For lack of tomatoes...

A couple of months ago I threw a BBQ for some friends who had recently been married. I knew burrata cheese (which I have a feeling will be the star of my next post) had to be on the menu, but tomatoes weren't really looking very good yet and I wasn't about to pair the greatest cheese ever with something sub-standard! There happened to be some lovely, local (early) red bell peppers at my organic market and I figured they'd make a nice substitute. Little did I know just how amazing a marriage burrata cheese and roasted red peppers make! The sweet, smooth, depth of the roasted pepper perfectly compliments the creamy, slightly salty mildness of the cheese. Piled on top of crusty bread or good crackers or simply eaten with a fork, this stuff is daaaaaaaaaaaaamnnnn gooooooooooooooooooooooood.



Roasted Red Peppers

several red bell peppers, whole

Preheat oven anywhere from 400 to 450 degrees F.

Lay peppers in a baking dish/pan. Roast anywhere from 30-45 min (depending on your oven), turning occasionally so all sides brown fairly evenly. Remove from the oven when the skin is well charred and bubbling/loosened from the rest of the pepper. The peppers will be quite soft.





Place peppers in a paper bag (or any other closed vessel, tupperware, a covered bowl, etc.) and roll shut to let them steam. Let peppers sit in bag for at least 10 minutes. Remove one pepper and test; the outer skin should peel away easily from the flesh (if this doesn't happen, leave them in the bag awhile longer). I usually get a bowl of cold water (which also helps cool them enough to handle, if they're still hot) and submerge the pepper, pulling away the skin and seeds. Cut away any firmer parts of the flesh that didn't cook as much or won't separate from the skin. Slice pepper into whatever size pieces you want (I usually leave them in fairly large strips).



Sprinkle with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and balsamic vinegar. Throw on some chopped parsley or basil, if you like. Eat them as they are, use them on pizza, in pasta or salads...these things are LOADED with flavor and make any dish better! I store mine in the fridge - drizzled with olive oil and layered in a covered dish - and use them all week.

Enjoy!

So long and thanks for all the fish...

It was my future-husband's birthday on Saturday, and after spending a week in bed with what I'm dubbing the "Summer plague of '11" he needed some major TLC. Fresh fish immediately sprung to mind for its health benefits and easily-digestible nature. I haven't been buying a lot of fish lately (thanks to the recent report I read on the state of the worlds' oceans) but when I do I make sure it is a) sustainable, b)as local as possible and c) fresh. Luckily I can rely on my butcher/fishmonger to sell me products that came from the most sustainable and local sources possible. That might not mean as much as I'd like it to, but what it DOES mean is that on David's birthday we ate quite possibly the best salmon I've ever tasted.



I knew at first sight that this salmon was going to be a winner; neon-pink and hardly any scent, it was obviously fresh fresh fresh. When it comes right down to it, I really only have two things to say about salmon: buy it fresh and DON'T OVERCOOK IT. I read a blog today where someone explained-away their salmon recipe that involved smothering it in sweet sauce in order to counter the "dense, chewy, not-that-tasty-on-its-own" salmon they were preparing. And then I read 20 people's comments about how great this recipe was and how it made them "finally like salmon." And all I wished is that I could be standing next to these people as they cooked their salmon so that when that salmon turned from translucent to just-opaque I could scream "TAKE IT OFF! IT'S DONE! DOOOOOOOOOON'T FLIP IT OVER, NOOOOOOOOOO"...etc. Because the only reason someone would ever think salmon was "dense, chewy or not-that-tasty-on-its-own" is if they cooked the absolute crap out of it. It also helps to use salmon that was caught within the past 24 hours. Salmon is not a fish I'd recommend to mid-Westerners buying their fish frozen. Go with a white fish, or better yet, something caught in a river or stream or pond that is located ANYWHERE in your general vicinity. It will taste better. Believe me.

The truth is overcooked salmon begins to taste like cat food. And in my opinion, trying to mask cat-food-like-salmon by drowning it in sauce or blasting it with flavored rubs is just as close to sinful as you can get with food. Which is why I practically NEVER order salmon in a restaurant. The real truth is that it just doesn't get any better than wonderfully fresh salmon simply cooked in the oven (or carefully on the grill...and no flipping!) with a little olive oil, lemon and salt and pepper. Cooked this way, and removed from the heat when it's flesh is just barely opaque, the salmon simply speaks for itself. Add whatever you like on the side, but keep it simple. Salmon makes a great summer meal because it pairs beautifully with the simplest, freshest ingredients.


Salmon with Chanterelles and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

2 fresh salmon fillets
2 cups fresh chanterelle mushrooms, sliced
2 cups cherry tomatoes, in season, halved
1 or 2 spring onions, halved and thinly sliced
1 tsp lemon zest
2 TB butter
olive oil
chopped parsley
fennel or dill fronds for garnish
fresh-squeezed lemon, to serve

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Drizzle salmon fillets with olive oil, sprinkle with lemon zest, salt and pepper. (for fun I laid on some beautiful fennel fronds...you could do the same with fresh dill)



Toss cherry tomatoes with olive oil and salt. Roast in oven for about 30 min.



Meanwhile saute mushrooms and onion in butter on medium-low heat until onions are translucent/soft and mushrooms are slightly browned, anywhere from 10-20 minutes.



When tomatoes are slightly caramelized and just beginning to brown, remove from oven.



Toss tomatoes with the mushroom mixture. Add a big pinch of chopped parsley.



Cook salmon in oven for anywhere from 12-20 minutes, depending on your oven. I usually poke a corner of one my fillets to see if the inside is done. If the outer salmon is still translucent, give it a few more minutes. When the salmon is just barely opaque in the center and the outside is slightly firm (could be browned or not, depending on the circumstances) REMOVE FROM HEAT. If you notice a white substance secreting from the salmon, do not be alarmed: this is simply protein (called albumen) cooking out of the salmon and is not only thought to be good for you, but more importantly extremely tasty! I like to think of it as the 'fat.'



Let the salmon rest for a few minutes, drizzle with lemon juice, top with the mushroom/tomato mixture, and enjoy!



- Happy Eating -

A Peck of Pickled Peppers

Summer offers up a huge bounty of beautiful, fresh produce. Fruits and vegetables taste best when picked at the height of their natural season...it's a simple fact. Given today's society's ability to ship anything from anywhere, we don't necessarily cry when summer is over. But imagine if we didn't have the option to simply go buy a mealy tomato or rock-hard/sour peach in the middle of winter. For those of us living in the practically-non-seasonal climate of California I know we would take seasonality a lot more seriously if we were living in, say, Vermont. In Vermont, winter - and I mean REAL winter - likes to stick around for a good 6-7 months of the year. Spring is muddy and fall is brisk, so summer actually means something. And the plants are there to prove it. They push up out of the ground at amazing rates; the combination of intense sun and quick-but-plentiful rain showers make for the perfect setting for speedy growth. Now imagine you're a farmer 100 years ago. You rely on the land for everything. You have to grow enough food to get you through the next winter; if you make a bad crop, you suffer. If you waste anything or fail to store enough of your crop, you're screwed! This idea has fascinated me ever since my first reading of Little House in the Big Woods and the rest of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. I've always loved reading about living off the land and bringing in the harvest. In Animal Vegetable Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver makes it clear that, come July, the vegetable garden becomes a full-time job; picking loads of food every day and then canning, preserving, stewing, drying, freezing, pureeing, storing and otherwise readying these perishable items for the long year ahead. A lot of work, yes. But the idea that you can provide for yourself...that you don't have to resort to tasteless, out of season produce shipped from 1000's of miles away (wasting precious fossil fuels), picked by laborers slaving away for next to nothing (instead of raising their own food) and who work for huge, corrupt corporations that make a practice of destroying the natural world around them...yeah, avoiding all that is a really nice idea.



As someone trying to eat as seasonally as possible - even though I don't have to - pickling is a very attractive prospect. For one thing, you can pickle almost anything...for another, the acidic nature of pickling means you can ease your mind about the one big fear that goes along with canning: botulism. One of the most deadly - but also rare - bacterias ever, botulism can occur in food that is not canned properly (meaning the food was not processed at a high enough temperature or the acid content of the food was low). If you're canning plain green beans, you should be concerned (and probably use a pressure canner). But if you're pickling green beans, that's a whole different story...you're storing them in brine, baby! Doesn't get more acidic than that.

For this pickling round I wanted quick results. I know most methods require at least a few days of fermentation...but I had a BBQ planned for the next day and needed more immediate pickles. Luckily Alice Waters came to the rescue. I used her basic recipe for "fresh-pickled vegetables" as described in The Art of Simple Food and it worked perfectly for this situation.



Fresh-Pickled Veggies
adapted from The Art of Simple Food

1 1/2 cups vinegar (cidar, white wine, distilled white...I used half cidar, half distilled white)
1 3/4 cups water
2 1/2 TB sugar
1 bay leaf
4 thyme sprigs
pinch of dried chile flakes
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
2 garlic cloves, peeled and cut in half (use more if you like)
a big pinch of salt

(keep in mind that these herbs, etc. are just suggestions; you could add whole chilis, dill or other fresh herbs...whatever you like!)



Bring all ingredients to a boil.
Cook each type of vegetable separately in the brine, removing them when they are just cooked (but not soft)...you want them to still have some crunch! Most vegetables shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Taste-test to see when they're done.



I reused the cooking brine for all of my vegetables, but saved the more potent types - like turnips and jalapenos - for the end, lest they over-influence the other, milder veggies. Since the brine had reduced considerably I made a fresh batch for pouring into the jars; just bring it to a boil first!
Place the veggies in mason jars - I also added some more garlic cloves and salt at this point - and pour the boiling brine over the top so that all the veggies are completely submerged. Let cool a little if you want, then seal and refrigerate. They will be ready immediately thanks to the neat trick of cooking them in the brine first.

You can pickle a wide variety of vegetables with this method. You'll want to keep them fairly small: slice large carrots and jalapenos into inch thick pieces, break cauliflower into small florets, cut turnips into wedges, chop fennel into slender pieces, halve small pearl onions...you can use whole green beans, and if you want to make pickled red onions simply slice them thin, place them in a jar and pour the boiling brine over the top.

It's amazing how many uses you can think of for pickled veggies. For my BBQ we heaped them onto grilled flank steak sandwiches with burrata cheese and arugula. My favorite pickles were the fennel and the turnips; the pickling mellowed the fennel and somehow captured the sweetness of the turnip while avoiding their more spicy, bitter notes. The guys loved the pickled jalapenos, which were mellowed out some but still packed a spicy punch. I have since mixed pickled onions with some cilantro, ginger and soy sauce and used as a topping for an Asian soup and I used several kinds of pickles on my scrambled-egg breakfast burrito this morning. I plan on doing more pickling this summer - including the longer version requiring more intense fermentation - and hope to be enjoying my own home-made pickles all winter long.



- Happy Pickling -