Five-spice salmon and leeks in parchment

As a child I loathed fish. As a teenager I still loathed it. It took me a 5000 mile move to Florida to get me to like the stuff. Fish in Florida was different. It was delicate and it came with all kinds of fruity sauces.  It tasted of Caribbean vacations and summer nights and drinks at sunset. In other words, it didn't taste like fish at all.

There was one exception though. Salmon. Salmon was the first fish to make it into my plate... or, actually, I should say into my mouth, because there was no actual plate involved. It involved a screaming child, an unprepared set of parents and a smoked salmon sandwich. To this day, every time I see or eat smoked salmon I can't help but thinking about these modern parents I see going everywhere —China, the post office, on a walk— with a bag full of food for their kids. My parents never carried food for me. There was absolutely no eating allowed in the car and, in general, eating in between meals was frowned upon. It will ruin your appetite.

But there was one time where this strategy backfired. Big time. It all happened when I was a toddler a few months short of 2. En route from Milan to the United States my parents and I had a layover in London. And I got hungry. So hungry that I started screaming on top of my lungs. I wanted food. And I wanted it right away. The only option seemed to be a little cart where an old man served smoked salmon over thick, salted butter and brown bread. Not exactly baby food. But, hey, desperate people do desperate things. My dad bought a sandwich and they shoved it in my mouth. I instantly stopped crying. And I ate the whole thing. From that day on, salmon and I were friends. And for about twenty years after that day, salmon was my only friend of the seafood variety.

Later on, I learned to enjoy fresh salmon as well as the smoked kind. I have to thank Tommy for this, because he's the one who made it for me for the first time, baked with a Mexcian style salsa on top. And that was beginning of many other fresh salmon recipes, including this one that my great friend Carolina and I made at her place last week. One last note: if you have never tried wild caught salmon, do so immediately. I cannot stand the farm raised variety and once you'll try the wild kind, you'll never go back either.

FIVE-SPICE SALMON AND LEEKS IN PARCHMENT

(adapted from Cooking Light)
Serves 4

2  teaspoons  whole fennel seeds
8  whole black peppercorns
2  whole cloves
1  whole star anise
1  (1 1/2-inch) cinnamon stick
4  (6-ounce) skinless salmon fillets
1/2  teaspoon  salt
1  leek, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced (about 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 425°.
Combine first 5 ingredients in a small skillet over medium heat; cook for 1 minute or until fragrant. Transfer toasted spices to a spice grinder or coffee grinder; grind until fine.
Cut 4 (12-inch) squares of parchment paper. Place 1 fillet in center of each square. Sprinkle evenly with salt and spice mixture; top fillets evenly with leeks. Fold paper; seal edges with narrow folds. Place packets on a baking sheet. Bake at 425° for 20 minutes or until puffy and lightly browned. Place on plates; cut open. Serve immediately.

Fish Provencal

                                       

I have not fallen off the edge of the Earth like some of you have kindly asked through e-mail and Facebook. I've not been crazy busy either, unless you count stalking a certain semi-famous Italian hip hop artist "being busy". Most people would call it acting like a teenager, I guess, and I don't blame them. That's exactly what I was doing. Because sometimes it's easier and it's definitely more fun than acting all grown up. It also makes you forgot about the rut you are in, if you know what I mean. I had such great expectations for 2011 and so far it hasn't really been that great of a year. Especially when it comes to finances. Being unemployed is killing me and, unfortunately, it greatly reflect on my cooking. I don't mean to sound like a big crybaby, but as I'm typing I'm drinking instant coffee and for lunch I'm going to have a homemade cream of cannellini bean (without the shrimp the recipe calls for), because that's all I can afford right now. 

This fish Provençal is the last "luxurious" recipe I've made a few days ago, before I had to start eating out of my pantry and paring up the most incredible foods (hello canned red kidney beans and ricotta!). It's a very easy, very gratifying dinner to make, although next time I will definitely pan sear the fish before putting it together with the sauce so it gets all nice and browned. Other than that, Cooking LIght has once more nailed a great recipe.

FISH PROVENCAL

From Cooking Light

• 1  tablespoon  olive oil
• 2  garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 1/2  cups  slivered onion
• 1/2  teaspoon  salt, divided
• 2  cups  chopped peeled plum tomato (about 4 tomatoes)
• 1 3/4  cups  thinly sliced fennel bulb (about 1 small bulb)
• 1  cup  dry white wine
• 1/3  cup  chopped fresh basil
• 1/4  cup  chopped pitted kalamata olives
• 1  tablespoon  tomato paste
• 1/8  teaspoon  crushed red pepper
• 2  teaspoons  capers
• 1  bay leaf
• 1/2  cup  water
• 1/8  teaspoon  black pepper
• 6  (6-ounce) halibut or cod fillets

Preheat oven to 450F.

Heat oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat, and add garlic. Cook 30 seconds, stirring constantly; add onion and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomato and next 8 ingredients (tomato through bay leaf); cook for 10 minutes. Stir in water. 

Sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon salt and black pepper over fish; place fish on top of onion mixture. Wrap handle of skillet with foil; cover and bake at 450° for 10 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork. Discard bay leaf.  

An interlude: the fried herring experience

This is a story about how something truly incredible happened while I was in Stockholm: I said out loud "Wow, herring is good!!!". And I meant it. It wasn't one of those "Wow, I really love this sweater Aunt Mary," sort of things. I meant it. From the bottom of my stomach. It all begun on Saturday morning, as my friend the architect and I were strolling through the streets of Stockholm. Going to Stockholm and not eating herring, he said, was just plain crazy. Like going to Philadelphia and not eating a cheesesteak crazy? Yes. Like going Milano and not ordering risotto? Yes. You get the idea. He shamed me into thinking that had I not tried the damn herring my Stockholm experience would have been sort of flawed and meaningless. I cringed inside, but looked up what the best place for herring is in Stockholm. We were in luck. It's a small street side cart called Nystekt Strömming, which literally means 'freshly fried herring', an unassuming tin box located right after the bridge that connects Gamla Stan (the Old Town) to Sodermalm (the 'hip' part of town) right outside the Slossen metro station. I cringed even more because that was exactly where we were headed anyway, so my chances of escaping the dreaded herring were slim to none. "Weren't you a food writer? Aren't you supposed to like everything?" Sure I was a food writer for years. As for the liking everything part, there are very few things I don't like, herring being one of them, and since I worked in Florida I could always safely assume that herring would not show up on my plate unexpected. 

The thing is I don't hate herring just because. I wasn't being a 

child about it. I had tried herring before. Twice. And hated it both times. The first time was in 1991, while traveling with sled dogs a hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Finland. Everything was magical about that vacation. Everything except breakfast which was, you guessed, smoked herring. I was ten and I was horrified. 

The second time a few years later, around 2000 I would say, when my palate had greatly improved and so had my open mind-ness. That time I picked the wrong the place, so it was entirely my fault. I was in the outskirts of Milano, looking like a madwoman for a new desk lamp at Ikea. You can imagine the rest. They had one of those tasting stations where some lady from Southern Italy, dressed in a ridiculous Viking costume and sporting and even more ridiculous fake Swedish accent, was giving away bites of brown bread topped with fried herring , onion and dilled mustard. I was famished —I was 19, I was always famished— so I grabbed a bite, chewed on it and here I have to give credit to my mother who taught me some manners, I swallowed it. It was bad. It was gross. Everything about it was wrong. The bread was hard on the edges and soggy in the middle. The herring was chewy and fishy. Even the dilled mustard, which is one of my favorite dressings in the world, was... bland. How do you make bland mustard, I ask you? Maybe it was diluted. Maybe it was old. Still, it let all the fishy flavor of the herring shine through. At that moment, while holding my $9 lamp in one hand and with a disgusted look on my face, I swore herring off my list of things to try again forever. Or so I thought.

Saturday afternoon in 18 degree weather and a fast approaching sunset, I found myself at Nystekt, facing my archenemy, the herring. The place had no menu, just a list of six or seven different fried herring sandwiches, all written in Swedish, so we observed what locals were doing for a couple of minutes and, other than a guy ordering a giant herring burger, everyone else seemed to go for something called skaning, an open-face sandwich that didn't look too intimidating. At this point, I must confess, I still wasn't sure I was going to try it. But once I saw the sandwich and once I realized the sun had gone behind the building and I was freezing, i decided it was time to give herring another try. And I am so glad I did. That sandwich, that herring, were heavenly. The rye bread was toasted just right, not too hard nor to soggy, he herring itself was crisp fried and, well, not fishy at all. It tasted like freshly caught, well seasoned, flesh fried fish. The red onions, spicy mustard and abundant fresh dill on top gave the sandwich that extra kick, bringing it from being a good sandwich to an amazing one. So I have to thank Stockholm, and my friend the architect of course, for making me get over my irrational hatred for herring. Now, will I eat it at Ikea next time I'm looking for a couch? No freaking way. But next time I'm traveling through Scandinavia I'll definitely look for another herring sandwich.      

Shrimp carpaccio

So the new year is here. I had such high expectations for the beginning of 2011 and, not so oddly, I was bitterly disappointed. I mean, what the hell is wrong with me? Don't I preach every year that I don't care about New Year's Eve ans so on? So why do I end up caring when nothing goes the way it was supposed to? I guess I'm delusional. Or to be a little less tragic, let's call me a dreamer and be done with it.

Anyways, the point is that yesterday was the first day of 2011 that didn't majorly suck —which put me in a great mood I have to say. For the first time in a week I felt healthy enough to leave the house, which did me a world of good since I had spent day after day on the couch with a blanket and a frown on my face. But last night I was and about in Lugano, drinking drinks I don't usually, eating pizza and catching up with old friends. It was a better medicine than any traditional one and totally worth the slight headache I woke up with this morning. 

I have to say that now I have a brighter outlook on the new year, which also translates in the renewed resolution of eating healthy meals and living an altogether healthier life. So here's my first recipe for the new year: butterfly some good size shrimp, season with salt, pepper, and a mixture of evoo and lemon juice. Sprinkle with chives and serve cold as an appetizer. 

Salmon with mustard and dill

 

I don't know what's wrong with me and Sundays. Unlike most people, I've never liked them. Even as child, I used to think Sundays had a certain halo of sadness hovering over them, a halo that said 'the weekend is over'. One that also said 'you should do something and have fun today, before the new week starts'. But somehow I never found anything fun or exciting to do on Sundays and dreaded the Sunday boredom much more than the 'back to the grind' routine of any given Monday.

What can I say? I've always been a weird child like that, a child that hated Sundays and preferred books to tv. Especially on Sundays. TV on Sundays, in Italy, is worse than the plague. It must be avoided at all costs. 

As a teen and a 20-something I kept quiet about my not liking Sundays, but kept not liking them all the same. I didn't like them for different reasons than those of my childhood. Or, maybe, I should say that some new reasons piled up, high on top of the already existing ones. The reasons were plentiful. Sundays come after Saturday nights and Saturday nights always bore expectations of the great things that could have happened, but never delivered. At least not to me. I usually spent Sundays thinking about the boy I happened to like at the time kissing some other girl at the party or bar or whatever I had been at the night before. 

Now that I'm —do I dare say it?— almost 30, I still spend my Sundays in a similar fashion. I sit around and waste a perfectly good day thinking of what happened or not happened on Saturday night, or what happened or not happened in my 20s.

What does all of this have to do with salmon and dill, you might be wondering by now? Absolutely nothing. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that the two things are somehow related, because they are not. And don't let my sour mood deter you from trying this recipe, because it's absolutely amazing and yet very simple to assemble. I found it on my friend Emily's blog, which you should check out if you haven't yet. The only thing I changed from the original recipe is that I used plain white yogurt instead of sour cream because sour cream is not readily available here in Italy, but that's a substitution I've made several times successfully, so feel free to use either one. 

SALMON WITH MUSTARD AND DILL SAUCE

(Adapted from Emily's recipe)

1 cup plain yogurt

1/3 cup chopped fresh dill

3 tablespoons finely chopped onion

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 1/2 pound center-cut salmon filet with skin

2 teaspoons minced garlic

Whisk yogurt, dill, onion, garlic and mustard in small bowl to blend. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

Lightly oil baking sheet. Place salmon, skin side down, on prepared sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and spread with 1/3 cup of the dill and mustard sauce.

Bake salmon until just opaque in the center, about 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Serve with remaining sauce.

Avocado "boats" with tuna salad

 

Ahhhh... here I am. Back home and already bored. I have to say that it's kind of hard to spend a few days in a city as awesome as Barcelona and come back to a tiny village by a Swiss lake. I mean, it's great to be here and all, but it's no Barcelona.

While I was there I made sure I sampled as much food as humanly possible, which is very easy over there for two reasons. The first one is that it's cheap. The second is that with tapas you get to try lots of different things without over-stuffing yourself. Ok, who am I trying to kid? I did over-stuff myself anyways. But it was worth it. Croquettes, clams, snails, potatoes and, needless to say, tons and tons of jamon serrano and jamon iberico, the Spanish equivalents of prosciutto. I had it everyday, multiple times a day, usually starting at breakfast. Yes, it's that good.

Other than eating —and drinking— my heart out I did all the usual sightseeing, enjoying the many amazing churches and buildings the city has to offer. It was an intense four days and the fact that I was there alone made each day even more intense, making me feel as if I had moved there or something. Which is something that one day I'd like to do. As I was driving the 660 miles that separate Barcelona from Switzerland yesterday, I was musing about living in Barcelona for a couple of months to learn Spanish. I mean, since I'm here, I might as well do something that makes me a better a person, and knowing more foreign languages in my opinion always makes you a better person. So that's the idea I'm toying with.

And, as most ideas do, it came to me as I was sitting idly at a bar —waht a surprise, right?— that served tapas. Someone in the table next to me asked to the waiter "What does aguacate mean?" It turns out it means avocado. I was baffled, because for all my life I always assumed that 'avocado' was a Spanish word. Turns out, it isn't. Turns out I need to go studying Spanish. In Barcelona.

AVOCADO "BOATS" WITH TUNA SALAD

Serves 4

2 ripe Haas avocados, halved and pitted

1 can of tuna in olive oil, drained

1/2 red onion, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

1 lemon

! tablespoon olive oil

Salt and crushed red pepper, to taste

In a bowl mix the tuna with the chopped onion and tomato until it flakes. Season it with salt, crushed red pepper to taste. Divide mixture in four equal parts and place it in each avocado half. 

Mix olive oil and the juice of half lemon and drizzle the boats.

Note: if you are not going to serve this dish right away, either wait until the last minute to cut the avocados open or drizzle them with lime or lemon juice to keep them from browning.

Spaghetti with clams, cherry tomatoes and saffron

When I was almost two years old, my parents and I went on a summer vacation to Isola del Giglio, a small island off the coast of Tuscany, close to bigger, more famous Isola d'Elba. It was a quiet family vacation that involved lots of hanging out at the local beach and eating simple local dishes which were, as they are on most islands, mostly seafood based. My mom especially enjoyed spaghetti with clams —the garlic and white wine, no tomato version. The version any spaghetti with clams purist loves. And although I wasn't even two years old, I loved clams so much I snatched them from my mom's plate with my chubby little fingers, leaving her with a dish of spaghetti in olive oil and parsley.

To this day, spaghetti with clams is one of my favorite pasta dishes and I love both the white and the red versions —there's something about the briny saltiness of the clams that makes me want to eat more and more of it. So the other day, when I found both clams and cherry tomatoes on sale at the grocery store I couldn't resist and decided to whip up some spaghetti with clams. The addition of saffron is something I thought of at the last minute, an idea that hit me because I had once eaten a guazzetto of clams and mussels in a tomato saffron broth and thought it was amazing. I have to say that it added a certain something to my dish, even though I'm sure my spaghetti with clams purist mom wouldn't agree.
 
SPAGHETTI WITH CLAMS, CHERRY TOMATOES AND SAFFRON
Serves 4

3/4 pound spaghetti
2 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered
Extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
1 glass dry white wine
1 teaspoon saffron
2 pounds littleneck clams
Crushed red pepper

Heat up some olive oil in a large skillet. Add garlic and red hot pepper and make it fizzle, without burning it. Add well-washed clams, drizzle with a glass of white wine, cover and wait until they open. When they are opened, remove most clams from their shells, leaving only a few for decoration. Discard any clams that haven't opened. Return clams to pan, add cherry tomatoes and saffron and keep warm over low heat.

In the mean time, cook spaghetti, and drain them slightly undercooked. Add them to clams, sautè everything for a couple of minutes and serve.

Padellata of shirmp and vegetables

You'll get a kick out of this. Or at least I'm getting a kick out of it, so I'm going to pass it on to you. I'm writing this post using a high speed connection on a high speed train traveling between Milano and Napoli. It covers 724 km. in 4:25 hours, including a 15 minute stop at the Rome train station. Is actually mind boggling to zip through the countryside at such high speeds, speeds that peak at 355 km/h in galleries. The train itself, of course, it's pretty damn sweet, with a nice restaurant and bar wagon and power outlets for each seat, even in second class where I'm sitting. Rumor has it that in first class, other than having even roomier and comfier seats, they serve you complimentary drinks, including mimosas —a tidbit of information that has made me long for first class like never before.

See, a mimosa would greatly help me right now as I'm sitting only a few feet away from the world's most annoying 9 year old boy. Seriously, he just cannot shut up and, get this, he not only talks non-stop, he whines non-stop. Which is a lot worse, if you ask me. Good thing that in 40 minutes we'll be in Napoli, and then off to the ferry that will take my best friend and I to Ischia, a gorgeous island in the Med where her family has a vacation home. I'm really looking forward to a few days of sun, relax and, of course, her grandma's cooking.

Last night, before leaving for my minivacation, I had the usual problem of getting rid of all the contents of my fridge, so I thought I'd make a nice healthy meal to prepare myself for the journey and, most of all, to my alarm going off at 5 a.m. to catch the 7 a.m. train to Napoli.

PADELLATA OF SHRIMP AND VEGETABLES

(Serves 2)

1 zucchini
1 red bell pepper
1/2 red onion
1/2 egg plant
2 cups shrimp, peeled and deveined
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Crushed red pepper
1 clove of garlic

Heat olive oil in a pan, mince garlic and saute it in the oil until fragrant but not burnt. Add vegetables, season with salt and saute until crisp tender. Season with crushed red pepper.

Add shrimp to pan, saute for a few minutes, about 5, making sure not to overcook the shrimp.

Top with torn basil if you like, and serve immediately.

Branzino tartare with zucchini blossoms, basil and tomato

One of the most exciting things I'm experiencing now that I moved back to Italy is the diversity of ingredients. Every time I go to the grocery store, there's a plethora of vegetables, proteins, grains, and so on, that in the last few years I couldn't find in Florida. Point in case: this very recipe contains not one but two ingredients that were pretty much impossible to find in Naples. Branzino, also called Mediterrenean seabass has little to do with its bigger Atlantic counterpart and is the living proof that bigger isn't always better. Au contraire, sometimes small things are packed with more flavor and tenderness than bigger ones. Baby zucchini and zucchini blossoms were available in Florida for about two weeks each year, so you can easily imagine how high their price was.

Not here. Both branzino and zucchini blossom are readily available, and with price tags that didn't make me weep. They made me smile.

But there's another exciting thing I'm experiencing right now that almost makes me more excited than food: watching the soccer World Cup... in a country that really cares for soccer. Because there are only a few things that are more Italian than soccer, or watching soccer for that matter. And especially watching the World Cup, which is one of the few times when Italians come together and cheer for the same thing —namely the Italian team. I have many funny, sad, exciting and boring stories about the past World Cups and about me watching them, and I will tell you all of them in the next 30 days. But for now, I want to leave you with a recipe that kind of brings together two of my biggest passions, two things that really don't go well together: soccer and fine cuisine. So what does a fish tartare have to do with soccer, you may ask? Well, look at it. You will notice that this dish has the colors of my flag —red, white and green. Go Italy!

SEABASS TARTARE WITH ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMS, BASIL AND TOMATO

Serves 4

3/4 pounds Mediterranean seabass, minced
6 baby zucchini with their flowers
A handful of basil
1 lime
1 shallot, thinly sliced
1 tomato, cubed
Tabasco
EVOO
Salt and pepper

Mince zucchini flowers, , wash the zucchini and cut into small cubes.

Thinly slice shallot and soak in cold water for about 10 minutes. Drain, dry and place into a blender with a little olive oil, salt to taste, juice of a half lime, a handful of fresh basil and few drops of Tabasco.

Mix the minced seabass with the cubed tomato, zucchini and their flowers. Season with salt and pepper and season with the sauce you made in the blender. Shape using a mold and enjoy immediately.

Sole with cannellini in aromatic tomato broth

 

My grandma was famous among relatives for many things —her wonderfully fluffy gnocchi, her impatience, her love for books—but one of the things I remember the most about her is the fact that, in the kitchen, she would always go through "phases". For a few months, sometimes for a few years, she would make a certain dish on a weekly basis. Everyone loved it. Everyone always asked for second helpings. And then, all of the sudden, she would stop making it altogether. The dish was never again to be seen on her dining table and if people asked about it she would go as far as saying that she had never cooked such a dish before. 

I'm not that bad, but I have to admit that I, too, go through some phases when I get a kick out of cooking a certain ingredient or a certain type of dish. Right now I'm on a seafood kick and, without even noticing, I've packed my fridge and freezer with shrimp, sea bass, sole and the likes. Not bad for someone who grew up despising any fish that wasn't prepackaged breaded cod fingers. This sole I made last night is a very simple yet delicious meal —sophisticated enough for company and very satisfying to eat even by yourself, like I did.

 

SOLE WITH CANNELLINI IN AROMATIC TOMATO BROTH

Adapted from Cooking Light

Serves 4

Extra virgin olive oil

4  sole fillets

Salt and pepper 

2  garlic cloves, minced

2  cups  chopped plum tomato

1 1/2 cups broth

1/2  cup  dry white wine

1  (16-ounce) can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

1/2  teaspoon  chopped fresh rosemary

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle fish evenly with salt and pepper. Add fish to pan; cook 5 minutes on each side or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork or until desired degree of doneness. Remove fish from pan; keep warm. Add garlic to pan; cook 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Stir in tomato, broth, wine, and beans; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in rosemary. Serve immediately.

Snapper Veracruz style

Cooking dinner last night made me realize that there are certain ingredients that I will miss dearly once I'm in Europe. They are not what most people would miss, I tell you.

For instance, I won't miss the mind boggling variety of sodas you can buy in this country, mostly because the only two types of sodas I occasionally consume are club soda and tonic water, respectively as a mixer to vodka and gin.

Also, I won't miss the mesmerizing selection of breakfast cereal because, you guessed it, I never really enjoyed cereal. I tried, mind you, several times. As a kid, every time we stayed on vacation for longer than 5 days in any U.S. city, town or state I'd beg my parents to buy me Fruit Loops or Coco Pops or Frosted Flakes. My parents, I have to admit, knew better. They usually fed me those miniature cereal boxes that you find at breakfast buffets in mid-range hotels. What followed was comical. I very ceremoniously dumped half the content of the tiny box in my bowl and splash it with the equivalent of two and half tablespoons of milk. Then I would take two, maybe three bites, and declared I was full. Similar behavior, at home, would have developed into a full fledged family drama —I was never allowed to leave anything in my plate— but because we were on vacation and we we had an airplane/boat/bus tour to catch my parents, very forgivingly, muttered something about that back in their day they didn't even what cereal was and hauled me away from the breakfast tabel, so that we could "make good time", something my parents felt very strongly about in the mid 80s.

So what the hell are you goning to miss once your gone, you might ask? If you are thinking about fast food, you are wrong again. Although I was born in 1980, my mother had a very futuristic, very progressive, very 2010 if I may say that, approach to feeding her child. I'm proud to say she never spoon fed me that baby-food-out-of-a-jar-crap that I see so many infants swallow. She made my meals from scratch —each and one of them— and turned me into an incredibly happy and healthy baby. And as I grew older, while other kids at preschool were dreaming of drinking Coca Cola or Sprite, all I wanted was water. And fast food to me meant a meal my mom would cook from scratch in less than 30 minutes. So no, I'm not going to miss fast-food in the McDonalds-good-knows-what's-in-your burger way.

Enough with the guessing. I'm going to stop telling you what I'm not going to miss and tell you one thing I will miss dearly: freshly caught snapper from the Gulf of Mexico. Because I'm pretty positive no one will stop by my house in Milan, Italy, and drop off something that they have just caught nearby. And if they do, I'll run for my life.

SNAPPER VERACRUZ STYLE

 Adapeted from Cooking Light
Serves 4

1 1/2 pounds of snapper fillets
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cumin, to taste
Olive oil
1/4 cup chopped green olives
1/4 cup bottled salsa (I used hot, but you can use whatever you prefer)
1 15-ounce can good quality chopped tomatoes, such as Del Monte Organic
3 tablespoons minced cilantro
1/2 lime
Cayenne pepper

Season the fish on both sides with salt, pepper and cumin. Lightly grease a large baking dish with olive oil, place fish in baking pan and broil in preheated oven for 4 minutes, then flip and broil for another 4 minutes.

In the mean time mix remaining ingredients in a bowl. When fish is ready serve it smothered with prepared salsa.

Mahi with spicy salsa

So maybe I shouldn't have written a to-do list, especially not on a public blog where everyone could read it and then see what a failure I am at going through with my to-do lists. I don't really know what has gotten into me lately. As soon as I got laid off I had all this energy and these plans and I thought I was finally going to take care of things because "I had time". Well that didn't last long. After a couple of days I just got extremly lazy and haven't done anything constructive, except for working on my novel which is currently at page 128. So I guess that's a good thing.

Everything else, though, has been kind of put on hold and left behind. Including the cooking of epic recipes that I always wanted to cook but never had time to try. I was thinking about writing a list of those too, but we know what happens to stuff on my lists, so I'd rather not. Which brings me to this mahi recipe —the opposite of long and complicated. It's really a non-recipe, just something I threw together last night at 9 p.m. because —after writing all day— I realized that I hadn't made any plans for dinner. So I just kinda went with the good old idea that good + good = good and put this together. And guess what? It was good.

MAHI WITH SPICY SALSA
Serves 2

2 fillets of mahi mahi or other mild white fish
Salt and pepper
Half a lemon
3 plum tomatoes, cubed
1 avocado, cubed
Half a lemon
1/2 onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Season fish with salt and pepper, place in a pyrex and dress with juice of one lemon half. preheat oven to 350 and cook fish in oven for 20 minutes.

In the mean time mix the chopped tomatoes, avocado, onion and jalapeno in a bowl. Season with salt, pepper and cumin and dress with lemon. Mix well.

When fish is ready serve topped with salsa.

Vietnamese sweet and peppery fish

 

Ever since I said that I was going to write on my blog on a daily basis I pretty much disappeared and posted twice —which is very typical of me, so I'm not too surprised. Again, I have a good excuse (don't I always?). This time my disappearance has nothing to do with appliance malfunction. It was Tommy's birthday, so for a few days I was busy having birthday drinks and the likes, which meant that I had no time to cook and no time to post new recipes. But now the birthday is over, the hangovers are gone and it's time to get back on track. 

The track being healthy eating, because for one reason or another I kinda forgot about my resolution to only eat stuff that is good for me. So today I'm off to Whole Foods to stock up on grains and vegetables and seafood and for the next month I'm going to straighten this eating situation and go back to my normal habits. In the mean time, here's a really good and healthy recipe, courtesy of Cooking Light. It's a Vietnamese "caramelized" fish that is both sweet and peppery —the best of both worlds.

VIETNAMESE SWEET AND PEPPERY FISH

From Cooking Light

1/2  cup  water, divided

3  tablespoons  sugar

2 1/2  tablespoons  Thai fish sauce

3  tablespoons  minced peeled fresh lemongrass

1  tablespoon  minced fresh garlic

1  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper

1  cup  coarsely chopped green onions

4  (6-ounce) mahi mahi fillets

1  tablespoon  chopped fresh cilantro

Combine 1/4 cup water, sugar, and fish sauce in a large nonstick skillet; bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add lemongrass, garlic, and pepper. Cook 1 1/2 minutes or until slightly reduced. Add 1/4 cup water, onions, and fish, and cook over medium-high heat 7 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, turning once. Sprinkle with cilantro.

Spicy tuna melts

I guess the biggest thing that hit me when I lost my job was the fact that one moment I was a writer and the next I wasn't one anymore. See, it wasn't the money or the humiliation —it was more the fact that for over three years I had defined myself by what I was doing, which was basically writing all day, everyday. And then, after a couple of days, it hit me.

I still am a writer.

I write this blog. I'm writing a novel. And, soon, I'll be writing for other publications. So I really didn't need my job to define who I am. It may seem obvious to most, but to me it wasn't until I started thinking about the possibilities that lay before me. I can now do and be whatever I want. I can travel. I can work for multiple organizations and publications. I don't have to sit in an office for a pre-set amount of hours each week. I can decide to make my own mayo to make tuna melts for lunch which, so far, is the only thing I've done in my new and improved life. But hey, one has to start somewhere, right?

SPICY TUNA MELTS

Serves 2

2 English muffins, cut in half and toasted
1 can tuna
1/2 cup of mayo
2 tablespoons capers
1/2 onion, minced
1 jalapeno, minced
Salt and pepper
1 tomato, sliced
4 slices of your favorite cheese

Mix tuna, mayo, capers, onion and jalapeno, and season with salt and pepper.
Divide mixture evenly over the four muffin halves, top with a slice of tomato, season with salt and pepper and top with cheese.
Place under the broiler for 3 or 4 minutes, until cheese is bubbly.

"Cioppino" pasta

 Lately I've been literally obsessed with cioppino, the Italian seafood stew and have been ordering at several local restaurants. The best one yet was the one I ate on my mom's birthday at Sea Salt on Third Avenue South in Naples. Not only the seafood -mussels, snapper, shrimp, calamari and scallops- was masterfully prepared and just tender enough, the tomatoes Chef Fabrizio Aielli uses are so red and so flavorful they make your taste buds sing. Or at least they made mine sing, because you know how obsessed I am with good tomatoes.


The idea of making a Cioppino pasta came a coupleof days after my mom's birthday dinner when it was time to decide what to make with the leftover Cioppino. It was too much for me to eat at lunch but it wasn't enough to serve for the two of us at dinner, so I thought, why not make a good pasta out of it? All that I had to do was adding more good quality canned tomatoes (I used Cento) to the stew to thicken it up a little and serve it over pasta with a side of garlic bread. It was out-of-this-world. And of course, next thing I knew, I was looking for a recipe to make it from scratch -which I found and then modified a little on epicurious.com



"CIOPPINO" PASTA
Adapted from Epicurious.com
Serves 6

4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 (28- to 32-ounces) can whole plum tomatoes, drained, reserving juice, and chopped
1 cup bottled clam juice
1 cup chicken broth
18 small (2-inch) hard-shelled clams (1 1/2 pound) such as littlenecks, scrubbed
1 pound skinless red snapper or halibut fillets, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 pound large shrimp (16 to 20), shelled (tails and bottom segment of shells left intact) and deveined
3/4 pound sea scallops, tough muscle removed from side of each if necessary
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 box short pasta, such as cavatappi or fusilli

Cook garlic, onions, bay leaf, oregano, and red pepper flakes with salt and pepper in olive oil in an 8-quart heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring, until onions are softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Add wine and boil until reduced by about half, 5 to 6 minutes. Add tomatoes with their juice, clam juice, and broth and simmer, covered, 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Add clams to stew and simmer, covered, until clams just open, 5 to 10 minutes, checking every minute after 5 minutes and transferring opened clams to a bowl with tongs or a slotted spoon. (Discard any unopened clams after 10 minutes.)

While clams are cooking prepare past according to package directions.

Lightly season fish fillets, shrimp, and scallops with salt and add to stew, then simmer, covered, until just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Discard bay leaf, then return clams to pot and gently stir in drained pasta. Garnish with parsley, if desired. 

Mock salmon tartare

Once again I'm being horrible at posting regularly, but trust me, there is a reason. And I mean a real reason -not just the fact that I'm lazy. I'm trying very hard to concentrate on something that is important and have to do so for another ten days. Then I can go back to my normal self and be horrible about posting regularly for no other reason than my laziness.

Anyway, I thought I'd post this recipe because it's fast and easy, relatively healthy and very, very yummy. I call it a "mock" tartare because it's made with smoked salmon, so technically it isn't a tartare at all.

MOCK SALMON TARTARE

1 pound smoked salmon
1/2 cup fat free yogurt
1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
1/4 cup spicy mustard (increase quantity if you like a more robust flavor)
3 tablespoons capers
1/2 red onion, minced
1 lemon
Salt and pepper

Cut salmon into small pieces, season with salt and pepper. Place in a bowl, mix in red onion and capers and dress with lemon juice. Stir well, cover and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Before serving mix remaining ingredients until well combined. Stir into salmon mixture and serve with slices of toasted bread.

Pappardelle with lobster sauce

Ahhh, the New Year is here. I'll tell you what -2009 couldn't go away fast enough. I had such great expectations and hopes for it and it turned out to be a pretty crappy year for many reasons that I'm not going to dwell on. The whole decade, really, was quite a disappointment. Yes, there were some good times, but there were some really bad ones too. So one -me- can only hope this year and this decade are going to be better. And one -me- can also do something about it, instead of sitting one's -my- ass and just wait for things to happen and happen in a perfect way.

There is no perfection in life, love or friendship. There will always be flaws, tiny ones maybe, but flaws nonetheless. That's why I love cooking. Of course I love it because I find eating to be one of the greatest pleasures in life, but the real reason why I love getting behind the stove is that it gives me control over a tiny -but important- part of my life. Because when it comes to cooking, to food in general, there is such a thing as a perfect dish or a perfect meal. It doesn't happen very often, but it has a greater chance to happen then, say, finding the perfectly paid perfect job or a perfect person to perfectly spend the rest of your perfect life with. Perfect dishes are possible and I take great comfort in knowing that I can make them every once in a while. If had been good at math, I'd probably find comfort in knowing that the mathematical laws that rule the universe are perfect and unchangable. But I'm far better at cooking, so I find soothe and comfort in knowing that if you mix great ingredients and you pay attention to what you are doing you can make a perfect lobster sauce, just like the one pictured above.

And yes, I have just said that it myself. It was perfect. I wish you could have all been there to try it. Happy 2010, everyone. Let's make this year the best year of our lives (so far).

PAPPARDELLE WITH LOBSTER SAUCE

4 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of olive oil
Cognac or brandy
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1 cup tomato sauce
1/4 cup of diced onions
4 lobster tails, with shells
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
Salt and pepper

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add olive oil and butter and let them melt. Add onions and garlic and sautee for a couple of minutes. Add the lobester in their shells into the pan until they turn bright red. Add a couple ounces of cognac, and ignite (be careful because the flames will be high for a few seconds). Allow the cognac to burn off , remove the shells and carefully extract the meat from the shells. Return meat to pan, add the tomato sauce, season, bring to a boil, and allow to simmer for 20 minutes at reduced heat. Add the cream. In the mean time cook pasta. When pasta is done strain, add to the pan and mix well with sauce before serving.

Gravlax

So I have this thing for salmon -for me to eat it it must be either smoked or wild caught. I refuse to eat the farm raised type mostly because it tastes so fishy it makes my stomach turn and also because if you read how they live in captivity and what they eat it will turn you off it forever. Anyhow, I had a beautiful piece of wild caught salmon in the freezer, but it wasn't really big enough to make an entree out of it, so I decided to make gravlax instead. Gravlax is a Swedish dish and, to my knowledge, the only Swedish contribution to world cuisine. Those of you who have read Stieg Larsson's novels will probably know that all they eat in Sweden is toast, coffee and, when they get all crazy and reckless, cereal. Never in one of his huge books does Larsson mention gravlax -which is a pity because it's delicious and easy to make. The only tricky part is that you have to plan ahead for it because it has to marinate for 24 hours. Other than that it's completly idiot-proof.

GRAVLAX
One pound of salmon fillet, skin on
2 tablespoons sea salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon black pepper
A large bunch of fresh dill

Place the salmon, skin side down, on a large piece of plastic wrap.

Mix salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl. Sprinkle evenly over salmon, until the flesh is completly covered with salt mixture. Place dill on top of salmon.

Wrap the salmon up, as tightly as possible, in the plastic wrap. Use a second sheet of plastic wrap to wrap again. Place the package in a container (I used a pyrex) and place in the fridge for at least 48 hours. You will notice some liquid forming in the container -it's normal.

After two days open the pacakge, discard the dill and gently wash the salmon with cold water. Place on a cutting board and cut thinly, from the tail end first, detaching each slice from the skin. Serve with dill, crackers, sour cream and slices of lemon.

"Italian flag" mahi mahi

Green, white and red... get it? The colors of the Italian flag. It's ok if you didn't, neither did my boyfriend at first. He was too busy connecting and ohhhhing and ahhhhing over our new blue ray dvd player (courtesy of my mom and dad). In the mean time I was concocting this Italian flag inspired mahi mahi dish which turned out beautiful to look at and very yummy. The red is a sweet and spicy homemade tomato jam, while the green is a very healthy broccoli puree, both of which go together well with a mild fish like mahi mahi. I poached the fish in vermouth and garlic, mostly because I realized I didn't have any white wine on hand and it was way to late to go to the store. Vermouth gives food a pleasant sweetness so I use it often as a substitute for wine. I also use it often to make martinis, but that's another story.

Speaking of booze, since party season is coming up I will start posting some cocktail recipes soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow, but in the mean click here to read a story I wrote for today's paper with some recipes and ideas for Halloween parties.

ITALIAN FLAG MAHI MAHI
Serves 2

For the green:
1 steam-in-bag bag of broccoli
1/4 cup broth
Crushed red pepper and salt to taste

Steam broccoli in their bag in the microwave for 3 minutes. Using a food processor bland them until you have a puree, pour in a saucepan and season with salt and crushed red pepper. Keep warm over low heat.

For the red:
3 large tomatoes
1 small onion
1 jalapeno, minced or 2 tablespoons jalapeno jelly
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Grate onion and tomatoes in a saucepan, add jalapeno, sugar and salt and simmer until tomato water evaporates, about 10 minutes. Stir in lemon juice and keep warm.

For the white:
2 mahi mahi fillets
Salt and white pepper to taste
1 clove of garlic
Vermouth

Season fish with salt and pepper, place in a pan with two cloves of garlic and a half inch of vermouth. Simmer gently, flipping once until vermouth is almost all evaporated, about 10 minutes. Serve with broccoli puree and tomato jam.

Guazzetto of clams

I learned to love clams when I was very young, so young that no one would have ever thought I might like them. It was one and my parents and I were vacationing on the beautiful island off the coast of Tuscany called Isola del Giglio. When my mom ordered spaghetti with clams she had no idea they were going to find out the biggest (littlest) clam fan ever. As soon as the spaghetti with clams was in front of my mom I started picking clams out of her plate, reaching over from my high chair and using my tiny, fat fingers to remove the clams form their shells. I don't know if it was the salty brininess of the clams or the fact that they were "grown-up" food -what I know is that my mom that night ate spaghetti with olive oil, parsley and no clams.

Since then I've always been a big fan of clams, even during my pickiest years (from age 3 to age 10 I barely ate anything and drove everyone crazy). Nowadays I absolutely love clams in all their forms. Although I love spaghetti with clams as much as your next Italian, I love guazzetto even more. A guazzetto is pretty much the clam sauce you'd put on spaghetti, minus the spaghetti. It's delicious served with toasted bread to soak up the rich, briny broth. For those of you who are in the Naples, Fla., area try the guazzetto at Miramare Ristorante -it's to die for.

"GUAZZETTO" OF CLAMS
For two:

5 pounds of clams, in their shells
10 ounces fresh tomatoes
2 slices Italian bread
4 cloves of garlic, minced
Parsley (about 4 sprigs), minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons olive oil

To get rid of the sand in the clams soak them for at least 30 minutes in abundant water and salt. Rinse them under running cold water and set aside.

Blench tomatoes in boiling water for 1 minute to remove skin. Chop and set aside.

In a very large skillet (large enough to accommodate all the clams, that is) heat the olive oil and add clams. Cover and cook for a couple of minutes. Check on clams. The idea here is that they will slowly open as they cook. Keep cooking them. After five minutes throw out the few that haven't opened yet.

Pour the cooking liquid through a fine sieve and reserve it.

Place clams (still in their shells) back in the skillet with cubed tomatoes, minced garlic, minced parsley, crushed red pepper, white wine and reserved cooking juices. Cook no longer than 7 minutes. Serve with toasted bread.