New food find: Mahi Mahi burgers

I like fish and make sure I eat it at least once a week for my health. I've been eating a lot of canned tuna, which, though friendly to the wallet, is sort of sad. I tried out a whole foods mahi mahi burger today and it was delicious! It's about $7 for 4 patties. I had it with dijon mustard, fresh basil, tomatoes, pepper, and hot sauce on seed bread. The package suggested eating it with pineapple or a fruit salsa, which I imagine would be delicious. I highly recommend it!

White Peach salsa

Peel, slice and dice 2 juicy white spicy peaches. Mix in 1/4 of a jalapeno (maybe 1/2"), whizzed or in tiny dice. You can blacken it first to remove the skin, but I think it's ok either way. Add 2 T. chopt cilantro, 1 chopt spring onion, juice from maybe 1/4 of a lime, and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. You can add chopt mango. And red onion. And red pepper. It's good on a white fish (haddock or scrod) and on whatever you are having for the next several days - - rice, chicken, or even just lettuce.

Watermelon and mozzarella salad

I made this dish last night with CSA watermelon. It was inspired by a salad I had earlier in the summer at Fig in Charleston and is absolutely delicious! At Fig, they also included thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes and used fresh basil instead of dried.

Arrange thinly sliced watermelon and thinly sliced mozzarella cheese on a plate. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with dried basil.

Update: in my CSA this week, I got tomatoes and basil, so I made the fancy version (pictured here, along with zucchini sauteed in basil and butter and baked potatoes with butter and parsley.) If I made this again, I'd slice the basil--it was a little ungainly in leaf form.

Somebody else post, please :(

Tomatillo Sauce

Today I made potato and bean enchiladas baked with green sauce for an old friend who came to dinner. The enchiladas were OK, but I really liked the sauce (adapted from this recipe):
Boil 6 whole tomatillos and 1 chopt onion for 10 minutes. Drain thoroughly and cool. Puree the boiled veggies with 1/3 c. fresh cilantro and 1 jalapeno pepper until smooth.
I imagine this would be good on top of all kinds of other Mexican food, polenta, and nachos. The inspiration for this dish was, as per usual, the CSA. I have never cooked with tomatillos before, but they showed up in the box, along with onions and potatoes. We also ate CSA lettuce in our salad and CSA watermelon for dessert (my Southern husband claimed to have picked out the perfect one--I think he was right). I plan to put the last couple tomatillos in a leek pie in a few days.

Yummy Garlic Soba Noodles!

Today I saw Julie & Julia. It pumped me up so much about cooking (it was also about 6 so I was getting hungry) that on the way home I dropped by Whole Foods to get some special ingredients. Michael's been talking about making soba noodles for a long time, but they don't sell them at our Superfresh, so I figured today was a good day to try them out. I made garlic soba noodles from 101 cookbooks. It was quite a hit. I used chard for the greens and chose to pan fry the tofu. It was delicious--tasted just like chicken nuggets! Next time I would blot the tofu slices before dredging them. Also, I would make about half as much batter (only 1 egg and less bread crumbs/parmesean). My other addition was to add some black pepper to the cooking veggies. Hot pepper would be good, too.

Jerk Halibut

Mom and Dad came to visit Michael and me to see our new apartment now that we're all settled in. We started with hummus and chips, then moved on to beet salad on a bed of greens. For our main course, we had polenta ratatouille casserole and Jamaican jerk halibut. Michael made the halibut using jerk spices we brought back from Belize. We used a stove-top grill/griddle pan that we got as a wedding present. Indoor grilling is smoky, but it got great results!

Adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Jays-Jerk-Chicken/Detail.aspx
INGREDIENTS:
* 4 green onions, chopped
* 1/2 onion, chopped
* 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
* 1/2 cup soy sauce
* 3/8 cup distilled white vinegar
* 3/16 cup vegetable oil
* 1T, 1t brown sugar
* 2t jerk spices
* 1 lb halibut
DIRECTIONS
1. Combine ingredients in a food processor or blender. Mix for 15 second.
2. Marinate the fish for 1-2 hours.
3. Preheat grill for high heat.
4. Lightly oil grill grate. Cook fish for 4-5 minutes on each side.
Enjoy!