Coho Salmon

I just finished reading Bottomfeeder, by Taras Grescoe.  I highly recommend--it's scary, how overfished our world is, and how contaminated some of the seafood we get in the grocery store can be, but ultimately, it's a very useful book, in terms of helping you figure out what fish you should and should not eat.  As soon as it's out in paperback, I'm giving it to everyone I know.  One of the things I learned from Bottomfeeder is that whether or not you should eat salmon very much depends on what kind of salmon it is; wild-caught Coho is good, because it comes from sustainable stocks and is relatively short-lived for a salmon, thus lower in contaminants.  

Last night Craig made a wonderful Coho dinner.  He used an Epicurious recipe for salmon with tarragon mustard butter on leeks and French lentils.  It was soooo good--the butter was amazing and perfect with the fish, and I love those little French lentils, they have such a great texture.  It was a very flavorful meal, and we had the perfect wine to cut through all the sort of thick flavors and brighten up our mouths, a 2007 Vinedo de los Vientos Estival, an Uruguyan blend of Gewurztraminer, Chardonnay, and Moscato Bianco.  What a great way to say goodbye to a crappy week.

Roast Chicken Provencal

On Sunday evening I roasted a chicken, basing it on an Epicurious recipe for one-pot chicken provencal. The recipe called for roasting tomatoes, onions, and olives in the bottom of the roasting pan next to the chicken, but I didn't think we needed ALL that chicken fat, so I elevated the chicken and cooked off the vegetables in the roasting pan after pouring off some of the fat, while the chicken rested. I added leeks and green beans, and I think the beans especially were a good idea, but I think next time they should be cooked in a different pan altogether, and maybe finished off in the same oven as the chicken, the flavors just weren't deep enough the way I did it. The chicken was pretty good, although it could have been brined longer--I only had 2 hours. But it is way cheaper to buy a whole free-ranger and eat the bits all week than individual pieces of the same free-ranger, so I'll be doing more roast chicken as winter approaches!

What MK eats

Mary Kate came down for a visit on Saturday and stayed over that night. She is one of my favorite dinner guests, and did not disappoint this time! We started with the latest iteration of the Thanksgiving GF Stuffies, accompanied by a nice white burgundy whose name and birthdate I cannot recall. Unfortunately, I got distracted by our conversation and left the stuffies on the grill a little too long, but they were pretty good and I might be just about there on the proportion of cranberries to clams.

For dinner we had pork chops stuffed with pine nuts, spinach, ricotta, and fontina (Cook's, except I grilled them). They were sooo good--you wouldn't think a person could eat that entire ginormous chop, but we all succeeded! The chops were from WF, so pretty high-quality to begin with, and brined, so even better. Hollie got to do what she does best, oven potatoes (CSA, so good) with herbs and balsamic, and I made Alton Brown braised cabbage and apples, which was great and really easy. MK brought us some Pinot Noir to accompany.

Finally, dessert! Because that peach shortcake I made a couple of weeks ago was only so-so, I really wanted to redeem myself. I made an Epicurious recipe for pecan shortcakes with bourbon whipped cream. I am SUCH a bad baker, and did my best to mess up the shortcakes, but they were pretty good anyway, and the whipped cream was awesome. I put some bourbon in the peaches as well, and also used cane sugar that Lisa and Chris got in Cambodia, which is really delicious--I have been known to nibble at it on its own.

The fun didn't stop there! Sunday morning MK and I went to yoga and Craig went for a bike ride. When we all got back, Craig made us a German apple breakfast cake thing from Cook's. We topped it with maple syrup. It was so good, the perfect amount of dough, perfectly cooked, with all those good apples.

Chicken Thighs with Feta Relish

On Friday evening Craig made a lovely dinner, grilled chicken thighs with an awesome relish he made out of fresh CSA tomatoes, feta, kalamata olives, and thyme (was supposed to be mint but we didn't have any). I would have been happy to just be served the relish on crackers, but it was even better this way, with couscous and sauteed CSA chard. We agreed that the couscous needed a sauce of some sort, but in all it was an excellent low-stress Friday night meal.

Strata

The NY Times had a recipe for tomato strata that looked interesting, so I more or less made that last night, using bread left over from Saturday and CSA tomatoes. I added grilled slices of eggplant and steamed spinach with the water squeezed out. The recipe called for gruyere and parmesan, which were delicious, and rosemary and thyme--I thought the rosemary flavor was too strong and would skip it next time. The baking dish I used was too small, so a lot of the egg-milk mixture overflowed and never got to soak into the bread, but it was really good nonetheless and seems like a great way to use veggies and old bread.

Steak is Best with Blue Cheese!!

This is the first weekend in living memory when Craig and I were home AND with no huge bike ride, so we celebrated with a nice dinner on Saturday.  I went to the farmers' market and got a couple of grass-fed local t-bones, some baby squash, and country bread from 7 Stars.  First, though, the appetizers.  We had Dogfish 90-minute and Food Should Taste Good jalapeno flavor chips with Megan-style guacamole.  I like my guac super simple, just avocado, cilantro, lime, garlic and salt, no fancy-addins.  Those chips are sooo good.

Craig did an excellent job manning the grill with his headlamp on.  While the steaks rested he grilled the squash and the bread.  I sauteed some of our home-grown golden chard with currants, and we topped the bread with garlic, salt and good Spanish olive oil.  The steaks were a perfect medium-rare, and that bit of Danish blue on top made every bite wonderful.  We drank another wine club selection, Green & Red Vineyards Zinfandel Chiles Canyon 2006, an excellent zin for a meal, really nice and full without getting in the way of the food.  

Fluke with Rosemary

Craig had intended to grill steak on Friday night, but it rained, so instead he thawed a fluke fillet and found an Emeril recipe.  I had my doubts about rosemary on fish, but it was really good, baked with chopped tomatoes and a little cayenne sprinkled on top.  We had sauteed Swiss chard from the CSA alongside.  The house smelled so good on such a chilly damp night.  We also drank our first bottle from Craig's birthday wine club, a Sicilian Insolia, 2007 Case Ibidini.  It was really really good, almost buttery, a white wine with the ability to fill your mouth up.  I'm definitely going to ask for it at Wakefield Liquors!

Portabello and Garlicky Pesto

One of the greatest things about owning a food processor is how easy it makes using up leftover herbs . On Wednesday night I made pesto with some basil, mint, and arugula we had, adding toasted pine nuts and almonds, and a head of fresh garlic I blanched for one minute. Really good AND it kept the mosquitos (and vampires) away! A little mint is so good in a pesto. I grilled portobello caps and topped them with Danish blue cheese and the pesto, and served steamed Maine broccoli (soooo good this time of year) alongside. I've been using the leftover pesto in our lunches, and that garlic flavor definitely gets stronger as the days go by!

Chowder out of the Bowl

Craig and I had plans to ride a century on Sunday, and on Saturday Tropical Storm Hanna was supposed to roll through, so I thought I'd take advantage of the bad weather and make a hearty, carb-loaded meal of chicken corn chowder and bread.  CLEARLY I have a lot to learn about tropical storms.  Saturday was not particularly rainy, but it was so humid and sticky and disgusting, not weather in which to let Hollie heat up the whole house, that's for sure.  I decided to grill, and to get my grilling in before any rain came through.  I did chicken thighs, minimally seasoned, and tossed them with tiny boiled CSA potatoes, seeded tomatoes, and sauteed sweet corn.  I threw in some olive oil and lots of basil and a little ground cumin, and served it room temp with sauteed Swiss chard when we were ready to eat.  It was pretty good, just like chowder without the heat.  Or the good dairy fat--fresh mozzarella would have been the perfect addition.  I actually even made dessert, although I forgot to take a picture.  It was an only OK peach shortcake--the biscuits were heavy (I blame Hanna) and I should have taken more care with the peaches, too much cinnamon.  Not too bad though, and worth trying again--we also joined a fruit CSA and are getting a bag of apples and a bag of peaches every week right now.

Saturday's big culinary experiment was gluten-free Thanksgiving-themed stuffies.  I made 3 different kinds, cranberry, apricot, and candied ginger.  Craig took them to Lisa and Chris's last night for a taste test, and apparently they're worth perfecting.  When I see chestnuts in the store, I'll have to try throwing some of those in as well.

Two Dips

Or three or four, depending on who at the table you count. On Sunday when I was grilling I also did some eggplants and hot peppers we had from the CSA. I food processed those with tahini, and it was too hot, so I mixed in some seeded chopped tomatoes, and it still needed a little something. I added some lime juice and a little more salt, and suddenly had the most addictive, just the right amount of spicy, amazing thing! So on Wednesday night we had things with dips. I made a yogurt mint cucumber dip to cool off the eggplant, and blanched some CSA carrots and beans from our garden. Wednesday morning I started a simple bread, and then grilled that off along with some lamb chops I'd quickly marinated in olive oil, garlic, oregano, and lemon zest. YUM, were those chops ever good, especially in the yogurt. I thought the bread was too puffy, but Craig really liked it (it's the thing that looks sort of like a chicken breast--I'd torn the round in half).


To drink we had a really nice Pinot Noir that complemented the meal well I thought. It was a Dom. Brunel 2006 that we'd sampled at a tasting near Ellie and Dave's. This was a fun meal that would be good with company (if you could afford all those lamb chops), especially if you added a few more dipping items.

Treats on Pasta

We didn't eat at home much over Labor Day weekend, and as a consequence, I had a lot of produce, home-grown and CSA, to use last night. Earlier in the day, I grilled one of Craig's beautiful red peppers (peppers are too fussy for me to deal with, but he gets along well with them), and some winter squash--one we grew, and a couple our neighbors gave us from their garden. I julienned the pepper and scooped out bite-size chunks of the squash. For dinner, I sauteed carrots, leeks, garlic, and tomato (all CSA) in olive oil, and added a little bit of crushed red pepper, then turned off the heat and added torn up basil leaves and the squash and peppers. I threw all the veggies on top of whole wheat linguine, then topped all of that with a poached egg (also from the CSA now that my job has moved and the Eggman is no longer in my life). I had worried we would need to order a pizza, but this was pretty good, especially the squash, which had seemed like a strange thing to throw in and turned out to be the best part.
While I was grilling yesterday, I also came up with an inspiration for Date Night tomorrow night. Stay tuned.