Articles of Mastication

More Articles to Masticate

Dalmatian Pork Roast Braised with Plums over Potato Gnocchi

What a year it’s been so far! Up, down, all around… and lots of traveling and cooking. For those of you who don’t know, I’m now running bistro «LUKA», a multi-city private dining club featuring Balkan home cooking. That means I’m an itinerant chef now. Or, more appropriately, a gypsy chef. For the moment I’m doing dinners in St. Louis, Missouri, but I’ll be heading home to Portland, Oregon, then to New York before jetting over to Croatia to do more photography, media and blogging from the Balkans.

If it sounds to you like I have my hands full, I do! In any case, my apologies for the slow trickle of content this year. I’ll have a steadier flow of content coming as of next week, including reviews of eateries in Portland, St. Louis, New York and Croatia. Thanks for staying tuned. I hope I get to cook for you sometime soon.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Malo Aperitivo

On the job, I cook all manner of sinfully rich, complex dishes for guests, but my own diet consists typically of an endless series of uncomplicated snacks throughout the day. My favorite “meal” is a simple little plate of fish accompanied variously with raw vegetables and onions, pickled peppers, olives, cheese, bread, and a few healthy dashes of olive oil and sea salt. It truly gets no better than that. I’m not even terribly picky about the fish if I can’t get a few pilchards to grill quickly, or squid to toss in a hot skillet for a few brisk moments. I will even eat canned sardines… and love them.

Salt-preserved anchovies or sardines are also fair game so long as I have plenty of bread, oil, and maybe an ice cold beer.

I cook all day at work, but at home I just want to eat without a heap of fuss. A little aperitivo, zakuska, antipasto - or whatever you want to call it - is usually just the thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Beet Mie

Cold mie noodles marinated in beet-ginger juice with blanched broccoli and snow peas, spring onions, carrot tongues and flash fried rice noodles. I doused this cold noodle and vegetable configuration liberally with tamari after taking the photo. Then, of course, I ate it. Please note that this was taken some time ago with my old camera, which did not really do the colors justice.

Posted in Noodles, Vegetables | 1 Comment »

Krumpira! Luka!

Potato hucksters in Zagreb

There are men who walk the streets of Zagreb bellowing “Krumpira!” at the top of their lungs. They are potato hucksters, and some of them may also offer onions  (”Krumpira! Luka!”). When two of them cross paths in the same territory, their ululations remind one of a call-and-response field holler. I asked a woman in the Trešnjevka-Voltino neighborhood of Zagreb if there is an affectionate term for these potato-mongers, such as ‘krumpirac’ (potato man) or another colorful nickname signifying the community’s affection. She answered in lovely English, “No, he’s just that fucking guy who wakes us up yelling ‘krumpira’ on Friday mornings.”

Posted in Croatia, Potatoes | No Comments »

Black Pudding and Champ

How better to flood the system with pure warmth, energy and fortification than an Irish breakfast? What you see above is black pudding and champ.

Black pudding is a simple blood sausage found throughout most of the UK. I made a batch last week from pork blood, steel-cut oats, onions herbs and spices. You make a viscous glop of those elements, stuff it into sausage casings and poach it for about an hour. The sausage is then cooled and dried, and possibly smoked for a while. I haven’t smoked mine, but I may do so with what remains of this batch when I fire up the smokehouse tonight. Once you’ve got a firm sausage, though, all that’s left to do is slice and fry it. You can fry or grill it in links as well, but it’s tastiest when most of your surface area has a crisp caramelization to it. Pork blood contains a lot of fat, so it’s extremely rich eating. Good thing for the oats to soak some of that up…

And the champ? Well, it’s really just boiled potatoes and chopped kale, all mashed together with butter, cream salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

I’m definitely full of calories now, and ready to tear into the day.

Posted in Charcuterie, Grains, Potatoes, Vegetables | 1 Comment »