What's Cooking (Take Three!)

Jenise, that sounds divine. Anxious to get report of that and ALL other entries for Terrine 2022. Have missed seeing the photo reports.
Karen, the Calabrian chile potato salad is in the making for tonight's cold plate dinner. Thanks !

A tapas gathering tonight. Starting with a Marianito cocktail with Gonzalez Byass Vermut, Brooklyn Dry Gin, Campari, Angostura bitters with green olive and orange twist garnish. Have been anxious to try the varieties of Spanish vermouth we brought back from NY. Bacon wrapped, chorizo stuffed dates and grilled mini peppers stuffed with a mixture of goat cheese, cream cheese, grated Petite Basque seasoned with browned onion, roasted garlic, sweet, hot and smoked Spanish paprikas and topped with panko browned with the same 3 paprikas mix are my offerings. Looking forward to a leisurely time to savor the tastes.

[Jenise]

Christina I'm going to look up that Marianito cocktail. Much like a negroni but obviously different enough to have its own name.

Tonight I'm making pork verde on rice with fresh Hatch chiles.

Grilled Halibut tonight, with a salad of watermelon, feta cheese, serrano chili pepper, shallot, thyme, champagne vinegar, evoo, and fresh lime vinaigrette. Italian green beans with fresh herbs, and lemon on the side.

Re the Marianito cocktail we've had some very interesting trials.This is the recipe we used to trial the first Spanish Vermut La Copa Gonzalez Byass https://www.bascofinefoods.com/spanish- ... il-recipe/. The 5 parts more vermouth to gin and Campari is just perfect to let the wonderful flavors of the vermouth shine and be complemented by the gin and Campari. I totally understand why it is drunk straight. We subsequently tried the Spanish vermouth in an equal parts Negroni and it was awful, markedly accentuating the Campari. Very unbalanced. The Marianito was a wonderful aperitif to the tapas menu of seared shishito peppers with Maldon salt, canned octopus from Spain, chorizo stuffed bacon wrapped dates, mini peppers stuffed with P'tit basque cheese, pa amb tomàquet and mini lamb albondigas with almond sauce.
I have been perusing Anya von Bremzen's book The New Spanish Table for more ideas when we open the next bottles, Fot-Li also a red vermouth from Reus, Tarragona and St. Petroni Vermut Vermello from Galicia. A bottle of something at the duty free in the Barcelona airport many years ago was hard to forget and this recent Food and Wine article got me again on the radar https://www.foodandwine.com/cocktails-s ... enaissance

[Jenise]

Christina. Talk about hard to forget: a few years back Bob and I dined at a great restaurant in Nashville. The wine list was geek-heaven--wines I read about but rarely see let alone get to drink. The server and I bonded immediately so I had him pick our wines and, after dinner, something for me to sip on while Bob did something utterly conventional. I love my Bob, but he's quite predictable. Anyway, I was given a glass of Spanish vermouth to sip neat. I had never drunk vermouth neat before. I fell in love! He brought the bottle over to show me, a tall bottle, seemed taller than average (maybe a full liter?), jet black with either a simple elegant 'M' or maybe just 'MUT' on it. In looking just now, I found a candidate or two for the latter, but the bottle shape isn't right. I vowed to hunto for some when I got home.

But that was the last week of February 2020--weeks before we all went into Covid lockdown. I forgot all about that vermouth. Just went back to cooking with Noilly Prat and making negronis with Antica Caparno.

I am in love with the idea of the Marianito and will get on this immediately. I have a friend in town who is both Spanish and a wine importer; what better place to start.

Vietnamese Chicken Salad is on the menu tonight. A favorite of Gene's, it has roasted chicken breast slices, Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce, garlic, rice wine vinegar, lime juice, cabbage, fresh mint leaves, peanut oil, red onion, red or green chili pepper, cucumber, carrots , red bell prepper, cilantro, roasted peanuts. Veggies are all julienned. The dressing is very good.
Eldest son and wife are coming to Redding tomorrow, and he requested chicken enchiladas. That will have the watermelon, feta, serrano chili, salad I was supposed to make a few days ago and did not get to it.

[Jenise]

Karen: so, a larb using roasted chicken instead of ground chicken. Perfect hot summer day food, isn't it?
Does fish sauce go in your dressing?

Last night I made stir-fried ground pork and minced hot chiles with a bunch of long, red, hot chiles I found at the Saigon Market in Manchester NH. A bit of a change from the long, green, hot chiles I usually use. A combination of the two would be more decorative.

Tonight I'm making Thai chicken curry, most probably with green curry paste. It'll have cauliflower, Thai sweet basil, kaffir lime leaves, and green peppercorns as well.

-Paul W.

Smashed cucumbers using some of the multitude of the long, thin, crisp Japanese cucumbers Suyo Long from my garden. A beautiful dark green, ribbed cucumber with spines that rub off easily. Corn is finally in the farmer's markets so will caramelize that in the husk on the grill while my husband grills a prime NY strip. Not a fan of hot steak, I leave my portion for a cold salad the next day.
Working on a pandan coconut panna cotta recipe. Flying by the seat of my pants as I see no specific recommendations for amount of frozen leaves to use to adequately flavor the mix.

[Jenise]

Aren't we a pair. I don't dislike hot steak but I LOVE it cold and always make sure I have leftovers (for breakfast).

We ate out last night, a Oaxacan restaurant in White Rock Canada just over the border from us. Incredible food. The moles were to die for. And a ceviche that was actually made from raw shrimp. Dear god.

Karen: so, a larb using roasted chicken instead of ground chicken. Perfect hot summer day food, isn't it?
Does fish sauce go in your dressing?

Yes, it does. I like the Red Boat fish sauce.

I found beautiful Shishido peppers at the Farmers Market yesterday, I am blistering them in a dry cast iron pan today, tossing with Lisbon Lemon evoo and sprinkling with red lava salt, as an appetizer to give my family while waiting for the enchiladas to heat up. I am offering the option of a Ginger, chili dip from the Ginger People for a dip. Have not tried it with the peppers before, so not sure how it will go over. I love the sauce, so it should work out ok.

[Jenise]

Love those peppers, Karen, that sounds good.

I have no idea what I'm doing for dinner tonight. And I missed the Farmers Market yesterday in Bellingham, got going too late so ended up at Joe's Garden, an inter-urban produce farm and farmstand. Spent $98--when I load up on produce, I load up! One of the things I bought was a gloriously fat Italian eggplant. I had no intention regarding it, but on the way home I imagined that a fat slice, slathered with mayo and pressed into panko crumbs, then baked crisp, would be an excellent foundation for a tall swirl of cacio y pepe which I'd been dying to make out of the peperoncino pasta I'd bought at Bosa's in Vancouver.

I've bought their peperoncino pasta before--it has an amazing heat to it and lovely orange color when cooked, but this turned out to be what you might call a defective batch. The pasta itself was patchy colored, white spots among the red, not uniformly colored as it was the last time I bought it. And guess what, those patches were significant because the pasta broke itself into 1-2" lengths in the pot though I cooked them very al dente. I have never ever seen a pasta do that. It was tasty, VERY, but lacked the beauty and drama of the intended presentation.

Today's menu--no idea yet.

Karen, those are the only pepper that I grow in my garden and the seed packet is labeled Shishito but I suspect it is the same variety. I most frequently rub them with olive oil on my fingers and throw them into a pan to sear and finish with Maldon salt. When I serve them at a dinner party for a more substantial offering I make a sauce that we had in Barcelona called Salbitxada which is made with toasted almonds, chile, olive oil, garlic, tomato, parsley and sherry vinegar. That sauce is what my friends say would make shoe leather taste great but they say that about the sauce I make for vitello tonnato and aji verde for Peruvian chicken!

[Jenise]

Karena and Christina, something a friend did once: in addition to Maldon salt, sprinkle the peppers with bonito flakes. It's a WOW treatment.

We had hamburgers yesterday. My brother brought over some patties he purchased and thought special along with the best multigrain buns from the best bakery in the next county, where I had an overload of Havarti cheese, some uncured bacon, and fresh perfectly ripe beefsteak tomatoes, lettuce and fresh, apple-sweet, big white onions purchased at a farmstand on Saturday. Combined, we had everything needed. They're fans of mayo-based pink sauces for burgers which the mere sight of turns my stomach, but they have to have their goop so I did make a sauce of 2 parts mayo to 1 part Costco pesto which Chris went nuts over and says he's totally going to steal for the next burger he makes at home.

No plans yet for today except that whatever we eat will be vegetarian.

NH is in another 90F+ heat wave. I have two heat-wave-friendly Thai recipes lined up: Crying Tiger Beef and larb nua (spicy minced beef salad). Both start with marinating a pound of flank steak for an hour with a bit of light soy sauce, grilling the steak to the desired level of done-ness, then serving the steak with either the Crying Tiger sauce or mincing it and mixing it into the larb. I have a 2-pound flank steak so I'm going to marinate and grill that, then use half of the steak in each recipe.

There's a Thai colloquial expression "hot enough to make a tiger cry". Crying Tiger sauce is an uncooked sauce with a large number of those nasty little Thai red bird's-eye chiles in it, along with shallots, lime juice, fish sauce, and a few other things. It live up to its name.

There used to be a Thai restaurant in the Nashua, NH area that I was very fond of called Bangkok Oriental Cuisine, run by a lady from Bangkok named Mowl Wolfe. The menu items were graded by hotness as 0-3 flames. There were two 3-flame items, one of which was larb neu. I usually ate the various two-flame items. One night I ordered larb nua and asked Mowl to make it just as it would be served in Thailand--no western concessions for the heat-shy. She asked if I was sure and I said I was. She said, OK, it comes with a soup that'll help cool things down if it's too hot for you. I knew I was in trouble when the soup arrived first and there was a red bird's-eye chile floating in it. This version of larb nua was the Thai equivalent of steak tartare--the beef was very finely minced and was raw. The dish was delicious but also one of the most incendiary things I've ever put in my mouth. Most larb recipes call for cooked meat, which is fine by me (too much Biology background for me to be happy with uncooked meat in any form). The larb I'm making won't be quite that hot.

-Paul W.

So I’ve got my Annual delivery of black truffle and I’ve been playing around with them.
My favourite currently is potato and leek soup. Beautifully unctuous and silky smooth, becomes
: perfect with some grated/chopped heated through before serving with shaved truffle. It doesn’t hurt to have toasted truffle sandwich on the side

That does sound delicious Barb, unfortunately, I have never had a fresh truffle, but have white and black truffle butter, truffle salt, truffle powder in my cooking stash. Love the smell and taste of each.

The Crying Tiger Beef was delicious. The Crying Tiger sauce (with 15 Thai bird's-eye chiles) was very hot but not overly so, at least not for me. The other half of the grilled flank steak is in the fridge waiting to be turned into larb.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

15 Thai bird chiles. I marvel at your tolerance, Paul!

The 15 bird's-eye chiles is for more than one serving, of course.

Thai Mahogany Fire Noodles has 30 of them, and 10 cloves of garlic.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Yes but still. Your tolerance is clearly well above anybody else here.

Tonight for dinner, a classic: veal picatta.

There's something to be said about the sweet point where the inherent chile flavor stands out above the heat. That takes finesse in the use of chile. I never liked habanero - too hot - until I tried a dish wherein despite the heat the distinctive habanero flavor stood above the heat and was delicious. I am there with some hot peppers but definitely not Thai chile or a lot of others.