Extras Credit: Lomi Lomi Pupu

My friend, Jennifer, is a great big thespian. That’s right, she’s a stage actress – educated and professionally trained. Jennifer is also married to Phillip, a naval officer, so they have hop scotched around the globe, landing at various naval bases. Because of that, she hasn’t had the opportunity to run to New York or LA and be ‘discovered’. Instead, she’s landed in Jacksonville, Dallas, and now Hawaii (and I don’t see the Navy building major installations in either LA or New York anytime soon).

Hawaii is the first place she’s landed that hasn’t had a large theater community, so Jennifer has branched out – she’s auditioned for the circus and for some television shows that film in Hawaii, including Lost, which is one of my all-time favorites – except for the finale (oh, don’t get me started).

Now there’s a second television show filming in Hawaii, the CBS remake of Hawaii 5-0. And guess what – Jennifer was cast in a major role! OK, maybe ‘major’ is overstating it a little. But the part has lines and everything!

Since Hawaii 5-0 is a crime drama, it has to set-up the murder to be investigated – that’s Jennifer’s part. She plays a mom with a pre-teen son who discovers the body of the murder victim. Alright, it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it part, but it happens on a submarine!

Jennifer’s mother is one of my best friends, so I knew I had to organize a viewing party to watch her big Hawaii 5-0 debut, but I don’t know anything about Hawaiian food (because I don’t think ordering ham and pineapple on my pizza counts). I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I hit the interwebs to do a little research. Of course, I focused in on some classic luau dishes, and found one that really spoke to me: lomi lomi salmon. (Lomi means massage in Hawaiian, so it’s twice-massaged salmon.)

It’s a salt-cured salmon dish that is served with tomatoes and onions. Think gravlax meets ceviche meets salsa. I’m a sucker for all three, so I thought that this would be perfect. Then, when I found out the Hawaiian word for appetizer, the adolescent in me decided that I had to put my own spin on it and turn this into an hors d’oeuvres, just so I could call it Lomi Lomi Pupu.

Turns out that it’s an incredibly easy dish to make, Curing the salmon takes about 5 minutes to set up, but it has to set for 6 or 8 hours, so you need to plan ahead. Most of the recipes I looked at also called for peeling the tomatoes, which is no big deal if you first dunk them in boiling water for 30 seconds. I also thought the dish was in desperate need of some color, so I swapped out the sweet onions for scallions and used a yellow tomato as well as a red one. Some recipes called for some heat, while some others didn’t – I chose to add a little jalapeño to give it some background flavor.

One other tip – do not fall victim to the desire to season the vegetation before you add the salmon. Even after washing off the excess, the salmon is quite salty. Once you add the tomatoes et al, it balances out – but it certainly does not need any more salt.

To make it finger food, chopping it into smaller chunks turned out to be the best thing (the small-chop made it easier to get the filling in). I hollowed out some cherry tomatoes, used a melon baller to create some cucumber cups, and perched some of the salmon mixture on top of thick-cut pineapple. The pineapple turned out to be the favorite in the test run – the salty Lomi Lomi needs that sweet counterpoint for the best balance. In fact, the next time I make this, I think I’ll add a little pineapple to the mixture.

Jennifer and her "son" hanging out in her on-set trailer

So Jennifer is scheduled to kick off Episode 4 of Hawaii 5-0, which means that her episode should appear October 11 (Hawaii 5-0 airs Mondays at 9pm EST on CBS). Make sure you watch the beginning – look for the woman who is trying to make a cell phone call on a submarine while she ignores her son (yeah, I really don’t understand this set-up either). Then, all it will take is for the producers to see what potential her character has – they could bring her back. Oh! I know! She could have a torrid affair with Daniel Dae Kim’s character. OK, maybe that’s just a little projection on my part – but it could happen! Hey, at the very least, Jennifer ought to finally get a page on IMDB out of it – they always credit the extras.

Recipe: Lomi Lomi Pupu

Summer Squeeze: Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad

When I was coming up with side dish ideas for the pasta tasting I did a few weeks ago, I knew I wanted to use tomatoes and fresh corn for one dish because they were in such abundance, and both crops have tasted better than average this year. When I showed the idea to a friend, she said “but it’s so everyday and boring.” Well, of course she’s right, but I would not be daunted. I set out to come up with a couple of twists that might look a little less everyday.

I love to squeeze every bit of flavor out of the ingredients I have, so instead of a raw salad, I thought I would roast the vegetable. Besides, I thought a roasted salad would pair better with a raw pasta sauce (pesto).

To try and make it a little more elegant, I decided to serve the salad in tomato boats – just hollowed out the tomato halves and roasted them along with the corn. It makes portioning much easier (don’t you sometimes hate trying to figure out how much is enough?), and I used the tomato flesh for another dish later on.

The salad dressing couldn’t be simpler – just oil and vinegar with a couple of dried herbs thrown in. And I used one of my favorite inexpensive flavor weapons: roasted garlic.

Roasted garlic is such a breeze – I just throw a halved-head of garlic and some olive oil into foil and toss it in the oven for 30 or 45 minutes. It comes out so fragrant and rich. I mash it down, combine it with a touch more olive oil, and stash it in the fridge for weeks. I’m not sure how long you can realistically expect to keep it in the fridge, but I’ve worked off of the same head of roasted garlic for a month or more. The trick is to make sure the oil covers the garlic – it acts as a great preservative. You’ve got roasted garlic add at a moment’s notice, and it costs about 45 cents to make.

Roasted garlic can make all the difference in a simple dish like this. Raw garlic could easily overpower the other flavors, but roasted boosts the overall flavor without drowning out the corn and tomatoes.

This dish was part of the winning combination for the pasta tasting party. You could say that it squeezed out a win.

Recipe: Roasted Corn and Tomato Salad

Change of Seasons: Grilled Tilapia Packets with Tomato Arugula Cous Cous

I always tell people that there are two seasons in Florida: 1) summer; and 2) Oh, My God, It’s Hot! We have definitely transitioned into the second season around here. I mean, when the overnight low only gets to 85 degrees, it’s definitely time to find a way to make dinner without turning on the oven. READ MORE

Recipes: Grilled Tilapia Packets

Bothersome Baby Brunch: Ham and Tomato Mini Frittatas

My good friend, Carol, is on her way to Hawaii as we speak (I know – we hate her). She’s headed there for her first grandchild’s christening. OK, it’s not a ‘christening’. It’s a New Age, hippy-dippy, nondenominational, waterside, baby-blessing (but ‘christening’ is so much easier to write). Either way, she’s thrilled. Of course, she’s been there two weeks out of every month since the baby was born (and she wonders why she’s always tired), so you would think the ‘new’ would wear off after a while, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, a couple of nights before she left, she casually said, “I meant to ask you: could you come up with a recipe for me? We’re doing a brunch for 30 people after the waterside baby blessing. Oh, and I leave day after tomorrow, so there’s not much time.” (Some days I really don’t care to be the food and entertaining expert of the group, you know?)

Luckily, the day in between was Sunday, so I had some free time to kill (yeah, right). She wanted something egg-y that could be done ahead of time and could be used as finger food. On top of all that, it also had to be fairly easy to make because everyone’s hands would be a little full, what with a newborn to look after and thirty guests and all. (Anything else? Want me to solve world hunger for you too while I’m at it?)

So that’s what I set out to do: easy, egg-y, finger food. What I came up with was a ham and tomato mini frittata. I think it fills the bill pretty nicely.

I tried desperately to figure out a way to crisp up the ham and use it as the shell, but I didn’t have any luck. When I used just the ham, the egg bled through and you couldn’t get it out of the muffin tin. I tried baking the ham first, then setting it inside a paper liner, but that didn’t get anywhere either. I finally gave up on crispy ham and settled on a paper liner, then lined the liner with ham as well (maybe if I’d had more time).

And evidently the grocery stores in Hawaii don’t stock quite as wide a variety of items as stores here on the mainland do, so I kept to a pretty simple set of ingredients. (Carol loves to tell the story of trying to find smoked salmon while in Hawaii. The clerk said, “You mean, for Jewish?” Turns out, they didn’t have it.) The tomato slice on top helps keep the eggs from being too dry, and the cheese, both in the eggs and on the top, give the whole thing quite a bit of richness.

Personally, I like to eat them warm, but they’d be perfectly fine at room temperature too. And it’s stable enough to make a day or two ahead, stash in the fridge, and just bring back to room temperature on the morning of the brunch. Should be a snap (these are all subliminal directions for the party throwers).

Like I said, being the resident party authority can be bothersome – then again, how could anything be too much trouble for a face like this?

Macy, the Party Girl

Recipe: Ham and Tomato Mini Frittatas

All Choked Up: Chicken with Tomatoes and Artichokes

I was supposed to be taking the night off. Don was at work, and I had the house to myself for the evening (which certainly is not a common occurrence). I had considered diving head first into a bag of chips for dinner, but then I got the dreaded phone call: Don needed me to bring him something to eat because he wasn’t going to get the chance to get away for a break.

So much for a Doritos dinner. READ MORE

Recipe: Chicken with Tomatoes and Artichokes

A Quick ‘Between Jobs’ Dinner: Tomato, Asparagus, and Pesto Salad with Chicken

I hate working two jobs. OK, let me correct that before the gods of irony get involved and have a field day: I hate the fact that I need to work two jobs.

Three nights a week I have to run from the office, back to the house, scarf down dinner, and head out to job number two. I just can’t hit the drive-thru and be on my way, like normal people. Why? 1) If I ate fast food three nights a week, I’d be as big as a house; and 2) spending money to eat fast food defeats the purpose of working two jobs (I mean, if I’m going to pay for dinner, then I want to appreciate the food, not the plastic cup full of soda). The solution is to come up with some quick and easy recipes to keep in my back pocket. That’s where this one comes into play.

All these veggies pair nicely with pesto on their own, so I thought I might as well toss them all together. Same goes for the chicken. I seasoned the chicken breasts with just simple salt and pepper, instead of doing anything that would compete with the pesto.

In an effort to add a little body to the sauce (which is really just pesto), I cook the orzo as I would a grain – a 2:1 ratio of liquid to orzo (when it's finished cooking, it looks like a pot of rice). That way I can use all the starchy goodness that comes from the pasta when it cooks to give the sauce a little more heft. Cooking it in chicken stock just imparts that much more flavor. The only thing the recipe lacks is some crusty bread to go with it (which I happened to have on hand).

I know this is short, but that’s all the time I have – it’s a two-job day.

Recipe: Tomato, Asparagus, and Pesto Salad with Chicken

Barley Any Trouble at All: Sausage and Barley Stuffed Tomatoes

I’ve been in a rice rut lately. I’ve got long grain, short grain, white, brown. I’m tired of rice. I love quinoa, but unfortunately quinoa is a little out of the budget for the immediate future. So while I was roaming through the grocery store this week, I noticed pearled barley. Read More

Recipe: Sausage and Barley Stuffed Tomatoes

Silence of the Lamb Chops

One of the bad habits that I have recently adopted is to stop at the lamb section in the meat department of the grocery store and wish longingly (Have I mentioned that I really like lamb? Only about every other post). Most days I think I probably whimper a little to myself too. I miss it, but at $13 or $14 per pound, lamb chops really aren’t in the budget right now. Sigh. (Want to know the really sad part? I hit 3 stores, and I do the same thing in all three.)

I was making my usual grocery store rounds this weekend. I did my lamb sigh in the first two and was rambling through store number 3 when I saw it. It was there, tucked between the veal cutlets and the beef hearts: lamb chops - on sale for only $6 per pound! YES! SIX DOLLARS PER POUND! I think I actually squealed like a 4-year old when they find out they’re going to Disney World. (Seriously – I squealed out loud. It takes a secure man to admit that, don’t you think?)

I resisted the urge to empty the whole section into my cart, but I grabbed 4 and ran home. It was almost as good as winning the lottery. Once I was in the kitchen, I pondered how I should prepare them. They were too rare a find to experiment with, so I finally decided that a clean, simple dish was the best way to go. I mean, who knows how long it would be before I got the next opportunity? So last night we feasted on Grilled Lamb Chops Gremolata with Rosemary Polenta and Roasted Tomatoes with Feta. Simple, succulent, and sublime. I was in heaven.

Now, I use regular yellow corn meal instead of specialty 'polenta corn meal'. It's a heck of a lot cheaper, and no one has ever noticed the difference. (And, just between us, I routinely interchange polenta and grits in dishes. If you call it polenta, people like it. If you call it grits, no one will touch it - it's the same freakin' thing, people!)

Ahhh. Now my lamb chop craving has been sated for a little while. But who knows for how long? At least next time you’ll know what that whimpering is when you’re in the meat department.

Where's the Beef? Not in Eggplant Lasagna

One of the biggest dilemmas I continually experience while eating inexpensively is how to also eat healthy. I mean, it’s easy to load up on pasta and grains for little money. And cheaper cuts of meat tend to contain more fat than the more expensive cuts. But if you stick to just those things, you are missing quite a bit of vital nutrition. I finally realized that the way to kill two birds with one stone is to create some (sort of) vegetarian meals.

Now, I have nothing against vegetarians. If you’ve got reasons to be vegetarian or vegan, more power to you. I grew up in the Midwest where every meal was meat and potatoes – and ‘vegetarian’ was a derogatory term. Needless to say, it’s taken a little effort to get over that negative stigma of meatless dishes. For me, the one thing a vegetarian dish has to have is enough body to be satisfying. I’ve just never been a ‘salad-for-dinner’ kind of guy.

Because of that, most of my vegetarian dinners are take-offs of my favorite meaty dishes. This dish takes it one step farther – not only do I use eggplant instead of ground beef, but the eggplant planks take the place of the pasta as well. So this Eggplant Lasagna is so freaking healthy that it ought to come with a prescription. But, like I said, who cares if it’s healthy when it tastes like the lawn? Well, there’s the beauty of this one – it still tastes thick and rich - like the pasta and sausage laden version. Don’t believe me? Then try it for yourself.

Huh. Who knew that you didn’t need cows and pigs to make a great meal?

Cheap Mediterranean Vacation with Saffron Lamb Ragu

Ah, Sardinia – Island breezes. Blue Mediterranean waters. Laidback culture. What bliss.

OK, so I’ve never been to Sardinia. In fact, it’s been almost two years since we’ve been able to get away at all. But once in a while you have to have a little mental holiday, even if it’s only for a meal. This month’s Gathering for Get Together Gourmets gave us the opportunity to experience a little faux-retreat for an evening.

Get Together Gourmets is the cooking club we formed a couple of years ago. It’s been great fun – we’ve made some new friends and had the opportunity to experience some wonderful food. It really runs the gamut, we have some professional culinarians (so I made up the word – get over it): a trained chef, a professional baker, food writers, etc.; some folks who are terrified of the kitchen (you know who you are); and a host of people who fall in between. The one thing we all have in common is our love of food. It’s a good time. If you’re interested in more information, here’s a link.

This month’s Gathering theme was The Island of Sardinia. The concept is really a subset of the Mediterranean Diet: lots of seafood, olive oil, etc. The one exception is that a large portion of Sardinia’s way of life revolves around shepherding (so I’ve read). That means lamb, and I noticed that no one had chosen a lamb dish when they signed up.

I love lamb. It is one of my all-time favorite flavors. Of course, the best cuts are out of my price range right now. I started researching some Sardinian lamb recipes and came across a recipe for a saffron roasted leg of lamb. It sounded good, so I improvised. I took the flavor components of the dish and turned it into an appetizer: a ragu with ground lamb, saffron, tomato paste, and red wine. I served it with another island staple, Sardinian Parchment Bread, called Carta Musica.

I adapted the parchment bread from some recipes I found online, so I don’t know if I can completely call it my own, even though I tweaked it (especially the rolling. Holy cow! How did they do that everyday?!), but the Saffron Lamb Ragu is an original. It went over well with the group (I, personally, have never had a lamb dish that I didn’t like), and the parchment bread is certainly going to make a return appearance at a future cocktail party. There is so much that I can do with flavor components to make it a stand alone dish – I’m sure you’ll see some future recipes on that.

So don’t despair if your budget doesn’t allow for international travel. Whip up a dish that’s out of the ordinary. Sardinia really is within your grasp.

Comfort Food: Roasted Tomato Risotto

There’s something about comfort food after a bad day. It’s just so, well, comfortable. And, luckily, because of their peasant food origins, most comfort foods are fairly inexpensive to make. Around our house, we refer to it as ‘eating thick’.

One of my favorite ‘thick’ dishes it risotto. It’s starchy and creamy and simple to make. I don’t know why risotto has this reputation of being difficult to prepare. It’s done in less than 30 minutes, and all you have to do is stir it every minute or two to get the creamy consistency that everyone desires. The trick is not to ignore it – so as long as you’re doing something in the kitchen anyway, what’s wrong with a little stirring?

Most risotto recipes call specifically for Arborio rice. Unfortunately, Arborio can be a little on the pricey side, so I substitute a less expensive rice. Just make sure it’s a short grain rice – the long grain varieties don’t have the starch content necessary to get the starchy goodness that you expect. I’ve found a Valencia rice on my local supermarket shelf that costs about two-thirds less than the Arborio options.

The other fantastic feature of risotto is that it’s a totally blank canvas. You can add whatever flavors you have on hand, making it easy to keep the costs down. I found some grape tomatoes on sale this week, and decided to incorporate them into my risotto fest. I’m a sucker for any roasted vegetable too. It’s such a simple way to bump up the flavors components of simple ingredients. So roasted tomato risotto was on the menu for comfort food night this week.

And because you can never have too many carbs on comfort food night, I also made some spinach bruschetta – because you have to have something to help scrape the risotto out of the bowl, right? It’s simple, quick, and tasty. The bonus is that it’s made of staples I always have on hand.

So who cares if the Atkins people won’t ever call and ask me to cook for them? Carbs help cope with stress – and that’s all that matters when you’re craving ‘thick’ after a long day.