Arctic char with beurre blanc and sautéed vegetables

You may have never heard of arctic char, but if your grocery store carries it, I urge you to give it a try. In terms of taste, it is somewhere between a salmon and a lake trout, with a nice fatty flesh and skin that is also very tasty. I buy it whole whenever the grocery store carries it since this is the freshest way to get fish, but you can obviously just buy fillets if you don’t want to fillet it yourself. Of course, you can make this dish with salmon or trout if you don’t have arctic char.

If you want to learn how to fillet round fish, you can check out the video on this previous post. Leave the skin on; it would be a waste to throw it out since it is so delicious, especially when cooked to a crisp as per this recipe.

Here is the whole fish.

One side removed.

Two beautiful fillets!

Cut the large fillets into smaller portions, however large you wish to have them. Here are the rest of the ingredients:

Red bell peppers, julienned

Mushrooms, sliced thick. You can use whatever mushrooms you like, I’ve just used regular white mushrooms, but shitake would go very well.

For the beurre blanc:

One shallot, diced as finely as possible

Dry white wine, about half a cup (that’s what I used for 2 medium-sized portions of fish)

Butter

Pour the wine into a sauce pan and add the shallots. Simmer for about 20 minutes such that the wine reduces to about a third of its original volume (as with all my measurements and suggested cooking times, these numbers are crude and approximate). Some people leave the shallots in the sauce but I prefer to strain them out. After straining the shallots out, return the wine to the sauce pan and on low heat, add the butter about a tablespoon at a time and keep mixing it thoroughly until the sauce has a thick, smooth texture and coats the back of a spoon. This sauce (and any butter-thickened sauce) is thickened by emulsifying the liquid and the butter, so if you don’t keep stirring, you will just wind up with melted butter floating on top of the wine – not particularly appealing. Season the sauce to taste at the very end. You should always season your sauces after you’re done with the reductions; if you season to taste and then reduce, it will be so salty that it will be inedible.

Sautee the mushrooms in some butter and add the bell peppers until soft. Season to taste.

Preheat a non-stick pan (fish is one of the few things that requires non-stick – eggs are another), and add olive oil once it’s hot. Season the fish on both sides and put it into the frying pan skin-side down. The majority of the cooking time will take place with the fish on its skin. There are two good reasons for doing this: First, you will get a very nice crisp skin; and second, the skin will protect the flesh of the fish from being exposed to very high heat and drying out. Once you see that the fish has cooked about two-thirds of the way up the side of the fillet, turn the heat down a bit and flip it over. Cook it until you can see that the entire fillet has cooked through on the side. This will take a different amount of time depending on the thickness of the fish, but it probably won’t be longer than 1-1.5 minutes.

Serve the fish on top of the vegetables and pour the sauce on top of the skin.

Overlooked meats - Part 1: Lamb shank fricassee

I've decided to write a number of recipes devoted to introducing some sadly overlooked cuts of meat. If all you're familiar with are rib-eye steaks, beef tenderloin (if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford it), and pork chops, this series of recipes will hopefully broaden your view of just how many delicious cuts of meat are available. Actually, in America (or at least, in New England, where I live), the variety of meat that is available is very limited in comparison to Europe, or even Canada (where I grew up).

The only problem with some of these cuts is that they are very tough and require long cooking times, which is perhaps why they are not so widely-used. These might be dishes that you could cook on the weekends when you have a few hours to let them simmer away.

The first dish is a fricassee made from lamb shanks. The shank is the lower part of the leg (shin) and since it is constantly working, it tends to be rather tough. Because of this, it is a good candidate for braising, which tenderizes the meat through long cooking in a liquid that later becomes the sauce. This recipe should be enough for 4 people.

2 lamb shanks
3 large portobello mushrooms, cubed
2 stalks celery, cut into very small cubes
3-4 medium-sized shallots, chopped
white wine
1 full teaspoon flour
2 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
few stalks of rosemary
a bit of cream

Trim the visible layer of silverskin from the lamb. Silverskin is a tough, somewhat shiny membrane that can easily be removed by slipping a knife under it and slowly working the knife edge along the tough membrane. Once they've been trimmed, brown the shanks all over in some olive oil until they're golden.

Remove the shanks from the pot and add the shallots and saute them until they're soft. Next add the celery and mushrooms and sautee until the mushrooms have been softened and reduced in volume (they shrink because the water within them evaporates as you cook them, which intensifies the flavor). Next, add the flour to the pot and mix it in until it incorporates with the oil.

Return the shanks to the pot, then pour in the wine until the shanks are about halfway covered in liquid. Wrap the garlic, bay leaf, and rosemary in  cheesecloth to make a bouquet garni.

Put the bouquet garni in the liquid; it adds flavor without being overpowering, and can easily be discarded once the dish is finished. Add salt and pepper, but don't try to get the seasoning right for now; if you do, it will most likely be over-seasoned once it's cooked, since some liquid will evaporate and the flavors will transfer during cooking. Always under-season braised dishes at the beginning, you will correct it once it's completely cooked.

Bring the pot to a simmer, then place a lid on it and lower the heat to the lowest possible setting that will allow a very gentle simmer (bubbles just gently break the surface of the liquid). Even better, you can place the pot in a very low oven (200-225F) as long as it doesn't have plastic handles. Keep an eye on it periodically to make sure it doesn't boil too vigorously. Also, occasionally turn and move the shanks while they cook.

After about an hour and a half, take the shanks out and trim all the meat from the bones into small cubes. Return the meat to the pot along with the bones and simmer for another 1-1.5 hours. If you want the sauce to be rather thick, you can take the lid off the pot to allow it to reduce near the end (last 15-20 minutes, depending on how thick you want it and how high your heat is). Once it's done, take out the bouquet garni and the bones, and add a bit of cream, to your taste. Now you can finally correct the seasoning.

This dish works well on its own, or with a thicker sauce, goes very well with fresh tagliatelle (or good dry pasta).

Sea-bass with yellow pepper sauce

This is a simple dish with only five ingredients, and can be prepared relatively quickly. The fish is the Mediterranean sea-bass (or Brazzini as it's sometimes called in the US), not the Chilean sea-bass which is much larger and - from I've heard - endangered. I buy the fish whole and fillet them myself, but I'm sure that the place where you buy your fish can do this for you (perhaps for an additional charge). If you'd like to learn how to fillet a fish yourself, it's really not that difficult and I encourage you to learn; it's obviously much fresher and more flavorful this way. The first few times you do it you'll probably leave too much on the bones, but who cares, you'll get better with time. Here is short video that explains it perfectly (here he's filleting a Salmon, but all round fish are pretty much the same):

2 whole sea-bass (4 fillets)
1 yellow bell-pepper, cut into very small, thin pieces
2 thin slices of ginger
1 clove of garlic, cut in half
a bit of double cream

Saute the bell-peppers in some butter until they are nice and soft (about 5-10 minutes, depending on how small you cut the pieces). Put them in a blender or food processor with a bit of cream and puree it until you have a fairly smooth texture. The amount of cream is up to you, however, if it's too little you won't be able to puree the peppers, and if it's too much, you'll drown out the pepper flavor and your sauce will also be too runny. I suggest putting it in a bit at a time, until there's enough liquid to allow you to get a smooth puree. Then pass the pepper puree through a very fine sieve (or a regular strainer lined with a layer of cheese-cloth) to catch the skin of the pepper and other solid pieces. If you don't sieve the sauce, it will not be smooth and the texture won't be very nice (mainly because of the skin).

Put the pepper puree in a sauce pan along with the ginger and the garlic. Bring it to a gentle boil then turn it to low and put the lid on. After 5 minutes, check to see if the consistency is to your liking; if it's too runny, continue to boil it but with the lid off so that it thickens. It should take about another 5 minutes. After a total of 10 minutes, take the ginger and garlic out of the sauce; their purpose was simply to infuse the sauce with a subtle flavor. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Salt and pepper the fish on its skin side (you eat the skin, it has an excellent flavor). Preheat a non-stick pan and add a bit of olive oil. When the oil is very hot (almost smoking) put the fish skin side down into the pan. Push down to flatten it, since the extreme heat will will cause the skin to curl up and lose contact with the pan. While it's on its skin, salt and pepper the other side. You want to brown the skin but you have a very limited amount of time to do it before having to flip the fish over, which is why the pan has to be very hot before you put the fish in. You'll be able to tell how far the fish has cooked through by looking at it, since it will turn solid white once it's cooked. When you can see that it's cooked about 2/3 of the way through (probably around 2 minutes or so) flip it over. It should take about another 30-45 seconds to finish cooking.

Put the sauce on the plate and fish on top, skin side up. You can eat this on its own or with mash potatoes or steamed vegetables, or whatever other garnish that you happen to like.

If cooking fish has scared you in the past, I hope this short write-up can convey just how easy it is. It literally takes about 3 minutes in a pan to cook such thin fillets as sea-bass, sea-bream, red snapper, or similarly sized (around 500-600g) white-fleshed fish (obviously, cooking times can vary drastically from fish to fish, especially depending on their thickness). I think the vast majority of restaurants overcook fish because they think that 2 or 3 minutes is simply too short a time-span. I'll steal a quote from Marco Pierre White on this one: 'Just remember, when you're cooking fish, 15 seconds is a lifetime'.

Tagliatelle Bolognese

This blog was instigated by my girlfriend (she had to convince me that it was a good idea, I was too lazy to start it), so I thought that the first recipe should be her favorite dish. You may wonder why I've put up a recipe for tagliatelle instead of spaghetti bolognese, which is more common (in the English-speaking world, anyway): the reason is that a Bolognian friend of mine told me that in Bologna, they never eat their ragu with spaghetti, always with fresh tagliatelle. So, here's my attempt at authenticity, although I'm sure there are other aspects of this recipe that would be frowned upon in its birthplace. You can certainly eat the ragu with good quality dry spaghetti as I do when I don't have the time to make fresh pasta. The best dry spaghettis have a very rough surface that allows the sauce to cling to the pasta instead of sitting on the bottom of the plate, and they are invariably imported from Italy. This recipe should be enough for 4-6 people.

For the ragu

500g ground beef

1 carrot, grated

1 celery stalk, chopped as finely as possible

1 onion, chopped as finely as possible

~1 can of san marzano tomatoes, blended smooth and passed through a strainer

~1 cup white wine

1 clove garlic

1 bay leaf

2-3 sprigs of thyme

olive oil and/or clarified butter for sauteing and browning

a bit of cream or milk (optional)

Drain as much of the tomato juice out of the can as possible (if you leave the juice, the sauce will be too runny), then, blend them until smooth. Pass the tomato puree through a sieve to catch the seeds - they completely ruin the texture of the ragu. When you pass purees through a sieve, you will have to force them through using a spoon; if you just pour a blended mixture into a sieve it will simply sit there because it is too thick.

Preheat a heavy pan until it's very hot, then use either a couple tablespoons of clarified butter or olive oil (I think it tastes better with the clarified butter but it's probably not very Italian) to brown the ground beef. If the meat doesn't sizzle violently when you put it in the pan, it's not hot enough - take it back out and wait. As the meat cooks, it will release some water which will have to evaporate before it can really brown properly, so give it the time it needs. Once the water has evaporated, you will hear the meat sizzling again; keep breaking it into small pieces and scraping the bottom of the pan until the meat is golden brown. The reason you want to brown the meat is to caramelize it and develop flavor, otherwise, you might as well have insipid boiled beef. Once it's done, put the meat in a strainer to drain off the excess fat. Put the wine in the frying pan and scrape any brown bits that were stuck to the bottom - those little bits have a ton of flavor, don't discard them.

In a pre-heated pot, saute the onions until they are translucent but not brown. Then add the celery, and after a couple of minutes, the carrots. After a further couple of minutes, add the meat and the wine from above to the pot and mix well. Then add enough tomatoes to cover (you won't need the whole can) and season with salt and pepper. The next little bit is a technique that's used quite often in French cooking, but I don't know how Italian it is; nevertheless, I think it improves the sauce, so in this case, to hell with authenticity. Take the garlic, bay leaf and thyme, wrap them in cheesecloth, tie everything tightly with kitchen string, and put the whole thing into the sauce. The purpose of these so-called bouquet garnis is to delicately infuse the flavors into the sauce without being too overpowering (I rarely put garlic directly into anything). Put the lid on the pot, turn the heat down to low, and simmer for at least one hour, preferably three to four; the longer you simmer the ragu, the better the flavors will develop. Once it's finished, check the seasoning again, take out the bouquet garni (you can now throw it away, it's done its job), and add a bit of cream or milk to add a nice texture to the sauce. Apparently, they add cream in Modena, but not in Bologna.

For the tagliatelle 

4 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon salt

1.5 - 2 cups all purpose flour

Making fresh pasta isn't as daunting as one may think. However, like most acquired skills, it won't turn out perfect the first time, so if you want to get it right, you will have to be persistent. The fastest and easiest way to mix the ingredients is in a food processor, but of course, you can do it by hand in a bowl as well. It is always safest to have a dough that is too wet rather than one that is too dry, so be careful about how much flour use initially. I usually put in about 1.5 cups of flour and mix in a food processor, then slowly add more to get something that resembles a crumble pastry. Then, turn out the loose dough onto a well-floured counter-top and kneed until you have a smooth, homogeneous dough. If it's too wet, it will keep sticking to your hands, so if this happens, just add a bit more flour. Once you have a finished dough, put it in a ziplock bag and into the fridge for at least 20 minutes, or at most a day (you can make the dough in advance and just roll it out the next day to save some time). 

Take the chilled dough out of the fridge, flour it generously, and flatten it enough so that it will fit through the thickest setting on your pasta machine (you can roll it out using a rolling pin, but it will take much longer). Pass it through the machine twice, then put it on the next setting and continue this process sequentially until you reach the thinnest or second thinnest setting on your machine. At this point, you will have a long, thin sheet of pasta. If you're doing this by yourself, it will take some practice to operate the crank and grab the pasta as it comes out of the other side, but with practice, it's no problem. Then use the attachment on your machine to cut the sheets into tagliatelle. Throughout the whole process, ensure that the pasta is well-floured, otherwise the tagliatelle will stick together once they've been cut and ruin all of your hard work. Boil the tagliatelle in salted boiling water for about 3 minutes (the cooking time depends on how thinly you rolled the pasta, so just eat a bit of it to make sure it's cooked). After draining, make sure to toss the pasta with olive oil immediately, otherwise it will stick together in a huge lump.

This may seem like a lot of work for some pasta and sauce (with practice, the amount of work naturally decreases), but I assure you that if you get it right, it is just as satisfying and delicious as a very sophisticated dish. You can certainly take shortcuts in the recipe, however, you have to bear in mind that there is a price to be paid for facilitation, and it is quality.

Kitchen Equipment

I think that before I post any recipes, I should make a note about kitchen equipment. You don't need to go out an spend a huge amount of money, but if you would really like to cook well, good pots, pans, and knives are a necessity. 


As far as pots and pans go, mass is the key: the heavier the better, which invariably means cast iron cookware. The reason for this is that heavier pots and pans retain heat better. Lodge is a good and relatively inexpensive brand that makes all sorts of cast iron cookware. The absolute best (and most expensive) is enameled cast iron, which is cast iron cookware that's covered in a ceramic enamel that eliminates the need to season the pots and pans to keep them from rusting. Le Creuset and Staub are both excellent brands from France which (as far as I've seen) only make enameled cast iron cookware. There are times when you'll need non-stick pans (for example, for fish or eggs), and so it's a good idea to have some non-stick cookware as well. All-Clad makes excellent non-stick (as well as stainless steel) pots and pans, but they are very expensive. If you're looking for lower-cost non-stick pans, just keep in mind the rule about mass!


In terms of knives you only really need a couple of good ones - no need to spend hundreds of dollars on a set of knives. A chef's knife (about 20cm long) and an all purpose knife (about 10cm long) will take care of 90% of the jobs in the kitchen. A boning knife and a fillet knife can also be useful, although I use the smaller all purpose knife for both of these jobs as well. Also, a sharpening steel is important to have in order to keep the edge on your knives. At the risk of generalizing, good knives only come from Germany and Japan. Obviously, not all German and Japanese knives are good; even the good brands make bad knives to appeal to the budget-minded consumer. I have Henckels and Wüsthof (both from Germany) and I'm happy with both, although I think Wüsthof is higher quality.


That covers the basics, but there are obviously many other pieces of kitchen equipment that one accrues over time. I will just mention them as I write more posts that require other things. As a general rule, don't buy cheap cookware or knives - you get what you pay for. Good equipment will literally last a lifetime, whereas the low-end stuff will require replacement every few years.