Santiago, Chile

We concluded our South America cruise in Valparaiso, Chile. We booked a wine tour through Liz Caskey Wine Tours, which would take us from the Chilean coast to Santiago in one day. We decided on the tour that would introduce us to Chilean coastal white wines, with which we had no experience (we had drunk plenty of carmenere, merlot and other Chilean reds, but didn't know anything about white wines of the region). Our favorite winery of the trip was Casa Marin, which had an amazing Sauvignon Gris and Sauvignon Blanc (Laurel Vineyard). Sauvignon Gris is a mutation of Sauvignon Blanc, but it has a relatively low-yield of fruit, so it's not a particularly popular varietal. In coastal Chile, it appears to be thriving. The 2009 vintage has a smoky, citrusy flavor, which paired amazingly well with my roast chicken with tomatoes and olives - I think it was the fennel and other provencal flavors that matched so beautifully with the notes of the wine. I sent an email to Felipe Marin and Jamie Verbraak letting them know how terrific the wine tasted with dinner. I hope they link to this blog, and I'm linking here to theirs. They only have a couple of US distributors (both in NYC), so if you're lucky enough to see one of their wines in a shop, buy one (or a few) and support this terrific family winery.

We ate lunch on the Chilean coast at a quaint little family-run seafood shack, where I had machas a la parmigiana, and my husband had scallops pil pil. The food was delicious (if a little heavy), and the scenery couldn't be beat - perched atop a craggy cliff overlooking a small patch of beachy sand and the gorgeous blue of the Pacific.

Later that night, we had dinner in Santiago at Akarana, a restaurant near our hotel. We ate barbecued calamari with sour mangoes and a crunchy vegetable slaw of carrots and scallions, flatbread pizza made with chorizo, sweet peppers and camembert, and, the next day for lunch, lamb chops with mint-flavored goat cheese and portobello mushrooms (buttery, tender and absolutely amazing) at Happening.

Santiago felt to us like any American city - bustling, commerce-centric, and well-developed, with wide roads in a grid pattern, crosswalks, and typical businesses and cafes lining the business district. This was opposed to Buenos Aires, which felt to us much more European than American.

Next stop: Easter Island.

Burgers without a grill

As you can see from the picture, the coleslaw from the lobster rolls did double duty this weekend!

Our second "summer in New England" dinner was grilled burgers with all the fixings, cole slaw (leftover) and a warm quinoa salad with grilled vegetables from the June 2009 Gourmet.

For the burger, I bought fatty hamburger meat (80-85% lean), and mixed it with minced garlic and onion, worcestershire sauce, salt and black pepper and formed it into 2 patties. I grilled the patties on a cast iron grill pan, and toasted the buns (English muffins) on the same grill. The burgers turned out big and juicy, and I served them on the shmuffins with blue cheese.

For some reason, the quinoa recipe is not posted online. I have never cooked quinoa before, despite the fact that I've had it in my pantry. The recipe I used called for steaming the quinoa (quite different from the box instructions, which just said to boil the quinoa like rice), but I didn't have a colander with small enough holes to use as a steamer, so I just boiled it according to the box. I tossed the warm quinoa with a sautee of garlic, onion, jalapenos and cumin with olive oil, sliced kalamata olives, roasted asparagus and eggplant (no outside grill), and cubes of queso blanco (you can substitute any mild, creamy cheese, such as fresh mozzarella). Finished with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, and hot smoked paprika, if you have it. It was delicious and even my husband thought it was great for "health food". I do think it would have been fluffier if I had steamed it, as it did seem a little water-logged and heavy, but the flavor was great.

We drank a very smoky, mineral-y $12 Cotes de Blaye from Chateau Valentin (a Bordeaux from the extremely hot and dry 2005 vintage), which went perfectly with the blue cheese burgers, and even with the quinoa, I think because of the smoky eggplant and paprika flavors.

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody, Jaws

To make these amazing lobster rolls, I used a recipe for lobster salad from an old Gourmet magazine. I don't normally like the flavor of black licorice (like in anise, fennel or tarragon), but I have found that fennel (both bulbs and seeds) and tarragon work really well with seafood without lending too "licorice-y" a flavor for me.

To make it easier on us (since we don't have outdoor space or a good enough hood on our stove to keep our apartment from stinking like cooked lobsters), I purchased steamed lobsters from James Hook in downtown Boston. You can call ahead and ask for your preferred size lobster, to buy uncooked or pre-steamed. They'll even chill them for you after steaming, so you can take them home and put them right into your fridge until you're ready to use them. My husband and I put down brown paper bags across our dining table and then went to work. They were really hard-shelled lobsters, but after a good half an hour or so, we had the meat ready for the salad (and I got to eat the meat out of all of the legs afterwards!).

We buttered squishy hoagie rolls and toasted them so that they'd hold up to the salad. I followed the recipe for the salad exactly as written (but halved), steamed some corn on the cob (unfortunately from Florida this time of year, but hey) and sprinkled it with Old Bay, and made some creamy coleslaw. I halved the coleslaw recipe, and salted the shredded cabbage in a colander for about half an hour first to get the liquid out so we wouldn't end up with watery coleslaw. Otherwise, I made the recipe as written (substituted creme fraiche for sour cream because that's what we had in the fridge), but we didn't end up liking the flavor. It was too mayo-heavy, probably because the creme fraiche didn't have nearly as much tang as sour cream, so my husband suggested some dijon mustard to kick up the flavor (and the vinegar) a bit. I put in about 2 heaping tablespoons of dijon, and that did the trick, but it still wasn't great. Next time I'll try a non-mayo coleslaw, but this menu called for a less assertive coleslaw (it wasn't barbecue, after all).

We enjoyed our lobster dinner while watching Jaws and drinking an inexpensive 2009 Rhone rose to kick off summer in New England.

Special Weekly Menu - Memorial Day

This week starts with Memorial Day weekend. My good friends are all up in Maine hanging out, grilling, lobster-eating and enjoying a relaxing and beautiful New England weekend. I couldn't join them because of an enormous backlog at work, but I wanted to capture the feeling of the first summer weekend with our menu:

Saturday: Lobster rolls with coleslaw and corn on the cob

Sunday: Grilled vegetable quinoa salad, indoor grilled burgers with blue cheese

Monday: Shrimp remoulade with okra dirty rice

Tuesday: Grilled zucchini pasta with walnut pecorino crumble

Wednesday: Mussels with fennel and crusty bread

Thursday: Work event (dinner provided)

Normally, I try to identify recipes where I can use a lot of the same ingredients, or double up a recipe for leftovers. This week, however, we're not expecting a whole lot of leftovers, or using one ingredient for several things. I'm home for the long weekend, so I know I can cook whole meals for 3 nights. I like to try new things when I have extra days to experiment.

Anyway, when I write my grocery list, I don't group ingredients by recipe; instead, I group ingredients by where they are in the store. So, at my local grocery store, I start in the veggie/fruit section, move past the seafood and meats, then pantry and dairy. As we move through the aisles, it's easier to be sure that we got everything on the list.

Vegetables:

red onion

jalapenos

asparagus

tomato

asian eggplant

cilantro

zucchini

tarragon

lemon

parsley

scallions

carrots

green cabbage

red and green bell pepper

okra

Pantry:

frozen shrimp

burger buns (or English muffins)

hot dog buns

PB&J

fettuccine

mayo

eggs

milk

kalamatas

queso blanco

blue cheeses

pecorino

pickles

sriracha sauce

Butcher: hamburger meat, pate

Oh, and I forgot to note in my kitchen staples post that we also always have onions, garlic and shallots around, as well as lemons and limes in the fridge. We buy those pretty often too, but it's a strange week if we don't have them all in the house somewhere.

Kitchen Staples

On a recent outing with friends, I was asked to provide (i) tips on my blog for creating and sticking to weekly menus and (ii) ways to use leftovers. I was told people would be interested just in seeing my weekly menu items. I'm not so sure that's very interesting, but far be it from me to refuse a direct request (since no one reads this blog as it is).

First off: strategy. My husband and I generally grocery shop on Friday evening after work or Saturday afternoon if we have plans on Friday night. We shop once for the entire week, and in summer months, we can add vegetables during the week from local farmers markets (I will be posting shortly about local community supported agriculture shares and farmers markets). We also make a lot of use of our freezer and pantry, which house a ton of staples. Each week, we think of ways to use fresh seasonal ingredients to punch up our staples, but we eat a lot of the same things from week to week.

What's in our freezer today? Whole Foods mini baguettes and dinner rolls; Trader Joe's Thai shrimp dumplings, chicken gyoza and pork gyoza (these are amazing - you have to try them); Trader Joe's Brittany Blend; green beans; bacon slices; chorizo; chicken sausage; Whole Foods shell-on raw shrimp; Whole Foods sea scallops; salmon fillets; petite peas; sweet corn; chicken breasts; various leftover homemade frozen soups; pearl onions; whole leaf spinach; brown rice; calamari; store-bought ravioli; hot dogs; my husband's homemade pasta sauce (minus the meatballs, which we already ate); pine nuts; walnuts; peanuts; summer tomatoes (frozen last fall when they were gorgeous and cheap); blueberries; various whole spices. Note I have no chicken or beef stock right now, because I haven't had time to make them, and we're doing fewer roasts now that it's gotten warm out. We usually have ice cream too, but we overlooked it this week. Also frozen fruit bars in the summer.

What are our pantry staples? Polenta, various pasta shapes, red and green lentils, split peas, quinoa, bulgur, brown rice, arborio, couscous, rice noodles, soba noodles, barley, fire roasted no salt added canned tomatoes, coconut milk, anchovies, Cento tuna in olive oil, chipotle chiles in adobo, sliced jalapenos, jarred salsa, truffle oils, various vinegars, olive oil (regular and flavored with lemon) and honey. Every week we also have an assortment of kettle chips and popcorn for snacking. I am not going to go into our spice collection yet.

Finally, what's usually in our fridge? Parmesan, Pecorino Romano, eggs, milk, butter, sour cream or creme fraiche, pb & j, bread, olives (various), anchovy paste, jarred red peppers, tabasco sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, mirin, red bean paste, sriracha and chile garlic sauce, capers, horseradish, various mustards, red and green Thai curry pastes, hoisin, tamarind sauce, maple syrup, store-bought chicken stock and ketchup. Oh, and right now, tons of white and rose wines!

From these staples (which we obviously don't buy every week and which last for weeks on end), we build our grocery list each week, depending on what's fresh, seasonal and (if we can swing it) local. Next up: our Memorial Day week menu.

Rounding Cape Horn and Puerto Montt Excursion

After Montevideo, we missed the Falklands due to severe weather, had a wonderfully calm trip around Cape Horn, hiked in Tierra del Fuego and in Patagonian Chile and finished out the cruise with a stop in Puerto Montt in the Chilean lake district. My girlfriend and I took a culinary tour with a local chef, while our husbands went kayaking. We went shopping with our chef/guide at the local fish market and vegetable market, where we were able to see all sorts of wondrous sea creatures (many of which I had never even imagined, much less imagined eating!). Chile is lucky to have miles and miles of coastline, and takes full advantage of the different kinds of life teeming in the Pacific Ocean.

We were introduced to "sea squirts", which looked like barnacles from the outside but were bright red inside and full of iodine and brine, too strong to enjoy on their own, but mashed into a ceviche, they lent a seawater flavor that added a lot of depth. The gentleman at the top of the post was breaking open the "shells" of the sea squirts to get the meat out. The picture just above is of smoked sea squirts (the red things), mussels and barnacles - Chileans apparently like to smoke some of their seafood and then use the smoked items in their cooking. We also learned about "green" eggs laid by the Araucana hen, which are indigenous to South America, and got to smell and purchase a wonderful spicy chili blend, known as merken, and derived from the Mapuche indians.

The picture below on the left is of the finished ceviche. Sea kelp, octopus, whitefish, bell peppers, onion and cilantro rounded out the flavors. We also enjoyed a soup of plump mussels, which were cooked in a toasted merken spice blend and finished with milk and cream (see picture on bottom right). We saw several mussels at the fish market that were bigger than an adult shoe (appropriately referred to as "zapatos" mussels), but were told they had quite tough meat. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot to say on how the chef made the delicious dishes we sampled, since we were generally plied with pisco sours and not allowed to assist in the kitchen. But we did watch the ceviche being made, and tasted each of the ingredients that went into it (including the chopped up sea squirts, which are (to say the very least) an acquired taste).

Montevideo, Uruguay

After spending one night in Buenos Aires, we boarded our cruise boat, and set sail for Montevideo, Uruguay. After dinner on the ship, we went on deck with our friends and a glow-in-the-dark star map and tried to find familiar constellations. We found Orion's belt, but it took us a minute to realize that Orion was upside down in the southern hemisphere. We didn't sample any local cuisine in Montevideo-just spent a couple of hours on the beach and headed back to the boat. It was a gorgeous day - 75 degrees and sunny. The beach was relaxed, full of locals who had spent the last night partying and were working through their hangovers while snoozing on the beach. I even took a swim in the water, which was very warm, but full of silt, which got everywhere and stained everything.

An interesting thing about Uruguay is its beef production. According to a NYT article, it appears that Uruguayan farmers are claiming the "grass-fed" cattle market, as Argentina moves toward a feedlot cattle-raising culture to respond to increased worldwide (and domestic) demand.

Grass-fed beef in Argentina

Our first and only night in Buenos Aires, we had dinner at the Duhau Restaurant and Vinoteca. Our reservations included a wine and cheese tasting at the Vinoteca, and we assumed it would be a cheese or two with a glass or two of wine. Boy were we wrong. 6 cuts of cheese and two bottles of wine later, we were stuffed with local cheeses and tipsy with excellent wine. Halfway through our tasting, the head of wine buying for the hotel deceided to stop by to see how we were doing. That led to a one-hour wine tasting class and lesson on Argentine wines. We had an amazing torrontes, which is a grape native to Argentina, and two malbecs of terrific quality for the price. That led into dinner which was a rib eye for me (have I mentioned I love ribeye steaks?). The beef was delicious, but I wouldn't say it was the best I've ever had- just really good steak. The differnce was the price - only about $15 for a pretty good-sized steak grilled to a perfect medium rare.

The next day, we went shopping for leather goods, and found some great handbags. But the highlight of the trip was the empanadas store - El Sanjuanino in Recoleta. We got carnes picante empanadas, as well as a cheese and onion one - both were delicious, but the meat one was better. The crust was impossibly light and flaky - like pastry - and the filling was a perfect ratio to the crust. Delicious!! We definitely preferred Argentine empanadas to Chilean empanadas, but that's another story yet to come...

What A Braiser Looks Like

I realized that I keep referencing my braiser, so here's a picture of it in case you don't know what one is or don't already have one. Mine's from Le Creuset, but I would imagine any wide, shallow, heavy, oven-safe pot with a tight-fitting lid would work for most of the recipes where I mention it. That being said, I love my braiser - it cooks very evenly and releases food easily. The lid stays put, even when food is at a full boil. And it's a breeze to take from stove to oven and back again, and then to the dinner table.

Now, getting it in and out of our ridiculously small apartment-sized kitchen cupboard is another story, as it is heavy as sh*t (it is iron, after all) and unforgiving on your fingers when you accidentally drop it.

Roast Chicken Three Ways

During the winter months, my husband and I go through a lot of chickens. Sunday is roast chicken night, and since we don't want to get bored eating roast chicken, we have a few recipes we work from. I've already mentioned my standby roast chicken, based on Ina Garten's recipe, but I also like to do a roast chicken provencal, loosely based on Gourmet's braised chicken recipe, and a spiced chicken from Claudia Roden's Arabesque cookbook. In any case, I roast the chicken at 400 degrees for about 1.25-2 hours, depending on the size of the bird.

I usually get my chicken from Savenor's, after years of being disappointed with supermarket chickens and Whole Foods. The chickens would not last in my fridge even for a day or two, and would often have an off-smell from the packaging. I have tried three kinds of chickens carried at Savenor's: grade A, Giannone air-chilled, and Misty Knoll Farms. I have found that the Misty Knoll chickens are head and shoulders above the others for taste, juiciness, freshness and size. They are definitely more expensive, but since changing over, I have found that one chicken can feed my husband and me for at least 2 dinners, sometimes even 3. For that, it's well worth the extra cost to me.

My standby roast chicken: 3-4 vegetables (choose from quartered onions, yellow potatoes, carrots, parsnips, fennel, beets and sliced acorn squash) in the bottom of the roasting pan with olive oil, salt and pepper. Lay on top of the veggies a roasting chicken, with salt and pepper both inside and out, and the cavity stuffed with a head of garlic (sliced through crosswise), a couple of lemon quarters, a celery stick and a handful of parsley. Serve with roasted brussels sprouts or a crisp salad.

My provencal roast chicken: quartered tomatoes, fennel bulb, onions and black brined olives in the bottom of the roasting pan with olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh thyme sprigs and herbs de provence. Lay on top of the veggies a roasting chicken, seasoned as above, with herbs de provence, garlic, lemon, fennel stalks and celery in the cavity. Serve with Alice

Waters's fingerling potato coins for a rich and homey, stick-to-your ribs dinner, or with couscous for a lighter spring dinner.

Finally, my spiced chicken: lots of quartered onions (or whole peeled shallots) on the bottom of the roasting pan with olive oil, salt and pepper. Lay on top a roasting chicken, seasoned with a pasty mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, salt and pepper and honey. Serve with couscous or rice pilaf and some lemony, garlicky sauteed greens.

"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up." - Ernest Hemingway

So, it's been about 4 months since my last blog post. I feel like I'm starting an AA meeting...

In February, my husband and I went to South America with friends. It was a terrific trip, and I'll be posting some pictures in the next few posts.

We took off from Logan airport with nothing to report (thank god) although I did succumb to my inner demons and had an Egg McMuffin for breakfast. Growing up, when my family would road trip for vacations, our parents would let us get McDonald's. My favorite was breakfast, and my absolute favorite was the Egg McMuffin with hash browns and an orange juice. So it felt good to have that again, although this time without the hash browns. Nowadays, I make egg sandwiches at home - with Canadian bacon, farm eggs and real cheese. They are delicious, and especially pretty if you use egg rings to shape the eggs into the perfect sandwich patties.

Anyway, we landed in Miami without incident, and were starving for a decent lunch. Unfortunately, everthing in the airport was fast food or worse: Villa Pzza, Nathan's Hot Dogs, Pizza Hut, blech. We just knew if we ate that we'd be in trouble somewhere over the Caribbean. Then our friend suggested Sushi Maki, which the rest of us had discounted, thinking it was food court sushi in an airport. Instead, it was a glorious little oasis in the middle of an otherwise horrible airport. Table service and reliable sushi in an airport setting. We ordered chicken fried rice, "blazing noodles" with veggies, miso soup, gyoza and some cooked sushi (we're not crazy-we were in an airport!), which included the dynamite roll (shrimp, scallops and crab stick), the dragon roll (eel, shrimp and avocado) and the volcano roll (an otherwise innocuous shrimp and crab roll that was quite unfortunately drowned in spicy mayo sauce, which was meant to resemble lava). The food was terrific for airport food, the service was a little flighty, and the sushi was better than most of the other items on the menu. And we were grateful to have found such a welcome, calm atmosphere at the Miami airport.