Weekend Dinners, Pt. 2

This dinner I cooked for two vegetarian friends, so it was vegetarian food combined with influences from dishes we had on a recent trip to Paris. Which, considering the meat-based French cuisine, was actually quite interesting, given the simplicity of the combinations here. The trip to Japan a year back also had its effect – especially as I still have left some dried seaweed I brought back from there.

I was a vegetarian for many years, and frankly I wouldn’t know anything about cooking if I hadn’t. You can easily get away with a simple steak and steamed vegetables for a meat eater, but the typical veggie version of the same dish would just mean removing the steak – and steamed vegetables, good as they might be, simply won’t cut it when you want a nutritious meal that’s a joy to eat. Variety is the key, especially when you leave the meat, poultry and fish out. And variety doesn’t mean changing the filling of the filled peppers from meal to meal.

That’s not to say you cannot have themes on a vegetarian menu: we had mushrooms all the way through this dinner, except with dessert…

Menu

Seaweed Konbu with button mushrooms

Shiitake-Roquefort-Walnut Quiche on a Leek Mat
Raspberry-Wasabi Sauce
Sunflower Sprouts

Fried King Oyster Mushrooms and Sweet Potato-Chestnut puree
Roasted Eggplant Slices with Pine Seeds
Black Currant-Red Wine Sauce
Avocado-Cream
Pea Sprouts
Sugar Leaf Decoration (for the puree)

Cherry Tartalets with Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Sauce
Raspberry-Wasabi Sauce

The dried konbu I just cooked in water for an hour, then discarded it and added sliced mushrooms, some soy and miso paste. This was the Japanese part of the menu, although on the next dish we had cranberry sauce with wasabi in it. Just give the fresh raspberries a spin in the blender, sieve, and add a little wasabi. It looks really good on the plate with the greens.

The quiche I’ve done at least five times now, and it keeps getting better and better (and looking nicer!) There’s some cognac in the mushroom-blue cheese-walnut-filling, and the base is simply flour, butter, salt and some ice water, pre-baked for a few minutes.

The king oyster mushrooms are grown in Estonia. They’re very meaty when just fried on a pan and, unlike some mushier and wetter mushrooms (most of them), king oysters serve great as a main dish.

I was interested in cooking a vegetarian meal that incorporated a red wine sauce, because you never see that anywhere. It worked just great; the king oysters are a natural companion for a red wine sauce. I used burgundy red (the same we drank with it) and black currant jam – and vegetable stock instead of meat stock, of course.

All these mushrooms are mild enough in taste so they didn’t overpower. Had we had just one course with mushrooms in it, I might have chosen a variety stronger in taste.

The idea for the puree came from the menu of one Montreal restaurant. They served it with ostrich, and even used the sugar leaf decoration, so I added that as well. The chestnut/sweet potato combination is delicate, made even softer with some cream.

The tartalet pastry was made from equal amounts of butter, sugar and flour, which nearly turns into fudge when baked. It’s firm enough to hold the cherry jam and a whole cherry inside without leaking red on the outside, so the end result will look clean and nice. Served warm/hot with a little ice cream and chocolate sauce. The raspberry-wasabi sauce made a re-entry here, but merely to add a small spot of colour on the plate.

(Sorry, there’s no pictures at this time – sometimes I feel that taking photos distracts from the atmosphere and turns the focus into the food too much, away from the conversation with the guests. I’ll try to add them the next time I prepare these!)

Weekend Dinners, Pt. 1

…And speaking of time (and not only lack of it), timing is everything when cooking a menu. Generally, cooking a dish, even a complicated one, doesn’t represent a challenge even for a chef of modest experience; cooking starters, mains and a dessert and serving them all hot, the pasta al dente, and the steaks just right is a lot more likely to cause problems, and then you also want to be able to enjoy the food and the company.

Of course, thing’s will be easier if you have two chefs (like we had here) or if you can cook in between courses. It’s best to prepare everything you can beforehand, so it’s easier if you plan the menu the previous day. Setting the table should be done first.

Menu

Snails with Blue Cheese

Slow-braised Lamb Shanks in Red Wine
Oven Root Vegetables
Green Beans

Pear Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream

The lamb was going to be in the oven for at least two hours, so it was the first thing to get going. Brown the lamb in butter on a frying pan, adding salt and pepper.

 

 

 

Butter an oven pan. Peel and halve the shallot onions, peel the garlic cloves and put in the pan. Add the browned shanks and pour the red wine and add meat or vegetable stock until covered. Add a couple of rosemary sprigs. Put in the oven (200°C).

 

 

Prepare the pear pies. Mix wheat flour, sugar and butter (1:1:1). Don’t knead too much.

Individual portion pans are easier with this course, as cutting and transferring the slices onto another plate with this pie isn’t always easy. Press the dough to a 5 mm layer at the bottom of the pan. Add half a cubed pear, a little lime or lemon juice and a little cinnamon. Put in the refrigerator.

Potatos and yellow root go in next. Peel and cut in quarters or eighths. Put on a buttered pan, add olive oil, honey or maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Fry until tender (which is about an hour, or 15 minutes more than we did!)

You can cover the pan for half of the time.

 

Then snails. The queue to the cheese counter was about 25 people, so we stuck with Bleu D’Auvergne for the snails. Rinse the snails and fry on a pan with a knob of butter and a little pepper. Put some butter in the snail pans, add the snails and a little blue cheese on top, and fry until the cheese starts to brown. (Our oven started to get quite crowded at this point…)

 

The snails here might have needed a teaspoon more of the butter, but they were great nonetheless… Bleu D’Auvergne worked just fine. Serve with champagne/sparkling wine and white bread for cleaning the pan!

 

 

 

Steam the green beans, add a little butter.

Put the potatos and yellow root at the bottom, add the shanks, onions and garlic. Put the beans on top. Serve with a cabernet or pinot noir.

 

 

Put the pear pies into the oven before starting the main course. Turn the heat down to 150°C. They should be done by the time you’ve finished your lamb. The bottom starts picking up caramel flavors at the same time the pears start to brown. (The one in the picture here is maybe a little too brown.)

With two table spoons, form a ball out of the vanilla ice cream, lay on top and serve.

Ingredients

Snails with blue cheese

1 can of snails (6 per person)
Blue cheese
Butter
Pepper
White bread for serving

Lamb in Red Wine

1 kg of lamb shanks (3 per person)
1/2 bottle (375 ml) red wine
Shallot onions and garlic cloves (3 per person)
Stock (vegetable or meat)
Rosemary sprigs
Butter
Salt, Pepper

Yellow Root and Potatos

Potatos (2 per person)
Yellow root (2 per person)
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Honey or maple syrup
Salt, pepper

Pear Pie

Flour, sugar, unsalted butter (one part each; I think we used about 100 grams each for four pies)
Pears (1/2 per pie)
Cinnamon
Lemon or lime juice
Vanilla ice cream

Faster Food, No Junk

Welfare is one thing that’s measured very differently from a hundred years back. Food, among other things, was something that people couldn’t always count on, but all that has changed: now we get much more than we actually need, and it’s now the rich who, on average, are thin and fit, whereas people with a smaller outcome are also more likely to suffer from obesity.

But there’s something else that’s changed. It’s not always material things that people so desperately crave for anymore, but rather the abstract; first, there seems to be a constant shortage of space.

Our grandparents, having lived through a world war or two and gotten used to surviving with the bare minimum, gathered loads and loads of stuff around them and were wary of throwing anything away once there wasn’t a constant shortage of everything anymore – just in case the bad days were to return.

So first they built warehouses in their yards for all that stuff they couldn’t throw away, but in the end the yards got filled too. Of course, the bad days never returned and nowadays discarding something you don’t need to reclaim the space it takes in your surroundings is often seen as pure pleasure. (I know: I’ve helped to empty and tear down one of these warehouses. I went home and got rid of everything I didn’t need afterwards and it felt good.)

Second, and even more important, is time. That’s something nobody seems to have too much of today. You used to be able to call someone to see if they were around to meet you the same evening, and usually they were. Now you have to book weeks ahead via email, and then you get pulled a rain check the same day. Sure, it has a lot to do with turning 30, but then, time is all older people seem to have.

Which is why I constantly find myself trying to come up with dishes that I can prepare in 10 or 15 minutes. Here’s the quickest recipe I’ve come up with – perfect for those times when you spend your 5-hour nights dreaming of 5 hours more and the latest blog entry was three weeks ago.

Taste this and you’ll know where to shove that microwave pizza.

Cold Smoked Salmon Pasta (serves a few people)

A pack of cold smoked salmon
A small bag of pasta
Some garlic
A lime
A splash of olive oil
A pinch of black pepper
A bit of salt

There’s no time to measure the exact amounts now! Put some water, oil and salt in a pan on high heat while you boil a full can of water in a water boiler. This way you’ll get a full pan of boiling water in less than 5 minutes. Put the pasta in.

Meanwhile, cut the salmon as small as you can bother to. Small slices work just as well. Set aside.

Squeeze the juice of the lime in a cup. Crush a garlic clove or two with freshly ground black pepper in the juice. Add olive oil. Mix.

When the pasta is nearly edible, pour almost all the water away (if you leave the pasta a little wet you won’t need as much oil.) Mix in the salmon and the liquid. Put on a plate, sprinkle some salt on top and, preferably using a fork, stuff down. Winner!

Eat the Ostrich

The first time I ever had ostrich was right where these round, flightless, tiny-brained and hugely sympathetic birds come from: in Africa. Ever since then, the culinary world has seen an ostrich boom, and by now it has become a common alternative to the other well-known types of red meat.

Rich in proteins and iron and low in fat (1–2g per 100g of meat), the fat that it has mostly consists of polyunsaturated fatty acids (as compared with saturated fats, in case you’re hysterical with the types of fat you’re stuffing down). This means it’s healthy. Not only is the nutritional content ideal, but its short muscle fibers also allow for much easier digestion. The high glycogen content also makes the flavour of ostrich quite sweet, and thus creates a perfect contrast with vegetables or rocket.

Add to this the fact that with its tiny head dangling at the end of its thin neck, and its huge body (about 90–130 kg) held in the air by its straw-strength legs, it looks like it’s the walking meat factory of the bird species, whose looks just scream “eat me!” (Although the meat yield is actually quite low, which has kept the price relatively high.) For me, ostrich was the first bit of red meat I’d had in eight years.

Fast forward to a couple of years later, to Montreal, Canada. I had ostrich in two different restaurants, both BYOB – bring your own bottle, as is customary there. Two very different approaches, the other one very rustic and old-fashioned, the other one modern and stylish. Both delicious. I was sold.

Ostrich with Endives (serves 2)

300g Ostrich Fillet
3 Endives
1dl Cream
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
1 tbsp Corn Starch for thickening

Boil the endives in salted water, outer green leaves removed, until just done. Cut in half. Dry. Cut the ostrich in 1cm slices. Heat the olive oil on pan. Quickly fry the slices with the endives. Add the cream and the thickening. Boil until thickened. Serve with some South African red wine to make the birdy feel at home.

Leaving You, Honey

Tapping into Maple Syrup

By the time I was 6 years old, I had discovered that maple syrup made almost everything my mother cooked taste better. It wasn’t that my mom was a bad cook, it was just that when I tasted that lush golden syrup on pancakes and French toast, I wanted it on everything [...] over oatmeal and omelets, on cooked carrots and peas and even drizzled her over chicken and fish. As I look back, my creative use of maple syrup might well have been the beginning of my culinary career.
[...]
I started by sauteing sliced carrots in a mixture of butter and syrup. As they cooked and the sauce reduced, the carrots took on a deep golden glow. When I tasted them, I was wowed by the complexity and depth of flavors the syrup produced.

I duplicated the combination with cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Although the pairings sounded odd, as each vegetable cooked and caramelized, the flavors became deeper and more complex. Unlike honey and brown sugar, reducing maple syrup enhances its flavor but doesn’t necessarily make it sweeter.

–Marlene Sorosky Gray, San Francisco Chronicle

I got excited when I read this article and ran out to buy some maple syrup. Seek the Canadian brands, as Marlene warns us about Mrs. Butterworth or Aunt Jemima – their sweetness comes not from maples, but corn, and they use maple extract for flavor. “Maple Joe” is one brand of pure maple syrup we get here in Finland.

I tried frying some cooked Brussels sprouts and red pepper using a little maple syrup and liked the outcome, but here’s my own recipe, as served to our saturday dinner guests, along with some lamb steaks and red wine sauce:

Sweet Rosemary Potatoes (serves 4)

6 Potatoes (the floury type, I used the big, red-skinned Rosamunda)
2 tbsp Maple Syrup
1 tbsp Butter
4 Fresh Rosemary Sprigs
Salt (ground Sea or Mountain Salt)
Black Pepper (freshly ground)

Wash the potatoes, leaving the skin. Cut into quarters (or smaller if the potatoes are big). Melt the butter in a pan. Fry the potatoes on medium-high heat until they brown slightly. Add the maple syrup and fry a while longer. Pour the potatoes and the mixture of butter and syrup into an oven pan, add the rosemary sprigs, salt and pepper. Bake, covered or wrapped in foil, in the oven under medium heat for an hour or until the potatoes are soft. (It’s not easy to overcook them.)