I went to the market today in search of duck and came home with an eye of beef round with which to make bresaola. Yes, bresaola. The Italian cured meat. Yes, it takes more than a month to make. Yes, there are bacterial dangers. Yes, I will have to convert my old wine fridge to the tune of some extra cashola for humidifiers, temperature controllers and fans.  Yes, I am singlemindedly obsessed. But hey, at least I remembered the duck breast!

After I pored over bresaola recipes and whiled away the afternoon, I realized I needed to do something with my duck. Thank god for local produce and springtime! This recipe practically made itself.  I tossed salted, peppered and garlic powdered breasts into the sous vide at 140° for two hours while I threw together the rest of the plate.  The cherries have begun to bless us with their sanguine flesh here in Washington (can you believe it?) and what a season it promises to be. I bought a pricy pound but ate half of them on the way home they were so shazaam succulent.  I made a simple sauce from what I had left, simmering them with some vino dolce, adding a touch of broth, and finishing with freshly shelled peas just before I plated the dish. 

If you’re as big a fan of duck as I am, you’ll probably agree that there is no better accompaniment than potatoes fried in the rendered duck fat.  These fries were especially unctuous because I added some caramelized onions to the fat as well, making for a side dish robust enough to stand up to the duck.  Both the duck and the fries benefit hugely from the addition of my favorite thing on earth. NO, I didn’t toss a pair of Manolo Blahniks into the fryer, people, jeesh! I’m talking about SALT, not SHOES, but you’re right, maybe we’ll call them neck and neck vying for the “number one favorite thing” position in my heart.  And yes, I know I have the best baby on earth, Bentley Danger, but he doesn’t count because he’s a person not a thing. Eeenyways, back to adding shoes to duck and fries. I mean salt. 

You probably know by now that I love to make salt myself.  You may also know that my salt obsession was borne from my husband’s annoyance with me insisting on getting a new pair of shoes in every country we visit. I figured he’d be more amenable to salt instead, because it’s lighter on the luggage and on the pocketbook, which I think was his real beef.  I used several different salts in the making of this dish because different salts perform differently in different applications.  For the rapid brine (only rapid because I didn’t leave myself enough time) of the breast, I used plain old kosher salt. For the salt rub on the breasts in the sous vide bath I used Portugese flor de Sal from Marx Foods.  I tossed the fries with a bit of my own salt since I love it as a finishing salt on something hot for the way it melts.  I even added a little Maldon salt to the top of the cherry sauce since the little pyramids look so lovely and it helps balance the sweet flavor. 

Who knew you could employ four salts in one meal and truly justify different uses for all? I’m extra saline-sensitive right now because I’m hosting a salt-tasting soiree soon wherein my guests will be subject to a blind tasting of the salts of the world.  Do you have a favorite salt? One you can’t live without that is your go-to kitchen staple? If so let me know in the comments section of this post. I want to be sure to have a varied representation and not miss anyone’s nearest and dearest.

Best. Dinner. Ever.  When you challenge yourself to the limits of personal creativity, more often than not the result is an epic failure. I have had my fair share of those: popovers that didn’t “pop”, mousse that was more like sludge, pasta fit to line the rubbish bin, not the inside of a happy mouth.  That’s why I was so elated when I tasted the first bite of this bite-sized bliss.  Who knew Jerusalem artichokes would make such great gnocchi- certainly not me, though I thought I’d try because I had success with parsnip gnocchi recently, and what the hell, right?

Many of you may be asking yourself what in the god-damn is a Jerusalem artichoke aka sunchoke? It looks to me like a cross between ginger and galangal with a purplish skin if you are familiar with both of those roots, but it tastes like, well, an artichoke.  Sort of a really condensed artichoke with the minerally flavor many roots take on that is vaguely reminiscent of licking a D battery (in a good way!). 

I had a healthy handful so I baked them along with some purple potatoes and milled them into an even texture.  Then I added salt, a banty egg (but any egg would do) and enough flour to form a dough.  I rolled pieces of the dough into very thin tubes, maybe ½”.  Then I cut the tubes into ¾” lengths as you would gnocchi and placed them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.  I find that resting the gnocchetti (little gnocchi since they are so small) for up to an hour helps it to develop a nice solid exterior post-boil, but anything over an hour makes them too hard and dried out. 

This dinner in all actuality started three days before I served it, however, as I wanted medium-rare beef short ribs, and the only way to do that is in the sous vide machine.  It takes quite a bit of time for the collagen to break down and tenderize the meat at medium rare temperature (134°) so I planned ahead and gave myself 72 hours to tenderize the ribs.  I removed them at more like 60 hours and they were actually completely ideal, so in the future I’ll stick with that number.  Before I sealed them in the foodsafe bag I seasoned them with salt, pepper and smoked garlic powder (which you can learn to make here).  I tossed in a mango that I had sliced, since I wanted a sweet, tangy sauce made from mango and the sweetish effervescent Italian wine, Moscato.  Pan-global, I know, but it worked so well together I make no apologies. 

When I pulled the ribs from the sous vide bath (pictured above, before deep-frying), I added the juices from the bag to a shallot I had lightly sautéed in a saucepan.  I let the juices reduce a little, then added another chopped mango.  Finally I added a cup of Moscato and let the sauce reduce until slightly thickened and all the flavors came together.  I gave it a few whirrs with the immersion blender et voila.  I didn’t even add additional salt and pepper as the bag juices were already seasoned to the perfect level.  The smoked garlic powder came out stunningly in the sauce, and lent a subtle savory hint to the sweetness of the mango and Moscato. 

The final step in putting together this plate of scintillating savory seduction is to throw the sous vide short ribs in the deep fryer at 375° for 60 seconds.  This all came about because a few days ago I was excitedly tweeting (on twitter, for those of you wondering whether I regularly walk around the house acting like a bird-follow me @saltyseattle) about my new deep fryer.  One of my wonderful twitter follows/followers who is also sous vide-obsessed (@bamiyahara) suggested I deep fry sous vide short ribs a la Chang of Momofuku fame. 

still rare but so soft after three days

I couldn’t track down a recipe, but it’s not exactly rocket science, so I worked my own magic, and after one minute in the fryer I was very pleased with the nice caramelized crust that had developed on my short ribs.  Much more than a minute and I’d have worried too much about undoing all the great pains I took to keep the ribs at medium rare, but any less than a minute and not enough caramelization occurs.  I am very thrilled that this was the inaugural use for my deep fryer. It has convinced me unequivocally that there will be many more to come.

It’s springtime in Seattle and the land is engorged with possibility.  You don’t need to go farther than your own neighborhood to make a meal fit for royalty, let me show you.  I cook by feel rather than by rote more often than not, and it’s a good habit to be in if you want to focus on seasonality. Rather than go to the store armed with a nitpicking recipe and a fastidious commitment to detail, loosen up. Go with the flow.  Take a walk. That’s what I did, and two blocks from my house I ran across a patch of stinging nettle ripe for the taking.  There may have been a touch more planning involved as I was armed with gloves, shears and a bag for my bounty- all necessary for harvesting stinging nettle lest you desire prickly pain all day.  In fact if you’re not sure it’s stinging nettle there is one surefire way to check, though I don’t recommend it :)

I brought my nettle home and lightly steamed it to render it harmless, then plucked the leaves from the tougher stems.  Harvest younger, shorter nettle for best flavor and tenderness.  Once I had my nettles ready to go the rest of the meal fell into place readily.  I had a fresh fat duck sitting in the refrigerator waiting to be fabricated (broken down) and cooked sous vide, so I thought I’d make a pasta with the nettles and some kind of saucy meaty accompaniment with the duck. 

I fabricated the duck into four parts and seasoned each quarter with homemade salt, thyme, smoked garlic powder, bay leaves, and oregano.  I packed each quarter into food-safe bags and sous vided the legs and thighs for 15 hours at 180° and the breasts at the same temperature for five hours. Normally you can get by with cooking duck breast at 140°, but since I kept the bone-in I maintained a higher cooking temperature as I was looking for more of a fall-off-the-bone tenderness rather than a firm breast.  Funny, kind of the opposite as you’d want in a human, no? 

Initially I thought of making gnocchi with the nettles, but settled on its ricotta-based cousin called gnudi (which means nude in Italian and is short for gnocchi gnudi- aka gnocchi nude of the pasta itself).  Some folks refer to gnudi as malfatti, which means badly made, but I like gnudi better, plus I take time in forming each gnudo, so they’re not really as roughly made as some malfatti can be.  As I see it, a main difference between malfatti and gnudi (though this varies regionally and is hotly debated) is that malfatti can be made by simply dropping dollops of dough into boiling water (you can even plop them out using a pastry bag) whereas gnudi tends to be formed using spoons or hands.  I thought gnudi rather than gnocchi would bring out the flavor of the nettle as it wouldn’t be competing with potato. I thought correctly- who woulda known? 

Making gnudi is fun. That sentence wasn’t meant to sound sexual, I promise.  First you press out all the liquid from one tub of ricotta and the nettles, then whir them in a food processor with either two duck egg yolks or three chicken yolks.  Plop the goo into a mixing bowl and add salt, smoked garlic powder if you wish, and flour as needed to form a light dough.  A cup and a half of flour should more or less suffice.  (tip- the amount of flour needed in most recipes will vary with your humidity and altitude. Learn to adjust by feel rather than rely on a specific number). 

To form the gnudi roll a teaspoon of dough between your palms into a little oval. Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and repeat with remaining dough. Cover while waiting for the water to boil and finishing the duck and sauce.  Cook gnudi as you would gnocchi- by dropping into salted boiling water and removing with a slotted spoon once they float to the top.  Keep in warming oven while boiling the remainder. 

Rhubarb became the base for the duck sauce because it is seasonal and growing like mad all around Seattle.  I chopped it into small pieces and reduced it in moscato wine, chicken stock and the juice of one orange. After ten minutes I strained it, tossing the rhubarb chunks.  I poured some duck fat and jus from one of the duck pouches into the saucepan and lightly sautéed a spring onion in it. Then I added the rhubarb sauce and reduced a bit further, adjusting seasoning as needed.  To finish the dish, I crisped up the skin on the duck by deep-frying them for two minutes. Then I plated the gnocchi, a quarter of duck, and drizzled rhubarb reduction over both. 

This dining experience is an example of how relatively simple it is to incorporate local, seasonal elements into cuisine.  Rhubarb and nettles were foraged and duck eggs come from a local farm as does the duck itself.  Herbs all came from my garden, salt I made from Washington waters, garlic powder was made and smoked at home.  While I buy my ricotta from DeLaurenti in Pike Place Market and they make it themselves, I easily could have made it too. It’s one of the quickest cheeses to make; in fact it’s a byproduct of many other cheeses.   I hope this post inspires you to take a walk and cook off the beaten path.  Your diners will thank you for it.

I like to take the chill off the late afternoons in our Indian summer by baking a couple loaves of bread.  I sort of cheat and keep the oven on so the air is nice and hot for my loaves to rise, so I figured I’d toss in the acorn squash my gracious neighbors gave us from their harvest last week to soften it up.  One thing led to another and I started to think about just how the squash might best accompany my bread. Hmmm, smeared all over it a la fingerpaint-style the way my one year old Bentley would surely prefer it given his penchant for all things messy? Yeah, probably not.  “I have it!” I thought to myself, some sort of squashy dipping sauce for my little chewy french bread nuggets- what do they usually call that? Oh yeah, soup. Well, in my house we like to whir it all up into a tizzy with the immersion blender and call it bisque, so what the hell, why not make squash soup- sounds fabulous!

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