Weekly Dish

Links:

• Figs and Sausages
• Curried Noodles with Beef
• Avocado and Sun-dried Tomato Fettucine

We’ve just returned from out of town; this menu is from a few weeks ago. I’ll be back up to regular posting tomorrow; until then, I have unpacking and cleaning out the fridge to look forward to!

The menu for this week is relatively short; as you can see, we’re headed to Mississippi to spend some time with family and friends before school starts. Most of what I’m planning revolves around what I have an excess of: tomatoes, basil, and Vidalia onions.
The farmer that I buy my tomatoes from starts about this time in the season boxing up very ripe tomatoes and selling them for cheap. Yesterday, I bought 15 pounds for $10! So, the only thing to do with that many tomatoes is make tomato sauce to freeze (and to use to make a lasagna for friends who are moving). And, of course, reserve some fresh ones for this pizza.

Not so much a recipe as a suggestion, for this pizza, you simply prepare whatever kind of crust you like, spread it with pesto, top with sliced tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, and drizzle the whole thing with olive oil and Kosher salt. Bake until the cheese melts.

Here are the other links for this week:

• Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce
• Basil Pesto
• Lasagna

Happy end of July, everyone!

Links:

Boiled Shrimp
Cobb Salad
Rorie’s Tomato Paninis (Note: I used homemade foccacia bread; with a green salad, these make the easiest, yummiest summer supper!)

Another easy, quick recipe, inspired by Karina at Gluten Free Goddess, were these vegetarian tacos. We had a few leftover, and they were even better the next day.

Spicy Black Bean Tacos

1 t. olive oil
Half a sweet onion, sliced into half-moons
1 clove of garlic, chopped
2 sweet peppers, cut into matchsticks
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced
1 14 1/2-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup salsa
1 t. cumin
1 t. chile poweder
1/2 t. seasoned salt
Corn tortillas or taco shells

To serve:
Monterey Jack cheese with peppers
Sliced avocados
Lime wedges

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium. Add the garlic, onion, and peppers, and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the beans, salsa, and spices; stir and let the mixture simmer while you prepare the tortillas.

To make taco shells: heat a half-inch of vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add one tortilla to the skillet and quickly coat both sides with the hot oil. Then, let one side fry until it’s nearing the crisping stage; turn quickly and fold over with tongs, holding the top slightly open. Flip again, and remove from the oil when both sides are crispy and golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

To serve: fill each taco shell with the black bean mixture; top with cheese, avocado slices, and a squeeze of lime. Yum!

Inspiring recipe: Karina’s Black Bean Enchiladas

Recipe links:

Mushroom-Arugula Risotto (I subsituted spinach for the arugula and served the risotto inside roasted portabello mushroom caps, which was pretty, and also added more mushroom-y goodness to the risotto.)
Sweet-Hot Grilled Chicken
Angel Hair with Goat Cheese and Caramelized Vegetables
Blue Cheese and Mango Quesadillas

Here’s an idea for pizza inspired by the restaurant where I worked in college. The chef there invented this pizza as a way to make the peanut sauce and grilled chicken–both of which he prepared in great abundance each week–serve double duty. Whenever I have leftover peanut sauce and a chicken breast that needs to be used, this simple preparation often finds its way into my oven.

Authentic Thai cuisine it is not, but I love the combination of the cooked and raw ingredients atop a fluffy crust. I keep meaning to experiment with different recipes for pizza crust, but so far, I tend to stick with the basic crust/foccacia recipe both because I have it memorized and because it takes so little time to throw together. But any crust will do if you have a recipe you prefer.

Thai Chicken Pizza

One half recipe pizza dough
One grilled chicken breast, sliced
1/2 cup Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce plus more for serving
A handful of shredded mozzarella cheese (optional)

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Stretch the dough to fit a round pizza pan or a rectangular cookie sheet, and prick the dough all over with a fork. Bake for 10 minutes. Spread the pre-baked crust with the peanut sauce, sliced chicken, and cheese. Bake for another 5 or 6 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust is light brown.

To serve, top with any combination of the following:
Cilantro leaves
Basil leaves (I used lemon basil)
Chopped peanuts
Shredded carrots
Sliced green onions
Bean sprouts
Snow peas or sugar snaps

Drizzle with remaining peanut sauce.

Links:

Gnocchi with Pesto
Tuna with Avocado and Corn Salsa

Links:

Italian Sausage Lasagna

Corn and Tomato Risotto

This marker board, attached to the side of my fridge with magnets, is the source of much conversation in my kitchen. Friends are always asking about my menu-planning habits, what we eat on a regular basis, if we really stick to it, how this menu will be modified when we have kids (many of my friends with small children often scoff at my salads with goat cheese and spicy Asian food, muttering things about fish sticks and hot dogs).

I’ve always been a girl with a plan, and even if the plans don’t turn out just right (as often they don’t), filling this marker board on Saturdays helps give shape to our weeks through food. It also helps me to know when I’ve planned company-friendly meals (dishes that make more than could feed the two of us) and when we’ll have leftovers for lunch.

Of course, I don’t expect that any of you would want to follow my menu plans exactly, but in case you’re looking for a little marker board inspiration when you sit down to plan your own week’s worth of meals (if you do), I’ll try to post photos of my marker board on Sundays. Hopefully, it will also remind me which recipes I need to post about soon. If you see one that you can’t find on the site, don’t hesitate to let me know, and I’ll move it up the list of things-to-post.

In case you can’t tell, I’ve also always been a girl with a list. Or twenty.

Have a great last week of June, everyone!

Links

Monday: David’s Roast Chicken, The Contessa’s Parmesan Zucchini

Tuesday: Pad Thai with Chicken

Fortunately, Thursday night’s dinner turned out much better than Wednesday’s last week. At least I was able to eat it!

We are not big breakfast people–usually, a bowl or cereal and a banana and a cup of coffee are all either of us eat before noon. But we love breakfast food, so I often plan to make dishes usually served before noon at night. I have fond memories of my mom doing the same–she especially loved to make omelets for supper.

Me, well, I’m a waffle girl. I don’t know if it’s the crisp texture, the pretty shape, or just because I’m a fan of all bread products, but I love waffles of all kinds.

These turned out pretty well–I like the way the strawberries lightly flavored the batter, but I think I should have chopped them into smaller pieces; the slices made holes in the batter, and the part of the berry directly exposed to the waffle iron browned a little too much for my liking. Small-diced strawberries would probably solve that problem.

I topped the waffles with a smattering of sliced strawberries, a dollop of sour cream, and a drizzle of locally made cane syrup. Served with a side of bacon, this meal made us very happy breakfast-for-dinner diners.

Strawberry Waffles
based on the Basic Waffle recipe in The Joy of Cooking

1 3/4 cups flour
1 T. baking powder
2 T. sugar
1/2 t. salt
3 eggs, beaten
1 stick butter, melted
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 cup small-diced strawberries

Preheat the waffle iron. Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, melted butter, milk, and vanilla. Dump the wet ingredients into the dry all at once, folding together gently until they are well-incorporated. The batter should be a bit lumpy, like muffin batter. Fold in the strawberries.

Prepare the waffles, according to the specifications for your waffle iron. (Mine has a little light on it that goes off when the waffles are done, so I never time them.) To serve, stack two waffles on a plate, top with a dollop of sour cream or butter, a handful of sliced strawberries, and a drizzle of cane or maple syrup. Bacon makes an excellent side.
For those of you keeping up with my attempts to eat local, here’s a list of this week’s market purchases and my menu plan:

• Bought: corn, broccoli, carrots, green tomatoes, mixed salad greens, and shrimp
• Monday: Shrimp Scampi and green salad
• Tuesday: Vegetable plate–Hannah’s broccoli, corn on the cob, oven-roasted carrots, salad
• Wednesday: Shrimp and corn soup, green salad, and bread
• Thursday: Fried green tomato BLTs with Vidalia onion rings

I’ll continue to post recipes and reports for the dinners we actually end up having!

See, I knew it was a bad idea to post a menu with designated days. I never seem to stick to the chronology of a meal plan. Here’s how the switcheroo starts: I decided I wanted to have my friend Casey over for dinner one night this week because her husband is in New Orleans working on a movie for the month of May and she’s all alone. If she’d come last night, the paneed catfish would have been perfect food for company, and all would have been well. But, we didn’t catch up with one another until last night was out of the question, so at the last minute, I had to postpone the paneeing and opt for something else. Something quick too because I wanted it to be ready before the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy began (our guilty television pleasure).

Thursday’s meal slides into Monday’s spot, Monday gets bumped to Tuesday, and well, who knows what the rest of the week holds.

At any rate, the salad was simple and delicious–the pepper jelly added just the right sweet-spicy kick to a basic vinaigrette, and the combination of bacon, strawberries, and goat cheese is really hard to beat in my opinion.

I wanted to toast the goat cheese, you know, like they do in restaurants sometimes, where the top is all brown and crispy and the inside is perfectly creamy? Can someone please tell me how they do that? I tried to stick mine under the broiler (a bad idea), and I ended up with puddles, which I then had to reform into balls. They tasted good, but were not exactly what I had in mine. Next time, I’ll stick with the un-toasted cheese. And I’m sure there’s a more complicated version of Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette out there, but this simple one did the trick for this salad, and it comes together in a snap.

Strawberry Salad with Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette

For the dressing:
2 T. hot pepper jelly
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 t. coarse salt

Whisk the vinegar, jelly, and salt together in a bowl. Whisk in the oil, a drop at a time, until the dressing comes together.

Salad for 2:
Enough garden greens to cover two dinner plates
4 slices bacon, cooked and cut into slivers
Half pint of strawberries, washed and sliced
1/4 cup (2 ounces) goat cheese

Top the greens with the sliced strawberries, slivers of bacon, and mounds of goat cheese. Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve.

As strawberries, peppers, and greens are all rich in vitamins and anti-oxidants, this salad makes a great contribution to ARF Tuesdays at Sweetnicks.

Notes: Pepper jelly is a quintessential southern condiment. Made from the many varieties of hot peppers that grow down here, pepper jelly is served on everything from black-eyed peas to biscuits to ham. I’ve never been a huge black-eyed pea fan, but I love pepper jelly, so I was happy to find this alternate use for it. The jelly I used is made by one of the farmer’s wives at the Saturday market, but you can sometimes find commercially made pepper jelly in the condiment section of a grocery store (at least in this part of the world).

In other news: Today has been designated Save the Internet day by Chez Pim. You can read more about the threat to internet democracy here or on Pim’s site; she has a list of great resources. Instead of writing a long involved post about it, I plan to do some more research and write my congressman.

Sometimes I simply crave salad. I’m sure it’s my body’s way of telling me I’m not eating enough vegetables, or I’m eating too much other non-vegetable fare. Or maybe I hunger for something bright and crisp and raw in place of the usual warm cooked meal. Whatever the reason, ever since Alanna, who writes A Veggie Venture, posted a lovely watercress salad last week, it has been on my mind.

I had seen watercress, both at the farmer’s market and at my local grocery the week before, so I was excited to have a recipe to try with the peppery little green. Unfortunately, this week, the watercress at the market was missing (or gone by the time I got there) and the two sad little bunches at the grocery were brown and wilted. Alas.

I couldn’t get the combination of sweet, tangy citrus and rich, salty blue cheese out of my head, so I made the salad with spinach instead. Arugula would have been a better substitute for watercress, but we used the last of it from our garden a few weeks ago. And Alanna’s recipe called for clementines, but satsumas were the best I could do (they are both sweet, diminuitive relatives of the orange).

As I was already tinkering with the recipe–albeit reluctantly–I decided while I was at it to add a few chunks of avocado and a slightly different dressing. I’ve never been one to mix up dressings anyway–I usually just drizzle the ingredients right onto the salad. If you want proportions and an exact recipe, you should head over and check out Alanna’s version. What I have to offer is really more of a suggested toss, which turned out to be delicious, although more free form.

To accompany the salad, I topped some French bread with feta cheese, thin slices of tart green apple, and a drizzle of honey, and popped the toasts under the broiler. Minus the honey, this concoction is frequently what I have for lunch, and when Rorie at Milk & Honey posted about a similar snack last week,–plus honey–I decided to sweeten up my recipe with her addition. Yum! The salad was refreshing and healthy, the feta toast a little more decadent, and together, they made for a filling supper. If you need more protein to make a complete meal, I imagine that citrusy grilled chicken would make a great addition to the salad. As vague as it is, here’s my very approximate salad recipe:

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