Cod en Papillote with Asparagus

Well, it happened again. Summer hit, my air-conditonless apartment has become a sauna, and I have thoughts like, "I should turn the oven up to 500 degrees and roast fish!" Every year it's like there's a part of my brain that can't figure out the formula Oven=BAD. But I had to do it! The seasonal recipe seduced me! It's not my fault the seasonal recipe didn't come with seasonal cooking instructions!

There were two big factors in my picking this dish. One, Cod was on sale. I've never had Cod but give me a discount and I'll try anything. Two, asparagus season is almost over. My heart is aching. From the first announcement of "Local Asparagus" it's a staple in our apartment, as we munch and grill and chop and bake it into tarts until it fades from the farmers market completely. I even splurged and bought a bunch from the farmers market, with its delicately feathered tips and deep green color. I waved the asparagus around the kitchen giggling like I had just brought home a pair of Jimmy Choos.

This particular preparation calls for creating parchment paper packets, a style that is known in french as "en papillote," though this steam entrapment method is used in a number of cultures. The NY Times has an interesting article about the whole idea from the 90's. Folding was a bit tricky, which is, I suppose, why some forgo the parchment in favor of foil. (Now that I think about it, if you are lucky enough to have an outdoor grill then the foil parchment might be an excellent way of preparing this in the summer.  I must try that.) If I was doing this for a fancy dinner party, I would need to practice this more, because a perfectly folded packet, ripped open to allow the aromatic steam to roll out in a tantalizing cloud, would be really impressive. As this was a test dinner made for only husband and best friend who forgive me anything, my packets looked a little more like mangled UPS packages held together with paper clips. Trapped steam like a charm though!

Cod en Papillote with Asparagus

Adapted from Bon Appetit

Serves 3

Ingredients:

- 1 bunch of asparagus, ends trimmed

- 2 garlic cloves, minced

- 1 teaspoon of salt

- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

- 1 tablespoon plus 3 teaspoons olive oil

- 1/4 cup lemon juice

- 1 1/2 tablespoons dry white wine

- 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

- 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped thyme

- 3 6 oz cod fillets, pinbones removed

Directions:

Mash garlic and salt to paste in a small bowl. Melt butter with 1 tablespoon of oil in small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add garlic paste; stir until pale golden, about 1 minute. Stir in lemon juice, wine, peel, and black pepper. Remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. (At this point you may want to open your windows more and turn on a fan.) Cut out 4 12-inch squares of parchment paper. Take a square, and drizzle 1 teaspoon of oil on the parchment. Place 1 cod fillet in the center of the parchment. Spoon 2 generous tablespoons of garlic-lemon mixture over fish. sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon of thyme. Cover with about 6 or 7 stalks of asparagus, laying diagonally across the parchment square. Wrap two opposite corners in over the fish and asparagus, then fold in the two remaining corners, enclosing completely. Fasten edges together with a metal paper clip or two to seal your packet. Place on a large rimmed baking sheet. Repeat procedure with the other two fillets. If you have any left over asparagus, use remaining parchment square to make it its own packet, spooning over as much lemon-garlic sauce as you like. (Can be prepared up to 6 hours ahead and refrigerated.)

Bake fish until just opaque in center (parchment should turn golden brown), about 12 minutes. Transfer 1 fish packet to each plate. Open packets, being careful not to touch the paper clips, and serve.

It turned out really well, and honestly was not a huge hassle for a weeknight dinner. The neatest part was turning on the oven light, and as it shone through the paper I could see the liquid bubbling in the packets. The cod flaked apart beautifully, and was super moist. Again, this was my first cod, so I've not much to compare it to, but I was a fan. The asparagus-only packet, which was a last minute addition on my part when I realized I had too much, was possibly the biggest hit of all. I would consider making the sauce and cooking just the asparagus that way on the side of some other entree if I was really going for a neat display at a party.

I may get one or two more asparagus dishes in this year, but that season is fading. Happily though, new seasons are coming in. Specifically, berry season. I have containers of little red wonders in my kitchen right now, and who knows what kind of summer treat it might become...

PS- I went to a concert in Central Park this week, The NY City Pops featuring Melody Gardot. My friend Anne who went with me remarked that it was great music to cook to, so I downloaded the album and tried it out with this recipe. She was right.

Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg and Miso Butter

There are two things I've been obsessed with lately. One is eggs. The other is the new spring fruits and veggies. I'm mad about them, and desperate for them. I spend half an hour circling the farmers market this week before I came to terms with the fact that the East Coast just didn't have strawberries yet, but I didn't leave empty handed. My bag was bulging, it is officially Asparagus season.

Since my experiments with Ginger Scallion noodles, I've been scouring my Momofuku cookbook for recipes I could make without spending hundreds of dollars on obscure ingredients and a cold smoker. With my obsession for cooking embryonic food and the piles of asparagus popping up all around me, it was time for my next David Chang challenge. There it was, on page 90, Pan-Roasted Asparagus and Slow Poached Egg in Miso Butter. The set up for the recipe seemed fairly simple, and astoundingly all things I keep in my cabinet, with one exception. The damned miso butter. I had purchased Chang's miso butter at Milk Bar a few weeks back, played with it exactly once, then left it out overnight and had to toss it all out because of damned "food safety" concerns.

Miso butter is not hard to make, literally mix together miso and butter. Ta da! This method, however, assumes you are the kind of person who just has packages of miso on hand. Well, now I am one of those people. At the Assi Asian grocery near my mother's house last weekend I picked up my very own package of miso. I have no idea if it's the shiro (white) miso that Chang recommends, it just said "Miso" and then a lot of characters I can't read. When I mixed it together it looked like the one I bought at Milk Bar so I'm counting it as a win for me.

The whole recipe comes together rather quickly, as long as you have that poached egg. That slow poached egg. Poached eggs are generally broken, put in a dish, and then slid into water. If your lucky the whole thing does spread apart and go to shit. Momofuku avoids this problem by slow poaching the eggs in their own shells, bringing the water to between 140 and 145 degrees (a nifty test for my new digital thermometer) and then plunking in the eggs for 40 to 45 minutes. When you crack the shell, out comes poached egg, nice and pretty. Since they keep (in their shells) for up to 24 hours in the fridge, they can be made ahead of time. I was curious though, if I did not have the nearly an hour to make the egg the Momofuku way, could I pull off the traditional?  Blog commenter Deanna pointed me toward Smitten Kitchen's tutorial. But that didn't satisfy my desperate need to cheat. (And according to my pasta making teacher this week, I'm a big cheater, with my Kitchen Aid and all.)

I decided to use a brand new Poach Pods in a side by side test. These silicon little toys float on top of your simmering water, keeping your eggs in tact and pretty. I did a side by side comparison, poaching one egg the normal way and one in the pod. The pod has to be lightly oiled before use, so it's not technically the completely "oilless cooking" that pure poaching is. The color of lose egg was a purer white then the Poach Pod one, and had a more natural shape to the finished product. The Poach Pod egg was very obviously the shape of a Poach Pod, so if you were doing this for company, slow poaching or normal poaching would probably be best. If you were just trying to knock together something like this recipe or an Eggs Benedict for yourself though, the Poach Pod has it on ease and piece of mind. There is absolutely no need to worry that your egg will break apart or will be undercooked when you use a pod.

Will, as previously mentioned, is not an egg fan. Can't stand even the smell of them actually. Therefore I waited until a night he was working and prepared a dinner for 1. It was a tiny meal, if you are looking for a filling main course maybe throw a piece of chicken next to it.  I still made plenty of miso butter, because I love having a new condiment around to play with, and it's tasty stuff.

Pan Roasted Asparagus and Poached Egg & Miso Butter
Adapted from Momofuku

Ingredients:
-1/4 cup of Miso (and pray it's the right one)
-3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
-6 stalks of Asparagus, ends snapped, peeled if they are thick
-Kosher Salt
-1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar
-1 poached egg (slow if you're doing this the Momofuku way, pictured right)
-Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
First make miso butter: In a small bowl combine 2 1/2 tablespoons of butter with miso until well mixed. Stir until it's one color, not full of chunkiness. Reserve half of the mixture at room temperature for the dish, the other half can be stored, wrapped in the fridge for a few weeks. Trust me, it's a fun ingredient, you'll want to play with it.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of butter in a medium skillet over medium high heat. When the bubbles have cleared, put in asparagus. If making more don't overcrowd, do in batches with fresh butter if need be. When asparagus begins to brown (about 2 or 3 minutes) season them with salt and pepper, turn the heat down to medium, and flip with tongs. Brown on reverse side, another few minutes. When you have some satisfying color and tenderness, remove from pan and lay on paper towel lined plates to drain.

Put sherry vinegar in a microwave safe dish for about 10 seconds. Using a small saucepan, mix warmed vinegar with reserved miso butter over low heat until butter starts to separate but does not melt, about 2 minutes. Spread miso butter on the center of the plate in a "thickish puddle".  Arrange asparagus on top of the butter and place the egg on top of the asparagus. Finish with a small pinch of salt and a grind of fresh pepper.

Look how much it looks like the picture! I was very proud of myself. The taste was phenomenal, salty, tangy, buttery, the crunch of the asparagus versus the softness of the egg, the smoothness of the egg versus the graininess of the miso, it was a pretty banging and impressive dish.

Crab and Asparagus Tart

The tarts were following me. In cookbooks, on blogs, in restaurants, I kept coming tart after tarts, some sweet, some savory, all looking insanely good to eat. I've had difficulty with pie crust in the past, however, (edible but not pretty) and tart crusts seemed too similar. Also it was baking, and I'm not a huge fan of baking. Finally though, the New York Times broke me down. I was minding my own business, sitting on the subway, happily reading an article about 2008 Kabinett Rieslings and how good they were in spring. Then I came across their suggestion for pairing. It was a recipe for a Crab and Asparagus Tart. I ran out and bought a tart pan.

I had to! This tart had in it just about everything I had been craving of late. Spring means asparagus, even if I had to shamefully buy it from California, it included goat cheese, which I already had in my fridge. And it had crab.

My family, for generations now, has been insane about blue crabs. Entire summer picnics have been designed around only the idea of a cooler full of crabs and a case of beer. On summer vacations we pulled them out of the bay, the scrawny little New Jersey crabs. A bar right on the water in Maryland has seen our faces several times, and when that bar was the subject of a feature article in the Times last fall, extolling the virtues of sitting on the deck picking apart crabs, I leaped off the subway at the next stop to call my mom, standing on a street corner in Manhattan as I tried to guide her to the right part of the website. "No Mom, you have to click on Travel. No not Styles, Travel. How did you end up in International? Look at the bar and click Travel!" No wonder visitors to the city think we're all crazy. In any case, it had been far too long since I'd eaten crab meat. I've been prowling the fish shops, waiting for soft shells to appear, but that's another month off. I didn't care if I wasn't going to be able to pick the meat myself, I wanted to eat it. I wanted to eat it with spring veggies and cheese. I had to make this tart.

It actually went pretty well! the nice thing about tart crusts is you don't have to pinch the crust all pretty like you do a pie. Once you have it laid in there, you can just roll your rolling pin over the top, and Ta Da! Perfectly trimmed pretty crust. I made only one significant change from the Times recipe. They call for 1 tablespoon chervil, essentially a fancy parsley. On the day I was doing my shopping I couldn't find it. I considered throwing in some regular parsley I had in my fridge, but I really wasn't feeling the bitter herbs with my nice, fresh, spring tart. I considered my ingredients, and decided fresh dill was what I really wanted to add to the flavor. Dill is so perfect for seafood, as well as for mixing with goat cheese, mild and soft in flavor but bringing a fresh dimension to an otherwise somewhat heavy dish.

Crab and Asparagus Tart

Adapted from the New York Times

Ingredients:

-1 and 1/4 cup flour (156.25 grams, I have learned from my new digital scale)

-1/2 teaspoon cayenne

-7 tablespoons unsalted butter

-4 large eggs

-1 Tablespoon minced shallot

-1/2 bunch medium asparagus, ends snapped, halved vertically and cut into 1 inch pieces

-8 oz lump crab meat

-1 Tablespoon lemon juice

-1 Tablespoon chopped dill

-3/4 cup half-and-half

-4 oz soft goat cheese

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a food processor, blend four, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and cayenne. Add 6 tablespoons cold butter and pulse until size of peas. In a separate bowl, beat 1 egg with 2 tablespoons of ice water. Scatter on flour mixture and pulse until a dough can be gathered together. Add a little more ice water if needed. Form into a disk and roll on a lightly floured surface until about 1/4 inch thick. Loosely roll your dough onto your rolling pin, then unroll it gently into a 9 inch tart pan.

Form dough to side of pan, then roll your rolling pin over to trim the edges. Line with foil and weight with pastry weights (or if you are like me and don't own those, pennies). Bake 10 minutes. Remove foil and weights and bake until it begins to look lightly browned, 5-10 minutes. Remove from oven. Reduce heat to 350 degrees.

Melt remaining tablespoon of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and cook 1 minute. Add asparagus and cook about 2 minutes, until they start to soften. Remove from heat. Fold in crab meat, lemon juice, and dill. Season with salt to taste. Spread mixture into pastry shell.

Whisk half-and-half and goat cheese until smooth. Beat in the remaining 3 eggs until well blended. Pour over crab mixture. (You may have a little too much, I did. I just poured until it looked like it was going to breach the pastry wall, then stopped.) Place in oven and bake about 40 minutes, until set and lightly browned. Let cool 15 minutes, remove the sides of the pan and serve at once or cooled to room temperature.

I was pleased with how this turned out. It was excellent the day of and I think even better for lunch the next day, so it could definitely be made the night before if you planned on serving it for brunch.

The cayenne added a little heat, more of a mouth feel then a spicy flavor. It was the perfect thing because we paired it with the crisp white wine that had been recommend, but if you were doing this for a brunch, I might leave it out. Next time I might trim back the asparagus and the crab a little bit and throw in some sliced mushrooms with the shallots. The article even recommends replacing the asparagus with diced zucchini later in the summer. The recipe is open to a lot of adaptable options, so you can make it your own. Now that I own my own tart pan, the possibilities are endless.

Scallops with Asparagus

Last weekend my best friend since babyhood crashed at my apartment as she stopped through New York after a writer’s conference upstate. Stef has the single girl status that I never really tried on in adult life since I met Will when I was 20 years old. Her stories are fun, her going out wardrobe is built for the hunt, and I enjoy the vicarious thrill of knowing her. Not only did she have a new crush to dish about, she actually brought him with her for the first few hours of her stay. He was gorgeous, Irish, and an honest to God poet. They met at the writer’s conference and he had the day to kill before his flight back to Ireland. Being the generous person that she is she decided the polite thing to do was to keep him with her as long as humanly possible. I was given 20 minutes notice of his visit, and had to do the apartment scan pretty fast. I had planned on a guest who had known me since diapers, so shoes on the floor and some empty wine bottles wouldn’t have been problematic. Now I had to make her gentleman caller believe he wasn’t in the apartment of both an alcoholic and a slob. The imposition was forgiven at the introduction, however. The man’s brogue alone was nearly enough to cause a girl’s clothes to just fall off. Stef and I could barely keep from swooning, and I think I even caught Will in a half swoon once…maybe three quarters of a swoon…it was at least five eights. I know that.

When I asked for the details, however, they were a bit disappointing. The connection had stayed one of artistic respect and cerebral discourse. So much for my vicarious thrill. When I delved for details I'm not sure what she would have done with that boy anyway, he was a vegetarian who abstained from both caffeine and alcohol. I’m not so sure he’s Irish…or a poet…let alone both at the same time. Damn him for not fitting into any of my cultural stereotypes. His dedication to forgo booze and coffee made it somewhat difficult to keep him entertained for 4 hours as it took both my cool bars and indie coffee shops off my list of “New York places to impress out-of-towners.” Thank God I didn't try to feed him.

Honestly, what does one do (outside the bedroom) with a man like that? Especially considering that you are immediately handicapped because you can't ask him up for a cup of coffee! Even if you get past the fact that you can't temper nerves and talk over a glass of wine, what do you do when your go-to seduction meal involves the death of a small animal? When one has a skill, they like to share that with the people they love. I find there to be two main reasons for this. The first is to win returned affection, to impress, to win praise and perhaps, yes, to seduce. The second is the belief that good food is good for a person, not necessarily in the nutritional sense—though that is certainly part of it—but in the sense that a well made dish will smooth away life's edges and create a feeling of safety and happiness. Like my mother before me I am fully committed to the idea the food can fix problems and heal pain. When Stef settled into my apartment I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Stef, like all those who graduated college in the past three years, has had the extreme misfortune to hit this workforce in the most god awful recession this country has seen in generations. On top of that she is 24, which just means the unpleasantness of navigating a mine field of men, life changes, and general grown up fuckery that they don't warn you about in the dorms. Under extreme stress lately she confessed that her appetite had completely abandoned her. I pulled on my apron (I own 2 aprons, yet another reason the women's movement should stone me) and prepared to fix things the only way I knew how. Sauteed Scallops and Asparagus in a White Wine Butter Sauce.

Stef and I share years of our mothers feeding us a steady diet of seafood every summer of our formative years; she's the only person I know other then myself who can rip a crab apart neatly in under three minutes flat. While Will mixed drinks and Stef tried to convince herself that a transatlantic booty call was a brilliant idea for the unemployed, I sliced asparagus into half inch pieces. As she dreamed about his gaze following her as we exited Penn Station in a scene similar to a 1940’s movie earlier, I sprinkled salt and pepper on scallops. And as she expressed displeasure over the fact that if fate didn't deal her a guy who was a distant emotional jackass then it just dealt her a guy who was just plain off at a distance, I simmered white wine and swirled in butter. One catharsis later and we sat down to dinner.

Scallops with Asparagus
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine

Ingredients:
- 1 lb medium asparagus, ends trimmed, cut into 1/4 inch thick diagonal slices, tips whole
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 lb large sea scallops, tough ligament removed from side if attached
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 2 teaspoon white-wine vinegar
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions:


Pat scallops dry and sprinkle with pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add 1 Tablespoon oil to skillet and heat over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then saute half of scallops, turning over once, until browned and just cooked through, 4 minutes per side. Transfer scallops with tongs to another plate as cooked.

Wipe out skillet with paper towels, then add remaining Tablespoon oil and heat until hot, but not smoking and cook remaining scallops as before. Do not wipe out skillet after second batch.

Carefully add wine and vinegar to skillet (might spatter) and boil, scraping up brown bits, until liquid is reduced to about 2 tablespoons, about 1 minute. Add any scallop juices accumulated on a plate and bring to a simmer.

Reduce heat to low and whisk in butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, until incorporated. Add asparagus and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook until heated through, about 1 minute.

Serve scallops topped with asparagus and butter.

The dish was a savory, buttery, indulgent, and satisfying medicine. It didn't replace the man from Ireland, but it was delicious and it expressed exactly what I wanted it to express: That her best friend loved her and would exert effort to create something that would bring her happiness, if only for a few delicious minutes. On that night, that is what my cooking was all about. . Using food as a means of emotional healing. Well, that and I make damn good scallops. While being a culinary healer, why not satisfy yourself in the process?