A Break in the Summer Heat

Thank goodness the weather took a break from full-on swelter. Aside from the joy of not wilting as soon as I step out of the shower, the cooler weather finally gave me a chance to address the fall veggies that the CSA has been sending along each week. Turnips, carrots, fennel, apples and cabbage, oh my! Sure, these can all be turned into dishes for a hot summer night, but I think they are even better cooked together in the spirit of fall.

So that's just what we did: cracking open a bottle of pear cider (a Swedish brand that's been on super sale at the Pioneer), I started to gather my cool-weather roots and assembled a dinner with roast vegetables, thick pork loin chops (also on sale), and sauteed savoy cabbage with apple. Perfect food for a fall break from the summer heat.

Pork Chops

Thick cut pork loin chops

olive oil

salt and pepper

Roast Fall Vegetables

1 turnip, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch pieces

1 leek, sliced thin and soaked in water to get the grit out

1 small bulb fennel, tops trimmed off and sliced into 1/4-inch slices

5 carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

Sauteed Cabbage and Apples

Olive oil

1/2 small Savoy cabbage, shredded

1 medium apple

Caraway seeds

Putting it together:

Preheat oven to 375F. Trim and and toss the root vegetables with olive oil, salt and pepper on a foil-covered baking sheet (easy clean up!). Start roasting, at least 25 minutes, but longer works, too. This is great if you're not sure when dinner will happen.

With the veggies in the oven, heat some olive oil in a medium saute pan. Add the cabbage and start stirring so it doesn't stick/burn. Once it has started to wilt a bit, add the thin apple slices and a generous sprinkle of caraway seeds. Turn back the heat and let this mixture get nice and soft.

Now, the pork. Heat some olive oil in an oven-safe saute pan. (No nonstick, metal handle.) When the oil is heated through add the pork chops and salt and pepper the chops. Let one side get a nice crust/browning and flip it. Once both sides look browned the middle will still be very raw. Now, put the pan, pork and all, into the oven. I liked mine at 12 minutes, but Mr. Lemon likes his pork d-o-n-e at 16 minutes. Mine was juicy. That's all I'm saying.

And that's it. Lots of vegetables, some succulent moist chops and a taste of fall on an August night.

Tally:

Fall veggies from the CSA inspire a mid-summer roast

Pork and Pear Cider, deliciously on sale

Lots of vegetables, lean-ish protein, easy dinner

To Marrakesh, Stat!

Long before the drag queens, er I mean Ladies, of Sex and the City 2 ventured into a desert in their caftans, I was truly taken with Moroccan culture. (In case you want to see those dunes and souks they featured in the movie, it was filmed in Morocco.) I loved the tiles, the fabrics, the little leather slippers, the poof-like footstools and, of course, most of all, the food.

After many years of hunting Moroccan food in Manhattan, I had the chance to go and try the real deal: Casablanca, Fez, Marrakesh. It was a whirlwind trip and everything you imagine a trip to an exotic locale will be. And the food? Divine.

With the recent heat wave, I've been thinking a lot about that trip to the desert and the cool refreshing dishes that Moroccan feasts kick off with. The traditional five salad starter has dozens of variations, so the combos are seemingly limitless, and are all veggie-loaded and health-friendly.

Plus they use a lot of the same ingredients in different combinations, so it's easy on the budget. Here's the ingredient list for the whole thing:

Veggie drawer: beets, carrots, eggplant, onion/scallion, cucumber, celery, tomato,

Fridge staples: garlic, parsley, mint, yogurt, capers, *always* lemons

Pantry pals: cumin, cayenne pepper, olive oil, vinegar (white, balsamic), bulgur wheat

These are all so easy, I went with some recipe short hand.

Moroccan Beet Salad

Roast cleaned, trimmed beets (3-4) at 375F for 1 hour individually wrapped in foil. Cool. Peel: the skins rub off with paper towel, which also protects your hands from getting dyed. Cut into 1/2 inch pieces.

Combine with 1/2 teaspoon cumin + half the juice of a lemon + 2 Tablespoons olive oil + 1 clove garlic, minced + salt and pepper.

Make at least 2 hours to one day ahead.

Cucumber Salad

Peel and dice 1 small or 1/2 medium large cucumber.

Combine with 1/2 cup plain yogurt + salt + half juice of a lemon + 1/2 clove of garlic, grated + 6 mint leaves, cut into a chiffonade

This can be thrown together quickly right before serving.

Moroccan Carrot Salad

This is my favorite of the bunch and the salad I'd been dreaming of for a while. I found this About.com recipe with video instruction. I'm not sure what it is about this video, but I find the chef so charming. He seems to care a lot about these carrots. Maybe I'm projecting.

I cut his recipe in half and skipped the cilantro. In short: steam 4-5 sliced carrots. Mix while hot with 1 Tablespoon white vinegar + 1 Tablespoons olive oil + 1 cup parsley minced fine + juice of half a lemon + 4 grated cloves of garlic + sprinkle cayenne pepper + 2 teaspoons ground cumin + salt.

Let it sit overnight. The carrots soak up the sauce. Yum.

Eggplant Caponata

Ok, more Med than Moroccan, but it was too hot to roast the eggplant for Baba ganoush.

Saute half an onion, diced, and 1 rib celery, diced, in 2 Tablespoons olive oil.

Cut 1 small-medium eggplant into 1-inch pieces and add to pan. Salt and pepper, and cook stirring until eggplant turns yellowish brown and is soft. Over medium heat this takes about 15 minutes. Then again, I have an electric stove, so gas-guzzlers you'll be done in no time.

Add 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar + 1 Tablespoon capers and lower heat. Add 1 tomato, diced. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Tabbouleh

Pour 1 cup boiling water over 1 cup bulgur wheat. Bulgur wheat is a Always Lemons Allstar: a cheap, healthy, quick, pantry dweller. Let stand 15 minutes.

Mix in: juice of 1 lemon + 2 Tablespoons olive oil + 1 scallion sliced into disks + 1 cup parsley minced + 1/2 cucumber peeled and diced + 2 cloves of garlic grated.

I have a lot of variations on this. Sometimes I add mint. Sometimes I add celery in place of cucumber. I've seen recipes that add tomato. The main flavors are the wheat, parsley, lemon and garlic. Add what you like. Feta, olives, and so on.

Serve with pita.

A Date with Soup

This soup has all the features I'm looking for in a meal: fast, full of veggie goodness, thrifty ingredients, filling. In short, my perfect lunch date.

** This photo looks like yellow mush. It's really more like orange mush. I tried.

Carrot Soup

Serves 1 nicely

1/2 small onion, finely chopped

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 c. baby carrots, sliced

1 c. chicken stock

1/2 pink grapefruit, membrane removed

Salt and pepper

In a saucepan, cook onion and ginger in olive oil over medium heat. When they start to smell great and look a little cooked, add carrots (I used baby carrots because that's what I usually buy for $1) followed by chicken stock.

A note: I make my own chicken stock not to be fancy pants about it, but as part of my no ingredient left behind program. That chicken I was picking apart last week? Its last bits and bones went into the stock, which I'll post about later. I like to freeze the stock in ice cube trays or in one cup measurements, since I rarely use one whole pot but rather throw it into multiple dishes.

Let the carrots simmer and when they are almost fully tender add the grapefruit. This is a subtle flavor, so you could try adding more, but I don't like overwhelming the carrots and ginger. Or skip the grapefruit altogether.

When the carrots are fully tender, turn off the stove and let the soup cool a little. Then transfer to a blender and puree or liquify. Me? I puree since I'm ok with a little more texture.

Return the mixture to the pan and simmer, adding salt and pepper to taste. I walked away and it thickened more than I wanted. Solution? I added about 1/4 c. water to the blender, ran it to gather up some of the soup that was left behind and added it to the saucepan. Bonus: the blender was that much easier to clean!

And then I got fancy...

I thought about veggie soups I'd had at restaurants and how they get dressed up. The answer:

Chive Oil

8 chives

1 1/2 Tablespoons walnut oil

Salt and pepper

I had never made chive oil and I couldn't believe how simple this was going to be. A little internet searching turned up a recipe on the Oprah site (not where I usually go for recipes, but it had the easiest instructions). The recipe from a book called The Conscious Cook is here. Did I follow all the steps? Of course not. Too many dirty dishes for my laziness.

Here's what I did instead: I didn't blanch the chives, I put them in a strainer, balanced it on top of the already steaming soup mixture and covered the strainer with tin foil. I let it sit there for about 1 minute and then removed the strainer from the heat and ran it under cool water from the tap.

Cut up the steamed chives and put in a mortar. Add the walnut oil and salt and pepper and then grind away. I was surprised at how quickly the oil turns a pretty green shade. Strain and drizzle on top of carrot soup.

The chive oil added a nice contrast to the spiciness of the carrot soup, looked pretty and made this an omega-3 rich dish.

Tally:

Veggie-tastic lunch

Bunny food that's spicy and filling

Pretty way to use up carrots and other leftover ingredients

One Fish, Two Fish, Pink Fish, New Fish

More fish? More fish!

Recently I've been on the hunt for ways to get more omega-3-rich fish into our daily meals and I had to come back to my old favorite: salmon. Salmon's not the most thriftastic fish around, but it sure is delicious.

I had been dreaming of salmon ever since we enjoyed the most delicious Japanese salmon dish at our friends' house the other week. The salmon had been marinated overnight in another old favorite: miso.

I'm not so patient, so here's my quicky-version of Miso Glazed Salmon.

Miso Glazed Salmon

1/2 lb. filet of salmon

1 Tablespoon white miso paste

2 Tablespoons mirin

1 Tablespoon water to thin glaze

Mix the miso paste and mirin in a bowl. Add water slowly to slightly thin the glaze. Spread on salmon filet and let sit for 10 minutes. Place on baking sheet and place under a broiler about 10-12 minutes (this could be shorter depending on the heat of your oven--as you can see, my oven was a little too hot! I'm still learning how to use the broiler in this kitchen.)

Ginger Honey Carrots

2 cups baby carrots

4 thin slices fresh ginger

1 teaspoon low sodium soy sauce

1 Tablespoon honey

salt to taste

Place carrots and thin slices of ginger in a saute pan and add water to pan (not so much that the carrots are submerged). Cook over medium-high heat until carrots are tender. If there's a lot of water left, drain it off. Add soy sauce and honey and stir. Turn heat down to low and cook until carrots begin look lightly glazed, about 5 minutes.

Green Bean Bundles

Green beans

Fresh chives

Garlic

Run knife or finger along chives to flatten and make the chives more flexible. Tie 3-4 trimmed green bean together with a chive (I wrapped the chive around and then made a little knot.) Place in a steaming basket over simmering water with some peeled garlic until beans are bright green and tender.

Tally:

A rich dish that's both healthy and satisfying

A slight splurge, but still less than going out

Easy fish fast