CSA Carrots - Check!

I know I swore off posting pictures of my CSA share, but - check out this carrot!

There were about a dozen more of these knobby little guys in the share this week; too bad I don't have a wood-fired oven like at Michael's Genuine to roast them in.

Sakaya Kitchen Dim Ssam Brunch - Midtown Miami

I wrote about my initial visit to Sakaya Kitchen about a month ago. Chef Richard Hales' focus on Korean flavors, organic ingredients, and reasonable prices all showed real promise. That promise is fulfilled, and then some, with Sakaya's "Dim Ssam" brunch, which was unveiled this weekend.

While the restaurant is set up for counter service, Chef Hales has switched over to table service for the brunch, and has crafted a longer menu of smaller-portioned dishes that play on his contemporary Korean theme (thus, "Dim Ssam"). I was just about the first person knocking on the door a little after 11am this past Sunday to give it a try.

Choosing was not easy. Fortunately, the prices are so reasonable that you can try a sampling of several items without breaking the bank. Everything I tried was excellent.

"Banchan" are a customary feature of Korean dining, a selection of little side dishes to accompany a meal. Different types of kimchi are typical, but usually there are a variety of other items as well. At Sakaya, ordering the banchan (for $5.99) brought seven dishes, including dried shredded cuttlefish ("ojinguh bokkeum"), bean sprouts dressed in sesame oil ("kongnamul"), tiny dried anchovies ("myulchi bokkeum"), pickled cucumbers, green bean kimchi, balloon flower root kimchi (a/k/a bellflower, or "doraji"), and marinated tofu.

Here are some closeups (note, by the way, that everything is served in disposable, recyclable dishes. I saw some kvatches when Sakaya first opened that the take-out boxes they were using for in-restaurant service were somewhat awkward; the dishes used for the "Dim Ssam" brunch were all perfectly serviceable):

dried cuttlefish

tofu

dried anchovies

balloon flower root kimchi

These ranged from extremely pungent (the anchovies) to very spicy (the balloon flower root kimchi) to sweet-sour (the cucumber pickles) to sweet-spicy (the dried cuttlefish) to mild (the bean sprouts and tofu), and each with a different texture as well. It's a great way to wake up the palate and reinvigorate it between bites of heartier stuff. Just keep a beer close by.

With prices for just about everything at around $3 or under, I tried several of the menu items, starting with the Korean Pancake with Pork, Radish Kimchi and Ssamjang.

(continued ...)

CSA Collard Greens - Gomen Kitfo

I can no longer keep track of which week is which from my CSA shares. Since collard greens make a frequent appearance, this is a recipe that can hopefully come in handy. Gomen Kitfo (or Yegomen Kitfo) is an Ethiopian dish which, frankly, one of our good friends makes much better than I do, but that didn't stop me from trying it anyway. What I find so intriguing about Ethiopian food is that it is generally highly spiced, but without being "spicy" (i.e. hot), using a palette of spices that we don't encounter often in Western cuisines, at least not in savory dishes. This dish is a good example: it features cooked collard greens mixed with cottage cheese flavored with cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, clove, garlic and onion.

As usual, I looked at a few different recipes and then sort of mushed them together. Here's a rough ingredient list:

• 12 oz. cottage cheese
• 2 lbs. collard greens ( I suspect my pile was shy of 2 lbs)
• 4 tbsp. butter
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp chopped onion
• 1 tbsp chopped chile pepper (I used jalapeño)
• 1 cardamom pod
• 2 cloves
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• ground clove, ground cinnamon (to taste)

First, make some ghee. Ghee is just clarified butter, which is something that always used to sort of intimidate me, until I figured out it's not exactly culinary rocket science. Here's how I make clarified butter: put some butter in a pan. Turn on low heat. The butter will melt. Some solids will drop to the bottom, some stuff may float to the top, everything else will be transparent and golden. That's what you want. Skim the stuff off the top, leave the stuff on the bottom. Some recipes I saw called for a flavored ghee ("niter kebbeh"), which sounded like a good idea, so I threw a bit of garlic, onion and ginger in there (just some generous pinches of each) along with a lightly crushed cardamom pod and a couple cloves. Rather than straining through cheesecloth or anything fancy like that, I just skimmed what I needed for the dish straight out of the pan.

Ready to Do a 180?

Well, Chef Norman Van Aken is almost there. His new Miami venture, Norman's 180 in Coral Gables (in the Colonnade Hotel) has been under construction for some time. Though there's clearly been some slippage from the original goal to open before year-end (2009), it looks like he's getting closer. Hiring for an April opening would seem to be a good sign:

For more previews of what to expect when it opens, check here and here.

El Rincon Asturiano - Miami

"Vale." It's a word we heard throughout our travels in Spain, with no precise definition we could discern, potentially meaning "OK," or "So...," or "See?", or "Voila," depending on the context. Apparently more European (and possibly Castilian, more specifically) than Latin American, it's a word I almost never hear in Miami, despite the abundant Spanish-speaking populations. We heard it almost immediately, and regularly, upon sitting down at El Rincon Asturiano this past weekend. I took that to be a good sign, and I was right.

Rincon Asturiano is a small restaurant in Little Havana near the corner of Flagler Street and SW 17th Avenue, not particularly noticeable from the street. There are several outdoor tables under a covered patio, as well as a small tapas bar and several more tables packed inside, including a narrow bar-height two-top that we squeezed into on a Saturday night (the place was filled). Asturias is an autonomous community of Spain on the northern coast by the Bay of Biscay, a couple hundred miles west of the Basque Country. The region is known for its seafood, its ciders, and most of all for the bean and sausage stew known as fabada. Rincon Asturiano's menu offers some of these specialties (the daily specials in particular seem to focus on Asturian dishes) as well as a broader selection of typical Spanish tapas, together with some heartier main courses and a variety of paellas.

Our server, in between "Vales," spoke only in rapid-fire Spanish and I struggled to keep up as she recited the day's specials. But with my dog-like ability to understand those words essential to my universe, I got the gist of most of it. For instance, I understood enough to know that she disapproved of my choice of wine, and recommended the Muga Rioja Reserva 2005 (at roughly the same price as my original choice) instead. I'm glad I listened, as it was a wonderful wine and a great value (at $36, less than 2x average retail).

As for food, we stuck with the tapas, and ultimately had to do something of a plate-juggling act to make room on our tiny table. We started with Chorizo a la Sidra, with chunks of pleasantly soft chorizo sausage cooked in cider stained bright red from the paprika in the sausage. Like New Orleans style BBQ shrimp, this is a dish that's as good for just dipping bread into the sauce as for the star ingredient itself (and the bread here is nice crusty Spanish style bread). The next item to hit the table was one of the only disappointments of the evening, Pulpo a la Gallega, the traditional dish of boiled octopus with potatoes, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with paprika and served on a wooden platter. But this was solely a matter of personal preference - boiling rather than grilling leaves the exterior layer of the octopus with a very slippery texture, and I prefer it grilled. But the preparation was absolutley authentic.

A slippery texture I do like is that of tripe, and so I couldn't pass up the Callos a la Asturiana. Callos is a Spanish stew featuring tripe and usually other miscellaneous parts. Though for years I only knew from Callos a la Madrileña, I've more recently learned of different regional variations, including a Sevillan version and this Asturian version. While Madrid's version, as I've seen it, often involves garbanzo beans in addition to chorizo and morcilla sausages and various other pig and/or cow parts, in a thick rust-colored stew, this Asturiano version omitted the beans, and had an intriguing spice note to it on top of the paprika - maybe nutmeg or even cinnamon? It was chock full of mysterious unctuous bits and pieces in a densely flavored gelatinous broth. Apparently the Asturians may be even more hardcore about their callos than the Madrileños: it seems that every year in the town of Noreña, they have a callos festival where more than 30 restaurants cook more than 7,000 pounds of tripe for about 10,000 visitors.

But it's not all about the nasty bits. The Patatas Bravas here were the finest I've had outside of Spain, the cubed potatoes cooked perfectly to have a bit of crispness on the exterior, while still being pillow-soft and hot in the middle (presumably the result of a double-frying technique similar to those used for good French fries), and were served with both a pungently garlickly and thick aioli, and a spicy tomato "bravas" sauce. The latter initially came on too sweet and ketchup-y, but that initial impression was quickly corrected by a pleasingly spicy follow-through.