Very southern

Tonight's Menu

• grilled ham steak
  
• cornbread
  
• spinach w/bacon and pinkeye peas
  

Well, this was NOT a cool-kitchen supper, I'm sorry to say. But it was very yummy and easy and I'm not sure you can get much more southern than ham, cornbread, and greens with peas, y'all.

The ham steak was easy -- just drain off the water in which it's usually packed and slap it on a grill over high heat for 3 minutes per side (more or less, depending on thickness).

The cornbread was homemade, using my usual recipe. I SWEAR this is not much more trouble than those mixes you buy at the store, and you can control how sweet it is (DH likes it SWEET) and what sort of fat is in it (this time I used an extra-light olive oil).

The spinach and peas were the real stars of this meal, though. One of the weird things I planted in my garden this year was purple-hull pinkeye cowpeas. They look a lot like blackeyed peas, if you're familiar with those (you can see the pods here, and the peas here). Of course, my garden is tiny and I don't usually get enough peas all at once to feed the four of us. I had collected maybe two tablespoons worth over the past week and had no idea what to do with such a small amount, but I definitely didn't want them to go to waste!

So, here's what I did: I brought a little pot of water to a boil, dumped in my tiny amount of homegrown pinkeye peas, and boiled them for maybe 15 minutes until they were nice and tender. Then I drained them and set them aside.

In a large skillet, I browned off some chopped bacon and then added the drained peas and a big bunch of fresh baby spinach. I tossed the spinach around until it had wilted, then I seasoned it with salt and pepper and added a tablespoon each of brown sugar and vinegar (this time I used a raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, but in the past I've used red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar and it's all good!). Stir that around for a bit until some of the liquid has evaporated, then serve. So yummy! If you think you don't like spinach, try it like this -- it's all smoky bacon and sweet-sour sauce. Mmm!

Here was the timeline for this simple, delicious meal:

• Put the peas on to boil.
  
• Mix up the cornbread and stick it in the oven.
• Light the grill (if you're using gas; for charcoal you might want to do this first).
• Remove peas from heat after they're tender, drain and set aside.
• While grill is heating, chop bacon and have the spinach, sugar & vinegar nearby.
• Put ham steak on grill for 3 minutes per side; remove and tent with foil to rest.
• Remove cornbread from oven.
• Make spinach/pea dish (it's fast).
• Cut ham into serving pieces, ditto cornbread, serve it on up!
  

Cool kitchen supper #3

Tonight's Menu

• grilled garlicky flank steak
  
• grilled flatbread
  
• grilled romaine salad
  

Hey! I haven't posted in over a month! How'd that happen? I have no idea, y'all. With the kids home for the summer and not only making their own damn dinners, but breakfasts/lunches/snacks as well, the kitchen is always an absolute mess and I've sort of lost my cooking mojo. If you click on the "grilling" link over there in the right-hand sidebar, you can see some of what we've been eating -- the usual summer fare around here.

However, this is the first time this summer that I've made my grilled garlicky flank steak, which has been a staple in summers past. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to make it this season, because it's so easy and delicious! Just bash up a few cloves of garlic in the mortar and pestle with some kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, the juice of one lemon and some extra virgin olive oil. Make some diamond cuts in a nice piece of flank steak, then rub the garlic slurry over both sides of the meat, smooshing it into all the cuts and crevices. You can let it sit like this for a bit but there's really no need -- just whomp it right onto the grill and cook it over high heat for 4-5 minutes per side. Let it rest for 5 minutes or so, then slice thinly across the grain. So yummy!

I'm not sure what took me so long to throw some raw bread dough on the grill, either. I'd heard of people grilling flatbreads and pizzas and whatnot like this -- just slapping the uncooked dough right onto the grill grates -- but I guess I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it really worked. And it does! Honest! I used a hunk of the master recipe dough from ABin5, lightly flouring it and rolling it out into an oval about 1/4-inch thick. Then I really did just toss it right onto the grill grates! The grill was nice and hot and the dough started bubbling pretty quickly. When it looked sort of dry around the edges (like a pancake), I flipped it over with a pair of tongs and cooked the other side. I would say it took maybe 5 minutes total to grill up a nice big hunk of flatbread, which I then cut into squares for serving. The kids love this -- they say it tastes just like pizza crust!

I've made grilled lettuce before but it's been quite a while. I love lettuce this way -- it has such a sweet, earthy flavor when it's cooked. All I do is take a head of romaine lettuce, remove the tough outer leaves (sometimes I just buy packaged "hearts of romaine" in the produce department and have done with it) and give it a good rinse. After drying it thoroughly, I cut it in half lengthwise, drizzle it with a bit of EVOO, then slap it on the grill. You have to watch it closely and turn it with tongs every minute or so -- what you want is just a WEE bit of char and wilting, but with the inner leaves of the lettuce still retaining a lot of body. Take it off the grill and slice it crosswise, then toss in a bowl with some fresh lemon (or lime) juice and a bit of salt and freshly ground pepper. That's the simplest treatment, but you could also whip up a vinaigrette (something mustardy would be nice) for it. Serve warm and enjoy!

Here's the timeline for this quick and easy cool-kitchen supper:

• Light the grill about 30 minutes before serving time (for a gas grill -- adjust accordingly for charcoal or wood) and set to high heat.
• While grill heats, prepare the garlic slurry and rub it over the meat.
• Wash, dry and halve romaine; set aside.
• Put meat on grill.
• Flip meat after 4-5 minutes.
• Roll out dough for flatbread (I use a silpat, but you could put it on a pizza peel or a foil-covered cookie sheet or whatever). I've found that it's better to do this at the last minute if you're using a wet dough, because it gets sort of gooey if it sits for too long before cooking.
  
• Take meat off grill and cover to rest.
• Put flatbread dough on grill.
• Watch bread closely and flip when needed, then remove from grill when done (about 5 minutes total).
• Drizzle romaine with EVOO and put on grill.
• Watch closely, turn when needed and remove from grill when just barely charred/wilted.
• Cut bread into squares or wedges.
• Slice lettuce and toss w/lemon juice and seasonings.
• Slice meat thinly across grain.
• Serve it on up!
  

A cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

• grilled shrimp
  
• garlic bread
• grilled asparagus
  
• green salad "bar"

Oh people. It is already SO HOT here in central Texas. Too hot to sit outside while the food grills, unfortunately. The good news is, this meal pretty much cooked itself on the grill while I sat inside in my nice, cool, air-conditioned kitchen! Yes!

I deviated from the script a bit with this shrimp. We love our usual recipe, but I've been making it like once every 10 days or so and wanted something just a little bit different. So I mixed together about 1/2 cup of canola oil, 1/4 cup EVOO (I would have done ALL EVOO, but I was running low), a few glugs each of Worcestershire and hot sauce, a tablespoon or so of honey, the juice of one orange, one lemon and one lime, a bunch of minced fresh garlic, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper and poured it over two pounds of peeled jumbo shrimp. This marinated in the fridge for about 4 hours before I threaded the shrimp onto skewers and grilled them for 5 minutes per side over medium heat. They were really good!

The garlic bread was purchased at the store. I wrapped it in foil and stuck it on the top rack of the grill to warm up while the shrimp was cooking.

The asparagus was dead easy. I grilled it on a grill screen after I'd pulled off the shrimp. I drizzled it with EVOO and sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then grilled it for maybe 8 minutes total, tossing it around with tongs to brown it all over. Yum! This is my favorite way to eat asparagus (roasting it in the oven is a close second).

The salad bar was just chopped romaine, sliced carrots, sliced cucumber, and wedges of tomato.

Easy dinner, and the house stayed nice and cool! Good thing, because it was about 98 degrees out on the patio -- yikes!

More lamb!

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless leg of lamb
  
• red onion & rosemary focaccia
  
• green salad "bar"
  

I have no idea what possessed me to buy this boneless leg of lamb at my new neighborhood farmers market last weekend. At $9 a pound, it's by far the single most expensive piece of meat I've ever purchased or prepared. As such, I was terrified of screwing it up, so I turned to Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, my go-to cookbook when I'm preparing something unfamiliar for the first time. And he didn't steer me wrong!

Guided by Bittman, and adapting based on the flavors my family likes and the ingredients I had on hand, here's what I did. First I butterflied the leg out so it was a bit more even in terms of thickness and whomped it into a Pyrex baking pan. Then I mashed up several garlic cloves (seriously, like half a head) with some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper in my mortar and pestle. I dumped the garlic into a bowl, then added a giant handful of chopped fresh herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, fennel fronds and cuban oregano. All but the parsley was from my own herb patch (my parsley has gone completely to seed -- boo!). I mixed that together as best I could, then drizzed in some EVOO until it formed a loose paste. Then I rubbed this mixture all over both sides of the lamb, being sure to get it into all the nooks and crannies. I covered the lamb tightly with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge for a few hours, then I brought it back up to room temperature before grilling it over high heat for about 13 minutes per side. After letting it rest for about 5 minutes, I sliced it very thin to serve.

Oh. Mah. Gawd. It was SO GOOD. The thinner ends were done medium and the thicker bits were medium-rare. The whole thing was SO flavorful and tender! The boy thought it tasted a bit like beef, and it really kind of did, but it was like really GOOD beef. So yummy! This is definitely going on the menu at my next big backyard barbecue! (Sorry, vegetarian peeps. I'll have stuff for you too, I promise!)

I've made the focaccia before. It's from the bread book. I made it with the olive oil dough and it was tender and delicious.

It's been a while since we had a green salad up in here! There are so many other good veggies to be had right now, but our cupboards were kind of bare so salad it was. This was romaine with sliced carrots & cucumbers and little grape tomatoes. Kind of boring, but it worked well with the rich meat.

Here's the timeline:

• Earlier in the day, mix up the garlic & herbs, rub it into the lamb, and refrigerate.
• About 45 minutes before serving, pull the lamb out of the fridge and prepare the focaccia from refrigerated dough.
• Make the salad while the focaccia is resting.
• Preheat oven; light grill.
• Put focaccia in oven and set timer for 25 minutes.
• IMMEDIATELY put lamb on grill.
• Turn lamb halfway through the 25 minutes.
• When timer goes off, take focaccia out of oven and lamb off grill.
• Rest lamb for 5 minutes (the focaccia will be fine sitting during this time).
• Slice lamb thinly.
• Slice focaccia into wedges.
• Serve it up!

Memorial Day "picnic"

Tonight's Menu

• bbq pork spareribs
  
• grilled garlic toast
  
• potato-artichoke salad
• coleslaw
  

Okay, so it was too hot to eat outside. But I grilled a lot of stuff! Does that count?

The spareribs were my usual, finished on the grill (meat side down over medium heat for 4 minutes, meat side up and slathered in Carolina-style barbecue sauce for 4 minutes, rest before cutting into riblets).

I grill everything from meat to veggies to fruit, but I think this might have been my first time grilling bread! We had some leftover boule (yes, from the book -- I SWEAR I don't have any relationship with the authors/publisher) so I cut that into half-inch slices, brushed it on both sides with olive oil (LIGHTLY -- you don't want to soak it), and grilled it over high heat until it picked up some grill marks, which didn't take long at all. Then I rubbed a cut garlic clove over both sides of each slice of bread. So easy, yummy and fresh tasting! The girl particulary loved this bread. Of course, she lives on bread, so take that with a grain of salt, maybe.

The salad was my favorite summer salad. It's finally summery enough to serve this again, yay!

And the coleslaw was my usual, except I used savoy cabbage because that's what I had.

Here's the timeline:

• Three and a half hours before serving, rub the ribs with spices and put them in the oven at 325 degrees F, TIGHTLY covered with foil.
• Make potato salad and coleslaw after putting ribs in oven; put both salads in fridge.
• Thirty minutes before serving, light grill and pull ribs out of oven.
• Grill ribs as described above.
• Remove ribs from grill; cover with foil and let rest.
• Grill bread and remove.
• Cut ribs into riblets.
• Pull salads out of fridge.
• Serve it up!

I had a craving

Tonight's Menu

• lamb kofta kebabs w/minted yogurt
  
• za'atar bread
  
• marinated red onions and cherry tomatoes
  

We've been eating a lot of lamb lately, owing in part to the fact that the new farmers market that just opened in my neighborhood (yay!) has a vendor that sells local, pastured lamb in a variety of cuts. I like to load the ground lamb with spices and make little meatballs out of it, but tonight I had a craving for lamb on the grill. Kofta kebabs were just the ticket!

Bear with me, because as usual I don't have an actual recipe, but I can tell you what I did. First, I stuck a heel of stale bread into the food processor and whizzed it up until I had fresh bread crumbs. I was afraid dry crumbs would make the meat too crumbly. To the bread crumbs, I added some chopped fresh parsley, kosher salt, garam masala, chili powder, paprika and grated onion (fresh onion, not dried -- just peel it and run it over the large holes of a box grater). I also ran a good-sized garlic clove over my microplane zester (love this tip -- no need to peel the garlic!) and added that as well. I pulsed it for a bit to blend the ingredients, then added a pound of ground lamb and one large egg. Whiz it around until it's all combined, then form the meat into sort of oblong sausagey shapes and thread a metal skewer through each one (or a soaked bamboo skewer). Then grill them over high heat on well-oiled grates for about 4-5 minutes per side or until done through.

The yogurt sauce was easy -- just mix some greek-style yogurt with chopped fresh mint, a tiny bit of lemon juice, and a tiny bit of minced garlic. It makes a nice accompaniment to the meat.

I have made za'atar bread before. We all love this as an alternative to focaccia, and again, it went so nicely with the flavors of the meat.

For the little marinated salad I served alongside, all I did was cut a red onion in half lengthwise and then slice it VERY thinly crosswise, dumping the little onion slivers into a non-reactive bowl. I added halved cherry tomatoes (actually, I think these were grape tomatoes, but it doesn't matter) along with some chopped fresh parsley and oregano. Then I mixed some red wine vinegar with a TINY bit of sugar and a small amount of EVOO (use more vinegar than oil), poured that over the onions and tomatoes, seasoned with a bit of kosher salt, and tossed it all together. I just let this sit on the countertop at room temperature while I made the rest of the meal. It was very refreshing!

This whole meal was freaking fantastic, if I do say so myself! I had such a craving for something Middle Eastern or Mediterranean and this was perfect. The lamb kofta reminded me very much of a Romanian dish called mici, and I am half convinced that my occasional craving for spiced meat on the grill is an ancestral memory of some kind (I am one-eighth Romanian on my Dad's side). Every now and then, I need a little garlic and paprika in my life, you know?

Here's my suggested timeline for this meal. This is not exactly the one I followed, but it's the one I WOULD follow when I made this again.

• Earlier in the day, make the minted yogurt and stick it in the fridge.
• Also earlier in the day, make the meat mixture and put it in the fridge. It's easier to work with when it's cold.
• About an hour before serving time, make the marinated onions and tomatoes and let them sit on the countertop while you do the rest.
• About 40 minutes before serving time, prepare the za'atar bread (it has to rest for 20 minutes while the oven gets hot, then it cooks for 15 minutes or so).
• About 20 minutes before serving time, light the grill and put the meat on skewers while it heats.
• Put the za'atar bread in the oven.
• Put the meat on the grill. Turn after 4-5 minutes.
• Take the meat off the grill and the bread out of the oven.
• Slide the meat off the skewers so no one ends up in the emergency room (I speak from experience with metal skewers, here -- those suckers get HOT).
• Slice the bread into wedges, pull the yogurt out of the fridge, give the salad another toss and serve it all up!

A (mostly) make-ahead meal

Tonight's Menu

• oven-cooked beef brisket
  
• fresh bread
  
• tangy coleslaw
• grilled apricots
  

My day today was such that my afternoon and early evening were insanely busy, but my morning was relatively calm. So 90% of the work for this meal was done well before the after-school frenzy, and I was still able to get dinner on the table at a decent time. YAY for mostly make-ahead meals!

The brisket was my usual. I made a dry rub of sugar, chili powder, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, dry mustard, dried oregano, salt and freshly ground pepper. Then I rubbed it all over the brisket on both sides and put the meat fat-side up in a roasting pan. You could put it on a rack but I no longer have one, so I wad up some tin foil into balls and line the bottom of the pan with those, then place the meat on top. Works great! Add a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, then cover tightly with heavy-duty foil.

The cooking time and temperature can vary quite a bit, depending on the size of your hunk o' meat, the amount of time you have to work with, and how you like your meat cooked. We like a very tender, melt-in-your-mouth brisket with crispy fat; my roast was about 2.5 to 3 pounds, and I had all day, really. So I cooked this at 225 degrees F for about five hours, then uncovered it and boosted the heat up to 400 for 15 minutes or so to get the fat nice and crispy. Then I let it rest for about 10 minutes before slicing it thinly across the grain. You could do this same size roast for maybe two hours at 375, as long as there's water in the pan and it's tightly covered. It won't be quite as tender, but you can make up for that by slicing it nice and thin.

The bread was plain boule from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I am STILL loving that book! The authors have a blog where they share recipes, too!

For the coleslaw, I whisked together 1/4 cup each of sugar and apple cider vinegar until the sugar was mostly dissolved, then whisked in a tablespoon of canola oil and about a teaspoon of celery seed. Pour it over half a head of shredded cabbage, toss to coat, and stick it in the fridge for several hours or overnight. I like this version of coleslaw over the creamy mayonnaise type when I'm serving a fairy rich, fatty meat -- the acidity really helps cut the richness.

The apricots could not have been easier -- just cut a few in half, make sure to oil your grill grate, and grill them cut-side down until they pick up some grill marks and get SLIGHTLY soft. Don't overcook these or they will go mushy. I really like apricots with spiced beef -- something about that flavor combination just works for me!

Okay, so here was the timeline I followed:

1. Make the bread in the morning (or the day before)(or just buy some damn bread, already!).
2. Prepare the brisket and stick it in the oven (I did this five and a half hours before I planned to serve it -- see above).
3. Make the coleslaw and stick it in the fridge (you could do this the night before).
4. Thirty minutes before serving, uncover the brisket and turn up the heat to crisp the fat.
5. Wrap the bread in foil and slice the apricots in half, removing pits.
   
6. Light the grill for indirect heat (for my grill this means two burners on, one off).
7. Put the foil-wrapped bread on the unlit burner to warm it as the grill heats.
8. When the grill is hot, take brisket out of oven, re-cover and let rest.
9. Put apricots on grill; remove bread from grill.
10. Slice bread and re-wrap in foil to keep warm.
11. Take apricots off grill, cover to keep warm.
12. Slice brisket and put on serving platter.
13. Remove coleslaw from fridge and give it another toss or two.
14. Soup's on!
    

One of the few meals everyone will eat

Tonight's Menu

• pork spare ribs, spiced & sauced
  
• homemade cornbread
• coleslaw
  

Seriously, this is one of the few meals I make that everyone in the family will happily eat (with no substitutions of cheese for meat or mundane vegetables for the coleslaw). It's one of those meals that require a bit of advance preparation, but then very little actual work at mealtime. Everyone's happy!

The spare ribs (which are cheap at my local grocery, and very few meats are these days) were rubbed with a mixture of brown sugar, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, smoked paprika, dried oregano and garam masala. Then I stuck them in the oven, in a pan tightly covered with heavy-duty foil, for about 3 hours at 300 degrees F. I usually cook them longer on a lower heat with a bit of liquid, but they tend to fall off the bone when I do that and I wanted these to have some structural integrity so I could finish them on the grill. Which I did! I put them flesh-side down over high heat for about 4 minutes, then bone-side down over low heat for maybe 7 minutes, slathered on both sides with bottled Carolina-style (think mustard-based) barbecue sauce. They came out tender and extremely delicious, if I do say so myself!

I've already given you the recipe for the cornbread. I swear this isn't much more trouble than those "just add water" mixes. This particular cornbread was leftover from last week. It freezes really well! To reheat, I drizzled it with a bit of water and then stuck it in the oven, tightly covered, for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees F. It tasted freshly baked! Honest!

The coleslaw was my usual -- half a head of green cabbage, shredded, tossed with a mixture of mayonnaise, white vinegar, sugar and celery seed. Even the girl will eat this, and she doesn't like ANYTHING.

Chili!

Tonight's Menu

• chili con carne
  
• cornbread
  

I actually made this chili last night but forgot to tell you about it! Well, we ate it tonight too so it still counts, right?

I used Martha's recipe, as usual. This time I pretty much followed it exactly except mine was about half pork and half beef. And I used Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes. SO good, y'all. We love this chili!

The cornbread was also my usual.

And it's true, we ARE pretty much eating nothing but soup this week! I'm in a soup mood, I guess. I've suddenly come down with a rotten cold so that's not likely to change anytime soon, either!

Soup weather

Tonight's Menu

• Portuguese soup
  
• beer bread
  

It was damp, foggy and generally yucky out today, which gave me the perfect opportunity to make something I had been craving for a while -- this delicious sausage soup! It's been forever since I've made it. The original recipe calls for potatoes but I didn't have any, so I substituted kohlrabi from the CSA instead. It really made no difference at all in the taste of the soup -- it was delicious as always!

The beer bread was leftover from a couple of nights ago, just wrapped in foil and reheated in the toaster oven. Yum!

Soup!

Tonight's Menu

• bean soup with ham
  
• beer bread
  

DH and I have been in the mood for bean soup, even though he's totally allergic to it (yes, in addition to poultry and soy, he's allergic to BEANS). I had a big, meaty ham bone in the freezer (left over from Thanksgiving, see: allergic to poultry) so I decided to use that up in a nice big pot of soup.

What I did was buy one of those bags of 15-bean soup mix and discard the seasoning packet. I totally don't trust those seasoning packets, man. This one had soybean oil and hydrolyzed soy protein in it, which was reason enough for me to ditch it. (I think I had somehow convinced myself that the girl, who is violently allergic to soy, would want to try this soup. HAHAHA, what was I smoking?!)

Anyway, I kept the beans, obviously, and soaked them overnight. Then I drained and rinsed them the next day and set them aside while I got to work on the rest of the ingredients.

I chopped up half an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and sauteed them in some olive oil in a BIG pot. Before they were able to get any color on them, I tossed in two whole fresh bay leaves, several chopped leaves of fresh sage and a bunch of fresh thyme (all from my herb patch), along with maybe half a teaspoon of smoked paprika and half a tube of sundried tomato paste (1.5-2 tablespoons). Feel free to use regular paprika and plain ol' tomato paste from a can; I was using what I had. I stirred that around for several seconds until it started to smell AMAZING, then added the ham bone to the pot and dumped in the beans, along with a quart of vegetable broth (Pacific Organic -- again, it's what I had) and another quart of water. While that was coming to a boil, I stirred in some chopped fresh parsley (from the herb patch again!) and a tablespoon or so of brown sugar. I know, that sounds weird, but brown sugar goes great with beans and ham, y'all. TRUST ME.

Once it came to a boil I reduced the heat to low and just let it simmer away uncovered all afternoon. After two hours I removed the ham bone, scraped off the meat and diced it, then added the meat back to the pot. At that point I tasted the broth and adjusted the seasonings somewhat, adding the juice of half a lemon, a bit of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Altogether I cooked it for about 4.5 hours, tasting and adding more salt/pepper as needed and removing the bay leaves at the very end. Some of the beans broke down and thickened the broth quite a bit so that it was almost stew-like, which is just how I like it. If you like your broth a little thinner and your beans with more shape to them, you might want to only cook it for about 3 hours. Just be sure to taste, taste, taste as you go -- it's the only way to know when it's done to your liking and to get the seasonings right!

The girl wouldn't touch it, and DH had just a little taste, but the boy and I LOVED it and went back for seconds. I stirred just a tiny bit of sriracha into my bowl and washed it down with a cold glass of unfiltered apple cider and it was heavenly!

The beer bread is a favorite here. I only use half the butter called for in the recipe and it comes out just fine. This time I used Shiner Hefeweizen for the beer and it yielded a very tasty loaf that went great with the soup.

I expect this soup to be even better tomorrow, so guess what we're having then? Yep, leftovers!

My favorite soup

Tonight's Menu

• loaded potato soup
  
• freshly baked bread
  

It's been chilly in the mornings here the past couple of weeks (finally!) and that means I'm craving comfort food!

I love, love, LOVE this potato soup. It's the only potato soup I make. I use full-fat dairy in this but you could lighten it up and even use turkey bacon if you like. It wouldn't be as GOOD, but whatever floats your boat!

The bread was just a boule from the book.

Perfect fall supper, if you count potatoes as a vegetable. Which I do.

Za'atar bread = yummy

Tonight's Menu

• grilled marinated shrimp
  
• za'atar bread
  
• green salad "bar"

Okay, well this was just plain tasty! A perfect end-of-summer meal.

The shrimp was the usual. So yummy. I've finally figured out how to tweak this recipe to our liking -- use ACTUAL tomato paste instead of my usual substitution of ketchup (the ketchup makes it too salty), the full amount of KOSHER salt (not sea salt), half the hot sauce, and put my grill burners on LOW, not MEDIUM-LOW. The skewers are messy to assemble but it's SO worth it, y'all.

I have to tell a story about the za'atar bread. The girl and I were at World Market the other day and I was browsing the spices (looking for whole cumin seeds, if you must know) when I saw a packet of za'atar spice. For some reason that pinged something in my brain -- I KNEW I had read a recipe recently that sounded really good and featured za'atar, but I couldn't remember what the recipe was for. The spice packet was only a couple of bucks so I bought it anyway and brought it home, and then I remembered that the recipe was from my beloved bread book. (I don't have a deal going with the authors of this book, I swear. I've just been using it A LOT and really loving it.)

ANYWAY, the za'atar bread was really easy to make -- it's a flat bread that's similar in concept to a focaccia, only sprinkled with za'atar spice instead of fresh herbs and onion (or whatever you like on YOUR focaccia). I made it with the olive oil dough from the book and it came out so flavorful and tender and delicious! DH has requested that I make this bread again, and often (and hello, OMG, my picky DH ate something kind of exotic AND LIKED IT!) so I'd better head back to World Market and stock up!

I think I've managed to work through my salad boredom. Tonight's salad was torn green leaf lettuce (I tried that romaine thing you all suggested but the kids wouldn't touch that either! curses!) with sliced red onion, shredded carrots and tomato wedges. So far, so good on my plan to avoid pre-bagged salad greens! I'm sure I'll have an even easier time of it when greens are actually in season, argh.

Pizza night

Tonight's Menu

• homemade pepperoni pizza
  

The girl told me after tonight's dinner that I'm not allowed to buy frozen pizzas from the grocery store anymore. Um. Okay, then. Fortunately, with a little advance planning, the homemade version was just as fast and easy as the frozen version.

The crust: was made with the olive oil dough from the bread book. I mixed the dough up the day before so it could sit in the fridge overnight. This was my first time working with the olive oil dough (we usually make the master recipe or European peasant dough) and it was fabulous! It made for a soft, tender, and delicious crust.

The sauce: was made from roasted tomatoes, eggplant and and garlic, pureed with a stick blender. I made this earlier in the day -- chunks of tomato and eggplant, whole garlic cloves, a bit of fresh basil and oregano, salt and pepper, a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, and lots of olive oil roasted at 300 degrees F for about two hours, stirring occasionally (do this on the weekend and it'll keep in the fridge for use during the week). I let it cool and then pureed a small amount with my stick blender, adding a bit of tomato paste and water to get it to the right consistency. The puree was NOT pretty -- hello, red and green make BROWN -- but it was delicious! And no, I did NOT tell my family they were eating eggplant. That's just between you and me, a'ight?

The toppings: since I live with a bunch of pizza traditionalists over here, I went with fairly mundane toppings -- shredded mozzarella and sliced pepperoni. That's it.

It really wasn't any trouble to assemble. While the baking stone was heating up in the oven (at 500 degrees F), I covered the pizza peel (that's the wooden paddle thing) with cornmeal, rolled out the dough on the countertop, moved it to the peel, spooned on some sauce and sprinkled on the toppings. By that time the stone was hot, so I transferred the pizza to the stone (I get a little thrill out of successfully executing that jerk-and-tug motion it takes to get the pizza off the peel and onto the stone)(though I am NOT always successful at it, I hasten to add) and baked it for 8-10 minutes. While the first pizza was baking, I made another one (we can put away A LOT of pizza over here, y'all) and stuck it in the oven when the first one came out.

There is something about pizza made with FRESH dough, y'all. I don't know. I think I agree with the girl -- we can never go back to frozen now!

Chicken skin revisited

Tonight's Menu

• grilled chicken thighs
  
• herb-onion focaccia
  
• garlicky green beans
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, well this was just plain yum.

The girl and I decided that while chicken drumsticks were an iffy proposition with braces, chicken THIGHS with the bones in and skin on would probably be okay. So that's what I made. I just sprinkled them with Jane's Krazy Salt and garlic pepper as usual, grilled them skin-side down over medium-high heat until the skin was nicely browned (but not BLACK this time; I watched them pretty closely), then moved them all skin-side up to an unlit burner and left them alone for 35 minutes or so. They were crispy, juicy and delicious!

The focaccia was made with the master recipe boule dough from the book. I topped it with snipped fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, sliced red onion, EVOO, coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Yum!

The green beans were from my garden! Yay! I had thought that my Kentucky Wonder pole beans weren't setting fruit, but it turns out the vines were so freakin' dense that I just couldn't SEE any. I poked around in there yesterday and managed to harvest a good-sized handful of beans. Some of them had obviously been on there a while and looked more like broad beans that you would pop out of the pod than string beans that you would eat all in one gulp, but oh well! I cut them in 2-inch pieces and simmered them in water for a good 15 minutes to make sure they'd be tender. Then I sauteed a large minced garlic clove in some EVOO in a skillet and tossed in the beans to get them nice and garlicky. Season with salt and pepper and you're good to go! Now I just have to remember to check the bean vines more often so I can get them while they're still young and tender!

I'm trying to move away from bagged, prepared salad greens for no particular reason other than pure contrariness on my part. So tonight's salad "bar" was torn green leaf lettuce (from the store and out of season, ugh), the last of the cherry tomatoes from my garden, and the last of the sliced carrots from the CSA. The kids apparently think green leaf lettuce = poison so they didn't eat any (they had chopped raw apples instead), but DH and I thought it was worlds better than our usual salads made with packaged lettuce. Yay! Non-boring salad, for a change!

Notes for next year's potluck

So hey, everyone! I hope all of my fellow Americans had a good Fourth of July yesterday. We went to our neighborhood potluck, as usual. I've been told not to show up without my extremely fattening potato salad, so I made that, but I had cut down the recipe because fewer people than usual were expected and that tiny little bowl of potato salad looked ... lonely, somehow. Sooo, I also made some zucchini bread and quinoa salad!

I followed the zucchini bread recipe I found here, except that I left out the nuts (DH and the girl are allergic to tree nuts) and added just a bit of grated orange zest to the batter. Oh my GOD, y'all! This is some damn good zucchini bread! It's almost more of a spice cake than a bread because it has a really fine, cake-like texture. The boy child is flat-out addicted so it's a good thing this recipe made two loaves (we only took one to the potluck). I will have a freezer full of this stuff before zucchini season is over, mark my words!

I totally winged it with the quinoa salad and it turned out to be the sleeper hit of the potluck. Go figure! I was afraid nobody would want to touch it, but I haven't gotten that many raves over a dish since ... er, the first time I showed up with that fattening potato salad, probably. I wasn't measuring but here's approximately how I made it.

I had some plain, unseasoned, cooked quinoa leftover from dinner the night before -- I'd guess it was maybe a cup and a half, cooked. So I dumped that in a bowl. Then I took a large-ish cucumber, peeled it, cut it in half lengthwise and scraped out the seeds with a spoon before chopping it into a relatively small-ish dice (not a PERFECT dice -- you know me -- but I was going for more or less uniform pieces). I dumped that into the quinoa along with about 1/4 cup chopped (small, again) red onion and 2-3 sliced scallions, green tips included. I had some colorful bell peppers (yellow and orange) in the crisper so I diced up just a bit of those for color (like maybe 1/4 of each pepper -- not much) and tossed them in. Then I went out to the herb patch and snipped a handful of basil, flat-leaf parsley and mint, brought it inside, washed and chopped it and tossed it into the bowl with everything else. Finally I seasoned it with salt and pepper, then shook some fresh lemon juice (NOT bottled) and EVOO in a jar and poured it over, tossing the quinoa mixture to coat. There was only a small amount of dressing -- not enough for it to pool up in the bottom of the bowl or anything. I just wanted to moisten and loosen everything up a bit while giving it a hint of that bright lemon juice flavor.

This was SO GOOD! Seriously, everyone raved about it (and asked what the heck quinoa was, and where they could buy it, and how to cook it...). There were no leftovers so I am going to have to make another batch just for me. This would make a fantastic lunch -- quinoa is really high in protein, and when you add in all the veggies, that's a complete meal as far as I'm concerned!

Of course, now I'm stuck bringing both the potato salad AND the quinoa salad to every neighborhood potluck henceforth (and probably the zucchini bread, too) but I don't mind.

Pasta!

Tonight's Menu

• farfalle with roasted tomatoes
  
• peasant bread
  
• green salad "bar"
  

We eat pasta at least once a week around here but I don't usually post about it because, well, it's boring. But tonight's pasta was anything but!

It was CSA pickup day again and we got loads of tomatoes. Up to now some of the tomatoes in the CSA boxes have been not quite ripe, which allowed us to put them on the windowsills and then forget about them for a few days while they ripened up. However, all of today's tomatoes were perfectly ripe, which means I need to use them FAST since I'm not into canning or preserving or any of that stuff (might have to GET into it though, if this keeps up).

Sooo, all I did was follow this recipe for roasting them with garlic, basil and balsamic vinegar, then I served the resulting delicious melange over farfalle (aka bow-tie pasta). It was SO yummy, y'all. This time I refrained from tarting it up with any eggplant or zucchini (though we got bunches of both in today's box).

The bread was from the book. I SWEAR I will post a review of this soon. A few people have emailed me with questions and I will try to get those answers out this week, I promise!

The salad was the exact same one we've been eating for the past week, but with fresh ingredients. I'm getting a little bored with salad, frankly, but the kids are always happy to eat it so it's a painless way to get veggies into them. Sigh.

My new go-to meal

Tonight's Menu

• grilled chicken drumsticks & thighs
  
• rosemary-onion focaccia
• leftover zucchini with bacon & onions
  
• green salad "bar"
  

This is becoming my new go-to meal this summer. Tonight's dinner was basically a repeat of our dinner from June 4 of this year, except that we had the leftover zucchini from Saturday, and tonight's salad bar featured purchased mixed lettuce, sliced carrots from the CSA, sliced cucumbers from the CSA, sliced banana peppers from the CSA, and mixed cherry tomatoes from my dad's garden. Yum!

More soft-ish things

Tonight's Menu

• grilled ham steak
  
• cornbread
  
• sauteed zucchini with bacon and onion
  

This was Day Two of Get Some Real Food Into The Boy After His Tooth Extractions. Hmm, I should come up with an acronym for that, maybe. It's a little long as-is. Anyway, tonight I made food that was slightly LESS soft than last night, but still easy on the gums. And still easy, period!

The ham was just a packaged cross-cut ham steak, slapped on the grill over high heat for maybe 4-5 minutes per side (you'll want to adjust that based on the thickness of your steak). Yummy, easy and super fast!

I've given you the cornbread recipe before. It's easy, too. Honest!

And I KNOW I am making zucchini with bacon and onions practically every single night, but tonight it was different because the zucchini was cut into a different shape. Yep. (Picture me nodding earnestly at you here.) Usually I slice it into coins and/or half-moons, but tonight some of it was shredded (leftover from a couple of days ago when I made these cupcakes, which were FABULOUS) and some was cut into batons. TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Why are you looking at me like that?

More cooking from the CSA box: slow-roasted veggies? Oven-poached veggies? Veggie confit?

Yeah, I am not sure what to call this one, y'all. Here's what I did; maybe YOU can figure it out!

I wanted to slow-roast some of the CSA tomatoes in a bunch of olive oil based on this recipe by my lovely pal Kim. So I cut a bunch of tomatoes into wedges and tossed them in a baking pan along with some unpeeled garlic cloves, and then I thought, "Hey! I bet those little ichiban eggplants from the CSA would work a treat in here, too!" So I tossed those in as well (some of them were whole because they were just finger-sized, and others were cut into chunks).

I could have left it there but you all know me; I can never leave well enough alone. So I chopped up a medium-sized zucchini and popped that in the pan as well. Then I tore in some fresh basil (from the CSA), drizzled over quite a lot of extra-virgin olive oil (REALLY a lot -- I didn't cover the veggies entirely or anything but I definitely covered the bottom of the pan), shook on a few glugs of balsamic vinegar, sprinkled the lot with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and popped it into the oven, uncovered, at 300 degrees F. The total cooking time was about 90 minutes, and I gave it a stir every half-hour or so.

Oh DUDES. This is one of the most delicious things I've ever made, I'm not kidding. After it came out of the oven I took a spoon and squished the garlic cloves so the smooshy garlic goodness squooshed out of the paper (which I threw away). I let it cool a bit and then spooned some into a bowl, scooping up great gobs of it with thick slices of peasant bread (from that bread book I can't stop talking about). HEAVEN, people. Absolute heaven.

This is going to be my lunch every single day until I've eaten it all. And possibly my breakfast, as well. It's THAT good.

But I still don't know what to call it!