyme, curry or cayenne

*I've also had success using pre-made spice mixes like garam masala and Old Bay. Whatever you have around the house that you like but would taste awful in a pumpkin or apple pie should work.

**Obviously regular table salt will work, but I've found that sea or kosher salt seems to hold it's ground a little better against the spices. The vegetables themselves are relatively bland, so there's something about a crunchy little salt flake that really adds to the potatoes.

Turn the oven on to 325°.

Wash the potatoes, peel them if you like. I peel the sweet potatoes but not the red. Chop them into a rough chop, small enough to be taken down in a bite or two. Peel and rough chop the onion, wash and do the same with the asparagus.

Throw the vegetables together in a bowl and drizzle them with the olive oil. Sprinkle your spices over the top and mix until everything is coated in a light layer of oil and spice. Put the vegetables into an oven proof dish, cover with a tight layer of aluminum foil and toss it all in the oven.

I don't really have a cooking time for these, I just leave them in until everything else is done, about an hour. I usually get this dish going first, because you have a lot of leeway as far as overcooking them goes. If it seems like they've been in for too long or you taste one and it's getting mushy, pull them out and set them on the back of the stove with the foil still on and they'll hold their heat until you can finish up the rest of the meal.

You can also pull the foil off at the end and throw them under the broiler for a couple minutes if you want to crisp them a little on the outside, but pay close attention because they're already hot from being in the oven and can burn quickly.

Curried Tilapia

I'm supposed to go ocean fishing this month, so I've been kicking a lot of potential fish recipes around, trying to decide on one I want to try first. There are as many options as there are fish in the Atlantic, but for some reason I hadn't been able to stop thinking about a nice white fish in a creamy curry sauce. I can't tell you where this came from or when it entered my head even, but once it was king of the hill, there was no other option.

The problem is finding a recipe for fish in a creamy curry sauce, or for anything in a creamy curry sauce for that matter. I wasn't too excited about any of the options I came on, and then it hit me. What I want is dum aloo from the Julie Sahni book, only with fish instead of potatoes and hot curry instead of garam masala. Aha!

I realize that makes no sense unless you have personal knowledge of either her book or dum aloo, but go with me on this. It was good.

Adjusted from the recipe for Whole Potatoes in Spicy Yogurt Gravy (Dum Aloo) on page 258 of Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni.

Ingredients

4-5 fillets of Tilapia or other white fish, about 2 lbs
2 tbl vegetable oil
1 white or yellow onion, sliced thin
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cayenne
1-2 tbl curry powder
1 medium fresh tomato, chopped
2/3 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup heavy cream (optional)
Salt to taste

Add the oil to a pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion slices and break them apart, covering them in the oil. Cook the onions until they soften, 5-7 minutes. Add the spices and stir until they are evenly distributed in the oil.

Add the fish fillets and cook them on both sides, just until they start to get a crust.

Add the tomatoes and yogurt and stir until the fish is completely covered in the sauce. Drop the heat to medium-low and let the fish simmer until it starts to flake apart, about 10 minutes.

The cream goes in at the last minute in the potato dish and you let it sit just until the gravy has re-heated. I didn't use the cream with the fish, mostly because it was the only thing I didn't have on hand. But I can't say I missed it, the yogurt gave me the dairy tinge I was looking for.

Fishalicious? I don't know, doesn't have the same ring to it.

Updates and Sidebar Items 2

May was a busy month, personally and professionally. I always feel so much better when the sun comes back out! I didn't do much blogging but there's been all kinds of meat curing in my fridge over the last 30 days, so the pictures are forthcoming.

This week I'm going to do a posting on the recipes that live in my cluttered head and one on my mini-charcuterie operation I've got going in my hard working old kitchen. In the meantime I've got a few notes and a couple of stupid stories I don't want to forget.

Kalustyan's

First off, my new second-favorite place in the world is a food-stuffs shop on Lexington Ave at 29th St called Kalustyan's. It's still hasn't replaced The Strand as my official Favorite Place In The World, but another bag of cinnamon dates and it might.

There are a lot of Indian restaurants in the neighborhood and the store is staffed almost entirely by Indians, so they carry a whole range of expected ghees and curries. BUT, this is also the only place in New York I can find rennet, sodium nitrate, lemon salt, reasonably priced dried dates in bulk, Mexican oregano, juniper berries and the list goes on. The Spices & Herbs section of their website has 1364 listings!!!!! And they're friendly!

This is one of my favorite things from Kalustyan's, dried dates, at one of my favorite places to eat them, the reservoir at Central Park. Spring time!! It makes me want to use exclamation points!!

Grub at The Garden

I got invited to the last Knicks game of the season. We mostly went to join in the Fire Isiah chants, but it turned out to be free food night too, woo-hoo. We watched the pre-game at my place, just a few blocks downtown from Madison Square Garden, and got extra um, hungry.

It was a freaking extravaganza, as I literally consumed all or part of a hot dog, hamburger, pretzel, slice of pizza, Haagen Daas bar, popcorn, a box of Cracker Jacks, an ice cream cone, chips and about a gallon of soda. The only thing that wasn't free was the beer, but I didn't pay for the ticket either, so. I had an excuse to pay for arena beer.

Tiny Car, Big World

These Smart Cars are all the rage out here now. A guy on my block has had one for months and a second one popped up last week. With no room for parking, absurd gas prices and a 10 mph weekday average on any street below 86th, I guess they make sense. There's just no dignified way to get in or out of them.

The best thing ever though, is watching somebody in a Smart Car try to get food at a Drive-Thru window and not be able to reach high enough to grab the bag. Poor lady with her short arms and tiny car. They should call it the Barnum Bailey Clownmobile.

Bartering with the Chinese

I needed a non-reactive stockpot for my mozzarella cheese adventure, but the prices of the ones I could find were an insult to any reasonable person's intelligence. It didn't take me long to figure out that Chinatown was my best option. There are restaurant supply places all up and down Bowery below Houston, most of them take walk in customers. They aren't getting too excited for one guy buying one pot, but how likely is it that I'm going to be able to leave with one item?

The day's take.

I of course had 10 bags before I got back on the subway, but the best thing I bought all day were the tongs resting humbly in the back of this picture. They're like a Swiss Army Knife for the kitchen and have become my most-used accessory. I can grab, stir, scoop and poke and still only have to wash one thing. If I sharpened one of the edges and could cut with them I wouldn't need anything else but a fork.

Mamma's Meat Loaf

Okay, this isn't how my mom made it, but that's the name of the dish anyway. There's a brilliant little Italian place on Ave B called Max and they make meat loaf with a hard boiled egg in it. I like it so much I had it for my birthday last year, and not for the first time. There's a new artisnal ice cream shop just up the street now too, which makes the whole visit somehow even better.

I tried to recreate the Max meatloaf at home and it turned out pretty good, but far from perfect. One of the highlights of their dish is the spicing of the meat, which I didn't get right. I also forgot the prosciutto that they shred into the meat mixture, which helps keep it moist and adds, you know, prosciutto. Always a good thing.

I'll follow up with a proper posting on it when I get it right, but suffice it to say for now that you should add an egg to the middle of your meatloaf next time. It's a little weird and kind of surprising but works out well in the end. Like a David Lynch movie. Maybe that's what I'll call my version, David Lynch Meat Loaf.

Is he a vegetarian?

Have a Burger for your Dead Homies

Made cole slaw and sauce and some other crap for a rooftop barbecue in Tribeca on Memorial Day. I don't know what it had to do with remembering the dead, but the beer was coooooold.

And last but not least...

A story.

When I was but a wee lad, there was an age of marketing that centered around the Supermodel. Cindy Crawford seemed to lead the pack, but my absolute, all-time, tear out the page and tape it to the inside of your locker model was Laetitia Casta.

She had some curves that a lot of the other models didn't, she always had this look like she was waiting for some guy to put out a cigarette so he could have sex with her and she was French, which meant she showed her boobs in foreign films. Sold.

Well, I met Laetitia Casta, girl of my boyhood dreams. She was skinny, really skinny, and looked so bored it made me wish I knew a magic trick. I worked on a series of commercials for a French make up company, and she was one of the models. As it happened, we met at the craft service table, which is a magic spread of cheeses and meats and veggies and dips and little hot dogs and cookies that is replenished all day long by the snack fairy, usually a stoner with an eclectic book collection and a talent for homemade guacamole.

ANYWAY, I'm at the craft service table when Laetitia Casta walks over. I've got a beard and a shaggy mess on top of my head, I've been in a truck all day so I smell like a MAN, I'm pretty sure I had dog shit on my shoe. And I'm dishing myself out a nice bowl of strawberry shortcake with lots of whipped cream on top.

Now, she probably made $1000 for every $1 that I made that day, but the look on her face while she ate snap peas and I finished off a big piece of strawberry shortcake made up a little bit of that chasm. I got obnoxious with it too, leaving bits of whipped cream in my beard and picking fruit out of the bowl with my fingers.

She's hot and rich, but bored and starved. I'm ugly and broke, but there were blueberries in it too - another one of life's little victories.