Mediterranean Tomato-Saffron Tilefish

There's a Beaufort-based seafood guy now coming to the All-Local Farmers Market every Saturday, and his fish is amazingly, absurdly fresh. Yesterday we bought grey tilefish, which I've never bought before. It was lovely -- bright spotted skin, big easy-to-find bones, grouper-like color and grain. You could put your nose right down on it and smell nothing except a faint, fresh sweetness.

I poked through some more complicated recipes and came up with this simple Mediterranean preparation, which has some of the flavor of bouillabaisse but is more straightforward. Any blend of garden and canned tomatoes would work; I used a little of both. It's not a super tomato-ey dish.

I'm out of the food-photographing habit, so here's Patty demonstrating how hot it is here lately.


Mediterranean Tomato-Saffron Fish

Preheat oven to 400.

In Dutch oven, saute in olive oil until onions are softened and smaller:
- 3 small Vidalia onions, sliced
- 8-10 saffron threads
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Add and let some of the booziness cook off:
- 3/4 c dry vermouth

Add and cook for just a few minutes:
- 1 ripe tomato, chopped
- 1/2 cup chopped canned tomatoes
- salt
- pepper

Add, cover, put in oven and cook 8-15 minutes, depending on fish size:
- 1 lb. fish

I left the fillet whole, and it took exactly 15 minutes. The bones and skin thickened the broth just a little.

I served it over farro, with which Lawson and I are in love. He says it tastes like he wishes brown rice tasted.

Crusty bread would also be good with this. On the side we ate sliced cucumbers in rice vinegar, and baba ghanoush made with our own eggplant, which are the only plants really doing well this year in our yard. I drank vinho verde. Lawson drank Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was a good summer dinner.

Tomatillo Time

Here’s a fresh, easy raw tomatillo salsa. It’s from Aida Gabilondo’s Mexican Family Cooking, still my favorite Mexican cookbook.

Green Green Sauce

1 pound tomatillos

2 fresh jalapenos

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1 cup cilantro leaves

Salt

1 teaspoon sugar

Remove the husks from the tomatillos and rinse. Pulse all ingredients together in food processor or blender, leaving a little chunkiness in the texture if desired. You may add a clove of garlic if you want.

Salade Nicoise

I was so happy to discover I had the ingredients to make this the other day.

Green beans, blanched
New red potatoes, boiled
Anchovy filets
Lettuce
Hard boiled eggs
Tuna
Olives
Capers
Mustard sprouts (from City Roots -- so tasty)

The dressing is a simple vinaigrette: just mustard, salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar. You toss some of it with the potatoes and green beans while they're still warm. Then you serve everything at room temperature and drizzle dressing over it.

We ate it with bread and butter on the side.

Chocolate Icebox Cookies

I had a vague image of this recipe from my childhood--Grandma Oty used to make them--and managed to find the right recipe on About.com. It was in the Southern food section, though I think of them as quintessentially mid-Western. They are so easy! I love the mildness of the chocolate, because you can taste everything else: the butter, the brown sugar, the walnuts.

Cocoa Icebox Cookies

· 1/2 cup butter

· 1 cup brown sugar

· 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

· 1 egg

· 1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

· 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

· 1/4 teaspoon salt

· 2 tablespoons cocoa

· 1/2 cup finely copped walnuts

In mixing bowl with electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in eggs, blending well. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa; stir into creamed mixture, blending thoroughly. Stir in walnuts. Shape into a roll about 2 inches in diameter. Wrap roll in waxed paper and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Slice roll into 1/8-inch slices. Place on ungreased baking sheet and bake at 350° for 10 to 12 minutes.
Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

Note: I increased the cocoa by 1 tablespoon and reduced the flour the same amount.

Basic Beans

I had to post this because for a while we couldn't find the recipe card--we worried that it might be lost to posterity. Dad makes these.

And I have to tout Anasazi beans again: they are less gassy than pinto beans, and they cook in about half the time without pre-soaking. This is a slow crockpot recipe, but on the stove top they become tender in a little over an hour.

Crockpot Anasazi Beans

1 pound Anasazi beans

Water to cover by about 1 ½ inches

Place in crockpot in the morning and cook on High for half a day.

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 small dried red chile

3 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tablespoons olive oil

Add the remaining ingredients and cook on Low until dinnertime.

Sweet and Sour Eggplant Salad

This is from Claudia Roden. It's simple enough to let the flavor of the eggplant come through.

Sweet and Sour Eggplant

Olive oil

1 large Spanish onion, coarsely chopped

1 pound eggplant, partially peeled and cut in 3/4-inch cubes

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1-pound can diced tomatoes

4 tablespoons chopped parsley

3 tablespoons wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground red chili

Cover bottom of a large skillet with oil and heat. Saute onion until soft and golden. Add eggplant and cook, stirring, for about five minutes. Then add garlic and cook until colored.

Add remaining ingredients and cook over very low heat for 20 minutes. Serve cold (we had it warm last night and cold today--delicious).

And here's the Sidecar recipe. Russell made these for us.

Sidecar

1 part lemon juice

1 part Cointreau

2 parts cognac

Shake with ice.

And our version:

Poor Man's Sidecar

1 part lemon juice

1 part Triple Sec

2 parts bourbon

Spinach Enchiladas

I finally figured out a good spinach enchilada recipe. For the filling I used 2 cups cooked fresh spinach, chopped and combined with shredded Monterey jack and cotija cheeses. I briefly fried corn tortillas, filled them, topped them with sauce and more shredded cheese. Then I baked them for about 10 minutes.

I made this sauce from Aida Gabilondo's Mexican Family Cooking.

Tomatillo Cilantro Sauce

1 pound fresh tomatillos, husked

1 cup cold water

4 garlic cloves

1 jalapeno, seeds and all

1/2 medium white onion

2 cups cilantro leaves

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

First put the tomatillos in a saucepan with water to cover, bring to a boil, and simmer 20 minutes. Drain.

Put tomatillos in a blender with water, garlic, jalapeno, onion, and cilantro. Blend until nearly liquid.

Heat oil in a pan and pour the sauce directly into it. Season with salt and sugar and simmer for five minutes.

Appetizers

We had a progressive dinner with Mary Ellen and friends last night. Appetizers and wine were at our place, then we progressed over to her house for the main course.

My repertoire was limited to foods I had on hand--I did NOT want to go to the store on Valentine's Day while people were scrambling for flowers and chocolate at the last minute. I ended up with marinated carrots; empanadas with a filling of spinach, currants, pine nuts, and a little goat cheese to bind; and a frittata with green chiles.

I boiled the carrots in salted water until barely tender, then marinated them for a few hours in olive oil, wine vinegar, fresh thyme, garlic, salt, and pepper. They were a nice change from richer things, and colorful as well.

Elaine made a fabulous lamb-meatball-and-spaghetti dish with Middle Eastern seasonings. She was on a TV cooking show and won a prize for it. Maybe she'll share the recipe here!

Indian Lamb and Garbanzos

I've really missed cooking these last few months. I've had a lot of evening work -- mayoral debates, late nights in the office -- and haven't had time for the kind of messy, unfocused cooking I like to do. We've had a lot more pasta dishes and tuna melts for dinner. I've made good stuff, and so has Lawson, but it's been different. It'll get better after the April city election.

Anyway, last night was a completely sprawling, right-brain, organic (in the procedural sense) night of cooking, and it was wonderful.

We were going to have grilled wings, naan and salad, but it started raining. Bad weather for an outdoor fire.

I'd already made the naan dough, so I decided to build a meal around that instead. I started cutting up some lamb we needed to use, leafing through Indian cookbooks, seeing what we had and what would taste good.

Here's what we ended up with, clockwise from left:

- Swiss chard sauteed with garlic and chiltepins, finished with a big squeeze of Meyer lemon juice
- lamb with garbanzos
- Boddingtons Pub Ale
- naan
- yellow lentils with spices (cinnamon, ginger, garlic and coriander, mostly)
- pickled okra

Lawson made the spice blend for the lentils. I made the rest.

The lamb-garbanzo dish grew out of a lamb recipe in an old cookbook called "Classics of Indian Cooking." It was called Cumin Lamb but I left out the cumin, added garbanzos, left out the bell peppers, and more, so it really is a completely different dish. You could use a teaspoon or two of cumin seeds in the spice paste; I didn't use them because there was a lot of cumin in the yellow lentils.

Lamb and Garbanzos
Blend in blender until smooth:

• 1" piece of ginger
• 3 garlic cloves
• cardamom seeds from 10 pods
• 2 whole cloves
• 20 almonds
• 1 t chile powder or cayenne
• 1 t brown sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1/4 cup yogurt
• stock as needed to moisten (I used lamb cut from the shoulder, so I simmered the scraps and bones for an hour or so beforehand and used that. Chicken stock would work, too. Leftover lamb stock goes to the dog.)

Heat in casserole or Dutch oven with lid:

• 3 T butter

Saute until golden brown:

• 1 onion, diced

Add and brown:

• 1/2 lb or more lean lamb, cubed

Add the spice mixture and fry it for a while, making sure it doesn't burn on the bottom. Add:

• pinch of saffron (10 threads?)
• 1 can garbanzo beans
• Stock to moisten but not make soupy

Cover and cook on low until lamb is very tender, 75 minutes or more, adding stock or yogurt as needed.

The beans keep this from being too rich, but it stills needs to be paired with some bright flavors and green foods to balance it out.

Tofu with Peppers and Pecans

Hey, this is a really delicious tofu recipe. I can't remember where I modified it from, but we had it last week and really enjoyed it. Dad served one of his home-grown salads with it.

Tofu with Peppers and Pecans

1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons vermouth or sherry
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice or rice vinegar
3 cloves garlic, crushed
Red pepper flakes to taste
¾ cup vegetable broth

Mix above ingredients for seasoning sauce and set aside.

Prepare 1 tub firm tofu and set aside (cut into slices, drain, pat dry, brush lightly with oil, and bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes per side.) Cut into strips or cubes.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 red, green, or yellow bell peppers, cut in strips
4 green onions, cut in 1-inch diagonals
¾ cup pecan halves

Sauté peppers and green onions in oil for 2 minutes. Add pecans and sauté 2 minutes more. Add seasoning sauce and stir until boiling and thickened. Stir in tofu and heat. Serve with rice.

Lemon-Chocolate Chip Pancakes

I had an idea this morning. I looked up recipes for chocolate chip pancakes and lemon pancakes and made up this combination of the two.

Lawson put syrup on his, but I think all they need is plain yogurt. Sliced bananas would also be good.

Bowl 1:
1 1/2 c self-rising flour (or all purpose flour + 1 t salt and 1 T baking powder)
2 T sugar
zest of one lemon

Bowl 2:
3 T melted butter
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 t or more lemon juice

Mix well separately, then briefly together.

Sprinkle 4-10 semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips on each pancake as soon as you pour the batter.

Birthday Dinner

Dad and I collaborated on my birthday dinner last night. We had Crab Louis, Stromboli Bread, Golden Mushroom Soup, and two cute little desserts Dad picked up at AJ's. And Dad stayed up late and did all the dishes!

I saw this Stromboli Bread in a bread cookbook. I made my regular French bread dough (3 cups white flour) with the addition of 2 tablespoons of olive oil and let it rise; rolled it out to about 8 by 14 inches; sprinkled it with a mixture of Swiss cheese cubes, shredded parmesan, chopped ham, 2 cloves garlic, and a handful of chopped basil; rolled it up starting at the short end and brushed it with olive oil, then sprinkled on salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary; then poked holes in it before baking it without a second rising at 400 degrees for an hour. It was good-looking and delicious.

New Cookbook

One of the best things about Christmas is getting new cookbooks: I received a check from Bob and with it I bought The Book of Latin American Cooking by the famous Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz.

Much of the book is taken up with Mexican cooking, about which I already know a lot--I was looking for Central and South American stuff. The Mexican things in this book, though, tend to be more exotic, very far away from Tucson-Sonoran and Tex-Mex.

Tonight I cooked a halibut steak which Russell and Brittany sent from Alaska for Christmas. I loved the simplicity and flavor of this dish. Here is the recipe.

Pescado con Cilantro

1 pound fresh fish fillets (snapper, flounder, etc)

Salt, pepper

Juice of 1 fresh lemon

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Canned jalapenos, chopped

Sprinkle fish with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

Heat olive oil and saute onions until tender and lightly browned.

Place the fish in a baking dish and cover with the onions. Top with chopped cilantro and jalapenos. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes, or until just cooked through.

Cooking A Goose

Yes, there were many jokes about our goose being cooked.

For Christmas I was going to roast a duck -- the perfect two-person holiday meal, with just enough delicious leftovers and rich stock. But the grocery store was out of ducks, so Lawson bought a goose instead. (A very expensive goose, as it turned out, so we felt extra-compelled to use every little bit of it.)

I proceeded to read everything I could about cooking geese. I decided to skip Joy's complicated two-day process for drying out the skin; decided to skip stuffing, too. I read about goose anatomy and goose grease. I'm glad for it, too, because it prepared me for some of the strangeness of goose.

The bird weighed 11 pounds. It was big, but just short enough to fit on a regular pan, unlike a turkey.

I took off the wing tips, rubbed the thing with salt, put it on a little folding metal poultry rack, set it in a deep pan and roasted it at 400 for 30 minutes, then 350 for a few hours. I flipped it from breast down to breast up halfway through the cooking time. I let the meat temp get pretty high since there was so much fat -- maybe 175 in the breast and somewhat more in the thigh.

Here were some of the strange things about goose:

Fat
An incredible amount of fat rendered off that goose. More than a quart and a half. It filled the deep roasting pan twice over, and there was still plenty left in the skin, not to mention the chunks I'd pulled from the cavity beforehand. Pre-cooking, the whole bird felt greasy and weird, like a hunk of sheep.

I have a lot of it left over in jars in the fridge.

It's great fat: snowy white and mild, really delicious. I roasted potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes and turnips in it to great effect. I intend to use it in tamale dough soon.

Goose Cracklins
The skin on the goose was still pretty blubbery, so I didn't serve it. Instead, I cut it into strips with scissors and put it in the roasting pan at about 290 degrees to render further, per Julia Child. Now I have a container of crispy goose cracklins. They are incredible.

Connective Tissue
Parts of the goose are clean and easy to eat. But parts -- particularly the back, wings and the part of the breast closest to the bone -- have a ton of connective tissue, almost like the muscle fibers are wrapped in casing. You know how you can sort of push meat off a chicken backwith your thuumbs? Not so with a goose. It meant some meat loss, as some of the bird wasn't good for regular plate eating. The dog got some gristly bits, and some went into stock.

Big Cavity
There's a lot of space inside a goose. I understand the desire to stuff it, but I think leaving it empty helped it cook better and render more fat.

Tight Joints
That's how Joy described them -- and they were right. I wish I had pictures of me grappling with that bird before roasting. It was bony, very bony, and I found out what "tight joints" meant when I tried to trim the enormous wing tips. Much twisting and crunching of bone ensued. The dog was impressed.

After roasting, the bird remained tight: prying a leg off was quite hard.

Good Stock
The carcass made lovely stock -- copious amounts of it, too. The enormous gizzards, the heart, and the two-foot neck helped, too.

Goose Liver is Not Foie Gras
The liver was just a regular liver, not fattened and yellow and mild like foie gras. It was tasty, though: I sauteed it and sliced it, then deglazed the pan with a few drops of Cointreau and poured that over it. It tasted like duck liver, fairly dark but not at all bitter and only faintly musky.

Amazing Gravy
I made a simple, classic gravy with pan drippings, red wine, black pepper and flour.

The Final Yield
Two big meals of roasted goose with root vegetables and gravy.
One goose liver appetizer.
Five quarts of stock.
One batch of goose tortilla soup (chicken tortilla soup with goose stock and goose meat).
One week of dog dinner supplementation with goose scraps.
One cup of goose cracklins.
Two pint jars of pure goose fat.

Lime Cordial and Lime-oncello

Those tiny yellow limes you grew are so intense, Mom -- they're wonderful, but more acidic than regular limes. Today I used some of them in booze-related experiments.

Lime-oncello
First I zested 14 of them and started a batch of limoncello using limes instead of lemons.

I read a few recipes and enjoyed this overly detailed recipe the most. I more or less followed it but didn't filter the vodka -- it seems silly to filter something that's distilled. We had a bunch of Skyy vodka and since we don't drink vodka very often this seemed like a good use for it -- no grain alcohol in my version.

Two hours in, the vodka is already starting to yellow (it's in the jar on the right). After a few months it should be very pretty. Either that, or it'll look like urine. We'll see.

Lime Cordial
So then I had a bunch of dermis-free limes -- way too many for margaritas or mojitos. I thought about juicing them and freezing the juice, but again, they're so acidic, if they were to lose any delicate lime flavors through freezing they wouldn't be very useful -- all tartness, no flavor.

I poked around online for a while and decided to make lime cordial. Rose's Lime Juice is lime cordial, but Rose's seems pretty gross lately. Maybe it's the high fructose corn syrup. I made a gimlet with it over the summer and it wasn't very enjoyable.

Recipes for lime cordial online mostly contain lime juice, simple syrup, citric acid and tartaric acid. I have neither of the latter two ingredients. I decided the limes' acidity was intense enough to make up for the missing citric acid. For the tartaric acid I used cream of tartar. I'm no chemist, but cream of tartar retains the acidic flavor of tartaric acid, which I think is the goal of the acid, and is also a potassium salt...and I figured salt is a positive thing from a preservative standpoint.

I think I can taste the potassium from the cream of tartar a little. There's a slight bitter aftertaste similar to potassium chloride -- the taste of those "salt substitutes," or of Marmite, or of banana bread with too much baking powder. But Lawson says he can't taste it, so it's probably not a big deal.

After some adjustments, here roughly what I ended up with:

2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
1 scant teaspoon cream of tartar

Boil the water and sugar until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat; stir in lime juice and cream of tartar. Strain into bottles and refrigerate.

I'll make gimlets tonight. And I'll let you know how long the lime cordial keeps.