From My Kitchen » The Saucy Coq

WATERMELON SALAD WITH DATES & PISTACHIOS

Photo by The Saucy Coq

When was the last time you used your melon baller? Yeah, me neither. But my wife brought home a 1 kg bucket of Medjool dates and I was reminded of this salad I made last summer for a lobster dinner party at a friend’s place and never got around to posting.

Cold, crispy watermelon tossed with sweet Medjool dates and salty pistachios. This salad is very refreshing, sweet, salty and substantial! The total package. Goes fantastically well with BBQs! If you don’t have a melon baller, you can just cube the melon. Don’t sweat it. I don’t think it looks as nice, but it will impress nonetheless. The rose water is optional, but it adds a nice perfume and summer flavour to the whole thing.

WATERMELON SALAD

5 cups watermelon balls, chilled
6 Medjool dates, pitted and slivered
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/3 cup shelled pistachios, toasted and coarsely chopped
A tiny bit (1/8 tsp) rose water

This salad comes from Heidi Swanson’s vegetarian cookbook called Supernatural Everyday. It’s one of my favourite cookbooks in regular rotation and I’ve never made anything from it that I didn’t love.

Once the watermelon is balled or cubed, put it together with the dates in a large bowl. Stir the salt into the lime juice in a separate bowl and then drizzle it across the melon and toss well.

Put the melon and dates in the fridge for at least an hour before you serve, but preferably two hours. The colder the better as the melon will crisp up!

Just before serving, turn the salad out into whatever serving bowl you’ll be using and sprinkle with the pistachios and rose water.

Eat with spicy BBQ meat, burgers, seafood, chicken…anything really!

Enjoy!

FRIED TILAPIA WITH TURMERIC CRUST

Photo by The Saucy Coq

Thai food has been in heavy rotation in my kitchen since our recent 26 day trip through Thailand. This fried Tilapia has southern Thai influences with its heavy Turmuric marinade. Fresh chilies in fish sauce give it the salty, spicy kick that brings this to the next level!

TILAPIA WITH TURMERIC CRUST

2 tbsp chopped garlic

1 tbsp chopped shallots

2 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp fresh pepper

Pinch of salt

2 tbsp fish sauce

3 tbsp vegetable oil

2 or 3 fillets of tilapia (or other firm whitefish like catfish, snapper, halibut)

1 cup flour

2 fresh Thai bird chilies or 1 dried red chili

In a small food processor or in your blender, combine the garlic, shallots, turmeric, sugar, pepper, salt, fish sauce and 1 tbsp of the oil. Grind to a fairly smooth paste, stopping to scrape the sides a couple of times. You could also do this the traditional way and smash it up in a mortar and pestle. Combine the fish fillets with the turmeric marinade, turning to coat and let that fish soak up the flavours for 20 minutes or so. You can leave this for up to a day if you want to prepare the fish ahead of time!

Next you’re going to want to coat the fillets with flour, which will give them this nice golden brown crust in the end. Take the fish from the marinade and try not to lose what is sticking to the fish. Pour the flour in to a baking dish or bowl and lay the fillets in there, turning to coat. Shake off the excess flour and place on a plate. Heat the remaining bit of oil in a skillet over medium high heat, but don’t let the oil smoke. You can tell it’s hot enough when a drop of the marinade sizzles immediately in the pan. Add the fish fillets and cook for 5-7 minutes total, turning once in the middle of cooking to get a nice crust on both sides. If your fillets are quite thick, you’ll have to cook a few minutes longer.

This fish does fantastically well with a simple bowl of fish sauce spiked with fresh chopped chilies. If you can find one or two of those little Thai Bird chilies (about an inch long), slice them thin and toss em a third of a cup of fish sauce. Dried red chilies will suffice if that is what’s on hand.

Serve with a squeeze of lime and say g’night.

I chose to serve salt & pepper broccoli as a side dish.

PEAR CARDAMOM BUTTER

Photo by The Saucy Coq

“THIS IS NOT BUTTER” you might say if you were with a group of your snobby friends. Call it what you will, but this Pear Cardamom Butter is very, very good. Think apple sauce here, but more interesting.

You can make a butter from almost any fruit by just stewing it down with some liquid and sugar until it has reached a very thick consistency. Apple butter is likely the most common form, but this Pear Cardamom Butter is fantastic. You can have it with granola in the morning, serve it with pork chops or jerk chicken at dinner, or have it with peanut butter! What else would you use it for?

I found this recipe on www.shutterbean.com and tried it out last week to give to my sister for her birthday (Happy Bday Harmony!). I will definitely make it again, but might not cook it down so much as this recipe only gave me four (half-pint) jars full. I am not going to give a lesson on canning because there are much better teachers out there. Namely, Google.

Pear Cardamom Butter

6 pounds pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
juice of 1 lemon
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

I use my Dutch Oven for jams and sauces, but use whatever you’re used to. Get a nice heavy pot on the element and fill it with all of the great smelling things that you’ve prepped. Pears, lemon, sugar, salt and all of the spices. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Lower the heat, and continue to stir. You really want the pears to break down, so try helping them along after about 15 minutes with a wooden spoon or potato masher.

After about an hour, remove the pot from the heat and blend the pears with an immersion blender in the pot until you’ve reached the desired consistency. My immersion blender actually broke (albeit a year ago) so I just used my blender. Save yourself the mess and use an immersion blender if you can.

Return the pear butter to the heat, and simmer over medium-high heat for 20 minutes longer, or until butter mounds on a chilled spoon.

Ladle butter into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Check for air bubbles, wipe the rims and seal.

Place the jars in boiling hot water for 10 minutes. Note that you really don’t have to have all of the proper canning tools to do this. I only preserve things every once in a while so I just stick with using regular pots, kitchen tongs and a funnel. The only important step is to be sure you sterilize the jars properly. There are many sites out there to read up on the canning process if you like.

If you’re going to make just a fraction of this recipe to use within a couple of days, you don’t have to worry about the jarring process. Spoon into a nice serving dish and enjoy the fruits of your labour! Yes, I went there.

Plum Sorbet with Sloe Gin

I almost never make dessert because I’m not a baker of any sort. But, I lifted this plum and sloe gin sorbet from a Jamie Oliver cookbook I have and I couldn’t have been happier with the result. It takes only a handful of ingredients and a couple of simple steps to impress your guests!

Plum sorbet with sloe gin

2 pounds mixed plums

Zest of 1 orange

5 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup sloe gin, plus extra for serving

Keep in mind that you could substitute pretty much any kind of fruit – paired with an appropriate fruit based liqueur – in the below recipe.

Sloe gin is a liqueur made with sloe (or blackthorn) berries, gin and a few additional flavours.

To make the sorbet, cut the plums in half and remove their pits. You are going to blend the plums with the other ingredients so putting them in the freezer first will give you a more slushy, less juicy texture for the sorbet. Place the plums in a freezer bag and put into the freezer for at least 2 hours or until frozen solid. An hour before you want to make your sorbet, put a serving dish into the freezer to get really cold.

Once you’re ready to roll, put the plums into a food processor with the orange zest, sugar and sloe gin and pulse until smooth. Scoop into your frozen bowl or dish and use a spatula to smooth out the surface. Throw that in to the freezer, and bingo bango!

Once you’re ready for a flavour explosion, remove the sorbet 5 to 10 minutes before serving so it softens slightly. Serve in big scoops, with a swig of sloe gin over the top if you like.

Buccatini with Meatballs. The Don Draper of Pasta Dinners.

Buccatini and meatballs is a classy spin on an old classic. I don’t think I’ve met anybody who does not like a good ol’ bowl of pasta and meatballs. For me, it’s one of those few meals that I crave if I go too long without. I guess that’s one of the defining characteristics of comfort foods in general…

But I have to say, this is one of the best bowls of pasta that I’ve had in a long time – at a restaurant or at home! In the past year or so, I’ve started to try and remember my favourite types of pasta. I still love the classics – spaghetti, linguini, penne – but there are so many interesting kinds, it’s easy to find a few other favourites. If you can get your hands on buccatini, I would highly recommend it. It’s basically just like spaghetti but with a hole in the middle, making it a tube.

I almost always have some of this tomato sauce in my freezer. It’s a good starting point for a pasta dinners and marinara sauces and can just be defrosted the day before.

The meatballs can be made ahead of time to save some trouble, or just thrown together before you start cooking – my typical M.O. The lemon zest in the meatballs here really brightens up the pasta and works perfectly with the bit of heat from the chilies.

Buccatini with Meatballs

For the pasta:

250 grams Buccatini

Tomato sauce (recipe follows)

1 cup mushrooms, cleaned and sliced

For the meatballs:

1/2 lb good quality ground beef

1 dried red chili

small pinch of cinnamon

2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

Sea salt & ground pepper

Small handful of freshly grated Parmesan

Zest of 1 lemon

Small handful fresh basil

To make the meatballs, mix together all of the meatball ingredients and form in to large marble sized balls. As I’ve said before, unless you’re making meatloaf, you do not need to mix the meat too much. Just fold it over enough times to incorporate the ingredients. The more you smash up the meat and play with it, the more dense it will cook. The idea is to get tender meatballs that fall apart, not mini-meatloafs. The same goes for rolling them – just enough to shape them. To help them hold their shape and to help you roll them, run your hands under cold water every few meatballs.

Once you’ve rolled the meatballs, add a little olive oil to your pan of choice and heat over medium-high. Cook the meatballs until they are browned on all sides (about 6-8 minutes). It is not necessary to roll and shake the meatballs around constantly. You want each side to get some colour, which means letting it sit without moving. You only need to roll the meatballs around 3 or 4 times for this step. When finished, remove to a plate with paper towel while you deal with the sauce.

If you’re using dried pasta, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook to your liking. Buccatini, like all pasta, should be cooked to al dente.

Add the sliced mushrooms to the pan the meatballs were in and cook until softened, about 3 minutes. This is a good point to add more garlic if you’re so inclined. Otherwise, add your tomato sauce to the pan with the mushrooms and get your meatballs back in to the sauce. Allow the sauce to heat all the way through and wait until the meatballs are cooked through to turn off the heat, about another 8-10 minutes. Taste the sauce and adjust for seasoning if need be. You may want to add more salt, pepper or chili flakes to your taste.

Drain the buccatini and reserve a bit of the cooking water. It is always a good idea to keep a cup of the pasta cooking water as it can help to loosen up the pasta and sauce if it is too ‘sticky’. Toss the pasta with the meatball sauce and add a spoonful of butter, the Parmesan cheese and half of the ripped up basil leaves. Add a splash of the pasta sauce if you like.

Serve up the pasta in large bowls and top with the rest of the basil leaves and grated Parmesan.

Buon appetito!

Basic Tomato Sauce

4 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, cut to small dice

4 or 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

3 tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves or 1 tbsp dry

1 medium carrot, shredded

1 dried red chili, crushed (or red pepper flakes)

2 large cans whole plum tomatoes

Sea salt

For the tomato sauce:

In a large sauce pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until soft and slightly coloured, 8 minutes. Add the thyme, carrots and chili and cook until the carrots are quite soft, about 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes by crushing them by hand into the pan. You can just grab them out of the can and squish them through your fingers, making sure to get all the juice in the pan as well. Bring this to a boil, stirring often. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Season with salt to taste.

This will keep in the fridge for 1 week or in the freezer for 6 months.

Pickled Red Onions

Pickling never really crossed my mind until recently. I guess I’ve always felt that anything involving canning, jarring or preserving was for grandmas, you know? Great to have on hand for the apocalypse, but otherwise, just too much work. Turns out, it couldn’t be easier. Now that I’ve made these pickled onions many times I can see the slippery slope ahead of me. I suspect that within two months I’ll be eating nothing but vinegar soaked veggies.

Pickled Red Onions

2 red onions, sliced whole

3/4 cup red wine vinegar

3/4 cup white vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 dried bay leaves

1 tsp whole fennel seeds

4-5 whole allspice berries

4-5 cloves

1 dried red chili

In North America, “pickle” almost always refers to a pickled cucumber. The word actually comes from the Dutch for “brine”, and almost any vegetable, or any perishable food for that matter, can be “pickled”. I’ve never actually gone through the trouble of jarring these since I always use them within about two weeks.

It is important to point out here that, much like most of the cooking I do, nothing is exact. Especially with pickling. You can use whatever spices you want and have on hand. Most recipes for pickled red onions use only white vinegar, but I really like the sweet tanginess that red wine vinegar imparts on the onions, so I use a mix. The only reason I mix it is because white vinegar is much cheaper. In the end, you just need enough vinegar to cover to the top of the onions in the pot you’re using. If your onions are larger, use more if you need it! I like to slice the onions whole – I think the full rings look better for serving – but cut the onions in half first if it’s easier for you.

Add the vinegar, sugar, salt and spices to a pot on medium-high and heat until the sugar & salt are dissolved. Add the onions to the pot and stir them around for about 3 or 4 minutes. You only need to blanch the onions and soften them up. Allow the onions and pickling juice to cool enough to safely add to a jar or airtight container.

Since the first time I made these onions, I’ve had a jar in my fridge at all times. I’ve served them with all kinds of grilled meats from pork chops to jerk chicken to steaks. They’re great with burgers, hot dogs, fish tacos or even just with a spread of meats and cheeses!

Lamb Kefta with Tomato, Cucumber and Bell Pepper Salad

Lamb is so cute. How can it taste this good? I’ll tell you how…cumin and paprika and some herbs and some spices fired under a broiler with a crisp refreshing salad to dance with.

As far as I can tell, lamb is an all-or-nothing food. Like cilantro. I don’t know anybody that sort of likes lamb…it’s either love it or hate it. It is a fairly strong tasting meat, but Kefta is a bit milder than, say, a straight up lamb chop given the mix of flavours in the meat. Give these a try if you’re not sure about lamb. Or, if you love it!

Skewers are a good family style meal and great finger food. A couple of these left over Kefta would make a great next-day sandwich with some thick yogurt, cucumber and pickled onions!

Lamb Kefta

1/2 medium onion
Small handful fresh parsley
Small handful fresh cilantro leaves
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
Pinch cayenne pepper (depends how spicy you lika-da-meatball)
1 teaspoon salt
1 lb lean ground lamb

Kefta – Put all ingredients except meat in a food processor and pulse briefly. Add the meat and pulse again until mixed. Alternatively, grate the onion, chop the parsley and cilantro finely, and mix with the other ingredients.

Divide into 18-24 pieces and roll each into a little ball. Mold each ball around a metal skewer, pressing the meat gently yet firmly into a sausage shape. Do NOT use wooden skewers as you’ll be putting these under the broiler and you’ll burn your house down.

Place under a preheated hot broiler and cook for 3-5 minutes on each side until browned. The crunch and flavour you will get from the char on the outside of these Kefta is amazing!

Tomato, cucumber, and bell pepper salad

1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon salt
Some fresh mint leaves (5 or 6ish)
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, sliced into rings
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, about 12-14 (or 3-4 medium sized tomatoes), peeled, seeded and diced
1 medium green bell pepper, cored, seeded and diced
1/2 small cucumber, unpeeled, seeded and diced
Handful finely chopped parsley
Pinch of black pepper

Salad – To make the dressing, put the garlic, salt, and mint in a mortar and pound with a pestle until creamy. Gradually incorporate the lemon juice and oil. If you don’t use a mortar and pestle, you can just throw the ingredients in to one of those little choppers or food processors and give it a buzz.

Put the onions, tomatoes, bell pepper, cucumber, and parsley in a salad bowl and sprinkle with pepper, if using.

Add the dressing and toss well before serving with the lamb Kefta on top and garnished with a sprig of fresh mint.

Pesto & Red Pepper Jelly Sandwich

My fiancee used to tell me that she didn’t like sandwiches. To me, that’s a bit like not liking drinks or music or recess. There’s got to be some kind of sandwich you can dream up that would get you going. Start with your favorite meal, slap it between two pieces of bread, and call it a night.

I, on the other hand, love sandwiches. I rarely make veggie sandwiches, but this one is a gem. If you do require your daily dose of meat, a decent Ham is the best way to go here.

Pesto & Pepper Jelly Sandwich - Makes 2-3

Your favourite bread, preferably thinly sliced
Heaping spoonful of basil pecan pesto
Cream cheese
Cottage cheese (~8 ounces)
Red pepper or jalapeno jelly
Sprouts (alfalfa or broccoli)
Banana peppers
Salt and pepper to taste

Despite her aversion, Kate made a sandwich like this last year, loosely based on a sandwich from a Montreal restaurant. I’ve made it a bunch of times since then and it’s great every time.

You can use whatever kind of bread you like for this sandwich, but I prefer a thinly sliced bread that is toasted well to contrast the soft texture of the ingredients. While the bread is toasting, fold together the pesto and the cottage cheese. When ready, spread the cream cheese on one slice of toast, the red pepper jelly (available at most large grocery stores near the jars of peppers) on the other and top with pesto-cottage cheese mixture. I finished the sandwich with broccoli sprouts (alfalfa sprouts are great too) and some sliced banana peppers for extra kick.

If you want to take the sandwich to go, you’ll need to make sure the bread/toast doesn’t get soggy. So, use lettuce to line the toast before piling on the rest of the ingredients.

Serve with a good dill pickle and chips to make it a meal.

CRÈME BRÛLÉE – IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO?

Sooooo. Nothing like a six week hiatus to make me feel bad about myself. Apologies for the lack of updates here on The Saucy Coq in the past several weeks. A lot on my plate to get the new decade rolling in the right direction. Back on track now!

Like every Christmas, my family’s go-to gifts for me fall in the kitchen & cooking genre. And, rightly so…I’m always up for experimenting with new foods and techniques. This year, my sister got me a blow torch with some nice ramekins. The next gift I opened was some Vanilla beans from Madagascar. Then, she let me know that there happened to be a dozen fresh eggs and cream in the fridge. “Merry Christmas” she said, “I want crème brûlée”.

Crème brûlée, French for “burnt cream”, is a dessert consisting of a rich custard base topped with a contrasting layer of hard caramel. This was actually my first attempt at making the rich dessert. For starters, as I’ve mentioned many times, I don’t bake. Secondly, even though crème brûlée is a pretty basic affair, it’s always remained a restaurant dessert for me. Enter the blow torch. If you weren’t a fan of Home Improvement in the ’90s, you wouldn’t understand, but the torch makes me feel a bit Tim Taylor-esque. Grunting, looking around the kitchen for anything that will volunteer to be torched.

For now, it’s just this custard mix. For the future, I’m scared.

Crème Brûlée

3/4 cup sugar
4 large egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 large vanilla bean

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. If you have a whole vanilla bean, use the tip of your knife to open up the bean length-wise, then press the knife down at an angle and scrape it along the length of the bean to remove the seeds. It actually looks like a brown paste inside, but what you’re extracting are all of the seeds, and, all of the flavor.

Place the cream, vanilla bean and its pulp into a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, but do not bring to a boil. Remove from the heat, cover and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Remove the vanilla bean.

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the sugar and the egg yolks until well blended and it just starts to lighten in color. Add the cream a little at a time, stirring continually. If the cream is still hot, it’s important to add the cream in small batches so as not to cook the eggs.

Pour the liquid into 6 ramekins. Place the ramekins into a large cake pan or roasting pan and pour enough hot water into the pan to come halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake just until the crème brûlée is set, but still jiggles in the center, approximately 40 to 45 minutes. Remove the ramekins from the roasting pan and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days.

Remove the crème brûlée from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes prior to browning the sugar on top. Divide the remaining sugar equally among the 6 dishes and spread evenly on top. Using a torch, melt the sugar and form a crispy top. Allow the crème brûlée to sit for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Sooooo good.

WEEKENDER BRUNCH: PORTOBELLO EGGS w PANCETTA

Leaving for the holidays tomorrow for a week means we’ve been spending the last couple of days trying to piece together meals and snacks from the food on hand in our kitchen, rather than buying food that will go bad. Knowing I wasn’t going to want to wake up this morning and head out in the snow for food, I needed a plan last night. We had a few eggs, a bit of the homemade Basil Pecan Pesto and some parsley on hand…just needed a medium to serve the eggs on. Typically, I’d pick up a nice fresh baguette from the store, but we weren’t about to eat a loaf of bread in one sitting. So, I headed to the store and bought two huge portobello mushrooms and a few slabs of 1/4 inch thick pancetta.

We have a little indoor grill that I used to cook both the mushrooms and the pancetta, but if you don’t have one, you can use a grill pan or even the oven.

Portobello Eggs

Vegetable Oil
2 large portobello mushroom caps
Glug of olive oil
Pinch of salt
2 slices pancetta, 1/4 inch thick
3 large eggs
2 additional egg whites
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Hot sauce
Fresh cracked pepper
2 tbsp basil pecan pesto
2 tbsp fresh parsley or basil, chopped fine
2 tsp freshly grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese

Coat a grill or grill pan with a bit of oil. Remove the stem of the portobellos and with a spoon, gently scrape out the gills (dark inside) of each mushroom cap. Brush both sides of caps with oil and sprinkle with salt. Grill mushrooms over medium-high heat until juices begin to release, about 7 minutes per side. Transfer each mushroom to a plate, top side down.

On the same grill or grill pan, cook pancetta over medium-high heat until it begins to get crispy and you get some nice grill marks, about 5-6 minutes per side. I actually placed a big heavy cast iron pan on top of the pancetta for two reasons: it helps the fat render from the meat and it will help to keep the pancetta slices flat, rather than curling up. Place 1 slice bacon onto each mushroom cap (and the other on the plate if you like).

Whisk eggs, egg whites, dijon, hot sauce, a splash of milk and a pinch of pepper until well combined in a bowl. Melt a bit of butter in a medium nonstick skillet and heat over medium-low heat. Add eggs and scramble until cooked through, about 3 minutes. Season with S&P.

Divide eggs among mushroom caps. Drizzle 1 tbsp pesto over each; top with parsley and 1 tsp Pecorino.

Good brunching!