Fishcakes I Love...No Joke

One of my very worst memories of meatless Fridays growing up is the fishcakes we were served. It was always a very bad, sad day on those Fridays (we would have eaten fish sticks every Friday night. This was not during the years of fresh seafood in the greater U.S. interior. Trust me.). I remember a textural mush, a certain fishiness and filler--whatever it might have been.

Blech. Still makes me shudder.

Well, imagine being reintroduced to fishcakes as an adult. Let's just say I did not even bother trying one immediately. But there they were, showing up at every turn. So I broke down and bought some last year for Easter (an Easter tradition)...and they were okay. I homemade the traditional hot cross buns last year. They were just okay, too.

This year, I reversed the order. I homemade the fishcakes and bought the buns. Stellar decision. I will leave the baking of the buns to the pros in the future and will always make a batch of fishcakes.

This uses salt cod, which, in spite of my Italian heritage, I'd never prepared. I read one article about a well-known chef who did not divulge his recipe, just named a few ingredients and a ratio: 2 to 1, fish to potato. Well, that was enough for me.

I rocked these fishcakes. I think we ate them for lunch and for dinner...I made two types of tartar sauce, one plain and one with curry powder...oh, and it was unusual tartar sauce, because I used Branston Pickle instead of relish, which I didn't have...

Try them, you'll like them. These won't erase the childhood fishcake scars, but they'll go a long way towards blotting those taste memories out.

2.5 pounds salt cod
2 red potatoes
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped parsley
mixture of fresh thyme, oregano and dill
Salt and pepper to taste
1 egg
Seasoned flour
Vegetable oil for frying

1. Soak the salt cod for at least 10 hours, the water every couple of hours. Place salt cod in stock pot with onion. Cover with fresh water, bring to boil and cook about 20 minutes.
2. While salt cod cooks, cut potatoes into small pieces. Cover with water, add salt to water, bring to boil, reduce to simmer and cook until soft, about 20 minutes.
3. Drain cod and onion. Drain potatoes. Let potatoes cool until you can hold them, then peel the skins and mash potatoes with a hand masher.
3. Place the fish and onion into bowl. Break fish into pieces. You will have about 2 cups fish. Add 1 cup mashed potatoes. Add parsley, herbs, salt and pepper and egg to the bowl and mix well.
4. Heat oil in cast-iron skillet to about 365F. While oil heats, shape mixture into fish cakes about 2 1/2 inches wide. Dredge each cake in seasoned flour (flour mixed with salt, pepper and paprika) and gently shake to remove all excess. Heat oven to 225F and place rack over sheet pan in oven.
5. When oil is hot, place about 4 fishcakes gently into oil. When golden brown on bottom, gently and carefully turn the fishcakes and cook until golden on second side. Drain fishcakes on paper towels then place onto rack in warm oven.
6. Repeat with remaining fishcakes. You will have about 12 fishcakes.

These reheat very nicely. Place on sheet tray in 350F oven and heat until piping hot.

Painting Food

I was possessed recently--I hand-painted 8 thank-you notes to some sources (I spoke to them about "specialty meats" for a story)...I was proud of these little masterpieces.

As ever, I continue to paint food best...landscapes? Meh.

Now go find a dry-aged steak and enjoy a great meal.

Trends...Or Not.

Food trends are funny things. What's old is new again and what was once "poor" food is now hot and trendy--pork belly anyone? Skirt Steak? How about fried hominy? Not saying that those things aren't great. I LOVE me some pork belly, skirt steak and fried hominy (if you haven't had this, think corn nuts).

But yesterday I read a CBS news story on the Top 5 Kitchen Trends. While I'm on board with the colorful cookware they feature (they show Ingrid Hoffman's fun T-fal cookware), a few photos down is the popcorn maker they gush about: Popcorn makers, including this one from West Bend, were very popular at the show. The dome of this particular model detaches and turns into a bowl. 

I have owned that Westbend popcorn maker for at least 7 years. And I bought it because a popcorn loving friend showed me her well-used maker way back when. Not new.

The very next image is of a microwave with a coffee maker. Ditto--when we remodeled the kitchen in Kentucky 8 years ago, I coveted a multifunction stove/cooktop...

Not to say I don't like some of the items mentioned in the story. Wilton Ametale has cookware that does double duty as serveware..They say it can go straight from the stove to the table. I like that (especially since I never have enough serving bowls)..

I also like the Cubodira, the dish rack that collapses into a cutting board. Again, double duty.  Works for me.

The rest seemed like not-needed stuff to me. I don't need more STUFF. I need less of it. I need workhorses in the kitchen.

You want trends? Make something real. Like this kettle corn (sweet and salty)...and I don't even use my Westbend popcorn maker--a pot, popcorn (you know, the kernels--not the stuff that goes into the microwave), sugar and oil.

Ready for Some Creamed Spinach?

What can I say? Creamed spinach is a household favorite. But I've jazzed it up now--all because of last weekend.

Not pretty, but it sure tastes good.

Last weekend I visited Ayse Mezze Lounge in Frederick, MD and had many bites of fabulous food. One of my favorites, one I wanted to recreate, was a creamed spinach with feta dish (side dish on most delicious lamb chops)...I did a decent job here, but I left out the bacon (It wasn't bacon they used, but something called sucuk (pronounced soo-jook) so Bryn would eat it--but I won't leave it out next time...In fact, I think I will use linguica sausage (since I have no clue where I can find sucuk). I liked my version, although I missed the sucuk, and mine had a lot more spinach to bechamel ratio than the version at Ayse.

Barb's Creamed Spinach with Feta (inspired by Ayse)

1 teaspoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 large onion, finely chopped
HERE'S WHERE I WOULD ADD THE BACON/SUCUK
3 cloves garlic, minced
pinch cayenne
1/2 teaspoon oregano 1/4 cup flour
2 cups warm milk (I used skim....bec. that's what I have)
1 20-ounce bag frozen chopped spinach, thawed  and squeezed dry
juice of 1/2 lemon
4 ounces feta cheese

1. Heat butter and oil in large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until softened. (If using sucuk/bacon/linguica, add it here and cook it with onion.) Stir in garlic, cayenne and oregano and cook another minute. Sprinkle flour over all and stir to coat vegetables.
2. Reduce heat to medium. Slowly add warm milk, about 1/4 cup at a time, stirring each time until no lumps are left. Cook about 5 minutes over medium heat. (Now you have bechamel sauce).
3. Stir spinach and lemon juice into bechamel. Continue cooking and stirring until heated through.
4. Crumble feta cheese and stir into hot spinach mixture. Serve immediately.

This serves about 8 (reasonably generous portions).

Fresh Fried French Fries

Now and then, just eat the real deal. Forget everything else. Slice, fry once, drain, fry again. Enjoy.
Worth it.
Now promise me you won't ever eat fries from frozen ever again...

Here's what you do.
Cut cleaned russet potatoes into 1/4-inch lengths. Heat oil to 350F. Make sure you use a heavy duty pot and that it is not filled more than half full of oil--the oil bubbles up when up put fries in...
Gently add potatoes to hot oil..Fry until they just start to color. Use a slotted spoon or a tool called a spider to get fries out of oil. Drain on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet. (You probably have to do this in batches.)
Heat oil to 350F again. Add fries in batches and cook until they are golden. Use spider again to remove them, drain them on the rack, salt and eat hot.

Any questions?

Child of the Corn

I probably shouldn't have scraped the sides--but I wanted it all.

I am a Child of the Corn. No, not that scary movie. It's just that I love things made from corn. I love popcorn, corn noodles, corn bread and corn muffins.

And I love polenta.

Ever wonder why corn and tomatoes, both New World ingredients, got to do so well in Italy? I wonder. Don't have an answer yet, but I do wonder.

But recently, I decided I had to have it with a dish I was making--nothing else would do. It's such a lovely color, it's such a lovely texture...

I turned to my rock, Marcella Hazan. Let me just say that Marcella doesn't do anything by halves. Remember when I begged to not have to par-boil the fresh lasagna noodles? She said NO.

For polenta, she has you standing there stirring and stirring and stirring...for 45 minutes. Luckily for me, she also has an easier method--er, one she refers to as the "no stir" method...HA.--for the lazy (my word, not Marcella's!) among us. Add the polenta to boiling water, stir it, put heat on low, cover, let it cook 10 minutes. Stir another minute. Cover and cook 10 minutes...etc. Do that 4 times, then stir stir stir stir at the end...serve this silky-textured molten corn with an intensely flavored tomato sauce and steak...

Or you could also pour it into a loaf pan to slice and saute or grill the next day or two.
Or you could stir cheese into it, pour it into a shallow pan, cut it into pretty squares or diamond shapes and top it with sauteed mushrooms, like we did at Union Square (name drop!)...mmm, great little hors d'oeuvres.

The crust is the best part, right? And trust me, just like Marcella says, an overnight soak and this came out in one piece.

And the next day I had it sliced and griddled...

But whatever you do, don't do instant. Marcella, in the spirit of being fair, tried hard to like instant polenta, but she just couldn't. And really, jumping up to stir a pot of this every 10 minutes? Not a hardship, not at all for the final results.

As for me, with every recipe I make from Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella, I am in love. Maybe I can blog my way through it like Julie did with Julia. Unoriginal, but man, what a year of good eating I would have!!!

Guest Post: Annie Logue and Sweet Carbs in China

My good writer friend, Annie Logue, had an incredible experience this summer--she got to spend six weeks teaching in China. I love her financial blog posts, but she happened to have some thoughts about baked goods in China..

Finding Carbohydrates in Chengdu

by Annie Logue

I dearly love all things flour, so I was worried about my stay in China this summer. I knew I’d have no trouble getting noodles, but I figured I’d have a summer without bread. But I was mistaken. It turns out that there are some mighty fine baked and fried treats available in the middle of the Middle Kingdom.

I was in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, which is known for its food. Apparently, the women are considered to be the most beautiful in China because the peppers makes them so hot. Po, the Kung Fu Panda (http://www.kungfupanda.com/), is from Qingcheng Mountain outside of Chengdu, and I was told that you can tell he’s a local because he likes to eat. In all the discussion of Sichuan favorites like mapo doufu (http://www.food.com/recipe/iron-chef-chinese-chef-chens-mapo-tofu-296880)  and hot pot (http://www.chengduliving.com/a-fiery-feast-sichuan-hotpot/), the pastry gets overlooked. And that’s a shame.

I spent seven weeks in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan and home of the giant panda. I was teaching finance at Southwest Jiaotong University (http://english.swjtu.edu.cn), which is well off the tourist track. On my first full day, I stopped in a bakery and found a wonderful treat: custard bread. It's a soft and sweet bread, almost like challah, spread with whipped cream (my favorite), custard, or jelly: 

MMm. Custard Bread.

Another bake shop nearby had a large, changing assortment of cookies and cakes. 

Cookies, cookies, cookies.

 My favorite were caramel rolls, which differed from the American version mainly in being a manageable size and having a light sprinkle of sesame seeds. Unfortunately, they were not available when I was taking pictures. I liked their sandwich cookies filled with a sweet bean paste, almond cookies, and pumpkin-seed cookies. The bakery also sold rolls garnished with shredded pork, a common item in Chengdu. It seems that in China, cooks will put meat in anything they can find! The baker was really nice.

Really nice baker!

That's not a surprise, because everyone in Chengdu was really nice and really friendly.

Twists or teething biscuits?

Many bakeries sold deep-fried twists , which had the sweet, plain taste of teething biscuits. That's a good thing; I'm the oldest of five children, so I ate a lot of teething biscuits growing up.

One of the standard breakfast foods in Chengdu is you tiao, which are fried breadsticks. They are a lot like unsweetened yeast doughnuts. 

You tiao

They are usually served with warm soymilk or congee, a really thin rice porridge, which you can dip the sticks in if you like. I loved you tiao, although I was sometimes tempted to sprinkle sugar on them. 

In addition to the baked goods, I really liked the caramelized-sugar suckers. 

Lucky winner! Caramelized sugar rooster sucker.

These are sold in the parks. The vendors have spinners; for about $1.00, you take a turn at the wheel to select your shape. The best shape was the dragon. I won the rooster, which was pretty cool. The vendor spoons melted sugar on a marble slab, inserts a stick, and viola! A tasty treat. I'm told these vendors are mostly found in lesser-developed areas; Beijing and Shanghai are too sophisticated. Who knows if that's true?

What I do know is that Chinese food was always surprising, sometimes in a bad way, mostly in a good way. The best surprises were the baked goods.