Serious Addictions

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Saltimbocca alla Romana had been on my to-do list for the last 3 months or so. But I hadn’t gotten further than the “look up recipes for a possible mashup and drool while looking at the pictures” phase. Until today’s dinner. Well I am a huge fan of beurre blanc and the beurre blanc-like sauce complimented this dish perfectly. Not much to say about prosciutto, is there any dish it hasn’t improved?

The family loved it, but I, being the skeptical cook, wished for a more tender cut. The cut is originally very tender (pink) veal cutlets, but I had some entrecote on hand, so had to do with. Not the ideal meat, but it did give in to a little pounding. I’ll probably repeat this recipe with chicken thighs or veal cutlets whenever we have some leftover white wine.

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Moving to a seaside town comes with its perks, and by perks, surely I mean seafood. Yesterday evening (notice how I never say “last night”, because well, if it’s night, I’m home playing video games) we took a walk to the town center and decided to pick up some fish for tonight’s dinner. Seafood here is not only better, but also more varied (and cheaper) compared to the big big city we moved from. So we started chatting with the fishmonger and his people and I asked about the cuttlefish, which I didn’t recognize. Only had it once in Barcelona I think, very fond memory of the taste though. I asked him if he’d show me how to clean it next time I’m in town to buy some, because I know how to handle calamari and octopus but this one’s a bit different, he said. He said sure, but then went on to clean one anyway so he can show us, asked me if I knew how to prep it too.

I cleaned and prepped a lot of calamari in the restaurant and what we did was rub the hell out of the pieces on a sieve with a good amount of salt (and a bit of sugar). This takes about 15-20 minutes, you should be able to squeeze a piece and it should easily dent a bit. Then we rinsed and plunged it in mineral water or carbonated water (I hear some prefer beer) and refrigerated until use. Come order time, we took it out, plunged it into a deep well of flour and deep fried it, salting on its way out and there you’d have your fried calamari. Gorgeous stuff. That’s pretty much what I did with the cuttlefish, except I added a tiny amount of lemon juice, sugar and salt to the mineral water, to help the denaturation and brine it a little. And I added a bit of salt to the flour before deep-frying.

There’s a whole lot of myth in cooking, which is basically chemistry. One might tell you to add baking soda and the other might forbid you from rinsing the squid, claiming it will make it tough again... Well, I say fuck that, if you’ll kindly pardon my French. You can do whatever you want as long as you know the science behind it. You rub the squid/cuttlefish because you want to denature the protein. You add the salt because it greatly helps with denaturation. Mineral water (and lemon & salt) also help with the denaturation and keep it in a nice brine. Lemon (not the amount I added, I would think), salt and sugar also help with flavoring as well as keep the produce moist, thanks to osmosis = brining.

So what’s up with “not rinsing it because it’ll get tough again”? I call myth, as I don’t see how you can restore the protein structure once you’ve broken it by simply using water. And baking soda? Well, baking soda is a superb tenderizer. I haven’t tried it on seafood but I’d assume you would get much faster results with it without half the effort. That’s why people come back to it so often. I think it’s a brilliant ingredient and it has some “magical” effects on various proteins, but for seafood (which is more delicate in general) I’ll try to avoid using it for now as it tends to leave a taste if not used carefully. But still, you never know until you’ve tried.

Next time, I promise I’ll remember how to make that amazingly good tarator sauce which so many seafood places epicly fail in making. Really I, I’ll remember.

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Last night’s dinner: eggplant involtini with a piece of toast.

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So anyway, last year I decided to find a really good tomato sauce and started out by browsing some recipes to see if they’d work. The first day of my research, I came across Marcella Hazan’s famous (yet unknown to me) tomato sauce recipe - which involves zero skill and basically cooks itself. Suffice to say that’s where my research ended. Like most amazing things in life, it’s so simple I feel like cheating when making it. There is a bit of a trick to it though, you have to let the sauce simmer until the fat is visibly on top - otherwise your sauce will taste nowhere near how it should. That usually takes around 60 - 75 minutes for me, even though the recipes state 45. For yesterday's dinner we added some beautiful spicy homemade sausages we bought from a steakhouse and a bit of good hard goat cheese. Magical things happened.

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Serious Addictions is back, Indian style.

Hello nerds.

I’ve decided to get back on the cook->point&shoot train with a new focus on Indian cuisine, for now. I’ve very rarely cooked Indian before, despite loving the cuisine and working with a good Pakistani chef for a while. So I thought it’s time I got on with it. I might post some off-topic dishes every now and then, but it’ll mostly be attempts at Indian food for a good while.

I’ll either go through a cookbook or pick recipes from several books I find fit to my purpose. I’m taking a peek at the books and getting my spices in order right now, and should get to cooking in a week or two. Here’s to hoping my new camera gives me an effing break. Until then, take care and eat well.

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Why don't you share food any more? Signature: Hot Chick

Busy with other things! Maybe I've lost interest? Or maybe I'll come back to it some day :) I'd like to go back to my PWF project one day though.

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Quest item! Player Z challenged me to update my blog. What better than salmon to please her? Here you go Z, seared salmon on top of a garlicy pea+parsley "medley" & toast German bread.

Who's boring now?

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Russian (Olivier) salad topped with salmon gravlax on toast. The salad and gravlax are both homemade. I had a really special recipe for the salad, which helped make this an amazing snack I'll be making often.

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Quick dinner with warm cabbage salad and homemade meatballs.

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Grilled cheese sandwich with culatello - cured pork at its sexiest and I don't call just anything that. I only had a piece about the size of my fist and those were some of the happiest days of my life. Remember that relative of yours visiting Italy soon? I suggest you pick up the phone now.

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Spinach souffle for the masses!

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Medium rare beef entrecote and green salad. Screw tenderloin, you're better off with this cut.

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Fırın sütlaç vs. regular sütlaç. We all know the winner here, but hey, I have to think of others too when I cook.

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Olive bread I made for a mini beach sandwich picnic with the family.

Speaking of, frozen olive bread doesn’t thaw well when force-thawed (in a toaster, grill etc.), learnt that the hard way when I bit into semi-frozen olives in an otherwise warmed slice. It was an experience that almost ruined my relationship with black olives, but thankfully failed as I know how to wipe some memories clean. Yes I am that food ninja.

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Karnıyarık on lavash. It's usually served with Turkish rice (then again, what isn't in Turkey?), but I think bread/pita or lavash really makes this dish justice.

I didn't make the lavash.

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Şevket-i bostan (blessed thistle) with lamb and Firik bulgur.

While this delicious plant may be just another weird-looking item sold at the herb shop for some of you, it's a quite precious cooking ingredient in other parts of the world, like where I'm from.

What really shone for me on that plate is the Firik bulgur, though. I ordered this gem from a nice farm, so maybe that's part of why it was so mindblowing for me but I had never tasted or smelled anything with such a strong woody aroma - and I don't mean "smokey", I mean woody. It also strongly reminded me of green tea (probably because green tea is a little woody itself).

So if you have access to this bulgur, I suggest you store for 10 winters. Now if you'll excuse me I'll stop my salivating and move on to whatever it is I'll do next.

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Sunday morning pancakes with buffalo butter and chestnut honey. The latter I would describe as "less pushy, more edgy" than your mother's honey. No awful pun intended.