Fish, Veg, Veg, Veg

Menu: baked wrapped tilapia again * eggplant relish again * three-tomato salad * tilapia-influenced coleslaw

I don’t usually re-run recipes quite so quickly, but we enjoyed the baked wrapped tilapia from my first post so much that I went ahead and did it again. This time instead of the chile garlic sauce, I used fresh hot peppers from this morning’s farmers market run, but otherwise it was unchanged.

I used a few of the ingredients … the wasabi oil and chopped garlic … to make a dressing for shredded cabbage for slaw… I added some chile garlic sauce, a little bit of Steen’s cane syrup for sweetness, Steen’s cane vinegar, a splash of mirin, and finally a spoonful of Miracle Whip light to finesse the line between creamy slaw and vinegary slaw.

For the eggplant relish, again, I roasted two small heirloom ivory eggplants from the farmers market in the same 400-degree oven with the fish packets and a red bell pepper. I chopped the peeled pepper and eggplant together and stirred in a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. That was it.

Finally, I sliced three kinds of heirloom tomatoes purchased at the market this morning, ground fresh sea salt over, and sprinkled a chiffonade of basil over.

I would definitely do it again.

Pizza, Salad

This post feels like cheating, but I realize, to take the pressure off myself, that I said I’d keep track of what we ate, not what I cooked, and that’s it’s about the meal, and not the making of the meal.

Rationalizing aside, the menu: California Pizza Kitchen Sicilian pizza * farmers market salad

Prepare pizza according to package directions. When you take it out of the oven, drizzle olive oil over and grind crushed red pepper flakes over. Use farmers market ingredients from crisper for salad: greens, cherry tomatoes, red pepper, salad pepper, cukes. Empty drawers completely for farmers market run the next morning. Drizzle with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.

Chicken, grain, salad

Menu: Baked chicken thighs * wild mushroom couscous * mixed green salad

Preheat oven to 400. Place boneless chicken thighs in glass baking dish; pour Salt Lick BBQ sauce over. Bake 20 minutes; turn off oven but do not open.

Prepare couscous according to package directions.

Salad: mixed fresh greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, small salad pepper, red bell pepper, Sass smoked tomato ranch dressing. Chop and mix.

Serve chicken on couscous.

Fish, Veg, Veg

Menu: Roasted salmon with dijon mustard * roasted eggplant with garlic and roasted red pepper * sauteed spinach and tatsoi * red potatoes * dessert: vanilla yogurt with blueberries, extra blueberries set aside for Bailey the lab

Heat oven to 450. Roast whole red pepper and whole small Italian heirloom white eggplant from Tecolote Farm for 30 minutes. Remove; set aside to cool. Slide in a tray of small red potatoes for 30 minutes. Peel eggplant and pepper. Mash eggplant in bowl; dice roasted pepper and add with splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil and several grinds of sea salt. Place salmon filets in glass baking dish; spread dijon mustard over; bake in 450 oven for 10-12 minutes (while potatoes finish). Saute spinach and tatsoi in large nonstick saute pan or wok with a drizzle of olive oil on high heat.

This was based on a previous salmon recipe (that 450 cooking temperature impressed!) and a note I read somewhere that I can’t remember about roasting smaller eggplants whole for eggplant relish and baba ganoush. It worked. It was moist and delicious, not a bit bitter. The salmon impressed all over again. No soundtrack; I was cooking in between e-mails. No sustenance; we’re trying to be a little healthier. Would I do it all again? Well, I might play a little music… but otherwise, I would do this exact dinner all over again as soon as I hit the Tecolote booth at the farmers market.

Beef, Veg, Leftover Pasta

Menu: lime-tequila marinated flank steak * sauteed spinach * rewarmed trecce dell’orto pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes

In glass oven dish, combine 1/4 c rice vinegar, 1/4 c tequila, 2/3 c olive oil, 1/3 c lime juice, chopped garlic, crushed red pepper flakes; add flank steak, cover tightly, and marinate several hours in refrigerator, turning occasionally. To cook: heat grill pan over medium-high; grill steak 4 minutes per side, rotating one-quarter turn without flipping after the first two minutes; flip to cook on other side at 4-minute point; rotate one-quarter turn.

Saute spinach in olive oil with fresh-ground garlic and sea salt.

Rewarm pasta.

Pork, Vegs, Grain

Menu: herb-dijon marinated pork tenderloin * oven-roasted yellow squash * oven-roasted okra * polenta with mozzarella and basil

Bless the butchers at Central Market and their marinating team. Tonight’s tenderloin was as moist and flavorful as last night’s chicken. I turned the oven to 400 to start; it pre-heated to that, and I put in the tenderloin for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes later, as I put in the oven sheet of okra (with salt and red pepper ground over) and the oven sheet of yellow squash (cut in half, placed face down on a drizzle of olive oil), I turned the heat down to 375 and set the timer for another 15 minutes.

When the timer went off, I peeked at the vegs, which were roasting nicely, and started the water boiling for the polenta. 3 cups water and a grind of salt; bring to a boil, add 1 c medium stone-ground yellow cornmeal. Stir in; reduce heat to medium-low; cook 5 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally. Add handful skim mozzarella and 1 T butter; stir, remove from heat. Just before serving, stir in chiffonade of basil.

Remove everything from oven; slice and plate.

Chicken, Pasta, Veg

Menu: baked lemon-rosemary marinated chicken * oven-roasted zucchini romanesco with parmesan shavings * trecce dell’orto pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes and fresh basil * vanilla yogurt with fresh blueberries
Wine: Famega vinho verde

I made my grocery run this afternoon to provide main dishes with the farmers market veggie sides this week. Tilapia and salmon from Sam’s, marinated chicken breasts, marinated pork tenderloin, and a flank steak at Central Market.

Zucchini romanesco
1 large-ish zucchini romanesco, purchased from the fine water-challenged growers at Tecalote Farms

Preheat oven to 400. Slice zucchini in half; place cut side down on oven rack. Roast 30 minutes.

Roasted cherry tomatoes
Three dozen cherry tomatoes
Olive oil
Drizzle oil on nonstick rimmed baking sheet. Add tomatoes; shake to coat. Place in oven with zucchini. Roast 25-30 minutes.

Chicken
1 large split boneless chicken breast, marinated in lemon juice with chopped garlic and rosemary by the fine butchers at Central Market
Olive oil
Drizzle olive oil in glass baking dish. Set marinated breast in; place in oven for last 15 minutes of zucchini and tomatoes’ 400-degree baking. Turn oven heat to 375. Continue roasting until chicken reaches safe poultry temperature of 165.

Pasta
Note: this is the same pasta I cooked last week, and last week I completely mis-read the package. Trecce dell’orto, not trecce dell’oro. Which makes it, rather than “braids of gold,” “braids of the vegetable garden.” It’s a specialty pasta whose multi colors come from vegetable. I love “braids of the vegetable garden” (or, to make it even more fun, “braids of the kitchen garden” or “braids of the market garden”). Boil water; add pasta; cook 10-12 minutes. Drain; toss with butter and fresh-ground salt. Chiffonade a handful of fresh basil leaves.

Plate a zucchini half for each person; grind fresh salt and garlic over, add parmesan shavings and basil chiffonade. Plate a pile of pasta; top with cherry tomatoes and basil chiffonade. Plate chicken. Serve.

For dessert, a handful of blueberries with Brown Cow organic vanilla yogurt over.

Chef’s sustenance:
vodka-tonic (still no gin) with Beemster graskase (a Belgian pilsner for M)

Chef’s soundtrack:
final round of the U.S. Open, play-by-play provided by M as I cooked

How did it turn out?
I loved all of it. M felt the zucchini was bland. I thought it was intensely zucchini-flavored, and loved the rich note of the parmesan, but could experiment next time with a shake of cane vinegar or lemon juice for him. Would have tied it in nicely with the chicken. That chicken, by the way, is now on my standby list of Things To Pick Up At Central Market To Cook Quickly In The Evening. Very nice. And I am convinced that you just cannot go wrong oven-roasting (or sauteeing) cherry tomatoes. It really concentrates the flavor.

Would I make it again?
Yes.

Beef, Legumes, Tubers, Roots

Menu: Cuban brisket with black beans * roasted beet salad * baked sweet potato

The farmers market yielded yellow squash, okra, three kinds of cherry tomatoes, white eggplant, Italian zucchini, salad cucumbers, and peaches. All to be planned into menus for the week. I still had a handful of beets left from the previous week, so roasted those up, pulled out a packet of pre-cooked brisket (another H-E-B timesaving trick) and a can of Goya beans, and rummaged a huge sweet potato from the pantry.

Cuban brisket
A fancy name for a process that entails heating up beans in olive oil in a large skillet, adding the brisket, pasilla chile powder, and fresh lime juice, then simmering. Serve over yellow rice, with tortillas, or plain.

Roasted beet salad
4 beets, greens and tail removed
leafy herbs (choose one like mint or basil; tonight I used Mexican marjoram)
nuts (choose from walnuts, pine nuts, pepitas, hazelnuts; tonight, pepitas)
crumble-able cheese (choose from feta, blue, even tiny mozzarella pearls; tonight, feta)
specialty vinegar (choosed from balsamic, champagne, cane, white wine, etc.; tonight, Steen’s cane vinegar)
oil (choose from olive oil, walnut oil, hazelnut oil, etc.; tonight, olive)
fresh-ground salt
fresh-ground pepper
garlic (fresh-ground, very finely diced)
Preheat oven to 400. Wrap each beet individually in foil; bake 45 min to 1 hr. Let cool; peels will rub right off. Cut into quarters; slice each quarter in thin slices. Toss in bowl with salt, vinegar, oil, and garlic. Add nuts, cheese, and herbs to taste. Will change anyone’s mind ever about beets.

Sweet potato
Roast whole in jacket in oven (while roasting beets). Peel, mash or puree. Can be served plain, with spices (crushed red pepper ground over is good, as are Indian spices), or with sweets (a drizzle of Steen’s cane syrup being our favorite). Tonight’s was already sweet enough on its own, so we served it plain and found it delicious.

For dessert, we put Bailey in the back seat and drove up to Amy’s Ice Cream, where I had a tiny of coffee amaretto and M had a small of mocha almond chip.

Friday night

Menu: burgers with cracked pepper and garlic * oven fries with rosemary and sea salt * cucumber and cherry tomato salad with smoked tomato ranch dressing * Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy

H-E-B provided much of our dinner again tonight. Their meat department has a whole series of burgers, from this cracked pepper-garlic version to a fresh poblano-cheddar patty. The Alexia potato line in the freezer case yielded the oven fries. The farmers market was the source of the cukes and tomatoes. We finished them up tonight, leaving the crisper drawer ready for tomorrow’s expedition.

More Leftovers

M had to work late; rather than cooking, I helped up leftover beans and leftover kale and poured another glass of red wine. The beans were still delicious; I think the kale’s day is done.