Cenas Sin Recetas

For a special dinner to mark our anniversary, we looked in Laura Arnold's Best Simple Suppers for Two, because there are two of us. There we found a recipe for Caprese Salad with Basil Pesto. We knew we would need to modify the recipe because it called for prepared pesto. We also thought it would be nice to use the pesto we prepared for the salad to make a pasta pesto. 

In the end, the recipe for one dish had become merely a menu suggestion and shopping list for two dishes we already knew how to make. So we set off on a small shopping trip. We rarely go to the grocery together, but we decided to make an occasion of it and we visited Fieldstone Market in Marion with a short list. Because we already had pine nuts on hand, we just needed fresh mozzarella, basil, tomatoes (we remembered this place always has great ones), parmesan cheese, and fettuccine. 

We returned to the small galley at Whaling House, where we each put together two nice, simple dishes. On a platter, we had mozz, tomatoes, a drizzle of basil-infused olive oil, and a sprinkling of dry basil. Pam blended some of that oil, fresh basil leaves, chopped garlic scapes and pine nuts until they made a paste. I combined them in a bowl with fettuccine, a small scoop of the water from cooking the fettuccine, some freshly shredded parm,  and lemon zest. These combined well with a a baguette from Fieldstone and a Gewürztraminer from Westport Rivers. As we dined, Pam remembered to light the candle we first lit together 35 years ago at a church in Baltimore, and that we light on May 9 of each year. (And that I failed to include in this photo.)

Flashback for the next day: While we were in Fieldstone, Pam noticed a small, whole chicken and some fingerling potatoes. We bought both, with vague plans to prepare them in our upright chicken roaster -- a great little pan that we first wrote about in the 2011 Just Peachy post on this blog. (It has been featured many times since then, especially since we get roasters from our friends at Maribett Farm. 

In the middle of Tuesday afternoon, I rinsed the chicken and removed the package of giblets from the middle. I glanced around the kitchen and decided to fill the central well of the pan with some margarita mix and tequila, which would moisten the inside as the bird roasted. I then applied some lime-infused olive oil, dry thyme and oregano, and a bit of salt. I placed the small potatoes around the base of the pan and roasted at 450 for 15 minutes before turning down to 300 for an hour. At the end of that time, my eyes and our Thermapen agreed that it needed just a bit more cooking, so I increased the heat to 425 for another 10 minutes. The result was a perfectly cooked, very tender and savory chicken. 

Simple chicken, without a recipe. The candle is not the one mentioned above;
it is an "everyday" candle on a sun-moon-star candlestick that was the gift
of a generous colleague. 

It paired well with Malbec, as most things do. A prefect start to our 36th year! 

A Birthday Celebration that created quite a lot of Dishes

A mid-week birthday during final exams means a low-key celebration for James as he enters his sixtieth year. James made his own birthday dinner of an old favorite: Puerto Rican Chicken Fajitas from the Well-Filled Tortilla cookbook. My role was to bake the birthday cake. When I asked James over the weekend what kind of cake he would like he said something with lemon and raspberries. The New York Times Cooking page had just what the (Ph.D.) doctor ordered! Lemon Sheet Cake with Raspberry Whipped Cream.

This recipe is a 12-step program, beginning with preparing the pan. The instructions call for use of a non-stick spray, but I used Crisco shortening. I did follow the instructions to coat the pan, then cover in parchment, and then coat the parchment, which seemed like overkill, but I must say that I have never had such an easy time removing a cake from a pan when it was time to serve. The recipe also calls for vegetable oil. I used lemon-infused olive oil, which really was the right thing to do.

The recipe also calls for an electric mixer in steps 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11. Still don't have one, so a spoon, a whisk, and some strong arms were put to good use.

Lemons needed to be zested and juiced, and raspberries needed to macerate (a word I did not know before) and then strained. Cream needed to be whipped and flour sifted. We used every mixing bowl in our cabinet, one of which had to be rinsed out so it could be used again. We also used more of our utensils than we usually would with one recipe.

The result was a delicious yellow cake with a thick pink topping. This isn't very sweet, so the flavors of lemon and raspberry come through more than we expected, although neither is overwhelming. 

Photos show our sink after we'd already put round one of dishes into the dishwasher, and our "Julia Child" pegboard with lots of space as as all the utensils were being washed. Unfortunately the photograph of the cake turned out blurry, so I won't be posting it here.

So many dishes!

This is after I'd already washed the flour sifter and put it back in its place. We really did use a lot of utensils.