What's cooking? part 4

Cold eggplant salad (a riff on Bittman's and another use for the ever-so-tasty kecap manis)

i did jaq's scallop variation w/sesame oil instead of olive, a big hit.

hoping this will be a gateway dish to more asian influences, get me out of the italian-american rut.

Stopped at the butcher's today for sausages, and they had fresh chicken livers for $1.99/pound. I made up a bourbon chicken liver pate, seasoned with garlic, thyme, and black pepper. It's cooling in the fridge under its coat of clarified butter now, but early tastes indicate success.

That turned out really well:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3264/2559224394_bbe8168b89.jpg

wau!

Pretty cheap too - $2 for livers, $2 for butter, maybe $2 for seasonings+bourbon?

i made some tilapia with lemon and an herbed crust the other night. served with green beans, onion, garlic, tomato, artichoke hearts, and olive sauteed with some olive oil, and a splash of lemon and white wine. it was very yummy. the leftover vegetable sautee was really great cold over lettuce for dinner last night.

my camera broke. phone pics suck :( but it was really pretty.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3122/2559362818_507ec03e2d.jpg

Man that sounds really good - I have got to start doing more with fish.

We are just now eating more of the pate, with a cold couple of pours of gewurtz (Bargetto 2005 I got from Wine Woot awhile ago). Hello Saturday afternoon!

I have been in some kind of cooking frenzy today - I made popovers for the first time:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2559217323_bb63e14563_o.jpg

and also a batch of chicken stock. Popovers are just one more thing to add to the list of yummy stuff made with basically just eggs, milk, and flour (crepes, Yorkshire pudding, baked pancakes aka dutch babies, waffles - to name a few of the others).

whoa HUEG! Like, almost life-sized!

This has given me an idea for a really really long Is That...Pie? post.

Re; yr pate, jaq, I made opne recently with ox liver, beer and caramelised onion, the liver cost 50p!

God I love pate.

I am definitely making the next pate with dark rum - I think that will be awesome. I don't know I've ever seen ox anything over here, except oxtail but that is just from regular beef cattle. My butcher is from some Slavic country and was so pleased when I bought the chicken livers - I'm going to see if he carries tongue and some other exotica (for the US); it's difficult to get things like trotters and beef cheeks and skin-on pork belly most places.

i have decided i want to make cioppino. any tips? it seems daunting.

Mr. Jaq used to make it all the time! But we haven't had it for an age. It seemed pretty straightforward - I'll ask him when he gets back from the gym.

do you have a recipe?

if you're okay with bouillabaisse instead of cioppino, then i'd recommend mark bittman's recipe. it's a long list of ingredients, but it's actually very straightforward.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DD163CF936A35751C1A9679C8B63

Alas, Mr. Jaq doesn't remember a) how to make it or b) where he found the recipe. No wonder we haven't had it since forever.

you can totally play with the amount and types of shellfish involved, btw. last time i made it, for example, i didn't include a flaky, white-fleshed fish - just the monkfish. also, i cut down the amount of shellfish and added a pound of squid. i like strong flavors, though, so i was pretty liberal with the seasoning measurements (including saffron, which i don't consider to be optional).

yeah, it seems like something you can play around with a lot and still have it turn out yum. i have just been browsing recipes... some of them call for making your own fish stock to use in it, and i don't know if i have that in me! (now all those years of being pissed that my dad's tupperware container's labled 'fish stock' were crowding up the freezer like giant chunks of wasted space are coming back to haunt me!)

i like bittman's take on the issue of stock:

Though some will argue that bouillabaisse must contain fish stock, any time you add a few pounds of fish to a simmering stew there is enough fish essence to make stock superfluous. If additional liquid is needed, water will do just fine.

that said, if you're going to put shrimp into the dish then you can improvise a stock using the shells pretty easily and quickly.

it's difficult to get things like trotters and beef cheeks and skin-on pork belly most places.

I'm in a state of shock over this. Come to the Old Country and we'll cook parts of the animal it never even knew it had.

I made the best korokke I've made ever yesterday. For bento lunches.

one of my local greengrocers sells bags of shiitake mushrooms the size of my head, for a pittance, so every day for about the past week I've been eating them fried up in a kind of rudimentary teriyaki sauce -- equal amounts cooking sake, mirin and soy sauce, plus some sugar, a pinch of salt, and a dash of ginger. It's sliiimy but so good.

I made some excellent rockfish last night based on this:
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/food5_rockfish.html#herb

Except I used v. little mustard, added milk to the batter, and we didn't have regular potato chips, just Salt & Vinegar kettle chips, and I like everything blackened so I used a lot of pepper and some paprika and etc.

one day I am going to have my standardized seasoning blends so I don't have to go scrabbling through the spice cupboard every time I break out a frying pan

served on orzo with hearts of palm salad (TY GF) it ruled except for the one bone I swallowed

Last night I improvised a whole bunch of hearty, Sunday dinner AWESOME.

Crockpot required, approximate cooking time 6 hours on low.

Chicken rub:
Paprika, kosher salt, pepper, lemon pepper

Sauce:
Can of condensed Cream of mushroom soup, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup chicken stock, hot dry mustard, generous squirts of Sriracha hot sauce.

1. Rub chicken breasts all over, place in bottom of crock pot.
2. Slice the five remaining mushrooms about to rot in the crisper, put on top of chicken.
3. Mix together sauces, pour in.
4. An hour or so before the end, add frozen cooked new potatoes.
5. Fifteen minutes before the end, add frozen peas, turn to HIGH.
6. Serve with veggies and enjoy!

The broth was delicious. While I was waiting for my boyfriend to get home I totally "buttered" a piece of bread with it. Nom nom.

I made pesto for the first time on Saturday! It was delicious! I can't believe I didn't try it years ago but I think I used to be nervous about basil (food issues). Does anyone have pesto suggestions etc to refine my next attempt?

HOT TIP from Montenegro, where I'm not really cooking at all, due to the fact that we're staying with my in-laws: my mother-in-law made chicken liver tonight, and it was excellent, not least because of the unusual yet totally right-on addition of fresh DILL. No joke, it totally works!

speaking of dill -- lemon-dill potato salad, you are a treat.

My dad is picking a 5-gallon bucket of green beans every other day and my mother is forcing me to take some off their hands, so in self-defense I stir-fried a bunch with a ton of garlic and a little soy sauce and sesame oil, to get away from the standard southern method. SO GOOD. Need to go buy more garlic now.

Funny you should say, I am IN LOVE with sesame oil right now. I'm saving $$ by eating Ramen noodles, but with steamed green beans and sliced scallions and sesame oil on everything, it doesn't taste like I'm skimping at all.

omg i want all the green beans!!!!!!!!!! they were like $3.49/lb in my veggie stand the other day :(

so after a week of fresh (and not to mention extremely affordable) ahi tuna sashimi and marlin ceviche, i am really not happy with the frozen seafood mix from trader joe's i sauteed to throw on salad for dinner. u_u

where in nyc can one find quality fish that is not like $20/lb?

blue moon at the union square greenmarket or pure vida at the mccarren park market. the gramercy fish market is very nice, but on the pricier side and (i assume) not convenient for you. i used to buy fish in chinatown, but you have to spend some time looking around for a store that you're comfortable with.

i started reading shark's fin and sichuan pepper over the weekend. it's very informative and interesting, although dunlop can get a bit "cheery englishwoman" at times for my taste. a nice selection of recipes are included. what's cooking? tomorrow night, it's going to be fish-fragrant aubergines.

Last night I made arepas (yellow corn) with smoked gouda, shredded chicken (leftover from lunch) and sofrito (leftover from something else I made a few days ago) and man was it good. They were little towers of taste:

sofrito
chicken
gouda
arepa
chicken
gouda
arepa

sauteed green beans on the side

yumz

next time i might mix the cheese in with the masarepa and then pan-fry them

nommm.

yeah, i need someone to teach me how to shop for and identify good fish before i could do chinatown.

this reminds me i forgot to take my frozen mahi mahi out to defrost for dinner tonight. damn it.

i'd recommend checking out the mccarren market this weekend. the fish/seafood that pure vida sell are caught by their boats (same w/ blue moon), so you're getting a very fresh product.

yeah, definitely! i keep meaning to go up there. must make a point of it this weekend.

Am trying to cook nutritious+delicious food for pregnant wife so have a big pot now bubbling with white beans, smoked ribs (yay montenegro!), onion, carrot, garlic. Will eat with steamed greens w olive oil and lemon. Not the most summery of dishes (it's a million degrees here), but I still think it's gonna be great.

i'd be astonished if it wasn't, that sounds awesome

today I made potted smoked mackerel with pickled cucumber, I'm fairly pleased with the results but it's too early to tell

did not get to mccarren last wekend bc of beach trip but hopefully this sat it is ON!

matt that combo sounds awesome!

Pregnant so soon?!??!??! Congrats, goob, I missed that one somehow.

Yeah you're telling me! Thanks; we're generally excited, but the excitement is punctuated by huge waves of fear and anxiety and nervous laughter. Oh, and nausea.

I'm loaded down with cherry tomatoes, mostly yellow ones -- if I can see my way through these work deadlines, I'm going to pickle a bunch of them. Don't see why it wouldn't work -- but I wonder if I should process the jars after I seal them or not. I want the tomatoes to retain their shape, so as little cooking as I can get away with will be good.

i bought huge bunches of radishes and cilantro at the greenmarket. i have some avocados for another attempt at guac for a party tonight and want radishes to be one of the dipping utensils. also string beans. and cucumbers (the latter two not from greenmarket).

i also got some nice fresh blueberries that i haven't figured out what i will do with yet.

Blueberry yoghurt cake om nom nom, faling that just toss them with a little shredded mint and a glob of creme fraiche

and thanks, the cucumber was possibly too acid a cure cos there was a lot of pepper in with the mackerel, but I started another batch today with some dill and thyme which I have high hopes of