June 29: Risotto with Kale and Roasted Butternut Squash

I know. Kale and roasted squash? That sounds like I can't wait for cold weather to be here. Not (completely) true. I do love me some autumnal (!) meals, but I can hang on to warm weather for a while.


Anyways, back to the recipe. We had two half-bunches of kale (one from the produce box the week before) to use, and found this delicious looking recipe. 

Two kinds of curly kale!

Start by preheating the oven (to 425 degrees). Peel, seed and dice the butternut squash. Toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Stir the squash every 10 minutes or so.

Next, blanch the kale. You do this by bringing a large pot of water to a boil, cooking the kale in the boiling water for about 4 minutes. Prepare an ice water bath, and once the kale has cooked for 4 minutes, pull it out and immerse it in the ice bath to stop the cooking. 

Side benefit of blanching: it retains such an awesome, bright color. 

Drain and squeeze out the kale. Coarsely chop once drained. 

Sous-chef Christine, working hard to prep everything. 

Begin to heat up the chicken stock. In a separate pan, add the remaining olive oil, and cook the onion for about 3 minutes. Add the minced garlic and salt, and cook for another minute. Add the arborio rice and cook until coated in the oil. 

The cubed squash is tender and ready to go!

Stir in the wine, and cook over medium heat stirring constantly. When the wine is almost evaporated, add in the kale and 1/2 of the squash. Start adding the stock, ladle by ladle. Stir in the stock completely before adding in another ladle of stock. 

It is laborious, but worth it. 

Continue to check the risotto as stock is added to make sure the rice does not become mushy. 

Once all but 1/2 cup of the stock has been incorporated, add in the remaining squash and the last 1/2 cup of stock. Stir in the Parmesan cheese and parsley, and remove from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve. 

Bright and seasonal (a little early). 

The risotto was really tasty. Very different from the other risottos we have made (i.e. risotto with bacon and peas, and risotto with mushrooms) in terms of taste -- the vegetables are much milder that other ingredients that we have used before. It was nice and creamy without being terrible for you. I would definitely make this again, perhaps varying the vegetables to try some different combinations. The end of summer is prime for delicious squash!

June 23: Cornflake-Crusted Chicken Fingers

There are some days when I just don't feel like cooking anything adventurous. I know. Surprising. It is then that I turn to these quick and easy chicken fingers. I found this recipe several years ago in Fitness Magazine, and have probably made them 10 times. Probably not the most exciting recipe to follow, but it is quick, easy and better for you than regular chicken fingers.

Yes, Corn Flakes, I endorse you for this recipe. 

Basic Ingredients:
12 oz. skinless, boneless chicken-breast halves
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp mustard
2 cups cornflakes, finely crushed (I pour them in a Ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin)
black pepper to taste


Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Cut chicken breasts into strips. Combine egg, honey, and mustard in one dish.

Honey mustard goodness. 

In another dish, stir together cornflake crumbs and pepper. Dip chicken strips into egg mixture, then roll in crumb mixture. Spread the chicken strips on a baking sheet.

No boot-shaped McNugget, but there are a couple fun shapes in there. 

Bake for 12 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink.

Crunchy goodness. 

The chicken strips are nice and crispy without all the extra fat from regular bread crumbs or from frying. They are delicious with many different sauces -- buffalo sauce, BBQ sauce, ranch, mustard, ketchup -- or all of them.

The butter and sour cream were for baked potatoes. But I bet they'd go good with these chicken fingers too. 

June 14: Ratatouille Salad with Quinoa

We had gotten some yummy looking zucchini in the produce basket, and thought we'd make a delicious vegetable ratatouille salad for dinner. We decided to add some chickpeas to liven it up, and made some quinoa to go underneath the salad. 

I got started trimming and cubing the eggplant.
 

See the bright green book in the background? It's become my go-to. You could play, "Find Mark Bittman's book in Christine's blog photos!" if you're really bored.

Add two tablespoons of oil, warmed to medium heat. Once the pan is hot, toss the eggplant into the pan, add salt, pepper and cook for about 10 minutes, until the eggplant is soft. 

I got to work getting the other ingredients prepped while the eggplant was cooking, and tossed some quick cooking quinoa on the stove (no exciting photos of that move).

Medium zucchini, small onion and medium tomato: CHOPPED.

Take out the eggplant and let it dry on some paper towels. 

Softened and seasoned.

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and then add in the zucchini. Cook for about 2 minutes, then add in the onion and garlic. Cook this for another minute or two, then add in the chopped tomatoes and thyme (I also added a can of drained, rinsed chickpeas here). Cook everything down for just another minute, then pull off the heat.  Mix in lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Before mixing in the eggplant. So colorful!

Add the cubed eggplant, the vegetable mixture and the pan juices/dressing into one big bowl and mix thoroughly.

Warm, vegetable-y goodness.

The recipe says to let it cool to room temperature. I don't think we let it get that cold. Paul was busy working on taking the broken tv off the tv mount while this was going on (I was supervising, obviously), so we probably let it sit for about 10 minutes. Here is the salad on top of a bed of quinoa.

I'll need to have some ice cream to balance all these vegetables out.

This recipe was really easy to make, and very tasty. I'm sure you can make it with lots of different sides -- rice, pasta, a bed of spinach, etc. You could also top it with some feta or Parmesan. I imagine it's really good alongside some fish or meat as well, especially one that incorporates Mediterranean flavors. I liked that the vegetables still had some bite to them -- that they didn't fall apart or get too mushy while you were cooking them. 

I may have to make this one more time before all the summer vegetables are gone! Who can resist summer tomatoes and squash? Happy eating!

June 21: Steelhead Trout with Fennel and Celery Salad

After getting fennel in our produce basket, I was on the hunt for some halibut to go with it. No dice at Dominick's. Instead, we picked up some delicious looking trout. I wasn't sure how we could prepare it, but found this recipe online, which looked pretty simple.

Here, fishy fishy fishy!

The mixture that goes on the trout is made up of butter, paprika, lemon, barbecue sauce and cayenne pepper. What the what?!? That sounds really weird. We had some Sweet Baby Ray's in house, so I figured whatever happened -- it would probably still be pretty good. Or you dump more barbecue sauce on it and it's fine.

After mixing all of the components together, brush this on the trout ahead of time (you add more while cooking as well).

The sauce IS boss, so it can't go too wrong, right?

Alongside the fish, I found a recipe/article by my hero Mark Bittman that would take care of both the fennel and the celery that we had received in the produce basket. Even without the halibut. 

BOOM. Salad.

Bravely figuring out the fennel.

Bittman's recipe doesn't really give you quantities, so I eyeballed it. After following his directions to quarter the fennel and take off the hard outer leaves, I sliced it thin on the mandolin, and did the same with the celery. Add a TON of lemon juice, a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and some shaved Parmesan, and this guy is good to go.

All combined with some mood lighting.

Paul got to work on the grill. He put the fish on and cooked them for 10 minutes on a medium heat.

I wonder what our neighbors think, while we're taking 900 pictures of the grill.

He then brushed them with some of the remaining sauce, and cooked them for an additional 2 minutes on the grill. 

I know this picture looks similar to the first one, but it's cooked under there. Promise.

We cut the fish into normal sized portions, and ate it alongside the fennel and celery salad. 

Ooh, pretty.

The note alongside the recipe is totally true -- you wouldn't think this is good, but it really is! The fish was really good! The barbecue sauce is not overpowering -- the combination of ingredients has a nice flavor. 

The salad is quite refreshing -- the fennel has a licorice-like flavor (but not gross, I promise). Adding a lot of lemon juice and pepper really tones it down and blends well. The celery and fennel are similar in consistency, so they make for a nice crunchy bite. Plus, throw some Parm on it, and I'll probably like it anyways.

Update: we've gotten fennel again in our produce basket, and I made the same salad. Second round was just as good as the first!

Tapas: A New Adventure

Looky loo-loo what I got yesterday in the mail! That's right, friends. A sweet tapas cookbook!

Look at that cheesy fried goodness right on the cover. Penelope knows what's up.

Bring on the queso de cabra and patatas bravas!

Update: 2011 Summer Goals

Thought I'd give everyone an update on where we stand with our summer goals. 

1. Try not to kill our herbs. Specifically, the basil plant. 

Basil plant: alive (yes!!)
Cilantro plant: alive
Parsley plant: alive, but looks diseased. We'll put it out of it's misery. 
Rosemary plant (that we tried to resurrect): still dead
Tomato plants: kind of alive, but dying (Note: this is not totally my fault, as the workers fixing our building sprayed some sort of sealant, which killed all of the downstairs flowers AND grass. So I'm not totally to blame.)

2. Make flavored oils. But without giving ourselves botulism. 
Still working on this. Tried a quick ginger oil right around the time of the goal-setting, and it didn't knock my socks off. Maybe we can use some of the still-kicking basil plant for this. 

3. Stop shopping at the local chain grocery store.  
Um, pass.


4. ADDITION: Christine will learn how to grill meats. 
I have mastered preheating the grill for Paul. I ALMOST had to cook last night because Paul was on the phone (and I was out of control starving). I managed to get the grill ready, get everything outside, then found him out there cooking while still on the phone. In my apparent rush to mentally prepare for this foray into grilling, I burned the couscous. Oops. I'll get back to what I'm good at -- making sure stuff doesn't burn in the kitchen.

June 13: Grilled Salmon with New Potatoes, Broccoli...and a minor fail

We're big salmon eaters around here. Paul had picked up this nice big fillet at the store. We weren't sure how we should prepare the salmon, especially a large piece like this (about 2 lbs). I found a recipe online that looked easy and tasty. 

Fillet? Filet? I went with the two L version.

The only thing we were missing was mayonnaise to make the sauce. So, we decided to make our own. I decided to make it in the food processor. First, add an egg yolk and 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard. I only had one egg left, so it was do or die. 

So far so good...

I started the food processor, and used the feed tube to add in the oil. I think it went too fast into the mixture, because it didn't work. I couldn't get the mayonnaise to emulsify. 

Yerg.

So, we scratched the sauce, and simply went with the marinade on the salmon instead. (Note: I'm not sure it's technically a marinade since we didn't let it sit and soak into the salmon, but for the sake of keeping the marinade and the failed sauce straight, we'll call it the marinade). The marinade consists of vegetable oil, prepared horseradish, soy sauce, garlic, salt and pepper. 

Getting the salmon all ready to go. 

We decided to make some small red potatoes in olive oil and rosemary as a side. The potatoes were small enough that we figured they could cook alongside the salmon on the grill. 

Everything went on the grill. The potatoes went on first while I was making the marinade for the fish. The potatoes were on for about 20 minutes (you really can't overcook the potatoes here.) Paul cooked the salmon for about 5 minutes on each side. 

We think it was 5 minutes per side. Note to self: update the blog in a more timely fashion and you won't have friends cursing you while eating raw fish. 

Everything came off the grill looking quite tasty!

We steamed some broccoli to go with the salmon and the potatoes.

You also can't go wrong with rosemary potatoes in my mind.

YUM. I would totally make this marinade for the salmon again. It was really tasty! I'm glad turned out okay without the sauce. The fish was really nicely cooked, even the end pieces which can dry out. By making such a big fillet, we also had salmon lunch for each of us for a couple days. Normally I fear reheating fish in the microwave, but both Paul and I commented that it still tasted delicious a day or two later.