Krautsalat

On two occasions on our trip to Südtirol back in the fall, we had a very simple cabbage salad called Krautsalat as a side dish with our meals. Both versions were of thinly sliced young cabbage dressed simply with oil and vinegar. It was one of those rare dishes that was more than the sum of its parts; we could not believe how good it was.

Roasted Steelhead Trout with Krautsalat

Recently on a rare foray to Trader Joe's, we stumbled across a pile of really young cabbages, really tight and dense and of conical shape. As much as I have wanted to make Krautsalat back here in the US, I was waiting to find just the right young and tender cabbage. Like potatoes, for cabbage, the freshly harvested young variety is far superior to that which is old and harvested months ago, storage cabbage.

Thinly Sliced Cabbage

There are many ways to thinly slice cabbage. When I was a kid, we had dedicated sauerkraut cutters, basically huge, bench-mounted mandolines. Today, a mandoline or a benriner would do the trick, or perhaps even the slicing blade on a food processor, though, to me, that cuts the cabbage too coarsely. I prefer to use a knife, so after quartering the cabbage and cutting out the core, I lay the quarter flat and slice it superfine with my handy-dandy knife.

Kneaded and Dressed Krautsalat

After slicing the cabbage, I sprinkled it with just a little salt, tossed it well to distribute the salt, and left it on the counter for 20 minutes. Then I roughly kneaded the cabbage to yield something approximating a fresh sauerkraut. After draining off the resulting salty liquid, a touch of rice vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil completed the dish.

Ann really loved this version. I preferred the version that we had in Italy in which the cabbage was dressed without salting or squeezing. Both are delicious. It's a shame that we cannot get decent cabbage at the store (not even a pretty looking Savoy). I'm going to have to make another trip to Trader Joe's on the far outskirts of town. It will be worth the hassle of getting there if they have more of these cabbages.

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.

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

We end up eating a fair amount of steelhead trout and salmon, to the point where I am looking for ways to cook it other than on the grill or in a steel pan. I remember years ago at the restaurant, sometimes I would brine and roast fish and that's what I decided to do in this case. Brining gives fish a silky, sexy texture and this piece of steelhead was amazingly moist and delicious.

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

It's hard to come up with garnishes for dishes in the middle of winter because so few things are in season. Fortunately, winter is a great time for both citrus and fennel. On spying a nice fennel bulb at the market, I brought it home to make into slaw for the steelhead. Haricots verts have very good shelf life and are not too bad during winter, so I brought some of those home to roast as well.

Brining Steelhead

A decent brine is a tablespoon of Kosher salt per cup of water. For this brine, I put two tablespoons of salt and a tablespoon of sugar in a pint of water. The steelhead was in the brine for about two hours. Even ten minutes in the brine improves both texture and flavor. I did not salt the fish otherwise.

Fennel-Orange Slaw

This fennel-orange slaw could not be any simpler to make. It contains one fennel bulb, core removed and shaved, the segments of two large navel oranges, and a bit of shaved red onion. It is seasoned with salt, sugar, red wine vinegar, and the orange juice that I squeezed from the oranges after removing the segments.

New Year's 2020

2020 in Review

Many have characterized 2020 as a horrible year and one that they are glad to see in the rearview mirror. While it was certainly the most memorable year of my life and one that changed my life totally and irrevocably, I cannot say that 2020 was all for the bad.

Ann's Take on 2020

Given the extraordinary nature of the year, it would be easy to focus on the bad: living through a contentious presidential impeachment, rethinking our lives in the face of a global pandemic, going stir crazy being holed up at home, finding empty supermarket shelves at the onset of the COVID quarantine, losing my job, having a president who encouraged racial and social division, canceling our long-delayed vacation, enduring a presidential election cycle unlike any other, suffering the death of Ann's mother and attending her funeral by watching an empty church on the internet, coping with our dog's cancer diagnosis, barricading ourselves indoors with towels under the doors for just over two weeks because of massive forest fires, and seeing riots in major cities exceeding what we saw in 1968.

While that is a lot on the negative side of the balance sheet, lest you think that 2020 was a total shit show, the positive side is not negligible and potentially tips the scales to the good:

• The loss of my job was exactly the impetus that I needed to retire. To be honest, I was scared of pulling that trigger myself both for financial reasons (committing to a thin fixed income) and for personal reasons (my sense of self has always been bound to my work). Financially, we've learned to live on our adjusted income and emotionally, I'm used to being retired now, though it took several months to divorce myself from feeling that I needed some external purpose in my life.

• The pandemic that caused us to wear masks everywhere and to worry about social distancing also forced us to quarantine at home. As a result, Ann and I spent a lot of time together for the very first time in our marriage. It has proved to be wonderful.

• Our pharmaceutical companies undertook truly heroic efforts to deploy a COVID vaccine, efforts that are just now starting to come to fruition. Just as heroically, our amazing healthcare providers risked and continue to risk their personal safety to care for the ill. As a world, we now have first-hand experience in tackling the next global epidemic. I hope our politicians will have learned from this.

• Our three kids are well. Carter jumped through significant hoops, some COVID-imposed, to enlist in the Army and now has discovered a path forward for himself. Although it is early days for him, he seems to be thriving. The girls, Ellie and Lillie, despite both working in medicine and having daily contact with patients, are healthy. We are proud of all of them, but are equally glad that we do not have to go to work daily as do they.

• Being retired and being isolated at home gave me the time and motivation to tackle all those house and yard projects that have been on the someday list.  The yard and the house have never looked better. Ann's vision for the interior is coming along beautifully. She is a talented decorator and her results are impressive.

• Time at home and closure of restaurants has brought me back into the kitchen. After three years away from the restaurant and cooking simple post-work meals only begrudgingly, I am re-finding my love of cooking and I am finally delighting in cooking all those things that make my wife happy. 

• Likewise, I have missed writing for many years. It is my therapy. The time to sit and organize my thoughts is a bonus born of this epidemic.

• Finally, all this cooking and the drinking to combat the quarantine blues caused us both to put on a lot of weight, like a lot of people. But at year end, we find ourselves down a combined fifty or so pounds, our clothes fit (I had to get a new, smaller wedding ring), and we are walking a lot. We're not in super cardio-shape because our local terrain in the valley is flat, but we're way better off than in the first months of quarantine.

On balance then, 2020 was not as horrible as many feel it to be. Moreover, if 2020 has done nothing else, it has made me think about how well off we really are and how thankful we should be for the small things in our lives that we too often take for granted. I am:

• thankful that we no longer own a restaurant and have to worry about keeping it open and keeping the employees paid so that they can pay their bills. Several of our favorite places have closed permanently and tragically there are more to come. My heart goes out to all.

• thankful that we no longer have school-aged children that we need to educate safely and responsibly. I cannot imagine juggling home schooling and trying to work for a living.

• thankful that we had the financial ability to retire rather than face job-hunting in this environment. So many people are so much worse off.

• thankful that we have a strong marriage that has only gotten stronger during the epidemic. I am quite sure that it has had the opposite effect on many marriages.

All this said, I am really hoping that with the roll-out of the COVID vaccine that 2021 sees a return more towards what we consider normal. I am not so naïve as to think that our 2019 normal will be our normal going forward, but I hope that we make good strides on moving away from 2020 normal. The thing that I first want to do after all this virus mess is said and done is to go sit with Ann at a bar with a cheeseburger and a beer, talking to any and all at the bar. That's not such a big ask, is it?

New Year's Eve

Early in the day, we went to our local park for a five-mile hike, knowing that we were going to eat badly on New Year's Day. 

We did not plan much for New Year's Eve other than opening a bottle of Champagne and having a nice piece of fish for dinner. Earlier in the day when we went to Newberg to pick up the caviar that we ordered for celebratory Egg's Benedict on New Year's Day, we also picked up a stellar portion of wild Steelhead Trout. The side from which our piece came was huge (I'd guess that fish was 10+ pounds) and resplendent with its pink stripe and black dots. I pan seared it and it was delicious.

Marc Hébrart Premier Cru Champagne with our Steelhead Trout

With our fish, we had a very sexy Marc Hébrart Champage, a cuvée called "Mes Favorites." Delicious raspberry notes from Pinot Noir made this one of the best Champagnes that I have ever tasted and I've tasted a lot.

We ended up heading to bed early, though I stayed up until after midnight, the first half an hour of the new year spent comforting Grace who was terrified of the neighbors' fireworks. It would have been a great year to have held a quiet get together with some of our neighbors to toast the new year, but alas, we start 2021 with the same social distancing to which we had become inured in 2020.

New Year's Day

While we made no plans for New Year's Eve, we had been planning a special Pacific Northwest eggs Benedict for brunch the next day, a Benedict fashioned of toasted crumpets, smoked salmon, halibut, poached eggs, hollandaise, and white sturgeon caviar. All three fishes are native to our rivers and seas here in Oregon.

Ann Set the Table While I Cooked

We opened a bottle of grand cru grower Champagne for brunch, this one more lemony from being 50% Chardonnay and 50% Pinot Noir. It did not suck, but it was not in the same class as the premier cru Marc Hébrart from the evening before. It always amuses me when a premier cru (a lesser cru than grand cru) outperforms a grand cru. Of course, the grand cru was only two-thirds the price of the premier cru, so the market is under no illusions as to which is better.

Hollandaise Set Up

Making hollandaise is a classic kitchen task that every chef should master. In French cuisine, hollandaise is one of the five mother sauces upon which almost all other classic sauces are built. A good rule of thumb for home use is that four egg yolks and a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice will incorporate and thicken a quarter of a pound of melted butter, enough for 4-8 healthy portions.

I made a 2-yolk batch, a very difficult task because the volume is so small that it is so easy to overcook and curdle the sauce. A much bigger volume gives you a lot more leeway with the temperature. I had to watch the sauce like a hawk while dribbling butter into the egg yolks over a pan of boiling water. Most of the time, I had the bowl on the cold counter to keep the heat in check. If you're just learning, start with a big batch of hollandaise.

Pacific Northwest Eggs Benedict

Making this eggs benedict at home is a tricky proposition in that the halibut, the poached eggs, and the hollandaise are all last minute (what we chefs call à la minute) items that vie for a single cook's attention. In a restaurant, we would have at least three cooks involved in this dish: one poaching the eggs, one making the hollandaise, and one cooking the fish. And if labor is no object, you really want a fourth person doing the plate-up and calling for each ingredient as necessary.

At home, I toasted and plated the crumpets and smoked salmon while the halibut was cooking. I held the halibut warm between two domed plates while I made the hollandaise. As soon as the hollandaise was done, I dropped the eggs in the water bath. Then I started plating the halibut, pulled the eggs out of the water, rewhisked the hollandaise, and finished the plate-up. That's a lot of cooking with precise timing for a lone cook.

Farmed White Sturgeon Malossol Caviar

Out here on the West Coast, we have a much better selection of domestic caviar than on the East Coast. I wish we had this selection during my restaurant days. Back then, I never served any endangered or overfished fish, always seeking more environmentally friendly wild-caught species. The same thing went for caviar, except that for caviar, I preferred eggs from farm-raised sturgeon rather than endangered wild populations. Our domestic white sturgeon caviar can be really outstanding. At home, I still insist on caviar from sustainable operations that do not harm wild fish populations.

I prefer malossol caviar because it is less salty than regular caviar (you can hide a lot of sins behind salt, too). I remember the word малосоль from my Russian classes in college, a combination of мало ("light" or "a little") and соль ("salt").

Ann's No-Knead Olive Bread

Olive-Pecorino Focaccia

Continuing our "bad" New Year's eating spree, Ann had put up a bowl of her no-knead bread dough flavored with Kalamata olives and pecorino romano cheese the evening before. This is really significant in that we have been eating almost no simple carbs such as bread since August. For dinner on New Year's Day, I shaped the dough into a focaccia and baked it. We were going to have it with cheese and Pinot Noir, but we were wined out after the bottle of Champagne at brunch and really not hungry enough after the big brunch to want cheese along with the bread. If the truth be told, we really just craved the bread!

And so 2021 is now off and running. May it treat us all better than 2020.

Steelhead Trout with Piquillo White Beans and Haricots Verts

A Quick Dinner from Leftovers

I know I have touched on this a bunch of times before, but it bears repeating: having leftovers in the refrigerator really helps put dinners on the table quickly. A case in point: I had a couple pieces of Steelhead Trout to cook for dinner and on rummaging the fridge, I found some roasted haricots verts, a little black olive tapenade, and a half a jar of piquillo peppers from various recent dinners.

Steelhead Trout with Piquillo White Beans and Haricots Verts

While the fish was cooking, I reheated the green beans and blitzed a can of cannellini in the food processor with the four or five leftover piquillos. By the time the fish was done, the plate was ready to assemble, a really tasty and nice looking dinner in under seven minutes.

Steelhead Trout with Curried Zucchini Noodles

Ann loves zucchini noodles. I'm pretty ambivalent about them, but she really seems to love them to the point where she asked me to buy a turner for our home kitchen. Long before the "zoodle" craze, we were turning squash and lots of other vegetables into noodles at the restaurant. We often turned raw beets to toss with arugula and goat cheese in a wonderful and unexpected salad.

With our primary farmers market closed for the season now, our selection of vegetables is really hit or miss, but if there is nothing better looking at the grocery store, the summer squashes always seem to be decent looking.

Quick Dinner: Steelhead Trout on Curried Zucchini Noodles

The other night I was looking for a dinner that I could pull off in 15 minutes and armed with two zucchini and 3/4 of a pound of steelhead trout, I decided to make Ann's favorite form of zucchini as an accompaniment to the fish.

Annie Helps Turn the Noodles

So many people blanch zucchini noodles in water, but in most cases, I think that this is a fail. It only seems to dilute the noodles. If they are going in a sauté, I prefer to put them in raw. It takes almost no time on the heat to cook them through.

For this dish, I started half a sliced onion going in a large skillet and once they it translucent, I added the the zucchini and a large spoonful of very fresh Madras curry powder. In less than two minutes, they were on the plate as a base for the fish.

I don't really use pre-prepared spice mixes in my cooking, but I have a weakness for yellow Madras curry powder. I know that it is not in any way Indian or even authentic, but it has a flavor that brings back memories of my mother's (fairly not good) chicken curry and of one of my favorite quick noshes, Singapore noodles.

Pinot Noir for Pregame

As we were turning the noodles, we opened a stellar local Pinot Noir. McKinlay is unknown even to most people locally, yet they consistently produce some of the most amazing Pinot in Oregon.

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.

Gravlax

Gravlax, salt- and sugar-cured salmon, is a thing of beauty. And it is so simple to make that I'm not sure why you would ever buy it. I've been making gravlax regularly for at least 35 years. I recently put up a tail section of a salmon filet as gravlax, the first that I have made at home in more than two decades. I never needed to: we always had plenty at the restaurant.

Everything Bagel, Chive Cream Cheese, Gravlax, Shallots, and Capers

I can't really think of a time at the restaurant when we wouldn't have at least a couple sides of salmon curing and a couple more in service. I even came up with my own spin on it, calling it prosciutto of salmon, salmon that had cured more than is typical for gravlax and then hung to dry and age for a couple of weeks, just like a ham. Sliced ultrathin, it had a lot of the same great umami qualities as a good ham. Think katsuobushi or bottarga meets prosciutto.

Many recipes make gravlax seem more complicated to prepare than it truly is. Weights, slotted pans for draining, cheesecloth, precise amounts of salt, etc. Baloney! You'll see none of that as you follow along below. Making gravlax is truly simple.

Deboned Salmon Tail Section, Skin On

If I'm not using whole sides to make gravlax (who needs a whole side at home?), I like to use the tail portion. Why, when many recipes suggest that center cut is the best? Because at home I want to serve the center cut portions for dinner and use the less desirable tail portions for gravlax. It's going to be sliced paper thin anyway, so why use the best parts? Pull all the pin bones with a pair of needlenose pliers and leave the skin on.

Cover the Salmon with Sugar, Salt, and White Pepper

Place the salmon skin side down in a glass or stainless steel pan. The salt will eat up an aluminum container, so use something non-reactive. The ratio of sugar to salt is a personal preference. I believe that most people, like me, like a lot less sugar than salt. First, I sprinkle the salmon with a small amount of sugar, just a good sprinkling. Then I cover the salmon in a good layer of salt as you can see above. I sprinkle the whole with a bit of ground white pepper.

If I were going to add an herb for flavoring, I would put it on next. Dill is the classic herb. I omitted it because I didn't have any. I also love to use Thai basil or anise hyssop to flavor the salmon.

Gravlax After 48 Hours

The fish then goes into the refrigerator. You can cover it or not. After 48 hours, I pull it out and check on it. Here is where experience comes into play. The fish is edible at any point. You have to decide what texture you want. I like mine firm to the touch throughout the whole filet. The thinner points are going to firm first. In the photo above, the lower three quarters of the fish are cured to my liking.

At this point, I rinse the fish, pat it dry, and rinse out the curing pan. Then I put the fish back in the pan and re-cover only the parts that I want to cure further with more salt. I check the fish every day from this point to see how it is progressing. I was satisfied with this piece after 4 days, 96 hours total in the cure.

After rinsing the fish and patting it dry, you can serve it right away. But I like to put the fish back in the refrigerator, uncovered, and let it dry a bit for 24-48 hours. This does two things. It fully firms up the flesh and it lets the salt equalize throughout the filet so that there are no super salty spots.

It's important to note that there is no right or wrong time to take your salmon out of the cure. It is a matter of personal preference. Although my preference is for a longer cure and a firmer texture more akin to a ham, I also love a brief 10-minute cure for meltingly soft salmon sashimi. There's a spectrum and you have to find your spot on the spectrum through experimentation. Do understand that the longer the cure, the saltier the result.

There are various ways to slice gravlax. For soft textured (24- to 48-hour) gravlax, it's often best to slice the fish vertically down to but not through the skin. Then you can slide your knife along the skin to remove all the slices at once. With firmer and saltier gravlax such as I make, it's probably best to take very thin slices towards the tail. I start about three inches back from the tail and make a very thin slice to the tail. Then I maintain this angle for the entire fish, yielding slices that you can see through as in the very top photo in this post. You can see the chives in the cream cheese through the salmon.

Making gravlax is very simple, a lot simpler than a lot of recipes make it seem. It's also ultra-rewarding to cure something so delicious yourself. And yes, those bagels were fabulous!

Happy Fourth!?

In this crazy year of 2020, July 4th was an opportunity for many to celebrate, but it seemed really off to me and I am sure to Ann as well. Our neighborhood had been planning to get together to eat, drink, and shoot off some fireworks for weeks, the 4th being something good and fun and normal that we could all look forward to, to help us get through the depressing news about this pandemic and the lack of leadership from our president.

Happy Fourth! Ann's Pallet Flag in the Back Yard

It was quite a stunning day, weatherwise, and we spent nearly the entire day outdoors as we are wont to do now in our dry season. In Oregon, we make the most of the summer, because it rains for the rest of the year. The morning we spent on the back patio, doing the daily crossword with coffee, and watching the hummingbird forays through the flower gardens.

Eggs with Salmon, Chives, Capers, and Sour Cream

Around mid-day, we migrated to the front patio and ate breakfast about one in the afternoon with a scramble designed to use the fat belly flaps off the steelhead trout that I broke down the day before. In addition to the trout, in the eggs are sour cream, capers, and chives from the garden. It was delicious, but I won't mix sour cream in with the eggs again. The sour cream disrupted the normal creamy texture of the eggs to yield a slightly grainier dish that wept water. Live and learn.

Red, White, and Blue Berry Smash

About three and feeling a bit morose, Ann declared it Happy Hour, "We need a red, white, and blue cocktail!" During this pandemic, our house cannot be the only one in which 5 o'clock comes at random times. I rummaged the kitchen and ended up with a cross between a gin and tonic and a Tom Collins: red raspberries, white liquor, and blueberries. It was tart, refreshing, and the recipe will follow in a subsequent post because Ann wants me to remember it for the future. If I don't write it down, it will be gone from my head in 48 hours.

Oh yeah, shout out to our neighbor Rennika who brought us the berries from her family's farm! Blueberries and all manner of caneberries are a staple agricultural product of our valley.

Bison Burger with English Cheddar, Pickles, and Bacon

In looking back over previous posts about July 4, a consistent theme seems to be burgers. We don't eat them that often, so they have become something of a treat for us and something of a 4th ritual. We picked up a package of ground bison at Costco earlier in the week, just for burgers. Bison has such a great meaty flavor that is sadly lacking from most beef these days. The meat is a little leaner than I like for a good burger, but so very tasty.

While I was out shopping, I forgot to get a bag of chips to accompany our burgers. How sad is it that I didn't just run up to the store two minutes away and grab a bag? How sad is it that I have to weigh the potential risk for bringing this damned virus home to Ann every time I think about leaving the house? How sad is it that there are no casual trips out, only necessary ones? This pandemic sucks.

We made the reluctant decision earlier in the week to opt out of the neighborhood Fourth gathering, for two reasons. First, the incidence of virus is growing here in Oregon, albeit not as bad as in other locales, and second, our dog Grace is absolutely terrified of fireworks. We wanted to be home to comfort her. Charlie doesn't like the fireworks so well, but he's so damned deaf now that he curled up and slept through them.

Even though it doesn't get dark here this time of year until after 10pm, the booms and pops started about 9:30. Reluctantly we went inside, to help muffle some of the sound and put Grace at more ease, scant good that it did do.

I really, really wanted to be out in the alley behind our houses, kicking back a few brews and watching fireworks, if not to totally seem normal, at least to get the hell out of the house and interact with human beings other than my wife. It's a small sacrifice to skip the fireworks, I know, but it certainly seems a much larger sacrifice in a day when every decision seems to be a sacrifice or at least a tradeoff against health risk.

Zucchini Puttanesca

While it is slow in the winter and I have more help than I have work for at the restaurant, I'm trying to take off our slowest night, Tuesday, to be with Ann. Honestly, I really haven't done much cooking of late and it was time to get back in the kitchen, if only for 15 minutes, and make some dinner for us.

Roasted Steelhead Trout with Zucchini Puttanesca

This was a refrigerator-foraged meal. Ann told me she had some small zucchini and I had bought a side of steelhead trout on Monday. That was a start at least before I went grubbing around the refrigerator looking for inspiration. I don't know how other people's refrigerators are organized, but as a chef, my refrigerator is full of deli containers of random things.

Ultimately I found some olives, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and grated pecorino hidden away in those deli containers. There's always garlic and sambal oelek (chile paste) in there too. And on the counter were some less than perfect grape tomatoes. Within a minute, I had already figured that I would do a puttanesca riff on the zucchini to accompany the roasted steelhead.

Really simple procedure: pit the olives, mince the garlic, slice the sundried tomatoes into small batons, halve the grape tomatoes, and prep the zucchini by cutting in half lengthwise and then bias cutting each half. Fire a big sauté pan on high heat and film with olive oil. Add the zucchini and toss a little until just crisp tender, perhaps a minute and a half. Add the olives, sundried tomatoes, and capers. Toss for another minute. Add the garlic and a bit of sambal for spice and cook until you can smell the garlic. Turn off the flame and toss in the fresh tomatoes and a couple tablespoons of the grated pecorino. Feast!

Salmon Cakes

I'm starting to get back in the habit of taking Tuesday and Wednesday evenings off to spend with Ann if business is slow enough and slow enough early week it has been. After some back and forth about eating in or eating out, we decided on eating in.

In trying to find something healthy to eat for dinner, I remembered that I had a couple sides of small Steelhead Trout in the refrigerator and had just scored some amazing small cucumbers at the farmers market. Pretty quickly I arrived at salmon cakes with cucumber salad.

Salmon Cakes in the Pan

Salmon cakes really could not be any easier to make. The exact flavorings are different each time that I make them. I skinned the fish, cubed it, and tossed it in the food processor with some whole grain mustard, two minced shallots, a big bunch of chopped dill from the garden, and a big handful of capers. I processed it to the consistency you see in the pan above and then formed it into four-ounce cakes, which I cooked to crispy on the outside and medium rare in the middle. I see all kinds of recipes that include egg and breading to help hold the cakes together. This is about as necessary as egg and bread in hamburgers to help them hold together.

Salmon and Cucumbers, a Classic Combination

The cucumber salad is equally trivial to make. After slicing the cucumbers thinly, I added just a little Greek yogurt, a little sugar, a little rice vinegar, and a little salt. End of story. Delicious!

Steelhead Trout with Gingered Nappa and Soy Shiitakes

Steelhead Trout, Nappa Cabbage, Shiitakes

We're still very much in the winter doldrums at the restaurant and I am able to leave the cooking to the cooks on some weeknights, giving me an opportunity to get home and have dinner with Ann and Carter. Last night was one such night that I took off, worked on the bathroom that we're remodeling, and made dinner for all of us.

Yesterday afternoon Ann and I were discussing dinner via text when she asked me to do something with the Steelhead Trout that I brought home on Monday. So I started sketching out an idea: gingered nappa cabbage, soy-glazed Steelhead, and shiitakes. No sooner had I written this on a piece of paper than she texted me: "teriyaki or hoisin." How crazy that we were on exactly the same page, miles apart?

The nappa I quickly sautéed in a little oil with a splash of sesame oil, a lot of minced ginger, and a bit of minced garlic. Once it wilted, I moved it on to plates, wiped the pan down, and quickly sautéed some sliced shiitakes with a bit more ginger and garlic, then as they were wilting, splashed them with a few drops of soy sauce, let that evaporate, and moved them to a plate at the back of the stove to stay warm.

Another wipe down of the pan, a touch more oil, and in went the Steelhead, skin side down until the skin was crispy and brown and the fish at least half cooked, about three minutes. Then I flipped the fish and let it go for another minute, splashed the pan with soy sauce, let it evaporate, and then I turned off the flame and let the fish rest for 90 seconds. The fish was perfectly cooked: crispy skin, soy char on the other side, moist, flaky, and pink center. Delicious!

The plate up as you see above is simple.

Ann did not like the nappa cabbage. She keeps surprising me with all the leafy vegetables that she will not eat, nothing except for spinach and maybe gai lan, Chinese broccoli. This is going to be a bone of contention when we are eating together full time, post restaurant because I've not met a vegetable that I won't eat and I love and have to have my leafy greens. More for me I guess! I ate her cabbage and enjoyed every forkful of it!

Snowy Day Lentils

Beautiful and Awful

Tuesday was a real pain in the rear day. It started snowing just before 7am and the temperature dropped through the day with a nasty snow storm settling in above us, midafternoon temperatures in the low teens and winds in the 15-20 knot range. By the time it was said and done, we had about 14" of new powder that drifted to 3' in places thanks to the wind roaring straight out of the north.

We gave up at the restaurant around mid-afternoon when it became apparent that the storm was only going to get worse through the course of dinner. On my way out the door, I grabbed a couple of cups of lentils, knowing that we had a side of steelhead trout at home. I wanted to serve steelhead on the lentils in the style of the French bistro classic saumon aux lentilles. Lentils are in that class of simple and delicious comfort food that are perfect on a blizzardy day.

Comfort on a Freezing Day: Lentils Happily Bubbling Away

Being a chef, I have access to fresh herbs at all times of the year, even when there is snow on the ground and I am not ashamed to say that I also grabbed some fresh parsley, basil, and thyme when I purloined the lentils.

The lentils have mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery), garlic, herbs (parsley, thyme, bay, and basil), a little whole grained mustard, a bit of tomato paste, and a bit of smoked paprika. The paprika is to mimic the smoked pork I might have otherwise put in: I wanted to keep these lentils low in fat.

White Wine on a Cold Day?

We just don't drink white wine in the winter, so this bottle is notable. It was already open and if I'm not going to have a Pinot Noir with my lentils and fish, a high-acid Oregon white is where I would head next. This delicious Pinot Gris tasted of peaches and cantaloupe with lemon and minerals.

Steelhead Trout with Orange-Bean Sauce

After pigging out for the holidays, we're both feeling the need to eat lighter and so I brought home some salad fixings and a side of Steelhead Trout.



I Love Salad

I don't fix that many salads, which is a bit odd, because I love them a lot. This one is very simple: torn butter lettuces, grape tomatoes, blanched haricots verts, and some croutons I made from a piece of stale baguette found on the counter, all tossed in balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil.



Steelhead Trout with Orange-Bean Sauce

Many people are not familiar with Steelhead Trout, a sea run form of Rainbow Trout. For all intents and purposes, you treat it like salmon, which is to say that I left it skin on after pulling the pin bones and then seared it hard on the skin side to crisp and gently finished it on the other side, so that it was still medium in the middle.

I'm not usually a sauce guy: I like to buy the best proteins I can find and let them stand on their own merits, so it is highly unusual that I made a sauce for this trout. In retrospect, not sure why I did. It was fine, but the fish didn't need any help. The sauce is a reduction of orange juice with finely minced fresh garlic and fresh ginger, thickened with a tablespoon of soy bean paste, and glossed with a teaspoon of sweet butter.