Shrimp Malbec Jason Style

I have no idea how to cook seafood; all I know is red and white meat. Well that’s not totally true — it’s just that for seafood, I don’t have an internal recipe repertoire like I do for other meats. That’s why I had to pull out Molto Italiano a few weeks ago when Jacquie tasked me with cooking shrimp for dinner. After thumbing through Batali’s book, I thought his “Jumbo Shrimp Marsala Housewife Style” sounded great.

Just one slight problem. I was missing many of the recipe ingredients: capers, pine nuts, currants, fennel seeds, plum tomatoes, and marsala wine. Yeah, pretty much everything. However, I knew the flavor profile of those things and knew I could substitute for the stuff I didn’t have. That’s how in our version of the dish, capers became dill pickles, pine nuts became walnuts, currants became Pom juice, fennel seeds became fennel pollen from Marx Foods, plum tomatoes became vine ripened tomatoes, and marsala became malbec. Lastly, this dish is meant to be served like an appetizer but being as it was our dinner, we served it over pasta. This forced me to throw in some tomato paste to thicken it up a bit.

Despite all of the substitutions, we loved it and though the pics might not be great, I assure you that dish itself was tasty and beautiful.

Shrimp Malbec (Jason Style)
adapted from Molto Italiano

5 ounces of dried spaghetti

1 celery rib, diced
1/2 medium red onion, diced
2 vine ripened tomatoes, diced
2 tbsp chopped walnuts
2 tbsp chopped dill pickles
1 tsp fennel pollen
1 tbsp red pepper flakes (less if you aren’t a fan of spicy)
1 tbsp Pom juice
1/2 cup malbec wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
10 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt/pepper to taste

1. Bring a pot of heavily salted water to a boil for spaghetti.

2. Heat oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the onions and celery. Salt and cook until translucent.  

3. Add the rest of the ingredients up to the shrimp and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 4-6 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly.

4. While this is simmering, start the pasta.

5. Add the shrimp and cover, cooking for 6-8 minutes or until the shrimp turns pink. Salt and pepper the sauce to taste.

6. Transfer the pasta - which should at this point be just al dente - into the sauce and toss.

7. Serve immediately.

Memorial Day Hamptons 2009

We took our first trip with Jasmine this past weekend! Granted it was only a 2 hour drive away to the Hamptons but it was the first time she was somewhere other than our apartment overnight. She did really well though so our worries were for naught.

As per our usual vacations, it was a big eat fest. We explored some food places in town but mostly shopped for groceries and made a lot of our own meals at the house. We utilized the grill a LOT, which got us very excited for my parents to move into their new house where we’ll be able to use one.

I took a lot of pictures and thought it would be more efficient to put captions to the pictures in a gallery, rather than to try to write one long blog post. Click through the pictures in order for captions to make the most sense. Enjoy!

Memorial Day 2009 - Hamptons

Taking the cake

A couple of months ago Marx Foods sent out an email saying they were giving away free samples of spices for people to use and then blog about. I jumped on the opportunity and two days later I had a package of spices delivered to my door step. In the box were samples of:

1. Tahitian vanilla beans
2. Lavender buds
3. Fennel pollen
4. Dried hibiscus flowers
5. Tellicherry peppercorns
6. Grains of paradise

This post features the vanilla bean but there will be future posts (Jason’s soon to be posted shrimp dish) about the spices he generously gave to us. Thanks Justin!

To be honest, I’ve used Tahitian vanilla beans in my cooking before. I was lucky enough to be able to pick some up on our honeymoon in Tahiti two years ago. I loved using them because they seemed to make ordinary desserts extra special. Unfortunately, I ran out before I had the chance to use them in all the applications that I had planned. More specifically, I didn’t get to try my hand at homemade vanilla extract, even though I told Jason I would so many times that he was sick of hearing it. You can imagine my anticipation in using the one I got from Marx Foods.

I got my chance last Sunday when we went over to L and C’s apartment in Long Island City for a birthday brunch held in L’s honor. When C sent me the menu for the shindig one thing was glaringly missing: a cake. What’s a birthday celebration without a dessert!? No, fruit salad does not count.

I asked C if I could bring a dessert as my present and before he could modestly decline, I started doing research into what L would like that incorporated the vanilla bean. I was going to do a strawberry trifle with a vanilla scented custard until C burst my bubble and told me L couldn’t eat whipped cream. How she finds the will to live is beyond me.

I finally decided on a cheesecake recipe that recently made the food blog rounds after it was the Daring Bakers challenge for April. I’ve made plenty of cheesecakes in my day but I always come away less than satisfied and wind up hunting for a different recipe the next time I make one.

Well that stops here and now.* This recipe turned out a fantastic cheesecake that managed to be fluffy and light yet rich and flavorful at the same time. It was a wonderful cross between an Italian style and New York style cheesecake. It was also incredibly smooth thanks to the water bath it baked in. The best part of this recipe is that it is vanilla (pun intended!) and lends itself to “customizing” very well.

In this instance, I stuck with the original recipe but topped the finished cake with a chocolate ganache and fresh strawberries. I already have tons of ideas on how I can change the crust and also incorporate fruits that will be coming out at the farmer’s market soon.

Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
adapted from Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake

Crust

• 2 cups / 180 grams graham crackers or the crumbs
• 1 stick / 4 oz butter, melted
• 2 tbsp / 24 g sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Cheesecake Filling

• 24 oz cream cheese, at room temperature (very important to create a smooth mixture)
• 1 cup / 120 g sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup / 8 oz heavy cream (I figured it’d be okay for L since it would be heated through thoroughly in the baking process)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• innards of 1 vanilla bean (could substitute 1 tbsp vanilla extract)
• 1 tbsp liqueur that suits your cheesecake, optional (I omitted this)

Chocolate ganache

• 5 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 1/4 cup heavy cream

Strawberry Topping

• 8-10 strawberries, hulled and thiny sliced

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bring a large pot of water to a boil for the water bath.

2. If starting with whole graham crackers, place in a food processor and grind to get crumbs. Add in melted butter and sugar and pulse to combine until it looks like wet sand. If you’re starting out with crumbs, you can just manually mix it all together.

3. Press the crust into the bottom and/or up the sides of your pan, depending on your preference. I use the bottom of a measuring cup for this to get the crust really dense and solid. I also wrap the bottom of my springform pan with foil to prevent water from leaking in while it bakes in the water bath. Set crust aside. Next time, I will blind bake the crust for 10 minutes in the oven to see if that creates a crunchier crust.

4. Combine softened cream cheese and sugar in the bowl of a stand-mixer (or a large bowl if using hand-mixer) and cream together until very smooth. Add one egg at time, being sure that each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. It’s also a good idea to scrape down the bowl between eggs. Add heavy cream, vanilla (innards or extract), lemon juice, and alcohol. Blend until smooth and creamy.

5. Pour batter into the prepared crust and tap the entire pan on the counter to bring the air bubbles to the surface. Place the pan into a large pan and pour boiling water into the larger pan until quarter way up the side of the cheesecake pan.

6. Bake for 45-55 minutes. At the point of shutting the oven off, the cheesecake should still look VERY jiggly in the middle but held together at the edges. Do not bake it until it’s completely firm. Close the oven door, turn the heat off, and let it rest in the oven for an hour as the oven cools. By doing this the cake won’t cool too quickly, which is what causes cracks.

7. After one hour, remove the cake from the oven and take it out of the water bath. Let it cool on the counter for one hour.

8. While the cake is cooling, get started on the ganache topping. A lot of recipes for ganache say to heat the cream and pour it over the chopped chocolate. For frosting/spreading purposes, I like to do it the other way around and melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Then I pour room temperature cream over the melted chocolate while whisking. I suppose this opens up the possibility of having the chocolate seize but since I use room temperature cream and not cold, I’ve never had that problem. I find that by using this method, the ganache gets thicker much quicker and I can use it right away.

9. Spread the ganache over the top of the cooled cake with an offset spatula being sure not to let the chocolate pool over the sides.

10. Decorate with sliced strawberries.

* I don’t know who you are Abbey, but a special thanks to you!

Jacquie’s First Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day!

Not only did Jasmine let Mom (us!) sleep until 9:45 today, she had a lot to say

Lemon Basil Dressing

Since we haven’t done a food post in a while, I thought it best to ease back in with a sauce recipe that’s quick and versatile. We tossed this with roasted asparagus the night we made it but used the leftovers later on in the week drizzled over grilled branzino.

Lemon Basil Vinaigrette

• ¾ cup olive oil
• 1 large bunch of basil (we used a 70 gram store bought package)
• juice from 1½ large lemons, separated
• salt to taste (about 1/2-1 teaspoon)

Combine the basil, 1/2 cup of olive oil, and the juice from 1 lemon in a blender along with a pinch of salt. The reason I don’t do all of the olive oil and lemon is because I like being able to adjust the flavors and consistency as I go along.

If you like your dressing smooth and not chunky, pour the vinaigrette though a mesh strainer to separate out the solids. If you’re fine with having it a bit “grassy” - in texture, not taste - just skip this step.

Taste the dressing and if you need to adjust the flavors, return the strained mixture back to the blender. Blend in remaining olive oil, lemon juice, and/or salt according to your taste.

In this instance, I decided that the rest of the olive oil was needed to smooth out the mixture so it was less of a chunky pesto and the rest of the lemon was needed to perk up the flavor.

That’s it!

Smoked Honey Chipotle Ribs

For my birthday last year my parents bought me Emeril’s stove top smoker but it just gathered dust above my washer/dryer stack. It was a combination of laziness (not wanting to learn something new) and trepidation (not sure if stove top smoking was a pain in the pork butt) that kept me away from it originally. Once I got past those barriers and used it for the first time, though, I was in love. For the past few months we’ve probably smoked about 10 racks of ribs, portioned for two.

The smoky flavor imparted on the ribs is amazing and the dry rub permeates into the meat. We had made ribs in the ovens (on a roasting rack) numerous times but we never got the smoky flavor - obviously - and the dry rub was more of a dry crust than a deep flavor, if that makes sense. It wasn’t bad but it definitely wasn’t the effect we were trying to create.

Also, because we are using the smoker, the ribs come out tender and moist that peel off the bone, but not so soft that the ribs are more braised/stewed than smoked. I never thought it would be this way, but the stove top smoker has now elevated to “kitchen essential” status and until our doctor tells us we’ve consumed an unsafe and inhumane yearly quantity of ribs, I don’t see an end to rib smoking in sight.

Process-wise, smoking ribs is very simple. You get the wood chips smoking on the stovetop, throw the seasoned meat on the rack, close it up, toss the entire contraption in the oven for a while, baste it, then broil it. The end.

With that said, I’ve probably done a different style of rib each time (from spicy to sweet) because I don’t really write down the rubs or the bastes. I decided to write this one down in hopes it would be good enough to share with you. Thankfully, that was the case.

The directions on how to work the slow cooker is specific to the smoker we have. Please consult the directions of your own smoker to ensure proper usage. Side note: I just noticed that usage looks like sausage. I’m going to use that word more often.

Smoked Pork Ribs

Dry Rub - Expressed in “parts” instead of actual measurements so you can scale this for as much or as little as you want**

• 2 parts chili powder (homemade or store bought)
• 2 parts cumin
• 1 part smoked paprika
• 1 part coriander seeds, cracked
• 1 part dry mustard
• salt & pepper

Baste - Usually I make a BBQ sauce but I was feeling lazy so this was the alternative. It’s a modified Bobby Flay recipe.

• ¾ cup honey (I actually did ½ cup honey and ¼ cup pomegranate molasses that Jacquie made)
• 1 chipotle from chipotle in adobo sauce
• 1-2 tbsp of the adobo sauce depending on how spicy you like it
• 1-2 tbsp mustard (I used Dijon, yellow probably would have been good too)

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees

2. Mix the dry rub ingredients together and coat both sides of the ribs. This can be done the night before and refrigerated to let the rub marinate longer but we don’t find it’s necessary.

3. Place about ¼ - ½ cup of your favorite wood chips (I used mesquite bought from Sur la Table) in your smoker and cook over a high heat on the stove. Set the rack on the rack (hah!), then immediately put the entire thing over the chips in the smoker. Cover it and it will start to smoke pretty soon. (I usually give it about 10-15 minutes this way so there is a good amount of smoke going.)

 
Then put the whole shebang in the oven. NOTE: DO NOT OPEN THE SMOKER OR YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR SMOKE!

4. While you let that smoke in the oven for about 60-90 minutes, toss all of the baste ingredients together in a blender and blend until fairly smooth.

5. After about 75 minutes (it’s really hard to over cook the ribs in the smoker) pull out the ribs and turn the broiler on. Flip the top of the smoker over so it’s a grill pan and lay the ribs on foil placed over the pan. This will mean easier clean up later on. If the top of your smoker does not convert to a grill pan, you can just up the ribs on a regular broiling rack at this point.

6. Baste the ribs with an even coat of sauce and place directly under the flame, maybe 2 inches below the fire. Broil for 3 minutes then remove and baste again. Put it back in for another 3-4 minutes until the sauce is slightly charred and bubbly. We usually leave the oven door ajar while broiling so we can easily keep an eye on it since the sauce is mainly sugar-based and can burn easily.

7. Remove, let rest for a few minutes, carve next to each bone and enjoy.