The Pink Hobart

A Cold-Weather Feast: Cioppino

This recipe makes great use of the shells of the shrimp-don't discard them!  Instead, make your very own shrimp stock by sauteing them in the pan first.  Later, they're removed, wrapped in cheesecloth, and dropped back into the stew.  Get the most of what you've got!

Cioppino

Italian-style Seafood Stew

 

Serves 6 to 8

 

• 1 pound medium shrimp, shell on
• ¼ cup canola oil
• 2 onions, small dice
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flake
• 2 teaspoons black pepper
• 1 each green and red bell pepper,
•    small dice
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 cups red wine
• 28-ounce can whole roasted
•     plum tomatoes
• 1 cup clam juice
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 pounds clams, shell on
• 1 pound white fish, such as cod or
•     halibut, cut in bite-size pieces
• ¾ pound sea scallops
• ¼ cup flat-leaf parsley
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

 

 

Rinse, peel and de-vein the shrimp, reserving the shells. 

 

Heat oil in an 8-quart stockpot over medium heat until it shimmers. Sauté the shrimp shells until they have turned pink, then remove them from the pan and place them in an 8 by 8 inch square of cheesecloth. Tie the corners of the cheesecloth and set aside.

 

Add onion to the pan and sauté until fragrant. Add garlic, bay, oregano, red pepper, black pepper and bell peppers. Stir well and sauté until the peppers are soft. Add tomato paste and cook for 30 to 45 seconds, until it gets fairly brown.  Add red wine, stir well and bring to a high simmer, reducing the wine by half.  Crush tomatoes by hand or chop roughly. Add tomatoes, clam juice, stock and shrimp shells in cheesecloth. Cover and let simmer for 30 minutes. 

 

Lightly salt and pepper the fish and scallops and then add to the soup along with the shrimp. Simmer for 2 to 3 minutes. Add clams. When clams have opened, turn off the heat and add parsley. Stir well and garnish with basil. Serve with toasted garlic bread. 

 

My Life in (Cook)Books

 

Yes, I'm supposed to be moving right now.  I'm also supposed to be writing recipes for three different projects, and getting ready for two catering events.  But I can't fight with the heat anymore, and the overwhelming sense of futility in the face of my current task: organizing and boxing my cookbooks.  I can't finish this project because I need to hold and coo and flip through my beloved collection.  Moving always makes me feel displaced, but my books have always helped me to reconnect.

I still have my last employee purchase from Williams-Sonoma, a copy of Food Lovers' Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst.  I cannot part with it, though it's fifteen years out of date and really worn.  It is adorned with a golden WS sticker and signed by my coworkers.  I bought it as a memento,since I was leaving home the next day for Seattle to attend culinary school.  Like a babe walking into the jaws of death, but hey-I had something good to read while being digested. 

I also can't part with my mother's copy of Elizabeth David's French Provencal Cooking, which floats around the bookshelf in three sections.  The middle section begins with a recipe for Quiche Lorraine and ends with a recipe for Beef Daube, which were mom's favorites.  This naked little clutch of pages often falls off the shelf when I'm rifling through and the same phrase on the last page always catches my eye: "O, scent of the daubes of my childhood!", a quote which David has taken from another cookbook to introduce the chapter on stews.  It is from Pierre Huguenin's Les Meilleures Recettes de Ma Pauvre Mere.  My own mother has underscored once and twice several sections of the following recipe for La Daube De Boeuf Provencale (unsmoked streaky bacon, orange peel, 290 F.).  And oh, the scent of that daube from my childhood!  It's pushing 100 F. right now in this house, but all I want is some bone-warming stew and ma pauvre mere.  

I've never organized these books, and I remember why as I'm trying to sort them out.  Where does Waverly Root's The Food Of Italy go?  Reference/history, or Italian cookbooks, or next to the collection of cookbooks by douchy chef-authors who have issues with women in the food industry?  Does Recipes for a Small Planet go in the local, sustainable section, or vegetarian/vegan, or do I relegate it to my "books of personal historical interest", because honestly, the recipes from this 35-year-old book will never be recreated by this hand, I swear on all things holy?

There are the utterly weird items that I can't sort at all-why DO I have a book called Dracula's Cookbook of Blood?  Um, whatever.  I'll pack it between The Romanian Cookbook and Death in the Pot: The Impact of Food Poisoning on History.  There are the copies of Food and Wine, Saveur, Food Arts, Gourmet, Plate, Cooks' Illustrated and a milliontythousand other magazines, those wire coat hangers of the bookshelf world.  I must keep them though, because I must keep them. 

One favorite book actually sits in a display stand on a shelf with a picture showing.  I change it every season as a dorky homage to the librarian in the Salt Lake City library who turned to a new page of the James Audubon Illustrated Book of Birds every day, the book on display under glass in the restricted section.  Thanks librarian, whoever you were. 

These books are really for the sake of comfort, I guess. I have three shelves of stuff that I haven't really looked at in ages but it would kill me to give up.  The cookbooks on the nightstand, however, I will kill to defend.  Right now, Judith Jones's Tenth Muse and  Herve This's Kitchen Mysteries are dividing my time, and both of them have a common inspiration: the Culinary Philosopher Jean-Anselme Brilliat-Savarin.  The Physiology of Taste is an absolute treasure to me, reading it the first time I felt a kindred spirit speaking to me about the things in this world that I loved.  Seriously, its subtitle (or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy) shouts to me: Food Geeks, You can Sit at This Table."  That, and Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food, are proof positive that there are people in the world who want me to cook and think and be happy.  Ah, and so off I go again, my mind and heart fed and my stomach never left wanting for thrills.

Copper River Salmon are Coming!! Copper River Salmon are Coming!!!

Did that get your attention?  Okay, now that I have it, here is my list of demands. 

Wait, actually they're really scheduled for arrival this weekend, I'm not yanking your chain.  It does depend on how things are shaping up in Cordova, AK, but I spied the call list on the counter this morning so get your name on it while the gettin's good.  Wild Salmon's expecting a nutty weekend, so if you come in please bring me and the boys a power bar.  You can email Jon or Paula at ask@wildsalmonseafood.com, or call them at 206-283-3366/1-888-222-FISH.

You don't know about Copper River Salmon?  You been living under a rock?  Here, read what Mr Jon Rowley has to say about it in Gourmet magazine.  I'll wait here.

Speaking of (one of the five trillion places I) work, Wild Salmon Seafood Market gets a mention in this month's Bon Appetit magazine.  Local restaurateur, blogger and cutie-cute redhead Mollie Wizenberg (AKA Orangette) is the author.  Thanks, Mollie!

I haven't had any fresh salmon yet this season, but I did poach some fresh Wa. State Spot Prawns in garlic and ginger-infused butter (I said poached in butter, yes) and had a lovely meal of it.  Chris asked me to marry him.  Of course I said no.

Night of the...Whatever.

I am actually afraid of some things. I am afraid of flying. I used to think that was all... Until I encountered a tiny amphibian in the shower and screamed like a GIRL.

I am also now afraid of killer ocean waves, because one tried to rip my head off this morning.

One thing I do not fear is meat in a foreign country, which is apparently kinda weird. The manager at the condo here in Barra thought I was kidding when I asked for goat meat. "excuse me, but donde can I chupa una
cabre?". What?

Honestly, I need to be more forthright about why I'm on vacation. It's not to fall asleep in the tropicalish sun or work on my killer tan (as if); it's to drink Coca-Cola made with cane sugar and shove many fresh tortillas in my mouth. It's about watching my lunch arrive by boat...spiny lobster, straight on the grill with garlic and chiles.

And it's about discovering the "Jungle by The Sea" as described in Tenessee Williams' Night of the Iguana", the film of which was shot very close by. Tonight in this sultry evening cool II can hear the Rum Coco calling, and am watching out for two shirtless cabana boys with maracas.

Holy Mole!

Is This Thing On?

Wow, it's like I've never blogged before.  Turns out you have to update and stuff.  I swear I've been doing other stuff and junk... There's this Facebook thing and it's eaten my life.  But I digress.  There's a wholebuncha stuff that's been snappening.  Highlights: going to Brasa for a FoodBuzz dinner in March and experiencing an intermezzo snowstorm... Eating St. Patty's Day Corned Beef and Cabbage... That crazy swearing in day we had (Aretha!  Stevie!!  Beyonce!!!)...  Sleeping in on Christmas Day... The Golden Globes...  Dancing at a speakeasy on New Year's Eve and eating French onion soup with my family in the morning... Wow!  Oh, but the Flickr Uploader is taking its sweet time and I need to get to bed.  Photos coming soon!

Kefthethes from Georgia's Greek Restaurant

  Kefthethes from Georgia's Greek Restaurant 
  Originally uploaded by unclj0

Our wedding was a great "stone soup" affair, where we kinda brought in food wherever we could.  Lakis from Georgia's Greek Restaurant made these gorgeous patties of lamb and beef, drenched in a rich cinnamon-tinged meat sauce.  OMG, how fantastic.  Lakis, I kiss you full on the mouth *mwah*. 

Wait, what do you mean "where're the leftovers?".  I'm a growing girl. 

Burp.

The Good, The Bad, and the Benihana

It wasn't my idea.  We went to Benihana for the  kidlet's thirteenth birthday.  That is an utterly appropriate reason for doing anything that involves umbrella drinks and salads composed of iceberg lettuce and carrot shreds.

I'm fairly certain our chef was drunk, or really really bored, or both.  I could see the wince when he flipped the thousandth shrimp tail of the night into the breast pocket of his chef's jacket and clanged up a racket with his knives, salt-and-pepper shaker and spat.  But it's the show, you know; and like a sad, scary clown who smells a little weird but you have to take his balloon poodle anyway and thank him...

Wait, what?

On the bright side, Benihana, and lots of other teppanyaki places, do what any other purely Japanese-American restaurant will do (and do it well): a good seared steak.   Any idea that you're going to get some veggies in this place should be abandoned at the door.  In that spirit, so should any kind of desire to eat healthy.

Wear loose pants, bring your fiber supplements, and wear your best tourist attire. 

Reflections on a Gift...

How can you eat any sweet, sour, cold treat from a jar and not think of this poem?  Thanks for the AMAZING stuff, pickle man.

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts

(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer–
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was–
Watermelons ruled.

Thick imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.

            John Tobias

 

 

Ice Cream Dreams

Ice cream, fresh fruit, summer, dogs, kids... did I leave anything out? 

Yesterday I went blueberry picking at Mercer Slough Blueberry Farm with a friend and her kids and their new labradoodle puppy.  Though my haul was a paltry handful next to their nearly five pounds, I had plenty for my diabolical plans.  I also picked up a flat of peaches, and headed home for my favorite kitchen project: ice cream!!