To accompany the leftover greens from Sunday, I made some sauteed chicken chunks: breast meat tossed with fine flour and then shallow fried in olive oil. These I served with a lime-yogurt sauce (yogurt, garlic paste, lime juice, salt, black pepper, hot paprika).
Quick and quite good.
Yesterday was a bit too warm for normal cooking, and we had a friend visiting, so I fired up the grill. We kept it simple though and just did burgers and sausages with grilled onion.
oh, and a green salad. Of course.
To accompany the leftover grilled pork, I did a batch of "cumin scented greens" from La Cocina de Mama.
This is pretty simple and quite good: brown some garlic and bread cubes in olive oil then mash with cumin seeds and red-wine vinegar in a mortar; slowly cook some minced onion in the remaining oil; add diced tomato and salt and cook a couple of minutes; add the garlic/bread paste and cook a bit longer; add some pre-cooked and chopped chard greens and let heat through.
We also had leftover barley and a green salad.
After seeing the Minimalist recipe this week and then seeing it mentioned on Bittman's blog, I pretty much had no choice when I saw blueberries at the market yesterday.
We assumed graham crackers would be difficult, so we didn't really do much looking and just used McVities digestives for the crust. These were good, but I think a bit more sweet in the crust would have helped.
Otherwise, this was a really nice dessert.
The weather permitted, so the grill was employed yesterday. They had some really beautiful T-bone steaks at the Coop that I almost succumbed to, but then we found a nice-looking pork tenderloin that was half price; it's hard to pass that up.
I seasoned the pork with salt, pepper, coriander, and prepared mustard and then let it stand for about an hour while I got the fire started and grilled some red onions and heirloom tomatoes (a Pro Specie Rara type: Gezahnte). I grilled the pork over a medium-hot fire and then served it with the grilled vegetables, some cooked barley, and a simple vinaigrette (basil, rapeseed oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, prepared mustard).
Of course we also had a green salad.
I usually end up forgetting to record weekend lunches where I cook; ha ha... not this time.
Start some olive oil in a pan. Add minced garlic and a couple dried chilis and let those cook until they're aromatic. Add some spaetzle (pre-made; I used "vegetable spaetzle") and let cook, tossing every few minutes, until the noodles are starting to brown and crisp up in places. Toss in some diced fresh tomato, coarsely chopped basil, and crumbled feta cheese. Serve immediately.
Yesterday I had a craving for something made with Chinese black beans. To solve this, I followed a BittmanWorld recipe for pork ribs with black bean sauce. Instead of ribs I used schweinshaxe (like osso bucco), which is a nice substitution.
As a side I did lettuce stir fried with sesame oil, ginger, and garlic, served with Sichuan hot oil and soy sauce.
Of course we also had rice and a salad.
Yesterday was one of those "let's clear vegetables out of the fridge" cooking days. The basil on the balcony also needed to be pruned, so that had to go into the meal as well. Given the situation at hand, the obvious thing to do was a garbage gratin.
Put a gratin dish in a 175C oven and let it preheat. Make some pasta (broken spaghetti and elbow macaroni). Brown some diced bacon in olive oil. Microwave some vegetables (green beans, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant) until half cooked. Make pesto (basil, olive oil, almonds, parmesan). Mix everything along with some salt and a few good grinds of black pepper. Add to the heated gratin dish. Top with breadcrumbs mixed with olive oil. Bake until browned up top, about 30 minutes.
We ate this delight with a big green salad.
This quick meal was inspired by an app we had at the Kornhaus a couple of weeks ago; it's a nice way to use up stuff from the fridge. :-)
Brown some bacon in a bit of olive oil; add a sliced onion and cook until the onion starts to soften; add some zucchini sticks and some piquillo pepper strips; cook a bit longer. Toast some slices of bread (we used whole wheat toast bread) pretty well, then put on a baking sheet and top with the cooked vegetables, fresh basil, sliced tomatoes, and a good amount of cheese (mixture from the fridge: val poschiava, mariage des trois laits, sbrinz), then toss in the broiler and cook until the cheese is nicely browned.
We ate this with a big green salad.
We still had a lot of salsa leftover, so we suffered through another salsa-driven meal.
I developed a strong craving for chipotle salsa; so I planned a meal around the salsa.
For the salsa: combine good canned tomatoes, chipotles, some garlic, some onion, lime juice, and some cilantro and food-process until smooth.
Other things to have with the salsa:
We had a large quantity of vegetables in the fridge from last week's biokiste. This was an expedient to use up a bunch of those.
For the vegetables: Saute some chopped garlic in olive oil. Add green beans, cauliflower, dill, marjoram, oregano, black pepper, and a bit of water our bouillon. Cover and cook for a few minutes. Stir in some zucchini. Cover and simmer until the vegetables are cooked. Adjust seasoning.
For the meatballs: mix ground pork with some minced smoked bacon, an egg, some breadcrumbs, and a good grind of black pepper. Form small meatballs and brown in a bit of olive oil.
For the sauce: combined yogurt, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, hot paprika, and chopped fresh basil.
Serve the vegetables and meatballs with some rice and the sauce for a quite nice meal.
We also had, of course, a green salad.
Chickpeas need no justificatory text.
Cook some chickpeas in water with a couple bay leaves. Drain them. In a separate pan, cook a couple diced onions, some chopped garlic, and whole cumin seeds in olive oil until the onion softens a bit. Add the chickpeas and toast a bit longer. Add some paprika, white wine, piri piri chilis, black pepper, stock (chicken bouillon), tomato paste, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, chopped parsley, and a couple more bay leaves and stir well. Add some merguez chopped into 1-2cm pieces, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 20-30 minutes until the merguez is done.
loooooovely
of course we also had a green salad
It seems like it's been forever since I made risotto (ok, actually only since February).
I did a straightforward mushroom risotto using dried porcinis and black chantarelles. I tossed in a couple of thyme sprigs for good measure. Since we had no proper stock in the house, I used porcini bouillon that I enhanced by using it as the soaking liquid for the mushrooms. I finished the risotto with some butter.
Since the rice was super rich, the protein bit was simple: beef Saftplätzli (minute steaks, I guess) cooked in the grill pan, then served on a bed of mixed bell peppers cooked in olive oil.
Great food.
After the great success of the margaritas, we decided to try another application of the basic Bittman recipe and substitute rum for the tequila in order to get something like a daiquiri.
I started with more or less the same proportions as before: 4oz rum, 2oz lime, 1.5oz triple sec, but that was too sweet. To cut the perceived sweet a bit, I added a slick of Meyers; that helped some.
All in all, this has potential, but we need to get some better rum. This is a formula where you really taste the alcohol you use, so a big part of the reason the margaritas were so good was the high-quality tequila. Comparing a drink made with some generic (not bad, but not particularly distinguished) rum just isn't fair.
To go with the leftover lentils this week I sauteed some green beans in olive oil with savory and bacon.
To go with the leftover chicken I cooked a head of lettuce with olive oil and dill.
The original plan was to do a Bittman recipe for grilled chicken with lemon, accompanied by chipotle-peach salsa. Unfortunately the peaches were moldy, so we just did the chicken.
This was super simple: toss chicken leg quarters on the slow part of the grill; cook until they're basically done; move to the hot part to get a nice surface; season with salt and pepper and serve with lemon slices. With good chicken it was excellent food. I wanted fruit salsa, so I made do with what was in the house: halved gooseberries and cassis tossed with minced chili (habanero family) and lime.
I also did some potatoes in a sort of cheaters hobo pack on the grill: cut new potatoes into chunks; microwave for a couple minutes until they're about half cooked (this is the cheating part). Transfer to a sheet of foil; add olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and fresh thyme. Wrap up the packets and toss on a slow part of the grill until they're done. very very good.
As a vegetable side, we had pan-browned cauliflower.
and a big green salad.
I've been craving lentils for a while, but it's been too hot to cook them. "Fortunately" yesterday was cool and rainy.
Cook some finely diced onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil until they start to soften. Add small green lentils, diced smoked ham, some white wine, some chicken bouillon, a pinch of herbs de provence, a few bay leaves, and a good grind of pepper and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook until the lentils are soft, about an hour. Serve topped with a drizzle of olive oil and some chopped parsley (if you have it, we didn't).
Lentils are goooooood.
As a veggie side, I cooked some thickly sliced zucchini in butter until it was soft and then mixed in some shredded basil leaves and a good grind of white pepper.
Of course we also had a green salad.
The berries are now really starting to show up at the market. Last night, to celebrate, we did a berry gratin with blueberries, raspberries, cassis, and cherries (pitted), mixed with a bit of sugar, cornstarch, and lime juice; topped with crumbled cookies and baked.
simple and delicious
A while ago we bought a bottle of Savagnin that's been sitting there waiting to be tried. Yesterday we went to a good local cheese shop to organize a cheese plate and last night we broke open the bottle.
The cheese plate consisted of an assortment of raw-milk cheeses:
I took advantage of the fact that it cooled down yesterday to do some "real" cooking and improv a pan of baked eggplant.
Put some olive oil in a baking dish. Top with a layer of sliced eggplant, sprinkle with salt, top with a layer of sliced tomatoes, a layer of basil leaves, thinly sliced onions, a sprinkling of finely diced bacon, and a grind of pepper. Add another layer of everything. Cover and bake at 190C for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, grate over some sbrinz and let bake another 15 minutes.
Great stuff.
I also steamed a head of cauliflower and then tossed it with salt and olive oil.
Oh yes, and the green salad.
It's still to hot to do real cooking in the kitchen, but I wanted to do something other than salads, so last night I fired up the grill and did:
It's too hot for real cooking, so I did some assorted salads and things that cook quickly:
