How can I possibly pass up this rare opportunity to experiment with abundant, high-quality insect protein? Yes, it’s time for the 17-year cicadas to rise up from the rich Midwest USA soil again. You’re damn right I’m going to eat a few.
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.
I’ve sampled a lot of Adriatic and Balkan charcuterie in the last year. This article at Food Arts on dry-cured ham is a decent introduction to the king of all cured meat products.
Lovers of real Cheddar cheese from real England will turn a somersault over Somerset, England’s West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers in Shepton Mallet. They’ve finally given us the transparency we so sorely need at cheddarvision.tv.
You should have known that it was only a matter of short time before I cooked a sea creature with tentacles. If you can find me a land creature with tentacles, I’ll be happy to come up with something for you.
Tentacly speaking, you may know how difficult it is to find octopus readily available in the midwestern United States. I’m fortunate to have Seafood City Super Market here in St. Louis, where you can walk in on any given day and find not only Asian groceries, produce and cookware, but also a dazzling array of live, fresh and frozen fish, seafood and amphibians on offer. I was looking for a fresh, fully grown octopus, but had to settle for a pound of babies.
Uh, baby octopi, that is.
The Citrus Baby Octopus Salad I conjured was a squarely uncomplicated foray, but if you would like to attempt it yourself, it will take at least 24 hours. I don’t like to give standard-format recipes here because I don’t believe they bolster your culinary pluck; if you truly desire to internalize cooking knowledge and skill, to be absolutely exceptional in the kitchen (or in music, or art… just about any endeavor that resonates with our emotions and passions, really) you need to allow your instincts to roam beyond the perimeter of exact measurements and times. Feel your food. Attempt to understand what a dish is supposed to accomplish in your mouth by looking at it and knowing the ingredients. In this case, the salad contains:
Cleaned baby octopi, heads removed and softly simmered for 45 minutes. They’re then rinsed, chilled and marinated for two days (no less than 12 hours!) in beet juice.
Julienned roasted red peppers
Supremed lemon and grapefruit
Lemon and grapefruit zest
Chopped parsley
White onion
Grated Grana Padano cheese
Shredded Romain lettuce
A vinaigrette of lemon and grapefruit juice, olive oil, herbs, salt and cracked pepper
After considering the ingredients listed, look at another shot of the same salad and imagine the dance of aromas, tastes and textures in as vivid detail as you’re able (considering the second-rate contrast and color balance in these particular photos).
Spend some time with it. What would it taste like if I used such-and-such a proportion of lemon to grapefruit juice in the vinaigrette? Red onion rather than white?
Now, based on what you imagined this salad to taste like, make it yourself. Approximate it to the best of your ability by preparing the elements separately, then assembling them. If you can’t find baby octopus, use squid or sliced adult octopus. I will tell you that small, cleaned squid tubes and tentacles should be cooked in briskly boiling salted water for about a minute and a half, then immersed in an ice bath and drained before marinating. A whole adult octopus should be simmered for around an hour before slicing and marinating. If you’re completely unfamiliar with octopus and need more detailed instructions for cooking, refer to this recipe for a simple, traditional Dalmatinska Salata od Hobotnice from The Best of Croatian Cooking (I’ve linked to it in a previous post, yes). I adore octopus salad nearly as much as I adore the butterflies and bluebirds that flit about my head and follow me wherever I go. It’s a dish that’s ever so conducive to re-imagining and experimentation.
I’d love to hear about the results of your experimentation.
“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” - Miles Davis
Where else will you find a cartoonish rabbit ice sculpture but at an Easter brunch in America? We had 600 guests at the club today, and they ran our asses off. Four solid hours of nonstop bacon-egg-sausage-waffle hustle. What did we run out of first? No, not prime rib or pork tenderloin. Chicken wings. Welcome to the Midwest, where chicken wings are practically a religious contrivance unto themselves.
Let it also be known that some of the sport jackets I encountered while working the buffet line were criminally pastel, but I thought the image below of the kitchen’s used linen bin was telling. That’s what Easter looked like to this cook at around 3:30 this afternoon: a thousand soiled pastel napkins.
I would have snapped some images of the dining room and buffet for you, but we were far too busy for me to be piddling around with that. I should tell you, though, that I’m proud to work with this crew, that there’s a lot of talent and potential in this kitchen (provided the younger cooks begin exploring food a little more actively and thoroughly), and that everyone did a really kick-ass job today.
I put the heel of my right palm through the julienne teeth of the mandoline yesterday while prepping Veg O’Day (that’s technical jargon for the vegetables of the day). Carrots. The fat ones - and we have fat ones - occasionally jam midway through the blades, requiring a little surge of pressure to get them through. It was on one of those little surges that my hand lost its footing and went through. Speaking of little surges, say hello to Little Serge.
Okay, it’s actually the Québécois poet Claude Gavreau, creator of the exploréen language. But he looks like a little surge, doesn’t he?
Only two of the mandoline’s teeth actually got enough play to draw blood, so it almost appears as if I was bitten by a jenglot. I’d post a photo, but it’s an undramatic wound. I do have a forearm scar that looks like Alaska. I received the wound when a tidal spatter of grease leapt from a nearly white-hot cast iron skillet. The flesh flew from my arm as the lardy fire glanced across. I predicted terrible scarring and considered having it covered with a tattoo of Alaska, but it has since healed to mild contrast. Now I am considering a tattoo of Claude Gavreau. He looks a little like Alaska.
If you’re in or near Berkeley, California, you might be interested in checking out a four-course wine tasting dinner at Caffe Venezia on Thursday. Good labels, to be sure, and great accompanying dishes. I’m tempted to go just for the lamb braised in paprika and tarragon.
________________
Bakalar and Blitva - salt cod cake on
a bed of potatoes and swiss chard 10.00
Marco Polo Pošip, ‘05 8.00
***
Sarma cabbage rolls filled with housemade kobasa sausage
and rice simmered in a sweet and sour tomato sauce 14.00
Bibich Riserva ‘04 8.00
***
Slavonija tarragon and paprika braised lamb
with njoki(gnocchi) 16.00
Zlatan Plavac Barrique ‘03 14.00
***
Krofi - Slovenian apricot filled doughnuts 8.00
NV Prošek Dioklecijan 8.00
***
Four Course Dinner 44.00
Accompanying Wine Flight 18.00
Since running Zagrebački Odrezak as a Sunday brunch item a couple of weeks ago, I’ve had a pow’rful hankering for Wiener schnitzel. I only got around to shopping for the veal last night and, as luck had it, the supermarket had none to offer. So I bought some inexpensive pork steaks, trimmed most of the fat and pounded them escallope. They were then floured, eggwashed and breadcrumbed, and I pan-fried them in clarified butter.
Since pork is not the traditional meat for Wiener schnitzel, I felt relatively comfortable taking other liberties with the preparation, such as melting Emmenthaler cheese atop the cutlet and positioning it between slices of toasted wheat bread with typical sandwich ornaments. Wiener schnitzel is also, in its purest form, served with little more than potato salad and a wedge of lemon, but I ran a russet potato through the mandolin and fried the resultant shoestrings.
In the wilds of America, this would commonly be breaded with flour only, receive the benefit of a ladle of milk gravy and then be termed ‘Country Fried Steak’. But it doesn’t really matter what you or anyone else decides to call it since it’s already gone.
