A SCALLOP DISH FOR THE SUMMER

SEA SCALLOPS with TOMATO CORN RELISH

I am a fan of scallops.

The problem is getting good scallops, and a reason for this is "wet" scallops versus "dry" scallops.

There is a difference between wet scallops and dry scallops. The difference is how they are preserved. Wet scallops which are what we most often find in American stores, are commonly treated with phosphates which are a preservative.  Besides having an effect on the taste, scallops soaked in this manner absorb water which, of course, is released when cooked making them harder to brown and smaller. Dry scallops are not treated with any chemicals.  They are harvested directly from the ocean, then immediately frozen. They are harder to find than wet scallops and are more expensive but are definitely worth the effort.

Served along with whole wheat orzo and fresh spinach, this meal is both easy and healthy. It is simple enough for a weeknight and (I think) elegant enough for company. My wife liked it not only because of the taste but she said it looked good on the plate!

First, the relish:

Two tablespoons of unsalted butter
Two ears of fresh, sweet corn (cut from the kolb)
Two cups of quartered cherry tomatoes
1/3 cup of fresh basil (chopped)
One tablespoon of cidar vinegar
One teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Do this a couple of hours ahead of time if you can to allow the flavors to meld.

Melt the butter in a saute pan and cook the corn over medium heat until cooked and slightly brown (about 5 minutes). Add the tomatoes and saute for another two minutes. Remove from the heat and transfer to a glass bowl to cool. Once room temperature, I stirred in the basil, vinegar, sugar and salt. I covered the bowl and put it in the refrigerator. (By the way....this relish is also good with grilled chicken).

For the orzo, I used whole wheat orzo and cooked it by the directions on the container. When it was almost done, I add a bag of baby spinach and a pinch of garlic salt and let the spinach cook down as the rice was finishing cooking. Cover to keep warm.

Now for the scallops. This was not difficult as I threaded the scallops on skewers and cooked them on the grill. One trick I've learned is when grilling scallops either use a grill pan to "saute" the scallops on the grill or to thread two skewers through each scallop. This makes it much easier to turn the scallops on the grill.

Heat the grill to around 400 degrees. Dip a thick wad of paper towels in a bowl with cooking oil in it and liberally grease the grill to prevent the scallops from sticking.

Place the skewered scallops on the grill and baste with a simple mixture of melted butter and salt and pepper. Nothing fancy. Close the top, cook for about five minutes. Turn the scallops, baste again and cook for another five minutes. The scallops should be lightly browned and firm.

Plate the scallops and spoon the relish over them or on the side. Add the orzo and you have dinner!

What am I drinking with this?

Through my good friend at Aleph Wines, Jean Pierre Chambas, I have been enjoying several white burgundies produced by Maison Champy in the Cote de Beaune.

This Pernand-Vergelesses is produced in the commune of the same name and is notable for it's better known and much more expensive neighbors: Corton, Corton-Charlemagne and Charlemagne. It is a reasonable priced wine from the 2009 vintage that does nicely on its own but pairs beautifully with food.

So there you have it!!!

A summertime meal easy enough for a weeknight but elegant enough for weekend guests.

Beef Daube....to "glacée or not to glacée"

Think of a cold winter night with a roaring fire and the idea of a hearty beef daube over rice with crusty french bread to sop up the gravy brings a smile to my face.

Daube is a french word that, according to one dictionary definition is: "a stew of braised meat, vegetables, herbs, and spices."

Daube de Boeuf is a classic french dish. The beef is braised then slowly cooked in a heady concoction of vegetables, rich stock, wine and herbs.

The problem is, it's the middle of summer and the heat index is over 100 degrees and the idea of sitting down to a big ole bowl of beef stew is NOT that appealing. So......how to enjoy that wonderful flavor in a summer version?

Answer: Daube Glacée (pronounced Dobe Glah Say)

Often served in New Orleans as an hors d’oeuvres, Daube Glacée  is simply leftover daube that was cooked with spices and a stock which included veal bones and pigs feet. These are high in natural glycerin which when mixed with the daube and poured into a terrine, formed a solid jelly-like mass. This was either sliced and served as a cold meal or in smaller pieces as hors d’oeuvres.

I remember as a child my Aunt Louise would give a loaf of Daube Glacée to friends and family at Christmas. I can still picture my father sitting at the kitchen table, quite content, with a thick slide of Daube, a spoonful of mayonnaise and a pile of saltines.

A number of the older recipes for this dish include the pigs feet and so on but as a practical matter, unflavored gelatin does the trick.

The recipe I use comes from Chef John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans. His cookbook: My New Orleans, the cookbook should be a "must have" for any chef who loves New Orleans. More information can be found at www.chefjohnbesh.com


I'm not going to type the recipe here as it has a lot of ingredients but you can find it on Google and here is the link: http://books.google.com/books?id=L-PBWXgTTjsC&pg=PA344&lpg=PA344&dq=john+besh+beef+daube+glace&source=bl&ots=qNXE5mIFcc&sig=9c9zW_ALq6n3vxpudRbSTxkEqzM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SDocUKOFDcfb0QHmpIHwAw&ved=0CGIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=john%20besh%20beef%20daube%20glace&f=false

I followed the directions pretty closely. The dried mushrooms I used were chanterelle mushrooms. I keep a number of different dried mushrooms and I felt the chanterelle mushroom imparted a pleasant flavor without overpowering the dish. Incidentally, I buy all my dried mushrooms from Olive Nation. They have wonderful products besides the mushrooms. Here is a link: http://www.olivenation.com/Mushrooms-C52.aspx

The big hurdle with this recipe is the veal stock. Where I live, it is impossible to find in a grocery store. So I either have to order it, make it or fake it. My preference is to make it but try finding veal bones. A reasonable alternative is to use store bought demi-glace. The demi-glace is made with veal and when added to a combination of water and beef broth, it comes close. Candidly, I would simply suggest using beef broth. Some will argue with me but I think, especially for this recipe, it adds boldness to the dish.

Something else I take care with is the wine I use. I've written here before that the first rule about cooking with wine is if you wouldn't drink the wine, don't cook with it. This rule applies for any bottle you might already have open. Don't think "well I don't want to waste it so I'll stick it in the stew". If the wine has turned, and you don't enjoy drinking it, don't cook with it. However, all is NOT lost. Don't throw out this wine, save it in a ceramic vat for fabulous red wine vinegar.

I think this recipe calls for a big wine and that makes me gravitate to the Southern Rhone wines. I used a Cotes du Rhone (Guigal Cotes du Rhone 2007).

Something else that I did different was the cooking time. I started this around 5:30 one evening and around 8:00 that night, I let it cool and put it in the refrigerator. I took it out at lunch time the next day and let it simmer on very low heat until around 6:00 that night, stirring it periodically and adjusting seasoning.

Since I hadn't forgotten about those cold winter nights, I didn't make Daube Glacée out of all of it. I put a fair amount in the freezer for the winter.

That reminds me......here is another idea for this recipe: Beef and Barley soup. Somebody remind me later and I'll tell you how I use this as a basis for a great winter soup.

I took the rest of the daube and added the gelatin, let it cool and put it in the refrigerator.

So.....here it is!!!

A nice cold way to eat beef stew on a hot summer night.

How did I serve it? We had a slice of daube accompanied by cooked and chilled haricot verts along with a large dollop of homemade mayonnaise. Not bad.

And....guess what??? Don't like it cold? Hell....heat it up and it is Daube de Boeuf again!!

What did I pour with it??

This is clearly a red wine meal. So I picked one of the great wines from the Languedoc region of France: Mas de Gassac vintage 2000. The wine is a blend of Rhone and Bordeaux grapes and is outstanding.

Kabobs Redux

In June of last year I posted a recipe for chicken kabobs cooked on the grill. (June 11, 2011)

I fixed them the other night for the first time in a while and I urge you to read it and try it. I think it is the best way to cook chicken kabobs period.

Also, I'll give one more plug for Cooks Illustrated. They have a fabulous web site with great recipes. It is not expensive and well worth it. Go to http://www.cooksillustrated.com/

So fire up the grill and open a bottle of crisp Cotes du Provence rose wine. You can thank me later.

Great Fish Recipe but......

Here in Columbia we are lucky to have a great Saturday market that is only a few minutes from our house. It is called the All Local Farmers Market and it is open Saturday from 9:00 to 12:00. Besides great fresh produce, they have a wonderful seafood vendor that come from Beaufort, SC. All the fish is local caught (except the scallops and salmon). Recently they have had a wonderful type of snapper called Hognose snapper. It is a mild all white fish that is delicious.

I bought a beautiful fillet on Saturday and was discussing with good friend and neighbor Joe Blanchard how we should fix it for Sunday dinner. A native of Tampa, there is a famous restaurant called Columbia that has a well known snapper dish called Snapper Alicante.

I'm not going to copy the recipe here as you can grab it on the Internet by simply googling snapper alicante. Although the recipe calls for red snapper and I had the milder cousin, it still worked great.

However!!!!

There is one hitch. The Columbia Restaurant cookbook calls for using 1/2 cup of brown sauce. The web site recipe calls for brown beef stock gravy. Now.....I know what brown sauce is but I'm not sure what brown beef stock gravy is. I'm assuming like you, it is some kind of beef gravy you conjure up using beef stock.

I don't care.......don't do it......please use brown sauce!! This is what makes this dish great!

The reason you want the brown sauce is the flavors are so much more complex then simple gravy. The problem is finding it. Brown Sauce is one of the "mother sauces" of french cuisine and is the base for a number of highly refined french sauces such as Marchand de Vin. You can find it online or find it at local gourmet shops. However, it is NOT hard to make and it FREEZES beautifully.

In previous posts, I've mentioned the Plantation Cookbook from the New Orleans Junior League. First published in 1972, it is still one of my go to cookbooks even though half of it is about Louisiana plantations. It is their recipe I use to make my Brown Sauce

You can buy the book at Amazon and other places but I hope you will buy it from Garden District Book shop in New Orleans. This great local institution picked up publishing the book when it went out of print. So if you want it.....please buy it from them: http://www.gardendistrictbookshop.com/

Regardless of whether you use this recipe or not, you are doing yourself and this dish a disservice if you opt for gravy over the brown sauce.

It is inspired. How many different ways could you think to poach fish before you would think of using a beef based sauce?

So here it is.....served with blanched asparagus sauteed in olive oil and tarragon. We also had a salad of heirloom tomatoes and avocado.

The fish, poached in the brown sauce mixed with a white spanish wine (albarino) on a bed of onions and topped with red and green peppers was simply fabulous. Make sure you have some good crusty bread to mop up the sauce!



What did we drink with it??

Even though we cook it in a beef based sauce, the dish is way to delicate for a red wine. Joe brought a 1992 rioja and it was still too big a wine for the meal.

I came to the rescue with a 2006 Grand Cru Cablis from Simonnet Febvre that worked just great.

On a personal note......in my first post in May of last year, I told you all that my mother was a great cook and the person who inspired me to cook. Over the years we continued to share recipes and when I would visit her in New Orleans, I always cooked for her getting a loving dose of "critique" on the side.

My mother passed away almost two months ago in May. She was 86. Her cookbooks are crammed with personal notes and marked through with changes to recipes. I've got a lot of cooking to do to get through them.

I never fixed this recipe for her. She would have loved it.

So here is a "tip of the glass" to my mother, Sue Menge. She was a real character and a hell of a cook!

Sue Menge

1925-2012

Chicken Pilau that won't "Bog" you down

A famous South Carolina Low Country dish is Chicken Pilau or Chicken Bog. It tends to be a gooey concoction of mainly chicken and rice usually with sausage and onions sauteed in bacon fat etc. It is the kind of meal that brings a smile to Paula Dean's face.

Now, no one is every going to accuse me of being Mr. Heart Healthy but I fixed a kinder,gentler version of a Rice Pilau that turned out pretty good.

This will feed four:

One small head of broccoli: just florets
Two cups (loosely packed) dried Chanterelle mushrooms
1/2 bell pepper chopped
One small onion chopped
One bay leaf
Two boneless chicken breasts
Two packs of Success Brown Rice

Take the broccoli and cook in boiling water until soft. Remove the broccoli from the water and put under cold water to stop the cooking. Do not throw the water away! While the broccoli is cooking, heat two/three cups of water in a measuring cup to almost boiling and add the Chanterelle mushrooms. Note: I buy my dried mushrooms at www.olivenation.com I have been buying stuff from them for years and I recommend them highly. Let the mushrooms reconstitute in the water (about 15 to 20 minutes). Remove the mushrooms from the water and pour the remaining mushroom stock into the pot of reserved broccoli stock.

Put one tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan and brown the two chicken breast over medium-high heat. Once browned on both sides, remove the pan from the heat, take the chicken and coarsely chop and return to the pan. Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of fresh ground pepper. Return the pan to the stove and stir the chopped chicken over medium heat until cooked. Add a 1/4 cup of dry white wine to deglaze the pan and continue to cook until almost dry. Set the chicken aside.

Now....in a 12 inch skillet, heat two or three tablespoons of chicken fat.

What????? Did he say chicken fat?????

I have made it a practice of saving the fat whenever I cook some kind of beef or poultry. Beef, lamb, chicken, turkey whatever. I pour off the fat and freeze it.

If you are like most people, you don't have chicken fat in the fridge so simply use butter but IN THE FUTURE.......start saving your fat!

When the fat has melted, saute the onions, bell pepper and bay leaf over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes. This gives the bay leaf time to sweat and add flavor. Don't brown the onions.

While doing this, boil the reserved stock and cook the rice. (If there is not enough stock to cook the rice, add chicken broth).

While the rice is cooking, coarsely chop the mushrooms and add to the saute pan continuing to cook over low heat.

When the rice is cooked (10 minutes) remove from the water and drain.

Coarsely chop the broccoli and add it to the pan then add the chicken and then add the rice. (Don't simply dump both bags of rice....you may not want all that rice so dump the first bag and add as much of the second bag as you wish).

That's it!! Stir it and serve it!

Chicken Pilau purists will say this isn't Chicken Pilau and they will probably be right. It if makes you feel better, cook a bunch of bacon and saute the vegetables in the bacon grease and chop up the bacon and throw it in at the end with the rice and chicken.

Another alternative is to add some smoked sausage but now we are getting back to Paula Dean territory.

Try it my way.....no bacon or sausage. I think you will like it. Plus with brown rice and broccoli, you won't feel the need to go out and do something stupid like jog or work out.

What do I drink with this??

A lighter red wine such as Pinot Noir will stand up to this nicely. Most folks will want a white and if you have read my previous posts you know I abhor the nasty domestic chardonnays and think most pinot grigio is tasteless. So go with a white burgundy, whatever you can afford. But for a different taste, I would try a nice quality champagne.....I think you will be pleased with the match.