Perfect Egg Salad

Eggs must be boiled to creamy yellow yolk. Never overcook. Once you get those green iron sulfides, or whatever they are, it smells eggier. (Yep, just looked it up. Iron in the yolk combining with sulfur in the white. That's why it only happens on the outside I'm a genius).

Meticulously turned through three dimensions in the egg slicer, creamy yolk mixed with mayo, a touch of sri racha, a touch of dijon. Look at that texture. Spread on fresh bread. And Triscuits. I love egg salad on Triscuits. The salt and texture combine perfectly.

Best Practices Fried Rice

This fried rice incorporates leftovers from six different meals including three batches of white rice and three breakfasts of scrambled eggs my kids didn't eat. I resurrected limp takeout chinese chicken by tossing in char siu sauce, and broiling on cast iron into sweet, sticky, half burnt, nasty, delicious cracklin's.   Mix all, season light with a little soy sauce and even less sweetened rice vinegar; add peanuts, salt shrimp, chopped scallion, and serve with lime and hot sauce.  Also finely shredded inner romaine leaves in lieu of bean sprouts, which are so rarely fresh enough for me that I stopped looking.

Blackened Cod Tamale

This started as an effort towards blackened cod, which doesn't work because the cod flakes apart.  Instead I wrapped them in fresh corn husks, a la tamale, and blackened them instead.  This contained the fish, which sort of steamed, and the blackening spice on the corn husks came off on the food, the plate, the fingers when you open them, and seasoned the fish lightly.   I included the corn kernels in the tamale as a nod to the tamale's staple cooked corn meal filling.  Served with lemon wedges -- well, OK, slices, and just a couple of drops of hot sauce.  

The Schnitzel Whisperer

Chicken breast cut into even, horizontal thirds with my sushi knife, and pounded yet thinner still. Egg, breaded, fried.  Before I got the hang of it, I kept the oil too hot, and I had to bread all the cutlets in advance so I could keep rotating fresh chicken in to keep the temperature down.  Now I use a lower temperature, and can bread the cutlets as I go along and feed the kids at the same time (they sit on stools at a butcher block to my back as a cook).  Multitasking through a a couple pounds of cutlets and feeding the kids, I said 'just LOOK at this!  I am the f*ing Schnitzel Whisperer.'

Friday NIght Chicken

In 'Kim', Rudyard Kipling describes chicken 'stewed to rags with prunes and olives'.  I keep it in mind for Friday night chicken -- though I didn't have prunes and olives last night.  Two (or three) kinds of soy sauce, and strawberry jam are the staple ingredients.  And Kosher chicken, 'cause it's shabbat.  Simmer long and slow, and broil to crisp.

Baked Haddock

Bought a fresh haddock, about 5 pounds, from Connelly's Seafood in Gloucester.  Basted it with wine and olive oil during roasting, and served with root vegetables in herbs from the garden.  Haddock salad rolls the next day.

Sushi and Steel

 A shout out to Shinichi Watanabe (watanabeblade.com) for the intro set that taught me about japanese knives.  And the boys from CLAW.

Anyway, here's my hand at sushi.