What's Cooking (Take Two!)

A simple bowl of pasta carbonara tonight. Fortunately, I was alone so no one had to see or hear the commotion as I gobbled that up!

Grilled marinated Chinese-style chicken wings tonight.

Thai Chicken Satay tomorrow night.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

Thai-style red curry with green beans, onions, green peppers, ginger and garlic, coconut milk and warm Thai spice, garnished with cilantro from the garden.

pick of the day.jpg

Garden pick of the day: heirloom romaine, garlic scapes, spearmint and wrinkled cress - about to be transformed into spicy lamb lettuce wraps!

A chuck roast has been marinating for 1 1/2 days in fresh lemon juice and zest, evoo, green onions, worchestershire,and Dijon. It will be grilled to a medium rare. Sides are a cauliflower, Yukon Gold mash with my first garden garlic, roasted and smashed with the veggies. Green beans blanched, then cooked with a little butter, garlic, sweet basil and Sungold cherry tomatoes.

Fired up the charcoal grill tonight: NY strips and a rack of lamb.

Some of the exploration I am doing almost feels like anthropology/archaeology. Today I made Ful for the first time. This is an ancient dish in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and neighboring countries. You find small dried fava beans (finding the ingredients is really half the battle), soak them overnight, and in the morning cook for an hour or two until the beans are falling apart. Then add salt, pepper, crushed garlic cloves, olive oil, lemon juice, and cumin, and mush everything together. When I tasted it I said "why all this lemon??"

If you live in that part of the world, what do you have in the back yard? Olive trees and lemon trees. Lemons are free. That's why lemon flavor is a signature of the whole culture. And garlic and cumin must also grow locally. I think Ful is delicious. For supper I toasted pita bread, spread a layer of Labne (a thick sour strained yogurt), spooned in some warm Ful and some chickpeas, and stuffed in a slice of tomato and some leaves (baby spinach). Really satisfying and good... And a window into a whole culture.

Next time, less lemon.

Made a Moroccan spiced chicken pot pie based on an Epicurious recipe. It called for chicken, fresh lemon, cinnamon, cumin, paprika, almonds, golden raisins. I left out the olives and added preserved lemons, carrots, a little dried chipotle, and diced potatoes. I also used Trader Joe's pie crust. It was good, but I was looking for something that had a tagine type of spiciness to it and this did not. It would be worth trying again, though.

[Jenise]

Dinner tonight will be a soft lettuce salad followed by broiled lobster tails with tarragon-butter rice.

I have an overabundance of rapini in my garden so have been using it as often as I can . Made stuffed peppers with lamb, bulghur, pine nuts, onions, Aleppo pepper, sundried tomatoes and rapini that had been cooked with olive opil and garlic. Never used greens in the stuffing mix before. Quite like it !
About to start processing for the freezer. Makes a great stuffing for pasta shells or crepes or savory tortes as well as the classic Puglese sauce with pork sausage for orichietti. My family loves bitter greens of any type.

Warmed Bolillo rolls buttered, then filled with roast beef cooked in beef stock and fresh garlic until very tender along with Piquillo peppers, and baby arugula. We will dip them into the beef stock like a French Dip. A plate of garden tomatoes, and sliced cukes, sprinkled with salt, pepper and chervil.

If you live in that part of the world, what do you have in the back yard? Olive trees and lemon trees

I don't live in that part of the world but do have a lemon tree. If ones tree is healthy, like ours, they are prolific. Last year it gave us 520 lemons. We gave many away, then zested and juiced the rest. I have bags of beautiful yellow lemon cubes in Food Saver bags, and bags of zest in my freezer. Took a look at my lemon tree this morning and again it is loaded. I have not bought a fresh lemon in a very long time, except when I make a dish that I want roasted lemons in, or sliced lemons in a beverage. Olive trees are abundant here in our neck of the woods and seem to be very prolific, as well.

Always nice to have a meal that fully embodies the seasonal transition. Tonight it was spinach-based foglie d'ulivo with baby artichoke hearts, green olives, ricotta, mozzarella, basil, and lemon. Delicious. The salad of shredded carrots with oregano didn't hurt either.

Ooh, I love shredded carrot salads!

Ooh, I love shredded carrot salads!

So does my wife. It's pretty much a guaranteed hit, which is always nice. And I always enjoy making punchy vinaigrettes with lots of flavor, so it works for me too.

Surprisingly, our 2.5 year old son will also eat carrots that way (it helps if we include things like saba or sweetish vinegars in the vinaigrette) but tonight's fresh oregano was too strong for him and he had to pick out the green shards.

Spaghetti tonight with spicy turkey meatballs made with lean gr. turkey, sweet turkey sausage, prosciutto, asiago cheese, fresh parsley and oregano, milk, bread, red pepper flakes, eggs, a little evoo, and oven baked. They will finish off in a rich marinara sauce. A side of sautéed Super Caserta zucchini and sugar snap peas.

[Jenise]

Argentinian surf and turf: a prime filet mignon roast for four and garlic-marinated shrimp with chimichurri sauce to take advantage of my garden's bounty in the fresh green herb department with a cumin-scented rice. That main course will follow a green salad with avocado-lime vinaigrette and a skillet of charred peppers di padrone. Oh, and lots of cabernet.

Italian vegetable soup with fresh herbs, using up an abandence of goodies I have in stock right now. I am also using golden beets in an salad of some sort.....not sure yet.

This being such a late spring start around here for the garden, we just had our first pea harvest. Lunch was sugar snap and snow peas, sauteed in butter with garlic scapes, tarragon and chervil, with a bit of lettuce wilted in at the last minute. Gotta love a whole meal that comes straight from the garden (apart from the butter, S&P)!

Tonight's dinner will be kung pao chicken, but with cashews instead of peanuts.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Joy, it's early in the season and I'm already jealous of your garden!

Supper Club's tonight, and I'm hosting. The theme is Tuscan Summer Family Feast, and I'm providing the antipasto platter of various salumi, roasted olives, and a pair of artichokes soaked in a tomato vinaigrette. Another couple is doing a pasta primi. The secundi is going to be a big roasted porchetta (whole pork tenderloin wrapped in several layers of mortadella set in a forcemeat of ground pork, salami, garlic, shallot and rosemary all rolled up inside a boned out 1" thick layer of trimmed pork shoulder which is soaking in a marinade of more garlic, EVOO and rosemary), white truffled roasted brussels sprouts, turnips braised in chianti and honey, and black kale on a bed of ricotta with lemon rind and OO, all by me, and panzanella and a farro tart by my guests. Someone is also bringing homemade chocolate and zabaglione gelatos.

Oh, and I'm also making a Limoncello/Gin/Rosemary and Campari cocktail! This is the only part I'm nervous about.

Pictures and report of that porchetta please .....have never done the real thing because it is impossible to buy pork shoulder with the skin ON. Have tried approximations and nothing comes close to the crispy skin and succulent, intensely flavored roasted meat when the skin is intact

I provided prime NY strip steaks and a bottle of 2000 Pagodes de Cos (St Estèphe). Neighbors provided pommes Anna and a tasty spinach dish, plus big portobello mushrooms. For dessert I made a dead ripe juicy honeydew melon into balls and cut up a delicious ripe peach, and we had those with some purple sorbet from the neighbors. They also have a really nice grill on the deck and we ate out there. Steaks were blackened on the outside and red on the inside. In some ways a perfect meal...

[Robin Garr]

Spaghetti with a quick sauce of sauteed julienne red, orange and yellow peppers, browned onions and garlic, part of the sautee buzzed into a puree and mixed back in to make a sauce.