le blog de tranny

Hi friends – it’s been a while. Living in SF has meant a lot of things — perhaps most notably eating and drinking out a lot and not cooking as much as I would like. Not that this has been completely my fault. Let me tell you about our stove. It can hardly be called a stove. It’s more like a stovie, or a stove that’s half the size of a regular stove. A full-sized pizza pan cannot even be fit into this oven. Hell, our oven doesn’t even work unless you take off the back and fire it up manually! Did I mention that the range leaks gas unless we turn off the valve behind it, and that we have to light it manually (with matches) every time we want to use it? Hopefully this all will soon be one of those things we can laugh at in retrospect. Tomorrow I will call the repair man, and I will be forceful. Like with so many other things (i.e. lack of a microwave), we’ve managed to find ways to work around our kitchen’s deficiencies. Cooking without a working oven is actually almost doable.

The other day I had this undeniable urge to make a romesco sauce, like the one they often serve with squid cooked in the wood-fired oven at Pizzaiolo. This requires blanched almonds and hazelnuts (toasted to remove the skins). The latter I did on the stove.

Blanching 101: soak the almonds in boiled water for a minute, then rinse and rub the skins off. News to me!

I attempted to “toast” the hazelnuts by just heating them in the pan (without oil) and shaking them around a bit. They did not toast evenly, nor did all the skins come off, but in the end it didn’t really matter.

I think I discovered the secret to why romesco is so delicious and crunchy! There’s fried bread in it!

Squid was an obvious choice for pairing with the romesco sauce. But when I was cruising the fish counter at Berkeley Bowl I noticed a tastier, cheaper option that I couldn’t resist surprising Caroline with — baby octopus!

She was elated.

Caro seasoned the squid and octopi with lemon juice, lemon zest and red pepper flakes before throwing them on the grill. The lemon zest added the tastiest kick.

For the romesco sauce I combined the nuts (a few tablespoons of each kind), a few garlic cloves and some red pepper flakes into the blender.

After blending these things, I added San Marzano tomato puree, a dried ancho chile, some roasted red pimentos from a jar, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, a few tablespoons of water, a bunch of cilantro, and the cubed fried bread to the blender. The baby blender was too small; I should’ve gone with the immersion blender.

Meanwhile, Caro grilled up the sea creatures and some trumpet mushrooms that had been marinated in rice vinegar.

Grilled squid and baby octopus with romesco sauce and chicory salad with grilled trumpet mushrooms.

Harro Pandrea.

The smaller octopi I could eat whole with ease — the brains were actually quite tasty. To actually bite the head off of this big guy though would’ve been a bit much. Excuse my appearance.

So instead Andrea and I decided to sever the head and trick Paul into thinking it was a quail egg when he got home. He bit into it but the texture was a give-away.

There was a good amount of romesco sauce and sea creature bits leftover so I pulled another one of my favorite old tricks…

~

As the seasons have turned I’ve been pretty into making soups and stews lately. I’m pretty much a one pot lady nowadays. The other night Nina came over and we made this lentil soup with sausage, kale and escarole recipe I’d been drooling over at work that day. I splurged for some nice sweet Italian sausages at BB and it made all the difference.

I de-cased those bad boys while Nina cooked the lentils with some broth and water.

I heated some oil in a pot and broke up the sausage and browned it a bit (though not quite as much as I should have). I removed the sausage from the pot and then sauteed some chopped onion, carrots, celery and several cloves of minced garlic until the onion and carrots were soft. I seasoned the mirepoix with s&p and then added some tomato paste, stirring to coat the vegetables for a few minutes until the tomato paste started to caramelize a bit. I added back the sausage along with the lentils, a few bay leaves, some chicken broth and some water.

After letting the soup simmer for a while I adjusted the seasoning to taste and then added some escarole and kale.

I left the soup on the heat for a few more minutes to wilt the kale and escarole. Meanwhile, Nina fried a few slices of sweet batard in a pan with some olive oil, and then seasoned them with garlic powder, s&p, dried oregano, whatever sounded good. That made for some pretty tasty ghetto croutons.

A well-rounded meal and leftovers for days!

I’m gonna venture and say that fried bread = always a win.