STIR THE POTS

Like upstairs downstairs!

There used to be a show on PBS that Alistair Cooke presented called Upstairs Downstairs. When we first got a television my mother had us watch it, I didn't really get it at the time but now working in a similar situation as a service person I wish I had a copy to watch now so I could compare notes, or maybe Fawlty Towers would be more fitting?

Why Upstairs Downstairs? Private chefs,chefs working in private situations a common connection which led me recently  while surfing the web to a blog called Chefs gone wild. The name was somewhat disconcerting but when I saw some great photos and some fine recipes I kept going back to check to this site for new posts. The back-story is that this chef also works for the rich and famous, a different crowd I work for, not as stiff, but definitely in that realm of Upstairs Downstairs! When I read the authors profile I had to laugh at his wish to do something else rather than cook for rich folks, but with so many scattered ideas it makes it hard to concentrate on what he actually rather do, perhaps a professional eater?

Whatever he decides, I hope it’s related to food, from story to recipe your bound to find something that will fulfill either your hunger pangs or make you laugh aloud or even gawk at the fabulous food offerings. The other day it was a recipe I haven’t had the nerve to try yet, Gateau Basque. It’s filled with cherry compote and or pastry cream with a double-layered dough. My brothers former boss Pascal Rigo has a version in his book, but what intrigued me was the dough is yeasted and the fashion in which this particular version was acquired was really funny; talking about stealing with your eyes and ears as a prominent chef once counseled me!
So if you like the often quirky feel to a food blog go and check it out, and definitely try the recipes, because let me tell you I steal with my eyes and ears!

 

¿Si los aguacates no estan maduros?

Ever get an avocado that was green and had no chance to mature? Old wives tales tell you to wrap them in newspaper or even in a bag with a tomato or whatever else those old wife tales  suggest! Fear no more friends, because my incredible Sous-chef again saved the day! One day he started stuffing the hard stone fruit into our bin of rice, as I quizzically looked on, "What the hell are you doing?" I chimed in disbelief! "Primo", he croaked in a joking voice and his Vicente way, he explained that this was the way to make them soft and delicious. I tried rebutting his claim and told him we could send these rocks back to my purveyor in the morning; he just chuckled as I called in for some more avocados on the following mornings delivery! What do you know, when I looked in on the green orbs they were no longer that green hard fruit, rather they were verging on ripe, unbelievable! Later I asked him how he learned that trick, " I'm Dominican primo!", he said , with obvious pride!

No shit, it works!

Onion soup with Vicente clicky por aqui!

 

Sandor Ellix Katz

Organoleptic, that is the word that I had to look up recently in reference to sourdough; it also was the way Sandor Ellix Katz came to be known to me in my last interview with John Downes. I quickly jotted down his name, looked up his web page and started to read about his love of wild fermented food and his food politics. Some of our favorite foods are fermented, cheese, bread, chocolate, coffee, vinegar are just a few and they all benefit our health through the process of preserving food that help us digest food into nutrients and beneficial bacterias.

He is not a Luddite or even a die-hard purist, in fact he’s soft spoken though well versed practitioner of age-old practice fermenting food. Delivering a message that while  people can change their own local community by challenging the food industry’s consumer driven  unhealthy food choices that harm the environment and us. Sandor  describes how we can find alternatives to healthier food and living rather being beholden to our local supermarket chains,(literally!), rather he encourages a proactive solution to healthier sources, like the farmer and even growing our own sustainable gardens.

Organoleptic:

adjective

acting on or involving the use of the sense organs.

Check out his site

 

Click to listen   Podcast

 

Humitas

Whenever my wife and I head into a store, the sudden urge to make something down home and familiar grabs us, just like it did yesterday when we were checking out the ethnic food aisle in my mothers neighborhood Stop & Shop.We of course were going past the "Spanish" section, when I noticed a grain mill,(Molino) and my wife was saying how much she wanted to eat humitas! Being holy week you kind of crave those connotative special things that you eat, for me it's a spring lamb. We were set just to prepare our traditional gigot de agneau with some roasted vegetables and potatoes. Now with my wife recruiting me and my mother to labor over the filling of corn husks with masa of fresh ground corn and some fresh cheese with scallions, well it's going to be a long day, but worth it!

Humitas:
Makes about 25 humitas, depending on size of corn husks

8 ears of corn (shelled)
2 cups of Andean corn or corn flour if you can't find a good Latin market in your barrio!
6 eggs separate the yolks and whites
21/2 tsp of baking powder
2 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp sugar
2-3 tsp baking powder
80z melted butter
8oz of fresh curd cheese, mozzarella is ok, but look for some latin cheese if possible
1 bag of dried corn husks

Puree or ground the corn in either a molino or a food processor until finely ground. Add butter, egg yolks,baking powder,salt,sugar and cheese.Mix until thoroughly incorporated. Transfer into a large bowl: Meanwhile whip egg whites until soft peaks form, fold in half into the dough mix till almost completely absorbed, finish with the other half.
Assembling Humitas:
overlap two leaves and fill with a 1/2 cup of filling on the lower half of the husks and fold over the sides to meet in the middle and tie off the tops with either string or with a piece of extra husks.
Steaming:
Place the finished humitas in a large steamer and cook for 30 to 45 minutes until firm to touch.
Some of us like our humitas with hot sauce, but to avoid being sneered at or told Yanquis go home, just enjoy it with a good pot of coffee and just sneak some hot sauce like I do!

 

Spring, sproing and terrine too!

When a loaf springs or in this case sproings it's most likely a good thing! I have been off baking for a bit, not that I like it, but work has been non-stop and my food end of this blog has been on the back burner somewhat, I mean how do you snap a shot when your hands are cooking on the line?

This being the long weekend with good Friday giving me a chance to  reawaken my ferments  in the fridge, I decided on a seeded mix loaf with my apple starter, Teresa it's going into the mail when I get a second, really! Amazing baker and friend Teresa has given me a little advice on a recipe with grains, but I wanted seeds and I sort of over hydrated the dough, that's ok though, put it in loaf pans says I! As for other loaf,what another loaf.... hell why make only one kind of bread? It's a Desem starter with multi flour combo including, wheat, rye, kamut and naked barley, formed in a crown shape with my beautiful bannetons from Cooperative Vannerie de Villaines, sure I am nuts to buy them with the dollar only good for wiping my ass, but who the "F" makes them in the states? Besides with the whole issue of sanitation, pasteurization and whatever else makes germ freaks go nutty, how couldn't I buy them? I promised the wife to go to the gym after of course, and fortunately my cat had me up early enough to get the doughs mixed so she couldn't nix the deal, the dough risen, formed and now baked, needs only a good accompaniment of cheese, sausage, whatever suits your taste buds, it's all in a days work, sproing!

P.S. Just stopped by Johnny the butcher in Sunnyside, got him a copy of Stéphane Reynauds Terrine book. I dropped him off a loaf of seeded bread and he gave me a sample of pate of duck, fabulous!

 

Birthday dinners

Last weekend I had my 44th birthday, this week it's my wifes turn, actually hers is tomorrow. Since we will both be working I seem to be the cook on hand to fill the niche for making the munchies! As I had my hands full last weekend I didn't even snap a picture, guests were too nice and well the food was first class if I don't say so myself!

Menu was:

                Appetizers

Stuffed quails basted in there pan juices and balsamic on mache salad

              Main
Grilled wild striped bass from Virginia on upland cress with roasted fingerling potatoes mushroom jus and mustard vinaigrette

             Dessert

Yogurt, lemon olive oil cake with whipped cream and berries

    Sourdough breads and assorted cheeses

 Wines

Sauvignon blanc from New Zealand Culley from Marlborough

2006 Alicante Vin de Pays d'Oc, Domaine Fontareche

then this evening I started snapping away at all my food, but managed to delete most of the files except the main course which was a Roasted curried King Salmon with a cucumber, and citrus salsa on sauted spinach with what else fingerling potatoes and a really nice Txakoli from the Basque country! Oh well, it's hard to keep focus while cooking, eating and clean up, a mans job is never done!

 

Thurston

Since the house was feeling empty without our cat "kika", we decided it was time to find a new one. We went to the Humane society where we were screened and filled out lots of forms, initially we asked for a female kitten, but were shown a special cat! His name was Thurston, it made me think of Thurston Moore band member from Sonic Youth, even though they attributed it to the millionaire on Gilligans Island, ok?
Thurston was introduced to us in an office, where my wife first held him, he purred, and was a bit timid at first. The lady in charge said I should maybe hold him, and I took him in my arms, he went straight for my beard, chewing and biting me then grabbed me around the neck! Ok, I am a sucker for that sort of thing and well I didn't care that he was a male cat, he was wanting a home! Even though my wife wants to give him a dimunitive  papasito sort of name, she even confuses his sex and will politically incorrectly say, "my little Obama!" I guess either way we love the little guy!

Welcome home buddy!

Staples as commodities, what is a baker to do?

If you haven't looked lately at your grocery shelfs or receipts, prices are up and yes Mr. Bush this is your recession!
As for wheat not being grown, but actually discouraged in favor of corn to substitute our need for oil to feed our cars instead, I mean who would rather drive than enjoy a good loaf of bread?
The discussion of prices and economics are not only for economists and federal reserve chairman, no it's for the people who gather the wheat, the mills who make the flour,the baker who tends to his/her dough and finally average you and me!
Some of our friends at the ABA (Australian Bakers Association) and the Sourdough.com.au have been discussing this dilemma as well as the BBGA  here in the states. I keep wondering what and how did this all get undone, here is an interesting article I found the other day on the subject of commodities and bread. One good thing is it's making people go home and make their own homemade bread, that is a good omen!

Sustained@Quaint

Quaint is my neighborhood local, Chef John McGrath and the boys in the kitchen like to let there ya ya's out  occasionally. Funny part of the whole thing was a recent night out Tim; the owner of Quaint was the dreamer of good organic sustainable menu with organic wines to boot! Surprise, no just a new approach to what should be a wave in restaurants and hopefully a wave of new eateries in this beleaguered part of Queens! Brooklyn is the current hub of the food conscious and trend setting after Manhattan, but people live here too! So give a hand to the guy’s with an affordable menu and some good tunes too boot!
Seems like everyone is labeling what is already a proven, more nature less processing is safer and better for you, enjoying a meal and some wine is also a part of that balance. Good slow manual labor can make the best meals taste so good, maybe it’s the love or thought process’s that combine with the natural ingredients harvested by farmer and chef give meaning to an event like this evenings at Quaint, and hopefully more often!

My choice was the Homemade Paparedelle with Cedar River Farms Short Rib Ragu with Asiago cheese. You know I wanted more but after I finished it off with 3 glasses of wine from Vermonte Vineyard of Chile I couldn’t put my mind into a dessert, I was full and but not to the point of splitting in two!
Sure it costs more to grow and to serve organic products, but if we all pitch in it will become the norm? Support your local Chef and farmers for a good meal!

Prime steak at my house

Nothing better than some aged meat! Seems like the whole of NY is on a beef eating trip, there are so many steak houses, old and new opening lately! While doing some weekend shopping for food and my birthday by the by, we went to Fairway market to pick up some odds and ends. As we passed the meat department, my wife mentioned we should get something for dinner like steak and she meant she wanted some steak! We looked at the packaged kind with those blood soaked annoying tampon things wrapped in plastic, I was about to tell her no when she said, "hey lets get that juicy one there!",no problem it was a marbled and expensive piece of Prime aged laying out uniformly along with all the other pieces in majestic meatiness. I decided to make a dry spice rub that I sort of based loosely from a fellow blogger the Zen chef, I had already tried his chimichuri recipe for an Argentine steak special at work, it was a sell out! With a nice touch of coarse sea salt I used gave it a sensational crust and the fingerling potatoes and sauted baby spinach instead of the standard old school creamy spinach,no this was a simple meat and potato deal without shoveling out a load of cash for some blackened blue steak sizziling on a greasy plate with a less than interesting crowd, getting milked for every side order and drink! Nope this is take your time and chew and swallow down a good Claret from Coppola vineyards and just go and chill out after with some Anthony Bourdain on tivo for some after dinner entertainment!