Piccolo Restaurant - a great new Minneapolis restaurant, and where my sis cooks!

Rick and I were in Minnesota visiting my family this weekend and we had dinner at Piccolo, a new restaurant in Minneapolis that is getting rave reviews (recently crowned best new restaurant 2010 by CityPages - read the review here) - and my sister Linh cooks there!

Dinner was fantastic and it was really fun to take my parents here to experience what my sister is so excited and privileged to be doing every day at work.  The menu is set up as all smaller composed dishes to mix and match and share. Think of it as a tasting menu you put together yourself.  The food was really delicious and Rick and I thought dinner was pretty reasonable for a restaurant doing food at this level - each dish was about $10/dish on average.  They also have a great wine list with very reasonable options as well as a full range of prices.  If you are in the Twin Cities, or will be visiting, go there!

I don't usually take pics at restaurants but given that it's where my sister works, I did this evening.  Some have some funky shadows and by the end of the meal it was definitely getting dark.  I missed a few dishes but managed to get most of them.

Fennel, radish, and mushroom salad with lemon and truffle oil

This is one of my favorite salads and can be made in a cinch with a mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor.  Thinly sliced fennel, radishes, and mushrooms are tossed with lemon, olive oil, and a drizzle of white truffle oil to finish - it's so light and refreshing and that hint of truffle is so good!  I use a little truffle salt and truffle oil, but if you don't have either, it's still a great salad just tossed with lemon and a good olive oil.  It's perfect on a warm spring or summer night alongside grilled, pan-seared or broiled chicken, pork chops or even steaks.

• 1 large fennel bulb, trimmed and cored, fennel fronds reserved
• 1 small bunch radishes, about 8-10 radishes, trimmed
• 8 - 10 white button mushrooms, cleaned and stems trimmed
• Zest of one lemon
• 2 Tbsp. lemon juice, more to taste
• 1 Tbsp. high quality extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp. kosher salt, more to taste 
• 1/2 tsp. truffle salt or porcini salt, more to taste - if you don't have this, just increase kosher salt a bit
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper, more to taste
• 1 Tbsp. white truffle oil, more to taste - black truffle oil works too

Trim the fennel, radishes and mushrooms. To trim the fennel bulb, remove the outer layer if it seems a little dried out, tough, or bruised, slice the bulb lengthwise, and then cut out the core in a triangle on each half. Trim the tops of any stem ends attached to the bulb. Chop the fennel fronds and set aside (this particular fennel bulb I used did not have a lot of fronds still attached, but it's great when you get one with a lot of fronds to add to the salad).  

Thinly slice the fennel, radishes and mushrooms using a mandoline, the slicing disc of a food processor, or with a knife.  If using a mandoline, I like to set it to 1/16".  In the bottom of a large mixing or salad bowl, stir together olive oil, half of the truffle oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, kosher salt, truffle or porcini salt, and pepper.  Add sliced vegetables and reserved fennel fronds and toss well.  Taste and adjust seasoning with additional salt or lemon juice to your own tastes.  Drizzle the remaining truffle oil and a tiny sprinkle of truffle or porcini salt if using, over the top and serve.

Slow-cooked pork shouler, Vietnamese style

It's been cold all week here in New York!  So, here's a hearty dish perfect for days when you don't mind having the oven on for a few hours.  

This is an easy recipe for dinner - you could do it on the stove top, in a dutch oven in the oven, or in a slow cooker.  A pork shoulder is slow-cooked for a few hours with fish sauce, chicken broth, canned tomatoes, garlic and onions for a salty (in a good way) pork stew that is delicious with some brown or jasmine rice.

This dish is also easy to adapt to other cuts of pork - spareribs are also delicious.  I sometimes also add pickled mustard greens, which you can find at your local Asian grocery store or market.  If using pickled mustard, cut down the fish sauce to 1/4 cup as the mustard is fairly salty.  When using pickled mustard, take it out of the package and rinse it well before chopping it up into big chunks and adding it to the pot

• 1 small to medium pork shoulder - about 5 to 6 lbs.
• 1/3 cup fish sauce, nuoc mam
• 2 onions
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1 x 28 oz. cans diced tomatoes or whole, peeled tomatoes, broken up into smaller pieces
• 3 Tbsp. kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp. ground pepper
• 1 Tbsp. freshly ground pepper
• 3 cups chicken broth

Score skin and rub salt and pepper all over pork shoulder.  Cut onions in half lengthwise and then each half into 4 wedges.  In a dutch oven, large pot, or slow cooker, pour chicken broth into the pot and put the pork shoulder in. Pour the fish sauce,  and tomatoes over it.  Scatter onions and garlic around the pork.  If using pickled mustard, scatter the mustard around the pork as well.

If cooking on the stovetop, bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for about 2-1/2 to 3 hours, rotating once or twice, until meat is tender and the meat easily comes apart.

If cooking in a dutch oven, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Place dutch oven with lid in the oven for about 3 hours or more until tender, rotating once or twice during cooking time.  Taste and adjust seasoning with a little more fish sauce if you like.  Remove skin and whatever fat you would like to remove before serving.  Serve with brown or white jasmine rice and some slices of cucumber or a simple boiled vegetable to round out the meal.

Lentil patties

I realized I had a lot of stuff in the pantry that I needed to start using up including several bags of beans and lentils so I was looking for some inspiration in cooking up some lentils. Heidi Swanson at 101cookbooks.com has an amazing looking recipe for vegetarian lentil burgers using black lentils and she actually splits the burger and puts lettuce and avocado in the middle rather than using a bun - it looks so good!  So, I was inspired to make some kind of lentil burger or patty with one of my bags of lentils - I settled on the red ones.

I seasoned these lentil patties with carrots, onions, cilantro, scallion, cumin, and ginger and served them with a tzatziki-inspired sauce - a yogurt sauce with mint, cilantro, mint, scallion, grated cucumber, garlic and lemon juice. Because I made the patties with some stronger flavors, I made the yogurt sauce a little more mild to balance out the flavors, so I eased up on the garlic and didn't add too much salt, but you can adjust to your own tastes.  Click here for the recipe.

Red lentils cook much more quickly than other kinds do, and resemble mung beans or split yellow peas when they are cooked.  They are reddish orange in the package and when cooked are really more yellow.  They can cook up in about 10-12 minutes or so without soaking, or if you think about it earlier, you can go ahead and soak them and they really do cook to tender in just a few minutes.  A 1 pound bag of lentils should yield about 6 cups of cooked lentils, depending on your lentils.  I had a little more than 6 so put aside the extra to throw into my salad for lunch (try adding lentils to your salads for a little more protein sometime).   If you want to use the whole amount of cooked lentils from your 1 pound bag and it's more than 6 cups, you can just up the rest of the ingredients a little bit - don't worry too much about an exact conversion - this recipe is pretty forgiving.  If your mixture seems too loose, add some more breadcrumbs, if too dry, add another egg or a little bit of water.  You can fry up a tiny bit to taste and then adjust the spices and seasoning if needed.

This is an easy recipe that comes together pretty quickly and is open to endless possibilities in spices and seasoning.  You can also easily halve the recipe if you don't want to have 18 patties.  You can also make this vegan by omitting the side of yogurt.

Yogurt sauce with mint, cilantro, scallion and cucumber

This recipe is for a lightly seasoned tzatziki-inspired sauce to serve with my lentil patties (click here for the recipe), but if you want one that is more aggressively seasoned, you can increase the garlic and salt.

This yogurt sauce is great with almost anything - over grilled vegetables or grilled meats or seafood.  When we used to live in Chicago and had a grill (we really miss having a grill!), we would often grill up tons of bell peppers, zucchini, onions and broccoli and then some simply seasoned chicken thighs or pork chops and would serve them with a few dollops of tzatziki - so nice on a summer night!

• 2 cups thick Greek-style yogurt - I use nonfat or low fat but you can use full fat if you like
• 1 cucumber, peeled and seeds removed, or if you're using a seedless cucumber, you can just trim the ends and use
• 1 sliced scallion
• 1 large clove of garlic, very finely minced, or increase if you want a stronger garlic flavor
• 1/3 cup chopped cilantro
• 1/2 cup chopped mint
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice, more to taste
• 2 tsp. kosher salt, more to taste
• 1 tsp. black pepper

Grate the cucumber on the large holes of a box grater, sprinkle 1 tsp. salt over the grated cucumber and mix together, and place in a fine mesh strainer set over a bowl or the sink to drain for a while.  When you're ready to put the sauce together, squeeze as much water as you can out of the grated cucumber.  

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the cucumber , the remaining 1 tsp. kosher salt, and the rest of the ingredients together.  Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour or more so the flavors come together.  Before serving, taste and adjust seasoning with more salt or lemon juice.

April restaurants

The weather is getting nicer and we are getting out more - we had some fantastic meals this month!  Keep reading for my accounts of eating at Franny's, Momofuku Noodle Bar, Pulino's, a few Chinese restaurants in different New York Chinatowns, Japanese yakitori and takoyaki at Yakitori Taisho, the Brooklyn Filipino restaurant Umi Nom, pupusas at the Brooklyn Flea (pictured here), tapas at Boqueria SoHo, Terroir, Vietnamese pho at Cong Ly in Chinatown, Freeman's, Bellini, Aurora SoHo, Taiwanese gua bao at Baohaus, and French-African fare at Kush.

It was also the season for ramps so we had a few seasonal dishes with ramps that were fun - ramps over mackerel, ramps over grilled asparagus with rhubarb, and ramp croquetas.

Whole wheat spaghetti carbonara with ramps, and Happy 101 Award!

I recently was contacted by Nancy over at www.spiciefoodie.blogspot.com to let me know that she was giving me the Happy 101 Award for being one of 10 blogs that make her happy - how sweet!

Please check out her blog sometime - it's so great! She's a Mexican expat living in Europe and posts about all kinds of recipes, from all kinds of European recipes to Mexican recipes, like this recipe for homemade chorizo.  Thanks for the shout out Nancy!

I'd like to post a recipe that made me happy today - whole wheat spaghetti carbonara with bacon and ramps.  And I served it in my new Brooklyn bowls that also made me happy :)

Ramps, or wild leeks, are only here for a brief time in the spring and are reason for many home cooks and chefs to celebrate all over the place.  I do like them, but I don't go quite as crazy over them as a lot of people I know.  But that said, they are really great in all kinds of dishes - over the last month, I've had a number of dishes are restaurants that included them, like ramp fritters, mackerel with ramps, grilled asparagus with ramps and rhubarb.  This weekend, we bought two bunches at our local farmers market and made a whole wheat spaghetti carbonara with ramps - yum!  They are often described as tasting kind of like a cross between scallions or onions and garlic - they can have a really pungent smell that can be a bit off-putting, but give them a little saute and they really are nice.

We made a simple but delicious carbonara with whole wheat pasta, some bacon, ramps and eggs from the farmer's market, and some good parmigiano reggiano - simple to throw together and really tasty!