Two at the Table

Tuesday night, we made a new recipe that we received via e-mail from “Food & Wine” magazine: Grilled Shrimp with Black-Eyed Peas and Chimichurri. We’ve made chimichurri before, but with steak, so this is a new twist for us. Also, we were excited to eat black eyed peas, which we only do on New Year’s Day. This is a Southern tradition that’s supposed to bring good luck and that Kim introduced Tony to right before they were married. Here’s how the dish came together:

This was a very easy recipe that took maybe 45 minutes from start to finish. Since most of that time was spent marinating the shrimp, it’s not a very labor intensive dish.

The first step was to make the chimichurri. As we mentioned, we’ve made it before, but this recipe has a unique twist. It uses parsley, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic, just like about all of the recipes we’ve seen before, but it also uses fresh oregano, which was a very interesting change. Fresh oregano smells and tastes much more vibrant than the dried version. It has small, round leaves that extend out from a thin, woody stem, so all you need to do is pinch the top of the stem and run your thumb and forefinger down to free the leaves. Since we were halving the shrimp, I also halved the chimichurri, which in retrospect was a phenomenally bad idea. Why? After marinating the shrimp and dressing the salad, there was nothing left over! It would have been nice to have more to pour over the shrimp or even to spice up a sandwich later in the week.

While the shrimp was marinating, I made the salad. I simply combined a 15-ounce can of black eyed peas, the arugula, and the cherry tomatoes. I waited until the shrimp was almost done cooking before adding the dressing to the salad, because I didn’t want it to get too soggy.

The final step was to cook the shrimp, which took about 2 minutes per side on the grill pan, which I had over medium-high heat.

This new version of chimichurri was a winner. The oregano really stood out and was a nice complement to both the shrimp and the salad. Much like the potatoes that were included in Sunday night’s blue fish recipe, the beans made the salad more filling but not heavy. We paired this with a white wine for a quick, different, and delicious dinner.

Sunday night, we made bluefish for the very first time. Armed with Mario Batali’s recipe for Bluefish as the Fisherman’s Flag: Bandiera alla Marinara, we were excited to dive into this recipe. Tony describes how it went:

There was a good bit of slicing and dicing involved in the prep for this dish, but it wasn’t too hard, as the recipe make things pretty clear. I did deviate a bit for two ingredients: the Gaeta olives and the tomatoes. I pitted the olives, even though the recipe doesn’t specifically say to; I just thought it would be nicer not to have to spit out olive pits at the dinner table. This probably took more time than it was worth – plus I missed one! – so I’ll skip this step next time.

I did save a little time by not peeling the tomatoes. It seemed like a lot of work, plus I figured a few tomato peels weren’t going to make or break the dish. I also didn’t “coarsely chop” the tomatoes because this seemed like it would make a huge mess. Instead, I did what I always do when I have to chop plum tomatoes. First, I use a serrated knife to cut off the top of the tomato and then cut it in half lengthwise. I next lay each half cut side down on a cutting board. (See the photo on the left below.) Then, using the same knife, I make four cuts down the length of the tomato and about five or six cuts across. The result is about two dozen neat, about even-sized pieces (see the photo on the right below), which are much easier to work with.

I also took another small shortcut in assembling the ingredients. If you watch any cooking show, they almost always have each ingredient ready to go (sliced, chopped, measured out) in its own bowl. This looks beautiful and is great if you have a lot of room to work with. Since we don’t, what we usually do is put all the ingredients that go into a dish at the same time in the same bowl. This not only saves space, but also saves time, because you can pour a lot of ingredients in at once. This approach works really well for this recipe, because the non-fish ingredients basically get added in two batches.

The prep was simple, but I got off to a bad start with the cooking. Instead of using a saute pan, as the recipe instructs, I used our Dutch oven. The potatoes immediately started sticking to the bottom of the Dutch oven and began to make quite a mess. I switched things up mid stream and moved everything to a non-stick pan, which totally solved the problem. After that, it was pretty simple and I followed the recipe to a successful conclusion.

The fish was firm and not at all dried out. The other ingredients came together really well and gave a nice mix of flavors, especially the capers and olives. The small amount of potato made the dish a little more filling without making it heavy. We paired this up with a white wine from Sardinia for a nice Sunday dinner.

We’ve gotten a few questions about us from our readers, so we thought we would field those periodically. We’ll mix the Q’s & A’s in with our usual posts and also add them to our “About Our Blog” page.

Q: How do you decide who makes what?

A: There are some exceptions, like old favorites that we both know how to make or things which, for whatever reason, one of us has always made, but our basic rule is that whoever suggests adding something to the menu is also agreeing to make it. Weeknight dishes that take a little more time generally fall to Tony, because he gets home earlier, and dishes that take a little more skill and patience generally fall to Kim, because, well, she has more skill and patience. Since Tony usually gets home from work earlier, he might do some prep work for meals Kim is going to make, but the deal is that whoever is making dinner does everything except the dishes. (However, as we’ve noted, having a small New York City kitchen means that “clean as you go” is the rule, so dish duty is usually not too bad!)

Saturday night, we made  Sheet-Pan Clambake with Mussels, Shrimp, and Chorizo, a recipe we found recently in Real Simple magazine. Tony describes how it all came together.

We rarely make things like mussels and clams, mostly because I’m nervous that I won’t get them clean enough before cooking them or that one of us will eat a bad one and get sick. This recipe really addressed both of those concerns. More important, it sounded like a really fun thing to try for a holiday weekend.

As planned, we went to our local Whole Foods to get fresh mussels, clams, and shrimp as well as some small Yukon gold potatoes, which we weren’t able to find on Fresh Direct. We were cutting the recipe in half, so we had to take that into account too.

The first challenge was finding the potatoes. It turned out that Whole Food didn’t have small Yukon gold potatoes loose and we couldn’t justify buying a whole bag, as we had no desire to use them for anything else. Instead, we just bought one medium-sized Yukon gold potato.

We had a similar problem at the seafood counter, namely, that while we only wanted one pound of mussels, all they had were two-pound bags.We decided to improvise and bought the two pounds of mussels and just half a pound of clams, instead of a pound. (Halving the  recipe means using one pound of each.) We both like mussels, so this wasn’t a big issue. Buying 1/4 pound of shrimp turned out to be a lot easier!

Once we got everything home, the next step was to clean the clams and mussels. The same issue of Real Simple that had the recipe also had very simple instructions for cleaning the shellfish. Basically, you put them in a large pot of cold, salted water and let them sit for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, so that whatever sand or grit that’s inside the shells can find its way out.

While the shellfish were soaking, I prepped the potato and chorizo. The chorizo was simple, as I just cut two links into thirds. For the potato, I cut into four wedges and the cut each wedges into three pieces. I put all of this into a good-sized roasting pan.

At this point, I had to start thinking about the timing of all the steps. The potatoes and chorizo were supposed to cook for about 20 minutes and the shellfish were supposed to soak for 30. I didn’t want things to come out of the oven and sit, getting cold, while I finished cleaning the shellfish. So, when the shellfish had been soaking for 20 minutes, I put the potatoes and chorizo in the oven. This meant I would have at least 10 minutes to finish cleaning the shellfish–scooping everything out of the water carefully and then “debeard” the mussels, which just involves plucking off little bunches of stuff that looks a little like seaweed–while things in the oven finished cooking.

I was trying to get the two steps mentioned above finished at the same time, which is exactly what happened. There were only two things left to do: 1) put the clams on a separate baking sheet and 2) add the mussels and shrimp, plus some butter and Old Bay seasoning, to the roasting pan and mix it with the potatoes and chorizo. Everything went into the oven for another 15 minutes, which was the high end of the cooking time for the clams and mussels/shrimp.

Once everything came out of the oven, all that was left to do was add the clams to the roasting pan and serve. We sprinkled some more Old Bay onto each our of plates and sat down to a delicious clam bake, complete with Sam Adams Summer Ale, all courtesy of our small New York City kitchen. We plan on making this again soon, probably after our next trip to Long Island when we can get more fresh seafood, and might even invite a friend or two over to share…

Two at the Table_Menu_Week of July 6 2014

This is a bit of quiet week, with only a couple of nights out planned, so, with the understanding that our work schedules have been getting a little crazy lately, we’re going to try to make a few things.

When we started filling out or Fresh Direct order, we saw that blue fish was both highly rated (five stars, which is rare) and on sale. Tony had wanted to make another bluefish recipe a while back, but just didn’t get the chance, so we found a new one for Sunday night: Mario Batali’s Bluefish as the Fisherman’s Flag: Bandiera alla Marinara. We thought this would pair well with an Italian white, so we chose a Vermentino di Sardegna.

We’ve been in a  real seafood mood lately, so Monday night we’re going to make something new and different: Grilled Shrimp with Black-Eyed Peas and Chimichurri. We’re going to pair this with a rosé we had in the fridge.

We’re having dinner out Tuesday night, thanks to an invitation from our friends Eric and Alexandra to join them for drinks at the Honorable William Wall, the floating clubhouse of Manhattan Sailing Club. We did this last year and everyone brought some snacks to go with drinks. This year, Kim, having recently purchased a bread pan and enjoying a Statue-of-Liberty-induced bout of Francophilia, decided to do something adventurous and make Rachel Khoo’s Cheese, Pistachio and Prune Cake, which is featured with a slight variation in Rachel’s Little Paris Kitchen cookbook.

On Wednesday night we decided to have another old favorite: Barbecued Chicken with Short-Cut Collard Greens and corn bread, the latter purchased from Fresh Direct. The chicken is our own invention and basically involves seasoning two-bone in chicken breasts very liberally with Salt Lick’s awesome spice rub, roasting them i the oven, and slathering them just as liberally with Stubb’s barbecue sauce for the last 10 minutes or so of cooking. (Salt Lick and Stubb’s are two institutions in the world of Austin barbecue.) This approach would probably be considered cheating by any self-respecting barbecue chef, but short of Tony getting approval from the co-op board to build a balcony, this is how we make do in a small New York City kitchen. The collard greens, from Ellie Krieger’s The Food You Crave cookbook,  also have a bit of cheat in them (a microwave is involved), but none of the guests we’ve served them to have ever complained. Beer will be the order of the day, as nothing pairs better with barbecue (at least in Tony’s opinion) than an ice-cold beer, so we’ll pop open a few Stone India Pale Ales.

Thursday will be dinner out with friends at the Cosmopolitan Club. As Kim and the other two ladies in our party are members of the New York Junior League, they enjoy reciprocal privileges at the Cosmopolitan Club over the summer. This means that the three gentlemen in attendance are guests and are not allowed to pay for drinks, snacks, dinner – anything really. In a twist on an old-fashioned tradition, the guys will be the ones getting the menus without prices at dinner.

This brings us to Friday night and to another old favorite: Cowboy Steak with Coffee and Chili Rub (with Sautéed Spinach). The steak recipe also happens to be from Ellie Krieger’s “The Food You Crave” cookbook. The steak features an incredibly flavorful rub made with ancho chili powder and ground espresso. We always have leftovers so we usually make this on a Friday so we can have steak sandwiches over the weekend. We have a “BBQ Red” from Salt Lick cellars (yup, the same folks who make the awesome barbecue!) that we’re going to pair up with the steak.

Last but not least is Saturday night. With no plans to go out we decided to make something new and a bit more involved: Grilled Eggplant Parmesan. We picked eggplant parmesan because it’s vegetarian, but picked this recipe because it uses ingredients not normally used in eggplant parm: green olives and Fontina cheese, not to mention Calabrian chiles. Tony’s Very Italian Father (VIF) is from Calabria, Italy and has talked wistfully about how good these are and how hard they are to find in the States. We had to order the peppers on-line (none of our local markets carry them) and we did, of course, order an extra jar for Tony’s VIF. We’re going to pair the eggplant parmesan with a Barbera d’Alba we found on Fresh Direct.

If you’ve been following our blog, you know that last week Tony made two batches of pickles using two different recipes: Alton Brown’s B and B’s, and Lori Lange’s recipe for bread and butter pickles on her fantastic Recipe Girl blog. This Fourth of July, Two at the Table had our official pickle taste-off. Tony gives the results.

We had made plans to take a day trip on the 4th of July, but the weather was a little questionable, so we decided to stay home. As a result, we were able to make our traditional Independence Day lunch: burgers, fresh cole slaw, potato chips, and of course, bread and butter pickles. Unlike previous years, however, we had two kinds to try this year.

On the left in the photo above is the current champion and perennial crowd pleaser, Alton Brown’s B and B’s. On the right is the challenger, Recipe Girl’s bread and butter pickles.

Alton’s pickles are a bright greenish-yellow, as shown in the photo below, because the recipe uses more turmeric. They also have a different flavor profile because they contain spices (including cloves and allspice, which are the little “twig” and “ball”, respectively, in the photo below) that the other recipe does not. They were very sweet and crunchy and perfect with the burgers.

Recipe Girl’s pickles were a lighter green, as shown in the photo below, because they use less turmeric. They also had a nice sweetness to them, but it was a more subtle sweetness that let the flavor of the cucumber come through. The sweetness also worked on multiple levels because of the two kinds of sugar used in the recipe. They were also nice and crunchy and a good complement to the burgers; Kim even put some pickles directly on hers.

After a hard-fought contest and much deliberation by the two judges, the winner is…Recipe Girl’s bread and butter pickles! We love both recipes, but Recipes Girl’s pickles win out because of the great balance between sweet and savory. The best part is, we still have one whole Mason jar full of each kind to enjoy in the coming weeks!

We were supposed to make Joanne Bruno’s Caramelized Onion, Spinach, Roasted Red Pepper and Ricotta Salata Crostini from her blog Eats Well With Others on Wednesday night, but a late night at work caused a change in plans. Instead, we made them on the 4th of July for a fun and easy dinner. Tony describes the process:

Instead of starting with the cooking steps, I’m going to jump to the end and say that these were fantastic! Joanne’s recipe is very easy to make and her combination of ingredients is hugely flavorful, with lots of sweet from the Vidalia onions and roasted red peppers, a little bitter from the spinach, and plenty of salty from the ricotta salata. Since all the ingredients were basically at room temperature by the time we assembled the crostini (we let things sit for a little bit as we finished our pre-dinner cocktails), we decided they would be perfect to serve to guests because you can make everything in advance. Plus, everyone has the fun of assembling their own crostini.

As for the prep work, there wasn’t much to do. While slicing two onions by hand isn’t very hard, I decided to try to overcome my mandoline-phobia. I managed to keep all my fingers attached and intact and breezed through the two onions. I added them to our Dutch oven, as I thought something with higher sides than our large frying pan would make stirring the onions a lot easier. I cooked the onions over medium-high heat for 20 minutes, as Joanne instructs. When I started, the onions looked like this:

After 20 minutes, they had started to brown and caramelize in spots and looked like this:

The next step was to cook the onions over low heat for another 30 minutes so they could finish caramelizing. (I actually let them go about 35 minutes, just because I wanted them to be a little darker.) After the onions had fully caramelized, they were a beautiful golden brown and looked like this:

If you’ve done the math, you’ve figured out that the onions spend 50 minutes on the stove. This seems like a long time, but keep in mind that this is not a labor-intensive recipe. You don’t need to do much to the onions besides stir them occasionally and add a little salt and pepper at the end, so you can easily use the 50 minutes of cooking time to clean up and get other things ready.

For example, during the first 20 minutes, I sliced the red peppers, as I wanted them to sit at room temperature for a while so they could warm up after coming right out of the fridge. I also used the time to (very carefully) wash the mandoline and help Kim mix up a batch Vespers, cocktails made with Lillet, gin, and vodka. During the final 30 minutes, I got out the bread, sliced the ricotta salata, wilted the spinach, set the table, poured the wine, and finished my cocktail.

Assembly was easy, as you just layer some onion, then some spinach, then some roasted red pepper on the bread and top it all with a slice of ricotta salata. We added some Kalamata olives on the side and had a wonderful, simple, delicious dinner, thanks to Joanne and her Eats Well With Others blog!

Fish Tacos with Chipotle Cream make for a fun, quick, and tasty weeknight dinner. Here’s Kim’s take on how it went this past Monday night.

Even thought this is a very simple recipe, it is truly delicious and presents well enough even to serve for a casual dinner with friends, which we’ve done before. This time, we cut the recipe in half so we’d just have two servings.

The marinade for the fish is really easy to make. I try to avoid dirtying a bowl for mixing and a dish for marinating, which is what the recipe suggests. Instead, I like to whisk the ingredients for the marinade together in glass pie plate, dip both sides of the fish in the marinade, and let the fish sit in the marinade for 20 minutes.

While the fish was marinating, I got all the other ingredients and toppings together, first starting with the chipotle cream. I pretty much follow the recipe (I’ve made it so many times and it is so easy, I barely have to measure), but I do add just a little bit of salt to bring out the chipotle flavor even more.

I love the cabbage in the tacos, but rarely like to buy a whole cabbage. However, Tony was able to find a small container of shredded purple cabbage on Fresh Direct, which made for a beautiful and crunchy addition. Picking a few cilantro leaves off the bunch took no time at all and gave us a nice garnish.

We also had an avocado in the refrigerator and I thought that might make for a nice topping, so I sliced it and squirted on a little lemon juice to keep it from browning. I might have normally used some lime juice, but we only had one and I used half for the marinade and wanted to save the other half to squeeze on our tacos.

For the corn, I used some frozen corn, added a little salt and chili powder, as well as a little water. I then covered the bowl with plastic wrap and microwaved for about three minutes while I was grilling the fish.

One place I always deviate from the recipe is the step with the tortillas. Since I have a grill pan that goes across two burners on the stove, I use one side to grill the fish and the other side to warm (on low) the tortillas. I just wrap all four tortillas together in foil and turn the foil packet over after I turn the fish.

In no time at all Tony and I were building our own tacos and sitting down to a tasty dinner. As you can see from the photos below, I (top photo) went heavy on the avocado and Tony (bottom photo) went heavier on the fish! We paired the tacos with a fun beverage in honor of my Texas history: Ruby Redbird—a beer new to us from the Spoetzl Brewery, who makes Shiner Bock in Shiner, Texas, USA. It is made with one of my favorite Texas items, Ruby Red Grapefruit, and was a deliciously tart beverage to enjoy with the tacos.

We’ve gotten a few questions about us from our readers, so we thought we would field those periodically. We’ll mix the Q’s & A’s in with our usual posts and also add them to our “About Our Blog” page.

Q: How big is your kitchen?

A: Tiny, as the picture above shows. If you measure wall to wall, it’s about 5 feet by 7 feet, or 35 square feet. If you just measure the tiled area (basically, where we can stand), it’s more like 3.5 feet by 5 feet, or 17.5 square feet. In other words, you don’t need a big kitchen to do what we do!

We are lucky though – when we bought our place back in November 2011, the kitchen was in the process of being completely redone. As part of the buying process, we were given a budget for the kitchen and access to a designer. We were able to build in quite a bit of cabinet space and even got a dishwasher, which helps a lot, plus some really nice appliances. We went over budget by a bit, which added to the final purchase price. Given how much we do in our kitchen and how much joy we get from it, it was totally worth it though!

It was a busy weekend of cooking for Two at the Table, but we made the Glazed Lemon-Ginger Scones as planned. Here’s how it went for Tony:

I don’t do much baking, but I’ve made this recipes a few times. It’s not too difficult and the results are great.

The mixing steps were pretty simple – I combined the dry ingredients, mixed them together with a whisk, added the wet ingredients, mixed them into the dry ingredients, and then added in the pieces of candied ginger. I then turned the dough out onto a floured cutting board. At this stage, the dough was still wet and sticky, as you can see in the photo below:

The next step was to “knead the dough just until it comes together”. I’ve always taken this to mean “knead the dough gently until it’s no longer sticky” and this approach has worked well. I will sprinkle more flour on the board as I go if the dough is still a little wet. When I finished patting the dough into a thin circle and was ready to cut the circle into wedges, it looked like this:

This is when things started to go a little wrong. In the past, the dough cut smoothly, the knife stayed relatively clean, and the pieces slid off the cutting board easily. As I started to cut, I could feel the dough was still pretty wet in the middle. I hadn’t kneaded it long enough or added enough flour. Not only was the dough a little difficult to cut, the wedges were kind of droopy when I moved them onto the baking sheet; thankfully, I didn’t drop any. What I should have done is added more flour to the dough and kept kneading until it felt dryer and then started cutting. After about 20 minutes in the oven though, the scones turned out just fine.

Despite being a little misshapen – thinner and wider than usual, more like a triangular cookie – the scones were great. They were light and moist (as the recipe promises!), not too sweet, and had little bits of candied ginger spread throughout. The recipe makes eight scones, which is more than enough to get us through the week.

A final note: as you can see, I didn’t make the glaze for the scones. In fact, I never have. The first time I made these, I skipped this step. The recipe for the glaze uses a lot of confectioners’ sugar: two cups. I did the very simple math and it works out to a quarter cup per scone, which seemed like a lot. Plus, the scones are really good without the glaze, so I’ve never felt the need to make it. Please let us know how they come out if you do!