Life

Life has just been kicking my can this summer. If I could work 80 a week at my office, I'd still be behind. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel so things should get better soon.

I am planning to do some pie shell decorating for this weekend. I promise I will post my results!

Still here!!

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I've been dealing with a lot of life right now - including the death of my mother-in-law. So, it's been kind of tough to write and tough to cook. Next week, things should be easier, so look for a post mid to end of the week.

Radishes, Not Just for Salads!

When my mother rejoined the workforce in my teens, my dad and I picked up a lot of her cooking tasks. Over time, my dad took over making all weekend breakfasts and was usually pretty good. My mother never needed to worry about leftovers as my dad kept finding new and inventive ways to use them. Some of them didn't work out too well, but most of them worked incredibly. I think it helps that my dad never had a home ec teacher to tell him it wouldn't work.

One of his great discoveries was that radish roots sauté wonderfully. They didn't work too well in the omelet, but on their own they were exquisite.

This week I was able to get wild-caught, fresh salmon on a wonderful sale. I've been grilling it until tonight, when a wind/dust storm made grilling inadvisable. Each night, I've been trying to come up with a new vegetable combination to accompany it. Tonight, I decided on radishes.

Sauteed Radishes, Zucchini, and Onion

1/2 cup zucchini, sliced
1/2 cup radishes, sliced
1/2 cup onion, (sliced lengthwise in strips)
1/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon olive oil

Heat oil in skillet. Sprinkle salt over veggies as the oil heats. Sauté onions until they start to become translucent. Add radishes and zucchini and sauté until they are to their desired doneness.

This is a very easy and flavorful vegetable dish. A lot of people find zucchini to be bland, but I don't. I do find that it plays well off a stronger flavor, so it's creaminess can come to the fore.

When choosing radishes to sauté, make sure the radishes aren't too big or too strong. If they are, the radishes will be bitter.

Book Review: Over a Red-Hot Stove

Over a Red-Hot Stove (ed. Ivan Day) is a wonderful series of essays of reviewing the development of cooking technology from the 16th century to present. The six-essay series tackles a different aspect of technology development from the development of the kitchen range to changing meat roasting technologies to changes in yeast/leavening techniques in breadmaking.

I found Peter Brears' (author of Cooking in Medieval England) essay on the changing technological changes in the methods of roasting meat quite compelling. His discussion of the transition from open hearth roasting to closed oven roasting provoked a lot a thinking about why we value grilling so much today. Grilled meats share a lot of characteristics with open-heart roasted meats.

Early meat roasting technologies involved one or more spits arrayed in front of a large open hearth, burning wood or coal (occasionally even turf, when fuel prices are too high). Drip pans placed under the spit caught the fats and fluids rendered from the meat as it roasted, and were basted back onto the meat as the roasting process progressed. This treatment led to a very succulent and flavorful piece of meat.

Two important characteristics of open-hearth roasting are intense heating of one side of the meat at a time and removal of the rendered fats from the meat. The alternating periods of heat allows the sugars to rise to the surface of the meat and carmelize, providing incredible Maillard reactive flavors (enhanced by basting from the drip pan). In addition, the application then removal of heat allows the heat to slowly penetrate the meat and slowly change the protein structure of the meat, leaving the meat very tender and juicy.

Most grilling instructions call for grilling one side of the meat, then turning the meat and grilling to desired doneness. If a thin steak is being grilled, this may be the most efficient way to grill, but for a thick piece of meat, this process increases the likelihood the meat will be burned. Personally, I prefer to work with meat at least one inch in thickness (and thicker when doing pork ribs). By turning the meat periodically during the cooking process, I alternate the intense cooking heat with cooling, drawing the sugars out of the meat. I also drain the rendered fats away from the meat, preventing the fat from overheating and affecting the flavor of the meat. While I can't baste with drippings to increase succulence, I can marinate and add flavor and fluid prior to cooking, thus increasing the succulence.

I love it when a book about food or cooking makes me put things together in different ways! Over a Red-Hot Stove certainly stirred things up in my mind. Go get a copy for yourself and see what it makes you think about cooking!

Curried Potato Salad

Potato salad is one of America's summer staple food. But face it, too many times, potato salad is bland or one-note or uninteresting. Most of them use mayo or sour cream as their bases, which is more fat than any of us need.

A couple years ago, a local restaurant gave me the recipe for their creamy curry sauce. It's excellent, but not as versatile or healthy as I like. So I started playing with it (of course).

Yogurt is a common (and quite yummy) substitute for mayo. I buy a (relatively) local creamery's yogurt - Tillamook. The creamery is situated near the town of Tillamook on the Oregon coast. I am partial to their products, which I feel are far superior to nearly all the larger regional brands -- and head and shoulders above the national ones. But this is all beside the point.

My point is that low-fat yogurt, from any source, is healthier than mayo. It has loads of nutrients, especially vitamin D and calcium.

Curry Potato Salad

3-4 cups of diced potatoes
1/2 cup diced onions
1/2 cup celery

Curry Dressing

1-1/2 cups plain, low-fat yogurt
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoon curry powder
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar

Blend well by hand or with a food processor.

Steam the potatoes until done, but firm. Cool.

Once the potatoes are cool, mix the onions, celery, and potatoes. Add the curry dressing 1/2 to 1 cup at at a time, until everything is coated. Do not add too much dressing (you probably won't use all of it). Enjoy!

I prefer the waxy potato varieties (red, Yukon gold, white) to the mealier russets. I think it nicely highlights the creaminess of the entire dish. The celery and onion provide a nice crunchy counterpoint to the unctuous creamy conspiracy of the potatoes and sauce. One of my next experiments with this dish is deciding what other vegetables to include - carrots and broccoli are definitely contenders.

I made the salad the night before I served it. The flavors tend to marry and intensify overnight, especially as the potatoes absorb some of the curry flavor.

Fry-ups

Every so often, fortunately not very often, I decide to do a fry-up for dinner. The contents of the fry-up vary, but usually in some way include a meat, a starch, garlic, onions or leeks, mushrooms, and a veggie. Tonight's fry-up involved leeks and mushrooms I had purchases over the weekend for camping -- they needed to be used and used quickly!

And did I add, needed to be fast? I hurt today.

Beefy Leeks and Mushrooms

8 oz beef sirloin cut into cubes
1 large leek cut into coins
8 oz. mushrooms sliced thickly
2 large potatoes
2 cans green beans (I know, but I didn't have fresh -- and I said quick)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large tablespoon chopped garlic
1 teaspoon salt

Microwave the potatoes for 4 to 5 minutes, then cube.

Add oil to a large skillet or wok and heat on medium/high. Add potatoes and mushrooms. Saute until halfway done.

Add leeks and garlic. Saute until done.

Remove everything from the pan and saute the steak on high until nearly to desired doneness. Return everything to the pan and add the green beans. Heat until green beans are done.

This was wonderfully savory and amazingly yummy. The dish was mostly vegetable, but tasted very full of meat. And it was fast and easy to make -- about a half hour, from first chop to serving.

I love the interplay of leeks, mushrooms, and beef. That combination is so savory, so umami that I just can't get quite enough of it. In some ways, I prefer leeks to onions; while the taste isn't as sharp, it contains a lot of the freshness I associate with green onions. However, I prefer to go gently with the spicing, simply because I like to let the leeks shine.

New Recipe Finally - Grilled Mahi Mahi

I'm sorry about the lack of post last week - I had a virus or something and one demon of a headache (not a migraine - that I know how to deal with) that two prescription meds just could not knock out. So I went to work and came home and let Julia baby me.

So I'll try to do two recipes this week!

The last week has been rather toasty here in the Pacific Northwest with highs in the 90s. This wouldn't be too bad, but the highs the week before were in the upper 60s to lower 70s. We went from mid-May to mid-July with no stop over for June!

So I'm going to enjoy my grill. Today's recipe is Grilled Mahi Mahi.

Grilled Mahi Mahi

1 lb mahi mahi fillets (four fillets about 4 oz each)
1 large lemon
6-7 garlic cloves
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1 cup water
2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil

Zest and juice the lemon and put in a sealable plastic bag. Chop the garlic finely and add to the lemon juice. Add the rice wine and water (I collected the water in the lemon husks to add flavor). Add salt and fish. Marinade no more than 30 minutes. I marinaded for 60 minutes and I think that was a little too long.

Lightly coat each side of each fillet with olive oil.

Grill on medium heat for about 1-2 minutes per side. I grilled 2-3 and the fish was a little more done than I preferred. Part of this may have been the marinade time being too long.

The fish held together reasonably well, though the edges of some of the fillets tried to fall off. The fish was firm, but not yet tough; I definitely should have shortened either the marinade time or the grill time (I think both).

However, the fish was delightfully lemony and not overly garlicky. I thought about adding fresh dill, but the store was out of it. I refused to use dried dill; I really wanted a fresh flavor to the fish.

I served the fish with brown basmati rice, steamed broccoli, and a lovely, well-chilled rosé. Now, I'm going to enjoy my dinner.