Stuffed Swiss chard

There is a traditional Russian dish of white cabbage leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice. As I looked at the colorful bunches of Swiss chard at the Farmers Market, I realized that the same technique would work with them, so I got a bunch.

Stuffed Swiss chard
Makes 8

8 large Swiss chard leaves (make sure that they are whole and not torn), stems trimmed
1.5 lb ground beef
1 cup cooked rice
2 Tbsp olive or vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
salt, pepper
2 Tbsp oil (additional)
2 cups beef stock

Boil water in a large stockpot. Add the chard, cook about 2 minutes to soften. Refresh in ice water, drain carefully; set to a side.

Make the stuffing:
Heat the oil in a medium pan, add onions, cook, stirring, until soft and transparent. Add garlic, cook for 2 more minutes to soften. Let cool. Mix the ground beef, rice, onions and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. You can cook and taste a small piece to check the seasoning (I did).

Stuff and cook the leaves:
Place a leaf on a flat surface, with the more colorful upper side facing down. Put a small handful of stuffing on the leaf, closer to the stem side. Roll up the leaf, tucking in the sides, to make a closed envelope. Repeat with remaining leaves and stuffing.

In a large straight-sided sautee pan heat 2 Tbsp of oil over medium heat. Place the chard envelopes in the pan with the seam side facing down, and sear to seal. Turn over and sear the other side. Turn again (carefully, they are fragile!). Reduce heat to low, pour the stock over them, cover and simmer for about an hour, untill the stuffing is fully cooked. Transfer the stuffed leaves to plates, spoon the cooking liquid over them.

Here they are served with cauliflower and fried bacon chunks, of course. The Charcuterie book is becoming my new addiction, and the easiest and the most basic recipe for home-cured bacon is a winner. I now add wonderful, dense and meaty homemade bacon to everything.

Fall menu: vegetable stew

This simple stew is based on classic ratatouille, but I learned it from my grandma, who, while being a natural intuitive cook, was born and raised in a Russian village, so the recipe that she got from one of her lady friends she called "soup ritatoole". This was not correct, but did sound like a song for us, kids, to dance to: soup, soup, ri-ta-toole, tap-tap-tap, clap-clap-clap...
It isn't really a soup, it's a very moist stew , and I like reduce some of the cooking liquid and spoon it over the meat that I serve with it.

This time I used cherry tomatoes from my garden, they grow faster than I eat them, and some of them get overripe and crack - these I use for cooking. A good practice would be to use San Marzanos, but these grow so slowly, I just get one or two a week.
I don't peel the tomatoes, but I fire-roast and peel the peppers. I know, most people would do exactly the opposite - let them. The eggplants here are japanese cherry variety, I bought them for their good looks, and will never do it again. Inside their cuteness, they consist mostly of seeds. Fat Italian eggplants rule. This stew benefits from lots of garlic, so if your garlic tolerance is even higher than mine (unlikely!), add some more.

The beauty of this dish is that you eat as much as you want hot (here it's served with pork loin chop, seasoned with salt and pepper and sauteed in a little olive oil), put the leftovers in a jar, top with a splash of red wine vinegar, and refrigerate for up to a week, serving cold as an appetizer or to garnish meat.

Fall vegetable stew
makes 2-3 servings

1 small or 1/2 large red onion, sliced in 1/2 inch half-rings
4-5 garlic cloves, sliced
2 Tbsp olive oil
large handfull of cherry tomatoes, halved
4 small eggplants, sliced
2 bell peppers, fire-roasted, skinned, seeded and sliced
a few olives
a few sprigs of fresh herbs: oregano, parsley, thyme, rosemary, bay leaf (easy on the last two)
1/2 glass white wine
salt, pepper, sugar (optional) to taste
2 tsp red wine vinegar

Heat the oil in a deep sautee pan, add garlic and onion, cook stirring over medium heat for several minutes, until soft and translucent. Add eggplant, cook until almost cooked. Add tomatoes, peppers, olives, herbs and wine. Lower the heat, cover the pan, and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring once in a while. Adjust salt, pepper and optional sugar.

If not serving immediately, add vinegar and refrigerate.

Learning to Stir Fry

I got a small stir fry pan! I wouldn't call it a wok - it's Calphalon stainless steell, not the traditional carbon steel that turns black with use - but it's small enough to fit into my kitchen, it has a metal handle (that's one reason why I didn't get an authentic wok, everything in the Chinese store has plastic handles that I don't like), it's easy to clean, and, it turns out, one can use it to stir fry!

The common sence would tell me to get a cookbook and to try to follow a few recipes, to get the idea, and then start improvising. But no, I'm not like this, only the lusers (short for 'lame users' in old hackers slang) read the manual, the real gurus just do the thing. So my first stir fry experiment is an improvisation. It turned out eadible, and I will probably even repeat it, with some variations - it has to be a little different every time, no fun otherwise.

I used a top sirloin steak from Safeway that was flavorful, but, like most meat cuts in this store, cut in such a way that I had to trim off a lot (the trimmings go into the freezer in a marked plastic bag for future stocks), so as a results I probably had a little over half a pound of meat.


Stir fried steak with bell peppers
serves 2

2 Tbsp peanut oil
2-3 large garlic cloves, grated
1 in of gigger root, grated
1 star anise, litely bruised
1 kaffir lime leaf, cut into thin strips
leaves from 2-3 sprigs of oregano and thyme, stems removed

1 top sirloin steak, trimmed and cut against the grain into thin 2-inch long strips
salt, pepper

1 yellow onion, peeled, cut in half, and thinly sliced
1 each small red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, cored and thinly sliced
handful of white mushrooms, quartered
4-5 asparagus stems, hard part removed, cut into bite-size pieces

1 tsp each soy sauce, fish sauce, rice vinegar, toasted seasame oil
a few basil leaves, to garnish
1 cup steamed white rice, to serve

Heat the stir fry pan over high heat. Turn on the kitchen fan. Add the oil, immediately add the aromatics, swirl and cook for about 30 seconds.

Add the steak, cook, stirring to brown on all sides. Remove the steak to a plate.

Add more oil if needed, add the vegetables, cook stirring untill soft and browned in places, a couple of minutes.
Add back the meat and the meat juice, stir to warm up. Adjust salt end pepper. Remove the star anise.

Mix the sauces, vinegar, and seasame oil, add to the pan, stir to mix. Garnish with basil leaves.
Serve over rice.

Why white wine? - No reason, I just was feeling like it this time. I would actually serve a Zinfandel with this dish.

Friday Night Mixed Grill

I didn't plan it as a mixed grill, but once in the store I couldn't decide between halibut and sturgeon steaks, so I got them both. Fortunately, they were approximately the same thickness and cooked in the same time (about 12 minutes on medium grill).

Appetizers:

Spinach Rolls
1 large bunch of spinach, washed and stems removed
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp each black and white toasted sesame seeds

Steam spinach until wilted. Let cool in a colander, squeeze out water, season with the soy sauce. Place the spinach on a sushi mat and roll into a 1-1/2 inch thick log. With a very sharp knife, slice the log into 1-1/2 in pieces. Garnish with sesame seeds.

Mushroom Rolls
1 package of enoki mushrooms
3 thin slices of bacon

Cut the mushroom roots off, divide the bunch into 3 equal parts. Wrap each part in a bacon slice. Grill over a medium grill, turning frequently, until the bacon is crisp. With a sharp knife, cut each roll in 2 or 3 portions.

Main: Grilled stugreon and halibut with papaya salsa:

Papaya Salsa
1 small sweet papaya, peeled, seeded, cut into 1/2 in cubes
1 japanese cucumber, skin on, cut into quarters, then thinly sliced
1 small white onion, peeled, sliced, rinsed with cold water to take off the bitterness
a small bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 green chili (I used the mildest kind because I cannot eat hot peppers), chopped
juice of 1 lime
sea salt, fresh ground pepper to tase

Mix all ingredients well.

Season the fish steaks with salt and pepper, brush with light olive oil, grill over medium grill about 12 minutes or until done, turning carefully once half way through cooking. Serve with the salsa.

Sunday Market Research

I was spending last weekend on the Peninsula, and of course I had to use the chance to compare Mountain View Sunday farmers market to the Marin Sunday farmers market that I've been writing about here all this time.
The first thing you notice is the crowd. They are Indian and Chinese, Russian and German, men, women and kids, but you can clearly see that most of them are Java programmers. With the exception of those who are C# programmers, programmers' wives and kids (and they probably do some Java programming too). And they wear Java programmers uniforms: shorts, T-shirts and sandals. No fashion show here, while in my market, Marin inhabitants Type I (yuppy-type) compete in perfection of their dressed-down designers yoga outfits, and Marin Type II (hippie-type) go overboard with artistic creativity. No show means no problems with the parking. People just come, get their groceries, and move on. There are more people in Mountain View market than in Marin, but this crowd is easier to navigate - fewer people with carts and strollers.

OK, enough antropologic observations, it's a food blog and I am expected to write about groceries. Both markets happen at the same time, so the vendors are different. I imagine that some really big farms may be able to send their employees to sell in both markets, but then what would these large producers be doing in a farmers market at all?

The quality and selection of fruits and vegetables is about the same in both markets, however the prices are some 20% higher in Marin (no surprise here).

We found some very colorful peppers, perfect baby artichokes, fresh lettuce, and a selection of mushrooms (we selected large Portabello 'shrooms for the grill). And at the tomato stand, FatCat™ found a huge ugly heirloom tomato (the uglier ones are the tastiest), way over two pounds, that he absolutely had to take home. He is still eating it.

I missed the seafood vendor that we have in Marin - here is just a small oyster stand - the butcher and the artisan cheeses. What's nice about shopping on the Peninsula is that whatever you missed on the market you can get in the numerous ethnic stores. There is the Milk Pail for fruits, vegetables, and cheeses, several Chinese and a Japanese supermarket for fresh fish, a Persian market for lamb and exotic spices, or go to a Mexican market and get all the vegetables you need, some interesting cut of very fresh meat and a pound of queso fresco - cheap! The one we went into just became another fine example of California fusion: the Fiesta Super market now has a large sign "РУССКИЕ ПРОДУКТЫ" (Russian groceries) over the entrance
and sells both Mexican and Russian stuff.

I'm not posting a recipe here because we just marinated the tri-tip steak with cumin, oregano and lime juice, brushed the vegetables with salt, pepper and olive oil, grilled everything by the pool and ate with fresh made pesto.

OK, here is the pesto:
1 bunch of green basil, stems removed and leaves roughly chopped
2/3 cup olive oil - I use half of light olive oil for blending, then add half of EVOO. (For some reason the EVOO doesn't like to be put in a blender and turns bitter if blended.)
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup pine nuts (toasted or not - matter of taste)
salt, pepper
1/2 cup grated parmesan - optional

Put basil, light olive oil, garlic and pine nuts in a blender, blend until almost smooth but leave some chunks for texture. Add EVOO, salt, pepper. Mix in parmesan.
If you are going to store the pesto for a few days, it's better to leave the cheese out and add it just before serving - it stays fresher without the cheese. Also for storage cover the surface of the pesto with olive oil to preserve the color.

Serve as a sauce for pasta, over grilled meat, fish, chicken or vegetables, or add to mediterranian-style soups. Or add even more extra-virgin olive oil and use for dipping bread.

A Weekend of Seafood

The ocean is beautiful, and still I am happy that I moved away from the ocean. Because as I was driving yesterday to Bodega Bay, the temperature was dropping almost every mile, and when I finally got there, it was 60F and foggy. An experienced Californian always has a sweater and a jacket in the trunk, even on a hottest summer day (especially on a hot summer day, because this is when the fog may come from the ocean any moment). So I put on both, and proceeded on my quest to find a good place to buy seafood.

There are a couple of places right on Rt. 1 - the Tides, that is a total tourist trap, giftshop and all, and Lucas', pretty touristy too. Behind Lucas' restaurant, however, there is a little fish shop, where an impressive-looking fishmonger is doing magic, filleting rockfish, just off the boat, in one precise movement, with his bare hands and a serious knife. I didn't let him perform much of the magic on mine - just scale it. I don't know why I didn't have him gut it and cut off the sharp fins, somehow I got an idea that if I bring it home whole, it will stay fresher. So the idiot cat had to get out her kevlar glove and gut her own fish. Which means that tripple-wrapped fish guts will have to stay in my garbage till Thursday. May be I should get them out and freeze them, but I just don't feel like diving in the garbage on a nice day like this...

All good, but I still have to find a real seafood place, like El Granada marina, where, when on thye Peninsula, I would buy crab and fish off the boat. So I go into the marina, and between the docks and a trailer park, there is what I'm looking for - a shack with a proud name of Pacific Seafood Co., and crates of Dungeness and oysters next to it. The idiot cat, like a very rich woman, doesn't carry cash, and Pacific Seafood is cash-only. After searching through the purse and the car, I come up with $11, and this is exactly how much is a dozen of medium oysters from Washington state. The water is always cold in Washington, so the oyster season never ends.

My dear friend and drinking buddy KY loves oysters as much as I do, so we had to somehow divide a mere dozen of oysters between the two of us. Luckily, the oysters were relatively big, so there was no fighting.

Oysters first, then the fish had to be squeezed into the well-oiled fish basket, it's gut replaced with all the herbs I could get from the garden - fennel, rosemary, thyme, and parsley - and a quartered lemon, and grilled for some 17 minutes. It still managed to stick to the basket, but you know what, I don't eat the skin anyway.
Cognac for desert.
So this morning I went to the market, looking what's good for a hangover. What I found was sashimi-grade toro (tuna belly) and excellent sea scallops. They also had live lobster, it flies all the way from East Coast of Canada, but I have to pick up the FatCat™ from the airport tonight, and after all these exhausting hours on the plane he may not appreciate it if I show up in SFO with a live lobster that needs to be cooked right away. So I had to pass it, praying that they have it again next week.

Toro I just sliced on the diagonal and ate with some soy sauce and wasabi. God, I made enough wasabi to last me till the next year! I made a whole teaspoon of wasabi!

The scallops I sliced thinly and marinated for 30 minutes in this sauce: juice and rind of one orange (love my microplane zester), 1/4 red onion, minced, 1/4 tsp panca chili paste, a few chives and parsley sprigs, salt and pepper. A hangover can feel good. I ate the scallops first, and then drunk the sauce.

This is how right I was about the FatCat™'s ideas on a happy homecoming after a 14-hour flight: straight from the airport we went to where? - Trader Vic's, of course, and it looks like my man was even happier to see our favorite bartender than anything else in California, including this little food blogger.


Here they are: Trader Vic's fried rolls, and bacon-wrapped shrimps with mango-pineapple sauce. The European traveller had to agree that although all Europe goes to Brussels for dinner and it's worth it, we have some food in California too.

Sturgeon Kebabs

The temperature is in the nineties again, I have to grill, even if only for myself.
One of my favorite fishes for grilling is sturgeon, not only because it's my heritage fish (Russians adore sturgeon, it's a topic for a separate post, family history and all), but also it's boneless, the taste is strong enough to stand up to any interesting marinade, and it's so firm that it never ever falls apart on the grill. And I just happened to have a steak that I took out of the freezer last night.

So I cut most of the meat from the steak (the trimmings in a marked zip-lock bag went right back into the freezer for future stocks) and cut it into large cubes.
The marinade was made by rinsing the blender after making chimichurri sauce with a half-glass of Pinot Grigio and juice from a couple of key limes. After the fish spent 30 minutes in the marinade (and the bamboo skewers in a bottle of water), I took it out, wiped it with paper towels, threaded it on skewers with chunks of sweet red onion from the farmers market, brushed it with EVOO and grilled over medium fire for a few minutes, turning three times. The sauce was made out of reduced and strained marinade.

Yellow rice is colored by tumeric. I'll use saffron next time, I missed the flavor.

Decorated with chopped parsley, nasturtium flower from the garden.

Washed down with laftover cooking-quality Pinot Grigio and a glass of Perrier.

Salmon and Shrimp Teriyaki Skewers

I think I got this recipe for teriyaki marinade on epicurious.com, and I've modified it a little.
(serves one hungry cat)

Teriyaki sauce:

1/2 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp mirin
1 tsp Japanese (toasted) sesame oil
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 in ginger root, grated (I didn't have ginger but had galangal, so I used it instead; liked it better)
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp chili paste
1 skinless salmon steak
3-4 large shrimps, peeled, tail on
1/2 small ripe papaya, peeled, cut into bite-size pieces
1 or 2 key limes, halved (after our recent quest for Peruvian food, I have a large bag of key limes, so I use them everywhere)

Mix all sauce ingredients. I didn't pass them through the blender - next time I will, to make it smooth. I didn't enjoy picking burnt woody pieces of galangal and garlic out of my dish.

Cut the salmon steak into 1 in cubes. Toss the salmon and shrimps with the sauce and marinate for 2 hours.

Soak bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes.

Thread salmon, shrimps, pieces of papaya and halves of key lime on the skewers.

Grill over hot grill about 5 minutes, turning frequently, brushing with the sauce.

Serve over green salad.

And yes, the wine! Margan 2001 Verdelho, from Australia. I was in love with it at the first sip. Similar to my beloved New Zealand Sauv Blancs, but more so. Crisp, with tropical fruits, herbs, and spices. Medium-light body. It's not just an elegant bottle, the content is elegant too. Serve chilled.