Alaskan Cod
It's a bazillion degrees outside with humidity to match. Going outside to grill would mean leaving the comfort of the air conditioning. Baked cod seemed a much wiser choice tonight than grilled.
Hey... I'm not a native. I don't like drinking my air.
But native or not, dinner needs to get on the table. Sadly, I'm not one of those people who can't eat when it gets too hot. I can always eat. Always. Feed a cold, feed a fever. Always.
Dinner tonight was really, really simple... Baked cod, roasted cauliflower, and cheesy rice.
The rice took the longest to cook. 1/2 cup of rice in 1 1/2 cups water, with a drizzle of butter and a half-teaspoon of Italian seasoning. When it was done, I stirred in about a cup of finely-grated parmesan cheese.
The cauliflower was drizzled with olive oil and coated with crumbs and asiago cheese. Baked at 375° for 30 minutes.
The cod was the quickest. I drizzled some butter on top and coated the top with crushed croutons. Into the 375° oven for 10 minutes.
Simplicity.
I'll probably make it out to the grill again, tomorrow. Although I have had sloppy joe's on my mind for a while...
H-m-m-m-m-m-m.....
Steaks
I love any number of spices, rubs, sauces, grilled onions, mushrooms, crumbled blue cheese - just about anything on a steak.
But sometimes ya just want a steak. An unadorned, on-the-grill, basic steak. And that's what we had, tonight.
We had a couple of nice strip steaks in the freezer that called my name this morning. We also had a couple of ears of corn I bought yesterday - and potato salad I made yesterday. This was one easy meal!
The corn went on first. Well-buttered and with salt and pepper, I wrapped it in foil and put it on the upper grill rack for about 10 minutes. The steaks got salt, pepper, and garlic - and onto the grill they went. I put the corn on the lower grates while the steaks cooked.
A few minutes later, dinner was served.
Sometimes simple is good.
Burgers
If you're gonna have a burger, have a burger! A real one. With lots and lots of stuff on it!
This was an 8oz wagyu burger - what they call American Kobe. I've never had real kobe beef and am not in a hurry to part with the funds necessary to do so, but these are pretty good burgers. And they're made even better with cheese, bacon, lettuce (iceberg, of course!) tomato, red onion, pickles, mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard.
And french fries.
A burger such as this is not easy to consume. In fact, it's down-right difficult. Even cut in half, everything is slipping and sliding, juices dripping everywhere. It's a mess. But what a fantastic-tasting mess!
It takes numerous napkins - we just bring the roll of paper towels to the table - and even then, we have to wash hands up to the elbows when we're done.
And it's seriously worth every bite.
Peach Ice Cream
Ice cream is one of my earliest food memories. One of the best is my grandmother feeding me homemade peach pie with vanilla ice cream on top - for breakfast. My mother, of course, was not pleased. My grandmother just looked at her sternly and said "peach danish and a glass of milk." Grandma always won.
There was a family gathering at Auntie Sis's house in Bakersfield circa 1955/56. Auntie Sis was my maternal grandfather's aunt, and if grandpa seemed old to me, Auntie Sis was downright ancient.
I remember a huge block of ice in the back porch sink and an ice pick. My brother and I just broke off huge chips of ice to suck on. No one screaming that we were using dangerous implements. No hovering parents trying to control our every movement or trying to ensure we were experiencing the day the way they wanted us to. Kids were kids back then.
And sometimes we had to work.
Back in those otherwise idyllic days, ice cream was made by hand. No Cuisinart ice cream makers, no plug it in and come back in 30 minutes. It was all hand-cranked.
And that was the kid's job.
Ice and rock salt and grandpa yelling not to get the salt on top and ruin the ice cream.
And cranking and cranking and cranking until I thought my arm would fall off. And then cranking some more.
The work was hell but oh, was it worth it! Rich and creamy - almost buttery. It was summertime perfection - even better than spitting seeds from hunks of ice-cold penny-a-pound watermelons.
Idyllic, indeed.
Peach Ice Cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup peach puree (from about 3 peaches)
Mix milk and sugar until sugar dissolves. Add peach puree and heavy cream. Pour mixture into your ice cream maker and mix according to manufacturer's instructions.
One note... If you're going to take the time to make your own ice cream - use the best ingredients you can. Look at the ingredient list on your carton of heavy cream. If there is anything in it other than "cream" put it back and go to another store. (You wouldn't believe the things they put in something as basic as whipping cream!)
Pork Chops and Peaches
Four pounds of peaches really doesn't seem like a lot until they all start ripening at once. And there's only two of you to eat them.
Grilled peaches last night, peach salsa today, and peach ice cream later on tonight still leaves a few peaches for tomorrow... Peach upside down cake, perhaps?!? Peach BBQ sauce?!? I'm gonna have to think about this...
In the meantime, the peach salsa came out pretty good atop bone-in pork chops. I used a Caribbean salt rub (Sarah's Sea Salt - another gift) on the chops that set off the peach salsa quite nicely.
Peach Salsa
- 2 ripe peaches, diced
- 1/2 small red onion, diced
- 2 jalapeño peppers. minced
- 2 tbsp cilantro, minced
- salt and pepper, to taste
Mix ingredients and chill.
The salsa is about as basic as it gets. Add lemon or lime juice, or anything else that strikes your fancy. It's pretty difficult to screw up.
The mashed sweet potatoes had a bit of a twist, as well. I mixed in Boursin cheese! I used it a lot for white mashed potatoes, I figured it would go with the sweets, as well. It did.
It hit 81° today. The windows are all still open and a slight breeze is blowing through the house. Perfect temperature for homemade peach ice cream.
More on that, later...
Raspberry Chicken
One of our wedding gifts last October was a huge box of fun foodstuffs from our friend Ruth.
Ruth and I spent many years standing next to one another playing with food - she knew exactly how much fun we would have with all the different sauces and oils and tapenades and the like.
One of the goodies was a bottle of Martin Pouret Vinaigre d'Orléans avec du Jus de Framboise. A French wine vinegar with raspberry juice. The Pouret family has been making vinegars and mustards in Orléans since 1797 and the company today is run by a 6th generation Pouret family member. Talk about continuity. And flavor.
I had been holding back a bit on opening it because I knew that once I did I would find two dozen things to do with it and it would be gone.
Today I finally figured out that it's okay to use it all up. That's what fun food and enjoying life is all about! To quote Patrick Dennis in Auntie Mame "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" It's time to Live! Live! Live!
I knew that dinner was going to be grilled chicken. I also knew I was cooking some broccoli. I had picked up peaches a few days ago and thought grilled peaches would go good with chicken and when I looked up into the cabinet, I knew just how good raspberry would go with peaches, as well.
A really simple marinade was born: Raspberry vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Nothing else. The raspberry vinegar is rich and fruity with a nicely-pronounced raspberry flavor. It's totally unlike most fruit vinegars I've had in the past. It really tastes like raspberries.
I marinated the chicken for about an hour and then put it on the grill for about 20 minutes total.
The peaches received a light coating of olive oil before going onto the grill, themselves, for about 5 minutes.
Buttered broccoli and faux rice-a-roni completed the plate.
The chicken really was stellar. It had a great raspberry flavor without it being overpowering. There was just enough acidity to balance the sweet with the tart. I'm really glad I resisted adding more flavors. Garlic would have been fine and any number of different herbs or spices would have worked, as well. But the simplicity of the raspberry alone made the dish stand out.
Naturally, the little gray cells are working overtime trying to figure out what else to make. I'm thinking a full-fledged raspberry barbecue sauce might be in the running..
In the meantime, there's a lot more peaches and the ice cream maker has gone into the freezer. Tomorrow night is peach ice cream.
And maybe a raspberry sauce...
Perfect Grilling Weather
Yes. Perfect grilling weather. Actually, it has been pretty perfect all day long. It barely hit 70° today. Part-sun and part-overcast. All the windows have been open and I'm listening to a symphony of birds out in the back yard.
A pretty perfect day. This is the Spring we haven't been getting. Lazy days with a book in the back yard. Or - since it is Basil Rathbone's birthday today - a Sherlock Holmes marathon on TCM.
And a pretty perfect day calls for a pretty perfect dinner. Porterhouse steaks seemed to fit the bill quite nicely.
There were a couple of slices of bacon in the 'fridge that just called for topping baked potatoes - and mixing into a container of fresh peas.
And what's a steak without grilled onions to top it all off?!?
It ended up being more food than any two people could eat - but we have luncheon leftovers for tomorrow.
And Cybil ate well, too.
Summertime Salads
When I got into the car after work today, the car thermometer read 107°. The thermometer in the back yard hit 102°. (It's always in the shade - never gets direct sunlight.) The desktop weather widget read 98°. And it's so muggy you can drink the air.
Welcome to mid-August.
Once again, we have gone from winter to summer without ever really seeing spring. No fair. Spring is my favorite season. Gently warming after the freezing winter months - and months - it's supposed to slowly acclimate us to the unbearableness that is summer.
Except it never seems to happen that way.
I admit to being a weather wuss. When it gets this hot, I don't want to do anything. I turn into a complete slug. Of course, we still have to eat (it takes a lot of work to maintain these figures!) but I just don't feel like getting über-creative.
Time for salads.
Salads are great. They can be clean-out-the-refrigerator or planned in advance. Or a combination of the two.
Tonight's was the latter.
Happy Hal's Black Bean Bruschetta, sliced tomatoes, hard-cooked eggs, avocado, marinated artichoke hearts, and thin slivers of asiago cheese, topped with a grilled chicken breast and a simple red wine vinaigrette. And croutons.
Possible thunderstorms tonight as it cools down to the mid-70's. And only 90° tomorrow. Downright balmy.
Oh well... There's nectarine and apricot crisp and vanilla ice cream for dessert later on.
That should make everything better...
Lamb Chops
Lamb is one of those things I keep forgetting I like.
I don't seem to notice it at the store and I certainly don't go out of my way to buy it. But I really do like it.
My Aunt Dolores (actually Great-Aunt Dolores) made the absolute best leg of lamb when I was a kid. Bone-in, of course. Back then "boneless" wasn't really an option. And even if it had been, no one would have bought it because everyone knew that the flavor comes from roasting with the bone. Aunt D was born in 1898 in Pueblo, Colorado, the youngest of 7 children. She lived in San Francisco and NYC but by the time I came along she was living with Uncle Tommy in Sacramento, CA. Tommy was a Train Master for the Southern Pacific. They had a really cool "modern" house that had things like a refrigerator and freezer that was built-in and looked like the upper cabinets in the kitchen. They entertained and cooked all the time and I still have her Sunset BBQ Cook Books. (Here's one of them...) She and Uncle Tommy even had matching aprons. I've had Uncle Tommy's for years. When he died in 1958, she moved back to San Francisco.
Sacramento was shish-ka-bobs on the barbecue. San Francisco was leg of lamb with lamb gravy.
Auntie didn't do a lot to the lamb. I remember the slivers of garlic she placed throughout the meat and maybe some rosemary. But it was the good meat itself that was the centerpiece. And her lamb gravy. I watched her make it enough times that I know there really wasn't any secret tricks she performed, but that gravy was silken perfection every time. I've tried replicating it in the past to no avail. Auntie just knew what she was doing.
When I saw the lamb chops at the store I had to pick them up. I marinated them in olive oil, fresh garlic, fresh mint and fresh rosemary. They went onto the grill for just a few minutes. Potatoes in the oven and broccoli rabe finished the plate.
Auntie led a full and interesting life, traveled all over the world, married twice (no children) and liked her martini's. She died in 1994 at the ripe old age of 96.
They just don't make 'em like that anymore...
Porchetta in Norristown
This past Saturday night I worked a function at the Elmwood Park Zoo. It was a fundraiser called Beast of a Feast and local shops donated their wares for charity. The event attracted close to 500 people from all walks of life and the vendors were just as diverse.
The table next to ours was from an Italian deli/cafe called Sessano. They were making huge roast pork sandwiches on great bread made locally in Conshohocken. Naturally, I had to schmooze with the owner and get one for myself.
And was I ever glad I did. It was totally different than anything I had had before. And absolutely delicious.
This was actually the first time I had ever had Italian pulled pork. I have made pulled pork many many times, but I always do it with a southwestern/Mexican style. I've also had it many times in may restaurants, but, again, with that southwestern flavor profile.
It was impressive!
I had read about Italian porchetta in La Cucina Italiana magazine a while back. Street food of Italy. It was a bit (okay, a lot) more labor-intensive than I wanted to do. I filed it away. But after having it Saturday, I knew I was going to Norristown on Monday to get some for home.
The folks working the booth were really, really nice. Fun, friendly, and justifiably proud of their product. The kind of folks you would want to shop with and support.
One of the guys working the event was behind the counter and recognized me the minute I walked in. In a matter of minutes I was heading home with two pounds of porchetta, a container of peppers, and another container of extra broth.
Heaven.
The flavor is rich and vibrant.
It's beautifully balanced and at the same time screams Italy! You can taste the Italian herbs but they're not overpowering. It's easy to see how they have won numerous "Best Of" awards over the years.
There are a few things in this world I just never make because someone else makes them too good to even bother. Sessano's porchetta has just been added to the list. Out of this world good. I know I shall be doing a monthly trek to Norristown to get more. It's only $7.50/lb. Worth every penny and the travel time to get there!
I used Italian rolls and sliced thin slices of aged provolone from a ball I picked up earlier. Topped with the hot peppers. I didn't have to do anything to it. It was done for me. My stomach is smiling.
Sessano Cafe and Deli is in a fairly nondescript shopping center and you could easily pass by without seeing it. I had a GPS and still missed it the first time around. The center looks like it's getting a nice face-lift, though. Lots of building going on. A good sign!
Sessano Cafe and Deli
1840 Markley St.
Studio Centre Norristown
(formerly Logan Square Shopping Center)
Norristown, PA 19401
610-270-9607
Flank Steak on the Barbie
Flank steak. Once upon a time it was an inexpensive piece of meat. And then - sadly - it was "discovered." The price has risen dramatically over the past few years.
One of the reasons I used to make my Oriental Flank Steak with Spicy Garlic Sauce for crowds because it was so economical. Now it's top-tier appetizer!
But I still but it because it's one of the most flavorful cuts of meat on the steer. Cooked right and cut right, it's tender and juicy - and it takes any and all marinades and rubs. Versitile, it is.
Tonight i just salt and peppered. Nothing else. A good piece of meat doesn't need anything else. The mushrooms I cooked in a pat of butter and then a splash of beef broth. Spinach and a couscous blend.
Tomorrow I'm heading out of my local shopping area to visit an Italian Deli/Cafe in Norristown. I met the owner last night at a function at the Elmwood Park Zoo and want to see the place up close.
I'll be reporting back if it's as good as I hope it is!
The Indian Subcontinent
I suppose one of the nice things about having never been to India is having no idea how Indian food would be traditionally served. If one doesn't know what the rules are, one doesn't have to worry about breaking them!
Tonight's dinner is a perfect case in point. It was paratha - an Indian flat-bread - topped with an eggplant curry, grilled chicken breast rubbed with garam masala, a yogurt, honey, garlic, lemon, and mint sauce, and finally a few pistachios.
I have no idea if the flat-bread is used as a plate with everything on it, as a scoop or eating utensil, rolled, buttered, dipped, torn... You get the idea. So...
I made an Indian Tostada of sorts.
I don't know if these foods and flavors would traditionally be served together, but it doesn't matter. It's what we had for dinner.
I've always said that I would love to go to another country for a couple of weeks and have my own kitchen and a market within walking distance. I'm not interested in taking cooking lessons. I'm more interested in just wandering the markets, buying the local foods, and making what I feel like making. I think that would be a blast. (I would especially like a villa in Sicily overlooking the sea...)
Some people go to museums. I go to cheese shops. What can I say?!?
I bought the paratha and the curry, but grilled the chicken and made the yogurt sauce. I mean, really... I couldn't buy the whole dinner! What would the neighbors think?!?
This really was fun. Definitely not your basic Friday chicken. It had lots of spice and lots of flavor and the yogurt and cucumber cooled everything down. The perfect ending to the week.
And it took so little time to prepare, I made a strawberry cake for dessert!
More on that, later.....