salt-baked hamachi kama for breakfast

So I fricken love hamachi kama. I used to always look for it on the menu at sushi restaurants because nothing can beat a nice grilled piece of yellowtail collar with a lot of lemon on the side. The flesh is succulent, falls apart at slight pressure, and any salt you add to it only enhances the flavor. Sunday morning, after Mike had already gotten our weekend ritual of Dunkin'* for breakfast, I jumped out of my seat and ran to the kitchen.  You see, I'd bought the hamachi kama at the Lobster Place in Chelsea Market before the weekend and was worried it had gone bad. 

Fear not, (I did), the fish was fresh and smelled like... mostly nothing. I like that in a fish that I'm about to consume. 

My normal dealie with the kama is to place it in a cast iron pan with olive oil and butter in the bottom so the skin gets extra crisp and fabulous. Then I dump it unceremoniously into a bowl so that I can eat in front of my keyboard and pour the rendered oils over the entire lot. 

Notice the tots made a one time only appearance. I normally eat this plain with a whole lemon to squeeze on every bite. 

recipe if you can call it that

• one piece hamachi kama (yellowtail collar)
• plenty of salt
• olive oil/butter

Heat the oven to 350ish degrees and place your hamachi kama, skin side down, into a pan just large enough to hold it. Pour a splash or three of olive oil over the top and into the pan and add a pat of butter in the bottom because I said so. Get your tastiest, flakiest, semi coarse salt and sprinkle it liberally over the whole thing.

Place in the oven and cook till it sizzles that it's done at you. 

*I do tots and an iced tea/coffee, he does an everything bagel with cream cheese and two donuts.

pork cheeks braised in a coconut-tomato-wine sauce with pasta

So I was walking up from a paper supply store and decided to stop by Eataly. At the meat counter they had pork cheeks in the spot I was hoping to find boar sausage, but whatever. Pork cheeks! I didn't know what I wanted to do with them, but I knew that I wanted them. The butcher behind the counter asked me what you do with pork cheeks and I said well... braise mostly.  

So that's what I did.  1.5 pounds of pork cheeks got braised in my le creuset purple dutch oven of awesomness then got smothered with wine, tomato paste, tomato concentrate, coconut milk, berbere spices, salt, pepper and a small can of anchovies. 

This was placed into a 300ish oven for 3ish hours. Then I decided I didn't want to eat them that day because we'd had italian sausage earlier while the cheeks were cooking. So into the fridge they went.  The next day, I got Mike to heat them up (funny how guys can make a big deal out of heating up the food you did all of the prep work for because they might break/drop/set-fire-to something) and cook the fresh pasta from the noodle case at Eataly. 

He was... hesitant... but not everyone can be excited about pork cheeks without trying them! Once he got over that he liked them enough to clean his bowl (win!). 

I had them later that night with some more pasta and a sprinkle or two of Parmesan cheese. The cheeks are so easy and really flavorful. Plus, the meat just falls apart after all that cooking.

recipe

• 1.5-2 lbs pork cheeks
• 1 tube of tomato paste
• 1 small bottle of tomato concentrate
• 1 can of coconut milk (the creamier the better)
• 1/2 a bottle of red wine
• one small can of anchovies
• Berbere spice mix (I get mine from spices and tease)
• few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

thanksgiving small plates - sweet potato pie & mangalista ham

So it's surprisingly hard to get a piece of ham to look ok next to pie no matter how delicious it is, but maybe that's just my problem. This is the ham I mentioned in my risotto post. It came from Mosefund Mangalista and we almost didn't get to have it for dinner. It got delivered to the wrong building so I ran around like a crazy person in PJs, flip flops, coat and a winter hat with a pom pom on top to get my package from the doorman in the building 4 doors down from me.  I warmed it in the oven in a pan with a bit of water in the bottom. Then I added whole cloves and a satsuma mandarin to the water as aromatics. I was going to glaze it, but no one else seemed to mind if I didn't so, yay, one less thing to do!

The sweet potato pie was made the semi-lazy way with a frozen crust, pumpkin pie spice, powdered ginger, and a dash of cayenne. I also blended (yes, I still don't have a food processor)  the sweet potatoes with cream and butter this year before adding other ingredients instead of just dumping everything into the mixer. It yielded a smoother texture. I would've added the cream and butter anyway, but I think I like this whole puree thing. Also, I probably would have eaten the puree straight from the blender if I didn't have a pie to make. 

thanksgiving small plates - sage sausage stuffing & cranberry sauce

I miss Penzey's cause they had the best poultry seasoning for stuffing, ever. It was moist and chock full of sage. The poultry seasoning I used from Spices and Tease on the fried chicken wasn't going to cut my stuffing requirements. So at around 9 in the morning I schlumped to Food Emporium and picked up some Bell's. Yes, Bell's, the seasoning ground so fine the minute you open the box it crawls up into your nose and goes angry wolverine on your nostrils. 

So I was going to be lazy and use someone's cornbread mix but no store had any besides jiffy and some random whole wheat version. They also were out of yellow cornmeal so I used what I had left and supplemented with some corn flour (gluten free, woo).   it came out pretty cake like and I added extra sugar just in case I didn't get a chance to make the cranberry sauce on my microstove. All the other stuffing bits are pretty standard and the cranberry sauce was ocean spray cranberries, sugar and water:

recipe

sage stuffing

• cornbread 
• 2 packs frozen sage sausage like Park's (not Jimmy Dean, plz), or one box of fresh 
• onions
• celery
• bell pepper
• poultry seasoning
• extra sage (if needed)
• homemade or low sodium chicken stock
• butter
• dash of cayenne 
• dried cranberries
• salt & pepper to taste
• more butter

Cook the cornbread or take it out of the package you bought to save an hour. In a large saucepan or dutch oven cook the sage sausage in slices/ pieces till brown and crisp. Set aside.

Put chopped onion in the pan with the sausage oil, or pour the oil out and put a pat of butter into the pan. Let the onions deglaze the pan and cook until translucent. Add the celery and bell pepper and cook till tender-crisp. Set aside till cooled enough to handle. 

In a large bowl break apart the cornbread and the sausage. Add the sauteed veggies and seasonings. If you're not like me, you'll remember to add the cranberries now. Mix everything together. I like to use my hands to make sure the pieces are small enough.  Pour enough chicken broth onto the mixture to make it slightly moist. Pack into a rectangular baking pan. If you are like me, you'll remember to put the dried cranberries in right now and have to mix the thing all over again. Pour more broth on top of the mix until you can kinda see it on the sides of the pan. Dot the top of the stuffing with pats of butter and bake until the broth is all absorbed and the top is browned and bubbly. 

thanksgiving small plates - truffled mushroom risotto

Mike's family has a recipe book and I normally alter something from it for the holidays. This time I added mushrooms and white truffle oil to an already tasty recipe and used a compound stock with ham and chicken to compliment the ham we got from Møsefund Mangalista (which I totally forgot to put in the picture, but I already ate the risotto so I'll put it in with something else later). 

No recipe for this one, but make your basic risotto recipe and top it with a mixture of mushrooms sauteed in butter: reduce the pan sauce and add a touch of cream. I love using the microplane grater I got last year because it makes hard cheese into edible snow. Before you add the cheese drizzle a little white truffle oil on top of the whole thing then make it snow on the 'sotto.