Tyler Florence's Peach, Mozzarella and Crispy Prosciutto Salad

Here's another salad for you courtesy of the farmers' market.  Work is busy enough that I only have the opportunity to cook/eat 1-2 meals per week at home so I really want to take advantage of the produce at the farmers' market and make great meals when I can.  This salad started with the peaches.  I love the smell of fresh peaches, but I just can't get into eating them solo.  It's the fuzz on the skin that really throws me.  But when you combine fresh peaches with other ingredients in a salad or crostini I really enjoy it.  Go figure.  I was going to make this Grilled Peach Panzanella Salad but I thought it would be fun to try something new.  Since I really liked the combination of prosciutto, peaches and dairy in the crostini I wanted to make a salad that used those ingredients.  This Tyler Florence recipe fit the bill perfectly.  It wasn't the most amazing salad we have made but it was fun and different.  I liked the crispy prosciutto and the fennel.  We don't use fennel a lot, but it is really growing on me.  The anise flavor and the crunch of the fennel works beautifully in a salad.  While the salad was nice, it didn't really come together for me.  If you had a bite with equivalent amounts of every single ingredient in it, it wasn't bad, but if you had a bite without the prosciutto it lacked seasoning/salt.  It was still yummy, but it wasn't quite as delicious as I had hoped for. 

I'm hoping that work will slow down enough for us to make a few more farmers' market-inspired meals.  At the very least I have a few more to post about, including the Corn Som Tam with Rock Shrimp we made this afternoon.

Recipe after the jump.

Peach and Mixed Greens Salad

I found this recipe on Epicurious when I was looking for a non-dessert way to use up the fresh peaches I bought at the farmers' market.  The recipe sounded mildly interesting - I liked the combination of the pancetta and the peaches with the arugula and ricotta salata.  In the end, this dish couldn't hold a candle to the Grilled Peach Panzanella we made last summer.  Everything about that salad was just wonderful.  This salad was good, but it never approached wonderful.  It just didn't quite come together for me.  Alex's main complaint about the salad (which I agree with, although it wouldn't have been my biggest complaint) was that sauteing the peaches in a pan with evoo and the rendered fat from the pancetta made the peaches have a greasy/oily mouthfeel.  He would have preferred to wrap the peaches in pancetta and then roast them over a cooling rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet (similar to how you can roast bacon in the oven) because that way the pancetta fat would have dripped off the peaches and would have obviated the need for the additional evoo.  I suggested maybe grilling the pancetta-wrapped peaches for a similar effect.  Either way, it wasn't my favorite peach salad (although it was far from terrible and we ate it all) and I doubt we will be making it again.  Oh, one more thing, you definitely want to use toothpicks to secure your pancetta.  The recipe doesn't call for them but otherwise your pancetta ends up falling off all over the place and not on your peaches.  We would have used toothpicks, but we ran out.

Recipe after the jump!

Vietnamese Peach Relish and Fresh Green Peas and Sugar Snap Peas in Sesame Dressing

What do you do when you end up with tons of random farmers' market produce?  We had peaches, shelling peas, sugar snap peas, green beans, wax beans, cherry tomatoes and a bunch of other goodies in the fridge, so it struck me that tonight's meal had to involve at least a few of those ingredients.  I thought a bit and came up with this Vietnamese Peach Relish (served with seared halibut) and a green pea and sugar snap pea salad.  And then you make a salad the next night and another salad the night after that...  Anyway, this dish was one that I thought would be interesting, fresh and vibrant.  And it was all of those things.  Plus it looked pretty on the white plate we served it on.  But Alex and I came to the conclusion that this peach relish (for better or worse) could have been served with anything - grilled chicken breasts, shrimp, pork chops...  You didn't need to spend $20 a pound for halibut because it doesn't really do anything spectacular for the halibut that it couldn't do just as well for another protein.  If I had to pick a halibut recipe to make again, I would go with the Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt that we made last week because that dish was phenomenal and really showed the halibut off nicely.  If I make the relish again (and I think that I will because I liked it and found it interesting) I might try it with a meat to see how it works out.  As for the peas, they were nice but I almost preferred them in their raw state to cooked because the soy sauce and the sesame oil obscured some of the natural sweetness and flavor of the peas.  I also think we needed to dry the peas off a little better so that the dressing would adhere a little better and not be diluted with the cold water that we rinsed the peas with.  My bad.

Recipes after the jump!

Peach, Prosciutto and Ricotta Crostini

When I was younger my favorite restaurant was an Italian restaurant in Rockville, Maryland called Il Pizzico.  They had a few dishes that I loved - a shrimp and tomato crostini, a pasta with stewed calamari and dessert called "chocolate salami."  We started going there for dinner when it was a really small cafe with a glass case at the front full of desserts and stopped going after it got all fancy and expensive.  I believe Il Pizzico was also my first experience with tiramisu, but I didn't grow to love tiramisu until years later.  Once they fancied the restaurant up, they took all of our favorite dishes off the menu in favor of other, less homestyle dishes and raised prices dramatically.  So that was the end of that.  I haven't been back to Il Pizzico in at least 15 years, but it had a lasting effect on my diet - my love of crostini stems from meals I ate at that restaurant.  I really should ask my mother what went in the crostini aside from shrimp, scallions and tomatoes because she used to make a version of it at home that I would love to recreate.  And I am determined to make chocolate salami eventually just to see if it can possibly be as good as I remember it being. 

Back in June of this year Bon Appetit had an article called "Summer Crostini 7 Ways."  Two of the recipes from that article immediately caught my eye - this one, and a recipe for Tomato, Mozzarella and Thai Basil Crostini that we made about a month ago.  There are a few other recipes that I want to try from that issue (including one for Peas, Mint and Parmesan Crostini), but I figure I will get around to them eventually.  I decided this morning that these crostini would be the perfect light lunch served alongside a simple arugula salad.  We had some of the really nice local ricotta that I picked up from Whole Foods the other day left in the fridge, so we went to the farmers' market this morning and picked up some fresh peaches and some ciabatta bread.  Then we wandered down to Salumeria Rosi to pick up some of their amazing prosciutto.  By the time we accomplished all that it was about 12:45 pm and I was starving so we whipped up some crostini.  I really liked this recipe, but Alex and I both agreed that the Tomato, Mozzarella and Thai Basil Crostini was better.  Alex wanted there to be more prosciutto on each crostini, but that's because he is obsessed.  I thought the amount of prosciutto he wanted totally obscured the flavor of the ricotta and the fresh peaches.  The recipe is inspired by the traditional Italian combination of prosciutto and melon and all in all, I think in this case traditional might be better.  While I enjoyed the summery flavors of this crostini, the combination of peach and prosciutto wasn't quite as successful to me.  Even so I thought it was a really lovely lunch.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Peach Panzanella Salad

I have to thank Tastespotting for providing me with the inspiration for this salad.    A few days ago I was scrolling through the recipes and pictures on Tastespotting and this recipe for Grilled Peach Panzanella Salad caught my eye.  We had some nice fresh peaches from the farmers' market that I had no idea what to do with.  Neither Alex nor I like peach cobbler so that would have been a waste.  Nor do I typically like peaches enough to just eat one.  And Alex dislikes anything peach-flavored (which means that he has never eaten a raw peach before), so I was justifiably nervous about what we made with the pretty peaches I picked up.  This recipe seemed perfect because it showcased the peaches, but toned them down a little by combining them with ingredients like arugula, fresh mozzarella and great bread that we already know and love.  

This salad really blew me away.  When I tasted the dressing by itself I thought the balsamic was overpowering.  And then I tossed it all together and it was marvelous and wonderfully balanced.  It was delicious.  It was so summery and fresh.  After this I think I might be able to convince Alex to try more peach recipes.  I might even get him to eat a peach by itself!  That in and of itself would make the salad an unqualified success.

Recipe after the jump!