April 15 - Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe, Toasted Garlic and Bread Crumbs

This week Mark introduced me to a new ingredient from the produce aisle – broccoli rabe. I’m a fan of broccoli and of bitter greens, so I don’t know why I didn’t try rabe before. The preparation was fairly easy, and I liked the final dish. I still like chard better, but the rabe will be a good back-up.

I’m back in DC this week, so there was no problem with this ingredient list:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, more as needed
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and slivered
1 cup bread crumbs, preferably homemade
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
About 1 pound broccoli rabe, trimmed and washed
1 pound spaghetti, linguine or other long pasta
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

There wasn’t a ton of prep for this dish. I followed Mark’s instructions and made my own bread crumbs (once again using my handy dandy Magic Bullet blender). After that, all I had to do was slice the garlic and trim the rabe, and I was ready to go.

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it. Put 1/4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. When oil is warm, cook garlic just until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add bread crumbs and red pepper flakes and cook until bread crumbs are golden, 5 minutes or so. Remove and set aside.

Pretty easy. The garlic smelled wonderful, and I got a nice golden brown on the bread crumbs. But I wonder about the instruction to add red pepper flakes “to taste” in the middle of a preparation. You can’t really taste the recipe at that point. Even with something spicy like red pepper, there’s enough additional preparation that I wouldn’t really be able to tell whether it would be too mild or too hot in the end, so I just added the amount suggested.

2. Cook broccoli rabe in boiling water until it is soft, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain well and chop. Cook pasta in same pot.

3. Meanwhile, add remaining oil to skillet over medium-low heat. Add broccoli rabe and toss well; sprinkle with salt and pepper. When it is warm add garlic and bread crumbs and mix well.

At this point, I made the mistake of putting the rabe in the skillet right after I put the pasta in the pot. Why was this a mistake? Well, it didn’t take 6 minutes to heat & toss the rabe, but it did take 6 minutes to finish the pasta. I decided not to let the bread crumbs get soggy in that time, so I didn’t add the garlic & bread crumbs mixture at this point.

4. When pasta is done, drain it, reserving a little cooking water. Toss pasta in skillet with broccoli rabe mixture, moistening with a little reserved water if necessary. Adjust seasonings and serve with freshly grated Parmesan.

To finish this off, I tossed the pasta with the rabe in the skillet. Then I topped the individual servings with the garlic & bread crumb mixture and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. Here’s the final product:



Overall, this was a nice weekday dinner. There was a good mixture of textures, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes from start to finish. I can imagine using the same basic preparation with different bitter greens and perhaps serving it with a side of grilled chicken.

April 8 - Maya Citrus Salsa (Xec) with Fish

Only the second week of this project, and I’m feeling a bit disappointed. This was one of those recipes where the final product just wasn’t worth the effort. Mind you, there wasn’t that much effort involved in this dish, but I felt like I could have gotten the same results just cooking some fish and putting a nice canned citrus salsa on top. I wasn’t feeling the Yucatan “burst” of citrus flavor that Bittman envisioned…unless you count the bursts of lemon and grapefruit juice that covered my arm and shirt by the end of this process.

Let’s start with the ingredients:
1 orange
1 small grapefruit
1 large lemon
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 habanero or other chili, seeded and minced, or to taste
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons oil
4 red snapper fillets, 4 to 6 ounces each, preferably skin on (and scaled)

I’m cooking in North Carolina this week, and I felt the impact on my culinary options when I went to the grocery store. (Disclosure: My husband is currently stationed at a military base in Jacksonville, NC, and I spend about 60% of my time in DC and 40% of my time with him in J-ville, as I often refer to it. Needless to say, I’m drawn there because of my husband, not the culture…if you can count chain restaurants, big trucks, tattoo parlors, and strip clubs as culture. But what you hear is true – people are nicer in the South. If only my DC grocery store employees were half as courteous and helpful as the ones so eager to help me out in the J-ville aisles.)

Okay, back to the shopping. The fruits and vegetables were easy enough, but the lack of a fresh seafood counter limited my fish options. There were a few pre-packaged selections of “fresh” fish fillets and a few more varieties in the freezer case. No red snapper in either set, so I decided to stick with something “fresh” and to try to get as close to the skin-on red snapper fillets as called for in the recipe, which seemed fine since Bittman said you could even make this with chicken or pork. I settled on some nice looking mahi-mahi with the “sell by” date well in the future.

With all my ingredients ready, I started on the preparation.

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Cut orange in half horizontally and section it as you would a grapefruit; do this over a bowl to capture all its juice. Remove seeds and combine flesh and juice in bowl. Repeat with grapefruit and lemon. Stir in cilantro, habanero and salt.

Sectioning the various citrus is easy, but by the end of the 2nd piece of fruit, there was no denying that is was a tedious task...as was finding the pesky seeds that did their best to hide in the fruit sections. I finally got to use the grapefruit spoons we got in a holiday gift pack; they were a great little tool for this purpose. Once the salsa was ready, I let it sit and got on with the fish.

2. Put oil in a nonstick or cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. A minute later, add fish, skin side down; season top with salt. Cook until skin begins to crisp, 3 or 4 minutes, then transfer to oven. Cook another 3 or 4 minutes, or until a thin-bladed knife meets little resistance when inserted into thickest part of fish. Serve fish with xec, immediately.

This part was easy. I had to cook the fillets in the oven for a few extra minutes as the mahi-mahi fillets were a bit thicker than your average snapper fillet. While the fish was in the oven, I tasted the salsa and decided to add another quarter of minced habanero to give it a bit more bite and a better balance with the cilantro. Before serving, I flipped the fillets over for a few seconds to get a bit of browning on the top. (I’m not sure this added anything, since I immediately covered the fish with a juicy salsa, but I figured it didn’t hurt either.)

Here’s the final product, which I served with some couscous and quick sautéed squash and onions in a lime vinaigrette:


As you can see from the picture, the salsa was pretty juicy. I like a chunkier salsa, so in the future, I'll probably reserve about half the juice and only add it as needed. However, as I alluded to at the beginning, I think I’d only make the xec again if I had some great blood oranges or other citrus that I needed to use. It was a fine dish, but nothing special...although it wasn't a total wasted effort since I liked the simple technique for cooking the fish and we had a fine weeknight meal.

April 1 - Tortillitas with Shrimp

Bittman called this Simplicity From Spain: Tiny Seafood Pancakes, and I think this was a good place to start. It was a pretty simple recipe with just a couple of the Bittman twists you'd expect -- one slightly obscure ingredient (chickpea flour) and a few "choices" to make in the preparation (onion or scallions; chives, parsley, thyme, or cilantro).

Let's start with the ingredients:

1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup chopped onion or scallions
1/2 cup raw shrimp, chopped, or scallops or other shellfish or fish
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped chives, parsley, thyme or cilantro
Olive oil

I knew I didn't have chickpea flour or fresh seafood, so I headed to the local grocery store. Bittman's video presentation says you can find chickpea flour at an Indian market, a health food store, or even a supermarket. I have both a health food store and a good (but smaller) grocery store in my neighborhood (Harris Teeter). I chose the grocery store since I could also get the seafood there. If I read the recipe a bit earlier, I could have gotten fresh seafood at Eastern Market (my Washington DC neighborhood's fresh food market) and then hit the health food store, which is located about a block away from the market. But I didn't get started until after 5 p.m. on Sunday, so it was off to the grocery store. Success in the seafood section! They had a nice selection of fresh, large, wild caught head-on shrimp...on sale. The shrimp look good (much better than the previously frozen, farm-raised shrimp that are my other option), so I got about a third of a pound. Then I headed to the flour aisle and started to recognize the error of not going to the health food store -- a few specialty flours, but no chickpea flour. I also tried the "international" food aisle -- lots of prepared Indian food, but no staples such as chickpea flour. At this point, I figured that chickpea flour is probably made by grinding dry chickpeas, so I grabbed a bag of dried chickpeas and head home.

Once I was home, I put some chickpeas in my magic bullet, and after about a minute, I had chickpea flour. Later, I spoke with an Indian friend, and she confirmed that her mom makes her own chickpea flour by grinding dry chickpeas. So I feel a bit better about that choice. (And yes, I'm admitting to owning a magic bullet blender from those TV infomercials a few years ago. My dad got me one for Christmas, and after an initial cringe, I found it's very useful as a spice blender, coffee grinder, and smoothie maker, but not for anything else. The chunky salsa demonstrations had to be a hoax, because the machine completely mangles fruits and vegetables.)

I prepped the shrimp and froze the heads and shells to make stock later...but in all honesty, it's more likely that they'll stay in my freezer for months, become unidentifiable, and be purged in a future freezer reorganization. I'm now on to the flavorings. When I was originally looking at the recipe, I did face a moment of indecision about which onion-herb combo to use. I'm not a scallion fan, so I went with white onion. But which herb would go best with the onion? While I suspect that parsley might be the best pairing, I decided to go with chives, because I had a nice fresh bunch in my patio pot (the first herbs of the season!).

So all my ingredients were prepped, and it was time to get cooking.


1. In a bowl, combine flours and baking powder with salt and pepper. Add a little more than a cup of water and stir to combine; consistency should resemble pancake batter (if batter is too thick, add more water, a little at a time). Stir in the onions, chopped seafood and herbs.

This step is fairly easy, and I got the thin pancake batter. While the recipe doesn't say anything about letting the batter rest, Bittman's article says that many recipes "suggest refrigerating the batter for an hour or more before cooking" although he doesn't think it's necessary. Because I got a phone call near the end of my prep, I actually let the batter rest for about 30 minutes. I would not recommend doing this -- the flours soaked up the liquid, and I had to mix in more water to get the batter back to the thin consistency.


2. Put a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat and film its bottom generously with olive oil. When oil is hot, pour in half the batter until it fills center of pan; spread gently with a spoon to form a large pancake.

I faced another choice here. I have a really large nonstick skillet (about 14 inches) or a 10 inch cast iron. I chose my cast iron -- it's well seasoned and works great for almost anything, and the nonstick skillet just seemed too big.



3. Cook about 3 minutes, or until pancake is set around edges; flip pancake and continue cooking for another 3 minutes, then flip it again and cook for another 30 seconds or so, until it is crisp on outside but still moist inside. Remove from pan and serve immediately, while remaining batter cooks.

Even though I used a fair amount of olive oil, by the time the edges crisped up, the pancake had stuck to the cast iron skillet in a number of places and broke up when I tried to turn it. It was also a uniform brown, instead of the spots of crispiness that Bittman's had. Needless to say, the first pancake did not look or taste good. So I used the remaining batter to make a 2nd pancake in the very large nonstick pan. I still didn't get the nice crisping that Bittman seemed to get, but the pan produced a nice pancake.

Instead of eating this as an appetizer, I had it as my main course with some fresh steamed green beans on the side. It was a nice spring meal -- the flavor of the shrimp and chives could come through the thin batter, but the batter also had some flavor and texture.



I think I'll add tortillitas to my list of simple, summer entrees. I think they'd work really nicely with some white fish and thyme and a simple salad on the side, or with some scallops and cilantro and a salsa on the side.

Looking back, I think the batter consistency in the pan was more important than the pan itself. I added too much batter for the first pancake, so it was too thick and stuck and browned heavily on the bottom before the rest of the batter could cook through. The key is to have a thin batter spread thinly in the pan. Next time, I'll try this in a slightly smaller pan (the All Clad 12 inch should be arriving any day now!) and see if I can get those nice crisp edges.

And so it begins...

So what does it mean to take a bite out of Bittman? Well, it's pretty simple – each week for the next year (April 2009-March 2010), I will make Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe from the Wednesday food section of the NY Times and write about it here. I think that’s a pretty simple goal for my first real blog.

And why did I decide to do this? Well, I like to cook and bake, but somehow I’ve gotten out of the habit of spending real time in the kitchen. Bittman's How To Cook Everything is my go-to book when I need a basic recipe or have a new ingredient that I'd like to try out, and when I read the Times food section most weeks, I see the Bittman recipe and think "that looks good" or "that sounds easy" or "I've never used [insert new ingredient here]." But do I make the recipe? 97 times out of a hundred, the answer is a regretful no. From this point forward, I have no excuse for not making the recipe. This blog is my commitment to do it. And hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll have built up my cooking creativity and added a few new "go to" recipes to my repertoire.

I know that lots of foodies out in the blogosphere have little respect for Bittman, putting him one small step above Rachel Ray on the culinary ladder. But I think they're wrong. It's true that Mark uses fairly simple techniques and ingredients, but he isn't trying to make culinary innovations – I think he's trying to get other people to make a meal in their own kitchens and to start to recognize the value of techniques and ingredients as the building blocks of cooking. And I think he succeeds in this...or at least I hope to prove that he does.

Finally, some initial caveats. When Bittman gets a week off (i.e., he has no recipe or food article in the printed edition of the Times – his Bitten blog is a whole other universe), I get a week off. I may not blog that week or perhaps I'll write about something non-Bittman. When he does one of his classic "[insert # here] easy appetizers/summer meals/side dishes/etc." articles, I will make at least one of the entries and will pick one that uses an ingredient or technique I've never used before. Although I'm sure I'll find the need for a few more caveats as this experiment continues (admission: I'm a lawyer that also has an advanced science degree), that's all I could think of for now.

Okay, time to cook…or at least time to look at the April 1^st recipe and figure out what (if anything) I need to get from the grocery store in order to starting cooking.