The Eager Eater

April, 17...sunny...72 degrees...6:00. After my (justified) weather rant a few days ago, Mother Nature has redeemed herself. This, however, is central
Ohio in April, and it is going to get cold and rain tomorrow (who saw that one coming?). For this one night, we sat on the deck, and basked in the warmth.

Stephanie made a dish perfect for a warm spring night.  A riff on the classic Chinese dish  Mapa Tofu.  An aside: Several times when we went to her hometown in Texas we would regularly drive past a particular Chinese restaurant. She would often share stories about  meals at that restaurant when she was younger. Her grandfather would always order Ma Pa Tofu.   It is funny how the foods of our childhood  often find their way into  our  modern repertoires. 

Ma Pa Tofu is a saute of minced pork and tofu in a deep brown sauce (a basic recipe here). Stephanie's version is delicious, and I'm sure a considerable bit spicier.  It is also much tighter and less saucy than some restaurant versions. Paired with bib lettuce leaves, a salad of julienned cucumbers and jicama and some sriracha sauce it is a real winner.

After dinner, Sophie found a small flower in the lawn and showed it to me. What a beautiful night. I love spring. To bad tomorrow it is going to rain.

Eric

It is April 14th...35 degrees...a steady drizzle of rain. My yard is a swamp, and my dogs are going stir crazy. Tomorrow it might snow! This is just not right. We deserve better.

So, we decided to defy the season and have a taste of the tropics inside. The initial inspiration was a post I was reading by the Homesick Texan about the perfect flour tortilla. It got me thinking about tacos (I know...again...I'm kind of obsessed).  I was craving something fresh and spicy.

I started by making those fresh tortillas, which turned out so delicious and chewy. I filled them with grilled shrimp marinated in a Caribbean marinade that I adapted from Dunstan Harris' book Island Barbecue: Spirited Recipes from the Caribbean (adapted means I didn't have some of the ingredients). The shrimp was roughly chopped and topped with a slaw of green cabbage, mango, red pepper and cilantro.  The final touch was a creamy "fish taco" style dressing that included some of the marinade. We dished it up with a side of black beans well fortified with smoky bacon.

I'm telling you what...this meal  brightened this dreary day.  It was one of the tastier things to come out of our kitchen in a while.

Oh...I almost forgot. You can't have a  Caribbean meal without a icy Mojito. I had to make a last minute run to the store for some mint to make that possible.

This will definitely make an appearance again. Hopefully next time I don't have to grill in the rain.

Jerked Shrimp Tacos with Mango Slaw
(serves 4)
8 Fresh Flour Tortillas (find the recipe here)
1 Pound of fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 Cup Jerk marinade
2 cups Mango slaw
1/2 cup dressing

Toss shrimp in 1/4 cup of Jerk marinade and store refrigerated for at least one hour.  Reserve some marinade for the dressing. Grill shrimp until done. Chop shrimp into large pieces.Distribute shrimp evenly between taco shells. Top with slaw and dressing. Serve with a slice of lime.

Jerk Marinade (adapted from Island Barbecue by Dunstan Harris)
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup finely chopped scallions
3 Jalapeños  stems removed, cut in 1/2 retaining seeds
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup Soy sauce
2 Tbls vegetable oil
1 Tbls Salt
Pinch garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree.

Mango Slaw
1 Cup cabbage,finely shredded
1  Mango, peeled and seed removed, julienned
1/4 Cup red pepper, julienned
1 Tbls cilantro finely chopped
Pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients  and set aside fro at least 1/2 hour.

Dressing
1/4 Cup Mayonnaise
1/4 Cup Sour Cream
1/8 Cup Milk
1 clove garlic minced
2 Tbls Jerk Marinade
2 tsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of cracked black pepper

Combine all ingredients

Hobart "Hot Rod" Mixer...A Thing of Beauty

Just a quick post about a recent project I worked on. For the International Pizza Expo  we gave away a custom painted pizza mixer. This beauty is a HL662 Hobart pizza mixer. It has a custom paint job reminiscent of a vintage hot rod, complete with the Hobart Logo from that era. We met a real nice guy named Terry McCall from McCall Custom Colors in Kettering, Ohio, who did the paint job. Even close up this is one sweet machine.  It was the hit of the show. People wanted their pictures taken with it...I'm sure it was the most photographed item there.

The guy who won was a real nice pizza operator from St Paul, Minnesota. 30 year old Hobart mixer, and in the business 20 years. He couldn't have been happier. Enjoy the pictures.

Eric

 

Why Trader Joe's Rocks

Last post I complained about the lack of great produce and artisan products available in Dayton. I didn't talk about Dorothy Lane Market, which I will post about at another time and we are very lucky to have in the area.  However, what is on my mind today is Trader Joes. If you don't have a TJ near you, or haven't heard of it, it is one of the best things to hit us in years. It is a very specific type of shopping experience based around branded prepared foods, organics, frozen proteins, wine, cheeses and bulk foods. All of this available at great deals. That description does not really do it justice. I know many a convert that shop almost exclusively at Trader Joe's.

When I came home from work today, Stephanie had a great salad for dinner. A salad that some may spend hours preparing, and others might acquire from the prepared foods counter of a boutique deli. Perfectly sweet roasted beets, tender lentils, tart dried cranberries, and soft goat cheese. The Trader Joes  difference is that the beets were peeled and roasted, the lentils steamed, the goat cheese crumbled, and with the cranberries, some sunflower seeds, scallions and a splash of apple cider vinegar  a salad is born. 10 minutes or less.

I'm not saying freshly roasted beets from the garden, organic lentils and Laura Chenel cheese might not be better. It might. Then again, taste is in the moment, and we didn't have any of that stuff. We had Trader Joes, and it made tonight's dinner perfect.

Eric

Cauliflower...Just Cauliflower

I have been reading too many great food blogs lately. And…I admit it. I have coastal envy.

Reading many of the most popular blogs, most of which are based in Seattle, San Francisco, LA, and New York, I can’t help but feel kind of pained when someone shares how they just returned from such-and-such market and picked up beautiful specimens of (enter desirable vegetable here) that they are going to pair with a wonderful loaf of bread purchased from the corner bakery and some perfectly ripe cheese grown in a cave by silicone valley dropouts. When I go to the local grocery store in Dayton, Ohio, I don’t find locally grown much of anything this time of year.

I did, the other day, find some cauliflower. Not from any farm that has a name (other than Dole). Not organic. Just cauliflower.

Living in the Midwest the most common use for cauliflower is often the cruelest: Crudité. At the end of any corporate function, a black plastic catering tray will stand, picked clean, bowl scraped of dill dip, with only cauliflower remaining. Even in this most humiliating of presentations, cauliflower is further disgraced.

Additionally, cauliflower has been done no service by Simplot or Birds Eye frozen "California" blends. This mushy mixture of broccoli, cauliflower and waffle-cut carrots has been forced upon far too many grade school children, invalids, and wedding guests. The name alone is troubling to me (I hope that my idyllic vision of Californians eating organic, heirloom vegetables procured from an appropriately scruffy Berkeley grad can remain intact for the time being).

However, as I have seen testament on many a post, cauliflower can be transformed. Simply roasted with olive oil, lemon and sea salt. Tonight we incorporated the addition of fennel and curry to create a more-than-satisfying side dish. Hey, I could have eaten just this!

Hmm…I wonder what people in San Francisco are eating tonight? I'm sure it is beautiful and unavailable at the local Kroger.

Eric

Roasted Cauliflower with Fennel and Curry

1 Head Cauliflower cut into ¼ inch slices
½ Bulb Fennel cut julienne
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
½ Teaspoon Curry Powder
½ Lemon, juiced
Sea or Kosher Salt to taste
Cracked Black Pepper to taste

 Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Toss all ingredients together and spread out in baking dish in a single layer to promote carmelization. Roast for approximately 15 minutes until cooked through and well browned. Drizzle with a good olive oil before serving. 

Food Styling and Photography: Take 1

In response to a photography challenge on Still Life With..., a incredibly informative food blog from the same author as Cook & Eat, I decided to try and get a little more serious about my food photos. This is the first time I have really thought a lot about composition, lighting, and color.

The nature of the challenge was the color white. So, for dinner I found some clams at the market, boiled some linguine, and sautéed shallots, fennel and garlic with some of the homemade bacon scraps we had left over. The results were a satisfying meal, and some above-average food photos.

I'm pretty hooked on this food photography thing. I just hope that Stephanie can wait another five minutes to eat while I get just the right shot.

You can see all the entrants to the challenge here.

Udon

In the world of pasta there are many fine species, but udon may be my favorite. The texture of udon, smooth and elastic, with just the right amount of spring, coupled with its flavor-absorbing ability, sits just right with me. A little more on udon here.

Last night Stephanie had this waiting when I got home. A rich beef broth seasoned with ginger, dashi, lime and ginger, garnished with crimini and chanterelle mushrooms and thin sliced strip steak. I'm a lucky man. This is the simple kind of dish I could eat almost every day.

From the recent posts it appears as if we are on somewhat of an Asian kick. I guess these warm, spicy dishes are comforting to me when it is so cold and rainy outside.

Pad Thai

Last night my parents joined us for dinner. I made Pad Thai from Victor Sodsook's book True Thai. It is a fairly straightforward recipe with quite good results. I took a lot of pictures and came up with a few pretty good ones.

Pasta on a Thursday

In a continuing effort to not eat like we're still twenty, Steph made another dinner that was a real winner. Whole wheat  pasta with shrimp, peas, bacon, sun-dried tomatoes and cream. We're still using up the shrimp and sun-drieds from last night, and we had some of the last of the homemade bacon that we cured and smoked (more on that another time). Apparently this meal had under 500 calories. This is not something I usually think about (it makes my head hurt), but I really need to keep under control the majority of the time so I can really dig in when necessary. THis meal felt like a sacrifice in no way.

Our Food and Her Food

Despite two parents with culinary degrees, multiple above-average restaurant experiences, and sitting across the kitchen island while untold numbers of excellent meals were crafted, my child will eat nothing but fish sticks, peanut butter sandwiches, and corn dogs. Now, occasionally she will also eat grilled chicken, steak, and fresh fish, so don't call child welfare on me. She used to love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until the jelly jar fell on her toe, and now no more jelly.

I must admit that I have somewhat of a complex about this. Sophie is funny, beautiful, a genius (I'm not biased), and five. However, there is nothing that kicks me in the gut more than when some friend of mine says these words, "my (insert child's name here) will eat anything!".

Well good for you.

Last night for dinner Stephanie made shrimp broiled with garlic and lemons, brown rice (we're on a health kick), and spinach with caramelized red onions and sun-dried tomatoes. Not too shabby for a Wednesday.

Sophie had fish sticks, brown rice (which she refused to eat because she insisted that it was mixed with "woody things"), and carrots. Oh...and of course, ketchup...children's nectar of the gods.

I guess I shouldn't be too worried about this. She is healthy, and hasn't been to the doctor for anything other than regular checkups in a year. Actually, I kind of wish I had a little of her self control.

Hey...I wouldn't eat tomatoes until I was 20...and I turned out OK.