Cobaya Experiment #3 - Chef Jonathan Eismann

When Chef Jonathan Eismann, of Pacific Time and Pizzavolante (and soon to be a couple more), and I first started discussing the prospect of doing one of our "underground dinners," he was completely into it. After months of trying to nail down a date and location, several weeks ago Chef told me "I have a spot" and everything quickly fell into place.

The spot turned out to be the not-yet-opened location of his new seafood restaurant "Fin," which is nestled within his also not-yet-opened new restaurant "Q" (which will be a barbecue place). Both are in what Miamians will likely fondly recall as the location of the old "Sheba" Ethiopian restaurant which closed a year or so ago, along Miami Avenue in the Design District. The "Fin" space occupies a cozy corner of the space (I'm pretty sure this is where the little art gallery used to be in Sheba) and is decorated in a Cape Cod style, very clean and simple.

The fish-centric concept of the new restaurant (everything will be fresh, local and simply prepared) and Chef Eismann's love of seafood helped set the theme for the dinner. After considering the seafood angle and the late December date, I mentioned something about the Italian Christmas tradition of the "Feast of Seven Fishes," and Chef Eismann and his team ran with it from there. Everything on our menu was brought in from the waters up and down the East Coast within 48 hours before our dinner, and Chef Eismann's team of chefs all assisted in creating several courses out of the ocean's bounty. In all, we had nine courses, all fish and seafood, fresh from Maine down to the Keys.

Though our menu said "Fin" on it, and the new restaurant will share the seafood focus, you won't see most of the specific dishes we had on the restaurant menu, at least not in the particular incarnations we saw. Most of what we 34 guinea pigs experienced (our largest group yet for one sitting, and very cozy for a 32-seat restaurant!) was created just for this dinner. Unfortunately I forgot to bring a camera and so for present purposes can only offer this low-quality scan of the menu and my recollections (I've put a request out to the other diners to see if someone will share their pictures Thanks to guinea pig Brad Nichol for providing some pictures, his full album from the dinner is here).

CSA Week 3 - roll 'em if you got 'em

When I first saw a bag of big, strange leaves in my CSA box, I didn't even know what I was looking at. Thankfully, the newsletter helpfully explained that these were piper betel leaves. They looked like they really wanted to be wrapped around something, and eventually my mind got to thinking about the Vietnamese dish called bò lá lốt, or grilled beef wrapped in leaves.

Lo and behold, the traditional wrapper for the dish would appear to be none other than betel leaves! I looked up a few different iterations of the recipe, all of which appeared to be variations on the same theme, and improvised some. For a pound of ground beef, I added about 2 tbsp. of finely chopped lemongrass, 2 tbsp. chopped green onion, a clove of finely chopped garlic, a couple tsp. of curry powder, a couple glugs of fish sauce, a spoonful of sugar, a pinch of salt, a grinding of black pepper, and mixed well with my hands. I laid out the leaves and added a torpedo-shaped spoonful to the upper third of the leaf and rolled it backwards on itself. My basic assembly guide can be found here.

If the leaves still have the stem attached you can use that as a sort of toothpick to hold the roll together, otherwise an actual toothpick will work (as will a longer skewer, which you can stick through several at once). Then just brush with a little oil and grill them in a hot grill pan:

The leaves, which start off feeling somewhat waxy, quickly soften and then get slightly crispy. After about 3-4 minutes, turn or roll them to cook the other side. Conveniently, once the leaves are wilted and cooked all over, the meat inside will also be done. I only got five leaves in my box, not nearly enough for a pound of beef, but I did have another leafy green hanging around. I trimmed off the leaves of some of the white chard and quickly blanched them for a minute or two in boiling water, then dried them on a paper towel.  I wrapped the rest of the beef in the chard leaves and gave them the same treatment:

I also whipped up a quick nước chấm to use as a dipping sauce. There seem to be many different schools of thought on the proportion of ingredients in a nước chấm. I used the juice of two limes, one thinly sliced chile pepper, one clove of minced garlic, about a tsp. of sugar, about 2 tbsp. hot water, a squirt of sriracha chile sauce, and about 1/4 cup of fish sauce. It wasn't bad but it could have used more tweaking if I wasn't ready to eat, right then and now.

The betel leaf wrappers had a wonderful frilly, slightly crispy texture and an interesting, subtly smoky flavor. The chard had a more substantial bite, but took nicely to grilling and had a slightly sweeter flavor. I liked the filling, which when cooked has a nice firm, but not tough, texture with brightness from the lemongrass and scallion.

The betel leaves seem like they could come in handy for a number of other uses. I will no longer feel the urge to panic when I see them in my CSA share. In fact, I'll be looking for more in the extras box.

CSA Week 3 - pesto and pisto

I've been making quick work of my CSA share this week. The Thai basil started changing color on me from green to purplish-brown, which told me it was time to make pesto, and fast.

It's sort of a shame pesto seems so dated and 1980's, as it's tasty, versatile stuff and the basic concept works with a broad variety of different combinations of herbs, cheeses and nuts. I went traditional here though, starting with three cloves of peeled garlic and about a 1/2 cup of pine nuts, lightly toasted in the toaster oven. Those went into the food processor, along with the basil leaves, were pulsed until smooth, and while doing so, I started adding a drizzle of olive oil through the feed tube. I don't measure the olive oil (OK, I don't really measure anything); the texture I look for is a loose paste. It could have been anywhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of oil.

I could try to convince you that I prefer to grate the parmesan separately and then add it to taste, but the truth is I forgot the cheese. So, by accident rather than design, I grated about a 1/2 cup of parmigiano reggiano and then added that to the rest of the ingredients. Salt to taste. It all came out OK.

I blanched the green beans (3/4 lb.) in boiling salted water for about five minutes, then shocked them in ice water to keep them from overcooking. I then used the same water (I use a spider to fish them out rather than dumping the water through a colander) to boil about 3/4 lb. of dry linguine. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and throw it in a big, warmed bowl (I stick it in the oven at 200ºF while the pasta is cooking), and toss with a big generous spoonful of the pesto and green beans. Use enough pesto to evenly dress the pasta: I used about 3/4 of the batch of pesto I'd made (probably about 3/4 cup). Grate more parmesan over the top, and grind black pepper to taste.

I made this over the weekend for the kids and one of their guests for lunch, and they all wolfed it down. That makes me proud.

OK, that's pesto - what about pisto?