garlic – Our Wild Savory Kitchen

Greek Lemony Chicken Soup with Rice (Avgolemono)

This is our go-to dish when we want to use up leftover rice or chicken from the frig, or we have purchased a super tasty rotisserie chicken. We can prepare this amazingly elegant and umami packed soup in about 20 minutes, so it’s perfect for a weekday family soup. Classic Greek dishes, like Italian cuisine, are fairly simple as a recipe, but every great dish in both cultures depend entirely on the highest quality of ingredients. Avgolemono soup, (Avgolemono means “egg-lemon”), is a perfect example.

Thai Shrimp with Tomatoes and Mint

The secret of this simple Thai dish is the amazing tension of the umami flavors that are Ying and Yang… fish sauce and mirin or sugar gives us the sweet and sour… the bite of the ginger and the base note of the garlic, light yet intense… the mint and lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves, fresh yet deeply penetrating in taste. This dish is refreshing, aromatic, addictive and spicy, and the mint, tomatoes and the coconut oil together are really wonderfully addictive.

Blackened Mahi Mahi

This dish is our take on a classic Cajun dish, Blackened Redfish, made famous by the incomparable chef, Paul Prudhomme. And it features a tasty hard fighting fish I catch in Key West, the Mahi Mahi.

Frutti di Mare (Fruits of the Sea)

We are lucky to live along the ocean, on the Monterey Bay, and our wild savory kitchen is often filled with the abundance of seafood harvested just a few miles away. We gather mussels from the tide pools and rocks, fish I catch from the Bay, and Dungeness crabs and squid from boats just offshore. So the Frutti di Mare dishes are always changing, we use whatever is available and fresh. This dish is seafood heaven, with mussels, crabs, lobsters, wild caught bay scallops, squid, baby octopus, and our favorite shrimp, Argentinian Red shrimp from the icy waters off Argentina. Served with reduced wine and clam broth, garden fresh tomatoes and tons of garlic, the fruits of the sea are a huge part of the good life.

Fish Baked in Parchment Paper

When a fish is baked whole, especially in parchment paper (papillote), something magical happens. The French call this little feast Poisson en Papillote, and it’s often made with spinach, potatoes, peppers and fennel. All the succulent flavors stay inside the parchment bag, keeping the fish moist and marinating in its own juices. Like any other creature, the meat closest to the bone has the most flavor.