Admittedly, the garnishes are pretty spare, but is this not a sexy plate of dinner? I made a customary stop at Mitsuwa on the way back from a recent trip to the city and picked up hamachi, kampachi, fluke, and yellowfin tuna (bluefin is verboten. Don’t buy it). I got a bunch of other goodies, too, per usual: noodles, sake, condiments like mirin and usukuchi, and these fresh yuzu. I also got shishito peppers, from…
Category: Seafood
It’s just too damn nice out for me to spend much time in front of the computer, so I haven’t been. I’ve been a plate-making machine, though, so there will be lots of hot, amateur man-on-clay action in the coming weeks to help slake your insatiable cravings for content. There has been food, though; cooler (perfect, beautiful) weather has allowed me to spend actual consecutive minutes in front of the stove, resulting in some pretty good meals. I’ll try to play catch up over the next few days.
One of the advantages of having a friend in the fish biz is the occasional hors commerce hookup: in this case a side of wild sockeye salmon and a big hunk of cod fillet. The cod is going to be either fish and chips or a coconut curry, but first off we had at the salmon.
You see where this is going, right?
Notwithstanding the heat–which is under control lately, hovering in a dry and resplendent range that should be the summer default–it’s still hard for me to cook a beautiful piece of sockeye salmon. That was the idea buying it, and it ended up being the result, though not before I had my way with an uncooked portion because I couldn’t keep my hands off of it. So dinner ended up being sashimi and then curry, both…
So herewith day three of our ocean-derived sustenance. It’s telling–and extremely wonderful–that the scallops we received on Wednesday, cooked tonight, were sweeter and fresher tasting than anything we’ve ever bought from a store. Anybody who reads this and happens to live in the Hudson Valley would be well-advised to seek out the Fishmonger and get themselves the royal hookup. It honest and for true does not get much better than this unless you’re a deep-sea angler. I cut these circles out of square wonton wrappers with a jar and a knife because I couldn’t find my biscuit cutter.
With a pornucopia of freshest seafood in the fridge, dinner this evening was pretty easy. That’s not to say that I didn’t make an unholy mess of the kitchen, of course, because that is the manner in which I roll. But the actual food was pretty easy. To start, because the family was deep into “My Side of the Mountain” (my absolute favorite book when I was about 7 or 8), a couple of quick salmon hand rolls for the cook.
I had a pretty interesting meeting and interview today with the subject of my next article, and Jen (who was driving) kindly agreed to make a detour on the way home so we could pick up my fish order. It’s great that the fish is back, and we took excellent advantage of its return: wild salmon, scallops, and–most interestingly, because of a long hiatus–shrimp. We haven’t bought shrimp for a long time, because they’re mostly farmed in horribly destructive ways or wild-caught in horribly destructive ways. These, from Laughing Bird in Belize, are raised in inland ponds with filtered seawater and vegetarian feed. The company has received approval from the World Wildlife Fund.
So we returned home from a day trip to Delaware county later than forseen, and with nothing at all planned for dinner. A quick stop at the place in town that carries wild Alaskan salmon later, and we were fully in business, thanks largely to the presence of some high-end leftovers in the fridge. And I like a high end. We lost power on Thursday, but it was only for four hours, so nothing was…
OK, here’s that sushi. Our regular fish guy is on hiatus, so we’ve been missing him and the superb product he purveys. Feeling the sun-inspired urge for something clean and raw, I went to a nearby store that sometimes has good fish. Good timing; they had both wild Alaskan salmon and sushi-grade ahi. Score. Since we had leftover brown rice already in the fridge, this was beyond easy. I ran to the garden and massacred…
Well, not really. Prince Edward Island, actually. But I was channeling our Belgian brethren, inspired by the bag of fat, juicy bivalves in the fridge and the memories of all the moules frites I used to enjoy at my favorite spot in République back when I got paid to go to Paris every fall. Sigh. Keeping it simple, I steamed them in beer with our very own carrots, beet greens, garlic mustard, and ramps. I…
So, after much finagling, Claudia and Michael came for dinner. I know that this has been something she’s been waiting for for ages, mostly because she lives in freaking Kentucky and has WAY too much time on her hands, and I’m all about charity. But we pretended that we were happy too, and there was only a small amount of awkward throat-clearing, foot-shuffling, and sidelong watch-glancing while I scrambled to make like a million courses to keep them amused.
I’m deep into working on an important project in the studio right now, so I was stressed out and impatient prior to their arrival (which, you know, always makes the food taste better) and even more so after they arrived, on account of she’s a giant pain in the ass. But, because I literally lie awake at night thinking about dinner parties, I even had something ready in the fridge: tartare of miso-cured Arctic char with ramps and crispy skin. I had rubbed the char with miso a couple of days ago (these were the trimmings from the sushi) and gave it a rinse this afternoon, then cut off the skin. The flesh I chopped super-fine–too much, really; it got a bit gluey–then mixed it with finely chopped ramps, and the skin I put in a hot skillet with sesame seeds until it was well-browned on both sides. Putting it skin-side down first helps keep it stuck to the pan long enough to stay flat, so that it makes a good cracker for tartare-eating. I also added sesame oil, usukuchi, sudachi juice, and white pepper to the mix for a nice complex flavor profile. Garlic chive, red mustard, and the crispy skin cracker all added contrasts flavoral and textural.
