Preparing for Passover

Whew, Passover is tonight and my Seder is tomorrow night. As I have today off from work, I did some necessary shopping this morning, with more to come later.

I decided this year to make my own gefilte fish. Here in Chinatown there are several fishmongers. Chinatown fishmongers still have a bad reputation because of what they used to be like. However, the combination of new York health inspectors doing their job, a clientele who suddenly cares about not being poisoned, and people realizing that you can partially tell the quality of a fishmonger just by the smell.

I made one foolish mistake. I assumed that they would have Whitefish. Looking back it would seem obvious- the chinese don't eat whitefish and neither do many other people.

I arrived at my preferred fishmonger early this morning, around 8:45 or so, just in time to see the fresh live fish being offloaded from the delivery truck, and fishmongers spreading and tamping down the ice for the day. No, they didn't have whitefish. No they didn't have cod. They probably had pike, but I don't like pike. Well, how about tilapia? The man pointed to the live tanks being refilled from the truck. Exxxxxllent. How much? $3.50 a pound? Sold. I got about twelve pounds of fish, had them filleted for me, kept the heads and bones and such for the stock. It ended up being about four and a half pounds of meat, which is just how much I wanted.

So, right now I have the stock pot boiling and I'm going to make some lovely, fresh stock.

Funniest part of it all? Seeing the fish dumped on the clean table and having the shit beaten out of them with a chair leg before being cut open. Maybe that sounds sick, but the fact that it was an honest to god chair leg is what cracks me up.

Chicken and Spaghetti with lemon-wasabi "aioli" (mayo)

My wife has learned that when she texts me at night and asks what is for dinner, my response will often be a simple one word reply: stuff. Stuff generally means that I have no idea, I'm making it up as I go along, and I'm probably making it right now and can't respond. On occasion I am done cooking but too exhausted to explain in detail.

So, dinner last night was "stuff." and delicious stuff it was.

Put up a large pot of water to boil.

Into a large flat pan, I put two chicken quarters- leg and thigh together. This was heated on a medium heat for a while, until both top and bottom were partially cooked, and much of the fat had rendered out. I then added water and a fair amount of lemon juice, covering the pan. Does the lemon juice do anything? Truthfully, I don't know. It certain,y can't be tasted, but the chicken tends to be more tender. I suspect that the acid helps to tenderize the meat, but I might be completely making this up. Whatever the case, continue to cook on a medium heat, flipping occasionally and adding water and lemon juice as needed.

Meanwhile, chop four medium sized celery stalks- not all the way on the outside of the bunch, nor in the core. Flavorful but tender. Before chopping,slice them through lengthwise. This allows the celery to lay flat while being chopped, and gives you smaller and more delicate pieces. Put into a large mixing bowl and put aside. Chop a small Spanish onion into small pieces and add to the celery. I wanted a little bit more green, so I also chopped the heart of some romaine lettuce and added this as well to the celery. Stick the bowl in the refrigerator until ready to use.

By this point, hopefully, the pot of water should be boiling. Dump in a box of spaghetti and crush it down to cook as normal.

Take a half to whole teaspoon of wasabi powder and combine with a few tablespoons of water. Set aside for a few minutes to allow the flavor to develope. Repeat with chinese mustard powder.

In another mixing bowl, combine two heaping tablespoons of mayonnaise, a squirt of lemon juice, wasabi, chinese mustard, a pinch of black pepper, a pinch of dill. After adding each ingredient, whisk until well combined. Taste and adjust as needed. It should be fairly liquidy and flow readily. You should have the flavor of the wasabi without the heat, acidity from the lemon, creaminess from the mayo, and all the flavors should be pretty harmonic. This is your "aioli" which I only call because it is easier to say than lemon wasabi mayo. stick this bowl into the refrigerator until ready to use.

The spaghetti should be done by now. Pour into colander to strain, and wash with cold water. Don't be afraid of using too much cold water. Dig in there with your hands and mix the spaghetti up, making sure there are no hotspots- mayonnaise doesn't play friendly with hot pasta. Once the spaghetti is cold- and I mean use the coldest water you can get from your sink- strain thoroughly and add to the bowl with the celery, onion, and romaine. Toss to mix the ingredients together. Pour the aioli over the spaghetti. Scrape some but not every speck of the aioli from the sides. Toss the aioli and spaghetti together until well combined (the spaghetti should have just a very thin coating of aioli, nothing too goopy) then put the bowl in the refrigerator.

By this time, the chicken should be done. Remove the chicken pieces to a cutting board. Remove any skin or fat and toss away. Cut away small chunks of the chicken and toss into the bowl with the aioli remnants. Take your time and get as much meat as you can. Once you are done, throw out the carcasses.

If you have taken your time and been thorough, the chicken will have cooled rapidly to warm at best if not room temperature- the high degree of moisture in a cool kitchen will drop the temperature like a stone. Toss the chicken in the bowl, allowing the chicken to get the last of the aioli off the sides of the bowl and getting an extremely thin coating. If you like, this can be served immediately or can go in the refridgerator for a half hour or an hour. Serve the chicken atop the spaghetti when ready to serve.

This was really something I threw together and ended up being really delighted. I wanted something both cool and refreshing, delicate in flavor. In the spring and summer, this would be something really nice to make, and I am very pleased about how well it turned out.

So, there's my pasta recipe.

We've just completed a house move from Hell so I haven't even managed to peek at this site for the past 2 months. But, installed in our new place and boxes amazingly all unpacked at last, I discovered Andrew's suggested Pasta recipe discussion/comments request.

I really like pasta, especially in warmer weather, but my husband doesn't. His list of approved pasta dishes is limited to Lasagne (British style) and grudgingly, linguine with a tomato, cream, chicken, & mushroom sauce. Suggestions to him of pasta related dishes are met with thundercloud scowls and

Le Sigh

I, on the other hand, coming from NYC and having lived alongside Italians (the RIGHT kind of Italians), love almost anything pasta with the exception only of those involving squid ink.

So while I know an enormous number of pasta recipes, I'm going to go with the one which by coincidence, I made this past Saturday: British Lasagne.

For those of you not from the UK who are now busily scratching your head and saying "Huh? British Lasagna?, this is a version of the Northern Italian style Lasagne I'm told. In the US, almost all the Italian Immigrants traditionally came from Southern Italy, especially Sicily. So in the US, we're used to the traditional Sicilian Lasagne - which we know and love. For our family variant, we make a Sicilian style lasagne but because I'm not a big fan of ricotta cheese, I leave that out and just use a bit more mozzarella.

So, essentially British Lasagne is layers of lasagne noodles filled with bolognese sauce (tomato meat sauce), bechamel sauce (white sauce), and parmesan cheese.  Excuse me but that is simply bogus. And disgusting. And a sad waste of good pasta and if you made a yummy simmered red sauce, that's a sinful waste.

Thus, I created a compromise which is essentially my traditional family lasagne with white sauce topping the layers. It's different, it works.

I won't give the exact recipe now as I usually just make this by hand and I'm about to start cooking tonight's dinner. But I will return and add in some exact ingredient amounts for each of the parts of this dish. Experienced "by hand" cooks should be able to make this recipe anyway using the general outline I'll provide.

Lasagna Recipe
bake at 350 F or 180 C (fan)/200 C (conventional)
baking time: 45 min
Prep time - depending on if/how long you simmer the sauce, can be up to 4 hours

Ingredients for the bolognese sauce :
ground beef 10% fat
chopped onions
chopped carrots
chopped celery
chopped garlic
sliced mushrooms
canned chopped tomatoes in juice
red wine
virgin olive oil (or butter works)
thyme
sage
oregano
salt
pepper



Ingredients for the bechamel sauce
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon table salt
1 clove minced garlic
Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper


1 lb shredded whole milk mozzarella (please don't use skim milk/low fat; it will turn everything watery!)
1 cup grated parmesan (Not a big fan so I used much less, maybe 1/2)
Lasagna noodles

To be continued...

New Recipes

The output on the blog has diminished in part, I think, because it is a great deal of work to try to present these recipes in the format we have them, taking pictures, etc. So after the recent e-mail from Tavie, it amused me that we all automatically had immediate and completely different responses.

So, I proposed that every week, we would pick an ingredient and briefly each of us would write up a recipe which features the ingredient. If we ever decide to expand on these recipes, that will be doable with what we publish as a base, and we can always add things like pictures later. But this would seem to be much more writer-friendly.

This week, we are doing strand pasta. Strand pasta is meant to be a broad catagory which includes things like spaghetti, linguine, and angel hair pasta.

Thoughts on Salmon

Tavie sent out a call on the Family hotline:

Help, cooks!

I was putting an order in on Fresh Direct the other day for some large staples that I don't feel like lugging from the store, and I noticed that there was a sale on salmon fillets. (Verlasso farm-raised salmon 8 oz steaks, to be exact.) So I got a couple for me and Sean.

Problemo: I've never cooked salmon before.

So: how do I cook these things? I don't have a grill. I have a stove/oven, and a bottom broiler (that I'm not sure works - the last time I used it I got some steaks about 1/3 way cooked before the whole thing just shut off and I haven't tried it since.)

What's the best way to get some flavor out of these things with the tools I have at my disposal? And should I marinate them in something? (What?) How long do you cook 'em? Should I roast 'em? Bake? Poach? Pan-fry? Take them to Andrew's and make him grill them for me? (HAHA)

I could look up a recipe on the internet but I'm going to my personal experts first.
-- Tavie (rhymes with GRAVY)

Mom, Andrew and I replied the following:

From Mom:

Marinating fish is always a problematic issue because it's all too easy to overwhelm the fish flavor itself. But it's easy enough to do; just pop the fish into a zip-lock baggie and add a bit of sherry, rice wine vinegar, chopped herbs, lemon zest (your choice from the list) seal the bag and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or so. To cook - grill or pan fry.

Pan frying is dirt easy - a bit of butter and brown gently on both sides. Fish needs to be cooked through but not overcooked such that it separates into flakes by itself.

I tend to cook 3 min on a side for pan frying or 5 min if the piece is thick. In general, I cook salmon as plainly as possible - ie quickly pan fry in some butter. Then I top with unsalted butter and squeeze lemon juice on top. Or I ladle on some bernaise sauce which is sold fresh, ready to use in supermarkets here.

You can also easily make gravlax with salmon fillets in a glass dish (like a pyrex pie plate). Mix 2 parts sugar to 1 part salt (NON-iodised) ie 1/2 cup salt to 1 cup sugar (you don't want to end up with too salty fish). Sprinkle on bottom of glass dish, place 1 fillet in the dish skin side down (if skinless, formerly skin side down). Sprinkle a bit of ground pepper on the salmon and then a lot of the salt/sugar mix. Place a bunch of fresh dill on top (you can use dried dill but it's not as nice). Pat plenty of the salt/sugar mix on the 2nd fillet and pace that face down on the dill (ie skin side up). Sprinkle the remaining salt/sugar mix on that. Cover with saran wrap/cling film and place a flat plate on top of that. Add a heavy weight to press the whole thing down - a few large cans works well. Twice a day, remove the weights and saran wrap, flip the whole bundle of fish and dill over and put back the saran and weights. That helps it cure evenly. The gravlax is ready in 3 days depending on the thickness of the fillets. You'll see the texture of the fish change. So, when you are ready to serve, just scrape off the dill and other bits and wipe dry with paper towels. Place on a clean cutting board and using a very sharp knife held at an angle, slice very thin, flat slices - then eat!

This is a useful recipe site as they have photos and sensible instructions: http://www.cookingforengineers.com/recipe/132/Gravlax

Remember that recipes are just guides, not the law ;)

From Asti:

Further to my mother's recipe for pan-frying, if there is skin on your
salmon then fry the skin side first until it crisps a bit. I like to
do that and then use the fish in a salmon nicoise (lovely in the
summer). That would be salad leaves, green beans, hard boiled egg,
tomato, boiled new potatoes, black olives, some anchovies if you like
and serve with a nice vinaigrette.

To poach i put butter and white wine and some dill and juice of one
lemon in a pan. Maybe add a bay leaf. It should be enough to come to
about halfway up the fish but you want to bring the liquid to heat
before you add the fish. Liquid shold be almost ready to simmer when
you add the fish skin side down. Keep at this heat and let poach for
~15 minutes. You may want to add some baby asparagus when there is
5-10 minutes left. Note: no need to turn and it is quite normal for
the skin to pull away in the pan when you lift to serve.

I would serve with hollandaise sauce and boiled new potatoes.

And from Andrew:
Preheat the oven to 350. Slice a bunch of lemon rings and coat the area the salmon will sit on in the pan/cassarole dish/whatever. Place salmon atop lemon. Cover top of salmon with a few more lemon slices, but not completely covering it- just a few. Seal whole pan in aluminum foil. Place salmon into oven. Bake for about 10 minutes per inch thickness. Five minutes before finishing, take salmon out of oven. Remove foil. Remove lemon slices from top. Heap spinach on top of salmon. Put foil back on. Place salmon back into oven. Let salmon cook the remaining 5 minutes, potentially slightly longer since the salmon may have cooled while out of the oven. Do you have a meat thermometer? Worth buying. Anyway, the spinach will have wilted and stick to the top of the salmon, looking almost like a green glaze. Remove salmon from the oven and enjoy.

Variants can include putting a little bit of white wine in the bottom of the pan to help keep the salmon moist and flavor it.

Kangaroo Tenderloin

Yes, you read that right. I made kangaroo tenderloin medallions tonight. No, they aren't difficult to make at all, although you need to keep on your toes.


Kangaroo is not domesticated, but instead is still hunted in the wild. The reason is simple; they die when attempted to be herded. Still, when you look at the meat, it is fairly astonishing. As you can see above, the color is a very livid purple. About the only way I can describe it is it is like dark meat on fowl. And this is the tenderloin no less.

I'm going to say this again, but it can not be stressed enough. Kangaroo is exceedingly lean. Look at the pictures I post here- show me one tiny piece of fat. There isn't any. Well, technically there is, but it is easily under 3%. This is about as lean as it gets.

Now, you see that purple, you hear about kangaroo, you worry about gameyness and flavor, right? Well, you don't need to so much. The gameyness flavor comes from two factors- the age of the Roo and the length of time since it was killed. Most butchers will have the meat frozen, which means that the length of time is no longer an issue. And hunters pretty much go for the young Roos, so that isn't a big deal either.

I'm not one of those people who like gamey meat. I had no problems with kangaroo. The flavor is almost exactly that of a very nice steak. Almost. There is a subtle background hint of a flavor which is different, but many people simply will not be able to tell the difference. Which is fine, as kangaroo meat is actually extremely healthy.

So, you have your kangaroo tenderloin medallions, you are reassured about the gameyness factor, you just want to eat the fucking things. Now what?

I set the medallions on a plate and poured all the extra juice I had over them. Then I sprinked salt on top of the meat. You see I had a fair amount of meat. For this, I sprinkled three generous pinches of simple Morton's salt. Why no sea salt? I don't have any at the moment.

I set the meat aside on the counter and left it alone at room temperature for five hours. You can eave it overnight in your fridge if you cover it. This allowed the salt to draw moisture out from the meat, form a brine, then become re-absorbed by the meat, flavoring the meat all the way through. Plus, the extra juice I poured on top was also almost completely absorbed. After five hours, the top of the meat was dry to the touch, but that is okay.

I heated my griddle with a generous amount of olive oil spread onto the grill. Again, I emphasize the leanness of the meat. Because of this, the meat will dry out if you are at all careless with it. This is a meat which can NOT be cooked past medium at the most, but really should be cooked to rare/medium rare.

But how to achieve this best? The secret is frequent flipping. Yes, they always tell you to flip only once. You know what? That's bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit, as you will see in a moment. Flip as much as you like. These tenderloin medallions were flipped around once per minute. This allowed them to cook from both sides at the same time.

Note: the top of the steak where the salt was sprinkled will be a darker bluish-purple, while the bottom will be redder, as seen in the above picture. While cooking, that bluish-purple color does not necessarily go away 100%. Do not be fooled into thinking that this means that the meat is still raw. Just keep flipping.

I cooked these for a total of roughly ten to fifteen minutes. Yes, I know that is a large range, but I don't remember exactly the time. Plus, my grill isn't exactly even of heat, so if you have a better setup, ten minutes should be fine.

Your beautifully cooked steaks will need to rest a full ten minutes. As always, don't fuck around with that time- it allows the juices to flow from the interstitial spaces back into the cells, keeping the meat juicy and moist.

The final product? See for yourself:

Only needs to be flipped once? Fuck you. That is one of the most beautifully rare steaks I have ever eaten in my life.

(Mostly) Around The House Stuffed Peppers

I've wanted to make stuffed peppers for a while now, haven't made them in years. As usual, I don't have everything that I need, but I put together what I had from around my kitchen- mostly. I say mostly because I did go and buy the peppers and the chopped meat especially for this dish.

You will need:

several teaspoons salt
several teaspoons pepper
1 cup white rice (I use Basmati)
several tablespoons of butter
water
6 bell peppers (traditionally green, I used a mix of green and yellow because they only had two green left.)
1 small onion
1 clove garlic (I used a clove of smoked garlic, which was all I had)
1 tiny can of tomato paste
~1.5 pounds of chopped beef
oregano (about a teaspoon, dried)
basil (about a teaspoon, dried)
1 egg
Worcestershire sauce

First thing's first. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Have a large casserole dish (large enough to fit all of your peppers upright inside) on hand. Put a fairly large (6 quart) pot of salt water on the stove to heat. Note that this should be fairly lightly salted, you don't want it to be salty like you make pasta in- it will turn your pepper into pimento if you do that.

I recently figured out a trick when it comes to rice. I hate washing rice. It's not that its hard, but it takes forever, your hands get pruney, and you're never quite certain that you've gotten all the starch washed off. Here's the trick. Get a large, deep mixing bowl. Deep is important. You don't want one of those shallow but large ones. Just a big, classic deep mixing bowl. Put one cup of rice in the bowl. Stick the mixing bowl in your sink, under the faucet. Aim the faucet into the middle of the rice and turn the faucet on, hot. Why hot? Because starch is more soluble in hot water than cold. What *should* happen (and you will need to shift the bowl/faucet around) is the water will hit in the middle of the bowl and spread out and come up the sides. A current will be set up so that the rice will flow with the water in a cycle, constantly rinsing it, no need to stick your hands in. After a few minutes, the water should run clear. Bam, you're done.

Wash 1 cup of rice and drain. Add it to 1 1/2 cups (there will still be a little water left in the rice, which is why I don't say 1 3/4 cup) water and a tablespoon of butter in a medium saucepan and put on a high heat until boiling. On boiling, turn the heat down very low so it just simmers and cover tightly. After 10-15 minutes, it should be dry. Fluff with a fork and set aside.

While the rice is cooking, cut the tops off of the bell peppers, putting the edible parts of the tops aside, and clean the insides of membrane and seeds. Once all six are done, place them into the pot of water. Hopefully you didn't take too long about this, so the water should still be pretty cool. This will be brought to a boil and allowed to boil for five minutes. However, this much water takes a long time to get to a boil, so by the time the peppers are ready to be fished out, you should be ready to use them.

Take the edible parts of the top of the peppers and chop them up. Also chop the small onion, and the single clove of garlic (chop this fine but no need to mince it, or you can crush it if you like). In a frying pan, melt two tablespoons of butter. Add the peppers, onion and garlic and stir them a little to make sure everything is nicely coated and cook for five minutes until tender. Add the tiny can of tomato paste, re-fill the can with water and add the water to the frying pan. Stir until the tomato paste is evenly incorporated into the vegetables. Add a teaspoon salt, teaspoon pepper, the oregano and basil and stir. Let that sit with an occasional stir for 5 minutes or so- you want it to be thick, but not play-doh thick. Like a good tomato sauce in thickness.

In another mixing bowl, whip the egg until fluffy. Add 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper and whisk it together. You want to add the Worcestershire sauce now. How much? I add a tablespoon or two- but I have low sodium, so if you have regular you may want to add less. Just use a few generous dashes, you should be fine. Add the chopped meat and the rice (should be finished cooking by now). Use a lean chopped meat, you don't want lots of fat oozing through the peppers, making it greasy. Add half of the tomato-mixture from the frying pan. Mix by hand. As with all chopped meat, you don't want to over-mix it, but you want it fairly homogeneous. It won't take too long.

Fish the peppers out of the water and put them upright in the casserole dish. Fill them with the meat mixture by hand- you can add it in without touching the pepper if the pepper is still really hot. Top with rest of the tomato mixture.


Pop into your hot over for an hour, then take out and let cool. Eat and enjoy! Hands down best stuffed peppers I've ever had. And the yellow peppers? I'm never going back to green again, much sweeter and more flavorful!


Edit: I made an absolutely enormous batch for a party last night and found something interesting- the amounts don't seem to scale linearly. I made a little over three times the number of peppers (red, yellow, and green) and made three times as much filling, but had enough for a good 4-5 more at the end. I'm not really sure why this is, but the green peppers I got were a little bit on the small side. So, I guess, look at this as working for fairly large bell peppers.