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Gourmet fast food

February 7, 2013 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

That’s what my husband calls my leftovers. While I really enjoy the process of cooking and find it a great way to unwind from the day, and I like the act of making up a great dish out of what I have on hand, working with the beautiful colors of the vegetables, herbs and spices. But when the week is busy, especially with evening work-related events, leftovers can be a lifesaver.

TIP: I only shop once a week – buying only what looks great in vegetables and figuring out what to make with them day by day. This is a time saver, and with the Internet you can always look up recipe ideas to match the ingredients you have on hand, or come back here to LOVE and check our recipe tab.

You can also make dishes that incorporate leftovers into a bigger meal – this is a way to quickly make a simple dish gourmet. I did this on last Friday night. I bought fresh catfish fillets, lightly coated them with flour, salt and pepper, and flash fried them in a little canola oil, and then topped them with the multi-use leftover fennel compote and it was fantastic!! To “freshen” the compote, I added in three chopped cherry tomatoes and tiny drizzle of olive oil, warmed it up in the microwave and a quick dinner was spectacular! TIP: I like to always have fresh tomatoes on hand and a few fresh herbs. With those, you can liven up any dish.
Here is our plate with a little steamed Jasmine rice and sautéed Swiss chard with garlic. Delish and quick!!

When your husband wakes up the next morning and is still talking about the dinner the night before, you know it was good.

This is the thing: the more you cook, the more accumulated resources you have at hand to continue to cook better and better!

Birthdays and fennel compote

January 12, 2013 by Mary Frances 14 Comments

There is much excitement in our family today – emails, texts, phone calls, everything! Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday and our boys want to make him a huge Sunday lunch. The menu will be a surprise to him. At first we were going to celebrate tonight as Zach has to go back to Yale Sunday evening, but no, they wanted to keep it to the day and do a multi-course nice long lunch and each person is in charge of one course. Our oldest is organizing this. He is taking over the main course – short ribs with polenta garnished with fennel fronds. I have been assigned the pasta course, Zach is doing the salad and Agata is handling dessert. So we’re talking back and forth, determining the menu, recipes and food buying. I point out and ask, “Why are we having a pasta course if we’re having polenta with the main?” Our oldest says, “I want the pasta course too. I want this to be over the top. You know, this will be a long, paced out affair.” This is just like they do in Italy on a special Sunday. He did live there for six months.

So I have decided to make a Union Square Café recipe that is one of my all time faves. It is a little tricky and detailed at the end so it’s the perfect dish to make if I’m only responsible for it and not the whole rest of the meal too. It is Linguine with Spinach, Garlic and Olive Oil. This dish produces a whole lotta mmmmm’s and there are broiled bread crumbs on top – just a touch, not too much. I love crunchy bread crumbs on top of pasta.

So hopefully I’ll remember to take lots of pictures tomorrow to share with you what I know will be a fabulous meal. But meanwhile, I’d like to share with you our dinner last night. I made a Mark Bittman fennel tomato compote to put on some oven roasted cod and it was fantastic! I can see putting this on lots of things – steamed eggplant, pasta, chicken, swordfish, I could keep going.

A white Wedgewood dinner plate with oven roasted cod topped with a fennel tomato and olive compote, steamed coarse bulgar and a kale salad.

Our dinner – oven roasted cod topped with the fennel compote, steamed coarse bulgar and kale salad

Once again I changed the recipe so I’ll give you mine, and I forgot to add the parsley at the end, which would have been prettier, so that doesn’t show up in the pictures.

FENNEL COMPOTE WITH TOMATOES AND OLIVES – adapted from Mark Bittman
– serves 4

1/4 cup of olive oil
1 bulb fennel (or 2 smaller ones), trimmed and chopped
Salt and pepper
1 tbs. choppped thyme leaves
1 tbs. minced garlic
6 plum tomatoes, chopped (canned are fine, but drain excess liquid)
Heaping 1/2 cup big, plump olives, green or black or a combination, preferably unpitted
1/4 cup capers, optional
1/2 cup chopped parsley leaves, for garnish

Put the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the fennel and some salt and pepper, and without browning (adjust the heat as necessary), cook it down, stirring occasionally, until it’s quite soft, about 20 minutes. Add the thyme and garlic, and cook 1 minute, stirring.

Add the tomatoes, olives and capers, raise the heat a bit, and cook until the mixture is saucy, about 15 minutes. Serve as a side dish or to top a portion of cooked fish. Garnish with parsley.

Fresh fennel sauteing in olive oil in a Calphalon skillet

Sauteing the fennel

Fennel, tomato and olive compote in a pan.

The compote complete

Blueberries!

August 17, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

They’re here now locally in abundance! And boy, are they delicious this year!! Sprinkle them on oatmeal, toss in your fruit salad, make sauces for duck, pork and salmon or just eat them! I have already made two pies and one blueberry crisp. They supposedly are a true brain food, full of antioxidants to combat all the other toxic things we do to our bodies. My good friend, Margaret, makes sure to eat lots of them year round but right now they are local, sweet and yummy.

Melissa Clark, in the New York Times, recently published a recipe of a blueberry sauce on salmon. This is on fresh, expensive wild King salmon. You can find the recipe here: Salmon With Agrodolce Blueberries. I made the full recipe for only a pound of salmon for the two of us and saved the rest of the sauce for pork chops on another night. To our tastes, this sauce was just okay on the salmon (which would have been just fine by itself), but amazing on the pork chops. You decide. And the crisp is easy as can be with an oatmeal topping. That recipe is here.

Blueberry Crisp – with an oatmeal topping

Summer pleasures!!

August 12, 2012 by Mary Frances 6 Comments

There’s nothing better than a meal of hard shell crabs, corn on the cob and a cold beer on a hot summer night. Throw in a little coleslaw, make sure you have plenty of newspapers and you are set for a real treat! Since my husband is from Baltimore, this is a must at least one summer night in our household.

This was our dinner last night and the crabs were heavy, meaty and delicious! Just follow the instructions on the back of the Old Bay can. Make sure your blue crabs are alive to start, wash them in the sink using long tongs, as they will bite. Create a steamer rack in a large soup pot, (I use a store bought aluminum pan, upside down and punched with holes), fill with about 2″ of half water and half cider vinegar, (or you could use plain old white vinegar), put the live crabs in, layer by layer sprinkle heavily with Old Bay, cover and steam for 30 minutes and voila – get ready to work for the succulent crab meat. It is worth it!

(Now, what in the world are we going to do when we finally give up getting the Times every morning in paper format?)

An early summer delight!

June 29, 2012 by Mary Frances 1 Comment

It’s the season for soft shell crabs, a personal favorite of mine. After a true Seinfeld episode with Felix from the fish store calling numerous times and yelling at me, I finally got my order delivered. I have to say, it was worth the abuse.

What I did was so stupid simple and so very good, my husband is still talking about them today. That’s the sign of a really good meal – the memorable factor!

Here’s what I did.

SOFT SHELL CRABS
– serves 2

4 cleaned, washed and dried soft shell crabs
Organic buttermilk to cover the crabs
2 tbs. canola oil
1.5 tbs. unsalted butter
Flour to lightly dredge in on a flat plate
Fresh snipped chives to garnish
Lemon wedges

Have your fishmonger clean your crabs before you bring them home. (Put up with the abuse.) Place crabs in a narrow deep bowl to stack them and cover with buttermilk and let them sit for 15-25minutes, turning them once in the middle of the time. Heat the oil until very hot and add the butter. When the butter foam subsides, lift a crab out to drain the buttermilk and dredge lightly in the flour to cover and place in the hot pan. Once all the crabs are in, place a heavier, preferable cast iron skillet, on top of them to weight them down and cook for 3 minutes. Remove the top skillet and turn the crabs over and cook for another 3 minutes, no weight on top this time.

Lift them from the pan, sprinkle chopped chives on top and serve with fresh lemon wedges.

Delish!!! (Notice they didn’t even need any salt or pepper – I think the organic buttermilk was important and of course the quality of the crabs.)

So civilized

April 17, 2012 by Mary Frances 1 Comment

My husband and I were asked to take in a French graduate student for 4 months to live with us. We take on French interns at the office but this was the first time we were asked and considered doing this. Quite frankly, our oldest son had such a great experience living with a family in Tuscany for his semester abroad, we thought it was our turn to pay it forward. Charlotte was due to arrive this past Sunday evening so I wanted to make a special meal but of course one that would hold up if she was two hours delayed in getting through customs. So I made this amazing pork roast – my husband and son said it was better than my version of Julia Child’s Beef Bourguinon – and way easier. Recipe to come!

But while I was making everything, I needed a little snack and had to test the wine that was going into this dish. So I fixed a little smoked trout on a Breton cracker with a smear of plain Greek yogurt, a dab of horseradish and a bit of fresh thyme. With a taste of red wine in a little juice glass and the sunlight streaming through the window, isn’t this just the prettiest little picture?