Daily Archives: August 9, 2009

Fresh Fish

Coming to a location near me. A location I can walk to. Starting next month approximately 12 vendors will set up in an interior space right here in our back yard. We went to a market today, mainly hippie clothing, jewelry and other items. They also had prepared food and about eight farmers market stalls, one which had the most beautiful mushrooms I’ve ever seen since Mendocino – chanterelles. But by then I’d run out of cash. I bought yellow and red cherry tomatoes, some organic summer wheat berries to grow wheatgrass, 1# of frozen sea scallops that look gorgeous, and 1# of freshly flown-in Coho salmon, tail sections. I re-froze the scallops, cooked one salmon fillet and froze the other. I got a summer sun hat as there is no atmosphere here to keep the sun off one’s face, and Jim bought a leather one evocative of Indiana Jones.

For fresh fish here, you’ll probably get trout from the local rivers. Otherwise it’s flown in. But the Coho was gorgeous. I looked for pin bones and there were none, easily removed the skin with my fish filleting knife and cooked a marinade of 1/3 c soy sauce, 1 c water, several 1/4 inch coins of ginger, two large crushed garlic cloves, a pinch of freshly ground red pepper flakes and black pepper, and a few drops of roasted sesame oil. I used the microwave and cooked the sauce on high for about six minutes then let it cool. When Jim’s ribeye (he’s allergic to anything that swims) was ready on the grill outside, I put the salmon in the marinade and guessed cooking times but only used 50% power so it wouldn’t cook too quickly. I probably did it 6-7 minutes, flipping it carefully midway and ended up with the tail end a bit flaky and the rest just as I wanted it. I wish I had some lemon but wasn’t going to go back to the grocery store and I’ve two limes but they didn’t fit my personal flavor profile.

I served the ribeye and the salmon with an organic baked potato and 1/2 of the red and yellow cherry tomatoes, sauteed with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and dried basil from Penzey’s.

Here’s a photo of a unique welded metal “see saw” at our first try at Park Silly Market:

We had lunch at our favorite burger joint then went to see Julie and Julia across the street. It was a good weekend but now Jim’s coming down with something. Not good news. Husbands are never good patients, especially when they brought back some bug from the office, you have it worse than him and he still moans and asks for a cup of tea. Not to mention he’s on contract so every hour he doesn’t work is an hour he doesn’t get paid.

Luckily we have plenty of fresh OJ, chinese herbs, tea and chicken broth. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. Cheers, Dee

The Spirit of Julia Child

lives. While we lost the culinary lioness five years ago, Meryl Streep has breathed life into the spirit of this American icon (one icon playing another) for a mainly enjoyable movie. Two of the first cookbooks I ever purchased were volumes I and II of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You can buy them direct from this site on Amazon just by clicking on my exhaustively researched Cookbooks section at right. The credits today stated that the initial volume is in its 49th printing, that’s about one a year as I count. They share my precious bookshelves (well now climate-controlled storage) with the likes of Simca Beck, James Beard, and many others.

I’m sorry to say that the character of Julie in the movie is hard to identify with. Who can compare a Cordon Bleu graduate who writes the seminal book on French cooking for Americans (without servants in their kitchens) and changes the world? Especially given a depressed, narcissistic wife in Queens who cooks all the dishes in the book in one year and blogs about them. An admirable pursuit and she got an audience, book and movie and is no longer working as a government drone, which is what she wanted. Even the ebullient fairy princess of Enchanted couldn’t make this woman worth caring about. But what they accomplished was night and day.

Perhaps if I was 6′ 2″ I could have faced the disapproving head of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and the stony-faced room of professional male chefs that Mrs. Child, the neophyte, chose to join. Probably not. I also was not blessed with the je ne sais quoi that was Julia Child. Twenty years ago when I quit the NYC rat race and went to cooking school, women were accepted. Perhaps not after graduation, which is why I chose to apprentice in the kitchen of a female chef and cookbook author.

The first half of school we learned the basics of French cuisine. I joked at one point that we should have checked our weight and cholesterol before we began and after Phase I. Classic cooking: butter; cream; eggs. And we had to eat everything we cooked. Egg day was always feared, for its difficulty as much as knowing eggs were all we would get to eat all day. Phase II brought in a stagiere who stocked the kitchen for us depending upon the lesson, and cooked us a balanced lunch. Consider that we spent two solid weeks on pastry and baking, so we had to have something nutritious to get us through what was nearly a 12-hour day for me with commuting. There were eight students in the class so we all got individual attention. I’ve had really great teachers in grade school, high school and college (not many, but a few really stand out even years later) but this was literally the most fun I’ve ever had in school. Luckily so, because I blew my entire life savings on it.

One hopes that this book and movie will bring a new generation to cooking, instead of take-out and the prepared aisles of the grocery store. It made such a difference when I shopped the outside (produce, meat, fish, dairy) aisles and only ventured inside for olive oil, rice, soy sauce, pasta and other staples.

Instead of my regular sign-off this evening, permit me to say “Bon Appetit!”