Since reheated mashed potatoes are not so pleasing, I combined them with grated onion and a bit of flour, formed patties and sauteed them. We ate the croquettes topped with chives along with the remaining venison and wild mushrooms from Tuesday and the "overly spicy" chard from the weekend.
and a green salad
At the market on Saturday we picked up some chanterelles and mixed wild mushrooms (it's mushroom season! yay!). When we found reh schnitzel (venison steaks) at the butcher, it was clear what needed to happen for a dinner this week.
I prepared the venison very simply: after washing and drying, salt and pepper the steaks, fry them over high heat until nicely seared on both sides, and then toss them in a 180-200C oven for 5 minutes to get them to medium rare. Let the steaks rest for 5 minutes before serving.
For the sauce: slice the chanterelles thick, sautee them over med-high heat in butter until they started to brown. Periodically pour off the liquid from the pan to add to the sauce later. When the mushrooms start to brown, move them to a bowl. Gently sautee a minced clove of garlic in olive oil until it's nicely aromatic; add a couple cubes of sulz (aspic/glace blocks, see below), some white wine, the mushroom liquid, and some water. Simmer gently for a couple of minutes. Thicken with potato starch, then stir in the mushrooms and whatever liquid has collected around the meat. Adjust seasonings and serve.
This was some seriously good food.
We had roasted cauliflower and mashed potatoes as sides.
And a green salad.
Wine: Ridge 2004 Lytton Springs Zin. This paired well with the strong flavors from the mushrooms and the venison.
A word on sulz: I had noticed this a week or so ago at the meat counter of the Migros and realized that I *needed* to try it. As near as I can tell, it's a very firm aspic (like a glace du viande, I guess). The blocks we got at Migros were a bit saltier than I would have liked, but the flavor is good and they certainly give the sauce a nice body. I think I'll be using these a lot in the future. Now if I can just find a convenient source of stock. :-)
We finished off the pork braised in milk last night. There wasn't any sauce left, so I made a quickie cheese sauce (bechamel + Emmenthal + cayenne + chives) to pour over the pasta.
As a side I roasted some cauliflower.
No green salad. (what????)
Wine: Mann 2003 Vielles vignes Chasselas. This Alsation Chasselas didn't go particularly well with the food and was fairly different from the Swiss ones we've been drinking, but I liked it after the meal.
Last night we ate some more of the pork braised in milk from Saturday along with some penne pasta (we're out of spätzle). To go along with it I gently sauteed some sliced carrots in butter until they were nicely browned.
Oh yeah, and a green salad.
This main dish was following a recipe from Hazan. I did vary the cut of pork (I had a roast from the leg, not the loin), and I thickened the sauce at the end with a bit of potato starch, but otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely. It's a damn good one.
We ate the pork with spätzle. I also made a batch of sauteed chard following a recipe in CPV, but I overdid it on the dried chili (primarily because I was using dried thai chilis since that's what we have in the house), and the chard ended up being too hot to go with the pork. Ah well, we'll eat the chard sometime this week.
Green salad.
Wine: Quasso 2001 Barolo. We may well have to get a couple more bottles of this stuff, it was mighty good last night.
The main course here was "designed" to use up a bunch of stuff in our fridge (to clear it out for Saturday's shopping!). I sauteed some shelled shrimp in oil, removed them, then cooked a mixture of spring onions, chopped garlic, chopped green chili, and chopped onion. After the veggies softened, I added back the shrimp, along with some white wine, sweet paprika, smoked paprika, and a dash of sherry vinegar. After the liquid reduced a bit, I thickened it with potato starch, added some chopped coriander and served it.
In order to have it a bit more interesting I toasted the rice in peanut oil before cooking it in stock (bouillon).
As a side, I cut a couple of zucchini into sticks and then baked them with butter until they were soft. mmmm, good.
Of course we had a salad with this.
Wine: Abadia Retuerta 2000 Cuvee Palomar
On our hike on Sunday we found a ton of blackberries. After bringing back all we could reasonably carry, we ended up with a full gratin dish:
I sprinkled the berries with some of the remaining gelierzucker (reasoning that it would help thicken the sauce), improv'ed a topping out of oats, butter, and sugar (milled raw sugar), and baked at 170C until it looked done.
We ate the cobbler with creme fraiche and it was deeeelicious.
Last night's gratin had potato, kohlrabi, leek, and Emmentaler cheese. For the sauce I used a mixture of cream, milk, and a splash of white wine seasoned with sweet paprika, a bit of cayenne, salt and pepper. I also added some potato starch to thicken it up (and to celebrate having finally found potato starch here!).
Our gratin dish was full of blackberries (see next post), so I had to make this in a pot. That made getting the gratin out in nice-looking pieces impossible, but didn't affect the flavor too much. :-)
We also had a green salad.
I am currently having no luck coming up with a name for this improvisation beyond "Eggplant Dish", so that's what I'll call it.
1 medium eggplant, cubed, salted, rinsed, and drained
300 g mixed ground meat
1 cup mixed thinly sliced chilis/peppers (I used a mixture of the long curly green ones and thicker red ones from the turkish market)
1 medium onion, diced small
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomatoes
salt
paprika (sweet and smoked)
cayenne
parsley, finely chopped
lemon wedges
Saute the eggplant in olive oil over medium-high heat until it starts to brown. Transfer to a bowl.
Add the ground meat to the pan along with a good quantity of salt, black pepper, the paprikas, and the cayenne. Cook until nicely browned, then drain off the fat and transfer the meat to another bowl.
Add some more olive oil to the pan, then add the chilis and onions and cook for a couple of minutes until they start to soften.
Add the eggplant and garlic and cook for a minute or two.
Add the meat and cook for a minute or two.
Add the tomatoes, bring to a boil, and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
Adjust seasonings and serve over rice. Top with copious parsley and some lemon.
This was quite nice, though I don't think it would have hurt to have added some cubes of feta or something like that.
We also had a green salad.
Wine: La Bastide Saint-Dominique 1998 "Secrets de Pignan" Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Very nice.
Not much cooking this weekend. Friday night we wandered around town to enjoy the chaos associated with the "Em Bebbi sy Jazz" festival, so we grabbed dinner at Namamen, a "japanese ramen bar" Andrea had spotted. The food wasn't very interesting and it didn't strike me as being particularly Japanese either. Oh well... I probably have excessively high expectations because of the Bay Area.
Yesterday we went across the border to St. Louis to check out a wine shop a coworker had recommended. Finding lunch in France on a Saturday in August turned out to be non-trivial, but we did eventually find an open restaurant -- Brasserie de la Poste -- next to the market. The place was packed, but we luckily got a table. There were three food choices on offer: couscous, faux filet au poivre with frites, and "carpes-frites salad". Fried carp didn't sound particularly interesting, so we got the couscous and the steak. Hoo boy was that a lot of very good food. Two hours later we walked out completely stuffed, but happy.
The wine shop ("Au Monde du Vin") had a good selection of French wines at prices that didn't seem unreasonable. We picked up a couple bottles of wine and a bottle of Alsatian eau de vie (Gilbert Holl "Quetsch") to be able to have a digestif once we got home.
We had meatballs leftover, so last night I made another batch of curry sauce (not forgetting to add a pinch of sugar this time), more cabbage salad, more carrot salad, and some quick-pickled cucumbers.
Wine: Henry Badoux 2004 "Petit Vignoble" Yvorne. This is one of the "spritzig" Swiss whites.
In order to make juicing lemons easier, I use a trick I saw Jacques Pepin use where you toss the lime in the microwave for 15-20 seconds first. It really helps.
It's stupid, however, to leave the lime in there for 30 seconds. In our microwave that's not long enough to cause it to burst , but it does build up enough pressure inside the lime to give a very dramatic spray when I cut it in half.
Firefox informs me that this isn't the first "Wednesday Curry" I've done... maybe I should start a tradition. :-)
In this case, I made "Thai meatballs" which we ate with jasmine rice and a green curry sauce. As sides we had a quick-pickled cabbage salad (with lime and 'tro) and a shredded carrot salad (with soy sauce, fish sauce, and lime).
To make the meatballs: Combine 400 gm ground meat (we had a mixture of beef, pork, and veal) with 4 cloves minced garlic, 2 cm ginger (minced), 1 Tbs minced lemon grass, 4-6 birdseye chilis (minced), minced coriander root (we had about 1 tsp), and some fish sauce (maybe 1-2 Tbs). Mix well, then let sit for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to meld. Form into 2-3cm balls and sautee in peanut oil until nicely browned.
To make the curry sauce: Fry 1 Tbs green curry paste in 1 tsp peanut oil over medium heat until aromatic. Reduce the heat and add 1/2 can coconut milk, 1 tsp minced coriander root, and 3-4 keffir lime leaves. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, then add the juice of 1/2 a lime and serve.
No green salad!
Wine: Bernard Bovy 2004 St. Saphorin Terre Plein. This Swiss white maybe didn't have the magic of a riesling when combined with the curry, but it was not half bad.
This meal used up the last of the pork chops from this weekend.
I didn't brown the chops first, but threw them in a pot with a bit of oil, a bunch of thinly sliced onion, some minced garlic, and black pepper. I added a bit of white wine and some stock, covered the pot, brought it to a boil, then let it simmer until the onions were melty and the chops fork tender, about an hour. For the last 5-10 minutes, I removed the lid to reduce the volume a bit. We ate this with brown rice. Delicious.
To go along with the chops, I sauteed some more cucumber, but this time I added some thinly sliced red pepper as well to get color contrast and bit more sweetness.
And a green salad.
We brought some porkchops and a bunch of pickling cucumbers back from our visit to Andrea's parents, so the immediate priority was to use those up. My normal reaction to the pickling cucumbers would be to jump for joy and make a batch of fermented pickles; unfortunately we don't have the infrastructure to do that here in the temporary housing, so another solution was required. thus sauteed cukes.
For the porkchops: I browned the chops in peanut oil, then removed them and cooked some sliced onion and garlic in the pan. Once those softened, I added back the chops along with some stock, diced san marzano tomatoes, pepper, and a bit of cayenne. After braising for a bit, I removed the chops and finished the sauce with some cream.
For the cukes I followed an idea in CPV and sauteed them with a bit of butter and salt over medium heat until they started to soften and sweetened up a little.
We ate the chops and sauce over spaetzle (from a bag) with the cukes on the side. Oh, and a green salad.
Wine: Terroir du Trias 2001 Beaume de Venise; we bought a few bottles of this in Beaume back in '04 and have been storing it (along some Vacqueyras) at Andrea's parents' house. This weekend we brought it back with us. The wine is surprisingly new worldy, but still quite nice.
This menu plan was started by some fennel from the market that we had sitting in the fridge. I actually did the planning in the morning so that Andrea could get stuff during the day instead of just making something up at the end of the day... crazy.
For the fish I followed the recipe for "red snapper with tomatoes and cream" from JPFF, except I used pangasius (=basa=catfish) instead of snapper and yellow onion instead of red.
I caramelized the fennel following a suggestion in CPV and served it on the side.
I roasted some whole fingerling potatoes with peanut oil, sea salt, black pepper, and cayenne.
This was some seriously good food.
We also had a green salad.
Wine: Pride Mountain 2005 Viognier, holy crap is that a remarkable wine. It's not the most food friendly white the world has ever seen, but it's amazing as a "cocktail wine".
Andrea grabbed a couple of nice looking "clubsteaks" yesterday along with a big assortment of veggies, so even without a fully equipped kitchen I had plenty of possibilities for making dinner.
I just salted, peppered, and broiled one of the steaks; no need to be fancy there. Our broiler doesn't deliver as much heat as I might like, but aside from that the steak turned out well.
I also made a big batch of brown rice cooked in boullion instead of water.
As a sauce for the steak and rice, I made a lightish roux (maybe 10 minutes cooking time) and whisked in stock (boullion) and some mustard. I had originally planned to add cream, but that was totally unnecessary.
As a side, I sauteed zucchini (cut in half and then 1cm slices), onion, and some red pepper (a long, non-bell, red pepper) in olive oil. I used the high-heat, brown the zucchini approach. By leaving the zucchini relatively thick, I was able to get the onions nicely caramelized before it turned to mush. This is good stuff.
We also had a green salad.
Wine: Paul Jaboulet "Les Jalets" 2002 Crozes-Hermitage
We didn't make it shopping on Saturday and were too lazy to make it to the big train station, so Sunday night was a "make dinner with whatever can be found in the shop at the small station" night. That turned out to be Tuna Casserole.
I started by making a bechamel, to which I added some chopped garlic and Gruyère (so now it's sauce Mornay with garlic, which probably has its own name). Andrea broke up the drained tuna and mixed it into the mostly-cooked elbow macaroni. After combining the noodles and sauce, I transferred them to an oiled gratin dish, I topped the noodles with quartered cherry tomatoes (pressed down into the noodles), and then covered that with a mixture of grated Gruyère and breadcrumbs. It baked at 200C until nicely browned.
As a side I made a grated carrot salad (with good olive oil and lemon juice).
This was a relative quickie for the end of the week. To make the pork, I diced some "Plaetzli" (same cut I used for the Schnitzel earlier in the week) and browned it in peanut oil. After removing the pork and pouring off the fat, I added diced red pepper, mushrooms, chopped garlic, and some chopped tomato. When the veggies were close to done, I added back the pork along with a shot of sherry vinegar and some pimenton. Just before serving, I added another bit of chopped garlic.
I put the "risotto" in quotes because I didn't do the constant stirring thing (sorry Pino Luongo, there was no lovemaking!). I toasted the rice with some onion in butter and added stock (boullion). Whenever things started to dry out I added more stock. Until al dente.
We ate these topped with fresh parsley and alongside the required green salad.
Wine: Schlipfer 2004 Riehener Blauburgunder. This local wine wasn't particularly good on its own (a bit thin and sour) but it did pair well with the food; there the acid helped.
It cooled down a lot over the weekend, so it's actually possible to work in the kitchen without being uncomfortable. To celebrate, last night I made a couple things from JPFF: "Summertime Pasta" and "Chicken Breasts with Parsley and Garlic".
The pasta dish is just fresh veggies (zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms) warmed for a couple minutes in the microwave and then tossed with olive oil, fresh basil, grated parmesan, and pasta. My only variations were to add some minced garlic to the veggies and a bit of fresh parsley to the basil. For the pasta we had Fiorelli, which is a great shape for this kind of dish.
The chicken dish is diced chicken breast tossed with seasoned flour, sauteed until brown and almost cooked, then finished with a bit of butter, parsley, and garlic. I poured off the sauteeing oil before adding the butter but otherwise followed the recipe.
Both dishes were very good; as expected from that cookbook.
Naturally we had a green salad with this.
This was a relatively quick dinner after we got back from hiking. I did schnitzel using "Schweins Plätzli" that I seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. To go along with it we had pasta with a bottled sauce that I adulterated with some browned garlic and onions. The pork was remarkably flavorful... keep that cut in mind.
Of course we had a green salad.
We did a four day hiking trip (Sat -> Tues) in the Alpstein, so there was no cooking. Interesting food highlights from the various huts:
Yesterday morning I made a batch of apricot jam using the fruit (Walliser apricots) we picked up at the market on Saturday. Being able to buy "jelly sugar" (already contains pectin and citric acid) sure does simplify jam making.
Preliminary indications are that the jam is quite good.
I got tired of not cooking so yesterday, despite the heat, we had an actual hot meal. It was simple, but still it's a big change. :-)
As a main dish, I made frikadellen with ground lamb, onion, garlic, lemon zest, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. For a side I sauteed some fresh beans (long flat green beans, I'm not sure what they're called) with sliced garlic in olive oil until they were tender and almost caramelized.
And a green salad.
Wine: Santa Rosa 2005 Torrentes (Mendoza). This is an Argentinian white that Andrea and I both really enjoyed. It was a plesant change from the Swiss whites we've been drinking.
The heat here hasn't let up, so we're still mostly eating salads and simple stuff. Saturday I made a potato salad with new potatoes, pieces of cervelat, onion, and a mayo-mustard-lemon-garlic sauce.
We haven't been doing much in the way of cooking this week. I did make a couple of salads (quick-pickled cabbage and cucumber with a lemon vinaigrette; rice salad with green curry, lime, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and chilies) to fill out the meals, but otherwise it's been Abendbrot and green salads.
We found a good Asian supermarket on Saturday, so to celebrate I made a green curry last night. I augmented the curry paste with ginger, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, and onions. Just before serving I added some lime juice and sugar.
To go along with the sauce, I breaded some pieces of rotbarsch (redfish or ocean perch) by dredging them through egg and paniermehl (somewhere between standard American breadcrumbs and panko), and then shallow fried them in peanut oil. We also had some sauteed napa cabbage and broccoli stem pieces, and a big pot of jasmine rice.
As always we had a green salad. Last night though the flavor clash between the salad and the curry was extreme enough that the salad had to wait to be eaten as a second course. :-)
We had a bulb of fennel from the market that really needed to be used, so last night I made a gratin with the sliced fennel, some new potatoes, elephant garlic (or some kind of large-cloved garlic), cream, and gruyere.
To go along with it we had a green salad.
The wine was a Les Plantailles 2004 Aigle. We're really enjoying these Swiss white wines in the warm weather.
I stopped at a "turkish market" (gotta find out what they call these here in Switzerland) on the way home from work last night and picked up some eggplant and a couple different kinds of hot peppers.
For the meal I diced some pork stew meat and browned the pieces. I combined those with a bit of boullion, cubed eggplant (salted for a while, rinsed, and drained), diced onion, and the sliced peppers, then baked it at around 400 until the eggplant was soft. We ate this over rice, topped with chives.
As a side I steamed some broccoli and then melted a bit of gruyere over the portions.
It was good food.
The wine was a Abadia Retuerta 2001 Sardon de Deuro.
Unfortunately the wireless connection I was using to get online while we waited for our DSL went away, so we haven't had net access at home. Now our DSL is here, so the logging will pick up for real.
Luckily, there's not a huge amount to put into a catch up post: between the heat and our less than perfectly equipped temporary-housing kitchen we haven't been doing that much cooking. We've been doing a lot of Abendbrot + salad.
Last night for dinner I made a quickie pasta sauce with lardons, green garlic, onions, green peas, boullion, fresh basil, and cream. We ate this over spaghetti with some baked chicory on the side and a green salad.
The wine was a 2001 Barba "Vignafranca" Montepulciano d'Abruzzo that we picked up on Wednesday; it's very nice.
To finish off the leftovers from Tuesday, I made a gratin by topping the leftover rice with the remaining pork and sauce then sprinkling over some shredded Emmenthaler and baking until bubbly and brown. As sides we had roasted cauliflower and a green salad.
We're in Basel now and still getting settled in, but there has been some cooking - Andrea and I were both ready for some more vegetable-rich food than we had been eating.
On Tuesday we headed to the outdoor market at the Marktplatz to look around and see what kind of stuff was available. We picked up some salad makings (including radishes shaped like carrots!), green garlic, a head of cauliflower, and some strawberries from a German stand that seems to be associated with a cooperative of organic farmers. I also got a bit of smoked venison and garlic salami made from boar. There was no way I was walking past that stand without buying stuff; I think I showed a lot of restraint to only get 200g of meat. The Marktplatz, which has stands there Mon-Sat, looks to be a frequent shopping destination for us.
On our way home we picked up some staples and other groceries at a big Migros.
Tuesday's dinner was pork ragout (stew meat) cut into 1-2cm pieces and then browned with finely diced onion and minced green garlic in peanut oil. I then added some chicken boullion (no good source of stock yet), black pepper, and water and let things boil until the pork was done and the sauce reduced to a reasonable consistency. At the very end I added a bit more minced green garlic to liven things up. We ate this over short-grain rice. This wasn't a dish to write home about, but it was quite good.
As a side dish I baked some chicory (endive) halves in a gratin dish on a bed of thinly sliced onion and butter until they were soft. The sweetness of the cooked onion balanced the bitterness of the chicory very nicely.
Of course we also had a green salad.
The wine was a 2004 Ridge Lytton Springs Zin that we brought with us in our bags from CA. mmmmm.
Dessert was macerated strawberries. It's nice to find strawberries other than the giant, mostly flavorless things that you mostly see in CA.
The movers came yesterday and packed up all our stuff.
I'll start posting again more regularly once we're settled in Basel and have reliable internet access.
Tuesday I did a Thai red curry with chicken thighs, onions, potatoes, and red peppers. We had sticky rice with the curry and a green salad.
The leftover curry, with a green salad, was Wednesday night's dinner too.
Monday night we had leftover lamb (still delicious) and brown rice along with some sauteed zucchini [CSA] and a green salad.
I actually started the lamb on Saturday morning by cutting the butterflied leg into serving-sized pieces and then marinating them in a mixture of: minced sweet onion, minced preserved lemon, garlic, fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil. Yesterday I grilled the pieces over a hot fire until they had a good sear, then moved them to lower heat and cooked them to medium rare. We ate the lamb with a relish made from minced sweet onion (salted and rinsed) and finely chopped parsley.
I made a fava bean ragout by rendering the fat from some lardons; removing the crisped bacon pieces; adding some minced garlic, minced shallot and sauteeing for about a minute; adding shelled and skinned fava beans, salt, pepper, and some chicken stock; covering and cooking until the beans were soft. For the last couple of minutes, I removed the lid to evaporate the remaining stock. Just before serving, I added the bacon pieces back.
We also had brown rice and a green salad.
The lamb and the fava beans were both really, really good.
Wine: McLaren 2001 Linchpin Shiraz (this was an excellent pairing)
For dinner on Saturday, I made a pasta sauce by caramelizing some sweet onions and zucchini [CSA] and then serving that over penne with fresh parsley and a good helping of grated pecorino.
Of course we had a green salad with that.
Last night was leftover risotto. We also had some pan-steamed spinach [CSA] as a side and a green salad.
We have loads of fava beans from last week's CSA box, so on Wednesday I made a fava bean and asparagus risotto from a recipe in CPV. My deviations from the recipe were to use twice as much asparagus, but to leave out the peas since we didn't have any fresh peas.
We also had the last of the zucchini fritters from Tuesday and some flash fried then stewed beet greens [CSA] with vinegar. And a green salad.
Our plates were full of different shades of green goodness. Ooo boy is that risotto good.
I couldn't take the idea of any more leftovers last night, so I made something new.
For the tuna I used yellowfin (frozen from TJs) and baked it with salt, pepper, and a bit of canola oil at 300. I served it with a sauce made from mayo, salsa, and chives. This was nice, but I think I could have pulled it from the oven a bit quicker than I did.
The squash fritters were made with squash from last week's CSA box following a recipe in CPV. Even after having eaten it, I'm still amazed that something with that much lemon zest (basically the zest of one lemon per serving) can come out being so good. With most other cookbooks I would have (wrongly) reduced the amount, but Alice Waters seems pretty reliable... :-)
We also had sauteed asparagus and a green salad.
Monday night was more leftovers from the goodbye party: grilled marinated chicken with onions and peppers; potato salad; some sauteed asparagus; and a green salad.
The wine wasn't so much a pairing as a tasting. We're trying to find a few more bottles of wine to take with us when we move, so we tried four bottles Monday night. I'll so a bit more detail on this some other time.
This is what we used on the red cabbage salad this weekend, the recipe is taken from Lettuce in Your Kitchen:
1/2 cup fresh OJ
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup sesame oil
6 Tbs rice-wine vinegar
1/4 cup molasses
2 Tbs minced fresh ginger
12 dashes Tabasco
1 Tbs crushed star anise
The recipe additionally called for 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, but I didn't use that because I didn't want to alienate cilantro haters. That was probably not the best decision (because how many of them are there?), but the dressing was still *very* good, particularly when paired with the grilled pineapple.
Andrea and I threw a goodbye party for ourselves on Saturday. The food we made included:
This is inspired by a recipe in Bittman that has been begging me to make it for a couple of years.
To make the sandwich, I hollowed out a loaf of pain de compagne and filled it with: grilled chicken breast, grilled onions, roasted pepers, cornichons, marinated artichoke hearts, anchovies, capers, and basil leaves. I dressed the whole thing with good olive oil and lemon juice, then put it in the fridge overnight under a brick.
This was gooooood eating.
As part of our preparations for Saturday lunch (next post), I grilled some chicken breasts and onions on Friday. I seasoned the chicken with salt, pepper, and coriander before grilling and served them with grilled onions. Chicken breast is inherently pretty boring, but this turned out ok. To add a bit of zing, I tossed some hickory chips on the coals just before adding the chicken. That helped a bit.
To go along with the chicken, we had sauteed kale [CSA] with chickpeas and fresh garlic [CSA]. This was a great combination. There was also the requisite green salad.
This was a quickie meal: I marinated the remaining pieces of pork shoulder in oyster and hoisin sauces, xiaoshing wine, sriracachachacha, and 5 spice powder. Other bits in the fried rice were red pepper, onion, and egg.
The original plan for last night was to do a stir fry with some pieces of "country-style pork shoulder" we had picked up at TJs, but I changed that upon seeing the contents of the CSA box.
To make the pork, I brined the pieces for a few hours (salt and sugar), covered them with a quick spice rub (cumin, coriander, sweet paprika, cayenne, black pepper, salt), seared them on all sides, then tossed the skillet in a 350 degree oven until the pork was done. I served the pieces drizzled with good olive oil on a bed of kale[CSA] that I flash fried, then stewed with white balsamico and fresh garlic[CSA] until it was tender.
As a side I made sauteed summer squash[CSA] with fresh garlic[CSA], basil[CSA], and meyer lemon. This was following a recipe in CPV.
Beside this goodness (and I do mean goodness... this was very good food) we had a big green salad.
Wine: Chateau St. Jean 2003 Sonoma Valley Cab
Last night I made the other piece of snapper we got on Sunday. I more or less followed a recipe from Hazan for fish steaks sauced with wine-cooked onions and anchovies, though of course I was using snapper fillets instead of steaks. Still, with a bit of adjustment (finish the fish in the sautee pan, then sauce it in on the plate) it turned out great.
To accompany this I made some pappardelle and "sauced" them with good olive oil, the remaining Tuada cheese (it was a bit too dry to eat plain), some fresh parsley, and black pepper. I also sauteed some asparagus.
And a side salad.
Wine: Mauritsons 2003 Sauvignon Blanc
Last night was a bit of a butter and ginger extravaganza in our house.
Our main course was sauteed red snapper fillet topped with a lime-ginger beurre noisette. To go with this I made sauteed asparagus with crispy ginger threads and a batch of short-grain rice to soak up the buttery goodness.
For the beurre noisette:
3 Tbs butter
1 Tbs finely chopped young ginger (I don't think this would have been as good with older ginger).
Juice of 1/2 a lime
sugar
Get the butter to the noisette stage in a small saucepan. Toss in the ginger and set the pan on ice to stop the cooking. When you're ready to serve, warm over very low heat and add some of the lime juice and a pinch of sugar (to balance the acidity of the lime). Taste and adjust sugar and lime quantities.
This was some seriously good food.
There was also the requisite green salad.
Wine: A.G. Ferrari Prosecco.
Jon has a copy of a Futurist cookbook and has been suggesting that we do a futurist dinner party for a while. Somehow this actually happened this weekend.
Andrea and I don't really understand futurism, so we figured that we'd go with doing something odd to a familiar dish, oh and regular geometric forms. Regular geometric forms are hard to realize with unadulterated food, so we needed a trick of some kind. The trick in this case was aspic; which I had been wanting to try out for a while anyway.
Luckily I had a bunch of aspic guidance in Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques (what's classic French cooking without aspic glazes and plate decorations?) and my 1940s edition of Joy of Cooking (20 whole pages of molded salads!), because none of my normal cookbooks even mention it. Hey Mark Bittman: it's not really How to Cook Everything if you don't have a single aspic recipe!
For the aspic itself, I followed the recipe in Techniques pretty much verbatim. The base stock for this is a good thing to revisit since it's a relatively simple clear broth. Even the egg white part wasn't overly fussy.
The overall theme for the dish was roasted chicken and vegetables, freed from the tyranny of biological form (Is that futurist? I have no idea, but the thought makes me giggle a little bit.). So I made roasted chicken in the form of meatballs; the stuffing was done with breadcrumbs, egg yolks, onions, and herbs mixed into the meat (no distinct filling, that would have been nasty). To make things appropriately geometric, the meatballs were embedded in aspic cubes (pour a thin layer of aspic; let it set up in the fridge; add the cooled sauteed meatballs; pour over more aspic to cover). The vegetables were diced tomato aspic, diced pea aspic, diced carrots (roasted a bit after dicing to get them tender), and diced beets (roasted before dicing).
Finally, since many of the futurist recipes in the book seemed to include cologne, I made a "scent bowl" to accompany the food by tossing a bunch of thyme, marjoram, and lemon verbena into everclear and letting them extract overnight. To serve we strained the crazy-green liquid, put it in bowls with a bit of warm water, and put those on the table next to the serving platter. The idea was to waft some of the herb smell over your plate as serving and eating, but we forgot to move a bowl to the table while eating, so that didn't really happen and the gimmick stayed a gimmick.
Here's a quickie picture of the resulting serving plate (scent bowls not visible), I'm sure Andrea will produce a nicer one, but this is a start:
Some aspic lessons:
The last couple of nights we've had dessert in the form of three cheeses and a glass of Bonny Doon vin de glaciere. The cheeses, from the Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building are:
We needed to finish the braised chicken from Tuesday, and didn't have enough other leftovers, so I made a batch of risi e bisi by basically following the "soupy rice with peas" recipe from JPFF, with the small deviation of using 1/2 cup of white wine instead of the last 1/2 cup of stock. This wasn't quite as good as the risotto al limone from back in February; but that stuff is hard to top and this was a lot quicker.
Of course we had a green salad.
Wine: We finished off the bottle of Linchpin.
For the braised chicken, I marinated bone-in breasts in balsamico and salt for an hour or so, browned them in olive oil, added some chicken stock and a good amount of red wine, and let it braise (covered) until the chicken was done. After removing the chicken, I added the 1/2 cup (or so) of remaining red-pepper walnut dip from Andrea's defense and thickened the sauce with a bit of starch.
The cauliflower and bratkartoffeln were done the usual way (goose and duck fat for the potatoes).
There was a green salad.
Wine: Linchpin Shiraz
The sauce recipe was from Hazan; I made it with basil-tomato sausage from TJs, which wasn't really perfect, but the sauce ended up being damn good anyway. Peeling the peppers is definitely worth it.
We also had a green salad.
Wine: St. Francis Sonoma Cty Old Vines Zin, 2003. This wasn't an ideal food wine, but I liked it more than I remember liking the 2002 (at least better than our notes indicated that I liked the 2002).
This weekend we went backpacking. Dinners were:
Last night we had friends over to help eat leftovers from Andrea's defense party. Since the remains were all hors d'oeuvres, I also made a simple pasta sauce using fava beans from last week's CSA box and some green garlic and scallions we got at the farmers' market this week:
1 cup very thinly sliced green garlic
1 cup shelled and skinned fava beans
1 cup scallions, 1/4" slices
8 oz ricotta cheese
2 Tbs coarsely chopped parsley
chicken stock
olive oil
salt and black pepper
Cook the garlic slowly with olive oil in a covered pan until it is very soft and caramelizes (mine didn't get very brown, but it did start to have some of that excellent caramelized onion smell). Add the occasional splash of stock if things look dry.
Put the favas in a separate pan and add enough stock to just cover. Add a good pour of olive oil and the scallions, cover and bring to a gently boil. Cook until the beans are tender, a few minutes.
Stir in the ricotta cheese and caramelized garlic and cook over gentle heat until the sauce is warm. Adjust seasonings.
Just before serving, thin with some pasta water if the sauce needs it and stir in the parsley.
I think it would not have hurt to add a bit of lemon zest at the end here.
Cati brought a bunch of new kinds of chocolate that we'll have to make notes about too, but I'm not doing that now.
This is a list of the stuff I made:
Andrea's defense was yesterday, so things have been super hectic. Some catching up:
Wednesday we put the grilled buffalo steaks to another use: fried rice. I fried the remaining rice from Tuesday with onions, red peppers, garlic, some dried chilis, and a bit of soy sauce.
Served with sriracachachacha on the side, this was quite nice.
Wine: Saddleback Cellars 2000 Napa Valley Cab
For the main dish here, I took some thinly sliced (on the ceramic slicer) onions and cooked them with a bit of oil and soy sauce until they started to soften and brown, then added some mirin and let the onions really start to caramelize. After adding some thinly sliced pieces of grilled buffalo steak I cranked the heat to high for about a minute, then covered the pan and turned off the heat. I served the meat over short-grain rice.
To "go along" with this we had sorrel soup with croutons and a green salad. The soup didn't match the main course at all, but a bit of contrast is good... right? Particularly when each component is good on its own? right?
Wine: Linchpin Shiraz
We had a couple of buffalo sirloin steaks that we bought on Saturday drying in the fridge, and they were just screaming (mooing? lowing? what noise *do* buffaloes make?) to go on the grill. So that drove last night's meal.
The steaks I did very simply: coated with a bit of oil, salt, pepper, and some freshly ground coriander, then grilled over a medium-hot fire to medium rare. After letting the steaks rest, I sliced them thin across the grain and served them.
Accompaniments were sliced mushrooms sauteed with shallots, then dosed with balsamico and a touch of soy sauce, and bratkartoffeln cooked in a mixture of duck and goose fat (from the duck confit at the charcuterie night). And a green salad, of course.
There's something nice to say about each component of this meal.
Wine: Linchpin Shiraz
I also made some sorrel soup by sauteing a bit of red onion in butter, adding chicken stock, some potato scraps, and the sorrel I mistakenly cooked last week. To finish this, I added a bit of cream. We didn't eat the soup though; there was enough other food.
We had leftover dip from Friday night's bagna cauda to use up, so last night I did a pasta dish.
I started by gently warming the dip in the microwave to get it re-liquified and a bit warm (above room temp at least). I toasted some bread crumbs in a couple Tbs of the oil with a pinch of crushed red pepper. We ate spaghetti dressed with the remaining dip and strewn with bread crumbs.
mmmm.
Since we had a lot of veggies that are suited for it, we had bagna cauda on Friday. I followed the recipe in Hazan for the dip and we ate it with cardoons[CSA], arthichokes, asparagus, and yellow pepper. To serve the dish we jury-rigged a warming dish by setting the bowl with the dip on top of a ramekin in a pot of boiling water. We switched pots of boiler water every 10 minutes to make sure the dip stayed warm.
Before serving, I parboiled the cardoons and steamed the artichokes and asparagus.
This was very nice food.
Wine: Rosemount Estates 2002 GSM. Not the best pairing, but it worked ok.
Last night we finished off the pasta and sauce from Wednesday. To go with it I made a cauliflower[CSA]-parmesan gratin from Hazan and another batch of butter-stewed chard[CSA]. The cauliflower thing, which differs from our normal baked cauliflower in that it's boiled first, was very nice.
However, when I went to adjust the seasonings on the chard, I discovered that I had grabbed the wrong bag from the fridge and cooked the sorrel. That explains why it didn't behave like chard. :-) Even after adding a bit of cream this was still a bit too intense to eat as a vegetable, so it's in the fridge to make soup with. I know I tasted a leaf before I pulled the bag, but I either got a very mild leaf or I was really not paying attention.
We got a new CSA box yesterday. In this week's box were... cardoons! Two bunches of cardoons, in fact, because there was a bunch in the trade box. Since I've been wanting to cook with cardoons for a while, it was a no brainer to trade a bunch of cilantro for the cardoons.
Of course I had to do something with them last night. I started simple just to get a feeling for what they taste like and how they behave. After figuring out an efficient way to peel the stalks, I cut them into 3 inch strips and tossed them in acidulated water (suggestion from CPV). I boiled them for about half an hour in salted acidulated water, drained them, and then sauteed them off in some olive oil. The taste was still rather bitter to be served plain, so I added some balsamico to the pan to add some acid and sweetness. The end result was good, but not fabulous. I've still got 2-3 meals worth of the veggie left, so I'll see about alternative serving modes. Maybe I can figure some way to use it with the pound of sorrel that also came in this weeks box. A pound of sorrel. A *pound* of sorrel.
I also made a bit of chard [CSA] by parboiling it in salted water and then stewing it with some butter and white pepper. That was very good.
The main course was pasta (fusilli) with a sauce made from caramelized leeks [CSA], tomatoes, lardons, chopped italian sausage (the last of the sausage from the charcuterie night), red wine, and thyme [CSA]. Topped with some parmesan, this was very nice.
Of course we had a green salad too.
The wine was a Valley of the Moon 1999 Barbera. Not great, but not bad.
Last night we did leftover fried chicken and cauliflower sambar. To supplement that, I followed the Dakshin recipe for green bean poriyal, but I used asparagus instead. The results were unusual because we're so used to asparagus with western flavors, but very good.
Memo to self: don't forget the poriyal technique as a general recipe for vegetables.
Andrea handed in her thesis yesterday, so we had a little celebratory meal. Andrea requested Indian food; this is what I made:
Yesterday we fired up the grill for the first time this year. I chose to start slow, so I can be sure I haven't forgotten how it works. ;-)
Dinner was grilled sausages (the remainders from the charcuterie night), grilled leeks, guacamole, and fried plantains with chipotle salsa. Notes:
It was a busy week, so I'm having to catch up.
To go along with the leftover beans and ham from Tuesday, on Wednesday I made asparagus sauteed with chorizo, almonds, and croutons (from JPFF); and a potato-turnip-carrot gratin (from CPV, but I added the carrots).
The asparagus dish was excellent. The gratin had excellent flavor, but was waaay too soupy. I'm guessing I didn't pack the veggies tightly enough in the baking dish.
The wine was a bottle of Bastardo.
This was a pretty simple dish made by cooking a bunch of garlic and diced onion in olive oil until soft and adding some stock, sweet paprika, smoked paprika, a couple sprigs of thyme[CSA], and some cubes of smoked ham that we browned in a separate pan. After cooking for 5-10 minutes, I added two cans of drained white beans, mixed gently, covered the pan and simmered for another 10 minutes or so to meld the flavors. Simple and delicious.
As sides I did asparagus sauteed with shallots (a la JPFF) and broccoli [CSA] that I pan steamed with a bit of olive oil and preserved lemon peel. Both were very good.
Of course we had a green salad.
Wine: the last of the Marques de Cacera Rioja.
I've been saying for the past couple weeks that I should make the potato-crusted fish fillet dish from FStoS but somehow never getting around to it. Then we had a dish at Kaygetsu with ice fish pieces mixed with shredded potato, formed into small patties, and deep fried; that reinforced the need for fish and potato.
So yesterday we picked up a snapper fillet from the fish guy at the farmers market and I made:
Snapper and Potato Patties
3/4 pound snapper fillet, cut into 1/4" strips
4 medium yukon gold potatoes, shredded
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 egg, beaten
salt, pepper, cayenne
Wrap the shredded potato in a kitchen towl and twist out as much moisture as possible, then place in a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix gently, but well.
Form into small, reasonably flat patties, and saute in olive oil until nicely browned on each side.
Serve hot.
The fish was quite good. It would have been even better if it were deep fried, but that was a pain in the ass I wasn't willing to take on.
As sides, I made broccoli [CSA] sauteed with ginger threads and butter; and mashed golden turnips [CSA] (peel, dice, microwave until soft, mash, add a bit of cream, salt, and white pepper). And we had a green salad.
Wine: Marques de Cacera Rioja, 2002
Last night we did the big charcuterie evening over at Cati and Jons. We had rillettes and pate from last weekend, some duck confit that I made this week, and three types of sausage (red wine and garlic, hot italian, and sweet italian) that Cati made. To go along with that there was potatoes roasted in duck fat (with thyme and rosemary), a green salad, bread, a beautiful cheese plate, sauteed asparagus, and copious wine.
Since there wasn't enough other food, Cati made a couple of very nice cakes for dessert.
The charcuterie all turned out pretty well:
For Friday's dinner I chopped up some broccoli rabe and green onion [both CSA] and sauteed them with some crushed garlic cloves, a couple dried cayenne peppers. We ate this quickie sauce over spaghetti.
For a side I did caramelized carrots with cream. That stuff is just soooo good.
Naturally we had a green salad with this.
Wine was the remaining McManis Cab.
Last night Andrea and I went to Kaygetsu and did their kaiseki dinner with sake pairings.
Other than some minor blips in the service (unfortunate given the price tag on the meal), it was a very, very nice experience. The food was absolutely beautiful and excellent, and the sake pairings were most interesting. We don't really know sake at all, so it was fun to try the different styles.
Oh, and did I mention that the food was excellent? :-)
Yesterday we got a new CSA box, so I needed to finish out older veggies and start using up the new ones. Here's what we had:
Last night I used up the last of the roasted chicken making a quick pasta sauce with copious olive oil, chopped garlic, sliced leek, diced chicken, a bit of crushed red pepper, stock (from making rillettes), and finely diced preserved lemon peel. I reduced the sauce a lot to concentrate the flavors and added the lemon peel at the very end. This went very nicely over spaghetti, topped with some fresh parsley, parmesan, and drizzle of good olive oil.
As sides I braised the last of the stalky broccoli from the farmers market in a bit of stock and Andrea made a chopped salad with persian cucumber, red pepper, avocado, and spanish radish.
The wine was Mauritson's 2003 Sauvignon Blanc.
Last night we had leftover roasted chicken with preserved lemon and stuck pot rice. To go along with the leftovers, I braised some broccoli (the stalky thin kind from the farmers market) with leeks in a combination of stock (the stock used for making rillettes over the weekend) and cream. We also had a green salad.
Not that we're frequently going to have stock with quite as much flavor as that stuff, but this was still an awfully good side.
I'm going to try and remember to start recording our wines along with the food: last night we drank Mauritson's 2003 sauvignon blanc. This was a much better choice than the Ridge 2001 Santa Cruz Mountains blend (bordeaux) that we drank with the chicken on Saturday, but then that was just silly.
Yesterday we did some preparation with Jon and Cati for a planned charcuterie meal for next weekend. We made a batch each of rillettes and pate de compagne, and started the cure for some duck confit. For all this we followed recipes from Cati's book Charcuterie. No real report so far on how these things turned out, since they aren't done yet, but preliminary indications are that the rillettes and pate taste pretty good. :-)
For dinner I made a pan of Joe's Special using dino kale Cati brought from her garden and Cati made a batch of braised veggies (baby artichokes, carrots, onion, asparagus, bacon) and a big salad. It's hard to go too wrong with either Joe's Special or the braised veggies, and we didn't.
The preserved lemons I started back in March had officially pickled for long enough, so I did a roasted chicken on Saturday using one. I took the pulp and rubbed most of it under the skin of the breast and thighs, then rubbed the rest of the pulp and put one quarter of the rind in the body cavity. We ate the bird with diced rind from the rest of the lemon and a sauce made from pan juices deglazed with some vermouth. The chicken was very good - the lemons have a really nice flavor that complements the chicken pretty well. I'm not sure that it would be worth the wait of doing preserved lemons just for this dish, but it certainly is nice if you just happen to have some.
To go along with the chicken, I also made a Bittman recipe from earlier in the year for rice with a potato crust. I'd been thinking of making this for a couple of weeks and it was a good excuse to use up some CSA fennel. The rice turned out great, but next time I think we shouldn't cut the potatoes with the ceramic slicer: the slices were just too thin for the dish.
Naturally we had a green salad to accompany.
Last night I made kung pao chicken from the recipe in BittmanWorld (no peanuts though). This is pretty quick, simple, and very good. I served the chicken over rice (of course).
As a side, I made a "chopped salad" of diced daikon, carrot, spanish radish, scallion, and red pepper that I salted for a while (not the red pepper) then dressed with sesame oil and xiao-xing wine and served on leaf lettuce.
Last night's dinner was leftover Japanese food from Tuesday. The fried fish crisped up nicely in the toaster oven.
Because there was a bit less food (no more broiled tofu), I also made a bit of miso soup with the remaining dashi, scallions, and the barley-mushroom miso.
Last night I made a few things out of Washoku:
Monday night I attempted to reheat the remaining hollandaise from Sunday. After allowing the sauce to come to room temp, I microwaved it for 10 seconds and got back to a nicely liquid and correct consistency. Then I got greedy and tried to actually get the sauce warm by nuking it for another 10 seconds -- that broke the sauce. Doh! After adding a bit of heavy cream and whisking vigorously, I got the sauce back together. It wasn't warm and it was no longer technically hollandaise, but it still went nicely with some sauteed asparagus.
I had found some 12-count shrimp at the fish place, so I roasted those in a cast iron skillet and served them with a spicy orange sauce (Saute minced onion, and garlic in olive oil until transluscent; add some crushed red pepper, tomato juice, and and orange juice and reduce until the sauce is thick; add some orange zest just before serving).
I also added some onion and canned tomatoes to the rest of Sunday's brown rice, tossed it in a gratin dish, topped with gruyere, and baked it until the cheese was browned.
Oh yeah, and we had a green salad.
The idea of making hollandaise has been kicking around in my head for a while now, but somehow the time never seemed right. When we were visiting my parents, we all went out to dinner at The Warehouse and I ordered trout Orleans, which includes hollandaise. So, since that reminded me that I should make it and since both artichokes and asparagus are in season, last night I made hollandaise.
I followed the recipe (halved) from Techniques (2 egg yolks, 1 Tbs water, 4 oz butter, salt, white pepper, and cayenne; cooked on the stovetop) and ended up with a very nice sauce that we ate with steamed artichokes[CSA] and pan-steamed asparagus. To go along with that we had some brown basmati rice, a bit of roast pork (I did a sirloin roast coated with a spice rub I found in the cabinet... I'm not sure what I used it for originally, but the combination of cloves and paprika went really well on the roast pork), and a green salad.
A couple notes:
For dinner on Saturday we started with a bowl of green garlic soup. The main course was baked vegetables: I baked broccoli[CSA], onions, and potatoes (sprinkled with salt, pepper, ground coriander and cumin, and sweet paprika) at 300 for about an hour, until the potatoes were cooked. As a sauce I made an improv tomato vinaigrette (canned tomato with a bit of juice, lemon juice, sherry vinegar, garlic, chives, sugar, salt, pepper, sweet paprika, cayenne, olive oil). Of course we had a green salad with that.
As dessert I made a batch of rice pudding following the arroz con leche recipe from Latin American Table. That was good stuff when we ate it warm, just after it finished cooking. It was even better after resting for a night.
We did another batch of Wienerschnitzel last night to finish off the pork I bought for Thursday. To go along with it I did a chard [CSA] gratin from a recipe in CPV and some sweet and sour braised red cabbage [CSA]. To add some color/texture contrast to the cabbage, I diced an orange carrot [CSA], sauteed it a bit in olive oil, and used that to top the cabbage:
(what was that about a slippery slope?)
Everything was quite good. That chard gratin recipe yields something that's very creamy and flavorful. I will definitely keep the basic technique in mind in the future.
This is a test of trying to include a picture in a post.
I'm not really sure that I want to start walking down this particular slippery slope, but I was so pleased with those carrots from yesterday that I wanted to put up something.
Since we get nice carrots (not the standard kind that you see at the grocery store) at the farmers' market and in our CSA box, I've been cooking them a lot lately. Some of the braised carrot recipes have been really good; this one, though time consuming, is sublime:
Clean, but don't peel, some good carrots (I used a mix of yellow and orange types), and cut them into 1 cm thick slices.
Put the carrot slices in a single layer in a lightly oiled baking dish, sprinkle them with a bit of salt, and bake at 300 degrees for 45-60 minutes. They'll shrink a lot and caramelize. Don't let them burn.
Transfer the carrots to a smaller baking dish, sprinkle with some freshly ground white pepper (white pepper is super carrot friendly), and pour in enough cream to almost cover the carrots. Put back in the oven, turn it to 375, and bake until the cream is mostly gone.
Serve hot.
The results aren't particularly pretty, but they are goooooood.
We got a CSA box on Wednesday and last night we started working on eating our way through it. :-)
To get things started I made a big pot of green garlic [CSA] soup following a recipe from CPV (a new cookbook). That is one fine soup, and not just because it's full of butter.
The main dish was Wienerschnitzel made with pork instead of veal. I pounded out halved loin chops; seasoned them with salt, pepper, and cayenne; breaded them with flour, egg, then bread crumbs; fried them quickly in butter; and served them with lemon wedges. Very tasty.
Veggie sides were long-cooked broccoli (also from a CPV recipe) and caramelized carrots with cream (I made this up, see the next post). Both the broccoli and carrots were [CSA]. The broccoli was good, but not great. The carrots were *amazing*.
We also had a [CSA] green salad.
We were travelling last week, so I didn't do any cooking.
On Friday night I made dinner at my parents' place for us, my parents, and Holly and Kristen.
I (really I should say "we", because Kristen did most of the grill work) made a big grilled vegetable salad with baby arugula, parsley, and romaine lettuce as the greens and grilled bell peppers (red, green, and yellow), anaheim chilis, fennel, and red onion. We also grilled some pork chops, shrimp (shell-on, skewered), and a couple pieces of ocean perch. As a sauce/salad dressing, I made a vinaigrette with olive oil, sherry vinegar, garlic, honey, and some parsley.
It made for some good eating.
Since getting back we've been working our way through some leftover ragu from the freezer (over penne on Monday night and over riced potatoes last night). Last night I did some braised carrots [CSA] with chicken stock, butter, and garlic to go along with the meat and potatoes. mmm, braised carrots.
The high-speed veggie consumption continued last night.
We started with steamed artichokes [CSA]. These were small, so I trimmed them, cut them in half, rubbed them with lemon, then steamed them. We ate them dressed with good olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper.
The main course was white beans with spanish chorizo, dandelion greens [CSA], and loads of smoked paprika and garlic.
As a side I did another batch of carrots [CSA] cooked in cream, but this time I added some julienned ginger to the mix. The ginger went very nicely indeed, thank you very much.
I'm tired of the green goddess dressing, so for the salad I made some yogurt-garlic-tahini dressing.
It was another night of happy, happy food. :-)
Yesterday we got our first CSA box of the season. Since we're going to be out of town next week, there's some time pressure on finishing off the veggies, so the menus are going to be veggie-heavy for the next couple days.
Last night I made a batch of polenta with asiago fresco cheese to serve as center of the meal. To go around the polenta I did:
To accompany the last of the chicken and two vinegars leftovers, I sauteed some asparagus and served it with a quick sauce made from pasted, salted garlic and yogurt. I used "Mediterranean cheese style yogurt", which we recently noticed at Trader Joes. This stuff is close to quark, and we really like it.
To go along with leftover chicken and two vinegars, I tried a slight variation on the sauteed asparagus prep that I've been doing. Instead of sauteeing with olive oil over medium-high heat in an open pan, I did the saute with butter over medium heat and covered the pan. This took longer, but it gave the asparagus a nice "stewed in butter" character that was mighty good. Like that's not redundant.
We also had the requisite green salad, with some spanish black radish and avocado (both from the farmers' market) thrown in.
We found a couple of new bars at Trader Joes on Sunday, both are from Chocovic SA and purport to be "Unique Origin Varietal Chocolates" with minimum 71% cocoa. One bar, "Ocumare", is from Venezuelan cocoa; the other, "Guaranda", is from Ecuadorian cocoa.
Andrea and I agreed on preference: we liked Ocumare better than Guaranda, though both are good. Ocumare is creamier/richer and spicier. Guaranda is a bit "sharper" (to use a random word). Both are well balanced and very smooth (like the Valrhona). We liked the smoothness.
We haven't tasted these beside the Caro yet, that's for tonight. :-)
One of the other things I made on Sunday was a batch of potato leek soup with some country ham.
This turned out well (it's hard to screw up), but it's quite green because when I made the stock I had loads of vegetable bits to toss in. It's almost like I planned the soup for St. Patrick's day. Except I didn't. And I was late. Yeah.
On Saturday I was inspired to make a batch of green goddess dressing. I started from a recipe at epicurious, but then I added extra parsley, a bunch of extra tarragon, and some water to thin things out a bit.
We're going to be eating this stuff for a while, so it's a good thing that it tastes good. :-)
It's been a surprisingly long time since I last made this dish.
Yesterday's variation used a whole cut-up chicken, red wine and sherry (instead of champagne) vinegars and vermouth instead white wine. I left out the chicken stock, because that's just not needed. I thickened the final sauce a bit with potato starch so that it worked better on the pasta (farfalle this time).
To accompany the chicken, I sauteed some asparagus. Our asparagus guy at the farmers' market is now starting to have some really nice thick spears, which we really prefer. Plus he even gives discounts for getting thick bunches, since most Californians seem to prefer thin asparagus. I won't say anything bad about them for this, but I'm tempted to. Besides, it means we get the good stuff for cheaper. :-)
Fabulous, fabulous food.
