Something Old, Something New

From earlier in the spring, a couple of dishes celebrating the first asparagus of the year and the final butternut squash from winter storage, "Something Old, Something New."

The first dish took full advantage of a rare sunny spring day to grill both the asparagus and the butternut squash, giving them a nice char that works against the sweetness of the scallops. Garnishes are a quick sweet chile sauce and Korean chile threads known as sil-gochu.

Scallops with Grilled Asparagus, Grilled Butternut, Sweet Chile Sauce, and Chile Threads

Grilling the Veg

Black Steel Gives a Perfect Sear Every Time

Sweet Chile Sauce (Agave, Sambal, Salt)

The second dish came on the following night when the weather turned back to its usual rainy springtime norm, making us want something warm and comforting, the genesis of the butternut lentils, a batch of brown lentils cooked with cubes of the bell of the butternut, the leftover bits that I couldn't slice for the grill the evening before. The salad is shaved raw asparagus dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.

King Salmon, Butternut Lentils, and Shaved Asparagus Salad

Chipotle Chicken with Grilled Vegetable Salad

We had a bunch of things in the refrigerator that needed to be eaten and so I set about turning them into a delicious meal. I really succeeded with this grilled dinner of chicken and vegetables. The aim was to keep the fat to a minimum, so I deboned and skinned the chicken thighs. And the grilled vegetables were so tasty on their own that they needed no dressing. The only fat was a touch of pan spray on the vegetables to promote their charring.

Chipotle Chicken with Grilled Vegetable Salad

Chicken Thighs in Chipotle-Lime-Agave Marinade

When I buy chicken thighs, I buy an entire tray of 8 of them. After boning them out, I use the bones and skin to make chicken stock for the refrigerator. I'm always using chicken stock for all kinds of things, at least a quart a week.

These thighs went into a seal-top bag with a chipotle marinade and into the refrigerator for a few hours before grilling. To make the marinade, I blended three chipotles, a tablespoon of chipotle adobo, the juice of one lime, and three tablespoons of agave syrup.

Salad Vegetables, Ready to Cook

For vegetables for the salad, I scavenged the refrigerator and came up with a zucchini, two ears of corn, a big handful of green beans, and five nice Padrón peppers. Add to this a big onion from the pantry. My intent was to grill everything, chop it, and mix it with chipotle-roasted garlic salsa.

Vegetables on the Grill

Once the grill got blazing hot, I started by grilling the vegetables and getting them really charred. Charring gives them great flavor. After the vegetables came off, I put on the chicken. While the chicken was cooking, I assembled the grilled vegetable salad by chopping all the vegetables and slicing the charred corn kernels off the cobs. I mixed the grilled vegetables with a diced tomato and that was it.

With just a touch of salt, the mixed vegetables were so tasty on their own that I scrapped the idea of dressing them with anything. The salad was as delicious as it was beautiful.

Chipotle-Lime-Agave Chicken Grilling

For twenty minutes of prep time, we thoroughly enjoyed a delicious summer dinner that did not heat up the kitchen at all, a great return on my minimal investment of time. This was the first time that I have ever grilled green beans, believe it or not. We love to roast pans of haricots filets; they're a favorite snack, so I knew that grilling green beans would be delicious. Top top it off, a quart and a half of fresh chicken stock in the refrigerator was bonus!

Sweet and Salty Chicken and Rice Soup

I love Asian broth-based noodle soups of all kinds: ramen, pho, Thai roasted duck noodle soup. Sadly, living here in wine country (aka farmland), access to the ingredients I need to make those soups is tough. We have got to bite the bullet and drive in to Portland (or Beaverton, more likely) for a supply mission. I love living out here in the country, but....

The other day, I wanted such a soup so badly that I decided to improvise with what I had on hand.

Caramelizing Shallots and Ginger

From classic pho technique, I wanted to get color in the soup by caramelizing some shallots. In Vietnamese technique, you would char an onion and some garlic to get color. After the shallots colored darker than you see above, I added a quart or so of chicken stock.

While I wanted noodles in my soup, there's no source for them here and none in the pantry, so I added rice and let it cook until soft, about 20 minutes.

Similar to Thai roasted duck noodle soup, I wanted a sweet-salty component that I would normally get from balancing fish sauce and palm sugar. Having no palm sugar, I used agave syrup with fish sauce. It worked really well as a substitute.

I love soft-boiled eggs in ramen, so at the last minute, I poached a couple of eggs right in the soup. 

Sweet and Salty Chicken and Rice Soup
with Poached Egg, Green Onion, and Cilantro

This turned out to be a really great soup with all the flavors I wanted, even though I had almost none of the ingredients that I wanted. Necessity, as they say, provided us with a soup that I want to remember.

Grilled Tequila Lime Chicken with Mango-Chipotle Salsa

For me, the hardest part of making dinner is deciding what to cook. Fortunately, Annie is pretty good about throwing out ideas, such as the tequila lime chicken she mentioned last week. I decided to do the chicken as tacos topped with mango salsa. Mangos are 48 cents each right now, so we have a bunch in the house. Recipes below.

Tequila Lime Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle Salsa

You can use whatever chicken you want. I have no use for chicken breasts, so I always buy thighs. I boned out 6 chicken thighs for this dish, using the skins and bones for making chicken stock. And then putting the skins in Charlie's dinner to try to put some weight on him. His tumors are making him really skinny.

Grilling Marinated Chicken Thighs

Tequila-Lime Marinade

Mix the following ingredients and place in a seal top bag. Add the chicken and marinate for at least an hour and preferably overnight. The sugar in the agave syrup will really help give you great grill marks on the chicken, as you can see above. This would also be great for shrimp.

zest of one lime
juice of one lime
1-1/2 ounces tequila
2 tablespoons agave syrup
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
stems from one bunch of cilantro, finely minced

Mango-Chipotle Salsa

Mango-Chipotle Salsa

This is about as simple as salsa gets. Mix all the ingredients. The quantities below are for your benefit. You don't actually think I measured anything, do you?

1 ripe mango, diced
juice of half of a lime
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 bunch of cilantro, chopped
finely minced chipotle, to taste
salt to taste

Thai Chicken Salad

On Monday, Ann and I were both running different directions and we missed the opportunity to discuss what was for dinner, so I ended up making an executive decision. Given that it was a warm day, I wanted something cool, light, and highly flavorful.

Thai Chicken Salad

And so I decided to grab a pre-roasted chicken, some herbs, some lettuce, some vegetables, and throw together a salad. I'm calling this Thai Chicken Salad, but I doubt seriously that it has a counterpart in Thailand, though Thai cooks would recognize the spirit of the dish.

Salad Fixings

The first thing I did was to throw together a quick dressing, which you see in the bowl at the top of the photo, of freshly squeezed lime juice, fish sauce, sambal oelek, and agave nectar. Agave isn't used in Thailand but it has the benefit of dissolving readily in a cold dressing. It works better than sugar and I am all about works better.

Then I diced some of the chicken breast and gave it a quick marinade in the dressing while I tossed cilantro and Thai basil leaves with some lettuce leaves. I put the undressed leaves on a platter and then put tomatoes, sweet orange peppers, cucumber, and red onion rings over that. Then I spooned on a good bit of dressing and tossed the chicken on top.

I love crunchy bits in a salad, so on top of everything, I scattered some roasted peanuts and crispy fried shallots.

This was a delightful salad that we gorged ourselves on while sitting in a chair and eating right out of the platter with two forks!

Roast Pork Soup

What to eat that is filling, warm, comforting, low-carb, and low fat? How about some terrifically delicious soup with roasted pork?

Roast Pork Soup: As Beautiful as it is Delicious!

There are several tricks that we chefs use to make first-rate soups. We start by jamming as much flavor into the soup stock as possible. And then we cook each of the garnishes separately so that they are at the peak of goodness. And everything is assembled at the last second before going to the table to preserve freshness of and prevent muddling of flavors. This soup is an exercise in just that.

Garnishes for the Soup

This soup has both raw and cooked garnishes, which you see in the photo above, staged for cooking. The cooked garnishes are the pork in the foreground and the green plate in the background. The raw garnishes are the cilantro, snow peas, and pickled mustard stems on the right of the photo.

Just before serving dinner, I quickly sautéed the nappa cabbage, shiitakes, carrots, pressed and spiced tofu, lop cheung sausage, and Chinese chives with finely minced ginger and garlic. After just a minute in the pan, I divided these among our deep soup bowls. Over this, I scattered the snow peas and the mustard stems. On top, I placed three small slices each of roast pork and then over all, I ladled on boiling soup stock, garnished with fresh cilantro, and rang the dinner bell.

Stock, the Key to any Great Soup

While I was prepping vegetables, I put together a stock, starting with a base of chicken stock. Into the stock I put several slabs of ginger, six lightly crushed cloves of garlic, a bunch of cilantro stems from last week, the bulb ends of a bunch of green onions from last week, the stems from the shiitake mushrooms, and the pièce de résistance, four or five fresh double kaffir lime leaves. I hadn't planned on adding lime leaves, but when I saw fresh ones in the market, I couldn't resist. Who can resist their unique and haunting citrus flavor? The stock simmered away while we watched a movie.

Hoisin-Agave Roasted Pork Loin

Early on in the afternoon, I rubbed a piece of very lean pork loin with hoisin sauce, agave nectar, and black pepper and let it sit on the counter to warm slightly before cooking. I roasted it at very high temperature for about 25 minutes to an internal temperature of 135F (knowing it would carry through to 145 or slightly higher while cooling).

All these steps and separate cooking or not of garnishes, really, is arguably a lot of fuss for a bowl of soup. But I'm a chef and this is what we do. And the results? You can't argue with them.

Pork Tenderloin Bánh Mì

Monday morning came way too early after a late Sunday night out on the patio and I wasn't in the mood really to think about dinner. Moreover, Ann left her phone in Dimitri's car and I had no way to talk to her about dinner as we usually do on Monday mornings, so I was left to my own devices.

At some point during the morning, I got this vision of a pork tenderloin bánh mì in my mind and that was all the spark I needed for dinner.

Pork Tenderloin Marinated in Hoisin, Fish Sauce, Garlic, and Cilantro

I sliced the pork tender into medallions which I flattened with the side of my knife blade and then threw into a seal-top plastic bag with hoisin, fish sauce, and finely minced garlic and cilantro stems.

Simple Garnishes: Cucumber, Cilantro, and Fried Red Onions

This Bánh Mì Tasted Even Better Than it Looks

I made a spicy mayo to go on the bread from equal parts sriracha, hoisin, agave nectar, minced garlic and cilantro stems, all mixed with two parts mayonnaise. For a little crunch, I sprinkled on Thai fried red onions, which I believe is a misnomer. I believe that they are shallots fried in palm oil and they are one of my favorite guilty pleasures!

Cellophane Noodle Salad with Grilled Red Drum

After a really unpleasantly hot and humid weekend full of nasty thunderstorms, Monday started out to be a carbon copy, but turned out to be a pretty decent day and cool enough to sit outside. Finally! And I was able to move a late afternoon meeting up by an hour so that I could get home to enjoy the nice weather that developed during the day.

Note to self: I am under strict orders from my wife to give her credit for the following dinner.

During the morning and early afternoon, it was pretty humid and it looked like the day was going to be a rehash of the weekend: soupy air and threat of thunderstorms. And the morning is when we discuss what we want for dinner. Given the weather, we were looking for something light and Ann had Asian on the brain and specifically mentioned cellophane noodles (the credit, folks, is all hers). I wanted grilled fish, so I put the two together.

After we picked the kids up from school at 5:00, I started prepping dinner, making a quick cellophane noodle salad (yum woon sen), the dressing for the salad, and prepping a side of red drum.



Standard Thai Salad Dressing

Dressings in Thailand are very simple and although I make mine from slightly different ingredients than they would in Thailand, the end result is almost identical. The dressing above is a mix of lime juice, sambal oelek, fish sauce, minced garlic, and agave nectar. I use sambal so that I don't have to crush the chiles in a mortar and I use agave nectar so that it goes directly into solution without a lot of stirring. A basic recipe idea is:

    juice of 3 limes
    3 tablespoons agave nectar (to taste)*
    3 tablespoons fish sauce
    2 tablespoons sambal oelek*
    2 cloves garlic, minced

Mix well. Adjust seasonings to your taste. Makes enough for a large salad.

*or your favorite sweetener/your favorite heat

Cellophane Noodle Salad without Fish and Dressing

Cellophane noodles, aka glass noodles, bean thread, woon sen, among other names, is a noodle made from various kinds of starch, most typically mung bean. They have a slippery-crunchy quality that makes them perfect for cold salads (although they are often stir-fried, see pad woon sen). They come in small bundles, each of which is typically enough for a single serving. Cover the bundles with boiling water and let stand for 5-10 minutes, then drain the noodles, and spread them out to cool off. When cool, chop into manageable lengths with a knife (or some people use scissors).

Mix with your favorite crunchy raw vegetables and herbs and toss with dressing. Add a protein if you like. My salad above has noodles, orange peppers, red peppers, carrots, cilantro leaves, and Thai basil leaves, green onions, lots of each. I love sliced red onion in this salad too, but didn't have any. No worries, it's just a salad!

After prepping all this, we went outside and enjoyed a glass of wine while the noodles were chilling and the grill was heating. I congratulated my wife on her brilliant choice of dinner.

Asprinio d'Aversa, our new Favorite Summertime Sipper

The wine that we opened is our new favorite summer sipper, a sparkling Asprinio from the town of Aversa, near Naples in Campania. We just love this lightly creamy wine: it feels more like beer in the mouth than sparking wine and it is a touch cloudy. The nose to me is of yeast, beer, apple cider, pear cider (perry), and apple sauce. The flavor on the palate reminds me of similar things but with really nice and refreshing acidity. It kind of reminds me of Mauzac a bit and some of the Blanquettes de Limoux that I have tasted, only a lot better than any Mauzac that I have ever had. This particular bottling from Grotta del Sole is also famous for being made from grapes from vines that are trained to grow up poplar trees. It's a pretty cool sight to see.

Dinner! All Ann's Idea!

When we were good and relaxed and the grill nice and hot, I put two big slabs of drum skin side down on the grill and closed it up, checking every few minutes until each piece had just turned opaque. I scraped the fish off the skin into the salad and tossed it all with dressing, all the while complimenting my beautiful wife on her wonderful dinner idea.

Dead Soldiers at Dusk

I am so glad that Ann had this idea for dinner tonight. She deserves all the credit.

Shrimp, Snow Pea and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

Shrimp, Snow Pea, and Lop Cheung Chow Mein

What to make for dinner isn't usually hard for me to figure out, but in the last few days, I just haven't had the cravings that send me in a particular direction. Nor has Ann. And so it was that I found myself at FoodMaxx yesterday before coming home, wandering the store quite aimlessly trying to figure something out. I know the guys stocking the produce were wondering why I, who generally gets in and gets out in 10 minutes, was wandering back and forth for 45 minutes.

I knew I wanted something fresh and crunchy but fairly light. I selected some snow peas even though they are woefully out of season knowing that Ann loves them so. For myself, I would have used gai lan, Chinese broccoli. Then I spied a beautiful orange Bell pepper and a bunch of garlic chives with buds, which for some unkown reason FoodMaxx labels Q Flower.

Over in the freezer case, I needed to see if I could find some lop cheung (sweet Chinese sausage) that didn't contain pork for a dinner I am doing later in December. No such luck: all five brands contain pork. While that means that I am going to plan B for my upcoming dinner, I did get introduced to a new brand of lop cheung from California Sausage. This sausage looks really nice and different from the other brands, so I put it in my basket to try.

Then back to the produce aisle where a few shiitakes caught my eye. Then I wandered to the seafood counter where they had beautiful large white shrimp at a great price. Into the basket with them. Meanwhile a stir fry of some sort was materializing in my mind and as I wandered by the noodles, I grabbed a package of udon thinking then about chow mein. I grabbed udon because I prefer them to the Chinese-style noodles that FoodMaxx stocks.

Back home, the assembly was easy. While Ann peeled the shrimp, I prepped the vegetables, a lot of fresh ginger, a big mound of slivered garlic, and thinly sliced lop cheung. Then I mixed some soy sauce, agave nectar, crushed red pepper flakes, and Chinese Zhenjiang black vinegar (Chinkiang brand).

I fried the noodles en masse in a skillet and then flipped them to crisp both sides. The resulting pancake I slid onto a platter where it waited while I stir fried the topping and then added the sauce and reduced it.

After all the work I put into figuring out what to have for dinner, I think I got it right! It was just what the doctor ordered. And the new brand of lop cheung was fantastic, the best I've ever had!

Seís de Mayo: Quesadillas Etc.

This is the third post of four on our Seís de Mayo party.


Sangria

To warm everyone up when they arrived, I made two big pitchers of so-called sangria from Pinotage (a South African grape that is the scion of two French grapes, Pinot Noir and Cinsault). This is not really sangria so much as it is a berry wine punch, but I was under orders. ;) I mixed the wine with tequila and St. Germain and then added mixed berries, fresh pineapple, lemon slices, lime slices, and agave nectar.

Pinotage: Fruity and Inexpensive, Just Right for Sangria

Quinoa Salad with Black Beans, Avocados, and Lime-Cumin Vinaigrette

Ann makes a delicious salad of quinoa, black beans, red onions, avocados, tomatoes, garlic, cilantro and whatever else she feels like putting in it, all dressed with a simple vinaigrette flavored with lime juice and cumin. It's just a wonderful side dish (or even a great vegetarian summer main dish).

Quinoa Salad

Quesadillas with Chorizo, Bison Skirt Steak, Poblanos and Onions

Quesadillas are fun to make for a crowd, either on a grill or as I did it, in a pan on the stove. You can put just about anything you want in them, but I was in the mood for chorizo. The cheese we used was some generic pre-shredded white cheese from the grocery labeled "Queso para Pupusas," cheese for pupusas, that amazing Salvadoran stuffed tortilla. Any melting cheese will do.

And what better to go with sausage than peppers and onions? The five pounds of onions and peppers that I started with cooked down by at least half. I was planning for leftovers anyway, because how useful is it to have onions and peppers in the fridge?

We also had a tiny bit of bison skirt steak leftover, so I cooked that too.

Bison Skirt Steak, Nice and Rare

And I leave you with two parting shots.

I can feel your jealousy from here, dear reader.

Stay tuned for the final episode in which dessert gets made!