Author: foodnerd

Last night we had dinner with our delightful friends S & D, who were very patient with me as I undertook three separate courses for dinner. Everything was yummy (more on that in a minute), but I have learned that even when you are totally prepared, with sauces made ahead and a simple menu, and with a carefully-thought-out action plan, it still takes way too long to cook & plate up 3 whole courses while your guests are kicking around the dinner table waiting. Next time I will just do two: soup and main, rather than breaking up the main into meat+veg, then pasta. And family style at that — plating is a drag when done at home. Oh well.
Anyway: we started with baguette, crostini crackers & cheeses — a tomme (inspired by the photos on The Daily Bread, and they right – it’s yummy!), a nevat (swoon), a spenwood (from Neal’s Yard, a dreamy hardish cheese with a good balance of milkiness and tang) and a caciotta al tartufo, which is a pretty boring semisoft cheese made utterly lovely by little flecks of black truffle. And also homemade dilly carrot pickles.
Then gazpacho andaluz, which was a bit spicier on the tongue than I anticipated. I think there was a bit too much garlic, or the garlic was too strong; it was not as creamy and delicate as what I had in Spain. Lovely, though, and we all liked it just fine. And it makes a nice change from the chunky bright red style so common here in the US (for which the Moosewood Cookbook’s recipe is by far the best).
Then seared scallops and steamed green beans with lemon-chive mayonnaise sauce. Trader Joe’s frozen scallops are just terrific and very cheap, though I do recommend getting the largest size you can for nicer presentation. Lemon-chive mayonnaise is great stuff — I’m definitely making it again, to go on fish, chicken, green vegetables, probably pasta too.
And then (sigh) pasta with wild mushrooms & sherry, from the current issue of Saveur (October 2004). I first made this with chanterelles & oyster mushrooms, at littlelee’s house, and it was very tasty but seemed to lack oomph. I attributed this to the fact that $7 worth of chanterelles wasn’t very many damn mushrooms, and so there wasn’t enough to fill out the pasta. This new batch was made with a huge pile of shiitakes, button mushrooms and oyster mushrooms, plus more liquid in the sauce, plus more parmesan cheese, and it STILL didn’t have enough flavor. Argh! I suspect I didn’t salt the dish enough, and I also suspect that I still had too much pasta for the amount of shrooms. Maybe I overcooked the mushrooms; I don’t know. I ate some cold, sprinkled with salt, for lunch, and this seemed a great improvement; the mushroom flavor came through much more when right out of the fridge. What I might do next time (because I love mushrooms & sherry so much, there *will* be a next time despite the frustrations) is cut back the pasta and also add another ingredient, like meat or seafood, or some nuts, or a stronger herb. And I’ll salt up those shroomies right next time, too.
Last but never least, cantaloupe sorbet for dessert; three cheers for the ice cream maker!

A happy confluence of leftovers and farmer’s market goodies spawned this tasty dish (healthy too, shh).
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 poblano pepper, seeds & ribs removed, diced
2 small summer squash/zucchini, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
dried oregano (1/2 tsp?)
ground cumin (1 tsp?)
chili powder (1/2 tsp?)
stewed tomatoes or can of diced/crushed tomatoes
2 grilled chicken thighs, diced
kernels scraped from 2 ears leftover corn
salt & pepper
Heat the olive oil over med-high heat and add the onions. Saute till starting to soften, then add the poblano and squash and continue sauteing. The high heat will add a bit of nice brown crust to some of the vegetables, so keep stirring so they don’t burn rather than brown. When they’re nice and soft, sprinkle a bit of salt on the veg, add the spices, and stir to distribute. Then add the garlic and saute for 30-60 seconds. Add the tomatoes to keep things from burning (the oil will have been absorbed by now). Lower the heat to low and simmer 5 minutes, or as long as it takes to fully soften the vegetables. Add the corn and chicken just long enough to heat through and blend flavors (about 5 minutes), or longer to reduce any extra liquid you don’t want. Adjust seasonings & add pepper to your taste.
Serve over white rice, sprinkled with cheese, cotija if available.

This is my version of the classic recipe, which has been vetted as authentic by our Italian-American food-bigot friend Victor, who views any not-Italian food with suspicion at best. It is definitely one of those recipes where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Ingredients:
1 onion, sliced
2 -3 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
generous amount olive oil to saute (I use extra virgin, as I think it tastes nice)
head of escarole or other bitter green
can of chicken broth
can of white beans
salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste
Saute sliced onion in olive oil till softened, then add garlic slices and saute those till softened (use enough oil so they don’t get dry or hard, or burn while you’re sauteeing the greens). Add sliced up head of escarole, or other bitter green, and saute until wilted and fairly soft — you want them pretty well sauteed before you add liquid, at least for escarole, because it tempers the bitterness. Add some pepper and red pepper flakes, if you like. Add a can of chicken broth. Braise a good long time till the greens are getting silky soft and delicious, then add a drained & rinsed can of white beans, and braise a little longer to flavor them up and blend everything (the broth thickens up just a hair from the bean starch). Cover at any point if you think the broth is disappearing too quickly. Salt to taste.
It’s just lovely as it is, with some bread and cheese as accompaniment, but you can also add chicken sausage or other cooked meat to make a heartier stew-like dish. The key is to not wuss out on cooking the greens longer than you may think is strictly necessary, at both the saute and braise stages, because when they get all soft and olive green, that’s when they taste most delicious. (I would even make so bold as to suggest that this might be the sort of thing that Marcella Hazan has in mind when she talks about insaporire as the wellspring of Italian food’s astounding yumminess. Roughly translated it means “to make flavorful,” and the general idea is to cook your aromatics (onion, celery, carrot, peppers, whatever) slowly in fat, building up layers of caramelization and flavors, before firing up the heat and adding the ingredient which is intended to be ‘insaporato’: given the flavor you just lovingly built up in the supporting ingredients. I think the beans are the target in a greens-n-beans recipe like this.)