IDEAS IN FOOD

Onions and Olives

Cocktails are garnished with onions and olives, why not look at them as a dish on their own? We pressure cooked boiling onions with aromatics and complimented them with an onion syrup and sprouts. To add a crunchy presence to the dish we accented the allium with our olive-walnut crumbs. The dish is earthy and heady, bitter and sweet. The savoriness of the olive-walnut crumb has us exploring other avenues and combinations for incorporating a savory undertone for dishes.

Cuban Oregano

We literally stumbled across this ingredient at the Trenton Farmers Market. Actually, Aki saw it out of the corner of her eye and brought it to my attention. The aroma is intense, like oregano amplified to the 100th degree. The taste is crisp, cool, slightly bitter, and not nearly as intense as the aroma. It is oregano as a gentle ingredient. The succulent nature of the leaf with its juicy explosion makes it especially intriguing because we have never worked with an herb like this. To further add interest is its plethora of identities: Indian Borage, Mexican Thyme and Cuban Oregano. We have an array of exciting descriptions to utilize depending upon the final dish, its preparation, and presentation.

Jar Cookery

We have been exploring mason jar cookery again. During our classes at Le Sanctuaire, we demonstrated the benefits of using a chamber vacuum machine and a mason jar to create miniature vacuum chamber to infuse pickles and marinades into fruits and vegetables. The demonstration led to the revisiting of cooking in a jar. When we were in Colorado we used to cook eggs in small jars and serve them at breakfast like a baked egg. We did not have a chamber vacuum machine out west so we just seasoned the eggs, sealed the jar and cooked the eggs at a low temperature. The evolving egg dish was wonderful. Over time we forgot about the dish. It may be time to return to that delicious preparation. Since then we have acquired a chamber machine and explored using the vacuum of the chamber to marinate tomatoes and other vegetables. What we did not do was apply controlled heat. Today we were looking at the ideas which were sparked out west, twice, and what we previously could and had not tried. We filled mason jars with maitake mushrooms, ginger, basil and soy sauce. We will be cooking at a variety of temperatures: 60, 70 and 83 degrees C, to taste and feel the results of mushroom cookery in a vacuum at lower temperatures What is also exciting about this approach is the mushrooms and in the future other vegetables will be able to retain their natural shape rather than being crushed by a bag.

Stay tuned for taste and texture results...

Ham it Up

A great result of the Mangalista pig dinner is that we were able to refine our honey ham ice cream. In the setting of the dinner it was served as part of the dessert course with Cracker Jack cracklin's and pineapple upside down cake. Of course ham ice cream has its place in courses other than dessert. In a recent twist on the traditional we paired the honey ham ice cream with yellow watermelon and oxalis: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and even some umami.

Reheating the Pizza

Sometimes it's the small innovations that make my day. Normally I reheat pizza in a skillet for a crisp bottom and melted cheese. This method works well if you don't want to turn on the oven and if you don't mind the fact that the top of the crust remains a bit soggy. Tonight I needed to reheat pizza for two so I pulled out the griddle. Unfortunately without the high sides to help keep the heat in the cheese wasn't melting. As I stared at the slices, trying to melt the cheese through the force of my mind I had an epiphany. I could simply flip the pizza over. The crust would brown and the cheese would not only melt, it would become crispy and caramelized like a frico making the leftover pizza into something possibly better than the real thing. It worked perfectly and I crunched and chewed happily wondering why on earth I never thought of doing that before.

Berry Preserervation

In today's New York Times food section Harold McGee has written an indispensable article on preserving the quality of fresh berries in their natural state. We have often seen berries deteriorate before our eyes and were not smart enough to ask the question, how can we stop this? Harold was and shares his experiences and studies in this important article. Now we have a great technique to not only wash but preserve fresh berries for our extended enjoyment.

Yogurt Dumplings

Here is our recipe for yogurt dumplings. This is a recipe we have not thought of until recently. It came back up in some inspiring conversations during today's workshop and we felt it might we useful and happily extrapolated as menus begin to shift from summer to fall.

Yogurt Dumplings

 

485 grams drained whole milk yogurt

45 grams honey

3 grams salt

 

5.33 grams activa y-g (1%)

 

Place all ingredients in a Paco Jet canister.  Put the four bladed cold preparation blade in place and process the mixture once with the blue air valve pressed in.  This is done to prevent excess air from being incorporated into the mixture.  When the cycle is done, remove the canister and scrape the inside walls to bring the entire mixture together.  Put the canister and blade back on the Paco Jet and process one more time with the blue air valve pressed in.  When the second cycle has finished, remove the canister from the machine and place the mixture into a squeeze bottle.

 

Spray the inside of the magnetic sphere mold with pan spray and then with a dry paper towel wipe clean.  The fine film remaining will ease the un-molding process.  Close the sphere molds and then fill each cavity through the top opening by extruding the yogurt mixture into the opening.  Fill all the spheres and then tap the plastic mold on the counter to force out any air bubbles.  If the cavities empty during this process, top them off with any remaining apparet.  Loosely cover the top of the sphere mold with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 18 hours.

 

Remove the mold from the refrigerator and carefully remove the top section of the magnetic mold.  The spheres will have set and there will be a small extension on each sphere from the fill hole.  Use a pairing knife to cut this yogurt extension off of each sphere.  Once the spheres are trimmed, gently remove each sphere from the mold and place in a shallow container.  Cover the container and reserve in  the refrigerator.

 

To serve, gently warm the spheres in simmering water to heat through.  Once the spheres are hot, remove them from the water and place them in the pan with the appropriate sauce and glaze.

Synchronicity

Sometimes ingredients just come together. We found amazing organic green grapes at the market. The next day we picked up heirloom tomatoes at Shady Brook Farm. Finally we stopped at Di Bruno Bros. and Hunter hooked us up with an amazing Robiola cheese. The Blis Elixer and Manni olive oil were already in our pantry. All we had to do was put them together...

Enjoy Your Food

We're at the point where every meal is an adventure. Amaya may not eat everything we give her. She examines each bite, squishes things with her fingers, smells every bite, and then more often than not, manages to get it in her mouth. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she shivers, and sometimes she screws up her entire face and recoils. No matter what the reaction, nine times out of ten she will taste whatever it is again. Amaya may not go in for the third bite but unless something is truly terrible she will give it a second chance. If something is good on the first try her entire face will light up and she will promptly throw anything left in her hands into the air in celebration. Needless to say meals are messy affairs. No matter what we set in front of her, she eats wholeheartedly with intense concentration and focus. Amaya loves to share the experience, checking often to make sure we're paying attention. It's a beautiful thing. Which doesn't mean that the mess doesn't make me a little bit crazy. It goes against my nature to let her toss food onto the floor. She can whip off her bib one-handed with a dramatic flourish and send it flying.  She usually chooses to do so mid-meal. Amaya loves to share and happily feeds us bites of her food from her sticky fists.

For two people who love food and cook for a living her active participation in every meal is a revelation. Too often we rush through our own meals consumed by a thousand other things. We enjoy the first few bites and then slowly get distracted and accelerate through our daily meals. There's always a laundry list of other things to do. Watching Amaya is a reminder that even a simple meal should be celebrated. We should be able to take that extra ten minutes to feed our spirits along with our bellies. We should remember to enjoy our food.

Roasted and Smoked

More flavor. How can we get more flavor into our pasta? Roasting pasta in the oven is one way to deepen its flavor and broaden its taste spectrum. The flours become nuttier, there are caramel like notes. We have read about toasting pasta when cooking it like risotto and it's been years since we thought to pre-roast it for cooking. Until we started hydrating our pasta for expedited cooking. After more research into pasta cooking and reading Harold McGee's piece on little water cooking several times, it dawned on us.  Some of the detractors in the piece noted a lack of flavor in the pasta. Those doubts followed by McGee's comments on the risotto style pasta cookery had us reaching for the pasta and turning on the oven. If we roasted the noodles and then hydrated we should have a more intense pasta flavor. Our tests proved correct. We roasted the noodles for twenty minutes in a 350 degree F oven and then hydrated them in cold water for an hour and a half. We brought a small pot of water to a boil, cooked for a minute and tossed with butter, salt and black pepper. The roasted noodles were amazing. Linguine with clam sauce and simple fresh tomato sauce will now have a deeper flavor and aroma, which we did not know was possible.

Since I cannot leave well enough alone I took some of the roasted and hydrated noodles and smoked them with a smoking gun. The quick and direct smoking of the noodles allowed us to be eating smoked and roasted pasta almost instantly. To accent the dish we added a few garlic chives and some Ossau Iraty cheese. The delicate smoke on top of the roasted flavor was mind blowing. The simplicity of the ingredients and ease of execution were even more exciting. The deep flavors present a wonderful canvas to work with. Aki is pushing for crabmeat and jalapenos and I am looking to sweet corn and country ham.

Malt Crisps

Another new ingredient in our pantry is these malt crisps. The crunchy malt flavor and light texture is really tasty. Having malt in this form presents a number of new possibilities: from a crunchy topping for sweetbreads paired with smoked fennel puree to the texture on top of a delicate chocolate sheet. Right now, they are a great snack while writing and thinking about food. In fact, as I'm mulling this, they could work well with the foie gras flake bar we are working on.

September 12, 2009

Dinner will be served at 7:00 pm. The meal will be held in our workshop space in Levittown, PA. Guests are welcome to arrive a bit early to check out the space and the preparations. There are twelve seats available. The cost of the dinner is $150 per person, BYOB. Any dietary issues must be noted at the time of your reservation. Email us via the blog or the website if you would like to reserve space.

Because Everyone Loves a Good BLT

The thing about using traditionally savory ingredients in ice cream is that you have to decide how to serve it. Sometimes the flavors work for dessert and sometimes you have to slide the ice cream over to the first part of the menu. This works as long as the diner can suspend their pre-conceived notions long enough to appreciate the flavors before making a judgment call. Here we have a bacon ice cream, the ice cream is sweet, the application savory. The best of all worlds if you please. We've paired it with heirloom tomato, purslane, and croutons cooked in bacon fat and dusted with raw sugar. It's a small savory dish balanced by sweet elements. A little bit out there and so good that we could probably even win Jay over with this one. We never can resist a challenge...

Ideas in Food-Studiokitchen III

It is with great pleasure that we can announce the third dinner in our series of collaborations with Shola. It, being the third, brings even more substance because it will be held in our workshop space. What this means is that Aki will not just be consulting or sending along components from our kitchen, she will bring a hands on approach to the menu, the food and the execution of the dishes. It is only appropriate that the third dinner has all three of us.

The details:

Friday October 2nd

Saturday October 3rd

The location will be our workshop in Levittown, PA.

30 minutes from Downtown Philadelphia.

Cost is $150 per person. BYOB

Dinner begins promptly at 7:30. Guests are welcome to arrive earlier.

Email your requested interest in reserving a seat(s) to idskvolume3@gmail.com

Lobster and Corn

Cooking lobster is something I enjoy. Cooking lobster for other people, particularly Aki and now Amaya, is even more gratifying with higher expectations. Eating lobster either on the shore or in your backyard evokes memories. Memories of the last time you had the lobster, where you were, what you were doing. Usually corn is not too far off when lobster is cooked. The butter, a frivolous luxury for both the corn and the lobster for Aki, is a necessity in my world. Eating lobster is often messy business. I remember eating lobsters and corn, juices dripping, mingling, and having to wipe my face, my legs, and occasionally losing my napkins in the fray. In my haste to grab my errant napkins occasionally a weed or two would be caught with them. I am not going to presume the weeds under the picnic table were the same as those we are cultivating, though they could have been. In any case, we have rethought our past. We used the peeled lobster claws with a buttered popcorn puree and balanced them with weeds, I mean herbs, from our garden. The lobster preparation resembles a risotto in appearance and texture, it is not a real risotto as to be served in Italy, although the analogy serves us well in describing the dish. (We recently received a thoughtful and passionate email about our menu terminology from someone we respect and are slowly digesting the contents.) We punctuate the dish not with lemon, the traditional go to for lobster garnish, instead we use our weeds: oxalis leaves and pods and a few tips of purslane. The flavors are easily imagined, the texture is familiar, the finished dish is...something slightly different and simply delicious.

The Ogleshield

It sounds like a tool for a superhero, instead it belongs in the arsenal of a chef. The Ogleshield is an English cheese. It is born of a collaborative effort by Jamie Montgomery (yes, that Montgomery), Randolph Hodgson the owner of Neal's Yard Dairy, and William Oglethorpe their master affineur. The cheese itself is made by Montgomery with the milk from Jersey cows. A favorite for milk and cream, it's large fat globules make the milk an unusual choice for cheese. The cheese is aged at Neal's Yard and treated in the same way as a traditional raclette, salted, massaged, and kept in a moist cave. Instead of a crumbly cheddar, the jersey cheese is something softer and more unctuous, ripe with flavor, and perfect for melting.

We got our Ogleshield at Di Bruno Bros shop in the Italian Market in Philly. A benefit of knowing our cheesemonger is that we get great cheeses and great stories. Hunter explained that the cheesemaker buys back the cheese after it's aged and uses it for grilled cheese sandwiches made with raw red onion and rye bread. We would have bought it because the cheese was delicious, the idea of the sandwich added a whole new incentive to take some home.

This morning Alex ran out to the Italian People's Bakery and picked up, among other things, a loaf of everything rye bread. Yes, just like the bagel, this light rye bread had a topping of assorted seeds and salt. He layered thinly sliced red onion and Ogleshield on the bread and grilled it in a pan with a generous amount of sweet butter.  The sandwich was amazing. It was rich and almost meaty in flavor. The onions were partially cooked, mostly tender and sweet with the odd crunchy, pungent bite to cut through all the cheese. The seeded rye was the perfect foil, highlighting the earthy qualities of the cheese. Of course, how could we go wrong? Obviously the cheesemaker would know the best way to serve his creation...

The Not Garden

We had plans to grow a garden. Tomatoes and herbs, perhaps a vegetable or two would add to our kitchen supplies and inspire. Plans change, distractions occur, and life can get in the way. Our garden, at least the space where the garden is supposed to go, did not materialize. Instead small patches of purslane have grown into fully established plants, acting as ground cover and a delicious succulent to munch on. The oxalis which cohabits with the purslane is also growing with alacrity. The oxalis has grown pods, an ingredient we became aware of after seeing it in pictures of dishes at Alinea. It was great to peer into our yard and see and taste this ingredient, which we thought might be difficult to source. How little we knew, since it happily grows in the plot of soil intended for a cultivated garden and now filled with what some people think of as weeds and we see as ingredients.

Live

Sorry for the delays. The website is now live, have fun, look around, like the blog it too changes, some parts daily some over time.

Three Minute Rigatoni

As with dried noodles, different varieties of pre-hydrated pasta have different cooking times. Since we were playing anyway we decided to soak rigatoni in flavored liquid. This time we used crushed tomatoes seasoned with a bit of salt and thinned out with some water. The rigatoni hydrated in this liquid for two hours before we cooked it in boiling salted water. It took three minutes to reach a perfect al dente. To serve we simply tossed the hot pasta with the juices from a fresh tomato salad, added some shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano and a few leaves of arugula.  Quick and delicious.

One Minute Pasta

Cooking pasta is about heat and hydration. We asked ourselves what would happen if we separated the two processes. Soaking the pasta was slightly counter-intuitive. What if it got to soft? What if it all stuck together? We decided that the only thing to do was try it and see what happened. After an hour and a half in a bog with cold water the soaked linguine pasta became pliable, while remaining a bit stiff. The drained noodles held their shape and since the starch had not been activated, they did not stick to one another and could be held without the addition of oil. Once we added the noodles to boiling, salted water we had perfectly cooked al dente pasta in just 60 seconds. Now that we know it works, it is time to see what flavoring the hydrating liquid does.

What we do know is that we have now changed how dried pasta may be cooked to order.

 

Roasted Barley

We are really excited about the uses of roasted barley in our cooking. It is supposedly a key ingredient in Oreos and its striking color and rich flavor show endless promise. It has a slightly grainy texture that may be a key part of the crunch in those delicious chocolate cookies. (Delicious without the fake white filling. I was one of those who scraped out the stuff and threw it away, happily scarfing down the plain chocolate wafers.) On the top of my list is: grilled noodles, roast barley ice cream, as a medium for spice rubs and to use in a batter for fried fish. We'll also be playing around with bread recipes. The color makes me think of pumpernickel, one of Alex's favorites, so we'll definitely need to do something with that. Perhaps a pumpernickel crepe...

Peeling Lobster Claws

We peel everything else, why not a lobster claw? The flesh filaments encased in the claw are extremely delicate when separated and their smaller size opens up a number of new uses, preparations and presentations for claw meat. If you follow my twitter feed you may know what is coming.

Peek A Boo

It is amazing what this phrase can do. Try it and experience its power.

Tasty Fat

We realized that the texture of slow cooked pork fat was very close to that of foie gras in both hot and cold preparations. The dish was designed around fat substitution. We also realized that if we served a slab of hot or cold pork fat we might get a less than enthusiastic reaction. In order to balance our beliefs with customer satisfaction we opted to slowly cook the Mangalista pork belly. The belly provides some incredibly delicious meat within the layers of fat. Yes, this is a lot of fat. So is foie gras. The point of the dish was to appreciate the fat. We served the belly seared on one side with mole, stone fruits and a tamale. We could have happily served the belly chilled with grilled bread and marmalade. In fact, if it were not for a larger stigma of eating vast quantities of cold pork fat we may well have done so. The key to the dish and the preparation is the fat. More often than not meat is marbled with fat. In the Mangalista it is reversed. The fat is marbled with meat. The meat is extraordinary and imparts a rich flavor to the fat. Perhaps that is what I missed at first when looking at this animal. The meat seasons the fat rather than the expected and norm of the fat supplementing the meat.

Garlic Bread Sauce

It turns out bread is not necessary in this preparation. Our first thought was a spin off of traditional bread sauce. The first step was cooking the garlic in butter for the garlic bread. Looking at the garlic and butter it made sense to add milk powder so that we could maximize flavor and have extra butter solids for seasoning the bread. When the garlic butter was finished we realized that not only was it delicious, it already had the texture of butter soaked bread crumbs. So instead of adding parsley and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese to the garlic and spreading the mixture on bread, we made a Parmigiano-parsley stock using the fresh herb, cheese rinds and water in the pressure cooker for twenty minutes. This was then strained over the garlic butter, cooked for five minutes on the stove and then the entire mixture was pureed together. It's ridiculously good and will only improve overnight. To begin with it's going to paired with the sausage stuffed pepper course tomorrow night at Elements. After that who knows where it'll end up.

OK, we have a few ideas: with lobster either as sauce or a a medium to cook the lobster in, a pairing with clams would not be half bad, also with asparagus, and in soup form even more avenues open up.

All Kinds of Burrata

A mistake in understanding a cheese's ripeness led to another version of burrata. We have made buttermilk burrata in the past. At the eleventh hour we learned that ripe  Delice de Bourgogne did not aerate in the same way as a denser brie cheese. The scrambled mess was saved when we looked at it and saw a delicious burrata texture. We paired the cheese with a green olive oil, black pepper and miniature fennel. If we were to raise the bar, some grilled bread would be added. As it was the dish was delicious and a great way to reinvent a disaster by utilizing a different point of view.

Ideas in Food, an evolution

We are sure you have been asked, "where are you going to be in five years?" Five years ago we did not really know what blogs were. Thankfully our friend Michael shared his with us and introduced us to a way to share ideas with the world. We did not plan on anything. We were cataloging ideas, we were creating and shaping a digital notebook. Over time, people found us and pushed us to question, to improve, to become more curious, to look for and understand not just what we knew but what we wanted to know. We have made many mistakes. These mistakes have been the mortar in our culinary masonry. Ideas in Food is a blog. Ideas in Food is a digital notebook. Ideas in Food is a compilation of thoughts where people can come and openly share ideas in hopes of improving, discovering, understanding and continuing to search. Like all notebooks, the pages wear, the ink sometimes fades, dog ears turn into tears and what was once clear becomes a bit difficult to wade through. Ideas in Food the blog, being a digital notebook, has gone through these growing pains. Several months ago we removed the photo albums from the side bar. Some noticed, others not so much. The result of the change, a faster page load and the lack of a photographic sand box to play in. I miss the sand box and still I knew it was time to change. Perhaps this is a sign of growing up. Perhaps removing the pictures is a bit of modesty as we portrayed many successes and failures in these pictures.

And maybe, we had an idea.

Ideas in Food is a notebook. It evolves daily. It has a personality. We can publish ideas instantly and even faster via the twitter feeds of Aki and myself. The blog is not changing, the notebook is getting a new binder. Ideas in Food will now be part of Ideas in Food the website. The website has been designed to be nearly as fluid as the blog. It will contain vital information about us, our workshops, our writing, our cooking, our clippings and of course, our pictures. Ideas in Food the blog: to be seen as IiF the Blog, will improve as well. It will lose some extraneous stuff. It will point and link to the website for the information which used to be nearly hidden in the squalor of side bars and typelists. The blog will get a bit of a face lift. It should hopefully be essentially the same and a bit different in a way you may not be quite sure of.

The website should go live Monday. RSS feeds etc for the blog should be fine. Those who read the site via feedblitz should not have any interruptions in their daily dose of ideas. If time permits, you may want to visit the website itself, there are a bunch of new and not so new ideas you may have missed over the years.

*the pictures are screen shots of the website. The different pictures on the home page are part of the plan, each visit will show something different.

The Best Meal You Will Ever Have

I really don't miss the calorie counts on everything in New York. Yes I probably should know for sure that most of my favorite indulgences: ice cream sundaes, chili cheese fries, nachos with guacamole, pizza with the works, etc. have nine thousand calories but that does take the fun out of things.

People love to say that if you eat high quality foods that you need less to satisfy you...not always true.

On the other hand, a great meal does make the world a better place to be, always.

Chocolate does not heal all wounds although a great steak with a fabulous syrah will distract you long enough to pretend that's true.

The things that annoy me most are the things I most need to hear.

It's easier to be gracious after the fact.

Fondue can make friends if you pick the right filling for your pot.

Cheese is never a neutral subject.

If you share a great meal, fine dining or rustic, you'll remember each other forever, like it or not. Choose your dining companions with care.

The best meal you'll ever have is still waiting to happen, be open to it.

Table for Ten

Nothing beats eating in the kitchen. The folks at Elements know this and have made the kitchen table available for the Mangalista dinner for ten lucky diners. Since the entire restaurant is communal seating for this event, this table will allow a group to wallow in all good things pig while watching the action behind the scenes. You never know what will happen when the fat hits the fire.

Finger Food

Fish collars are interesting. They contain a fair amount of rich, unctuous meat hidden in nooks and crannies, protected by flesh and bones. The question that arises is how to get the meat from the collar in order to serve it to the guests. David Burke looked at the situation and sought large fish, like the swordfish and trimmed the collar down into a chop. (I cannot count how many of those chops I cooked back in the day.) On the other, hand Ken took the Japanese approach and marinated smaller fish collars and then grilled them. The collar was placed on the table between guests to share. Polite people and self conscious diners gently poked at the chef's generous mid-meal gift. Those who truly enjoyed food dove into the plate, ignoring utensils in order to use their fingers to excavate amongst skin and bone for rich nuggets of fish, eventually trading a ravaged plate for a hot towel and a lemon.

In the past we have played around with making miniature chops of fish. There is a certain novelty to the process, yet the original fish chop is David Burke's. As for the marinated and grilled fish collar, it is a classic Japanese preparation that we happily prepare for ourselves and others. While Ken showed us the path, he did not pave the road.

Yesterday we marinated some Hiramasa collars in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic oil, and chile oil. Today we grilled them and served them with some spicy greens, fresh lime and a basil puree. The collar is the canvas, the components and flavors the colors. It is always exciting to pick and probe at the collar, savoring the different components of crunchy skin and tender fish, and finally licking your fingers clean with a satisfied grin. It's a perfect meal for sharing with someone you love and someone you don't mind making a mess with.

Our Morning Cuppa

A few months ago we invested in a new coffee maker. We were using a Cuisinart grind and brew model and we needed to upgrade. Particularly since Alex basically inhales his coffee and he hated cleaning all of the parts on the Cuisinart. After much research we decided upon the Capresso Coffee Team. We had owned a Capresso in the past and hed been very happy with the quality of the brewed coffee. This model had a burr grinder and a thermal carafe. The grinder was separate from the brewing area so that it did not need to be cleaned with every pot. Even better, I found refurbished models available from 1st in Coffee. Two and a half months later I can honestly say that this is my favorite home coffee maker ever. There was a definite learning curve, it took a while to figure out exactly how to screw in the lid to avoid waterfalls of coffee cascading across the countertop. Now that we've got the system down it's a breeze. Combined with beans from Counter Culture Coffee it makes our mornings that much better. And let me tell you, with a baby in the house that first cup of coffee is more important than it ever was before.  

First, Do No Harm

In working with wonderful ingredients it essential to take a step back and see what you are dealing with. In the case of the fluke we knew that less would be more and that seasoning would be essential to the preparation. A continued love affair with all things brine, I opted to use a green olive brine as a seasoning. The olive brine has a balanced salinity not unlike a great soy sauce. Having two parts of the dish in check, we needed delicate accents. With borage flowers readily available and small sprigs of parsley at hand the dish began to take shape. Since parsley has a cleansing quality we did not need an assertive acid to pique the fish. Instead we reached for lemon oil with a vibrant aroma and clarity of flavor. These were our ingredients. Weaving them together took more time than I imagined. The adjustment period allowed me to reflect on the phrase: first, do no harm. In taking the time to fully gain an understanding of our ingredients we were able to bring them together into a cohesive and delicious dish. A light sprinkling of fine sea salt was all that was needed to bring the picture into focus.