Baby artichokes have one real advantage over their larger brethren – they can be eaten whole.  Of course, you can’t eat them whole as you buy them.  To prepare baby artichokes to cook, peel off the outer leaves until you have revealed the light green and soft leaves inside.  Trim the stem end and slice the tips off the leaves. At this point, the artichokes either need to be cooked or rubbed with lemon juice as they will brown very quickly.  If you thought apples browned quickly, you haven’t seen anything yet.

• 6 baby artichokes, trimmed (see above) and cut in half lengthwise
• Juice of one lemon
• 5-6 smallish candy cane beets, washed and scrubbed
• Olive oil
• 2-3 ounces smoky bacon, diced
• 2 teaspoons maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon cider vinegar
• 1 ½ teaspoons thyme
• 1 bunch arugula
• 3 scallions, greens cut into ½ inch pieces, white ends reserved for another use
• 4 ounces smoked mozzarella, finely chopped

1. Trim artichokes and slice, placing in bowl with lemon juice.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Place each beet on a piece of foil and drizzle with a teaspoon of olive oil each.  Wrap each beet in its foil and place in oven.  Roast for 1 hour, 10 minutes.  Remove from oven and as soon as the foil is cool enough to touch, unwrap and let beets cool.
3. Drain artichokes, reserving lemon juice.  Place artichokes in small roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Roast for 25-30 minutes or until the stem end of the choke is tender.
4. In skillet, cook bacon over medium-high heat.  When browned and crisped, drain on a paper towel-lined plate.
5. Cut cooled. beets into eighths.  In large bowl, combine reserved lemon juice, syrup, vinegar, and thyme.  Whisking, drizzle in 1-2 tablespoons olive oil, mixing completely.  Add arugula and toss well.  Add beets and toss again.
6. Mound arugula and beets onto plates.  Top with artichokes, and sprinkle scallions, mozzarella, and bacon over salads.

As I awoke on Sunday morning, I had a hankering for a richly spiced stew, possibly a curry or perhaps some Moroccan-inspired flavors.  That Lena would be coming back from running a 10K in the snow also made a hearty stew seem like a great idea.  Lamb stew really got me intrigued but when I went to the grocery store (I didn’t feel like making a special cross-town trip to a butcher), all of the lamb seemed excessively priced for the cuts available.  Enter the first substitution: boneless beef sirloin filets for lamb.  At this point, my thoughts began to drift back into the curry realm, and I started salivating thinking about beef rendang.  But I am nothing if not stubborn and I decided to try out the beef in a Moroccan-styled stew.

As I started chopping onions and cutting meat, I had every intention of serving this stew over rice.  But when I realized that I had several potatoes taking up space on the shelf, I decided that I’d try my hand at gnocchi.  Substitution number two turned out to be a smart one, as the soft, doughy gnocchi were the perfect accompaniment to this stew.

With the rich flavors from the ras el hanout, the generally neutral flavor and texture of the gnocchi, and the briny sweetness of the quick Meyer lemon preserve, this dish was typical Just Add Bacon: a far cry from the standard meat-and-potato stew and from its unique cultural backdrop but somehow still seeming like it was rooted in a traditional cuisine.

Moroccan-styled Beef Stew

• 6 dried chiles, preferably serrano, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1 ½ lbs beef sirloin filets, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 ½ teaspoons ras el hanout
• 1 ½ teaspoons smoked paprika
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 ½ cups beef broth
• Zest of 1 Meyer lemon, minced
• 1/3 cup golden raisins
• ½ cup quick-preserved Meyer lemon, recipe follows

There it was, before my very eyes.  A savory french toast – two pieces of bread with a layer of oxtail stew between, soaked for an hour in eggs and milk – fried and topped with a poached egg.  It was damn good, but I’m sure I’ll never have anything like it again.

One dish that I had been thinking about was a soused fish.  Generally, it is a white fish that is braised in a pickling liquid and or fried and then set in a pickle brine for some amount of time.  Neither of these were quite what I was looking for so, after consulting with the good folks at New Deal Fish Market when I was picking up the fish, I decided to brine some salmon, serve it over celery root puree, and top it with salt-pickled cranberries inspired by a recipe in Momufuku.  Sadly, it was so delicious I forgot to take a picture!  The dish was paired with Blue Point Brewing Toasted Lager, a fairly low alcohol lager with a nice crisp hop finish.

Soused Salmon – serves 10

• ½ cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 ½ cups water
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons salt
• 1 tablespoon chipotle puree
• 3 lbs salmon filet, cut into 10 pieces

1. In medium saucepan, bring first five ingredients to a simmer, stirring to dissolve sugar and salt.  Let cool.
2. In a glass baking dish or other nonreactive dish, place salmon skin side up.  Pour brine over fish and gently lift each piece to thoroughly coat.  Cover with foil and refrigerate for about 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 425°F.  Drain salmon, wipe out dish, and place back in pan, skin side down.  Roast for 6-8 minutes or until fish is just starting to flake.
4. Broil fish on high for about ½ to 1 minute, just until top of fish starts to brown.  Serve over celery root puree and top with salt pickled cranberries.

Celery root puree

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 medium yellow onions, chopped
• 3 lbs celery root (about 4 medium roots), peeled and chopped
• 1 quart milk
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 sprig sage

1. In medium skillet, melt two tablespoons butter over medium heat.  Add onions, turn to coat, and reduce heat to moderate.  Cook, stirring infrequently, for 20-25 minutes or until onions have caramelized.
2. In large saucepan, combine celery root, milk, garlic, and sage.  Bring to a boil and simmer for around 25 minutes or until celery root is tender.  Discard garlic and sage.
3. In skillet, heat remaining butter over moderate heat until the butter begins to brown and starts to smell nut-like.  Remove from heat.
4. Over medium bowl, strain celery root, reserving milk.  Place half the celery root in a food processor with the browned butter and the caramelized onions.  Puree, adding some of the reserved milk mixture by the tablespoon, until the mixture is smooth.  Mash the remaining celery root with a hand masher and combine the mashed with the pureed celery root.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Salt-pickled Cranberries

• 1 cup cranberries, chopped
• 3 tablespoons turbinado sugar
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt

1. Combine cranberries, sugar, and salt.  Stir thoroughly to mix and let sit for 30 minutes before serving.

Since my last post, way back in dying days of autumn, there has been some good cooking that could have made its way on here.  Off the top of my head, I created a savory pumpkin bread pudding, a cranberry ice cream, a pork-plantain stew, savory baked French toast, beef and bean stuffed shells, and a host of dishes for a Tiki-themed dinner party* that were worth blogging about.  Lena and I also ate some awesome dishes, notably half a pig’s head, and had an amazing dinner at East Coast Grill.  There was also a trip to Kentucky that allowed me to delve into some old family recipes.

This past Sunday saw a litany of good food to blog about.  In my ongoing effort to host at least one sizable dinner party per month, I had shaken things up and decided a brunch would be a fun diversion.  What would be even more fun would be creating a menu based on the life and times of Elvis Presley.  Known for his outlandish excesses of his later years – stories abound of the King and his Memphis Mafia boarding his private plane, the Lisa Marie, and flying to Denver for Fool’s Gold sandwiches, a glorified peanut butter-and-jelly with bacon, or flying in dozens of donuts.

But what I wanted to do with the menu was to tell the story of a young man growing up in the middle part of the 20^th century in Tennessee, his family living paycheck to paycheck, who would go on to become the biggest musical and cinematic act of his time.  And the best part would be telling this story through food.  A food-ography, if you will.

The first dish I thought of was something Elvis likely would have enjoyed: a trio of bacon, representing his life from the simple, plain upbringing (smoked bacon) to his jetting around the country to film his movies (pineapple glazed bacon) to the outrageous decadence of something like that Fool’s Gold sandwich (chocolate dipped bacon with macadamia nut).  Elvis was, if nothing else, a simple Southern boy and to my Yankee thinking, nothing seems more Southern than cornbread.  So it was that each bacon selection would be paired with a unique cornbread: a plain, rustic bread to match the simplicity of smoked bacon; Jiffy corn bread to pair with Elvis’ love of easy effort and maximal results; and peanut butter cornbread because it just sounds extravagant.

The next dish that sprang to mind was something even more to the King’s liking: a banana stuffed doughnut with peanut butter frosting.  The man loved peanut butter and banana sandwiches; how could he not love a peanut butter and banana doughnut?

Elvis was, if nothing else, a product of the times and of the 1950s car culture, loving to spend his free time going to movies.  Nothing seems more fitting to represent that era than a burger with fries and a milkshake.  But I was cooking brunch, so a burger with grilled Vidalia onion and topped with a fried quail egg seemed perfect.

I wanted something that screamed breakfast and preferably something that seemed more down-home.  Buttermilk biscuits might actually be more Southern than cornbread, causing my previous claim to be erroneous.  I had also heard from my girlfriend that an old family dish was serving biscuits with fried apples; slices of apples cooked over low heat in butter until they became golden and deliciously sweet.  I was almost there, biscuits with fried apples sounded good to me but it seemed like there was something that would put this over the top.  One word screamed out: ham.  Now the dish was sweet (apples), salty (ham), and rich (all three).

I will try to follow up with some more in depth posts on the meal in the coming week.  Thanks for sticking with the blog

Starting with a good dose of olive oil, I slowly cooked the garlic and onion over low heat so that the oil just barely simmered.  I added some crushed red pepper for a shot of heat and a slice of Meyer lemon for a little acidity and sweetness in one shot.  For those unfamiliar with the Meyer lemon, I think they are completely worth tracking down for their somewhat unique flavor.  Essentially, it’s a lemon you don’t mind eating.

Straining the oil out of the garlic and onion, the aromatics get added to the beans and some roasted potatoes to create this side dish.  The remaining oil is drizzled over the cooked salmon, tying the two dishes together.

Citrus salads have been getting a lot of publicity as of late and for good reason – come the winter, citrus is at least in season in the South (that bad ass frost Florida had this winter notwithstanding) and in New England, it’s a pleasant reminder of summer-like weather.  This version uses blood oranges, navel oranges, and the aforementioned Meyer lemon dressed with lime and rice wine vinegar.  I think the smoked sea salt provides a subtle flavor that keeps the palate intrigued, cutting the sweetness of the citrus.

Salmon with Cannellini Beans and Roasted Potatoes – Serves 2

• 5 or 6 fingerling or baby Yukon potatoes
• ¼ cup olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons
• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• ½ small red onion, thinly sliced
• ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon coarsely crushed black pepper
• ½ inch slice meyer lemon
• 1 can Cannellini beans, drained
• ½ teaspoon smoked sea salt, more to taste
• 2 tablespoons butter
• ¾ pound salmon filet
• Coarsely ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375° F.  Coat potatoes with two tablespoons olive oil.  Roast for 30 minutes or until tender.  Let cool and quarter.
2. Heat remaining olive oil with garlic, red onion, crushed red pepper, black pepper, and lemon over low heat in small saucepan.  Cook, stirring often, until garlic is soft, about ten minutes.  The oil should just barely be sputtering.
3. Remove lemon and strain oil into dish.  Return garlic-onion mixture to pan.
4. Add beans to sauce pan and cook over low heat.  Add a tablespoon or two of the oil to the beans and the potatoes.  Let warm, stirring occasionally.
5. Heat butter in large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add salmon and cook for five minutes, flip and cook for another five minutes or until desired doneness.
6. Drizzle reserved oil over salmon and serve with the beans.

Citrus Salad with Mint

• 2 blood oranges, peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
• 2 navel oranges, peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
• 1 meyer lemon, peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
• ½ small red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• ¼ teaspoon chile powder
• ½ teaspoon smoked sea salt, more to taste
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, more to taste
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced mint

1. Combine oranges and lemon in bowl.  In separate small bowl, whisk together lime juice, vinegar, chile powder, salt and pepper.
2. Sprinkle mint over oranges, add dressing, and toss to combine.

Molasses-ginger marinated wing with pineapple glaze

The makings for a Suffering Bastard

A Baked A(laska) Bomb: ginger-lemongrass ice cream, angel food cake, and meringue

I made mine by having the duck dry in the refrigerator for several days before hanging in the open air for a lengthy afternoon session in front of a fan.  None of the diners reported feeling ill.  And I ate leftovers for several days afterwards.

Peking Ducks; the wire trusses allowed me to hang the birds to dry before roasting.

Peking Duck with homemade pancakes

Curried Lobster Dumplings

Making high-quality dumplings is surprisingly easy, though a little time consuming.  The wrappers are a simple mixture of flour and water that is made into a dough, kneaded for a several minutes, and then allowed to rest for about 15 minutes.  The dough is then rolled into a rope, cut into individual servings, and rolled out to a small circle.  Filling is added and the dough pinched off to seal in the filling.  Cooking is simple and quick, all the better to satisfy the hunger built up during all of that tedious rolling.

Last year I made an all cranberry pie that I thought was spectacular.  The reviews, however, were mixed.  Mostly they were split into one of two camps: those who reveled in the bracing tartness of the cranberry and those that just felt the tartness was too overbearing.  Although I firmly fell in the former camp, I do see the perspective of the too-tart crowd.  Cranberries are an exceptional little fruit for their exceedingly tart flavor with only a slight hint at the sweetness they offer at the back of the mouth.  That’s what I like about them – they’re just a little different, they’re not super-sweet and they damned sure taste like New England to me.

I was going to revisit this pie for the all-cranberry dinner party I was cooking.  For a dinner where cranberries would be featured in every dish, it seemed fitting to finish it off with a big celebration of cranberry in the form of a pie.  But I wanted to dress it up.  Originally I had made it as a two crust pie.  For the 2010 edition, I would top it with a towering layer of meringue.

Meringue is an interesting thing, one of those fantastic science experiments disguised as delicious culinary technique.  Broken down into its simplest form, it is beaten egg whites with a sugar syrup and whipped to a marshmallow like consistency.  There are different types of meringues, from the aforementioned marshmallow like toppings to many pies to the puffy and crispy cookie-like treats.  For the meringue topping for the pie, an Italian meringue is called for which means hot sugar syrup is drizzled into the egg whites and beaten until glossy.

By topping the pie with the meringue, it deftly balances the real tart fruit in a way that even a really good whipped cream doesn’t.  I am an unabashed fan of whipped cream as an accompaniment to pie but here, I was very happy with the results of the meringue.  As for the other side of the pie, I have been trying my way through different variations of pie crust, using all-butter, butter-and-lard, and even all-lard recipes.  Some call for different ratios of flour to fat and I still don’t know that I have settled on anything as definitive yet.  For this pie, I used a recipe for Flaky Pie Crust from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.

Cranberry Meringue Pie – serves 8-10

For the crust

Use the Flaky Pie Crust recipe in the link above or your favorite pie crust.  You’ll want to prick the crust all over with a fork and then line with buttered parchment paper.  Line the paper with foil and place 4-5 cups of beans or pie weights in the foil and bake at 425F for ten minutes.  Carefully remove the foil and parchment paper and bake the shell at 350F for an additional 15 minutes.  Let the crust cool before filling.

For the filling and meringue

• 1 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• ½ teaspoon curry powder
• 5 cups fresh cranberries
• 1 cup sweetened-dried cranberries
• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.  Combine honey and spices in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until honey becomes thin and spices are incorporated.  In a large bowl, combine both types of cranberries.
2. Pour honey over cranberries and stir to mix well.  Pour cranberries into prebaked pie crust.  Bake pie for 55 minutes.  Let cool on rack.
3. In standing mixer, whip egg whites until soft peaks form.  In small saucepan, combine sugar, water, and salt and bring to a boil and cook for about five minutes without stirring.  With machine running, pour in hot syrup in a slow stream and whip for five minutes or until the meringue is smooth and glossy.  Top the cranberries with the meringue and tease the meringue with the back of a spoon to create peaks.  Broil under high for 30 seconds or until the meringue starts to brown.