With the holidays coming up, and all of looking forward to at least a little more time penned up by the cold weather, the pandemic, or a staggering fear of our friends seeing our pandemic hair/beard/sartorial choices, maybe it’s time for some gift ideas. If you’d like, you get some cooking gift ideas, and can help support my work here at the Daily Menu by checking out the Equipment and Resources page at my other project, The Chicken Thigh Guy. - and of course by encouraging your friends, neighbors, and even pets to subscribe. Ok, maybe not pets.
- Thanks, Drew
Often I start these newsletters with a personal story, where I learned to cook a dish, or how it came to be a part of some grand and wonderful memory of a time or a place in my life. This isn’t one of those newsletters. This one has fish. That’s unusual on two counts. First, in the time I’ve been writing this newsletter, I haven’t sent out a menu that features fish as a main course. Secondly, and probably the main reason for the first count, I do not actually like fish. Well, most fish.
For years, I wouldn’t eat it at all. Sure, maybe a single plank of fried lake perch and chips on the dock in the summer, particularly if there was nothing else on offer. But when my family went to get the Friday fried fish special at a local restaurant when I was a kid? I ate the chicken fingers. I don’t think I even liked fish sticks, although if I tolerated them it was mainly, if not solely, as a tartar sauce delivery device.
I mostly got over my fear of fish living in San Francisco, and by mostly I mean that I started eating sushi. Kind of a lot of sushi, to be honest. Raw fish seemed different. Along with shellfish – hard and soft – and it’s non-Japanese analogs (ceviche, crudo, etc.), it’s what I want when I’m eating seafood. Also, I can now murder a pint and plate of fish and chips while watching the Rugby, but that seems like cheating. So, tastes and cravings do change, even fishy ones…. Or something like that.
As I’ve pushed myself cooking, I’ve pushed myself to cook more fish – both because my friends and family love it, and because I’m convinced I’ll eventually find something other than that fried plate of wonder that I’ll really, really love. The dish featured on this week’s menu comes close, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Rosemary and Onion Focaccia
This focaccia is great because it’s delicious, and also because it can be done in a few hours when you just really want bread on the table and dragging yourself to the bakery in the middle of a global pandemic, a cold day, or just Wednesday doesn’t seem like a great option. The dough is very wet and comes together quickly in a stand mixer. Unfortunately, because it relies on the mixer to quickly develop gluten in a wet dough, this recipe doesn’t really work when mixed by hand.
I’ve topped the bread here with onion and rosemary, which feels wintery and cozy to me, but you can vary the toppings to your tastes– or leave them off all together. I’ve topped the same dough with everything from grapes and olives, to bacon, cheese, and whole eggs.
500g bread flour
425 g water
25 g olive oil
7 g instant yeast
10 g salt
1 medium onion
2 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves
Add the water and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook or paddle and stir to dissolve. If using instant yeast, proceed. If using active dry yeast, allow to rest 10 minutes before proceeding.
Add olive oil and bread flour and begin mixing.
Add the salt.
Turn the mixer to a high setting.
Process the dough until it is shiny, and has pulled completely away from the sides of the bowl.
Cover, and allow to rise in a warm place until tripled – usually 1-2 hrs.
Preheat your oven to 400° F.
Heavily grease a ½ sheet pan with olive oil.
Transfer the dough onto the pan, and using wet hands, spread the dough evenly across the pan. Allowing the dough to rest for 10 minutes after the first spread will allow the gluten to relax and make spreading it evenly easier.
Scatter onion pieces and rosemary over the top. Optionally, scatter some coarse salt with the toppings.
Allow to proof in a warm place for 15 minutes.
Again, with wet hands, push dimples into the top with your finger tips and transfer to the oven to bake for 20-35 minutes.
Cut into rectangles with scissors.
Spinach Salad with Walnuts, Blue Cheese and Pomegranate
This quick spinach salad seems far more sophisticated and fancy than the sum of its parts, and at least here in the states, this time of year it’s pretty easy to find whole pomegranates. That means I get to do the whole “whack the pomegranate with the spoon” seed removal/anger management therapy trick. It’s really very satisfying.
2 cups loosely packed baby spinach
¼ cup candied walnuts
¼ cup pomegranate seeds
¼ cup blue cheese crumbles
1 clove garlic
1 tsp good balsamic vinegar
1 tsp water
1 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
Add the vinegar and water to a non-reactive bowl.
Crush or microplane the garlic into the vinegar and water mixture. Add the mustard, salt, and pepper and allow to rest 10 minutes to meld and tame the garlic.
Whisk the olive oil into the bowl.
Toss the spinach, pomegranate, cheese, and walnuts with the dressing and serve.
Salmon Roasted with Fennel and Citrus
I’ve found that a lot of fish – whether cooked, raw, or somewhere in between – benefits from a quick cure. It covers a multitude of sins, firms up the flesh, and really helps with the normally tiny margin of error you get when preparing fish. Here, we’ll cure the salmonid of your choice in honey, kosher salt, and coriander (I used wild Atlantic salmon, but this dish will work with anything from Sockeye, to Char, and even riverine salmonids like trout). The coriander’s citrus-like flavors and the floral elements of the honey will complement the bed of citrus and fennel we’ll roast the fish on – flavoring it lusciously, and protecting it from the harshness of the oven.
2 lbs salmon filet
1 large fennel bulb
1 lemon
1 grapefruit
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp ground coriander
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp kosher salt
4 sprigs thyme
Prepare a brine by stirring 1 tbsp of salt, 1 tsp of ground coriander, and 1 tbsp of honey into as much water as is necessary to fully dissolve both the honey and the salt. Pour this over the salmon in either a non-reactive covered container, or a zip top bag.
Allow the salmon to lightly cure for at least 30 minutes, and up to three hours.
Supreme the grapefruit. (click the link for instructions)
Remove the greens from the fennel and slice into thin slices.
Slice the lemon very thinly.
Toss the grapefruit, fennel, and lemon slices with oil, mustard, and remaining coriander.
Toss in a hot pan and sauté over high for 3-5 minutes, or until the fennel has softened and is beginning to color.
Preheat your oven to 300° F.
Spread the fennel mixture on a sheet pan lined with parchment.
Arrange the fish on top of the mixture and scatter with thyme leaves.
Roast for 13-16 minutes, or until fish is just barely cooked through.
Dill-Roasted Fingerling Potatoes
Simple, roasted potatoes are one of life’s great pleasures. No really. I’m putting it up there with a nice walk on a fall day, a first swim in the ocean, and watching penguins fall down – either the Antarctic kind or the Pittsburgh kind.
I boil these quickly first in lots of water spiked with baking soda – a trick I learned from one of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s intricately researched pieces. It makes the cut surface of the potato rough, and thus crunchier when roasted/fried. The garlic and dill flavor the fat as the potatoes roast. The end result is a soft creamy flesh, a crunchy cut surface, and the pleasant chew of the thin fingerling skin.
2 lbs fingering potatoes
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp chopped dill leaves
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp neutral oil (melted clarified butter is best)
Prepare a large pot of boiling water. Add the baking soda to the water.
Cut the fingerlings in half, lengthwise.
Boil for 7 minutes.
Drain, and toss immediately with oil, herbs, and garlic.
Preheat your oven to 400° F
Spread the potato/herb/garlic mix evenly on the pan.
Roast at 400° F for 15 minutes, then stir, flipping potatoes over.
Roast another 15 minutes, or until crunchy, and browned.
Serve hot.
Lemon Olive Oil Cake
I’m not a baker. I like quick, cheat deserts, pies, things that – to me – don’t seem to require the intricate steps and careful measurement required to make the spectacular desserts I’ve seen friends and former colleagues putting together to beat back the boredom of the pandemic.
This lemon olive oil cake is somewhere in between the glorious ease of microwave cake and the care given to real dyed-in-the-wool fancy enough for a cake stand cake. Also, it’s phenomenal for breakfast the next day – it’s sweet, dense, lemony, and the olive oil keeps it really moist.
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup olive oil
1 cup AP flour
¼ cup milk
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
Preheat your oven to 350° F.
Zest the lemons into a bowl with the sugar. Allow to rest for 15-30 minutes for the sugar to extract the citrus oil.
Add the eggs, and whisk until light colored and fluffy.
Whisk in the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and milk - making sure the juice is well incorporated before adding the milk (to prevent curdling.)
Whisk together the flour and baking powder, and sift into the wet mixture, using a spatula to fold into the batter.
Pour into a well-greased cake pan.
Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely, remove from the pan, and dust with confectioners’ sugar.