Eats For One … or more

Scallops Cooked Onna Plate with Tomato Coulis

After a day at the Giants game (Giants 2 Astros 1), neither Carol nor I felt much like doing real cooking. “Why don’t you do those scallops on a plate in the oven… that’s easy,” she said. Good idea, that’s super easy. I had two Zip-Lock bags of plump super-fresh scallops from Shogun Fish Co., purchased that morning at the market, each bag containing four scallops. (Don’t try this with supermarket scallops!) As luck would have it, I had a jar of Fresh Tomato-Basil Coulis in the fridge, made on Thursday because my tomatoes were going south.

tomato coulis and fresh scallops

I started using what I call the “onna plate” method of cooking thin sliced fish when I found a recipe for Alaskan Halibut Cooked on the Plate with Tomato Confit* in 2004 by Olivia Wu in the SF Chronicle. She described it as an “utterly simple and almost instant dish.” Slice your fish thin across the grain, put it on an oiled plate and into a 500°F oven for two minutes. I’ve cooked that way several times, usually with halibut or salmon, but I even did it once with thin sliced hanger steak.

I got out the jar of Tomato Coulis to come to room temperature while we put our feet up and had a drink and some cheese and crackers. We watched the six o’clock news and At The Movies with the NY Times’ A.O. Scott and Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. That’s a pretty good show, by far the best attempt to replace Siskel and Ebert. (It only took about 10 years. Roger Ebert teamed with this guy Richard Roeper for a while before Ebert’s extensive throat cancer treatment, but Roeper was a jerk, in my opinion.) Peas would be good with the scallop dish, so I shelled about eight pea-pods from the morning market while Scott and Phillips discussed movies I won’t see.

sliced scallops on the plate

That was a good and necessary respite. I got out the scallops and pre-heated the oven to 450°F – as hot as my oven will go. I found that if I held the scallops on edge it was easy to slice a scallop into four equal pieces – I got a Chef’s Choice knife sharpener for my birthday, so I’m able to keep my knives very sharp with ease. I arranged the slices on two oiled plates and dropped a few peas in the center. While I was doing this, Carol washed, cut up and sautéed some chard to go with. We generally don’t work well together in the kitchen, but in this case, we had our own little space and task so it worked out well and we saved some time. I opened a bottle of Bonny Doon 2009 Paso Robles Viognier I’d been saving for a special meal. Hey, in spite of the simple preparation, this was becoming a special meal. (more…)

Son Eric and Alison in Maine sent six jars of Raye’s mustard for Christmas. They swear by this mustard. Of course those Mainers stick together.

Being grateful, I fired off an email thank you which precipitated a lively dialog.

Me — So the catcher sez to the pitcher, he sez, “Nice pitch, but put some mustard on it!” We now have no lack of mustard.
Thanks!

E — You are welcome. Not sure if we’d sent you Rayes before. But it’s still my favorite mustard in the world. I sent it ahead of Xmas so you could plan for some mustard-centric courses for Christmas dinner.

Me — Do you have suggestions for mustard centric dishes?

E — How about Fra Mani sausages n stuff? Especially some Boudin Blanc for Xmas?  Knockwurst? How about smoked salmon for the sweeter mustard? How about corned beef? Ham and cheese sandwiches?

Me — I was thinking something exotic like a mustard crusted roast or something.

E — Use your weak west coast mustard for crusts. Use this mustard when you want to take a flavor and turn it up to 11…

Well, it was getting close to dinnertime. I had some nice flounder fillets and jars and jars of mustard. In spite of his advice, I Googled “mustard crusted” and got all kinds of results for salmon, pork, beef and so on. I took the concept of a couple of the salmon dishes and started dinner. It surely wouldn’t take long.

I started by putting the fillets on parchment paper on the Countertop Convection Oven baking sheet, oiled them up and sprinkled them with salt, pepper and herbs d’ Provence. Preheated the CCO to 375°F on regular bake.

Next, I generously slathered on Raye’s Brown Ginger mustard and sprinkled fresh bread crumbs over the fish. That went in the oven for about 10 minutes until the flounder was tender and lovely.  It wasn’t crusted so much as dressed with the mustard.

I served the flounder with lard fried fingerling potatoes and sauteed cauliflower leaves.

Yum.

My wife and I have been traveling the San Francisco – Reno route the past few months to help son Brian find and move into a new house. We were tired of “the usual” stop at Ikeda in Auburn, not to mention their long lines and limited menu (cheeboigie or cheeboigie?). A friend suggested stopping in Newcastle for Newcastle Produce and La Fornaretta, an Italian place (“the best pizza,” she said).

Our first Newcastle stop was in the late afternoon and La Fornaretta was closed, so we had a sandwich and salads at Newcastle Produce. Excellent, and what an interesting shop with lots of good and local products.

Last week we arrived in Newcastle on the stroke of noon and were the first seated at La Fornaretta. As he took us to our table, the ebullient Italian owner raved about his fresh seafood and especially the fresh clams over linguine. How could I resist?

The dish was magnificent and so simple I figured I could recreate it at home. (more…)

My brother Tom is in the food biz… he has a company called Food Service University. Among other things, he develops online training programs and content, delivering them on a proprietary learning management system. Thus, he receives a number of food industry publications, both as actual magazines and on-line.

Recently, he sent me a link to a recipe with the subject: “You might find this interesting.”

Recipe: Sake-cured Salmon with Spinach Purée and Yogurt
Chef Daniel Snukal
Restaurant/Operation 3 on Fourth, Santa Monica, Calif.
http://www.3onfourth.com/
Menupart Fish and Seafood
Daypart Lunch,Dinner
Region Asian Fusion

Not being one to resist a challenge, the following Saturday I bought an appropriate piece of salmon at the Farmers Market. I had spinach from my Mariquita Box and was wondering what to do with it. I also have this swell ceramic refrigerator dish in which the salmon (almost) perfectly fit. I rarely use that storage dish, as both the dish and the cover are opaque — can’t see what’s inside — but that’s just fine for this dish.

salmon and salt, sugar, oregano mixture

Planked Seafood

I’ve fried, broiled, and grilled,
I’ve poached, baked, and braised,
But I’ve never planked.
Sounds kinda risqué,
like something that might be
mentioned in a folk song.*

I heard the term “planked” about a year ago. Maybe on Food TV, or the Saturday Morning PBS cooking shows. Planked Salmon. Put your Salmon fillet on a cedar plank and put the plank on a gas grill. Cover and cook.

Not long after that I got a gas grill, not for that reason.

Cedar planks appeared on or near the fish counter at Whole Food. They seemed to be about 15 inches long, half that wide and maybe 3/4-inch thick, topped by full color glossy paper with a picture of a gorgeous salmon fillet, promising cooking instructions on the back; all shrink wrapped in plastic. Hmmmm, planking is going mainstream. I was curious, but not compelled to buy a plank.

This led to two recent events in rapid succession:
1. Alton Brown cooked trout on a plank on his Good Eats show. “We haven’t had trout in ages,” Carol said. My fishmonger at the Farmers Market almost always has whole boned trout, so I got a pair and poached them. (more…)

Sunday Supper was so good and quick and easy, I just had to share it.

Sunday supper is a time when cooking and eating is an imposition, especially the cooking part. Whether we’ve been watching football, on a day trip, coming home from a Giants game, cooking a soup or stew for later in the week or just vegging out and trying to get through the entire Sunday New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, it’s a time for ordering in Pizza or Chinese. But we can’t do that every Sunday. (We can’t?)

We’ve gone through a few phases:

The ordering in phase,
The leftover phase,
The peel and eat shrimp phase, that was the latest, and frankly, I’m tired of shrimp — or easy substitutes such as squid or scallops.

It’s January and the market is full of roots: beets, carrots, potatoes, and celery root, parsnips, turnips and the like. I scored a few pounds of beets and a couple of fine celery roots. The beets went to Harvard Beets and Pickled Beets and a couple of pounds are left for Borscht. That’s a lot of beets, our pee will flow red for days and days. (more…)

This ain’t your Calamari

When I saw the recipe for Stuffed Squid With Wilted Salad in the New York Times, I thought I would keep my eye out for squid, haven’t had that for a while. I haven’t done stuffed squid since a party at my business partner’s house back in Boston, that would have been in the late ‘80s.

My go-to squid recipe lately has been Squid with Black Pepper, Vietnamese Style by Mark Bittman, and I’ve done that several times, even for guests. So this would be a welcome change of pace.
What do you know? Shogun Fish at the Farmers Market on Saturday, had fresh caught local squid arrayed neatly in ziplock bags. Oh boy, now is the time.

Cleaning squid is messy, but not difficult. I cleaned them Sunday afternoon. There were 10 nice size squid in the bag.

(more…)

Peel ‘n’ Eat Shrimp
Leftover Potato Salad

While waiting for dinner at Brophy Bros Fish Restaurant in Santa Barbara on Thursday, we had a mess of Peel ‘n’ Eat Shrimp. Yum. Carol said, “We should have Peel ‘n’ Eat shrimp for dinner every Sunday night.”

Our Sunday night dinners are usually planned, and then when the time rolls around to cook, one of us says, “who’s cooking?” and the other says “How about (Chinese) (Pizza) (Leftovers).” Our Sundays are rarely structured; we’ve been out or whatever, and we neither are inclined to get it up for a nice meal.

On this particular Sunday, we were just back from a trip to Santa Barbara to attend the beach wedding of Amber — one of Carol’s head teachers — and Will, a fine young Italian. We wrapped extra days around the Friday afternoon wedding to create a nice “foodie getaway.” (more…)

Sand Dabs, carrots, turnips and turnip greens

I’ve been diligently cooking from recipes, albeit with adaptations and fitting to suit, for years. Well over a year’s worth are recorded on this site. On this occasion, I cooked with what came out of the refrigerator, and from suggestions.

This week, the Shogun stall at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market had Sand Dabs. I love Sand Dabs, little bitty things, two to three for a serving. But these were big fellas, seven or eight inches long. Wonderful. (more…)

February is soup season in Maine; with all due respect to San Francisco in the summer, it can get pretty cold here. Our very favorite cold weather soup is an ancient recipe from Rome that includes bread, egg, cheese, and garlic in chicken stock. When it’s done right, it’s not even a soup really — it’s so thick that each spoonful will crown over the spoon edge. The garlic opens your often stuffy nasal passages, and the egg and bread fill you right up. There’s nothing better to be eaten in front of a roaring fire on a dark winter night. The recipe we normally use is from a 1993 SF Chronicle article by Carol Field who calls it “Pancotto.” However, there’s another good recipe in The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines where Jeff Smith traces a bit of the history of the soup, and then offers a version that makes “rags” out of semolina, eggs, and grated cheese that are cooked in the broth just before being served. Either way, you can’t go wrong when you’re looking for a quick filling way to warm up.

February is also Maine shrimp (Pandalus borealis) season, when this smallish species (averaging 30 to 60 pieces to a pound in the conventional shrimp meat measurement) of comes south for the winter from its summer home in the Arctic ocean. The nice thing about buying these shrimp in season is that you can often buy them directly from the fishermen, who sit in pick-up trucks just off Route 1 (the coastal State highway) propping up hand-lettered signs advertising their catch. And, believe it or not, these days the shrimp, often less than 24 hours out of the net, cost $1.00 or less a pound (the best I got this winter were $0.75 a pound)! That’s in the shell, but you can get more than a pound of tail meat from two pounds of shrimp, and that’s a very nice meal for two to four people. The remaining shells make this deal even better because the heads and shells contain lots of flavor of their own (and often the shells also include eggs stuck to the legs because the shrimp breed at this time, and the roe offer even more rich fat and flavor), and you can make some serious shrimp stock for poaching other fish, or as a base for sauces or soups.
(more…)