Potato Salad Success (or, what I ate on Saturday)

Once again, Saturday was my red letter day for cooking. The day started out with a trip to the farmer's market, as per usual. Our brunch was waffles with sauteed apples. I'm not satisfied with my waffle recipes yet. I've been working mostly out of Joy and usually use at least some whole wheat flour. They taste good but aren't nice and crispy. Does anybody have any tips for making a crispier waffle?

Anyhow, the real success of the day came with dinner. One could call it "Farm Box Reject Variety Show" or, more flatteringly, "A Summer Salad Spectacular." I had a few farm box items that, for a variety of reasons, had been lurking in my fridge for >1 week and seriously needed to be used. Part of the problem (if this is really a problem) is that I had some unexpected free food opportunities over the past week. Anyhow, I needed to get rid of a sliver of red cabbage, some beet roots, lettuce, a pepper, and potatoes stat. I created a beet and red cabbage salad based on Jo's recipe, though of course I substituted red cabbage for the carrots. I also used almond oil rather than walnut, added sunflower seeds, and topped with sliced purple/green bell pepper. It made for a lovely presentation when placed atop some large red cabbage leaves in a bowl.

I also made a french potato salad based off of Ina Garten's recipe in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (referred to below as BCC). Let's get this out of the way right now: I love Barefoot Contessa and I love this cookbook! Everything I've made from this book has been fabulous, and Garten's style conveys her love of food so much that it makes you love it, too. Ok, plug over. Anyhow, I started with her recipe and adjusted the ingredients to fit my pantry and taste. My version has significantly less oil, uses different herbs, and adds celery and eggs. I include her original ingredients next to mine when I made a substitution of necessity so that if you are blessed with a fuller pantry you can decide between the two. Either take is an entirely different beast from the American mayo-ful potato salad.

French Potato Salad



1 qt small red potatoes
2 eggs
1.5 stalks celery
2T wine (I used red, BCC calls for white)
2T veggie stock
3T rice wine vinegar (BCC: champagne vinegar)
1t Dijon mustard
1/2t salt
1/2t black pepper
3T EVOO
Some (8-10ish) chives, chopped
Some (6-8ish) basil leaves, chiffonaded

Boil potatoes in salted water until cooked through, 20-35 min.
Hard boil eggs (I use Joy's cold water start method)
When potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut into quarters (or halves, or 8ths, depending on the size/your preference). Do not drop a potato into your toaster (how did that even happen?)
Place in a bowl, drizzle with the stock and wine, and toss gently with a spoon.
Allow the liquids to soak into the potatoes before adding any more ingredients.
Make the dressing by whisking together vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper. Pour over the potatoes.
Slice the eggs and the celery and add to the potatoes.
Add the fresh herbs.
Toss gently with a spoon to mix.
Serve over a bed of lettuce or eat solo.



You could monkey around with this recipe a lot, depending on what you have available. Tomatoes and dill would be a good addition, as would green onions and parsley if you leave out the celery and chives. Or how about olives? I think I should make it again next weekend and find out.

Until next time (next Saturday?) !

Tomato Pie and Seared Cabbage

Saturday was another good day for food (this seems to be a pattern). I took the bus to the farmer's market, which means that instead of scurrying away after picking up my farm share, I had time to loiter. I found a stand that has "seconds" tomatoes--I got 5 big, ripe, juicy tomatoes for $2 and they were only slightly bruised. In fact, had I grown them, I would've been quite proud that something so pretty had come out of my garden. Also found some okra. With those finds, plus this week's farm share, plus the stuff left over from last week, I have committed us to eating a lot of veggies this week.

We decided to start with a tomato pie. I've been talking about making one since I saw this recipe in the Post last week. I've only had tomato pie once before, when I ordered it at PJ's Pancake House and thought I was getting a slice of tomato pie (in fact, I got a whole pie. Oops.) The below recipe was adapted from the recipe from the Post. My pie crust was a little shallow so I used only two layers of tomatoes, but you could do more.

Tomato Pie

Preheat the oven to 350
Ingredients:
Pie crust (I used a "Best Yet" frozen pie crust that I think brought the whole dish down... next time I would make my own or do without and serve the crustless pie with bread)
~1.5 cups of cheese, grated (I used cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan)
1/4c diced sweet onion
~2.5 tomatoes, seeds and pulp removed, sliced 1/2" thick
~16 chives, chopped
Oregano, salt, pepper

To assemble:
Cover the bottom of the pie crust with 1/2c cheese
Cover with a layer of tomato slices
Sprinkle with ~1/2 of the onions, ~1/2 of the chives, oregano, salt, and pepper to taste
Repeat the above three steps
Finish with a final layer of cheese.


Ready for the oven

Bake in the 350 degr. oven for about 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the crust is toasty brown. I put mine under the broiler for two minutes to brown the cheese.


Delicious!

I could see using fresh basil instead of oregano, as well.


I accompanied it with seared red cabbage. Here it is in the pan.

I like how this preparation softened the stems and gave them a mild flavor, sort of like turnips. Be careful when cutting the cabbage--you need to leave a little bit of stem with each piece to facilitate flipping. I messed up with about 1/3 of the cabbage, which is now in the fridge, waiting to become slaw.



Bon appetit!

Swordfish stew (and other food news)

Saturday was a good day for food. I hardly cooked all week, so felt like I had some serious pent-up culinary excellence to let loose. We started the morning with a trip to the farmer's market to pick up our farm box, and then returned home to make chocolate chip pancakes. During the afternoon, I made rye bread. Turns out if you're out of molasses, it tastes great made with brown sugar. I used that to make myself a snack of rye bread, butter, sliced radishes, and sea salt, which apparently is a thing. I still don't love radishes, but this was actually delicious. Maybe it was because I had some unusual white radishes, which are milder than the bright red kind you usually see at the grocery store. Still don't think I'll be seeking out radishes much in the future, but if I ever end up with a bunch of them, I will set to work on some rye bread immediately.

This all leads to the piece de resistance of my day in the kitchen, the namesake of this blog post, the jester of Tortuga: swordfish stew. I found this recipe in the New York Times years ago and Mom used to make it before The Great Oil Taboo. I decided to make it when I fortuitously had three ingredients I rarely purchase: swordfish, olives, and grape tomatoes. What, you may ask, lead me to have random, unspoken-for swordfish in my fridge? Well, I made one of my monthly-or-so hikes to Whole Foods on Friday and picked up some "Whole Catch" frozen fish. That stuff is so good! It's only $8 for 12 oz and, unless you're busting the bank and getting the best stuff, it's just as good as fresh fish.

As an FYI: the recipe calls for making this dish 24-48 hours ahead and allowing it to marinate in the fridge that whole time. I made it 6 hours ahead this time and it tasted exactly the same.

So without, further ado, Swordfish Stew:
Thaw 12oz swordfish. Season with salt and pepper.
Place fish in a (preferably heavy bottomed) sauce pan. It should fit snugly but not be all crammed up in there.
Cover with 1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced; a generous handful of olives; about a half pint of halved grape or cherry tomatoes; 2 bay leaves, and ~1t dried oregano. Drizzle w/ 3T EVOO.
Let marinate in the fridge for 24-48 hours (or 6 hours... whatever.)
Take out of the fridge ~1 hour prior to cooking to warm to room temperature

Here's the pan all ready to go:


Cook, covered, for ~1 hour on low heat, or until the swordfish is cooked through. (We have to put our gas burner on the very very smallest flame possible to get a low enough temperature to prevent burnage & stickage).
Remove from heat and allow to sit for 30 min (or just eat right away, like we did... again, whatever.)
Serve on top of garlic bruschetta. This is how you make that:
Marinate 1 clove minced garlic in 2T EVOO for 5-10 minutes
Brush the mixture onto a thick slice of bread (we used rye... see above)
Broil 1-2" (keep an eye on it--bruschetta burns fast)
Serves 2-3.

The resulting stew is delightful--warm, filling, flavorful. We enjoyed ours with sauteed spinach on the side.



Remember to save a piece for your cat!

Father's Day Brunch

Suzanne made Father's Day Brunch. Muffins: from the Hodgson's Flax Seed box, and delicious. Fruit Salad: mint, nectarines, blueberries and black raspberries from the garden that gave the nectarines a flaming red blush. Served with a yogurt/lavender honey sauce. Eggs with parmesan and herbs. Veggie sausage patties. Delectable.

Cheesy Biscuits

Michael and I made an AMAZING breakfast today. At first we were just going to have eggs, but we didn't have bread with which to make toast. So, I decided to make biscuits to go with the eggs. I'd had my eye on this recipe for Cheddar Biscuits on the back of my King Arthur white whole wheat flour bag for quite some time. This seemed like an opportune time to try it out. I left out the sausage (obviously) and opted for the buttermilk. I also omitted the pizza dough flavor (what does that even mean?) The finished product:

They were SO good! Cheesy and soft. I liked the effect of using diced rather than grated cheddar--you get these little bursts of flavor. Plus, the bits of cheese on the edges and bottom of the biscuits get nice and toasty. I can't think of any way to improve them. I could see myself throwing in some coarse ground black pepper or using blue cheese instead of cheddar, or maybe adding some chives.

By the time we had the biscuits and eggs, we thought we may as well do some grits, too. The finished meal included biscuits, veggie sausage patties, fried eggs, and blue cheese grits (Michael's creation--fabulous!) We both made little sandwiches with the sausages, eggs, and biscuits. A 5-star breakfast if I may say so myself!

Mother's Day Lunch

Dad looks hungrily at my salade nicoise!

To celebrate Mother's Day, I had Mom and Dad up to B'more. We started with Kier Royales, homemade bread, hummus, and minty pea spread with mint from Mom's garden. Next, we had salade nicoise. It tasted really good, but the most appealing part was probably the presentation. The preparation involved a bit of a splurge at whole foods, too, which may have contributed. I spread a base of Boston butter lettuce and watercress over a platter. I then added boiled small red potatoes, grape tomatoes, haricots verts, a few chives, hardboiled eggs, and nicoise olives with herbs de provence. I finished it off with grilled tuna. I tried to get fresh tuna, but they were out, so I used the "fresh catch" frozen kind from Whole Foods. It actually tasted really good--I thawed it in the microwave, brushed with oil, seasoned with salt and pepper and then cooked 2-3" on each side on my stovetop grill. The only downside was that I feel like you need to cook the frozen kind all the way through rather than just sear it, like some people like. I make a simple dressing --3T red wine vinegar, 2t Dijon, 3-4T EVOO, fresh rosemary, and salt & black pepper to taste. We finished with a Dan cake (not shaped like Dan but that same recipe).

This ended badly,

I was making my date dip - - dates, almonds, orange zest and sherry. I reached for the sherry - - hmmmm - - - that little bottle in the pantry - - - and poured some into the mix. Looked fine. Tasted horrible. I'd used sherry vinegar. I tried to remedy the mix with Drambuie. The vinegar was undaunted. Into the disposal.