Kitchen Interviews

Each year my mom hosts break-the-fast at her home, and I assume my regular sous chef role.  Tonight we’re having 19 of our friends and family over to gorge in brunch foods past twilight.  Hey, we deserve a little over-indulgence after 24 hours of painstaking reflection on our personal shortcomings and failures over the past year — assuaging our sorrows with not even a crumb!  So why not make up all the meals you missed in one fell swoop?  

During the day, I do allow myself my coffee with a drop of milk.  Without it, I’d be crankier than a 3 yr-old on her first day of nursery school.  And trust me, we don’t want that.

For those of you keeping the fast today, my apologies in advance for the tease.  It’s cruel, I know.  Read at your own risk.

Yesterday was prep prep prep.  I love arranging food platters, like I love arranging flowers.  The trick is to put everything in its place, but not too perfectly.  A tuft of lettuce here balances slices of tomato there.  A spring of parsley here allows pats of swiss to rest there.  Other dishes come and go, but the bagels and fix-ins will always be a staple gobbled up without a hint of hesitation.  

Mom and I munched on my open-faced roasted chicken sandwiches (toasted multigrain bread with avocado and sundried tomato mayo,) while I worked the platters and she, Bradley Ogden’s ‘warm bread and butter pudding with peach sauce’. 

A certain dessert-maker’s rugelach are also a fixture, chewy with raisins and caramelized brown sugar, rolled into buttery, flaky nuggets of bliss. I want to write up said baker for the New Times, but her husband the lawyer put the kibosh on such publicity lest the underground operation be discovered. So scandalous! So priceless!

A trip to the grocery with no recipe in mind can sometimes result in a great dinner.  Such was the case last night.  Entering the store, I had a yen for certain flavors, and before you could say ‘carambola’, there were salmon filets, zucchini, English peas, mint, and French Feta in the cart!  Here’s what came together in the kitchen shortly after.

Beautiful wild King Salmon.

One filet gets a home-mixed honey mustard and hoisin glaze (foreground,) the other a marinade of "East Meets West."

Great product.

Slice two zucchini, throw in a very hot saute pan with some olive oil, sear and move pieces around quickly with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes (no more.)   Remove from heat and pour into a large bowl.  They will continue to cook off the heat, but still maintain their crispness and not go limp.  Add the shelled peas and small chunks of French Feta. Tear a small handful of mint leaves into pieces with your hands and sprinkle. Stir to combine, so the feta breaks down a little and the mint oils are released.  Add a tiny bit of salt and a few turns of black pepper, to your taste.

So easy.

Since I’ve ventured into the foreign outpost known as the Asian market, I’ve experimented in the kitchen with some interesting results. This one, a flash-boiled vermicelli noodle with seared pancetta and yellow onion, held together with a slurry of goat cheese, soy sauce, and spices, is worth repeating here. Just a few ingredients — some Oriental, others Mediterranean — come together in a pot and a pan. In about 10 minutes, they end up twirled on a fork or in chopsticks, and into your mouth. It’s fun to make and to eat, I think.

Here’s the “recipe” for one serving:

1 cup of water

2 “spools” of mung bean vermicelli

1/4 cup soy sauce

1 disc of pancetta (1/4 inch slice)

1/2 yellow onion, roughly chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh, mild goat cheese (chevre)

*1 tablespoon spice mixture with equal parts Hungarian paprika, cumin, and curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste (benefits from a lot of freshly-ground black pepper)

Slice up the pancetta into little lardons and add to a hot saute pan with the yellow onion. Melt the fat. When the meat is just about crisp and the onion cooked through with a sear, remove from heat. Place a medium sauce pan on the burner with the 1 cup of water. Once boiling, drop in the vermicelli and cut the heat. It’ll be limp in about one minute, and then you can add the soy sauce, goat cheese, and spice mixture to the hot liquid. Using a fork, lift the noodles up and down to thoroughly combine. Top with the pancetta/onion mixture, add a pinch of salt to set off flavors, along with generous turns of black pepper.

*The picture above includes the “spice mixture;” the noodle image below does not.

Had there been eggs and thyme in the refrigerator, they would have been beaten and scrambled with the pancetta/onion mixture for the best result.

Enjoy!