Avocado, Ruby Grapefruit, and Shrimp Salad with Sesame-Ginger Vinaigrette

This combination developed when we had guests en route for dinner. Somehow we had forgotten to purchase lettuce. We had avocadoes on the counter, some Ruby Red grapefruit on the trees, and shrimp in the freezer. The combination worked, and these ingredients are seasonally perfect for Fall in southern California. The flavor combinations work together beautifully, and the colors are beautiful together.

I flour the shrimp lightly with flour containing salt, pepper, and a little paprika. Saute lightly in a little oil. Cook until just done, overcooked shrimp are rubbery.

Slice off outside red Grapefruit rind. Slice out each wedge of grapefruit.

Prepare avocado just prior to serving. I like to slice avocado with skin on, then remove skin from each wedge. It keeps the pieces from falling apart.

Assemble pieces artfully and drizzle with a sesame-ginger vinaigrette.

Dressing:
2 T white wine vinegar
2 T soy sauce
2 T honey or sugar
4 T olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp ginger
½ tsp curry powder

Applewood Grilled Salmon with Honey Mustard Sauce with Hints of Wasabi and Raspberry

Four to five ounce portions of salmon for four

(Farmed Atlantic salmon is now 7.99 per pound at Costco! At that price, better to go to Trader Joe’s for flash frozen shrink wrapped wild caught western salmon. Each species of western salmon has a different color, taste, and texture. Sockeye is definitely my favorite. DO NOT BUY: anything labeled Keta, Johnson Straight, or silverbrite salmon. These are marketing euphemisms for a species called chum or dog salmon by the locals in Alaska, because it was worthy of using for chum for better species or to feed to the sled dogs.

Wood chunks and smoking box for the gas grill

2 tbsp Dijon or your preferred type mustard (We particularly like the Raspberry-Wasabi Mustrd from the Cider Mill in downtown Julian for this recipe.)

2 tbsp Honey ( brown sugar may be substituted for honey, but use light brown)

2/3 can chicken stock (of course use a good fish stock if you have it)

2 tbsp butter

Sauce can be prepared ahead for better synchronization of cooking times. Combine mustard, honey and stock in a sauce pan. Over medium high heat reduce by half. You will be concentrating flavors. Sauce will thicken without flour or corn starch.

Set aside. Grill fish until JUST DONE. Very center should be just pink as you pull fish off the grill. It will “coast” to complete doneness as you plate. Warm sauce through. Add butter just before serving sauce.
Dill can be added to the sauce or put a sprinkle of it on the fish of those that like it.

Just for the Halibut

I am a huge fan of Alaskan Halibut for a variety of reasons. Reason one: they can become really large, sometimes really, really, large. Reason two relates to reason one: their huge size makes them a remarkably challenging big game catch. I have caught many halibut over a hundred pounds, as well as a 150, and a 200. It can be intimidating when you catch a fish almost as big as you are. The big ones can be extremely dangerous brought aboard a boat. They can break legs, bite off fingers, throw around hooks the size of tuna cans, five pound lead weights flying around, just generally create a lot of havoc. The big ones are shot in the head with a shotgun before being brought on the boat. The third reason I am a fan of Alaskan halibut is that they taste delicious. The flesh is very firm, very mild flavor, and is quite healthy for you.

The halibut we have on the Pacific coast of California is a different fish from its Alaskan cousin. It is quite a bit smaller, although it looks the same. A thirty or forty pounder in San Diego is a real trophy catch and quite a rarity. I have been on Halibut charters in Alaska where we were throwing back thirty pounders to hold open our limit of two for the big boys. One trip our average fish was eighty-five pounds, with a number of hundreds. The San Diego version of this flat fish is better pan sauteed with a nice beurre blanc. The meatier fleshed Alaskan fish are best as beer battered fish and chips or on the grill with a little wood smoke adding some complexity to the flavors.

Tonight Alaskan halibut was on the menu. We had a lot going on so things needed to come together fast. What to do? A very quick treatment that has its inspiration in a little Sicilian dish called pepperonata. We had this halibut dish with boiled baby red potatoes, and grilled asparagus.

Halibut with pepperonata

4 halibut fillets, about 4 ounces each

1 finely chopped shallot

4 cloves garlic, pressed

1 yellow bell pepper

1 red bell pepper

4 oz jarred sun dried tomatoes in oil (Trader Joe's brand is excellent)

4 slices cooked bacon

2 tbsp butter

3 tbsp white wine

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp pine nuts

Cook bacon, set aside, chop when cool. Drain off bacon grease. Add olive oil to pan, saute shallot, garlic, then add chopped bell peppers.

De-glaze pan with the white wine. Add pine nuts. Cook until peppers are tender, but still have body. Add chopped bacon and sun dried tomatoes.

Grill halibut on the barbeque until just done, DO NOT OVERCOOK.

Add butter to pepper mixture, stir in, spoon over the halibut.

Enjoy

Cooking Class on November 14

We will be having a Community Church cooking class on Saturday November 14, 2009. It will be held at Bill Bernard's newly remodeled and very instruction friendly kitchen in Allied Gardens. The menu will be as follows:

Avocado, shrimp, and grapefruit salad with gingered vinaigrette

Apple wood smoked grilled salmon with honey mustard glaze with a hint of Raspberry and wasabi

Rissotto'd orzo with parmigiana

Pecan praline green beans

Crunch top apple pie with cardamom whipped cream

To better interact with cooking students and facilitate hands on instruction, the class size will be limited to 10 students.

Cost is the unbelievably low price of $15.00, meal following to be shared by attendees.

Call Pastor John at 619-583-8200 for further info and to reserve a place.

Fruitfulness and the Cutting Down of Trees

Fall is my favorite time of year. While most of the country receive frost on the pumpkin, the leaves turn scarlet, russet, orange, and yellow, and the animals put on their thick winter coats, our signals of fall are the very epitome of subtlety. Our days are the most clear of the year, temperatures in the high 70's, but with crisp nights (at least crisp for us). The evening sounds change, frogs chirp in the canyon, dozens of different insect sounds begin that are unheard the rest of the year. October and November always give our best sunsets of the year. There is nothing like floating in a kayak on the ocean as the sky begins to be painted in tempera tones before your eyes. We shared the first apple pie of the season with friends. Fall apple pies are better in every way than those made during other seasons. It is also our best time of year for gardening. It is time to clean up the thick and abundant growth of summer and prepare the soil and plant winter crops. Fall is also our very best planting time.

Part of the rhythm of fall planting is making tough long term decisions. Occasionally a tree must be removed because it isn't performing the way it should. I have removed plenty of trees for not performing in the past. The prevailing mood of our times is that performance ought not be taken into account anyway. In soccer tournaments everyone gets a trophy because we would feel badly if anyone had their feelings hurt by not winning. Little League games no longer keep score of runs. We pass everyone on to the the next grade, because we are concerned being held back might damage their self-esteem. It seems the realm of agriculture is the last bastion of the cold, hard, no-nonsense assessment of fruitfulness. To a farmer, a tree gives a return on the investment of space, water, fertilizer, and the time and care of the grower or it is cut down. My post-modern/non-judgmental/failure to criticize mind can barely take in the concept. A living thing should have its life terminated purely for failure to perform? Almost unfathomable.

Preparing apple pies reminded me I have a agonizing decision to make. I am confronted with a four-fold decision of extreme difficulty. Four apple trees of mature age and substantial size need to come down. Adding to the difficulty of the decision is another factor most farmer/businessmen do not face. These four trees have tremendous sentimental value for me. They have names: Anna, Ein Shemer, Gravenstein, and Beverly. Anna was the first tree I planted when we moved into our home. Ein Shemer was a gift from dear Israeli friends from the kibbutz on which it was created in the Gallilee. Beverly was removed from a friend's garden that would have been otherwise cut down. Gravenstein is the most fragrant apple I have ever smelled. It also juices into better cider than any other apple. These trees are dear to me. Removing a tree is not like painting a wall a different color. It is not receiving a bad haircut that will grow out and can be re-fashioned next month. There is a horrendous permanence to a tree's removal. I grieve when I see the stumps of giant sequoias in the Sierra's that are now flat discs of wood twenty feet across that merely give a hint of their former glory as the world's oldest and grandest living things.

The trees will come down. The die is cast. The saw sharpened. My precious tree from the kibbutz is gone, a stump. The rest are next. Why must they be removed?

They have been infected by a tiny pest. How can something so small become such a menace? It looks so inconspicuous. A tiny bit of white fuzz, a little blister or gall, a speck of mildew. They have been overcome by woolly apple aphid. This pest, once active, spreads to every tree in the orchard. The pest does some damage where you can see it, but it is far from distressing to view. In fact it looks like almost no problem at all. Where the real damage happens is the roots. There is no cure, no remedy, no alleviation of this desperate sickness.

The pest travels underground, unable to be reached or affected by any sprays. It travels along the roots of a tree like a truck on a highway till it comes into contact with other apple tree roots. It infects them and moves to the next victim. The bulk of the damage remains unseen above ground. The roots can no longer pull water to the mass of tree above ground. The tree will not be killed by the pest, just become a vector to infect other trees. Oh yes, and one other thing, the tree no longer bears fruit. In spring the flowers still appear, the bees still pollinate them, they give tremendous signs of promise as small apples form. Then later, in the heat of summer every last fruit aborts. There is nothing more pathetic than seeing so much promise turn to empty, lost dreams of what might have been. Such have been my apples of the last twenty years. Perhaps I should have acted sooner. Each year I would say, next year will be different, maybe this will pass. This is most unfortunate and most unpleasant work.

"See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many" Hebrews 12:15. Are we like trees? Can the root of bitterness we possess spread unseen infecting others? Can that infection be a source of trouble, defilement, or discouragement among others in the family of God? Absolutely. I have seen it firsthand. It is every bit as ugly seeing the orchard of the Lord made unfruitful as my own tiny apple orchard. I think that is the very heart of the warning given us by the author of Hebrews.

"I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man or woman remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like an unfruitful branch that is thrown away and withers; such unfruitful branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire and burned......" John 15.

I realize there is biblical warrant for what I am about to finish.......but I am still so saddened.

The Lost Art

I love hospitality. There is really nothing quite like it. I have observed this art performed by a number of folks through the years, people from wildly divergent backgrounds and classes, cultures, and economic status. I treasure the bits and pieces I have learned from each friend and try to put into practice what each person has taught me.

One of the first lessons was taught to us by Bill and Maureen R. Sue and I were newly married, Bill was a small business owner and grad student in two disciplines at two universities. They were as poor as church mice, but they were practitioners of two frequently practiced events that enriched their lives. One was tea. One was conversation. My friend Bill had studied and lived at a Christian commune in Switzerland called L'Abri. L'Abri was home to the great Christian thinker Dr. Francis Schaeffer. For the residents of L'Abri the art of tea and discussion was part of the fabric of life. Bill and Maureen integrated the lessons of tea and talk into their hectic California lifestyles, which is in itself quite a bit of work. Their invitations to tea transformed us. They didn't have the resources to entertain in a grand style, but they made totally amazing tea. Murchies in British Columbia is purveyor of fine tea to the queen of England. They also supplied tea to Bill and Maureen of Polk Street, San Diego. It was, and is exquisite tea. It was the tea they always served. Their philosophy was, "we can't afford much, but let's celebrate in a totally over the top way this small part of our life." So, Murchies it was. Not Lipton, not Costco, not even "Constant Comment," but Murchies- purveyor to the queen. We got to know them over the pleasure and warmth of conversation and a pot of really marvellous tea.

The second lesson was taught to me by Bill and Sarah B. Bill was brilliant, trained as an architect, but dabbled in businesses ranging from Almond orchards in the Central Valley, to oil wells in Texas, and oh yes, a little world renown porcelain business in the family for generations. I will never forget the first time I met them. I was referred to them to do some landscape work by one of their friends. We had spoken on the phone a number of times, but had not yet met, until that fateful Saturday.

I pulled up to a hillside estate in Point Loma I can only describe as breathtaking. If you are familiar with the post cards of San Diego that frame the Bay with the Yacht Club in the foreground, and downtown and the mountains in the background- that is their view. From the moment we met they exuded the most gracious, hospitable, and friendly spirit I have yet to encounter. They informed me they were departing for a weekend getaway. Within twenty minutes of meeting me they said " here is the key to the house, we picked up food for you from "Old Trieste," there are snacks in the fridge, we have picked up other things for you as well, the bathroom is down the hall, oh and by the way, you look like you need a cup of coffee." I had done nothing to deserve such gracious and trusting liberality of spirit. I immediately became their dear friend and was showered with their abundant kindness.

What happened next transformed coffee for me. Bill took coffee beans from the refrigerator, put then in a small grinder and held down a button. The only coffee I ever knew was disgusting granules from a jar one would mix with hot water-instant. Yecccchhhhh. The step up was ground from a can. I thought I really became quite a "gourmet" the first time I bought Yuban. Well, within seconds this aromatic, rich, toasty, scent began to flow from the kitchen through the whole house. It was just coffee. What coffee! But I felt like Ponce de Leon that had found the "fountain of youth." I never smelled anything like it before. This was two decades ago. There was no Starbucks, no whole bean coffee at the grocery store. Then we sipped our coffee. My oh my. I had never had coffee like that before. It so affected me, the first thing I spoke about when I arrived home was not the house or the grounds, nor the new friends, nor the other aspects of Bill and Sarah's incredible graciousness, but that coffee. Those kinds of moments freeze time for me. Over coffee with Bill, I told him I was uncomfortable with being given the key to their house and the run of their home. Bill said,"Friends I trust, like and trust you, and a house and its contents- it is just stuff, but friendships, now that is real treasure." Bill is one the reasons I am writing this blog. Twenty-five years ago Bill told me, "you really should write down the things you know, maybe even do a subscription newsletter on gardening." He was ahead of his time. Through the years, we had many lingering cups of french roast at "A la Francaise" before it was cool in America to do that.

I learned hospitality doesn't need to be opulent to be grand. Taking time to chat pays intangible dividends. Enjoy some small bit of something grandiose on occasion. Make someone an esteemed and honored guest in your home, even the plumber or landscaper. Hospitality is commanded by God, who sets the standard of warmth, undeserved love, graciousness, and hospitality. Folks that love God and people should have well worn homes lovingly put into service for others. As my friend Bill said "It's just stuff." Make some coffee or tea and share it with someone. Converse a little. You will be reviving one of the lost arts.

Deep Fried Goodness

What is it about hot oil that makes things taste so good? At least I think they taste good. At the Del Mar Fair each year there is always some new item that has been deep fried. I hear the latest thing to hit the grease was the ignoble twinkie. You can have my twinkie, deep fried or otherwise. I will save the calories for something that actually tastes good.

As a child, fish and chips was one of my favorite comfort foods. Some renditions were so-so. Some were worthy of permanent recollection in childhood's best tastes. There was H.Salt Esquire (o.k), Mr. Fish and Chips (better), and Arthur Treacher's (the best). Who knew that an old English character actor would run such a great "chippie." The reason that fish tastes so good deep fried is that the batter completely seals the piece of fish. Every bit of flavor is encapsulated within the jacket of batter. The fish also retains every bit of moisture.

The English and Irish really do a nice job of fish and chips. Most often, the fish of choice in the chippies (chippers in Ireland) is spiny dogfish, a type of bottom dwelling shark. It is very good. In Ensenada fish taco stands they use "anjelito" or little angel for their fish of choice. This is the angel shark, another type of bottom dwelling shark. They are neither little nor angelic looking. In the UK and Ireland you will also find cod and skate wing. Skate is a type of ray, and is pretty tasty. The down side is the bones which are long and thin and run the length of the wing.

I have wonderful memories of a cold wet January in Ireland with my daughters Allison and Erika. We found two orders of fish and chips made a satisfying and inexpensive meal. There are two famous purveyors of fried fish in Dublin, Beshoff's and Leo Burdock's. Burdock's was founded in 1913 and has been in the same place ever since. Beshoff's near the O'Connell street spire was founded in 1916. Skip Beshoff's altogether. Go to Leo Burdocks. Delicious, full fillets of cod with crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside chips. By the way, do not ask for catsup. And certainly do not ask for tartar sauce. They will give you a hostile glare and point to some nasty packets in a bin. You don't need catsup or tartar sauce. The crispy, steamy, fresh fish and ethereal potatoes are best with a sprinkle of salt and a splash of malt vinegar. The down side to Burdock's is they have no tables, not even a place to stand and eat. Take your paper wrapped comfort food and find a curb or a park bench and chow down. We ate ours on a curb in front of one of the swankiest hotels in Dublin. I think we looked like little tourist urchins eating our peasant food. How rewarding to be a peasant.

I love to make fish and chips at home. At the Sun Street chippie we also cook onions in the batter (from what my guests tell me, the best onion rings ever), also try trimmed whole green onions, and green beans. Yes, you heard correctly. Green beans. Even people that swear they don't like green beans like these. Slices of zucchini, slices of acorn squash, and mushrooms all equally enjoy a battered hot oil spa treatment. Here are a few suggestions that can get you frying in no time.

1) Cook outside. Let me repeat that. Cook outside. The oil goes airborne and will cover every surface in your house. It doesn't wipe off. Do you want a fine coating of oil on your Van Gogh canvas in the living room? The smell will also linger for a week.

2) I use a propane burner outside that will give me sufficient heat. You need to cook at 375 degrees. NO COOLER. Use a candy thermometer if you lack experience.

3) Use a high quality vegetable oil (no canola), or peanut oil. Peanut oil is expensive but good at high temperatures and imparts no other flavors to the food.

4) Cook fries first. They take three to four times longer to cook than the fish. Veggies take about twice as long as fish. In your cooking progression start potatoes first, keep them in the oven on warm while veggies cook, then cook the fish.

5) Use a fresh, good quality white fish. Bass, cod, rock fish, halibut (halibut is insanely good made into chips), or ling cod (another favorite of mine, can be hard to find). Slice it into 1 1/2 inch strips for even coating and cooking.

6) Make a beer batter. Roughly 3 cups of flour. 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, dash of pepper, and 2/3 bottle of ice cold beer. My own personal favorite is Newcastle Brown Ale. It imparts a malty, rich flavor. The batter takes a little experience to read. Play with it. It should not be to thick. You want the batter light and airy. On the other hand, too thin, and the batter will run off without coating and remaining till being placed in the hot oil. Whisk ingredients together.

7) Buy a spider. Don't get ahead of yourselves bug-haters and arachnophobics. A spider is a cooking tool sold in Asian markets with a wire basket secured to a bamboo handle. The best tool for deep frying, especially if you do not own a "dedicated" single tasker deep fryer.

Go do a little tempura. But please, keep the twinkies out of my hot oil. That is just wrong somehow.