Last Night’s Dinner

Where did our June weather go? After a stretch of mostly sunny, beautiful and warm days, we woke to grey, gloomy and COLD. How am I supposed to play with light, bright springtime flavors when all I want to do is curl up under blankets with a mug of tea to get the chill out of my bones? I really must protest.

My crankiness about the weather aside, soup is often the first thing I think of making on damp, rainy days, and I suppose I could have gone with an elegant, light puree of peas or asparagus, but I wanted something a little heartier. Not winter-strength hearty, but a soup with a little more heft.

I rummaged through the fridge and pantry and came up with a pound of chicken and red pepper sausage, roasted red pepper strips with garlic and herbs in olive oil, some of my homemade chicken stock, canned tomatoes and a box of Puy lentils. I removed the sausage from its casings and crumbled it into my soup pot with a little bit of olive oil to brown while I chopped up an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Those went into the pot next, along with the roasted peppers and a generous dollop of harissa paste for some heat. Once everything was nicely toasty, I added the tomatoes (half of a large can, plus juices), stock, and a cup of the lentils, lidded up the pan and let it cook away until the lentils were tender. I adjusted the seasoning and tossed in a couple of handfuls of another kitchen staple – some frozen chopped spinach.

While the soup cooked I sliced a couple of thick pieces of the sourdough loaf Mike baked yesterday and re-warmed them in the oven. (I’ll let him go into more depth about the bread if he wants to – but trust me when I say it’s pretty awesome to come home from work and walk directly into a kitchen filled with the smell of bread baking, and sharing the first slice still warm from the oven is pretty freaking amazing. I think we’ve eaten half of the loaf already. It’s delicious and I am, as ever, a lucky girl.)

This soup was a winner with its light and savory broth, the lentils and spinach providing a little earthiness, and the sausage lending a satisfying meatiness. The heat of the harissa was definitely present, but it was more of an overall warmth in each spoonful rather than a knock-you-over-the-head pepperiness. This was not the most seasonal dinner, but I can see us coming back to this in September and October, when autumn’s chill is in the air and we’ve got an abundance of late-season, home-roasted peppers.

I know that in these last weeks before our move I really have no business adding more items to our pantry, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept hearing and reading about harissa, and when I spotted this little jar at Formaggio Essex recently I had to pick it up. This North African chile paste is most commonly described as “fiery” and I’m telling you, that’s no joke. But the burn is the best kind of burn, sharp and complex, a welcome bit of kick when added to a dish or served alongside.

I had a beautiful piece of halibut that I wanted to cook for dinner last night, but none of my usual preparations were really sending me. I remembered that little jar of harissa and decided this would be a great time to put it to use. I put together a quick marinade for the fish, a combination of harissa, ground coriander, cumin and fenugreek, a bit of salt, fresh lemon juice and olive oil, which I poured over the halibut about half an hour before cooking it (I removed most of it before adding the fish to the pan so it wouldn’t burn). We had one Meyer lemon lingering in the citrus basket, so I chopped it up and combined it with some chopped sundried tomatoes and oil-cured olives, picked flat-leaf parsley (mint would have been great, too), salt and olive oil to make a quick relish to serve on top of the fish. I served it all on a bed of couscous and pine nuts, a nice neutral counterpoint to the zippy flavors of the fish and lemon-olive relish. Mike passed but I couldn’t resist adding a little more harissa to my plate, dabbing a bit of it on random forkfuls of my fish and couscous. It was lovely, and a welcome bit of heat on a blustery night.

My first date with harissa was such a roaring success that I couldn’t wait for our next encounter. My office is closed today and though I have plans to meet Mike in the city for lunch, a girl’s gotta have breakfast, right? Rye toast, a couple of fried eggs, and harissa, oh yes - my lips are still tingling. I think I’m in love.

(Happy Purim, Happy Easter, Happy weekend, everyone!)