Just Peachy Quesadillas

For Sunday's dinner, James played the role of Pam, concocting a new meal from ingredients we had on hand. On my way to Harvard Forest with students on Saturday, I had of course stopped at the "farm stand" of Bolton Orchards.

The stand is more of an emporium of all things apple -- including apples, applesauce, apple butter, apple candy, apple cider, apple donuts -- as well as all things local. It is such an excellent place to include in a land-protection field trip that we stopped twice -- on the way to the forest and on the way back. I was careful to restrain myself, but still managed to come home with quite a few peaches, apples, cider, and, yes, some cider donuts that the whole family enjoyed.

My dinner idea did not include the apples or the donuts, but it did make use of the peaches and the cider, as well as several other items in the house. I began by slicing two chicken breasts into thin stripps and browning then in olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. As the chicken was browning, I sliced two of the peaches (ripe but quite firm) and put them in the pan. That is when I realized that this dish had potential, at least to be photogenic.

I added a few vigorous squirts from the Tabasco bottle and a few spoonfuls of some blackberry preserves we had on hand. I stirred over high heat until the chicken was cooked through and the peaches slightly caramelized. I then added a glug of apple cider and allowed the mix to continue cooking until reduced.

To assemble, I used a slotted spoon to fold the mixture into tortillas with some sliced provolone and shredded Monterrey Jack, though other soft cheeses would serve just as well.

We topped these with standard salsa from Newman's Own, though one of his fruit salsas would have been even better. Similarly, we had it with our weekend house wine, a pedestrian Sauvignon Blanc that was refreshing but not quite a perfect pairing. We are open to suggestions on the wine front! 

Our Most Important Libro de Recetas

Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day by Moosewood Collective
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This may be the most important book in our kitchen. When I was getting ready for my dissertation research -- three months in the Amazon without my sweetheart -- we already had the "regular" Moosewood. We liked it, but also knew that most of its recipes were a bit of work. Pam wanted to eat well while I was gone, but we needed something convenient enough for a cooking-for-one lifestyle.

This was just the ticket -- great, simple recipes for anyone who would like to have healthy meals on a weeknight.

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The Good Read Tortilla

James is adding some old favorites to his Good Reads profile; this is the first cookbook to be included.


The Well-Filled Tortilla Cookbook by Victoria Wise
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We purchased this book more than 20 years ago, when we lived in Tucson -- where these things are decided. We do not traffic in "wraps" -- just tortillas. As hard as decent tortillas are to find in New England, this book allows us to put them to good use when we do.

Many of the recipes in this book have become comfort food in our home, but we still open it to a new page fairly often. Anyone who loves to cook will find plenty to enjoy in this book. On our recipe blog, we probably cite this book more than any other -- http://nuevareceta.blogspot.com/searc...

Enjoy!

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Salmon with Root Vegetables

This recipe came from the "August" page of out Old Farmer's Almanac Cookbook Calendar. James likes to pick up seafood whenever he goes out with his rowing club. We eat later than usual on the nights he rows, so we try to find quick and simple ways to prepare the fish. Last week he brought some salmon so we could make the monthly meal from the recipe calendar we have in our kitchen this year.

I improvised a bit on the ingredients to use what we had on hand. We used white potatoes instead of red, and scallions instead of leeks, otherwise we followed the instructions combining the diced potatoes, diced carrots and chopped scallions and in our indispensable cast-iron skillet along with a c. of chicken broth. The veggies were covered and simmered over a low heat for 10 minutes. The fish was placed in the pan with them and covered again for another 10 minutes. Here the recipe calls for removing the fish and vegetables, then making a sauce with Dijon mustard, butter, and lemon juice, but I just added everything into the same pan and let it all simmer a few more minutes. A tender and flavorful meal.

James adds: Most recipes with "root vegetables" in the title feature beets and other variations on dirt, so this was much more delicious than the name implied for us.

Birthday Simplicity

Image: Food.com. My results were tasty but lacking symmetry.

Among the many things of which we are proud as our daughter becomes an adult is that she has a strong and growing interest in good foods, including fruit. The rule in our house is that a birthday is celebrated with whatever dessert it requested by the celebrant. So when Paloma requested something strawberry-related, I did just a few seconds of "research" to find Fresh Strawberry Cake on Food.com.

This is a very simple vanilla cake with a simple glaze, except that it includes a full quart of crushed strawberries, divided between the two components. I looked for local strawbs, but we are about 6 weeks late for that, so I went with what I found in the store. I then stemmed and halved them, and used our potato masher to crush them (gently) almost to a liquid.

I used a Bundt instead of the called-for pans, which might explain the much longer cooking time I needed, and the messy outcome. As Pam said, "Cake Boss would not be pleased." But our entire little party agreed it was delicious, and it counts as a fruit serving!

Collaborative Chicken Salad

a.k.a. Tarragone Salad

Determined to do better with finding new dishes to prepare weekly, we took out some cookbooks and found a few new-to-us recipes. We like to start our summer weekends with Sunset Music at Westport Rivers Vineyard. Sometimes we eat some of the local fare from the vendors, but usually we bring our own picnic.

This week we tried Tarragon Chicken Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts from the Dishing Up Maryland cookbook. We took turns doing the various tasks in order to get this ready. James started the night before by boiling some chicken breasts and refrigerating them overnight.

While Pam was home for her lunch break she made the Old-fashioned Boiled Salad Dressing that accompanied the recipe for the salad. The dressing was made by starting with 3 eggs and a cup of milk whisked together. To this was added 2 T flour; 2 T sugar; 1 t salt; 1 t dry mustard; 1 t celery seeds and a dash of pepper. This was cooked on low heat while whisking continuously. Finally 1/4 c of vinegar was added.

Next time we'll make a better effort
 to include this beautiful herb.
But really, this recipe is
delicious without it.

When James returned from work he finished putting everything together. He was, in fact, clueless about the complexity of the dressing, having only read the directions in detail while wrapping up this blog post, to which he added the subtitle. The word "tarragone" refers to the omission of targon, both among the herbs to be added and the vinegar that the recipe calls for.

When James got home, he simply diced the now-cold chicken, finely chopped some celery, and combined both with 1/3 cup sour cream, red-wine vinegar, the dressing Pam had made, and some salt and pepper. He then stirred in a cup of chopped hazelnuts he had toasted for a few minutes in our indispensable cast-iron skillet.

Although preparation was spread over a full day, it took us longer to write this than it did to prepare the dish. It is simple and perfect on a roll for a picnic. It paired well with two different wines of medium dryness - Cinco Cães (Five Dogs) from the site of our picnic, and a more pedestrian Chardonnay from Line 39 a couple days later.

Coming Out of the Cold

As mentioned in the "Cada Mes" post last week, our summer has been blessed with everything but at-home leisure, putting us well behind our usual pace of a new recipe each week. Well behind. As we get back on track, today's post is not only a specific recipe, but some of what we have learned about how to plan meals.

It began with Pam making a list of today's goals that included a freezer inventory. After a morning row and some extreme yard work, we got together at the freezer door and used a cooler so that we could take everything out and put it on a list. We threw out one or two items that were of miniscule quantity or unknown provenance, but otherwise made a detailed list of everything in the freezer before returning it there. (I did generously volunteer to save space by finishing off a small quantity of vanilla ice cream.)

With the inventory in hand, we each grabbed a cookbook to look for something that would be new to us, interesting, and most importantly that would use something from the inventory. Pam found a chicken salad that we will prepare at the end of the week for our weekly vineyard outing -- details to follow.

Because I knew we had a fresh package of tortillas in the fridge, I turned to our bible, a.k.a. The Well-Filled Tortilla. I have to admit I was doubtful. After all, we have used this book many times over the past 20 years, and much of what remains is either grandiose (even for us) or uses ingredients on the no-go list (olives, tripe). But we had a half-bag of lentils ("half" being the most common word on our freezer inventory), so I checked the index for that word.

On page 221 is a recipe entitled "Indian-style lentils." We were prepared to use the second half of our Sunday for something more complicated, but this worked out very well indeed. We went to our local farm stand at Hanson Farms after deciding the recipe, so that we could get the needed tomatoes there. We planned a grocery-store run for after the farm stand, for any items that would not be there. This is always a good order to shop -- home inventory then farm stand, then grocery.

The rest came from our shelf, fridge, or modest garden. (Actually, mint is not a "garden" item. It is something that the previous owner of our house planted, and which we can now retrieve from random spots all over our property.)

Preparation was incredibly simple, halving the recipe as printed. I put 3 cups of chicken stock (could have been any stock) in a stock pot, along with 1/2 pound of lentils and three medium potatoes, diced to 1/2-inch.  I then added plenty of turmeric, cilantro (in place of coriander), ground clove, chili powder, cumin, and cayenne. I heated to a boil and then simmered for 20 minutes.

I then added a generous splash of lime juice (from a bottle in this case). We then diced tomatoes, tore up some mint, and spooned up a little sour cream that was in the fridge. The only thing missing was something the recipe calls "pickled carrots, optional."

The result; Delicious! I had been skeptical of a dish calling for both lentil and potato, but they worked well together in this case. These tacos paired beautifully with a 2013 Wild Oats Pinot Noir from from San Luis Obispo, California. This is a complex wine with dark fruit flavors and just a bit of spice.