Mussels – Simple and Delicious

Sometimes I cannot believe there was a time when I didn’t eat mussels. They’re just so delicious and when they’re fresh it’s like you get a mouthful of the ocean. Mmmm.

There are many ways to eat mussels but my all time favorite is the classic Moules Marinieres.

The mussels are cleaned and checked for only live ones. You can do this by gently tapping them with the back of your knife or with a fork. They should open and if they don’t close again then discard.

Chop garlic and shallots. Soften in a large pot with butter, dash of oil, bay leaf and some sprigs of thyme. Add wine and bring to a boil. Add the mussels, cover and let steam for 3-4 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and thyme. Add some cream and chopped parsley and serve! A side of fries with mayonnaise dip are a perfect complement.. Along with a very cold pint of beer! Yum yum!

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Quick Dinner or Brunch : Frittata or ‘Spanish Omelette’?

Last week, I needed to come up with a quick dinner that didn’t involve rice or pasta or fish & chips. My husband suggested a ‘Spanish omelette’ – to which I said “Huh?!”. We proceeded to have one of our very funny arguments/discussions that are common when you have a trans-atlantic relationship. Others have included “what is a ‘cup’ as a measuring unit?” and “why don’t you have to refrigerate squash”.

So the ‘discussion’ got me thinking on how exactly do you differentiate between an omelette, frittata and ‘Spanish omelette’? So here goes:

• A frittata is an Italian word which is a general term for cooking eggs in a skillet. Typcially a frittata is made with eggs that are whipped to create a light texture. It’s cooked slowly and is flipped as a whole or finished under the oven. The additional ingredients are often cooked first and the eggs are added in after.
• A standard omelette (according to Escoffier) consists of three eggs with seasoning of a small pinch of table-salt and a little pepper and requires 1/2 oz of butter. It is effectively “scrambled eggs enclosed in a coating of coagulated egg” (The Escoffier) and is therefore cooked on low/medium heat.
• A “Spanish Omelette” or as it is known in Spanish a “Tortilla” traditionally consists of eggs, onion and potato. I’ve read a few different methods. Some cook the onion and potato first and pour the egg right in. Some cool the onion and potato after cooking and add to the raw egg mixture to let the flavors mingle. Some put it under a grill/broil to cook the top or in an oven. And some let the bottom set and then use a plate to flip it out and then tip it back in.

So there you have it. The differences between frittata, omelette and a Spanish omelette. Also in case you’re wondering, “omelet” is the way it’s often written in the US but “omelette” is the actual French spelling. Now seeing that I studied in Spain (Sevilla) for 6-months during college, I’m a purist and believe that a Spanish omelette can only be called such if it’s potato, onion and egg. However, my husband was insisting that he grew up with Spanish omelettes being an omelette with any type of vegetable or leftover. And I had to bite my lip after strongly disagreeing when I saw Tesco selling a “Spanish Omelette” – one with potato and the other with red pepper and chorizo.

So hope you enjoyed all those little facts! After all that, I ended up making what my husband affectionately called a Spanish omelette and what I will continue to insist is a frittata for dinner last night. The method I chose was to chop into small dice – potatoes, leeks and a red (bell) pepper. I cooked the potatoes first until they were starting to soften and then tossed the leeks and pepper in. Let it all cook a few more minutes. Cracked my eggs, seasoning and a splash of milk in a bowl and whisked. Drizzled a bit more olive oil around the edges of the vegetables and poured the eggs in. On medium heat, I let the egg start to cook and gently moved it all around until I had at least a third of the egg cooked and a layer on the bottom forming. I had the grill (in the US we call it a boiler) on mark 4 and popped the ‘frittata’ into the oven. Make sure you have a pan that is oven proof though! And I just let it cook until the top was golden and it was springy to the touch. Serve with some salsa or salad!

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Chicken, Beef and Pork – Oh My!

All my British friends and family are more than likely to be familiar with the “3 for £10” meat offer at most supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s and recently Waitrose). For all my American friends and family, I’m sure I’ve complained to you how expensive meat is here! While this deal isn’t always the best I have found, it makes grocery shopping a little easier. In this case, I just picked three different types of meat/poultry and thought I’d figure out what I would do with them later. I still struggle with accessibility to quality meat in the UK.. I mean – let’s be honest. The steaks are just NOT the same as American steaks (unless you’re willing to spend a small fortune). Most of the time, steaks served in restaurants are thin and overcooked and have this distinct taste that I really can’t explain. However, I HAVE had a good steak here.. but it was one I cooked myself at Cordon Bleu with meat sourced from Allen’s of Mayfair (London’s oldest butcher shop with superb quality and the prices to match!).. Nonetheless, I still crave red meat from time to time. So that day at Waitrose, I decided to buy a tray of chicken thighs/drums (bone in, skin on), a couple frying steaks and some pork loin steaks.

The dishes I came up with were:

• Vietnamese Chicken Curry, served with rice
• Steak in a peppercorn cream sauce, served with roasted sweet potato and fennel
• Pork scallopini in a lemon, butter, caper sauce, served with roasted asparagus and angel hair pasta tossed with garlic infused extra virgin olive oil

Because it was National Curry week in the UK not long ago, I decided to use up my chicken thighs and drumsticks by making Vietnamese Chicken Curry. Now I’ve promised my mother that I’d never divulge her ‘family’ recipe. But what I can do is refer you to another Vietnamese recipe by The Ravenous Couple (a young Vietnamese couple cooking traditional recipes). There are a few variations of this recipe depending on the family, but their recipe is great. Since I don’t always have these ingredients on hand, I make a few shortcuts and a few additions.

• I haven’t been able to find curry paste in the UK, so I use Madras curry powder from Costco UK and it tastes just fine.
• I don’t often have the patience to cut shallots, so I just use white/yellow onions.
• Again, I don’t often have the patience to marinate the chicken but if you have time then it will only make your dish better!
• My family doesn’t usually add carrots (even though it’s traditional). Instead we add sweet potato chunks. We also don’t add onion wedges.
• My husband likes his curry thick, so I’ll add some corn starch/flour with water.

Vietnamese Chicken Curry by TheRavenousCouple.com

While I can’t reveal my mom’s measurements, my method is basically this.. Cook chopped onions and garlic until translucent. Add curry powder and secret ingredient. Cook a minute or so. Add chicken and brown on all sides. Add chicken broth, fish sauce or salt and smashed lemongrass. Let cook and then add chopped potatoes, sweet potatoes and coconut milk. Let cook and thicken as necessary. For some added spice, add cayenne.. Traditionally, Vietnamese curry is eaten with fresh baguettes but it’s often eaten with rice vermicelli or plain white rice. It’s also always better the next day or day after that! PS.. I’ve used up leftover mushrooms to make a vegetarian version of Vietnamese curry – check out this old blog post.

So after eating curry for dinner and lunch the next day, I was ready to cook my steaks (click above for recipe). This was a dish I thought of based on my basic pantry ingredients. It’s such a great classic and is super fast to make. Also, a creamy rich sauce is great to mask a lower quality meat! I used basic Oxo beef stock cubes and didn’t actually have any wine to add, but it was still great! To make the sauce super rich, I reduced the stock quite a bit and added a knob of butter at the end. The sweet potato and fennel combo came about purely because they were available at my local market. I was trying to come up with more creative and nutritious starches to bread and pasta. So I had leftover sweet potato from making curry and roasted it with the fennel. Fennel is a great vegetable which isn’t used too often. I didn’t grow up eating it but I see it so often lately that I’m doing my best to find new ways to cook with it. It did take quite awhile to roast though. So be prepared to wait for this one. But this dish is really minimal in prep and has very little cleanup!

Steak in creamy peppercorn sauce with roasted sweet potato and fennel

So as I worked my way through my very full fridge, I was torn on what to do with my pork (click above for recipe). They were pretty thin already (just about 1cm thick), so making any hope of cutting ‘chunks’ for a Vietnamese dish were out the window. I also wasn’t in the mood for cooking with fish sauce.. It CAN smell the house up a bit 🙂 So I figured I’d utilize the capers I had yet to open. I originally wanted to make an escalope (breaded) but realized we were low on breadcrumbs. It’s also a bit messy to set up an assembly line of flour, egg wash and breadcrumbs. But dipping in just flour isn’t so bad! Due to the recent unexpected heat wave, asparagus had a second season and was available in abundance at my local market. This is one of my favorite vegetables and I think I’ll be eating more of it.. It’s so easy and quick to roast and can be eaten on its own, in an omelet or tossed with garlic and pasta! Whenever I think of scallopini or escalopes, I always think of warm pasta. Since I’m on a garlic kick right now, I took the easy route and infused extra virgin olive oil with a LOT of garlic. I found that if you let it infuse until the garlic slices become really soft and golden, the taste isn’t too strong and doesn’t stay with you for ages. This is also my ‘fast’ way of getting nice garlic flavor instead of roasting a whole garlic. But yum, remembering this dish is making me very hungry.. pasta, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, meat, butter, lemon.. Mmmmm.. Hope you enjoy!

Pork Scallopini in Lemon Butter Caper Sauce

P.S. I recently discovered my new favorite ‘affordable’ wine! Sainsbury’s House Cotes du Rhone. 75cl is £3.99. It also comes in mini 250ml bottles that are 2 for £3.

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Oh How I Miss California Cuisine

Every chef book I’ve read and each of my chef instructors in school always talk about the food from their childhood. It’s funny how so many of us, even if you’re not a chef or foodie, have childhood memories that involve or center around food. Most of my childhood was spent in the San Francisco Bay Area – an absolutely beautiful and diverse place. As I’ve gotten older, I always feel so fortunate to have grown up in a place where cultures collide and people are genuinely interested in each other. There are, of course, conflicts but again I was fortunate to not be too exposed to any sort of intolerance. I grew up with friends from many races and religions. And from that exposure, I developed a great love for learning about others. Every culture, every community is so unique. This upbringing also inspired me to travel the world. Even as a young teenager I fulfilled my dream of seeing the Eiffel Tower and eating a “real” croissant. Of course it all comes back to the food!

So back to why I’ve decided to write – recently my lovely sister and her fiance moved back to the Bay Area where they both grew up. I went to visit them and wanted to share some photos from the trip. It was funny though being back in the Bay as an adult as my parents left California while I was in college. It was the same yet much more sophisticated than I remembered. All the food was delicious, rich, complex yet incredibly fresh. I have already posted some Yelp reviews for two of the places, so I’ve included the links for them. But hope you enjoy the pictures!

Moscow Mule

First up – Cafe Des Amis. (Click here for my Yelp review). This place was very charming. It was one of those French restaurants that is trying to be authentic which it did a pretty good job at without trying too hard. We had a cozy table in the back next to the fire – very romantic actually. Our whole group was really happy with our dishes (steaks, mussels, lamb, escargot, salmon) but we were even happier with the drinks! They make a great Moscow Mule!

Oysters for the group

Gorgeous buttery, garlicky escargot

Perfectly cooked medium rare salmon on a bed of lentils

For brunch the next morning, my sister and I managed to drag ourselves (and I’m so glad we did!) to Foreign Cinema. My sister’s friend had been to a wedding there and raved about their brunch. They were right.. I’m only sad that I can’t go back to try more dishes!

Slow-cooked, brown sugar smoked bacon

(No longer on the menu) Fried eggs with zucchini, fried prosciutto, harissa and chicken sausage on bed of creamy palenta

Classic Croque Madame with super crispy fries!

The last place we visited was Morocco’s Restaurant in downtown San Jose. (Click here for my Yelp Review) My review says it all, so here are a couple pictures!

Imperial chicken couscous with caramelized onions and raisins

Briwatt phyllo turnovers with mixed fillings such as chicken with cinnamon

I could dream about these turnovers all night long!  The chicken briwatt tasted just like the traditional Moroccan pastilla that I’ve written about. It’s such a surprising combination of flavors. I love it when food catches you off guard like that – just when you think something should be sweet, it’s even better savory!

Hope you’ve enjoyed the photos! What have you been eating lately??

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A Bit Of MY Soul Food

As the weather begins to turn here in England, I find myself craving for really hearty, comforting, food for the soul. The kind of food you smile at or smile thinking of. The kind of food your fork lingers over. Most importantly the kind of food you finish then curl up onto the couch and sleep a blissful sleep… 

For now I’d like to share three examples of the kind of food that makes me just simply happy… 

• Chorizo Fried Eggs on Ciabatta
• Classic Fish & Chips with Mushy Peas
• Steak Au Poivre with Pommes Darphin

Let’s get right to it, shall we? As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite weekend pastimes is to cuddle up with Chris and watch BBC’s Saturday Morning Kitchen. Just a couple weeks ago, we watched the well known British chef Sat Bains (who runs Nottingham’s only Michelin-starred restaurant “Restaurant Sat Bains”) whip up one of his family’s favorite brunch dishes – Chorizo Eggs with Scallops and Coriander Salt. As neither of us had had breakfast yet, Chris got inspired to run out to the store and make us breakfast. He came back and did a wonderful job of whipping up this incredibly satisfying breakfast below. It’s incredibly simple but made even better with high quality sausage and high quality bread. Any spicy sausage would really do. For the bread, Chris nipped to our local Italian delicatessen (Filippettos) for some ciabatta. Believe it or not this little delicatessen is perfect. The owner is actually Italian and many of his products are imported directly from Italy (with the packaging written in Italian only!). If you’re ever around, you must have some of their ice cream… But more importantly they have a wide variety of cured/smoked meats and fresh bread. 

Chorizo Fried Eggs with Sauteed Mushrooms on Ciabatta

As you can see Chris added his own little addition of mushrooms sautéed in butter… I think any egg-lover will agree with me when I say there’s something SO satisfying about breaking a perfectly runny yolk. The gooey liquid spills out everywhere and drips off your bite of egg, spicy/smoky chorizo, buttery mushroom and crispy but light toasted ciabatta. And that’s when I look over at Chris and remember why I love him 🙂 Because he knows exactly how to make me happy! 

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USING A WHOLE CHICKEN

While there are endless possibilities of how to use a whole chicken, here are a few different things I tried last month. They’re hardly sophisticated dishes but rather me using up a few items in my kitchen.  You can easily start off with poaching a whole chicken in a large pot of water, or you can carve the chicken while raw. So using one whole chicken I made: 

• Chicken & Mushroom Tortellini
• Potato Florentine Bake with Ground Chicken & Bacon
• Asian-style Chicken Stock
• Glass Noodle Soup with Shredded Chicken & Beef Meatballs

For the tortellini and the potato bake, I used the two large chicken breasts which I carved from the raw, whole chicken. The remaining carcass and leg meat was used to make the stock, and the leg meat was shredded for the noodle soup. All of these dishes were whipped up spontaneously and I haven’t had a chance to make them again. However, I do have a couple suggestions on how to improve them in case anyone wants to try them out! 

First up is chicken and mushroom tortellini. I had an afternoon free the day I made this, so I was playing around a bit. I had originally wanted to make ravioli which I remember watching Giada de Laurentiis (Food Network) do with wonton wrappers a long time ago. Of course, I ended up with way more filling than necessary so I made tortellini to maximize the use of my wonton wrappers. Giada’s recipe for turkey-cranberry ravioli sounds quite good and I kind of worked off that. My ingredients included: 

• Chicken breasts, ground up in a food processor
• White button mushrooms, finely chopped
• Eggs (1 for mix, 1 for egg wash)
• Breadcrumbs
• Garlic and onion, finely chopped
• Parmesan cheese
• Seasoning – salt, pepper, basil or thyme
• Wonton wrappers 

Now my method was to just combine all the above ingredients and fill each wonton wrapper. However, like many others, my wonton raviolis came out a little watery after boiling them. I was able to correct it by tossing them with some butter, a few more sliced mushrooms, white truffle oil and more parmesan for garnish. But as I’m writing this, I have another thought… 

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