Chickpea Salad with Yogurt Dressing

Chickpea Salad with Yogurt Dressing

This post is mostly a note to myself to remember this salad, because Ann really loved it. I made it last evening from odds and ends I had in the kitchen that needed to be used. It's a two-part salad, the base of which is arugula tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. The chickpea salad on top is chickpeas, olives, green onions, and grape tomatoes tossed in a yogurt-based dressing.

The dressing, very much a spur of the moment thing, is plain Greek yogurt flavored with garlic, cumin, and salt, spiced with chipotle adobo, and thinned with water. If I were making a true Mediterranean-inspired dressing, I would have used some other kind of spice, such as Urfa or Aleppo pepper, or even a bit of harissa, but I have a can of chipotles open in the refrigerator that needs to be used.

Update: I have cooked so much food in my life that I have forgotten much of what I have done. In cruising through old posts, I came across a recipe for this dressing that I published back in 2020. I totally forgot about it.

Arroz con Pollo Soup

One of my favorite meals is arroz con pollo, the dish of baked chicken and rice. I made it frequently for staff meals at the restaurant and it is one of my go-to dishes when I want comfort. It's turned cold here in Oregon (heretofore, our winter has been extremely mild as is usual) and that's got me wanting both hot soup and comfort.

I was going to make a salad a couple nights ago, but the weather turned against that, as did Ann, who in rebelling against the salad idea said, "I want soup." In going through the refrigerator, I saw leftover chicken, chicken stock, and diced Anaheim chiles from our Super Bowl chicken chile tostadas.

I started craving arroz con pollo, but with only a few ounces of cooked chicken on hand, I wasn't equipped to make it. But in response to Ann's request, I could make a killer soup from the leftovers that would taste identical to arroz con pollo.

Arroz con Pollo Soup

Soffritto for Soup

I started by warming the leftover chicken, stock, and chiles with a can of tomatoes while I prepped the vegetables for the soffritto: a yellow onion, half a bunch of green onions, a bunch of cilantro, a yellow pepper, a poblano, and eight cloves of garlic. I sautéed all these veg with a big pinch of saffron until the onions started to go translucent. Into the stock pot they went to simmer for a half an hour. I seasoned the soup with salt and sambal oelek (crushed red jalapeños) and then tossed in two big handfuls of rice to cook in the broth.

I would typically make this dish with achiote instead of saffron, but I don't have any achiote. Achiote was very common and cheap on the East Coast where a lot of our immigrants came from the Yucatán, the Caribbean, and other eastern locales where achiote is king. Out west, there doesn't appear to be the demand for achiote and I cannot find it anywhere, hence the saffron. I'm sure I can find it in Portland, but who wants to drive in from wine country and deal with that traffic?

This soup hit all the right notes: arroz con pollo flavor and soup comfort with just the right amount of sinus clearing spice. What a great soup!

New Year's Black-Eyed Peas

It's an old tradition, at least in the South, that we eat black-eyed peas for good luck in the new year. I don't know what in the hell happened in 2020: I assure you that I ate my black-eyed peas. This year, I wanted to do a dish reminiscent of my time in New Orleans, a creole take on a black-eyed pea stew.

Creole Black-Eyed Peas

Ready to Cook

The dish is simply made. I decided to start with two pounds of dried black-eyed peas because I wanted leftovers for lunches. After draining and rinsing the soaked peas, I put them in the slow cooker with a chunk of smoked turkey neck, large can of diced tomatoes and juice, a lot of minced garlic (an entire bulb, minced), and a bunch of "trinity." My trinity comprised two poblanos, a bunch of green onions, a huge yellow onion, and three stalks of celery, all diced. I filled the slow cooker with water and put it on high for seven hours (and it was done in about 6:45).

Later in the day, I mixed up a batch of my Cajun spice mix, which I call Magic Dust. I would have put it in from the get go, but I was out. My spice mix contains thyme, salt, black pepper, white pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, basil, oregano, smoked paprika, mustard, and bay leaves. I grind the basil, oregano, mustard, thyme, and bay to order. My ratios have been determined by trial and error over forty years. I don't currently have any onion powder, so I went heavy on the granulated garlic. I added three heaping spoonsful of spice mix to the stew.

Once the beans were tender, I mashed a bunch of them against the side of the slow cooker with the back of a wooden spoon. This helps thicken the stew, otherwise, you end up with a sort of thin black-eyed pea soup, not what I was aiming at.

Although this stew contains a chunk of smoked turkey for flavor, it would make a fantastic vegetarian stew by omitting the meat. My Cajun spice mix has enough smoked paprika in it to give a smoky flavor without the smoked meat.

Temaki: Spicy Tuna Hand Rolls

As I have lamented elsewhere, there is no place we trust in our town for sushi and so I have been doing my own raw fish dishes to scratch that particular itch. The spicy salmon tartare that we had recently got our sushi urges raging and Ann was really longing for hand rolls, so I made some spicy tuna temaki for us.

Ann Models a Spicy Tuna Hand Roll

Check out Ann's new Christmas nail job! We ended up eating the hand rolls standing at the counter. I would roll a couple, we would eat a couple, and so forth. All great fun.

Hand Roll Mise en Place

For the tuna, I minced some seedless cucumber and sliced some green onions and then made a spicy sauce of equal parts sriracha and soy sauce with a little sesame oil for flavor. I combined these two with the minced tuna and toasted sesame seeds.

Earlier in the afternoon, I had cooked a bit of good sushi rice. Fortunately, we grow excellent sushi rice in California and it is readily available in grocery stores. Although I love imported brands from Japan, my tried and true California brand is Nishiki, but my store doesn't carry it. What I have found is that most sushi rice brands can be very good, but what is really messed up are the cooking instructions.

Most brands call for too much water, resulting in an overcooked mushy mess, especially after you add the seasoned rice vinegar to the rice. In general, I have found that 1 portion of rice to a scant 1 and an eighth portion of water is a very good ratio, depending on how fresh the rice is. For reference, a cup of uncooked sushi rice will make a good dozen temaki.

As for seasoned vinegar, I don't mess with it. I use plain rice vinegar into which I stir a little sugar or agave nectar for sweetness. I use about an eighth cup per cup of rice and sprinkle it over the hot rice, gently turning the rice while it cools to room temperature.

Lay Rice on One End of the Nori

Making temaki, hand rolls, is child's play. It's fun to let everyone, kids included, roll their own. Mistakes are still edible! Start by slicing a sheet of nori down the center longways. Place it shiny side down on your board and with moistened fingers, spread a little rice on one end.

Lay the Filling on the Rice

Lay the filling or fillings on the rice on the diagonal. Start rolling by grasping the lower corner, the lower left corner in this case, and bringing it across the filling until the lower corner meets the top edge. I like to roll left to right. They roll right to left equally easily.

Roll the Resulting Cone Over Itself

Continue to roll the resulting cone over itself until you have but a small flap remaining. Put a few grains of rice on the flap to act as glue, then press the flap down onto the body of the cone.

Spicy Tuna Hand Rolls

Annie Demonstrating Temaki-Eating Skills

Vegetable Tacos

Vegetable tacos are something that I started making seriously this summer during grilling season and because they are so delicious, have become a regular quick dinner chez nous. Since I first posted about them back in October, I have formulated a strategy for making them that I will outline below, using vegetables that I prepared stovetop.

Vegetable Tacos

As I have been experimenting with dozens of veggie tacos, I have fallen into a procedure which involves mixing cooked ingredients with raw ingredients just before serving. This yields a warm, but super fresh taco.

Preparing the Raw Ingredients

In a large bowl, I mix the raw ingredients: green onion, cilantro, tomatoes, cotija, and finely minced chipotle. In season, I would likely include raw corn in this mix.

Searing the Cooked Ingredients

For the cooked ingredients, which I grill in good weather, the mix varies depending on what I have on hand. This pan contains onions, poblanos, yellow squash, and asparagus. Almost anything goes in veggie tacos and I have used eggplant, zucchini, and green beans this past summer. To mimic the intense cooking on the grill, sear the veggies hard if you are using a pan.

When the veggies are done, mix them immediately with the raw ingredients and season to taste with salt and spice. Serve with slices of lime on warm corn tortillas.

Although veggie tacos don't sound all that great, I assure you that they are delicious and addictive.

Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

I don't guess it comes as any surprise that we eat a lot of tacos here at the casa. I love street food and a tacos are a big part of that for me. You can find a taco truck anywhere out here. I'm always thinking of new taco ideas just to shake things up and this week I decided to make jerked chicken tacos.

Jerked Chicken Tacos with Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

You can see the tacos above in the photo. They also got some slaw on them before we ate them, but I wanted to photograph them without the slaw so you could see how attractive the mango salsa is with its contrasting flecks of chipotle. There's a recipe for the salsa at the end of this post.

Jerk Paste Ingredients

I'm a big fan of jerked chicken (pork and goat too!) and I like to make it even though I don't have any pimiento wood over which to smoke the chicken. We used to mimic this at the restaurant by adding allspice berries to the wood chips when we were smoking the meat. At home, I skip this step.

Jerk paste varies from person to person as do most things in life, but all versions are good. The one time that I wanted a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper from my store, they don't have it. So I substituted serrano instead. Serranos have straight ahead heat and lack the apricot fruitiness of a good habanero or Scotch bonnet, but what's a guy to do?

My paste consists of ginger, shallots, green onions, serranos with seeds, fresh thyme, and lots of freshly ground allspice. After mincing everything by hand, I let the food processor combine everything and then I finished the paste to taste with some salt and equal parts of brown sugar and vinegar.

Shallots are not super traditional in jerk paste, while garlic is obligatory. I find that shallots help bulk out the paste and they turn plenty garlicky when puréed in the food process or blender.

Boneless Chicken Thighs in Jerk Paste

I skinned and deboned a bunch of chicken thighs (saving the bones and skin for stock) and covered the thighs in jerk paste. They stayed in the refrigerator overnight.

Jerked Chicken on the Grill

If I had the right set up, I'd love to smoke my chicken low and slow, but alas, I am limited to my grill. Still, it gives great flavor to the chicken, just not quite the traditional flavor.

Mango-Chipotle-Vanilla Salsa

To accompany the jerked chicken on our tacos, I made a spicy mango salsa. The unique thing about this salsa is something that I stumbled onto while playing with mango salsa years ago at the restaurant: vanilla is a haunting dance partner for mango. We used vanilla beans at the restaurant; at home, all I have is extract, good quality extract to be sure. I don't use enough vanilla to warrant purchasing beans. We bought them buy the half kilo at the restaurant and would use a dozen or more beans a week, mostly in flavoring desserts, but sometimes in more savory applications such as this salsa:

1 large very ripe mango
2 chipotles en adobo
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup rice vinegar

2 cups water 

few drops of vanilla extract

Put all the ingredients in the blender except the vanilla and process until smooth. Season to taste with salt (which will help pop the vanilla). Then add vanilla a few seeds or drops at a time until you are happy with the flavor. But remember, too much vanilla is too much: go easy. If your mango was not very ripe, you may need more sugar to balance the sauce. I would use brown sugar. You could also use lime juice in place of the milder rice vinegar for a more tropical effect, but for this salsa I prefer the milder less puckery rice vinegar.

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.

White Beans with Potato and Chorizo

Damn, I've gone and done it again. I created a dish that is really comforting, really tasty, and according to Weight Watchers, shitty for you.

White Beans with Potato and Chorizo

Weight Watchers and I tangle every so often. In general, any system that gets people to be accountable for what they eat and to be cognizant of choices is a good thing. But the one-size-fits-all points system unnecessarily penalizes some good things in its crusade against fat and carbs. I don't like the way that they penalize high-fiber good carbs such as beans, lentils, and chickpeas. Ann does Weight Watchers and we get into it now and again. Things were going along really well with this dish until the dreaded points were calculated. Then it became food non grata. I'm still going to make it again, hence my writing this post so that I remember it.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large yellow potato, unpeeled, in 3/8" dice, about a cup
2 3-ounce Salvadoran chorizos, skinned
8 cloves garlic, minced
2 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, washed and drained
1 large sweet red pepper, in 3/8" dice
1 bunch green onions, sliced
1/2 medium red onion, small dice
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

In a sauté pan, heat the olive oil, then add the yellow potato cubes and cook until they are brown and crispy on about three or four sides. Season as you go. Remove half of the potatoes to a salad bowl. Return the remainder to the heat and pull apart the chorizos in small bits into the potatoes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until the chorizo is just cooked through. Remove to the salad bowl. Add the drained cannellini, red pepper, red and green onions, and the smoked paprika. Stir well and season to taste.

Turkey and Shrimp Lettuce Wraps

Monday was one of those days that I just couldn't get inspired about food. It happens. Ann and I were on the phone trying to plan dinner before I hit the grocery store and I could tell she was getting frustrated by my lack of input and lack of enthusiasm for her ideas. I just wasn't feeling anything. She started surfing through something on her computer when she came across and suggested lettuce wraps. And that finally struck a chord with me.

Turkey and Shrimp Lettuce Wraps with Thai Basil

Mise: Thai Basil, Mystery Vegetable, Green Onions, Sugar Snaps, Shrimp, Ginger

I started off by quickly cooking minced ginger, garlic, and cilantro stems in a very hot pan. Next went in the ground turkey and Ann stirred it until it was almost cooked. I then added about a tablespoon each of sambal oelek, sugar, and black pepper. Once this was stirred in well, I added a fair amount of fish sauce, liberally sprinkling it over the meat. Finally, in went the green vegetables (sliced sugar snaps, mystery vegetable aka preserved mustard stems, chiffonade of Thai basil, and green onions) along with the shrimp. I let this cook for another two or three minutes just to reduce the sauce to thick and sticky.

Salmon Burgers

Ann had mentioned liking salmon burgers at some point last week and as I buy a side of salmon each week to snack on after work, I decided to turn this week's salmon into salmon burgers for her. I'm no stranger to salmon burgers: they were on the lunch menu at the restaurant for a couple of years in the early days until I figured out that nobody comes to my restaurant for sandwiches. It's a shame for it's a great sandwich.

Salmon Burger

Making salmon burgers is pretty trivial. I took the pin bones out of a side of salmon and skinned it, then cut it into large dice. Into the food processor it went and I pulsed it until it was the consistency of burger. To this I added a bunch of a quarter cup of capers, a half teaspoon of salt, a quarter cup of whole grain mustard, and a big handful each of chopped fresh dill and sliced green onion. I pulsed it again a couple of times to mix everything and then formed it into bun-size patties. A couple of minutes per side in a hot pan and we were eating. These burgers really are great.

Bonus Dinner: Cellophane Noodle Salad

Tuesday was about as odd a day in the restaurant business as one could imagine. School just started so we had no reservations and not much hope of any dinner business either. Worse still, our disgruntled dishwasher called out sick after posting on Facebook on the weekend that he hates his job and never wants to wash dishes again, so we were stuck with no dishwasher.

However, one of our line cooks volunteered to come in and wash dishes for the extra hours on his paycheck. And with the extra line cook in the kitchen, there was really no need for me to be there, so I took the night off and stopped by the grocery store to pick up some items to make that cellophane noodle salad that Ann and I had discussed as a possibility for Sunday's dinner.

Cellophane Noodle Salad with Shrimp

This light, refreshing salad was just what the doctor ordered. Ann and I ate it while catching up on some TV.

Salad Ingredients Save for Shrimp and Noodles

This is a freeform salad that takes little time to prep, cook, and devour and should be in everyone's culinary arsenal. Five minutes of prep included cutting up two bunches of cellophane noodles with kitchen scissors and covering them in warm water, defrosting eight big shrimp, slicing a quarter of a small red onion, cutting half a bunch of green onions into batons, likewise for a small pickling cucumber and a small orange pepper, picking some cilantro leaves, harvesting some Thai basil leaves from the garden, and making a batch of nước chấm from lime juice, fish sauce, garlic, sambal oelek, and agave nectar.

When we were ready to eat, I quickly cooked the shrimp, drained the noodles, and mixed everything together. A quick scattering of crispy fried shallots on top finished the dish.

Ann said to me during dinner, "It's almost like we're normal." Almost, girlfriend, almost.

Easy. Fresh. Delicious. Quick. Try it.

Nachos

It's not very often you'll see junk food on this blog, but Ann wanted nachos and we had a bunch of stuff around from which to make them, so nachos it was. They were delicious even if they did conjure up distant memories of college and pitchers of really bad beer!

Nachos with Nopalitos and Black Beans

Right out of the Oven

I cut up some old tortillas and Ann and I tag-teamed frying them. Then they got topped with black beans, nopalitos, pickled jalapeños (but only a little because our last batch is screaming spicy), cheddar cheese, queso Chihuahua, and green onions. After the nachos came out of the oven, I sprinkled on a bunch more green onions, a handful of cilantro leaves, and squirted the top with a smoky pimentón sauce.

Vegetables with Spiced Tofu

I admit that I wasn't too jazzed when I read in an email from Ann yesterday "Let's do a vegetable stir fry with tofu." But, I was in a hurry to get home and really didn't want to try to think of something different, so I just replied "OK" and grabbed a few things at FoodMaxx on the way home.

Vegetables with Spiced Tofu

I also have to admit that it really did taste very good and that my body was craving vegetables, after a week of heavy Thanksgiving eating.



Peppers, Snow Peas, Shiitakes, Green Onions, Carrots

Not shown here is a small crown of broccoli that I prepped into florets and steamed in the microwave for about four minutes before adding them to the pan to caramelize.



Spiced Tofu, Cilantro, Garlic, "Pickled Radish"

The prep took about 15 minutes of chopping and slicing during the afternoon and then it only took about 10 minutes to bring the dish to the table when Ann decided she was hungry. I seared the ingredients in three different batches to keep my pan smoking hot. This is where I miss a carbon steel wok and a smoking wok burner. ;) The heat and the smoke I don't miss.

The green onions and cilantro went in raw. And then when all was done, I put the so-called "pickled radish" into the pan and deglazed with a touch of water. In went a little bean paste, some hoisin, a little soy sauce and it all cooked for another 90 seconds at which point, I poured the sauce over the veg and tossed well.

As for the "pickled radish," that's the name on the shelf tag at the store. The packages themselves are not marked in any way in English, except for a use-by date. So, I don't really know what these sweet and spicy pickled vegetables are, other than addictively good. They are my new favorite find!

Egg Drop Soup

Egg Drop Soup

We had planned to have guests over for dinner on Monday night, but Ann texted early morning saying she wasn't feeling well and had cancelled dinner. And then she texted to ask if I would make some soup even though we had just made soup the week before. She knows that I don't like to repeat the same things.

I decided this time rather than going the Vietnamese route, to do more of a classic Chinese soup. And then when I got home, I mentioned that I might poach an egg right in the soup so that we could break open a nice runny egg into the soup. But she asked me to make her stracciatella, the Italian version of egg drop soup.

And so I put on a big pot of water with a couple pounds of chicken necks, half a pound of ginger, some garlic, some green onion bulbs, some cilantro stems, and some celery leaves. After this cooked very slowly for about 90 minutes, I put in a whole chicken and let it poach until it was done, another couple of hours. I fished the chicken out and let it cool while I strained the broth.

From here, just a small matter of some vegetable prep: thinly sliced snow peas, straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots, pickled mustard stems, sliced green onions, and tiny baby bok choy.



Garnishes (except the chicken) Ready for Soup Bowls

Once the garnishes were prepped, I put them straight into our soup bowls and then beat a couple of eggs while the stock came back to a wicked boil. Into the stock went the eggs. And then I ladled the boiling stock into our soup bowls.


Soup Bowl Ready for Broth

I love soup. So really, no real hardship to make it two weeks running.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

Tough weekend. I couldn't eat all day Sunday for a minor medical procedure on Monday and after getting out of that, I needed something really comforting to eat. Enter phở gà.

Phở Gà (Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup)

When I make pho, it is typically the more common beef version, but when I am not 100%, chicken suits me (and most of us) better. It was Ann's idea that I make chicken noodle soup: good call!

Here are my tips for making phở gà:

1. Poach the chicken until it is done, remove it from the broth, pick the meat from the bones, and return the bones to the stock to keep enriching it. This way, you achieve both goals: rich broth and tender chicken. Leaving the chicken meat in too long just renders it tough.

2. Char the onion and ginger on the flame for a few minutes before adding to the stock. It adds great depth of flavor.

3. Sweetness is optional. I almost never add sugar to chicken pho. But I often add just a touch of Chinese sausage (lop cheung) to the broth at the last minute. It imparts a certain sweetness. This is certainly non-traditional, but it's my bowl of soup, damn it, and I will cook it the way I want.

4. Have a light hand with the seasonings. To a half gallon of stock, I added four star anise and half a stick of cinnamon for just 20 minutes so that the flavor was there, but really in the background. You want the delicate chicken flavor to come through.

5. Knock yourself out on garnishes. I love pickled mustards stems from China, so I garnish my soup with them, but not with so many that I mask the delicate chicken broth.

6. I don't add either hoisin or sriracha to my bowl with chicken as I would with beef. Again, I want the chicken to be front and center.

Black Bean Salad with Chipotle-Marinated Shrimp

Now that we are just back from our annual vacation, we've got to get serious about shedding some of those excess winter pounds. And the warmer weather is pushing us too. When it's warm outside, we naturally gravitate to eating lighter, such as this salad.

Black Bean Salad with Chipotle-Marinated Shrimp

Last night, I decided to make a big salad in the manner of a vegetable seviche that I did at the restaurant week before last. The shrimp to go on top were an afterthought. Most of the vegetables are raw. One ear of corn and the red onion were charred, but still not cooked through. The nopalitos are pickled. I tossed everything together with the juice of a lime, some salt, and a couple tablespoons of chipotle salsa.

Salad Mise en Place

A quick trip to the grocery store yielded the ingredients for a wonderful salad: cilantro, grape tomatoes, black beans, chipotle salsa, nopalitos, lime, red onion, poblano, orange pepper, green onions, Ataulfo mango, garlic, cumin, and fresh corn.

Charring the Red Onion and Some of the Corn

For a change of pace, I decided to char the red onion before chopping it, as well as one ear of corn. Yes, this is directly on the flame. The other ears of corn, I left totally raw.

Shrimp in their Marinade

The shrimp marinade is finely minced cilantro stems and garlic, zest of the lime, salt, toasted and ground cumin, a touch of olive oil, and a tablespoon of the chipotle salsa.

Chorizo, Pineapple, and Chipotle Tacos

Chorizo, Pineapple, and Chipotle Tacos

Today, I planned to be at work most of the day mostly babysitting a contractor but also getting my usual Monday deskwork done. I had no plans to be at home by noon and no plans to eat lunch with my lovely wife, but the moon and the stars aligned: I arrived at 7:30 and powered through my paperwork and glory of glories, the contractor arrived at 8:05 and was out before 10am!

My errands all complete, I stopped into FoodMaxx on the way home. I wanted to make something light and full of flavor and had pretty much decided on crab tacos when I realized that I failed to grab crab from work. No worries. I grabbed a tray of Salvadoran chorizos along with a pineapple, some green onions, cilantro, and a can of chipotle adobo.

At home, I cooked the sausage and mixed it with the other raw ingredients, tossed with the adobo and salt. Ten minutes of work yielded these most awesome of tacos! Because I used a slightly green pineapple (can you really find a ripe pineapple in the US?), I didn't need any lime juice to cut the richness of the sausage.

These are so good that I am salivating as I type! We're probably going to do these at the restaurant for our street food extravaganza during Rally in the Alley in April!

Cá Nướng

"Something light and Asian." What is "What Ann wants for dinner, Alex."? Actually, just her texted answer to my inevitable Monday question. After the big pork feed on Sunday, we were definitely in the mood for something light, especially with the weather having finally broken after a long, long winter.

Rockfish are running in the Potomac right now and the season won't be open very long, the fish getting ready to spawn and off limits once that gets under way. Rockfish is what everyone around here calls Striped Bass. Try asking for Striped Bass in Virginia and you are likely to get stares. Rock as it is known is what we call this king of American eating fish.

There is no place I can quench my metaphorical thirst for Vietnamese food around here, so I am relegated to doing it myself. Not a problem, but sometimes a guy would like to go out to eat once in a while. Being in a Vietnamese mood, I decided to do my take on grilled or roasted whole fish, Cá Nướng.

Here you see a 3-pound rockfish that I butterflied, rubbed with honey, and coated with lots of ginger, garlic, and lemongrass, all finely minced. I put it in the oven until it was just done then topped it with green onions that I just blanched in hot oil (mỡ hành) and toasted peanuts, a pretty usual garnish for roasted fish.



Roasted Butterflied Rockfish with Peanuts and Oil-Blanched Green Onions


When I do this with whole catfish (awesome by the way), I like to highly caramelize the fish. When I am working with the king of our eating fish, I want the wonderful rockfish to shine through. So I have kept the caramel to a minimum by cooking the fish as little as possible. With catfish, I will often slather the cooked fish with more honey and put in back in the oven or grill to become deliciously brown.



Herbs (cilantro and Thai basil), Lime, and Nước Chấm

We decided to eat the fish rolled with fresh herbs in rice paper (bánh tráng). While the fish was roasting, I prepped a plate of Thai basil and cilantro. If we had decent other herbs at this time of year, I would have used them too, but this was it. I also threw together a quick nước chấm while the fish was in the oven (fish sauce, lime juice, sugar, garlic, and Thai chiles).

All a Roll Needs is a Bowl of Nước Chấm!

Red-Cooked Chicken

"Oh my God, I think this is better than your pork belly bánh mì!" exclaimed Ann. This is high praise indeed: my bánh mì, currently on the lunch menu at the restaurant, was tops on her list of all the dishes that I have ever cooked. And for such an unassuming looking dish to assume the mantle of the-best-dish-ever is saying something. Though no stranger to hyperbole when it comes to food, Ann seemed earnest in the extreme. I can understand her excitement: this dish clearly shows why Chinese cuisine is one of the world's great treasures.

Red-Cooked Chicken: Uninspired Plating, Inspired Flavors

Unwittingly, Ann asked me to cook this eastern Chinese classic last week. As she was flipping through some or another food thing, she showed me a plate of red-cooked pork and said she wanted it. The dish wasn't labeled red-cooked but that's what it was. It's been 30 years since I red-cooked anything at home (though it is the basis of many dishes at the restaurant). I decided to lighten up the calories by going with chicken, but chicken legs instead of insipid breasts.

Red Cooking Basics

I've been red cooking dishes so long that I no longer remember the prescribed formulae, if there ever were such things, for this braise. Because of the long cook time, I put together the dish in the slow cooker the night before, so that I could remove it from the refrigerator and start it cooking before I left for work in the morning, to have it waiting when I returned.

Into the slow cooker went the three huge chicken leg quarters, 6-8 star anise pods, half a cinnamon stick, a chunk of rock sugar, a handful of whole garlic cloves, several slabs of ginger, a couple whole green onions, the peel of a tangerine, and the stems from a bunch of cilantro. To this I added about half a cup, maybe three-fourths, of soy sauce, several tablespoons of Chinkiang black vinegar, and water to just reach the top of the chicken.

To finish the dish, I put some rice on to cook, removed the chicken to a plate, and strained and defatted the braising liquid which I then reduced to the point where if I reduced it any further, it would be too salty. At the very end when the sauce and rice were done, I blanched some Chinese broccoli and we sat down to dig in.

This dish clearly belongs in the pantheon of great dishes invented by humankind. It is that good. And that simple: try it yourself. If you've never had it before as Ann had not, it will be a revelation of the best kind.

Hot and Sour Catfish

Hot and Sour Catfish

For dinner, Ann wanted me to reprise the fried catfish dish with mapo dofu topping that I did this time last year. But I was in a soup mood, so I split the difference. This didn't stop Ann from giving me grief about not cooking exactly what she wanted, for doing some riff, but that's what Eds do: they take inspiration from whatever source and then map that inspiration onto something deliciously edible (and I don't think that judging from her happy noises that she really has any grounds to complain about the results). ;)

Earlier in the afternoon, I simmered for a couple of hours a couple pounds of chicken necks in chicken stock with garlic, ginger, and cilantro stems. Meanwhile, I soaked a handful of dried daylily buds and tree ear mushrooms in hot water.

Just before dinner, I strained the chicken stock and added the rehydrated lily flowers and mushrooms, broth and all, to the stock. To this, I added soy sauce and vinegar in equal parts to the soup until I got just the right amount of salt and sour. I added three parts rice vinegar to one part black vinegar. Into the soup went finely diced tofu, chopped Shanghai bok choy, and spicy preserved mustard stems. I didn't add any more spice to the soup, but if I had, the classic hot and sour soup spice is ground white pepper (which I did add to Ann's soup because she wanted more spice). I did not add cornstarch to the soup: I am not a fan of the gloppy consistency. If that's your speed, go for it.

While finishing up the soup stock, I roasted a whole sheet tray of catfish in the oven (to have something to eat for dinner late night when I get home later this week) and then placed a small filet in the bottom of a soup bowl. Over this went a couple ladles of soup and on top, fresh cilantro and green onions. And presto! Hot and sour catfish.