Burratta Caprese

Caprese salad, in any form, is just so photogenic!

Anyone who’s ever read this blog will know of my devotion to burratta, that Italian cheese sensation that’s been cresting for several years now. Once a little-known fringe cheese from Apulia (that’s in Italy, duh!), in America it hit the foodie scene with a splash due to the efforts of a couple of producers here in Southern California. Dozens of companies now make some version of the delightful pouch of fresh mozzarella filled with creamy stracciatelle. I particularly love the burratta from Gioia, which is large and just fantastically delicious. I also like the slightly milder and slightly sweeter burratta from Di Stephano, which is what you see here. Di Stephano might be slightly more elegant than the Gioia, but both are delicious. I’m not sure about Gioia, but Di Stephano claims to import fresh cream from Italy for the filling.

I whipped up this late snack for Regina the other day — very ripe roma tomatoes topped with burratta, fresh mint, baby wild arugula, balsamic syrup, and extra virgin olive oil. It was pretty damn delicious, if I may so. I think Regina liked it too, because she inhaled it in under 23 seconds.

 

 

Skillet Green Beans with Garlic & Cashews

A hot skillet makes everything taste great.

This side dish was one of those off-the-cuff veggie things that I do on occasion.

The dish started with schmaltz. Schmaltz is the Yiddish word for rendered chicken fat, which is used as a cooking oil in kosher-keeping kitchens. It makes a great cooking oil, lending robust flavor to anything that’s cooked in it. Often, when I make a big vat of chicken broth, I’ll cool the broth overnight to remove the fat. The fat rises to the surface and can be pulled off in chunks after it solidifies at refrigerator temperatures. I’ll melt this chicken fat and strain it very well, leaving behind a highly-flavored (and highly-cholesteral-laden) cooking medium. It’s great to pan-fry anything — from eggs to chicken cutlets to veggies. So anyway, I had some schmaltz on hand, a nice supply of good green beans, and a little know-how.

I heated my trusty seasoned skillet over medium high until a droplet of water splashed on the hot surface skittered and hissed away instantaneously. I added a tablespoon of the chicken fat and about 12 thin slices of fresh garlic. The garlic browned very quickly, and when it did I threw in some raw (trimmed) green beans. I added about two tablespoons of dry white wine and covered the pan to steam the beans. After about one minute I uncovered the skillet and seasoned the green beans with plenty of salt and pepper. I added a tablespoon of butter and stirred it around. After a couple of minutes, when the beans got a little wrinkly and slightly browned, I tossed in a big handful of roasted cashews. I cooked that another thirty seconds or so and then removed the beans from the pan. It was dinnertime!

This yummy side dish made a perfect accompaniment for crispy pork chops. I think it would be nice with chicken or steak or fish as well!

 

 

Dungeness Crab Benedict

Crab makes everything better!

I’m very passionate about feeding my children right and about exposing them to all the wonders of the food world. My little girl is less than a month old, but I feel it’s never too early to get her hooked on great seafood! Thank goodness my wife Regina is breastfeeding. Perhaps little Vivian will gain an early appreciation for Dungeness crab as its flavor courses through Regina’s milk into her tiny mouth.

With that in mind, and in an effort to please a wife exhausted by the rigors of parenting a newborn, I made this dynamite Dungeness Crab Benedict for a late breakfast this past Saturday. I served the poached eggs on toasted Bay’s English Muffins (my favorite) with fresh dungeness crab that I warmed slowly over low heat in a small amount of Irish butter. I dolloped the whole thing with hollandaise made with a bit of Meyer lemon juice and topped it with some green onions rounds and a pinch of paprika.

You can check out my recipes for hollandaise and poached eggs in an earlier post, entitled It’s Eggs Benedict Day!

Check it out! http://spencerhgray.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/its-eggs-benedict-day/

So beautiful I had to show you TWICE!

Lobster Roll

Man, nothing beats a killer lobster roll!

It finally feels like summer here in LA! The sun is shining, everyone’s donning their shorts and sandals, and along the coast the breeze is briny and beckoning. Summer screams LOBSTER ROLL for me. Nothing beats eating the taste of the sea right out of your hand.

My fiance Regina was born in Boston, as she is prone to reminding people with that brilliant smile of hers when the subject of lobster comes up. She has lobster in her blood, I suppose, although that sounds a little nasty, if you ask me. A few days ago I taught her the simple art of making a lobster roll, and in doing so we came to a consensus of how we like it. Sometimes you see lobster rolls offered in restaurants that bear little resemblance to the simple lunch I became familiar with on the East Coast, when I’d visit Boston or the single trip I made to New Hampshire. The one brief time I made it to Maine I sadly didn’t get my coveted roll.

But when I did get a chance to eat lobster out of my hand right on the edge of the Atlantic ocean, it was simple and delicious and perfect each time. The beauty of the lobster roll is, of course, as a showcase for the sweetness and tenderness of freshly cooked lobster, as recently caught as possible. So when you see versions with cucumber, or bits of tomato, or tarragon, or what-have-you, you can be sure that it isn’t authentic or true to the spirit of a real lobster roll. The lobster salad inside the roll should be simple. I like only a bit of celery and chives. And a little homemade mayo.

The other thing that makes for an authentic lobster roll is the split-top, “top-loading” New England style hot-dog bun. I suppose you could use a regular hot dog bun, but then you’d be guilty of the worst kind of West Coast phoniness. Sorry.

Search online for a source, or try this link: http://nehotdogrolls.webs.com/

Since I wrote this post, I’ve (very recently) discovered a great split-top hot dog roll made by King’s Hawaiian. It’s a fantastic substitute for the East Coast split-top roll. It’s a little denser and a bit sweeter than the real deal, but they crisp nicely on the sides. If you can find ‘em, use ‘em!

Yes, I ate all three of ‘em!

You’ll need:This recipe makes four lobsters rolls with a little leftover salad.

The meat from 2 lobsters (about 1.75 pounds apiece).
3 tablespoons homemade mayo (or the best store-bought you can find)
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon finely minced celery
1 tablespoon finely minced chives
salt and pepper
softened salted butter
4 split-top hot dog buns

Do this:

Chop up the lobster meat; you’ll end up with just over two cups. Mix the meat with mayo, lemon juice, celery, and chives. Taste for seasoning and add salt and cracked pepper as desired.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Smear the sides of the hot dog buns with softened butter. Brown each side of the buns in the hot skillet. While the buns are still warm stuff them with lobster salad.

Hope you like ‘em!

For instructions on lobster cooking check out my Lobsta Lessons post: http://www.spencerhgray.com/2011/03/lobsta-lessons.html. Try the McNair method; it’ll demystify the process for you.

I added new pics to this post 11 months after I wrote it. I think the new pics, while not perfect, are a huge improvement. 

Yep, this older photo was unforgivably orange.

Garlicky Rau Muong: “Water Spinach” in the Vietnamese Style

Rau Muong is great with loads of garlic!

Rau Muong is the Vietnamese name of ipomoea aquatic, a staple leafy green vegetable that grows all over Asia in tropical and subtropical regions. It grows quickly and plentifully in moist environments, in moist soil or shallow water, and is therefore cheap and widely available. It’s known by seemingly a whole host of names, including water spinach, swamp cabbage, Chinese spinach, kongkang, water convolvulus (whatever the hell that means), morning glory, ong choy, phak bung, and “hollow vegetable” which is a transliteration of a (to me) unpronounceable Chinese word.

Very healthy and quite mild, rau muong is a snap to cook and worth the trouble of finding. In the US you should be able to get them in most good Asian grocery stores, especially in areas of concentrated Southeast Asian populations like here in Los Angeles. If you can get your hands on the stuff, first trim off any woody or dried-out stems. Also, discard any unwholesome-looking leaves. Cut the veggies into lengths about two-to-three inches and rinse well.

When my mother cooks it she blanches the rau muong for about three minutes in salted boiling water until slightly tender and then she rinses it in cold water to halt the cooking process. She allows it to drain until dry and then heats up a wok until very hot. She swirls in a little vegetable or peanut oil to coat the bottom of the wok and then adds the greens. As they soften she’ll add about six cloves of minced garlic (starting with about two pounds of cleaned greens) and season with salt, pepper, a bit of sugar, and a little MSG. Naturally the MSG isn’t mandatory, but a tiny bit will go a long way and it kicks up the flavor quite nicely. When she adds the spices she’ll put, say, about a teaspoon-and-a-half of salt, a half-teaspoon of pepper, a half-teaspoon of sugar, and a quarter-teaspoon of MSG in a quarter-cup of warm water. She pours the seasoned water over the veggies and tosses the whole thing with big cooking chopsticks to evenly distribute.

The stir-frying part of the cooking process is only about five minutes. So in no time you’ll have an amazing, healthy side dish to go along with all kinds of fish, poultry, meats, and rice.

When I’ve cooked the stuff I like to add fiery chillies, a splash of fish sauce or soy sauce, sometimes shallots or scallions. Sometimes ponzu or toasted sesame oil. Add whatever you like. Rau Muong is versatile. And yummy.

Quickly sautéed, rau muong remains crunchy and delicious.

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Baby Vivian!

She’s so yummy!

My latest dish:

Vivian Haines Gray, born April 24th at 5:40PM at UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Westwood, California.

Delicious!

Salad Dressing Simplified

I dressed this salad of leaf lettuce, arugula, baby tomatoes, fennel, endive, celery, fresh corn, and chopped boiled egg with a simple vinaigrette of cider vinegar, whole grain dijon mustard, and minced cilantro.

Of all the requests I get for advice or recipes the most frequent seems to be for a simple, all-purpose salad dressing. It strikes me as strange because making a basic vinaigrette is something I figured out years ago and now I make vinaigrettes several times a week, almost without thinking. I never measure, I never really plan it out, I just do. Into a bowl I throw in some acidic liquid, a few seasonings according to whim, and whisk in some oil. My vinaigrettes change according to the day, to the salad I’m making, to the season, to whatever ingredients I have on hand, and to whatever creative forces swirl through my head in the moment. And I’ve gotten so adept at making salad dressings that they almost always come out perfectly delicious. I’ve gotten almost instinctive about dressing.