DIVORCE, A HOT ‘DIP IN THE POT’, AND A DAMN GOOD MEAL AT IKEA (YES, IKEA)

A lot has happened since my last post. On the downside I went through a VERY nasty divorce to a vindictive lawyer (ugh), endured another long illness and moved to a place that can truly be called ‘hell on earth’ in the summer months. On the upside I kicked an addiction, wrote a novel and started a trendy (but fulfilling) long distance relationship with a beautiful Swedish girl. In the words of the Grateful Dead, “what a long strange trip it’s been”. Through it all I maintained my curiosity and passion for that peculiar magic that can only happen in a kitchen. Well, for awhile anyway.

Soon after the divorce was finalized I was forced to seek shelter in the, shall we politely say, ‘lower echelon’ of the city. My kitchen shrank by two thirds, and with it, my tools. Fading finances from legal bills dictated the liquidation of my cherished pots and pans. Three different sauce pans, all with their own individual personalities and purpose shrank to one beat-up and chipped porcelain thrift store pan. My favorite stock pot was replaced by a lopsided aluminum pot that, when viewed from above, resembled a flat tire on a two ton semi-truck. I went from a state-of-the-art self cleaning gas oven to a wobbly box with four leaky burners that could make the most jaded of thrill seekers swoon. It was not what one would call ideal conditions to flambé a cherry jubilee or roulade a tender strip of Venison, but it was all I had. For awhile I made a challenge of it, determined to dominate and control a very uncontrollable  environment. With a stove that made a toy store Easy-Bake Oven look professional and pots and pans that were barely a step above tin foil wrapped around flower pots, it was an impossibility. Add to that the equation of cooking complex and involved meals for a party of one and my passion started to fade like the green of oxidized avocado flesh. I knew I was towards the end when I suddenly realized I was eating champagne poached scollops with Blanco Modena & truffle oil off a flimsy paper plate while standing over the sink watching an infomercial for a bogus non-stick skillet.  I was struck by the thought I now had no personal regard for the culinary high art I was stuffing into my mouth, only a begrudging lament for the time spent preparing such an extravagant meal. I had to find a way back to my cooking roots, a reason not to fill the freezer with dollar store TV dinners and bean-padded precooked burritos. Strangely, salvation came in the form of a Swedish love.

Although she was roughly 10,000 miles away, technology afforded us all the closeness a couple can have short of being in the same room together. In time she would visit, but for now we had to make the most of the marvels technology offered, and we did. Everything was shared through phone, Skype, text and video. I was immersed in her world, from trips sent live from the bus on her way to work to stops at the market to buy ‘pickled beet root’. I watched as dinners were planned and cooked and I got lessons on ‘Husmanskost’, traditional Swedish foods based on classic country cooking. She made odd Swedish casseroles like ‘Janssons Frestelse’ and showed me the best way to serve ‘Dip In The Pot’ (pieces of rye bread with butter or meat dipped in hot ham bouillon). The relationship grew until, like everything that is good in this world, there developed a bittersweet edge. The senses beyond eyes and ears longed to be stimulated. Yes, I could vier off at this point and turn this blog into an ‘adults only’ rant, but much like the sensual nature of sex, food can offer the same intoxicating quality. As I watched her work for a full week preparing the Christmas holiday smorgasbord, I became increasingly agitated I could not be present at the buffet style feast of foods and wines that made up her menu for the day-long eating binge. She sensed my frustration and offered a suggestion to my discontentment. Just one simple word. "Ikea".

IKEA? 

Really??? 

I’m sure everyone reading this knows of Ikea, the Swedish owned masochistic do-it-yourself home furnishings store. And I’m sure most of you also know Ikea offers an in-store restaurant specializing in a set menu of Swedish dishes (be it limited) such as Swedish Meatballs (with mashed potato, gravy and lingonberry jam). But if you are like me, you’ve questioned the ‘authenticity’ of both the furniture and the culinary fare. Do Swedes really eat meatballs as a standard? They do. My Swedish love said so. She also said the people of Sweden not only fill their homes with wares from Ikea stores, they often travel out of their way just to enjoy a meal in the palatial ‘factory like’ setting of the dining area. And on holidays, like Christmas, Ikea holds a month long holiday smorgasbord (yes, all you can eat for one price) that features succulent ‘holiday only’ dishes that “taste as good as mum use to make”. I was sold and the next day I headed to the Burbank Ikea for a taste of Sweden and, hopefully, a further pronounced connection to the beautiful girl who was so close and yet so far.

The holiday smorgasbord in American Ikeas, unlike those held in Swedish Ikeas, comes but once a year and I’d just missed it. There was an upcoming ‘Midsummer celebration smorgasbord’ and I quickly made sure to RSVP a spot. For now, the daily (rarely changing) Ikea menu would have to suffice. Once one gets past the shrill echoing of children screaming for attention through crowds of hungry build-it-yourself shoppers and one looks beyond the surrounding low decor on par with a high school cafeteria lunch room, the food at Ikea has a way of transporting one into calmness. It is, after all, nothing more than swedish comfort food. I’d ordered the obligatory Meatballs (with gravy, mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam), Swedish tapas (smoked Salmon, salmon mousse and shrimp with root vegetables) and a Najad salmon ‘salad’ (cold smoked marinated thin slices of Najad salmon under a scoop of lime marinated vegetables). I threw in a desert cookie to top the meal off. At the cashier my well worn twenty dollar bill got me change in return. There was no wonder it was so crowded. As I dug into the meatballs, supported by a velvety light brown gravy, I realized these were not like my ‘mum’ use to make, there were no chunks of undercooked onion poking out under a cover of cooked-on ketchup and it didn’t explode with bread crumbs like a baseball filled with sawdust. It was dense with meat and rich and complex in flavor. I couldn’t put my finger on what made it so different, but I enjoyed every bite. The same with the potatoes, they too were heavy with a profound richness. The lingonberry jam was just icing on the cake. I Skyped the meal to my girl in Sweden and insisted she share the recipe to this anomaly known as the ‘Swedish meatball’. “And I want to know how to make all the fixin’s too” I added, scrapping the last of the gravy from the plate with the side of the fork. She shook her head and laughed - after all, this was just a meatball I was excited about. But she eagerly agreed to send me the recipe so I could make this pedestrian Swedish dish at home.

That night an online search turned up pages and pages of Swedish meatball recipes - most were lifted directly from, wait for it.....the official IKEA COOKBOOK! Yes, Ikea not only makes living-room couches that fit into a box half the size of a steamer trunk but they also published a cookbook divulging their secrets to cooking kick-ass meatballs as well as other Swedish delights (the ingredient photos are nothing less than stunning and hold true to the Ikea 'clean line' esthetics). Although out-of-print, the recipes now comfortably make their place online alongside misguided casseroles and oh-so-wrong dishes with names like ’Corn-dog crusted pork chops’ and ‘Granny’s CocaCola pot pie’.   

The next day my girl sent me her recipe for everything except the lingonberry jam. “Sorry, we get our lingonberry jam in jars at the store like normal people” was written at the end. 

That wouldn’t be a problem, my online search showed I could readily find an imported jar at any ‘Cost Plus World Market’ (or Ikea, Doh!). She sent the recipe in an email with the heading ‘Shhhhh, Swedish secrets’. Funny, I felt like I was about to peek into the basest of adult movie theaters and witness techniques so provocative they were forced underground.I looked over her recipe and compared it to the Ikea recipe and found only subtle differences (mainly ingredient amounts). The Ikea recipe was authentically Swedish. The secret to the quintessential Swedish Meatball? Besides the fact it is made with a combination of beef and pork? The binding is made with cream and pre-cooked potato. Yes, I said potato. Within hours I found myself back in the kitchen enjoying the creative culinary process again. Crappy cooking utensils be damned, I ended up making a plate that equaled, if not exceeded, that of Ikea (yea, I know how lame that sounds). But believe me, In the world of a zillion meatball recipes, this is one solid dish.

Now, in a typical blog the recipe would start here, followed by pictures of me making it step by step. But face it, does the internet need yet another carbon copy of the Ikea recipe? I think not. So it is I encourage you to do a search for the official version of Ikea meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy then go to town with it. I will admit I cut the potato down a bit, substituted ground (fresh) breadcrumbs for unsweetened rusk flour and fancy-ass Creme Fraiche for regular run-of-the-mill cream. In the end the entire dish sang as loud as it did at Ikea. OK, OK, so Ikea is no French Laundry or Alinea, but sometimes you just want comfort food that kicks it up a peg from what you are accustomed.

Trust me, try it Swedish style, it’ll scratch that itch.

 UPDATE: A reader sent me this news article: Horse meat found in Ikea's Swedish meatballs. No, horse is not a typical ingredient at the everyday Swedish dinner table, and "Not in MY damn meatballs" yelled the beautiful girl who sent me to the track - I mean Ikea for dinner.

My Friday Night

I look forward to Friday nights, there is always a ripple of rebirth and youth in the air, the marking of the end of a stressful, laborious week and the start of a regenerating and coveted weekend. The odd thing is, I never do anything on Friday nights these days, yet feelings of anticipation still hover over me like so much mayonnaise on a club sandwich. This powerful Friday night intoxication stems back a few decades and seems well ingrained in me now.

Back in South Florida my friends and I would gather at a strip of beach known as DOUBLE ROADS and we would toast the Friday night blood red sunset with a cold pony-keg of beer and warm Jack Daniels whiskey, shots pulled from found whelk shells. We would eat wonderfully greasy Wild Boar, butter poached Alligator tail and key lime marinated reef Snapper, all simmered in rolled foil - cooked on an open air beach fire. In our gastronomic frivolity we would heatedly debate such crucial topics as who served the best conch fritters in town and what was the greatest album of all time. To this day I stand by my answers, THE GREENHOUSE on Singer Island and TV EYE by Iggy and the Stooges (but EXILE ON MAIN STREET by The Rolling Stones is a very close second). It's funny though, I consider the concept of the greatest album to be an objective 'obvious' point and the food question to be quite subjective. Strange that I see one black & white while I see the other as colorful as a edible flower salad.

But all this got me thinking; what would the greatest album of all time "food" equivalent be? Would it be pate de foie gras? Wagyu beef? sliced Fugu? Or something more peasant in nature, like an elementary slab of slow smoked bacon? Would it be as simple as an ingredient or as complex as a prepared dish? Could I nail it down as pat as I did with the album debate? Sadly, no - I think there are just too many variables involved with such a momentous decision. It's a conundrum that is most likely sparking debate over fishy shots of Jack Daniels everywhere this Friday night - and one that poses no forthcoming answer.

Screw it - Weekends are for chasing that food grail with a pitchfork in one hand and a steak knife in the other, not jawing about it. This is a big city with a million opportunities to start a greatest food search. I think I'll let the drug of past Friday nights find a fresh vein tonight and venture out to experience a new flavor.

Friday night Street Tacos at the Tonga Hut Bar in North Hollywood Caifornia

A Friday Night Favorite:
Caribbean Heat Conch Meat Soup

Saute in butter/olive oil:
fine chopped stock celery, 1/2 chopped onion, 1/2 green chopped bell pepper, 1 clove minced garlic & 2 TBS chopped parsley
Add:
3 cups Coconut Water*
1 bottle clam juice
2 cups chicken broth
1 TBS lemon juice
24" stalk of LemonGrass cut into 4" pieces
4 dry whole Arbol Chilies
1 TBS chopped Cilantro
chopped heads of 4 Bok Choy
Daikon root - diced into small cubes
1 cup oyster mushrooms
1 TSP crushed red pepper flakes
3 TBS rub + pepper + salt to taste

-Simmer all 40 minutes uncovered then add shelled shrimp and cook 2 more minutes.
Add: small pieces of a fresh raw white fleshed fish, 1 cup cooked chopped Conch Meat (or octopus) and
bring to boil, quickly remove from heat and serve - Garnish with thin sliced lime pieces and parsley.
Be sure to place a whole chili pepper from the pot in each bowl
Even better the next day, so I usually make it on a Thursday.

*To make COCONUT WATER using canned Coconut Milk:
- start with 1/2 cup coconut milk & add spring water (tap water is unacceptable) to equal 2 cups.
thicker flavor: 3/4 cup can milk to 2 1/2 cups water

FAT TUESDAY, SKINNY CHICKEN and HOT JAMBALAYA

It's Fat Tuesday and I have a hankering for all things Creole. Yesterday I made my skinny chicken stew, that means today the anemic bird will hit the jambalaya pot.
What's that now? What's a skinny chicken? Well, It's the rock bottom of the poultry offerings at my local market - the least expensive Chicken in a lineup of three different whole birds.
First you have your name brand chicken, plump and cream colored, free of hormones and broken bones, officially labeled and lovingly Government approved. But not cheap. Next you have the supermarket chain chicken, a fatty swollen gristle of a bird that gives off a perfect hepatitis glow. It is salt water injected, hormone fattened and crudely butchered. It too is officially labeled and lovingly Government approved and costs a little less than the Brand name bird. THEN you have the skinny chicken, a scrawny wretch of a fowl with questionable origins, bones that protrude in impossible ways and a color that resembles a New York Taxi cab. It comes wrapped in kitchen grade cellophane on a gray styrofoam tray - free of pesky information labels and Government grades. It costs about as much as a dented can of peas and smells like a rendering plant. When cooked any other way than at a slow poach, the meat is akin to gas station jerky - boil it low and slow and it turns to a heavenly piece of chicken perfection. THIS is the x-rated bird of Colonel Sander's sick dreams! The skinny chicken also makes an unbelievable pot of chicken broth and an even better Fat Tuesday meal.

Which brings me to the star this rant, Jambalaya, the paella of the South.  One pot dinners reign supreme down in Louisiana, and everyone makes a signature jambalaya. I learned the secrets to a good pot of jambalaya while living on the fringe of the French Quarter many years ago. New Orleans locals will tell you there is no absolute one way to make jambalaya… but there are, as they will firmly enlighten you, many wrong ways. Most of those wrong ways have to do with leaving things out. The worst thing you can do is leave out the holy trinity - I'm talking of course of the trinity of celery, onion and bell pepper, the nucleus of most Cajun one pot dishes. Without this vegetable essence there can be no Jambalaya, no Gumbo, not even Red Beans and Rice.

But what about using canned tomatoes? Sunday's turkey leftovers? Barnacle scrapings from the skiff? All fair game for the jambalaya pot as long as the holy trinity graces the stock and blesses the meal. It's law. And one of the few laws that I make a point to never break - I'm all for radical outsiderness and experimental prowess but some things are best not screwed with, period. The holy trinity is one.

Around here jambalaya is known as the Hang-over pot. Oh, the wonders of the day-after refrigerator clean-out jambalaya. I've been know to make Lobster and sushi fish jambalaya, leftovers from a drunken blind date gone horribly wrong the night before - the date sucked but the jambalaya killed. Enough so that I'd do that train wreck of a date again, just for the excuse of making another pot of the decadent laden treat.

But today it's skinny chicken and fat shrimp, a juicy link of andouille sausage and a bag of frozen okra. Thus the party begins. This is my quick and easy version, a one pot treat that can be handled with ease even with the most severe of hangovers. True, purists will argue the only way to make a perfect jambalaya (given you already have your Holy Trinity in place) is with a homemade chicken stock. But sometimes it's just not practical to slow boil a pot of chicken and vegetables for what seems like an eternity, thus the canned broth comes into play. I prefer to use a low sodium, MSG free broth - there are several organic 'box' broths out there that have a nice 'skinny chicken' flavor. Just follow the core of this recipe then dump in whatever leftover meat graces your refrigerator. Be sure to make the Seasoning mix and store it in an empty spice jar, it'll come in handy for recipes I'll post in the near future.

Oh, it's gonna be a good day. My neck is laden with cheap candy-colored beads and Dr. John is hexing my ipod. Now all I need is a plastic-baby King Cake and a six-pack of cold Dixie Beer. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

SWAMPY'S 'LEFTOVER MEAT & THE KITCHEN SINK' JAMBALAYA

Damn easy & bullet proof. EVEN BETTER the next day...

In large deep pan (make sure you can add a lid to it later), brown chopped sausage - drain (Andouille Sausage is recommended).
Remove sausage and add 2 tbs. butter and saute minced garlic (3 cloves) and chopped onion (one small) until tender.

Add chopped green and red bell pepper (half a pepper each), diced celery (2 stalks), chopped green onion (about 2) and chopped fresh parsley (3 tbs.) and saute until wilted.

Add spices (cayenne pepper, hot sauce, 3 tbs. 'skeeter' seasoning (see below), 1 tbs. thyme and about a tsp of salt), add 2 medium bay leaves, 2 tbs. lemon juice, 1 can chopped peeled tomatoes, an 8 oz can tomato sauce, stir and cook over medium heat 8 minutes. Check your seasoning and add hot pepper as needed.

Add the browned sausage, leftover cooked chicken (skin removed, cut into small pieces), raw shrimp (shelled), 1 cup cubed fresh raw catfish fillet (NOT catfish pieces or "balls") and 1 bag of frozen cut okra (or 1 can of sliced okra, drained). Add a 14.5 oz. can chicken broth and 1 cup of white rice. Stir, cover, bring to boil and simmer 30 minutes until rice is done.

Don't open the lid during the cooking time and remember to remove the bay leafs before serving. Be sure to put a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce table side.
SKEETER SEASONING - THE SEASONING OF THE SOUTH
all dry powder herbs:
3 tbs. granulated garlic (NOT salt)
3 tbs. granulated onion (NOT salt)
2 tbs. celery salt
1 tbs. thyme
1 tbs. paprika
1 tsp. white pepper