09 Oct 2010 10 Comments
in Cooking Tips, Good Gadget, Bad Gadget, Recipes Tags: gadgets, margaritas, queso fundido
There’s a whole industry based on creating useless gadgets. I may have to get creative and come up with something myself. Get a piece of that business. Seems people actually buy these things.
I was embarrassed to discover some bad gadgets in my own kitchen drawers… must’ve been gifts.
A little brush to brush... uh, something off?
27 Sep 2010 12 Comments
in Cooking Tips, Video Tags: chevre, figs, fruit, pancetta, summer
People, I find, either love figs or hate them. Mostly it’s less about the food than the tree. If you love figs and you have a fig tree, you are thrilled every late summer when the branches are nearly exploding with ripe fruit. If you hate figs, you despair as the ground of your garden or driveway are littered with gooey, sticky, fly-covered fruit. Others have fig trees and are merely agnostic about them. “Oh, yeah… it’s a nice tree. But we never eat the figs. No idea what to do with them.”
Eat them, my friends, eat them.
My friends with fig trees are never surprised when they invite us over in the late summer and find me clinging simian-like amidst the high branches of a tree or scaling a wall. Some of them look at me skeptically and ask what on earth I’m going to do with the fruits — fig haters, they. Here’s what I teach them:
I dreamed of having my own fig tree. Last week, we had a surveyor out. We’d always thought our property extended beyond the fence but weren’t sure. I was walking the additional half acre or so we’d picked up in the process with him, and he pointed to a tree. “Well, that’s a strange looking tree!” I looked over, and there hidden among the oaks, a beautiful tall fig tree, reaching its limbs to clear the canopy. Right on the far corner of my own property! So maybe next summer, if you’re lucky, you won’t find me lurking in your yard and scaling your wall…
16 Sep 2010 2 Comments
in Cooking Tips, Recipes Tags: fish, video
My German friend, Pirco, called me one evening.
“Sean,” he said, “I have a piece of fish. What do I do with it?”
I needed more information. What kind of fish, for example, was it?
“I don’t know. It’s sort of white.”
“Is it a fillet or a steak?” I asked.
“It’s a rectangle.”
I gave Pirco my advice on what to do with his rectangle. The video above and recipe below show you what to do with your own rectangle of fish. But first, a few words on fish in general.
Fish is one of the easiest foods to cook beautifully. It is also one of the easiest to screw up. I was giving a cooking class recently on fish, and my students were stuck in the salmon rut, and at a loss as to what to do other than throw their fillet on the grill. (i.e. “Do we marinate it in soy sauce?”) If you’ve got very fresh fish, you’ll want to do very little to it. If you’ve got not so fresh fish, you’ll want to sauce it into oblivion. In general, heat is your friend. With a few exceptions, you’ll want to cook your fish at very high heat very quickly — in a hot pan, in a hot oven, or on a hot grill. And you might experiment with some different types of fish. Branzino, black cod, halibut, Atlantic cod and John Dory are some of my favorites. Talk to the fish guy, tell him what you like.
And now, here’s your recipe:
Serves two.
Sauteed Whitefish
2 half pound fillets of whitefish (red snapper, halibut, black cod, mahi mahi, etc.)
flour
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter (not Country Crock or I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter)
juice of one lemon (or 1/4 cup white wine)
Dust each fillet with flour to cover. Heat olive oil over medium high heat in a large pan. Fry the fish for about 3 minutes, until it begins to brown, and then flip. Add more olive oil if the pan seems dry. Cook for an additional 3 minutes on second side. (If fish is very thick, give it an extra minute on each side.) Remove fish from pan to a plate and keep warm in a pre-heated 200 degree oven.
Deglaze the pan — add juice of one lemon (or 1/4 cup of white wine) to pan and immediately remove pan from heat. Using a spatula, scrape up any bits of flour sticking to the pan into the sauce. Add your two tbsp of butter and stir constantly, until your pan juices and butter have emulsified into a velvety sauce. Plate fish, and drizzle sauce over the top.
(In the video above, I have sauteed some chopped swiss chard in olive oil and sea salt. I steamed arborio rice and when it was cooked, tossed in a tbsp of butter, 1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley and 1/4 cup grated parmesan reggiano. To plate, I placed some chard at the bottom of the plate, topped with the rice in a food mold [you could simply scoop some rice on top artfully], topped that with the fish, then drizzled the sauce around, and added some balsamic reduction for flair. Please note: I accidentally said “salmon” in the video, but the fish I was preparing was actually halibut. If I was a Food Network superstar, I’d re-edit that segment.)
Wine suggestion: A light, French-style chardonnay (not one of those clumsy over-oaked Napa monsters)
14 Sep 2010 Leave a comment
in Cooking Tips, Observations Tags: beer, pairings, wine
“I will drink no wine before it’s time.” —Orson Welles
Well, that didn’t exactly end well, did it…
BTW, Skinny Girls & Mayonnaise can now be followed on Twitter at skinnygirlsmayo — cooking tips, humorous asides, farmer’s market reports, fab ingredients, various little surprises, stealth restaurant reviews… and absolutely no taco trucks whatsoever.
Here’s a fun little quiz before we begin. Answer correctly, and you’ll make me feel better about my own drinking habits. : )
In Europe, it’s normal to drink with lunch. In America, unless there’s football on, people look at you funny if you drink during the day. Of course, eating a 1,200 calorie hamburger is somehow better…
The object is not to get drunk. It is to enjoy a finely crafted, fermented beverage. Budweiser and Sutter Home wines do not count.
Since well before Christ performed his most famous party trick and turned water into wine, men have been fermenting liquids and enjoying the frivolity that ensued. But drinking wine, beer or other libations with food can be serious business.
Having a family wine business, I’m often asked what wines and drinks go well with what foods. I answer that zinfandel goes well with everything. (That’s the only wine we make!) It’s really a matter of taste. But you do want to choose to drink something that complements your food, or to flip that — choose food that makes your wine taste better. I once had a gooey, stinky French cheese that made the zinfandel we were drinking unfold like a symphony in our mouths. That’s an experience you want.
I try to remember to include wine suggestions with most of my recipes. But here’s some very basic thoughts on food/wine/beverage pairings:
Cheese:
I almost hate to give recommendations with cheese, because this is one of the funnest areas to experiment and find your own favorite pairings. Stronger cheeses like cambembert or La Tur will bring out the characteristics of large, bold red wines. More subtle cheeses — aged parmesan, asagio, brie, gruyere — often pair nicely with white wines. Try farmstead cheeses from England, Ireland, California or Vermont with a malty beer. My mom swears that coffee and cheddar is one of the world’s greatest combinations. Never tried it myself…
Tomato/Meat pastas:
Medium bodied red wines (zinfandel, sangiovese, syrah). Possibly chardonnay.
Lighter pastas:
A refreshing white such as viogner or pinot grigio, or a light red — gamay or a pinot noir. A light lager beer would work well, too.
Fish:
Depends somewhat on sauce, but you’ll usually be okay with a dry white like sauvignon blanc or a French chardonnay. The exception is if it’s an Asian-style fish with a citrus or vinegar sauce. Then you’ll want something sweet like a good saké or a reisling/gewurtraminer. With fried fish, I would recommend a hoppy beer such as Anchor Steam.
Poultry
Depends on the poultry and the preparation. But in general, with chicken or duck, you want a lighter red, white or rosé. If you’re a fois gras eater, one of the world’s great pairings is fois gras with a sweet sauternes from France — the sweetness beautifully cuts the fatty richness of the liver. Lager beers and Trappist-style ales go well with chicken, especially if its fried.
Pork
Ah, pork… be still my beating heart. There may be nothing better than a warm summer evening, a sweet, smoky rack of ribs cooked on the grill, and a big blackberry-filled zinfandel. In general, pork will benefit from medium-bodied reds, such as pinot noir, Spanish tempranillo or sangiovese. A good sauvignon blanc will work well with lighter dishes, such as proscuitto and melon. Crisp, slightly sweet whites like a Central Coast viognier would do well with barbecue or pork chops. And for a BLT, drink Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Steak/Hamburgers:
Go for size and flavor here. Obviously cabernet sauvignon or petite syrah. Also good is a big, fruity zinfandel — especially with burgers. Big Italian barolos would pair nicely with steak, too.
Salads:
This is one of the trickier pairings, especially when you’ve got a lot of acidity in the dressing. Softer, less acidic whites tend to do well — a buttery chardonnay, a reisling or a French Pouilly-Fumé.
Chocolate/dessert:
Chocolate and port is one of the world’s great pairings. In general, you’ll want a sweet wine with your dessert. There are many good late-harvest wines being made domestically which bring a lovely finish to your meal.
If you have specific pairing questions, leave a comment with your question and I’ll do my best to answer it.
skinny girls & mayonnaise 