VEGETABLE GOAT
Friday, September 16
Apparently, the Brick-Oven (although the Brick-Oven in Jackson has closed, I understand that there's a similar restaurant in Greenville, SC, called Trio. If I'm ever in Greenville, I'll eat there.) has been on my mind this week. This pasta dish is one I also learned to make from the chefs there. On the menu, the entree was called Penne with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts, but customers always ordered it with angel hair instead, minus the pine nuts, and usually with shrimp or chicken. So my order, when it went to the kitchen, would be called Chicken Goat or Shrimp Goat, which always sounded hilarious to me. I do like to make it with angel hair; the fine noodles are easily coated with the pesto-goat cheese mixture. I think the Brick-Oven recipe also called for spinach, but I always forget that; you can add some to your skillet if you have it. Just to give you an idea of how many people there are now in the fair city of Baton Rouge, when I went to Calandro's last week to get my groceries, I got the LAST package of angel hair pasta in the whole store! Traffic is horrendous too, but I try to only travel within my neighborhood. People seem to be in good spirits about it all (some people, anyway); I saw a bumper sticker last week that said: "Traffic is congested, but we're glad you're here." Anyhow, if you have pesto on hand, this is a quick and easy pasta dish, and subject to many variations. Here's the gist of it:
1 pound angel hair pasta
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 carton sliced mushrooms (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup chopped Kalamata olives
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
Olive oil
Pesto
4 ounces goat cheese
Cook the pasta until tender but firm, drain, and toss with some olive oil. Set aside. In a large skillet, cook the garlic and onions over medium heat until the garlic is soft. Add the mushrooms. Continue to cook until the onions begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the olives and sun-dried tomatoes and cook another minute or two. Place a nest of oiled noodles on plates and ladle vegetable mixture on top. Finish with a teaspoon-ful of pesto and a handful of crumbled goat cheese. Drizzle once more with olive oil and season with Kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Serves 4-6, depending on how much pasta you can eat in one sitting.
Oh, and just in case you're keeping up, David killed another one of my plants this week. He took my three-year-old aloe plant out for some sun (the one that's always been inside), and didn't bring it back in until most of it's plump leaves were fried. I must say, though, that I am painting quite a one-sided picture of his gardening abilities; the lovely basil I used to make my pesto would surely be dead by now without his attention, and we have some fun lettuces already poking their heads out in our backyard. He does seem to have it out for plants I've been caring for, so maybe I should just leave all the gardening to him! Oh, and one more thing: yesterday, he bought me some more rosemary. Just so you know.
PRESTO PESTO
Thursday, September 15
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.
LEMONY CHICKEN
Wednesday, September 14
The weekend of Katrina, our friends Jerrod and Jessie were supposed to come stay with us. With Katrina and Jessie's baby on the way, we decided to postpone the trip. I planned to make this chicken dish for them while they were here; it's one of my favorite things to make for a small group of guests. Chicken and potatoes sounds simple, I know, but one of the things I really like about this recipe is that the flavors are surprisingly strong. The rich, citrus flavor of the roasted lemons adds just the right bite, and the capers and artichokes mingle nicely with the white wine to add some depth. I usually make the potatoes with a lot of rosemary too, but, well, you all know what happened to my rosemary. If you have some, please chop it and add when you sauté the potatoes. The trick to making this dish is timing, but if you follow these steps, it isn't hard:
10-12 very small new potatoes, scrubbed
4 lemons
4 chicken breasts
Olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons capers
1 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, diced
1/4 cup white wine
2 tablespoons butter
Preheat the broiler.
Place the potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil. Boil potatoes until fork-tender, about 20 minutes.
Halve the lemons, and place in a flame-resistant dish (or in a foil packet). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Kosher salt and cracked pepper. Broil the lemons until the edges begin to darken, about 8-10 minutes (but watch carefully). When they're done, set them aside to cool.
While the lemons are broiling and the potatoes boiling, flatten each chicken breast to about 1/2-inch thickness. Dredge in flour; salt and pepper.
Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet on medium-high. When the oil is hot, lay the chicken in the pan and cook for about 4-6 minutes per side, until brown and crispy. Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with foil.
When the potatoes are done, drain, cool, and cut into quarters.
In the skillet, add 2 cloves of garlic, and stir briefly. Immediately add the potatoes, and sauté, stirring occasionally and scraping up the brown bits from the bottom of the skillet. Here is where you would add the rosemary if you had it. Sigh.
Cook the potatoes until all sides are brown; remove them to the platter with the chicken.
Add to the skillet one tablespoon of butter and the remaining garlic. Sauté the garlic for just a minute, making sure not to burn it. Add the artichoke hearts and capers, and stir-fry for another minute or two. Deglaze the pan with the wine, and cook while stirring. Add the juice from the roasted lemons and cook for another couple of minutes; the sauce should reduce a little.
Pour the sauce over the chicken and potatoes; serve with any extra sauce. Serves 4.
DELICIOUS!
TOSSED!
Tuesday, September 13
Tuesdays are my busiest nights. I have class all day, until 7:30, and when I get home, I'm both exhausted and starving. Tossing ingredients onto a plate is a great way for me to fix the hunger part without adding to the exhaustion. With grilled chicken from the night before, some strawberries, goat cheese, red and green onion, bacon, and a simple dressing, this salad comes together in no time flat. AND, it tastes good. (Which when I'm really, really tired is sometimes beside the point. But not often). Here's how this one comes together, for 2 servings:
Cook 6 slices bacon in the microwave. While the bacon's cooking, slice about 8 strawberries, small-dice about a quarter of a red onion, slice 2 or 3 green onions, chop the leftover chicken, and chop some nuts (I used walnuts; pecans would have been better.) Lay out some greens on 2 plates, top with your prepared ingredients, sprinkle with a good handful of goat cheese, and top with the cooked bacon, crumbled. Drizzle each salad with about 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and 1 teaspoon honey. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and cracked pepper. If you have some crusty French bread (as you can see I did not), it would be a great accompaniment. The key to the dressing is to make sure you toss the salad together on your plate really well before you eat it, mixing it so that all the salad ingredients are coated with some of each component of the dressing.
BALSAMIC VINEGAR AND MAYONNAISE?
Monday, September 12
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 my own 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.