Category Archives: Food

November 16, 2018

Oceania Cruise line is well-known for its culinary prowess in the dining room. What you might not know is that they started the at-sea culinary class revolution, which is now in full swing on the high seas with most cruises in the luxury category offering several options for learning about local cuisine geared toward your itinerary.

Our cruise from Barcelona to Miami offered several culinary classes held in their state-of-the-art culinary demonstration-teaching center. Given our embarkation location and the cruise being a transatlantic crossing, you’d not be surprised to see courses on Spanish cuisine and the bounties of the seas.

We booked ahead – well before our departure – the Viva España and If It Swims courses; highly recommended as these courses are becoming very, very popular.

At the Viva España course we prepared –

Patatas Bravas with Smoky Paprika Aioli (recipe below)
Pan Con Tomate
Seafood Paella

We were served Sangria Blanca as well.

At the If It Swims course we prepared –

Pan-Seared Scallops
Pesce All’Acqua Pazza (fish in crazy water)
Salmon Wraps A la Canyon Ranch
Fish Tacos with Asian Slaw and Sriracha Crema

Chef Kellie prepared Aquavit-cured Gravlax for us and served a good white wine.

These classes were offered in the shop's Culinary Center.  This is a onboard cooking classroom offers two classes each day while at sea with a variety of topics throughout the cruise. At some ports, they offer shore side shopping trips to local market.

The classes are well run and fun. On Riviera, they're headed up by Chef Kellie Evans, formerly an associate food editor at Saveur Magazine. She commands a staff of 3 or 4 assistants. As a team they make the sessions fun, informative, and easy. Most of the tedious tasks of preparing your mise en place (all the cutting, chopping, and measuring) is taken care of by the staff. If there's a special technique that called for there will be a demonstration before you get to try it for yourself. You get to do all the cooking, assembling, and plating - and eating! - yourself. And the best part: they also do all the cleanup afterwards!

After the orientation to our workstations and introduction to what we'll be cooking, everyone comes to the front demonstration station where Chef explains a little about the dish, the ingredients, and the techniques involved as she shows how it's done. The we all go back to our own stations and try to replicate what she just did. The staff comes around to make sure we're on track and answer questions.

When one step or dish is done, we move back up to the front to learn about the next step. We're back and forth as we progress through all of the dishes in the course. Eating as we go. 

Each session last for 2 hours, but the time goes by far too quickly.

Read more about The Culinary Center here: https://www.oceaniacruises.com/ships/riviera/life-on-board/culinary-center/

This recipe below is from the Viva España class. We made this Patatas Brava dish as well as the obligatory tapas Pan Con Tomate, and Paella. All while enjoying Sangria Blanca. Look for some more of these recipes in coming weeks.

For this recipe, check with your local wild mushroom seller to find out what varieties would go best with the tarragon. We’ve made this a number of times using whatever varieties were availabe at the time: lobster, cauliflower, white and red chantrelles which, in the Pacific Northwest, are available in late summer into fall. We also added criminis from the grocery store to fill out the volume (criminis are available all year in at most grocery stores). For true decadence add some morels! Farmers’ markets are a great source. We did try dried mushrooms to see how they would do. The flavor was ok, not great, but the texture was tough and rubbery. We strongly recommend sticking with fresh if you can get them. Also, from a strictly aesthetic point of view, you may want to steer clear of black mushrooms. As you can see in our picture, lighter mushrooms would look better. Before we soaked our mushroom mix, there were more white and orange ones than black. Once they soaked together, the light colored mushrooms absorbed all the black. 

As for the puff pastry: don't even attempt to make this yourself! That is, unless you're really looking for a challenge. It's a nuisance to make whereas it's easy to find in most grocery stores. Pepperidge Farm is the most commonly found here but the last time we made this we used Dafour that we found at Whole Foods, which we quite liked. Check out the comparison at Serious Eats.

If you don’t have sweet vermouth, dry sherry would work just as well (not “cooking” or crème sherry, both having salt and other additives).

Our favorite pan to use for baking this is 6 x 13 x 1 removable-bottom tarte pan. Any other low-sided pan should work just fine; just adjust your volumes and quantities accordingly for your size pan. As long as you don’t go with a deeper pan, the cooking time should stay the same. You can even do individual serving sized, these will require less cooking time so keep an eye on them.

We haven't tried to add any grated cheese to the custard mix but fresh grated Parmesan made be a really good addition. If you try it, let us know in the comments.

Bon appétit!

Our Superbowl Snacks

February 3, 2019

Our God Daughter, Megan, came over during the Superbowl so we needed a few snacks to have on-hand. Still being inspired by our trip to Spain, we decided to stick with the tapas style goodies. However, not ones to be confined to convention, we've adapted and combined several versions to come up with a more "keto friendly" recipe. Not that we're totally about keto (Hello, wine!) but we are trying to avoid most carbs including bread, which is generally found in meatballs.

Here's what we came up with.

Copyright

 

by Steven

24 May 2017

People occasionally ask us why we have both a gas (propane) grill and a charcoal/wood grill. The simple answer is that we can - we have enough room on our deck for both. The more complicated answer is that we simply enjoy the flexibility and options.

Which to use and when? It depends. The considerations being what we're cooking, what we want from the final flavor (smoked or not-smoked), the weather, and how much time we have for cooking. These aren't all the possible considerations, but they are the main ones we look at. 

Rather than reinvent the wheel here (or would it be re-discover fire?) I'll refer you to this article from The New York Times - Charcoal or Gas? Depends on What You’re Grilling. 

Happy grilling!

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Here’s a little post from our home food adventures.

In late September Kevin and I and our friend, Robert, headed north for a nice little weekend getaway. We stayed at a friend’s house east of Bellingham, on the way towards Mt Baker. We arrived the day after the house/groundskeepers finished harvesting the wine grapes from the vine growing on the porch arbor. They had more grapes than they knew what to do with so offered for us to take some home. Not to miss an opportunity, though not knowing what we would do with them, we took about 5 pounds of grapes back home with us.

What to do with 5 pounds of grapes? Not enough to make wine – darn! – But enough to make grape jelly. A quick look on the internet and we’re in business.

There are certainly a number of grape jelly recipes on the internet. Most recipes have one thing in common: pectin. I knew that Jello makes a pectin. So I thought who could have the more technically correct recipes than the people who make the pectin – If they can’t get it right, who can?

I found their recipe at kraftrecipers.com/recipes/surejell-concord-grape-jam-60879.aspx

I'll reprint the entire process here if that page goes off-line (don’t worry; I have the text saved, just in case). I just want to mention a few things I did differently.

I don’t have all the “proper” canning equipment but easily found ways to make do. One part of canning, if you’re not familiar, is that you have to sanitize your jars by boiling them. I don’t have a large enough pot to do this so I resorted to our electric roasting oven. This took longer than on the stove top, much longer, but eventually got up to just barely a boil, but hot enough (checked with thermometer) to get the job done.

[What I didn’t think of doing, which probably would have been more efficient, is use the Sanitize cycle on the dishwasher. I’ll try to remember that for next time.]

With the jars well on their way, I began on the jelly. I started off by getting the grapes off the stems and rinsing. Now it was time to weigh how much I had to work with and started in on the math of converting the recipe to the right amount of ingredients. The recipe called for 5 lbs of grapes. I had 8 ½ pounds. So not a simple, just-do-it-in-your-head math, unfortunately. But I have the technology!

Beyond adjusting for the proportions, I also added the juice of one very large lemon near the end of the boiling process. In the end you won’t really taste it, but I think it kind of “brightens up” the flavor. I do the same for my raspberry sorbet and it really makes a difference by helping to break some of the sugary sweetness.

Another thing to note is that the recipe says it takes one hour to complete. Don’t be fooled by this, it will take longer. Between sterilizing your jars and crushing the grapes you’re well over an hour into this, especially if your grapes are small. However, once you have the grapes wrapped in cheesecloth to drain, this mash can go into the refrigerator overnight. The rest of the process to getting the jelly into the jars does happen fairly quickly.

If you want to store your jelly on the shelf, you will need to continue the process through boiling the filled jars which will take some time plus the cooling time. But if you have the space in the fridge that you don’t mind giving up as you work through years’ worth of jelly, you can skip boiling the filled jars. We’ll probably give some away; I don’t like giving gifts that need refrigeration, especially if it needs to be shipped.

I know there aren’t many who will take the time these days to can their own anything. But this wasn’t that hard though it did bit of a time commitment. Worth it for having a good supply of jelly in the pantry and to give as gifts.

I’m a lover of pickled vegetables. All pickling starts with the same process: create a brine, cut vegetables in the shape you want, pack into jars or containers and wait a few hours or a few days. Oddly, I’m not a fan of olives, which are also brined, but that is another story.

The balancing of salt, vinegar (acid), and sweet is as varied as there are home and professional cooks. This basic, easy recipe on pickling cucumbers has been altered to suit my tastes. Below is Teri’s original list of ingredients. After, I’ve added my changes.

Food52 Take Off of Quick Cucumber and Shiso Pickles, by Teri
(https://food52.com/recipes/4891-quick-cucumber-and-shiso-picklesf)

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon salt, preferrably sea or kosher
5 Japanese cucumbers, or 2 English cucumbers
8 shiso leaves (or substitute basil)

Kevin’s Basic Asian-Inspired Pickled Cucumbers
1/4 cup white sugar, though palm sugar could be used, but you have to grate it or buy it that way
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup mirin (Sweet Japanese Rice Wine)
2 tablespoons salt, I used kosher salt because it resolves easily
1 large Japanese cucumber
1 medium zucchini
4 small carrots
3 stalks of Thai basil

1. Mix the first five ingredients in a glass bowl, or some non-reactive bowl. Stir until sugar and salt are dissolved.
2. Slice cucumbers and zucchini in whatever shapes you like. I made discs of the cucumber and zucchini. Keep them thin. Use a mandolin if you have one.
3. Peel and quarter the small carrot, cutting them to the right length to fit in your container.
4. Remove the basil from the stalks, saving the purple flower heads if you have them. Since Thai basil can have smaller leaves than typical basil, you don’t have to chiffonade them.
5. Place the vegetables in your container or split even among two or three, depending on the size you want to store.
6. Add basil to brine and stir.
7. Pour into a glass measuring cup, then pour over your vegetables.
8. If you need, take a chopstick and push down the basil deep into the containers to evenly spread them.

**Option: crush one glove of garlic and break up evenly between containers.

Seal up the containers and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. Use as condiments for burgers, rice dishes, or grilled meats such as hotdogs! Be creative. These are fast and wonderful. Thanks to Food52 and Teri for the inspiration.

Sometimes good thing happen with Kevin goes to the grocery store on his own. On Sunday he came back with not only King Crab Legs which we steamed and devoured for lunch on Easter Sunday, but he also picked up some nice sea scallops. Tonight we had them for dinner.

Yes, they're a little pricey and most of us only have them at a restaurant. I have to think that part of the reason many people don't cook them at home is that they're a little intimidated by them. They're actually pretty easy to cook, it's just that they're also easy to overcook. But with some high heat, a good pan, and attention, anyone can make a delicious scallop dinner.

Here's how Kevin did this tonight. It only took about 40 minutes. The longest stages were boiling the pasta and reducing the shallot and wine base - more about that in a minute.

He used dry pasta tonight so he got it going first. If it had been fresh pasta (never hurts to have fresh pasta!) this would have been done nearly last minute. While that was going he got all the rest of the ingredients in place. Chopped shallot, chopped garlic (from a jar), stripped thyme leaves from their stems. Meanwhile I grated a couple of hard cheese - parmigiano reggiano and asiago.

To prepare the scallops, the tops and bottom were coated with a bit of cornstarch then lightly salted. These then went into the eight inch skillet on medium high heat (coated with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, enough to coat the bottom of the pan) and a couple of teaspoons of butter ( NO! not margarine). You need a high enough heat to sear and brown the scallops, but not so high they'll burn. Once properly seared, take them out and set aside. They should not be cooked completely through at this point - they'll be finished later, trust me.

Next into the pan are the shallots, garlic,and thyme. Sauté until softened then add about 1/2 cup of white wine. Our choice of wine tonight is a chardonnay: 2012 Enlightenment from Sparkman Cellars. Reduce until about a tablespoon of liquid was left.

Add cream (actually leftover cream thyme from Sunday's scalloped potatoes) and about a teaspoon of grocery store lobster base. Reduce again just until slightly thickened. Then add a cup of the starch water from the boiled pasta, let it come back together - "tighten up" if you will. Check your seasonings, salt and pepper, to taste at this point. Now add the scallops back into the pan to finish cooking - up to this point, remember, they were only seared, but not cooked through.

Now toss in your pasta, directly from the boiling pot to the pan along with the asparagus tips that were cooked with the pasta (did I mention the asparagus tips?). Toss to combine, season as needed with a little fresh ground pepper and most of the grated cheese.

Now to the plate, or should I say pasta bowl.

Garnish with the remaining grated cheeses and a sprinkle of fresh thyme and to be decadent add a drizzle of the EVOO.

Buon Appetito!

Your family probably has a version of this egg casserole. I first came across this treat from my almost-cousin Jerry’s Mom, Corky (Jerry’s aunt was married to my Dad’s brother). I and a couple of friends of Jerry’s went over to his house one weekend and Corky made us the cheese, bread, egg and sausage casserole that inspired this one. She served her’s with cheese sauce over thick portions. I’ll take the corner piece with the most crispy edges, please. Thanks Corky.

My version is a Pantry Version, meaning, I just grabbed things on-hand to add to the basic custard and bread base. Today, I pulled out Hot Bulk Italian Sausage, Anaheim Pepper, Red Pepper, a local Jalapeño & Cheddar Cheese from Hunter & Holden’s, and a chunk of sturdy day-old rustic French Baguette – ours is from another local maker, called Grand Central Bakery.

The Basic Elements

• Custard: Egg and whole milk (or cream if you’re living on the edge).
• Structure: Provided by day old bread. Corky’s version was made with Wonder Bread, mine is includes day old crusty French bread.
• Flavoring: What ever you like. A word of caution, cook all ingredients and let them cool BEFORE adding them to the custard. For instance, uncooked mushrooms will exude all their water while in the oven and make for a soupy, grey casserole. Not pretty.

Heat oven to 350 F

Custard

• Six whole eggs
• 1 cup milk or cream
• Salt & Pepper to taste – this is where you could take the casserole in any direction you want. Add Herbs de Provence for instance for that south-of-France flair, or Cilantro and Cumin a Mexican spin. Get creative.

Whisk together thoroughly.

Structure

• Cut up your bread of choice into no larger than 1” cubes. If you need, you can always dry the cubes out in a low temperature oven (250 F) for 30 minutes.
• Add to Custard and mix to combine making sure to push down the bread.
• Let stand for at least 30 minutes to allow the custard to get into the stale bread.

Flavoring

Pantry and crisper ingredients of your choice

• ¼ Anaheim Pepper, chopped medium fine
• ¼ Red Pepper, chopped medium fine
• 4 oz white mushrooms, chopped medium fine
• 2 oz Hot Italian Sausage
• 2 oz prepared Cheddar Cheese spread (I almost never do this, but since this was a local produce…and I love supporting local ventures, this makes it in)

Left overs

• Roasted potatoes – use as much as you like, just remember to cut all ingredients to the same size.

Make sure to pre-cook the veg and meats. In my case I’m using hot Italian Sausage, mushrooms, red pepper, and Anaheim peppers.

• Combine all ingredients. It will look like a mess, that’s how it’s supposed to look.
• Pour into a greased pan of choice – I used a square Emile Henry baking dish.
• Dot with butter if you like.
• Bake for 50 minutes, checking for doneness about 30 minutes in to the cooking process. Cooking time depends on the depth of the custard.

Remove from oven when the custard is set and let rest for 5-10 minutes. Don’t over cook, some softness is desired (at least by me).

To Serve

If you’re serving a crowd, just put it out as is, with what ever other condiments or additions, like muffins, you want.

We just take our preferred slice and have at it.

We, of course, had some when it was fresh out of the oven! But once it cooled, we cut into "snack-sized" squares and individually wrapped each in plastic wrap. This may them easy and accessible for a little breakfast to take to work throughout the week. - What could be wrong with that?

What to do with a quart of Duck Fat without really trying.

For this Saturday dinner we needed something pretty easy – meaning something we’ve already cooked before with success. I was at a conference most of the day and Steven had rowing practice then errands to run. Before he left, Steven had set out a couple of organic chicken breasts from the freezer to thaw for me to brine when I got home. Other than that, anything was fare game.

The backstory to having duck fat on hand isn’t that interesting. It involved going to our favorite seafood shop called Taylor Shellfish in the Melrose Market on Capital Hill, Seattle’s trendy – though quickly gentrifying – post-queer neighborhood where we picked up a dozen fresh oysters, clams and mussels (see our cioppino post coming soon). In the same complex is Rainbow Meats, another great destination for all things meat. Since that night we were making a riff off the traditional Italian fish stew, we needed some spicy sausages. Rainbow has it all. You’ve got to go if just to ogle the fine meats…and staff. Anyway, I saw they had prepared duck confit. An idea sprang into my brain….I wondered if they have duck fat so I can make confit myself? Of course they did and we left with a full quart of that tantalizing fat. Score!

The duck fat sat in the fridge for a few days taunting me every time I opened the door, challenging me to find some uses for it…..I didn’t have duck, so what to do with it until I did?

Here’s what I decided:

• Porchetta-style Baked Chicken Breasts
• Duck fat roasted new potatoes with rosemary and white pepper
• Romesco sans almonds

Saturday Evening Porchetta-style Baked Chicken Breasts

• Split a single, brined breast without cutting it entirely in half. I recommend starting at the skinny end with one hand holding the breast in place, tilting your hand slightly away from the blade. Take your sharp knife parallel to the cutting surface and slowly slice through the breast to about ½ in from the fattest edge and fold open like a book.
• Pound the breast to an even thickness of ¼ inch. I always put a big old piece of plastic wrap over the meat to prevent the kitchen being splattered with flying bits of chicken.
• Optional: marinate for one hour.
  • ½ cup dry white wine – 2012 Oriana by Brian Carter Cellars in this case
  • ¼ cup honey
  • 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried
  • Salt/pepper (not much salt needed as the breasts are already brined)
  • Mix and pour over the chicken, sealing it up on a gallon sized freezer plastic bag is very convenient
• After about an hour, take out the breasts and dry off excess liquid.
• Pancetta substitute: I used enough bulk spicy sausage to have a nice layer on top of each breast. The sausage didn’t really need further seasoning, but I added fresh crushed coriander, finely minced basil, garlic, and dried Aleppo chili’s I had in the fridge. Feel free to improvise!
• Prep and set back in the fridge until you need them.

Duck fat roasted new potatoes

From our organic grocery delivery bag we had LOTS of potatoes to use, naturally a roasted potato would go well with the chicken.

• Preheat oven to 400F.
• Cut up the potatoes into even ½ inch squared chunks. For the two of us I used three medium red potatoes. We had left overs.
• Melt 3-4 tablespoons duck fat in the microwave, low power. High power might seem like the right thing to do but resist the temptation otherwise you might have small explosions as the water in the fat expands under the power. Messy.
• Toss the melted fat with the potato adding your favorite seasonings. I this case in keeping with the Mediterranean theme, I picked more Rosemary (2 teaspoons), crushed coriander (1/4 teaspoon), salt and pepper.
• Spread out evenly on a baking sheet, pop in oven for 30 minutes. HINT: Watch the potatoes, turning them frequently after 10 min. To prevent sticking, heat the pan up in the oven for 10 minutes before adding the potatoes.

Romesco Sans Almonds

Probably one of the easiest sides you can do with pantry items. Maybe not traditional, but good home cooking isn’t about replication but innovation. If you Google Romesco sauce you’ll see it originated in Spain most likely, and they all have ground nuts and/or bread. We neither like the mouthfeel of ground nuts nor appreciate the thickness bread gives this sauce. So, maybe what I have here really isn’t Romesco at all…but Seattle-style Romesco???? You decide.

• 2 tablespoons duck fat into a sauté pan on medium heat. Used instead of the traditional olive oil….I can hear the protests now.
• Chop fresh red pepper (or yellow or green for that matter) into ½ inch pieces.
• Chop roasted red pepper, maybe just one big piece from the jar.
• 1 tablespoon Aleppo pepper (use what you like here, these were in the fridge)
• 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh rosemary.
• ½ large shallot minced.
• Sweat the above in the simmering duck fat, being careful when putting them in as any water will cause some spattering.
• Add 2 teaspoons minced garlic and sauté 1 minute – we use Christopher Ranch brand because it’s easy to find in the grocery store, but feel free to use cloves of course.
• Add 1 can dices tomato (with liquid if you want a thinner sauce) and spices to link with the others you’ve chosen for the chicken and potatoes. Just pick one main one to repeat. In this case I used the crushed coriander as my bridge spice.
• Scant teaspoon red wine vinegar and sugar.
• Season to your taste.

Cook away until you get the consistency you want. I prefer a looser sauce, hence no bread or nuts.

While the sauce is combining and reducing and the potatoes are happy in the oven (don’t forget to check on them and give them a turn), pull out the chicken from the  fridge and put in a baking dish or sheet pan that you have coated with….you guessed, duck fat. Pop into the 400F oven on a lower rack. Let this go for about 20 minutes only. The sausage spread on top will keep the breasts from drying out, but as you’ll have one final stage of cooking left at the very end, you don’t want some leathery plank of protein on your hands.
 

Staging for the final cook

Pull out the cooked breasts from the oven. Take a small amount of the improvised Romesco and schemer on the top of each breast if serving more than two people. It turned out that the chicken breasts were plenty large and we split just one, tucking the remaining cooked breast in the fridge for another meal.

Add a little shredded cheese on top and place under broiler for just a few minutes. We used some mozzarella and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano …the undisputed king of cheeses according to Mario Batali.

Plating

As you can see, we used the Romesco to one side and potatoes on the other, placing the piping hot-from-the-oven chicken on top the potato. A little fresh basil, and maybe to guild the Lilly, add a drizzle of EVOO and fresh cracked pepper.

NOTE: It took about as long to write this posting as it did to make this dinner!!!

I hope you enjoy.

Caio Bella, Kevin