Santa Monica Shrimp Scampi

So, the east point kitchen has temporarily relocated to a townhome in Santa Monica. The townhome is on the eastern boundary, although not quite the eastern most point of the city's terminus, but close enough that we might say we are at the east point of Santa Monica.

Not that any of that matters. More importantly, we now have an antique stovetop that barely heats a pot of water to cook pasta, an oven that decides when it is ready to heat up, and a kitchen with just a tad less space for stockpots and sauce pans. Oh well. When the weather is perpetually pleasant outside and the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean are only a ten minute bike ride away, you learn to live with a few things.

Tonight we are trying shrimp scampi. I've made this a few times before, but this time I want to record the recipe.

2 tbsp olive oil (about)

pound shrimp

juice of a lemon, or so

1/2 cup white wine

lemon zest

parsley

5 garlic cloves

Cook shrimp in olive oil. Remove. Add garlic. Perhaps some cracked black pepper. Once fragrant, add lemon juice and white wine. Let the liquid cook down. Return the shrimp to the pan and toss. Add the pasta, some pasta water, and let the flavors meld. Finally, grate in some lemon zest. Top with parmesan and parsley and serve.

Cognac Cherries

Here is an adaptation of several different recipes on brandied (or really, cognac) cherries.

I've run the recipe with fresh cherries, frozen cherries, and dried cherries. Fresh are my least favorite. Dried are by far the best.

Bring 3/4 cup of sugar in about 1 1/4 cup of water to a soft boil. Simmer with cinnamon stick or two, a couple cloves, cardamom pods (about 4), and anything else you want to spice the sugar. Simmer about five minutes. Basically, reduce it to the thickness you want the syrup. Add 1 cup of cognac.

I put cherries directly into a jar and then spoon the mixture over them. Then seal and store!

Turkey Breast

So... here's one that could cover a week of sandwich meat and one family dinner. Do a turkey breast!

I cured a turkey breast with a 3:2 ratio of salt to sugar. Then I bagged it and sous vide cooked it for 24 hours at 131. Then I finished it on the grill, and hit it over and over again with a butter, olive oil, garlic, lemon baste.

Nice and tender. Easy to shave off turkey for sandwiches. Easy to block out and serve with whatever else you happen to be making (mac n cheese, ancient grains, whatever!)

Plus, it's in the fridge. It lasts a week. And no bones or mess to deal with.

I would love to try this cooking with the baste and see if it works. Might be the next experiment.

Sirloin pork roast

I did not have an approved sous vide recipe for a pork loin roast. Recipes on several different reputable sites suggested that you could cook a 3-5 pound roast anywhere from 135 to 150 degrees anywhere from 2.5 to 12 hours. Christ.

I settled on a compromise. I am cooking a 2.5 pound roast at 140 degrees for five hours.

Then I'm going to douse it in a butter, apple cider vinegar, herb mixture and roast it at 450 degrees for at least ten minutes, maybe more. We shall see.

Granted, internal temp has to be right, or we may have to roast it for longer at a lower temp... here's hoping. Results to be reported.

Update 1: the bag broke sometime after an hour and a half. I rebagged it, cleaned the sous vide, and got it going again. Don't know how long it was in a hot water bath, but, well, them's the breaks.

Update 2: Followed instructions. Pork came out tough. Okay, but the bone in sirloin was a pain in the ass to cut. Need a new recipe, frankly.

Swordfish Sous Vide

One swordfish half can typically be turned into three or four steaks. For a quick weeknight meal, here's my preparation:

For the marinade and sauce:

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp mirin
3/4 in. ginger piece
garlic clove

microplane the ginger and garlic into the mixture. I typically do this sauce up on the weekend while doing bulk food prep, but it only takes a few minutes.

Cut swordfish, bag it with the sauce, and let it marinate for at least fifteen minutes. Meanwhile,

• Fill pot of water and heat to 128 degrees.
• Toast sesame seeds. 
• Set aside and let the saucier pan cool. 
• Measure out 1 cup of medium or short grained sushi-style rice, prepare 1 1/4 cups water
• Snap the stalks from asparagus, put on a cookie sheet, prep with olive oil, salt and pepper
• heat oven to 425 degrees (you can broil them in the summer time when you don't want to heat up the interior)

Add swordfish, with marinade, to the water when it is properly heated and cook for thirty minutes.

After ten minutes, put asparagus into the oven.

After twenty minutes, start rice.

In saucier, prepare 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp plain rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp salt. Stir and cook until combined. Set aside.

When swordfish is finished, remove, and pat dry. Put sauce into a small saucepan and prepare to reduce on the stove.

Heat an iron skillet, add one pat of butter and a touch of olive oil, and sear the swordfish for thirty seconds on each side.

Plate the suckers. Then add the asparagus. Then add the rice, after coating it with the vinegar mixture. Drizzle sauce on the fish. DONE.

Blueberry Shrub

We had frozen blueberries, needed to make a cocktail to take to someone's house, and in a panic tried to make a blueberry syrup. The result was pedestrian and unbalanced, something akin to cobbler. But my hosts were, or pretended to be, delighted. They called it a shrub.

So I made a shrub the next time around.

3 cups of frozen blueberries
2 cups of apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. (scant) chile flakes
3 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves

First up, take the blueberries to a food processor with enough apple cider vinegar to keep it moving. Then drop it into a saucepan along with everything else, and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for one hour, with the occasional stir.

Take it off heat, put it in a water bath to cool it down. Remove the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.

Put it in the Vitamix.

This part is tricky. The heat from the shrub will make blending it hard. You have to do it with the top off, and you can't turn it up too much. I would really have preferred to put it on high for ten minutes, but we ended up on a middle speed. Oh well.

Strain it back into the saucepan. Simmer and reduce. It took me at least an hour to do this, and in the end I reduced it by 1/3. This gives you, almost a glaze.

Cocktails to try with a shrub:

• Shrub and bourbon. Top with soda water.
• Gin and Shrub. Top with soda water.
• Blueberry soda (just soda water!)
• Tom Collins, just substitute the shrub. 

Those are remarkably uninspired...

Brazino, Whole Brazino

I'm kind of a big deal...

preheat oven to 425.

Sear the Branzino, three minutes per side, in olive oil.

Stuff the Branzino with lemon wedges and a rosemary sprig.

Put on a rack and roast for 10-15 minutes.

Remove. Turn off the oven, stupid.

Serve with caper butter.

UPDATE:

I really can't abide the searing. It just took the skin off.I also cooked this on a rack, but it was a rack designed for a chicken, and it was difficult to get the Branzino off of it without it falling apart. One could hoist it on onion rounds or lemon rounds, although the moisture would prevent crisping I imagine. This is clearly something I still need to work on...

swordfish sous vide

Here's a super easy weekday swordfish meal.

One steak, cut into thirds. Not too thick. Quick trick: if you are saving it, put it straight in the freezer bag and freeze it.

Marinade:

3 parts soy sauce
2 parts mirin
microplaned garlic and ginger to taste. One clove garlic, a good one inch piece of ginger.

Sous vide: 130 degrees for 30 minutes.

Pull it, dry it, sear it.

Reserve the sauce. Reduce it by half, pour back over the swordfish to serve.

Weekday Meal Schedules 2020

Middle age brings all kinds of challenges, none more annoying than the slightly more delicate stomach and the tendency to keep on weight. So, working up some New Years' Resolutions, and one of them will be to make sure that we have a weekly meal schedule. I let this slide a bit this last Fall.

Never again.

Sample schedule, to match my wife and daughter's rigorous schedules.

Sunday:     Chicken (or some other leftover producing food)
Monday:    Salmon and asparagus and couscous (or other fish)
Tuesday:    Pasta (vegetarian) and broccoli (Also: prepare Tuna for Wednesday)
Wednes.:   Tuna and/or leftover pasta
Thursday:  Leftovers (Sunday food) plus greens
Friday:       Nice meal. Or frozen pizza. Depends on weekend schedule.
Saturday:   Wildcard.

I'm going to experiment with other dishes and add to this post some other schedules. Frankly, I would like one more vegetarian option in here.

chuck steak

Here's one that could become a standby, although it is a bit much for three. We ate it for two nights, and still have leftovers.

Chuck Steak.

I did not even know there was such a thing, truth be told. I was familiar with the chuck roast. With ground chuck But as a steak? The front shoulder is the hardest working part of any cow. It is flavorful, to be sure, but needs slow roasting to break down the fibrous tissue. Steak hits the grill and comes off within ten minutes (maybe fifteen, depending on whether it is two or three fingers thick). No dice.

So, enter sous vide.

I seasoned the steak heartily with four seasons rub, but then added additional salt and a ton of cracked black pepper.

Then I dropped this steak into a hot water bath the night before at 129 degrees and set the timer for twenty-four hours. Come morning I added about two cups of water to the pot. It had lost another two by the twenty-four hour mark.

The grill was prepared to high heat. I melted some butter in a pan, added olive oil, salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar. The steak got the hot treatment for about three flips, one and a half minutes a side.

The cutting board got an olive oil pour, salt, and chopped parsley. I dropped the steak on that, flipped it, and sprinkled the remaining parsley over it.

The result: a tender, tasty, meaty steak. Easy for a weeknight meal. One can pan sear it rather than start a fire, to save on time and trouble.