When we catered the VIP suite at SalonCon in September, we tried to think of a fun and interesting way to make sure people got some protein in their diets during the day. Conferences and conventions are notorious for people taking poor care of themselves, and failing to eat real food or get enough sleep. We wanted to do our part to help solve that problem this time.

After leafing through Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie again, we decided to play with his cured salmon recipe, and we eventually made a few different flavors to provide to the VIP suite. After some experimentation, our favorite was still one that Ruhlman suggested in the book – black pepper and coriander.

We eventually served it as a one bite course at the restaurant as well, with with fresh cucumber and dill on top of a pine nut tuile.

This home-cured salmon is also a wonderful substitute for lox if thinly sliced rather than cubed. Nothing beats Brooklyn bagels, but the lox you can buy at the store doesn’t come close to beating salmon cured at home and flavored any way you please.

Archives
2007: Clementine Sunchoke Puree
2006: Persian Pomegranate Soup (Ash-e Anar)

Home-Cured Salmon with Black Pepper and Coriander
(adapted from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman)
4 oz (or 125 g) sugar
6 oz (or 180 g) dark brown sugar
6 oz (or 175 g) kosher salt
A 2-3 pound salmon fillet, skin on, bones removed
Freshly ground black pepper and coriander seeds to taste

Find a non-reactive baking dish just large enough to contain your fish, but not too large. You want the brine to cover the fish eventually, so if your dish is too large, you will fail.

Whisk the sugars and salt together.

Spread half the mixture into your dish. Place the fish skin side down on top of the sugar/salt.

Cover the fish with a thick layer of ground black pepper and coriander seeds (about 1 tbsp whole seeds per pound of salmon might be right, but really, do it by eye and to taste).

Spread the rest of the sugar/salt mixture out on top of the fish.

Cover the dish tightly with plastic wrap and set a pan on top of it, with some weights (about 4-8 pounds) on top of that. Canned good, jars, bricks, or those dumbbells you never use would be perfect.

Refrigerate for about 48 hours, checking halfway through to redistribute the cure if necessary to more evenly cover the salmon. If it still feels too squishy, let it go longer, testing with a finger poke every 12 hours or so until it feels nice and firm.

Once it’s done curing, rinse and pat dry.

You can serve it thinly sliced, though as you can see it also worked well cut into small cubes as if a tartare, served with fresh cucumber and dill on top of a pine nut tuile.

Figs are marvelous. Dave and I have been eating them with duck confit (as in this spectacularly tasty recipe, all rich luscious duck and bright fresh figs with mustard seeds and curry leaves to perk everything up), pickling them, and just generally reveling in their availability lately.

Instead of apologizing for not updating this blog often enough, let me tell you some interesting things:

Comment #17 was randomly picked as the winner for the A Pig in Provence by Georgeanne Brennan book giveaway from Yummr. Congratulations, Michelle! Just get me your address and Yummr will ship the book directly to you.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to create dishes and meals based on color palettes from Kris’s Color Stripes?

Our occasional restaurant will be catering the VIP suite at SalonCon on September 13th. SalonCon is a one day event in NJ focusing on.. well.. check out their FAQ. Their tagline is “the Victorian Era for the 21st Century”. They have music, book readings, steampunk and neo-Victorian art, a ball, and a set of salons with speakers, suggested readings, and of course a lot of spirited discussion. If you can, please stop by to say hello, join in the event, and taste some of the tasty treats that we will be providing.

Nancy Weber, an author, caterer, and all-around magnificently creative and wonderful woman, has started making these fantastic butcher’s aprons. The photo below is of me wearing mine while trimming lamb shanks (which we braised into melting tenderness using a adaptation of our Pomegranate Ginger Saffron Braised Lamb Neck recipe). I got mine when I saw it hanging in her apartment and fell in love with it on the spot. You can buy your own butcher’s apron here if you’re interested.

Archives
2007: Ma La Chicken with Roly-Poly Squash
2006: Fig and Date Basteeya


Duck Confit and Fig Crostini
Approximately 1 1/2 C shredded duck confit (recipe below)
5ish fresh figs
30 or so fresh curry leaves
1 tbsp mustard seeds
Olive oil
Baguette
Cucumber
Salt

Slice the cucumber into thin rounds, using a mandoline if you have one. Mix with a few tablespoons of salt, then set aside for at about an hour. Rinse the cucumber slices, squeeze them dry as you can, and set aside.

Slice a baguette, and toast the slices is you like.

Splash a bit of oil into a pan, then add some mustard seeds, some curry leaves, and some of the shredded duck confit. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until the mustard seeds start to pop, the curry leaves start to sizzle, and the duck is warmed through.

Slice the figs into 1/4″ thick rounds. Put fig slices onto the baguette slices, then the duck confit with curry leaves and mustard seeds, then the cucumber slices. Garnish with an extra curry leaf.

Duck Confit
1 duck, legs and wings only (save the breasts to sear and eat separately)
Rendered duck fat or oil
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
Plenty of salt.

Take you some duck legs, and wings if you have them, and put them in a pot. Cover them with rendered duck fat and/or oil. Add the other ingredients. Cook for a couple of hours at a low simmer (the moisture in the duck will simmer; the oil won’t, of course), until the duck is very tender and easily pierced with a fork or even a toothpick. Remove the duck, cool and drain, then shred the meat.

These are dead simple, very tasty, and wonderfully vocal – both the pop rocks and people’s reaction to them.

Shell your fava beans. Remember, favas need to be removed from the pod, and then the skin has to be removed from each bean individually. It’s a pain in the ass, but worth it once in a while.

Make the seaweed pop rocks right before serving by combining a mix of finely ground kelp, dulce, and nori with unflavored pop rocks and Maldon salt. You can grind the seaweed in advance, but if you mix the pop rocks in too early they will end up clumping together into a solid, non-poppy mass. They’re mostly sugar, and quite hydroscopic.

Saute the fava beans in butter until they smell utterly delicious. Put into small serving spoons or dishes. Sprinkle with seaweed pop rocks and serve immediately.

Archives
2007: Fava Bean and Cherry Salad
2006: Lemongrass Saffron Soda and Ginger Ice Cream Float

This was our amuse bouche for our opening night at Jack. I’m a bit obsessed with nicoise olives at the moment, because I absolutely hated all olives until I discovered these at the Park Avenue Bistro not too long ago. So now I’m using them to add depth to stews, intricacy to cookies, and inspiration all around.

I love alternating sips of chilled, tart rhubarb soup with bites of crumbly, salty olive cookies. I know it sounds odd, but they really were quite lovely together! Brave the olive cookies; you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Also, my apologies for the radio silence lately. It’s been spring on and off, and I just want to go out and wander the streets and parks whenever the sun comes out. I treasure every evening spent having dinner outdoors in a tank top, every smell of earth and green growing wonder, and even the comforting smell of rain first hitting the pavement. I spent last Sunday night in Prospect Park at a marching band scavenger hunt and capture the flag game. Not to mention the lawyering that takes up time, too. Life is grand, every moment of it.

Speaking of which, if any of you locals like playing board games (such as Scrabble or Go), stop by the Brooklyn Lyceum and say hi on Monday night. I’ll be there.

Archives
2007: Sour Cherry Braised Lamb Shanks
2006: Pear and Basil Tart


Rhubarb Soup
(adapted from La Tartine Gourmande)
18 oz rhubarb
1 3/4 oz sugar
1/4 C water

Chop the rhubarb into cubes. Simmer everything together until the rhubarb is soft and fallen apart. Pass through a tamis. Serve chilled.

Nicoise Olive Cookies
(adapted from The Traveler’s Lunchbox)
9 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3/4 C confectioners sugar, sifted
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/4 C all-purpose flour
pinch of fine sea salt
1/2 C (heaping) pitted and coarsely chopped nicoise olives
Maldon salt to taste

Cream butter until soft. Mix in sugar. Mix in olive oil. Mix in salt and flour, gently but thoroughly. Mix in olives.

Press about 1/4″ thick on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Score with a butter knife into squares. Poke holes with a fork. Sprinkle a bit of Maldon salt on top.

Refrigerate at least 30 minutes and up to 1 day.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Bake until golden, about 15-20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks. Cut apart while still warm.

Serve at room temperature or slightly warm.

I love Momofuku, especially now that the Noodle Bar has moved to a larger location where Dave and I can actually bring our friends and chat with them at a table over dinner instead of just hoping to find one or two spaces at the bar. The food is amazing, and being the devoted carnivore that I am, I enjoy chef David Chang’s devotion to adding meat to every dish on the menu (with one exception). Momofuku is not the place to bring vegetarians or people who keep kosher, but for the rest of us it is a pleasure to visit.

While I hope beyond hope that Chang will eventually write a cookbook, Dave decided to do his best to recreate one of our favorite Momofuku dishes on his own in the meantime. Here, then, is his version of Momofuku’s Roasted Rice Cakes – it’s not the Momofuku recipe, but just our own attempt to make something similar at home. (Hey David Chang, if you read this – did we come close to getting it right?)

It’s hot and chewy and crispy and spicy and more than a bit overwhelming on the palate, in a good way.

Roasted Rice Cakes with Onions and Red Chili Pepper Sauce
1 lb Korean rice cakes
2 medium onions
A little oil for frying
1/4 cup hot water (we suspect pork stock would make a good substitute, if you have it)
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce (or more to taste)
3 tbsp gochujang (Korean red chili paste)
1-3 tsp Korean red chili powder
1 tsp Korean anchovy sauce
Sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

Slice the onions thinly and fry them in a bit of oil until they are lightly browned. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, fry the rice cakes until they are also nicely toasted on all sides.

Combine all the ingredients and stir-fry quickly until they come together, then serve. Use however much red chili powder you can handle – 3 tsp is probably closer to Momofuku’s level of spiciness, but 1 tsp was closer to what I actually wanted to eat at home.

Garnish with sesame seeds to taste, if you like. Dave does. I do not.

These latkes look kinda fishy to me.

At least, that was was my first thought when I glanced upon the recipe in Mark Bittman’s Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking. I was on a mission to make salmon for dinner, since we don’t eat nearly enough seafood around here, and Dave complains when I pick up fish that he considers too flavorful (mackerel) or too bony (butterfish).

It’s really unfortunate. I grew up sailing, and I love fish. I caught the first fish I ever ate, in fact. (It was a fluke.) I wish we ate more fish, and blame my recent lack of fishy meals on Dave.

This is a perfect way to use up leftover salmon that has become boring, or the flesh left on the skin after you’ve cut salmon scallops for some other recipe. It revitalizes leftovers, transforms them into something different, something… crunchier.

Though Bittman calls these galettes, I look forward to serving them as Salmon Potato Latkes when Channukah comes around.

Salmon Potato Galettes
(from Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking by Mark Bittman)
2 C grated peeled potatoes
2 C flaked cooked salmon
1 tbsp salt plus more to taste
2 tbsp minced fresh basil
Butter and olive oil for frying
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put the grated potatoes in colander and sprinkle them with 1 tbsp salt. Let them sit for 15 minutes, then rinse them and squeeze out as much water as you possibly can from them.

While letting the potatoes sit, mix together the salmon, basil, salt, and pepper.

You can use leftover salmon for this, or if you have salmon skeletons or skin left over from cutting off scallops, microwave it until the flesh is cooked enough to be easily removed and use that.

Mix the potatoes in with the rest of the ingredients. Form into patties.

Swirl half butter, half olive oil into a pan over medium-high heat and fry the galettes until they are golden brown on both sides and done.

My family and I sailed around the Cyclades in Greece a few summers ago, and while we felt that the cuisine on the islands became tedious after a while, there were a few things we never tired of: dolmas, spanikopita, and milk pies.

My dolmas are a bit of a stretch from traditional Greek or Turkish stuffed grape leaves, which sometimes call for pine nuts but never hazelnuts, and which can call for currants or meat but rarely both at the same time. I think that hazelnuts and garlic were meant for each other, truly, and that meat can always be improved with a little fruit. (I plan to devote my life to creating hazelnut/garlic recipes, in fact. Maybe I should start a food blog event devoted to the pairing?)

To be fair, I’m still holding a bit of a grudge against some Greek traditions, anyways. When I tried to visit the island of Delos, we were turned away because the center of the ancient world was closed on Mondays.

I’d still kill for a good Greek milk pie recipe, mind.

Dolmas (Stuffed Grape Leaves)
(inspired by Apricots on the Nile: A Memoir with Recipes by Colette Rossant)
For the filling
1 1/2 lb ground lamb (you can substitute beef or pork, but lamb is better)
6 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 lb hazelnuts, ground
2 2/3 C rice
1 oz fresh parsley, minced
1 1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1/3 C lemon juice
1/2 C olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Everything else
A big jar of grape leaves
1/3 C olive oil
2 1/4 C water (or chicken stock)
Optional: lemon juice and/or yogurt for serving

Rinse off the grape leaves in cold running water. Place them in a bowl, cover with boiling water, and let stand for 5 minutes. Drain and let them cool as you construct the filling.

Mix all the filling ingredients together. There, your filling is constructed!

One by one, spread out each grape leaf shiny side down. Pinch off the bit of stem that’s sticking out and set it aside. In the center of the leaf place about 1-2 tbsp filling, shaped into a small log. Roll up the leaf according to the second set of instructions here. (You can find another good set of instructions for rolling up the leaves here, too.)

Once you’ve stuffed all the grape leaves you can, find a heavy-bottomed saucepan large enough to contain them. Cover the bottom with a layer of loose grape leaves, the left-over ugly ones or any spares, and throw in those pinched off stems, too. Cover that with a layer of stuffed grape leaves, packed tightly, seam side down. Arrange another layer on top of that, continuing until all the stuffed grape leaves are in there. Cover with another layer of loose grape leaves. Pour the olive oil and water or stock in over that.

Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for about an hour, or until done.

Serve hot or cold. (I prefer them cold, but it’s really just a matter of taste.) Optionally, you can drizzle lemon juice on top and serve them with greek yogurt for dipping on the side.

Perhaps the best Afghani restaurant I have ever been to is Helmand in Cambridge, MA. Bamiyan in NYC has a special place in my heart, because we discovered it when Dave was trying to keep me fed while I was taking the bar exam, but Helmand won me over with their Kaddo Bourani.

The way Bamiyan makes their Bouranee Kadu, it is sauteed butternut squash with this perfect mint garlic yogurt sauce. I love it, and order it every time I go there. But when I went to Helmand, I found that they called their version Kaddo Bourani, and it was translucent caramelized sugar pumpkin with both that perfect yogurt sauce and a meat sauce on top of that.

Bamiyan’s version is incredibly good; Helmand’s version is a transcendent experience.

I found Helmand’s recipe in the SF Gate archives, and to be honest, I followed it exactly. I couldn’t bring myself to risk disappointment by experimenting too much the first time around.

It worked out perfectly. This is a dish so good it made me shift my Afghani restaurant allegiances. So good that I will probably serve it at my next serious formal dinner. So good that we may have to get a second freezer just so that we can make this dish after pumpkins go out of season. This goes on my shortlist of favorite recipes of all time.

Kaddo Bourani
For the pumpkin
2 Sugar Pie pumpkins, each about 3 pounds
6 tbsp corn oil
3 C sugar
For the yogurt sauce
2 C plain yogurt (we used lowfat, which was fine)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried mint
1/2 tsp salt
For the meat sauce
1/4 C corn oil
1 large onion, finely diced
1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
1 large tomato, seeded and finely chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 1/4 tsp ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 1/3 C water

Make the pumpkin:

It helps to have a serious vegetable cleaver for this bit.

Preheat your oven to 300º.

Wash off the outside of the pumpkins. Cut them in half. Scrape out the stringy stuff on the inside. Cut the halves into 3″-4″ pieces or so. Peel them – you can actually use a regular peeler for this, though it helps to have a sharp paring knife to get the stem and hard-to-reach rind bits off. Peel it deeply enough that you get rid of all the green and rind.

Find a baking pan large enough to hold all the pumpkin pieces in a single layer. Use multiple pans, if need be. Cover the pumpkin pieces in the oil (yes, really, use all of it), and place them hollow side up in the pan(s). Pour the sugar evenly over the pumpkin pieces (yes, really, just grit your teeth and use all of it; if you have a small child, you may find it easier to have them do this part for you, and you can look away until they’re done).

Cover the pan(s) with aluminum foil. Bake for 2 1/2 hours, then baste the pieces with the pan juices, cover them up again, and bake for another 45 minutes.

The sugar will all melt away and end up partially absorbed. The pumpkin pieces will turn dark orange and translucent. They will have a stunningly novel texture. It is a beautiful thing.

Make the yogurt sauce:

Mix all the ingredients together. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to serve.

Make the meat sauce:

Brown the onions in the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the meat and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until it is broken up into small pieces and the pinkness is almost entirely gone. Add all other ingredients (except for the tomato paste and water) and cook, stirring, for another 5 minutes or so. Stir in the tomato paste, then add the water and bring to a boil. (Really, it will probably boil as soon as it touches the pan.) Lower the heat and let simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes.

Serve:

Hot pumpkin, topped with cold yogurt sauce, topped with hot meat sauce.

I was so excited when I saw cabbage-stuffed peppers on a menu in Hungary. How wonderful, I thought. But when I ordered them, they turned out to be pickled. I’m sure that is delightful to some of you, but personally, I do not like pickled anything. (Oh, all right, Japanese pickled ginger. And mango slices pickled with habañeros very briefly in a jar of salt water in the fridge, used later in making sauces.)

When I got home, I decided to try making cabbage-stuffed peppers the way I had originally imagined them to be: cabbage sauteed with sugar and cinnamon, almost as if you were making strudel, stuffed into fresh bell peppers, then roasted to perfection.

These end up soft and sweet, very richly flavored, and sometimes with a touch of bitterness depending on your peppers. If you are concerned about that last, you may want to throw together a tomato sauce to serve them in. That would reduce their finger food managability, but I imagine it would appeal to some palates.

At some point, I may have to post my family recipes for more traditional stuffed peppers and stuffed cabbage. If only I could get over the fear that my mother would never forgive me if I did.

Sweet Roasted Káposzta Töltött Paprika (Cabbage-Stuffed Peppers)
Cut tops off of sweet bell peppers, and remove their innards. Stuff them full of the cabbage filling (recipe below). Place in a lightly oiled roasting pan and roast at 375º for an hour or so, turning them over halfway through if necessary.

Cabbage Filling
1 medium cabbage
2 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
olive oil
salt
black pepper

Pull off the most wretched outer leaves of the cabbage, and rinse the rest. Chop it up into chunks that your food processor can handle, but remember to remove and toss out the core. Grind pretty finely in your food processor.

Mix the ground cabbage with plenty of salt and leave covered in your fridge for at least two hours. The point here is to allow the salt to draw some water out of the cabbage. Once that’s done, you rinse off the salt and squeeze as much water as you can out of the cabbage.

Saute the cabbage in a saucepan with some olive oil, along with the sugar, cinnamon, and salt and black pepper to taste.

These are made in much the same manner as the last stuffed zucchini blossoms I posted about, except that they are filled with spicy duck breast instead of the sweet cheese filling I used before. I am so excited that this time we found blossoms with baby zucchini attached! I think someday I will have to try to grow squash of my own, so I can play like this more often.

Perhaps they are too similar to the ones I made before, and not entirely worth posting about themselves. But I did so want to share the photos.

Duck-Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

Step 1: Cover duck breast in a paste made of olive oil and the Moroccan spice mix ras al hanout. Bake, fat side up, until it reaches an internal temperature of 160°. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Step 2: Rinse your zucchini blossoms and remove their internal organs.

Step 3: Grind the duck breast in your food processor, then mix in the cooked spice paste to smooth out the texture and add flavor.

Step 4: Stuff the blossoms with the duck.

Step 5: Coat with batter (2/3 C flour mixed with 1 C seltzer) and fry until golden.

Step 6: Sprinkle on coarse salt.