Kitchen Zink - Chocolate Sauced Filets

Missed a day, but it was just leftovers, so it’s fine.  Hey, it’s my blog, and I’ll contribute when I feel like it!  Actually, there’s really only 3 to 4 meals per week that are worth commenting on, so my earlier estimate was perhaps a bit ambitious.  Not that we really hold high standards around here, but something akin to “Tonight we boiled water, cooked pasta, and poured sauce on top” isn’t exactly riveting content.  Regardless, we did have one meal in the interim that was awesome, so today I’ll write about that.

I’ve never really been much of a steak person, until I learned that it’s safe to eat it rare.  As Stacia (who worked in a meat locker) informed me, for a full-muscle piece of beef, the E-coli danger resides in the surface, so once the outside is cooked, the inside should be fine.  It’s the same concept that makes steak tartare edible.  Note that this doesn’t work for ground beef, since the inside and outside of the cuts are all mixed together, or for white meat, where parasites and salmonella are the main threats.  Pretty much anything else needs to be cooked through, but I’ve come around to letting steaks bleed a little, and now usually shoot for medium-rare.

Medium-rare steaks are usually pretty awesome, but as an eco-conscious guy, I do try to only eat beef every other week.  The fact of the matter is that it takes a ton of land and resources (energy, grain, water) to raise beef, and a socially-minded fellow can’t feel good about eating it too frequently.  Last week featured no red meat, so when it came up in the meal plan, I thought let’s go nuts and have something great.

We ended up selecting the tantalizing Beef Tenderloin with Rosemary and Chocolate from Ellie Krieger’s great book The Food You Crave.  Ellie is way cool, and has a very similar food philosophy to my own, perhaps warranting its own post sometime in the future.  There was some broccoli lying around in the fridge, so the side dish became a Roasted Broccoli with Lemon and Pecorino, from Fine Cooking Annual.  Very fancypants, but hey, we can splurge every now and then.

Now, a beef tenderloin is a big piece of meat, and Ellie called for 2 ½ pounds of it in the recipe, which obviously wasn’t happening.  As a substitute, Stacia somehow convinced me to get two filet mignon steaks (6.99 each at Gateway!) which are actually the same piece of meat, just cut into smaller pieces.  While we were there, we picked up a piece of actual Pecorino cheese, instead of being lazy and just using Parmesan, so we were all set.

With a modified set of ingredients, the recipe needed to be reordered a little, so we started with the sauce.  Sauteed shallots, carrot, celery and garlic formed the aromatics, into which some beef stock, rosemary, and cheap red wine were added and cooked down until the whole sauce was reduced.  While that was going, we started the broccoli on a cookie sheet in a 450 oven, and began searing the steaks.  Once the sauce finally reduced, it got poured through a fine strainer to remove the veggies (kinda sad but they were pretty used up by that point), and added a little bit of cocoa powder.  Tossing the broccoli with some lemon juice and shredding the pecorino on top meant that both the sauce and broccoli were ready to go.

The steaks were the star of the show, so cooking them right was imperative.  I feel like such a badass because we got it almost perfect, using a trick restaurant kitchens use and presumably few home cooks know about.  The secret is to only cook the steaks on the stovetop to sear the outsides, then move the whole pan to the oven to cook the rest of the way through.  Apparently it takes a lot longer to get the heat in through the pan only, so you end up overcooking the meat to get the insides done right, whereas the radiant heat of the oven cooks it from all sides so the interior can remain juicy.  Or something like that.  I’m just a cook, not a food scientist – all I know is that it works.

So we seared on the stove, cooked in the oven, rested on the counter, and finally were ready to plate.  I cut into my steak and was instantly worried that I had cooked it longer than intended: not quite pink enough in the center.  Then I tasted it, and realized that it was probably the best steak I’ve ever eaten.  Not sure if it was meat quality, cooking method, or what, but it was more tender and juicy than any piece of beef I’ve had before.  I mentally kick myself a bit that it would have been even more fantastic had it had been pulled from the oven a few minutes earlier, but since it was so awesome, I can’t complain too much.

The sauce was pretty neat, too; as advertised it didn’t really taste like chocolate, but just had a really great hearty and beefy flavor that really accentuated the meat.  The broccoli was the only disappointment in the meal.  Roasting it was supposed to really give it a distinct, sweeter flavor, but the difference was pretty subtle compared to the usual steamed.  I suppose it was tastier, but the recipe called for a bit too much lemon, and as far as I could discern, the Pecorino cheese was pretty indistinct.  But, sitting alongside the chocolate-rosemary sauced steaks, no side dish was really going to shine, so overall it was a phenomenal meal, one to repeat, just not really one we can have all the time.

Final note – taking pictures of food is hard, and mine seldom look much like the real thing.  So, this pic might not look great, but trust me that the food looked and tasted much better, and I’m still learning on the photography.

Kitchen Zink - Fish Tacos

This probably shouldn’t come as much of a shock, but I’m a fairly frequent Food Network viewer.  It all began with Iron Chef America during my college years, and I’ve recently become a big fan of Chopped.  However, there is one other show that I also like quite a bit, but don’t end up watching as frequently: Throwdown with Bobby Flay.  The concept is awesome – star chef Bobby Flay challenges a cook renowned for one particular dish at their own game.  So say, hypothetically, that you make really great chili; Bobby tracks you down, shows up one day and asks you to do a chili cook-off.  There are judges, and they do choose a winner, but it’s all in good-natured fun.

Now, bear in mind that Bobby Flay is a highly regarded, classically trained Iron Chef, so he’s not really an amateur at any of these dishes.  But the overriding idea is so good that it was my inspiration to learn how to make one thing “right” each month, back when I was making cooking goals in January.  I haven’t done one yet, and I’m not sure if it ever will, but if I had, the first one was almost certainly going to be fish tacos.  Well, fish tacos happened to be on the menu this Monday.  There ended up being much to learn, so I may have to do my research post-cooking, so that my next foray will turn out better.  The ones we had Monday weren’t bad, but let’s just say that I wouldn’t win the Throwdown against many other cooks.

Fish tacos are one of my favorite foods, and have been since the first time I tried them.  Stacia can tell you that I would be happy to eat Mexican food any day of the week, but changing the protein base to something so different really makes for a light, fresh take that I enjoy.  Every time we make them at home, and each time I’ve ordered them dining out (TGI Friday’s and especially Star Bar in Des Moines) has been a positive experience.  So, let’s head into the kitchen and see how they turned out this time.

A dish like fish tacos presents you with a lot of interesting choices.  Tortillas – crunchy or soft, corn or flour?  Fish – which variety, grilled or fried?  Toppings – Cabbage or coleslaw, fruit salsa, guacamole?  Like anything, this all comes down to personal preference, but in sampling many variations over the years, I think I know which I prefer.  The only ambiguous choice is the grilled or fried question, since I like each in its own way.  But at home we’ve traditionally done grilled, and I wanted a new challenge, so we went with the fried.  The plan became – BHG’s oven fried fish, using Hy-Vee’s “whole” catfish (don’t worry – no guts, just a tail and spine), served on flour tortillas and topped with BHG’s creamy coleslaw and our own home-canned salsa, which I think is too sweet for just snacking but should complement fish nicely.

The first step was hacking apart the fish into nice-sized chunks, which ended up not being gory at all.  It was a first time really filleting a fish, and I think we left a lot of meat on the bones, but I’m considering making fish stock with the rest if that’s even doable with catfish.  We modified the breading spices from the cookbook’s parmesan and dill(?) to cumin, cayenne and black pepper, coated the chunks with flour and the spiced bread crumbs, and threw them in the oven.  Making the coleslaw was supremely easy, just tossing one of those pre-packed slaw mixes with mayo, vinegar, sugar and celery seeds.

It started to become apparent that these weren’t Throwdown-winning tacos when the fish came out of the oven, and though cooked, weren’t really crispy.  Although we’ve had some success using the oven to replicate fried foods, these really weren’t the same.  In addition, the quantities for the spices that we’d guessed at ended up being far too mild, so I needed to add Cholula to spice up individual tacos.  With the fish not too zippy, just a basic coleslaw, and a salsa that was more sweet than spicy, the whole affair ended up being more of a fish wrap than a taco per se.

Don’t get me wrong – everything was fine, and between the two of us we ate everything we made, but for a food I love so much, I was really hoping for stellar results.  I know we have done better with grilled fish, and will certainly return to those in the future too.  But I want to be able to make the fried guys as well, and I’m already looking into better ways to get there.  My contention is that we need a deep fryer to really do the job, something that Stacia might be on board with now, so we may actually be allowed to buy one.

Finally, though catfish worked well for the fried variant here, I don’t think I’d go with it for grilled.  Ideal would be Mahi-mahi, but the foreign mahi fisheries aren’t well managed, and I can’t get US mahi in Des Moines.  Probably the best option is Tilapia, which is a “good alternative” if sourced from Central America.  That’s probably the most common choice in restaurants; they’re much firmer than catfish, which is really what you want for a grilled fish.

I don’t want to grade the results or rank them with stars, but I do think I would give this meal another try, with the caveat that I find a better way to fry or go with grilled next time around.  Ordinarily you’d now be able to see a picture, but we already ate all the tacos, so you’ll have to use your imagination ‘til next time.

Coming Attractions

I used to be a huge pack rat for most of my life, accumulating stuff, attaching sentimental significance to it, and refusing to get rid of it.  No joke, for a while I had, among other things I was keeping in a “memory” shoebox, receipts from purchases made when on vacation, to help me remember the trip.  When I met Stacia, she was the exact opposite, pretty much tossing anything into the trash after she was done with it.  It took some time for us to be able to understand each other’s viewpoint, but I think by now we’ve reached a happy medium – trying to live simply, but making a point to keep cherished items.

In that vein, I have two items at home that I really like, but don’t use enough.  So, to ensure they don’t become clutter, this post is about my goal to use them more.  The first is my digital camera (a simple point-and-shoot model), which gets used extensively on trips/special events, but spends most of its time just sitting in a drawer.  I also have an old SLR, which I know how to use, and might like to use more, but photography is such a rarity that I feel out of the habit.  The second is my food journal (it’s not a diary, it’s not a diary!), a great idea of Stacia’s that I just never remember to use.  The concept was to make notes of the food we cook at home, and lessons learned, so that I can go back and see what progress I’ve made in the kitchen and not make repeat mistakes.  Sadly, I seldom remember to write things down in the remaining evening downtime after dinner.

So here’s the plan (evolving, as all good plans are) – use the blog to push myself toward using those tools.  Ideally, I’ll make dinner, take notes, take photos of the finished product, and then write up a post, complete with photo, the next day during my lunch break.  The whole idea, and the ambitious frequency of it, may not take, but it’s my plan for the moment.  Perhaps I could co-opt SJ’s weekly roundup style if it all becomes too much to do daily.  Sadly, I haven’t taken any pictures of food yet this week, so if I write one today it will be un-illustrated, but take heart, food lovers: tonight’s dinner should be quite photogenic!

I'm Back...

So it’s been a little while since I’ve been on here, as evidenced by that “1 month ago” next to the Zinkthink  title on Stacia’s (or others’) blogroll.  It’s been a pretty lousy new year, to be honest, with a big crisis during the first month, and then some blogging apathy through most of February.  Torn between writing about what had happened and not, I ended up just not writing anything at all.  But then motivation came from a surprising place, though thinking about it now, it really shouldn’t have surprised me at all.

I know that very few people read this blog, which is fine with me.  If I wanted mass readership or side income, I’d write about something with mass appeal instead of what I ate for dinner last night.  Either way, one of my faithful readers is my older brother, who just spent the last two weeks in India with my sister – the trip of a lifetime, I would imagine.  We haven’t even really caught up yet about that trip (I suspect most of it is better told with pictures, so I’m okay with waiting til I’m home next), but he sent me a text the other day asking about the blog, with an accompanying frowny-emoticon expressing disappointment that I hadn’t written in a while.

That actually meant quite a bit to me.  I mean, he’d just been to places most of us will never see, immersing himself in a new and unique culture.  Compared to all that, my blog seems like one of the most insignificant things I can imagine, and yet he was anticipating reading it.  In some ways, it is a way for us to keep in touch, living some 400 miles apart, so I guess I can see why he’s interested, and I do really appreciate it.  Corny as it may sound, it really felt nice to know that people actually do read this for some reason, and I figured I better kick my ass into gear and write something.

It’s not going to be about the crisis in January, though.  I’ve thought it through, and though it might be good for me, I don’t think the people involved would appreciate it; not to mention how damn hard it would be to write.  In that vein, if you know about things, I appreciate your thoughts, but I think it would be best to keep them out of the comments for this post.  Maybe someday that will change, but everything is too recent right now.

The monthlong absence from blogging does give a good opportunity to think about what I want this space to be, a topic I frequently debate with myself.  Initially, it was an outlet from my very logical and orderly job, with the thought that I might one day want to write a story or even a book.  Then I came upon my love of cooking, and decided to put some time into that, including frequent corresponding blog topics.  The mix seems good to me right now, and more importantly, it’s still fun to write the blog.  When I was trying to write a story, I was almost literally banging my head against the wall, and just felt frustrated.  If I let myself be okay with this blog not being the orderly and polished product I frequently wish it were, it can be enjoyable for me, and maybe even for some of you.

I’m shooting for two posts per week, which is ambitious given that I’ve almost never reached that mark in the nine months I’ve kept the blog, but I’m keeping open-minded about it.  Previous post-goals left me feeling let down if I didn’t write enough times per week, so it’s just a target, which I’m okay with missing periodically.  One will be food or cooking-related, so if you don’t like those posts, you’re really in the wrong place.  The other will be more along the lines of what I started with, thoughts about life and what I’ve been up to lately.

The old movie project is going to continue, though I certainly didn’t see all the planned films in January.  Hopefully I can catch up this month, and get the next five watched before February ends.  I’ve already seen two, and have one on the DVR, so it seems doable.  I’ve also started a new reading project, which I may or may not bring into the mix here.  For a guy who ended up being an engineer, I always loved English class, and felt like there were so many more works of classic literature that I had yet to read, so I’m working on that now, too.  By time I’m done, I should be a bit of a Renaissance man.  J

In essence there probably won’t be much of a change around here.  I’ll still write every now and then, mostly about the weird cornucopia of my interests, from home cooking to car racing, from yoga to old movies.  In one way, this is a relaunch of my blog after so much time away, but I like to consider this quote attributed to Buddha, and just accept and appreciate today’s blog for what it is, without worrying about tomorrow’s entry or what the overriding point of the whole thing is.

“Each morning we are born again.  What we do today is what matters most.”

Well, this is what I did today.  It might not seem like much, and certainly doesn't matter “most,” but at least it does matter to me.  Be sure to check back and see what I do with a new morning.