Silver Case

Ten minutes simmering a pot holding tamari sauce, chopped garlic, honey, and chili padi.

Toss a defrosted Alaskan salmon fillet (skin-side down) on my super-heated infrared grill.

Brush on the glaze/marinade

Wait longer than I think I should before I flip the skin-side up.

Brush on more glaze.

Done. Fifteen minutes max.

Including very special guests:

• Grandparents from the United States
• Grandparents from Denmark
• Family from Canada
• Local expatriates
• Three extremely expensive Heritage-specie, free-range turkeys hand-flown from Copenhagen
• Seven small children playing on Luke’s new trapeze and circus gear
• Drunk father boiling 14L of scalding peanut oil
• Bottles of Sauterne

My first trip to arguably (or not!) Japan’s best sushi restaurant, Kyubey, was great. But my second trip, last friday night was better, as a Japanese friend who’s been eating at this Ginza restaurant for the last thirty-five or so years came along with us. This was a passport to having our chef, Toyama, make up some more adventurous fare. In addition to all the standard sushi restaurant fare, highlights included

• Whale Sperm. It’s the same color, but a slightly more dry (chalky?) consistency of tofu.
• Abalone Liver. Extremely rich, extremely green abalone liver served in-shell. It was actually too rich for me. I was satisfied halfway through, and the second half became a bit of a chore
• But Toyama palate-cleansed us next with a refreshing sandwich of thin daikon slices holding a shisho leaf, sesame seeds, and plum paste (ume)
• Aji tartare



• I also could have done without Sea Cucumber, freshly killed, in brine.
• Enormously sweet rockmelon, the spilled juices and husk remnants scraped into a tumbler of ice and brandy, making a beautiful after-dinner cocktail.

If I’m lucky, Ling and I will manage a way to get back up to Tokyo in late February to celebrate our friend’s 50th birthday here. To date she’s still never been able to accompany me here.

I just posted the Tomato and Pepper Database on a Google Spreadsheet. This comes from a Gardenweb Forum.

The Sauerkraut is ready. I opened up the crock today to compress the cabbage and check state-of-the-ferment. It greeted me with the perfectly-scented slightly sweet fermented smell of beautiful kraut . It is ready to eat. This weekend I’ll harvest it and make myself a dinner of mashed potatoes, sauerkraut and some grilled or braised meat. Can hardly wait.

Yesterday:

1. Several pounds of cheap tomatoes
2. 1 small onion (whole)
3. 2 stalks celery
4. 1 beet cut into 1cm slices

Threw in a pot with a cup of water and simmered for 45+ minutes

Seasoned with salt (1tsp + pinch) and sugar (1tsp + pinch) and a long grind of black pepper

Pulled out the onion, celery, and beet chunks. Poured the tomato slurry into a food mill and squeezed out all the juice.

Made close to two quarts.

Chilled overnight in a refrigerator and had after my morning latte this morning.

Really good. Way way better than disgusting salt-bring tomato puree you get from stores or restaurants.

Onion Soup with Thai Seasonings (From Nigel Slater’s “Real Cooking”)

Four medium onions, split in half, gently roasted in an oven for forty minutes. Accompanied by a full bulb of garlic roasted until soft.

I put the entire roasting pan on the stove in order to save the caramelization that stuck to the pan. Pour in a liter of chicken stock, a handful of hot thai “birdseye” style chilis (picked from a bush in my garden) and chiffonaded lime tree leaves (picked from a lime tree in my garden) along with the squeezed-out innards of the garlic. Heat up briskly and then simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Pour in 400ml of coconut milk (sinful but beautiful) and simmer a bit more. Season with some nam pla (thai fish sauce) to taste.

I roughly pureed mine with a hand blender.

mmmm…. spicy, sour, sweet, creamy all at once. Beautiful. I enjoyed it more than tom yam, as it has a thicker consistency, and I like the sweet onion base.

Bean Tortillas

Nothing real special. Tomatoes, onions, beans. Seasoned and softened. Used some old red chile base from my mexican chilli collection. Wrapped up on some organic tortillas. mmm

Dill Pickles

Made another round of refrigerator pickles from some japanese cucumbers today. I really laid on the spices and tried to be temperate with the salt. Last time I oversalted. Hopefully they are tart and flavorful. The ikea jar holding them looks brilliant with the dill stalks floating around with lots of seeds and spices.

I have a Barolo (Italian Wine) tasting dinner tomorrow, so I’ll not be tasting the pickles till tuesday. Ling (who doesn’t drink ) is coming too. There will be many orphaned glasses of wine I guess we’ll have to take care of on her behalf. I’m really looking forward to a Tuesday-morning hangover. Bit early in the week. Maybe I’ll drink pickle brine for Tuesday breakfast. Ling and Luke fly to Sydney Tuesday evening. I follow on Friday evening. I’ll be there for a week.

I’m shagged. Got up with Luke at 6:30 AM, and after he dressed himself and played, I made Osso Bucco (it tastes better if it cooks, cools off, and reheats). The more languid the braising is, the better veal tastes. Then spent the rest of the day on bicycle matters.

In designing Matt’s Fourth Protocol, I was considering the results of Le Chacal. This led me to I spend a fair bit of the day doing measurements on Le Chacal trying to figure out why it handled squirrely on my bike tour in Taiwan. I started out thinking it was due to some fine measurements, but my working theory now is simply a matter of bad weight distribution. (I had too much weight on the back, and the front wasn’t loaded)

Then I finished assembling the Le Chacal. I was being quite anal about tuning the transmission system. Last week I screwed around for an hour perfecting the Z/L (smallest back and smallest front cogs) shift combo. The shifting is in good shape now.

Wish I could say the same thing about the brakes. The Braking system is still driving me up the wall, but that’s not the brakes’ fault. It’s the stupid wide rims I have on the bike. I need to get those replaced with narrower, lighter wheels pronto. There is barely clearance, and if I hit any mud, it jams the faces of the brake pads.

Headsets are a touch loose on both Le Chacal and my Dahon. I need to tighten them. Need to study how in my Barnett’s Guide.

I installed a set of “trekking” handlebars. This will give me more riding positions on long rides, hopefully avoiding wrist numbess and sore back. The old mountain bar was 250g, this is about 500g, but I think it’s an ok tradeoff. Plus, I’ll save more than that much when I replace those damn rims. I need to screw with the stem. Lower it a bit, or farther forward, or something. My friend is a professional Pilates instructor and bike racer. I’ll get recuit him to fix my positioning.

Ling even got in on things and started refurbishing her Paul Frank single-speed cruiser. The chroming was really, really cheap and blistered and rusted. So we took off those bits of hardware. Ling sanded things and I ran other things on the wire wheel. Next week we’ll repaint those parts with some rust-retardant, install the side-view mirrors she’s so insistent on, and then she’ll have a local errand bike.

Dropped the heavy Kenda tires and put a Schwalbe Marathon Racer on the back and a Continental Contact on the front, just for something different. I went out on a testing and calibration ride. I hit a field that was basically grass and lumpy, very wet clay. I managed to spin my way through without spilling over. So although there isn’t much tread on these things, I got the minimum traction I needed. (being able to stand up and crank w/ the trekking bars was also helpful)

I discovered the wooden workbench I dragged home yesterday was termite-ridden, so I beat it apart with a ball-peen hammer and crowbar then tossed the bits in the garbage.

Now I’m basking in my downstairs workshop, sipping a beer, and waiting for my osso bucco to heat up. It was so nice this morning having that massive Le Crusset dutch oven. I could brown all four veal pieces simultaneously, then sweat out the vegetables, plug it up with a cartouche, and let it braise for 2.5 hours. It’s nice having the right things at times. In an undersized pan, I could have never browned the meat nicely. (or at least concurrently)

I bought three fillets of ocean salmon (not farm raised).

A friend brought me back a small bottle of Birch Syrup (more like molasses than cloy maple syrup). I mixed a half-cup of that with some annoying white sauvignon and bay leaves. Simmered that to a glaze. I brushed(*) that onto the salmon and grilled that on my massively-hot infrared grill. Worked beautifully — skin grilled crispy and it cooked through quick, staying juicy in the center.

In the meantime, boiled sliced potatoes, tossed with fresh chopped dill (salmon’s mistress) and some diced onion sweated in butter and a tiny bit of japanese sesame oil.

Side dish was homemade scratch cranberry and orange sauce.

Devoured it quickly and now I’m done.

(*) I simmered it down to wear it was a nice hot glaze, then took it out of the pan so that it would cease cooking. It sorted of turned into a glass caramel at that point. I had to rejuvenate it with some hot wine to re-dissolve it into a nice glaze. oops.

**I also made homemade infusion-style dill pickles tonight. I’ll see how they taste in a few days. I’m keen to try my hand at making fermented pickles. In fact I also bought a head of cabbage with mind to make a batch of homemade sauerkraut. My biggest problem is that ambient temperature here is like 10-15degrees F too warm.

Low-hassle party today… Matilda made okonomiyaki and I bought a plate of temaki-cut fish for a temaki handroll party. Mekajiki (swordfish), Tuna, Salmon, and Tai were the fish we ate. Grazed and drank all afternoon. By 4:30 everyone was tired and left. Now we have someone else’s birthday dinner tonight I’m not exactly looking forward to the restaurant. I think the chef is a pretentious prick.

Suddenly found inspiration this afternoon. So I speed-defrosted six free-range quail. Put them in running water and blew a fan on them for thirty minutes.

I marinated them with a combination of tamari sauce, english mustard, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, garlic, and sea salt.

Side dishes were indian-style carrots, baked with mustard seed, crushed coriander, and roasted cumin seed. And a side of spinach salad, tossed with feta cheese, an old, softened onion, and some nasty quasi-bacon.

Quails were amazing. Roasted them hard (220C) in a La Cruset roasting pan for 25 minutes. Skin was puffed and crisp. Let them sit while I deglazed the copious drippings with a handful of our dinner wine and tossed in some roux I had frozen a couple months ago. Made a nice side sauce.

Quail really tasted nice. You have to eat a quail with hands.. it’s too tiny, too crispy, and too raw (lots of spines and innards left) to eat daintily with a fork. Think KFC, not Christmas turkey.

I thought Shyan Woei was eating with us. I was decanting the wine, pulled out three glasses (me, Ling’s Mom, and Woei) when Matilda said that Woei was long-gone in my car. Now I had way too much food. I bullied Ling’s mom into eat a quail and help me drain the wine. I guess she’ll sleep well tonight. What we didn’t finish with dinner we finished with a dessert of Jean-Paul Hevin chocolates.

Friends pointed me at a few wine moving sales and end-bin sales recently and I’ve suddenly accumulated a nice stash of Italian Barolo and French Bordeaux for the summer.

• 2002 P. Scavino Barolo Bricco Ambrogio [x4]
• 1998 Azelia Barolo [x4]
• 2003 G Corino Barolo [x4]
• 2003 Grimaldia Barolo Sotto Castelo Di Novello [x4]
• 2004 Chateau Lauduc Prestige Bordeaux [x9]

Thankfully Tien-Lee is visiting in April, so we’ll be able to enjoy a few of these. We killed two double-magnums of Chateau Lauduc a couple months ago and I recentlly drank the Azelia Barolo, so it should be a good stack.

Today’s dinner menu was fried chicken fried in leftover peanut oil from my deep fried turkey.

Yesterday I bought two whole chickens from the Tekka wet market, chopped them up, and marinated them in buttermilk over night.

This evening I made up a batch of seasoning (cayenne, garlic powder, salt, paprika) and when I asked Matilda to get me my chicken, she pulled the frozen bowl out of the deep freeze………

…yes.

She misunderstood me yesterday, and put it in the freezer. I didn’t even bother. There was no way the buttermilk was effective. No chicken today. Let it thaw, marinate for another day, and try again tomorrow.

That meant Random Dinner Night at the Slaters. {Tough shit} I dug through the refrigerator and found another two boxes of mushrooms. Pulled out a giant white onion, and the leftover yakitori glaze from yesterday. I imagine everyone’s eyes rolled at another round of 1600F grilled mushrooms, but I wanted to play with my toy again. I need more practice with it. How to load the grill, how to read when stuff needs turned, how to keep some things from sticking. etc. (For reference, I charred the onions quite badly)

Simultaneous to all this, I was preparing my lunches for the first part of this week. I wanted to make refried beans from scratch. So in one pot I had a dutch oven frying some bacon and old turkey livers, while other beans (which I soaked since yesterday) boiled in the collagen-thick stock from the two chickens + turkey parts I boiled down yesterday.

I wanted homemade taco sauce, so I grilled some Guajillo chillis (yes, I still have ample supply of chilies from my buying spree in Pittsburgh 18 months ago), roasted two tomatoes on the Rinnai grill for 15 minutes, and roasted some garlic in a pan. Then I blended it all together. It tasted flat to Matilda and I, so I toasted a handful of (hotter) Arbol chilies. I asked Matilda, “how much of these chilies should I add?” “All,” was her answer. It sounded fun, so I tossed them all in, seeds and skin. [no one ever uses stems]. Blended that up, tempered its taste with some lime juice and salt, and suddenly we had a fantastic-tasting sauce. I can’t wait to eat that with rice, beans, and a tortilla tomorrow for lunch.

I’ve also lately been having hard-ons to make homemade tater tots.

I found a recipe for something called a potato “bite” or something. I took their idea yesterday, added substantially more spices, and tried them out. Ling has some ultra-small cupcake tins. Maybe a tablespoon of dough fits. Perfect for a tater tot. The first round looked beautiful. At the last minute I sprinkled them with cheese, let that brown, and then served them with dinner. Problem was they were stuck in their tins. So everyone sat around digging out would-be tater tots and piling them into a big, disgusting tater-tot carcass-pile. They liked them, but it was a revolting sight.

I still had half the potatoes left today, so I decided to try again. I wondered if crisco-ing the tins would help. Short answer? Yes, it did. They came out fine. Thing is, their bottoms were no crispier than those of the ones I made in the handy silicon cupcake tray, so why not use that for simplicity. Also, I told Matilda to add 50% more baking powder. I think that helps. They immediately puff up into cut little crowns. They look more like spiced potato cupcakes than tater-tots, but the taste is there. Matilda diced my potatoes into 3mmXside cubes. They still cook into a pretty consistent mash.

Now I’m upstairs. The beans are simmering downstairs, monitored by Emily, and I can hear Matilda grinding up tonight’s vegetable juice. Just now I ate a couple of the oatmeal raisin cookes I made last night. But I think they suck. This recipe totally sucks. It’s got way too much oatmeal. I feel like I’m a horse eating oats from a feedbag. The oats demand more liquid than the recipe provided, and there was a lack of any nice secondary flavors, particularly enough vanilla. I remember today that the Staff Meals book has a far superior recipe.

My Christmas gift finally arrived — my Japanese Rinnai RGK 62-D infrared grill. It’s just disgustingly, massively hot.

Once it arrived, Ling was able to pipe in both the American Range stovetop (30,000btu burners) and the Rinnai grill.

Tomorrow will be grilling night. The gas burners are hot enough that it’s not feasible to cook with a wok. Hitherto impossible.

I made a tan roux tonight as a base for tomorrow’s turkey gravy.

To make a roux you put equal parts butter and flour into a pan and whisk it until the flour cooks and darkens along the gradient from blond roux to tan roux to ‘brick’ roux. I wanted a medium or ‘tan’ roux, which requires about 30 minutes of vigorous whisking in a cast iron skillet. I had about 1.5kg (4pounds) of flour and butter cooking, so it was a lot.

I finally finished the roux and poured it into a pyrex container for tomorrow. In the meantime, I wondered how the roux tasted, so I ran my index finger along the bottom of the skillet, scraping up some left-over roux.

So the skillet is probably 180F still, if not more, and the roux is basically a heat-retaining napalm of fat and starch.

So, yes, I burned my finger quite badly. I somehow manage to do things like this frequently.

Tomorrow is Fastelavn party here.

My Danish friends and their three kids, plus a Canadian family of five, plus a Japanese party of two, plus us.

Menu:

• Deep fried turkey
• garlic mashed potatos
• baked butternut squash
• green beans + musroom soup + friend onions casserole
• pea salad
• homemade cranberry sauce
• proper gravy
• pecan pie
• Danish ‘fastelavn’ buns (sort of like a potato flour donut with cream [i think'])

To entertain the many kids < 5yo, we are having a pinata. Normally in Denmark is looks like a barrel with a black cat in it (smashed for good luck) but hours is more of a traditional Mexican one. All the kids are dressing up as well. Luke is already preparing his batman costume. I think the Danish kids are coming as monsters.

I have done a lot of preparation already. I made a tan roux for the gravy, cubed the squash, brined the turkey, made the cranberry sauce, and Ling’s mom went to work on the buns. She was interested in it because the recipe calls for a pound of mashed potatoes and their boiling water to be included in flour. I think it’s to generate a tremendous amount of starch. This must be tough little buggers

Ling made the pecan pie already. I must say it’s the most attractive pecan pie she’s ever made. She properly blind-baked the crust so it doesn’t leak. It’s so well done that her mom was able to remove the pie from the pan intact.

Regarding the mushroom/bean casserole — this is a totally Eisenhower America dish. But rather than using canned beans and Durkee fried onions, I am using fresh french beans and I fired up the wok and fried up my own onions today. Wow they are sweet.

The visitors are bringing some over-the-top wines.

Threw together a generic curry this afternoon… cumin, mustard seed, ground ginger, chilli powder, salt, turmeric, coconut milk, curry leaves, onions, garlic, tomato.

Matilda scolded me for putting in too much turmeric. Only a little is necessary for color. Its main purpose is to absorb (or numb?) bad smells or flavors. So I fried up more cumin and mustard seed to balance it out better. I made the sauce quite thick. Not water-runny.

I bought a nice fresh whole sea bream at Tekka. They sliced it into two skin-on fillets and the head. I transferred the sauce to a roasting pan, put it on a low heat and, essentially, poached the fish in the curry for fifteen minutes or so. I didn’t want the fish torn apart by violent cooking.

Sea Bream poaching

Side dishes? I made a runny raita-style coriander/yogurt/garlic sauce and made pickles out of lemon peel. Similar to curry… fry up mustard seeds, curry leaves, chilli powder, a bit of dal, and white wine vinegar. Then after that’s fried up and commingled, toss in several diced-up lemons. The lemon mostly disappears and the skin remains, which is the nice part. The rind is just firm enough and has good flavor to contrast fish curry and rice.

Coriander raita (top) and lemon pickles (bottom)

I had some crummy restaurant okonomiyaki last weekend. I like okonomiyaki, and when we make it, it’s good. So I’m hosting some of Ling’s friends for an okonomiyaki party tomorrow. We haven’t done that in a long time.

Yesterday’s post was a fan-favorite, so I thought I’d show off tonight’s Living Liquid.

I had dinner at my W3LMB workshop this evening and then crashed on my couch for ?2? hours. When I woke up, I realized I hadn’t drank my Matilda Super Juice yet. And by now it had totally separated and the wheatgrass had begun to oxidize into brownish foam. mmmm

Which part is the healthy bit?


Nothing but scum is left

Mr. Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you.

The cookbook, a “gastronomical compendium that was intended to make modern cooking accessible to everyone,” looks similarly thorough as the Mastering the Art of French Cooking set, with all sorts of well-photographed illustrations of important kitchen operations.

I liked Mr Oliver straightaway. In addition to looking like Sir Hugo Drax, he “detested the nouvelle cuisine” instead focussing on a “solid base” of Gascony ingredients like “filet mignon, baby lamb, lobster and pheasant, which might be slathered with truffles, caviar, foie gras, cognac or armagnac.”

One side effect of a classical French cookbook printed in 1969 is there are some color (new technology!) photos of some truly ghastly classic dishes, like Fish Pate Guillaume Tirel (an ingot of fish paste, fennel, egg and asparagus) and Chicken in Aspic (imagine Han Solo as a chicken, frozen in a beef-based gelatin).

On the other hand, some of his pictures of game meat preparations are mouth watering. You just have to get used to the really, really over the top serving presentation. Everything on silver plates accompanied with chalices of deep-colored wines, etc. I for one am looking forward to his treatise on cassoulet. I also noted he had many pages of fava bean recipes.

I keep finding exciting or mysterious recipes. Just now I stumbled onto “Carp in the Jewish Manner” and its refined sister, “Carp in the Jewish Manner Orientale“.

I also saw something called Turkey Galantine, which appears to be a 6″ hotdog made of turkey, prosciutto, pork, and other meats. But before I could run back and find the recipe to write about here, I stumbled onto something weirder – Ballottines of Chicken with Lobster. I can’t make out from the photo what it is – it appears to be some kind of lobster-impregnated chicken.

My head’s spinning though, because there is a full chapter on how to properly host a dinner, everything from invitations, to seating plans, to what the host and hostess should wear (please note Ling, “The basic rule for you, the mistress of the house, is to be dressed with sobriety, which in no way excludes elegance“), to the correct greetings, conversation, and table service.

I swear this book is endlessly entertaining.

Bought a lot of really ripe organic avocados today.

Blending many of them with a soffrito of garlic and onion. On top of that several “chilli padi” (aka birdseye chillis aka really fucking hot chillis) Lemon Juice and cider vinegar and salt to balance the heat. Think I threw in some leftover dill or some other gratuitous herb, but it was basically finished after I smoothed it with some olive oil.

Then we ate it spread on toasted ingot-like pumpernickel bread. (dense as a wet telephone book).

deceptively nice appetizer