Ceviche!

For a recent wine club gathering, I decided to pair my French rose with a homemade ceviche. Roses apparently go with just about everything (which makes sense -- they're red, they're white), so it seemed like a fine time to try my hand at ceviche, something I'd never attempted but which I've been fostering a taste for between trips to the Red Hook ballfields and a visit to the coast of Peru.

Now here's a photo of the ceviche mixto I had at the fancy oceanside Costa Verde restaurant in Lima.



And here's my ceviche. Not quite so fancy, but pretty darn tasty for a first try. Below is the recipe I used (thank you Emeril).




TRADITIONAL CEVICHE

Ingredients needed:

• 3/4 pound very fresh white fleshed ocean fish, such as cod
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons (about 2) minced serrano peppers
• 1/2 cup chopped tomato
• 1/2 cup small diced avocado
• 1 tablespoon minced onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 corn tortillas, cut into thick strips and fried until crisp
• Lime wedges

Cut the fish into 1/2-inch dice. Place in a glass dish with the lime juice. Cover and refrigerate for 6 hours, stirring occasionally. Drain the fish and add the peppers, tomato, avocado, onion, cilantro, olive oil, and salt. Fold gently to mix. Serve with some fried tortilla strips, thick cut, garnish with lime wedges.

Yield: 4 appetizer portions


Of course, wine club was hosting some twelve or so people that night, so I tripled the recipe and then some buying 3lbs of cod at the fish market. I then carried the fish to the bar, because I'm not one to miss happy hour, where I stuffed it in the cooler behind the bar until later.

When I got home, I set to work dicing the cod. I quickly discovered that cod can be very, very full of bones. Not wanting to kill any of my wine drinking buddies, I dug into the cod one strip at a time and yanked out each and every bone. This took about forty five minutes and left flakes of cod buried deep under my fingernails. Thankfully, this was the hardest part (well, that and juicing eight limes by hand), and once I added the citrus and a splash of the canned pepper juice (per the suggestion of the gentleman who sold me the wine), the ceviche pretty much took care of itself. It was a hit at the party the next night!

So proud was I of my debut ceviche, I brought a little container along to the beach the next day to impress my foodie friend Dan. Now, I don't know if it was the walk carrying my fish to the bar where I stopped to shop for gift chocolates and nuts along the way. Or if it was the forty-five minute commute by bus lugging a cooler to the wine club meeting. Or maybe the little container of ceviche leftovers baking in the sun inside a sort-of-cool cooler at the beach. But maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised when Dan (and bless him for being such a good sport) hoisted a fork of ceviche up towards my nose to show me A WORM wiggling its way out of a chunk of fish. OMG. I've never seen something so disgusting come out of my own kitchen creation.

Apparently the ceviche really was good though, because after flicking the wormy piece of fish into the sand, Dan continued to eat what was left. What I lack in food sanitation sense, I just may make up for in taste.

Casserole Crazy

I'm thinking about entering this. I've never invented my own casserole, and in fact the only original recipe I've ever concocted is the one that found its way into Kara's indie rock cookbook. But I certainly enjoy eating casseroles having grown up in casserole country (aka The Midwest). I am a little intimidated by the rules that say you will be BLACKLISTED if you register and then don't show. I think I will spend next week trying out some ideas and see where it gets me before the Oct. 10th registration deadline. Wish me luck, and please leave me some recipe ideas in the comments!

Oh! And did I mention, Ted Allen is one of the judges? He's like the cool gay uncle I never had.

Brooklyn Cooking Demo

I've been far too busy painting my toenails and making watermelon-basil ice tea drinks to update you on this, but this is exciting!!



Recently, in celebration of Kara Zuaro's new indie rock cookbook I Like Food, Food Tastes Good, I was invited along with my bandmate (and aforementioned meat enthusiast) Scott to do a food demo. It was at The Brooklyn Kitchen, a fantastic kitchen supply store owned by the very lovable couple Taylor and Harry.

Now let's stop and consider for a moment the hilarity of ME doing a cooking demonstration. Crazy, right? Hey watch me microwave a burrito and burn some rice! But the truth is, I have one original (and very tasty) recipe that I created a few years back for the Pillsbury Bake-Off on the urging of my very handy-in-the-kitchen grandma. It was my honor to include this recipe for "Big Apple Quiche Puffs" in Kara's cookbook, and to show it off to a small, hungry crowd at The Brooklyn Kitchen. Of course I couldn't find the requisite Crescent Grands for the "puffs" part of the recipe and had to make do with canned biscuits. Then Scott totally showed me up by making yak dumplings, which is okay because he's making a living off knowing a thing or two about meat and I'm just a casual cook, and certainly not used to having an audience (note to self: don't lick fingers in front of said audience).

I'm gonna be a pain in the ass and suggest you pick up a copy of I Like Food, Food Tastes Good if you want to check out my recipe. Commerce, yay!

Freebase Pancakes

Thanks to notcot.com for passing along this seedy (and adorable!) cooking technique from Random Stuff:

Dude, As a Rule I Do Not Buy Girls Weapons As a Gift

It seems my kitchenware, mostly a bunch of hand me downs or beat up crap I've been destroying since college, is so lacking it prompted a food-loving friend of mine to buy me a new skillet and a chef's knife for my birthday. His roommate's comment on this choice of gift was
adept: "Dude, as a rule I do not buy girls weapons as a gift."

To return the favor, I bought this friend an ice pick for his birthday. We are now fully armed.

The Joy of Cooking in my Pajamas

Recently someone gave me the new 75^th Anniversary edition of Joy of Cooking. This is probably the most important cookbook ever made with over 4000 recipes and instructions for the most basic and necessary of kitchen techniques.

Sunday morning I lay in bed imagining what was in the fridge that I could turn into breakfast without leaving the house. Stale multi-grain bread + eggs = French toast? Eh. Fennel and olive omelet? Yuck, no. Old granola? Instant grits? No and No. Plain old eggs, which I never seem to fry to a desirable consistency, just weren’t going to do. I didn’t have anywhere to be until the afternoon, and wasn’t hungover for the first morning in days. It was time to try something challenging.

I cracked open the crisp new pages of Joy of Cooking and browsed the eggs section. Now if I were slightly less broke and had had the foresight to make plans with a friend, I would have been dining at one of Park Slope’s many fine brunch establishments, probably on challah French toast or eggs Benedict. Instead I was in my jammies, listening to The Cure in my kitchen at noon trying to summon my inner cook.

Could I make eggs Benedict? I’d never tried. I’d never even made poached eggs. I remembered reading recently that you can retain the shape of poached eggs better if you place a ramekin or a mason jar lid or something like that in the bottom of the pan, but having neither handy, I decided my eggs would have to hang loose.

Joy has three variations for Hollandaise sauce. (It also has an egg recipe called Scotch Woodcock, but that’s neither here nor there). The first is the standard Hollandaise Sauce, which called for ten tablespoons of butter and three large egg yolks. Then there is the Blender Hollandaise sauce, calling for almost as much butter and the use of a blender, and who wants to clean that? I went with a third variation called Quick Whole-Egg Hollandaise which called for whole eggs and less butter and seemed less likely to fail and less likely to give me a heart attack. I also considered for a minute making Eggs Béarnaise because I have a fond memory of a drunk coworker loudly explaining at dinner with a client how the béarnaise sauce was made out of BEARS! Turns out béarnaise calls for a whole lot of tarragon and “1 shallot, minced,” which are simply not things I keep around the house.

I’m always astounded when, through the magic of science, some new culinary experiment actually does what the recipe says, and I was thinking this as the butter, eggs and lemon juice started to thicken in the pan into a sauce and my gooey eggs turned into nice little white blossoms in the simmering pot. Soon I had constructed my creation atop toasted whole-wheat English muffins and crispy turkey bacon (what, you thought I had Canadian bacon handy?).

Verdict? Well, I’m not about to open my own brunch spot in Park Slope, but for something I pulled together with whatever scraps happened to be handy, my own Eggs Benedict was fairly tasty, and looked even better.

Next week, Scotch Woodcock? Oh, and if anyone has suggestions on what to do with a cup of leftover Hollandaise, speak up.