Cooking Fish at Sur la Table

Our "adopted daughter" Sara has been very disappointed that I never got around to posting photographs of  the results of the essential fish recipe class we took at Sur la Table a few months ago. I confess, part of the problem is I can't find the recipes, so I'm not sure I'll get the names right on them.

First up is the crispy-skin salmon with edamame pesto. Unfortunately, the fish which was purchased for the class lacked skin, but it still tasted pretty good. When Sara decided to make it for the mother's day dinner at our house, Lisa told her there was no way she was going to get enough of it done to feed the 14 or 16 people in attendance in time for a reasonable dinner hour. I'm happy to report that they found a way to do it in the oven and Sara did a fine job on the pesto. My son Michael used the left-overs on pasta.

I think, though I'm m not entirely sure, this is roasted halibut with tomato jam and possibly a panko topping. It was delicious.

This is for sure grilled ahi tuna served with some sauteed vegetables. There may be an orange sauce, which means that neither Sara, my son, or our friend Lorien should eat it. It was good, but would need a new sauce for the Sunday Super Supper Squad.

This was a baked cod or sole dish with definite Mediterranean flavors of tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese.

And here we have a nice couple of views of the presentation before the class dived into dinner.

As you can see, Sara enjoyed herself.

Sur la Table at the Farmers' Market (adjacent to The Grove) on West Third Street in Los Angeles offers periodic classes on cooking fish, which is an excellent way to learn more about this healthy protein. I saw that there's an upcoming class which concentrates on grilling fish. My friend who has been running the cooking classes program for about a year is leaving to return to her career as a pastry chef at the beginning of July (sniff!) But there are a number of excellent instructors remaining, most of whom have graduated from culinary school and worked in restaurants. I would strongly suggest taking the essential knife skills class (offered often) for anyone who wants to improve their performance in the kitchen, as well as the more advanced class in knife skills (rarely offered) if you want to safe money in the meat department.

Most classes run $69-$79 and end with a good dinner (or dessert) to sample. It is especially fun to take a class with a friend or two. Most classes are hands-on, and I guarantee you will learn something new every time. Plus, there will be a nice discount card to use for a week after the class.

Pasta and Gnocchi alla Fabio Viviani

Somehow, I missed out on the first two seasons of Top Chef, but then I became a convert.  I'm a fan of the Richard Blais, the Voltaggio brothers, Carla Hall, and some of the others, but I was greatly entertained by Fabio Viviani.

Now it happens, that the first time I heard of Fabio and his restaurant out in Moorpark was when William Shatner sang Fabio's praises at one of his charity horse shows and Cafe Firenze provided catering for the event (we didn't have tickets to dinner, sadly.)  Then my hairdresser, who lives out in Moorpark, also gave the place a rave.  That was about the time Fabio showed up on Top Chef.

After he was on Top Chef, I heard he wasn't at the Moorpark restaurant any longer (that's changed and he is back there) and then I heard he had opened a place in North Hollywood.  Lately, he's been hosting Top Chef viewing parties at both restaurants (doing the east coast feed in Moorpark and the west coast feed in North Hollywood.)  He's also teaching cooking classes at both places, though, sadly, not hands-on classes.  At least, not yet, but he promises they are forthcoming.

Fabio is also an avid tweeter, and I happen to follow him (and a lot of other chefs) on Twitter and Facebook.  So I caught the announcement that he would be teaching a pasta and gnocchi class at Firenze Osteria in North Hollywood on February 13.  The class was $40/per person or $70 per couple, so I signed up for two, figuring that if Len couldn't go with me, my son Michael or someone else would.  Michael lucked out because Len started a class on Sunday.

We got to the restaurant about half an hour ahead of start time, which was good, because there were only two people ahead of us in line and it turned out that seating was first-come, first served, and it was a fairly large group.  Women outnumbered men by a factor of about 10 to 1, and there was a huge group of women who all came together, leading me to the obvious conclusion that this celebrity chef has groupies.

We came to watch pasta and gnocchi being made and we got an afternoon at Comedy Central as well.  Fabio is hysterical.  From his good-natured difficulties with English ("the thumb rule" "rule of thumb-a") to his retro male-chauvanist-pig remarks (reminding me why I would never marry an Italian-American male), I laughed until I wanted to cry.

Fabio wanted everyone to understand that making pasta is EASY.  A egg, some salt, some oil, and some flour in a food processor--that's pasta.  Some baked potatoes, an egg, some salt, some nutmeg, some pepper, some flour in a mixer--that's gnocchi.  There was also a big emphasis on common sense--I pinch or a hand of some measurement isn't a child's hand or that of Andre the Giant, use a folded towel to take a hot potato out of the oven and the n let it cool off.  And so on.

Like most of the Italian and Italian-American cooks I have known, there's less about measuring and much more about taste and feel in his methods.  To make pasta, Fabio uses one egg per person and he advises working in batches of no more than four eggs.  ("Don't have more than 4 people to dinner!")  So for four eggs, add a pinch of salt, a little olive oil, and about 2/3-3/4 cups of all purpose flour in the food processor until a ball is formed.  Then knead the dough a little and cut it into several pieces to run through the rollers of a pasta machine.  The kneaded dough feels a bit like your earlobe when it is ready to rest.  Depending on the type of pasta, either cut it by hand (after rolling up the sheets of dough) or use a pasta machine to cut the noodles.

He advocates the use of the food processor over the hand-mixing method because it is quick and easy.  He does recommend giving the dough an opportunity to rest between mixing and rolling.

I remember watching my grandmother rolling out her pasta dough by hand.  She made it look so easy, but it is so much faster and easier to use a pasta machine.  I love mine.

After Fabio finished making the pasta, we were all served some with a meat sauce.  Then it was on to gnocchi.

The rough recipe for gnocchi, which won rave reviews every time he made them on Top Chef, involves baking potatoes, letting them cool, and running them through a meat grinder or a ricer after peeling them.  Do not mash them--it give the wrong consistency.  It looked like he used about 4 cups of ground, cooked potatoes to 1 egg, two pinches of salt, one pinch of pepper, about a half-teaspoon of nutmeg, and a handful and a half of grated Parmesan.  This was mixed with a paddle in a Kitchen-aid mixer.

(There were lots of ooohs and aaahs over the mixer and a number of people were whispering about how expensive they are.  I will say that my Kitchen-aid is one of the best investments in the kitchen I ever made, and the one I had before that was one my mother owned for 30 years.  I've had my K5A for twenty years now and I expect to leave it to my son.  My sister may still own the one our grandmother had.)

After mixing those ingredients together, Fabio added flour to reach the consistency he wanted.  It is a softer consistency than the pasta dough.  I would guess that he added around 1-1/2 to 2 cups of all purpose flour to get the consistency he wanted.  After that, he took lemon or tennis ball lumps of the dough, shaped it into cylinders of about 3/4" thick and 10" long and cut them into approximately 3/4" pieces.  He used very little flour on the counter and on his hands to keep things from sticking because adding too much flour to the gnocchi makes them heavy.

When cooking the gnocchi (and the pasta) he advises adding olive oil to the pot.  With the gnocchi, don't stir them in the pot and, no matter how many are in the pot, scoop them out and drain them all when two or three of them have risen in the water to float.  To do otherwise will water-log the gnocchi and make them fall apart.

We got to sample the gnocchi in a marinara sauce.  Heavenly.

Fabio spent quite a bit of time answering questions from the room.  And then we got an added surprise--door prizes for four of the attendees.  We were told to check under our seats and this note is what I found under mine:

And this is what it redeemed:

It is a Bialetti ceramic-lined, nonstick saute pan.  Fabio will be selling it on QVC or some such channel in the not too distant future.

I planned to upload some video of the class, but I'm having big problem with it.  So I am sorry.  If I figure out what to do, it may just be another entry.  Fabio will be teaching a risotto class at Firenze Osteria on Sunday, and I think there are still spaces available.  It is a fine bit of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon.

Back in the Kitchen

Where did eight months go? It isn't as if I stopped cooking or eating. I guess it is catch-up time.

The rebuild on our house was more or less done in February. We've been back in since early March. There was quite a bit of change, but not of the over-all square-footage. The open floor plan we went with for the front of the house works really well. The color of the cabinets is fairly close to that of the first photograph. (This was shot before we actually moved back in and is a view from the living room into the kitchen area. The powder room is just past a coat closet next to the front door. The hall was formed to make room for an additional couple of cabinets.)My new kitchen has a pantry, a big oven and range, a big refrigerator (after dealing with the horrible rental refrigerator, we're doing the happy dance), and lots of cabinets (though, sadly, there are never enough cabinets.) Did I mention the walk-in pantry where the useless laundry sink used to be? The kitchen sink now looks into the yard, rather than the living room, but it does not have a big, single tub like I finally got when we redid the kitchen three years ago.
Somehow, the contractor didn't hear that I wanted it returned, no matter how many times I told him. The granite counters are lovely, but every one of them is a bit too high for my comfort. I anxiously await the return or my great grandmother's Hoosier kitchen, which will have a workspace for someone of my height.The door leads out to my garden--and the grilling area. My landscape artist just got the raised beds in for my herbs and vegetables and I can't wait to get plants in that will attract humming birds near the kitchen window.

The counter on the right is over a good-sized cabinet with drawers and has a seating area outside the range of the picture. This was taken before we moved things back in. It's a little more crowded on those counters now.

The new kitchen does inspire use, but I've largely been limited by time (mostly spent unpacking) to making dinner for the Sunday Super Supper Squad. I've rediscovered the joys of using a crock pot after purchasing a copy of The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone. It's a great way to cook for a crowd, especially if you don't have a lot of time.

On Sunday, I tried the recipe for Seafood Couscous. It was a good choice because my husband, who has limited seafood tastes, was on a plane back from a comic book convention in Calgary, and my pescatarian was in attendance. Len will eat salmon, tuna, and swordfish, but won't eat most whitefish or shellfish (there's an exception for peeled shrimp.)
This wasn't the best styling I've ever done on a plate of food, but I appreciate my friend Liz taking the picture for me before it disappeared. Everyone loved it and it was so easy to make. Onions and garlic are sauteed, chopped tomatoes and tomato paste added, along with broth and clam juice and brought to a boil. Then it's into the crock pot for four hours on low. The fish (scallops, shrimp, and firm white fish) get added 20 minutes before serving. The couscous is made separately. I have a six and a half quart crock pot and doubling the recipe filled it up.

Thanks also go to my son, Michael, who is turning into a great assistant. He does a great job with prep, which has been a godsend since I broke my arm in December (there went four months of my life.) I'm almost done with physical therapy, but he's been most helpful. If French cooking is about perfection and not yield, he's got a future in the kitchen.

Michael has just complete the third of three three-day cooking basics classes taught at Sur la Table at the Los Angeles Farmers Market on Fairfax. (If you have a Sur La Table in your area, check them out. Not all of the stores hold classes.) The group that took the first round had such a good time that they convinced the chef to do it twice more with different recipes. I wish I had the time to go with him and our friend Sandy, who's been doing the driving. Tomorrow they get to go to a wine and cheese tasting, which is so much more fun than anything I'll be doing.

Cooking as a Spectator Sport

Has cooking become a spectator sport? I'd like to recommend an article from the New York Times which suggests this and proposes we'd all be thinner if we took more time to cook for ourselves. I think he's on to something.

My husband and I are addicted to cooking shows. He actually does most of the cooking, because I'm the one with the traditional job these days and he works at home. But his idea of cooking is along the lines of "Semi-homemade." He's more than happy to use canned sauces for pasta, even though making them from scratch is fairly quick and easy. I'm reluctant to complain, because by the time I get home from work and the requisite trip to the Arabian Prince at the barn, I'm not in any shape to cook.

I am feeling somewhat inspired by Julie & Julia, and I think it would be so much more interesting and healthy to actually eat fresher things with fewer ingredients (a la Mark Bittman and Food Matters.)

So I think I'll challenge my other half to this: starting September 1 and going til the end of the year, I'll cook for the Sunday Super Supper Squad and one other night each week and you get to do the same three nights a week for the three of us, but the cooking can't use highly processed foods (that means canned or frozen things with more than the maximum requisite number of ingredients Mark Bittman writes about.) You can go back to Rachel Ray's books, which actually are pretty good about these things, or any other cookbooks on the shelf (Julia Child is still there, even though most of our cookbook collection is gone because of the fire.) I claim Marcella Hazan and the Silver Palate books.

Remember, we live in southern California, where the produce at a farmers' market is always wonderful and fish is readily available. And we've got a really nice grill in the back yard.

It will require planning on both of our parts, but we can do this. And we don't have to give up watching cooking shows while we do it.

Cookbooks and Gamers

I have never been a role-playing gamer (RPG), so this wouldn't mean much to me except for the fact that my son, who also works as a video game tester, is. Actually, we know a lot of people who are into gaming and eating, but not cooking. I got a link to a commentary piece which, if you picture cookbooks subject to the continual updating of software, is pretty funny. Here's the link to Killjoy Cooking with the Dungeons and Dragons Crowd by Lore Sjoberg at Wired. Thank goodness that, unless you are a lawyer, your paper books are not subject to updates which can upset your life if you don't get them. As I said elsewhere, the 1970s version of the Joy of Cooking is my kitchen workhorse and the recipes still work just the way they should--even though it's been updated twice since my edition.