Roasted Rockfish with Herbes de Provence on Ratatouille

"You've never made me ratatouille."

A statement, not a question, from my wife, a request really, disguised.

Ann hinted that I should make ratatouille, a dish that I have never made throughout a lifetime in the kitchen. "I don't really like it," I responded. Like is the wrong verb, because I do not dislike it. I just would never care to make it for myself. Ever.

There's a bit of backstory here. We grew up without a lot of money, one small income, three ravenous kids. We were not poor, but going out to eat was never an option. Our cars seemed to be third-hand. Luxury foods were not in the cards and during the summer, we ate largely off our garden, my dad being an inveterate gardener.

Those of you who garden, you're probably already beyond the punch line. You know.

Our garden was a good quarter of an acre if not a half, at least three times the size of our current lot here in Oregon. And my dad was an exuberant planter. If three squash plants would feed our family, why not plant a 100-foot row? Ditto for tomatoes. Why not have 50 plants? Peppers. How about four dozen plants of seven or eight varieties?

We kids were free labor to work this massive garden and I foremost, being the oldest and strongest. Our Saturdays were given over to picking vegetables in the morning and prepping and preserving them in the afternoon.

We ate well because of this all year. One wall of our farmhouse basement was reserved for shelves of jars from canning: tomatoes, tomato juice, ketchup, relishes of all sorts, all manner of pickles, peaches, green beans, yellow wax beans, beets, and so forth. Bins of potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and apples lined another wall. Our freezer was jam packed with gallon bags of corn, peas, lima beans, and black-eyed peas, the vegetables that did not can well. I learned to put up from day one.

But back to late summer. Those of you who garden know well late July and August when after a trickle of vegetables during the early summer, the garden gods kick things into hyperdrive and bestow an unceasing bounty of tomatoes, peppers, squash, and eggplants. Ready or not, here they come!

My mother's answer, clearly in self-defense from this onslaught, was ratatouille. Ratatouille three to four nights a week. The first couple of times were OK, but by night three, I was ready to vomit at the mere smell of the stuff. Ratatouille for weeks was what we ate with little variety.

Ann, now you know why I have never ever made ratatouille since.

Roasted Rockfish with Herbes de Provence on Ratatouille

I relented of course. How can I not make something for my wife when she asks? How could I disappoint her? One of the things I always disliked about my mother's version of ratatouille is that it would be stewed nearly to death. I wanted to freshen it up a bit and serve a simple piece of roasted fish with it.

Herbes de Provence

It's hard to make a typical Provençale dish without their classic herbs, the soi-disant "herbes de Provence." Everybody's mix is varied. Mine is what I gathered from the garden: rosemary, thyme, oregano, lavender, and basil. These I destemmed and chopped fine.

I do have a quasi-love affair with these herbs and fond memories as well. I remember in great detail driving with Aimé Guibert, the owner of the famed Mas de Daumas Gassac in Aniane, from his home at the winery to dinner in nearby Montpellier. Excitedly and quickly once we climbed to a ridgeline just after dark, he pulled the vehicle to the side of the road and urged a swift exit. "Sentez!" he urged with typical Gallic passion, eager to show off the bounty of his native land. Smell, he insisted.

The warm breezes wafted up the hillside bringing along the fabulous aromas of the garrigue, the scrubland that is common to the Mediterranean coast, be it in Greece, Italy, Provence, or in the Hérault as we were. I could smell the wild rosemary and lavender, but above all the low-growing wild thyme. I could not resist rubbing my fingers through that thyme and then inhaling the amazing aromas.

I have been hooked ever since and thyme is undoubtedly my favorite essential woody herb.

Roasting Roll-Cut Zucchini, Squash, and Eggplant

To create a fresh and lively version of ratatouille, I wanted a base of roasted vegetables. This intentional caramelization and concentration of the vegetables was no doubt a reaction to the overly stewed quality of my mother's version with its mushy, disintegrated vegetables.

Although ratatouille is a peasant dish at heart, many chefs prefer that each of the vegetables be cooked separately and then mixed. This cuisine soignée approach flies in the face of the cuisine pauvre origin of the dish in which all the vegetables would be stewed together. But I like it.

I took a modern approach by roasting the zucchini, squash, and eggplant together after tossing them in the herbs and salt. I roll-cut these long vegetables in the Chinese style so that they would all be in similar-sized pieces and roast at the same time. Once the vegetables were roasted, I sautéed a chopped onion with a bunch of garlic, then added the roasted vegetables, roasted and sliced piquillo peppers, and halved grape tomatoes.

My Ratatouille

I warmed the vegetables through after mixing them, but only just. I did not want the tomatoes to break down at all. I wanted them to retain their freshness and sweet acidity to brighten the dish.

While I was finishing up the vegetables, the herb-covered rockfish, a local species of white fish, was in the oven roasting. Just as it set in the center, I pulled it out and plated it over the ratatouille.

I quite enjoyed it, my first ever foray into making ratatouille. It only took a half a century to get over my instinctual dislike of the dish.

Annie Makes Tinga Casserole

Every now and again, Ann gets the inspiration to cook dinner. I won't lie: I love being a spectator and not having to worry about what's for dinner. We made a batch of chicken tinga a few weeks ago to put in the freezer for a rainy day. Ann had been thinking to make a casserole of the tinga with corn tortillas and cheddar cheese and she finally got around to doing it.

Baked Tinga de Pollo Casserole with Slaw

Crazy Chef Annie

Layering the Casserole

Just out of the Oven

With the tinga from the freezer, this dish went together in seconds: a layer of tortillas, a layer of tinga, a layer of tortillas, and a final layer of cheese. She put it in a moderate (350F) oven until it was good and browned, perhaps 25 to 30 minutes. After it cooled, she cut it in quarters and we chowed down. What is not to love about crunchy baked tortillas?

I plated the casserole with a bit of extra tinga sauce on top and some cole slaw on the side.

Coho Salmon with Gochujang-Roasted Carrots

I was lying wide awake in bed one early morning not too long ago when a dinner idea popped into my head pretty much out of nowhere. I had a lot of carrots in the refrigerator that I needed to use. The idea was to roast those carrots with the funky fermented Korean chile paste called gochujang.

I have been missing the bold, direct, and earthy flavors of Korean food a lot recently. Ordinarily, we could sate our cravings at any of the myriad Korean restaurants west of Portland in Beaverton. But with this pandemic, we're not going out to eat. Any Korean-inflected food that we eat, I am going to have to make myself.

Always prepared for such an eventuality, I keep a tub of gochujang in the refrigerator. It is a wonderful flavor builder. With the exception of the inherent sweetness from the glutinous rice powder that it contains, gochujang has an earthy funkiness that reminds me a bit of the sambals (fiery Thai bird chiles fermented in fish sauce) that we used to ferment at the restaurant for our own consumption. While the staff and select customers enjoyed these sauces, they were way too spicy to unleash on the general public. 

In the same vein, we used to make dozens of kinds of kimchee at the restaurant in addition to dozens of kinds of western pickles and sauerkraut. After fermenting on the counter in the pastry station, various batches of kimchee would go onto a specially reserved shelf in our walk-in refrigerator, to keep the health department at bay. Most pickles don't need to be refrigerated, but our health inspectors have been trained that any unrefrigerated food is bad. Anyway, the dozens and dozens of pickle containers on our pickle shelf was a site to see.

These pickles, our sambals, and gochujang all serve similar purposes in the kitchen. They are instant spicy umami bombs that naturally complement other flavors, especially sweet flavors such as carrots.

I was actually intrigued enough by the carrot idea at 3 am that I roused myself to write a note on my phone so that I would not forget it. Good thing too: the next morning I had no recollection of the idea until I saw the note I left for myself.

Seared Coho Salmon with Gochujang-Roasted Carrots

But roasted carrots do not a meal make. Taking inventory of the refrigerator the next morning, I found a half a pound of wild Coho salmon and some baby spinach. That was enough to make a complete dish: seared Coho on gochujang-roasted carrots, topped with the classic Korean spinach banchan called sigeumchi namul.

Toasting Sesame Seeds

I wanted to toast sesame seeds for both the spinach and the carrots. Lightly toasting them really brings out the flavor. You can see the color just starting to change in the photo above and the toasted color in the photo below. Toss sesame seeds in a dry pan over a high flame until they get to the color you want, them remove them from a pan to a cool container. If you leave the seeds in a hot pan, they will continue to cook beyond what you want.

Making the Sigeumchi Namul

"Recipes" for sigeumchi namul are as varied as there are cooks. I've made fancier versions and I've made plainer. So as not to detract from the salmon, I wanted to keep this version pretty straightforward.

I started by blanching half a pound of baby spinach leaves for just a few seconds. Once a batch of spinach came out of the hot water, I put it in ice water to fix the bright green color and stop the cooking while I finished all the batches of spinach.

After the spinach was fully chilled, I squeezed it dry. Then I dressed it right in the bowl with toasted sesame seeds, minced garlic, and a splash each of rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. After mixing, I set the bowl in the refrigerator to await dinner.

Making the Gochujang Sauce

Before roasting the carrots, I wanted to coat them in gochujang, so I mixed up a couple big spoonfuls of gochujang, with a splash of sesame oil and a splash of soy sauce. It still wasn't quite liquid enough and I didn't want to add more oil, so I added a tablespoon or two of warm water to make the sauce flow.

Before roasting the carrots in the oven, I tossed them in this sauce, reserving the remainder of the sauce for later. Because of their tapered shape, carrots are difficult to roast: the slim root end cooks a lot faster than the chunkier leaf end. Stealing a technique from Chinese cooking, I roll cut a bunch of carrots into roughly equally sized pieces to even out the cooking.

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots

After about 20 minutes in a hot oven (425F), the carrots were tender, yet still firm, with nice caramelization along the edges. While still hot from the oven, I put them back into the leftover gochujang sauce and tossed them along with some toasted sesame seeds. Once I plated the carrots, I still had some gochujang sauce left in the bowl to drizzle over the fish for a plate garnish.

As good as the crispy-skin coho was, the carrots were the star of the show. The funky spicy sauce really contrasted with the sweet carrots and earthy sesame seeds in a delicious marriage of flavors. Gochujang-roasted carrots is definitely an idea I need to keep in mind for both Ann and I want more, fish or no fish.

Fully Loaded Eggs

Every now and again, I like to serve a nice brunch without working too hard at it. As I get older and more accustomed to retirement, I find myself more often than not eating only two meals a day, brunch and dinner. Along with retirement goes the sentiment of not wanting to slave over a meal quite as often as in the past, so I'm always thinking of ways to put great food on the table with little effort.

Fully Loaded Eggs

A case in point are these fully-loaded eggs that we had for brunch, plain-Jane scrambled eggs in a bowl, topped like tacos.

Taco Toppings

Just before scrambling the eggs, I pulled a container of roasted garlic-chipotle salsa, some cotija cheese, and some jalapeños en escabeche out of the fridge. Then I sliced an avocado and diced up a tomato with a bit of cilantro. Alternatively, these eggs would have made great breakfast tacos.

This was a really tasty brunch that took under ten minutes to assemble.

Refried Beans

A few weeks back, I wrote a bit about refried beans or frijoles refritos in the context of learning about frijoles peruanos. In that post, I made them in a blender, which is not my preferred means of making refried beans. I like more texture in the beans that the blender gives, though to achieve texture in refried beans with a blender, you can blend part of the beans and leave some whole.

Black Beans Becoming Refried Beans

Although here in the States, most refried beans are made from pinto beans, and even though I have a 25-pound sack of pintos in the pantry, I prefer black beans for refritos. And where a lot of refried beans are just a bland purée of beans, I like to add flavorings to mine.

To make this batch of beans, I first sautéed a finely diced poblano, a finely diced onion, a finely minced bunch of cilantro stems, and four large cloves of garlic, finely minced. No matter how soft the beans get, the onions and poblanos help give the beans texture. Then I added four pounds of beans and a couple cups of liquid, followed by a puréed chipotle en adobe 

You can see my antique, hand-carved maple bean masher in the photo. I used this to break up the beans to a slightly, but not much, smoother texture than you see in the photo. They cooked down for about fifteen minutes in total after mashing.

Garnishes for Refried Beans

For much of the world, refried beans are a side dish, but I like them as a main course on tacos. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to make a salsa cruda, so I merely put the salsa ingredients on a plate and let everyone serve themselves: tomatoes, green onions, cotija cheese, and cilantro, all the colors of the Mexican flag.

Tacos de Frijoles Negros

This batch was especially good and I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner. Refried black beans tick all my boxes for a great dinner: super tasty as well as quick and easy to prep, cook, and clean up. 

Lentilles du Puy

I love legumes: dried chickpeas, lentils, and black-eyed peas form a large part of my diet. Lentils are an especial favorite and I have been eating them all my life. They were a constant at my restaurant and our pantry stocked 7 to 10 kinds at any given time to give us the flexibility to make any dish that we wanted.

My love of lentils started early. When I was a youngster, my mom would cook big pots of lentil soup with kielbasa and I would be in hog heaven. As I grew older and had my own apartment, I discovered that lentils come in different colors at a local high-end market. Trips for work exposed me to Indian restaurants and the range of daal so common to that cuisine. Then, in my first foray into the wine business on a buying trip to France, I fell in love with the green lentils called lentilles (vertes) du Puy which have turned out to be my favorite. Opening a restaurant gave me access to many more kinds of lentils including the amazing tiny black lentils called beluga, after the caviar.

These days, I am limited to the lentils that our local grocery stocks. There are the ubiquitous brown lentils, of course. But they also have a bulk section in which I can buy all the Puy lentils that I want!

Pan-Seared Steelhead Trout on Puy Lentils

Along with saucisse aux lentilles, sausage and lentils, a staple of French cafés, bistros, and quotidian restaurants is saumon aux lentilles, salmon with lentils, a classic pairing. Here in Oregon, we have access to amazing salmon of many species. For my version of salmon and lentils, I chose a really fatty side of steelhead trout. While not technically a salmon (but in the family), steelhead trout is the ocean going form of rainbow trout. For all intents and purposes, the flesh looks, cooks, and tastes like salmon. It is totally interchangeable with salmon.

Flavorings for the Lentils

There are two tricks for cooking the small green and black lentils. The first trick is that they readily absorb flavors, so the more flavor you add to the broth, the better. Above, you see that I am using garlic and shallot, both minced, as well as a bouquet garni of a sprig of lovage, a bundle of thyme, and a bunch of Italian parsley stems.

Lovage is a vastly underappreciated celery-like herb that has the most incredibly haunting flavor. It was a priority to plant lovage when we first moved to our new home here in Oregon. I can no longer cook without it.

Ready to Cook

Besides taking flavor from these seasonings, the lentils also pick up the base flavor of the broth, so I used about a quart and a half of chicken stock that I had just made from the bones and skin leftover from breaking down a tray of chicken thighs.

Cooked Lentils, Bouquet Garni on Top

The second trick is not to overcook the lentils. I cover the lentils by about a finger width of broth and then bring them up to a gentle simmer. At this point, I keep an eye on the broth level, adding more if necessary. After about 15 minutes, I am tasting the lentils frequently until they are just done. This pot took exactly 20 minutes. You want the lentils firm, so that they hold their shape, without having a crunchy, raw center.

At this point, if there is any liquid left in the lentils, you have the option of draining them (but save the tasty liquid for soup!) if you want. My pot didn't really have liquid to drain. If you are going to serve them warm, you can dress them with a vinaigrette or a pat of butter, but they are delicious plain. Or you can refrigerate them and make a cold salad from them the next day.

And that's a brief tutorial on cooking my favorite lentils. I'm not alone in my love for them. They are so valued by the French that they have their own AOC and AOP, reserved name status. Nobody but the growers in the Haute-Loire can call their lentils du Puy. By analogy, in a sea of sparkling wine and lentils, for me, lentilles vertes du Puy are the Champagne of lentils.

Kale and White Beans

It's full-on September now and I can feel a shift both in my cooking and what I want to eat. Stews will no doubt start to feature more prominently on this blog now, including this kale and white bean stew. This stew feels so Tuscan to me, probably because the way I make it is hardly different from Tuscan bean classics ribollita and pasta e fagioli. Seriously, add stale bread to kale and white beans and you have ribollita. Add ditalini and you have pasta fagiole. 

As good as those two dishes are, right now, we're keeping simple carbs like bread and pasta to a minimum, so it's just plain kale and white beans for us. Not just any kale and white beans though. It's cavolo nero and cannellini, both staples of the northern Italian kitchen. I like them not because they are Italian in origin, but because they are both best in class.

Kale and White Beans: Cannellini and Cavolo Nero

The initial step in almost any stew or ragout is to prep the vegetables that you will sauté and leave in the dish to lend their flavor to it. Collectively, these vegetables are known as many things in many regions: mirepoix in France and in restaurant kitchens worldwide, sofrito in the Caribbean and the Portuguese-speaking world, trinity in Cajun Louisiana, Suppengrün (soup greens) in Germany, and soffritto in Italy.

Soffritto: Vegetable Prep

My usual soffritto consists of onions, carrots, and celery. However, because of the horrid wildfire situation and not being able to get out to the farmers market for almost three weeks, the pantry was bare. Just like anyone in Italy would have done, I improvised with what I had on hand. This soffritto was a leek, two smallish carrots, half a mangy zucchini, and half a shallot. It worked.

Destemming Cavolo Nero

Next up is prepping the kale. There's nothing special to it, but there is a useful trick for destemming kale. Gently but firmly make a fist around a leaf of kale so that the naked stem base sticks out between your thumb and index finger. Then with your other hand, grasp the base of the stem and pull it out of your fist so that the leafy part stays behind. Discard the stems on the compost pile. Stack, roll, and slice the leafy green part of the kale.

My preference for kale has always been the Italian kale called cavolo nero (black cabbage). It is also known as lacinato, Tuscan black kale, and, as much as it pains me to say, dinosaur kale. Cavolo nero has great depth and complexity of flavor when compared to our usual curly kale. If you cannot find cavolo nero, use whatever you can find at your farmers market. I have used curly kale, Red Russian kale, and Brazilian couve. 

Cooking the Soffritto and Tomato Paste

Next comes the cooking of the soffritto. In a large pot, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom, then add the soffritto vegetables along with a sprig of rosemary and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Once the onions start to go translucent, add several cloves of minced garlic (to your liking) to the mix and stir well. Clear a spot in the middle of the pan and add a tablespoon or two of tomato paste to the bare pan, spread it out a bit, and let it sit until it starts to caramelize and brown. Stir the tomato paste in well.

Tomato Paste: Brand and Pack Do Not Matter

Before I get back to the process: a word on tomato paste. I like Italian doppio concentrato (double concentrated) tomato paste in a tube and not because it is Italian and somewhat expensive. I buy it for convenience. I can squeeze out the small amount that I require for any given dish and put the remainder back in the refrigerator, unconcerned about spoilage. I gave up on cans of tomato paste decades ago. No matter how small they are, they always contain more tomato paste than I can use at one time and I don't want to fool around repackaging tomato paste.

It turns out that American tomato paste comes in cans and Italian tomato paste mainly in tubes. This is because of differences in packaging lines. We're set up for cans here in the States, whereas in Italy, they're set up for tubes. The different production lines have differing processing temperatures, higher here and lower there, so Italian paste is brighter red and fresher tasting whereas American paste is deeper colored and more cooked in flavor. Because the first step in using tomato paste is to caramelize it on the bottom of the pan, processing temperature makes no difference in the outcome of the final dish.

I have tried a lot of tomato paste brands and they're all just fine. Relative to American tomato paste, Italian paste is a lot more expensive (up to four times) but still, a tube is inexpensive to buy. If you want the convenience of a tube, buy an Italian brand. If that doesn't matter to you, buy the least expensive American brand.

Kale and White Wine Added

If you have caramelized the tomato paste well, some of it will be stuck to the bottom of the pan. To aid in getting all the brown bits off the bottom of the pan, add a glass or two of dry white wine, and scrape the bottom of the pan vigorously. Let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes to evaporate some of the alcohol. Then add the kale and wilt it a bit.

White Beans and Chicken Stock Added

Finally, add cooked white beans. This is about four pounds, a single pound of beans rehydrated and cooked. Then add chicken or vegetable to just below the surface of the beans and cook over a moderate flame until the consistency is what you want. I like a bit of liquid in my beans, but I am not aiming for it to be soupy.

Kale with White Beans

I have already walked through the process above. Here are the ingredients for a large pot of kale and white beans that will serve four people generously.

2 carrots, diced

1 large leek or one large onion, diced

1 stalk of celery, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 sprig of rosemary

1 pinch red pepper flakes

1-2 tablespoons of tomato paste

1 bunch cavolo nero (about a dozen leaves), chopped

4-8 ounces of dry white wine

3-1/2 to 4 pounds of cooked cannellini

1 quart of chicken or vegetable stock (or water in a pinch)

salt to taste

Quantities of everything are adjustable to your liking or to what you have on hand. As you read earlier, I had shallot and zucchini in my last batch.

And it should go without saying that this stew is better the second day, so make it a day ahead if you have that luxury.

If I were having company over, I would garnish each bowl with a drizzle of olive oil, a bit of grated pecorino, and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

White Bean and Piquillo Salad

Sometimes you just don't feel like cooking dinner. It happened to me the other night. That's what I have a pantry for, given that going out to eat during the pandemic is a non-starter.

Here's a quick and healthy dinner salad from the pantry that takes moments to make, a salad that would make a perfect accompaniment to a piece of roasted fish, grilled calamari, or lamb chops. For more of a traditional salad, a few big handfuls of arugula would complement all these flavors. Or you could put it all in the blender to make a delicious white bean-piquillo hummus. Or you could enjoy it in all its vegan glory by itself as we did. Beans like this are extremely versatile.

White Bean and Piquillo Salad

I hate to even give a recipe because you can see all the ingredients in the photo. I mixed two 15.5-ounce cans of cannellini, a small jar of piquillos (8 piquillos in total), half a bunch of green onions, one clove of minced garlic, one teaspoon of pimentón (smoked paprika), the juice of half a lemon, and salt to taste. A slug of olive oil would have been delicious, but we're trying to keep the non-essential calories to a minimum.

And there you have quite literally a five-minute dinner that is as easy as it is delicious.

Brooks Plums

Back in 2018, Ann and I went shopping for a tree for our side yard with an eye towards growing a little fruit on our tiny 1/10 acre lot. I remember going to one of our favorite nurseries looking for a fruit tree other than a plum, but something about a small plum tree drew us in and it went home with us in the back of our pickup.

Part of what attracted me to the plum was the fact that it was discovered in an orchard in Lafayette, OR, the next town northwest of ours, about two miles distant. I figured that a local plum had to be a great choice for our location. And as I planted it beside the house, I thought nothing more about it other than how I would start pruning it come dormancy and whether it was as self-fertile as the tag proclaimed. A lot of self-fertile fruit does better with another variety as a pollinator. Time would tell.

Brooks Plums, Extra Large Egg

In February of 2018, I committed to my pruning decisions, always a bit nerve wracking for someone who does not prune fruit trees for a living. Then in the spring of 2018, the tree was covered in beautiful white blossoms which morphed into dozens and dozens of tiny fruits, so dense that in June, I dropped a lot of the small green fruit on the ground. The last thing I wanted was a massive load of small fruit threatening to break my new scaffolding branches, the branches that would carry the fruit load for the productive lifetime of the tree.

As we watched the fruit develop during the course of the summer, a lot of it fell to the ground, but still a fair amount remained. I assumed that this fruit drop was normal, but it was a tad worrisome. And as we got into late August, I wondered if and when the egg-shaped fruit would ripen. Magically, as it seemed at the time, the fruit started coloring and by about the tenth of September, the oval blue-purple fruit was soft enough to pick.

Not having any idea what we would be tasting nor how serendipitous our choice of fruit tree would be, Ann and I bit into the first yellow-fleshed fruit off the tree and immediately, we were hooked. It was the best-tasting plum I had ever eaten and its deliciousness was beyond compare. Ann said she preferred these plums to pluots and that is saying a lot, because she adores pluots.

The ultra-delicious fruit got me wondering about the back story of this plum and I found some information at OSU and other places, though some of the information conflicts. OSU says the original Brooks sport was found in 1930; other catalogs place it at 1946. The earlier date may be the discovery date and the later may be the commercial availability date.

All agree that this variety formed the backbone of the now-defunct Oregon prune industry. That prunes are now associated with California is in part testament to the fact that Oregon growers routinely shipped their plums to processors in California. Alas, most of the old plum orchards are gone, replanted to grapes, filberts, or other crops.

Brooks is a sport (a mutation) of the standard oval purple European prune plum which is known locally at the Italian Prune plum. The scion is larger, sweeter, and ripens a week earlier than the parent. The size, sweetness, and relatively dry flesh made it perfect for drying, though we do see little quantities of fresh fruit at the local farmers markets. Moreover, as a bonus for eating out of hand, the fruit has a relatively thin skin and is freestone.

Many references say that Brooks is a little sweet and lacking acid, but ours has the perfect balance of both sugar and acid. You get a big burst of brown sugar sweetness, followed by a medley of fruits (overtones of peach and cherry on the plum), followed by the perfect acidic finish that makes you crave the next bite. In wine-geek-speak, Ann and I are both acid-heads, meaning that we crave wines with great acidity. Our Brooks tree produces fruit with sugar and acid levels that please both of us.

After another heavy winter pruning to shape the tree and with much anticipation for a great second crop, we went into the 2020 season. Rains at blossom inhibited pollination and we got a very tiny crop needing no thinning at all. And we lost 40 percent of that to normal fruit drop over the course of the summer.

While OSU says that Brooks tends to overset, necessitating fruit thinning to avoid branches breaking under a heavy load and while that was necessary in 2019, I didn't touch the sparse fruit in 2020. Some fruit trees bear heavily every other year, but Brooks is supposed to have a reliable crop each year. Although I think it was just bad timing with the weather this year, it will be another couple of years before we know for certain.

Picking day for most of the crop this year was September the 8th, right on schedule despite our relatively cool summer. The rest of the crop I picked on the 12th. And the fruit that you see above in the photo did not let us down. Brooks is definitely the most superb plum I have ever eaten.

The tree put on six or seven feet of growth this summer that I am going to have to tame this winter to keep the tree compact enough for our tiny lot and to carry the heavy fruit load. In retrospect, I should have topped a lot of branches this summer, but I'm still learning about plums. I can't wait to see what happens in 2021 for our third harvest.

Steak Tartare

Steak tartare, that decadent appetizer, is a fixture of a great many restaurants. Why is that? As a retired chef and restaurant owner, the answer is obvious to me: economics. Beef is expensive and one of the most expensive items on the entire menu. Because it is so expensive, it is very hard—given what diners are willing to pay for a meal—very hard indeed to mark beef up to the extent that less expensive items can be marked up. So it is vital to sell every bit of that beef.

Steak Tartare, Egg Yolk, Cornichons

Think about it this way: all the trim and scrap off of the beef that I purchased cost the same $20 per pound as all the steak cuts. At that price, a restaurateur who wants to stay in business has got to find a way to cover some of the expense of the scrap meat. Steak tartare to the rescue. Ditto for tuna: when I would pay upwards of $20 a pound for #1 tuna, any little scrap was highly likely to end up as tartares. What a delicious way to recoup some of the expense!

Tartare isn't limited to beef. I've had delicious lamb kibbeh at Middle Eastern and Afghani restaurants and even served it at my own. On our tasting menu, we served tartares of elk, antelope, and yak. And during salmon season when we would get fresh king salmon flown in, the belly flaps and other trim would often end up minced and served as salmon tartare, a riff on sashimi. 

We Americans are not alone and we surely did not invent the concept: most cultures have a raw meat preparation that is similar to steak tartare. Think of crudo in South America, carpaccio in Italy, and yukhoe in Korea.

Tartare also is not limited to fully raw meat. Stepping out of the tartare rut, I would do mi-cuit (half-cooked) preparations in which I would briefly sear or grill the meat before chopping it. In France, if you sear a patty of tartare on both sides like a very rare hamburger, you call it steak aller-retour or tartare aller-retour ("steak round trip"). In addition, I used to cold smoke chopped tartare over ice at times. If you use a light hand, the smoke is a wonderful addition to tartare and really wonderfully unexpected to most diners.

I would also note that tartare is not limited to tenderloin. Of all the steak tartares that I have enjoyed at restaurants, my favorite beef version was made from skirt steak and my least favorite from tenderloin. My favorite lamb version was made from heart. Most people are squeamish about heart, but it is one of the cleanest, most flavorful cuts, albeit with a bit of chew. While most people lean toward the soft texture of tenderloin, I find it a bit mushy for my liking. I definitely prefer more texture to less.

As a trained food professional, I'd be remiss if I did not mention that eating any raw food is a risky proposition. E. coli is a very real thing as are other foodborne illnesses. Each person has to decide whether that risk is acceptable. For my part, I will only eat raw meat at a restaurant that I trust.

Capers, Minced Beef, Shallots, Mustard Prior to Mixing

Having run a restaurant, it is ingrained in me to use every single bit of every ingredient and so when I recently purchased a beef tenderloin, it was a no-brainer that we would soon be having steak tartare. When cutting the beef into steaks, I saved all the small bits of scrap from the tenderloin, plus the parts of either end that were too small to cut into steaks.

To make the tartare, I diced the pieces of tenderloin very fine with a knife. Yes, it takes a long time compared to running the meat through a grinder, but the two textures are incomparable. At the restaurant, we always cut the tartare with a knife and as long as we had the labor, we would cut it to order as the tickets came into the kitchen.

What you add to your tartare for flavorings is up to you, in the same way that what you add to your guacamole is up to you. For my part, I default to classic seasonings. I generally add capers, minced shallots, Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper as I did in this case. That said, tartare is a wonderful blank canvas that lends itself to experimentation. For example, a favorite from my restaurant days was a Korean-inflected tartare with minced kimchee, green onions, soy sauce, sesame seeds, sesame oil, and dobanjang.

Tartare is easy to make at home, especially if you are buying meat in bulk and breaking it down yourself. But beyond that, it is a really approachable and decadent restaurant-style appetizer to have in your home-cooking arsenal.

Labor Day Filet Mignon with Red Wine Sauce

After scoring a whole beef tenderloin at a great price, I broke it down into some steaks, some bits for steak tartare, and a small pile of trim from which to make steak sauce. In general I'm a purist: on those very rare occasions when I eat steak, I want to taste the meat without a sauce obscuring the flavor. However, because filet lacks fat, it's pretty flavorless on its own and a bit of sauce can help perk it up. 

Below you see a six-ounce filet perched on a couple of slabs of ripe tomato, a pile of spinach sautéed with shallots, and a drizzle of red wine sauce intermingling with the tomato juices. I'm not a big fan of steak, but this was a decent dinner.

Filet, Red Wine Sauce, Fresh Tomatoes, Sautéed Spinach

As a base for the steak sauce, I had a pile of silverskin, fat, and some otherwise unsalvageable bits of meat leftover from cutting the steaks. These went into a pan with a bit of oil to brown thoroughly and to create a great fond (browned stuff) on the bottom of the pan. Also into the pan went a whole clove of garlic and a shallot that I sliced skin and all.

When making brown stocks and sauces, I always put the onion and shallot peels in the pan because they yield a nice brown color. Onion skins have traditionally been a source of a beautiful natural brown dye for wool and other clothing fibers. You should take advantage of the skins to help introduce a great brown color into your stock.

Browning Beef Scrap

Once the beef and shallots were deeply brown all over, about 10 minutes of cook time, I added a small sprig of rosemary, a single lovage leaf, a bay leaf, and a healthy pinch of coarse black pepper as seasonings.

After this, I deglazed the pan with two glasses of red wine, making sure to scrape up all the brown bits of the fond off the bottom of the pan and into the sauce. Then I added about a cup and a half of homemade chicken stock. The collagen in the chicken stock will help the sauce have great mouthfeel. I would have used beef stock, but all I had made recently was chicken stock. In the grand scheme, the red wine flavor will dominate whatever stock you use.

Reduced, Defatted Sauce

I let the sauce bubble away gently for 15 minutes and then strained the solids out of it. After this, I let it come down to about a half a cup in total. As the sauce came down, I skimmed the fat off of it. Traditionally, if I were making a beurre rouge, I would bring it down tighter and finish it with a lot of cold butter. Otherwise to make a red wine sauce with classic technique, I would knead cold butter with flour to make a beurre manié that I would whisk in to thicken the sauce.

But, we're in the process of losing a bunch of this COVID quarantine weight by minding our fat intake. So, I used a much lower fat way to bind the sauce. I mixed a little cornstarch with a bit of cold water to make a slurry. Then I dribbled this in bit by bit until the sauce thickened to my liking.

Last Time Outside for a Week

OK, so don't look too harshly on the indistinct grill marks on these filets. Even though I need to scrape the grill down good, I don't have a wire brush and I'm not running right out to Lowe's for just that. I'm not risking my health for something as inconsequential in the grand scheme as a grill brush. Even more important now to our health than COVID is the quality of our air. Have a look at the photos below.

The Wildfire Smoke Starting

Day Two, Dark Skies

Day Three, The Last Time We Saw a Little Sun

Day Three, Late Afternoon Red Skies

Day Four to Eleven, Choking Smoke

We should have seen the warning signs in the forecast from the NWS that included a red flag warning for violently gusty, hot, and super arid winds. I did see the warnings, but I never in my wildest dreams extrapolated them to spending the last eleven days closeted in the house with towels blocking off some doors.

We're used to fire season in the West. It's a natural artifact of our summer season in which we do not get rain for months on end. Each fall, before the rains begin and when the forests have desiccated all summer, we have forest fires. But what we don't have are 2020-style fires one-upping COVID for the Trauma of the Year award.

Back to the steaks which I saved for celebrating Labor Day. Given the constant northerly and easterly winds (our usual winds are SSW to NW in orientation) with wicked blasts sending loose things flying, I was not sure that I would be able to grill out as my Labor Day tradition dictates. I was afraid that a blast of hot, dry air would tip the grill over. Fortunately, when I went out to light the grill for its preheat, the wind was directly out of the north and the grill was in the lee of our next door neighbor's house.

I should have known that something was up when I found myself licking my lips and wishing I had lip balm, just like being in the dessert in New Mexico and Arizona. Although we have naturally low summertime humidity here in the Willamette Valley, it is a comfortable humidity that does not require us to maintain a steady stock of lip balm.

The first time that I licked my lips outdoors when lighting the grill, it tasted like a freaking ash tray, acrid and bitter. The reek of smoke was all around. After putting the steaks on the grill, I retreated to the house and only emerged to give them turns.

After turning off the gas, and bringing the steaks in for dinner, little did I know that that would be the last time I would go outside for over a week. I finally did relent and go to the grocery store on day 10, not having been shopping in 17 or 18 days and the cupboard really bare.

I also had no way of predicting that things would get worse and that of this writing, millions of acres are on fire or have already burned here in Oregon and we have the worst air quality in the world. This is unprecedented as far as I know, though one old-timer told us that the air has not been this bad since Mt. St. Helens erupted 40 years ago.

2020, we're screaming "uncle!" Do you hear?

 

Cutting Beef Tenderloin into Filets

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I do not eat much steak. Ann loves it a lot more than me. It's been over three years and possibly as long as five since I have had a steak. If I'm going to have beef, I'll have a burger or some melt-in-your-mouth shank. It is not that I do not like steak; I do. It is more that I love so many things better than steak that I rarely, if ever, crave it.

These days we are looking to eat low fat and there's no cut of beef lower in fat than tenderloin, which is why if I were ever to order a steak, a filet mignon would be the absolute last cut I would order. No fat equals no flavor. Plus filets have no texture and I want texture in my steak. I know from the restaurant days that I am in the minority; for many, steak means filet and only filet.

For me, of the traditional "high value" steaks, the New York strip, the top loin, would be the choice for its great texture and flavor. But my preference runs to lower value steaks, among which, the flatiron, a cut from the shoulder clod, is my favorite, with the teres major, another shoulder steak, and the hanger steak next.

That aside, beef tenderloin was on an incredible sale at my grocery store. Our store places their special values right in the entrance way and while I sometimes glance at them, I rarely buy them. But when I saw whole tenderloins for $5.89 a pound, the same price as the good hamburger, I about broke my neck doing a double take.

Long story short, I picked one up because it would be great to surprise Annie with her first steak in years. As I put the tenderloin in my cart, the store employee sitting at the door handing out masks to those who "forgot" them, said, "Good man! Those are a screaming deal!" No kidding!

I have no fear of bringing home a whole tenderloin. My restaurant was farm-to-table before that was ever a term and so we did a lot of small animal butchery as well as breaking down the larger sections of the bigger animals. I cannot tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of beef tenderloins I have broken down into thousands and thousand of filet steaks, so I'm really comfortable prepping my own steaks.

It's really easy to do and a great way to save a lot of money over buying pre-portioned steaks. For example, I paid 26 dollars for five meals for the two of us: eight 6-ounce filets mignons and two 5-ounce servings of steak tartare. The total cost for each portion of beef is just $2.60.

Mind you, I do not begrudge restaurants the prices that they have to charge for their food; it is a terribly hard business and I lived it for a career. Unlike a restaurant, when looking at my costs for the steaks I cut, I did not factor in my labor, my health insurance, my utilities, my mortgage, and all my other living expenses. I'm not saying do not eat steaks out; to the contrary, eating out helps keep our economy ticking. Rather, I am saying, if you're going to cook your own steaks at home, you might as well save a lot of money but cutting your own.

Here's a step-by-step photo essay on breaking down a beef tenderloin into filets mignons.

Whole Tenderloin, Minus the Chain

I'm used to entire tenderloins which as traditionally packed consist of three muscles. They are the tenderloin proper, the psoas major, the chain that runs alongside, the psoas minor, and the heel, the iliacus. We referred to these in the trade as PSMOs (Peeled, Side Muscle On) pronounced pizz-moes, like Pismo Beach, CA. We also called them 189As after the North American Meat Processors code for the cut. This tenderloin would go by code 190 because the side muscle (the chain, the psoas minor) is absent.

If your tenderloin has a chain, you'll see a very long thin piece of meat running alongside the tenderloin. Grab it with your hands and pull it off. The chain usually has long sinewy pieces running through it, but if you can pull them out, you have a really nice little chef snack to throw on the grill. I generally cleaned the chains and ground them for various uses.

The heel, the iliacus, is not really all that well visible in this photo, but you can see part of it sticking out near the butt of my knife. Dealing with the heel is the only tricky part of cutting tenderloins and we'll get to that later on.

You Need a Good Knife

The only catch in cutting steaks is that you need a good knife, but chances are, if you are looking to break down a tenderloin, you already own a decent knife. Whatever works for you, works for you, but a knife with a flexible blade will work best. I have used an inflexible chef's knife, but I don't recommend it. The upper knife on the cutting board is my boning knife, and the one I prefer for working with meat, while the lower one is my slicer, which I prefer for skinning and portioning fish. Either would work fine for prepping a tenderloin.

If you are serious about cooking, knives are a lifetime investment. I have had the boning knife about 40 years while the slicer is a relative newcomer to my kit at 30 years old. They both served me well at the restaurant. Good knives don't come cheap: to replace these two would be every bit of $250. Notice that they are both from different makers. When I bought a knife, I found the very best one that fit my hand, regardless of the maker. I don't subscribe to buying kits of knives and so I have knives from probably ten different makers, each selected for a specific function.

Start by Removing the Silverskin

In the photo above, you can see that the tenderloin is covered in an extremely tough sheath of silverskin. At any place that feels comfortable to you, slide the tip of your knife between the tenderloin and the silverskin. Then push the knife back through the silverskin so that you can remove it in strips.

Remove the Silverskin Strip by Strip

Until the Tenderloin is Cleaned

Tilting the knife blade up against the silverskin, so that you do not cut down into good steak, remove the silverskin strip by strip until the tenderloin is clean. You may have to remove some fat as well. In the photo above, you can see the pile of scrap at the top. Remember that scrap for it will become an awesome sauce for our steaks in another post. In other words, when butchering meat, never throw out anything without repurposing it first.

You also have a very clear view of the heel on the left side of this photo. My knife is lying beside the barrel of the tenderloin, also known as the chateaubriand. This is where the best center-cut steaks will come from.

Cut out the Center Steaks

I opted to cut 6-ounce steaks and I got four nice ones as you see in the photo above. Next, you have to decide what to do with the heel and the tail of the tenderloin. I decided to take one more steak out of heel end, for a total of five steaks.

The Upper Section of the Tail

The remaining part of the tail is too narrow by half to make a decent steak, but if you double that piece up, you can get a decent serving. This wouldn't be served as a premium steak in a restaurant, unless perhaps somebody ordered a well done filet, in which case all bets are off. But at home, you're not being judged on perfection and a doubled-up steak makes good sense. To start making the doubled-up steak, I cut a section of the tail that is twice as long as the other steaks are tall.

Split the Steak Almost in Half

You can either cut this piece in half and tie the two halves together or you can do as I have done here and cut the steak almost in half.

Fold the Two Halves Together

Now you can fold the two halves (still joined by a small flap of meat) down to form a steak the same size as the center-cut steaks. You'll want to tie this steak with a string to keep it together while cooking.

Leftovers: Heel (left) and Tail (right)

The heel section is trickier. The end where it joins the carcass will have more silverskin that you will need to remove. Depending on the tenderloin, it is usually possible, once all the silverskin is removed, to cut one or two more steaks that include part of the tenderloin and part of the heel. I got two more steaks, numbers seven and eight.

Heel and Tail End Steaks, Tied

You'll want to tie these half tenderloin-half heel steaks so that they keep their form while cooking and don't end up all ugly looking. These aren't your prime steaks in terms of looks, but they eat just fine.

Packaged for the Freezer

I kept the two prettiest steaks out for dinner, along with all the trim for steak tartare the following day. After wrapping the steaks for the freezer, I weighed them. My goal was to cut 6-ounce steaks. The two for dinner weighed 12.2 ounces and if you can read the writing on the packages above, the other three packages weighed 12.5, 12.2, and 12.2 ounces each. Despite my eyeballing each cut, I was able to be this consistent because of a lifetime of portioning meat. The welfare of my restaurant and its employees depended on that consistency. Don't expect to be this close; your ability to pay your mortgage does not depend on portion size!