Fall Dinner Party
After a long and hot summer (it doesn’t happen often, but we had a real summer in Toronto this year), the air is finally cooling down and the days are getting shorter. We are finally ready for richer and heavier food. It is a perfect time to have a fall dinner party.
There are so many dishes we are thinking about cooking. Then comes Samin Nosrat’s Netflix show ‘Salt Fat Acid Heat’, based on her James Beard Award winning best seller cookbook of the same name. The slow braised beef short ribs in the first ‘Salt’ episode make our mouth water and the main course for our fall dinner party is settled.
We decide to have a lighter first course to balance out the short ribs, and think scallops with lentils and spinach would be a perfect match. The rest of the menu comes easily. We throw in some sardine crostini, chorizo cooked in Sherry to start off.
For the hors d'oeuvres we served, we made the recipes up based on the food we had during our travels. The sardine crostini recipe is super easy. We just put some avocado paste (just mash the avocado slices) on the toasted bread and top with some canned sardines. For the chorizos, we peel off the casing of the chorizos first and cut the sausage into pieces and simmer them in Sherry. If you don’t have sherry handy at home (we are not sherry drinkers, and keeping a bottle at home just for occasionally cooking use sounds a bit wasteful), you can use a mixture of equal part of apple cider vinegar and dry white wine, which captures both the acidity and the richness of the alcohol content.
These hors d’oeuvres are so popular that they are all gone within 20 minutes! It is definitely a good start.
Scallop was a bit of challenge for us for a long time. It is very tricky for us to cook the big, plumy scallops through (we are not really into the jelly-ish texture in the middle) without overcooking them. For a while, we only ate baby scallops instead. Then we found that if we slice the scallops in half, it is very easy to cook them to perfection! Sounds very simple when you know the answer, doesn’t it?
The scallop recipe is also made up by us. The earthiness of the green lentils compliments very well with the sweet and delicate flavor of scallops, and gives the dish some structure. Spinach adds a nice texture as the bridge between the crunchiness of lentils and the silkiness of scallops. The lemon juice squeezed on top provides acidity to cut through the earthy and sweet tone of the dish.
It takes some digging around on the net to find the Samin short ribs recipe. Eventually we found it here. Every ingredient looks straightforward, except for dashi. Although there is a recipe for dashi, the ingredients look a bit exotic, such as kombu, bonito. Determined to follow the recipe strictly at the first time cooking, I set out to find real dashi in Toronto. Given how diverse Toronto is, I’m convinced that I will find the authentic dashi somewhere in the city. Sure enough, I found dashi from Japan (!) at Sanko on Queen Street West in downtown Toronto. Bonus point? There is no MSG!
The beef short ribs are definitely a blast. They are so tender that you can cut them through with a fork. Dashi adds a very earthy and smoky flavor to the ribs, and works so well with the sweetness of mirin and sugar. The cilantro and green shallot garnishing gives the dish a refreshing finish. Everyone at the party got seconds and we have no leftovers!
Finally it is time for dessert. We are generally not dessert people. But this Norwegian apple almond cake from New York Times Cooking looks so delicious and perfectly seasonal, we can’t resist. It is a beautiful cake for the season and very moist. We did cut down the sugar in the recipe by half and removed the sugar dusting altogether, and the cake is sweet enough.
Here are the recipes for the party.
Samin Nosrat’s Soy-braised Beef Short Ribs
Prep the ribs one or two days before you want to cook. If you start the prep the day before, season the meat lightly with salt and let it sit for 30 minutes. We start the prep two days before, and season the meat with salt and let it in the fridge overnight.
For the marinade, whisk together the soy sauce, brown sugar, mirin, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and cayenne. Place the meat in a resealable plastic bag and pour in the marinade. Seal the bag and squish the marinade around so all the meat is evenly coated. Refrigerate overnight.
A few hours before you want to cook the ribs, pull them out of the fridge to come up to room temperature. Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat to 400°F.
Set a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat to preheat. When pan is hot, drop the temperature to medium-low, add just enough oil to coat the bottom. Working in batches so as not to crowd pan, brown a few short ribs at a time on all three meaty sides, adding more oil if necessary before each batch. Reduce heat as necessary to achieve browning gradually; it may take 4 to 5 minutes per side for well-browned ribs.
Transfer the ribs, bone-side down, to a large Dutch oven, then pour the marinade over the meat. It’s fine if the ribs are snug, but they should all fit in a single layer. Add enough dashi to go about ¾-inch up the sides of the ribs, then cover with lid or parchment and aluminum foil. Slide into the oven and cook until the liquid simmers, about 30 minutes, then reduce heat to 325°F and cook until meat is very tender and falling off the bone, 3 to 4 hours more.
Uncover pot or dish and crank oven to 450°F. Brush ribs with the braising juices and cook for about until shiny and brown, about 8 to 12 minutes.
Serve warm, garnished with cilantro and slivered scallions.
Cover and refrigerate leftovers for up to 3 days.
5 pounds meaty short ribs on the bone, 2-3 inches thick
Salt
Grapeseed oil
¼ cup (60 grams) soy sauce
¼ cup (55 grams) dark brown sugar
¼ cup (58 grams) mirin (rice wine)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves, finely grated or pounded with a pinch of salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne
About 1 cup (228 grams) dashi
1⁄4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro leaves and tender stems
4 scallions, green and white parts slivered
Dashi
With the Sanko dashi package, making dashi is like making tea. Boil 3 cups of water and put a bag of dashi (a bit bigger than a standard tea bag) in the boiling water. Let it simmer for 10 – 15 minutes and take the dashi bag out and put aside. This is the first round of dashi which has more intense flavor. You can make another batch with the same dashi bag with a lighter flavor.
Norwegian Apple and Almond Cake
Peel and core apples; slice 1/2-inch thick. Set aside. Use some of the butter to grease an 8-inch cake pan. Dust with a little flour. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Sift or whisk flour with baking powder. Set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer, beat granulated sugar with 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) of the butter for several minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat mixture about 3 minutes until creamy. Gradually add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with milk, mixing well after each addition. Transfer batter to pan.
Arrange the apple slices on top of batter in tight overlapping concentric circles, gently pressing them in a bit. Scatter almonds on top. Dust with brown sugar and cinnamon. Dot with remaining butter. Place in the oven and bake about 1 hour, until a cake tester comes out clean, the top has browned and feels fairly firm to the touch.
Allow to cool in the pan until just warm. Remove sides of pan and serve with whipped cream or ice cream. If cake has cooled completely it can be warmed before serving.
4 tart apples, like Granny Smith (We use about 2 and half apples. The key is to have enough apples to cover the surface of the cake.)
1 cup/227 grams (2 sticks) salted butter, softened, plus more for greasing the pan
2 cups/255 grams all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ¼ cups/250 grams granulated sugar (We cut this by half.)
3 large eggs, at room temperature
½ cup/4 ounces whole milk
⅓ cup/32 grams sliced almonds
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar (Not used)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream for serving (Not used)
