Swordfish with lemon butter and capers

Some ingredients aren't meant to be tasted; they're present to make other things better.

There's molecular gastronomy - where you might want to make a raspberry into a foam - and there's food science. I'm not a big fan of molecular gastronomy. Too many chemicals with names I don't recognize, things that I doubt are healthy.

Food science, on the other hand, looks at the interface between what's in the food and how we perceive it. So, how to improve on a recipe that I've been making for over twenty years?

The basic recipe is to take great quality swordfish, thick steaks whisked here from the most pristine water possible (no such thing as "pristine" but still...). The fish is seasoned with salt and pepper, then sautéed in vegetable oil, put aside before it's completely cooked. A pan sauce gets built with the fond: a quick sauté of some capers, white wine to deglaze, reduce, add butter then lemon juice, adjust seasoning, pour over the fish and serve.

That was my old recipe, from before I started reading about glutamate receptors and how to increase the perception of richness and depth of flavor. So, armed with a bit of knowledge (enough to be dangerous?) I began my mise en place. Celery paste, garlic paste, nuoc mam (nam pla) shiitake mushroom powder and shallots step into the equation.

The sauté process remains the same - that part is all good science, Maillard reaction, all that stuff. The fun begins once the fish is out of the pan, holding in the oven. Sauté the shallot paste, then the celery, then the garlic - deglaze with white wine, add a tiny dash of nuoc mam, throw in the mushroom powder, reduce, add butter, lemon juice, adjust seasoning, pour over fish and serve.

The result? Much richer, a sauce that segues from flavor to flavor, lingering. The trilogy of fish, wine and sauce works well, with nothing dominating.

So, here's the theory. The nuoc mam, shiitake powder and celery paste all supply glutamates that stimulate umami receptors in the palate, making the food taste more rich and savory. None of them were there to provide their own flavor - the mushroom powder and nuoc mam, in fact, were undetectable by mere mortals. It's all a question of proportion, like most things in cooking.

So, eleven ingredients for the sauce, but they definitely take the dish to a new level.

salt - flavor stimulant
pepper - flavoring
capers - flavoring
lemon juice - flavoring and acidifier
nuoc mam - umami (anchovy paste would probably work as well)
shiitake powder - umami
celery - glutamates, again - for umami
shallots - flavor
white wine - flavor, acidifier
garlic - flavor, and umami again
butter - mouth feel, richness

Of these ingredients, the ones you're likely to actually taste are the salt, pepper, capers, wine and lemon. The other ingredients are in smaller quantities and will blend in to support the dish without stepping up and screaming.

Summer Seafood Celebration

Champagne for starters

Italian Prosciutto and Alpina salami, fresh sweet basil

 Then on to the main wine: Soave

Rosemary & olive oil ciabatta

Swordfish with caper sauce, roast fennel, fennel purée, broiled heirloom tomato

We probably should have started with Pastis 51, considering that this was a birthday where we could match numbers - except I prefer Champagne and it goes better with food. All discussion of Champagne with dessert was quickly vetoed, since Annette already chose a nice bottle of Brut. Brut Champagne with sweet desserts tastes like vinegar mixed with lemon juice. Paired with savory dishes, however, the acid in the Champagne cleanses the palate and dances well with the food instead of peeing on its leg and stepping on its feet. This Champagne exuded aromas of fresh citrus with some grapefruit thrown in, not much yeast to speak of. It was destined for the charcuterie plate that came before the main course.

I love charcuterie plates, especially when I'm both chef and celebrant. All they need is decent plating, a garnish and people who aren't afraid of a bit of nitrites. These meats came via Claro's Italian Market, imported directly from Italy. Yes, there is a difference between real imported Prosciutto and that domestic stuff. Richer, fuller, perhaps a tad less salty. The Alpina salami is somewhat like the offspring of Prosciutto and Pancetta with a nice note of black pepper to keep things interesting.

We netted some nice bottles of Soave for the main course. This wine got lots of points from one of those Fancy Wine Guys, yet it's affordable (at least for now). Dry with nice notes of fruit, it's the ideal bride for most seafood. Since we hadn't yet been to the fish market, we would pick the fish to accompany the wine for an acid fruitiness tango with savory fin food.

The main course was supposed to be herb-grilled striped bass. Until we got to the fish market. Ugh. Those poor fish looked about four to five days old, slightly sunken eyes, gills removed, dull scales starting to present a rough appearance. So, 86 the bass. The Alaskan halibut looked nice - glistening thick steaks at $28 per pound. Ouch. How about swordfish?

Swordfish is one of those environmentally ambiguous fish species, going from Avoid to Best Choice, depending on its origin and how it was caught. If it's from the United States, odds are it's acceptable, so you can eat it without an extra helping of guilt. And it goes well with Soave.

Since the meal was centered on summer, the plate was finished with roast fennel, fennel purée and a thick slice of grilled heirloom tomato.

As it turns out, the fennel purée was the most complicated dish to prepare. First, the fennel was sliced into quarter inch slabs, placed on a parchment paper lined baking sheet with some garlic cloves,  sprinkled with EVOO, kosher salt and black pepper and placed in a 375° oven.

While the fennel was roasting, some chicken stock mixed with fresh thyme and bay leaves went on the stove, with a few sweet red peppers tossed in to soften.

The decorative, center sliced pieces of fennel were reserved for a garnish/vegetable. The rest got roughly chopped to medium dice, mixed with a bit of the stock, the baked garlic, and the rest of the sweet red peppers and puréed with a bit of EVOO added.

The heirloom tomatoes were cut into half inch rounds, sprinkled with a bit of EVOO, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and set aside for broiling once the oven was free.

The fish was relatively simple, and could be done at the last minute. Sauté the steaks in a stainless steel pan, add white wine, capers, a bit of fine brunoise from the cooked sweet red peppers, sea salt, black pepper. Monter au beurre, add fresh squeezed lemon juice and pour over the fish when plating.

Next year, they promised to take me out for my birthday. I guess it's a balance between what this meal would cost in a restaurant and the fuss of preparing it at home (four people x charcuterie plate, Champagne, swordfish steaks. Two bottles of Soave. Dessert. Espresso coffee. Armagnac digestif = $$$$). Balance that with the risk of paying a lot of money and being disappointed - or cruising East L.A. for tacos, cemitas or tortas - or Monterey Park for dim sum and forgetting about anything fancy.

Buttermilk fish & chips

 

It was a dark but not yet stormy night. The storm was on its way, though. Rain was in the air as the trees bent in the wind. An ideal night for some comforting pub food.

This recipe started with an idea to use a thinner, lighter batter but still have moist, flavorful fish. I did not want to fool with beer batter, yeast, and a thick crust with a lot of flavor, since the goal was to bring out the fish's natural flavor and just use the batter for a bit of crunch and as a coating. The fish should be the star, after all. Instead, the fish is left in some salted buttermilk to act as a brine and get more moisture into the fish before frying. The buttermilk will also act as glue to hold the flour mixture onto the fish during frying.

I suppose I should mention that this type of cooking has an element of risk. Doing things the old school way is not the same as sticking things in a microwave and waiting for the "bing". 

Hot oil overflowing onto an open flame creates a grease fire - not a good thing, and definitely best avoided. This typically happens when your fryer has too much oil, too close to the rim. When you add the food, the moisture on its surface will flash into steam, creating bubbles. All those bubbles - combined with the food itself, will raise the level of the oil. If you have too much oil, it will overflow right onto an open flame (if you're doing this over a burner). Badaboom! Danger! No eyebrows! Always add the food slowly, even when you're certain that the oil level is fine. Dropping the food into the oil is never a good idea in any case, since hot oil hurts, leaves unsightly red welts on your skin and is overall bad form if you're trying to appear expert and cheflike.

Maybe this is a good time to check that you have appropriate materials on hand to extinguish a small kitchen inferno appropriately, too.

Never, ever use water to put out a grease fire! Remember the Wizard of Oz? Do you really want that fireball in your kitchen or in your face? No, I didn't think so. Water is heavier than oil, so what happens when you get a lot of it in the fryer is that it sinks to the bottom of the oil and flashes into steam, shooting burning oil everywhere.

If all this sounds too scary, maybe you should bake the fries and fish instead - but that's another recipe. This recipe is the real thing, hot oil, potatoes, fish. If the oven is too much a challenge, well, there's always frozen stuff and a microwave, the mainstay of cooking-challenged people everywhere - although at this point I'd rather brave the approaching storm and head for a local pub.

The Fish 

Ingredients

The Fish

• Black rockfish fillets, sliced into four inch chunks. Debone the fillets first (fish or needlenose pliers work great for this). You could also use some other type of white fish with firm flesh. If you opt for salmon, remember that your oil will be forever imbued with a good dose of fishiness. Remember to use sustainable seafood, whatever your choice!
• Buttermilk to cover fillets
• Sea salt
• Aleppo pepper (chile flakes)
• Black pepper

The flour for dredging

• All purpose flour
• Morton sea salt flakes
• A bit of kosher salt (since the flakes won't all stick)
• Aleppo pepper
• Black pepper

Process

1. Mix the buttermilk, salt and peppers together, pour over the fish, mix everything together so that each piece of fish is well coated. Place in refrigerator for at least two hours.
2. Mix the flour, salt, peppers together and set aside in a large mixing bowl suitable for dredging the fish.
3. Heat a suitable vegetable oil to a point where a chip (piece of potato) bubbles energetically when dipped into the oil. It doesn't have to be smoking, and it's probably a good idea that it's not.
4. Dredge the fish in the flour mixture, making sure that the pieces are well coated. When removing the fillets, shake them a bit to remove excess flour.
5. Your oil should be nice and hot at this point. Slowly dip the fish into the hot oil and let go. Don't drop it in unless you like oil burns all over your forearms. The fish will cook much quicker than the fries, so stagger the two processes.
6. When the fish is golden brown, remove it from the oil, turn off the heat and set it on a rack or screen to let the excess oil drip off.

The Chips

The chips should not come out of a large bag that's been in a freezer for an unknown amount of time. They should be cut from scrubbed Russet potatoes, sliced and done in a three step process just like in Belgium. No, they're not French. Just ask a Belgian if you don't believe me.

Ingredients

• Russet potatoes, julienned. If you have a mandoline, you can slice them quickly. If you're a gadget freak, you can get a gizmo that mounts on the wall and slices them just about instantly. If you have a really great, razor sharp knife you can do them all by hand.
• Salt, pepper for tossing on the finished chips

Process

1. Soak the potatoes in water, preferably overnight. If you're in more of a hurry, you can rinse the potatoes until the water is clear and soak them for less time. This is to remove excess starch for crispier chips.
2. About an hour before showtime, heat a suitable high temperature vegetable oil. Use a frying pan or fryer that's deep enough to cover the fries yet have ample room between the top of the fryer and the surface of the oil. The fries will bubble energetically when they go in, raising the surface of the oil so it's essential that this can all happen inside the fryer. 
3. Place the fries in the oil slowly. This lets you avoid splashing and consequent burns, and also lets you verify that you didn't put too much oil in the fryer. If the bubbles get almost to the top, save the rest of the fries for a later batch. 
4. Fry the potatoes until they start to get limp, not golden. That's the next step. Leave the potatoes to cool off. Don't worry about draining off excess oil at this point, since you're going to re-fry the chips anyway. Turn off the heat under the oil.
5. Before meal time, start heating the oil. Since you may need to fry the chips in batches, allow time for multiple fryings as needed (you can heat the oil for the fish so it's ready too - just be careful not to overheat it while you're doing the chips).
6. Fry the chips until they're just a nice golden brown. Drain off the excess fat.
7. Toss the chips with some salt and pepper and serve immediately. If all went well, you've also cooked the fish and everything is in perfect synchronization. 

Place the fish over the fries, garnish with a lemon wedge and dinner is ready. If you insist on being very British, make sure you have some malt vinegar on hand.

Oysters: If I can get them, how come...?

 There they are! Right there, not even 100 miles away

 I'd show you how tasty they look, but oops! They got eaten!

I'd show you the wonderful greenish-gold color of the wine, but it's gone too

Any person can just drive over to Tomales Bay or Point Reyes, walk into the store at an oyster farm, and buy as many as they want (if you want hundreds, calling first is a good idea). You can just put them in a cooler on ice, bring them back, and enjoy super fresh seafood. All in less than a day's time.

I suppose there might even be fishermen along the Northern California coast, not too far away, doing  sustainable harvesting. If they're going out in day boats, their fish should be cleaned and iced right after it's caught so when the boat arrives the fish is in prime condition ready to prepare.

California has Dungeness crabs, and there might even be tasty shrimp that could be trap caught too. We've bought live crab in Bodega Bay, and it was fresh and snapping.

So, this all seems obvious, doesn't it? Go to the coast, give someone money, bring back absolutely fresh seafood, prepare it, eat it. Simple. I can do it. You can probably do it. So why can't supermarkets do it?

The last time I was at our local supermarket, the fish looked like it was one step ahead of being made into fish sauce. It was limp, slimy looking and lay flopped over the ice like a beached jellyfish. The trout was bloody, with sunken eyes. The salmon was farmed, colorant added, yet looked mushy. The shellfish looked like it expired while frozen, gaping open.

Can't something be done to make the seafood counter an anticipated destination? Seafood is more expensive every day, yet the quality is dropping faster than you can say bathyscaphe.

I, an individual, can go to the coast and buy what I want. But I can't get it here in the supermarket. Huh? These are supposed to be professional food distributors and sellers, yet they can't manage to stock their cases with anything worthy of accompanying a simple Entre-deux-Mers?

What about an online ordering system, where people could pay in advance and the seafood would be shipped as fresh as possible for the delivery date? What about not stocking limp, flaccid stinking trout? If the fish is borderline, why even bother selling it? How about doing away with all that non-sustainable farmed salmon altogether and telling people to wait for the real stuff in to come into season?

Why have a seafood counter at all, when half of it is just thawed out sea protein. Might as well just leave the stuff in the freezer! Have people grown as flaccid as that half-melted tilapia fillet, that they can't even thaw their own shrimp? What if the seafood case really had only the best quality fish, and the rest of that crap they're selling were sold off as cat food (don't make a habit of it though - mercury isn't good for kitties, either).

Maybe you're reading this thinking that fish normally smells like someone forgot to clean the aquarium. Maybe you think it should rival California's famous Banana Slug in sliminess. Maybe dull, sunken eyes and brown (or missing) gills don't tell you anything. So, here is (another) quick review on how to select fresh fish. (If you're an expert fishmonger or piscivore you can stop reading here and get back to the mise en place for your beurre blanc.)

Is that fish fresh? Check this:

Fish

• Firm flesh, briny odor, not fishy
• Smooth, but not slimy. Your fingers should come away from the fillet with a light coating of fishiness, not coated with slime.
• whole fish should have bright, shiny eyes that bulge. Not dull, sunken pits with black holes in the center.
• The fish's gills should be light to medium pink. They should still be attached to the fish, not missing. If someone cut them off, was it because they were deep red and slimy?
• For fish with scales, the scales should lie flat on the fish and not have gaps.

Shellfish

• Clams closed, or will close when tapped. No, you can't check this by tapping the case, so it's not too practical. Same for mussels.
• Shrimp: buy them frozen (unless they're alive), from a sustainable source, preferably wild. Thaw them yourself.
• Oysters? Well, I've never been brave enough to buy these in a supermarket. Obviously, they should stay tightly closed. So tightly that you need a special knife and some skill to open them without exploding the shell and spewing particles of shell all over the meat.
• Squid: buy it frozen. It probably arrived at the store that way.

If you want to see really nice, fresh fish head for Sunh Fish in the Asian Foods Center on Broadway or Oto's Marketplace. When it comes to fish, those guys don't mess around. Be aware that both sell non-sustainable fish, so do your homework or arrive with your Seafood Watch card in hand. Or if you're geeky, there's an app for that, too.  Just click here.

Valentines Day - a (très romantique) dinner for 2 humans & 1 cat

First, there might be something to going out to a nice restaurant: no dishes. However, I doubt that we could have afforded this meal:

• Vol-au-vent avec crevettes, vent d'Asie: shrimp, snow peas, garlic chives, shrimp stock in bechamel inside puff pastry shell. Garnished with purple bok choy from our garden.
• Steamed Dungeness crab, Crabandaise sauce, baguettes à l'ancien.
•  Fourme d'Ambert blue cheese
• Meli-Melo de gourmandises: truffes au chocolate noir legerement orangés, fleurons de pâte feuillétée, Valentine's day candies.

___

Cremant d'Alsace rosé
Vin Blanc du Cotes de Gascogne

The cat got some steamed crab, no sauce.
Thanks Teresa for the Valentine candies!
Ripping apart recently deceased crustaceans with your (almost) bare hands and devouring them is sooo romantic!

Shrimp Po'Boy (actually Lazy Boy)

Sometimes you just get an idea. There's no trace of where it came from, but it grabs you and won't let go until you try it out. This is not a simple sandwich, with several steps that need coordination, so that just makes the process that much more mysterious.

It was a dark but not stormy night, after a long day. This however was not enough to stop me once possessed by the concept of tweaking a po'boy so that all the ingredients were either seasonal for winter or previously frozen. So, no tomatoes. I was out of lettuce, and did not have or want some of the other traditional ingredients. But then a real poor boy would not run out to buy ingredients that he couldn't grow or didn't already have, would he? Gas is expensive.

So, the sauce became a spicy Hollandaise variant using home made vinegar, three kinds of chilis and salt. The greens became garden fresh arugula. The shrimp was the real deal, frozen Louisiana Gulf shrimp. The relish was caramelized onions and garlic. The bread, rosemary levain - a bit chewy perhaps but with a flavor that would go great with the other ingredients.

After all was said and done, it was quite a tasty sandwich. The dishwashing was less tasty, since all this stuff could not easily be combined into one or two pans.

Winter Shrimp Po'Boy
Serves two hungry people as a meal or four as an appetizer (just cut bread into 3" long pieces)

Ingredients

• 2 pieces of Rosemary levain baguette, about 6" long, sliced lengthwise to about 1/2" of the other side, leaving a "hinge"
• 4-5 Gulf shrimp, 16/20 size, cleaned and de-veined, cut into two pieces
• About 2-3 Tbsp each Corn meal / cake flour mixture for dusting
• 2 eggs, about 1/2 cup milk mixture for dredging
• Aleppo chili powder to taste
• 3 large leaves of arugula
• 6 Tbsp onions, small dice or brunoise
• 1-2 cloves garlic, small dice or brunoise
• New Mexico chili powder to taste
• Pimenton agridulce to taste
• Oil for frying shrimp
• 2 egg yolks for sauce
• 4-5 Tbsp. butter, cut into 1/2" - 3/4" cubes
• 4 Tbsp. or so Red wine vinegar
• Oil for sauteing onions

Process

1. Defrost shrimp in refrigerator or cold water
2. Slice butter into cubes, leave out to soften
3. Pre heat oven to 250° F
4. Slice the bread
5. Clean and devein shrimp, cut into two pieces, drop into milk-egg mixture.
6. Tear arugula leaves into about 2" pieces
7. Chop onions and garlic
8. Mix corn meal, flour, three chilis
9. Mix vinegar with some salt, half the onion/garlic mixture, 3 chili powder to taste, reduce by about 1/2. If you over reduce, add water.
10. Mix milk and egg mixture
11. Heat oil for frying shrimp
12. Sauté remaining onion-garlic mixture in some oil until it has a nice golden brown color, set aside.
13. Heat water under double boiler
14. Dredge shrimp in flour/cornmeal mixture, fry until golden, place on dish in oven to reserve.
15. Strain chilis and onions out of vinegar, add to double boiler. Have butter cubes and a bit of cold water ready at hand so you can add them quickly as needed.
16. Whisk in egg yolks, and keep whisking as you add butter a little at a time. Watch this sauce very carefully - when it starts to thicken it will go fast. Keep adding butter to maintain a nice consistency. I usually don't end up adding all the butter. When the sauce is getting thick (or is just a tad thicker than you want, take it off the heat (off the double boiler, since the water is still hot), and add a bit of cold water to stop it from over cooking. Keep whisking a bit to keep things smooth. Add salt to taste if you wish.
17. Now, you're ready. Don't let the sauce sit since it will go downhill rather quickly. If you have to let it sit, add a bit of heavy cream instead of cold water at the end of cooking to stabilize it. Prepare two plates with a piece of bread each. Pour a bit of the sauce into the bread to moisten it a bit, add some of the onion/garlic relish, add some shrimp, tuck the arugula into the space between the bread and the spinach, and pour on the rest of the sauce. Enjoy! These things are supposed to be messy and drippy, so lean over your plate as you eat.

If you're reading this in summer, add vine ripe fresh tomatoes, maybe sauteed eggplant or peppers.