TV/Dinner - Squid Games

Sometimes, if I didn’t enjoy a dish at a restaurant that I felt should have been really good, I’m left unsatisfied to the point where I then play a sort of game and make the dish at home in an attempt to improve upon it. But what I often prefer is trying to recreate a dish I loved.

I didn’t start watching Squid Games until recently (yes, it’s highly addictive, frequently stunning, and probably dangerously subversive) but was reminded of an evening years ago at Milos in mid-town New York—a soaring space draped in splashes of white with glittering ice banks of fish on display, freshly flown in from Greece. I once enjoyed the most delicious grilled squid there, stuffed with goat cheese, basil, and mint. It was rather pricey, so instead of going back to Milos, I headed down to Chinatown for a bunch of inexpensive squid and made a pretty good version in my own kitchen.

I’ve included a basic recipe for grilled squid from Serious Eats (with a little help from Ina Garten) below and tinkered with it to recreate the fabulous squid at Milos.

Unlike Squid Games, there are no rules to this particular squid game. Play however you’d like! For example, I recently stuffed some squid with a ground salmon burger and grilled that. Opa!

Grilled Squid With Olive Oil and Lemon
Serves 4 

(2 stuffed squid per person)

Ingredients
8 medium whole cleaned squid bodies
Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling and serving
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 oz goat cheese

2 oz feta cheese

1 heaping TB chopped basil

1 heaping TB chopped mint

1 TB lemon juice
Salt and pepper, to taste

Fresh parsely, for garnish

Directions
1. Rinse the squid tubes and pat dry with paper towels. 

2. Make the Stuffing:

In a bowl, combine well goat cheese, feta cheese, basil, and mint with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
3. Stuff the Squid:
Carefully spoon (or pipe with a pastry bag) the stuffing into each squid tube, filling about 3/4 full. 
Secure the open ends of the squid tubes with a toothpick.

4. Preheat a grill pan to medium-high heat.

5. Brush the stuffed squid with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and grill for 2-3 minutes per side, or until the squid is opaque and has light grill marks. Avoid overcooking as the squid can become tough.
6. Serve:

Transfer the grilled squid to a serving platter, drizzle with olive oil or lemon juice, and garnish with fresh parsley. Serve immediately.  



Thanks to realgreekrecipes.com for the pic!

For Guinness' Sake!

 

The luck of the Irish sure seemed to be with me when I happened upon Nigella Lawson’s gorgeous Chocolate Guinness Cake: I already had most of the ingredients on hand (including a leftover can of Guinness from the Guinness Beef Stew with Horseradish Cream I’d made). Just thinking of an icing that should “resemble a frothy pint of Guinness” sent me into the kitchen to start baking. This cake a stunner for sure. My suggestions to lighten things up a bit are in italics.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody!

Chocolate Guinness Cake
By Nigella Lawson

Yield: One 9-inch cake or 12 servings

Ingredients
For the Cake:
Butter, for the pan
1 cup Guinness stout
10 tablespoons (1 stick plus 2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups superfine sugar
¾ cup sour cream (I used Breakstone Light Sour Cream)
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2½ teaspoons baking soda

For the Topping:
1¼ cups confectioners’ sugar
8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (Neufchâtel has a lower fat content)
½ cup heavy cream (try a few tablespoons of condensed skim milk)

Preparation
Step 1
For the cake: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line with parchment paper. In a large saucepan, combine Guinness and butter. Place over medium-low heat until butter melts, then remove from heat. Add cocoa and superfine sugar, and whisk to blend.

Step 2
In a small bowl, combine sour cream, eggs and vanilla; mix well. Add to Guinness mixture. Add flour and baking soda, and whisk again until smooth. Pour into buttered pan, and bake until risen and firm, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Place pan on a wire rack and cool completely in pan.

Step 3
For the topping: Using a food processor or by hand, mix confectioners' sugar to break up lumps. Add cream cheese and blend until smooth. Add heavy cream, and mix until smooth and spreadable.

Step 4
Remove cake from pan and place on a platter or cake stand. Ice top of cake only, so that it resembles a frothy pint of Guinness.

BOOK/A TABLE - Baked Lemon Pudding with Blueberry Jam

 

I love it when an author gives a character a memorable “monkey”—a truly great trait or accessory that provides them with an identifiable silhouette and makes an imprint on our hearts: Miss Havisham’s rotted wedding dress, Philip Carey’s club foot in Of Human Bondage, Cyrano’s protuberant proboscis, Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter!

When it came to making this Baked Lemon Pudding with Blueberry Jam I became giddy as a kid, remembering when I was one, picking blueberries with my mother along bristling side roads in Maine. And thanks to Roald Dahl, blueberries will also always remind me of Violet Beauregard, that little brat from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory whose inability to stop chewing gum yielded disastrous results. Here’s what happened to her after eating a stick of Wonka’s gum that wasn’t quite ready yet...

“But there was no saving her now. Her body was swelling up and changing shape at such a rate that within a minute it had turned into nothing less than an enormous round blue ball—a gigantic blueberry, in fact—and all that remained of Violet Beauregard herself was a tiny pair of legs and a tiny pair of arms sticking out of the great round fruit and a little head on top.”

Since the first day of Spring is a week away, I’m pretty sure you should make this pudding in celebration—but it’s not exactly a pudding. Perhaps imagine instead a meet-cute where tart lemon curdy custard and an airy soufflé topping have a fling with blueberry jam. 

Whatever you want to call it, start cracking those eggs and fling yourself into Spring with this luscious dessert. I think it’s best served chilled!

P.S. I would be remiss not to mention Robert McCloskey and Blueberries for Sal, of course.

Baked Lemon Pudding with Blueberry Jam
By Melissa Clark
6 servings

Ingredients
2 tablespoons/28 grams unsalted butter, softened
1cup/200 grams granulated sugar
2 large lemons, zested and juiced (about 2 tablespoons zest and ½ cup juice)
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
3 large eggs, yolks and whites separated
¼ cup/31 grams all-purpose flour
1 cup/236 milliliters whole milk
⅓ cup/about 120 grams blueberry jam
Powdered sugar, for serving

Preparation
Step 1: Heat oven to 350 degrees with a rack in the center.

Step 2: In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, lemon zest and salt, using a wooden spoon to mash together. Mix in egg yolks, then whisk in flour. Whisk in lemon juice and milk.

Step 3: In a small bowl, stir blueberry jam to loosen.

 
Step 4: Using a whisk, electric mixer or electric beaters, beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Fold into batter.

Step 5: Pour batter into a glass pie dish or shallow gratin dish and use a spoon to top with small dollops of jam. Bake until golden brown on top and just set (a wiggle in the center is fine), about 30 to 35 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, then use a spoon to serve warm or room temperature with a dusting of powdered sugar.

BOOK/A TABLE - White Bolognese

Reading Amor Towles’s dazzling novel Rules of Civility felt like being plunged into a tub of Champagne—at once perilous, heady, and delicious. There’s a definite nod to The Great Gatsby, I think, as we follow Katey Kontent (Kontent) and her witty chums (particularly the seductive, mysterious Tinker Grey) around a glorious, fizzy Manhattan in 1938.

Here Katey mulls over her neighbor’s Bolognese in a brilliant evocation of city life:

“When I got back to my apartment building, you could tell it was Wednesday because the blushing bride in 3B was running roughshod over her mother’s Bolognese. When she had transcribed the recipe, she must have written two heads of garlic instead of two cloves, because we’d all be wearing her home cooking for the rest of the week.”

It seems Katey is talking about a traditional Bolognese with a garlicky red sauce, but I was reminded of Amanda Hesser’s heavenly White Bolognese (without any garlic!), courtesy of the New York Times. 

My own rules of civility dictate that I tell you to try using fresh hand-cut egg noodles instead of rigatoni—they unfurl so wonderfully and make a tremendously satisfying, gorgeous plate of pasta. A few further suggestions from me are in italics below.

Rigatoni with White Bolognese
By Amanda Hesser
Serves 4

Ingredients
Extra Virgin oil
1/2 sweet onion, peeled and finely chopped we used a regular Spanish onion as sweet onions can simply be too sweet, the carrots add enough sweetness
2 medium carrots, peeled and finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lb mild Italian pork sausage meat, removed from casings
1 lb ground beef (not lean)
1 1/2 cups dry Italian white wine
1 cube beef bouillon dissolved in 2 cups simmering water we used porcini mushroom bouillon that we brought back from Italy, but it's also available stateside and well worth hunting down
1 1/2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms rehydrated in 3 cups lukewarm water 
1/3 cup heavy cream probably a little more, I like to see the creamy whiteness in the sauce
1 lb rigatoni
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese we used Romano cheese that we had, though it hardly needs any enhancement anyhow--but we did add freshly grated nutmeg that we think is an essential addition to any hearty sauce!

Preparation
1. Add enough oil to a large, deep saute pan to coat the base and place over medium-high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the onion, carrots and celery and saute until glassy and just tender, about 5 minutes. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Add the sausage and beef to the pan, breaking it into walnut-size pieces, and brown well.

2. Pour in the wine and keep at a rapid simmer until the pan is almost dry. Then pour in 1 1/2 cups beef bouillon and lower the heat to medium. Simmer gently, uncovered, until the bouillon is nearly gone, stirring now and then. Meanwhile, chop the rehydrated porcini into small pieces, reserving the liquid.

3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add mushroom liquid to the sauce to cover the meat halfway(about 1 cup) along with the porcini and continue simmering until the sauce is loose but not soupy, about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and pepper, it should be highly seasoned. When the consistency is right, fold the cream in. Remove from the heat and cover.

4. When the pasta water is at a full boil, add the rigatoni and cook until still firm, but not hard, in the center. When the pasta is almost done, scoop out 1 cup of pasta water and reserve. Drain the pasta and then return it to the pot. Pour the pasta sauce on top and fold in with a wooden spoon. The pasta should not be dry. Add a little pasta water or mushroom liquid to loosen it. (It will continue to soak up sauce on the way to the table.) Serve in one large bowl or individual bowls, passing the cheese at the table.