Three Little Tricks that Make Cooking Easier and Better

Over the years, I’ve discovered, through sheer trial and error, a few realizations that have really helped make me a better, more productive, and more interesting home cook. I would like to go over everything I’ve discovered over time, but one of the great things about the blog format is that it’s nice to present ideas in little snippets for easier overal digestion. So with that in mind, here are three little tricks, or habits, I’ve developed that have really helped me. Maybe they’ll help you, too. Thinking like this begets more cooking, and better eating.

1.  Upgrade your relationship with salt. Throw out the iodized table salt and replace it with kosher. Purchase some sea salts with varying textures and colors/origins, and get to know them. Then find some sel gris (coarse gray salt from the coast of Brittany, France) and begin to make flavored salts. Most of the salt that most people consume is consumed via processed foods, which are loaded — and then some — with salt. The breakaway cooking style may appear at first glance to place an undue emphasis on salt. But because processed foods play little or no role in the cooking and eating habits of breakway cooks, overall salt intake is probably much lower than those with average, conventional diets.

Simmered Daikon Wheels

Daikon is a challenge for a lot of people who aren’t familiar with it.  Especially when cooked, It has a rather strong, radishy flavor that, if untamed, can be off-putting. Japanese people seem to never tire of it though — more agricultural land is devoted to daikon than any other vegetable! In Japan it’s often grated finely and infused with soy sauce and sometimes yuzu, for a wonderfully pungent and flavorful dipping sauce for tempura, meats, fish, and stewed dishes. It’s also commonly sliced into 1/2-inch wheels and cooked in a broth made with water, kombu, soy sauce, and mirin; it’s supercomfort food, especially during cold weather. 

I found some nice-looking organic daikon the other day at Berkeley Bowl, and thought I might try cooking it in another flavorful broth, this time made of carrot juice, chicken stock, white wine, and plum syrup (bottled reduced plums cooked in sugar and water, often sold in Chinese markets, and a wonderful global flavor blast sweetener in its own right).  The daikon wheels came out soft, fragrant, and popping with umami. We had them alongside a roasted chicken leg and some rice cooked in homemade beef stock and kaffir lime leaves. 

Lunch the next day (above photo) was a winner: rice refried in a huge quantity of ginger, the daikon wheels, avocado with lavender salt, and homemade pickled turnips for crunch and tanginess (though you can’t seem them in the photo). There’s something supremely satisfying about a lunch of rice, vegetables, pickles, and avocado; it hits all the right buttons for me, and can be assembed in just a few minutes with leftovers from the previous night’s dinner. 

Any other daikon fans out there? What do you like to do with it?

Come Have Some Breakaway Fun at SieMatic’s Drop-Dead Gorgeous Showroom

If you’re in the SF Bay area on Wednesday, October 22, please join me for an evening of fun, food, cooking, and design at the showroom anniversary event of SieMatic, designers and manufacturers of wildly innovative — and drop-dead gorgeous — kitchens.  I’ll be cooking and demonstrating a half-dozen or so dishes, assisted by the amiable and incredibly capable kitchen staff at Purcell Murray. I’m told I’ll even have a Gaggenau induction burner to cook on, so woohoo! We’ll have wines to match, a book signing, and a raffle for a private dinner for four, cooked by moi in the home of the winner. All proceeds from the raffle and book sales will go to Project Open Hand.  SieMatic throws awfully good parties — don’t miss this one!

SieMatic’s showroom address is 235 First Street (near Howard), SF.

And because we’re trying to get a semi-accurate headcount so we’ll know much food to prepare, please RSVP to j.boyce@siematic.com or call 415-442-0255. It goes from 5 to 8 pm — hope to see you there, and be sure to introduce yourself to me if we haven’t met yet!

Pickled Jicama

I often see fine-looking jicama in my local Mexican grocer, and I just as often buy it. It’s one of the best $1.50 investments I can imagine making. It’s really all about the texture: when it’s good, it has the crunch of a honeycrisp apple, making it perfect for salads and, when finely minced, as a crunchy snappy little topping for fish and tofu. You can make killer salsa out of it, too.

I think the trick is to slice it very thinly; thicker slices have a texture, color, and shape too similar to a raw potato. The Benriner remains the essential tool for getting really thin slices (talk about great investments; I use mine almost daily).

I was slicing away at a jicama today, not really knowing what I would do with it, when I thought: hey, how about some quick pickles? I had just purchased a large bottle of good rice vinegar and a new global flavor blast I’ve been playing with — much more on this later — bottled passionfruit syrup, from Taiwan. So there it was: my sour, my sweet, and my ingredient to be pickled.

Jicama, like tofu, is pretty much a blank canvas, so we can impart any flavor we like into it. I must say: these pickles are great! The passionfruit has some major passion to it, and the crispy slice of pickled jicama is the perfect delivery vehicle for it. Just a little mound beside my snapper fillet tonight ought to fill the bill nicely.

And, a final bonus:the liquid will make superb salad dressing. Take it out of the fridge, drizzle some in a cup, pour in some olive oil, swirl it around, and voila, instant, delightlful salad dressing!

Halibut Carpaccio, Breakaway Style

Summer seemed to fly by this year, and I didn’t even get around to making any carpaccio, one of my favorite summer dishes. I was thinking of just that when cruising around Monterey Fish, where the local (well, Oregon) halibut were looking mighty fine. The deal was struck.

One tricky part of carpaccio is slicing. How in the world do those restaurants get those thinner-than-paper translucent slices? Someone once told me: with a meat slicer, after lightly freezing the fish! I wasn’t about to go that route (though I am secretly jonesing for a small meat slicer). I’m actually not crazy about that uniform look, in which each slice is laid partly on the previous one, forming a circle — there something kinda fussified about it; it’s just way too much trouble, for very little payback, at least in my book. So I relied on the good old meat mallet to do its brutal magic. A couple of gentle pounds, with the fish in between pieces of Saran wrap, worked perfectly. Each piece comes out very differently, so I enjoyed the mosaic that eventually wound up on the plate, in the photo above.

Dressing: infused pickled ginger vinegar, fruity olive oil, and piece of very ripe plum smashed in for good measure. That got poured, gently, on each piece, followed by a few flecks of julienned pickled ginger. My shiso in a pot is cranking on the deck, so some of that got sliced up and tossed on as well. Finally, I sliced up a few skinny strands of dried persimmon, just for fun, and tossed those on, though I might have done that AFTER I snapped the picture! And a pinch of persimmon salt (made the usual way, with a piece of dried persimmon, whirred in the coffee grinder with some sel gris).

This is a really great first course, as part of a special meal. You could do something similar with other fish, especially tai (snapper), fluke, albacore, even conger eel.

Spiced Polenta-Fried Tofu in Ginger Broth

I’ve been feeling — quelle horrors! — in a bit of a cooking rut lately.  And whenever I feel that way, I know there is an easy fix nearby: I just pick up Gray Kunz’s masterpiece, The Elements of Taste, and start flipping through it. I always find something that catches my attention. This time it was a new idea for a crust: polenta, star anise, and cloves. Gray doesn’t (to my knowledge) cook with a lot of tofu, but I do, so I figured the crust might be a winner on a nice block of soft tofu, especially if I place it, crispy side up, in a shallow bowl of aromatic gingery chicken broth.

The preparation might look labor-intensive, but it’s actually a snap. Just heat up some butter and olive oil in a small saucepan, and saute red onion and plenty of ginger (both roughly chopped) until they soften a bit, about five minutes. Add a few cups of chicken stock (homemade is of course best, but the boxed organic stock is fine) and a tablespoon or so of apricot jam for some subtle fruity sweetness, and reduce. While it reduces, toss in a handful of green beans (or asparagus, or carrots — almost any vegetable will work) to cook in the broth.

While that simmers, toast a few star anise and cloves over low heat in a cast-iron pan, until fragrant (about three or four minutes), and whir in the spice grinder. Add a quarter-cup or so of polenta, and whir some more.  Set aside.

Slice a block of soft tofu in half along its equator and pat the two halves dry with a clean kitchen towel (or paper towels, provided I can use them without Delia noticing!). Slice each half twice diagonally, to form a big X, giving four triangles per half, or eight total. Spoon or spray on some olive oil, and liberally dust on the spiced polenta, pressing it in a bit with your fingers to make sure it sticks. Heat up butter and olive oil in a nonstick pan, and gently fry the tofu triangles, crust-side down, until golden brown. Flip and turn off the heat.

Pour the broth through a sieve for a more refined presentation, or just use as is for a more rustic one. Ladle a small quantity in a shallow bowl and place the tofu in it, crispy-side up (we want to keep the crispy part out of the liquid, so it stays crispy). Top with the cooked veggies and any fresh herbs you like. I used radicchio in the photo above.

The clove/star anise/polenta mixture is a heady one, and sets the stage for the deeply savory, clean broth. This one’s a winner — thank you again Chef Kunz!

Sierra Mackerel with Japanese Citrus

I’ve long been a fan of mackerel,  both cooked and the vinegared saba of sushi restaurants.  Its oils have a rather strong presence, and I’ve found that most people either really like it, or really dislike it.  I still clearly remember the first time I had it; I felt like I could have eaten a dozen! To me the oil is a feature, not a bug; it just needs to be tempered with a little acid, either in the form of citrus or vinegar.

Lots of places around me sell frozen mackerel from Norway, and it tastes great prepared simply, typically just by heating up some olive oil and butter, seasoning the fish with salt and pepper, and pan frying until done, followed by a healthy squeeze of lemon. It’s also a meaty fish — one mackerel is usually enough for two people, if served with salad and some good bread.  A variation on that simple treatment would be to omit the salt, and add a little soy sauce and lemon to the pan toward the end of cooking (soy sauce and lemon like one another very much).

Lately I’ve been eating a new (to me) kind of mackerel called Sierra mackerel. Its oils aren’t quite as strong as the regular mackerel;  it’s a beautifully light fish, chock full of omega 6s. It just tastes like it’s really good for you, and it turns out that it is. My favorite prep for it so far: the simple pan fry described above, but instead of lemon, a small drizzle of Japanese citrus: either yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu. All three are available in bottled form at Nijiya, or any Japanese market. Top with tangerine salt, or whatever your salt of choice is.

I’m working on scoring actual trees of yuzu, sudachi, and kabosu. It’s not easy. But I think I’ve got the right climate for them; now it’s just a matter of convincing the Northern California Rare Fruit Growers to actually come up with some! Has anyone reading this ever seen any of these citrus trees in California? I know a guy in Oakland with a GORGEOUS yuzu tree, packed with hundreds of individual yuzu. I’m not a person who easily gets envious or jealous, but I would KILL to have such a happy yuzu tree!

Giant Zucchini, Two Ways

My extraordinary friend Michael — a painter, sculptor, and all-around enlightened being who has made Kyoto his home for the past 35 years — visited us this weekend. He came with a big smile on his face, bearing a zucchini the size of rolled-up yoga mat (I exaggerate just barely). I thought about all the usual suspects — zucchini bread is the classic answer to that problem, since it typically takes five cups or more of shredded zukes for a loaf. I like some zucchini breads, but I find most of them to be very heavy, with the exception of one special loaf that I call “Spicy Floaty Zucchini Bread” (I will make this soon, and post about it) that’s made in the cast iron pan along with mustard powder, ancho powder, ground ginger, and ground cardamom. It’s so light it almost floats!

I thought I would start the inspiration process by slicing the beast in half and spooning out the guts/seeds. A liberal salting came next, in the belief that it’s the excessive water content of summer squash that makes it, I dunno, unwieldy. While salt began to pull out water from the robosquash, it occurred to me that filling the cavity with savory goodness and baking the entire thing might be a good idea. So I hunted around the fridge and pantry, and came up with two versions for the two halves:

• Vegetarian/Mediterranean: wokked up plenty of onion, finely diced carrots, eggplant, and green beans until the entire mass shrank considerably, and then dressed it with a pesto comprised of several roma tomatoes, good quantities of four or five herbs, olive oil, lavender salt, and parm. Spooned it into boat #1.
• Carnivorian/Middle Eastern: onions, carrots, ground lamb, pomegranate molasses, walnuts, plenty of ground coriander seed, cumin, almonds, and pecans for boat #2.

Baked at 400 for about 45 minutes. It was fragrant and just right for the small gathering of (mostly) vegetarian friends who later came over. The nonvegetarians were happy too. The only thing I would do differently: squash of this size have rather tough skins, I’ve discovered, so I would peel the skins first. But it was still fun to scoop up the flesh with spoon, leaving the skin behind….

Anyone have any good ideas for LARGE quantities of summer squash?

(and just for reference: the photo above is the uncooked version, just before it went into the oven; the roasted finished version looked much tastier!)

Beef Chuck Steak with Herb “Curry”

A neighbor came over recently and gave us a nice big bundle of herbs, mainly some robust-looking rosemary, thyme, and oregano. So in his honor, I chopped up a gigantic mound — probably two cups — and set them aside while I pondered what the hell I was going to do with such a large pile of fresh herbs. My kind of problem!

I had taken out of the freezer a two-pound (or so) pack of beef chuck steak (from Chileno Valley Beef), a cut I would normally braise for a few hours with lots of aromatic Indian spices, plus probably some coconut milk and beef stock, for a more-or-less classic beef curry. But the pile of herbs beckoned. Hmm, what about the possiblity of Mediterranean-style cooked-down mass of highly herbed onions and carrots, and braising the beef in that?

I’m happy to report that results were lovely.

Here’s how I did it:

• heavily coat one side of the chuck with freshly ground pepper, coriander seeds, and salt, and brown that in some olive oil/butter. Do the other side in the same crust, and brown that too. Remove from pot and set aside
• Add several cups of finely chopped onions and carrots, and roughly two cups of chopped thyme, oregano, and rosemary, and saute in the same pot.
• Just for fun and for the maximum “curry” effect, chop up several fresh heat-packing chiles of choice. I used a combo of rococo, manzano, and new mexico.
• When all of that is soft, put the beef back in and drizzle in a healthy stream of carrot juice. Cover and cook for about an hour over low heat. Check it — does it need more liquid? If so, decide which liquid.  I used a little homemade beef stock, but I could have used water, wine, other stock, more carrot juice, fruit juice, almost anything really. Cook for another 45 minutes or so, and declare victory

This dish has so much flavor it’s almost overwhelming. And real kick — the chiles did their job admirably. Not exactly what most people would choose to cook on a beautiful, 80-degree day, but what the hell — the smell of the house makes up for any additional heat! The photo above reflects the dish after the first braise, not as I would serve it, of course — the meat has to be deboned and de-fatted. The final plating would look something like this:

Served with a simple salad and some rice, possibly some Japanese-style pickles. My kind of meal!

Cha-soba To Go

I can clearly remember the first time I had cha-soba (green tea buckwheat noodles). It was a sultry day in Kyoto, and I was thrilled to EAT green tea. They were served icy cold in the zaru-soba style: the noodles are cooked and chilled, and then presented on a zaru, or rollable bamboo mat, with a sprinkling of nori (toasted seaweed), a small mound of wasabi. You then dip the noodles in tsuyu, a blend of soy sauce, dashi, and mirin, and slurp them up. Heavenly when the humidity starts to make you feel like you want to wring out your entire body like a towel. But unless you want to use bottled industrial tsuyu — not horrible but not great either — it’s not exactly a last-minute, throw-together dish, by the time you’ve shaved the bonito, made the dashi, and all the rest.

Still, the green, slightly chewy (if cooked correctly), grassy-tasting noodles beckon. I recently had some good organic cauliflower, fresh English peas, and shallots, so I decided to saute those together with some fruity green olive oil and umami salt while the cha-soba cooked. When both the noodles and the veggies were cooked, I chilled the noodles with ice water, drained, and folded in the veggies, along with a quickly made dressing of olive oil, greek yogurt, and some picked ginger/raspberry vinegar brine. Topped with a good dusting of finely minced Thai basil, packed it into a tupperware, and brought it to the ballpark for a simulcast opera performance, along with a bottle of rose, some leftover roasted chicken, and chopsticks. An excellent evening, and great picnic food! Not a bad choice for the next picnic, hike, or other summery outdoor event.

Anyone else a cha-soba fan? They’re available at Nijiya and other Japanese markets, and are also easily found online.