Content about Seafood
June 24, 2011
A Chicago Backyard and Many Happy People
Mexican food is made for parties. The construction of tortillas, fillings, salsas, and toppings; the spicy, rich flavors; and above all, the fact that it tastes so darn good. This was our guiding principle on a recent Saturday when, with the help of a handful of talented friends, we threw a Baja Fish Taco party under warm string lights in a Chicago backyard.
We were celebrating one of the early recipes published on this blog for beer-...
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Getting a head start on the season
Soft shell crab season is here, generally considered to begin at some point in May. So we here at The Paupered Chef decided it was time to take advantage. Generally, the soft shell crab is dusted with flour and fried up in a skillet, and I'm not sure there is a better way to prepare this crustacean than this recipe by David Lentz from Food & Wine magazine: stuffed into a crusty baguette with a lightly dressed cole...
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March 9, 2011
I'm kind of sucker for Cajun and Creole cuisine, so I couldn't help but whip up a batch of shrimp and in honor of Fat Tuesday. What I didn't expect was that everything would heat back up so well for lunch the next day. The grits were still creamy and addictive, and the shrimp still popped. Might have to start making this more often for the week.
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The original celebrity chef helps us out with this French classic.
A variation on meunière sauce with almonds
In one of the opening scenes of My Life in France, Julia Child experiences an early meal in France with her husband, Paul, a lunch at La Couronne, a medieval house turned restaurant built in 1345. After oysters, she goes on to describe an early culinary epiphany, apart of what would become "the most exciting meal of my life."
Paul had decided to order sole meunière....
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February 24, 2010
How to save the oyster while cutting up chicken.
The chicken oyster. It sounds strange. But also intriguing enough to suggest deliciousness. I've heard other people talk about this elusive piece of meat hidden somewhere on the chicken. Only smart cooks know about it, like Thomas Keller, who mentions it in his recipe for "My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken" in the Bouchon cookbook. When the chicken is done roasting, the skin golden and fragrant, he locates the oyster on each...
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January 26, 2010
This fishy roe is a meal in itself.
My Chicago is about life as a cooks and eaters in our home city. Markets, restaurants, secret finds, really tasty bites--or just a great story. We're lucky to live here.
Bottarga would handily win the award for "foodstuff with least correlation between attractiveness and deliciousness," if such a thing existed. It is a brown, firm lobe, and, poor thing, really quite ugly. A cured, pressed, and dried fish egg sack. How...
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January 21, 2010
Some sandwiches don't need a top.
Personally, I didn't need any convincing, but after seeing the above picture, I can see why you might. It's the same reason Alton Brown went to great lengths on a recent episode of Good Eats to hide a central ingredient in his recipe. Something small, something oily, something canned, something with a rather poor reputation. This particular foodstuff was apart of a puzzling, yet intriguing little sandwich that was the centerpiece of...
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My last post about the Fulton Street Fish market covered its history, including corruption and mob connections, leading up to the 2005 move from lower Manhattan up to Hunts Point in the Bronx. This post is about our actual experience in the market: how it functioned, what Hunts Point is like today, and a few good eats in the area. While in Hunts Point we met a few fish buyers, ate in 24-hour coffee shops, and were invited personally...
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August 12, 2008
If you walk around Manhattan, it often seems like more than half of the stores are restaurants, most of them busy and stuffed with people. It doesn't take much thinking before one wonders how all that food gets into the kitchens to feed them all. And not just the dining-out set: what about grocery stores? And bodegas. And butchers. And fish mongers. The sheer quantity of food moved around the city every day...
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I can't remember exactly where the conversation began, or why we suddenly started talking about New Orleans, but for about 5 minutes last Friday Night I waxed poetic about the Crescent City. My interest has been explored before, but apparently my chatter seemed especially interesting that night. I suppose I could have been because my friend Hal had never been, and I took umbrage. It was late, and alcohol was slightly involved...
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February 4, 2008
It didn't look pretty. After two days in the fridge, my fennel-cured salmon looked something like a disaster. A lot of the liquid had somehow seeped out of my protective covering. This worried me because that meant the brine didn't probably coat the fish during the cure. It might not be done. How would I know if it worked?
Ruhlman said to give it a touch. "The salmon should be firm to the touch at the...
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January 30, 2008
Sparked with inspiration by Blake’s duck proscuitto, I procured Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and dug in. Don’t let anyone fool you; it’s intimidating stuff. Curing food is the exact opposite of the cooking I’ve become used to. I love to take fresh ingredients and then cook them quickly, without much fuss. This process, hopefully, highlights the good quality of ingredients I’ve been...
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January 24, 2008
From his memoir Heat
My favorite passages from Bill Buford's Heat are set in the Babbo kitchen, when he describes with fear and awe the wonder that is a busy restaurant kitchen at dinnertime-- tickets flying, steam vaporizing, oil popping. Orders arrive faster than they can be made; you are perpetually behind. The heat, of course, is unbearable-- like a shimmering wall when you enter the kitchen. Sweat pours down. Timing is everything. A mistakes can...
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January 21, 2008
Quality ranges considerably; the worst come in a brine or packed in oil (often rancid); the best anchovies tend to be packed in salt, are worth seeking out, and can be delicious by themselves.
- Michael Ruhlman, The Elements of Cooking A to Z
On one of my last Brooklyn weekends before the big move to the Mid-West, I spent most of my time dashing in and out of every specialty grocery store in the Carroll Gardens area on a very important...
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January 2, 2008
Welcome to 2008! Abby and I spent New Year's Eve constructing the ultimate meal. We spent a small fortune at Whole Foods and walked away with a lot of shellfish and a fillet mignon or two. Since we weren't going to some fancy black tie event, we felt okay about spending more money than we would for a weeknight meal. We sort of had a carte blanche to create whatever we could dream up. Here's what we had: ...
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December 12, 2007
"No, no, no!" our waiter was saying, dashing across the room to our white-tableclothed table, where we were sitting in front of a grilled Turbot. I was politely transferring a portion of the fish's glistening meat to my plate with two forks.
"It's very important to us," he began to explain, almost out of breath, while taking my fork and knife, "to eat with our hands." He picked up the fish's head and began to...
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August 23, 2007
On my way home from work every day, I walk down Lexington Avenue and risk the smell, squeeze, and auditory onslaught that is the Grand Central station subway stop. I never get to see the beautiful, soaring interior of the actual terminal, which looks like a starry night's sky. No. Only the passage where everyone else shoves into this awful, grubby stairway under a Strawberry clothing store that often smells like a sewer....
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August 15, 2007
I wondered often about what I'd have to give up, culinary speaking, when I moved from New York to Ohio, but most my fears have proved to be unwarranted. There is a fantastic farmer’s market and utterly divine regional specalities (try Jeni's ice cream!). But fish has been hard. Most of the stuff in grocery stores looks decent, but it has been previously frozen and thawed at the store. There are a couple fresh...
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August 6, 2007
I just watched Emeril make shrimp etouffee in about 10 minutes. I’m sure some of that time was saved thanks to the precut vegetables, pre-made stock, and carefully placed commercial breaks. But it was still a little disconcerting to see him whip up a slow moving dish with such manic energy. He made it look quick and easy, which can't be said about this one. Not only does this version have lots of ingredients, it...
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After some disappointing lobster rolls, the raw beauty of a national park was just what we needed. We drove into Acadia after dark, paid for a campsite, pitched our tent, and fell asleep immediately. The sun rose hot and early, and I woke up squinting. For a few minutes I thought we were going to start the day at 5 in the morning, but then I was able to pull the hood from the sweatshirt I was using as a pillow to enclose my...
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July 18, 2007
After we left Portland, we didn't have much of a plan. We knew we needed to arrive at Acadia National Park, about 150 miles away, by nightfall. On the list was, of course, lobster. We also wanted to see the famed L.L. Bean store. A friend had insisted we see a place called Popham beach, and we also wanted to visit Blue Hill, where E.B. White used to spend summers.
Armed with page after page of recommendations for lobster...
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July 10, 2007
Last weekend, some of Elin’s friends that she met while getting her master’s degree in England came for a visit. Max and Chris are both from South Africa. They spent a long weekend with us and we did our best to show them our way of life in New York—playing the good hosts. Often, guests find New York overwhelming, or they find the idea of it overwhelming. “Where do I start?” they ask....
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May 30, 2007
My only real dumpling experience has been at the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, a tasty, if tad expensive little shop in Flatiron. There you could get fried or steamed dumplings with whatever filling you wanted for around $6. A box full of those, a warm, sun-drenched day in Madison Square Park, and all is right with the world. I know Chinatown has some great deals, some where 5 or more can be secured for $1. But mine were tasty...
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May 21, 2007
Everybody’s always talking about lobster--in a roll mixed with mayonnaise, sliced in two and charred on a grill, served with dipping butter next to a tender piece of filet mignon. The fact is, this animal gets far too much attention. No doubt about it, lobster is quite something--but how often can you afford to eat it? For the same reason we rarely eat filet mignon--and then only when it’s on sale--we don’t...
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April 25, 2007
I’ve only recently reached a point where I’m ever so slightly bored with cooking. Don’t worry--it’s only a very subtle, mild boredom, easily fixed. But it’s there, and it’s a stage I’m sure many cooks experience periodically. What compels me to make the same old dish again? And even if I use new ingredients, isn’t it still the same technique? I’m a qualified saute-er, I can braise...
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April 12, 2007
Every once in a while I get really excited about something I've never made before, and before I really have a firm understanding about what I'm getting myself into, I'm in the middle of making it. "Hey, I've never made a whole ham. Let's do it tonight even though we have no guests." This is the thinking that lead me to pull out an apparatus that has never, ever been used in my kitchen before: the bamboo steamer....
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February 12, 2007
We all grew up on tuna fish sandwiches, whether we liked it or not. Sally pulls out her bag of carrots and a PB & J, Frankie his bologna with Kraft slices, and I pull out a soggy, fishy, tuna sandwich, and everyone stares. And holds their nose.
But it turns out my mom was on the right track: James Beard famously said that tuna is the "only food better canned than fresh." He was entirely wrong, but it stands that canned tuna is a...
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January 12, 2007
I'm no stranger to clams. I'm no stranger to the whole bivalve genus. I think that we've cooked mussels more than any other dish for this website, even going so far as titling a post "Because You Can Throw Just About Anything In the Pot with Mussels and It Will Taste Glorious." Clams are cooked much the same way: you make a simple broth with herbs and usually a little butter, toss the critters in the pot, add some kind of wine, slam the...
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January 11, 2007
I've been attempting to eat more fish this year. In fact, it's something of a resolution for me. Whether I did it to be healthier, get fitter, or simply have a more varied diet, I instantly dreamt of grilled salmon, roasted whole red snappers, halibut tacos, and other feasts of fresh, flaky fish that would pump me full of omega 3 and immune me from any possible disease. What I wasn't thinking about when that ball was dropping...
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January 5, 2007
It's all around us: the studies exclaim the health benefits of fish and those miracle omega-3 fats, which you can either get by pill popping those capsules or by simply eating more fish. With the New Year come and gone, and the resolutions stated, it is time for us to try and at least keep one: We're going to try to eat more fish. It's a rather hard resolution to keep--fish is expensive and difficult to cook well (especially...
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October 23, 2006
One of the many things that happens when you cook often and with whole ingredients is that you start to face up to the creatures you are eating. When I roast a chicken at 500 degrees, handling its raw flesh and trussing it, and then take a large knife to its carcass, I still understand that this was once a feathered bird that bid its life on some farm, whether that was indoors or out. I'm okay with this. As an avowed meat...
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Every time I go to a grocery store and, while making my merry way down the produce aisle, I see leeks, a little jolt of suspicion and hesitation runs through me. My shoulders tense up a little, my eyes get shifty, and I keep walking. What are those giant, oversized green onions? What steroids have they been fed? Are they from a Jonathan Swift novel? And why do these arm-length vegetables require me to commit to bunches of three?
So I...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
