Inspired by a meatloaf recipe in this month's Le Menu.
I found some interesting buckwheat pasta at the Coop which provided the motivation for this dish.
A simple summer vegetable dish:
Another random thing to accompany the bread soup/salad from Thursday.
This came about because I couldn't decide if I should make bread soup with tomatoes or bread salad with tomatoes. So I ended up with too much liquid for the one and not enough for the other. Ah well, we served it in a soup bowl and tossed pieces of lettuce in the bowl as we were eating. It was soup/salad. :-)
Inspired by a Bittman post and column: the idea is to make a fritatta with a high vegetable to egg ratio.
No problem: cook a finely chopped red onion with a couple cloves of minced garlic in olive oil. Add a grated carrot and a big pinch of salt and cook a while. Add two grated medium-sized zucchinis, some black mustard seeds, chopped dill, more salt, and some nutmeg. Cook until the zucchini is about ready to eat. Stir in four beaten eggs and cook until the eggs are just set. Serve with grated Sbrinz.
Probably would have been better if I'd salted the grated zucchini and let it drain for a bit; still quite nice.
We ate this with a big green salad and some bratkartoffeln.
Andrea requested Southeast Asian for her birthday dinner, so that's what I did.
After browning some skinned chicken leg quarters in butter I did the usual caramel + fish sauce + lime sauce and then braised the chicken in that along with some chunks of lemon grass. Just before serving I strained the sauce and added a bit of fresh lime.
We ate this with sticky rice.
As a side I steamed some green beans and then quickly stir fried them with chili-bean sauce, soy sauce, and black vinegar. The beans were good but didn't really match with the chicken in terms of flavors.
A bit of a random one:
Lightly brown geschnetzelted pork in rapeseed oil, season and set aside.
Cook diced onion and carrot in the oil with some minced garlic. When the carrots soften add some flour and cook another minute or so. Add vermouth, water, chopped tarragon, and prepared mustard and mix well. Add back the pork and cook 5-10 minutes. Add a bit of cayenne and adjust seasoning.
We ate this with oven-roasted potatoes and the usual green salad.
This could have gone in a lot of different directions, Spanish is what I chose.
For the chicken: season chicken breast chunks with salt. Coat with sesame seeds. Cook over medium heat in some rapeseed oil (careful not to burn the seeds!). Serve hot on the spicy tomato-saffron sauce.
For the spicy tomato-saffron sauce:
Cook some chopped garlic and small-diced bacon in olive oil until the garlic just starts to color. Add whole cumin seeds and cook another minute or so. Add dry sherry, canned tomatoes + juice, a pinch of saffron, sweet and hot paprika, and black pepper. simmer until the tomatoes start to break down. Puree with a stick blender.
For the rice: Cook basmati rice in copious salted boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drain. Put the pan back over medium-high heat and add olive oil. When the oil is hot, dump the rice back in the pot, top with some canned tomatoes, cover, and let cook a few minutes until it sizzles. Reduce the heat and let cook another 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let stand until ready to serve.
As a vegetable side I cook sliced zucchini with tarragon and butter.
This was some really nice food.
We're reaching the end of cherry season (it's just sour cherries now) and we needed to get some in jars for the rest of the year.
It's been hot, so we've been eating a lot of salad.
The cod: cut a fillet into serving-size pieces, season, cook over medium-high heat in clarified butter.
The salads:
As usual, after a weekend in the mountains the priority was something relatively easy.
For the rösti: grated potatoes (wrung out), grated onion, minced garlic. Seasoned and cooked with clarified butter.
For the spinach: Cook lardons with diced onion, chopped garlic, and a couple piri-piri peppers in olive oil until the bacon starts to brown. Add spinach and cook until the spinach is about done. Season and add a handful of raisins and splash of cider vinegar. Cook another couple of minutes.
With this we also had a green salad.
Just a note: to go with the leftover baked rice we used some colorful tomatoes (a big yellow one, some purple cherry tomatoes, and a orange pear tomato) from this week's biokiste to make an insalata caprese of sorts: tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, and olive oil.
Something random:
Cook some basmati rice until it's just short of done. Season it reasonably then put in a olive-oiled pan. Saute some diced onion and carrot in a bit of olive oil. Add ground beef and salt and let the beef start to brown. Add diced zucchini, oregano, dry vermouth, a couple dashes of Maggi (or soy sauce) and a good amount of prepared mustard. Simmer a bit then adjust seasoning. Top the rice with the meat and vegetable mixture. Top with grated gruyere. Bake at 200C for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is brown and bubbly.
Serve with the requisite green salad.
Inspired by a Bittman idea. I wanted to use sausage from the good Italian butcher, but he was unfortunately out. Damn! I ended up using standard bratwurst.
Poke a couple sausages all over with a fork. Roast in a pan over medium heat until nicely browned. Remove the sausage and add a bit of olive oil to supplement the rendered fat. Add thinly sliced fennel, salt, and orange peel. Slice the sausage and add back to the pan. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring every once in a while, until the fennel is soft and nicely caramelized. Serve over pasta and top with grated parmesan.
Really good stuff.
To go along with the pasta I cut up a head of cauliflower and roasted it in the oven with a bit of rapeseed oil and salt.
The goal was to use biokiste potatoes:
Cut new potatoes into chunks and toss them with some peanut oil. Roast at 210C until about halfway done. Add chopped garlic, diced onion, and whole cumin seeds. Roast another 5 minutes. Add finely diced ham and sliced piquillo peppers. Roast until the potatoes are done. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
To go with the very nice potatoes I cooked some zucchini in olive oil. The green salad was missing (out of lettuce!), but we did grated carrots with a bit of arugula and tomatoes.
Last night I did a batch of crepes based on the basic proportions in FStoS : 1 1/4c flour (should have been buckwheat, but we didn't find that), 1/2c milk, 1c water, 2 eggs. On the table as fillings we had arugula, chopped basil, tomato sauce (from the pizza), cottage cheese, and diced ham.
After a long day in the mountains, dinner needed to be quick and easy. Macaroni and cheese seemed like a good choice.
Cook some elbow macaroni until almost done. Drain it, put back in the pan over medium heat and add a splash each of dry vermouth and light cream along with some grated cheese (alp cheese for us) and minced garlic. Stir until the cheese melts. Stir in some chopped ham and a couple of pinches of piment d'esplette and let warm through. Serve topped with diced fresh tomatoes and a good grind of black pepper.
The cheese didn't behave as nicely as I would have hoped (probably should have made the cheese sauce first), but the dish itself was quite good.
Using some pizza dough from the Coop and a quick tomato sauce (tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt) we did a number of small pizzas:
First gazpacho of the year: tomatoes, onion, garlic, and long green peppers pureed together. Small diced zucchini and long green pepper added at the end to provide texture. Served with olive oil and balsamico.
We also did another round of wraps; this time with spicy ground beef (cooked with garlic, onion, cumin, coriander, hot paprika, black pepper, and salt), cucumber-mint raita, and lettuce.
Inevitably, there was a green salad.
