Weekly Dish

My good friend Katherine, who has two small children, said to me the other day, “Hey, I have a great idea for your blog.” I saw David smirk in the background because he says that exact thing to me often, only his ideas are usually quickly dismissed (rarely do they have anything to do with food, at least in any realistic sense, and most often, he’s just trying to be a wise guy. A big surprise, I’m sure, to any of you who caught his carbonara recipe.) He was waiting to see if I responded similarly to my friend.

But Katherine’s suggestion was genuine. She said she’d love to see more recipes that are quick and easy that can also provide for two meals. I’d gotten into the habit of cooking that way in the fall and winter last year — slowly roasting vegetables that could morph into side dish, soup, or pasta sauce; cooking two chickens at once for main dish, stock, chicken salad, and a curry or quesadilla. But summer demands a different kitchen ethic: both because our schedule was a bit more lax and because turning the oven on for more than 20 minutes at a time is out of the question, dinner was usually a one-shot deal. Quick, perhaps, but rarely any leftovers.

But as the weather cools slightly and the days become busier, I find myself, perhaps inspired by Katherine’s suggestion, trying to plan more carefully and think ahead, getting more mileage out of the effort I put into particular dishes.

This salmon is a good example. It isn’t difficult or labor-intensive, but because I cook a whole slab at once, it makes a fabulous main dish one night, and then will crumble up into a yummy salad later in the week, enough for another supper and at least a couple of lunches. On the first night, I slathered it with fresh basil pesto, grilled it, and topped it with a silky tomato-cream sauce and fresh basil. Grilled corn and baby eggplants rounded out the plate.

Look for the salad recipe later on, and don’t forget to grill a few extra ears of corn too. It’s another great leftover food.

Grilled Pesto Salmon with Tomato Cream Sauce

1 whole slab salmon (about 1 1/2 - 2 lbs), or 4 6-ounce steaks
1/2 cup basil pesto
Kosher salt and cracked pepper
2 T. butter
1/2 small onion, chopped (about 1/3 cup)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium tomato, diced
1/4 cup white wine
1 T. heavy cream
Basil leaves, for garnish

Prepare the grill. Rub the salmon on both sides with the pesto (depending on how thick you make your pesto, you may need to add a bit of olive oil); you should have a nice, thin coating of oil and herbs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill the salmon, skin side up, until it’s just translucent in the center (it took ours about 4-6 minutes per side).

Meanwhile, saute the onion and garlic in butter over medium-low heat until soft. Add the tomatoes, and stir to heat. Sprinkle with salt. Turn the heat up to medium-high, and pour in the wine. Stir, cooking for a few minutes, until the vegetables have absorbed some of the wine; stir in the cream. Turn the heat down to low, and keep covered until the salmon is ready.

To serve, cut the salmon into 4 equal portions (if whole), and reserve 2 for salad later in the week. Top the steaks with the tomato sauce and fresh basil leaves.

–Recipe adapted from Come On In! by the Junior League of Jackson, MS 

This pizza sprung from my current love affair with figs and a hankering for grilled pizza. The restaurant where I worked in college — aptly named the Brick-Oven Cafe — served the most delicious wood-fired pizzas, baked, as you might expect, in a huge brick wood-burning oven. The texture of the crust was nice: a balanced blend of crisp and chewy, but the rich, smoky flavor was of the sort you can only get when flames are involved. Currently without a wood-burning oven of my own, I’d been thinking that grilling a pizza might impart a similar texture and flavor.

The trick, I learned from this experiment, is to roll the dough as thinly as possible. What happens in the cooking process is that the fiery heat licks the bottom of the crust, imparting its smoky flavor within a matter of minutes. But if the dough is too thick, it won’t cook all the way through, leaving you with a gummy texture in the center. We ended up pulling the pizza off of the direct grill, reducing the flame, and cooking it the rest of the way through on a foil-lined cookie sheet. It worked, but I would have liked it more if the crust had been thinner and more evenly crisp.

The toppings, inspired by recent fig pizzas at A Mingling of Tastes and at Milk and Honey, were figs, grilled in a drizzle of basalmic vinegar and cane syrup; grilled pieces of prosciutto; and large dollops of goat cheese, which melted nicely into the figs. David, not as big a fan of figs as I am, was a bit skeptical about this sweet/salty combo, but he admitted after several slices that he was pleasantly suprised. Given my penchant for contrasting flavors, fresh figs, and pizza, it should come as no surprise that I loved every bite.

The labor of this meal is in the prep work; once you get everything ready, it takes almost no time to cook on the grill. The grilling times I’ve included are guesses: my best advice is to stand at the grill the whole time and watch carefully. The amounts are also estimates, as it will depend on how much you want to load down your pizza, how big your crusts are, and how many figs you can get your hands on. As you can tell, this is no exact science.
Grilled Fig Pizza

Half recipe of Basic Focaccia/Pizza Dough or other dough of your choice
Figs (I used about a pint)
Basalmic vinegar
Cane syrup (honey would work too)
Kosher salt
Prosciutto, thinly sliced
Goat cheese (I used about 4 ounces)
Olive oil
Cooking spray

Heat the grill to a medium-high flame (we have charcoal, so I imagine a gas grill would be easier to keep consistently hot).

While the fire is heating up, get everything ready: Slice the figs in half, and spread them in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet (preferably with a lip) that will fit on your grill rack. Drizzle with a tiny bit of vinegar and syrup, and sprinkle with salt. Place the prosciutto slices on a doubled piece of foil that’s been sprayed with cooking spray. Divide the the dough into two balls, and roll each one out as thinly as you can manage with a rolling pin and place on wax paper sprayed with cooking spray. Rub a little olive oil onto both sides of each pizza crust.

Take everything outside: prepared figs, prosciutto, dough, and the goat cheese. (If you live in the hottest, stickiest climate you can imagine like I do, spray yourself copiously with bug spray first and be prepared to sweat.) You’ll also need a big metal spatula (or two regular-sized ones) to flip the pizza. Grill the prosciutto first on the foil, just until it crisps up; this won’t take but a minute. Next, place your baking sheet of figs on the grill, and cook until the juices are bubbly and the figs are very soft; maybe 5 minutes? Now you’re ready for the pizza. Place the oiled dough directly on the grill rack, and let it cook (we covered the grill because the wind was fanning the flame too much) until it’s brown and crispy on the bottom; it took ours about 3 minutes. Flip, and immediately cover with figs, prosciutto, and goat cheese, being careful not to let any of the fig juices drip into the fire (like I did). Cook for another few minutes until the bottom is crispy and brown. Remove from the grill and drizzle with olive oil; repeat the process with the next pizza. Eat immediately!

David and I have often been accused of being vegetarians. Yes, for those of you who live in other parts of the country, being a vegetarian is something you can be accused of in the South. Possibly even prosecuted in court, although I personally have never had it taken that far. In any case, we eat a lot of vegetables and not very much meat. Especially not very much red meat. But every now and then, I really crave a big, juicy burger. I don’t know if it’s too many years of Fourth of July in Mississippi, or possibly just growing up in a house with my father and two brothers, but I can’t escape the occasional physical need for grilled meat. David is always happy when these cravings strike–like me, he doesn’t eat red meat often, but when he does, he really enjoys it. I think it makes him feel more manly somehow, but he’s an artist–that’s a losing battle. He proved his muscles by grilling these burgers–they were perfectly falling apart, crispy and black on the outside and tender and not-quite-pink on the inside. I mixed up some Corn Salad from The Barefoot Contessa–a delightful mixture of corn straight off the cob, red onion, and basil with cider vinegar and olive oil. David ate the corn salad leftovers–all of them–straight out of the bowl the next day. I also cooked the remaining potatoes and onions I chopped for the hash browns on Tuesday, so the vegetables in no way took backstage. We are fair-minded people, after all. Here’s how we fixed the burgers:

David’s Burgers

1 1/2 pounds ground beef

1/2 yellow onion, chopped finely

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 egg

1/4 cup Worcestshire

Salt and pepper

Mix all in a bowl (with hands, he says, if you can stand the goopy-ness), and form into patties. If you have time to refrigerate the patties for a while, they tend to hold up better on the grill. Grill over a medium flame to desired doneness.

To dress the burgers:

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 yellow onion, diced finely

3 T. butter

1 t. Kosher salt

Sauté the mushrooms and onion in butter until very soft and the onions are beginning to brown. Top each burger with a heap of this mixture and some Swiss cheese. Enjoy your carnivorous meal, but don’t forget the veggies (or they will have their feelings hurt).

Tomorrow, I will resume the menu to the left, but for now, I thought I’d share what we cooked on the grill the day our power went out. After a week of watching the harrowing coverage of the tragedy in my two home states, it seems trivial¾to say the least¾to contemplate my own inconvenience of a few day without electricity. Nevertheless, many people found themselves resorting to the grill until their refrigerators and stoves were back in action, so I thought I’d offer this recipe for what we cooked the night we lost our power.

My heart goes out to those who have lost so much, and I can only pray that the recovery efforts will help them begin to put their lives back together. In the meantime, I hope you and your family and loved ones are out of harm’s way. May all of us who have survived count our blessings and remember to reach out to those in need.

The original recipe for this antipasto, which my Aunt Prissy shared with me, comes from Angela Rhemann, a long-time friend of our family who occasionally teaches cooking classes at The Everyday Gourmet in Jackson, Mississippi. If I followed her recipe, I would bake the antipasto in the oven and serve it with crostini, which I am certain makes a divine appetizer. However, I wanted it to serve as a main dish, so I cooked it in a skillet on the grill, and then stuffed it in some grilled portabella mushroom caps and topped it with slices of fresh mozzarella.

Antipasto-stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

1 red bell pepper

1 14-oz. can artichoke hearts, chopped finely

4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

4 oz. mixed Mediterranean olives, chopped

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup capers

4 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese

4 large portabella mushroom caps

French bread

Over a medium flame, grill the bell pepper until it is charred on all sides. Remove from the grill and place in a shallow bowl; cover with plastic wrap to steam. While it is grilling, remove the stems from the mushroom caps, chop them finely, and mix them with the artichoke hearts, garlic, olives, capers, and olive oil in a flame-resistant skillet. Cover with aluminum foil and cook on the grill for about 20 minutes, or until the garlic is very, very soft (you should almost be able to mash the mixture to a paste). Spray the mushroom caps with cooking spray (I use the canola oil spray) and place gills-up on the grill. Cook until the mushrooms are soft. Remove the mushrooms and fill with antipasto mixture. Place each cap in a foil packet, top with mozzarella slices, and drizzle with olive oil. Cut the French bread in half length-wise, brush it with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and place it face-down on the grill. Cook until the cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.