Writing With My Mouth Full

Dirty Rice with Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Southern cuisine’s “dirty rice” gets its name from the offal pieces they add in their rice. Comfort food often contains more than its fair share of fried stuff as well as heavy starches and some people say “dirty” is also taken from that. I honestly fucked this dish up so I had to literally scramble and rename it “dirty”. I stir-fried the Brussels sprouts and carrots with the salted black beans and then browned the tofu. When it was time to turn the tofu over, they just fell apart. Fuck it, I thought, and I just mixed everything together.

Mark Bittman recently featured canned black beans and I immediately recognized them as the 89-cent cans I see in Chinatown. Filipinos call them tao-si because the black beans come from long string beans we call sitaw. Reverse that and you get taw-si. The spelling changed to make it sound more Chinese. Oh, those Filipinos! I knew they were salty–the beans, not the Filipinos–but not that salty, so I added rice to the dish to fix it up. Sometimes, the most wonderful dishes come out of mistakes made in the kitchen.

Ingredients:
2 small buckets of Brussels sprouts, hard tips sliced off, quartered
a handful of baby carrots, julienned
1 package of extra firm tofu, sliced into strips
1 can of salted black beans, drained
2 cups of steamed white rice
juice from 1 lemon
1 onion, finely chopped
oil

1. In a large skillet, heat some oil. Sauté onions until translucent. Add black beans and cook for 1 minute. Add Brussels sprouts and carrots and stir-fry until carrots are tender. Set vegetables to the side and make room to fry the tofu.
2. Add some more oil if necessary. Brown the tofu on one side. When turning tofu over to cook the other side, they may stick. That’s okay. You can mix them up with the vegetables and make a scramble. Add rice and continue to mix until fully combined. Add lemon juice to control the saltiness of the black beans.

Pork Chops with Apples and Potatoes

Twenty-four hours before, we were in Philadelphia, the so-called sixth borough of New York City. It was like summer and everyone was out walking and enjoying the weather. From the Reading Terminal Market, we picked up some purple potatoes and apples, a bunch of arugula and escarole. We planned to cook a nice fish dinner back in New York City with the fresh produce we stuffed in my canvas bag. Alas, there were no more whole fish at Eli’s grocery store when we stopped by in the upper east side so we moved to Plan B. We bought two pork chops from the back and I thought of baking them with the Fujis. The Dr. was exhausted and just wanted to leave the cooking to me. I’ve done a similar dish before using red and white wines, but we were starving and this had to be fairly easy and quick. We snacked on the beef jerky we bought from Philly and drank the Hungarian red brought by co-workers from Budapest while we caught up with New York City news.

Ingredients:
2 pork chops
1 Fuji apple, peeled, sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
5 small purple potatoes, halved
1 cup veal stock
2 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 cloves
salt, pepper, oil

1. Preheat oven to 375º. Sprinkle pork chops with salt and pepper.
2. In a large skillet, heat some oil and brown the pork chops on both sides. Remove to a plate. Using the same skillet, sauté onions while scraping the bottom of the pan to include the pork bits. Remove to another plate.
3. In a small bowl, combine stock with mustard, sugar and cloves. Whisk and season with some salt and pepper.
4. Transfer pork chops to a baking dish. Add potatoes around them. Top with caramelized onions and pour in flavored stock. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes, turning chops over during the last 15 minutes of cooking. Remove the chops to a chopping board and let rest while the potatoes roast for another 15 minutes.

Esca

402 West 43rd Street off Ninth Avenue
212/564-7272
about $190 for two, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

I remember my first time in Esca as if it happened just last week. The $700 bill was split in four, my purse let out a small cry and I hoped that the next time my friends from Ireland visit, I would be able to afford dinner without wincing at the price. Several checks from other restaurants have since surpassed that moment so I knew it was time to go back to Esca. I was with the Dr. and I was armed with a more sophisticated palate for Italian cuisine and seafood.

So why did I think everything we ate was too salty?

We were tempted by the crudo tasting. For $30 each, we could have had six appetizers served in two flights but we wanted to save our appetites for the beautifully described pasta dishes. We started with half a dozen of the oysters and the geo duck ceviche. I’ve never had geo duck but I’ve always wanted to buy it from Chinatown just for laughs. The texture reminded me of abalone–tender and a little tough, but wait…I’ve had better ceviche than this before. Where was the chili and lime essence? My tongue was desperate for that spike. The oysters from Oregon were perfectly briny and all I wanted from the ceviche was more ocean taste to compliment and prepare me for the rest of our meal.

We had a very rich pasta course coming up so we decided to order two vegetable plates. The white asparagus was breaded and slathered with a thick sauce. I destroyed the brown crust–I wanted more asparagus than a fried casing. The insalata di porcini would have been my kind of salad if only it wasn’t overwhelmed with the cheese. I loved the beefiness of the porcini mushrooms and I was all over the mache, or lamb’s lettuce. I didn’t think the dish needed anything else; the cheese got in the way of the salad’s simplicity.

We were getting disheartened and knew that we only had one more dish to lift our spirits. The guitar spaghetti with sea urchin and crabmeat was to rescue the night! Alas, what we hoped for was a more Japanese treatment of the uni–bright and yet subtle–but what we got was an overpowering taste of cream and salt. I wish they left the uni alone to do its job with the crabmeat. It was supposed to be a rich and graceful dish, not loud and overbearing.

After two rhubarb bellinis and a panna cotta, we finished our meal and stepped out into the pouring rain. On our way home in the cab, we both wished Esca turned everything down a notch just like the faint tartiness in my drink and the delicate sweetness of my dessert.

Grilled Kid or Baby Goat Meat

I was tempted to omit “or baby goat meat” in the recipe title because grilled kid sounded funnier. This recipe is from Scott Gold’s The Shameless Carnivore, a new book about, well, eating all kinds of meat. It’s obvious from the title alone why I felt an affinity towards the book. His recipe called for cubed goat meat for barbecue and kebabs, but when I went to the farmers’ market, Patches of Star Farm from Nazareth had already ran out. The lady sold me rib chops instead.

I’ve had goat meat before but never this tender. It makes a huge difference when the animal is a young one. The younger it is, the more tender the meat. The chops weren’t any bigger than my hand so they took less than 10 minutes to cook both sides. I served two chops to myself with a side of kimchi and some rice.

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh baby goat rib chops
juice of 2 limes
half a bunch of cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
oil, salt

1. Combine all ingredients except goat in a bowl and whisk. Season with salt to taste.
2. Transfer the marinade in a shallow glass baking pan with cover. Add the goat, making sure all the meat is covered by the marinade. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
3. When ready to cook, heat a skillet. When almost smoking, add one or two goat rib chops at a time. Apply light pressure on the meat using a cast iron grill press or the back of a large spoon. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Spinach Potato Gnocchi

These came out looking more like mini-sausages than authentic gnocchi. I’m sure any Italian grandmother will freak out if they saw how I made these at home. It seems like a lot of work but after you mash the potatoes, they kind of form themselves with just the help of some extra flour. It’s helpful to have a Bravo TV marathon on in the background.

If making ahead of time, prepare them on a baking sheet and put in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Then transfer them to a Ziploc bag and keep in the freezer until ready to boil. Do not thaw them out; just throw them in a pot of boiling water when ready to serve.

Ingredients:
6 medium-sized Yukon gold potatoes, washed
2 bunches of spinach, thoroughly washed, chopped
1 cup flour, and more for dusting
1 egg
oil, salt, pepper

1. Cook potatoes in a large stock pot with boiling water, about 25 minutes. Remove from water and let cool. When cool enough to handle, peel by gently shredding the skin off with a fork. In a large bowl, mash potatoes. Add flour and egg to the mashed potatoes and combine well. Season with salt and pepper.
2. On a clean table surface dusted with flour, form medium-sized logs using hands. Keep sprinkling flour as necessary to avoid potatoes from sticking to hands. Slice off small quantity of dough and form mini-sausage-shaped “dumplings”.
3. In a large pot of boiling salted water, add the gnocchi and remove to a paper towel-lined plate using a slotted spoon when they float on top.
4. Heat some oil in a skillet. Fry the gnocchi until light brown on all sides. Remove to a serving plate and top with pesto.