Last week, I found myself inundated with salad greens. Superstorm Sandy left my friends without power, and I inherited all their perishable food so that it wouldn’t go to waste. For someone who cooks for only one or two most of the time and shops every day for whatever it is I want that night, inheriting the weekly produce for a family of three was a little overwhelming. I had a large tub of mixed greens(you know – the size that you can wash a baby or small dog in!), a huge bag of spinach, and a couple of heads of radicchio, all on top of the usual box of greens and other salad ingredients that I had on hand for myself. It looked like salad was going to be an “every meal accompaniment” – with eggs for breakfast, as an entree for lunch and along side every dinner – for as long as they would last.

The good news was… I love salad. I truly do. I have a fondness for foods that are so variable (like omelets, pizza, pastas). You can add any mixture of ingredients and dressings to a bowl of greens and change the salad completely from what it was the last time you had it. All this salad got me thinking about vinaigrettes and in talking with my friends about my overabundance of salad greens, I realized that the simplicity of a vinaigrette often eludes the home cook. So, I thought I’d put together some tips for making a perfect vinaigrette.

The word vinaigrette is really just the diminutive form of the French word vinaigre, which means “vinegar”. “Little Vinegar”. That makes sense since a vinaigrette in its most classic form is just a combination of three parts oil to one part vinegar. The classic 3:1 ratio is easy to remember, and now you know that the vinegar is the “little” number. Stick with that ratio, and your vinaigrette will be fine every time.

The tricky part is that vinegar and oil are two liquids that don’t like to mix. [Read more…]

Just typing the words “grilling Rockfish” makes it feel like summer. For instance,

“What are you doing for dinner?”

“Me? Oh, I’m grilling Rockfish.”

The words immediately conjure up images of backyards, hot grills, fresh fish and delicious meals. It’s not just the words, however, that make you want to put on a pair of shorts, lie back in a lounge chair and grab a glass of white wine. If you actually get out there and grill some Rockfish you’ll see that the feeling of summer will be upon you in no time. I experienced this over the weekend and can testify to its truth.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rockfish, there are more than 70 species of Rockfish living off the West Coast of North America. Pacific Rockfish is a firm, lean, mildly-flavored, pink-fleshed fish. It is sometimes marketed as Snapper, Red Snapper, or Pacific Snapper on the west coast. (True Red Snapper, however, is an Atlantic fish.) Pacific Rockfish is a very approachable fish. It’s delicious with an almost sweet flavor, tender and flakey, and appeals to both the fish-lover and those who have just started to incorporate fish into their weekly diet (which we should all be trying to do!).

There are so many ways to prepare Pacific Rockfish. It’s easy and versatile. [Read more…]

I’ve been cooking for years now, both professionally and for personal enjoyment. What never ceases to amaze me, and one of the things I love most about cooking, is that I am constantly learning new things and changing the way I cook. I eat out at restaurants a lot and learn about new ingredient combinations. I read a lot of food magazines and books and learn about new cooking techniques and new foods on the market. I play with ethnic dishes when I cook and learn about entirely different cuisines. Finally, I just cook a lot and I learn through experience about what works and what enhances a meal. This past year, the one lesson that has affected me the most involves my use of fresh herbs.

Using fresh herbs is not new to me. I’ve always preferred to cook with fresh herbs over dried herbs for the most part. I like the fresh, bright and pure flavor that fresh herbs provide. This year, however, I’ve started adding way more than I’ve used before. Part of the reason for that is my herb garden. Any gardener knows that pruning and pinching herbs is good for the plant and generally helps it grow. So, this past summer, every time I went into my garden to cut herbs for a meal, I cut more than I needed. Then, I started using more than I felt I needed, and the flavors really started to shine and complement the dishes I was making. They became a critical ingredient and flavor of their own accord, rather than a supplementary flavor or just color garnish for the dish. This is not rocket science or any new revolutionary culinary technique. It’s just my own personal observation, and frankly it’s probably a little late for me to be making this realization, but better late than never. Sometimes we get a little set in our cooking ways, and a small change can make a big difference. [Read more…]

There are two things I love about pie – the pastry and the filling.

Ok, so I love everything about pies! After all, what’s not to love? What could be better than a warm, flakey crust that breaks gently under your fork paired with a warm sweet fruit filling? It’s a dessert that pleases your heart as much as your taste buds. It’s sort of the chicken noodle soup of the dessert world.

If I had to choose which is more important to me in a pie, the pastry or the filling, I’d probably be forced to go with the pastry (although the two components truly are inseparable). I like a pastry made of butter, rather than shortening. The butter gives the pastry great flavor and a crisp texture. Shortening does make a flakey crust, but I can’t go without the flavor of butter. Sometimes I do compromise, however, and accept a pastry made of both.

The rule to making pastry is simple keep everything cold. The goal is to work butter into the dough without completely blending it into the flour. In a finished pastry, you should still be able to see chunks of butter. Those patches of butter will separate the proteins in the flour when baked, making it more like flaky pastry than chewy bread. By keeping the butter cold, you run less risk of blending it into the flour. By using ice-cold water, you also increase your chances of keeping the butter in small chunks. [Read more…]

Salmon with Potatoes and Peas in a Ginger Broth

Years ago I worked as a cook in a couple of restaurants in Les-Baux-de-Provence, France. During my time there, I used to go into a nearby village on Saturday mornings to visit the local market. I didn’t buy food at the market - after all, I worked in a fully stocked restaurant and was living in quarters without a kitchen. Instead, I would just sit and watch the women who ran the fish stall. There were three of them working in a caravan with an open side, and they spent the whole morning preparing the fish for sale -cleaning, de-scaling,’breaking down whole fish into fillets, doing all things to all sorts of fish. They were masterful with their knives, slicing the fish with grace and precision. They worked quickly and quietly as they prepared their display. I admired their skill and thought at the time that I might like a future working as a fishwife. Strange to some, I suppose, but that’s what I thought at the time.

Well, time passes and plans change. My career path has never been predictable, and I never did become a fishwife. Perhaps now, however, I’ve come as close as I ever have to realizing my dream of selling fish. No, I’m not actually fishing, cleaning or preparing the fish, but for the first time I’m about to provide access to the freshest, tastiest fish many people will ever taste (unless they visit a seaside town and buy fish off a boat). Here’s how I came to this… [Read more…]