Single Girl Salmon

Last weekend, I threw my Seemon a surprise cocktail party.

To many, such an event for a few intimate friends would entail canapés: perhaps nested quail's eggs, or crostini with goat's cheese, a purchased dip, and some mini-mealed classics set upon defrosted and deflated puff pastry. There is nothing wrong with that approach, and my approach indeed was reproachable. I set out to the store three times to procure the makings of:

-THREE homemade dips (one involving an entire roast chicken)

-Greek-style (ie, let's add some brined cheese please) roasted peppers nestled into endive boats

-A rare tenderloin marinated in chianti classico, fruity olive oil, and a million herbs costing effectively a million dollars)

-Three racks of infantile lamb with ribs resembling post-dentist lollypops

-Two kinds of homemade pizza (an entire intended for the vegetarian, blast her)

-A cherry pie, the birthday boy's favorite. He had to settle for a mixture of forest fruits since the British don't have an Oregon, and why did he have to want a pie requiring tapioca, which does not exist in this country?

Seemon's real surprise was that I'd made a banquet for everyone he'd ever met, not everyone invited. Below, a smattering of the recipes I relied on for 'Cocktail party? Why not just make it a meal!' 2010.

Buffalo Chicken Dip, specially for the wing-wanting birthday boy:

http://bunsinmyoven.com/2010/01/25/buffalo-chicken-dip/

Artichoke Dip:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Baked-Artichoke-Dip-104684

From the original recipe, I added spinach, swapped fresh garlic for ewww garlic powder, added French Onion soup mix DO NOT JUDGE (thanks, Mom), and used Grana Padano instead of Romano (English people do not believe in the former). Either I'm a genius, or Buffalo Chicken Dip is weird, because this was by far the favorite.

Adorable racks of lamb:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Rack-of-Lamb-with-Spring-Succotash-and-Wilted-Spinach-237838

Serve as if lollypops– how literally tongue-in-cheek, and how two-years-ago trendy. But if Seemon could get the last two years of his life back, he would, so it follows. I toasted and bashed cumin seeds for a scent eastern promise. Originally, I was going to serve each rib with a dollop of hummus, but Seemon mutinied. Instead, we reduced a bit of the tenderloin marinade to make a drizzle. Obviously, I only payed attention to the lamb factor of the below recipe.

Pizza and Tenderloin:

Get yourself The River Café Classic Italian Cookbook as soon as possible for the BEST pizza dough recipe I've ever made. I'm quite sure there's a blog coming up about that. As well as a ridiculously easy tenderloin recipe, that I only blundered because I need to get my knives sharpened and cannot currently cut in carpaccio dimensions.

Back to single girl salmon, apologies apologies. Though not a huge eater himself, Seemon friends feedees- as in people who seek feeders like myself. But while the next morn held nary a leftover in sight, I was left with a few ingredients I had found the time or permission to incorporate. Those pizzas crafted from River Café dough were meant to be half vegetarian, half pescetarian: I wanted one with blue cheese, artichokes caramelized onions, scallions, and toasted pecans, while the other was meant to shoulder goat's cheese, smoked salmon, and homemade pesto.

The bastard only let me make one pizza, which was half-hazardly topped with the labor-intensive pesto, one half of the goat's cheese, and a make-do medley of antipasto.

All week I've been sneaking last Saturday's spoils into our dinner specials. A pasta bore still more antipasto, Goat's cheese swirled into a beet risotto, and the dismissed dough ached beneath a weight of meat and cheese. But there was the hefty matter of two smoked salmon packets, which were to expire within minutes. I made midweek muffins with a pretty pink draping, and a weekend brunch of eggs and albatross, and yet I STILL had 240g left. Enter this entry.

What began a romantic meal of pappardele with smoked salmon, Riverford Organic mushrooms, sour cream, and dill was ultimately consumed as single girl salmon. The title comes from a chapter of Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone (ed. J. Ferrar-Adler, New York, 2007), a delightful collection of stories predominately from singletons. One man revels in seasoning refried beans to only his own tastes, Jonathan Ames gets quite quirky with eggs, and Amanda Hesser reports on this dish's namesake. Ever since, when I make myself a Marks & Spark's farm-raised filet to serve over salad, I chuckle at the apparent obviousness of my choice. Salmon: a little bit of indulgence, a lot of omega 3, and known to women the world over as their go-to entrée.

Seemon was at a pub with clients, and I should have known he was not coming home when I detected a slur at 4:30pm. Charming. When we spoke at 6:30pm and he was hours from return, I promised to make him a meal at his beckon call should his hour be reasonable. But why not practice on myself first, and just see how the noodles tangle in their sumptuous sauce, how the flavor of reduced marsala pairs with woody mushrooms and nearly rude fish, and how dill brightens a dish suspended between winter and spring?

And so I did, and instead of cursing my wayward boyfriend for abandoning me on a Monday night, I relished every chardonnay-spiked moment of crafting and consuming my single girl salmon.

On hand, I had salmon, half a box of pappardelle, and 2/3 of a sour cream container, so whatever recipe I used I was going to bastardize it and thus assuage my guilt. My template: Smoked Salmon Pasta Verde from Epicurious.com, Bon Appétit, April 2004. I'm giving you my version here- don't skip the mushrooms, they offer an umami of a slightly different frequency than that of the fish, and they both taste the better for it.

Single Girl Salmon Pappardelle

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup Marsala wine

1 cube fish stock dissolved in 1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup sour cream

a box of strongly flavored mushrooms, rubbed, sliced and halved

1 T butter

1 T olive oil

4 oz (half a proper pack) dried pappardelle

1/2 cup chopped dill

4 oz (half a large pack) smoked salmon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips

1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions (about 5)

1/2 cup chopped dill

Boil wines and stock in a medium saucepan until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 8 minutes.

Melt butter with oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add mushrooms, and cook until they have released their juices and re-absorbed them. Add your reduction to the pan.

Put sour cream in a medium bowl and add one T of mushroom mixture- you must temper the cream. I tried adding a T of cream straight to the acid mushroom sauté, just to see if I would be in curdle town, and wow was I indeed. You don't need to go to cooking school to realize that tempering can really save your ass. So please keep adding mixture to cream a few Ts at a time, until the two are nearly entirely combined in your cream pot. I finally allow you to return the result to the pan.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until almost tender but still firm to bite, stirring regularly because pappardelle particularly likes itself. Drain but do not rinse, and return to pot. Add mushroom sauce to thoroughly coat, then sprinkle in salmon and half the dill for a stirring. Gild with green onions and dill, and serve with green salad, plenty of Chard, and a side of smugness: some man just wishes he could be eating THIS with you.

Actually, Seemon did not wish that at all. He had the nerve to skip SBS in lieu of a post-pub, near midnight McDonald's injection, even though his sad serving awaited him in our fridge, garnish and all.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Smoked-Salmon-Pasta-Verde-109383#ixzz0j0mPdqtf

Hello.... and cabbage rolls.

How does one just start a blog? As of now, I don't care for anyone to read this and will treat this page as personal diary that maybe, just maybe, I would one day show a few friends for recipe referrals. I can just FEEL the judgement of someone reading this- why does anyone want to know what and how I eat? And what can insights can I really offer- Let me tell you about this AMAZING market in London- it's called Borough!

I'm putting this out there if only because I speak too much about what I had for dinner, and people stop listenting before I've gotten everything out (usually around course two). Having an edible archive of meals would be useful not only so that I might recreat them, but so that I can remember the course (and courses!) of my life. Because as many a kitchen philosopher has noted, Life IS Meals.

And I like mine flavorful. I amp up the flavor factors of any dish, sometimes innapropriately- I turn up bass and trebble, the inaudible, sometimes indistinguishable, and essential vibrations that come together to make something 'moreish', to use that wonderful English adjective that helps me tolerate a city that never gets sun. I think it's there in music (although I'm tone deaf, so the above metaphor is risky), I know it's there in art (says my degree in uselessness), and I assert here it exists in food. At the stove, my mother instructed that less is more, but when I cook I take a rare dare to disagree- toasted cumin seeds smashed in my heavy mortar and pestle and sprinkled over carrot soup makes all the difference, and I want the warmth added from beginning to end so that it hits your palate in waves and in varying increments and textures.

Food is my favorite part of life, and sometimes the only factor that feels real, the only pasttime that reminds me I am alive and okay and deserving on a particualry empty day- the simple acts of cooking, eating, and sharing (or not) serve as reminders that we come down to a few basic needs. And no matter how shitty your day was, you can sit down to a beautiful meal and a decent glass of wine and succumb to a few strong flavors.

The kitchen is a cheap therapist. Mine needs a bigger office, though.



This blog will inevitably be personal, though I do not expect you to care. But food and profession are inextricably linked at the moment, because I have the former (as does any living thing, I suppose) and not the latter. I'm a recent graduate school departée who must find a way to fill her day, and so in addition to applying for jobs (all in the London art world-I'm fighting the recruiters off with a stick) I am able to spend perhaps too much time thinking about and preparing for my dinner. That's allright with my domestic partner, who I'll call Seeeemon, and the people I force over to dinner regularly. And what I eat reflects the moods I cook, and when I have an amazing interview for a job I'm destined for, and then DON'T get that job, you can taste it in the food.

The last few months would be fertile ground for a foodwriter, but I can't call myself that without cringing. Last weekend I served a luxe birthday buffet to ten guests, featuring recipes gathered from The River Cafe Cookbook, Bon Appetit (thank you, Epicurious), and Foodgawker (I go there more than I go to the New York Times... shhhhhh). That would have been a good post- crap. In October, I went to an Indian wedding in Calcutta and ate homemade Gundjrati food for two weeks courtesy the groom's family. Wow, that too would be more interesting than what follows. Oh well. So we begin not at the beginning or with anything spectacular: stuffed cabbage rolls.

I don't even have a picture of the dish when I served it, that's how whoreish the flavor whore has been. You're going to get a picture of my leftovers. You'll be lucky if you can't see the tupperware.

I promise, my food is usually better looking than this:




Never have I made cabbage rolls before, and I cannot recall ever eating one. But Seemon has a penchant for Polish food and I try to pretend it's NOT because he had a Polish girlfriend for seven years. I'm always looking for new dinner ideas though, and if I have to farm my boyfriend's romantic past, so be it. Plus, my Riverford Organic vegetable box included a cabbage creature I was not sure what to do with.

Below, see my aforementioned veg box. For less than £13 it could be yours!

http://www.riverford.co.uk



Cabbage rolls are not Rachael Ray specials, as my active prep time neared two hours, nor were they glamourous guest fare (with tinkering, I hope to change this- I LOVE make ahead meals and the lack of acid reflux they imply). We almost invited one of Seemon's mates over to join us since I had laden an entire cabbage's fronds with two pounds of meat, but I am glad we did not. While my results were aesthetically not a disaster, and we left table satisfied (manfriend consumed FIVE parcels), the filling was not worthy of the flavor whore brand. Sometimes I doubt my instincts, and this is one such occasion- the mince needed MORE paprika, MORE chili, MORE bitter garlic, MORE moistening tomato sauce, MORE dill dusting, and MORE of the two lifeforces: salt and pepper. If I could, I would make the recipe again today because there is potential for greatness, but just as Seeemon tired of his Polish beauty queen, he has tired of my cabbage comfort. Not for a month, he says, but I'll be mentally seasoning minces of beef and pork all through April.

I searched the web for a good recipe and found paltry few reliable results, and I do not have an Eastern Euro cookbook (though a few specialties can be found in Mark Bittman's and Craig Claiborne's tomes). Only Tyler Florence of Food 911 fame answered my plea, with his revamp of Galumpkis. Here is his recipe, with my notes for next time:

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Galumpkis)
Recipe courtesy Tyler Florence

Ingredients

Sweet and Sour Tomato Sauce:

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 1/2 quarts crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cabbage Rolls:

11/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Splash dry red wine
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups steamed white rice
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 large heads green cabbage, about 3 pounds each

To make the sauce:

Directions
Coat a 3-quart saucepan with the oil and place over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar; simmer, until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat.

Note: I had one small carton of passata, and that was just NOT enough. I combined it with leftover chili marinara (shhhhhh) and fresh chopped tomatoes, which explains why I had to cook my conconction for longer in order to break down the fruit. Upon first taste, the sauce was really sharp from the red wine vinegar I used in lieu of white wine vinegar, so I sprinkled a bit more sugar and cooked down until mellowed. I would do the same next time, but with more fodder to begin with. With garlic I also sprinkled smoked paprika and oregano, and I wish my hand had been heavier.

Place a skillet over medium heat and coat with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Sauté the onion and garlic for about 5 minutes, until soft. Stir in the tomato paste, a splash of wine, parsley, and 1/2 cup of the prepared sweet and sour tomato sauce, mix to incorporate and then take it off the heat. Combine the ground meat in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg, the cooked rice, and the sauteed onion mixture. Toss the filling together with your hands to combine, season with a generous amount of salt and pepper.

Note: As I had no parsley on my window sill, thyme sufficed- no disaster, you can barely taste it over the cuts of vinegar and swathes of sweetness. I used more than the 1.5 C of white rice (Basmati in our case), and would even 'beef' that up next time so the filler can be keepin' up with the minces. The rice will act as a moist-maker, and once baked, a moist-maker is a must-have. The mince ended up dry, so not only would I use the 2 C of grain I did, I would add at last a cup of sauce. As I've mentioned, while far from physically hungry, the Flavor Whore was wanting after this meal.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Remove the large, damaged outer leaves from the cabbages and set aside. Cut out the cores of the cabbages with a sharp knife and carefully pull off all the rest of the leaves, keeping them whole and as undamaged as possible, (get rid of all the small leaves and use them for coleslaw or whatever.) Blanch the cabbage leaves in the pot of boiling water for 5 minutes, or until pliable. Run the leaves under cool water then lay them out so you can assess just how many blankets you have to wrap up the filling. Next, carefully cut out the center vein from the leaves so they will be easier to roll up. Take the reserved big outer leaves and lay them on the bottom of a casserole pan, let part of the leaves hang out the sides of the pan. This insulation will prevent the cabbage rolls from burning on the bottom when baked. Use all the good looking leaves to make the cabbage rolls. Put about 1/2 cup of the meat filling in the center of the cabbage and starting at what was the stem-end, fold the sides in and roll up the cabbage to enclose the filling. Place the cabbage rolls side by side in rows, seam-side down, in a casserole pan.

Note: Well, my cabbage came in from my wildcard box, so it was not Savoy or even recognizable. The leaves were too small to devein and separate, so I just shaved down the central skein so as to make my wrappers more wrappable. When I ran out of cabbages and kings, I took two peppers recently relegated to the frigidaire and used them as my vessels, topping them with scraps of wilted cabbage so as to ensure all steamed similarly.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (That's 176 C for my current countrymen)

Pour the remaining sweet and sour tomato sauce over the cabbage rolls. Fold the hanging leaves over the top to enclose and keep the moisture in. Drizzle the top with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Bake for 1 hour until the meat is cooked.

I wish I had pulled the whole lot after 45 minutes. I effecively turned my oven off after 1 hour, and by the time our first course was ready (a carrot soup, see below) the cabbage's contents were hockey pucks. Seemon, a Kinook, could have had a go, but he doesn't play until Tuesdays and they will be fragrant by then. In this case, no silver lining.

Though tasting better the next day, the cabbage lost in beauty-wise what it made up in flavor.



A riff on an Epicurious recipe, this bright-orange beauty was equally inspired by the RO veg box. See: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Moroccan-Carrot-Soup-357911



I made a few alterations, including a teaspoon of charmoula and the all-important bashed cumin AND coriander courtesy Seemon's marble mortar). So simple to make, this soup strongly delivered hits of chili, lemon, and cumin after a night of thinking in the fridge. Chopped wild garlic, courtesy my box, did some for taste and much for texture. Serving a purpose similar to chives, the green leaves are unexpected and more fitting with the veg purée's gusy 'Moroccan' profile.

And this is the story of a lonely Monday's lunch, and how it came to be quite so delicous.