Last dinner in my Chicago kitchen

Here's the last dinner I made in my Chicago kitchen. Tomato salad, braised greens, grilled corn with chile and lime, and grilled steak. It was a bit of an eclectic mix. But it used up the last of the vegetables in the fridge.

The tomato salad was pretty straight forward. Just slice up the tomatos, mix with thinly sliced shallots, capers, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

The greens (purple kale) were braised in some pork stock and a smoked ham hoc that had been sitting in my freezer. I also added some red pepper flakes and raisins. The raisins add a nice bit of sweetness and they soak up a lot of the savory flavors from the braising liquid. To make this dish, you want to start by sauting one bunch of sliced up kale along with a few cloves of sliced garlic. Add the stock, ham hoc, raisins, red pepper flakes, and maybe a tablespoon of cider vinegar. Let this simmer for a while (until the greens are very soft), remove the ham hoc, pick off the meat and toss this in with the greens.

I served the corn with a chile lime spread. I made the spread by mixing melted or softened butter with mayo in about a 1 to 3 ratio, and then adding lime juice and Mexican chile powder. Slathered over some grilled corn, this stuff is really, really good.

Grilled pork tenderloin with apple cider reduction, grilled sweet potato with rosemary, and wilted escarole with garlic chips

Here's another dish from back in Chicago. It's been a while, so I don't remember all the details, for the escarole, tenderloin and sauce. The sweet potatoes couldn't be easier though. Just chop up some rosemary, mix it in with olive oil, and toss this mixture together with some sliced rounds of sweet potato. Grill until finished. This is one of my favorite side dishes for summer grilling.

Catching up

It's been more than three months since I moved from Chicago to DC, but I still have a few photos from Chicago. Most of the dinners I cooked last summer were pretty straight forward preparations of ingredients I would pick up at the Wicker Park farmer's market (btw, I am shocked at how much more expensive the farmer's markets are here in DC). Here is one of those meals: a grilled lamb shoulder chop and roasted carrots with dill. I had made roasted carrots from one of the stands at the Wicker Park market earlier and they were soooo good. Here, I just tossed them with a little dill, olive oil, and salt.

Grilled leeks with basil vinaigrette and grilled Mint Creek Farms ham steak

Here's another meal from the farmer's market. This is a fairly simple dish, so it was a good week night meal. For the leeks, just cut off the dark green parts, cut a slit, lengthwise, down the leeks, leaving a half inch intact near the base, and rinse the leeks. Braise in water with some bay leaves and peppercorns for about 15 minutes to soften them up. Remove the leeks, finish cutting them in half, and then grill for a few minutes on each side until they are slightly charred. Top the leeks with any vinaigrette and let sit for a few minutes to soak in the flavors. I made a vinaigrette from red wine vinegar, olive oil, basil, garlic, and mustard. While the leeks are marinating in the vinaigrette, grill the ham steaks for a couple minutes on each side. Since the ham is already smoked and cured, you only need to grill it long enough to warm them up and add grill marks. As with most other pork dishes I make, I finished them off with some fennel pollen.

Back in Washington, so I must be cooking salmon

After our big wedding in Chicago, Abby, her parents, her younger brother Matt, and I all went out to Poulsbo for a more subdued reception at my parents house. I wanted to make the main course and wanted to do some classic Pacific Northwest food, so, of course, I cooked a whole bunch of salmon. 90+ pounds worth, to be exact. One of my favorite things about all of this was that we didn't get the fish at a supermarket. We got it here
from a local fisherman who sold us freshly caught salmon for the bargain price of $3 a pound. In all, I think we got 11 fish. Here I am inspecting the fish in the back of his boat.
Since there was a lot of fish, he just gutted them and left all the fun work of breaking them down to us. That took me a while, but it was fun to do.
Since he didn't just give us fillets, and, instead gave us pretty much the whole fish, I got to keep the best part, the salmon collars, which I roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper. I put the rest of the fish in a marinade of olive oil, brown sugar, parsley, mustard, and lemon juice and then cooked it on cedar planks. To get all of the fish done, we had three large grills going at the same time.

Grilled trout and asparagus

One of the sort of annoying things about planning for a wedding in a Catholic church is that you have to go through a series of meetings that, in the end, turn out to be completely useless. Last weekend, Abby had to fly up from DC for one of these useless meetings. Basically, we walked into the priests office, handed him some papers which were to be mailed to some central office to be stamped or something before being forwarded on to the church in Chicago where we are getting married. In retrospect, it was a huge waste of Abby's time, she really didn't need to be there, but at least we got to spend the weekend together. On one of here evenings in town, I made this nice little dinner for us. It's just a grilled whole trout with lemon jam and prosciutto wrapped asparagus with a mustard orange vinaigrette.

Chicken under a brick

This is a really fun way to grill chicken, and for some reason, using the bricks makes the skin perfectly crispy. It comes out a little charred, but it tastes great.

I started by cutting out the spine and flattening the carcass. To do this, you may need to crack the breast bone. Trim off the wing tips and excess fat. Fat from the chicken will render during cooking, and too much fat dripping off of the chicken and cause flare ups. Next, I mixed together a paste of chopped garlic, thyme, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and olive oil and spread this both over the surface of the chicken and in between the skin and the flesh of the chicken breast. Its good to get this step done pretty far in advance to let the flavors penetrate the meat.

To set up the grill, spread out coals over about half of the grill. This way you can move the chicken to the cooler side in case it starts to char too much. Make sure the grates are clean and well oiled, and preheat a brick wrapped in foil (use an oven mitt to move the brick around). Place the chicken skin side down and put the brick on top of the chicken. Grill for about 10 minutes over indirect heat, flip and cook for another 15 minutes skin side up, still with the brick on top. Finally, cook skin side down for 5 minutes over the coals to make sure the skin is nice and crispy. When I cooked it, I started the chicken out over the coals, but I thought the skin got a little too charred. I think shifting to indirect heat should solve that problem. Let the chicken rest for about 5 to 10 minutes before carving it up and serving.

I also made grilled potatoes and scallions to accompany the chicken.

Lamb kofta, sweet and hot eggplant, and Israeli couscous with pine nuts and lemon zest

I made this dish last night. For the kofta, I mixed together ground lamb, finely diced red onion, garlic, parsley, ras-al-hanout, and sumac and cooked it over the grill. To make the eggplant, start by generously salting and letting the slices stand for about 30 minutes. The salt draws out a lot of liquid and removes the bitterness from the eggplant. Wipe of the salt and press out the liquid with paper towels, then broil the eggplant until golden brown on each side. Meanwhile mix together the juice from 1/2 lemon (for 1 eggplant), 2 T honey, 1 tsp cumin, a pinch of cayanne pepper, 1 tsp grated or minced ginger, and 1/3 cup water. Cook the eggplant with this mixture for about 10 minutes (this recipe comes from Claudia Rodin's Middle Eastern cookbook). To make the couscous, start by cooking minced shallots or red onion with olive oil over medium heat until soft. Add the couscous and chicken stock to cover and cook over medium heat until the couscous is done...just taste periodically until it gets to the texture you like. When it is done, stir in the zest from half of a lemon, a bunch of chopped parsley, and toasted pine nuts.

Family reunion dinner 2

Pretty much everyone had a hand in preparing the next family reunion dinner. The menu included grilled vegetables (zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, and portabella mushrooms), teriyaki chicken, tri-tips with a korean style marinade, sushi and musubi, and potato patties made from roasted potatoes that were left over from the previous night.

Here are my aunties Susan and Pauline and my sister Laura showing off the key ingredient for musubi, Spam. Most people outside of Hawaii think this stuff is pretty gross, but I like it.
Below, Auntie Susan expertly assembles the musubi.
Here's a picture of the potato patties that I whipped up. This was an improvised dish that made use of a bunch of left over ingredients that we had sitting around. I diced up the roasted potatoes from the night before and combined them with left over roasted corn, minced onion, garlic, scallion, mayo, egg, and flour. I would have liked to grill them. The mixture probably would have fallen through the grates, though, so Auntie Nora fried them up.
Here are a few pictures of the final spread.

Family reunion dinner 1

My grandmother is getting on in years, so my dad's sisters have made it a point to come up and visit her each of the last few summers. This year, my brother, sister, and niece came out at the same time, so we were able to have a mini family reunion. Wild salmon is in season and really cheap, so I went a little overboard on the salmon purchase. We already had a big fillet of salmon and some lamb left over from the previous night, but when we went to the store and saw whole wild salmon for $6/lb, I had to get one. This fish weighs 6.5 lbs.
I stuffed the whole salmon with fennel, lemon, garlic, thyme, butter, salt and pepper. When you're cooking a whole fish this size on the grill, be sure to truss it so everything doesn't fall out. The strings will also make it easier to flip the fish. Also, make sure that you scale the fish before tying it up. I remembered this step after tying the fish, and it was significantly more difficult to work around the strings.

For the fillet of salmon, I decided to paint it with a honey mustard, citrus, and thyme glaze and cook it on a cedar plank. If you can incorporate a trip to the lumber yard and power tools into your food prep, that's probably a good thing.

Here are some pictures of the cooking and the finished products.


I also made a relish for the salmon that was made of roasted corn, avocado, tomatoes, red onions, garlic, cilantro, and lime. Basically, it was guacamole that hadn't been mashed up.
The menu was rounded grilled corn and Greek salad and roasted potatoes that my sister made. Midori was a big fan of the corn, which is unusually good this season.

Back home

I spent the first week of August back in Poulsbo and was either in the kitchen or at the grill most of the time. In my book, that's a pretty good vacation. My second night back, Sarah and Joe came over for dinner and we made garlic and rosemary lamb skewers with a cabernet sauce, wild salmon with a spice rub that Sarah whipped up, chickpea salad, and grilled vegetable ratatouille (with some fresh vegetables from Grant's garden).