thai shrimp cocktail

I've always poached shrimp in the conventional way: in a pot of simmering court bouillon. Sometimes I poach it in butter or olive oil, but then, that's confit, isn't it? Same with sous vide.

Recently, I was shown a different method by a culinary student at the restaurant, who learned it from another chef. His way is with residual heat. Instead of cooking the shrimp in the simmering broth, boiling broth is poured over the shrimp that's been spread out in a hotel pan. The pan is immediately covered tightly with plastic wrap and set aside. Depending on the size and quantity of the shrimp, it takes 10-15 minutes until they are perfectly cooked. What I like about this countertop cooking is that they are never tough or overcooked.

Peeling and deveining shrimp is a time consuming task. Sometimes, I buy them already deveined, but always with their shells on for flavor. Decapods (ten-footed crustaceans) carry their intestines on what appears to be their backs, but are actually their bellies. To remove the intestinal tract, the flesh along the belly must be slit open, leaving thin flaps that I find visually distracting when presenting them whole. These long, thin filaments peel away easily and are tasty morsels, though they rarely accumulate in quantities that would comprise a meal. These trimmings— the rare and esoteric by-products of cooking— are the cook's reward.

I think what I like best about Thai food is the balance of sweet, salty, tart, spicy and umami. Nowhere
is this best exemplified than in the sweet-sour garlic dipping sauce Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon— a lively combination of lime juice, palm sugar, thai chilies, garlic, and fish sauce. It's an alarm clock of a sauce— it awakens the senses, makes you sit up and pay attention. I prefer it over cocktail sauce as a dip for poached shrimp. It's delicious poured over hot, grilled fish or steamed rice. In hot weather, I drizzle it over icy-cold watermelon or freeze it and rake it with a fork for a refreshing granita. It's so good that I could drink it, and I do—diluted with sparkling water and sometimes in a sake cocktail.
Using kaffir lime juice brings it to a whole other level, adding complex floral notes along with a bracing acidity.
I wanted to use it with the shrimp bellies and rice noodles in a cold salad, but because it is so thin, I was having a hard time getting the sauce to cling to it. It's not such a bad thing having a pool of it in the bottom of the dish to slurp up, but I was looking for a cleaner presentation. Of course, I could've thickened it with xanthan or ultratex, but looking at the rice noodles, I realized that they were the perfect vehicle to carry the flavor. With a nod to an entirely different cuisine— Italian— and the dish Spaghetti All'Ubriaco, where pasta is cooked in red wine, I cooked the rice stick noodles in the sauce. Infused with the flavor of Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon, the noodles 'dressed' the salad neatly and cleanly.

Nahm Jeem Plah Pao Ubon
parts are by volume, not weight

3 parts nam plah (fish sauce)
2 parts water
2 parts palm sugar (or brown sugar)
1 part finely minced garlic
1 part minced fresh thai bird chili, or 1/2 part dried
3 parts fresh kaffir lime juice

Place all ingredients except for lime juice in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. When the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and add the lime juice.

kaffir lime

Why— in the dead of winter— do I crave bright exotic flavors? I suppose it's a countermeasure to the bleakness of January; a physical reminder that somewhere on this planet the earth is producing things that are juicy and ripe.

Many food trend lists for 2010 include eating locally and seasonally. Admirable goals, certainly, but I live in the frozen tundra Northeast, and if I were to adhere strictly to that, I would be starving right about now. And even worse, there would be no citrus fruits of any kind.

I never fully realized how indispensable citrus is in cooking until I had to do without it, as the Native Americans did— who ONLY ate locally and seasonally. It forced me to analyze why I relied on lemon and lime juice— or any acidic medium. I concluded that it is not merely a crutch, but an essential element of flavor balance that is supported by many of the world's cuisines. Lemons, limes and other sour citrus have distinct aromas that can define or enhance flavor, while acid is a great equalizer. Like salt, it opens up flavors and makes them bloom. A small addition of acid can balance a dish; saving it from being too sweet, too rich, too flat. Relearning all of this makes me more mindful of its role and all the more grateful that I have access to products that don't grow in my climate.

I'll never forget my first encounter with kaffir lime. It was one of those moments that left an indelible impression on my sensory bank. I was eating Thai food— for the first time— at an authentic Thai restaurant. The perfume of kaffir lime leaves was woven through course after course of the most sensual and aromatic food that I had no point of reference or vocabulary for. It was wonderfully exotic.

The first thing I did was to buy a Thai cookbook to better understand the cuisine. 20+ years ago, I had never even heard of things like galangal, nam pla, and kaffir lime leaves, let alone know where to source them. But that didn't stop me from cooking it— substituting ginger for galangal, lime zest for kaffir lime leaves— fully cognizant that it was not authentic. Instead, I focused on learning technique— how to pre-soften dried rice noodles for Paht Thai in warm water, how to make an incendiary and aromatic Krueng Gaeng Kua in a mortar & pestle, how to thicken coconut cream until the surface glistens with oil before adding the curry paste and coconut milk when preparing Choo Chee Goong. When the ingredients finally became available, I was prepared to do them justice.

As I recall, the kaffir lime leaves were the hardest to source. It was a hit-or-miss item at Asian markets. With the advent of the internet, I found a supplier/grower in Florida who was willing to ship small quantities of fresh leaves. Eventually, I became curious about the fruit, made inquiries, and was told that because there wasn't a market for kaffir limes in the US, they stripped the trees of fruit buds to direct its energy to producing leaves. Undeterred, I ordered a dwarf tree that I would grow indoors. It died before setting fruit, along with my hopes of ever tasting a fresh kaffir lime.

Fast forward to last winter. The chef at the restaurant hands me a pair of green knobby fruit that Sid Weiner had dropped off as samples of a new product. One intoxicating whiff and I instantly knew what they were. I had waited over a decade to experience them. Were they worth it? You bet.

This was one of my favorite hors d'Oeuvres from this holiday season. They're so simple that a recipe isn't neccessary. Just mix impeccably picked-over crab meat with a little mayo, minced shallots, scallions, cilantro and kaffir lime zest (or minced leaves) and as much red curry paste as you can handle.. The avocado bases were cut a few hours ahead and kept in diluted kaffir lime juice (or just lime juice with a few kaffir lime leaves tossed in for flavor).

Indian Summer :: the sea :: oyster seaweed

The diets of coastal Indians were largely dependent on the bounty of the sea. In colonial times, oysters were abundant in the brackish waters of estuaries. This has been well documented by the early settlers. Among them, William Strachey, wrote in 1612: "Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I have seen some thirteen inches long." (!)
We know that Native Americans enjoyed oysters by the tremendous piles of shells that they left behind. These piles, called middens, have been found by archaeologists up and down the eastern seacoast, including many in New York City (one directly beneath a subway line). Some of these middens were four feet deep and contained thousands of shells.
Although Native Americans ate massive amounts of oysters, it's unlikely that they ate them raw. Their tools of stone and bone were too brittle to pry open the abductor muscle, capable of exerting twenty pounds of pressure. It's far more probable that they were wrapped in seaweed and baked in pits with hot rocks, as that was the traditional way of cooking shellfish and mollusks— and the origin of our modern clambake.

Seaweed was prized by the Native Americans. Besides its use to steam-cook foods, it was eaten as a vegetable, or dried and used as seasoning— in much the same way that we use salt. Some varieties, like Irish moss, contain polysaccharides that form gels when boiled. These were used to thicken soups and make a type of pudding.

Irish moss (Chondrus crispus) is a red alga found along the Atlantic coasts of North America and Europe. More closely associated with the potato famine in Ireland, where its consumption warded off starvation, it also proliferates along the rocky outcrops of the New England coast. Alternately, it is known as carrageenan moss because it contains up to 55% of the polysaccharide. When dried in sunlight, the color bleaches to pale yellow.

Irish moss needs to be soaked before cooking, which causes it to swell but not soften. The difference can be seen in the photo above— dried is on the right, soaked on the left. In the soaked stage, it has a weird synthetic texture, like plastic aquarium plants. When cooked in liquid, it begins to soften and eventually dissolve, forming a soft gel when cool. Cooked in just water, the gel has a mild and pleasant taste of seawater. Cooked in oyster liquor, as I have here, it tastes like the essence of the sea.

The Essence of the Sea

seaweed-roasted oyster
irish moss gel

scallop fennel bearnaise

What would you do if you were served a broken bearnaise?

Would you think that it was a mistake and send it back to the kitchen?

Or would you recall that Fernand Point wrote in Ma Gastronomie "It takes years of practice for the result to be perfect" and chalk it up to inexperience?

What if you learned that it was broken intentionally?

Would you be curious to know why?

Or outraged that someone would mess with 170 years of tradition?

Can something be fixed if it's not broken?

Or does it need to be broken to be fixed?

scallop mousseline

fennel: bulb, fronds, green seeds, pollen

smoked bearnaise

caviar

corn langoustine plantago

There's a prevalent flavor in raw plantago that intrigues me. It's the same nutty oiliness that is found in arugula. It's reminiscent of a nut oil that is starting to go off– not rancid, but strangely pleasant. Unlike arugula, it's not followed by a sharp bite. Like arugula, it matches well with corn.

Anything cold and easy is all that I crave on these dog days of summer. Fresh corn, put through a juicer along with a chunk of fresh coconut, seasoned with salt and a squeeze of lime, requires little energy to prepare and even less to consume. Swirling on fresh plantago juice and brown buttermilk allows the flavors to meet and mingle on the palate and not be muddied on the plate. A quick salad of langoustine tails, dressed with a light and tangy brown buttermilk vinaigrette completes the dish.

scallop milkweed curry

I found some old photos of my very first garden. I was taken aback by how pristine it looked– perfect rows, not a weed in sight. I remember how diligent I was back then. A lot has changed.

I used to think that if I was going to put the time, work and expense into cultivating a patch of earth, that I had the right to choose what could live there– the freeloaders had plenty of other options. Despite my democratic world views, any semblances of egalitarianism were firmly checked at the garden gate.

Over the years, I've made peace with the weeds. Mostly, I grew tired of feeling defeated. But the softening could also be attributed to a newfound appreciation that runs parallel with an accumulation of life lessons:

Life Lesson Cliche #1: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade (or better yet, wine). I've always collected tender, young dandelion leaves for salads and such, but this year it was gratifying to utilize the blossoms for dandelion wine.

Life Lesson Cliche #2: Pick your battles (aka Parental Survival Tactic #1). I still pull dandelions out of the lawn, but I leave the more tenacious clover for 'textural character'.

Life Lesson Cliche #3: You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse (don't believe it). Even fierce and hostile stinging nettles can be transformed into an elegant and refined soup.

Life Lesson Cliche #4: Shit happens (deal with it). On the morning of an important dinner that I had planned down to the last detail, I went to the rock garden to harvest newly planted cultivars of oxalis that I had purchased for the occasion, only to find that they had been loped off by an animal. The common yellow-flowered oxalis that proliferates everywhere came to the rescue and no one was the wiser.

Life Lesson Cliche #5: Stop and smell the roses (and the weeds). While working in the yard one night, I caught a whiff of a sultry, sweet scent that I couldn't identify. I followed it to a patch of tall plants with large allium-like flowers with a captivating scent that I later identified as milkweed. Though I didn't know what they were then, I instantly recognized the leaves as being the same weed that I had been pulling out of the vegetable garden for years. To make up for my indiscretion, I gave milkweed a place of honor in my flower garden. And because it's edible, it's also welcome in the vegetable garden.

Regarding weeds, the best lesson is: If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em.

scallop ceviche

milkweed

cucumber

curry

salad burnet

daylily

As with most dishes, It started as a concept…

The idea was to showcase a flower– not just as a taste/aroma, or as a representation– but to present the flower intact, in full bloom, even as it grows on the stem.

Then, I thought, wouldn't it be better if there were two flowers on that stem that could be presented in different preparations: one hot, one cold; one cooked, one raw? Sure it would.

And– what if there were buds that could be…oh, say, pickled…to serve as a counterpoint to the other preparations? Awesome right?

The problem was finding the right flower. No matter how lovely, would anyone want to approach a rose with a knife and fork?

It was a tall order and I all but gave up on the concept because, frankly, I wasn't sure that such a flower existed. But Nature knew that it did…and set the day lilies a-bloomin".

king crab/creme fraiche/preserved lemon/tarragon

king crab tempura

pickled lily buds

mango/yellow bell pepper

cantaloupe

tomato

fava/orange mint

A single daylily stem can produce up to 50 blossoms, each one programmed to last only a day. They have a tender, lettuce-like texture and mildly sweet vegetal flavor, reminiscent of melon or squash. Do not mistake toxic lilies (Lilium) for daylilies (Hemerocallis). While the flowers are easily confused, the plants are distinct– daylily leaves are long blades that grow directly from the base of the plant, while Lilium species have short leaves that grow along the length of the stem.

uni cinnamon rose

Is it just me or does anyone else detect cinnamaldehyde and floral notes in uni? I can't find any evidence of it (there aren't many studies on aroma compounds in uni) but I suspect they're there in some form. At any rate, they make an interesting and tasty mouthful.

uni

cinnamon-scented congee

rose pearl

lime basil

These days, I'm finding more inspired service ware in in the candle department than in tableware. I've searched for the better part of a year for an aesthetic piece that would steadily hold a spoon or fork for an amuse. This glass votive holder from IKEA does just that and at 8$/pc I can afford to invest in a number of them.

Now that I've divulged…make sure you leave some for me.