The Wednesday Chef

  • SHF #15: Sally Schneider’s “Real” Jell-O

    Jello

    There are days when living in New York feels like having found a spot to curl up on in an pearl-laden oyster shell. Those days I walk around the city feeling love and magnanimity towards everyone I pass: surly cab drivers honking at dithering cars, delivery guys on teetering bicycles who insist on driving against traffic, corn-rowed women working at the check-out line in my grocery store who break into a smile when I thank them. The sun shines just so on the tops of buildings and being alive in Manhattan feels like a privilege.

    But then there are days when the trudge to work is twice as long than the day before. The unrelenting noise makes my eyeballs twitch. The people on the sidewalk in front of me are too slow, the line at the grocery store makes me crazy, and it's all I can do to keep myself from locking myself in my bathroom and plugging my ears up for some peace and quiet (though of course that won't be happening any time soon, due to the recent cockroach sighting and subsequent moratorium on bathroom stays longer than 85 seconds. You'd be amazed at how fast a face can be washed, toned, and moisturized while simultaneously making room for a thorough brushing of the teeth.).

    On days like those, I eat cereal for dinner. I make rude gestures when my cell phone rings. I think all sorts of woeful and self-indulgent thoughts about (the abysmal state of) my writing, my (sometimes screwy and complicated) relationships with the people I love, and my (totally unknown) purpose in life. To make myself feel better, I curl up on my couch and dream about a life in which Jon Stewart is my best friend, obliging me with constant amusement and tales of mockery.

    I'm not giving up that dream, but I have found a different antidote to my current malaise, and it comes in the form of exotic fruit juice and powdered pigs knuckles. Jell-O, yup. Sam of Becks & Posh proposed that the theme for this month's Sugar High Friday be anything made with minimal or no processed sugar. Amongst my mountains of newspaper clippings, there was nothing fitting this description that inspired me. But being the lucky owner of Sally Schneider's A New Way to Cook proved serendipitous.

    Sally has you dissolve powdered gelatin in some unsweetened fruit juice (go to a fancy food store and you can go nuts choosing what kind – sour cherry? papaya? Japanese plum?) both cold and heated, which you then mix together and chill. You can make different batches of juice and layer them over each other (waiting until each layer is set before starting a new one). If you're creative with colors and the thickness of layers, you've got yourself a batch of desserts that are stunningly simple and visually arresting (or the other way around).

    In my attempt at minimalism, I made a bottom layer of pomegranate Jell-O and a top layer of guava. The guava layer had a creamier texture, while the pomegranate jelly had the trademark wobble that gives Jell-O its lasting power among the young and young at heart (who hasn't stared happily into a bowl of Jell-O cubes as they jiggle and sway to their own beat?). The flavors were clear and delicious and the eating is pure pleasure. You can nibble your way carefully through one layer and then another, or you can sink your spoon through the quivering Jell-O and bring up a curved slice of bicolored joy.

    As any child knows, the best thing about Jell-O is squelching it in your mouth, letting the coolness slide down your throat. And now as an adult I know that it can make even a dismal week a little bit better.

    Real "Jell-O"
    Serves 4

    2 cups fresh or good-quality bottled fruit juice or puree
    1 envelope (1/4 ounce) powdered gelatin
    2-3 teaspoons of fresh lemon juice (optional)
    Sugar, honey, maple syrup, or fructose to taste (optional)

    1. Pour 1/2 cup fo the fruit juice into a medium glass bowl or measuring cup and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Let stand for 1 minute.

    2. In a medium saucepan, bring the remaining 1 1/2 cups fruit juice to a boil. Stir into the gelatin mixture until dissolved. Add the lemon juice and sweetener to taste, if desired (I left both out). Pour into individual bowls or into one bowl. Let cool, then refrigerate for several hours, until set.

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  • Nigella Lawson’s Salmon with Ginger and Lemon Grass Broth

    Soup_5

    As I slurped up the hot broth in this bowl the other day – sharp lime juice mingling nicely with salty fish sauce and the exotic (well, sort of) flavors of julienned ginger and lemon grass – I felt like I was finally making up for all that bacon grease. And there's so much left to go! I know I sound like a broken record, but bear with me. I rarely eat that much pig fat in one week and I'm still trying to get over it.

    A soup like this one is perfect for January – it's easy to make when you just don't feel like you can peruse one more cookbook or start one more slow-cooked feast, and it's crammed full of vegetables for vitamins and fiber, salmon for omega-3 fatty acids and natural health boosters in the form of lime juice, ginger slivers, not to mention a full three cups of Grandma's best medicine: chicken soup. Plus, it has not a drop of added fat.

    Nigella Lawson printed this in the NY Times three Januarys ago, and it is just the kind of recipe one can expect from her. It's fast, it's easy, it works. It's not ever going to compete with the multi-layered, well-developed flavors that might come by following recipes from Fuchsia Dunlop or Corinne Trang, but for people (moi) who are intimidated by Asian cooking and the plethora of ingredients it requires, it is just the ticket.

    While preparing the soup, I even got to flex the Mini Macgyver in me: my widest pot (which was to be filled with broth and flavorings, over which the salmon chunks would then be steamed) is a cast iron pot that, once filled, was too deep for the steamer basket. Using a shot measure that I filled with soup so it wouldn't wobble, I balanced the salmon-filled steamer atop it precariously, then covered that with the lid of a stockpot. Steamed perfection!

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  • Standard Baking Company’s Baguettes

    Baguettes_1

    I've said it before, but I'll say it again: there's really nothing like homemade bread. Nothing else comes close to the smell and warmth it imparts to the house, nor the sense of completion I get when I pull crusty loaves from my oven and let them cool on the table. I eat bread almost every day – it's a staple of my existence – so having it freshly made and available just makes sense. Although I'm surrounded by places where I can buy good bread (imagine – even the d'Agostino's around the corner sells bread from Tribeca Oven), I will always prefer to make my own. I can fiddle with new recipes, sink my fingers into cool, elastic dough, and commune with the hippy inside me (present since I tie-dyed my underpants and wrote a research paper on Woodstock in the 10th grade). Now that hippy has moved on from experimentation with fabric dyes to just wanting to bake bread, make her own yogurt and cheese, and grow her hair out. Not very counterculture, I know.

    The slender baguettes above came from my latest batch of baking in which I followed a recipe that Molly O'Neill published when she still wrote for the New York Times Magazine regularly (every bio I found of her online says that she still is the food columnist for the magazine, but I think those are in need of a bit of an update). The piece was on artisan bakers at a time when artisan baking was just becoming mainstream. Maggie Glezer's fantastic book was published later that same year. Loaves of crusty bread with irregular pockets of air studding the creamy interior flooded bakeries, and people were becoming acquainted with words like poolish, autolyse, and biga.

    The Standard Baking Company, now found under Portland's famous Fore Street restaurant, was known in foodie circles to have great, European-style bread. Using one basic poolish (a mixture of flour, water and yeast that is allowed to rise, then added to the dough to give the baked bread a better, fuller flavor), the bakers at Standard developed three recipes to incorporate it. I tried the baguette recipe first, but I plan to make the other two (a rustica and raisin-pecan) as soon as I find a bit more time. I made the poolish one afternoon by stirring together cake yeast (difficult to find, at least in lower Manhattan), flour and water and letting it sit for several hours. This fragrant slop was then to be measured out and added to a fresh bowl with flour, more cake yeast and water.

    Unfortunately, it was around this time that I walked into my bathroom to wash my hands and saw a shiny cockroach amble languidly across the floor, sending me shrieking and wailing into the other room while Ben killed it and flushed it down the toilet. I, of course, had to also then vacate the premises and could return only at the point in which I didn't see a largish insect every time I closed my eyes or blinked. I'm such a girl, I know. A cowardly, wimpish girl. But there's something about roaches that just induces utter despair. You know they're there, lurking in the walls, too close for comfort. But you get through most days staying out of their way (and vice versa). When that delicate balance is thrown out of wack by the appearance of a roach in your personal space, it brings to light just how foolish and delusional you are for thinking you could live life avoiding them. Anyway, luckily for me, the poolish could be refrigerated.

    The next day, with teeth clenched and eyes firmly ignoring all peripheral movement, I kneaded together some poolish, flour, water, salt and cake yeast into a shaggy dough, then let that sit for 15 minutes. I then tipped the dough out on the counter and kneaded it until it was smooth, about 10 minutes. I covered the dough and let it rise for an hour.
    First_rise_3
    I tipped this gently back out on the counter and folded it in half. It then went back into the bowl to rise again.
    Folded
    An hour after that, the dough held the imprint of my hand when I pressed it gently, so I turned it out and divided it into three pieces. I shaped the pieces into logs and put them on a floured sheet.
    Folded_and_shaped
    O'Neill instructs you to fold the long sides of the loaves into the middle to create the baguette shape. I found that confusing, but managed to shape loaves that looked just fine.
    Shaped_2
    These loaves rose a third time. After an hour or two, I heated the oven, slashed the baguettes (badly) and slid them in with a makeshift steam system of icecubes in a pan at the bottom of the oven (because I was too disorganized to get a spray bottle).
    Risen_and_slashed
    The baguettes baked until they were crusty
    and golden (O'Neill says this should take 16 minutes; my nutty oven took longer). I let the loaves cool on a rack, then broke one open to eat with dinner.
    Interior
    We ate half of that baguette for dinner. The crust was crisp and the crumb was warm and delicious (if a bit salty). I wonder what the difference to the crust would have been if I'd used a spray bottle or a pizza stone to insulate the oven. I wrapped the rest of that loaf in aluminum foil to reheat, sprinkled with water, for breakfast. In case you didn't know and were throwing out "stale" baguettes, the sprinkling of water and short time in the oven revives any limp baguette to its formerly crusty state. I froze the other two baguettes.

    I'm not sure this is the baguette recipe: I'm still holding out for one that will deliver something closer to the Retrodor I loved to eat in Paris (though I realize that professional ovens, and water and flour quality in France has much to do with the flavor and texture). But the satisfaction that comes from biting into your own bread really makes up for almost everything.

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  • Roasted Trout with Pancetta and Sage

    I've been scouring my recipe clippings for dishes that use bacon, figuring I might as well kill two birds with one stone. I want to use up some of that cured pig sitting frozen stiff in my freezer, even if it is at a snail's pace and I have begun to have misgivings about the state of my arteries. When some girlfriends came for dinner last week, I looked for a recipe that'd be light and incorporate some of my bacon.

    I didn't think I'd be able to fill both requirements until I stumbled across a trout dish from the LA Times – I can't find who wrote it and when – that's easy and delicious, with an ever-so-faint whiff of bacony splendor. Despite Thomas Kellerian green beans and molten chocolate cakes for dessert, that fish was the best part of our meal, hands down. You make a topping of diced bacon, shallots and sage that gets punched up with a spritz of lemon juice and strewn over the top of a broiled piece of trout. I didn't have any capers, so I left them out.

    Then I closed the freezer door, hid my recipes under my bed, and went for a walk in the park. There's only so much a girl can cook and write about before smoke starts coming out of her ears.

    Roasted Trout with Pancetta and Sage
    Serves 4

    4-5 tablespoons of olive oil, divided
    1/4 cup minced shallots
    2 ounces finely diced pancetta or bacon
    2 teaspoons lemon juice
    1 tablespoon drained nonpareil capers
    1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
    4 boned trout, about 7 ounces each
    Salt
    Freshly ground black pepper
    Sage leaves for garnish

    1. Heat oven to 500 degrees. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small saute pan and cook the shallots and pancetta until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice, capers and sage and remove from the heat. Keep warm.

    2. Oil a baking sheet large enough to hold all the trout in a single layer. Lay the fish skin side down on the sheet and brush the tops with oil. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Roast until the fish is just firm, about 5 minutes. Transfer to serving plates and spoon the bacon mixture over each fillet. Garnish with sage and serve at once.

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  • Thomas Keller’s Haricots Verts in Red Wine Vinegar Cream

    Beans_1

    Not really the most appetizing image up there, I know. It looks mostly like a mess of green beans defiled by too much mayonnaise. Would you believe that that inelegant creation comes from the deeified Thomas Keller, reprinted from the very pages of his spectacularly beautiful cookbook? Oh yes, I know, there were supposed to be little snippets of chives decorating the beans (but my chives were moldy), and half-moons of cherry tomatoes on the rim of the plate (but my friends don't eat tomatoes! It's a good thing I like my friends so much, or, you know, pffft), and the beans were to be sliced into 1-inch segments (but I wasn't, er, paying attention). So what you have there is really the unfancified version of beans in cream.

    I've been eyeing this recipe for some time. It comes from a piece in the LA Times that Regina Schrambling did on vinegar in cooking. I thought it sounded like a lovely combination, and simple to boot. It was at the grocery store that I had my first misgivings. Half a pound of green beans is enough to feed four as a side dish, yes. But in a third of a cup of whisked cream? It sounded like cream overkill. And it was. If I made this again (or if you do), I'd double the amount of beans so that they aren't drowning in the sauce. Also? A teaspoon of vinegar is barely enough to tickle the cream, let alone actually taste like anything on your tongue. So I doubled that to 2 teaspoons, which was delicious.

    The dish went nicely with a simple fillet of fish. But we kept wondering as we ate, who would really choose this unhealthy version of beans over the trusty standby dressing of oil, vinegar and a handy sprinkle of summer savory? The bottom line: whipped cream on my beans was a fun departure for once, but I don't think I'll make it again.

    Incidentally, that whipped cream minus the additions would have gone perfectly dolloped on our dessert: Nigella Lawson's chocolate babycakes from the NY Times in December. I know: yawn. Aren't they so 1999? I'm late to the molten-chocolate-cake party, so I'm not giving them their own post. But at least they get their own picture. And if you're wondering, yes, they were good.

    Haricots verts in red wine vinegar cream
    Serves 4

    1/2 pound haricots verts
    coarse sea salt
    1/3 cup heavy cream
    1 teaspoon best-quality red wine vinegar
    freshly ground black pepper
    2 tablespoons chopped chives
    16 grape tomatoes, cut in half.

    1. Trim the stem ends of the beans and cut them into 1-inch lengths

    2. Bring a pot of salted water to boil. Blanch the beans for 2 to 4 minutes. Drain and transfer to a bowl of ice water to chill. Pat dry.

    3. Beat cream until it just thickens and the whisk leaves a trail in the bowl. Gently fold in vinegar, and salt and pepper. Do not overbeat.

    4. Toss the beans with cream, garnish with chives and serve at once on a plate rimmed with halved tomatoes.

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  • Mark Bittman’s Pumpkin Panna Cotta

    Pannacotta

    Hrmph. I have voiced my skepticism about Mark Bittman's recipes before. But with this recipe, I officially question whether I'll every try another one of his again. Maybe minimalism is not for me? Or at least not Bittman's version of it. Simple, easy cooking should not equal pallid pap. But perhaps I should be less judgmental when the pap I speak of is cooked cream. The dueling sides of my brain will battle it out while I proceed.

    With leftover pureed pumpkin hanging about my fridge like a sullen teenager on a Friday night, I thought an easy way to get rid of it would be to turn it into silky little cups of pumpkin panna cotta, as published in a Minimalist column a few years ago. Bittman even goes so far as to propose that you could unmold this dish into a piecrust as a suitable replacement for pumpkin pie. Which leads me to ask: why, Mark, why would you abuse your impressionable readers with this suggestion?

    The beauty of panna cotta lies in its ease of preparation and the pure, simple flavor of cream shining through the suspended form. With nothing but a scattering of macerated strawberries alongside it, panna cotta can be the easiest and most elegant of desserts. On the other hand, the glory of pumpkin pie is the multi-layered taste imparted by a good blend of warm flavors (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, vanilla, and brown sugar). It can be a delight to eat, and often you really do wonder if you can toss the crust and just scrape happily away at the filling.

    The pumpkin and cinnamon in the panna cotta crossed out the milky, creamy goodness and left behind a one-note flavor combination that reminded me more of seasonal coffee blends at Starbucks than a reasonable substitution for pumpkin pie at the holiday table. I lost the very things I love about panna cotta and pumpkin pie in this combination. The bottom line is that I don't need my panna cotta gussied up and I don't need my pumpkin pie simplified. My dueling brain rests.

    I sprinkled powdered gelatin over some milk and let it sit.
    Gelatin
    In the meantime, I blended together more milk, cream, the pumpkin, sugar and cinnamon. I heated the gelatin mixture until it dissolved, then slowly stirred in the pumpkin mixture until steam rose off of it.
    Whisk
    I poured the mixture into cups and let them cool before putting them in the fridge to set up. Once it had cooled, the panna cotta separated into two layers.
    Layer
    I didn't eat the rest…

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  • The Cheese Board’s Corn Cherry Scones

    Scone

    I may have mentioned before that I am somewhat of a pedant in the kitchen. I like to have the exact ingredients called for, and I don't like cutting corners, especially when I'm testing recipes. But even the most organized and type-A cook can get thrown for a loop when time is of the essence and the buttermilk-man still hasn't made his rounds to the grocery stores in the neighborhood. And so it went this morning, when while toiling away at the elliptical machine, I thought of making fresh scones for breakfast.

    I had only a bit of time before going to work, so I scurried to one store to look for dried cherries and buttermilk. No dice. I bought dried cranberries instead of dried cherries, but had no recourse when told that the buttermilk hadn't been delivered yet. I sped on to another store, barreling down the street while the winds pushed back against me. This next store, however, had also not gotten their buttermilk shipment. So I thought, er, creatively, and bought a quart of kefir instead. I zipped home, grumbling at the thought of all these substitutions to contend with, and hating the fact that I'd wasted precious time trying to find the right ingredients.

    Back at the ranch, things only got worse when I realized I'd run out of all-purpose flour on New Year's Eve and hadn't replaced it yet. I had to turn to a bag of organic pastry flour (that had, incidentally, expired in December – oogh). With a frown firmly planted on my face, I quickly set about making what I was convinced would be Total Failure Scones. I followed a recipe that the LA Times had tracked down for an eager reader back two winters ago, and which comes from The Cheese Board, a collective bakery in Berkeley.

    The stiff dough came together quickly while the oven preheated. The kefir mixed in nicely, and the creamy yet sour aroma mimicked buttermilk quite well. I gently formed balls of dough, placed them on a baking sheet (forming 11 scones instead of 14), and sprinkled the tops with 1 teaspoon of sugar instead of the 2 tablespoons called for. I slid the sheet into the oven, then turned the heat down and ran off to get ready for work. 20 minutes later, the scones were burnished and golden. While still hot, they were cakey and soft. But as I walked to work munching on one, it cooled to a delicate crumbly state – just as it should. The cornmeal gave it a pleasing crunch, and the cranberries (of which there were not enough!) peeked jewel-like through the yellow crumb.

    I found the scones to be a bit sweet for my taste – I like a scone to tolerate a goodly amount of jam on top, and this one wouldn't have stood up to that treatment. But Ben will love them, I'm sure, and I'll freeze a few for toaster oven warm-up later this week. As for my pedantry, I did breathe a sigh of relief when I saw a photograph of the original scones online that looked exactly like my own. But it didn't exactly free the ties that bind me to be exacting in the kitchen. 

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  • Celery Salad and a Getaway

    Celery

    The excesses from my cooking adventures threatened to overwhelm me last week. Not a minute too soon, I found a recipe in Everyday Food's December issue for a spartan salad that promised to cleanse the bacon grease and white flour build-up in my arteries. I sliced up a few stalks of celery and shredded the still-clinging leaves, then tossed in a dressing of (Meyer) lemon juice, olive oil, Dijon mustard and Maldon salt. The salad was snappy and astringent: the perfect thing to eat when you need something green in your system, but can't bring yourself to cook anything anymore.

    Then I packed up my things, closed the door behind me, and went to Rhode Island with Ben for the weekend. We went indoor climbing, cringed and laughed at a zombie movie, and were fed splendidly by Alizah and Fran. Deliciously spiced pork with orange sauce, authentic fideua, puffy homemade pizzas, raisin-studded pane d'uva that rose and baked while we hollered Uno! at each other in the living room, and a fantastic, pureed mushroom sauce for pasta that could be eaten with a spoon whilst ignoring the pasta altogether.

    The best part about the weekend was forgetting everything that awaited us back home: overheated apartments, work with no end in sight, the mind-numbing noise of city traffic. Thanks, Fran and Leez, for the good company and delicious food. It was the perfect medicine!

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  • Michael Ruhlman’s Savory Bacon

    Bacon

    Well, I promised, didn’t I? I herewith break the curse of the starch post epidemic I was suffering from to present you with a 3.3 pound piece of pork belly. Rubbed and cured and massaged and roasted, it’s actually now a 3.3 pound piece of bacon. That sound you hear? My (almost) vegetarian father and kitchen-phobic mother falling over backwards as they stare in disbelief at the computer screen. That’s right, I went to the butcher a week ago, I bought a piece of pork belly the size of my head, and now I proudly own more bacon than Ma and Pa Ingalls would know what to do with.

    Last November, Michael Ruhlman wrote an article for the New York Times about the glories of curing your own meat, having just published a book on this same subject. Included with the article was a recipe for bacon and one for corned beef. Ruhlman writes that home-cured bacon is cheaper and tastier than the kind you buy in a store (and certainly the brine-pumped bacon slices shrink-wrapped in the refrigerated section of the store paled in comparison with the hunk of meat in my kitchen). I also figured the challenge of hunting down the ingredients, finding the patience for a week-long preparation, and overcoming any feelings I might have about seven-day old raw meat resting in such close proximity to my living quarters would add to the fun. So I took Ruhlman’s bait.

    First, let me tell you right away: if you live in New York, go straight to Florence Meat Market on Jones Street to buy your pork belly (if you’ve never eaten at Inside or been to Florence Meat Market, make sure you try their Newport steak sometime – it is possibly the most delicious meat I’ve ever eaten.) Their pork belly costs $2.99 a pound, which, compared to the prices here and here and here, is practically getting it for free. You have to call in advance to order it, but it takes no less than a day or two to arrive. When I got down to the butcher to pick up the belly and was confronted with the porcine terror that is a 5-pound piece of pork, I begged them to let me buy just a little bit less. They kindly agreed on 3.3 pounds, and wrapped it beautifully. Florence’s is a fantastic place – I hope it stays in business for a long time.

    Back home, I mixed up the cure and smeared it all over the belly. I put the belly in a Zip-loc bag, wrapped it up in butcher paper and put it in my fridge for a seven days of rest. But the next morning, confronted with the raw-meat-and-garlic stench smell in the early morning hours, I removed the package and marched it over to Ben’s place. It was just too much to handle. Sweet Ben complied and let the belly rest at his place for the week. Every other day, the package was flipped. When the seven days were over, I rinsed the belly well. There is something profoundly ridiculous about standing at a sink and cleaning an enormous piece of meat that you have absolutely no idea how you’re ever going to consume. But these were not the intrepid thoughts of a homespun bacon-curer, no! So I banished them from my mind and forged ahead.

    The belly was placed on a rack on top of a baking sheet and slowly roasted at a low temperature until the interior temperature measured 150 degrees. It took my oven about 2 and a half hours. The bacon then rested until cool, at which point I sliced it up into different-sized portions. Ruhlman says you can refrigerate the bacon for two weeks or freeze it. I’m thinking of cooking up some for dinner tonight, so I can report on how it actually tastes. But then, I wonder: after Sunday breakfast, beef stew, Southern cornbread, and hostess gifts, I will still have more bacon than I’ll know what to do with. Luisa’s Homemade Bacon – just $2.99 a pound?

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  • Steven Raichlen’s Marinated Fish with Coconut-Ginger Rice

    Bass

    It's like I'm possessed. I set out last night to break my streak of starch-filled meals, but no matter how hard I tried, it all ended up being about the carbs. Let me explain. I had good intentions, I swear I did. I went to the store, I bought two gorgeous fillets of sea bass, and my very first jalapeno. It was shaping up to be a momentous occasion. At home, I made a marinade of lime juice, Meyer lemon (because I bought two at the new Balducci's – which, by the way, is lovely but totally unnavigable – and they were threatening to rot) and diced jalapeno. I lay those glistening pieces of fish in the marinade and turned. To. The. Rice.

    I'll be honest. That photograph up there is pretty much a red herring. This post is all about the rice. I mean, the fish was good. Delicious, even. I'll make it again. But the rice? The rice is perfection. Now you see about being possessed. The recipe came from an old New York Times Magazine article and is from Steven Raichlen's book Miami Spice. For once this was a recipe I hadn't clipped myself – it was given to me by a friend. I put it aside politely, figuring the presence of cilantro (have I mentioned it tastes like rat poison to me?) would make this a no-go. But something kept me from throwing it out. Probably divine intervention.

    While the fish marinated away, I melted some butter in a saucepan, added minced ginger and garlic and then a mixture of basmati and long-grain rice. When this had toasted nicely, I added coconut milk, water and salt. Top on, flame down. 20 minutes later, the ingredients had melded into a fragrant, fluffy pile of the most delicious rice I'd ever eaten. The fish broiled briefly in the oven (setting off the fire alarm, I might add. I'll get to the part about preventing that in a minute) and then got flopped down next to the rice. The delicate fish meat worked perfectly with the rice, and the tiny diced jalapeno gave the whole thing some heat. The best thing is, you could make this rice with Latin food, or Caribbean or Indian. It'd work perfectly with all of it.

    Now I promise to break this carbohydrate streak presently, I really do. It might even happen tomorrow. In a big way. Aren't I a tease? I'll try to stay focused. Wish me luck.

    Marinated Sea Bass with Coconut-Ginger Rice
    Serves 4

    The sea bass:
    1/3 cup fresh lime juice (I mixed in Meyer Lemon juice, too)
    1 large jalapeno, with seeds, minced
    4 sea bass fillets (the original recipe calls for grouper or red snapper. My store didn't have either of these. The sea bass was fantastic, though.)
    2 teaspoons chopped fresh cilantro (if cilantro doesn't taste like it's going to kill you)

    The rice:
    1 teaspoon unsalted butter (I'd make this 1 tablespoon – otherwise it's not enough and all will burn)
    2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
    2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
    1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice (I used a mixture of long-grain and basmati because I didn't have enough of either)
    1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
    1 1/2 cups water
    1 1/2 teaspoons salt

    1. To make the fish, combine the citrus juice and jalapeno in a shallow glass or ceramic dish. Add the fish and turn to coat in the marinade. Let stand for 20 minutes, turning once.

    2. Meanwhile, to make the rice, heat the butter in a medium-sized heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and ginger (you could easily double the amounts of these for bolder flavor) and cook until fragrant but not brown, about 1 minute. Add the rice and stir for 1 minute.

    3. Add the coconut milk, water and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and cook the rice until the liquid is absorbed and the grains are tender, 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for 1 minute. Fluff with a fork.

    4. Preheat the broiler. Remove fish from marinade and place on a baking sheet or broiler pan (oil this pan! Otherwise your fire alarm will go off). Broil until fish is just cooked through, about 6 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Place 1 fillet on each of 4 plates and sprinkle with cilantro (shudder). Spoon the rice beside the fish and serve immediately.

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