Fish and Seafood

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Ottolenghi's Semolina, Coconut and Marmalade Cake

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"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman, and a ride home."  This week I did two very important things: I made Ottolenghi's Semolina, Coconut and Orange Blossom Cake and I rewatched The Outsiders . These two events are not related; however, they were both delightful. Let's start with the cake, shall we? This cake is a light - in - texture - but - heavy - in - flavor take on the ubiquitous Eastern Mediterranean semolina cake. From Greece to Syria, Egypt to Turkey, this cake, well, takes the cake. Call it revani , basbousa , shamali, harisi , mix in yogurt, coconut, rose water instead of orange blossom water--no matter what, you're going to do all right.   Ottolenghi's version adds coconut and marmalade to a large dose of sunflower oil and semolina. He also serves it with a dallop of Greek yogurt freshened with orange blossom water. However, this is the kind of ...
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Ottolenghi's Lemon and Eggplant Risotto

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Risotto is such a delightful dish. Comforting, creamy, simple, stable.   And I am a huge fan . As in, I will make me a risotto any chance I get, with any sort of ingredient you can imagine. It doesn't matter--any season.  Spring--lemon and peas;  Summer--tomato and parmesan;  Fall--mushroom;  Winter--butternut squash and pancetta.  If it's in your fridge, you can put it in this Northern Italian rice dish. However, you will want a very specific kind of rice--a high starch, medium- or short-grain rice--in order separate this delicacy from any other rice dish. The high starch means that as you cook it, it releases its starch, making that requisite creamy smoothness to risotto. The most popular risotto rice in the United States is, hands down, Arborio rice. This short-grained rice isn't as starchy as some of its popular Italian counterparts, but it is the most easily procured. However, a...
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Cookbook #4: Cheese Board: Collective Works

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Adapted from Cookbook #4:  Cheese Board:  Collective Works (2003) Recipe: Four-Cheese, Three-Onion, Four-Herb Pizza Four cheeses?   I needed four cheeses to make one pizza?  When you're the Cheese Board, the answer is yes. Four cheeses: four gospels, four noble truths, four horsemen of the apocalypse,  four chambers to mammalian heart, the fantastic four ... And so, to follow in this illustrious suit of four, I give you four reasons why this was a good recipe for me to make: 1.  I don't make pizza. My husband does.  For his thirtieth birthday in 2003, he and I were envisioning our ideal kitchen, so I gathered together an immoral amount with the kitchen-themed presents, including a pizza stone.  Since then, he has been delegated head pizza chef, so this is another one of those recipes I would never make but would foist upon him.  When I pull this cookbook off the shelf, I go straight to the scones pages (which are relatively eas...
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Ottolenghi's Salmon Steaks in Chraimeh Sauce

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Oh, what a sauce this is.   What a glorious, glorious sauce. And it comes from our new Jerusalem cookbook, from one of this blog's favorite chefs and current culinary darling, Yotam Ottolenghi.  I need not detail that this blog has featured recipes from Ottolenghi here and here and here and here ,  but I will anyway because, whoo boy, I love these recipes.  This sauce comes from the Sephardic Jews, who resided on the Iberian peninsula until the Spanish Inquisition.  After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Sephardic Jews were folded into the Mizrahi communities in Northern Africa and the Middle East.  Such intermingling of people and cultures has produced some culinary superstars; this being no exception.  Indeed, you can taste the Spanish, Moroccan, and Libyan influence on this sauce. Sephardim pride themselves on their chraimeh recipes, and often serve them at Rosh Hashanah and Passover celebrations (whereas Ashkenazim might serv...
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Butternut Squash Crumble

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Oh, this past weekend was spent at the ocean. W ell , technical ly, it was spent in a cabin in the woods, b ut last Sunday evening was spent on a winter run that ended with a winter sunset at a winter ocean, and let's face it, that was the highlight of th is winter weekend. And , in addition to that wonderful sunset, y es, there was squash. I do what I can, when I can, to ea t squash , f or my CSA s ends it almost every week. I  have roasted it with cardamom and nigella seeds , wrapped it in pastry ,  roasted it with dates and thyme , and  pureed it into soup . And this past weekend, I had it in a squash cr umble , which is a savory equiv a l e nt o f a crisp (as in what the Americans might t hink of when we think of Apple Crisp) . Apparently, the Brits serve these crumbles in a swath of varieties and have been doing so since the middle of last century. America ns know them usually only under their sweet variety, but the Brits are onto something...
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