Mediterranean Salad

One of the great things about eating out is getting inspiration for dishes to make at home. Last weekend we had lunch at Miriam Restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I had a Mediterranean salad that was delicious. It was fresh and used seasonal ingredients. I promised myself that I would make it at home this week, and here it is. It was a great opportunity to use up some green, yellow, red and orange varieties of heirloom tomatoes. We had gotten some sorrel at the farmers' market. I had never used sorrel before, and it provided a great lemon taste to the salad. One regret: I didn't seed the tomatoes. After I had them chopped up, I wished I had. So I placed them in a small strainer to remove the excess liquid while I chopped the onions and cucumbers. I tried to recreate the look of the dish at Miriam with only moderate success. I just used my hands to form it when I really should have used a ring mold. Ring molds count as gadgets we do not have space for in our small kitchen, so the rustic look will have to do. We served our Mediterranean salad with some pan fried salmon, but it could be a meal on its own.







Mediterranean Salad
1 eggplant (or 4 very small eggplants in our case), thinly sliced
5 small tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 medium English cucumber, finely chopped
16 oz chickpeas
2 T sorrel, finely chopped
feta
oil
sea salt

Heat a large skillet and add a drizzle of oil. Place eggplant in the pan and sprinkle with sea salt. Cook for 2 minutes on each side (or until tender). Cook batches of eggplant until it is all ready. While cooking, chop the rest of the vegetables. Combine the tomatoes, onion, cucumber, chickpeas and sorrel. Dish up the veggies, wrap in eggplant slices and sprinkle feta over the top.

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursdays at GNOWFGLINS, Things I Love Thursday at Diaper Diaries, Tasty Traditions at Coupon Cooking, and Ultimate Recipe Swap at Life as Mom.

30 Minute Stuffed Peppers

When I think of stuffed peppers, I think of a meat and rice mixture baked inside a whole bell pepper smothered in tomato sauce. There is prep time for the meat mixture and the sauce that runs between 15 and 30 minutes, plus almost an hour to bake them. We rarely want to spend that much time on dinner on a week night, so I was pleased when I saw some stuffed pepper boats popping up on different blogs recently. They were baked, but they took a lot less time.

I planned on making stuffed pepper boats tonight, but our apartment was pretty hot when I got home and I was hoping to take a yoga class. I saw on-line Rachel Ray had a cheat. She cooked the peppers and the stuffing separately on the stove top. Her recipe was for Southwestern peppers, but I adapted her technique to my flavors. It was great! Thirty minutes and only one pan was dirtied! Plus, it was delicious and we have enough leftover to serve over salads for lunch tomorrow. Quick, tasty and delicious (and nutritious)with leftovers - pretty much my definition of a successful weeknight dinner.






30 Minute Stuffed Peppers
4 green peppers
2 carrots
3 small tomatoes
3 green onions
4 large cloves of garlic
1 t dried Oregano
1 T fresh sage
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1 lb ground beef
2 T oil
salt to taste
grated cheese (optional)

Slice the top off the peppers, and slice in half. Remove the seeds and ribs and rinse. Place in a dry, large skillet with a lid. Cook over high heat for 4 minutes covered. Flip them over and cook for 4 more minutes covered. Turn off the heat and let sit while preparing the rest of the vegetables.

While the peppers are cooking, chop the carrots, tomatoes, green onions and garlic. Once finished preparing the vegetables, remove the peppers to a large serving platter. Add the oil to the pan, cook the vegetable for 5 minutes over high heat. While cooking the vegetables, measure out the spices and add to the pan.

Once the 5 minutes are up, push the vegetables to the side of the pan and add the ground beef to the other half. Cook until no longer pink (about 5 minutes). Drain off the excess liquid, and spoon mixture into the pepper boats. If desired, top with grated cheese.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Works-for-me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.

Liver and Onions with Collard Greens and Corn

I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day. We used our day off to explore a couple of neighborhoods in Queens. We continue to expand our horizons and consider new places to live. A couple of neighborhoods were really promising, but we haven't found an actual apartment we like yet.


Labor Day is often associated with cook-outs, grilled meat and all those great summer foods. We don't have a grill, so we had something more akin to a Sunday dinner (on Monday). We had liver and onions, collard greens and corn. I read about a technique in Mark Bittman's column a while back that recreates the taste of grilled corn without a grill. What you do is heat up a cast iron skillet, melt some butter, and pan fry the corn. It looked beautiful, but unfortunately tasted mushy and flavorless. I think our CSA farmers gave us cow corn! Oops! We each took a couple of bites, but couldn't finish it.

The rest of the meal was a huge success. We always like liver and onions. This time around it was bison liver. Here is my recipe. For the collard greens, I basically followed ChezSuzanne's recipe off of Food 52. My husband exclaimed, "These are the best collard greens that I have ever tasted!" and a few bites later "These are amazing." They are definitely worth a try. It includes garlic chips, bacon, and a butter and apple cider vinegar sauce- need I say more?


Here is a close up of the garlic chips and bacon bits awaiting their fate (That's a small plate).

This post is part of Two for Tuesdays at A Moderate Life, Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam, and Tempt my Tummy Tuesday at Blessed with Grace.

Making a Plan

We had a busy day walking around Brooklyn. We are considering moving to have some more space, so we were checking to see how we felt in a couple of different neighborhoods. There are lots of nice places, but we are weighing living space, distance to the subways, outdoor spaces, and things to do close by. It is hard because there are so many choices. It feels that we need to keep looking and looking so that we won't miss that one good deal right around the corner. A decision will need to be made in three weeks, which is good. Sometimes it is good to have deadline.

I thought we should get more organized this week and plan out our meals. We are going out of town for a wedding on Friday and Saturday, so this plan will only take us through Thursday. I want to eat up our farm share veggies and our farmers' market finds:

Monday - Stuffed Peppers with some grass-fed ground beef, corn, carrots, garlic, mushrooms and fresh tomato sauce.

Tuesday - Liver and Onions with Collard Greens and Corn on the Cob.

Wednesday - Salmon and a Mediterranean Salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, avocado, chickpeas, sorrel, garlic and feta (inspired by a dish at Miriam Restaurant in Park Slope)

Thursday - Lentil and Beet Salad with goat cheese and beet greens


Last night, we had steak with leeks and mushrooms over some yellow beans (or should they be called wax beans?). It wasn't the most photogenic meal, but it was delicious. The steak was a tough cut, so we cooked it pretty rare.


Steak with Leeks and Mushrooms
1/2 lb steak, thinly sliced
1 head of garlic, minced
2 T soy sauce
Juice of half a lemon
oil
1/2 lb of Oyster mushrooms, chopped
2 leeks, whites finely sliced
2 T butter

Mix the steak, garlic, soy sauce, and lemon juice and let marinate for a few minutes. Heat a skillet and coat it with oil. Add the steak mixture and quickly toss it in the pan for a minute and turn off the heat. Cook mushrooms, leeks in the butter until brown (about 10 minutes). Combine and enjoy!

This post is part of Monday Mania and The Healthy Home Economist.

Smoked Trout

Two years ago we were in Arizona to visit my family, and we spent several days on an AZ sightseeing trip. We went to Jerome, Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Williams, Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. My husband hadn't seen most of it before, and I was excited to show him the rest of the state where I grew up. In Flagstaff, we ate breakfast at a small diner downtown. It was great! We love the type of places where the waitstaff knows how the regulars like their coffee and their eggs. My husband ordered scrambled eggs and smoked trout, and the combination was amazing. We wanted to buy some, and we tracked the trout to Oak Creek Canyon, but they only smoke it for restaurants. We hadn't tried it again... until, yesterday! We were walking through our Whole Foods, and spotted some local smoked trout. We were so excited!

We had smoked trout and poached eggs for breakfast, and it was delicious. I hadn't tried poaching eggs in a while, so I looked up some tips. People recommended cracking the egg into a ramekin, and then gently submerging the ramekin into the boiling water and transferring the egg into the pan. We don't have any ramekins, so I used a small shallow bowl. They don't look perfect, but they were delicious. My husband came up with the idea of using a ladle tomorrow. We sprinkled a little chopped sage over the top. The creaminess of the egg yolk with the smoky, salty taste of the trout and the herby, fresh taste of the sage created the perfect flavor combination.





We also picked up our farm share yesterday. It was another roof top week, and we had to climb the 7 flights of stairs to pick-up our veggies. I just tried googling Anthill Farm the other day (the farm that provides our veggies) and they now have a website!


This week we will be enjoying garlic, onions, leeks, beets, carrots, kale, yellow beans, and corn. My goal is to eat them all from root to tip (if possible).

Chicken with CSA Succotash

My husband made dinner last night while I worked away on the computer. I worked at the table while he was cooking about 9 feet away (I know because I counted floor tiles.) We chatted about our days as we cooked and worked. He asked a couple of times if I was ready to type up the recipe, and taunted me that I was going to find the succotash recipe shocking. Mmm, what could make succotash shocking?


As he was plating up dinner, he revealed his recipes. The "shocking" ingredient was Sazon. It is really tasty, but I worry that it's full of chemicals.

This was a great meal for using leftover bits of veggies. We were getting down to the end of our CSA veggies, so my husband supplemented the succotash with the "emergency" can of black eyed peas from the cabinet. You can substitute whatever you need to eat up, and if you want to forgo the Sazon choose some spices of your own. A little chili powder would be a good choice for a similar flavor.

Chicken with Herbs
4 cloves of garlic
2 T fresh basil, chopped
2 T fresh oregano, chopped
1/2 t red chili peppers flakes
1 t paprika
1/2 t Dijon mustard
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 T melted butter
1 T olive oil
2 large chicken breasts, thinly sliced
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the garlic, spices, mustard, vinegar, butter and oil in a mixing bowl. Add the chicken and mix together with your hands. Let marinate for an hour or more. Heat a wok or pan with deep sides, and add the chicken mixture. Cook until cooked through (about 5-8 minutes).

CSA Succotash
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
1/2 onion, chopped
2 ears of corn
6 oven roasted tomatoes
2 frying peppers, julienned
1/2 lb of green beans, chopped
16 oz black eyed peas
1/4 c pepitas
1 package Sazon

Saute corn for 2 minutes. Add garlic, onion and peppers and cook for 1 more minute. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 5 minutes or until they are tender.

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays from Food Renegade, Finer Things Friday, Frugal Fridays, and Grocery Cart Challenge Recipe Swap.

Eggs Glorious Eggs

I think the recall of a half a million eggs is a reminder to us all that we need to be eating better quality eggs. Get out there and support your local farmer or farmers' market and buy eggs from their pasture raised hens. They will be safer, tastier, and more nutritious. Here are two ideas for those farm fresh eggs:


A while back, we had burritos for breakfast. We peeled and chopped some kohlrabi and sauteed it with some onions. When they were softened and starting to brown, we added some eggs. Serve in tortillas with condiments of your choice. Prepared this way the kohlrabi has a texture similar to potatoes, but with a slightly sweet flavor. It pairs nicely with the onions and scrambled eggs. My favorite thing about that picture is that one burrito has salsa and one has ketchup. Can you tell which one belongs to the girl that grew up in AZ and which one belongs to the boy from upstate NY? It makes me chuckle each time I think about it.


This is not the best photo, but it documents our breakfast yesterday morning. I'm actually impressed that I managed to take a photo during the morning scramble before work. This was very simple, but delicious. My husband sauteed some spinach until it started to wilt and added some beaten eggs to the pan. We topped it with salsa we made the night before. (I learned that he will eat salsa on eggs if it is homemade.)

Eggs are a satisfying way to start the day.


This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFGLINS, Ulitmate Recipe Swap at Life as Mom, Tasty Traditions at Coupon Cooking, and Things I Love Thursday at Diaper Diaries.