Dinner! 2002

[Jinmyo]

Disclaimer: Professional kitchen, staff of three. Still, please try this at home.

Thin tomato and ancho soup with sour cream and slivered scallions atop and some fresh corn tortilla chips on one side of the bowl.

Deep-fried and battered roasted and skinned poblano chiles stuffed with roasted corn, panchetta, (leftover) chicken, onion, and queso blanco.

Skewers of monkfish cubes with a lime, coriander, and mirin sauce.

Mashed sweet potato and garlic quenelles in parmesan cups.

Salad of romaine and avocado with chopped grilled sardines (bones removed).

[Nick]

Grilled sardines?

[Jinmyo]

Yes, Nick. Like real sardines? Untinned? Check your fishmonger. They're quite wonderful.

[Jason Perlow]

Sliced Niman Ranch Top Sirloin Chateubriand with Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Saute of Pepper and Onion, and Garlic Saute of Haricot Verts

Click for full size picture

[Nick]

Jin, in over twenty five years on the Maine coast, I've never seen fresh sardines. But, I'll check around. You don't mean herring do you? How big/long are they? With heads or without?

Thanks

[torakris]

This week has been so hectic, we've already been trick or treating 3 days and have a Halloween Party tomorrow.

I shopped a couple days ago with out planning a thing, and opened up the refrigerator yesterday to a lot of green things (some that didn't originally start out that color). So last night we ate*

sauteed liver with onions and mizuna in a soy based sauce

avocado slices with sudachi ponzu

sugar snap peas (blanched then a cold water bath) dressed with thick mustard dressing leftover from a couple days ago

crab shumai (frozen) garnished with cucumber sticks and mayo for dipping (mayo is the most popular condiment in Japan and is often served with veggies, I find it gross but the kids love it!)

Japanese rice

[Jinmyo]

Jin, in over twenty five years on the Maine coast, I've never seen fresh sardines. But, I'll check around. You don't mean herring do you? How big/long are they? With heads or without?

Thanks

Sure, herring, pilchard. All are called sardines. These were about4 inches long, head and tail inclusive.

[Rachel Perlow]

Sliced Niman Ranch Top Sirloin Chateubriand with Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Saute of Pepper and Onion, and Garlic Saute of Haricot Verts

I rubbed oil, salt and pepper on both sides and broiled in our new Garland range for about 6 minutes per side. It rested in a 200 F oven for about 20 minutes and came out beautifully medium-rare.

[Nick]

Headed out to town a little later and will stop at the local fish store and after that have to go to the shore and will ask there as well. I've been seining for herring (got 200-300 bushels a night) but that was for lobster bait. The only time we'd eat any was if someone smoked some. And those would be 6-8" long. Anything smaller would usually get through the twine. Will report back later.

Edit: RP slipped in there while I was typing. This is in reply to Jin.

[Jinmyo]

Nick, try rubbing them with EVOO and grilling. With a bit of lemon and crunchy salt. You can tear the flesh away from the bones with your fingers. Pop a few olives, some good crusty bread.

[Suzanne F]

Nick, try rubbing them with EVOO and grilling. With a bit of lemon and crunchy salt. You can tear the flesh away from the bones with your fingers. Pop a few olives, some good crusty bread.

Yes -- and you don't even have to go through the trouble of gutting them. Grilled sardines are one of the easiest, most delectable fish dishes! YUMMMMMMMMM

[Sandra Levine]

Buty if you want to gut them, it's so easy. Just slit the little bellies and slide the guts out with your thumb. You can then go one step further and pull out the back bone (the rest of the tiny bones come out with it. The fish then falls open flat, ready to be grilled for a minute or two.

[Nick]

Reporting back. The fish store (salt water right in back of it) had never heard of grilling sardines and didn't think they'd be very good anyhow. Not quite yuk, but not too far away. Ditto down at the shore (wharf.) I'll keep scouting around in coming weeks, but at least along this part of the Maine coast, this is new territory.

We do do something like this with smelts, a migratory (salt to fresh water) small fish 5-6" long. Gut them, cut the heads off, roll them in corn meal or flour, and fry them. As Jin says, the meat comes right off the bones. I also eat the tail. It's nice and crispy.

Sandra, I'm assuming Jin does gut them before cooking. Jin, if anyone's fishing on herring, I'll let them know I'd like a few small ones and give them a try.

Tommy, you sound like the pot calling the kettle black.

Edit: Oops, I just noticed Jin doesn't gut them. Jin?

[Liza]

No sardines tonight. Short ribs rubbed with a spice rub of cumin, cloves, many kinds of crushed peppercorns, coriander, bay leaf, allspice, salt, and cinnamon. Seared off in olive oil then braised in tomatoes, carrots, onion, celery, garlic, ginger, Wors. sauce, tomato paste, white wine. And whatever the heck else Davy threw in there when I wasn't looking.

[Jinmyo]

Nick, I usually do gut them. And sometimes debone them. That time I just pulled the flesh and skin from the bones for tossing in the salad.

[torakris]

Sardines are truely wonderful fish, we eat them every way imaginable.

Sashimi with grated ginger in top, fried, breaded in panko and various seasonings and sauteed, baked in a gratin with tomatoes and potatoes, stuffed with pine nuts, herbs, cheese, tomatoes and baked, sauteed and tossed with spaghetti, and then off course grilled with a sprinkle of lemon juice.

[awbrig]

I made seared sea bass with a white wine lemon herb sauce w homemade garlic mashed potatoes...I find sea bass very delicious even if they are going extinct...

[torakris]

Last night's dinner:

a vegetable pulao, courtesy of Seductions of Rice, very, very good

turnips with cumin (shorvedar shaljam) from Madhur Jaffrey, one of my favorite turnip preparations

yoghurt with roasted cashews and cilantro

[Nick]

Okay. Sardines are left for another week. Tonight's adventure in cooking was to be a plain old chili. Except baked in the new 3 1/2 qt Le Creuset. Dry pinto beans, some beef, onions, peppers, garlic, etc. The only thing different was instead of using chuck, I decided to use a nice Angus strip steak in the freezer. 1 3/4' thick and well marbled. So I got it out to thaw in some water.

Washed the beans, brought them to a boil , and let sit for an hour, after which I pressure-cooked them for 10 minutes, along with some good smoked bacon ends, whole garlic cloves, and a little cumin seed. everythings good so far.

I take the well-marbled Angus strip steak and cut open the cryovac. (My friends with the slaughterhouse/wholesale/retail shop cryovac almost everything except pork.) Well, well, it turns out that the Angus strip is in fact frozen stew lamb in the same shape as a nice thick, well-marbled strip.

What to do now? Mise en place, forget it. It's gone. Shit. Plow ahead, do the same thing you were going to do. You're not going to mix mint with pinto beans are you?

It's in the oven now. I hope it comes out as well as Cabrales' chicken.

[Jinmyo]

Nick, while mint and lamb work together well, they aren't de rigeur. Cumin and garlic, as you've used, works great. I hope that you enjoy it.

[Nick]

Sardines are truely wonderful fish, we eat them every way imaginable.

...stuffed with pine nuts, herbs, cheese, tomatoes and baked...

Waiting for the lamb chili to finish. Back to sardines. Torakris, how the hell do you stuff a sardine with all that? Are they bigger than what we have here?

[Suzanne F]

Hey, don't they bbq lamb in Texas? Or is it Kentucky (no wait, that's mutton). It might be different, but I'll bet it tastes good. I believe there are almost no irreparable mistakes in the kitchen -- just new inventions. Just plow ahead, as you said. Let us know how it tastes, please.

[Nick]

Suzanne, It came out okay. Nothing I'd want to put on the table for a bunch of strangers, but not bad. I didn't add the seasonings I usually would toward the end because of the lamb - didn't know what would happen. But, I did plow ahead cubing the lamb a little finer and giving it a pretty good sprinkle of salt, pepper, chili powder, and garlic crystals the same as I'd do with beef before I seared it for chili.

Difficulty was compounded by the fact that this was the first time I cooked everything on the wood range this season. Have to get the top to sauteing, then searing temp while making sure the oven stays somewhere around 350. But, it's a good stove. Built it back in '78 and if necessary (and the wood holds out) could probably keep that oven at 350 'til hell freezes over.

All in all, it came out okay. The lamb came out really well.

[Nick]

Jin, What with Cabrales' chicken adventure and my own with chili last night, I forgot to mention that a friend (good cook) stopped by and I brought up the grilled sardines. He thinks it worth a try so I'm going sardine (herring) hunting. Snatching little herring from the mouths of lobsters.

[tommy]

osso buco. wild mushroom risotto. broccoli rabe with anchovy and garlic.