What's cooking?

[Robin Garr]

Italian-style invention: Snow peas, onions and green peppers in a lightly spicy roasted red pepper velouté over mezze rigatoni.

Wow, does that look good! Made me hungry. Were the snow peas from your garden?

[Robin Garr]

Wow, does that look good! Made me hungry. Were the snow peas from your garden?

Karen, they're from the produce market. We're not having an amazing spring like we did last year. <sob> The lettuces and spinach are just barely getting started, and it's been a drizzly gray and chilly spring with temperatures running 10 to 20 degrees below normal. They say it might break loose in April, but everyone around here is getting deseerate.

[Robin Garr]

Free-range egg dinner: Red potato and green bean salad with Mary's homemade mayo, and a browned-butter omelet.

Spaghetti with roasted fennel and onions in a Parmigiano-Reggiano béchamel.

I tried your combo last night for dinner, added some crimini and served with olive bread. All washed down my a 2005 Tsillan Cellars Bellissima Rossa.
A very good dinner. Your combo works !

Still working my way through Ottolenghi's "Plenty." Here are the sauteed chickpeas with carrots and Swiss chard -- with mint and cilantro, and a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice. Still in the pan, I just thought these vegetables looked happy together.

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Those are a colorful bunch of veggies Frank! Looks real good.

[Jenise]

Still on the Italian streak, last night's dinner was a salad of romaine chiffonade in a citrus dressing topped by a stack of pan-fried large shrimp in a parmesan cheese crust. The salad was followed by cacio di pepi--thin spaghetti tossed with lots of pecorino cheese, lots of black pepper, and pasta water. It's a classic dish that I've never had or gotten around to doing, so last night put an end to the wait.

Last night's dinner was Linguine and Fish Ragù, taken from a Giuliano Hazan cookbook. Used mahi mahi with onion, tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, and linguine. Was delicious and sounded a lot tastier than pasta with sardines.

I'm doing two different pasta dishes tonight. One will be for my wife, me, and my younger daughter, and it will be pappardelle with a classic Ragu Bolognese. My older daughter is a "polite vegetarian", meaning that she avoids meat for the most part but will eat it if it's served to her. I thought I'd respect her preference and have made a roasted vegetable "ragu" to go with penne. This is an interesting dish - you just roast some fennel, carrots, onions, a parsnip, mushrooms, and a bell pepper. Then add some veggie broth, canned tomatoes, and zucchini and roast a while longer, adding more broth to keep it moist. It's called a ragu but it stays pretty chunky and relatively dry, so it doesn't really fit my idea of that type of sauce. Still, it's very good and makes for a very hearty vegetarian meal.

[Robin Garr]

Asparagus risotto kicked up with flavors of onions, fresh ginger and garlic.

Last night's dinner was Chinese stir-fried ground pork with minced hot peppers (jalapenos in this case).

-Paul W.

Lately, I have been revisiting old recipes that were favorites of ours over 20 years ago. Tonight it is chicken thighs, bone in, skin off. Put into a buttered casserole, layer on fresh mushrooms, artichoke hearts, (I used frozen)and threw in crushed garlic cloves. Then a sauce made from a can of cream of mushroom soup (regular, not the fat free stuff) mixed with half and half, a bit of sherry wine and poured over the chicken. Parsley is sprinkled over at the finish. This bakes for 90 minutes and is divine. It is served with a lemon juice, and zest, mustard seed, chicken broth, butter, rice that is browned then baked. Parmesan, lemon and zest are fluffed in at the end. This recipe came from a volunteer with the police department. She had been a nursing supervisor for 25 years, then came to work with my volunteer program for ten years before she passed away. She was an excellent cook and had many of the secret recipes from Blum's Department store.

She had a friend who traveled from the north state to So. CA twice a year. Somewhere down in artichoke country, there was a place that turned artichoke hearts into a very tasty fried morsel. They were frozen and she would bring back boxes of them for her friends. It was suggested that we use those delightful morsels on top of this chicken casserole dish at the last thirty minutes of cooking when the dish was uncovered. OMG, were they good. After our supplier passed away, I used the drained, marinated,or frozen hearts with good results.

For those of you who shun the canned cream of mushroom soup, I must say I think it is an excellent product. Sometimes, in the winter, I gently warm the condensed soup, mixed with a little half and half, home made chicken broth, and a splash or two of sherry wine. We have it for lunch with a few toasted almond slices on top.....excellent!

Another Ottolenghi -- this one is a winner. My son and his wife were staying overnight. I know he loves smoked mozzarella, so I put together the "Smoky Frittata" from Plenty. Cauliflower, chives, smoked moz, and smoked paprika, with cheddar and six eggs, all cooked in a frying pan in the oven. It looked exactly like the picture in the cookbook, cut easily into tidy wedges, and tasted delicious for breakfast with crunchy buttered toast and new red radishes.

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I made this smoky frittata for dinner as a side to my husband's usual Wednesday night grill. I must admit, I was really disappointed in the result. Yes, it looked like the picture in the book (Plenty), but I found it uninspired in almost every way. When I was putting together the ingredients I thought it was lacking something. First, 7oz of cheese (almost half a pound) is entirely too much for just 6 eggs (and I use jumbo eggs). The cheese made the dish heavy, in my opinion. Chives alone were not assertive enough to add any real flavor to the dish, and smoky paprika should be a background note, not the star of the flavor profile. The creme fraiche and mustard did nothing to elevate the dish. I've had much better frittatas with more flavor interest offered by herb combinations, and other savory ingredients like onions and garlic. The one thing I did like was the texture and flavor of the cauliflower, which I will use in other frittata recipes in place of potatoes. But I probably will not be making this one again. It fell flat for me.

Speaking of "fall flat": the other day I made a shrimp quiche that rose an inch above the crust, like a souffle! It settled back down as it cooled but I don't recall seeing that behavior before. I guess I was a little over-zealous mixing things with the whisk.

Sorry Jo Ann -- I was in fact surprised that I didn't taste the smoked paprika more, since if you add a pinch to a soup recipe it can easily dominate the flavor. I'd agree it didn't have a "punchy" flavor but I chalked that up partly to the fact that he doesn't give a guideline on how much salt and pepper to add, when you are seasoning the raw egg mixture, and one has to be brave to taste the raw eggs. I thought I had under-salted when I tasted the finished product. I liked the fact that all that cauliflower lightened the texture and reduced the calories per serving.

Sorry Jo Ann -- I was in fact surprised that I didn't taste the smoked paprika more, since if you add a pinch to a soup recipe it can easily dominate the flavor. I'd agree it didn't have a "punchy" flavor but I chalked that up partly to the fact that he doesn't give a guideline on how much salt and pepper to add, when you are seasoning the raw egg mixture, and one has to be brave to taste the raw eggs. I thought I had under-salted when I tasted the finished product. I liked the fact that all that cauliflower lightened the texture and reduced the calories per serving.

You're right, the cauliflower was the best part of the dish for me. But, you pretty much have to really like cheese to find this dish interesting, I believe. Salt a pepper was sufficient in my dish. There just wasn't enough going on to make my palate sing. But, I will be experimenting with this dish and making others from the book.

Baking day. This is olive/muffaletta bread just out of the oven. Sourdough next.

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Looks heavenly.

Tonight it is thick potato wedges that were parboiled for 5 minutes, then put into a baking pan with garlic, s & p, evoo, roasted about 40 minutes then turned for another 40. Drizzled with a concoction of wing sauce, butter, Worcestershire sauce. Then green onion, cheddar and Gorgonzola cheese crumbles, and under the broiler it goes for more crisping and melting. A sprinkle of fresh chives will finish it off. A side dish of caramelized onions, in which two organic beef patties will be browned and cooked. Quick and comforting meal after a hard days work, it was all prepped this morning.

Tonight was one of the better pizzas in recent weeks. Tomato sauce with a strong component of slowly sauteed onions, a few shredded beets, taleggio, rossellino, and parsley. Plus, the crust was particularly good.

[Jenise]

Baking day. This is olive/muffaletta bread just out of the oven. Sourdough next.

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So you bake on a regular basis? Those loaves look great. What else goes in besides olives?

I only took a picture of the mise en place -- but this is my setup for the Ottolenghi version of okra in tomato sauce. There is a jar of preserved lemons -- that is the hardest to find ingredient but actually it was the one thing I didn't exactly like about the recipe.

It's obvious that I want to like everything I am cooking from "Plenty" but honestly, when I got this sauce mostly done, I was tasting it and I realized that what I wanted to do was just sit down and eat the entire panful of sauce. He likes his sauces "lumpy" so you cut the red pepper in strips thick enough that they can't "dissolve." Everything else does, except the whole coriander seeds. Ottolenghi likes to use whole spices, and when you get a seed you just crunch into it and enjoy the burst of flavor.

The recipe called for tiny frozen baby okra which I didn't think I could find, so I used the fresh okra shown and cut it in half before roasting. It worked well but today I visited the Greek market and realized that in their freezer they have the exact frozen baby okra that I was supposed to have used. Next time!!!

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