Roasted Beet and Turnip Salad

It's now getting on to good weather and I'm out walking and hiking as much as I can these days. That's not leaving me a lot of energy for cooking, creating new dishes, or even time to write about them. Here's a departure from all my recent wildflower posts.

After a visit to an early farmers market and coming away with early season ingredients including arugula, beets, and pretty little white Hakurei turnips, I decided to make a salad. 

Roasted Beet and Turnip Salad
with Arugula, Goat Cheese, Croutons, and Spiced Hazelnuts

The very best way I know to treat beets for salads (if you're going to cook them at all) is to roast them. I wrap them in a single layer in an aluminum foil packet and place them in a moderate oven until I can pierce them easily. For these smallish beets at 350F, that was about 45 minutes in the oven. The smaller turnips I treated the same way, but only roasted them for about 20 minutes. I just wanted to soften them and not cook them quite all the way through.

For the salad, I peeled and chopped the beets, quartered the tiny turnips, made some croutons quickly in a skillet on the range, and then toasted whole hazelnuts in olive oil in that same pan before tossing them with a little of my pork spice rub. Everything went into a salad bowl with a bunch of arugula and some crumbled goat cheese. After drizzling the salad with a little extra virgin olive oil, a bit of really good balsamic vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt, I tossed the whole thing and Ann and I set about feasting.

I was really pleased with the addition of the beets to this salad. Their pepperiness complemented the arugula and contrasted pleasantly with the beets.

Chum Salmon with Roasted Hakurei Turnips and Gai Lan

As an East Coaster, I'm always surprised at the dearth of fish species that we have in our markets out here in the Pacific Northwest. Granted, a lot of what we harvest goes to Asia, but still, compared to what I am used to, we have very little variety out here.

Very little variety except for one fish family: the Salmonidae, the salmons. We have the very famous species that everyone knows: King/Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye. Also famous, but rare, is my favorite, the ocean-going rainbow trout that we call Steelhead Trout. Finally, we also have Pink Salmon, which in general ends up canned, and Chum, our most numerous salmon, but which is not held in very high regard, being associated with the salmon that the sled dogs eat.

Because of the stigma, Chum Salmon doesn't command the price of King, Coho, or Sockeye. But when caught out in the ocean in its silver phase, it's a delicious fish, milder and less fatty than the other salmon species, and a great buy for people looking for wild-caught salmon at an affordable price.

I scored a pretty piece of chum and some fresh hakurei and gai lan at the farmers market recently and decided to plate them all together for a delicious fall dinner.

Chum Salmon with Roasted Hakurei Turnips and Gai Lan

Everything on this plate is done simply. The salmon is seared in a black steel pan. The gai lan is blanched and then finished in garlic olive oil. The turnips are roasted at high heat until their cut surfaces brown. Everything in this dish is of pristine quality, so I didn't need to do anything cheffy to help it out, no sauces, no tricks, no pizazz. One of the great secrets of fine cooking is to start with the best ingredients. I used to tell my line cooks, "My job is to source the finest ingredients and yours is not to fuck them up."

Blooming Gai Lan and Hakurei Turnips

Gai lan is also called Chinese broccoli and is in the same family as our familiar broccoli. This bunch of perfect gai lan is in bloom. A bit of bloom like this is just fine. What you don't want is any kind of broccoli in full flower. Broccoli flowers, like all Brassica flowers, are edible and make fine garnishes for dishes and salads. I especially like radish and arugula flowers for garnishes.

Roasted Hakurei Turnips

Hakurei turnips are mainly sweet with just a tiny hint of radish bite. Although you can use them like any turnip, I prefer them for raw applications and roasted like this, in which case, they become very mild and melt in your mouth.

Browning Slivered Garlic in Olive Oil

When doing garlic oil as a garnish for vegetables, I like to sliver the garlic and serve bits of the browned garlic as an additional garnish. You can see in the very first photo that I have put some of the garlic on top of the gai lan. After blanching the gai lan, I reheat it in the garlic oil just before plating. In this way, you can blanch the broccoli hours before service, if you shock it in an ice bath to stop it cooking and from turning olive drab. I cooked my broccoli an hour before dinner so that I could concentrate on cooking the fish to perfection.

Seared Chum Salmon

I cook salmon skin-side down until the skin becomes very crisp and delicious. The skin is always the best part. Chum salmon, because it is very low fat when compared to red or silver salmon, wants strict attention in the pan. It is not a fish that can really tolerate extra cooking, so take it off the heat a little sooner than you might other salmon. In the lead photo in this post, you can see that mine went on the plate still showing a bit of pink in the center of the portion. By the time we got to the table to eat, it was perfect. Fish timing is not something I can teach in a blog post; it's just something you figure out by doing it over and over. You can't teach experience, alas.

Beef and Barley

It's cold, damn cold this winter. I'm not a person to complain about the cold: I like it usually. But there have been entire days this winter when I have been chilled inexplicably to the core and have not been able to feel warm. In weather like this, I definitely crave stick-to-the-ribs food capable of warming not only my chilly bones but my soul. And beef and barley fits that bill perfectly.

Raw Ingredients

On Sunday, before we took off to spend the afternoon at Delaplane Cellars to have lunch, I put all the ingredients for beef and barley in the slow cooker so that it would be ready and waiting for us upon our return.

My basic idea for beef and barley is to put stock, mirepoix, a bouquet garni, and barley in the slow cooker. Then brown the meat and add it to the cooker. Then deglaze the pan and add that to the cooker. Then walk away for hours.

For a really good, chef-quality result, the reality is a touch more complex than that. The day before, I made a huge stock pot of brown beef stock and reserved a half gallon for Sunday to serve as the flavor base of the dish. My idea of beef and barely is a little beef, too little to properly flavor the dish, and a whole lot of barley. It is a grain dish, not a meat dish, in my culinary lexicon and so a great stock is necessary to add deep meat flavor.

The bouquet garni came straight from the garden (yes, I put on my knee-high boots to wade through the snow drifts): sage and rosemary from above the snow and some thyme buried under a coat of snow. And I threw in a couple of bay leaves harvested back in the fall, from the pantry. Herbs, especially this time of year, add flavor nuance to an otherwise very mellow dish.

And variety in the root vegetables comprising the mirepoix will also help. I used what I had on hand: carrots, leeks, celery root, turnips, and red and yellow onions. Some people put potatoes in theirs; I prefer turnips. Into the slow cooker they went along with an ounce of dried porcini mushrooms (for yet another layer of flavor, a deep earthy one).

Browning the meat adds still more flavor and after I browned the beef shin and removed it to the slow cooker, I put a couple tablespoons of tomato paste and a small handful of finely minced garlic into the hot sauté pan and cooked it, stirring all the while, until the tomato paste was caramelized. I deglazed the pan with water and once I had scraped all the bits off the bottom of the pan, I poured all over the meat in the slow cooker. Tomatoes are another source of umami in addition to the beef and the mushrooms. The more layers of flavor at this party, the better.

I added a half gallon of water and a tablespoon of salt, stirred it all well, put the lid on, and spent five minutes washing up the kitchen, before walking out the door with Ann.

Neither Pretty nor Glamorous, but so Delicious!

Back at home later that evening, I pulled the beef shin out of the cooker and let it cool, before shredding the meat and adding it back. Once I adjusted the salt, I scooped out big steaming mugs that we ate in front of the fireplace while watching a movie, warm at last during this bitter winter. Life is good!

Third Annual Valentine's Dinner

It Doesn't Really, Does it?

For the third year running, we've had our Valentine's Dinner for friends on the Sunday before Valentine's Day so that we can celebrate. In the restaurant business, Valentine's Day and the days of intense preparation leading up to it constitute one of the busiest times of our year. And because I am always working, celebrating on Valentine's Day itself is never possible.

Last year, we did a more elaborate dinner with cocktails and appetizers and it was just too much for me on top of my insanely busy workload at the restaurant. I really like the simplicity of this year's menu and the fact that with some advanced planning, Ann and I putzed around in the kitchen for only about 90 minutes pulling everything together. And that wasn't 90 minutes of solid work either; we might have opened the Prosecco before the other guests arrived and had a little whistle-wetter while putzing about the kitchen.

Ann Always Sets a Beautiful Table

We Started with Virginia Sewansecott Oysters

Ann had wanted Wellfleet oysters to start off the dinner, but with the blizzard in New England, that wasn't happening. We "settled" for Sewansecotts from H. M. Terry over on the Eastern Shore opposite the mouth of the Rappahannock River. I love the briny flavor of Eastern Shore oysters, but the shells are so soft that they are a pain to shuck cleanly.

The First of Many Bottles

We opened a lot of bottles of wine with our dinner, our friends not lacking in thirst! For sparkling wines with our oysters, we had Prosecco, a Loire rosé, Roederer Champagne, and a couple of other bottles that I didn't really get a look at because I was busy shucking oysters. With dinner, we had a delicious Rioja that Dimitri brought along, a California Syrah and a Washington State Bordeaux blend from our cellar, and Mike and Dennis brought along two local wines: Jim Dolphin's Cab Franc and this Otium Dornfelder from nearby Loudoun County. I don't know Otium Cellars and Dornfelder is not a grape that I have tasted before and as much as I like to support our own Virginia wine industry, this was not a good wine. To quote Ann, "This tastes like ass!" Indeed. I'd be lying if I said anything flattering about this wine.

Mike Forgot his Camera; I Gave him Mine!

Dennis and Dimitri. Where is Mark? He Seems to be Camera Shy.

Dennis and the Girls

After the oysters, we had dinner proper: braised duck, truffled mac and cheese, braised turnips, and sautéed brussels sprouts. It worked out well (and created a lot fewer dishes) to have everyone serve himself from the cooking vessels arrayed on the counter in the kitchen, rather than to platter everything up and take it to the dining room. Thanks to Ann for coming up with the menu so that all I had to do was execute it. And it was fun working with her in the kitchen finishing it up. We make a good team in the kitchen!

Moulard Duck Legs Starting Their Three-Hour Braise

The Finished Product

The day before the party, I braised the duck legs with white wine, veal stock, parsley stems, and thyme. And twenty minutes before taking the duck off the heat, I added peeled and quartered turnips. I let everything chill out together in the rondeau overnight in the cooler. On Sunday, I reheated the congealed mass to the point where I could separate the liquids from the solid duck and turnips. The duck went onto a sheet tray to reheat in the oven at the same time as the mac and cheese was baking and the liquids went into the big blender, first to be defatted and then to be whirred into a smooth sauce that was further reduced on a tiny flame on the stove.

Orecchiette with Four Cheeses and Black Truffles

Next up was the truffled mac and cheese. Ann and I apparently have different ideas of what mac and cheese is. I make classic American (see Fannie Farmer) mac and cheese, slightly overcooked pasta bathed in Sauce Mornay and baked. What Ann describes is more like pasta mixed with straight cheese, something I've never seen before. Good no doubt, but I know it not. My Mornay contains a mixture of young Manchego, Goot Essa Alpenkäse, Carr Valley Marisa, and commercial mozzarella in roughly equal parts. And a good healthy dose of black truffles. I generally would use a hollow pasta such as cavatappi (corkscrews) but Ann seemed to want a more substantial pasta, so I used that Pugliese specialty, orecchiette (little ears). Needless to say, there were no leftovers.

Speaking of cheese, Goot Essa has no web site but if you chance upon some of John Esh's cheese, by all means, give it a try. John is a plain dairy farmer, some would say Amish, from Pennsylvania and he makes great cheese. He popped into the restaurant some years ago with samples and I have been hooked on his Alpenkäse every since.

Artful Shot of Shallots for the Brussels Sprouts

Sprouts, One of the Few Late Winter Green Vegetables

Turnips, Braised along with the Duck

Ann's Red Wine Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ann made this delicious not-too-sweet red wine chocolate cake for dessert. We passed a decanter of Warre's 1977 Port along with dessert.

Who Needs Plates?