Italian Vinaigrette

I learned on my way home from work that we had a last minute guest coming over for dinner tonight. I did a quick mental run through of the kitchen contents and decided we really didn't have the makings of a dinner that would comfortably serve 3 (or 1). My husband suggested that he pick-up pizza, and I loved the idea. I picked up some lettuce, and we were in business.


I have worked in some restaurants along the way, and two of them were casual Italian-American places. Both restaurants had the same recipe for their house vinaigrette. It's really complex. Are you ready for it? Large squirt bottle filled with about half olive oil and half red wine vinegar (slightly more oil). Place thumb over the nozzle and vigorously shake. Squirt on some chopped lettuce. Sprinkle it with a couple of shakes of oregano. Garnish with a tomato wedge (two if the customer is a regular), and you are finished.

As a step up, the salad I made tonight even included local tomatoes, cucumber and carrots. Pizza pie and salad with leftovers for tomorrow. Perfect. Here is my dressing recipe for home:

Italian Vinaigrette
3 T olive oil
3 T red wine vinegar (or I used apple cider vinegar)
pinch of oregano, salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Combine the oil, vinegar, oregano, salt and pepper. Toss salad with dressing and garnish with grated Parmesan cheese.


We are heading to Boston tomorrow and leaving the computer at home, so no posts for several days. I hope to bring back news of exciting adventures and fun family time. Do you have any suggestions for restaurants in the North End/Financial District of Boston?

Pickles

I have been learning about the benefits of naturally fermented foods recently. One food that can be fermented is a cucumber. They are referred to as lacto-fermented pickles. I was inspired by a recipe at Healthy Green Kitchen. She credits Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with the recipe. This is interesting because that cook book has been popping up everywhere in my reading lately. I just ordered a copy, and I'm sure that I'll be talking about it more once it arrives. We started the pickles on Saturday and opened them up yesterday. I highly recommend them. They are crisp, fresh, sour and garlicky with a light dill flavor. Best of all, they are super easy. Here is my take on the pickles:

Pickles
4-5 kirby cucumbers, washed and sliced in half
5 garlic scapes, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 T dried dill
1 T sea salt
1 cup filtered water
very clean 1 or 2 qt. wide-mouth mason jar with screw-top lid (run through the dishwasher before using to ensure it is sterilized, if you have one)

Place cucumbers, garlic scapes and dill into 1-2 jars. Mix salt and water in a measuring cup and add to the jar. Add additional water to completely cover the cucumbers and scapes. Make sure the liquid is about 1 inch below the top of the jar. Screw the top on the jar tightly and allow to sit at room temperature for three days.

Healthy Green Kitchen says, "After this time, go ahead and open the jar. The liquid should be pretty fizzy, which means the lacto-fermentation was successful. If there is any type of “off smell”, discard and start again (I’m mentioning this as a caution, but also want to mention that I have been lacto-fermenting for years, and I have never had anything go wrong)."

Once opened, move your jar to the refrigerator for storage. Lacto-fermentation will continue in the colder temperature, but at a much slower rate, and the garlic scapes should mellow a bit over time.

Cucumber

Zucchini Pancakes

I'm usually the one that comes home from work starving, but yesterday my husband was the hungry one. We have a large supply of squash in the fridge, but I was at a loss for new delicious, nutritious ways to prepare them. Chopped up and sauteed in butter, in stir-fry and burritos. Check, check and check. I tried to think of something fast, and decided to make zucchini pancakes.


I grew up with very sensible dinners that looked like a picture in the nutrition brochures. My mom always tried to have a protein and starch on half the plate, and a yellow and green vegetable on the other half. This is not one of those dinners.

I got a little over zealous with the egg, so they almost tasted like omelets. A dinner of zucchini omelets with salad, how very European of us. I adjusted the recipe to make it less eggy.

Zucchini Pancakes
2 medium zucchini, shredded
2 scapes, finely chopped
2 eggs, beaten
2 T Parmesan cheese
flour, if necessary
oil
salt and pepper

Squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the zucchini and mix in the scapes, eggs and cheese. Heat a large saute pan over medium heat and add a thin layer of oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Spoon in the mixture and cook until golden (about 2-3 minutes per side). Repeat the process until all of the pancakes are prepared. As the mixture sits, the zucchini will release more liquid. If the mixture starts to get runny, add a tablespoon of flour. Serve warm.

We ate the leftovers for lunch today in a cold salad and they were good.

Heirloom Tomato and Mediterranean Tuna Salad Napoleons

There is a blog called A + M that has a weekly recipe/cooking contest on a featured ingredient. We have entered twice before, once with a Deconstructed Eggplant Parmesan Salad (for fresh mozzarella) and another time with Cherry Chutney topped Pakoras (for cherries). I thought both of these were pretty good. They tasted great and were creative, but neither one even made it into the final list. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad because there have been between 100 and 200 recipes in entered in both of those rounds.



The contest topic for this week is Heirloom Tomatoes, and we decided to try throwing our hat in the ring once again. We tried to think of something that was fresh, summery and unique for the tomatoes. We decided to create a no-cook dish with Mediterranean tuna salad layered with tomatoes. Here's the recipe:

Heirloom Tomato and Mediterranean Tuna Salad Napoleons Serves 4

16 ounces tuna
16 ounces cannellini beans
1 handful Niçoise olives, pitted and chopped
1 small roasted red pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons capers
3 scapes, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence
2 heirloom tomatoes, sliced
4 cups salad greens
Parmesan cheese curls

Combine the tuna, beans, olives, peppers, capers and scapes in a mixing bowl. Mix the oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard, herbes de Provence and drizzle over the tuna mixture. Layer the salad greens, tuna mixture, tomatoes and top with cheese curls.

Week 8

We passed by Saint Patrick Old Cathedral School this morning on our way to pick up our CSA share, and noticed that they had sign for a yard sale. We were intrigued! Both my husband and I love the treasure hunt aspect of yard sales and church rummage sales, and this had the added bonus of offering a peak inside the school building. We were drawn to the above poster, but not big fans of the silver frame and bit concerned about some mildew and foxing around the edges of the print. We decided to go get our veggies and think it over. On our way home, we purchased it and it is now hanging near our table. I'm looking forward to doing some research on the poster and learning more about it.


It's hard to believe that we are up to the eighth week of the farm share. I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed with the volume and variety this week. I was hoping that we would get some peppers and tomatoes, but I guess it is still too early. It seems like the volume has been down the last couple of weeks, and I'm wondering if the heat wave is adversely affecting some of the plants. All in all, I'm still very pleased with the Foodstockings CSA, I think it has been a good value, and everyone involved is very nice. This week we will be enjoying carrots, fennel, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, collard greens, mustard greens and heads of garlic.

Yesterday I wrote about how I couldn't find the salmon orzo salad recipe, and then I found it in our big organization effort this afternoon. Ha, ha, ha. For now, the loose recipes are in a file folder waiting further organization.

Summer Salmon Orzo Salad

My mother-in-law makes a great salmon orzo salad with cranberries, asparagus, and goat cheese. We decided that it would be the perfect dish to share with a dinner guest coming over last night. We have gotten the recipe from her more than once, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I have an undependable system for organizing recipes; I stick them inside my cookbooks. Slips of paper with my great aunt's famous chicken, my friend's lentils, a few pages from magazines, and more are all stuck inside the cover of my Joy of Cooking. I looked through other cookbooks and there was a recipe or two in each one of them as well. I have started saving recipes on the computer which works for recipes I find on-line, but I never type up the ones I get hard copies of... What is your system for keeping track of recipes? How does it work for you? Tomorrow we are dedicating the day to some deep cleaning and organizing. When you live in a TINY space, it is more necessary than ever to purge belongings and keep everything super organized because it doesn't take much for things to spiral into total chaos. I'll let you know what I come up with on the recipe organization front.


We served our Salmon Orzo Salad with a green salad of lettuce, green bell pepper and cucumber. I never did find the recipe for the orzo, so here is our recreation from memory:

Summer Salmon Orzo Salad serves 4 as a main dish, or 6-8 as a side dish
Because it is summer and asparagus is no longer in season, we used green beans instead.

16 oz. orzo
water
1 lb. green beans, trimmed
1 lb. salmon
3/4 C dried cranberries
5 green onions, finely chopped
6 -8 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

Dressing
1/4 C olive oil
juice of one lemon
2 T apple cider vinegar
1 T Dijon mustard
pinch of salt and pepper

Cook the orzo according to the package instructions. Drain and add to a large mixing bowl. Pour the dressing over the top and mix together to prevent the orzo from sticking. Steam the green beans until al dente and add to the mix. Salt and pepper the salmon and place in a hot pan lightly coated with oil. Cook over medium high heat for 4 - 6 minutes per side (depending on the thickness of your fish) until the fish easily flakes with a fork. Remove the salmon from heat and flake into bite size pieces with a fork. Add the cranberries, onions and goat cheese. Can be served warm or chilled.

Energy saving tip: I placed the green beans in a bamboo steamer over the pasta pot and cooked them together.

Angelo's of Mulberry Street

We live very close to Little Italy in New York City. Little Italy is a busy, touristy area with hawkers out in front of the restaurants pressuring passersby to eat dinner in their establishment. Most of the places are almost interchangeable because they all have menus serving the same Italian-American classics. We have eaten at a couple of places when we have family in town, but we are never sure where to go because they all blur together. Once we tried asking an old-timer from the neighborhood which restaurants were the best and he refused to answer the question. We asked which ones to avoid, and he replied, "I don't know you. I don't know who you know." He went on to explain that there are a lot of "wise guys" in Little Italy and he didn't want it getting around that he was suggesting one restaurant or bad mouthing another. I think of the mob as a thing of the past; something that died away in the 1960s or 70s. Is it still around today? I don't know, but it was fascinating to hear the old-timer's concerns. Just in case, I'm not going to say anything negative, but I will give a recommendation.



Last night we got home from work, and the apartment was hot as Hades. Neither one of us could imagine cooking, so we decided to go out. A friend of ours has been harassing us to try Angelo's and last night we acquiesced and gave it a try. We ended up sitting in a funny little room in the back, it was a little tight, but it was fine. The service was impeccable and the food was even better. I wish I had photos of our meal, but we were sans camera last night and the cell phone pictures just didn't do the food justice (the phone cameras don't do well in low light).

We started with Carpaccio Veneziana which included thin slices of raw fillet of beef served on a bed of arugula dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette, capers and generous curls of Parmesan cheese. The combination of peppery arugula, the tangy capers and the pungent flavor of the cheese with the paper thin slices of tender beef was amazing. We chose Rigatoni Del Montannaro for our pasta course. This dish is a Wednesday night special and was described as rigatoni with sausage and wild mushrooms in a special sauce. The waiter came out with two large bowls for us; it was hard to believe that this was a single serving split in half. Ahh, heaven in a bowl. It turns out that the special sauce included tomatoes, cream and cognac. It reminded me of a really good vodka sauce. Delicious! For the meat course we chose the Scaloppine di Vitello Caprese. The thin slices of veal sauteed with asparagus, zucchini and artichoke hearts were lovely and fresh. I was stuffed by this point, and it was a hard for our taste buds to appreciate the delicate flavor after the big showy flavor of the tomato cream sauce with sausage and wild mushrooms. I could only eat three bites of the meat course and then I had to take the rest home. I packed up the leftovers over lettuce for today's lunch and it was fabulous. I ate it cold and the artichoke flavor really came through.

Angelo's gets an A. It's a great place to go for a treat.