Amy's Food Adventures

And Now We Cook

Visiting Greece

Last night we had a Greek fiesta, fairly impromptu, brought on by the fact that I spotted a boneless baby leg of lamb in the butcher case and a basket of baby eggplants (they're about 2" each) at the farmer's market. The menu came together easily.

The lamb got marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, oregano and garlic (lots of garlic) for a few hours, then broiled for about ten minutes on each side (we like it rare-ish).

The eggplants became a kind of Mediterranean stew. I sauteed a large onion, thinly sliced, in a few tablespoons of olive oil and then added about six cloves of sliced Garlic. When all of it was faintly golden, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a large can of tomato sauce, a big pinch of thyme and some salt and pepper. After a few stirs, I tossed in the baby eggplants. I had removed their tops and quartered them. The whole thing simmered gently for about 35 or 40 minutes.

We like pilaf with grilled lamb. It's easy. Just melt a few tablespoons of butter and in it brown long grain white rice and a handful of finely broken thin spaghetti. Then add yellow or black raisins, sliced almonds, and salt and pepper and water or chicken broth (we use half and half). You'll need two cups of liquid for every cup of rice. Bring to a boil and cover and simmer gently for about 20 minutes. Easily reheated in the microwave.

We also had a kind of middle eastern salad. The dressing is a vinaigrette flavored with pressed garlic and (preferably fresh) chopped mint and oregano. The salad is shredded lettuce (we use romaine, you want something crunchy), cherry tomatoes, cucumbers (peeled, deseeded, quartered, and sliced). You can also add bits of Feta cheese, olives, radish slices, and chopped red onion.

For dessert we had a Jacques Pepin "cheat." Buy a pound cake (from the freezer) and slice it length-wise into three layers. Make a buttercream frosting from half a stick of soft butter, 2 ounces of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juiuce, and 1/2 cup of confectioners' sugar, whirled in the food processor. Use it to put the cake back together and frost the top. It needs to set up in the refrigerator for at least a few hours. We served it with fresh apricots, halved, pitted, and poached in sugar syrup flavored with lemon peel, lemon juice, and ginger. Yum!

This meal is full of options for leftovers, if you have some. The easy thing to do is to mix slivers of the leftover lamb into the eggplant and pile it into a flattish casserole. Cover it with 2 cups of bechamel (white) sauce, medium weight (that means 4 tablespoons of butter to 4 tablespoons of flour to 2 cups of milk), flavored with nutmeg. Sprinkle a bit of grated Parmesan cheese on top and put it into the oven for 20 minutes or so.

Turn the leftover cake and apricots into a kind of trifle. Cut the cake into slices or small wedges and use some of it line a glass bowl. Drizzle some of the apricot syrup onto the cake and place some apricots and/or some berries on top. cover with the rest of the cake and then top with your choice of custard (from scratch or from a box), vanilla pudding, or whipped cream. Top with some berries and a few almonds.

Roast Beef for Father's Day

I was feeling sorry for my husband since our daughter couldn't be with him on Father's Day. (She more than made up for it by taking him out for dinner a few nights earlier and then coming for the Greek dinner the night after, but I thought he deserved somethng special.)

This is the easiest way to have a special dinner that I know. We had a 1-pound piece of filet mignon (I guess it was a Chateaubriand), roasted for abot 25 minutes aat 350 and therefore quite rare, served with our favorite Pommes Gratin Dauphinoise, right out of Julia Child, but made just for two. This is not hard. Just a few peeled, sliced Russet potatoes lightly cooked in milk or half-and-half until just tender, then drained and placed in a buttered gratin dish. Dot the potatoes with bits of butter and sprinkle with shredded Swiss cheese. Pour the milk or half-and-half in to the depth of half the potatoes and cook for 40 minutes in the 350 oven until golden brown. We had some fresh peas cooked with shredded mint to finish things off and a heavenly bakery delight -- layers of chocolate meringue with hazelnut buttercream and white chocolate mousse -- in miniature.

Breakfast with a treat, too. We started off with leftover home-made Gazpacho, followed by crab cakes (purchased at the local market), browned in butter, accompanied by a huge fresh fruit salad.

An altogether satisfactory day.

Dining at Home without Cooking

Sometimes you don't want to eat out, but you're not exactly in the mood to cook, either.

I confess to eating pizza or Chinese take-out occasionally, but not with enthusiasm. However, in our neighborhood, there are lots of resources for dining in without doing much cooking.

Friday night we had a splendid dinner of rack of lamb, complete with the de rigeur mustard and bread crumb coating, stuffed baked potatoes flavored with chives. with some home made gazpacho to start. (We could have bought gazpacho, too, but I like my own too much). Dessert with what is called filet of watermelon in our house (big chunks of watermelon, seeds removed).

We did something similar for brunch on Sunday morning. We had the rest of the gazpacho, followed by fabulous crab cakes which required nothing but a brief cooking in some hot butter. We served them with some doctored up cocktail sauce and big bowls of fruit salad (fresh strawberries, blueberries, and what are probably the last of the navel organes).

We do this a lot -- with no guilt at all -- whenever we want to eat in, but don't feel like cooking. We usually combine some purchased things and some things we quickly whip together (a salad, for example). It isn't cheaper than cooking from scratch, but it's a lot cheaper than eating out and makes me much more willing to extend myself when I'm really cooking.

Father's Day dinner, for example, is planned for a bit more culinary labor.

And on Saturday night, since we had shopped at the local Farmer's Market, which has a real butcher shop, we enjoyed Calves Liver, sauteed with Vidalia Onions and dressed with a Balsamic Vinegar pan gravy, Mashed Potatoes, and a baby argula salad with roasted beets in Balsamic vinaigrette. Dessert was a cherry pie from a Pennsylvania Dutch bakery at the market. Those kinds of results are worth the cooking!

The All American Hamburger

I've never thought of myself as much of a meat eater (I could survive entirely on cheese and veggies), but I do love hamburgers. Of course, they must be perfect.

Perfection in restaurants is not so easy to attain. There are the usual problems:

(1) The wrong kind of meat. Hamburgers made of very high quality, ultra-lean meat aren't better; they're drier and less tasty. The best hamburgers are made of well marbled meat with at least 15% fat content. If you're not willing to eat that much fat you should consider veggie burgers -- or making hamburgers at home where you can cheat and replace the fat with moist vegetables (I like soft sauteed chopped onions).

(2) The wrong degree of doneness. Of course, if you like your hamburger well done, who am I to tell you tht's wrong? On the other hand, I know it tastes like a very old shoe. The best hamburgers are somewhere between RARE and MEDIUM. I like MEDIUM RARE myself. Today, you need to be very stern to achieve this personal choice in many restaurants who believe they must serve only medium or well cooked beef to avoid lawsuits.

(3) Ridiculous ingredients and condiments. I'm a classicist. I like a Medium Rare beef burger, with a thin slice of melted cheddar cheese, on a soft bun. It should be topped with a slice of ripe tomato and a slice of raw onion. I'll add yellow mustard (and picckle relish if I can find it), at the table. I don't want shredded lettuce, mayonnaise, special sauces, fried onions, or pickle slices. I might have some catsup if tomatoes are hopelessly out of season. If you want bacon, blue cheese, or some other exotic object on your hamburger, please do, by all means, but don't expect me to eat it.

The best restaurant hamburgers happen at the ends of the scale: at diners and cafes, where they make them the old fashioned way and at very good restaurants where they believe they're offering you a retro experience. At the high end, however, you must beware of chefs who decide, for your own good, to add some grace note to justify a higher (much higher) price. That could range from a slice of foie gras (I adore it, but not on my hamburger, please), to Dijon mustard (all wrong here), to something silly like a kiwi-mango salsa (yes, I had that once; or, rather, it was offered to me and I scraped it off).

You can make great hamburgers at home, on either an outdoor grill or a very hot grill pan (the kiind with raised ridges) on your stove. Make the patties out of fat-enough beef. Don't add anything (just use good meat) and don't fool around with the meat, just pat it into an oval, gently. Don't make the burgers very thick unless you like them very rare. We grill them on both sides until they're just beautifully browned but still soft to the touch of a pressing finger and serve them on a toasted soft bun with ball park mustard, onion and tomato slices, and Heinz pickle rlish. Our favorite go-withs are white corn on-the-cob in season or a French potato salad (right out of Julia, no mayonnaise) and some green salad with a tangy dressing. Divine!

P.S. in spite of the fact that I don't like exotic hamburgers, I must confess the best hamburger I ever ate was at an impromptu lunch in New York. Our friends (whom we were visiting for brunch) got a call from their friends with a big terrace and a barbecue. They had hosted a big cocktail party the night before and had many pounds of steak tartare (made of hand ground filet mignon tails (lots of fat), seasoned with anchovies, Dijon mustard, tons of black pepper, and tabasco sauce. They made this mixture into hamburgers and served them rare on soft buns with more mustard and a very French potato salad. We've been trying to duplicate them for years.

On the Road

If you love to cook, being on the road for long periods of time can be very trying. I`ve been on the road almost constantly for the last few weeks, eating airplane, airport, hotel, and sometimes restaurant food and I can`t wait to go home and Cook Something.

Here are some of my adventures on the road:

I`ve nearly given up on edible airline food, but on a trip from NYC (JFK) to San Francisco, American Airlines surprised me. I got a big bowl of yellow rice (tinted with tumeric, I`d guess), topped with sauteed strips of red pepper and green and yellow squash plus grilled chicken breast. Accompanied by a roll and a salad, it was amazingly good. If only airlines understood that sticking to things that can survive reheating is the trick!

In San Jose, all the lovely shops behind the Fairmount Hotel near the convention center have disappeared, the victims no doubt, of the the dot.com bubble. But I did find one of the best hamburger`s I`ve ever eaten at Johnny Rockets, a kind of fake 50's dinner. Complete with your choice of a milk shake or a root beer float.

And on the way back to the east coast, via Los Angeles, I found a terrific Mexican meal at Cantina La Chula in LAX (the Delta terminal). I had incredible corn tamales filled with fresh corn kernels, cheese, and green chilis. So good I had to have two.

Back in Phladelphia for about 40 hours (not long enough to shop and cook), we took our daughter for dim sum at our current favorite, tucked down on Washington Avenue in the old Italian market, where there are now dozens of Viet Namese and other ethnic reataurants and shops. Best dim sum in Philly, I think. (But not in the U.S. -- those are still at Yank Sing in San Francisco. I`m looking forward to having some in a few weeks when I'm there for JavaOne).

Back on the road, at my hotel in Montreal I ordered a Caesar salad. I thought I was safe, because we always get great Caesar salads at our favorite seafood restaurant in Montreal, down in the Old City. But this Caesar had been, unfortunately, on a world tour, and it was very weary. It spilled out of a tortilla shell (irrelevant and silly) and was trimmed with red pepper strips, grated carrot, and who knows what else. It did have authentic bits of anchovy, but whoever had made the dressing had clearly never read the recipe. I refer them to this blog.

I'm busy plotting a weekend of Father's Day goodies for my husband who will be the beneficiary of my need to cook.

Hail, Caesar!

Making a Caesar Salad and offering it to a guest can start a religious war. Everyone has an opinion of what goes into -- and what should stay out of -- a perfect Caesar salad.

Of course, we have perfected our ideal. This is the wettest, most garlicky Caesar salad you're likely to encounter. We recommend that married couples only indulge if both parties agree to have some. And we promise you that your environment will be vampire-free for at least 24 hours!

Caesar salad is based on romaine lettuce. You need it's springy texture to stand up to the dressing. On the other hand, I want nothing to do with a Caesar salad made of the dark green outer leaves. You have two choices; buy a Romaine (or two) and discard the tougher, darker, outer leaves or buy a package (they seem to come in sets of three) of baby romaines, nearly devoid of dark leaves. Separate, wash and spin dry the leaves. Decide on a critical decision: are you making classic Caesar salad; if so tear or cut the leaves in halves or thirds. If you are making designer Caesar salad, keep the leaves whole.

Ignore any recipe that suggests you use any other kind of lettuce. It may be a salad; it might even be good; but it isn't Caesar salad.

Now, on to the dressing.

We finesse the raw egg argument (some folks are nervous about using uncooked egges) by using an egg substitute like EggBeaters. It's a little lower in fat and calories and you'll never tell the difference here. For a generous serving for two (or a normal serving for four), measure 1/4 cup of egg substitute (the equivalent of one egg) into the salad bowl. Beat in olive oil (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup), until the sauce starts to mount (thicken). Now add the juice of one lemon, 2 (or more) tablespoons of red wine vinegar, 2 splashes of Worcestershire Sauce, and as many dashes of Tabasco as you like (we use 5 or 6). Beat furiously. Add 1 or 2 large cloves of garlic, peeled and put through the garlic press and beat again. Now add finely grated Peccorino Romano cheese. We use about a cup to start and keep adding until we have a thick, creamy sauce. (I find that 2 cupes is too much, but you definitely want more than one cup.)

For classic Caesar, you now add the torn Romaine, a handful or two of croutons (home made is best, of course), and toss vigorously. Don't let it sit too long -- it will get soggy.

For the designer variety, you put a portion of whole romaine leaves on each salad plate (use big ones) and drizzle on a few tablespoons of dressing. At a restaurant, they'd eliminate a sprinkling of croutons and use a thin slice or two of French bread, toasted with a sprinkling of Romano or Parmesan cheese, as giant (designer) croutons.

That's it. There are valid additions: Some anchovies (2-4) crushed into the dressing at the begining or whole anchovies as a garnish if you know your diners like them. You can use Parmesan cheese instead of Romano for a milder taste.

There are ridiculous additions which should be avoided. Here are some of the ones I've seen: designer lettuces (like mesclun) which are completely wasted -- they just wilt. In Canada and Australia, we've consistenly been served Caesar salads with bacon crumbles. We don't know why. It doesn't taste bad, it's just not right. We've also seen cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, and other garnishes added. Wrong! Even worse are the Caesar salads dressed with mayonnaise-based dressings, created in an effort to avoid raw-egg-based recipes. Or the ones with no strong flavors at all.

Caesar salad is perfect with a grilled steak (you can eat a smaller one, because it's quite filling). It's also good as a main course, on its own or accompanied by poached or grilled (and properly seasoned, please) chicken breast (sliced), shrimps, or slivers of rare lamb or roast beef.

The only trouble with getting addicted to this kind of passionately flavored Caesar Salad is that almost none of the sad objects sold on menus as Caesar salad will ever content you again.

A Traveling Lamb

It's always interested me how you can take a few main ingredients and take them to quite different culinary destinations depending on small differences in preparation, seasoing, and accompiaments. Last night we took a boned leg of lamb out on tour.

This lamb decided to be Greek, but we've taken legs of lamb to France, India, and England, too. We seasoned the boned lamb (it was a very small, infant one) with a bit of olive oil, sea salt, ground pepper, rosemary, and Greek oregano, then seared it well on both sides in an oven-suitable saute pan. When both sides were quite brown, it went into the oven for about 20=25 minutes at 350 degrees to finish cooking (timing depends on the lamb's size, of course).

To accompany our lamb to Greece, we started with the Cold Yogurt and Dill soup we've mentioned in an earlier post and plated it with a rice pilaf cooked in chicken broth and seasoned with a few toasted pine nuts and some butter and pepper. It went to the table with a salad of shredded romaine, grape tomatoes, cucumber slices, and bits of feta cheese, all dressed with a vinaigrette blended with a crushed clove of garlic and pinches of fresh chopped mint and oregano.

We finished with some fruit, but if we hadn't started with the yogurt soup I might have picked yogurt drizzled with honey.

If you'd rather take your lamb to India, you might pat it with a mix of garlic and ginger paste and season the pilaf with some curry powder. We'd probably serve that with raita (yogurt with grated or chopped cucumber, seasoned with a bit of cayenne or cumin) and a chutney -- Major Gray's out of a bottle or Amy's Tomato Chutney out of the everlasting jar in the fridge.

We usually save the French lamb for a larger crowd, patting it with olive oil, rosemary and garlic before browning and roasting it. We usually accompany it with pommes gratin dauphinoise (a Julia Child specialty which also appears, in some version, in nearly every French cookbook). It's basically thinly sliced potatoes, first lightlly cooked in milk, then layered into a buttered casserole with salt and pepper, bits of butter, and milk or cream (to about half the depth of the potatoes) and baked until golden brown. There are lots of variations, from additing garlic, shredded Gruyere cheese, or other ingredients, to skipping the pre-cooking of the potatoes (which I consider essential). We'd serve another French style cooked vegetable, perhaps string beans, and a classic green salad with vinaigrette dressing. You can pick the dessert.

An English version might take the seasoned (probably just salt, pepper and perhaps a bit of garlic) lamb from browning to oven and accompany it with oven roasted potatoes, glazed carrots, string beans, and a green salad with quartered small tomatoes (the English call them Salad Tomatoes). It would be served as a mid-day Sunday dinner, and a very good one.

In all cases, try not to slice the part of the lamb that isn't going to get eaten for this meal. It keeps better in one piece. Then you can choose to use it up as a delectable addition to a composed salad, an ingredient to a curry, or the basis of Shepherd's pie. We'll talk about all of those soon.

A Classic Barbecue

We leave the grilling to our daughter, Florence, who lives in a suburban house with a big deck, a big gas grill, and a backyard herb of deer (we don't grill them).

Florence loves classic menus and this Memorial Day was no exception. After a snack of salsa and chips we dined on crunchy Bratwurst sausages and rosy London Broil, both done on the grill. The London Broil had been marinated gently in wine and spices first. A mango salsa, spiked with fresh Jalapenos, accompanied the London Broil.

Since some of the season's first White Corn was on the menu, I didn't really eat anything else before I had tried an ear. A mesclun salad with a vinaigrette based on many vinegars (Balsamic, Apple Cider, and Rice Wine), mustard, garlic and honey rounded out the main course.

Dessert was a very creamy, meringue-topped key lime pie.

I love it when someone else cooks holiday meals -- nothing to do at the end but say "Thank you!"

Dining In -- and Dining Out

Sometimes (it seems to be Friday in our house) we don't want to go out to dinner, but no one wants to cook. We could just do take-out, but we find that ordinary takeout -- Chinese, Pizza, or whatever -- is overpriced and very mediocre. So we have our own version of takeout -- a kind of combination of things that can be bought partially or entirely prepared, and a little light lifting at home.

For example, last Friday we stopped at a newly favorite neighborhood shop that specializes in seafood. We bought several of their incredible crab cakes (they seem to be 98% lump crab meat) and a pint of their garlic mashed potatoes. We also bought a few of their roasted red peppers annointed with olive oil and dusted with parsely and chopped garlic.

This shop has perfected the idea of partially cooking its seafood (so all the external deep frying, for example, is done) and telling you exactly how long and at what temperature to heat it. In the 18 minutes that it takes to warm up the mashed potatoes and crab cakes we made the roasted peppers into the topping for a shredded romaine salad, dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette, sliced a lemon, and tarted up the cocktail sauce with extra horseradish. We also put some sliced pineapple (fresh pineapple comes already cored and sliced at my produce store) and raspberries in a bowl. Dinner was served.

Later in the weekend, we had lunch at the Philadelphia Art Museum. Have you noticed that nearly every major art museum now has a fairly polite restaurant to lure its members into visiting more often? Each is different (MOMA in New York's is high-end northern Italian, Gertrude's at the Baltimore Museum of Art is Chesapeake Regional Cuisine), but they're all alike in their gentrified service, their abundance of wine, and their attempt to offer upper middle class food. (The best of all is the Rat's Restaurant at The Grounds for Sculpture outside of Trenton, NJ. It's a visit to Giverny in the middle of a giant 22-acre sculpture garden.)

We've had lots of good meals at these restaurants -- we like to go to museums and the cuisine and ambience is definitely designed for us. After a tour of the Manet and the Sea exhibit we lunched at the Philadelphia Museum Restaurant and did well with the appetizers (mushroom soup and a beet and mache salad ornamented with a Roquefort mousse) and even better with the entrees (a lobster club sandwich and a too-generous smoked salmon frittats), but floundered hopelessly on the deserts. Too bad neither the chef, nor the waitress, knew what a tuille or a clafoutis looked like -- our sarcastic answer to "Did you like that?" was obviously wasted. But fewer calories on dessert just means more for later.