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Recently, I went down the street to a local business. Fred’s Urban Farm, specializing in micro greens, sprouts, eggs and citrus. My wife and I have been there a handful of times but this time I wanted to pick up some items for a party. I was happily talked into some sunflower sprouts for cute deliciousness and broccoli spouts for superfood health.

Apparently broccoli and it’s babies are chocked full of a cancer fighting phytochemical known as Sulphoraphane, an anti cancer fighting phytochemical that will keep me healthy and robust. Cool, sounds good to me…and they ended up being quite tasty. Which was a surprise because I don’t really enjoy most sprouts.
Researching sulphoraphane I came across The Carnivore Diet. I’m not a fan of the word diet or the lifestyle, but different ways of eating always intrigue me. I googled around a bit and found that some people have found health happiness with the diet, which is what it’s all about.

Greens Got Me Thinking of Diets

Reminds me of Terry. Terry was the oposite of Fred’s Urban Farm.

We went on a family reunion in 2015 to Montana where I enjoyed the company of the patriarchs nephew, he was about 75 I think. Terry had been eating what I didn’t realize was a burgeoning diet fad that may have some points of note to it. Terry would tell me (in his gravelly old voice), “I eat meat, cheese and eggs. Anything from the ground, ‘ll kill ya.”

Interesting stuff. I’ve read before about toxicity in seeds and such, but the carnivore diet seems a little intense. Maybe not…but I have a hard time with food extremes. I’m a firm believer in balance and finding happiness in the grey, so eating like it’s a black and white world doesn’t jive with me. Especially when our teeth are more veggie crusher then meat ripper. That being said, whatever method we choose to limit easy carbs is a win.

What’s your goal when you eat a salad? Why are you eating it? Obligation, pleasure…somewhere in the middle? Eating salad for life means enjoying it for health, the rest of your life.

Love The Greens

For me…I enjoy cool fresh crunch and the feeling of consuming health. I’ve always had a confidence with salads and see them as an opportunity to enjoy food, not put up with it. It can be simple or complex, but it needs to be thought about or cared for as much as the roast in the oven.

If you can make a well seasoned dressing, then all you need is some stuff in a bowl.  Lettuce, canned beans, nuts, cheese, herbs.  Thinly sliced or shredded raw veggies like roots, cabbage or peppers.  Fresh or dried fruits are great as is diced or julienned apple. Rice! Rice is rad in salad.

There are no rules for a good salad, but there are some things to keep in mind for success. Some things need more dressing and time then others. For example. Most salads are best when everything is tossed just before service, like Caesar. Some salads need time, like kale.     

Kale salad is not hard but it has a few rules and is a great example of needing to structurally break down. Confidently work the kale with dressing. Oil, acid and salt break down tough greens but it has to be worked in. You will always want some sweetness with any bitter green; kale, arugula, endive all need a little sweetness. I also like to add a little garlic in with kale. Even if you’re thinking sweet, those flavors are needed balance.

Kale Salad:
2 bunches kale, washed and large ribs torn away
1 clove garlic, minced
1T honey
salt and pepper
4T lemon juice
2T virgin olive oil
1/3c slivered almonds, toasted
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
1 fuji apple, peeled and diced small
¼c raisins, dries cranberries or cherries
½c shaved parmesan, for garnish

Tear up the kale and toss with garlic lemon, salt and pepper, olive oil and honey. Massage a couple minutes then let sit for a bit. Work again until soft, then toss in the remaining ingredients, season to taste and garnish with parmesan.

Be Interesting…

Celery root and carrots are similar: Peel and julienne; toss with a little salt, oil and acid (lemon juice). Let sit and toss again, the texture should be noodley. Keep these macerating items separate until go time, or they’ll bleed too much liquid, which should be drained. Add this to the kale salad for lovely results.

Think about each ingredient and bite. Think of how the end product will come together in your mouth. Let’s say broccoli salad…are you going to blanch the broccoli? If yes; don’t over cook it and give it time to drip dry afterwards. If not, it’s raw state needs to have a lot of rich dressing and it’ll need to be chopped up but not obliterated. Both of these questions for broccoli salad are important because the decision and execution of either step, sets the stage for what’s next. And what’s next is texture and dressing. Some toasted nuts, raisins and diced celery cover texture. Dressing could be grapeseed oil, lemon juice, lime juice, red wine vinegar, honey, salt and pepper and chives. Sneaking in more health at the end is nice as long as is stays crunchy, a little endive or esocarole works.  

See…it’s easy.

Finally, we get some cold weather and rain in this new year. That rising crave for warm dishes and soups is unstoppable. 2018 was a veg heavy year; (that’s a good thing), when my mind is firing on veggies everything falls into place.

Last night was similar but I made another play at one of my favorite beef dishes. I pound beef tenderloin thin, lay it on a warm plate, top with grilled and braised short rib, grilled asparagus tips and one huge gnocchi. Then it gets waterfalled with boiling cabernet jus so the fillet gets barely cooked ala pho or sukiyaki. It went well. This years proteins were strangely steady. Fresh grouper and grilled prime beef were always pairing beautifully, but fall saw a lot of duck breast and thresher shark.

This new year I will continue with dishes like the fish course. A classic example of why I use spontaneous market menus. Dover sole wrapped portobello with broccoli nage, sweet potato, kohlrabi and mushroom marinade reduction. No one is going to order this off a menu unless it checks their dietary boxes. Hell, I’m not even going to come up with it as a concept unless I’m standing in front of it. But when it’s presented as a course, and you know other flavors and proteins are coming. It allows you to relax and enjoy it for what it is. Something new and delicious.

Having chickens is fun but is a lot of work. I guess like anything cool.

Team building exercises were something I was a part of often when I worked in the Bay Area. Not as much down here but that might be my marketing. I like team building exercises. They’re fun, exciting and rewarding; and getting work mates together outside of work is always a hoot. The last group I did was actually two years in a row. Not a third as they moved to Canada, but it was fun both times. The hosts were foodies so we did alot. It got crazy with 15 people in a medium kitchen :-o, but we it got done with smiles and laughter.

Appetizer cheese dish
Chicken wings of some awesome flavor
Lightly smoked fresh fish
Ceviche or shrimp cocktail
Ribeye with umami mushrooms
Curry sauce for naan
Grilled carbs–naan as mentioned, pizza, panzanella salad

Although they can get crazy and busy, my goal is always to keep everyone involved, engaged and eating a delicious meal at the end.

I remember one time we broke everyone into teams with a knife and cutting board. They got to choose ingredients from a big table and utilize anything else in the room. There was a sink, microwave and dishwasher. I got to taste all the entries and it was awesome. The winners used the dishwasher to steam some salmon :-)Grilled veggies that are not usually seen on the grill

Vacations can be crazy and tiring, especially if you’re coordinating people and especially if you have kids. Staying in “vacation mode” is real and important. Ever had the feeling you need a vacation after your vacation? That’s where I come in. You already rented a great house. Having me come in to cook a mind blowing dinner while you throw the kids in the pool and refill cocktails is a smart decision.

Let me paint a picture for you…

It’s vacation night 3 of 4. You’ve already done Legoland and the beach, but you spent this day at the zoo. You pull back to your rental around 3:30 and as you carry in the sleeping children, you realize you only have an hour or two to chill before you need to start getting everyone ready to go out for dinner. Feeling hungry, you attack some of the leftovers from the night before in the fridge. A cocktail sounds nice but you have to drive and wrangle the kids in a little bit, so you forgo.

After showers, getting ready, travel and parking; you’re 10 minutes late looking at your phone. There’s a message from your mother-in-law, wondering where you are. Dinner was some good, but mostly, “just ok”. Full, you pile everyone back in the car and come back home to have the kids still be hungry. Bummed you missed the sunset on your deck, you put the kids to bed, pour a glass of wine and finally exhale together on the couch with your love.

Or…I arrive at your place and create a memorable and highly delicious dinner with apps and dessert, served at your leisure. You get to relax; relax with your kids, relax with your parents, relax with your love, relax in the pool, relax chatting up the chef whirling around your kitchen. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you to watch the sunset.

What’s old is new, and what’s new can sound old. Reliving past menus is fun because I still stay true to form.

I was introduced to fresh fava beans by Chefs at Mr A’s and I’d like to tell them, thank you.  It took a friend hosting a friend from Taiwan who curiously purchased them to play with; but never got around to it. Then, months later the host was cleaning out his pantry in effort to streamline his new gluten free lifestyle. He brings me his box of “here ya go’s”, and I gladly accept. (Side note- my house is the dumping ground for random scraps or ingredients unknown.)  Chickens get the scraps and I experiment or utilize the unknowns.

In this box

…was a bag of dried whole fava beans. I have been successfully avoiding whole dried favas since the first time I saw them 20 years ago at a Mediterranean market. But when I saw this random, lonely, forgotten bag. I saw it as a sign that now was the time to slay the bean.

Whole dried fava beans never seem worth the effort because they are not worth the effort. I mean, if that’s your only bean…cool, it’s good enough to enjoy. But shucking each bean is an extra step I like to reserve for fun and special foods that taste delicious, like a fresh fava. Now, if you purchase peeled and split dried fava’s, it’ll be faster and easier to process. But I’d still rather have the taste and texture of other beans, rather then a starchy mellow lima bean.  I made a cumin and garlic flavored dip that was pleasant and filling enough to overcome the pleasure dome.

Recipe:

2c dried favas
salt
1/4c olive oil
1/4c sesame oil
1/4tsp chile flake
2T garlic
1 tsp ground cumin
2T lemon juice
2T minced parsley

Cover the beans with water by one inch and bring to a boil. Cover and turn off heat to let sit an hour. Strain and cover again with water and add a tsp or more of salt. Simmer for 2 hours, strain and keep some of the water. Shuck the beans and discard the soft shells. Heat half the olive oil with the chile flake, garlic and cumin. Once everything starts to bubble and fry, remove from the heat. Place the beans in a food processor with 2T of the reserved liquid and all other ingredients. Puree until smooth and season to taste, adding more liquid or oil if too tight.

*Departed on a plane, not dead.

I’m sure Thomas Keller would title this, “The Importance of Salt and Pepper.” I’m somewhere between that and titling this, “Salt ‘n Peppa.”
Proper seasoning is a simple but major difference in restaurant vs home cooking. Seasoning is a general restaurant term for salt and pepper or salt alone; specifically fresh ground black pepper and clean salt, (clean meaning no iodine). If you want to know way too much about salt, read Salt: A World History. A fascinating but not riveting read that I got halfway through before I had to return it to the library :-|

Salt will blow up your taste buds and pepper will tickle ’em. Too much salt and you over expand, things get uncomfortable. Too much pepper is like too much tickling…shudder.
The balance between salt quantity and timing are like anything else in food. Care and intuition will take you a long way, but it takes time and experience to be great. Like anything in life.

Luckily with food, even failures can be good and/or easily fixed. It’s innate to learn from them because all your senses are in play with food. You aren’t trying to memorize a chapter; you’re smelling, seeing, feeling, touching, hearing and retaining…without trying.
You just have to keep cooking.
If someone really wants to be a cooking machine; make a drum of pico de gallo and see what happens. Seriously, if you made a drum of pico de gallo, knowing, that the result needs to make someone want to marry you? (meaning, it has to taste good)

You would learn

Knife skills for life; including sharpening and blade maintenance, dicing, brunoise, mincing, knife variance and preference
5 integral vegetable variants, and specifics of their structure
Salt maceration and pickling
Seasoning and flavor balancing with salt, sweet, spice, acid and oil
Oil maceration and garlic processing are optional :-)

Simple favorites have a magic balancing point. That point when the taster is forced to close their eyes and contemplate the pleasure blanket they were just wrapped in. This can happen with pico de gallo, or mashed potatoes, or fried chicken, or steak, or salad, or a hamburger. This level of pleasure is quite difficult to attain without salt. That being said; I don’t love salt on the dinner table unless we are serving plain tomatoes or boiled eggs. I also don’t love auto salters. You know who I’m talkin’ about…shaking salt on their food before they’ve glanced at their plate much less tasted anything yet. My cousin is an auto salter and it irks me. I imagine shaking her but never do, because I’d probably get salt everywhere.

Like the title says. Be adventurous and brave, don’t let curry push you around. The ingredients are cheap, so have fun and experiment.

Most of us don’t make our own spice rub or curries and we tend to make one of two curries.  They add curry powder to coconut milk or curry paste to coconut milk.  Done, dinner served.  There are definitely times when these pre-made curries are a life saver, I get it.  

But…if you have an extra five minutes, creating a fresh curry is cathartic and rewarding.  The complexity brought from fresh toasted spices is always a smell that makes you give a smiling, closed eye, moaning exhale.  One ingredient can change the outcome of a curry but will almost never ruin it; so always feel free to riff or alter.  It’s always about the sum of its parts being stronger than any one ingredient.  

Below is a simple curry made with spices you can get anywhere.  I hope this allows you to take a creative breath and add a little spice to your culinary lexicon.

Basic mix

½in cinnamon stick
1T coriander seeds
½T cumin seeds
1tsp cardamom seeds
1tsp whole black peppercorns
½ tsp fennel seeds
½tsp mustard seeds
½tsp fenugreek seeds
3 whole cloves
2-4 dried red chiles, broken in pieces
1T turmeric
1tsp kosher salt

Toast the coriander, cumin, cardamom, peppercorns, fennel, mustard, fenugreek, cloves, and the chiles in a small dry skillet over medium heat just until they smell fragrant, about 2 minutes; let cool. In a clean coffee grinder or spice mill, grind the toasted spices together to a fine powder. Stir in the turmeric and salt and you are done.  If you omit the turmeric you will have a lovely and spicy Garam Masala.

Making a spice mixture is the first step of a curry and can be made days and weeks ahead of time. The remaining steps are universal to most curry recipes and should never be fussed over.  Sauté aromatics in plenty of oil over a medium heat until everything breaks down, and softens.  Add in a liquid and boil until perfect, season to taste and add meat as you see fit. Measurements and aromatics below:

A spice mix

2c grapeseed or avocado oil
1c sliced shallots
2 small chilies
2T minced ginger
2T minced garlic
1c chopped tomato
1c chopped cilantro
2-3T prepared curry powder
4c water or coconut milk