Weekly Dish

Things are getting really busy at school–a stack of papers to grade, a presentation to prepare, reading, reading, reading, etc., and David and I made a quick jaunt to Jackson this weekend to see Jerrod and Jessie and the new baby (click here for a really cute picture of David holding him). All that to say, I’m fixing more and more dinners that can be ready on the fly (and probably these posts are going to ramble less and less).

For my busiest weeks, the formula is usually: salad, pasta, pizza, a meat dish, and something else that could use up leftovers. For this week, my pasta and salad center around gorgonzola cheese, and the phyllo spinach pie uses up all the leftover spinach from the one main-dish-and-sides night. Most all of these meals can be prepared in less than an hour, and good food that’s also quick makes me happy when life is busy.

This Cobb Salad is a great example of a simple, fresh meal in not a lot of time. I am averse to salad dressings that come in a bottle, so I make my own (which takes about 2 minutes), but other than that, a little chopping, and this meal is ready.

Here’s what you’ll need for 2 salads:

Baby spinach leaves

Sliced ham

1 avocado, sliced

1 plum or Roma tomato, chopped

2 green onions, chopped

2 ounces blue cheese (I used gorgonzola)

Arrange the spinach on the plates. Top with everything else, arranging each ingredient in its own little stripe. Drizzle with Blue Cheese Dressing.

Here’s how to make that:

1 clove garlic

1/4 cup mayonnaise, homemade if you’ve got it

1/4 cup plain nonfat yogurt

Juice of half a lemon

2 ounces blue cheese (again, gorgonzola for me)

Add the garlic clove to the food processor with the motor running; when it’s minced, add everything else.

I have lived in Louisiana for almost three months now. In the course of the last one, my new state has been hit by two hurricanes. The response from the American community on the whole has been overwhelming; so much money has been given to the Red Cross, and so many people have turned their outrage into positive energy through the act of giving. In the food blogger world, as a matter of fact, Adam of The Amateur Gourmet is hosting a cook-off of sorts to raise money for the hurricane victims. The contestants have been cooking New Orleans-style food, and it all looks fabulous (you should check out the beignets and vote for your favorite).

Although I am not an official part of the festivities, this sandwich is the one that comes to my mind when I think of New Orleans. My mother, a Louisiana native, has a particular affinity for muffalattas (I have no idea whether I’m spelling that correctly–don’t tell my students!), so I think of her when I make them. You can buy olive salad in the grocery store, but I really like to mix up my own. The best muffalattas I’ve had are crunchy on the outside and warm and gooey on the inside, so I attempted to recreate that texture with this one.

If you haven’t ever eaten in New Orleans, please put it on your list of things to do when the city is rebuilt–it is a culinary city like no other. In the meantime, perhaps you can bring a little of the Crescent City into your kitchen with these sandwiches (or with the po’boys and beignets cooked up by the contestants and their coaches on Adam’s site–go William, Melissa, and Jason!).

Muffalattas and Oven Fries

1 potato per person (fries don’t keep well)

Rosemary, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash and dry the potatoes; slice them into fry-like wedges. Place them on a baking sheet and toss with oil, so that the wedges are coated on both sides. Sprinkle with rosemary and garlic. Bake for 20 minutes; then flip the potatoes and bake for 10-15 minutes more. Meanwhile, prepare the sandwiches.

1 loaf crusty French bread

Genoa salami

Ham

Provolone cheese

1 cup green olives

1/2 cup black olives

3 cloves garlic

Fresh oregano, a few sprigs

Olive oil

Combine the olives, garlic, and oregano in the food processor until very finely minced. Drizzle with a little olive oil (about a teaspoon) to bind, and pulse a few times. Carve out the top of the bread loaf, leaving the sides in tact (so that the filling doesn’t spill out). Remove the top and fill with the olive mixture. Line with Provolone slices, salami, and ham, and then drizzle the inside with a little more olive oil. Replace the top of the sandwich and wrap in foil. Bake in the oven with the potatoes for about 10-12 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the outside is crunchy. Cut into sandwich portions and serve with the fries, which should be crispy on the outside by now. Sprinkle them with Kosher salt. And, if you’re so inclined, this meal works nicely with Abita beer, bottled right here in Louisiana. Eat, drink, and think of New Orleans.

When the tomatoes are nice and fresh and summery, I like to serve the first version of the oven-roasted sauce right over pasta with no accoutrements at all. But now that the summer tomatoes are on their way out (even though summer appears to still be going strong–it hit 100 degrees here in Baton Rouge last week!!), I am trying different methods to make the sauce go further without sacrificing freshness or variety. I have an old, old Italian cookbook that my husband gave me eons ago when we were dating that recommends adding carrots to tomato-based sauces. So, I thought, I roast the tomatoes to enhance their flavor, why not give the carrots the same treatment? The result is a sweet, chunky, delightfully bright orangey sauce that retains traditional Italian flavors without being boring. As a bonus, the velvety texture that the carrots take on when roasted makes the sauce adhere nicely to the linguine. If you have the base sauce leftover, dinner can be on the table in about 30 minutes…and it’s good for you too!

Linguine Marinara with Roasted Carrots

6-8 whole carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

1 - 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce (see recipe below)

1/2 pound linguine

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the carrots with enough olive oil to coat, and season liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for about 15-20 minutes, until beginning to shrivel. Meanwhile, cook the pasta, and heat the tomato sauce over low. When the carrots are done, place them in the bowl of a food processor and process until paste-like (think baby food texture). Add the carrot puree to the tomato sauce and stir to combine. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary (it may be too sweet and need salt). Serve over linguine, and top with fresh Parmesan.

For the bread:

Hollow out a half-loaf of French bread and fill it with a mixture of chopped Roma tomatoes, garlic, basil leaves, and olive oil, all salted nicely. Wrap in foil and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. The bread will soak up the juices from the tomatoes–yum! The filling is even better if you make it a few hours early and let it sit for a bit. Slice into rounds and serve with the pasta. This is a terrific meal to serve to your vegetarian friends!

Aaahh, pesto. That lovely oily amalgamation that I nearly kill my basil plants over every single summer. When I was a waitress at the Brick-Oven, I often worked the long lunch shift, which usually left me and the kitchen staff alone in the restaurant for at least a couple of hours. Steve, a vegetarian chef extraordinaire, taught me how to make pesto one afternoon in late summer, and I’ve made it every summer since. I usually stick to his basic version, with basil leaves, pine nuts, fresh Parmesan, garlic, and olive oil, but I’ve also made it with walnuts (my friend Angela is allergic to pine nuts, so when I lived in Jackson, I usually substituted the walnuts on her account). One of my favorite food blogs, Cooking with Amy, recently posted a whole host of variations on the traditional pesto; if you’re interested in mixing it up, you should check out her suggestions. I make mine as a paste with only a little oil at first, and then add oil as needed as I use the pesto in different ways. One of the tricks I’ve found that really enriches the flavor is toasting the pine nuts first; they become more buttery and flavorful when they brown. This week, pesto’s in chicken salad and dolloped on pasta, next week on pizza! It’s so versatile, and a little goes a long way. For this recipe, I made the pesto and then mixed about 2 tablespoons of it with 1/2 cup of the homemade mayonnaise left from the sandwiches on Monday. These proportions can be adjusted, depending on how much pesto flavor you like, and how “wet” you like your chicken salad. Add some small-diced chicken (also leftover from Monday) and toasted pine nuts. It’s wonderful on foccacia bread, if you have any left. I served the sandwiches with a simple green salad. Here’s how I made the pesto:

1 cup basil leaves, washed and thoroughly dried

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

4 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 t. Kosher salt

1/2 t. cracked black pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a 350 oven until brown and fragrant, about 15-20 minutes. In a food processor or blender, mince the garlic as finely as you can. Then add the basil leaves and pulse until they are also chopped finely. Add the nuts, cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper, and process until a paste forms. Will keep in the fridge in a tightly covered container for about 2 weeks.

This week’s menu is the one I fixed after the hurricane, so it represents a new start (at least in my refrigerator, which had to be completely purged). We came back from staying with friends in Mississippi to a city where groceries were hard to come by (at least that’s what we’d been told). So, I sent David to the grocery store to pick up a few things, and this is what we ended up with: chicken, chicken, and chicken again. So, if you find yourself with a whole bunch of chicken and you don’t know what to do with it, this week’s menu is for you. With just a few other purchases, you’ll have a week’s worth of meals at your fingertips (even if they are all, well, chicken).

For this first one, David grilled all but 4 breasts, and I used the leftover grilled chicken for the Strawberry-Goat Cheese Salad and the Pesto Chicken Salad. I made the focaccia bread and mayonnaise for these sandwiches; the mayonnaise I divided in half: one half for tonight, and one half for the pesto chicken salad. Now, I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the balsamic mayonnaise, as I am particular about the use of both balsamic vinegar and mayonnaise. My Aunt Prissy forbids the use of store-bought mayonnaise in anything but comeback sauce, and I don’t like the taste or texture of the congealed, eerily white store-bought stuff.

The focaccia bread, I like with lots and lots of rosemary. But strangely, when I went out to cut some sprigs from my favorite evergreen herb–from the plants my husband gave me as GIFT, mind you–I discovered that they were all, well, dead. My idea was to leave them in their pot because they seemed so happy there, but no, my expert gardener husband just had to try to put them in the ground. Thanks, David, thanks a lot. (Do you sense the bitterness?) I had to use the sprigs in my window I’d been trying to root, which only amounted to about a tablespoon. If you make it, please use as much rosemary as you can get your hands on (and don’t let David anywhere near your rosemary plants).

My sister-in-law, Hannah (that’s her below on our trip this summer to Napa Valley), emailed me the recipe for these yummy sandwiches; the original recipe comes from Jane and Michael Stern’s Southern California Cooking from the Cottage: Casual Cuisine from Old La Jolla’s Favorite Beachside Bungalow, reprinted in The Splendid Table’s e-newsletter, The Weeknight Kitchen. Here’s my version:

Grilled Chicken Breasts

4 pounds chicken
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2 T. honey
Combine all liquid ingredients and pour over chicken breasts; salt and pepper well. Marinate at least a few hours, preferably overnight. Grill the chicken over a medium flame for a total of 12 minutes, turning every 2-4 minutes to prevent the honey from burning. Baste as you turn it.

Tomato-Basil Relish
This is best after it’s marinated for several hours, so I make it when I marinate the chicken.

3 ripe Roma tomatoes, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
2 T. chopped basil
2 t. olive oil
1/2 t. Kosher salt
Cracked black pepper
Combine and refrigerate.

Focaccia Bread with Rosemary

1 pkg. yeast
1 t. sugar
2 cups warm water
5 cups flour (I used a combination of all-purpose and bread flour because I only had 3 cups of all-purpose in the house)
2 t. salt
2 T. olive oil
4 T. chopped rosemary (or more)

Mix the yeast and sugar together, and sprinkle the mixture over the warm water. Let it stand for about 5 minutes, or until the yeast dissolves. In a mixer, combine the water/yeast with the remaining ingredients with a dough hook until it forms a ball (or something resembling a ball). Remove dough to a floured surface and knead with your hands. (This is my favorite part–I love the feel of the smooth, elastic dough and the smell of the rosemary). Return to mixing bowl, cover, and let it rise for about an hour. Divide the dough into two balls and place in greased cake pans (some people use cookie sheets, but I think the bread stays more moist if you bake it in a pan). Preheat the oven to 475, and let the dough rest in the pans until the oven is heated. Stretch the dough to fit the pans, drizzle with more olive oil, sprinkle with Kosher salt, and bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Homemade Mayonnaise

1 egg
1 T. cider vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 t. Kosher salt
1/2 t. paprika
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
3/4 cup salad oil (canola or vegetable or a combination), divided
Place all ingredients in the blender, but start with only 1/4 cup of the oil. After the ingredients are blended, with the motor running, add the remaining oil in a very slow, steady stream. The mayonnaise should emulsify, creating a very thick consistency. Remove one half of the mayonnaise from the blender, and reserve for the pesto chicken salad later in the week. Add to the remaining mayo in the blender 2 tablespoons of balsamic mayonnaise and blend just until the vinegar is incorporated.

To assemble the sandwiches: Cut the focaccia loaves into fourths. Slice open one of the fourths, spread liberally with balsamic mayonnaise, add a chicken breast, and top with about 2 tablespoons of the tomato relish. Serve the sandwiches with a green salad, or with chips and the remaining tomato relish.