4 medium cucumbers (mine were actually pickling cukes)
2 small zucchini
2 cloves garlic
3T lemon juice
A small handful of basil
5-6 mint leaves
salt and pepper
Put all that in a blender or food processor and zap it until it’s soup!
I garnished with some chopped chives, a couple of quartered cherry tomatoes and some diced cucumber.
Summer at it’s best!
Along with the gazpacho, I served a grilled piece of lingcod. Any hearty white fish will do. All I did to it was sprinkle it with salt and pepper, a little olive oil drizzle and grilled it to perfection.
When it was done I put it atop a blob (that isn’t the most appetizing word is it?) of eggplant-walnut puree, a squeeze of lemon and put a little parsley on top for color.
Rub snapper fillets with grated ginger and garlic. I grate them on my microplane grater right over the fish…works pretty well. Pour juice of 2 limes over the fish. I let it sit for about 30 minutes. Not long enough to cure the fish but long enough to get a good flavor. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and grill.
For the pesto:
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup almonds
1 – 1 1/2 cups or so cilantro leaves
Juice of 1 lime
salt, pepper
Blend all that in the food processor then add enough olive oil, with blade going, to reach the consistency you like. I like drier pesto so I stop when it’s a paste.
For the slaw, well, it wasn’t my recipe…*gasp!* I got it from Epicurious and it was really good. Highly recommend that one.
Grill salmon with just some salt, pepper and olive oil. In a grill basket, toss some broccoli florets and chopped summer squash. Cook all that until it’s done.
Meanwhile (on the stove not the BBQ) sauté up some chard with garlic and chili flakes. When the grilled veggies are done, mix those into the cooked chard. When the salmon is done, separate it into small pieces and mix that into the veggies. When that’s all tossed together, put it on top of some pasta…penne or something else short works best.
Chiffonade some basil–I had this gorgeous purple basil from my CSA–and top the pasta with a generous amount of it.
Exhausted from vacation…aren’t they tiring? I had a chicken, I had leeks from my CSA, I have sage in the garden. That’s a meal right there!
1 whole chicken
3 leeks, chopped
1/4 cup butter (sliced into pats)
10-12 sage leaves (4 leaves chopped, leave the rest whole)
1-2 T chopped fresh thyme
Salt, pepper, olive oil
Place chopped leeks in the bottom of a 9×12 baking dish. Drop 6 pats of butter somewhat evenly around leeks. Place 6-8 sage leaves around on top of the leeks.
Put the chopped thyme and sage under the skin of the chicken breasts along with 2 pats of butter per breast. Salt the chicken inside and out, generously. Drizzle with olive oil. Place the whole chicken, breast side up, on top of the leeks.
Put in a 375° oven until internal temperature of the chicken (inserted into the thigh, not touching a bone) is 165°
Some of the leeks should get crunchy-crispy, some just soft and buttery.
Alongside the chicken I served bruschetta with a fava bean puree.
Shuck those beans. Shuck? That’s what you do to beans right? Not just corn? Anyway, take the beans out of their pods. Blanch them for 2 minutes and then plunge them into ice water. Once they’re cool enough to handle, squeeze the favas out of their skins (if there is a split in the skin, they’ll pop right out). Add the beans, garlic, salt and nuts to a food processor. Puree. Add olive oil while it’s running until it’s the texture of pesto.
Spread on toasted, hearty, yummy bread. Grind a little pepper on top.
2 leeks, chopped
2 green garlics, white and pale green parts, chopped
3 small carrots, diced
Saute all that in some butter until everything is soft.
Add 1 cup white wine and cook most of it off.
4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
4 c. chicken stock
Add to pot, bring almost to a boil. Simmer, covered, until potatoes are soft.
Meanwhile, slice and grill some king trumpets…the closest thing you can get to porcinis off-season. Just brush them with olive oil and grill until they become fungus-bacon.
Puree the soup, add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.
Ladle up, top with the mushrooms and a few parsley leaves.
Mixed spring greens salad:
Mixed spring greens (duh!)
1/2 grapefruit per dish (segmented and sliced)
3 radishes per dish
Parmigiano-Reggiano slices
Dressing:
1 shallot
Juice from 1 lemon
1 T orange juice
1 T grapefruit juice
1 T parsley
salt & pepper
~1/4c olive oil (I never measure this, just whisk until it looks and tastes right)
This is a scaled down version of the New York Strip Loin I made in December…you know, if you’re not cooking for 20 people!!
Chop enough herbs to moderately cover your steaks. For 2 ribeyes, I had about 1/2-3/4c herbs total. I use marjoram and thyme with a clove of garlic minced in. I’d say 1 clove for every 2 steaks. Rub the steaks w/ the herbs, pour olive oil over them to coat, cover them and set aside. If you have a lot of time, put them in the fridge. But you want the steaks at room temperature when you cook them.
Time to cook?! Heat a large skillet (large enough for you steaks and oven proof!) to really hot. Put your steaks in…you don’t need oil in the pan because your steaks are covered in it. Sear them until they have a nice brown on each side. Put them in a 425° oven until it reaches your desired doneness. I like rare meat so I cooked them until the internal temp was 125°. Remove from oven, place on a cutting board and loosely cover with foil. Leave them alone for at least 10 minutes.
If you want this to look purty, trim and thinly slice the steak and place over some greens. If you just want to chow down, gnaw on the cow-piece whole ;-)
I needed to cook as much produce as I could for dinner. I’m picking up my first CSA box today and it’s going to fill my fridge. I had a huge bag of spring onions from my dad’s garden and a head of napa cabbage that were taking up the most space. Pasta time!!
2 cups chopped spring onions
1/2 head of napa cabbage
2 garlic cloves
1 c. white wine
1 package of prosciutto cut into 1″ slices
1 lb shell pasta
1/2 c. toasted pine nuts
I chopped the spring onions into 1/2 inch chunks (just the tender white parts…i cut down a little too far into the green and got some tough pieces). Put those in a large pan with some olive oil and salt. Cook for what seems like forever. When they look soft, add the wine and cook that until the wine is almost gone. Add the garlic and cabbage. It will be a huge pile, but will quickly reduce. Once the cabbage is soft, fold in the prosciutto.
Toss the cabbage-onion mixture into the cooked pasta. Top with the toasted pine nuts.
This turned out to be far tastier than I imagined. It was just a clear-out-the-fridge meal for me but the result was really, really good. We had a 2004 Ridge Syrah with it that was great!
This is an easy, quick, yummy meal for those days that are just screaming for barbecue. This recipe is for 2 people.
2 trout fillets, each about 1/2 lb
4T Green Peppercorns
Olive oil
Salt
Crust the peppercorns with a mortar and pestle if you have one or zap them a few times in the food processor. You want to have them coarse and still have a few that are whole. These aren’t hot, they’re just flavorful.
Sprinkle the fillets with salt and then rub with olive oil. Press the peppercorns into the top of the fillets, the olive oil should help it stick.
Put the trout, skin side down, peppercorn side up, on the grill for, oh…a while…maybe 7-10 minutes depending on the thickness of the fish and the heat of the grill. I don’t flip the fillets over. As long as the skin is still on the trout I’ve found I can leave them skin-side down long enough for them to cook through nicely.
Meanwhile I thinly sliced fennel bulbs (some use a mandonline for this, I just like my handy-dandy chef’s knife), peeled and sliced in half some tangerines, tossed this with lemon juice, a high-quality olive oil (I prefer Stonehouse House Blend), and some sea salt.
I also melted some butter and garlic together and brushed it on some francese which I put on the grill next to the fish for a couple of minutes. I could eat a whole loaf of garlic bread by myself. It’s a huge weakness of mine!
This is a quick, easy meal that has very little cleanup afterwards!
These are a great party snack. They’re easy to make and wonderful. They have a slight crack-like character in that you really can’t stop eating them! The good thing is they are relatively healthy!
1 c whole almonds
1 c pecans
1 c walnuts
Toast on cookie sheets for 5 min. at 375. Lower oven temp to 325.
Let cool completely! If not, the next step is disasterous and you get scrambled-egg-nuts.
Beat one egg white until it is frothy (not into a meringue state, just foamy). Toss the nuts with the egg.
Mix together:
3/4 c. sugar
zest of 1 large orange
1 t. salt
1 t. cumin
1/2 t. pepper
1/2 t. cayenne
Add the egg-coated nuts and toss until coated with the sugar mixture.
Put back on cookie sheets, single layer so they toast evenly. Bake 20-25 minutes. Keep a close eye on these, they can burn easily.
You didn’t think there would be all these posts about trumpets without a recipe did you?
A lot of people like black trumpets in cream sauces but I’m not a fan of cream sauce. Â I like to enjoy them simply.
All I did was saute them up with a handful of chopped kale and one clove of garlic. Â I threw everything in the pan at once with the olive oil and cooked it on medium heat until the water evaporated. Added some salt, tossed it with pasta and topped that with some toasted pecans.
