Shrimp cakes

I think I done good tonight. As usual, I skimmed a bunch of recipes on the web and decided to combine the ideas that seemed most appealing. This recipe which uses cooked sweet potato as a base tempted me, but I opted for something more traditional. But not too traditional: many recipes call for a cup or more of mayonnaise, which has always struck me as a calorie-overkill innovation. Hey, these things are unhealthy enough as it is — why add another several hundred calories?

Here’s what I did:

1 pound of raw shrimp, peeled
1 heaping tablespoon each of jalapeno pepper, red bell pepper, and yellow onion, diced fine
2 green onions, diced
1 large clove of garlic, sliced
1 heaping tablespoon of celery, diced fine
1 egg
1 chipotle chili, diced fine
2 cups of Panko bread crumbs, divided
Salt to taste
Lemon slices
olive oil and butter

Saute the garlic, onion, bell pepper, and jalapeno until tender. Let this cool a bit. Next, put the peeled shrimp into the work bowl of a food processor and add the sauteed vegies, 1 cup of Panko, 1 egg, however much salt and pepper you like (pepper being very optional, thanks to the chipotle chili and jalapeno), and the chipotle chili. Run the processor until you have a nice paste, then add the celery and process until incorporated.

Shape into patties 2 to 3 inches across and about 1/2 to 3/4 inches high. Bread with Panko. Heat up some butter and olive oil in a nonstick skillet and fry those patties on both sides until golden brown. Serve with lemon slices.

I made a nice mushroom risotto with this. Does anyone need risotto lessons? When I have the time to prepare it, risotto is well worth the extra effort.

D.

Fried pizza!

I’ve been enjoying Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, Jamie at Home, and I give it two thumbs up, especially if you’re a gardener. It’s a beautiful cookbook with lots of full page color pix and page after page of tips on how to grow the difficult stuff, like asparagus or mushrooms.

The pizza dough and subsequent preparation were the easy steps. Jamie’s “quickest tomato sauce” was the real bitch, because I don’t enjoy pushing tomatoes through a sieve (and cleaning the sieve afterward wasn’t much fun, either). This recipe produces an intensely tomatoey sauce, though, almost like straight tomato paste, but tastier of course. I’m sure you could substitute the pizza sauce of your choice, but for the record, here’s my scaled-down version of Jamie’s recipe.

olive oil
about a dozen leaves of fresh basil
one 28 ounce can of stewed tomatoes
salt and ground black pepper
3 cloves of garlic, peeled

In a non-stick frying pan, add some olive oil and then the garlic, thinly sliced. When the garlic begins to turn color, add the tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper. When it comes to a boil, strain the sauce through a sieve into a bowl, and press the tomatoes through the sieve using the back of a wooden spoon. Be sure to scrape the “tomato mush” off the far side of the sieve. Return the sieved mixture back to the frying pan and cook it down until you have something that looks about right for pizza sauce.

For the pizza dough, I cut Jamie’s recipe in half and came up with the following. He calls for “strong white bread flour” whatever that is, and mixes it with some semolina, but I used bread flour and it worked just fine.

3.5 cups of flour
1/2 tablespoon of salt (he calls for sea salt)
1/2 tablespoon, heaping, of yeast
1/2 tablespoon brown sugar (he calls for raw sugar, whatever that is)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1.25 cups lukewarm water

Jamie gives a rather tedious recipe for working the liquids into the flour. I threw everything into my Kitchenaid with the dough hook and I let her rip. A few minutes later, I had a nice dough ball. I put it into an oiled bowl, flipped it over to oil it all around, and covered with plastic wrap. Popped it into the garage which in Bakersfield is always a warm place for letting your dough raise. Gave it a good hour for the yeast to do its thing.

I should note that I do indeed have sea salt, so I put my half tablespoon into my spice grinder, which lately has been used to grind fennel seed. Nice flavor addition to pizza dough, in my opinion.

The rest of this is easy as can be. Divide the dough into six balls, roll each one out on a floured board to about a six-inch diameter, and fry each one 30-60 sec per side until a bit golden. I used a combination of butter and olive oil. Top with tomato sauce and other goodies, and finish under a hot hot broiler.

I used tomato sauce, caramelized onions, prosciutto, fresh basil, and mozzarella cheese. Jamie’s recipe calls for buffalo mozzarella, halved cherry tomatoes, fresh basil and some dried oregano. Obviously you can do whatever you like for the toppings.

These were big enough that one for each of us was a pretty full meal, and I have three leftover mini-pizzas (just the rolled-out dough) that I’ll fry up tonight to accompany my dinner (chicken seekh kebabs). I wish I had more leftover caramelized onions,as then I could make a sort of onion kulcha with my leftover dough.

Enjoy!

D.

Salt water chicken

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged this. I MUST have blogged it. But I just did a search, and came up empty-handed.

This is so simple: it’s a simplified version of Julia Child’s roast chicken recipe.

1. Make some brine. I use one heaping tablespoonful of kosher salt and four cups of water.

2. Rinse your chicken and put it in a garbage bag. Set the garbage bag in a big glass bowl. Fill the bag with the four cups of brine. If you like, you can add other things to the brine, such as peppercorns, rosemary, bay leaves. But I really don’t think it makes much difference. Tie off the bag and put the whole thing in the fridge.

3. I usually remove the giblets from the cavity and add those to the bag, too.

4. Leave the chicken in the fridge overnight. This is a very mild brine, so don’t expect 1-2 hours to do it for you.

5. Preheat oven to 425 to 450 F.

6. Coat a casserole dish with olive oil and then add vegies to the dish. Usually, I peel one potato and cut it into big (3/4 inch high) disks, and then I chop one yellow onion and add it to the dish, too. Portabella mushrooms are nice. Today, for the first time, I used a combination of chunks of butternut squash and chopped red bell pepper. It’s all good. Whatever you use will take on the loveliest flavor from the chicken.

Anyway, what you’re doing is building up a platform upon which your chicken will sit. Stir the vegies in the oil, flip the potatoes, add salt and pepper to taste. Place the chicken, back-side-up, on this platform.

7. Brush the chicken with a combination of olive oil and melted butter. Salt and pepper to taste. Pop it in the oven.

8. At 15 minute intervals, brush the chicken with more butter and olive oil. When you have sufficient drippings from the roasted chicken, you can brush with this instead.

9. When the chicken is nicely browned, usually after 30-45 minutes, flip it. The breast side will then brown fairly quickly, usually in no more than thirty minutes.

10. Remove from oven, rest, carve, voila!

Gizzards cooked in this manner (in the bottom, along with the vegetables) will be gloriously tender, not the chewy horrors you’re imagining right now. Livers tend to overcook. Necks are delicious.

The vegies are always great. The drippings are useful, too: you’ll have a combination of highly concentrated chicken stock with a top layer of fat (which is butter + olive oil + chicken fat). I usually save both for use in other dishes.

Julia Child is insistent about the baste-every-fifteen-minutes thing. I’ve left this in the oven for a half hour at a time, no basting, and it does very well. Brining is your insurance against a dry bird.

By the way, I’ve done this with Thanksgiving turkey, too. Takes a special kind of refrigerator to accommodate a turkey in brine, but it’s worth it. Best bird you’ll ever eat, and I don’t even like turkey.

Bon appetit!

D.