Poached Shrimp with Watermelon Curry and Masa Cookie

It’s time for summer fun, summer vacations, and summer food. To celebrate the beginning of the season, Tribeza has organized an event, the Summer Solstice Chef’s Table Series from June 27 to June 29, to showcase menus inspired by this time of year. At eight different Austin restaurants, guests will have an opportunity to dine with the chef and enjoy special dishes created just for this event. Trio is one of those participating restaurants, and Chef Todd Duplechan’s menu will include poached gulf shrimp with watermelon curry and a masa cookie, warmed loch salmon with braised market vegetables and lemon aioli, and bacon wrapped lamb loin with heirloom squash and black garlic custard. I had the opportunity to stop by the kitchen at Trio, talk with Chef Duplechan about the Chef’s Table dinner, and watch as he showed me how to prepare the poached shrimp dish. We talked about the Texas heat, spices and chiles, what grows locally, and he taught me a few interesting cooking techniques along the way.

Here in central Texas, Chef Duplechan likes to cook what grows nearby, and that fits with his idea of creating a new southwestern cuisine. He says “there’s more to southwestern cuisine that blue corn chips.” Rather than taking influence solely from Mexican cooking as most southwestern dishes do, his creations brings together elements of cooking from various hot weather climates around the world. By taking cues from Southeast Asia, his dishes have a lightness that’s especially welcome during our hot summer season. A perfect example of how these ideas come together is this poached shrimp dish. The shrimp are from the Gulf and as many of the other ingredients as possible were procured locally.

Watermelon, which is a well-loved Texas summer fruit, is taken in a new direction via Southern India for this curry sauce. Making the sauce began with mustard seed oil being warmed in a saute pan. Cumin seeds were toasted in the oil, ground coriander and ground mustard seeds were added, finely diced green chiles and ginger came next, and this mixture cooked just until the chiles softened. Next, turmeric and pureed watermelon were added, and the sauce was allowed to reduce and thicken. The watermelon was not strained, so it retained some texture. I was offered tastes as the sauce reduced and Chef Duplechan explained how the watermelon takes on a squash-like flavor when cooked. It also becomes sweeter as the water evaporates. Once reduced, lime juice and zest were added which cut the sweetness, and chopped cilantro was added. In the end, the sauce had an underlying sweetness, bright lime flavor, and nice notes of heat from the chiles and ginger.

Next, we talked about the shrimp. These were big, fresh, gorgeous ten per pound, Gulf shrimp. They had been shelled, deveined, and skewered to make them straight. They were going to be oil poached but not in plain oil. This was one of those cooking tips that’s genius, that adds so much flavor, and that I never would have thought to do. The oil had been treated like a stock. The shrimp shells and some of the same spices used in the curry had been cooked in the oil and then strained out before the oil was used to poach the shrimp. I tasted the oil before the shrimp were placed in it, and it was so flavorful I knew the shrimp were going to be phenomenal. To gently poach shellfish in oil, the temperature needs to be no higher than about 125 degrees F. Duplechan checked the temperature and maintained the low heat by pulling the pan with the oil off the heat when the temperature climbed too high. He explained the good news about poaching shellfish is that you have a long window of doneness. You can watch as the shrimp turn from translucent to opaque white, and you want to pull them from the oil before the opaque-ness reaches the center of the shrimp. They’ll finish cooking from residual heat once removed from the oil.

One last element for this dish was a masa cookie. Masa is a typical southwestern ingredient, but it was given a new twist here. It was baked into a tuile after being mixed with sugar, and ground coriander and mustard seeds. No water was added. The dry mixture was spread on a baking sheet, and as it heated in the oven, the sugar melted and the tuile formed. The big, thin cookie then easily broke into pieces. It was a sweet, savory, corn-flavored bit of crunch.

The dish was plated with a layer of arugula, then the watermelon curry, the shrimp were pulled from the skewers and placed on the sauce, the masa cookie was broken into shards which were strewn about, and last, a little drizzle of the poaching oil was added. My reaction upon tasting the finished dish was a wow. That was perfectly cooked, juicy, plump shrimp, and all those wonderful flavors in the watermelon curry accompanied it nicely. The fresh, bright flavors and slight edge of heat, the mix of textures with the crisp masa cookie, and the lightness of it all made a stellar combination. And, this is just one of the courses offered at Trio for the Chef’s Table Series.

For more information about the menus, the locations, and the opportunity to sit and dine with some of Austin’s top chefs, see the Tribeza site.

Grilled Peach Sundaes with Balsamic Fudge

Despite the fact that everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas, Texas-grown peaches are kind of small. I would argue, however, that their flavor is very big. Not many other fruits compare to a perfectly ripe peach. I mentioned the other day that I’d been reading Farmers' Market Desserts, and most of the recipes in that book include suggestions for alternate fruits. There’s a dessert called grilled fig sundaes with balsamic fudge, and I took note of the suggestion to use peaches or plums instead when in season as I had just received some peaches from my CSA. Whichever type of fruit is used, each piece is cut in half and skewered onto a rosemary sprig and grilled. The fruit skewers only remain on the grill long enough to soften and brown in spots and take on some smokiness. And, the fruit is only one part of this dessert. There’s also ice cream which is a natural with warm fruit, and then there’s the sauce. This is no old-fashioned, ice cream parlor kind of sauce. It’s a tangy, sweet reduction of red wine, balsamic vinegar, and sugar, and it makes this a sundae with grown-up flavor.

I’m sure both figs and plums would work very well for grilling. The peaches I used were nicely ripe which means they were a little tender and had to be pierced and skewered carefully. The pieces of fruit didn’t stay in place very well on the rosemary sprigs. They tended to flip around the stem and would have been difficult to turn on the grill. To fix that issue, I also pushed a wooden skewer through the fruit behind each rosemary sprig. With two skewers in place, the fruit stayed put and was easy to turn. To start, you should soak your skewers in water so they won’t burn on the grill even though any rosemary leaves left on the ends will catch the flame regardless. Meanwhile, you can begin the sauce. Good balsamic vinegar, red wine, and sugar, and the amount of sugar depends on whether you’re using a dry wine or a sweet, dessert wine, were stirred together in a saucepan. Over a bare simmer, that mixture was left to reduce by half which took about 15 minutes. It thickened as it cooled. Then, the fruit was brushed with olive oil, seasoned, and grilled for a few minutes per side, and the timing will depend on how hot your grill is. The goal is to just allow the fruit to soften and begin to brown. I served the grilled fruit and sauce with vanilla gelato, and I always follow the recipe from Demolition Desserts. It includes only two eggs and is made with more milk than cream making it slightly lighter than other vanilla ice cream recipes I sometimes use.

Savory flavors from the grill smoke and rosemary challenged the sweetness of the peaches and gelato in a delicious way. Likewise, the sauce was a mix of sweet and tart, rather than just sweet, which nudged the taste of the gelato in the direction of cheesecake. Plain, ripe, summer peaches are a pleasure, but if you’d like to dress up a few of them for dessert, I highly recommend this sundae.

My Calabria: Rustic Cooking of Southern Italy

It’s no secret that Italian cooking is one of my favorite styles, and I often mention my penchant for spicy flavors. So naturally, the food of Calabria, with abundant use of both sweet and hot peppers, is something I’d like to know better. On June first, Rosetta Costantino, author of My Calabria, taught a class at Central Market Cooking School, and I was invited to attend. She presented four dishes from the book while sharing stories about growing up in Calabria and her family’s farm. They grew everything they ate and made their own cheese and sausages. Fresh, seasonal cooking was a given. When she was fourteen years old, her family moved to California and brought their food traditions, along with vegetable seeds, to their new home. They continued to grow their own vegetables and make their own ricotta and pasta as they always had. It was a delight to hear the stories of southern Italian culture translated into Bay Area California living while observing how to make fresh pasta from only flour and water. I can’t wait to dive into the book and try several other dishes after watching a few them being prepared in the class.

First, polpette di melanzane or crispy eggplant ‘meat’balls were demonstrated. Rosetta told us that most cooking in Calabria has always been done by boiling or frying because ovens aren’t all that common. When she was growing up there, wood ovens for bread were shared but most home kitchens included only stove tops. Chunks of unpeeled eggplant were cooked in boiling water, and Rosetta said she never bothers salting and draining eggplant as some do. The cooked eggplant was drained and pressed to remove as much water as possible before being finely chopped by hand. A food processor would result in too finely chopped and mashed eggplant, so chopping by hand is important. That was then mixed with breadcrumbs, grated pecorino cheese, parsley, minced garlic, salt and pepper, and an egg. One inch sized balls were formed from the mixture and rolled in more breadcrumbs. At this point, the polpette can sit in the refrigerator for a day if you wanted to make this in advance. Just before serving, the polpette should be fried in olive oil. They make fabulous, little hors d’oeuvres but could also be served in tomato sauce with or without pasta.

Making fresh egg pasta is, for me, just about the most enjoyable thing ever to create in the kitchen. Turning the handle on my pasta machine that clamps down to the counter and holding the dough as it becomes thinner and longer with each pass through the rollers makes me happy every time I do it. So, I was very curious to learn about Calabrian pasta which is made with no eggs and is rolled and shaped by hand without being passed through rollers of any machine. Rosetta explained that it’s better to let the dough be on the dry side because you can always work in tiny amounts of additional water, but once the dough gets too wet it’s nearly impossible to correct. You just keep kneading the flour and water mixture by hand until the consistency feels right, and then you let the dough rest for twenty minutes or so. For the cavatieddi, she rolled pieces of dough into thin ropes and then cut the ropes into about two inch lengths. Then, by pushing and quick pulling with two or three fingertips, the cut rope of dough was shaped into curled tubes. Interestingly, even though this was fresh pasta, it takes about fifteen minutes to cook.

A simple but delicious sauce for the pasta was made by roasting some fresh, peeled and seeded tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper, breadcrumbs that had been mixed with garlic, herbs, and some grated pecorino, and ground dried hot chiles. Rosetta grows her own chiles, dries them, and grinds them. She spoke about the juicy, dark red, homegrown tomatoes she's accustomed to using. She said even with just picked tomatoes, she’ll leave them sitting for a few days to allow them to deepen in color and become extra ripe before using them for this recipe. Once roasted, stirring the tomatoes a few times causes them to break into pieces and form a chunky sauce. The cooked pasta was added directly to the roasting pan with the tomatoes and tossed to combine. The pasta had a slightly firmer bite than egg pasta does, and the thick, roasted tomato sauce coated it perfectly.

Next, a traditional Calabrian sausage was prepared from pork butt with surface fat, wild fennel seed which has a slightly different flavor than cultivated fennel seed, ground hot pepper, and Calabrian paprika. The meat was ground, and the spices were mixed in by hand. Rosetta explained that you know the mixture is well-combined when it becomes a bright red color and your hands are also red. The preferred shape for the sausage is one long, coiled piece that is tied together with kitchen twine. The big spiral is easy to grill and turn when it’s tied. The grilled sausage was served with peperonata piccante which was a slowly sauteed mixture of sweet and hot peppers, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and basil. The sweet, spicy mix of tender vegetables seemed to melt upon being tasted, and since I’d passed my piece of sausage along the person sitting next to me, I wished I had a piece of toasted, rustic bread on which to scoop the peperonata. Obviously, the sausage isn’t something I’ll be making at home, but it was a brilliant color that looked beautiful on top of the sauteed peppers.

The last dish of the evening was gelato al cioccolato con peperoncino. A rich chocolate base was made for the gelato, and once it cooled ground hot red pepper was added before it was churned in an ice cream machine. The flavor was deeply chocolaty with a slow burn that surprised you at the end of each bite.

Rosetta also leads culinary tours combined with cooking classes in Calabria, and the next one is this September. It’s a nine day tour including porcini foraging in the mountains, observing cheese making, as well as wine tastings and olive oil tastings. You can also learn more from Rosetta at her blog Calabria From Scratch.