cocktail and bar snack: gold rush + oven fried okra with smoked tomato aioli

Every summer for the past four years, I've traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, for eight days in order to read and score high school essays from the current year's AP English Literature Exam. There's much more good stuff from Louisville than you'd think: baseball, horses, Muhammad Ali, killer Ethiopian and Persian food, My Morning Jacket, cool fossils, and bourbon a-go-go... 


Because this small city's downtown suddenly swells with over a thousand high school and college English teachers during that week in June, it's always a bit of a mixed bag: it is admittedly something of a socially awkward nerd-fest (present company included), but also, and at the same time, it's full of some of the coolest and most interesting people you'll ever hang out with, all of whom are packed into one frigid, fluorescent-lit convention center for a week of eight-hour days spent scoring largely mediocre high school writing, and who are chomping at the bit by five o'clock in the evenings for anything else to do but read. So, to pass the time, we have been known to find good restaurants, go bowling, do silly karaoke, dance at Howl At the Moon (shout-out to my man Ed), and drink lotsa bourbon.

This just in: whiskey
futures are soaring.

One of the more surprising spots in the downtown area is Proof, the bar and restaurant attached to the 21st Century Museum Hotel on Main Street - part hotel and part museum - which is also so much fun to visit for its rotating art exhibits. My AP friends and I generally eschew Proof on the typical go-out-to-dinner night because it's nearly impossible to get a reservation, but we do insist on going there for drinks on the final evening, when most of the other English teachers are already in bed in preparation for their flights the next day.


Proof has a constantly evolving menu of the best-named cocktails I've seen in a while. Two years ago, I felt obligated to try something called the Dirty Presbyterian, which completely lived up to the name (I only hope I could do as well...). This year was no different: we had a couple of rounds of delicious drinks, including the gold rush (which I found so haunting that I actually hunted down a recipe for it), as well as a basket of fries with an intriguing smoked aioli. I had no idea how to replicate that one at home, but I had just watched a Top Chef episode in which a contestant mentioned a smoked-tomato-something-or-other, so here is my homemade version.


It's probably too fancy to call this aioli. This is basically just a spicy, smoky, tomato-n-mayo-based dipping sauce, but it is GOO-OOD, to quote Cousin Eddie in Christmas Vacation. 


I've posted the recipe for oven fried okra here, which I realize is only in season during the dead middle of the summer in the South. At any other time, the romas for the aioli will still be available at any grocery store, as will baking potatoes for this best home fries EVER recipe. I recommend substituting your dip-ables as needed, season-wise.


gold rush cocktail
3/4 oz. honey, warmed
3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 oz. bourbon


Pour all three ingredients into a cocktail shaker without ice and stir until well combined. (Stirring before adding ice keeps the honey from getting cold and congealing into taffy consistency, which will mess up the drink.) Now add several cubes of ice, put the lid and cap on the shaker, and shake vigorously. Strain into a highball glass with a lemon twist or a sprig of mint for garnish.

oven fried okra

1 lb. okra, washed, dried & split down the middle lengthwise

1/2 c. corn meal

sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne to taste

olive oil spray (or Pam)

smoked tomato aioli

2 to 3 small roma tomatoes

1 medium garlic clove, minced

sea salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil

2 tablespoons Hellman’s low-fat mayo

1/4 tsp. liquid smoke

a pinch of cayenne pepper

a few shakes of chipotle Tabasco sauce (for the spicy smokiness)

Roast tomatoes:  Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Slice roma tomatoes lengthwise into thirds and remove ribs, seeds, and pulp. Drizzle with olive oil and toss them a bit so that they’re covered completely. Arrange them peel side down in a shallow oven-proof skillet and sprinkle with garlic, sea salt, pepper, and a little bit of sugar – making sure that these ingredients are on top of the tomatoes and not on the bottom of the pan itself. Roast for 20 to 30 minutes, until they’re nicely caramelized and brown. Let them cool.

Don’t turn the oven off! Keep it preheated to 450 degrees.

In a paper bag, pour in cornmeal, garlic powder, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Shake it around so that it mixes together. Put in halved okra, twist the top closed, and shake it around so that it’s all coated with the breading mixture. Dump the breaded okra into a not-so-fine sieve over the garbage can and shake all the extra corn meal off of it. Grease the bottom of a large rimmed baking sheet with olive oil and then arrange okra in a single layer, cut side down, spraying the top of everything well with Pam (or drizzling with olive oil). Roast okra for 30 minutes, shaking or turning it halfway through cooking time to make sure both sides get browned and crunchy.

While okra is cooking, in a small food processor combine cooled roasted tomato pieces, mayo, liquid smoke, and a tablespoon or so of olive oil. Blend until smooth. Add a sprinkle of cayenne and or few shakes of chipotle Tabasco sauce to taste (more if you like it spicy) and give a couple of extra pulses of the food processor to incorporate.  

Serve okra with aioli for dipping.

Sit back on your porch and enjoy your Kentucky-endorsed cocktail and bar snack.

Cheers,
H.

tarte tatin with chantilly cream

Let's get one thing straight: I've never been a baker. There was a short stint, back when I was taking Adult Living in high school, when I managed to make a nice sour cream pound cake and, more impressively, an apple pie completely from scratch, crust and all. But ever since then, I've been more of a savory sides-and-main kind of girl. 


I have another confession: this is not entirely my recipe. It's largely another cook's adaptation of a tarte tatin recipe from The Joy of Cooking, which I found at Deb Perelman's blog Smitten Kitchen. All I did was add the idea of the puff pastry crust, which makes the whole thing easier. I've proven once in my life that I can make a pie crust from scratch. I don't need to do it every time I make a dessert, especially when I like puff pastry better anyway.


And now, for the reason I chose this particular tarte tatin recipe: she calls it "Molly's Apple Tarte Tatin." For those who don't know me, I used to have a wonderful cat named Molly. She had a short tail that wouldn't bend and a calico coat so vividly variegated that it prompted me sometimes to call her names like "Butterscotch," "Bumblebee," and "Speckle." She adored pepperoni and anything made of pork - we used to say she lived in Birmingpig. She was (appropriately) a Leo who was sure upon meeting you for the first time that you were just going to love her. She had teeny, skinny arms and legs, an enormous belly, huge green eyes, and donkey ears. This may not make sense, but D always said that her features made her look sort of like Audrey Hepburn. Two years ago this November, we took her to the vet for some apparently innocuous breathing problems, and as it turns out, she had heartworms. She died on the ER table that night, lying between D and me, mercifully sedated. 

So, this recipe is for the lovely Molly, our little piglet.


I apologize that I only have a picture of the final slice of the tarte and not the whole thing, but I made it for dinner on Friday night with D's parents, and we demolished the whole thing in under 24 hours. Not bad. Anyway, I kind of like the picture the way it is: one lone slice left, swimming in a pool of pure salted caramel. 


The gestalt of this recipe is not to be underestimated. It's composed of a deceptively short list of simple ingredients that somehow, when cooked this way, become nothing short of sublime. As a final note, let me just encourage you not to skimp on the chantilly cream - when it comes to dessert, I say go big or go home.



tarte tatin with chantilly cream
7 medium apples (We used Gala.)
1 stick (4 oz.) salted butter
1 cup sugar (white or brown, depending on your preference)
1 frozen puff pastry crust, thawed in the refrigerator overnight

Take out the thawed puff pastry and unfold it. Using the same 10-inch skillet you’ll use for the apple filling as a template, lay the square of pastry over it and cut off the corners so that it’s basically circular and fits inside the skillet’s top edge. Fold it back in thirds and put it back in the refrigerator, covered in a tea towel or paper towel to keep it damp.

Peel and core the apples, cutting them into quarters – nothing smaller, as they’ll cook down quite a bit. You don’t need to toss them with lemon juice to keep them from browning; they’ll brown plenty in the pan, if you’re lucky! :)

In a 10-inch diameter, heavy, oven-proof skillet, melt a stick of salted butter over low heat. Remove pan from heat and stir in a cup of sugar. Tap or bump the pan so that the mixture is evenly distributed over the bottom.

Arrange the cut and peeled apple quarters side-down in the skillet, overlapping them first in a layer around the edge of the skillet and then filling in the middle. Stack them as closely as you can.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Put the skillet back on high heat on the stove. Boil sugar, butter, and apples over high heat for 10 to 12 minutes, until juices are starting to brown some. Using a sharp paring knife, spear each slice and carefully flip it over in the pan (it’ll take a couple of minutes to do all of them.) Then continue cooking on high for another 5 minutes or so, until it’s really brown.

Take the puff pastry crust out of the refrigerator and cover the skillet with it, tucking in the edges a bit on the sides. Be careful not to burn your fingers!

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, just until the crust is as golden-brown as you like it.

Take it out of the oven, let it cool for a half hour, and then carefully flip it onto a large plate.  Use a rubber scraper to get all the caramel out of the bottom of the pan, and spoon it on top.

chantilly cream

1 small (6 to 8 oz.) carton whipping cream

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tbsp. sugar

Whip all three ingredients together in a large bowl with a hand mixer until they form stiff peaks. Put a dollop on top of your tarte slice.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

H.

sautéed corn with garlic, basil, and parmesan

This recipe was inspired by a Saturday trip to the East Lake Farmer's Market last month (following our visit to Ruffner Mountain for "Breakfast with the Animals," where we were the only adults present who didn't have children in tow, and where we got to meet and pet a possum, a screech owl, a box turtle, and a corn snake). We came home excited, tired, and laden with a huge bag of local produce, which I ended up making into a vegetable plate - incidentally, one of my favorite things to have for a summer supper - including sautéed corn, quick pickles, oven fried okra, and black-eyed peas with onion and bacon.


I have made this dish on a half-dozen occasions since, always to rave reviews, and I can't help but feel a little guilty because it was totally serendipitous, simple, and thrown-together. But it ends up being surprisingly elegant and impressive looking. 


A couple of tips: it's fine to let the corn and onions get a bit golden and even a bit golden-brown, but do yourself a favor and don't let the garlic brown. Just clear a little space in the pan, melt a tiny pat of butter there, add the finely minced garlic, stir it a little into the pool of butter, and let it sit and cook for just a half-minute before you work it into the rest of the corn/onion mixture. It will be buttery and garlicky, and between that and the lemon zest and the basil, your kitchen will smell like heaven. Tip number two: be sure you use a very sharp knife when you cut the corn off the cob. Finally, it can be messy work, so if you have a porch, I recommend doing your cutting outside so that you can just let the kernels fly.

sautéed corn with garlic, basil, and parmesan

4 fresh ears of white corn, cut off the cob
2 or 3 tbsp. butter, divided
1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil
half of a white onion, minced (a couple of small shallots will work, too)
1 medium clove garlic, minced
5 or 6 large basil leaves, finely chopped
zest of one lemon
1/4 cup shaved Parmesan
coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper


Melt olive oil and 2 tbsp. butter over medium to medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes until it's softened and light golden.

Add corn and toss in the butter, oil, and onion mixture until it's completely coated. Sauté corn and onion until it’s golden and caramelized, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Make a little space in the pan and melt the remaining 1/2 tbsp. butter, and then add garlic. Sauté just until fragrant, about 30 to 45 seconds.

Remove from heat and stir in the basil and lemon zest, as well as salt and pepper to taste. A minute or two before serving, add the Parmesan and toss just a little bit, so that it doesn’t melt too much and stays in little chunks.

P.S. For my vegan friends, I have a suspicion that this would be perfectly wonderful with just the olive oil and without the cheese. 

My dad says this corn should be illegal.

And a pic of the whole shebang:

I love me some vegetable plate.

roasted pork tenderloin with peach lambic glaze

This recipe started out as a dish for two friends who came over for dinner one night this summer. I’ve been brining and pan-roasting chicken breasts for months because I love how tender and juicy it makes them, but since I had just served that to one of our guests at another dinner just a few weeks beforehand, I figured I should use a different meat this time. I ended up making a wild mushroom sauce to go with the pork, but this week, when I made it again just for D and me, I thought something sweeter and less heavy would be nice; hence the lambic glaze.

Brining the pork beforehand will make the juiciest tenderloin you’ve ever had. D said it had the texture of filet mignon, yet it tasted like pork. Awesome. Plus, it's super easy. Over half of the ingredients are just for the quickly stirred-together brine. The only real components you need for the recipe itself are brined pork, lambic, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

I served this with a skilletful of sautéed corn with basil, garlic, and Parmesan (which I'll post soon) and Laura Calder's recipe (from French Food at Home) for Roasted Cumin Carrots. If you don't like peach lambic, I'll bet the black cherry (or "Kriek") flavor would be really good, too.


roasted pork tenderloin with peach lambic glaze
1 pork tenderloin (a little over a pound)
1 quart cold water
1 tbsp. whole black peppercorns
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
2 large (or 3 to 4 small) bay leaves, broken in half
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1 bottle peach lambic
freshly ground pepper

Brine the pork tenderloin: In a large bowl, whisk together water, salt, and sugar until they’re completely dissolved. Stir in peppercorns, thyme, garlic, and bay leaves. Cut off all visible fat and gristle from the tenderloins, and then rinse with clean water. Add the pork to the brine, and use your fingers to press the spices into the meat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to several hours.

About a half-hour before cooking time, remove pork tenderloin from refrigerator. Be sure to remove all the peppercorns. Rinse the meat well with clean water, and pat very dry. Crack some pepper over top of it (no salt - that's in the brine). Put it on a plate, cover it, and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Make peach lambic glaze: pour an entire bottle of peach lambic into a saucepan. Over medium to medium-high heat, boil gently until it’s reduced to a third of what you started with and is the consistency of a syrup. Add a teaspoon or so of sugar if you like it a little more sweet than tart. Otherwise, it’s done.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high to high heat, add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. When it begins to smoke a bit, add the pork and sear well on both sides (peppering the other side when you turn it) until it’s well-browned, a couple of minutes per side.

Take the skillet off the stove and immediately put it in the preheated oven. Roast the pork for 20 to 25 minutes, turning once and basting once or twice with the lambic reduction, until a thermometer inserted in the center reaches 135 or so degrees. (I know they say 140 or 145, but trust me, it will come out perfectly medium-well this way.)

Remove to a plate, tent the meat with foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes. Slice it into thick rounds. Save the glaze and pan juices and drizzle them over the top of the pork slices.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
H.

once-a-year cream of mushroom soup

...so called because, for the sake of my arteries, I don't think I should eat this soup any more frequently than that. Luckily - or unluckily, depending on how you see it - this recipe produces a pretty modest amount of soup, though it actually begins with a healthy amount of liquid.

But first, let me explain why I got a bee in my bonnet about making up a mushroom soup recipe. A few weeks ago, I went to Florida for my annual beach trip with my girlfriends from the University of Georgia. The five of us are now scattered all over the country, but we reconvene every summer in Melbourne Beach to drink margaritas, sit in the sunshine, read glossy magazines we would never otherwise buy, and earnestly discuss the Harry Potter books while swimming in the ocean. This year, we actually had the chance to visit the newly opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios theme park in Orlando. Excited as kids, we showed up early in the morning just before the park opened, lined up to get in, and spent four hours touring Hogwarts Castle, drinking butterbeer, and riding dragons and hippogriffs. At lunchtime, predictably, we were all exhausted, overheated, and ravenous. Just outside the Harry Potter section of the park, we found a restaurant called Mythos, which is supposedly the Best Theme Park Restaurant in the World, and we put in our names for a lunch table. Forty-five minutes later, we were sitting in a cushy booth, drinking large glasses of water and eating freshly baked rosemary bread with butter. When I saw the cream of mushroom soup on the menu, I knew I had to try it because it's so rare to find a restaurant that carries it. Also, you know, what do you crave most when you're hot, tired, and hungry, if not something warm and dairy-based? ;)

So it was sublime. And it wasn't just the hunger or the exhaustion, either.

I've been thinking about making a version of that soup for weeks, trying to figure out how to do it. I looked at a bunch of recipes from cooks I love but finally decided against all of them. Instead, I started by riffing off of a mushroom-and-thyme sauté that I made earlier in the summer. It looked like this...

mushrooms with butter, thyme, and white wine - mmm!

...and here's the recipe I ended up with. My strategy was to make sure each layer - the broth, the mushrooms, the shallot-and-garlic mixture - had plenty of complex flavors so that the soup wouldn't be bland. 

This is so incredibly not bland.  Trust.

cream of mushroom soup

16 oz. sliced button mushrooms

2 c. chicken broth

3 or 4 small shallots, finely diced

1 huge (or 2 small) cloves of garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

1/2 tsp. whole black peppercorns

10 to 12 stems of fresh thyme

1 tbsp. olive oil, divided

1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2  c. white wine

1/2 c. dry sherry

1/2 tsp. paprika

1/2 c. whipping cream, warmed

3/4 c. half-and-half, warmed

coarse kosher sea salt

coarsely ground fresh black pepper

In a small saucepan, combine chicken broth, 1/2 cup of the wine, bay leaf, peppercorns, 3 or 4 stems of thyme, a few mushroom slices, and about a teaspoon each of the shallots and garlic. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 30 minutes until the flavors have infused the broth. Strain, keeping mushroom pieces. Set aside or keep on low heat.

In a large soup pot over medium-high, heat a couple of teaspoons of the olive oil and a few tablespoons of the butter. Add mushrooms, stir them to coat with the oil and butter, and crack some pepper over them. Don't salt them yet. Let them sit, without stirring them, until they’re slightly browned on one side. Stir and repeat a couple of times until all the mushrooms are a bit browned. Add another 1/2 cup of the white wine and 1/4 cup of the sherry. Deglaze the pan, stirring to lift the browned bits off the bottom. Add some salt to taste and another teaspoon or so of butter and stir to cover mushrooms. When mushrooms have absorbed some of the liquid, remove to a plate or bowl.

In the same unwashed pot, melt the rest of the olive oil and butter. Add shallots and a little cracked pepper and sauté for a couple of minutes over medium-low heat. Add garlic and keep cooking for another minute or two. Be careful not to brown it! When shallots and garlic are softened, add the paprika, some salt to taste, and the remaining thyme, white wine, and sherry. Stir and raise heat. Boil for a minute or so, just until the alcohol has burned off.

Add the broth and all of the mushrooms back into the pot and stir. (If you like some bigger mushroom pieces in your soup, pull a few of them out and chop them roughly before you puree it.) Remove from heat and puree the soup with an immersion blender. When it reaches the consistency you like, scoop out a cup of it and stir some it into the warmed cream and half-and-half, a little at a time, until you’ve combined them and they’re both relatively hot. Add the whole thing back to the soup pot. Bring it up to almost boiling, turn off the heat, and it's ready. Serve it in a shallow bowl with plenty more cracked black pepper and a few thyme leaves sprinkled over the top.

spicy tomato bisque with pesto + grilled cheese on sourdough

I first made a version of this soup in the late winter of 2004, when I was a doctoral student living alone in an apartment on the east side of Athens, Georgia, in the middle of perhaps one of the loneliest periods of my life. Not coincidentally, this bisque got spicier and spicier as more time passed, I started dating D, and my life went on the upswing. This is the best version yet, but I doubt I'll ever stop tinkering with it. The secret ingredient (much as it is for Heidi Swanson's sublime recipe for Five Minute Tomato Sauce, which I have used in every meal including breakfast) is lemon zest, which zings up the canned tomatoes and makes them actually taste fresh.


As for the grilled cheese sandwich, I've learned the hard way that patience is a virtue. Toasting it slowly over medium-low heat ensures that the cheese melts and the bread gets the perfect shade of golden brown - and it means that there will be little crunchy, yummy edges where the cheese has seeped out the sides of the sandwich and hit the hot pan. On the other hand, cranking up the heat too high means lukewarm cheese and burned bread.


spicy tomato bisque
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. butter
1 white onion, finely chopped
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 26.46-oz. carton Pomì chopped Italian tomatoes (or regular canned crushed tomatoes)
1 c. dry white wine 
2 c. chicken broth or water
5 or 6 large fresh basil leaves
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cayenne (depending on how spicy you like it)
zest of one lemon
1 c. half-and-half, warmed (fat-free is fine if you're making it skinny)


Melt butter and oil in a soup pot and stir in the onions. Sauté over medium heat until soft and golden. Add garlic and stir for 30 to 45 seconds, just until fragrant.

Add wine and stir for a minute or two to deglaze pan. Pour in the carton of tomatoes with juice, white wine, chicken broth, basil leaves, thyme, oregano, cayenne, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until reduced to the consistency of a thick marinara sauce.

Take the soup off the heat for the moment. Using an immersion blender, purée the mixture in the pot. Stir in the lemon zest and the warmed half-and-half. Let soup heat back up almost to boiling, and then turn off heat.

Ladle into bowls. Garnish with a little Parmesan and a generous dollop of pesto in the soup bowl, and serve with a grilled cheese sandwich.


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Grilled Cheese on Sourdough

4 slices of fresh sourdough bread 
light mayo
butter or margarine
plenty of your favorite cheese


While soup is simmering, heat a skillet over medium-low. Spread one side of each sourdough slice with mayo and the other with butter. Place one slice butter side down in the skillet, cheese on top of that, and the other slice on top, butter side up. Slowly toast the sandwich until it's light brown on one side, and then flip and toast the other side. Remove to a cutting board and slice in half.


*      *      *      *      *      *


Homemade Pesto
the rest of a package of basil leaves (whatever you didn't use in the soup)
1/4 c. toasted walnuts or pine nuts
2 to 3 tbsp. Parmesan
1 medium clove garlic, smashed into a paste with a little salt on the side of your knife
1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil


Chop everything as finely as possible, and then mix it all together well.

arugula salad

My friends know that the word "arugula" makes me giggle. When you say it, it sounds like the noise that an old-timey car horn makes: ah-rOOOO-gu-la! 


Anyway, this is one of the easiest salads I've ever made, and I can't seem to stop eating it. It's lovely: crunchy, peppery, salty, and a little bit tart. Even D likes it with his pizza, and he is emphatically anti-salad when it comes to pizza accompaniments. 


Another way we love to eat it is piled on top of a homemade thin crust pizza - we got that idea from an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate, where Ted Allen describes his favorite pizza, the arugula and parmesan pie from Graziella's in Brooklyn.


arugula salad
2 to 3 c. arugula leaves, washed & dried
juice of a lemon wedge (or two)
2 to 3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. coarse kosher sea salt
1/4 tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
2 to 3 tbsp. shredded or shaved Parmesan


Feel free to eyeball all of the ingredients and adjust the amounts for your own taste - you can't really go wrong here. Toss everything together just before serving and pile into salad bowls or on top of pizza. Enjoy!


Cheers,
H.