cooking

Big Y + Groupon = Perfect Catch

If you’re in New England and love seafood, I hope you picked up last week’s Big Y Groupon for a Shellfish Grilling Pack. If not, this post might make you sad.

The bounty: two lobster tails, two shrimp skewers, two stuffed clams, two pounds of mussels and four huge king crab clusters. Retail price: $39.99. Groupon price: $24.

Big Y, the first grocery store to partner directly with Groupon, offered the deal last Wednesday. With this setup, the discounted seafood package was loaded directly onto my loyalty member card for easy purchase.

If you missed the deal, don’t beat yourself up. I nearly did, too, as I’m ever-annoyed by Groupon’s “whimsical” yet nonsensical (and ridiculously contrived) style of copywriting. If the deal in the subject line doesn’t grab me, the email doesn’t get opened. I just happened to see a business news item about Big Y’s new partnership.

So on Saturday, we decided to cash in the Groupon and cook ourselves a sea feast at home. We ran into a stumbling block at the seafood counter, where the clerk on duty, seafood manager, front end manager and another person of authority scrambled for a good 40 minutes, trying to figure out how to fulfill my order. It wasn’t their fault; the protocol for this deal clearly hadn’t been communicated correctly. Only one person had come in since Thursday’s deal launch to claim their seafood pack.

At home, we unloaded the bag and took stock of its contents. Holy crap, it was an embarrassment of riches. (Pro tip: Everything predictably came frozen, so you’ll need to allow time for it to defrost.)

Rob got to work grilling the lobster tails and shrimp skewers, while I popped the stuffed clams into the toaster oven and tossed the already-cooked crab legs into boiling water. For sides, we had grilled ciabatta bread, roasted broccoli and an impressive batch of Belgian-style frites (like the crab cakes, Rob fried while I made a sauce.)

It was also my first time cooking mussels, so I stuck with a basic recipe: steamed in a white-wine based broth with lemon, garlic, shallots and parsley. Simple and so easy. The mussels were fat and tender.

Pictured: our feast. Yes, we like to eat in the living room while watching TV, and yes, those are back issues of Wine Spectator serving as placemats.

I’d wondered if the shellfish servings would be smaller than expected. After all, it was a great deal. But in all seriousness, this is way too much food for two people. I’d suggest you freeze what you don’t want to cook, or invite friends to share.

But I’m not complaining. I made two quarts of stock from the leftover shells, then used that, plus meat from three (!) leftover crab legs and the remaining mussels to whip up an amazing seafood linguine dish.

I couldn’t replicate this recipe exactly if I tried, but it used San Marzano tomato sauce and a bit of cream to balance the salty sea goodness. Amazing.

Ciabatta Was Not A Disaster, After All

I sent this tweet around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday:

“I’d like to propose a name change for ‘ciabatta.’ It should now be known as Something I Will Never Attempt At Home Again, So Help Me God.”

Four and a half hours later, I was literally eating my words. The ciabatta dough that I’d written off as a disaster turned out to be the lightest, airiest and most delicious bread I’ve ever baked in my own kitchen.

I love buying ciabatta bread at the supermarket, particularly the stuff delivered from Chabaso Bakery in New Haven. One of our favorite summertime snacks is grilled “bruschetta”- olive oil-drizzled ciabatta grilled quickly, then topped with roasted garlic, tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella. And since I’ve been wanting to expand my bread repertoire, I had an idea to make my own. This recipe from King Arthur Flour seemed easy enough to handle.

I made the “biga,” or sponge starter, on Tuesday night, giving it 12 hours to rise and do its thing. That wasn’t the issue; it was adding the next round of ingredients (more flour, yeast, water, olive oil, etc.) to the sponge. I used my food processor to try to blend it all together, and the mixture was too heavy and cumbersome for that appliance to handle. I should have used the bread machine, but was afraid to overmix the dough. (I don’t have a stand mixer. But my birthday is coming up…)

This is why I find it so difficult to follow recipes. Too many steps, too many chances to mess it up; too much probability that I’ll get frustrated and never attempt it again. The dough didn’t feel right to me, but I pressed on. I hate wasting flour.

Perhaps my favorite step of the recipe was the addition of water in the oven, to simulate steam-injection baking technology. Once the loaves were on the preheated pizza stone, I poured small amounts of warm water over them (it’s supposed to help give them that crackly crust you’ll see on professionally-baked bread.) The linked recipe suggests throwing a few ice cubes on the floor of the oven when you slide in the loaves.

Given my bordering-on-unhealthy love for bread, you’d think I’d slow down and enjoy the process. But this recipe’s outcome has taught me to chill out and follow through to the end. Good things happen.

Surprise Crab Cakes

While running outside Sunday, I tripped off an uneven sidewalk and wrenched my ankle. (I like to say running is for chumps, but I only have my own klutziness to blame.) It was hurting quite a bit Monday, so I spent the day icing and elevating it. Since I had zero intention of cooking, I was thrilled when Rob came home with the fixings for crab cakes.

Rob’s coworker, who owns a vacation home in Virginia, catches dozens of Chesapeake Bay blue crabs whenever he’s there. And since he knows how enamored (okay, obsessed) we are with food, he decided to share. He prepared what can only be described as a DIY kit: a container of crabmeat mixture, a baggie of spices and a sleeve of Ritz crackers.

I do most of the cooking in the house; Rob prefers to grill. But man, was he excited about these crab cakes. I sat and drank a beer while he whipped up four cakes, then took them outside to deep-fry them. (Wait, that’s not true. I contributed a five-second sriracha mayonnaise.)

They were delicious. Light and airy, but with plenty of sweet sea flavor from the crab. I think I detected green onion and pepper in the mix. Sriracha mayo was the perfect dipping sauce.

Apologies for the photo quality. I haven’t figured out how to take a Droid photo that doesn’t look like it’s haunted by spectres.

Thanks, Steve, for the heartfelt and homemade taste of Virginia. We loved every bite.

Superfood Veggie Burgers

If you’ll notice, my last five posts reference burgers in some form or another. I guess I’m a little meat-crazed lately?

In the midst of this beef bacchanal, I happened to visit Hartford County’s newest food truck, Gmonkey. Gmonkey is an exciting new concept – a fully vegan, eco-friendly mobile eatery run by the owner of a Middletown vegetarian restaurant and his wife, a holistic nutrionist. I’d written about the new business for A La Carte, and was eager to try the food for myself.

I’m about the furthest thing from a healthy vegetarian type, but Gmonkey’s “Farm 2 Street” veggie burger was out of this world – made with black beans and other grains, spiced with chipotle and topped with homemade pesto, vegan mayonnaise and vegan cheese. It was piled onto a fresh-baked roll with tomato and field greens. I wish I’d taken a picture of it, but I wasn’t about to delay any gratification. This burger was off the hook. (They also serve these ridiculous sweet potato fries with their own hickory ketchup.)

Since then, at home, I’ve been working on my own variation of a veggie burger. The recipe here is approximated, but the beauty of it is the possibility for customization, with different vegetables and spices. With a simple base of black beans, sweet potato and quinoa, you’re getting a hefty dose of fiber, protein, vitamins and amino acids.

1 can of black beans
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cooked and mashed sweet potato
1/2 cup chopped vegetables (your choice. I used some leftover bell peppers, onion, jalapeno and shallot.)
4 cloves of roasted garlic
Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper or other spices to taste
1 cup bread crumbs
1 egg

Blend all ingredients into a bowl and shape into patties. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees, or until your preferred degree of doneness.

I ate mine on a toasted potato bun, topped with pesto and melted feta. I didn’t have any fresh tomato in the house, but I imagine that would have been delicious, along with some field greens.

It’s a nice change from beef when you’re looking for something hearty. And one batch of mixture makes about 12 medium-sized patties, good for a large crowd or easily frozen for later.