Category: Recipes by Ingredient + Prep

Recipes by Ingredient

Cioppino with Harvest of the Sea Seafood Medley

I love making seafood dishes at home, but sometimes it becomes cost prohibitive when you need multiple kinds for stews like this cioppino. Enter Harvest of the Sea’s frozen seafood medley pack. One bag contains a generous combo of Asian shrimp, Indian-wild-caught calamari, Argentine scallops, and Canadian Prince Edward Island blue mussels. They’re available at Costco in the Bay Area, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Texas; soon they’ll be in the New York area too. With Harvest of the Sea’s seafood medley, all you really need is your imagination to bring in your favorite restaurant seafood dish home.

Ingredients:
olive oil
1 onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 28-oz can of diced tomatoes
1 1/2 cups of dry white wine
6 cups of fish stock; but chicken broth will do
2 bay leaves
1 bag of Harvest of the Sea seafood medley, thawed
half a bunch parsley, roughly chopped
salt, pepper

1. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and sauté for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and continue sautéing for 3 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the tomato paste and stir until it changes color.
2. Add the tomatoes with the juice to the pot, along with the wine. Let the wine reduce by half, stirring occasionally. Add the stock and bay leaves; season and bring to a simmer.
3. Stir in the seafood and simmer gently for another 8 minutes. Stir in parsley and turn off the heat.

Jammy Eggs

Jammy eggs are my new jam! Ha! Even though they need more supervision than hard-boiled eggs, they’re easier to make than poached eggs. They’re perfect to top your sourdough-avocado toast with or to jazz up your instant ramen. 

A spider skimmer is useful here; in fact, it’s one of my most used kitchen tools. If you don’t have one, you really should buy one.

Ingredients:
eggs, room temperature

1. Boil enough water in a small saucepot on high heat to make sure your eggs will be submerged.
2. When water is boiling, adjust the heat to low and gently add the eggs using a spider skimmer.
3. Re-adjust the heat back to high and cook for 6 minutes. No more; no less.
4. Turn off the heat after 6 minutes and scoop the eggs out using the spider skimmer and run them under cold water in the sink until they’re cool enough to handle and peel. Slice in half and serve with your favorite accoutrements.

Related post/s:
Buy the most useful kitchen tool ever: a spider skimmer

Jiggly Cheesecake

Baking instructions are weird. This recipe came from Bon Appetit and I had to enlist two of my friends’ help to decipher what the original recipe meant by “Butter pan, then line with 2 overlapping 16×12 sheets of parchment, making sure parchment comes at least 2 inches above top of pan on all sides.”

Why am I buttering the pan and then lining it with parchment paper? Seems like a waste of butter. Oh, I see; the butter will seep through the paper and keep the cheesecake from sticking to the pan–you just don’t want the butter directly in the cheesecake.

What’s up with all the wording to line the pan with paper? I’ve re-worded that bit here to make it more simple, and I think mine is easier to understand especially by beginners like me.

Don’t be tempted to open the oven while you’re baking this cheesecake. You want it to collapse after you’ve baked it, not during. The middle part will give a little while it’s cooling, but that will tell you that it’s indeed jiggly inside.

Ingredients:
a small knob of soft unsalted butter
2 lbs cream cheese, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup flour

1. Move oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400°. Butter the springform pan, then line and pleat with 2 sheets of parchment paper that’s oversized enough to make sure that at least 2 inches come up on the sides of the pan. Then place pan on a rimmed baking sheet.
2. In your stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beat cream cheese and sugar in the bowl on medium-low speed, scraping down sides of bowl, until very smooth and sugar has dissolved, about 2 minutes.
3. Increase the speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, beating each egg 15 seconds before adding the next. Scrape down sides of bowl, then reduce mixer speed to medium-low. Add heavy cream, salt, and vanilla and beat until combined, about 30 seconds.
4. Remove bowl from the mixer and sift flour evenly over cream cheese mixture. Mix with a spatula while scraping down the sides of bowl until the batter is smooth and silky.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake cheesecake for an hour until golden brown on top but still very jiggly in the center.
6. Remove from oven to let cool slightly then unmold. It will collapse as it cools–that’s okay! Let cool completely. Carefully peel away parchment from sides of cheesecake. Slice into wedges and serve at room temperature.

Related post/s:
You will need a 10-inch diameter non-stick springform pan for this
Some parchment paper is also necessary

Spanish Chorizo and Potato Stew

New York City temperature dropped to “feels like -15F” during the long weekend that I was forced to make this Spanish chorizo and potato stew before hibernating. Actually, “forced” is such a strong word; it was too easy to be forced to make it. It was a hearty meal that did not require much effort.

Ingredients:
6 bacon slices, chopped
1 large sweet onion, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced, sliced
3 tbsps tomato paste
2 lbs smoked Spanish chorizo, cut into rounds
2 large russet potatoes, peeled, chopped into large chunks
1 lb button mushrooms
32 oz chicken broth
3/4 cup hot smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
sour cream
a handful of dill
salt

1. Render bacon fat by heating a large pot over medium heat. Add bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown but crisp, about 7 minutes. Remove to a plate.
2. Add onions to the same pot with the bacon fat. Cook, stirring often, until softened, about 10 minutes. Add garlic, and cook, stirring, about 3 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook until slightly darkened in color.
3. Return bacon to pot, then add the chorizo until slightly browned. Add the potatoes, mushrooms, broth, paprika, and cayenne and bring to a boil. Reduce heat so liquid is at a bare simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. Season with salt.
4. Remove from heat. Ladle into small bowls and top with a dollop or two of sour cream and torn dill.

Related post/s:
Where were these tubed tomato paste all my life?

Seared Salmon with Endive and Broccolini

The original recipe came from Bon Appétit and the dressing required a couple of jalapeños. I bought some, but the clerk didn’t ring them up so they weren’t in my grocery bag when I got home. I had to improvise and I used chili oil instead.

Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, chopped
chili oil
zest from 1/4 grapefruit
1 tsp honey
1/2 bunch broccolini, tough stems removed
2 skin-on, boneless salmon fillets, patted dry with paper towel, salted
2 Belgian endives, outer leaves separated and hearts chopped
juice from the same 1/4 grapefruit
4 tsps unseasoned rice vinegar
toasted sesame seeds
olive oil, salt

1. Make the dressing. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the garlic into the chili oil and salt, and then mix in the grapefruit zest and honey. Stir grapefruit juice and vinegar into dressing. Set aside.
2. In a heated skillet, heat some olive oil over medium-high heat. Add broccolini and cook, tossing occasionally, until charred in spots and tender, about 7 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Scatter endive with it.
3. Lower the heat to medium and add some more oil in the skillet until hot. Add the salmon skin side down, and cook until skin is browned and crisp, 7 minutes. Gently turn and cook the flesh side just until cooked through, about 1 minute. Place on top of the broccolini and endive. Drizzle grapefruit dressing over salmon, then top with sesame seeds.