One of my favorite magazine sections is Fine Cooking's Make it Tonight. I always get one or two great ideas for weeknight dinners. This month's edition is no exception. We made a pasta that was great and have a tilapia with orange salsa on the menu for next week.
Our plan on Friday evening was to head to The Tamale Place. Guy Fieri visited there on a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives segment. Our next stop was going to be Final Friday at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Both are pretty far west of us so it made sense to combine the trip. Then, Thursday evening we had an ice storm. Supposedly on Friday the temps were to get high enough to melt the ice. They didn't. Main roads were fine. Side streets pretty treacherous. And, who knew what the parking lots and sidewalks would be like? Felt like an excuse to have a quiet evening at home. Actually, it didn't take much of anything to convince us that we wanted to be at home -lol.
Now, I had to come up with dinner. Connie suggested chicken parmesan from the latest Cooks Illustrated. Alas, we had no boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the freezer. After we got in the car for the trip home I opened my Fine Cooking. There it was! Pasta with peppers, tomato and tuna. Oh, and olives. Flavors we love.
We got home and I started pulling cans and jars out of the pantry. Yup, you read that right. This is the perfect pantry dish for us. We always have all of the ingredients on hand.
Peppers, olives and sun-dried tomatoes got chopped. Tuna and tomatoes got opened. The pasta water was bubbling away. Time to figure out a salad. Connie loves hearts of palm. We had a jar of them. We both love blue cheese. There were kiwis and Brianna's Poppyseed dressing to be used up. So, what if I peeled and mashed the kiwis and mixed them in the salad dressing? Time to test that theory. We both loved the dressing. The kiwis added a little bit of a citrus note. Took some of the sweetness away. Our salads were ready to go. Might I note here that it is incredibly difficult to type with a very active kitten on one's lap...
The pasta sauce came together in no time. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner!
Tuna, Pepper and Olive Pasta
serves 4-6
Ingredients:
2 T extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
1 c olives, coarsely chopped (you can use a mix of black and green - I used kalamata and green)
1/2 c diced jarred roasted red peppers
2 T coarsely chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, including juice
2 5-oz cans tuna in oil, drained
2 T finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (we didn't have any and I wouldn't substitute dried so I omitted this)
1/2 - 1 lb dried penne rigate or other short, sturdy pasta
Directions:
Start your pasta water - not the pasta, just the water. Lightly cook the garlic in the olive oil. You just want to get the garlic to release it's flavors, not brown. Add the olives, peppers and sun-dried tomatoes and cook on medium heat for a few minutes.
Pour in the tomatoes and their juice. Use a fork to crush them just a little bit. Cook the sauce for about ten minutes. Now, it's time to start the pasta. Add the tuna to the sauce and cook it for 5-10 minutes. The original recipe called for adding 1/2 c of the pasta water to the sauce. I didn't think that was necessary so use your own judgment. And, although the recipe called for a pound of pasta, we used half a pound and found it was the right amount for us. We also tried this with and without a bit of grated parmesan on top and both of us concurred the dish doesn't need anything else. Last but not least, this made a fabulous cold pasta salad for lunch the next day.
adapted from Fine Cooking
One of the tasks I actually finished over the last couple of months was scanning in my great-grandmother's recipe box. What a joy to see her writing, my grandmother's and my mothers. What a shock to see the actual recipes. A few of them came from the days after canned food became available to the masses. Salads were mostly gelatins. Vegetable recipes were virtually non-existent. My guess would be that the vegetables cooked were in season and plainly seasoned. Or, doused in butter and bread or cracker crumbs.
As I recall, my maternal grandmother was a pretty darned good cook. My paternal grandmother was a fabulous country cook. Lemon meringue pie. Chicken and dumplings. Rolls. All the things you read about and think good farmhouse cooking. This recipe box has given me insight into how my great-grandmother cooked. Pretty plain stuff for the most part. One of the really cool things I own is one of her old baskets:
Only a couple of recipes actually piqued my interest. How would they taste made as written? Made to our tastes?
This past week was a bit chaotic. We left for Chicago on Tuesday morning and got back late Thursday afternoon. With most of last weekend spent moving Mom from her condo to independent living, we'd not had an opportunity to go to the grocery. One of the first things we did was plan a menu and write a grocery list. But, neither of us had any desire to go shopping.
Friday wasn't a horribly busy day - at least when you looked at my calendar it didn't look terribly busy. But, the phone didn't quit ringing and emails were once again stacking up. Oh, and we had the great bbq taste-off. You see, the end of July we're finally going to have our shredding/bbq party at the office. I've been threatening to do this for several years. This is the year. We ordered pulled pork, beef brisket, mac and cheese, baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad from three of the barbecue joints nearby. I made a rating sheet. One of them quickly lost - Garrett's. The brisket was kind of like beef jerky. The cole slaw was watery. The mac and cheese was gummy. I'm sure you're getting the picture here :-) We were disappointed because we've had a couple of good sandwiches from there. Next up was GT South's. They're a perennial favorite. Their pulled pork sandwich is incredibly reasonably priced. And, they're about halfway between my friend Patti's office and mine. Perfect. The pulled pork was very good. So was the beef brisket. The green beans were straight out of a can. The mac and cheese was good as was the cole slaw. The baked beans were totally blah. They were in second place. Time for Black Diamond BBQ. Let's just say that we rated each dish on a 1-5 scale. Black Diamond beat GT South's by TEN points. You read that right. The baked beans were amazing. The beef brisket was the best I've ever had. The pulled pork and sauce were wonderful. The only clinker was the potato salad. It was ok but not great. We went there for the first time a couple of months ago and declared they were our new favorite bbq place. A taste-off proved that.
Do you think Reta's ready for the taste-off?
Well, now, back to Friday. We escaped at 6:00. And, once again neither of us wanted to go to the grocery. I could make Ina's weeknight bolognese. But, I needed broccoli for the chicken and rice and potatoes for the cabbage and bacon torte. I also had everything on hand for Katharine's baked sandwiches. Actually, it's a recipe that my grandmother gave to my great-grandmother. Here's a copy of the front of the card:
What did we think? Connie and I tasted as I went and found the basic recipe to be very blah. Some spicy rub went into the tuna. A bit of sherry and pepper into the eggs and a good pour of sherry and a can of mushrooms into the sauce. Once the sandwiches were out of the oven and onto our plates, I wasn't too sure about them. There was a lot more egg salad than tuna salad. I was concerned that the egg would overwhelm the tuna. That was kind of the case but not totally. We really enjoyed these sandwiches. While not something that I'll make with regularlity, they're a good go-to with mostly pantry ingredients.
Great-Grandmother Katharine's Baked Sandwiches
Ingredients:
1 can tuna, drained
2 T mayonnaise
2 t minced onions
1/2 t spicy rub (I added this to the recipe)
3 hard-cooked eggs
1/2 c cream of mushroom soup mix
2 t sherry
balance of the can of mushroom soup
2 T sherry
1 4 oz can mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1-2 T milk
6 slices of bread
3 T butter
Directions:
Mix the tuna, mayo, onions and rub. Set aside. Finely chop the eggs and mist with the 1/2 cup cream of mushrrom soup, 2 t sherry and pepper. Set aside. Mix the remaining mushroom soup, 2 T sherry, mushrooms and milk in a small saucepan. Heat gently on low heat. Melt the butter in a small skillet. Trim the crusts offs the bread.
Dip the edges in the melted butter. Leave the remaining butter on very low heat. Put together the sandwiches. Put two slices of bread in a baking dish (Iused a 9x13 cake pan) and top them with the tuna.
Add another slice of bread to each. Top with the eg salad.
Top with the remaining bread slices. Brush the bread slices with the rest of the melted butter.
Bake the sandwiches at 325F for 30 minutes.
Serve topped with the mushroom sauce.
1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
3 inner stalks celery, thinly sliced (with some leaves)1/2 cup chopped pitted kalamata olives
1 jar chopped roasted red peppers
1 can tuna packed in water, not drained
1 can tuna packed in olive oil, not drained
Italian dressing to taste
Directions:
Toss everything in a large bowl. (nota bene: much easier than the original instructions that involved sauteeing the beans in olive oil and adding in the kale... If you'd like to go through all that hassle, please see the original recipe on foodtv.)
adapted from foodtv.com
Ewww is probably your first reaction if it's not what in the heck is nicoise salad? Hot conjours up visions of wilted lettuce and soggy stuff. This is not that at all. It seems, Gywneth Paltrow had a hankering for a nicoise salad on a cold, grey London day and decided to try a hot version. Now, I knew she'd taken a tour of Italy with Mario Batali. But, I had NO clue she could cook. Seems she's written a cookbook called My Father's Daughter. Based on this recipe, I may well buy the cookbook. It was that good.
I'm a huge fan of Salad Nicoise. Tuna, anchovies, basil, tomatoes, olives, green beans... Tossed with a great vinaigrette and some nice, crisp romaine. It doesn't get much better. When I saw this version, I was totally intrigued. We were in the car so I immediately read it to Connie. He was intrigued too.
We were supposed to go out to dinner to celebrate my birthday which was coming up in a few days. But, life intervened. We needed to start cat food since we were almost out. The menu at R Bistro - which changes weekly - didn't particularly appeal to me this week. And, Butler was playing in the Sweet 16 at 4:30. I'm an IU grad - that's Indiana University - but I served on the Kappa house board at Butler. And, Mom went there. And, it's one of the hometown universities. Needless to say, I wanted to see the end of the game. So, our R Bistro reservations were cancelled. The gift certificate will be used another day. We had all the ingredients for the Hot Nicoise Salad. It needed the oven and not the stove. Which was a good thing since I had most of the burners going making cat food. And, the others were being used for slices of happiness. Serendipity!
A couple of comments. The photo showed the dish in a skillet, so my brain said it needed to be roasted in a skillet. I don't have a large enough oven proof skillet to make four servings of this. So, I made the full version of the vegetables and two servings of the eggs and tuna. It was so good I wish I had the leftover tuna today!! And, yes, I could have used a roasting pan... This recipe called to me for a bit of truffle flavor so I added the black truffle salt and truffle oil. Those by no means are make or break items. We just happen to love the flavor.
Hot Nicoise Salad
serves 4
Ingredients:
or with wine for the cooks...
1/2 lb green beans
1 c grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 c pitted olives (her recipe calls for Nicoise, we used Kalamata)
1 roasted red bell pepper cut into strips
1 2 oz can anchovies, drained and chopped
1/2 c torn basil leaves
1 T capers (my addition)
1/2 c plus 1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T truffle oil (my addition)
salt and freshly ground pepper
4 6oz 1" thick tuna steaks
4 large eggs
1/4 t black truffle salt (my addition)
2 T fresh lemon juice
Directions:
Preheat your oven to 400. Lightly steam the green beans just until they're crisp tender. Put them in the skillet or roasting pan.
Squeeze the tomatoes over the green beans.
Add the roasted red pepper, anchovies, capers, basil and toss all of that with 1/4 c of the olive oil.
Crack the eggs into ramekins. Nestle the ramekins into the vegetables.
Sprinkle the eggs with the black truffle salt and freshly ground pepper. Drizzle them with a tablespoon of the olive oil. Lay the tuna steaks on top of the vegetables. Drizzle a tablespoon of the olive oil over the tuna steaks. Dust them with salt and pepper.
Roast the salad in the center of your oven for 15 minutes. You want the tuna steaks to be rare in the center and the yolks of the eggs to be runny.
Whisk together the remaining tablespoon of the olive oil, the tablespoon of the truffle oil and the lemon juice. Remove the skillet from the oven and plate the salad. Drizzle with the dressing.
Adapted from Food and Wine. Original recipe Gwenyth Paltrow.
I'm hosting a bunch of sorority sisters at one of our networking events. Wine and appetizers are the order of the day. Here's the draft menu in no particular order:
Bloody Mary grape tomatoes
Caesar salad leaves
Lucca style roasted olives
Salsa de Parmigiano
Spuma di tonno
Stuffed apricots
Crispy salami rolls
Buffalo chicken egg rolls
Muffuletta dip
Loaded baked potato dip
Shrimp and artichoke heart dip
Baked tex-mex pimento cheese dip
Sausage, bean and spinach dip
Wrapped waterchestnuts
Rumaki
I'll have to eliminate a few because of the time it'd take to prepare everything. Since only six of the appetizers are recipes I've made before tonight, it'll probably be some of the newbies who get kicked to the curb.
One newbie won't get kicked to the curb. It's the spuma di tonno. Remember when Connie and I went to the Midland Arts and Antique Mall and I found The Best American Recipes, 2002-2003? Well, I also found Michael Chiarello's Casual Cooking. The Best American Recipes was SO good that Casual Cooking got put aside. I finally had an opportunity to visit it and found loads of great recipes. Included were three that I've got on the menu. The parmesan salsa, the roasted olives and the tuna pate - aka spuma di tonno.
I'd not intended to do a trial run of the tuna pate tonight. But, life happens. I was in the midst of a meeting with a wholesaler this morning when I saw my necklace on the floor. Now, I don't like jewelry. (I know, I'm weird!) But, I do wear a thin gold chain with a crystal my brother and sister-in-law brought me from their honeymoon cruise and my mom's original wedding ring. The necklace was on the floor but the crystal and wedding ring were nowhere to be found. They're not worth much money but they're two of my most precious possessions. My wonderful assistant, Stephanie, must've crawled the entire office. At about 3000 square feet, that's a LOT of crawling. I shook rugs, dug into my briefcase and purse, even went in the kitchen and closed the door and took off my clothes and shook them out. Nothing. So, Connie and I walked the path from his car to our office. He checked his car. Now, why I trusted the man who lost his cell phone in his car for a week to check for my jewelry, I have no clue. But, I did. Nothing. I was beyond upset but at that point there was nothing I could do but get back to work. I was on a really long conference call so Connie was a sweetheart and brought some lunch in for me. No interest. No appetite.
I did want to cook down some turkey broth tonight so we left the office early and I brought a packed briefcase home. Immediately on arriving home, we started hunting. Yes, I found them, upstairs on a rug. Now, they're safely hidden away until such time as I can get to a jewelry store where a client works and buy a new gold chain with a safety closure. WHEW!
As you might have guessed, my appetite returned as soon as I found my treasures. I decided it would be a great idea to test drive the tuna pate. Oh, my. I had to leave the bowl in the kitchen and get up and walk from the computer to the kitchen when I wanted another cracker. Or, I'd have inhaled the whole bowl-full. My goodness that was good!
Spuma di Tonno
Ingredients:
1 can tuna packed in oil, drained
2 t lemon juice
2 t soy sauce
2 t balsamic vinegar
1 T unsalted butter at room temp
salt
1 T heavy cream
Directions:
Put the drained tuna in the bowl of a food processor.
Pulse until it's broken up. Keep the processor running and add the lemon juice, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar
then the butter.
Process until the mixture is smooth. Scrape the sides of the bowl, then add the cream. Process just until the cream is incorporated. Serve at room temperature with crackers, crostini or vegetables for dipping.
adapted from Casual Cooking
