Quarantine Cooking: Sunday Night Fish

I had bought sable fish and artichokes at the Saturday farmers market and decided to repeat Italian cuisine for our Sunday dinner since I was serving leftover vegetables from another night of Italian food.

I had also bought artisan chocolate at the farmers market which was my dessert later in the evening. 

Quarantine Cooking: Saturday Steak Night

After a day of clay, it was time to go home and make dinner. I had woken up early that Saturday and decided on a whim to go to the farmers market. I had a great time. I came home with my market tote laden with tomatoes, Cubanelle peppers, artichokes (baby and huge Globes), Thai basil plants, artisanal chocolate, corn (white and bicolor), and a Black cod filet. I spent so much time cooking the vegetable side dishes that the hubs decided to grill the steak, which I had already salted and coated with garlic confit and laid on rosemary sprigs.

I couldn't find the soft mozzarella and decided on an even simpler tomato salad: just the 3 tomatoes I bought, salt and torn basil.

My friend Meral's sister is growing tomatoes, beans and herbs. Her tomatoes looked healthier than ours and her basil was crazy prolific.

I was going to cook Mexican street corn, but since we were having steak and a tomato salad, I decided to stick to an Italian flavor profile.

Elote entails mayonnaise and sour cream and Cotija and fresh squeezed lime juice, cilantro and chili powder. Easy swaps for an Italian creamed corn were to keep the mayo and sour cream and swap out the Cotija for Parmesan & Romano, the lime for lemon, and basil for cilantro.

For heat, I used Aleppo and red pepper flakes instead of chili powder.

And because I had them, I added chives to my Italian creamed corn.

Hubs was not impressed with the tomatoes, and so next time I'll dress them with olive oil and balsamic or sherry vinegar and garnish with soft mozzarella cheese. The steak, however, was perfectly medium rare which I wouldn't have accomplished because I was so obsessed with executing vegetable sides.

Ceramics: Red Clay Saturday

While working, I was torn between my two hobbies of ceramics and sewing. And yet when the pandemic started, I was doing neither. And so my friend, Meral invited me to her garage and clay studio to do some distance handbuilding this Saturday. We both wore our masks and worked at separate tables. It was glorious. I hadn't planned any specific project, and so I jumped into what I normally do when not knowing what to make: mugs. I brought a bag of red clay I had in my office and bought some basic tools from China Clay Art in San Jose. Here's my clay story over not being able to go into the Central Park ceramics studio.

Golly how I've missed you Mistress Clay.

Quarantine Cooking: Instagramming Pizza Night

And since I didn't use all the pineapple on my pizza, I made a fruit cup along with apricots given by a neighbor and strawberries from our tiny patch for dessert.

And poured myself a glass of wine while the pizza baked. I was a bit leery of the wine because of its name, but the label also did say dry rose and from California. Unlike Southerners, we Californians like our wine not soft and disgustingly sweet but dry. And thank goodness it was dry and a bit crisp.

And now back to the main feature...

I regretted buying this Boboli crust, but I couldn't let it go to waste and thought if I loaded it up with toppings, I could forgive its mediocrity. Not bad, not bad. Next time for sure, if I buy this prepackaged crust again, it's gonna be the thin one.

Quarantine Cooking: Fish Tacos Night

Last night I needed to cook fish (Alaskan cod fillets) I bought the day before, using the method of battering and frying that I learned while making stuffed squash blossoms on a previous night. Rather than chop ingredients midway through a recipe, I've learned to cut everything beforehand. I took out a small head of white cabbage I bought that day from the produce market and a small red onion from out garden and started slicing and dicing.

I also poured myself a glass of Mexican beer, which I would need for my fish batter.

Everything in place for my DIY fish taco bar: chopped cabbage, pickled jalapenos and carrots, street corn tortillas, sour cream, guacamole, chopped red onion, chopped cilantro, lime....mixed some of the ingredients to make a lime crema.

Next I whisked a half cup of beer with half cup of flour in order to batter half a pound of white fish.

I discovered this batter while cooking stuffed zucchini blossoms; you can substitute sparkling water for beer which makes for an even lighter and crispier batter. I started with using my fingers to dip a single fish filet into the batter.

And then dipped the battered fish filet into the hot oil.

Umm my cooking oil was way too hot which resulted in burned fish that tasted bitter though crispy.

Fuck that! I lowered the temp of my oil, and put all the fish into the batter and swirled the fish in the batter with my hands to coat the protein.

And then washed my hands and broke out the tongs to pick up the fish from the batter to drop into the slightly cooler cooking oil.

I lowered the temp of the cooking oil too much because it took quite a while to cook AND crisp the fish. And so I raised the temp past medium high to not so high.

Once the fish was cooked, I summoned the hubs to the taco bar. He instantly plopped down 4 tortillas into a hot pan and drizzled them with a little garlic oil. Clever. And then he plunked down cheese first into his taco build. S.O. W.R.O.N.G. But to each his own. And I do often make macaroni and cheese whenever I bake beer battered fish for dinner.

Then red onion, lime crema, lettuce and... red salsa? I didn't even make pico de gallo because really tomatoes go with red meat tacos. I verbally objected to his taco toppings, to which he said, you do you, I do me. 

When I construct my own fish tacos, I like to lay down the lime crema first.

And then I lay down a layer of chopped white cabbage and then guacamole and then fish.

And then a little more lime crema on top of the fish, a little more cilantro, and oh why the hell not....I put red salsa too on my fish tacos. And carrot and jalapeno and cauliflower pickles because I like a vegetable heavy meal.

I thought I had grabbed Pacifico and not Corona beer, it's all Mexican and all good.