Posted in Recipes, tagged appetizer ideas, cheese and salami, cheese ideas, cheese plate, cheese snack, cheese tray, cocktail snack, entertaining appetizer, healthy-living, mimolette, oil and bread, olive oil on May 29, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Here we are enjoying the evening with a bottle of pinot and a tray of cheese and salami and, of course, some olive oil and bread. I can’t remember the cheeses except that the bright orange is one of my favorites – mimolette. The salami was from one of the young artisanal charcuterie makers – again, can’t remember which one. Perhaps the wine made me forget, but I expect I simply was enjoying it too much to put much thought into the provenance of my eats and drink!
Posted in Recipes, tagged beefsteak tomato, fresh tomatoes, grape tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, tomato, tomato salad, tomatoes, tomatoes in salad on May 29, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Another photo that doesn’t need much explanation – just a plate of beautifully ripe heirloom tomatoes ready to be sprinkled with sea salt and drizzled with fruity olive oil. Summer is coming – this is just a reminder of what great food is on its way from the garden.
Posted in Recipes, tagged beet recipes, beet salad, beets, cannellini beans, economical dinner, greens and beans, vegetarian on May 23, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Beets are one of our favorite veggies – in the summer I pickle and can them and in the winter I roast them with orange zest and extra virgin olive oil. And, the greens either become a toss with garlic and oil and mixed into pasta or simply work as a side dish. When they are tiny and sweet, I shave them raw over all kinds of salads. The big fat ones can be pushed through the mandolin and then baked into crisp chips. The versatility of beets just can’t be beat – pun intended! Beside their goodness, they are beautiful as they now come in multiple colors – red, white, pink, candy-striped, yellow – a veritable rainbow. This bunch was roasted for one dinner and the greens were chopped and added to some kale for a dish of greens and beans in pasta (very simple – sauté the greens with garlic and red chile flakes in extra virgin olive oil – when they have wilted, add a well-drained can of cannellini beans, season with salt and cook for a few minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Then, toss with any pasta, add a good measure of grated Parmesan, and you will have a peasant-style, delicious and economical dinner.
Posted in Recipes, tagged bulb fennel, cioppino, crab, crab recipes, crab salad, dozen mussels, dry white wine, Dungeness crab, Mediterranean fish stews, shellfish, shellfish stew on May 23, 2012 | 6 Comments »
This seemed to have been a bountiful late winter catch of Dungeness crab. We had a great dinner of crab, sour dough, and salad in San Francisco and then found them stacked in our local Whole Foods quite frequently once we returned home. Although I love them steamed, cooled down, and picked right at the table, I also love them in cioppino, a traditional San Fancisco shellfish stew that I grew up with. It is similar to all Mediterranean fish stews in that you can make it with almost any combination of fish and shellfish you like and in any base, although tomato is almost always the defining flavor. I only use shellfish ‘cause Steve is allergic to fish with scales. If you can find the crab, make the stew; it is everything you want an aromatic stew to be.
Cioppino
½ cup olive oil
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1 bulb fennel, cleaned, trimmed, and cut into thin slices
1 cup dry white wine
Two 28-ounce cans Italian tomatoes, cut into pieces, with their juice
1 bottle clam juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley plus more for garnish, if desired
Salt and pepper to taste
1 to 2 Dungeness crab, cracked into pieces
2 dozen clams
2 dozen mussels
1 pound peeled and deveined shrimp
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, carrot, and fennel and cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes or until the vegetables begin to soften. Add the wine and cook for about 10 minutes or until most of the alcohol has burned off. Stir in the tomatoes, along with their juices, and the clam juice. Bring to a simmer. Stir in the basil and parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook at a low simmer for 15 minutes or until the flavors have blended nicely.
Add the crab pieces, clams, mussels, and shrimp. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes or until the shellfish is cooked and the shells have opened.
Ladle into individual shallow soup bowls or one large soup tureen. Garnish with parsley and serve with warm sour dough bread, if desired.
Posted in Chefs, Recipes, tagged bay area diners, breakfast beans, flavorful beans, fremont diner, fremont diner sonoma, rancho gordo, rancho gordo beans, san fran diners, sonoma california, sonoma diners on May 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »
In a post from November 2010, I boasted about our discovery of The Fremont Diner in Sonoma, California and promised we would go back every time we were in the San Francisco Bay Area. Well, we haven’t made it back every time, but we did this last visit. It is the most wonderful, laid-back, welcoming place to start the day – even if you have to take a drive to find it. This visit didn’t find us being as piggy as usual, but we didn’t leave hungry, either. Our favorite dish was something called “Breakfast Beans” – a plateful of very flavorful beans (I’m sure that they came from Rancho Gordo – http://www.ranchogordo.com – my favorite bean brokers) – topped with a perfectly poached egg and served with 2 big slices of toast to scoop up the whole mess. An easy dish to try at home IF you have a knack for cooking up batches of wonderfully flavored dried beans.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flowers, ranunculus, spring blossoms, spring flowers on May 15, 2012 | 2 Comments »
There really isn’t much to say about this photo except isn’t nature wonderful—— and don’t flowers brighten our lives unlike anything else can.
Posted in Recipes, tagged cooking with ramps, digging ramps, farmers market veggies, mushroom, poached egg, ramp ideas, ramp recipe, Ramps, shallot, spring veggies, what are ramps, wild leeks on May 10, 2012 | 4 Comments »
If you’ve followed my rantings for any time, you know how much I appreciate ramps (or wild leeks), those aromatic billboards that announce SPRING in the northeast. (Check out my post of May 17, 2011 for a full report on digging them.) We have had and are having a very weird spring – we’ve had 80 degree days followed by freezing so the usual spring veggies have been having a hard time maturing. We intended to dig ramps this past week – we had seen them in the farmers market although they were quite small – but when I started to lower the fork into the damp earth I could tell that they were just not quite as big as I would like so we took just a few to satisfy our longing for their almost sweet garlicky/shallot flavor and put ramp digging on the agenda for later this month.
Not willing to waste even a part of the small batch we brought home, I chopped up the lot, greens and all, and sautéed them with some button mushrooms I had on hand. A little salt and pepper, a poached egg on top, and dinner was delicious!
