So in anticipation of today’s big stuff-a-thon, yesterday I ground a couple kinds of sausage meant to hang and cure into salami. But of course all of that pungent meat, fragrant with garlic and spices and the like, was impossible to resist once it came time to shake the magic dinner 8-ball.
Last night I went to Nobu Next Door with a couple of friends after a thing in the city. It was far from our first choice, but since it came on the heels of another event and I had 110 miles to drive afterwards, we settled for what was right there, around the corner. I haven’t been to a Nobu franchise since a lunch party several years ago at the decorative trainwreck that is Nobu 57–it looks like 5 different interior designers mudwrestled to see who would get to ornament which surface–but I still have respect for his Peruvian-influenced ability to actually change Japanese cuisine from outside Japan. I had a few epic meals at his joints in NY and Miami back in the day, and because of who I was with luckily didn’t pay a penny for any of them. One’s standards tend to be a tad higher when one foots the bill, I have noticed. Today it feels like a hilarious Clinton-era time capsule all the way down to the too-loud lite house music, but it was convenient. Had I known that they still have bluefin on the menu, I would have kept walking.
The slight but meaningful increase in temperature from last week to this–from 40s to 50s, basically–has made a huge impact outside, not least in the form of turning our last two winter storm warnings into plain old rain. All those tentative early shoots have emboldened, and are pushing forth with enthusiasm. It rained again today, and I’ve been leaving the plastic off the hooped salad bed so it can soak up the water. Today I got some asparagus crowns so I can put in another bed parallel to the existing one but outside the garden fence since the deer ignore it. I grabbed a few herbs to stick in the herb garden, and some lavender to go in a bed outside the front garden fence. Once it’s in, all four sides of the garden will have mulched beds or just plain mulch outside them, which should provide an extra measure of protection against the tenacious and ever-encroaching lawn.
While I picked this stuff up, along with less-sexy things like rock phosphate, lime, and green sand to amend the big-ass truck full of compost that’s coming tomorrow, I also hit the fish counter since the store in question has a decent one. Soft-shell crabs are in season, and Milo loves them, so I got three. I also bought a nice Pacific albacore steak, figuring that some tataki would be a nice complement to crispy fried crab.
Japan has been on my mind a lot lately, though unfortunately for terrible reasons. Given the many areas in which Japanese culture has influenced me–ceramics, cooking, and to a lesser degree painting–there’s not another country that has made such an impact on me, at least one I’ve never been to. Italy taught me to cook, and France taught me about wine. Japan is more of an aspirational influence, a strange attractor that shapes my cooking and serving from afar.
This morning I went to unload a kiln, and the results were inspiring. This is why I make ceramics: apart from the pleasure of working with clay (and productivity makes me happy) the resulting pieces make me want to cook better to do them justice. In this case, these 7-sided bowls made the difference between some steaks with other stuff on a plate and a meal that really worked on every level.
Friday I went down to have make lunch with for Claudia and her Mom and friend, and on my way home I stopped at the good fish market there and picked up some things. Among those things were some beautiful sushi-grade yellowfin and opah and a small container of ikura. Other treats went in the freezer for another time. After the impromptu free catering gig, this stop was an excellent idea; there’s not much that I find more inspiring than gleamingly fresh seafood like this. I was most cheerful as I washed the rice.
I realize that I promised something, you know, good this time, but circumstances conspired to keep that at bay for another little while. I have this totally awesome terrine I made, but now it looks like I have to save it for Saturday for a party. The terrine is a byproduct of the wonderful day of cooking we had here on Sunday, complete with Jen’s photography, but I can’t really spill the offal beans about that until it comes out. So, to tide you over, because the Internet is both a harsh mistress and an insatiable gobbler of novelty, I offer you some humble noodle soup.
Seafood inspires me. Faced with some wild shrimp and semi-local (RI) clams, I thought about all the ways I could use them–together or separately–to good effect. I went around and around, and ultimately I settled on soup. Amazing, right? All the visions of multiple small plates (each cradling one elegant concoction) collapsed in the din of the ticking clock. I did have enough time to prepare the components individually, though, and it made a huge difference to the result.
Sometimes when making dinner I have just a little bit of time and the inclination to use it well. This is the sort of food that would normally get the one-plate treatment, but the simple act of approaching and presenting it as a multi-dish meal made it so much more interesting and satisfying than it would have been. Presentation matters, and that intention works to inform the cooking process with more care and attention.
It’s just too damn nice out for me to spend much time in front of the computer, so I haven’t been. I’ve been a plate-making machine, though, so there will be lots of hot, amateur man-on-clay action in the coming weeks to help slake your insatiable cravings for content. There has been food, though; cooler (perfect, beautiful) weather has allowed me to spend actual consecutive minutes in front of the stove, resulting in some pretty good meals. I’ll try to play catch up over the next few days.
One of the advantages of having a friend in the fish biz is the occasional hors commerce hookup: in this case a side of wild sockeye salmon and a big hunk of cod fillet. The cod is going to be either fish and chips or a coconut curry, but first off we had at the salmon.
You see where this is going, right?
