There’s good news and bad news. The good news: This is one of two things I’ve made that I would actually serve in a restaurant, were I the kind of guy who owned the kind of restaurant that brought you an amouse-bouche to kick off a meal. Plus, the recipe is stupid easy. If I’m only going to post one recipe a month, I might as well make it count.

The bad news? That picture above is fake. I took pictures of the real dish, then deleted them in the midst of purging. But the fake reconstruction above looks almost exactly the same. And you can’t taste my pictures anyway, so damn. On with the recipe.

This post is also my entry into Beet ‘n Squash YOU, a friendly monthly theme battle hosted by the lovelies Melody and Leela. After months of sitting on the sidelines I’m finally participating. It’s Battle Mushroom! Here goes.

What I Used

• Kusshi Oysters
• Shiro Miso Paste
• Junmai Daiginjo Sake
• Oyster Mushrooms
• Chives, finely chopped
• Salt

What I Did

1. Shuck oysters.
2. Heat 1/2 cup of sake in a small saucepan until it reaches a boil.
3. Cut the heat and add 2 teaspoons of miso paste. Stir vigorously until all the clumps are gone.
4. Place the miso sake sauce in the refrigerator until chilled. You’ll have to restir the sauce when you take it out again.
5. Spoon a teaspoon of chilled miso sake sauce over the raw kusshi oyster. Top with a pinch of chives, one raw oyster mushroom, and a pinch of salt.
6. Serve.

It’s that simple; I feel bad calling it a recipe. While it sounded good on paper, I was surprised just how well balanced all the flavors were once assembled.

You can try swapping out almost all of the ingredient varieties until you find a combination you love. Change mushrooms. Try a different miso paste. Shop around the sake section. While Kusshis are a fantastic small variety of oyster, you might not have a supplier in your area, and that’s fine. Use what you’ve got.

My dad makes a kickass version of ceviche, closely related to a traditional Mexican ceviche. Cilantro, tomato, red snapper, shrimp, lime, onion, etc.

This is not that recipe.

For those of you living in a cave who have managed to avoid the 8 bazillion versions of ceviche in restaurants these days, here are the basics: Soak seafood in citrus juice for hours, curing the meat in place of cooking it. Everything after that is whatever you make of it. Okay, so no cheese or rice or chocolate. Go to town adding whatever fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices you want.

Ceviche is the perfect dish to make in a hotel because it doesn’t require heat. Assuming you brought a good knife to cut everything with (who doesn’t travel with an 8 inch chef’s knife?) and can put together a suitable cutting surface, all you need is refrigeration and a plastic bag. Want to see where I made mine?

What I Used

• Fillet of True Pacific Cod, cut into bite size chunks
• Bay Scallops
• Lime Juice
• Coconut Milk
• Red Onion, medium diced
• Mango, medium diced
• Garlic, minced
• Serrano Peppers, small diced
• Chiffonade of Basil

What I Did

1. Combine bay scallops, cod, and lime juice in a plastic zip-top bag and let the seafood cure in the refrigerator for 12-24 hours.
2. Once cured, add to the bag the remaining ingredients and mix up well. Return to the chill box for a few hours to let the flavors mingle.
3. Serve with chips (needs at least some type of delivery system.)

One more thing. There is something everyone should know about cutting mango, explained at 1:20 in the video below:

Neat right?

I may be stuck in a hotel without so much as a microwave or a good bottle of whiskey six pack of ginger ale clue, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a way to cook. Check out how this pimp urban survivalist makes do (h/t Hugging The Coast):

While I do have an iron, I’m not sure I’m ready to start using it to make bread. Hell, I should probably use an oven to bake bread first. Also, my room lacks an electric kettle or coffee maker. I guess the usual upper-class hotel patrons have gotten the message through to the staff that coffee and tea do nothing to wipe away the taste of cheap sushi and hooker. So this leaves me with one viable option.

Commandeering.

This post’s wicked pro photography and kitchen facilities have been brought to you by Patricia Yee. In exchange for kitchen use she gets food and the distinction of being allowed to photograph my food with her D80 and then send me the results. :P

What I Used

• Live Lobster
• Elbow Macaroni
• Sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated or chopped into small chunks
• White Truffle Infused Brie
• Parsley, chopped
• Panko Breadcrumbs
• Whole Milk
• Bay Leaves
• Unsalted Butter

What I Did

1. Cook macaroni until not quite al dente, and strain.
2. In a pot melt butter, add bay leaves, milk, and bring to a simmer. I suggest making a standard béschamel with flour, but I didn’t do that this time.
3. Add 3/4 of the cheddar cheese, all of the truffle cheese, and the chopped parsley. Cut the heat, and stir.
4. Boil a large pot of water and move the live lobster into the water head first.
5. Cook lobster until the shell starts to turn red. This should only take a couple minutes.
6. Remove from water and harvest the claw and tail meat. The claw meat will probably be very runny still, as this is not fully cooked. Chop all the meat into bite size chunks.
7. In a baking dish stir to combine the milk/cheese mixture, lobster meat, and cooked pasta.
8. Top the baking dish with the remaining cheddar cheese, then a layer of breadcrumbs.
9. Melt some butter in a pan and pour over the breadcrumbs to assist browning.
10. Bake at 425°F for 50-60 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

With lobster currently on the cheap (got mine for $8/lb) this orgy of decadence is a steal. Considering what you would pay in a restaurant, now’s a great time to try your hand at a gourmet homemade dish like this. Just get the ratios right on the ingredients.

Yeah, I know, I didn’t include ratios. I seriously recommend just using Google. I screwed up the cheese to pasta ratio on this one so bad I feel like a douche even calling it Mac and Cheese. It’s pasta with truffle cheese flavor and lobster chunks. Which is tasty. I’ll just have to pay more attention next time.

The truffle cheese idea was born out of a conversation with Chris. He recommended boschetto al tartufo and I brilliantly forgot to write this down, so I grabbed the first white truffle infused cheese I found. Even that took a few minutes given how stupidly large the selection at Whole Foods can be in the SF bay area. But whatever, it worked. I think if the cheese is truffled up and melts well, you’re set.

What we have here is the baby born out of my first draft of Gumbo. Just like last time, this was influenced heavily by a recent post at No Recipes.

What we also have here is a new category on Food Goes In Mouth: Oops!.

I think a good percentage of food bloggers subscribe to a philosophy of “If it aint good, don’t blog it.” That’s just fine, and I understand why. Personally, I don’t want this blog to become one of a million databases of amateur home recipes. I find it boring. I imagine you, my tiny band of readers, would find it boring.

Honestly, I fuck up food more times than I get it right, but usually in small, controlled doses with one or two ingredients. Little experiments. But if I shared every minor success and failure that would be both boring and exhausting. I don’t need to post multiple times a day because I successfully microwaved a burrito or added too much pepper to some rice.

I’m just going to divulge in the true disasters. Like this:

What I Used

• Chicken Stock, homemade
• Celery, chopped
• Red Bell Pepper, sliced
• Yellow Bell Pepper, sliced
• Onion, sliced
• Flour
• Goose Fat
• Sage, fresh
• Bay Leaves
• 86% Cacao Chocolate, chopped
• Andouille Sausage, diced
• Crab Meat, fresh
• Sweet Hungarian Paprika
• Cayenne Pepper

What I Did, Part 1

1. In a cast iron pot, render one part goose fat. (That’s it in the picture above.)
2. In another pot, bring the chicken stock to barely a simmer.
3. Slowly add equal part flour and stir like you’ve never stirred before for about half an hour over medium-high heat until the roux reaches a chocolate brown.
4. Add vegetables, herbs, spices and sausage then reduce heat, letting the roux mixture cool.
5. While stirring, add 6 parts chicken broth. Bring to a boil and if the gumbo seems too thick, add more broth until desired consistency is reached.
6. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove bay leaves.

Earlier that afternoon I went to Port San Luis, picked some fresh live crabs out of the tank at Pete’s Pierside, and had them cooked for me. At this point I pulled some of the cooled crab meat out of the refrigerator and stuck it on top of a bowl of this Gumbo with some steamed rice at the bottom. This is delicious. This is what you see at the top of this post.

But wait, the chocolate! Everything so far, except for the goose fat, is pretty standard. The addition of some chocolate was the one serious deviation I had planned, so when a roomate said, “Hey, did you put any of the chocolate in here?” I said, “Oh shit!” I was excited to add this in and see what happened.

Now, in my head the chocolate would primarily change the color and consistency of the sauce more than the flavor. This may still be a good idea or a horrible one, but I wouldn’t know, because this is…:

What I Did, Part 2

1. Blow culinary load prematurely and add too much chocolate to the Gumbo. Change dish name to Nicely Spiced Chocolate Soup. Ruined.

How frustrating! I took so much care bringing a roux to that color for the first time. How could I just go dumping so much of a strong ingredient in with reckless abandon? Ruining a dish with that much love in it can knock the happy out of you, and it took me a full day to come out of it and say: Screw it. You learned. Time to move on.

So there you have it. Go ahead and do all the steps but the last one. Hell, go ahead and do the last one without foolishly rushing things and let me know if a little chocolate does work well to finish a Gumbo. Or if it doesn’t work well, I’d appreciate knowing that as well.

I have another “Oops!” I need to share with everyone soon, but it will require a story…

If you’re reading this, chances are you already know this, but I have to say it anyway:

I really dig this Twitter thing.

What started as a way to vent random thoughts throughout the day while I crapped out code has evolved into a primary means for me to discover and connect with some awesome food bloggers.

One such blogger, Elle, recently took the show Chopped on the Food Network and transformed it into an open, multi-ingredient challenge she calls Ingredient Wars. I’m a fan of these community-based tests of creativity.

This challenge required the use of an orange, a white fish, egg roll wrappers, Ricotta cheese, and Ritz. So after a couple weeks of base flavor testing, complete rethinking of the dish, and good ol’ fashion procastination, here it is.

What I Used

• Orange Zest
• Ling Cod, filet
• Egg Roll Wrappers
• Ricotta Cheese, whole milk variety
• Ritz Crackers
• Tarragon, dried
• Whole Milk
• Onion
• Bay Leaf
• Clove, whole
• Flour
• Pepper
• Egg Wash
• Chives, chopped

What I Did

1. Make Béchamel sauce. I left out adding nutmeg and instead added a sinful amount of black pepper. Make this thin, since the Ricotta will thicken it more later.
2. In a food processor, pulse together orange zest, dried tarragon, and Ritz together to make the breading.
3. Dust Cod in flour, dip in egg wash, and coat with the breading.
4. Bake Cod in a 425&degF oven for ~20 minutes
5. Cut egg roll wrappers into thin strips, essentially making wonton fettucine. Cook these in boiling water for two minutes.
6. When Béchamel is cooked, over low heat, mix in Ricotta until the sauce is thickened to your liking.
7. Plate wonton pasta mixed with sauce and top with the fish! Finish with the chives.

I’m happy with the fish and unhappy with the noodle and sauce texture combination. I’d say more, but it would be pages of endless mind-dump. And who needs that?

If you would like to get ahold of me on Twitter you can do so here.

I want your help. I NEED your help. But more on that later…

Over a week ago Marc at No Recipes posted a kick-ass recipe (I know, ironic right?) for Shrimp and Duck Gumbo. I haven’t tried to cook gumbo in maybe four years. Reading through the post it became obvious I needed to give it another shot.

I mean come on, all the components are perfect for a California coastal town! Fresh produce? Fresh seafood? My new found bounty of goose fat in the freezer? I’ve got everything I need!

But see, you don’t just start chucking goose fat around like it grows on trees. If I plan on using ingredients I regard as precious, expensive, or just plain a pain in the ass to get, I’ll make a first run just to work out any major flavor problems beforehand. As with this example, it’s done quick, taking shortcuts and disregarding a few standard procedures entirely. You’ll see: adding the rice straight to the gumbo pot? What the hell is that? It was at a friends house, I had to get it done quick, and I didn’t want to use an extra pot.

Oh, and a trazillion dollars to whoever invents the goose fat tree.

What I Used

• Onion, diced
• Celery, diced
• Green Bell Pepper, diced
• Red Bell Pepper, diced
• Serrano Peppers, diced
• Garlic, minced
• Andouille Sausage, cut into bite sizes
• Large Shrimp, shelled and deveined
• Chicken Broth
• Old Bay Seasoning
• Sweet Hungarian Paprika
• Bay Leaves
• Flour
• Butter, clarified
• Short Grain Sushi Rice

What I Did

1. In a pot melt some butter, add salt, and sweat the Holy Trinity, garlic, and Serrano peppers.
2. Remove them from the pot, add more butter, add flour, and make the roux, stirring until it reaches a medium blond color.
3. Add the chicken broth and fully incorporate the roux. Add Andouille, old bay, bay leaves, paprika, and the vegetables back in. Simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Add the shrimp and cook for an additional 10-15 minutes.
5. Add the rice to the same pot and cook for per the rice packaging directions. Do not do this after adding the shrimp. Do this so that it syncs up with the shrimp being fully cooked.

You’ll notice the ingredient list is almost identical to Marc’s. I’m missing a few things. I’ve obviously completely horked the typical gumbo procedures. But it’s fine, I got what I was after.

No flavor problems. Time to do this for real.

By the way, you may notice the picture looks a little different. I shot it with my friend’s D80. This wasn’t even going to be a post at first but he had it lying around so we said What-The-Hell. I’m glad because it gave me this chance to elaborate on my process, but more importantly ask:

What should I do?!?! I already know the procedural changes I’ll make. I know a couple of the ingredients I’ll change. But there’s so much potential for awesomeness here I want to take any suggestions you might have. Seriously, shoot away in the comments.

Freshman year. The dorms. As was common during a midnight session of programming, the television is on and tuned to whatever the hell is good at that hour. Often enough, this was episodes of the original Japanese version of Iron Chef.

Saito is challenging Kenichi in Battle Prawns and both of them include variations on the same dish. Both of them are fairly simple, as far as Iron Chef concoctions go. Chef Kenichi ends up making what was later called out to be one of the five best dishes on the show, Prawns in Chili Sauce Canapé Style. I was enthralled with the simplicity and the reaction it induced.

During one of my next visits home, as is now seemingly customary, I cooked something for my family. (I especially got a kick out of this at the time, both because I was new to cooking and they had never seen me do it before.) I remembered the recipe I had seen on TV. I knew I couldn’t reproduce it; I had no chance of finding spicy bean paste or the prawns he had used. But I could find some sort of seafood, something spicy, and make some ill-thought-out substitutions. The resultant shrimp and scallop spicy thingamajig (with the appropriate finishing, almost off-the-heat toss of green onion) was something along the lines of my first success. My mom wanted me to make it again.

I’ve since played around with the ingredients, timing, heat, and anything else under my immediate control so much that the “recipe” doesn’t even resemble the original masterpiece. What I’ve produced below resembles other dishes entirely. I plan to continue exploring and changing things, keeping what I think works and throwing the crap I think stinks to the gutter, until I find something I can feel comfortable calling original and delicious.

This latest incarnation took some inspiration from the Shrimp with Snow Peas recipe at Rasa Malaysia. When I saw the picture last month I knew the snow peas would add a nice fresh crunch the spice from the sauce needed. All I needed was an occasion to cook it up. A few weeks ago this happened.

What I Used

• Large Shrimp, peeled, removed of vein and tail
• Chinese Peas
• Orange Zest
• Fresh Ginger, grated
• Sriracha
• Dried Red Chili Peppers, whole
• Peanut or Canola Oil
• Salt

What I Did

1. Heat oil in wok (or whatever other pan you favor stir-frying in.)
2. Fry the dried chilies in the oil for a minute, then remove them.
3. Add ginger, orange zest, salt, and fry until fragrant (~30 seconds.)
4. Add Sriracha, shrimp, and toss/stir until shrimp is almost cooked through (3-4 minutes)
5. Add Chinese peas and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes longer while stirring. The peas should heat up and start to soften slightly, but retain all that awesome crunch.

When adding the dried chilies turn the fan on high. Even then, when the aroma begins to make you cough, and possibly everyone else in the house cough, you’re good. Get em’ out of there. Before I learned of this potential I once heated these things for several minutes dry and then added liquid. The rapidly created, violent aroma kept me and my grandma from reentering her house for at least 10 minutes while it aired out.

While removing all the flavorful peel from the shrimp isn’t something I’d normally do, this way the spicy sauce will adhere to the shrimp and not be lost on the peel while you’re noming away. Plus, you wont get your hands all dirty and spicy. You then wont rub your eyes with your spicy fingers. This severely lowers the chances you’ll want to gouge your eyes out or pour milk in them.

Ok, wow, I feel like I’ve written a lot. Too much. If anybody has some suggestions on where to go on this thing from here, I’d love to hear it in the comments.

I know. You had salmon for Thanksgiving? You’re so weird. Right, I’ll get to that soon.

I’m at my parents’ place in the booming urban metropolis that is Corning, CA for the rest of the weekend. For Thanksgiving day it was just the three of us. The huge family clan dinner isn’t taking place until Saturday and my sister doesn’t get in from San Diego until tonight Christmas Eve. We’re talking about a small audience. Forget turkey.

I could also note that seafood, what with the Pilgrims being coastal in location, made up a significant portion of the original menu. I think this misses the real point though.

It’s fashionable these days to knock the modern Thanksgiving food traditions with something like, They never ate pumpkin pie or broccoli au gratin or cornbread stuffing…nope not in the real first Thanksgiving. Fine, but shouldn’t the remembrance of tradition focus on the point of this meal and not the details? The Pilgrims were thankful for what they had. So they ate what they had.

My parents had fish. :)

Ok, that’s my two cents on the subject of Thanksgiving. On with the inevitably flawed session of cooking!

What I Used

• Salmon
• Cedar Plank
• Almonds, chopped
• Honey
• Vegetable Broth

What I Did

1. Let the cedar plank soak in water for 12 hrs (this can be done for only a few hours, but the longer the better)
2. Thinly coat one side of plank with vegetable oil and place salmon skin down upon it
3. Salt the top of the salmon and move plank to a 350° BBQ for 20 minutes
4. In a small saucepan mix and heat almonds, honey, and vegetable broth until reduced to a consistency of your liking
5. Plate salmon and top with almond/honey reduction
6. Serve and finish with fresh dill (or as pictured, with crushed dry dill)

The BBQ I used was my Dad’s gas-powered, but if you use charcoal just do it over cooler coals or indirect heat. The exact temperature isn’t really important.

You’ve never cedar grilled salmon before? Just go for it. If you can buy untreated cedar at your local lumber store, make your own planks. Otherwise you can probably find them in the store, overpriced. Personally, I’m thankful to have a Mom who bought me a few during graduation.

Happy Thanksgiving!