Comforting Foods

My comfort foods class on Monday really worked out well. Sometimes we don't have enough time to complete the recipes because we have just so many minutes to put the dishes together. But with some advance preparation that didn't rob my students of a learning process, it all came out better than good. We had ham and bean soup and I had soaked the beans at home and also I had boiled the ham hock at the same time in a separate pot with two teaspoons of herbes de Provence. When I arrived at the cottage kitchen, I presented the group with ham stock, softened beans and hocks with meat just falling off the bones Members of the group chopped an onion, several carrots and two sticks of celery and mushed up four cloves of garlic. They stripped the ham off the bones and then everything went into one pot and cooked for an hour by which time the beans were soft and I finished off the project by using a emulsion blender to mush up some of the  beans.

At the same time we put together two glorious egg custard pies. I used Pillsbury's ready made pie crust and lined two pie plates, building up the edges to make them deeper. Then mixed up eggs, milk and sugar with a little vanilla and poured into the shells, dotted with some butter and with great difficulty, one of my helpers moved the very sloppy pies to the oven where in about 35 minutes they had firmed up. Very eggy and creamy and the added whipped cream, raspberries, banana slices and shredded coconut didn't hurt this elegant dessert. I had also brought from home some from -scratch hot chocolate to further the comfort ambiance along A very happy, relaxed group of eaters.

Jersey Quality Diner in Virginia

I'm a Jersey girl through and through. So when I came to Virginia over eight years ago I looked around to find a good diner like I was accustomed to enjoying in my native state. New Jersey is famous for its diners. Alas, all I could find was the Silver Diner at the two locations that I know of and they just didn't measure up.

More recently, I stopped in at the Silver Diner one afternoon and was delighted to see a very fresh menu, with local products featured in imaginative variety. So, last evening, looking for something comfortable and homey, I stopped in for dinner. Again, as I looked through the menu I could have chosen any number of dishes to fit the bill,  but settled on an all-time favorite, liver and onions with bacon, mushrooms and all the fixings.  It was excellent, the liver soft and moist, and even the accompanying veggies were fresh and steamed correctly. I have a thing about half cooked, half not- cooked fresh vegetables.  The service was really good with a cute young waiter who seemed bent on keeping me in hot tea and checking my progress throughout the meal, but not annoyingly so. Restaurant not too crowded.  Best of all, someone was feeding silver into a juke box that was playing out tunes from the 50's and 60's with understandable lyrics and a gentle beat. I recommend you grab a friend or go by yourself  and give the Silver Diner at West Ox and Fair Lakes a try. Not as classy as my favorite fancy restaurants but for under fifteen dollars you get a delightful good meal. Like you can get at any Jersey diner.  Tell them, "Debbie sent you."

Fish Night

To celebrate Chinese New Year, we dined with some of our regular Fish Night guests at Asia Nine in D.C. They have a wonderful prix fixe menu especially for this great holiday, and the food was amazing. I can recommend it heartily! Is anyone else doing something food-wise to celebrate the Year of the Dragon?

The Soup That Keeps on Giving

Today in our Comfort Foods class we made Potato and Leek soup. It came out really good, everyone seemed to enjoy it although I contend that it needed more salt. Our brownies were really comforting and for a day like today both were pitched to bring the ultimate comfort.

After the class I scurried to Reston for my 2 pm. class, Gloria Sussman's music class that I absolutely never miss, although I was late, and after I picked my way across the darkened room to the only chair available so late in the session, I sat down to enjoy the violin music that was streaming from the speakers. As I sat there, something caused me to sniff and sure enough I realized that I smelled like an onion!  My clothes must have absorbed the cooking aromas from the soup. After the class, I asked the guy sitting next to me if he smelled the leek-y soup and he said he thought what he smelled was Chinese food. I made my impression. Next week 's offering may be loaded with garlic.

No More Free Juice Glasses

When I was a kid, my favorite refrigerator sneaky-snack was a  finger lick of pimiento cheese that came in a small glass, later recycled into a juice glass. I loved that stuff. But when it no longer appeared in our fridge, I forgot about it until more recent years when I would occasionally buy it. Pretty pricey for what it is. Then Bobbie Deen, Paula's son, brought it up on his show the other day and claimed his mother made it for his family, spreading it on grilled cheese sandwiches. I watched him put together pimiento cheese quick as a lick. A half cup of soft cream cheese, a half cup of shredded cheddar cheese, a quarter cup of jarred roasted red peppers, chopped,  and a hefty tablespoon of olive tapenade. Mix it all up and lather some between bread and make yourself the most delicious grilled cheese sandwich.  Gooey goodness, comfort food.

Not Your Canned Variety of Sardines

I've been getting the message from my Food Network that fresh sardines are terrific. I like sardines even in cans, but when I saw them fresh and plump in the fish case at Wegman's yesterday, I decided to try them. Picked up three about five inches long and undressed, so I had to gut and debone them, but that wasn't too hard or messy.

Once that was done and I'd rinsed them, I laid them flat on a parchment covered cookie sheet and spread them with a mixture of Panko flakes, oregano, salt, pepper and olive oil. Then I topped them with a slice of lemon and wrapped my package of fish tightly envelope style and baked them for about 40 minutes . On the same pan I had put some chunks of potatoes lathered in olive oil and herbs and they roasted along with the fish.

This was a really good dinner when sided with deli cole slaw. The fish was so delicate and sweet. I shall have to do that again as this fish is supposed to be extremely nourishing and pretty cheap.  I'm trying to try out new fish options.

Fish Night

Among our guests this week was a friend who will be moving to Costa Rica soon, so it was good to see her and have a chance to learn of her plans and bemoan her loss to our social circle. We toasted her new adventure with our Fish Night Cocktail – a Bahama Mama. I chose this drink because one of our regular guests told me he had some Nassau Royale Liqueur, a substance unknown to me, and I wanted to try something that included it. It was pretty tasty.

During drinks, I served some cheeses that I purchased over the week-end from a shop called Arrowine in Arlington (using a Social Living voucher). Arrowine is a great place, by the way. The cheesemongers were very welcoming and helpful. We started our dinner with the (almost) ever-present green salad and then had:

• Pan Fried Catfish with Crispy Mustard Crust – The recipe is from my new cookbook Good Fish. It was really delicious – a hit with all our guests. The recipe calls for char, but it seemed it would work with catfish and it was perfect. The recipe follows a technique I used to use a lot but have gotten away from – brushing a very flavorful sauce or paste on fish before breading and frying or baking it. In this case, the recipe called for a very simple sauce consisting mainly of Dijon mustard and lemon juice – yummy!
• Green Beans Amandine – a great recipe from Cook’s Illustrated.
  
• Parmesan Roasted Butternut Squash – I loved to roast root vegetables, but the last couple of times I roasted winter squash were not that successful – squash that was completely cooked before any browning or caramelization -- so I went online to try to figure out what I was doing wrong. I happened on this recipe, which is actually more of a casserole, and I can highly recommend it.
  

For dessert we had chocolate chip cookies with our tea. I used the Consumer Reports recipe. Sounds like a joke, right? But last year, the Consumer Reports folks offered a recipe for “The Practically Perfect Cookie” when they tested and rated store-bought chocolate chip cookies. I had always used the recipe on the chocolate chip bag and it was fine, but it turns out the Consumer Reports cookie really is “practically perfect.” Try it and let us know what you think. No need to do better next time!

Fascinating Fish Facts: Catfish produced on fish farms in this country is an excellent seafood choice. It’s not only delicious and inexpensive, but also provided to us in an environmentally sound manner. According to Monterey Bay Seafood Watch, US farmed catfish is “[r]aised in closed, inland ponds using recirculated fresh water and fed a mostly vegetarian diet of soybeans, corn and rice, [so it] is considered to be one of the most sustainable fish species available. Closed, inland ponds dramatically reduce the risk of farmed fish escaping and spreading disease to native wild populations. Their primarily vegetarian diet, with extremely low levels of fishmeal, reduces the number of wild fish caught.” As noted, catfish aquaculture is especially cool because farmed catfish (as opposed to farmed salmon or shrimp, for example) are vegetarians, so the end product is healthier and produced at less cost to other species and the environment. I just make sure my catfish is farmed in the United States – not only for environmental reasons, but also because I’m not confident that foreign farmed fish is a safe as it should be.

Catfish farmed in Asia is often sold under the name Basa or Swai (and sometimes just under the name “Catfish” even though this is not legal) and it’s also a good choice according to many (including Monterey Bay Seafood Watch), but I avoid it. I don’t know enough about this to offer firm recommendations to others, but there are plenty of examples of foreign raised seafood that we should NOT eat (banned chemicals, unsanitary conditions, etc.), and credible reports of poor oversight by the FDA, so I just err on the side of safety – especially inasmuch as farm raised fish is even if the US product is a tiny bit more expensive.