Tuesday: tomato soup, pasta with broccoli

More simple stuff for the hot weather:

• A cold soup from peeled tomatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, bread, tabasco, olive oil, Maggi (the tomatoes were lacking umami), salt, and pepper
• Orrecchiette tossed with steamed broccoli, olive oil, parmesan, basil, chopped pistachios, and black pepper

Mondays salads

It's too hot for warm food, so I did salads.

• Shredded carrots, olive oil, white balsamico, freshly ground cumin, piment d'espelette, salt, white pepper
• Siedfleisch, thinly sliced red onion, horseradish, cider vinegar (let the onions marinate a bit in the horseradish and vinegar first)
• Cottage cheese with chopped dill, parsley, and chives
• Fresh corn cut off the cob and steamed, then combined with diced red pepper, minced onion, pasted garlic, lime juice, sour cream, and chipotle salsa.
• A green salad

Sunday: summer tomato vegetable soup

I won't call this one gazpacho...

Puree peeled tomatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, parsley, olive oil. Add salt and black pepper, dry sherry, tabasco, and minced smoked ham.

Together with a green salad this was a good quick meal for a hot day.

Wednesday: another gazpacho, tuna salad

I don't think I can get tired of gazpacho. This one had fresh tomatoes (peeled, of course), cucumber, onion, garlic, olive oil, basil, parsley, salt, pepper, water, and sherry vinegar.

To go with it we did a big salad: shredded iceberg lettuce, carrots, cheese, tuna, flageolets, cherry tomatoes, and a dill-chive-caper-anchovy vinaigrette.

Tuesday: penne with potatoes, green beans, and basil

A variation on a Ligurian dish driven by the contents of the cupboards.

Cut some peeled potatoes into 1cm dice. Steam them until cooked. Cut some green beans until they are about the same length as the penne. Steam until crisp-tender. Combine basil, pasted garlic, parmesan, olive oil and olive oil in the mini-chop and grind to a pesto-like texture. Toss this with the potatoes and green beans. Add chopped pistachios (no pine nuts in the house!), black pepper, and a bit of the cooking water from the pasta. Serve over whole-wheat penne.

Monday: sauteed vegetables

A no-brainer meal for using up vegetables: onion, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, tomato, smoked ham, olive oil, salt, pepper, and fennel seeds.

We also had some chard (thinner stems that normal) that I steamed in the microwave, coarsely chopped, and then combined with butter and sour cream.

Nothing complicated, everything good. :-)

Friday: frikadellen

To go with the leftover Ensalada Rusa I made some frikadellen:

Combine ground beef and pork with minced onion, minced garlic, minced pickles, salt, pepper, and an egg. Mix well and form small patties. Cook over medium-high heat and then set aside and make a pan sauce with tomato paste, ketchup, mustard, tabasco, and water. Before serving, put the frikadellen in the sauce and flip a couple of times to coat them.

Wednesday: Ensalada Rusa, stuffed squash

I needed to come back to the Ensalada Rusa recipe from Wiener since we had a lot of potatoes and it was so good last time.

The stuffed squash idea used some small round hard-skinned squash from the biokiste (no idea what they are): Remove the tops of the squash and scoop out the seeds. Add a bit of water, cover, and microwave until about cooked inside (4 minutes for us). Make the filling by combining garlic paste, minced onion, shredded dried smoked ham, diced tomatoes, diced dried tomatoes, olive oil, salt, white pepper, and a bit of white balsamico. Fill the squash, top with grated parmesan, and bake at 180C for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is melted and the insides are bubbling.

Saturday: nachos

Not sure where the idea came from, but once it appeared it definitely grabbed hold and wouldn't let go. :-)

For the chicken:

Brown some chicken leg quarters well. Add chopped onions and garlic and cook 4-5 minutes. Add coarsely ground coriander and some cumin seeds and let cook another couple minutes. Add sweet paprika, oregano, minced chipotles with adobo, a pinch each of ground cloves and cinnamon, a couple bay leaves, a good splash of soy sauce, and some chicken bouillon. Add sufficient water so that the chicken is just about covered. Bring to a simmer, cover, and let cook for a couple of hours. Turn the chicken pieces after an hour. Remove the chicken from the cooking liquid and let the pieces cool briefly. Meanwhile reduce the cooking liquid by half. Once the chicken is cool enough to handle: remove the skin and bones and shred the flesh. Stir some of the reduced cooking liquid into the shredded chicken and set aside.

To assemble the nachos:

Make a layer of chips. Top with kidney beans, shredded chicken, and some diced tomatoes. Put in a 200C oven (top heat) for ~5 minutes until the tomatoes wilt a bit. Add another layer of chips and top with grated cheddar cheese and more tomatoes. Toss back in the oven until ready to eat.

Serve with salsa, guacamole, shredded lettuce, and sour cream.

*Very* happy making food.

Friday: Succotash

It was impossible to resist doing a succotash given the contents of the fridge.

Cut some bacon into 1/2cm dice and brown it nicely with a bit of neutral oil. Add onions and garlic and sweat a bit. Add chunks of zucchini and pepper (we had long peppers in the box) and a good pinch of salt, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini are about soft. Add sweet corn (freshly cut off the cob), some diced tomatoes, and some broad beans, cover again, and cook another 5 minutes or so until the corn is read to eat.

Serve with some good bread.

There's not much point with making this unless you have fresh corn, but with the corn it is soooooo good.

Thursday: spaghetti with pesto, tomato salad

We had plenty of basil and some almost-overripe tomatoes in the biokiste this week... this was one of the obvious things to do with that.

The pesto was standard : basil, garlic paste, toasted pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil.

For the tomato salad I made a vinaigrette with garlic paste, microplane-grated ginger, white balsamico, mustard, and peanut oil. I used more vinegar than normal. We tossed this with some cut-up tomatoes and chives.

Wednesday: extending indian leftovers

We had some leftovers from Tuesday's lovely Indian food, but not enough for a full meal, so I came up with something.

For the leftover lamb paratha filling: saute some minced garlic, ginger, chile, and onion in clarified butter. Add ajwain and fennel seed and cook 30 seconds or so. Add steamed potato chunks and salt, mix well, and let cook 3-5 minutes. Stir in the leftover lamb and some chopped cilantro, cover, and let cook another couple minutes.

The second improv was to make another batch of saag paneer with tofu, but using swiss chard instead of spinach. I cut the chard into bite-sized pieces and boiled them until just about tender before using it.

Both of these turned out quite well. Using chard in this way is definitely something to remember next time the quantities of it start to get oppressive.

Tuesday: Indian

I was wondering out loud what to do with the mint in last week's biokiste when Andrea piped up with two suggestions: lamb, and some kind of raita. That got the ideas flowing, and here's what I ended up doing:

1. Lamb paratha (from BittmanWorld)
2. Saag paneer with tofu in place of the cheese (from BittmanWorld)
3. Mint raita : yogurt, salt, chopped peppermint

The paratha were a bit fiddly (I think the instructions calls for the initial rolling-out to go too thin), but everything tasted really good and made us quite happy.

Yet another catchup post

Some things we've eaten lately that I haven't gotten around to recording;

• Mezze night with hummus, baba ghanouj, and tabbouleh
• Chicken salad with skordalia made with a roasted chicken from the Coop. Recipe from Bittman, and it's a good one.
• Pasta with a raw tomato/anchovy sauce. Idea from the JP "More Fast Food My Way" videos.
• Roasted peppers diced and tossed with finely diced alp cheese, fresh herbs, lemon juice, and olive oil
• Steamed corn on the cob; we don't get enough corn on the cob...