Katie Meadow

Probably it never even occurred to me growing up around the corner from Barney Greengrass that there was such a thing as fresh sable or fresh sturgeon or fresh whitefish. Nor can I remember eating fresh salmon, but then my parents didn't eat a lot of fish that wasn't smoked. Rarely I have been able to get the west coast version of smoked black cod on the northern CA coast, and it is great, but a little differently done than back east. Not easy to find, though, and very expensive. The price of fresh black cod has been on the upswing in the last couple of years. Berkelely bowl used to sell it for about $12 per pound, and Tokyo Market for about the same. Recently Berkeley Bowl has been having difficulty stocking it, and last week Tokyo Market was selling it for $18 per pound, which is the most I have ever paid.

The definition of a favorite fish for me is not only how it tastes, but must include low toxins and sustainably fished. Being on the west coast I would agree with David Ross that the best all-around fish these days is wild Alaskan Sablefish (black cod, butterfish.) I eat black cod about once a week, and it's super versatile and yummy. Ten years ago I would have said wild Pacific King Salmon. But now it's available sporadically and is very pricey. I still love it, and consider it a treat. I also really like fresh wild Pacific sardines, but gutting and boning them isn't a favorite activity, so I have to buy them somewhere they are willing to do that for me. They are not terribly available; I suppose demand is low. The price is right, though. They are dynamite cooked on the grill. Yellowfin Tuna (Ahi) is also a favorite of mine, but it takes finesse to cook it just right, and it isn't cheap, and it isn't easy to determine how it is fished. When I'm on the east coast I admit to a weakness for bluefish, if I can every find it, but it has been so long since I lived in NY that I look at most of the fish sold when I visit and just get confused. When back east I tend to eat the shellfish of my childhood, which isn't available in CA.

In what form exactly are you wanting to preserve your green chile? I suppose you could can salsa or pickled jalapenos, but if you just want to have green chile to add as needed during the year I would go with freezing. In New Mexico typically the green chiles are roasted, peeled, and then frozen in bags or containers the sizes you estimate might be useful. I like to chop the roasted, peeled green chiles coarsely, add a little salt and mashed garlic, and freeze in small containers. If they are really hot, like Hatch chiles, I get rid of the seeds before freezing. If they are milder, and I want to use them for stuffing, I just freeze them whole, stems and seeds included.

Sweet onions are nice for carmelizing and adding as a pizza topping, as long as there is some spicy tomato sauce on the pizza to balance out the sugar. Another way I like them is in a stir-fry. I find that mostly when I go out for or get take-out Chinese or Viet food I rarely want to eat the onions that are often in the dish--sometimes far too many of them. Today I made a quick shrimp stir fry recipe that calls for a sweet onion. The onion gets wok-fried on high heat for just a couple of minutes, so that it gets just a little browned but remains slightly crunchy. World of difference between that and a regular yellow onion under the same conditions. In Walla Walla one restaurant does a sweet onion deep fried "flower" that's pretty yummy. I love them grilled, just plain with olive oil and salt or on a burger. I'm not really a hot-dog person, but served with dijon mustard on a hot dog grilled WW's are pretty awesome. I eat fried onion rings once in a blue moon, but I imagine a sweet onion would do well that way. In stews, most soups or long cooking braises sweet onion are not my first choice.

Mmmm...soup! That would be Scotch Broth. The bones and fat are a plus for flavoring the stock, then you can easily pick off the meat to go into the soup.

Sounds just about too fantastic. In my experience if there's plenty of lox (yum, two kinds!) no one eats whitefish salad. Especially if there is an alternative smoked fish, like sable or even whitefish. I can't imagine eating chopped liver before 5pm, or with lox; we're talking really rich food, given you are planning potato pancakes and a frittata. Now speaking personally, if presented with untoasted bagels and no toaster on the table, my anxiety level goes way up. Gotta provide a way to toast bagels without you having to run back and forth to the broiler. Okay, I'm a high maintenance guest; lox on a cold bagel makes me depressed. A savory noodle kugel might be nice, but no need for such with latkes. Mmm, don't forget some fresh lemony apple sauce for them. If potato pancakes suddenly seems like too much work, a kugel could fill in. Yes to anything that adds a crisp unadorned vegetable or fruit. Sliced tomatoes, paper-thin red onions, capers. A citrus salad works really well--several different kinds of citrus, with a very light dressing of olive oil, citrus juice, teensy bit of salt, even pepper. On second thought, just make sure there's a pepper grinder on the table. Nothing beats a blood orange salad with a grind of pepper. As for sweets, well, no one I know would ever turn down home made rugelach. Chocolate cake sounds good, if that's the birthday boy's favorite. Cheesecake after such a meal might seem like coals to Newcastle.

Same here, only sadly, no grand marnier, so we used a bit of Triple Sec and a dash of orange bitters.

Batali's meatballs are the only ones I make. My Batali recipe is a little different. It uses 2 kinds of ground meat, less egg, less bread product, but definitely the cheese and the pine nuts. Sometimes I make them with beef and veal, sometimes I add a little ground pork. I especially like the technique of quick saute for the meatballs and then warming them up in the red sauce so they don't overcook.

Artichoke bottom stew sounds perfect. The golden crispy-top rice looks delicious. How is it made? In a big flat skillet? The way I prepare basmati rice I don't usually get a crusty side, and that makes for a really appealing presentation. Tell me how please! I seriously need some hakkaka immersion therapy. What a fun blog.

There are two ways I like a chicken sandwich. One is the Betty's Bakesale way, which is fried breast meat with spicy slaw. Very simple, but not so simple if you have to fry the chicken yourself; and I don't do that. In the early days that sandwich was dynamite, but now the line is so long I find the quality is suffering. The second way is grilled, in a banh mi. Of course freshly grilled and still warm is best, but not always practical. If I don't have leftover grilled chicken, I might quick saute slices of breast meat in a pan in butter. The crunch factor comes from the carrot-daikon pickle, which is easy to make in bulk and keeps well in the fridge. The usual suspects include cilantro, mayo plus maggi, sliced jalapeno and sliced cucumber. If you take the trouble, adding a smear of pate makes it perfect. If you have all the ingredients on hand it's easy to put together. I'm very happy using a good baguette and don't require an authentic Viet roll.

I haven't made a dedicated search yet, but I would like to find a source of fresh masa that's available in bulk--in other words in SMALL quantities. I shop for Mexican ingredients at Mi Pueblo (partly because I am addicted to the cuernos for breakfast and their bakery has really good ones) and although the masa, both preparado and non-prep is great and seems very fresh, it's only available in enormous bags. I never need all that masa. I don't know if there are preservatives in it or not, I'll have to check next time. I'm told that it can be frozen, though. Does anyone recommend this?

Okay, here's my totally sick confession. My go to is a piece of good chocolate, but like you say, sometimes you don't have that. However, I usually do have some quality chocolate sauce in the frig. My current favorite is Fran's dark chocolate or bittersweet sauce. I swirl this in about equal proportions with natural unsweetened chunky peanut butter and a teaspoon is usually all I need to satisfy. There is a thread somewhere about making peanut butter cups with high quality ingredients. I'm no fan of Reese's--they taste like what they are, very cheap sugary pb and cheap milk chocolate. But this is pretty yummy. No one is aware that I do this, so don't broadcast it. If I don't have any chocolate sauce I probably will have caramel sauce. I'm a devotee of Recchiuti Burnt Caramel. I cut up an apple into thin slices, melt a little puddle of caramel sauce in a small bowl and then dip in the fruit. Would work with a pear too, I imagine, but I've never done that. You could skip the melting part, but it's kind of nice. Neither of these extremely desperate measures takes more than 2 minutes. Nutella on toast also works, and that's under 5 minutes as well.

Rick Bayless has a few recipes that in my mind qualify as casseroles, such as his version of tamale pie. When I lived in NEW Mexico there were endless variations of casseroles built around masa, tortillas, beans, eggs, cheese, tomatoes, tomatillos, green chiles, zukes, potatoes, cornbreads. Some were more like souffles or custards or standard brunch backups and some were more like architectural constructions built with layers of various ingredients. Every B & B in New Mexico will serve something like that for breakfast, especially if it can be constructed the night before. I used to make a tomato zucchini rice cheese green chile baked affair that was comforting in the extreme. A casserole, definitely. Maybe not Mexican, but using the most commonly found ingredients in the southwest and south of the border.

Sorrel? Maybe something bright to serve on the side like a raita or just sour cream/creme fraiche/greek yogurt with cucumbers and fresh dill?

Hey, my hash turned out great! Minimal ingredients, since I'm trying to use up stuff before going away for a long weekend. I think refrigerating the par-boiled potatoes is an excellent technique; it was a snap to then mince them into perfect little cubes (smaller than 1/4 inch.) Above thread there are several advocates for using russets. There didn't seem to be any down side to using yukon golds. I weighed the virtues of bacon fat or oil, but went with just butter. First I sauteed some onion until golden, and removed it from the pan. Into the pan went the potatoes with ample butter; I stirred occasionally until they started to brown. Then I added back the onion, a couple of minced jalapenos that were not super hot, salt, a modest amount of dried Mexican oregano and fresh thyme and a sprinkle of paprika. I sort of turned the hash once or twice until it seemed nice and crisp, added a small amount of shredded ham and cooked it a few minutes more. My new non-stick pan worked way better than I thought it would. About the onion. I have no idea if what I did was unnecessarily fussy, cooking the onions partially and then removing them, but for some reason I decided that if I put in the onion and the potato in at the same time the moisture from the onion might prevent the potato from getting crispy. And in the end, I think the onion needed a bit more total cooking time than the potatoes. So perhaps it would work equally well to halfway cook the onions, which would eliminate some moisture, and then simply add the potatoes to the pan and continue to cook. With it we had a simple no-mayo kohlrabi and cabbage slaw and fresh baked warm cornbread. I had planned to serve the hash with a fried egg draped on top, but didn't remember until we were already eating. So much for short-term memory. There was no dessert, but it struck me that a baked apple in a puddle of cream would have been awfully nice.

Margaret, that recipe looks excellent. I love the idea of tossing in leftover greens, which I do sometimes have. Leftover beets are also not unknown to me. It's the corned beef that's a mystery, frankly.

I come down on the side of "not too large" ingredients, but I don't like a big mush, either. So my potatoes usually get cut into very small cubes that hold together with other ingredients on the fork. No spearing involved, but also you wouldn't want to eat it with a spoon. I never heard of putting cream in hash, but it sounds good. I didn't grow up kosher by any stretch of the imagination, but nor did my parents ever pour dairy products into a pot full of meat. "OMG what am I going to do with all this duck fat?" were words never spoken in my childhood. Too bad I didn't grow up on a farm in France. Then my mother might have learned to make a decent cassoulet and I would have been weaned on duck confit hash instead or corned beef from a can. (Yes, a can. I'm sure my dad never corned a beef in his life.) To add insult to injury, he also ate it with ketchup. And I don't mean catsup. Catsup is found on the rug before you take Snowball to the vet. The whole idea of hash is to throw in whatever you think goes and whatever you need to use up, no? If all you've got is cows, spuds and onions, then that's your hash. My dad's corned beef hash was always exactly the same; he had plenty of rules for the four things he ever cooked and never improvised. His four things were good, but he would have been useless on a desert island. And he would have been horrified at the idea of red flannel hash. Beets are for borscht, aren't they?

Okay, I'm inspired and I have just the proper leftovers/misc stuff in the fridge to make a perfect case for hash tomorrow. That would be frozen leftover ham from shanks, a few jalapenos, and a couple of potatoes, old enough so that I don't actually remember what kind they are; my guess is they are yukons. Going out and actually purchasing ingredients for hash seems to defeat the purpose. I'm going to par-boil the potatoes, which I don't believe I've done in the past, and since I am planning to make the hash tomorrow it seems worthwhile to do the potatoes today and refrigerate them overnight. When should I throw in the onion if my potatoes are partially cooked (still firm I'm presuming) and cubed in smallish bite-size pieces? Which needs a head start, the potatoes or the onion if I want an overall crispy result? And just to throw in another variable, instead of using my cast iron, I'm going to try using my newest Good Will find: a non-stick Sur la Table heavy duty fry pan that looks like it has never been cooked in. This is my first non-stick pan ever, and although the idea of buying a used non-stick pan is sort of revolting, this one looked so clean I sprang for it. And it was cheap. We'll see if I can produce a sufficiently crispy hash with this pan and pre-cooked potatoes. With eggs and some simple slaw this will be dinner.

My experience is that salting ahead improves the texture; it still has good bite, but doesn't taste so raw. Also salted slaw seems more forgiving when it comes to dressing the slaw in advance. Unsalted slaw that sits after being dressed gets watery and the flavors get diluted. I toss my shaved cabbage into a colander, salt in layers, mix, then fill a large bowl with water and set it on top for weight. Two hours seems to do the trick, or a bit less if time is short. I don't wring it out after this, although it can only help. Too lazy.

I've had duck confit hash (the duck was definitely in shreds) and smoked salmon hash, although I've never made either myself. Both were yummy.

My biggest stumbling block has always been that the potatoes stick fiercely to my cast iron pan, although generally the pan is well seasoned and doesn't have a lot of other sticking issues. I'm looking forward to seeing some recipes that turns out crispy potatoes instead of a crispy pan. I have a fondness for simple hash: just potatoes, peppers of various kinds, onion, maybe a little leftover ham and always paprika, smoked or otherwise.

Smitten Kitchen Apple Sharlotka: I love all kinds of apple cakes, including some that have lots of raw apples simply mixed into the batter. But this recipe has something seriously wrong with it; I made it recently and it was terrible. The recipe on the website includes NO butter (or oil) in the batter, which made me suspicious right away, although I proceeded to bake it. Wouldn't this be one reason the cake is a total bore?

Given I am a person who tries to use less salt, surprisingly I do carry a vial of gray sea salt around in my purse. A couple of summers ago I discovered the fresh corn ice cream at Tara's, in Oakland. It definitely screams for a little salt, but the board lists salt, among other things, at 50 cents extra. What's with that? We're taking about a few grains, no? So I started carrying my own salt in case I should find myself walking by Tara's. Every once in a while it comes in very handy for bland or seriously undersalted foods.

Identifying what's properly salted is a crapshoot. If you eat out a lot, most food will probably be within your expected preferred range. Anyone who has reduced their sodium intake for one reason or another knows that the taste buds adjust after a time, and keep adjusting as the level of salt in the diet decreases. If you eat a lot of processed food and fast food, most of that stuff will also taste properly salted, no? I love salt, but I've cut way back in the past few years. I never ate a lot of fast foods or processed foods, so my tolerance level for sodium is below average, I am guessing. Mostly I don't eat out any more, and the reasons are multiple: costs far too much, the food often tastes too salty and I usually have the time and/or inclination to cook. I try to salt my food moderately while cooking, and usually end up undersalting by some amount, even to my own taste buds. So I often use a little finishing salt after plating, and always provide it to guests at the table. I have a sister-in-law who cooks with no salt at all and her food is tasteless, imho. She's the only person I know who probably considers my cooking too salty. With the exception of baked goods, I almost always cut back on the salt specified in a recipe. I used to think that restaurants in NY oversalted more than restaurants on the west coast, but I don't believe that any more; salt seems evenly distributed in all parts of the country. If the sodium content of all processed and fast foods was cut back somewhat--maybe gradually--and if many restaurants did the same, there would be a general lowering of salt tolerance in the entire population; hard to imagine that happening, however, given the vast number of people who are used to phenomenal sodium levels. To say nothing of the money it will cost the food industry to make some changes.

Thank you Frank Bruni's mother! The recent recipe in Dining for her traditional xmas eve Eggplant Macaroni is excellent. The eggplant is prepped as for eggplant parm and the noodles, sauced with your favorite red sauce, are layered in along with a modest amount of grating cheese. The whole is baked. I didn't have as much red sauce as specified but I thought it was perfect, and even better the second day. My husband topped his with a snowfall of grated cheese and that was fabulous. What I like is the simplicity, and the refreshing lack of gooey cheeses. Not that I don't love mozz and ricotta, but this is easy (and cheap) to prepare and doesn't have that "in your face" cholesterol presence. Makes a large casserole, perfect for vegetarians.