Cooking in the Fishbowl

When I was growing up, our holiday celebrations followed a familiar pattern. Big Christmas Eve celebration with Scandinavian accents, Christmas stockings and cinnamon rolls Christmas morning, and an early Christmas dinner. New Year's Eve celebrations varied, but the most memorable were those spent around my grandparents' kitchen table, covered in newspaper, and piled high with Dungeness crab. As an adult, the holiday celebrations have been much more varied. Christmas Eve became a quieter affair that featured Grünkohl, marzipan, and tapioca pudding with no ham, lefse, or krumkake in sight. Some years, Christmas brunch was the big gathering.  New Year's Eve generally involved a collection of friends, and, occasionally, competitive cooking. And there were a number of years mom & I opted to head to Palm Springs for the holidays. (After one too many trips home to Seattle that involved snow.) This year,  mom and I celebrated Christmas early (because, snow), and I was able t...

Most days for the last few weeks, I've kept my carb intake below 25 grams. It was probably slightly higher over Christmas, but not enough to throw me out of ketosis or seriously mess with my blood sugar. I've reached the point where I get hungry, but not hangry. Thank the stars. I've also reached the point where I'm craving things I've cut out. The other day, something I haven't eaten in years sounded unbelievably good: Sweet and sour chicken. Oh, who am I kidding...it was the pineapple. I was craving pineapple. Like blueberries, and kiwi, pineapple has that wonderful sweet-tart thing going that I adore.  So, I bought the cup of prepared fresh pineapple from Safeway. And instead of simply chowing the whole darn thing straight, I made sweet and sour chicken. Yeah, the pineapple was pretty much my day's allotment of carbs, but it didn't need any additional thickener or sweetener, I used a couple scallions in lieu of onion, and green bell peppers and mushro...

Chef Andre at Paso Terra in, you guessed it, Paso Robles, CA once served a lovely salmon entrée with a coffee-based sauce. It was slightly bitter, slightly sweet, and a surprisingly good complement to the rich salmon. Bitter things are often an anathema to the American palate. Dismissed as unpleasant and incongruous to good eats. To be fair, one of the reasons we humans are sensitive to bitter compounds is that a number of them are decidedly not good eats: ricin, cyanide, saponin.  But not all things bitter are deadly. Artichokes, broccoli rabe (rapini), Brussels sprouts, coffee, and grapefruit all have distinctive bitter characteristics. Many digestifs have a strong bitter character that is considered "good for the digestion". Many quality wines have a slightly bitter, palate-cleansing finish. It admittedly took me a long time to embrace bitter as a good thing. Like much in life, it's about finding a balance. No, that's not a piece of salmon, it's Alaskan hali...

We are in the time of year where there's only about 8.5 hours of daylight. The trendy term these days is "the big dark". The typically stormy weather on top of the short days makes coffee consumption skyrocket and the desire to leave the house plummet. It's truly a struggle not to make like a bear and hibernate. Unsurprisingly, it's when warm, rich, carb-laden comfort foods sound most appealing.  Not an easy time to jump back on the low-carb bandwagon. I headed to the grocery store with a number of low-carb friendly meals in mind. I'm notoriously bad at shopping ahead, but if I don't, I am way more likely to succumb to the siren song of the Grub Hut.   It wasn't on the list, but Town & Country had some really nice looking ahi on special. It's hard not to buy whatever their fish/seafood specials are, because they move a ton of it so it's always in great condition.  A dish that Tom invented one trip to Hawaii came to mind. I don't recall ...

Sometimes, you just need the comfy classics: savory pies, soups, casseroles. They are also useful for cleaning out the fridge. They're the perfect place to use up tired veggies.  I often use some thinly sliced potatoes on top of my Shepherd's pie instead of a mash. But I'm trying to wean myself off potatoes for a while, and happened to have a head of cauliflower and a leftover parsnip, so I made mashed cauliflower.  Probably more carbs than the thinly sliced potatoes, but it was tasty. Filling 1 lb ground lamb  2 stalks celery, chopped 1/2 yellow onion, diced 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms 1/2 cup chopped sweet pepper 1 carrot, diced 1/2 parsnip, diced 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 cup chicken broth 1/4 cup Medium Amontillado Sherry (or other wine) 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tbsp concentrated Italian tomato paste (the kind that comes in a tube) 1 tbsp smoked paprika 1 tsp mild Numex chile powder 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp ground  cardamom 1/2 tsp grou...

There are many cooking tomes that extoll the importance of  mise en place , which essentially translates to preparing and putting everything in place before you start cooking. I'd argue, however, that for home chefs, what's most important is doing things in the proper order . Unless you're cooking on a line and need to be able to grab things by muscle memory, where you put them doesn't matter too much.  Don't get me wrong, the prep is really important. But that's mostly because you don't want to be frantically chopping things or digging in the cupboard after you've started the cooking phase. The order in which you prep and cook things can have a big impact on both the quality of the food and how big a pile of dishes you have to do.  The latter is a pet peeve with many recipes I've seen lately. I guess they want you to cook everything in a separate pan because they want you to feel good about investing in that ridiculously large, expensive set of pot...

Yesterday's cooking experiment was making yogurt. Because I want to make mayonnaise. Which means I ended up eating "charcuterie" for dinner instead of cooking. And was really hungry this morning.  No problem. I shopped yesterday with an eye to cooking real food. And scaling back on the carbs. Both the scale and recent bloodwork confirm what I already knew from getting the OMG hungries. My carb consumption has been outpacing my activity level.  So, today's brunch was what last night's dinner should have been: Veal Amontillado with Hedgehogs. Don't worry, talking the prickly mushrooms, not the cute  Erinaceidae .  It's the first time I've bought veal in a long time. I'm not opposed to eating young creatures, but the calves raised for meat are both spoiled and deprived. It was a good meal. It will probably be another long time before I buy veal again. Hedgehogs Hedgehog mushrooms are kind of like Chanterelles with spiny gills. They have a similar text...

For Thanksgiving, I was tasked with bringing an "interesting" appetizer. I immediately knew what I wanted to make: Smoked-salmon stuffed piquillo peppers with a citrus vinaigrette. My NW spin on a classic Spanish tapa. Simple. Portable. Yummy.  But, being me, I had to complicate things. Use the OMG amazing Katfish smoked Keta Salmon I have in the cupboard? Way too easy. Instead, I decided to smoke the kitchen. Errr, smoke some salmon. In the kitchen.  Yes, I know I have an amazing Kamado sitting in the garage that would do the job beautifully. Or, either of the two Weber kettles would get the job done. But... Northwest. November. Rain. What if I could figure out how to smoke a salmon filet  inside ? My last indoor smoking adventure (really!) was tea-smoking an unctuous piece of King salmon to a delicate, barely-cooked, melt in your mouth texture. That is not the order of the day. For this purpose, the fish needs to have a firmer texture and a distinct smoky character....