Mario!

I had a really weird dream last night that I went to one of Mario Batali's restaurants and he was there. He was really stressed out and crazy, but he let me check out some food book he got in high school. But then I got tomato sauce fingerprints on it and he put me in a headlock. Then we ran out.

Brillat-Savarin

The legendary gastronome said many things, two of which strike me:

"The world is nothing without life and all that lives takes nourishment"

"Desert without cheese is like a pretty woman with only one eye."

Peach Melbas and Care Bear Villians

There's a fly in here I can't kill. It keeps flying around, just cruising around my apartment mocking me, taking it's time, waiting for me to drop my guard before it buzzes back around my head again.

Anyway, the night was hot and fevered and so is my sleep. It's about 3 in the morning and I've woken up about every hour to pour an ice cold glass of water down my throat so I can sleep again. During one of these periods I dreamed the the color from my pictures was bleeding away. I couldn't stop it but sought to capture ALL the colors as they seeped away and became like a care bear villian. I think it had something to do with this image of the peach melba lingering in my subconscious from earlier.

This drink is actually the opposite of the picture and refreshing on many levels and not abrasive, but definitely intense. It's made from ground up frozen peaches, simple syrup, raspberries, lime juice, spiced rum and ice. It's a lot like a smoothie and can be made hours ahead of time and stored in the freezer. The recipe came from . I topped it off with white flesh peaches which brings me to my next point;

PEACHES ARE IN SEASON. GO EAT PEACHES.

Steph had to work the 4th so my day was fairly uneventful. I had a beer lunch: beer brats with carmelized vidalia onions in beer reduction, served with beer. By the way, the time for vidalia/walla walla onions has passed.

Dinner was simple but delicious: Steaks with grilled vegetable-pesto salad and garlic potatoes. We started out with the peach melbas I got some really beautifully marbled new york strip steaks from top and grilled them. I made a steak sauce that tasted a lot like homemade A-1 but way better:

Steak Sauce

1/3 cup worcestershire
2 Tbs ketchup
pinch of salt
several dashes of tapatio or other pepper sauce

I grilled asparagus, mushrooms and tomatoes and drizzled the last of the pesto over it with a little balsamic vinegar salt and pepper.

I quartered some russets and grilled those as well and then tossed with butter, salt and roasted garlic.

Desert was a raspberry chocolate puff pastry. Aside from some eggwash brushed on the outside for color, these were the only three ingredients. I cut the thawed puff pastry sheet into quarters about 4x4" and placed ~4 raspberries and 5 or 6 semi-sweet morsels and then folded them up. If I had some coarse cane sugar I would have sprinkled it over, but only a pinch.

I love puff pastry dough, it makes you look like you spent a lot of time on something when, in actuality this is the extent and complexity of the desert I make.

Teriyaki

I wanted to make buffalo burgers for the fourth, but top wasn't stocking any buffalo meat. For some reason it makes me think of Teriyaki sauce. The french neglected to take into account the whole spectrum of mirin based sauces when they left it out of the 5 categories. It's incredibly simple and the difference between homemade and store bought is expectedly large. There's reason not to make it just before you need it since it only requires you combine 4 ingredients:

1/2c. mirin
1/4c. shoyu (soy sauce)
1/4c. sake
2 Tbs. sugar

warm to dissolve sugar.

This teriyaki isn't thick and syrupy like the kind you'd buy already made, and can be brushed onto meat as it grills in layers. The extremely high salt from the soy sauce makes it into more of a brine than a marinade and consequently more effective. The mirin really makes all the difference in the world - use a good one and your dreams will come true, but use a bad one and see what I'm talking about. Unfortunately there's not much selection when you're living in a fairly small town like olympia. There's nothing to be learned from the smell, you have to taste it. It should be rich and much to sweet to ever be consumed on it's own and taste only of rice. It's the perfect representation of the japanese simplicity and love of sweetness in savory dishes.

Another in the mirin sauce family is tare, or yakitori basting sauce. It's made with mirin, sugar, shoyu and sake, but is simmered with grilled chicken wings for 30-35 minutes afterward. The result is unbelievable. In restuaraunts the grilled chicken on the skewers would be dipped into the tare pot during cooking and acquire more chicken flavor with each skewer. According to the cookbook this recipe came from - The Japanese Kitchen by Hiroko Shimbo - Restaurants boast to have been using the same tare base for ten years. Eating the wings afterward is the recipe thanking you for making it.

Momos Momos!

Not much more to say. Delicious as usual. I'm not crazy about this presentation. The napa cabbage should be turned around to draw out the off-white momos instead of fading them away.

Momos

1 large package wonton wrappers
1 recipe turkey filling
Momo sauce

Garnish:

½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
½ cup chopped green onions

Wet the corners of the wontons so they stick. Place ~1 tbs of turkey filling in the middle of each wonton and fold together. Steam the momos a few at a time, making sure they don’t touch each other. Cook until the dough turns transparent, about 5 minutes. Serve immediately with momo sauce poured over. Garnish with fresh chopped cilantro and green onions.

Turkey Filling:

2 pounds ground turkey
½ cup chopped fresh dill
1 bunch green onions (green part only)
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper

Combine ingredients in a stand mixer or by hand. Use immediately or refrigerate up to 24hrs ahead of time for optimal flavor infusion.

Momo Sauce:

2 29oz cans tomato sauce
1 sliced serrano chilis
5 cloves minced garlic
3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
remaining dill (throw in whatever is leftover from the turkey filling)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 tsp of salt

In a large saucepan, heat the oil. Add the shallots and cook 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic, herbs and chilis and cook another minute. Add the tomato sauce and remaining ingredients. Bring up to a boil and then down to a simmer. Cook until flavors are infused, tasting periodically, about 30 minutes. Serve warm over momos.

Penne alla Vodka

By making this with the spicy pepper vodka we had leftover from the bloody mary's, I thought, at the time, it was a bold and daring experiment that would yield untold glory or total ruin. It was however, mediocre. I didn't realize that as the vodka cooked away it would take all of it's infused flavors with it leaving us with a sweet (and still very good) tomato sauce. Also, I have to thank John Graham, who let me borrow his negative scanner which brings us this image. The recipe came from my beloved


I found this book on half.com while looking for 1,000 Indian recipes. Both are hardcover and came out the same year, but this was about $3 with shipping and the other was $21 and I doubt 1,000 Indian Recipes was endorsed by Mario Batali.

The recipe I used was:

1/4 c. unsalted butter
1/4c. finely chopped red onion
1 28oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped, w
1/2 c. tomato puree saved from tomatoes
salt
1 Tbs. tomato paste
1/4 cup spicy pepper vodka
1 pound penne
1/2 cup grated parmesan

1,000 Italian Recipes called for a 1/2 cup of cream instead of the puree and no tomato paste. Keep in mind while I was making this I thought there would be a nice peppery bite to balance out all the sweet tomato-iness. The whole time I was eating it, I couldn't help but think about this capaldi recipe for a deconstruction of a tomato ravioli. I haven't been able to find agar agar (or Kanten) around, but once I do I'm totally gonna make that.

More Shrimp From Steph

Shrimp on Shabbat? Maybe. Delicious? Definitely. This fusion recipe wasn't particularly impressive, but very nice. A variation on the spring roll that included a pesto salad dressing. It works well as a delicious summer food but lacks the substance and heat for a colder season. Steph found the recipe on Epicurious and made it while I tried to get john's negative scanner to work. the good news is I did! more to come