Shrimp Scampi with (no) Pernod

This post begins my reports on my California Cooking Adventure: this one in San Diego at my sister Alicia's house. I gave her the choice between shrimp and blueberry tea cake, and we were all happy with her choice.

The afternoon I made this was a busy one: we went to La Jolla, looking at the sea lions, downtown, and the UCSD campus. It was already on the late side when we went to Whole Foods and picked up some key groceries for this dish. Since Melissa Clark allows for many different variations in the recipe, I decided to skip the fennel and Pernod and use the basil we already had and the white wine we bought (and would drink with the meal).

The scampi goes together in a flash: you make a quick butter-garlic-white wine sauce, cook it down a bit, and then add shrimp and herbs. That's it--and it's all that's necessary for a delicious dish. We devoured it with a somewhat spicy Israeli couscous dish and, I believe, a salad. It's an elegant meal that comes together in minutes, which makes it a great back-pocket recipe.

Whole Wheat Pizza with Cherry Tomatoes and Tuna

As we move into June, the calendar starts to explode: friends come to visit, girls have social events (and school only sporadically), work nears its end. In other words, it becomes difficult to plan a family meal at home. But one we managed to squeeze in was this pizza.

You have to do a bit of planning ahead for this pizza, in that the crust needs to rest in the refrigerator at least 24 hours. That's not a huge hardship, as the dough comes together in about 5-10 minutes (I mixed it by hand because the mixer was dirty). It's quite a simple dough: white and wheat flour (I used part bread flour and part all-purpose because the flour here is quite low in protein), salt, yeast, and water. I let it rise in an oiled zip-top bag because my fridge is too small and crowded to fit a bowl full of dough. The dough expanded quite a bit and crawled all over the fridge during its rest: give it space. 

On pizza night, all Claire and I had to do was prepare a few simple toppings and stretch out our crusts. You will notice that there is cheese involved: since there are no lactose-intolerant members of our family, we decided that a bit of cheese (mozzarella and some feta left over from a Greek salad) would be in order. Otherwise, we stuck to the program: cherry tomatoes, olives (yummy spicy ones from the market), sliced garlic, tuna.

Claire made her own pizza: she was able to get it quite round and put some nice crimped edges on it. And she was rather conservative with the toppings, not feeling very sure about the whole tuna-on-pizza thing.

We baked Claire's pizza and "my" pizza (I shared with Sami) in a 250 C convection oven for 15 minutes, switching the position every 5 minutes. I don't have a pizza stone, I didn't preheat the baking sheets, and I didn't use the broiler, and yet the pizza turned out really great!

(Here's my misshapen and more heavily loaded pizza) The crust was crackly and yet chewy, and the toppings created a fabulous balance of salty and briny and spicy. We were pretty conservative with the olive oil and did not salt the pizzas (really no need with the olives and the tuna and the feta).

I have to say this is one of the best pizzas I've made. I have a recipe for an overstuffed Chicago-style pizza that I also love, but a pizza like this seems more reasonable to incorporate into the daily routine. 

I had an extra ball of dough since Julia was not available for dinner, and I used it the next night for an appetizer pizza with olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and goat cheese. Unfortunately, I let it bake a bit too long (one pizza cooks faster than two: go figure!), but it also disappeared in a flash. This is a recipe I'll be going back to often.

Pan-Roasted Pacific Halibut with Spring Onions

This was a pretty simple recipe based on the idea that spring onions are mild and delicious and match well with a nice piece of fish. Balsamic vinegar doesn't hurt, either.

I'm not sure whether what I got at the market truly qualifies as spring onions: we get these just about year-round. What's hard to find on the market here are actual scallions. But the "white onions" on the market now seem smaller and fresher than in other seasons, so I'll just believe that they're the right kind. Whatever these were, I dutifully trimmed them and cut them into quarters (halves for the smaller ones). Unlike Melissa, who claims she can cut hers tear-free, I had some eye irritation issues. No matter.

The onions then go in a skillet with olive oil and some salt, pepper, and thyme: first covered and then uncovered. As they cooked, I thought of the Slate article I had recently read about how long it really takes to caramelize onions (the author points the finger at Melissa Clark for underestimating the time it takes). Mine never really caramelized, but they got soft and nicely browned, so I decided to leave well enough alone.

So I deglazed the pan with balsamic vinegar and honey and had a sauce that was perfect for at least three of us: the girls and I love caramelized onions, and Claire has a special fondness for balsamic vinegar. Sami, however, is agnostic on the onion.

This part of the recipe was the downside for Julia and Claire: Julia doesn't eat fish, and Claire doesn't much like it, although I always make her try it. I went with the "colin" or haddock that I often use in fish dishes: I seared the skin side on the stove and put the skillet in a hot oven to finish for about 10 minutes or so.

And voilà: fish plated with onions and potatoes (fancy spring potatoes from Noirmontier). The portions were a bit small, but everyone liked the dish. Claire ate all her small piece of fish, because the onions helped it go down. Sami ate all his onions: perhaps the fish helped them go down, though he did in fact praise the sauce. Julia liked the sauce with her potatoes. And I liked it, too. It's a simple and elegant dish that really does highlight good ingredients, and it was light and flavorful. Now that spring seems to finally have arrived, this is the kind of food I want to eat more of!

Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari

I'm very excited to write this first post for a new blog group I'm part of, Cook This Now Together, a group of friends and friends-of-friends cooking our way through Melissa Clark's Cook This Now! Please check the blogs on the sidebar to see the group's entertaining takes on the same recipe.

Let me briefly introduce myself: my name is Maria, and I'm a transplanted Californian who has been moved all over the US but now lives in the Paris suburbs, where I teach English and immerse myself as much as possible in the food culture. I cook mostly for my family: my husband Sami, who loves meat and dislikes vegetables and soup; my daughter Julia, who loves vegetables and soup but doesn't eat any meat or fish; and my younger daughter Claire, whose tastes seem to change on a daily basis but who generally dislikes fish. Still, I cook something different every day, and usually I can find a majority who will eat and even enjoy it.

So let's get to this first recipe, which Alicia chose: Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari with Israeli Couscous. As soon as I saw the title, my first thought was, "Do they have Israeli couscous in France?"

 Well, the answer is probably yes, but in the shops I went into, they didn't. So I decided to go ahead and use the whole wheat mini-macaroni I already had in my pantry. I toasted it a bit in the pot before adding water and salt--a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated--and I think it was a good substitution.

My second thought was, "How do you say calamari in French? Can I buy it here?" I was pretty sure I could, but I'd never seen it because I'd never shopped for it. Before I cooked this dish, I had never bought, much less touched, raw calamari. Maybe the picture above can explain why...
Well, it was not available at the outdoor market when I went, but when I went by the fish counter of my local Monoprix, there it was, encornet. I didn't buy even close to the 1-1/2 pounds Melissa calls for--I just asked for two of the beasties, and the fish guy cleaned them for me.

Once I had all the ingredients, this recipe was a snap. I made just a few tweaks to the procedure: since I don't like burnt garlic, I sautéed just the calamari and chiles first, and added the butter and garlic when the calamari was just about cooked. I then turned off the heat before adding the herbs (which were frozen and pre-chopped, because it's winter) and lime juice (oops, no lemons in the fridge).

I planned this recipe for a busy night: We had a meeting at the girls' school that night and didn't get home until 8. But Melissa writes that she considers this dish to be fast food, and indeed, wow, that was an understatement. With all the prep and even washing lettuce for a very basic salad, we were sitting down to dinner at 8:30 (a very normal dinnertime here in France). But the main appeal of this recipe in my eyes is that it's delicious. Claire, the fish skeptic, polished off a decent-sized serving without batting an eye. Julia snuck several bites of the pasta and declared it delicious. Sami went back for seconds, and also had the tiny bit leftover for lunch the next day, to my great disappointment (I had been hoping for some for my own lunch!).

So this was a great start to what I hope will be a fun, delicious, and educational adventure.

Clam Chowder

For the first time ever, I made clam chowder with actual clams. It was quite the adventure. I found the clams easily enough at the fish store, and while the guy was packing them up, I asked him how to prepare them. "Uh, you just open them and eat them raw!" I explained that I wanted to cook them: did I need to soak them? wash them? He looked very confused--why would I want to cook these? So he asked the manager, who took one look at me and declared, "Ah, you must want to make that American clam soup!" Busted.

So I took my clams home and washed them and steamed them in water and white wine, hoping to use the broth instead of clam juice. But the broth, for whatever chemical reason, turned a horrifying shade of blue. I really didn't think my family wanted to eat blue soup. So that was discarded.

Despite all this adventure, I made some really delicious clam chowder. I still kind of wish I could buy canned clams in France, though...

This recipe, with some modifications, comes from the September 1999 issue of Bon Appétit.

Littleneck Clam Chowder

2-3 lbs. littleneck clams (I have no idea what kind of clams I used. In French they were called "clams")

3 T. butter

1 onion, diced

1/4 c. flour

1/2 c. white wine

1-1/2 c. clam juice (I used water and a bit of "fish stock powder")

1-1/2 c. milk

3 medium white potatoes, peeled and diced

In a large pot or covered skillet, put the clams and a bit of water over medium-high heat. Steam, watching closely, about 8 minutes. Take the clams out with tongs as they open. Scoop the cooked clams out and set aside. Don't use any clams that haven't opened. Make sure to keep the juice inside the clams as well as the cooking water, assuming it's not blue. You'll probably want to strain it through a fine sieve or even a coffee filter.

Now get out another large pot and melt the butter in it over medium heat. Add the onion and a bit of salt and sauté until translucent. Sprinkle the flour over and let cook for about a minute. Then gradually add the white wine, clam juice, and milk, stirring constantly and carefully to avoid lumps. Add the potatoes, cover, and cook at medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, or until they are tender.

With scissors or a knife, coarsely chop the clams and add them and any reserved juices to the soup. Cook the soup just until hot and serve with bread and a salad. This makes 4 good-sized bowls.

Roasted Halibut in Curry Sauce

This has a lot of component parts but is not difficult to put together. And it's healthy and tastes good. I've adapted it from the October 2004 Bon Appétit. I'm putting the original ingredients as well as the substitutions I made so that you can make your own adaptations according to what you can find...I served this with roasted potatoes (the oven was on, after all), but it would also be good with rice.

Roasted Halibut in Thai Curry Sauce

1 can coconut milk (light is probably fine)

1/2 c. chicken broth (or water)

1 T. yellow curry paste (I used red)

1 T. curry powder

4 halibut fillets (I used cod--use whatever is firm, white, and not overfished)

1 T. vegetable oil

1/2 t. salt

2 T. butter or coconut oil

1-1/2 lbs. shiitake mushrooms (I used less than a pound of brown mushrooms)

1 lb. baby bok choy, leaves separated from the core (I used baby Swiss chard, sliced)

Lemon wedges

Heat the oven to 450. In a small saucepan, mix the coconut milk, broth, curry paste, and curry powder. Bring to a boil and let simmer to reduce while you make the rest of the meal.

In a baking dish big enough to fit the fish in, make a small pool of oil and sprinkle in the salt. Use your hands to rub this mixture over the fish. Roast for about 10 minutes or until it's done to your liking.

As soon as the fish goes in the oven, heat the butter or coconut oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. When it is melted and hot, throw in the mushrooms (and the Swiss chard stems) and stir-fry until the mushroom liquid has cooked off a bit. Add the bok choy/chard leaves and stir-fry until they've wilted.

To plate this, put a spoonful of sauce on a plate and top with a fish fillet. Top that with a big scoop of veggies and then another generous spoonful of sauce. Enjoy!

Salmon with Fennel and Mint

This is an oldie from my recipe file, and I have no idea where it came from--Sunset? St. Louis Post-Dispatch? Who knows. I completely changed the recipe, making it simpler and cutting down the butter by 5 T. You're welcome. This was elegant with rice and broccoli. The recipe as I've written it served 3, but Claire and I can only handle small amounts of salmon. Adjust according to your needs and appetite.

Salmon with Fennel and Mint

1 bulb fennel, quartered and sliced

2 shallots, halved lengthwise and sliced somewhat thickly

2 t. olive oil

Salt and pepper

2 salmon filets

1/2 c. white wine

1/2 c. clam juice

2 T. butter, preferably cold

2 T. chopped fresh mint

Heat the oven to 400. Put the fennel and shallots in a small baking dish--an 8-inch square is about the right size--and toss with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for about 5 minutes. Put the salmon on top of the vegetables, season with a bit of salt and pepper, and return the dish to the oven for another 10-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salmon, whether it's completely thawed (mine wasn't), and whether you like your salmon cooked through. In other words, check frequently after 10 minutes. While the salmon is cooking, put the wine and clam juice in a small saucepan over high heat and reduce by a half--with luck, it should be there when the salmon is done. When it's reduced, take off the heat and whisk in the butter. Once the butter has melted and the sauce has thickened a bit, add the mint. Pour the sauce over the fish and vegetables and serve.

Oven Cioppino

Last week we had some friends from work over for dinner. The pressure was on, because one of the guests has been a restaurant manager. He told stories about Gordon Ramsay. Gulp. But everyone seemed to like this dish, which I made by heavily adapting a recipe from Joyce Goldstein'sThe Mediterranean Kitchen. This is a really nice dish for entertaining because you can make the "sauce" ahead and then pop in the fish/seafood right before you want to serve it. I served it with grits/polenta (no-one at the table had ever had grits before, and I have never heard the word "grits" spoken so many times during the course of one meal as I did then).

Use whatever kind of seafood you like and is abundant in your area. If you're in California/on the West Coast, use cracked Dungeness crab! Please?

Oven Cioppino

(for about 8 people)

3 onions, chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 red pepper, peeled and chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

4 bay leaves

4 sprigs thyme

1 T. red pepper flakes

1 T. fennel seed

Salt and pepper

3-4 T. olive oil

1/2 c. red wine

1 large can whole Italian tomatoes

Seafood of your choice: I used about a pound of shrimp, a whole monkfish, and about 20 scallops.

Heat the oven to 425. Line a large rimmed baking sheet or jelly roll pan with parchment or heavy-duty foil. Pour a bit of the olive oil on it. Then pile on the onions, celery, carrots, pepper, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, red pepper, fennel, and salt and pepper to taste (I probably used about 1/2 t. salt). Sprinkle with more olive oil and the red wine, and pour over the can of tomatoes (if you're more dextrous than I, squish up the tomatoes a bit with your hands). Mix that well and then put in the oven to roast for about 30 minutes, or until the vegetables have browned nicely. When you're just about ready to eat, arrange the seafood atop the sauce, sprinkle with a bit more wine and/or olive oil if you feel like it, and return to the oven for about 5-10 minutes, depending on what kind of seafood you're using. Serve with grits, polenta, and/or sourdough bread.

Fettuccine al Barese

Sami and I had a big Sunday lunch with some American professors who live in Paris, and this was the main course. Shrimp, butter, garlic, pasta--how can you go wrong? This took about 15 minutes to put together and was much appreciated, though the baked Mont d'Or cheese and the raspberry brownies afterwards rather outshone it...

This recipe is adapted from Joyce Goldstein's Mediterranean Kitchen. The original recipe calls for 2 T. olive oil plus 3 T butter per person. That just seemed a bit excessive. If you want "restaurant-strength" sauce, go ahead and use 12 T. butter and 1/2 c. olive oil.

Fettuccine al Barese

2 T. olive oil

1 lb. shrimp, shelled and deveined

Salt and pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 t. dried red pepper flakes (more if you feel like it)

1/2 c. white wine

12 oz. fresh fettuccine (you can usually buy this in the deli section of your grocery store)

4 T. lemon juice (that's about 1-1/2 large lemons)

6 T. butter, cut into pieces

Start a pot of salted water boiling for the pasta. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and cook them until they're just pink. Remove from the skillet with a slotted spoon and throw in the garlic and pepper. Stir that around for a minute, then add the wine and let it cook down by about half. At this point, you should probably be throwing the pasta in the water and cooking it according to package directions. When the wine has cooked down, add the shrimp, lemon juice, and butter and stir until the butter is melted and the sauce has thickened a bit. Drain the pasta and toss with the shrimp sauce. Serve with a green salad and some bread to soak up the buttery goodness. Serves 4.

Mustard-Crusted Bass

We had friends over for Sunday lunch yesterday, and this was one of the many things I made. Now that the French gastronomic meal has UNESCO protected status and all, I feel the pressure has ramped up to produce the proper meal in its many courses. So we had gougères with the aperitif, then salad, then this fish and a quinoa pilaf, then cheese, then an apple crumble of sorts, then coffee and macarons. Our friends came at 12:30 and left at 5. That's a civilization worthy of protection, I guess...

Instead of buying frozen fish fillets, which I usually do because I'm a squeamish frightened fish buyer, I bought whole fish at the market, which the friendly guys cleaned and gutted for me. I also had them cut the heads and tails. They gave me the look, "OK, weird foreign lady." But I hate having my food look at me. So sue me.

This recipe, which I've adapted for a bit more simplicity, is from the August 2005 issue of Bon Appétit. I'm not sure why it didn't make it onto the Epicurious site--it's very good: flavorful and light. Which is good if you're doing an all-afternoon meal.

Mustard-Crusted Bass with Tomato Sauce

2 T. olive oil

2 T. butter

4 cloves garlic

1 branch thyme

Salt, pepper

2 lbs. tomatoes (get the tastiest you can find), cut into cubes

1 basket cherry/grape tomatoes, halved

1/3 c. Dijon mustard

1/3 c. whole-grain mustard

1 t. hot pepper sauce (I used Sriracha)

1-2 T. chopped fresh thyme

2 c. panko breadcrumbs (I used regular dry breadcrumbs because I couldn't find panko anywhere...)

4 striped bass fillets (or whatever bass-like fish is considered sustainable in your area)

Canola or other neutral oil

In a large saucepan or skillet, heat the butter and olive oil until the butter is melted and no longer foamy. Add the garlic and heat it until it sizzles a bit. Throw in the thyme and some salt and pepper, and then the cubed big tomatoes (save the little tomatoes for later). Let simmer until the tomatoes have broken down and the sauce has thickened--mine took at least half an hour. Throw in the cherry tomatoes when you're ready to cook the fish.

For the fish, get out two pie plates: put the mustards, hot pepper sauce, and thyme in one; put the panko in the other. Get out a skillet (nonstick is probably best) and heat some oil in it--enough to cover the bottom of the pan generously. Dip the fish in the mustard--you may need to smear it on with your hands or with a rubber scraper--and then in the breadcrumbs. Fry the fish until the outside is crisp and the fish is just opaque in the center--about 3 minutes per side.

To serve, spoon some tomato sauce on a plate and top it with a fish filet. Enjoy and get ready for the cheese.