Home Alone...Again: A Lime-Mint Cooler, Grilled Corn Salsa, and Carne Asada

A couple of days ago, Michael was at a Dodger's Game, Frank was in San Francisco, and Michelle was at Sundance so I was home alone. The last time I was left to my own devices, it took me a while to figure out what to make for dinner. This time I knew exactly what I wanted.

Carne asada.

When I'm cooking for myself I want something that's quick and easy. Carne asada was perfect because it only took a few minutes on the grill. Adding a corn salsa and a lime-mint cooler and I was completely happy.

For the recipes I expanded them to serve four (except for the cooler which should be made one at a time).

Lime-Mint Cooler

I wanted to find a use for a white rum from Guatemala called "Quezalteca - Especial". What I came up with is a close cousin to a Mojito.

Yield: 1 serving
Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

1 lime or 1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
10 mint leaves (washed, crushed)
1 1/2 tablespoons powdered sugar
3 tablespoons white rum

Method

Mix together the lime juice, mint leaves, powdered sugar and white rum, add 4 ice cubes and stir well. Let the ice cubes melt for a couple of minutes. Stir again. Taste and add more powdered sugar as needed.

Roasted Corn Salsa

Using several different kinds of cherry tomatoes gives the salsa a colorful presentation.

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 ear of corn (husks and silks removed)
1 basket cherry tomatoes (washed, stems removed, quartered)
1 garlic clove (peeled, finely chopped) optional
2 tablespoons red onions (finely chopped)
1 cup cilantro or Italian parsley (washed, stems removed, finely chopped)
1 small hot pepper (washed, stem and seeds removed, finely chopped) optional
1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional)
1 teaspoon olive oil
Sea salt and pepper

Method

Drizzle olive oil over the ear of corn and grill on all sides until lightly charred, remove, let cool and cut off all the kernels. Mix the corn with the tomatoes, onions, and cilantro and season with the hot pepper (optional), lemon juice (optional) , olive oil, sea salt and pepper.

For an Italian style salsa substitute the parsley for the cilantro, black pepper for the hot pepper, and don't use the lemon juice.

Carne Asada

Traditionally carne asada is served with a corn or flour tortilla. Sometimes I substitute lavash for the tortilla because the lavash is flakier and sweeter.

Yield: 4 servings
Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

1 pound skirt or flank steak (washed, pat dry)
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
Hot sauce (optional)
4 large tortillas or lavash
4 romaine leaves (washed, shredded)
1 avocado (washed, pitted, peeled, roughly chopped)
2 scallions or 1 small onion (washed, peeled, finely chopped)
2 cups grated cheddar

Method

Sprinkle olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and hot sauce (optional) on a plate. Dredge the pieces of steak through the seasoned oil until well coated and grill on a hot barbecue 5-8 minutes on each side until slightly charred.

Remove from the grill, put on a plate, cover with tin foil, let rest for 5 minutes. Lightly grill tortillas or lavash on the grill. Chop the meat into bite-sized pieces, spread on the tortillas or lavash. Sprinkle on the lettuce, onions, and cheese. Season to taste with sea salt and hot sauce. Top with salsa.

Bivalves Reign Supreme During Father's Day Week

I have a Father's Day recommendation: visit One for the Table, a web site devoted to "Food, Politics, and Love"--a good mix of interests in my book--and read the Father's Day essays.

For these dozen writers the memory of their fathers and grandfathers is forever tied to food: eggs over easy, mackerel, crustaceans, deli food, apple pie and caviar... Amy Ephron, who created this beautifully written site, was kind enough to include the post I published in February with Frank and Michael's remembrance of my cooking their favorite dishes: rosemary chickens and flourless chocolate cakes.

If my sons write another essay and talk about my favorite food, I'm certain they'd focus on my love of shellfish. I would eat lobster, crab, oysters, scallops, clams and mussels regularly if anyone else in the family liked them. Since I prefer to cook what my family wants to eat, I stick with beef, chicken, and pork.

When I went to the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers' Market, I hadn't intended to buy any shellfish, but talking with Rob at Carlsbad Aquafarm, I couldn't resist. Michelle was at Sundance for the month. Frank has his own apartment. Michael was working late. I was going to be eating dinner alone anyway. Besides which, this was Father's Day-week, so a little shellfish indulgence could be tolerated.

I bought clams and mussels and had one of those exceptionally agreeable Home Alone evenings. They were deliciously tender and sweet. I was very happy.

For those of you who don't care for clams or mussels, please indulge me and read the recipes. There's always the off-chance that you didn't realize your father or grandfather loves bivavles and now you'll know how to prepare them.

If you get the urge to cook bivalves for Father's Day, fresh shellfish is available at Santa Monica Seafood. Carlsbad Aquafarm will be at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market on Saturday. If you're in New York on the Upper West Side, stop by Fairway Market or Citarella.

Steamed Mussels

Yield 2 servings
Time 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 pounds live mussels (washed, "beards" removed)
2 slices bacon (finely chopped)
2 shallots (peeled, sliced)
2 garlic cloves (peeled, sliced)
1/4 cup Italian parsley (washed, stems removed, finely chopped)
2 tablespoons butter
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper

Method

In a large sauce pan sauté the bacon, shallots, garlic, and parsley with a little olive oil until lightly browned. Add 1/4 cup water and the mussels. Cover and cook on high heat for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium for 5 minutes. Discard any mussels that haven't opened.

Serve the mussels and broth in bowls with a fresh baguette.

The mussels can be removed from their shells and served with the broth as a soup, topped with croutons.

Clams with Pasta

Any pasta goes well with clams. Usually I like spaghetti, ziti, or shells, but for this meal I used a small pasta called tubetti. The effect was very good. The pasta was so small, the clam flavor dominated each bite.

Yield 2 servings
Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 pounds live clams (washed)
1/4 cup Italian parsley (washed, leaves only, finely chopped)
2 bacon slices (finely chopped)
1/4 cup corn kernels (fresh not canned)
3 garlic cloves (peeled, finely chopped)
2 mushrooms, brown or shiitake (washed, dried, sliced thin)
2 tablespoons onion or shallot (peeled, finely chopped)
1/2 box De Cecco pasta (tubetti, ziti, spaghetti, or shells)
1 cup pasta water
1/2 cup chicken stock (homemade) or water
1 tablespoon sweet butter
Freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Olive oil
Sea salt and pepper

Method

Put the clams in a large saucepan with 1/4 cup of water, cover, boil on high heat for 5 minutes, remove all the clams that have opened, continue cooking another 5 minutes, discard any clams that have not opened, and reserve the clam juice. Strain the juice to remove any grit or shell fragments.

The clams are delicious by themselves and no one would blame you for eating them all at this point. If you have the discipline to continue on, you'll be rewarded with a superlative pasta dish.

Boil 4 quarts of salted water, add the pasta, stir frequently, taste after 8 minutes, and drain. Remember to capture 1 cup of pasta water to use in the sauce.

Drizzle olive oil in the saucepan and sauté the parsley, bacon, corn, garlic, mushrooms, and shallots until lightly browned, add the butter, pasta water, and chicken stock--if you don't have stock, use plain water--season with pepper. Hold off adding sea salt until the very end. The clams are salty, as is the pasta water.

Reduce the sauce by half, add the pasta, toss to coat well, taste and adjust the seasoning (for more sweetness add butter and chicken stock; sea salt and pepper if needed) remove to a bowl and top with freshly grated Parmesan or Romano.

Variations

For more heat add pepper flakes or a dusting of cayenne.

Substitute cilantro for parsley and add grated fresh ginger.

Add quartered cherry tomatoes and roughly chopped spinach leaves to the sauté.

A Surprise at the Farmers' Market: Six Oysters, Two Appetizers, One Stew

Michelle checked the refrigerator and all we needed from the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers' market was a romaine lettuce. She handed me the list before I left. Usually when I go to the Wednesday market, I only have a few minutes, but the day wasn't that busy, so I didn't have to rush. I checked with the farmers I usually go to for lettuce, but there must have been heavy rains when the romaine was picked, because the ones I saw were pretty ragged and muddy.

I have to confess, whenever I go to a farmers' market, I buy more than I intended. The flowers are always amazing, even in the winter and the vegetables are so inviting. By the time I'd walked around the market, I'd filled my bag with anemones, Italian parsley, a bunch of carrots, a bag of Haas avocados, and Yukon potatoes. I even bought baby onions and fresh mustard greens because they were too cool to pass up, even though I didn't have a clue what I'd do with them.

Leaving the market I saw that a new vendor, Carlsbad Aquafarm, was selling baskets of fresh mussels, oysters, clams, and red seaweed. Fresh oysters at a reasonable price are always hard for me to resist. The Catalina Oysters looked like the Gulf oysters I had years ago when I worked on an oyster boat near Galveston. I bought a dozen.

When I got home, excited about having oysters for lunch, I unpacked what I'd gotten from the market and realized an awful truth. I'd forgotten to buy the romaine. 'Guess I got distracted.

I've described how to shuck oysters in an earlier posting. It's not difficult, but it does take some practice. Prying open the first plump, beautiful oyster, I discovered a benefit of buying them fresh-from-the-ocean. As I cut the oyster loose, nectar filled the shell. Six oysters opened over a bowl and I had a cup of nectar. Today had turned into a day of improvising. My lunch now had an added course: oyster stew.

Eating good food makes me happy. I must have learned that from my dad. When I was a kid, I remember watching him come home from work and sink down into his leather chair. My mom had the routine down cold. Within a few minutes she'd bring him a plate of appetizers. Happiness for him was a pre-dinner feast of pickled herring with sour cream and onions on pumpernickel bread, a plate of thinly sliced radishes with salt, a jar of baby shrimp in cocktail sauce, and a Seven & Seven on the rocks. The only part of his menu held onto was a love of cocktail sauce.

I tried the raw oysters a variety of ways: with a squeeze of lemon juice, a little taste of caviar left over from my Home Alone dinner, with finely chopped baby onions, with chopped avocado, and with cocktail sauce. I ate the oysters with slices of French bread and a couple of Nabisco saltine crackers.

6 Oysters Serves 1. Preparation Time: 10 minutes.

Traditional Cocktail Sauce

1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon capers
1 teaspoon soy sauce
½ teaspoon grated horse radish
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
Pinch of cayenne

Mix all the ingredients together. Put a small amount on top of each oyster. The recipe makes enough for several servings. Keep the sauce in the refrigerator in a sealed jar.

Salami With Avocado

When I had finished prepping the oysters, I realized I hadn't used half of the avocado. I could have easily made an arugula and avocado salad, but an appetizer seemed more satisfying. There was some felino salami from Bay Cities in the refrigerator. A piece of avocado, dredged in olive oil with sea salt and black pepper, placed on a slice of the salami, topped with finely chopped scallions and reduced balsamic vinegar and I had a delicious compliment to the oysters.

Oyster Stew

This dish is a freebie. The nectar gives the stew its flavor. Since I was eating raw oysters, I didn't need any in the stew, but you can certainly add them if you want.

1 cup oyster nectar
½ cup homemade chicken stock
½ carrot, washed, peeled, finely chopped
½ Yukon potato, washed, peeled, finely chopped
1 large shallot, peeled, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled, finely chopped
½ cup Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 piece of bacon or 1"piece of sausage (Italian or Cajun), finely chopped
1 tablespoon sweet butter
1 tablespoon cream
Freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
2 tablespoons homemade croutons

Two quick notes. The stew doesn't need any added salt. The oyster nectar has all the saltiness you'll need. The vegetables should be finely chopped as you would with a mirepoix.

Sauté the vegetables and bacon/sausage in the olive oil, seasoned with black pepper. After they're lightly browned, add the pat of butter, the oyster nectar, and the chicken stock. Simmer for 15 minutes to combine the flavors. Taste the potato for doneness. If you've decided that you'd like to have some oysters in the stew, add them at this point and simmer for 2 minutes. The oysters can be cooked whole or cut up if they are larger than the size of the soup spoon. Add the cream and simmer 2 minutes. Top with a tablespoon of croutons just before serving.

Serves 2. Preparation Time: 15 minutes. Cooking Time: 20 minutes.

Dim Sum at Din Tai Fung and Ginger Chicken with Sushi Rice at Home

Today started out as a really bad day. I had an important business meeting, but it...canceled. I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch, but he...rescheduled. A day that looked incredibly full was now...completely empty.

I checked the TiVo in the bedroom and watched the Chocolate Battle on Iron Chef America (Bobby Flay v. Graham Bowles). Since I had nothing better to do, it seemed as if it was time to finally clean off my desk. That's when I found a review I'd cut out from the Los Angeles Times by Susan LaTempa about Din Tai Fung, in Arcadia. She made their dumplings sound amazing, but Arcadia?

That's miles away from where we live. Besides which, how accurate a review is depends on the taste of the writer. I hadn't read her reviews before, so she was an unknown quantity. But I love dumplings and, if they were as good as she said they were, maybe it was worth the drive.

From where we live near the beach in Pacific Palisades, Arcadia is on the far, eastern edge of LA, a good 40+ miles by freeway, taking me east across the LA Basin, north through Downtown, then across Pasadena, and finally east again into the San Gabriel Valley.

The review had predicted there'd be a long line out in front. She was certainly accurate about that. I joined the queue and waited 45 minutes before I got a table. With some friendly advice from the waitress and guided by the review, I spent the next hour enjoying the highlights of the menu: a mound of sautéed garlic-string beans, 10 pork/crab dim dumplings, a large steamer filled with pork shumai topped with whole shrimp, and stir fried noodles with shrimp and spinach. One of the condiments that came with the lunch was a small bowl of finely shredded fresh ginger. Adding soy sauce into the bowl with the ginger made a dipping sauce that added the right amount of edge to the sweet dumplings.

Susan LaTempa's review accurately reported about the special qualities of dishes like the pork/crab dumplings: usually a Chinese dumpling has a stuffing of meat and some vegetables, but here the dumplings had an added "spoonful of fragrant broth in each".

Happily, the meal put me in a very different frame of mind. More than an enjoyable lunch, Din Tai Fung's dumplings made me want to go home and cook. The julienned ginger and soy sauce combination had given me an idea.

Passing through Downtown, I made a quick stop in Chinatown to pick up ingredients. An odd fact about Chinatown is that virtually all the large Chinese supermarkets are gone. What's left are mom-and-pop style stores like the Far East Supermarket at 758 new High Street. Although small, the market has a good collection of Chinese vegetables, fresh fish, and meats. I decided on deboned chicken legs, a nice piece of fresh ginger, baby bok choy, and some shiitake mushrooms.

Ginger Chicken with Italian Sausage and Bok Choy

You can use breast meat, but dark meat holds up better and won't dry out as easily. Asian markets sell deboned leg meat very inexpensively. If you're buying chicken legs from the local supermarket, cutting the meat off the bone isn't difficult. Combining the chicken and Italian sausage with the ginger and soy sauce puts an edge on the sweet and savory meats. You can serve plain, steamed rice, but using sushi rice adds another layer of tartness. The generous amount of broth holds all the flavors together.

Yield: 4 servings

Time: 60 minutes.

Ingredients

2 pounds deboned, skinned, chicken leg meat, washed, cut into 1" pieces
4 garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped
1" piece of ginger, peeled, julienned
2 Italian sweet sausages, cut into 1" rounds
1 bunch baby bok choy, ends trimmed, quartered length-wise
6 shiitake mushrooms, washed, thinly sliced
2 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cups Japanese rice
2 ½ cups water
2 tablespoons Japanese rice vinegar
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Method

In a wok or chef's pan, brown the sausage rounds in the olive oil then remove, drain on a paper towel, and set aside. Sauté the chicken meat, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, and garlic until lightly browned. Add the chicken stock, soy sauce, and the sausage. Simmer for 20 minutes, then add the bok choy, lightly cover with a sheet of tin foil, and simmer for another 15 minutes.

Making the rice: I have to confess I have used a rice cooker for so many years, I couldn't begin to tell you how to make Japanese rice without it. With the rice cooker, add the rice and water, cover, push the button, wait for the button to pop up, use chop sticks to fluff the rice, put the cover back on, and leave alone for 5 minutes. Put the cooked rice into a large metal bowl, add the Japanese rice vinegar and sugar and toss well. Cover the rice to keep it hot.

Put a large spoonful of the sushi rice in the middle of a bowl. Ladle the chicken, sausage, and bok choy with plenty of liquid over the rice.