Sunday, September 10, 2023

More experiments with tinned fish

I am employed again (yay!), and that means I've fallen behind on almost everything. Especially the laundry, but anyway...

I'm still experimenting with tinned fish and having a lot of fun with with it. I found this recipe searching for things to do with anchovies. Special thanks to my friend Allison for being a guinea pig. 

Our ingredient list:

  • 6 oil-packed anchovy fillets
  • 4 garlic cloves, smashed (always fun to take a mallet to something 😁)
  • ¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • ½ cup walnuts
  • 3 Tbsp. double-concentrated tomato paste
  • 2 red Fresno chiles, split lengthwise, seeds removed
  • 3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
  • 3 oz. finely grated Parmesan, plus more for serving
  • ½ tsp. kosher salt, plus more
  • 1lb. spaghetti
  • 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

I did run into a snag when shopping: none of the places I get groceries from had Fresno chiles. I must have missed their peak season, which is a pity because I have other plans for a large amount of them.  Fortunately, I usually have a jar of Calabrian chiles in the fridge--this jar was chopped ones--so I used a heaping soupspoon full and then threw in a little more. 

Besides that, I found this was quite easy to make, which makes it good to have when company comes. You don't have to neglect them for long to cook.

Step 1
Cook anchovies, garlic, oil, and walnuts in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring often, until walnuts are deeply golden and garlic is just beginning to turn golden, 4–5 minutes. (your kitchen is going to smell fantastic. My guest guinea pig was quite happy) Add tomato paste and cook, stirring often, until it turns a shade darker, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and let cool 5 minutes.

I let it cool closer to 15 minutes. I have had the experience of having too-hot things in the blender. You do not want to know, trust me. 

Step 2
Transfer walnut mixture (including the oil) to a food processor. Add chiles, lemon juice, 3 oz. Parmesan, and ½ tsp. salt. Pulse until a thick paste forms.

Step 3
Meanwhile, cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente. Drain pasta, reserving 1½ cups pasta cooking liquid.

Step 4
Scrape pesto into a large bowl and add butter, then pasta and ½ cup pasta cooking liquid. Using tongs, toss pasta vigorously, adding more pasta cooking liquid if needed (you may not need all of it), until glossy and well coated with sauce.

I didn't need any additional pasta water besides the original half cup. This emulsified beautifully. 

Step 5
Divide pasta among bowls. Season with more salt and top with Parmesan.

Optional Step 6
Do Ahead: Pesto can be made 5 days ahead. Cover and chill.

This was delicious, filling, but not too heavy, and layers of umami dancing on the tongue. I definitely will be making this again. 

If you try it, let me know!

Turn the world around: Something Briny

Many many changes happening: I just started a new onsite job after 8.5 months of unemployment and 2.5 years of working at home. As you might imagine, this makes for a lot of adjusting. Commuting. Shoes all day. Dry cleaning bills. Ironing. Figuring out what to eat without always having to dedicate an entire day to cooking for a week ahead. I don't want to make cooking feel like a chore.

I also strongly dislike eating the same meal two days in a row. Today, I put the following together, which should get me several lunches on alternating days for a while. Not to mention that between the olive oil and the brine, it's not going to go off quickly

Into a large bowl went

  • 1 pound of Orzo pasta cooked al dente (any pasta will do)
  • 1 small jar of Capers (rinsed)
  • 6 ounces Kalamata olives 
  • 6 ounces sundried tomatoes 
  • 4 ounces Anchovies, drained 
  • 4 Tablespons Olive oil
  • Salt to taste
  • Black pepper to taste
  • 2 heaping Tablespoons dried oregano (just one of fresh)
  • 6-8 ounces Feta cheese
While the pasta was cooking, I ran the tomatoes, the olives, and the anchovies through the food processor with a little bit of olive oil. Then all it took was stirring the mixture into the pasta, adding a bit more of the olive oil to help me distribute things evenly, then tossing in the cheese. 

This is tasty warm or cold .


Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Wait, I'm trendy? How did that happen?

My first exposure to anchovies was on a Domino's pizza when I was in college. I didn't care for them at all, and generally avoided them except in a Caesar salad for decades. Several years ago on a very snowy day, a friend served me a salad nicoise with anchovies I enjoyed quite a bit. This past Christmas at East Harbor Seafood Palace, (a delightful Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn), one of the dishes passed around was fried salt & pepper anchovies. These were deep fried anchovies and in the basket were some delicious salted chili pepper slices. I do plan to make salted chiles soon because how could I not?

Fast-forward a bit and I'm trying to a) live on a tighter budget than normal b) eat more fish.  I had recently become a fan of Trader Joe's smoked trout, and wanted to branch out a bit and use other types of tinned fish. So I found myself putting phrases like, "things to do with tinned fish" into search engines, not realizing just how popular tinned fish has become of late. One example is here on TikTok. 

I started with this recipe from the Food Network, and while my results weren't perfect, they were damn tasty, though this was fairly time-consuming. 

First and foremost, the artichokes went into a colander and I gave them a serious shaking and blotting with paper towels. Leaving them to drain,  I made the breadcrumbs.
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 2 flat anchovy fillets packed in olive oil, drained and finely chopped (this is probably not news to many of you, but chopsticks are great for getting tightly-packed anchovies out of a jar)
  • 1/4 cup panko  (I used rice cracker crumbs because my dinner guest is gluten-free. If I do this again, I will use 3 Tablespoons and use the coarsest setting on the grinder instead of a medium one)
  • Zest from 3 lemons
Put the butter and anchovies in a small nonstick pan and cook over medium-high heat, swirling the butter and stirring the anchovies until the butter starts to brown, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the panko and cook, stirring continuously and tossing, until the breadcrumbs are golden, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl, stir in the lemon zest and set aside.  Easy peasy.

From there, I put the pasta water on to boil and while waiting for it, I grated the garlic with a microplane and chopped the anchovies for the sauce (full ingredient list below). Then I zapped the arichokes on one side in a sautée pan with 2 Tablespoons olive oil. Notes for next time include a) more draining and blotting of the artichokes and b) more olive oil. 
  • 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 6 flat anchovy fillets packed in olive oil, drained and finely chopped 
  • 5 cloves garlic, finely grated 2 lemons, juiced (I also quartered a lemon to serve alongside, and I'm glad I did so)
  • Chopped flat-leaf parsley, optional
The artichokes got a bit scorched because I stepped away a little too long, so I deglazed the pan with some Pinot Grigio before I put the butter, anchovies, and garlic into the pan to complete the sauce. Once the pasta was cooked, I grabbed half a cup of the liquid (should have put in more) and threw that in the pan as well as the drained pasta.

This was rice/quinoa pasta and it soaked up that sauce like it was a premium two-ply paper towel in a television commercial, so while the flavors were there (it needed more lemon), the smooth velvety texture you get from a good emulsified sauce wasn't. I was a bit chagrined, but it still tasted pretty good, especially with extra squeezes of lemon and some red pepper, the latter of which was nowhere in the recipe.

You'll be seeing more from me with tinned fish. How do you like yours?



Saturday, May 20, 2023

I lifted a sauce

Something I've learned from Just One Cookbook is that a grated onion can add a lot to a recipe. This recipe is no exception. 

This is a case where I stole the flavors, but not the method. I do not have the knife skills to get pork cut to 1/8 of an inch (3.175 millimeters), and since I had a pork loin in the freezer, I didn't want to spend the $ on a special cut. 

So, a little adaptation. I started with the sauce:

  • 1 knob ginger (2 inches, 5 cm for 2 servings; remember to keep half of the ginger juice for marinating the pork)
  • ½ onion (remember to use the leftover onion for slicing and stir-frying) 
  • 2 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 2 Tbsp mirin
  • 2 Tbsp sake
  • 1 tsp sugar
The onion I used was labeled Jumbo Sweet Onion at the store. I happen to love onions. If you like them as enhancers more than you do as a strong flavor, start with one of the ones you get in those red net bags. You can always add more.

If you don't own a ginger grater, I strongly recommend you grab one. They're also good for garlic. I put everything in a small saucepan on low for about fifteen minutes. This was just enough time to  let the alcohol in the sake burn off and the sugar to dissolve. Then I took it off the heat and set up the water bath, with the immersion circulator set to 135 F (57.2 C,  330.4 K). While the water was coming to temperature, I sliced the other half of the onion, and sliced some cabbage as thin as I could get it and set it aside. 

By the time the sauce cooled to room temperature, the water was ready. I salted a pork loin, stabbed it multiple times with a fork. (There was about an inch between stabs), put it in a vacuum bag with 3 Tablespoons of sauce, sealed it, and put it in the water bath. 

Once that was set, I made the sesame dressing to have on the side and stashed it in the fridge. From there, I started the rice, which would take 50 minutes. I watched most of an episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, and then started cooking the sliced onions in a bit of safflower oil and a bit of the sauce. When the onions were brown on about half the edges, I turned the heat down to low and added the rest of the sauce to the frying pan. 

When the pork had been cooking for 90 minutes, I put some safflower oil in a pan on medium high to prep for searing. I took the meat out of the water bath, added the liquid in the bag to the sauce and patted the loin dry with paper towels. When the oil began to give off smoke, I seared the pork for 30 seconds on each side, then let it rest for five minutes while I added the rice and the cabbage to a bowl and set the table. After the resting, I sliced the pork, added it to the bowl and spooned some sauce over it.

My pork wasn't the crispy delight in the recipe, but I did have fabulous flavors and a great mix of textures.  This is definitely being made again!

Saturday, May 13, 2023

Two fish with one stone. And an egg.

 If you've never tried onigiri, I think you're missing out. They're fun, tasty, versatile and highly portable. Recently, I've developed a weekly appointment that brings me past a Japanese market on the way home. In the front, where many people grab a quick lunch to go, is a counter full of onigiri. Even on my limited budget, they're affordable. I also stop here on the way home from donating blood across the street. I find them much more restorative than a small bottle of cranberry juice and a bag of chips.

My favorite fillings are mentaiko, seasoned egg, or bonito flakes. I don't have any mentaiko at home, but now that I can get eggs cheaply at Trader Joe's, I suddenly had an excuse to try to perfect a seasoned egg to my satisfaction (here's a famous example, which I've been tweaking).

So, I marinated some eggs last night. This afternoon, I put a cup of rice in the cooker and then got to work on the rest of the fillings. I also made a spicy tuna salad using the following:

These were all mixed in a bowl and set aside. 

For the bonito filling, I used one small packet of bonito flakes, a bit of soy sauce, and about a quarter teaspoon of snipped green onions (I usually use scissors to deal with green onions), and stirred all this together.

Then I waited for the rice and tried to find the right name for a character in a dystopian novel I'm writing.

Just One Cookbook's recipe has the onigiri shaped by hand, which is what I did with the egg, but for the others, I couldn't resist buying some molds. I also pulled out my silicone pastry board. My setup looked like this (out of picture is some kosher salt for my hands):



Using the molds was easy enough. Fill halfway with rice, add filling, keeping it to the center, add more rice, press. The onigiri I planned to eat right away were popped out of the mold onto some nori. The ones that I'd be eating later, got wrapped with plastic and will have the nori wrapped around them later. It would get too soggy if it sat overnight.

Lunch:



I need practice with the egg, I started falling apart when I ate it, but it was still delicious. I think next time I will let a bit more of the marinade into the rice. There was a side of sliced cucumbers with shichimi togarashi, and a small glass of sake. 

One cup dry rice made two of the large triangles, two of the small triangles, and wrapped one egg. I will double the amount of rice I make next time because there's a lot of the spicy tuna filling left. I may be making more this weekend, or it may be eaten with sesame crackers.

Do you like onigiri? What do you like in them?

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Well I've never been to Spain...

 but I kind of like the music...

But I digress. I've been tossing around the idea of retiring to Spain, which will take a few more years of working and saving if I can make it happen. In a group I joined about Americans in Valencia, I was pointed to Spain on a Fork and there's a growing list of recipes I plan to make from this fabulous site.

While perusing, I found many recipes for Spanish tortilla, which is only related to the tortilla one finds in Mexico and points south in that they are both round.

The Spanish tortilla is a potato omelette, massively versatile, and, to my surprise, surprisingly light tasting. There are several to choose from on the site. I went with this one because I love an excuse to eat Manchego cheese. 

Since my pan is smaller than the one listed and there's only one of me anyway, I cut the ingredients in half, though what is below is right from the site.

  • 3 Yukon Gold potatoes
  • 1 large onion (I call a large onion 1 cup sliced or chopped)
  • 2 cups tightly packed fresh spinach 120 grams
  • 2 cups shredded Manchego cheese 470 grams
  • 6 cage-free organic eggs 
  • 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil 85 ml
  • pinch sea salt
  • dash black pepper

  1. Peel, wash and pat dry 3 Yukon Gold potatoes, cut each one into 4 evenly sized quarters, cut each quarter into 3 pieces and then slice into 1/8 inch (.3175 cm) thick pieces. (I used a mandoline for this and I highly recommend such)  finely dice 1 large onion, grab 2 cups of tightly packed fresh spinach and roughly chop, shred 2 cups of Manchego cheese, crack 6 eggs into a large bowl and season with sea salt & black pepper, whisk together until well combined
  2. Heat a large nonstick fry pan with a medium heat and add in a generous 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil, after 2 minutes add in the diced onions and mix with the olive oil, after 2 minutes add in the pieces of potatoes and continue to mix, after 20 to 25 minutes and the potatoes are fully cooked through, start adding the spinach into the pan, add in batches to not over-fill the pan, mix the spinach with the potatoes so it wilts, once all the spinach has been incorporated and wilted, turn off the heat, season everything with sea salt & black pepper, mix so the seasonings are evenly mixed
  3. Add the potato mixture into the bowl with the eggs, add the 2 cups of shredded Manchego and mix everything together until well combined, at the same time, make sure to heat the same fry pan with a low to low-medium heat
  4. Once well mixed, add the mixture into the pan, make sure everything is in a single layer, after 2 minutes run a spatula through the outer edges to ensure the mixture is not sticking to the pan
  5. After 4 to 5 minutes it´s time to flip the tortilla to cook the other side, add a plate that is a little smaller than the pan into the pan, place one hand over the plate and the other hand on the handle, make the flip in one swift motion, slide the tortilla back into the pan, push down on the tortilla to ensure everything is evenly divided and then using the back of a spatula, start compacting the tortilla through the outer edges and into the middle, this gives it that classic rounded edge
    1. The flipping was not as difficult as I thought it might be. Keep a firm grip on your plate and you'll be just fine.
  6. After another 4 to 5 minutes the tortilla should be perfectly cooked, remove from the heat and transfer into a serving dish, enjoy!


I've made a few of these since. If I have a lot of veggies added like mushrooms and spinach, a 3-egg tortilla can give me three meals. 

Let me know your variations if you try this!


Friday, April 28, 2023

There's no food! There's just ingredients!

I'm sure more than a few of you have yelled that more than once. I do it frequently and this weekend I decided to do something about it. I considered making sous vide egg bites, but a) I am running low on room in my fridge and b) I wanted to stuff the freezer for the future and the jarred bites really should be eaten pretty quickly.

So, why not breakfast burritos? I first came across a breakfast burrito in 1989 in Albuquerque. I was moving for a job from Long Island to Prescott, Arizona. My friend Jason drove with me. He was great company. We mooed at a lot of cows, noted the frequent number of Yellow trucks, and I swear every time we changed states and found a new Top-40 radio station, the Bangles' Eternal Flame came on.

Anyway, our comment at the fast food joint was something along the lines of, "What the f*** is a breakfast burrito?"  Then I was in love. Warm, comforting, convenient, cheesy.

While I'm looking for a job, I'm keeping expenses down, so while I would have loved some chorizo, that will be for a later time. Instead, I grabbed a can of black beans. The whole ingredient list:
  • 8 8-inch tortillas (mine came from The Tortilla Factory, and were bog-standard white flour)
  • 6 eggs--taken out of the fridge a couple hours before I got going. Cooking with room-temperature eggs just works better.
  • 1 can of black beans
  • 6 ounces of cheddar, grated. Next time with the black beans, I will get pepper jack
  • 3 green onions, chopped
  • 1/2 cup green salsa that I found in the fridge
  • 3 few shakes of Dave's Habanero Powder (I still don't remember buying this or getting it as a gift)
  • 3 shakes of oregano  It might not have been Mexican oregano, but I don't think the Oregano Police are a thing.
  • 2 shakes chili powder
A lot of the recipes I looked at had potatoes in them, but I've recently learned how to make Spanish Tortilla  (and I still need to blog about it) and right now, if I'm doing potatoes with eggs, this is how.

I drained the black beans and put them in the largest bowl I had, followed by the green onions, then the salsa, then the spices. Stirred well with a rubber scraper. I started the eggs and alternately kept an eye on the eggs (I always start my eggs in a cold pan on low, gradually increasing temperature to medium-low), and grated the cheese.

When I make scrambled eggs, I do my initial stirring with a whisk once they've been on a the heat for a few minutes. That will usually pull some nice big curds off the bottom. When the mix is about 50/50 curds and runny egg, I switch to a silicone scraper and gently fold them over once in a while. You don't want to scramble them too much. Once I felt they were done, they got stirred into the bowl with all the other goodies.

If you look away from this blog entry when you're making it, please make sure you read this part: Use warm tortillas. They are much more flexible. I zapped mine individually in the microwave for 30 seconds between paper towels. No tearing whatsoever

Also this: use a little water (just brush it on with your fingertip) to make the parts of the tortilla stick together when you're folding and rolling.

I spread out my silicone baking mat, lay down a tortilla and put about 1/3 cup of the mixture on the bottom third, and pulled up the bottom like a tab (there's only one of me, I can't take pics of me folding a burrito). Then just like wrapping the sandwiches  I used to make for my school lunches, I folded the sides over so all the filling was kind of in a pocket and then rolled, wetting the top  before I finally sealed it. I let them sit seam-side down while they cooled, then individually wrapped them in parchment paper before bagging and freezin.

My most sincere apologies. I did take pictures, but they came out twelve kinds of terrible.  The burritos themselves are kind of cute and rather trapezoidal. I had enough for 8 burritos and one taco, which was breakfast.

If you try this, please let me know!