bbq sauce (base)

Everyone has their own favorite bbq sauce, but let’s admit it – usually it’s store bought. There’s nothing really wrong with that, and there are definitely some good sauces out there to buy. I didn’t get into the idea of making it from scratch myself until I started living somewhere where it’s virtually impossible to find. I know, I didn’t think that was even possible. Still, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to throw something together quickly in case you run out, or want something fresh and customizable, or a way of giving your burger an original and personal touch? I think it’s worth a try.

Let me start out by acknowledging that everyone has different tastes on this, but what we’ll make is a launching pad – something to build from. I imagine you’ve noticed that with a lot of my stuff, but I like solid basics. If you have some solid basics down, it’s easy to be original and creative by adding this or that to suit your own tastes.

So what are the solid basics when it comes to bbq sauce? Well, for one, it’s based around tomatoes. That’s the main ingredient. Whether you’re using fresh tomatoes, paste, or ketchup (catsup? Anyone?), that’s the body of the flavor. Tomatoes naturally lean towards both sweet and tart flavors, so that’s the next step. For the sweet it’s sugar or honey (unless you’re a dire fan of Sweet-N-Low), and for the tart it’s vinegar.

You can see I’ve already given you a load of options – what kind of vinegar, tomato choices, sweeteners, etc. From there you add in your spices and additional flavors to make the sauce unique. Check the labels of bbq sauces in the store for inspiration if you’re feeling low on creativity. I’ve seen everything from onion powder to coffee to chocolate, and I’m sure there’s a whole lot more recipe secrets out there worthy of lifting an eyebrow at.

The great thing about having a building block to work from is that you can change it to fit with many different dishes. Maybe some rosemary to have it go with that lamb, maybe some red wine, garlic and shallots to fit it with that skirt steak. So, here’s my simple, basic recipe, the base that I like to think you'll soon be putting your own twists to.

simple, quick bbq

●3 Ketchup

●1 Honey heated thin (and not just any honey!)

●1 Vinegar (I blend rice and balsamic here)

●1/4 Mustard (whole-grain here)

●Hot sauce (optional, but not really that optional)

●Black pepper (or another seasoning of your choice, like paprika or onion powder)

●Salt (not cooking salt!)

●Lemon (to taste)

Mix all together and there you go. As for the ratios, I use about a 3 to 1 to 1, with the hot sauce and seasoning to taste. Maybe you're astounded that I don't use garlic? I am a garlic lover, but I don't need it every time. Add it when the menu calls for it. Give it a try!

too-may-toe, too-ma-toe, tomato sauce

Tomato sauce, one of the official members of the haute five since Auguste Escoffier’s interpretations of the mother sauces, is one of those most basic and most necessary to conquer. It is the underlying source of so many beautiful dishes. If you can make a good tomato sauce, you are well on your way towards delicious pastas, pizzas, soups, and myriads more.

If you are still buying your tomato sauce in a jar, this recipe is a must for you. Have you ever tasted that stuff right out of the jar and actually liked it? DIY it and not only can you make it perfectly to your tastes, but perfectly suited to your meals as well. So, that’s what we’re going to do.

Good tomatoes are naturally quite sweet, but leaving them in a can gives them tartness as time progresses. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s something to keep in mind later when we balance the flavors. First of all - and this should be obvious – a tomato sauce can only be as good as its tomatoes. That’s why I rather heartily demand that you find Italian canned tomatoes and accept no substitutes. The Italians know how to take care of their tomatoes. Oftentimes, those canned tomatoes are better than what I can get fresh locally, so don’t think badly of them just for being in a can. Also here’s a tip – don’t be fooled by labels advertising “Italian-style” tomatoes, check for the “prodotto in Italia” – make sure that they’re actually tomatoes grown in Italy.

 
The tartness in the canned tomatoes has to be balanced, but with what? You might think of adding sugar as a sweetener to combat the sourness, but I prefer to use that tartness to our advantage rather than counter-attack against it like it’s some kind of bad flavor. Garlic, and the richness that garlic contains, will do most of the work for us here. Frying the garlic in the pan a bit before adding your tomatoes is just what gives a great balance to the sour notes within.

The other trick is using whole tomatoes. If you want a really smooth sauce, feel free to blend and strain it after making, but make it first. I’m convinced this creates a richer something, and the tinny flavor seems less infused in the tomatoes packed this way. You can add anything to this either during or after it has been created to make it fit your style, so give this a shot.

croutons, small cubes of delight

To me croutons are, more than anything else, a way of preventing food waste. Take old, stale bread (not molding, just stale) and cut it up into small pieces to remake it into something that you would want to eat. Throwing away bread is such a shame.

The other thing that’s nice about croutons is that, since they are fully dried, they have a long shelf-life if you store them in an airtight container. The other route you could go with stale bread is to make breadcrumbs, but I’ll cover that some other time. Basically you just throw it in a blender. Like I said though, I'll cover it later.

You can flavor these any way you want, and it’s a great opportunity to use up some of those dry herbs you’ve had lying around since you got them in that gift set five years ago. The method I show here is the baking method, but actually you can successfully make croutons in a frying pan if you don’t have the time to bake them off. If you’re storing them for a long time, however, I prefer baking them because it more evenly dries out all of the moisture from inside.

 
Like I said in the video, croutons are great with soups and salads, but that’s news to exactly zero people out there. Here’re some other ideas that you may not have considered – toppings for chicken bakes, gratins, and casseroles. Bread puddings. Pie toppings (replace the herbs and spices with sugar!). Snacks for dip. The list goes on, and I’m sure you can come up with many more. I’d love to here about your creative ideas for croutons, too, so give this one a try!

the French Dip sandwich - the name tells you it's not foreign

Nothing says, "I wasn't invented in the country that my name says I was invented in" like writing a country's name into the title of a recipe. The history behind the French Dip goes way back to America in 1908. Or maybe it was 1918. It's hard to say, since the exact date is debated. The reason for this shroud of mystery lays in a double-claim over who originally invented the sandwich - Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet, or Philippe The Original. Both restaurants are long-standing establishments in the Los Angeles area.

Not only the restaurant, but the claims themselves also change quite a bit. Some say it was a police officer, while some say a fireman, who came in for a bite. While hastily trying to get this customer a sandwich, according to some, the cook accidentally dropped the sandwich into a pan of meat drippings. Alternatively, the customer asked if the sandwich could be dipped because of a problem with soar gums. Whatever the case, all the stories agree that the result was so popular that patrons were back for more in no time at all. Nowadays, you can find these slightly soggy, beefy wonders just about anywhere, at diners or even at fast food chains.

To my mind, French Dips are the quintessential soup and sandwich combo - simple, hearty, and filling. Despite its name, this is old school American fair. This isn't something I'd want to overdo by getting too complex. Meat, onions, and a nice spread on a French roll is as far as I want to go with this. Don't be fooled by my picture there, those tomatoes and that spring of dill were only needed for the photo-shoot. Not that they were bad, but they were definitely superfluous.

One thing I like to do, as you'll see in the video, is poach the beef in water for a minute or two. This does two things for me. It gets the meat tender and starts it off cooking, while also flavoring the water and making the start of a nice beef stock. The next step is to slowly simmer a bunch of onions in there and complete the soup.

In the video, I used a homemade barbeque sauce that was great, but feel free to use whatever is handy. Simple mustard, as long as it's good mustard, would work fine for the spread too, but when I'm really feeling fancy I like to upper class it a bit by mixing it with some cream cheese and maybe a little oil. You could easily start adding things like garlic or spices, and they would be delicious, but refrain from doing so. We're keeping this one simple, it's a lesson in restraint. Let the meat speak. After all, this sandwich was born with the idea of dipping meat into meat juice.

chicken stock for the soul

If chicken soup is for the soul, then a good chicken stock is the basis of that spiritual healing. Another on the list of things that are a million times better fresh but that most of us rarely find time to make, this is one that is just integral to so many ways of cooking, and it’s great to have on hand. If you want to know where that rich, full flavor that you just can’t quite place is coming from in that expensive restaurant dinner, it’s the stock.

I follow the freezer-pack method, in which you freeze all of your stock in ice cube trays and then store the cubes in freezer bags for later use. I like this because you can use the stock cubes as measurements, and you can throw them right into a hot pan for instant satisfaction. Whatever you do – and you are bound to have heard this by now – don’t buy those bouillon cubes. That’s fools’ gold, a cubed kitchen trap hemorrhaging salt that’s sure to make your lovely dish unpleasant. In fact, when making stock let’s just leave salt out of the equation entirely.

Remember, we’re not making broth, it’s stock. It’s an ingredient, like salt is an ingredient. Since you don’t salt things for taste until the end of the cooking process, you want to avoid upping the salinity of your ingredients, which will only cook down and become more concentrated – hopefully not concentrated-ly salty. 

In the video, I use a couple chicken breasts to flavor the stock, but reserve them for another recipe. You can see that recipe here.

There’s an unavoidable part at the end of making a stock when every home chef (professional chefs having long lost their empathy for ingredients) feels bad about throwing out the used up vegetables. As hard as it is to come to terms with, those onions and carrots simply don’t have anything left to give.

If you’re really thrifty, you could use them in compost, but otherwise bite the what-a-waste bullet and toss them. It may seem like a pity, but the soul of that celery has been transferred to that liquid heaven in your pot.

vinegared cucumber cod maki with foam sauce

believe it or not, there is cod in there under the foam sauce

White, firm, and clean tasting, cod has remained one of my very favorite fish. I do have a bias however - it seems that I have a Newfoundland cod fishing heritage on my mother’s side. Donning oil slicks and bundling over stormy waves in the foggy waters of the Grand Banks, some distant relative fought and struggled with these fish in what I imagine was an epic battle that would have put The Perfect Storm to shame.


Meanwhile I get mine down at the fishmongers. Unfortunately the cod I have to work with in Japan is Pacific cod - what they used to fish off the Banks was Atlantic cod. You can’t taste the cold water of the Labrador Current in the Japanese varieties, but it is - for the purposes of cooking - the same fish.

We are making a point of creating two different but balanced flavors. The cucumber is vinegared to give it a refreshing sour tang, and the fish with its foam sauce is an herbaceous and rich companion to it. We want it so that by eating the cucumber it makes you want to eat the fish, and vice-versa. The rice vinegar could be replaced with apple or wine vinegar, but I recommend against balsamic for this recipe because there's too much flavor going on there. Additionally, while the extra step takes some more of your time, soaking the cucumber slices overnight can make a really nice pickle for the wrap.

First off, get some rice going. White is fine but I prefer to throw in some herbs while it's going to flavor it up. The fish: salt – both sides! – of your square-cut fillet and set it aside while you peel your cucumber. Take your peeler and take as thick a slice off the side of the cucumber as you can. Make four of these slices per fillet, and chop up the rest of your cuke in as haphazard a way as you choose. 

George Clooney in The Perfect Storm

Throw these guys into some salted water and add to it about 2 shot glasses (50ml) of vinegar. Let them soak while you make the fish.

Back to our fish. Drain off any juices from the fish that may have collected from your salting. Pat dry. In a fry pan over low heat, add a small amount of not-olive oil (something less flavorful, like grapeseed oil) and add the fish. As it begins to whiten you’ll see a line coming up the side of the fillet. When it gets around halfway, turn the fillets over and add the remaining chopped cucumber.

Just before you feel that it's done, take it off the heat. Don't overcook this one! If you have nice fresh fish, please consider leaving the center soft like you would with a steak. You'll thank yourself that you did. Just after taking it off the heat, evenly sprinkle a small amount of vinegar – I like rice vinegar here as well – to calm the flavors. The heat remaining in the pan will warm the vinegar and brighten its flavors.

You'll also probably want to make a foam sauce - it goes frighteningly well here. I'll talk more about foam sauces in another post. If you don't want to take the time, don't worry - it'll still be excellent without.

Pat dry your cucumber slices. I use a form to shape the rice, but you could use an old soup can or an upside-down cup. Make it into a cylinder and wrap the cucumber slices around it. Put the fish fillet up on top there and drizzle your foam sauce over if you're using it. Or as an option to that you could sprinkle an additional small amount – the goal is not a puckered face, so be sparing – of your vinegar after plating if you like. Simple and elegant.

can you think of anything that rhymes with tzatziki?

Lately, after reading a post on Chef John’s excellent blog Food Wishes, I have been hooked on marinating chicken with yogurt. Tzatziki-like concoctions are easy to make and make an amazing marinade and sauce.

Now yes I know, real Greek tzatziki is always served cold, and it’s certainly no marinade. But it’s a foodie buzzword and sounds a lot nicer than “yogurt marinade”, you have to admit.

yogurt-marinated chicken over pesto mashed potatos

Usually tzatziki has garlic, cucumber, some kind of herb (like mint or dill), and a few optional dudes (depending on who you ask) like olive oil, lemon juice, salt/pepper, and even nuts in some areas. It’s generally a dip and served with meat or bread. But we’ll blow it apart today.

There are a lot of regional varieties and different names for similar styles anyway, so it’s fair that we use it for a marinade. And on chicken. And still call it tzatziki. Anything goes when it’s good eating.

●chicken thigh meat, boneless or cut from bone but KEEP the skin 
●yogurt*
●garlic 
●herb (dill, parsley, or sage – let’s leave mint out of it for now)
●lemon juice
●olive oil
●cracked black pepper (no reason to buy pre-crushed anymore)
●cucumbers if you want, or replace them with thinly sliced onions (yeah, changing it up)

*Ah, additional note.  The yogurt used in tzatziki is Greek yogurt, which is a lot thicker.  You can strain thinner yogurts by pouring them into a coffee filter and leaving that over a jar (I also like to plastic wrap the thing) in the fridge overnight to make a similar-to-Greek-yogurt yogurt, but we don’t mind the thinner stuff in this recipe because it’s a marinade. If you want to use thick stuff, add in a bit more lemon juice or olive oil to thin it for marinating.

Take the chicken and cut it into strips about the same size. I usually cut about 3 strips per thigh, but it’s a preference thing. When you get thigh meat, it’s this meat that’s been wrapped around the bone so that it’s all sort of radially attached to the skin. If you roll it up like a cigar it’s easy to cut into even strips.

Season the chicken with salt, both sides. This isn’t an ingredient. Ingredients are things you have to go out and buy. If you don’t have salt in your house there is something seriously wrong in the kitchen. And if I’ve said it before, I’ve said it before: all salt is not made equal. Get a nice, good tasting salt full of minerals. You want to eat minerals, right? Not baking salt. Enough said.

Use about 2-3 tablespoons of yogurt per strip, and put it in a bowl, ziplock bag, or whatever your preference for marinating things is. Smash or crush the garlic (perfectionists, feel free to finely mince) and add that mess. Add a squeeze of lemon (I am pushing that as an official unit of measure), a drizzle of olive oil (bit more if you’re using thick-style yogurt), and throw/crack in your black pepper. Chop up your herb, throw that in, and stir it all up.

Dip each strip into the mix and coat it completely. When all the strips are coated, pile them all together and throw the sliced onions (and/or cucumber) on top. Spread that out and plastic wrap it. I’d leave it in the fridge at least an hour; overnight wouldn’t hurt.

Ok now that’s marinated, ready to go, so get your oven preheating to around 200 C. While that’s happening, get a fry pan and get it hot over medium/medium-high heat. Leaving the onions/cucumbers alone, shake the strips off and throw them on there (by throw I mean place carefully, away from you, skin-side down). There should be a sizzle sound, oh yes.

Keep around medium and go until you’re getting some golden brown type of color on the chicken, then flip to the other side. When you get some color there, take off the heat. Don’t worry, the chicken’s not supposed to be cooked yet. Put your onions and marinade into the bottom of some kind of bakeware (pyrex for me), then lay those strips on top. Pop into that oven for about 7-8 minutes. The rich flavors are going to impress you.

Deliciously tender and serves well with bread, flatbreads, rice, or pasta. How can you lose?

honey, I got you some mustard sauce

Honey mustard is an underused sauce. I almost want to say honey mustard is an underused concept. Think about it, it's too often the sauce relegated to McD's and KFC. Fast-food fare. Pushed to the side next to the McNuggets. That's not the image I have of it. This is a sauce that can be elegant, versatile (again my two favorite words), and amazingly poignant. Ham, chicken, salads dressings - there's lots of uses for this basic recipe mixing a spicy tangy seed (mustard) with a sweet natural sugar (honey).

Honey mustard sauce

Pommery, a serious mustard for serious mustard gourmets

●Whole-grain mustard (Pommery, I love you)

●Yellow mustard (or Dijon, which tastes better but is surely less American)

●Soy sauce (just a drop)

●Coarse ground black pepper (accept no pre-ground!)

●Honey (microwaved until thin)

●Something spicy (I like sambala)

●Sea salt (salt is really too obvious to include as an ingredient but hey)

●Ginger powder

Just combine everything in a bowl. Nothing raw here so you can use it immediately if you like as a dip, spread or topping. Super easy and super quick, and of course you can modify the recipe with your own additions.

A note about Moutarde de Meaux Pommery.  This is a French mustard that's been a Pommery family secret since the 1700s. It's a whole-grain mustard, and I'm confident that it's incomparable to any other whole-grain mustard out there. It has the spicy bite of whole mustard seeds, but simultaneously the soft mellowness of Dijon mustard. The recipe is still guarded closely but the ingredients are all natural products from the Meaux region. Even now it comes in an earthenware jar and the wax seal with a distinctly old-world presence to it. By the way, if you're in America and don't recall having seen this one in the store, that's because it's not distributed in America anymore. Import tariffs to America became too high for the small-batch numbers that Pommery produces. More luck for those living in Canada, where it's still available, or if you're like me, in Japan.

Another thing you can do is use it as a marinade for chicken or meat. I also find it to be a nice salad dressing if you emulsify it with oil. If you want to do that, slowly drizzle oil while beating the mixture with a fork or whisk.

You could also pour it into a frying pan and cook it down into a thick drizzle sauce, which will give it rich flavors from the mustard seed. Brilliant.

salted pork cutlet with avocado mung bean puree

This one should have been up a while ago, but you know, this led to that. Back when I was talking about yin-yanging food together, I mentioned the idea of putting two separate flavors together on the same plate so that they could be joined harmoniously together in the mouth.

This time, I decided to go with an interesting complementary pair - salty and soothing. The pork is slightly over-salted in this recipe, and to compensate for that there is barely any sodium in the rest of the meal. The salt drives you to taste the avocado and mung bean, which is soothing and refreshing to the palate. Mung bean sprouts are naturally filled with a large concentration of water, and blending them up with a tiny bit of oil leads to a smooth paste.

The pork is seasoned and left to marinate in sea salt with no additional flavors, so if you get a good cut of meat it will make a big impact on the end result here. We are showcasing the meat by keeping it simple. After-flavors from the soy sauteed Napa cabbage and the avocado bean sprout puree will then add complexity in the mouth. This is the basic idea behind the yin-yang approach.

I added little piles of Mothia - a favorite Sicilian sea salt of mine - in front of each cutlet so that diners could choose to give it an extra salty punch if they wished. I prefer it with the extra salt but this way I don't have to force it on anyone, and it makes the meal more interactive. If you're worried about sodium, compare this to any soup you may have made with one cube of bullion from the store and I think you'll be quite surprised at what you find. Also note to balance the overall salt concentration of the meal the avocado dip has only the slightest pinch for seasoning.

Tell me what yin-yang flavor ideas you can come up with!

bacon explosion – mini coupe version

And afterwards, you might consider eating a salad

First of all, credit where credit is due. The original Bacon Explosion recipe comes from two barbecue geniuses: Jason Day and Aaron Chronister, writers of BBQ MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER - the title is literally in all-caps even on the book - and creators of the site BBQ Addicts. Apparently, you can even order ready-to-eat versions of the Bacon Explosion at their site now. The only problem I have is that the recipe is massive, about the size of a football, and I wanted to come up with an individual portion scale-down. Thus the birth of the mini coupe version. The ingredients, as well as the process, are largely the same as in the official version.

thick-cut slices of bacon (short, you can cut normal slices in half)
sausage meat (preferably Italian)
bbq sauce
bbq rub*

*If you are making a rub, there’s lots of ways but basically these ingredients:

5 paprika

4 brown sugar

3 sea salt

2 black pepper

1 cayenne pepper

1/2 dry mustard

The numbers indicate ratios that I recommend, but everyone’s tastes are different. I like this one because it’s sort of a descending scale – if using teaspoons, use 5 teaspoons of paprika and so on; if using tablespoons, likewise.

1. Reserve a couple slices of bacon, and weave the rest into a square lattice (think apple pie). So you need equal amounts of bacon for the X and Y axis of the lattice. If you don't have at least 4x4 it's a no go.

2. Preheat oven to 225 degrees. Fry the bacon you saved in a frying pan and cook until crisp. Sprinkle latticed bacon with bbq rub. Remove sausage meat from its casings (if you couldn’t buy it as just meat). Evenly spread the sausage meat on top of the bacon lattice. You want enough to cover to the outer edges.

3. Crumble fried bacon into pieces and sprinkle on top of the sausage meat. Drizzle some bbq sauce on that and sprinkle with some more bbq rub.

4. Separate the front edge of the sausage layer from the bacon weave and roll the sausage away from you. The bacon weave should stay where it is. Press sausage roll to remove any air pockets and pinch together.

5. Roll toward you, this time with the bacon as well, until it is completely wrapped. Turn it so that the seam faces down. Sprinkle with a bit more bbq rub.

6. Place the roll on a baking sheet into the oven. Cook until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F, about 1 hour for each inch of thickness. When done, glaze the roll with more sauce. Like the original recipe, I recommend serving in slices.

 
This is a taste-splosion of flavor, so keep your dose low. I did notice, however, that it's much lighter feeling in this mini version, probably because the juices don't have all the time and space to move around in the center of the roll.

sweet strawberries Batman, a salad!

Sweet strawberry spinach salad yin-yang-ed with balsamic vinaigrette chicken scaloppini

The yin-yang effect - the sweetness and color of the red strawberries will contrast delightfully with the tangy, deep-maroon colored balsamic.

Let’s marinate our chicken, and then make the salad. To rightfully give it the scaloppini tag, we’ll need to flatten the breasts out a bit. Sandwich the breasts between sheets of wax paper or plastic wrap and lightly pound them down with a mallet, the goal being to get an equal thickness throughout. Once that’s done, season your scaloppini with salt and pepper and set in a tray or bowl. Pour enough balsamic vinegar to nicely cover (3-4 tablespoons should do it). Add a drizzle of olive oil. If you have it, sprinkle some fresh tarragon or sage leaves on top. I didn't at the time so there's none here in mine. Mix lightly and put away in the fridge.

Get some nice ripe strawberries (often smaller ones are sweeter, don’t be fooled) and slice them up finely. Sprinkle a bit of salt on them, and put aside in a small bowl. Wash your spinach thoroughly, and either use  whole leaves (my preference, if the leaves are small) or cut them into large pieces. Back to the bowl and add in either a bit of white wine or (if you’re avoiding alcohol) some white wine vinegar. Just a small bit, and then stir together gently. Now, drizzle some olive oil on your spinach leaves and toss. A pinch of sea salt adds a great crunch and taste. Add half of your strawberry mix and toss again gently. I recommend waiting until serving to put the other half of your strawberry mixture up on top to give the salad its beautiful color.

They've been marinating for long enough by now, so whip out your breasts like it's half-time at the Superbowl. Get a frying pan hot but don’t put in any oil – there’s enough of that already in the marinade. Shake off excess juices before putting it in the pan. There should be a sizzle! At this point, turn the heat down to medium / medium-low so that our thinned chicken doesn’t dry out. The key here is to not overcook the chicken. The cooking time is very short because of the thinness. When color comes half-way up the side of the chicken, turn them over. A good thing to keep in mind is that the chicken will continue cooking in its own heat even after you take it off the pan, so it’ll be done before you know it.

When plating, I tried to showcase the different dishes as individuals rather than combining them. Simple, light, and totally delicious - try this one out!

handmade pasta

handmade pasta

It’s easy to buy pasta. So many varieties, rather inexpensive, and it keeps near indefinitely. Making pasta by hand is not something that crosses everyones’ mind when planning dinner. Even so it’s a basic kitchen skill, only needs dos ingredients, and is satisfying to make from scratch. So let’s get to it!

The general idea seems to be about 100 grams of flour to 1 egg, which makes just about a 1 person serving. So if you have 3 people, 300 grams of flour and 3 eggs is easy as math!

Sift the flour into a bowl (or pour it into a bowl and cheat-sift after with a whisk). Make a well in the middle of your flour and crack your egg(s) in there. Using either a fork or a whisk, mix the egg up and slowly start pulling the flour together from the sides. There are a lot of people that do this right on their work surface with the flour well, but it can turn into a mess real quick if the wall of flour surrounding the egg gets messed up, so hey I dig the bowl approach.

When you get all the flour mixed in into a ball, you’ll notice it doesn’t come together very nicely. It’s flaky and hard. So to make nice, smooth pasta, the idea is to fold the dough on itself and flatten it down a number of times. There’s a couple of ways of doing this. If you are into pasta all the time, a pasta machine of some kind might work for you. But if you only want to do this occasionally, just use a rolling pin. Roll it out as best you can (as thin as you can) then fold it in half, half again, and repeat. Do that 5 or 7 times until it’s very smooth, the last time, to get it very thin, follow this trick:

Roll the ball out roughly into a circle, then roll the dough around your rolling pin. With the dough rolled around the pin, rock it back and forth while pulling the dough out from the center towards the outsides of the rolling pin. You can get it really thin this way. Lastly, you have to cut the dough. Nothing fancy required since you can just use a knife. Take a look:

can I truffle you for a drink?

With Valentines Day approaching, I have not-so-surprisingly had chocolate on my mind. There's probably nothing so perfectly balanced between decadent, elegant, and simple to make as are truffles. Better still, handmade truffles more faithfully fulfill their original intention than do perfectly-shaped machined ones. Chocolate truffles try to mimic their fungi counterparts - treasures dug up out of the dirt. The dusting of cocoa powder here represents the loamy fresh soil that you would have to dig through to find such a prize.

truffles try to look like they were just dug up like buried treasures

I make my truffles with this ganache recipe that I talked about a bit ago. Spread the ganache from that recipe thin into freezer-proof trays and put it in the freezer. This time the bain marie is unavoidable. Melt some dark high-cacao level chocolate – something sultry in the above 70 percent range – in a stainless steel bowl over a pan with hot simmering water in it. It’s important that the bowl doesn’t actually touch the water. Leave it there for a while and then give it a stir with a spoon. If it comes together it’s ready.

Roll the now chilled ganache into balls and drop these into the chocolate (might want to let it cool a bit, off the pan, first). One way is to use a melon baller, but I tend to find two spoons work pretty well. Pluck out the coated ganache balls with a toothpick and drop them into another small bowl of cacao powder, rolling the bowl around until completely coated. Pluck again and drop on wax paper, and let them chill in the freezer until set. These keep for a long time, and are stupidly delicious. For wine pairing, red or semi-sweet sparkling (like, not brut) works equally well, but I tip towards one or the other depending on the ganache flavoring. I recommend Chambord flavored ganache with merlot or another red wine that has sweetness and berry tones like malbec. With something like Grand Marnier, you might want to try an Asti Spumante or a semi-seco cava - wine with a little sweetness always goes nicely with chocolate. So easy, yet amazing!

prosciutto-wrapped amberjack over avocado basil salad

Amberjack is a trout-sized fish that's common in Japan, but it could be replaced with cod or another firm white fish fillet. I should also say that prosciutto is simply the word for ham in Italian, and what is meant here is dry-cured ham, which is what us Americans tend to mean when we say prosciutto. You will want:

 

Fillets of white fish (de-boned and de-skinned)

Enough prosciutto (you’ll see)

Sea salt

For the salad:

Avocado

Fresh basil leaves

Lettuce (of choice, something crisp)

Something crunchy (I use celery)

Simple dressing

Wrap the prosciutto around the fillets, covering them entirely as best you can. Season with sea salt – both sides, always both sides – and set aside. Preheat your oven to 210 C.

Break up the lettuce coarsely with your hands. Wash and throw in the salad spinner (an absolute essential kitchen device) along with a couple handfuls of fresh basil leaves. Also cut up a celery stock or two and toss those in as well.

To make a simple dressing, shake lemon juice with olive oil and some salt together in a mason jar. This isn’t emulsified but it works fine. Dress your salad and toss. The wrapped fillets go into a hot frying pan with a glug of olive oil. There should definitely be a big sizzle when they touch the pan, and we’re going to keep high heat the whole time. By the way, a glug is a unit of measure based on sound – it’s more than a splash but less than 2 tablespoons, according to me (who you gonna trust?).

Now, since we’re going to pop this into the oven after pan-frying, the goal here is not to cook the fish but rather to crisp up the ham with a nice sear. Golden brown with maybe just a touch of black char will tell you that it’s done. Do both sides. The searing will only take a minute or so, so watch the fish and adjust heat down a bit if needed. Take the fishy bundles of joy out of the frying pan and put them in an un-greased baking pan in the oven for 10 or 11 minutes.

While that’s baking, get the avocado out of its shell with a spoon and slice it up thinly. Arrange that on your salad, lumping it up in the middle a bit. Take out the fish, let it rest for just a bit, and then place it atop the avocado. This will warm the avocado without much wilting the leaves. One spoonful of pan jus - the juices left over in the pan after cooking - over the finished fish gives it that sexy sheen (and I don’t mean Charlie!).

 
This works really well as a light luncheon or entrée for a romantic dinner. I would say lager beer with the luncheon and chardonnay with the romantic dinner. The juices from the prosciutto seep into the fish, giving it a meaty, fishy, chicken-y, my-taste-buds-don't-quite-know-how-to-respond-but-it's-wonderful-y feel. Brilliant.