Poached Salmon Steaks with Lemon Butter and Wine Sauce

In general, I prefer salmon filets to the steaks, as the steaks can get too dry. However, I've found that poaching keeps them good, moist, and flavorful.

This recipe works for three or four steaks and takes about 10 or 15 minutes, so you can prepare all of your side dishes first and do this while they're cooking.

Remove salmon from the refrigerator uncover, and set aside. I like to have it out for up to 30 minutes to get closer to room temperature prior to cooking. This will get your pets stirred up - especially if you have cats.

Sauce Ingredients

• the juice from 1 large lemon
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter

In a small saucepan, combine sauce ingredients and heat until butter is completely melted. Note that you could easily double this amount if you want to have extra to put over your side dishes (it goes great on asparagus). If you invite my in-laws over, you definitely need to double the sauce recipe. While that's going, lube up a skillet with olive oil and get it smoking hot - i use a big ol' cast iron skillet and heat it at 7 on my 10 point stove. You need a skillet that is big enough to hold all of the steaks at once while the lid is on.

As soon as the skillet is hot, sear the steaks for one minute, then flip to the other side. You will likely lose some bits of meat, but that's OK, it will flavor up the sauce nicely. Let the other side sear for just 30 seconds, then pour the warmed sauce into the skillet, lower heat to medium, and cover. Sautee these dudes for about four minutes - up to five if they're particularly thick or still cold.

Remove and serve directly. I recommend pouring the sauce from the skillet into a gravy boat or small pitcher for serving, or just drizzle the salmon directly as you plate it.

To accompany this, any green veggie is good - I like spinach or asparagus with lemon flavors.

Steamed Pork Dumplings

Here's my favorite Chinese treat. Maybe when I make it, it's not so Chinese, but I can always try to emulate the best, can't I?

By the way, if you're ever in Houston, the Dumpling King restaurant has the best dumplings in town. I used to like Lai Lai Dumpling House, down in Chinatown, but the dough on those is too chewy.

But I digress...

Start with:

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp fresh chopped ginger
• 4 cloves fresh chopped garlic
• about 1 cup fresh chopped cabbage (I've used the regular green cabbage, Napa, or bok choi)
• 4-6 big cabbage leaves
• serving stuff (vinegar, soy, pepper sauce)
• won ton wraps (or if you can't find those, egg roll wraps, cut in half, (or if you can't find those, google how to make your own damn wraps! it's just flour and water)) If you have access to a Chinese grocery, you'll be able to find proper circular wraps.

Before you prepare the chopped cabbage, salvage a few big leaves from the outside of the cabbage. You need enough to cover the bottom of your steamer. This recipe will fill up about four bamboo steamers (I usually make about 1/2 pound of meat, and it will fill up my stack of two steamers). If you don't have a steamer, it's OK. Do the pan-fried thing. I've got a posting on pan-fried lamb dumplings from October 2007 in this blog, so after forming your dumplings, move on down to that post.

Start by sauteeing the garlic and ginger in the oil। Once the garlic is translucent, brown the meat in the flavored oil। Drain all the fat you can, once that's done. You then want to have the chopped cabbage tossed with the meat in a bowl. It's best to have the cabbage chopped pretty fine, and toss it with the meat while the meat is still hot, so it will soften. Sharp edges will tear through the tender won ton wraps, and we don't want that, do we?

I'll frequently toss this mixture with an added 1 or 2 teaspoons of flour or cornstarch to help it stick together. Since we're just using ground meat, it's not excited about holding together in a proper dumpling formation. I typically put this mixture in the fridge for half an hour to let it cool a bit. Seeing as I'm about to work with it with my bare hands, I've found that to be a pretty good practice.

To make the dumplings, have a bowl of water and your wraps out. Some folks use egg yolk instead of water - it does have better adhering properties. I like to have a damp towel handy to wipe my hands periodically while I'm doing this (especially if I'm using the egg!).

Moisten the four sides of the wrap. Take a small spoonful of the flavored meat and place it in the middle. I like to take two diagonal corners and press them together (they should stick with the moistening) making a hammock like tube. I then take the other two corners and tuck them under the raised corners. They can't actually tuck under completely - what you want is to get them to paste to the underneath edges of the top corners. You should have an oblong dumpling now. Then seal it shut by taking the thumb and forefinger of both hands next to each other pressing and twisting from one side to the other until you have a classic dumpling shape. It's hard to describe without pictures, but I've found videos on You Tube, so if you can't figure it out, do a little research. After awhile you'll figure out what works for you. Everybody has his/her own style.

To steam, place the dumplings on top of the cabbage leaves in the steamer. If the water is already boiling, it should take 5 to 10 minutes, as the meat is already cooked. You'll know they're done when the wraps look almost translucent. I have one of those two-high bamboo steamers, and I place them in my wok to do this.

Serve with the usual fixin's - I like rice vinegar and pepper sauce, and sometimes soy sauce. The cabbage should be served as an accompanyment.

One note - all of the recipes I've read have you make the dumplings with raw meat and boil them for about six minutes. That will give you a more solid filling than what pre-cooking gives you. I pre-cook for two reasons - one to remove a lot of the fat, two, to make sure the meat is cooked through, and three, to keep the dumplings from falling apart (always a risk). But i've never tried the boiling method - I will do so and write about it one of these days.

Chili Smoked Catfish

This is a recipe I've borrowed from the Sublime Smoke cookbook. That book is, ahem, sublime. I haven't smoked in awhile, and I got the hankering for some fish the other day. I needed to feed a large group, so I made it catfish. OK, so call me cheap.

I took 7 catfish filets and marinaded them in

• 1.5 cups white vinegar
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 6 tblsp roasted chili powder
• 4 tblsp brown sugar
• 2 tblsp coarse sea salt
• 2 tblsp coriander
• 1 tblsp dill seed

for about three hours. The recipe says you can even do this the night before, which is a must if you're intending to prepare this dish after work on a weeknight. (it calls for monkfish, too, but my local grocer only has that stuff once in a blue moon)

Smoke said catfish for about 35 minutes. I let it get nice and flaky (almost a bit too flaky, as you can tell by the picture - one guy didn't survive extraction in one piece).

I served this with some sauteed mushrooms, brown rice, and asparagus. After sauteeing the mushrooms in olive oil, I added about half a cup of the same wine I used on the fish, and a tablespoon of chili powder to ensure its compatability as a topping. I was thinking of doing a lemon butter sauce, but opted out on the account of trying to make the meal heart-healthy. I also squeezed fresh lemon on fish, mushrooms, and asparagus immediately before serving.

This served 6 adults and a couple of little kids.

Campground Cooking

You know, I don't eat a lot of eggs at home, but it seems that when you're camping, some good breakfast tacos are de rigeur.

I think everybody knows how to do this - start with a little chorizo, add some onions and peppers, eggs, and at the last minute, shredded cheese.

What's optional is the Bloody Mary accompanyment.

There's just something about campground cooking that makes everything taste better.

dave

Dutch Oven Ciabatta

After a few fits and starts, I've finally got the Dutch Oven thing down. I've moved from burnt-bottomed biscuits to ciabatta. Hell, I even did a batch of brownies on my last camping trip and they turned out perfectly. It's kinda cool to be at that level of maturity in my dutch oven baking. I'm wondering if there's a certifying body or something. I'd love to put "Dutch Oven Certified" on my business card.

So, what I did was make the ciabatta dough prior to departing on my camping trip. I used:

1 cup sourdough sponge (or poolish sponge)
5 cups unbleached bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp instant yeast
1 cup water
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt

Mix this stuff up, beat it and all that. Knead it, too! The consistency of this should be much moister than what you would expect in a bread dough - really too moist to knead by hand. Use a wooden spoon or a mixer. Cover tightly, let it rise a bit for about 3 hours, then refrigerate overnight.

When you're ready to make some bread, dump the dough out onto a heavily floured work surface, and cut it into three equally sized pieces. Stretch each piece about 12 to 18 inches like it's a piece of toffee or something. I like to then fold the piece into thirds. Put the pieces on some floured cookie sheets or parchment paper, mist with cooking spray, cover, and let rise for about three hours. Two hours if it's really warm, or four if it's a mite chilly. The loaves should rise to where they're sticking up against that plastic bag like the belly of a pregnant woman in a tight shirt.

For those of you unaccustomed to dutch oven baking, I'm about to accustom you.

By now, you should have a nice hot fire - regular ol' charcoal is easier to manage for this purpose. Spread out a nice bed of coals and preheat the oven with the lid on by setting on top of said bed. When you're ready to bake, spray the interior of the oven with some cooking spray (or if you don't have that, lube it up with some olive oil prior to preheating). You need to have some coals to the side ready to put on the lid - preferably using a camp shovel.

This is the tricky part - pick up the loaves by hand and position in the dutch oven. Three will fit in a larger one (I think mine is like 16 inches). Otherwise, you can only do two. I hate picking up the loaves by hand, because they deflate a bit. It's not like using a peel and just sliding them into the oven.

Get over it, then mist the loaves with water and cover. Shovel a bunch of hot coals on the lid of the oven and set your mental timer for 5 minutes.

Ding! Remove the dutch oven from its position on the bed of coals. Five minutes is about all you can do on the bottom.

After another 10 minutes, pare down your supply of coals on the top of the oven until it's about 75% covered. Basically, you're trying to go from around 450 degrees to 350. Bake for another 20 minutes, checking periodically. If you see too much browning on the top while the sides are quite white, take a few more coals off. You want to get these loaves fairly browned as evenly as possible. What's pictured is the loaves about 10 minutes before they were finished.

It smells pretty damn good to have some bread baking around a campground.

Pull it out and eat it when it's done.

dave

Pinot Noir

You know, I like Pinot Noir. I liked it before I saw Sideways, too. OK so I buy it a bit more often after I heard the poignant description about the grape's temperment and potential for excellence from Paul Giamatti's character. You gotta respect the opinion of any wine connoisseur who loves the sauce so much, he'll confuse the spittin' trough for a beer bong.

I went to a wine tasting a number of years ago, where I learned that Pinot was a nice accompaniment for pork (among other things). I did find the Pinot is definitely not a cocktail wine - merlot seems the best to suit that purpose among the reds - but once the saliva and acids get going in the mouth, Pinot is tremendous with a nice pork roast, a spicy chicken dish, or even the occasional beef dish. It has a light body but enough acidity to match up to full flavored fare. I'm loving it these days.

My most recent find was an inexpensive 2006 Oregon Pinot called Kings Ridge. Oregon, you say? I've always wondered about those Oregon and Washington wines, but then I realized that, hey, they're right there jostling with northern California, and they're just as liberal. There must be some good wines coming out of there, too.

So my point today is, if you've got a pork tendrloin roast, crack open a bottle of Pinot. You won't regret it. That's what I did last night. Sure, I took it easy by buying a peppered pork tenderloin and baking it with onions, apples, and rosemary. I made a gravy out of the drippings to pour across the basmati rice on the side, and served it with asparagus. It was a pretty simple meal, but the Pinot made it a bit more special.

I even had enough of the bottle left over to use in the marinera sauce tonight. But that's a different story. My ziti awaits!

ciao,
dave

Smoked Salmon - Sugar and Spice

I gotta tell you, I love smoking. Partly because it sets cooking into slow motion, so you can enjoy the experience for a longer period of time. Kind of like going into a black hole, but without the relativity thing. Another reason is you can more easily avoid screwing up what you're doing.

Think about fish. If you're going to sautee or broil a nice filet, you may only be talking about four or five minutes of cooking time. A one or two minute error in cooking time can mean the difference between a moist succulent meal and getting the ol' "Dave, you overcooked the fish again." On the smoker, one or two minutes is nothing. Do I cook the fish 40 minutes? 50 minutes? Who cares? As long as I take a peek at it somewhere within the right five minute inverval, I can pull it out and it will always be done to perfection.

This recipe comes courtesy of a great smoking cookbook called Sublime Smoke. Well, I don't know how courteous those folks were - I didn't ask. So I won't divulge too much here - for quantities, go buy the book.

gin
brown sugar
coarse sea salt
anise
dill seed
whole coriander, bruised

Mix up all of these ingredients in a bowl, add the salmon, cover, and marinade in the refrigerator for at least two or three hours. Smoke it for 45 minutes to an hour. Smoking times will vary depending on your heat. My smoker is a vertical model that runs about 250 degrees or more, so it may be faster than some of the nice indirect heat models with the firebox on the side.

For flavor, I use hickory or pecan. Mesquite will give this too bitter a taste.

The picture depicts two small filets - I had a remnant of wild salmon (the dark red) in the freezer, and I went out and bought a little Scotland farm-raised for about half the price of the wild. The fresh farm-raised was much better than the frozen wild stuff (duh).

Another note about Sublime Smoke: I've done a number of recipes from this book, including chili-smoked monkfish (yowza!) and tandoori chicken. It has inspired me to smoke rather than grill just about all of my meats - including hamburgers, steaks, and fajitas.

That's about it, compadre. Enjoy!