I finally got around to putting together a video from the footage I took during our Feast of the Seven Fishes this past Christmas Eve.
It was the first time I've done video editing like this - it was frustrating at first, but fun once I familiarized myself with the editing software (Sony Vegas).
Update: Check out our video of this Feast of the Seven Fishes.
Another year, another crazy multi-course Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner for two on Christmas Eve. Since we've been eating so much great local fish and seafood this year, we decided to keep with that theme and source everything as locally as we could.
The produce came from our garden, the oysters were from Carlsbad Aqua Farm, and the rest is local fish (primarily Baja caught) from Catalina Offshore Products.
We started early in the afternoon and cooked and ate through the evening. Here are the dishes in the order we had them:
Halibut Clementine Ceviche
We picked clementines from the communal tree at our garden, and used the juice (along with some lime) to make a simple Halibut ceviche. Some finely chopped onion and fresh chiles (used to marinate, but not served) accentuated the delicate flavor of the fish.
Rock Cod and Potato Ravioli with Marjoram Tomato Sauce
Based on one of our favorite dishes from Mario Batali's Holiday Food - Ravioli alla Spigola, with Rock Cod replacing Sea Bass. The marjoram (picked fresh from our patio) tomato sauce is what really makes this dish. The freshly made pasta doesn't hurt, either...
Smoked Fish Duo - Quick-Pickled Breakfast Radish and Beet - Snap Peas
Each year there seems to be one dish where we spend way too much time messing with silly plating. Last year it was our Niçoise Tuna Skewers. This year it was this smoked fish dish. The fish is Opah (in front) and local Sea Bass (in back). Both fish were nice, but the Opah was particularly good.
Pacific Oysters
We kept the oysters simple this year. Pacific Oysters from Carlsbad Aqua Farm that we slurped down with a little bit of classic mignonette.
Shrimp al Mojo de Ajo
I can't fathom why we've never done a mojo de ajo dish before. We'll certainly be doing it again, as this may have been my favorite dish of the meal. The Mexican White Shrimp from Catalina Offshore are so good that you don't need to do much to them. Soft, sweet garlic from the mojo, some cilantro and a squeeze of lime. Perfect.
Sculpin with Roasted Golden Beets and Beet Greens
Simply prepared with a little bit of vermouth-tinged pan sauce. The Sculpin was good, but the beets were even better. We love golden beets - all of that rich beet flavor without the crimson mess of a red beet.
So there you have it - this year's seven-fish feast. Six dishes, seven fishes, two very content diners.
Happy Holidays!
We've been remiss in following up on the Guanciale we made earlier this year. We just recently cooked the last few remaining bits of it, so I figure now is a good time to revisit it.
Guanciale is a cured meat that is much like Pancetta, except that it is made with jowl instead of belly. We cured ours with a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, cracked black peppercorns and fresh thyme. This is what it looked like after about a week:
Then it was hung in the meat fridge until it was quite firm, but not too dried out - a little over three weeks. When it was done, it came out looking like this:
We've used it in a number of dishes, but I want to highlight a couple. First, some Guanciale and Smoked Cheddar Sliders we made this summer:
And, of course, perhaps the most classic guanciale dish - Bucatini all'Amatriciana. We've been wanting to make this for a while, but we hadn't been able to find bucatini locally. We finally broke down and ordered some online.
The dish is extremely simple. We rendered down diced guanciale with some red onion and olive oil, added in some of Mario Batali's Basic Tomato Sauce, tossed it with cooked bucatini and served it with some grated Pecorino Romano:
Lovely, rich dish.
So Sherry is out of town for a couple of days and I'm on my own.
It feels very strange pulling out just a single glass from the cupboard.
It feels even stranger being completely responsible for dinner!
In case you haven't guessed already by reading previous posts of ours, while I may be the source of much of the inspiration for what we do, Sherry is very much in charge when it comes to the execution.
Last night, being temporarily responsible for both the inspiration *and* the execution, it was all on me to figure out what to make for dinner. It needed to be heavy on the inspiration, while at the same time being easy on the execution. I went with a simple, summer-focused tomato pasta dish based on ideas I got from this thread on eGullet. It isn't so much a recipe as it is a simple process and a state of mind.
While making breakfast, I also chopped up a few cloves of garlic (four, I think). I put the garlic in a medium-sized bowl and generously covered it with extra virgin olive oil. Don't hold back on the olive oil, since that is the only fat in the dish and we want the richness that it provides.
If that looks like a lot of garlic to you, have no fear - it mellows nicely. If you aren't a big garlic fan, I guess you could use less. Or just make a different dish...
The olive-oil-covered garlic just sits at room temperature on the kitchen counter for the day - the flavor of the garlic slowly leaching out into the oil.
A few hours before I wanted to have dinner, I diced up a couple of good-sized tomatoes (around 10oz, total) and popped them into the garlic oil. I added a few generous pinches of kosher salt, gave it a quick stir, and then left it alone for a while longer.
After a few hours with the odd stir now and then (and admittedly stealing bits of tomato "to make sure it tastes right") the mixture was transformed. The tomatoes softened and gave up much of their juices to mix with the oil to become a rich, fragrant sauce.
At this point, I admit that I could happily spoon this stuff into my mouth now and call it a day. I smells amazing and tasted event better. But, we need to control ourselves and do a bit more to pull the dish together.
Heat some water, salt it generously, grab some spaghetti (we keep ours in an Oban canister, don't you?) and toss it in to cook. And yes, "grab some" is the measurement. I told you in advance this wasn't really a recipe!
When the spaghetti is ready, drain it and mix it in the pasta pot with the tomato sauce. Serve it in a bowl and top it with a chiffonade of basil. What? You don't have a chiffonade of basil? Neither did I, but I quickly rectified the situation. I told you in advance this was more a state of mind than a recipe...
The result was exactly what I was looking for. Richness from the olive oil, pungent depth from the garlic, and drawn together perfectly by the essence of the tomato.
All in all, I think I did pretty well.
I'm still very much looking to having Sherry back tomorrow, though.
I find myself endlessly fascinated by the various cuisines of the world. On the one hand I am intrigued by their diverse styles and flavors. On the other, I'm often also struck by things that they have in common.
Case in point - the similarities and differences among the foods of Southern Europe and North Africa - the "two sides of the Mediterranean", if you will.
One evening we made a Moroccan Lamb Meatball Tagine:
After my initial reaction (I love it!), I thought about how the tomato base in the tagine reminded me of an Italian pasta sauce (and an Indian curry sauce as well, but that is another story altogether). As is often the case, I was planning another dish while eating the current one (something Sherry finds frustrating).
In this case, the next dish was to use the leftover meatballs and sauce with pasta (taking it to the "North Side" of the Mediterranean). The pasta we used was Campanelle, which is named after its characteristic trumpet shape.
The result was very nice indeed. Probably even more enjoyably than the original dish.
Bolstered by this success, we decided to try using the tagine as a pizza topping. It seemed fitting, since various forms of flatbread are a staple of cultures on both sides of the Mediterranean. Pictured at the top of this post, and below, the resulting pie was wonderful:
We cooked the pizza on the grill, of course. Everything came together in a perfect conglomeration of flavors and textures. I just hope we can re-create it.
And we've got more Lamb "Tagineballs" safely stowed away for whatever other cross-cultural experiment we come up with next.
Lamb Meatball Banh Mi, perhaps? Maybe some tacos? On a breakfast sandwich? In a soup?
We'll see...
Sherry's folks, who live in Washington State near Mt. Rainier, go foraging for morel mushrooms every spring. Their success varies from year to year, but this past spring they hit the mother lode. What they don't consume immediately, they dry for later use - some of which get sent to grateful non-foragers like ourselves.
Unable to restrain ourselves, we decided to use about a third of our mushroom care package in a single go. Sherry whipped up a batch of fresh tagliatelle and we measured out about an ounce of the dried mushrooms (they are very light):
After reconstituting them in some warm water and then squeezing them dry, they are ready to use just like fresh ones.
Like most mushrooms, Morels have an affinity for butter. We fried them up with a little garlic and salt until lightly browned in spots.
Stir in a few tablespoons of cream, sprinkles of Pecorino Romano, black pepper and fresh parsley and you have a finished sauce, just lightly coating the pasta.
Tagliatelle with Morels. Earthy, nutty and rich tasting. We have a limited supply of morels, but we just may have to make this dish again.
Here is the recipe that Sherry improvised:
Tagliatelle with Morels
Serves 2.
6 ounces fresh tagliatelle
approx 1 ounce dried morel mushrooms
1 tablespoon butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
3-4 tablespoons cream
1 tablespoon grated Pecorino Romano
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Rehydrate the mushrooms in a bowl of warm water for about 30 minutes. Remove the mushrooms and squeeze them to remove excess water. Place on a towel to dry a few minutes. (Keep the soaking water for use in other recipes.)
Heat a pan over medium high, add butter, garlic and morels. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and cook until mushrooms are browned in spots. Drop the fresh pasta into boiling, salted water and cook for 2-3 minutes. Reduce the mushroom heat to low, stir in the cream and heat gently 1-2 minutes to thicken slightly. Add the cheese, parsley and black pepper. Slowly add the cooked, drained pasta and toss to coat evenly with sauce. Divide into warm bowls and serve immediately.
We recently smoked some mackerel, and for some reason it occurred to me that it might be good in Mac N' Cheese. It was. Maybe it should be called Mack N' Mac N' Cheese?
We like to use a nice, creamy cheese sauce for our Mac N' Cheese. We start with a basic milk-based white sauce to which we add sautéed shallot and a variety of cheeses (generally whatever we have in the fridge). This time, we used Gruyere and Irish Shannon, along with some Emmentaler, Mozzarella, and Sharp Cheddar that we had cold-smoked with apple and pecan wood.
We purchased the mackerel at Zion Market, a Korean market in Kearny Mesa. Here it is after being beheaded and cleaned:
After a quick brine, an overnight dry and 3 hours in the smoker (hot-smoked with hickory wood), here is what it looked like:
The smokiness from the mackerel and the smoked cheeses blended really nicely with the saltiness of the fish - this is a combo we'll definitely make again. Maybe with smoked salmon next time?
