On the Menu This Week

There's lots of great food on the Pinch menu this week. First up is tonight's dinner: Coriander Dry-rubbed Steaks with Avocado Salsa. I'm hopeful my avocados are ripe enough. If not, I'm going to morph the whole dish into kabobs using some gorgeous peppers I picked up at the market recently. Either one will be paired with summer greens, but I need to change up my vinaigrette routine a bit. I'm bored with my dressings.

Next I'm going to line up a summertime favorite: Sweet Corn Risotto topped with a piece of pan fried halibut. I've loved this dish since watching its creator, Anna Thomas, cook it up at the original Sur la Table in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. Cooking fish this way is quite simple: first, remove the skin and cut your fish into individual servings (I go for 4-5 ounces for all animal protein but your fishmonger will advise you to buy more). Sprinkle kosher salt and fresh ground pepper all over the fish. In a medium nonstick skillet, heat 1 teaspoon of grape seed oil for a minute or so. Add the halibut and cook over moderately high heat until browned, about 3-4 minutes. Flip the filets and cook for another 2 minutes or so.

Start preparing the fish when the risotto is about 10 minutes from being ready and serve it right on top of the plated risotto. You'll be busy at the end, but that's just how it goes with risotto. Remember, risotto waits for no man - or fish - so time things properly.

You can also make a simple tomato-herb salsa to toss on top (thinking tomatoes, parsley, shallot and chive, tossed with a smidge of olive oil and white wine vinegar) - just keep it simple and fresh.

Two light meals I'm going to make on evenings when we have evening plans that don't include dinner are Tabouli with Lemon Chicken and Gazpacho which I plan to serve with a side of Chipotle Shrimp. And later in the week will be Rick Bayless' Skirt Steak Salad, which will put to use those chipotle chilies leftover from the shrimp.

That's all.

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Three Tricks All the Pastry Pros Know

In a recent post I mentioned tweaks I employed on Flag Cake and Gougères to send them over the top. Here's that info:

Cakes
Trick 1 - Soaking Solution
The easiest way to ruin a cake is by overbaking. But even if your cake isn't baked perfectly it can be brought back to life (within reason) with a soaking solution. This is a hot sugar syrup, flavored with a bit of liqueur, pure extracts, or citrus zest, brushed or squirted onto cake layers. It adds both flavor and moisture and really improves the whole of the dessert.



A soaking solution is made by boiling equal parts sugar and water and adding the liqueur or zest once the sugar is dissolved. For the average 8-inch cake I use about 1/2 cup each sugar and water and 2 tablespoons of liqueur. The solution needs to be hot when you brush it onto the cake, otherwise it won't saturate well. I use a pastry brush to soak my cake layers (just make sure your pastry brush doesn't smell like garlic or BBQ sauce) but you can even spoon it on, tho that method takes longer.

When I bake a round cake I routinely cut off the rounded top. The crumb that is revealed is much more porous than the cake top you've removed and snacked on. But if you are not brave enough to trim the top, just poke holes all over the cake with a toothpick and then saturate.

Oh, and you want to do this to a cake that is out of the pan already. Here's the order of operations:

1. Bake a cake
2. Let it cool 5-20 minutes
3. Remove from pan, transfer to a plate
*At this point, I always let my cakes cool completely, then chill in the fridge as trimming and frosting comes out way better on a chilled cake.*
4. Make soaking solution and brush on

Trick 2 - Crumb Coat
A crumb coat refers to a thin coating of frosting that is applied to a cake. After crumb coating, the cake is retired to the fridge to set. This process sets all the crumbs in place so that when you apply a nice thick coating of frosting you don't get any crumbs ruining the view. Here's photo of the crumb and final coat:




Gougères
This recipe from David Lebovitz was really great. When I learned to make gougères in cooking school they were the sort where you made a choux pate, piped out rounds onto a baking sheet, topped the rounds with grated Parmesan or Gruyère, baked them, and then, when cool, piped into them a ham and Gruyère béchamel. They're quite good, but the béchamel is a wee bit heavy and so 1980. Quiche, brie and béchamel probably did more to usher in the aerobics era than Jane Fonda.

The Lebovitz recipe redeems the hors d'oevre in two ways: it brings it up to date (and offers suggestions for using other hard French cheeses in addition to or in place of Gruyère) and it simplifies the process by adding the cheese to the choux pate. Once the puffs are baked, they are ready to serve.



The only thing I did differently was to use a little water to shape the puffs before baking. If you aren't an expert with a pastry bag, the choux rounds can be a bit misshapen. A simple fix is to dip your fingers into a small bowl of water and then gently smooth out the choux rounds before topping with cheese and baking. I'm pretty sure I learned this trick in cooking school, but maybe it was from restaurant work. Anyway, you can see the difference in the lower photo. The rounds in the front have been smoothed out a bit.

And there you have it - three tricks all the pros know.

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Several Things You Cannot Dispute

Once upon a time we caught a production of A Year with Frog and Toad, a musical based on the children's books written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel, the same genius behind Mouse Soup. Thank goodness for children. Where would we be without these stories?

The production, in fact the inaugural production of the Chicago Children's Theater, was really magnificent. We returned home with the CD (the writers of the musical, brothers Robert (music) and Willie Reale (lyrics) won the Tony in 2003 for Best Original Score) and some of those songs still dance in my head.

In Act I, Snail, the show's only character with a job, sings a lovely tune about delivering a letter. "I'm the snail with the mail, I deliver without fail..." This is a tough act to follow, but the brothers Reale pulled one outta a hat with Getta Loada Toad, which concerns Toad's anxiety about being seen in his bathing suit and counts among its stanzas this gem:

"Four things you cannot dispute:
Bamboo comes from a bamboo shoot
Rutabaga comes from a rutabaga root
Bananas are the funniest fruit
And Toad looks funny in a bathing suit!"

Aside from all the catchy rhyming, I really appreciate the simple observation of the banana as funniest fruit. Bananas have a silly name, a silly shape, and that whole shtick with the slippery peel. In fairness, the banana is also the most dependable fruit. It's good on an empty stomach, more satisfying than a Snickers, and folks who find themselves exhausted from gnawing away at beef jerky and protein bars must certainly appreciate - when consuming a banana - mastication without temporomandibular dislocation.

But the banana flavor is a different story. What happens inside the peel needs to stay inside. When I was a kid I had to take banana-flavored medicine for asthma (sucks to that banana-flavored asthma medicine) and I still harbor mistrust of pharmaceuticals. A fifth indisputable fact: a single banana Runt can spoil a perfectly good day. Or, put to music:

...Bananas are the funniest fruit
But a banana Runt will make you boot.

And this brings us to Smarties, my second-favorite non-chocolate candy. We had a boat-load Smarties leftover from assorted parties and I have one roll left in my secret stash. One of my favorite things about Smarties is that there's not a gross flavor. Just now I opened a roll and there were a whole bunch of yellows which, in the case of many other candies, would be a grave disappointment. I know, usually yellow = lemon. But Laffy Taffy, Runts, and Now and Later have each slipped their nasty banana candies onto the market and now I get nervous every time I see yellow in a candy wrapper.

That's all.

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Summer Food and Nightcrawler

I haven't been cooking much lately  - just enough to pass along a few recipes from the past month. The Barefoot Contessa's Flag Cake (our version is pictured here) was a big hit, as were David Lebovitz's Gougères. I'm looking forward to trying out Mark Bittman's Sigapore Chili Lobster sometime soon. For that adventure - which will involve live lobsters - I've already secured co-council. I've been watching re-runs of The Good Wife and have found legalese as fun to throw around as Italian. Prego!

When TGW first debuted I assumed they'd never find me in their audience. This was for the same reason I planned to never watch Big Love:  there's just not enough lifetime waking hours to spend any of them wrapped up in adulterous dramas. I'm not sure if it's more surprising that I watched a multiple seasons of Big Love or that I found myself rooting for those dear polygamists. With TGW, it's all about Kalinda and Eli. The last time I saw Alan Cumming was as Nightcrawler in X-Men 2. I'm half-expecting him to pounce into Alicia's office, long tail flying, only to dissipate into a cloud of midnight blue smoke.

In between reruns I've been answering a flood of emails concerning picnic food. Here's what I've been suggesting:

Salads
Fresh Corn Salad
Three Bean Salad
Roasted Red Potato Salad
Avocado Salad
Potato, Dill, and Cucumber Salad
Panzanella

Main Courses
Flank Steak Sandwiches
Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Summer Chicken Salad
Pan Bagnia
Chilled Soba Noodles


More soon on tweaks to the Flag Cake and gougères to really send them over the top.

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Poison, Not Just an 80s Metal Glam Band (or One Woman's Private Struggle with Sugar Ants)

A year ago we moved into a house that counts among its features a rooftop patio accessed via sliding glass doors off the kitchen. Immediately off. Not down the stairs, across the city back yard, and up the stairs to the top of the garage. It is possibly my favorite thing, to be able to step outside to grill, pick some herbs, or water my plants. The downside, a ceaseless parade of sugar ants inside on my counters, seemed a small price to pay. Until this year, that is, when spring came early and so did the ants. They were in such great numbers a week ago that something had to be done. And so I searched for a home remedy that wouldn't poison the dog or put noxious chemicals in our living area. My success was so great that I'm passing it along:

Jammy Borax
Recipe below

Let me be clear: Use Borax with caution and don't leave Jammy Borax around where Fido can reach it.

INGREDIENTS
2 T jam, preserves, honey or sugar syrup
2 T Borax

METHOD
Fashion 1-2 small trays/shallow bowls out of tin foil (or recycled lids from sour cream or yogurt containers, or the like). Just use something you won't use for food later.

Spoon all ingredients into the lid/tray and mix well to combine (if using more than one tray, just do a tablespoon of each ingredient for each tray). Set right outside the point of entry the ants are using. (I set mine on the ground outside our sliding glass doors, next to the outside wall, and leaned a dustpan over it to block the dog from licking it. I also told the dog in no uncertain terms to stay the heck away from the jam.)

The idea is that the ants snack on the jam and then head back to their colony where they either share or infect the queen and kin with the poison. Then you have no more ants. This is what happened for us. Within about 20 minutes the tray was positively teeming with ants. We set out the Jammy Borax last week and I haven't seen an ant inside (or out, for that matter) since. We also spent about 30 minutes smushing every ant we saw inside, just for the sake of immediate results.

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Home fries, home slice!

I have a mental picture of the dude (read: nerd) who inquired of Google, "What does 'Wasabi, home slice' mean?" Even my kids know Wasabi is more than a spicy, expensive root that is usually replaced by a cheaper preparation of horseradish, mustard and green food coloring. Wasabi is a one-word interrogative statement employed by hipsters (read: metro-nerds) when seeking information from other hipsters usually as a direct question of current emotional well-being or purpose. Translated into improper English: "What's up?"

Home slice, on the other hand, is what you call your homie, your paisano, your brother from another mother, even your children.

Anyhoo, I gave up eating potatoes for breakfast several years ago because I just love them so darned much and they were making me pudgy. I'm more moderate now and do eat them sometimes - more like 1-2 times a month. This morning I tried them a new way, following this recipe from Simply Recipes. They were so, so good. There was some distrust of the onion among the natives. But, oh! I will enjoy having them again in the distant future.

One further note: I made them with peeled, uncooked russets. I think if you use cooked potatoes they will come out approximately like the delicious breakfast potatoes at Toast.

That's all.

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At long last! A traditional seeded Irish soda bread

Well. I have been trying to make this forever. When my lovely Irish neighbor was fixing to leave town for New York, I asked her to tell me how she makes bread. Recreating a traditional soda bread (not the caraway-raisin one I turn out each year around St. Patrick's Day) is difficult on this side of the Atlantic because the flours are so different.

Being a professional cook and a frequent bread baker, my former neighbor didn't have a recipe to hand me. But she rattled off the ingredients and I sleuthed out a recipe online that sounded a lot like the bread she bakes several times a week.

You should feel free to tinker with it yourself, adding oats or other grains as you like. For example, the original recipe called for wheat and oat bran. I didn't have either in my pantry, but I did have a box of 7 Grain Hot Cereal which contains cracked wheat, steel cut oats, grits and millet - sort of a chicken scratch that gave the bread some nice texture.  Just follow the basic dry to liquid ratio and you'll turn out something delightful. My version is a slight adaptation from a recipe on Epicurious, which was reprinted with permission from A Baker's Odyssey by Greg Patent.

Anyway, the bread is quite perfect - very authentic and yet less dry than the brown breakfast bread I ate in Ireland. I baked it in a cast iron skillet, which may have helped.

Seeded Irish Soda Bread
Print recipe only here 

INGREDIENTS
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour, plus more for shaping
3 T cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup wheat bran AND 1/4 cup oat bran OR 1/2 cup 7 Grain Hot Cereal OR 1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 T flax seeds
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 large egg
About 1 3/4 cups buttermilk
2 T honey

Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly oil a heavy baking sheet or cast iron pan or line it with a silicone baking sheet.

In a large bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour. Add the butter and work it into the dry ingredients with your fingertips until the fat particles are very fine. Stir in the baking soda, salt, wheat bran and oat bran (or substitutes), wheat germ, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds.

Beat the egg lightly with a fork in a 2-cup glass measure. Add enough buttermilk to come to the 2-cup line. Add the honey and combine well.

Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until the dough gathers into a thick, wet-looking mass.

Sprinkle your work surface with whole wheat flour and scrape the dough onto it. Dust the dough with a bit more whole wheat flour. Pat the dough into a circular shape about 7 inches across and 2 inches high and transfer it to the prepared baking sheet.

Make a cross-shaped indentation on top of the loaf going right to the edges. I use a metal bench scraper.
Bake the bread for about 40 minutes, until it is well browned and sounds hollow when rapped on the bottom.

Cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

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