Shrimp & Mushroom Etoufee

I'll start this one out by saying thank you to Chef Andrew Zimmern! You posted a link to your shrimp étouffée recipe on Twitter a while back and you inspired me to make some of my own.

 First off, if you have access to fresh shrimp take advantage of it. Frozen shrimp will work. The only requirement is that you get them with the shell on. The shrimp stock is the key to this dish!

There isn't much stock but the flavors
you get are worth the time and effort

Shrimp & Mushroom Etouffee

1 lbs of shrimp
1 lbs of mushrooms
1 medium white onion chopped
3 tbsp oil
6 cloves of garlic sliced
2 celery stalks
4 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp Harissa paste
4 tbsp butter
¼ tsp basil
¼ tsp thyme
¼ tsp oregano
1 tbsp cornstarch ¼ cup water (for slurry)


Shrimp Stock
shrimp shells from 1 lbs of shrimp
stems from mushrooms (optional)
¼ medium onion
2 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
3 cups vegetable stock (water is also suitable)
1 large pinch of salt
½ tbsp cracked black pepper

In a sauce pot combine “Shrimp Stock” ingredients add a large pinch of salt and using a steaming rack place the rack on top of all of your ingredients to ensure they are submerged, bring to a boil. After boiling turn heat down and simmer for at least 2 hours. Check for seasoning and strain solids from stock. Hold aside for later.

I used my steamer basket to keep the shrimp shells submerged

In a large saute pan heat over medium high heat add 2 tbsp oil, when hot add mushrooms, onions and season with salt. After onions have softened and become translucent add garlic and and lower heat. After sauteing garlic add Harissa and tomato pastes cook until tomato paste has changed color slightly and add herbs. Set aside for final ingredients to cook.

In another saute pan melt butter and on high heat cook shrimp in one layer, avoid overcrowding the pan, and get a good sear on the shrimp but do not overcook them, actually it would be best to under-cook them.

After shrimp have cooked, add shrimp to mushroom onion tomato mixture, and add shrimp stock. Cook for about 2 minutes bringing it to a boil and breaking up tomato and herbs. Make sure there are no lumps  in your slurry and your sauce is boiling, then add the cornstarch slurry and stir continuously. You will notice the sauce thicken and get a nice sheen on it. That's when you shrimp étouffée is ready.

Serve over rice or potato celery root mash. Recipe to follow.

Potato Celery Mash

1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes
1 lb celery root
6 cups of water
plenty of salt
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 cup half and half
1/2 cup freshly chopped parsley

Quarter the potatoes, and peel and cube the celery root, once that is done add to water and salt water well. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are fork tender, in other words, you can poke em with a fork and they slide right off. Drain the water.

While the potatoes and celery root are boiling, in a separate pan melt the butter and saute or gently cook the garlic in the melted butter. Do not toast the garlic it could turn bitter very fast.

Add the melted butter and cooked garlic to the drained potatoes, add the half & half and mash the mixture, just as you finish mashing add the parsley and taste for salt.

So there it is. If you try it let me know, if you like it let others know, if you don't like it, well just keep that to yourself! Just kidding about that last part. Comments and questions are welcome! 

Barrel Aged Cocktails

I sometimes laugh when I ask myself things like "Why am I the last to know about these things?" or "Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this?" And there are times when I just don't care, if its about fashion/style, you'll probably never get my attention, or even something like photography it might not even phase me that I don't know. But if its about food and drink then I have a problem!

All of that being said, why did I not know about "Barrel Aged Cocktails?" Or that they could be homemade?

One of my best friends gave me a Hudson River Barrel Aged Cocktail Kit (the kit from here on), and the results have been pretty cool. Not only that but it has given me some interesting ideas. The kit is an empty 375 ml bottle, a cork stopper and a honeycomb oak stave that has been charred. For $12.50 and shipping its a great gift. As the recipient I can say it's an awesome gift.

Now for the recipe, I use water for reasons I will disclose later, keep in mind the bottle is about 12 oz so you have space for the recipe below times 4 if each part is 1 oz. The recipe follows and I'll write more about the hooch later.

Barrel Aged Manhattan

1 part White Dog Mash #1
1 part water
1 part Cinzano white vermouth
4 dashes Fee Brothers barrel aged bitters
After thoroughly mixing the ingredients you pour the mix into the kit. Then comes the wait.
I noticed an amber hue after about three days, and the aroma began to resemble a "regular" Manhattan.

After about a week I poured the mix into my flask and have nipped at on occasion. 

To make my Barrel Aged Manhattan I decided to use Buffalo Trace White Dog Mash #1. It is a mouthful in more ways than one. At 125 proof I decided that water was needed to cut the proof of the White Dog.  Along with the "white whiskey" I decided that Cinzano White Vermouth was appropriate, too many times the sweetness of sweet vermouth overpowers the oak flavor of any bourbon. I just wanted a little sweetness to see how the charred oak would taste. Finally I used the Fee Brothers Barrel Aged bitters just for the heck of it.

That is basically it for the cocktail, but the whole process did give me other ideas.

I'm a sucker for a good cocktail but also for a good hot sauce. In the past couple of months I have been making different batches of hot sauce. Since I got the kit I thought, what would a barrel aged hot sauce taste like, should I use a fresh oak stave? Or should re-use a "white Manhattan" stave? What kind of peppers would work to make that taste good.

More cocktails came to mind, what about an oak aged martini, the earliest examples of jenever (the predecessor to modern gin) were aged in oak before being bottled. The only thing you shouldn't do is use acid or citrus to soak in the oak as it were. Another idea that came to mind was re-using an oak stave from the "white Manhattan" to flavor some tawny port or Marsala.

In any case, there are plenty of other ideas and I plan to buy some more oak  honeycomb staves to use in future projects. Please let me know if you decide to try this product and how you feel about the results in the comments area below.

It's funny how standing in line you see so much...

I have tried to make this blog about food, travel, and fun and today I'm going to the source of our food, at least the source for a city-boy, living in the 2nd most populous city in the U.S. The grocery store is just where we have to go to get our groceries. Unfortunately the problem that I'm gonna write about is something that I see all over, not just the local Pavilions, but every other grocery store that I have stopped in, not to mention coffee shop, gas station, restaurant, hardware store, and wholesale outlet. I'm not trying to be harsh, but you know you have noticed it too! Customer service is terrible at so many places, why else do we go places like Trader Joe's? I mean they have great products, but they generally have good customer service. Why do I choose a place like George's Diner over any of the other dozen diners in my area? I mean the food is good, but the service is consistently good! Why do I go to Thyme Cafe in Santa Monica instead of Champagne French Bakery? Well to start I love the fresh seasonal beet salad Thyme has, but Thyme goes the extra mile to provide great service!

Just so you understand I'm touchy about customer service, standing in line today at Pavilions I was kind of annoyed! I mean I totally understand having to stand in line... I understand that one cashier might be slower than another, or that a customer has decided that they are going to shopping after their around the world cruise and buy three carts full of stuff, and that I just happened to be that guy who saw that they only had three things left in the cart and jumped in line right behind them, without seeing the other million things that haven't been scanned and bagged. 

That isn't the stuff that annoys me. What annoys me is knowing there is a rush and at least 10 people waiting in each line, and there are 3 employees not doing anything to help right in the front of the store. Okay let me rephrase that, one guy was eating chips by the time clock, another guy was taking return items back to the shelves and another guy was emptying the trash bins at the cash registers. I've been going to this store for the better part of the last 5 years and you start to know the people that work there and what they do. These guys were baggers, and they weren't bagging!

At this point I will say this, I'm old school, if you work in retail you don't take breaks or stand around and do nothing in front of customers. When you do that then people e.g. people like me look to see who else isn't working and when I say working I mean not helping me get out the store faster, or with less of a headache. I understand stuff needs to go back on the shelf, every shift has "go-backs," and granted trash bins need to be emptied. But this is stuff you do when things are slow or you have a full staff. I know one of the other cashiers was on break because I saw her in the back of the store going to the warehouse. Obviously "Chip" was taking a break, but right by the time clock? I know there are perishables that need to be taken care of, and trash bins need to be emptied. But none of that takes precedence over this next thing!

Every customer should be made to feel like YOU are doing YOUR best to help them out...

 I'll just say most of my recent visit to Pavilions didn't make me feel like that!

I think what made me feel better is what I noticed about the cashier, I'm not going so far as saying that he was handicapped or disabled, but he was definitely not completely able. If you've gone to the Pavilions in Marina Del Rey in the evening you have probably seen him or waited in his line. I admire him for holding it down and working such a physical job, what I didn't admire was his coworkers standing around, even the front-end supervisor this evening wasn't there supporting the front-end. The "supervisor" showed up and opened a cash register to ring folks up just as our cashier was finishing ringing us up.

Customer service is bad nowadays because "supervisors" and "managers" let customer service be bad! Each of them has it in the power of their hand to make it better for customers. I say this from experience, every job I have had has involved some form of customer service, over the last 15 years as a front line employee or as a supervisor or manager I knew it was my job to make the customer feel like I was doing my best. I didn't have to jump through hoops, or do an extraordinary job, I just had to do the best with what I had. 

So "Thank You" to our cashier tonight. You did a great job making me feel like you were doing your best. You could teach your coworkers and supervisors a thing or two.

Duck Prosciutto 4.0 STEP 2!

The finished product!

Before I get into the next step of my Duck Prosciutto recipe let me make one thing clear. There are some things I didn't cover in my last post.

I hate to say it but I made some assumptions about YOU the reader. I have to apologize! Don't take this the wrong way, I'm going to cover some basic stuff that you need to do or you could get sick. A couple days on the ceramic throne sick! On to the serious stuff.

Please keep your stuff clean! I mean, your cutting boards, knives, your scale, all of it, but most importantly keep your hands clean! I know it's a pain but of all things, we cross-contaminate more with our hands than with any other possible utensil!


The best way to clean your stuff? About a half a gallon of water with 2 tsp of bleach! That's it, cheap, easy and right there under the sink!

Okay now that the health and safety is taken care of on to part two of our recipe!

Things you will need:
2 salted duck breast
paper towels
butchers twine
digital scale
a small plate
refrigerator or cold dark basement
cheesecloth (optional)
between 7-10 days or 2 weeks
Plenty of hot water and soap (not OPTIONAL)

Now that your duck breasts have cured in the salt and pink salt for at least 1 day and not more than 2 days (I like 36 hours) you can take it out of the fridge and clean off the salt and spices. I wash it under warm water to clean off the salt and stuck on pieces of herbs. As you handle the it you will notice that the duck has sort of stiffened. That is the wonder of salt both the pink and regular salt doing its job!

Salted and seasoned!

Once I have cleaned off the salt dry the duck with paper towels and set them aside I move on to the scale... 

NOT! I wash my hands!

Please keep washing your hands throughout this process! You'll feel so good knowing you didn't poison someone!

After you have washed your hands, get the out the scale. I like to weigh my duck before wrapping and trussing. In doing so I find out if the right amount of drying is happening. Some recipes simply call for 7-10 days of drying. Others call for 30% of the weight to be lost in hanging and drying.

I'll be honest both ways work. I have tried each one and each one works as well as the other.

Note the starting weight of the duck breast

Moving on, using the 'tare' function place a small plate on the scale and hit the 'tare' button to zero out the weight of the plate. Note the weight of each piece of duck and record that weight. If your duck starts out at 124 grams then your duck should lose 37 grams (30% of the weight) during the course of drying.

The next step is to truss the breast, basically you are wrapping it with string to make it easier to hang, this video shows the easiest way to truss a piece of meat in the range we have with a duck breast, http://youtu.be/iDtLRqoHb9A I know the graphics and intro are hokey but the technique works.


Before you truss the duck there is another option you need to choose, cheesecloth or no cheesecloth? I am trying no cheesecloth this time around. But as with everything everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Now that you have wrapped and trussed the duck, or not! You can hang it in the fridge! How you do that is up to you! I have glass shelves in my fridge and have a hanger that I have bent into a special rig to hang my duck.






Now comes the test of your patience! You might need to wait up to 2 weeks for this to cure. If you decide to weigh your duck, the first couple of days you will see quite a bit of weight coming off your duck breast, then about 5 days into the process it will slow to a crawl. My buddy Brennan likes to feel the difference in his duck. It seems that when the duck stops feeling "squishy" it is ready, that happens in about 10 days. 

Now go wash your hands!!!

Weekends with my Dad

It's funny the way we remember things...

I was just listening to some music and "Okie From Muskogee" played. Merle Haggard records were always on the turntable when we were kids!

When I was a kid we used to spend the weekend with my Dad (not that Momma wasn't around, but she knew how important that time was), he would work on the never ending chores of working on the car or cleaning out the garage or rearranging the furniture for Momma and we... more like I would be spinning records, old stuff and new stuff like Elvis, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Mostly we listened to Elvis right up till about noon when the local TV station would show the weekend western, then an Elvis movie. My first taste of John Wayne came on one of those weekends. "The Cowboys" "Big Jake" and "El Dorado" all the classics and yet we would sit there rolling our eyes, but we still hated "Long Hair" (Bruce Dern) for shooting "Mr. Anderson" (John Wayne) in the back. Sorry for the spoiler but if you haven't watched The Cowboys yet, shame on you!

And don't get me started on all the old Elvis movies... So corny but listening to him sing was special!

It was still a time when we were innocent, before the Internet, YES there was a time before the Internet, before video games and smartphones, ha I remember the time one of my little school friends came over and didn't know how to use my mom's fancy looking rotary phone! He picked up the receiver and just looked down at the rotary dial and stared. The poor kid only knew how to use a touch-tone phone, my parents got a kick out of it.

But I digress, we didn't worry about the things we do today, I was ten or eleven and I didn't have to worry about drugs in elementary or even later middle school, I didn't have to worry about people abusing me in any way cause I knew Dad would stand up for me, I didn't have to think about what was for dinner, how long my commute home from work would take, I didn't have to watch everything I ate and drank for fear it might trigger a migraine.

I didn't have a care in the world, just what records I was going to spin next, and to listen for that call from my Dad for a flashlight or a 3/8 socket, or that I was taking too long to start up the next record. And to believe I used to dread those weekends! 

I hated listening to all that OLD music and watching those OLD movies! Now I miss those times. I miss Dad, it's been 15 years now since he died. But I know that I will see him again, and hearing Okie From Muskogee brought a smile to my face because in my mind I could just hear him in the distance singing along about as loud as he could. (BTW Dad had never been to Muskogee in his life)

Pride

It's something you want, but not too much. It's something you need, without it we have no drive to succeed. It's something that is passed down, whether right or wrong! It's also trans-formative, depending on what you do with it.

I have always, for years I have prided myself in being my father's son. The principles he instilled in us as kids are things I carry now. For a while though I had my doubts about him and his principles and myself. I'll take a minute and tell you why.

My dad Roger was the second of four children born to Oscar and Mary "Lynn", his parents, my grandparents separated when he was about 4 years old. As a young man in the military Grandpa Oscar later said that he didn't know what he wanted in life, he just knew that it wasn't Grandma Lynn! At the time I thought I understood that. It wasn't till much later in life that I really understood what Grandpa meant. My grandmother as it turns out was a lying and at times vindictive woman. That my Dad although broken and flawed was a good man and that he was even distantly related to my grandmother is hard to fathom...

For years my father wallowed in the damage that was caused by and brought upon him by his mother and others. To dull the pain that was his life he turned to drugs and alcohol. Let me just say this to all the non-addicts (those of us that don't feel the need to get high) you don't realize how far away the drinks or the drugs make all of your problems seem until you get really drunk or high. No matter how drunk or high you get though you always come back to who you are and your problems are still there and cause you been drinking to get away from your old problems new ones problems have come up...

Dad ran through that cycle over and over again for over thirty-five years. It started with smoking cigarettes, then it progressed to alcohol, once that stopped working to numb the pain I think my dad started using speed. I say "I think" that because I recall times when my dad was a superman or a madman. Little did I realize he thought he was superman too. Working for days on end, not sleeping, but then when he did sleep he was gone, crashed out, and there was nothing you could do to wake him. Then there was that time when I was 12 and my dad drove across country from Western Pennsylvania to San Francisco with no sleep, 3 1/2 days with no sleep! Chain smoking while mom was asleep, telling us that the cold window from the blizzard we were driving through was keeping him awake.

Later in life when we got back to the West Coast Dad found crack! Crack cocaine! The scourge of the inner city found place in our little flat in Daly City. No doubt Dad got it somewhere in The City or Oakland, but he never did drugs around us so how did I know? Later in life I realized how my dad knew all he did about drugs. I would be helping Dad cleaning out apartments before we painted them and we would come across socket drivers with bits of steel wool in them. My dad knew these were quick cheap crack pipes! There weren't shows like "Intervention" back then. You couldn't turn on the TV and see what the drug life was like. And yet my dad knew!!! He also knew enough to protect us! He never wanted us to turn out like him...

That is where the pride came in. Dad knew that no matter how bad a person he was he was never going to let us be worse than him. I know that sounds strange but he knew our upbringing could never be as bad as his, and at the same time his bad example would or should persuade us to avoid following the same path he did. He knew we were never emotionally abused by a parent, sexually abused by 'friends', or told we were abandoned by our father. We weren't raised in a world where we were told that "black folks need to know their place" or that "we were stupid and never going to amount to much!" We all had laughing loving personalities that weren't stifled, " because children should be seen and NOT heard!" And above all we were never fooled into believing that we would not, or could not change. My Dad was all of those things. And yet he knew we didn't have to be.

My Dad did his best to protect us from becoming just like him! That is not to say my Mom didn't do it... But in hindsight I knew that Mom was making an efforts to be a better person, Dad on the other hand thought he was just fine the way he was. After all was said and done Dad spent years on drugs. When I was 17 he left to go do drugs without the accountability of a family. Over the next couple of years Dad went back and forth between trying rehab and living in the parking garage beneath our apartment. From 17 to about 20 when I did see him and despite the fact that Mom had let Dad back in the house and yet I still didn't speak to my him. Finally after two and a half years Dad hit "rock bottom" and stuck with rehab, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and stayed clean and sober. Over the course of the next couple of years he became a practicing Christian and he kept clean. On December 9, 1992 after a brain aneurysm Dad died.

It is coming up on 20 years since Dad left our family, with every day that passes I realize how much I hate what he did to us, and yet I am thankful for all he did for us! Because of him I was raised to stick to my principles and everyday I do that I take pride in being Roger Jr. Because of him I remember everyday to tell my wife I love her, I don't want to miss that chance the way I did with Dad. Because of him I know my serious flaws are not too difficult to overcome, and I know that I can't overcome those flaws alone. Because of him I know how to be there for somebody whenever they need you, there are times that you can't always be there, and there are times when you have to choose not to be there. Because of him I learned that you didn't have to be the biggest or the toughest or even the meanest, you just had to believe that what I was doing was right. I learned that you should never start a fight but if one finds you, you better finish it. 

Despite what I might think about my Grandma Lynn, she did love Dad. To deny that would be like denying my Dad's love for my brother, sister, or myself. And I knew that Dad loved Grandma. I used to watch him, clean up her house, because she just didn't care how dirty it got, I watched him hide her cigarettes because if he didn't she had no reason to get up. I watched them argue back and forth because Grandma would do just the bare minimum to get by. And just like I do not and will never doubt his love for her, I will never doubt his love for us, his family! To this day I carry the pride of knowing he did his best to care for us and he did so with the knowledge that each of us had a chance to be different. We just had to take that same leap that he did and choose to be different!

Quality Seafood

It's more than just a motto! It is a place, a place that we found out about from my brother Brennan, well it's a fish-monger/restaurant in Redondo Beach. And it is a place that I can't describe in 140 characters or less!

Over the last year or so we have had a number of things here. What I will remember the most is my first experience with fresh uni. Sea urchin wasn't something that was on my bucket list of foods to try! Now I look out for it on menus.

The taste is not easy to describe, I guess the best way is, creamy and briny, with pillow-y type of texture. For a minute the briny-ness reminds you it came from the ocean, then just as that realization comes over you find yourself wondering where the creamy softness in your mouth came from.

It's not fishy, not at all what I expected, at the same time when it is fresh and you look down into that broken shell, you see the spines still moving, you expect a slimy texture. Not even!

It is funny what you bond over. Food is one of the best glues there is!

Since that visit I will say I have gone back to the standards that brought me to Quality Seafood in the first place. Fresh oysters, crab legs, and shrimp!

Fresh oysters, 5 minutes before this pic was taken,
well you the picture...

Each area of the shop has it's regular workers and as in most places you find people you like and some you don't, but the last couple times we have gone I couldn't complain about the service if I wanted to. The guys shucking the clams and the oysters usually do a good job keeping the shells out, sometimes because the shells are so fragile it's impossible. I have really enjoyed the Blue Point and Malispina oysters the last couple visits. Blue Points have thicker shells so they don't break so easy when they are shucked.

On the other side of the shop they have all sorts of seafood salads, ceviche, poke', campechana. In addition they will grill or deep fry your fish right after they scale and gut it for you. Plus this is where you get the Cajun Style shrimp with vegetables and bread. I could get this dish every time, my wife actually does!

Take that bread and dredge it through the sauce.
That's how you know you have a meal!

Every meal here has been an experience, you might go in the summer and have to muscle your way to the different areas of the shop. You might go in the "cold" of winter and get the gratitude of a bunch of cold fish mongers. It might be the first time you take a couple of friends that will want to know every time you plan on going!

Before I forget, between the bars and sushi joints you are going to see this sign.

This is not an exaggeration!

Don't pass it up! Save some room, after your meal go have some churros. It was the best dessert that I have had in some time! Oh and don't forget the caramel sauce... the best 50 cents I ever spent!!!

After this goes up I'm going to feel bad for a minute! I hate to let anyone in on a place like this, but there aren't too many places like this around anymore! It's the kind of place I will go for the rest of my life!