Farmers Market Photos

Here are some snaps from the market this morning. I love this time of year; so many toys to play with!

Seviche/Ceviche/Cebiche

What got me going on this article was a question from a friend who asked, "Do you spell seviche with an 's'?" when we were chatting about that dish that we both adore. She spelled it ceviche and I spelled it seviche. They're both correct and so is cebiche and I happen to think that all of them are corruptions of escabeche (which itself has myriad spellings and corruptions). Language is crazily fluid and cannot be corralled and who cares anyway as long as we understand one another?

But this is all an aside for the real idea behind this post. I think most of us foodies are familiar with this dish, raw fish marinated in citrus. Most references state that the citrus "cooks" the fish, with cooks always in quotes (from the epicurious.com food dictionary: The action of the acid in the lime juice "cooks" the fish, thereby firming the flesh and turning it opaque). This got me pondering about cooked versus raw, the very semantics of two states that we take very much for granted. Or to ask it in a more straightforward manner, what does it mean for something to be cooked?

This leads to many other questions such as "Does the transformation from the raw state necessarily imply the application of heat?" Gee, I'm a professional chef and somewhat of a language pedant and I haven't a clue. So I set about finding an answer, as if such a fundamental question can have but a single answer.

But before I move on, let me just limit this discussion to the physical transformation that happens when food changes state from what we call raw to what we call cooked. The subject would otherwise be fairly boundless. If you don't believe me, ask yourself the following questions:

Am I cooking when I remove heat from sweetened cream and make ice cream?
Am I cooking when I whisk together oil and vinegar in that emulsion that we call a vinaigrette?
Am I cooking when I salt sliced raw cabbage and leave it at room temperature so that it undergoes lactic acid fermentation and becomes sauerkraut?

First stop, a few dictionaries of the English language. The majority such as the compact OED are fairly abolute: cooking is preparing food for consumption by application of heat. A few others such as Merriam-Webster, no doubt wanting to avoid absolutist traps, give more grey definitions along the lines of cooking is preparing for consumption especially by application of heat. Hmmm. A lot of leeway here.

So I decided to consult my well read copy of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking which generally has the answer to most of my questions culinary. And what did I see in his discussion of seviche but the quotes around the verb cook? Subsequent reading in McGee leads me to understand that the acid in citrus denatures (breaks down) proteins in a way similar to what happens when you apply heat to those same proteins. But it also clear that because of the lack of heat, no Maillard reactions happen and those reactions produce the browning and flavors that we associate with being cooked.

So I am back to square one. I don't know if seviche is raw or cooked or in some hybrid state. But I do know that I love it and that it's just the perfect summertime dish. Here's a recipe that I devised after one that a Mexican prep cook made for me once upon a time. The thing that I took from him was the celery, sliced crosswise into kidney shapes,which adds great texture to the dish. The tequila is my own thing. I make this from scraps of flounder when we are running flounder as an entrée. Any mild white fish will do nicely.

Three Citrus Tequila Flounder Seviche

3 cups diced flounder, about 1 pound
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon toasted and ground cumin
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1-½ tablespoons guajillo chile paste*
½ medium red onion, minced
2 green onions, sliced
1 large celery stalk, sliced crosswise into kidney shapes
2 cloves garlic, minced
Zest of one blood orange (or regular orange)
Zest of one lime
Zest of one lemon
Juice of two blood oranges
Juice of two limes
Juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon gold tequila

Mix all ingredients well and let marinate under refrigeration for at least two hours. Serve cold in a martini glass rimmed with cumin salt and garnished with blood orange.

*To make guajillo paste, reconstitute toasted and seeded dried guajillos in warm water until soft. Drain and blend with sufficient fresh water to make a paste. Pass through a strainer to remove any skin and seed bits.

Summerlong Basil

I'm completely taken with a new basil cultivar called Summerlong which you see to the right. Some plants have the micro leaves that you see here while others have slightly larger leaves. The cultivar is a very compact globe or bush basil that is slow to bloom. If you've ever grown basil, you know that once it blooms, it's not nearly as good as before. The smell and flavor is outstanding. The tiny leaves can be tedious to work with, but I'm still taken with this basil, and the tiny leaves are a bonus for us in the restaurant where we need tiny leaves for garnish. Try some in your garden next year. Ed likes this.

Water Pepper

You see here some micro Water Pepper (Persicaria hydropiper) that we recently received to experiment with. As microgreens go, its handsome green leaves with pink undersides and pink stems look great on the plate.

Water Pepper is known for its wasabi-like spice. The grower that I bought it from went on and on about how spicy it is, but we never found it to be overly spicy. Maybe these micros are just too young to have developed killer spice. Eating a few of the leaves is akin to taking a bite of prepared "wasabi" powder. Wasabi is in quotes because wasabi powder contains no actual wasabi, but that's the subject of another post, once I get some fresh wasabi root to photograph.

I notice that the leaves have a slight bitter cast on the initial taste, followed by the spice, which lingers and reminds me of Sichuan pepper. What's a bit weird is that it doesn't have any real flavor of its own, just slight bitterness followed by the burn.

I enjoyed it as a replacement for wasabi with tuna sashimi, wrapped into tekka rolls, and in summer rolls. I also mixed a bit into my local mesclun for my personal lunch salads. Water pepper retains its spice when cooked (I put a batch of wilted leaves into a quick salsa), but I'm not sure why you'd cook with such an expensive green.

Note to chefs: this micro does not last long. It wilts in a hurry. You must store it cold and tightly covered, so you can't keep it in the top of your garnish box, even with a loose fitting lid. That's a bit of a pain at service, but so it goes.

Sorrel-Wrapped Mahi Demonstration

Here's a brief photo essay from a recent lunch special that one of my cooks was prepping. It's a good lesson in how to wrap any kind of protein with a leafy green. In this case, we're wrapping relatively mild Mahi Mahi in bright, lemony sorrel.

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is not well known in the US and not commonly grown. In fact, we take all we can get from two different growers and it's still not enough for us. The bright lemony flavor is a favorite in our kitchen. If you've ever tasted the shamrock-leaved Oxalis that we commonly call sour grass and gets its sour flavor from oxalic acid, you know the flavor of sorrel, which gets its flavor from a big dose of ascorbic acid.

Sorrel pairs extremely well with mild seafood such as this Mahi and with poultry; roasted chicken with sorrel sauce is a classic.

Here are the lanceolate or arrowhead-shaped leaves of raw common sorrel.

 

 

 

 

When you blanch sorrel even for just a second, it goes olive drab; it's unavoidable. After blanching, blot the leaves well to remove any water.

 

 

Chop the leaves finely and flatten between two sheets of film. Peel the top layer of film off.

 

 

 

Place the raw fish bottom side up on the sorrel and using the bottom layer of film, wrap the sorrel around the fish.

 

 

 

Here's the bottom side of the fish after having been wrapped.

 

 

And the top side.

And the finished lunch special with rice wine vinegar-poached dried pears, microgreens, and a plum-sesame sauce. We seared the fish bottom side down in a hot skillet and then finished cooking it in a hot oven.

WTF!

An event at lunch today reminded me that I have a whole treasury of WTF stories to tell. Here's what happened today, followed by three more.

Worth the Detour? Customers called ahead this morning to reserve a table for lunch, telling us that several people had recommended that they have lunch with us. When they arrived, they made a point of telling us that they were from out of town and that many places recommended us for our creative cuisine, and that they had come all the way across town from the Visitors Center to dine with us. After all this, the three customers ordered three soups and two side salads, but tried none of the creative cuisine. WTF!

Our Famous Buffalo Burgers. One Saturday at lunchtime, I was in the front of the house when in walked a couple that I had never seen before. The man queried, “We read about you someplace. Do you still have those buffalo burgers?” I thought he was joking because at that time we had never had buffalo burger or any other kind of burger on the menu. I thought he might be confused with buffalo at dinner, knowing that NY strip of bison had recently come off the dinner menu (we rotate through various meats on the dinner menu somewhat at random). I replied, “No sir, I’m afraid we have no bison today.” He turned to his wife and said, “I guess we drove two hours for nothing!” and they spun on their heels and walked out the front door. WTF!

Nothing to Eat on the Menu. Customers drove 20 minutes from a local inn where they had viewed our sample menus and on arrival, the husband told me how much they were looking forward to dining with us and chatting with me after their dinner, how much our menus stood out amongst all the others, etc., etc., fairly gushing. Five minutes later, they got up and left, claiming that they couldn’t find anything to eat on the menu. Generally this is a price objection, but this couple was staying at the most exclusive and most expensive inn in the area. WTF!

One Party, Two Tables. On a busy Friday night, we had a reservation for 8 people for which we set an 8-top. When the group of eight women showed up, one of them approached the host and asked if they could be seated at a table for six and a table for two. That raised some eyebrows. We couldn’t move the six people to a table for six, so we seated the six at the 8-top and put the other two at an open two-top on the far side of the dining room. Once seated, the same woman who requested the separate tables came back to the host and asked if we would include the two-top on her bill for the six-top. They proceeded to have two entirely separate dinners, with no communication between the two tables, the woman at the six-top paid, and then all eight of them got up and left together. WTF!

Aren't we humans silly at times?

Porcini with Thyme

Yesterday, I did an outdoor demonstration at Sunflower Cottage as part of the Virginia Herb Festival. During the 90-minute demo, I cooked Scallops with a Tarragon and Shallot Compound Butter, Herb-Crusted Wild Boar Chops, Local Lamb with Chimichurri, Shrimp with Mojo (an oregano-inflected citrus marinade), and Porcini Mushrooms with Thyme.

Here's an easy way to fix porcini or almost any mushrooms.

Porcini with Thyme

2 tablespoons clarified butter
1 large shallot, minced
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
1/2 pound porcini mushrooms, sliced
salt and pepper

Heat the clarified butter in a large sauté pan and add the shallots and thyme. Cook for a minute or so, then add the mushrooms. Cook and toss for another minute or two until the mushrooms are tender. Season to taste and serve immediately. Serves two as an appetizer.

Variations: add a splash of cream; add pancetta and a splash of veal demiglace; serve over pasta as an entrée.