Job opening. Apply here.

My cousin thinks I’m certifiable. She just can’t fathom how I can toil away all day, trying to make the world a better place through advertising, and then get home at 8 o’clock at night and start chopping and dicing and roasting. I tell her that it’s stressful trying to sell people things they don't want. Cooking is relaxing.

But she got me thinking: how can I toil all day and then get home and start cooking? Advertising is stressful. I deserve someone at home, making dinner for me. The solution is clear: I need a manservant.

I'm not picky. I will accept either a Mr. French type or a scantily clad, well-oiled muscle man who can make a decent bearnaise. I prefer someone who will do light housework as well, including figuring out what to do with this box of wires, cables, and chargers from old electronics that I feel obliged to keep.

The pickings are pretty slim on Craigslist for manservants (menservant?) They're also on the meager side for butlers, house boys, valets, and serfs. But I am realizing other, more pressing issues with the MSP (manservant plan), the biggest one being that we live in 820 square feet. Nick and I like to spread out, so that doesn't leave a lot of space to keep a manservant. Plus, this manservant will probably want to be paid something and I'm not in a position to do that (Sigerson Morrison has the right of first refusal on my paycheck.)

So, it seems like the only way to get dinner on the table is to prepare it myself. No, I'm not trying to recreate some 1954 “perfect wife” fantasy. No, I'm not trying to re-enact that old Enjoli commercial. I'm just hungry. And if I'm making dinner, then it ain't gonna be the Manwich.

It will be something like the following recipe for fish glazed with a honey-soy mixture. Simple and truly delicious. I served it on a bed of sautéed sweet potatoes and Chinese cabbage (I love the sweet/salty mixture of the soy glaze with the sweet potatoes), but don’t feel like you have to get fancy. Unless your manservant is making it for you.



Perch with Honey-Soy Glaze
Serves 2

3 tablespoons honey
2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 large clove garlic, minced
6 scallions, white and light green parts trimmed to 1” pieces.
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
Salt
2 6oz-8oz. fillets of perch or other firm fleshed, white fish


1. Whisk together honey, soy sauce, lime juice, and garlic in a small bowl.


2. Pat fish dry and sprinkle with a little salt. Heat oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until very hot (but not smoking.) Add fish and cook on one side until browned, about 3-4 minutes (depending on weight of fillets.) Turn fish over and brown another minute. Add soy sauce mixture and simmer, covered, until fish is almost cooked through, about 3 more minutes. Remove fish and set aside.

3. Add scallion to sauce and boil, stirring occasionally, until glaze is thick and reduced, about 5 minutes. You should have about 1/4 cup of glaze. Perch the perch (oh, how I wanted to use that!) on your plates and drizzle with glaze.

Everything Happens for a Reason

The Pistou sat there. It was getting increasingly annoyed with me. Every time I opened the refrigerator, I could hear it practically spitting at me in a French accent: “Why do I just sit here? Why do you not use me? Am I not good enough for your ridiculous American recipes? Pah!”

The Mint Pistou was the remainder of the Ugly Soup episode, the superfluous byproduct of Gourmet’s original recipe. It was tasty, a blend of fresh-from-the-garden (someone else’s garden, of course) mint and parsley, a scallion, and some of my favorite extra-virgin olive oil, a French version of pesto. The soup didn’t need it, but the pistou didn’t deserve to sit there and rot. It didn’t ask to be born.

Fortunately, the Superfluous Pistou collided with a summertime hankering for shrimp kebobs. Could I repurpose the pistou into a marinade for the wild jumbo fresh shrimp I just shelled out $15.99 a pound for at Whole Foods? Either this was going to be a brilliant marriage of flavors or a colossal mess. After the Rainbow Chard Incident, my confidence was shaken, but thankfully not stirred.

The pistou, in it’s original state, was too thick to act sufficiently as a marinade, but some lime juice took care of that. And since cooking would dull it’s original bright flavors (even more than sitting forlornly in the fridge did) I added some shallot and garlic to punch it up. Despite the grilling, the mint flavor shone through and brought out the shrimp’s sweetness.

Voila! The Superfluous Pistou has become indispensible! I have discovered the reason for it's existence. And, to it's snooty French delight, I 'll definitely make it again.



Mint Pistou Shrimp Kebabs
Serves 4

Note: Since shrimp and vegetables tend to cook at different rates, it makes more sense to skewer them each separately and combine in a bowl, as they come off the grill.

3/4 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs
1 large scallion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 small shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 lbs. uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined, tails on
1 medium red onion
1 medium zucchini
1/2 lb. crimini mushrooms


1. Cut onion and zucchini into 1 1/2” pieces. Wipe mushrooms with a damp paper towel and cut tips off stems.

2. Pulse mint, parsley, and scallion in a food processor until finely chopped. With motor running, add oil in a stream, then add water and salt, blending until incorporated. Whisk in lime juice, shallot, and garlic.

3. Toss the shrimp with enough pistou to generously coat. Marinate 30 minutes. Skewer on soaked wooden skewers or metal kebob skewers.

4. Toss the vegetables, in separate bowls, each with enough pistou to coat. Marinate 30 minutes. Skewer the onions, mushrooms, and zucchini on separate soaked wooden skewers or metal kebob skewers.

5. Preheat grill or grill pan to medium. Coat with cooking spray. Grill shrimp skewers until pink, turning once. Timing depends on the size of the shrimp you use, but you probably won’t need to grill for longer than 3 minutes per side for colossal sized shrimp. Brush with additional pistou before turning. Grill zucchini and onion skewers until tender and caramelized, about 5-6 minutes each side. Grill mushrooms 2-3 minutes each side. Brush all with remaining pistou. Once cooked, serve on skewers, or slide off skewers and toss together in a serving bowl.

Maybe math doesn’t suck.

It’s been a rocky road for math and me. We had a tense relationship from fractions through the algebra years. Integers didn’t help and it got really ugly during my head-spinning foray into geometry. The Pythagorean theorem still makes me break out in hives. But it’s been a long time. Math and I have grown up a bit and developed a cordial truce, based pretty much on salad.

If you’re unsure of the correlation between math and salad, you obviously make as lousy and unbalanced a vinaigrette as I used to. Vinaigrette is one of those cooking cornerstones mastered on the first day of culinary school before tackling weightier subjects, like ice. But not having been to culinary school, or ever really put much thought into it, I spent years combining vinaigrette ingredients in random proportions, completely unaware of the disservice I was doing my greens.

And then math stepped in.

The basic ratio for a good vinaigrette is one part vinegar to three parts oil. If you’re using a particularly strong vinegar or something else highly acidic, like lemon juice, it’ll probably taste more balanced at one part vinegar to four parts oil. Those ratios, 1:3 and 1:4, aren't advanced math, but you can't deny their mathness.

Get your oil to acid ratio right and you can futz with flavors like shallots, herbs, garlic, and sugar. Dijon mustard is a great flavoring and it’ll help your oil and vinegar emulsify (but that’s science. My relationship with science is still a little shaky, so let’s not go there).

Once you see the math-powered light, the horizons of vinaigrette expand beyond salad greens. It's fantastic drizzled onto grilled or roasted meats, just before serving, and tossed with vegetables, beans, and grains (or any combination thereof.) As a mayo replacement, vinaigrette makes a less expected pasta or potato salad and an interesting sandwich condiment. This Basil Vinaigrette, a variation on a Bon Appetit recipe, ranks tops in the official Best Bite Kitchen, and I've used it for all of the above. It’s great tossed with sweet summer corn and tomatoes (as in the snappy photo).

Thank you, sweet, sweet math. I'm glad we stuck it out.


Basil Vinaigrette

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh mint
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
1 scant Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tsp. packed light brown sugar
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper

1. Blitz all ingredients through olive oil, with a hand-blender or food processor, until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste and then get your serve on.

In Defense of Mint

(Bacon Update: The bacon is ready for action, but I haven’t had a chance to do anything with it yet. Will post on that as soon as I have a chance to use it. This work thing keeps getting in the way of my culinary adventures. Hhmph. In the meantime, lets get minty…)

If I were mint, I’d be pissed. Mint may be the most underappreciated of all the herbs. It’s been reduced to a breath-freshening artificial flavor that shows up in candy canes and wintergreen bubble gum, bearing only a passing resemblance to its actual namesake. Restaurants seem to use mint mainly as a dessert garnish or in cocktails. Granted, there are summer rolls and Babbo’s Mint Love Letters, but it too often gets stuck playing Jan to attention-hungry basil’s Marcia. Why aren’t home cooks embracing the minty fresh goodness?

Poor mint. Poor unloved misunderstood mint.

Its high time someone stood up for mint, gave it the savory-food respect it deserves, made mint cool again. My mission is pretty clear. So, in tribute to all that mint has done for us, from the breath freshening to the garnishing and beyond, I’m designating this week Mint Week. (Confession: I admit I’m only doing this because I have a ton of fresh mint at home that needs to be used before it starts getting slimy. If I had a ton of Funyuns at home that needed using up, this entire week would be Funyun Week.) Maybe the Discovery Channel will replace Shark Week, with Mint Week. It's so much more civilized.

First stop? Roasted Lamb with Mint Sauce. I am firmly in the anti-jarred mint sauce camp. It’s not that difficult to chuck a handful of ingredients in a food processor or blender and anyone that tells you otherwise is probably a jarred mint-sauce salesman. I started with Mark Bittman’s Mint Pesto from “How to Cook Everything” and wound up adding more mint, easing up on the oil, and replacing the pine nuts with toasted almonds (because that’s what was in the Nut Cupboard).

The result was more saucy that pesto-y. It’s a fresh tasting, spring-y addition that really punched up the leg of lamb I had marinated in cumin and pomegranate molasses. And it was just the right amount of mint-y, mint-y in a savory food way, not in a curiously strong way. All in all, a proper salute to what mint is meant to be.


Mint Sauce
Makes about 1 1/2 cups

1/4 cup sliced almonds
3 cups loosely packed mint leaves, rinsed and dried
1 medium clove garlic
3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Toast the almonds in a dry skillet, until just fragrant.

2. Put the almonds, the mint, the garlic, the lemon juice, and 1/4 cup of the oil in a food processor or blender and pulse until blended.

3. With food processor or blender on, stream in the remaining oil, until a creamy sauce forms, scraping down sides of the work bowl occasionally.

4. Use immediately or freeze for up to a month.