Cherry Tomato Salad

This salad came about as part of an effort to use up things in our kitchen.  We had cherry tomatoes from the farmers' market, plus an English cucumber, feta cheese, kalamata olives and fresh parsley, all in the fridge.  It was also part of our millionth resolution to eat healthy.  As always, I have my doubts that our resolution will stick, but that's ok.  At least we get a few healthy meals out of it.  

I found this recipe on The Way the Cookie Crumbles, which originally found the recipe in Cook's Illustrated.  And then I also saw it on Annie's Eats.  Both blogs had much prettier pictures than mine.  Oops.  I am perfectly happy to admit that food styling is not my forte and my dishes are pretty boring.  If only I had a house with a decent sized kitchen I would own a variety of fun serving dishes, but I just don't have the cabinet space in my little NYC apartment kitchen!  I am always oogling pretty new dishes from Anthropologie, Fishs Eddy and Crate and Barrel.  I went through an Etsy obsession too, but I had to rein myself in.  Anyway, this salad might not look pretty but it was pretty nice to eat.  It's not one of those "oh my god, where have you been all of my life" recipes, but I didn't think it would be.  I liked the concept of using the tomato liquid to create a vinaigrette so the salad really is all about the tomatoes.  The shallots that are simmered in the tomato liquid while it is reducing become super sweet and delicious, which I thought was really nice.  I might follow the lead of The Way the Cookie Crumbles and Annie's Eats and omit the kalamata olives in the future.  I love olives, but I felt like they were a little overwhelming in this recipe.  The ingredients are very similar to other quasi Greek salads we have made before, but somehow the salad tasted pretty unique.

Recipe after the jump!

Seared Tuna with Olive Tapenade Vinaigrette and Arugula

On Saturday Alex and I went to Chelsea Market after having lunch at The Spotted Pig.  I went a little crazy at The Lobster Place buying fresh seafood.  There were these amazing Mayan Shrimp from Guatemala (biggest shrimp I have ever seen - more on that later), gorgeous ruby red tuna steaks, huge lobsters, Dungeness crab, etc.  If good seafood wasn't so expensive I would have gone buckwild.  But I managed to restrain myself with 3 things - the Mayan shrimp, the tuna and some nice wild salmon.  I know it's lame that I always buy salmon, but I can't resist.  It's delicious, easy to cook and one of my favorite fish.  Next time I promise to get something a little more exotic.  Anyway, back to my tuna!  When we cooked up the recipe in my last post about tuna, Seared Tuna with Green Onion Wasabi Sauce, I had two other recipes that I really wanted to make, but we didn't happen to have the ingredients at the time.  So I decided to go ahead and make one of them, only once again we didn't have all of the ingredients.  But I picked the recipe that required the fewest ingredients we didn't have at home (in this case basil and baguette) and ran by Fairway on the way home from work.

I have to say that the tapenade in this dish was fantastic.  I have never thought to add balsamic vinegar, basil and lemon zest to olive tapenade but it really worked.  I also never would have thought to serve tuna steaks with olive tapenade, but that worked too.  The tapenade was equally delicious when drizzled over the tuna steaks or spread on the toasted baguette slices and provided a ton of flavor.  Without the tapenade the tuna steaks would have been a little blah, but with the tapenade it was a completely different dish.  I might try out the tapenade with other dishes - perhaps with some roast chicken breasts or a nice seared piece of striped bass.  I'm not sure if I will make this tuna recipe the next time I pick up some nice tuna steaks, but I am glad that I finally got the chance to try it.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Chicken with Olives, Lemon and Garlic

So I will be the first to admit that this roast chicken recipe is more than a little labor-intensive.  It's definitely not a roast chicken recipe where you just throw the chicken into the pan and then forget about it for an hour.  Instead you have to flip the chicken a few times, reduce the heat, stir the onion-olive mixture, etc.  But I love me a good roast chicken and we hadn't made one in awhile, so I thought why not.  I had two recipes pulled to try (one by Ina Garten and this one by Susan Spicer) and the Spicer recipe won out because it didn't involve 4 plus hours of marinating time and spatchcocking a chicken.  Although I think if we had read both recipes fully we would have realized that in the end the Susan Spicer recipe was actually more labor-intensive than the other recipe.  But hey, there's nothing wrong with a labor of love.  And I love roast chicken so I'm willing to work at it a bit.

The biggest endorsement I can give of this dish is that Alex couldn't stop eating it.  Every time I turned around, he was eating more sourdough dipped in the chicken jus, or the onions that roasted alongside the chicken.  I think that he polished off the better part of a red onion and just under half of a very large loaf of sourdough all on his own.  And that was on top of the arugula salad and the chicken breast he ate.  He ate.  And ate.  And then ate some more.  Then he stated that roast chicken with arugula salad and some fresh bread is one of his favorite meals.  Yeah it the chicken takes a little effort to prepare, but it is well worth it.  The chicken breasts were flavorful and juicy.  Alex is going to eat the legs tomorrow for lunch so I can't attest to how they tasted, but I bet they were delicious as well.  And then there was the mix of onions, olives, lemon quarters, and garlic that we roasted underneath the chicken.  The onions were sweet and yet savory and totally flavorful.  Then there were the olives, which provided you with bursts of saltiness in every bite.  You can definitely taste the lemons - both in the chicken itself, and in the chicken jus underneath.  It's such a nice combination of flavors.

Recipe after the jump!