Seafood Supper

Without a doubt, seafood is one of our favorite food groups and last night I made a couple of seafood dishes that I'd like to remember, hence this post. Sadly, I have cooked so many dishes in my life and professional career that I have forgotten more than I remember. Seafood features much less frequently in our diet than we would like, because despite being only 3-1/2 hours from the coast, good seafood is really hard to come by out here in the high desert. Believe it or not, our best source of seafood is often Costco. That's kind of hard to admit for a chef who used to buy directly from the boats, but it's true if a little sad.

John and Heidi came over for dinner last night and we all gathered around the kitchen island to eat. We had really hoped to at least have appetizers if not dinner out in the courtyard around the firepit. But wouldn't you know that it rained, albeit lightly, for the first time since spring? And after some really warm and smoky summer days of late, there was a marked chill in the air and way more humidity than we are accustomed to. Is fall here already on the last day of August? For goodness sake, it just finished snowing on the 19th of June!

Goat Cheese Crostini with Pink Shrimp and Fennel Pollen

Summer here in Oregon is pink shrimp season. Though these tiny shrimp are harvested in the ocean close to shore, they are often called Bay Shrimp. They are netted, then cooked and peeled and are available pretty reliably through the summer. I have been trying to find ways to work with them, an opportunity that I have not had before this summer. Last time, I made them into delicious shrimp cakes. This time, I made them into a quick salad to sit atop crostini.

The crostini are topped with a schmear of softened goat cheese and pink shrimp seasoned with a really great olive oil, lemon zest, salt, and fennel pollen. After I put these delicious appetizers together, I drizzled them with more olive oil, salt, and fennel pollen, then topped each with a fennel frond.

Roasted Steelhead Trout on Fines Herbes Israeli Couscous

I really love the marriage of fish with fines herbes, so I put the two of them together in this dish. Fines herbes is an herb mix used in classic French cooking with seafood, poultry, and other very light proteins. The canonical mix is parsley, chives, tarragon, and chervil, but I use whatever I happen to have on hand. This time the herbs would be Italian parsley, tarragon, and dill. Why is chervil so hard to find? I used it quite a bit at the restaurant, but I had to grow my own.

I boiled the couscous to almost done, then drained and mixed it with a steelhead cream sauce to finish cooking. Just as the pasta was finishing, I added sugar snaps (mange-touts) cut into one centimeter lengths, a big mound of finely chopped herbs, and a quick grating of pecorino romano. The steelhead cream sauce I made by cooking two minced shallots in butter, then adding a quarter cup of brined capers and roughly a quarter pound of diced steelhead trim leftover from portioning the fish. After the fish cooked a bit, I added a pint of cream and let it reduce by half. I made the sauce ahead and rewarmed it before adding to the couscous.

After roasting the fish, each portion went onto a bed of the couscous (which intentionally mimics the look and feel of risotto) and I topped each with a dollop of saffron aïoli and a dill sprig.

A Summer Dinner with Friends

It's been a few weeks that we haven't seen Rob and Dyce as both our schedules have been a bit busy this summer. We (well, Ann and Dyce are the planners) decided to have dinner Saturday night and invited them over to our house. In part, we wanted to make a nice dinner to thank them for their hospitality during our recent trip to McMinnville and wine country. But we also wanted to drink a little wine and sit out in our courtyard and have a pleasant evening, the recent wildfire smoke having abated somewhat.

Dinner would be on me. Ann stated that she would make her summer pudding for dessert, which is a good thing, because I don't eat sweets, don't care about dessert, and wouldn't have even thought about making any.

I'm the breed of chef that needs to be hands-on with foodstuffs in order to pull together a menu. That is, seeing and touching food starts my mind cranking through the endless possibilities to arrive at a menu. Without that input, I really don't get anywhere. I find it hard to create a menu in a vacuum. My menus have always been a response to what is fresh, what is best, and what is seasonal: the menus at my restaurant changed every day of the 15-plus years that I owned it.

My menu was informed by two shopping trips : Wednesday to the local Bend Farmers Market and Friday to Costco, still, believe it or not, one of the best places to secure center-of-the-plate proteins in Bend. It's not like the restaurant where I had access to anything and everything you could imagine, but it is what we have to work with out here in the high desert.

Wednesday at the farmers market, I saw just one pint of Padrón peppers and into my bag they went. When Ann asked me why I bought them, I answered, "to have another weapon in my arsenal." I didn't buy them with a plan to use them in Saturday's dinner, rather to have them on hand for whatever use because I am not going to pass up an opportunity to buy and eat one of the world's most delicious peppers.

That happy accident behind us, we went to Costco on Friday, primarily to secure new eyeglasses for me, my first in 15 years and sorely needed at that, but also to look around for interesting proteins. For me, interesting does not mean expensive. It merely means something that looks really good and which piques my chef-interest. We added a tray of tremendous looking and highly marbled USDA Prime tri-tip slices and a container of tiny Oregon pink shrimp, for a quasi-surf-n-turf dinner menu.

We're not big beef eaters (I might eat steak once per year) but it seemed like the safest bet. Dyce isn't a big fan of oily or fishy fish (the kind that we really love) or lamb, both of which looked really good, so we opted for beef. My preference would have been a nice cut of pork, but there wasn't anything on offer other than some rather ordinary and very lean top loin.

By the way, I have never worked with tri-tip, which when I was growing up was called bottom sirloin. I believe the name tri-tip originated in California long after I grew up. In any case, at my restaurant, weekly, I shared a local 180-day corn-fed Angus steer with several other restaurants and my share consisted of short ribs and skirt steak. Somebody else got the sirloin. Moreover, in a very high-end restaurant, it is hard to get customers, who walk in the door salivating for tenderloin or strip steaks, both fairly uninteresting cuts from a chef's perspective, to order more prosaic cuts such as tri-tip. Fortunately, I could move my skirts and ribs on the nightly tasting menu.

Gorgeous Tri-Tip (Bottom Sirloin) Slices

Reflecting on the menu and remembering the padrones that I bought at the farmers market, my mind turned a bit towards Iberia when planning dinner. And in a back-and-forth with Ann about menu ideas, she mentioned that she might like some Israeli couscous. This reminded me that at the restaurant, we often made Israeli couscous in the style of paella and I was off to the races with a plan for dinner.

Tri-Tip Marinating in Pimentόn, Olive Oil, and Garlic

First thing on Saturday, I mixed up a marinade of smoked paprika (Pimentόn de la Vera), garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper and slathered it on the tri-tip slices. Into the refrigerator they went to await their turn on the grill just before dinner.

After this, I turned my mind to the tiny pink shrimp that I planned to use for an appetizer. Again, I took my cue from Ann. As we were kicking ideas around and after I had rejected a bunch of more usual ideas, she asked, "Why not shrimp cakes?" I loved that idea for ease of preparation and ease of eating. I can make cakes of pretty near anything and I have during my restaurant career. But never shrimp, however.

While I drained the shrimp (already pre-cooked and shelled, if you have never worked with these tiny so-called bay shrimp that actually come from the ocean off the Oregon coast), I got busy chopping fines herbes: tarragon, dill, Italian parsley, and chives. I mixed the tiny drained shrimp with these herbs, a tiny amount salt (they are naturally fairly salty), white pepper, one egg (for two pounds of shrimp), and just enough mayo and panko to hold them together. Ann and I tasted the mix and I adjusted it by adding more parsley and dill. Into the fridge the mix went for several hours. This achieves two goals: it stiffens the mix as the panko starts to do its binding trick and the herb flavors bloom into the mix. 

After this, I made a quick lemon and chive aïoli using a single clove of garlic that I pounded to a paste with a touch of salt in my big green granite mortar. You have to be really careful with garlic paste in an aïoli because the garlic flavor will bloom in the sauce over time and can get really out of hand. One garlic clove is sufficient to make a cup of sauce. After mixing in finely minced chives and the zest of a lemon, I put the resulting aïoli in the fridge. All the flavors bloom (get stronger) and come together over the course of a couple hours.

An hour or so before Rob and Dyce were to arrive, I pattied out two-ounce cakes and pan-fried them. A trick with a really loose cake-mix like this is to lower the heat a touch and let the cakes really brown well. The crust will help them hold together.

Pink Shrimp Cakes

Shrimp Cakes in the Courtyard with Lemon-Chive Aïoli

Premier Cru Champagne with our Shrimp Cakes

After yakking and eating our fill of shrimp cakes (plus boiled peanuts that Rob and Dyce cooked and brought over) on the patio in the courtyard, it was time to grill some steaks in the gathering dusk. Grilling steaks, I'm an old hand at, having run the broiler station at the restaurant for years. Ordinarily, I grill steaks with two turns on each side to get beautiful crisscross grill marks, but these large, chunky steaks being square in profile, I cooked with one turn on each of the four sides, to a rosy medium rare by feel. Years of experience on the broiler means that I can pretty much tell temperatures of steaks just by looking at them.

Pimentón-Marinated Tri-Tip Grilled to Medium Rare

The steaks having been grilled and it getting dark outside, we moved our show into the kitchen. The steaks rested on the counter while I made the Israeli couscous and seared the peppers. Earlier in the day, I had prepped my sofrito just like I would have for paella: finely diced poblanos, red peppers, red onion, and green onion, along with minced garlic. These veg went into a pan with some saffron and pimentón to cook and then I added Israeli couscous and water (for paella, I spend a lot of time making a great stock). When the couscous was just tender but still had a bit of remaining bite, in a twist, I stirred in four ounces of softened goat cheese. This has a similar enriching effect to stirring butter and cheese (mantecare) into risotto.

Israeli Couscous Cooked à la Paella, Finished with Goat Cheese

Padrones Seared with Olive Oil and Salt

Plate Up: Couscous, Sliced Tri-Tip, Padrones, Pimentón Sauce Drizzle

Along with dinner, we opened a couple of bottles of Barbaresco, one of our favorite beef wines. Dinner was admittedly rich yet quite flavorful and so we wanted a wine that would help cut the richness (tannic or acidic) but not hide the myriad of flavors in the couscous (lighter bodied), so we chose a youngish Barbaresco. We just love the tannins and flavors along with the light body of the Nebbiolo grape.

So many sommeliers would have paired this with a bigger bolder wine such as a Cab, Cab-forward Bordeaux, or big Syrah such as Côte-Rôtie. To my palate, those big fruity wines hide all the nuance of the dish. What do I pair with Cabernet? I don't. To my palate, pairing Cab with food is akin to using a sledgehammer to nail in a tack.

And now we come to the highlight of our meal, Ann's summer pudding. None of us are dessert eaters, but she insisted. Her summer pudding starts with briefly cooking strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries in a scant amount of sugar. Then she lines a trifle mold with challah or brioche and then fills the mold with alternating layers of fruit and bread until the mold is filled. It sets in the refrigerator (blueberries in particular have a lot of natural pectin) and then is unmolded. She served it with a touch of cream whipped with dark rum.

Ann's Outstanding Summer Pudding

Ann served Dyce and Rob first and I asked her for a third of what she served them, not really wanting dessert and already very full from dinner. Not one to listen to me, she passed me an entire serving telling me to eat what I wanted and she would finish the rest. I took one bite and told her that she better make her own plate. It was so delicious that I ate the entire thing! We all did. This is one of those dishes that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Brava Annie!

All our Dessert Plates Looked Just Like This!

Shrimp Pasta Jambalaya

So I made something at home for the first time (made it plenty of times at the restaurant) that Ann asked me to make again: a pasta jambalaya, a riff on a traditional dish from South Louisiana.

Jambalaya, a rice dish with similarities to jollof rice from Africa and paella from Spain, is near and dear to my heart. I've made countless jambalayas of many stripes over the past five decades and am so comfortable making it that I have felt free for many, many years to adopt the idea and the technique as I have seen fit. In particular, in the past 20 years or so, I have adapted the technique used traditionally for rice to a newer version using Israeli couscous, a dish I call pasta jambalaya.

Shrimp Pasta Jambalaya with Israeli Couscous

Traditional jambalaya has evolved into two different but equal schools as have many Louisiana dishes: Creole and Cajun. The Creole version, essentially city cooking for the relatively richer people living in and around New Orleans, is tomato-based. The Cajun version, country cooking for the relatively poorer people from the bayous, tends to be roux-based. One is red, the other brown.

My heart lies in the simpler country cooking of the bayous and so my jambalaya almost never contains tomatoes, though in my early days learning the idioms of the Louisiana canon, I certainly made my share of all the classic Creole dishes. In extending my Cajun jambalaya to pasta, I make it with and without roux. Roux is essentially a thickener which is not necessary when cooking pasta in this fashion. The pasta will thicken the jambalaya without any assistance. Where roux makes a difference, however, is that inimitable flavor of flour highly browned in duck fat or lard. I did not use roux for this particular jambalaya because I was in a hurry and roux cannot be hurried.

The following photos illustrate the technique for making pasta jambalaya. It is not by accident that this is identical to making risotto. I make the two dishes in the same manner on the stovetop, just like paella. If I were making it in the traditional manner with rice, once I put the rice in the liquid, I would put the whole thing in the oven to finish à la arroz con pollo.

In the pan below, I have my trinity (onions, peppers, and celery) along with a little ham and garlic. My trinity is yellow onion, celery, poblano pepper, and in this case because I had a bunch of bottoms of green onions in the refrigerator needing to be eaten, sliced green onions. I use poblano peppers exclusively rather than Bell peppers that are used traditionally, merely because I don't really care for the flavor of Bell peppers. I contend that if the early Louisiana settlers had poblanos as an option, the cuisine would be based on them rather than Bell peppers.

I used a little cured ham in this, your basic supermarket ham steak. I would have preferred either tasso (spiced and smoked pork shoulder) or andouille (spiced pork shoulder cubes in a casing, smoked), easily available to the restaurant trade, but hard to find outside Louisiana in small quantities for home use. The smoked paprika in my house-made spice mix aka Magic Dust helps add some of the missing smoke flavor.

Trinity, Garlic, and Ham

Cook Until Onions are Translucent

A key part of any Cajun dish is the spice mix. Although pre-prepared spice mixes are now ubiquitous thanks to Chef Paul Prudhomme, I don't use any commercial mix, preferring the base recipe that I developed over many years at the restaurant. In addition to a lot of spice mix in the pan below, I also added a good sprinkle of filé powder (ground sassafras leaves). Although filé in jambalaya is probably heretical, I like the flavor.

Add Spice Mix and Cook for Another Minute

Add the Israeli Couscous (or Rice) and Stir Well

You can use whatever liquid you like in making this dish. If I had some shrimp stock, I would have used that. Chicken or vegetable stock would work great as well. I had neither, so I used water.

Add Liquid to Cover, Reduce Flame, Stir to Keep from Sticking

Add Liquid by Dribbles Until the Dish is Thick and Cooked

Once the pasta was nearly cooked and the liquid nearly evaporated (about three minutes before I thought the dish was done), I added a pound of medium peeled and deveined shrimp and stirred them until they just turned pink. As you can see in the very first photo, I think a sprinkle of grated pecorino works well on this dish, the old saw about "no cheese with seafood" be damned.

Israeli Couscous in the Style of Risotto

A lot of chefs, myself included, stretch their culinary vocabulary by learning classic techniques and then extending those techniques to non-traditional ingredients. For me, having learned to make risotto in my teens (more than 40 years ago now!), I have always loved the risotto technique and have extended it to many other ingredients. I once taught a series of cooking classes examining the classic technique for risotto and extending it to barley, farro, quinoa, and orzo.

Israeli Couscous in the Style of Risotto
Poached Eggs and Salsa Verde for Garnish

Recently, Ann ordered some Israeli couscous (because it's a favorite pasta and is not readily available in our markets) and that has seen me making couscous just like I would risotto, mainly for the simplicity of a one-pan meal, truth be told. Post-restaurant, I have to wash the dishes myself!

First Liquid Addition

Cooking Off the Final Liquid Addition

The classic technique is three-fold: sauté the onion and rice in fat, add the liquid in small additions until the rice is done (a bit of wine followed by stock), and finally mantecare, adding butter and Parmesan to finish the dish.

I extended this technique to my clean-out-the-refrigerator couscous. First, I sautéed my soffrito of onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, dried basil, sweet peppers, and asparagus slivers to evaporate some of the moisture in the vegetables. Then I added and toasted the couscous. Next, in went the liquid, water in this case because I already had a lot of flavor in the soffrito. To gild the lily, I could have used an aromatic saffron stock.

Once the pasta was just cooked after a few small additions of water, I then finished it à la true risotto with both fat and cheese. For fat, I made a quick pimentón aїoli and for cheese, I used grated cotija from Mexico.

To add protein to the dish, I poached eggs and put them on top, along with some salsa verde and cilantro for garnish. What is better than stirring egg yolk into a dish?

Father's Day: Beef Short Ribs

On my last run to Costco to get paper towels and toilet paper, I happened by a meat case that had a very few trays of phenomenal looking beef short ribs. And so I fell into the Costco trap, the MO of their business model: I came for the low-priced staples and walked out with an impulse buy. I am not an impulse buyer, except when it comes to food. If I see something interesting to cook, it is coming home with me. You'll never see me loading up on clothes or sweets, but I will splurge on short ribs!

This is a ton of meat for Ann and me, but fortunately, we had surprise guests for Father's Day weekend and I used that as an excuse to braise short ribs for Father's Day. I browned the ribs, then made a braising sauce from mirepoix, rehydrated dried porcini, leftover Super Tuscan Sangiovese, a tiny bit of leftover heavy cream, tomato paste, and veal glace. The ribs braised for 4-5 hours while we showed our guests the town of Bend.

Back at home and after pulling the ribs out of the oven, I removed the meat from the braising pan and defatted the sauce, while cooking a batch of Israeli couscous. I mixed some of the sauce into the couscous and divided it between bowls, topping each with a rib and more sauce. Delicious but incredibly rich, almost too rich for people who don't as a rule eat rich food!

Happy Father's Day to me!

Ribs, Sangiovese, Cream, Tomato Paste

Porcini, Parsley Stems, Celery, Onion, Carrot, Garlic

After Browning the Ribs, Making the Braising Sauce:
Sangiovese, Veal Glace, Heavy Cream, and Water

Ready for the Oven

Pregaming with Moscow Mules on the Patio

Out of the Oven, Prior to Defatting the Sauce

Et Voilà!

Quick, Midweek Dinner

Grilled Scallops on Risotto of Israeli Couscous

Last night was Thursday March 12 and the first beautiful evening after the spring clock change, the glorious first evening of the year when the weather and the light were both good enough to grill out. From long years of experience at the restaurant, I know that this means an empty dining room. I used to get so twisted up about this phenomenon and the cashflow implications, but after more than a decade of it, I now subscribe to the old adage, if you can't beat them, join them.

Accordingly, I left the restaurant to the crew (poor, poor bastards) at 5 p.m. with a few scallops and stopped by the store on the way home, searching for something. I left the restaurant with the idea that I would grill the scallops and serve them over an Israeli couscous risotto, something that would take 20 minutes or less to execute, but I needed something to go in the risotto or at least a vegetable garnish. Being in a very spring mood, I grabbed some sugar snaps, a leek, and some dill for the risotto.



Scallops, Sugar Snaps, Dill, Pecorino, Israeli Couscous, Leek, Saffron

Risotto of Israeli couscous is shorthand for saying that I cooked the couscous, a small, round pasta, in the same manner as I would have cooked Arborio rice for a risotto. First, I sweated the leek and saffron in some butter and once the leek had gone translucent, I added the couscous and water to just barely cover. As the couscous absorbed the water and the water evaporated, I added more water bit by bit until the pasta was cooked and the liquid incorporated. Next I added the raw chopped sugar snaps (chopped to mimic peas and to not be significantly larger than the pasta), a handful of chopped dill, and a half a cup or so of grated pecorino romano cheese. I stirred well, seasoned to taste with salt, and added a bit more water to achieve the texture I wanted.

Before I started the risotto, I fired up the grill and let it get good and hot for about 15 minutes while I prepped and started the risotto. Then I sprayed the grill down with Vegalene and placed the scallops on for about 4 to 5 minutes. They turned out as you see in the initial photo above.

Tips I have learned from years of grilling scallops (they are not the easiest thing in the world to grill because they want to stick mightily):

1. Start with dry scallops. Dry is a trade term for a shucked and rinsed scallop. Wet is a trade term for scallops that have been treated with a chemical (sodium tripolyphosphate) that acts as a preservative. Not only does it extend the shelf life of the scallops, it helps it retain water, and a scallop that retains water is a heavier scallop and one that nets more money for the seller. Unfortunately, when you cook said scallop, it oozes that retained water back out and you'll never get that scallop to brown.

2. Start with large scallops. U-10s to be exact. That is under 10 to the pound. You need a big scallop to stand up to the heat of the grill.

3. Start with a very hot grill. The grill bars need to be very hot to sear the scallop. Once seared, the scallop will release from the grill.

4. Just before placing the scallops on the grill, spray the grill and the scallops with Vegalene, a commercial pan spray. Don't screw around with inferior grocery store pan spray. If you're serious about grilling, go to the Internet and get some Vegalene.

5. Leave the scallops longer than you think you should. As I said, for these big boys, they were on the grill 4 to 5 minutes. It takes time to get that great sear so that the scallop will release. Don't rush it.

6. Cook the scallops on one side only. After you have left the scallops on the grill long enough to get great stripes on the show side, they don't need any further cooking.

Beautiful U-10 Dry Scallops

These scallops are gorgeous and you'll notice that some have a pink, orange, or coral tint. If you've ever shucked a female scallop and you've seen the bright coral color of the ovary (which we call the roe and is delicious), you have a good idea where this color comes from. Sometimes the females produce too much of the carotenoid zeaxanthin that colors the ovary and it leaches into the adductor muscle, the part that we eat. Hence, the colored meats are from female scallops. There is no difference in taste.

Quasi Mystery Basket Dinner

We had a full-on mystery basket dinner scheduled for Sunday. Each couple attending brings three ingredients and we all get together, figure out how to use all the ingredients, and make a meal. Some people use this as an opportunity to try to stump me (good luck with that) while others want to learn how to cook some ingredient that they would like to try at home. We always seem to end up with far more than three ingredients per couple and we always have a blast.

Our karmic forces were clearly in disarray Sunday because from early morning on, the phone let us know that one couple after another could not make it (for very legit reasons, not the least of which is that it is prime cold season). In the end, only Kelley and Marco Due showed up, but that's plenty of people for a nice relaxed dinner. And after my week of scrambling at the restaurant last week, relaxed is just fine by me.



Kelley and Mark brought chorizo, andouille, baby artichokes, cream cheese, and a blend of Israeli couscous, orzo, split chickpeas, and red quinoa. I contributed pork tenderloin, fregola sarda, pimentón, fresh green chickpeas (far right in the photo), and goat cheese, plus some random bits from the fridge (pecorino sardo, onions, green onions, yellow tomatoes).

Prepping baby artichokes is tedious but I love them so much that I am willing to go to the effort. Though I have to say that standing for an hour a prepping a bushel of baby artichokes for the restaurant is just no fun. But as long as I'm doing them in family-sized scale and I get to eat them, game on. Everybody else shelled the green chickpeas while I got to work on the artichokes, then Mark came and gave me a hand stripping the tough outer leaves off the artichokes. Happily, I only found one that had developed enough choke in the middle that I had to remove it.

This mix of ingredients is highly coincidental—déjà vu even! Saturday night, Kelley and Mark were at the restaurant for a tasting and for one of their courses I did a "risotto" of Israeli couscous, peppers, chorizo, artichokes, and tomatoes, finished with pimentón and goat cheese. What is really too funny about this is that they bought their ingredients for the mystery basket dinner before coming to the restaurant.

That couscous dish on everyone's mind, we decided to reprise it by pitching all the ingredients into a pan risotto style and serving it with roasted pork tenderloin. I ran out to the garden and picked some sage and rosemary and minced that fine along with garlic. This became the quick rub along with salt, pepper, and olive oil for the pork tenderloin.


And here's dinner. Not too shabby! Mark and Kelley, good time!