Sunday at the grill

A standard night at the grill: sausages, a steak, and grilled vegetable salad (peppers, onion, zucchini, corn, basil, olive oil, balsamico).

standard, but oh so good

Thursday: pasta with tomatoes and chickpeas

From the Splendid Table mailing:

Combine chopped fresh tomato, minced garlic, chickpeas, basil, balsamico, and olive oil and let stand for 30 minutes. Serve over penne.

Very simple, very nice.

Wednesday: chopped salad with steak

Another one of those "using vegetables up" ideas:

Mash some garlic and combine with minced onion, finely chopped celery, salt, lemon juice, some white balsamico, and rapeseed oil. Dice a zucchini small (1cm) and microwave it a minute or so to kill the raw taste then stir into the rest. Repeat that process with a fennel bulb. Add diced (1cm) carrot. Add chopped basil, mix well, and let it all stand for a while to marinate. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

Season a piece of sirloin well, cook it to rare in the grill pan, slice thinly after letting it rest, and serve beside the salad.

mmmmmm

Sunday: baked vegetables with pasta

Sometimes it's almost too easy to use large quantities of vegetables from the biokiste:

Cover the bottom of a baking dish with olive oil; layer in sliced fennel, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, and onion; add a couple splashes of white wine; cover and bake at 175C for 40 minutes. Remove the foil, top with grated gruyere, increase the temp to 190, and bake for another 20 minutes until the cheese is brown and bubbly. Serve with pasta (penne) tossed with chopped basil, chives, and olive oil.

Together with a green salad, this was some good eating.

Saturday: Broiled chicken and eggplant

Marinate a couple chicken leg quarters with salt, lemon juice, garlic, chopped chives, and olive oil for a few hours. Meanwhile broil some eggplants (poke holes in them first so they don't explode!) until the skin is nicely charred and they are soft. Scoop out the interior and chop it coarsely, then mix with mashed garlic, yogurt, tahini, a bit of lemon juice, cumin, salt, and black pepper. Let stand for a while so the flavors can merge. Broil the chicken until it's ready to eat and then serve with the eggplant-yogurt mixture.

We also had roasted potatoes and a carrot salad: thin strips of carrot tossed with lemon juice, salt, pepper, piment d'espelette, cumin, a hint of cinnamon, and olive oil.

It's good to be back home and able to cook again. :-)

Thursday: escarole and chicken

The nice head of escarole in the biokiste was calling out for beans and greens, but since I was going to be on a plane the next day, it mutated into something else.

Cook diced onion and carrot with minced celery, garlic and salt in some olive oil until the carrots start to soften. Add some hot paprika, freshly ground cumin, and piment d'espelette and cook another minute or so until the pepper is aromatic. Add a good quantity of sherry and let reduce most of they way. Add tomato sauce and a pinch saffron and bring to a simmer. Add coarsely chopped escarole, cover, and let cook until the escarole is about ready to eat. Add more salt if needed and some chopped chicken breast and let simmer another few minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Serve topped with toasted spiced almonds and a drizzle of olive oil.

This, some bread, and a green salad was quite a good meal.

Wednesday vegetables

This was going to be a succotash, but then it changed. :-)

Cook diced onion and chopped garlic in olive oil with a good pinch of salt until the onion starts to soften, add diced carrot and cook a few minutes. Add diced long-green pepper and cook another five or so minutes. Add diced summer squash and some more salt and cook, covered, until the squash is almost ready to eat. Add fresh corn and cook another couple of minutes.

Sometimes it's really nice to just have a big plate of well-cooked fresh vegetables.

We ate the veggies with oven-roasted potato wedges and a big green salad.

Saturday Risotto

I made a batch of risotto to go with the leftover pork roast: olive oil, minced onion, diced carrot, white wine, chicken bouillon, and (of course) rice. Served topped with parmesan and drizzled with a bit of olive oil.

I also did a batch of chard stems cooked in tomato puree. I'm tired of dealing with chard for this year, but this is quite a good combination.

Saturday: Apricot panna cotta with berries

A recipe from the Le Menu archive selected to take advantage of all the fruit that we picked up at the market.

Pit and dice 250g apricots, then cook them with 100g sugar and a packet of vanilla sugar until they soften. Let cool a couple of minutes and then puree.

Combine 2.5dl cream with 1.5dl milk and half of a (scraped) vanilla bean and bring to a simmer. Remove from the heat and stir in 3 leaves of softened gelatin then the apricot puree.

Transfer to ramekins, cover, and refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

15 minutes before serving combine some blueberries and blackberries with a bit of sugar and let macerate.

Serve the panna cottas topped with the berries.

The two we tried on Saturday hadn't fully set up, so they didn't have the correct panna cotta texture, but they were still really tasty. Hopefully with more cooling the texture will be right too.

Thursday : slow-cooked pork loin

I actually cooked this Wednesday night; we ate it on Thursday:

Season a pork-loin roast well with salt, glaze with a mixture of honey and mustard, then cook at 85C until the internal temperature is 70. Serve with some additional honey mustard on the side.

We ate this with bratkartoffeln and zucchini sauteed in butter. And, of course, a big green salad.

Tuesday: more wraps

This time, vegetarian wraps with: steamed green beans, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, corn, lettuce, and a dressing made from pesto (basil, almonds, olive oil, garlic) with extra oil and some white balsamico.

As an accompaniment I did a bean salad with: white beans (and some of the canning liquid), diced smoked salami (an appenzeller schubli), minced onion, minced garlic, lemon zest, parsley, olive oil.

Monday wraps

Driven by a desire for something at least vaguely mexican; wraps with:

1. Ground beef cooked with cumin, pimenton, garlic, and onions. Red wine and soy sauce added and allowed to reduce off.
2. a quick salsa: tomatoes, onions, garlic, lemon, chilies, piment d'espelette
3. corn, cheese, lettuce, sour cream

This year's cherries

Timed this one perfectly: Andrea got the last flat of sour cherries for the year from the guy at the market. whew!

Last night we cleaned and pitted the cherries (more than three kilos pitted). I combined 3kg with 1kg sugar and brought to a boil. Tonight I'll put them in jars.

Pickles

Andrea picked up a big bag of pickling cukes yesterday, so I'm trying another pickling run.

I used a 5% brine (a la Ruhlman) and combined the cucumbers with green beans, garlic, onion, dill, black pepper, and mustard seed. Let's see how these turn out.

Wednesday: Siedfleisch salad

An idea that's been kicking around for a couple weeks:

Cook a piece of siedfleisch in the pressure cooker (25 minutes after it started to sing) with water, onion, garlic, cloves, bay leaf, all spice, black pepper, and some vegetable boullion. Let cool a bit, then thinly slice. Make a sauce from sour cream, prepared horseradish, a bit of the beef cooking liquid, mashed garlic, chopped parsley, and black pepper. Mix with the sliced beef. Add chopped chives and quick-pickled onions and cucumbers (very thinly sliced, tossed with salt and white balsamico). Serve with good bread and a green salad.

Tuesday: macaroni and cheese

We still have lots of cheese to use, so doing mac and cheese seemed like a good idea.

I used whole wheat pasta, some white wine, and a mixture of grated alp cheeses. To serve I topped it with minced shallots. Good stuff!

As a vegetable side we had diced squash sauteed with onion and garlic. Oh, and a big green salad.

Monday's pizzas

A simple one for Monday night: two different vegetable "pizzas"

Squash with alp cheese: slice summer squash and then microwave (uncovered) a few minutes to start the cooking process and dry them out a bit. Brush rolled out pizza dough with olive oil, brush on minced garlic, top with the squash, sprinkle on some salt and fresh thyme, top with alp cheese., bake.

Tomato with fresh mozzarella: brush dough with olive oil, top with sliced tomato, season with salt, top with sliced fresh mozzarella, bake, sprinkle with fresh basil before serving.

Even using the prefab dough from Coop these were quite good.

of course we also had a big green salad.

Sunday: potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and cheese

A random one based on what was in the house and inspired by the really nice cheese we bought in the alps.

Thinly slice a couple of onions and put them in a baking dish with a bit of rape seed oil. Toss in the oven at 190C for 10 minutes. Add a good splash or two of white wine and bake until the wine is mostly evaporated (another 5 or so minutes). Meanwhile steam some sliced new potatoes until they are almost cooked. Top the onions with sliced tomato, then with the potato slices, then with sliced alp cheese. Salt as appropriate while building the thing. Toss the baking dish back in the oven and let it cook until the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

This was really, really good. I need to come up with a name for it. Oh, and more onions next time; caramelized onions are gooood!

Of course we also had a big green salad.

Thursday salad

Inspired by the contents of the box: quarter some new potatoes and steam them until just cooked through. Toss warm with olive oil, mashed garlic, salt, chopped basil, and minced onion. Steam some green beans until crisp-tender, toss into the potatoes. Add toasted and coarsely ground almonds, black pepper, more chopped basil, more olive oil, and a splash of balsamico. Let stand 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Just before serving mix in some grated parmesan. Serve over lettuce with cherry tomatoes on the side, drizzle with olive oil.

Wednesday: stuffed zucchini

Lots of zucchini to use up!

Grind some lamb with onion and garlic. Season well with salt, black pepper, cumin, and piment d'espelette. Cook for a few minutes. Stuff into hollowed out zucchini halves, top with feta cheese and tomato slices. Bake at 175C until the meat is cooked through and the zucchini is soft.

Serve with rice and mint-feta-yogurt sauce.