Vegetarianism, Fish, Lamb, Scallops and, strangely, Gordon Ramsay

My wife has returned to vegetarianism. This was kind of an unexpected turn. I wanted to explain to her that vegetarianism can be cured by eating meat, but this seemed like a bad idea. Luckily she isn’t expecting me to become a vegetarian as well, although there are a lot of vegetarian dishes that I love and cook on a regular basis, and she will still eat fish occassionally. Initially, I thought this would be a huge drag (especially since I just bought a whole 12 pound NY strip loin that I cut into steaks), but so far it’s working out well. She did tell me that she feels better already (after about ten days) and she said it without sounding smug. (Nothing worse than a born-again vegetarian.)

The unexpected upside is that I’m now allow to eat whatever I want so long as there are enough things to make up an adequate vegetarian meal for her. I’m normally against cooking multiple entrees, particularly on a week night, because it takes more time, dirties more pots, etc. But I’ve done it a few times and am actually excited about the possibilities. As I mentioned, she will eat fish occasionally, but the big issue is that she doesn’t really like fish that much, and tends to prefer the milder sorts of fish. I, on the other hand, love fish. In fact I love all kinds of fish including a lot of the darker and oilier ones that a lot of people find too strong and some of the scary things like skate wing. So now I find myself with an opportunity to cook fish more often and so far I’ve been taking advantage of it. Recently, I made her a mushroom stew, with mushrooms, onions, garlic, and thyme, which I served over polenta. I sautéed a piece of orange roughy for myself, served it on polenta and stole just enough of the mushrooms to use as a topping to the fish. We both had some sautéed yellow and green baby zucchini with basil and garlic on the side. We were both more than pleased with the results. (The baby zucchini were from the farmer’s market and were incredibly good.)

The next night was faux-Chinese. I made tofu in black bean sauce, stir fried Italian kale with red chiles, ginger, and garlic, steamed rice, and steamed fish with scallions, ginger, soy and sesame oil. It’s one of the simplest fish preparations and also one of the best. You get subtle flavoring from the aromatics and the purity of the fish comes through. I hadn’t steamed a fish in ages and it was so incredibly good. Now, I need to track down some oily fish or skate wing.

The other thing that I’ve missed for a long time is lamb. It’s absolutely my favorite red meat. But my wife would never eat it because it was in the “cute animal” food group (along with duck, venison, rabbit and other furry and cuddly things). Tonight, I’m having lamb. At least I think so. I’m not going shopping until later and I don’t know if I’ll find something that’s up to snuff. I’m hoping to get some kind of lamb that I can marinade quickly and grill, but I can get her Portobello mushrooms. (That’s the other interesting thing. I like mushrooms a lot, but she loves mushrooms and is more than happy to eat more of them). So this may really work out after all. The irony is that she’s told me all along that I could cook whatever for me and she’s fine with something else, but I was always the one to refuse. Now it’s opened a whole new door.

I’ve made a whole lot of other great things of late as well, but haven’t written about them. One of them was something that my wife loved and may be requested for her birthday, so she asked me to write about it so I don’t forget it. I was heading home a little late from work and didn’t want to cook anything too involved because I didn’t want to wait. I had some scallops at home (big sea scallops) and stopped to get some white mushrooms but they were out. So I picked up some shitakes instead and a loaf of bread. I cut a carrot and an onion into brunoise (tiny dice for you non-geeks), sweated them in olive, cut the shitakes in half and then sautéed them quickly, deglazing them with a little white wine and the juice form half and orange. I seared the scallops in a pan with a little olive oil, plated the vegetables in the center of two plates, and then put the cooked scallops on top. I had the other half of the orange left, so I deglazed the scallop pan with orange juice, reduced it and then added a dab of butter to mount it. The sauce went over and around the scallops and I served the bread on the side. I don’t know why I decided to use orange instead of lemon, but it made all the difference. It was incredibly simple, but shows what you can do quickly with good ingredients.

I think the scallops were influenced by reading Gordon Ramsay’s A Chef for All Seasons. Many (most?) people know him as the loud, rude chef from Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, but the guy can cook, really cook. His book has a lot of the things you would expect form a top chef: cook things that are in season, buy great ingredients, etc. Nothing new in that. Every celebrity chef gives that same advice (because it’s true). But his food is really well done. It’s clever without being ostentatious and doesn’t get overly complicated (well for the most part). He also cooks a lot of fish. In fact he likely has more recipes for fish than for various meats. It was interesting to see that his food really is as good as his reputation would suggest. He has a talent for creating dishes that look good, are relatively easy to make and make sense. There’s nothing done for flash or show. All the elements of his dish make sense, even when he mixes seemingly unrelated ingredients. I really should look at more of his food.

My Wife's Birthday

December 27th

This was my wife’s birthday and the rule in our house is that the on your birthday you get to dictate the activities and meals of the day. She had chosen a fairly simple meal to prepare so that we would have time to go see a movie and watch some other ones at home as well.

For her birthday dinner she chose sautéed scallops, Brussels sprouts cooked with homemade pancetta, shallots, and white wine, and orzo tossed with garlic olive oil, and pine nuts. It was in fact a quick meal to cook, because none of them take very long to do. In fact the Brussels sprouts take the longest. I started those and then got the orzo cooking and sautéed some garlic in olive oil to mix with the orzo. I toasted some pine nuts in a pan and held those to the side. When the orzo was done I drained it and tossed it with the garlic oil and added the toasted pine nuts. I was initially going to add some cheese to it, but I was using the orzo “pilaf” as a bed for the scallops and thought it would interfere with the flavor of the scallops so I decided not to.

I dried the scallops well on paper towels to help them get a god crust and sautéed them quickly in olive oil over high heat. Scallops cook very quickly and generally one minute a side is plenty of time to cook them without letting them get tough. I pulled the scallops form the pan, added some chopped garlic, let it cook briefly before deglazing the pan with white wine and then added some butter to pull the sauce together. I added the scallops back to the pan briefly to coat them in the sauce and then plated everything. I used the orzo as a bed for the scallops and did the Brussels sprouts on the side. The scallops were tender and very sweet and delicious. I would have liked a little better crust on them, but the crust was adequate. I had a glass of inexpensive Viognier with it which went quite well.

For dessert, we had Napoleons form the Beaverton Bakery, which is one of the best bakeries I’ve ever seen. She had chosen these instead of a cake, and although we didn’t add candles, I did sing her “Happy Birthday.” The Napoleons were as perfect as anything else I’d had form them and was a great ending to a great meal.

Scallop Pasta and La Fin du Monde

I had initially planned to cook some kind of pasta with tomatoes, because my tomato plants are finally starting to come on strong (particularly the cherry tomatoes), but I had to stop by the store on the way home and found some attractively priced scallops, so the menu changed. The scallops were frozen, but unless you meet the boat at the dock (and it’s only been out for one day), chances are that most of the seafood you buy has been frozen at some point, so I generally don’t have a problem with frozen seafood. These were large New England scallops at a good price, so I decided I needed to do something with them. I picked up some mushrooms as well, headed home, and tried to figure out exactly what I was going to cook. Scallops and mushrooms are a good combo and don’t really need much else. I was still thinking about using some of the tomatoes, but I was worried it would make for a dish that was too busy. I settled on sautéing the mushrooms in olive oil with garlic, then searing the scallops in a hot pan and serving it all with pasta.

I put the scallops in cold water to thaw, started to prep the mushrooms, and put water on for the pasta. Mushrooms give off a lot of liquid when they cook, and I generally try to cook them in batches to help reduce the amount of liquid in the pan (which can otherwise turn sautéing into stewing). You don’t necessarily need to remove each batch, but if you only throw in a handful at a time and then brown them before throwing in more, it keeps the liquid from building up too much. I cooked the mushrooms until they were firm and browned, then added the garlic. As the pan got dry, I deglazed it all with amontillado. I love sherry and generally keep fino and amontillado on hand. Amontillado is the more full bodied and flavored of the two and is a great match with mushrooms. Fino would do fine in a pinch, but the amontillado is nuttier and works better.

I pulled the mushrooms out of the pan, added a little more olive oil, and put the scallops in to sear (making sure that I patted then dry first). Scallops cook very quickly and get tough if overcooked, so I let them sit for about a minute and a half, and then flipped them. I gave them about another minute on the second side and pulled them out to rest. I added the mushrooms back to the pan, added the drained pasta (which was penne), some parsley and tossed it all together. The mix was a little dry so I added some of the pasta cooking water in order to add some silkiness to the dish. I put the scallops back, turned the heat off and let it sit for about 30 seconds before plating it. In Italy you don’t add cheese to pasta with fish in it, but I was in the US, so I felt no compunction to skip the cheese, although I’m sure there was a loud groan somewhere from the pasta police.

A few days before, I had picked up a Unibroue La Fin de Monde, which is Belgian style Golden Ale, because it was on sale. Unibroue is a Canadian brewery that brews some of the best Belgian-style beers outside of Belgium. I think it’s fair to say that many of their beers are as good as or better than some authentic Belgian beers. According to their website, this is their beast selling beer and it’s no wonder. It clocks in at 9% alcohol, but is wonderfully balanced. The aroma is full of orange, lemon, spice and malt undertones. On the palate it’s full bodied but finishes fairly dry. There’s a wonderful combination of fruit, malt and spice to the flavor. Because it’s so highly carbonated, it’s very lively on the palate which helps to mask its high alcohol content.

Scallops are fairly rich and with the added mushrooms, you need something that has a fair amount of body and flavor to stand up to it. La Fin du Monde was an excellent choice. It was big enough and complex enough to stand up but because of its carbonation and dryness, it also helped to cut through the rich flavors of the dish. The scallops had a buttery quality to them and the citrus notes of the beer contrasted beautifully with that. I have a tendency to overlook a lot of beers at the supermarket because they’re part of the regular inventory and I’m normally looking for something new that I haven’t tried. A lot of these beers are great beers, but being in Portland, I’m spoiled by the selection. So I tend to overlook some classics, like La Fin du Monde, Trois Pistole (which is my favorite of Unibroue’s beers), and the various beers from Chimay, because they’re so readily available and I’m searching for something new and different. Luckily, I was smart enough to give this beer a second look this time and it reminds me of how many “standards” I overlook on a regular basis. Maybe it’s time to go get one of those bottles of Chimay…