If I am so Frugal why do I use Truffles?

I am frugal; I like to think I got to retire from high tech because I was cheap, not because I was rich. But I also think life is too short to eat bland food.

I have a nice little collection of fine ingredients that I use on a regular basis. Truffles, nut oil, salt packed capers, Greek olives, fine cheeses and expensive vinegars frequently find their way onto my plate.

A fourteen dollar bottle of walnut oil might seem like an extravagance but if it enhances fifty meals out of it it works out to 28 cents per meal. And it tastes great.

I love condiments made out of boiled down grapes, from the balsamico we know to unusual items like must, which is simply boiled down grape juice. A drop of that on a plate packs a lot of flavor. I love putting just barely a drop on a piece of apple or cheese or a slice of beef. Sweet and sour with a lot of depth it's really worth looking for.

Truffles are the sign of a special meal here. They have the cachet of being rare and expensive but if you use them right they can be a very cost effective way of packing some powerful flavors. I buy jars of truffles or peelings to make sauces for beef or chicken or vegetables. Just a dollars worth sauteed in a little butter in a pan where a steak had cooked will make your whole house smell like truffles and with a few drops of cream you have as good a sauce as can be made.

One area I don't suggest spending a lot of money on is fancy salts. I have tried grey salts, pink salts, sea salts from all over and cheap salts. Use a good brand of kosher salt for most things or everything and you'll do well. There are some fun salts like Maldon, which are little crystal pyramids and crunch when you eat them, but is that worth the bundle of money it costs? Maybe, but it's hardly frugal and doesn't pack a flavor punch.

So if you don't know what to get or how to use it I suggest you start with a single item like a good nut oil or maybe an aged balsamic vinegar. Spend ten or twelve bucks. Then taste what you have been missing!

It's Sushi Day

(Note: I wrote this onstage in the middle of Brahms' German Requiem, waiting for my cue. Right in front of a large, strong, well rehearsed choir and a fine, large orchestra. Not bad place to be.)

If you think you need years to learn how to make sushi you are dead wrong. In Japan sushi is restaurant and home food. It was originally a way of preserving food for lunches. Think of it as their version of a PBJ.

Simple ingredients. Great food.

 I was lucky enough to have friends of Japanese ancestry when I was growing up and I ate plenty of raw fish back when most Americans thought it was poison.

In 1980 I got to go to Japan with an orchestra. I was the only one who who was used to Japanese food. After a few days whenever they served us something they weren't used to they would all offer it to me. Awesome!


 I remember when we got served huge, incredibly fresh prawns. Oh man oh man.

If you have never eaten octopus you are missing out. You buy it already boiled and tender at the Japanese market but my favorite way to make it is getting it raw and grilling it for a long time in olive oil. Some other time..  

Like so many Americans now my kids grew up eating and loving sushi.

Making it home is easy, fun and way cheaper than eating out. I spent 20 bucks on fish for this lunch and it made a lot of sushi for 4 people and yes, we have leftover ingredients like rice wine vinegar and nori.

Notice the knife blade is almost parallel to the cutting board.

Aside from the fish you need some short grain rice, a bit of rice vinegar, sugar and the Japanese ingredients, none of which cost more than 2 bucks, and there is plenty left over.  To make the seasoning for the sushi rice, we put a little water in a bowl and add the sugar and rice vinegar in small amounts and keep adding until it tastes right.  I know it's not traditional but I like to put a little fresh lemon juice in the solution.

Spreading the vinegar mixture over the rice.

The rice takes 20 minutes to cook, 10 minutes to rest and a few minutes to cool off. Traditionally the chef cuts the rice and sprinkles it with the vinegar mixture while the apprentice fans it to cool it quickly.

Today my son Phil helped out, waving the Gordon Jacob horn concerto frantically at it while I cut the rice and mixed in the solution.

I'm sure my critics would say that's how I play the Gordon Jacob concerto.

With rice and condiments, here is lunch for 4.

Here is a finished serving plate. It really doesn't take much time as aside from making the rice all you have to do is slice stuff up.

The fish we have here is hamachi, octopus, scallops with the roe and innards and marinated mackerel. To make them more interesting I floured and lightly fried the scallops.

Along with the fish we have shiso leaves,  nori seaweed sheets that I waved over a flame and shredded, sliced cucumber, wasabe, pickled ginger, and takuan, which is daikon pickled with rice bran.


On this plate, starting at the top is the fried scallops on top of shiso leaves, then on the left is takuan and on the right is cucumber and below the scallops are octopus, yellowtail and vinegared mackerel.

Today we served sushi Chirashi or 'scattered' style. Instead of making rolls or lumps we simply put the rice in the bottom of a bowl and topped it with the fish and stuff.

This was Phil's bowl. Not a bad lunch.





I have a hot tip for you today. We use Kikkoman Organic Soy Sauce. Not because it's organic, but because it tastes awesome. A really fine flavor unlike the usual dull soy sauces.  It smells and tastes great.