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!
In mid-April I started thinking tacos and Cinco de Mayo. Mexican food screams warm weather to me and I have been dreaming about warm weather since about December... If only I had visited the farmers' market on Monday I would have made these charred asparagus tacos for Cinco de Mayo but I didn't have time to visit the farmers' market before today. Before today I hadn't been to the farmers market in 2 weeks so I was pretty excited when I went today and saw all of the fresh spring veggies. Thank goodness for spring! I was so sick of winter and so very excited for fresh asparagus. When sugar snaps finally make it to the farmers' market I will do a giant happy dance. Moving on. My other Cinco de Mayo alternative was to make carnitas (Smitten Kitchen posted a slight variation on Homesick Texan's carnitas recipe and it looks super simple and tasty and Bon Appetit has a Beer-Braised Carnitas recipe that I find intriguing), but because Cinco de Mayo fell on a Monday this year it wasn't going to happen. I don't know about you, but I am barely prepared enough on Monday to throw something together - roasting or braising pork shoulder for 2-4 hours (or cooking it all day a slow cooker) just isn't going to happen.
So I guess you can fairly say that this recipe was my backup. Alex occasionally orders chicken tacos but I don't think I ever do. Then again, I do like chicken enchiladas so I guess it's not all that different. But chicken generally seems like such a cop out to me. I decided to try out this recipe anyway because what did I have to lose? It sounded good and the pictures looked good. And to be honest, I didn't have anything else planned. I was looking for a little more depth of flavor - instead I mostly tasted the chipotles and adobo sauce. And once I topped the chicken with tomatillo salsa I mostly tasted heat. The tomatillo salsa added brightness and acidity, but I wish we had made an equally bright and spicy pineapple salsa or maybe a mango salsa instead. I think a little sweetness would have been a good counterpoint to the chicken tinga tacos and some textural contrast would have been a really welcome addition. With the salsa and the braised chicken you ended up with a mouthful of fairly wet and somewhat mushy taco. Pineapple would provide some texture, but adding jicama to any salsa would work too. If you do make these tacos, make sure to drain the chicken fairly well before putting it on the tortilla. Same goes for the salsa. Otherwise you end up with a pool of liquid in your taco, which leads to a rapidly disintegrating corn tortilla...
Recipe after the jump!
This is totally embarassing. Alex and I made this roast chicken back in February or March. And then I forgot to post it. I really thought it was up on the blog. And then I was looking today today at other recipes that I had bookmarked to try and came across the draft of this post. The recipe was on there, the picture was too (even though it's not a very good picture), but I never got around to adding any text. Fail.
Roast chicken is one of my favorite things if it is well done. And Peruvian roast chicken seems to be, on average, a lot better than your average roast chicken. I don't know how they season it traditionally but their rotisserie chicken is magical - even the white meat is juicy and flavorful. I also love that spicy green sauce you get at Peruvian restaurants to go with their roast chicken. It's pretty much the best thing in the world. So it's a little shocking that it took me this long to make it at home. In my defense - it turns out that there is a whole lot of mayo and sour cream in the sauce. I don't know why the addition of mayonnaise and sour cream to a sauce that I know will be spicy and delicious bothers me when I make it at home, but it throws me for a loop. However, I am going to have to get over it because this stuff was pretty delicious. It's creamier than what I usually get at the Peruvian restaurants that I go to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It also doesn't taste quite the same, but for a homemade version (that we adapted from Serious Eats), this was close enough for government work. Ours had some pretty good kick so if you want your green sauce a little milder, leave out some of the jalapeno seeds.
Recipe after the jump!
Like most of the pictures we take of our food for the blog, this picture doesn't look very appetizing. Actually, this picture is worse than most because the sauce looks like a pool of blood so it makes the whole experience a little... gorier than usual. But notwithstanding how the sauce looks, it is damn good. It is the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness, but nice and rich. Adding the butter to the sauce at the very end made it glossy and rich. Reducing the pomegranate juice in the porky cast iron pan made the whole dish that much porkier and more flavorful. It also pairs really nicely with the spice rub on the outside of the pork, which isn't spicy but it does have a lot of flavor. I would love to make this dish for a more casual dinner party - it is easy to make but it is pretty distinctive and delicious. I think with bread, a nice salad and some veggies (roast brussels sprouts would be lovely) it would make a really nice meal that is elegant and flavorful, but not fussy. Tonight we served the pork with broccoli we roasted with jalapeno, shallots and garlic. Roasting broccoli is easily my favorite way to prepare it -it gets all nutty and crispy around the edges, but tender on the inside. Sauteed broccoli tends to be a little mushier and the flavors aren't as concentrated. The thinly sliced shallots were crispy and reminded me of onion straws or fried shallots - we usually mince or chop up our onions or shallots rather than tossing in thinly sliced rings but I will totally do the ring thing more often. I thought they added a really nice flavor and texture to the dish. It never would have occurred to me to add sliced jalapenos to the broccoli (that was all Alex), but they worked really nicely. The broccoli picked up a surprising amount of flavor and heat from the jalapenos, without being too spicy.
Recipes 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!
There are a few cookbooks out there that I have been thinking about buying for years. Some of them are by cookbook authors whose cookbooks we already own. One cookbook that I have been thinking about buying for years is Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. But everytime I convince myself that I don't need yet another cookbook. We easily have 30-40 cookbooks in the apartment, some of which we have never used. I tried to make a deal with myself a few years ago that I wouldn't buy another cookbook until I made at least one recipe from each cookbook. Clearly that never happened. Earlier today I was trying to find a recipe for Uyghur laghman noodles and after finding out that Beyond the Great Wall had a recipe for laghman I went ahead and ordered it on Amazon. My compromise was to buy the cookbook in Kindle format so it doesn't clutter up the apartment. I thought it made a lot of sense (although it does make it more difficult sometimes to find and use the recipes).
This dish is one of the dishes that I remember fondly from China, but haven't eaten since I left. You don't get a lot of Uyghur food in the United States. And when I showed Alex the recipe, he was a little shocked by how un-Chinese it all was. This dish screams Italy more than China - it's like a pasta with a tomato and meat sauce. It's a relatively homey and simple flavor combination - no spices (although we added cumin), no heat, just lamb, bell peppers and tomatoes.
Recipe after the jump!
