Rooftop Gourmet

I always get excited when fresh corn starts to appear at the market because I know that summer is approaching quickly. Despite the gorgeous weather yesterday, I still had a craving for something warm and comforting. I grabbed a few ears of fresh corn and peeled back an inch of the husk to reveal the golden nuggets that were nice and plump even though it’s quite early for corn season.

I packed them up and set home to make a quick corn chowder. I started off by slicing the kernels off of the cob and boiling the cobs in milk.

This is essentially the same idea as making a stock. All of the corn flavor inside the cobs gets extracted and flavors the milk. After about an hour of simmering away, the milk tasted just like fresh corn.

In my chowder pot, I started off by rendering the fat out of some house cured pancetta until I was left with some crispy matchsticks of delicious pork belly.

I sweated some diced yellow onion, and tossed in the corn kernels and cubes of Yukon Gold potatoes before covering everything with the fresh corn flavored milk. I just let let it simmer away until the potatoes were cooked all the way through.

Lots of times, a flaky white fish is used in a fish chowder so I figured that a nice thick piece of Cod would be a perfect compliment to the corn chowder. I pan roasted it which creates a crispy crust on the top but leaves the inside moist and flaky. One touch from a fork and the Cod splits away into natural medallions that seem to melt on your tongue.

 The flavor was distinct yet delicate. I finished the dish with a sprinkle of fresh chives and a drizzle of really good Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I opened a bottle of 2007 Dumol Russian River Valley Chardonnay, which is pretty rare for me to do because I am not a huge domestic Chardonnay fan.

I cannot get over how most of them are overly oaked, almost to the point that I have to chew the wine it’s so thick and creamy. In my opinion, most producers go so far over the top with their domestic Chardonnays, that they completely over power any dish you put infront of it. I figured I’d give it another shot, and thankfully I did because the Dumol was actually quite balanced and food friendly. There was just the right amount of oak, fruit, and acidity that made it very pleasing even though it was a very big wine.

 There is lots of stone fruits and lemongrass flavors up front followed but a rich finish with hints of nutmeg and allspice. The flavor of buttered brioche toast lingers on your palate for minutes after you swallow. It might have been a little bit too powerful for the dainty Cod, but all the less worked great with the rich chowder. Maybe… just maybe I’m starting to enjoy domestic Chardonnay.

Whenever I eat lobster, I order it steamed, throw on a bib, roll up my sleeves, and dig in. It was a beautiful day Wednesday and I had the day off so I decided to walk down to Yankee Lobster and pick up a few monsters. I had the whole day to work with, so I wanted to experiment with a couple different preparations.

 Yankee Lobster is located right on the dock and has the freshest seafood imaginable. I literally walked right into the back door and pulled two 3lb. bugs out of the water and brought them back to the condo.

There are many different ways to kill a lobster and some people think that certain ways are more humane than others. You can throw them right into a pot of boiling water, put them in the freezer first, or just take your chef’s knife to its head. Because I wanted to cook the tail separately from the claws, I had an interesting afternoon to say the least.

I was forced to rip the lobsters in half with my bare hands while they were still alive in order to separate the tail from the rest of the body. This wouldn’t have been so bad if both separated parts stopped moving but the tail was jumping and curling around my wrist for up to half an hour afterwards.

It was like a scene from a creepy alien movie. The nerves inside the tail and the body were on the fritz, which made it extremely difficult to remove the shell, but after some wrestling around, I managed to yield a perfectly intact, raw lobster tail.

 I simply boiled the claws and removed the meat for my chilled lobster salad. Every remaining part, including the head was then thrown into a giant pot of water with onion, celery, parsley, peppercorns, lemons, and bay leaf to boil away for lobster stock.

 I rolled the lobster tails in paper thin slices of Prosciutto di San Daniele…gourmet pigs in a blanket.

 I gently seared one side, while I basted the rest of the tail in clarified butter until it was cooked throughout.

This was a tedious process but well worth it because the lobster meat was not overcooked. After it rested, I sliced it thin and served it atop a silky smooth puree of turnips laced with fresh vanilla bean. The combination of the luscious tail meat and salty Prosciutto, with the creamy and sweet turnip puree was heavenly.

 The underlying flavor of fresh vanilla bean brought the dish to a whole new level.

On the right side of the plate, I made a cold lobster claw meat salad with fresh fava beans, tangerine supremes, and mache lettuce rosettes. To lighten it up in contrast to its partner to the left, I opted to leave the mayonnaise out of the salad.

 Instead I tossed it with lemon juice and a heaping tablespoon of Dijon mustard. The balance between light and cold and rich and warm on the same plate was really cool and it displayed the versatility of the sea creature. It felt great to use essentially every part of the lobster for something. After 8 hours on the stovetop, the lobster stock made roughly three quarts to use at a later date.

The wine pairing for this dish was tough due to the clashing styles, but I ended up opening the 2008 Le Paradou Viognier. It was forwardly aromatic right from the start. Tons of orange peel, flowers, and exotic herbs on the nose. The wine is actually a lot bigger in style from what I anticipated and had a slightly creamy finish to it, which paired well with the Prosciutto wrapped tail. The wine had great acidity, and flavors of peach pit and tangerine zest.

In my opinion, the wine worked better with the cold salad stylistically but was still pleasant to drink with the warm dish. Viognier in general is a great white wine for Spring, whether it’s served with food or drank on its own. If you want to re-create this meal at home, trust me…. don’t get too attached to the lobsters before you start.

Easter wasn’t all eggs, bunnies and chicks this year. A whole red snapper made it’s way into our Easter baskets. After inhaling a post-church brunch, and aggressively snacking on jelly beans, chocolate, and Peeps all afternoon, we wanted to make something light and healthy for dinner.

The weather was cooperating so we decided to stuff and grill a whole fish. The sun was still out so there was no reason to come inside off the deck until the first pitch of the Red Sox Game of course.

There are positives and negatives to buying a whole fish. First of all it’s extremely cost efficient, just like buying anything whole or “in bulk”.

 Secondly, when you cook a fish whole, it’s very hard to overcook it. The skin and bones keep all the moisture and flavor inside resulting in succulent and flavorful seafood.

You also have to have patience to eat a whole fish (which typically I don’t). If you try to scarf the whole thing down you’re going to end up with a few bones stuck in your throat. In my opinion, the slow, precision of pulling the meat out from in between the rib cage with your fork only makes the meat taste better. Very similarly to eating a lobster… the food tastes better when you have to work for it.

The downside to eating a whole fish is based on presentation. Most people get grossed out by scales, fins, and of course eyeballs.

Personally, I think the presentation is awesome and the eyeballs are delicious when charred. I had the fish monger do most of the work, by slicing the abdomen and scaling the fish before I picked it up. After rubbing down the outside down with olive oil, I stuffed it with garlic, chilies, lemongrass, ginger, cilantro and slices of lime. When the fish hits the grill, the aromatic oils in all of the ingredients permeate throughout the entire fish.

I made a vinaigrette to spoon over the finished product using the same ingredients all pulsed together in the blender. After the skin was nice and crispy on one side, I had to work magic to get this thing to flip over. After losing some arm hair to the flames, I finally managed and successfully kept the fish in tact.

 I served it on top of some  marinated zucchini carpaccio, that I thinly sliced and drizzled with olive oil and fresh lime juice. On the side, I tossed some yellow wax beans in some Thai red chili paste and sprinkled them with sesame seeds. Koreans like to dress vegetables with sesame seeds and flaming hot chili paste, but this store bought paste was very tame; unlike my twist on a Corona.

 There’s nothing better than an ice cold Corona with a lime on a scorching hot day on the deck. I added a kick to mine by slicing a Serrano chili in half and inserting it into the bottle before my lime wedge. Sip after sip gets progressively hotter but still refreshing to say the least.

The ice cold beer with a touch of heat was perfect with the moist snapper that was loaded with lemony-citrus vinaigrette. It was a great way to cap off a wonderful Easter holiday; it only would have been better if we were seated at Fenway Park watching the Sox beat the Yankees but I don’t think they serve Grilled Red Snapper at Fenway.

With Passover approaching, I thought I’d attempt to make a Kosher for Passover meal for the first time in my life. Other than a handful of Bar Mitzvahs, a few friends, and a ‘Jews in America’ class in college, I don’t know much about Jewish tradition. I was forced to do a little research before preparing this meal and I’m afraid that after reading the Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), I am more confused than ever.

To the best of my ability, I tried to conceptualize the restrictions and came up with a Kosher friendly version of my favorite breakfast food; Eggs Benedict. The reason that Jews only eat Matzah on Passover is because it reminds them that they didn’t have time to bake the bread when they left the slavery of Egypt. They took the unleavened bread into the hot desert where it baked under the hot sun into a thin, crisp cracker.

Prohibited unleavened breads means my English Muffins are no good to me in this dish so I was in search of a replacement.

Even though they’re more commonly seen on a Hanukkah dinner table, I decided to make potato latkes because I used to eat them at friends’ houses growing up and from what I remembered, they were delicious.

I peeled and shredded five large russet potatoes into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. You’d be surprised at how much liquid is inside of a single potato. The ‘pouch’ of potato flakes needs to be rung out before adding other ingredients or frying or else they won’t get crispy on the outside. Five potatoes yielded almost two cups of starchy water! Once we got them as dry as possible, we added a shredded onion, sliced chives, eggs, and flour to the mix. Forming the mixture into patties is tricky because everything is pretty wet, but as soon as a blob hits the hot pan, everything stays in place.

I fried the latkes on both sides to a nice golden brown and finished them in a low oven until it was time to serve. Horseradish root or other bitter ingredients are often used in Passover food preparation to remind Jews of the bitter and cruel ways that the Pharoah treated them when they were enslaved.

I dropped the Hollandaise sauce from the menu (my right forearm muscle was happy about that) and made a horseradish creme fraiche to spoon over the top of my egg.

Creme fraiche is a cultured cream, similar to sour cream but thicker and not as tart. Since bacon, ham or any pork product for that matter was out of the question, I needed a protein to layer atop a perfectly poached egg. I chose to use a smoked salmon because you don’t have to cook smoked fish, making it Kosher, and it wasn’t beef. The combination of beef and the milk in the creme fraiche sauce would have been a no-no.

I cracked open a few extra large farm fresh eggs and dropped them into a shallow pan of simmering water to poach. Whenever you’re poaching eggs, add a cap-full of white vinegar to the water; it will help the eggs hold their shape. As soon as the whites solidified, I removed the eggs with a slotted spoon and placed them on top of their matching latkes, followed by a paper thin wafer of smoked salmon, and a dollop of horseradish creme fraiche.

 I spooned some smoked Herring roe (caviar) on top of of the mock Benedict to add another smoky and salty aspect to the dish. The chives that I used to garnish the plate had been soaking in salted water because of another Passover tradition. Jews soak their vegetables in salted water to remind them of the tears that were shed during slavery in Egypt. The first bite was exhilarating as I pierced the quivering orb with a prong of my fork. The rich, buttery, yolk flowed out onto the plate and weaved its way into the tiny crevices of the potato latke. The latke was crispy an salty, the yolk was creamy, the salmon was cold and smoky, and the sauce was light with a kick of bitter heat. It was as if Sir Benedict Arnold was sitting down for brunch with King David of Isreal.

I paired this meal with a sweet wine called Moscato. The Moscato grape is famous in the town of Asti in northern Italy but this one is made by Carmel. I like Moscato because in this state, before it’s aged, it isn’t syrupy sweet; there is just a little bit of residual sugar, keeping the wine crisp on the finish. This young wine is only 5.5% alcohol because the natural sugars (which are still present in the wine… just taste it) haven’t transformed into alcohol yet. Not only is this sweet white perfect with the rich breakfast feast, it’s also Kosher for Passover.

There is a fine line between wines that are kosher and wines that are kosher for Passover. Wines that are kosher are created under a rabbi’s immediate supervision, with only Sabbath-observant Jewish males touching the grapes throughout the entire winemaking process. While all wines require some sort of mold or yeast for fermentation, kosher for Passover wines must be made from a mold that was never grown on bread. You can distinguish kosher for Passover wines by the letter P on the back label or the ‘Kasher L’Pesach’ written in Hebrew, stamped on the back as well. Kosher for Passover or not, this breakfast for dinner meal was Lelakek Et Ha’etzba’ot!

Now that we’re all settled in to our new condo and the weather was great over the weekend, it was time to break in the new kitchen and test out our new grill.

It was strange cooking in a different kitchen after making countless meals in my old apartment. I knew my old countertop, stove, and grill like the back of my hand and now everything is brand new and needs to be broken in. I walked down the street to the little Mexican restaurant on the corner of the block and picked up a dozen of their homemade tortillas.

I have had these in the past and knew that they were a hundred times better than the store bought ones. A seafood taco is one of my favorite warm weather foods. When it comes to creating a fish taco, the possibilities are endless. I have had ceviche tacos, beer battered haddock tacos, grilled snapper tacos, you name it; all of which come with a plethora of different toppings, sauces, and salsas.

No matter what I put in a fish taco, I always try to balance different flavors and textures, all while keeping the ingredients light, because that is what a fish taco is all about. Unlike its beefy cousin, a fish taco won’t leave orange grease stains on your t-shirt.

I decided to marinate some jumbo shrimp in some Ponzu (Japanese citrus marinade), dried cumin, and a few Serrano chilies for some heat. Peeling and deveining shrimp is one of the most tedious tasks you’ll ever have to do in a kitchen but I used the time to get acquainted with the new space.

I saved all of the shrimp shells and stored them in the freezer to make stock down the road. I knew that I wanted to make a crunchy slaw or salsa so in order to balance that, I needed a creamy sauce for the shrimp to sit in. I made a simple cilantro sour cream in the blender and I threw the last chili in there for some extra heat. The color of the sauce was a beautiful pastel green, and with a touch of lime juice it was perfect. Due to my heavy hand in the spicy chili department, I needed something sweet to balance it out.

I diced up a watermelon into tiny cubes because I thought the subtly sweet flavor and extreme juiciness would help refresh our tastebuds.

 Most people frown upon serving cheese with seafood, but in this case, Feta cheese was a perfect fit. Believe it or not, the milky, salty Feta combined with the sweet and juicy melon was a great combination.

I decided to make a watermelon-Feta salsa with some sliced red onion, and chives. The triple threat of the pungent onions, sweet melon, and creamy, salty cheese was delicious on its own, let alone smothered inside a taco. I fired up my new Vermont Castings grill (which the movers explained was the heaviest piece of equipment they’ve ever moved up four flights of stairs) and was instantly speechless. This bad boy has more bells and whistles that I even knew what to do with.

 The two dozen shrimp I threw on back right corner looked like ants from the top of a skyscraper. As soon as the shrimp were cooked, I threw them into the warmed tortillas with a spread of the cilantro sour cream, and a pile of the fresh salsa.

The pop of the charred, succulent shrimp in every bite, complimented by abundance of intense flavors, was sending my mouth into overdrive. I opened a bottle of 2008 Bodegas Val di Sil Godello to serve with these handheld treats. Godello is a lesser common Spanish white grape with tons of character. It is very similar to a Sauvignon Blanc; light, crisp, and refreshing.

This Godello is not overly complex but extremely pleasant and perfect with fish tacos and warm weather. The nose was slightly floral and the wine is bursting with acidity and green apple flavors. The good thing about fish tacos, is that they’re so light and healthy, you can easily find enough room for five in your stomach.