SPEAKEASY KITCHEN

Butternut Squash Lasagna: A Speakeasy Kitchen Original?

2012-01-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

I suppose if you googled "butternut squash lasagna," you might come up with a couple hundred recipes for something like this. But I wouldn't know -- I didn't do any research to come up with this one. Nor have I ever eaten butternut squash lasagna nor seen it on any menu or blog I've ever read. It just showed up over the course of the day, as I puttered around from one activity to another.

A few do's and don'ts before I share the recipe:

1. DO roast the squash in advance. Roasting squash doesn't take a lot of time, but when you're going to make something like a lasagna, where there's also a sauce to compose, pasta to roll, and a giant pan of lasagna to bake, it helps to have a few steps, like roasting squash, squared away a day or two in advance.

2. DO use no-bake pasta from a box if that's what you're comfortable with. I'm no Sandra Lee so I'm not going to tell you to slop a can of squash on top of a box of pasta. But let's face it. Most of us grew up eating lasagna made from no-bake pasta from a box if we were lucky enough to have moms that made lasagna. And it didn't give us less appreciation for lasagna made from fresh pasta. So I say if you don't have the wherewithall to roll out fresh dough, then just go with what you know.

3. DO make sure you have more than enough ingredients before you start. The task of layering of a lasagna is such that you want to make sure there's as much of the good stuff for the top layers at the end as there was for the bottom layers in the beginning.

4. DO NOT substitute string cheese for mozzarella in the event that you didn't follow tip #3 and you ran out of mozzarella. They are not the same thing. Now that I've made the mistake, and knowing what I know about mozzarella because I make it from scratch at home, I can explain how they're different. Mozzarella, once the curds are separated from the whey, is stretched out a bit, but not too much so that it remains tender. String cheese is really dried out mozzarella and has been processed more, to pull out the proteins till it is no longer tender. They won't react the same way when cooked, string cheese being significantly drier and tougher to begin with. And when you put it on top of the lasagna, it will brown before it melts so it looks like this:

The flavor on this bad boy wasn't bad, but the texture of that "mozzarella" on top could hardly be described as creamy... it was more crispy and chewy than anything else.

That's about all the wisdom I have to impart on this experiment. Without further ado, the recipe:

Butternut Squash Lasagna
2 large butternut squash
2 tsp unsalted butter
4 tsp sugar
1 lb ground pork sausage, preferably sweet italian
1/2 large vidalia onion, diced
1/2 lb sliced button mushrooms
1/3 c minced fresh sage
2 c fresh ricotta
2-3 c fresh shredded mozzarella
enough sheets of lasagna pasta to lay down three layers in a 9"x13" pan (freshly rolled and boiled, or boxed no-bake)
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Split squash in half lengthwise and scoop out seeds. Set squash cut side up on a baking sheet. Cut butter up into small pieces and distribute evenly across the four halves. Sprinkle 1 tsp sugar over each squash half. Salt and pepper lightly to taste. Roast squash in oven for about 20-30 minutes, till lightly browned and flesh easily pulls apart with a fork. Remove from oven and let sit until squash is cool enough to handle. With a fork, loosen squash flesh from skin/rind, shred flesh with fork (or mash with potato masher) and set flesh aside in a bowl.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat oil in large heavy bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Saute onions till tender. Add mushrooms and saute till lightly browned. Add pork sausage, stirring occasionally to break up pieces of sausage, but not so much as to not let the sausage brown lightly, about 10-15 minutes. Add sage, stir, and let simmer for 2-3 minutes. Stir in squash flesh. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread about 1 c of the squash and pork mixture into the bottom of a 9" x 13" pan. Layer noodles. Spread another cup of the squash and pork mixture over the noodles. Spread about 1/2 - 2/3 c of ricotta over the squash and pork mixture. Sprinkle 1/2 - 2/3 c of mozzarella over that. Layer noodles, repeat, ending with mozzarella (but not string cheese!). Pop in the oven and bake till the top cheese layer becomes golden and gooey (which won't happen if you use string cheese!), about 30 minutes.

Remove from oven, let set for at least 15 minutes, then serve and enjoy.

Pan-roasted pork chops with balsamic fig sauce and garlic chopped kale with a kick

2011-10-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

On a Sunday evening, after running errands, tending to the chickens, tending to what's left of the garden, and chopping up the half of the 30+yr maple that fell in the wet snowstorm we had earlier this week, I thought Mr. Rose deserved a nice home cooked meal. The only problem was that I was along side him doing everything but the heavy lifting, and I was pretty drained too. So the nice home cooked meal had to be quick and simple. It was. From start to finish, I had the table set and was ringing the dinner bell in 30 minutes.

The trick to making a quick dinner quickly is knowing when you have a few minutes between cooking one thing to work on another thing. For this simple dinner, I prepped the kale while the pork was roasting and cooked it while the balsamic fig sauce was roasting.

Reducing sauce

Stir-frying kale

Now that you know this, take a look at the recipes below and let me know whether these logistics work as well for you.

Pan-roasted pork chops with balsamic fig sauce (serves 4)
4 x 6 oz. center cut boneless pork chops, cut about 1 inch thick
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 c chicken stock (or turkey stock, which is what I had after Canadian Thanksgiving)
1 tsp minced thyme
4 tbsp fig spread (the kind you might find in the cheese section at the store)
coarse salt and ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Pat the pork chops dry and generously sprinkle both sides with the salt and pepper. Preheat a cast iron skillet (or other heavy-bottomed skillet that can go in the oven) over medium-high heat. You want the pan so hot that a drop of water will sizzle and evaporate quickly, but not so that it skitters across the pan before it disappears -- if it does that, the pan is too hot.

Add oil and tilt skillet to coat. Throw the pork chops in with a bit of space between them. Let them sear for about 2 minutes so that they are well-browned and easily lift up off the skillet with tongs. Once browned on that side, flip the chops over and sear the other side for another minute. Then transfer to the oven and roast for 5-8 minutes, when the meat is just firm (or if you need scientific precision, till a meat thermometer registers 145 degrees F in the center of the chop). Set the skillet on the stove top, remove the chops to a plate and tent with foil to keep them warm. Heat the skillet on medium and deglaze the pan with the stock and balsamic vinegar. Reduce to 1/2 cup of liquid, about 5 minutes. Add thyme and fig spread, stirring slowly. Reduce again to 1/4 cup of liquid. Plate and serve with pork chops.

Garlic Chopped Kale with a Kick
16 stalks of kale
4 tbsp olive oil
6 anchovy fillets
2 large cloves of garlic
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 c water
salt to taste

Wash kale and remove ribs. Chop coarsely. Mince garlic and anchovies. In a large saute pan (I used a wok), heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic and anchovies, stirring constantly so nothing burns. Add the chopped kale and stir fry the mixture. Add salt to taste (I used just a pinch of kosher salt and that was right). As the kale starts to wilt, toss in the red pepper flakes. Add 1/4 cup of water and stop stirring for 30 seconds or so, until all of the water has steamed off. Stir again, then add another 1/4 cup of water and let sit again for 30 seconds. Stir, add more salt or red pepper flakes to taste. Plate next to your tasty pork chops and serve!

Tips for a stress-free Thanksgiving dinner

2011-10-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving for most Americans is more than a month away. People are just now starting to make arrangements to travel home. They're looking forward to the family gathering or dreading this year's family drama. They're making peace with the fact that they won't be eating their mom's special turkey stuffing because they're spending it with the in-laws this year.

For me, it's different. I celebrate Thanksgiving a month and a half early because it's when the Canadian do it. This year marks my 9th year of celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving in America.

My mom, though she dutifully hosted Thanksgiving for our family every year, must have hated the pressure to getting a giant bird and cooking a giant meal. I think it stressed her out to entertain a house full of people. The rest of us tip-toed around her, wondering whether her surly mood, which would magically disappear when guests arrived, would return once everyone left. One year, while I was in law school, my sisters used their college mid-term exams as an excuse not to go home for Thanksgiving. Inspired by their brilliant plan to avoid Mom's wrath, I followed suit and decided to stay in Washington, D.C. as well. Since Dad was out of town, Mom decided to ditch the rest of the relatives and come to D.C. And I decided to show her what it meant to throw a dinner party without becoming a basket case. That was the inaugural Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner at my house.

It was the first dinner party I'd had with more than 6 people in attendance. I'm not sure why I thought I could calmly host 21 for a seated dinner at my tiny 650 s.f. two-bedroom Capitol Hill apartment with my Tiger Mother breathing down my neck, but I was confident that I could. And I did.

I can't say I've never internally lost my cool while preparing for a big dinner party in the last 9 years. There have been a few disasters, one that irretrievably ruined my reputation (which included both an unfortunate slime of pureed onions and a hand spasm that caused an explosion of cinnamon to go flying into a curry just seconds before I served it to the features editor of the local rag at Speakeasy Kitchen). But I've never had a crisis that I couldn't work through and I've certainly never thought, "This isn't fun anymore." So what's my secret? No secret. I love feeding people. How could you ever not have fun doing what you love? But if you're not in love with feeding people like I am, I suppose there are still a few things you can do that will help you get through your next holiday dinner a little more stress-free.

Tip #1: Accept help.
If you're throwing a really big dinner party, go ahead and let people help out. People will always offer. You already know who's reliable and tidy, who's a good cook, who's the best pastry chef, who's a conscientious dish-washer, who brings the good wine, and who brings the crappy Yellow Tail. If you're hoping to throw the best possible dinner party, accept offers to help and maybe even enlist the competent help you know. If you're a perfectionist and trust no one to help out, you will suffer alone (or you'll make everyone around you suffer with you <ahem, Mom>).

Tip #2: Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
This goes out to the perfectionist again. Hosting a big holiday meal is no small feat. Everyone knows that. No one is expecting perfection. And good is pretty damn good enough. So chill out a little bit, try to enjoy the warmth and lovely smells of the kitchen, and look forward to breaking bread with loved ones. Dinner is going to be just fine.

Tip #3: Self-medicate... moderately.
Hey, I get it. We can't all just chill out at the drop of a hat, especially when there's so much to get done in so little time. You know that wine you were going to deglaze that pan with? Take a sip. Take two. Just don't overdo it. There is, after all, a lot of work to be done in the kitchen. Tipple too much and you might not get it all done, much less competently. The turkey needs to be basted regularly and it won't get basted if you're wasted.

Tip #4: Deep-fry your turkey.
Since we're on the topic of basting, let's explore the issue a little bit. Seven of my last nine Thanksgivings were spent diligently basting the bird every fifteen minutes for several hours on Thanksgiving. It's a necessary evil if you want to roast an evenly browned bird that would be tender and moist. That, along with brining, injecting, salt-rubbing, flipping the bird halfway through the roasting, flipping the bird three times during the roasting, etc. I've tried every method under the sun and have never had a dry breast so long as I was diligent about basting. Yes, the bird is heavy. Yes, it barely fit in the oven when making turkey for 30. Yes, I burnt my hands, arms, and elbows on the roasting pan or the sides of the oven when reaching in to make sure every square inch of the bird got basted. But it must be done when roasting a bird. So I basted religiously. Until I discovered the deep-fried turkey. It's all the deliciousness (and then some) of the most perfectly basted bird without any of the hassle. All I use is an overnight dry rub under the turkey's skin consisting of freshly minced sage, orange zest, kosher salt, and ground pepper. Oh, and Mr. Rose's strong and steady arm to lower the bird into a vat of hot peanut oil. (See Tip #1). This is the recipe to the most delicious turkey you will ever eat.

Tip #5: Remember that this is supposed to be fun.
Turn on some good music. I don't mean that morbid emo shit. I'm talking fun, upbeat, makes-you-want-to-tap-your-toes-and-dance-with-the-dogs-music. If it's Don't Stop Believing by Journey because you're still not sick of that song, so be it. If it's some hippie bullshit like Grateful Dead and that stuff works for you, so be it. But make sure it's something that'll make you shake your booty. Dancing in the kitchen will lift your spirits and, if one were to believe what one saw in Like Water for Chocolate, your diners will taste your joy. For me this year, it was Don't Stop Believing (because I'm only a little bit sick of it) and the ensuing Genius mix, comprised inexplicably of Led Zepplin, The Beatles, Black Crowes, and Jimi Hendrix. The turkey this year will taste strongly of joy, with a little bit of cheese and a whole lot of rock and roll.

Tip #6: Give in to your inner voice.
Seriously, if you've gotten down to this tip and you're still skeptical that hosting Thanksgiving dinner can be stress-free, entertaining is probably not your thing. If you're already signed up to host this year, consider ordering a ready-made turkey from Whole Paycheck or getting Chinese take-out. Hopefully no one will be terribly disappointed at the substitution of Peking duck for turkey. But you'll have done your duty for the year so you'll be off the hook for Christmas. And for goodness sake, don't volunteer to host Thanksgiving next year.

Cooking my way to San Francisco: 30-minute budget-friendly meal

2011-09-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

Foodbuzz is hosting a blogger festival in San Francisco (my happy place) and as much as I wanted to go, I just couldn't afford to take the trip. Times are tough! Luckily for me, Foodbuzz offered me a $250 stipend to offset the costs of the trip. I just have to do my part -- write a post about a budget-friendly meal that I whip up out of ingredients I have in my pantry or fridge.

This is the new pantry. Yep, it's as big as the fridge.

People often ask me whether I cook every night. Other than when we're eating out, the answer is yes. I mostly hate leftovers (lasagna and soup are a few other exceptions), so it's a rare meal that doesn't get cooked fresh each night. I'd rather put in an extra 30 minutes to make a quick and simple meal than re-heat a plate of <insert whatever I had last night>. In a 30 minute pinch, here's what happens Chez Rose. We have a gorgeous, wholesome soup.

The garden is key to eating fresh vegetables even on sad days when the refrigerator crisper drawer is empty. If there's anything in the garden, I start there with my soup. It's the beginning of fall, so there's stuff in there, including some kale and this weird looking carrot.

For your edification, the carrot's skin is red, but the flesh is yellow and orange. Funky!

In the fridge, I look for meats, a soup base, and other fresh veggies. There are almost always some mushrooms and some miso paste for soup. On this occasion, there was no meat but I did discover a couple of chicken backs in the freezer so I roasted them, then threw them in a soup pot with some carrots and celery to make a chicken stock. That was a fortuitous find, but in a 30 minute pinch, I'm not to proud to use a good quality chicken soup base either.

In the pantry, I've got grains, noodles, and dried and canned beans. If I were using a miso paste, I might opt for a rice noodle. But with a freshly made chicken stock, I opted for pearl barley.

To balance out the soup with a bit of protein, I had some canned garbanzo and cannellini beans. Mr. Rose got to choose and he went with cannellini beans.

On an average winter day or during a cold stretch in the fall, I'd have some bread dough sitting in the fridge and I'd bake a crusty boule. Last night, there was none. I guess I was pushing my luck with the chicken back treasure.

For the people who need precise recipes, here's how I made this soup (approximately).

30-Minute Soup (serves 3-4)
8 cups of chicken stock
4 handfuls of barley
7 kale leaves, ribs removed (and fed to dogs) and torn into small pieces
1 large misshapen carrot, diced
5 button mushrooms, sliced
1 15 oz can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
salt and pepper to taste

Bring chicken stock to a boil, then add barley. Bring to boil, then lower heat to medium so you have a light boil. Let boil for 5 minutes before adding carrot. Let boil for another 5 minutes before adding kale. Let that cook for another 10 minutes before adding mushrooms and beans. Once the soup comes back to a boil, the beans should be heated through and the soup is ready to serve.

Get your Tour de Harvest tickets!

2011-08-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

Have you been wanting to try out a Speakeasy Kitchen dinner but haven't managed to score an invitation? Well now you can BUY YOUR WAY IN!

UrbiCulture Community Farms is throwing a progressive dinner party in 8 of its Sunnyside Gardens and I'm cooking at one of them. It's been a hot and rainy summer in Denver, which is more than just a boon to the mosquito population -- it's a boon to local gardens, too! I don't know which garden and I don't know yet what I'll be cooking, but UCCF has a vast variety of fresh produce in the ground so it's sure to be an exciting offering. So get your tickets to the Tour de Harvest and enjoy a lovely fall afternoon with the urban farmers of Denver while eating foods prepared by some great local chefs (and yours truly)!

The Sky's the Limit(?)

2011-07-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

For the last few years, I've called Denver, Colorado "home." It's not a title I use lightly. I've lived in a lot of places: St. Catharines, a town outside of Niagara Falls; the suburbs of Toronto; Long Island, NY; downtown Montreal; Hong Kong; and Washington, D.C. I can't say I'm "from" Denver, but I do feel quite comfortable and centered here.

Denver is where Mr. Rose (who has also lived in a lot of places) and I came right after we left Washington D.C., which is the city that both of us had resided for the longest time in either of our lives. We bought a house in Denver. We bought a Subaru. We mounted a ski rack on the Subaru. I had to start wearing sunscreen (Mr. Rose who is pale as a sheet has always been diligent with sunscreen). We adopted a (third) dog. We adopted the Colorado lifestyle. This is home like no other place has ever been.

But. There are limitations to living in Colorado. "Ethnic" food usually means Mexican food. Figs on a plate are the thing to get at restaurants (just kidding... but aren't we just about sick of braised pork belly and/or roasted beet and goat cheese salads yet?). H Mart is the only Asian grocery you can get lost in and it's way the hell out in Aurora.

View Larger Map

Then, this morning, I came across this article in the New York Times and was reminded of these shortcomings. Flushing, N.Y. is home to the new Sky Foods Market. This ain't the kind of thing that existed in Flushing, N.Y. when I lived one county over in Long Island. It's 36,000 square feet of live frogs, duck gizzards, and noodles of every shape, size and flour, and it boasts a prepared hot food section, including its own sushi bar. I can picture the mind-boggling variety of fermented tofu and pickled... um... things. I can smell the livestock. I can imagine my hair getting frizzy as I walk through the aisles humidified by the tanks of crazy-looking fish begging me to eat them. Clearly, this place is totally awesome.

Google it, though, and you'll find some nay-sayers. As of today, two grammatically retarded reviewers on Yelp gave it 2-3 stars. And this entitled beyotch whined that it's not serious about "organic."

Whatev.

I'm seriously considering a weekend getaway to Flushing.

Another day in paradise (with quails, morels, and garlic scapes)

2011-07-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

The kitchen renovations aren't quite done yet, but the Speakeasy Kitchen has been back up and running for weeks. Not surprisingly, after 5 months without a functioning kitchen, I enthusiastically went back to cooking, but had forgotten to blog about meal after meal (in part because the computer on which I blog has not yet been reinstalled in the kitchen).

Then came the weekend at J&M's cabin. You may remember this place. Perched on a hill at 9200 ft elevation, and surrounded by beautiful vistas, it's the perfect place to work up an appetite and then cook up a storm. In preparation for the trip, I acquired some quail and morels from Gilt Taste, threw them into a cooler with some locally-sourced heavy cream and garlic scapes, and made the ascent to paradise.

On this particular trip, we drove up through Eleven Mile Canyon, and went for a quick hike. J calls it "The Stairmaster Trail." It was a short but steep climb to some beautiful views.

After a dip and a brief nap on a rock in Eleven Mile River, we headed back to the cabin to make some dinner. M quickly rolled out some fettuccini. He is the master of all things dough and can whip up fettuccini for four in less time than anyone I know. It is M's fault that I cannot eat pasta out of a box anymore. He makes it look so easy (and makes it so tasty) that there is no reason -- not even time savings -- why anyone wouldn't just roll out their own pasta.

While M worked on the fettuccini, I cut up the morels and garlic scapes and made a cream sauce.

J kept busy by keeping our glasses full with pink champagne (ok, technically, it was from the Alsace region... whatever) and zesting the lemon for the quail, which I lightly pan-fried.

Once again, a delicious meal shared with great friends after a lovely day of fun in the sun. I can tell you how I made the meal, but remember that this meal is best shared with friends so you'll have to figure out that part on your own.

Pasta (this is my recipe -- not sure what M did, but there are lots of recipes out there so mess around with them however you like)
Serves 4-6
1 c semolina flour
1-1/2 c unbleached white flour
1/2 tsp fine salt
3 large eggs
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp water

Mix the flours and salt together in the Kitchenaid mixer. Add the liquids and mix until the dough comes together with all ingredients well-blended. Add water 1 tsp at a time if it's too dry and won't hold together, or flour 1 tbsp at a time if it's too sticky. Then pull the dough out and knead it for a few minutes, pulling the dough out, folding it over on itself and flattening it out again. Cover with saran wrap (especially if you're in an arid climate) and let rest for 20 minutes. Then cut the dough up into 8 equal pieces, roll each piece into a ball, and flatten it out a bit so you can roll it through the pasta maker on the thickest setting. Fold into thirds and re-roll. Repeat 2 more times, then continue to roll, adjusting the roller to thinner settings until you reach your desired thickness. Then cut. Repeat for the remaining 7 pieces of dough. Toss finished pasta lightly with semolina so it doesn't stick to itself before you can cook it. Boil in a large pot of salted water for 1-2 minutes.

Morels and Garlic Scapes in Cream Sauce
3/4 lb morels, cleaned and cut into roughly equal sized pieces
10 garlic scapes, cut into 1" lengths
4 tbsp minced chives
1/4 c rose wine
4 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp flour
1 c heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large pan over medium heat. Saute scapes in 2 tbsp butter with a pinch of salt for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and saute till tender. Add wine and reduce for 5 minutes. Remove and set aside the scapes, mushrooms, and liquid. Heat remaining butter in the pan and add flour, stirring quickly and constantly, to make a roux. Add cream, then scapes and mushrooms along with any fluid that accumulated while they sat. Toss in chives, bring to a simmer, and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pan-fried Quail
6 semi-boneless quail, rinsed and patted dry
2 tbsp olive oil
grated zest of 1 lemon
coarse salt
freshly cracked pepper

Season both sides of the quail with salt, pepper and lemon zest. Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat. Place the quail in the pan and let sit undisturbed for 3-4 minutes and when the quail skin is nicely browned, turn the quail over and let sit for another 3 minutes, or till nicely browned. Remove from the stove and tent with foil for 5 minutes.

Merci, French Press Memos!

2011-04-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

It's been two months and we are still without a kitchen. [STATUS UPDATE SIDE NOTE: We've ordered cabinets and they'll be arriving in 2 weeks.] I've watched a deplorable amount of television and eaten unfathomable quantities of pho, chicken fried rice, my usual order at Chipotle (there's only one combination of ingredients that I always order there), and ice cream sandwiches, interspersed with the occasional liquid dinner over the past 8 weeks. For someone who rarely ever cooks the same thing twice in one month, I've demonstrated uncharacteristic tolerance for the mundane in my diet.

I've been making guest appearances in kitchens here and there. Most recently, French Press Memos invited me, mushrooms, and meats into her kitchen so that I could make pate aux champignons and pate de campagne for my French-themed supper club.

There's not a lot that's sexy about pate. It's a whole lot of ground up ingredients, pressed into some sort of a mould or a terrine if you're lucky. But if you put them on some sourdough toast with a bit of good mustard and a little cornichon, and you've got yourself a special treat.

The pate de campagne came from a recipe posted by Cheeseslave, modified only in that I added a bit more salt (oak-smoked, at that) and that I made it with a meat grinder rather than a food processor. The mushroom pate, however, was modified more greatly, and the recipe is here:

Mushroom Pate (adapted from a recipe by Emeril Lagasse)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped shallots
2 teaspoons minced garlic
20 oz mixed mushrooms (shiitake, portabello, etc.), wiped clean and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme
1 teaspoon salt oak-smoked salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 teaspoon truffle oil
8 ounces softened goat cheese

In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, until soft and fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring, until wilted and starting to brown. Add the wine, thyme, salt, and pepper, and cook, stirring, until the wine is nearly all evaporated, 5 minutes. Add the parsley and truffle oil and cook for 30 seconds.

Let cool till it's cool enough to handle, because the next step is messy. Grind through a meat grinder. Stir in the goat cheese until well combined. Then grind through the finer plate of the meat grinder. Transfer to a decorative ramekin or bowl, cover, and refrigerate until set, 3 to 4 hours. Unmould by gently sliding a knife between the pate and the sides of the bowl and transfer to a plate.

Spreading some Sunshine on a cloudy day

2011-04-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

As they say, for every cloud, there is a silver lining. The cloud of my out-of-commission-Speakeasy-Kitchen arrived with an opportunity to be in the New Belgium Brewing Company’s Tastemaker program.*

I’d been stealing opportunities to cook in friends’ kitchens across the continent, but I found myself with some tasty New Belgium brews and running out of kitchens to impose upon. Not to worry though -- one of my favorite things to do with beer (other than drinking it) is to shove a can of it up a chicken’s butt and that can be done outdoors on a grill, no kitchen required.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t try it with anything other than the stray can of pilsner that occasionally shows up at our house. I use something with a mild flavor that doesn’t impart much more than its moisture to the chicken. But since New Belgium was buying*, I figured, “What the heck?”

Yes, that’s right. New Belgium beers come in a can. And they are mighty delicious, I might add.

According to New Belgium, its Sunshine wheat beer is “a great beer for trouncing thirst.” Not a bad way to impart moisture to chicken. But it gets better than that. The flavor profile includes coriander and orange peel tartness, “settling nicely into a tranquil sea of apple and honey tones.” Well then, what better way to part the clouds than with a little Sunshine? I consulted the Flavor Bible and decided to pair the beer up with some spices on my beer can chicken.

Sunshine Wheat Beer Can Chicken

Whole 3 lb chicken

1 can New Belgium Sunshine wheat beer

2 tsp oak-smoked salt
1/2 tsp powdered ginger

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp granulated onion

1/4 tsp granulated garlic

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp chili powder

Preheat grill to 450 degrees F. Rinse and pat dry the chicken. Put all the spices into a small bowl and mix well.

Open up a can of Sunshine and pour out half. I recommend pouring it into your stomach.

Rub 1/4 of the spices into the interior cavity of the chicken. Rub the rest all over the skin. Shove the can up the chicken's butt. Prop the chicken wings up so it has an satisfied air about it while it sits on the can. Set it on the grill where it is not sitting directly over flames, drop the lid on the grill, and let it cook till a meat thermometer reads 170 degrees, about 30-40 minutes. Carefully remove the chicken from the grill and let it rest. The internal temperature will continue to rise while the outside cools. The outside cooling is a critical step -- it's hard to grip a can of beer to pull it out of a cooked chicken butt when it's full of steaming beer. Remove can, carve chicken, and let the sun shine in.

*As part of this Tastemaker program (through Foodbuzz), I received a stipend to make this meal possible.

Kitchen hiatus

2011-03-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

I'm grouchy.

Not only am I working private practice hours these days, but my kitchen has been out of commission for longer than I can take. What started as a simple flooring job morphed into analysis-paralysis over the choice of cabinetry. And now we're over a week away from being able to make a decision and 4 weeks away from delivery of cabinets. And my inability to cook anything has made me grouchy.

I'm going to Washington, D.C. this weekend and staying with friends. Hopefully someone there will want a home cooked meal.

The unfortunate timing of 5280 Week.

2011-02-27T08:48:00.000-08:00

It started so innocently. All I wanted was to put in a few inexpensive finishing touches -- additional lighting, polished floors, and plumbing the second sink. Mr. Rose installed recessed lighting while I was out of town for a girls weekend getaway. He got to plumbing the second sink and I stopped him -- why not finish the floors first? There's a layer of oak under here somewhere. We just have to unveil it and polish it... right?

So we got to work and started tearing away at the vinyl sheeting. Then the second layer of vinyl sheeting. Then the particle board subfloor. Then the second layer of subfloor... you see where this is going. Then we got to the linoleum-asbestos tile, which was glued down to the oak. We're not people who are prone to panic about a material as inert as asbestos, but it quickly became apparent that in order to get to the oak, we'd have to free the asbestos by sanding it off. We had industrial dust masks that were made for asbestos remediation. And we had already taped off the kitchen from the rest of the house to prevent the dust from getting everywhere. But I just didn't want the oak (which wasn't even the first and original layer of floor) that badly.

Which meant that we had to put in new flooring. We'd had some plans, off in the distant future, to replace the cabinets. But there was no time like the present, as long as we were re-doing the floors. We moved decisively, ripping out the cabinets and tearing the floor down to the joists, until all that was left was a 14' x 24' box with an wavy bottom surface, or no bottom surface at all. Mr. Rose ingeniously went to the cellar under the kitchen and jacked up several areas under the floor. And now, we're finally ready to lay down a subfloor.

Here we are, two weeks after embarking on a flooring adventure, with the entire contents of our kitchen spilled out into the dining room and living room. Kitchen cabinets have not yet been ordered, so they are no less than 8-10 weeks away. I thought this blog would subsist on restaurant reviews for a while.

But, it's Restaurant Week, known in Mile-High City as 5280 Week. During 5280 Week, all of Denver's best restaurants are putting out a mediocre three-course meal for two people for $52.80, served by over-extended waitstaff who likely also despise Restaurant Week (which unfortunately spans two weeks) as much as I do. It's not fair to review a restaurant on Restaurant Week. Everyone's reviews are bound to be merde (my last Restaurant Week dinner was at Bistro Vendome, where dinner for 2 took 3 hours because our waiter nowhere to be found, but when he did show up, he arrived with cold, overcooked, albeit delicious, cod, and because we ordered off the 5280 menu, dinner came to $130). This was bad timing indeed.

So. I need a new plan while I am sans cuisine. Now soliciting kitchens. If you have an under-utilized kitchen in Denver, perhaps you could give me a call and I'll come over and cook, eh?

Cheddar and chive biscuits are divine.

2011-02-15T23:25:00.000-08:00

Please don't write me off as a blogger because I can't remember to take pictures. Please forgive me for being a chef first, eater second, blogger third, and photographer last!

I was invited to J&M's cabin for a girls' weekend getaway last weekend and we had a blast, drinking wine and eating cheese, while cooking. I made these awesome biscuits that rose as tall as they were big around in diameter -- no small feat, considering the cabin was at over 9,400 ft -- high-altitude baking at its finest! They were cheddar and chive biscuits and they were divine.

Here's the recipe (in exchange for forgiveness):

Cheddar Chive Biscuits
(makes about 24)
2 c. all-purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp fine sea salt
2 tbsp shortening
2 tbsp butter
1/2 c. coarsely grated sharp English cheddar
1/2 c. finely chopped chives
1 c. cold milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. With fingertips, rub the shortening and butter into the flour mixture until it's crumbly. Mix in the cheddar and chives. Gradually stir in the milk. The mixture will become a sticky ball. Turn the ball out onto a well-floured surface. Flatten out the dough and fold the dough it over onto itself a couple of times, using just enough flour so it doesn't stick. Press the dough out to a flat sheet about 3/4" thick. Cut the biscuits out with a 1-1/2" or 2" cutter (I used a champagne flute because that's all we had at the cabin -- that's how J rolls) and place the biscuits onto a cookie sheet with 1/2" between them -- just enough space so they don't touch. Reform remaining dough into another 3/4" thick sheet, working the dough as little as possible (so the biscuits from the second sheet will rise as well as the first). Bake till the biscuits are tall and just barely golden on top, about 15 minutes.

Cooking is my therapy

2011-02-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'd be lying if I said that it doesn't bother me that I've been an infrequent blogger lately. It's partly the fact that I am a doer by nature, and not-doing makes me uneasy. It's also partly the fact that I've been doing a lot of other things instead that are less fun, namely day-job, day-job, and day-job. And then there's the fact that my blogging activity is directly correlated with the amount of cooking I'm doing, which means I haven't done much. I won't bore you with the details, but it's taken a toll on my sanity. I just haven't been feeling like myself -- I've been so cantankerous that I recently hissed "Boo!" to my secretary and he screamed like a girl. I threw back my head and cackled wickedly.

psy-cho-sis (si-ko-sis):

A severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage,

characterized by derangement of personality and

loss of contact with reality and

causing deterioration of normal social functioning.

So, with my sanity hanging by a thread, I invited a friend over, rolled up my sleeves, and went back to the therapy that cured my chef's block: Indian food. Old habits die hard -- no photography. But I had start from my roots. Just getting my hands, tools, and appliances dirty were a good start. The end result was a tasty haleem (lamb and lentil stew -- I used a recipe off Saveur that turned out to be quite bland and I had to go to heroic efforts to rescue it), saag paneer (there's something extremely therapeutic about curdling milk and turning it into cheese), and a pseudo-tandoori chicken (not bad considering I didn't have a tandoor oven). I started to feel a little better.

Three days later, I got a bigger dose of therapy. Some friends, we'll call them the RBergs, brought over Susur Lee's cookbook, Susur: A Culinary Life. The book comes in two volumes that are bound together in a unique double-binding. The first volume talks all about techniques (or something... I never really looked at it) and contains some "basic" mini-recipes that Susur uses as part of whole recipes contained in the second volume. The recipes in the second volume were accompanied by photographs of fantastical food, assembled so that looked akin to sci-fi-Chinese-food-meets-molecular-gastronomy, even where the cooking methods employed were mostly traditional. RBerg and I laughed at how inaccessible the recipes were. Then, we picked the three recipes that contained the least obscure-sounding ingredients, and set off on a quest to find them.

We returned to the Speakeasy Kitchen feeling pretty triumphant. We hit 4 different stores for the ingredients, substituting only the licorice powder with ground star anise because we just didn't feel like going to the apothecary across town. With the cookbook open before us, it seemed that we may have bitten off more than we could chew by attempting three recipes.

I mean, it was just sheer, mad chaos in here. Little bowls of partially mixed ingredients, 18 piles of perfectly julienned vegetables, and hot, scalding lobster juice splashed all over the place.

Lobster with junk in her eye. I harvested her roe for garnish in a later dish.

But before too long, my instincts kicked in, and before I knew it, we were straying from Susur's instructions.

Eighteen varieties of vegetables julienned to perfection, all in one bowl. We had to drive through a blizzard all over God's winter wonderland to get them.

For instance, Susur doesn't know squat about how to make spinach pasta. Or mayonnaise.

I'm so good at making pasta that I've made pasta my bitch.

And he certainly doesn't care about the distinction between paprikas. Or chorizos. And he uses ridiculous things as "garnish," like lobster.

Some kind of lobster, clam, and chorizo chowder with some lump of something under an oven-dried tomato that took 2 hrs in my convection oven (not 50 minutes in a conventional oven, as described in Susur's instructions) to dry.

There was a glaring and unforgivable absence of salt, stingy use of some flavor-imparting ingredients (like fermented black beans), and failure to appreciate how other ingredients could be used more efficiently (like saffron). Yeah, that's right, Susie. I'm calling you out.

Salad with, you guessed it, 18 different vegetables and quail eggs on spinach noodles, dressed with a spicy black bean dressing. Refreshing, yummy, and not bland, thanks to our discerning adjustments to the recipe.

But these errors and omissions did not go unnoticed or uncorrected. I reached down deep and I made it all better. It was like Susur's ludicrous recipes were a culinary case study into insanity that was reflective of my my non-culinary-driven insanity. It was an opportunity to sort out my head, heart, and soul.

Pretty much everything used in this recipe was a "garnish." Lobster salad, garnished with saffron mayonnaise, fried lotus root, radish sprouts, chorizo, and a lobster claw.

It's a good thing I got one big cooking project out of my system because Mr. Rose has embarked on a massive kitchen renovation project... On the one hand, these are some much-needed improvements. On the other hand, it means the doctor is out. If I show up at your doorstep wielding a spatula and a crazed look in my eyes, don't panic. Just step aside, show me to your kitchen, and let me saute something. I'll be back to normal in no time.

Lasagna = Love

2011-01-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Nothing says love like the long process of making a lasagna. The chopping of vegetables, grinding of meats, mixing of herbs, long stewing of sauce, rolling of dough, boiling sheets of pasta, ginger handling of hot boiled sheets of pasta that you pray won't stick, swift and deft arrangement of cheeses to get a little bit of every variety in every bite. Oh yes. To make lasagna is to proclaim your love. Not that there aren't other ways to express love, but lasagna is the exclamation point to "I love you!"

Most nights, I give Mr. Rose the option of having whatever he wants for dinner. As we head home from work on weeknights, or when I wake up on weekends, knowing that I have a few hours for a bigger production, I always ask what he wants. In reality, he doesn't actually get anything he wants, because sometimes the ingredients aren't readily available; sometimes I'm just not in the mood to make it. But I always ask, for conversation sake and to make him at least *feel* like he gets to make that decision.

Several nights in the last few weeks, Mr. Rose requested lasagna. Of the meaty variety. Night after night, I declined, gently nudging him to something less time-consuming or less-fattening. But one can only deny a loved one of lasagna for so long before said loved one has wandered over to the Olive Garden at lunch for a big heap of carb-laden mediocrity.

So I rolled up my sleeves one Wednesday night and got to work. None of it, with the exception of the part where I parboiled pasta, was all that difficult.

Sauce, so long as one has plenty of good ingredients, is forgiving. Because you're going to be stewing it for a couple of hours, you can just keep adjusting the flavor as necessary. I'd been reserving two tins of tomatoes, imported from Italy, for this sort of occasion. Add some chopped onions, carrots, celery, herbs, ground pork, and beef and you've got yourself a party.

Pasta dough has become quite easy, though I still find it to be a bit of a challenge to make perfectly rectangular sheets for the lasagna pan. With linguine, no one has to know that it's coming in random lengths, and probably no one notices that the edge pieces aren't quite rectilinear. But rolling pasta has become therapeutic for me, so it was actually quite nice to work the dough so meticulously. It's amazing that pasta dough, when raw, is so easy to handle, but then becomes so finicky when boiled. You have to handle it gingerly or it tears, but you have to move quickly because it's both (a) burning your hands, and (b) threatening to permanently stick to itself or its neighbors.

Last, but certainly not least, was the cheese. I used three varieties: romano, mozzarella, and ricotta. I managed to spread an even and tidy layer between each layer of pasta and sauce, and reserve some for the top. The lasagna baked with beautifully browned cheesiness. No, I didn't make any of those cheeses from scratch -- it was, after all, a weeknight. I think I got just enough love in there for a Wednesday.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. Rose.

Wabi-sabi

2011-01-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

Wabi-sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "incomplete, impermanent, and imperfect." It's kind of an on-going theme here.

Incomplete: I'd had a few posts that never quite got done, including a review of the Savory Spice Shop's holiday party at Colt & Gray (I'll get to it eventually, but here's a plot spoiler: Colt & Gray rocks).

Impermanent: I get fleeting moments of inspiration (and energy) to kick off a Speakeasy Kitchen in Denver.

Imperfect: I occasionally get pretty far off perfection, which causes me to steer in a different direction.

Take, for example, the macaroon. I found a recipe with detailed instructions for what sounded like a heavenly little treat. French macaroons with raspberry-rose buttercream frosting. I've often heard that macaroons seem harder than they actually are. I'm here to say that's not really true.

I had tidy, but imprecise, little rows of macaroon batter, piped out of a gallon freezer ziplock baggie because I don't own a pastry bag. I was proud of my ingenuity. The batter was slightly drippy as the recipe had warned it would be. It flowed.

And it flowed.

Except when it burnt. (Imperfect.)

This was my second attempt at macaroons and it came out worse than the first. I felt as hollow inside as this crisp-skinned one. "They'll be a great crunchy treat that I can dip in my coffee tomorrow," said Mr. Rose in his most consoling tone. But that wasn't going to work for dessert for a bunch of lawyers and judges whom I'd be feeding tomorrow night. (Incomplete.)

"You make good rice pudding," offered Mr. Rose.

And so I went back to the pantry to cobble something altogether different. (Impermanent!) It would be a dessert I couldn't mess up at this late hour. I made a lavender-lemon rice pudding.

I sewed a little pouch full of lavender and dropped it into the pot.

I felt a lot more comfortable improvising in this way than I was with full instructions for the macaroons.

It was more Englishy than the Frenchy dessert I'd planned, but it's a dessert that will compliment the rest of the menu and that the judges will hopefully enjoy anyway. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, and when the wabi goes too sabi, it's time to switch gears.

It's a beautiful thing.

The truth about shortbread

2010-12-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

I've done significantly more cooking in the years since I left private practice to have a better lifestyle. I went from studying and disassembling recipes to making up my own. Take, for example, linguine puttanesca. My first puttanesca (c. summer of 2003) was made using a no-cook recipe out of Gourmet magazine and I followed it to the tee, right down to the 1 lb box of dried linguine. I was in my last year of law school and worked full time as an engineering analyst doing patent prosecution at a D.C. law firm. The recipe was a quickie, promising a zesty bowl of linguine with puttanesca in just 30 minutes.

I still find puttanesca to be an easy sauce to throw together, though I cook it now, without a recipe and the contents often vary. I also roll out fresh linguine which, if I have leftover dough from a previous night, takes about as long to roll out as it does to boil a pot of water. People tell me I'm crazy to go to such lengths for a bowl of pasta, but I've become convinced that nothing is all that difficult to make. I've dispelled more than one myth about the difficulty of preparing food for mysef, from European items like ravioli and canard a l'orange to Asian dishes like stuffed tofu and matar paneer. And I've discounted my inability to bake cakes and cookies as attributable to my inattention to detail to things like how many cups of flour vs. how many cups of sugar go into them, or my tendency to forget that something's in the oven (out of sight, out of mind!).

Well, at a holiday party last week, I found myself nibbling on a shortbread cookie and wishing I could bake my own. My friend Jenny tells me "Shortbread's easy. All you have to do is mix flour, sugar and butter, and VOILA! Shortbread." So I decided that the instructions were simple enough that I figured I could pull myself together long enough to keep count of the cups of flour vs. cups of sugar and just give these "easy" treats a try.

Now, I'm not going to call Jenny a liar (that title is typically reserved for politicians and select members of the Colorado bar). But I will say that she left out a few details. For one thing, shortbread is not quick and easy as 1-2-3. The dough needs to chill. Twice.

And the dough does not particularly "come together" like they suggest in some of the recipes I've seen (Ahem, Contessa and Joy, I'm referring to you). It just stays crumbly, especially after you chill it. Both times.

And I must admit that I couldn't entirely help myself. I fell back into my old habits and managed to not follow the recipe. I misread what kind of sugar I was supposed to use, and then I mixed up the quantities between Contessa's and Joy's recipes. And I sacrificed one batch in the oven. That said, I still managed to make perfect shortbread cookies and sandwich them around some homemade dulce de leche with a recipe I borrowed from David Lebovitz. The result was akin to the alfajores I'd had in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.

In hindsight the trials and tribulations of shortbread aren't that bad. But there are a few warnings I could have had in any of the instructions I'd received or recipes I'd read. And I've got to believe that I'm not the first person to have figured out an easier way to roll out the dough. Here, I'll attempt to give you a recipe with complete instructions and a few tips on how to make shortbread that you won't find anywhere else.

Shortbread cookies

Makes about 40 3-inch diameter cookies

1 3/4 c butter, slightly warmer than room temperature but not quite goopy

1 c powdered sugar + more for sprinkling (you must have the cornstarch content)

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 1/2 c flour

1/4 tsp kosher salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, beat butter and 1 cup powdered sugar until smooth. Add vanilla extract and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix flour and salt. Add flour mixture to butter and mix well. It will make a crumbly mixture and it won't really come together, but make sure the ingredients are well-mixed. Pour the crumbly mixture onto a clean surface and separate them into two lumps. Gather up each lump into a ball and set the ball onto a piece of cling wrap. Flatten the ball into a disk, wrap tightly, and chill for 30 minutes.

Prepare baking sheets by placing a piece of parchment on each one. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out to a disk about 1/4" thick. It will still be crumbly and it is easier to roll out if you do it between two sheets of cling wrap. Cut the disk with a cookie cutter and place on the prepared baking sheet. Chill cookies for 10 minutes, then bake for 10 minutes, till cookies are barely golden.

Dust with powdered sugar. To send a message to someone that you really care, put a tablespoon of dulce de leche between two cookies before you dust them with powdered sugar. To smite your enemy, give a powdered sugar cookie to them while they're wearing dark colored clothing.

And there it is, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about shortbread.

Moules et frites are finger foods

2010-12-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

I love going out to eat with friends and sharing the meal, family style. Everyone picks something, then we pass the plates around, so everyone gets to try a little bit. And I'm pretty willing to try just about anything on anyone's menu... except for the mussels. They're just such so easy to make. Still, I let my dining companions order them if they wish, and rarely explain why I never do. I also never partake in this order because I believe they're finger food, so it might leave fellow diners aghast to see how I eat them.

Now and again, I host a moules et frites night and, in my home, mussels are finger foods. Fellow diners are not required to eat them the way I do, but they certainly can't be embarrassed by it. Nevertheless, I always manage to convert a few people to my method* because it's nifty, and who doesn't like eating with their hands now and then?

When using my method, I get a little exercise for my mussel muscles. Lightly gripping the shell with my first two fingers and thumb, I snap the two sides of one shell together like mini-tongs to deftly extract the tender meat out of another shell. If there are veggies in the preparation, then the shell-tongs work well for eating those as well. Then, to drink the broth left in the bottom of the bowl (assuming it hasn't already been sopped up with bread or french fries), I separate my mini-tongs into two separate little soup spoons and drink the broth from the shell. Slurping is optional.

As to the ease of preparing these succulent treats, in the time it takes to fry one basket of thickly cut frites, you can steam enough mussels for four. Here's how:

Steamed mussels
(serves 4)
4 lbs mussels (if you're friendly with your fish monger, he might pick out the heavier ones for you)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 red/orange/green peppers, thinly sliced.
3-4 sprigs each of thyme, basil, parsley
3/4 c. Belgian ale (or other tasty liquid. See details below.)
lemon wedges (optional)

If you haven't got beer on hand, white wine or a mixture of water and liquor (I've even tried vermouth) will do in a pinch. If you're not the drinking type, chicken or vegetable broth will also work.
Prepare the mussels by scrubbing them under cold water and debearding them. Rinse and set aside in a colander to drain.

In a large, heavy pot, heat the oil over high heat. Saute the onions till tender, about 4-6 minutes. Add the peppers and saute for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, tie the herbs together with some kitchen twine to make a bouquet garni. Toss the bouquet garni into the pot and stir around for 10 seconds. Working quickly, pour the mussels into the pot, pour the beer over the mussels, and drop the lid on the pot. Let it steam for 5-7 minutes, depending on how hot your burner is and how heavy your pot is (hotter burner/heavier pot 5 minutes, cooler burner/lighter pot 7 minutes). Resist the urge to open the lid to check on it before 5 minutes. The mussels need to steam continuously to open up nice and wide. If this is your first time, open the lid just enough to take a peek and see if the mussels are all open. If they're not, drop the lid back on and let steam for another minute or two. When the time's up, open the lid, take in the fragrance, and give them a stir. Serve, sans une fourchette. Some people like lemon wedges for their mussels. I just use them to help clean my fingertips.

* I owe "my method" to a Belgian friend, Lesly, who taught me how to do it years ago in Washington, D.C. at my own moules et frites night.

What to do with a quail egg if you manage to sneak it past TSA

2010-12-14T18:25:00.000-08:00

When I was in San Francisco, I marveled over the panoply of foods one could find throughout the city. Including varieties of eggs I'd never seen before -- and I've been around the world a bit. I shared with my sister and my twin (two different people) that I had recently discovered (and rejoiced) a place to buy quail eggs in Denver. Confused by the chaos in the kitchen, my twin asked, "How are you gonna get the quail eggs past the TSA?" Forgetting that I had the quail eggs in my kitchen in Denver and wouldn't need to bring them on the plane with me, my sister followed on with "Do raw eggs count as liquids?" Which then begged the question, "How many quail eggs fit in a 3.0 oz container?"

Setting aside these profound questions, my sister wanted to know, "What do you do with a quail egg even if you manage to sneak it past the TSA?" Well, Lucky Duck, here's your answer: fry it and place it, like a crown, on some fish.

As long as it takes to preheat the oven and roast some fish is all it takes to do that. I've been known to serve egg with fish before, because I love the combination. So when I got my hot little hands on the quail eggs, I had to see if they'd give me the same joy. They did.

Here's exactly what you do with a couple of quail eggs if you manage to sneak them past the TSA.

Quail Eggs, Spinach, and Sea Bass

(serves 2)

2 quail eggs

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2/3 lb fillet of sea bass, cut in two

1 small shallot, minced

1 tsp dill, minced

1 tsp chives, minced

1/2 tsp parsley leaves, minced

1 bunch spinach, washed and trimmed

1 clove garlic

salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle salt and pepper on both sides of fish. In a small bowl, mix shallot, dill, chives, and parsley. Coat salt with the herb mixture. Set the fish in a baking dish and drizzle 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil over the fillets. Roast for 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish (though, as Joe Bastianich once told me, "Sea bass is the most forgiving fish" so you need not worry incessantly about overcooking it).

About 5 minutes before the fish needs to come out of the oven, saute the garlic in one tbsp olive oil for 1 minute. Saute spinach till just wilted, about 2-3 minutes.

In a small frying pan, heat the last tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat. Drop the quail eggs in and fry till the whites become opaque.

Set the fish on the plate, topping each fillet with wilted spinach, and a fried quail egg. Drizzle with the juices from the fish pan. Salt and pepper to taste.

Encouraging the fast food world to bring us better fries

2010-12-13T21:10:00.000-08:00

About four years ago, I heard a piece on NPR wherein the NPR journalist attempted, but failed, to create a stir by interviewing a Sierra Club muckety-muck about Walmart's green initatives. Everyone (who can afford to shop elsewhere) likes to get moralistic about how Walmart doesn't treat its workers very well and Walmart buys from manufacturers that use child labor and Walmart is killing the environment and Walmart eats babies.

So when Walmart said, "Look everyone, we're implementing green initiatives," everyone was skeptical. Said NPR journalist called up said Sierra Club muckety-muck for comment. The woman at Sierra Club surprised us all by saying, "Well, great! Let's encourage their commitment to corporate greening by spending some money there." The rationale was that irrespective of whether Walmart's green initiatives were motivated purely by their desire to stop harming the environment or for marketing purposes, it was important to encourage their green initiatives with our pocketbooks, so that they would continue to engage in them. If we doubt their green efforts, then they have no motivation to engage at all.

That point stuck with me. I think about my consumer power often, when it comes to shopping, eating, and spending money in any way. And so, when Foodbuzz was offering gift certificates for Wendy's new natural cut fries, I was skeptical, because as a supposed foodie, I'm supposed to snub fast food joints. But then I thought, "Sure, why not? If fast food joints start making better fries, I should partake." I signed up, and as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received two gift cards for Wendy's and I headed out to try these fries. It also didn't hurt that there was a chance to win $500 for participating. [Pick me, please.]

Last Friday night, I stopped in at a Wendy's and ordered a small natural cut fry with sea salt. Sure enough, Wendy's was serving up fries with the skin still intact (my favorite kind) and they actually tasted like potatoes in the very first bite. I wouldn't say that they were at all comparable to frites of steak et frites or moules et frites, but they were definitely a step up from your standard fast food fries.

Since I've been comparing them to some sort of fine food, I'll share with you Mr. Rose's take, when I brought him to a Wendy's two days later. "When you dip these fries in a Frosty, the salty and sweet is kind of like that melon-prosciutto carpaccio thing you get at fancy restaurants."

Note to Wendy's: I don't, personally, think your fries and Frosty combo rises to the level of melon-prosciutto carpaccio, but I like the fact that your fries taste like potatoes. And thanks for the gift card. Mr. Rose will be back to taste test your fries dipped in all your other menu offerings.

Happy Place: San Francisco

2010-12-13T20:21:00.000-08:00

I love Colorado, the state that I call home. Colorado's been good to me. In fact, I've been known to say "Steamboat Springs is my happy place" for the fact that there's perfect champagne powder blanket over that quaint ski town. I've also been known to say "The Little Man is my happy place" for the fact that it's a giant milk can, lit up at night, that dispenses the smoothest, creamiest ice cream on a hot summer night. So it's true. I actually have many happy places. But they're not limited to Colorado. There's also a special place in my heart for San Francisco, California.

What's not to love about San Francisco? You can't spit without hitting a farmer's market. A good farmer's market.

Persimmons, dangling form a rope.

Dried figs, apricots, and cherries of several varieties.

Alfajores, aka The Most Delicious Cookie I Have Ever Eaten, South American shortbread cookies sandwiching dulce de leche and dusted with confectioners sugar. Get some. http://www.saborsur.com/

And the live entertainment at the farmer's market can't be beat.

One-man band.

And the seafood is cheap. Dirt cheap.

So I went out for a quick visit to see my sister, who lives there (lucky duck). It was a short weekend trip, so every minute counted. She indulged me by letting me pause to touch, smell, and photograph every single bit of food that crossed our paths. Case in point: street tacos off a truck. In this case, we also stopped to taste.

Not that we don't also have these in Colorado, but this time it was a family experience.

Lucky Duck isn't an intrepid cook, but she's more adept in the kitchen than she thinks she is. In just a couple of hours, we'd whipped up a mighty fine dinner, with the last minute assistance/company of my MasterChef twin, Azmina, who is much better at remembering to photograph food than I am.

I took full advantage of the fresh produce and seafood Lucky Duck and I came across throughout the day. We had roasted dungeoness crabs, seafood risotto, and some fresh bread, among other tasty treats for dinner.

It was quite a feast, and none of it was all that hard. If you want to see recipes, post a comment below and tell me what you want to see and I'll post a recipe in the near future, complete with more photos and instructions for the yumminess pictured above. (You, too, can eat like we did, though you'll have to provide your own lively dinner conversation and sassy dinner company.)

It's only been a week, but I already miss hanging out with Lucky Duck and Azmina. San Francisco is my happy place. There. I said it. "San Francisco is my happy place" for the fact that there's good food and good company in abundance there.

What to do if it rains British and you have duck confit on hand

2010-12-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

Mr. Rose has an old friend, a British fella, who showed up to our wedding on about 2 days notice. Let's call him Mr. B, fitting for a British fella. Mr. B showed up in Colorado once again this week, this time with about 1 whole week's notice. Make no mistake; we absolutely adore his surprise visits. To me, they're just shy of drinking a glass of champagne and finding a diamond ring at the bottom of it. Completely surprising and delightful, the memory of his surprise visits will always be galvanized in my memory. And this time, he brought the Missus and the Junior.

I took a day off work to hang with the B's and brought them to some of my favorite sites around Denver. First and foremost, breakfast burritos from Las Casitas and coffee from Common Grounds. Then, Westminster dog park with my own girls.

Mrs. B, Junior in background, Margo Frances in foreground

It was a solid day of touring, stopping only to feed Junior some leftover pasta and bolognese (pasta made with the help of my newly acquired Kitchenaid).

By the time we got back to Chez Rose, it was about time for the Roses and the B's to eat as well. Here's the quickie menu:
Artisinal boule and butter with truffle oil (thanks Kitchenaid)
French lentils and duck confit
Happy Cakes

I could go on about the butter and truffles, mycophile and proud owner of a new Kitchenaid that I am. But this isn't the time. I'm here to rave about the duck confit and the delicious meal that can be whipped together when it's raining Brits and it's time to eat.

This meal made me realize that, about a month from now, when I'm making a list of new year's resolutions, keeping duck confit in my freezer needs to be on that list. Here's why I'm excited... here's the recipe:

French Lentils and Duck Confit
(Serves 4)
1.5 c puy or french green lentils
2 c poultry stock
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 carrot, finely diced
1/2 rib celery, finely diced
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tsp kosher salt
4 confit duck legs, room temperature
4 tbsp duck fat
1 tsp sel de gris
ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat oil in a medium sauce pan over medium-high heat. Saute onion, carrot, and celery until tender, about 3-4 minutes. Add lentils, stock, thyme, bay leaf, kosher salt, and 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, till lentils are tender, about 20-25 minutes. Drain and set aside in a bowl.

In a cast iron skillet, heat 2 tbsp duck fat over high heat. Place the confit legs in the skillet, skin side down. Sear till the skin gets brown, about 2 minutes. Flip the legs over, then place in the oven. Let the legs roast till lightly browned and fully heated through, about 7 minutes. Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 tbsp duck fat in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Saute lentils till re-heated. Add sel de gris and stir.

Serve duck legs on a small heap of lentils.

Euclid Hall: Better than Martini Ranch.

2010-11-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

When we first moved to Denver as an unmarried couple a few years ago, Mr. Rose and I still fancied ourselves as young and hip and would find ourselves roaming around downtown on weekends, looking for a hot spot to cut some rug. We stumbled upon a very cool space that just didn't live up to expectation on 14th between Market and Larmier, Martini Ranch.

It was filled with young women with bleached blonde hair, wearing barely more than bikinis, tottering around in impossibly high heels, gyrating as seductively as they could for the crowd of men, young and old, who stood on the sidelines, watching intently, tottering drunkenly, and, perhaps, wishing they had enough rhythm to join the ladies on the dance floor. It was a sad, sad place, but everyone there seemed content. For the price of a double, the bartender would always pour a triple, and every person that entered Martini Ranch could reliably expect to exit with permanent hearing damage and promises of a serious hangover the next morning.

Eventually, Martini Ranch shuttered its doors. Perhaps the business model of pouring triples for the price of a double at a seedy dive bar dressed up as an exclusive night club was not sustainable. I don't know. I'm not in the business. And, I am apparently old and judgmental about these places and the people who frequent them anyway.

But then, Euclid Hall came along and filled the void that Martini Ranch had left in the Larimer Square-ish location. Touted as one of the best new restaurants in Denver by 5280 Magazine, I was pretty excited when Skywalker suggested that we try it on Saturday night. This time, I remembered my camera.

We had a drink at the bar next to the open kitchen while we waited for a table. From my crowded perch at the bar, I could see plates waiting to be picked up by servers. It was a very exciting place to be. I didn't see anything thrilling pass from kitchen to bar, but it was still exciting to be there amid the action.

We were seated at a cozy booth and spent a little time perusing the menu. I think it could best be placed in the new "gastropub" category of cuisines. My eyes quickly gravitated toward the Crispy Buffalo-Style Pig Ears and Brulee Bone Marrow, probably because I'm Chinese, and Mr. Rose honed in on the Pickle Sampler. We added Fish N Chips to our order, upon the recommendation of our server, and Skywalker chimed in with an order of the Wild Mushroom Poutine.

The pig ears came first. This was my first disappointment of the evening. The little basket of pig ear strips had a mostly hearty crunch (they were, after all, deep-fried), but once my teeth made their way through the unseasoned batter, they met with a mush that I can only guess was the fatty skin of pig ears. Crunchy batter around a mushy nothingness... the overall effect was definitely not what I'd call crispy, which is surprising since pig ears naturally already have a bit of a satisfying crunchy mouth-feel. The buffalo sauce and ranch dressing a la carte were also underwhelming. Not sure how the brilliant idea of crispy buffalo pig ears went wrong, but it did.

Next up was the bruleed bone marrow. The portion of actual marrow was small, maybe a teaspoon. As with the pig ear batter, it was under-seasoned, but the marrow was rich enough that it was not entirely flat. The slivered onions and sweet sherry reduction hidden under the bone went a long way to helping this dish. Unfortunately, as the sherry reduction was hidden, I didn't discover it till the very end, when I was pushing the bone around the plate, wishing there were more than a diminutive bite of marrow in it.

The fish and chips were unremarkable. I expected there to be something amazing about this dish, since our server especially recommended it as a "definite must-have." True, it was perfectly cooked, but it's the least I'd expect considering the pedigree of Euclid Hall. Also true that it was served with a dark malt vinegar gastrique and lemon tarragon ailoi, but these sauces did not elevate the fish'n'chips to anything I would have called a "must-have." It seems our server had a way with hyperbole.

In addition to being Chinese, I am also Canadian. And I went to school in Quebec. So it's difficult to pass up a poutine when I see it on a menu. Skywalker was a poutine virgin and I was thrilled to be present during the popping of another culinary cherry. But here's a poutine I wished we hadn't ordered. This poutine is the reason poutine has a bad reputation of being a foul sludge that clogs the arteries; actually, it's always been true that poutine will clog your arteries, but it's never a foul sludge. C'mon! It's french fries, cheese curds, and gravy! That screams delicious(!), not "foul sludge." But Euclid Hall managed to take it to that level. They were skimpy on the cheese, without enough to create the trail of melted cheese strings one expects as one pulls each french fry away from the pile. I could have overlooked this transgression if they'd gotten the gravy right. As a mycophile, I applaud the idea of making a mushroom gravy. But the "gravy" was a lumpy mushroom puree, a sorry failure in the execution of mushroom gravy. Don't just take my word for it. See the lumpy, amorphous tan blanket over a pile of fries below.

It's difficult to say that Euclid Hall was a negative dining experience because it truly did have a vibrant and inviting atmosphere. Couple that with the fact that it was created by one of Denver's favorite chef-restauranteurs -- we really wanted to love it. But it just didn't live up to the hype.

Well, at least it's better than Martini Ranch.

White bean, kale, and prosciutto soup

2010-11-27T18:04:00.000-08:00

Since I had decided to avoid the post-Thanksgiving crowds on the ski slopes, we stayed in town and it didn't take me long to set into my old ways... finding entertainment in the kitchen. While Mr. Rose raked leaves in the yard, I investigated the fridge, garden, and pantry to see what we had. With little effort (I was able to make it while wholly engrossed in the This American Life podcast entitled "Frenemies"), I put this soup together.

If I'd had more than a cup of flour, I also would have made a dense crusty boule to serve with the soup. But my Kitchenaid has not yet shown up -- it is still sitting in the same UPS warehouse it's been in for the last 3 days -- so I didn't bother trekking out to get more flour. I say this like there was a blistering blizzard outside, but there wasn't. In fact, Mr. Rose probably got sunburn while raking leaves. I was just feeling lazy. It is, after all, Saturday.

Well, here it is, my recipe for a tasty wintery soup, that can be made without much effort on a sunny autumn afternoon.

White bean, kale, and prosciutto soup

1 lb dried cannellini beans
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 small onions, chopped
6 large cloves, chopped
3 tbsp chopped rosemary
2 bay leaves
12 oz thinly sliced prosciutto, cut into 1/4" wide strips
1 small bunch kale, ribs removed and leaves torn into small pieces (about 3 packed cups)
8 c chicken broth
2 c water
Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse and pick over the beans in cold water. Put the beans into a medium pot and cover with 2" water. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then remove and set aside, covered. Let sit for 1 hr.

Heat the oil in a large pot (mine was a 6 qt dutch oven) over medium-high heat. Saute the onions till tender, about 4-5 minutes. Add the garlic, rosemary, and bay leaves. Stir and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add the prosciutto, stir, and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add kale, chicken broth, and water. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to make sure the kale gets nice and wilted in there. Drain the beans and add them to the pot as well. Lower the heat to a simmer, drop a lid on the pot, and cook, stirring occasionally, till beans are tender, about 1 hr.

Indian Inspiration

2010-11-21T16:07:00.000-08:00

You may have heard that I'm suffering from a terrible bout of chef's block. I got a few suggestions that can be summed up in a few points:

1. Try to recreate a memorable restaurant meal.
2. Flip through some recipes and just start cooking.
3. Go exotic.
4. Keep eating the same thing over and over again till you get so sick of it, that inspiration MUST come to you.

I attempted an amalgam of all these techniques this weekend. My brother-in-law (we shall call him Kidney, or "Kid" for short) was in town for a conference and had free time to hang out on Saturday night. I had originally planned on taking him to one of my favorite restaurants in town, but I'd heard through the grapevine what Kid was too shy to say -- he was hoping to try my cooking. Well, Kid doesn't come to town all that often, so I had to indulge him, chef's block or not.

I worked my way backwards through that list of suggestions. First, I considered what I'd eaten a lot of lately. Two things came to mind: Indian food and Jimmy John's Vito with hot peppers. One thing I've never done was buy store-bought and pass off as my own cooking, so I wasn't about to start by taking a Jimmy John's out of it's paper wrapping and throwing it on a plate for Kid. So Indian food it would be. Once again.

Second suggestion: Go exotic. Check.

Third suggestion: Flip through some recipes. Saveur magazine had a few interesting recipes and I am now the proud owner of a couple of Indian cookbooks, so check.

Fourth suggestion: Recreate a memorable restaurant meal. So here's where I kill two birds with one stone. I'd obliterate my chef's block while reminiscing about my trip. For Kid's dinner, I would make prawns with saffron coconut curry and matar paneer (among other things).

Our trip to India took us to a lot of places in the country, but we did not get anywhere near the ocean. Accordingly, we weren't confident about ordering seafood in many places. But we did seek out one place, Sagwath Restaurant in the Defense Colony district of Delhi, that was recommended by Frommer's that specialized in southern Indian cuisine. We ate a lot of prawns and other fish, all of which was rich and bursting with flavor. We stuffed ourselves and ambled through a nearby bazaar set up for Diwali that was decorated with marigolds and temples for favorite gods placed at every corner before catching an autorickshaw back to the hotel. I would recreate the meal at Sagwath with prawns in saffron coconut curry.

Chutneys at Sagwath


Ganesh, among beds of marigolds.

Matar paneer, or curried cheese and peas, is a traditional Punjab dish that we ate throughout the northern region where we were traveling. Everyone had their own version of it, but the best one we had was the one at the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling. Darjeeling, famous for its tea, was a gift to the British Empire from the Kingdom of Sikkim in the mid-1800's. It became a resort town where the British soldiers stationed in India could go to retreat from the heat and humidity of the plains into the more temperate climes of the Darjeeling hills. We descended from our trek around Sikkim into Darjeeling and could immediately see why Darjeeling was such a treasured gift. Perched on one hill amongst many hills, dripping with tea bushes, the local Hindus and Buddhists erected a temple at the peak of Observatory Hill, where they could be closer to heaven. And truly, just below that temple, at the Windamere Hotel, the matar paneer, with its smooth and tender paneer and rich, velvety sauce, was close to godliness.

Clouds rolling over the hills surrounding Darjeeling

Prayer flags strewn around the Hindu/Buddhist temple

The Windamere Hotel

The meal I made for Kid also consisted of potatoes with asafeotida, daal, naan, and rice, followed by three varieties of kulfi. But the greatest amount of the effort went into the paneer and prawn dishes. Since I hadn't spent a whole lot of time studying the recipes, the dishes took a lot longer to prepare. I kept referring back to the recipes, step after step, adding spices with painstaking precision, using measuring spoons rather than my usual approximations ("teaspoon" = big pinch with two fingers and thumb; "tablespoon" = big pinch with three fingers and thumb). Each individual motion felt natural, but for the act of measuring out spices. The measuring threw off my momentum and disrupted the flow. Still, it felt good to be back in the kitchen. The fog of chef's block hadn't yet lifted, but at least most of my cooking sense had come back.

We sat down for dinner. The bronze statue of Ganesh I'd purchased at a curio shop in Khajuraho was already seated on the table. Ganesh is the famous elephant-headed Hindu god, son of Shiva and Parvati, Lord of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles. I'm not a religious person, but it did not escape my attention that the Remover of Obstacles was sitting at the table where I hoped to exorcise my chef's block.

The meal, to me, was just okay. It was definitely Indian food -- still the best Indian food in Denver -- but it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi... I can only surmise that it was the mechanical way in which the meal was prepared, the way someone with chef's block cooks. And, what's worse, I'd left the pots and pans to soak in the kitchen sink overnight. The scent of that Indian food this morning, though not unpleasant, was just too much. I'd eaten my fill of Indian food, and there it was again in the morning, taunting me to eat leftover Indian food for breakfast. It was enough to make me crave a big creamy bowl of steel cut oatmeal, followed by a big, fat, juicy ribeye steak (no, I'm not pregnant, I often crave a steak in the morning).

Wait... What was that? I had a craving? Yes! I have finally kicked my chef's block!

Thank you all for providing your helpful tips to get me through this difficult time. Thanks, especially to my twin, Lawyer Loves Lunch, for knowing me well enough to know that it was the act of eating the same thing over and over again that would ultimately drive me into the arms of another food.

I should add that, despite the fact that I didn't love what I'd cooked up last night, Kid liked it well enough, and he had seconds of both the prawns and the paneer, so, at the very least, the recipes are at least worth sharing. Here they are, with links to the original recipes and adjustments where, now that I think I've kicked the chef's block, I would have made substitutions and adjustments. I'm also giving you these recipes with the caveat that none of the measurements should be used precisely -- it'll all come together much more nicely if you trust your intuition better than your measuring spoons.

Prawns with saffron coconut curry (adapted from Vij's Cookbook)
Serves 6
2 lbs prawns, shelled and deveined
1 tsp saffron
1/2 c warm water
1 1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 c canola oil
1 1/2 tbsp whole cumin seeds
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp ground black mustard seeds
1 tsp ground fenugreek seeds
1/2 tbsp ground cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground tumeric
3 c water
2 c coconut milk
cilantro

In a medium bowl combine prawns and 1 tsp of salt and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for up to 6 hours.
In a small bowl, crush saffron with the back of a spoon and add 1/2 c warm water. Set aside.
Heat oil in large saucepan on high heat. Stir in cumin seeds and allow them to sizzle for 30 seconds. Turn the heat down to medium and add tomatoes, ground mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, cayenne, tumeric, and 1 tbsp salt. Stir well and cook for 5 minutes.
Add 3 cups of water, increase heat to high, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for another 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Add coconut milk and saffron (with water). Stir well and cook for another 10 minutes.
Bring curry to a boil on medium heat. As soon as it start to boil, add the prawns and stir gently. Cook for about 4-6 minutes, till the prawns are just done.
Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve with basmati rice.

Matar Paneer (Curried cheese and peas) (adapted from Saveur)
Serves 6
Included in this recipe are instructions for making paneer. Paneer is not difficult to make, and it comes with 30-minute blocks of waiting time, during which you can be doing something else, like preparing the matar paneer sauce or making naan -- it's up to you to decide what to do with your spare time. Mix and mingle your kitchen activities as you wish!
1 gallon + 1 pint whole milk
1/2 c lemon juice (2-3 lemons)
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2" piece peeled ginger, half of it coarsely chopped
6 tbsp clarified butter
1 tbsp whole cumin seeds
3 green cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
3" stick of cinnamon
1 large red onion, finely chopped
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp smoked paprika
28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 c canola oil
2 c frozen peas, thawed
1 tbsp garam masala
Salt and pepper to taste
Cilantro

Paneer Instructions:
In a large stock pot, heat the milk till it almost boils, stirring occasionally. Add the lemon juice. Do not stir so as not to break up all the curds, but with a wooden spoon, gently, push the curds toward one side of the pot in no more than 4-5 strokes. Let the milk mixture sit for 5 minutes.
Set a large colander in the sink and line it with a large piece of cheesecloth folded into 4 layers. Pour the milk mixture into the colander, allowing the whey (the yellow-ish water) to drain off. Let it drain for another 5 minutes. Then, pull up the corners of the cheesecloth and tie them into a light knot and run the wooden spoon under the knot, so it looks like a hobo's pouch hanging on a stick. Prop the stick across the top of the empty stock pot so the pouch of cheese hangs into it as it drains. Let it drain for 30 minutes.
Untie the cheesecloth and gently form the pouch of cheese into a flat rectangle. Fold the cheesecloth back over the cheese, wrap the package in a kitchen towel, and set it in a shallow baking pan. Place a heavy cutting board onto the cheese package and set something heavy on it (I used a large dutch oven filled with canned food). Let it drain this way for 1.5 hrs, unwrapping it every 30 minutes to squeeze out the liquid from the cheese cloth, and rewrapping it tighter.
When the cheese is done draining, cut off the rounded ends to create a rectangular block with squared off edges. Cut the block of cheese into 1/4" cubes for the matar paneer and crumble the rounded ends for garnish.
Matar Paneer Instructions:
Purée garlic, chopped ginger, and 1⁄4 cup water to a coarse paste in a blender and set the paste aside.
Heat clarified butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add cumin seeds, cardamom pods, whole cloves, and cinnamon stick, and cook, stirring constantly for 1 minute. Add onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until just browned, 7-8 minutes. Add ginger-garlic paste, ground turmeric, and paprika, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the butter starts to separate from the paste, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in the crushed tomatoes and cook, stirring slowly so that the tomatoes caramelize but don't burn, until brick red and thickened, 12-14 minutes. Add 4 c water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until slightly thickened, about 10-15 minutes.
Add paneer cubes, peas, garam masala, and salt to pot and stir to combine. Heat through, 2-3 minutes more. Garnish with crumbled paneer and cilantro. Serve with naan or basmati rice.

Chef's Block

2010-11-19T06:12:00.000-08:00

I've got chef's block. I'm not referring to the 500 lb block of wood in the center of my kitchen; I'm referring to the chef analog to writer's block. I can't think of anything to cook. It should be so easy to combat:

Step 1: Chef develops a craving.
Step 2: Chef becomes hungry.
Step 3: Chef goes to kitchen and cooks up whatever chef was craving.

The only problem is that this chef hasn't had a craving over a month. I have literally been eating whatever comes my way, without ever having a desire to eat anything else. While in India, every meal was Indian food. Sure, there were choices between one masala and the next, lentils or chickpeas, paneer or potatoes, but there was no way to satisfy a craving for, say, a hamburger.

Upon returning from India, I, like everyone else, expected that I would have missed hanging out in the kitchen and I'd be totally inspired to cook. But no. Every day at lunch, I've had either leftovers from dinner the night before or a Jimmy John's sandwich (Vito with hot peppers -- because that's what my secretary knows I always get there so that's what he's been bringing me as I slave away at my desk). Dinner the night before has been leftover chicken curry that Mr. Rose requested for dinner on Sunday night. We ate it for 3 days. There are no more leftovers and I wonder if it's healthy to consume three Vitos with hot peppers in a week. What if this continues and I consume three Vitos with hot peppers per week for the next three weeks? Is that healthy?

Health consequences aside, I wonder if I'll ever get my chef mojo back. What happened to the daily lunch daydreaming that would start at approximately 10:15 a.m.? What happened to the daily dinner daydreaming that would start approximately 30 seconds after I swallowed my last bite of lunch? I recall that being fun, albeit a little obsessive-compulsive. Unfortunately, you can't make up an obsession where there is none. And I appear to have misplaced mine.

Well, the chicken curry I made last Sunday was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. And getting back in the kitchen did feel natural -- like I'd never been gone. I presume I can still make anything upon request. But I'm lacking the inspiration to create. Someone. Please send help.

The Birth of Speakeasy Kitchen.

2010-11-13T22:36:00.000-08:00

A dear friend of mine, grandmomma of "technocuddly," and owner-proprietor of Mer-Chan, K-Cub, recently blogged about an unlicensed restaurant she stumbled upon in Dubai, UAE. It reminded her of the original Speakeasy Kitchen. My Speakeasy Kitchen. I was touched to see that she had retained (or found) the link to the original Speakeasy Kitchen blog! Click here to read about the inception of Speakeasy Kitchen, the underground restaurant.

Remembering that I'm a Food Blogger: Cholon Bistro

2010-11-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

I'm back after three weeks in northern India -- stay tuned for the highlights (and the lowlights) of the trip -- and realize that I'd forgotten that I'm a food blogger. I'd just purchased a new camera for two big reasons, primarily to (1) capture the colors of India better than my point-and-shoot, and (2) improve my foodtography upon my return from India. I didn't use the camera for foodtography while in India since, well, it's Indian food. How attractive could piles of daal on piles of rice (delicious as they may be) possibly look in the din of flickering florescent lights in restaurants around, say, Old Delhi? But when Four-sides Reynolds invited me to join him and TLR (who recently wept with Mondo Guerra and 600 of his closest friends at the end of this season's finale of Project Runway) for dinner at the hip new place in town, I should have jumped at the opportunity to practice with my new camera.

Alas. I left the camera at home.

My heart sank as dish after dish of the most visually interesting food I'd seen in weeks was delivered from the kitchen to our table, knowing that I had no camera to capture the moment. So now I'm putting my food-writing skills to the test, without the crutch of photos to describe the food. Just as well, since I haven't written about food in the last 3 weeks either. I need the practice.

Let's start with my impressions of the hip new place. When ChoLon Bistro was barely more than a twinkle in Denver's eye, it caused a bit of a stir around town. Mr. Rose's college girlfriend emailed him with news that her grad school roommate's brother was coming to town and hanging up his own shingle. "It will be called ChoLon. It's a modern Asian bistro," Mr. Rose announced to me, knowing it would provoke a reaction. I have long proclaimed that the word "Asian" (or any subset thereof, such as "Thai" or "Japanese" or "Vietnamese") has no business preceding words like "bistro" or "bar & grill." A "bistro" is what I typically think of as being European, particularly, French. A "bar & grill" is American. As much as I love the melting pot that is America, I hate it when the cuisine of eastern and western continents collide, mostly because most chefs do a generally shitty job of it, making things far too sweet and foregoing the flavor complexity of both cuisines. "Cholon? Asian bistro?" I sneered. "Well, I guess we have to try this one out since you practically know the guy."

Who doesn't like saying, "I know that guy" when that guy is the likes of Lon Symensma, Chef-owner of the hotly anticipated, hip, new place in town? Sure, he's my husband's ex-girlfriend's roommate's brother. That puts me at only 4 degrees of separation, which is probably about 2 degrees closer than I am to Kevin Bacon. I am so. Close to. So. Much. Greatness.

So when Four-sides Reynolds invited us to join him at ChoLon, I said, "Yeah, we know that guy. See you there at 7." The friendly hostess gave us a table with a great view of the kitchen, as if we actually did know him.

Four-sides Reynolds and TLR had been planning this dinner for a few days, and TLR had been studying the menu fastidiously. She fixated on the chili crab rolls with charred corn salad and Sriracha mayo. They were scrumptious. The rolls were tender on the outside, with a delightful crunch of corn complimenting the sweet crab meat inside.

After spending three weeks in India where cows are sacred and, therefore, never on the menu, my eyes honed in on the beef tartare with Chinese mustard and tapioca puffs. Unbeknownst to us at the time we ordered, TLR does not eat red meat. Not that she never has, but she chooses not to now (oh, those sweet fuzzy little cows!). So when the plate arrived, adorned with white crisps made of tapioca and dotted with pale yellow Chinese mustard along side a log of luxuriously red beef tartare, she was a little torn. She had never eaten beef tartare. But she decided to give it a try. Yes, that's right. We popped her beef tartare cherry. It was a good way to do it -- it was the perfect opportunity. The tapioca puffs were both visually unique and satisfyingly crispy. The mustard gave just a touch of zing. And the beef melted in my mouth. It was divine.

A little birdie from French Press Memo had tweeted at me: Don't miss the soup dumplings. So we ordered the soup dumplings with sweet onion and gruyere. They were indeed tasty little sacks of French onion soup, disguised as the Shanghainese steamed dumpling, xiao long bao. Xiao long bao is magical to me because a delicious clear broth gushes out of the delicate flour wrapper just before your teeth sink into that tender nugget of minced meat inside. To me, the addition of gruyere takes the magic out of it because the fat of the cheese could act like an impervious Gore-tex jacket, keeping the onion broth inside separate from the steaming flour wrapper, thereby aiding the wrapper by making it less susceptible to dissolving or falling apart in the steamer basket. I tried to explain this to the table. TLR paused respectfully, as if to show she was giving my science due consideration, then announced, "These are awesome. I could eat these all day, every day." She was right -- they were awesome, magic be damned. We all nodded in a moment of silence while we stared at the empty steamer basket longingly.

We had a couple of large plates that did not disappoint either. Of note, the Australian sea bass with wok-tossed boy choy and water chestnuts looked and even smelled like sweet and sour -- my biggest fear for the continental collision -- but it turned out to be bursting with flavor, and not sweet and sour at all. It had a plucky bit of spice to it, with whole mustard seeds or maybe coriander seeds and cilantro. The fish was battered and cooked to perfection (though I found the batter to be a tad on the salty side). The water chestnuts and bok choy had a refreshing and complimentary crunch to them. The roast chicken with potatoes anna and soy jus was incredible. The chicken was so tender that you could cut it with a fork. And you could actually taste the potatoes. My mouth waters now, just thinking about it.

As we marveled over the large plates, our server brought us a bowl of the chicken fried rice with poached egg, "Compliments of the Chef." I looked up toward the kitchen and locked eyes with Lon Symensma. I smiled and waved thanks. Fried rice made creamy with the yolk of a perfectly poached egg. Yum. Just yum. Our server came back and asked, "I saw you and the Chef waving at each other. Do you know him?" I blushed. "Um, no," I admitted, "But he's so kind to send us this rice!" Four-sides Reynolds hypothesized that he recognized me from MasterChef. I did my best impression of Gordon Ramsay, confusing our server, who clearly never saw the best show ever to hit FOX television. He mumbled something about refilling our water glasses and shuffled off.

We got some dessert -- I fell in love with the spiced doughnuts with Vietnamese coffee ice cream for the rich flavor and departure from boring chocolate blahbiddy blah.

Now here's where the story turns and 4 degrees of separation became just one degree. Apparently, I confused more than just our server by waving at the Chef. Chef Symensma emerged from the kitchen and appeared at our tableside for a chat. We explained how Mr. Rose knows his sister, welcomed him to Denver, and then gushed about the gorgeous meal until he headed back into the kitchen. If I'd had a camera, I would have taken one last photo, with the Chef. Digital proof that "I know that guy." Well, at least I met him. Proudly.

A hip and inventive restaurant that is completely different from anything else Denver has to offer, ChoLon Bistro dispelled some of the doubts I had about the word "Asian" preceding the word "bistro." And it reminded me that I'm a food blogger in the most delicious way. I'll remember to bring my camera next time.

Pizza Sojourn

2010-10-19T12:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I left the world of private practice to work at the Attorney General's Office. Having not had a vacation in years, I asked the AGO if they could wait a few weeks before I started my new post. I wanted to travel. Big time. I had no particular destination in mind, but wanted the place to be completely disconnected from anything familiar. Although I ultimately ended up in Ecuador, I'd had my eyes set on places far and wide, from Tibet to Congo to Georgia. Opting to eject any locales that were politically unstable, Tibet and Congo were out. Georgia was not so stable either, but it is, if one believes what one reads online, a beautiful country with regal landscapes, centuries of fascinating Eurasian history, and diverse ethnic cultures. I might have risked military coups had the photographs of their cuisine not looked so, ahem, dull.

Adjarian (or acharuli/adjaruli) khachapuri

This image of Georgian khachapuri, devoid of any seasoning, herb, or color, consoled me as I ate my way around Ecuador. Ecuador is not known for its cuisine. In the highlands, they have their own brand of meat and potatoes and lentil stew. On the coast in Guayaquil en route to the Galapagos Islands, there is ceviche. In the jungle, they have some interesting fruit that looked like it came from some Klingon colony planet. They even have a certain South American delicacy: Cuy (guinea pig). But that's it. None of the food in Ecuador is all that exotic or mind-blowing. So as I sat by the side of the road between Otavalo and the sacred Peguche Falls, sipping a Fanta while an old woman worked over a coal fire to cook the crap out of my spiced meat and potato dish, wondering why I had stubbornly decided to spend three weeks in Ecuador rather than, say, Tuscany, I remembered the khachapuri of Georgia.

That meal of dried up meat and potatoes was the 5th such meal I had eaten that week -- I desperately craved vegetables, ironic considering that Otavalo sits amidst a lush green countryside. But at least I wasn't eating meal after meal after meal of boat-shaped pizza dough topped with butter and an egg.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post. Project Foodbuzz's challenge this week is Pizza. Everyone's putting their own spin on it, including one of my favorite contestants, Asha of Fork Spoon Knife. Her pide from Turkey is remarkably similar in shape to khachapuri from, you guessed it, neighboring Georgia. But of course every country and every ethnic culture puts their own spin on the pizza. So as my own little side project, I'm going to take Asha's lead and follow the footsteps of pizza around the world (with a nod to Jules Vernes' Around the World in 80 Days). From Italian pizza to Turkish pide to Georgian khachaprui, who knows where our versatile sauce-topped flatbread will end up. If you, Readers, have some suggestions on where to go next from Georgia, let me know.

For now, I'm heading to northern India. I'll do a little bit of research on the fate of the pizza in South Asia. The only flatbreads I can think of at the moment are naan and poppadum. Those flatbreads are perfect for putting stuff on, but neither of them come with the sauce and stuff already on them. Somewhere between Georgia and India, the stuff fell off the dough (or did it go on... which came first, the naan or the khachapuri?). It's about time I go investigate...

To be continued...

Turkey Pastries

2010-10-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

It would not be a Thanksgiving feast if there were not heaps of leftovers to provide you with the challenge of how to make them into something delicious but different by the end of the first week. It also would not be a Thanksgiving feast if some version of turkey pot pie was not attempted. This year, we had turkey pot pies AND turkey empanadas.

They were stuffed with the same mixture of turkey and vegetables, but something about the portability of the empanadas make them an attractive option. Maybe it's the grab 'n' go single-serving aspect of them. Maybe it's the fact that they remind me of the delicious alternative-to-dollar-slice-pizza late-night snacks that I used to enjoy across from the 18th Street Lounge after a long night of, um, lounging. Maybe it's just another vehicle by which to dispose of delicious deep-fried turkey.

Either way, the pastry dough I came up with was versatile enough to serve as both double crust pie and empanada dough. The recipe creates a light and crispy crust, a perfect envelope for the savory filling. In hindsight, I should have made a gravy to mix in with the pie filling (it wouldn't be necessary or, for that matter, neat for the empanadas), but the pies were not dry and were tasty nonetheless.

Here's how to do it.

Turkey Pot Pies and Empanadas
Makes 2 double-crust pies and 4 generously sized empanadas
3 c unbleached white flour
1/4 c water
3 eggs
6 oz butter, cut into 12 pieces
4 lbs cooked turkey, shredded*
1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 lb cremini mushrooms, brushed, de-stemmed, and sliced
4-6 multi-colored abominable carrots, chopped (approx. 2 c chopped carrots)
2 c chopped celery (approx. 4 stalks)
1-2 c turkey or chicken broth (I actually used turkey aspic because that's what I had after boiling the Thanksgiving carcasses)
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp ground coriander
salt and pepper to taste
*If the turkey is unseasoned, I would also add 1 tsp orange zest and 1 tsp chopped sage.

Pulse flour, 2 eggs, and butter in a food processor until well mixed. Gradually add water through the feed tube, pulsing until the dough just comes together in a clumpy ball. Take the dough out, press it into a ball, then wrap tightly with plastic wrap and let sit for at least 30 minutes in the fridge. Over medium-high heat, sautee the mushrooms in the olive oil (I had the foresight to do this step in two deep-sided skillets -- this recipe simply makes two much to fit into one). Once brown, add the onions, carrots, and celery, and sautee till tender. Add the shredded turkey, broth, coriander, and salt/pepper to taste. Stir to incorporate, lower heat, and let simmer under a lid for 10 minutes. Then remove lid to let cool.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Unwrap the dough and roll out as thinly as possible on a lightly floured surface. Cut four pieces to fit two pie pans such that some dough flops over the sides of the pan. Set aside the remainder of the dough for empanadas. Press one piece of dough into the bottom of a pie pan. Fill the pie pan with cooled turkey filling. Lay a second piece of dough over the pie pan. Working around the edge of the pie pan, roll the edges of the first piece, together with the edges of the first piece, over the edge of the pie pan, and tuck the dough just between the side of the pan and the outer edge of the pie. Cut some vents into the top pie crust. In a small bowl, beat the remaining egg with 1 tbsp water to make an egg wash. Brush the egg wash over the top crust. Repeat with a second pie pan. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the top crust is golden and lightly browned.

For the empanadas, cut 6" diameter (or whatever sized bowl you can use as a template) circles out of the remaining dough. Place a 1/2 c of turkey filling onto the center of each circle. Fold the dough over and crimp the edges. Lay the empanadas on a baking sheet lined with foil and brush them with egg wash. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Let cool for 5 minutes, then serve, unless you like burning off the roof of your mouth (ahem, Mr. Rose).

Pre-Thanksgiving Feast: Cassoulet

2010-10-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

You may have heard that 30 people RSVP'd to attend my annual Canadian Thanksgiving dinner. I did not pull this off without help. In addition to Mr. Rose, three out-of-town family members were among the attendees: my middle sister and my in-laws. For the sake of storytelling, we'll call them Daffy, and Mr. and Mrs. Rose, Sr. They arrived a day before the festivities to offer a helping hand and earn their turkey dinners. In exchange, I decided to serve up a hearty cassoulet for dinner the night before, so that they'd have their energy for the work ahead of them.

The meal took all day to prepare. I gave Daffy a tour of my garden full of abominable carrots. She was impressed by the selection of herbs we had, and the convenience of having an herb garden, rather than having to buy packets of stale stuff at the store. But as I pulled up each colorful, abominable carrot, she laughed at the color and shape of it, pausing only to squeak, "Most people... just... buy... carrots... And they don't look like that."

Undaunted by the mockery in the garden, I showed her my knife skills with onions. Thanks again to Gordon Ramsay and Graham Elliot for making me chop onions for over 90 minutes and paralyzing my tear ducts. I now have the best kitchen trick ever -- being able to chop an onion without crying.

The largest sweet onion I have ever seen. For scale, that is my left hand, the hand of a former concert pianist.

The thing that Mr. & Mrs. Rose, Sr. and Daffy found most astonishing was that I would go through this entire mutli-hour, multi-step process with nothing but my dutch oven and cast iron skillet. As I walked Mrs. Rose, Sr. and Daffy through each step, there was a look of wonderment that we still hadn't arrived at our final destination.

But, this was one of the tastiest one-pot meal we'd all had in a while. I'm sure everyone agreed it was well worth the wait, and a good way to kick off a weekend in the kitchen. You might even call it a feast before the feast.

Cassoulet (adapted from Saveur magazine)
1 lb dried great northern beans
8 tbsp duck fat
16 cloves garlic, smashed
1 extra-large sweet onion, chopped
2 abominable carrots, chopped
1 smoked pork shank
2 lb bone-in shoulder, meat cut off bone and cut into 1" cubes
1⁄2 lb pancetta, cubed
4 sprigs oregano
4 sprigs thyme
3 bay leaves
1 c whole peeled canned tomatoes
1/2 c vermouth
1/2 c macintosh apple sauce
2 cups chicken broth
4 confit duck legs
1 lb pork sausages (I used rustic bratwurst)
2 cups bread crumbs

Soak beans in a 4-qt bowl in 7-1⁄2 cups water overnight.

Soak the smoked pork shank in a medium bowl of water. Heat 2 tbsp duck fat in a 5-qt dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add half the garlic, onions, and carrots and cook until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add pork shank and the pork shoulder bone along with beans and their water and boil. Reduce heat and simmer beans until tender, about 1 1⁄2 hours.

Remove contents of the dutch oven, including the liquids, and set the pot aside. Pull meat of the shank, discarding skin, bone, and gristle. Also discard the pork shoulder bone (rumor has it, your dogs will thank you for the discarded bones.). Chop meat and add to beans. Set aside.

Heat 2 tbsp duck fat in the dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add pork shoulder cubes and brown for 8 minutes. Add pancetta cubes and cook for 5 minutes. Add remaining garlic, onions, and carrots and cook until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Tie together oregano, thyme, and bay leaves with a bit of cheesecloth, add to pan with tomatoes, and cook until liquid thickens, 8–10 minutes. Add vermouth and apple sauce, and let simmer for 15 minutes. Add broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, uncovered, until liquid has thickened, about 1 hour. Discard bouquet-garni and set dutch oven aside.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. In a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat, sear the duck legs in 2 tbsp duck fat for 8 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Brown sausages in the fat, about 8 minutes. Cut sausages into 1⁄2" slices. Pull duck meat off bones. Discard bones (the fat can go into a baking dish, covered with aluminum foil, into the oven to render additional fat... yum.). Stir the duck, sausages, and reserved beans and pork shank into the pork stew in the dutch oven. Cover the mixture with bread crumbs. Drizzle with duck fat from the cast iron skillet. Bake, uncovered, for 3 hours (or 2 hours in the convection oven). Raise oven temperature to 500 degrees F for the last 5 minutes.

Canadian Thanksgiving 2010

2010-10-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

It's 2010, my 10th year in America, and the 9th anniversary of the biggest dinner party of the year. Each year, my American friends ask me for the story behind Canadian Thanksgiving. I tell them, "It's just like American Thanksgiving, except in Canada, we just call it 'Thanksgiving.' Kinda like how in China, they don't call it 'Chinese checkers,' it's just 'checkers.'"

And despite my smartassery, each year, the same people keep coming back for Canadian Thanksgiving. Each year, it grows. This year, we had 30 people RSVP. Had it occurred to me that, if we didn't have enough china for 30 people and if I believed that eating off Chinet destroyed the sanctity of a Thanksgiving feast, I shouldn't have invited 30+ people to dinner? Perhaps. But it was just a fleeting thought. After all, I now have a beast of a range, with 6 gas burners, 2 convection ovens, and a separate broiler tray. And if I rented china (elegant ivory, with gold rim) and wine glasses, I wouldn't have to wash it or worry about breaking my own bone china or stemware. Piece. Of. Cake.

Since the number of people in attendance each year has escalated, the comfort level never remains the same. Dinner for 20 would have been a piece of cake. I'm not sure how I noodled it out in my head than 30 would be the same as 20. Maybe it's because I opted to do two smaller birds this year, 18 lbs a piece, instead of one giant one. Certainly, the brawn required to cook a pair of 18 lb birds is much easier to muster up than the brawn required for a single 36 lb bird. A bird that size would be more than a quarter of my size. That's just ridiculous. I know my limits and I can no longer bench press my own body weight any more than I can bicep curl 36 lbs. Either way, I didn't anticipate that I'd be solely responsible for the bird(s) this year because of two simple words. 1) Deep, and 2) Fryer.

The thought of handling something combustible adjacent to our 120 year old wood frame house was so dangerous and manly that Mr. Rose accepted the task with great gusto, driving across all of God's green Denver/Aurora to find peanut oil ("It's out of season. Come back closer to real Thanksgiving," was what he heard time and time again), procuring a second tank of propane to fuel the burner, and using all his ingenious faculties to fashion some kind of insulating layer to protect the deep fryer from the cold, wet wind. I'm sorry to say I have no photographic documentation to share, but suffice it to say that the final setup included a patio umbrella, a roll of aluminum foil, and some moving boxes -- it looked akin to something I would have made as an 8 year old and called my make-believe spaceship. It rocked.

And it did the trick. I'd made a dry rub out of orange zest, chopped sage, salt and pepper, and spread it between the flesh and the skin of the birds and let it sit in the fridge over night. The next day, when the peanut oil was up to 375 degrees F, Mr. Rose put the birds into the basket, one at a time, and lowered it into the oil. About an hour later, the perfectly roasted birds were on the butcher block, cooling a bit, rejuicing themselves, and waiting to be carved.

While Mr. Rose was doing all these things, I was setting the tables in the dining/living room, and making side dishes. We had cranberry sausage bread stuffing, Chinese sticky rice with shiitake, scallions, and lap cheong sausages, creamed kale from the garden, garlicky mashed potatoes, rich turkey gravy, tangy cranberry sauce, and a sweet and sour plum sauce. Despite the fact that I had the help of some out of town guests (my sister and my in-laws), there are no more photos to accompany this story (unless any of the guests happened to have taken some and, upon reading this right now, decided to email those photos to me) because I kinda had my hands full with dinner for 30. It's true -- photography is not my strong suit. However, I do have the recipe for the Chinese sticky rice, which should be enough to satisfy your curiosity AND your cravings.

Chinese Sticky Rice
2 cups sweet rice (also called glutinous rice -- you get it at the Asian grocers)
4 cups chicken stock
6-8 lap cheong sausages (pork sausages cured with soy sauce and booze -- while you're at the Asian grocer, pick some of these up as well)
1-1/2 bunches of scallions
1-1/2 oz dried shiitake mushrooms
3 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp canola oil

Boil 2 cups of water. In a medium bowl, soak the mushrooms in the boiling water and cover the bowl with a dish to keep the heat in. While the mushrooms are soaking, quarter sausages lengthwise, then chop to 1/4" dice. Chop the scallions into 1/4" lengths. In a wok, heat canola oil over medium-high heat. Stir in sweet rice till well-coated and hot, about 2 minutes. Add chicken stock, stir, and drop the lid on the wok. Bring the stock to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes with lid on the wok. While that is simmering, dice the mushrooms, which should be tender by now. Add mushrooms, sausage, and scallions to the rice, stirring gently to mix well. Add soy and oyster sauce, stirring to incorporate sauces into all of the rice. Return lid and let simmer till the rice is tender.

This sticky rice was something my Shanghainese mom uses as stuffing/dressing inside the turkey at Canadian Thanksgiving. It is delicious out of the turkey as well, and the following morning, I like to fry little patties of them, and serve them with an egg over easy. Best breakfast this side of Shanghai.

A little something for the dogs: Bok-bok-bok Choy Love Biscuits

2010-10-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that we love our dogs and spoil them rotten. But, unlike the rest of the helicopter parents our generation is known for, our children wag their happy tails when they hear the jangle of a leash or think there might be left overs from last night's dinner for breakfast today. Simple, cost-free things make them so happy. And I'm happy to indulge.

The won ton we made with Zoe was served in a luscious, home-made broth. It started with a coarse mirepoix, topped with six chicken backs, a couple of heads of bok choy, a hunk of ginger root, a handful of parsley, and enough water to cover. The mixture was boiled for a couple of hours, then the solids were drained and -- here's where we differ from other households -- set aside for doggie treats.

I cannot stress enough how lovely and fragrant the broth was. All the goodness from the cornucopia of ingredients were completely absorbed into the water, needing only a little bit of salt to finish it off. Yet, somehow, the oft-discarded solids can be picked free of bones and mixed with a few other bland ingredients to make the most scrumptious treats my girls have ever eaten.

Taking a page out of Mark Bittman's book, I have moved my food processor to an easily accessible location and now use it now fewer than 2-3 times weekly. Today, I threw the chicken bok choy broth solids into my food processor with some cooked rice and egg, and gave it all a hearty whirl to make a lumpy sludge. I put small handfuls of the sludge on wax paper-lined baking sheets and threw them in the convection oven at 350 degrees till they were stiff enough to be peeled off without breaking apart. (No, I don't have any idea how long that was. I was too busy writing this blog and giving love biscuits out to all the doggie neighbors that have stopped by this morning to note the time.) Behold, the bok-bok-bok choy love biscuit!

Kid-friendly cooking: Won ton

2010-10-02T14:19:00.000-07:00

We don't have kids, Mr. Rose and I, nor do our most frequent dinner guests. So the idea of a kid-friendly meal, much less a meal prepared with the aid of a kid, is mostly foreign to me. That is, in part, because we find most children to be fussy eaters and sub-par conversationalists -- when friends bring children to dinner, I feel my anxiety level rising: What do I feed them? What do I say to them? Our house is doggie-proof, but is it kiddie-proof also?

Then I met Zoe. Zoe is a delightful child. She's good-natured, curious, and has the wittiest things to say. And, when we went to dim sum, she happily noshed on the food few adults would try. The chicken feet. She popped the chicken toes right into her mouth and spit the bones out clean. Like a champ. Nothing grosses Zoe out. Not even ground pork.

Zoe's mom asked if they could help me make dinner sometime. Maybe something Chinese? You're on, ZM. I enlisted the help of Ku and we made a meal that would test the dexterity of Zoe's 5-year old fingers: Won ton.

The tough part of cooking for kids is that some are picky eaters and it's difficult to predict what they will and will not eat -- I could agonize for days in advance over what to put on the menu, then toil all day to cook it, only to find the kids feeding my dogs under the table. I don't take it personally though. My food is unfamiliar to them and I don't cook like their mom does. My theory is that children are more likely to be open to new foods if they know what goes into it. Zoe doesn't strike me as a picky eater at all. Nevertheless, I brought Zoe in from the beginning, starting with mixing the won ton filling.

One thing that was really cool about Zoe is that she is able to focus like no other child I've ever seen. She watched Ku demonstrate the wrapping of one won ton, then pushed up her sleeves and went to town. She did the lion's share of the won ton wrapping and invented a couple of alternative methods of wrapping that were adorable.

She even helped me make a spicy soy dipping sauce for the scallion pancakes. ZD (Zoe's dad) fed her little wedges of scallion pancakes while she worked diligently on wrapping won ton.

The meal was delicious. And we had a lot of fun making scallion pancakes and won tons! There was just barely enough space after dinner for a little nibble of sweet cream filled pastries that ZM brought. At the end of the evening, when Zoe had her fill of excitement (and hard work -- she wrapped more won ton than ZM or I did), she did the only sensible thing she could: she curled up in ZM's lap and fell asleep. The kid is wise beyond her years.

Continuing on a theme: Stuffed Tofu

2010-10-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

Since our garden exploded with cucumbers, kale, tomatoes, tomatillos, and plums this season, home-grown produce has been predominant in my cooking. If you've been reading, you'll know that it started with fresh salads where we could taste every squirt of tomatoey freshness a couple of months back. Then the tomatoes started getting sauced. Then roasted. Then roasted and sauced. Same goes for the rest of the vegetables. While I was working late one night, Mr. Rose blanched and pitted 30 lbs of plums, then threw them in the freezer where they still await their final fate. I created a kale chip addiction among the 60 or so attorneys and staff on my floor -- I bring in large batches once a week to feed the addiction (I would not be a very successful crack dealer -- I know I should be charging money for this). I cannot cook all the vegetables fast enough and I certainly cannot eat them all. I know. This is not exactly a tragedy. But. It's. Just. Too. Much.

Though I resent today's formidable volume of vegetables, I know that I'll miss them in a few months when the garden goes into hibernation.

Still. Now that I'm off my grocery shopping moratorium, I'm back at it, making whatever I feel like eating, whenever I feel like it.

It just so happens that I am still on a Chinese food kick from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. It also happens that there was a scrumptious mixture of ground pork, chopped shrimp, and shiitake mushrooms in my fridge (left over from a certain meal of wontons that you'll read about soon). A splash of oyster sauce, a pound and a half of silken tofu, and a few leaves of napa cabbage would transform the pork-shrimp-shiitake mixture into a totally new meal.

I lined bamboo steamers with a bed of napa cabbage, which would make the bottom of the steamer a slightly softer place on which to set silken tofu. Then, I carved out cylinders of tofu in which I would stuff the meat-mushroom mixture. What did I do with the cylinders? It's a little known fact that dogs love cylinders of silken tofu.

I had enough to space to steam two well-spaced baskets of stuffed tofu. This little experiment yielded delicately-fragranced entrees for four. Since the meat mixture was made of left over won ton stuffing, the recipe quantities are approximate.

Stuffed Tofu
2/3 lb ground pork and chopped shrimp (my mixture was about 2/3 pork with 1/3 shrimp, though it could easily be the other way around)
1/2 c minced shiitake caps
1/2 c watercress, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp minced ginger
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp ground white pepper

2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 1/2 lb silken tofu
6-8 napa cabbage leaves

In a medium bowl, mix all ingredients but the last two. Line the bottoms of two 8" bamboo steamer baskets with the softer green parts of the napa cabbage leaves. I fed the bottom white parts to my dogs, but they could have gone into the compost just as well. Cut the silken tofu into 2" x 2" cubes that are 1-1/2" deep. With a small paring knife, cut 1/2" diameter holes into the top of the 2" x 2" squares, being sure not to cut all the way through the entire 1-1/2" depth. Take a small amount of the meat mixture and gently stuff it into the hole, allowing a larger quantity of the meat mixture to sit on top of the tofu. Set the stuffed tofu on the napa cabbage in the bamboo steamer basket. Stack the baskets and place a lid on the top steamer basket. Place 1-2" of water in the bottom of a stock pot and place a rack on the bottom so that when you set the baskets in the pot, they will not be sitting in the water. Place the baskets on the rack and put a lid on the pot. Bring the water to a vigorous boil and let steam for 20 minutes.

Be careful when removing the steamer basket from the pot. Use a good pair of tongs to lift the lid. Then grip the side of steamer baskets, removing the baskets one at a time.

The stuffed tofu is good with extra oyster sauce or hot sauce (yay Sriracha!) on basmati rice.

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival Dinner

2010-09-26T20:09:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I was in Nashville, speaking at a conference. Nashville is known for producing the best country music in the world and I got to sample some of country's up-and-comers, live. The music was vibrant and energetic and made me want to get up and dance, which I did. I have a greater appreciation for the genre now that I've spent some time at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and The Stage on Broadway. To all the nay-sayers of country music: You ain't heard nothin' till you've been to Nashville.

Something Nashville is not known for is its food. And for good reason. The food I ate there was neither tasty nor healthy. After three soggy fried-food-filled days there, I announced to my fellow conference attendees that I thought I might be suffering from scurvy. I suggested we try to find a place that served salads. Someone handed me a screwdriver, made with orange juice out of a can, and told me to hurry up because they wanted to catch an early set at B.B. King's Blues Club. Luckily for me, I hadn't been out at sea for weeks on end.

Enter Teddy, a friend I met through Ku, who is of Chinese descent and was raised in the Denver area. Teddy sent me a text message from Denver while I sipped on my screwdriver in Nashville:

mid-autumn moon festival @ jj's tmrw nite @ 8:30

casual with a few people.

you in?

The only correct answer to this kind of question is, emphatically, YES.

Honestly, Denver isn't exactly known for the best Chinese food either. Having spent some time in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, San Francisco, and, yes, Hong Kong, there's just no comparison. But if there's any decent Chinese food to be found in Denver at all, Teddy will know where it is. And the knowledge that I would soon be feasting at an authentic Chinese restaurant gave me the strength to fast (and to beat scurvy) for the remainder of my time in Nashville. So promptly at 8:30 p.m. the following evening, Mr. Rose and I pulled into the little parking lot on W. Alameda.

It was a small place and it's not much to look at. But when we walked in, the outdated wallpaper and fish tanks characteristically labeled with misspelled fish names confirmed my suspicions that we would soon be eating some pretty darn good Cantonese style food.

People trickled in, fashionably late as Asians often are, and the attentive waitstaff hurried to Teddy's side to give him recommendations for a mid-autumn moon feast to knock our socks off. The rest of us exchanged and/or made up some mid-autumn moon folklore while they made some critical decisions.

I pointed out the black rock cod that looked like the bully of the tank (the rest of them fish will thank me later) and the waitress pulled it out, gave it a swift bump on the head, and brought it to our table deliberation.

"Over 2 pounds. $50. Is okay?" she warned us about the price tag, as if it wouldn't be a problem to just give him a moment to let him recover from the trauma and return him to the tank. Teddy raised his eyebrows to the rest of the table -- were we ready to commit? Again, the only correct answer to this question must be, emphatically, YES.

The waitress shuttled our black rock cod and the rest of our order back to the kitchen, and a few minutes later, emerged with several dishes for the lazy susan. We had guilan, salted egg, and pork soup to start. Then ma po tofu and crispy peking duck skin with soft pancakes with scallions and hoisin sauce arrived at our table. The flesh of the duck was chopped up and fried with scallions and served with lettuce wraps. The lettuce wraps arrived with baby guilan shoots, sauteed with garlic.

We also had pan-fried fat rice noodles with beef, Japanese-style fried tofu with fish and shrimp, and a clay pot with soft and luscious eggplant stew (not pictured here).

I didn't get to take a picture of the black rock cod before we devoured it, but it was steamed with scallions and slivers of ginger root. Here it is, after we'd all but picked it clean.

For dessert, they brought us a hot red bean and tapioca soup, followed by moon cake.

All in all, the meal doesn't rival the food in Hong Kong, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, or New York. But, considering I started the day in Nashville, and spent most of the day in transit back to Denver, this was not a bad way to celebrate the mid-autumn moon festival.

ASIDE: The tab for this meal came to $22 per person, including tax and tip. Not a screaming deal, but the fact that this tiny establishment was able to offer such a diverse menu, including a variety of fish so fresh that it was swimming until the very moment we asked for it, at that price, is staggering.

Project Food Blog Challenge #1: Me, Food Blogger for the People

2010-09-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

*UPDATE* In all of my blogger soul-searching, I somehow forgot to mention that this post is part of an interactive competition where thousands of Foodbuzz Featured Publishers are competing in a series of culinary blogging challenges for the title of FOOD BLOG STAR. Starting Monday, September 20, please click on my face to the right, sign up, and vote for me. Thanks for reading, Friends! *END OF UPDATE*

If you look at the archives of my food blog, you'll see I started this, reticently, in 2006. It was named for my underground restaurant in Washington D.C., where friends and strangers came to my house for dinner and the only thing they had in common was that they expected to dinner to be good (I think I may have disappointed them once, due to a Cuisinart mishap with 10 lbs of onions and a crummy, store-bought, cinnamon-heavy mixture of garam masala).

On my food blogging reticence: I have no professional culinary training whatsoever, nor did I grow up eating home-cooked meals worth blogging about. I prefer good food over bad, but my closest friends will attest to the fact that I have been known to eat complete merde with much shame and little complaint. So, humbly, I didn't think I had anything important to say about food -- I like to cook it, eat it, and share it. That's it.

As a result, my blogging was inconsistent over the years. But my love for food has never wavered. Ever since I discovered that wonderful, delicious food could be made by my own two hands, I have cooked. Even when the meals went unblogged, I cooked for myself, my loved ones, and a few dozen total strangers who wandered across the threshold of my kitchen.

And then I had the opportunity to meet with some brilliant kindred spirits in Los Angeles and they encouraged me to share my love through my blog. So here I am.

The thing about Speakeasy Kitchen is that it simply shares my love of food. There is no snobbery, no elitism, no exclusivity. I probably don't know more about any food subject than you, but I'll tell you what I'm up to in the kitchen because I hope you find it interesting/amusing/refreshing/resonates with you. Because it resonates with me. I make mental notes of my horticultural successes, jot down recipes for my culinary triumphs, and practice foodtography on a daily basis, all so I can share my observations with you.

It's important to me that you feel like you've been welcomed into my kitchen. I recently found myself among some people (whom I refuse to dignify by identifying them in any way) who were real experts and enthusiasts in their field. At first, I felt honored to be invited to join them, but very quickly felt excluded as they name-dropped and talked over my head. I never want to be those guys.

I aspire to inspire you, but will settle for a little camaraderie amongst food-lovers. Speakeasy Kitchen, as an unlicensed, underground restaurant, was a place to enjoy a good dinner with good company. With my current day job, I can't be running crosswise with the Department of Public Health, but I hope that Speakeasy Kitchen, as a blog, is still a place where everyone can enjoy a good meal.

Foodbuzz 24x24: My Taste of Colorado

2010-09-08T10:09:00.000-07:00

When I learned that Foodbuzz would sponsor my perfect meal, team up with Electrolux to raise awareness about ovarian cancer, and donate $250 to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund on my behalf, I thought: PERFECT WIN-WIN. And so I dedicate this blog post to survivors of ovarian cancer (in admiration of your strength and resilience) and the State of Colorado (in gratitude for providing me with a bounty of ingredients about which to blog).

The weekend of my perfect meal was the weekend of the Taste of Colorado, but we had been invited to J&M's cabin, Castle View. Castle View is perched on the edge of Pike National Forest, just on the other side of the Continental Divide, near Eleven Mile Lake. It's out there, far, far away from the hub-bub of civilization. The ingredients for the meal would have to travel 2.5 hours by car from Denver. Not to get preachy à la Barbara Kingsolver, but no food should have to travel much more than that. So I decided to make the meal out of ingredients produced in Colorado.

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The decision was easy to make. Colorado is a tremendous food-producing state and, as you may have read before, I get a great deal of my produce from my very own garden in Denver. The elk came from Grande Elk Farm in Del Norte. The eggs and cream came from Grant Family Farms in Wellington. The wines from Mesa County. Everything else came from somewhere in between, thanks to In Season Market.

We arrived at Castle View the night before the big meal. While we caught up with our hosts, I prepared the elk with a marinade, including New Belgium 1554 black ale. The next morning, all the ingredients from around the good State of Colorado got together for a 3 Hour Summit. Grilled anaheim peppers and tomatoes from the Denver Rose Garden, jumped into the Fort Collins beer-broth concoction. Then the Del Norte elk joined them. And that was the official start of the Taste of Colorado Party.

It gave us a lot of time to do some hiking around Castle View, and explore some of the neighboring summits ourselves.

In the final hour of the 3 Hour Summit, we shifted gears and got ready for dinner. Also on the menu: roasted beet and carrot salad, dirty mashed potatoes, and a plum and raspberry cobbler. Everything but the potatoes and raspberries came from the Rose Garden in Denver.

Despite the fact that we were all operating in relaxed cabin-mode, we still managed to coordinate dinner like a well-oiled machine. The table was set, the wine uncorked, and the food brought to the table, all in time to eat dinner while the sun set behind Saddle Mountain. We were temporarily quiet while we passed the food around and took in our surroundings.

And now, without further ado, I present five dinner plates, practically licked clean.

So that's it, folks. That's My Taste of Colorado. The only tough part of the entire experience (aside from getting out of the office on Friday afternoon) was having to put out the fire and call it a night. The recipe for my braised elk roast is below. If you want more recipes/instructions on the rest of this meal, make your request in the comment section below and I'll post those recipes as my next entry.

Thanks for reading. I'll take this as my final opportunity to wish you and your loved ones good ovarian health.

Braised Colorado Elk Roast
Elk, as it turns out, is an extremely lean meat, even when it is farm-raised. So don't be afraid of the butter and bacon fat that is left in the pot. It is insignificant in the whole scheme of this roast, much needed given the leanness of the elk, and just plain delicious. If you are fat-phobic, feel free to skim the fat off the top of the broth before boiling it down to serve.

3-4 lb elk shoulder
10 cloves garlic, mashed and minced
2 large onions, chopped
1/2 lb cherry smoked bacon, diced
10 anaheim peppers, roasted, skinned, and diced
2 tbsp butter (unsalted)
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and diced
2 bottles black ale (I used New Belgium Brewery's 1554, robust and sweet)
3 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp chili powder
1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Place one chopped onion and 4 minced cloves of garlic in a gallon ziplock bag with elk shoulder. Pour both bottles of black ale into the bag and seal it. Place the bag in the refrigerator for 8-24 hours, rotating once or twice every few hours, to make sure everything is well-mixed.

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F and arrange the rack so that the dutch oven can fit into the oven with its lid on. Remove the elk from the bag. Reserve the liquids from the bag by pouring it through a sieve into a bowl. Set liquids aside and discard the solids. Liberally salt and pepper the elk. Mix the cumin and chili powder in a small bowl and rub all over the elk. Set the elk aside. Melt the butter in a large dutch oven over medium-high heat and saute the remaining garlic in the butter. Add the bacon, stirring, till the bacon is just barely starting to get cooked. Place the elk into the dutch oven to brown on all sides, about 3-4 minutes per side. Remove the elk and set aside on a plate. Saute the remaining chopped onion in the bacon fat. Remove the onion and set aside. Slowly add some of the reserved liquids from the ziplock bag to deglaze the dutch oven. Put the elk back into the dutch oven, adding also the onion, peppers, and tomatoes. Stir the mixture, place the lid onto the dutch oven, and put the dutch oven into the preheated oven. Cook for about 3 hours, turning the elk every hour.

Remove from oven and place the dutch oven on the stovetop. Remove the elk to a cutting board while the remaining liquids boil, about 10 minutes. Squeeze the lime into the beer broth. Add salt and a generous amount of freshly ground pepper to the elk-beer broth. While that is boiling, slice the elk thinly, against the grain. Serve the elk with the beer broth. I highly recommend using dirty mashed potatoes to sop up some of that beer broth as well.

Winding Up for My Perfect Meal

2010-09-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I submitted a proposal to participate in Foodbuzz's September 24x24. It was to create a perfect meal on Saturday, September 4, 2010 and blog about it. Foodbuzz teamed up with Electrolux to give a stipend to 24 lucky bloggers to make that meal happen, and a matching donation to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

Last week, I learned that they selected my proposal! I know you're curious... what exactly is my perfect meal? To be honest, I'm not sure there is a single perfect meal, like a one-size-fits-all. Sure, I'd eat sushi any day of the week, but I'd probably get sick of that if I had to eat it every day of the week. To me, "perfect" is situation-specific. And on Saturday, September 4, 2010, the situation was this: We'd been invited to spend the weekend at J&M's cabin, Castle View. Castle View is perched on the edge of Pike National Forest, just on the other side of the Continental Divide, near Eleven Mile Lake. It's out there, far, far away from the hub-bub of civilization. A perfect weekend getaway. J&M also invited a German who is, as they put it, "hands down the nicest guy in the world." Well. Can you think of more perfect dinner company?

Last time we were invited to Castle View, we got lost somewhere around the edge of the world. Mr. Rose, center, walking toward some thunder clouds.

So, with this remote mountain location, the lovely J&M and the German Nice Guy for dinner company, what is the perfect meal? Well, I'm not going to haul sushi up there, that's for sure. The food must be able to make the 2.5 hr trip from Denver. Since the rest of Denver would be celebrating the Taste of Colorado, I figured I'd go with a similar theme: My Taste of Colorado. In my proposal, I touted Colorado as a fantastic, but lesser-known, food-producing state. The meal would be made up entirely of foods produced in Colorado.

Mr. Rose testing out his post-surgical anterior cruciate ligament on Eagle Rock.

Last night, I got an elk roast from Edward's. This elk was raised on an elk farm just west of the Rio Grande National Forest in Del Norte, Colorado. Our own garden is pushing out tons of produce, including several varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers, beets, carrots, kale, peppers, plums, and herbs. I'll bring a large assortment with us. We'll pick up some microbrews that Colorado is famous for, as well as some wine from up-and-coming Colorado vineyards at Mondo Vino, both for cooking and for drinking. Finally, before we head for the hills, any other ingredients we need will be purchased from In Season, a local market that sources all of its groceries from farms within a 250 mile radius of their shop. If all goes according to plan, we'll dine al fresco with a view of Castle Mountain, as the Aspen trees start to turn golden and the sun starts to set. How's that for perfection?

Aspen Moon Farm Dinner

2010-08-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

It is no secret that the Squeaky Bean in our neighborhood has a brilliant chef and a fun atmosphere to boot. They don't exactly boast, but they have quite a following. So much so, that when they announced a Monday night farm dinner at Aspen Moon Farm in Longmont, CO, they were able to pack a coach bus full of patrons in no time.

Now, we Roses are not characteristically on time for anything. But Squeaky Bean says the bus departs from 33rd and Tejon at 5 p.m., and we were there by 4:50 p.m. It was perfect timing to get a Colorado Peach Bellini down our gullets before getting on the bus.

Aspen Moon Farms is a lovely, young, family farm that produces all the produce they serve at the Squeaky Bean. Venue Bistro, Colt & Gray, Duo Restaurant, and the Masterpiece Delicatessen were also representing.

When we arrived, everything was perfect. The sun was making its way to the horizon. The tables were set. Beverages were chilling.

With cocktails in hand, we took to the fields for a tour of the farm.

The Aspen Moon farmers were not reticent to share everything they could about what they had learned about organic farming. They raised everything from zinnias to zucchini...

... and snap peas to purple beans.
Despite the excellent agricultural education, we were all hungry, and focused on the greater task at hand.

We sat down with fellow diners at a long table, and soaked up the beautiful setting while an accordianist entertained us with her enchanting voice, accompanied by her trusty squeezebox.

Then the festivities really began when the amuse bouche came out. An egg custard with finely diced new potatoes and figs. Does anyone recognize the plating from a certain MasterChef Top 24 finalist? I cannot tell you how vindicating it was to have this served to me and 50+ other dinner guests who'd paid good money for dinner that night.

Next came the first course, by Venue Bistro. It was a salad of heirloom tomatoes with fine herbs vinaigrette, Haystack Mountain Snowdrop, and a focaccia tuille, paired with Infinite Monkey Theorem Chardonnay from 2009.

The second course was by Colt & Gray. Pork rillettes with grilled bread, peach compote and Aspen Moon greens, paired with Infinite Monkey Theorem Riesling. Now I'm not one for rieslings, but this was the perfect wine for the porky goodness of the second course.

The third course was a luscious chilled corn soup with basil creme fraiche by Duo Restuarant, paired with Infinite Monkey Theorem sauvignon blanc. Also a big hit.

That's when it started to get dark. Then came the fourth course, the Squeaky Bean's kale-wrapped chicken sous-vide with ratatouille terrine and squash blossom stuffed with a tomato cream foam, paired with Infinite Monkey Theorem cabernet franc. I'm not ordinarily a big fan of ratatouille, but this was the tastiest thing on the plate and I would eat it any day of the week. It was divine.

And finally, just as it was starting to get chilly in the Colorado late-summer night, the Masterpiece Delicatessen rolled out its whiskey baba with peaches and creme anglais, paired with Stranahan's Whiskey. Just what we needed to keep us warm.

Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the Highlands. Reluctantly, we and our dining companions pushed back from the table, took one last nostalgic look at the candlelit setting, and stepped aboard the same bus that brought us to this magical place, Aspen Moon Farm.

With a little bit of diligence, we'll get ourselves on the guest list just one more time before the farm closes up for the winter.

Baked eggs in lean times

2010-08-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

We had this brilliant plan that would save money and allow us to eat healthfully: we would subsist entirely on what was in the fridge, pantry, and garden for two weeks. No dining out, no new groceries, no wasted food. The only problem with that was that, after eating all the leftover duck and a bit of steak I had in the freezer, there was little in the way of protein to go around. It only took a week for me to start to feel faint. I longed for the days of plenty, specifically, the day I stood before Gordon Ramsay and a forklift pallet with 20,000 eggs. I broke down and sent Mr. Rose out for eggs.

The baked egg is my new favorite preparation of egg. It embodies all of my favorite qualities in eggs. They're simple and delicious. The yolk is still runny, and the egg overall is rich and creamy, a perfect sauce for a wedge of toast. The egg can carry its own flavor while simultaneously complimented by whatever seasoning you dream of putting on it. But unlike, say, a wine-poached egg, this egg sits snugly in the ramekin I cooked it in, allowing it to stay warm for several minutes while I get the rest of my disorganized morning together.

So this is how it works. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. I put a scant bit of heavy cream in the bottom of the ramekin, then crack an egg into it.

An even scanter bit of extra virgin olive oil goes over the top of the egg, along with some herbs, like maybe some thyme.

And some salt. Maybe something special for my first protein in a week, like alaea volcanic sea salt.

For pepper, I went with something special as well. Not pepper at all, but chili. So a dash of achiote chili.

The eggs went into the oven while I hopped in the shower. Twelve minutes later, the eggs came out of the oven and sat while I got dressed and put on makeup (yes, Mom, I do wear makeup).

I popped some thinly sliced multi-grain bread under the broiler because, toasted, multi-grain bread is the perfect vehicle for this yummy baked egg.

Okay, eggs, plural. I made four. But I did share them with Mr. Rose, who texted me later to say that "THOSE EGGS WERE SEVERELY DELICIOUS."

Yes they were. So did you get that? Here's my recipe, approximately.

Baked Eggs
4 eggs
6 tsp heavy cream
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp coarse salt (I used alaea volcanic sea salt)
1/2 tsp powdered achiote chili
2 small sprigs thyme

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Set a rack about 8-10 inches from the top burner of the oven. Pour 1 1/2 tsp of heavy cream into the bottom of each of 4 ramekins. Crack an egg into each ramekin. Add 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil to the top of each egg. Then add 1/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp chili powder, and a few thyme leaves to each. Place all four ramekins on a baking sheet and put the sheet in the oven. Bake until the eggs quiver ever so slightly when you shake the ramekins, about 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let set for 10 minutes. Serve with toast, preferably some kind of multi-grain.

Orange Supper Club Lucky Duck Aftermath

2010-08-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

Once a month, we convene with foodie friends who live (or used to live) within walking distance of us to do a themed dinner. We call ourselves WRAPSC: Walkable Rotating Assigned Potluck Supper Club. We're no longer all within walking distance, so the W has taken on a more a-propos meaning: Wine-loving. Each month, we take turns hosting. The host provides the main course and decides on the theme. Everyone else brings an appetizer, side, or dessert. And wine to pair, of course. We've covered several themes since WRAPSC's inception. Sometimes they revolve around regional cuisines. South Asian/Indian (curries, samosas, biryani, chai bread pudding). Italian (ravioli, figs with gorgonzola dolce, tiramisu). Thai (not sure what was on the menu -- I was out of town filming for MasterChef at the time). Other times, the themes are a little zany, like Cowboy theme (hearty chili, jalapeno cheddar corn bread in a skillet, tortillas) and White Trash Picnic (Popeye's chicken, deviled eggs, mac 'n cheese, coke cake). This month, we hosted and the theme was Orange.

J&M brought a roasted carrot and fennel dish, with fresh marjoram and a bit of parmesan. Loren came without V, but brought cantaloupe gazpacho with poblano creme fraiche as well as a salmon mousse. M&J brought a cheese cake, with a peach compote through the center. And finally, Nick showed up with an orange, fennel and cured olive salad. Everyone set their dishes down on the table, and drinks -- including wines from the Orange region of France, were poured around. All of these lovely things perfectly complimented the duck a l'orange and butternut squash ravioli with a sage browned butter sauce I made.

The duck a l'orange came from a recipe out of Mastering the Art of French cooking. It was a long process, but it wasn't that difficult. (There was one mishap when I dropped a cup of the duck fat I had been collecting off the roasting pan. It made me think of Julie and Julia -- ah, the trials and tribulations of foodies and their food blogs.)

In the end, it was a perfect fete. As usual. Everyone drank double-fisted, with a glass of wine in one hand, and a glass of champagne in the other. We polished off several bottles of libations and had spirited conversation. Somewhere in there, we even started a think tank. Mr. Rose did the dishes while the rest of us concluded that the meal was finally over, and reluctantly pushed away from the table.

There was little in the way of leftovers. I had approximately 1/2 of a duck leftover (I had made two). And the following afternoon, as I was starting to get hungry, I contemplated what to do with orange duck. This is what I came up with.

I plucked kale and an heirloom tomato out of the garden. I chopped up the kale and wilted it in duck fat (I'd only dropped one cup... there's still plenty left!), then seasoned it lightly with salt and freshly squeezed orange juice. There was also some ravioli filling left over. It was comprised of butternut squash, ricotta, and sage. Duck fat, emulsified with red wine and orange juice can be put together with some minced thyme and parsley to make a rich dressing. Everything was arranged and finished with finely ground pepper and oak-smoked chardonnay infused sea salt.

Moral of the story: She who eat good things for dinner ends up with some pretty amazing leftovers.

Squash Blossom Saturday

2010-08-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

The neighbors asked us to watch their geriatric dog, Kramer, for the weekend and to please help ourselves to whatever zucchini, tomatoes, and onions we wanted. Well, we're quite well-stocked in the tomato and onion category, and I'm kinda "bleh" on zucchini. But since he's so well-behaved, we're happy to watch the old boy any time. I went through the alley to their back yard to pick him up.

Hello. What have we here? Zucchini trails of squash blossoms overgrown from my neighbor's backyard into the alley! Oh my pretties... you shall be coming home with me!

I've only ever had squash blossoms once. I was at a farmer's market in San Diego and one stand was offering up squash blossom tacos. The flavors and textures were so delicate -- I couldn't get them out of my mind. I read probably a dozen to twenty recipes for them. I vowed to grow zucchinis in our garden this year, but we Roses got our wires crossed and the seeds never went into the ground. Thank goodness for good neighbors. I helped myself to seven blossoms.

I picked thyme, parsley, and spicy globe basil out of my own garden and minced the herbs finely. I minced a small clove of garlic, and mixed it with the herbs, some ricotta, parmesan, finely ground pepper, and fine sea salt. I gingerly cut off the bottom of the blossoms and removed them with the pistil and stamen intact (don't be impressed by my knowledge of flower anatomy... I couldn't remember and had to consult Google). Then I stuffed the blossoms with the herb cheese mixture, dipped them in egg, and dredged them in flour.

I poured about a quarter inch of olive oil into a skillet and heated as high as I could without the oil smoking. Then the stuffed blossoms went in and cooked till they were golden.

Once done, I blotted with a paper towel, and waited till they would just barely be too hot to pick up with my fingers and popped them in my mouth. Delicious!

They didn't last long enough to get cold. I'm not sure, but I don't think Mr. Rose managed to get his fair share. He barely escaped with his fingers. Oops.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms
10 squash blossoms
1/2 c whole milk ricotta, drained
3 tbsp finely grated parmeggiano reggiano
2 small sprigs of thyme, finely minced
2 small sprigs of spicy globe basil, finely minced
2 sprigs flat leaf parsley, finely minced
1 small clove garlic, finely minced
sea salt and finely ground pepper to taste
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 c unbleached flour
enough extra virgin olive oil to put a 1/4" in a small skillet

Rinse the blossoms in cold water and gently pat dry. Cut about 1/4" off the bottom of the blossoms and carefully remove them as well as the pistils. It's okay to leave pollen inside the blossoms. Set the blossoms aside. In a small bowl, mix the herbs, garlic, and cheeses. Add salt and pepper to taste. With your fingers, gently stuff the blossoms with the herb-cheese mixture through the opening in the bottom. Heat the oil in a pan on medium-high heat. The oil should be as hot as it can get without smoking. Dip the stuffed blossoms in egg and dredge through flour. Gently drop the blossoms into the heated oil and fry till golden on the bottom, then rotate them so the top sides get golden as well. Remove from oil and set on paper towels to blog the oil. Eat while hot, but be careful not to burn yourself with the hot cheese inside!

Photo tour of my birthday crab shack

2010-08-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

*SPECIAL THANKS TO DARCY VARNEY FOR THE FOODTOGRAPHY*

http://www.dgvphotography.com/

There are no recipes in this blog post. All I have are these wonderful photos that take me back to the moment and I'm sharing them with you.

A little background. Although I have had many excellent meals with many excellent friends in Denver, I had become a little bit nostalgic for my friends and the celebrations we'd had together in Washington D.C., including the evenings at Maryland crab shacks, in Bethesda and Annapolis. Luckily for me, my Denver friends were open-minded enough to want to celebrate D.C. style with me.

The morning of my birthday, Mr. Rose and I went for a quick bike ride out to Golden, and when we got home, we saw that a package had arrived at our house. A whole bushel of Maryland blue crabs, plucked straight out of the Chesapeake Bay just the day before!

Mr. Rose rented a giant propane powered boiler with a basket in it. I got out the biggest tin of Old Bay ever. We rolled out some butcher paper over the tables. I shucked some corn and made some biscuits.

A dozen birthday revelers showed up with flowers and gifts and more side dishes, and quickly busied themselves with setting up the party (a big part of which included drinking pilsners and white wine).

Once the boiler got going, we got started.

In went the crabs with a couple of generous shakes of Old Bay. We had a few drinks and nibbled on sides while saving room for the main course.

Twenty minutes later, the crabs were done! We poured them all out over the butcher paper.

And then I gave a brief demonstration on how to get that sweet, succulent meat out of the shell.

Then everyone was on their own. And they did wonderfully.

Even Margo Frances may have gotten a little taste. And although we hadn't anticipated it, everyone managed to make just a smidgeon of space for the key lime pie and apple-pear tart afterward.

Not too shabby for a Rocky Mountain birthday celebration, eh?

MasterChef-Jambalaya Mash-Up.

2010-08-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

Emboldened by my success with the crab cakes, Mr. Rose immodestly requested "Jambalaya!" for dinner tonight. Well, there's not a thing in the world I wouldn't cook for this man, including soup from a powder when he's sick, ass-kicking Thai curry when stomach isn't up to the heat, and "anything but Ecuadorian" when all I want is arroz con menestra y carne asada. So I accommodate with gusto when he suggests something that will delight both of our palates at once (and doesn't involve me opening a package and adding boiling water). Plus, I've never made a jambalaya before... For that matter, I wasn't sure I'd ever eaten a good, authentic jambalaya before.

So I inquired to a fellow MasterChef finalist, Max Almerico, from New Orleans. That's him on the right. (Oh, and the gal up front intently tugging on a bunch of greens is Azmina, my doppelganger.)

Well, Max is a real, live MF NOLA (that is, Man From New Orleans, Louisiana). He promised to get me a recipe if I told him what kind of jambalaya I wanted to make. What KIND??? As in there's more than one kind??? But I have shrimp and chicken and andouille sausage and produce at the ready. I couldn't wait for a response. I hit the Google.

Once again, Google did not disappoint. I very quickly stumbled upon Emeril Lagasse's recipe for jambalaya. And lucky me -- I had approximately triple the amount of shrimp, chicken, and andouille that the recipe called for. I broke out my gigantic Mario Batali dutch oven (suck it Bastianich! my money went straight to your partner Batali!) and went to town.

I figured Emeril, one of the people who put New Orleans on the nouveau culinary map, would know how to do a jambalaya. His recipe says it only takes 35 minutes. Well, between actually having to prep all the ingredients, including chopping vegetables and peeling and deveining shrimp, and entertaining my brain by smattering Facebook with incensed political rants (hey, I had a recipe to work with -- I didn't need my brain to put this meal together), it was more like 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Yep, you heard me. I didn't use my brain in the making of this meal. But I did taste it a little. I opted for the Blind Betty hot sauce this time, because I thought the Caribbean flair would compliment this Creole dish. But it just lacked pizzazz. So I went to an old standby, Sriracha sauce, or the sauce that we affectionately call "Rat Sauce" around here. It has an impossibly simple list of ingredients considering how delicious and versatile it is.

"BAM!" as Emeril would say, "That kicked it up a notch!" When I'm done with this blog post, I'm going to write to Mr. Lagasse and suggest that he specify Rat Sauce, at least a teaspoon full, in his jambalaya recipe.

I don't know if what I made is what jambalaya is supposed to be, but I made a huge pot of it and sooner or later, someone in the know would taste it and tell me what's what.

Twenty minutes later, Mr. Rose finally got home from work. He sat down to a pile of jambalaya.

I asked him if he'd ever eaten jambalaya. "Sure, plenty of times," he said. Oh, like when you went to Jazz Fest with your food-lovin' friends? "Well, maybe," he responded, "but definitely, like, a dozen times at Barrington Hall (the now-condemned student co-op building were he spent his freshman year) 'cause, ya know, it's a good casserole-type thing to serve to a bunch of hungry, skinny, college kids." Hmm. Guess he's not going to be a good judge of jambalaya.

He scarfed it down without much commentary, probably just like he did in college, and washed it down with a can of PBR, probably just like he did in college.

And that is probably why I will cook absolutely anything for the man. He occasionally challenges me to cook something different, which he then eats without judgment. He sometimes gives me feedback, hardly ever complains, but never passes judgment. He leaves the judging to the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot, and Joe Bastianich.

Okay, one more gratuitous MasterChef shot, with me up front, standing in ready position (as taught by NITA), to tie it all together for you.

In that moment, I stood there as one of the Top 24 home cooks in America. I was really damned proud of myself. About as proud as I was this evening, presenting my first-ever jambalaya, authentic or not, to my hungry, skinny, Mr. Rose.

Crab cakes!

2010-08-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

Although I had only lived in Washington D.C. for 7 years, that was enough time to be considered a native. I saw three presidential administrations go and come and come again. And that is all it takes to know a good crab cake. All the seafood restaurants and fancy catered lawyerly events I'd ever been to in that town offer some form of crab cake or another. I've had a few decent crab cakes in my day, but none as good as my own. I, for one, am heavy on the crab meat and skimpy on the bread crumbs. And after 7 years of wandering from one event to another from Bethesda to D.C. to Annapolis, I think I know a thing or two about these matters.

These puppies were imported from Maryland and picked clean of their shells by my very own hands. Most people aren't as fanatical as I am about this sort of thing, but my crab meat came out of a shell, not a can. I mixed some panko, herbs, and spices.

Then I mixed in the wet ingredients, which included a pound and a half of crab meat.

Then I formed the cakes, dredged them in a little more panko, and fried them in a hot skillet with olive oil.

Add some fresh vegetables and some friendly company and you've got yourself a meal!

Okay. So here's my recipe:

D.C. Native's Crab Cake (serves 6)
1.5 lbs crab meat, picked clean of shell bits
2 c panko
2/3 c minced scallions and/or chives
1/2 tsp Old Bay Seasoning
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1/2 tsp finely ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

In a large bowl, mix 1 cup of panko with the minced scallions/chives, Old Bay, and black pepper. Add the crab meat, eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, and Worchestershire sauce. Mix thoroughly but gently so that the crab meat is not too broken up. Place the remaining 1 cup of panko in a shallow dish. Taking small handfuls of the crab mixture at a time, form them into a small ball, then flatten into 1-2 inch thick patties. Coat both sides lightly with panko in the shallow dish. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Place the panko-coated patties on the pan and let fry for about 3 minutes on each side. You can serve with a horseradishy cocktail sauce (or, as Mr. Rose likes 'em, with capers), but they're more than tasty just plain!

MasterChef Episode 3: My mom's take

2010-08-11T22:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't get much MasterChef airtime in the first two episodes, so I was confident I'd get a little love in the third. And I did. But in Colorado, it was an election day. And the local FOX affiliate mistook Andrew Romanoff's concession of the Democratic senatorial ticket to Michael Bennet, who was up by 10 points, for breaking news. Just as we were about to watch the one minute of airtime that MasterChef would devote to me, FOX cut to Bennet's acceptance speech. Good thing I'm not registered to vote; I might be forced to vote for the crazy dude on the Republican ticket come November just to spite Bennet for stealing my show.

But the rest of the world was watching, with only limited commercial interruption. My mom, who lives in a suburb of Toronto and who thought that MasterChef was not only a waste of time but also a
surefire detriment detrimental to my professional career as an attorney (even though she equally disapproves of my post as a government attorney), was also watching.

As it turns out, she was having viewing parties with all of my aunts and uncles (this includes their close friends who are not actual blood relatives, but nonetheless carry the titles of "aunties and uncles".... yes, just like in the Joy Luck Club) in Toronto. Today my mom finally fessed up that she'd been watching, and she told me what she really thought. Disclaimer: If she weren't in such an unusually chipper mood, it would have sounded mean. But really, her voice was almost melodic when we spoke today, so it was more comical than hateful, which is how I'm able to share this.

On my egg dish: "You really should have cooked Chinese food. Too bad you never learned how because the Vietnamese girl cooked traditional food and white people just like Asian food. They don't know the difference. You could have wowed them with real Chinese food because all they know is sweet and sour." [I'm sure Gordon Ramsay regularly dines at the Panda Express, Mom.]

On learning how to cook Chinese food: "How would I know where you can learn how to cook Chinese food? No one taught me so I don't know either. But I think I have a DVD somewhere. If I can find it, I'll mail it to you." [Cool, thanks. Just look for the DVD that's still shrink-wrapped.]

On how I looked: "You're almost 34 years old and you still don't know how to put on makeup. You looked terrible... So your makeup melted off but no one else's did? Did you notice that they only picked pretty girls? And those girls probably don't really know how to cook because they never have to cook for themselves. They just get taken out on dates every night... No, I didn't say you're not a pretty girl. Those were your words." (See below... does it look like I'm not wearing makeup? Indeed, it did all melt off in that warehouse with 24 Viking ranges with ovens all set to 350 degrees and studio lights towering over us.)

More on how I looked: "So it's true what they say about how the camera put on ten pounds, because your auntie and I were saying they made you look really fat. All those other girls who looked normal, they must have been reeeally skinny. Maybe you should lose ten pounds."

On going back next year: "I wouldn't do it if I were you. All they want is to make you cry for the show. Why show everyone your shame? That's just ridiculous."

I am my mother's daughter. Both pride and brutal honesty are in my blood. And I don't make empty promises; I always do what I say I'm going to do. Just like I'm positive that I will be getting an instructional Chinese cooking video in the mail in a couple of weeks, I'll be back for MasterChef Season 2 if they'll have me. In case you were watching in Colorado and missed me making that vow, you can watch the whole show here: http://www.fox.com/watch/masterchef

Maldon chocolate caramels

2010-08-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Kelly asked me what my secret was for fried chicken. She'd tried making it once, but had accidentally added powdered sugar to her flour canister, which was disastrous. Well, I don't really have a secret for fried chicken. I like to make mine spicy and I used wasabi powder in lieu of ground mustard seed in an Epicurious recipe for deviled fried chicken that gave excellent results. So I told her my secret was not mixing up powdered sugar with flour. Then I felt badly for being sarcastic in response to a very valid question -- because who doesn't want to know how to make awesome fried chicken? -- and went in search of other people's secrets. I found a blog that did a taste test between someone's mom's killer fried chicken and Thomas Keller's fried chicken. I forwarded it to Kelly.

But this blog entry is not about fried chicken. No. This blog is about caramels. You see, in exchange for my fried chicken research, Kelly and her husband invited us over for a brunch with her friends (wherein they would be serving that guys' mom's killer friend chicken -- and it was indeed finger-lickin' good). She told me I didn't have to bring anything, but how could I not?

These lovely maldon salted chocolate caramels were unbelievably delicious, if I do say so myself, and when we joined that same gang at a pig roast later that day, they just would not stop talking about them. Even Greg, from The Denver Bread Company (whose loaves were a perfect vehicle for roasted pig) was intrigued by them. I could be onto something here.

Salted chocolate caramels
2 c. heavy cream
10 oz fine bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 3/4 c sugar
1/4 c water
1/2 c corn syrup
pinch fine sea salt
3 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
2 tsp Maldon

Prepare an 8x8 square-sided baking pan (metal is better than glass) by lining the bottom and sides with parchment paper, then spraying the parchment paper lightly with oil.

In a small pot, bring the heavy cream to a boil. Add the chocolate and lower the heat to a bare simmer. When chocolate has melted, remove from heat. Place the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a large dutch oven and heat over medium high heat, without stirring, but occasionally lifting the pot to swirl the contents around until the sugar completely dissolves. Then, pour the chocolate cream mixture into the dutch oven and stir. Cook until a candy thermometer reads 250 degrees F, stirring frequently with a silicon spatula (do not use a metal spoon because you do not want to scrape up any burnt bits into the mixture). When it hits 250 degrees F, turn off the heat and stir in the butter until well-incorporated. Then pour into the prepared baking pan. Wait 10 minutes for the mixture to set slightly, then sprinkle the Maldon (or other flaky salt) evenly across its surface. Then let sit on a rack to cool completely, about 1.5 hours. Remove from the pan and cut into 1" pieces.

These will probably keep, if you separate them with parchment paper and place them in an airtight container, in a cool place for quite a while, but I don't think you'll have any trouble eating them or giving them away.

The Birth of Ricotta-Encrusted Salmon

2010-08-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

Today was not the first time I've been asked to teach a cooking class. But it was the first time someone asked me to teach "the basics." What?? My friend explained, "People are very interested in learning classic techniques so they can look in the fridge and understand what ingredients will combine to make a meal." Now that's a head-scratcher. Do they want me to unearth the secrets of the food pyramid? Or tips on stocking a fridge and pantry? Do I compile a tome of flavor rules like "thou shalt not pair pickles with ice cream" and "thou shalt pair olives with anchovies"? I told her I'd have to give it some thought. But first, I would make some dinner.

On the way home from work, Mr. Rose and I stopped in to see Bruce. He had the largest salmon head I have EVER seen in his fridge when I stopped in yesterday and I would take it home with me if he still had it. He didn't. But there was one little fillet of salmon left in his fridge, fresh off his friend's boat in Alaska. I considered myself lucky that the tidbit weighed in as much as 10 oz.

But then I wondered: How do I prepare this tiny fillet of salmon? It was bright red, but just a little flicker of a tail. It might be nice to have more protein. I opened the fridge and like a beacon of light, a glimmer of rich, whole milk ricotta flashed before my eyes. What else? Less than half a handful of capers, scattered on the bottom of a plastic container. A misshapen hunk of parmegiano reggiano. I opened the pantry and pulled out a box of panko. I went to the garden and pulled back a behemoth tomato plant to find that the spicy globe basil and the chives were miraculously flourishing underneath. This was very promising. Capers, ricotta, parmegiano reggiano, basil, chives... some acids, some fats, some aromatics...

I minced the basil and capers and mixed them with the ricotta. Then I grated the little hunk of parmegiano reggiano, minced the chives, and mixed them with panko. I spread the ricotta mixture onto the flesh side of the salmon and attempted, without success, to roll it up. I settled for a fold.

Then I beat an egg. Oh damn. I forgot to preheat the oven. I didn't want the egg to sit under the panko for a long time and get the panko soggy with egg. So I waited. I hate waiting. A lot goes through my mind when I'm waiting. At this point, I was thinking, "We've got some Italian flavors on this piece of salmon, which is weird. You know what's also weird? There's all this Italian flavor but there's no olive oil. Speaking of olive oil, how am I going to get the panko to brown? I wish I had one of those misters that I could put olive oil in so I could spray the panko before I put it in the oven. Maybe I could get the olive oil to go on first. It would soak through somehow, wouldn't it?"

Literally. That's what went through my mind while I waited for my little Aga to hit 375 degrees.

And then, I reached for a bottle of extra virgin and give the beaten egg a splash of it. I beat it some more. It frothed. The oven light went off. Show time!

Something about lipophilicity, oleophilicity, and/or surface tension made the egg-oil combination stick really well to the salmon skin and the exposed ricotta, and it did so evenly. It was freshman year organic chemistry right before my very eyes! I paused for a moment to bask in that knowledge. And then the panko mixture went on. Feast your eyes on this beauty.

To silence the thoughts in my mind while I waited for the salmon to cook, I busied my hands by making a garden salad, checking now and then on the salmon. Once in the oven, the salmon tail had unfurled itself. I turned the light on and watched the whole thing take place. No, I didn't get the folded salmon fillet I expected, but the panko browned perfectly.

And without realizing it, I had considered the food pyramid, the stock in my fridge and pantry, and flavor pairings, all while assembling this meal. The recipe for the ricotta-encrusted salmon is below. Stay tuned for details on cooking classes as the mechanics of my thought process become clear to me, one meal at a time.

Ricotta-Encrusted Salmon (serves 2)
10 oz. salmon fillet
1/4 c. ricotta
2 tbsp minced spicy basil
2 tbsp minced capers
2 tbsp minced chives
2 tbsp finely grated parmegiano reggiano
1/3 c. panko
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a small bowl, mix the basil and capers into the ricotta until well-incorporated. Add ground pepper to the mixture, to taste. Rinse salmon under cold water and pat dry with paper towel. Spread the ricotta mixture onto the flesh side of the salmon so that it covers the salmon in an even layer. In another small bowl, mix the chives, parmegiano reggiano, and a pinch of coarsely ground pepper with the panko. In a separate bowl, beat the olive oil into the egg until it is well-mixed and barely foamy. Coat the ricotta-covered salmon with the egg mixture (N.B. not all of the egg mixture is used in this process). Sprinkle the panko mixture over the ricotta-covered salmon. All of the panko will be used. Place the salmon on a baking sheet and bake for approximately 10 minutes, when panko is lightly browned.

Bachelorette Not-Quite-Bouillabaisse

2010-08-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

At about 4:30 p.m., as my mind wandered away from the shenanigans of opposing counsel, I got an email from Mr. Rose. Subject line: Boys Night Out. "It's Tom's last day today. Can I go play?" I let him off the hook and sought out some gals, but they were all either on date night or going to a lousy Indian restaurant tonight. I called up an old prison buddy of mine (we'll call him Golfie), but he wasn't up for dinner, only drinks. I was left to my own devices for the next hour and a half.

I was in the mood for something hearty, but not heavy, maybe even... a bouillabaisse. Gordon Ramsay once said "It takes two days to make a perfect bouillabaisse." Undeterred, I decided to make a go of it. I stopped in to see Bruce and picked out some seafood, like a kid at the penny candy shop: a few small sea scallops; a few large shrimp; and a few mussels.

Once home, I went to the garden and plucked out an heirloom tomato, abominable carrot, mini-Walla Walla onion, basil, parsley, and thyme. I put a pot on to boil some linguine I made a couple of days ago and was drying out.

The vegetables all got cooked with a couple of splashes of white wine. That is one splash for the skillet, one splash in a glass for drinking!

I threw the seafood on, then a lid, and a few minutes later, it was done.

No, it was not a bouillabaise. But it was still mighty tasty, and done in under an hour and a half.

Not-Quite-Bouillabaisse for One
4 small sea scallops
5 mussels, cleaned
4 large shrimp
1 large heirloom tomato, coarsely chopped
1 small sweet onion, finely chopped
1 small abominable carrot, finely diced
3 sprigs basil, coarsely chopped
4 sprigs thyme
3 sprigs parsley, stems removed and leaves coarsely chopped
2-3 tbsp dry white wine
salt and pepper to taste

In a deep-sided skillet over medium-high heat, saute the onions and carrots till the onions are translucent and the carrots are tender. Add the tomatoes and stew for 5 minutes with the lid on. Add the herbs and stir. Add the white wine and quickly place the seafood over the vegetables, then drop the lid on. Let simmer for 5 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

(N.B. I stopped at Seafood Landing, came home, collected my harvest from the garden, made this meal, ate it, and wrote this blog entry in an hour and a half, with plenty of time to go meet Golfie. YES! This recipe is THAT easy... I should have done this for my MasterChef audition... and cried like a baby.)

Gorgeous mushroom ravioli

2010-08-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

Despite getting out and about a whole lot lately, I've been feeling under the weather. But on Sunday, the first day of my birthday month (I have no shame... I discovered the fun of birthday parties a few years back and decided to stretch out the event as long as possible), I decided to rally and make some dinner for Mr. Rose and a friend who lives down the street. We shall call her Nicknamer, or Nick for short, for the fact that she has more nicknames for her dog than anyone I know. Nick is a vegetarian so the sausage and ricotta ravioli I'd originally had in mind were out of the question. So mushrooms, the only vegetable matter that comes close to pork in my mind, would have to suffice.

Mushroom ravioli is far easier than it sounds. It's almost mindless, which is good when I'm feeling under the weather and have less than 100% of my wits about me. But it requires a little bit of labor, which is great when I'm not otherwise motivated to do anything but cook and need an excuse to stay indoors.

The mushroom filling was a mixture of porcini, shiitake, and cremini mushrooms, sauteed with minced shallots, and mixed with ricotta and finely grated parmesan cheeses. A generous pinch of truffle salt put the mixture over the edge to mushroomy goodness.

I rolled out a dough consisting of semolina flour, unbleached white flour, eggs, extra virgin olive oil, a splash of water, and a healthy pinch of sea salt. And when it got really thin, I placed parsley leaves between two sheets and rolled them out again. A dollop of mushroom mixture on each parsley leaf, an egg wash around each dollop of mushroom, and a second layer of pasta was laid over like a blanket. The ravioli was cut and pinched shut so that they were air tight.

Some of these pillows of mushroomy pillows were pan-fried (a brilliant idea from Nick). The rest were to boiled and tossed in a quick sauce made of minced shallots, garlic, abominable carrots, tomatoes, and herbs from the garden.

While waiting for the water to boil, I went back to the garden to pick up a few things -- cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, basil and mint. Nick chopped up the veggies like a champ. Add a little fresh lemon juice, olive oil, cracked pepper and red alaea volcanic salt, and voila! Although I can mix a pretty awesome salad, I must admit that a good bit of the magic came from the vegetables having been freshly picked out of my garden (tip of the hat to Mr. Rose).

I don't always keep track of quantities, but I did this time, so here are a few rough recipes.

Mushroom Ravioli (serves 4)
Mushroom mixture:
1 lb mixed mushrooms (I used cremini and shiitake), brushed and finely chopped
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 oz dried porcini mushrooms
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
1/3 c. drained ricotta (recipe for homemade ricotta shall come on another day -- you'll have to make do with store-bought stuff for now!)
1/3 c. finely grated parmesan
1 pinch white truffle salt
Pasta:
1 1/2 c. semolina flour
1 1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1 pinch fine sea salt
3 eggs + 1 egg for egg wash
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
flat-leaf parsley leaves with stems removed (optional)

In a small bowl, soak the porcini in 1/2 cup of boiling water and set aside. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil on medium-high heat. Saute the shallots until translucent, about 2-3 minutes. Add the chopped mushrooms and stir frequently to let the liquids evaporate. Drain the porcini mushrooms, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid. Chop the porcini mushrooms and add to the skillet. When all the liquids have evaporated from the mushrooms, add the 1/4 cup of reserved mushroom liquid and stir until all liquids have been evaporated. Transfer the mushrooms to a medium bowl and let cool for 5-10 minutes. Add ricotta, parmesan, and truffle salt and stir. Set mixture aside.

Mix semolina and unbleached flours until well incorporated. Dump onto work surface and create a mound. In a small bowl, lightly beat 3 eggs, oil and salt. Add 1 tbsp water and mix well. In the mound of flour, poke a hole in the top so that it resembles a volcano. Slowly pour 1/3 of the egg mixture into the mound. With one hand, work the egg mixture into the flour around it, while using the other hand to maintain the walls of the "volcano." Add the egg mixture 1/3 at a time and repeat. Eventually, the flour will come together into a cohesive dough that is tough, but elastic, and slightly tacky to the touch. Fold it into a rough ball and set it aside on the work surface and cover with a heavy bowl. Let it sit for at least 20-30 minutes, or wrap in plastic wrap and set it in the fridge until you are ready to work with it.

When you're ready to work with the dough, roll it out and fold it over itself a few times. Cut the dough into quarters so that it's a manageable size to work with. While working one with one quarter, stow the other pieces under the heavy bowl so they don't dry out. Roll the dough out, thinner and thinner, dusting with flour as necessary so that it doesn't stick to your work surface. When it gets as thin as you can make it, place parsley leaves (stems will poke through the pasta so be sure to make sure they are completely removed) on one half of the dough. I spaced them 3-4" apart. Fold the other half of the dough over the parsley leaves and roll over it to ensure that the dough sticks. Roll to the desired thickness. Each sheet of pasta should be covered with plastic wrap so that it doesn't dry out before you marry it with another sheet of pasta. That's right, I said marrying sheets of pasta.

Lightly beat the remaining egg in a small bowl and lightly baste one side of the sheet of pasta you're working with. Over each parsley leaf, put a heaping teaspoon of the mushroom mixture. When you've got one whole sheet of pasta peppered with lumps of mushroom mixture, gently lay another sheet of pasta over it. Press the top sheet over the bottom sheet, being careful not to squeeze the lumps of mushroom -- work around the mushroom mixture. Cut out the married sheets of pasta and crimp around the mushroom mixture, being sure to squeeze out any air bubbles before the two sides become completely crimped together. I experimented with a circular cup to make round raviolis and a pizza cutter to make square raviolis. I found the square ones easier to make.

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to boil and drop the raviolis in. One or two minutes after they float to the surface, they can be pulled out with a slotted spoon, and transferred to a sauce.

Easy Garden Sauce
2 large tomatoes, blanched, peeled and diced.
1 medium shallot, finely
1 abominable carrot, or one small carrot, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
10 leaves basil, chiffonade
2 sprigs thyme, chopped
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp heavy cream

Heat oil and butter in a medium skillet over medium high heat. Saute shallot and garlic till shallots turn translucent. Add diced carrot and cook till tender. Add tomatoes, then herbs. Let simmer for 10 minutes, then finish with cream.

The morning of the MasterChef premiere

2010-07-28T05:50:00.000-07:00

I got to share my sesame chocolate bread pudding recipe with the whole state of Colorado on FOX 31's morning show, Good Day Colorado! To answer some questions that my friends at home asked me:

1. Yes, the dress is new. I got it a month ago and have been wearing it because I love it.

2. No, I did not buy that dress just for the show.

3. No, I did not wear it to match the set.

4. Yes, I can believe he didn't know what tahini is. They were eating bratwurst at 8 o'clock in the morning for crying out loud!

Well enough about that. Here's the video clip:

Tahini... it's not just for hummus

2010-07-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

The problem with sweets, to me, is not only that they're lacking in umami, but from a nutritional standpoint, they're not much more than empty carbs which leave you hungry shortly thereafter. And when you eat as often and in such quantities as I do, that can be a problem (even assuming that I like being pudgy, I cannot afford the time or expense to continually buy bigger clothes!).

Now, let's say you've just had a big cookout, and, as with every other cookout, there are people who fear those carbs so much that they eat hamburgers with a knife and fork, leaving you with lots of leftover hamburger buns. What do you do?

In this kitchen, when life hands me lemons, I make lemonade. And when life hands me bread, I make bread pudding. The question is, when life hands me bread in the form of sesame seed buns, what am I supposed to do? Do I painstakingly pick them off, one seed at a time? I may be Chinese and I may be cheap labor (read: lowly government worker), but my time is certainly still more valuable than that. Do I leave them on and hope no one notices the sesame seeds stuck in their teeth? I'm a voracious eater who happens to love the texture of gristle and could chomp from end to end through a steak without giving a second thought to odd textures but I think even I would notice sesame seeds in a bread pudding.

The solution to both problems, the non-nutritious sweets and the leftover sesame seed buns, is what puts the um(ami) in hummus. Tahini. Just 2 tablespoons of the stuff will add 8 grams of protein, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 5% of your daily recommended intake of iron, and 15% of your daily recommended intake of calcium.

Rather than hiding the sesame seeds in a chocolate bread pudding, I would enhance them by adding tahini. It's a very if-you-can't-beat 'em-join-'em approach to the problem.

And it could be fatally flawed. I checked The Flavor Bible.
I looked under "chocolate" and nowhere in the exhaustive four-page entry on chocolate did sesame even show up. Cross-reference under "sesame" -- two columns dedicated to black and white sesame seeds and chocolate was under neither one.

Well, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

And so it was that this intrepid chef came to invent the dessert that protein-lovers could enjoy: Sesame chocolate bread pudding.

The result -- dessert with umami goodness.

Here's the recipe.

Sesame chocolate bread pudding

1/2 lb sesame seed buns, cubed
1 1/2 c whole milk
1/2 c heavy cream, plus more for whipped cream
1/4 c tahini
3/4 c granulated sugar
1/2 c light brown sugar
1/8 c cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp sesame oil (not seasoned or toasted)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, grated
2 pinches toasted white sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place the cubed bread in a 9"x6" baking dish. In a large bowl, whisk together the milk, cream, and tahini. In a medium bowl, combine the sugar, brown sugar, and cocoa powder and mix well. Add the sugar mixture to the milk mixture and mix well. Add the vanilla and sesame oil to the beaten eggs. Combine the egg mixture to the milk mixture and mix well.

Stir the grated chocolate into the mixture. Pour the mixture over the cubed bread in the dish. Stir the mixture to make sure the bread is all coated. Let the mixture stand for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, so the bread absorbs most of the milk mixture. Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds over the mixture. Bake pudding for 50 minutes or until set -- pudding is done when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Serve the pudding warm, or refrigerate and serve chilled with whipped cream.

Fruit of our labor

2010-07-22T21:13:00.000-07:00

Not everything in our garden has sprung, but the stuff that has is perfect! There are tons of kale, several varieties of tomatoes in various stages of ripeness, peas, and a few types of cucumbers.

Since my colleagues didn't get any of the rose cherry cobbler and (being the honest lawyer that I am) I felt the need to tell my boss what I didn't bring in, I felt I owed them a batch of kale chips. So I donned the headlamp and headed out the back door with a bucket and a pair of kitchen shears to pay my penance (no amount of hard livin' and debauchery can undo all those years of Catholic school). As I waited for the oven to heat up, I threw open my spice cabinet and thought long and hard about how to season the kale chips. Curry? Harissa? Jerk? On second thought, if my colleagues were to be running around smelling of the stuff, maybe it ought to be something more accessible so that everyone would enjoy it -- all for one, and one for all! Sea salt and garlic was the poison I picked. A 50/50 mix of fine sea salt and granulated garlic sprinkled on scantly olive oiled kale pieces. Divine.

Then I turned my attention to the harvest that Mr. Rose brought in. The last of the peas from the second flush burst with fresh, green goodness. We'd had yellow and red cherry tomatoes, but the black cherry tomatoes are new arrivals, with an unusually rich sweetness. And the pickling cucumbers have so much of that grassy cucumber aroma, but packed in a shorter, stubbier and slightly less crispy body, that we couldn't wait for them to be pickled -- they had to be eaten tonight.

The peas were shelled and boiled till just tender. The tomatoes halved and sprinkled lightly with the garlic salt from the kale chips, and the cucumbers were peeled and diced. Everything was tossed in extra virgin olive oil and peach-infused white basalmic vinegar, finished with cracked pepper, then tossed down the hatch. This salad didn't stand a chance.

Now that dinner's over, I'm refraining from nibbling away at the kale chips. They must make it to the office because I cannot handle another moment in the confessional with my boss, nor can I imagine what the self-prescribed penance would be.

P.S. If you must work with a recipe, here's a rough one:

Fresh pea, tomato and cucumber salad (serves 2)

2 handfuls of shelled peas
1 cup of assorted cherry tomatoes, halved
1 pickling cucumber, peeled and diced
1-1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp peach-infused white basalmic vinegar
1/2 pinch sea salt
1/2 pinch granulated garlic
salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Put the peas in a small pot and just barely cover them with water, a pinch of sea salt and 1/2 tbsp of the extra virgin olive oil. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 2-3 minutes, or till peas are tender. Remove from heat, drain, and quickly drench in ice cold water. Drain well. Mix 1/2 pinch sea salt with 1/2 pinch granulated garlic and toss with the cherry tomatoes in a small bowl. Toss the peas and cubed cucumber into the bowl. Add remaining 1 tbsp olive oil and peach-infused vinegar. Season with salt and cracked black pepper to taste.

Simple dinner and sour cherry cobbler redux - Rose style

2010-07-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

The weather has finally cooled down enough where it's tolerable to turn on the oven. And on this long rainy day, we got out of the office in just enough time to pick up some fillets of tilapia from Seafood Landing. It was late for dinner, so simplicity was key. The tilapia went into the oven, under a pile of parboiled potatoes, artichoke hearts, olives, and herbs, a smattering of olive oil and lemon juice, and wrapped in an aluminum foil pouch. (Recognize these ingredients?)

I like this method of cooking fish because it feels like I'm luxuriously roughing it. It's only one step away from how I like to eat when camping, the only difference being that I used an oven rather than the coals from a fire. That and the fact that I shall sleep in a warm, dry bed tonight.

While the fish cooked, I explored the gardens. In the hot spell that preceded today's rain, we got another flush of peas! They were so perfect, and so I made quick work of shelling them. One for me, one for the little dog, one for the bowl.

Paired with our abundance of mint and scallions, nothing could be more delightful.

Dinner came and went quickly, lingering only long enough to grace our palates. Mr. Rose went back to work and I opened the fridge to explore my options. Ku had returned from Peru to find more sour cherries adorning the forbidden HOA tree. She brought enough for another sour cherry cobbler. So I "rose" to the occasion and decided to give this one a twist -- a few dashes of rose water.

A refreshingly tangy flavor, with the floral essence of roses. I think this is what cherry blossoms would taste like if you could capture a flavor from those beautiful pink petals. And the smell is divine. Waiting on this cobbler was torture.

I briefly entertained bringing this in for my lunch hour meeting with folks in my office, but, frankly, I'm not sure I like those guys enough. This might be something exclusively for Mr. Rose and me.

The Moonlight Classic

2010-07-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was one of my most highly anticipated events of the year -- the Moonlight Classic, ranked second only to Thanksgiving, and above my birthday, Mr. Rose's birthday, our wedding anniversary, and even Halloween. The Moonlight Classic combines several enticing aspects into one event. Outrageous costumes, lots of bicycles, extremely loud music, a bathtub full of beer, and, of course, enough food to feed an army, twice. The food isn't fancy, mind you. It does have to feed an army twice, after all. But it is always satisfying and there must be enough for the Moonlight Classic pre-party AND the post-party.

Every year, a couple dozen people park their bikes in our backyard at dusk, one of which has a serious sound system on the rear rack hooked up to a car battery which one rider must carry throughout the ride. We feed these people, so they have energy for the slow and drunken ride. People go back for seconds of brats, burgers and sides. Round about midnight, we light up some glow sticks and flashing head and tail lights, and roll down the hill to the Capitol, where the Moonlight Classic starts. And when we're done with our 10-mile loop around Denver, we reconvene at some pickup trucks strategically parked at the bottom of the hill, and transport our revelers back up the hill to our house to nosh on leftovers. The last party-goers depart from the Speakeasy Kitchen, exhausted, but full and re-hydrated, in the wee hours of the next morning, about an hour before sunrise.

On the table this year were pico de gallo and guacamole with freshly fried corn chips, multi-colored potato salad, roasted corn salad, and pasta salad with cherry tomatoes and olivada.

The potato salad was simple and delicious, with multi-colored potatoes, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives and mint, tossed with a lemony herbed vinaigrette. Not only was it a good side dish for the cookout, but it'll be excellent with eggs in the morning... the very late morning.

Waiting and Watching for MasterChef

2010-07-15T05:33:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I auditioned for Top Chef. Yes, that's right, Season 5, the one where the guy who won was a professional chef from Boulder, CO. Rather stiff competition, I suppose. I was probably out of my league, but I felt like it was my big opportunity to dig myself out of an exhaustive document review and into a fulfilling new career. Well, I didn't get on the show, but it did encourage me to do less semiconductor litigation and more cooking.

I cooked for my husband, my neighbors, my friends, my colleagues, and total strangers. I steamed and roasted lobster. I baked bread, stretched pizza dough, and made bread pudding. I battered and fried chicken, al matone'd chicken, and shoved a beer can up a chicken's butt. I made homemade cheese and grew my own mushrooms. I perfected my curries and my poached eggs. I poached fish. I cooked every kind of food that came to mind. I was having fun and getting ready for the next opportunity.

Then, MasterChef came to North America, and suddenly a door opened, and Gordon Ramsey, Graham Elliot, and Joe Bastianich walked through it. They took my breath away.

And now, I will go fix myself a snack while I wait to watch the show.

What to do with extra cherries

2010-07-06T21:12:00.000-07:00

Three pounds of sour cherries is a lot of cherries. After the cobbler, there was still over a cup of sour cherries left over. What does one do with extra cherries?

I consulted the Outstanding in the Field cookbook that I recently received as a gift from my friend, Starr, author of the Rainy Day Ranch blog. They had a recipe for grilled squab with sweet and sour cherries. Perfect.

Except the only way I could think of finding squab would be to head over to City Park with a shotgun -- a flawed method sure to get me arrested. Unwilling to drive to Whole Foods to buy frozen quail or cornish game hens, I opted for a small chicken from Wheat Ridge Poultry, the people who supplied me with the 27 lb bird for Canadian Thanksgiving last year.

A marinade of olive oil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and wine covered pieces of chicken while the cherries simmered in kirsch, champagne vinegar, and sugar. Peppery watercress tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper. Chicken grilled. Plates composed. Amber lagers poured around the table. Dinner is served. Simplicity is bliss.

Finger food: miniature caprese salad

2010-07-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

None of the big tomatoes have yet ripened on the vine, but that doesn't mean we can't have a caprese salad. Red and yellow cherry tomatoes pair nicely with ciliegine (which frankly is a little easier for me to make than some of the other forms of mozzarella because of my small hands), and look lovely with the petite leaves of spicy globe basil. Finish with extra virgin olive oil, aged balsamic vinegar, cracked pepper, and Turkish black pyramid salt. Makes for great finger food while you wait for the grill to heat up on a rainy day.

As American as cherry cobbler

2010-07-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

Ku asked us to dogsit for 3 weeks. Not a problem -- Max and Maya collectively weigh as much as our little Margo Frances, so it would be (in theory) like having 4 dogs in the house, not 5.

Not so. Maya, the heavy-breathing pug, appears not to know her name, especially not in combination with commands like "sit" and "come" or "no." And, despite her labored breathing, she is really active and quick on her feet. She is constantly in motion. Max, sweet and responsive to commands as he is, is really intent on lifting his leg on our raised vegetable garden. We've had more than 5 dogs in the house before, but never did it seem like this much activity. Ku didn't warn me that her pups were so unruly.

I could be mad at her, except that (a) the unruly pups are so darn cute(!) and (b) she brought 3 lbs of sour cherries that she'd picked from the tree outside of her townhome, HOA rules be damned. Ku picked these tart and juicy cherries from communal property, at the risk of being glared at by snooping neighbors and, perhaps, a stern warning from the president of the HOA. It was a bold act that brought to mind an old American story, that young George Washington, chopping down a cherry tree. How very American was this gift of illicit sour cherries on the eve of this great nation's birthday!

Three pounds of little sour cherries are a lot of work to de-stone, especially when one does not possess a stoner. It's well worth the money, but it was late and I was not in the mood to run to the store. So I let the dogs out into the garden, with hopes that Mr. Rose's watchful eye would ensure that my kale would not get peed on, and set myself to work pitting cherries. I used this Epicurious recipe roughly, though I had a 10" cast iron skillet so I had to increase my quantities a bit, and I used a convection oven, so baking times were decreased.

5-6 cups sour cherries, picked over, rinsed, and drained well
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

Remove pits from the cherries and reserving the cherries and any juices in a large bowl. Stir the cornstarch, 1 cup of the sugar, the lemon juice, and almond extract into the cherries. In a small bowl stir together the flour, the baking powder, the salt, the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar, and the butter, blend the mixture until it resembles coarse meal, and stir in 1/3 cup boiling water, stirring until the batter is just combined. In a 10" cast iron skillet or flameproof baking dish bring the cherry mixture to a boil, drop the batter by heaping tablespoons onto it, and bake the cobbler in the middle of a preheated 350°F convection oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the top is golden.

The recipe calls for a peach and brown sugar ice cream pairing. I will, instead, chop some peaches up into a thick Greek yogurt sweetened with honey, and throw that into my ice cream maker for a peach and honey frozen yogurt. It may be no less fattening, but it feels like a more refreshing dessert on a hot day. All together, it'll be a mouth-watering, tangy dessert, crisp and toasty on the outside, warm and gooey on the inside, and topped with a smooth and soft peachy yogurt. YUM!

I love the weight a cobbler in a cast iron skillet. It has gravity. It makes me feel like I am doing something serious. And it has a rustic, old-timey feel to it, as if I were making a cobbler for Mr. Washington himself. So there it is, my patriotic American dessert for a July 4th celebration on my 10th year in the country. No, it's not apple pie. But not half bad for an immigrant in a country full of immigrants.

goat milk mac-n-cheese

2010-06-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

I can't even take credit for this creation. It was born of an Alton Brown recipe and a modest amount of creativity, driven by a meager selection of items at the store.

The theme for yesterday's supper club was "White Trash Picnic," complete with cheap beer, coke cake (it's a southern thang), and cornhole. My task: macaroni and cheese. Yes, someone brought Popeye's fried chicken, which we all ate without remorse. And I didn't really believe anyone would trash-talk me for bringing a pot of Kraft Dinner... or at least not to my face... but I thought I should at least make a mac-n-cheese from semi-scratch, using preformed elbow macaroni and preshredded cheese.

Now there's more than one way to skin this cat so I had a few options. I chose to go with Alton Brown's recipe because Mr. Brown said it would only take 25 minutes and the supper club was convening on a weeknight, so I didn't have a whole day to prep. And nothing says "white trash" louder to me than a quickie recipe that involves preshredded cheese and a can of evaporated milk.

The Sunflower Market four blocks from the Speakeasy Kitchen doesn't always have the "normal things" you see at grocery stores (incidentally, this is really the reason I didn't want to bring Kraft Dinner -- they don't carry that either). I scoured the aisles in search of evaporated milk and found only this stuff: Evaporated goat milk. "Gourmet Taste. Easy to Digest."

Crunched for time, I decided to give it a whirl.

I cooked the macaroni and went about mixing the goat milk, which had an yellowy-pinkish color, with the eggs, mustard, and hot sauce.

For hot sauce, I had a couple of choices. Although the crazy colors on the Blind Betty's hot sauce looked appropriate for the occasion, I opted for the Boulder Hot Sauce version because I figured the smoked serrano would be a nice flavor bridge between the goat milk and sharp cheddar.

I was right. The result was a creamy, slightly goaty cheddar mac-n-cheese that was quick and easy. Pleased with the results, I donned my wife-beater and giant belt buckle and headed to the park, bringing my cornhole and trash-talking A-game and the best mac-n-cheese I've ever eaten.

Garden tour

2010-06-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

I had a little bit of trepidation over the 16 pea shoots I dropped into the garden -- what on earth would I do if all 16 went into hyper-production? Well, it's starting to happen. But I no longer worry. My recent dinners at The Squeaky Bean gave me confidence that there would be plenty I could do with good fresh peas.

I cracked into the first pod, popping the peas out into my mouth. They were so tender and sweet! I got so excited that I temporarily lost my mind and gave the empty pod to Margo Frances, my smallest and hungriest dog. She gobbled it up in a hurry, and now she lurks around the back side of the garden, as if she were stalking a cat. She's waiting for me to look away so she can steal some of the good stuff right off the vine for herself.

There's plenty of good stuff in the garden. There will be plenty of good recipes for fresh vegetables in the months to come. I'm most excited about the mixed beets and the multi-colored carrots. Carrots on the left, mixed beets on the right. Under each bunch of greens will be an unexpected pop of color! The suspense is killing me!

Also in the works are about 8 different varieties of tomatoes. We've already had a few salads of mixed greens complimented with yellow cherry tomatoes. But these Better Boys are on their way in. I expect to be plucking them by the end of this coming weekend.

And last, but not least, we have 8 square feet of garden dedicated to kale. Yes, that's right 8 square feet. Due to our inexperience and/or laziness, we decided to do raised beds according to the square foot gardening method and so far, it seems to be easy enough to follow. Mr. Rose put in some backbreaking work up front and before his ACL reconstruction surgery and built some boxes, I helped mix dirt, vermiculite, and compost into the boxes, and we roped off the dirt into individual, square zones. It keeps us organized and there is seldom a question as to whether something is a weed or an unusually shaped sprout. It's phenomenally easy and, so far, we're pleased with the results. And looking forward to the endless supply of kale chips.

The egg and the fish.

2010-06-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I love mixing my proteins. Chicken and tofu in a Thai curry. Eggs on cheesy garlic grits. Surf and turf. A menagerie of animals in a bolognese sauce. My latest favorite combination of proteins: fish and eggs.

On Saturday evening, in the middle of a hot summer weekend filled with 5 hours of biking and attendance at a smattering of lively local festivals, we had dinner with Dr. Ku and Mike. Dinners with Ku and Mike have become a pleasantly regular occurrence, switching between the Ku and Rose residences, occasionally intermingled with dim sum, Ethiopian, or other ethnic fare. But on this busy weekend, there was no time to get elaborate. I went to my simple go-to.

Seafood Landing had a large selection on Saturday morning. I had in mind some fillets with the skin still on, so they would get crispy when broiled. The barramundi looked the best, though I would have preferred little fillets of trout or John Dory. I parboiled and grilled scallions, shaved parmesan reggiano, mixed a mustard vinagrette and soft-boiled an egg to garnish the plate before I laid down the broiled barramundi, which I finished with a pinch of Maldon salt.

Thankfully, Ku and Mike were able to appreciate this combination of proteins. It shouldn't have been hard to appreciate, since the plate was lovely and I didn't get too creative with the egg... unlike the egg from the red wine-poached egg on butter-poached halibut that I photographed for a certain casting call (I poached it in white wine when I showed up for the actual casting call... the egg comes out in a barely yellowish hue, a much more palatable color for an egg than the purpleish blob that comes out of a red wine poach). That was no less delicious, but admittedly, the color in the photograph was a little off-putting.

Nonetheless, there's nothing quite like a juicy piece of fish paired with a perfectly cooked egg. It's a more delicate kind of surf and turf. Unlike the brute force of a slab of beef wrestling against a lobster tail for dominance, the fish and egg nestle in harmony on a plate. When fruit of the mighty sea comes to the shore and meets with the humble and earthy egg, you end up with something light, yet fulfilling, and perfect for a busy summer evening.

The fate of a shrimp in endangered habitat

2010-06-16T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's not entirely clear to me how it came to be that these pink shrimp were available "on special" at Seafood Landing. They hail from the imperiled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and although the species itself had a "stable" existence earlier this year, it's not hard to imagine that they'll be a little more scarce in the months and years to come.

So how did they find their way to this land-locked state, only to be placed on sale like they were going out of style? Perhaps the shrimp trawlers sifted them all out of the water before they could meet their oil-slicked doom. Or maybe Bruce foresaw the BP accident and made the biggest fishmonger futures trade boon in history and was sharing the wealth. No matter what brought them here, I had Old Bay Seasoning and limes at home, waiting to make their sweet and tender acquaintance. Together, with a few other accoutrements, they would become ceviche.

Last year, I met a Mexican civil rights lawyer-cum-painter named Clay. He was helping me fix up my house in Washington DC. We spent a week working side by side and, one day, we spontaneously decided to make ceviche for lunch.

It was a typical day in DC, hot and humid. We were tired and hungry. We had plenty of hardware, but no kitchen utensils. But, where there's a will, there's a way. A bathroom mirror came down and became our cutting board and a Swiss Army Tool our knife. The lime juice was our sanitizer. I felt like McGyver.

We butterflied the shrimp and soaked it in lime juice. Thinly sliced onions and tomatoes went in to add more flavor and acidity. Then a few splashes of soy sauce and a few dashes of Old Bay Seasoning. We used a blow torch to toast thinly sliced garlic and crushed red pepper in a bit of sesame oil -- it smelled heavenly! Ripped up some cilantro, sliced some avocados, tossed everything together with an extra squeeze of lime, and Voila! It is the best thing I could possibly hope to see on the end of a tortilla chip heading towards my mouth. Not to mention, it's hardly the worst possible fate for a shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico.

*N.B. This is a recipe (be)for(e environmental) disaster. If shrimp becomes extinct, I do not recommend that you try this with raw chicken.

Freeloaders and Fungi

2010-06-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

All the rain we've gotten in the last twelve months made me really regret I haven't been taking advantage of what has been highly hospitable climates for mycelial growth. We didn't do any gardening last year, and only had some miniature mushrooms growing indoors, in buckets.

Without a doubt the Espresso Oyster mushrooms were delicious and a delight to find springing up from their humble abode. But they were limited in number and one bucket never really produced.

Meanwhile these little toxic creatures cropped up all last summer around the yard. They're pretty fascinating, but I looked every one of them up in my field guide, and not a single one of them won't cause at least a couple of days of gastrointestinal distress if eaten.

Not to mention the horribly obscene Stinkhorn that showed up overnight in our front yard. The Stinkhorn is also known by its Latin name, phallus impudicus, and I've posted a photo elsewhere, but I will not post here because it is highly unappetizing. (Click on "Stinkhorn" if you're curious).

But I digress. I've decided to capitalize on the mycelium-friendly climes of late and, killing two birds with one stone, make it so that a couple of trees in our neighborhood have not died in vain. I ordered mushroom spawn plugs online. Then I got to work.

First, I started with some logs. Different mushrooms like different substrates. I have three varieties of spawn: Lion's Mane, a milky-colored, fluffy, sponge-like mushroom; Phoenix Fir Oyster, a white mushroom with taupe, velvety ruffled tops; and Pearl Oyster, a prolific, almost blueish oyster mushroom. The Phoenix Fir Oyster prefers conifers, while the Pearl Oyster must be grown on hardwood, and the Lion's Mane is an equal opportunity innoculator. Luckily, we had a Douglas Fir come down in our backyard this spring, and our tree guy gave us a few sections of an Elm he took down a couple of weeks later.

While waiting for the logs to age, the spawn arrived and really took off. They had completely saturated and filled up the grooves in the wood dowels that they come packaged in. Three precious little baggies, each filled with 100 promises of tender fungi!

I set about making homes for these little promises, drilling a diamond shaped pattern of 5/16" holes around the logs. Then the promises went into the holes, plugging them up. I tapped them in so that they ran flush with the outer surface of the log, then sealed them in with melted beeswax (yay! the kitchen torch found a use other than for creme brulee!) so that the mycelium had nowhere to go but into the wood.

Now all I've got to do is keep the logs damp and shaded. Some are on the north side of the garage and east of a giant silver maple tree, while others are on the north side of a giant lilac bush and east of the house. They need a bit of sun, but not too much. It'll be 6-9 months before these babies fruit, but it will be well worth it when they do.

As a reward for my patience, I hope to have beautiful colonies of Lion's Mane, Phoenix Fir Oyster, and Pearl Oyster fruiting proudly and prolifically, and perhaps their spores will spread throughout the yard in years to come, taking the place of the pretty, but inedible parasols.

Roasted Beet Salad

2010-06-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

No one remembers liking beets when they were kids, and I'm no different. I only ever saw them at the all-u-can-eat salad bars at the Ponderosa "steak house" and The Sizzler, on display under florescent light and a sneeze guard. They were gelatinous-looking, circular slabs with an unnatural magenta hue. I always watched in awe as Dad popped them into his mouth by the forkfuls, waiting to see if he'd spit them out. Being a kid who thought green jello was cool, I can't explain why beets weren't. But then again, I was a complex kid, full of contradictions.

Now fast-forward to a new decade, 2010, when I buy anything that looks pretty in the produce section and find a way to make it taste as good as it looks.

For me, the beet greens are the loveliest part of the beet. They're almost magical, with bright green leaves springing forth from the red stems and veins that, when you cut them, bleed hot pink. And, invisible to the naked eye are the beta-carotene, vitamin C, iron and calcium that they also bring to the table.

I separate the beets from the greens, wrap the beets in foil, and roast them at 400 degrees F till they're just tender. The greens, I chop and saute in olive oil with a pinch of salt, till wilted.

The beets come out of the oven and get diced. Beets and greens are reunited, and tossed with extra virgin olive oil and peach-fused white balsamic vinegar from a local purveyor and topped with crumbly gorgonzola and sunflower seeds for the best salad love can make.

Kind of makes me wonder what I could do with green jello if I put my mind to it.