Spring is my absolute favorite time of year. Alex loves fall (which is
comparable enough when you are looking at the temperature) but a large
part of what I love about spring is the appearance of things like sugar
snap peas, asparagus and rhubarb at the farmers' market. The
reappearance of the sun and warm temperatures are a bonus. Ramps are one spring ingredient that has I have never really understood. The dishes we made at home with ramps were all pretty good, but they never blew my mind (the best was this White Pizza with Ramps) and I can't remember ever ordering a dish at a restaurant with ramps that really stuck out in my mind. I did have a lovely carrot pasta at Blanca a few weekends ago that had a ramp sauce and a single grilled ramp on top that was lovely, but I think it would have still been lovely without the ramps. I'm sure I have ordered other dishes with ramps because that's what you're supposed to do at a farm-to-table type restaurant in the spring, but seeing as I can't remember a single one they couldn't have been that amazing. And yet I keep trying new ramp dishes because I am stubborn like that. I see them in the farmers' market and I just have to buy them. And then I have to figure out what I want to do with them. Again.
Anyway, I saw this recipe in Hugh Acheson's cookbook, A New Turn in the South: Southern Flavors Reinvented for your Kitchen, not too long ago and I mentally bookmarked it for my next ramp experiment. It looked different from the usual ramp recipes I come across (i.e. serving them with eggs, pasta or pickling them). Our fallback is usually pickled ramps, but I wanted to try something new. And I'm glad I did because this was probably the first ramp recipe where I started to understand why people enjoy ramps so much. In this dish they have such a lovely garlicky flavor that is nicely tempered by the salty flavor of the cheese and the brightness of the lemon juice. "Grilling" our ramps on the grill pan seems to have taken their almost oily and pungent flavor down a notch. I know some people enjoy ramps and eggs together but I have had dishes where the ramps just seemed greasy and a little too in your face funky to me (like in these Fried Eggs with Ramps and Duck Bacon) or completely disappeared into the dish (like these Oeufs en Cocotte with Ramps). We served these ramps with some seared salmon, but I could see serving them any number of other dishes.
Recipe after the jump!
Chicken schnitzel doesn't exactly sound sexy (if I had to pick a sexy-sounding schnitzel it would be duck schnitzel like the one they serve at The Marrow). And it doesn't look sexy. But I feel like I keep running across recipes for it lately and honestly, schnitzel can be really tasty (provided it's not dried out and flavorless, which can be a serious problem with chicken breasts and/or pork). Alex and I have long been fans of breading and cooking chicken. Generally we bread the chicken with some panko and/or cornflakes and throw it in the oven because it's easy and the breading tends to fall off on us when we try to cook it in a pan. But this recipe worked out beautifully - the panko was beautifully golden brown and crispy and the chicken was cooked through without being dry. And none of the breading fell off! Plus when you added the piccata sauce it makes everything that much more delicious. Who doesn't love browned butter with capers and lemon juice? I think chicken schnitzel always needs a sauce because
the breading often isn't seasoned and even though the chicken breasts here weren't
all dried out and overcooked, it's still boneless, skinless chicken
breast with breading. By definition the combination is a little dry. This piccata sauce works nicely, but a spicy sriracha mayo (or a simple squirt of lemon juice) works too.
As for the asparagus salad, I love asparagus salads. And this one worked nicely with the chicken schnitzel because it is crisp, bright and acidic. It cuts through the slight richness of the chicken nicely. This isn't my favorite raw asparagus salad that we have ever made, but it was really nice and fresh, but the dressing gives it a little creamyness and umami. I would make it again.
Recipes after the jump!
There are a lot of things that I love about this recipe. The first is the asparagus itself. Fresh asparagus is one of the things I love most about spring. Charred in a pan with evoo, s&p, the asparagus was sweet but grassy. The second is how wonderful the creamy adobo sauce is. This is a sauce that I want to slather on all sorts of dishes - it is spicy, sweet and tangy. Actually, I think this sauce would work really nicely with skirt steak tacos. I told Alex that if we ever have people over for a Mexican fiesta I want to simply grill up some skirt steak for tacos and make these asparagus tacos. You can use all of the same fixings for both sets of tacos, whip up some homemade guacamole and some elote and it will be an amazing meal. Somehow you taste all of the various flavors here - the adobo sauce adds a ton of flavor without obscuring the flavor of the asparagus or the sweetness of the pickled onions. My two biggest complaints about the Smoky Chicken Tinga Tacos we made were that the flavor of the chipotles obscured everything else and the tacos didn't have any texture. All you tasted was heat and everything was soft. This dish had varying textures and serious depth of flavor. It was sweet, spicy, crunchy, creamy and tangy. In a nutshell, these tacos were delicious. And I will be adding them to my regular taco rotation. They were great with fresh asparagus, but with all of the other flavors and textures going on, normal supermarket asparagus would work too.
Recipe after the jump!
Hurray for fresh asparagus! Before I go on I should disclose that I bought about 3 lbs of fresh asparagus at the farmers' market this week (along with a LOT of other fresh produce, some of which we already used) and as of today we have only used about half of it. So you can expect a few more asparagus recipes shortly. We already made a much lazier version of this Spring Salad of Asparagus, Ramps, Snap Peas, and Peas, with Poached Egg and Lemon Vinaigrette and we are planning on making some asparagus tacos tomorrow. We will have to wait and see how much asparagus we have left after that, but I'm thinking it will be enough for at least one more dish.
I guess I should turn to this salad. I bought My Pizza by Jim Lahey roughly two years ago but we haven't had the opportunity to use it much. There are a ton of delicious looking pizzas in there (one of which I am considering for our remaining asparagus), but there are also some nice salads and other appetizers. For us it has become one of those cookbooks I always mean to use, but somehow never do. I need to fix that because this salad was one of the easiest and tastiest things we have made at home recently. The combination of asparagus, avocado, lime and mint isn't an intuitive one for me but it works really nicely. I was worried this salad would be a little too simple, but it works - it's really simple, but the avocado makes it creamy and a little indulgent and the fresh farmers' market asparagus has a lovely grassy sweetness. Our lime was a little stingy on the juice so I would recommend tasting and adding more lime juice to taste (or a little lime zest if your limes are similarly stingy). This is a dish I can definitely see us making in the future - it's perfect on days where you just don't want to turn on the stove and/or oven, but a mixed green salad doesn't work. It makes a really good side dish that could work with a number of entrees, but I can see myself serving it for brunch with a simple frittata or omelet and some fresh fruit. I don't think I would pair it with pasta, but it could also work nicely with some homemade pizza. I would probably do a simple pizza without too much cheese and meat - maybe a margherita or stracciatella pizza or a pizza with prosciutto and arugula. My Pizza also has a spinach pizza called a Popeye Pie that I would pair this with.
Recipe after the jump!
I love traveling but sometimes, when I get back, all I want is salad. I was in Miami for work last week and when I got back yesterday all I wanted was a salad. So we made some brook trout with this Make-Ahead Radish Fattoush Salad. And then I also had a salad for lunch. Tonight for dinner I wanted something relatively light, but flavorful. I also wanted something that didn't remind me of all of the buffet meals (some of them were pretty decent, but most were pretty blah) I had all last week. This dish was basically the antithesis of the random meats, pastas, sandwiches and salads I had last week. The best part of each meal was the desserts so I had more than my share. Strangely enough, one of the best meals I had last week was the shrimp po' boy that I had at the Fort Lauderdale airport. How random is that? Granted, it had coconut shrimp in it - and who doesn't love coconut shrimp? Given the number of desserts I ate and the shrimp po' boy, it's no wonder I feel like I gained 5 lbs while in Florida.
This post has been weeks in coming. I keep planning to make more Chinese meals for my very very belated Chinese New Year meals. I'm 3 months late at this point, so I guess another few weeks won't make much of a difference. I really am going to try to finish all of the posts up by the end of May. I actually had another tofu recipe picked out for Chinese New Year but I decided in the end to make this dish because it looked easier (and healthier). Everything in the dish worked together in a really interesting way. I loved how soaking the celery, cilantro and scallions in an ice bath made them crisp and refreshing. The sauce was really savory - nutty, spicy and funky. It wasn't my favorite sauce, but it was one of the more interesting Chinese sauces we have made recently. One thing I might recommend is another cooking/heating method for the tofu itself. Microwaving it made it release tofu water which diluted the sauce. So I would either microwave it in another bowl and then transfer it (minus the water) into the serving bowl. Or I would try steaming it. Steamed soft tofu ends up with a better silkier and more custard-like texture to it.
Recipe after the jump!
Pesto usually leaves me feeling a little... blah. I like it on a sandwich or as the sauce on a pizza, but there has to be more stuff going on. A plain pasta tossed in pesto has always struck me as being a little boring. This pesto is far from boring. The combination of basil, mint and fennel seeds (who puts fennel seeds in pesto?) makes things a lot more interesting. And I really like the addition of serrano chilis and dried chili flakes - they give the pesto great kick. You don't want to make this pesto if you are afraid of a little heat. The post on Serious Eats suggests that the sauce has "gorgeous hints of subtle spice" but this isn't a gentle hint of background heat. It should also be said that this pasta doesn't have the level of spice you would expect from a Sichuan dish either. All things considered, this was a pretty interesting take on a simple pasta tossed in pesto that is relatively easy to throw together. There are other pasta dishes that would make my easy mid-week pasta repertoire before this one (including this Pasta with Caramelized Cabbage, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs, this Pasta with Sun Gold Tomatoes or this Spaghetti with Garlic and Oil). But I could see myself making this variation of pesto again. And this pesto might make me reconsider pesto as a delivery method for any number of different seasonings and ingredients. Overall I consider that a win.
Recipe after the jump!
Sometimes I pick out a recipe and I don't expect much from it. Take this recipe for instance. I thought it would be good, but mostly I wanted another easy vegetarian recipe and I got suckered in by the poached egg in the photo. I'm such a sucker for poached eggs. Runny egg yolk is my jam. And yes, I know I sort of mis-used that term. So I sent Alex the recipe and said "hey, we should make this sometime." And then we both proceeded to not do anything about it until New Years Eve rolled around and I wanted a simple dish to make for lunch that didn't require too many ingredients from the grocery. Luckily, we had everything we needed in the fridge. In the spirit of full disclosure, if we had been short on eggs I would have made a special trip to the grocery store just to get eggs. There was no way that I was going to make this soup without poached eggs. It was one of the "optional enhancements" listed in the original recipe but I think it is totally crucial. Even if I weren't obsessed with poached eggs I would think it was crucial for the recipe as a whole. Without the egg the soup lacks body and richness. As the egg yolk melts into the soup it makes the broth a little creamier. And while we're on the topic, I think the harissa is another necessary element. If you don't like heat, just add a little, but I think that without harissa you will be missing out. The same goes for the fresh herbs - the parsley and mint gave the soup some brightness and freshness. But if you absolutely had to pick one thing to leave out, I would leave out the herbs. Or the drizzle of evoo. You could leave that out too. But if you make the soup and add the egg and harissa you will be pleasantly surprised by just how tasty the soup is. Don't get scared when you taste the chickpeas by themselves prior to adding the garnishes. They taste a little bland, but the broth is delicious. And the soup as a whole with the addition of the garnishes is warm and comforting, not to mention really tasty.
Recipe after the jump!
Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I don't know about y'all, but as much as I enjoy Thanksgiving, it wrecks me for weeks to come. Too much starch, too much dairy, too much dessert, too much...well everything really. Alex and I got back to NYC last night after spending Thanksgiving with his family and all I wanted for dinner was either straight up veggies or seafood. We settled on sushi - low carb, no dairy and simple. Well, I assume it's not that simple for the people preparing it, but it doesn't get much simpler for us than picking up the phone and ordering delivery. Today we are having a very simple kabocha squash soup for lunch and some swordfish for dinner. I can't even think about another plate of turkey, stuffing or corn pudding for at least another month.
This tofu dish would have made a good weekend after Thanksgiving meal too - it is satisfyingly spicy and tasty, while still being pretty simple to prepare. We actually made it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but I didn't have time to post it before the holiday. If I have my way I will be digging into the leftovers shortly. My favorite thing about this recipe was how the flavors of the smoked tofu and the 5-spice seasoned tofu combined with the sauce. We used a combination of the two because we had both in the fridge and it just seemed like a good idea. We also didn't have quite enough of either to make the full recipe - either we made a half recipe with one type, or we combined both and made the full recipe. And as much as I love smoked tofu it can get a little overwhelming. The sauce is assertive enough that you would probably be ok using just smoked tofu, but we figured why not combine the two? I love the texture of pressed tofu, which is firmer and has more of a springy/chewy texture than even extra-firm tofu does. We typically use smoked or seasoned pressed tofu in simple salads with celery and peanuts, like this Smoked Tofu with Celery and Peanuts. Mark Bittman also has what looks like an interesting take on the classic Celery and Tofu Salad that I want to make the next time we hit Chinatown for groceries. We served the tofu with some sauteed bok choy with garlic and it was a perfect, light and easy meal. And it was about as un-Thanksgivingy as it gets. Yum.
Recipe after the jump!
I love kale salads. And yet, so many of the ones we make at home are vaguely disappointing. I feel like it's tough to strike the right balance with a kale salad - you need the dressing to be fairly assertive because kale is a hearty little green with a slightly bitter flavor. If you try to dress it the same way you would dress baby spinach or really tender young salad greens with a light balsamic vinaigrette it's just not going to work out. But sometimes the dressing just goes a little too far in the wrong direction and gets too assertive and you lose the kale. I have been trying for months to come up with a spicy Asian kale salad with cashews (for some reason I am really stuck on the cashews) and I keep failing. The first time the dressing wasn't flavorful enough and the second time it was too harsh. It was a bummer. But this recipe is a wonderful quasi-Asian take on a kale salad that combines two of my favorite greens/vegetables - kale and brussels sprouts. It has great flavor - bright fresh herbs, slightly bitter greens, and fried greens all tossed in a spicy fish sauce vinaigrette. And it has wonderful texture. But I should point out that it is labor intensive. Alex took one look at the recipe and his comment was "at least you picked a simple recipe for dinner." I believe my response was along the lines of if he does the menu planning in the future he can avoid over-complicated salad recipes, but until then... We will make at least one change in the future to simplify the recipe a bit - roasting the kale and brussels sprout leaves in the oven saves us the time, aggravation and oil spatter of frying them in small batches. I really liked the crispy texture and the nutty, concentrated flavor of the fried kale and brussels sprouts because it added depth of flavor and additional texture to the salad. But you can achieve a nearly identical result (without risking third degree burns) by roasting the kale and brussels sprouts in the oven. I'm also tempted to try to transform this into an entree salad by serving it with some tofu (we might roast that too) or shrimp. I will probably play with it a little more, but I really liked this salad and aside from tinkering with the cooking method out of self-preservation and laziness, there isn't anything else I can think of that I would change to the base recipe. As a side note, just because I found this recipe doesn't mean I am going to quit my quest to find a perfect spicy Asian kale salad. I'll get there eventually.
P.S. The picture sucks because we misplaced the memory card for our camera and had to use my cell phone. And my iPhone 5s (which has otherwise taken excellent pictures) absolutely and utterly refused to cooperate.
Recipe after the jump!
This recipe has quickly become my new favorite broccoli recipe. I know it doesn't look (or sound) like much, but it's the perfect side dish. It is insanely easy to make and very tasty. I'm not ashamed to admit that we have made it twice in the past week. Last week Alex and I were making one of our favorite quick and easy meals (Stir-Fried Eggs with Cellophane Noodles) for dinner and I wanted a really simple side to go with the eggs. We had some nice broccoli that we picked up at the farmers' market and I looked through a few Asian-y recipes we had made in the past with either broccoli or Chinese broccoli but none of them looked quite right. So I Googled "broccoli fish sauce" and found this recipe on Andrea Nguyen's blog Viet World Kitchen. And I love it. The broccoli is perfectly cooked - tender, but crispy and toasty. Somehow it avoids the pitfall of high heat roasting - overly charred and slightly bitter veggies, as well as the pitfalls of steaming, sauteing or otherwise cooking broccoli so that it ends up kind of mushy and blah. Beyond all that the saltiness from the fish cause provides good flavor, without obscuring the flavor of the broccoli. I should note that we have used nice fresh broccoli from the farmers' market both times we have made the recipe, so I don't know how well this recipe would suit out of season grocery store broccoli that has less inherent flavor and tenderness. But I am sure that at some point we will give it a try. I might also try this with broccolini and just adjust the cooking time as necessary or try it and modify the ingredients slightly. I bet it would work nicely to blast the broccoli in a combination of oil, s&p and then toss in a thinned out harissa paste mixture for some heat...
Recipe after the jump!
The summer is officially over which means that heirloom tomatoes will be disappearing from the farmers' market any day now. To be perfectly honest, the best ones are probably already gone. Every time I walked by a farmers' market in the months of August/September with a decent heirloom tomato selection I couldn't seem to stop myself from picking up another handful (or two) of tomatoes. At least half of the heirloom tomatoes ended up in tomato-mozzarella salads and the like, but I do occasionally feel the need to experiment a bit. I'm currently in a bit of a panzanella phase so I keep making tomato salads with giant croutons of sorts tossed in. I also included a variation on a fattoush in this post that we modified from a Susan Feniger recipe from her Street Food cookbook, but aside from the spices, the salad reminded me more of a panzanella because the bread was olive bread, cut into large croutons, rather than smaller pieces of crispy pita.
My favorite of these three salads was probably the panzanella. It had the right balance of tomato and acidity with the pickled shallots. I might take those shallots and use them in other dishes because I thought they really worked. My second favorite was the heirloom tomato salad with pomegranate-sumac dressing. I thought the flavor of the pomegranate-sumac dressing with the herbs and shallots on top was really nice. My only complaint was that the sumac left it a little gritty. And you have to like the flavor of pomegranate molasses in order for this dish to work for you. You rarely see pomegranate molasses left to shine on its own in quite this way and the rather concentrated sweetness might throw some people. And the sweetness of the pomegranate sweetness masks a bit of the natural sweetness of the tomatoes themselves. As for the fattoush it was my least favorite of the three. I really thought it was going to be amazing, but it was a little heavy and it just wasn't as vibrant and fresh as the other two salads. The heirloom tomatoes just got a little lost.
Recipes (and more pictures) after the jump!
A few weeks ago Alex and I were at an impasse. We have been too busy to cook and when we do cook, we cook the same things over and over again because they are easy. But I picked up some little gem lettuce and we had a huge basil plant from the farmers' market and I wanted to do something fun with them. So we made this salad. My original plan was to pick up a rotisserie chicken from Citarella and throw it on top, but they were sold out by the time I made it to the store. So we ended up making this salad along with an heirloom tomato and fresh mozzerella salad with even more of the fresh basil. As far as this salad went, I wished the dressing had a little more umph to it. It was good. I liked it. And I always like homemade croutons. But I wanted a little more rich, nutty flavor from the anchovy and more basil flavor. Also, in the future I will probably stem and hand tear my little gem lettuce. We left the cute little heads of lettuce mostly whole here, which meant that the dressing didn't really penetrate into the heart of each head of little gem. The next time I get my hands on little gem lettuce there is a Nancy Silverton recipe I want to try in her Mozza cookbook. But lord only knows when I will find more little gem lettuce at Fairway as well as the free time to cook, so it could be some time before we get around to it...
Recipe after the jump!
I have been trying to come up with a really good recipe to break my blogging fast, but we haven't been cooking much recently. I've been busy with work and we have been a little lazy of late - when we do cook, we tend to stick with easy riffs on dishes we have made in the past. I just don't have the energy to make elaborate meals when I am this busy. Alex has also been pretty busy with school so he hasn't had the time to cook either so the blog has just been kind of hanging out there all alone. Sorry blog - I just don't have time for you like I used to. And I can't see that changing anytime in the near future. I salute anyone who works full time and still manages to post several times a week, but I don't think I can do it anymore. Anyway, I kept trying to come up with something really amazing for the blog (rather than the random salads and such we have been making recently), but I finally decided that I needed to just post the next thing I made that was new.
I'm not sure why or how I started thinking about making enchiladas, but this dish has been a few weeks in the making. It's the end of the summer and a lot of my favorite vegetables (like corn) are about to disappear from the farmers' market so I wanted to take advantage of them while I can for this dish. I was originally going to make chicken and zucchini enchiladas with salsa verde, but I changed my mind once I saw fresh corn at the market. I also abandoned the idea of salsa verde once I realized that I had everything I needed at the apartment to make a quasi-traditional red enchilada sauce. I used a recipe from Homesick Texan for the sauce and then started playing around. I threw onions, zucchini (also from the farmers' market) and corn in the enchilada filling. I also added some cilantro stems, which is a recent thing that I secretly love doing. It's my new little thing. I didn't feel like going through the process of rolling my enchiladas so I stacked them instead (kind of like a Mexican lasagna with corn tortillas instead of noodles). And then I threw it all in the oven and baked it.
All things considered, I think this was pretty successful. We have only made enchiladas once or twice before (and never stacked enchiladas) and I'm always pretty happy with myself when we are winging it on something this new and it turns out. I would probably play with the recipe a bit in the future to make it perfect, but it was pretty good. The sauce had good flavor - nice and smoky, with some heat without being bitter or gritty. The vegetables had good flavor too (although you could swap out the veggies we used for whatever was in season). I had originally worried that the vegetable filling wouldn't be filling enough without some black beans or another zucchini, but I think we ended up with just the right amount (and it was plenty filling). One thing we did mess up on - we forgot to cover the enchiladas with tin foil for the first 20 minutes, which would have helped the enchiladas stay moister/saucier. Oops. That was both Alex's and my chief complaint - that the enchiladas dried out a bit. I would definitely cover them in the future.
Recipe after the jump!
For the past few years I have gone on a summertime gazpacho kick. What tends to happen is that Alex and I make at least 2 batches of gazpacho (some more traditional than others) over the course of the summer and I find it hard to resist gazpacho when it makes its way onto the menu at some of my favorite restaurants. This summer I have expanded into trying the various take-out gazpacho offerings from my favorite soup and lunch places. For the record, this summer I have been particularly into the Andalusian gazpacho from Zabar's (which I think is better than their traditional gazpacho). I'm not exactly sure why, but I have been
fixated on the idea of watermelon gazpacho since last summer. I can't
remember ever trying watermelon gazpacho but it sounded delicious,
refreshing and oh-so summery. I looked at a number of different watermelon gazpacho recipes and this recipe from CHOW seemed like a good starting point. I meant to play with it a little more, but we ended up making it almost exactly as written. I wish I had played with it a little more because there are a few changes I think I would have made. I would have cut down on the amount of garlic, used shallot instead of onion and maybe cut down on the amount of vinegar. Of course it's easy to say that I would have made those changes after the fact, because those are the same changes that I would make after having tasted the gazpacho. I found the gazpacho slightly harsh and acidic. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but it had a lingering aftertaste that I didn't find altogether too pleasant. When I first tasted the gazpacho it didn't immediately strike me as harsh or acidic, but the more I ate, the more those flavors seemed to intensify. We let our gazpacho hang out in the fridge overnight on the theory that the flavors could really meld that way and maybe that was the problem? Maybe this is the type of soup you need to eat right then and there because given too much time the flavors overdevelop? Who knows. Either way, this wasn't our most successful gazpacho ever. I am thinking that for our next gazpacho experiment we will make this Cucumber Gazpacho with Shrimp and Melon, which I considered (and discarded) for this batch because I decided I wanted a gazpacho that was more melon and less other stuff.
Recipe after the jump!
For the past few weeks I have been going a little crazy with the heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' market. I can't help myself. Ever since I discovered just how wonderful heirloom tomatoes can be I have been a little obsessed. Between the heirloom tomatoes and the fresh corn at the farmers' market I have a bad habit of focusing on them to the exclusion of all other vegetables. And then I have to scramble to find new and interesting recipes to use all of the corn and heirloom tomatoes ASAP because neither of them have a good shelf life. If I were a more strategic farmers' market shopper I would only buy ingredients with a better shelf life - like zucchini and/or eggplant. Anyway, I bought somewhere between 2 and 3 lbs of heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' market last Friday and then had to figure out what to do with them over the weekend. I wanted to try something new and since we had a lot of tomatoes, I decided to make a recipe from our Susan Feniger cookbook (Heirloom Tomatoes with Black Garlic and Basil Vinaigrette) and a recipe that I had bookmarked from Bon Appetit for shirazi salad with heirloom tomatoes. There is an heirloom tomato tart recipe that I have been dying to make, but it's just too time/labor intensive. I am going to try to make it before the end of the summer but I make no promises. The other thing that keeps me from making the recipe is that it requires turning on the oven, which is the absolute last thing I want to do on a hot summer day, no matter how delicious the end results might be...
Alex and I disagree over which recipe we preferred, which happens from time to time. He preferred the Susan Feniger recipe, whereas I preferred the shirazi salad. As soon as I took a bite of the shirazi salad I knew it wasn't going to be his favorite. Alex has a healthy suspicion of parsley and dill when used in abundance and Middle Eastern cuisine can be a little aggressive in its usage of parsley. I really like the flavors of both, so I didn't have a problem with it but I wasn't surprised to hear that it wasn't his favorite tomato salad ever. If you look at the picture after the break you will see how heavily herbed this dish was. As for the Susan Feniger recipe, it was very tasty. I always love the combination of tomatoes and basil. But I didn't think it really distinguished itself from other tomato-basil salads we have made. Perhaps if we had the black garlic (which has a pretty distinctive taste) it would have made more of an impression? I don't know. Our tomatoes also had a ton of juice so they thinned out the vinaigrette a lot and it didn't really coat the tomatoes as well as I had hoped. Perhaps we should have drained some of the tomato juice first but I didn't want to waste any of the tomato-y goodness... It was
delicious (as far as I am concerned, it would be nearly impossible for a
salad made with ripe heirloom tomatoes, basil and balsamic to not be
delicious) and I would eat it again, but I don't think it will stand out
in my mind in comparison to all of the other heirloom tomato salads.
If I can track down some black garlic in the coming weeks I will have to
try it again (and maybe drain some of the juice) and see if that makes a difference or not.
I have another 1 1/2 lbs of heirloom tomatoes that I picked up at the farmers' market yesterday. Later today I will sit down and figure out what I want to make next...
Recipes after the jump!
Clearly I am fickle because I just found my new favorite watermelon salad. And I think I declared my previous favorite (Hugh Acheson's Watermelon-Feta-Arugula Salad with Serrano Chili Vinaigrette) about two weeks ago. So it had a short but well-deserved reign. Both watermelon salads have a wonderful balance of sweet, spicy and savory, but this one won by a nose. I think it was the addition of the Thai basil and radishes. I really liked the crunch and the slight peppery flavor of the radishes, as well as the peppery fragrance of the Thai basil. And the fish sauce. I don't know. It just works so well. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the radishes with the watermelon, but it worked. It's light and refreshing, but full of punch Asian flavors. And Asian flavors beat feta cheese for me 9 times out of 10. I really enjoy feta cheese but I love fish sauce. After eating a fairly heavy meal at The Marrow last night (duck schnitzel, crispy kale with scallops and bone marrow with uni anyone?) and greasy Chinese at my desk for lunch, I really needed something light for dinner. This salad couldn't have been more delicious. Note to those who don't love spice - you're going to want to cut back on the amount of sambal oelek and chili or seed your chili prior to throwing it in. Just like Hugh Acheson's recipe, there is some fairly serious kick to this dish. Another note, if you're a Top Chef nerd like I am, it's kind of funny to compare recipes between Tom Colicchio and Hugh Acheson since they are both judges on the show and Hugh was a contestant on Top Chef Masters a few seasons ago.
We served the watermelon salad with sizzling ginger-lemongrass tofu. We had a block of handmade firm tofu from The Bridge that I picked up at Fairway that I wanted to use and I wanted something different. So we went with another recipe from Food & Wine that sounded like it would be a good pairing with the watermelon salad. If you can find tofu from The Bridge in your local Whole Foods I would highly recommend it. It had a really nice firm, but still creamy texture and it had more flavor than your average block of supermarket tofu. It was really good. I can't wait to try it in other dishes. As for this dish, it was good. I'm always surprised how much flavor a dish can pick up by just sizzling some aromatics. And it did go very well with the watermelon salad. I would totally make them together again in the future.
Recipes after the jump!
Hurray tacos! I love tacos. And I love fresh corn. So I knew this recipe was going to be good. There are actually a ton of corn taco recipes out there so before fresh corn season ends I hope I have the chance to try out a few more. This recipe was one of the easier ones out there and didn't require an additional trip to the grocery store. It also included a number of ingredients that I love (corn, zucchini and cotija cheese) and that are at the peak of their season right now. I thought these tacos were nice (and very summery), but I'm positive that the perfect corn taco is out there. I just know it. I tried the tacos with two different salsas and I thought the salsas added another level of flavor that I really appreciated. I might try the corn-zucchini filling for quesadillas, enchiladas or tostadas. And I wonder if some blackbeans would make a good addition? So many thoughts, so little time left before fresh corn goes out of season...
Recipe after the jump!
I know I referenced this recipe weeks ago and promised to post about it. And then I didn't. This isn't going to be the longest post ever but I know myself and if I don't get something up about it now it's not going to happen. So here goes. This recipe was the first recipe we made from Hugh Achesons' cookbook and I loved it. The serrano chili vinaigrette is not shy - it's spicy. But it works really nicely with the sweet watermelon. If you don't like spice, you should cut the number of chilis in half (or seed some of the chilis). We like spice so we went whole hog, but I think it would be a little too spicy for a lot of people. Anyway, I know we have made a number of watermelon salads on this blog (I have a thing for watermelon salad), but this might have been my favorite one ever. It had a perfect balance of salty, sweet and spice. Sometimes the cheese can throw off the sweetness and freshness of the watermelon (particularly if your watermelon isn't very sweet), but this salad retained all of the fresh and bright flavors that I love and added some kick. We did cut back on the amount of cheese slightly, but that was due to the fact that we ran out (not because I made the strategic decision to do so). I thought the amount of feta was fine as we made it so I will probably continue to use a little less cheese than the amount the recipe calls for in future watermelon salads. But if you want a fun and funky take on a classic summertime treat, make this salad. If your tastes are at all similar to mine, you will love it.
Recipe after the jump!
Kohlrabi is one vegetable that I just can't into. It's fine. But I'm just not sure that it is worth the trouble to peel and cook at home. The flavor and texture is vaguely turnip or potato-like and since I'm just not that into turnips or potatoes, it makes it hard for me to really enjoy kohlrabi. The first time we tried to cook kohlrabi at home we didn't peel off enough of the outer layer, which was incredibly fibrous and hard. The second time we roasted it with garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was pretty tasty that way, but it was pretty ugly so we didn't bother to take pictures and post the recipe. This recipe is obviously more photogenic and it is also pretty tasty, but it didn't blow me away. We made this recipe previously with daikon and I think I liked both the crunchier texture and the slightly peppery flavor of the daikon better in this dish.
Recipe after the jump!
Alex and I were left with a dinner dilemma on Sunday. We had a lot of items in the fridge, but nothing really went together and I had no interest in going to the grocery store or cleaning up after an elaborate meal. I really wanted something quick and easy. Once we realized what we had in the fridge, the simplest solution seemed to be to make some form of arepas with the store-bought arepas. I thought the arepas already had cheese in them, but it turned out that they were plain. I threw together some black beans, with sauced jalapenos, onions, garlic, cilantro and cumin. I'm not typically a huge fan of beans but these were actually very tasty. I'm proud (and a little bit shocked) to say that we ate the entire pan of beans. The only problem with the dish was was that it needed some sort of a sauce. I originally considered taking one of the avocados and blending it with some lime juice and other ingredients to make more of a sauce, but we ran out of limes (and I got lazy). Looking back on it, I wish we had made something like this Avocado-Lime Sauce to give the arepas some moisture. They were a little dry. Halfway
through the meal I admitted that I really should have thrown half of the
avocado in the blender and
served the other half sliced because it would have been the best of both worlds. Beans and arepas (particularly plain arepas) need something saucy and/or creamy to really make them come together. I had hoped that the sliced avocado itself would be enough, but while it did provide some creaminess, it didn't quite get the job done. Oh well. I think it would have made for a really nice sauce for the arepas. As a side note, that avocado-lime sauce gives me some interesting ideas for a shrimp tostada, but that is a dish (and a blog post) for another day.
Recipe after the jump!
