{"id":474,"date":"2007-07-20T14:34:53","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T14:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2007\/07\/20\/a-recipe-meme\/"},"modified":"2007-07-20T14:34:53","modified_gmt":"2007-07-20T14:34:53","slug":"a-recipe-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2007\/07\/20\/a-recipe-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"A Recipe Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got hit by a mutant meme; I don’t remember who tagged me. I’m not terribly into these
\nmeme things, but I don’t pass up excuses to post recipes. So below the fold are four recipes that I’ve created: seared duck breast with ancho chile sauce; saffron fish stew; smoked salmon hash; and
\nspicy collard greens.<\/p>\n


\nSeared Duck Breast with Ancho-Chile Sauce<\/b><\/p>\n

This is one of the best recipes I’ve ever created. It’s perfect
\nwith a good california Zinfandel.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Get some really good, large duck breasts. Marinate them for an hour or two
    \nin red wine. <\/li>\n
  2. Put about 2 cups of chicken stock into a small pot, and bring to a boil.<\/li>\n
  3. Take one or two dried ancho chiles, crack them open, remove the seeds, and
    \nput the rest into the boiling stock.<\/li>\n
  4. Add two minced shallots to the stock.<\/li>\n
  5. Lower the heat, and let the stock simmer for about 10 minutes.<\/li>\n
  6. Carefully transfer the stock with the chiles and shallots to a blender,
    \nand puree until it’s as smooth as you get it. (Be careful<\/em> doing
    \nthis; it’s easy to get a face-full of boiling hot stock when you turn the blender
    \non!)<\/li>\n
  7. Put pureed sauce through a chinois or other fine strainer to remove the
    \nfibrous pulp.<\/li>\n
  8. Put the strained sauce back into a saucepan, and add a small amount of red wine
    \nto thin it out a bit. Bring it to a simmer, and let it cook down until it’s roughly
    \nthe texture of a glaze. <\/li>\n
  9. Add in about a tablespoon of key-lime juice (more if you want); salt to taste
    \n(around 1 teaspoon or so); and honey to taste.<\/li>\n
  10. Remove the duck breasts from the marinade, pat them dry, cut a cross-hatch pattern through the skin and fat, and sprinkle with
    \nsalt and pepper.<\/li>\n
  11. Heat a dry skillet on medium heat.<\/li>\n
  12. Put the duck breasts into the skillet, skin-side down. Cook for about 5 minutes
    \nper side, draining fat periodically. (Depending on how rare you like your duck,
    \nyou can vary the cooking time. You really need at least 5 minutes on the skin side
    \nto render the fat, but if you like it very rare, you can reduce the time on
    \nthe other side to as little as 2 minutes.)<\/p>\n
  13. Remove the duck breasts from the pan and let them rest for a couple of minutes.
    \nWhile they’re resting, whisk a pat of butter and some minced scallions into the sauce.<\/li>\n
  14. Slice the duckbreasts into thin slices *against* the grain of the meat, and lay
    \nthem onto a plate in a fan-shape. Sprinkle them with a very little bit of
    \ncoarse salt and pepper.<\/li>\n
  15. With a tablespoon, spoon the ancho sauce around the duck on the plate. You don’t
    \nneed much sauce – just a couple of tablespoons per breast is plenty.<\/p>\n
  16. \n<\/ol>\n

    That’s it. It goes really well with fresh corn, and some nice braised vegetables – collard greens or mustard greens would be terrific.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Fish Stew<\/b><\/p>\n

    This one I just created off the cuff about two weeks ago. I had some good fish (mahi-mahi), and didn’t know what to do with it, so I whipped this together, and it turned out\tto be really<\/em> fantastic. This should work with any strong-flavoredd firm white fish: the mahi-mahi was great; it would probably also work with swordfish or chilean
    \nsea bass.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Put some dried morel or porcini mushrooms in water to soak.<\/li>\n
    2. Put a good sized pinch of saffron into warm water to soak.<\/li>\n
    3. Get some baby red potates, cut them in half, drizzle them with olive oil and salt,
      \nand put them into a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until they’re just starting to brown. Then transfer them to a large skillet or roasting pan.<\/li>\n
    4. To the skillet, add 1\/2 of a large onion, cut into thin slices; two cloves of minced garlic; about 1\/2 a cup of halved grape tomatoes; and the fish cut into large
      \ncubes.<\/li>\n
    5. Add the mushrooms (and the water they soaked in) and the saffron to the pan.<\/li>\n
    6. Add white wine and chicken stock to the pan until the fish and potatoes are covered slightly more than halfway; add salt and pepper to taste.<\/li>\n
    7. Put the pan uncovered<\/em> into the 350 degree oven, and let it cook for
      \nabout 15 minutes. <\/li>\n
    8. Add in some broccoli florets cut into bit size pieces, and drizzle with extra
      \nvirgin olive oil. Then put it back into the oven for another five minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n

      Smoked Salmon Hash<\/b><\/p>\n

      This requires some really good quality smoked wild salmon – the east-coast lox really won’t do the job. You need a good chunk of something like smoked king salmon. About 1\/2 lb should do nicely for 4-6 people. Also, the fried capers are really important – do go to the trouble of finding dried, salt-packed capers.<\/p>\n

        \n
      • Mince a large onion.<\/li>\n
      • Cut 4-6 large potatoes into small cubes.<\/li>\n
      • Put the onions and potatoes into a hot pan on medium high heat with olive oil, add salt and pepper, and cook until they’re nicely browned.<\/li>\n
      • Mince the smoked salmon into small cubes.<\/li>\n
      • In a small pot, put about 1\/2 inch of oil, and heat until almost smoking.<\/li>\n
      • Take about 2-dozen salt-packed capers (it’s got to be the salt packed kind for this!), and toss about 6 into the hot oil, then immediately remove with a slotted spoon.
        \nRepeat for the rest of the capers. The capers should immediately puff up and
        \nturn crisp.<\/li>\n
      • Make a batch of hollandaise sauce, and poach two eggs per person.<\/li>\n
      • Prepare plates with a mound of the potatoes. On top, scatter the fried
        \ncapers and minced salmon. Top with two poached eggs and the hollandaise sauce.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
        \n

        Spicy Collard Greens <\/b><\/p>\n

        This is my version of a dish cooked by the chef in Google’s cafeteria. I’d never had collards
        \nbefore, and they were amazingly good, so I needed to try to reproduce it. It’s not the same
        \nas what he cooked, but it’s good, and it’s easy.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Take a big bunch of collard greens. Wash them carefully, and cut off the stems. Then
          \ncut the leaves into thin strips, about 1\/4 inch by about 3 inches.<\/p>\n
        2. Mince a few ounces of bacon or smoked turkey.<\/li>\n
        3. Coarsely mince a couple of cloves of garlic.<\/li>\n
        4. Heat a saute pan, and add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Immediately add a good bunch
          \nof crushed red chili flakes to the hot oil. Stir them around a bit, and then add the
          \nbacon\/turkey, and cook until it starts to brown.<\/li>\n
        5. Add the collard greens, and a good-sized pinch of salt, and stir-fry them until they wilt.<\/li>\n
        6. Add about 1 cup of chicken stock, lower the heat, and cook until most of the stock has
          \nevaporated. Add salt and pepper to taste.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          I got hit by a mutant meme; I don’t remember who tagged me. I’m not terribly into these meme things, but I don’t pass up excuses to post recipes. So below the fold are four recipes that I’ve created: seared duck breast with ancho chile sauce; saffron fish stew; smoked salmon hash; and spicy collard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chatter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-7E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}