Codfish Niçoise and farro risotto

These recipes didn't come as a package, and I don't think they should stay that way, but the individual recipes have merit. The fish would pair nicely with couscous or quinoa, especially the black variety that would make a nice color contrast to the red sauce. It needs something to slurp up the sauce without being too assertive. The farro risotto definitely asserts itself. It's darned tasty, so that's OK, but it cries out to be served alongside roast chicken or grilled pork and doesn't need any sauce to cloak it.

Codfish Niçoise

From “Great Good Food” by Julee Rosso. This book is organized seasonally, and then I’m sure by some indiscernible pattern internally to each season. It always struck me as a little random, but has lots of likely prospects. The tagline is “luscious lower-fat cooking,” so it’s healthful, but not wretchedly so.

Ingredients

2 large fresh cod fillets (about 1½ pounds for 4 servings)

1 medium lime, juiced, about 3 tablespoons, divided

1 teaspoon olive oil

2 cups thinly sliced onions

1 tablespoon thinly sliced garlic

1 can (28 ounces) plum tomatoes

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram or oregano

1 2-inch cinnamon stick

2 tablespoons sliced pickled jalepeños

1 tablespoon juice from pickled peppers

½ cup green olives, halved

¼ cup capers

Method

Place fish in nonreactive baking dish. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons lime juice. Cover and chill for an hour.

In large skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions and saute until softened. Add garlic and cook for a minute. Add tomatoes and their juice, smashing tomatoes slightly to break them up. Add bay leaves, marjoram, cinnamon, jalepeño peppers and their juice and cook for 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Add olives, capers and remaining lime juice. Simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. (Sauce can be made a day ahead and chilled after this step.)

Preheat oven to 350. Pour sauce over fish and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily.

Rating: Nice sauce. Just mildly spicy from the pickled peppers, and the cinnamon is a nice touch. You need a robust fish to stand up to it however; the cod very nearly disappeared and was almost overwhelmed by the sauce. Of course, if you’re not too fond of fish, perhaps you’ll think that’s a good thing.

Variation: Chicken Niçoise. Since I was using half the amount of fish fillets, I reserved half the sauce for the next day and poured it over 4 chicken thighs and baked it at 375 for 40 minutes. The chicken stood up to the sauce more robustly than the fish and it paired well with the chicken.

Farro risotto

Adapted from “The Sexy Forever Recipe Bible” by Suzanne Somers. No, I probably wouldn’t have picked this up if I’d had to pay for it, given the title, but so far all the recipes I’ve made from it have been respectable.

Ingredients

3½ cups broth

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ medium onion, chopped finely

1 cup uncooked farro

1 tablespoon butter

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Method

Heat broth to a simmer and keep warm. In a saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Saute onions until translucent. Stir in farro and cook for a minute to coat grains. Add 1 cup of the broth, and cook, stirring frequently, until liquid is almost absorbed. Keep adding broth, 1 cup at a time, until all liquid is absorbed and the grains are puffy.(This is going to take some time. The original recipe claimed 15 minutes. I'd allocate 30.) Stir in butter and Parmesan cheese. Salt and pepper to taste.

Rating: Nutty, buttery goodness. The onions oddly aren’t noticeable in the end product, which almost seems as much sweetish as savory. Very robust side dish. I'd say it serves 4.

 

Asparagus and caramelized onion tarts

I didn't make any token effort to stage this, since I snapped it quickly before whisking them away to an off-site dinner party.

Years ago, back in the ’90s, a group of friends got together periodically to cook a menu from Bon Appetit or Food and Wine or some such thing. It predated the supper club craze of the next decade by a bit, but it followed the same theory: Most of us (me excluded) wouldn’t make all of those lengthy menus on our own. There are still some definite keepers that came out of those gatherings (both recipes and people), and the people finally reassembled Saturday night for a revival of gourmet night. It was a total blast, with great food to boot, so we’ve already got promises of a next time on the horizon.

The menu was a bit more loosey goosey this time; more suggestion of ingredient or dish category than list. Our fabulous hosts (oh my heaven, I now have basement envy) made salmon with a dill sauce. I took the suggestion of asparagus and opted for this tart. The original recipe, which you can find here, called for mushrooms, but since at least one person among us doesn’t care for them, I decided caramelized onions would be a fine substitute in terms of offering the same substance and relative texture, while boosting the flavor quotient. I might like to try this some day with mushrooms, but it’s definitely a keeper with the caramelized onions.

Asparagus and caramelized onion tarts

Adapted from Betty Rosbottom via Bon Appetit, April 2009

Ingredients

2 large onions, caramelized (with 1 tsp. butter and oil if you’re doing the stove-top method)

1 package of frozen puff pastry (two sheets), thawed just until pliable (about 40 minutes in winter, less in summer)

2 tablespoons butter (or equivalent fat saved from caramelizing onions)

1 pound slender asparagus spears

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1½ teaspoons chopped fresh thyme, plus sprigs for garnish

1½ teaspoons lemon zest

½ cup crème fraiche

½ cup packed coarsely grated Gruyere

Method

Caramelize onions by your preferred method. Mine is the minimal fuss, foolproof, great-reward crockpot method I’ve blogged/raved about here, but you can use the stove top method: Cut onions into slices between 1/8 and ¼ inches (if you get them too thin they’re easy to burn). Heat 1 teaspoon olive oil and 1 teaspoon butter in the largest skillet you’ve got so they’ve got room to spread out and not just steam cook. Set the pan on medium low. Add onions, and cook, stirring periodically until they’ve given up and become deep golden brown but not burned. This can easily take 40 minutes and you need to pay attention. Hence the reason I rave about the wonders of the crockpot set-and-forget it method.

Once your pastry is thawed to just pliable, roll into a 10-inch square on a cutting board. (One side will probably already be 10 inches out of the box; you just need to roll it out the other side to make it square.) You shouldn’t need to flour the board if you haven’t overthawed the pastry. If it’s reached the sticky stage, refrigerate it a bit before rolling out so you don’t need to flour the board and toughen the pastry. Cut into 4 squares. Using a sharp knife, score a border one half-inch in from the edge of the squares, making sure not to cut all the way through the pastry. Place squares on two baking sheets. Chill until ready to use.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter. (Or if you’ve got any remaining fat from caramelizing the onions, you can use that to make up part of the amount.) Let cool slightly.

Snap off any tough ends of asparagus. Slice asparagus into 1½-inch pieces on the diagonal. Combine with butter, onions, salt, pepper, thyme leaves, lemon zest, crème fraiche and Gruyere.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mound mixture on pastry squares, making sure to leave the ½-inch border uncovered. Place one sheet on a rack in the upper part of the oven and the other on a lower rack. Bake for 12 minutes, then flip positions of the baking sheets and cook for up to another 10 minutes. (Depending on your oven, it might be done a minute or so sooner, so watch them.) I baked mine for a total of 19 minutes between the two stages initially, then covered them with foil and transported them to the dinner party eight blocks away, where they were reheated while still foil covered in a 275-degree oven (my thanks to hostess Jodi). Garnish with thyme sprigs if desired.

Rating: Tasty. Those are all flavors I like separately, and combined the individual flavors still come through and combine nicely. It makes a nice presentation, so they’re a good dinner party first-course option. Ideally they wouldn’t have been transported and reheated, and would be best served shortly after their initial baking so they stay at their crispest, but they were remarkably forgiving of the abuse. This might look like a lengthy recipe, but they come together with minimal fuss or overall time commitment, with lots of make-ahead shortcuts. Overall, a great option for entertaining. Could make a meatless main dish for a lunch.

Make ahead tips: Onions can be caramelized a few days in advance. Just bring to room temperature before proceeding. Pastry can be rolled out, scored and placed on baking sheet, then covered and stored in the frig for up to a day. The asparagus filling can be mixed up a day in advance and kept in the refrigerator.

Quinoa with broccoli, cauliflower and toasted coconut

Today it was finally grilling weather again, and unlike some years where it’s been warm enough to grill but the patio was still snowbound, this time Dave didn’t have to shovel a path to unearth the grill from a snowy mound. 

Quinoa with Broccoli, Cauliflower and Toasted Coconut

Adapted from “Marcus Off Duty: The Recipes I Cook at Home,” by Marcus Samuelsson, whom locals count as an honorary Minnesotan given his time here at Aquavit and his Scandinavian roots. This book purports to be what the chef cooks when he’s offline, so to speak. Several of the recipes still look like they take a bit of a time commitment, but this one came together in about the time it took the lump charcoal to heat up and the main dish to cook. (Samuelsson offers music to cook to options in each section; it’s a possibly cheesy device, and now I’ve got a song by The Time running through my head, but every book needs a good gimmick.)

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa

1½ cups water

½ cup coconut milk

½ cup small broccoli florets

½ cup small cauliflower florets

1 medium carrot, peeled and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 celery stalks, finely chopped

4 green onions, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon ground ginger (or 1 tablespoon minced fresh)

2 garlic cloves, minced

3 tomatoes, chopped

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram or oregano

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper or hot red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons coconut flakes, toasted in a dry skillet until golden

Method

Combine quinoa, water, coconut milk and ½ teaspoon salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat.

Meanwhile, bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add broccoli and cauliflower and cook for 2 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside. Add carrot to pan and boil for 1 minute. Drain and add to other vegetables. (You’re aiming for barely threatened vegetables, not cooked all the way through.)

Heat olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add celery, green onions, ginger and garlic. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring often. Add pepper flakes, boiled vegetables, tomatoes and herbs. Stir to combine and season with salt and pepper.

Spoon quinoa into a large bowl and fluff with a fork. Stir in vegetable and coconut flakes. Serve hot, or at room temperature.

Rating: A quite nice side dish to accompany grilled food, or it could make a standalone main dish.  (The recipe says it serves 4, and if it’s the main course, that might be about right. Otherwise I’d say it serves 6 or more as a side dish.) Very colorful, and nicely textured since the veggies retain a hint of crispness. I used sweetened coconut and hot red pepper flakes because that’s what I had on hand. The contrast between the heat and the sweetness of the two kind of flakes really made this dish work, so I think I’d opt for the sweet kind anyway. He uses mint in the original recipe, which naturally I did not do since I think it’s nature’s attempt to make me very ill, but any bright herb could work.

Braised lamb with white beans

Haricot de Mouton

Adapted from “Paris Bistro Cooking” by Linda Dannenberg, an assemblage of recipes from several bistros loaded with charm and old-fashioned food, in this case the venerable Chez Georges.

This cookbook is one of the reasons this blog exists, to make myself explore the wonderful world that awaits inside. It sits on my shelf, filled with enticing recipes that represent the way I want to cook -- leisurely, lovingly -- and the way I want to eat – savoring laid-back, lingering meals. It's as much lifestyle aspiration as it is food inspiration. You imagine yourself living the life of a bistro frequenter, a life somehow more relaxed and more focused on the things that matter. It's all poppycock of course, but the idea persists.

So out the book comes for another glimpse into another life.

Ingredients

11 ounces dried white beans (I used Rancho Gordo’s cassoulet beans)

2 sprigs thyme, divided

2 sprigs parsley, divided

2 bay leaves, divided

1 medium onion, peeled and studded with whole cloves

1 medium carrot, chopped

2 pounds lamb shoulder, cut into 2- to 3-inch pieces

Salt, pepper and sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons flour

2 cups white wine

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 ripe tomatoes, quartered

4 garlic cloves, crushed

Method

Soak beans in water overnight. Rinse, drain and store in refrigerator until ready to use.

Wrap 1 sprig of thyme, 1 sprig parsley and 1 bay leaf in cheesecloth to make a bouquet garni. Put beans in large Dutch oven with the herb bundle, clove-studded onion and carrot. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Heat oil in large Dutch oven or deep skillet. Sprinkle lamb with salt, sugar and pepper. Brown on all sides, working in batches if necessary. Sprinkle with flour and cook for a few minutes, stirring. Add the wine, tomato paste, tomatoes, garlic and remaining herbs. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for an hour.

Drain liquid from beans (I strained it and kept it to use as a vegetable broth). Add beans and carrots to the lamb mixture and cook another 45 minutes more. Season with salt and pepper as needed. Serve lamb and beans “heaped together,” a phrase that just smacks of comfort food.

Rating: I wasn’t transported to Paris, but it was a lot cheaper than airfare and it was good comfort food that didn't take that much hands-on time. The tomatoey sauce over the beans is the best part. I suspect the same method could work for beef chuck as well, if lamb isn’t your thing.

And speaking of traveling the world in search of food, I love Eatthispoem.com's literary city guides: http://www.eatthispoem.com/city-guides/

My other favorite food-related online stop of the day (thanks for sharing, Rebekah) is the Toast's bit on food blog commentaries.  But if you try this recipe with lentils, Gatorade and chicken, I don't want to hear about it.