Cleaning Out My Cabinets: Blowfish

We spent July 4th down in LBI with our friends John and Liz since the Ryan residence is still out of commission from Sandy.  As mentioned last week, I was a typically awful houseguest: serving offal to unsuspecting children, snoring on couches, and complaining about hot pepper juice I rubbed in my own eyes.   There was no fishing or clamming on this trip, but lots of relaxation on the beach and deck.

Sure, looks like she is relaxing, but she is just as neurotic as her father.  Notice the feet curled up on the chair to not touch the beach, the calming container of Pirates Booty, the sunglasses that were called for nonstop until they were presented?  She’s a mess sometimes

However, on a ride down LBI Boulevard the first day to pick up food for dinner, I noticed that a few of the seafood shops were advertising blowfish on their signs.  Not only advertising them, but doing so excitedly (meaning: exclamation marks).

“Hey, Pete, really been enjoying the photos on the blog lately.  One request, can you start taking more pictures from very far away?  Like far enough away that it isn’t clear what you are trying to show us?  Thx!”

If you look really closely, so closely that you’re not really sure whether you are actually seeing it or just pretending you can see it, you’ll see that the sign says “Blowfish are back!”.  That sign is there because, well, blowfish are back, and you should be excited about that.  Me, I was pretty excited.  You ‘cited?

I’d definitely encountered a couple blowfish diving over the years, but I’ve never cooked or even seen them in their cleaned, raw form before.  Aside from the early Simpsons fugu episode where Homer almost dies from eating poisonous blowfish, I can’t say I had even thought of them as food, really.  I guess they are relatively innocuous looking.

Not my foto.  I believe there is a blowfish in Finding Nemo and/or The Little Mermaid but I’ve never seen either so I don’t have a witty quip related to those characters.  But, you can imagine me making some comment about eating <character’s name> and ruining your childhood memories and such and such.  Bringing my A game with that spoof

But, I mean, seriously?  This is food?

Again, not my foto.  Just a bunch of blowfish hanging out, gabbin’, inflating and stuff.  Looks like a pretty decent time if you ask this blowhard.  Ever seen this tactic before on here?  It’s called stalling, and I do it when I only have three fotos of the actual cooking because it was so straightforward and simple.  Shhhh!  Don’t tell the caption non-readers

When we went into Boulevard Clams, I had no idea what the blowfish meat would look like;  I would have believed anything from a deflated basketball to a beautiful fillet.  But, what they actually looked like was entirely logical.  Almost boringly logical.

I took a bunch of pictures of the contents of this package and somehow this was the best one. They were as dark and slightly red in color as they look here, though

The general anatomy and how much of those fishies were edible was a complete mystery to me, and as usual the yokels at the store weren’t much help.  What do they taste like: “chicken”, how do you eat them: “like chicken”, whats the best way to cook them: “jest fry ’em up”.  I know, we were in New Jersey, not some backwoods locale, but good lord were these guys unhelpful and yokelish.  That said, they have a customer for life as long as they carry blowfish every season, and for $9.99 a pound no less.

With no creative cooking ideas and not wanting to stink up the house frying things inside, I decided to keep it relatively simple and put a sautee pan over medium/high heat.  While it heated, I salted and peppered each piece of blowfish.  Once the pan was hot, I added a little olive oil and a couple cloves of chopped garlic then the blowfish.  What I meant there was, once the pan was way hotter than it should have been I added all that stuff.

After a couple minutes on one side, I flipped the fish, added a solid pour of rosé (it was open), and put the lid on to finish the cooking.

I know, I know, I burned the garlic.  I struggle mightily with electric ranges and pretty much every pan I used that weekend was about 100 degrees too hot for whatever I was trying to cook in it.  I blame electricity

After another 3-4 minutes I moved the fish to a plate, reduced the last of the wine in the pan to thicken into a sauce, and poured it over the fish.  A little squeeze of lemon over the top, and it was ready to be served.

It looks a little funky, but you really can’t go wrong with the olive oil, garlic, wine, and lemon combo.  Plus it smells decent enough that it’s an easy sell to those who would be otherwise terrified

After tuna fishing last year, I babbled about what a perfect fish tuna is for how easily the loins come off and how much is edible.  I was even more impressed with the blowfish.  The spine is directly attached to the fins on the top and bottom and has a flat center bone that runs up the whole fish.  The meat comes off in two large pieces, one on each side of the spine with no bones in the meat, and no other picking needed.

As far as the taste, I don’t know if this was extremely fresh or something, but it was much much better than I expected.  The meat was rich and slightly sweet with none of the fishy flavor you expect from a darker-meat fish.  The texture was buttery and soft like properly cooked cobia, and the collagen from cooking on the bone coated your lips when you ate it.  As usual I base whether or not I am the only one who would find it tasty on the reactions of others, and three people besides myself ate the blowfish and had seconds.  Including Kristi.  See!  I don’t always just make up the fact that things taste good, sometimes its true and stuff!

Hopefully more fish for next week, if I can figure out when the sketchy docks in Little Compton open this time around.

Major Dags: Volume 2 (feat. Bean Hole Beans & Lamb Pinwheel Roast)

Welcome back to the segment on this blog that documents my “oopsie daisies”.  These are the meals that I thought would make great posts, and in the end they were either a complete failure or I forgot to take pictures.  You know, major dags.

I should quickly address my inconsistent blogging patterns lately.  Lotsa travel and not a lot of cooking recently.  In addition, I have a bit of a creativity block these days; when I am home for a weekend I stare into my freezer of crazy crap and cant think of anything to make.  So, once again, I will put out the call for requests.  If you read this blog regularly and you’ve wanted to see me attempt a difficult dish, please add the suggestion to the comments on this post.  I have a freezer full of all parts of cow, lamb, and pig along with some rabbit, pheasant, and venison.  Give me some ideas!  I don’t ask for much (aside from you patiently reading this crap and telling me how much you love it), so help me out please.

Anyhoo, this post will focus on two well intended failures: Bean Hole Beans and a Lamb Pinwheel Roast.

Bean Hole Beans

Last year on our camping trip in Maine I resumed my love affair with cooking things under the ground by attempting bean hole beans.  Relatively simple concept: mix all your baked bean ingredients in a big pot, stick the pot in a hole in the ground and build a fire on top.  In 18-24 hours, you should have baked beans.  Should have.

I started out by digging a small hole inside of our fire pit area and starting a small fire in the base of it that I intended to let burn down to a thick bed of embers.  The key adjective for the hole and the fire is “small”.

I know, I know, that’s not a very deep hole.  But, I was missing both Mooman’s shovel and Mooman’s shoveling ability so the digging was slow going and complaint-heavy.  Once I got to about the depth of the pot I gave it a good-nuff nod and walked away

With the fire burning down, I started preparing the beans for cooking.  First step was to lay slices of salt pork in the bottom of a cast iron pot I stole from under my coworkers desk.

Dear Joe, when you asked me whether you could cook eggs in this freebie cast iron pot from a supplier, I knew that you weren’t going to give it the life it deserved.  Not to mention that 11 months have elapsed and you still haven’t noticed it is gone

On top of the pork I poured in a few pounds of pre-soaked beans and a mixture of onions, chopped salt pork, garlic, mustard, sugar, vinegar, maple syrup, salt, and pepper.

Anyone who has read the Momere’s Baked Beans post recognizes these signature ingredients.  However, this turned out so sh*tty that I didn’t want her name attached to the final product, so lets just pretend this is some crappy allrecipes.com recipe

I gently stirred in about 6 cups of water trying to mix everything together without disrupting the bottom layer of salt pork.  Not my strong point since I generally only know one method of stirring which is to scrape everything off the bottom and stir until it looks like a whirlpool.  But I was careful, and it looked relatively familiar at the end.

I think this is best done in a backyard since this contained about 7 more ingredients than should be featured in a camping dish.  Maple syrup and mosquito ridden campgrounds definitely don’t go well together, plus I complained about my sticky hands until people got sick of hearing about them and went to bed

I wrapped the top with two layers of tin foil, then nested the heavy lid on before doing another wrap of foil over the top.  I was planning to completely cover this thing with sandy dirt, and nothing would suck more than even a tiny bit getting inside and ruining the batch.  Once I felt it was well sealed, I nestled it into the hole on top of the glowing embers from the fire.

Steamers, vegetable butter ball, and drawn butter cooking on the grate, ‘course.  How great is Maine?!?!?

Once the pot was well situated, I covered it up with a couple shovel-fulls of dirt and ashg from the surrounding fire.

I was disturbingly anxious about whether these $8 worth of ingredients would be a success.  In hindsight I have to admit I need to start taking some of these cooking missions a little less seriously.  Also, that shovel is 7 years old, I have no idea why it still has a label on it

Once the pot was fully covered with earth/ash, we built another small fire on top and got a good bed of embers in place for the the cold night.  Followed that with another fire in the morning, more embers, off to the beach for a full day and back to the fire to uncover and remove the beans. Not nearly as difficult as the hogs head because it was buried shallower and had a handle.

This Le Creuset oven mitt had a real tough weekend but we still use it despite black burned marks from the fire.  I know that was a bit of a brand name drop, but I just wanted to reiterate/clarify/recognize that despite some steps in this process looking wilderness-y, I was just a suburbanite playing camping

With cameras ready and a nervous expression on my face, I peeled the foil away and removed the lid to discover… that it hadn’t cooked.  Maybe it cooked a little bit but not much, and certainly not enough to eat.  I was crushed.

Looked no different.  I don’t think I spoke to anyone for about fifteen minutes.  I am positive I made things uncomfortable and unpleasant for those around me, which is when Janet came in handy for a distracting “Heyyyyy!! Look at Janet! she is sitting and not doing anything and stuff! Awwww”  Forgot to mention Janet came camping

I have a pretty good idea what I did wrong (of course I am a know it all even when I am wrong).  I am sure that there was supposed to be a consistent fire on top, but given that it was cooking for 18 hours+ I had some concerns on overdoing it and the same strategy worked fine for the hogs head three ears earlier.  I also think I needed a deeper hole with more embers that had burned for longer than the batch I used.  The hole itself wasn’t warm enough to start since it needed to almost preheat like an oven.

I need to take another crack at this and get my vengence.  On myself, I guess.  Sometime soon.  On to the next major dag.

Lamb Pinwheel Roast

I can’t remember the exact occasion for this one, mainly because I don’t date my photos well, but I think it might have been Mommy Ryan’s birthday.  I also think Tim was being bossy/cranky about what he wanted to eat because it was pre-ordained that we would be having a butterfly leg of lamb and deviled eggs.  Weirdo.

I thought a great idea with the leg of lamb would be to make a pinwheel roast, almost like a lamb porchetta.  Except this one would be stuffed with all of the awesome flavors Mommy Ryan used to pack into her lamb dishes.  Namely, Dijon mustard, rosemary, garlic, and lots of salt.  Decent idea in principle, but you know I will be bungling this somewhere along the way.  Lets start with the lamb.

Looks pretty identical to any deboned piece of meat shown on this blog previously.  Most similar to the duck from the turducken I think, but without the weird snorkel thing from that shot

My goal was to make some small slices in the meat so that it would be approximately the same thickness throughout and also spread out as flat as possible.  With that done, I started working on the filling.  Three key ingredients: rosemary, (green) onion, and garlic.

Yeah, it’s been a while but that pile of raw garlic doesn’t look any smaller.  Not sure exactly how I thought this was the appropriate balance.  Looks like a crap ton of rosemary too, actually

The onions, rosemary, and garlic went into a bowl with cubed staled bread, a couple tablespoons of Dijon mustard and mayonnaise and lots of salt and pepper.  The goal was to create a wet stuffing that would flavor the lamb from the inside out, but also mimic the lamb flavors we grew up with.

I have to admit that since it’s been awhile, I totally had no idea what that green blob was in the center.  Upon further review, it is a blob of mint jelly which joined the party along with some additional brown sugar as well.  It’s all coming back, coming back to me now.  Shout out to my girl Celine!

The stuffing was pungent, but I felt like I needed that to stand up to the strong flavor of lamb and there was a lot of meat.  Using the same process I used with the turducken, I pressed as much of the stuffing as I could into the lamb in an even layer.

Midday cooking in Tim’s kitchen is actually great for fotos, It’s a hell hole at night though.  Lighting-wise.  I feel like I am writing a scathing Trip Advisor review or something, but it really is terrible for taking pictures usually

I attempted to roll the lamb up porchetta style and was mildly successful, but the real feat was that I actually tied it up without the whole thing falling apart.  I am assuming Tim didn’t help but probably criticized my technique.  Friggin’ jerk, I’ll show him.

The bundled package headed into the fridge for a few hours.

Again, am I on Rhee Drummond’s blog or something?  Where did all of this natural light come from?  I swear this is the same place I took blurry photos of Yuengling and dental floss-stitched smoked hog stomach a few months earlier

And here’s where it went off the rails.  I was obsessed with having a crispy outside on the lamb and it was a beautiful day, so I thought I could cook it slow-ish on the grill at Brother John’s.  And when I get an idea in my head it’s tough to steer me away, so onto John’s grill it went.

I should have stopped when he told me there were hot and cold spot on the grill.  I should have swallowed my pride and preheated the oven.  I shoulda…

This one ended up as a bit of a debacle in the cooking process.  In the first five minutes on the grill, one part of the lamb had burned while the other end of it looked like no heat had been applied.  I rolled it around on the grill a bit to keep it from burning but that led to less trapped heat (due to opening the grill constantly) and less cooking through.  When it was finally in danger of charring too much for edibility, I had to put it in the oven for 20-30 minutes.  Which didn’t make a damned bit of difference.  The stuffing was barely warmed and the inside of the lamb was rare instead of lightly cooked all the way through.  A mess and a nightmare on the stomach due to raw lamb an garlic in the mix.  Happy birthday Mommy Ryan!

Send in your suggestions!  I desperately need them.

Pete’s Recipes: Pete’s Breads

My travels over the past month, on top of Janet becoming more active and not sleeping much during the day, has cut into my bread making a bit.  But, I ended up making a couple loaves of bread for my neighbors this week and decided it was time to share the recipes I’ve been honing for the past few months.

First up is Pete’s Sandwich Bread.  The bread is based off of a Michael Ruhlman recipe that included some very helpful cooking tips.  When I first started making it, the bread was dry, spongy and the crust was a little tough to get through.

My first attempt. Looked decent initially, but as you can imagine a PB&J on this bread was not as enjoyable as a good old slice of Wonder Bread

A few adjustments to the mix/amount of ingredients, and cooking technique has improved it greatly; it’s soft enough to be enjoyable eaten with cold sandwiches but it’s even better when toasted.  Here’s what you’ll knead (wokka wokka):

1+ teaspoon yeast (I like adding a little more than a teaspoon)
2+ teaspoons of salt (to taste)
5 cups all purpose flour (minus 2 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons vital gluten flour
12 ounces of water
1/2 tablespoon salted butter
(Oh, and a 9-quart dutch oven and Kitchenaid mixer with a dough hook too.  If you don’t have those, feel free to scroll down to the dippin’ bread recipe that doesn’t require them)

Quick note on the vital gluten flour (VGF).  This is the same stuff I made seitan with a few months ago, but it’s also what is used to make all-purpose flour into “bread flour”.  If you buy bread flour, every cup includes about a tablespoon of VGF which helps add a little moisture and chewiness to cooked bread.  I like using AP flour and VGF separately instead of just bread flour since it allows me to control how chewy the texture of the bread will be.  For sandwich loaves I like less than a tablespoon per cup; with other loaves I like a tablespoon or more.

Enough of that, back to the recipe.  Mix all ingredients in the Kitchenaid mixer with a dough hook for about ten minutes on low speed.

Every time I make this I anxiously check every minute nervous that all of the flour won't be incorporated and will be stuck along the edges, yet every time it ends up coming together

The goal is to have the dough ball fully incorporate all flour.

I probably herky-jerkily paced the kitchen complaining to Kristi that the dough "would never come together" and that the Kitchenaid mixer, "is probably broken" before checking again at ten minutes and finding this

Remove dough from mixing bowl and place on a lightly floured surface.  Knead dough a few times until you have a relatively dense, smooth elastic dough ball.  Place in a bowl (I usually pick a fresh ceramic bowl instead of the mixing bowl) and cover with a kitchen towel to rise.  Rising usually takes 2-4 hours, depending on the temperature in your home (low/mid 70s works well), and you should be looking for the dough to approximately double in size.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down and tip it out onto the same lightly floured surface.

If you've been anxiously waiting for a progress report, I've made it through roughly 20 pounds of the 25 pound bag of flour I bought at Costco 3 months ago. Bread has been my go-to item to bring whenever we visit people

Knead the dough again for a few minutes before using your fists to press and flatten the dough.  I use my hands for this part, but I guess a roller could be utilized as well.

On the other hand (I am like a shotgun filled with puns today), I would guess there is still 1.95 pounds of yeast in the two pound bag I bought at the same time as the flour. Still saved money, but there is no way I get even a quarter of the way into the bag before it's unusable

The goal is to stretch it into a ~6” x 18” rectangle of relatively uniform thickness.  Once it’s about the right shape, cover with the aforementioned kitchen towel and let rest ten minutes.

This is the right shape

While the flattened dough rests, grease the inside of a 10″ loaf pan with a little olive oil and get out your dutch oven.  The importance of the dutch oven, which was the key Ruhlman trick, is that it allows the bread to cook without the crust getting too thick and dying out.  It makes a huge difference and separates the bread I’ve made recently from every dry homemade bread I’ve had before.

Once the 10 minutes is up, fold the long side of the dough on itself and press together with the heel of your hand, pinching along the edges as well.

Probably not the most necessary action shot to explain what folding is, but I was amazed how uninformative and confusing bread recipes are without pictures

Starting with the 6″ x 18″ flat piece, three folds should get you to about a 10″ rolled shape with a little shaping along the way. Place the dough roll inside the loaf pan inside the a dutch oven and cover with a towel to rise for at least an hour.

I usually put the side that has a seam from the final fold on the bottom

Once the dough has doubled again and mostly fills the loaf pan, cut a slash about 1/4″ deep down the entire length of the loaf.

That's some good slashin'

Put the lid on the dutch oven and place inside an oven that has been preheated to 450F.  Once in the oven, immediately decrease the heat to 350F and set the timer to 45 minutes.  When 45 minutes is up, pull the dutch oven and remove the lid, which should look something like this:

The first fragrance manufacturer that can nail the smell of baking bread will corner the market on perfume for women who want to attract obese men

After testing a few variations of lid-on/lid-off cooking times as well as what to brush on the bread when the lid comes off, I settled on 45 minutes and a little bit of melted butter.  I usually put a pat of butter, less than a half tablespoon, in the microwave for fifteen seconds then brush it all over the surface of the loaf before putting it back in the oven with the lid off for 15 more minutes.

At this point I know my bread is cooked through after an hour in my oven, but every oven is a little different.  A good way to test if the bread is ready is to place a meat thermometer in the center of the loaf; if its 200F or higher, the bread is ready.  At which point it should be removed from the oven and tipped out of the loaf pan onto a rack to cool.

Little different from the first batch

I like to tap the bottom and sides of the bread to test its density but the most important thing with this type of bread is to wait for it to cool completely before cutting into it.  But, once it’s cooled, go nuts.

When you've made this a few times, you look for some nice non-uniform air bubbles that keep the bread light and soft

The bread is soft but not as questionably fluffy as some of the store bought varieties.  Due to the amount of salt I add, you might notice a little more salt than most breads, but it makes the bread better in my opinion.  Well worth trying on your own.

Next up is Pete’s Dippin’ Bread.  I wish I had a better name for it, but I really don’t.  At one point in time it was 1/3 of an Italian bread recipe I found online, but I’ve made a lot of changes since then and I can’t really call it an Italian bread anymore.  So, let’s go with Dippin’ Bread since it’s always best when served with a little olive oil for dipping.  Agreed?

For the purposes of this blog post, I will give the recipe for my roasted garlic and herb loaf, though other ingredients can be inserted instead of the garlic and herbs and the other proportions stay the same.  Aside from the one shown, I have made it with kalamata olives, roasted tomatoes/garlic/anchovies/capers (my puttanesca bread), and just anchovies as discussed previously.

Here’s the ingredients:

1 cup warm water (100F)
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1+ teaspoon active dry yeast
1+ teaspoon salt
3+ cups all purpose flour (minus 3 tablespoons)
3 tablespoons vital gluten flour
1 tablespoon corn meal
6 cloves of roasted garlic (roast by lightly covering with olive oil, wrapping in foil and baking at 300F for an hour)
1-2 tablespoons of herbs (to taste; dried or fresh, I use dried herbs de provence or occasionally chopped fresh thyme leaves)
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

Mix sugar, water, and yeast in a mixing bowl and let sit for 5-10 minutes.  You want the water to foam a bit to prove that the yeast is still living.  I skip this step consistently with my sandwich bread, but always do it with this bread.  Not sure why.

Whisk in 1-1/3 cups of flour, chopped roasted garlic, herbs, red pepper and continue whisking until fully mixed.  Cover with a fresh kitchen towel (I gots a whole stack that I keep around for this process) and let rest for 15 minutes.

I always wait until the batter has rested before adding the salt. Not sure why, I think I have a fear that the salt will kill the yeast, which is likely completely irrational

Stir in the salt and a cup of the remaining flour and continue stirring until fully incorporated and the dough is too thick to stir anymore.  Take the remaining 2/3 cup of flour and put a heavy covering on the surface you will be kneading on.  Keep the remaining flour close by to add as the flour on the counter is incorporated.  Once that’s done tip the dough out onto the flour and scrape any pieces stuck to the sides of the bowl out as well.

Much more wet than the sandwich loaf dough when it came out of the bowl, hence all of the extra flour that needs to be incorporated by kneading

Start kneading the dough and incorporating the flour.  This can be a little tough since the dough will be sticking to your hands and fingers at first.  It helps to keep a lot of flour on your hands and around the dough.  Continue kneading in flour until the dough no longer sticks to the counter, usually about 5-10 minutes. Place dough ball into a greased bowl, cover with towel, and let double in size.

Once doubled (about 2-3 hours), remove from the bowl and knead a few times on a flour dusted surface. Place dough ball back in the bowl, cover, and let rise.

Once doubled again, remove and repeat the kneading process.  Once dough is smooth and ball shaped, take out a 4-5 quart heavy bottomed/lidded pot and coat the bottom with a little olive oil and a sprinkle of corn meal.

By the time this heads into the oven, the fully risen dough will be to the edges of the pot and puffed up in height a bit as well

Once risen, usually around 90 minutes later but doesn’t hurt to let it go longer, slash the top in a cross pattern cutting about 1/4″ deep.  Then put the lid on the pot and place in a preheated 450 F oven.

Cook for 15 minutes with the lid on, remove from oven, and brush top with a little liquid.  I’ve used water before, which makes the crust a little bland, and olive oil tends to make it too crispy.  Lately I’ve been going with a 50/50 mix of water and olive oil with a little salt, which comes out pretty dece.

Cook an additional 15-20 minutes with the lid off until golden brown on top.  Remove from the oven and transfer to a rack to cool.  It will be very hot, but if you tap the bottom of the bread it should have a slightly hollow sound.

Sometimes it pays to be Pete's neighbor

That’s about it.  Pretty long recipe post.  Basic bread making (I certainly do not consider my skills anywhere beyond basic) is a good skill to learn and is fun to mess around with.  It definitely takes a few tries to get the hang of but your bread will come out better with every iteration.  Final note: it does take some time to make bread, usually 6-7 hours, but you’re only actively working for 30-45 minutes of that.  Its a great activity for fall/winter weekends, so give it a shot if you get bored.