Monthly Archives: January 2009

Dynamite Ham

9 Replies

So Martha and I were all dressed up and ready to hit the town. We had celebrating to do. The babysitter was here. I made a quick call to one of our friends to verify the bar where we were all meeting. “Great, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Cora said.

Tomorrow?

Oops. Wrong night. It’s been a little hectic around here lately, what with Marty learning just the other day that one of her poems published last year has been selected for the new Best American Poetry anthology. Our phone was ringing off the hook, the news spreading virally among our Facebook friends. Even cheerleaders who snubbed Marty in high school were coming out of the woodwork: “Catch me up on your life,” one said. “I always knew you were the creative type.” So I guess we jumped the gun on date night. We were so ready.

But here we were in a celebratin’ mood. We had a bottle of Pinot Noir on hand and a bag of chanterelles defrosting in the fridge. Chanties. They’re nice to have for situations like this. While I cooked the pasta Marty ran around the corner to the last chance Hollywood Video, the movie ghetto for those nights when Netflix doesn’t come through. “Woody Allen?” the clerk said. “You can look it up in that computer over there.” Annie Hall was my idea. It was the movie that kicked off our mutual admiration Woody Fest many years ago, when we rented pretty much the entire oeuvre one rainy weekend—and now I could imagine my Marty having her own Alvy Singer moment: “Hey, it’s Marty Silano. She’s on the Johnny Carson. Hey everyone, it’s Marty Silano!”

The kids burst into tears because we sent home their favorite babysitter. Next we exchanged our on-the-town duds for pajamas and scuffies. But the wine tasted good and the pasta was even better.

Dynamite Ham Chanterelle Pasta

It beats a plate of mashed yeast. You don’t need ham, really. Pancetta, bacon, whatever fatty pork products you’ve got lying around. Dice a q-p of the pig and saute in a dollop of butter until starting to crisp. Meanwhile put a pot on the boil and throw in whatever pasta you feel like. We used little radiators because they’re such good fat-catchers. Next add a chopped shallot or two to soak up all that porcine goodness in the pan. Put a couple tablespoons of butter in a large oven-proof mixing bowl and top with a couple ounces of heavy cream; shove in the oven at 300 degrees. When the shallots are soft add a pound of chopped chanterelles to the saute. If the chanties are fresh, cook out the water. Slowly, over medium-low heat, add a cup of heavy cream. Add a half cup or more of frozen peas to the sauce. Toss the finished pasta in the heated bowl with the butter and cream along with a third of a cup or more of grated parm. Pour the sauce over the pasta and mix some more.

Serve with red wine to insure full French Paradox mode and then repair to food coma couches for cinema and port.

Dinner dates and flowers
Just like old times
Staying up for hours
Making dreams come true
Doing things we used to do

Seems like old times
Being here with you…

Warm My Cockles

8 Replies

I’ll admit that among most clam chowder aficionados—of which I am most certainly one—Manhattan style is something of a red-haired step child. Given my druthers, I go for cream and butter too. But let’s not sell short that versatile fruit the tomato. It’s among the New World’s most successful exports, along with cocoa, potatoes, and corn. In any other chowder most of us love the tomato, but for some reason it’s maligned when in company with clams.

Well, get over it. While Manhattan Clam Chowder may often be dismissed as nothing more than vegetable soup with a few clams tossed in for good measure, if you cook it at home it can be so much more. And if you make it with cockles instead of clams…well, then you’re in truly rarified territory.

About Cockles

Cockles are medium-sized bivalves that inhabit sandy beaches and mudflats in the intertidal zone. Because their siphons are so short, they’re usually buried just beneath the surface. They can be distinguished from other bivalves by radiating ridges on the shell that run from hinge to margin.

I’ve had good cockling in Oregon. Puget Sound cockles (Clinocardium nuttalli), though widespread, aren’t commonly encountered, probably because of a lack of sandy habitat. When I saw a bunch of broken cockle shells littering a Hood Canal beach the other day I knew right away we were going to sacrifice a limit of steamer clams for these beautiful-looking mollusks. The easiest way to harvest them is with a garden rake. Look for tideflats with evidence of cockle shells, then rake the flats at low tide. It doesn’t take an abundance of elbow grease to uncover a cockle—you’ll know right away because the rake tines will ping off the shell.


Cockles have a muscular foot that can reportedly propel them up to two feet as they “jump” along the sea floor. Most folks don’t bother with cockles because they’re tough and also because they’re usually filled with grit from their sandy habitat. But they’re meaty, flavorful, and fun to forage. You can get rid of the grit by keeping the cockles in clean salt water for 24 hours before cooking, and the toughness is remedied by chopping and tenderizing. I use them mostly for chowder.

Spicy Manhattan Cockle Chowder

A few days before the new year my neighbor stopped by with a bagful of peppers from his garden. Seattle is not an easy place to grow peppers—and how these things were still in mint condition in the middle of winter was something of a mystery. But I’m fine with mysteries, especially if they work their way into a variety of deep winter cooking to add spice and intrigue. We dropped a few into the New Year’s Eve Paella and sprinkled a generous helping into another Crab and Seafood Gumbo. The last got tossed in the Manhattan Cockle Chowder.

This is the sort of dish you can cook as you process each ingredient, an hour from start to finish. The hot peppers spice it up and the sherry gives it a sweet finish.

20 medium-sized cockles in the shell (or 2 cups of meat)
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
3 thick slices bacon, diced
1 large onion, sliced into half-moons
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, sliced into rounds
3 ribs celery, split and sliced
2 hot peppers, diced
3 large red potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 28 oz cans whole plum tomatoes, with juice
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
sherry
parsley for garnish

1. With live cockles in the shell, figure you’ll need about 20, or more if they’re small (about 2-3 pounds). Combine wine and water in a heavy pot and heat on high. Add cockles when boiling, cover, and steam for several minutes until all shells are open. Turn off heat, remove meat to a bowl, and strain liquid (yields about 2 cups).

2. In same pot, heat oil and saute bacon until beginning to crisp. In turn, stir in onions, garlic, carrots, celery, peppers, and potatoes, adding each ingredient successively as you finish chopping.

3. Add reserved cockle broth. Pour in both cans of tomatoes and, to save time and mess, rough-cut tomatoes in the pot with a spoon or knife. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Add herbs. Cook until vegetables begin to soften, then add chopped cockles. Cook several more minutes. Ladle into bowls, add sherry to taste, and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread.

Clams with Pancetta, Wine & Cream

6 Replies

THIS A VARIATION on a classic dish that you see in restaurants all the time. Fresh thyme is an essential ingredient, and if you don’t have pancetta, good slab bacon is fine. 

2 dozen steamer clams, scrubbed
2-3 oz pancetta, or 2 thick slices of quality bacon, diced
1 large shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup cream
1 tbsp butter
thyme sprigs for garnish

Using a heavy pot, saute the pancetta in butter over medium heat until crisp on the edges. Stir in shallot, then garlic a minute later. Cook another minute or two until softened before de-glazing with wine. Stir in cream and herbs and raise heat to medium-high. Add clams and cover, cooking until they open, several minutes. Eat with good bread for sopping up the ambrosial liquid. Serves 2 as an appetizer.

Stinging Nettle, Potato & Leek Soup

12 Replies

THIS IS THE TIME of year when my stash of dried stinging nettles comes in handy. ]High in protein and nutrients, stinging nettles are a jolt to the system—just the ticket for the deepest, coldest stretch of winter. They also have that taste of the wild that can’t be duplicated by domestication.

Who doesn’t love a soup that’s ready to eat within an hour on a winter day? Just take your favorite Potato Leek recipe and sprinkle in a couple heaping tablespoons of dried nettles to transform a routine dish into something with a little more edge to it, a dish that sits up and howls at the winter moon.

3 tbsp butter
3 leeks, thinly sliced (tops discarded)
1 onion, chopped
2 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 lb red potatoes, unpeeled and cut up
1 quart chicken stock
2 heaping tbsp dried & powdered stinging nettles
1 cup heavy cream
1 bay leaf
pinch of white pepper
pinch of thyme
salt to taste

Melt butter in a heavy soup pot. Saute leeks and onion until soft. Add potatoes. Cook a few minutes. Cover with chicken stock; add water if necessary until potatoes are fully covered. Throw in a bay leaf. Simmer for 10 minutes before adding nettles. Continue simmering until potatoes are tender, then work with a masher. Season and add spices. Turn heat to low. Now is the time to use an immersion blender; otherwise, blend in a food processor to desired consistency. Stir in heavy cream and, if you like, a pat of butter.

For a little extra umph, I floated a few garlic-rubbed croutons on top.

Ushering in a New Year of Wild Foods

4 Replies

New Year’s Eve is largely, in the view of this critic, a letdown. If you brave the crowds downtown, you’re guaranteed a long, tedious night of bad food, overpriced bubbly, and boorish behavior. We prefer to indulge in boorish behavior in the privacy of our own home, with friends and accomplices who are forgiving of such behavior. The food is a lot better too. (As is the late-night dance party…)

Once again my friend Tip and I donned the aprons to throw together huge vats of paella for our guests. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The dinner didn’t actually make an appearance until a quarter to midnight, the cooks being too busy quaffing cavas and wolfing down cheeses from The Spanish Table, including an etorki that was mindblowingly delicious. Over the course of several hours we enjoyed a feast of fresh oysters, calamari from recently foraged Pacific squid, bagna caôda compliments of our Piedmontese friends the Coras, and a full bar of booze and wine.

Though not wild in origin, the bagna caôda deserves special mention. Chris and Lori harvested winter vegetables from their garden and put together this fondue-like dish with an aromatic sauce of garlic, olive oil, anchovies, and butter, all of it heated in an attractive vessel over flaming Sterno. Really, there’s not much I can do to fully describe just how stinky and delicious this whorehouse specialty is. Sopping up bread with the sludge in the bottom—and I use the word sludge with utmost admiration—is one of the more prurient acts in the food world, always accompanied by an orgiastic chorus of oohs and ahhs. Cardoon is a traditional bagna caôda veggie; others include cauliflower, broccolini, beets, cabbage, fennel, and whatever else you want to stir into the hot bath. The taste is intense and lingers in the memory.

While I’m at it, I’ll hand out more props: to the Day-Reis gang for their marinated and barbecued lamb and the Hunter-Gales for their Big Salad. The Coras also brought over a few pounds of squid harvested out of Elliott Bay, a pound of which got sauteed up for a calamari appetizer. But the cornerstone of the feast—the menu item that set the gears into motion this New Year’s—was the paella.

Kitchen-Sink Paella for 10

We call it “Kitchen-Sink Paella” for obvious reasons. Each time we use a conflation of two or three or more recipes and end up using most of the ingredients from each, including but not restricted to: chicken, chorizo, squid, shrimp, mussels, clams, and oysters. Of those, only the chicken and sausage were store-bought this year, which is a new record. The other key ingredients are Spanish rice, saffron, and sweet pimentón (paprika). This time around we used the more expensive Bomba rice, which requires a higher 3 to 1 ratio of stock to rice—which in turn requires you, the cook, to properly estimate your size of cookware or risk a flood of paella.

Speaking of cookware, the traditional paella pan is large, steel, and fairly shallow, the broad shallowness allowing the rice to cook quickly without burning. According to PaellaPans.com, a 26-inch pan will serve 15. One of these years I’ll have to pick up the real thing, but in the meantime Tip and I have been getting by with unsanctioned cookware, including his well-named “everyday pan” and my large skillet. This year Tip forgot his pan, so we experimented with a Le Creuset French Oven, mainly because it was big enough.

In the past, if memory serves, we finished the paella in the oven; this time we decided to court tradition and not stir (this despite our choices of cookware; clearly multiple cavas were making mischief). The shallower skillet came through with flying colors but the deep French Oven took longer to cook and burned on parts of the bottom, though not in a calamitous way. The take-away here, to employ the verbiage of a former employer, is to use a broad, shallow pan. Memo to Santa…

Here’s what The Spanish Table has to say about cooking paella: “Traditionally, paella is not stirred during the second half of the cooking time. This produces a caramelized layer of rice on the bottom of the pan considered by many to be the best part. With a large pan, it is difficult to accomplish this on an American stove and you may prefer to stir the paella occasionally or move the pan around on the burner(s). Another alternative is to finish the paella by placing it in the oven for the last 10-15 minutes of cooking. Paelleras can also be used on a barbecue, or an open fire (the most traditional heat source).”

4 cups Bomba rice
12 cups chicken stock
2 large onions, chopped, or 1/4 cup per person
50 threads of saffron (5 per person), crushed, toasted, and dissolved in 1/2 cup white wine
4 tbsp (or more) olive oil
10 (or more) pieces of chicken, on the bone (thighs and drumsticks), or 1 per person
10 soft chorizo sausages, sliced (about 2 lbs), or 1 per person
5 tsp sweet or semi-sweet pimenton (paprika), or 1/2 tsp per person
10 cloves, minced, or 1 per person
1 large can diced tomatoes
2 lbs squid, cleaned and cut up
1 lb shrimp, shelled, or 2 per person
2 lbs clams in the shell, or 4 per person
1 lb mussels, or 2 per person
2 red bell peppers, thinly sliced
2 hot peppers, diced
1 10 oz package of frozen peas
chopped parsley and lemon wedges for garnish

1. Warm stock.
2. Toast saffron gently in small saute pan until aromatic, then add wine. Bring to boil and set aside.
3. Heat olive oil in large paella pan (or two pans), then brown chicken on all sides. Next add onions and garlic and cook until translucent before adding chorizo, cooking a few minutes.
4. Add rice, stirring until fully coated. Add paprika and tomatoes. Stir in saffron-wine mixture and all the stock. Bring to a boil while scraping bottom, then add peppers. Adjust heat to maintain a slow boil. After 5 minutes or so, add frozen peas and seafood, stirring in peas, squid, shrimp, and clams; arrange mussles by inserting vertically halfway into top.
5. Cook another 15 minutes or until rice is done and clams and mussels have opened. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and garnish with lemon wedges. Serve with good Spanish wines, lots of them.