STIR THE POTS

Turkey! (no Not the country, the bird.)

 

Thanksgiving...again!

Thanksgiving has always been a trying feat, when mixed with long shifts and prepping my own meal at home, not like in the old days when I was working in restaurants or hotels serving other people. This year has been somewhat less hectic as far as business. Effects of the recession (or is it a depression?) I suppose.

Yesterday I brined and schlepped my Turkey on the subway, all 24 pounds of it!  This is my favorite holiday; it's a virtual food harvest, family,friends and just that, no symbols or trees. Great leftovers to eat the next day. Or next week, if you cook enough. So last night I started roasting chestnuts, peeling pearl onions,  salted and confited what few gizzards I could find. There must be shortage or something, as the gizzards weren't all that visible. Turkeys impacted by the economy, too? Who knows!

Whatever, today I'm baking pies and cakes, seasoning the bird, then finish off the stuffing for my wife to "stir", she always say's that she prepared it. Well I guess it's the thought that counts. Our meal is standard; stuffed bird, vegetables and some pies.This year I will make a persimmon cake from Jean-Louis Paladin rather than the Saveur magazine version, which was a disaster last year. I won't name the person who screwed up the recipe, as it's family. And this, after all, is Thanksgiving. Soooo.... happy and healthy one to all!

Au revoir mon petit Suçuk

Since returning from Istanbul on a whirlwind five day cooking vacation, I have been devouring my favorite Turkish delicacy, suçuk or soujouk; a spiced sausage that is insatiably imbued with spiced laden lipids a taste that's indescribable, but once sampled can be a staple in ones repertoire of exotic dishes....

But what do you do when your supply runs short, as a matter of fact when you only have a nib left? Go back to Istanbul? Make your own? Buy it from a local Turkish market, if your fortunate to have one? My guess is I will go back to Istanbul if invited, but most likely I will have to go to my local Turkish market and buy an imported one and see if it stands up to the quality of the one my friend Dilara  kindly put in an abundant care package for me when I came home!

(Ode to a suçuk)
Since I first sliced you, fried you and tasted your special spice.I've adorned you on my pide, laid you in a pan to fry with my onion, tomato and eggs. When thinking about where we met, I dream about the shores of the Bosporus the sunny heat and the scents and smells of the magic kitchen...but alas your at the end of your link, what shall I do? So for now mon petit suçuk au revoir!

Home alone, dinner and a Mets' game...priceless!

It's only the first week of my vacation and my wife is away in Ecuador. I am home alone. After two days of slumming on pate and cheese, and following some motivated gym time, I decided to make a nice dinner for myself. A Mets' game was about to be televised, so I whipped up this dinner in one pan and... well it was good!

Menu for the Mets

Salad:
Arugula, pear, goat cheese salad with almonds and mustard vinaigrette.
( Got this from my friends at Quaint, nice taste!)

Main course:
Roasted wild striped bass, tomatoes, pencil asparagus, portabella mushroom  onions cooked in pancetta, drizzled with Castelas extra virgin olive oil.

Wine:
Bastianich Viticoltori
Tokai Friuliano
(A present from my friends Leo and Roberto!)

Dessert: I wanted something rich in chocolate, but who wants to do all that work? I would have gone for watermelon or a peach, except I had none at home and it was too hot to go buy some. What would have been your choice?

Oh, the Mets lost!

My pêche, your Melba!

It being summer, the season for fresh fruit, my wife requested another of her favorites, poached peaches. Off season, she will get a yearning and buy the glass-jar variety from Trader Joe's. Her pleasure is my happiness, especially since it is a  simple  preparation to make this dessert that reminds me of childhood. Its pedigree can be dated back to the 1890's when Auguste Escoffier, the designer of modern French cuisine simplified the codified style from its elaborate state as designed by its originator Antoine Carême.

One of Escoffiers signature dishes was named after an Australian diva named Nellie Melba. After watching her perform on stage, he wanted to dedicate a dish in her honor. It was said that she liked ice cream but was afraid of its cooling effect on her vocal chords. So Escoffier decided to put in some other elements, including peaches, raspberries, red currant jelly  and, of course, ice cream. I have not picked up either of my two copies of Escoffier's recipe books for some time. They are really wonderful tools, like references that read like testaments, not in a religious sense, but a kitchen primer of the highest order.

Thinking about Escoffier reminds me of having once seen a French chef prepare peaches for a dessert. He poached and peeled them, and then with surgical precision carefully pushed a pairing knife into the fruit, magically removing the  pit through a tiny opening that he made on the top of the fruit. He then  filled the cavity with lavender-flavored ice cream. Sublime!  Forgetting how he did that, tonight I just cut my peaches in half,  made a light syrup, and poached them untill pushing a knife into the flesh showed that they were tender. I let them cool and without garnish we had them for a refreshing dessert after dinner; maybe not your Melba but my pêche all the same!

Julio quattro

Today my mother and I spent a July the fourth cooking what most would consider a Bastille day meal, hell it's only a tend day difference that separates the two revolutions. So wishing you the best at 1:14 am on the 5th of July, keep on cooking!

Summertime in the kitchen...hot

No chef in his or her right mind will tell you that it is nice to work in the kitchen when the summer approaches, why? It's hot, hot, hot! Another problem, especially for my line of work as a private club chef, is the tedium and waiting between services if I can't manage to get out for a break. So what pray tell do I do? Bake bread amongst other things. Kind of like Dante's inferno, why not just get a little hotter and just enjoy it.

Yesterday was case in point, I rustled up a loaf of Jim Lahey's infamous no-knead pot bread, with various borrowed sources. Dan Leaders levain formula from his first book, Bread Alone. From Pim of Chez Pim, who got bit by the baking bug on one her recent posts, I followed her formula. I didn't have any special flour except all purpose white, my boss smirks when I make a loaf, the fact is I don't think he has a liking for crusty loaves of sourdough, whatever?

This whole week after memorial day has been deliriously boring, though it gave me time to play with the new summer menu which I try to snap photo's of when I am not sautéing or filleting leaving me helpless to focus and snap!

So here are a few pictures to show you I am not having blogger block or something, I actually do work for a living! Not that I wouldn't like to be traveling and eating in temples of the food gods instead.

So until I write a cook book or end up on food network, well I guess I will just keep cooking for the hell of it, even when it is hot!

 

 

Berlauch=Ramps

If you're like me spring is the season of renewal. Even though I love root vegetables and cooking stews in winter,  there isn't anything more delicious than...  berlauch!  You know berlauch? No you say? Well then berlauch are ramps, those green leafy white and burgundy tipped stemed plants that grow in the woods up and down the east coast. When I got my first seasons batch I quickly matched them with morels and scallops, then used them for Passover. This latest batch I served with creamed corn and black sea bass. Last weekend my sister in Switzerland called and told me she had eaten at a fine restaurant where they served them in ravioli. In Germany they use them in bread. I wonder what Alex and Aki at ideas in food would do with them?

 

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!

 

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!