We Made a Blog

I’m a really big fan of single-pan (or pot) cooking. Sometimes I go to extra-lengths just to devise a way of dirtying only one pot, one knife and one cutting board. Cooking is fun, cleaning isn’t. Plain and simple.

Along the same lines, I really like creating simple dishes. Only a handful of spices to coat a single protein and a small side. And if it doesn’t take too long, even better.

To make this dish you need:
1.) Tilapia fillet (one per person)
2.) Beer
3.) Chili powder (preferably Mexican)
4.) Salt & Pepper
5.) One shallot (more if you’re making for a few people)
6.) A cucumber
7.) A lemon

Take the fillet and rinse under water. Maybe I’m paranoid but I always rinse fish and poultry. Pat dry.

Take a single large cutting board and place the fish at one end. I cut my cucumber and shallot at the other end; if this is too close to cross-contamination for you, place the fish on a separate dish.

Wherever your fish is, season with a two-finger pinch of salt (we’re not including your thumb in the two-finger pinch equation). Then, lightly season with black pepper. Next, take your chili powder and hold the shaker at least two feet above the fish and coat the whole fish with a single layer. FYI, adding seasoning from a height helps spread it out better, you should do this with the salt and pepper as well.

Flip the fish and do it all again to that side.

While your fish is sitting, grab your frying pan, preferably cast-iron, and add olive oil. You don’t need a lot of oil! But the measurement completely depends on the size of your frying pan. You need just enough olive oil to easily coat the pan. Turn the burner to high.

While the pan is getting hot, slice your shallot. Usually you only need half of a bulb. Make 1/4 inch slices. Take the slices and cut in half.

Put your hand about ten inches over the pan, if you can’t keep it there for more than a few seconds, you have the right temperature. Now throw in the sliced shallot. The shallot only needs a minute of cooking to get soft at that heat. You don’t want them to brown yet, just get soft.

Once the shallot is softened, add the tilapia fillet right in the middle of the pan. Clear a spot with the shallot so the fish properly sears. Cook the fish on each side for about two minutes. (A fish-specific spatula is extremely helpful. They’re the ones that are made of metal and have big slots running through them. Their flexibility makes handling flaky fish a lot easier than a firm spatula would.)

Once you have a nice, dark-brown color on your fish, lower the heat and cover with a pot-top. Let the fish cook this way for another 5 minutes, flipping once.

I don’t have a top that properly covers my pan. So, I take the spatula and place the handle on the counter so that the business-end is hanging over the edge of the pot. (Pointing toward the center of the pan.) Take the ill-sized top and place in the pan with one edge being lifted up by the spatula. This will help the fish cook through without burning it or needing to warm up your oven.

During that five minutes, peel and slice your cucumber. This will be your side. And trust me it works. The crunch of the cucumber pairs properly with the soft fish and it’s natural sweetness compliments the heat of the chili powder.

When the fish is ready we take it out leaving the shallot behind. If you aren’t sure how done your fish is, try cutting it with your spatula. If it puts up resistance, you’re far from it being finished and it probably needs ten more minutes. If it goes through but you still see pink, let it go for another minute or two. Once finished, place the fish on the plate you will be serving it on.

Now that the fish is cooked, turn the heat off because we’re going to deglaze the pan. This recipe calls for beer, so I assume you’ve cracked one at the onset of your preparation. Take what’s left, you need around three ounces, and pour it into the pan.

You should instantly see the beer foam and sizzle. Take your spatula and start scraping. You want everything that’s stuck to the bottom of the pan to mix into the beer along with the shallots. Once the beer stops fizzing and foaming, you’re done. Deglazing shouldn’t take more than one minute.

Pour the liquid from the pan over your fish. Take a wedge out of your lemon and squeeze over the fish. Place the cucumber to the side of the fish. (A pinch of salt on the cucumber never hurts…)

Done.

If you properly deglaze the pan and add the lemon, I promise you will want to lick the plate. This entire meal takes 15 minutes, tastes delicious and is pretty healthy too.

Enjoy!

Last week, inspired by David Chang, I decided to make a dish where protein was not the dominant theme. I wound up with a small portion of pork and a healthy dose of beans. The beans were made with jalapeno, tomato paste and sriracha. Delicious, but not quite perfect.

I set out to rectify that.

Cooking, I have a knack for. Recipe creation, not really. A solid base of information provided by my mother and the occasional class at The Brooklyn Kitchen have given me enough know-how to whip something up. But an actual original recipe, other than my infamous worked-over veggie burgers, I have not created.

What follows is the perfect recipe for a chili concoction that will rock your taste buds as much as it does your colon.

I realized that what I was missing in my last attempt was a fatty substance to add that lingering flavor you get out of true dishes. I also only used one jalapeno, forcing the addition of the sriracha.

This time I solved both issues. For depth of flavor, bacon is an obvious choice. Take five slabs, chop them and then render in a medium-sized saucepan. Once rendered, add three diced jalapenos. Cook until the bacon begins to crisp and your nose starts to burn.

Take about a pound of ground turkey and season with salt (lightly), black pepper, garlic powder and onion powder. Of course fresh garlic and onion is preferred. Dump the meat in the pan to brown.

After a half a minute, add two tablespoons of tomato paste. Stir.

Let the meat brown. Now taste. Depending on how spicy the meat is, add an appropriate amount of honey. Start with a three-second squirt out of your honey bear. Taste. Too spicy? Add more honey. Once you have the correct ratio of honey, take a tablespoon of white vinegar and add to the mix. This will help cut the richness of the chili.

Take a small can of pinto beans and strain as much liquid out as possible. Add to the pot. Let that all simmer for at least 15 minutes once the beans are added.

Get some extra-sharp cheddar, the amount is kind of up to you, shred and fold into the the beans and meat.  Shred some extra for topping.

Let the pan simmer for a bit. There’s no science to how long it cooks at this point, it really just depends on how much time you have.

I like polenta – a lot. So I like to take half-inch slices and fry them up. Season with a  pinch of salt, pepper and garlic powder. Don’t overcook! Just brown them on medium-low heat. You want a slight crunch without losing the creaminess in the middle.

Take your bean, meat, bacon and jalapeno mix and pour over the sliced polenta. Take the extra shredded cheese and put it on top as soon as you as you can so it melts nicely.

There you go. You will flip out at the depth of flavor here and, more importantly, that you only have a single pot to clean.

I’ve walked past Saltie so many times I thought I‘d actually eaten there already. It’s at a particular locus between my apartment and other haunts that means I’m usually not hungry when I pass by. Yesterday, I was.

And I faced the scary menu. Sardines, pickled egg, capers, pickled carrot and parsley sound more like someone’s pranking you than suggesting a sandwich. But you remember that Saltie is in some way connected to Marlow & Daughters and the ingredients suddenly transform into hidden secrets you never dreamt of.

So I ordered the Captain’s Daughter (the aforementioned combination) with a cup of hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was excellent; thick and creamy, with just the right level of sweetness. Even if as soon as I was out the door I pondered what made me think to order a hot chocolate with a fish sandwich. But it was an excellent hand warmer for the walk home.

The sandwich was excellent. Most things placed on fresh focaccia are. The saltiness of the capers brought out the best in the sardine, which was slightly muted by the pickled egg, and the parsley, bathed in something acidic, cut through any heft. So, yes, I do suggest you give it a try.

But that isn’t why I felt the need to write this. Now, I can’t give a full review of the place because I’ve only been there the one time, but the fact is, the sandwich was $10. Actually, all of the sandwiches were $10 or hovering slightly above, which makes you wonder how they figure out what to charge. In any case, I would gladly pay $10 for the sandwich on taste alone. What enraged me was when I got home I discovered that my sandwich wasn’t even cut in half. Ten dollars and you couldn’t cut my sandwich in half?

Fine. Whatever. I’ll get over it. It tastes that good. But what’s this? My bread is falling to pieces. Remember, this isn’t a cold-cut sandwich; you need to apply pressure to keep all the pieces of fish and egg from falling out. In trying to keep your sandwich whole, you inevitably begin to bend it. The more it bends, the more it falls apart.

Again, for $10 you couldn’t cut my sandwich in half?

This is the problem with charging so much for something as quotidian as a sandwich. It brings it up a level in expectation. If this were maybe $7, I would be back again and again. But when you ask someone to pay that much for a sandwich and you don’t deliver perfection, it’s hard not to be disappointed.

Also, why the fuck are sardines and eggs costing me this much? I know this is exotic food to the uninitiated but, really, this is peasant food. The kind of thing my Dad would whip up for me for lunch on a Saturday when my Mom wasn’t around to complain about the smell.

We Brooklynites love our food. Especially anything novel. And often around here, things are as advertised. Saltie makes very good food – let that not get lost in this rant – but I just want to get what I pay for. Or vice versa.

Oh, Goods, how you’ve let me down. It’s especially heartbreaking since things between us started out so beautifully. For weeks, I anticipated the day the windows of your chrome trailer would open. I even showed up early on a false report that they had. Dutifully, I waited and we finally had our first meeting.

I fell for your sausage, egg and cheese on a biscuit – and the beignets on the side, too. Then I had the fried green tomato sandwich and I couldn’t stop gushing about this magical, stationary food truck that had appeared two blocks away from my apartment. For about two months of Sundays, I would have my ritual tomato sandwich. Then a waitress suggested I try the oyster fritter sandwich. This is when things started to go sour.

That sandwich was actually quite good – not great, but solidly good. So, I thought, what about the rest of your menu? First up, the hot dog. It doesn’t matter how organic or closely grown a product is to where it’s being sold, taste is taste, and you either have it or you don’t. The dog did not. I might as well have been eating a veggie dog – a very expensive veggie dog, at that.

OK, so one negative. No reason to panic, but I was starting to see why so many said you were “overpriced” and “not very good.” But I stuck to what I liked about you and life went on wonderfully for us both. Then you committed an unforgivable sin, one of biblical proportion.

We’d never spent the afternoon together, so I hadn’t had your weekend special: fried chicken. Until last week. You’re selling chicken in the same town as Pies ‘n’ Thighs, so I figured you wouldn’t be messing around. I drooled in anticipation from order until delivery. What came after was a monumental disappointment.

There was the taste of par-boiled, then fried chicken that comes at the pre-hot sauce stage of buffalo wings. The chicken didn’t suffer the usual list of complaints, meat on the dry side, soft skin, etc. It was cooked ‘properly,’ it just didn’t taste like anything.  On top of it (literally) was a sauce whose beginnings seemed to be juice squeezed out of a plastic lemon. When I suggested to my friend that you don’t come close to matching Pies ‘n’ Thighs’ delights, he remarked, much more tellingly, that you don’t “stack up against KFC.” And he’s right – about taste and price (not that I’m endorsing fast food). For $10, I felt like you were flipping me the bird. And about the $10 octopus dish I was served: Thanks for the two pieces of octopus. The pound of chick peas and faro at the bottom was quite tasty, but I don’t think it’s enough to repair things between us.

We Made a Blog writes a lot about food (and drink) we’ve consumed that’s been prepared by others. But we do actually cook – pretty well and with feeling. So we whiled away a few winter (ah, winter) and spring evenings this year in the kitchen – Brooklyn Kitchen Labs, that is – taking classes to expand our home-based culinary ventures.

The Brooklyn Kitchen cohabitates with carnivore paradise The Meat Hook. The shop flaunts vintage finds (if I ever need to recreate my grandmother’s kitchen – from harvest gold Tupperware to blue wheat-stamped CorningWare – I know where to go) and the latest in kitchen gadgets. On the day of class, you get a 10% discount on any of their wares (excluding meat and dairy) and the staff is friendly and helpful (we sought their advice more than once in a goat cheese project we undertook). The labs consist of one warmly lit spacious brick-walled kitchen on the lower level and one smaller bright one lofted above it. On our first visit we wandered into the wrong kitchen and were sent, prosecco-filled, to the proper one. It was an auspicious start.

We embarked on Oysters 101, given by the incredibly knowledgeable Nellie Wu and Michael Kidera of W&T Seafood. They take oysters very seriously and that passion translated into an enjoyable and information-packed two hours. We spent the first hour learning the biology and culture of the oyster and then got around to sort of destroying both by learning how to shuck. The second part of the class was devoted to cooking; mignonette sauce, oysters Rockefeller and oyster chowder were more than enough to count as that evening’s meal.

We had high hopes for our next class, Japanese Takeout, with Cathy Erway of the blog Not Eating Out in New York. We have an obvious bias toward bloggers and we wouldn’t want to dissuade anyone from taking a cooking class given by someone with only that credit in the experience column but this is the only class we can’t wholeheartedly endorse. The description foretold of an evening filled with miso soup, ginger dressing, katsu and sushi. We did gain some expertise in the miso/ginger arena but sushi skills were what we were really there for. We assumed we would be learning about how to select and slice fish but fish was nowhere to be seen. It was explained away quickly with something about mercury and something about overfishing and we spent a good amount of time making hand rolls that were free of the sea. Katsu was also not in attendance.

Now any time I think about baking bread, I picture Nicolas Cage in one of my favorite movies of all time, “Moonstruck.” Glinting with sweat and anger in the fiery subterranean of the bakery he owns, he reflects on his profession. “They say bread is life,” he starts out but it’s soon clear that he holds the opposite view. Matt Tilden of SCRATCHbread, our instructor for our foray into focaccia, seems like he would be more than happy to take up the issue with him. As enthusiastic as his blissed-out state would allow, Matt delved into the chemistry behind perfect loaves and the more alchemical ingredient of love. He did some light iPod DJing, kept up the patter, served some Brooklyn Lager and generally made the class forget that we weren’t tasting our delicious endeavors until about four hours had passed. When we did, it was well worth it. We’d created simultaneously fluffy and dense squares embedded with our selections from the available fennel seeds, gray salt, sweet red onions, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, cracked pepper, lemon zest, parmagiano reggiano, coarsely ground mustard, thick-cut bacon and speck. As a bonus, we took home some dough that made every effort to burst out of its wrappings, fresh yeast and gray salt so that we could wake up to fresh focaccia in the morning.

There is no way to describe just how profound Knife Skills was. Taught by Chef Brendan McDermott, it goes way beyond merely conquering the performance anxiety induced by having someone watch you cook. Brendan handled the class as well as he handled the knife. Funny and charming, he managed to even deal with a small crisis of a fainting student (a bit of kitchen heat, not any knife-related injury, was the culprit) in a way that comforted the student and didn’t disrupt the lesson. The slicing (chopping is only for herbs, as we learned) technique was brilliantly simple to master and the tips given for specific vegetables were nothing short of a revelation. If you take the class you will have to often repress your urge to show off your one-stroke cauliflower decapitation trick. With the exception of a chicken deboning demonstration, the class was hands-on. It’s bring your own knife, so be prepared to wander the streets of Brooklyn as we did, knife handle sticking out of a purse for me, poorly disguised knife wrapped in newspaper for Hillel.

The last class we tried is one of the quickest to fill up – Pickling. McClure’s Pickles is well-known for its pickling pickings, and Bob McClure, one half of the sibling duo behind the brand, set up a bubbling, boiling pickling central in one of the labs. Most of the class was observation of the procedures behind preserving (in this case, of asparagus) with the opportunity to pack a small Mason jar with as much or as little spice as you can handle and a fresh handful of spears. You then wait it out a week (or more; pickling preserves fairly indefinitely) to try your treat and can reuse the brine once to do a simple refrigerator pickle.

We Made a Blog now makes a lot of new dishes. But if you see any class at Brooklyn Kitchen called We Made a Blog Makes Goat Cheese, I advise you to steer clear because all you will learn is how to make hot goat’s milk spiked with rennet that 24 hours later will be room temperature goat’s milk spiked with rennet. Trust me on this one.

While scanning the Whole Foods cold beverage display for some illy issimo, I came across a dark brew wrapped in a gold label with a Soviet-ish font and a pretty illustration of a field of wheat and a bird.  Krushka & Bochka Kvass – a fermented soda from the motherland.

Now we’ve all learned a lot about the Russians lately. That they’re still trying to gather secrets about how we live (even though there are no real travel restrictions and, you know, there’s the internet if they’re really lazy); that they have a town that’s an exact replica of Chevy Chase, Md., to train spies in (did they choose Chevy Chase because they’re fans of “Spies Like Us”?); and that no matter how much cleavage she shows, you shouldn’t trust a woman who dyes her hair red every week and sounds slightly foreign after a few glasses of vodka.

What hasn’t been very well publicized is that they seem to be very fond of a soda made of wort concentrate. Or that’s what the label of Kvass would have you believe. “Kvass has been a Russian staple of refreshment for centuries, enjoyed by czars and peasants alike. Pushkin describes how Russians believed they needed Kvass like the air for living.” When not composing thousand-page literary works or fomenting revolution, Pushkin kicked back and enjoyed a nice cold glass of fermented soda. You can’t buy an endorsement like that.

Back to the wort concentrate. It’s rye flour, fermented rye malt and barley flour. To that they add some sugar. And that’s pretty much it. Kvass is described as “[m]alty with a sweet finish and light sparkle, Kvass is truly a thirst quencher like no other.” The reality? A soda that tastes like the raisins that get stuck at the bottom of a box formed a collective that meant to work toward the common good but somehow they’ve just grown hardened and weary.

Na zdorovye!