Roasted Whole Branzino in Cherry Tomato Sauce

I freaking love my new kitchen. I love all the counter space on the island, the granite counter tops, the deep sink. The hanging pot rack still has me a little paranoid that one day all of it is going to come crashing down. But nonetheless, I still make good use of it.

Once I got all my kitchen things out of their boxes and in their proper places, and organized my pantry-and-utility-closet-and-laundry-room, it was time to get back to regular cooking. And this was one of the first meals I made for myself once the kitchen was up and running. It's super simple, so I won't go into details on the procedure.

Whole Foods recently started carrying fresh whole fish. Or maybe they've been carrying whole fish for a while now and I'm just late to the party. Either way, their Mediterranean sea bass (branzini) looked fascinating. It was already gutted, and the guy at the counter gladly scaled it for me. Pret-à-cuisiner.

All I did with it was rub its skin with olive oil, season liberally with salt and crushed black pepper and a little bit of dried oregano, and stuff the cavity with a couple of springs of fresh rosemary and fresh dill and 3 thin slices of lemon. Put it in an oven-safe roasting pan and put it in an oven preheated to 375 deg for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, flip the fish to its other side, and set the oven to broil for 2 minutes.

I made a really simple sauce to go with it, using grape tomatoes, shallots, fresh dill, and sake.  Why sake? I didn't have any white wine in house, and I was enjoying the fantastic sake I brought back from my trip to Japan. Call it a successful experiment.

I did feel a little guilty using my good sake for cooking, so the 2nd time around with this sauce, I bought the cheapo stuff that's everywhere in the States, Gekkeikan. It's unfortunate that the standard bottle of Gekkeikan in the US is not really that good (served chilled, anyway), even though it's one of Japan's oldest breweries. Actually one of the world's oldest companies, est 1637. And they have a wide variety of premium sake sold overseas that I'm sure are way better than what we have access to.

Sauté some shallots in olive oil and add 1 cup of halved grape tomatoes, then add about a half cup of sake and the fresh dill.

Quick, easy, and tasty. Just watch out for bones.

Easy Boeuf Bourguignon

Recipe Source: Everyday Food on PBS/Create

I'm lazy. I admit it. I've wanted to explore French cooking more, and I've taken a look at a bunch of classic Julia Child recipes. But all of the prep involved, the lengthy ingredient lists, and the sheer amount of butter involved were a bit of a deterrent. So when I found a stripped-down version of Boeuf Bourguignon on TV, I was eager to try it out. Besides, I've been on a braising kick since I got my enameled cast-iron dutch oven.

One of this recipe's ingredients is, plainly stated, "bacon." So I picked up the first kind that I saw at the market, thick-cut applewood-smoked. Following the recipe through, the end result was some really tender beef, but the wine/beef/herb flavors completely overwhelmed by the bacon. In other words, beef and carrots in bacon-smoke sauce, not as tasty as it sounds. But trying the recipe again with the non-smoked variety of bacon made a world of difference. You could really appreciate the wine in the sauce, get the sweetness of the carrots and pearl onions, and the bacon doesn't distract from anything else.

My initial failure with the recipe brought up an interesting philosophical question. Is there such a thing as bacon-overkill? Or is bacon capable of making a dish worse?

I mean, it's a fact that is ingrained into everyone's mind (every non-vegetarian or non-kosher/halal eater's mind, anyway), that Bacon Equals Better. To improve a salad, use bacon bits. For extra flavor in your chicken marsala, use pancetta. How can something as perfect as bacon possibly decrease enjoyment of food?

It's such a universally accepted fact that people are now buying bacon-flavored chocolate. I've actually tried it, at Whole Foods in a bacon-chocolate gelato. And it tasted like savory/sweet angels dancing upon my taste-buds. Umm... I mean it was kind of good. The lady next to me in line said "Oh, I've had bacon-chocolate before. My girlfriends and I had a bacon-chocolate tasting party last weekend." The first thing in my mind was "why the hell was I not informed of this baco-choco sub-culture?"

But I digress

Bon Dieu, c'est si bon

Oh Snap [Vol 3]: Maison Bouachon

My grocery shopping this week was geared toward French meals. Salade Niçoise, Chicken à la Provençal, and Beef Burgundy. This means that I needed to buy some wine for the recipes, so I went to Specs, of course. Seriously, they have everything.

I decided on a Côtes-du-Rhône red. CdR is a region along the Rhone river in the Provence area of France, known for its rustic landscapes and slow pace of life, in total contrast from Paris. My friend Dom and I spent 3 days in Avignon back in 2008, and we absolutely loved the region, especially after we took a winery tour in the famous Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine country. We loved it so much that, between the 2 of us, we brought back 12 or 13 bottles of wine :)

So at Specs, I was perusing the Côtes-du-Rhône shelf. I saw 1 particular bottle, and I caught myself from saying out loud "holy shit." It was from Maison Bouachon! That was the first of the 3 wineries where Dom and I were taken on our guided tour! This brought back some good memories of the trip.

The ruins of the eponymous Chateauneuf-du-Pape (new castle of the Pope)

Look at all those vines.

Mont Ventoux (of the Tour de France course) in the background.

With my rusty French, and our bilingual tour guide, Dom and I talked with the winemaker, who was a really nice guy. He wasn't snobby like the next winemaker we visited, and didn't turn his nose up at us for not identifying the aromas in the wine. He disliked people who have to come up with ridiculously flowery language for describing the wine: "an arrogant red," "notes of damp topsoil and granite," and other B.S. He taught us how to really find the aromas and told us to just describe what the wine feels like. We bought a good number of bottles from him. The next winemaker scoffed at us for not identifying notes of the local wildflower, the auberpine. We scoffed back by not buying a damn thing from him.