Fugu filet

Here's a second clip courtesy of my buddy Joe (  http://socalsalty.wordpress.com ). We where fishing...nice way to say walking,casting and getting skunked again... la Bocana in San Jose' del Cabo when we saw these local guys fishing a few puffer fish.
Once approached we started talking about recipes and the peculiar way locals have  to harvest the filet.
This makes it totally safe. here it is, caught on video for you.
A note: puffer fish is very good eating..forget sushi and urban legends; think monkfish instead!
Ah! Another thing...here too, like elsewhere in the world, if some food is remotely "weird" it's good for your...ehm...#privates  ; )
Enjoy the clip:

Surf fishing Cabo with @SoCalSalty & @CaboSurfCaster

Here's the proof that social medias are more than just a way to exchange gossip and bits of news and frivolous information.
Over the past few months I've been active on Twitter I' ve got to know a lot of interesting people involved in cooking and fishing.
In a few cases these "virtual friendships" blossomed into actual ones .
@SoCalSalty and i started planning this surf fishing outing a couple months ago and even though we thought of a lots of things, we did not take into consideration this ginormous new moon that, sure as hell, messed fishing up in a major way.
The following link is to the first installment of a series of short videos that Joe ( @SoCalSalty ) shot during these last few days, on the quest for nasty, angry and toothy CUBERA snappers, jack crevalle and the ghost of the surf itself...the mighty roosterfish!
Guiding us was Cabo born Wesley Brough ( @CaboSurfCaster ) who was featured in Dave Maynard's award winning "Fishing the Baja" network show
Here's the first clip:

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FVBmSIbs0&h=uAQELOW9_AQHnbWeLUfi2ceTqDjxUDrJVKOTjthX93406lg

Enjoy the adventures and disadventures of these jollly anglers and stick around for more.

Giulio's First 6 Strands Challah! HAHAHA!

Giulio takes one for the team.... Thanks pal         ; )

I'm back!

Hi guys...nice to be back!
Not that I ever left but I've been hiperbusy catering to a big family of 12 in a rental villa and, at the same time, doing private dinners for a few friends.
Not much to say but "Thank you" for the abundance...the dulldrums of summer are just ahead on the horizon so now it's time to go "balls to the wall" and take anything that comes our way.

Giulio and I came up with some interesting menus...even put a few neat twists on classics that our clien wanted during the stay.

Remember spending a whole afternoon coming up with countless ideas for a Caesar Salad..duh!

Here are some  pics of the ones I think are the most interesting dishes we served to Matt and his family at Fundadores in P.to Los Cabos:

 MONDAY:

Baked Portobello, truffled goat's cheese, roasted tomatoes and squash blossom stack

In the works...on the way out

Parrotfish....fresh enough?



Pan roasted parrotfish ( smells like lobster! ) with roasted garlic and garlic chips, herbed tomato coulis, "erotic" potatoes

Pappardelle with Piemontese ragu' >>> lots of porcini mushrooms, red wine ,sausage, chicken liver and  BEEF!

On Tuesday we cooked for our friend Adrienne's family at the El Zalate condos in SanJose'. You´ll find that dinner "report" and more on www.iCookCabo.blogspot.com

Back to Matt's on Wed for Pasta Night... we made a lasagna with the leftover ragu

                                                                      
 a "fancy" porky Mac'n'cheese with lots of smoked pork chops, bacon and really SHARP Cheddar and Parmigiano in it...we spread it out thin in order to make nice and crunchy and, while it was intended for the kids, the adults couldn't wait for it to cool down and be served...picture a locust invasion! HAHA!

Also freshly made spaghettini with #vongole

and the star of the evening: duck ravioli, with Port reduction, blackberries and Parmigiano

Now..the day came with a little issue...for me at leas...
as you know I am a strong supporter of catch and release, specially for sportfish and specially for billfish. The clients went fishing that day and caught a pretty decent marlin and brought it home in order have it packed and shipped back to N.Y.
Also they'd liked some for dinnner.
In order to apologize for the killing of such a noble animal, this dish had to be perfect...good wouldn't have been enough so here's what we did :

First we encrusted it in pistacchios and lightly seared it

Then we sliced it and served with a spiced up leftover Caesar dressing from the night before.
It made for very interesting contrast of textures and acidic, fatty,sweet and nutty notes

Thursday was back at El Zalate condos in SanJose for another iCook dinner.

Friday baaaaack to Fundadores for a paella evening..not ANY paella though...Lobster and Soft Shell Crabs Paella ! lights of FusionConfusion tapas like duck taquitosour tamarind sauce, shrimp&pork pot stickers with a ginger&balsa; meatball sliders with melted Provolone.
Here's a few pictures os the Paella De Luxe:

Ready for the oven

Saturday was the last night and Matt wanted something "important" to crown the week...so we went off to get some real good local lamb chops that we've encrusted in mustard, Mexiterranean herbs, sunflower seeds and pepitas and we roasted root vegetables ( the cutest baby beets in any color God makes them, radishes, multicolored carrots and potatoes

And, finally, the last push...Dessert. A combination of "Clean the fridge" crumble, Cointreau semifreddo, raspberry, red wine and rosemary compote and Warm Moltent Chocolate Cake

As they say..that's it folks  ; )  as always feel free to send me a line if you'reinterested in any of the recipes and I'll send it over to you and/or I'll post it here.

Ciao, for now,

Emilio

 

Easter dinner in Palmilla

Here's the menu of last week's dinner we catered in Palmilla Estates, Los Cabos.

Botanas, Snacks: coconut shark ceviche;

sesame breaded chicken fingers with saffron aioli and tamarind sauce
Appetizer: grilled local baby octopus with lavander cauliflower puree and warm pork belly vinaigrette

Salad: shaved asparagus, tender green fava beans, mixed tender lettuces,aged sheep's cheese, citronette
First course: gnocchi with artisanal ricotta, prosciutto, arugula and oven roasted tomatoes
Second course: loin of yellowtail(hamachi) with chickpeas and spinach stew

Dessert:individual coconut custard tarts.

As always, recipes to follow..... 

Ciao,

Emilio.

Eat local, eat fresh

As you all know I live, fish and cook in Baja California Sur, a hilly peninsula surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Cortez. Between the bounty of our waters and the year around crops of our farms we're blessed with an obscene abundance of fresh, local seasonal and mostly organic ingredients.
Where am I going with this? Out for a stroll with Tony, my dog, earlier this morning I was snooping around restaurants alleyways ( a bad, long time habit that's hard to kill..) and, by a good downtown restaurant with a great rep, saw an empty box of scallops, from China. That got me thinking and kind of pissed me off more than a bit.
We live in scallop central and, to top it off, we're in the middle of scallops season, which means LOTS of FRESH, local scallops from just up the peninsula! And that reminded me that most of the restaurant and hotels in town sell frozen New Zealand lamb, when there's tons of very good, local lamb or an "organic" restaurant using frozen Asian fish for its fish'n'chips ( maybe if it comes from the local supermarket, in their book it can be considered "local"? ) and so on and on and on till when I got home and on Twitter my friend and chef Emanuele shared this post by Mark Bittman which I'd like to share with you here:

A Letter that all Chefs (and Anyone Who Eats) Need to Read

10|25|11

I’ve known George Faison for 25 years or more; he was a co-founder of D’Artagnan and is now a co-owner of Debragga and Spitler, a New York meat wholesaler that’s been doing business since 1924, and a main supplier to many of the city’s best restaurants. This is a letter George sent late last week to a well-known chef, and one he’ll be sending to others. (It’s worth noting, if for no other reason than to answer the inevitable question, which I asked myself, that George doesn’t only sell naturally-raised meats – he sells industrially-produced stuff as well. But he’s on a campaign to persuade the chefs who insist that’s what they want to change their minds, and I know he’d like to supply only the right stuff.) I’ve changed nothing except misspellings.

---

Hey Chefs:
This note explains my thinking about why I believe that you should be pursuing clean agricultural ingredients as standard practice in your restaurants.
Our food supply system is broken. Badly. 80 percent of the U.S. beef production is controlled by four industrially producing companies. Three of these companies also process 60 percent of the nation’s pork.[1] Too much chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used to produce our crops. The variety of crops produced around the world has diminished dramatically in the last 60 years. There are now nearly 5,000,000 fewer American farmers since the 1930s.
Yes, this industrial structure has significantly lowered the monetary cost of the food we consume. But this is misleading. While the amount of money we spend on food has declined, the quality and nutrition supplied by this food has deteriorated. As a country, about one third of all adults are obese, and since 1980, the incidence of obesity has tripled among children ages 2-19.[2]
In 1960, we spent 18 percent of our take home pay on food and 5 percent on health care. Now we spend 9 percent of our take home pay on food and upwards of 17 percent on health care. According to Michael Pollan, during his Oprah interview in February, “We spend less of our money on food than any other people at any other time on this earth.” What’s wrong with this picture?
People have gotten used to eating cheap food and it is killing them. There is little flavor and little nutrition and we eat more and more, because so much of it has been engineered to trigger consumption (salt and sugar have been proven to be addictive, like nicotine in cigarettes).
Regarding meat and poultry, here is what drives me to promote naturally raised meats.
By clean I mean the following:
1. Antibiotic free: Over 70 percent of the antibiotics used in this country are fed to the animals we eat. 70 percent! The practice is banned in Europe. The antibiotics are fed to animals housed in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). They are so densely housed that they get sick. The producer gives them feed treated with antibiotics so they won’t get sick. Hogs are crammed into concrete and metal pens with grates that allow the excrement to fall through. Chickens are packed into closed houses where the lights are turned on four times each day to make them eat more often. Conditions like these would make any animal sick.
The key problem when antibiotics are overused is that it can lead to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It is a great threat to our country’s health. In fact, there is an antibiotic-resistant Staph bacteria called MRSA that is definitely impacting employees working on hog CAFOs. According to the CDC, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that in 2007, 18,650 people died of MRSA, whereas approximately 16,000 died of AIDS. Additionally, JAMA reported that MRSA was also responsible for upward of 94,000 life threatening illnesses.[3]


Commodity cattle that are fed hormones are moved to a feedlot after as little as 9 months. There, they are given antibiotic-laced feed to keep them healthy while they adjust to a largely grain diet (that’s like you moving from a salad-based diet to an all-cheese diet overnight). These cattle are intensely fed for 75-100 days. Very efficient. Very cheap.
Naturally raised cattle are on pasture for 16-20 months before transferring to a low density feedlot where they are fed a mixed diet (dried grass/grain for 200 days in a naturally raised, clean program; 400 days for a wagyu program). It takes a lot longer to raise clean, healthy cattle, and this is why they cost more. But they taste a lot better and they marble better. Our naturally raised, clean beef program typically grades over 20 percent Prime, and that’s a lot more than commodity at 1.5 percent.
But the impact of hormones in our food system is becoming increasingly controversial. The practice is banned in Europe. The use of hormones in our food supply has been linked to the earlier onset of menstruation in young women in western societies over the last 40 years. (These dates coincide with the introduction of hormones as an additive/growth stimulant in dairy and beef cattle.) The issue with earlier onset of menstruation is that it is associated with a vastly greater incidence of cancer in women, breast and cervical.[4] That is just one reason why many of our retail customers are ordering DeBragga’s grass fed or naturally raised beef.
So why does this matter to you? Maybe it doesn’t. But from where I sit, I see more and more of our chef/restaurateurs making the switch to naturally raised meats and poultry for the reasons I describe above, and more (like animal welfare, for example). We know that a greater and greater number of our clients, especially in New York City, are looking for these ingredients, even expecting us to be offering them. As an industry, restaurants are on the cutting edge. Not just in culinary technique and quality, or décor and service, but in the quality and production standards used to make the ingredients in our recipes.
Yes, naturally and humanely raised meats cost more. Maybe you can counter the higher monetary cost by offering smaller portions. Or expect chefs to charge more money for it.
I do not think the solution to our food supply problem is to use poorer quality ingredients because they cost less money. In the long run, the true cost of these meats is so much higher.
George

---

[1] Hendrickson, Mary and William Heffernan. “Concentration of Agricultural Markets.” Department of Rural Sociology, University of Missouri. April 2007.
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[3] Journal of the American Medical Association, October 17, 2007.
[4] Sellman, Sherrill, “The problem with precocious puberty,” Nexus Magazine, Vol 11, 3, April – May 2004.

Interesting, right?

 Till the next time,

Buon appetito and tight lines,

Emilio

Making gnocchi is boring

Ok, I started with all my best intentions and I was ready to make 4 pounds of gnocchi...but motivation faded rather soon and I got stuck with a couple pounds of riced potatoes.
Don't believe the overpaid tv and overly famous chefs when they tell you that making gnocchi is "fun" and "entertaining" for the whole family...it's not, it's tedious and boring, and repetitive and monotonous and...where was I'
Yes, the potatoes...

I added a couple tins of tuna in water (well drained), a couple eggs, s&p and half a cup of A.P.flour.
Mixed it up nicely and started rolling it out on a floured table top... and that's when I thought to start taking pics..

So, roll'em up, 1 inch diameter,cut it with a plastic spatula in 4 inch bits, roll in flour, then egg, then in bread crumbs...I don't use panko because I feel retarded using Japanese bread when I have bags of dry bread in the pantry.

Once your soon to be croquettes are breaded, fry them in a blend of butter and vegetable oil, till nice and golden on all sides.

Frying in butter and corn oil...

...till nicely golden on all side  : )

Take them out, roll them on a lenght of kitchen paper and serve them.

I served mine with a Mexican salsa verde, the raw one that, I think, has a little more zest than the cooked version...but you can use whatever you want; thinking about it a good spicy tomato sauce or a Puttanesca sauce would be quite good too...

Beet "zuppetta" with vanilla & basil gelato, balsamic and black pepper

I was going through folder of older pictures and found this dessert that I totally forgot about.
I love it..it's a little "out there", but be open and give it a try.

At the restaurant we made our own gelato, but what you can do, in a pinch, is to blend a handful of basil leaves with a couple spoonfuls of vanilla ice cream ( the richer and the fatter the better ), mix it in the rest of the pint and put it back in the freezer, till the end of the dinner.

The other prep you'll have to do ahead is to reduce the vinegar by placing 2 cups of balsamic into a skillet and reduce it to at least 50% over low heat.

Now, for the beet zuppetta, just peel your beet (s), diced them somewhat small and blend them with a bit of lemon juice and sugar adding a tiny bit of water if the blender screams for it.

That's it...just pour the beet in a glass, cup or bowl, scoop some gelato on it, drizzle with the reduction and add a basil leaf, touch of freshly ground black pepper and very few sea salt crystals.

Enjoy.