Escar-a-go-go

No those aren’t anemic meatballs, they are snails and they don’t make for a sexy picture. I’m sure if I had stuffed them back in to those decorative shells or scattered some parsley around it might look better, this is the ugly but delicious reality.

Escargot are really quite cheap and very easy to make. I guarantee you will impress all of your friends with your gourmand savvy and Francophilia. The snails are found in a can at the grocery store. Most grocery stores carry them, they are in the supermarket Siberia with the anchovies and sardines teetering way above the tuna fish. They usually cost about $5 for a can of 2 dozen.

Warning - they don’t smell so great when you open the can. Once, after I had just cracked open a can, Jim’s daughter flitted through the kitchen and blithely asked ‘Who tooted?‘ And the dogs always swarm my feet in anticipation, I’m not sure if it’s the can opener or the aroma. They also are not the most attractive looking morsel, they are snails after all.

As for presentation you could mess around with the shells and tongs but mine was an economic decision and really it’s the same thing just in a different wrapper. I got these snail dishes for about $5 a piece at the Cook’s Warehouse. I also put two snails per divot so all 24 snails fit in the two dishes pictured. I put them in the center of the table and everyone shares.

My recipe is adapted from, yet again, Thomas Keller. I, of course, add more booze to the recipe. I also feel you can stretch the recipe further than he suggests, the butter is enough for 4 dozen snails, or two cans. So I will use half and freeze the leftover snail butter and, like last night, in an instant make our house in to a bistro simply by defrosting the butter and opening one of the cans of snails in our pantry. Unexpected company? Snails anyone? I have no sympathy for the snail squeamish, you are missing out, and you’re kind of being a baby.

Escargot - Adapted from Thomas Keller - Serves 4-8 as an appetizer

1 can 2 dozen snails

8 oz. unsalted butter, softened

4-5 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons sea or kosher salt

1/2 cup Italian parsley

2 tablespoons shallots, chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons Pernod

Fresh pepper

Open the can of snails, drain and rinse under cold water. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, put snails in water for 1 minute, the water will just have returned to a boil. Remove snails, drain and rinse again.

Place the remaining ingredients in a food processor and hit ‘on’, turn ‘off’ when fully incorporated. Preheat oven to 450. Place snails in snail shells or in a snail dish or really oven proof ramekins, top each snail with 1-2 teaspoons of snail butter. Place in the oven for 7 minutes, remove, let cool for about 3 minutes before serving. It’s that easy.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

I received a box via UPS this summer. I receive boxes all the time, every week, typically containing something for work: catalogs, lighting fixtures, lamps, flash drives, miscellaneous swag, the usual. But this box clearly contained something personal. The box itself had been delivered to a few other people before me and it had scratched out names and places on it. It was a little saggy and tired. I considered this box, what a mystery. I started to open it and then had the revelation that I could check the return address; it was from a man I did not know in South Carolina, a town I had heard of but never been to. As I opened it and I sifted through the crumpled ads from a Sunday newspaper it hit me right before I got to it, ‘Oh the apple peeler!’ I had purchased a hand crank apple peeler on eBay the week before and apparently promptly forgotten about it. My summertime daydreaming of fall foods led me to unconsciously go shopping.

This past spring Food and Wine published a recipe for sautéed rutabagas. Jim loves the whole pack of them; rutabagas, turnips, celery root, etc. I’m always looking for starch-like alternatives and this seemed to fit the bill. The recipe was called Shaved Rutabagas with Butter and Black Pepper, and that is the entire ingredient list except for some sea salt. The directions are very simple and they are exact as well, it directs to saute for 10 minutes, well, it took me 10 minutes until my dish looked like the one in the magazine. Although I only use one vegetable and the original recipe calls for two. I’ve made this dish a few times by shaving the rutabaga with my vegetable peeler, this results in 3/4” wide by 2” shavings. I was certainly in love with the dish but I wanted something more lacy, ribbon like, because I like vegetables in ribbon form (zucchini, carrots, asparagus). I also thought the crispiness ratio would be improved with less surface area and I wanted to twirl that rutabaga on to my fork. So this brings us back to the apple peeler.

After I had unpacked it from the mystery box and clamped it to the counter Jim tested it with a lemon. Jim didn’t get very far with that lemon besides removing an inch of zest and giving it 3 vampire like puncture marks, but we had mastered the mechanics of it! Last night we gave it a whirl (no pun intended).

Rutabaga Ribbons – Adapted from Food and Wine – Serves 4 as a side dish

1 rutabaga – peeled and shaved in to ribbons
½ stick of unsalted butter
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt to taste

Add the butter to a wide pan, heat over medium to medium-high heat, add rutabaga shavings, sautee for about 10 minutes until the edges become brown. Toss with salt and pepper.

Notes: Jim’s son has adopted the apple peeler as a toy of his. He enjoys playing with it by clamping it and unclamping and cranking the handle forward then backwards and back again and generally just staring at it quizically. So useless kitchen tool moniker be damned, it doubles as entertainment.

You Don’t Die Square

Yesterday I finished reading Frank Bruni’s Born Round. If you have read the book then you will understand the first thing on my mind this morning as I got out of bed was sesame noodles. The irony is I had purchased the book in the Portland Airport with a bowl of noodles from a newsstand. The noodles, looked like a less offensive choice for airplane dining, filling, not so unhealthy (carrots and broccoli and not swimming in sauce) and most important for a 5 hour flight, not stinky so to not offend my fellow passengers or get stuck with onion. Jim did not get so lucky with his chipotle chicken wrap. I was very pleased with my choice, Frank is quite right, they were comforting.

Sesame Noodles - Serves 4 - Adapted from Tyler Florence

6 ounces soba noodles

2 Tablespoons sesame oil

2 tablespoons peanut oil

3 garlic cloves minced

1” piece of ginger peeled and minced

1/3 cup green onions, green part only sliced

2 teaspoons red chili paste (I use the rooster)

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter

2 tablespoons brown sugar

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce

juice of a lime

hot water

4 asparagus stalks, chopped in to small rounds and blanched

1 carrot, chopped and blanched

2 mushrooms, chopped

1/3 cup chopped cilantro

2-3 tablespoons toasted peanuts

Bring water a boil and cook the noodles for 3 minutes, remove from heat and rinse under cold water. Place the noodles on a towel to drain, toss with sesame oil and place aside. Heat peanut oil in a pan on medium heat, add in ginger, garlic, onions and chili paste and saute for about a minute or two. Reduce the heat to low and add in peanut butter, sugar, vinegar, lime juice and soy sauce stirring until the sauce becomes creamy and incorporated, keep the hot water on hand and add in to thin the sauce, Tyler recommends 6 tablespoons, I use closer to 4, the consistency is up to you. Add the noodles to the sauce and toss to coat, add in veggies and 3/4 of cilantro and mix again. Garnish with peanuts and remaining cilantro.

The apology continues...

Yes, the bird again. I am really starting to appreciate it’s versatility, it’s tofu like qualities to take on other flavors. It’s cheap too and it just makes people happy. I had chicken and dumplings for the first time the other day at my neighbors Kevin and Lisa’s restaurant. Gobbled it up. And so the new love affair continues. I saw this in this month’s Food & Wine: ‘Tea Smoked Chicken’. Sounded exotic. The picture was beautiful and so was the chef that created it and the recipe came with a pedigree. Now, outside of Thanksgiving, I usually don’t spend multiple days preparing a dish and certainly rarely go through the numerous steps called for to create this recipe; I’m impatient and such recipes seem fussy. But I was intrigued and the chef, Andrea Reusing, promised it would deliver and for some reason I trusted her, she looked trustworthy and she used the word ‘doozy’. The reality is I don’t know why this woman has not yet published a cookbook. Andrea - I would buy it and I’d buy copies for my friends. Please publish a cookbook. Until then I will use all the recipes in this month’s Food and Wine again and again.

When I rolled out my first try at this Jim and Jayme decimated the bird, picked it clean, n o t h i n g for the dogs, at all. Jayme declared it the best thing I’ve ever made her and Jim said he thought it was damn good and not to change a thing. Jayme then went on to boldly state it was better than the Thomas Keller chicken I constantly make. Take that TK. Girls rule. We had it again last night and I could not wait to get home for lunch today to eat the leftovers. It is a total home run.

I served it, as Andrea recommended, with green beans with her XO sauce. Perhaps that’s another blog, but let me say that the XO sauce was awesome. The blog momofukufortwo.com recommends giving XO as a gift; I’d be happy to have it as a gift. And if I know you and you’re reading this - you might be getting it for Christmas because I know have a lot of tiny dried shrimp in my fridge and not a whole heck of a lot of recipes that call for them. I also served jasmine rice and the ginger scallion dressing Andrea recommends for the chicken. The sauce was baffling to me, vegetable oil, scallions and ginger, that’s it, not heated up, just vegetable oil, ginger and scallions; I was very confused. It actually went great in/on our rice but that chicken is so special it did not need the addition of any sauce, so I say skip it.

Andrea calls for two birds, I used (1) 31/2 lb. bird both times, I did not reduce the amount of brine or smoking ingredients she recommends for both birds. For some reason I could not find loose black tea, so I cut open 10-12 Tazo teabags to create the needed quantity of loose tea. Obviously the type of tea you select will effect the chicken. I found a 50/50 combination of Earl Gray and a less pungent black tea worked the best.

My advice would be to do this on a weekend, make it a Sunday night dinner and start the brining Saturday. Be patient, read all the directions about 7 times before embarking; I know I did. The result is a stunner. I plan to tea smoke a whole bunch of things. Next up, Andrea's Carmel Lacquered Pork Belly.

Tea Smoked Chicken - From Andrea Reusing

Brine

2 quarts water

6 garlic cloves - smashed

5 dried red chiles

4 star anise pods

3 tablespoons honey

(1) 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

zest of an orange removed with a vegetable peeler

1 cinnamon stick

1 cup soy sauce

1 small yellow onion, quartered

1 tablespoon sugar

Combine everything in a pot and bring to boil, allow to simmer for 10 minutes, let cool. While the brine is cooking I gather the smoking ingredients and but in a container for use the next day.

Smoking Mixture

1/2 cup jasmine rice

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons loose black tea

4 star anise pods, broken into pieces

4 dried red chiles, broken into pieces

Chicken

(1) 3.3-3.7 lb. chicken

salt

vegetable oil

1 Tsp. crushed Sichuan peppercorns, crushed

When the brine has cooled to room temperature place the chicken in the pot, making sure it is covered in brine and place in fridge for 24 hours.

Remove chicken from brine and pat dry, coat with vegetable oil and sprinkle with salt and peppercorns. For the smoking I used a broiler pan on my stove top. Wrap the bottom portion of the broiler pan 2x in heavy aluminum foil, spread the smoking mixture on the half of the pan over the burner, put the broiler rack on top and the bird on the broiler rack. Tent with foil making sure there is a good seal all around. Turn your kitchen vent fan on now and preheat oven to 375. Turn up the burner to high for 2 minutes, reduce to medium for 3 minutes, turn off heat and keep bird covered for 5 more minutes, uncover and let rest for 10 minutes. Andrea then recommends you cook the bird at 375 for 35 minutes and then at 425 for another 35. I found after turning up the heat I only needed another 15 minutes until the bird was completely cooked. Let rest for 10 minutes prior to carving.

Trash Talk

I am not interested in your chocolate layer cake, your brownies or your doughnut, at all. But I will gladly take your anchovies. Or your sardines. I have spent this entire summer bingeing on taramosalata. Working out for an extra 10 minutes so I can reward myself with a handful of crackers, slathered, no, piled high, in salty, pink bliss. Quite simply, I love trashy fish.

We are headed to Monterey at the end of this month for our friends’ Danny and Kasia’s wedding. We are really looking forward to the wedding, wine tasting, a climate different than that of Venus, and the Eden that is California and its delicious food. Jim and I are somehow very lucky to travel to Northern California every late summer/fall and we wine taste and we eat too much and we laugh until we hurt and we drive windy roads and we look around at all the kooky flora and we truly relax. It’s a tradition I hope never ends.

So we are dreaming of our impending vacation. Yesterday Jim asked me if I had read this month’s Bon Appetit article about Monterey. I had not. He said he left the magazine open to the first page of the article. This morning I checked it out, first item on the menu - grilled sardines - yum. I really didn’t need to go any further. But it also said that since fresh sardines are rare in this country outside of this part of California, true, I have never seen them here, they had a cheat method for those without fresh sardines - a sardine dip instead. We were in luck! I had all the ingredients needed just downstairs.

Jim’s kids are good about eating. They aren’t too fussy and we don’t feed them kid food, (which in my opinion should be banned) they eat what we eat and they really enjoy it. Occasionally an item comes up that might be skeptical, like snails. Jim’s son wouldn’t touch them but his daughter popped three right in her mouth and smiled and said ‘yum!’ I’m not sure if she did this to irritate her brother or she genuinely liked them. I don’t care, she ate them. She also likes eel and ikura. Jim’s son was given a surprise this Sunday when I made a snack plate of various whats-its for visiting friends and he asked if he could have some. I made him a kid sized plate of what we were eating, he came back for more and my friend Jessica asked ‘How were the eggs? ‘What eggs?’ ‘The fish eggs.’ Frowny face. Taramosalata not so good all of a sudden. So I made the sardine dip last evening and I thought it was pretty good but Jim’s son told me and made a point to tell me how awesome he thought it was, again and again, and ate so many servings Jim had to tell him to stop before he ruined his dinner. And we told him it had sardines in it and everything was OK. Jim really liked it too.

Sardine Dip - Serves 4 as an appetizer - adapted from Bon Appetit

1 can boneless sardines packed in oil

2 tablespoons chopped Spanish onion

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro

salt and pepper

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 tablespoon olive oil

Combine the first five ingredients in a food processor, turn on, stream in oil and lemon juice, scrape down sides, turn on again. Serve with table water crackers.

Notes : Good with a dry white wine.

Taking Requests...

Everyone has a skill set and not-so-skilled set. In my bag of tricks I can boast that I am an excellent parallel parker; I can fit my behemoth 20 year old station wagon into spots fit for an MG and I can do it on the passenger side too. I can poach the heck out of an egg. And I can make a damn good salad. Really. And I have a formula for it but first let me prate on about what I don’t like about other salads for entertainment value.

Entree salads are different beasts than side salads (and many people would argue there is no such thing as an entree salad), so for the sake of this blog I’m going to stick to side salads. Things wrong with side salads: boring vegetables, insipid dressings distributed by a food conglomerate, or giant trophy leaves of lettuce that slide across the plate on to the tablecloth with everything else when you cut them, proving you are an uncouth heathen. How many times have you seen cherry tomatoes, cucumber, raw mushrooms and raw onion? What do you do with that cherry tomato? Bite it whole and let the seeds and juice gag you or shoot out of your mouth on to your fellow diner? Cut it in half like some OCD salad eater? The rest is just a snooze fest. There is very little creativity when it comes to salads out there. I really can’t argue that I’m more creative because I have a formula for creating a salad, but mine taste good.

I make salad dressing at least 3x a week; why I don’t make more than a day’s worth is not a question I can answer. I have several salad dressings I make, all based on the same theory. Recently a friend of mine requested that I post my everyday salad dressing on this blog. She wanted to shave a few pounds via salad for dinner and she wanted it to taste good. The thing is I don’t really know what goes in to it. Well, of course I know what goes into it, just not the proportions. So I have tried to make it several times and when I measure it it seems off. Normally I use my leftover jelly jars and pour the ingredients in, always in the same order, I can tell based on the level in the jar what is correct.

Now, for the salad, it goes like this: greens (I usually use a lettuce - bibb, green leaf, or recently, the very cheap Romaine or spinach or arugula), a chopped fresh herb (basil, cilantro, chives, mint, fennel fronds), fruit and a protein - either a nut (always toasted), cheese or meat or sometimes a combination. Next step, goody to leaf ratio. Honestly, you prefer the goodies (goodies = good) and the goodies are anything that is not leaf. My theory is it should be about a 65% greens, 35% goodies. Then there is the dressing. It shouldn’t be cloying or mask the flavor of your food; just like wine it should complement the salad.

I normally have these items on hand in some form or another. Usually it comes in scrap form, leftover from some other dish but not enough to make a real dish, whatever herb is floating around in my vase by the sink or in the herb garden. Nuts: buy them and store them in the freezer so they don’t become rancid, we always have pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, pignoli... whatever. Fruit: again, whatever leftover; apple, orange, blackberry, strawberry and if you don’t have those may I suggest dried cranberries, dried blueberries or golden raisins? Seal them up and they will last in the pantry. Cheeses: shaved parm, chevre, blue, gruyere or sometimes, in our case, whatever leftover, bizarro, stinky cheese Jim has picked up on a whim. Meat: think pig or cured fish; prosciutto, Spanish chorizo, bacon, pancetta, smoked trout, smoked salmon. Seriously it’s like legos, pick one ingredient, grab another and start building.

So let’s try this a few ways. Arugula, chopped Navel orange, sliced fennel, toasted pecans and chopped fennel frond. Romaine, mint, chopped cantaloupe, goat cheese and prosciutto. Spinach, basil, golden raisins, blue cheese and walnuts. It’s easy and tasty. So pick your building blocks and lessgo.

Balsamic Vinaigrette - dresses 1 head of Romaine or a side salad for 4

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, the better, the better

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 teaspoons dijon mustard (I prefer old stand-by Grey Poupon)

1 teaspoon honey

1 garlic clove cut in half on the bias

Variations

1 teaspoon Herbs de Provence

1 teaspoon Orange zest

1 teaspoon Lemon zest

Put everything in a jar and shake, or a bowl and whisk. It is preferable to make it an hour or two before dinner and let the garlic flavor infuse, discard garlic before dressing the salad. I dress the salad, meaning only the greens and mixed in herbs, 5 minutes before serving, I put the goodies on top. Nuts, meat, fruits and cheeses do not need to be covered in dressing, and really, it effects their textures and ruins their colors.

Salad with Cantaloupe, Proscuitto and Goat Cheese - Serves 2-4

1 Heart Romaine (approximately 2 cups chopped)

1 1/2 ounces goat cheese - crumbled

1 ounce prosciutto - chopped

1/2 cup cantaloupe - chopped/cubed

Love Letter

This meal came back to me very clearly today while running and listening to an old play list. Years prior I remembered running to that song as I approached the corners of Gibson and Fulton Terrace and I just stopped running and I cried. I realized that I was quite hopelessly in love with Jim whether I wanted to be or not. Being in love is like having the most awesome secret in the world, it’s shiny, tingly and it’s warm and it’s all yours and it makes everything and everyone more enjoyable. But clearly overwhelming.

A few days or weeks later I was running, yet again, and I wondered what does falling in love look/taste like? What does it look like on a plate; what do I want to eat that can celebrate this emotion? The first part was easy; it popped right into my head: scallops. I don’t know why but apparently falling in love feels like pan seared scallops. Scallops with lentils, baked ones, not too soupy, and nothing too earthy to season them. Falling in love certainly has something green on the plate, but nothing bland, there is something zippy about falling in love. This was the hard part, finally after a few miles, I had it! Falling in love is pan seared scallops with basil oil, baked lentils and roasted asparagus with thyme gremolata. My friend Jayme called while I was preparing dinner for myself and asked what I was doing ‘I’m preparing an ‘I’m falling in love with Jim dinner.’ ‘Ooohhh, what’s in that?’ I told her the menu. ‘I hope he realizes how lucky he is.’

The funny thing is I have never made this meal for Jim. I’ve certainly made some parts of the sum. I should but....

While writing this down I decided that asparagus sounded like the perfect accompaniment for hot weather but I wanted it with steak. Right now, being in love feels like steak, steak Jim will cook. Hopefully one of those pampered, grass fed, manicured and massaged $25 steaks from the meat guy at the East Atlanta Farmers’ Market.

Shaved Asparagus with lemon and parmesan - serves 4 as a side dish

1 lb. asparagus, ends trimmed and shaved

1.5 ounces shaved parmesan

1 tablespoon olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

salt and pepper

Trim the ends of the asparagus and shave it with a paring knife. Heat oil in a pan add asparagus, saute for a minute and add in 1/2 lemon juice and 1/2 parsley, salt and pepper. Saute for another minute, remove from heat and toss with cheese and dress with remaining lemon juice and parsley.

Notes: Shaving asparagus is equal to peeling garlic or shrimp or husking corn in my mind as far as tedious kitchen chores are concerned. Hang in there, it’s worth it.