Oui, Chef

Nobu's Spicy Shrimp Tempura

 

One of my favorite features of Bon Appetit magazine has always been the r.s.v.p. section.  This is where readers write to ask the Bon Appetit staff to chase down chefs in order to discover the recipes of their favorite restaurant meals.  I've never written in myself, but have loved reading about people's special food memories, and their quest to uncover the secrets to making a beloved "restaurant" dish at home.

That said, the boys and I came across a dish this past Spring, that had I not already had the recipe in a cookbook I owned (how lucky was that?), I almost certainly would have been begging Bon Appetit to get it for me.  My desperation not only driven by how perfectly tasty the dish is, but also by Grid relentlessly hounding me to figure out how to make Nobu's "Tempura Shrimp with Creamy Spicy Sauce"....man, you'd think I never feed the kid.

The dish is so addictive that when we ordered it as a shared appetizer, I started to really fear that someone was going to get hurt, as the four of us stabbed our chopsticks into the serving bowl to fight for our share.  It got UGLY in a hurry!

Rich and Spicy Applesauce

When the boys returned from a visit to their grandparent's house in VT. last weekend with a 1/2 bushel bag of fresh from the tree, organically grown apples, it could only mean one thing....time for some homemade applesauce!  Making your own applesauce is so easy to do, and the quality of the end product so far better than ANYTHING you can buy in a store, that we haven't bought a jar of applesauce in many years.

Soup au Pistou

This is a dish that may not be a home-run with very young kids because its absolutely packed with veggies (YUK, what are you trying to do, poison me?), but its easy, flavorful, and can provide plenty of room for creativity for your budding teenage cooks.  Soup au Pistou is a traditional Provencal dish that is made in as many different ways as there are cooks who make it.  Loosely speaking, it is a summer vegetable soup served with a blast of fresh pesto, and many serve it, as I do, with a pesto topped crouton floating on top as well.

This is a great soup to make on your local Farmer's Market day.  If you can, bring the kids with you to meet the farmers who grow your local veggies, and let them choose some of the bounty that will find its way into the soup.  There are no hard and fast rules as to what to include, and in fact, every time I make it, I end up with a distinctly different soup in the end.  As long as you buy the freshest veggies you can get your hands on, and work to include a variety of color and texture in your choices, you'll have a beautiful, fresh and satisfying soup in the end.  If you use a store bought chicken stock, make sure it is a low sodium brand, and if you have the time, allow an hour at the start to infuse it with some aromatics to add a little more interest and depth to your soup.

Peyton missed the trip to the Farmer's market this time around, but was fully up to the task of practicing her knife skills (which are really coming along) by prepping our mise of chopped, sliced, and diced veggies.  While she was busy doing her ginsu thing, I crafted a little sachet that included, white peppercorns, anise seed, fresh thyme, and fresh rosemary, and set it steeping in our barely simmering store bought stock.  The finished soup is delicious hot or cold, with a crusty bread as accompaniment. 

Recipe:

Soup au Pistou

By: Steve Dunn

(Print Friendly Version)

Ingredients:

1 16 ounce can of cannelini beans, drained and rinsed

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 large carrot, cut into 1/4 inch dice

1 small zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch dice

1/4 pound green beans, cut into 1 inch lengths

10 leaves of swiss chard or kale, sliced into 1/2" thick ribbons

1/2 cup of shelled peas

2 cups of tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced

2 ears of corn, kernels cut from the cob

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced into rounds (on a  Kyocera Adjustable Mandoline Slicer, Red , if you have one)

4 cups low sodium chicken broth

2 cups water

EVOO

Salt and Pepper

Basil Pesto

aromatics - 1 stem fresh rosemary, 3 stems fresh thyme, 1 teaspoon peppercorns, 1 teaspoon anise seeds

Method:

Place chicken stock and water in a sauce pan over low-medium heat.  Add the aromatics tied in a cheese cloth bundle, and simmer for 1 hour.  Remove the bundle and reserve the stock.

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot over low-medium heat.  Add the onion and carrot and saute 15 minutes to soften.  Raise the heat to medium, and add the green beans, zucchini, cannelini beans, tomatoes, and chicken stock to the pan, and cook 10-15 minutes.  You want the soup at a simmer, not a rolling boil.  Add the corn, peas, and swiss chard and cook for another 5 minutes.  Check seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste.  Ladle into warm bowls and top with a spoonful of fresh pesto.  You can also make a crouton by taking a slice of baguette, topping it with some gruyere cheese, and toasting it under the broiler.  Spoon some pesto onto the crouton and float it on top of your soup.  Oh, la, la.

Serves 6

Madeleines

"The fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach".  I think on this point, most of us would agree. 

But did you know that the same can be said for young girls? 

Well, I’m here to tell you that this strategy is equally effective when attempting to vie for a young chica’s affections, especially if what you’re offering to put in her stomach is something, that warm out of the oven, is as delicate and delicious as a homemade madeleine.

It was to this simple recipe that I turned shortly after I started dating my second wife, when I felt a little “sweetener” would help to warm the hearts of her two young daughters.  To be fair, Muppet and Peyton seemed OK with me dating their mom from the get-go, but I must say that the introduction of madeleines to their world certainly helped to grease the path of my acceptance into their lives.

Steak Frites with Sauce Bérnaise

OK, I know what you’re thinking....”sauce bérnaise” sounds way too scary, fussy, and time consuming for you to EVER contemplate cooking, let alone with your kids.  I get it, and I used to think that too, until I was taught how to make it while at Le Cordon Bleu.  The fact is, sauce bérnaise is really quite simple to make, hardly takes any time at all, and is such a perfect complement to grilled steak, that once you’ve made it, you’re going to weep like a baby thinking about how every steak you have ever made in the past was just a shadow of what it could have been had you only known how to craft the magical bérnaise.  

Really, I’m not kidding.

Now, this is not a meal that I recommend you reach for every week (as much as you might want to), because between the fries and the bérnaise it is a real artery menace.  But, once you get some confidence with the sauce , and get your timing down for the fries, it is a meal that is totally doable on a weeknight, and mastering a classic French sauce is a great confidence builder for a novice cook. 

M Cookies

Imagine my surprise (and delight) as I slipped into the kitchen a few mornings ago and found my youngest step-daughter curled up in a comfy chair with a fist full of post-it tags in her right hand, and an open cookbook on her lap.  I asked her what she was up to, and she told me that she was “just looking for some fun stuff to cook.”

God be praised.

As I walked closer I could see that she hadn’t picked up one of the few “kid” oriented cookbooks that I had on the shelf, but rather the quite fabulous Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme .

Holy crap!

She had a wide grin on her face and that all too familiar glazed look in her eyes, which I recognized immediately as a sign of someone who had just been exposed to a healthy dose of really good food porn.  She quickly shoved the book in my face and rapidly started to flip the pages to show me all the recipes she wanted to try; the Triple Chocolate and Meringue Ice Cream Puffs, the Gâteau Saint-Honoré, and the Plaisir Sucré were her favorites....oh my.  To be sure, these are some of the more elaborate and complicated confections in the whole book. 

Merde!

As challenging as her choices were (especially for a 10 year old), I gotta say that I like the way she thinks.  She is definitely a ”go BIG, or go home” kinda girl.  No fussing about with a beginner’s cookbook for her, no sir.  If she was going to learn how to bake, then she wanted to have the world’s premiere pastry chef showing her the way.......ummm, that would be Pierre, not me.

Vanilla - Spice Granola

6:30 AM.....Grunt, groan, sigh....the fridge door opens, a cursory glance at the contents apparently yields nothing interesting.  The ritual is repeated next at the freezer, and then at the breadbox before the inevitable question is tossed my way. 

"Hey dad, what's for breakfast?" 

I'm not even sure why I bother to answer, because regardless of what I say, the only response I ever get in return is; "Is that all?"  "We never have anything good for breakfast anymore!"  Repeat this dialogue (if you want to call it that) four more times, once for each of my kids stumbling into the kitchen, and you have a pretty accurate depiction of my morning routine lately.  I suspect that the deterioration in the morning 'tude is just part of their end-of-the-school-year restlessness, but it seems an opportune time to add a new player to the breakfast rotation in any event.  Something that is nutritious, easy to make, can do double duty as an afternoon snack, and most importantly, will get my kids off my @#$  about not having anything good to eat for breakfast.  The choice is simple, delicious and obvious.

Granola.

Slip this word into a chat you are having with anyone over the age of 30, and the image in their mind’s eye is liable to be this; granola, the breakfast of choice for birkenstock and tie-dye wearing tree-hugger hippies weaving hemp plant-hangers while listening to The Grateful Dead.  You know, munchy fodder for “crunchy-granola” types.

Mention granola to a group of kids sitting around the breakfast table, and you’re likely to illicit a sea of sour faces and the following dialogue; “keep that nasty bowl of tree bark and weeds far away from me, just the smell of it is making my eyes itch....I must be allergic."

Such a bad rap for what CAN be a delicious and nutritious staple of healthy eating.  Of course, the poor rep is not entirely undeserved.  Most pre-made granola on the market today falls into two broad categories, it either does taste like a bowl of bark mulch and pebbles, or it has been so highly processed and “sugared” in order to appeal to the bulk of our mass market cereal eaters, that it should not even be considered a cousin, eight times removed, of real granola.

There are some terrific artisanal granolas on the market these days, but at a cost of $10-15 for a 16 oz. bag, even our hemp-weaving hippie friends (who have been known to spend great sums for weedy things sold in bags) choke at the cost.