My "foodie" Dynasty

It does appear that I am the eldest of our developing Halverson foodie dynasty. I realized this on Christmas night when  everyone from myself, to my son Pete and then the grandsons participated in the creation of our Christmas dinner at Peter's house.

My teenaged grandsons provided the always required layout of dips, shrimp, and munchies. Jon, 16, made a terrific quacamole and both the boys decorated the house so that when I arrived it had all the warmth and holiday setting to make opening gifts most festive. Fire in the fireplace of course.
 Even many of our gifts related to food: a large heavy duty cutting board for me to replace my very warped standby, along with an assortment of alcoholic spirits for me to have on hand because I don't keep a large inventory of something I don't drink in the house. I gave Peter Alton Brown's new cookbook, a great book for an exhaustive treatment on just about anything to do with food. Also a gift certificate for two to Cheesetique, a cheese emporium in Alexandria.

We started the meal with grandson Chris'  terrific butternut squash/leek pureed soup. I don't know what he put into it but it had many levels of flavor and a touch of a kick. Pete baked a crown roast of pork with the little footie slippers on it, rich and succulent and worthy of a pic that now appears on Facebook. With that flavorful and deeply roasted vegetables with chopped apples and a tangy spinach. For dessert, our friend Janice supplied a pumpkin chiffon pie that was smooth and rich.  Both kids are great helpers in the kitchen and table conversation frequently relates to food and its preparation and dinners past. Jonathan at eight years old was the traditional pumpkin pie maker for the holidays and he early earned his own chef's knife to make him useful in the kitchen. His mother is an excellent cook, so I guess these guys had no choice. My late husband was chief cook when alive and while we both had demanding careers. I don't know if a passion for cooking is hereditary, but if so, good eating goes along with it.

Fish Night

Fish Night seems to have been hijacked several times in the last couple of months and last night was no exception. We had a big crowd at our house on Christmas Day for a dinner of standing rib roast (my first attempt at this -- so easy and almost fool-proof with the techniques I used) and lots of veggies. For this Fish Night, I served left-over veggies and leftover home-made dinner rolls along with a very simple shrimp dish. So, after cheese, crackers and tamarind chutney with our drinks, we sat down to green beans, scalloped potatoes and:

• Baked Shrimp Scampi – a la Barefoot Contessa. Yummy and delicious – so easy and great for advance preparation.
  

For dessert, we had chocolate fondue brought over by my neighbors – leftover from their Christmas Eve dinner. Hooray for leftovers!

This holiday season has just wiped me out – I’m ready for the New Year when I’ll do better next time.

Fish Night

I love Fish Night around the holidays.  In fact, I just love the holidays, but the food served at holiday dinners is not my favorite (to cook or to eat) so I enjoy eating foods not generally associated with the holidays and, in my world, fish is one of those foods. Last night, it was great to eat “regular” food even though the house is oozing holiday décor and the smells of holiday baking.  I fell back on an old standby – simple roasted finfish with a new and different sauce.  In fact, if you’re unsure of your seafood prep talents, this is the way to go.  It’s almost foolproof.

We had six for dinner – perfect for conversation around the table, but I do admit I love a bigger crowd with it attendant commotion.  Hugo brought a delicious sauvignon blanc – Spy Valley 2010.  I was afraid he had broken my cardinal rule – “don’t get me hooked on a wine that costs more than $20” – but this wine had me fooled.  It’s not costly and it's very grapefruit-y; if, like me, you love these characteristics, this is a wine for you.

We started with drinks and pistachios – the latter in the shell give us time to catch up on each other’s holiday plans and events.  As a first course, I served a vegetable soup that was leftover from my week-end comfort food cooking binge.  Then:

• Pan-Roasted Cod with Chorizo Vinaigrette – I love roasted mild white fish complemented with a “wow” sauce or condiment. But I just about outdid myself this time; after preparing the sauce, I almost tossed it out thinking it could not possibly complement fish.  But it was amazing!  I can't find a link to this recipe, so let me know if you'd like to have it.  Pan-roasting is a great way to cook fish.  I urge you to try this preparation – because it is so easy (see below) and so delicious.  
• Green Beans with Lemon Vinaigrette – Is this one too many vinaigrettes for a single meal?  I didn’t think so and no one complained!  This is one of my favorite ways to prepare green beans.  The recipe calls for walnuts, but I omitted them last night because the meal was already very rich.
• Carrot Celery Root Puree – Here I am with the celery root again.  What can I say?  It’s in season and I love it.  And it’s fairly easily disguised – especially in this recipe.  I had only about half the amount of celery root called for in the recipe, so I just increased the amount of carrots.  Purees are “in” these day s.  Not sure why because they are fairly boring, but this was good.
• Baked Parmesan Tomatoes – Here’s where I fall off the wagon in my attempt to eat locally and seasonally most of the time.  I love, love, love tomatoes and the Campari hothouse tomatoes at Costco actually taste like tomatoes all year round.  This is a great, simple recipe -- the finished product is shown at right.

We had banana cake with cinnamon icing for dessert – only because I had some over-ripe bananas that needed to be used.  I can’t in good conscience give you this recipe because, like pretty much every banana cake I’ve made, it was boring.  I make a mean banana bread, but I want banana cake!  Does anyone have a good recipe?

Fascinating Fish Facts:  It’s not all that fascinating, I guess, but it’s been suggested to me that preparing fish for guests presents difficult timing issues.  True, most fish dishes require cooking at the very last minute; so how do you do that when you want to spend time with your guests and not in the kitchen while they are having fun without you?  This is especially important to me so, whatever the meal, I try to serve food that does not require a lot of last minute attention and I do as much as I can before guests arrive.

Fish, however, really does require last minute cooking.  So I rarely fry fish – it smells up the house, takes a lot of time and attention, and is not all that healthy.  If you’re a backyard griller, you know that grilled fish is great.  But I’m not, so I mostly baked or broil fish (though poaching is also a good option).  If you prep the fish before your guests arrive, you can excuse yourself just before dinner is served and bake or broil the fish in less than 10 minutes.  The technique for last night’s pan-roasted cod is my very favorite and produces perfectly cooked fish with no hassle.  Its variations are limitless.

The only other point worth making is that, when serving fish, it is especially important that your side dishes take little or no last-minute effort.  For example, last night the puree was done early in the day and the just popped into the microwave while the fish was cooking.  The beans enjoyed their hot water bath while the fish was in the oven – their seasoning having been prepped earlier in the day so the flavors would meld.  The tomatoes were made oven ready before guests arrived.  So they were done by the time the fish went into the oven and we sat down to eat our soup.  Piece of cake! 

Banana cake anyone? -- we have lots left over.  If someone has a good banana cake recipe, please share and I’ll do better next time.

Plum Pudding with a Kick

Now that I'm thinking about Christmas at my grandmother's house, I remember another anecdote that I could share. We always had plum pudding for dessert with an egg custard dressing, delicious and touched with a spot of whiskey. Our family weren't drinkers and certainly my grandmother wouldn't imbibe, except for the bit she would put into the dessert at Christmas time. One year as her eyesight seemed to be getting dimmer and her memory not quite as sharp as usual, my mother watched her tip the bottle into the sauce and then a few minutes later come back and do it again, with an additional flourish. As the forks plunged into this delicacy at the table, I recall eyebrows flying up, a few coughs and someone said, "wow"! My grandmother didn't seem to notice and nothing more was said. But that had to be my first encounter with the hard stuff. I was probably 11 years old.

Philadelphia Pepper Hash Returns to my Christmas Table.

My Christmas dinners as a child almost always occurred at my grandmother's table in Haddonfield, New Jersey, an historical town quite close to Philadelphia.  We usually had standing rib roast, overdone according to my mother's taste, but that was the way my dad's family liked it. The salad served was like cole slaw but it was called "pepper hash" and my father liked to tell of how his job was to chop the peppers for the hash, evidently quite the chore given they didn't have food processors in those days. After my grandmother died, Dad lamented that he didn't have her recipe for the pepper hash and so it no longer appeared on our Christmas table.  Yesterday, I realized that we now have the internet where everyone shares old recipes and so I typed in "pepper hash". Suddenly I was met with  chat about Philadlephia pepper hash; that had to be my grandmother's recipe and I was delighted to see that others were longing for it along with me.   The website which proved to be full of all sorts of handy info for  foodies is www.seriouseats.com.

Too bad Dad didn't have a chance to enjoy his pepper hash before the internet came along to save his Christmas dinner.

Fish Night

No Fish Night yesterday because almost all my guests ended up going out of town - to a wedding in Florida or skiing in Colorado. So "Hugo" and I just went out for dinner. We planned to eat at Hank's Oyster Bar in Alexandria because they have great seafood, but we had not counted on them being closed on Mondays!

So we ended up at a nearby restaurant, but I want to mention Hank's anyway because fish lovers should definitely visit the place. They have especially good oysters, which I love! In fact, the Washington Post ran a great article not long ago about the sourcing of some of the oysters served in this restaurant. It's actually an inspiring story and I think you'll enjoy reading it.

Food Completes the Season Fun

I"m sure, along with the retailers, the restaurateurs love the holiday season. Good business for them as shoppers stop off for a meal to complete or start a busy day of tracking down bargains. The spending mood is irresistible as is the desire to incorporate food into the shopping fun. On Saturday morning, I was headed out Route 7 on a shopping mission when I was about to pass IHOP. Not having had breakfast, I decided to "hop" in and munch on some blueberry pancakes. Even though I was a "party of one", the warm and lively atmosphere was embracing as I watched families park their packages beside them on the booth seat, lift the baby into the booster chair, and laugh and banter among themselves. It was a fun place to be and I was caught in the mood. I've thought of how lunch time is also the time to celebrate, when folks get together to visit and connect, and how dinner out is a must at least once during the season, probably at a more upscale place than they would normally choose, but what the heck,  it's the HOLIDAYS!

Happy Hanukkah,  Merry Christmas to all my foodie friends.

Cooking Club News

So, yesterday our Cooking Club ladies, about 13 of us, gathered at Mary Jane's to enjoy our take on Winter Solstice foods. Assembled on table were such good things as kugles, potato pancakes, salmon cakes, rice pilaf and all sorts of other things, and yummy desserts, the recipe for one we all agreed would be good to have in our collection. My own contribution was chopped liver and onions; not being Jewish I had to get the recipe from my grandson's mother who is, and it went over well. I wish I didn't have leftovers because that stuff is wicked dangerous! Hopefully we can get some of the recipes onto the doc store.

Fish Night

With apologies to Casablanca fans, we "round[ed] up the usual suspects" for Fish Night yesterday. I had a great time because we had had to cancel Fish Night for two Mondays in a row, and I missed the camaraderie. We spent more time than usual over drinks and unsalted almonds --- catching up and staring into the fireplace. “Hugo “ brought a couple of bottles of Vinho Verde – one of my favorite wines of late -- and we made quick work of the first one. I had a nice red wine left over from a big pot-luck dinner we had had on Saturday night with our rowing club (NVRC), so we finished that off rather than open Hugo’s second bottle – we’ll pop that cork next week! After dinner we watched the Caps game against Florida, which we had TiVo’d during dinner – the Caps certainly did their best to come back after a horrible start.

Another very simple dinner this week. I did two things I rarely do – (1) serve a main dish pasta and (2) fry the seafood -- and I must say the dish was a real hit. I started with a pasta recipe from Lidia Bastianich – she’s known for her cooking shows, though I have not seen them.

• Tossed Green Salad – I made the vinaigrette with a vinegar that is new to me – Fruit Vinegar. It’s an Asian product and I found it at an Asian grocery. Not surprisingly, given its name, it has fruity sweet notes that make for a great salad dressing. I added some lemon juice to balance the sweetness. My guests heartily recommend this dressing!

• Spaghetti with Breaded Shrimp (Spaghetti con i Gamberi Impannati) – This is essentially a pasta primavera served with breaded fried shrimp on top. I’m thinking it’s the best pasta primavera I’ve ever made, so the shrimp – though delicious – was almost an afterthought to me. I started with Lydia’s recipe, though I omitted the broccoli because several of the folks at dinner do not like it and its strong flavor would have permeated the entire dish. I think you could use any vegetables you like. I used the asparagus and green onions called for in the recipe, and I added some winter squash because I had gone to all the trouble of peeling one the day before and not cooked all of it. And right now Costco has some very reasonably priced chanterelle mushrooms that I could not resist, and they were amazing in the dish.

• Roasted and Pickled Red, Yellow and Orange Bell Peppers – I had some bell peppers in the fridge last week that needed to be used before they spoiled, so I roasted a whole bunch of them and let them sit in a marinade until yesterday. They were really yummy and a nice complement to the pasta.

• Dinner Rolls – these were also leftover from Saturday’s Potluck. They were from Costco and a lot better than you would ever think they could be. Lots of flavor for a white bread roll.

And, to complete the Potluck leftover theme, we had leftover pumpkin pie and cherry-topped cream cheese pie. If I had not done such a good job (if I do say so myself) on the pasta, I don’t think I could even take credit for this dinner!

A final cute story from the evening – probably cute only to me because I love my Fish Night guests. I had picked some amazing parsley from the little garden we have under grow lights in our laundry room. I chopped it up intending to garnish each pasta serving before I took it to the table. As often happens, I forgot the fancy final touch and started to wander around the table topping each person’s serving with a pinch of parsley. Two of my guests virtually threw themselves over their pasta bowls to protect them from the “green stuff.” I think I’ve made great progress over the years with encouraging fish consumption among my friends, but I clearly have a lot of work yet to go on the veggie front.

Fascinating Fish Facts: Almost all the shrimp marketed in the United States is frozen (or was frozen before the purveyor thawed it for sale). Shrimp are extremely perishable, so there is always a substantial risk of getting shrimp that’s past its prime if you buy fresh shrimp. I used to be able to buy fresh “heads-on” shrimp from a reliable source at a farmers’ market, but I have not seen that guy at the market for quite a while. When you buy non-frozen fish at a local store, you can be 99.9% sure that it was frozen and then thawed by the store “for your convenience.” The problem, of course, is that you don’t know when the shrimp was thawed or how long it’s been sitting, unfrozen, in the display case. I never buy this shrimp – seriously, how hard is it to thaw something?

You can be fairly confident that the shrimp you thaw yourself and then cook immediately is very “fresh.” Today, fresh wild shrimp catches are processed and frozen immediately to very low temperatures - frequently, right on the fishing vessel. So fresh is rarely better than frozen. Always buy shrimp that is still frozen – better, cheaper and more convenient in the long run.

There are two great ways to thaw shrimp:

• In the refrigerator: Put wrapped frozen raw shrimp in the refrigerator to thaw, with a tray beneath it, to catch the drippings. This usually takes about 24 hours.

• In cold water: Submerge the package in cold water and change the water approximately every 30 minutes until the shrimp is thawed. More often than not, I’m desperate for a quick thaw, so I will also immerse the shrimp without the packaging.

Purchasing tips from the FDA:

• Don't buy frozen seafood if its package is open, torn or crushed on the edges.

• Avoid packages that are positioned above the "frost line" or top of the freezer case in the store's freezer.

• If the package cover is transparent, look for signs of frost or ice crystals. These could mean the fish has been stored a long time or thawed and refrozen - in which case, choose another package. (I think this is very important!)

Most of the shrimp available in the U.S. is farm raised. This is fine as long as the methods used are safe and environmentally sound. I could actually go on and on about this, but suffice it to say that you want to avoid shrimp that has been raised in “open” systems -- farms that are open and allow surrounding water to flow through the enclosures—or those that divert wastes and chemicals into the environment—pollute adjacent waterways and habitats. This includes floating net cages or ponds that exchange water with the ocean. Needless to say, the shrimp does not have the best diet when a significant part of their food consists of their own waste. U.S. fish farmers have developed closed systems to manage wastes, filtering their ponds constantly and composting wastes to keep them out of neighboring waters. Fish farmers in Thailand are also starting to do this, but the easiest way to ensure the healthiest frozen shrimp is to buy shrimp from US fish farms. More detailed information can be found on the Monterrey Bay Seafood Watch website.

I see I've gone on too long once again. I'll do better next time.