Tuesday leftovers

To use the leftover chicken from Monday: caramelize some thinly sliced onions and chopped garlic with some olive oil. Stir in the boned and diced chicken and cook gently for a few minutes. Just before serving stir in coarsely chopped mint and some lemon juice.

We ate this with basmati rice, the leftover yogurt sauce, and sliced zucchini cooked with butter.

Monday miscellany

It's cool enough to cook again, so I had to take advantage of it.

The main dish was chicken baked with fennel (from Bittman), which is simple enough: slice some fennel; put it in a baking dish with some olive oil and season; bake at 175C for 10 minutes; add chicken parts and season with salt and pepper; bake another 30 minutes or so, removing the breast pieces when they are done and setting aside; serve with lemon slices.

As a side I did vegetable rösti of a sort: grate some zucchini then salt it and let it drain; mix with minced onion, mashed garlic, lemon zest, grated carrot, lemon zest, chopped basel, and enough flour and breadcrumbs to make you believe it's going to hold together; form small patties and saute in olive oil. We ate these with a sauce I made by blending together feta cheese, mashed garlic, yogurt, and mint.

The zucchini things didn't hold together quite as well as I would have liked, but they (as well as the chicken) tasted great.

Friday: baked ratatouille

The ingredients in this weeks box were perfect for a ratatouille.

Put some olive oil in a baking dish. Layer in thinly sliced zucchini and eggplant, very thinly sliced onion, sliced tomatoes, chopped parsley, thyme, and basil, salt, pepper, and some crushed garlic. Top with bread crumbs mixed with olive oil and bake at 175C until it's ready.

Really nice stuff.

Wednesday's salads

Still too hot to cook!

1. Potato salad: sliced potatoes that I steamed in the morning and then refrigerated all day tossed with mashed garlic, minced onion, parsley, chives, rapeseed oil, white balsamico, mustard (plenty of it), and a bit of vegetable bouillon
2. Smoked pork salad: diced (1cm) smoked pork loin tossed a vinaigrette (lemon, garlic, peanut oil, honey), chives, and piment d'espelette
3. Cold pasta tossed with a pesto rosso (dried tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, parmesan, black pepper)
4. A big green salad

Tuesday: Bread salad

When we got back from the mountains it was hot as hell in the flat, so there was no way I was going to do real cooking. Instead I did a tomato-bread salad (panzanella) with some leftover pagnol, tomatoes from the box, basil from the balcony, olive oil, garlic, onion, balsamico, and a bit of veggie bouillon. After letting this soak for 30 minutes we ate it over lettuce.

Catching up.

I'm hopelessly behind with the blog (again) so here's an attempt to catch up with at least some of the things I've made recently:

1. chicken legs marinated in garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, sriracha, soy, and shallots, then broiled. I served the extra marinade as sauce (after boiling it, of course).
2. A salad made from grated zucchini (salted for 30 minutes), chopped tomatoes, olive oil, white balsamico, and basil
3. wurstsalat (the usual method)
4. Japanese-inspired beef salad: thin steaks seasoned, seared in the grill pan, thinly sliced, and then marinated in soy, mirin, sake, and sesame oil
5. thinly sliced peppers marinated in balsamico and olive oil
6. potato salad (more than once, multiple kinds)
7. salade nicoise
8. Chard cannelloni: chard leaves cooked with olive oil, garlic, and piri-piri chilis, then chopped and mixed with finely diced smoked bacon (from Wallis) and parmesan. We rolled this up in lasagna noodles, topped with a bit more parmesan and ran it under the broiler for a couple minutes before serving drizzled with good olive oil

Another round of energy bars

Made a batch of energy bars for a backpacking trip. I used more or less the same proportions as last time but I did stronger spicing (2tsp ground ginger, more nutmeg, more black pepper) and, due to ingredient availability in the kitchen, I made a couple substitutions:

• 100g dried mango instead of the prunes
• 200g honey instead of 110g honey and 90g zuckerruben sirup

I also left out the butter, but that's because I forgot, not due to any clever plan. ;-)

The results were, once again, really good. This makes a large quantity so we should be set for a few weekends.

Tueday's randomness

A couple of weeks ago I marked a recipe for gooseberry relish that looked like an interesting way to use the gooseberries from our balcony when they got ripe. Last night as the night. Since there weren't a ton of berries (our bush is small) I ended up doing a half recipe, which meant there was insufficient liquid to put the ginger and mustard seeds in a bag; I just dumped them in and then picked out the ginger slices before serving (the mustard seeds blended in well with the seeds from the berries themselves). I also didn't add any additional sugar other than what came in with the elderberry syrup. The resulting preparation maybe could have used brightening up with some lemon juice, but it was still quite good.

We ate the relish over thinly sliced pork steaks that I seasoned with salt and cooked quickly in the grill pan.

As an accompaniment I made a batch of coconut rice (using coconut milk to replace most of the water in a standard short-grain rice recipe). I have no idea where this idea came from, but it worked reasonably well.

Of course we had a big green salad as well.

More salads

I did a couple salads to take for a picnic by the Rhein: wurstsalat and fennel marinated with preserved lemon slices (recipe from Bittman, but I used mustard seeds instead of coriander).

Tuesday salads

Salads to deal with the heat:

1. cottage cheese, finely diced Walliser bacon (smoked and then dried with herbs and spices... fantastic stuff), parsley, black pepper, a bit of olive oil
2. cauliflower (steamed, then cooled to room temp with cold water), mashed garlic, white balsamico, good olive oil, chives, black pepper
3. A big mixed green salad

We accompanied the salads with bread and cheese.

Thursday at the grill

A nice day that was just screaming for grilling... so that's what I did:

1. Burgers (beef, salt, minced onion, minced garlic)
2. Various sausages (we found a package of mixed sausage from Ticino)
3. Fennel, grilled and then served with a basel vinaigrette
4. Big green salad (not grilled, of course)

Sunday cocktail: the bourbon sidecar

Eric Asimov did a post on the bourbon sidecar last week that just sounded excellent, so I "had" to try it.

It's the standard ratio: 2:1:1 bourbon (Makers Mark):triple sec (Curacao):lemon juice with a twist of lemon zest and it's really, really good.

Sunday: Lamb steaks

We found some lamb steaks from the leg (mmm, lamb ham) at the Coop. Since I happened to have some newly done preserved lemons in the fridge this one was almost too easy...

Marinate the lamb steaks in: diced preserved lemon, minced garlic, minced rosemary, black pepper, olive oil for a good while (I did 24 hours). Cook them in the grill pan (or on the grill). Serve with some reserved marinade as a relish.

We ate this delight with a big green salad and a "hobo pack" I made in the oven with new potatoes, onion, olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika.

Saturday: chinese

Andrea's request for chinese yielded:

1. sweet and sour pork (recipe from Land of Plenty, I've made this one before).
2. dry fried eggplant (also from Land of Plenty, but I added szechuan peppercorns and chilis to the mix).

Of course we also had rice and a green salad.

Thursday: quick(ish) stewed veal

Andrea found some veal stew meat at half price, so that formed the basis for dinner.

Cut the veal into thinnish slices; brown well in clarified butter; add minced garlic, diced onion, diced carrot, and cook a few minutes; sprinkle over some flour and cook a few more minutes; deglaze with white wine and let it reduce to half; add chicken bouillon and bring to a simmer; add chopped fresh herbs and simmer for 20-30 minutes; just before serving add more herbs.

We ate this with sauteed spinach (the usual garlic, chili preparation, drizzled with balsamico for serving), noodles, and a big green salad.

so far behind...

Ok, Andrea was out of town for a week and there was lots of lettuce in the fridge, so I ate salad for a week.

Friday: first pesto of the season

The basel plants on the balcony needed to be trimmed back, so I made the first pesto of the season. Aside from having a bit too much garlic, it was another nice way to welcome summer.

Friday at the grill

The weather was good, so we had a couple people over and fired up the grill.

The grilled food:

1. Red peppers and fat spring onions, choppped and mixed into a salad
2. Red onions
3. Veal cipollata
4. Standard bratwurst
5. Small bratwurst (Nürnberger size) with sage
6. Meatballs (beef) flavored with allspice, lemon zest, black pepper, and salt then grilled on skewers.
7. A nice ribeye (it was on sale, I couldn't resist) done with salt and pepper

The non-grilled food:

1. a big green salad
2. baguette
3. flavored ketchups: ketchup+curry powder+hot paprika; ketchup+chipotle tabasco
4. a vinaigrette : cider vinegar, rapeseed oil, rosemary, chives, salt, pepper, honey

We ate well...

Wednesday: macaroni with meat sauce

a.k.a. Hörnli mit Gehacktes :-)

Soften some diced onion, diced carrot, and minced garlic in olive oil. Add ground beef along with some salt and cook, without browning, until the beef is most cooked. Add some white wine and reduce a bit. Add tomato puree, oregano, bay leaf, parsley, a bit of rosemary, black pepper, and a good pinch of sugar. Let cook uncovered, barely simmering for an hour or so. Serve over macaroni with a grating of parmesan.

Monday: stuffed kohlrabi

An adaptation of a recipe from this month's Le Menu.

Peel a couple kohlrabi, then steam them until they are about soft (about 20 minutes). Cut a flat bottom in each and scoop out the insides to give a ~1cm thick shell. Chop the insides coarsely and set aside.

Cook 300g of spinach (I did in the microwave), drain, and chop coarsely. Cook a minced onion with some minced garlic in butter until the onion is cooked, then stir in the spinach and a good pinch of salt. Once the spinach is cooked through, add pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Stir in 2 eggs that have been beaten together with 5cl of sour cream; cook until the egg starts to set, then stir in 100g of grated gruyere.

Put the kohrabi shells in a lightly buttered dish. Fill them with as much of the spinach filling as fits inside (I ended up using about half, which makes sense since the recipe is for 4 shells ;-), sprinkle the chopped kohlrabi around, top with grated cheese, pour a mixture of cream and veggie bouillon around the whole thing, then bake at 200C until the top is brown and the liquid is bubbly.

We ate this with the leftover risotto and a big green salad and were not displeased.