Mango Basil Fried Rice

This meal was another good example of planning a meal in order to make good use of ingredients already on hand -- we began by identifying a couple of ingredients we wanted to use and then seeking a good way to use them. I mentioned that we had a pound of boneless chicken breast, a local organic staple that we receive most weeks in our Crescent Ridge dairy delivery. Our son Harvey mentioned that we had a mango we should use soon, and my mind went immediately to fried rice.

When I am at a Thai restaurant, the menu always comes down to two choices: chicken-basil stir-fry or mango-chicken fried rice. I love both of these and rarely look at the rest of the menu, basically alternating between these two. While not pretending to have any expertise in this area, I saw this as an opportunity to have it both ways: mango basil fried rice with chicken.

I was not sure where to begin -- that is, what order to fry things. I explored a few different recipe pages, searching on both "fried rice" and "fried rice chicken." There were some subtle differences among sources and I did not follow any recipe strictly. Rather, I made the meal as described below. It required a fair bit of prep time and then just a few minutes of cooking time.

I began by making rice (in this case Thai basmati) two hours before I would start the rest. Earlier would have been even better, but this did give me time to prepare one cup of dry rice (to make three cups total) and to put it in the fridge to cool thoroughly before starting the rest of the preparations.

I then chopped all of these so they would be ready to go in as needed:

• boneless, skinless chicken
• a full bunch of scallions
• two Anaheim hot red peppers
• one mango (there is no easy way to dice this, but with Harvey's help I made it work)
• a fistful of basil

I also made sure the following were on hand:

• two eggs
• soy sauce
• oyster sauce
• I would have included sesame oil if we had any

I heated our indispensable cast-iron skillet to medium-high, added olive oil and tossed in the chicken once the oil was hot. I stirred and scraped quickly -- using a metal with a good edge -- until all pieces were cooked through. I removed all of the chicken to a plate and added a generous slab of butter. I would not have thought of this, but one of the recipe pages convinced me that this would be key.

To the hot butter and oil, I added the scallions and peppers. After stirring them for a minute, I pushed them to the edges of the pan and scrambled the eggs in the center -- stirring vigorously with a fork. I grinded a generous portion of black pepper over all of this. With the oil still hot, I added all of the rice and began turning and scraping frequently. After about two minutes of this, I stirred in the chicken and then the basil and mango. 

Although this is not a terrific photo, it is a case of an
in-progress photo that was better than a final-product
photo could hope to be.

I lowered the heat slightly and continued to stir and scrape until all of this was cooked through. I then removed from the heat and while Pam and Harvey readied the table (and wine), I stirred in just a bit of soy and oyster sauces. It was at this point that I would have stirred in some sesame oil if we had any. One recipe page made clear that smoked sesame oil would be good for finishing, but not for cooking. 

Salmon Family Effort

 This week on Nueva Receta ... a meal involving the whole family. We checked the fridge before sending our son out to our favorite fishmonger (our only monger, actually -- we almost never buy seafood elsewhere). We noticed some mushrooms, and he was convinced that we could do something good with them and salmon. 

He picked up some Canadian wild-caught salmon, and at a nearby seafood restaurant later that day he noticed plenty of dishes using that combination. Knowing we had excellent salmon waiting for our use the next day, we all had other-than-salmon deliciousness at Turks (highly recommend). 

The next day came, and Pam took a turn, moving us from general concept to specific recipe, care of New York Times Cooking. Salmon With Sautéed Mushrooms, Shallots and Fresh Herbs called for a few things we did not have, but for which she could verify we had ready substitutes. (Good: no need to tangle with the robot at Stop & Shop again).

I then did the easy part: making these dreams a reality. Cooking is often easier for me than figuring out what to cook. The link above might be pointing to a subscriber-only page; in case it is, I'll describe this in a bit more detail, with the modifications I made (or would make next time). 

First, I started cooking rice as a side dish, later sprinkling some dried thyme into it.

Then, I put the huge fillet, skin down, in a casserole dish, with just a bit of olive oil in the bottom. I brushed a bit more oil on top and sprinkled with salt and fresh-ground black pepper. 

Next I heated oil and butter in our indispensable cast-iron skillet at medium high, adding most of a package of white mushrooms, quartered. I stirred these until they were softening and -- as the recipe says -- sweating a little. Then I reduced heat to medium and added minced onion (in lieu of shallots) and garlic, and finally salt, pepper, and dried thyme. Some combination of fresh or dried thyme and rosemary was called for. The combination would be nice, I'm sure!

Image: Johnny Miller & Susan Spungen

Finally, I added just a couple ounces dryish red wine (again, substituting for the dry white in the recipe) and cooked, stirring, constantly, until it had mostly evaporated. I spooned this sauce on top of the salmon as it was just cooked (opaque. to the top of the thickest part). This was delicious with the rice and the same wine I had used in the sauce.

All three of us declared this a success and we will have it -- with variations -- again. We do not, however, agree with the NYT assertion that we will never want salmon any other way after having this. Regular readers (or quick searchers) of this blog know that we know a lot of good ways to prepare salmon.

Berry Clafoutis

The recipes in the New York Times Cooking Pages often have names that tell the main ingredients (e.g. Roasted Salmon with Miso Cream; Uncooked Tomato and Mint Sauce with Poached Eggs). Clafoutis, however, was a mystery to me. Since I have harvested a lot of berries (both blueberries and blackberries) from my yard this summer I was on the lookout for berry recipes so I investigated this Julia Child egg-based dessert. 

This was rather easy to make. The eggs, milk, and 1/3 c. of sugar were blended together. A small amount was put in a pie plate and then heated on the stovetop until it began to harden. I imagine this step wasn't absolutely necessary. Berries and more sugar were added, then the rest of the egg batter. It was all placed in the oven at 350 and baked until ready. Mine took longer than the 50 minutes called for in the recipe. I find this is often the case when I bake. The final touch as a sprinkling of powdered sugar, which really does enhance the flavors.

This was a not-too-sweet treat, with a definite egg-y flavor.

Chicken Salad

A few weeks ago while James was in Brazil (and I was on my own) I thawed, poached, and shredded two chicken breasts. Although I only needed one breast to prepare Chilaquiles, I cooked both simply because they came in a package of two. Once the superfluous breast was shredded I put it in the freezer to use later.

Often in the summer I like to have cool salads for meals, so last week I took the prepared chicken out of the freezer, thawed it and made a chicken salad. I decided not to follow any recipe and let the ingredients I had on had be my guide. 

The chicken was mixed with two dollops of  sour cream, about 1/4 c. chopped red onion, and some salt, pepper, and dried basil. At this point I gave it a taste test and determined that it was a bit "onion forward"  so I found some prepared cranberry sauce in the refrigerator and added about two tablespoons. The sweet/tart flavor softened the harsh onion for a lovely flavor combination. We made sandwiches with the salad and had some roasted potatoes on the side.

Croutons

Yes, croutons. We had never thought about making our own. In fact, Pamela does not even eat croutons, but she knows I like them. A lot.

So when I returned from a trip, she surprised me with some croutons she had made while I was gone. She had stumbled across Homemade Croutons in the Air Fryer, and decided to make some, even though she would not be eating them. Part of the attraction (aside being nice to me) is the opportunity to use up some bread that might otherwise go to waste. Which is the whole point of croutons, I suppose.

She had made the croutons in our relatively new electric stove, which has an air-fryer setting. It might be for that reason that the timing needed a little adjustment. The recipe calls for 4 minutes at 400F, then some stirring, and then another 2 minutes. Pam extended that second step to 3 minutes. The result was tasty but a little soft. 

Today we decided to try again, with Old Bay in addition to the seasonings the recipe calls for (we met in Maryland, after all). 

This time we extended the second step to 4 minutes -- a total of 8 minutes cooking. We also simply left the basket in the oven to cool and dry. We were out of the house for a couple hours and on our return, I ate some right of the basket. THEY WERE PERFECT. Even better (for me): the oily, salty mess of crumbs on the tray under the basket. Yum!

We will definitely be repeating this recipe, and experimenting with the seasonings. I imagine that users with their own air fryers might need to experiment with the timing just a bit.

Cod Almondine Meunière

Faithful readers of this blog might recall that it was in the spring of 2016 that I learned the word meunière, courtesy of a Vincent Price scallops recipe. (Less faithful readers be assured that this is neither a typo nor a hallucination. Go read that post and come back a happier gormand.) Today's dinner took the meunière to a whole 'nother level for us.

Following my recent Amazon adventures, we have had a bit of a staycation, which of course includes finding some food we can enjoy together. As we started to make menu plans, Pam mentioned several NYT recipes she had been saving. Many involved asparagus, but the season for that is both intense and very brief around here. So she scrolled down to Roasted White Fish With Lemony Almondine. I love all things lemon, and we keep slivered almonds in our fridges just because we so often find good uses for them. Note: as far as I can tell "almondine" does not differ in any meaningful way from "with almonds."

I followed this recipe almost to the letter. "Almost" because I used scallions instead of chives and I used proportionally more lemon that kitchen math would indicate, since I bought only 3/4 of a pound of cod for the two of us. The cod was an exceptionally thick cut from our friends at Kyler's (also exceptional quality, of course)  so at the end of the 7-11 minute time frame mentioned in the recipe, it was not quite done. I reduced the oven to 425F and roasted another 5 minutes. 

Otherwise, I did everything as called for. Past experience had told me that a meunière seems simple but things move quickly. So I had prepped EVERYTHING ahead of time in order to concentrate on the timing of the butter browning. When I turned the heat off, I actually moved the indispensable cast-iron skillet to a cool part of the stove as I put the almond slivers in. I paid stirred often until the sauce and the cod were both complete. The result: sort of amazing. 

Pam had prepared a fruit salad earlier in the day, giving it time to meld in the fridge. This included local peaches with cherries and banana tossed with a mango balsamic. The rest of the meal was a baguette from Kyler's and our favorite Grüner Veltliner (link is to the same varietal from the same producer; Löss and Lehm seems to be out of production now.)

Final verdict: we will definitely be having this again, and I will be experimenting with this method of toasting almonds and other nuts.

Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie

 The description of this New York Times recipe begins "Skillet cookies are perfect for lazy nights when everyone wants something sweet but no one wants to work that hard for it." This really was much easier and faster than making a batch of cookies. I will probably never make regular chocolate chip cookies again. I had everything I needed in the pantry, and the cookie baked beautifully in my indispensable cast-iron skillet. Some friends had invited me to dinner and I offered to bring dessert. This was well received, especially when topped with vanilla ice cream - after all it was National Ice Cream Day!

photo from New York Times Cooking Pages

Roasted Chicken Thighs in Blueberry Sauce

It looks like we are going to have a bumper crop from our backyard blueberry bushes this summer. So in addition to some refreshing smoothies, blueberry cobbler, and blueberry salmon we will be looking for some more recipes that use these summer favorites. One such recipe serendipitously showed up on my Facebook feed from the New York Times Cooking Pages. While we regularly prepare chicken breast, or a whole chicken, thighs are something we cook much less often, but Roasted Chicken Thighs with Blueberries is likely to become a favorite.

Using my indispensable cast-iron skillet I cooked the well salted thighs on a medium low heat for 15 minutes, then flipped for another five and then moved them to a plate while I used the rendered fat and a bit of water to sauté four large cloves of thinly sliced garlic. Spices were added, then 3 cups of blueberries, a tablespoon each of mustard and honey. The thighs were placed on top of the berries and then the skillet was placed in the preheated 400 degree oven.

Ready for the oven

The thighs baked for 15 minutes and came out a beautiful golden color surrounded by a deep blue sauce. Served with a green summer salad and paired with Pinot Noir Rosé from Westport Rivers Winery this meal was full of texture and flavor - tender and juicy, sweet and savory. 

On mange!

One-Pot Vegan Tomato Basil Spinach Pasta

 

This recipe comes from The Ordinary Vegan  webpage. The print out I have is dated June 24, 2015. I found it stuffed between some other things on my cookbook shelf. I have no recollection of how I originally came across this recipe, but when it fell into my hands recently I realized I had everything I needed to make it, so I did. 

 

Although the recipe calls for linguine, I used some tri-colored bow-tie pasta we bought recently at a fancy-schmancy food store while we were traveling in the mid-west. The preparation was easy and quick. Just about everything went into the pot at the start, even the dry pasta. The pot was covered and the liquid was brought to a boil, then reduced to a simmer. The only real prep work was slicing the onion and garlic cloves. The only thing that went in later was the spinach, which was added after seven minutes of cooking. Since this is a vegan dish it did not call for any cheese, but we like cheese so we added a bit of feta to each of our plates.

This had a very peppery flavor, which we both liked. From start to table was about 25 minutes. Easy, quick, delicious.

Chicken Florentine

 

Often when I post about a recipe from the New York Times Cooking Pages the name of the dish gives all (or most) of the ingredient list, not so with Chicken Florentine which goes even further in its "not like the others-ness" in that the ingredient list provided does not provide any measures. This list simply reads:

Chicken breasts

Extra-virgin olive oil

Butter

Flour

Spinach

White wine

Heavy cream, sour cream or yogurt

There are instructions, however about what to do with the ingredients. I followed the steps provided using the two chicken breasts we got from our weekly delivery. As I've discovered on previous attempts to cook these in a skillet the breasts are very thick and any indication that they can be cooked through with 5-6 minutes per side is pure fantasy. I doubled the time and still had to give it a final blast in the microwave to cook it to a safe doneness. 

As for the portions of the rest of the ingredients the instructions do call for two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil, as well as 1/2 cup white wine.  Otherwise I went with a dollop of sour cream, and four large handfuls of spinach leaves.

Relishing Swordfish

 As is our wont since we began spending weekends by the sea -- and by one of North America's most important seafood ports -- we pondered what seafood we would like. I had noticed we've had a fairly tight rotation of fried cod, scallops meunière, and salmon. Not that any of this is a bad thing, but I decided to check the social media of our local fishmonger for ideas. Kyler's was featuring swordfish, with which we have apparently had only one noteworthy experience since beginning this blog.

I began a lazy search for recipes, which is to say I checked the Big Green Egg web site --  too lazy even to fetch the Big Green Egg Cookbook from our kitchen. My minimal effort was rewarded with just one result to choose from on the site: Grilled Swordfish with Corn-Avocado Relish -- one of those recipes whose title provides the bulk of the instructions.

On Friday we picked up some ingredients for the relish -- drawing on Pam's expertise in avocado selection  -- and then selected two swordfish steaks with the help of one of Kyler's most expert mongers.  We got them into the fridge right away, and then prepared the relish at midday Saturday, so that it would have time to chill and meld. 

Small deviations from the relish recipe: I sautéed the corn in chipotle-infused olive oil, I used dry cilantro because we did not have any fresh, I used jalapeño instead of Serrano (because this is New England and most stores have few pepper varieties), and I added just a touch of thyme-infused white balsamic vinegar because, well, just because. 

I had trouble with the Egg so its temperature was a bit low, and this might have worked in our favor. I grilled for about 10 minutes on one side and 8 on the other. We were generous with the relish because it won't last very long. We also reserved one of the steaks to be reheated tomorrow in a cast-iron skillet for what we know will be great leftovers.  

This was, as Pam commented, Yum. In addition to a very nice relish (which we called salsa because we really don't know the difference), this was delicious because I managed to get the fish cooked but not overcooked. 

Lagniappe

This did indeed work as leftovers -- we had it the very next day because of the avocado. Returning the grilled fish to a well-oiled and seasoned, hot cast-iron skillet, I seared it for about one minute on each side. I then lowered the heat and covered the pan, so that the interior of the fish could be gently warmed without drying out. 

Meanwhile, I cooked some local fresh corn-on-the-cob, so we had corn ON the fish and WITH the fish. Pam declared leftover "shark bake" (though no shark was involved) a success.

And regarding that Big Green Egg issue: it is amazing that it had been working at all recently. I had been occasionally clearing it of ash that I could reach, but it was totally clogged with ash I could not reach. It got a thorough cleaning today -- its first in the six years we have had it.

Sweet & Sour Scallops

Frequent readers of this space may recall that we were introduced to the world of infused olive oils and vinegars in essentially the same way we were introduced to each other. That is, our UMBC alumni magazine introduced us to Lebherz Oil & Vinegar Emporium in Frederick, Maryland shortly after it was opened by a fellow graduate, and shortly after we launched this blog. A quick keyword search reveals that we frequently turn to L.O.V.E. for inspiration.

While we still visit that original shop whenever we are in the area, we were pleased to see a similar purveyor open much closer to home Ripe from the Vine in Marion, Massachusetts. When visiting this weekend, Pam bought two large bottles of chipotle olive oil, leading the proprietor to ask if we had tried this in combination with pineapple -- on scallops!

An unexpected combination that we will
be trying in other dishes.

We were on the way to Kyler's Catch at the time, with the intention of making Vincent Price's scallops Sauté Meunière to share with Pam's visiting sister. During the car ride, we figured out that I could cook the dish in exactly the same manner, but using chipotle-infused oil and butter for the sauté stage and the pineapple-infused vinegar with white wine in the deglazing stage (instead of lemon juice). We picked up that white wine on the way to the fish monger -- Löss & Lehm Grüner Veltliner from our friends at Stevie's in Fairhaven.

The result: scrumptious, even decadent, and pairing well with the wine I used in the deglazing.

I confess to taking a big shortcut on sides, in part because I am trying to baby an injured left knee. So those are just what they look like: canned cranberries from our local growers cooperative (aka Ocean Spray) and slightly enhanced Annie's mac & cheese. 

Lagniappe

Lebherz introduced us to the idea of flavored vinegars as a topping for ice cream. I fully intend to try this one on a coconut dessert this summer!

Fish Poached in Wine Sauce

 As James mentioned in his recent post on Herb-Crusted Salmon we each selected a seafood recipe from our cooking-with-wine cookbooks. I used the index-card-sized Cooking Seafood and Poultry with Wine by Bruce Carlson to prepare white fish poached in white wine (in this case Chablis). One of the earliest recipes I posted on this blog was for Fish in a Packet: this recipe is not unlike that one, except that it used wine, and it also included a cream sauce. 

The fish fillet was placed in a foil packet along with 2/3 c. of wine, a bit of minced onion, some fresh parsley, and a tablespoon of butter, and some salt and pepper. I put the packet onto a baking sheet and baked at 375 for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I prepared the sauce in my indispensable cast-iron skillet. I melted 3 T. butter and blended with 3 T flour and stirred until smooth. I added 1/2 of heavy cream and when the fish was done in the oven poured some of the liquid from the packet into the sauce, and stirred. I moved the fish to a platter and poured the sauce over it, then sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese and placed under the broiler for about a minute to brown.

This was quite delicious. Of course we paired it with the same wine we used in cooking.

Herb-Crusted Salmon

Sometimes I know a dish is going to taste better than it looks, and I take a photo of some of the ingredients at a photogenic moment in the preparations. I failed to do that in the case of this salmon dish -- and I'm not quite certain there was such a moment -- but I a leading with this record shot in hopes that some will find it inspiring.

The full title of this recipe if Herb-Crusted Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce, which I made with fairly close to the directions found under that title in Bonnie Jesseph's W.I.N.O.S.: Cook with Wine, a 2006 spiral-bound volume whose acronymic name refers to Women In Need Of Sanity. The book has a bit of a silly presentation, but at heart is rather a comprehensive collection of ways to use wine in the preparation of many kinds of dishes.

In this case, we had decided to do something new with seafood for the weekend, so before I headed to our favorite fishmonger (Kyler's Catch in New Bedford), Pam and I each thumbed through a different wine-themed cookbook. (She poached cod in chablis a couple days later.) I had been thinking recently about sun-dried tomatoes, so this title caught my eye immediately. It took me as long to find those (not packed in oil) hidden in our local grocer's produce aisle as it did for me ultimately to cook the fish!

This is a fairly simple dish with just a few components. Because I knew each part of it would be needed quickly, I took the instructions somewhat out of order. 

I turned the oven on to 400F, convection. Then I started on the crustiness: I blended panko and cornmeal with dried basil, oregano, and rosemary -- just a small amount on a plate. Then I removed the skin from a perfect salmon fillet -- this was fairly easy, though I know the folks at Kyler's have the skills and knives to do this almost effortlessly. I usually just cook salmon with skin-side down, but breading this would make that weird, I supposed.

I then minced both a shallot and the equivalent of five sun-dried tomatoes (actually dried, not in oil). In a. small, indispensable cast-iron skillet, I sautéed the shallot for just a minute or two and then added the tomato, some lemon juice, and just 1/4 cup dry white wine all at once. I stirred this until reduced, and then left it warming on the lowest possible heat. (The recipe suggests reducing, allowing to cool, and then reheating; this made no sense to me.) 

Meanwhile, I sprayed Pam (the spray, not my spouse) in a casserole dish; I probably should have just used a little oil. I then dredged the salmon in the crumb/herb mix and simply placed it in the pan. This recipe would easily work for up to 4 smaller fillets; I had a single one-pounder. The crumb adhered better than I expected after pressing it a bit on both sides.

Side note: I had boiled a pan of water previously and now returned it to heat so that I could make some simple Aunt Annie's mac & cheese. Sometimes even a foodie wants a simple side of comfort food. I prepared it in my usual way, which is to add a generous shredding of cheddar to the mix-made cheddar it comes with. 

Back to the fish -- at 10 minutes, I noticed it was a bit dry, so I decided to spoon the sauce (which was rather thickened at this point) onto the fish for the final minutes of baking. Cutting the fillet in half a couple minutes later, I noticed it was not quite flaky in the middle, so I did give it another 1 minute.

The result: savory, sweet, delicious. As is our wont, I cooked it with good wine, which we paired with the meal, rather than using purpose-bought "cooking" wine. In this case, it is was Löss & Lehm, an Austrian Grüner Veltliner that I first bought because the name is perfect for a soils nerd who has also studied German. But it turned out to be such good wine that we do pick it up frequently at our local purveyor.

Pineapple Salmon

A Tale of Double Leftovers

After enjoying a bounteous Easter dinner with friends last week, we left them with some lemony cake and they sent us off with a lot of delicious, spiral-cut ham. Neither of these are included in this recipe, but they are what got us here. 

That is to say, the availability of ham led us to make a wonderful, deep-dish ham-and-pineapple pizza in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. For that, I purchased a whole pineapple for the first time in a hound's age, but we only used half of it.

So off I went to Kyler's Catch for a wonderful fillet of salmon -- in this case, organically farmed Canadian. I have had some misgivings about farmed fish, but this is one I have started to embrace. 

I prepared it according to the simple Baked Pineapple Salmon recipe from Chef Jar, a site that was new to me -- with one important digression. I made rings (actually half-rings) from the half-pineapple (I always cut them lengthwise first) and thereby had almost no pineapple juice for the sauce.

The editing and formatting over at Chef Jar is pretty terrible; I realized after the fact that its "Jump to Recipe" link would have been preferable to navigating the three different ingredient lists and the random advice that is scattered throughout the main body of the article. 

The result was delicious and beautiful, paired nicely with rice and Löss & Lehm organic Grüner Veltliner from Stevie's.

Lagniappe: The Next Days

For those still wondering about our leftovers, we can report that Pamela found the perfect way to use the rest of the ham; Sunday was National Eggs Benedict Day

And because I can only make rice with one cup of rice and two+ cups of water, there is always leftover rice. Hence Monday's rice and beans -- and a caught-up kitchen! 

A very lemon-y meal

We recently bought some lemon-infused olive oil, as well as some white balsamic vinegar, so we've been on the look out for lemony recipes. (This post describes a meal by Pamela and a dessert by James; Pam writes first.)

I chose Lemon Chicken with Garlic-Chile Oil from the New York Times Cooking Page for last night's dinner. The recipe is clear that the garlic oil be cooked slow so as not to burn, and then removed from heat, but I admit to simply adding my chicken breasts to the cooked oil, and then keeping the heat low. This did mean that the chicken took longer to cook, but the garlic never burned and the chicken was tender and flavorful in the end. As a side dish I prepared Greek Lemon Potatoes (made with the lemon olive oil) and topped it off with some of the Lemon Bundt Cake James made for Easter dinner.

James continues (writing a few days later) ...

I did indeed prepare the lemon Bundt cake, based on the New York Times recipe Pam mentions above. But I took the lemon-ness to a higher level -- incorporating all of Yossy Arefi's excellent ideas and adding some of my own. In fact, my intentions for this cake were what had gotten us to the oil-and-vinegar store the week prior. (It does not take a lot to convince us to go to these stores, and in fact we have two, in Marion and in Fredrick.)

Photo: Yossy Arefi

I must first recognize Arefi's most important contribution. Step 4 of her recipe looks complicated at first, but it is an elegant way to make sure that every lemony part of the lemons ends up in the cake, with the pithy white part between the rind and the fruit removed. Standing the lemons on end as she suggests makes this easy.

The recipe calls for 3/4 of a stick of butter, plus 1/4 cup of neutral oil, by which I assume she intends canola or the like. I substituted the lemon-infused olive oil that Pam mentions above, raising the lemon quotient just a bit.

The real difference is in the glaze. I remembered the glaze that helped us win an award from Marley Coffee for my mocha cake, and simply lemonized that concept. I substituted lemon-infused white balsamic vinegar for some of the juice in the glaze. I might never make a glaze without balsamic again!

A pasta recipe I won't be making again

Ricotta cheese and penne pasta were the reasons for choosing this recipe from the 365 Ways to Cook Pasta Cookbook - not because we are particularly enamored of these two ingredients, but because we already had some open ricotta that we did not want to go to waste and, likewise, we had some penne pasta in the cupboard. The other ingredients include fresh basil and fresh tomato (both hard to come by in New England at this time of year) as well as garlic, lemon zest, salt and pepper, and "fruity olive oil" - I used lemon olive oil. I will admit that I would have preferred basil and tomato in season, and I didn't use lemon zest, but rather a lemon pepper seasoning to substitute, but I don't think these reasons were why we decided that it was a once-in-a-lifetime meal. James' assessment that it was too "ricotta forward" is more in line with our thoughts. The recipe is similar to Pasta Fresca which is made with mozzarella and is one of our favorites - eat this; not that.

Hot Chicken Salad

 Sometimes the most important reason that we pick a particular recipe is that we already have all the ingredients to prepare it. So it was for Hot Chicken Salad. We had some chicken thawing and using the New York Times Cooking search feature found a recipe that didn't require a grocery store run. Having just done some major Costco shopping neither of us were interested in going to the store again. 

The chicken breasts were cut into small pieces and cooked on the stovetop in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, then tossed in a bowl along with celery pieces, mayonnaise, shredded cheddar cheese, slivered almonds, diced onion, lemon juice and salt and pepper. This was then placed back into the skillet, topped with crushed potato chips and baked at 350 for 32 minutes. This turned out a bit saltier than I would have liked, perhaps I over salted, or maybe it was the potato chips. In any case, we ate every bit of it.

Cod Almondine

A visit from our Chicago-dwelling adult child always necessitates a fresh-seafood dish. We selected the Roasted White Fish with Lemony Almondine from the New York Times cooking pages for his most recent return. This was simple to prepare, and packed a lot of flavor. Cod filets were placed in a 450 degree oven with a bit of butter for about 10 minutes. While the fish cooked 6 T of butter were browned on the stovetop, and then almonds were added along with lemon juice, lemon zest, and chives along with some salt and pepper. The almond sauce was poured over the cooked fish and served. Roasted potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms were served on the side.

Caramelized Pork chops and Apples

 

This one came from the New York Times Cooking pages. We had some Miso sauce from previous recipes so when this one appeared on my Facebook page we put in an order of pork chops with our regular weekly delivery.  Most of this was done in one skillet, although the miso was mixed with brown sugar and cider vinegar separately before it was added. We also had a side of mashed potatoes and paired this with a Chardonnay from Westport Rivers.

Chicken Enchiladas

 

This recipe came from our Best Simple Suppers for Two cookbook. The original intention was to make it for Valentine's Day, but we decided to roast a whole chicken instead for our romantic February 14 dinner. Since this recipe called for shredding a prepared rotisserie chicken it made more sense to use the leftover chicken for this one. The recipe says this has a prep time of 10 minutes, which I found wildly inaccurate. It took about twice that long to shred the chicken, chop the onion and garlic, cook it all with the other ingredients, then divide, and assemble. 

Full ingredient list includes:

4 six-inch corn tortillas (next time I will use six tortillas)

2 T olive oil

1 garlic clove (minced)

1 small onion (chopped)

2 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 can black beans (rinsed and drained)

1 can diced tomatoes

juice of one lime

1 cup corn kernals

1 t. cumin

1 c. enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded pepper jack cheese

While sautéing the onion and garlic in our indispensable cast-iron skillet I charred the tortillas in a dry cast iron pan on the stovetop. I added the chicken and beans to the skillet and seasoned with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken and beans were warmed through I removed half the mixture to a separate bowl and mixed half the corn, half the tomatoes, half the cumin, half the lime juice, and half the enchilada sauce into what was left in the skillet and sprinkled a third of the cheese on top. Two tortillas were placed on top of this, and then the rest of everything (except the cheese) was mixed together in the bowl with the remaining chicken and bean mix, and then put over the tortillas. A third of the cheese was added, and then the other two tortillas followed by the last of the cheese. This was all baked in the skillet (with its lid) at 350 for 14 minutes. We topped our enchiladas with sour cream.

A spicy, flavorful meal with a lot of texture. We both liked this, although it wasn't especially simple. It had a lot of ingredients, a lot of steps, and created a lot of dishes. We will likely have this again, but I will save it for a weekend meal next time.

CodFish ChowderSoup

Thanks to our resident librarian, we knew that yesterday was National Homemade Soup Day -- which was perfect for the record-setting cold we were expecting (and received). In preparing this blog post, I noticed that it has also been Ice Cream for Breakfast Day, but the aforementioned conditions made my usual Saturday gingerberry waffles a better choice.

In addition to finding the holiday, Pamela found just the right resource -- the Soup Cookbook from the Jean Childress Country Kitchen collection. More a pamphlet than a book, this publication is 32 pages (that is, eight sheets folded and stapled) and is apparently difficult to find even on sites that carry other works by this New England writer.

Having already intended to pick up some seafood for the day's main meal, we quickly settled on the recipe entitled "Oven Baked Fish Chowder" even though I usually prefer shellfish chowders to fishy fish chowders.

Preparation was simple. I preheated the oven to 375F and arranged the racks so that a Dutch oven (that is, a large, oven-safe covered pot) would fit. 

I then set the pot on the counter and added most of the items from the ingredient list (my choices and variations in parenthesis):

• 2 pounds cod or haddock, cut into bite-sized pieces (I chose 1 pound cod and applied kitchen math to all other ingredients; original quantities are shown below, so cooks should do their own math)
• 12-ounce can evaporated milk
• 4 potatoes, unpeeled and cut into chunks (as I usually do, I partly peeled some Yukon golds)
• 1/4 cup celery leaves (we opted to exclude this, given the tiny quantity would use)
• 1 bay leaf (I used a small one)
• 4 whole cloves 
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 tsp dried dill (I used a bunch of fresh dill, chopped)
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (I used more than this)
• 2-1/2 tsp salt (I used less than this)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (see below)
• 2 cups boiling water (I set this on the kettle while chopping and measuring the rest)

I simply placed stirred all this together gently and placed the covered pot in the oven for one hour at 375F.  After about half an hour, the aromas began wafting into the rest of the house, reminding us that this meal was now preparing itself.

Meanwhile, I gently heated light cream (recipe calls for 2 cups, so I heated 1 cup) on the warming zone of the stove top. Any way of getting the temperature close to that of the soup without scalding it would do. 

After an hour, I stirred in the warmed cream and chopped some parsley for a garnish. I added Tabasco to my serving (this is chowder, after all) and served it with some buttered crusty baguette from our favorite fishmonger. Kyler's Catch is of course the only place I would go to for cod, and they usually have some yummy bread to go with whatever seafood we are having. 

This was both tastier and more photogenic than I expected.

The recipe purports to serve 8, which seems correct. Divided in half, we had plenty for the two of us, and enough leftover for a lunch. I used only 2 ounces of white wine in the soup, so the rest of the bottle served as our beverage. Langhe Doc Bianco Dragon was both a good ingredient and a perfect pairing. 

Some folks use only cheap or leftover wine for cooking, and sometimes we do that. But more often we use what we are drinking in what we are cooking, and we never regret this. I had selected this wine for the label when browsing our new favorite wine store, not realizing until later that the Luigi Baudana vineyard had named the wine in honor of its label, which had been the last work of their beloved designer Gianni Gallo. This is a white wine from Barolo, a region I had associated only with exquisite reds.

Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms in Miso Butter

When our adult child was visiting recently he made us a meal featuring noodles and miso sauce. We still had some of the miso paste so when this recipe from the New York Times Cooking pages showed up on my Facebook feed I put it on the schedule for this week's dinners.

 I halved the recipe for the mushrooms and scrambled only four eggs as only two of us were eating. This was quick and easy. I tried the method described for giving the eggs a "custardy finish" which worked well. James and I both liked the eggs prepared this way. We will never go back.

Pretty Easy Pasta

Sometimes the most important thing I'm looking for in a meal is what I can prepare without buying any additional ingredients. Yesterday was snowy and I had no desire to go out for any reason, but especially not shopping. 365 Ways to Cook Pasta to the rescue! We had a partial box of spaghetti so I flipped through some recipes and found Spaghetti with Walnuts and Parmesan which I was able to prepare in less than 15 minutes.

While the pasta cooked I coated the bottom of my indispensable cast-iron skillet with olive oil and minced and sautéed a garlic clove. After about a minute I added 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts and sautéed a few more minutes. Once the pasta was cooked and drained I mixed the contents of the skillet into the pasta and added shredded Parmesan cheese and some dried parsley. Simple, fast, and delicious. James and I were both impressed with the especially nutty flavor.

Pasta and Poppies

We had bought a large bag of spinach leaves at Costco last week in order to make a family favorite: Mashed Potato Casserole (which is detailed on this post) while our adult child was visiting. There was still an awful lot of spinach so we had been looking for ways to use it before it spoiled. I found this super simple recipe in our good ol' 365 Ways to Cook Pasta. 

There are only six ingredients in this one: butter, garlic, spinach, poppy seeds, fettuccini, and shredded Parmesan cheese. 

While the pasta cooked, I crushed a garlic clove and added it to 4 T of melted butter in the indispensable cast-iron skillet and sautéed. The spinach was went in next and cooked until wilted, then 1 T of poppy seeds was added. Once the pasta was cooked it was tossed in a bowl with the spinach mixture, topped with the Parmesan and served with some crusty bread. I imagine this would pair well with a buttery Chardonnay, but we had it with Malbec because...Malbec.

Photo added by James, who did nothing for this meal except shopping
and eating, but who wanted to give this post a bit of color.
Lacking a photo of the meal,   I found this other
poppy reference, with Miss Judy Garland.

Roasted Salmon with Miso Cream

While our adult child was visiting last month he wanted to have a lot of seafood. He currently lives in Illinois, not especially well known for it's fruits de mer. He specifically asked for salmon (among other things) so we chose the Salmon with Miso Cream from the New York Times Cooking page for our final family meal before he left.

Wow! Was this good! Lots of texture and flavor, and roasted to perfection. I used the advice offered on the recipe to test for done-ness by putting a knife into the thickest portion of the fish and to see if it comes out warm. I had not seen this suggestion before, but it turned out to be sound advice. Everyone liked this and we will for sure make it again. As a side dish we adapted another recipe from the New York Times Cooking - Spinach Salad with Persimmon. Astute readers will notice that the recipe is actually for Spinach Salad with Prosciutto and Persimmon but I don't especially like Prosciutto, and we otherwise chose the recipe because we already had spinach and persimmon on hand. I also noticed that the first part of the recipe was for making croutons, another thing I don't like, so that whole piece was left out. James does like croutons so he simply used the store-bought ones we already had on hand. After thinly slicing the persimmon and tossing it with the spinach leaves I added some shredded parmesan, salt, pepper, lemon olive oil, and pomegranate vinegar. Pleasing to the eye as well as the palate. 

Cilantro-Forward Chicken

As we contemplated upcoming meals over yesterday morning's Nicaraguan coffee, I mentioned that we had received some local chicken in our dairy delivery and that I would find a way to prepare it using some ginger that remained from a soup our son had prepared during a recent visit. Before I could say "una nueva receta cada semana," Pamela had found several options on her now-favorite cookbook: NY Times Cooking on her iPad.

I chose the first one she mentioned: ginger-scallion chicken sounded both simple and tasty and (spoiler alert) indeed it was. I started to thaw the chicken, which had arrived frozen just a couple hours earlier, in the usual Hayes-Boh way (note below).  

The recipe was, in fact, similar to what I was thinking of doing without any recipe, but I am glad we had Melissa Clark's adaptation of a recipe by Lan Hing Riggin. The ingredients were something I might have come up with on my own, but the technique was a delicious improvement on my usual approach to stir-fry, which is to brown the meat and then add vegetables, sauces and seasonings. 

They suggest a more nuanced approach, which I followed almost to the letter. One exception: we usually keep only one kind of oil in the house (proving we are not really foodies), so I used EVOO instead of the lighter oils suggested. First, though, I started cooking some brown rice, because I knew that this recipe would be ready pretty quickly. If I am going to serve something with rice, I usually start it early and I use a technique that has worked well for me recently: I heat some oil (or butter) in a small saucepan while rinsing 1 cup of rice in a sieve. I then put the rice into the medium-hot pan, stirring vigorously with a fork and perhaps adding some seasonings (in this case black pepper and oregano). After just about 2 minutes, I add 2-1/4 cups of water and bring to a boil. I then cover and lower to a simmer, where I can forget about the rice while making the rest of the meal.

I prepared all of the ingredients before I started any cooking, because this does indeed go quickly. I trimmed two large scallions and then separated the white from the green. I cut each lengthwise into quarters and then into one-inch little sticks. This was a little tedious but the texture at the end did seem to benefit. I tossed the green pieces together with one full cup of chopped cilantro (leaves and fine stems) and set aside. I put the white pieces on a plate with some finely chopped ginger and a finely chopped hot red pepper.

I cut the chicken into one-inch pieces and heated the oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet.  I stirred frequently and followed the recipe's guidance to remove the chicken to serving plates as soon as it was cooked through, not browning it as I usually might. I put the mixed cilantro and green scallion on top of the chicken and the rice alongside it on each plate. I then lowered the heat in the pan and added the ginger and pepper, which I stirred for just about a minute. I added the scallions for a half minute more and then stirred in a tablespoon of sugar and a glug of soy sauce. I stirred this just long enough to reduce it slightly and then poured it over both the greens and the rice.

Voilà! This was an easy, delicious, healthful meal. And the red peppers helped make it look as festive as it tasted.

Thawing note: I put the frozen package in a bowl full of water. This is both faster and safer than simply leaving the package out on the counter. If the kitchen is warm enough that thawing is achieved early in the day, we will return it to the fridge; if we start the process a day early, we can just thaw things like this in the fridge itself. In any case, we avoid microwave thawing, which always seems to result in some uneven pre-cooking.

Spinach Lasagna

Our only child came to visit for Christmas. Although he is not a vegetarian, he said he hadn't been feeling it for beef or poultry recently, so for our (otherwise landlocked) Chicagoan we planned a variety of seafood and vegetarian dishes for his visit (more recipes to follow).

Lasagna is a dish we've traditionally enjoyed for the holidays. I used to make the very time-consuming "Everyone's Favorite Lasagne" from 365 Ways to Cook Pasta on Christmas day before we started having Christmas dinner with friends, who also always made (vegetarian) lasagna. We had no idea at our Christmas dinner of 2019 what was to come in 2020. There were of course no get togethers the following Christmas, and the next year our hosts moved out of state. If we had known that there would be no more holiday gatherings at their home we might have done something special in 2019, but alas, here we are. In honor of Christmases past I made a spinach lasagna adapted from another recipe in the the 365 Ways Cookbook.

The recipe calls for spinach lasagna noodles, which I have never been able to find in my local stores, so I used regular egg lasagna noodles, and used actual spinach leaves between the layers. 

Additional ingredients include:

Olive oil

1 garlic clove

28 oz. can plum tomatoes (pureéd)

15 oz. ricotta cheese

1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese

a bit o' nutmeg

1 egg 

fresh basil 

1 lb. mozzarella (shredded)

While the noodles cooked I sliced and sautéed the garlic in the olive oil. When the garlic was browned it was discarded and the puréed tomatoes were added to the skillet and cooked down for about 20 minutes. Salt and pepper we added to taste.

The egg, nutmeg, Parmesan and ricotta were whisked together in a separate bowl.

The lasagna was assembled thus:

A small amount of the sauce was spread on the bottom of the lasagna pan and four noodles were placed on top. A quarter of the remaining sauce was spread over the noodles and they were sprinkled with basil leaves and a handful the fresh spinach leaves. Another layer of four noodles was placed on top and then layered with the ricotta mixture, some more basil, and another handful of spinach. Another layer of four noodles was topped with the mozzarella, more basil, and more spinach. A final layer of noodles was topped with the rest of the sauce. 

The lasagna baked in a 350 pre-heated oven for 45 minutes, then rested for 15 minutes before serving.

We all enjoyed this, especially our adult child who ate 2/3 of the leftovers for a midnight snack! The taste of the fresh basil came through along with the cheeses. The texture was perfect. Although a bit complicated it was less work than the "Favorite Lasagne" recipe which calls for a long-cook meat sauce. We will add this one to our family "comfort meal" repertoire.