My Food Geek

Last night my friend Marcelo and I made orecchiette for Christmas Eve dinner. I roped Marcelo into making the pasta with me since individually crafting each piece of pasta is a bit time consuming if done alone. I made a simple pasta dough from semolina, high-gluten flour, and water; nothing else. After working the dough on the counter, we rolled it out, sliced it up, and pressed out a whole bunch of orecchiettes.

The recipe I came up with used radish tops, sauteed radishes, and Italian sausage. “Cooked radishes?” you say? I thought the exact same thing when I made this in the past using penne pasta and omitting the sausage. The radishes take on an almost turnip flavor, much more mellow than their raw counterparts. The greens aren’t anything new and taste very much like spinach. A little bit of olive oil and red wine holds the whole dish together.

Orecchiette, sausage, and radishes

1lb orecchiette
3 Italian sausages, casings removed
2 bunches of radish greens
1 bunch of radishes
1 cup red wine
6tbls olive oil

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

While the water is coming to a boil, cook sausage in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until lightly browned.

Add radishes and greens and stir into sausage. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes to blend flavors.

Cook orecchiette according to directions (if using fresh made, cook until they begin to float)

Add cooked pasta to sausage and radish mixture and add red wine. Simmer for a few more minutes to combine flavors. Add the remaining olive oil and correct seasonings.

A few weeks ago I ordered a few new chocolate molds from Chocolat-Chocolat online. They seem to be of high quality, two from a French maker and one from a Chinese maker. I was itching to try them out, but did not have any couverture in the pantry. Luckily, it’s the holidays and Whole Foods had a huge display of couverture to choose from; I chose Scharffen Berger 60%.

Making chocolates lies somewhere between science and art. The science is in properly tempering the chocolate so it will crystallize properly. The art is in getting them to look nice and taste good after you extract them from the molds. For now, I’m just going to concentrate on the science.
There are a few methods for tempering chocolate; I chose one of the quickest and easiest, the seeding method. The basic idea is to melt about two-thirds of the chocolate and bring it to about 120F then add unmelted, chopped chocolate to cool the chocolate to 92F. These two steps are pretty easy to do; the hard part is keeping the mixing at 92F once you get it there in the first place. This usually entails several visits to the bain-marie to keep the temperature as constant as you can. Once you get to this stage, you’re ready to fill the molds.

Filling the molds is easy, albeit a bit on the messy side. Basically you just ladle the chocolate into the molds, slide a spatula or pastry blade along the top to clean off the excess chocolate, then let sit. After a minute or so, turn the whole works upside-down and tap the molds to remove the excess chocolate. Once that’s done, you put the mold upside-down on a piece of parchment and chill until solid. Next, pipe in your filling of choice, apply another layer of tempered chocolate, and remove the excess with a pass of a spatula and let set. If everything was done properly, in a few minutes your candies will pop out of the molds.

Since this was my first try, I’m choosing to omit a finished product. I’ll consider this an experiment; I’ll show the final products in part two.

To Be Continued…

There are few things in the world that I find more pleasant than snuggling up with the dog on the couch while delicious food creations are conjured in the kitchen, filling the house with wonderful scents.

I had the pleasure of that experience the other night while Jef created this Thai curry soup. He used coconut oil for this one, so the distinct but delicate scent of coconut was already wafting through the air from the moment the cooking began.

This was a perfect soup for a cold night, with the warmth of soup and warmth of spicy green curry both working to take away the winter chill.

Green Curry Soup
2 tilapia fillets
1/2 lb shrimp, peeled but tails left on
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
3 carrots, peeled and roll cut
6 baby bok choi, whole - bottoms removed
2 cloves garlic 1 tsp ginger
6 green onions
1 Tbsp Thai green curry paste
1 can cream of coconut (coconut milk may be used)
3 Tbsp oil (preferably coconut oil)
Thai fish sauce (to taste)

rice noodles or rice, prepared

Mince garlic, ginger, and the whites of the green onion. Saute in oil until fragrant.

Add green curry paste and saute for 1 minute.

Add coconut cream and 4 times as much water.

Add potatoes and carrots and bring to a boil.

Cook until potatoes are fork-tender, then add the seafood and bok choi and reduce to a simmer.

Simmer for about 5 minutes or until the fish is flaky and the shrimp have turned pink and curled.

Server over cooked rice noodles or steamed rice.

Garnish with scallion tops and chopped cilantro.