Last Night’s Dinner

Lobster chopped salad. With bacon. Because a ridiculously bad day at the office calls for a little luxury, don’t you think?

See you all next week.

I think I’ve spoken before of my fondness for Rhode Island-style calamari, but did you know that most of the squid served in restaurants in this country is actually from the waters off little Rhody? I didn’t until I read an article about it in the Spring 2008 issue of Edible Rhody magazine, and since then I’ve happily indulged in this local treat whenever possible.

I’ve lamented the fact that, to my surprise, fresh local seafood can be difficult to find in stores around here, but our nearby Whole Foods often has plenty of Point Judith squid available. It’s inexpensive and plentiful, and I picked up a pound of it recently hoping to make it the focus of a meal.

I had originally planned to go in a slightly different direction here, but I settled on a salad infused with Spanish flavors, mixing up a smoked Spanish paprika and sherry vinaigrette to dress the smoky grilled squid and warm potatoes. Chopped shallot and celery added some crunch, and plenty of fresh celery leaves and parsley provided an herbal bite. The finishing touch was a few slivers of fresh red chile pepper, which imparted a gentle heat and pop of color.

Every time I think the market can’t possibly have more beautiful summer produce to offer, I’m proven wrong – it’s almost too much of a good thing. It’s hard for me to exercise restraint with so much bounty before me, and when I bring it all home it’s important not to let it go to waste.

Luckily, we love our veggies, and this time of year it’s easy to load up on them. This salad was the first of many main dish versions I have planned for the week, and it features two southern favorites: fried green tomatoes and fried okra. I did a basic dredge, first in a mixture of buttermilk and beaten egg, then coated the tomatoes and okra in seasoned flour and cornmeal, and fried them in batches until crisp and golden. I arranged them on a bed of young, peppery arugula leaves, drizzling them with a buttermilk-Tabasco vinaigrette. A smattering of halved yellow and red grape tomatoes came next, and to gild the lily a wee bit more, I topped each plate with a poached egg.

One of the things we both loved about this salad was the interplay between the tart and crusty green tomatoes and the sweet fresh ones. The dressing was a total experiment, but a successful one, providing a little bit of heat and becoming creamier as it mixed with the egg yolk.

It’s still about a million degrees here, so I went with another salad: black-eyed peas, yellow wax beans, radishes, purple scallions and basil with mustard vinaigrette. I served it on a bed of baby mustard greens from Arcadian Fields.

Sorry so brief, but I’m feeling a bit rough after a mostly sleepless night. Long story. Anyway, I’ll catch up with you all next week. Be safe and well, everyone.

I got home from work yesterday and walked into a house that was empty but for two quiet and very confused kitties. I had come up with all sorts of ideas about how to spend my alone time while Mike is away at Tales, but in the end, a very quiet evening was what was in store for me last night. And my husband wasn’t the only one knocking back a cold drink.

After my lunch of sushi and soba yesterday, I stopped at BRIX to pick up a bottle of wine, and spotted some 4-packs of Press cucumber soda (which of course I had to try). Their suggested pairing, obviously, was with Hendricks gin, but we were out. Aviation worked just fine, and the combo made for a darned fine tipple on a sticky evening.

My cooking efforts were minimal. I cubed up a couple of heels of multigrain from Bread Alone, tossed them with salt, olive oil and Herbes de Provence and toasted them until crunchy, then served them on top of a Very Big Salad:

A few big handfuls of Arcadian Fields’ “Teenage Lettuce Mix,” carrots, celery, cucumber, roasted red peppers, one of our homegrown patio tomatoes, a diced up grilled chicken breast (I had Mike cook a couple for me when he grilled our pork for Sunday’s dinner), and the rest of my buttermilk blue cheese dressing (an adaptation of Grace Parisi’s version, subbing creme fraiche - which we always have on hand - for sour cream), and dinner for one was served.

I love a good Caesar salad, which for me pretty much requires a homemade dressing with garlic and anchovy and fresh egg yolks, but as others have pointed out, main dish Caesars topped with grilled chicken or shrimp can be pretty boring. I spotted this recipe in Bon Appetit recently and fell in love with the idea of topping a Caesar with egg rather than mixing it into the dressing, but I wanted a dish with a little more oomph. I remembered the tub of Mike’s pork belly confit we still had in the fridge, and it seemed like just the thing: I’d do a “bacon and egg” Caesar - a little Bon Appetit, a little Ruhlman, a whole lotta yum.

I had Mike pull the confit out of the fridge in the afternoon and cut some crouton-like chunks for me, and when I got home from work, I prepped the romaine, whizzed up a dressing (lots of garlic, anchovies, sea salt, fresh lemon juice and our best olive oil), and set up my breading station:

After a dip in flour, beaten egg, and panko, I carefully lowered the cubes into some very hot fat - in this case, some of Mike’s rendered leaf lard. When the cubes were golden brown, they came out of the fat and onto a paper towel to drain.

I went back and forth about how I’d do the eggs for this dish, but settled on sunny-side up for cosmetic reasons. I cracked two eggs into a pan with lots of butter, put a lid on and let them cook gently until the whites were just set, then I took a ring mold and very carefully cut out little rounds. I held my breath as I moved them from pan to plate, and happily, I didn’t destroy either one.

I finished the plated salads with shards of Parmagiano Reggiano and plenty of freshly ground pepper. And then we got to the best part:

Yes, friends, breaded and deep fried pork belly confit is every bit as good as you’d think, and on a Caesar, it’s stellar.

Sometimes dinner is more about putting together a few items from the fridge and pantry and less about actual cooking. Last night was one of those times - I had something planned for dinner, but as the morning’s rains moved out, leaving us with a beautiful, warm evening, the meal I originally had in mind seemed too heavy. I needed a Plan B.

In addition to my outline of meals for the week, I keep a running list of ideas for quick pantry dinners in my menu planning notebook. Often this list is nothing more than combinations of ingredients that I think would work well together, and I often turn to the list when I need to come up with dinner on the fly.

We’re big fans of canned and tinned fish of all types, so we’ve always got some in the pantry. I thought of the two tins of Cole’s Petite Rainbow Trout we had on hand, and decided to go with one of the combinations listed in my little red book: trout+potatoes+mustard. I whisked together a couple of tablespoons each of mayo, creme fraiche and Dijon mustard, fresh lemon juice, a minced shallot, salt, pepper and a teaspoon or so of brown mustard seeds to make a tangy and lightly creamy dressing. I added a good handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley for color and an herbal kick, and then gently tossed the potatoes and trout in the dressing until coated. I mounded the salad over a big bed of baby lettuces, added a little more freshly ground pepper, and that was that - dinner in minutes, with a minimum of time, effort or fuss.

Are you ready for another rave about Rancho Gordo beans? I hope so, because I continue to be dazzled by them and the meal I made with them last night was no exception.

While the temperature is still quite chilly I am so ready to move on to lighter dishes. I am so over braising, stewing, roasting, and the last thing I wanted after a full weekend of overindulgence was anything heavy for dinner. I made a mental inventory of the contents of our fridge and pantry on my commute home to try to come up with something – anything – that tasted of spring. I thought first of the various beans in the cupboard and decided to use some as the base of a warm salad.

I chose Rancho Gordo’s Flageolets, a delicate little bean with a lovely creamy texture, cooking a cup of them in an abundant amount of water, and adding salt near the end of their cooking time (about an hour and a half total). I then drained them and set them aside to cool slightly while getting to work on the rest of the dish. I whisked together plenty of fresh lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil with salt and pepper in a big bowl to dress the salad, added the beans to the bowl, then a bunch of chopped veggies: scallions, radishes, and a couple of Israeli cucumbers. I added a tablespoon or so of chopped fresh mint and a handful of fresh dill fronds, gave everything a toss, then finished the salad by gently folding in about 4 oz. of cubed feta. I served the bean salad on a bed of baby greens (you can really never have too many veggies), and it was just what I needed – the beans were super tender and held their shape beautifully, and the crunch of the veggies, salty bite of feta and brightness of the herbs and lemon were perfect counterpoints. As warmer weather arrives, this salad is going to be a great one to have in the arsenal for lunch or a light dinner.

After the long week we had, I was really feeling the need for some inspiration, so on Saturday morning Mike and I headed into the city to do a food safari. After brunch and a quick stop at Uva to pick up a good bottle of wine for our Valentine’s Day dinner, we went into the city to go to the Greenmarket at Union Square. With Mike working so close I don’t go there as often as I used to, so I was anxious to see what sort of treasures we could find at the winter market.

I was delighted to see Yuno’s Farm there on a one-off winter appearance. They weren’t selling a wide variety of things, but I was immediately drawn to these beautiful young mustard greens with their spiky green and violet leaves (which reminded me of a Disney villainess). I filled a bag and moved on, already beginning to change my plans for our meatless Monday dinner.

By the time we finished our shopping, we had a beautiful selection of root vegetables, grass-fed Angus fillets and pork sausages for later in the week, and those beautiful greens. We headed home with our bounty, ducking in to Essex Market to visit our favorite cheese goddess, and I revamped our meal plan for the week.

Since my recent experiments with roasting beets have been so well received, I decided to roast them again along with some multicolored potatoes and carrots and Silver Queen turnips from Windfall Farm. I tossed my roasted vegetables with a mustard vinaigrette and placed them on a bed of our mustard greens, then topped them off with a poached egg.

I was pleased enough with how these salads came out - they were certainly pretty to look at and the texture of the roasted vegetables and creamy egg worked well together - but I would have liked a little more flavor contrast, perhaps from a bit of sharp or tangy cheese or a punchier vinaigrette. This is definitely a dish we’ll have again.

This is my take on the buttermilk salad I had at Marlow and Sons last weekend - a mixture of red butter lettuce, scallions, sweet corn, radishes, and three different kinds of tomatoes from our garden, all chopped and tossed with homemade buttermilk dressing and snipped chives. I marinated a couple of pieces of grass-fed flatiron steak from Elk Trails in a mixture of crushed garlic, kosher salt, black pepper, lemon juice and olive oil, and Mike seared them in the cast iron skillet, finishing them in the oven. Simple and delicious.