Poached Salmon Pasta with Cream Sauce

1 lb salmon fillets (4 oz/serving)
1 medium onion, fine dice
1 c Riesling or other semi-dry white wine
1 c half-and-half
1 t hot smoked paprika
double-handful cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 c coconut milk
olive oil
kosher salt

Saute the onion in olive oil with a pinch of kosher salt in a skillet. Whisk together wine, half-and-half, and paprika. When the onion starts to brown pour in the liquid. When it reaches 150ºF, add the salmon. Spoon liquid over the salmon and poach for 8-10 minutes. Test doneness with a fork. Remove salmon, add tomatoes, raise heat to medium and simmer until liquid is reduced by half.

Break up salmon to bite-size pieces. When liquid is reduced, remove from heat and stir in coconut milk and fish. Season with salt and fresh-ground pepper. Serve over pasta, garnishing with parsley and shaved parmesan if desired.

Tom Yum Soup With Eggplant

There's not all that much to say about this, since the soup base came right out of an envelope, but I wanted to talk about the eggplant. I cubed it, tossed it in a little cornstarch, and pan-fried it. Then I drained it and did not add it to the soup until I served it. That way the outside stayed crispy and delicious for as long as it took to eat.

A squeeze of lemon juice and a dash of soy also really makes the soup pop - it cuts the heat and lets the flavor really stand out. You could also try a couple of drops of toasted sesame oil or even just a couple swipes of fresh nutmeg across your microplane grater.

Curried Seitan With Vegetables

So, I'm not a big fan of seitan - done right and in some kind of stew application it's nearly indistinguishable from meat, so what's the point?

Well, if you've ever despaired of communicating what cut of meat you want from a butcher with whom you have no language in common and it's the end of a long, hot, sticky day and your air conditioner keeps freezing up and leaking water all over your coffee table, and you just don't have the energy to deal with One. More. Thing, you'd understand the point.

I started with this recipe, adapted for my preferences and on-hand.

8 ounces beef flavor seitan
2 T oil
8 oz mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1/2 bell pepper cut in large squares
1 onion, sliced
2 green onions, sliced in 1-inch lengths

marinade:
dash coconut cream
dash Worcestershire sauce
1/2 T green curry paste
1 T peanut butter
1 oz fond
juice of 1/2 lemon
splash water

curry sauce:
2 T green curry paste
1 can coconut cream
dash Worcestershire sauce
1 T chunky rooster sauce
3 large cloves garlic, smashed and minced

Mix up the marinade in a large bowl; cut up the seitan and let it marinate while preparing the curry sauce. Mix the sauce ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over low heat.

Meanwhile, brown the seitan with the marinade in the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the sauce is simmering, add the mushrooms, bell pepper, and onion. When the seitan is well-browned add it as well. Simmer for  10 minutes, add the green onion, and simmer for 5 minutes more.

Serve over starch, rice or cubed potatoes.

Quick Kung Pao-ish Fried Tofu

8 oz firm tofu, cubed
2 T cornstarch
1/4 c panko breadcrumbs
1/4 c Worcestershire sauce
3 T tomato paste
1 T chunky rooster sauce
1 drizzle honey or 1 t dark brown sugar, if desired
4-6 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
1/2 bell pepper, sliced thin
half a dozen mushrooms, sliced
3 green onions, coarsely chopped
small handful peanuts
oil for frying

Press the tofu for an hour or so to remove excess moisture, then marinate in Worcestershire sauce for half an hour. Dredge the tofu in cornstarch and then panko (reserving the Worcestershire), and pan fry over high heat until the breading is GBD. Remove the tofu and add to the remaining oil the bell pepper, mushrooms, green onions, and garlic. Saute for just long enough to stir the tomato paste and chunky rooster sauce into the Worcestershire, adding the honey or brown sugar if desired. Then reduce the heat to low and pour the mixture over the vegetables, tossing until coated. Add the peanuts and simmer for 3-5 minutes.

Serve the vegetables over rice, topped with the tofu. The sweetener, if added, will provide a nice counterpoint to the fiery garlic sauce. But sometimes you just want your Scoville units straight up.

Egg-Drop Miso Soup

A variation on an earlier attempt.

2 cups unsalted chicken stock
2 cups water
2 T dark miso
1 ear corn, cut off the cob
1 dried chile, sliced very very thinly
6 mushrooms, sliced thin
1-2 T cornstarch
2 eggs
1 green onion

Combine chicken stock, water, and miso. Bring to a simmer. Cut the corn off the cob and when the miso has dissolved, add the corn and simmer 20 minutes. Add the chile and mushrooms, simmer for another 10 minutes. Stir the cornstarch into a little water to make a slurry, and add to the desired consistency. If you're not sure how much cornstarch to get you where you want to be add it little by little and allow to simmer 2-3 minutes before adding more.

Beat the eggs and drizzle in while stirring so they feather out nicely. Serve garnished with sliced green onion.

I'm happier with this than the previous recipe. The mushrooms and the green onion make a nice balance of earthy and piquant, the chile is just a little heat in the background, and together they keep the corn from overwhelming all the other flavors.

Fried tofu in gravy

No photo for this one, just because the color scheme was pretty boring - brown on brown on brown - but it was yummy nevertheless.

8 oz. firm tofu
Worcestershire sauce
toasted sesame oil
4 T cornstarch
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
vegetable oil for frying
2 T dark miso
a dozen small mushrooms
1 green onion

First, press the tofu to squeeze out extra moisture. Cut it into 4 slices and place them between paper towels with some weight on top. I generally put the tofu between matching Pyrex baking dishes. Leave for an hour or two, but change the paper towels if they get completely soaked.

Now replace some of that moisture with flavor: cut the tofu into large cubes and put into a bowl with a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and just a little toasted soybean oil. Toss to coat and put in the fridge to marinate for another hour or so, tossing occasionally.

Add the miso paste to 2 cups water in a small saucepan over low heat. Bring to a bare simmer. Thinly slice the mushrooms and green onion. Add to the broth and cover; continue simmering while preparing the tofu.

Heat vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet; if you use a little more than you think you need that will help keep the tofu from sticking. Drain the tofu and toss with half the cornstarch to coat. I've found this goes easiest if you do it Shake'n'Bake style - put the ingredients in a Ziploc bag, close it up, and toss from hand to hand. When the cornstarch is well-distributed, repeat with the panko.

When the oil starts to shimmer, add the tofu. Toss every 2 minutes, repeating until the cubes are browned and crisping on all sides. Turn the heat down to medium low, pour off any excess oil, and pour in the miso soup.

Mix the remaining cornstarch with a little water and add to the mixture, stirring until it thickens to a gravy consistency. If necessary add more cornstarch.

Serve over pasta or rice.

Egg-Drop Corn Soup

Chicken stock:

a chicken carcass or equivalent

1 onion

1/2 bulb garlic

2 stalks celery

8-10 cups water

kosher salt

yield: 4-6 cups stock

3 ears corn

1 t grated ginger

1 T soy sauce

2 T cornstarch

4 green onions

2 eggs, lightly beaten

There's a grocery store nearby that has chicken leg quarters on "permanent special" if you buy 3 kilos or more. So every couple of weeks I go buy 3 kilos. I roast them or BBQ them or pan-fry them in a batch, and then I have a week's worth of lunch if I'm too lazy to whip something else up. And that leaves me with a big pile of bones. I give one or two to the kitten who makes the most amaaaazing moaning sound of pleasure as he destroys them. The rest get frozen until I need some stock. And then I do like so:

Put the chicken carcass, onion, celery, and garlic in a large pot with 8-10 cups of water. The vegetation is just for flavoring and will be strained out, so there's no need to chop it finely. I just cut the onion and garlic cloves in half and break the celery into pieces small enough to fit. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, all day - 6 hours, minimum.

If you keep the simmer at the proper level over the cooking time the liquid will reduce to 4-6 cups. When it reaches that point, remove from heat and strain. Voilà, chicken stock. Salt very lightly, not to taste - you'll be adding soy sauce in a minute.

Put the stock back on the fire. Add the freshly-cut-off kernels of three ears of corn, 1T soy sauce, and 1 t freshly-grated ginger. A Microplane® fine grater works best for this. (It's only recently that I learned that Microplane was a brand name. Duh.) Simmer 30 minutes until the corn is tender.

Raise the heat slightly until the soup is at a low boil. Put 1 T of cornstarch in a small mise-en-place bowl or ramekin. Skim off a couple tablespoons of the soup and mix it into a slurry, then stir it back in to the soup.

While the soup thickens, coarsely slice 2 green onions and lightly beat 2 eggs. While stirring the soup slowly, drizzle in the eggs so they feather as they cook in the hot liquid. Remove from heat, salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with chopped green onions.

Hmmm, the corn kind of overwhelms the egg flavors in these proportions. Maybe use less corn next time. And I don't like my soup to be thickened a lot so others may wish to use more cornstarch than I did.

A quick lunch salad

This poorly-presented bowl of yumminess contains grape tomatoes, scallions, cucumber, olives, avocado, some white rice cooked with golden raisins, and goat's milk feta, all dressed with a couple tablespoons of gently-warmed ginger-scallion oil.

It was quite nice. The green olives were a bit too vinegary, they kind of clashed with the ginger flavor, but the mild black olives were fine. And the occasional raisin was a burst of contrasting sweetness that really highlighted the onions and the saltiness of the feta.

You could make it a much less intense (and much less expensive) experience if the proportions were altered to be more rice and less of everything else: a rice salad with some vegetables instead of a vegetable salad with a little rice.

It was accompanied by a small glass from a bottle of 4-dollar sake from the local whole food market. I think the stuff is intended to be cooking-quality vile, but chill it down and it's really quite tolerable.

It's only knife work, or, Phake Pho

I started out the evening by making Francis Lam's ginger-scallion sauce, even though I don't have a food processor. (I haven't bought one yet because the good quality models are ludicrously expensive in Israel.) I told a friend I was going to try making the sauce and she suggested I buy one of those mini-food-processoids, basically a glorified POS stick blender with attachments. But it only took about 10 minutes of knife work to reduce the ginger and scallions to the prescribed consistency.

There's certainly nothing wrong with using a labor-saving device. I don't have a food processor now but I used to. Actually, I used to have two. And a stick blender. And I still have an orbital mixer, a coffee grinder (plus another one for spices), and for that matter an automatic drip coffeemaker. Technology is a wonderful thing. I like wearing ready-made clothing and pooping indoors.

But if you have the time and if you enjoy it, there's something to be said for the sensual pleasure that comes from doing your food prep "by hand". I enjoy the rhythm of the knife rocking back and forth, the tension in my biceps and across my shoulders as I control the blade, the fresh aroma of the ginger rising up.

Francis Lam, by the way, is one of the few remaining interesting voices on Salon.com. If I detailed all the ways that that publication no longer satisfies me I would stray into a subject area that I promised myself I wouldn't allow on this blog, so I'll just leave it at that.

Now that I have some yummy yummy ginger scallion sauce, what to do with it...?

1/2 cup white rice (dry)

2 T miso

some kind of meat-substitute snausage

a medium onion

half a red bell pepper

a stalk of celery

oil for pan-frying

pizza pepper

soy sauce

Cook the rice. Dissolve the miso in 2 cups of water in a small pot. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer.

Slice the snausage into long, thin strips (almost bacon-like) and pan-fry it in more oil than you would normally use until it is very crisp. The more crisp, the better it will taste. Drain and set aside.

Slice the onion, celery, and bell pepper into thin strips and saute with a pinch of salt; finish with a dash of soy.

Put a scoop of rice in a deep bowl, then some of the vegetables and strips of snausage on top. Ladle the miso over and season generously with ginger-scallion oil. Eat with chopsticks and a big spoon, like pho. In fact, you could dress it with a squeeze of lemon, some fresh basil, and some rooster sauce if you wanted. I don't have any basil or rooster sauce tonight, but it was still pretty yummy.

Serves 2.