As the guy who wants to be the great cook I make a few chef-like observations so that I can focus on the simple joys of cooking for friends. Let’s take a look at the ballpark.
So the ballpark today includes: the flavors of the Mediterranean, a great kitchen, and my wonderful hosts (Jim and Beth) who have a fairly adventurous palettes. Grilled fresh fish filet (grouper it turned out) with romesco-style sauce, broccoli rabe in pesto, and brown rice. This meal follows the day of pasta gluttony, so something healthy and light was at the forefront of our minds. Dinner for three was on the way.
After the day of pasta gluttony I proceeded to the Connecticut to meet up with a college buddy and cook some dinner. It has been 16 years since we have seen each other and thankfully we are the same twisted individuals we were then but a bit wiser. His kitchen is the antithesis of most kitchens I cook in; six-burner stove with a griddle, horsepower-laden ventilation for said stove, counter space the size of a Chevy Malibu, and the requisite selection of culinary toys to be found in a upper-class suburban kitchen. Gotta love the toys! After the day of butter at the pasta store I needed to move on to the Mediterranean. So, at Jim’s insistence, we went to Stew Leonard's for the dinner fixins.
Stew Leonard’s is a unique grocery store that includes singing animatronic lettuce, dairy products, bread, and other items dancing about. The aisles are really a maze that has some interesting shopping sociology going on. What the store lacked in interesting spices is made up for in fresh fish. Choosing fish is simple: smell it. The more is smells like the sea and less like fish the better off you are. For white flesh fish like grouper, cod, trout, halibut, sea bass, snapper, walleye, perch, mackerel, swordfish, the flesh is light, translucent, and rebounds when pressed.
We bought:
- 26 ounces of grouper, skin on (keep the skin on for grilling a white fleshed fish to keep it moister)
- 1-12 ounce tub basil pesto. In the end this saved time and money, as the basil in the bin didn’t look good
- anyway.
- 1-6 ounce can of tomato sauce (simple, no meat or mushrooms, you may already have something in your fridge.) Please don’t use fresh tomatoes in March in the Northeast!
- 2 bulbs of garlic (we actually already had some at home, but what the hell)
- 1 small baguette with asiago cheese (sounded great, but we ended up eating the hearth loaf. Use later.)
- 1 big old round loaf of hearth bread - which we ate a lot of.
The broccoli rabe was chosen because as we walked by it Jim mentioned that his wife loved broccoli rabe. Since I made no inquiries about what other vegetables his wife liked, I guess I might just be growing up after all. I also had never met his wife so it made sense to keep the Freudian jibes out of the conversation for now.
Rice was chosen because Jim already had it at home. This is the first thing you get cooking when you get home because the brown rice is a 45-minute cook time. Grab the box or bag, follow cooking directions, and on to the fish
Place grouper in a pan skin side town (aka flesh side up), then grate a teaspoon of the orange rind (or zest) onto the fish, a sprinkle of sea salt and a few turns of the pepper mill, and rub into the flesh. Grab a heaping tablespoon of the pesto and rub that into the fish and set aside. Wash your hands well before proceeding.
At this point Jim's wife Beth had pulled out some emmanthaler cheese with crackers. To which we added the pesto and the end cuts from the loaf of bread. I also had some Marcona almonds with me that I thought I might put in the romesco, but instead we ate them with the cheese. They taste like a cross between almond and macadamia nuts, yummy.
Rinse the broccoli rabe with victory vegetable spray or slightly soapy water, then rinse with cold water. Soap can help kill contaminants and will dissolve many pest/herbicides/fungicides which are oil-based. Put on a 4-quart pot of water seasoned with a tablespoon of salt over medium heat so it is at the ready to blanch (i.e. par cook or quick-dip) the rabe right before service (i.e.: dinner).
At this point, it is 7:30 in the evening. We arrived back home at 7 p.m. and their two beautiful daughters were due to beddie-bye at 8 p.m. The rice should be done by 7:55 pm; we called from the store to make sure the grill had gas. Their chosen wine was a Rioja Crianza (which means young wine) and dessert was some fantastic truffles I had bought from a gal named Kee in Soho (Thai Chili dark chocolate genache, yum) around the corner from Eddie's restaurant, Savore.
Romesco sauce is a favorite of mine because it can be made very healthy, rich, and would taste great on the grilled fish and can help with the bitterness of broccoli rabe. You’ll notice the similarity between this method and the method of the “refried red beans.” The starch is cooked to desired doneness, seasoned along the way, pureed, then a final seasoning and oil added to bring your desired consistency. It is the same basic principle with a few twists added.
So, over low heat soften two cloves of smashed garlic in ¼ cup of the most neutral oil you have in the cupboard (we used up some old soybean oil and almond oil. It really doesn’t matter which oil you use because it is really has no smell or flavor. If the oil smells offensive in any way, just throw it out. But the oil you use is a courier for other flavors in this case, so you don’t need to pull out the 25 dollar an ounce olive oil to make this sauce. But if you end up drizzling the final product with a bit of that Christmas gift oil, well then more power to ya.
Add 2 cups of one inch dice baguette in to the pan, toss, brown, and crisp for about five minutes. Add your almonds next and toast briefly. If your almonds are already toasted then add them at the end of this step so they don’t burn.
The bread and garlic are wafting a toasty perfume, the color is good, and Jim's wife mentioned how good the pan's waft was, then…….
- Add 2 T Paprika (smoked if you want) and 1 t Turmeric, and stir for 30 seconds.
- Add a ½ cup red or white wine (this is for acid, if you don’t have or want to use wine then skip.) and bring it to a boil.
- Add half of the can of tomato sauce stir and simmer season with sea salt and a few twists of pepper.
At this point you should have the consistency of juicy croutons. If it needs more juice you can add a bit of chicken stock or you can proceed as I did.
Dump the mixture into a big food processor and find out that the blade to the food processor is not functioning. Kinda like a Boy George T-Shirt at biker rally. No sweat, there is a smaller food processor. So add half the mixture to a small food processor (about one cup of mix) with the juice of 1 orange and 2T sherry vinegar. Pulse that little mini food processor and hope it doesn’t blow up. I have had two blenders go poof before (making bean soup) and the electrical smell from this bugger was a bit concerning. But Jim was convinced his machine was fine (“a little pain is good for it”). If it dies, I guess we’ll go shopping for a new one.
Well the little processor did well and we added about a half cup of oil until the puree was smooth.
Tasted bland, so add a tablespoon of prepared mustard, salt, and a dash of hot sauce. Puree and taste, mine just needed a little more salt.
When I am in the mood for a sauce I put it on everything, and so it was. The fish was light and flaky, the broccoli rabe was a bit bitter, and at some point the grill was going up in smoke. Seems that Jim decided put the grill on high after we cooked to burn it clean -- and burn it did. We were talking and I looked out on the deck to see the grill giving off and excessive amount of smoke. We turned off the gas and lifted the lid. A huge plume of white smoke did its own wafting skyward and we could see that the enamel was burning and peeling off the inside of the grill. “I guess I didn’t clean it last fall,” Jim said.
Hmmmm. What real man doesn’t want to buy a new grill in the spring anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment