One of the best aspects of a food. wine and travel blog is the fact that all of the threads are interconnected. Today’s example began with a yearning for Provence. Last night I was in the wine cellar, browsing the French section. I was pleasantly surprised to find a bottle of 2018 Mas de Bourgonnier, and I brought it up to the kitchen to make it ready for drinking the next day.
All of this was prelude to deciding what to have for lunch today. The next link in the chain came from examining the refrigerator to see what was available. Happily, I came upon a leftover carrot, spinach, and rice dish with Turkish overtones, and I decided to use that as a basis for lunch. This approach was further enhanced by the presence of some local green peppers which neighbor brought for us this morning.
Since Provence is the center of this expedition, I thought it might be appropriate to add chopped anchovies and garlic to the dish. Therefore, I de-boned and rinsed an Italian anchovy and produced two lovely fillets. These were chopped fine along with a plump clove of garlic. After I sautéed the cut up green pepper, I sautéed the anchovy/garlic flavoring, and then added the carrot/spinach/rice dish to the pan over moderate heat. A couple of deep red Peruvian Piquillo peppers completed the dish, and it was all heated to perfection. Freshly-grated Ricotta Salata melted into the dish, and it was served with the Mas de Bourgonnier wine, a charming blend of Grenache, Syrah, Carignan, and other red grapes. It was a marvelous lunch, even though I was a long way from Provence.
So the moral of this story is: Start anywhere (food, wine, or travel) and let it take you wherever you want to go. Buon appetito!
It’s a relaxed Sunday afternoon, and since I’m making lunch just for myself, it’s a good time to try a new recipe. This one is from Alexandra Stafford (Ali) and her excellent blog, Alexandra’s Kitchen. I love her blog because the recipes are usually superb, the recipes are clearly described and accurate, and her videos enhance the process greatly.
I have cataloged over 7,000 recipes in my digital files. Since I haven’t cooked with cannabis in several decades, none of those recipes can be described as “addictive”. Until now.
Strangely enough, I had all the ingredients handy: black lentils from Rancho Gordo, white balsamic vinegar from Trader Joe’s, a bag of fresh spinach I needed to cook, and a jar of Bulgarian Labneh from my natural foods market.
I loved the dish, so I had two full portions for lunch. The Portuguese red wine I opened last night for the beet salad was also a very good match for the lentils. I will definitely make this again.
I had some cooked beets, so it was time to make a Beet Salad. In my usual fashion, I kept throwing ingredients into the bowl until I thought we had enough flavors. Here’s the list when I finished:
Chioggia beet, julienned
Red beet, julienned
Chopped garlic
Chopped onion
Feta cheese, small dice
Fennel, thinly sliced
Kohlrabi, julienned
Piparra peppers, diced
Chopped capers
Chopped Kalamata olives
Chopped scallions
Salt and pepper
Lime juice
Red wine vinegar
Chopped cilantro
Olive oil
Maldon sea salt
Beet Salad
The wine selection turned out to be easy and spectacularly successful. Yesterday, on our way to visit friends in Little Compton, RI, we stopped at Portugalia Marketplace in Fall River, primarily for their superb selection of Portuguese wines. I bought almost two cases of those wines, including one that I never tried before, a 2016 Baga from Sidónio DeSousa. That turned out to be a perfect match for the beet salad.
It’s comforting when you make a good meal and you know the recipe well enough to repeat the performance again at a later date. This post is about three such meals in July:
my wife’s vegetable lasagna
my favorite way with Spanish octopus
my own sourdough bread
Lasagna
Barbara’s standard lasagna features packaged lasagna noodles and multiple layers of vegetables and cheese. Key ingredients were Swiss Chard, lacinato kale (a/k/a cavolo nero), mushrooms, onions, three cheeses (Feta, almond milk ricotta, and mozzarella), and a jar of tomato sauce. She bakes it in a large lasagna pan (13″x 9″x 3″), initially covered with foil for quite awhile (to ensure everything is fully cooked), and then uncovered to melt the cheese on top.
It’s enough to serve 8 to 10 people. We enjoy it for a couple of days (one dinner, next day lunch) and then freeze another section for another occasion.
Octopus
My routine for a 3.5 lb. Spanish octopus is well-defined now. It is removed from the freezer and defrosted at room temperature overnight. The next day I remove the cap and cut out the beak. After a 30-second dip of the tentacles in a pot of boiling water, I simply place the octopus in an empty Dutch oven, so that it can poach in its own juices in a preheated 200 ° F. oven until it’s tender. That usually takes about 4 hours.
I prepared the marinade, with juices and zest from lemon, orange, and lime, added to a large stainless bowl of extra virgin olive oil. Then add:
rosemary branches,
garlic cloves,
lots of Kosher salt, and
dried, ground Calabrian pepper flakes.
The octopus (still quite warm from the pot) is added to the marinade and placed in the refrigerator overnight to absorb the flavors in the bath.
The first prepared dish the next day is almost always Pulpo a la Gallega, the classic Spanish Basque rendition with just sliced octopus, pimenton, olive oil, and sea salt. Various other dishes with grilled octopus are made during the rest of the week. Sautéed potatoes is one good accompaniment. Chopped salad with radicchio and bitter greens is another.
octopus, beak removed, tentacles cooked for 30 seconds prior to poachingcooked octopus in marinadeoctopus salad
Sourdough Bread
I’ve been making sourdough bread for 14 years, and I’ve worked at improving the process often. That ought to make Repeat Performances relatively easy for me. Much to my amazement in the past few months, I found that my breads were very disappointing. They were dense, relatively flat (very little “oven spring”), and showed a tight crumb structure that was unappealing. I was stumped, and as a result, didn’t bake at all for a few months.
Finally, I did more reading (of course), and I committed myself to researching possible causes and appropriate remedies for this dilemma. Help came swiftly from a baker called “The Regular Chef“. After watching his 15-minute video on how to make Tartine style country bread several times, I came to the realization that my problems were probably caused by at least three factors. One seemed to be that my sourdough starter was not vigorous enough when I made my levain. Solution to try: feed the starter twice a day for two days, and add to the levain near its peak expansion activity.
Another issue I suspected was insufficient dough development. I had been stretching the dough multiple times over a 6-8 hour period, but I never had tried to add “coil folding” to help build structure. Solution to try: add “coil folding”.
The third element was a surprise for me. After completing the dough development and bread shaping, I have been placing the loaves in the refrigerator (“retarding” the dough), and then baking the loaves the next day, 10 to 12 hours later. In his video, The Regular Chef indicated that he felt he achieved the best “oven spring” by baking the loaves 4 to 6 hours later. In effect, I may have been over-proofing my loaves. Solution to try: retard for only 4 hours.
On July 6-7 I tried all of the proposed solutions, and I followed the video carefully as prescribed. Most of the measurements and techniques were the same as I had been using, but with the changes noted, I was able to get a much better product.
For fish fanatics (like me) the arrival of the late Spring catch of fresh herring in Holland is cause for celebration. We have access to it via Russ & Daughters, a fish supplier since 1914. Nowadays, these transactions are done online (Russ’ business was originally from a pushcart).
It appears that there is quite an enthusiastic following in the U.S. for these fish, and the rituals are intriguing. Photos below are from their website.
I have a friend, Dean, who is a fellow seafood lover. Unfortunately, his wife is allergic to all fish and seafood, so he is rarely able to enjoy it. However, I often have occasions when I have seafood and my wife is not interested (e.g. octopus), or her tolerance is small (herring, but only pickled from a jar). Thus, Dean and I have a pact in which he joins me to indulge in my piscatorial excesses, and the new Holland herring was just such an occasion.
I had tried the herring two days before in the manner shown above, where one drops the raw herring in your mouth from above. It’s quite tasty — smooth, rich flavors, full of umami — but I can only eat one or two fillets that way. On the other hand, I find that grilling the fillets with a little olive oil and a touch of fresh basil is supremely delicious, so last week, Dean and I demolished the remaining 10 herring fillets using our preferred methods of imbibing. Here’s what my plate looked like:
Fortunately, Dean also appreciates wine and is curious about different countries and grapes, and I am always happy to oblige. I had three open bottles of white wine in the refrigerator (much more than usual), so we could do a compare and contrast exercise, which was great fun. We tried them in sequence: Landron Muscadet (France), Vermell Xarel-Lo (Spain), and Oddity Wine Collective Riesling/Viognier (AZ). All were good, but the consensus was that the Riesling/Viognier was the best match. Thanks, Aaron!
This is an indulgent recipe. It begins with two elements at play. One is a recipe I found which uses the brine from a container of Feta cheese as a way to salt eggplant, as an alternative to the traditional kosher-salt-for-an-hour trick. The other vector is the acquisition of fresh scallops from Farmers to You, by way of Red’s Best in Boston. These two elements were fused together with fresh English peas, sliced tomatoes, and wild rice. A little bit of Feta cheese was thrown in as a reminder about the origin of the brine for the eggplant.
This by Tinrocket 1.1 (109)
Scallops | Peas | Wild rice | Grilled eggplant and Feta cheese | Tomatoes
I was thrilled with the results from brining the eggplant. Deeper, richer flavor, and not too salty. I will try it again in other dishes, as soon as I can find good Italian eggplants.
It’s hard to beat homemade pasta. I’ve been enjoying making Tonarelli at home. Last week I decided to adjust the recipe in an effort to make the dough more supple. This formula is the best so far:
88 grams of double-zero “00” flour
37 grams of Durum wheat (milled myself from wheat berries)
1 extra-large whole egg
1 egg yolk
salt
olive oil
Onions, mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, and leeks, sautéed individually, became the sauce.
This Aglianico was a very good match with the dish.
Pasta or Couscous? No problem. The next dinner features an excellent couscous that was a gift from a good friend. The couscous is superb and took less than 10 minutes to cook. I grilled a bunch of my favorite vegetables plus some pitted Kalamata olives, and I added them to the couscous, along with a not-spicy Harissa, and it was all delicious.
Conclusion: pasta and couscous each provides a neutral palette for painting beautiful meals. Select the best of each, and have fun putting it all together.
For many years, all I would eat for breakfast was fruit — usually fresh on a plate, sometimes as a smoothie in a glass. It worked well, providing plenty of energy and keeping me healthy. In the past few years, I’ve expanded the choices quite a bit, and I wanted to share with you some recent delights.
Fruit is still a great option, especially in early summer. Here’s a colorful array of fruits.
Another favorite over the years is a plate of high-quality smoked salmon on toast, with or without cream cheese. We recently had a shipment from Russ & Daughters in NYC, and they have the best smoked fish anywhere, in my opinion. Here’s a breakfast featuring their Gaspé Bay smoked salmon, accessorized with thinly-sliced red onion, capers, and lemon — all on sourdough toast.
On the fish theme, I was inspired recently by Sven Fish, a vendor at a local farmer’s market (in Hudson, MA). I’m very particular about the quality, provenance, and suppliers of the fish we eat, so after a good set of answers about this vendor’s sources and processes, I decide to try a small fresh tuna steak. What does this have to do with breakfast?? Well, one morning I decided to try a very simple recipe for breakfast from Cucina Rustica, one of my very favorite cookbooks. It was amazing! And easy!
Here is the recipe. I recommend it for any meal, even breakfast.
This marvelous pasta dish started for me with a large batch of home-grown Spring arugula that was beginning to go to seed. I pulled off all the good leaves, washed and dried them, and saved them for something I could make that looked appealing.
Enter this recipe from NYT Cooking:
I made a few minor adjustments: frozen corn from last year’s harvest, less butter, no red-pepper flakes, and added green garlic and scallions. It was easy to prepare, quick to cook, and delicious to eat. The wine was a bottle of California 2020 Vermentino from Birichino, my favorite new winery on the Left Coast. This was part of their 6-pack Spring shipment. If my math is right, the two barrels produced totaled only 600 bottles. I was very happy to have one of them.
This pasta dish will definitely be part of my regular repertoire.
This dinner was one of my first experiences with Pollack, a whitefish which I always deemed inferior to flounder, fluke, and sole. However, with the help of my primary fish advisor, Chris — I was able to make a delectable and easy supper with a couple of pollack fillets.
The key element was Chris’ advice to cut off the dark colored layer of fish on the bottom side of the fillet. This “bloodline” has a strong flavor that many do not appreciate, so with a freshly-sharpened filleting knife, I trimmed off that layer and baked the rest — with very good results.
It was a simple dinner. I baked the fish according to this recipe, and my wife roasted potato slices and made her signature coleslaw, and dinner was on the table in 30 minutes.
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