i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Some years there are so many blowfish in the water you can’t catch anything else because they are voracious and will take any line with any bait at any time. Then there are years where they don’t show up at all, for whatever reason may …
I’ve had smoked trout and smoked cheese conserves in a Costa Rican resort when we visited my parents last year and had wanted to do something similar, and then in passing I saw a recipe for Hungarian smoked quail eggs in oil. Try as I …
This “dish” is usually what’s considered ”accidental” as in it’s a byproduct of cooking or braising fish, rendering a gelatinous broth that is cooled and solidified (although now there are places that make it specifically)—often done with eel but it can actually be made with any type of fish that produces gelatin from its skin, scales, and bones (you can actually make a fish gelatin using just the scales.) You might have seen it on Midnight Diner or in the anime Food Wars! but you’d be a bit hard pressed to find this on any menu stateside, possibly only in your mom’s fridge after dinner as leftovers.
Making food with aspic/gelatin can be found in a lot of traditional cooking around the world, including Asia and eastern Europe although the ingredients and methods may differ. It has become a rarity these days however.
As it melts over piping rice back into lip sticky broth, revealing the tender fish meat and skin I carefully picked from the bones, the flavor is rich and comforting. The kids will eat a whole bowl of rice with it. I like to freeze it and cut cubes whenever the mood strikes.
I made this batch with creek chub (could possibly be fallfish, which is in the same family and chub and carp) we caught on our vacation in New Hampshire. I would have done it with the bass we nabbed, but everyone preferred those fried. Chub is sometimes considered not palatable due to the amount of tiny bones it has, but that doesn’t matter when the final dish requires me to pick the meat off anyway. The recipe itself is simple, but not really quick if you’re trying to be careful about the bones, and working with it while watching TV or listening to an audio book is the easiest way to pass the time.
If you prefer to just have the pure aspic with no meat, you can triple the broth ingredients and cook the fish for much longer, then strain and cool.
My sister bought 12lbs of A5 Wagyu for a pretty and decadent penny and then gave me a hunk of it after we had a barbecue. This level of marbling in the wagyu makes it a slightly difficult ingredient to work with–heat it for too …
My mom gave me a package of octopus before she left for Costa Rica–I’ve been meaning to make something with it but never got around to the doing part, mostly because octopus has a long prep time and I wanted to make sure I gave …
My sister came over today much to everyone’s (especially the kids’ who are obsessed with her) delight and of course, being two foodies who love to cook (and one an actual chef), we got to working on shucking a baker’s dozen (plus an extra one) of oysters I had picked up at the market just a little earlier. Nothing makes me more happy to live on the coast than access to gorgeous and fresh seafood–and these oysters were large, plump, so unbelievably fresh, and just $.99 cents each.
My garden is also in full swing so we decided to do oysters broiled with an herb butter and a smidge of my salt cured lemon puree and it was straight heaven. We froze the oysters for a few hours and then thawed them out under running water so they were easier to open, but it’s also possible to just steam them quickly first just so the shells are just loose. They’ll be cooked anyway, but sometimes you might lose some of the juices during steaming. While that was happening, we went into my garden and harvested a plethora of herbs, pureed them with oil, butter, a clove of garlic, some salt and pepper, and dropped a dollop on each of the shucked halves. Into the air fryer they went, until they were bubbly and the herb mixture just browning slightly.
These morsels of the ocean were so delicious that we almost went back to the market to get some more, just so we didn’t miss out. If there was ever a taste of a Long Island summer that has embedded itself deep into my soul, this would be it: the flavors of the bountiful sea, the sun that has helped the garden grow and thrive, and my own two hands that had lovingly placed them into the earth, I couldn’t ask for anything more.
Sometimes I get venison from friends who are hunters which is always a treat. I find raw venison to be less gamey than cooked, so it’s one of my favorite ways to eat it. Obligatory warning that consuming raw meat can lead to food-borne illnesses. …
The whole house came down with some vengeful stomach virus for almost two weeks (it went around TWICE) and that meant that we had an overflow of eggs from the chickens that hadn’t been used (try keeping down eggs—it’s not fun.) What was I going …
I dried a bunch of lavender last year and between syrups, jams, and baked goods, I always enjoy adding a bit of this floral treasure to give a subtle hint of irresistible deliciousness that makes me think of spring. These tasty bars with a crumbly topping is like if a coffee cake and a pie had an easy to make dessert baby. The thing that took me the longest was probably cutting the butter into the flour but you can actually do it in the food processor if you’re impatient.
You can use whatever berries you want—I just so happen to have cherries and blueberries this time around. You can also choose to use a different type of flower flavor, such as rose, jasmine, or orange blossom if you have. The world is your oyster and creativity should know no bounds.
It’s spring and one of the first things to pop up in my garden is garlic chives—different than onion chives, the leaves are flat and the flavor similar to ramps but less intense. It’s a popular Asian vegetable and dead easy to grow. With my …