Avocado, Smoked Salmon, Capers

I’m currently working on my computer from the dining nook table, and when I look up, this is the view I see.  My back yard, turning lush and green, a couple of maple branches hanging down, and a hillside of vinca being invaded by Pachysandra.  I’ve been up for a couple of hours this Saturday already, and have run two loads of laundry, and begun tackling several way overdue sorting and tossing tasks — and this afternoon I will plant the cannas and dahlias outdoors.

Out my back window

Anyhow, last night for dinner I made a simple avocado and smoked salmon dish.  There are two ways you can go about this.  I’d been reading a few online recipes where people baked their avocados with either bacon or eggs, and decided, well, I had smoked salmon, let’s try that.

But first, I’ll talk about the raw version, as that’s the one I photographed.

1 avocado (per person)  Or, if you use this as an appetizer, one half avo per person, and then this serves two…
1 ounce or so, smoked salmon (you can get really good quality, reasonably priced, wild-caught smoked salmon at Costco, or BJ’s)
1 or two slices of lime (or lemon, but I prefer lime with avocado)
Fresh dill
2 generous teaspoons rinsed capers
Fresh cilantro, optionally

Cut your avocado in half — basically run your sharp knife around the rim of the pit when you cut, then pull it apart, and remove the pit from the side that has it.

Squeeze lime (or lemon) juice on the avocado.  This will keep it from browning as fast, but frankly I wasn’t going to be waiting around for it to brown, before consuming.  However, I do like the tart flavor as a complement to the smoothness of the fruit.

Put in a layer of smoked salmon.  Add some dill, then some capers.

Then, top the whole thing with a layer of more salmon, and for a garnish, add a little cilantro  if you have (and like) it.

The finished treat, ready to eat! Grab a spoon and dig in.

Okay, that’s simple.  For baking the avocado, an experiment I tried earlier in the week, (and something that is essential if you say, want to cook an egg at the same time), I preheated the oven to 425 F.  I assembled the avocado the same, with the addition of a very thinly sliced piece of butter atop each side, to melt into this without things drying out. With this preparation, I baked the avocado for about 12-15 minutes (an egg would take longer).  Oh, and yes, in this case add any cilantro to the top after it comes out of the oven.

Both methods were very good, and I guess I’ve crossed off cooked avocado from my bucket list.   I can imagine that an avocado that turned out to be under ripe could become more palatable by baking it, but I haven’t tried doing that yet.

Have a happy Spring day!

A Weekend Breakfast Delight

The banana and the salmon slices need no introduction.  I do freeze my salmon for a minimum of three days before turning it into sashimi, as here.

The Poached Egg On Mushroom Cap with Stuffing, follows.  (Scale up to as many eggs as desired)

1 farmer’s market egg, shelled and held in reserve (yolk intact)
1 large portabella mushroom, de-stemmed
1/4 teaspoon olive oil
Eggplant mushroom stuffing, a tablespoon or two, depending on the size of your base portabello mushroom cap. 

The recipe for the eggplant mushroom stuffing is found:  HERE.  My previous recipe.

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

Rub the outer area of the mushroom cap with olive oil, allowing a little into the center of the cap.  Place your eggplant mushroom stuffing in a general ring around that target center, as depicted below:

Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prep and arrange any cold items of your meal, and when your mushroom cap is five or so minutes from being done, bring a pot of water almost to a boil.  Bubbles will be forming, but it won’t be boiling.  (You don’t need a great water depth in your pot — a good two inches will do fine.)  Some people add a dollop of vinegar to this water, to keep the egg whites more “together”, but I haven’t noticed significant difference.  Slide in your egg(s), and reduce heat to where it stays at a gentle simmer.

After two and a half minutes for a large egg, your poached egg should be ready (solid whites and a mostly liquid yolk).  Using a slotted spoon, gently transfer to a paper towel, to drain water. Remove your mushroom cap from the oven if you’ve not done so already, and gently edge your poached egg into its container.  Sprinkle with ground pepper and/or salt if desired.  Thin sliced pieces of scallion could serve as a great garnish for both this and the raw fish.  (I simply didn’t have any.)

And, breakfast is served!!!

Quail Stuffed with Eggplant and Mushrooms

I’ve never stuffed quail before, so I did reference a web link for timings, which sounds excellent in its own right (although I’d probably skip the bread crumbs).   You can check out Emeril Lagasse here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/mushroom-stuffed-quail-recipe2/index.html (Mushroom-Stuffed Quail).

Dinner this past Saturday night

This I consider a “weekend dish” as there are too many steps involved for a weekday night.

Eggplant:  One medium/small.  You won’t be stuffing with the whole thing (it would NEVER fit!), but stuffing is also excellent served on the side.

Someone told me there’s now GM eggplant, so I chose organic

Quail:  Two.  Partially de-boned (preferably by your butcher or your supplier.  I think if I de-boned mine myself, there wouldn’t be anything left!)

Garlic: about half a head.  Remove outer skin and cut off tips, and roast with the eggplant, see below.

Small tomato or kumato, diced.

1  half teaspoon each:  Ground pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander.  (I eyeballed these amounts).

Optional:  A little cheese, Fontina or similar.  

How to:  Remove ends on your eggplant, slice into 1/3 – 1/2 inch slices, put into a pan containing  cold water with salt and the juice from either a whole lime or half a lemon, weigh the slices down with a bowl or something, let soak for 30 minutes.  This keeps the eggplant sort of whitish, and draws out any bitterness.  (If you use Asian eggplants, you don’t need to worry about bitterness, and in that case, go leave out the salt, or at least most of the salt.)

Meanwhile:  Pre-heat your oven to 375 F.

Meanwhile:  Put your quail into a bowl and drop in about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon of coconut aminos (or a quality tamari/soy sauce, if you’d prefer.  This is QUAIL, I am going the extra mile…) .  Put back in the fridge to marinate.  Turn it occasionally.

Butcher-deboned quail. No WAY am I doing that!  Note:  Quail are quite small!

Meanwhile:  soak two wooden skewers in water.  I’m figuring this is going to be the best way to hold stuffing together inside a bird.  You don’t want wood catching fire.

When the eggplant has finished soaking, rinse quickly, then layer, wrap in foil, with garlic as mentioned above, and ground pepper and yes, the olive oil.  Mix with your hands before wrapping.  Place in oven for 40-45 minutes.  Keep the layers small, no more than two across.  Otherwise you will be here forever.  When done pull out of oven and allow to cool down to where you can handle them with your fingers.  Scoot roasted garlic cloves out of their shell, and remove skin from eggplant, especially if they are the regular English ones — Asian eggplants have thinner, and actually-tasty skin.  (You could have removed skin earlier, but it falls off fairly nicely now…)

Happily roasted eggplant

Turn heat in oven down to 350 F.

In a skillet, while eggplants and garlic are cooling:  Take mushrooms – you can use anything you like but I used a mix of portobello and shiitake.  Slice thin, then dice.  Saute with your preferred choice of oil or butter.  Add in one small tomato, chopped up – I used a kumato, which are a special brown tomato currently on sale locally around here.

Then:  Chop and or mash after the above skin removal, add to skillet with the mushrooms.  Add ground pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander, and mix on low heat for about five-ten minutes.

Bring out your quail and stuff them with the hot eggplant mix, using the skewer sticks – break them in half – to hold the flaps of bird together.  Place in the 350 degree oven and allow cook for 25-30 minutes.   If desired, for the last five minutes, add a slice of cheese over each stuffed breast.   Keep the leftover stuffing warm at a slow simmer, or alternatively, reserve some of it for future meals, as you will notice in my next post.

Serve hot, with a salad of your choice, more of the stuffing, and perhaps a dry white wine.  You’ll need to eat these using your fingers.  Very tender and flavorful.

Slow Cooked Lamb Shank

I know, I know, I haven’t been active in a bit — nothing really came together to post about, and at least one dish turned out to be an Epic Fail.   And another I forgot about taking photos…

Anyhow, in honor of our great spring weather in these parts, I decided to cook a meal using a lot of favorite ingredients, and came up with slow-cooked lamb shank with onions, fennel and shiitake mushrooms.

Tender and tasty

So.. here we go!  Serves two.  Add an additional lamb shank for one or two more servings, in which case five cups of water and 1/2 cup of balsamic (and all other ingredients doubled) will do fine.

1 lamb shank (about 1.5 lb)
1 large onion, peeled and cut in half
3 ounces shiitake mushrooms, remove stems (actually, I would on second thought, add MORE shiitake.  Six ounces sounds great!  …maybe more??
1/2 leek bulb (I also threw in the thickest of the stalks here)
1/2 heaping teaspoon fennel seeds
1/2 heaping teaspoons of peppercorns
1/2 heaping teaspoon of rosemary leaves (fresh would be best)
3 cups water (or so)
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

In the crock pot and ready to roll

Add all of the above to your crock pot, set on low, for 5.5 hours.  (I didn’t measure the above, but those amounts is what it looked like.)

After the above cooks:

Five and a half hours of slow cooking.

Now, add:

Ground pepper and salt to taste
Some fennel stalks and leaves, roughly chopped

Toss in a few things into this merry mix!

Allow to slow cook another 30 minutes, and serve.  The meat is tender, and falls off the bone.  Reserve the liquids and chill in refrigerator.  Once chilled, remove the fat layer and you have a nice seasoned broth of lamb (and shiitake flavorings, if you put in more than I did.), and I will leave the uses of that to your imagination.  The vinegar in the pot will have helped leach out nutrients, and if you have marrow, don’t forget to enjoy it.

This was excellent, but as noted, I’d do MORE shiitake next go round.  It was that half-container of what was available here.  Another worthy option would be fresh garlic, diced, to add for that last half hour of slow cookery.

And there’s more for tomorrow!

Eggselection Protection…

I am going on a road trip tomorrow, and decided hard-cooked eggs and some raw veggies would serve for lunch.

I am totally stunned by this egg that did not spew its innards all over the pot,  despite the severe eggshell crazing.  I am attributing this to the fact that it shattered its shell late in the boiling process.

How I keep eggs with weak shells from doing too much spewing-forth while cooking:  I add about a teaspoon of salt to the pot.  I start the eggs and the salt off at room temp, and the salt helps balance out the osmotic pressure, so a

Eggs, just pulled off the burner, with the cracked one happily intact

weak-shelled egg normally will not explode its guts into the water.  (A severely weak-shelled one will still do so, but not to the same extent as if there were just unsalted water in there.  THIS egg appears eggceptional!)  I  think it is simply because the shell that weakened let its cracks happen later on in the cooking process.

Anyhow… salt you add to the pot to help the eggs survive the boiling process will not flavor the eggs.

Note:  for hard-cooked eggs:  place in room temp water, bring to boil, reduce heat to medium high for about ten minutes, remove from range and rinse in COLD tap water.  I’ve never made eggs with “green” rims this way.

Good soft boiled eggs (whites solid but yolks liquid) will depend on the size of your eggs, how fast your water heats and stuff like that.  Experiment, and make sure you use some kitchen utensil to move the eggs around so that the yolk just doesn’t stick to a side somewhere.

Cabbage for St. Paddy’s Day

What happened to the corned beef, I hear you ask?  Or I believe I hear you ask.

A few days ago I suddenly felt in the spirit of the wearing of the green, and I figured, since I have a brisket in my freezer, perhaps making corned beef and cabbage would be appropriate.  Mind you, I’ve a distant past of wearing orange on the day, but my rebellious youth has mellowed out into a finer appreciation of things.   (Although right now I am wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt.)

I’ve never had trouble going Mexican for Cinque de Mayo, but I guess I drew the line at Irish food — what I considered to be overcooked vegetables (when present) along with boiled meats, and too many tasteless and starchy potatoes.

But I’ve always loved cabbage, and I wanted to try my hand at making corned beef.  I reflected that I have indeed eaten great corned beef and cabbage, so I figured I’d start from scratch — ie, corning the beef myself.

So after a quick surf of the web, I learned:  the brisket needs to sit in its brine for 5 to 10 days.  That was going to put me post-St. Patrick’s day, so I figure I’ll reserve the brisket for some time when I want to corn it for Reuben sandwiches.

I considered going to a fairly reliable market and buying some previously corned beef, but I do try in my personal purchases to avoid feedlot beef, and besides I’m sure the stuff would have had more sugar (among other things) in the brine than I would have done.

Okay, corned beef and cabbage, minus the corn.  One good thing: the cooking time is far less.

The below recipe is vegetarian but not vegan, as it contains butter.

Cabbage for St.  Paddy’s Day (for two)

1/2-3/4 onion, chopped.  (I used red, simply because the red one was telling me I had to eat it SOON, but yellow would be more traditional)
1 small potato (or large if you wish), scrubbed, bad spots picked out, but skin on, cut into rough chunks.  (I used Yukon gold, because I like them, but red potatoes appear to be traditional)
About 20 ounces shredded cabbage (two bags from Trader Joe’s).
1.5 teaspoon butter
2-3 bay leaves
Peppercorns (in lieu of not being able to find my peppercorns — seems everyone is selling peppercorns inside of grinders these days, will have to rectify this! — I used a pickling spice mix that includes peppercorns)
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
A generous teaspoonful of sea salt (to make up for not having the corned beef in there)

Saute the onion in butter in a pan that can double as the thing you cook the rest of the meal in.  (Why dirty extra pans?)  Get the onion translucent, mildly browned.  Remove onion to a small dish and reserve.  Don’t worry about any residual butter.

Add potatoes and cover them with water, bring to a boil, along with peppercorns and bay leaf and salt.

Reduce heat and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, or until potatoes just begin to get soft.

Add everything else.   Simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes.  If you use larger chunks of cabbage that you chopped up yourself you may need to cook longer, but for packaged shredded, don’t do this.

Drain off excess liquids, remove bay leaf, and serve.  I like a little Dijon-style mustard with my cabbage but that’s not necessary.  Alternatively, you can garnish with fresh parsley (which I wish I had for the photo), or add some butter.  I did, however, reserve the drained-off liquids for some as of yet unspecified dish.  (Maybe I’ll simply just drink it???  It’s that good.)

If you do cook this with corned beef, you can reduce or eliminate the salt.

A couple of sites of interest:  

http://www.food.com/recipe/n-y-c-corned-beef-and-cabbage-15846 – this one does a great job telling you how to shop for the right ingredients (perhaps a little overkill) but at the end discusses some of the symbology of the meal for those who are curious why one shouldn’t serve a pile of carrots on St. Paddy’s day (if one is Irish).

http://blog.junbelen.com/2010/03/15/how-to-make-corned-beef-brisket-nitrate-free-at-home/ – Apparently, a great recipe for corning beef brisket, for those who celebrate the day on a different calendar (or who are planning for next year).  It is also nitrate-free.  I will let you know when I actually try it.

A Rub with Skirt Steak, Tomatoes and Mushrooms

… and garlic.

The rub actually is very simple and basic, and would probably go well with flank steak or other steaks of that ilk.  (Flat iron, hangar, flap…)  Not everything needs to be complicated.

Skirt Steak

For the rub:

1 heaping tablespoon chili powder.  I used medium heat, but your miles may vary.
1 teaspoon cracked ground pepper.  I used Trader Joe’s Rainbow Peppercorn, currently my favorite.
1/2 teaspoon salt.  I used Himalayan pink salt, and I also used about a teaspoon, but frankly that turned out to be a lil too much.

For the rest of it:

0.75 pounds skirt steak, approximately.
2 fresh Roma tomatoes, in segments.
4 ounces button mushrooms, sliced.
2 cloves garlic, slivered
Maybe a tablespoon or such of toasted sesame oil (or whatever your favorite is, but I wanted that sesame flavor)

Skirt Steak Prep with Rub

I rinsed, then cut the piece of meat into about six sections, ran it through the rub, and let sit with the rub for about an hour.  Going longer is likely even better.  (It was after work, and I was hungry…)

Put the oil in the skillet, heat the skillet to a medium-medium high, and add the mushrooms, then the tomatoes.  Using a spatula, run them around together for a while, and when the mushrooms are getting a little moist-looking on both sides, add the meat and garlic.  Keep up the spatula action as needed.  If needed, reduce heat a little.

Skirt steak gets tough when overcooked.  I stop at medium rare.  This is likely going to be around five minutes, maybe even less.  Peoples’ ranges differ, and there is not really any good temperature terminology for range-top cookery.  If in doubt, remove a piece while cooking and slice it.

This would be a meal for two.  After taking the finished photo, I cut the large chunks of meat against the grain into thin slivers (for increased tenderness) , and this was indeed a taste treat.  This cut of meat is embodied with a lot of happy flavor.

Serve with a tossed salad comprising a variety of colors.