Stir-Fried Sugar Snap Peas with Chinese Sausage

I have a bad habit of buying far too much produce anytime I hit the farmers' market or the grocery store in early summer.  Everything just looks so fresh and delicious.  Even though our fridge was already full to the brim, I couldn't resist buying some more fresh asparagus and sugar snap peas, as well as a gigantic daikon, at the farmers' market behind the Museum of Natural History on Sunday.  So today for lunch I had to figure out how to use some of that produce.  This was the result.  We had to modify the recipe somewhat because it called for far too much liquid, but I am modifying the recipe even further here so the sauce thickens up even more.

The flavors were really good here.  I loved the combination of the sweet Chinese sausage and the sugar snap peas and asparagus.  You have to be really careful not to overcook the vegetables because then they will just be mushy and gross.  Part of the beauty of this dish is tasting the rich, savory and sweet sausage balanced against the fresh crisp vegetables.

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp and Pineapple Salad

There is a Vietnamese restaurant called Present in Falls Church, VA that my mother and I love.  The food is absolutely delicious, and the atmosphere far surpasses that of all of the other Vietnamese restaurants in the Falls Church/Eden Center area.  For those of you unfamiliar with that area of Virginia, it is Vietnamese restaurant central.  Some of our other favorites in the area include Huong Viet and Viet Royale.  If you're in the area you really have to check them out.  Try the butter-fried frog legs and lotus root salad at Huong Viet, and the banh xeo and caramel shrimp at Viet Royale.  But if you go to Present, you absolutely have to try two things - the "Treasure of the Sea" (a fantastic salad made with pineapple, carrot, onion, lemongrass, fried garlic, roasted peanuts, tiger shrimp, and calamari) and the "Silken Shawl Imperial Autumn Roll" (the best pork and shrimp stuffed Vietnamese spring roll that you have ever had).

Today for lunch I decided to try and make a version of their "Treasure of the Sea" using large shrimp, pineapple, red onion, cilantro, mint, roasted salted peanuts, lime juice, fish sauce and a touch of sugar.  I can't claim that my version of the salad is anywhere near as good as the one they serve at Present, but it was still a really nice fresh, tasty lunch on a warm late spring/early summer day.  The next time I make the salad I think I will add in calamari for variety and perhaps some fried shallots for crunch.

Recipe (and pictures of the food at Present) after the jump!

Linguine with Clams

One night in Aruba we ate at an Italian restaurant called Gianni's with some of our friends who attended the wedding.  I ended up ordering a shrimp scampi pasta instead of their fettucine with clams, but I have been thinking about pasta with a white clam sauce ever since.  I actually went grocery shopping at Zabar's yesterday and came home with a pound of fresh linguine and told Alex that I demanded linguine with clams one night for dinner next week.  Today we went out to lunch at Mad for Chicken with some friends of ours in K-town (aka Koreatown) where I introduced everyone to Korean fried chicken.  For those of you who haven't had it, you are really missing out.  The skin is light and incredibly crispy, without all of the extra breading that Americans use.  And they serve it in one of two sauces - a sweet soy & garlic soy and a hot & spicy sauce.  Both sauces are delicious.  Anyway, back to the linguine.  So after we went to lunch we went grocery shopping at H-Mart (a Korean grocery store) and I saw some gorgeous little neck clams.  And the light said "linguine with clams for dinner tonight!"  Actually, these clams were so little that I was almost convinced they were cockles, but they would have been pretty huge for cockles and they were clearly clam shells.  Moving on.

I bought Mario Batali's Molto Gusto cookbook a few months ago and I have been rather obsessed with it ever since.  As I was explaining to Alex, this cookbook is so much more approachable than his other cookbooks, which often require esoteric ingredients and very labor-intensive preparations.  We made one of his pasta recipes from the Babbo Cookbook a few years ago and it took us about 4 hours to make the ragu, make the homemade pasta, and serve dinner.  Don't get me wrong - the meal was delicious.  But 4 hours?  Anyway, I have been eying the recipe for Linguine with Clams in Molto Gusto ever since I bought it.  We finally made it this evening and it was everything I hoped it would be.  One of the beauties of a good white clam sauce is that it is incredibly simple - you mix evoo, garlic, white wine, red pepper flakes, and parsley with some clams and some pasta and it's just wonderful.  The pasta is light and fresh, but very flavorful.  The linguine itself soaks up so much flavor from the sauce, and the clams remain nice and sweet, with a kick from the red pepper flakes.  Better yet?  Dinner was on in the table in 20-30 minutes!  And that included a quick salad of cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, sea salt and balsamic vinegar that I threw together, which incidentally was a perfect accompaniment to the pasta.

Recipe after the jump!

Thank you

It occurred to me this morning while I was washing dishes after our eggs benedict experiment that I really owe some thanks to everyone who made this blog possible.  For late 20-somethings, Alex and I have an incredibly well-equipped kitchen, even before we were married and the wonder of the wedding registry kicked in.  Thanks to Alex's family we have a huge collection of All-Clad pots, pans, utensils and even an All-Clad slow-cooker.  Thanks to mine we have a KitchenAid stand mixer, a food processor, a mini-prep food processor, a blender and an immersion blender.  And thanks to our friends we have wine glasses, mixing bowls, dishes, All-Clad measuring cups, Shun knives, cutting boards, serving platters, etc.

So thanks everyone!  We love you guys and we think of you every time we cook.

Eggs "Benedict" with Asparagus and Prosciutto

While in Aruba I got in a conversation with friends about how I am intimidated by hollandaise.  I'm not really sure at this point why I stay away from hollandaise in my kitchen, I just know that I have yet to make eggs benedict at home, because it would require me to make hollandaise sauce.  I've always heard that hollandaise is hard to make - it breaks, you have to whisk it by hand over a saucepan of gently simmering water, etc.  Then I realized, if you're going the home cook version, you can also make hollandaise in a blender.  Genius!  But when I told Alex that we were going to make the hollandaise for our eggs benedict in a blender he shamed me into doing it the old-fashioned way.  Well, really he shamed himself into it because I refused to be the one standing over the saucepan of gently simmering water whisking away.  Instead, Alex had to whisk the eggs into submission while I commentated.  And for the record, the first batch of hollandaise we made broke.  So we had to start over.  See?  I had reason to stay away - hollandaise is finicky!  But in the end, particularly once you know what you are looking for, it's not hard to make.  Basically, we learned that the hollandaise goes from thin, to thick, to thickest - almost the consistency of aioli or homemade mayonnaise.  Stop once you get to that really thick point, otherwise your sauce might break and end up a buttery, liquidy mess.  It just requires some knowledge, babysitting and arm muscle.

I decided to top my eggs benedict with asparagus and prosciutto rather than smoked salmon, or the more traditional ham.  And I decided to serve it on toasted crusty sourdough from Amy's Breads.  Alex and I both agreed that we loved the sourdough in our version of eggs benedict.  It soaked up the runny egg yolks and the hollandaise sauce without getting mushy, and it gave the dish great flavor.  Also, this hollandaise was lighter (overall it was just less heavy and rich) and more lemon-y than most I have tasted.  I know a lot of recipes call for either vinegar or lemon juice and I have to say that with the asparagus I loved the noticeable lemon flavor of our hollandaise.  The proscuitto added just the right note of rich, salty, porky goodness - without it I think the dish would have been missing something.  As much as I loved this dish, I think we will probably only make it once every 6 months or so because it requires so many pots and pans and a good amount of effort.  But it was delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemony Garlic Roast Chicken Breasts and Radicchio Salad with Gorgonzola and Peppered Walnuts

Roast chicken is one of our old standbys.  We tend to keep bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts in the fridge at all times.  Roasting them up takes little to no effort or thought and provides us with a delicious dinner.  Another thing I love about roasting chicken breasts is that you can mix up flavors, seasonings, and herbs to make it a new dish every time.  The most common combination of flavors for us, and the one we used this time, is evoo, s&p, garlic, fresh thyme, and lemon.  The flavors are nice and light, and vaguely Mediterranean.  The only caveat is that if you use too much lemon the skin of the chicken never crisps up and the flavor and acidity of the lemon dominates everything else.

I went a little nuts at the grocery store the other day and bought three beautiful heads of radicchio (mostly because they just looked so pretty).  We used one last night for our Prosciutto-Wrapped Radicchio, but there were two more heads of radicchio staring up at me from the vegetable drawer.  So I decided to make some sort of salad to go with our roast chicken for tonight.  Actually, I gave Alex the option of making a random mixed green salad with leftover romaine or concocting some sort of radicchio salad.  He chose the radicchio over the romaine based on the justification that if we didn't use the radicchio up ASAP we would forget about it.  I think the same rationale applies to the romaine (which we have forgotten about in the past), but I'll go with it.  So I started looking up various radicchio salad recipes and this is the one Alex picked.  We didn't have any Cabrales blue cheese, and I'm not a huge fan of Roquefort, so I substituted Gorgonzola cheese, which I love.  If we had any Valdeon in the fridge I would have thrown that in as well, but our fridge isn't fully back up to speed after Aruba yet, although it is getting close.

Recipes after the jump!

Disappearing Zucchini Orzo and Prosciutto-Wrapped Radicchio

 
Several years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life.  I went through a phase where I read every book even remotely related to food.  I have since grown out of that phase, but it must be said that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was one of the better books I read then.  While the book was a very interesting read, what really stuck with me was her recipe for "Disappearing Zucchini Orzo."  I had grated zucchini to use in zucchini breads before, but mixing grated zucchini into pasta had never crossed my mind.  And boy is it good and easy.  I think this is the perfect gateway dish to get kids to eat zucchini (then again how would I know since I don't have any).  The zucchini isn't a distinct and overwhelming flavor in this dish - instead it is somewhat masked by the taste of the Parmigiano-Reggiano, but you are still getting several servings of zucchini down in a really delicious fashion.  I also love that the whole dish comes together in a matter of minutes.  While you boil the pasta, you can grate the zucchini, chop the onion and garlic, then saute everything together.  Voila!  An easy, healthy, vegetarian weeknight meal.

We served our orzo this evening with prosciutto-wrapped radicchio - something I have been meaning to make for months now.  Alex loves prosciutto and I love the idea of using random vegetables like radicchio in different ways, so it really was the perfect dish for us.  I think the tang of the balsamic vinegar that I sprinkled on after I took the radicchio out of the pan was what really made the dish come together.  Without the balsamic it would have been a little blah, but with the balsamic it was yummy.

Recipe after the jump!