Home-made Stuffed-Crust Pizza 3 Ways: Margherita, Frutto di Mare, Piccante alla Melanzane

Pizza Margherita - tomato sauce and arugula
Pizza Frutto di Mare - tomato sauce and seafood
Pizza Piccante alla Melanzane - spicy tomato sauce and eggplant

I really do love pizza, but being lactose-intolerant kind of makes it suck. Sure, there are pizzas that don't involve cheese, but you don't find a whole lot of good ones in Montreal. If I do find one, I probably won't like something else about it, like the sauce, or what's used to make the crust (too much salt, too much sugar, preservatives, or other things I can't pronounce). Besides, there's something so sad about having a pizza craving for luscious, gooey cheese and having to settle for a mediocre tomato sauce made with low-quality ingredients on a dough of enriched, bleached flour.

So I did what I generally do in this situation - I made my own.
It took a fair bit of time, but I had a bunch of leftovers that would serve well as toppings. I had some spicy tomato and eggplant that failed as an Indian dish but worked well as a bruschetta, some leftover pasta sauce from Roberto's (a very good Italian fresh pasta shop and gelateria way up in Little Italy), some fresh arugula, some red peppers, and a bunch of leftover grilled butterfish.

What I didn't have was a pizza pan, but a big cookie sheet worked just fine. A few weeks of foccacia in Italy taught me that pizza does not necessarily get better when it's round.

I used Josée di Stasio's pizza dough recipe, with a few very tiny changes (cornmeal instead of durum semolina - there is a difference, but I didn't have any of the latter - and whole wheat flour to replace one of four cups of white when I ran out). I love her cookbook. I knew this would be a good recipe because she does not put bad recipes in her book. As long as my variations worked out, so would the pizza dough.

This is not a recipe to make when you don't have a lot of time. This is Italian slow-cooking at its best. It makes two huge pizzas or four small ones, but if you like thin crusts, it'll make at least 3 standard size pizzas.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp dry yeast

1 tbsp sugar (I used cane sugar)

2 1/2 cups of warm water (38 degrees Celcius, 100 Fahrenheit. I actually got the temperature perfect. I used two candy thermometres to make sure I didn't mess it up...overkill? Maybe, but probably not)

4 cups all-purpose flour (I used première moisson, a Quebec bakery that sells its amazing white bread flour which is ground at a Quebec mill. They use this stuff for all their breads and their own pizzas, and there's just nothing quite like it. Di Stasio recommends '00', a high gluten flour, and I'm sure Red Fife flour would be great too. Like I said, I ended up using 3 cups of première moisson unbleached white flour and 1 cup of their whole wheat flour (which is significantly not as nice as the white flour for cookies and cakes since it's not very fine, but decent for savoury and textured baked goods, like breads and pizza dough).

2 cups wheat semolina (yeah, I used cornmeal...not sure how okay this substitution really is, but the cornmeal was instant, so I figured at least it wouldn't expand in my stomach. It would absorb the warm water instead. I wasn't about to mess around with the water to flour ratio, though)

1 tbsp salt (this was too much salt, in my opinion. I like salt, and it turned out well, but my tongue knows when I'm enjoying it too much. It also knows that I'll be very thirsty afterward. So 2 tsp is what I'll use next time)

In a small bowl I combined the yeast, sugar and perfectly heated warm water. I stirred to dissolve and then let it stand for 10 minutes. Exactly 10. There was at least one timer involved.

During this waiting period I combined the flours, cornmeal and salt, and sifted it together. I used a real sieve, not just a spoon like I sometimes cheat with in baking (never for Alice Medrich's cakes, and never for a recipe I don't know, like this one). The cornmeal didn't sift particularly well, but it was the flour that really needed the sifting. Sifting actually adds air to the flour, which is important when you want it to rise and be light.

By now the 10 minutes were up, so I poured the yeast mixture on top of the sifted flours and mixed them together. Di Stasio gave no instruction on how to mix, so I started with a wooden spoon (stirring in just one direction, which I thought I'd heard somewhere for dough), and then with my hands, since the next step was kneading. I'd also heard you don't want to overmix, so I just stirred until there were no flour clumps left.

I'm so bad at kneading, but since the Première Moisson flour is specifically made for bread, it has a pretty decent amount of gluten. This makes it easier to knead since it stretches without breaking. I threw a bunch of flour down on a clean counter, had a bunch of extra on the side, and lathered up my hands in the stuff (waterless lathering, of course). I think the dough was stickier than it should have been, since it just wouldn't leave me alone. I ended up adding about a quarter cup of flour extra as I kneaded. At least I know it wasn't because my water had been too warm. It may have also been because of using cornmeal instead of semolina.

Knead: Push away from me with the palm of my left hand, holding the right side of the dough gently with my other hand. Fold the pushed-away section back on top. Rotate 90 degrees clockwise. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It says knead for 5-8 minutes, but I'm a slow kneader since I wasn't 100% sure what I was doing, and was being extra careful not to tear the dough, so I kneaded for about 10. The test (as I'd also seen somewhere) is to push down on the dough with two fingers and if the imprints rise back up and disappear, then the dough is elastic-y enough. This happened, so I figured I was done. I also took it as a good sign for the rest of the bread process to come.

Then I divided the dough in half, formed them into balls, and put each half in its own oiled bowl. I covered the bowls with plastic wrap (I don't have big enough kitchen towels, and I just heard yesterday that plastic wrap is maybe even better, but that might only be for certain kinds of dough rising in certain areas of a kitchen of a certain temperature and humidity...again, I am a newbie) and put it in the oven with the light on. It was a warm, humid day, so I figured it would actually be warmer out on the counter, but I wanted it to be in a draft-free space. 45 minutes later the dough hadn't quite risen enough, so I left it an extra 20. It was supposed to double in volume, and I don't think it ever quite got there. The yeast was good, though, so I don't know why it wasn't cooperating. Maybe the whole wheat flour? Or over-kneading? Or not kneading enough?

After the first 45 minutes I also decided to turn off the oven light and turn the oven on to its lowest heat while keeping the door open to try to help the bread rise. I'd heard this was good too, but maybe not on such a humid day, since the dough decided to stick to the sides of the bowl. I quickly got it out of there, punched it down (as per the recipe) and kneaded again for about 5 minutes per ball of dough (the recipe said 3, but slow kneader that I am...).

Then the dough balls went back into their respective bowls, got covered again, and put back in the turned off oven with the door open. This was a happy medium (a bit of extra heat from the oven having been on, but not as bad as actually having the heat on while the dough was in there).

I let it rise for another hour (the recipe said 45, but mine needed some more time. Again, it didn't seem to really being doubling in volume...).

Finally I rolled the dough out on a clean counter (there was a whole lot of counter cleaning this day - scrubbing, scraping, wiping) using a bottle of dessert wine/rolling pin coated in flour and placed it in my baking sheet that I'd brushed with oil. I rolled it out into a big rectangle to match the shape of my cookie sheet, but if I'd had a pizza pan, it would have been just as easy to roll it out into a circle. I've never worked with such nice dough! It stretched without breaking, and just kept on giving. Pie dough is always a struggle, a battle of wills between it and me, but this was much more an act of cooperation. The second ball I wrapped in plastic wrap and placed in the freezer for pizza another day without all this kneading and rising fuss. No need to go through this whole process again for awhile.

Once on the baking sheet, I let it rise one more time (just for 10 minutes). I preheated the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and once the dough had done its very best to rise one more time, I spread my tomato eggplant sauce over half the dough, my gourmet pasta shop-bought tomato sauce on the other half and added some fresh arugula. Then I added some pieces of grilled butterfish to both sides of the rectangular pie to get a few more combinations. Oh, and some diced red peppers to the tomato section. I basically tried to make as many different kinds of pieces as possible.

The cool part was that there was actually too much dough!! I don't love a really thick crust, but I certainly couldn't make it thin without having to cut off a lot of excess. Even then, I ended up with a lot of overflow. So after added the toppings, I rolled the excess back into the baking sheet to make a rounded crust. I didn't realize it until after it had cooked that in effect it became a stuffed crust, since the dough overlapped the fillings and locked them inside!!! Accidental miracles...the mother of culinary invention.

Then all I had to do was stick it in the oven for 15-30 minutes, until the crust was golden brown. I didn't want to destroy the fresh arugula with the long cooking time, but the crust just never seemed to get golden. When I took it out after 25 minutes, though, it was clearly cooked. I was worried I might have over-cooked it, but the inside was still chewy and delicious. The whole wheat and cornmeal gave a really nice grainy texture that pure white couldn't provide. Another time I will try this with the proper flours, but this was still an amazing crust. The whole wheat also turned the dough into something of sustenance. It was filling and made you chew and savour, and not inhale white fluff, like the doughs of store-bought, or even bad to mediocre restaurant-bought pizzas. There really was too much dough, though, so the extra pieces got torn off and turned into quasi-bread sticks with different dips (as bizarre as it sounds, it actually worked well with my mint chutney. It was also perfect soup-dipping bread, too, since it didn't just dissolve in the liquid).

Verdict on the pizzas? The tomato sauce with arugula was my favourite. I really liked the tomato and eggplant because it was chunkier, and the fish worked best with the plain tomato. It also added some necessary protein and gave me the necessary feeling of being full. I ate a whole lot of pizza anyway, which is fine since I do it so rarely. The arugula got over-cooked but I actually liked the dry, crispy chip-like quality of it. Not as good for me, but oh-so-delicious. Oh! I had a bit of raw cheese that I grated (somewhere close to a parmiggiano, so not the best for this pizza, but beggars can't always be choosers, try as I might) and added to individual mouthfuls. I couldn't melt it on top since that would kill the digestive bacteria, the whole reason I can eat the stuff in the first place, but I got the flavour of it on any given bite I wanted.

The pizza was also great once it had cooled down a little and stopped burning my mouth. Reheated in the toaster oven over the course of the next few days, it was still delicious, and I even managed to get the edges a little crispy. The nice part about the leftovers is that the oil from the sauces can seep down into the dough and make it soft and gooey. This contrasts with the crunch and chew of the thick sides.

I can't believe how versatile and successful this was. Bread is such an amazing thing, and this is such an amazing recipe. Mmm pizza...

Grilled Butterfish

I found butterfish! I spent a long time not even really knowing what butterfish was. I'd run into it from time to time at sushi restaurants, where it would either be amazing (silky and actually tasted like sublime butter) or not (usually still partially frozen, poorly sliced, etc.). Apparently the real name of butterfish is stromateidae, or at least that's the type of fish it is. Seachoice.org actually has a grand total of zero info on it! It does have two 'butterfish' listings but after some other research, it turns out it's not the same fish. The butterfish we sometimes find in sushi restaurants is related to, but not the same as, black cod, or sablefish. Apparently it's also connected to Chilean seabass.

It's very high in fatty oils, making it taste very buttery, hence the appeal. I was at a local grocery store where I would normally never ever buy seafood when I saw these little guys. They were small and silver and those are two of the big sustainability fish factors. Bigger than sardines or smelt, mind you, but small enough that I figured I should give it a try. They were cheap! Rarely can you find these guys on sushi restaurant menus, but maybe it's just that they're not widely available, not that they cost a fortune.

So I took them home and prepared them very simply. I brushed 3 with melted butter, salt and pepper and another three with a tomato-based chili paste from the organic farmer at McGill's Organic Campus. Then I let them marinate for about 30 minutes and then just grilled them for about 3 minutes per side (6 minutes total in the Foreman Grill).
They tasted like...firm-flesh white fish. They weren't particularly buttery. The melted butter I'd added didn't really soak into the fish, even though I'd scored them with a sharp knife so that the marinade would make it past the skin.

I think a longer marinating stage would have helped. I also think a miso marinade overnight in the fridge would be amazing, but I generally think that for any fish. The chile paste was fine, but nothing really special. The best part of the fish was how the skin crisped up from the grilling. I managed to cook the fish nicely, so it fell away from all the little bones without a whole lot of trouble or effort.

Some of the fish got added to the pizza I made (to come) and lent a nice, delicate flavour to the spicy tomato sauce I used. All in all, not a bad fish, and a much better choice than sole or tilapia. I hate tilapia. It's almost as if I can see the parasites from the farming.

The biggest achievement of this story was figuring out what the heck butterfish was, since it actually gave the name, stromateidae, on the packaging. Score one for the sub-par grocery store.

Thai Calamari Curry

I hate this name. It's not mine. Curry is a horrible name. It seems so degrading to me. Anything remotely spicy and Southeast Asian is considered curry. You show me the curry leaves in the recipe before I'll let you away with calling something a curry, and even then I have a problem with it. Unless it's called 'cari', or at least pronounced that way, in the original language, I get upset.

This recipe actually does have curry leaves in it, so I should probably hate it less. It's Thai, not Indian, like my latest recipe posts. Generally it's easier to find a Thai recipe for calamari than an Indian one, though you could definitely substitute squid in other Indian fish recipes. Sri Lankan squid recipes would be a nice bridge between the two culinary superstars.

Anyway, this was yet another attempt to save money while eating fish. Squid is so cheap and so easy to cook. You either cook it for no more than 2 minutes or you cook it for an hour. Anything in between will make it rubbery and gross. Seriously, 2 1/2 minutes and you're screwed.

Ingredients:
2 tsp oil
1 onion, diced
4 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped into small pieces (to remove the seeds, quarter the tomatoes and gently push out the seed mushy sections with your fingers. There are other ways to do this but this one is simple. Save the mushy stuff for a snack. There's nothing wrong with it. It just changes the texture of the dish and adds a bit more bitterness. Often you're supposed to remove the skin, too, but nothing is said about that here, so don't bother)
1 red chili pepper (or jalapeno. The flavour is different, but neither is bad)
1 tbsp ginger, grated (remove the skin from the ginger with a spoon and then grate the flesh into a bowl)
1 tbsp garlic, minced
3 curry leaves (or 1 tbsp curry powder). This is where my problem lies...curry powder is not a good replacement for the leaves. I doubt that the powder is actually powdered leaves since there are so many kinds of curry powders. Try a powder and see if you like it. It may or may not work.
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp lime zest, grated (just the green part. About 1 lime)
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 cups fish or chicken stock (or 1 1/2 cups stock and a small 14 oz. can of coconut milk for creaminess)
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped, plus a little more for garnish
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lime juice (about 1/2 a lime)
1/2 tsp salt
2 lbs calamari (tubes and tentacles are both fine. That's generally what you get at a fish place. If you buy it frozen in a supermarket you may just get tubes. That's also fine. Just chop the pieces into 1" rings (width-wise) and try to make the tentacles into pieces approximately the same size (I know this is impossible, but I also know it's not too important since really there's nothing you can do about it)
The key is to have all your ingredients ready to go. So chop all the onion, ginger, garlic, and cilantro (the ginger and garlic can be put in the same bowl to wait) zest and juice the lime, and measure out the stock, brown sugar, black pepper, ground coriander, and salt. Then cut the calamari. If you cut the calamari first you'll need to wash your cutting board with hot, soapy water before cutting the vegetables. There's a bigger chance of contamination that way, so generally work with the seafood last, or even better, use two cutting boards. I have a plastic board and wood board in the kitchen and I always use the plastic board for fish, since the wood absorbs more of what's cut on it. It generally makes it more difficult to disinfect and leads more easily to kitchen contamination. Okay, lecture done.

Heat the oil in a big pot over medium heat. When it's hot add the onion, and sauté for 5 minutes. Please make sure the onion is actually softened. Bite a piece of onion. If it crunches it's not done. If the onion starts to stick to the pot add a tbsp of water and keep stirring. Do not walk away and get distracted. This is way too easy to do. Focus.

Add the tomato and the next 7 ingredients (up to the black pepper), and cook over medium heat for 4 minutes. Then add the stock (and optional coconut milk) and then the cilantro, brown sugar, lime juice and salt. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 5 minutes.

So you've already cut the calamari into 1-inch pieces. Now add them to the pot, turn the heat up to medium, and cook for 2 minutes, or until the calamari is opaque. When you bite into one it should be tender, not tough. Now scoop some of the delicious squid and sauce onto some rice. It's too liquidy to serve with bread, like I tried to do. Garnish with some cilantro if you want. Keep in mind that the squid left in the pot will continue cooking in the sauce, so second helpings will probably be tough. Leftover calamari is sometimes okay, though, since sitting in the juices re-tenderizes the over-cooked flesh. If it is refrigerated NOT in a sauce, you're SOL.

"Get Off Your High (Sea)Horse" Calamari Challenge: Thai Chili Squid Stir-Fry with Carrots and Arugula

There's something miraculous about a dish made with ridiculously fresh ingredients, stir-fried for mere minutes and coated in a salty, sweet, sour and hot sauce before making the inevitable journey to your mouth. Come on, LOOK at those colours!

I also love that this is a very affordable recipe and so healthy, without feeling like you're depriving yourself. It's seafood, after all, and seafood is a luxury. It looks and tastes deceptively gourmet, but has a much higher intimidation factor than actual level of difficulty. So take a deep breath and go buy some squid. I resent the fact that so many people like deep-fried calamari but refuse to eat un-coated squid. If you don't like the tentacles, just buy the tubes, but know that you're missing out on great mouth texture. One small step at a time, I suppose. Think of this as my calamari challenge, to get off your high horse...or squid horse...or sea horse??
Ingredients:
2 cups jasmine (thai) rice

Sauce for Rice:
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock (I happened to have fish stock frozen that I hacked away at until I had 1/2 a cup)
2 Tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

1 lb squid (just go to a fish counter and ask for about a pound of squid. The tentacles won't hurt you but the tubes are what you really want since they'll stay more tender)

Stir-Fry Sauce:
1 heaping Tbsp hoisin (the original recipe calls for ground bean sauce but I didn't have that. I realize my version is completely different)
2 tsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. fish sauce
1 Tbsp. soy sauce or tamari
1-2 tsp. chili sauce, or 1-2 fresh red or green chilies, minced, OR 1-2 tsp. dried chili flakes (I used a small handful of my pickled chili peppers for the endorphin rush of the sezchuan peppercorns)
5 carrots, cut in thin sticks (the thinner they are the faster they'll cook)
2 cups arugula
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves (I used frozen)
handful of fresh coriander leaves (again, frozen)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece galangal or ginger, sliced into matchstick-like pieces
2 tsp oil

1. Cook the rice first. Leave it covered on the stove while you make the sauce.
   
2. Combine the stock, hoisin, and sesame oil sauce for the rice in a pot and heat it until it almost boils. Turn off the heat and leave the sauce on the warm burner until the rice is done. When it is, pour the sauce over the rice. This step is actually meant for glass vermicelli noodles or rice noodles because the noodles will keep absorbing the sauce, but I kind of like how it mushes up the rice and sweetens it. Then the stir-fry sauce on the squid itself doesn't have to do as much work. I'm a big believer in fair distribution of labour.
   
3. In the meantime, while the rice cooks, thaw your squid (if it's frozen) by dunking it in a bowl of warm water. If it's fresh, skip the dunking and get on with the scoring. All these sports terms...I don't even watch basketball. You don't dunk anything in World Junior Hockey, or more recently, the Montreal Canadians games.
   
4. Place the squid on a cutting board. Slide your knife along one side of the squid to open each tube. Lay the pieces of squid flat (leave the tentacles alone. They'll be fine without your knife assistance).
5. Score the squid tubes with diagonal slices. Score first one way, then the other to create diamond-shaped cuts, kind of like grill marks. Apparently you only want to cut through half the thickness. If your scores are too superficial, they won't be apparent when cooked. The cuts will "open up" while cooking and give the squid extra visual interest and texture. All this means is that you don't really need to do this step but it'll look cooler if you do.
   
6. Definitely do this step: Slice the squid into smaller, bite-size pieces (squares or triangles) and reserve. See, now that I don't understand because you just went to all the trouble of scoring and now you're cutting everything up, probably through your carefully scored lines. Any ideas on what's going on, stir-fried squid experts out there?
   
7. Combine the stir-fry sauce of hoisin, brown sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce and chili sauce (or chilies) in a small bowl.
   
8. Place a little bit of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger, and carrots (or other vegetables of your choice) and stir-fry 3-5 minutes, or until vegetables are soft. Add a little water to the pan when it becomes too dry instead of more oil. If the carrot is chopped in big pieces it will take a bit longer to soften. If you like it tender-crisp, feel free to err on the side of crisp. It gives great crunch to the resulting meal.
   
9. Now add the squid, arugula, and the stir-fry sauce. Also add the cilantro and basil if they're frozen. If they're fresh add them as a garnish only at the very end when you serve. Stir-fry for about 2 minutes, or until the squid curls up and the meat is tender. My squid didn't really "curl" but it cooked for 2 minutes, which was plenty. I hate, hate, hate rubbery squid, and when you think of how gross squid can be it's probably because you've always had it over-cooked. When it's not over-cooked it's tender and delicious. Ask a Greek. Or a Thai. So, do NOT over-cook, or the squid will become rubbery (3 minutes maximum).
10. Do a taste test for salt, adding 1-2 more Tbsp fish sauce if it's not salty enough. If it's too sour, add a little more brown sugar. If it's not hot enough, add a little more chili. If it's too sweet, add some lime juice. This isn't in the recipe (the lime) but it's the standard way to make Thai dishes more sour. Well, lime or tamarind, but only if tamarind is already called for in the recipe. You can also serve a piece of lime on the side of the plate as garnish and everyone can adjust their own level of sourness by squeezing it over top.
    
11. To serve, scoop the sauced rice onto a serving platter (or individual plates) and top with the stir-fried squid and vegetables. Add sprinklings of fresh basil and coriander, and enjoy!
    

Miso-Marinated Cod with Sake and Lychees

I looked for black cod, but it wasn't available in Newfoundland. Atlantic cod, however, was a different story. I could get about 2lbs of it for $6...how is that reasonable? I mean, it's way too reasonable. It can't possibly be sustainable.

For this dish you need to make a marinade and then a sauce for the cooked fish. Make the marinade first because you'll need 3 tbsp of it for the sauce. The lychee juice was leftover from making the lychee frozen yogurt and since it's hard to find mirin in Newfoundland I thought it would be a good substitute. It sounds very exotic and it was a very delicious substitution.

Miso Marinade
1/4 cup sake (don't buy anything fancy or special. A cooking sake or the standard big bottle of Hakutsuru is fine)
1/3 cup lychee juice or mirin
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup miso (preferably "shiro" miso - white miso)

Whisk together the miso and sugar in the top of a double boiler (I used a stainless steel mixing bowl placed on top of a medium saucepan. Fill the sauce pan with a little water and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium or medium-low to keep the water at a simmer). Add the sake and lychee juice, and whisk to combine.

Cook and whisk over simmering water, stirring frequently until sugar dissolves and the colour begins to darken (about 30 to 45 minutes). That's what the recipe says, but mine didn't darken so much. I used a different kind of miso and it was already fairly dark. So I just let it cook for 45 minutes and I was fine. You can't do this directly in the saucepan because miso shouldn't be boiled. It kills the good things in it, or so I thought. The double boiler is annoying, but worth it. After 45 minutes, remove the bowl from the saucepan and the saucepan from the heat and let it cool. Reserve 4 tbsp for the sauce below (the recipe only calls for 3 tbsp but keep 1 tbsp extra aside in case you need to make the sauce sweeter by adding more) and pour the rest of the cooled marinade over the cod in a large sealed container or covered casserole dish. Make sure all the cod is covered in the marinade, and if it isn't completely covered, try to remember to turn it at least once during its marinating period to make sure every part of the fish gets to luxuriate in miso. Place the fish in the fridge overnight or for at least 30 minutes.

Lychee Sauce:
1 cup dashi or fish stock
1/2 cup mirin or lychee juice
1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari
3 tbsp Saiko Miso (above)
1 tsp yuzu juice (or lemon, or lemon mixed with grapefruit and orange, but it's only a teaspoon so don't worry about it)

Place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat (here I don't understand why you can suddenly boil the miso. Sure, it's only supposed to be a simmer, but I don't quite get it. Perhaps the double boiler above is just so the sauce doesn't burn from direct heat over the long cooking time?). Let simmer gently for about ten minutes and taste. You want a good balance of salty, sweet and tangy. To make it sweeter add more Saikyo Miso (make sure you've reserved an extra tablespoon before pouring it over the fish. You can't use it once its touched the fish, since the bacteria won't be killed from any more cooking), or a bit of sugar (if you didn't reserve enough miso. I forgot to reserve extra and got stuck with less flavourful sugar). Be careful adding extra yuzu for more tang. It can be very pungent, so a little goes a long way.

Cooking the fish:
After making the dumplings you'll have a pot or two of boiling water. Remove the cod fillets from their dish in the fridge when you start cooking the dumplings. This will bring the fish to room temperature but won't let it sit at room temperature long enough for any bacteria to take over. When you're done with the dumplings, add the fish to the steamer apparatus, cover the pot(s), and let the fish steam about 5 minutes over simmering water (medium or medium-low heat). The fish is done when the flesh flakes easily with a fork and is no longer translucent. It shouldn't be tough or dry either. If the fish isn't done, just let it steam for a minute or so longer.

To serve the fish, remove it from the steamer to a serving platter and pour some or all of the Lychee Sauce on top.

Slippery Thai Noodles with Seafood

My cooking goals in Newfoundland are to cook as much seafood as possible. With that in mind I went in search of a Thai recipe in Wandee Lee's Simply Thai Cooking. We'd been eating a ton of rice and I figured noodles would be a nice change. There's something really gourmet about rice noodles in this dish, which is hilarious because they're so cheap, and even easier to cook than regular egg-based pasta noodles. Unlike last time I didn't feel like making the noodles from scratch because I like the air-like quality of the rice stick noodles you buy in the store and rehydrate.

The recipe calls for squid, which I love to see in a recipe because it's so affordable and also so delicious when done well. The recipe also calls for shrimp, so you can afford to splurge a bit more on higher quality shrimp since the squid is cheap. I went to look for squid but for reason no one had any that day (like my sea smelts that never came to be). They did have lots of shrimp choice.

Oh! An aside on shrimp: The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in the course of destroying a lot of shrimp, oyster and fish waters. Some of the best seafood from the US comes from those waters. Now, I don't know how I actually feel about this, because according to my trusted sustainable seafood guide, the only fish they list as sustainable coming from those waters is mackerel. Some types of shrimp and snapper are sort of sustainable, but others are very much not. I'm sure, however, that more than three types of fish are coming from that area. The oysters are listed as fine, but are categorized by region under "worldwide".

So my shrimp choice were the tiny frozen Newfoundland shrimp. I have absolutely no idea if they're sustainable. Almost certainly not since they're from Newfoundland. I won't even get into the latest Newfoundland crab fiasco...there's no end to the trouble, except to say that the fishery has subsequently closed for the season.

Anyway, I bought shrimp, and then I figured Newfoundland was the only place you could buy 'chowder mix' in a supermarket. Pre-cut up pieces of cod, Atlantic salmon and squid mixed with baby shrimp and a few scallops. Anywhere else in the country this would sell for a small fortune. Here it's not bad. It's also certainly not sustainable. Alas...I kind of liked the idea of a few scallops and a few pieces of cod, etc. So I bought some. So much for principles.

8 oz. rice noodles (this is half a normal package. I used the whole package, which meant I ended up with a pretty bland dish. In my family sometimes that's a good thing. So I just added my Guizhou Chile Paste to my plate, sat back and enjoyed the Sizhuan peppercorn high).
1 lb mix of scallops, shrimp, cod and salmon (or choose your favourite fish. Squid is a good choice. The recipe says 8 oz shrimp plus 4 oz squid sliced the squid into 1" rings but that seems huge to me. You could wear that as a gaudy bracelet. Think of it as a Thai chastity belt around your wrist. The smell would ward off unwanted acquaintances)
1 bunch of broccoli
A few leaves of bok choy or pak choi
A handful of snow peas (remove the strings of the peas. I kind of try to peel the edges by breaking off the top and bottom and pulling. You can skip the step but you'll be spitting out a lot of fibres while you eat if you don't. Very unattractive, but this is not a date meal. Especially not with your squid chastity belt and all)
2 tbsp oil
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce (find one without MSG and a million preservatives if you can. Caramel colour? Corn syrup? Really?)
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce (or tamari)
1 cup water
fresh cilantro for garnish

The recipe says to soak the noodles in lots of cold water for one hour. Then add them to 3 cups of boiling water for 30 seconds, drain, and add to the stir-fry at the end. Yeah, that didn't work. Maybe I should have cooked it longer than 30 seconds. I definitely should have tested a noodle before draining it. Pasta 101. So my noodles ended up tough. I think pouring boiling water over them instead of cold is another option. Leave them in the water until you need them. You can also make the whole package of noodles and have a very saucy meal by doubling the sauce ingredients. Seems a waste to make this meal and have no leftovers. You'll definitely be craving it the next day.

Prepare all the ingredients before turning on the heat. This recipe goes quick:
Slice the squid and shell the shrimp. Mine came in the mix so they were pre-shelled. I've also seen Thai dishes cooked with the shells on, but, like the peas, it's a nuisance to take them off while you're eating. Your choice. Like cooking chicken with the bone-in, it probably gives more flavour.

Chop the broccoli and tear off the pak choi greens (baby bok choi can be left as is).

Chop the garlic. In a small bowl combine the fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, soy sauce, water and black pepper.

Dissolve the teaspoon of cornstarch in a tablespoon of water (the recipe says to do this later, but later you're rushed)

Now the fun part. Heat the oil in a large frying pan or wok on high heat!! I never get to write "high heat". It's kind of the same rush as doing something forbidden. I know, I'm a huge geek. I know.

When the oil starts to smoke, add the garlic and stir frantically for 30 seconds. When it starts to burn, add a tbsp of water. Then add the seafood and cook another 30 seconds. Add another tbsp of water as necessary. Add the broccoli, peas and bok choy and stir for 30 seconds. Add the combined sauce mixture, reduce the heat to medium, and let the mixture cook for 3-4 minutes. This feels so long! Whatever will you do with all the time?

Two things: Put 3 cups of water on to boil for the noodles (unless you soaked them in boiling water. Then they're probably fine). Then stir you cornstarch/water mixture.

Add the cornstarch to the stir-fry and turn the heat to medium-low. It feels like the stir-fry is slowly dying, turning down the heat slowly instead of up. Cook 1-2 minutes until the sauce is thickened a little. Mine didn't thicken so much. Didn't feel like it, I suppose. Remove the stir-fry from the heat. Don't cover! It'll keep cooking the seafood. Over-cooked scallop is not good. Probably it's already over-cooked. If I had sashimi grade salmon I certainly wouldn't even want it cooked all the way through. Next time I think I will cook the fish for the prescribed 30 seconds and then remove the shrimp, scallops, and anything I didn't want to cook through from the pan, while I cook the vegetables and add the sauce. Then I'd put them back in when I added the cornstarch and let them cook for only 2 minutes while the sauce thickened. Yes, that's a better idea.

So now either stick the rice noodles in your separate pot of boiling water for 30 seconds, or until they're tender, or place your pre-tenderized and drained noodles directly onto a serving platter. Pour the contents of the wok straight on top and garnish with some chopped cilantro. Also a dollop of excruciatingly delicious chile paste.