A House Regular

Our favorite quick dinner. A thin chicken cutlet dipped in seasoned egg and a mix of panko breadcrumbs flavored with tangy aged goat's milk cheese and fried crispy brown in butter and olive oil. It takes minutes to prepare and is always a hit. Tonight I paired the golden cutlet with oven roasted carrots and potatoes tossed in spicy harissa and a fresh green salad right from the garden topped with quick fried padron peppers.
Crispy, spicy, crunchy -- perfect.

A Simple Stack

Creamy polenta, a crisp breaded chicken cutlet, bitter carrot top pesto and a peppery salad of arugula, cress (and sheep's milk cheese) from our overflowing garden. Simple summer suppers.

A Twist on a Family Favorite

Red white and blue salad -- red meat and radishes, (nearly white) romaine lettuce and beautiful blue cheese.

No Cook Night

Antipasto salad is a regular favorite around here. Usually I produce a real red sauce Italian American style platter heavy with roasted peppers, peperoncini, artichoke hearts, garbanzo beans and all manner of jarred Italian staples. A weighty dish mascara ding as salad. Tonight this beautiful little gem lettuce was so fresh and alluring I couldn't bear to muddy it's sweet, clean flavor. So in addition to the usual cheese, salami, prosciutto and hard boiled eggs (thanks girls -- 2 eggs just in time) I tossed in fresh pepper cress from our garden, Persian cucumbers, and spicy Padron peppers quickly blistered in hot oil and tossed with Maldon salt (okay so there was a little cooking) and tangy vinaigrette.

First (Late) Spring Salad

James made it home today. I've been watching the garden waiting to share spring's first salad with him. I got the seeds in late this year. Today while thinning the plants I gathered a bright, peppery, slightly bitter salad of home grown arugula, pepper cress, spinach, and oak leaf lettuce. Delicious tossed in a red wine and honey vinaigrette (2 cloves minced garlic, 1 tsp honey, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 2 tsp red wine vinegar, 4 TB olive oil, S&P).
Welcome home Honey. Welcome salad season.

Salad For Dinner

Fresh and green and perfect for new leaf eating carefully at home diet. Spinach, avocado, home-grown cucumbers and lean chicken breasts grilled with a spicy coating of za'atar, a middle Eastern favorite blend of sumac, thyme, sesame and more perfect of grilled pita, meats, and steamed vegetables.

Persian Cucumbers

One of James' favorites -- crunchy, thin-skinned, gently sweet Persian cucumbers put American slicing varieties to shame. I make sure our trellis has at least a few plants every summer.
Equally good fresh or pickled when our vines are most prolific I preserve our harvest by making several jars of Joan Nathan's Hungarian cucumber salad. It keeps for a couple weeks even and makes a great side for sandwiches or grilled meats.
Slice cucumbers very thinly, about 1/4 - 1/8 inch on a mandolin  -- and layer the slices, sprinkled with plenty of salt -- into a colander. Nathan calls for two cucumbers ( regular sized cucumbers, Persians are smaller) and 1 tsp salt. I always at least double or triple the recipe and generally use closer to 1TB of salt (or even a touch more) for each 3-4 Persian cucs. After the cucumbers have sat (weighted with a heavy dish or pot) for about an hour, I squeeze out the excess water (if there is any that didn't drip through the colander) and combine them with one large onion sliced as thinly as the cucumbers. Next I mix together 1/4 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup water, a pinch of sugar, and a healthy grating of black pepper and pour the liquid over the cucumbers and onions and let the salad marinate for a few hours. The result is pickle-y and bright and summery. A great make ahead salad for picnics and parties and guests.

Fresh Picked

I walked out to the garden with my salad spinner and gathered up these leaves for our salad. Topped with our summer favorite dressing, a simple garlic vinaigrette, a bowl of super fresh greens outshines  everything else on the table.

Simple Salad and Southern Vegetables

On menus at little mom and pop lunch rooms and restaurants throughout the South customers are offered "meat and three." Their choice of a central protein (roast beef, fried chicken, pork chops) and 3 side dishes, generally a rotating list of salads, beans and soft cooked vegetables. Many eaters (me included) opt for just the three with a hearty piece of cornbread to soak up the juices. Squash casserole is a regular on many of those menus and on Thanksgiving tables throughout the region.

For some reason tonight, looking at a box of Ritz crackers on our kitchen shelf, I set out to turn out beautiful farmers market summer squash into this cheesy, buttery baked vegetable dish.

First I cooked the squash (about 4 cups) and sliced onions (1 medium) in a skillet with a small amount of water for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile I crushed 1 large sleeve (about 35 crackers) of Ritz crackers (okay they aren't classy or artisan but admit it they are delicious -- and James loves them) and mixed in 1 cup of grated cheese. Cheddar is more traditional but I used Gruyere. I mixed half of the cracker combo with the squash and stirred in 2 eggs, 3/4 cup of whole milk, and 1/4 cup of melted butter. After seasoning with S&P I turned the mixture into a prepared baking dish and topped with the remaining cracker mixture and dots of butter. The casserole bakes for 25 minutes at 375º until toasty and golden brown on top.

On the side, you won't find this crisp salad on any meat and three menu but our garden is brimming with fresh, beautiful lettuce. This was our first garden salad of the season and I dressed it simply with a light Meyer lemon vinaigrette.

California meets the South on a plate.

A Crunchy Side Dish

I never think about celery. I use it in soups or stuffings or sauces but I never considered celery as the star of a dish. That was until today when we needed a salad and the vegetable drawers were pretty bare.  After a quick internet search I settled on a variation of a recipe from Saveur Magazine -- crunchy slices of my new hero vegetable tossed in a quick vinaigrette (1TB sherry vinegar, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, 1/4 cup olive oil, S&P). A salad with no lettuce. Such a little thing and I feel so daring. Market driven, casual, rustic, fresh, crunchy . . . I feel positively French.

Game 2 Not Very Ballpark

No not many salads in ballparks I suppose but James was in the mood for antipasto salad. Who am I to deny a man a salad made mostly of meat and cheese?? Especially when I have a fridge full of leftovers ready to be tossed and dressed.

Going Visiting

I'm not cooking tonight. We are going visiting. Our new friend Karin has come into town ready to make pasta and we are ready to eat. I brought this roasted tomato caprese salad ( a page from Nancy Silverton's Mozza playbook).

Oven Fried Chicken

Dinner had to be something simple that could wait while James finished today's projects in the yard. He'd come in hungry but I had no idea when he'd be finished. I grabbed a package of drumsticks. Setting the oven to 450º I put half a stick of butter in a roasting pan and let the butter melt in the oven. Meanwhile I mixed flour (about a half cup) grated Romano cheese, thyme, S&P, paprika, and a bit of poultry seasoning (I used Les Epices Rabelais a French spice mix made in marseilles since 1880) in a zip lock bag. Three at a time I dusted the drumsticks in the seasoned flour and placed them in the roasting pan siting on the melted butter. The chicken baked for 40 minutes on one side and then 15 minutes after turning the drumsticks over. "Hey these are good," James, not usually a drumstick fan said  after his first bite. He quickly reached for another.

Alongside these crispy drumsticks a cool cucumber salad. Our garden is positively overflowing with bulging round yellow lemon cucumbers. This salad with it's white vinegar dressing is the perfect way to hide some of the bitterness from a cuke or two that stayed too long on the vine. I combined thinly sliced cucumbers and red onions with shreds of mint and celery leaves (we've got a lot of celery in the yard too) and dressed them in white vinegar and olive oil with just a splash of lemon juice. I gave everything a good toss and seasoned the salad with salt and pepper. Just before serving I mixed in crumbled feta cheese and brought our indoor picnic to the table.

Simple Dinner Salad

There was so much going on today at the house I couldn't be sure when James would be ready for dinner. I needed something hearty (lots of digging and trenching) that could still be put together on short notice -- and didn't need to be hot so I could get dinner prepped in advance. I settled on a dinner salad with lentils, arugula, goat cheese, and butternut squash roasted with olive oil, S&P and a sprinkle of chili powder. When James came in I mixed all the prepared ingredients together, sprinkled a little mint on top and tossed his salad in a tangy balsamic, oregano vinaigrette.

Antipasto Salad

There ar precious few things James actually misses about our life in LA. Pretty high on the list is the antipasto salad from Casa Bianca. These days with everyone all worked up (us included) about farm to table and local ingredients and modern cuisine, something simple like an old Italian-American, red checkered table cloth ready antipasto salad can be pretty tough to find. I chopped prosciutto, salami, turkey, peperoncini, artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, garbanzo beans, and big chunks of cheese into a bowl with lettuce and cucumbers (James is not a fan of raw tomatoes) and tossed it all with a red win vinegar - oregano dressing. Not quite Casa Bianca but a lot closer to home.

Local Dinner With Christmas Duck

Our first Christmas in the new house. I wanted something memorable and still manageable --given the state of our not so, let's say, elegant kitchen. One quick trip to the weekly farmer's market brought home a treasure trove of ingredients: wild arugula, fingerling potatoes, baby turnips, cauliflower, pomegranates, shallots, and a fresh Muscovy duck. After pricking the skin all over with a fork I popped our duck in the oven, seasoned with salt and pepper; the cavity filled with shallots, garlic and thyme. He roasted for about 2 1/2 hours at 400º with me turning him breast side up or down every 45 minutes. I really wanted to cook the duck slowly -- more like 5 hours at 300º or 350º. With just one oven and a cake to bake I had to sacrifice a bit of the slow cooked taste for a nice early Christmas dinner. That's what I get for laying in bed watching Christmas movies instead of jumping up and baking. For the last hour of roasting I tossed the peeled turnips and halved fingerling potatoes in with the duck to roast in the rich fat. Just before the duck was cooked through I coated the skin with a delicate honey lemon glaze. I used that same glaze along with a dash of balsamic vinegar and, yes I admit it, a drizzle of duck fat instead of olive oil to dress the salad.

Along side the duck, offering a bit of creamy sauce to the dark meat, a cauliflower and endive gratin. The vegetables baed for more than an hour (I started them raw) in a cheesy mornay sauce brimming with nutty gruyere and fresh marjoram.
Though I am not really much for tradition, every year I make the same cake for Christmas. A gooey, spicy gingerbread from a recipe by Claudia Flemming, former pastry chef during Tom Coliccio's reign, of Gramercy Tavern. Flemming's recipes are simple, straight forward and brimming with flavor. Flavored with Guinness stout and molasses James is always happy to see this cake on the table. It's so easy and quick I am always happy to make it -- but I save it for once a year . . . most times.

Merry Christmas Honey.

Seasonal Salad

Sometimes I serve this riff on a salad from Chez Panisse as one course for Thanksgiving dinner. This year I conjured up a version as a way to serve up the last of the leftover turkey breast (okay some was tucked away in little TV dinner style containers in the freezer for James). It's as simple as it is fresh, fall-worthy, and delicious. I combined chopped turkey with pomegranate seeds, sliced persimmons, endive (in this case curly and Belgian but usually just Belgian) and toasted, roughly chopped walnuts. I dressed the salad with a quick vinaigrette of one part sherry vinegar (mixed with salt and pepper) to four parts olive oil.

Tomorrow Is A Big Day

And so a simple French style salad for dinner. Deliciously bitter frisée, gently sweet pears, and delicate pan fried boudin blanc all tossed in a balsamic and red wine vinaigrette.

Delicious.

Leaving Again

More packing, more traveling. No time for shopping or cooking or sitting. I stared into an almost empty fridge and came up with a platter of salads. Mozzarella with peperonata, arugula salad with grilled artichokes (pre-made I admit it), grilled asparagus and hearty wheat bread. Toast for dinner before the long drive.

A Very Composed Nicoise

What James didn't have for dinner. A French stye salad in an Italian restaurant in Budapest. Tourist fusion.