Persimmon Grilled Cheese

A simple but amazingly satisfying sandwich:

* goat gouda (Trader Joe’s sells a really nice and inexpensive one)
* chevre
* slices of very ripe fuyu persimmon

All dusted with good salt and pepper, of course. The bread is the magnificent TJ English muffin bread, but any good sturdy bread will do. The perfect five-minute lunch. Well, true perfection would be a bottle of Belgian abbey-style ale, some lotus chips, and a plateful of breakaway superkraut, but perfection’s elusive anyway.

Posted by Eric | 11:37 am 11/17/2011 | Posted in Dishes | 5 Comments »

Gingery Love

It took me long enough, but I realized today that I should be sharing my SF Chronicle articles and recipes here, for those who missed them in the paper. The original version appeared here.

* * *

It seems impossible to imagine nowadays, but I never tasted fresh ginger until I was in my late teens; it simply wasn’t part of our family’s culinary lexicon.

But don’t feel too sorry for me: I’ve spent the rest of my life making up for it. Fresh, pickled, crystallized, powdered, preserved, dried, I consume it mad quantities, and it still feels like I can’t get enough.

I vividly recall the first time I had pickled ginger, that small mound of ginger that comes with sushi. It was one of a small number of “whoa!” culinary milestones that was so different from what’s come before it that it’s not an exaggeration to call it an epiphany. And it was free, at the sushi bar! You could have as much as you wanted! To this day, I still probably eat ten times the amount of pickled ginger as the average person when I go to sushi restaurants.

And then I noticed fat bags of pickled ginger for sale at both Japanese and Chinese markets around town, for just a few dollars. So I began chowing on it, as a snack, with dinner, with all kinds of meals. But one casual glance at the ingredient list on the bag one day also produced another epiphany of sorts: ginger, white sugar, white vinegar, and red dye — surely I could make pickled ginger on my own, using better ingredients?

Why yes, I could. Homemade pickled ginger made with high-quality ingredients — young, lithe ginger, excellent vinegars, and fantastic sweeteners (artisanal honeys, organic maple syrup, and organic agave)– not only tastes vastly better than its industrial brethren, one would have to conclude it’s better for you, too.

Epicurean reasons alone are enough to make ginger a part of daily life, but its health benefits are enticing enough to begin adopting it into breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. There’s wide agreement in the medical community that it boosts immunity, promotes digestion, battles viruses, helps nausea, staves off sea sickness, gooses metabolism, reduces inflammation, stimulates appetite, ameliorates rheumatism and arthritis . . . the list keeps going.

I’m partial to its heady, spicy, sweet aromas, and to its bracing clean taste. It lends brightness and vibrancy to everything it touches. Its pro-digestion properties and cleansing effects on the body are just happy bonuses.

If you’ve never had a ginger blast in a salad, you’re in for a treat. And do try bites of pickled ginger with meat dishes; I like to place a little mound of it next a piece of cooked meat on my plate — a small nibble between bites cleanses the palate in the same way it does sushi. And be sure to use the ginger-infused pickling liquid in salads, it’s beyond fantastic.

Three-Ginger Salad

If you like ginger, you’re going to like this salad, which is loaded with sauteed ginger, pickled ginger, and crystallized ginger. It has crunch and snappiness from the cabbage, firm texture from the edamame, and creaminess from the avocado, all brought together by the ginger symphony.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 tablespoons fruity green olive oil
1 cup minced leeks
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
– Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
2 cups finely chopped green cabbage ( 1/4 head, about 8 ounces)
2 cups finely chopped red cabbage ( 1/4 head, about 8 ounces)
2 cups cooked shelled edamame
1/4 cup thinly sliced pickled ginger (see recipe below)
1/4 cup thinly sliced crystallized ginger (see Note)
– 2 tablespoons seasoned vinegar from accompanying pickled ginger recipe
– Matcha salt or medium-grind sea salt (see Note)
1 ripe avocado
2 tablespoons roughly chopped, roasted unsalted almonds

Instructions: Heat the butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the leeks and fresh ginger then reduce heat to medium-low; season with salt and pepper to taste. Gently cook until soft, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

Combine the red and green cabbage, edamame, pickled ginger, crystallized ginger, the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and vinegar in a large bowl; mix well (your hands work best). Add the reserved leek mixture, and combine. Season liberally with matcha salt or sea salt and pepper. Taste, and add more vinegar, if desired.

Halve the avocado, slice each half lengthwise into 1/2-inch wide wedges, and remove the peel. Then cut each wedge into 1-inch pieces. Add to the salad, and mix gently. Serve, topped with a scattering of chopped almonds.

Breakaway Pickled Ginger

Traditional gari, as it’s called in Japan, is made from rice vinegar and white sugar, but it’s much better when made with quality ingredients. Fruit vinegars – raspberry, fig, and Muscat – work especially well, but so do balsamics and wine vinegars. For the sweetener, try agave nectar, a good local honey, maple syrup, or your favorite sweet syrup. I’ve even used excellent jam to great effect. Mature ginger will also work, but the young variety is superior – check produce specialists like Berkeley Bowl or any Asian market. The dish is still good with older ginger, too, so if you can’t find young ginger don’t let that stop you from making it. I use an inexpensive plastic Japanese-style Benriner mandoline to slice the ginger, but you can also use a sharp knife or vegetable peeler. The formula is easy to remember: 1 part ginger, 1 part vinegar, and a touch of sweetener (to taste).

1 cup shaved baby ginger (see Instructions)
1/2 cup fruit vinegar 1/2 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons honey, or to taste

To shave the ginger, use a spoon to peel off the skin, then slice it very thinly with a knife, vegetable peeler or mandoline.

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add the ginger, and blanch for 2 minutes. Drain, and transfer the ginger to a bowl. Add the vinegars and honey, and mix well.

Transfer to a jar and refrigerate. The flavors are excellent immediately, but will improve with time. And it seems to keep forever.

Posted by Eric | 12:26 pm 08/15/2011 | Posted in Dishes, SF Chronicle pieces | 3 Comments »

A Quick Way to Great Pizza

I must say for the record: having a small child DOES impact one’s everyday cooking. It’s often a race to get something good on the table by about 6:30, since Daphne goes to bed by 7:30 or so. We’re believers in not only eating dinner together every night, but also in serving Daphne the same thing we eat — no separate “child friendly” dinners here at Breakaway Central. I figure that the wider a variety of foods Daphne eats, the more adventuresome she’ll be with food (and maybe other things too) later on. (She sometimes reaches for her tongue with alarm if something is aggressively spiced, but she gets over it quickly!)

Daphne’s vocabulary is exploding, and one of her favorite words is “pizza” (it does feel good to say, especially when you really accentuate the first syllable). So I’ll rummage through the fridge and garden to collect a few things, turn the oven on to 550 (with pizza stone inside), and begin preparing the world’s simplest pizza.

Breakaway cooking has always been about little “tricks” that save time and hassle. And what I’m about to say is sure to disappoint a few people, but here’s a valuable trick/tip: buy your pizza dough at Trader Joe’s. It’s sold in the refrigerated section near the tofu, in a plastic bag, for about a buck, and is ready for immediate use. You just lightly flour a pizza peel and spread out the dough, forming a small mound around the perimeter. The dough even freezes well, so I’ll buy four or five at a time. I then simply transfer one from freezer to fridge, where it will live for a day or two, ready to be pulled out on a moment’s notice.

I usually just saute an onion with some fresh rosemary and thyme and oregano and maybe some garlic confit, and toss in a veggie or two — summer squash, mushroooms, fennel — and lightly cook. The dough then gets sprayed with plenty of olive oil and slid on to the pizza stone and baked, sans toppings, for a few minutes to let the whole thing get exposed to blasting heat. Then the veggies go on, followed by a little cheese (I’m kind of a minimalist with the cheese, to the great consternation of European Delia, who always wants more cheese). When it’s done, about five minutes later, I’ll usually add very generous lashings of black pepper and good salt, followed by a big toss of chopped fresh herbs. Sometimes tomatoes go on, uncooked, if we have them, and maybe a final fleck of shaved pecornino. Total prep is about 10 minutes, and baking time is about the same.

Anyone else a fan of this dough?

Posted by Eric | 1:43 pm 08/10/2011 | Posted in Dishes | 12 Comments »

Really Easy Gojiberry Ginger Scones

Thanks to so many of you who wrote me to ask about my eye surgery. I’m happy to report that the entire thing was painless and unscary, thanks to the incredible skill of my ophthalmologist. Dr. Mark Mandel. There have been no complications, and I’m seeing like an eagle. Well, an eagle with a minus 5 diopter, but still eagle-like compared to before! We’re going to lasik down the rest, to zero (i.e. 20/20 vision) in September. Then I really will be hawk-like. It’s been tremendously liberating, and I can’t wait for part II. I’ve even turned Dr. Mandel on to matcha, after I unearthed a study linking matcha with the prevention and healing of eye ailments, including glaucoma.

Other matcha news: had a cup with Morimoto — more on that development soon!

We recently had some visitors from Japan that included three of the world’s cutest children (along with their dad, Aki, the founder of Cookpad, Japan’s largest cooking site, with a mind-boggling 7 million subscribers, and his lovely wife Junko), so I thought I would serve some hot scones and tea. I made them with copious amount of gojiberry and crystallized ginger, and they turned out to be a hit. As you know, I don’t normally include recipes in this blog (it’s the “teach a man to fish” belief that the IDEAS behind making good food are far more valuable than the recipes themselves) but with baking some guidelines are necessary, so here we go. Let me know what you think of them, please. The “secret” to these great scones is cornmeal — it makes for a fabulous texture. And the combo of gojiberries and ginger is a winner; your guests will rave. Yields about 15 scones.

Gojiberry Ginger Scones

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup light brown sugar
1½ cups cornmeal (medium grind)
½ pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, sliced into ½ inch cubes
½ cup gojiberries
½ cup crystallized ginger
1¼ cups milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice (can also use any kind of vinegar)

1) Preheat oven to 425. Prepare two baking sheets with silicon mats or parchment paper.

2) Using a large mixing bowl, add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cornmeal. Stir with a sturdy wooden spoon until well mixed.

3) Add the cubed butter and, using a pastry knife or your fingers, work the butter until it’s the size of small peas. Using the spoon, mix in the gojiberries and ginger.

4) Make a well in the center; add milk and lemon juice. Mix briefly, until ingredients just come together.

5) Gently shape the dough into balls about 2 inches in and place them on the prepared pans about 2 inches apart, 7 or 8 balls per sheet. Dust each of them with a pinch of sugar.

6) Turn down the oven temperature to 375, place the scones in the upper and lower oven racks, and bake for 10 minutes.

7) Switch sheet positions (top sheet goes to bottom rack, and vice versa) and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, or until the scones are golden brown. Transfer the scones to a wire rack to cool.

Posted by Eric | 2:56 pm 07/26/2011 | Posted in Dishes | 2 Comments »

A New and Tasty Way to Cook Squid

I think squid is the great underappreciated seafood, and can’t figure out why it isn’t more popular. Provided you don’t overcook it (which is easy to do), it has a fabulous, toothsome texture, especially if you make a crispy crunch crust before you cook it. It’s plentiful and completely sustainable, AND it’s local, at least for us lucky Bay Area residents. It may not be widely available in the huge supermarkets, but those aren’t the places you want to be buying fish anyway. And it’s cheap — I rarely pay more than $7/lb for top-quality squid, and a pound will make three or four generous portions.

Sold yet? Good, now go find some. As always, I can’t recommend the folks at Monterey Fish highly enough. You can get quality squid (and other sustainable tasty fish) online, believe it or not, from I Love Blue Sea.

My latest and greatest way to cook squid is to give it a crust made of amaranth, that ancient grain that kind of looks like quinoa, except the grains are even smaller. I often use other crusts, including ground rice, ground pink lentils, farina, and spiced breadcrumbs, to make my squid, but amaranth is really nice: it imparts a nutty, poppy, very lively crunch to the squid.

To prep the squid, rinse and dry it thoroughly (don’t skip this very important step) and then rub the whole thing generously with olive oil. Season generously with good salt and pepper, spray the squid with more olive oil, toss on some amaranth on one side and gently press it into the squid. Spray the whole thing again with olive oil (so that the amaranth doesn’t just fall off when you transfer it from cutting board to pan). Heat up a cast iron (or other) pan, give it a film of olive oil, get it very hot, and gently place the squid inside. Cook until deeply browned, as shown in the photo, about 3 to 5 minutes, and flip it over to cook another few minutes. Serve with wedges of meyer lemon and matcha salt (or other salt) and a huge salad.

Anyone have any favorite (and great) methods of cooking squid?

Posted by Eric | 2:28 pm 05/17/2011 | Posted in Dishes, Ingredient Centric | 5 Comments »

Kabocha — The Lazy Man’s Squash

The first time I tried kabocha was in a fancy tempura restaurant in Kyoto. It was one of those rare food epiphanies that come along once every few years: the perfect unity of sweet (kabocha is probably the sweetest of the winter squashes), salt (it was dusted liberally with matcha salt) and fat, delivered with ultralight crispness from the artful hands of a fry master. When he told me it was “pumpkin,” I was incredulous — this wasn’t like any pumpkin I had encountered. He hadn’t even bothered to peel it! But I wanted more of it, whatever it was.

I’ve been a kabocha fan ever since — it lends itself to quick roasting, steaming, braising, and pan-frying. Prepping it couldn’t be easier because, unlike other winter squashes, you don’t have to peel it. It has a very tasty deep green skin with celadon stripes that’s better left on. So it’s just a matter of slicing it up into whatever shapes you like, spooning out the seeds and strings, and proceeding. Use your biggest, heaviest knife for this job, and use lots of caution: the flesh is dense, and it’s hard.

But what a reward when it’s done! The brilliantly colored orange flesh turns buttery, flaky, and sugary, and takes well to spices and herbs. My go-to weeknight preparation of kabocha is a simple braise: cut up a few kabocha wedges into bite-size pieces, sauté in a combo of butter and olive oil, add freshly ground star anise, stir, add some stock, cover, and cook till soft, then top with good salt and chopped parsley or cilantro.

Its innate sweetness also makes it a natural for desserts. I like to gently poach some kabocha pieces in coconut milk and regular milk and warm spices like nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon, with a touch of brown sugar or honey. Simple and great. It makes a fine panna cotta and pudding, too. And I’ve made killer gnocchi with it.

But the simplest way to enjoy is to roast it in the oven. Cut it up into curved wedges or even, if you have the knife energy, into a julienne, place on a baking sheet, drizzle on some olive oil and salt and pepper, and bake it for 15 or 20 minutes in a moderately hot oven. When the edges begin to brown, it’s done. It’s fabulous on pasta, especially when combined with some fried sage leaves.

I always try to keep a few in my pantry, right next to the potatoes. They seem to keep forever, and it’s very comforting to know that a fantastic and easy dinner is nearby, even when the fridge is bare.

(photo by Robin Kok)

Posted by Eric | 1:31 pm 05/02/2011 | Posted in Dishes, Ingredient Centric | 5 Comments »

Cumin Chicken with a Rice Crust

We interrupt this matcha vegetarian lovefest with a one-dish wonder of a supper, the mighty cumin chicken/roasted yukon gold combo.

I like buying whole chicken legs — Falletti’s in SF sells the amazing Mary’s chicken, which is far and away the tastiest/most flavorful chicken that’s readily available (one-off “artisanal” birds are another story).

I’ve cooked them a million ways over the years, on the holy grail for ever-crispier skin and meat that completely falls off the bone, and I think I’ve finally settleD on a truly great method that results in juicy, intensely flavorful meat and skin with a texture similar to potato chips. The secret? Rice! Here is how I do it:

Rinse and dry the legs, and set them on a cutting board skin-side up. Drizzle on some olive oil, and rub them thoroughly with it. Preheat oven 375.
The next step is decide what kind of crispy crust to create. The latest and greatest favorite is about a tablespoon of finely ground very fresh cumin (I buy mine at the SF Herb Co) and another heaping tablespoon of finely pulverized rice, usually basmati or japonica, it doesn’t really matter. You then simply combine the cumin and the rice in the spice grinder, and liberally dust it over the skin-side of the chicken. Use your fingers to lay it on fairly thick. If you need to make more of the cumin-rice mixture, do so. (you could even make a little extra for later inspirations, and store it in a small lidded jar near your stove, where you can see it).
Spray the rice-cumin coating with olive oil (to make it adhere), then dust with freshly ground peppercorns and plenty of kosher salt. Spray it again (to make it stick).
Heat up a cast-iron pan (it really should be cast iron – here’s a video why) over high heat, add a small drizzle of olive oil, and swirl it around to cover the whole pan, adding more if needed, and being careful not to add TOO much, since the chicken will render plenty of schmaltz.
Place the chicken, spice side down, into the pan, and sprinkle on a good amount of salt and pepper onto the meat. Turn down the heat to medium-high, and let the spiced skin get deeply browned. Don’t shake the pan or stir or anything, just leave it alone for a good five minutes at least. Add a bunch of yukon gold potatoes, as many as will comfortably fit into the pan without crowding.
Using tongs, lift one of the legs up to check the brownness. Once you’re happy with how it looks, flip them over, cook for a minute or two on the other side, and transfer to the oven. Set the timer for 40 minutes while you cleanup, set the table, make a simple salad, open the wine, and smother your beloved with kisses.
Remove the pan from the oven, heat up your plates (very important — it’s one easy and simple step that makes a huge difference), plate up the dinner, and prepare for addiction.

When dinner’s over, if I’m feeling lazy I toss the bones into a freezer bag and freeze, to be used for stock whenever I next get around to it, but just as often I’ll toss them into a pot of water, along with a carrot, some bay leaves, some leek tops, or whatever veggies need to be used up, bring to a boil, and cook it over low heat till it’s time to go to bed. A gorgeous and healthful soup stock will then be there, on the stove, for lunch the next day.

If you’ve got a good method for juicy, crispy chicken legs, let us know!

Posted by Eric | 11:46 am 09/27/2010 | Posted in Dishes | 7 Comments »

Poached Eggs in a Carrot Base

Carrots, shallots, mushrooms, and eggs. Sounds simple enough, but it really doesn’t describe the harmony these four basic ingredients — which are very easy to keep in your fridge at pretty much all times — take on together.

The hardest part of this simple dish, like so many others, is dicing. The better you are with a knife, the less time everything takes. Getting comfortable with your workhorse knife vastly increases the pleasure of cooking, because fine dicing ceases to become a chore and more of a joy. Practice, people! It only takes a few hundred hours to get good, as opposed to the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says it takes to get REALLY good at something, like golfing or playing the cello. So this is a great dish to practice, and your family will exalt you for your efforts.

Dice up about a cup of carrots (I used yellow and purple ones in the photo above), and about half that amount of shallot and mushroom (I like criminis here, but any mushroom will do). Saute in a cast iron (or other) pan with some ghee or butter or olive oil (or combo of those three), stirring often. For extra umami, sprinkle on a big pinch of pulverized shiitake. When everything is soft, crack four of the best eggs you can find over the veggies. By now it’s almost a cliche to recommend quality ingredients, but this is ridiculously true with eggs: spend more, get some chickens, befriend your chicken-keeping neighbors — do whatever you have to do to get seriously great and fresh eggs. You’ll be amazed at the difference in color, texture, and taste.

Then pour a little liquid into the pan. You can use stock, carrot juice, orange juice, wine, water, whatever. Quickly cover the dish and let the eggs steam-cook in all that flavor. Finish off with a good pinch of pepper and good salt (herb salt is very nice here, as is lavender salt). When the yolks have largely set, but are still a tad liquidy, it’s done. Finish with some garlic chives, or whatever herb you like/have. Time your toast and coffee (get those ready after you chop the veggies), warm your plates, get the newspaper, and get ready for a seriously pleasant, and energizing, breakfast.

Posted by Eric | 2:38 pm 07/20/2010 | Posted in Dishes | 4 Comments »

Another Flavor Blast: Tomato Confit

I‘ve become such a convert to garlic confit that I thought I’d try to preserve some tomato bounty in the same way. The result: we may have yet another permanent breakaway flavor blast in the fridge! Classic tomato confit calls for roma tomatoes, sliced in half and roasted in a warm (250) oven for about four hours, enough to time really concentrate the flavors, as we do with our semi-dried tomatoes (and an umami-kissed version of them is here). But I didn’t have any romas, and had a boatload of gorgeous dry-farmed (method of farming that intentionally gives the plants very little water, allegedly to concentrate flavor) heirlooms.

I cut them into largish chunks without the bother of peeling them (I was feeling lazy, and the skin was pretty thin on them anyway), and placed them in a claypot, just to see how they’d turn out in comparison to a baking sheet. Turned on oven to 225, set a little reminder to come back in five hours, and had a lovely afternoon on the local hiking trails. Five hours later, they were reduced and concentrated, just as I had hoped, with quite a bit of nectar-like liquid still in the pot, which I drank and got a total nutrition buzz! Added a little dried tomato salt (well-dried tomatoes whirred in the spice grinder with some sel gris), transferred to a mason jar, and topped with fruity unfiltered olive oil.

I immediately made a pasta with tomato to the 4th power:

raw heirlooms pureed with greek yogurt, thyme, and and tarragon, then heated and reduced
tomato confit
raw sliced heirlooms
dried tomato salt

It was out-of-control good, one that I’ll definitely be featuring in the new book, which I hope will come out in late fall.

Most recipes for confit say that it will keep, refrigerated, “up to a week.” I find this laughable — it will keep for much longer than that, even ignoring the fact that this stuff is so good that it just won’t sit around very long. I’m well aware of the dangers of botulism in an inaerobic environment, but as long as you don’t forget about it for a few years, feel rueful, and slam down the whole jar, letting it live in your fridge for at least a few weeks, or even months, should be perfectly fine. As with all things in your fridge, however, always obey the golden rule — don’t let stuff sit around forever. I often follow the “one-month” rule: if I haven’t used something in a month, I’ll reconsider whatever it is — next time I’ll buy or make a smaller quantity, or just throw it out if I wasn’t that crazy about it in the first place.

Whatever your feelings on longer-term fridge stuff, do try making this confit — it just might earn a permanent place in your fridge, too. And please: if you do make it, come back and tell us what you did with it. OK?

Posted by Eric | 11:05 am 07/12/2010 | Posted in Cooking ideas, Dishes | 8 Comments »

Herring and Radishes? A Marvelously Refreshing Summer Salad

For a few weeks every summer, it just bakes here in Marin; I make a few pitchers of herbed lemonade — three or four meyers, a handful of herbs (mostly mint), a big squirt of agave, filtered water, and plenty of ice, all into the Vitaprep, then strained — maybe make a cheese plate and a salad, and declare victory. The thought of going near the stove is anathema.

Yesterday was one of those days. I had a small tub of pickled herring, picked up at Berkeley Bowl, that I was looking forward to munching on, and a beautiful bunch of radishes. Together they went into a bowl, along with a splash of olive oil, plenty of coarsely ground peppercorns (a medley of black tellicherry, green, and pink), and some tangerine salt. That’s it. But the medley is magical. I think adding anything else would just confuse it.

I’m not sure why this isn’t a canonical combination, because it really ought to be. Snappy fresh biting radishes, mellowed slightly by the piquant, sweet-sour fish and the pickled onions they come packed with, all moistened by the fruity green grassy olive oil and brought alive by the citrus salt. With a glass of gewurtz from Navarro, Daphne dancing in her bouncy contraption, and some cherished friends, it’s hard to imagine a better afternoon.

Herring is a massively underappreciated fish; it’s under the radar of most fish counters because it’s not set up on display, you have to search for it or ask for it. And I think many Americans have an aversion to much fish in general, and processed fish in particular. That tub cost I think about $2.50, and fed four people. It’s one of those items that should live permanently in the refrigerator, next to the olives. It makes a fine, fine dinner when you just don’t have the energy to cook.

Any other herring fans out there?

Posted by Eric | 10:59 am 07/06/2010 | Posted in Dishes | 12 Comments »

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