Trout en croute

Perhaps I should change the name of this blog to "What's on sale?", but what can I say? I live in a tiny apartment with three other people, I just graduated college with more debt than I care to think about, and I work as a line cook- we're not talking newly-graduated computer engineer's salary. So, I go grocery shopping, and buy what's on sale. Yes, rice and beans would've been cheaper, but what is life without good food? If you can't enjoy life, then there's simply no point to anything. 

But I digress. Today, trout was on sale at the fish counter, I had a coupon as well, and I could buy any quantity I wanted- for a single serving, it worked out to something like $1.10. I brought it home and wrapped it in the store-brand version of Pilsbury croissant dough (yes, the cardboard tube kind), with some chopped garlic, olive oil, and fresh sage off the back porch. While it was in the oven (350 for about 30 minutes), I found one small zucchini lurking in the back of the fridge, sliced it up, and sautéed it with more sage, butter, and a little cream. Perhaps a lot of cream. Ideally I would've waited for the cream to reduce into a thick, velvety sauce, but I was hungry, and the trout was done, so I ate it more as a broth. Still, the pastry dough soaked it up beautifully, the sage came through just enough, and the trout was complemented by both. A very easy yet impressive meal.

Bathtub Fruit Salad

This post is less about food itself than about the ways we obsess over it- don’t worry, no recipes for anything edible made in a bathtub will be included here. On a recent trip home to visit my family, I found myself without my usual bag of travel-sized shampoo, soap, and conditioner. Oh well, I thought, between the four other people who share the shower (two sisters and two brothers), I can just borrow someone else’s. I was not expecting the smorgasbord of choices that lined every edge and shelf of the shower: apparently my siblings’ tastes in shampoo varied as much as their tastes at the dinner table, from vegetarian to meat-and-potatoes-only. After reviewing the choices, and resisting the urge to begin commentating a food network show, I decided on some Juicy Green Apple shampoo, followed by the Tropical Coconut conditioner, and my sister’s oatmeal and brown sugar soap. Then I found the apricot almond facial scrub, and just had to try it out. Feeling like a walking tropical fruit cobbler, I stepped out and dried off with my lemon meringue towel, garnished with some Frosty Mint lip balm and pomegranate coco-butter lotion. When I finally headed down to breakfast, I found myself craving something heavy, like eggs and sausage gravy. Certainly nothing fruity, and nothing involving soap.

Onions and apricots

Today I cooked sitting down. This is strictly against all chef’s protocol for the kitchen, but under the circumstances I feel my actions were justified- better to cook sitting down than not to cook at all, right? After a full shift of rushing around on a horribly unforgiving concrete conference center floor, my knees, ankles, and feet were all ready for a break. The masochistic side of my mind somehow coerced me into an after-work run, pulling whatever mental stress I had left out with high-tempo music and pumping it through my tired joints, into the pavement around Mirror Lake. My jog conveniently ended at a grocery store, where I wandered the produce section before simply giving up and buying the two items that were on sale- vidalia onions and apricots. Once home, I grudgingly obliged my legs and sat down next to the stove with my economically-purchased produce. I sliced up one and a half onions, and six and a half apricots (well, seven, but one half had to be tested for ripeness) and threw them into a sauteuse. After haphazardly pouring some Simply Naked California chardonnay over top of them, I covered the pan and left it on med-low heat to sweat. As an afterthought, I added a splash of cider vinegar and some chopped garlic. Leaving that to fend for itself, I dug around the freezer until I located a chicken leg. Not the fish I was hoping to find, but good enough. I threw it into the sink to thaw (we don’t have a microwave, so are forced to do things the proper way). After getting distracted by the latest copy of Trail Runner Magazine and almost overflowing the sink, I took my nearly sous-vide cooked chicken out and dry-rubbed it with cardamom and curry (why not, eh?), then put it into a 400-degree oven to see what happened. Sometimes cooking just shouldn’t be taken seriously.

After some scrambling through my randomized spice cabinet, I located cumin, red pepper, and curry (again), and added small pinches of each to the cooking onions and apricots. It tasted pretty good at that point, although the apricots didn’t add as much sweetness as I’d hoped, so I drizzled some honey in to counteract the vinegar. I poured out the rest of chardonnay over the chicken to moisten it while it roasted (no one was going to drink that chardonnay anyway). I resisted adding any more ingredients into the onions... until I found the sesame oil. Just a couple drops, I thought, and then I’ll leave it to become whatever it was meant to be. At this point, the dish was either going to be exactly what I wanted, or it was going to turn out mediocre, another dish to put into the category of “well, it was an interesting experiment”, that would remain unwritten in the recipe books.

I opened a bottle of fruity pear wine, and waited. Maybe I should’ve caramelized the onions before adding the apricots and wine. Did that chicken leg really have enough fat on it to dry rub, or should I have added some butter or something? Is it going to turn out terribly dry? There’s some wild rice in the cabinet that would go great with some shredded chicken and this onion chutney-relish-whatever... But I’m not really that hungry, Just chicken and chutney for me tonight. After deciding the chicken had at least another twenty minutes in the oven, I turned off the stovetop and went to take a shower, returning with much higher confidence that this meal was going to be just what I wanted. The chicken was roasting nicely in it’s own juices, the chutney needed just a little more reduction, and it would all come together into deliciousness. I was sure of it.

I shredded the chicken off the bone, carefully saving the perfectly crispy skin, then spooned a hefty amount of my on-sale produce chutney on top. It was perfectly delicious. The chicken turned out tender and spicy, the chutney adding the perfect sweet-and-sour balance to it, with the chicken skin smoothing out the acid with fat, and adding the perfect little crunch. Despite the fact that this dish didn’t originate in inspiration or cookbook, I had taken what was given to me (at a discount!) and made it work.