Weekly Dish

I really want to start making really autumn-ish dishes and telling you all about how warming and comforting they are. I’ve been trying to get in the spirit of the season. See, I made soup yesterday? But here’s the thing. It’s in the eighties still. I am wearing t-shirts and flip-flops to class. How am I supposed to assume my place stirring a big steaming pot of soup when I have the air conditioning running? I couldn’t fight it anymore this week…salad it is (or was).

To dress my salad appropriately for the season, I started by gathering the greens right from my backyard. David’s first official vegetables in our garden include an assortment of greens, but we aren’t sure exactly what all of them are. As best we can tell, there’s some kind of curly lettuce, a red-leaf one, kale, and a bright green one with small round leaves (baby lettuce? butter lettuce? David doesn’t remember).

Grilling seemed a good option since it had cooled off a little bit by dusk, so I marinated some chicken breasts in a sweet and sour mixture, and David grilled them for me. For the dressing, I wanted it to be warm to wilt the greens a little bit. So I started by frying some bacon, and then added shallots, pecans, and some diced pear. It turned out to be a lovely combination of flavors, and the warm dressing made it feel more like a fall dish (without the my-standing-over-a-hot-stove-for-a-really-long-time part). After the chicken is cooked, the salad comes together really quickly. Here’s how it worked:

SWEET-HOT GRILLED CHICKEN SALAD

For the chicken:

2 pounds chicken breasts

3/4 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup rice vinegar (cider vinegar would work too)

2 T. dark cane syrup or molasses

2 T. sesame oil

1 T. fish sauce

2 T. hot chili sauce (I use Sambal, a Thai version)

Juice of 1 lemon

Mix all; marinate for a few hours or overnight. Grill chicken over medium flame.

For the Warm Balsamic Vinaigrette:

4 pieces bacon

2 shallots, minced

1/2 pear, diced

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 t. dark cane syrup or molasses

1/2 t. salt

Cook the bacon in a medium skillet until done; remove. Add the shallots and cook until tender, about 4 minutes. Add the pear and pecans, and cook about 5 more minutes until the pear is very soft. Add the vinegar, syrup, and salt, and cook another minute or two, stirring constantly.

To assemble the salad:

Mixed salad greens, washed and torn

Remaining half of pear, diced

1/2 cup chopped green onions

Spread greens on plate; top with pear, green onions, chicken, and bacon slices. Pour dressing warm on top of salad.

A strange cat has been hanging out at our house lately. He’s pretty cute, brown and gray tabby with really bright green eyes, but Chester and Carmela are having a hard time adjusting to his presence. We often hear the yelps and hisses of kitty violence in our backyard, opening the door just in time to see our cats ganging up on this wandering neighbor.

A few weeks ago, I had the back door open because it was so nice outside, and I came into my kitchen to find a cat on the floor, one that doesn’t belong to me. He quickly sauntered back out when he saw me, but he isn’t afraid to intrude. His favorite spot in the backyard is near our enormous basil plants, so in honor of his persistent presence around our house, I named him after another constant in our kitchen: Pesto.

I’ve never had basil plants (or strange cats, for that matter) hang around this long. I don’t know if it’s because we planted them late in the season or because of the near-tropical climate, but they show no signs of fading any time soon. And so, I’ve had a never ending supply of pesto in my fridge (as I’m sure you’ve noticed!) and am trying to find new ways to use it. This soup is perfect for a fall use of the usually summertime herb; it’s warm and creamy but not too heavy. I adapted it from the recipe for Basil-Eggplant Soup in Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge’s Intercourses; my version differs only slightly from theirs.

Eggplant Basil Bisque

1 medium eggplant

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

Olive oil

4 large tomatoes, or 1 14 1/12 ounce can whole tomatoes, drained

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

1/8 t. cayenne pepper

1/2 t. Kosher salt plus more to taste

Cracked black pepper

2 ounces goat cheese

2 tablespoons basil pesto

Peel the eggplant, and cut into small chunks. Boil in salted water until tender, about 10 minutes. (The original recipe calls for grilling the eggplant, which I’m sure would impart lots of flavor. I keep meaning to try it that way.) In a large saucepan, saute the onion and garlic together over medium-low heat until the onion is translucent and very tender but not brown. Dice the tomatoes and add them to the pot; cook for another 5-7 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft. Add the eggplant and chicken broth; season with cayenne, salt, and pepper. Simmer for about 45 minutes. Remove from heat to cool a bit. Mix the pesto and goat cheese in the blender to form a greenish paste. Remove the pesto paste from the blender, leaving a little sticking to the sides. Puree the soup in batches, but be careful! Hot soup will blow the lid right off your blender. Reheat the pureed soup if necessary; serve with a spoonful of the basil paste on top. I didn’t have goat cheese when I made the soup you see in the photo, so I just used pesto. It was still good, but the goat cheese adds a nice creaminess that I like, so if you have it, use it. Serve with crusty bread and a salad.

For this month’s Paper Chef competition, hosted by the dynamic duo over at Belly-Timber, contestants were given an unusual assortment of ingredients. Basil, oranges, and fish sauce were randomly selected from the list of nominees; for the final ingredient, Mrs. D and Chopper Dave chose a cuddly one: lamb.

I admit, I was daunted. My inexperience with cooking up Little Bo Peep’s charges gave me pause about participating in the competition this month. And, my sister was in town, and I have a presentation next week, so it would be a busy weekend…the excuses mounted up.

But, Saturday morning on my weekly trip to the Red Stick Market, I stumbled across Mr. and Mrs. Boggs, in from Sugartown, Louisiana, selling none other than the very creatures in question. I chatted with them about the various cuts and preparation methods for a while, and they convinced me to buy a pound of their best seller: lamb sausage! Mr. Boggs promised that I could use it just as I would any other bulk sausage,–not so daunting after all–and just like that, an entry in Paper Chef was a few ingredients away.

Basil still grows abundantly in my backyard (it’s 85 degrees outside here as I write this), and fish sauce is a pantry staple, so I only had to pick up a few oranges, and I’d be on my way.

So…what to do with lamb sausage, basil, oranges, and fish sauce, you ask? Well, stuff them in an acorn squash, of course! Okay, so maybe that idea didn’t come that easily, but at any rate, that’s what I decided to do.

I’ve been meaning to make a big batch of pesto anyway, and the basil-garlic flavor seemed a perfect accompaniment for the sausage. To thicken the filling and add some creaminess, I added bread crumbs and fontina cheese, which melted up nicely. I wanted to use orange pulp for complexity, but I didn’t want the sweetness to overpower the other flavors. So, I added some zest to the pesto and roasted the oranges, scooping out the pulp after the heat had mellowed the sweet acidic flavor just a bit. Fish sauce presented a bit of a challenge. Using it for the fishy flavor wouldn’t work with the lamb, and too much would overwhelm the filling for sure. So, I decided to use it as a substitute for salt. Instead of salting the squash before baking it, I rubbed the inside with fish sauce and some olive oil.

I served the squash with buttermilk basil biscuits and spicy orange marmalade over arugula with oranges, red onions, goat cheese, and a sweet-hot vinaigrette, made with orange marmalade, red wine vinegar, the juice from the roasted oranges, and a tiny bit of fish sauce. The vinaigrette complemented everything so nicely, I ended up drizzling it over the whole plate!

The lamb sausage filling really worked well with the squash: the eating experience involved mouthfuls of creamy, savory filling and sweet, buttery squash flesh, with hints of the sweet heat from the vinaigrette. The spicy bitterness of the arugula provided a strong backdrop for the oranges and red onions, and the spicy marmalade matched up nicely with the buttery flakiness of the biscuits.

All in all, I was happy I ran into Mr. Boggs; otherwise, this Paper Chef would have passed me by, and I would still be contemplating the ethics of eating those who I count before I go to sleep. As a matter of fact, I might have overcome that hurdle altogether: maybe in the coming weeks, you’ll see recipes for Lambsagna or Lamburguine. Who knows?

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