i8tonite

Month: May 2015

i8tonite: Spring Arugula Pesto with Spaghetti and Crisped Prosciutto (adapted from Hugh Acheson’s “The Broad Fork”)
I wish life were as easy as a recipe. Someone writes out the ingredients, measurements and methodology for creating the dish and I just follow it. I don’t think. My mind shuts off. I chop this, stir that and in the end, I have something delicious like a happy life.

I’ve never been a follower and I don’t mean that in a complimentary way. There is something infinitely courageous about the common worker. The individual who knows that they want security, a home and safe place. None of which I knew about when I ventured out in the world. There is no recipe for living.

That’s what I love about cooking. It makes me follow simple directions. I stop thinking and follow a direct path. I don’t drink like I used to when cooking. I found that I burned things. Besides, drinking and cooking, in my humble opinion, don’t really mix. At the table, when it’s all plated and everyone is seated, I feel that the libations are great for social lubricating; yet when cooking, I need my unbridled consciousness. I need to see the freshness. Taste the seasons. Hear the sizzling. Smell the aroma. Feel the food as it snaps. It is a sensuous experience. For me, cooking is in the moment, not on the periphery.

It’s why I seek out simple dishes to recreate with few but quality ingredients located at my markets. For just an unfettered moment, I can take my favorite lettuce, arugula, and turn it into a lusty, verdant sauce. Its peppery essence is intoxicating when pureed with olive oil, biting garlic and salty Reggiano. Dressed over room-temperature or leftover chilled pasta, a little more grated cheese and toasted pine nuts. It’s a perfect for meal for an outdoor supper when the heat of the day has been turned down and the fervent emotions ready to be shut off.

I can chew my noodles with abandon, sip rosé and wish that life were as easy as a recipe (especially Acheson’s Arugula Pesto).

Arugula Pesto, adapted from Hugh Acheson’s “The Broad Fork”. (June 2015 Cookbook)

Spaghetti with Arugula, Pesto, Crisped Prosciutto and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Serve 4.

Sea salt

¼ cup of pine nuts (or walnuts…I did say adapted)

4 cups arugula (preferably from the farmers market or CSA. It has a lot more pepper in the bite. However if you can only get stuff in plastic…nothing wrong with it. It’s good to eat your vegetables from any source.)

2 garlic cloves

1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Couple turns of fresh cracked pepper

3 ice cubes

¾ cup of olive oil

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 pound spaghetti

2 pieces of prosciutto (or salami. Acheson’s recipes calls for the salami. I didn’t have any and I wasn’t about to go out to market for the umpteenth time, so I used the ham. Shoot me.)
1. In a large stockpot bring 4 quarts of water to a boil. Salt the water enough so you can taste it.
2. Toast nuts in a skillet until lightly browned. Take two-thirds (eyeball it) for the pesto, the rest for garnishing. Place on the side for cooling.
3. In a food processor or blender, combine the arugula, the two-thirds pine nuts, garlic, grated cheese, 1 teaspoon of salt, the pepper and the ice cubes. Puree on high for 30 seconds. Using the chute, with the motor running and the olive oil in a slow drizzle. Scrape everything down the sides until all the leaves are in the pesto, creating a smooth sauce. Stir in the lemon zest and put aside.
4. Add the spaghetti to the boiling water, stir immediately and then cook to al dente. (If you made your own pasta…Good for you. Use that.) Drain into a colander and chill down with cold water. Turn into a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Stir. Add the pesto until coating all the pasta evenly.
5. While the pasta cooks, add a little olive oil to a pan and crisp up the prosciutto, like bacon. Drain on a paper towel.
6. Shave some of the cheese, chopped arugula, prosciutto and pine nuts to the top and serve-up family-style. (Or divide into 4 bowls.) (Lately, I’m really into family-style serving and letting people help themselves.)
May 30, 2015
i8tonite: Braised Leeks in Cream and Tarragon (Kitchen Sense, Mitchell Davis)

I know that as I write this that I’m not the only person who walks into a grocery store or farmers market and says, “I want to make something I’ve never made.” Recently, it was with leeks for me. I’ve cooked leeks but always as a supporting character in pot pies, vichyssoise, and fried for decoration. Thrown into stews. Chopped for soups. Roasted with meats. However, I’ve never used a leek as the main ingredient.

In Mitchell Davis’ lovely and massive cookbook, Kitchen Sense, which we are currently cooking from for the month of May; he had a recipe for Braised Leeks in Cream and Tarragon…making the onion relative, the star of the dish. (It’s Memorial Day weekend and I’m talking about braising instead of grilling. I always did like to go against the stream. Heh.)

Besides the leeks, the cream and the tarragon, the other major ingredients are butter and white wine. Very French. Before even making it, you can imagine the taste and subtle sweetness of the leeks with the cream’s richness. (I think a really good Loire Valley sauvignon blanc or a dry Belgian, non-fruit craft beer would be a good accompaniment; a light beverage with crispness and acidity.)

The methodology for making this vegetable braise is very simple but it does take a lengthy time to cook. I would make this for a holiday gathering or a dinner party when I have another item roasting in the oven. The dish is also lovely to present at a table.

Davis wants you to serve one leek per person. I feel it’s better at two leeks per person since this would be the only vegetable I’m serving; therefore, I’m doubling the recipe. If you are making the dish for two, cut it back to four leeks. (I think you can figure that out.)

Let’s Make This Puppy: Braised Leek with Cream & Tarragon

6 tablespoons of unsalted butter, room temperature

8 leeks, trimmed to white with about an inch of green

1 cup of white wine

½ cup of cream

4 sprigs of tarragon leaves; chopped

1 bay leaf

Salt and white pepper for seasoning.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use some of the butter to grease a large baking dish (maybe something that goes from oven to table).

Remove the tops of the leeks, leaving one inch of the green; thoroughly, rinse the leeks in water and then cut them in half, lengthwise. Dry them on kitchen towels. (I try not to use paper towels and conserve resources….but if you must use paper towels…do so, just remember that you can purchase really inexpensive kitchen towels at your Walmart, Target, or other large discount for pennies. You can wash them as often as you want and will last you longer than your roll of paper towels.)

Place the leeks cut side down in the baking dish and pour the wine and cream over. The vegetables should be about three-fourths submerged. If not, just add a little more wine or cream. You choose. Add the bay leaf and scatter the tarragon. Season well with salt and pepper. Using the remaining butter, spot the top of the leeks. Cover tightly with aluminum foil baking for an hour and a quarter.

The leeks should be tender. If you used an oven-to-table baking dish as I recommended, just remove the bay leaf and serve.

It’s a pretty awesome dish but a little heavy with a little too much cooking time for a regular weekday meal but for a special occasion….it’s perfect!

May 23, 2015
i8tonite: Chinese Roast Pork (Char Sui) (adapted from Kitchen Sense by Mitchell Davis)

Char sui

I inherited the love of Chinese food from my mother. One of my earliest memories was eating at a Cantonese American restaurant in Monrovia, a suburb of Los Angeles. This was 1970 and try as they might, decorating correctness hadn’t been seen in Chinese restaurants. The dining room was lacquered red, dotted with Chinese lanterns giving the space a “World of Susie Wong” crimson glow. Spread before the two of us was a hearty Asian spread in stainless steel standing bowls and piled into them were the deliciously fatty food stuff such as roast pork egg foo young, spareribs in black bean sauce, roast pork fried rice, roast pork eggrolls and the omnipresent white rice.

Yep, that roast pork was in everything.

As an incredibly poor college student looking for cheap eats in Manhattan’s Chinatown I discovered “real” Chinese roast pork hanging in storefront windows. It was as if you paddled into Hong Kong but you only walked across Canal Street. The bustling was stronger, headier than other parts of the city and you could tell you entered Chinatown by the smell of hoisin, sesame, soy sauce and food dangling in windows. Char sui drenches windows in rows upon rows, covering the glass like a maroon-colored curtain, although sometimes it’s paired elegantly with a whole tea smoked duck. Smoked duck. Roast pork. Smoked duck. Roast pork. When a customer ordered a strip, a kitchen worker’s hand pushes through, parting the meaty fabric and yanks a strip for a hungry customer. Quickly they slice it, in a rapid machine gun motion and shovel it into one of the Chinese paper containers.

At the time, char siu was cheap, one dollar per order: I would get the roast pork, cold sesame noodles and white rice, just enough to get me through breakfast, lunch and dinner. I needed the carbs to keep me running through New York City streets. Walking from Union Square to Broadway so that I can get to Canal Street and back again. No twisting or turning….straight on through. But a long trek…a hike.

Often it’s made with red tofu paste, red dye and MSG. It doesn’t need it. Using a really cheap cut of lusciously marinated and richly decadent pork, this can easily be served for masses. Home roasting made my house smell of Chinatown in a good way; while eating it will reminded me of being in college, running the streets of Manhattan and discovering myself. Who knew you could get that from a recipe?

2 ½ pounds of boneless pork shoulder

3 tablespoons of soy sauce

1 ½ tablespoons Chinese oyster sauce

1 ½ tablespoons hoisin sauce

2 tablespoons of rice wine

¼ cup of brown sugar

1 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder

½ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon of white pepper

Depending on the size of your pork, cut them into 2 inches wide and approximately 1 inch thick. Place the strips into a baking dish that will hold the meat in an even layer. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Cover the pork with this mixture and marinate overnight.

Heat your oven to 400 degrees and bring the pork to room temperature. Roast for about 30 to 40 minutes basting every 5 – 9 minutes. At this point, it’s done but if you want to achieve that Chinatown look apply some mascara…..kidding….to achieve that roasted, marooned charred edge, place under broiler for about 3 – 4 minutes. It will achieve that beautifully dripping-in-fat appeal…lacquered and deliciously edible. Heat up leftover marinade and serve with the pork.

(Note: I served my roast pork as lettuce wraps with a variety of Asian condiments such as a peanut dipping sauce, alfalfa sprouts, pickled cucumbers and pickled ginger. It could have been served with rice.)

May 16, 2015
I8tonite: Food from “Kitchen Sense” by Mitchell Davis

I stopped writing on “i8tonite”. It wasn’t going anywhere and truthfully, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to take it. It started because I love cooking. We know that. Truthfully, the sheer act of it (and craft) saved my life. I’m forever indebted to the stove, the fridge, farmer’s markets, and washing dishes. It will have been almost four years since I took on the name of “i8tonite” and the whole thing was a lark. Really. I just needed something to occupy my mind while I gave up a business, a partnership, a dog and the home that I had for more than decade.

Writing out what I was cooking on social media gave me something to look forward to while I was crying about the state of my life as it became unhinged. Then came the requests for photos. Taking the images, a little food styling, along with the hazy images became an extension. My life, as a whole, began to come together again. Then, I started this blog which has had fits-and-starts. Partially, because I only wanted to cook and I wanted to show to prospective clients that I knew about the culinary world, from a sophisticated and well-traveled home cook.

Candidly, I’m not really that interested in creating my own recipes. There are so many great chefs and home cooks out there that I just don’t feel that creative need. However, I do love reading cookbooks. I like understanding the ingredients and how they going to be appealing. I can taste the ingredients before beginning the process. It’s also important to note whether each recipe is laborious or fun. Puff pastry is laborious, making a cake or pie is fun.

I’m also not interested in reviewing restaurants. If I did, I would want to pay for my own meals and try the experience several times over. That would be a costly endeavor and I don’t think many restaurants are worthy of going to 3 or 4 times in a year, much less in a single month. (I’ve been called by friends “extremely picky” in my restaurant choices.) No, I leave that to the food bloggers and newspapers.

Therefore, I’m beginning this endeavor with a new verve with a fresher eye about food and cookbooks. My plan is over a calendar month to attempt at least 4 recipes from one single book. The idea is really to try cooking them. It’s not to review them so much as to just cook from them and then maybe add something with my own thoughts. I do own quite a few cookbooks and I’ve never used one recipe from about three dozen. I’ve read them…but never cooked from them. This will give me the impetus to execute something. Selfishly, I also want to expand my food repertoire and hopefully to whoever reads this blog…if anyone does.

For the first book, I’ve chosen Mitchell Davis’ “Kitchen Sense: More Than 600 Recipes to Make You a Great Home Cook.” Davis is also the executive vice-president and director of communications for The James Beard Foundation along with being an adjunct professor of Food Studies at the venerable New York University. His pedigree about food is astounding. It’s not a new book as it was originally published in 2006 by Random House.

It’s a vast collection around such culinary pantheons as Chinese, American, Italian and Greek and so on. Mr. Davis provides also great tips such as how to make a compound butter or “flavored butter” in a small area on various pages called “kitchen sense” or “basics”, small guidelines for executing simple home cooked gastronomic pleasures like roasted garlic or a compound butter. If you are a professional or have worked in a kitchen, you know some of these recommendations but if you haven’t, some of them are very handy to have.

There also aren’t any photos so I have to think with my tastebuds in order to pick the recipes. I want all my senses to be used as each recipe is made. Can I smell that it might need more seasoning? How does it look? Should I have used the richer Dutch processed chocolate or no? These are the things that I hope to learn as well as a little bit about myself.

Devil’s Food Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting (adapted from “Kitchen Sense” by Mitchell Davis, 2006, Clarkson Potter).

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting (NOTE: I had to double the recipe to cover the two layer cake. Although delicious and rich, the caramel flavor was very subtle. Next time, I make it I will double the caramel portion. Regardless, is was still delicious and I’m now running four miles every other day to remove it from my body.)

½ cup cold water

1 ½ cups sugar

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon kosher salt

3 cups (24 ounces) cream cheese (room temperature)

12 tablespoons unsalted butter (room temperature)

Place water and sugar into a medium sauce pan. Using a medium high heat, melt sugar by stirring constantly. As the syrup develops, it will thicken into a sauce and begin to darken. This will take roughly 8 – 10 minutes. (You will notice of the water to begin to darken as the sugar stiffens.) Watch carefully as the sugar can become burnt quickly. Swirl until the color of caramel. Remove from heat.

Slowly add the heavy cream and stir constantly. Replace saucepan on very low flame until all the cream has been incorporated. Add the salt. Keep stirring with a spoon or wooden spatula (do not use a whisk) until a beautiful, rich caramel sauce has developed. (You can always use this for ice cream or pour over cakes.)

In another bowl, mix the butter and cream cheese until frothy. Making sure you scrape the sides of the bowl, slowly add the caramel sauce until completely merged and, viola, you have made your frosting.

You can chill but bring to room temperature before frosting the cake. It will make spreading so much easier. It’s still delicious even though it’s a subtle caramel flavor. I think I wanted it to be overpowering like a caramel latte from Starbucks but it’s more like a European subtle instead of an American-beat-me-until-I’m-black-and-blue.

Devil’s Food Cake

Honestly, this maybe the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made. It was densely, moist with a very light crumb and an intense lovely chocolate flavor. (Will make two 9-inch layer cakes).

Unsalted butter for greasing the pan

Parchment paper

1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (Use the good stuff. I like Dutch-processed as it creates a darker, fudgier cake)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup sugar

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup strong coffee

½ cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. (We do this first so the oven pre-heats while we gather our wits.) Butter the pans and then line with parchment. Butter the parchment. (We do this so we keep our gathered wits about us instead of the cakes sticking to the pans. Trust me on this step….it’s a life-saver.) Once we remove the cakes from the pans, they aren’t that pretty… yet. We will do a little trimming of rough edges using a LOT of frosting to cover up the wrinkles left by the parchment indentations.

In a large mixing bowl, we will sift all the dry ingredients together (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, both sugars and salt).

In another bowl, mix all the wet ingredients together (coffee, buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla). Mix with a whisk.

Using a wooden spoon or an electric mixer on low, merge the wet with the dry.

Pour into your buttered cake pans. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes. Remove from oven once a toothpick comes out cleanly.

Take cakes out and cool on a wire rack. Frost. J

May 9, 2015