fish – SaltShaker

Fish and Fowl

Dan Perlman — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:39:28 +0000

“Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

– Johnny (David Thewliss) in Naked

Buenos Aires – The week began with fowl – chicken in particular – the plan had been one chicken and one duck dish, but lack of good duck and one other key ingredient for the recipe that my Brazilian cooking professor wanted to teach me negated the latter. Instead, we talked about it and then prepared three different traditional styles of chicken – the originally planned xinxim de galinha, chicken stewed in cashew and tomato sauce; a pollo con molho de choclo, or grilled chicken breast in a creamed corn sauce; and pollo con maracujá, chicken in a passionfruit and carrot sauce. All delicious! I’m disappointed that this was the last of the four session course (I do recommend it for anyone local, and am happy to provide the info for contacting Eduardo – you’ll need to be fluent in either Spanish or Portuguese…).

Here at Casa Saltshaker, group two worked their way through a quintet of contorni recipes – the braised endive, the peppers in bagna cauda, and the fried fennel from the previous week, plus a twist on eggplant parmesan using tiny little baby eggplant, and roasted porobello mushroom caps filled with pumpkin seeds and garlic. That was all yesterday. Today, group one launched their way into filleting fish and then making a trio of dishes – olive oil poached razor clams, Mario Batali’s “sicilian lifeguard” calamari, and my own breaded pomfret with a green olive, bacon, and chili topping. New photos, of course, on the flickr stream. Group three is waiting in the wings to start towards the end of the month after group one winds down, and meanwhile, I’m thinking through various ideas for the next series of classes… I’m happy to consider suggestions if you’re interested in a particular topic.

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Fish ‘n Grains

Dan Perlman — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:37:40 +0000

“Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant.”

– Shizuo Tsuji, Chef and cookbook author

Buenos Aires – Moving swiftly along with our class schedule, this week our first group simmered their way through a trio of grains – we looked at the different types of risotto, polenta, and farro, and had our way with a Saffron-Asparagus Risotto flavored with Gremolatta, a slow cooked Polenta with Cremini mushrooms and homemade Italian sausage, and a bubbling pot of Wheatberries with a Quartet of Spring Vegetables. Thus ends our carbo loading – next week on to vegetable side dishes.

More detailed pictures on our Flickr page.

On my side, I swam my way through a duo of Brazilian classic fish dishes – casquinha de siri and moqueca de peixe, both delicious – Henry insisted on more moqueca after sampling, so I whipped up a version using calamari that evening, simply because I had some….

Long Live the King!

Dan Perlman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:31:14 +0000

“We shall reign with righteousness, for the benefits and happiness of the Siamese people.”

– Oath of Accession for the Thai king

Buenos Aires – Look, he wasn’t feeling well, wasn’t even able to deliver his annual birthday address to the nation the night before his birthday festivities, so we didn’t count on him to show up for dinner. He would have been welcome. Bhumibol Adulyadej, better known as King Rama IX of Thailand, turned 81 this weekend. When it comes down to it, he’s more or less the guy who is the sequel to the well known “The King and I” – taking over when Yul Brunner’s real-life counterpart departed this globe. I decided on a seafood and vegetable dish dinner – I’d had several requests from visiting pescetarians and hey, I like seafood and vegetables too.

I’ll tell you right up front, the salad we started with was my favorite part of the entire meal. I could just sit around and eat plates of a salad like this. And, ain’t it purty? I charred those long asian eggplants over an open flame until they were cooked through, let them cool inside a paper bag to continue steaming a bit, then scraped off most of the charring and pureed the eggplant flesh with lime juice, fish sauce, and a pinch of salt. I left that to chill in the refrigerator. Slices of tomato to go underneath, then sprinkled with a salad of mixed shredded mint leaves, chopped green onions, thinly sliced shallots and chilies, then further sprinkled with chopped roasted peanuts and finely ground dried shrimp.

The soup gave me some problems. I wanted to try out a traditional, simple, prawn and lime soup. Following the traditional recipe, as I did the first night, resulted in a fairly bitter (not very slightly bitter as the recipe promised) broth of shimp stock (freshly made) with thin slices of lime and a julienne of ginger floating about. Even adjusting it with salt and sugar as suggested left it more bitter than I liked – though, everyone who attended on night one lapped it right up. The prawns, sauteed in salt and white pepper, added a nice note, as did the chopped cilantro. Night two, I added the lime slices only a couple of minutes before serving, so they just simmered for a very short time in the broth – still, I found it more bitter than I liked. I also added some finely chopped whole watercress to the mix to give the soup a little more texture – I liked the flavor addition, but not the texture. So, night three, it finally turned out the way I wanted – instead of adding the slices of lime to the soup in advance, I simply placed them in the bowls along with the sauteed shrimp (Henry’s suggestion) and the watercress (leaves only), then ladled the broth with its shreds of ginger over it. The lime flavor came through aromatically fresh, the whole dish came together – sometimes you just have to keep trying.

The next course, I played around with two dishes I’d done before for a previous Thai dinner – just two of the three middle dishes – the fried tofu sauteed up in oyster sauce and chili oil atop grilled pineapple – I stacked five squares of the tofu in a cute little tower, and then drizzled the tower with a reduced balsamic caramel. The squid dish I made with squid rings rather than tentacles, which was much better received – I also beefed up the spice a little with a mix of ground black and red peppers.

A sour orange curry is a tradition in much of Thailand – there are no sour oranges in it – the sour comes from tamarind, the orange comes from the curry paste in color rather than flavor. The classic fish version of this uses the rind of a thai melon, chopped and then used much like a vegetable, and then salt-cured and sun-dried river fish that is shredded into the curry more for flavor. I wanted the fish to stand a bit on its own – which meant a short-term salt cure – simply coating trout fillets in medium coarse salt and letting it sit for 4-5 hours, then rinsing it, and finally baking it in the oven drizzled with a little olive oil. The curry is a fairly simple one as curries go. I used the rind of honeydew melons, which I peeled, then scooped the flesh out, leaving about a 1/3″ thick rind that I diced, and then simmered in fish stock that I’d first flavored with tamarind pulp, palm sugar, and fish sauce and then strained. Meanwhile, the curry paste a blend of chilies (jalapeños), red onion, salt, garlic, and shrimp paste, got tossed in a pan and cooked slowly until it darkened. I added a few spoonfuls to the simmering melon rind and then served the rest on the side for people to adjust the spiciness to their own liking. A little jasmine rice completed the dish.

The dessert, from the same dinner as linked above, a butternut squash tart with a cashew caramel that worked out beautifully.

I have no idea what our distant friend Bhumibol was dining on, or if he was even up for a good dinner given his illness, but hopefully he would have appreciated ours had he joined us.

French Africa

Dan Perlman — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:40:48 +0000

“French speaking countries in Africa have always enjoyed a special relationship with their former colonial master. French influence in those countries remained strong even after independence, with currencies tied by a fixed exchange rate to the French franc, military agreements allowing the stationing of French intervention forces in Africa, and a strong presence of French companies in Francophone territories.”

– Emmanuel Wongibe, editor, Radio Deutshe Weller International

Buenos Aires – Fifty years have passed since the fall of French Equatorial Africa, splitting apart into separate states, tossing off the yoke of French colonial masters. Likewise in the neighboring Congo, and not far away in western Africa, in Mauritania. It seemed as good a moment as any to explore the flavors that spring from the combination of African tradition with French colonial cuisine.

Starting off in the nation of Chad, two key ingredients struck my fancy – dried smoked trout, as a way of preserving them, and millet, a cereal grain that one rarely sees used outside of vegan cooking. In fact, several people I mentioned it to seemed to think it was only for use as bird feed, but no, millet is actually quite nutritious and delicious! I decided to go with fresh trout and millet, and make something approximating a crab cake. First I cooked the millet – a quick and easy boiling process, taking no more than about 10-15 minutes. I let it cool and then mixed it with chopped fresh trout, onion and red bell peppers, minced garlic and basil, a little hot paprika, lemon juice, smoked salt, pepper, and some beaten egg. All mixed together well, then formed into patties, rolled in breadcrumbs, and left to sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to firm up a little. I fried them in a mix of butter and oil, served them with a salad of frisee and arugula tossed with just a little olive oil, and on the side, a spicy sauce made of green tea, tahini, ginger, soy sauce, lemon juice, molasses, and ground habanero pepper.

Moving on to Gabon, and starting with the idea of a simple salad, I gather made of little more than crushed or grated cucumber with chilies, garlic and vinegar. As usual, we like to offer up a soup, and with recent hot weather, a cold cucumber soup sounded like a good move. Into the blender went peeled cucumbers, ginger, garlic, lots of mint leaves, and a very small chili pepper. I pureed that, added “half-and-half” here that means adding equal parts of milk and cream, seasoned to taste with salt and white pepper, and served it simply topped with chopped green onions.

While the judges on Top Chef last season may have poo-pooed the idea of combining tomatoes and peanuts in a sauce, I have to assert it was just the particular dish they were dealing with. African cuisine abounds with dishes that use both, from soups to stews to sauces. Starting from a traditional dish of the Congo that uses chicken stewed slowly in just such a combination, I decided to up the ante slightly and use duck. I separated duck legs into their two sections, browned them with some onions in a little oil, then covered them with water, covered the pot, and let them simmer away over low heat for just over an hour. I removed the legs to one side, and into the pot went some white wine, plenty of cayenne pepper, about a cup of tomato paste and an equal amount of pure peanut butter, a little nutmeg and black pepper. Turning the heat up high, I cooked that all down until the sauce was reduced by about half, stirring regularly to make sure the peanut butter doesn’t lump together and burn. For service, the duck legs went back into the sauce, reheated to just a simmer. While traditionally served with yuca root, it’s out of season here, and what’s available is fibrous and/or rotting – so simple mashed potatoes on the side did the trick.

Mauritania has a quite different cuisine from the central African countries we’d started with. Having a more Arabic influence, and, in fact, that’s the major language of the country, as opposed to French in the other three, much of the food is reminiscent of dishes I’ve seen from Morocco. One, quite different, caught my eye – a beef dish stewed in coconut and mixed peppers. I decided on a style more like a traditional pepper steak – I ground together black pepper, allspice, coconut, and salt, and rubbed the beef with it. I left that to sit for several hours. In a dutch oven I sauteed thin wedges of red onion in a mix of olive and dende (palm) oil, then added the beef and cooked to lightly brown. Topped up with a little water, I turned the heat down low and let the beef (rib-eye steak) braise for about 45 minutes until nice and tender. Removing the beef to the side, I thickened the remaining liquid with a beurre manié, a paste of equal parts butter and flour (which helps stop the flour from clumping, and adds richness to the finished sauce), and served the beef, onions, and sauce over some blanched and then sauteed green beans.

Finishing off, without a fifth country to explore (at least one that was celebrating 50 years of independence), I decided on a simple banana dessert. A sheetcake cut into triangles (1¾ pastry flour, 2¾ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, ¹?₃ cup cream cheese, ²?₃ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon mace, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, 2 eggs, 4 very ripe bananas – all whipped together and then baked in a hot oven until puffed and brown). Over and under the cake, a simple sauce made from boiling together ½ cup cream cheese, ½ cup butter, 1 cup brown sugar. A few kirsch marinated cherries rounded out the dish.

Straddling the Pyrenees

Dan Perlman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:34:52 +0000

“We still think of ourselves as Basques”, says Mme Pitchoauajue. “Until I went to school at the age of seven, I couldn’t speak a word of French.”

– Graham Simmons, The Basque Way

Buenos Aires – Although it was suggested, I did not wear a proper French Basque Beret to celebrate “National Day” in the northern Basque country, i.e., the French side of the Pyrenees. We hear a lot about the Spanish Basque side of things, and all the high falutin’ restaurants along the coast and up into the mountains there, but we rarely hear about what’s happening in the southwest of France. So, how could I pass up the opportunity to play with some classic flavor combinations from the countryside? Even if I wasn’t wearing a beret.

Although it would have been more traditional to use bacalao, or salt cod, in this dish, I was feeling inspired by an array of fresh fish at the local pescadería, including a trio of beautiful fresh, whole cod, just ready to be filleted. My first idea was to fill some fresh piquillo peppers with some sort of cod preparation, but none were to be had this last week. A bit of thinking, and I decided on small tartlets filled with cubes of fresh cod, diced tomato, and thin strips of lemon zest. Added to that, some frying peppers and red onion, sauteed in a little olive oil, and then the whole thing topped with a scoop of beaten egg and milk, then baked until lightly browned. On the side, a puree of red bell pepper, orange juice, a small chili pepper, cumin, and salt.

If you’ve been reading SaltShaker for awhile, you’ve seen several iterations of panade, a slow cooked onion and bread soup. There was a very interesting looking Basque recipe for a garlic soup, and somehow, I sort of put them together – following the exact same procedure as for the onion panade, but using about 3 full heads of garlic, the cloves thinly sliced. What a great garlic soup!!!

This was a fortuitous accident. It started out with the idea of a fava bean filled ravioli, well, really, a half ravioli, an agnolotti, with a sort of trout cream sauce. But I got to doodling, and decided to put the trout inside the agnolotti – it’s a simple mix of homemade cream cheese, smoked and fresh trout, a little salt and pepper. The agnolotti dough was a basic egg yolk pasta. I decided to make a saute of fresh fava beans and corn with shallots, bacon and chives tossed in – lots of olive oil. Now here’s the accident. I laid the agnolotti out very carefully on silpats, those lovely non-stick sheets. They stuck. I couldn’t remove them without tearing them to shreds, so boiling them up instantly became out of the question. Now, it happens that I like baked pastas of various sorts, and I figured – they’re already on the baking sheets, and at least once they’re cooked, even if they’re still somewhat stuck to the silpats, I can slip them off with a spatula. Turns out they puff up almost instantly, brown, unstick, the filling solidifies a bit, almost like a ricotta type filling. Delicious, really delicious. This one goes in the cookbook!

This is more or less a deconstruction of a traditional poulet a la vasca, or Basque-style chicken. Normally it’s a slow cooked braise of pieces of chicken with potatoes, peppers, onions, tomatoes, in a white wine and olive oil combination, thickened with a little flour. I separated the components – mashed potatoes instead of whole, finished with lots of cream and butter. Atop those, sort of a chicken milanesa – pounded thin breast of chicken dipped a couple of times in a mix of flour, salt, and cayenne. The sauce, slow cooked onions, green and red peppers, all diced up fine, in olive oil, then tomatoes added towards the end of the cooking, a good couple of splashes of white wine, and then thickened with a paste of butter and cornstarch, cooked just until the sauce was the consistency I wanted.

Finally, a fairly straightforward cheesecake using our homemade cream cheese, but substituting roughly half of the volume with a fresh goat’s milk cheese. Atop, a warm kumquat and cinnamon marmalade.

See, I didn’t need a beret….

In the Middle

Dan Perlman — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:34:20 +0000

“The Federal Republic of Central America, also known as the United Provinces of Central America, was a short-lived state in Central America, which consisted of the territories of the former Captaincy General of Guatemala. An experiment in republican democracy, it existed from July 1823 to 1840. It was intended to be a federal republic modeled after the United States of America…. The republic consisted of the states of Guatemala (which initially included a large part of what is now the Mexican state of Chiapas), El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. (Panama was still part of Colombia at the time.)”

– Wikipedia

Buenos Aires – There was nothing in particular about the weekend that inspired a Central American themed dinner, simply whim. I’ve been exploring some of the cuisine from the various countries that make up “Central America” (now seven countries rather than the “original” five, Panama and Belize having been added in later on). The fact that the short-lived Federal Republic had five member states made it easy to fit into a five course tasting menu, you know?

This just goes to show how far afield my “inspirations” sometimes get. I started from a Salvadorean dish of yuca frita con pepesquitas – fried tapioca root with fried baby sardines atop… I had in mind something like the fritto misto that I’d recently had in New York at Scarpetta. But, as it turned out, the yuca in the markets here was all dried out or rotting, so that idea quickly got dumped. I’m also, when it comes down to it, not a big fan of fried foods, especially for Casa S dinners – it’s hard to manage the quantities we need to put out a dozen plates when deep-frying in a saucepan. So then I thought, potatoes. But I was already leaning away from frying, and come on, fried potato chips and sardines? A bit of thinking about it and I decided to stuff the potatoes with sardines – I simply baked the potatoes, cut them in half lengthwise, scooped them out, and mixed the potato with mashed cooked sardines, some chopped rosemary and parsely, lemon juice, chopped chilies and onions. I topped each with a fried lemon slice, so I got in a little frying in the end. Back into the oven to get them nice and hot and served.

There are more versions of pozole or posole out there than I care to count – not only national and regional differences, but probably from house to neighboring house – so whether or not this one is particularly Costa Rican is, perhaps, in question. The one thing they have in common is a base of corn… after that, all bets are off. The first night I used fresh yellow corn, but it just wasn’t quite the way I wanted it, the second night I used dried, hulled white corn, soaked it overnight and then used it in the soup. The stock was made with onion, garlic, diced bacon, and a couple of chicken thighs (which I later fished out, skinned and boned, and chopped up, adding the meat back into the soup). When those are all lightly browned, I added in the corn and a good amount of oregano. Then I topped it up with water and let it simmer away for a couple of hours until the corn was done and the flavor was where I wanted it. Simple salt and pepper seasoning, topped with julienned radishes and pickled baby bell peppers, with a wedge of lime for a bit of citrusy zip – traditional tico toppings.

Heading to Guatemala, I decided on a pipian de pollo, sort of a cousin to a Mexican mole dish. The chicken is simply dusted in flour, salt and cayenne, and pan roasted until done. The sauce – I toasted green squash and sesame seeds until lightly golden, then added cinnamon, guajillo chili powder, onions, tomatoes, cayenne, cloves, salt, pepper, and a little bit of chocolate. Cooked that all together for about half an hour, then pulsed it a few times in the blender to give a coarse sauce. We served it over rice, dusted with some cayenne flakes.

In the Honduras there’s a traditional fast food snack called a baleada, so named for its shape, like a bala, or bullet – more or less, it’s like what we think of as a burrito, with, as I understand it, only one closed end. There are numerous versions, though at its base there is the basic baleada, a flour tortilla filled with refried beans, then there’s the “special”, that adds some basic condiments and cheese, and then there’s the “super special”, which can add any or all of plantains, scrambled eggs, chorizos, and more. For presentation’s sake, I decided to go open-faced, and divide the tortilla up sort of like a quattro estaciones pizza. I made the fresh tortillas, topped them with refried red beans and a bit of cheese, then in the four cuadrants put, respectively, fried plantains, salsa criolla (chopped bell peppers, tomatoes, onions), soft scrambled egg, and beef chorizo sausage (the beef isn’t traditional, just a whim), then topped all that with a dollop of homemade sour cream. I love these – my kind of street food – though perhaps a more elegant presentation is in order… if I can figure one out.

Beef Chorizo1 kilogram of bife de cuadril (rump roast), ground coarsely
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons ají rojo powder (mild red pepper)
¼ teaspoon powdered cloves
2 tablespoons smoked paprika
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
3½ tablespoons cider vinegar

Mix all the ingredients together and let sit in the refrigerator, covered, for at least 4-5 hours – overnight is better. You could then stuff sausage casings if you wanted, I was using just the sausage meat, so sauteed it as it was at that point.

Finally, on to a simple, basic cheesecake, using part sheep’s milk cheese, as this was inspired by a requesón, which is a sheep’s milk tart. Normally made with an almond crust and topped with sliced strawberries, I went with a simpler cookie type crust, then topped it with a roasted strawberry sauce and toasted almond slices.

Overall, I’d say most folk were quite happy with dinner – I know we were.