lunch – Page 3 – chef meets girl

cold smoked salmon

i came home to the chef standing in the kitchen with a big, proud smile on his face. there he was, this mad scientist-looking lab set up on the counter, no “hello” or “I love you” — just a stammer of, “hey! look what I made! grab your camera, make a video! eat this!”

once he explained the tubes and the hookah and the burning coal it made sense. and to my satisfaction, it didn’t even make the house smell. that much. that chef, he’s pretty creative!

have you guys ever tried anything like this? or do you have any other DIY kitchen tricks?

homemade gravlax aka heaven

gravlax, lox, nova lox: we’ve come a long way from preserving salmon out of necessity. thankfully, the advent of refrigeration hasn’t killed the tradition altogether. the differences are subtle: do you add sugar to the cure or just salt? do you use aromatics like dill or juniper? do you smoke the fish after the cure? if you smoke, is the smoke hot enough to cook the fish, or do you cold smoke it?

in our case, we used salt and sugar with dill as our aromatic. initially, we decided not to smoke it (although the decision to eat without waiting to smoke may have been related to the fact that the girl was hungry for breakfast… and what the girl wants, the girl gets). later, with bellies full of gravlax, we decided to experiment with adding some smoke. stay tuned for a video. in the meantime, follow the jump for our so-easy-anyone-can-do-it curing recipe.

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you can pickle anything!

my mom loves coffee; she drinks it all the time, even late at night before bed. i have this really distinct memory of being four years old, and us drinking from matching coffee cups. in hers — folgers. in mine — pickle juice. i guess the point of that, is there’s a special place in my heart for pickles.

a couple weeks ago, steven and i took a day trip to the new river gorge in west virginia to go zip lining. it was a lot of fun and it’s so beautiful there, but in true chef fashion i think he was most concerned with what we’d be having for lunch. after much googling and pressure from a control freak friend (hi, bill!) we settled on gumbos cajun restaurant. i had a fried crawfish po’ boy with the most delicious pickled okra on the side! i mean, this okra seriously tasted like a dill pickle. i ate mine and his. i guess it may be a no brainer to some people, but it was an epiphany to me: you can pickle anything.

i didn’t believe him at first, but trust me… these pickled brussels are worth the wait!

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road trip favorites: boudin balls

Boudin – /bü-ˈdan. n. A style of sausage popular along the Gulf Coast incorporating meat (commonly pork, gator, or seafood) and rice. Or the most delicious deep-fried, truck-stop vittles to be found south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

I spent this past summer watching it melt away in the rear view mirror of a Saturn Ion named Sandy. The girl and I racked up something approaching 100 hours in the car traveling across the country and back. I lost track of the number of miles and the gallons of gas. And the billboards, enormous swaths of peeling paint and splinters devoted to roadside attractions that no longer rank even among the world’s top 10 largest gophers. But there is one sign I hope I never forget.

In the heart of Cajun country, off of interstate 10 somewhere between Baton Rouge and the Texas state line there is a sign that says, “Shrimp! Gator! Andouille! Boudin! Go left, then 2.5 miles!” But to her, the most important thing was inferred: “Restroom!” Sign after sign eventually led us to a dingy little shop — part truck stop, part country store, part plate-lunch diner. As she hurried off to use the facilities, my life changed in an instant.

Fresh from the fryer, glistening under a heat lamp like tourists at Myrtle Beach in July, were perfectly formed spheres of Boudin sausage, battered and deep fried. Three for two dollars. The expression on her face changed from disgust that I would consider eating something made in that rickety old market, to disbelief as i implored her to try it, to elation as she came into the fold: a believer that there might not be anything better in the world than deep fried sausage.

The following recipe is my first attempt at recreating that moment of pure bliss.

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