Quinoa Salad with Roasted Zucchini, Green Beans & Goat Cheese

I had a great workout class tonight, and decided to finish the evening with making something healthy and delicious that I can take for my lunches for the rest of the week. I still have some of the giant zucchini, so used that as the base for this recipe. And can you tell that tarragon is my current herb of choice? I seem to find a way to put it into almost everything savory. And the tarragon scent reminds me of herb flavored glace (ice cream) in France... Berthillon has a thyme-citron (lemon) that is amazing. I think that Berthillon or the glacier in Vetheuil would do well to consider making a tarragon ice cream!

Quinoa Salad with Roasted Zucchini, Green Beans & Goat Cheese

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1/2 lb green beans, snapped into bite sized pieces
saucepan 1/2 full of water
3 cloves garlic, smushed and diced
2 cups zucchini, chopped into thick triangles
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp dried tarragon
1/2 tsp shallot salt
3 oz soft goat cheese
salt and pepper to taste


1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Boil saucepan 1/2 full of water.
3. Mix quinoa and water in another saucepan and put on to boil.
4. Once the first saucepan is boiling, add the green beans to it. Once the quinoa and water comes to a rolling boil, cover and turn the heat down to simmer.
5. Mix 1/2 cup olive oil with garlic, tarragon and shallot salt.
6. Place the zucchini pieces on a cookie sheet (cover with aluminum foil to shorten clean up). Pour oil mixture over the zucchini and bake for about 20 minutes, or until soft.
7. Once everything finishes cooking (about 20 minutes for the green beans, 15 for the quinoa, and 20-25 for the zucchini), mix the quinoa with the goat cheese and remaining 1/4 cup olive oil. Then add in the beans and zucchini. Salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy hot, or this recipe would also be deliciously refreshing cold - tomorrow I plan to add some cucumber chunks (also from the gorgeous upstate garden) to the mix!

here's a pic from my
recent hike in Acadia!

Zucchini Quesadillas

the biggest zucchini ever!

Some awesome friends in upstate New York have a beautiful and fruitful garden in their backyard, and I was lucky enough to sample some of their zucchini and cucumbers. First of all, the zucchinis are the largest I think I've ever seen. I'll get several meals out of one! Here's a favorite:

Zucchini Chicken Sausage Quesadillas

4 corn tortillas
2 tbl olive oil
1 tbl butter
2 cloves garlic, smushed and chopped
1 tsp dried tarragon
1 tsp shallot salt
1/2 cup queso blanco, shredded
1 cup thinly sliced zucchini
2 chicken sausages, sliced
2 tbl sour cream

queso blanco!

2 tbl pico de gallo

1. In a small frying pan, heat olive oil. Add garlic, tarragon, and shallot salt and saute. Add sliced zucchini.
2. In a large frying pan, melt butter. Place tortillas on the pan and sprinkle cheese on them.
3. Once the zucchini is softened, add the chicken sausage to heat through.
4. Portion the zucchini-sausage mixture over the cheese and tortillas and place another tortilla on top of each.
5. Serve with sour cream and pico de gallo (or cabbage if you have any laying around!).

Bon Appetit!

putting it all together!

Saumon Unilateral

I have many favorite foods from France. But this is one of my all-time favorites. I had this dish first at La Grille, that lovely little bistro right around the corner from my apartment in Paris. I'm going back to town the week after next and I'm definitely going to get my La Grille fix. It's called "Saumon Unilateral" because it's never flipped on the pan, just heated from beneath on a dry, salted pan. The heat works its way through the fish, and so the cooking level is stratified in the final piece of fish. You can see on the fish based on the color to cook it to your preference, but I always find that the more rare part at the top center of the piece is creamy and delicious. And, the skin at the base is salty and crunchy.

This dish is incredibly easy and fast to make at home, but it does require a good quality piece of salmon, and the thicker the better. This dish can be served with almost any kind of side, but my favorite is to serve with roasted asparagus with melted parmesan cheese and whipped cauliflower mash.

Saumon Unilateral

2 filets of good quality salmon
1 tbl good sea salt
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp herbs de provence

1. Heat a dry pan over medium heat and sprinkle salt across the base of the pan.
2. Sprinkle herbs de provence on the salmon pieces. Salt and pepper too if you like.
3. Place the salmon filets skin side down on the pan.
4. Let the salmon cook - it will take 8-12 minutes depending on the heat of your stovetop.
5. Remove and sprinkle with olive oil

Plate with sides - below see recipes for cauliflower mash and roasted asparagus.

Cauliflower Mash
1 cauliflower head
2 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp white ground pepper (or regular will do fine)
1 small container boursin cheese

1. Boil water in a large saucepan.
2. Add chopped pieces of cauliflower and garlic. Boil until soft.
3. Add salt, pepper, and boursin cheese and mash with a masher (or my new immersion blender works great for this too!). If you don't add the cheese, add a few tablespoons of milk to make it creamier.
4. Enjoy!

Roasted Asparagus
This was one of the first recipes from the Barefoot Contessa I tried, and I still love having asparagus this way!

1 bunch asparagus
1 cup asiago cheese (or parmesan or pecorino, as you prefer)
juice from 1/2 lemon
2 tbl olive oil
2 tsp sea salt / fleur de sel

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
2. Place aluminum foil over baking sheet and spread asparagus across it.
3. Sprinkle with cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt.
4. Bake for 25-35 minutes until soft, depending on the thickness of the asparagus.


Put it all together, and ... Bon Appetit!

Perfect Pesto

I confess to having had a certain disdain for pesto for much of my adult life, but I think I just had a few bad experiences with pestos that were overly creamy or too oily. However, a few months ago, a friend of mine made an arugula pesto that I adored, and then I realized that any mix of greens will do. So tonight, I made a pesto with all my leftovers from my CSA from the past week, since tomorrow's time for the next pick-up. And the result... was perfect. I had a friend to dinner, and this was a fast and easy dinner, which we enjoyed white wine with our fresh pesto and white sole. Even though I used basil, garlic scopes, cilantro, arugula, kale, and spinach, this was just based on what I had in, and this recipe still works great with any combination of these.


White Sole with Pesto and Angel Hair Pasta

2-3 pieces of white sole filet
1 tbl butter
1/2 box angel hair pasta
3/4 cup good olive oil (I used my favorite - Chateau Virant)
3-4 garlic cloves
2-3 garlic scapes
1 large bunch basil
1-2 stems of cilantro
1 small bunch arugula
1-2 kale leaves
1 small bunch spinach
salt and pepper to taste

1. Start your pasta water boiling.
2. Combine and pulse in a food processor - garlic, garlic scapes, basil, cilantro, arugula, kale, and spinach.
3. Put greens in a separate bowl and whisk in olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Once the water starts boiling, add pasta and melt butter in a frying pan. The pasta takes only 4-5 minutes, and this fish is thin and cooks quickly. When the butter is melted, add fish and cook, just about 2 minutes on each side, until slightly browned.
5. Add a few ladlefuls of the pasta water to your pesto. This will help it to adhere to the pasta. Combine sauce and pasta in bowl.
6. Serve with piece of fish on top.

 On an unrelated note, recently, I went to one of my favorite bars in NYC - Little Branch, in the West Village. I enjoyed some of my favorite gin and ginger beer based drinks, and then my friend suggested that we have some absinthe. I had ordered absinthe before at bars in London and Paris, but it has always come in a bottle. I had no idea I was missing out on an authentic absinthe experience... a la Toulouse-Lautrec. The eerie green liquid (which did not look eerie at all in the dark bar) is placed in a glass, with a sugar cube above a slotted spoon over the top of the glass. The water tap is turned on slowly to let it drip over the cube, melting the sugar, and dragging it into the glass. The result is a sweet and tangy, licorice-scented beverage that I enjoyed... and I felt like I was doing late nineteenth-century research! :-)

Roasted Turnips

My farm share started today for the season! I was thrilled to be handed a giant bag of vegetables, some of which I could not identify:

mystery vegetable - garlic scape!

 I walked home, breathing in all the freshness of basil, cilantro, arugula, and kale, and then pulled everything out to see the harvest. I boosted my leftover macaroni and cheese dinner with a kale salad and these roasted turnips, that came out far better than I could have imagined. They were the perfect blend of fresh, sweet, and salt. It was hard to leave leftovers for tomorrow. Who knew?

Roasted Turnips

4-5 turnips, peeled, and sliced into 1/2" roundels

1 garlic scape (if you happen to have one around - this is the green of a young garlic plant), sliced into 1/2" pieces (otherwise a diced clove of garlic will do)

2 tbl vegetable oil

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp shallot salt (a new purchase from the spice shop in Princeton, NJ; without this, you can use onion salt)

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 425 and lay aluminum foil on a baking sheet.

2. Place turnips in a bowl, and add garlic scape, oil, paprika, salt, cornmeal, pepper, and cheese. Mix thoroughly to coat the turnips. Spread out evenly on baking sheet.

3. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until soft. Enjoy!

Prosciutto-Chicken Rolls with Pasta

Even though it's almost spring, since I walked home from work today, I was famished when I returned. So I decided to go for a more wintry Italian dish that I made up in my head at the grocery store - chicken tenders wrapped with prosciutto slices, topped with decadent melted mozzarella cheese. And I made a side of whole wheat pasta with a homemade sauce. It was quick, delicious, and left me with a few meals' worth of leftovers!

 

Prosciutto-Chicken Rolls with Pasta

Ingredients
1/2 pound pasta of choice
1 large can of diced tomatoes
1 tsp tomato paste (easier to buy the tubes instead of the cans so you can use it as you need)
3 cloves garlic, sliced
3 tbl olive oil
1 tsp hot pepper flakes
3 tsp dried oregano
1 small onion
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 pound of chicken tenders
1 small container (5 slices) of prosciutto
1/4 lb fresh mozzarella

Directions
1. Set a large pot of water on the stove to boil.
2. Heat a small saucepan over medium heat.
3. Take each chicken tender and wrap a piece of prosciutto around it at a diagonal.
4. Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and one whole garlic clove. The whole wheat pasta I made called for 11-12 minutes.
5. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat.
6. Apply olive oil and 1 clove sliced garlic to the saucepan. Once sizzling, add onion and 2 tsp oregano and sauté for a few minutes to soften. Add white wine, and let it cook down. Then add can of diced tomatoes and tomato paste. Let simmer.
7. Apply olive oil and 1 clove sliced garlic to the frying pan. Once sizzling, add hot pepper flakes and 1 tsp oregano to the pan.
8. Once the garlic has softened but is not too brown, add the chicken tenders to the frying pan. After about 4 minutes, flip to the other side. The prosciutto will brown slightly.
9. Once the pasta is completed, add 3 ladle-fulls of the starch water from the pasta pot into the sauce. This will thicken it and help it to adhere to the pasta. Drain the rest of the starch water and combine pasta with sauce.
10. Once the chicken is cooked through - tenders are small enough that this will take a maximum of ten minutes - add thin slices of fresh mozzarella and cover to melt.
11. Serve prosciutto-chicken rolls alongside pasta.

The Lobster Roll Quest Continues...

Lobster Rolls at
the Temple of Dendur

Galina and I have a new lobster roll buddy, Allison, and the three of us have tried two different lobster roll places in the past few weeks. And, serendipitously, lobster rolls were served at the opening of the American Wing at the Met recently! I feel that in only five lobster rolls (Pearl Oyster Bar, Sable's, the Met's opening, Mermaid Inn, and Luke's), I might have become a connoisseur, but I suspect it will take some more sampling to more fully refine my palate.

De-icing the Met's stairs

pretending to be
in Venice with a spritz
aperol

First, we visited the Mermaid Inn on the Upper West Side (http://themermaidnyc.com/uws/). We loved this place! The decor is lovely; I felt like I was near the New England seaside more than in the middle of Manhattan. There were white painted ceilings and lovely candle-lit tables. We went for their Happy Hour special (before 7 PM), which includes tapas-sized seafood and drink specials. We shared plates of oysters, calamari, fish tacos, and of course, the all-important lobster roll. I was curious about the shrimp corn dog, so will have to go back to check it out. The fish tacos were amazing - they took me immediately to those Malibu seaside restaurants again (I'll be heading to LA soon, so will have to go for a fish taco fix again then!). And, as for the lobster roll, these were delicious. It was essentially a large piece of lobster meat without much sauce or flavoring or mayonnaise (unlike the chunky salad with mayonnaise at the Pearl Oyster Bar), and it had a sweet pepper on top. Yum!

fish tacos

mini lobster rolls at the
Mermaid

oysters at Mermaid

Lobster Roll Love! 

Luke's Lobster Roll

Then more recently, the three of us took a lovely lunch break to the more casual atmosphere of Luke's (http://www.lukeslobster.com/) on the Upper East Side. We passed a new chapter of Alice's Tea Cup on the way that we'll have to go back to! But here at Luke's, we had yet another iteration of the lobster roll. In this case, it was a meeting between Pearl Oyster Bar and Mermaid Inn. The texture was more of a chunky salad, as at POB, but there was no binding material like mayonnaise, as at MI. In this case, the lobster is drizzled with butter and spices.

Galina and Allison at Luke's 

Galina with lobster roll!

The hoagie bread at Luke's is particularly nice, with flat sides and buttered as toast. I bumped into a colleague near the museum on our way back, and he explained that with the true lobster roll experience, the roll is as important as the lobster meat. I think I'm envisioning an investigative trip up to New England in the near future!

Lobster roll hallelujah