Connie isn't terribly fond of fruit. Soup, fruit and corn. That's pretty much his no-go list. I could live on soup. Mom's minestrone in particular. But, I also love fruit and corn. So, tonight when our cart at Costco looked like a Fruitopia, he wasn't amused. Pears, peaches, cherries, clementines and red grapes all came home with us. What are you going to make with all of that??? That was the question of the evening.
I'd decided to make the cherry tabouleh I made last year. But, we got home and didn't have cucumbers or parsley. Most of my herbs are producing well. Except for the parsley. I'd bought a rotisserie chicken thinking I'd just go ahead and slice some to go with the tabouleh. How about chicken salad with cherries instead? Off to eatyourbooks.com and I found a plethora of such recipes. Many called for tarragon. Which I don't have. A few called for dill. Which I have in abundance. I read all the ingredients in all the recipes and decided on my own recipe. Which was fabulous if I do say so myself!
Cherry Chicken Salad
makes 4 good-sized sandwiches
Ingredients:
1 large chicken breast, cooked and chopped
2 ribs celery, diced
1 cup cherries, pitted and quartered
3/4 c walnuts, toasted and chopped
1 shallot, minced
1/4 c sour cream
1/2 c mayonnaise (or more to taste)
2 fronds fresh dill, minced
onion buns or bread, toasted or not
Our friends Raquel and Steve and Toodie came over for dinner. They brought a bag of red potatoes and onions from their garden. YUM!
We loved the dinner that evening. Sherry cream shrimp on Texas toast, a roasted carrot salad and cherry tabbouleh. All make agains. You'll need to trust me that the cherry tabbouleh was gorgeous. For some reason I didn't get a photo of it.
Then, the next night I started in on those amazing potatoes and onions. The first thing I made was a lamb hash. It was pretty basic. Brown potato cubes, sauté onions and peppers, brown and drain ground lamb. Add some salt and pepper. Mix it all together. So easy and SO fabulous!
Then, I made roasted potatoes with sage and garlic. And, forgot to put the garlic in. Those were a five anyway :-)
There was yet another five out of the potatoes... Long story short Mom had a cookbook called Juicy Miss Lucy. I have a copy. We'd made some of the same recipes but not all. I've copied all of my notes into hers and am in the process of copying her notes into mine. Then, I can give my copy to my niece since Mom's cooking is very limited these days. Long before they were called Hasselback potatoes, JML published a recipe called Potato Fans. I've got to wonder if they were the originals? These are super easy. Put chopsticks on either side of the potatoes and slice them about 1/8 - 1/4" down to the chopsticks. Drizzle them with melted butter the roast them for 30 minutes at 400F. Remove them from the oven and baste them with the butter. Sprinkle cheese between the slices. I used a wonderful blue called St. Agur but you can use pretty much any grated cheese that suits your fancy. Now, the recipe called for also sprinkling them with chives and bread crumbs. I skipped those and just sprinkled on some kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. These were baked for an additional 30 minutes with a bit of grated parmesan added at the end. Here's what the steps looked like:
Last but not least, I made a pork loin (really small one) with roasted potatoes and shallots. Another winner!
Now, you have to see who "helped" while I was typing... We're turtle sitting for a friend's turtle while she recoups. I let the turtle have the run of the desk and all she wanted to do was hide behind the monitor...
Sherry Cream Shrimp
Ingredients:
4 T butter
1/2 lb sliced white mushrooms
1 large shallot, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
salt and pepper
2 T flour
1/3 c sherry
3/4 c cream
a few grates fresh nutmeg
2 T chopped fresh tarragon
1 T Evoo
20 large or jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
juice of one lemon
4 slices Texas Toast (the recipe actually called for good quality white bread, toasted, buttered and halved corner to corner. I thought the recipe was screaming for Texas toast...)
Directions:
In a large skillet, melt the butter. Add the mushrooms and sauté until they're just a little bit brown. Add the shallot and sauté until it's softened. Then, add the garlic and sauté for about a minute. Stir in the flour. Allow it to cook for a couple of minutes before you slowly add the sherry. Once that's in and the sauce has thickened, slowly add the cream. Once the sauce is thick, stir in the tarragon and nutmeg. In another skillet, heat the olive oil to shimmering. Add the shrimp and cook on both sides until they're pink. Add the lemon juice and mix the shrimp into the sauce. Serve over Texas toast.
adapted from Rachael Ray
Ludo Lefebvre's Roasted Carrot Salad
Ingredients:
for the carrots:
1/2 t ground cuming
1 1/2 lbs small carrots, scrubbed clean and tops trimmed (I used the mini-carrots)
1 bay leaf, fresh, scored
1 head garlic, cut in half
5-7 sprigs fresh thyme
1/3 c EVOO
salt and pepper to taste
for the blood-orange vinaigrette
2 blood oranges, juiced (they weren't in season so I used navel oranges)
1 T white vinegar
1 T granulated sugar
1/2 t kosher salt
1/3 c EVOO
for the cumin crème fraiche
1 c crème fraiche
1 T fresh lemon juice
2 t ground cumin
pinch kosher salt
for the salad:
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 T almonds, roasted and roughly chopped
2 blood oranges cut into supremes
1 T finely chopped fresh parsley
1 T finely chopped fresh tarragon
1 T finely chopped fresh chervil
1 T finely chopped chives
kosher salt
Tired yet? Me too! This looks tougher than it is!
Directions:
Start by roasting the carrots. They need to go into an oven that's been preheated to 400F. While that's preheating, you need to toast the cumin in a small skillet. Divide out what you'll need for the cumin crème and add the rest to a 9" square baking dish with the rest of the ingredients for the carrots. Toss them then roast just until the carrots start to caramelize. It'll take 30-45 minutes.
While the carrots are roasting (and you can do them well ahead,) make the cumin crème and the dressing. In both cases, you just combine the ingredients.
To assemble the salad, smear the cumin crème on the bottom of the serving bowl or platter.
Top that with the carrots - not the aromatics they roasted with, just the carrots. Then, sprinkle the carrots with the rest of the salad ingredients. Top everything with the dressing.
adapted from the New York Times
Cherry Tabbouleh
Ingredients:
1 1/2 c pearl couscous
1/3 c EVOO
1 t orange zest
3 T orange juice
2/3 lb cherries, pitted and quartered
3/4 c each chopped fresh parsley and mint
1/2 c finely chopped red onion
2 small Persian cucumbers, peeled and chopped
1 c shredded Swiss chard (optional - my add)
Directions:
Cook the couscous according to package directions. Drain and rinse it. Toss it with the other ingredients.
adapted from Rachael Ray
Roasted Potatoes with Sage and Garlic
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs small creamer potatoes, halved
1/3 c flour
1 1/2 T vegetable oil (I used light olive oil)
4 cloves garlic, minced (ooops, can't believe I left this out!)
1/4 c chopped fresh sage leaves
1 T unsalted butter
salt and pepper
12 whole fresh sage leaves
1 T unsalted butter
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 450F. Put a large heavy cast iron or other pan or skillet that's oven proof into the oven as it preheats. Put a large saucepan with salted cold water and the potatoes on the stove on high heat. Once the water comes to a boil, lower the heat. Simmer the potatoes for another five minutes or until they almost cooked through. Drain them and dry them on paper towels. Then, roll them in the flour. You just want to coat them, not drench them in flour.
Remove the HOT pan from the oven and pour in the olive oil. It'll sizzle like all get out, so be careful. Put the potatoes in in one layer, skin side up. Roast them for about 15 minutes, remove them from the oven and turn them over. Sprinkle with the sage leaves.
Roast them for another 15 minutes. Add the garlic just before you pull them out of the oven. That is if you want to use the garlic. Immediately on removing the pan from the oven, add the butter. It'll brown as it melts.
While the potatoes are roasting, fry the sage leaves in butter. You'll need to be very careful when turning them not to break them.
adapted from The New York Times
Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Potatoes and Shallots (Or Green Onions...)
Ingredients:
8 medium red potatoes, sliced 1/4" thick
8 shallots, peeled and halved lengthwise or a bunch of green onions
3 T olive oil
1-2 lbs pork, either tenderloin or small loin - I used the small loin and loved the bit of fat it added
1 t dried thyme
1/2 c sherry vinegar
3 T dark brown sugar
1 T coarse grain mustard
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400. Put the potatoes into cold, salted water in a medium saucepan. Bring them to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer them for about 5 minutes until they're almost done. Cover the bottom of a cast iron skillet or other oven proof pan with the olive oil. Put the potatoes in in one layer. Cook them over medium heat until one side is browned. Flip them over. Brown the other side. Remove them from the pan. Salt and pepper all sides of the pork. Brown it in the same pan. Remove it from the pan. Add the thyme, vinegar and sugar and scrape up all the fond. Put the potatoes back in one layer. Add the green onions on top of the potatoes. Then, the pork. Cover the pan tightly with foil and roast in the oven until the pork reaches 130F. Remove from the oven. Put the pork on a cutting board to rest for 10 minutes. Put the potatoes and onions in a bowl and cover with the foil. Add the mustard to the sauce in the pan and mix well. Serve the pork sliced thinly with the sauce over.
adapted from one of the Cooks Illustrated magazines - can't tell which one...
Last week was a zoo. Total, complete and entire. I was so ready for Saturday so I could head to the office and have no phones ringing and where the email deluge would slow down. I got up early and headed to the living room and sat down at the computer and started to work on the week's menu and grocery list. Plus the obligatory check of the weather and Facebook. I'd planned to start this post... But, at 8:12 we got a call from the idiots at the Fraternal Order of Police. I hung up on them. Grrrrr. Connie woke up and started puttering around. I'd had all of about half an hour of quiet time.
While Connie went to the farmers market and grocery and TJ's, I headed to the office to start in on the mountain on my desk. The bad news is I'll be there all day Sunday too. So much for brunch at Chef Josephs!
The fruits and vegetables are wonderful this time of year. So, I've got corn on the cob, watermelon, zucchini, tomatoes and cucumbers on the list. A couple of weeks ago we scored a box of fresh cherries. They were amazing. My kitchen was covered with cherry juice by the time I got done pitting them. About half went to a boozy cherry dish from a friend's blog. The other half went to the amazing cherry clafouti from A Kitchen in France. That's this Sunday's recipe from Weekend in a French Kitchen. I've made clafoutis before and we've thoroughly enjoyed them. This one was a bit lighter and more flavorful than it's predecessors. I made half a recipe since we're not into sweets too much. In fact, despite the fact that this was really wonderful, about a third of it went into the trash. Sweets just don't get eaten around here... Here's what it looked like:
Clafoutis are pretty darned easy to make. First you put the fruit in a buttered baking dish. Then, you top it with a custard of flour, sugar, vanilla, milk and eggs. Pop that in the oven and bake it for about 45 minutes total. Cool it (if you can wait) then dust it with confectioners sugar to serve. I confess that we didn't wait. It just smelled too good!
Let's see, in addition to the clafouti we 've had the most amazing cocktail: Cucumber Jalapeno Margaritas. An absolute five in my book. I got the recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. One of the magazines I quit taking eons ago but that is now on nextissue.com so I skim it... I think next time we'll make our own margarita mix and avoid all of the chemicals and preservatives that come with the prepackaged stuff.
Here's what the recipe was:
Jalapeno Cucumber Margarita
10 servings (needless to say, we cut the recipe to two servings!)
Ingredients:
1/2 medium cucumber, sliced
1 jalapeno pepper, stemmed, seeded and sliced
3 c margarita mix
1 1/2 c gold Tequila
3/4 c orange liqueur
Directions:
In a cocktail shaker, muddle the jalapeno and cucumber with 1/2 t kosher salt. Add the margarita mix, Tequila and orange liqueur along with several ice cubes. Shake well. Strain and serve over ice.
We also had a lamb pasta sauce that was incredible. It was supposed to be lamb meatballs in spicy sauce. My ground lamb was frozen. Pasta sauce was the best alternative. I doubled up on the spices (not the herbs, just the spices) in the sauce since the ground lamb wasn't seasoned as the meatballs would have been. The only change we'd have made is adding more cheese. It's a recipe I got from the New York Times. The original measurements are given below.
Lamb in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
1 lb ground lamb
1 medium onion, diced
1 28 oz can whole tomatoes
1 small sprig rosemary
crushed red pepper flakes to taste
1/2 t fresh thyme leaves
1/2 t ground cumin
pinch ground cinnamon
pinch cayenne pepper
1/2 t sugar
1/4 c orange juice (I used 1/4 c of frozen concentrate)
crumbled feta cheese
farfalle
Directions:
Brown and drain the lamb and onion. Crush the tomatoes. Add them along with the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for about half an hour to reduce the liquid. Serve over cooked farfalle. Top with crumbled feta cheese.
Mid week our friend Diane stopped by to pick up the bike her boyfriend, Craig, had bought from Connie. We made antipasto salads. Well, kind of. Let's see, no provolone and the truffle cheese (which was provolone based) had mold on it, so I used cheddar. No chickpeas so I used black beans. No salami so I fried some bacon. LOL. Talk about substituting! Diane is the ultimate baker so I was a bit hesitant to make a pie. But, since we had help to eat this one I pounced on the opportunity. Peach sour cream pie. It looks like it came from All Recipes. It tasted as wonderful as it looked. And, made a mighty fine breakfast too!
Peach Sour Cream Pie
Ingredients:
pie crust
4 fresh peaches sliced 1/4" thick (you can substitute a 16 oz bag of frozen peaches, thawed, drained and patted dry)
1 T lemon juice
3 egg yolks
1 c sugar
1/3 c sour cream
1/4 c flour
Directions:
Prebake the crust in a 425F oven that's been preheated. It'll take about 15 minutes for it to get golden brown. Allow it to cool for about 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temp to 350F. Toss the peach slices and the lemon juice. Lay the peach slices in the pie crust. Mix the other ingredients and spoon the custard over the peaches. Bake for 50 minutes. The original recipe called for tenting foil over the pie for that 50 minutes then removing the foil and baking it for an additional 30 minutes. I didn't use the foil and skipped the last 30 minutes because the filling set up enough for my taste.
adapted from All Recipes
Last, but not least, watermelon wedges. With all kinds of wonderful things sprinkled on them! Now, this is one that I saved in nextissue.com also. BUT, it doesn't reference the magazine. My guess is Cooking Light. I put the spice mixture together for this and cut a couple of wedges. The cilantro was chopped and ready to go but I totally forgot that and the olive oil the first round. So, I made another wedge. Connie liked it better with the cilantro and olive oil. I preferred just the spice mixture.
Chile Lime Watermelon Wedges
Ingredients:
grated rind from one lime
1 t ancho chile powder
1 t ground cumin
1 t kosher salt
1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
8 - 8oz wedges seedless watermelon
2 T extra virgin olive oil
3 T chopped fresh cilantro
Directions:
Put the lime rind in a cake pan or on a half sheet and bake it at 200F for 10 minutes. You want it to be slightly dry but not dry enough to lose it's flavor. Mix it with the chile powder, cumin, salt and pepper. Lay the watermelon wedges on the dish you'll use to serve them. Sprinkle them with the lime mixture. Then, drizzle them with the evoo. Finally, top them with a sprinkle of cilantro
I think this is adapted from Cooking Light. I got it from a magazine on nextissue.com - one that doesn't show attribution...
Vacation Time! We tend to travel a lot for business. This year we were in Phoenix for the NPC investment advisory conference and New Orleans for their annual conference. Coming up we've got a trip to San Antonio for me to take a bond class. Then, there's a drive to Kansas City for the America's Wealth Management radio show conference followed by another conference for the portfolio models I use. Last, but not least, I'm back to Phoenix for the NPC Women's Conference. Typically, we tack on a day or two of fun so as to not waste travel time. This time, however, we had nothing but fun on our minds. I'd gotten an email from Interlude Tours touting a trip to Michigan. It sounded fun but also sounded like it wasn't enough time for all we'd like to do. So, I e'd our friends Chris and Mark and asked what they'd think about doing a trip. Sure, they said. As soon as we get back from 10 days in the Netherlands. Alrightly then. This could be a real letdown for them!
Stashed in my scans, I had an old article from Midwest Living about Hungry Village Tours in Saugatuck, MI. Saugatuck was to be our first stop so the tour sounded great. From Saugatuck, we'd head to Grand Rapids and the Meijer Gardens. Then, we'd go see the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum. Next task, find B and B's. We were heading north right before the 4th of July so prices were high and availability was limited. I finally found a reasonably priced B and B on the Blue Star Highway in South Haven. Martha's Vineyard was it's name. No such luck in Grand Rapids so we wound up out in Lowell, MI at River's Edge.
Everyday People Café in Douglas was our destination for dinner Friday night. We'd been warned that there'd be a long wait so we were prepared to head to choice #2 if that was the case. Luckily, there were two tables open when we got there. VERY quickly the place was packed. I know why. The food is fabulous. Chris had a spinach salad with nuts and berries. Mark had crab cakes. They were both very happy with their choices. Connie had a Greek salad that was ho-hum and I had a chopped salad with garlic dressing. I could've had a BOWL of that dressing and been happy.
We also split a tapas plate with fruit moutarde, olives, chevre, red bell pepper relish, almonds, chive crema...
Magnificent. Our wine was a bottle of W Pinot Noir. We'd highly recommend Everyday People!
Saturday dawned bright and early and we headed downstairs for our breakfast.
And, what a breakfast it was. A pineapple wedge with a strawberry.
Homemade granola with vanilla yogurt.
Egg custard with a blueberry sauce and a homemade sausage patty.
All served by our totally delightful hostess and host. Then we were off on our Hungry Village Tour.
My goodness. David Geen who owns the company has run a travel business for years and years. He's great. I would LOVE to go on one of his Italy foodie tours.
The tour took off from the Saugatuck Art Center. I would LOVE to have some of the fun artwork from their garden.
We started at Pleasant Hill Farm where JoAnn and her hubby grow organic blueberries and make maple syrup. Thanks to our friend, Tim Burton at Burton's Maple Syrup, we've seen the maple syrup making process. This was a bit more rustic and equally interesting. The fascinating part, though, was the organic blueberries.
Oh, and the outhouse. The Art Center where the tour started was locked so there weren't facilities there. And, the only facility at Pleasant Hill was an outhouse. Ok, if that's my only choice...
Next we were on to Dee's Farmstand. Dee is in her late 70's and has lived on this farm virtually all her life. In addition to produce she sells a lot of junque. We bought cherries, honey and jams. And, Connie and I wandered off and talked to Vern, her son-in-law, who's an engineer in real life but was picking cherries that day.
From there we went to Evergreen Lane Creamery. Goats. Loads of baby goats. And, incredible goat cheese. I love our goat cheese we get from Capriole Farms in southern Indiana but I'd have to say that Tom and Kathy's garlic goat cheese was just a teeny, tiny bit better.
Our last stop before lunch was the Fennville Winery. As is true of a lot of Michigan wine, they tended toward the sweet side. Not our favorite kind of wine. But, we did find a couple of bottles we liked, including a rose. We had it with dinner the other night and it was very good. We also bought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate our tenth anniversary.
Lunch. This was one of those meals that you store in the recesses of your brain and pull out whenever you need to remember a totally fabulous meal. The restaurant, Salt of the Earth, is closed for lunch so we were the only folks there. The chef has carte blanche to do whatever he wants. Jeff Bailey was the chef. Homemade bread was on the table when we got there.
We all dug in. Our first course was popcorn grits topped with perfectly prepared pork belly and a roasted tomato sauce. How do you prepare popcorn grits, you ask? You pop the corn. Then, you soak it in water and butter. You drain it and reserve the soaking liquid. Then you put it through a very fine sieve. Then, you mix the grits with enough of the soaking liquid to make a creamy sauce. Next up was chicken with a very crispy skin, parsnip puree, chive crème and a mix of English peas, chanterelles and asparagus. Perfection on a plate. Dessert was a chocolate torte with marinated strawberries.
After lunch we went to a farm where they had chickens, cows, ducks and peacocks. We found out, much to our chagrin, that free range chickens aren't so free range. But, the good news here is that Dawn is a potter and I found a cute piggy bank for my collection at the office.
Last but not least we went to Virtue Cider. None of us really liked the cider but it was fascinating to see how it was made. The place was totally spotless. You literally could've eaten off the floor.
Once we left the tour, we headed to an art gallery and adjacent wine shop. I was the only one who had the smoked salmon that was out for the gallery opening. I was also the only one who wound up with a case of food poisoning. I'm not certain it was the salmon but my guess is it was the culprit...
Next stop, Saugatuck Brewing for flights of beer. Very good beer too. It's a fun brew pub. We saw lots of plates of good pub grub being served but none of us were interested...
Did you think we were done? Nope, remember we were with Connie who loves to cram in every experience he can while on vacation. No sitting around for this guy. The Casco Twp nature preserve beckoned. STEEP stairs down to the lake. But, so much fun to dip our toes in Lake Michigan.
On to South Haven to find the lighthouse. Mission accomplished!! Then, back to Martha's Vineyard. Should we unwind or go to dinner? Dinner won. Particularly since the place we wanted to go - which was nice and close - ended their dinner service about 9pm. It was about 8:00 at that point.
We set the GPS and found that Hawkshead was practically behind the B and B. But, we still had a fun drive to get there. Chris had a salad with salmon and asparagus. Mark had the prime rib. I wavered between that and the lobster bisque and wedge salad. Connie had the fried blue gills. As usual, we shared. The blue gills were good but the hash brown potatoes were incredible. As was the lobster bisque. Unfortunately, none of the photos of the food turned out... Just one photo of Mark and Chris:
Whew. So that was day one of vacation :-)
What did we think about Martha's Vineyard B and B? We'd stay here again in a heartbeat. Can't say enough good about it. The whole place was beautiful. The food was awesome. Other than the gal who checked us in and who was a bit glum, everyone was SO nice.
Now, with those lovely Michigan cherries I made some salsa...
Cherry Cherry Salsa
Ingredients:
sweet cherries, stemmed and pitted
cherry tomatoes
cucumber
red onion
mint leaves
cherry balsamic vinegar or any other good balsamic
extra virgin olive oil
(you could add some jalapeno)
Directions:
Slice the red onion and soak the slices in ice water while you start chopping. Finely chop the cherries, tomatoes and cucumbers. We didn't have to peel the cucumber because I'd picked it in our yard two minutes before. But, typically I do peel the grocery store cukes. Drain the onion and pat it dry, then finely chop it too. Add in some chopped mint and dress wth the vinegar and oil.
