use real butter

Recipe: black cod with miso

Over a year ago, I was contacted by the program director of the Denver Botanic Gardens about giving a lecture and doing a workshop for their Bonfils Series. We met over tacos at Pica’s and I cobbled together a proposal – something to inject a little ethnic culture and cuisine into Denver. I asked my friends Manisha, Todd, and Diane if they wanted to join me and then we worked out a date… October 20-21, 2011. That seemed quite far off, and now look – it’s next week!

If you’re near the Denver area, we’d love to have you come to our lecture: Three Food Blogs, Three Cuisines, Infinite Inspiration on Thursday, October 20, 2011 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. If you want to arrive early (5:30 pm) there will be some great Denver food trucks to grab a nosh! On Friday, October 21, 2011, the four of us will lead a workshop in the kitchen facility where we will share and demonstrate Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese recipes and cooking techniques. The workshop runs from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm with a short break in the middle for participants to grab lunch. So come join us for great stories, fantastic food, and heaps of laughter. We can’t wait to meet you!

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I see more bare branches than aspen leaves around my neighborhood, thanks to the winds that whipped through here a few days prior. While walking Kaweah on the local trails this evening, I could see the skeletal dried flowers, puffballs, and solitary leaves shivering in the cold. They make a sad rattling noise as the winds race along the ground. They crunch underpaw when Kaweah goes careening off the trail to sniff something. Sunset comes earlier each day and practically sneaks up on us. When we came home from Boulder on Monday, I looked out the window to see some Kelvin-Helmholtz waves over the Continental Divide. These clouds are typically short-lived, but to get them at sunset? SCORE! Jeremy and I love to geek out on beautiful examples of fluid dynamics at work.

indicative of high shear aloft (SCIENCE!!!)

We had no such glorious clouds at sunset today, but that’s okay because I had something glorious going on in the kitchen. On my fall colors recon/40th birthday long weekend, Jeremy and I spent a couple of days in Aspen. One evening, we went to Matsuhisa for dinner because so many had recommended it. I have to say, I was pretty underwhelmed with the sushi and sashimi which was decent, but seriously overpriced. However, the items we ordered from the kitchen were pretty phenomenal like their heirloom tomato salad with cilantro dressing or the black cod with miso. Let’s talk about that black cod with miso. Melt. In. Your. Mouth. I’ve been obsessing over it ever since.

white miso paste, mirin, sake, sugar, black cod fillet

Flipping through some of my own books, I found a miso black cod recipe. But a quick search on the internets led me to the recipe from Matsuhisa on Food and Wine! The anticipation was crushing. I checked my local Whole Foods and asked my buddy Dustin (he’s the head of Seafood) when they’d have some black cod in. We talked about the recipe and he nodded, “That’s good stuff.” I just had to be patient. Upon my return home from my road trip, I picked up some groceries at Whole Foods and saw they had black cod fillets on ice. YES, PLEASE.

pour the mirin and sake into a small saucepan

whisk the sugar in with the miso, mirin, and sake

pour the miso marinade into a baking dish to cool

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: agedashi tofu

[A Fund for Jennie Raffle Update: Kaweah has done her job and picked two winners. I’m waiting to get confirmation that the winners made donations. I’ll announce the winners in my next post! And again, my sincerest thanks for your support and generosity to help Jennie.]

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While most people who maintain a blog fancy themselves writers and/or photographers, I don’t necessarily equate blogger with writer or photographer. I’ve never considered myself a writer, just someone who never shuts up. And even though I am not any flavor of good writer, I know what I like to read. A favorite blog of mine happens to belong to one of my favorite people. Certainly you’ve heard of Tea & Cookies? Tea (Tara) is a friend of mine and she paints scenes, feelings, stories with her words that flow so naturally. I’m there with her in her writing, or at least wishing I was. She recently released an ebook on her time spent in Japan – a country, culture, and people so dear to her:

I’m sending the little book I’ve written out into the world. It’s not the full story of my five years in Japan—just the first part (if there is interest, I will continue it). I’m selling it as a fundraiser, to raise money to continue supporting people who have had their lives shattered. A portion of the money will be donated directly to organizations doing work in the earthquake zone, a portion I may use to put in place some morale boosting efforts. There will be more information about that in the next month or so, along with some creative ways you may be able to participate (this could be fun!). They have to do the hard work of rebuilding, but we can cheer them along, remind them of hope and kindness.

you can read tea’s entire post here

You can purchase Tales from High Mountain in PDF or for Kindle. The price? A mere $3.99. Funds go to Japan and so do you. You travel with Tea to the mountains and explore a wholly different way of life through her young and curious eyes. I’m pretty sure this is going to cost me more than the $3.99 I spent on the ebook because now I want to go to there. It’s a beautiful account of her first months in Japan after college: honest, sincere, naive, respectful. Tea has a way of putting you right there – like a first person shooter game without the artillery. And of course there are the foods, traditions, celebrations, rituals, and several recipes she includes at the end. A truly delightful read that transported me across the Pacific. I highly recommend it.

In honor of Tea’s book, I’m sharing one of my favorite Japanese dishes with you today. Whenever I would see my late grandma, I would often take her out for sushi at least once during each visit. Knowing that she loved tofu, I’d order the agedashi tofu appetizer from the kitchen for us to enjoy together. It’s a tender, silky tofu with a crisp fried coating in a small pool of dashi-based broth. There would be grated ginger, daikon radish, and bonito flakes served on top. It usually arrived steaming hot and was especially welcome on those cooler winter nights in California.

cornstarch, silken tofu, green onion, daikon radish, ginger, bonito flakes

grate the ginger and the daikon radish

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: mee krob

It’s taken me a few years to figure this out, but I think I have finally turned a photo roadtrip into a nice mini vacation for Jeremy as well. This basically means I’m learning to chill out a little. Just a little. And that’s hard to do in a place like Crested Butte when hillsides are bursting with colorful wildflowers while snow still lingers on the high peaks. I’m getting a lot better at knowing when to call it good, put the camera gear away and grab the bike to go exploring with Jeremy. We helped a fellow who broke his shoulder (he went over the handlebars on the trail) down the trail to get help. We even hit the bike park!

not a bad place to live – at the base of mount crested butte

and the town serves up some creative martinis (red raspberry)

cruising the lupines

it’s mind-blowingly beautiful

All of the snaps from the trip are on the photo blog.

Everywhere we went, there was a constant buzzing – that high-pitched whistle of hummingbirds zipping from flower to tree to chasing off another hummingbird and back to the flowers. They are territorial little guys. I spied two kinds.

the broad-tailed hummingbird

and the rufous

More hummingbirds here.

There aren’t a lot of places that make me question how much I love living where I live, but Crested Butte is certainly one of them. I’m not the wistful type and yet that place makes me point to random plots of land and ask Jeremy, “Is there any way you could be a freelance astrophysicist?”

wild iris and yellow paintbrush

delphinium, golden eye, and mule’s ears

lupine, scarlet gilia, and golden eye

sticky geranium

See the whole set on the photo blog.

Realistically, I’m doubting I could make the move to Crested Butte because I need to get my Asian on. We’re not just talking about Asian restaurants, I’m referring to Asian groceries. I need to feed my addiction for all things Chinese, Thai, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Malaysian so I can make favorite dishes like mee krob. I had no idea what preserved garlic was (it’s really pickled garlic), but found it at my local Asian grocer, much to my delight!

rice vermicelli, fish sauce, vinegar, pickled garlic, tamarind, shrimp, sprouts, paprika, sugar

pickled/preserved garlic

**Jump for more butter**