Alaskan Halibut, anyone?

Our son, Bo, has spent the last four years at a culinary school while studying to become a licensed chef.  If you enjoy the freshest of fish, have you ever wondered how the fish comes packaged to the restaurant in the first place?  It is not necessarily cut and boxed like the fish you find in the frozen food aisle at your local grocery.  Chefs actually butcher big fish behind the scenes in the kitchen.  Bo holds a rather hefty 80 pound halibut that was swimming in the ocean a day before boarding a plane on its way to Kansas City.  Chefs often create recipes, order the ingredients,  calculate profits, prepare, and cook the meals.   It can all rest on the shoulders of a good chef who efficiently orders the proper amounts of necessary ingredients while offering up the freshest meals without waste.

I had never really thought all that much about it, but fresh fish does not stay fresh for all that long.

Joe Pavlov and a 13 pound prime rib roast just out of the oven.

I recently had the pleasure of dining at the home of Joe and Maya Pavlov.  I must add that Joe and I have a shared passion for gourmet cooking.  There is always something special about pulling off a great meal and Joe and Maya’s dinner party was no exception.  They have a special combined magic in the kitchen.  Their guests dined on perfectly timed medium rare bone-in prime rib served with a fresh green salad and Joe’s mother’s rice and noodle recipe from the old country that Maya fixed on top of the stove only minutes before coming to the table.

Joe and Maya love fine wines.  The meal was accompanied by three magnums of exquisite French Chateau Nuf de Pafe followed by a taste of aged 1984 port.  Desert was to die for.  Joe, who worked in his grandmother’s bakery as a boy, showed off his baking skills with the best coconut cream pie that has ever touched my lips.

Dinner guests artist,JD Hillberry, and Mike Makens, Walkabout Landscape, discuss matters over a glass of wine.  Mike is an interesting fellow and world traveler.  In addition to owning a successful landscape business, Mike imports and sells fine cigars.

This wonderful party was thrown in my honor when I delivered and hung my newest painting, “Pass The Crackers Please.” Pencil artist, JD Hillberry, was also in attendance.  Together, we showed Joe and Maya’s guests a few pieces of original artwork as part of the evening’s entertainment.  It was a wonderful time for all.

The next night, Joe and Maya were so kind as to invite JD and me to share their box at Ranger Stadium for a baseball game.  Artist friends Randy and Lyn Sedlak Ford joined us for a fun time at the game.   I do not remember when I have ever been treated any nicer.

Over the years I have met some very special people who have collected my paintings.  It is some of these developed friendships that help to make my life as an artist so rewarding.  Thank you Joe and Maya for being the special people that you are.

“Pass the Crackers Please.”  Watching the television series Mad Men influenced me to paint this painting.  Certainly the crowded environment of downtown Manhattan, where the television show takes place during the early 1960’s, must sometimes feel like life inside a sardine can.  As for serving up life on a saltine cracker, the world is your oyster.  Why not make the most of it?  We are all looking for the key.  I love this painting!  I had not yet framed the painting when Joe called and bought it from me after seeing the step-by-step progression to completion on my blog.  It is a personal favorite.

In a day when all kinds of gourmet cookware is within arm’s reach, it is hard to beat grandma’s antique cast iron skillet to do the major lifting.

If you are looking for a quick veggie to accompany your favorite mojo pork recipe, this is a good one.  It is my own creation for fixing a dynamite asparagus side dish.  It will go with most anything and visually knocks it out of the park.  We usually steam our asparagus in an asparagus steamer.  But this is a great change of pace.   I heat a cast iron skillet in the oven while I clean and cut off the tough ends of the asparagus.  I chop up a little red bell pepper and a few mushrooms to add to the mix.  Put the asparagus mix in a large ziplock bag.  Throw in a pinch of oregano and some red pepper flakes if you like a kick. We do. Add pressed garlic, olive oil, and the juice of a freshly squeezed lime.  Juice an orange and throw the liquid into the bag.  I also mix some soy  into this marinade.  I like using soy in moderation for flavor.   Last, but never least, I add a spoonful of brown sugar.  The slight hint of sugar with the tartness and acidity of the lime is the secret to a good marinade.   All of this is my own twist on Cuba’s national marinade,  or mojo.  In Cuba, mojo is generally made from soured orange juice.  Adding lime gives the same flavor.   You will find that there are many personalized secret mojo additives much the same as the variations found in American barbeque.  The basis for a good mojo is orange, lime and oil.  Like most of my cooking I use a pinch of this and a pound of that.  Don’t be afraid to experiment.  Just don’t overdo it.  Exact measuring spoons are for wimps.  Do you think for one minute that I get an eyedropper out to measure my paints, as I mix them on my palette?  I cook the same way that I paint, much as a musician might choose to play music by ear.   It just happens.

A quick side note. I used the same mojo marinade to flavor the pork tenderloin that we cooked to accompany the asparagus.  This is great on the grill.  Last night there was eight inches of snow on the ground, so I cooked the roast inside in the oven.  If you marinade a pork roast, start the night before.  A pork shoulder is a good choice, or use a pork tenderloin.  You can marinade a pork roast overnight in mojo juice and it is “to die for” when you cook it the next day.  Just be careful not to overcook the pork.  Pork can get real dry in a hurry.  Use an internal  meat thermometer if you like.  I have a good one that plugs into the meat and has an extension that sits outside the oven on top of the stove.  Everything is personal opinion but I like my pork medium or slightly less than medium,  150 degrees will get ‘r done.   Cooking a pork roast wrapped in a banana leaf can help keep things moist if you cook it in the oven.  You can find banana leaves in the frozen section of most asian grocery stores, but the banana leaf is not absolutely necessary.  Banana leaves are commonly used in the tropics and in the Caribbean for slow cooking meat.

The vegetables need not sit very long in the marinade mix.  The secret to cooking vegetables is in preparation.  Have them all cut to size and ready to dump into the hot skillet.  The idea is to cook them quickly.  Drain off most of the marinade and add them to the pan.  Use a spatula to turn and stir fry the mixture.  I have found that  a preheated cast iron skillet gives a much more even heat than my larger wok,  while using it on our electric stove.  That is why professional cooks prefer gas to electric.  But the cast iron skillet solves that problem for me.  With practice you can learn to heat the skillet to your desired temperature ahead of time.  Like everything else, practice is key.  A really hot skillet will blacken the Asparagus.  I like that as a variation.  Blackened can be good once you master it.  If you wish stir fried Asian texture, don’t over heat the skillet.  Just get it good and hot, but not smoke’n white hot.  Which ever way you cook this recipe, it won’t take long.   The idea is to have crisp flavorful asparagus.  Don’t overcook the veggies until they go limp.

I use red bell peppers for color.  Did you know that red is directly opposite green on a color wheel? In artist terminology they are called complimentary colors.   Same is true for such mixtures as yellow squash and purple eggplants when looking for bright colorful combinations.  Artists understand and work with color everyday.  Chefs are no different.  A meal should be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the palate.

For the record, I make no claims at being a professional cook.  ( we do have a son, Bo, in culinary school)   If there are any holes in this recipe, it is totally on me.  I will tell you that I am a working artist who uses cooking for relaxation and a cheap form of therapy.   When you have one hell of a tough day, take it out in the kitchen.  It works for me.  Should you have a great recipe to share, pass it along.  It won’t go unnoticed.

Bon Appetit!

Fish Vera Cruz with Cuban black beans, Sheryl’s famous guacamole, and fresh lime.

I am about to tell you more than you really wanted to know.  That is, unless you love to cook, as is our favorite past time when I am not painting or Sheryl is not at work at her job as head of marketing for the Cessna Credit Union.   We both work hard at what we do, and ending a day on a high note by fixing a creative meal is our own reward.   That is not to say that Sheryl and I do not enjoy entertaining ourselves at our favorite restaurants.  We do.  In fact, we have a son training to become a licensed chef.  I wonder where he picked that up?

In these days of shared information, you can find almost anything on the internet.  In minutes anyone can enter a key word or two and come up with a dozen good recipes for almost anything.  I find it interesting to explore new things to cook, as well as international cuisines.  Thai and Indian have been long time favorites dating back for decades before Thai became the thing to do.  These days I get more specific when looking for unusual ways to prepare a favorite vegetable or cut of meat or fish by searching  the internet.   I find that these dishes often require items other than those common place in our generic grocery chains.  Part of the fun is ferreting out unique spices or unusual vegetables from all parts of the world.  Just last night I got an email from my artist friend, Jerry Ellis, asking me if I had ever heard of asafoetida powder.  I wrote back and told him that it had come up from time to time in recipes that I have read, but that I did not have a clue what it is or how to use it.  Just for interest, you might wish to look it up.  You can find it on the internet and it does not paint a pretty picture.  Apparently it puts off a very foul smell.  My question is how did  the peoples of the Middle Eastern countries and India come to use it in the first place?

Exploring the unusual in foods has long been an interest of mine.  Jerry Ellis, that I mentioned earlier, and I, used to share expenses at art shows during the 1980’s.  We were doing a show in Chicago and found time to visit China town.   We went shopping in an oriental grocery.  Jerry asked the store owner to recommend a good Chinese restaurant.  We explained that we did not want an Americanized version, but true Chinese.  A customer standing in line behind us suggested the name of a fine dining establishment that should fill our request.  It remains to this day one of the most memorable meals that I have ever eaten in my life.  It was delicious.  At the end of the meal that same gentleman, who had recommended the meal in the first place, appeared at our table.  It was his restaurant.

What appears above is a photograph of last night’s dinner.  It is my own version of fish Vera Cruz.  Any type of fish is good with a Vera Cruz sauce, and it is relatively easy to prepare in little time.  The recipe comes from the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico.  Anyone who thinks that Mexican food is simply Tex Mex, has never ventured south of the Texas border into Mexico.

This was an experiment.  Several days ago, I picked up a prepared meat dish in the gourmet section of the meat department at our local grocery store.  It was Chicken Vera Cruz wrapped in a corn husk similar to how tamales are prepared.  The idea is that it can be thrown on the grill or put in the oven for a quick gourmet meal.  That is where my latest project began.   The food was delicious, but I wanted to experiment and improve on the meal.  Research told me that Vera Cruz is most often used for fish and that it is generally fixed in a pan.  Nowhere did I find a recipe using corn husks, but I did find reference to fish tamales.  Banana leaves were mentioned for all kinds of fish dishes from a variety of countries.  So, what the heck.  Why not experiment and do my own thing?

The quest began with attempting to find banana leaves.  I found them frozen at a large oriental grocery across town.  I first prepared a great Mexican rice using plenty of cilantro, onions, garlic, peppers,tomato sauce and lime juice.   I placed a scoop of the rice on a large piece of banana leaf and then stacked a fillet of fresh flounder that I had purchased that same day at the fish market and marinated in squeezed lime.  The fish was then smothered with a Vera Cruz sauce that I had prepared in a separate pan using slivers of sliced onions, garlic, chopped plum tomatoes, and jalepeno peppers sauteed until soft.  I added both black and green olives to the sauce along with a few capers.  Delicious.  All of this was wrapped and tied off in the banana leaf.  I placed the individual servings in a covered dish with a small amount of water in the bottom of the dish, and cooked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.   Not bad for my first attempt.  Any fish will do.  I like a good white fish  like flounder or halibut.  Next time I will option for the thicker fillet of halibut.

Cook in a covered dish in the oven.

Bon Appetit!

This image is available as a print.  The subject is a lead dime store toy that was sold during the 40’s and 50’s and manufactured by the Manoil Toy Company.