Culinarius

Quick salmon recipe for a friend (good for most fish, with variations)

1. Heat oven to 500° / really hot

2. Marinate salmon in soy sauce for 20 minutes or so

3. Heat some oil in a skillet that can go in the oven over medium-high to high heat (recommend: cast iron)

4. Remove the fish and pat it dry; season with salt and pepper

5. Place the salmon in the hot pan skin-side up; cook for 1 minute (or slightly longer: goal light brown/delicious looking). Flip salmon skin-side down, cook for 1 more minute, then put in oven from 4 to 8 minutes (depends on thickness/desired doneness). Remove and serve.

Really short version: heat an oven really hot, cook the salmon briefly on one side in a pan, flip, then put it in the oven until it is done.

You can vary this a lot to get different textures, etc, and it might not work perfectly the first time. I always err on the side of caution and take it out earlier than it might need, because you can always put it back in the oven. I almost always add butter along with the oil, too.

The marinade can be changed, too, or omitted, though acidic marinades will start cooking the fish, so: caution. Also, you can roast something else in the pan at the same time, like, say, shredded laccinato kale.

Moroccan vegetable stew, harissa fried chickpeas, 5 and 1/2 minute egg (recipe) [EA + TR]

Risotto with basil pesto, spring onions, asparagus

Springtime!

[EA]

Mahi-mahi with roasted avocado and roasted carrots — possibly more important, the Birra Etruscan Bronze from Dogfish Head. It comes cold, but you should let it warm just a bit (two bits, really). Delicious.

Mourad Lahlou on Thanksgiving mashed potatoes

That’s a funny response. Let’s say mashed potatoes. What’s a good way to do that?
Never use a mixer. Never use a hand blender.

Why never use a hand blender?
Because it just makes it gummy. The heat from the blade makes the starch come out and it becomes sticky. People use hand blenders because it is easier for them. Use a wooden spoon and try to put as much fucking butter as you can possibly, physically, do. There’s no ratio – just keep adding butter and stir until you get fucking blisters. I swear, when I make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, I always know that I’m going to get blisters because I’m stirring with a wooden spoon and adding butter.

So, I’m writing this down. Until you see callouses and blood…
Absolutely. There’s no way that you can add all the butter at once because it gets greasy. Do it one piece at a time and keep stirring. With the wooden spoon, it’s really cool because you don’t incorporate any more heat from the blade and there’s no spinning. I’m trying to figure out a way to put more butter in mashed potatoes than humanely possible. Mashed potatoes are all about butter. The potatoes are just a vehicle by which the butter is consumed!

Let’s say you have a pound of potatoes. How much butter are we talking about?
Ideally, you can really incorporate a pound of butter. But that’s really hard to do. I am trying to figure out a method to incorporate equal parts butter in mashed potatoes, but I can’t.

What is this method?
I’m using a little bit of chemicals – a little bit of of xanthan gum. But then, when you use those, you need to rehydrate them in the mashed potatoes, which you can only do with a hand blender. I’m trying to figure out ways to add them to the butter before I add the butter.

So you will create some sort of magical Thanksgiving butter?
Oh, it’s so fluffy and so nice. You just have to do it by hand. Here is the deal with mashed potatoes: if you put a bowl of mashed potatoes in front of people and it doesn’t have enough fat, people just keep eating that shit and eating starch. If you put a lot of butter in there, they will have two tablespoons and be done.

But let’s be straight here. You’re not endorsing eating like, a pound of butter.
I’ll give you an example. For 12 people, I’ll use maybe two pounds of potatoes and that’s it. There may even be leftovers. They will have a little bit and it’s so rich and fulfilling. It’s delicious and you’re just happy after two or three bites. If you make it plain without a lot of butter and margarine, you just keep eating and eating, and you will end up feeling stuffed. They will keep eating it if it doesn’t have enough fat and feel sick afterwards.

[posted EA]

(Source: foodrepublic.com)

no-knead bread in a french oven (bittman-style), attempt 2 [EA]

“

Even in her brave opinion, Justice Ginsburg reveals the heart of the problem: nobody on the Supreme Court knows how to cook broccoli. Naturally, if you eat broccoli raw, steamed, or even deep-fried, it’s going to seem unappetizing, the kind of thing the government would have to force onto your plate. But broccoli is a bad thing only when it is badly done. The truth is that broccoli should always be either roasted or pureed, in the French style, and is so delicious done either way that, if you tasted it, you would not just tolerate but demand government-mandated broccoli. So here, in honor of the Justices—and still more in homage to the memory of the ever-to-be-mourned-and-missed Nora Ephron, who loved good food and pioneered the insertion of recipes into serious literary-legal occasions—are two delicious ways of preparing broccoli.

First, roast it. You need a very hot oven—four hundred and fifty degrees at a minimum—and you should mix the broccoli with some sliced red onion or else, even better, some sliced shallots, and sprinkle it all evenly with sweet curry and rock salt and, of course, drizzle over it all a little good olive oil. Then roast for approximately twenty minutes, though sometimes it’s better to go for a full twenty-five if you like your vegetables a little charred. It’s like eating ice cream, really.

The other good way to prepare broccoli is to steam it for about twelve minutes, until it is soft but hasn’t yet lost its bright green color—over-steamed broccoli, which apparently is what they served to Justice Ginsburg in law school, is a depressing off-green—and then puree it in your Cuisinart (or the equivalent, but not a blender) with a scant cup of crème fraîche. Really puree it, though, for a full two or three minutes. Add good fleur de sel, and you have, with carrots braised with orange and cumin, one of the two most delicious side dishes you can serve with roast chicken.

Anybody who doesn’t like broccoli in these two forms just doesn’t like anything. In fact, if you could force all the right-wing Justices to taste these two dishes, they would never mention “the broccoli horrible” again. They’d probably just move on to Brussels sprouts, though, legal argument being what it is. Fortunately there are one or two excellent recipes for those discouraging veggies, too. But let’s save them for another day, and another decision.

— Adam Gopnik

(Source: newyorker.com)

Home-made gnocchi with fresh peas [EA]

Summer. Tomatoes. Texas.

Quick Pickles with Cheese Plate

Thinly sliced carrots and radishes, quickly pickled in salt in vinegar for about fifteen minutes (made easy with a ceramic mandoline). That blue cheese was really great, too, but I don’t remember what it was …