The piece of cod

We recently had a spectacular vacation in Italy. From time in Tuscany (cooking class being the highlight) to an amazing time in Naples. I must say that Naples is the most invigorating, exciting, exhausting, wild place I have ever been. And we only just scratched the surface.

Given where Naples sits, a great deal of the food comes from the Mediterranean. So we ate a lot of fish and other seafood. Of course the Neapolitan street food featured too, but this posting is about flavor intensity.

Cod is (of course) not a fish one would expect to see in Naples, but for this recipe, it works well. Other firm, white fsh would work even better, but I didn't really have time to get to the fish monger - so frozen cod it was. The fish isn't the star, however. The bold combination of flavors - capers, tomatoes, olives, oregano, olive oil all baked with the fish made for a delicious, quick, easy dinner.

Ingredients

8 oz Firm white fish in 2 fillets

6 oz cherry tomatoes - cherry tomatoes have the most flavor and the right skin to flesh ratio . And they are about the same size as the olives.

1/2 red onion, diced (soaked in water for 30 minutes, then drained)

4 Tbsp capers, draind but not rinsed. I wanted to keep the briny intensity and not need to add more salt

4 oz black olives, halved

A sprinkling of dried oregano

8 oz Small Yukon Gold potatoes

Mint to cook the potatoes

Salt, to taste in the potato water.

Lots of high quality olive oil

Method

Preheat oven to 375F (Fan assist or 400F conventional).

Place the fish on a parchment lined sheet pan. Mix the tomatoes, capers, red onion, olives, oregano, and olive oil together in a bowl.

Salt cold water in a saucepan, and add the mint and potatoes. 

Cover the fish well with the tomato mixture. 

Start to cook the potatoes over a medium setting. At the same time put the sheet pan into the oven. When the potatoes are cooked (8-10 minutes after being brought to a simmer), the fish is cooked.

Serve with a nice, crisp white wine.

Steamed White Fish

 Some friends came over for dinner one evening and we co-cooked. He taught me a technique that I have since tried on my own - and I love it. It's a simple one pot dish using your choice of hrbs/spices and a firm non-oily white fish. I used red snapper for this version.

In the original dish we used Asian spicing - fenugreek seed, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. For this version, I used a fennel bulb, garlic, ginger, and aleppo pepper. So this is more about technique than recipe. I used the same technique both times.

Ingredients

1 inch of ginger, peeled and grated

3 cloves of garlic, made into a paste (using a garlic press would be fine)

3 medium shallots, minced very finely

1 fennel bulb diced finely - pieces should be the same size as the shallot

2 T olive oil

1 1/2 lbs plum tomatoes, cored, halced and sliced into strips

1 1/2 lbs white fish, boned and skinned

1 handful of fresh tarragon (divided use)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix together the ginger, garlic, aleppo pepper and a little salt. Rub half of this mixture onto the fish and leave for about 15 minutes.

In a 10" skillet, heat the olive oil, and when hot add the remaining ginger/garlic paste and stir for a minute or so. Add the shallot/fennel and soften for about 5 minutes. Do not allow to brown.

Add the tomatoes  and most of the tarragon to the pan, cover and allow to soften for 10 minutes over low heat. Layer the fish on top of the aromatics. Cover again, and steam on low heat for 8-10 minutes - depending on the size of the fish. 

Serve over rice with tarragon leaves as a garnish, making sure that you scoop up some of the juice from the pan and drizzle over the fish.

Gazpacho

I wanted to make a locally sourced dish for a "slow food" event here in Dallas. Of course I turned to the clever folks at Serious Eats for some pointers. I was less interested in a recipe from them, much more interested in techniques to create something like I have had in Spain. There were several obvious things and a couple of genius ahas. With a twist of my own at the end.

I didn't want this to be liquid salsa, nor did I want cold canned tomato soup. I wanted something special. That meant the ripest tomatoes that I could find (thank you Coppell Farmers' Market and the Fisher Family Farm), and locally grown peppers and onions.

First the Serious Eats genius:

• Cut up the vegetables and salt them all together. This extracts a lot of juice.
• Pour that juice over the bread and leave to stand
• Freeze the remaining vegetable parts. The recipe said 30 minutes, but I needed a full hour. But I was making a larger quantity.
• Thaw the vegetables and add them to the bread/juice. Keep some juice back

And the personal addition? The reserved juice after thawing is frozen into tomato-y ice cubes to be served with the soup to keep it cold, but not to dilute the flavors..

For serving - because this was a potluck event, I used a wine decanter. And had some olive oil, croutons, sea salt, sherry vinegar to act as final flavorings. It turned out to be a useful way to serve it because it could then be poured into glasses,

Caprese Salad

Kenji at SeriousEats makes some excellent points about Caprese salad. The keys are:

• Use really fresh tomatoes
• Use really fresh Mozzarella (none of that supermarket pizza topping Mozz.)
• Use really fresh basil, and tear it. (From the garden is the best)
• No vinegar
• Fruity olive oil
• Coarse salt.

So I made it his way tonight. Outstanding. I hadn't previously realized what a dulling effect vinegar has. It was so fresh, so tasty this way. I think there will be a lot more in our future.

Casserole or Gratin

Whether you call a dish a casserole or a gratin may rather depend on whether you like it or not. Needless to say there is some history around tonight's offering. A whole lot of unrelated events combined to make this a must do.
First, there had been the threat of cold weather and we had a massive amount of basil. Needed to get it in so it wouldn't go to waste. I made basil oil from it. Second, we had some stale bread - no surprise there given the amount we make. Third, Fine Cooking came and it had some gratin recipes. Fourth. Madame has said that she would like more veges. 5th, we had some zucchini, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and onions left over from a farmers' market trip.
Now making vegetable gratins is a bit of an art. because the veges can have a lot of water, it is possible to end up with a rather sorry puddle of water with some limp vegetables lying in it. Now that is a casserole!
The trick for this dish is to roast the watery vegetables first in a pretty low oven - not so much for browning, more to drive off some liquid.

Ingredients

3 Tomatoes, chopped into medium dice.
1 sweet potato peeled and sliced very evenly and thinly
1 large zucchini, peeled and sliced more thickly than the sweet potato
2T neutral oil
1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced and squeezed
1/4 cup heavy cream
6 thyme sprigs
1/2t pepper
1/2t kosher salt
a little adobo from canned chipotles in adobo
1 cup breadcrumbs (freshly made from stale breadmentioned earlier)
3T basil oil
2T chopped parsley

Method

Place the tomatoes, sweet potato and zucchini on an oiled baking sheet, add the thyme, salt and pepper sprinkle with oil and bake at 250F for 90 minutes - uncovered. Just to dry out. When dried, remove from pan, remove the thyme sprigs and place in a bowl with the raw onion. Add the cream, stir and allow to cool so the flavors come together.
About 45 minutes before serving, heat the oven to 450F. Place the vegetable/cream mixture in a grain dish. Warm the basil oil slightly. Combine the breadcrumbs, chopped parsley and basil oil and toss. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top of the vegetable mixture. Bake at 450 for about 30 minutes - covering with foil if the top browns too quickly.
Allow to cool for about 10 minutes and serve.

 

 

As you can see there was no nasty pool of liquid. Also, Madame pronounced it delicious (not, "We can serve this to people" delicious though).

Bottom line - definitely a gratin

Halving Olives and baby tomatoes

Halving cherry tomatoes, olives, grapes etc. is such a pain. Mindless, precision. So I have come up with a better way. I don't remember where I saw this technique - on one of the cooking shows, I think. Since then I have seen Chris Consentino (twitter @offalchris) talking about it.

Equipment

2 plates
1 sharp knife

Technique

Place one plate on your cutting surface - face down. Note the ridge. The plate in the picture is on a damp piece of paper towel to prevent it slipping.

 

Place some pitted olives (cherry or grape tomatoes, grapes, pitted cherries, etc.) into the dish on the bottom of the plate.

 



 

Place the other plate face up on top. The olives are now trapped between the layers.

 



Using a very sharp long knife (long enough so that the length of the blade is greater than the diameter of the plates) slice between the plates, using one of the rims as a guide.

 



 When you have cut all the way through, your olives are neatly halved

 

And ready for use in a dish.

 



Soup and Sandwich

This course was the "lunch" course of the Day in Dinner party. It was the soup course, but like everything at the party, it was to have a slight twist. The soup was a simple tomato/roasted red pepper soup. The twist was the sandwich. With the soup you don't have to be precise about the size of the vegetables - it is going to be blended and strained so it is completely smooth.
Ingredients  - Soup
2 red bell peppers, left whole
2T vegetable oil
2 oz butter
1 large onion (I used yellow) minced
1 shallot minced
3 cloves garlic smashed
3T all purpose flour
1 large and 1 small can of whole tomatoes
2 cups chicken stock
3 sprigs of thyme
salt/pepper to taste
A few drops of extra virgin olive oil for serving
Sea salt crystals
Method - Soup
Heat the oven to 450F and roast the peppers until the skin is well charred (about 45 minutes). Meanwhile heat the oil/butter gently until hot but not brown. Add the onion, shallot, garlic and sweat gently. Do not allow any color to form.
Place the tomatoes into the blender and pulse quickly to break up the larger pieces. It is better to this than to but crushed or sauce tomatoes. This way they are less metallic tasting. Also if you are lucky enough to have some home canned tomatoes (as we were), they will almost always be whole.
Once the onion, shallot and garlic have softened, add the flour to the pot and stir to coat, and make a light roux. Add the tomatoes, stock, thyme to the pot. Stir to incorporate. Peel and roughly chop the roasted peppers (having removed the seeds), add the peppers to the pot.
Bring up to a simmer - gently to avoid sticking. Simmer for about 35 - 40 minutes stirring occasionally.
Puree the soup in the blender in several batches. Do this while it is hot - make sure you place a kitchen towel over the blender while doing this. You do not want hot tomato soup flying around the kitchen!
Strain the soup using a fine strainer and discard anything that remains in the strainer.
Chill overnight to allow the flavors to develop. Reheat when ready.
Ingredients - Sandwiches
16 oz Parmesan cheese - grated finely. Use the highest quality you can
6 oz fresh goat cheese
A good handful of fresh basil leaves
2T milk (may not be needed if the goats cheese is soft and creamy)
1t sherry vinegar
1t extra virgin olive oil
Method - Sandwiches
Make Parmesan tuiles by spreading the Parmesan cheese on a baking sheet

and baking in a 475 degree oven until it is melted and bubbling. (3-4 minutes). Allow to cool a bit. While still flexible (they do become crunchy eventually), cut them out into the shapes you want. I used a 1" ring cutter. One guest remarked that they looked like Communion Wafers.

When ready to make the sandwiches, form the filling pr processing the cheese, basil, milk (if needed), vinegar, oil until a smooth green paste is formed. There is no need for salt because the tuiles have enough salt for the whole sandwich. To make the sandwiches spread a little filling on one tuile and top with another.
Serve alongside the soup.

It's cold now....

It is finally cold enough in Dallas for the time of the year. So the tomato season is over - replaced by "hot chocolate season".

No more pa amb tomaquet until next year :-(.

However hot chocolate made simply with milk and Mexican chocolate provides a similar degree of comfort!

Pa amb tomaquet.
A Catalunyan appetizer very simply made. Takes about 5 minutes - the longest part is the toasting of the bread.

A few slices of country bread - 3/8 inch thick - cut into planks about 3 inches wide
Some tomatoes preferably very ripe beefsteak
I clove garlic (optional)
Extra virgin olive oil (Spanish of course for this dish)
Large sea salt crystals
Thinly sliced Manchego cheese - cut in planks to match the shape of the bread (optional)

I buy my bread at the Breadhaus in Grapevine, TX. A bit of a trek, but fantastic bread and wonderful people.

I buy tomatoes at one of the nearby farmers' markets - always trying to get local produce. Since we go through so many of them, we always buy seconds. At about $1 per pound you can't go wrong. Sometimes you have to remove some nasty bits, but not often. They don't keep as long as the firsts - partly because they seem riper, and partly because they can be a bit bruised. Remember, of course, never to keep fresh tomatoes in the refrigerator.

Toast the bread - on a griddle preferably, but the toaster works too.
While the bread is toasting, cut the tomatoes in half around their equators (i.e. not through the stem end).
Do not bother to peel the garlic, but cut the garlic clove in half cross-wise (if using). When the bread is toasted on each side, rub the cut side of the garlic across the bread (optional step). Now press the cut side of a tomato into each slice of bread. Smoosh it around so some of the seeds and liquid permeate the bread. One tomato will do about 3 slices of bread (depending of course on the size of the tomato and the size of the bread!).
Once the bread slices are all coated with tomato, arrange them in layers on a plate, sprinkle the olive oil over them, and then a few large sea salt crystals top get an extra crunch.
If you are feeling especially decadent, lay a slice of Manchego on each - but it is pretty good all on its own!
Serve with a good rustic red wine, lots of people and you have a terrific evening started. Sadly though we will have to wait until the tomato harvest next year.

Hot Chocolate
This is Madame's favorite bed time drink - we have it during the winter instead of dessert. For 2 mugs of hot chocolate, heat together milk and 1/2 a tablet of Mexican chocolate (currently we are using Abuelita). The heating should be slow - the chocolate doesn't melt easily. Keep stirring throughout and don't let the mixture boil.
Pour into heated mugs (1/2 fill with water, microwave until hot - taking care because microwaved water can superheat and leap out of the mug when you move it).